Twitter Competitors, Lab Leak Theory, and Guest Mehdi Hasan

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Hi, everyone.

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

I'm Kara Swisher from Los Angeles.

How are you doing, Scott?

Wow, from L.A.

That's...

What are you doing in L.A., Kara?

By the way, I'm in London, but what are you doing in L.A.?

I'm here in L.A.

for the Upfront Summit hosted by Upfront Ventures, and I'll be interviewing, among other people, Jamie Lee Curtis and also the head of Universal Pictures, Donna Donna Langley, together

about her, about her Oscar thing, them about the Oscars, essentially.

And then I'm interviewing Mark Benioff, which I can't believe

it's worked out so perfectly because he turned in really good earnings yesterday.

So we're going to go back and forth here.

And then I'm appearing on The Love It Show, the John Lovett Show.

And tonight,

he tapes it at a comedy club.

And then some other Zarius and sundry LA type things.

He's the Pod Save America guy, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

He's a great guy.

He's a friend of mine.

He's good.

It's a fun show.

He does it.

We should try it sometime.

He does it at a com typically at a public venue, and it's really fun.

A lot of drink and stuff like that.

It's fun.

I like it.

I'm good.

I'm glad you're there.

Where do you stay when you're in LA?

What do I stay at Brooks?

I stay at Brooks.

She always has a beautiful home.

Yeah.

She's, she's,

Brick Hammerling is a friend of mine, and she's, she, I stay at her house.

I don't like hotels, Scott.

I'm not a hotel person.

Really?

I can't avoid it.

Unless they're really beautiful.

Like I stayed at London.

The Dills Hotel or stay at the Waldorf.

Those are two.

LA is a great hotel city.

It is.

I have stayed at beautiful hotels here.

That is fair, but I prefer to stay with friends.

I like that.

I like it better.

Anyway,

get my car.

I drive around.

Anyway, but it's freezing.

So it's colder than DC, which was a little bit of a shock.

But we'll see.

We'll see.

Anyway, what are you doing?

How's London?

Speaking of cold?

I'm back.

I'm jet lagged, which means I'm an even bigger asshole than I usually am.

Good.

Good.

Consider it's good.

It's good to be with the dogs.

You know, kids are all right, but it's really good to be with the dogs.

Worst.

I'm intervening on it.

I'm calling British whatever it is.

You call it.

I went to this concert last night.

There's this great club called Coco, and it's such a unique concept.

Of course, it's a members-only club because I'm very fancy, Kira.

Yes, I know you are.

It's such a unique idea.

They took essentially like a Soho house kind of zero-bond kind of club idea, and it butts up to a really beautiful concert hall.

Oh.

And so you have your, your fun, aspirational dinner with other, you know, hotter,

more interesting people, i.e.

everyone than me.

And then they have this member's entrance into the venue and you see this crazy concert with a DJ, but you're in your nice, safe, older person balcony.

It really is.

Literally.

Hello, Mr.

Elite, man of the people, Scott Galloway.

Oh, I have no desire to be that.

Anyways, it just amazes me how

basically the economy, the market

is totally morphing around what I call the 1%.

And that is, you know, I think of Disney.

Disney used to be everybody bought those stupid books with A, B, C, D, and E tickets and waited in the same line.

And now you have the fast pass.

Well, that's not enough.

If you can afford $5,000 or $6,000, you get a VIP tour with some really high EQ person from Wisconsin who bypasses the entire line and gives gives you a hand signal to take the ride again if you want.

And the whole world, and this is, there's, you know, it's great to be in the 1%, but I think it's kind of a negative looking forward indicator.

Prime means the revolution is coming.

The whole world is being optimized for the 1% and these members' clubs are popping up everywhere.

There's, there's, in New York, there's Sohaus, Zero Bond, Casa Cipriani, Five Hertford is opening there.

And it's just slowly but surely everything's going on.

They can't take a restaurant.

They can't take a going into a restaurant and waiting their turn.

No, I guess not.

When you say they, who's they?

You mean 1%?

Like, mostly, I mean, because restaurants, when I was in New York last weekend, as you know, and it was hopping, I have to say, everywhere.

It's packed.

It's packed.

But it wasn't just the 1%.

It was all over the place.

People are.

No, if you're in Manhattan, you're probably in the 1%.

No, I was.

It may not feel like it, but you're in the 1%.

No, no.

Brooklyn's.

I was saying it was young people.

It was all young people.

It didn't feel like

it did not feel like Club Cocoa or Square Flood.

It was a brewery.

It did not feel like Club Cocoa.

It felt like most people could walk in.

Anyway, my $28 hamburger and down in dirty Brooklyn.

My hamburger was not $28, but nonetheless, I don't roll like you, Scott.

I roll a little less.

You roll larger.

You just like to put on this sod that you're a woman of the people.

I'm not a woman.

I never say that.

Not once.

Not once do I say that.

Oh, yeah.

I'm educated in America with an excellent education, and I've worked.

Educated in America?

That's the most elite thing.

I've gotten all the advantages.

You get all these medals from Georgetown and go to a private school.

I mean,

you did.

Well, you tried to.

You've been very insulting to me lately.

I'm not insulting.

This is how I expect to be able to do that.

You tackle that back, Mr.

Coco.

Anyway, today we'll talk about Jack Dorsey's new social media app.

Also, the COVID lab league debate is back.

And we'll speak with friend of Pivot, Mehdi Hassan, about how to win arguments with your friends, enemies, and podcast hosts, and others.

But first, Elon Musk's latest master plan.

I call it the master baiting plan.

The Tesla CEO unveiled a five-point plan for, quote, fully sustainable earth on Wednesday.

Thanks, Elon, at the company's first live stream, Investor Day.

The so-called master plan three, however, was short on specifics, and honestly, it read like Bill Gates's book from two years ago and many other people's books from many, all the years.

It was sort of glommed together.

What was missing from the nearly three-hour presentation?

Any new product updates, such as plans for a more affordable electric vehicle, any new vehicle models at all, any information that Robo taxi fleet he promised us during his last Master Plan.

Tesla shares fell more than 5% in after hours trading following the event.

I mean, it was like heat.

Let's have heat pumps.

Oh, good idea.

It's happening already.

We already had several people at code like that last year and, you know, lots of people.

There was nothing fresh in this master plan for the universe.

It was very weird.

I watched it and it seemed chaotic.

And, you know, I'm glad he's talking about it, I guess.

What the event did reveal, though, is Tesla does plan to open a new factory in Mexico.

Great.

And they're way ahead in manufacturing.

The Cybertruck is expected to ship at the end of the year.

We'll see about that.

Engineers are planning to cut assembly costs by 50%.

Sounds great.

And Elon says they're developing a humanoid robot.

I felt it was master plan two,

which he promised a high-density urban transport.

And all he delivers was the Las Vegas loop, which has a single-lane tunnel.

I think this is just a lot of hand-waving, I'm sorry to say, even though I like the topic.

Yeah,

I couldn't help, and granted, I look at all of this through a biased lens because I don't like the man, but I felt like the

thing in the room that we weren't talking about was Twitter.

He struck me as a CEO who's been distracted with other things, and he got a bunch of notes and talking points from his comms, an IR person, and got on stage and kind of winged it.

It felt to me like all icing, no cake.

I mean, past presentations, he's gotten up there with new products and,

you know, kind of done what I I feel are very compelling things.

And this just felt like a lot of jazz hands.

This felt like a CEO whose promise has gotten way ahead of the performance, in my view.

Yeah.

And the other thing I'm really on to this notion, and I'm thinking of writing a book on it, is

we talk about.

Didn't you just write a book?

Didn't you just finish a book?

I'm trying to finish a book right now.

By the way,

advice to anyone out there, never write a book.

Never write a book.

It's both.

It's like, oh, terrible.

I don't know if I'm going to it's a slaughter.

I have March 31st as my deadline.

We'll see.

