Disney Drama, Amazon Owns MGM, and Guest Kelly AuCoin

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Hi, everyone.

This is Pivot from the Vox Media Podcast Network.

I'm Kara Swisher.

All right, what's going on?

Literally, you're still sick?

Still sick.

I was on my back for two different days, but I traveled in the in-between day and I got sicker.

And so I was in bed all day yesterday with a beautiful view of San Francisco.

But nonetheless, I'm still in a Bay Area?

Yeah, I'm in San Francisco.

Yeah.

And what's like, if you don't live there, people describe it as a hellscape, but I've heard it's not as bad as people say.

It's not.

It's bullshit.

It's such crap.

I've told you that.

Some of it is.

Yes.

Certainly.

There's more homelessness.

There's more issues with drugs, with fentanyl.

Thank you very much, Thackler family.

But, you know, it's still a beautiful place.

Yeah.

Don't listen to, don't listen to the Miami Bros scene.

It's not true.

It's not true.

I love it here.

I'd move here in a second if I could.

Really?

You want to go back?

Yeah, very much.

I've lived in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and Florida.

And I'd say my least, I think San Francisco is the most beautiful city in the nation.

Yeah.

But it's the only place I would say I don't miss.

I really miss L.A.

I miss, I love New York.

I love Florida.

Why is that?

You know, I don't know what it was.

I enjoyed it.

I had a great 10 years there.

Absolutely adored going to Berkeley, still very very involved with Berkeley.

I got sick of what I'll call the mono weather.

I felt like it was a monoclimate.

It was always between 60 and 70 degrees, 11 and a half months of the year.

Outdoor dining is a near impossibility because the seven nights a year, it's warm enough.

They're not ready for it.

I'm all about the night.

And San Francisco is all about the day.

You go mountain biking and mountain tam, and then you go out on the bay.

I'm the great endorsement.

I like to drink late at night.

There's not many places to do that in San Francisco.

Also, the political climate in San Francisco, I thought it

just as I find people who are very far right hard to be around, I found that the political climate in San Francisco was kind of intolerant, even though I consider myself a progressive.

So I was, I was ready to leave.

Yeah.

Well, you know, it's some of that is true, but it's so beautiful.

And I really like, I like the strangeness.

I like the, it's like, I don't know.

I just, I have a Tales from the City version of San Francisco in my head that never disappoints in a lot of ways from Armiston Mopin.

I'm much more a centrist also, also, and I find it

a little much, but it's changing.

They recalled the school board.

I'm sorry.

You describe yourself as a centrist.

Here I am.

What in Norway?

I mean, I'm not that liberal, Scott.

I'm a capitalist.

Yeah.

I am not.

I am not.

I don't know.

Those are capitalists.

Not all of them, for sure.

I remember feeling when I was at you, it's just so, it's so much about your context and your environment.

When I was at UCLA in the 80s, I was considered a communist because I didn't like Ronald Reagan, and all my fraternity brothers were just horrified at me and i liked ronald reagan

i liked i had a poster good morning in america poster i liked ronald reagan yeah very likable guy terrible policy anyways um and then and then um and then i got to san francisco and you felt republican if you were you just it's just so much about the environment you're in yeah i often feel republican here it's funny although i would say i'm i'm very liberal but not as liberal as the people here so that makes me centrist.

In any case,

we're going to have a lot to talk about.

Speaking of all kinds of controversies, today we'll talk about the troubles at Disney that keep going on.

Some good news for Amazon.

And we'll speak to actor Kelly O'Coyne about playing Scott Galloway in the WeWork drama series, We Crash.

Scott, people love it.

So there you have it.

Yeah,

people are really enjoying it.

You enjoyed it.

There's even been some chatter online.

But by the way, I didn't like, I think we should give you a shout out for your incredible appearance with Dustin Hoffman and John Boyd in the 1969 film Midnight Cowboy because you sound like Brenda Vaccaro right now.

I know.

How did your day with Jon Stewart go?

It was great.

Except I sounded even more like Brenda Vaccaro.

And he said, oh, I'm here with Brenda Vaccaro.

And you're the second person who's mentioned it.

So you have a lot in common with him.

Anyway.

Yeah, me and Jon Stewart.

That's about where it ends.

You're the only part that do guys that mention Brenda Vaccaro.

You're from the same timeline.

Anyway, let's talk through some stuff.

Some impressive news for crypto.

Crypto apps had more than 100 million downloads in the last three months of 2021.

Downloads grew by 400% in 2021, but downloads are dropping in 2022 after all those crypto ads in the Super Bowl.

You know, more and more people, I think 18% of people have some crypto in the United States.

It's obviously going to be growing much higher to large amounts as people put their assets in.

What thinks you of this?

There's a lot of really exciting things about crypto.

For the first time, people of color index at the same rate of investment as white people.

So it is incorporating people into the investment ecosystem.

The thing that's really exciting about the apps, which I think grew 400% year on year, is that people spend more time on these apps than they spend on their banking apps or their trading apps.

Yep.

So it's really, I mean, there's a lot to like about it.

I've always been, I'm a little bit of a skeptic, especially of kind of this great notion of Web3, because when you think about the apps that have the most downloads, essentially they're

middleware.

So, Coinbase, Binance.

People don't want to deal directly with the blockchain.

I think that's a bit of a misnomer.

They want middle people who will prop up and give them some semblance of order, reasonable.

Or like a bank or something, they feel like something is familiar.

You pay Coinbase, which is supposed to be power to the people, you know, takes, or OpenSea take similar commissions to American Express or or any other exchange, sometimes more.

But it's, I think there's a lot to, a lot to like about it.

It'll be interesting to see.

I mean, it's just been the perfect storm of everything that was supposed to happen for crypto, whether it was volatility, not being able to get currencies in and out of the country.

It didn't happen.

And trading in crypto has been flat.

And the price is, I think, I think Coinbase is up again.

But look, it's a new asset class.

So many smart people are investing time and money in it.

There'll be some enduring innovation here.

Here's my thing.

I feel like it's not the iPhone yet.

