Elon’s Taxes, Infrastructure Week at Last, and Friend of Pivot, Mark Mahaney

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Speaker 15 hi everyone this is pivot from new york magazine and the vox media podcast network i'm kara swisher and i'm an insufferable

Speaker 14 numbskull

Speaker 14 numbskull i'm an insufferable i don't know if you're insufferable are you insufferable let's let's break this down so okay fyi my twitter started blowing up last night and i said oh elon's called you out And our producer is the one that gave me the heads up, Lara.

Speaker 14 Yeah. And so I went on and he called me an insufferable numbskull.
And I looked up numskull because I wasn't entirely sure what it meant. Yeah.
It means foolish and stupid.

Speaker 14 And I think, I want your opinion here. I think I'm more foolish than stupid.
What do you think? Well, oh, that's a hard one. That's a tough one.
I think it's an easy one.

Speaker 15 No, foolish.

Speaker 14 Foolish for sure. 100%.

Speaker 15 Why are you foolish? Well, you have said you were stupid about Tesla stock. And I pointed it out several times, like you were wrong, not stupid.

Speaker 14 Yeah, but I didn't understand, quite frankly, what was going on. I didn't understand why he and his army of flying monkeys were coming after him.

Speaker 15 He gets it into his head sometimes.

Speaker 14 Well,

Speaker 14 I had put out what I thought was a fairly innocuous tweet saying

Speaker 14 that

Speaker 14 kind of a page out of the CEO big tech playbook is they never want to take responsibility for their actions, including selling stock. Oh, yeah, about that.
And I think what's happening here is that

Speaker 14 so Elon Musk now has, I think, about $200 billion of the Tesla stock.

Speaker 14 He was given so many options as part of his comp package that when they expire, he'll exercise them because they're hugely in the money.

Speaker 14 But that triggers a taxable event, the delta between the strike price and what the stock is trading at, which means he will probably have somewhere between a $5 and $10 billion tax liability.

Speaker 14 And what he could do, what he could do easily is borrow against his holdings $10 billion at probably 0.5%

Speaker 14 to pay his tax bill. So he could basically borrow money for free to pay his tax bill.
But here's the thing. Here's the thing.

Speaker 15 Here's the thing. What's the thing?

Speaker 14 Some very smart people who manage his money have said to him, look,

Speaker 14 if your stock got cut by 90%,

Speaker 14 Tesla would be worth more than General Motors and Ford still. So we have to model out the possibility that just as your stock has gone up 10X in the last 24 months, it could get cut by 90%.

Speaker 14 And if you had all of this money, and he's probably been borrowing against his money, I'm sorry, borrowing against his stock for a while.

Speaker 14 If you have $20 billion in debt and your holdings go from being worth $200 billion to $20 billion, this could be a really, really ugly scenario for it.

Speaker 14 Say they've modeled it out and he's obviously decided, and by the way, it's the smart thing to do. And it's his stock.
He's entitled to sell it.

Speaker 14 But instead of taking responsibility for saying, I want to diversify, I need to pay some taxes.

Speaker 14 And he has said this, the stock is fully valued.

Speaker 15 Yeah, he said he's going to pay taxes.

Speaker 14 He says, Twitter, you tell me what to do.

Speaker 15 Yeah, I know. Over the weekend, he put out a Twitter poll asking me he should sell 10% of his Tesla stock.

Speaker 15 Scott, you tweeted he's using the Twitter results as a cloud cover to monetize Tesla at prices that he knows aren't sustainable without Outright telling the market he's lost faith in its valuation, although he has said that somewhat.

Speaker 15 He has.

Speaker 15 And then he has said, then he did you. This has happened before.
I've seen it happen before many times.

Speaker 14 So Lara pointed out, and let's just call out the elephant in the room.

Speaker 14 The sexual tension between the two of us is palpable. It's palpable.

Speaker 14 And I got to be honest, last night I did have a sex dream about Elon.

Speaker 14 I was running my hands through his chest hair. We were in a hermetically sealed container

Speaker 14 30 feet below the Martian surface,

Speaker 14 recognizing that we were about to die a horrific death, either from asteroids or increased radiation or gravitational pull that was melting our bones and neuro

Speaker 14 and neurons. But you know what? We had each other, Kara.
We had each other. So this is what I'm going to do.