Yeah, my agent said, what's a reasonable deadline?

I'm like, I don't know.

You know, when we colonize Mars, don't ask, man.

Yeah.

So, anyways, but this notion that we're so focused on the emissions from fossil fuels.

And it struck me when he was up there saying we can have a world without fossil, you know, we can have a world that's all electric and it won't cost us a fortune, kind of portraying himself as a savior by reducing carbon emissions.

And I would argue that Elon Musk is an enormous coal-fire plant of a more dangerous emission, and that is

an economy that rewards, grabbing people's attention regardless of how damaging or divisive the things you say are.

Wow, that's a really good insight.

And I think this guy is literally the biggest coal-fire plan in history.

And that is his own needs, an economy that rewards attention over why you're getting that attention has resulted in a level of rhetoric and a desperate need to command the news every day that quite frankly is not productive, it's divisive.

And whether it's weighing in on Dilbert or accusing a former head of safety who he didn't like of a sex crime with his PhD thesis, those are noxious emissions that are damaging to the world.

I like this metaphor a lot.

So I'm all on this thing because if you think about it,

Biden's climate bill claims that we'll be able to reduce emissions in the U.S.

by 40%.

Would it even be possible, if and when we recognize how dangerous the emissions are from an attention-based economy, would it even be possible at this point to reduce divisiveness, polarization, and teen depression by 40%?

No.

Could we even do it?

No.

So while he's off talking about this Jesus complex of saving the world from carbon, I'm not,

I think we should be worried about climate change.

I don't think, you know, I think we're addressing it, and that's not to absolve us of making the requisite investments but i think we have a better chance i think the most dangerous omission in the world is this omission of rage i would agree i i think look of all the people who have changed the course of history in terms of getting us to electric he's the key person right he's the catalyst catalyst no question and that is his great i know some people at this event last night this dinner some people who knew him pretty well and and And one of them thanked me for being so tough on him.

I'm like, I wish he would focus back on this stuff and in real time, like and actually do it rather than waste his friggin' time.

I said he's ruining his legacy, which is this.

But talk a leader talking about this stuff is a great thing, always, right?

To focus, especially the people follow.

And now it looks like he's just masturbating a master plan three.

Like, give me master plan.

Stop it.

Tomorrow belongs to me.

I will build the master plan.

None of these ideas are fresh and new.

One, like, literally, it was Bill Gates' book, who he spends a lot of time insulting, by the way, who's probably doing more in terms of investing and focusing on it.

But Elon's got a particular ability to focus people on this.

He's got to run this company, which is really remarkable.

Tesla's remarkable in manufacturing, et cetera, et cetera.

It's obviously overvalued, but nonetheless, it's way ahead of everybody else.

And like, he's now a humanoid robot.

Okay, sure.

Like, why?

Like, focus on making Tesla better.

Focus.

And one of the things, I'll say one more thing that we got to move on is I was, I got out at Hertz yesterday.

And, you know, I could pick, you can pick whatever car you want now if you're in whatever gold circle.

And there were lots of Teslas.

I didn't want to get in one.

I honestly, I was like, I'm not using a Tesla.

But there was the Kia Nero, there was a Chevy EUV.

And I was getting into the Kia Nero because I wanted to try it, right?

They didn't charge it at Hertz.

They didn't charge it up.

It was down at 94 miles.

And I was like, hey, why don't you charge this fully so I can, it doesn't lose the charge so I can use it.

And they're like, well, you should go to your hotel and do that.

And I thought, what is wrong with you people?

Like, I would have totally taken it,

but I didn't know.

I'm not staying somewhere where there's a charger and I didn't want to, you know, hunt around and everything.

It's just, we've got to get on the plan here.

And this guy could do it.

And instead, he's doing the rest of this.

And tomorrow he'll, after all this.

you know, mas plan one, master plan two, he's going to say something stupid about, I don't know, Beyonce.

Well, then he'll be, he'll be dead when he does that.

But,

but it's just, he's such a waste of space at this point, given his promise.

It's one of those.

Anyway, I love Hertz.

I bought a car from Hertz because I find that buying a car from Hertz is like marrying a prostitute.

It may look good on the outside, but you have no idea who's been in it or what they've done to it.

All right, okay, fine.

I have not been in a rental car.

One of the nicest things about my life

is I have not been in a rental car location or desk in a decade.

I had to take a look at the car.

I like a rental car.

Or have a nice man pick me up in an internal combustion car getting four miles to the gallon.

Yep.

I just,

I, you know, several of my friends were like, why didn't you take an Uber?

And I was like, I like a rental car.

Anyway, you go to the thing and you rent the car?

I just go, I get to the bus, I get on, and I don't have to wait.

I don't wait in any lines.

I just get it.

Anyway, anyway, moving on, TikTok now has time limits for teenagers.

The app will prompt users under 18 to enter a passcode in order to spend more than 60 minutes on the app.

For users under 13, a parent will have to set a passcode in order to extend watch time.

And then it will only be 30 minutes.

TikTok announced a change on the same day the House committee voted to advance legislation that would empower President Biden to ban the app.

Are those changes good?

I mean, sure.

Sure.

Yeah.

I mean, what's not to like about this?

They'll put the passcode in.

It won't stop them.

It's the stop sign, right?

I spoke at a WPP event in Miami.

And I went and I went on this rant about, it it was just so funny you would have loved it the woman running the event kept looking at me so at first I talked about Walmart being in the Bible belt and she looked at me and she's like they're here they're like stop talking

and I start talking about tick tock and she's like they're here stop talking oh wow and I went into my whole tick tock should be banned rap oh yeah so what are the nice people from tick tock do they just couldn't be nicer they came up and they gave me a tick tock backpack for my kids what oh nice and we were joking like is there a listening device in here look back to the thing.

There is.

And by the way, I just want to be clear.

Every person I've met at TikTok is lovely.

I would like them all to get really wealthy.

I would just like to see their wealth created as a function of a spin to

American investors.

Yes.

You've made your opinion clear.

Yes.

Yeah.

But look, yeah, I think they're doing anything they can.

to try and spread Vaseline over the lens of the greatest propaganda tool in history.

And I don't doubt

it's the right move.

It doesn't do anything to address the fundamental problem.

Yeah.

And you know what's weird?

I now believe, and I'm trying to find another academic to do the actual hard work or research here.

Yeah.

I believe it's been happening the last few years.

I think, I think, and it's almost impossible to come up with the attribution, but Jonathan Haidt spent a better part of a decade to find that correlation does equal causation when it comes to social media and teen depression.

I think in 10 years, someone like Jonathan Haidt is going to find that the

poor feelings, the cynicism, and the general negative outlook that young people have on America

is largely driven by social media that the algorithms like to elevate.

And also, also, I think they're going to find a lot of it came from TikTok.

And we'll never know.

We'll never know if it was intentional.

Oh, it was before TikTok.

Facebook was doing this.

Oh, no, they're all guilty of it.

They're all guilty of it.

But one has it as a motive for geopolitical purposes, and the others just have it as a profit motive.

Yeah, okay.

Now, in terms of the the ban, civil liberties and digital rights groups are pushing back.

Some bring up First Amendment rights, and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo says the ban on a single company would be short-sighted.

Any reaction to that, Scott?

Yeah, look, I don't.

Michael Bennett is now calling for a ban.

I think this is really, just the more I think about it, spending time on TikTok and what I see.

And it's just,

I don't even like to go.

I think a better argument or an easier way to get done would be like, well, let's just look at trade policy.

What is China, of our media assets and companies, what is China allowing to China?

I had lunch with the most interesting guy, this guy named Jamil Anderlini.

He's the new editor-in-chief of Political in Europe.

He's such an impressive young man.

And he kind of ran me through a history of the rise of Xi Jinping and what's going on with the CCP.

And it is frightening.

I mean, it is really how many people have been imprisoned,

how they're basically, this guy's kind of become the Putin of Asia.