The iPhone hasn't shown up.

You know, that's when apps took off.

There was something that there was lots of phones like the iPhone, but until the iPhone showed up, it wasn't, it didn't explode.

And I still feel like I'm always like, I should get some crypto.

And then I'm like, oh, I don't want to learn it.

You know what I mean?

Although Kevin Roos had a very, by the way, congratulations, Kevin.

Just had a baby.

I'm going to go visit the baby this week in San Francisco.

Kevin Roos works for the New York Times.

He's been on our show.

He wrote a great primer for crypto in the Times.

It's like 14,000 words.

It's great.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's great.

It's just a simple, like, it's almost like a little booklet.

And it's really useful.

And he did a great job.

So I think at some point when people start to understand it, or there's some breakthrough that hasn't happened yet, which I don't quite know what it is, that's when people will be spending more time with it.

That's my feeling.

Yeah, it's

like, I think the biggest innovation in crypto is not the blockchain or isn't smart contracts, whatever you would point to.

I think the breakthrough that fueled most of this is scarcity, or specifically scarcity credibility.

And that is this genius.

methodology around saying you've got to throw numbers at a problem.

And every time you solve the problem, you're minted a coin.

And after that, the problem gets more complex.

And it's going to keep getting more complex.

And then it stops at 21 million minted coins.

The credibility around that scarcity that Bitcoin has been able to establish is, I just think, the innovation of web, whatever.

Web3 is web 3.

It's really web 2.01, but

it's given people the confidence that it is, in fact, a store of value, whereas all these other coins, I think that, you know, what is it?

83% of NFTs are mined on ethereum so there's some innovation there obviously but it's just scarcity credibility and at the same time the fed and usd have lost so much of that scarcity credibility i think it's a lot of it is leaked to bitcoin but i would i would say that the underlying innovation here is doing what luxury brands do what a rejectionist us university system does and it's established real credible

real credible notion of scarcity.

You know, I had an interesting interview with Sam Bankman Freed recently from FTX.

I did it for an internal New York Times thing.

And he was, you know, he was,

he's a much more, he's, you know, he's a billionaire, he's one of the youngest, richest people around from doing all this.

And he sort of had that point of view.

And he thought that as things became,

he's a little less like hypster than most of them.

But he felt like there needed to be more guideposts and guidelines and stuff like that where people would enter it.

And it was interesting.

Speaking of really rich people, China is producing more billionaires than any other country, especially when it comes to female billionaires.

That's been common, especially in real estate, by the way.

China's billionaire population growing three times faster than America's, and three cities with the most billionaires are all now in China.

China also has 60 to 70 percent of the world's most successful self-made female billionaires.

Big wealth in China comes mostly, as I said, from real estate, industrial products, and healthcare, while billionaires in the U.S.

mostly come from tech, finance, and entertainment.

But not everything's so great in China.

Alibaba and Tencent are are preparing for tens of thousands of job cuts as a result of China's regulatory crackdowns.

Both are looking at cuts of up to 15% of their staff.

And result, regulations targeting internet companies.

Alibaba reported its lowest revenue growth since 2014.

Now, this is a stock you thought would take off, stock.

Scott, you know, I know and thought it was undervalued, but it's really getting pummeled.

But at the same time, they're creating all this wealth.

So, what thinks you?

Well, there's a few different things there.

With respect to Alibaba, I thought it was a buy at 180, and now I think

it went down as low as 70.

So it's got absolutely crushed.

I would argue that if you compare it on a like-per-like basis to Amazon, you're basically getting Amazon at 70 to 80% off.

So I'm still bullish.

The Chinese stock saw a pretty big pop last week, but they're still very depressed.

I think generally speaking,

the interesting thing there is one,

I believe the Chinese do do a much better job of trying to look at us and learn.

So as Americans, I think we're essentially narcissists.

And a lot of that translates to ego and confidence and exceptionalism where we're sort of like, well, why couldn't we?

And that's one of the wonderful things about our culture.

But just as international news in Europe is 20 minutes, 20 minutes international and 10 minutes local, we're 20 minutes U.S.

and 10 minutes international.

We're just very focused on ourselves.

And as a result, we like to think that we own all innovation.

We like to think we're the most progressive liberal liberal place in the world.

But there's one really interesting thing there.

China's minting more billionaire females than any country in the world.

And to me, that is a shocking, striking, and real point of pride for them.

Because I've always thought that, you know, people talk about the incredible systemic racism we have in this country.

And I've always thought the key to most of it is money.

That once you get income inequality, once you take black households and Latino households from an average of $23,000 in wealth to where white households are, not all, but a lot of these problems go away.

Because I find if you have money, people treat you differently and the opportunities presented to you and your children are entirely different.

Okay.

And the fact that the fact, well, that's where I'm headed with this.

Thanks, Brenda.

Thanks, Brenda.

Listen, my grandmother, whenever my aunt, who over talked, said things, she'd go, land it, Anne.

Land it.

Go ahead.

Land it, Anne.

Land it.

Land it.

Land the plane.

It's the edible speaking.

But that's a real point of pride.

When you start minting female billionaires, it sends the right message to young women.

It sends the right message to business partners.

It sends the right message.

I mean, they can just, they can say when we wave our finger at them and talk about whatever it is we're lecturing them on, and there's some very, very real problems that we should put pressure on in China.

But, you know, look, they're producing.

more female billionaires than us.

I think that's

incredibly impressive.

That said, their problems are a little bit different than ours, I would say, including the wholesale

jailing of people and the leaders.

Genocide light.

I mean, there's a lot of places we could go with that.

But if you don't know what that is, I get that.

Don't do the Donald Trump.

They're bad people in our country, too.

We have done that.

I didn't say that.

And don't put words in my mouth like every fucking politician, Brenda.

All right.

Okay.

Listen, go ahead.

Explain yourself.

Well, and also, if you look at their wealth creation, a lot of it is what you would call how wealth was really aggregated in the 70s and 80s here: real estate, right?

Yep.

Industrials,

healthcare.

And then over here, we've moved, we've gone full information economy, and it's all about tech now and all about moving zeros and ones.

