Twitter's Whistleblower and Biden's Debt Jubilee, with Sam Sanders

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Hi, everyone.

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

I'm Kara Swisher.

Scott Galloway is on a beach somewhere reading through a steamy S1.

Today, I'm joined by the host of Vulture's new pop culture podcast, Into It.

Welcome, Sam Sanders.

It is so good to be here, Kara.

I'm a big fan and honored to be on the show.

How's your podcast going?

Now it just launched.

Tell people about it.

What's going on with it?

So, Intuit is a weekly vulture show all about the pop culture we are obsessed with.

So, I get to hang out with Vulture's best and brightest and the occasional celebrity and journalists to talk about the weird, lovable, quirky, hateable pop culture we can't stop thinking about.

Last week, I was able to talk about

maybe

the most loved and hated show on TV, Yellowstone.

Also,

biggest dramas on TV.

And then this week, we got to sample celebrity alcohol.

We taste-tested celebrity

branded spirits to see which one is the best.

So we kind of do everything.

We're all over the map, but it's always fun.

So that, like, George Clooney and Ryan Reynolds, those kind of things.

They didn't change that.

The George Clooney alcohol because he's overexposed.

We did taste Bruno Mars's rum.

We did taste Rita Aura's tequila.

I actually have a bottom of Bruno Mars's rum if you want to see it.

No, thank you.

No, no, no, that's okay.

And the results were what?

People can listen and find it.

You have to listen to see who won, but I will say,

I don't think celebrity alcohols are any better than other alcohols.

It's just alcohol.

It's just alcohol.

It's brand new, correct?

And they all want to get into it.

You know, years ago on Entourage, that was the thing.

I think one of the characters had a celebrity.

I think it was a tequila.

It might have been a vodka.

And it was so funny they were dealing with it.

But a lot of people have them, right?

A lot of people are doing it.

Because it's so easy.

It is passive income for celebrities.

You put your name on it and you just get the checks.

And then you go to parties and serve it and things like that.

Well, that sounds like a good thing.

Sam, we're going to sit down with Issa Ray next month at Co.

She's done a lot of really fascinating things, her shows and things like that.

So I'm hoping you're going to be my biggest support because this is something you're great at.

And I'm not as I've watched obviously her shows and everything else and I'm interested in the business part but the cultural impact of Issa Ray is really important I think on lots of lots of she's really important you know I was a big fan of insecure I'm a big fan of rap shit but I'm even a bigger fan of the way she loves her her home city Los Angeles from the start with insecure she proudly repped South LA and Black LA and since her show took off she has been investing a lot of money into businesses that help Black LA and help South LA.

So I don't know.

I just feel like she's doing it right.

I actually live not too far from where her businesses are in South LA and I just love to see it.

She's kind of become restaurants.

What?

It's a coffee shop.

There's a whole bunch of stuff.

There's a coffee shop called Hilltop, I think, which I was at yesterday.

She's invested in some restaurants.

She loves the city and she loves Black LA.

And I want to ask her about that a lot because you don't see a lot of creatives giving back the way she does.

And she does.

Yeah.

And also, you know, where we are with it.

She had a huge success from a very early on and how she then navigates that going forward.

I think it's really important, especially as a woman of color in Hollywood, which, as you know, it's just dripping with women of color running things there.

So I'm excited to talk to have you do it with me, but I do want to talk about Yellowstone.

I love Yellowstone.

I don't know why.

I hate that I love it because it's really quite a horrible, hot mess.

But tell me what you were talking about.

What do you think of that show?

Yeah.

So I didn't know what it was until my aunt Betty convinced me to watch it when i was visiting her in delaware a few years ago and um she said sam this show is crazy it's got kevin costner it's on a ranch there are cowboy hats watch it and you know what it felt like for me the first time i watched it it felt like dallas but on a farm it was a classic family soap opera right so i watched the first season in two days and thought nothing of it but a few weeks ago i caught wind of the really interesting backstory around yellowstone uh the creator of that show taylor sheridan and other fans of the show say that consistently it gets snubbed by the Emmys, even though it's the most popular drama on TV.

They say it gets snubbed for the big categories because it's too conservative.

And I said, oh, that's interesting.

Let's talk about it.

I want to know about it.

So I ended up calling last week on the show, Tressie Macmillan Cottom.

She's an op-ed comment from the New York Times.

And she wrote about Yellowstone and how liberals and conservatives are polarized in their viewing and what they they take seriously.

And we had a really great discussion about the quiet coding that exists in all the TV that we watch.

So that interests me.

I do not think Yellowstone is the best show.

I do think it says a lot about politics, and I like that conversation.

Well, although Kevin Costner was wearing a Liz Cheney t-shirt, as I recall, but which is sort of makes him conservative.

It is, I don't know if it's a conservative show.

I don't think Dallas won a lot of enemies.

You know what I mean?

I think it's one of those kind of popular.

Soaps aren't respected unless there's succession.

I think succession is a soap as well, written differently.

Oh, yeah.

Do you have a favorite character?

I mean, with succession and with the yellowstone, I love the redhead daughter, who's kind of crazy.

Redhead daughter, like both of the shows, redhead daughter, side me up.

I'm into it.

She is a I loved her in the bathtub.

Remember, she was in the outdoor bathtub and walked around naked.

That was my favorite.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I think about Yellowstone, though, that we got into with Tressie on the show last week.

If you really analyze it, it is a story of white grievance and what white people get to hold on to as America changes.

You have this white family who has this land.

Gentrification wants it.

Corporations want it.

Climate activists want them to get off of it.

Native people want that land back.

And so it is this white family trying to keep what they have and changing America.

And with that as a metaphor,

it's about our politics right now and white grievance, you know?

So watching it through that lens now, I find incredibly captivating.

As you know, grievance culture is one of my favorite things.

Everyone's aggrieved.

And the wrong people are

the wrong people are aggrieved, the people who have everything.

And I think it's really interesting.

I think I find it griftery.

I find people building businesses off of it.

But you're right.

I hadn't thought of it that way.

Don't take my leg.

Right.

And they're like obsessed with it.

Right.

Kevin Costner is a beautiful actor version of the angry white man watching Fox News.

He is

doing that white grievance but

as a beautiful actor in a beautiful pristine show and so it's more palatable but it does also follow those other

which maybe they were all grievance shows weren't they in a lot of ways it was who was taking over the oil who was taking over the you know the cul-de-sac or whatever anyway let's listen actually to of you guys talking about the main character and trusty talking about it john dutton the main character that's kevin costner's character you know is just driven by a lot of anxieties and fear and i think he is a bit of a Rorschach for a lot of people who are feeling fearful about social change in this nation.

