AI Blunders, The GOP Cries Censorship, and Adam Neumann’s Comeback

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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 the Fifth Dimension.

Would you like to ride in my beautiful balloon?

Would you like to?

Oh my God.

Huh?

So, Scott, explain why I'm playing the song Up, Up, and Away by Fifth Dimension.

Because I was sharing a moment from my childhood with this great song, and I incorrectly said it was from the Tijuana brass.

And I went down a rabbit hole.

I immediately pulled up, and I got fascinated with it.

And their lead singer, Florence LaRue, is like crazy fucking hot.

Not that that means anything.

I've got a lot of fifth dimension on my musical thing.

The Age of Aquarius, they did?

Yes, The Age of Aquarius.

Or Inside Aquarius.

They had like five

top-selling albums.

Yeah, they did.

They did.

Anyways, they're a nice, it's a nice thing.

Set the record straight.

All right, thank you.

And we got to hear some lovely music together.

That was nice.

And by the way, we were together this morning on CNN Morning Show.

Yeah.

There we go.

What were we talking about?

Poppy and Don.

They couldn't say pussy ass bitched on the show, but we did say it.

They played it.

Oh, they played pussy ass.

They didn't say it.

I didn't know if we could say it, right?

Did you wonder?

No, here's the thing.

You can say it.

I cannot.

You can.

Well, that's fine.

I cannot.

But I'm saying I think they bleep it, right?

Wouldn't they bleep it?

Or maybe not.

I have no idea.

Well, you know, it was in Congress, so we should be able to to say i barely remember i did chocolate mushrooms last night and the hit time was 8 a.m i don't remember anything congress spent our taxpayers dollars blowing the top off chrissy teigen's pussy ass bitch that was her tweet too oh my god and donald got defended that guy the misogynist uh

sexist weirdo whatever those things whatever anyway uh we'll talk about that in a minute by the way let me just say speaking of pussy ass bitch in that area my mother-in-law uh

did not want us to see where this goes did not want us to characterize her gift which i love as a penis candle okay it's a dick candle well no it's not a dandel okay let's call it a dandelion dandel okay i just want to move along from that but nonetheless they're lovely you can get them at moma um and uh and scott declined my kind offer to give him one anyway i like it when candles make me feel insignificant yeah

you know penis candles should be the name of our next podcast that's what i said what do you think anyways okay let's move on uh you you did pick a good time to leave twitter i hope you did on Wednesday, Twitter experienced a wave of technical issues that left many users unable to tweet, follow, or send DMs.

It's not clear what caused the issue, but errors have Twitter CEO Elon Musk spooked.

Well, if you fire a lot of people and then you try to put in new things, I think he was putting in a new - whenever you do anything big changed, like we said, you could have problems.

He reportedly directed staffers to focus on site stability ahead of the Super Bowl Sunday because he sold some ads.

Historically, it's highest-grossing revenue day of the year.

I suspect it's not going to be one of his highest revenue grossing

of history.

We've got a lot more Twitter to talk about later in the show, but today we'll zero in on Big Tech's Week in Washington and the threats from all sides.

Also, Adam Newman lays out his plans for his latest venture.

And Scott Galloway can't wait to invest.

And we'll take a listener question from a small business owner with a bone to pick.

But did you get off Twitter?

Oh, no.

I'm back.

I'm getting really good, though.

I wrote, I loved a speech I put out tomorrow.

I'm like, I choose crazy.

Oh, right.

That's true.

From normal.

That's Sarah Huckabee.

Did you see Sarah Huckabee?

That was crazy.

Speaking of crazy, yeah.

Gosh.

The dividing line in America is no longer between bright or left.

The choice is between normal or crazy.

You got to give her kudos.

It's not that easy to be that angry and that boring at the same time.

Yes.

She was.

She was.

I was fine with the thyroid cancer thing, which I feel terrible for her to have.

But then she started off on that story and I was like, land it, Sarah.

What is going on?

And then she went off onto some, she didn't define anything.

Did you know that?

She didn't say what CRT was.

So half of America was like, what?

Yeah, she covered a lot.

She did a tour of the like angry, woke kind of.

And it's interesting, though, that speech is kind of the kiss of death.

I mean, Bobby Jindal,

Marco Rubio, though, at Senator Rubio still plays.

Yeah, he sweated, right?

He drank water or whatever he had.

But they try to find someone.

It's almost like it's a little bit, it's a little bit curved.

It's a great opportunity, but oh, well,

I don't know, whatever.

It was a terrible speech, Sarah.

And you get busy with the Latinx thing over in Arkansas.

I'm sure it's your most major issue of your citizens.

Anyway, the AI race continues, but competitors are stumbling out of the gate.

Alphabet shares fell 7% following a demo of Google's new AI chat bot, Bard, and $100 billion blunder.

The company released a promotional video where Bard gives the wrong answer to a question about the James Webb telescope.

We talked about this, the wrong answer.

You said you rely on it.

I said wrong answer.

What do you think?

They lost a lot of money for it.

They look like idiots.

Yeah, it does feel as if

regardless of whether or not

I was on Ian Bremer this morning on PBS because, you know, I'm fancy.

I'm fancy.

You're fancy.

But in the short term, regardless of whether AI lives, the performance lives up to the promise, it does feel like it's going to create a transition or reallocation of about a half a trillion dollars in market cap from Google to Microsoft.

Maybe.

Well, it's kind of like temporarily.

Yeah, temporarily.

We'll see who.

Microsoft's above $2 trillion.

I think

if and when they release something, an actual demo of Bing powered by AI, I think that's going to cause a lot of excitement.

But yeah,

it's sort of like there's momentum definitely has its own momentum, and they're playing catch-up.

And that was very much a self-inflicted wound.

Commercial with a wrong ass.

Weird.

And then Microsoft, of course, unveiled its AI updates to Bing and Microsoft Edge, and reporters found incorrect answers there, too.

The chap up told one reporter that Tom Hanks was behind Watergate.

I think he was in a movie about Watergate.

He wasn't.

I don't know.

Not that dude.

Did you see Bridge of Spies?

No.

Yes, yes, I did with Tom Hanks.

That was great.

He's great.

Steven Spielberg, also the Fableman.

Seldom in a movie that is bad.

Microsoft says Bing's chatbot will supply more detailed answers.

The money pit?

Oh, no, no.

He's been in a lot of money.

Oh, the money pit.

You're right.

That's right.

Okay, but not bad.

Not bad.

But Microsoft says Bing's chatbot will supply more detailed answers to search indeque.

It's just better search.

Turner and answer.

And then who?

Okay.

Why don't you become a chatbot?

