Sheryl Sandberg's Next Move

Support for this show comes from Nike.

What was your biggest win?

Was it in front of a sold-out stadium or the first time you beat your teammate in practice?

Nike knows winning isn't always done in front of cheering crowds.

Sometimes winning happens in your driveway, on a quiet street at the end of your longest run, or on the blacktop of a pickup game.

Nike is here for all of the wins, big or small.

They provide the gear, you bring the mindset.

Visit Nike.com for more information.

And be sure to follow Nike on Instagram, TikTok, and other social platforms for more great basketball moments.

For a limited time at McDonald's, get a Big Mac extra-value meal for $8.

That means two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun, and medium fries, and a drink.

We may need to change that jingle.

Prices and participation may vary.

Hi, everyone.

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

I'm Kara Swisher.

And I'm Scott Galloway.

So Scott, how was your long weekend?

It was wonderful.

So I had the boys in New York and it was sort of a contrast and the difference between having an 11-year-old and a 14-year-old son.

I wanted to spend time with each of them alone, so I took my 14-year-old son for...

brunch and his favorite thing to do now with me is to try and just get through time with me and then ask if he can leave early and go home on his own.

He loves to go to take the subway, even if it's just walking ahead of me 100 meters, like before even the check gets there.

He's like, can I go home?

He's waiting the whole lunch to go home.

And then, in contrast, and this is wonderful, my 11-year-old said, I want to go to the Edge, which is this observatory deck at the top of Hudson Yards.

And we go to this, take this elevator up.

And he's like, oh my gosh, look at the elevator.

Look at the videos and everything.

And we go there.

And there's this thing where they have a clear cellophane or clear plastic or glass floor where you stare down 100 stories.

Cellophane would suck.

And he literally

and he lays down.

He's like, oh my God, lay down next to me.

We'll get a picture.

This will be awesome.

And then

we sit there and he like looks around and we're 110 floors up and he says, can I have a Coke?

And I'm like, what the hell?

Go get a Coke.

Gets a Coke, comes over, sits down and he looks at me and he means this.

He's like, isn't this awesome?

And it's just like, I have one 14-year-old who nothing impresses him.

And And I have an 11-year-old and everything

is just impresses him.

It's really,

so I'm really trying to lean in and enjoy and not take for granted.

It's

back and forth.

I had a,

we have, it shifts back and forth.

It shifts back and forth.

It's shooting one way with the 14-year-old.

It's shooting towards, how do I get away from that?

That'll go for a while.

That'll go.

Yeah, I think I'll get over that in about 20 years.

No,

for that.

No, I had a great weekend in San Francisco with Louie.

We

were spending time together.

Not recently, but the last time I'm in the woods right now, Louie's in the woods.

You know, we hung out.

We went out.

We walked around.

We had dinner.

We hang.

We like each other.

Just like I hang with Dr.

Swisher this week, my brother.

Oh, by the way, by the way.

Let's discuss that.

Hold on.

He's left here.

Hold on.

He's broken up with you.

Your brother

is having an affair with my boyfriend.

George has moved on.

I find out

on Twitter.

For a better man.

That your brother, a doctor that I cannot compete with, is spending Sundays with my boyfriend.

They went walking today, I think.

I think they went walking in the park today.

Yeah, that's got to stop.

Okay, I'm just saying.

It's a second day.

That's got a second day.

He also shaved.

Jeff had a beard.

We went to Annapolis this week because my aunt got real sick, so we couldn't go out to West Virginia.

But we went on a boat and stuff like that.

And he had this beard, this sort of old man, Jon Stewarty beard, and he shaved it off.

I was like, where'd the beard go for brunch?

He's looking good.

He cleaned himself up for George Han.

Just FYI.

What I'm stuck on is I've never heard anyone in a disappointed tone say, We couldn't go to West Virginia.

I've never heard anyone say that in the exact tone you just said.

I wanted to see my hand.

Tell your brother, hands off my man.

No, hands off, my man.

So exciting.

They're going to have a Hamptons wedding, and then you and I will preside over it, obviously.

You know, and I mean, we'll have to be the presiders.

That'd be great.

I think Jeff's wife would be kind of pissed.

She's fantastic.

It is just hilarious.

Are you gay?

Are you gay?

Are you sure you're not gay?

Anyway,

your wife's so pretty.

You have sex with her?

I'm like, every summer solstice like clockwork.

Yes, indeed.

And in any case, Jeff and I are going to my nephew's wedding this weekend, along with my mother, everybody.

We're all coming together, my ex-wife, et cetera, et cetera.

Anyway, today we'll talk about the surprise announcement from Cheryl Sandberg, which I just hold back just for a second.

Okay, we're not going to get to that yet.

We'll look at the FDC's pursuit of Amazon.

Also, we'll take a listener question about innovation.

But first, an economic hurricane is coming, according to Jamie Dimon.

He made the comments at a conference this week.

He says the company's praying for, quote, bad outcomes.

What the hell, Jamie Dimon?

What is he?

Speaking of someone who's...

presided over some bad outcomes.

What in the world does he mean?

What do you think?

I like Jamie Dimon a lot.

I think he's one of the few

few leaders who calls it as he sees it.

And

even if it costs him, he was one of the first guys.

He said it before.

It was cool in the midst of the euphoria that I think

crypto is

something near a scam.

He's like, we got to play in it.

I get it.

We have to make some bets in case I'm wrong.

But I just don't.

He basically said, I just don't get it.

And he wasn't afraid to say that.

I think a lot of us, especially of a certain age, feel bullied into like saying, well, there's got to be innovation here, even if we don't think that.

And at the same time.

Oh, I do think that, but I'm sorry, but go ahead.

Even at the same time, if we do think, you know, we do think it's, there's likely something there, the people, people who think it's a total scam get angry.

It's again, it's, there's no, there's no being in the middle.

And I think Jamie Dimon is unafraid to call out stuff.

And by the way, he's right.

He's, he said something that I thought.

He also has done some deals.

Come on.

Jamie Dimon's right in the middle of a couple of bad, like a ton of bad internet deals.

I know, we know.

Oh, it would be impossible not to.

They're

arguably the premier investment bank in the world.

They do more deals than this.

He's involved in this Twitter deal.

He's on the Elon side, right?

Yeah.

But he said, let me just finish the thought.

He said, and I love this quote about recessions.

Someone said, what is a recession?

And he said, something that happens every seven years.

And

it's been 13 years.

And he's just looking at economic history and saying,

when interest rates, when interest rates are this historically low and inflation is this historically high and you have inflation.

I mean, he just looks, he looks at all the numbers and goes, how do the instruments here read anything but bad weather ahead?

And he's not afraid to say that.

Because what's unfortunate, people are giving Janet yelling shit.

And the reality is she said, I was wrong about inflation.

And I love that when a politician or a political appointee actually has the backbone to say, yeah, I got it wrong.

You just don't hear that anymore.

And you don't hear heads of investment banks or people in finance doing anything but being cheerleaders anymore, which is not healthy.