Speaker 14 No, no, no, I'm going to take over. Wait a sec.

Speaker 15 Here's what, I'm going to get us away from the weird thing I had about Elon. Here's what Elon told me last month.

Speaker 15 He's talking to me, probably not now. Here's what Elon told me last month at code regarding his, by the way, Elon, I'm not his mama.
He does whatever he wants, so don't blame me.

Speaker 15 Here's what Elon told me at code regarding his Tesla stock.

Speaker 16 I have a bunch of options that are expiring early next year. So I'm

Speaker 16 that a huge block of options will sell in Q4 because I have to, or they'll expire. And my top marginal tax rate is 53%.

Speaker 15 So there you go.

Speaker 14 Well, okay, but here's the problem. And again, another page out of the playbook.
He, just in time to monetize the wealth of the wealthiest man in the world, he's decided to piece out to Texas.

Speaker 14 He's no longer a California resident. He became a resident of Texas in October just in time to start selling some of that 200 billion.
But you know what happened?

Speaker 14 I thought my Twitter was going to absolutely go crazy and the trolls are going to come for me. Really? But he decided to take another 10 milligrams of CBD.

Speaker 14 And did you see the tweet he put out to Ron Wyden last night? Senator Wyden?

Speaker 15 That was something else.

Speaker 14 Okay, so Senator Wyden basically said, well, something along the lines of, well, maybe you should just pay your taxes. And this is just a tax.

Speaker 15 Yeah, which is common. Among the politicians, they do that all the time.

Speaker 14 To the well tax. And you know what he wrote back?

Speaker 15 Yeah, I see.

Speaker 14 How come your PP looked like it just come?

Speaker 15 So

Speaker 14 here's a little bit of color on Senator Ron Wyden. Yeah.

Speaker 14 His father fled Nazis. Senator Wyden was a scholar athlete, which means he was very disciplined and in amazing shape.

Speaker 14 And he has been re-elected four times to the greatest deliberative body on this planet or any other planet. So Elon, shut the fuck up.

Speaker 15 Oh, goodness. Okay.
All right. Yes, that was not in good taste, I would say.
But Twitter is not in good taste. That is true.
So you don't want him to yell at Wyden.

Speaker 14 But he's in bad taste. This is not Twitter's fault.

Speaker 15 No, no, no, no. That was a bad.

Speaker 14 What do young people think of our connective tissue, our government, when the wealthiest man in the world starts tweeting at the head of the senate finance committee which i could i would argue on a risk-adjusted basis isn't great for shareholders saying how come your pp looked like it just come america everybody that's our role

Speaker 15 a lot of our leaders were tweeting at big bird for a covet supportive covet vaccine sted cruise called it propaganda an arizona state senator called it flat out big bird is a communist this has happened before with big bird by the way that was an interesting segue are you trying to protect elon for fear he's not going to come on stage with you again no i am not you may no no Are you practicing access journalism?

Speaker 14 Are you trying to put a chain on the dog?

Speaker 15 No, no.

Speaker 15 Have I stopped you from saying anything you wanted about Elon Musk? No.

Speaker 14 You've tried to save me from myself, actually, a few times.

Speaker 15 Aswath, actually, when he was, who was on that last week, previously weighed in on Tesla. Here's what he said here.
Let me give you some cover here.

Speaker 14 Go ahead, Aswath.

Speaker 18 I've described Tesla as the ultimate story stock, a stock you buy because you like the story and you like the person telling the story. And fundamentally, this is what it boils down to.

Speaker 18 If you believe in Elon Musk, you're buying Tesla. And this is where the moment of reckoning is going to come because I think Tesla has some real strengths.

Speaker 18 I mean, what other car company in the world would announce a car that's not going to come out for two years and 400,000 people put $1,000, $1,500 down to get that car?

Speaker 18 They've got this rabid customer base. The key for them is can they actually deliver? Because that's always been the weakness.
I mean,

Speaker 18 they have great vision, but the nuts and bolts stuff, they seem to have trouble with.

