Russia Invades Ukraine, Texas Gov.'s Attack on Trans Youth, and Guest Ben Stiller

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Hi, everyone.

This is Pivot from the Vox Media Podcast Network.

I'm Kara Swisher.

And I am the father of dragons.

Given everything that's going on, I have a fun story to share.

Okay, all right.

Tell me.

You know, we're at war.

We're at World War III, but go ahead, please.

I got this distraction from that.

So every morning my son claims he has the plague.

Something's wrong with his, as he calls them intestinals, and he just can't go to school.

Five out of five days.

And so we drag his ass out of bed and force him to go to school.

And yesterday, same thing.

I feel nauseous.

We're like, sorry, boss, you're going to school.

And then I get the call from Nurse Amanda.

Oh, Nolan's not feeling well.

He threw up in class.

Can you come get him?

So boom.

Jump in the car, head to the school, and out of the nurse's office comes this sweaty, pale little Nolan.

And with this this little like singular purpose expensive looking plastic bag which is for what we all think it's for and she says nurse amanda says lots of liquids shouldn't come back to school tomorrow i get him in the car and i'm like you all right buddy and he says dad he said i went up to mr handler's desk and i told him i felt nauseous and then i started vomiting and it was like the breath of a dragon and and he goes and he looks at me with pride and he goes and everyone was scared of me

and it wouldn't stop and he goes and so you know what I did?

I'm like, what?

And he goes like, I started chasing people.

And I started laughing so hard.

So I pulled over.

And I'm like, and then he looks at me and I go, did you catch anybody?

And he looks at me and he goes, Ethan, he's slow.

So

on Friday, we will all gather.

You're a vomit predator as a child.

So on Friday, we will all gather in the chapel where they will read all the kids in the fifth grade who made heads lists.

My son will not be on that list, but I will be.

Everyone in that auditorium will know know that I am the parent of the child who chases other fifth graders down and vomits on them.

I could not be more proud.

I was like a dragon and people were scared of me.

He was so excited about that part.

I'm going to have to take your children.

That's what we call social distancing in Florida.

Ron DeSantis would be proud of my son right now.

You go throw up on other children.

Welcome to Florida.

We're going to talk about Florida and Texas right now.

But first, later we're going to talk about Russia invading Ukraine, obviously, and what can mean for markets and cyber attacks.

And we'll speak with Ben Stiller,

our stalker, Ben Stiller.

He's also a famous director and actor.

He tweeted at us and we brought him on the show because his new project, Severance, actually has a sci-fi tech spin about work-life balance.

It's really quite gripping and disturbing, and it's also funny.

So

we're going to talk to him about that.

But let's go to this first big story in Texas.

Because we talked last week about this, and I think I was trying to get this point out to you, and then here it happened.

children, their parents, may soon be subject to investigation thanks to a new order from Governor Greg Abbott.

In a letter, his state's Department of Family and Productive Services said, Abbott said that the sex change procedures are a form of child abuse.

This has been a controversial issue, but this goes a step way beyond having discussions about it.

The letter goes on to say that teachers and medical professionals have a duty to report on affected children or face criminal penalties.

A year ago, I interviewed someone who worked on these trans issues, and he said this was coming using narratives like the swimmer in uh i forget where they are the college swimmer or things like this idea and they're they were going to uh weaponize it um when you could have normal discussions about things like that and debates they're going to do something like this which feels very um

handmaid's tale to me.

So

I usually don't speak this way, but I'm feeling a big sense of deja vu of many, many years ago when the AIDS crisis started.

So tell me what you think here.

Well, you know, Kerry, you said something that so I love when you think about what the term insight means, it's usually

you say something and it gets people to think a different way.

And the moment they are exposed to some sort of new concept,

real insight is it seems obvious once the person says it.

It's surprising at obvious.

And I remember being at Pivot MIA, which we haven't mentioned in seven minutes, so it's time.

But John, I think it was John Oringer, the founder of Shutterstock, said, I've always struggled with what will the epicenter or the center of gravity for the Florida tech scene be?

Because whether it's semiconductors or in New York, it was media.

What would be the industry that we would innovate around?

And John Oringer said probably healthcare.

And the moment he said it, it just made all sorts of sense.

And I thought, God, that's so obvious.

That was real insight.

And you, in our last program, said something that the moment you said it, I had not thought of it, and it made a ton of sense to me.

And I'd like you to expand on it.

You said that

when you're a child and you're gay, sometimes your parents are the enemy.

Sometimes they're not your advocate, and you need a safe space.

And it just,

I had never thought of that.

And the moment you said it, it just made all sorts of sense.

So I would like you to talk more about that.

Well, you know,

your parents don't understand.

And they're actually, either they're worried for you or they actually have real problems with gay people

or trans people or whatever you happen to be expressing yourself as.

And they they're hostile.

And in fact,

I don't need a safe space.

I need equal rights and I need to be able to be who I am.

You know, I think that I think the right does spends a lot of time on all these false narratives about space, safe spaces, et cetera.

And of course, the left does do some of that.

But honestly, it's really just asking to be left the fuck alone.

I had a big argument with Peter Thiel, who also is gay about this.

You want special rights.

I'm like, no, I have children, Peter.

I want equal rights that that other people have, that everybody else has.

I'll never forget that discussion.

And I think one of the things that they don't realize is that you spend a lot of time not just, and this is a different era that I was growing up in, where it was very problematic to say you were gay.

But it's still, now it is again, it seems like, especially for trans people.

For trans people, absolutely.

And it's

the next.

penny to drop is against gay people, et cetera.

And we're going to play something in a second to give you an idea of how they're knitting all this together.

But

you have no allies.

You often have no allies.

You may have an ally at school, a teacher.

You may have some friends who are understanding or parents of friends.

But for the most part, you're hiding and figuring this all out on your own.

And a lot of people actually went online to do this.

My ex-wife ran Planet Out, which was a very important space

for people to be able.

They used to say they had, they, you know, they even had, they had a lot of members at the Vatican.

Like wherever you're hiding, there used to be places online, and AOL was a very strong proponent of this, that you could have a place to go, not necessarily safe, because it wasn't always safe, but it was a place where you could express yourself, where you couldn't before, where you'd have to hide.

And so I think one of the things that's happening now is it's become even more weaponized, a lot of what's happened, because these groups are knitting together narratives that are, and it actually relates to the Ukraine.

because we'll talk about Putin later, but to see the right wing use anti-trans narratives.

CRT was another one of their narratives that they took and reduced a complex issue.

They reduced to a rage tactic.

The anti-trans stuff is the same stuff.

Like, look, the swimmer.

It's like, oh, my God.

It's not happening.

Right, exactly.

No, it's a narrative to design to scare and reduce people to cartoon characters.

But in this case, the right wing is using anti-trans, anti-gay, and pro-Putin nexus in real time.

And they're using the internet to do it.

I don't want them taken off, but but I want you to see what they're doing and how powerful their tools are now, because it's the same people who were there before.

They just have better weapons.