There's still a manufacturing-based economy, I would argue.

And we've moved to full service slash innovation.

I'll tell you what I think of them.

I think this is a very entrepreneurial country.

And when there's layoffs like this, there will be lots of companies.

That's another thing I think of.

I think this is not a, it's not like Russia where they just deem people oligarchs who are not entrepreneurial.

These people who made this money, everyone I've met from China has been very entrepreneurial.

I don't feel like they were handed, here, you get this, you get this, you do favors for who.

Now, obviously, that's going on in this country.

But I always feel that this, a lot of this stuff is self-made people who have been taking opportunities.

Now, the question, the big issue hanging for China is that the government can move in at any point, at any point, and do whatever it wants like it has done here.

Chak Ma was flying high, and then he wasn't.

Same thing with 10 cent.

What they have done when I was talking about our inability, or we're not as good at learning from other nations and best practices, I think China has clearly looked at the U.S., the ruling party, and said, we're just not going to let big tech get as big and powerful as they have in the U.S.

because it's been bad for their society.

And so they have gone in and they have pretty, I don't want to say knee-capped, but they have hit,

it's more like the Nancy Kerrigan thing.

Like, let's take her out of the Olympics.

Let's not cripple her, but let's just make sure she only gets the silver or whatever it was that guy did.

That's what the CCP has done to these companies.

It's come in and it's said, we don't like where Facebook, Amazon, and Apple and Google are in the U.S.

We're not going to let that happen here.

I think they're absolutely watching us and deciding, taking a lot of cues.

They look at educational inequality.

They've gone in and shut down these tutoring companies.

I mean, they've just shut them down.

Yeah.

Or they don't like someone getting too big and famous than the government.

I think that person starts speaking out.

Nobody in the U.S.

is scared of the U.S.

government and tech.

Really, they are.

They are.

They are.

Yeah.

And they are.

I would agree with that.

I would agree with that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Anyway, let's get to our first big story.

Not such a fairy tale beginning for CEO Bob Chepk.

He could use a little magic, as they say, a little fairy dust.

Employees are angry with his weak opposition to Florida's Don't Say Gay bill, as we've noted.

They staged brief walkouts last week.

A full-day walkout is planned for today.

Announcers on Disney-owned ESPN went silent for two minutes in protest of the Florida bill.

And Chappic is missing one powerful ally, his predecessor, Bob Iger.

Reportedly, the two aren't on speaking terms.

I can say I think they don't have a good relationship from my interview, recent interview with Bob.

But this piece in CNBC was terrific, was terrific.

I tweeted it, and it was fantastic.

It was really well done.

A very complex topic.

And very fair to Chappic, who's doing, I don't know if it's Chapek, it's Chapek or Chappek.

Anyway,

Bob Two is how I call him.

A really interesting story.

Very complex.

He's trying to make a lot of important changes.

That said, he's put power in the hands of

one guy.

This guy named Karim.

I'm blanking on his last name, but he's his chief of staff.

He's been with him for years.

He's the first really high-profile and powerful African-American executive at Disney and has the most powerful job, I think, in media right now.

And he's supposed to be quite competent and quite good at his job, but also has a lot of power and is making big changes in a company that has been presided over by Bob Iger, who's like everybody's uncle.

Everybody likes him.

Elegant, smart, made two of the best deals, Marvel and Pixar, in history of media, I think.

So what thinks you?

And then, just today,

Rachel Ziegler, the star of Westside Story, said she's not invited to the Oscars.

Westside Story is distributed by 20th Century Studios, a Disney company, and she's playing Snow White in the upcoming Disney movie, A Latin Woman.

Bob Viger prioritized relationships with A-listers, a CEO.

Bob, too, had some friction already with Scarlett Johansson.

I'm just sort of astonished by the ongoing series of small-time fuck-ups and bigger ones.

I get why you might want to reorganize a company along the lines that he's doing.

And so did Bob Iger, I think.

But this is really quite astonishing bunch of toast-ups.

What do you think?

Well, something you just said I didn't know makes me believe that he's probably not going to make it through 20, that he's probably not going to make it through 2023, maybe not even through 2022.

And that is Bob Iger.

And I don't know the man, but he's got such a sterling reputation.

Yeah.

The new CEO not having cloud cover and a full-throated endorsement from what is the closest thing to business or Hollywood royalty, which is now Bob Iger, is not a good forward-looking indicator.

Some of it is self-inflicted injury on Mr.

Chapek.

The statement he did around, don't say Gate was just stupid and tone-deaf.

I don't think that should be a career-ending injury.

What will likely be a career-ending injury is the following, and that is, Guys like Bob Iger, I think he's not only smart around media, I think he's very smart around the markets.

And I I think he realized it was a good time to ring the bell.

Disney's stock on a multiple of revenues, on any metric, well, it's down now, but it's still trading at an exceptionally rich price relative to other similar media companies.

And I think that Bob 2's undoing will be the fact that there's just going to be a natural,

I think the stock is still potentially overvalued when you look at every other media company that's similar.

And it got out a little ahead of its skis because everyone was so excited about a streaming company that looked like it could could actually go toe-to-toe with netflix disney plus was really the first streaming platform that kind of took some air out of the room from that it was just every story on streaming if it was about success was about netflix until disney plus yeah but when you look at disney it's still you know it's a great company it's got theme parks it's still a media company but i think bob i think the perfect storm of bad things for bob whether bob two whether it's not having a good relationship with bob one that's fuck up around don't say gay and three i just think some natural pressure that's going to come on come yeah the stocks are going to come under through no fault of his own means that he probably, he probably,

I don't think survives 24 months.

Well, you know, he's put all his, all the X in the streaming basket as Bob Iger was starting to do.

One of the things that was interesting is that Bob Iger came back.

Do you remember when he came back?

in the pandemic?

Apparently, Chapek didn't want him to and was surprised by this.

Although what I've understood is Chapek, it kind of zeroed and iced him out, which I thought, don't ice him out?

What do you, you know, you suck up to that guy?