Speaker 15 All right, there's Oswald supporting you. And then Elon.
It's a great car.

Speaker 14 I own one.

Speaker 14 Yep.

Speaker 15 You noted that in your tweet back to him, which he has not responded to. Elon has tweeted before, by the way, speaking of support for Scott.
Tesla's stock price is too high. So

Speaker 15 anyway, he has done that.

Speaker 14 I think he just, I think he might get on Twitter and have a, and be it feels like someone else is rubbing their fingers through Elon's chest hair.

Speaker 15 Well, in any case, I think he just does this just, he said this on stage to me. He does it just to bug people.
He just does it.

Speaker 14 I'm thinking of tweeting at him a picture of me shirtless with hair. In exchange, he needs to send a picture of me shirtless with hair.
I'm thinking 2000, 2001. What do you think?

Speaker 14 I know it's in his camera role. No.
I know it's in his camera role.

Speaker 15 You need to be as restrained as Big Bird is. That's how it is.

Speaker 14 I need to show more grace. Yes.

Speaker 15 You know what?

Speaker 15 He's just playing onto those idiots who always attack you and say they have stock things that are opposite.

Speaker 14 Hey, you know what? Whatever. You know what?

Speaker 15 You know what? You get out there and say your piece and people, you get out on the field and the rest of them sit around and yell at you from the edge. You know what?

Speaker 14 It's okay. I'm being very serious now.
It's okay to have enemies as long as they're more powerful than you. Otherwise, it's just bullying.

Speaker 15 I thought it was good.

Speaker 15 I thought that was good.

Speaker 15 I thought it was fine. Whatever.
It's fine to be called a numb skull by Elon Musk.

Speaker 14 Did you see my challenge as I'm virtue signaling now?

Speaker 15 No, what was your challenge? No.

Speaker 14 I told him that I would give $10 million to the University of California, which he has benefited from if he matched me. So Elon, there's the challenge.

Speaker 14 You give $10 $10 million to the University of California. I will do the same.

Speaker 14 And we can both continue to support the infrastructure for great companies of which you have benefited massively, known as the Cal State System and the University of California. I like that.

Speaker 14 You're involved in that.

Speaker 15 That's a useful thing, but that's not going to happen. This is just, he's

Speaker 15 some of his friends who don't like you, and there's several of his friends that don't like you. And he was just a little bit more.

Speaker 14 Well, what about if I prove that every woman of color? That's what was happening.

Speaker 14 What about if I could prove to him for $7 billion that every woman of color in the South would have access to safe family planning, would he fund it? Would he fund it? I don't know.

Speaker 15 He'd like the data plan.

Speaker 14 Just like World Hunger, didn't he say he was funding it?

Speaker 15 He said he wants the data. He said if he got the plan.

Speaker 14 I think I can give him the data on that.

Speaker 15 All right. Well, let's see if he responds to you.
I don't know what to tell you. I don't know what to tell you.
You had a throwdown with him. But that's good.

Speaker 15 Like you said, if people are attacking you from the top, but you're in good shape. It's fine.
That's right. That's right.
That's right. By the way, Salsa's lock is

Speaker 15 slipping as we record this, just so you know.

Speaker 14 Well, what a shocker. For General Motors, Daimler-Chrysler, Toyota, Honda, Kia,

Speaker 14 Tata Motors, Boeing, Airbus, JetBlue, Delta, American Airlines, and throw-in, I don't know, every special retail in America, Tesla is worth more than all those companies combined. Yeah.

Speaker 15 All right. You keep going.
You keep, you keep, Don Quixote, you insufferable numbskull.

Speaker 14 At some point, I will be right. At some point, I will be right.

Speaker 15 You insufferable numbskull.

Speaker 14 I'm not insufferable. People like the dog.

Speaker 15 No,

Speaker 15 you're a sufferable numbskull.

Speaker 14 I'm totally sufferable.

Speaker 15 That was unfair. Elon, take off the Elite.

Speaker 14 I suffered with the dog. I didn't know what was going on.

Speaker 15 Anyway, it was very funny. Funny that you didn't even know it was happening.
I looked at it. I'm like, oh, Jesus.