And he's facing it in a way, you know, with bravado, with guns, with

money.

That is the American fantasy, right?

If there's something in America you don't like, what do we tell people?

Well, work hard, make enough money, and buy your way out of it.

And that's what John Dutton promises.

So when you think about that, is there any other show, I guess the comparison would be, would be succession, right?

Which is also, which wins all the Emmys.

Why does that win all the Emmys and the other doesn't?

I don't know because, yeah, Succession is easier to watch because you know right away you're supposed to hate all of them.

I'm supposed to hate this family.

I'm supposed to hate what they do and how they do it.

And I actually think the stakes never change because the dad never dies.

To get real plot and movement, he'd have to go away or step down.

That hasn't happened yet.

So it's almost like a comedy, comedy in my opinion it is a situational sitcom comedy in which the fights just repeat themselves and they circle around nothing because there are no stakes because they're all too rich to actually care whereas with yellowstone i don't know if i should love them or hate them I don't know if I should be sympathetic to them or be repulsed by them.

And I find that more interesting.

I think the writing on succession is much better.

But I think the development of these characters who I'm not sure how to feel about in Yellowstone,

it's stickier.

It's stickier.

Yeah.

I love Yellowstone.

They have another show called 1883, right?

They got two prequels now.

There's 1883 and then some other one.

There's a whole Yellowstone universe.

You know,

Yellowstone is one of the biggest dramas on TV.

Some episodes get 10 million viewers a pop.

Yep.

All the time.

It's a big deal.

Yeah.

So, I mean, I love succession.

I've seen every episode, but that show in the greater scheme of things is tiny compared to Yellowstone.

We should be talking about Yellowstone.

We should.

I do all the time.

I recommend it to everybody.

All right.

Today we'll talk about Silicon Valley's newest whistleblower and Twitter's latest headache and also President Biden's plan to cancel student debt.

And we'll hear from a listener about nostalgia, which you should be able to talk about, Sam.

It's a part of culture.

But speaking of capitalizing on nostalgia, another show that has become a big hit, of course, is Game of Thrones and HBO's House of the Dragon, which is the prequel.

It was the largest premiere in HBO history.

The Game of Thrones prequel drew almost 10 million viewers in its debut.

Speaking of big numbers, on Sunday night, the overwhelming viewership caused the HBO Max app to crash for thousands of watchers.

More than $100 million was spent on marketing the show.

You saw it everywhere.

Talk a little bit about this show because there's another one.

It's a big hot mess of very violent people.

I had a hard time watching this one.

I didn't watch.

I started watching it the other night.

I watched like 15 minutes of it.

Then I got to one of the sex scenes and I said, It doesn't look like anyone's having fun here.

I'm tapping out.

Right.

These weird, mutant-looking people having bad sex.

Yes, yes.

And then someone gets decapitated or disemboweled.

I don't want to watch that.

And then there was a decapitation.

There was a horrible C-section.

I'm just like, this show is not for me.

Yeah.

That said, I get it.

It's a big deal.

But what I am most into discussing and unpacking is how

these new ratings compare to the old ones for Game of Thrones.

And what I think is is happening here is that HBO has a strategy where they probably never expect to have a hit as big as Game of Thrones again, but they do want to keep as many Game of Thrones diehards in the service.

Right.

So this will be the first of several prequels.

If this one works out, there'll be another prequel and another one and another one in the same way that Disney Plus now has every Star Wars fan forever because there'll always be Star Wars prequels.

And

it is a weird way to navigate the erosion of TV monoculture.

No one expects to get everyone to watch.

They have to just go after fandoms and pick them off and keep them.

Well, it makes sense, whether it's Avengers, Star Trek.

You know, I've always wanted more from the shows I like, right?

There was always an end and that's something.

Some shows should end, right?

Yeah.

West Wing was something I've watched over and over again.

I don't know why.

I would rather watch a show again and again and again than get prequels of fair demand and quality.

You know what I'm saying?

Like, I don't ever want to watch an insecure prequel.

Insecure is a good show.

Keep it right there.

You know what I'm saying?

That's a good idea.

But these other things work that way.

I mean, like, Game of Thrones is perfect because there's so many characters and offshoots of characters.

And that's where they go down those paths with other people.

They've done it on a bunch of shows like that, where they move to other characters.

You know, George R.R.

Martin, I interviewed him once.

He's the most benign-looking person, and his wife looks exactly like him.

They look like a pair of weebles.

Really?

And my first question to him, they do, they wear little Greek fishing hats.

It was really, I was sort of struck by how simple he looked.

And then my first question is, what is wrong with you?

Like, where are you?

Where's your mind?

Yeah.

It was just,

and I did give up on that because of the violence.

I can't.

I mean, I know people love it, but I just couldn't.

I also don't get the reasoning for it.

It's all a fantasy world.

So it's not like they're saying we had to be true to history.

It's not historical.

There are dragons there.

You could just say, we're not going to show this horrible graphic violent sex that is usually hurting women.

It's interesting to see how the Lord of the Rings stuff that's going on on Amazon, that's debuting really soon in like a week or two.

Another big cultural moment.

That's a big.

Another one where I'm just like, did we need more of that?

Do we need more Lord of the Rings?

And what I fear is that as these studios try to keep franchises going to maintain the attention of franchise fandoms, the smaller stuff gets less attention, less focus, less money, less support.

I like small TV shows.

I like little bitty dramas.

I like hilarious comedies.

I want the landscape to be just as welcoming to the Michaela Coles of the world as it is to the Dufford Brothers and Stranger Things type shows that just become juggernaut franchises.

And I worry about that.

I worry about it.

And it used to be you could count on HBO Max to support the small darlings, but they've been hacking shows left and right and doubling down on things like Game of Thrones prequels.

Yeah, they are.

I mean, that's what pays the bills, unfortunately.

I know.

Speaking of not paying the bills, Movie Pass is back.

The movie subscription service will launch in beta around Labor Day.

Great idea, kind of thing.

Is it a great idea?

Yes, it's a great idea.

Okay.

Is it?

It is.

I mean, for a consumer, yes, it is for having it.

Original co-founder Stacey Spikes predicted Movie Pass would account for 30% of all ticket sales by 2030.

At its peak, it was responsible for 4%.

The newest version will operate on a tiered system with monthly credits.

Members will also be able to earn credits credits by watching ads on their phones.