Um, he didn't like that Bob Iger did that.

That's in the story, which was interesting.

And Eisner did the same thing to Iger.

Eisner was the thing.

Here's the thing.

CEOs are great companies.

Yeah.

They're like African dictators.

They cling to power for a lot longer than they should.

And I just, Iger was quiet about a lot of the stuff around Eisner.

You know what I mean?

He just took a good soldier.

He just, he just, he just plotted along.

I don't know if you remember the stories back then, but a lot of people didn't think there was a lot of speculation around whether Bob Iger was going to get the job.

Was he the right guy?

He was considered nice, but not the creative mind of Eisner.

And then finally, he just kind of got it through attrition.

But typically, with CEOs that have that kind of thing, look what's happening with Howard Schultz.

He's decided to come back for the third time.

Yeah.

So that was, I got to, I don't even understand.

I know both those executives pretty well.

I haven't spent any time doing any reporting, but in that, that's in the case of Starbucks.

In this case, it's a very,

I think his big, there's a great piece by Matt Bellany on Puck about the difficulties of the streaming wars going on.

Disney's at $130 million, something like that.

JPIC has thought to get it up to $240.

He's promised by 2024.

The business may be very difficult to do that in.

It could be a very losing business.

People aren't paying.

It might have to drop prices.

They've all chased Netflix, and it might not have been the best race to do.

for them from a financial point of view.

It's definitely screwing up talent relationships.

I mean, it's a, I wouldn't, this is not good, but these tiny little mistakes, not inviting Snow White to the Oscars, who was the star of a movie, up for best movie, is

ow, Scarlett Johansson, really?

You know, even it doesn't matter.

He gets to take it all in.

Don't say gay.

Come on, guy.

Like, you're sort of like, come on.

But I think the real issue is the streaming stuff.

This other stuff makes for good fodder in Hollywood, which also can bring down the CEO for sure.

I think one of the biggest business stories of 2022 will be layoffs at unicorns, private market companies that got way out of their skis.

What's happened to Tencent and Alibaba is about to happen across a third to two-thirds of unicorns in the U.S.

So much cheap capital, so much growth, so much over-hiring.

It's going to be very interesting to see how those CEOs and this kind of new generation of workers are going to react to those types of layoffs.

And then I think the business story of 2023 is going to be the pressure that streaming is about to come under.

There's just no way they can get an R on that I.

They all rush the buffet line and there's not enough fried cheese sticks for everyone.

At Truism.

As someone who's about to launch a show on CNN Plus in nine days, I'm telling you, there's

too much content out there.

And there's only so many times someone's going to take their credit card out.

So you're going to see, you're going to see consolidation.

You're going to see layoffs.

Just as Web3, just as unicorns became overinvested in 2022, streaming is the next thing where everyone's going to lift up their head and go, okay,

there's just too much money has gone into this.

Well, that's a nice prediction for your show in nine days, Scott.

Thank you.

No one's going to buy CNN for all the seven people on CNN Plus.

That's what you just said.

You just said that.

The bottom line is there's huge room for news and politics and the dog.

Okay.

I saw my pilot, though, and I liked it.

Did you?

I liked it.

Can I see it?

It's on sale.

Do you believe they're already cutting prices?

Are they?

There's a promotion.

It's three bucks.

I'm like, well, that's that's encouraging.

We're already on sale.

We haven't even opened a store and we're on sale.

All right.

All right.

We're going to have a quick break.

I'll decide if I can afford three bucks for Scott Galloway.

When we come back, I actually want to watch, oh, Chris Wallace.

The centrist that you are.

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

When we come back, Amazon buys an iconic lion and we'll speak with a friend of Pivot, Kelly Acoin.

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

The FTC is leaving Amazon unshaken and unstirred.

The agency will not block, at least for now, Amazon's acquisition of MGM, the studio that owns the James Bond franchise.

FTC chairman Lena Kahn let the deal close without a vote from her commission.

She reportedly believed that a vote wouldn't get past Republican commissioners.

She needs it's still not balanced correctly.

It's 4-2-2, I think.

But like the Rocky movie, also an NGM property, there's room for a sequel.

The FDA says it can challenge a deal at any time, as I said.

I doubt it will.

It's looking for bigger fish from Amazon around marketplaces, from what I understand.

Also,

Amazon's got its hands full running the place, especially with the producers of the James Bond franchise in the driver's seat a lot of the ways.

There's also all kinds of executive flurrying going on there and who's going to report to who and this and that.

So

what did did you think about this?

Is this, she let it pass?

I'm not surprised.

I think this is the right move.

This is not the beach to die on.

And her first major action needs to be a win to show credibility and to

create an environment where there's more scrutiny and to reestablish credibility of the FTC as being effective.

I mean, keep in mind the last big profile thing was the FTC or the DOJ filed a suit to try and block the merger of AT ⁇ T and Time Warner, which was just stupid.

And

so I think this is a good thing.

And then if you look at the actual semantics of whether it's anti-competitive, it's effectively a content company for streaming.

And the streaming environment, per our previous comments, is actually very competitive.

So I don't, A, I don't think it's monopoly abuse.

I mean, you could argue that their ability to go in and overpay is a perfect example of monopoly abuse, but the market itself is very competitive.

What are your thoughts, Kara?

Yeah, it was interesting because at the end of our interview, she asked me what I thought of it at the deal out of nowhere.

You know, I did an interview with her relatively recently.

And

she asked me what I thought of it.

I said, it's not your elder die on.

This is not the one.

Like, it's not, it's competitive.

The same thing you were saying.

And she just listened.

She didn't say anything.

She just asked, asked what I thought.

And I thought

they're going to have enough problems integrating this thing into its business.

And it's not going to be a win-win for them necessarily.

You know, paying too much is really not the thing you're going to win on.

And it's going to spend all your firepower on something that's small.

And she doesn't have a majority.

If Congress does confirm Alfred Bedoya, it's not a clear thing that's going to happen.

His nomination is currently stalled.

And Amazon, though, the thing is, Amazon has acquired over 100 companies in its history, and the FDC has challenged.