You just all of of a sudden yell, tuner, I get it wrong a lot.

Money.

Get it wrong a lot.

Those are you do.

You do.

The 12th dimension.

Anyway,

they'll be able to provide itineraries for trips.

I don't, okay, sure.

Microsoft also seems to be putting safeguards on its bot.

A reporter at Insider asked the bot to write a cover letter, and it responded.

That would be unethical and unfair to other applicants.

Whatever.

We're in the early stages of this thing.

We'll see.

We'll see.

We'll see.

Who knows?

The original internet was pretty pretty wrong a lot in any case.

But there was, you know, what one of the first early internet sites was?

Do you know with a video?

I give up.

Something you were deeply involved in or covered or started.

I did cover it.

It was a picture of

a video of a coffee maker where they were doing a lot of these early internet stuff at a university.

And you watched the coffee brew.

That was what it was.

That's a great story.

Do you have more of these than your book?

I have a a whole section.

Do you know what?

Guess what?

I have a whole section on you.

Do you?

Oh, yes.

Really?

You're in it.

I like that.

Thanks.

Yeah, it's profane.

Anyway, there's a Walt section and a youth section, and they contrast really nicely.

Which is bigger?

Who has a bigger dick candle?

No, I'm having lunch with Walt this weekend.

Oh, really?

Yeah, yeah.

We're going to talk.

We're going to go over some things.

But then you and I will go over some things.

I want to be factually correct, unlike these chatbots.

Anyway, more layoff news.

Walt Disney will cut 7,000 jobs and over $5 billion in spending and reorganize the company.

The new structure will rearrange the company into three divisions: entertainment, ESPN, and theme parks.

He's really like tightening it up.

The monetary cuts will include $3 billion from movies and TV.

Bob Iger clarified the company does not intend to spin off ESPN, but it's ready to be spun off if he wants to.

So, Scott, I mean, also one of the benefits of this is the proxy fight with Nelson Peltz is now over, according to all kinds of, he said, has announced that he is okay.

He's ending the proxy fight.

He's very happy with the restructuring.

Obviously, the stock has gone up.

He has a billion dollars worth of stock.

That's a lot of stock.

You have to give respect to that.

He had a website called Restore the Magic, and he liked what he saw from Bob Iger.

Yeah, I would bet it was a little bit different than that.

And that is, I would bet Bob called him and said, Nelson.

you know what do you want to do here and he said well x y and z and he said nelson well this is what we're going to do and and gave nelson the impression that this stuff was his idea and said nelson if we do these things and i announce them in 48 hours would you stop the proxy fight it's a distraction and he agreed yeah so i would bet they coordinated on this he he went on jim kramer who's been hand in glove with him on this thing it feels like then he also said he's open to becoming friends again with iger i agree i'll pick up lunch or breakfast uh again next time i promise um i didn't realize until i just watched this now it's his birthday i might even send him a gift i mean I just can't even, whatever.

Okay, fine.

Yeah, see you on the golf course.

Yeah, whatever.

Oh, God.

It's a win for all of them.

It's a win for Nelson.

It's a win for Bob.

It's a win for shareholders.

Exactly.

I'm glad he pressed him.

I'm glad he did it.

He's, as usual, proving that he's quite good at being the CEO rather than a retiree.

Yeah,

this is definitely the year of efficiency, so to speak.

The market liked it.

It's a year of efficiency.

We should have a theme song for that, but go ahead.

There you go.

And

cutting staff, reorganizing, and something I hadn't thought of, and it makes a lot of sense, is I guess Comcast owns a third of Hulu and they own two-thirds, and everyone pelts and the markets are saying, okay, they have to buy it to buy the rest.

Or sell it.

Yeah, I actually think they're going to sell it now.

Yeah.

Help pay down the balance sheet.

Also, I'm just not entirely sure.

Like, what do you make of Hulu?

Like, what is it?

I watch it.

I watch it.

It's sort of the one I forget about.

And I'm like, oh, what's on Hulu?

The only reason I use it, and I do use it, but I don't have to make any money off of it, is for live TV.

Occasionally, I want to watch it.

It's expensive.

There's actually some very expensive sports.

My son signed up for a sports package telling me it was like $90, $100 a month, some basketball things we could watch basketball in.

Yeah.

And they were sort of a pioneer in advertising on streaming.

But

I think actually.

Fold it in.

They cut costs.

They have so many amazing businesses.

They cut costs.

Disney Plus has a very strong positioning and signal around what it stands for.

Hulu is kind of like the handmaids.

I feel like Hulu struggles for an identity.

Yeah, I think we don't need this many.

I just don't.

It's one of those, it's like, you know, one of those friends you call it the last minute when all the other friends aren't busy.

You're like, oh, Hulu.

And every now and then, there's some very good things on there.

It's like you and me.

I was waiting for that.

No, you and I had a lovely dinner last week with Jihan and

my son and my friend, and it was good.

By the way, Gi Han calls, George Hahn calls Bob Iger a Dilf, just so you know, he sent me

a Dilf.

Yeah,

I'd have to agree.

Anyway, Salesforce is also dealing with another activist investor.

It's fifth, Dan Loeb's third point.

He's a tough customer.

He's reportedly taken an unknown size.

He had taken a stake in Disney and pushed to spin off ESPN unsuccessfully, but he's in there.

There's all of them.

The whole party is in that, is in Salesforce, only one or two in Disney.

But this is interesting, them sort of coalesce.

They're trying to make some money,

these hedge funds.

I would have picked, if I were going to come in behind someone, I would have picked Disney.

I think Disney's the better buy right now.

But yeah, Salesforce.

Salesforce got a lot of attention.

Yeah.

Elliott's in there.

There's another one.

I forget.

They're all in there, all the names, which is interesting.

They get behind.

Someone told me I was asking why they got in there.

They said they get behind each other.

Loeb wants Peltz to make the trouble to get this.

They only want the stock up, right, essentially.

So they tend to get in behind and draft off the others.

I think that's a little bit of a recent phenomenon in that sense that there aren't that many big targets where these guys, these guys have raised so much capital that there aren't that many opportunities to put a billion, two billion dollars to work

in a great company that's kind of, I don't want to say on sale, but

trading down.

And so they read these decks and they're like, you know, they look at it and go, wow, what Nelson's saying is making sense.

He's doing all the hard work.

I'll just come in with some capital.

Yeah, and hope there's some raise in the profits.

Right.

And then they get to exit more easily and save face.

They're not accused of being short-term if they sell after a few months if the stock pops or whatever.

So it's sort of a...

Yeah, someone was going through the Disney thing with Lowe.

