Adam Neumann's Return, Climate Change Tech, and More with Molly Wood

Support for the show comes from Saks Fifth Avenue.

Saks Fifth Avenue makes it easy to shop for your personal style.

Follow us here, and you can invest in some new arrivals that you'll want to wear again and again, like a relaxed product blazer and Gucci loafers, which can take you from work to the weekend.

Shopping from Saks feels totally customized, from the in-store stylist to a visit to Saks.com, where they can show you things that fit your style and taste.

They'll even let you know when arrivals from your favorite designers are in, or when that Brunello Caccinelli sweater you've been eyeing is back in stock.

So, if you're like me and you need shopping to be personalized and easy, head to Saks Fifth Avenue for the Best Fall Arrivals and Style inspiration.

Thumbtack presents.

Uncertainty strikes.

I was surrounded.

The aisle and the options were closing in.

There were paint rollers, satin and matte finish, angle brushes, and natural bristles.

There were too many choices.

What if I never got my living room painted?

What if I couldn't figure out what type of paint to use?

What if

I just used thumbtack?

I can hire a top-rated pro in the Bay Area that knows everything about interior paint, easily compare prices, and read reviews.

Thumbtack knows homes.

Download the app today.

Hi, everyone.

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

I'm Kara Swisher.

Scott Galloway is a distant memory during Scott-Free August.

So today I'm joined by longtime business and technology journalist, podcaster extraordinaire, and managing director of the Climate Syndicate at Launch, Molly Wood.

Molly, thank you so much for coming on.

Kara, I'm so excited to be here.

What great August company?

I know.

Isn't it great?

And one of the things I'm great, and we're going to address this right at the top.

We don't care about Jason or Scott or their beef at all.

Not our problem.

Not our problem.

I think you put a Cinderella meme up, which I liked a lot.

This is my theory that people always want me to be the Cinderella for this situation.

And I'm like, you should interrogate why you think you need me to.

What does the Cinderella mean?

I wanted to understand it.

Explain it.

I feel like there are a lot of people out there who like men, who want women to clean up the messes of these men, whether we are or are not involved involved in those messes.

That's correct.

And I actually sent an email one time to somebody that was like, you should really ask yourself why you're asking me to do that instead of just like emailing Jason.

It's right, his email is right there on the internet.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

I'm sure you get a lot of those emails.

We're not going to Cinderella for Scott and Jason.

They've got their thing.

No, we're not Cinderella.

We're not going to, we're not going to do that.

We just want the Jason, be a little nicer to Scott.

Scott, don't be so upset about it.

And that's how I feel about it.

Anyway, there's a lot to talk about.

Explain what you've been up to.

You've You've done a lot.

You've been doing a lot of stuff.

So explain what your main things you've been focusing on lately.

I know, I guess so.

Well, I had a big career switch in January.

So I still do podcasts with Jason every day on this week in startups, but I did move into, I became the like tech journalist cliche and moved into venture capital because primarily because I had started, I got really passionate about.

the climate crisis and climate solutions.

And I started covering that

from the startup angle and from the venture capital sort of side of things.

And after four or five years of that, I think I was like, I don't have to, I don't have time to change minds.

I really just wanted to be more active.

Yeah.

Talk about that transition because a lot of techno, I never did that.

I was offered many, many venture capital positions and I was like, oh, should I have to talk to you?

And I think that was what it was.

And I'm sure I would have been extraordinarily wealthy.

In fact, I know I would have.

But that's not really the reason many people do it, even though it's a byproduct of it.

What was the theory from your perspective?

Is that you wanted to see change happen faster, that writing about it wasn't enough?

Yeah, I think I just got, and I, like you have had, I've been venture curious for a lot of years.

And, um, and this was a great opportunity to actually write checks, which I sort of couldn't resist.

And it was this sense of just wanting to like.

have some boots on the ground, be in the room where it happened, help enable a solution.

And what I have found that's borne out kind of that theory is that it's a really hopeful, it's a more hopeful job than journalism can be.

Like you and I both what it's like to be in a newsroom with a bunch of cynical reporters who are just down on everything.

And I'm not saying that's always the way that journalism is, but it's easy to feel that way, especially in an environment where journalists are getting beat up on all the time by one entire political party, sometimes the other.

And by venture capitalist FYI, just, you know, and by venture capitalist.

I think I chose the only profession that people hate more, actually, than journalists.

Well, it's interesting because when I thought about it, I thought I had more impact doing the journalism, like focusing on, like, I think some of my articles on Facebook really did get people to notice what was happening there.

And that you had, especially, you know, when there was regulatory issues, there was more impact.

But I do think you're right.

There is something to funding, you know, walking the talk kind of thing.

Like, if you really do believe in something.

Was there something about climate that really made you think about this?

Or what was?

I think it was I.

developed what I think is a slightly, now it's more common, but a slightly different approach to climate coverage.

You know, I came at it from a tech and business perspective because of a conversation at my hairdressers with a climate scientist who was talking about all of the ways, and this was probably 2016, talking about all the ways in which we've already tipped, you know, that there are going to be impacts no matter what and they're going to be pretty bad.

And she made this kind of offhanded comment that it was an engineering problem now, not exclusively, but in some ways that we were going to have to.

And so I started covering actually adaptation and resilience and the idea, the ways that we were going to create technology to not die when the weather gets worse or, you know, crops won't grow in 300 mile-an-hour winds or drought.

And

what I just realized, like Lake Mead, exactly.

Like, what are we going to do about that?

We'll be solving a lot of these mob murders, but go ahead.

Right.

I mean, I don't like.

You knew it was there.

You don't want to, right?

Like, you don't want to enjoy the climate crisis already in progress, but man, those stories are amazing.

I know they are.

They are.

Like the boats and everything else.

But it was always a desert.

I always used to point that out to my kids.

It was originally a desert and it probably will return to a desert.

Yeah, it's just geologic time.

Yeah.

But I didn't see a lot of that.

I didn't see a lot of that.

Anyway, it appealed to my sense of like, okay, let's just get to work on this.

Let's just do solutions.

And now I'm starting to see, you know, to your point, since I have left journalism and am investing in climate, more and more people are coming to me and asking me about climate storytelling.

Like it's...

Right.

It's very possible I made the jump a little too soon in the journalism way, but I'm happy to see that there's a lot more interest in those stories.

Well, you can still do that.

You know, you don't have to write douchey blog posts like many venture capitalists.

You can write really important.

There's several venture capitalists who I've always enjoyed.

Not very many, but a few who I think are beautiful writers.

I've always thought Chris Dixon was a beautiful writer.

There was several.

I don't like everything he writes, but I certainly think he's Bijan Sabat was always very good.

There was, oh, there's another one.

There was a couple who I thought did a great job of articulating.

And I think storytelling is part of your job still.

It is.

Even as you're investing.

It's interesting.

You know, we're doing one of our days of code is on climate change tech.

Good.

The whole day.

Well, last year was healthcare and psychedelics, which I'd been very interested in much earlier.

This is climate change tech.

And so, and obviously I've done it a lot on my podcast.

So I think it's one of the most important areas.