Let's play this from a Steve Bannon show.

I think it's called War Room with Eric Prince, another not Prince person, but go ahead.

Putin ain't woke.

He is anti-woke.

The Russians people still know which bathroom to use.

They know how many genders are there in Russia.

Two.

Okay.

They don't have the flags.

They don't have the pride flags outside on their...

They don't have boys swimming in girls

college swim meets.

How backward.

Okay.

Like so many things in there.

What they're doing is they're taking this worry and morphing it into something.

They're in there.

There's boys swimming in girls' meets.

One, there's one of them.

There's who's a boy and who's a girl.

There's flags, gay flags, I think, the pride flags.

Like, what the fuck do they care about a flag?

Like, are you kidding me?

There's gender issues.

Who's a boy?

Who's a girl?

There's, and then there's the Russians.

And what they're saying is Putin ain't woke.

And then they're bringing in cancel culture.

It's like astonishing how much stuff is going on here.

And their essential message, and Tucker Carlson's doing it on TV too, is Putin didn't do anything to me.

What did he do to me?

He's not like, but what he's doing to gay people in Russia, what he's doing,

what's happening here is,

and we are useful idiots by playing along with what they're doing, which is reducing people to cartoons who they can then hate.

And it works with this base base because a lot of people have moved on.

I got, I tweeted about this, but a lot of people will go right back to where they were in the days of AIDS when there was a lot of hatred towards gay people, for example.

And they will go right back there because this, what they're doing, what I said it today, it's like Omicron.

It affects the mentally unvaccinated here, and it will work.

It will completely work.

And it worked with CRT.

It worked here.

It works there.

And so I find this to be, you know, to say

I was under siege when I was a kid,

that ain't nothing of what's coming for people when they're doing, and they're making it real in Texas.

I gotta say, it's frightening.

And Abbott's not the only Republican beating this drum.

Florida Senator Rick Scott, the bazillionaire, released an 11-point plan for the GOP that they, should they retake the House in November's midterm election, Scott's agenda includes a declaration that there are two genders, a ban on critical race theory, and a provision to treat social media platforms as publishers, among much else.

And they're using these tools, these internet tools.

And again, I don't think we should should silence them, but you have to be aware of what they're up to here, just like they were with magazines or cable or whatever.

Yeah, in some ways, it's a little bit more insidious than the AIDS crisis politically, not in terms of the devastation of the AIDS crisis.

But I do think over time, the AIDS crisis,

I think America had slowly but surely a more empathetic response because

you started finding out,

know, so many people were affected by the AIDS crisis.

And then you found out your good friend's son was dying.

And

you couldn't,

first off, you lived in San Francisco, you felt as if you were amongst the walking dead.

And

then it just, I think a lot of people kind of woke up and said,

you know, this is something that

we need to be more thoughtful about.

It kind of touched a lot of people who saw up close and personal that we need to be more loving and empathetic to people.

And

I think America over time had

a more correct response.

This is when you talk about one athlete swimming,

it's like the emotional argument that says, well, if you're going to allow abortion at any time, that means before a woman delivers, she could technically have an abortion.

And the reality is that's an emotional argument meant to trigger a visceral response.

And the reality is that never happens.

And this is the same thing that a lot of us, the trans community

is an important community.

They deserve the same rights as everybody else.

But they're easier for people, they're easier for them to create a hateful narrative around because most people have a visceral response and then unlike the AIDS crisis, may not be touched by it as readily.

So I feel like this is incredibly dangerous.

And also...

Well, the bathroom thing was here and gone and now it's back again.

But remember, that was like the biggest crisis in America.

Now it's some swimmer.

Now it's like a cancel culture.

And everyone else who plays along are useful idiots to these people.

I'm just.

But they talk about Steve Bannon and

his Mary band of anti-American sycophants for some reason see a trans swimmer as a bigger threat to America, one, one person

than the 190,000 Russian troops amassing and now incurring the border in the Ukraine.

They pick the wrong enemy.

No, no, no.

They like him because they want to be him.

You do understand that.

And honestly, if they like Russia so much, they should move there.

They always use that term.

If you like it so much, move there.

Then go there.

Go and live with them there.

I just abuse gay people, etc.

And this kind of bridges to Ukraine.

I actually think that there is a positive outcome from

Putin's incursion into Ukraine is it's given a little bit of connective tissue back to NATO and the West and says, all right, we're not each other's enemies.

We are actually each other's allies.

And it's given for the first time, NATO, which had gone, kind of was incurring brain death, and that is they couldn't figure out what it was for.

Was it there to push back against China, extremists?

All of a sudden, it's brought new purpose and meaning.

to NATO.

I think the West, for the first time in a while, is going to have an existential threat that gets us past this bullshit notion that maybe we're competitors, but we're not adversaries.

we're allies.

And I hope that America, I would like to think that people would say.

Where's a drum beat on the right, like a drumbeat?

I don't even want to call my mom because I don't know what she's going to say to me.

Like, honestly, like, who knows?

Because it's been on Fox, on

these social media platforms that they're using.

By the way, Apple is the every

Bannon show got kicked off a number of platforms, but not Apple and not iHeartRadio.

But I don't want to get him kicked off.

I'd like to see him in plain sight, even though he's a really good thing.

I do have more faith in America that when they talk about what's going on in Texas, when it really comes out that we have something where trans children and their parents may be the subject of

investigation and that this letter in the State's Departments of Family and Protective Services, the governor says that sex change procedures are a form of child abuse.

And then it goes on to say teachers and medical professionals have a duty to report on affected children.

I mean, we're talking about an incursion into people's rights that is so far from a niche original basic GOP principles.

It's their old, it's their old, it's the same people.

I was back there.

I remember them all.

They were all there then.

And now they have better tools.

They were the same.

They're the same exact people.

And this not anti-gay and anti-trans nonsense was around then.

I just, I literally was like, oh, wow, they're still here.

Of course they are.

And let me just say to them, we're still here.

And if you think we're going to give up any ground on this issue, I have four kids to protect and and they're big and lesbians are testy.

So they better be very careful where they push because we're still here, even if they're still here.

I feel like that.

That's how I feel.

Yeah, but I don't think like 5% of America, according to most studies, is LGBTQ.

There are so many allies

that believe in liberty, believe that America is about generosity and acceptance.

that are going to, I think, rally around this

and help moderates go, you know what?

Maybe the far left is crazy, but they're not crazy and mean.

They're not crazy, mean, and un-American.

And what's going on here is not only crazy, it's mean and it's un-American.

I do think some of this works, especially online.

You know,

I tweeted this.

By the way, the bathrooms and the trans swimmer and how many genders there are and all that rotten repartee here are not the point.

The point of effective propaganda is to be reductive of complex issues

and take out any nuance that is conducive to tolerance and commonality.

They want us raging, and that's what they want.

They win when we rage.

Yeah, I'm really disappointed.

I always thought Rick Scott was a, I've never been a fan of Rick Scott, but I always thought he was a pragmatist.