I guess Peltz got in around 100 and he got in a little higher, 120.

So he's got to stick around to get this stock up.

It did pop with this Bob Iger changes.

So it's interesting.

It seems kind of old school to be doing this not you know really investing in things but i guess this is what this is going to be the year of the activists there's just a ton of big

you're probably going to see an act i mean we already see one activist at google it was down you're probably going to see another one pile into google behind i think it's tci yeah there's this there's there's just too much opportunity for the first time stocks are not at like constantly pinging you know all-time highs yeah and also the strategy here that just keeps appears to be the gift that keeps on giving is coming to a company and say, figure out what 10 or 15% of your workforce you're going to lay off.

And they're all doing it.

The markets love it.

And they don't even have to do anything that complicated or that difficult other than quote-unquote efficiency.

Yeah, it'll be interesting.

I keep saying we should start an activist firm, Scott.

You do keep saying that.

We'd be so good.

We'd be so irritating.

We'd be so, we just like, we'd be irritating.

Trust me on this.

It's hard work.

It's hard.

I know that we're professionally irritating already.

Why don't we make some dope?

We got that down.

All right.

Speaking of which, let's get to our first big story.

Republicans finally got through to Twitter customer service.

In Republican-led hearing this week, House members grilled former Twitter executives about alleged censorship and the company's handling of the Hunter Biden laptop story.

Former execs, including Yoel Roth and Vigigati, painfully explained Twitter's decision-making process to House members, including an arate Marjorie Taylor Greene.

But here is an exchange between Republican House member Byron Donalds and Yoel Roth after Roth explained that he didn't have a contact with anyone from the Biden team.

But the email is very clear.

More to review from Biden team.

The response three hours later at the bottom, handled these.

What does handled these mean?

My understanding is that these tweets contained non-consensual nude photos of Hunter Biden, and they were removed by the company under.

Hold on, real quick, Mr.

Roth.

How can you know so much about the content of these tweets?

I mean, as far as I'm concerned, these are just web addresses.

I don't know what's in these tweets.

You have these things committed to memory that you know the content, but you don't know who you talk to you talk to at the Biden team?

Sir, I didn't meet with the Biden team.

Wow, this is so ridiculous.

What an idiot.

I'm sorry, Byron, you're an idiot.

He can see naked pictures and should take them down non-consensual.

But the hearing produced one shocking example of U.S.

government trying to censor Twitter.

Guess who it was?

President Trump's White House

called the company to remove the tweet by Chrissy Teigen that called Trump, quote, a pussy ass bitch.

This is such a waste of taxpayer money.

And they looked idiotic because it turns out it was the Trump administration who had the most meddlesomeness.

None of this is

censorship and none of this is a conspiracy theory.

Well, it just goes from, it's like dumb and this literally is dumb and dumber.

The first premise that Twitter has an obligation to free speech is just dumb.

CNN or Fox, if they don't bring on AOC or Ted Cruz to comment on something, are they censoring?

Correct.

They get to censor.

That's called a media company.

Hey, take the word out.

It has nothing to do with First Amendment.

It has nothing to do with First Amendment.

They try and call balls and strikes.

They get it wrong all the time.

They got it wrong on the Hunter Biden thing.

They probably shouldn't have suppressed the story in the New York Post.

But they also got it wrong over letting a president continue to organize an insurrection on their platform.

That's correct.

And the only assertion here that was troubling and worth digging on was: did

agencies or individuals from the federal government put pressure on them to produce or delete certain content?

And what we found is that there was no there there.

The FBI did not put pressure on Twitter.

There's no evidence that the Biden administration put evidence or pressure on Twitter to pull the story down.

What we did find out is that, in fact, the federal government, specifically the person who is the commander-in-chief, was putting pressure on Twitter

to take down a tweet.

And it's just the whole thing, I watched the whole thing and I'm like, you know, head in hands, I'm like, you can imagine the CCP and China going like, just send every balloon we have over there.

They're idiots.

They're idiots.

I mean, it's just, they're dumb.

They're dumb.

And they make assertions that aren't true.

And then the only one who's at risk here was Yoel Roth, who got death threats.

And they started it because they made up stuff.

I'm sorry, this group of Republican House members are liars, actual liars about things.

and they just make it up.

Twitter can decide what can live online or not.

It's not a public square.

It's a private company.

They can do what they want.

They made a lot of mistakes on both sides, by the way, but mostly in being acquiescent to the Trump administration so they didn't get in trouble.

It was so clear what was going on here is these very liberal people were worried about seeming too liberal.

And so they bent over backwards to let a sitting president just cause an insurrection.

That's pretty much it.

So I thought the low moment, I mean, the real low moment was Representative Clay Higgins said, your lawyers know essentially that you could be arrested for interfering with election.

Okay, so I immediately look up, okay, who is Clay Higgins?

Clay Higgins

did not graduate from college, joined the police force, where he resigned from the police force under investigation that he

assaulted a suspect while handcuffed.

Yeah.

And went on to be the manager of a car car dealership.

Nothing wrong with that.

There's dignity in any work.

But this is an individual that is telling the general counsel or former general counsel Twitter that they're going to be arrested.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that Mr.

Representative Higgins doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about.

Shut the fuck up is what I can't say.

I'm like, okay, here's a guy who's totally unqualified and saying arrests are coming to people, to people who agree to testify on arrest.

And then also, what do they want from the, everyone there has been fired.

What do they want from those people?

Yeah, actually, Yoel wasn't fired.

Yoel left, right?

Yoel left because he couldn't deal with it.

He was fired.

No, no, no, no.

He left.

He left.

I mean, Vigigatte certainly was by Elon, but Elon kept it.

Remember, Yoel stayed and tried his best.

He's a terrific guy.

He doesn't deserve all this crap that he got.

But let me just say the clearest explanation of the hearing came from another House member, Democrat Maxwell Frost.

Here's what he said is one of the youngest members.

I think he is the youngest member of Congress.

But go ahead.

I mean, I've been sitting here for over two hours, and I'm still not really seeing the point of this hearing.

Is it to solve the problems of the American people, what people are struggling with?

No.

We get it.

My Republican colleagues wish that the Hunter Biden story would have helped them win the 2020 election, and that didn't happen.

And so they're angry about it, and that's the point of this hearing.

Yep, that's exactly the point of this hearing.

We need more youth.

Yep.

We need more youth.

Congress gets older every day.

He essentially said, what the fuck, politely, right?

WTO.

We need more individuals who look at the world and can represent, you know, Kara, the average age of an American is 38.

The average age of Congress is 64.

That means for every 40-year-old Congressperson, we have someone who's 88.

Or crazy.

