UFOs, The State of Tech, and Guest Lakshmi Rengarajan

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Hi, everyone.

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

I'm Kara Swisher.

And I'm Scott Galloway.

Happy Valentine's Day, Scott.

Did you forget to get me?

You know, I'm glad you remembered.

I'm glad you remembered.

What'd you get me?

You know, it's...

Wait, am I your Valentine?

Let's start with that.

Let's start with the baseline on that one.

I think the better question is, what haven't I gotten you?

Yeah, no, I'm not, I'm not, as you might imagine, I'm not huge on Valentine's Day.

How about you celebrate Valentine's Day?

I'm not a big fan either.

I have to say, it's kind of a cooked up thing.

That said, we're all the families going out to dinner together to get oysters tonight.

Yeah.

It's going to be.

Oh, yeah, you're that oyster thing.

That's good.

I always think that stomach flu is a good way to kick off Valentine's Day.

Right.

Nice.

I never get stomach flu from oysters.

They're the best things in the world.

Or whatever it is, stomach food poisoning.

So, so, in other words, there's no candy on the way or flowers or anything else?

Oh, no, it's there.

Perfect.

It's already there.

Okay.

All right.

So, not your holiday.

What is your holiday, Scott?

If you had to pick a holiday, what do you think?

Oh, hands down, Halloween.

Come on.

Halloween.

Of course, you dress like Sallie.

Women dress up like sluts and I get to wear a wig.

Hello.

Men win.

I sometimes dress up with Kara Swisher.

It's a really good costume.

Scary, I'll give you that.

Yeah.

San Francisco is a good place for Halloween.

Shout out.

I'm having it.

I'm here in San Francisco right now.

And again, walking down the street, they are like, where's Scott?

Everywhere I go.

Where's Scott?

Why are you back in San Francisco?

I have to have some things to do.

I'm always here.

I come every month.

I've got a house here.

I love San Francisco.

I'm looking at a beautiful view night.

It's a beautiful day.

It's in the 60s.

It's very nice.

I think you're running from Mayor again.

You're like this big San Francisco Chamber of Commerce thing.

I think you're going to announce your run for mayor.

No, I got some things.

I got some things.

My mom has moved here, so I'm helping her sort out her stuff.

So things like that.

Anyway, there's a lot going on here in not just not in California, but all around the world.

Obviously, UFOs, very exciting.

The winners and losers of Super Bowl on the marketing side.

I thought they were okay.

lost my mind on them, but they were good.

We'll talk about where the opportunities lie for tech in 2023.

We always talk about the layoffs, but I want your thoughts.

I want to plumb your brain for what you think people should focus on.

And we'll also speak with a friend of of Pivot, Lakshmi Ringarajan, about another kind of opportunity, dating apps, because it's a Valentine's Day episode.

Love is all around.

But first, the Super Bowl and its ads didn't disappoint this year, but viewers in submarkets saw a very different kind of car commercial.

Tesla full self-driving will run down a child in a school crosswalk.

90% agree that this should be banned immediately.

Why does NHTSA allow Tesla full self-driving?

Well, that's a message.

The Tesla attack was funded by tech entrepreneur Dan Odad.

He's made it his business to

talk about this a lot.

He's himself very wealthy, but Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, wasn't watching TV when the ad appeared.

He was spotted in the game sitting besides Rupert Murdoch.

That was a pair.

Two guys who both know what it's like to lose a fortune buying social media apps, as it turned out.

Musk joked on Twitter, of course, that he and Murdoch were discussing Dogecoin.

The cryptocurrency jumped 5% for a short-lived bump.

You know, super bads get talked about, but are they worth it, really?

Do they cause attention or what's the deal?

There's some good ones.

A lot of them were tech-oriented, as they always are.

Ram's premature electrification was very funny about EVs.

T-Mobile's Grease ad with John Travolta was cute.

Workday, Everyone's a Rockstar was cute.

There was one for Jesus.

What do you think about these?

Is it worth the $7 million for 30 seconds of airtime?

So the ad itself is not.

What may be worth the $7 million is the attention it gets before and after.

If you can bring together sort of that creative magic, I think it's a positive cultural thing.

I think your vendors, your suppliers, your employees get a kick out of it.

And do you remember that commercial with the kid dressed up as Darth Vader trying to make the Volkswagen start?

It was such a cute commercial.

Occasionally lightning does strike.

And those commercials get exponentially, you know, they get a fantastic ROA.

Because what I found is my 12-year-old summarized it perfectly.

I didn't watch the Super Bowl last night.

I just could get, I didn't even know who was in it till the day before.

Right.

and I used to watch it for the ads, now I'll no longer do that.

But my 12-year-old said, Yeah, I'm watching it for the ads, right?

So,

most people do now, yeah.

You know, advertising everywhere is a bug, not a feature, except in the Super Bowl, it's a feature.

So, people come to play.

It also usually says something about our society.

Last year, we had these commercials on crypto with Larry David talking about using a certain crypto platform.

This year,

I don't know if it's because I'm a little down, or but I found it sort of if the cultural references here aren't good ones.

And that is, as much as I like people ribbing Tesla, you know, kind of revenge ads or shit posting ads, I don't like.

I don't like ads on Jesus.

That's all right.

Good for them.

But it's like, that's where we are.

We shitpost each other and we talk about Jesus.

I mean, it kind of summarizes America.

Yeah.

So I found the ads a little bit.

There were some really cute ones.

Anything with Breaking Bad in it is cute.

I saw that.

Yeah, they were doing pop corners, which are delicious.

What did you think of the ads i thought they were okay i didn't think they soared to great heights and usually there's one or two that are very very funny i thought the the only one i thought that was really good was the premature electrification it was funny are you excited about buying an electric vehicle but worried that it could leave you unsatisfied I don't know if they count anymore.

That's what I really wanted to get your thought on because, like, you know,

you could do more damage on Twitter in a second or on social media or wherever to create virality year-round.

So I think the idea of Superbodes was virality, right?

This virality.

And now it wasn't, you know, the Ben Affleck one about for Dunkin' Donuts was cute.

Not the greatest idea in the world, but cute.

But I just don't, I don't know what the point is anymore, right?

I don't,

I think about advertising in general.

It used to really be so influential and create sort of these year-long halo effects.

And now it's just there and gone.

I don't know.

Maybe I'm wrong.

You're on to what is a bigger trend.

I mean, first off, go to Cannes and it's a bunch of ad execs giving each other awards,

trying to talk about how relevant they are as they go to their executioner's party on the beach,

Google or Facebook that are, you know, petting their hair before

they shoot them in the face.

The story I always talk about or bring up is that

And I love the story because it makes me seem important, but right out of business school, I met a guy named Warren Hellman.

He was at the time

kind of the top private equity guy in the world.

world.

And

he took a shine to me and

I would loosely describe him as a mentor.

And he asked me,

I started a strategy from Call Profit.

He asked me to attend

two years worth of board meetings for what was at that point the most valuable private company in the world.

And that was Levi Strauss and Company.

And I used to fly around the world and he would ask me to listen to the board meeting.

And then he's like, I don't want you to talk to anybody.

And I want you to stand up and tell us what you think.

Oh, okay.

And what a great assignment.

It's a professional pain in the ass, but go ahead.

Yeah.

What a great assignment.

Set off a career of being an asshole.

What a great assignment for a 28-year-old.

And they asked two other people to do it, to sit in in each of these board meetings.

One was Lee Klow.

He did the Apple ads, the Think Different Ads.

And then a guy named Nigel Bogle from BBH, which was the hottest creative agency in the UK.

And the three of us, they would talk about ads.

I would talk about strategy and direct-to-consumer, whatever.

And I still go to a lot of board meetings because I have been able, I'd like to think to sort of reinvent myself.

I thought e-commerce is the next thing.

I got out of brand and I got into tech.

Anyways, I haven't, I've probably been in, I wasn't as many, in as, in as many board meetings last year.