How many do you think, Scott?

Oh, two or three?

Zero.

There you go.

so you know this anti judge dismissed the antitrust lawsuit against amazon uh with the pricing policies are anti-competitive you know we'll we'll see i think the marketplace is where she needs to play is marketplace there's a lot of people you can testify there's a lot of uh people unhappy um they're not quiet uh people will understand that i just feel like you know that might go to doj who knows but this is not the one although who knows what she's going to do with microsoft activision coming up also before it?

I think they think it's going through.

I think Lena Kahn would be well advised to put all of her wood behind a couple arrows, and that is probably breaking up Google, which is both the buyer, the seller, and the marketplace.

Google's over at the Justice Department, but go ahead.

And then, but they cooperate.

Do they cooperate on these issues or do they just divide them up perfectly?

They divide them up.

Yep.

And then I think getting Facebook

divest of Instagram and WhatsApp would be a huge victory.

And I think there's a lot of supporting evidence that make that a very huge.

Although it might be backward looking because of TikTok and all the problems right now at

Facebook.

That's a good point.

So

it's a moving target for her.

And she still doesn't have the majority she needs.

Here's someone ready to go and loaded for bear and can't do what she wants.

I would suspect Amazon and Marketplace and something with Facebook around privacy would probably be where she might be able to make a win, win, but she's got to make a win.

And I think that's really,

I think that's really where she needs to play.

I don't think she could do this.

That's where she was going to go.

And then it would have been an internal fight.

And then you'd have seen the stories about Lina Khan's FTC going nowhere, that kind of thing.

And you understand how that goes, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

We need, we need, they need more funding.

They need, and their first one or two cases have to be wins.

Because,

again,

it's not through the FTC and the DOJ breakup that's important.

It's that when the DOJ went after Microsoft, big companies thought twice before trying to acquire competitors or trying to put small companies out of business.

It was the chill of the DOJ's initial win against Microsoft, even though it was overturned.

And the way she creates an algebra of deterrence around these anti-competitive acquisitions or activity is for her to she needs a win she needs a big iconic win and she should be very thought because the bottom line is she's going to go up against thousands of lawyers yeah uh uh in amazon a lot of people thought she would block this this was interesting but i think she knew she can't win she can't win she can't win but she put the letter out right um and amazon of course she got famous for her amazon yale law school article she wrote and again i think amazon's gonna have plenty there's plenty of competition in this area amazon's gonna have a hard time really getting

this brought in.

I read the Hollywood trades a lot, and it seems like there's a lot of unhappiness

among the executives.

And you know how much trouble those Hollywood executives can make.

And the broccoli family have lots of

heft there.

But not just that.

There's other executive.

And

I think it's Jennifer Salky who runs their thing.

It's going to, you know, there's a lot of egos involved.

But we'll see if

they can do something with this, with this,

this film library is really why they bought it.

They also have

epics, which whether it's going to stay on the air

and whether, how they're going to license things and what they're going to use for the Amazon Prime.

And I don't know.

We'll see what happens here.

It's going to be a big mess for them to make perfect in any case.

And I think she just saw no win here for herself.

Well,

you know why Daniel Craig had gray hair in the the last Bond film?

Why?

Because he had no time to die.

He did.

He did have time to die.

Anyway, I am so pleased right now to bring in our friend of Pivot.

Kelly O'Coyne is an actor known for his roles on Billions and the Americans.

Now he takes a role of a lifetime as Scott Galloway in We Crash, the Apple TV series that chronicles the rise and fall of WeWork.

Kelly, welcome.

Hey.

First of all, I am a huge fan of yours in billions.

I thought you played Scott Galloway so perfectly in this show.

I don't know what to say.

And I love the show, by the way, We Crashed.

And we have lots to talk about.

But why don't I let,

oh, I'm going to ask the first question.

That's a shocker.

How much research did you do to play Scott Galloway?

Hush up, you Scott Galloway.

I've got the nicer Scott Galloway here.

Well, you know, first thing I, I, I, I stalked his neighborhood till I found him and followed him very, very closely for months on end, um, years in anticipation of this, uh, of someone writing this series.

Yeah.

Um, no, I mean, it's, you know,

you guys have seen the whole thing, I think.

Um, it, it's not that it gets into, it doesn't get into his private life.

It's not, you know, the Scott Galloway biopic.

So for me, it was about

five yet.

No, the spin-off is coming, I'm sure.

Yeah.

Chipotle and ED clinic.

I can't wait.

Season four.

That's right.

So it was more just, you know, I wanted to

study the stylings of Croft G, you know, and that was very, very entertaining research.

Yeah, there's a lot of it, too, right?

There's a lot of it.

So it was, you know, and I wanted to see you.

uh interviewing people and talking into a crowd and i also wanted to watch a ton of your um youtube show and because that was the pretty much that's the type of stuff i do can i ask ask you what you thought?

The essence, what did you hold on to of the parts of Scott Galloway?

Well, there was this follicular thing that I felt kinship to.

Yeah, okay.

That's easy.

Yeah.

The essence.

I don't know that I would phrase it.

I don't know that I think of it in those terms.

But there's an energy and a curiosity and

there's a droll.

There's a world weary-ness

to it, but it's not cynical.

And that's what one of the things that really, I mean, it may be cynical, but it's not cynical to the point of,

I won't speak for you, but to the point of not giving a shit anymore.

So that was the kind of energy I was approaching it with.

Apparently, Gerald Leto stayed in character for six months, which is crazy.

Oddly enough, I just had breakfast with Adam Newman and he's perfect.

He's like crazy perfect.

Did you stay in Scott Galloway's character for six months or maybe a month?

That's a frightening thought.

Yeah, I shot those scenes about, I think, two months apart.

So, yeah, I had to say I wanted to stay in

the Gallowayan mode for two months.

Judgmental, yet desperate for other people's affirmation.

That's how you, that's, that's this headspace you decided to occupy for several months.

That's why I felt that way.

Yeah, I just somehow got into that headspace doing you physically.

I loved, I had one scene with Adam Newman, that the interview scene, that's already aired.

