The Future of Crypto, SPACs, and Trump's Legal Troubles

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Hi, everyone.

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

I'm Kara Swisher.

Hello.

Eliza Doolittle.

Oh, good God.

Let me steer your...

Karen, unwind that bow and let me get to know you.

That's Scotland, my friend.

Yeah, that's my bad friend.

All right.

Tell Tell me, how is life in, I guess, Victorian England?

How is life there?

What's going on?

Well, I'm really settling into the UK lifestyle.

Yesterday I went to Starbucks, then to Zuma, an American take on sushi, and then watched Netflix last night.

So yeah, it's great to be in Jolly All the England.

No, but really, what are the differences?

I feel as if London is New York and someone just...

a giant stepped on New York and spread it out over 80 miles instead of eight.

I feel it's just, I think it's the geography that makes things different here.

There's more green.

Right.

When it's sunny, you feel the sun more.

I feel as if it's a little bit more cosmopolitan.

You get people from a lot of different regions.

And the thing I like about Europe, I've noticed when you meet people, they ask you where you're from.

In America, they ask you what you do.

Right.

It feels like just a little bit more, I don't know what the word is, civil, so to speak.

How are they taking to Scott Galloway?

Oh, it was so nice.

My wife hates it here.

We rolled into a party last night and someone came up to me.

I was like, oh my God, are you Scott Galloway?

And my wife just literally turned around and walked out.

And she's like, that's it.

We're moving to Bucharest.

She can't have a lot of people recognize me.

We have a lot of fans at Bucharest, in case you're interested.

No, she gets angry.

She'll like, just before I even say, yes, I am, she'll be like, he's not that interesting.

Whoa.

But yeah, it's, it's, look, it's lovely here.

Little glimpse into the Galloway marriage, but go ahead, keep going.

There we go.

There we go.

It's taken me some time to adapt to driving on the other side of the road.

I was in the backseat of an Uber with my son, and I like to spit out the window and accidentally spit on him.

I just can't figure this shit out.

You know, I drove all through England on the wrong side of the road with a manual this summer, as I noted to you.

I did rather well on a manual.

I don't know what to tell anyone.

Oh, my God.

That is

literally

that's the, that's the most masculine thing I've heard anyone say in a while.

Yeah.

That's definitely a flex.

I do

in London on a manual.

Can you drive?

I learned on a manual.

My mom taught me how to drive on a manual.

Yeah.

I love London.

I'm so excited to come and stay with you for an extended period of time with the entire Swisher clan.

I think we'll bring them all.

I think we'll bring them all in the whole game.

You'll like it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm in San Francisco, just so you know.

Yeah, I've been in that day.

I have no idea what's going on.

I just know I'm jet lagged in a bad mood and everyone's angry at me because I'm being such an asshole.

Oh, we'll try to be liven up a little bit.

Live in up.

You're a jolly old man.

Do you know me?

Have you met me?

It's jolly.

It's a jolly place.

It's jolly.

Go see the crown jewels.

That's what you need to do.

Go take yourself down to the castle and see the crown jewels.

You'll feel good instantly.

I don't know what else to do.

I can't imagine.

Go on the eye.

Go on the London Eye.

It would make me even angrier than having to go see the Crown Jewels.

All right.

All right.

The London Eye?

That's what I'm going to do.

No, Madam's.

I went to one of these tony members' clubs last night.

Madam Toussaux, Wax Museum.

That's always fun.

No, I'm doing that with my kids this weekend because I owe, I have a lot of catching up to do on the whole

thing.

It appears that they seem to be like tracking that, how much time I actually spent with them.

So they're going to Madame I made the mistake of we can do anything this time.

We can do anything this weekend.

And they said, man, I'm too sad.

And I wanted to stick a gun, which does not exist here in my mouth.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, don't do that.

You know, one person just noted to me about London and England is there's no longer James Bond is no longer on Her Majesty's Secret Service.

So just a point.

Oh, is he on his Secret Service?

He is on His Majesty's Secretary.

Well, he's dead.

He's dead.

He died some of me, but okay.

Oops, did I?

Plot twist.

Plot spoiler.

It was well known.

I am in San Francisco, which is lovely.

I went to Drewce.

Are you going to San Francisco?

Are you out there for Dreamforce?

I went to Dreamforce.

They're one of our sponsors.

They liked me to visit their Dream Force.

Actually, it's cool.

I hung out with Stuart Butterfield, who started Slack.

I hung out with my bro, my mom.

We all went to D Switch.

J Swish?

Yeah, it was J Swish.

And we had a great time.

D-Swish is in Pennsylvania and never leaves there.

Anyway, so.

Yeah, I love San Francisco.

I'm going to Austin tomorrow to interview Hillary Clinton.

Give me a question for her.

Gosh, Hillary, I'm just curious

how does she continue to have an impact?

What are her plans?

Does she just want to, she's not a young woman, but she's still pretty robust.

What's her plan to have, to continue to serve, or does she want to continue to serve?

That would be what I would be interested in.

That's a good question.

I like, I've interviewed her many times.

It's for the Texas Tribune Festival.

We're going to use some of it in my new podcast coming out on Monday, too.

We're not going to put it out on Monday, but we have someone else that's really good to interview, I can't say.

How is inflation over there?

The Fed raised interest rates by 0.75% for the third time this year.

That's the fifth raise.

I'm just curious what they're talking about there,

what's going on.

Now that we have an international flair to our show,

Jerome Powell seems to be willing to risk a near-term recession if it stops long-term inflation.

Many people don't agree with him.

What thinks you of the situation?

Well, an observation I made, I went to this

party for some film festival thing last night, and

I met several Americans who had,

I thought we were being so original.

Word is out, and I met a lot of Americans who've moved here.

And this guy I met who works at JP Morgan said, well, if you want to experience something international or you have the opportunity to experience something international, you want a great city and you want English speaking and you want good schools.

It's like you kind of have Singapore, Hong Kong, and London.

And Hong Kong's off the table now.

Singapore's too far.

In addition, if you want to talk about inflation, and this is related,

the pound, when I got a mortgage, pre-approved for a mortgage to buy a home here, I think seven months, it was $1.38.

When I actually got the mortgage and converted, it was $1.26, and I thought I was getting the deal of the century.

I think it was, I think it's today it's $1.14.

So you're going to see, just as you've seen a lot of wealthy people migrate to Florida from New York, you're going to see a lot of very wealthy people migrate from New York to London because everything here is 20% less expensive than it was 12 months ago.