Speaker 15 I went to see the Washington Spirit, which is the women's soccer team. I took little, the golden child.

Speaker 15 It was very nice. And I looked at it and I was like, oh, no.

Speaker 15 And the golden child went, oh, no. And I said, oh, God.
And she went, oh, God.

Speaker 14 So it was good.

Speaker 14 Okay, let's talk about the show. I feel much better now.

Speaker 15 So, just very briefly, Senators Klobuchar and Cotton, two people you do not imagine ever sitting, going to a bar and suffering each other, introduced a bill to fight tech monopolies and only tech monopolies.

Speaker 15 I find this problematic, but the bill would make it harder for giant companies to buy up smaller competitors. It would also apply to companies with a valuation over $600 billion.

Speaker 15 That's only tech giants. Walmart, Visa, and JP Morgan are below the line.
I don't know. Everybody's a tech giant, in my opinion.

Speaker 14 So, first off, I just want to highlight an actual incredible role model for for men, Amy Klobuchar, who does the work and has grace and is unafraid. She's a fantastic role model for young men.

Speaker 15 Yeah, she is.

Speaker 14 I love this, except it's bad legislation because here's the thing. Antitrust should be a function of you diminishing market power and competitiveness.
It shouldn't be based on size.

Speaker 14 There are some companies that are $2 trillion companies that should be allowed to acquire other companies.

Speaker 14 And there are companies that are... 30 billion that should have their acquisitions blocked because they are locking up and creating a less competitive environment in their smaller sector.

Speaker 14 So yeah, this dog won't hunt. This isn't an economist for the other side is going to rip this apart.

Speaker 15 Yeah, agreed. I think it's problematic.
Anyway, it's, you know, it's these are the moves, the beginning of changing antitrust. Who knows all the strategery going on here?

Speaker 14 There's a lot going on.

Speaker 15 Yeah, there's a lot going on. So anyway, it's interesting the two of them are together and they're going to push for something.
And we'll see where it comes out. But there is antitrust legislation.

Speaker 15 coming. I suspect.
I don't think they're doing this because they're idiots. But in any case,

Speaker 15 it's rather interesting. It's a rather interesting bill.
There's a lot of these bills now. We'll see where any of them go.

Speaker 15 Now, of course, we'll be talking in a minute about the infrastructure bill, et cetera. But first, let's do the big story, the latest in COVID treatment.

Speaker 15 The new antiviral pill from Pfizer could be a pandemic game changer, a pill.

Speaker 15 Pfizer's pill treats COVID symptoms, is said to cut the risk of hospitalization or death by 89%, which I think is the point of these things. Not that it's going away.

Speaker 15 It's becoming endemic and we have to deal with it. A clinical trial was stopped early because the results were so convincing.

Speaker 15 Now Pfizer says it will submit its pill to the FDA for approval in the U.S. Merck also has a pill, though it's less effective.
And the U.S.

Speaker 15 lifted travel restrictions for vaccinated people from a long list of countries, including Mexico, Canada, and most of Europe.

Speaker 15 Seems like things are going rather well, even though everyone thinks Biden's an idiot. It seems to be moving forward.
I was just this morning, I was noticing everybody was out.

Speaker 15 And about last night, too. Everybody feels good.
People were masking inappropriate, but at the same time, everybody, like my local coffee place was full of people people hanging, talking, chatting.

Speaker 15 It's a beautiful day. So what do you think? Will it embolden anti-vaxxers? They just say, if I get COVID, I'll take the pill.

Speaker 15 And then lastly, I'm sorry, Aaron Rodgers of the Green Bay Packers, oh, admitted he's unvaccinated. And

Speaker 15 Terry Bradshaw got mad at him, calling him a liar.

Speaker 14 Well, not only that, but I'm thinking about getting a procedure done. So of course I called Joe Rogan.

Speaker 14 That's where he really stepped in it, was he said in his defense, he goes, wait, I called Joe Rogan to get advice. Yeah.

Speaker 14 Okay. Well, look,

Speaker 14 let me back up.

Speaker 15 Several people are lying about their vaccinations, which is interesting.