On the other hand, the owner of Regal Cinemas said Monday they was considering filing for bankruptcy.

The movie business is in big trouble.

I wrote a column two or three years ago saying after the pandemic, people will not be going back, especially for what you were talking about, the small movies.

Oh, yeah.

And I interviewed Ted Sarandos about this.

He said that.

I got such blowback from Hollywood, but I was like, only the big Avengers-like things are going to work in the theaters or, you know, Bond or things like that.

What do you think is happening?

And what do you think of movie pass?

I think that's true.

And I think what we're seeing in the music industry and the movie industry and the TV industry is that this era of fragmentation that the internet introduced about 10 or 15 years ago, it's led to this shakeout where only the biggest names survive.

Only Beyonce or Adele can really sell an album these days.

You know, only Tom Cruise and the Top Gun sequel can make a billion dollars at the global box office.

Only Game of Thrones can be a hit.

And the rest is just little bitty, bitty, bitty bitty.

And so we are seeing the film industry slowly decrease and get smaller and smaller and smaller.

And I kind of think about movie theaters as art, as like jazz.

At one point, jazz was the most dominant music form in the country, if not the world.

Everyone listened to jazz, played jazz.

Jazz was top 40 radio.

And then it wasn't.

And now it's a thing your dad likes.

And you can hear it.

And there are jazz clubs, but it's harder to find.

And only the purists really go do it.

I think movie theaters are going that way.

Yeah, I agree.

I agree.

I was so, and they have to be beautiful, and they have to, they so long abuse the consumer.

They have to feed me, they have to give me drinks as the whole environment.

And even then, it's hard.

Anyone who's a teenager knows this.

They do not, they use streaming, they use their phones, they use everything else.

And that's not, I'm not like doing anecdotal.

It's so clear what the numbers are.

And unless it's a very big film, and there was a real, I was talking to a bunch of Hollywood analysts.

There was a real desert of movies in August where you see all the big ones.

You know, there wasn't much to go see in the theater, and things came and went, like Elvis and some others.

Um, I went to see Thor is the only movie I saw, and it was terrible, by the way.

And I bet it's really interesting that Hollywood clings to this idea.

I know David Zasloff at Warner is trying, Warner Discovery is trying to say that.

He and I had a big argument about it.

I was like, theaters are very quaint, very small business.

And they didn't like that answer for that.

If you know that you can make a hit on some existing brand, movie theater money is good money.

It's a lot of money, right?

And so, like a movie, like everything everywhere all at once, it is an indie film, a very good indie film, but it goes to theaters and through word of mouth, it makes like $70 million.

That is more than it would have made if it were just on a streamer.

Sure.

Right?

So sometimes it's worth it, but it's hard to tell.

One.

One.

That was the one.

There's only one, and it has to be totally delightful.

I did a great interview with Michelle Yeo, who's wonderful.

She's wonderful.

But I think they have to understand the money's coming from elsewhere and they have to, and it's going to be less money, lots of money in different places.

Anyway, speaking of someone who's not doing very well, Dr.

Oz's campaign continues to feel like a bad joke.

First, there was the Wagner's clip.

I thought I was doing some grocery shopping.

I'm at Wagner's, and my wife wants some vegetables for crude, right?

And now his campaign is criticizing his opponent, John Fetterman, but not for any of his policies.

Sam, could you play the part of Dr.

Oz's senior communications advisor, Rachel Tripp, and read this for me?

Quote: If John Fetterman had ever eaten a vegetable in his life, then maybe he wouldn't have had a major stroke and wouldn't be in the position of having to lie about it constantly.

Wow.

Wow.

I will have a response in a second.

I had a stroke.

Fetterman responded in a tweet saying, I can't imagine ridiculing someone for their health challenges.

So irresponsible for a doctor to say this.

It's wild.

Well, and then after it was said,

Dr.

Oz's team doubled down, tripled down with this response from the comms advisor trip.

They wrote, quote, nice try.

Dr.

Oz has been urging people to eat more veggies for years.

That's not ridicule.

It's good health advice.

We're only trying to help.

I'm sorry.

That pissed me off.

My mother had a major stroke almost 20 years ago.

And a lot of times that shit can come out of nowhere and it'll fuck up your entire life.

It is a serious problem.

It affects a a lot of Americans, regardless of their health status.

It's not a game.

It's not a point-scoring thing for politics.

Can I say, fuck you, Dr.

Oz?

Fuck you.

You may.

You may.

Fuck you.

Please do.

Dr.

Oz.

That is stone approach.

I'm not going to.

This

is the worst doctor ever.

It is.

He also

had so many diet-fed controversies recommending all kinds of.

I never get mad at Oprah, but I'm mad at Oprah for giving us Dr.

Oz.

Oh, I gives us.

You know,

I had a stroke and I ate a lot of broccoli, and somehow I had it anyway.

And I eat very healthy.

And also, by the way, my family's from Pennsylvania.

Ketchup is a vegetable in Pennsylvania.

This is not a winning political thing to make fun of eating habits.

Now, and to get people to eat better, as they should, is something that you do in a nice way, not in this, not in a mocking way, which is really repulsive.

A hundred Pennsylvania doctors put out a statement condemning Dr.

Oz after the campaign's comments.

My brother is a doctor, also was horrified by it.

He's also a cardiologist, by the way, a cardiac thoracic surgeon, knows all about this.

I just, as someone who had a stroke, Dr.

Oz, it's shameful.

What is it?

And, you know, I didn't, again, I didn't have a stroke because I didn't eat carrots.

I eat carrots.

I like carrots.

It's because of a genetic anomaly that I have, two of them.

And it's really quite.

disgusting that they did this.

I was, the Wagner's thing was funny, like the veggie tray, et cetera, you know, like what an idiot.

But this is, this guy deserves to lose and lose badly, and John Fetterman deserves to win.

And I mean, just to like, and like, you've said this, but strokes really, really change your life overnight.

My family has a history of high blood pressure and stroke.

My mother had a massive one when I just finished high school.

Two of my aunts had one.

My brother, who is about a year older than me, had a mini stroke a few years ago.

Yeah, that's right.

And it's heavy and it's never a laughing matter.

We never joke about stroke.

That'd be like joking about,

I can't even think of a comparison.

It's just, it's a shitty thing.

Exactly.

It's a shitty thing.

You don't want it to happen to your worst enemy.

Shut up, Dr.

Oz.

Yeah, shut up.

It's appalling.

And also, he's a charlatan.