And

I would be very,

I'd just be shocked if they didn't have full-blown strategy meetings around, oh my God, we found the ultimate hypersonic missile, the ultimate defense shield, the ultimate offensive weapon, and it's called TikTok.

I would love to have this thing as a geopolitical weapon.

Anyways, very nice TikTok, the band, but teens will go right, we'll blow right through that stop sign.

We'll see.

You think so?

Because of the compelling, addictive nature of your terrific product that could be a propaganda, greatest propaganda tool in history.

And it also makes Scott feel bad.

So anyway, let's get to our first big story.

Jack Dorsey is back in the social media game, but this time he's inviting others to play.

The former Twitter CEO launched his new app, Blue Sky, in the iOS App Store this week.

It's an invite-only beta.

A review from TechCrunch shows that on the surface, it looks a lot like Twitter, but under the hood blue sky does something different it runs on an open source protocol which gives developers the chance to build their own social media apps with their own algorithms and moderation policies it's pick the kind of

thing you want essentially you know pick your own social media network if you don't want any Kanye if you don't if you want lots of Kanye whatever it also lets users move freely between different apps that's drawing comparisons not all of them favorable to Mastodon another social media network built on a different but similar network.

What's he doing here?

What do you think he's doing?

Everyone thinks it's not being discussed is monetization.

What's the play?

If anyone can make an app on this protocol, someone could just make one without ads.

Mastodon runs on donations, for example.

Luke's guy started as an in-house project at Twitter while Jack was in control, and it got $13 million for RD, I think, mostly from him.

So what do we think?

You know, I don't know that much about this.

In general, I'm just a big fan of competition.

I love the idea of multiple players coming after Twitter's launch.

Jack Dorsey, you have to give him credit for being a genius product guy.

But where I go is an odd place.

And that is, I go to corporate governance, just

another indication of just what a feckless board Twitter is.

Let me get this.

The CEO and the founder gets to go start a competitor.

I mean, I'm not, I don't like non-competes, but when the CEO who's made billions,

I think he's still an owner.

Yeah, you're not supposed to go start a competitor.

I just can't believe the board never thought to put in a non-compete for the founder and the CEO.

But anyways, I hope there's a lot of competition.

I love, I'm super happy and enjoying my investment and involvement in Post.

And the weird thing is Post news.

This is Post News, yeah.

And it's just a much cleaner, friendlier, more benign, more informative place to have a dialogue around news.

And what's strange is I'm really fascinated.

I have been so addicted to Twitter for the better part of a decade and purposely not spending, I've reduced my time on it about 80 percent i took a hundred percent off for 60 days now i'm back to about 20

and you make some observations one it's really good for your mental health not to be on it and two i can't get over i'm kind of back to i i looked up some people who are fairly controversial but interesting and and what you realize is You forget, you don't realize how small Twitter is until you're off it.

And that it's the same people who believe that the world is that world and it's not.

And they're talking to each other and they think that the ratio or the number of likes is an indicator of veracity or truth in the world.

And what you realize is it's a small group of people literally screaming at each other who are under the impression

that this tiny nation called Twitter is the world.

It's not.

It just feels.

When you go back to it, it just feels, it feels remarkably sweet.

I would agree.

I only do it every now and then.

I just did a big trans rant because I'm kind of getting pissed at the New York Times coverage of trans issues, but that's neither here nor there.

And then I put it on post, of course.

But there are plenty of competitors speaking of which former Twitter staffers are behind Startup Network Spill and T2

among the front runners.

Insiders point to co-host Hive Social, Discord.

There's Post, and now Kevin Sistrom, who'll be interviewing at South by Southwest, Artifact, which is more news-focused, but there's a social element to it.

Discord has 150 million active users, raised nearly a billion dollars across 16 rounds.

Mastodon, about 1.3 million active users, a little smaller, raised less than $100,000 in 2021, according to some reports.

Hive Social, by the way, is about a half a million active daily users raised less than a half a million dollars.

Flipboard announced this week, that's still around, by the way, that it's joining the Fediverse.

That's what this is called.

Mastodon users will be able to view their feeds in the Flipboard iOS app.

So that's kind of interesting, this Fediverse,

which is kind of a weird word.

So what do you think is going to, is any of them going to break out?

Because you do want to break out, or are they going to remain small like this?

I don't know.

I feel like I'm too close to it because I'm an investor in one and I have a bias against Musk and Twitter.

I don't have a feel.

I'm curious what you or Casey thinks in terms of an honest, I'd love to see Walt Mossberg break all these down because whenever I read reviews of his tech, I found he was just a genius of being dispassionate.

Yeah.

This is good.

This is not good.

Yeah.

And I can't do that with these things.

I'm too close to it.

What are your thoughts?

What do you think the good money is on?

I don't know.

I think it's all over the place.

You have to settle in one suburb, I guess.

I think they're all going to be small, right?

And Twitter could have been the one, right?

Of course.

It could have been.

It always remained so small.

And then it got ugly.

And now, you know,

Master Plan runs it.

So it's not good anymore.

And by the way, Twitter could use some work under the hood.

The site experienced at least four outages in February, according to the organization Netbox.

That's compared to nine outages in all of 2022.

Putting the technical errors aside, see, this is what I'm talking about.

It's there, Scott.

The problems are there.

Discourse is still rubbing some people the wrong way.

Comedian Hassan Minaj deactivated his account on the air this week while hosting the daily show.

Elon didn't make Twitter terrible.

Twitter has been terrible for years.

He's right.

I would agree with him.

You and I have talked about this a lot.

That's true.

He's made it terrible,

you know, kind of thing.

But

it's just stressed the things that have been bad about it.

He's sort of doubled down.

So I don't know if there's not good people that aren't going to just scatter to the winds in these different things.

And if there's one, and the one is probably Instagram and Facebook will continue to be, for the vast majority of regular people, the place where people are.

But again, I don't know how you could figure out where everybody goes, right?

It's like a small town that scatters to the winds, essentially.

If you think about it, you're trying to disrupt them.

Clay Christensen would say, and this is what we're trying to do at Post, you focus on a niche or an area that's not covered well and start to kind of, you know, climb up the leg, if you will, until the incumbent sees this great white and its torso is halfway in the great white's mouth.

But anyways,

I think in the strategy that I'm trying, or that I think is the right one, is to try and find responsible, fact-checked, great news organizations and say, let's try and work together to develop another

source of cash flow through micropayments.

I mean, I really,

in my book, I'm talking about this.

I really do think, and I think I got this from you.

The original sin of the internet was that they didn't, they built such amazing ad technology and they built such shitty micropayments technology.

And if it had been, if you had said at the very beginning of the internet, all right, how are we going to finance this thing?

Either through advertising or through payments, where every time you get great content or something inspiring, you either sign up for some sort of membership or you pay one cent or two cents.

I'm not sure that we automatically would have assumed it would have gone advertising.

And it's been so terrible for us.

So

I think that an opportunity is to say, okay, how do we find, how do we do relationships with everyone from News Corps to New Kay to the BBC and figure out a way to give them

to give them

some of the money for the content?

Because the reality is, and I was having a conversation with a woman we know who's running this great news startup that's on

primarily using Instagram.

And I'm like, I love you.

I love your business.

The problem is whenever you're dependent upon Meta or Google for your business, you ultimately get fucked.

Every one of them.

Every one of them.

I don't care who you are.

You never hear of someone saying the last decade of partnership with Meta has been great, said no company or individual ever.

I'm hopeful that we move to a point where people are sort of used to, in a very elegant way, saying,

Post, there's all these Reuters articles, and most of them are free, but occasionally there's one that's more in depth, and it says, okay, this is 25 cents.

And you're like, click here.

And to me, that just is a healthier model.

Anyway, we'll see.

We'll see what shakes out.

I think it's very hard.

People are very addicted to the anger on it, on Twitter, and they're addicted to the movement.

It feels like it's moving, right?