Speaker 14 I think there's somebody that's going to be aware of that. We immediately, and I understand this, go to the downside of this thing.
Like, could it create more vaccine hesitancy?

Speaker 14 The bottom line is this is a wonderful thing.

Speaker 14 And some of the most wonderful periods of prosperity have come directly out of crisis, whether it was the Great Fires of London spawning an era of beautiful architecture, World War II kept the peace, some investments we made.

Speaker 14 I think that progress around vaccinations and pharmaceutical research is going to be a real silver lining here. And the thought that we might have a pill that can reduce death by 90%.

Speaker 14 There's also, you know, what got glossed over this week?

Speaker 14 Is a company announced they're in late-stage clinical trials of what is effectively, effectively, CARA, a cure for HIV, not a prophylactic, not something to suppress it, but something that could actually eliminate it.

Speaker 14 And I have

Speaker 14 two close friends, and including the godfather of my children, who is open about his HIV status.

Speaker 14 And this is just a wonderful, joyous thing that science and what's disappointing, and people have the right to not get vaccinated, but what is disappointing is that we have lost so much faith in the closest thing we have to a truth, and that is the iterative peer review practice called science.

Speaker 14 And it just, I think that I've been thinking a lot about role models and male role models and the fact that once you get a certain following, people listen to you.

Speaker 14 And I think we've just created so much mistrust and doubt around our institutions, whether it's the Senate, whether it's doctors and medicine. And that is just terrible, terrible for America.
So

Speaker 14 while people continue this bullshit pseudoscience, I'm a junior epidemiologist because I used to call WWE fights, and I have a huge following, which gives me expertise around shit.

Speaker 14 I mean, I love this guy, Joel Stein, who I think is a genius. I asked him what he thought of the political situation.
He said, I have no fucking idea, and you shouldn't ask me.

Speaker 14 I don't know anything about politics. And I love that he said that.
He said, I just don't know anything about this.

Speaker 14 And because I have a little bit of a following doesn't mean I'm qualified, and it's a good lesson to me.

Speaker 15 Yeah, people do seem to.

Speaker 15 what what what are we doing when we're attacking our institutions and meanwhile our institutions continue to march on and do really good work the pharmaceutical industry and doctors are doing great work well it's interesting because you know the terry broadshot thing was interesting and of course people are dragging terry bradshaw i didn't see that can you say more about it he he he said um you lie to everybody i give aaron rogers some advice it would have been nice if he'd just come to the naval academy and learned how to be honest learn not to lie because that's what you did aaron you lied lied to everyone.

Speaker 15 I'm extremely disappointed in the actions of Aaron Rodgers.

Speaker 15 Rogers, who tested positive or coronavirus realtor, had not been vaccinated after saying earlier in the season he was immunized. So, well, you know what?

Speaker 14 The coaches and the staff have to get vaccinated.

Speaker 15 But people were giving Terry Bradshaw a hard time. I don't think he's just saying.

Speaker 14 Terry Bradshaw, that was a real fucking football team. The Pittsburgh Steelers, Dan Curtin,

Speaker 14 bring back Lynn Swan. And I thought those guys were amazing.
Anyways, I love, I'm obviously biased here, but this, again, is double standard for rich people and influential people. All the staff,

Speaker 14 you have to be back. Do you realize there's going to be another

Speaker 14 mixed MMA, is that what it's called, fight at Madison Square Garden? It's totally sold out. You have to be vaccinated per New York state law, except Joe Rogan has managed to get an exemption.

Speaker 14 He gets to go to that fight without a vaccine. Whatever.

Speaker 14 But here's the deal.

Speaker 15 He should have said he did. He said he was vaccinated and he wasn't.
And NFL, this is the story, has different protocols for vaccinated and unvaccinated players.

Speaker 15 Rogers had reportedly been participating in protocols for the vaccinated players and was, you know, so that's, that's really, that's, that's right.

Speaker 15 Like, come on, if it's to say you're not, because they have these protocols.

Speaker 15 And so then Brad just said, we're a nation divided politically, we're a divided nation on the COVID-19 or whether or not to take the vaccine.