So I'm, I'm, anyways, I agree with him.

And I think, as usual, Jamie Dimon is calling it as he sees it.

Nonetheless, what does bad outcomes mean from your perspective?

Well,

the bad, I mean, everyone's wondering now whether it's going to be a soft or a hard landing.

And how bad, how bad could it get?

And you've seen periods where the market has gone flat to down for 10 years.

Housing starts or housing is already cooling off really fast.

It's gone from white hot to hot to looking like it's going.

going going cold really quickly because of increasing mortgage rates.

I mean, spending down,

debt up,

the S-word, stagflation, where you have both

higher prices and a lack of productivity.

I mean, this could get...

And I wonder if it's a good thing, Kara.

I think we need a little bit of a bad thing.

You always like a little cleanup, don't you?

You like a little cleanse.

Well, here's the thing.

Young people need their shot.

And when you prop up the economy artificially and you artificially keep assets and real estate artificially high, all you're doing is transferring opportunity from young people.

The reason...

Well, you talked about that with the stimulus.

You said it keeps businesses that shouldn't be in business in business, although this was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of situation.

Well, the whole thing,

the whole thing was pitched as we're building bridges to the other side.

No, they weren't.

They were building piers for bad businesses, and they were putting gold-plated,

you know, 14-karat gold-plated on the bridges that were going to survive, anyways.

And that's most of the money ended up in the market.

Savings went up.

And now we have a bunch of zombie companies that had no business being in business.

Right.

Anyway,

I think we really got the stimulus stimulus wrong but i we're we're in for a rough ride we'll see how rough and you know what it's a good thing it's part of the cycle of the economy it's not as long as it's not a like a crazy hard landing the cycle of the economy it's the circle of life circle of life

the hurricane comes and clears out the savannah there you go there hurricanes on the savannah i don't know i don't care about mixing metaphors all right jamie diamond we'll see what happens it's it's a pretty good bet i don't think it's the most uh shocking prediction at all anyway a texas law that that regulates how social networks moderate content is on hold again after the Supreme Court blocked it on Tuesday.

It's waiting.

It's not the end of it.

The federal appeals court will consider the law soon and could return it to the Supreme Court.

But they didn't sound too pleased with it, none too pleased with it.

It was interesting.

And it was a weird amalgamation of people on either side of it.

And it was not what you'd think from a political point of view.

What thinks you of this?

Lemmy, to be honest, Kara, I have a view on it, but it's an uninformed view.

And I think your view is probably more informed.

You go first here.

I think these are private companies.

They can do as they damn well please.

100%.

That's what I think.

That's all.

I don't think if the government can't make companies take up or put down or keep up anything.

They can decide if owners, like say Elon Musk, wants to let all the hell break loose and all the shit flying, he can have a shitty flying social media site.

If he doesn't, he doesn't.

I don't know.

I just feel like companies have free speech too, and they can do whatever they want.

And so it's appropriate that the Supreme Court blocks this if they they believe in free speech.

I don't know.

Yeah, I don't think free speech is absolute.

I think if lawmakers were to say, look, you have to be subject to the same libel laws if your content is inciting violence, is spreading misinformation that results in economic or personal harm around health care, around

serving people content that...

turns them into radical fundamentalists or whatever it might be.

I think if Texas had said, look, you've got to be subject to the same liability laws as the rest of our media companies here, that's one thing.

But this this was purely political.

It's we don't like,

we don't like the fact we're going to, we're going to politicize and create this, uh, foment this falsehood that you are moderating conservative content.

And all the research actually shows if there's a bias of these algorithms, it's biased toward elevating conservative content because conservative content, and again, I don't think these companies or algorithms are inherently malicious, but what you find is the truly crazy shit on the right from representatives Gosar or Taylor Greene is so incendiary and so stupid.

Did you hear we're going to not have any straight people in a few years?

All I do is make straight people.

I find that.

Did you see she said that?

Well, I'll come back to that.

There is some.

There is.

I know.

My son did the same thing with me.

Go ahead.

Well, if you look at every generation, more and more people are reporting they're gay.

Supposedly by 2050, we're all going to be.

Maybe they were quiet before.

If you read A Secret City, a new book about Washington and gayness, they kept it to themselves.

Maybe there were lots of gays around before.

Anyway, please proceed.

I think there's some of that, but I also think that for the first time in a long time in certain metros, that it's not only not

discriminated, it's almost become a little bit fashionable.

And I think it's a worthwhile conversation.

And I'm about to trigger a bunch of people from Wolkistan.

I had this dinner conversation last night with my son.

Go ahead.

I'd love to hear your view on it.

Well, I, you know, it was interesting.

He was showing, and then he moved into plastics in the water supply.

But nonetheless, we told him about the Marjorie Taylor Greene thing and he goes, actually, statistically, there are more, you know, and then he was bringing out all his

percentage of the population supposedly is gay, according to Pew and confidential surveys.

Well, that declare gay, that declare themselves gay.

And I do agree people are being more fluid, gender fluid, and that stuff like that.

I think it was not allowed forever, forever.

And there was so many people pushing down.

And there was, there were more people who, when they had the consideration of it, think about it in a different way.

So I think that's that's one thing.

The second thing is

a lot of people say they're gay and they're not.

I mean, they can decide anything they want.

Like, you know what?

I mean, I had a, I had a relative.

I'm like, I had a nephew who said, you know, I'm gay.

And I'm like, do you sleep with men?

And he's like, no, I do not, but I could declare myself gay.

And I was like, no, what?

Like, I felt like an old, like, biddy, essentially.

And, you know, I think there's a lot more.

He was going out with a woman and they both declared themselves gay.

And I sort of, I just, I felt like a very old gay person.

I agree, more people, especially where there is more tolerance, where there's more, but I bet the same amount of people are in those scary areas where it's very scary to come out.

I think they're just hiding.

But they're just hiding.

But

the majority, and the research might be wrong here, the majority of research that is done privately, and maybe people are repressed or even afraid to tell an anonymous survey.

But generally speaking, the research to date shows that the public believes there are more gay people than there are.

Most research shows that the actual percentage of the population that identifies as gay is around 5%.

And because, and again,

I'm opening myself up here, because in terms of influence over industries, gay people over-index in industries that have an outsized influence in our society.

And I'm making a generalization and a stereotype here, but in terms of urban centers and media that have a disproportionate amount of influence.

Why wouldn't we go there?

Why wouldn't we?

Well, 100%.

but the moment you make it say anything that says this group is distinct and might behave differently you open yourselves to criticism but the reality is most people overestimate the actual number or percentage of the population uh that is gay yeah i think it's just there's more fluid you know you have someone like harry styles you know who or you know madonna's son always looked fantastic in this dress that she used to wear and um there's a lot of you know harry styles he's just something different i think there's a lot of different expressions going on in certain centers.

That's absolutely, and it becomes fashionable.

Yes, but it's also fantastic.

I agree.

It's, it's, on the whole, it's a good thing.

Linda Carter today was talking.

She was the original Wonder Woman.