I just gave a speech the other day saying

it's the only important thing to focus in on because it's sort of like when you're talking, there's an old joke, and I don't, I'm not going to tell it right, but it's, you know, the internet says I'm great.

You know, the chip said, the chip says I'm great.

This says I'm great, like all these technologies.

And then electricity said, without you, you're nothing.

So fuck you, bitches, kind of thing.

So without climate change,

it doesn't really matter what they make and what they do.

And so I hope there's...

Every company is a climate company now.

Every story is the biggest business story in the world.

That's not to be a mercenary, but when you have a total addressable market of the entire planet,

that's why you see banks paying attention.

A lot of money money is moving behind the system.

They understand nothing to do with policy.

They get yeah, the economic impact and the social impact is going to be vast and incalculable.

And though people make fun of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk going to Mars, we have to think about other planets.

We've got to think about like lots of different issues.

And they're all technological, each of them, in some fashion.

Not everyone.

There is usage and stuff like that.

Anyway, we have a lot to talk about, including the return of Adam Newman.

We'll see how social networks are preparing for the midterms.

But first, let's go to the metaverse.

Meta launched a new VR game, Horizon Worlds, in France and Spain this week.

And Mark posted a screen, Mark Zuckerberg posted a screenshot of the game to celebrate.

Have you seen it, Molly?

Oh, bless.

I have indeed.

Yes.

And your thoughts?

I don't know why we expected anything different.

I mean, there have been, you know, it's almost.

It's a lot of money.

Billy.

It's a lot of money, but there have been screenshots up to this point that did suggest that he had not achieved the ready player watching

thing that we're kind of all like

there's there's the promise and the reality and man the reality really is still yeah far away

but good god does they have anybody who goes how is this gonna look that's that's my whole thing it's a much more complex story than just Facebook sucks although there's elements of that and and they still didn't tell that right it was kind of crazy that nobody takes it but this one I thought was a an easy an easy layup for them not to have published one of my favorite joke is from comedian Andrew Nadao, I think it is, who tweeted, so far as I can tell, the metaverse is just Animal Crossing, but you're being hunted by Mark Zuckerberg.

It does seem.

He is so, I mean, we are seeing such egomania in action, I think.

The fact that he is the central character of his metaverse is the part that makes it so easy to dunk on.

It would be one thing if it just came out and was embarrassingly cartoony.

It reminds me of like the Sonic redesign.

You know, they have to do a Sonic the Hedgehog redesign here.

Right.

Yeah.

Yep.

Yep.

But it's the part where he is in every scene that's just like, listen, man.

I'm the CEO bitch.

It never changes from the day of the year.

I'm the god of my metaverse.

I have that card.

I have that.

I'm the CEO, bitch.

I have that card.

And I was sort of like, when I got it, I was, I was used to weird names from CEOs, like I'm chief.

thoughtful officer or chief astronaut officer back in the day.

When I got that, I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, dude.

That is something else.

And then it was a Mark Zuckerberg production at the bottom of Facebook for years.

So I'm not even slightly surprised.

But I think like we shouldn't lose sight of that because

what you're pointing out is that this has always been the trajectory.

And now he is in front of our very eyes, spending a ton of shareholder money, their own profit, to be fair.

They print profit.

It's not actually shareholder money, but spending.

what is it, $10 billion to build what is effectively a universe for himself to be the god of.

Yes, of course.

But we talk about it from a serious, like, where does this go?

Do you think we'll all be like, oh, we were wrong about Mark Zuckerberg and this metaverse?

Or do you feel that I think early, I keep saying so early, I can't even tell you.

And it's not coming from Facebook, essentially.

Yeah.

There's no doubt that we're going to do more in virtual reality.

I just don't think.

And frankly, I think from a climate perspective, there's a lot more we're going to do in virtual reality as opposed to fly places all the time.

You know, and so

if anything, I worry that Zuckerberg and Facebook are going to turn this into such a joke and suck up so much of the resources and make it kind of a technology non-grata that it'll set it back.

Yeah,

that's true.

Did you like what Microsoft had put forward?

Although very bad cartoons too and without legs, but that's fine.

I'm not, I'm not, there's no need of legs in virtual reality.

But did you like the direction they're going in?

Absolutely.

And but like you say, we're really early.

We don't know what Apple's going to do.

They're most likely going to lean into augmented.

I don't think virtual reality is dead as a concept.

We may have underestimated Facebook.

It's hard to, you know, this all too well.

It's hard, it's impossible to discount their scale.

I do.

Here's why.

Creativity.

They've had a lot of flops and a lot more than, I think, if you add them up, they're quite floppy.

They're very floppy, but even a flop at Facebook can still get 300 million users.

That's true.

And the suck up the resources is the thing that I think is more important.

They don't want to move slowly.

They want to move in a really dominant, scary way.

And I think that's a mistake on their part.

They should have just been helping all kinds of companies, you know, especially in climate change, things like that.

It would have been good for their brand, good for them, and good for the universe.

But this is all about Mark.

But we do get a lovely picture of him prancing around looking like Sonic the Hedgehog.

He really gave himself the princessy green eyes.

Like he really went Disney with the big doughy emeralds.

With the lashes.

You know, I'm such against talking about people's looks, but you can't help it.

You can't help it, him.

It's an avatar.

I understand.

Like, I was on Bill Maher once and he started dunking, you know, on Mark Zuckerberg's looks.

And I was like, you know, you're not so pretty yourself,

we don't talk about their looks Billmer wants to watch it you're right yeah right and I was but but here I'm like why are you making us talk about your looks like and that's the whole thing is he looks ridiculous in any case uh let's speaking of ridiculous Elon Musk is getting comfy with the GOP Musk spoke at a Republican retreat hosted by Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday McCarthy and Musk supposedly had a fireside chat with supporters which was closed to the press Musk solidified his stance in the gray area in a tweet on Tuesday saying, to be clear, I support the left half of the Republican Party and the right half of the Democratic Party as centrist.

I believe this is true.

He just keeps trying to

irritate Democrats, I guess.

He's pretty mad about not being acknowledged for his work at Tesla.

I know that.

And I think that's at the heart of a lot of it, actually, oddly enough, because he's tweaked that Biden didn't mention him around electric cars.

But talk a little bit about this.

Where do you think this he is right now when he's doing stuff like this?

I do think that for him it is, I mean, I think you're absolutely right, that it's a combination of kind of personal ego and attention getting

and owning the libs.

And

I was thinking about this in preparation for the show, and I think that it actually is very much in keeping with his kind of disaster capitalism brand.

Like wherever there's a disaster, Elon Musk shows up and tries to sell something, whether it's a literal disaster like the, you know, Thai cave or some big natural disaster where he wants to roll in or COVID with ventilators that didn't turn out to be ventilators.

And I, and there's something, I haven't put my finger on exactly what it is.

I mean, maybe it's that he's willing to like let America fall into flames and then try to ride in and sell us stuff to fix it.

I wouldn't put that past, you know, I feel like that's the Peter Thiel strategy.

Also, I don't think that that's out of the range of possibility.

That also ascribes this kind of like 40 chess

you know, thing to it, which might not even be true.