Speaker 15 And unfortunately, we've got players that pretty much think only about themselves. Look, you don't have to take the friggin' vaccine if you want to.
Whatever.

Speaker 14 Just stay at home and isolate.

Speaker 15 Just whatever. Just fall.
He doesn't like the rules and he doesn't like the things, so he's lying.

Speaker 15 That does cross some sort of weird line that is just weird. It's just weird.
He's got a zillion celebrity girlfriends, by the way. This guy.

Speaker 14 Anyway.

Speaker 14 That's some compensation.

Speaker 15 I'm going to call my friend who loves the Green Bay Packers and see what she thinks. She'll probably defend him because she wants to.

Speaker 14 He's an amazing athlete. Jesus Christ.
Have you seen the arm on that guy?

Speaker 15 Yes, absolutely. So, I don't know.
Just whatever. We're getting a pill.
Everybody, calm the fuck down. That's what I say.
We're getting a nice, nice pill.

Speaker 15 You'll be able to take it and we don't have to listen to your bullshit. That's great.
That is a really good idea. I have a new theory of commonality versus community.

Speaker 15 I'm thinking about writing something about this idea that, you know what, we have commonality. We don't all have to get along, but we do have some commonality and we need to focus on that.

Speaker 14 Well, there's more that unites us than divides us, Kara.

Speaker 15 Well, we don't even have to have that many things. It's just like, don't lie about your friggin' COVID vaccine if you don't mind.
And everyone can make their own decision.

Speaker 15 You know, I had someone say something about a mask. I was in Virginia and someone said, you know, why are you wearing a mask? I said, you know what? I think you go on and about not wearing a mask.

Speaker 15 So fuck you. I can wear my mask if I want.
I'm just, how do you like it on the other side? So it was interesting.

Speaker 14 I'm taking my 11-year-old to get his vaccine next week and we're excited about it.

Speaker 15 Louis got his

Speaker 15 thing. He's getting his first one, right? His first one.

Speaker 14 Yeah, it was approved literally like last Monday.

Speaker 14 And I've already tried to get an appointment and CVS, I don't think, is I don't want to give misinformation, but it hasn't been easy to get an appointment.

Speaker 19 You know what?

Speaker 15 We're in the high 70s now. Everyone's sort of like, get over it or just take the pill eventually.
Fine. Shut up.
That's what I would like them all to do. Shut up.

Speaker 15 All these people who have to do their little speeches, et cetera, et cetera. Just either, don't take it, just tell us the truth so we can make it.

Speaker 14 Aaron Rodgers, and people have a right not to take it. Then

Speaker 14 they should implement certain protocols around themselves because you're more likely to spread it when you're not vaccinated.

Speaker 14 And so you're not being a good citizen when you pretend everything that you're vaccinated and you aren't. I think that's the issue here.
We're at 50%

Speaker 14 vaccinated. You think we're higher than that? I heard we're at 58% of eligible adults.

Speaker 15 Okay, so one dose, 67.7%, and fully vaccinated, 60%.

Speaker 15 So that's higher than it was.

Speaker 14 Yeah.

Speaker 15 One dose is...

Speaker 14 You have 50 to 100, call it 50 to 100 million people who have chosen not to get the vaccine who could.

Speaker 14 And you're talking probably about somewhere between 500,000 and 5 million people who either die or have long COVID because of vaccine hesitation. So I just, and instead,

Speaker 14 we have decided to move authority.

Speaker 14 We have transferred authority and trust from our CDC and doctors and epidemiologists to celebrities who have all of a sudden decided to listen to the axis of misinformation, Trump, News Corps, and Facebook, and have decided that, oh, I don't need, I don't want to take a vaccine.

Speaker 14 And it's just, it's, it's just incredibly disappointing around that what I'd call transfer of influence. Which just says something strange about our nation right now.

Speaker 15 In any case, Rupert Murdoch requires people to have had a nose swab at his party. You have to have a nose swab to go to Rupert Murdoch's party.
Just the mirror.

Speaker 14 Let me take to the airwaves and tell you it's your liberty.

Speaker 14 I'm not having that. You know what I would do?

Speaker 15 I'd go to that party and knock it. I'd say, no.
What are you going to do about it? What do you?