Was like, if you don't think she's a lesbian icon, maybe it wasn't written as such.

She is.

She was like, this is the truth.

And everyone went to the back of it.

Linda Carter is a lesbian icon?

No, no, no.

Wonder Woman was a lesbian icon.

You're not a lesbian.

She was a lesbian icon for a lot of people, especially the Amazons, the whole outfits, the whole thing.

We all loved it.

it.

And so

she was talking about that.

It's Pride Month and stuff.

And so it was just interesting, the reaction back and forth.

It's like,

I think people are just being more open-minded about stuff.

I would recommend this book, Secret City, by James Kirchek.

He works for Tablet, I think, more conservative, gay guy.

And really, I did a Q ⁇ A with him.

It's really quite good about the hiding.

And

it brought back to mind a lot of hiding, myself included, because I wanted to go into military intelligence and I couldn't way back when until they changed a lot of things.

Anyhow, I don't know how we got on this from social media.

Social media sites should be able to put up whatever they want and take it down, and we can complain about it.

But if you do that.

And be liable for it, and we can.

bitch at them and call them amplified weaponization and there should be privacy laws and stuff.

So, but Texas has no fucking business being

free

in the censorship business.

Pure politicization and seven of the 10 most traffic sites on social media.

I can't get off the gay thing.

Let me just go back to it.

You know what I hope?

I hope for, I hope we get to a point soon

where you're, where you are in terms of fluidity, non-binary, binary, gay, straight, it becomes, goes way down in terms of the stack ranking for identifying somebody.

Yeah.

That it just becomes, yeah, but it's not, I feel like right now it's become the number one or number two thing in terms of how you identify somebody.

And at some point it just needs to be, yeah, they're this, and it doesn't really matter.

Straight people are still fascinated.

I hate to tell you, I'm always get, how did you have kids?

Like all the time, I go, for fuck's sake,

with my tummy, with my tummy.

What do you want?

With my uterus, with my uterus, I had a baby.

I've made so many good lesbian friends because of you.

One of the many things I, one of the many wonderful things I get from our friendship is that I have women who happen to be lesbian reaching out to me and establishing

one woman who's a fairly well-known and a fantastic journalist has like been so kind to me because of my relationship with you and I've established kind of a nice friendship.

You have opened up so many nice friendships for me.

I'm being very sincere.

Well, now you've lost George Kahn, so I don't know what to say.

That bitch, Dr.

Swisher.

You stay away from my brother.

I'll tell you, if I have to pick, I'm going to pick Jeffrey Swisher.

Anyway, Elon Musk is calling.

He's a very handsome man.

He's a wonderful guy and he's great.

Well, and he's a doctor.

I can't compete with that.

No, he's a really good doctor too.

Anyway, Elon Musk is calling Tesla's employees back to the office.

The Tesla CEO told employees that they should spend a minimum of 40 hours per week in the office or quit.

These are the top employees, actually.

He doubled down on Twitter saying employees who want to work from home should.

quote, pretend to work somewhere else.

This made me laugh.

I have to say.

That was funny.

I mean, he really, I kind of am with him on that one.

I got to say, he said, if the factory workers got to be there, they have to be there.

And I kind of loved it.

I kind of loved it.

I don't like all his other ridiculous pontificating on whatever subject of the moment, whether it's like trans fat or whatever.

And now he's commenting on everything, but this one I think he's correct about.

What do you think?

Yeah, look, I had the same reaction.

I'm on Team Elon.

I think there's certain industries, and manufacturing is one of them.

We're really not on Team Elon, but in this one, we are.

Yeah.

Okay.

It's impossible to make a car, almost impossible from home.

Yeah.

And if the factory workers, the frontline workers need to be there, the managers and the marketers need to be there.

Having said that,

I can't imagine that people didn't immediately point out out the irony: like, not only are you not here, but you've decided you can be the CEO of another company.

Like, is anybody else allowed to be the CEO of another company?

Yes, no.

He is

sort of.

He's unique, though.

He's unique.

Come on.

Come on.

Well, I get it, but look, let me go back to my original statement.

I think there, and by the way, speaking of Jamie Dimon and David Solomon of Goldman, they both said everybody needs to be back.

I do think there will be certain companies in certain industries that say, look, we've decided that work means being at a physical place between these hours.

And also,

I spoke at a communications company yesterday in Dallas.

I think it is really difficult to scale culture remotely.

I think it's just

I've seen this firsthand

at my startup.

It's one thing to take people who've worked together and have them be remote for a while.

And

I do think there's a huge unlock for people who are tacit, and it's usually women with a disproportionate amount of the care for others in the household, whether it's aging parents or kids.

there's an enormous unlock around not having to commute five days a week.

And so, to not incorporate that as a benefit for people who have what I would call real needs and can add to society and can and make homes healthier by, I think you should offer that.

And I do think all right, but let me just say, he's talking about top executives.

And I think they can afford.

They can afford

child care

easier.

And one of the things that was interesting, I thought the one thing that was interesting, it was kind of, I believe, a dig at Apple.

I couldn't tell, was that like people say you can't make great products without being together.

And some people say you can, but what's the last great thing they made?

It was something like that.

It was some version of that.

And I think he's right.

I think proximity does breed creativity within people.

And I don't, I like, listen, I've been remote working

almost my whole career, but it's.

I kind of, everyone like the same thing with social media companies, putting up what they want.

Every employee should decide for themselves.

They should decide.

And then they will get the employees they want and the ones that don't like it can leave.

That's my feeling on that.

But I kind of agreed with him on this, especially that company.

That particular company needs the executives to be just where the workers are, et cetera.

Well, someone said, I forget what executives said, and of course it got huge blowback, but somebody said that the most ambitious young employees want to be in the office.

And they got huge blowback from people who said, well, I'm ambitious.

I just don't have the option to be in the office.

So, at my firm, Prof G Media,

you know, who wanted to be in the office?

Was the young people?

They

won, especially in cities, they're living in such small apartments.

They're at an age where they want to make mentors, friends.

And they got

a WeWork-like thing in Brooklyn and said, We're going in.

And they go in every day, which just shocked me.

No, I think that's a good thing.

I think it's a good thing, too.

And there is, you want to talk about unpopular.

I had at all of my companies a mandatory 8 a.m.

Monday morning meeting.

Yeah, you told me this.

And then we also had, you want to talk about it, and this was less than pop, we actually liked it.

The senior executives, we used to do a call every Sunday night to talk about the week ahead.

It was like, we'd get on the phone.

Those are not necessary.

Unnecessary.

When you're growing a company,

I don't know.

That was my

might not be the right way, but it's my hustle porn.

That's hustle porn.

Well, you like porn.

I like both those things.

I like bust.

Yeah, you like hustle and porn.

All right, let's get to our big story.

Cheryl Sandberg is leaving Meta, something we predicted would happen.

After 14 years as chief operating officer, she announced her departure on Facebook post on Wednesday, where she talked up the company's contributions to women's equality and safety.