I mean, the Marjorie Tildereen stuff, I mean, honestly, honey.

Camilla Soprano.

Come on.

You gotta love the outfit.

You gotta love the outfit.

You know what?

I actually did like the outfit, but whatever she wants to wear, knock yourself out.

But

shut up.

Just shut up about this.

Is like such a this is

and and it continues persists online, even after today.

People are like, oh no, it really happened.

I'm like, no, it didn't.

Like, go find another, go, go investigate Sasquatch.

You know what I mean?

Where he like, we still haven't found Sasquatch, so go on, go for that.

Yeah, but they weren't planning this.

Biden's best moment, the state of the union.

I mean, the reason why we turn into these things is occasionally you're looking for an unscripted moment that reveals something.

He was really good on his feet.

He was.

Anybody who doubts it, contact my office.

I'll give you a copy.

I'll give you a copy of the proposal.

That means Congress doesn't vote.

Well, I'm glad to see you.

I tell you, I enjoy conversion.

He drove them in.

He drew them in perfectly.

Well, but not only that, he came across as gracious and didn't flinch.

Not sleepy.

Was not scared.

Didn't get angry.

Just said, okay, so we can all agree that Social Security and Medicare,

he was very good on his feet.

And it's really important for him because

he would be a lock on re-nomination right now if it wasn't for one thing.

And that is what I would argue are really credible concerns about his age.

Seemed pretty lively to me.

Well, that's my point.

I think he showed what I'll call real, I don't know what the term is, neuroplasticity or agility, but

the ability to kind of respond like that in real time.

You can't do that if you're losing it.

You can't.

Yeah, that's right.

You You know what I think you should do?

Tell me what you think of this.

If I, someone called me and said, what would you advise?

What would your advice be to the president or the state of the union?

I think you should pull an FDR and say,

let's just, I just want to say thank you for your grace and your patience.

As many of you know, I suffered with a stutter for much of my life, and it's reappearing as I, you know, as I get older.

And so

I hope you know that I have the words and I have the ideas.

Sometimes I just can't get them out as clearly as I would hope.

I think he should say that.

He did pretty well.

I don't think he stumbled.

They all stumble.

Are you kidding?

They all stumble.

It's just you don't know.

No, but he does have a speech in Bitcoin.

He does, but he's had that forever.

If you go way back and look at it, he took a different approach on the State of the Union, the correct one, speaking about the dangers that social media poses to children.

Let's listen.

We must finally hold social media companies accountable for experimenting they're doing running children for profit.

It's time to pass bipartisan legislation to stop big tech from collecting personal data on our kids and teenagers online.

Ban targeted advertising of children and impose stricter limits on the personal data that companies collect on all of us.

Hmm.

He widened it at the end and it targeted.

Well, why don't we just age gate it?

Yes, I think this is among the things.

I like this stuff, but occasionally I'd like to see actual,

I am proposing a banning of TikTok or I am whatever it is.

I think that was a moment where you should have said, I'm going to, you know present legislation or whatever it is well yeah but you can't ban tick tock like facebook collects just as much data he should he should have all of them it should be a larger i know but that's not the problem the problem is facebook the problem is instagram the problem is all of them your your point all along and it's the right one is we need some sort of systemic approach to privacy that's correct i get it across all of them uh tick tock is a national security threat.

As much as I hate the people at Meta, they are Americans, and I don't think they wake up and think, how do I undermine undermine American democracy?

No, how do we make money off of it?

Right.

And even if it costs, even if it hurts the Commonwealth, but that's not their objective.

They're sociopathic, but they're not psychopathic in the sense that they're not trying to hurt America.

They're just ignoring the hurt to America.

The CCP vis-a-vis whatever entities they control, i.e., every Chinese company wants to hurt America.

So I think the two,

I think one's more about national security and others about antitrust and mental health and all that stuff.

But I absolutely think he should have said, I want to ban TikTok and also I want to age gate social media.

The other things he did was talk a lot about big tech's power and the tax system.

Let's listen to that.

The tax system is not fair.

But now, because of the law I signed, billion-dollar companies have to pay a minimum of 15%.

God love them.

I propose we quadruple the tax on corporate stock buybacks and encourage

long-term investments.

But big pharma has been unfairly charging people hundreds of dollars.

We capped the cost of insulin at $35 a month for seniors on Medicare.

So a lot about antitrust, this idea of stopping online platforms from preferencing their own products.

There's a lot in there.

Even though Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have been largely pro-corporate power, he's going more populist.

And someone wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal today, is Joe Biden Bernie Sanders in disguise kind of thing.

Yeah, but

I don't think the populist stuff is especially.

I think you immediately

go to this kind of rage, populist, conspiracy stuff on the right, and the left goes to this populist rage against

the ghost in this machine that is corporate profits.

And I don't think that's effective either.

I think the gangster move for one of these politicians, and I've been thinking a lot about this, is we can bring taxes down as long as everybody pays them.

And that is, if you were to say, make

do away or have a unified rate similar to what Reagan did across personal or across current and long-term capital gains, you know, there's no reason that sweat should be taxed at a higher rate than money.

The money that money makes gets taxed at a lower rate than the money that works.

work makes.

Why?

Because old people make their money through work.

Old people make their money through stocks and houses.

That is ridiculous.

It's nothing but a transfer of wealth from the young to the old and the poor to the rich.

In addition, corporations should be taxed

if they want to license their IP and engage in a double-dutch sandwich to reduce for tax avoidance.

If they want to do a reverse merger such that they can have their profits taxed on low domain, we've got to repatriate those taxes.

I believe if you were to tax corporations at their fair level, their actual income and profits that they get from this country at 30%,

and then you were to tax anyone who makes over a million bucks a year 30%,

I think the actual effective tax rate across the rest of Americans would be somewhere around 15 or 18 percent.

You could lower taxes.

You just think everybody has to pay them.

Everyone has to pay them.

One of the other, I agree with you on all this.

I think it's interesting.

He's moving towards trying to attract back working class people from the Republican Party.

That's what he's doing.

It's very clear.

And I think he can do it.

I honestly think he can.

He seems like he's pulling a little Sanders in,

the attractive parts of Sanders and Warren.

He's pulling in the, he's, you know, he's whacking back at them.

He's being, you know, dark branded a little bit.

Like, I think it's very effective.

He also attacked something else, went with the Swifty fans, attacking all kinds of fees, overdraft fees, credit card fees, hotel resort fees.

I just paid a hotel resort fee.

It was ridiculous.

I had cracked up when they mentioned that.

Yeah.

I mean, like, thank God, resort fees.

Those fees can cost you up to $90 a night in hotels that aren't even resorts.