And this is him saying, hey, far-right crazies in Iowa.

I'm running for president and I'm crazy with shit shavings of crazy.

By the way, Meg Whitman did the same thing in California, didn't work there.

Well, you mean when all of a sudden she decided to narc on her

her nanny after 11 years?

No, no, no.

She became a prop a proponent at the time.

She and I had quite a

set to, as they say.

Look,

I'd like to think I just have more faith in Americans.

I have more faith in centrists.

I have more faith in our institutions.

I think we are going to have, and I don't want to be complacent about this.

I'm trying to figure out how I can get involved in this.

But

the special interest groups on the left, our gay brothers and sisters, have enormous allies and advocates.

And I think America is going to have a healthy immune response to this and realize that the enemy is hate, that the enemy is people who are un-American and want to diminish people and persecute them for things they can't control, and that the real enemy is amassing at the Ukrainian border.

I would hope, but I think it's been amplified by online in a way that wasn't there before.

Speaking of telling stories, you could do movies.

Movies started to change, depictions started to change.

This stuff endures in a way that's much more, it's mold.

It's mold and it doesn't go away.

I am very nervous

for a lot for this.

It's so effective.

And it's at the same time, guess what?

We have the same tools.

So get ready.

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

Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Obviously, we just talked about it.

It is in full swing as we record this.

The situation is rapidly changing.

Scott and I are not military experts.

We are not going to talk about geopolitics.

But the attacks, effects on the stock, tech, and international business committee are already apparent.

Global stocks plunged this week, and the Russian ruble briefly dropped by 10%.

Ukrainian government websites went down on Wednesday and what's believed to be a Russian cyber attack.

The outages follow similar attacks from last week, which shook down Ukrainian banks' websites.

At least one English-language publisher in Ukraine is now taking proactive measures to defend against these DDoS attacks.

And I just got an email from Nicole Perlross saying she's never been more terrified of what's going to happen here.

And so we've had her on the show.

We're going to bring her back on, I think, on Monday to talk about it.

Talk about this of what happens with these disinformations, the uses, the cyber attacks, et cetera.

Well, people talk about this new form of warfare, a hybrid war, where it's not as much about military as it's about disinformation, about cyber attacks.

I mean, Ian Bremer, who I've been listening to,

you know, as you get older, you realize that you don't want to fall victim to the notion that just because you have some domain expertise in one thing doesn't mean you have domain expertise in another.

So I've been reading a lot of other people.

I'm a big fan of Ian Bremer, as you know.

And so, Putin is like, he said, Putin launched a war against Ukraine, a country that has in no way provoked or attacked Russia.

Thousands upon thousands of innocent Ukrainians will die.

What we're witnessing is a crime against humanity.

And

look,

I think it's important immediately.

I love that special of the fog of war and Robert McNamara, that the only way to defeat an enemy is to really put yourself in the shoes of them and understand.

And if you try for a moment to understand what Russia is thinking, it's okay.

We were invaded from the West by the Germans.

We have a lot more license to go into Ukraine than you did going invading Iraq.

I think that's a fair argument.

And I also,

I always go to the midlife crisis thing.

I think this is a guy who is alone and has no relationships and wants to be the guy that re-established Russia as a force in the world and wants to.

I mean, everyone around him has gone NATO, except for the Ukraine.

Where I do think, I think the benefit here and how this hopefully gets solved without hopefully without the type of military and destruction and death that it risks

is that, one, I do think it's brought new meaning and resonance to Western allies and NATO.

Two, you're already seeing an impact on the Russian economy.

The rubles hit an all-time low against the Euro.

You are going to see nations, I believe Europe has become complacent and quite frankly spoiled by the military umbrella of NATO and America.

And I think this is going to wake them up.

I also think that the soft power here is what ultimately probably,

I don't want to call it wins, but pushes back.

And that is

money is an addictive substance.

And I spend a lot of time in beautiful areas where I run into a lot of very wealthy Russians.

And one of the reasons so many Russians, for example, are in London is that London has very strong private property laws.

And that is, you can be a Russian oligarch and transfer your $700 million into London and live a fantastic Western life and not be subject to certain politics or criminal investigations or whatever it might be.

Poison.

Poison, perhaps.

I think that might change.

I think if the U.S., and this kind of goes to the notion of why Bitcoin is an existential threat, when Western currencies are the default currency, any exceptional amount of wealth has to flow through Western institutions, which gives us the power.

I mean, the gangster move here would be if the United Kingdom went back on some of the private property laws and seized or froze the assets of a bunch of Russian oligarchs.

Because if the thousand wealthiest Russians all of a sudden no longer had access to their capital, they might call their buddies in the KGB surrounding Putin and saying, you know what, this just got much less fun for me.

So I think the soft power here of economic sanctions might

actually have more fun.

That's an issue.

But talk about the effect on the stock market.

Obviously, things are going down and the the cyber attacks people are quite worried about.

The Biden administration warned last year they're vulnerable to Russian cyber attacks.

Now, the FBI is warning the private sector, prepare for possible attacks if Russia retaliates for sanctions that have happened and are more to come.

And last year, the U.S.

blamed Russian criminals for cyber attack, which means slash government, for cyber attacks on the colonial pipeline.

And JBS, the world's largest beef supplier.

You know, you've been in borehooms.

How big a concern is cybersecurity in these companies?

Because there's so many.

It's such a, one of the things Nicole talked about is we're such a big landscape of attack.

We're like a huge battle.

It's a good surface area.

It's a good surface area to attack.

And then you have the Chinese actually weighing in on Russia's side.

A Beijing-based publisher seemed to have accidentally posted instructions on Ukraine coverage to Webo.

The message advised against posting pro-Western content or anything unfavorable to Russia, and they deleted it.

So it's obviously also...

not just a cyber war, it's a misinformation war,

it's a propaganda war.

How do you think about that if you're an investor or a company as you're trying to wage your way through this?

Well, there's a lot there.

So first off, in every board, you typically have a series of static reports where once every year you go through a succession report, and a good board is supposed to say, here are the potential people who could be the next.

the next generation of leadership.

You have a legal report that looks at all lawsuits that have been filed against the company.

And what you've seen in the last couple of years now is you get static cyber reports around what is the cybersecurity threats to the company, how many attacks we think have been planned, what is our strategy.

If I were a young person that was just an economic animal, it's pretty hard to see how cyber isn't going to be cybersecurity.

If you don't have a college degree, but you want to figure out a way to make six figures fairly quickly and you're decent at technology, decent at math, to go get a one or two year degree, even online, even in any school around cyber, I mean, it just, it's one of those things right now where when they say we need, when the CIO comes in or the CTO comes into the board and says, I need another X millions of dollars for cyber defense for the company, we all look at each other.

No one knows enough about it, and we all just say, yes.

So

these expenditures are about to increase.

I can't imagine on a risk-adjusted basis a bigger growth area.

Now, as it relates to the markets, this might be the...

quote-unquote wrong reaction, but every major threat, geopolitical threat of the last 20 years in the markets has ended up being a buying opportunity.