Mark Zuckerberg said he has no plans to replace Sandberg's role in the existing structure.

He sort of...

spread it around.

He tapped chief growth officer Javier Olivan, who has a very good reputation, by the way, take the title of COO, but he has many fewer things than Cheryl had.

Nick Clegg has a bunch.

Other people have a bunch.

Marnie Levine, who is one of her

people Cheryl's brought up, Sandberg said she would focus on her foundation and

philanthropy and would continue to serve on Facebook's board of directors, people on others.

She's also, I believe it was noted that she's getting married this August,

remarried after her husband died several years ago.

What do you think?

Why is she leaving now?

And Stephanie Ruhl tweeted, why now?

Like that really big with caps um so what thinks you about this there's a lot of uh regulatory or presuming legal action against facebook more is on the way they're going to be there's going to be super pumped is coming up from brian koppelman with mark and cheryl for super pumped season two but that doesn't that's not either there but nonetheless this relationship is coming to an end unlike ours uh this this very long term 14 years half of it very good half of it not so good um as casey Casey Newt pointed out.

What thanks you?

What thanks you, Scott?

Go ahead.

Well, look, first off, I just think you have to acknowledge that Gates and Bomber,

Jobs and Ive,

and Zuckerberg and Sandberg are right up there in terms of creating shareholder value and building an unbelievable business, which isn't easy.

I mean, they basically created or dominated or are the iconic technology firm in a space that has become increasingly important that no one even imagined.

So,

and she was the adult in the room.

She was 38 when she joined a 23-year-old.

That's correct.

And big companies and organizations all over the world said,

and Casey pointed this out, it's sort of like the first seven years and the second seven years, but the first seven years, she established herself as one of the most competent, socially-minded people in business.

And you just have to not acknowledge that is to say, is to not, is to have any nuance.

She built that business.

She built the key part.

That business was chaos before that.

Believe me, I covered it.

And guess who scooped that story that she went there from Google, Kara Swisher?

Nonetheless, she changed that company's profile.

It was really a chaos factory before that.

It really was.

He couldn't have done it without her.

And some people think that's a bad thing, of course, because he couldn't have done it without her.

The interesting thing is that if she had left in 2015 or 2016,

I think she would be either she'd be governor or she'd be probably

one of the premier candidates or names being tossed around to potentially get the Democratic nomination in 2024.

Yeah, I would agree.

I think she was on such an incredible trajectory.

And here's what the last seven years are.

She's also going to be known as kind of the the dark knight or the high priestess of really dark communications.

Yeah.

And that is whether it was digging up dirt

that ended up being anti-Semitic on Soros, whether it was spreading lies about assaulting teachers on TikTok, whether it was going on the media and saying other platforms didn't have the security measures we did January 6th and having all media go, okay, now you're just lying to us.

Whether it was a 900-person PR and comms department where there seemed to be a couple hundred people doing nothing but managing her obsession with the perception of the Russian hack instead of she seemed to be spending more time managing her perception and delay in obfuscating the public's perception of really bad things at Facebook rather than actually addressing the problems.

And here is the conflict.

And this is the difference between whether she will be a viable candidate for office, which I think she absolutely plans to do, and whether she's kind of a footnote in history.

And that is she has positioned herself as someone who's an enormous and powerful advocate for women in the workplace.

And she's written eloquently about it.

She's a powerful figure.

She sets a great example for women in the workplace.

At the same time, just as George Carlin said, if you're pre-birth, the Republicans got your back.

If you're preschool, you're fucked.

If you are a woman at work, you could argue that Cheryl Sandberg has your back.

If you're a 15-year-old woman who suffers from an eating disorder and Facebook serves you up an algorithm for a extreme dieting website, you're on your own.

And this is the conflict and the tension around Cheryl Sandberg's legacy, is that to position herself as an advocate for women and to have played a key role in what is, at the end of the day, a massive uptick in depression, especially among teens, especially among girls,

is the conflict, the irony, the tension that is Cheryl Sandberg.

So I think it's going to be very interesting what her legacy is.

You're being rather kind.

You had called her a number of other names before, which is interesting.

You're being very, I like this.

I like this analysis.

I would agree with you.

I think she is a complex figure.

And,

you know, people always think I'm too nice to her.

I do, the reason I'm too nice to her is I think it should focus on Mark Zuckerberg.

And often, whatever the case is, whether it's Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton, whether it's Amber Heard and Johnny Depp, they both sound vile.

You know what I mean?

It's addict versus addict playing out.

But she gets the, Amber Heard gets a bulk of the problem here.

If you look at the British case, you're sort of like, Johnny Depp's a scary character.

So I think that one of the problems she had was what the thing that got the company into a great space is exactly the problems she had later when it got to be more serious.

And she may not recall this conversation.

I actually do have to call her and ask her back.

It's going to be in my book where I called her around 2060.

I had thought she should leave the company when Dave died in May of 2015.

I liked Dave very much.

I would consider him a friend.

And people love him.

I thought that

he was a wonderful guy.

He was a very good judge with her.

He was a very good person who would help probably, you know,

give her

great advice.

I think he would stop her from doing some of these things.

That would be my

very good person and someone, I think, who would have been a good influence on her had he continued to live.

It was a tragedy that he died.

I think that he,

I think she should have left then.

And you're right, her legacy would have been very different.

She could have been, she has a hard time being

not being smooth.

I don't know what else to say.

She's such a like a smooth operator of an executive, you know, very perfect, very, with the hands,

everything about it.

And I think she just felt like, I think Mark was very kind to her and personally, too, when Dave died.

And I think they developed a bond.

And so she was.

loyal to a fault and also was part of it too.

So wasn't listening.

And we had a conversation about the Russian stuff in 2015, maybe.

And she said I was overstating it.

I said she was underthinking it.

And I said, we'll see what happens, but you've got to come clean.

And I think she was, I think when she did the thing on January 6th, about January 6th, that was really sort of the top of the don't do this.

What are you doing?

Why are you doing this kind of thing?

But go ahead.

You pointed this out to me, and you're absolutely right.

At the end of the day, the real blame or the real credit lies with the top guy, and it's a guy, and it's Mark Zuckerberg.

And I think Mark Zuckerberg is brilliant.

And quite frankly, I think he weaponized Sheryl Sandberg.

He immediately recognized that she is incredibly compelling.

She's incredibly charismatic.

She is an icon.

for 51% of the population.

Let's weaponize her and turn her into the ultimate heat shield against any sunshine that shows what is actually the fuck going on here because it is pretty ugly.

And he deployed her brilliantly.

And here's the thing:

there have been executives who have lied more than Sheryl Sandberg.

There's never been an executive who has lied longer.

No one has ever survived the number of blatant falsehoods for as long as Sheryl Sandberg.

And he deployed it brilliantly.

And everyone after her, whether it's Nick Clegg or the guy who was running PR before her, Kevin Rose, no one has had the half-life.

No one has had the half-life of bullshit before the media goes, you know what, you're just being paid to lie.

And we don't believe anything you say.