Speaker 14 They wouldn't. Liberty.

Speaker 15 Liberty. Liberty.
All right. Let's go on a quick break.
When we come back, we'll discuss the latest news in Congress. Then we'll talk to a friend of Pivot about tech stocks.

Speaker 14 I'm sufferable.

Speaker 15 I'm sufferable, Carol. Sufferable.
So you're still a numbskull.

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Speaker 15 Scott, we're back with our second big story. Congress actually did something Friday.
The House passed the bipartisan infrastructure bill. Now it goes to President Biden to be signed into law.

Speaker 15 Let's listen.

Speaker 14 Finally,

Speaker 14 infrastructure week.

Speaker 15 As he said, it is finally infrastructure week. After all our waiting, the House hasn't approved the Build Back Better bill yet.
A handful of centrists say they'll vote for the bill.

Speaker 15 It gets okay is by Congress's accounting arm. Progressives accuse centrists of moving the goalposts, whatever.
The bill has some in the crypto world worried.

Speaker 15 It could open the industry up to more regulation. It's not clear what will happen.
Will the Treasury use this to clamp down on crypto? Big issue.

Speaker 15 Of course, another big issue for tech is the $65 billion for broadband access. If COVID is over by this time next year, will broadband still matter? Yes, it will.

Speaker 15 Or will it be back to a mobile first place? Broadband will matter. The bill has lots of funding for cybersecurity.
There's lots of bipartisan support there. And now the infrastructure bill has passed.

Speaker 15 Do Biden and his allies have any leverage to get billed back better through? I think they will.

Speaker 14 I think they will. What do you think, Scott?

Speaker 14 Well, you know, and we so, by the way, we predicted this last week, but you know who's probably who's most responsible for this bill passing yesterday or Friday?

Speaker 14 Governor McAuliffe. Oh, all right.

Speaker 14 Specifically, him losing an election he should have won all of a sudden was the mother of all wake-up calls for Democrats.

Speaker 14 And it's no accident that 48 hours after, over the weekend, after they find out that Democrats who should have won have lost, they got their shit together and passed this thing.

Speaker 14 So I hope it gives Governor McAuliffe some comfort knowing that his loss was a wake-up call and the Democrats are finally pulling together. But

Speaker 14 we said this last week. We said in the next 48 hours, there's going to be more progress on these bills than in the last 48

Speaker 14 days. And

Speaker 14 you know you're getting old. I actually got emotional when I heard this passed.
This is going to be

Speaker 14 $550 billion in new funding for infrastructure projects, including bridges, broadband, and electric vehicle charging stations. Huh, what do you know? We're subsidizing the wealthiest man in the world.

Speaker 14 Anyways, different point. And represents the biggest federal investments in infrastructure in more than a decade.

Speaker 14 It'll be paid mostly with COVID relief funds that haven't been spent and a crackdown on taxes on get this for crypto trading.

Speaker 14 It'll still add a quarter of a trillion dollars in projected deficits over the next 10 years.

Speaker 14 Quite frankly, I think this is the kind of thing that deficits should be used for, and that is making investments in the future.

Speaker 14 But infrastructure is literally like, what operating system do you want to program on top of? Do you want to program on top of,

Speaker 14 I don't know what the latest thing is, PPP, I'm not a computer, or DOS.

Speaker 15 Yeah, our country's been woefully behind in this.

Speaker 14 Yeah, and it's an investment in the middle class in America, helping people get to work, helping them spend more time with their families, helping them

Speaker 14 be more productive in their startups. And what we've decided is, okay, rich people can create their own mini infrastructures.
But

Speaker 14 you have to have roads, ridges, and tunnels, and

Speaker 14 infrastructure and clean water such that ordinary families can get to the good work of making money and cementing relationships. So

Speaker 14 I think it's wonderful. Congratulations to them.
I hope it's inspiration for the other bill to get through.

Speaker 14 I'm excited about it. What do you think?

Speaker 15 I don't know if it's such, it's really interesting.

Speaker 15 Someone was tweeting to me, I thought it was pretty smart yesterday where they were like, Biden's got everybody vaccinated, pretty much, a lot of people vaccinated, passed this infrastructure bill.