There's a reason I put the trans thing up there.

I wanted certain people to see it, right?

And then I but I put it over on Post, I put it over in another one.

And um, I think probably if I had to guess, it would be Instagram will regain its status in some fact.

I'm spending more time on Instagram, I've noticed that.

I'm embarrassed to say it, but I've noticed it.

Yeah, yeah,

I know under the auspices of um I'm going to regret asking, what is it about the Times coverage of transgender issues that's authored you?

Oh, well, it's not just Times coverage.

Um, gosh, I would do we need a bigger boat, uh, we need a bigger boat, but I wrote a very long thing.

Look,

the coverage that they have been doing

of

trans people is over and above the actual problem.

So, you know, the obsession with this topic, including with Dave Chappelle, like, like, remember when I said, you know, Dave Chappelle, he can joke about it, but why an hour and a half?

Like, a powerful person talking an hour and a half about a topic brings attention to it.

And there was a great piece in the, I'll do it very quickly.

Great piece in the Washington Post.

I think they're doing about this.

It was called

The State is at War with Our Family, Clergy with Trans Kids Fight Back.

It was about a Missouri bill.

It was so fair and even-handed about this family.

And so I think a lot of people,

this topic is made more controversial to gin up political advantage.

And this piece was really good.

And I wanted to celebrate it because I think the rights' entire game is to get fair-minded people to think it's a fair fight so

so they can do what they want, which is to restrict transgender health care, period, for everybody.

And in fact, there's now a whole spade of new state bills restricting transgender health care for adults.

That's their game.

That's their actual game.

And so

I don't mind writing about like, let's reconsider J.K.

Rowland.

Sure, you can do that.

What's happened at the New York Times is there was a whole spade of these stories, let's reconsider, but all lots of them.

Like, and when a big company like the New York Times does it, it sets the agenda, right?

And I don't say they shouldn't write it, but suddenly, like, it's the biggest detransitioning kids is the smallest mathematical amount.

Um, people,

you know, I mean, it's the smallest mathematic.

It's, I'm like, why don't you write about poor kids?

You know, they did, but I like this kind of focus from very powerful people there is irritating.

So, what happened is a bunch of people wrote a note who worked there complaining, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

And then it got into the typical, we don't have advocates here at the New York Times, and anyone who did it will be warned for signing this letter, which I always hate, like that kind of stuff.

But powerful news organizations never see themselves as advocates too by over-focusing on alleged crises where none of the numbers actually bears out the excessive coverage.

And they think they're being fair and they wear it like a shield, but really they want control of the people that work for them, right?

And there was a quote by Asted Herndon.

As a black journalist, I've seen how charges of activism can be used to discredit journalists of unrepresented backgrounds who may come to work of reporting with a different lens.

Different lens doesn't mean advocacy.

I think the New York Times is just as much an advocate as by picking and choosing coverage as anybody else.

And I'm all for debate.

I'm all for fair coverage, even if it's painful.

But overcoverage is happening.

And something Amanda said, and I'll stop my rant in a second, was that you wonder if anybody there has trans friends, right, at all.

And one of the things that it reminded me of, and this is is what I did write about, when I was a gay, a young gay person at the Washington Post, there are all these editors advocating, covering the side that wanted to quelch and change people like me, even though they were deeply inaccurate and lying.

Right.

And I was like, why are we covering people who are at their heart lying to you about what's actually the really thing?

And so when I pointed out, I was called an advocate and emotional, and I was like, you're publishing errors about the gay community, errors.

And I was young.

And so I didn't have as much pull.

And, but I was a news aide, and they had this egregious gay photo of an old gay trope.

And I objected to it.

I said, this is not the gay community.

Can you just go out and do reporting on it or something?

And I joked and said, we contain multitudes.

You know, there's lots of, like, it's a little more complex.

And the right wing was just trying to fuck with gays.

That's all they were doing in order to gain political advantage.

So what I did is.

Back then, they didn't have digital photography.

I took the photo, put it in my desk, and I left it there, and they couldn't find it.

And so they did a, and I offered a better one, right?

It was, I wasn't being propagandized.

It was just a more accurate photo, and that's the one they use.

And I don't regret it for a second.

And so I just feel like overcoverage can be advocacy in a way, and they pretend it's not.

That's all.

So that's my rant.

Thank you.

I think it's a really important point.

And I think that

those progressives, and I consider myself a progressive, I think we just play into conservatives in very ugly factions' hands by saying, wanting to engage in an outrageous debate over don't say gay in schools.

And I'm like,

as someone who has kids in school in Florida, as someone who has served on the board of their kids' school, this is less than a non-issue.

We're trying to figure out a way, you know, to teach them the skills

such that they can go on and be productive citizens.

And because we get outraged by it, and

we, we, when everything is, you know,

when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a cultural war.

And this is what the Republicans want.

That's what they want.

They want us.

I mean, around trans,

I have a friend who's running or was running for re-election and asked for communication or thoughts around the transgender issue.

I'm like, I would leave it at everyone deserves dignity and rights.

That's right.

And we should err on the side of grace.

But don't take this up as like die on this hill.

They just write a lot about it.

And then they get curdled.

And you know why?

Because transgender people yell at them.

And I'm like, you know what?

They yelled at people at Stonewall.

Pesky, aren't they?

Like, that's, that's where they focus on free speech.

I was like, they're angry and they've been beaten down.

And really, is this, but to me, it's really, is this the big issue of our day?

And we're playing into the hands of people who want to restrict and eliminate, not just restrict, but eliminate.

Anyway, we should move on.

Our next topic is perfect on that, which is, we'll go on a quick break.

When we come back, the debate over the origins of COVID are raging again.

We'll speak with a friend of Pivot, Mehdi Hassan.

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Scott, we're back with the debate over the origins of COVID-19, which is still raging and still polarizing.

Another thing that should have been more widely reported on all sides, by the way, in this case, unfortunately, the conspiracy theorists took over.

So it seems if you said lab, you know, that it was a conspiracy of the Chinese trying to kill the entire world, and it became sort of anti-Asian.

But if you've forgotten, there are two dominant theories of how the pandemic got started.

One, the virus jumped from animals, it's called zoonotic, to humans, most likely at a market in China.

Two, the virus spread because of a lab accident in China.

There's actually a third that it was a purposeful accident in China, which that's what got everybody against this second one.

The lab theory got a boost this week when the Wall Street Journal reported that the Department of Energy, based on classified information, now consider the lab leak to be the more likely source.

That stirred up all the finger pointing all over again, specifically at big tech companies.

Republicans saying the report is proof that big tech censored information.

That is not true, Republicans.

Senator Eric Schmidt of Missouri tweeted: We've known all along that federal actors colluded with social media giants to censor anyone who dared to question the origins of COVID-19.

GOP Chairwoman Rona McDaniel, that piece of work, tweeted, we need accountability for both the Chinese Communist Party and big tech.

I think we certainly need accountability for the Chinese Communist Party.

We're not getting it.

And then, interesting, like half, there's no consensus in the intelligence community about this.

Of the eight intelligence agencies, four lean towards the natural origin theory with low confidence.

And the conclusion from the Department of Energy made with low confidence.

The FBI also supports the lab leak theory with medium confidence.

The two remain agencies remain undecided.

We're not going to know because the Chinese government isn't going to let us know, even if it was an accident.

And so

I don't know what to say here.

It's just that Facebook and Twitter did in the early days remove posts about the virus being man-made.

So, thoughts, Scott?

I actually think that the GOP has a really valid point here.

And that is, and I was, you know, I fell into this, and that is

the notion or the thought that this might have originated from a lab in Wuhan was immediately by the left assigned as being racist

and

a conspiracy theory.

Well, listen to their language when they did it.

They did say it was purposefully, it was very, it had an anti-Asian tone, but go ahead.

But the truth doesn't care about your feelings and what's politically correct.