I mean, the Russian Army, TikTok,

Teen Depression, it's resort fees.

Well, they're kind of usurious.

I would agree with it.

It is bad.

That airline fees, concert fees, everything.

I think it's the power of Taylor Swift.

They're fighting, of course, the Republicans are fighting to protect bank overdraft fees and things like that.

So I like the fee attacks.

I'm for it.

That's definitely time.

Popular.

Popular.

Occasionally, if you look down at your hotel bill,

nightly room rate, $300.

Bill, $1,180.

Exactly.

It's like, what?

I was like, I didn't go in the pool.

Like, if I go in the pool, you can use the resort.

You can use the resort.

I just walked through the lobby, essentially.

Anyway, I think he did very well.

And I think it's an interesting moment for the Democratic Party.

By the way, you can also hear me discuss the state of the union, especially the Democratic Party.

I had three, a couple of weeks ago, I had three Republican strategists.

Now we had three Democratic strategists.

And it's really good.

It's an on with Kara Swisher.

So we discussed it.

They were surprisingly.

Yes, I do.

They were surprisingly upbeat on Biden.

And these are people who had not been upbeat on Biden, but they were loving it.

The Democrats or the Republicans?

Democrats were loving to Biden.

These Democrats who have been very critical of Biden were very loving, including one who worked for Bernie Sanders.

Anyway, he's doing great.

Yeah.

All right.

Let's go on a quick break.

When we come back, we'll talk about Adam Newman's new pitch, your favorite guy, and take a listener question about minimum wage.

Hello, Daisy speaking.

Hello, Daisy.

This is Phoebe Judge from the IRS.

Oh, bless.

That does sound serious.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Scott, we're back with our second big story and your favorite entrepreneur, one that made you famous in various and sundry fictional depictions of the WeWork scandal.

Adam Newman wants his tenants to plunge their own toilets or something like that.

In a video released this week, Newman finally describes the value prop behind Flow, his new real estate venture.

Here's an edited clip.

So, number one, management company branded technology first.

Number two, real estate, asset management, a company that can buy real estate and asset manage real estate.

Number three, financial services.

And the fourth pillar is this mechanism that's going to take some of the value and share it with the value creators.

If we can actually create a better experience in the building, then the building performs better and makes a higher NOI.

If the building makes a higher NOI, then we'll be able to raise more money and buy more buildings.

If we buy more buildings, then we'll be able to run more buildings and have more users in those buildings.

those users are going to start using our financial services.

Okay, that's not all.

Newman goes on to describe some of the benefits of having tenants who feel like they're owners, except they're not, Adam.

Here's another clip, also edited.

And then if we are able to take this value-creating mechanism and share with the residents a portion of the value, it's going to make them feel ownership.

If you're in your apartment building and you're a renter and your toilet gets clogged, you call the super.

If you're in your own apartment and you bought it and you own it and your toilet gets clogged, you take the plunger.

And it's the difference when feeling like you own something to just feeling like you're renting, from being transactional to actually being part of a community.

Those comments were made November last year at a conference hosted by Andreessen Horo.

It's a big investor.

A16Z has invested $350 million in Newman's venture.

I think this is nonsense.

He invented apartments.

rental apartments.

This is really a big moment.

I don't even understand what he's...

He's done this before with We Live, but please, Scott, I'd like you to give me a question.

Actually, I do think, I don't get the sharing and the economics.

I mean, I get it conceptually, but I don't think it's going to work.

I do think if you think about residential real estate and rental real estate, it's probably the biggest asset class that doesn't have great brands.

I mean, can you name a brand

in the apartment, industrial?

There are millions of apartments, multi-trillion dollar asset classes.

Yeah, turn them into like hotels is what you're saying.

Total hotels.

100%.

We have them in, it's weird.

We don't really have them in.

I mean, there's equity Office or there's, you know, there's certain places that the related group is known for having really nice buildings.

But for the most part, they're institutional brands or they're brands that have a reputation in the investment markets and they can raise property, whether it's Sam's L's, REITs, or Office REITs.

But there isn't really a single post-properties tried to do this.

A company

in the Southeast tried to do it with apartments.

But it makes sense that if you're a young person and you're mobile and you're getting moved around a lot, I'll give you an example.

I'm a member of something called Insperado, which is basically residences and luxury vacation spots.

It's a rich people holiday rental thing.

Yes, got it.

Thank you.

But they do, it's really smart.

They have the same little things.

They have the same technology in every house.

You don't have to figure it out.

I don't have to figure out once how to turn on Netflix.

They have the same type of refrigerator.

They even have the same kind of decor.

They have the same, they learn from you and they put the same food in the refrigerator.

And

it has a brand.

Sure.

There is no brand in rental.

So I think that's actually the problem with it is it's all about buying right, which means buying slowly.

So these companies like the iBuying things like Zillow, which basically closed their iBuying and now Open Door, which is a total shit show going to zero in my view.

Real estate is a slow local business.

It's all about buying right.

But the idea of trying to brand

a national series of money.

So why buy the buildings?

You know, I talked to Brian Chesky about this.

He's like, that seems expensive to buy all these buildings and then maintain them.

And he goes, why not just put, you know, just have a company over it that does that business?

Yeah.

And he's like, the rest of it, I don't, he goes, there's not enough money in the world to do this.

And then the problems are rife

when you really start to wade in here.

He was right away, was like, no, no, thank you.

They'd come to them, I think, on some level.

But it feels like we work.

He did this before.

We live didn't work, as you remember.

Yeah, but that was more of like a cult.

That was more like, hey, everybody, put on Nikes and drink Kool-Aid.

Do the same, yeah.

But you could do it in a city, but it would take 10 years and you'd have to do it smart and methodically.

And he's not interested in any of that.

Yeah.

He's definitely like a big thinker.

He's very charismatic.

You can raise a ton of money.

What about the investing part?

Would you want them to invest for you?

Do tendency landlords to invest for them?

And why would you plunge your own toilet if you rented something?

The whole point of renting is you don't have to plunge your own toilet.

I thought it was that if the economics of the building were better, you got some back.

I didn't know it was a financial services company.

That's where it all gets confusing and weird and a lot of jazz hands.

But

the thing about Adam is

the reason why tech investors love him is he's all about scaling really fast.

But here's the problem.

When you scale that fast and an asset class doesn't have network effects, like renting desks or apartments.

Right.

Yep.

Like iBuying.

iBuying just overpaid.

iBuying thought they could bring an algorithm to buying apartments in Nashville.

And what it ends up is the best way to buy real estate is to really understand

the color and the the nuances of that local real estate and that thing you're buying and get a feel for what it's worth or not worth.