Sheryl Sandberg was the premier weapon of mass distraction ever deployed on the business community.

And Mark Zuckerberg was brilliant.

And unfortunately, if she had left six years ago, I think she genuinely would be a viable presidential candidate.

I agree.

I agree.

I think she would be, I think she would have moved away.

I think she might have done some really interesting interesting things around her foundation.

I think she, you know, it's interesting.

I think about what she's going to do next because philanthropy is what she's talking about.

I don't think she's going to start

at the end.

I don't think she's going to run a company.

She's 100%.

She's not running.

I'm telling you, she's not running.

That's what she's doing.

She can't run without Dave.

I always thought when Dave died, that was the end of it.

I don't know if she's going to win.

I know what she's doing.

I think she's not going to run.

I don't think she's going to.

I think she's going to try to pull a Bill Gates before, you know, the philandering thing.

I think Bill managed to revive his reputation.

You know, he had a bizarre fader reputation.

And through the philanthropy and through all these good acts

and measured and statesmanlike stuff, he returned his reputation.

There's a huge difference between Bill Gates and Sheryl Samberg.

Come on.

Go ahead.

All right, Tom.

I think Bill Gates manages his reputation as a function of wanting to solve really big problems.

And I think he'd rather stay out of the limelight.

Okay.

I think Sheryl Sandberg will use her philanthropy solely as a means to set up everything to run for Dianne Feinstein's seat seat in 2024.

She is going to run for the Democratic nomination for Dianne Feinstein's seat as soon as people at some point, somebody is going to have to have a talk with Senator Feinstein and say, you've had a.

People have had talks with Senator Feinstein.

She doesn't seem to be listening.

2024, Cheryl Sandberg is going to, I don't know, she will absolutely do polls, run trial balloons.

And I believe, because quite frankly, she's had more and more difficulty reading the room as she's gotten older, she is positioning herself to run for Senate.

She's totally different than Bill Gates.

I don't doubt her intentions.

I think she, you know, let's assume that she wants, she really does care about women's issues in the workplace and gender balance.

I think everything she does is posing for the cameras for an election.

And she's going to run in 2024.

Here's what she should do, not any of that.

She should be doing real philanthropy.

Talking about what should, should.

She should be, if I was...

I am speaking to her a little bit, but let me just say, if I were her, and this is what I would tell her,

she should try to really do the actual work and not for what you're saying.

You know what I mean?

Like really make significant strides in the areas she's talked about, which is women equality.

She's very outspoken on Row,

et cetera.

When she was, she gave at one point a couple of years ago, I had to do an interview with her, and she gave $1 million to Planned Parenthood.

I thought you should have donated and told her this, $100 million.

Well, in a similar story, I gave $17 to the local animal shelter.

And she's like, fuck you.

And I was like, well, 10 million is nothing to you.

That's like me giving $20.

Like, give me a break.

Or, you know, like, if you really mean it, put it up there.

I think her step would be to go out into the wilderness for quite a long time and come back with some results.

I think it's a mistake for her to run.

And

I hope she does not.

If we're going to talk about should, she should stick around, use all her skills to become CEO of Meta, and then shut the fucking place down.

They won't ever, they're never going to.

That's what she should do.

She should become CEO of Meta.

She's not not ever going to.

As powerful as she was, she does not have power there, Mark Zuckerberg.

No, I agree.

I'm joking.

Become CEO and then shut the company down.

This is not an individual who can stay out of the limelight.

And by the way, most men suffer from that same thing.

There is no way she is going to fade quietly into the dark.

No.

Go quietly.

Go and do some real, like, real

lifting, heavy lifting.

That's what I would.

Go quietly do some heavy lifting and then come back.

And then maybe, maybe you'll have to.

But you know her.

I'm putting forward a thesis.

I don't know her.

Everything I have seen from her is that, like a lot of men who are powerful, she is very focused on advancing her own

power and public profile, which includes political office.

I think she looks in the mirror every day and says, hello, Madame Senator, Madam President.

I don't think she says, hello, person who's going to change, who's going to develop a cheaper toilet for Africa, which is what Bill Gates is trying to do.

I don't think that's her mission.

I think her mission is to be an elected leader and increase her power.

And by the way, there's nothing wrong with that.

That's what most men do.

I think she should spend her money to do a local election media stuff.

And really, if I were her, I'd start buying up local media sites or something like that.

You know, they're looking for a chief of staff or a foundation.

Do you want to apply?

Shall I apply?

Should we apply?

She has a foundation.

Oh, that's right.

That makes sense.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

She has a big, well, they all have them.

But I would, I would really, I hope she does not do that.

And I hope I get a chance to tell her that.

Probably she may listen to this.

I think she needs to go and do the real work.

And

by the way, let me just say from the reaction of just one tweet I made, people have not, do not forgive her and never will.

They think she destroyed democracy.

But when I did, when I was...

I'm just saying, it may be irrevocable, but I don't know.

Who knows?

When I went on Twitter and just started putting out a bunch of snarky tweets, I got a lot of pushback.

And it depressed me.

So you know what I did?

I did my favorite thing.

I go to that strip club where they spit in your face.

That always cheers me up.

That always cheers me up.

You got more.

Hey, don't be so mean to Cheryl.

I got, hey,

she's the handmaiden to sedition.

I got a lot of that.

And I can see all sides of this.

Honestly, she's such a complex character.

But she definitely was responsible for Facebook.

I don't think she had as much power as he did.

I think that's a much, it's a much different place than you think inside there.

I think Mark rules the role.

Well, let me ask you a question.

She should have left.

She should have left.

Talk about staying too long.

She should have left.

Because if she,

again, she left in 2015, I think she would be her name.

Every time you talk about presidential contenders, her name would be mentioned.

Let me ask you this, and it's a sincere question.

Has she been a net good or a net negative for women?

I don't think she should represent all women.

I don't, I think that's, you know, has Lindsey Graham been a net good or negative to men, as Trump?

Like,

I don't think it's a fair thing.

I don't think it's a fair thing.

She's an executive, and so I'm not going to answer that question.

Okay, it's absolutely a fair question, Karen, because she's tried to position herself as the premier advocate for women.

Lindsey Graham isn't saying I'm representing heterosexual men.

No, you shouldn't.

I think there's a lot of complex characters in the feminism pantheon.

I don't know.

I don't think anybody represents anything.

Madeleine Albright, an enormous positive

for women.

Hillary Clinton, I will say, I think Hillary Clinton has been a net positive for women.

Not always.

Not always, but she will be.

I think she will be.

Well, okay, net.

I'm using the word net.

Net.

Net positive for women.

Cheryl Samberg question mark.

I mean, no matter how you slice it, Cheryl Sandberg has created more wealth for people through her efforts at Facebook than most executives in Silicon Valley.

I just, I like, look at some of these baby boys that behave so badly and then we let them go on and laugh.

Ha ha ha.

It's so funny when when Elon insults trans people.

Anyway,

in any case, Cheryl Samberg's never going to do something like that.

So let us just read.