Yeah.

I'm sitting here and I'm listening to you and all I can do is think three things.

First, God, he's got great hair.

Second,

kind of feels a little like you're targeting potential investors here.

And what does the third think?

Aren't his feet cold?

When I got on set, they were like, okay, no, listen, be warned.

He stays in character.

He goes off script a little bit.

You You just like go with him.

I was like, great.

No, this is actually fun.

That means I can play ball too.

And I think if you, maybe if you come from theater or, or maybe, maybe that's part of it, you know, there was a big crowd there that you get energy off the crowd of extras that are, that are responding to you.

And I had a great time with him.

I think he's, he's phenomenal.

He's a super.

He really is.

In this role.

I can't wait till people get to see the later episodes when we're doing the

prof G show and whatnot.

You know, what is weird is Kelly's referencing this conference where I interviewed Adam Newman on stage at the J.P.

Morgan Alternative Investment Conference.

And I don't know if the rest of the show is this exacting.

It was literally the exact words and dialogue.

I mean, really?

They call it inspired by or dramatization.

It was biopic.

It was the exact questions I asked.

Even I thought, my God, was somebody recording us?

But if the rest of the series, this is true to what actually happened, this is not a drama at all this is that's interesting is really close to the actual um

actual events well that's so you have not seen him play you doing prof g you have not seen you haven't seen the show when i do the show i did i gotta be honest it's weird to take yourself out of your body and see someone has to be right you're much you're much better me than me uh but it was i thought so it was i thought so my wife seemed a little too enthralled by you as me i gotta say that

so uh anyways, but

I'm at a loss for words here.

It's got to feel strange to see someone do you.

And I wasn't, I mean, I was not trying to like match your voice or I wasn't trying to do the Jared Leto

way of doing things.

Yeah, the rich little.

Yeah, I gotta.

Yeah.

But yeah, I wasn't, I wasn't doing the rich little, but it was.

There was just an energy that was infectious.

So I was definitely, and I think, and after the casting announcement, we connected.

And And I think I was like, just, you know, I'm not doing an impersonation.

It's inspired by it and all that, which partially I'm sure was me being like, well,

fucking hates it.

And I can say, well, this is just my interpretation of you.

Yeah.

But I did love your first comment.

You screen capture.

Do you remember what your first comment was?

I don't.

You screen captured the picture of me in the announcement, the casting announcement.

And said, I guess Chris Hemsworth wasn't available.

That's right.

That's right.

Which made me laugh out loud and my wife laugh out loud.

Oh, my God.

And Scott.

No, it was great.

It was great because then it allows you to respond in a self-deprecating manner.

Yeah.

Hey, Kelly, first of all, let me just say, I was so excited to find out that you were the guy.

I'm a fan.

You get a ton of credit for, you're sort of known as dollar bill and billions, but I think you're, in my opinion, your kind of iconic or great work is as the pastor in the Americans.

I can't turn Paige away from the church, Mr.

Jennings.

It's a sanctuary.

I can't turn anyone away.

That's the whole point of this place.

I'd love to just get a little bit of your backstory, like where you grew up, how you got into acting, what do you find rewarding about it, what's been your favorite role?

Just kind of give us the voiceover.

The extended elevator pitch, I suppose.

I've, God, you know, there was a period of time when I was maybe in junior high through high school where I'd realized there was nothing more, nothing else I wanted to do and what the fuck was going to happen if it didn't work out.

I really, I didn't have a backup plan.

But

my father was a congressman, uh, 18 terms.

And my mom sang.

You know, I grew up with

people who are used to being in front of people.

I don't know if you're familiar with the concept that there's a performative aspect to

politics yeah so notice and we were and for better and for worse um you do need to get a story across that's essential for any communication but uh it can obviously uh it can get it can go too far but um i was used to be in front of people and um i remember i've told this story before but i remember seeing it i was in a play called the trial of mother goose

in uh junior high or maybe grade school and i did something off script and the crowd reacted not to the the script, but to what I did.

They laughed.

And I remember just being like, what?

I have no idea what I did.

I just remember that it was like a seismic moment.

It's intoxicating, isn't it?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I could make the crowd do something.

And it was from there.

Two questions.

What role was your big break professionally?

And what role have you enjoyed the most?

Other than, of course,

playing this one, but in the past.

Well, yes.

I mean, certainly

I can quit now.

Happy.

You're done.

You've rang the bell.

It's all down here from here.

It was either me or Gandhi, and you chose me.

I did.

Oh, please.

That guy?

What other bald men can you play with?

I played Jeff Bezos in

Little Cameos.

Jeff Bezos in Superpunks, which is another show created by the Billion Hall.

You are correct.

More importantly, who plays his girlfriend?

It was a tiny cameo.

My favorite roles are still from theater.

I'm a big Tom Stoppard fan.

I don't know if anyone listening is a fan of his, but

Septimus Hodge in Arcadia.

It's probably my favorite room.

I'm kidding.

You played Septimus?

Yeah.

Oh, my God.

He's so deep and sexy.

I knew it.

Shall we dance?

Substances.

Shall we dance?

That last line is.

That's why this worked.

That's why it works.

Do the last line.

It's the best line ever.

Ages ago.

But it's when Septimina asks him to dance and you know she's going to die in a fire that night

because you've gone back.

Yeah, it's crushing.

I just spoiled the play for everyone who hasn't seen it.

Nonetheless, it doesn't spoil it.

It's so beautiful.

It's among the most beautiful.

My favorite role, I love the theater.

Theater is still my base.

I came to New York.

All of us came to New York, the theater actors, because we made a choice out of school.

Either we go to L.A.

for TV to focus on TV, or we go to New York for

theater.

And we got lucky.

Are you in a current play?

Not yet.

I haven't done a play since 2019.

Since billions.

No, I was able to do about a play a year for quite a while.

I just, the pandemic kind of shut things down.

Talk about playing Dollar Bill Stern on billions, which you are just really an awful human being, but fantastically funny.

Back off, Bill.

Why?

Because he can end my world, burn my contacts, and keep every cent of my bonus for himself.