And it's very hard.

Even the institutional guys that went into Florida and bought tens of thousands of apartments found out it's really hard to manage them.

Some they got right, some they got wrong.

Real estate is a local business.

And unfortunately, it has a certain friction to it and a slowness to it that just doesn't fit with his mentality around investing.

All right.

So this idea of infinite growth and appreciation of real estate, that really has to happen.

And it's so cyclical.

Let me read your takedown of WeWork's S1.

You said WeWork had no scale effects.

Let's see if residential real estate is any better.

You also wrote a WeWork.

There is no flywheel effect.

The ancillary businesses are stupid, just stupid.

In his flow panel, Newman went out of his way to describe the company's services as a flywheel.

He likes a flywheel.

I remember, I mean, you're taking me back now, but I remember I was in Nantucket at an Esperado and I got the draft of the S1 for the WeWork.

And I started reading through this.

I remember saying to my family who was going to Nobadir to go surfing, they had a great day plan.

I'm like, I can't go.

I've got to read this.

This thing's unbelievable.

I got to read this.

And I wrote that thing.

And the rest is history.

Now I'm here with you.

But at one point, they were flying two Bombardier Global Expresses into a mountain every week.

That's where I, so much happened for me that that's where I said that David Solomon or DJ Saul was a horrible DJ and a worse fiduciary for taking this garbage public.

Yep.

And then the charming guy guy he is, he texts me like, let's go to coffee.

I've had that call.

Go ahead.

But he's not, I would argue that Adam is just not interested in building sustainable value.

He's interested in packaging something and being a salesman and trying to become

king of the world.

He lost me a plunger.

Yeah, I just don't, I don't think you can, I think these guys are so attracted to how do you scale really fast in the reality.

It's the majority of real enduring wealth,

unfortunately, is built slowly because it involves a lot of thoughtful decision-making, which is really hard to do.

Yeah.

And every VC in the world is looking for something.

Interestingly, let me just say, as part of the investment, A16Z now owns stakes in many of Newman's buildings.

If the flow is a flop, they retain the stake.

Oh, God.

I'm like, I can see the inside of this meeting with Adam.

Let's talk about plungers.

I know exactly who did it.

And it's just, it's nonsense.

I'm sorry.

Would you invest?

I feel like nonsense right away, but you don't.

You seem a little bit more, oh, it could work, I guess, I suppose.

Well, no, the reason why this is a much better investment is because

they will buy, if they buy hard assets and rental properties,

they might overpay.

And if they use leverage, they could lose all of their equity investment.

But the idea of

bringing a brand to rental units makes a lot of sense.

It's all about where you buy in the cycle.

It's a good idea.

The problem is VCs don't have the right time horizon for real estate investment.

There's a group of families in New York, and all they do is buy these low-rise office buildings and just buy them slowly.

They don't lever up.

And they're like billionaires now, but they've done it over generations.

And they're having trouble now, too.

Like, right?

They say it's cyclical.

It's utterly cyclical.

Well, cyclicality is a function, simply put, of how much leverage you have on your property.

You can survive any cycle if you don't have too much leverage on it.

But this is what's going to happen.

They'll go to banks and they'll say, we're Andreas and Horowitz, lever us up like 20 to 1.

Adam, it's all about scale.

Scale in the real estate business, getting big fast means overpaying.

There's just no getting around it.

You can't be opportunistic.

It's just like, get bigger, get bigger fast.

And that's their whole, the entire VC model that's that makes sense across processing power and network effects.

Chat GPT, they need to get big fast.

They need to spend billions of dollars to establish leadership position.

That same mentality, mentality, that same speed is actually the opposite of how you build value in real estate.

Real estate is a fantastic way to get rich slowly.

Yeah, you know what?

It just reminds me, this is like throwing a little we work, throwing a little we live, making it, you know, have kombucha on every floor, that kind of thing.

That's what this is.

It's like a mat, it's like a dog's breakfast of all his former stuff.

I'm sorry.

Had him as incredibly charming, but I feel like this is oh, yo, yoi.

This is all I can think is oh, yay, yo.

I don't know.

Would you invest?

Would you invest in this?

Oh, no, I wouldn't get near it.

Not near it.

Because why?

I can see what's going to happen here.

He's going to create a lot of excitement.

He's going to do a lot of ribbon cuttings.

I don't think Adam Newman's actually interested in doing the hard work of building value.

I think he should run biz dev for an enormous company because Adam Newman set a new record, and that is we resent CEOs who make hundreds of millions of dollars, but usually they make hundreds of millions when the company and the shareholders have made billions.

And so that's a real issue is what about CEO compensation?

I mean, what's unique about Adam Newman is he's the first person to get hundreds of millions of dollars in commissions for losing billions of dollars of other people's money.

I've never seen that before.

So he's an unbelievably charismatic guy.

He's a great salesperson, but he's not interested in building anything slowly.

So he finds VCs.

He says we can scale this fast.

Why isn't Greasen Horowitz in here?

For the life of me, me, I can't get their family together.

They took their clubhouse winning anywhere near this.

Right.

They're in Twitter.

They were in clubhouse.

Well, Twitter, you could almost make an argument for.

They want to stay close to Elon.

You know, maybe he had some

payments.

Yeah.

Whatever.

Throw $200 or $300 million in.

That's not a lot for their fun.

I can kind of see that.

Real estate, VCs in real estate, unless it's like what Brian said, who's going to forget more about real estate than we're going to know.

If you put a thin layer of management, for example, hotels, owning a hotel, the hotel business is a shitty business.

Owning hotels is a shitty business.

That's usually the third owner.

The business that works and what they all do, none of these companies, the Four Seasons, Hill, none of them are hotel companies.

They're management companies.

And they find some guy who's in a midlife crisis who wants to own the local Four Seasons and they say, okay, you own it.

We have certain standards you have to live up to.

And we take 8% of the top line.

Yeah, and if it doesn't work, they go get another one.

They go find the next billionaire that wants to say he owns the Four

And they take a management fee and it's an amazing business.

That's what all of them do.

Star Wars.

Brand, you know, like the Four Seasons.

I always call Four Seasons holiday.

And for rich people, you always know what you're getting.

They do an amazing job.

The business of actually investing capital, it's very capital-intensive.

It's management intensive.

And I own apartment rental units.

The key to it is going to every property, looking around, doing your diligence, understanding traffic patterns, understanding

how long does it take, what are the schools like there?

What if we knock down this bathroom and put it here?

You know, it's just, it's a local business.

It's also, if you're patient and have some skills, it's probably the most consistent way in America to get wealthy.