And the reality is it is now a very viable

cause, that there is credible evidence that this may have, in fact, originated as most likely an accident from a lab.

There were

two or three lab workers who were hospitalized.

I think it was late

2019.

And I want to be clear, I was guilty of this.

I immediately saw, oh my God, that's just racist, jingoist bullshit.

And the reality is,

there was some veracity to it, and we should have taken it more seriously.

Agreed.

And so, look, I think they have a point that it's just a politicization of everything.

Every issue, you immediately, almost unconsciously,

identified as a left or a right.

And that identifies how you feel about it.

The ESG, the train accident, whatever, all the things.

The whole point of academia, and one of the reasons I love the basic notion of a university, is at least initially, we're supposed to pursue the truth fearlessly, regardless of who it offends, regardless of the narrative.

And I would argue that, unfortunately, we've lost a lot of that pursuit or that pursuit.

Occasionally, we get distracted from that pursuit.

And when you're talking about a virus that's killed at least 7 million people, probably a lot more than that, 1.1 million in the U.S., regardless of what might offend you or what is seen as jingoist or racist, where the fuck did this thing come from?

And the thing that leads me to believe that, in fact, it did come from the lab is that if it didn't come from the lab, the Chinese would be cooperating around validating that it didn't come from the lab.

But the fact that they have been, they have literally resisted any thoughtful attempt by the World Health Organization or neutral bodies to go in and investigate this means most likely they're hiding something.

I agree with you.

I do think I've read a lot on this.

To go to zoonotics is the first thing you should do because typically that's where they start, right?

Right.

Makes sense.

But listen, remember, Jon Stewart got slammed back for the backing the lab league theory on Colbert in 2021.

Here he is reacting to the latest news on his Apple Plus TV show.

Let's listen to John.

The larger problem with all of this is the inability to discuss things that are within the realm of possibility without falling into absolutes and litmus testing each other for

our political allegiances as it arose from that.

What he said.

Jesus Christ.

Exactly what he said.

Yeah.

And he's no, he's, I would not call him a conservative.

I would not, I would call him progressive, quite heavily progressive.

But he's right.

He's 100% right.

I think one of the problems is to entertain the lab leak theory because it was put out as a lab leak on purpose kind of thing and there was all that anti-asian violence at the time if you recall and so nonetheless people should have calmed the fuck down and said let's

we don't know i think we don't know might have been real good at that moment for all the agencies is we don't know and they don't you know at a time of crisis people always need to explain things they don't know and that's to me the real shame here.

I think John's right.

I think you're right.

The most productive way to do the discourse is say, everyone calm the fuck down.

We don't know why this happened, right?

And one thing, David Wallace Wells actually used to work for New York Magazine, now it's at the New York Times, that no matter the origin of COVID, and someday we will know, presumably, we should be having a conversation about lab safety.

Absolutely.

These labs are terrifying to me.

Not to say that they shouldn't exist or that we shouldn't think about and do all kinds of like what if, what if and test things to know what could happen.

But, you know, when you start doing that kind of stuff, you're going to, there could be trouble.

Speaking of seeing the movie, every movie on lab leaks,

Hollywood's already imagined this 100 times.

And so it's really important to be able to say, I don't know, and tell the public.

I think that was the greatest problem with the CDC in their response is they couldn't possibly say, we don't know.

It's just so strange what.

we'll go to war for and what we ignore.

And that is if something had showed up with different colored skin and a turban and killed a million Americans, we would be on the verge of, we would probably,

we would probably consider a nuclear strike.

But because it's one three-thousandth the width of a human hair,

even if it came out of China, even if it was possibly deliberate, which I don't think it was, but it was reckless.

If in fact it did come out of a lab, it was reckless.

And they, by the way, owe the global community total transparency here and a big fucking apology and reparations if it did come out of a lab.

And also to use it as inspiration for a universal global agency around controls and general standards for, I mean, something like this, what we've seen here, what if it had been, you know, a virus that mutated faster?

You literally could have wiped out a quarter of the world's population.

And we all have a vested interest in transparency here because this has hurt the Chinese economy.

So it just strikes me that if you want to be a global citizen, a good global citizen, I mean, we have weapons control, we have global organizations around poverty, around hunger, around whatever.

It strikes me that we probably need some sort of uniform standards around lab safety.

Yep, 100%.

And by the way, they should pursue both things, Dunatic.

Just, I think we will never know, probably, because of the way the Chinese government is.

But certainly,

we've got to talk to each other more.

Like,

they've got to drop the anti-Chinese stuff to be able to talk about it.

It could have been our lab leak, right?

So, I'm not an expert on this, but we have to consider all the origins of everything and talk talk about it without adding anti-Asian stuff and without adding,

you're all trying to censor us.

You know, I don't think that's the case.

I think these scientists try their very best.

And in times of crisis, they tend to, and these tech companies too, by the way, these tech companies shouldn't be in this business of deciding this stuff, period.

I think if you go to incentives, it oftentimes explains

kind of the best likely explanation.

And

I do think, because if you look at the behavior of them trying to not cooperate around any any investigation around the lab theory leak, that that lends veracity to the notion it was a lab leak.

The reason why I don't think it was intentional and

no one knew this, but I actually think when we look back over history over the last hundred years, I think COVID-19 and our response to COVID-19 will be seen as a great

geopolitical cause of ascendance of the U.S.

I think our response, our vaccines, our economic response,

as harsh it is to say, and this in no way diminishes the loss of life.

I think America comes out of COVID having reestablished its dominance.

And so I don't think China would have wanted to

play a hand in that.

But I think my point is in 2050, I think we're going to look back and go, you know, being very unemotional about it, COVID-19 and America's response to it

helped reestablish U.S.

dominance globally.

That's a really interesting thing.

We certainly did make a mess along the way, though, with every every issue, every single issue.

But it's a perfect segue to our guests.

Let's bring in our friend of Pivot.

Mehdi Hassan is the author of a show at MSNBC and Peacock and the author of Win Every Argument, The Art of Debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking.

Welcome, Mehdi.

Good to see you.

Thanks for having me, guys.

So speaking of arguments, we were just talking about the debate over the lab leak theory.

You hosted some conversations about about COVID's origins when the news came out.

You tweeted, it's hard to have a good faith disagreement about a major issue if the issue itself has been hijacked by bad faith folks.

Unpack that for us.

We'd love your thoughts on this.

Yeah, a lot of people got very upset.

I haven't had a response to a tweet like that from kind of crazy right-wingers for a long time.

I mean, I've been trolled on that for days.

I got properly ratioed.

People are very upset with that tweet.

I think it's because they read it as some kind of admission of a conspiracy by the liberal media to stamp out this story.

When in fact, the very opposite.

I actually covered the lab leak story on my show back in June.

I had to go back and check.

June 2021, I hosted a debate between Alina Chan, who's one of the biggest lab leak promonents, and Angie Razimus, and the virologist is a big critic of it.

So we don't run away from it, but I have a longer memory than most people.

I would like to think.

I think our media culture is dominated by people with very short-term memories.

There's always a reset button.

I hate to go along with that.

And I haven't forgotten 2020.

I haven't forgotten Donald Trump standing in front of crowds shouting kung flu, kung flu.

I haven't forgotten Peter Navarro saying the Chinese Communist Party created it in a lab and sent Chinese people to infect the rest of the world.

I haven't forgotten Washington Times Daily Mail running bio lab, bioengineer, bioweapon stuff in January, February of 2020.

So there was a lot of nonsense around this stuff.

It's always been plausible that it leaked out of a lab, but it was always a natural disease.

No one ever claimed it was, no serious person ever claimed it was a bioweapon.

And the problem was it was very, very quickly hijacked by the bioweapon conspiracy crowd and by the anti-China racist hawk crowd.

That's That's undeniable.

Go back, pull up the clippings, pull up the clips.