I mean, it really might just be just, and is very likely purely opportunistic, purely attention-getting, and possibly his version of kind of an intellectual exercise and talking to both sides or all sides.

I do.

I do think more and more as I watch it, it feels sad to me.

And it feels, I say this by a lot of, about a lot of people.

When I look at them, I think, wow, you didn't get hugged enough as a child, did you?

Yeah.

Like, that's what I feel like in some ways, that there's a lot going on with his dad.

And i'm not a psychologist but there's so many i've been talking to a lot of people close to him there's something going on here you know of how he's got a he's so talented and when he's doing these things like this twitter stuff and um half-baked comments it's it's such a bad side to him when he has such a better side um that it's almost like he's trying to create disaster for himself in that way.

There's never been such a, as Scott says, and I think he's right, there's never been such a brand decline as this guy in a very short amount of time, even though he has a lot of, still has crazy fans, very much like Trump, who love, love, love him no matter what he does.

And they're sort of red-pilled in that way.

But regular people, my sons loved Elon Musk, and now they're pretty much, what a douche he's being.

And he's not saying he's a douche.

It's what a douche he's being.

He's being right, exactly.

And it starts to be inseparable because you don't know him.

So you can only, you know, you ascribe personality to his actions and you start to come away with, I mean, I am one of the people who had a Tesla for a few months, didn't, and right at the moment that he, like, I had a Tesla for a few months that tried to kill me multiple times.

And then he tweeted a Hitler meme.

And I was like, well, I'm not taking my Jewish kid to school in this car.

You know, I mean, it was just an, it really was.

Back up to it, tried to kill you several times.

Oh, that's just,

I mean, I had the like, I had all of the issues.

I had to super glue part of it.

You know, it's like a $70,000 Model Y.

I drive it home from the dealer and have to super glue part of it.

The air conditioning crapped out in the like salt and sea.

And, you know, the auto, but what really happened was the phantom braking.

I didn't even have the on with just the automatic cruise control.

I had two phantom braking incidents on the five.

Wow.

So I'm going 80 miles an hour and the car just hits the brakes for no reason that I can discern.

And if anybody had been behind, and my son is in the car, and if anyone had been behind us, it would have been a terrible accident.

Yeah.

And it would always like try, think that it saw things on the road and then like take over the steering and

I was like, But the Hitler meme is what send you over the top it was that was like even before the Hitler meme, I was having problems and then that happened and I was like, you know what?

I don't have to know.

I'm not going to do this.

I'm not going to apologize for this car to my friend.

May I recommend the Kia-Sorrento hybrid to you?

So I got the Polestar.

Oh.

Because I'm about the all-electric life.

Yes.

Yeah.

And it is amazing.

Ah.

Let me say, you don't want to make a typo when you try to Google Polestar.

You You do not.

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

Social networks say they're preparing for the U.S.

midterm elections.

On Tuesday, Facebook announced it will restrict political advertising in the week before Election Day.

I'm sure that'll help.

Meanwhile, TikTok is telling influencers they can't accept sponsored posts from political groups.

TikTok and Twitter already banned political ads in 2019.

So, where are we again?

We're back to the same thing.

Should Facebook ban all political ads the same way TikTok and Twitter have done?

Of course, influencers are still free to do posts to promote whoever they want, and there's really no way for TikTok to know the difference.

They all say they're working on this.

Where do you think we are at this point?

I feel like I would almost prefer for these companies to say there's really not much we can do.

Because if they're not willing to actually do the thing that it would take, which is devote tens of thousands of human beings to combing through this content and taking it down when it's inappropriate.

And that includes advertising,

nothing is going to work.

I mean, the idea of banning political ads a week before the election is frankly laughable.

Like, don't even put out that statement.

Don't

just don't even say that.

That's like a slap in the face.

Let's put out Mark.

Yes, I agree.

It is.

It's really quite something to have done that.

Do you, they, they had some effect in the last election, though, from what people say.

They toned down the heat.

They did it early.

They did it in a massive force.

Facebook says it has hundreds of employees working on the election issue, but in June, the New York Times reported only about 60 people working on elections full-time.

This has become an enormous headache for them because they can't get it right, presumably.

And from the experts that I have spoken to over the years, it really does seem to just be a human power issue.

Like that's what they all say is that you have to have moderation in-house full-time.

It can't be contractors.

It can't be

an algorithm because then you end up sort of accidentally taking things down that are trying to rebut conspiracy theories.

TikTok seems to be being very aggressive, but

it seems to suffer from the same issue, which is that they just don't want to devote, which, look, I understand is a large budgetary item if you are going to try to bring in an army of moderators and train them and get them to be able to monitor this content.

I'm not sure that banning all political ads.

is the panacea that we think it is, even though I want it to be, because what that does is advantage incumbents who have enough money to buy ads on TV and newspapers.

And, you know, so for small independent candidates, being able to buy social media ads and boost those, their traffic that way is actually incredibly important for getting other voices into the races.

Well, one of the ways to do it is just say no political advertising, because that's what Twitter did, I think, largely because they didn't want to deal with it.

Like the cost of dealing with it was more than the advantage of having it.

And I think they didn't mind taking crap for it at that point.

But I think it was very much to do with cost and how, as you noted, how difficult it is to do properly.

You can only do it badly if you do it, unless you really truly devote time to it.

And it's a money hole for them all, you know, in some way.

And then they always have someone yelling at them from some political party.

You know, it'll be interesting to see if they have as much influence, if these ads have as much influence.

They seem to have already become a permanent part of people's mentality of misinformation.

I think the election lies stuff is the stuff they let go right after the election that was most, the most damaging, obviously.

It continues to be.

It seems like they still really are.

Yeah.

And so my question is not necessarily, are you going to take ads or not?

It's, are you going to, where are you going to place those ads?

Who are you going to target?

What's the algorithm behind targeting those ads or recommending groups to people?

Those are the questions that still sort of don't get answered.

If the ad is there, to your point, if a tree falls in the forest and no one's there to hear it, if the ad is there and it doesn't get pushed to people based on

75 different psychographic metrics that Facebook won't show us, then maybe it doesn't have such a big impact, and maybe those are some of the dials they've turned and just haven't been as force.

My issue is that they're looking at this election thing as if it's an event and it's an ongoing thing.

Like right now, with Trump, and he's performing the same thing he did with election lies with this attack, and he has 10 or 12 different excuses, each of which they try out on social media.

And then you see the ones that work, you know, which is essentially, how dare they?

They took my passport, they planted evidence.

They did this.

He tries out everything.

And it's all

tried out on social media.

And I'm just going to say we so that it doesn't sound like I'm like sitting over here attacking my former profession, but we, the media, then dutifully print it every time he says that.

Exactly.

So then everybody on Facebook has something to link to.

Yeah.

You know, and it's probably the New York Times.

Like not helping.

When I was thinking last night, as I was watching one of them, and they were talking about he may release data or video from

one person was going to release data that they had, documents they had, another cash Patel, who feels very sketchy to me.

And then they were going to release video so they could show the FBI

getting the boxes.

And then everyone reported it.

I'm like, are you kidding me?

Like, this is.