We've been predicting this for a while.

Let us play ourselves to give ourselves some credit.

What do you think?

I couldn't predict anything that Mark Zacker.

I think they're, both he and Cheryl are going to move along, I think.

Both of them.

And you think they'll bring in someone from the outside to be safe.

That would be the shareholder-driven thing to do, to hit the reset button.

Because Cheryl's not going to take over for him.

That's not going to happen now because they need to clear the whole thing out.

And I think it's a perfect.

The Bezos move gives them a little more permission to do this.

Just so you know, the Cheryl Sandberg and Dave Goldberg Family Foundation oversees two nonprofits that build on the work of Sandberg's books, LeanIn.org and optionb.org.

So we'll see.

We'll see what happens.

But I really appreciate your analysis here.

I thought you were just going to...

yell, but you didn't.

You had some very good analysis here.

Yeah, but I mean, this sincerely, you opened my eyes to the fact that, Scott, at the end of the day, it's about number one.

And I actually, everyone, you just said, he was very kind to her.

I think he absolutely weaponized her.

I mean, Cryo River, she made a big deal.

I'm talking about the reason she was so loyal to him.

I think that there was a lot of closeness after Dave died in terms of both him and Priscilla.

I think there was a lot.

Okay, again, armchair therapist, I think, is a fucking sociopath bridging psychopath and uses stuff like that to say, and go out there, and go out there and tell them we're proud of the progress we've made around January 6th and see if they go for it.

See if they go for it.

That was, I texted her.

I was like, What are you doing?

What the hell?

So, I don't, but you're right.

You've always said you've been consistent.

At the end of the day, it's about the CEO.

He controls the company.

And he's still there and he's still there.

He's still running it and he's betting it all on meta.

How much do you love that?

That makes me so happy

by himself.

Anyway, we're going to have a quick break.

We'll do it very quickly.

We'll talk about FDC's pursuit of Amazon and take a listener question about innovation.

As a founder, you're moving fast towards product market fit, your next round, or your first big enterprise deal.

But with AI accelerating how quickly startups build and ship, security expectations are also coming in faster, and those expectations are higher than ever.

Getting security and compliance right can unlock growth or stall it if you wait too long.

Vanta is a trust management platform that helps businesses automate security and compliance across more than 35 frameworks like SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA and more.

With deep integrations and automated workflows built for fast-moving teams, Vanta gets you audit ready fast and keeps you secure with continuous monitoring as your models, infrastructure, and customers evolve.

That's why fast-growing startups like Langchain, Writer, and Cursor have all trusted Vanta to build a scalable compliance foundation from the start.

Go to Vanta.com slash Fox to save $1,000 today through the Vanta for Startups program and join over 10,000 ambitious companies already scaling with Vanta.

That's vanta.com slash vox to save $1,000 for a limited time.

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 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 $100 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 ads.

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

The FTC is ratcheting up its antitrust probe into Amazon.

Government lawyers are reportedly looking into Amazon web services as well as the company's acquisition of MGM earlier this year, as Lena Khan said they might.

And when they let it go through, the FDC let the deal go through, but they said they could revisit it.

Now be the time.

Lena Khan is said to have taken a personal interest in the probe.

I will say she asked me about it.

So, about MGM, and I was like, it's not competitive.

I don't even think it was competitive.

There's so much entertainment competition.

That's what I answered to her.

I said other things are much more important when it has to do with Amazon and antitrust.

So, what do you think?

Amazon Web Services has $13 billion in operating income in 2020.

MGM sold to Amazon for $8.5 billion.

If you look at the cloud hosting in the top 100,000 websites, Amazon has 34% market share.

That's bigger, but I still think there's a lot of competition.

AWS outages affected everyone from Netflix to Disney Plus to Coinbase to Pinterest.

You think AWS could become its own company?

I'm not sure either of these things.

I think the marketplace issues are the most important thing around Amazon.

I don't know.

What do you think, Scott?

I think, and I understand why.

The FTC is under-resourced and they're outgunned.

So they're like, what can we get our arms around?

But they're being heavy-handed with the wrong issue here.

Amazon's purchase of MGM.

I mean, that's just, it's pretty trivial.

Now, granted, you could argue an example of the fact that they have so much market capitalization, they can do uneconomic deals.

Okay, fine.

That's an example of monopoly power.

But if you actually wanted to make a difference in terms of competition in the marketplace, you would say, all right, you can't be both the platform competing against your competitors and also if you want, you can't use AWS to subsidize and create a value proposition for consumers no one else can compete with on the retail side, funneling profits from one end to the other.

This is, this is sort of,

you're focused on the wrong thing.

You have a patient with cancer and you're like, we're going to get that, we're going to take the wart off your foot.

It's just, yeah, it's not even a wart.

They're like, okay, we got to do something we can be successful at.

We can get our arms around.

This is not.

We're going to be successful successful at it.

Even Hollywood people, they just think they overpaid for it, but they don't feel that bad about it.

Amazon Prime Video isn't the problem.

Them having access to Rocky isn't the problem.

So I look at this and I say, okay,

I understand that you're trying to have a win here against a big name.

That makes sense strategically.

But you're being heavy-handed with the wrong issue here.

It just doesn't.

Yeah, and I'm not even sure with AWS.

You know, maybe they have some documents we don't know about or something like that.

But it seems like there's Google.

There's lots of people in this space.

I think there's choice, right?

I think it feels like maybe.

I'd like to see some of the proof.

That's what I'd like to see.

With MGM, I'm sorry.

I think it's a rabbit hole.

She shouldn't go down.

I think the marketplace issue is really the issue, and it may not be an antitrust issue.

She's risking a loss on an issue that even if she wins, the downside's greater than the upside here.

What's the upside that she gets a victory and Amazon has to re-spin or the acquisition doesn't close of MGM UA?

I don't know.

Yeah, it did close.

on spinner?

What?

Anyways, I think it's another example.

We are perplexed.

We are perplexed, Lina.

We'd like some answers.

So please explain.

There may be stuff we don't know, but in any case, there's bigger fish with Amazon, I suspect, and I suspect none of them are going to get got.

In any case, Scott, let's pivot to a listener question, which is sort of along these lines.

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

You've got mail.

The question comes via email from Jeremy from Brooklyn.

I'll read it.

You often talk about how Facebook is not an innovative company, which I agree with.

My question to you both is, why aren't they?

They clearly throw boatloads of money around for smart people.

I work in tech and personally know a few folks who either work there now or in the past who are all bright, creative, and driven people.

So I can't imagine lack of talent is the problem.

Why does Facebook tend to fail at creating innovative products despite access to same capital and talent?

Whereas a company like Apple or Amazon often succeed?

I don't know what to tell you.

Jeremy, some things, people aren't innovative.

They just aren't.

They're just not.

There's some cultures that aren't innovative, that aren't fast moving.

And they just, I can't, there's all kinds of reasons.

Either they're fearful or people are safe with all their money or,

God, there's all kinds of reasons companies.

They don't have to be.