I was probably in 20 or 30, but I used to go into 50 a year.

That's what you've been doing, not buying me flowers and candy, but go ahead.

You do sound like my girlfriend.

Anyways, I haven't seen Kara, an ad man or an ad woman, in a board meeting in 10 years.

Wow.

No one cares what they think.

I mean, keep in mind that the Titans of yesterday in the world of consumer were Maurice Levy, Martin Sorrell.

It was WPP, IPG, Omnicom.

They were like the juggernauts.

They were the Google of yesterday.

Yeah, power guys.

Google and Meta will lose the value of each of those companies or gain it in one trading day.

They have, if you want to talk about diminished power, and then the other personal story I would talk about is.

Right when I started moved to New York,

you did summer shares out at the Hamptons.

And the bells of the ball, the masters of the universe were all these 30-something people who worked for the premier company in the world, the most influential baller company in the world.

And that was Condonast.

Right.

And 20 years later,

almost all of them are like kind of like they've had this slow burn to irrelevance.

Yeah.

You know, to be the associate, the associate publisher of Vanity Fair or Bon Appetite or Vogue was the job.

They were making in their 30s, they were making half a million bucks a year, the best parties.

And the worst thing about what happened to people in print is that it was a slow decline.

The best thing that could have happened for them is if it had just been shut off.

Instead, they were always signs.

They were always trying to reinvent themselves.

But the ad-supported ecosystem, unless you work for one of the big guys.

It's a shitty business.

Well, I do think it's the here and gone thing because we are titillated every day by social media, by constant news, by 24-7.

And so I don't think anything breaks through.

Like, how do you break through?

And that's the idea.

Every now and then there's one something, but I can't think of something that's broken through, even shows as they make them.

And then at the same time, because of the way it's done now, you know, right now, Twitter is running ads next to tweets from Holocaust deniers, according to a report from Media Matters.

In the latest blunder, ads for companies like MailChimp and the Wall Street Journal were spotted alongside tweets from neo-Nazis and anti-Semites.

You know, Elon's getting rid of the blue checks.

He tweeted that legacy blue checks will be removed soon.

Those are the ones who are true that are truly corrupt.

How ridiculous and stupid.

You know, and meanwhile, Twitter's making millions off of content of accounts that were previously banned, including misogynist Andrew Tate and jailed misogynist Andrew Tate, possible rapist, apparently.

It's really like if you're an advertising person right now, I don't know what I do because the other stuff ain't so sweet either, right?

And it's declining too, and the effectiveness, the constant, and I use the word tetellation, it's just we're constantly attacked by news and information that it cheapens all of it.

It doesn't, nothing sticks out and things are here and gone, essentially.

Well,

whenever you transition one substance to another for economic gain, whether it's oil to petroleum or in our instance, people don't really recognize.

And there's no real malice here.

There was delay in obfuscation.

But the transition or the refining of attention to dollars has been probably, has been more, I would argue, more damaging than carbon emissions.

And it just happened everywhere, whether it's getting more and more outrageous and salacious with ads, whether it's convincing 15-year-old girls to basically engage in soft porn on Instagram, whether it's

constant catastrophizing in the news media, whether it's media that demonizes the other side to just tune, you know, after the break, why Ted Cruz's father killed JFK.

I mean, it just,

it has, the attention economy and the ability to translate attention into shareholder value.

Yeah.

I think it's been more damaging than carbon emissions.

Yeah, it's interesting.

I mean, how do you find out about things?

How do you find out about things?

Yeah, things bubble up for me, either on social media.

I hate to say it.

Also, I get a lot of,

I'm pretty religious about reading those emails every morning, whether it's Dealbook or The Economist or CNN or The Information.

I know you love Semaphore.

I find that I'll find something in there that I that's.

I think Puck is what I read the most, but go ahead.

Yeah.

Puckett, you read Puck the most.

Yeah, I do.

That's really interesting.

Yeah, I like it a lot.

It's It's very valuable to me.

By the way, I'm in,

let's go back to me.

I'm in, you leave the apartment, you take off, you don't even say goodbye.

Yeah.

I did try.

I did try.

You don't even say goodbye.

I tried.

You were in your little thing.

You were yelling at someone on the video, but go ahead.

I was yelling at myself, Kara.

No, you were yelling.

I could hear you.

I was yelling into a mirror.

Anyway, I was sort of dirty Valentine's laundry here.

I was doing yoga and

I was doing my favorite movement.

You were in one of your screamies.

I was doing my favorite movement, Crippling Anxiety Post.

I read that online.

Anyway, I also texted you.

What are you so needy?

I literally texted you.

I tried to say goodbye.

I loved you, Bill Cohen.

Don't leave it.

Go ahead.

Okay, let's be honest.

What?

If we're going to be real here, I'm the least needy person you have ever met.

As a matter of fact, one of the big reasons my relationships have ended is because I am not needy enough.

I don't care.

Yeah.

Oh, you're leaving.

Okay.

Okay.

All right.

What was your point of my leaving without saying goodbye?

I'm doing the podcast.

You're out.

But I hear a really deep masculine voice and I think, oh, Kara's still here.

But it wasn't you.

It was,

I'm sitting in my podcast, and I'm trying to like focus on my call.

And I hear this very familiar, booming voice.

And I can't, I'm like, who the fuck is in my house?

And I go out and I see the very handsome Bill Cohen in my living room.

I'm like, what is Bill Cohen doing here?

By the way, Bill Cohen's one of the founders of Puck.

I'm like, this is going to be interesting.

And he was on some very important Zoom call talking about junk bond rights.

So I just waved at him.

And he waved at me like this was not unusual.

Like, oh, yeah, I'm in your house unannounced.

This is.

Are you offended?

And it ends up, I like having strangers in my house because I'm lonely and I need

people to stop by.

I really do love having guests.

Yeah.

And he's like, oh, yeah, I did something with Kara.

And she said to just make yourself at home.

You literally

make yourself at home more than anyone I do.

We had to finish a call.

Our call went late.

And I said, I'm sure Scott wouldn't mind you staying here.

So you don't give give me a heads up.

Wait, hold on.

We had your sister-in-law stay at my house.

I didn't even know she was staying there.

I wake up.

I wake up and I see this very pleasant lady.

And I'm like, hi.

How are you?

And then Bill Cohen's in my living room.

And I guess I'll never get to stay there again.

Anyways, you treat it like the international co-op house at Berkeley.

You know what?

You said whatever, Kara, and then you don't actually mean it because you get like a bad thing.

I'm just giving you a hard time.

All right, whatever.

You weren't supposed to be there.

Okay.

You weren't supposed to be there.

And then you.

I like that.

So you use my house when I'm not there.

I come home.

The garage is on fire and the dog is pregnant.

You're worse than a 17-year-old whose parents are gone.

No, there was, I left you a very handsome man and a very

pleasant person.

Anyways, Puck, back to Puck.

You asked how we get information.

All right.

So finish this up.

We got to get to the big story, which is UFOs.

You're absolutely right.

Between we've rewired our brains such that we need constant stimulation.

Constantly.

And there's just no getting around it.

I do think TikTok should be banned.

But when you have 1.7 billion people and 50% of them or 850 million people are creating content, from 850 million, you're going to get 85,000

amazing creators.

Yeah, you are.

Who using technology can put out bite-sized, snackable, interesting content.

It is.

And TikTok is immediately zeroed in on like the wonky weirdos I love.

That's where you get your.

You know what I did last night?

I sat on my computer.

I didn't watch, I had the Super Bowl on the background.

I turned it off.

I watched SNL shorts.

I watched some stuff from different economists.

and i just went down a rabbit hole on on you know various video platforms i think they're i think in a word the ad guys the ad supported guys i tell is tell people don't be in a movie don't be in an industry that is ad supported yeah it's just going away this is the this is the insight i wanted to get out of you i i have this feeling we took the long way home on that one okay speaking of which let's get to our first big story

if you're just tuning in the war of the worlds has begun in the last week the United States says it shot down three UFOs, or as the military likes to call them now, unidentified aerial phenomena.