So

wrongly,

wrongly or correctly, what you're already seeing in the markets today.

So what would you buy?

Bitcoin?

Would you buy crypto?

Would you buy,

what's the buy?

So I don't think that's the right way to approach investing.

I think you don't want to.

I always say don't want to, your emotions are your enemies.

So when

you hear about Russians going into Ukraine, your first inclination is, I need to sell.

I wouldn't do that.

You don't know.

What you want to be is the investor that's never, unless you're a professional trader, which is less than 0.1% of the population has those skills or those resources.

You want to buy good companies and you want to ride it out because you know what might happen here?

Let me say, there's a 50% chance.

the markets, there's some sort of sunshine or possibility of a diplomatic solution and the markets rip up because every time of the last 20 years, there's been a geopolitical crisis that takes the market down, you look back and you think it was a buying opportunity.

Yeah.

So

the strategy here is the same as it always was.

And that is you buy good companies, you diversify, and you don't subject yourself

to the delusion that you can somehow time markets and figure out geopolitical risk and how it's going to impact the markets.

So what do you do right now, quite frankly?

You do nothing.

You maintain your investment strategy would be my thought because the markets, quite frankly, I mean, we have 190,000 Russians pouring over the the border of Ukraine, and the markets are down, but not a lot.

The interest rates move the markets more now than geopolitics.

It's been down.

But I would say, really, if you're a big company, you have to be focused in on this.

And the government has been trying to work at it, but this is a little bit.

Well, we'll talk to Nicole.

We'll get an actual expert to talk about it.

You see it in oil.

Oil is at a higher price than it's been since 2014.

People are looking at different resources.

People are looking at grain because Ukraine Ukraine is like, I think 10% of grain.

It's the breadbasket.

So there will be some commodity trades.

But just

a lot of this stuff, the market is impossible to time like this.

So

I think it's a dangerous game to try and assume what the markets are going to do the next couple of weeks.

Yeah.

But meanwhile, let's focus on a single college swimmer.

Okay.

Anyway, because that's the most important thing in the world right now.

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

When we come back, we'll be here with our friend of Pivot, our new friend of Pivot, who solicited us online, Ben Stiller, about his new TV series, Severance.

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Ben Stiller is an actor, producer, and director known for hits like Zoolander, Tropic Thunder, and Escape at Danamora.

And as we are happy to learn, he's also a pivot listener and fan.

His latest project is the Apple TV series Severance, about a world in which corporate employees have their brains erased every day when they leave the office.

It's a timely show as workers renegotiate the idea of work-life balance in the real world.

Ben Stiller, welcome to Pivot.

If only people could see what was happening right now.

Little treat for Ben.

I like how you roll, Scott.

You just pop in, do your thing.

You got lots of stuff going on.

Well, Kara doesn't know this, but you and I are very close.

I'm not sure you know it either, but no, we are very close.

Really?

How so?

Ben and I, Ben, don't play Chloe.

Ben loves my Twitter feed.

I feel an attachment with Ben.

And let's just skip to letter L in our friendship.

We don't need to bother with A and B.

I am a skip to letter L.

By the way, I am a fan, Scott.

I am a fan of your brain.

Ben, you have a way with words.

Ben has gotten

better looking as he gets older.

Yeah, because it's all his fantastic hair.

That's what's happening.

You know, over the pandemic, I just let it go.

I let it go.

I like it.

I like it.

My kids want me to do that, but I decline.

You've gone from awkward to reasonable.

That's how we all want to age.

Oh, my God.

Scott.

Scott.

Thanks, Scott.

Let's get to his show.

All right.

So

I binged last night, by the way, on that thing.

Loved it.

Loved it, right?

It starts slow and it gains.

You know what?

I got to be honest, man.

That's the first friendship we have.

I got to be honest.

Tell me.

After the first episode, season one of Game of Thrones, I'm like, I can't do this.

And I did season two and it changed or episode two

and it changed my life.

It takes a while to get going.

But the visual design, the set design, and it builds, and you do get addicted.

I had to watch the pilot of Breaking Bad three times before I went all in.

Oh, there you go.

And then I got it.

But I would tell anyone, if you're kind of like, I like it, I don't love it.

Trust me, this is a relationship that grows.

I'm really enjoying this man.

Yeah, all right.

Well, let's have him talk about it, actually.

One of the things that someone tweeted that I thought was very smart, that it's on Apple TV, by the way, which we want to get to, but it could have been a place designed by Apple.

If you had ever spent any time there, it was super secretive.

They cut people up by departments.

So nobody knew what part of the the iPhone, for example, they were working on.

They wouldn't let one section see the other.

Talk about the generalized idea.

And the, I know

it's a writer, but what attracted you to this particular plot?

You know, it was just the tone and the style of this script that Dan Erickson wrote that he submitted to our production company like five years ago.

And I didn't really, I wasn't even aware of any of those sort of, you know,

resemblances to i mean i knew there were sort of like you know sort of like the big corporation and you know idea of tech companies that you don't quite know what's going on there and all that.

But there was just something about it that felt kind of rooted in these office workplace comedies that we've all been watching over the last 20 years, like, you know, movies like Office Space or shows like The Office or Parks and Wreck.

And yet it felt like it was sort of.

put through this lens of this weird, surreal, sort of abstract idea of, okay, everybody's coming in and having their banter and doing their thing and going through the motions, but they have no idea who they are, what they're doing, or why they're there.

And that greater kind of metaphor for the workplace, but really for life, it just sort of hit me as like, oh my God, this is such a, it just hitting into something that I hadn't seen before.

So tonally, I thought, oh, this could be something maybe a little bit different and yet also,

you know, I thought it could be funny too.

It is funny.

It develops into something that, you know, has a like more of a story that, you know, because there's things that happen.

But I really liked the idea that it was sort of like, you don't quite know what's going on.

Is this funny?

Isn't it funny?

Is it strange?

Is it scary?

Is it surreal?

Where are they?

Are they in hell?

Are they, you know, like, what's going on?

I thought those questions could be really fun to live in.

And, um, and, you know, hopefully, as long as, you know, I think as long as the show's creators have answers down the line.

So, so the, the first shot you did, and you directed the first show, correct?

I directed the first three, and then I directed the last three, and Aoife McCardle directed the middle three episodes.

Yeah.

Okay.

So the first shot, looking down at the woman on the table, splayed on the table, which was so disturbing, was to create disorientation among everybody, right?

What is happening here to this?

Yeah, well, yeah, Dan, when I read this pilot, it is a woman lying on a conference table in a conference room with no windows.

And

the question of like, how did she get there?

What's she doing there?

It is a sort of a weird, sort of disconcerting image.

And actually, even in the marketing, Apple,

you know, there's a billboard of that.

One of the billboards is that.

And I, you know, I thought, wow, that's really, you know, that it's a little bit, the image brings up a lot of questions.

You know, it's not really just what the show is about, but I thought, you know, that's kind of also what's interesting about the show is like you can read into it a lot of different things.