That's supposed to make me hold my tongue.

Fuck yeah.

That's why you will never buy and sell equities.

No.

All that's supposed to make me more brazen when I know I'm fucking right.

It's okay, okay, Wayne.

It's really fun to misbehave.

Yeah.

You know,

I can't think of a character short of a serial killer that is more polar opposite to me.

Yeah.

As my, as some of my former Twitter fans, Twitter former fans have found out that I'm slightly to the left of Dollar Bill.

Oh, yeah.

I'm not quite the Ayn Rand

follower that he is.

It's just,

it's fun.

And

you step in the shoes of someone who is so completely different from you.

You get to act out.

My wife tells me, never bring, you bring an out to him home and you're out, buddy.

But the joy is the group of people that I'm working with.

It's amazing.

It is amazing.

And it's I know Coppelman pretty well.

I know Brian really.

Yeah.

I went to set.

I think Paul Giamatti was on the set.

I think we were in his office during one of the seasons.

But it's how is it going with the changeover now that you've, you know, you have a new villain essentially running?

Yeah, um, I, I'm in fewer of these episodes because uh, Dollar Bill went off and did his, um, started his own business with Mafia because we were loyal to Bobby.

Um, but I have, I'm having a good time.

Uh,

supposedly, there'll be more stuff next, next year, but, um, uh, and I know we got renewed, so hope, hopefully, but it's let me do a lot of other things as well.

This, it was fun to keep my foot in the door with billions, but then also I did We Crashed and uh a show called the girl from plainville which premieres in about a week and uh

a couple other things uh so it's been fun what was the kind of pivotal moment in terms of elevating your career like what was your what was your big moment your big breakthrough there there were probably two um

i i got my first broadway show uh in uh a little old play called Julius Caesar that Denzel Washington was starring in.

And I had a nice, juicy little role that led to a couple of some other great theater things.

And I was doing well theater-wise.

I just hadn't broken into TV.

So

that was a big thing to elevate me a little bit

and change the way people thought about me.

And then it probably was House of Cards.

House of Cards and the Americans happened very close together.

The Americans became a bigger role as it went along.

I think they started to.

to start to expand the thought.

Instead of just killing him off, they thought, actually, maybe the one thing is everyone expects him to die we can't kill him off he's the one person we can't kill off um and i think the one-two punch of having house of cards and and the americans which were so different and i was so different on them that uh i think that sort of opened these other doors so i have one more question about um because one of the scenes i thought was best is when you read the the the s1 from we work and you start writing the what the fuck column the famous what the fuck column yeah um i thought you know one of the things people don't realize it is a pivotal moment in crashing

WeWork with Scotts doing this or starting people were going to catch on to this, but it really encapsulated the problem really rather severely.

I thought you got that energy just right because we talked about it on the show incessantly, the S1 at the time.

It was really interesting to me.

Also, I learned what an S1 was

working on this piece.

I think working on the audition.

When I was auditioning for it, there were three Professor Professor G shows, episodes, and little sections instead of just the two we have now.

And

each of them were much, much longer.

I can see why dramaturgically you had to cut them down because

I was bummed because it was so much fun to do all of it.

But yeah, so that SC scene was the one little moment, little quiet thing.

There were no other actors.

It was just me on a coast.

Yeah.

Where was that?

It's supposed to be Nantucket, right?

It should have been Nantucket.

They didn't take me to Nantucket.

Now I'm pissed they didn't take me to Nantucket.

It wasn't Scott.

Yes.

Scott was taking you.

But it was just, Scott, why didn't you take me to Nantucket?

We're Twitter.

You don't know this yet, Kelly, but you and I are friends.

George John was my first Twitter friend.

You're going to be my second.

I like to cut you.

I can tell you're a nice man and we'll enjoy hanging.

So congratulations, we're friends.

But okay, we're going to get to some things to test your Scott medal, if you don't mind.

Oh, my God.

Here's the gate.

Oh, my God.

Okay.

I'll read you a line.

Very nearly.

I do not see this in the script.

Yeah, you don't.

So too bad.

Do not be offended if I get him all wrong.

He's always offended.

He's pre-offended.

All right.

And you give it to us.

Perpetually offended.

Perpetually

uncomfortable.

Seriously.

As someone who is almost never uncomfortable, I'm incredibly uncomfortable right now.

Oh, you'll be fine.

It's all about you.

It's perfect.

Okay, go ahead.

You give it back to us as Scott Galloway.

Okay.

I'm going to say the line.

Oh, my God.

Oh, my God.

You can do it.

Kelly.

I'm Scott Galloway.

You're watching Pivot.

What a thrill.

What a thrill.

I'm Scott Galloway.

You're watching Pivot.

What a thrill.

What a thrill.

That was true.

Oh, that's good.

That was excellent.

That's good.

That's excellent.

Okay.

The real party is happening later in the dog's hotel room with Cialis and Chipotle.

Oh, my God.

I'm triggered.

The real party is happening back at the dog's hotel room later with Cialis and something else I don't remember now.

Oh, oh, my God.

I'm triggered.

Excellent.

You just have to say boom, and we're done on that.

Boom.

Excellent.

Now, what are you going to be in next?

So the real fun stuff on We Crash is coming up, I think, episode seven.

And

more billions to come, but we don't get back to shooting that until October.

And The Girl from Plainville on Hulu, which is a really, really interesting.

What's that about?

It's about the

Michelle Carter and Conrad Roy, the two teens.

Oh, yeah.

Their text relationship, and

he committed suicide, and the question.

And she was coaxing him to, and

it's about that case.

Wow.

And it's much more complicated than I ever knew.

The first three episodes drop on March 29th on Adam.

When you play, who do you play?

I play Scott Gordon, another Scott G.

There you go.

The detective who sort of pieces it together.

Oh, wow.

Oh, that sounds great.

Anyway, for our purposes, you can watch We Crash, which both of us loved.

I really loved it on Apple TV.

New episodes drop every Friday.

And Scott is hosting the companion podcast for the show.

And I'm interviewing Kelly on it, yeah.