That's in addition to the Chinese spy balloon shot down off the coast of South Carolina, which was floating over the U.S.

for a while.

The U.S.

government has been light with the details.

NORAD described two objects as cylinder-shaped, said one was the size of a small car instead of the truck, three trucks, things that the balloon was.

Meanwhile, China's foreign ministry claims that the U.S.

violated Chinese airspace with balloons of its own.

China says American balloons have floated over the country 10 times in the last year.

The U.S.

government denies these claims.

You know, this is, of course, taking up all the, you know, CNN has become the ancient alien network right now.

Everybody's writing about it.

But there is a bigger idea here.

First of all, why now?

The U.S.

does spy on other countries.

China spies on our country.

But this is sort of bringing this idea of surveillance into sharp relief, like the idea of surveillance and where it's going.

Aerial spying could affect private companies like SpaceX.

It launches satellites to the U.S.

government, including the National Recognizance Office.

I don't even want to know what they do.

SpaceX is trying to distance itself from its work in the Ukraine with drones, etc.

There are the idea of killer satellites, etc.

So,

what do you think of this story?

Because it's not going away.

And I assume they've always been here, these things.

And I don't think they're alien aliens from like another planet.

But what are your thoughts about how this story is spinning out suddenly?

It's just really a function of altitude.

And that is, we have balloons over us, right?

But if something is literally present in your child's prefrontal cortex, we don't mind that.

And then if a satellite, if a Chinese satellite is coming over U.S.

territory, but it's whatever 70 miles up or however far it is, we don't mind that or we can't do anything about it.

It's in the middle that we get upset, right?

And so

it's interesting, but I think you're going to find.

Pretty much everyone is engaged in this, or everyone that can afford it is engaged in this, including us.

And we're now having kind of proxy wars where we start shooting down each other's balloons

as a means of saying, okay, we don't want to go to war directly with you, but we're going to shoot these things down.

I don't think these balloons,

I think we're right to shoot them down,

but I think it's much more insidious to have, you know, I think TikTok and I think the real...

The race over intelligence comes down to two things.

It comes down to something very technically sophisticated, and that is satellites and listening devices.

But still,

the more advanced we get, the more we recognize that the need for soft intelligence, and that is human assets on the ground.

Right.

And the greatest,

the greatest kind of, I don't know, corporate espionage is humans.

And I think a lot of them come through our universities and end up at big tech firms.

And then what we do when we realize they're spying on behalf of the CCP or someone else is we turn them.

And you know how we turn them?

With America.

We just just say, Do you want to stay here?

Or do you want to go back to Shenzhen?

And we turn them.

But there is so much human capital.

That's the best intelligence you can find.

But I find it all fascinating.

Yeah, I know.

It's really interesting that now, of course, I always assumed they were there, sort of floating around.

Everyone was flying from the top with these satellites.

There's been a million movies of that.

There's so many satellites up there.

SpaceX is one of the places.

There's a lot of tech people involved in low, low, I think they're called low orbit satellites or something like that.

And so I'm assuming they're listening all the time, like all the time, and they're floating things and they're looking at what's interesting is that you mentioned TikTok and the TikTok CEO is scheduled to appear before a house committee next month.

Is it just we should expect this?

that they're up there doing this and we should try to shoot them down.

And then of course there's the whole, is it actually an alien here that we keep shooting at, right?

Is this like peak probes from another planet kind of thing, which is ridiculous?

This is some country, likely China, who's doing it and we're doing it to them.

And so it does bring up this whole idea of like being watched constantly or manipulated constantly.

Or, you know, from above, from the middle and below, essentially.

Yeah, but we, I mean, we had the Gary Powers U-2.

We used to fly U-2s over the Soviet Union because it was a race to see who could fly higher such that you'd be out of the, out of the range of anti-aircraft missiles.

And we, and basically now we have aircraft that fly almost to the Karman line.

Yep.

So we do this to each other all of the time.

I think the next war is likely going to, the next proxy war is going to break out in space.

Space, yeah.

I think we're going to figure out and be able to identify which satellites are not good actors, according to us.

And we're going to come up with sophisticated technical reasons for how they malfunction in space.

Yeah.

There's a whole idea about this killer of satellites that take down other satellites.

And of course, it was a James Bond movie 25, 30 years ago.

50 years ago.

You know, it also comes down to this idea of us versus China, which is continuing to get.

I don't know if it's getting.

I wouldn't, I don't mind them fighting it out with balloons.

I'd rather have that than in the Taiwan Straits, right?

So let us fight over balloons.

I don't know if it escalates to more, but certainly everybody's sort of tough on China.

That's sort of a brand, speaking of brands, for every, all the Republicans and the Democrats.

Well, this is the thing about war, and that is.

We have decided, proxy war, we've essentially outsourced war to military families and

younger kids.

And then we've outsourced war to Ukrainian soldiers, and we figured out a way that we don't even have to put American boots on the ground.

And we entered into these proxy wars and then these wars that are fought with technology and means of saying, okay, we hate each other and

we're going to fight each other, but we're never going to get close to something that resembles a real shooting match because we realize the downside there.

could be terrible because neither side wants to back down.

And that's what Ian Bremer says is the real risk of escalating the war in Ukraine because effectively what you have now is NATO is at war with Russia.

That's effectively what, and I'm on the other side, I'm the war hawk or part of the war hawk community that says the only way to end a war is to win it.

And that's actually not true, but the best, I should say, the best way to win a war or end a war is to win it.

But there's all these kind of different types of proxy wars popping up where we're bumping each other, seeing what the other side is willing to endure.

It's a little bit, and it makes, here's the, at the end of the day, it makes for great media.

It's kind of fascinating, right?

Yeah.

No, CNN's constant.

It's like literally like, is it an alien?

I'm like, it's not an alien.

I wish it was an alien.

Do you wish it was?

I kind of wish it was an alien, don't you?

It's about time they got here and fixed that.

You think?

Or ate us, either one.

Yeah, I don't know.

I think if I had to, if I had to pick aliens or no aliens, I would go with the whole no aliens.

No, I totally want aliens to arrive.

Really?

Yeah.

Be cool.

I'm so sick of the story now.

I want a new story.

That's the most scary.

Your story's getting better.

Your story.

You stay at amazing apartments and invite strangers over.

How could your story be any better?

You are the type of person who says you have a young wife.

You've locked and loaded with new kids.

Like how could you

sick of a story?

I also left a drone in your apartment, so I'm watching things very carefully.

I have a satellite in your apartment and it's there.

Here's the key.

I've decided

my life is so profane and outrageous and uncomfortable that you just got to go full weird.

Weird.

If you're like, if you're a decent human being, like an honorable citizen, 98% of the time, you get in trouble with the 2%.

You just got to go full.

All right.

See, I'm trying to help you do that.

I'm trying to help you do that.

Next visit, who shall I have in the apartment?

I don't know.

Maybe I'll party with Stephanie Rule and we'll bring all our cable friends in.

I don't know what's going to happen.

Who's to say?

I don't know.

Could you know?

And of course, you didn't buy her any Valentine's things either.

My favorite Bond

used to be James Bond, but then I started taking Viagra and decided I wanted to be Roger Moore.

Moore.

Get it?

The worst Bond.

Except for his first outings of Bond.

In

what was it?

Oh, God.

I love Bond.

Live and Let Die.

Roger Moore.

Live and Let Die.

Yeah, that was the first one.

Yeah, the most beautiful Bond woman ever.

Jane Seymour.

Yeah, Jane Seymour.

She was great.

She was real.

She was the card reader, the tarot card reader.

Yeah.

She was great.

I love Bonds.

Anyway, Scott, let's go on a quick break.

When we come back, we'll talk about where the big tech layoffs are taking the industry and where the new jobs are.

And we'll speak with friend of Pivot, Lakshmi Rengarajan.

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off.

Scott, we're back.