He's a well-known charlatan on all kinds of medical things for him to be giving medical advice at this point.

Come on.

They should sanction him in some way.

What do you think about the legacy and the long tail of Oprah in light of Dr.

Oz being what he is now and Dr.

Phil being what he is?

I think Oprah's an entertainer and she gave us a lot of you know some of it was good some of it was bad and her men were very bad but i think i guess the gay the gay designer was okay like well the gays and the women were great because she had like nate burkis and maya and yeah

love that yeah yeah she had the legends ball with all the fun ladies like but the white guys she never she never picked good white guys Never picked good white guys.

Bad, bad white guys.

But, you know, Dr.

started out promisingly, I suspect, and then just they lose their fucking minds.

And honestly, if I saw him, I'd punch him.

I want you to.

I wouldn't really punch him, but I take that stroke, Dr.

Oz.

Papow.

Yes, exactly.

Exactly.

Actually, one of the reasons I'm actually in San Francisco, I'm doing a lot of tests for my stroke to make sure it doesn't come again.

And so when this happened, and I'm in the middle of these tests

and thinking about doing some surgery around part of it, because I have a hole in my heart and things have changed.

It just was, it really does hit you.

And I'm sure your relatives felt the same way.

Oh, it's

patently offensive.

Yeah, I kind of, if I can say it, I hope that guy fucking loses.

Yeah, yeah, I think he's going to.

And people in Pennsylvania,

really, even the Republicans in my family hate him.

He's a tool.

He's a tool.

Speaking of staying healthy, Peloton may be coming to Amazon.

And the first, the company will step out of its direct-to-consumer model and sell equipment through another retailer, Amazon.

Won't get everything.

Peloton is keeping its high-end bike and treadmill off the platform, but nonetheless, it could be a step in the direction of Peloton selling.

It's a wonderful brand.

Scott and I have always thought it needed to sell.

It had a big high during the pandemic.

I do have a Peloton.

I love Peloton.

You don't have one, correct?

I don't have one.

A lot of my friends have them.

I follow some of the coaches on social media because they're fun.

But I think.

Yeah.

And then the guy who loves Britney Spears, whatever, Cody Rigsby.

Oh, Cody.

Yeah, he's a big popular.

Yeah.

He's very fun.

He's very fun.

Yeah, yeah.

I think, though, it's like everyone's like, oh, my goodness, Peloton had this big crash after this big boom.

And it's like, shouldn't we know by now health fads like Peloton always fade out?

There's one every few years.

Oh, this is the new health crazes.

And it's not.

And like, it happened with Soul Cycle.

It happened with Peloton.

It probably happened with like Jazzer size 30 or 40 fucking years ago.

I don't know when there was all of this.

Pearl clutchy coverage of like people buying fewer Pelotons.

I was like, one, well, yeah, duh.

And then two, maybe it's a good thing people are are back outside, hopefully post-pandemic.

I can't.

That's true.

I can't feel bad for Peloton.

I also don't ever think that a business needs to have continued and endless growth.

That's why I don't work in business.

But I will say, if Amazon buys Peloton, I think Amazon will do what they do to every boutique business they buy.

They make it worse.

They made Whole Foods worse.

They did.

They just bought my concierge medical service, one medical.

I think they're going to make that worse.

And so I don't have a Peloton, so I don't care, but I think they'll make the service of Peloton worse.

Ring.

They bought Ring.

Well, they should make that worse because I think Ring is a surveillance state and I don't like it.

I would agree with you.

I would agree with you.

I think Amazon has yet to buy things and let them just stay good and beautiful and small and cute.

They optimize it, and then I'm just over it.

Yeah, I think Apple's a better purchaser for this kind of thing.

Really?

That's my feeling.

Yeah, because they've got all those health things.

They did a whole health service.

Peloton, if you don't use it, it's really good.

It's really,

they have boxing and yoga and meditation, and their bike stuff is great.

It's well, it's beautifully, beautifully done the way Apple stuff.

And they have a big health service, Apple does, and also beautifully done, but they don't have a device.

And I think they would be the better owner of this.

And you could link up the Apple Watch with the Peloton.

Right.

Yep.

Yep.

It does.

It already does that.

Oh, okay.

I don't even know.

So

I think that they're a better owner because it fits in with

what they're already making and they're making what else.

And Peloton is small, but it's, it really is well done.

And I had a Twitter spaces session, and I all, it was huge.

All these fans of Peloton came and they love it, but, and they want to help it.

And they had 29 ideas of things, relationship they wanted to have with Peloton.

It's just too small a company.

It does need to be affiliated with a bigger one.

I think Apple's the better one, but I think Amazon, you're right, is going to probably turf it.

Can I tell you, being from South Texas, I remember the original Whole Foods in Austin.

It was an amazing store.

Oh, yeah.

yeah, great store.

An amazing grocery store.

You go to Whole Foods now,

it's fine.

It's fine.

Yeah.

Anyway,

I think it's soulless now.

I think it's soulless now in a lot of ways.

Anyway,

I go to Wagner's.

No, I go to Wegmans.

Anyway, I go to Wegmans.

It just opened in my neighborhood.

It's such a good store.

I can't go on anymore about it.

I love it so much.

Okay, speaking of which, let's get on to our first big story.

Silicon Valley's newest whistleblower says Twitter is a threat to national security and democracy.

Twitter's former head of security, Peter Zatko, aka Mudge, they all have a name, came forward, all these hackers do, came forward this week with a slew of accusations against the service.

The whistleblower report Mudge claims that Twitter's user data is inadequately protected or deleted as required.

Twitter is lying to the FTC about that.

Also, Twitter's systems are vulnerable to crash and data loss.

The company may have foreign spies on its payroll.

This is not new.

It already had some before and caught them.

And lastly, Mudge claims that Twitter doesn't actually know about how many bots are on its platform.

Twitter disputes the accusations, which they also did today at an all-hands meeting.

I have mixed feelings about this, about Mudge.

I think he's very well respected.

I do think he's very different than Francis Haugen.

It's the same group, Whistleblower Aid, that brought him forward.

I think he makes a lot of accusations, and he doesn't have the data to back it up in some ways.

At the same time, we all know Twitter is an information sieve, so are all of them.

Same problems happen at Facebook, in Snapchat, et cetera, et cetera.

All these companies face these issues.

Twitter just doesn't have,

as an information security expert told me, you know, when it happened at Facebook, including too much access by too many employees, Mark threw hundreds of people at the problem.

And at Twitter, it's three people and a parrot working on it because it's a smaller company.