Print it.

Yeah, I know.

I can't resist.

See, now that you're a VC, you don't even have to have this stuff.

It's really delightful, I have to say.

If you move to an aggrieved VC, I'll have a problem with you, Molly.

Just

I'm being victimized in some fashion by the media.

I resisted VC for a lot of years for the same reason you're talking about.

Like, what are the parties going to be like?

They'll be fine.

I'm sure people will.

One of the things, of course, TikTok is facing is their links to China.

I think we're going to have Vanessa Pappas at Code this year talk about, so this is one of the topics we'll be talking about.

Oracle is reviewing the social networks' algorithms to make sure they're free from manipulation by the Chinese government.

Oracle now has access to TikTok's American user traffic.

TikTok is still in the process of moving all its American user data to Oracle's cloud.

Oracle, of course, had wanted wanted to buy TikTok during the Trump administration.

It'll be interesting to see how this relationship moves forward.

I think Oracle still has interest in buying the company, although people at Oracle said, we didn't really want to get dragged in here, but Trump, Larry, that kind of thing.

So how do you look at this problem

for TikTok, their China problem?

I think this is such a weird and complicated problem.

And I find myself dragged into whataboutism with with it a lot myself because I'm like, you guys, the rank kind of hypocrisy and jingoistic, you know, China hating around TikTok when Facebook does everything that Facebook does and has done to democracy is like, you got to be kidding me, right?

You're going to, you're going to say that this is so much worse when you so far have yet to prove it.

And then I find myself thinking, well,

I guess if you're saying that the House shouldn't download it, that is kind of a, you know, members of Congress shouldn't download it.

I can understand why this data might be valuable, but I also don't know that I feel better about that data living on Oracle servers either, because I don't know what the goal is.

And I don't, and there isn't a regulation that says this data, you know, it's not like the United States has massively awesome data privacy laws.

We're sort of just baby stepping toward the GDPR.

So I'm like,

I'm not, you know, I'm going to set aside all questions of patriotism and say, I don't know that this thing is better than this thing.

And I'm not sure I believe it is.

Well, they're an American company.

They're an American company.

I mean, like, what does that mean?

Right.

Like, yes, you're right.

American companies have never perpetrated any ills on society whatsoever.

It's still valuable to Oracle to be in this position, absolutely.

And they created the and to get that data, to get that data

on all of those people, right?

It's like, don't forget that Oracle is going to get all of the same data on American citizens that you claim that China has, and you're fine with that.

That's okay, too.

Yep.

You know know who Larry Ellison is mentored to?

No.

Mark Zuckerberg?

Elon Musk.

Oh, right.

Elon Musk.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Don't you feel better, everybody?

I don't.

I feel great.

They've gotten the data on all the Husky videos that I watch on TikTok.

That's true.

Though people say, I remember a guy that said, oh, I don't have any secrets.

What do we care what I watch?

And this and that.

I do think there is more.

valuable to knowing what people do.

I do.

I'm a little bit.

We did a guy.

We interviewed him.

He said, I don't have any secrets.

And so we followed him everywhere and told him everything he did.

And he was totally creeped out.

Right.

Just, and he's like, well, how did you know that?

And I was like, we know where you were.

I know where you're here.

You know, I do, I do a trick on an iPhone even where I show you all your location data and the minutes you spent there.

So, and though I trust Apple more than I trust.

say TikTok or Oracle or whatever, you have your levels of trust.

I think it was really, it's a really interesting question because it does get sucked up into the China issue, which is a government that is a surveillance economy, you know, clearly.

And so you do worry about that.

I think Oracle will use it to manipulate you for money.

China might use it to manipulate you for something else.

And so

it's all manipulation, of course.

It's all manipulation.

And if we really want to solve it, we would put into place a comprehensive

right to privacy or what are they, what is the Ron Wyden thing, the digital bill of rights.

If we really want to solve this issue, we're not going to solve it like network by network, which would, by the way, would be to Facebook's advantage.

And there's no question that they have been lobbying and mounting all these PR campaigns and talking about how evil TikTok is because TikTok is eating their lunch.

And so every time I see one of those stories, I think to myself, which digital media consultant or PR person on behalf of Facebook placed it?

I've been watching a lot of ads against Amy Klobuchar right now.

There's a showing in Washington that tech companies are doing.

Do you want to stop innovation like Amy Klobuchar does?

And she's in hysterics about them.

She pointed them out to me.

And I was like, yeah, you're an evil person, you know, and they're popping up in the weirdest place.

You're a monster.

You hate innovation, Amy.

It's over her bill, which is, it shows how there was just some data coming out that tech is a bigger

contributor to lobbying than Big Pharma, which is something else.

Anyway, what I want to know is why you watch Husky videos, but I won't get into it.

I love them.

I'm obsessed with Huskies.

I never want to have one.

They're insane.

You don't have a Husky, but you watch Husky videos.

I would never have.

Those dogs are bananas, but they're great content.

My TikTok is a perfectly curated oasis of cute animals, mostly dogs, primarily huskies, but a lot of pitbull content sneaking in now.

They're adorable too.

Oh, wow.

Mine is all air fryers, as people know, when I use it on my burner phone, which I wrote a whole column.

I need a burner TikTok account because I don't want to mess up my algorithm.

That's what I have.

I have a burner too.

Yeah, smart.

Genius.

Anyway, let's go on a quick break.

When we come back, we'll talk about Adam Newman's second act and take a listener mail question about climate change.

Adobe Acrobat Studio, so brand new.

Show me all the things PDFs can do.

Do your work with ease and speed.

PDF spaces is all you need.

Do hours of research in an instant.

With key insights from an AI assistant.

Pick a template with a click.

Now your prezzo looks super slick.

Close that deal.

Yeah, you won.

Do that, doing that, did that, done.

Now you can do that, do that.

With Acrobat.

Now you can do that.

Do that with the all-new Acrobat.

It's time to to do your best work with the all-new Adobe Acrobat Studio.

Support for Pivot comes from LinkedIn.

From talking about sports, discussing the latest movies, everyone is looking for a real connection to the people around them.

But it's not just person to person, it's the same connection that's needed in business.

And it can be the hardest part about B2B marketing, finding the right people, making the right connections.

But instead of spending hours and hours scavenging social media feeds, you can just tap LinkedIn ads to reach the right professionals.

According to LinkedIn, they have grown to a network of over 1 billion professionals, making it stand apart from other ad buys.

You can target your buyers by job title, industry, company role, seniority skills, and company revenue, giving you all the professionals you need to reach in one place.

So you can stop wasting budget on the wrong audience and start targeting the right professionals only on LinkedIn ads.

LinkedIn will even give you a hundred dollar credit on your next campaign so you can try it for yourself.

Just go to linkedin.com slash pivot pod.

That's linkedin.com/slash pivot pod.

Terms and conditions apply.

Only on LinkedIn

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

Adam Newman is back at it.

His new housing venture, Flow, has raised $350 million from Andreessen Horowitz.

That's the biggest check A16Z has ever cut.

The idea behind Flow is similar to Newman's proposed WeWork spin-off, We Live, which failed at the time.