Oh, except energy prices are about to go through the roof, from what I understand.

Yeah, but

if you're wealthy, it's I mean, energy prices really hit the lower and middle income

classes.

Quite frankly, if you're a banker at Goldman or you're an entrepreneur and you're making millions of dollars, your energy, even if energy prices triple or quintuple, it's still a small part of your total income.

Right.

But it's good to go if you're rich to London, in other words.

Well, the bottom line is, and I don't think this is going to be a secret to anyone.

New York and London are the greatest cities in the world as long as you can lubricate them with millions of dollars, full stop.

You either need to be very young and be able to dance in between the raindrops and get

a lot of psychic income from the incredible things the city offers, and it's worth living in a 300-square-foot apartment in Gowanus and commuting in.

Or, I mean, the ultimate luxury item is to have three kids in London or New York because

you have to be making a million dollars a year.

Yeah, it is expensive.

But But relatively speaking, five years ago, London was more expensive than New York.

Three years ago, it was the same.

Now it is distinctly less expensive.

So it ties into the inflation discussion.

With the dollar surge, with Jerome Powell raising interest rates, with the dollars, or excuse me, with the U.S.'s relative strength geopolitically, food independent, energy independent, you're going to see every item in the store that's imported, and 48% of the global GDP is international trade.

You're about to see, and I'm skipping to my prediction, but I have a bunch of them, so I'll say it right now because it's related.

You're about to see inflation come down as fast as it went up.

I mean, the dollar surge is,

we are an import economy.

The Chinese, get this, have actually lowered interest rates.

So we're raising interest rates.

They're lowering them, which makes dollars massively attractive, which means in order to buy those dollars, the dollar is going to be able to command even more strength, which means every item or 88% of the toys under the Christmas tree, which all happen to come from China, are about to be 20% less expensive.

So and then and then just to roll in some geopolitical nuance or wrinkle here, I believe that the Ukrainian people and their military just striking courage, success, getting off their heels, onto their toes.

They're now on offense right now.

I think the global markets are going to correctly or incorrectly perceive a possible end to the conflict.

Energy prices are going to plummet.

The dollar strength, it's just the perfect storm to see inflation start to.

Scott is in a positive mood.

It's London.

It's the gin speaking.

I had a gin drink last night.

It's funny.

You did you?

I thought you did.

Of course you did.

Anyway, today we'll talk about the Biden administration's full court press on crypto.

Also, the FDC wants dirt on Amazon's Roomba deal.

Ha ha.

We'll hear from a listener who has to choose between his career and his clients.

But first, Elon Musk is not in the running for best boss ever.

In the months since Elon spoke to Twitter employees in June, hundreds of employees have fled.

He's not running the place, let's be fair.

The company reportedly has lost 700 employees as of this month.

Workers have left sites stressed from the Musk deal and the loss of respect for leadership.

So they're not thrilled with their CEO either.

That's been well known.

According to documents, Twitter has adjusted the way it categorizes attrition to track Twitter employees, quote, leaving due to acquisition by Elon Musk.

Huh, that's easy to blame him.

him.

I think they've got other issues there for many years.

I got to say, I find this unfair.

So it'll be interesting if they discuss it in the court case.

Obviously, we have a lot of big coverage coming up for that.

It's going to be like our Super Bowl, I think, in many ways.

Any thoughts on this?

We had talked about people leaving because of this.

Yeah, he leaves.

Twitter comes out of this deeply damaged.

And the person who's managed to escape scrutiny, who in my view is arguably the second-worst tech CEO of the last decade, everyone talks about Musk and Paraguay's been talking into it.

The person who bears a lot of blame here is Jack Dorsey.

He was basically an absentee CEO.

All this reportings coming out that in meetings and on calls, he wouldn't say a word.

He was totally disengaged.

And

you have a company that didn't innovate, said it made itself really ripe for this kind of BS volatility, brought in a CEO and then said that he thought that has made these crazy statements, that he thought that Elon was the singular best solution and then went quiet on it.

Didn't defend his employees.

I know that was irritating to many people when he didn't defend

the chief legal officer, the woman of color who was getting attacked.

I mean, the reality is when you decide that when you have

this unbelievable, you know, king-sized big gulp serving of arrogance, that you can run this company, this important company, whether it's a big company or not, it's an important company, while running another one where 93% of your wealth is and that's skyrocketing in value.

And what do you know?

This company has gone absolutely sideways during his tenure and has opened itself up to this type of volatile, exogenous bullshit, which is not in short supply with Mr.

Musk.

And the Chancery Court, there's no way, this is the Chancellor, if you will, the head judge, if you will, who's presiding over this case, there's no way she's going to be able to ignore the fact that in addition to him signing a hermetically sealed agreement to buy these shares for $54.20 a share, that he's also damaged this thing, that this process that he initiated has brought tremendous economic harm to the company and these employees.

I'm going to push back.

I think this company has not been run well is something that Elon's correct about, right?

And I think a lot of people feel that.

I don't think this is a new, fresh idea.

I think that people using it as an excuse for a long time pain of being there and why even bother?

Because they can see what's coming.

You know, either that it's not going to be sold.

If it is sold, that's problematic.

If it's not sold, it's problematic.

And they're sort of facing nothing.

And they, even though we're sort of staring at, you know, layoffs and things like that, most of these people can get better jobs somewhere else and more stable jobs without the headache of this.

I think it just calls into question what they're doing.

And after a while, you're like, that's enough.

You know, the kombucha is not that good kind of thing.

But just the one more wrinkle here is I think a lot of them look at the company.

Look at the current environment.

Look at the fact that the stock's at 44 bucks and it's probably worth less than 20.

And there's a lot of moving parts here, and this deal may or may not go through.

I think a lot of them have exercised their options and said, I'm out.

Peace out.

I'm not going to do any better.

Meanwhile, speaking of woes, Trump's legal woes are piling up, as I noticed.

New York Attorney General Letitia James announced a lawsuit against the former president as well as the Trump organization and three of his children.

Let's not call them children.

Let's call them adult children for fraud and false financial statements.

But the children.

James said Trump had, quote, falsely inflated his net worth by billions of dollars.

The AG seeks damages damages of $250 million.

She really came to play and a range of restraints that would bar Trump and the Trump organization from acquiring real estate or applying for loans in New York for five years.

An appeals court ruled that Mar-a-Lago investigation can continue.

That was in another ruling.