So I think he had some points to make.

I think he makes a lot of accusations that aren't,

I think he's correct.

He could be correct and also be

wrong if that is a thing.

And I do.

And lastly, the timing.

The timing is really unusual because of Twitter's head into court and its showdown with Elon Musk.

And the stuff he's alleging has nothing to do with the stuff Musk has been electing or very not as much to do with Muslim.

Which is why it's interesting to me.

Like when I first saw the headlines, before I read the piece, I was like, oh, shit.

Did Elon pay off a whistleblower?

to come public now and that's your first thought it was bad but it seems like it's not at all affiliated i will say this guy said everything told everything spilled all the beans some of it can't really be verified but some of these things, I'm like, I don't think he would lie about that.

And it's probably true.

The parts in which he talks about the ways in which foreign governments had basically infiltrated Twitter, there was one ex-Twitter employee convicted of using his position at the company to spy on Saudi dissidents and government critics.

Which they caught.

Yeah.

That's called a hole.

It doesn't mean they did it on purpose, but go ahead.

Okay, go ahead.

Still, that's crazy.

And then he also says that he believed the Indian government had forced Twitter to put one of its its agents on the payroll of Twitter with access to user data during a time of protests.

I don't think he would lie about that.

And I kind of feel like, oh, that probably happened.

Why would you lie about that?

Well, here's the problem.

I'd like to see the proof.

These are very serious allegations.

And if you're making them, and again,

believe me, I've written about this at Yahoo.

What was really interesting to me was.

Chief information security officers always see themselves as sort of savior heroes and everything's a mess.

One, why didn't he fix them when he was there?

Two, why is there a silence by other chief information security officers on this?

They usually are not silent people.

This guy has a great reputation.

They have not rushed to his defense, which is interesting because I think he overstepped

a couple of things.

Twitter can be porous, as many of these sites are.

That's the one thing I'd like people to focus on: all these sites are very porous.

Two, it doesn't mean that these is a nefarious thing.

It means that they're not devoting money and time to it, to safety.

He did a sentence where he's like,

they were interested in growth over safety.

Can you believe that?

And I was like, yes, yes, I can believe that.

That's all business is.

Yeah.

It's like, did he suddenly just realize this is the case?

It's almost like someone, like, can you believe politics is cynical?

I'm like, yes, I can believe it.

I do think the timing is unusual.

And Mike Masnick and Casey Newton wrote two very good pieces, sort of taking apart some of this, where you can be right generally, but not specifically.

And I think that's, we'll see, here's the good thing.

There's a court case.

So bring the data.

There's an investigation.

Yeah.

And unfortunately, or it won't, right?

So what he needs to bring, Francis Haugen brought the data, brought the data.

Let's see the information.

Let's see what's going on.

Other companies like Facebook and Google, infiltration by foreign spies.

What a surprise again.

Because, you know, why do you rob banks?

It's because that's where the money is, right?

It's, that's where you do they obviously that's where the information is so we'll see where it happens I think he he he he's making excellent points but he's just couldn't resist selling past the sale and and that's my issue with this

and he's relying on his his reputation for that and he there was also

allegations by Twitter and others internally and I've heard this across the board of Twitter bad manager I'm sure yes he was a hacker before he was a manager of course he's a bad man right should he have been there He was not managed by Jack Dorsey.

He had, there's some issues with another person who was hired that he doesn't seem to address.

So I think he should have had it buttoned down a lot more here or maybe taken off a, you know, it's almost like putting on too many pieces of jewelry.

He needed to take off a few.

But I will say, reading this story, talking about it with you now,

regardless of how much of him we believe, it does support my central thesis about Twitter, which I've had for years now.

Twitter has never been a winning business business model.

It's never been a viable company.

It's never had a model that is actually

made for long-term growth and success.

Most of the people on Twitter who use it frequently will tell you, it makes me feel horrible.

That's not how it's supposed to be.

It's not a winning business model.

I say this as someone who tweets a lot.

I just feel like

that's why I'm also so confused about someone who is ostensibly as smart as Elon Musk wanting to buy this shithole company.

I don't get it.

Why does Elon wanted to?

Why do rich people want to buy sports teams?

Why do rich people want to buy yachts?

What yacht?

Can't you rent a yacht?

You know, like, he just wanted it.

He just, he's the richest man.

He loves it.

He wanted to buy it.

You know, here's the deal.

Let's separate Musk from this.

It's a different, it's two different stories.

Yes.

But unfortunately, he had to go right into Musk land where he just, what I would, I would urge everyone to read Mike Masnick's analysis of this because it's very clear.

It says nothing to do with Musk.

Musk made an agreement to buy this company.

Unless he can prove they malevolently tried to trick him or it had material results, he has to buy the company.

He's going to lose in court.

This is a lot of smoke and mirrors.

That said, separately, these companies, especially Twitter, which doesn't have the money, needs to have better safety for the people that are using it.

And if you're using it, buyer beware.

How much did you pay for Twitter?

Zero.

Yeah.

So guess what you're getting?

Zero.

Zero.

Which of these platforms has the best safety, though?

Apple.

Apple?

Well, yeah.

But they don't have a social network.

Right.

That's they did.

They had one called Ping.

But, you know, unless you're take your time, like I use this thing called a Yubi key.

You've got to really go crazy to protect yourself on all these platforms.

And that's really their job.

And of course, they don't take it seriously.

They never have.

They never have.

And they do, but they don't, right?

It's not their first.

It's not their first thing.

Growth over safety has been the

Silicon Valley's most problematic issue.

And they don't care about your information.

In fact, they want to use it and abuse it.

We'll see.

Jack Dorsey is at the center of this.

That's one thing that was brought out.

He has been silent.

He also pushed the acquisition.

He needs to be subpoenaed.

Elon Musk subpoenaed him.

And

I think he should be subpoenaed.

And aren't they friends?

I think so.

They may not be now, but yes, they're very close.

They were.

It's messy.

And let me tell you, one thing I don't mind is seeing Elon Musk go to court.

I'm so tired of that man.

I'm so tired of that man.

You know what it is, Kiera?

I just feel like you can never trust what he says.

He's always lying.

Yeah.

He's always lying about dumb stuff.

Like there was this story a few weeks ago where all of his talk about Hyperloop and the little underground tunnels, crock of shit.

He was never going to actually do it.

This man is such an unreliable narrator.

That is a good way to put it.

He also does create things, though.

He's a complex.