Oh, for certain.

And that one more, but the by, but the idea of

splitting your personality, which people try to do at work, right?

They try not to drag their personal life into it, but it always does and vice versa.

Yeah.

I mean.

I thought it was, you know, the fact that you could just like sort of cut off from life and when you go to work and just do your thing.

I mean, I feel like so, so often in life, like right now, we all have personal things going on in our lives that we're thinking about.

I have, I know, I've got stuff going on.

I'm sure you guys do too.

But then you sort of have to let it go.

I mean, I think what we do creatively, both what I do and what you guys do, we take our lives and our life experiences and we put it into our work.

So it's a little bit different than people who just have to go to work and, you know, punch a clock and do things that are disconnected from what's going on in their inner life or even their lives, you know, in general.

So, that idea of being able to sort of like cut off and just do your work and then leave and not think about it.

I think for a lot of people, that's, you know, I thought it was just an intriguing question.

Like, a lot of people probably would really want to do that.

I think when you're right, which they argue about, it's a technology.

It reminded me a lot of Black Mirror in that remote.

Yeah.

Like, the idea.

And I think there's this, I mean, there was an episode where they're talking about like memories or talking about like, you know, just like forgetting a relationship or something like that.

But I thought it was interesting for Mark, Adam Scott's character in this is that he is grieving the loss of his wife.

He's got it on the outside, but when he goes to work, he's not aware of that.

Yet somewhere inside of him, he's feeling that stuff.

You know, it's going to come up.

It's going to bubble up somehow.

He doesn't quite know how.

And I thought that was really interesting, like how much of our memories and our emotional memories would seep through if you do something like this.

I do think, isn't there like a thing called Neuralink or something that Elon Musk is working with?

Elon Musk.

Yeah, that's to make us smarter.

Yeah.

And there is a technology this relates to in the show.

You know, we talked to a neurosurgeon to try to get the technique right and about what they're doing here in terms of like putting in a chip that could cut off a memory center.

So it's actually something that is possible.

Well, for Scott, it's called vodka, but Scott, go ahead.

So first off, Ben,

and I said this on the show, so it has some credibility.

I thought 2018, the best original scripted drama was, I think it was called Escape from Danamora.

Skip it Danamora.

Yeah.

Escape of Danamora.

Yeah.

And you putting Paul Dano, who I think is the next Ed Norton and Benicio del Toro on screen together, just really powerful.

And then I had the exact same sort of moment of awe when I saw John Turturo and Christopher Walken on the screen at the same time.

Yeah.

And I thought, Jesus Christ, Ben Stiller has turned into, what is it, Paul Thomas Anderson?

Basically, I get the sense.

Everybody takes your call now.

Everybody takes your call.

For you to put these people on screen together who get a million calls from a million different agents every day.

What I want to know is,

all right, you're this comedic actor just making bank, but that doesn't automatically transition to a director who Christopher Watkin calls back.

Like, what was the moment or the piece of work that gave you the credibility and the ability?

to get these types of calls returned.

Because let's be honest, Adam Sandler, Christopher Watkin doesn't return Adam Sandler's call, or maybe he does when he says, I want to direct a film.

You somehow made this transition that every great actor dreams of and very few have pulled off.

What was the piece of work?

What was the change in your career that gave you license to pull together this type of talent?

Well, thanks for saying that.

I mean, first of all, I think Adam has done that as an actor now, you know?

And

I didn't mean to be careful.

No, no, no, but I mean, he's because he doesn't direct, but I think, you know, the kind of work he's doing now is has transitioned.

He's transitioned.

I actually haven't really done that kind of work as an actor that much, but I, I love directing.

I've always loved directing.

I've always directed stuff that I've been in, but I think it was really

Dana Moore was the first thing that I directed after all these years that I wasn't in.

And that's something I always wanted to do.

And to take the time to do that.

And the first day of shooting on that show, I was so happy because

I was finally just doing.

one thing.

And I've always loved working with actors, but to really take myself out of the equation as an actor when I'm directing, I think made a difference for me in the process.

And, you know, I think actors appreciate

other actors as directors on a certain level because they understand how weird and vulnerable it is to be an actor and how strange the process is.

And so I feel lucky enough that that, you know, that that sort of translated into Anna Moore and that and people, you know, responded to it.

But I think it was kind of that.

It was kind of like taking a moment to sort of step back from acting and to really focus on directing.

So when you're thinking about doing that and creating this visual, talk a little bit about that because a lot of it has to do not just with the set, but I think I read an interview with Adam Scott, who's the star here, who's fantastic.

The set was disconcerting in how you created it because it really is.

I want to get out of that place so badly and the hallways.

Right.

And that's also the thing, the line that we're sort of writing because I want people to want to get out of there, but also not be able to get out of there, but also want to keep watching it.

So it's sort of, you know, you're trying to figure out what that balance is.

But I thought, you know, aesthetically, it should have a very specific feel that was based really on the building that we found to be the exterior, which is an, and it's funny because I started listening to you guys like, I was late to the game, but like probably like a year and a half ago or something.

And I was doing these drives to Holmedale, New Jersey from a house up in Westchester and where Bell Labs, the Bell Labs building is, that's our exterior.

And that's where they developed, I guess, the

transistor and the beginnings of the cell phone so that's the that building was and designed by Iro Saarinen in the late 50s and that became when we found that it was like to me that was the aesthetic of the of the show that sort of informed all the design of the sets for what was going on below and the idea the logic of this company that has been keeping these people severed wants to keep them cut off from digital technology wants to keep them out of touch with the outside world so there was a sort of a justification for this sort of retro tech that was going on down there.

That particular building, when you go in it, is like that.

I visited it many times.

You get lost.

Yeah, it's a crazy building.

The scale of it is amazing, but there are still old finishes from the original, you know, from the original design that are so, you know, feel so out of time.

But so that was sort of like the, and then we just designed the set that had all these sort of maze-like hallways and

that we repurposed a lot.

But it was really, you know, Dan in the writing had to sort of set up this environment where there were four people at cubicles in the center of the room.

And we decided to make the room kind of oversized and have a really low ceiling just to feel like

just to make it feel a little bit more oppressive.

It looks like the inside of a computer, actually.

It looks like you're stuck inside a video game in some very unattractive video game, which is interesting.

Yeah.

And then we wanted to have these workstations where they're doing this refining, which we don't quite understand what it is, and have those workstations work.

So everything is kind of,

you know, working and analog, but those screens were really working.

The actors could actually bin and gather the data that they were pulling into these, you know, into these little bins, and which we don't hopefully, you know, down the line, we'll get to understand more.

But so they could actually do that all day.

And I think everybody was going a little crazy because we shot during the pandemic.

And it was, as you know, everything in the last couple of years, we shot for about nine months.

And going there, I think, I know Deturo started to go a little crazy in there.

And, you know, I think that informed, you know, the vibe and that the actors were feeling, you know, for the show, too.

Put us in.