This appeals court had two Trump.

people of the three without waiting for a special master.

The special master, meanwhile, is smacking around Trump lawyers and the lawyer and the judge who had allowed the special master to be existing.

He spoke about the investigation nonetheless with Sean Hannity this week.

Here's what he said.

Is there a process?

What was your process to declassify?

There doesn't have to be a process, as I understand it.

You know, there's different people say different things, but as I understand it, there doesn't have to be.

If you're the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying it's declassified.

Even by thinking about it.

By thinking about it.

He's the Yoda of declassification.

He's just literally just,

I was worried during this interview because, of course, Sean Hannity, as usual, was the major suckup of all time.

Just literally, even informational stuff he couldn't get right, like, could also get information out of him, but he didn't even do that.

Molly Jungfast wrote in The Atlantic this week: Trump is never ever playing three-dimensional chess.

He's always just sticking pieces up his nose to see how they'll taste.

I just, I don't even know what to say here.

This, this day, legal day, was astonishing.

It was, you know, he sucked up oxygen from the Republicans who were trying to win an election, a bunch of elections.

He got himself into deep legal trouble.

And these people are just, you know, and everyone's like, nothing's going to happen.

I'm like, oh, besides going crazy, I'm not sure.

I don't know.

What do you think?

Well, what everyone's missing is for the first time in 25 years, it's awesome to be Tiffany Trump.

It's awesome to be.

She and Baron are not named.

I just imagine her getting together for family dinner last night.

And on the other side, the four favorite siblings be like, how do you like me now, bitches?

How do you like me now?

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's good to be Tiffany Trump.

This is our

business.

I really do want to talk to her now.

But go ahead.

Just to stir up our Twitter feed,

there's something about this AG Letitia James suit I don't like and I'm uncomfortable with.

I think that it feels very political to me, and that is

wealthy people exaggerating the value of their assets to try and secure loans.

If she's going to go after Trump, there's probably 100 other billionaires in New York she needs to go after.

All right.

Let me address that.

Most people do it 15, 20%.

This was 500%.

This was a very different

over,

you know, this was exactly the kind of case these prosecutors do.

It's an egregious abuse of this.

And she actually addressed that very clearly.

But go ahead.

I also worry that it distracts from, I believe, the mishandling of classified documents that may unmask

agents of our security apparatus overseas, information on nuclear codes.

I think that stuff is essentially is so reckless that it falls under the notion of espionage.

Or I don't know if there's like second-degree espionage.

I don't know how the law works.

And also

inciting violence at the Capitol.

I worry this case is going to give the other side ammunition to say these cases are politically motivated.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I think, you know, I'm using my mother as a barometer, but she said, what a crook.

Like, she got this right away.

Yeah.

Right away.

This one.

Yeah.

What a crook.

And they're going after his kids.

I mean,

stop it.

They're adult children who are officers of a company.

I'm sorry.

That's just crap.

Anyway, we'll see what happens.

And speaking of

people getting some criticism, Chamath Palihapatiya, he's the king of SPAT, the SPAC king.

He started the SPAC craze, announced on Tuesday that his firm Social Capital will wind down two of the SPACs it has created, created a lot of them, return money to investors.

Even as conservative social site Rumble is still in the game, the company has gone public and began trading after a SPAC deal.

Nothing's going well for the Trump-backed True Social.

Another area of weakness for Donald Trump of so many across his weak loser landscape.

Digital World Acquisition, the SPAC company, the company made a deal with, has seen its stock drop as much as 30% over the last six days as True Social threatens to sue the SEC for political bias after

delaying a planned merger.

I mean, it's what he does, of course.

But in the broad scheme, the SPAC

thing is completely over, correct or not?

Well, the SPAC's been around for a while, and my guess is at some point.

Investors have a short memory.

I mean, this kind of reflects a few things.

The first is the market has an unbelievable ability to produce products just on the spot when people have money.

And when the investment committees and the operating committees, investment banks would say, this company is so far from profitability, the financials here are so scary.

We're not comfortable taking it public and trying to look at institutions that we work with.

I mean, think about it.

We work God through their filters, but these companies wouldn't, these SPACs.

And so this vehicle.

Or they're not ready.

They're not all, they're not all problematic.

They're just not ready, for example.

But go ahead.

I think that's the same thing.

Yeah.

So anyways, you take a company that has, you know, it's pre-revenue, is churning cash, but it's cool and it's different and kind of flies into the, or has the wind in its sails of a lot of retail investors think, I want to participate in the new economy and these big, these big updrafts.

That's the first thing.

That's the cloud cover is the demand of retail investors who want to participate in this new information economy.

And investment banks aren't comfortable taking these companies public.

So enter the SPAC.

And then you layer on top of that really charismatic, thoughtful people who have an open invitation to CNBC.

So you put Richard Branson in an astronaut's uniform and you put Chamoth on CNBC every 48 hours.

And it felt like he was on every 48 hours.

He's very articulate, he's very compelling.

And you have the perfect storm of a vehicle that has essentially, at the end of the day, Kara, been a vehicle for the transfer of wealth from retail investors to the promoters, specifically Chamoth and Richard Branson.

And if you look at Chamoth

SPACs, Clover,

Opendoor, Virgin Galactic, and SoFi, they're down between 45 and 80%.

I mean, across the board.

So

this isn't an individual company thing.

This is a structure.

This is an asset class that is baking too early.

Baking too early, really, essentially.

Or, quite frankly, taking taking retail money without a lack of disclosure and companies that are just shitty companies.

Do you remember six months ago you pressed me for a company that would be a victim of the SPAC thing?

It was six, seven months ago.

And you remember what the company I cited was?

I don't remember.

You remember?

No.

I just said it.

Virgin Galactic.

Well, yeah.

I think Virgin Galactic is going to zero.

I have never seen a business more demand constrained or supply constrained.

Yep, agreed.

Space is incredibly,

this stuff is so hard and so expensive.

In addition, the market for people who want to spend $400,000 to go twice as high as they were in triple seven just two weeks ago on their way to London is pretty limited.

And so this is a shit, this is the worst business in the world.

Yeah, that is.

Although I would push away, I'd say Opendoor and SoFi are very interesting companies, may not be worth

being public yet, but certainly acquisition targets, both of those.

So some of them, you know what I mean?

It's just where they are.

I mean, Virgin Galactus is one that's so is obvious.

It's a stunt company in a lot of ways.

But it's definitely changed.

Let's talk about open.