Let me just, I'm not going to push back on it because I think he's lost bread equity like you can't believe.

And as a cultural figure, speaking of which, he had a very strong cultural position, which I think has been really badly hurt.

And I think he lost a lot of, in terms of a cultural influencer, has lost, he has, he has influence over a certain kind of man.

Yeah.

He has a cult following with those guys, but like, that's not enough.

And I just think that like a lot of the things that he touts, he can never really back up.

And I even think of like his biggest success, which might be Tesla.

There are more and more reports about how Teslas aren't really great cars.

They can kind of fall apart on you really quickly.

It's hard to get them serviced and repaired in a timely fashion.

And the quality control is a lot less than what you would expect from a luxury car brand.

I just don't think he ever backs up his mouth ever.

He's a complex figure.

The stuff he's doing around space is quite amazing.

The car did fast forward everybody into electric cars.

See, that's the problem.

There's a lot of quality mixed in with a lot of the bullshit.

And that's the real problem.

And it's getting more bullshitty than quality.

I think that's really

and it would be easier to give him the benefit of the doubt if he didn't sound so unhinged and if he wasn't kind of making shit up half the time.

I don't know what to believe when he talks anymore.

Do you think as a cultural critic, how do you look at him as a cultural figure?

I think he represents everything wrong with the extremely wealthy in the world right now.

Extreme wealth and extreme power

are not good on the society writ large.

And there is such a concentration of extreme wealth and extreme power in the hands of guys like Elon Musk.

It's good for nobody.

It's good for nobody.

And I think if we don't

think about what these rich men, and it's usually men, are doing to our societies and what they've taken from our societies, we're going to end up in situations where the Elon Musks and the Jeff Bezos have more power than our governments.

I don't want that debt.

They do.

They already have it, Sam.

I don't want that.

It's Yellowstone.

It's Yellowstone is what it is.

But like, as shitty as the federal government is, and it's shitty, I would much rather have Joe Biden and them in charge.

Agree.

Than Elon Musk.

I'm sorry.

Oh, he was elected.

Yeah.

He was elected.

That's my view.

Sure.

Sure.

Sure was.

Sure was.

We do celebrate the rich in a way that's really untoward speaking of which

we're gonna go on a quick break when we come back we'll talk about biden's student debt jubilee and take a listener question about nostalgia

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off.

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

Your debt is canceled.

Well, some of it anyway.

This week, President Biden announced his long-awaited decision on student debt relief.

The executive order erases $10,000 of debt for borrowers who make below $125,000 a year.

The amount goes up to $20,000 for Pell grant recipients.

The administration says the move will affect 95% of all borrowers and fully wipe out the debt of almost 20 million people.

The plan is drawing criticism on all sides.

On the right, there are predictable arguments about responsibility.

They kept using the word deadbeat.

It was fascinating to watch their little messaging.

A prominent troll account called the House Judiciary GOP posted, if you take out a loan, you pay it back, period.

Oh, please stop.

On the left, the argument is the plan doesn't go far enough and also that it's not the effective way to reach people who need it.

It's too helpful to wealthier and white, whiter, and wealthier people.

Talk about this.

Can you complain about debt relief while supporting PPP loans?

Many people have not paid them back.

Joel Austine apparently is one of them.

There's all kinds of people.

One report says most of PPP loans went to business owners and wealthy households and only 2% went to low-income workers.

Several right-wing leaders like Steven Crowder and the Daily Caller complained about student loans online, but Twitter users pointed out that Crowder and the Daily Caller both received PPP loans that were forgiven by the government.

These people are the most ridiculous hypocrites going.

And then, of course, everyone got all the rich people got their tax relief.

Critics point out to the racial disparity in student loan debt, though.

The average black borrower owes $52,000, nearly double the average white borrower.

The NAACP pushed for $50,000 in debt relief.

So talk about this because everybody has an opinion, including people.

Catherine Rampell was like, there's better ways to do this financially.

Others think it's not.

I'm good with it.

I'm good with it.

I'm so good with it.

And I think the right wing and the conservative pushback on this was as you would expect.

Of course, they hate a thing that Joe Biden did.

Of course, they hate a thing that helps poorer people.

Of course, they hate a thing that might help black people.

But I was most surprised by the antagonism and the nastiness about this from the left.

There were folks on the left not just saying, oh, it's not enough, which you could say that.

They were like, this is evil.

It's awful.

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

It's not awful.

This disproportionately helps black borrowers who usually have to borrow more money than white borrowers to afford colleges.

And by some White House estimates, the average black borrower will see their balance cut nearly in half.

And more than one in four black borrowers will have their balance forgiven altogether.

That is before you include the additional 10K for Pell Grant recipients.

How the hell is this a bad thing?

I had people in my Twitter feed who were leftists saying that this was evil because it didn't cancel all the debt.

It's not evil.

You're going to have millions of people getting their debts washed out.

And I think there's this echo chamber on Twitter that just can't let a win be a win.

No, it's not everything, but it's a win.

And I think the messaging in the rest of the country outside of the Twitter sphere is, oh, Joe Biden canceled some fucking debt.

That's great.

You know, already this week in some professional wrestling tournament, one of the wrestlers made a riff about canceling some wrestler like Joe Biden canceled the debt.

You know, it's like, we like this like, we already know how this plays.

The big headline is Joe Biden canceled debt.

I think he handled it well.

Actually, when they were asking about this, he's like, well, all those rich people got that tax break and you were okay with that.

They love trickle down.

They still love trickle down.

And if the rich people get a break, then all of us will.

Or the companies or the corporations get a break.

They don't mind

when it's seen in other ways, whether it's PPP loans or tax breaks or the military

when it goes to this.

It's a waste of money.

And the word deadbeat,

I find that so extraordinary.

I'm sorry.

The deadbeats who were trying to go to college to get advanced degrees, those are deadbeats.

Yeah.

I just feel like, one,

We need to be a society that is as comfortable with folks on the lower end getting a break as we are with rich folks getting a break because rich folks are always getting a break i also want to say to the angry left literally someone in my mention said that this was evil and this was a leftist because it didn't get everything Before this move this week to cancel student debt, Joe Biden had quietly authorized the cancellation of about $32 billion in debt for borrowers who were defrauded by for-profit colleges and for borrowers who were disabled permanently.

Joe Biden's been canceling debt.

I don't get how anyone can get mad at this guy for doing this.

Well, it's not enough.

It's never enough.

It's never enough.

It's a not enough thing.

It's the same thing with the Inflation Reduction Act.