It's another week, another round of layoffs.

Meta isn't planning to lock in staff budgets anytime soon, according to the FT, leading to speculation of another round of job cuts next month, probably at their Metaverse area.

Microsoft cut at least 600 employees late last week, asking its members of its Surface, HoloLens, and Xbox units, as well as its industrial metaverse division.

Again, more metaverse layoffs.

A lot of these layoffs target the more long-term moonshot products that they were excited about, where they were innovating.

With the budgets tightening in big tech, let's talk about where the opportunity might be because you can't just tighten your way way to the next thing, obviously, AI.

And according to the World Economic Forum, 75 million current jobs will be displaced by machines and algorithms, but 133 million new jobs will be created as well.

So here you are, all these things happening.

Things are up and down.

I'd love to use your thoughts for first for the big companies, and then we'll talk a little bit about startups.

What is the move here for these companies?

Well, first off, and I feel like I've been a small cog in the wheel here, and that that is

I'm disheartened and disturbed when I read comments on my blog from young people about how down they are on capitalism in America.

And I just don't think that's an accurate reflection of

where we really are.

And I think it's from the constant catastrophizing of media.

And again, we've talked about this topic.

I like it.

Go ahead.

Well, let's talk about media, all the headlines.

Okay, granted, let's talk about recent, all the layoffs through COVID and then all the hiring.

Okay.

But for each company, how many people they've laid off during COVID and how many people they've hired.

Microsoft, a lot of news, has laid off 10,000 people.

It's a lot of people.

Do you know how many they've hired through COVID?

You assume that more.

More.

30,000.

77,000.

That doesn't make headlines.

Google has laid off 12,000 people.

Ton of headlines.

Google layoffs.

How many people did they hire through COVID?

68,000 for a net hiring of 56,000.

Salesforce, world of shit, right?

Activists, Mark has been asleep at the Switch.

A lot of people have all of a sudden second

guessing Mark, they laid off 7,000 people.

Oh my gosh, through COVID, they hired 31,000.

Amazon laid off 18,000 people.

Big news.

Oh my God, Amazon.

Oh, but wait.

All the headlines for the 18,000 layoffs, not as many layoffs around through the 30 months identified as the COVID period.

They they hired 746,000 people.

Yeah, close to a million.

Meta, 11,000 layoffs, but 42,000 hires.

So it's like, okay,

what exactly?

What is that layoff thing?

What is their promise if they hired all these things?

I mean, if you're in that job, when this is the idea of relentless year of efficiencies, where is the innovation come from that allows you to get to the next level?

Or do you just, are you in stasis as a big company?

You can guarantee everyone is trying to pivot to something around AI and Meta is kicking themselves because they had a lot of interesting AI, which they made nothing of.

Google is furious

that Open AI is getting all this credit for what they feel is technology that they played a big hand in.

I think if you're laid off in one of these companies, if you're somebody, There's so much opportunity right now, both in the information economy.

You find some smart people and you say, you know what, we're just going to try and find interesting data sources and see if we we can feed them into, you know, prediction engines and see what we come up with and see if it's data anyone will buy.

There's just a huge amount of opportunity to sit down, sign up for all of these things and brainstorm.

There's also huge opportunities in the main street economy.

I'm coaching this young man who's handy, doesn't like college, was never a good student.

And unfortunately, in America, his parents have shamed him because he's not a good student.

And he dropped out of college his first year.

And there's just like the whole house came crumbling down.

And I feel like I'm coaching his parents, not him.

And like, it's okay.

It's not the worst thing in the world.

And he's, he's amazing with his hands.

He's like a craftsman, craftsman.

He came over and he helped me set up my studio.

And I'm like, boss, you need to get an apprenticeship, go for six or 12 months, become an electrician, and you'll make a shit ton of money.

And guess what?

Everything will be fine.

We have to stop shaming.

I'm going off on a tangent here.

I like this tangent.

Young men and women that don't end up at Google or KKR.

There's a lot of ways in the mainstream economy.

As a matter of fact, it's probably, I would argue, it may even be easier, especially if you don't have the certification from these luxury brands posing as education institutions that let in the rich and the freakishly remarkable.

If you're neither of those things, it's not a bad idea to get a trade step.

Yeah, I would agree.

I talk to my kids a lot about that.

Because we're not letting in immigrants, you can, with any sort of skill around plumbing or electric right now, you spend two to five years really learning the trade.

And if you're good at business and willing to work hard, I think you're making an extraordinary living.

But all of these kids are like, no, I want to, if you do what your parents want, you go to school and go into the information high-prestige economy.

And if you do what your society is telling you to do, you become an influencer.

I'm like, no, there's a third lane here.

Let me ask you, though, let's talk about the startups.

Be Real, which is a very good product.

Their downloads are down 95% from their 2022 peak.

You take a picture on Be Real.

that's not performative.

They just say now you have to take a picture.

They're life, right?

Life.

Venture capitalist Sasha Kaletsky has tweeted that the numbers show how difficult it is to keep consumer apps growth once you've crossed a chasm.

Home Fitness Startup Tonal, another pretty cool product is looking for a buyer after spending big on hiring.

It's sort of the Peloton of this year.

So when you're like, if you are like in a venture capitalist right now, it feels like there's not a lot of...

There's a lot of stuff been tried and a lot of stuff's not sticking.

This is the same theme of advertising.

It's not sticking.

is good?

What do you imagine is going to stick first besides being a plumber?

Well, first off,

I advise to VC firms.

And my advice, you know, they want to talk about where do we go, what investments, what categories.

My advice is to sit on your hands and do nothing right now.

Because what's happening in the housing market is happening in the venture market.

And that is everybody's anchoring off.

Joe sold his house.

You know, the Smiths sold their house for $800,000 15 months ago.

So I should get 800,000.

Well, no, the market's changed dramatically.

And so they don't want to, even if they put their house for sale, they don't want to accept a lower price.

Meanwhile, buyers

read everything in the news about a recession or housing price coming down and think, oh, wait, this house is worth $650,000.

So right now, there's total, as the word used, with stasis or a standoff.

The same thing's happening in the small business and entrepreneurship community.

And that is companies that raise money, still have capital.

They raise a lot of money.

They're cutting, but they don't want to think about the next round.

And they don't want to acknowledge that their valuation is probably down 50, 70, maybe even 80 percent.

And time is so on the side of venture investments.

Now, what field would you go into?

You know, I think there's a ton of opportunity in what I'll call tech-enabled services.

And that is, I'm an, I'll tell you where I'm investing.

I'm investing, I invested in a company that was very similar to the company I called L2 called 0100 that collects a ton of data and research on supply chain innovation because every company slowly but surely is elevating supply chain to kind of the top level decision-making capital allocation.

They're realizing that supply chain is how Amazon won and it's also how almost every company got taken down through COVID.

So it's no longer this necessary evil.

It's a key component of strategy.

And it's a tech-enabled firm, but it's a bunch of smart people writing research, hosting events, and helping big companies figure out their supply chain.

I think a company like that, and I want to be clear, we're not going public for $5 billion,

but it's a great business.

He'll build, the guy who runs it is a fantastic operator.

He'll build it slowly.

He'll build enduring value.

And in seven to 10 years, we'll have a company doing 30 million or 40 million in ARR that'll get sold for two to 300 million.

And that's a great, that's an amazing way to make a living.

What I, what you have, and is again, created all sorts of externalities, is in a world of zero interest rates where money is free.

And if you can make any money, you'll make money for your limiteds.

You end up with WAG.

You end up with the concept you talk about is a Q concept.

It's not a business, I don't think.

And you end up with Kathy Wood talking about Bitcoin at a million dollars.

You end up with just all of this crap.

And it's got to get cleaned out.

It does.

It's just, there's a lot of underbrush that needs to be burned in a bit of a super fire, which will spawn new ideas that are, that kind of make the first advice I give to entrepreneurs, and I'm old school.

Doll things.

Well, not only that.

What makes a business is not expenses.