I mean, open, I think, I'm looking it up right now.

It's now at,

I'm sorry, it's 52 week highs 25.

It's trading right now at $3.19.

And it's great in an upmarket, but they have inventory.

They will use an algorithm.

It's a really great idea.

They use an algorithm that looks at all sorts of comparables and then says, all right, we think your house is worth X.

We'll pay you 0.9 or 0.92X and you'll get a check in seven days.

And a lot of people say, oh my gosh, for that efficiency, I'll take a small discount.

And what we have seen over and over again is that real estate is a local business and requires certain nuance from a buyer and a seller.

And when real estate prices were skyrocketing and wallpapered over, in my opinion, the inefficiency of an algorithm to assess price, when inventory builds at this company and you have prices decline i think this thing is good and the mortgage issues the mortgage issues right now could be wildly underwater uh so uh the market perceives the same thing the stock's off 90 and again

if you heard the the the promoters on cmbc what this brings up i think is an interesting issue and that is if you have over

call it 10 million dollars over a certain amount of stock and you're on cmbc pumping it should you be able to get off like wipe off your makeup and call your broker and say, sell.

I just did a really good job pumping this thing and now I'm going to sell.

Because what it ends up, if you look at the sales of Virgin Galactic, you know, is it cool that the guy who's on CNBC talking about the brave new world of space tourism has basically sold his entire stake?

Yeah.

You know, it just,

those, that all is, you know, this is a get, get the money and run kind of thing in turn.

with some interesting ideas.

You're right.

It's taking advantage of lots of money around.

Why don't I invest in this?

You know, treasuries aren't giving me what I want.

And why don't I?

It's gambling.

It was, it was always gambling in a lot of ways for most of these companies.

Very innovative financial instrument in order to deal with unusual companies.

But everyone, I remember, I was talking to someone, I can't remember who it was.

Remember when Paul Ryan piled in?

That was a while back.

I was like, oh, like once the, once all of them, did you, were you in a spec or not in a spec?

No.

So

I partnered with two friends who are the founders of hedge funds, and we decided we were going to do a SPAC, and I put together an operating committee of very credible operators.

Goldman and Jeffries were going to take us out, and then we did one quick meeting, the three principals, before we pressed go.

And it was going to cost us a couple million bucks for underwriter fees and legal fees.

And one of my colleagues said, how many calls have you guys received from SPACs?

Because we're all on boards and private companies.

I had received seven calls in the last month.

Each of them had received between 12 and 15.

And I'm like, do we really want to be on the other side of this?

Right now, Kara, there are 700 SPACs that haven't de-SPAC that are looking for a target.

So what happens is they overpay.

Most shareholders in the SPAC are saying, there's no way I'm going along for this ride.

I've been watching what's happening.

Getting the pipes, et cetera, the extra money, which is called a pump.

And I just want to go back because pump and dump is a serious accusation.

If you promote a stock, which CEOs do and investors do, whether it's long, and then you sell it at a high, you're entitled to do that.

But when every company you've taken through a structure called a SPAC is off 40 to 80%,

and you are out there, I mean, really pumping these things hard.

At some point, should you be subject to the same type of lockup that a board of director is?

In other words, if you're on CNBC and you own more than 10% of this thing, if you're really out there trying to tell retail investors, this is a good company and you should buy stock, should you maybe be limited to to not be able to sell yours for nine?

Yeah, you have to own your book.

No, it's true.

So we'll see what happens here.

I think there's going to be a lot of pain with a lot of these companies for lots of reasons.

They are experimental, many of them are experimental companies in a weird way.

But we're going to be watching, especially the true social one, which looks like it's headed for disaster, unless some rich person just decides to bail them out to get in Trump's good graces.

But I'm not sure that's worth as much, speaking of things that aren't worth as much anymore.

Let's get to our first big story.

It's been a fateful few weeks in the world of crypto, another area, Scott, that we've talked about a lot about.

First, the Ethereum network completed its long-awaited system upgrade to the proof-of-stake model.

That should have had fans cheering, but instead, the price of Ether fell by about 15%.

The move could have regulatory implications.

SEC Chair Gary Gensler hinted that proof-of-stake cryptocurrencies could be considered securities and not commodities.

There's a push-pull over how they should be considered.

Also, the Biden administration put out a framework for regulating crypto.

Besides clamping down on fraud, the framework also encouraged the creation of a digital dollar backed by the Fed.

Not going anywhere, just ideas kind of thing.

They put out a lot of papers that are not very full of real information.

But obviously, a well-regulated crypto space is valuable, but it's a whole lot more, less exciting.

What do you think about what's happening now?

The numbers are pretty like...

problematic.

There's a lot of failures like Meta's Lieber or DAIM.

Reddit's NFT project isn't booming.

It refuses to call them NFTs.

Apple and Google Payment Apps are focused on credit card still, not crypto.

What has happened in this was people declare the end of crypto and it never seems to come.

It's an interesting technology.

Obviously, blockchain is incredibly promising.

But how do you look right now where it is in its young adult?

Walking through the fire.

Well, people who are long crypto will say this is 2000 where there's a shakeout that was overdue and some giants will emerge.

Some, you know, the Amazons and Yahoo's or whoever will emerge from the fire.

And it looks as if Bitcoin has hit sort of a floor.

I don't know if it's $19,000 or $20,000.

It bothers me that Bitcoin consumes the energy of Argentina and it's an artificially made construct.

It's genius to try and limit the supply to create sort of scarcity credibility.

But at the end of the day, it's like we've decided to have marginal, in my opinion,

unneeded energy consumption of a small country.

We just don't need that energy.

That's why they change it.

One of the reasons they change it, and it's a better system for it.

And I wouldn't be surprised if it flips in terms of valuation that Ether becomes more valuable than Bitcoin because the utility there around NFTs, the majority of them are minted.

on Ether, but it looks as if there's Bitcoin and Ether and almost everything else is going away.

And also, I come back to

my same boomer question.

How has the blockchain changed your life other than a vehicle for speculation?

That you know about, yes.

Yeah.

Well, even in 98 and 99, we were getting stock quotes on Yahoo.

We were getting email on Hotmail.

We were buying CDs on Amazon.

I mean, it was touching our lives.

Well, if you want to make that comparison, the internet is blockchain and all the applications and uses on top of it are these crypto.

currencies, right?

And so the way the blockchain is being used could be variant, you know, could there's all kinds of things that could happen.