I remember a lot of people wrote about it.

Flow will own and manage existing apartments and allow renters to build some undefined amount of equity with them.

There was a weird blog post about Mark Andreessen lecturing us about

being happy about home ownership and how renters suck.

I really thought that was great to be lectured by that by a billionaire.

So

who owns many homes, presumably, or I know at least owns one enormous one in Silicon Valley.

So talk a little bit about this because several people I've talked to, including at Airbnb and different places, because you'd think they could get into something like this, said this is an impossible company because the amount of money needed is so vast that it's impossible to create.

So, you know, Adam Newman, they did know what he was doing, what he was doing, but getting this second chance.

Female founders would not have, you're not going to see Elizabeth Holmes getting this money.

She's going to jail.

He, of course, did not commit fraud as was found, but he definitely had.

some wrangling with investors, lost an enormous amount of money, vaporizing billions of dollars in investment money.

So

what do you think about this?

There are also so many other bizarre questions about what this company even does.

They had already raised money for this flow carbon, which was maybe going to be emissions tracking on the blockchain.

And this appears to sort of possibly be just the we live

concept

recycled, right?

The idea of sort of communal living, maybe.

Dorms for adults.

Dorms for adults.

Yes.

exactly and then there was some bizarre reporting from forbes late yesterday saying that the company intends to launch a digital wallet to store crypto

so what so he's in addition i had breakfast with adam relatively recently and he was talking about crypto he's he was in miami uh i was happening to be in miami and he was there talking about crypto quite a lot before he announced flow carbon huh but then now maybe we think flow the real estate company is not related to crypto except that now it is evidently according to forbes yes maybe yes but they say flow carbon apparently isn't related yet to flow maybe that's correct that's correct maybe i mean so like i'm pretty new in venture capital but mostly what i've been taught so far is you have to get a coherent pitch with a um plan and like a product even at this early stage or at least an mvp you know it's i'm sort of joking here but this is the sort of thing that only

Adam Newman is ever going to be able to pull off.

And there are,

there's been sort of a ruberos backlash, right?

It was like everybody was really angry about it.

And then it came back all the way around to all the reasons why it might be okay.

And pretty soon the snake was eating its own tail.

Right.

And

is it fair?

100% not.

Like no woman founder, no founder of color, no, you know, over the age of 50 founder, underrepresented in any way would ever get the kind of second chance or first chance that Adam Newman just got.

That said,

he himself, I mean, I watched that deal book interview with Andrew Rosorkin after I had watched the entire We Crashed show and listened to the podcast and done all the years of reporting on it.

And I was like, I would write that guy a check.

Really?

I hope he never calls me because I would probably write him a check.

I'm going to call him.

Just go, hello, hello, Molly.

Hello, Molly.

He is totally charming.

I have to say, you can't.

He's terrified.

I don't like him.

He's mesmerizing.

He is.

He is.

I don't even understand it.

Yeah.

Is it really interesting?

So, but talk about the two ideas.

The flow carbon, do you even understand it?

Carbon credits on the blockchain, which because

of blockchain declines, couldn't,

I mean, it's couldn't happen.

Carbon credit on the blockchain makes some sense to me.

And I have heard pitches that are somewhat similar because right now, the tracking and selling of credits, you know, there's not, there's, we all have this vague sense that there's going to be a huge market.

Explain for people who don't know what carbon credits are.

You fly to Europe and you buy a credit or whatever.

You do.

And the way that, and the credits exist because let's say you build a solar farm on some private property in upstate New York or you engage in, this is really nascent, but like regenerative agriculture processes that make your soil able to sequester and store a lot more carbon.

Then you can effectively have a couple of like private agencies certify.

that you are carbon positive and create these credits.

And the credits can be bought and sold.

Right.

And the people who create those regenerative soil or whatever get the credit, the money for the solar system.

For a solar farm or whatever, get paid for the credits.

So

it's a way to keep them

clean, essentially, on the blockchain, correct?

Rather than because it's all over the place and there's a lot of fraud from what I understand.

There's a lot of fraud and there are a lot of like old expired, you know, like solar farms that might not even be in use anymore, but the credits are still being sold, that kind of thing.

So the theory is that if you put it on the blockchain, you know, we've got this idea that the blockchain is like the perfect record, the perfect immutable record that is available for everybody to see.

So there is some basic logic that if you could get credits on the blockchain, totally track their life cycle, you know, input the fact that this solar farm has been taken offline.

So don't keep selling those credits.

If you had a fancier database for carbon credits, it could enable or at least help enable what people think is going to be a huge economy.

in terms of creating and selling carbon credits.

Now, tell me when people, a lot of people feel they're bullshit.

So explain to people why it's not bullshit.

You said it's going to be a big economy.

I think it's probably going to be a big economy.

And if it becomes a big economy, then there is a real financial incentive for organizations to be more renewable, to employ more renewable energy so they can get credit.

And there to be a place that people trust.

And for there to be a place that people trust.

Right now we don't have any of that.

And a lot of the offset and carbon market is bullshit.

No question.

It is not a pitch that I am particularly interested in.

I don't think it's a good idea for Madam Newman, who always has big ideas.

It was a big idea.

Like that, maybe I think in some ways was a better, although smaller idea than I'm going to transform residential housing, which is, to borrow a phrase from my boss, Jason, operationally insane.

Yes, that's what sounds like.

What are you going to do?

You're going to.

Housing has never been more expensive in the United States, except for maybe the last like two weeks.

So one of the things, Lynette Lopez from Insetter called the deal, one of the most efficient ways I've ever seen is Silicon Valley light money on fire.

So you like the carbon credits better, correct?

I mean, I don't love it, to be clear.

I'm just saying it was a more understandable pitch.

Like at least that was

an issue that feels solvable in some way, whereas it's still so unclear what the intention even is around this residential play.

I mean, I think communal living, win.

People are interested in that.

If you could

create sort of a like Starbucksified living experience where any city that I went to, if I encountered it and it was a flow unit and the amenities were always the same, the rents were effectively normalized.

I just dealt with an app on my phone to rent it.

You know, I could rent it for a year, sublet it, like whatever it is.

I could actually imagine that being really cool and transformative and awesome.

Yeah, that was We Live.

That was we live.

That was We Live more.

Exactly.

That was We Live.

I remember the spate of pieces done on it.

Yep.

And it went nowhere.

And I'd love to know why it didn't before I would invest in it.

Yes.

And to say timing wasn't it.

I think people don't want to live in dorms when they're 40 years old.

Maybe some people do, but not everybody.

I don't think they want to when they're 40, but I think they want to when they're 20 to 35.

And then maybe again when they're 65 or 70.

Yeah.

Well, that's a more interesting area.

And that's interesting.

Older living to me is where I would be investing.

I'm with Disney on their things.

I'm just dealing with a parent in that regard.

And it's really,

it's so, it's way too artisanal.

Like it's way too distributed, way too involved.

There's nothing like I want a brand I can trust, essentially.

Anyway, we'll see where that happens.

Molly, 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 comes from Craig Evergarden on Twitter.

This one's specifically for you.

Is COVID denial a predictor of the failure of climate change?

prevention?