It's called We Crash, the Director's Cut, available from Wondery.

Thank you so much for coming on.

Thank you so much, Callie.

This is such a, I mean this sincerely.

It was such a rewarding moment for me.

So thank you.

I love that.

And having hearing you say that is very, it's a very rewarding moment for me as well.

So I'm very glad you guys like it, really.

It's another bromance for Scott.

There you go.

There you go.

Our mandate is coming up soon.

I love it.

It'll be very bromantic.

That's right.

Okay, Scott.

We'll take one more quick break and then we'll be back for wins and fails.

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Okay, Scott, wins and fails.

My win is Katanji Brown Jackson.

Her confirmation hearing begins.

She'd be the first black woman on the Supreme Court.

And she's what's exciting is she's passed passed the Senate confirmation test three times previously.

So Senator Murkowski, I believe, has already approved her for her appointment.

I believe it was to the appellate court.

Look, I think this is a nice moment.

And so I'm excited about that.

My other win is a little bit different.

My win is Poland, which has taken in 1.8 million Ukrainian refugees.

And I don't think that should be overlooked.

I think a lot of nations, when hundreds, you know, thousands, much less, hundreds of thousands, much less millions of people show up at their border.

That sometimes that brings out the best and the worst in nations.

And I think it's brought out the best in Poland.

They've taken over 1.8 million refugees into their borders and welcomed them.

And I think that's an extraordinary display of humanity and grace.

And I think over the long term, it helps their economy because there's nothing like loyalty to a country and a flag than when you take them in when they're at their most vulnerable.

So, my win is Poland.

My other Poland in

Judge Jackson.

My fail is there was a great article in the Washington Post just about how far millennials are and the younger generation is falling behind in terms of household wealth.

And when you look at our desire to keep boomers rich by bailing out the existing rich and not transferring opportunities and creating churn in our economy, it suppresses younger people.

When you look at skyrocketing education costs,

we have seen wealth of people under the age of 40 drop from 19% of GDP to 9%.

If you look at household wealth, they're effectively being shut out of the housing market because we live in a scarcity economy where once people have houses, they decide, let's make it harder for other people to get houses.

So you have a younger generation that is for the first time in history at the age of 30, not doing as well as his or her parents are at 30.

And the Washington Post did a great job of summarizing it.

But you have

You have a generation that's sort of lost economically.

And I think that leads to revolution.

And that revolution takes different forms, but it's also being, I think, especially hard on young men who are expected to be fairly or unfairly are judged based on their economic viability.

So we have a generation that's not forming households, not forming what I think is the elemental foundation of any society, and that is healthy, productive relationships, which in a capitalist society means someone has to be or both people need to be economically viable.

So I think there's a real

something, we always talk about income inequality.

I think what we should be talking about as much or more is generational inequality.

And that is we, through all our tax policies, all our legislative policies, through weaponization of government, we are consistently transferring money from the young to the old and not investing, making the same investments that our parents made in us.

So anyways, my lose is continued

generational inequality.

I think my fail was this video of the People's Convoy truckers, which has been a real bust,

surrounding surrounding a Tesla and blocking him in, and then thinking it was hysterical.

I was sort of like, you're really just an asshole.

Like, this isn't, but there's, but then someone wrote me and said, there's so much rage that's been developing for decades among truckers who've had a hard life.

I understood that, but on some level, I was like, I don't care.

That's not how to win.

hearts and minds.

You may have a lot of really reasonable, angry things to talk about.

So do a lot of people, including black people, including gay people.

Lots of people have grievances, but surrounding a car of someone on a highway and then surrounding

cell phones,

what's wrong with you?

Like, what is wrong?

You don't have an excuse.

No matter how much anger you have, there's no excuse for that.

A real fail, actually.

Many Apple services are suffering outages today, but so are some others.

They're reporting that there's some problems at,

it may not just be Apple.

This might be something from Russia, PayPal, AWS.

I'm not saying it is, but there's a lot of spikes and outages.

Apple services include iCloud, App Store, Siri, FindMy, Apple Maps, Music, Podcasts.

They're coming back online, but it'd be interesting to find out why they went down and if it was more widespread.

There's obviously going to be more attacks.

It may not at all be an attack,

but if it is, we really have to be vigilant.

Another win is the Russian cosmonauts who boarded the International Space Station wearing Ukrainian colors.

Wasn't that wonderful?

That was wonderful.

That was a big moment.

That was how you do a protest, you fucking truckers.

They put on their suits.

They put their lives at risk with their country.

They just said nothing.

They were classy.

They made a protest.

That's how you do protests.

You know, that's how you do it.

And they had something costly at them.

It was quite something to see.

I was sort of like, I couldn't believe it.

That's happening all over Russia with lots of people who are doing things, whether the woman in the line, there's people holding up signs.

There's all kinds of protests that are brave

and the way you protest in this world.

And I thought it was great.

I thought that was great.

I like your win.

I agree with you.

It seems obvious now, but that probably will be one of the iconic moments that endures.

And there is something about space, or at least the notion of space, that creates more of a comedy of man.

And I think they demonstrated that.

Some people would argue it was political, and now we politicize the space station.

But that was, there's something about this traditional notion about the humanity.

You know, you can't see borders from space and all that.

You're right.

It was an iconic moment.

And, but they did it with such a no noise, just visual.

And it was classy and risky.

Let me,

I'm hoping they're up there for a while.

That's all I have to say, that they don't have to come down.

Anyway, we'll take a listener question in our next episode.

This is a very full one.

What do you want to know?

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

The link is also in our show notes.

Okay, Scott, that's the show.

My voice is almost dead, but we'll be back on Friday for more.

And hopefully, I will be restored to my other power.

That was a really lovely interview with Kelly.

And again, we urge you to watch it, not just because Scott, there's a character of Scott in it.

It's a really good show.

We crashed, and because Scott's in it, obviously, watching.

Thank you, Carol.

Anyway, Scott, read us out.

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

Ernie Intertot engineered this episode.

Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Miles Severio.

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

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

We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business, Poland.

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