I don't know, Scott.

What do you, you run companies more than I do?

I just, people are either creative or they're not.

And I don't know.

You can, you can foment creativity like we talked about, the flow state, but I don't know.

You have to, it's hard.

Go ahead, Scott.

Why?

Well, first off, you can't immediately, the term innovation has become almost meaningless because it's used so often.

And if you look at economic history, it's not the innovators that create the most shareholder value.

Facebook was not the first social media platform.

Remember Friendster?

Apple was not the first company in object-oriented computing, nor were they the first company to have an MP3 player.

I mean, it's not the innovator that creates shareholder value.

They get mud on their face and arrows in their back.

It's the company that takes someone else's innovation and runs with it and does a better job job of it.

Now, what's unusual about Facebook,

to his point, or to Jeremy's point, is that they have been less able to diversify their revenues than anyone else.

So, Google gets real revenues from YouTube.

Amazon gets enormous revenues from AWS.

Facebook's percentage of revenues that they get from advertising has gone in the wrong direction.

It's gone from like 90% to 97%.

And if I were to try and devise a strategy to undermine, kneecap, weaken the corpus that is Facebook, I would invent this distraction called the metaverse and specifically the Oculus to pour billions of dollars down a sinkhole.

Not only are they not innovative, but they are so, in my opinion, they've created a culture, and I think this goes back to Shel Sandberg, where I think Mark Zuckerberg, I don't know this, but I think for them to not...

to be going this hard this long at the metaverse just shows that you can't tell i i i think this this thing already no one told him to stop i can i can see this room already let me just say i have been in discussions with mark and many other people i could spend hours with evan spiegel talking i can spend hours with kevin sistrom brian chesky i'm just trying to name some of the creative people i think or you know tim cook is fascinating to talk to i cannot spend hours talking to mark zuckerberg i mean he gets all there's word salad that goes on about community and then i i i don't put the phone down, but I certainly am like, I would like a fresh idea here.

It's never, you know what I mean?

Like, kind of when I met you, you were head full of fresh ideas.

It was, I really wanted to talk to you.

You thought I was going to say you were boring, but you are not.

It's, I can't explain why some people, someone keeps, people keep asking me lately how we met, but I got to say, I just really wanted to talk to you.

And that was, and that's how I feel about a lot of creative people when you meet them.

And then you meet other people, you're like, oh, God, kill me now.

Like, get me out of this dinner party kind of thing.

And I think that's, you can't, it's not innovation, it's creativity.

And you're right.

Some people take advantage of creativity.

Facebook definitely did that

around buying Instagram and other things.

They're good at buying, just the way Bill Gates was very good, opportunistic, but it wasn't creative.

Steve Jobs was creative.

And so I don't know why.

It just is.

It's just there's there's a, there's usually one person or two people at the top.

In the case of Snapchat, it was Evan Spiegel.

In the case of Apple, it's obviously Steve Jobs and Johnny Ive, and to an extent, Kim Cook.

He is really innovative around supply chain.

He really just is.

Well, I mean, there's a lot of things.

There's been so much research around innovation and creativity.

And it's not only about coming up with new ideas, it's having the willingness or giving people permission to fail.

And it's also killing ideas when they're not working.

To say, okay, this isn't working.

We're going on to the next thing.

And

it's also what gets very hard about creativity with a company as successful as Meta is what's always hanging over the cloud that comes over every decision is, will this innovation threaten our legacy business?

And that is.

They do think like that a lot.

Whereas if you look at Apple, they said, I know, let's take this wildly profitable, huge juggernaut product called the iPod, and let's turn it into a button on the iPhone.

I mean, that's the key component of creativity.

You don't let, if somebody says we can make this better and we're uniquely positioned to make this better, the majority of big companies go, yeah, but it's going to threaten this amazing thing called our legacy business.

So we'd rather, I mean, ATT never wanted, when it was a big company, they never wanted to do fiber or sell because they're like, dude, do you know how much money we're making off our long distance lines?

Yep, that's true.

Someone's going to eat our lunch.

It might as well be us.

That's right.

So smaller companies that have less to lose are generally much more creative because they take more crazy swings at the bat.

They don't have to be small.

They don't have to be small.

I don't, you know, I just, if you, if you spend any length of time with Facebook people, the process is all any company that is non-creative, process takes over of anything else.

Process, it's like process meetings.

I remember the journal, Wall Street Journal.

That's, I know, but I was at the Wall Street Journal and I'm thinking, I'm in way too many fucking meetings.

Like, it was just, I can't explain it.

It's just, it's a, it's a, I stopped listening to the people I'm talking to often at Facebook for years.

And I was like, oh my God, I'm so bored.

And I don't know why.

I don't know why I was.

And every time I saw Elon, I was like, that's cool.

You're crazy.

You know, that kind of stuff.

And so,

you know, whether you like him or not, it was always interesting.

So I don't know.

Good question, Jeremy from Brooklyn.

But I have to say, that is how I felt when I met Scott.

What a creative mind he has.

So anyway.

That's really the nicest thing that's happened to me all day.

You are.

It was true.

I was like, I also said, what an asshole, as you know.

I aspire to be creative.

What a jerk.

But wow, I didn't think

anyway.

I don't mind that at all.

I know.

I know you don't.

I don't mind that at all.

Which is why we get along.

All right.

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

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

Our last episode, which included questions on dating, was so popular.

We're going to do a whole episode on dating.

This is very exciting for me because I have my third-year high school reunion coming up and I want to stand up in front of everybody and say, I give people advice now on dating.

That's important to me.

By the way, it's my 40th, but let's just pretend it's my 30th.

So this is for me.

This is all about me.

Send us your questions about dating.

One more quick break.

We'll be back for wins and fails.

Honey punches the votes la forma perfecta depends on the account familia.

Cono ju las crucientes and verdad calos niños les encanta.

Ademas delicos trosos de grandola, nuces y fruta.

¿C todos vana disfrutal?

Honey punches a votes para todos.

Today alban para sabermás.

Support for the show comes from Sacks Fifth Avenue.

Sacks 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 Brunella Cuccinelli 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 follow rivals and style inspiration.

Okay, Scott, I'm going to go first.

Top Gun now has a record for the biggest Memorial Day opening weekend.

It made an estimated $156 million this opening weekend, and it marks the biggest opening of Tom Cruise's career, which Matt Bellany predicted in our last quarterly predictions episode.

I predict that Top Gun Maverick, which comes out on May 27th, will be the biggest opening weekend of Tom Cruise's career.

Let me just say, I'm thrilled by that.

I'm wearing a fighter school t-shirt.

But that said, let me just say one thing that Casey Newton pointed out, but his mom, Sally, doesn't want to hear us talk about Scopgun.

I'm not going to say why, but she has issues around the Scientology.

And so

you can't enjoy movies now because of people's eyes.

I know, but I'm just going to point it out.

Not everybody, I got a couple of people saying that, and I get it.

I just think it's, I think it's been around for a long time.

When someone is that good looking, you forgive a lot of their shit.