Don't build that infrastructure.

It's not even customers.

Because in order to aggregate enough customers to be able to make money off an ad model, you have to be such scale and raise so much capital.

I'm like, the thing that makes a business is revenues.

Find something people, a person, another person or a company will pay you for immediately.

And that's how I always built businesses.

And granted, I never had a big win.

All my companies kind of did tens of millions and got sold for, you know, three to six times revenue.

But I found that that is a lower risk way of building enduring value.

And I was, I'm writing, you know, I'm writing this book, Algebra Wealth.

And I'm like, I know how, I generally believe I know how to get you rich.

That's the good news.

The bad news is the answer is slowly.

It's thinking thoughtfully about, it's trying to maintain, you can go cash flow negative for a little while.

Yeah.

But it's the I do think this idea of boom is not, I think people have got to let go of it a little bit in tech, especially as it's the next boom.

They tried to boom with cryptocurrency.

They tried to boom.

I do think AI, but now they're overinvesting in it.

Right.

I think it's a slow growth, like this kind of thing.

And so there may not be some, unless aliens show up and give us new technology, which is my great hope, as you know.

Um, it's not going to be a, it feels like we're in that period of, even though you know, obviously, AI is the biggest thing, climate change tech.

They're going to be very slow in how beneficial they're going to be.

And I would agree with you, start off slow and stay slow for a little longer.

It's not going to be this sudden crop of billionaires just out of nowhere.

But there's a one of the things you have to recognize, or try to recognize as a young person, and I didn't,

is that big flaw in the species, because until literally the last hundred years, we didn't live past 38, we have a very difficult time calibrating time.

Simply put, we don't know how fast time is going to go.

And young people are all looking for get rich quick.

How do I get to a hot company that's going to sell for a billion dollars in three years?

How do I buy the new cryptocurrency that will triple in the next 30 days?

And generally speaking, those businesses, there'll get be a lot of very well-publicized small number of them that do just that, but the majority that doesn't happen for

and the thing i would just tell people is imagine imagine that the next 20 years is going to go really fast because it's going to i know you can't imagine it now but it but what could you build that with relative certainty over 20 years you'd make really good money at the end of that 20 years you'd have real money if i had you know i've been thinking a lot this a lot because i'm writing this book i made hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in my 20s i got right i shot out of the gates really fast yeah i i was even at one point in my 30s, you know, making $500,000 to a million dollars a year.

And then between the great financial recession, and I'm not proud of this, I'm embarrassed by it.

Between the great financial recession, the dot-com bust and a divorce, at 42, when I had my first kid, I was almost broke.

And if I just been not so, just a little bit smarter, or quite frankly, not so fucking stupid.

And I had the same mentality a lot of these kids have.

And I'm like, I'm swinging for the fence.

I'm good at what I do.

I'm on the precipice of a big win.

Red Envelope is going to go public.

I'm going to have tens of millions of dollars.

Yeah.

You're already spending this.

I have an investment in this tech company that I got to invest in alongside Kleiner Perkins, who knows no more than the rest of us.

I'm going to make 10 million there.

And I was always close to those big hits, but they never happened.

And I had lifestyle creep and I kept spending more and more and more.

And then 2008 comes, wham, ran over by a truck.

My kid comes out and I tell this story.

I remember being in the, being in the delivery room, and I was so nauseous, I couldn't stand.

I had to sit down.

I was just, I was in a bad, bad way.

Does he think it could provide?

Come on.

Oh, 100%.

This is what I felt.

I mean, granting, childbirth is disgusting, and I don't think men should be in the delivery room, but that's another conversation.

They should not.

Yes.

Yes.

I'm a Ricky Ricardo fan, but go ahead.

Here's why I was disabled.

It had dawned on me that with all my blessings, all of my luck, and all of of my talent, I was at 42 and I wasn't in a position I should have been.

And I had not only failed myself, I had failed my son.

And that fear and that shame like literally washed over me like a fucking tidal wave.

And if I had just been a little smarter, if I'd just shown a little bit more stoicism, if I'd just been a little bit more...

And here's the thing in America, we believe we're all exceptional.

And a good thing about America is we reward the exceptional more than any nation in the world.

But the better thing about in America is you don't need to be exceptional.

Live below your means just a little bit.

Put money away.

Put it in low-cost ETFs.

If I had just put, it would have been so easy for me

to put $10,000, $50,000, $100,000 away and low-cost, diversified ETFs.

It would have been so easy, so easy.

And at the age of 42, instead of being in a delivery room like terrified, I would have had five, seven million bucks in the bank.

That's how Kira switched to invest in case you're interested.

The most powerful force in the universe is compound annual growth rate.

But instead of thought, I'm exceptional.

I own $20 million in red envelope stock.

Guess what?

Dot-com, no, you don't.

There's an inverse correlation between return on investment in your human and financial capital and how sexy a job is.

Full stop.

I like your dullness.

I enjoy your dullness.

You know what works at a bar?

I'm saying this to the guys.

I have a plan.

I'm courageous.

I have a plan.

I'm an adult.

I make really good money.

It doesn't have to be cool.

That's exactly what we're going to talk about with our next guest.

So let's bring in our friend to Pivot.

It's Lakshmi Rengarajan.

This leads in perfectly, Scott.

He's the co-host of Land of the Giants Dating Games.

Lakshmi's work has focused on how to help people connect in real life and how to offset the weariness of online dating.

She previously worked at match.com and at WeWork as Director of Workplace Connection.

Oh my God, this should be interesting.

Welcome, Lakshmi.

Can I, wait, can I just do a quick gushing moment?

Is that okay?

You may gush.

Gush away.

Carol, I've been following you for so many years.

Thank you so much for everything you do.

I adore all of your work.

Thank you.

And Scott,

I have to tell you,

I discovered you when I was at WeWork and I was there.

for the crash and all of that.

And

I just want you to know, like your, your content helped me and a lot of other people

process what was a really difficult few months.

And so I just wanted to, I wanted you to know that.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for saying that, Larry.

We were recording.

Don't worry.

Yeah, good.

Well, good.

We're glad to help you out.

I think Scott really did a lot of really important work during that time period.

And I appreciate your things.

But let me let me say you also, besides, you were director of Workplace Connection there, which is one of the big

pulls of WeWork was the idea that you could meet people and socialize and the drinking, et cetera, et cetera.

And then you also worked at match.com, but now you've been working on this show Land of the Giants, which is focusing different things every time they do it.

And this time it's the dating games.

So give us an overview of the work you've done in the field of dating and how you feel about dating culture as it stands today, or connection culture, I guess, because that's what you're really doing.

Sure.

So it's actually like back in 2009.

So online dating was already a big thing.

It was like before Tinder, but people were dating online and that had started.

And I started already noticing the change in people, that there was the disposability, the snap judgments that had already started.

And I was doing this project where I was in, I had interviewed all of these couples that met at work.

And almost every couple told me that the person that they were with was not someone that they liked immediately, that this person had kind of grown on them over time.

And so I was.

And so I.

That's how I feel about Scott, but go ahead.

Yeah, exactly.

It's how I think a lot of people feel about Scott.

Go on.

There's your co-host.

There's your next co-host.

But so I saw this.

Yeah, I saw this like change in people.

Like we're losing this sort of gradual attraction, this thing that happens with people.

And I was at this lunch and learn where I worked and I had just gone for the free pizza.

And there was this guy there that I didn't notice at all.

He could have just been wallpaper to me.

And he gave this presentation about sports marketing.

And it wasn't just about sports marketing.

It was sort of about his life and how he arrived at this moment.

And he had slides and he told this like really, really important, sweet story.

And I remember he started to look different to me.

Like in that, in the course of those like 20 minutes, he started to look different to me.

And then I was talking to this group of women outside afterwards.

And I would, they were like, oh, that was a really good presentation.

And then I said, were any of you kind of turned on?

And they were like, yes, yes.

Like, what was that?

What was that?

Yeah.