I would say put us in the room.

So you have Apple TV.

First off, the production just drips money.

It looks like they said, here's a blank check

between the talent.

There's an OSI.

Well, my brother, it looks pretty close.

I mean, I look at everything and I think, could they have spent any more money, whether it's the Lennon facade or the lighting or the talent?

Tim Cook probably pulled it out of his drawer.

Seriously, my next iPhone is subsidizing your midlife crisis here, Ben.

Anyways,

we're friends.

We're friends, Carol.

No, you're not.

You're not friends.

You are not friends.

You are not.

He's never going to see you.

But go ahead.

Put us in the room.

You're the director.

Quite frankly, with this talent, with this story, with this budget, if this doesn't work, it's your fault.

If

Scott, now you're negative.

There's pressure.

There's definitely pressure.

What are the like the

dispel the mythology?

What are the moments that are better than people don't expect?

And what are the moments that are worse?

Because you are, I I mean, to a certain extent, this is your ball.

I mean, this is, this is your shot.

Like, what, what was the best things to happen to you to the upside and to the downside during this nine-month period?

You know, you actually are picking up on the reality of doing one of these things, which is you kind of go all in.

I always motivated first from the creative of like, I love this script.

I want to make this show.

And then you, and it took us three years plus to actually even get it mounted from when we discovered the script and started working on it.

So it started to sort of grow as we worked on it.

And then the pandemic hit about six weeks before we were supposed to start shooting.

So we were prepping for about six months before March of 2020.

Then we sort of shut down and then started up again.

And those things all affected, I think, the cost and the, you know, just the process of making this.

And ultimately, at the end of the day, you're in the hole with something where you go, okay, I think I see what this is.

I've got these amazing people I'm working with that we were able to get.

And then once you start doing it,

you know, hopefully you have a partner, whether it's Apple or Endeavor Content, who is the studio on this,

you know, which is a strange world of all that stuff too, where you just have to say, this is what we see it.

And you fight for it and you fight for what you think is going to, you know, make the show what it should be.

I think the more you go along, the less perspective you have on whether or not it's going to work.

And you just have to go with your initial instincts.

And it's a little bit, yeah, you know, I have to say, after this was a two-plus year project that probably that it one of the longest things I've ever worked on consistently.

And at the end of it, I was, I literally was just like, okay, we just finished it.

We got through it.

We made it.

We made it the way we wanted it to be.

I hope people like it.

I hope it does well.

I can't control that.

Yes, there's a lot of money behind this.

Yes, there's a lot of, you know, if it doesn't work, I've been in those situations where it doesn't work, you know, where you put it all in and you put your best foot forward and you you're you're deep in and it doesn't work and that sucks it doesn't feel good um but it's out of your control also so on this one it was sort of like you know i i felt walking away it was like i left it all on the floor you know and hopefully people will connect Is it different, though, working for a big tech company with endless sums of money?

I mean, this is sort of a push-pull in Hollywood right now.

Working with everything is streaming, obviously.

This could have been a movie.

This could have been a lot.

It could have been a TV series.

What is the, what has changed in the work of Hollywood?

Um, because there's an ongoing struggle with a lot of sort of old Hollywood people about where it's headed with streaming.

It's totally changed.

And I listened to you talk about it and, you know, where the movie industry has gone.

And, you know, it, it just, it's, it's

the, the upside of it is there's more money being put into productions like this to, for streaming, you know, and I've found over the last years, really with Dan Amora, is that I was able to do the kind of thing I wanted to do as a director that was much much harder to do in movies.

I think, you know, in streaming and limited series

and series now,

you can go into genres and have the support and do things in a way that, you know, movies are much more oriented toward these bigger movies that are just, you know, and the opening weekend.

And it's just those kind of movies are just not getting made.

So I think that's the upside of it.

I think the downside is it's all this big sort of, you know, menu on your screen of things that are all very, very different, but yet it's like, hey, should I watch a movie?

Should I watch a TV show?

Should I watch a special?

Should I watch a documentary?

And they're all just tabs in front of you.

And there's no separation anymore between, and I used to, you know, I love going to the movies,

but I also am guilty of, you know, sitting on my couch and saying, well, it's much easier to watch it this way.

Has it changed the way you think of not just celebrity, but creation?

Because a lot of some directors, Christopher and Ollen, are rejecting it, but that's, it's the facts.

It's where it's going.

Some of the things I talked about very early was you realize this is the way it's going, just like the internet, just like, you know, did to music, et cetera.

Is that is that a crisis for people in Hollywood?

Because you're sort of got your foot in both worlds here.

Well, it's changed everything about the economics of it.

I think.

And I think people like Chris Nolan, who can do that.

and directors who stand up for things like shooting on film and preserving the cinematic experience, all that, I appreciate that.

I don't think they're rejecting it as much as just sort of like, you know, standing up and keeping something going that's going to hopefully exist within this new world.

But, you know, as you know, the movie industry has changed totally in terms of the economics of how decisions are made on movies.

So, you know, I come from like,

at the end of the day, you know,

I wish I was more knowledgeable about or cared more about all that stuff.

But at the end of the day, I'm really, I love making stuff and I love making movies.

I love acting.

I love directing.

And so wherever I'm going to have the opportunity to do what I love to do, I'm going to try to find that and and have to work within that.

But it's, you know, but it's, I miss, I miss the old days of having a movie come out and what that meant and the excitement of that.

Just the way, you know, you know, it used to be fun to have a television show that everybody would watch and then there would be a conversation about it, you know, in the culture.

And now it's so much harder to cut through.

And that really, that's the stress that I feel with something like this, really, if anything is like, okay, you know, I just hope people like will find it.

I hope in this sea of so much, because there's just so much.

Right now,

that's just Yellowstone and Euphoria, which couldn't be the same, more the same, actually, if you think about it, actually.

Yeah.

Well, some people don't know this, but Ben and I were at UCLA at the same time.

And that's what I saw.

I know.

Ben, you got to learn.

Questions are just an opportunity to talk about me.

So I graduated.

He dropped out.

I'm on a podcast with Kara Swisher.

You're going to the Academy Awards with Tim Cook.

So kids drop out of school.

It's a lesson here.

No,

you've made the right choice.

You kept it.

You did okay.

Yeah.

You did just fine.

Anyway, so

I'd love to just get your

thoughts or your advice to your younger self.

You're an impressive, like, there's just no getting around it.

You're an impressive man.

What would you tell younger men?

You know,

what advice would you give yourself 30 years ago coming just dropped out of UCLA?

What would you say to that young man?

And what would you say to young men today?

Well, to me personally, I would say relax

and just

take a breath and just let stuff happen.

I think I was very, very impatient and really ambitious and really want.

That's why I dropped out of school.

I regret dropping out of school, honestly, because

you never have that experience again, the chance to just have

the time to sort of, you know, explore different areas.

And I was very much wanting to fulfill my dream and my ideas of what I wanted to be doing.

And at the end of the day, it's going to happen the way it's going to happen.