But I think the fact that it stayed so speculative speculative for so long and not useful is a problem.

Or you have utility in some fashion, except for speculation for rich people or young people who just are gambling again.

Yeah, it's, by the way, I just looked up Clover Health, one of Chamaspecs.

It's in 12 months, it's off 74%.

Yeah, look,

the bloom is off the rose on crypto.

I'm willing to acknowledge, and there's so many smart people, there's so much human and financial capital that have gone into the space.

It would be impossible for there not to be enduring innovation.

But outside of the two major assets in the asset class, Bitcoin and ETH, you're just, I mean, it really is pure, at this point, pure speculation.

And I keep waiting for

some sort of consumer service on the blockchain.

What about the digital dollar?

What about the official digital dollar?

We spoke with Circles Jeremy Alaire at USD Coin last February.

He talked about interoperability and open standards versus the walled gardens of PayPal or Venmo.

I mean, who are the winners and losers if there's a digital dollar?

Obviously, credit card companies or who?

It's a really interesting point.

Anyone, so for example, when I bought a house here, I had to transfer

dollars into pounds, and it's very inefficient.

And a wire, I always thought you press a button and it happens that moment.

Now it's like a day, two days.

There's all sorts of review and administrative complexity.

So just in terms of remittance or transferring assets cross-border or getting the middlemen out of the way, whether it's,

I don't know Venmo or PayPal, they might actually benefit from a digital dollar.

But I think it makes all sorts of sense.

The dollar has been such an extraordinary weapon and force for the United States.

I think it's still two-thirds of reserve currencies or USD, despite that we're only, what, a third of the economy.

So the USD over-indexes

from a power standpoint.

And whenever we decide to have

sanctions, they have more teeth.

Whenever we decide we're in trouble, we need to print more money, we can.

There's always people that want our dollars.

So the USD has been the most powerful aircraft squadron or carrier force in history that's invisible.

It's like kind of this invisible army.

So to signal innovation and say we're going to make it digital and you'll have more efficiency, you'll be able to send it overseas to your friends, whatever, and also create a mechanism such that American regulatory and enforcement

apparatus still have insight into flows, it's a great idea.

I think it's super strong.

And I think more regulation is needed, obviously, and deciding what it is, whether it's securities.

I suspect they're going to be made.

The Bitcoins and Ethereum world will be considered securities and not commodities.

I mean, there's a push-pull in the government about this, and that they deserve a whole bunch of all the

more

less sketchy people in the industry want this and talked about it.

And it's not in the, oh, please regulate me.

It's that this is going to get out of hand until you actually put some rules on the road because it creates so much uncertainty.

And with money, there has to be regulation and very quickly.

So it'll be interesting.

And obviously cracking down on fraud.

That's another big thing.

If it feels like it's the Wild West, nobody's going to move there.

You know, people don't, people who are thrill seekers do.

But it's certainly a problem.

I still haven't found my Bitcoin now that it's down again.

It's here somewhere here in San Francisco.

I love that.

I love that.

Someday I'll find it.

It'll be $50 again.

It'll be literally $50 when I find it again.

All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break.

When we come back, the FTC wants Amazon to come clean clean about its roombud deal.

Oh my God, Evan, stop with the jokes, the cleaning jokes.

We'll take a lesson or question about putting clients first or not.

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

The FTC could jam the Amazon Roomba deal like a sock left on the floor.

I'm just going to read them out loud.

This week, the regulator requested more information from both Amazon and Roomba's parent company, iRobot, about their proposed $1.7 billion acquisition.

Several advocacy groups have written to the FCC opposing the deal.

They're worried that if Amazon hoovers up iRobot, it could sell Roomba's at a loss and hurt the vacuum industry.

The vacuum people are upset.

The FTC also wants more information about Amazon's deal with OneMedical.

Just to review, Amazon is not backing down.

Many of the other tech companies are not buying big companies like this, but Amazon has bought MGM.

Art19, Podcasting, Wicker Messaging, Stryo AI, Autonomous Farming, and One Medical and iRobot.

They've been rumored in electronic arts.

They're being very aggressive.

And I think Andy Jassy, in our recent interview with him, didn't back off of that.

The FTC has not done anything in this area.

One Medical obviously has some HIPAA baggage, but it didn't seem like Jassy was going to back off that at all in terms of that deal.

He seemed very happy with that deal.

So what do you think?

Well, in a lot of the spaces, and you've said this, a Roomba, I don't even know what that space is.

Like, is it home appliances?

What is it?

It's a fairly compact.

Well, it's vacuuming.

It vacuums.

But that's a fairly competitive space.

So generally speaking, antitrust is supposed to ensure that people don't merge and create a lack of competition.

Right.

And not everybody wants a Roomba, by the way.

I don't want to.

I'd rather have a regular backing cleaner, but go ahead.

But you want to avoid, at the end of the day, what they're trying to do is protect consumers from market power that results in unearned margin.

And it's hard.

I'm not sure that the home appliance market, my sense is it's fairly fragmented and fairly competitive.

So I don't know.

Now, could Amazon, does Amazon show a pattern of coming in and using predatory pricing to clean up the market?

But I don't know if you can speculate on that.

I think that most of these will go through.

And also, I just think the FTC is outgun.

The problem is, I was thinking about our conversation from Friday about Adobe's acquisition of Figma.

I spoke to someone, including my partner at

Profit Media, who works in the, who's a professor of the arts in the Tisch School of the Creative Arts at NYU.

And she said that Figma is just incredibly powerful.

You know, Figma is what kind of

new up-and-coming designers are using.

It's more user-friendly.

You're just sort of up and running right away.

And that if Adobe acquires it, kind of it's not game over, but Adobe really controls the creative space.

And the hard part is it's hard to go after Adobe when the big guys are doing all this stuff and getting away with it.

That's the problem with antitrust when you don't go after the biggest, most powerful players.

I think it's kind of hard to be heavy-handed with the medium or the, you know, it's like, how do you go after

it's a legal case?

All of these are losers.

This MGM, Hollywood's very, um, uh, is very uh competitive.

Podcasting, very competitive.

Messaging, very competitive.

Autonomous farming, very small.

You know, one medical, very competitive.

Vacuums, lots of vacuum companies.

I mean, and not everybody wants what iRobot is selling, by the way.

So I think that's the problem.

And also, Amazon is just being aggressive with the FTC.

It's

top Amazon execs, including Jeff Bezos and Andy Jassy, were subpoenaed earlier this year as part of an investigation into allegedly deceptive practices around Prime membership.