And it was because this person had sort of been dimensionalized and we were getting context on him.

Right.

So I sort of took note of that.

And then so I started experimenting with in-person events and storytelling and slides and how could I slow down the process of dating, but still make it a really efficient and fun experience.

And so I did that for several years.

And then that's what caught the attention of match.com.

And that's how I kind of went there for a while.

So you wanted to fix them.

You wanted to fix, get rid of the judgy stuff, the

usability.

Yeah.

when you got there what did you want to do to fix them because why do you their algorithms don't get as much scrutiny as other social apps like how they're doing them yeah i mean i was brought in for a lot of reasons i was brought in to try and change their events business i think i was brought in to bring my opinion and what i was learning in the field there's a lot of people that report on dating there's not as many people who are actually trying to build something different um

but i mean you know long story short i don't know that anyone really wanted to hear from me because i was saying i was hired for those insights But then when I got there, I ran into a lot of like, well, we're going to make this button green instead of blue because green is more engaging.

So I don't even know that people knew what I was saying, quite frankly.

So let's, but let's just double-click on something you said that a lot of people over time, at least on initial encounter, weren't interested and found that they became increasingly interested.

It's very reductive, but I've generally found that, you know, guys get turned on with their eyes, women get turned on with their ears.

And

what do you do?

What do you do at one in three relationships begin at work?

And if it requires a certain level of persistence or trying again or expressing interest, first off, you're told as a man that if you express anything resembling romantic interest at work, you're a predator and should be fired.

And two,

how do you even begin to talk about

the reality that sometimes it requires a little bit of persistence?

I mean, haven't we just basically said to the entire mating community that a third of all mating opportunities are going away?

Because

you just, everyone has to go online.

You can't, you're not supposed to meet at work.

And, anyways, I'll just stop there, but haven't we basically, through certain norms, which are justified because of some of the terrible things that have happened in a professional workplace, haven't we just essentially kind of destroyed a third of the

alchemy and points of inspiration for relationships?

Yeah, we have.

And

I've heard you talk about this and I'm with you.

And so I don't feel like I can necessarily comment on workplace romances per se, but I think what you're pointing at, and I think the thing that we have to remember is whether we like it or not, we have spent decades making work the de facto town.

town square.

Yeah.

Right.

That was one of the few places where you could go and slowly get to know people over time.

Right.

So I think that's the, that's the thing that we have to take away is remember that a lot of your coworkers, a lot of your friends, a lot of the people that you adore were not people that you liked initially.

And you got to know them over moments.

You got to know them because they cleared your coffee mug, because they spoke up in a meeting.

And

whether or not I'm not advocating for workplace romances, but I think the takeaway.

is that people are people unfold over time.

And work is one of the few places where people can unfold over time.

So how do you not get unfolded online?

Because everyone crafts their online persona

and it must impact like what you're being very proof.

I find it all, I've never used an online dating service, but they seem performative to me and not real.

My son took his off.

He finds them ridiculous.

You know what I mean?

They're not, and then of course it's harder to meet in person, as you say.

How do you fix the world of online dating?

Because that's where people are doing this now, if given other venues are not available to them.

No, I get it.

And I know that everybody wants like advice or

the way that I like to think about it is

rather than advice, because I think when we give people advice, we suggest that there's a right or a wrong way to do this.

What I like to do is give people sort of considerations and think about the pool that you have been placed in, which is what we're doing in Land of the Giants.

We're not blaming the dating industry, but we want you to know the pool that you've been placed in and what chemicals are in the water.

And I think that's where you start.

And you have been placed in a pool where

marketing yourself and standing out is more important than developing the skill of how to get to know other humans.

Right.

So like my advice to people is to remember and be very aware of how dating online has changed you and changed everybody else.

What about fixing the apps themselves?

Well, I don't know that anyone will listen to me about fixing the apps, but what I do know is that we need to care about who is building our apps and who's going to be building the future of dating.

So I tell people they want to know what app to go to.

And I'm more like, I would go look at the founder,

right?

Because that will tell you a lot about what's being built.

and how they, you know, like how they inform their world and the decisions that they make.

So, no.

Do I think we can fix dating?

No.

But do I still want to empower people to date differently and date well and be aware?

Yes.

I'll put forward a thesis and I would just love to get your

response to it and go more meta than just online dating.

And that is women date or mate socioeconomically horizontally and up, men horizontally and down.

Over 50% of women say they would never date a guy shorter than them.

And it's probably closer to 80% because it's an embarrassing thing to say, I wouldn't date someone shorter than me.

And what you have, women now own more homes, single women than men.

You have men maturing later,

getting mixed signals about being aggressive, not being as economically viable.

My friend Chris Williamson, who has a great podcast, by the way,

he described it perfectly to me.

And he said that for the last three decades, women have been getting taller and men have been getting shorter.

And I hear women, and we all hear this story, and I know a bunch of them.

I know all these great women that not only aren't mating, they're not even dating.

And it's not because there aren't men out there it's because we're not producing enough economically or emotionally viable men have you given any thought to like big picture solutions whether it's through technology or society or social programs that can get men growing again if you will

um i there are a few things i think about more than this

um

so

Like there's, there's, there's a lot, there's a lot to say here.

And I know that this is a topic that you care a lot about.

And one one thing that I hear in your voice, and I've heard this several times, is

I know that you are hearing a depth of honesty that not a lot of people get to hear.

You're not just hearing dating frustration.

I think you're hearing some despair.

And I think we have to be very mindful of that.

So as we are talking to people about how to date better and how to find a partner, I think we also have to be really careful not to depict singlehood as this awful deficit and this awful thing that

you are.

It doesn't define success.

It does not.

It does not.

And so I just want to make sure we're having both conversations.

So one thing that I learned from designing events for such a long time is men are visual, but they also are much more open-minded.

They're less busy.

Well, they have a big range for what they find attractive.

But what happens is when they're on the apps, the most, I mean, we've heard of this, the most shallow side of them is being cultivated over and over and over.

And so the side of them that does, you know, it like does have range and doesn't just look at women for how they look or how old they are or what their weight is, that side of them gets suppressed.

And then you have the same thing happening with women.

I know that the surveys say that women, you know, are obsessed with height.

Like, and I think in a survey format that is true, if you really talk to women, like really really talk to them, and they're not just responding to a form, they're not as hung up on that as you might think.

They are hung up on that in the moment when they're asked to make a snap judgment.

But the thing that I learned over and over is if you can delay people's judgment, And that is something that the apps do not let you do.

They prey on your snap judgment.

And that's where events and in-person is so important.

If you can slow the process down,

you get a different side of people.

And at one of my, one of my early, the first couple that ever got married from one of my events, I love sharing this story because I think it says a lot.

The guy was 28 and the woman was 36.

That was the first couple that ever got married from one of my events.

And, you know, he even, he even like told me later, he's like, yeah, I probably would not have, you know, picked, picked, picked her out.

But by the time I got to knew her, I was, I was in.

She's amazing.

You know, so that number was not going to deter me.

So you're all talking about in-person things.

That these apps, you're never going to write it over because they're designed for click-click, you know, swiping.

They're designed for click-click and they're designed for speed.

And I think they put forth this message of efficiency.

And efficiency is a matter of time.

Sorry, I have to say it every time.

No, yeah.

No, and efficiency is a very powerful message for men in particular.

They love that idea.

But I would argue that this isn't an efficient way.

You're getting volume, but you're not, you're, I would actually say it's not, it's not efficient.

It's not efficient.

Yeah.

So I agree with you, especially for women, that society has to stop evaluating their, their success through the lens of romantic success or not.

I would say, though, that I do think it's actually more important

and key to a successful development and mature.

Kara, you talked about both your, both your sons have had girlfriends.

I'm really hoping my 15-year-old son gets a girlfriend.

I think men without, and it's increasingly happening, men who do not have relationships by the time they're 30, I think women who don't have relationships have much greater social connections, are more aware, more mature, more professionally adept, better at gas on, gas off, saving money.