But I think that's what it is, is it's not enough.

It's not enough.

But this is how politics works.

I hate to break it to everybody.

You don't just get everything you want because you want it right away.

Yeah.

And I would urge people to think about just how much the Overton window has shifted.

15 years ago, nobody was talking about canceling student debt.

Any Democrat or Republican would have been laughed out of the room had they brought this up.

And now it's happening.

The debate on this issue has moved to the left's favor.

The debate on this issue has moved in Democrats' favor.

This is a good development.

Of course, it's not all that Democrats want, but god damn it, some 20 million people will see debt forgiven.

Take a win.

Take a fucking win.

The left is very dissatisfied.

They're grievance.

Grievance.

Yes.

Well, like they just, they just have this ability to like

snatch defeat from the hands of victory.

This is a win.

I just don't get it.

Sorry.

Don't get me started.

Yeah, it's interesting.

You can debate whether, where there's better ways to do this, but that means more.

And that means whenever you're going to give someone something, you take away from someone else somewhere.

Right.

And so I think that's part of it.

The other part is what I, what I loved, I'll tell you one thing, speaking of cultural, on all the, all the social networks, people who had paid off their debt were like, I'm glad someone didn't have to go through what I did.

I don't feel bad it's like you know it's sort of someone was equating it to people who died of of say a disease that then had a vaccine like i'm glad that they had polio it's only fair that you get polio too like no yeah exactly make it better for people that that's a really interesting attitude in our culture i remember doctors when uh you know they go through a really tough when they're residents and such yeah and they're like everyone has to go through it i was like really it seems cruel you know why why what is it what is the plus if there's a plus, I get it.

If there's not, it's just because you suffered that other people that, and the whole deadbeat thing, like, fuck you.

Like that on that one, they're not deadbeats.

And also, it's good for our society, for people to go to college and to be smarter in all kinds of ways.

Let me tell you.

And I, yeah, I don't like Joe Biden for a lot of reasons.

Canceling student loan debt is not one of them.

I'm sorry.

Like, this is just like, this is a good thing.

It's a good thing.

And, and here's the thing.

There's probably more of it coming.

There's probably more of it coming.

So chill out, leftists.

He's going to do some more later.

Wait a minute.

Yep.

I love that Steven Crowder had a and Daily Caller had PPP loans.

Well, and a lot of it is racially coded.

100%.

All of it.

I think a lot of these folks on the right talking about how these deadbeats shouldn't have their loans forgiven, they're talking about black people.

That's what they're fucking talking about.

And I just, I don't know.

It burns me up.

But let me tell you something.

I am not going to be here shitting on folks on the lower end catching the break i'm glad they caught a break good yep and by the way everybody should get more education okay sam let's pivot to a listener question you've got you got i can't believe i'm gonna be a mailman you you got mail

this question comes from jenny on twitter i'll read it what's a piece of media you wish you could consume again for the first time oh that's a good one sam the like 10-part Michael Jordan Chicago Bulls documentary, The Last Dance.

Oh, my son loved it.

I I devoured it when it first came out during the pandemic.

And then I was thinking about it again when there was news that Dennis Rodman might be going to Russia to try to get Britney Griner out of imprisonment.

It made me think about him in The Last Dance.

It is a beautiful, brilliant sports documentary.

There's this scene where they're chronicling Michael Jordan's rise to the NBA, and they have this musical montage for like a minute of Michael Jordan just getting slam dunk after slam dunk set to the prince song from the Batman soundtrack Party Man.

So it's literally Michael Jordan dunking while Prince is playing.

It's one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen in TV history.

The whole series itself is perfectly constructed.

I don't like sports, but I do love sports documentaries.

And the last dance, the way I felt when I first watched it, I want that feeling again all the time.

It's amazing.

My son loved it.

My son's a basketball player.

He's quite tall.

He loved it.

He loved it.

He talked about it.

Of course, I did not watch it.

Now I can.

He's bugged me.

You should watch it.

You should really watch it.

It's long, but it's worth it.

I hate sports.

I grew up liking the Spurs as someone from San Antonio, but in my adulthood, I don't really watch sports.

But a good sports doc, I will watch.

For instance, the new Manti Teal documentary.

Really, really good.

Oh, that one.

Oh, about the girlfriend.

This is the football player who was catfished.

Yeah.

It's really good.

Oh, that looks great.

That guy got a short end of the stick on that one.

I'll tell you.

Yeah, he really did.

Yeah, I'm going to answer Gladiator.

I love Gladiator.

I love that movie.

Okay.

I love Russell Crowe.

I don't know why I love that movie so much, but I would wish I could see it for the first time.

I watch it over and over again, and I have no idea why.

So there you have it.

I remember having the DVD, and we had the special DVD cut of the commentary in China.

I would watch that back in the day.

It's a good movie.

It is.

The music, the whole thing.

You know, it's interesting.

I've been watching a lot of stuff over, over and over again recently, recently, even silly stuff.

Like last night, I watched Melissa McCarthy's Spy.

I don't know why, but it made me laugh.

I love her.

It's a great movie.

It's sort of, it's a really funny movie and Jason Strait.

Statham.

Statham, which who I love.

And he was making fun of his reputation.

And, you know, I love Jude Law.

Like, The Holiday is another movie I watch.

I don't know why.

I don't know why.

It's such a sad movie.

I have been, for the last few weeks, having Dune on in the background as I'm like on my phone looking at zillow listings it's so beautiful it's like a fun screensaver for me it's like oh dune is really pretty so uh is there a social network that you wish you could use for the first time no

i wish i never did any of them i'm like fully immersed in all these networks now and i need them for my career and livelihood but yeah a lot of them have gotten less fun and i will say The one that's the most fun for me is the one I never post to, and it's TikTok.

I just watch the kids have fun and then put it down.

I will never make a TikTok video myself.

Someday.

Don't say that.

We have the CEO of TikTok coming to code, so you can ask her some questions.

What is your take on TikTok as like an expert of, you know, industries and such?

I think it's a pretty good business model.

It's a great business model.

It's about interests.

It's about, you know, the Chinese ownership is the problem.

Otherwise, it's a perfect social media product.

It's about your interest.

It's about your interests and not your friends.

But it still is going to be subject to all the abuses, the political stuff, the bullshit.

Anytime there's a tool, assholes take advantage of it.

And that's the problem.

That said, I watch, as people know from listening to this podcast, I listen, watch Air Fryer content almost continually.

I love right now when

one person is like making nasty comments about some other person's online recipe.