I might do it on my show next week, in fact, because it frustrates me how people are acting like we should have all just sat down in March of 2020 and said, let's have a good faith, impartial, reasoned debate about whether it came from the wet market or whether it came from the Institute of Virology.

That was not what was happening.

Donald Trump was president of the United States, was trying to deflect blame for crazy deaths here in America, talking about disinfectant, and began by praising Xi, his friend, but then decided to blame China and the China virus for everything else.

So

it's nonsense.

And by the way, one last quick point.

The story that's come out this week does not vindicate anyone.

No, it's low confidence for everything.

Not even just low confidence.

No one in the story is saying it was related to a military program.

Tucker Carlson went on air this week, this week, and said,

and what did he say?

He said it was engineered in a lab as part of a military bio-lab, the GOP House.

The House GOP's position is that this was related to a Chinese biological weapons program.

No, the intelligence specifically says we do not believe that.

And by the way, only two out of the eight intelligence agencies that have looked at this say that it's lab leak.

Four say it's zoonotic.

It's from the wet market.

And by the way, the two that say it's lab leak.

One of them is the FBI.

And I thought we don't trust the FBI anymore.

Well, they don't.

So there's two very viable ways this could have happened, right?

And both should have been investigation.

And probably all our agencies should have said, we don't know until we do know.

So let's entertain both of them at the same time.

But talk about this.

What does this specific case tell us about the argument styles and the left and the right.

Because this, you know, this tweet by you really did get a lot of attention.

So, I mean, Twitter is not the greatest place to have arguments.

I keep telling myself that, but then I keep doing it again and again.

I'm sure you're in a similar boat.

I was going to have a chapter in my new book about arguing on Twitter, and then I thought, well, no, maybe that's for a sequel.

But look, I think what the COVID as a whole, the whole handling of the pandemic and why I actually think the right have won a lot of the messaging battles on vaccines, on masks, on lockdowns, on school closures, and now perhaps on lab leaks is because, A, the right wingers have a very clever tactic, which is to declare victory in the middle of the game when the game's not over and say we won and allow kind of both sides of the media to indulge.

They did it on Muller, I mean, the Mueller report.

Oh, they misrepresented that before the findings were even out.

And they've now left a legacy where everyone thinks the Mueller report showed no collusion or showed Trump did nothing wrong, which is not what the Mueller report shows.

And I think similarly, now on COVID, it's a very clever tactic to declare victory.

And And separately, the whole approach to pushing back against COVID mitigation measures was very cleverly framed by the right as freedom, liberty, standing up against oppression.

People in America love that stuff.

These are the values that appeal to Americans.

And they very quickly realize that if you make something about identity and about values, you win.

And liberals, leftists, progressives, members of the academic community, the scientific community, they think, if we make it about the facts and the figures, just one more peer-reviewed paper, then we win.

That is not how the human brain works.

That's not how people, that's certainly not how Americans engage in debate or persuasion.

So your book, Win Every Argument, The Art of Debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking.

Do we want to win every argument?

Isn't there a need for

debate or conflict to take on a level of consideration and acknowledgement of other points?

It strikes me that

we're in a situation now where we don't want to win every argument.

It's a great question.

A lot of people have asked that question.

So let me address it in a couple of ways.

Number one, 100% agree with you.

You should not want to win every argument.

I make it very clear in the dedication page on the front of the book that I do not win arguments with my wife and I don't want to win arguments with my wife.

So I'm very clear about situations where you don't want to win every argument.

But people have jumped on the title that said, win every argument.

You shouldn't want to win every argument.

I mean, I could have written a book called Drive Every Car.

Doesn't mean I'm telling you to go out and drive every car.

Literally, I'm saying, here's a set of skills that allows you to drive every car.

You can choose when is the best moment to win that argument because some people, they don't have a choice, Scott.

Some people need to win an argument.

It might be a job interview.

It might be something their job depends on.

You might be a prosecutor in court where you have to convince this jury to stop this person you believe is a murderer from getting off.

So the point of the book is to say, here is a skill set that you can learn that should help you win any argument you choose to win.

Because the reason I wrote the book is because I hate when people say, well, you were just born this way.

You came out of the womb doing this stuff.

I'm not like that.

No, I'm saying actually anyone can pick up these skills.

They've been around since Aristotle.

And just on your point about, you know, should you want to win every argument?

In the big stuff these days, I think people should want to win.

For example, democracy.

I believe that democracy is at stake in America right now.

I believe there is an existential threat to our democracy, our free press, et cetera.

Those are arguments you cannot shy away from.

Those are arguments you cannot keep your head down on.

And those are arguments that my side, I would argue, the pro-democracy side, is in fear of losing because we're confronted by people who've degraded our public discourse.

We're confronted by gaslighters and BS merchants who aren't interested in the the rules of formal debate or facts and figures.

And therefore, I would like to see people who believe in democracy and freedom be equipped with the rhetorical tools to win those very vital battles.

So when you think about that, how do you have good faith disagreement?

Because there doesn't seem to be any good faith disagreement.

It's always a one-up kind of thing and a dunk.

And obviously, I've gone way off Twitter.

Scott's sort of gone off Twitter.

You clearly haven't.

I'm just using it as the example because it is a very small little world of speaking of echo chambers.

It's the echo chamber there is but what is a good faith how do you have a good faith disagreement and how do you decide when to engage and when to walk away it's a great question and i talk a lot about the phrase good faith in the book and about the need and i genuinely believe in good faith disagreement because i believe that democracy cannot survive with that's the reason i wrote the book that's the reason why i enjoy debating and arguing and value it so much because you know i quote the french essayist joseph joubert that it's better to debate an issue without settling it than to settle it without debating it there's an intrinsic value to the process to truth seeking in that way and I think you're right.

It's really tricky.

You know, people say, well, what is a bad faith argument?

How do you define it?

And, you know, it's like the Supreme Court definition of porn.

You know it when you see it.

You know, there's so many different ways to engage in a bad faith argument.

People who shift the goalposts, people who make claims without any evidence whatsoever, people who only engage in abusive ad hominems.

Those are people you should probably walk away from.

I was going to write a chapter in the book on when to walk away from an argument.

I didn't.

Maybe that's saved for a sequel because there are arguments, Cara, that I choose not to have, to go back to Scott's earlier question.

Like people say to me, would you have Marjorie Taylor Green on your show?

No, I wouldn't.

I wouldn't have an argument with Marjorie Taylor Green.

It's pointless.

She's a grifter.

She's not interested in any facts or figures.

She doesn't even believe most of what she's saying, probably.

Why would I give her a platform, especially on live TV, to spew uninterrupted nonsense?

So there are some arguments you should walk away from, but good faith arguments.

I mean, I write a chapter in the book on listening.

right something we don't do in arguments and i'm a bad listener i say that openly in the book my wife laughed at me when she heard i was writing a chapter on listening

Listening, empathetic listening is a very important part of having a good faith argument because if you're just having a debate where you're waiting for your turn to speak, then that's not a good faith debate or argument.

Where if you're actually critically listening to what the other person is saying, if you're empathetically listening to what an audience is saying, for example, in a political context, then actually everyone feels like they have a stake in the conversation and everyone feels like they're going somewhere.

And I give the argument, I give the example in the book of 1992 Town Hall in Richmond, Virginia, where a questioner asks George Bush Sr., Bill Clinton, and of course, ridiculously Ross Perot,

how the national debt has affected them.

Bush isn't paying attention, looking at his watch, gives a nonsense answer about interest rates.

Bill Clinton goes up to the woman and says, tell me how it's affected you.

And that's the beginning of a great conversation.

Someone who's automatically persuaded by one person in front of them.

Yeah.

So you sent us a clip of an interview you did with John Bolton.

Set us up for this and what were you arguing about?

So John Bolton has done a lot of interviews.