Yeah.

Because it's so incredibly tax-advanced.

100%.

100%.

Well, good luck, Adam.

As usual, you'll do wealth.

We know that.

And you look fantastic, by the way.

You look fantastic.

He's still married.

I can't get over the fact that you're not.

His hair is good.

They have a very close relationship.

Yeah, they're really.

They're tight.

They're a unit.

All right, Scott, let's pivot to a listener question.

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

You got mail.

Hey, Karen, Scott.

Scott, you recently and in the past have said you think a minimum wage should be raised to $25 an hour, regardless of the impact it has on small business.

Being a small business owner myself, and coming from a city with a low cost of living, I have two thoughts on this.

First, I believe this this would further entrench the large monopolies our government have allowed to thrive.

Two, as a small business owner, I can tell you with 100% certainty that this would tank my business that provides for my wife and my two kids.

I've always believed a better solution to the ridiculous $7 minimum wage we currently have is federal law that mandates local governments set their own minimum wage but require that they benchmark it to local cost of living instead of a one-size-fits-all approach that you've recommended.

What say you, Professor Galloway?

What say you, Professor Galloway?

I shall leave this to you.

It's a very good point by this very good listener.

Simply put, he's right.

There you go.

It should be indexed to the cost of living of either a state or a region.

It probably needs to be a region.

I think there should be exceptions probably around companies with, say, fewer than, I don't know, 10 or 20 employees.

I think think there should be an exception for people under the age of 18.

I want my 15-year-old to get a job.

It would be harder for him to get a job with the $25 minimum wage.

If he's going to get a job at CVS or as a lifeguard, I think it'd be okay to have different rules for him.

I think it'd be okay to say, all right, in Mississippi, $25 an hour would put a disproportionate number of businesses out of business.

But let's index it to, okay, what is the poverty line?

Let's go 20% above the poverty line.

It's an algorithm that looks at the cost of living

and wages, and we set a floor.

But I think we're of like minds on this, and that is the floor needs to be, or the number needs to be a lot higher than what it is now.

But he's absolutely right.

Should there be a floor?

Should there be a floor and then

do it based on the region?

I don't know the difference.

Well, so say it can't go below a certain amount.

It's at seven, right?

Seven, whatever.

Well, no,

I think in sum, I think minimum wage needs to be somewhere.

I can't imagine it would be any lower than $14 or $15.

And also, I do believe that there are just some small businesses that should go away.

I think there's some big companies that are very dependent on cheap labor that their stocks will get hit hard, and I think it would be worth it.

There's no free lunch here.

But his point is a good one, and that is if you live in a small town in Mississippi,

and you make $18 an hour, and there's two of you, you can have an okay life.

And so wouldn't why would you do away with those businesses when you can get what you want on 18 bucks an hour?

And that's what he's saying, and he's correct.

This is a good answer.

And Scott, that was a good answer for you, too.

Do you think it's going to happen?

No,

unfortunately, this impacts disproportionately

young people, poor people, and their underrepresented in government.

A good thing for a politician like Sleepy Joe could be a good topic.

Look, if you wanted to,

I think if you did the real analysis here,

we don't talk about this a lot, but when you look at relationships, right, I think relationships are kind of the key component or central component of what makes a healthy society and a rewarding, productive society.

And the thing that really frays relationships is financial strain.

I think if you look at obesity, I think if you look at depression, I think if you look at deaths of despair, if you look at opioid addiction, it all comes, a lot of it reverse engineers the same place, and that is just massive shame and rage around financial strain.

And so I would argue that if you were to substantially increase minimum wage, the amount of social services we end up paying in mental health, incarceration, medical care for people who are morbidly obese because they can't afford to eat well,

kids who struggle developmentally because there's huge economic strain.

And I think financial strain is the reason a lot of, a lot of, there's a lot of marital agata.

Anyways, I think we get the money back.

I think the best investment

we could, a pretty easy investment we could, not easy, a really thoughtful investment that would have huge ROI is leveling out the part of our society.

It's like college loans.

It'll pay it back.

It'll pay it back.

You know what my son said, Louis said?

I thought it was super smart.

By the way, he loves seeing you.

That's nice.

He really did.

He mentioned it several times.

He said, they should pay me to go to school.

So it would help our economy in the end.

They should pay all of us to go to school because it would be a better economy.

It's a good term for that.

The University of California that I think is the same.

No, I get that.

No, but I mean.

It's 1950s to 1990s.

They felt the same way.

He's in this new economics class, and he loves it.

I made him take it.

I said, you need to take an economic.

And he's like, ugh, I don't want to.

And he loves it.

You know, he's really enjoying it a lot because it's making him think about UBI and everything else.

And I really, I thought that was, and she just said it out the top of his head.

It was interesting.

Well, we do.

The model a little bit is, it's interesting.

PhD students get paid.

Yes, they do.

We find the brightest.

And by the way, you want to talk about attracting the best and brightest from all over the world.

Yep.

We find these incredible people, and then we come and they learn, and we pay them.

They have responsibilities.

They teach.

They do some work.

But we pay them.

Right.

And one of the things, one of the colleges, I'm not going to say which Alice got into, they actually pay you.

They pay for your, you don't pay for education, but later, when you have a salary, you have to pay a certain percentage back to the school.

It's kind of, it was so creative and interesting.

I didn't realize that.

It's cool.

Yeah, that's going to be legally challenged because they think there's that it's to a certain extent kind of indentured servitude.

But there's people talked about that for a long time.

It's interesting.

I think I like all interesting ideas around all these things.

So we should be more creative about the way people are paid and the benefits that society gets from them.

Anyway, great question.

If you've got a question of your own and you'd like answered, send it our way.

Go to nymag.com/slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT.

All right, Scott, one one more quick break.

We'll be back for predictions.

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Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

He kept saying, no, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's going to tell you the truth.

How do I present this with any class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

AKA Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

Okay, Scott, let's hear a prediction.

And I think it should be that I was right about Joe Biden, but go ahead, move along.

That's a prediction?

Well, you know, I just want you to acknowledge it because he was a bit of a drink.

I mean, which part didn't post it, but I was right.

I was saying he's going to run, and he's still in good shape.

I don't know if he's going to run.

We'll see.

Nonetheless, you listened to my podcast about it, but in any case, he's doing a great job.

Yeah, I agree with you.

Um, and by the way, I wrote, uh, I'm constantly talking about Twitter and posts, but I wrote one of my most popular things, I underestimated Joe Biden.

Yeah, you did, and people like thousands of likes.

Um, you did, anyways, Mike, you don't listen to me, you don't listen to me, you have no respect for me.