You know, as I get older, and I'm sure you think about this too,

you just really

appreciate the moments and the time that you have doing the things that you love doing.

And when you're younger, you don't, I didn't think about that as much.

So I had my head down going, going, going, going, charging.

I mean, so I would say

if you love something, you know, follow that dream, go for it, but also don't

feel like you have to push, push, push.

And I think in this world right now, it's kind of crazy because people have success at such a young age or sometimes in the show business who are expected to do that.

And, you know, both my kids, I think about that.

And,

you know, just taking the time to have that experience in school and to let yourself sort of flounder a little bit too.

But I would never have listened to myself back then at all.

I would have said, sure, fine.

Yeah, that's probably true.

So I want to fast forward and follow up on that question.

You talked about, you know, going into production for nine months.

I don't think there's any way you can be this successful and this relevant and have it not come at a cost or a trade-off.

Can you talk a little bit about...

being a dad, being a husband, and the trade-offs or any learnings around trying to maintain that type of career trajectory and maintaining healthy or not maintaining healthy relationships?

Oh, gosh.

Yeah, I'm the least probably

right person to talk to about that because I've made so many mistakes over the years.

I think

all I can say is I feel like I've started to learn from the mistakes I've made in terms of trying to find

happiness in, you know, and in my relationships because that's the thing.

You know, with your kids, when my kids were younger, I was working, working, working all the time.

Now,

when I do work, I really go into it, but I make choices like, you know, with

both with Dan Amora and with Severance, that I was working in New York and I was not going to go on location.

Spending time being around your kids as much as you can, even if they don't, you know, if they're doing their own thing,

just being there.

But I've just, I've made so many mistakes, Scott, that I feel like, you know, all I can say is I think I've started to learn from them, both in my relationship and my marriage and with my kids and,

you know, being present with your kids when you're there.

But

it's an ever-changing,

evolving thing, you know?

And right now, I'm really grateful for what I've got going on in my life.

And I feel like that.

All right.

Sorry.

I'm going to shift it back to severance because that's about this idea of work-life balance and not just that, but the

splitting of work.

Right now, through the pandemic, you know, this is sort of, this show resonates quite a bit because after the pandemic, people aren't going back to work.

They, and they have their work at home and it invades their home in the other direction.

Jesus Christ, I was just getting somewhere with Ben and you go back to fucking Patrick.

No, stop it.

Yes, we're going to.

Let's talk about this.

I finally have my stop.

I finally have my Oprah moment with Ben Stiller and you go back to Pacific.

No, there's no Oprah moment here.

Thank you, Ben, for that thoughtful answer.

Anyway, I want you to break down the blockchain and Bitcoin for me, please.

We will in a second.

Come Rocket is replacing the dollar, Ben.

That's all you need to know.

Stop it.

sorry go ahead stop it oh my god i'm so embarrassed so uh you invite a nice boy over for dinner and here you are behaving like this so um so in returning to the office one of the things that a lot of people in tech i know did they they still have these big beautiful offices they still have not just tech but they lead the way in that idea of work as home and now home is work um when you're doing in this office one of the things that's important are these relationships developed at work what happens uh between Petey and your main character and Margaret?

What happens in this world now

in the real world?

It's almost more dystopian than this one is.

Yeah, well, I mean, it's so disconnected.

I mean, here we are, we're just all doing all of this over screens all the time.

I edited the whole show.

I'd say like 90% of the editing I did at home on my computer with my editor who was in Brooklyn.

I was in, you know, Westchester, and we just were, you know, and the only time we actually ever came together was actually to shoot the show.

And then everybody would leave.

And, you know, there was, it was very, and of course, everybody was in, you know, PPE and everything.

I think, you know, the work, I never experienced that, the sort of like office work life.

You know, I just was always outside.

In-person collaboration is important for creativity and inspiration.

Yeah, for sure.

And I think now when you have an in-person meeting with someone, it feels very different.

It feels, you know,

I mean, obviously it's, it's, it's, you know, more rare, but it, you know, that connection really does make a difference.

And I think

the work in the show is these people go to work, they don't know anything about their outside life.

So all they have, they're almost like children because they've only been alive in their heads since they got activated down there.

So the relationship that Mark and Petey have, sort of like his kind of like his older brother, you know, it's really the only sort of emotional connection that he has in his life is down down there is with that person.

Then all of a sudden that person's gone.

And that's another metaphor I think is interesting in the show.

When people sort of get, uh, they leave or they get fired or they, you know, leave the job, all of a sudden they're gone.

Yet that, yet at the company, they say, we don't have things like death down here, but they really do because people just disappear.

And that's kind of, I think, you know, what we deal with in life with loss, where people are just there and then they're not there.

And, you know, that to me is so much at the heart of how we process our relationships is, you know, that feeling that inevitably there's going to be that loss.

So that somehow resonated for me in the show.

Yeah, they only have melon to talk about.

That was painful.

Yeah, Melon Bar is like,

that's where, you know, in terms of like what the rewards are, if that's all you have.

The guy who plays the HR guy is fantastic.

Everybody is

so is Patricia Arquette.

She's particularly menacing.

Yeah.

And she's a fantastic way.

You know, she's a great actress who just, you know, has a wonderful sense of humor and as a person, as a real social conscience, you know.

But she just sort of jumps off the deep end and is willing to go, you know, to go for not knowing what it's going to be and take take those chances, which I love.

Yeah, she plays evil very well.

Scott?

I'm curious if there's a box you want to check professionally in the next five years.

Is it tackling a genre, a story, working a medium?

Like if you think, wow, Zoolander in the metaverse, for example, what would that look like?

Yeah, what would that look like?

Bad.

It would look bad.

Ben, don't let Kara get in between us.

Be honest.

What is the box in five years you think I would really like to check this box professionally?

What is, what is could be Bitcoin.

We don't don't care i want to mine some bitcoin i want to literally mine bitcoin what's the next thing for you what what would you what what what do you want to what bell do you want to ring here professionally it's been it's been um five or six years since i've acted actually and i i think i want to try that again and go back in and try to figure out how to do that and comedic acting dramatic acting what who would you like to work with what would the story who is the person you'd want to portray i know oh my goodness yeah he's got a minute hold on a guy like ben Look, it's pretty clear you're a pretty thoughtful man.

You've thought about this stuff.

Let us in there.

What would you love to do professionally in the next five years?

Maybe, maybe go out on, do a play on stage, do that.

I think I did that about 10 or 11 years ago.

I found that the most challenging, exciting thing as an actor because you got to do it all yourself every night.

I love directing, though, too.

So

think if I could keep on making stories that movies and shows that I'd want to see, that's kind of what I went back to a few years ago.

I was like, what I really would want to see this.

So maybe acting some more, acting in something serious, acting something funny.

I'm not, you know, looking to have to go and do Shakespeare or something, you know, at this point.

What book or what story would you that you've read or would you most want to direct right now?

If you could direct anything that hasn't been made on the film?

I'm working on a limited series about Benedict Arnold.