Now, that's a fertile area to look at, obviously, and also the marketplace.

Amazon appealed the subpoena, calling it, quote, needlessly burdensome, and the FDC rejected that appeal and said instead, let's set a date, bring your lawyer.

They just, they're being very aggressive in picking areas that are quite competitive.

Well, I think if it was going to be a case, they would say that you've used AWS to subsidize

non-unrelated industries, and as a result, they've created predatory pricing across your e-commerce platform, which has made it very difficult for anyone else in e-commerce to to compete.

And when you don't have growth,

when you don't have growth in e-commerce, you get hammered in the market, which creates an inability to compete in terms of capital.

That would be where I would focus.

But

buying a robotic vacuum cleaner, I don't know.

I'm not sure that's a good idea.

God, Amazon is so canny here.

Speaking of Lena Khan, and her DOJ counterpart, Jonathan Cantor, testified before Congress this week, pretty rough going.

Kahn, in particular, was grilled by Senate Republicans who asked about partisanship and the low morale at the FTC.

Khan pushed back, requested more resources from Congress.

She's absolutely right about this.

Khan was, they didn't get it, one of the bills that didn't pass.

I can't remember which one.

Khan was also asked about the Amazon One Medical Deal by Senator Josh Hawley.

Let's listen to that exchange.

Let me just ask you, still on this topic, what concerns we should be looking at involving data privacy that might come about from either this acquisition or more broadly about mass consolidation, particularly when you have technology companies that are purchasing healthcare companies.

I think especially when you have firms that are integrated across multiple lines of business, there are a whole set of conflicts of interest that can emerge.

Oftentimes, there aren't any limitations on how data being collected in one line of business is being used in other lines of business.

And so we've heard concerns both from consumers, but also from market participants about just the deep conflicts and asymmetries that that can create.

Well, they're kind of, because Cauley is so smart.

He's zeroed in on exactly the problem.

I mean, privacy.

If you stop yelling about censorship, he's correct here.

You know, it's a very tough time for Lena Khan.

She was supposed to come in on a big grand horse and slay the dragons, and she's not doing so.

Well,

you can list her accomplishments on zero hands right now.

She's got to really move forward and do something more aggressive.

The Republicans were very aggressive on the Musk thing last week.

They want the FTC to preserve any records related to the Musk Twitter bid.

And Khan said she was disturbed by Mudge's claims that Twitter misled the FTC.

But how does she get out of this?

She's got to have a win, some win somewhere, anywhere.

Exactly.

Same thing with Cantor.

She's either got to break something up or block something.

She is so, she has such an incredible, beautiful mind around this stuff.

She's able to articulate the problems.

Her and Tim Wu, in my opinion, are the two clearest blue flame thinkers around competitiveness and predatory pricing.

And they, they've been given the job.

It's like, well, okay, you know, now what?

And so far,

so far it's been a big thud.

Everything continues to go through.

You could argue there's been a chill and probably Google and

Meta are not being as aggressive.

But Amazon appears to be like, well, no, they're kind of poking the bare like, no, we're not, we're not worried about FTC or DOJ review.

So she's well, you're not seeing a Pinterest buyer.

What would really be poking too hard?

I'm trying to think, what could they buy?

FedEx.

I've always said Apple or Amazon's going to make a bid for HBO.

Yeah.

FedEx.

FedEx might be a problem.

Yeah.

Well, there's a lot of stuff.

I mean, Google acquiring Pinterest would absolutely get a review and be challenged.

But although, do you remember when I asked Sundar about that?

He was very quiet.

He didn't say a word.

It's obviously in their area.

In their Twitter, he was like, no, thank you very much.

But Pinterest certainly is in everybody's radar in that regard because it's so inexpensive.

Speaking of the money.

I mean, the only thing, so far, the only thing that's come out of Lena's administration of the FTC, and I'm a fan of hers, is that the morale is low.

Me too.

So, I mean, Tim and Lena are these incredible thought leaders.

And the question is, all right.

Is that all?

Are they just thought leaders or are they actual administrators and leaders that can rally an organization and navigate what I'm sure is a massively complex political environment to get things done?

She's got to make a big move and make a point.

And I think it may have be too late.

It should have have been made a year ago.

You know, just waiting and waiting and figuring is not really the thing to do here.

And I agree, you shouldn't just litigate unnecessarily, but there's plenty of fodder for her and discovery and getting the case going and showing who's boss.

I think she's really blown an opportunity here.

We'll see how it goes.

Again, Holly very much articulated the problem right there in healthcare, information, how much information these companies will have.

And if they get into healthcare in a big way, watch out, I think.

Anyway, Scott, let's pivot to a listener question.

You've got, you've got.

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

You've got mail.

This question came in via email.

I'll read it.

Hi, Karen Scott.

I'm a 52-year-old founder and CEO of the company here in London.

Oh, you can have a friend, your new friend.

My company hasn't done well as I would have liked.

We're facing some unfun months ahead, and I'm considering a change.

However, many of my clients are friends of mine, and they wouldn't be able to find another firm to provide the services we offer.

Hmm, I wonder what it provides.

My question for both of you, as serial entrepreneurs, is: how do you handle this situation?

I don't want to alienate my friends, but I'm concerned that my career is stagnating and there are more lucrative opportunities out there.

Thanks in advance.

And I hope to run it to Scott in London.

I will send you his address, sir.

The listener asks us to withhold their name.

Scott Galloway, London, England, near Buckingham Palace.

I don't know where you live, actually.

So what do you think about this?

I say get out.

I always get out.

I always leave.

I don't know.

I just feel like if I'm not happy, I'm not doing unfun, if something's unfun, I undo it and I go.

You can't be working because clients are friends of yours and they depend on you.

They can always find someone else.

By the way, one thing, get out when it's unfun.

Two, you're not, as my grandmother used to say, the graveyards are full of indispensable people.

So you're not indispensable.

So what do you think?

You're exactly right.

They say there's a reason why pilots tell you

if there's a loss of oxygen or pressurization to fix your own oxygen mass first.

You have to take care of yourself and your family.

And And you're not going to be able to take care of your clients if you're unhappy.

This is an easy one.

You figure out a transition strategy.

You say to your clients who are your friends, and you can be honest with your friends, I'm not happy.

I don't like this.

It's not going as well as I'd hoped.

This is how I'm going to transition my services to another firm.

You might be able to sell that client base.