John Bolton is a man who I don't like, but I respect him as a a debater he's a very clever guy you can't question his intellect whatever else you question about him he's been debating since his yale days and he agreed to come on my show in 2020 i don't know why i was surprised um and we wanted to do an interview with him and we looked at what he was promoting his book and i didn't want to ask him what everyone else was asking him i like to ask questions that other people aren't asking and i looked in his book and he hadn't mentioned the fact that he gave speeches paid speeches for an iranian opposition group called the mek who are nuts they're a bunch of cultist misogynists so i decided to press him on that angle how much of your antipathy towards Iran is to do with geopolitics?

How much of it is to do with the fact that you've had a long association with a group called the MEK, which was once a terrorist group banned by the State Department while you worked there?

You don't mention it in your book.

This is really about as low as it gets.

The fact is that Hillary Clinton, perhaps someone you support, took the MEK off the U.S.

list of terrorist organizations.

How about that?

I speak what I'm saying.

Yeah, she took it off in 2012.

You were speaking with them in 2010 when they were still a banned group yeah now look that that that you're simply wrong on your facts on this I know you were there in Paris in 2010 speaking at the MEK rally when they were still a banned terrorist group according to the State Department

opinion nobody buys my opinion and you can ignore that if you want I'm very comfortable I have never said anything other than what I believe and we are now sir 20 minutes into this interview which you said was for 15.

All right that didn't seem good.

Yes.

Medique, can I ask a question?

I don't, and I struggle with this as someone who's a podcaster interviewing people.

And there's a reason we let Kara lead the interviews.

And when I hear that, I feel like you're purposely putting him on his heels to score points with your liberal viewership, that you aren't having a productive conversation, that you are so aggressive there that you yourself are reducing the likelihood of a productive conversation.

So obviously I disagree with you on that.

And I understand my wife actually takes a similar view to Scott that some people don't like such confrontations.

And I think the American media has suffered because your point of view has dominated and we haven't had enough challenging conversations.

And the reason why I have partly succeeded in a career here in the U.S., and people like Jonathan Swan did well with their Trump interviews, because people are quite frustrated that American interviewers have been so deferential to people in power for so long.

So we engage in both sides of and don't really call people out.

And not just that, but I'm just talking about the tone.

And, you know, yeah, sometimes you do need a bit of, you could call it aggression, combativeness, belligerence, whatever.

It is someone like John Bolton who filibusters, who has talked over and bullied interviewers for years.

And it took 20 years, 20 years from the Iraq war, whatever it was, 18 years at the time, for someone to ask him, as I did later in that interview,

does he have any qualms?

Does it rest on his conscience that tens of thousands of people died in Iraq because of him?

I think those are questions that need to be asked.

And a lot of American interviewers, sadly, are a little uncomfortable asking such such questions.

And I take your point about scoring points for liberal viewers.

Maybe that's part of it.

I'm not going to pretend otherwise that I want to get views.

But I also think it's about holding people to account.

I mean, I do what I do because I want to hold people to account.

Otherwise, I'd go be an accountant.

Do you think you're just as tough on people from your side of the aisle, liberals, and when you do that?

Yeah, I try to be.

And in fact, liberals get very upset because sometimes they expect a kind of softball interview from a fellow liberal, especially on someone like MSNBC.

And no, I try and hold people to account.

If you watch my exchange with Ron Klain on Biden's support for Saudi Arabia, it was a tough interview.

MBS, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, was behind that killing.

And yet you haven't held him accountable.

Why?

It's been our government's long-standing policy not to personally sanction heads of state, leaders of government,

in countries where we have diplomatic relations.

He's not a head of state.

Because we need to also...

We also...

Ron, he's not a head of state.

He's very...

Gen Saki

is someone I've grilled before.

She'd put the quote on the book saying that.

Look,

is it tonally the same?

Not necessarily.

But then, for example, Tony Blair.

If Tony Blair was in front of me and someone I've never got to interview, oh, I would push him as aggressively on Iraq as I pushed John Bolton, regardless of the fact that he's a center-left prime minister who I once voted for.

So I think there might be tone differences, but no, certain issues, people need to be pressed.

I try and be tough on everyone.

Obviously, certain people,

you know, Cara, the reality is we live in an age right now where

one group of politicians are particularly deceitful and offensive and bigoted.

And that is reflected sometimes in the tone of my commentaries.

That's that's a reality.

But I can't.

The issue is, though, it does, and I try very hard to get as many people from all sides as possible, and not to be both sides as them, but more to be like, at some point,

it degenerates into a way that's not illuminating to people in any way.

And so you have to be very careful not to seem, because one of the reasons I don't watch cable that much anymore is I'm like, it's this, I know exactly what's happening.

Like, you know what I mean?

It never illuminates.

It's a lot of fire, but no illumination whatsoever.

Well, that's not always the case.

And I would say, watch my show and you've been on my show.

And

when you're on my show, it's certainly illuminated.

So I wouldn't want people not to watch you when you appear on my show.

Thank you.

But I would say this.

Look, to go back to Scott's point about is it productive?

I say context is everything.

We have very, very productive interviews with experts and with interesting people such as yourself on my show.

But then we do have the more lively,

combative interviews with people like John Bolton.

What I would say to you, Scott, is let me turn it around.

Let's say you were sitting with John Bolton talking about the MEK.

What would you have asked that would have been illuminating that he would have engaged in good faith?

I would have brought up the point, and I would have said, What do you say to people who say it's hypocritical and that you're sort of bought and sold, as evidenced by this?

And I would have let them respond.

And I probably wouldn't, look, you have a style and you have a show on MSNBC, and I don't.

So you kind of win.

But

when I hear that, I, that tone, and again, it's hard because it's one clip, right?

And my guess is we should look at the entire body of your work.

But I find that that's easily going to, it sounds to me like that's going to digress into a food fight where the person doesn't trust you and it just thinks you're trying to embarrass them.

So here's the thing, Scott, what I was saying.

Number one is if you did that, he would be delighted because there's no follow-up to point out that he's lying to the viewers about when he spoke to the group.

But just on the broader point.

Well,

I think you can say what you said.

Well, that doesn't feel accurate.

So it's a tone issue.

That's great.

But

just on the wider point, Scott, that you're making, I I just want to address this really important point.

I say this in the book.

Sometimes you're not trying to persuade the other person.

I'm not really interested in whether John Bolton agrees with me.

He's not going to change his mind.

He's John Bolton.

I am interested in the audience seeing that people in power can be held to account for their lies.

They can be accounted to account for what they've done.

And I think that's what's been missing too much from our discourse.

Sometimes you're not trying to convince the other person.

You're trying to convince the third person.

You say the liberal audience to point score.

I'm saying the American public that needs to hear some sharp conversations.

And perhaps sometimes my tone is off i'm only human but i do think the style is very important to be tough i do think that's important okay so let's talk about a place where it doesn't happen social media tactics do change online and we talk about different argument styles for the left and right there's no winning on social media it's just one dunk after the next back and forth and then it degenerates you know to what scott was very quickly which is no one's hearing a thing um at all so how does that change online and why do you think that is I agree with that.

That's where I would 100% agree with Scott, is that Twitter is a place where it does just descend into kind of mob mentality, dunking, ratioing.

It's really bad.

And if I wasn't so addicted to it, I would have probably cut myself off a long time ago.

100%.

You and me both, brother.

Why haven't you both?

I mean, it's an addiction, Car.

I don't know what to say.

I mean, it's an addiction.

I'm not hiding it.

I've told my family.

I was getting palpitations when I thought that night a few months ago was all going to shut down because of technical problems.

It's a place I both love and hate at the same time.

I do think there is some value.

I wouldn't write it off completely.

I'm not one of these people who say, this hell site.

It has huge advantages

in terms of reaching audiences I could never reach otherwise, in terms of connecting with people I could never connect with.

And some debates are really interesting.

Like I'll give you the, let's go back to what we started with, the lab leak debate.

There are some fascinating conversations going on between scientists on Twitter right now.