Yeah.

Great character.

Yeah.

And

Oscar Isaac's going to play Benedict.

And it's

a really interesting story because he was such a huge hero of the revolution and then, you know, and then wasn't.

And vice president.

In the context of what the United States was.

or not the United States yet, but what our country was becoming and

how we now define it as the United States.

But at that time, it was a lot, much more of a gray area.

And so I find that, you know, especially what's going on right now, you know, something interesting.

The Rudy Giuliani of his day.

I'm teasing.

He was a little more brave, though.

I think he was a little more brave.

Oh, I get it.

Please, Rudy Giuliani has lost every narrative possible.

Anyway, you can also mine Bitcoin.

We will hook you up with our friends in Miami.

I just want you to get down there with me.

You could really explain it to me.

Because I liked every investment.

Bitcoin went in high, got in at the highest

point.

It's important when the numbers get evil.

You'll recognize it.

You'll know it when you see it.

Yes, but it's inside joke.

Severance inside jokes.

There you go.

Mendacious algorithms.

That's one of my favorite Scott terms now.

Mendacious Fox.

It's really the actual term.

Feel free to use it in any one of your films or movies or whatever roles, whatsoever.

Mendacious Fox.

Ben, thank you.

Severance is really wonderful.

I could not recommend it more.

It's a wonderful show.

It's called Severance.

It's on Apple TV.

The first episodes are now out.

The first two, they come on Fridays.

Is that correct?

They come on.

Yeah, they're on Friday.

Fridays, they come on.

Yeah.

And I was going to say that they air, but they don't air.

They drop or whatever.

Yeah.

They drop it.

They're not doing it all at once.

You can't ban it.

And I'm so happy to be inside your pod here or be a part of this thing because I'm such a fan.

You are now a friend of Pivot's officially.

You are now a dude.

Just like Severance.

There's no getting out now.

You're here, my brother.

You, you, and

you're an innie.

You're an innie.

Anyway, thank you, Ben.

We really appreciate it.

Thanks, guys.

So, Scott, that was very exciting.

In any case, Severance is really a mind fuck.

So, you should watch it.

It's not a mendacious fuck.

It's a mind fuck.

And you should absolutely.

Oh, because I know you.

They send me all the episodes.

So I'm up till fucking four in the morning learning about all this weirdness.

Yeah.

It is addictive.

I'm kind of mad at it.

It is.

It's suffocating in the best of ways.

Anyway, one more quick break, and then we'll be back for predictions.

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Hey, Pivot listeners, I want to tell you you about a new podcast from the Box Media Podcast Network called Access with Alex Heath and Ellis Hamburger.

It's a show about the inside conversation happening across the tech industry.

You may know Alex Heath from shows like Decoder and The Vergecast, and he's the founder of Sources, a new publication about the tech industry and a contributing writer for The Verge.

And you'll probably only know Ellis if you worked in Silicon Valley yourself.

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Okay, Scott, predictions.

Do you got any predictions?

I'm going to resist the temptation to make predictions around anything important.

I'm going to talk about midlife crises and taxes.

Oh, all right.

I think Jeff Bezos is going to go full midlife crisis.

I kind of like the fact he's leaning into his midlife crisis.

I'm sort of enjoying it, watching it.

And I'm not sure I would.

I'm not a midlife crisis explanation for everything.

Well, okay, let me put it this way.

If this was a woman who was secure in her relationships, would you be fucking invading Ukraine right now?

Yes.

The majority of really bad decisions.

By the way, none of you are at midlife, but go ahead.

The majority, well,

the seven-eighths crisis, the seven-eighths life crisis.

I'm convinced the majority of bad decisions in corporate America and geopolitics are a function of narcissists who can't get over the fact they're going to die.

Oh, yes.

Anyways, so going back to a better midlife crisis, and that.

They are.

By the way, they are.

Good news for Putin there.

By the way, so back to the fun midlife crisis, which I am really enjoying a front row seat to, and that is Bezos' midlife crisis.

Jeff Bezos is going to buy the Denver Broncos or another NFL team.

Really?

Why the fuck wouldn't he?

Wouldn't you?

He's got...

Do you see that interest in sports?

I've never ever heard him talk about sports.

But

he's interested in testosterone and taking his new hot girlfriend to really fun events.

And he watched the Super Bowl with SoFi.

I have no interest.

Mark Cuban loves sports.

Bomber loves sports.

I'm just trying to think.

They really did.

They really were huge fans.

So

who else owns it among the techie billionaires?

Oh, Paul Allen.

Paul Allen.

Do you think Paul Allen loves sports?

This is what they love.

Not living.

They love.

They love going to.

Do you think Tim Cook loves the Academy?

These guys love it.

Tim Cook actually loves Alabama football.

I'm telling you.

It's like

accusing him of not being a Bama.

I'm just saying he's a fan.

He's a big fan.

I didn't ever hear Bezo talk about sports ever, not once.

Jeff Bezos

for whatever it'll be, it'll probably, I don't know, what the Broncos.

Because it's one of the few teams for sale.

And I might be wrong.

It might be another team, but the Broncos look like they're up for sale.

But wouldn't you, if you were worth $150 billion for a couple billion bucks, you get kind of nine or 18 awesome Sundays with your hot girlfriend, I would do it.

By the way, I'm going to buy the Glasgow Rangers just in case, just so I can have like not as cool a midlife crisis.

I guess it's interesting because it is.

These people do have a lot of money.

Piero Midiar, who was obviously founded eBay and is very wealthy,

bought,

invested in hotel chains.

He bought the montage on Laguna, which used to be my favorite hotel.

Right.

The brand, I guess.

I don't, who bought one of the hotels.

I don't, he didn't buy the brand.

He bought one of the hotels.

And

he, I asked him, I'm like, why did you buy a sports team?

He's like, because we can't.

I hate sports.

No, he's like, like, I hate sports.

And they think you're supposed to,

they make you think you have to buy a sports team, but I like hotels.

Anyways.

Okay, that is our long and involved show.

What a show this is.

It's action-packed today.

And of course, we'll be back on Tuesday for more.

And starting next week, video clips of Pivot are coming.

Oh, no.

Let it thrill.

I know.

From Salesforce Plue.

Face for Podcasting.

You can sign up to watch them on salesforce.com slash Plue.

P-L-U-S, actually, not Plue, but Plus.

And we're very excited.

I think it's great.

We're going to be in video.

I think we just, we, we, you know, we're going to have even more fans.

They like us.

Now they get to see us.

It's going to be very exciting.

I know they know how to find us.

Yeah, you're welcome.

What a thrill.

Good to see you.

Anyway, read us out, Scott Galloway.

Today's show is produced by Larry Naiman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin.

Ernie Ingertott introduced this episode.

Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Mia Silverio.

Make sure you subscribe to the show.

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.

Who is is the enemy here?

Let's remember this.

We're not each enemy.

Americans aren't each other's enemies.

The enemy just rolled over the border of Ukraine.

Focus on who the real enemy is.