I listen to you sometimes, I don't hear you, but you have no respect, no respect for my intelligence about these things.

Huge, huge props and respect, anyways.

Um,

you pussy ass bitch you pussy ass bitch i was right okay anyways by the way trump is a pussy ass bitch i think that was

like that's what we're talking about on cnn that's the state of the nation right now accuracy thank you chrissy teigan do you know john legend's on the board of vox

yeah i remember when we presented to the board and i'm like that guy looks like john legend i'm like it is john legend That's right.

Do you remember my joke?

And they said,

why do you think they said, I couldn't wait for the show?

I couldn't focus on any, you know, they asked me a series of questions.

He's very handsome, man.

I couldn't, he's very handsome.

I couldn't focus on anything they were saying because I had a joke lined up.

And finally they go, well, why do you think the SPAC market is so

terrible?

And I'm like, because all of you loves all of me.

And there was just an uncomfortable pause and no one got the joke.

Oh, my God.

I thought that was crazy.

They shouldn't have us into anything.

They shouldn't.

It's so funny.

They should not let us in.

I've served on a lot of boards, and I'm walking to the Vox board, and I feel like a seven-year-old about to throw up on himself.

Hey, hey, what do we think about the money?

Jay Pennsylvania.

Should we torture him?

Jay, we're ready to torture you, too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So what Kara's talking about is

Vox raised $100 million, I think at a PRIA 400 or post of 500 or a PRIA 500 or post of 600.

But when you think about it, it's a real victory.

I actually do know, but I'm not telling you, but go ahead.

Well, aren't you important?

Yes, I am.

That is a real victory for Vox because if you look at a lot of publicly traded media companies right now,

I mean, whether it's it's Gannett or BuzzFeed, I don't know, after the tripling of the stock, but Vox, in the private market story of the $100 million in this market, it means, not that I know this, it means the business is actually fairly healthy.

Yeah.

Anyways, congratulations to Vox and

Jay Penski, get ready for us.

We're so excited.

I rented a Penske truck recently.

I was moving Louis up to up to NYU.

That fits.

It was good.

It worked.

There we go.

Vanity Fair.

Anyways, okay, so.

You're so jealous.

All right, go ahead.

Prediction.

My prediction, and we talked about it before.

I used to think that Disney was going to buy the rest of Hulu.

I think they're actually going to sell it.

And I don't know if you saw

in another prediction around a sale of streaming.

Warner Brothers Discovery has decided that they're not going to, they're backtracking on their initial strategy of creating one super bundle with HBO Max and Discovery Plus.

They're going to keep Discovery Plus a separate entity.

And I think what that means is is they're keeping it distinct such that they can sell it.

I think this acquisition, Time Warner is just the acquisition that people love to overpay for.

Yeah, they do.

And I think that the numbers

are obviously pretty weak so far.

The stock has really not performed well

since Discovery Plus and Zaslov bought it.

And I think he sees the writing on the wall.

He's going to have to pay off some debt and divest of some assets.

He doesn't mind doing it either.

So him keeping Discovery Plus separate makes it cleaner for a sale

uh anyway so i think two predictions of streaming market i think disney's actually going to sell hulu not acquire the rest of it and uh time warner comcast yeah or to a third party but it's likely a likely gun i mean they're playing chicken with each other they're both all trying to posture that they want it or don't want it to try and get the the best deal but also i think you're going to see um time warner or i'm sorry sorry warner brothers discovery now Divest Discovery Plus to somebody, maybe to Disney even.

Although, will they have the money?

Anyways, you're right.

I think you're 100% right.

He's got a real problem there.

And I'm going to do a tiny prediction.

As Bob showed, you can really shake things up pretty quick if you've got the skills, the mad skills, which he has as being a CEO.

My prediction is that the olds are really showing they still got some juice in the tank, the olds.

The olds.

The olds, you know, Bob Iger, over 70,

President Biden doing the olds,

me being a fashion model now.

I was wondering how we were going to work here.

You're kind of at olds, but not quite yet.

Not as old as me.

But I'm saying, what Biden showed in that thing is political experience matters.

The ability, he's an old hand at this, and he handled it beautifully.

He ran right over those loudmouth Republicans.

And Iger did the same thing with Paltz.

He just like handled them.

He handled it.

I appreciate the Golden Girls moment.

What this nation needs is more young people in positions.

I agree.

I'm saying that, but I don't like count out the olds.

There's a lot of ages.

I just want to put them on an ice flow.

No, you don't want to put Bob Iger on an ice flow.

He'd look good.

I'm joking.

I'm joking.

All right.

I'm just saying.

I'm one of them.

I'm getting old.

I'm going to be 48 now.

No, you're not.

And don't you think you are more productive than ever?

And you're not going to be 48, but okay, sure.

Don't you think you're more productive, older?

I do.

Yeah, I'm more productive because

greatness is in the agency of others, and I surround myself with really talented young people who every year get more facile with technology.

I'm just disappointed that, look, what I see, Kara, quite frankly, is I see young people who can't afford to have children.

I see young people who have the deck stacked against them, and I see an America who's not investing in youth and creating a situation where young people feel so shitty about the future, and they can't afford to have kids.

And I think a lot of that is because we have old people in Congress, so Social Security is safe, but child tax credit goes away, and the first states that determine the president happen to be the oldest and widest states.

So, what do you know?

Oh, they're changing that.

The Democrats just changed that.

Well, the Democrats, and that's a great move.

That's a baller move.

Yeah.

But we, I mean, it's pretty, pretty straightforward.

You know, whether it's Nobel Prize winners or the best rock and roll music

or the best tech companies in the world, they all have one thing in common.

They're started, written, or inspired by people in their 20s.

And we have to- I like the young.

So I'm not saying, I'm just saying the olds did a good job this week.

Yeah, okay, I'll give you that.

Win for

a win for a win for the land of the walking dead.

No, they're not walking dead.

You're wrong again.

You didn't,

wrong, get he wrong, wrong, wrong.

You don't have to like age, age is not a concept.

It absolutely is not.

I think we should also encourage young people to.

How about that?

How about both?

How about both?

That's what

Biden was talking.

You can have both.

The answer is yes.

Yes.

The answer is yes.

All right, Scott.

Good prediction.

I think you're correct on that one.

All right.

Let's read us out.

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

Ernie Endertod engineered this episode.

Thanks also to Drew Burrows and El Severio.

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

Thank you for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media.

We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things in tech.

Also, special thanks to our friend and co-worker, Nick, from Second Peninsula.

We appreciate your good work over the last year.

And also, more importantly, we appreciate the fifth dimension.

Thank you, Nick.

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