And you're responsible.

It's like leaving a company.

When you leave a company, you make sure that you exit gracefully.

You don't give them two weeks' notice and bail and leave them hanging.

You transition your clients, you transition your responsibilities, you upskill people, you identify people who could potentially take over your role, and you leave the place and your role, hopefully as good as it was when you were there.

He can absolutely do the same thing here, but his obligation is to the well-being, his own mental health, and the economic security of his family.

And his friends will understand.

Yeah.

We tap out a lot, don't we?

I mean, over our careers, we've changed for various reasons, but I think we do it because we don't like what we're doing and see other opportunities most of the time.

Yeah, I've done it because I've been beamed in the fucking face and I have to find something else to do.

Yours has been a function of opportunity.

Mine's been a function of the world, literally smacking me and saying, No, you should try something.

I'm just living in London.

Not Karis Wisher.

No, not Karis Wisher.

I'm just took Leia and gangster to Regent's Day.

It's so amazing.

It's off-leash here.

It's off-leash.

They terrorize everybody.

It's hard to do.

Oh, great.

Fantastic.

That sounds wonderful.

Watch for the old ladies wandering around with that giant dog of yours.

Oh, my God.

Your dog off-leash?

That sounds very terrifying.

Just let me know when that's happening.

They're actually pretty nice.

People, people.

I know, I know.

So anyway, a listener who's withholding their name, but

lives in London, we say, go.

Don't worry about it.

Don't worry so much.

People are so, you know, I have to say, let me just add one more thing here.

Young people say this to me all the time.

Like,

I can't do it because my career, because of this.

Get off the hamster wheel if you don't like what you're doing.

I say this to everybody.

Get off the hamster wheel.

Absolutely.

No question.

Yeah.

With young people, it's different.

I don't know.

The first thing is...

Stay in your lane, you're telling them, but go ahead.

Well, no, no, no.

Stay in your lane is totally different.

Stay in your lane is not, don't do things or don't talk about stuff you shouldn't.

I was miserable at Morgan Stanley like within three weeks,

but someone said to me, it's an amazing platform.

You're young.

You have no credibility.

Stay the full two years.

With young people, it's different.

You're looking to build credibility.

And also, young people think, oh, wait, this isn't as fun as college football

and my fraternity.

I must not love it.

No, it's called work.

It takes some time.

And also, there's a certain amount of shitty work just involved in getting started.

And so my advice to a lot of people,

I just want to make sure a bunch of young people don't run out of quit their jobs.

You do not want to have a resume that looks like a tapestry coming out of your 20s.

Until you have the credibility of a Kara Swisher who can leave and has five other entities that want you to work for them.

I used to leave when I was young.

I'm going to push, but go ahead.

You keep going.

Keep going.

Well, I'm going to disagree and compliment you.

I think you're more talented than most people, Kara.

And I think Scott Galloway at Morgan Stanley at 23 that has no experience, not a hell of a lot of talent, and has an opportunity to stick somewhere two years, so I'm more attractive to business schools or that next thing.

Unless you have another job, you want to be really thoughtful before you leave.

At a minimum, you want to talk to some lame boomer such as myself and just get the benefit of their advice.

Because you do not, most people, most people have a more difficult time getting a job when people show up and they've had three jobs in five years.

I don't hire people who've had three jobs in five years.

I go, what happened?

What went wrong?

And so as a young person, you want to find a place where you're learning, hopefully a good brand, a good platform that builds credibility and currency.

Because very few people other than Kara Swisher know what they want to do in their early 20s.

I thought I wanted to be an investment banker.

That was ridiculous.

I was terrible at it and I hated it.

And the majority of people don't.

That is a fair point about not knowing what you want.

I, though, think that I'm a life is too short person.

And when I was very young, I left things constantly.

I, I, you know, I, I wasn't incredibly careless with shirt.

I kind of was.

I mean, I left that John McLaughlin thing when you were sexually harassing me.

I love how you taught yourself.

I wasn't incredible.

Actually, I kind of was.

I kind of was.

I kind of was.

As I reflect on it, I kind of was incredible.

There was almost a moment of like humility, and you checked yourself.

I couldn't do it.

Humility almost creep in.

I say go, and you say stay for young people.

I say, get your

credibility.

It's called work for a reason.

Don't call daddy first before you make any big moves and leave a good firm, especially if it's a good platform.

I say this to my kids.

I'm like, quit school?

Right.

Good, good decision.

I'm always.

A friend, a kid who used to work for me and broke my heart and left, went to Google.

He's like, I hate it here.

I'm just managing keywords for chilies.

And I'm like, you're at Google.

Stay there.

Just stay there.

Stay there until you're there at least two years.

Don't listen to Scott.

Go to London and stay at his house.

This is a good question, London man.

That might have been Prince Charles writing us.

What do you think?

That's right, I mean.

Hello.

That probably was Prince Charles.

Yeah.

I bet it was.

He has, you know, unfun months, is considering a change.

He can't, he has many clients.

Anyway, if stick with the king thing in that regard, you're the king.

Stay with the king.

All right.

All right.

They don't like it.

They don't like it.

They don't like it.

Now, in a minute, if you've got a question of your own you'd like answered, send it our way.

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

All right, Scott, one more quick break and then you can make your prediction.

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Okay, Scott, let's hear your predictions.

Although, I'm going to go first because one prediction I got right, Florida's Attorney General has asked the Supreme Court to weigh in on the Florida and Texas laws governing free speech on social media.

Here's what I said earlier this week.

The problem is this has gone down a free speech path when it has nothing to do with free speech.

And I agree, though, these companies have free speech too.

And we'll see how it plays out, but it's got to move to the Supreme Court.

I don't see how any other way this is not going to be.

The Supreme Court hasn't agreed to take up the case, but we'll see.

So, I think we were correct, both of us,

because I'm being generous here.

Go ahead.

What is your prediction?

So,

after 24 hours, I've come to the snap judgment that people underestimate just how incredibly powerful and important the queen was to the monarchy.

And if you look at the pattern of all monarchies pretty much over the last century, they've primarily just petered out.

And the whole construct kind of doesn't make sense.

And I don't think, I think the, I think the same is true here, but it'll be incremental.

And I think that incremental effect of the monarchy starting to lose its power here, I think Northern Ireland is going to potentially talk about reunifying with Ireland.

And I think Scotland, who's always justifiably been a little resentful of being ruled by the United Kingdom or

England.

But it'll be nuanced.