You got to forgive a lot of their misgivings.

repulsive they're that good looking scientology okay and there you have it sally our discussion of so can i make two observations about maverick top gun too i went yeah go ahead um but you need to win my kids have now seen it twice um whoa really two things really stuck out first off there's just no getting around it this guy has a deal with with the dark prince.

He has done a deal with Satan because he is about to turn 60.

And notice how when they brought back Val Kilmer, they had to build into the storyline that he's about to die.

That's why he looks the way he does.

And then they didn't even.

Because he was good-looking, Val Kilmer.

Oh, my God.

By the way,

not only good looking.

He's so much better looking than Tom Cruise.

Not only good looking and

extraordinary talent.

Did you see Real Genius or Top Secret?

I did.

I loved him.

He can sing and dance.

And he has great comedic timing.

Val Kilmer at Willow,

he was a rare talent.

But to to have him next to Tom Cruise, we had to give him near-death cancer.

And by the way, the neck thing, the neck thing old ladies wear, the neck has to be a little bit more than a hundred years ago.

Also, in fairness to Val Kilmer, I know I saw the documentary.

He was quite ill.

But notice how they didn't even dare bring back Kelly McGillis or Meg Ryan.

Because guess what?

They actually look their age.

And they're like, we can't have that.

We have to bring in another freak of nature, Jennifer Connolly, who's 51 going on 18.

Yeah, she looks amazing.

I mean, she looks amazing.

And she was age-appropriate, which I, but

I get a sense of how freakishly remarkable Tom Cruise is.

They couldn't bring anybody back unless they had cancer.

Anyway.

Can I just clear up something about Jennifer Connolly's character?

Someone was like, oh, she's representing single mothers.

She was the daughter of an admiral who probably by then worked for a defense company.

So she probably was rich.

They're like, how could she have a bar, a Porsche, the house, et cetera?

She was rich to start with.

Okay, sorry.

That was weird.

The other thing that I found really interesting is everything's become so politicized.

Did you notice how they made the enemy totally neutral?

No flags.

You didn't know if it was Iran, China, or Russia.

It's Iran, right?

Iran.

Well, okay, geography.

Here's the thing.

If you think about it, okay, the landscape sounded like Iran in

nuclear materials and fusion reactors, all that stuff.

Except, except

Iran wouldn't have access to third-generation fighters.

Fifth generation.

Fifth generation, whatever they call it.

Anyways,

a great film.

I don't even know if that's a thing, by the way, but fifth generation.

All right, go ahead.

What is your win?

I have fail.

I have Marjorie Taylor Green once again.

Look, my win is the same as my fail, and that is the thing I got disappointed, I thought it was really interesting how the top story was the Depp Heard verdict over Sheryl Sandberg leaving.

I thought that was interesting.

I agree.

And also, just because I'm naturally morose, but

I think there is a, I think it's important here that we not get distracted and that as we usually do, we move away from what was a horrific shooting last week.

So I just want to, quite frankly, I want to bring it up again.

And my win is, I do think, well, obviously we've been talking about the tragedy here, there is real,

I was so inspired and moved and quite frankly, just sort of rattled by,

I don't know if you read about,

there's a gentleman named Trey Ganum, who is an artisan who met with all of the families and is making custom caskets.

And these caskets, I mean, are not only so beautiful, but so heartbreaking.

There's one of Superman.

There's another that has TikTok and softball.

But he basically sat down with all the families and said, I want to bury your kids how they'd want to be buried.

But anyways, my point is,

I really hope

we don't do what we always do, and that is move on to bullshit like Heard and Depp and Sheryl Sandler.

There is a very important story that

commands and deserves our continued attention.

But my word.

Same thing with Ukraine and Uvalde.

And by the way, there was another shooting in Tulsa.

They've got to come up with gun reform.

Same thing with Roe.

We are not like, you cannot, I couldn't watch a bit of that hurt thing.

I thought it was sad and depressing and gruesome.

Monica Hess wrote a great column about it.

That hurt in depth?

Yes, read it.

I've tweeted it.

It's weird to

obsess over.

this sad marriage, the end of this very sad and depressing marriage.

And they're much more important.

These children were murdered.

We have to move towards gun reform.

There's some movement in the Senate.

We'll see.

We've been there before.

But it would be a huge fail if we don't do gun reform at this point.

And

remember, as they say, as it's getting a lot of traction, well-regulated militia.

Those words are in there.

They're in there for a reason.

And all of you who think you can do whatever you want, it says it in the if you believe in the Constitution, then read it.

Maybe.

Well, Maureen Dowd had a really powerful, and I texted her

article, and she just started off by saying, America is not some mystical kingdom run by magical princes or fairies.

She said, this is our country.

We have a democratically elected Congress and Senate that get to pass or not pass gun control laws.

And she just, it was just a wake-up call.

Like, don't get resigned.

This isn't some fairy tale thing we don't have control over.

We absolutely have control over it.

100%.

But anyways, my win is.

It becomes hopeless.

It does feel hopeless, though, to be fair.

My win is just the artisanship and grace and generosity of this gentleman, Trey Ganem.

I can't imagine how heartbreaking it is for him to do this, but you literally see these caskets, and I would recommend everyone Google Trey Ganem.

And I mean, it really brings home in a very bittersweet way what has happened here.

But my win is

I just think this individual must just, I just thought, God, what an incredibly interesting, talented, and generous man this guy must be.

Anyways,

you see this.

It was a beautiful thought, an artistic thought.

There's no happiness to become of this.

It combines the depravity.

It combines the depravity and at the same time, the grace of our society.

Anyways, my win is Trey Gannon.

Yeah.

My fail, by the way, is the stuff that's starting to come out about January 6th.

These emails, this is a coup attempt.

It's crazy.

I haven't been following that.

I just follow it.

It'll start to come out as they have the hearings and everything else this soon.

Some of these emails from these lawyers of Trump's are

they're just literally trying to take over the government via non-democratic means.

And it is, there's no way the fact that they thought they'd get away with it and they're continuing to get away with it is you know trying to seed people across the country.

Honestly, it's people should be more, they won't be, but they should be horrified by the attempt to subvert democracy.

Speaking of that, oh, wait, I forgot my fail is that bitch, Dr.

Swisher.

Stay away from my man.

Stay away from my man.

They're walking right now in the park.

Right now as we speak, they're taking a

lovely sojourn in Central Park, walking the dog.

They're walking the dog.

Yeah.

I don't know where you are, not walking the dog.

Anyway, and that does not, there's not a euphemism for anything else, by the way.

There you go.

Anyway.

Okay, Scott, that is the show.

We'll be back on Tuesday for more pivot.

We've got lots to talk about.

Please read us out.

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

Ernie Intertot engineered this episode.

Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Meal Siberio.

Make sure you're subscribed 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.

Do you have two kids, one who rolls their eyes and the other that doesn't?

Appreciate the one that doesn't.

Appreciate the one that doesn't.

Because soon enough, the eye roll is coming.

The eye roll is coming.