I think a man, if he hits 25 and hasn't had a romantic relationship, I think he's literally like, comes off the fucking rails.

He doesn't have guardrails,

doesn't develop any social skills.

I

I think men fail if they don't have these relationships.

Well, it's interesting because one of my

one son does have a very, has a girlfriend who's gone out for a while.

Now he's 17.

And the other one did have a girlfriend.

And actually, his new thing was he's going to wait till a woman asks him out, which is taking a long time, right?

If he doesn't, he doesn't want to be the...

And my other son and I are like, well, you're going to wait a long time.

I have to tell you, it's not going to happen, which is interesting.

So when you're thinking about,

I don't want tips for setting people up, but you were talking about live events, this idea of constantly, because there's not church, there's not other places, there's all kinds of things.

Obviously, we should have a

Pivot singles event where we all talk about Kara and Scott, and that's what you've shared.

But I'm going to tell you something very weird.

I get approached by so many couples and several well-known couples, actually.

Someone just texted me who listened to Pivot together, and that's their point of connection.

And it makes them, that's where they met.

Like, right.

I know it sounds crazy, but they had a point of connection and then they could debate which one they like better, me or Scott, obviously me, but um, but it was really interesting.

And I was like, huh, so we're like helping you, or couples that exist that feel better with each other because they're spending a little more time on a topic they like, right?

So it's fun.

It's fun for them to debate it.

So offline is just superior to online, no matter how you slice it, even though online is the way it's going with dating.

Yeah, no, well, I'll caveat that.

So yes, events are great, but most singles events are absolute garbage.

So that's the problem.

So like that, that is like the, in the hierarchy of, you know, event types, I would say singles events are usually pretty low in terms of like quality.

The, the, the, the standard has always been just shove a bunch of single people into a bar, give them drink tickets and hope that something happens.

Right.

And so single events, like rightly so, have a bad reputation.

So what I was trying to do, and maybe I'll do this again some, someday soon, is to elevate that right so like how do you use environment how do you use the the size of the crowd how do you use stimulus like you were talking about yes people need to have something other than we are all single as a point of connection

and so all of those factors like need to be put into consideration and if I could say something you you said something about um you know your son and Scott about your son and I've never said this publicly but I've I feel like this is the place to do it um one of the reasons why I think this industry doesn't get the same scrutiny that say Twitter or TikTok or any of these other places is that, you know, the moment when we start to see a piece of tech and we start to see its downsides is when we see it affect children.

Right.

So think about the social dilemma, you know, at the end when the product manager sees his child on Instagram.

That's the moment when he realizes the impact of the product.

We don't have that in dating.

We don't see adults in the same way that we do children.

The hearts of adults are just as important as the welfare of children in this context because of the implications.

And so you have people building products that don't see their quote unquote children experiencing the impact of that product.

And so that is why it does not get, I believe, it does not get very good scrutiny as some of the other forms of tech.

So let's do the tip, finish up with the tips.

And Scott, if you have any more questions, but what are some of the tips you have now?

Myself.

Well, I heard your episode last summer about how people always want you to set them up.

Yes, they do.

I'm good at it.

But I do lying, but don't do my method.

I lie to them.

I make things up and I set them up via dissembling.

Well, here's what I would say.

I get the, there's a couple of things to just remember when you're trying to set someone up.

One, never tell them that you're setting them up.

Don't use that word and never use the word match and never say that you guys are perfect for each other or anything like that.

This is the phrase that I like to use.

And it's really simple, but it's very powerful.

It's like, I think you guys might get along.

That's it.

I think you guys might get along.

That way you, as the person that's doing the setting up, you're kind of like out of it.

So you don't feel responsibility if it doesn't work out.

You have just created a little container.

And so that is just really, so the language is really important.

You've taken the pressure off of it.

And then those two people can decide if it, if there's something more.

So just something as simple as, I think you might get along.

Yeah, you should meet.

And then, yeah, you should meet already.

Personally, personally, personally, I try to do that with Scott.

With friends, but go ahead.

Yeah.

And I think, actually, Scott, meet is good.

Get along is better.

It just pushes, it just pushes the person just a little bit more.

And, and, and that, that little bit can make all the difference.

The other thing, and this is really important, and I want to like teach you guys this because Kara, I know people approach you all the time, and I feel like you would crush this.

I have this thing that I call a lodge line.

Um, and it's a little tiny thing that you say say about the person that you're trying to set up that kind of like lodges into someone's heart and kind of opens them up a little bit.

When people set people up, they tend to talk in these sort of like boring, well-meaning, but boring platitudes.

You know, they're amazing.

They're wonderful.

You'll adore them.

And that doesn't do anything.

It doesn't help.

You want to give a tiny, tiny line about the other person that evokes a visual and tells you something about their character.

So can I give you a quick example?

Sure.

It's not like, oh, I'd fuck them, but go ahead.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, if you want to throw that on at the end, I'm not going to tell you not to.

No, I'm not.

I mean, you are Kara Swisher.

You can get away with more F-bums than most people.

So yeah, go for it.

Go for it.

But the thing that you want to do.

So I'm going to give an example from this week.

So I'm sitting in the studio with Chris, Chris, audio engineer at Vox.

And I had been telling him for the past couple of weeks, I was super nervous about this interview.

And then last week, I was like, oh man, I just know my computer is going to break down.

Like the one time I get to talk to Scott Galloway and Kara Swisher, I'm going to have a tech issue.

And he was like, look, I will book a studio.

I will sit in the booth with you and you're going to be great.

And we're going to, we're going to, we're going to make this work.

Right.

So first of all, Chris is engaged.

So sorry, he's off the market.

But like you just heard something about him and it wasn't super deeply personal.

You weren't telling me what to think about him, but you probably pictured this guy.

who like looked out for somebody and like booked a room and he's sitting over there, you know, having my back.

And that's the kind of stuff that we need to share about each other, especially in a world where we're all getting flattened by our screens.

We as people need to do that little bit of extra work to dimensionalize people when we try and set them up.

Yeah, I think what you're talking about is powerful in this notion of third place is where random encounters or things like pheromones and humor and body language can play a role when they can't play a role online.

I'm just curious.

You got a 19-year-old

man and woman in front of you.

And what advice would you give them around

trying to find

or develop good skills that result in good relationships and potentially finding something that turns into a romantic relationship?

What advice would you let me add?

Man and man, woman and woman.

Yeah.

All right, somebody.

Hold on, hold on, hold on.

Before you're shaming, I said a man or a woman.

I didn't say but gay or straight.

All right, okay.

Go ahead.

It's official.

I mean, I know what information I, I know what advice I give to gay men.

What?

No means maybe and yes means anal.

Okay.

And there we have it.

Sorry.

Is that wrong?

Okay.

Is that wrong?

Yes, it is.

Yes, it is.

I mean, I listen to that.

From the Box Media Podcast Network.

We were so good.

We almost got out.

Okay.

I prepped for this moment.

Don't worry.

Don't worry.

All right.

Go for it.

Okay.

So a couple of things.

One, I'm going to do one philosophical thing and then one like very practical thing.

One, philosophically, please remember that most of the people that you like and care about were not people that you liked immediately.

And you got to know them in moments.

Right.

So right now,

second coffee.

Well, so.

Okay, I'm going to push back on that for a second, Scott.

Like, I get the sentiment of be open, like be open-minded.

But when someone hears that, it kind of, it actually comes across as a little bit condescending, right?

It's like, oh, you, you're, you're doing it wrong.

But here's the thing to remember to your coffee comment is most dates right now are happening in coffee shops and at restaurants, which makes sense.

But this is a terrible environment to get to know somebody.

It's not, it's not, I understand that why people do it.

But if you look at all the dating advice that is out there, it is all around navigating this very narrow box, right?

It's like, did he pay for the check?

Did they order something?

Were they nice to the server?

And so you're trying to get to know somebody in this very, very limited context.