This is my prediction.

I think Scotland is going to engage in a bid or an effort to try and rejoin the EU.

I think that's their excuse.

It'll be a twofer.

They'll get to say, we're not stupid.

I mean, if you look at the leave, the leave thing was basically pushed over the edge by kind of rural Englanders.

Basically, London wanted to stay.

People in the suburbs and the rural parts wanted to leave.

And I think that the twofer for Scotland will be they want to be part of the EU and they want to be away from England.

And if you look at the Commonwealth, it's everyone from

Australia, New Zealand, Canada, but it's also the Virgin Islands, Antigua, Jamaica.

All of these places have the Queen on their coins and their currency.

I don't think they're going to want Charles.

I think they'll use this as an excuse and they'll be polite about it.

They'll say, we still are big fans of the Queen, but we're going to use this as kind of

the final step in our independence.

But I think you're going to see the Commonwealth, if you will, or the monarchy lose substantial territories.

And the most interesting one, in my view, will be Scotland will engage in an effort to rejoin the EU.

Scotland would be a big problem.

Scotland's big because they're pretty economically tied to each other.

Northern Ireland isn't that big.

That would be very symbolic.

Reunification there, that would probably, I don't know, maybe that'd be good for Ireland.

But I think the biggest one would be the biggest one would definitely be Scotland.

They share, obviously they share a land border.

What about Australia?

What about Australia?

New Zealand.

Yeah, but I don't think they're nearly as integrated.

I think that's mostly symbolic at this point.

Belize?

Grenada?

Yeah, I don't know.

I think Scotland's the big one.

I don't know.

I think the other ones are mostly like, we like her.

We put her on our currency.

I don't think it's much more than that.

Like Canada.

But I think Scotland is much more economically integrated.

I mean, Canada, basically, my understanding is, well, the Scots have, I need to learn more about this.

Scots have representation in Parliament at the end of the day.

which parliamentary government here gets to decide, gets to make big decisions that affect Scottish citizens every day.

That's not true of Canadian citizens.

I think they saw that the connective tissue across the monarchy in the Commonwealth would start to fray after her loss.

So what did they do?

I don't think it's any accident that she died in Morn Scotland.

Yeah.

I think they strategically said, okay, she's not well.

This might be it.

We want to show our affinity and affection.

She did love that place, though.

Oh, and it's a beautiful place.

But if you look at her travel,

she always said the queen needs to be seen.

I think something along the lines of that the queen needs to be seen.

It can't be a figment of people's imagination.

And she used to go to all these places, and she created tremendous goodwill.

She did.

They do on those tours.

You know, it's interesting, at the top of this website, royal.uk, some information on this website may be out of date following the recent announcement of the death of the queen.

You think they could change their website real quick.

They have stuff, though.

They have a thing about the king and queen consort, but they're keeping her up there.

They're keeping her brand up there over

King Charles.

But it's a moment, I think it was consumer.

Whenever prices are raised,

it's an opportunity.

People rethink, or COVID was the mother of all rethink.

People thought, okay, do I need to be buying this?

Do I need to be approaching my life this way?

I think her death will give a lot of these nations that were affiliated with the monarchy a chance to rethink their relationship.

And I think a lot of them are going to decide just politely to say, we're done.

Yeah.

Anyway, it really is an interesting time.

I think that's a good one.

Do you have any others?

No, I said that I thought inflation was going to fall as dramatically.

I'm going to England versus Germany at Wembley Stadium, which I'm excited about.

I'm going to see Arsenal play Liverpool.

When do you go to Italy?

Go visit their new state.

Not for a while.

Problematic Prime Minister.

We're going to soak up all the great Premier League football first before we head to the United States.

Going up to your old homeland in Scotland.

I love Scotland.

I had such a good time.

I'm going to Scotland.

Yeah, I'm going to Scotland to see the Rangers play in a couple of weeks.

Wow.

So it's all around sports.

You know what it's all around, Kara?

I have no interest in sports.

My 12 and my 15-year-olds are football crazy.

And my advice to any father is give up all notion that your kids are going to be engaged in the shit you're interested in.

That's about you.

Being a good dad is about leaning into what they're interested in.

I know.

I just went to a football crazy football game tournament, the hoop tournament, whatever.

I went to it all day Sunday the other day.

Not all day, a big chunk of it.

I am very happy you're at home.

I'm very happy you're home.

You were wandering around a little bit, but now I'm glad you're there with your family.

I got all pissed off.

Some fancy friends of ours invited us to this black tie thing tonight, and they, and, and they said, oh, it's to benefit Amazon.

And I'm like, I am not moving to London to go to that fucking fundraiser for Amazon.

I hate Amazon.

They're like, no, no, no, the Amazon Scott.

Oh.

The Amazon.

And I'm like, oh, sorry.

Never mind.

I'm in.

I'm in.

I'm like, I'm not going to a benefit for Amazon.

I'm going to go to that river for being named after the company.

I got so angry.

I'm so stupid and so in my own world.

I thought there was a benefit for the e-commerce company in Seattle.

They're like, no, we're trying to save the Amazon Scott.

Go get a a gin.

Start it.

Start in on the gin.

I'm wearing a kilt.

Daddy's wearing a kilt tonight.

All right, Bridget.

Oh, God.

Oh, Bridget Jones.

I'm so happy that you're happy.

I'm going to call you Bridget Jones.

Go ahead and read us out, Bridget Jones.

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

Ernie Andrew Todd, engineering this episode.

Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Miles Severio.

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

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

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

A wonderful quote from Norman Cousins I stumbled on today.

Life is an adventure in forgiveness.

We're so in our own heads.

When anyone's not nice to you or there's a perceived slight, imagine the struggles you're dealing with.

They're dealing with those too.

Life is an adventure in forgiveness.

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.

Collagen smoothies and cold plunges, Pilates classes and fitness trackers.

But what does it actually mean to be well?

Why do we want that so badly?

And is all this money really making us healthier and happier?

That's this month on Explain It to Me, presented by Pureleaf.

Mike and Alyssa are always trying to outdo each other.

When Alyssa got a small water bottle, Mike showed up with a four-litre jug.

When Mike started gardening, Alyssa started beekeeping.

Oh, come on.

They called a truce for their holiday and used Expedia Trip Planner to collaborate on all the details of their trip.

Once there, Mike still did more laps around the pool.

Whatever.

You were made to outdo your holidays.

We were made to help organize the competition.

Expedia, made to travel.