And they're like, you're doing what?

You're making this.

That's horrible.

That's nasty.

Oh, I love those.

The whole getting upset at food and drink.

I love it.

Yeah.

I love it.

Anyway, it's a very satisfying social network.

Anyway, if you've got a question of your own you'd like answers, send it our way.

Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 85551 pivot.

Again, the last dance and gladiator.

All right, Sam, one more quick break.

We'll be back for wins and fails.

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Okay, Sam, let's hear some wins and sales.

What go for it?

I think the win, at least this week for me in pop culture land, goes to HBO and HBO Max.

They got a lot of flack for a while for secretly disappearing less successful shows off their platform.

And everyone said, oh, is HBO Max in trouble?

Are they doomed?

Are they this?

Are they that?

And then they have this juggernaut new hit with the Game of Thrones prequel.

And I've said this for years.

HBO knows what they're doing.

HBO has survived every wave of television and still succeeded.

And so I might not love everything about the direction they're headed in, but HBO is going to win and they're winning.

So I would say they're a win right now after a few weeks of nervousness around them taking shit off the platform, but they're allowed to do that.

I'm mad about the Sesame Street thing.

I'm mad that Sesame Street ever went private.

Sesame Street should have been a public commodity forever.

It should not be owned by any private company.

It should be public.

Yes, I agree, but I was using all those and they took out a lot.

Now, there's still a lot there, but it really was, I was really upset by that for some reason because we use it a lot.

But I agree.

It should never, that's the issue.

It should have never been.

yeah okay all right so that's your win and fail what's your fail okay the fail this week who is a fail i'll have to think a little more so you go first what i think of a fail i do think the win is this biden loan forgiveness overall the idea of it and i think the fail would be the reaction of like it's not good enough we have to stop talking about not good enough sometimes that most things aren't good enough in life you don't get as much as you want you don't get as satisfied and so i would say people have got to like stop immediately criticizing things, even if they don't agree with them and have a better way of doing it.

It just seemed like that really, I find that disturbing that nobody can ever enjoy and nasty.

Nasty, right?

It's nasty.

You know, I was talking to a friend about this the other day and she said something really profound and simple.

She said, sometimes you have to just stop and say, better

is better.

Yep.

It's better.

It's not the best, but better is better.

And we can say this is better now than it was before and that's the true thing with student loans i think it's better take that yep yep and i guess the positive one would be serena williams yeah she's i'm excited to see her play coming up and i think she's really conducted her career with a lot of dignity and um just coolness just like i'm hoping to interview her at some point i love her candor Yeah, I would love to hear you interview her.

I love her candor and I love the way that she is able

to bring people into a conversation that accepts and appreciates the nuance of who she is.

She could just talk about being a woman and that would be enough.

She could just talk about being black and that would be enough.

She talks about being a black woman.

And that is a very unique set of issues that she has to deal with.

But she's such a big star and such a household name that she can bring you into those conversations and you can find commonality with her, even if you're not that.

So her candor around childbirth and how it affects black women, her candor around being an athlete while raising a child as a woman, I admire it all.

And I, the conversations she's starting in people's households by sharing her story so candidly, I think it's good for the culture.

Yep.

And honestly, she looks amazing on that Vogue cover.

Speaking of cultural influences, she looks so fucking good with her daughter in the blue on the beach.

I just, oh, yeah, fantastic.

Made me so happy to look at that picture.

And

her, it just was, it was just a beautiful picture beautiful she's a beautiful woman and a beautiful athlete and just i'm excited to see what she's going to do next she's an entrepreneur she's really involved in the tech stuff actually interestingly yeah what's going to be next for her i think it's probably pretty cool i have a fail i have a fail fail oh fail go ahead sorry go ahead go ahead The LA Times had a report last week or this week talking about water usage in the midst of Southern California's big drought.

They found the worst offenders.

Kim Kardashian and her crew were right up there.

Some 270,000 gallons plus of water used in a small period of time, while the average Angelino uses 72 gallons of water a day.

What were they doing with the water?

I don't fucking know, but I tell you what, I'm so tired of the rich and powerful and famous thinking the rules don't apply to them.

We ain't got no water over here.

We don't have any water.

Like, stop.

I was mad at Taylor Swift and them with the private jet stuff.

I'm mad at Kim Kardashian for the overuse of the water stuff.

Just because you're famous doesn't mean you're not part of a society with limited and finite resources.

Sit down, turn the water off, turn the plane off, sit down.

Sit down, Kardashian.

They're not sitting down, Sam.

I'm sorry.

They're not sit down.

I know them a little bit.

They're not, they do not sit down.

They will, they will consume.

They will consume until they are consumed, as they say.

Anyway, Sam, that's the show.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Sam is the host host of Intuit from Vulture and New York Magazine and a co-host of Vibe Check.

Are you liking working at Vox?

I'm loving it.

So, yeah, you know, Vox is great.

And the thing about Vulture and New York Magazine and Vox is that, like, Vox, the company, is this really big, expansive network full of a lot of other small companies.

And so you're tapped into this kind of brain trust and this like economy of scale where everything you need is kind of there.

So that's been great.

And this was my first foray into media that was not non-profit media and public radio.

And it's been a wonderful transition.

And I got to plug while I'm here my second other pet project show.

I have a little talk show with two of my best friends, Saeed Jones and Zach Stafford.

It's called Vibe Check.

That's through Stitcher.

It posts every Wednesday with new episodes.

And it's a fun accompaniment to Intuit, which is my baby.

Okay.

All right.

What's the show this week on?

Intuit.

This week, we talk with a journalist who wrote about the interesting case of Sidney Sweeney, one of of the stars of Euphoria.

In a recent interview with the Hollywood Reporter, she said, My parents didn't have money.

I grew up poor.

I don't have family connections or entry connections.

I have to hustle really hard to make enough money to live this LA life.

And I have to do a lot of endorsements to get enough money.

And she said, right now, I couldn't even take six months off to have a baby.

So we talk about how for some actors and actresses, it's not all fun and games.

They don't make enough money, which is hard to believe.

Yeah, but

my guest this week explains it, Kelsey McKinney from Defector.

Anyway, everybody, listen to Vibe Check and Intuit with Sam Sanders.

We'll be back on Tuesday with more Pivot.

Thank you so much, Sam.

I'm going to read us out.

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

Ernie Enderdot engineered this episode.

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

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

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

And again, Sam, thank you so much.

This was an honor.

I'm such a fan, Kara.

This is like a bucket list for me.

Thank you for having me.

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