And so you're putting so much pressure.

It's like being in a fucking law and order episode, right?

But it's just here, right?

And everything is being determined at the moment.

So please just like keep that in mind.

Like these are not the best ways to get to know people.

I understand you have to do it, but like don't try and draw a complete picture about somebody.

I just want to press spots.

I couldn't agree with more.

I describe every date I had in a restaurant as me as like controlled boasting.

Me just sitting there trying to be more impressive than I was.

Yes, exactly.

It's just, it's not, even though that's and that's what everyone's doing so just remember this isn't like the best environment the second was you have to work on getting people to share like bits of their story as opposed to like their pitch engineer right because most people are trained to pitch themselves and you have to get people out of pitch mode and i'll give you an example of how people do this very inadvertently so what a very common question when people are dating is what's your family like are you guys close right sounds like a sounds like a good question, right?

It's not a good question because, first of all, it puts people in this state of being judged.

Not everyone identifies with the word family.

That is a very privileged word.

Not everybody has good associations with family.

And you're putting someone on the defensive, but it seems like a good question.

Here's the question I tell people to ask, and it will change the trajectory of your conversation.

What was one great thing about your upbringing?

Okay.

That's good.

Very different.

He's beaten daily.

There could be very different.

But think about it.

Like, you know, Scott has talked a lot about his upbringing.

Yeah.

And that, I'm going to hear more of that.

And everybody has had an upbringing,

but not everyone has had a family in the way that we tend to think about family.

That's really good.

And you're going to get a great story.

Yeah, you don't have to tell everything.

Interesting.

Someone, my son, it's not dating, but he's meeting different people.

And one thing that he's doing is not telling people that

his moms are lesbians, right?

And there's one woman who he likes him who's super anti-gay.

So he's like, oh, interesting.

And like, he's, I said, have you told her?

And he's like, not yet.

Not yet.

And so.

And then he moves.

And then he moves on to tell me something wonderful about your upbringing.

Anyway, this is so helpful.

Lakshmi, we're going to have you back on again.

Thank you so much.

This, you, you can hear more from Lakshmi on this season of Land of the Giants, as well as on her podcast, paired by the people, wherever you listen to podcasts.

Thank you so much.

This was delightful.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

That was riveting, Scott.

We should be, you know, Yentis.

We should.

I feel like it's a whole new business line for us.

What do you think?

Yes?

No?

Okay.

Yeah.

I like it.

But anyway, that was really fascinating.

We should do more on that topic.

Anyway, we'll be back for wins and fails after the break.

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Okay, Scott, let's do some wins and fails.

I'm going to start this week.

We're going to have them on on Thursday, but this book, The Epic Battle for Media Empire and the Redstone Family Legacy by James Stewart and Rachel Abrams covers Sumner Redstone's manipulation of family and girlfriends, according to the Times.

We see in precise detail the misogyny of Redstone's lust as he decides that his wealth and professed love for these women give him something like the rights of a king.

Inevitably, though he determines that each of them has betrayed him in some terrible way, one by one, he cuts them off.

Just this story.

It's also real dirty.

Just like it's crazy.

You got less moon vests.

And Sherry Redstone, who managed to wrest it all away from all of these terrible men,

seems like this is going to be a great book.

It's a great story.

Very enjoyable.

I love a good media succession.

It's the real life succession.

I like that.

And then with FAIL, a story that just appeared in the Washington Post today, and it's sort of something you talk a lot about.

The CDC did a report, and let me just read the top.

Teen girls in the United States are, quote, engulfed in a growing wave of violence and trauma, according to federal researchers who released data Monday showing an increase in rape and sexual violence, as well as record levels of feeling sad and hopeless.

Nearly one in three high school girls reported in 2021 they were seriously considered suicide, up 60%.

Almost 15% of teen girls said they were forced to have sex, an increase of 27% over two years, the first increase since the CDC was doing it.

Almost three in five teenage girls reported feeling persistently sad or hopeless every day for at least two weeks in a row during the previous year.

So girls are really not doing well.

You talk a lot about men not doing well, but this report is,

I just, it's so disheartening to read it.

And it's a failure of our society, both girls and boys.

But this one's really a tough one to read.

Anyway, that's my fail.

Just picking up on what you were talking about, there was some other interesting housing data that came out.

So a third of all houses sold, I believe it was in 2022, were all cash buyers.

So one in three houses being sold.

Someone shows up and pays all cash.

At the same time, You think, oh, great, the economy is doing really well.

People are flush with cash.

At the same time, the first-time homebuyers is at a 40-year low.

So what does that tell us?

It tells us if you're already rich, you're killing it.

But if you don't yet own a home or you're young or trying to establish a family, it's increasingly difficult to buy a home.

And this kind of NIMBYS culture we have that skews favor to the incumbents and people who are already with capital is just making it more and more difficult for young people to acquire an asset that is the primary means for building wealth in America.

And that is it's forced savings.

You take pride in it.

It has these huge benefits of creating a space for you and loved ones.

And over time, a lot of people end up at the end of their lives with the majority of the, my mom retired.

The only reason she could retire is because she had a home in Westwood that we bought for $72,000 in the early 80s.

And we ended up selling for $300,000 when she needed to retire.

And this is how the majority of America builds, it's kind of their safety net or builds wealth.

And first-time buyers, like literally young people, are just giving up.

So

my loss is in America, we continue to have this rejectionist luxury positioning that favors the incumbents.

We need massive and massive new permitting.

We have a housing crisis.

We could build dramatically more homes in the next 10 years and not have enough.

So the housing data is

my fail in the continued what I call transfer of wealth from young people to old people.

My win is I was on TV with you next week or or last week.

I won't say names, but we were on, and someone could probably figure it out pretty easily.

And I was, I went home.

I was with you.

I wasn't feeling great.

I didn't, I'm like, why the fuck was I on there talking about this?

I know nothing about this.

You complained at the place, but go ahead.

Yeah, it was in a bad mood.

That's like me.

And the anchor, someone who I would call a friend, called me at one in the morning and said, Are you doing okay?

Are you all right?

And I said, Yeah, I'm just a little bit jet lagged.

And I was pissed off.

I don't think I did very well.

But it got me thinking, and this is a skill I did not develop until I was in my 40s.

And that is, if you, if you want, if

the easiest way to express concern, and actually just tactically, the easiest way to get someone to like you and care for you is to express how much you like and care about them.

And so often you register in your life.

I get the sense they're not doing well.

And I didn't reach out to people and say, hey, are you doing okay?

And I remember thinking, I feel so much closer to this person that they would take the time to call me and just ask that one simple question.

So that's my win.

I think it's really nice.

I think it's an easy way to just reach out to people and say, you know, are you doing?

I notice

I care about you.

And so I'm reaching out to see if you're doing it.

It is in person.

Absolutely.

I agree with you.

I agree with you.

But we actually, it was interesting because not just you, but many of your friends talk to each other about other friends.

And that's another thing you should do.

Like say, hey, that person seems sad.

We should do something.

Do something.

You know, I do that a lot with lots of members, including you.

So it's really important to do that.

It takes two seconds.

It takes two seconds to do so.

Or say, leave them a man in their apartment so they can have a nice chat.

There you go.

Leave them Bill Cohen.

I did say goodbye.

I texted you.

Drew wouldn't let me interrupt you, by the way, FYI.

So I wanted to, I feel bad now.

But I was meant to say goodbye, but he wouldn't let me.

So let's blame Drew on this one.

There you go.

Message, Scott.

I care.

Anyway, we do also 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.

Scott, that's the show.

We'll be back on Friday for more.

Again, we're going to have James Stewart and Rachel Abrams there to talk about this book, and we're very excited.

Here we go.

All right, today's show is produced by Larry Naiman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin.

Ernie Endertott engineered this episode.

Thanks also to Drew Burroughs and Neil Severio.

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

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

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

Kara, have a great rest of the week.

You too.

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

We spend nearly $2 trillion on things that are supposed to make us well.

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