Will risky geoengineering be necessary?

I'm thinking of an interview I did with, is it Neil Stevenson about his new book where they shoot sulfur out into the air?

A billionaire does it on his own.

Let me answer that question first because we have a second one too.

Okay.

Yes and no to the first part of that question, whether COVID denial is a predictor of the failure.

I think

it, you know, there are all these entrenched feelings about both COVID and climate change.

And it started to become, it has started to become the exact same people.

now who are like, I'm never wearing a mask, getting a vaccine, and I don't believe that climate change is real.

So it is super unfortunate that climate change itself has gotten caught up.

There was a good piece actually that said the big problem is it's caught up in the culture wars.

Like people equate it with, and it's in a way partly because

it, I think it kind of has.

It's gotten worse.

You know, they pointed out that like Mitt Romney used to be a very reliable vote in favor of climate change, climate-oriented regulations.

And now is, for philosophical Republican reasons, like never can be or never will be.

However,

I think you actually saw, I think COVID for many, many people was

created this feeling that like, oh, the worst case can occur.

And all of a sudden you had a lot more people move into climate investing or start climate startups.

It's like there was this parallel conversation where a lot of people went, wait, so shit could get really bad.

And we keep saying that shit could get really bad around climate.

Maybe we should do something about that.

Or it could be like COVID.

Or maybe there's an opportunity.

I mean, I wrote a column many years ago where I made it up.

I said the world's first trillionaire will be a climate change technology investor.

Maybe you.

I made it up.

And someone's like, oh, that sounds great.

I'm like, I totally made that up.

I just want people to get into it out of greed.

Yeah.

You know,

that kind of thing.

So, so how do you shift that feeling?

How do you, how do you feel it gets

fixed?

Because some might be risky geoengineering, right?

Some of these ideas do have to do with sulfur guns and cooling down the climate and have unintended consequences.

You know, even though he was writing about it in a fictional way, that has been raised, right?

That's one of the things.

Oh, without a doubt.

Yeah.

I think whether we think that risky geoengineering should or should not be a part of the solution, someone is going to do it full stop.

Like Kim Stanley Robinson actually also wrote about it in Ministry for the Future about how after a horrible heat wave in India that kills 20 million people, India goes ahead and starts doing cloud seeding and geoengineering.

And I think they're already doing some versions of that in Abu Dhabi.

There's no doubt that humans are going to try it and that we probably need

some version of every solution.

And some of them are going to create unintended consequences

without a doubt, right?

Because every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

But we are certainly to the point where

things are going to get worse and worse.

And a lot of people are going to start dying and people are going to get more desperate for solutions.

Yeah, water, particularly around water in the West Coast, for example.

Water and heat.

I mean, the kind of like the wet bulb events that are, I mean, we have heat that is not survivable occurring on a regular basis now around the globe.

That did, I mean, it's just not, we're going to throw, we're going to try everything because existential dread is a powerful motivator for people.

Absolutely.

Or it makes people crazy.

When I was in London, I was there after the heat wave, which, but the parks, it's so weird to see looking like Northern California.

I was like, oh, look, it's Northern California, which has that, you know, dry, just desiccated look, quite beautiful in a weird way, but also like, what's it doing here in London?

What's happening?

Did it look like that in London?

It did.

It was crazy.

It looks like Northern California, you know, in the middle of summer up north.

And you know, those, that, that golden color, but it didn't look right in England.

I'll tell you that.

It looked weird.

And I was sort of shocked by it

because they've had no rain.

There's been no rain in

the northeast.

Same thing.

Obviously, in California and all those states ever, Lake Mead, and then all these weird different climate events in the Midwest.

Yeah, you're absolutely correct.

But

I think the deniers are going to be very powerful going forward.

I do.

I think they, and they remain powerful with COVID.

They remain powerful.

They brought polio back to New York.

Yeah.

Don't underestimate them.

No, that's right.

They brought polio back.

Thank you.

Great job, guys.

Great job.

Great job.

Second one from Patrick Hunt, also on Twitter.

Do you see an issue with climate tech startups fitting the VC model due to capital intensity?

That's been something, you know, Vinod Koesla had tried a lot early on with natural gas.

John Dore had a ring at it.

And now he's just decided to fund a school for 1.1 billion of his dollars at Stanford, which I thought was fascinating.

He's going to actually also come into code with the head of the EPA to talk about this.

And so what do you imagine?

How does that, because the amount of money needed is crazy, the amount of money to do this.

Yeah.

First of all, I just want to reiterate again how awesome I think it is that you're doing a day on climate at code.

I think you're the only major tech conference I know of.

It's really like I did like one panel at a conference recently in a side room.

And I was like, this is a main stage.

We will have you in as you start making investments at Pivot.

We're going to, it's a big focus.

Great job.

I love it.

Thank you.

So is there a capitalist solution?

The capital requirements are huge and the benefits, you know, are not immediate.

It's a little like

some

drug development.

This is sort of the like first series of stories that I started doing on climate and investment actually back at Marketplace was about venture capital and what had happened in that first clean tech bust, boom and bust cycle with John Dorr and Benu Khosla and these, you know, efforts to invest in renewable energy projects that were like extremely capital intensive and took a long time.

Because venture, as people may or may not know, has sort of a 10-year lifespan that's actually dictated by the structures of the fund.

It's like the legal documents say you will invest in this period of time, you will reap during this period of time, and after 10 years, effectively, like our deal is over.

That's why VCs talk in these 10-year horizons, which was a super interesting, specific thing for me to learn.

That made because I was like, Are you guys just very impatient?

What's your problem?

So, that's part of the,

I think, for a long time, the excuse that some VCs use to not invest in climate was like, it's going to take too long to come to fruition.

Now, what we're starting to see, especially as more and more firms and individuals get interested in this, is

we're starting to just sort of see us all try to figure out what our lane is.

And it may be there are definitely some funds that have set up new structures that have a longer life that are 12 years.

I think breakthrough energy, the Bill Gates fund is maybe even 20.

So they're saying we're going to raise a lot of money and the goal is to be long-term capital and that's great.

You're seeing some funds say, we're going to do hard tech.

We know it's super risky and we know it has a long

shelf life, but our investors know that too.

And that's our goal.

So this would be like carbon moderation.

It might be like direct air capture, or it might be, you know, there's a lot of like science around, I don't, just as one example, using fungus and mushrooms and mycelium networks to like break down types of waste and turn them into other things, whether those things are food or building materials.

That science takes a while, but is very promising.

And there are some firms that are like, we're dedicated to that kind of progress, R D and commercialization.

You're seeing funds start to work with universities.

So universities incubate for the R D and then the VCs fund the commercialization part.

Right.

So that's what Door is doing on a big level at Stanford, right?

Exactly.

Yeah.

And then you're starting to see the softwareification of climate investing, which is a great lane for VCs, right?

Like my early investment, two of my early big investments are around measurement.

very precise measuring of emissions in specific areas.

And that's super investable because it's software with software margins.

And it's super necessary because you can't manage what you don't measure.

And those technologies don't exist and they will drive.