They're really interesting people that 10 years ago, you and I would never have been able to connect with.

would have to go find some boring paper they wrote on their university website to find out what they think on this issue.

Right now, I can see really interesting scientists who I follow unpacking that Wall Street Journal story, that Department of Energy Intelligence Assessment, and making good points.

So it's out there if you want to find it and be part of those more productive conversations.

But sure, we're going to do the dunking along the way.

That's human nature in an age of social media, sadly, right?

Which cleverer people like yourself understand much more than I do about those kinds of incentives.

Where do you get inspired and find you can find good information?

That is a great question.

So good information, I'm very critical of the American media and people know that.

I've been very open in my criticism, even after joining NBC.

It was easy when I was on NBC.

But one thing I've always said is like, I can disagree with a New York Times op-ed columnist or some headline, but the investigative journalism that our media still does is...

the gold standard.

I think some of the stuff that people at NBC News, my organization, do, people at the New York Times and the Washington post, both foreign investigative journalism and domestic, I think is hugely valuable.

And that stuff still inspires me.

I'm not an investigative journalist myself.

I don't think I have the skill set or could ever be that person, but I'm great admiration to people who break these important stories and tell us what's going on behind the scenes, whether it's in China, whether it's in the United States.

So that is something that inspires me.

If you're talking about holding people to account the stuff I do, then, you know, unfortunately, it is.

I do look across the pond and I look at the UK where I do think it is slightly done a bit better.

And

maybe something you don't like, but that's a taste opinion.

For me, that is the kind of stuff I enjoy watching.

When I saw Ben Shapiro, the hero of the conservative debate right, the man who puts up YouTube videos saying, I've destroyed X, Y, or Z on a college campus, when he goes and gets interviewed by Andrew Neal and then gets a British, a BBC, British interviewer who's a conservative, who basically runs rings around him, that for me is enjoyable.

I enjoy that.

I'm a nerd.

I enjoy that stuff.

All right, last question.

Scott and I frequently argue.

That's our entire thing.

I think we argue well, actually.

One of the more harmless arguments is about whether my Chevy Bolt is sexy.

I'd like to tell you to tell us who's winning that argument.

Is the Chevy Bolt sexy as a car?

I think the Chevy Bolt is as sexy as the person driving the car.

And that is how I would define it.

Oh, nice.

Oh, no.

God.

Let me phrase the question.

Yes, you should reframe, I say, in the book.

Always reframe.

Am I more likely to get a random blowjob in a Tesla or a Chevy Bolt?

Your turn.

This is what I have to do.

He's got his head in his hands.

Let's bring back John John Bolton.

You've literally thrown me off there.

I wasn't seeing that coming.

Look at him.

He's flustered.

He's speechless.

I didn't see that coming.

In all the media interviews I've done, I didn't get that question.

Exactly.

The flaccid penis joke always ends up there.

Go ahead.

What I would say to you, Scott, is, is that joke contributing to a productive discussion and illuminating our lives or not, Scott?

Do you know what the answer was?

The right answer was no.

No right answer involves Tesla as the answer is what I would say.

There you go.

I agree.

Oh, very well done.

Anyway, last question.

What's the most important thing, not winning every argument?

What is the empathetic here at listening?

I think I suspect is what I actually think the more important than anything else.

I have a chapter on it is confidence building.

Unless you have confidence, you can't do anything.

You can't listen.

You can't speak.

You can't engage.

You can't take a position.

And we lack a lot of confidence in our societies.

We defer to people who are overconfident.

And I talk in the book about the need to build confidence because that's the stepping stone for everything else.

Yeah, that's the explanation for Elon for sure.

Anyway, the book is Win Every Argument: The Art of Debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking.

It's available now.

The Meddie Hassan show airs Sundays at 8 p.m.

Eastern at MSNBC and Tuesdays on Peacock.

Thank you so much, Mattie.

I really appreciate it.

Thanks, Maddie.

Nice to meet you.

Thanks, guys.

I appreciate it.

Even the end question.

Thanks, both.

One more quick break.

We'll be back for predictions

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Okay, Scott, let's hear some predictions.

So I think there's going to be a fairly significant punitive award to Dominion.

This Dominion versus News Corps

is just shocking to me, and I don't think anyone's going to be surprised where I imagine you land on this or I land on this, but

you call yourself Fox News.

You're the most watched news program in America.

And the anchors and the CO of the company and the founder know

that they're lying.

And they continue to lie in an environment where we have insurrections, in an environment where people don't trust each other.

And it just is.

And

I was trying to get to the human element of this.

You're 92 years old, which means there's like a one in three chance you're going to die in the next 12 months.

I mean, and what it's like, what?

I'm just trying to get into this guy's brain.

Is it because he hates the other side so much?

Is it because he sees a profit motive?

What is in your head when you decide to create a culture and you make the decision that we know this isn't true,

but we see an opportunity to inflame our viewers that could lead to really ugly places?

In addition, the board

should be voted out because 61%, let's just go to straight corporate governance distinct to the ethics and my virtue signaling and disappointment.

This company is a publicly traded company.

The board is supposed to show care of duty here and protect its shareholders.

61% of the shareholders are not the Murdoch family.

So let's just assume that the Murdochs have their own motives.

And I'm not even.

I don't realize that.

Point that out again.

They're not the controlling shareholders in that regard.

So I'm not even going to try and figure out what's going on between his ears.

But 61% of the shareholders invested in an organization that claims to be fair and balanced.

And veracity, even for Fox News, directly impacts shareholder value.

They are probably going to get a billion-dollar-plus fine here.

By the way, where these companies make all of their money or most of it in terms of high-margin money in an election season is from not only Republican candidates, but Democratic candidates advertised on Fox.

And guess what?

They were sharing information on Biden's advertising strategy with Jared Kushner.

So there are so many things distinct to the ethics that are going to really damage the 61% of shareholders that aren't the Murdochs that the board really should be taken into account here that

you're not doing your job.

You're not representing stakeholders.

Yeah, they're shitty bananas for sure.

So, I think, one, my prediction is, one, there's going to be a serious award here.

This is a very high hurdle to clear, and Dominion's lawyers have cleared it.

I mean, they have presented so much evidence that they acted in bad faith.

They knew they were spreading misinformation.

They knew this would hurt Dominion.

They knew they were lying.

They had information that showed that this was not the truth.

And they decided to engage in an editorial strategy to spread these falsehoods.

They will get, in my opinion, my prediction is it's going to be a large, not only a large monetary award, punitive award, but you're going to see some board members rightfully be kicked out of the board here.

There is no way you can be a board member of a media organization and not have heads roll when you have this type of reckless behavior, this negligence that results in this sort of shareholder damage.

I don't know.

I've seen some pretty bad boars.

Look at over a ton of money.

No, no, it might be, it might be me just like screaming into the wind.

Yeah, it's a very high bar.

I mean, it's interesting.

I've read all the various and sundry

debates among media lawyers, and some of them think this is slam dunk, others do not.

It's a very high bar.

We'll see.

I think they certainly deserve it, and it's a jury trial, but they'll keep appealing it all over the place.

The good thing about it is it will distract them.

And the rest of of his life, Rupert Murdoch will be in lawsuits over this.

And it will

occupy him until he's in the ground.

And so good.

That's what's going to happen.

Probably one of the executives will have to go like Suzanne Scott or someone like that.

But this is what they're going to be doing the rest of their pitiful lives.

So that's my feeling.

So anyway,

this company's not backing off FYI.

They haven't and they won't and they shouldn't.

So anyway, great prediction.

That's a really great prediction.

We'll see.

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 855-51PIT.

Scott, that's the show.

I like our arguing.

I think it's actually okay.

It's all right.

That's right.

If we're wrong, I don't want to be right, Carol.

That's correct.

And we'll be back on Tuesday for more.

Will you read us out?

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

Ernie Intertot engineered this episode.

Thanks 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.

My good friend Scott Sabah is not feeling well.

I am wishing him strength and good health.