So we're all in this kind of process, I think, of figuring out what's the best

because it's not going to get solved in any one sector, private, government, or

investment, risky capital.

It has, everybody has to get in the pool.

And so like, I'm fine if VCs say only these four segments are investable for us because we need them.

And the rest is, you know, appropriate for government and research.

And like, it doesn't have to be this one,

one or nothing or perfect or nothing.

Like there will be things that VCs can't invest in because they're not, the returns just aren't there.

And that's our business.

Well, much of it has to be government VC together.

You know what I mean?

This kind of thing, because this is a very government.

This has to be a massive, a worldwide government kind of cooperative effort, which is very difficult.

Everybody in the pool.

And which is going to be very difficult given all the tensions.

You know, it literally feels like some of these movies it does you know when you watch the day after tomorrow or i i'm a i'm a big apocalypse yeah don't look up i'm i'm a big watcher of all those movies i've watched every single one of them i love them um and you know even even the one with schwarzeneger on mars i'm flanking red total recall or total recall yeah where the guy they have a machine to make air on mars which you know was i was like they they must they have to but one of the things i like to think about is that

this is all possible with the commitment of lots and lots of money.

And sometimes when the people were running around with Bitcoin, I was like, just take that energy and put it into climate change.

Literally.

That literal energy.

That literal energy.

You know what I mean?

Silly, silly boys.

And it was mostly boys.

Germany made a surprise announcement this week to keep its last three nuclear power plants running as it deals with an energy crunch amid Russian cuts to the gas supply.

Is there a role for nuclear energy in this?

Do you think about that as an investment?

Yeah, there has to be.

You know, I've heard lots of very good arguments for nuclear power plants run, but then you have the Russians with the Ukrainians, and you're terrified what's going to happen to that particular power plant.

Yeah.

So, what do you, how is that?

Is that something you think about or worried about?

I'm an absolutist on this.

I think there is no universe in which nuclear energy cannot be part of our solution.

Like, if we had actually embraced nuclear energy in the 70s, we would not be in the situation that we're in instead.

If we, you know, if we had done that instead of oil and gas, we would have cut tons and tons and gigatons of emissions over that period.

And we're in a process of redefining what we, the Overton window on energy is really changing.

You're seeing Europe say natural gas is now in the green bucket because it is greener than coal.

Right.

And that, you know, if we, if we have to choose between oil and coal and natural gas, for the period of this energy transition, we should choose natural gas.

What about solar?

You haven't mentioned solar.

Do you do solar investments?

Oh, absolutely.

Yes, definitely.

I think, I mean, solar, I'm super into new panel technologies.

Like I talked to a company that's trying to do this new panel technology.

It's actually not, the technology is not new, but it's, you know, it's more moldable.

Like you could put high-functioning solar panels actually on the top of cars or on devices, just wrap it around a watch and charge.

And, you know, they're smaller and more.

Yeah.

I mean, there's, there's awesome technology.

And I'm like, all.

I want it all.

I want nuclear.

I want better solar.

Yeah.

You know, I have solar panels on my house for 20 years.

I had some of the early ones.

I've been worried about this crisis.

I know.

Anyway, this is really interesting.

Last question in this area.

Who are the leaders among tech people?

Is it Doerr and Gates and anybody else?

Eat Musk, certainly.

You have to sort of put in that bucket because of electric cars.

Is there anyone we don't know besides Molly Wood?

I wouldn't sleep on Chris Saka.

I actually think he was one of the earliest to make this move into climate tech investing.

You know, he started lower carbon.

I think that's a big deal.

There's a woman named Emily Kirsch, who has an organization called Powerhouse Ventures, who also has just been sort of quietly, awesomely investing for years.

And I'm just trying to find all of these investors, the new ones and the old ones.

There's a really interesting firm in New York, Jayco at Lightspeed, and they're doing specifically adaptation and resilience investing, the kind of what I called how we survive in series-type investing.

They're all over.

They're all over.

Molly, guns, more guns to steal steal water from each other.

That was the plot of that Kevin Costner disaster movie.

Do you remember that one?

With the guy with the super.

Oh my God.

Water.

Did I miss one?

Water World.

Oh, yeah.

That one.

Yes.

Water World.

That was about a tanker and Kevin Costner and land.

You need to get on it.

That was all.

I just was still thinking of the thing.

The webbed.

I know that you love it.

You can also watch them on Yellowstone if you want to calm down about him.

I love

Yellowstone.

I love Yellowstone.

Me too.

But just FYI, Gates lobbied Manchin to vote yes on the climate climate bill, just so these people are really getting involved.

Thank you for the other names, Sokka.

Sorry.

Gates has

got this idea for effectively like nuclear power backpacks that could be a complete game changer, like these small modular reactors that you could pop up in places.

Like if you could situate one of those on the coastline in Northern California, you have all the energy you need for desalination and water is fixed.

And that's why I'm so bullish on, you know, don't throw any solution out right now.

We do not have time for that.

Right.

100%.

I love those other names.

Sokka, Sokka, of course.

I love

Sokka.

Sokka.

I've had an up and down relationship over the many years, but I've grown to really enjoy Sokka.

Anyway, if you've got a question on your own that you'd like answered, send it our way.

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

All right, Molly, one more quick break.

We'll be back for wins and fails.

Every day, millions of customers engage with AI agents like me.

We resolve queries fast.

We work 24-7 and we're helpful, knowledgeable, and empathetic.

We're built to be the voice of the brands we serve.

Sierra is the platform for building better, more human customer experiences with AI.

No hold music, no generic answers, no frustration.

Visit sierra.ai to learn more.

Support for this show comes from Robinhood.

Wouldn't it be great to manage your portfolio on one platform?

With Robinhood, not only can you trade individual stocks and ETFs, you can also seamlessly buy and sell crypto at low costs.

Trade all in one place.

Get started now on Robinhood.

Trading crypto involves significant risk.

Crypto trading is offered through an account with Robinhood Crypto LLC.

Robinhood Crypto is licensed to engage in virtual currency business activity by the New York State Department of Financial Services.

Crypto held through Robinhood Crypto is not FDIC insured or SIPIC protected.

Investing involves risk, including loss of principal.

Securities trading is offered through an account with Robinhood Financial LLC, member SIPIC, a registered broker dealer.

Okay, Molly, your win and fail, please.

I have an obvious one, but you go first.

My win, well, actually, I think my win is a little bit humanity this week, because in amidst all of the other news is that this is the week that the, I'm just calling it the climate bill, but the Inflation Reduction Act was signed.

And it was easy to lose sight of what a huge deal that is.

But the fact that the United States, which I thought would be a laggard for decades, actually really did, kick-started the, again, the economic development of real climate solutions in such a meaningful way.

And you quibble all you want.

Nothing's ever going to be perfect.

I'm sorry, humans.

That's how we work.

That's huge.

That's a big, big deal for humans on the planet.

So that was a big deal.

The economic development part of it is critical.

I think that's what they were doing, giving all these subsidies and various things.

That's why I put solar on my roof when I did.

You know, that's why we got a literally electric car.

Google actually subsidized them at the time, which was interesting.

It's a really, really, really, really big deal.

What's the biggest part of it, do you think, the most important part?

I think the subsidies are a huge deal.

I think that all the moves that the Biden administration has taken toward things like electric heat pumps and decarbonization of homes, I'm like one of the last people who still thinks consumers have a huge role to play here.

And And I sort of feel like at this point in America, if you make $200,000 or more and you're not putting in an electric heat pump and an induction stove and solar, like you're kind of a climate criminal, like get after it.

And so the idea that that stuff will become more affordable to people and that it could then start to become the cool thing to do, I think is really powerful.

And then all of the infrastructure for electric charging and for more and more, I mean, solar in so many ways is the simplest silver bullet we have.

Right.

Like just 100%.

Put it everywhere.

Put it everywhere.

What I love about it is energy efficiency is so impactful, and you don't even have to care about climate to want to do it because it saves you money.

I mean, it's those kinds of solutions that are really like normal for people.

Yeah.

It did.

I had a very low heating bill and it gets cold in California.

Anyway, okay, what's your fail?

My fail, actually,

even though it may take some time to develop, is the GOP.

GOP.

Yeah.

I think that this

embracing, you know, Liz Cheney getting absolutely trounced, so many election-denying attorney general candidates advancing, like that party getting more and more and more extreme, I think ultimately is the end of that party.

And it will, it may take longer than we want, but I think that we saw some pretty big steps toward the

eventual dissolution of the GOP as we know it today.

Yeah, I would agree.

I think it's really, you know, someone was arguing, someone was arguing about, you know, Liz Cheney, this is the height of her power and this and that.

And I go, you know what what happens to Wyoming?

It becomes a really shitty little state nobody pays attention to because now they have a congressperson without any power.

Right.

She's going to be a nobody, and it's back of the line for you, Wyoming.

And now you're just a little state with no power.

So, wow, did you win?

You know what I mean?

Like, wow, did you?

Good job.

Nice job that you did that.

You had an incredibly powerful person who was super conservative and had all your values.

So conservative.

Super.

Like, I hardly want to talk to her.

I don't talk to her.

I hardly want to talk to her, though I do, you know.

And it's really, I was like, you're, you've now become a loser.

You become a loser.

Like, and you, because you won what on one thing, on one thing that is so meaningless and ridiculous, but it's not to them.

So they want to, they want to die on that hill.

They can die on that hill.

That's what they're going to do.

And that's what they're going to do.

Exactly.

So we'll see.

All right.

My win.

I'm good.

It's a win-fail.

Obviously, it has to be the Dr.

Oz stuff.

Fetterman is,

he's winning by a lot.

You know, if if it was all just, some people say social media is kind of what the elite think is happening.

He is using it beautifully and using it in a, in a retail politics kind of way that I think is being really effective.

And one of the things that I think he's doing well, and someone pointed out, is he's not going, Oz is the end of civilization.

He's going to like, he's not making it.

upsetting and angry like and making you upset about the Republicans.

All he's saying is, this guy's an asshole.

Why are you voting for an asshole?

Like, like and he's sort of make he's mocking him in a way that's effective and very clear and consistent he's from new jersey he's an elitist he doesn't live in pennsylvania by the way crudite what the fuck like and i know that's small but it's not it's actually very revelatory toward this guy and so he's defining him not unfairly but very explicitly.

And so I think he is just, I did a

podcast with him many years ago.

I was so struck by how he responded to the COVID crisis in such a smart way compared to a lot of Democrats.

I think he's a really interesting character.

I hope he stays healthy.

But he, I, I, I myself had a stroke too.

Um, you certainly can stay healthy.

Um, but I think the way he's handling this is fun and funny and very Pennsylvania-oriented.

Um, so he's local and also national at the same time.

I think he's a a winner of candidate.

And I always did when I talked to him years ago.

Um, he's sort of the real deal in a lot of ways.

And Dr.

Oz, I think he doesn't want to be senator.

I don't know what else to say.

I just think he does.

I just think what?

Like who, how?

And you sort of sit there.

And I finally decided he's like, you know what?

I want to stay a celebrity and not be a senator.

I think I would like to.

I feel like I don't know the next thing.

Don't you think so?

Just at this point, I don't know.

Like he's going to start selling supplements any minute now.

He thought he was Trump.

He's not Trump.

You know, it's not Trump.

I think a fail, just the continued media coverings, these, whatever comes out of Trump's fucking mouth.

I think it's really, if I had, I would really tamp that down.

It's sort of a race for stupid scoops.

And I just, one, the one last night was like, oh, he's threatening.

It's like, guess what?

The toddlers said he's going to vomit on the floor if we don't do something.

It's like being held up.

And, you know, it's very akin to covering mobsters, which everyone used to cover John Gotti.

Like he was funny.

And I get it.

I get it.

But he was a a killer, like killed people for a living and ruined people's lives with drugs.

And,

you know, so he's interesting.

He wears a nice shiny suit.

Like, I find it just,

at this point, I'm like, that's enough of this.

And

I get that he runs the Republican Party.

I think that should be absolutely covered.

But his weird little threats and lies, really.

Imagine if the media covered Trump the way that Federman deals with us.

Imagine if the media said, this guy is at this point pretty much a proven criminal who had one of the most corrupt

governments in United States history, who is barely able to string a sentence together, right?

Like,

what if instead it was just this kind of like honest assessment of the absurdity of this situation?

And instead of saying, like, he threatened to do this, say, look at how absolutely absurd, who cares?

Yeah.

So either don't cover it or be honest about it and say, this guy is an asshole.

But the fact that we still

like have learned nothing

about the way this guy manipulates media is embarrassing.

Very good at it.

He's very good at it.

Anyway, I think that's the fail.

I really started to be like, this is going to be a problem if they keep doing this.

And then, you know, lionizing Janie at the same time.

You know, it's not complex in any way.

There's a reason she wasn't voted for.

Write about that in a much more honest way.

Anyway, I had Roxanne Gay on Monday.

She said this.

I loved all of the things that she said about.

And

she said that's how low the bar is for inspirationalists, really.

We'll take it.

We'll take it.

Is she anti-Trump?

Perfect.

I like fine.

That's, we got so little.

Yeah, it's a little much.

Molly, thank you so much.

I'm excited to hear more about your climate change stuff.

And I wish you will come back on when you start to make, how many have you made investments?

I have four.

companies in our pipeline now.

Yeah.

Two in our accelerator and two through the climate syndicate that will be officially announced soon, the bigger investments.

Okay.

All right.

You want to hear about that.

All right.

Molly, thank you so much.

That's the show.

We'll be back on Tuesday with more Pivot.

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

Ben Woods engineered this episode.

Make sure you subscribe 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.

Jason, see how well we can get along.

Scott, that's all hug.

PDF spaces is all you need.

Do hours of research in an instant.

With key insights from an AI assistant.

Pick a template with a click.

Now your prezo looks super slick.

Close that deal, yeah, you won.

Do that, doing that, did that, done.

Now you can do that, do that with Acrobat.

Now you can do that, do that.

With the all-new Acrobat.

It's time to do your best work with the all-new Adobe Acrobat Studio.

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 Pure Leaf.