Speaker 15 We're out of Afghanistan, a mess though it was. We're out.
You know what I mean? Like that there's a lot that they can use to

Speaker 15 for the midterms, still probably in trouble for the midterms because they'll pull on some cultural, whatever the hell they want to to pull on. But it's really, I think it was a good thing.

Speaker 15 Now we'll see what happens with Bill Back Better. What do you think about that one? I don't know enough about the politics of it.

Speaker 14 I think we're going to get something there. I think the most exciting thing about that is that, and I didn't even know if this was possible, but if the child tax credits stay in there,

Speaker 14 you could have a reduction in child poverty of 62%. Like, I didn't even think that was possible to figure out a bill that could do that.
So

Speaker 14 I think that Senators Bennett and Klobuchar don't get enough credit, and Senator Warren had a lot to do with it. And also

Speaker 14 the person that doesn't get the credit, in my view, that he deserves for this is Andrew Yang, because let's be honest, this is a form of UBI light.

Speaker 14 And because he kind of pushed, he set the goalpost of like, let's just give money to everybody,

Speaker 14 giving money to selectively, so it's not universal, it's targeted basic income for people under a certain, to make under a certain income. It just, no one would have dared try this.

Speaker 14 They would have called it European or socialist.

Speaker 14 But America's becoming comfortable with the fact that in an economy where digitization and innovation and education and certification are so important and certain people just naturally have more access to that to others.

Speaker 14 And then you couple that with a conscious decision to transfer wealth from poor people to rich people from young to old, we're going to end up with homeless encampments off the 405 freeway in Los Angeles.

Speaker 14 And people are recognizing, okay, we're probably going to have to use the R word redistribution here.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 14 So there's been a change in mindset.

Speaker 15 There's been a change in the world. I think so for sure.
I think there has been. At the same time,

Speaker 15 there's still some things things outstanding. I was just noticing in the stores, the stores aren't stocked very well.
It's really interesting. It's the first time I've noticed it.
I mean, of course,

Speaker 15 my son is on sort of a consumer bent, like we're such gross consumers, but there are some

Speaker 15 terms of employment and whether people are going to work and this and that, and whether the stock market's too frothy, et cetera. So I think we should just tread.

Speaker 15 We have to look like we have a stable government that can function.

Speaker 15 That's really, I think, one of the parts that'll make us all feel feel a little calmer and get out of this endless cycle of fear and rage, which we are in right now.

Speaker 15 Anyway, speaking of which, the stock market, let's bring in our friend of Pivot, Mark Mahaney.

Speaker 15 Mark is an analyst and author who covered internet stocks since 1998. He's been called, quote, one of the top investment analysts on Wall Street.

Speaker 15 He revealed some of his tips on investing rather than trading in his new book, Nothing But Net. Hey, Scott, I think I'll let you start since, since Scott, you are the stock man, apparently.

Speaker 14 The inseparable stock man. Mark.
Yes. Yes.
Mark, Mark is a Mark as a friend. I can call you that, right, Mark? I don't say that about Mark.
Yes, you can.

Speaker 14 And he is the top internet analyst. Slowly through attrition, there used to be dozens of you.
Now there's...

Speaker 14 Now it's like Mark and some 14-year-old on Reddit that are the premier stock analysts in the world. But Mark really is the gangster here.
So Mark, let's bust in.

Speaker 14 Let's talk about the big guys, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. And let's throw in Microsoft and Netflix just for shits and giggles.
Who do you think is overvalued and undervalued in the space?

Speaker 14 Okay.

Speaker 17 You know, for long-term investors, I think most of these tech platforms are enduring.

Speaker 17 So I just try to find which one at any one point in time is most dislocated because I think their fundamentals don't generally change that much.

Speaker 17 They've only gotten stronger over the last two, five, and 10 years. So the top pick would be the one that's most dislocated.
In my mind, today, that's Facebook and then Amazon.

Speaker 17 I think Netflix is relatively close to being fully valued. I don't cover Microsoft and Apple.
That leaves Google. And Google is reasonably valued, but it's not a screaming buy here.

Speaker 14 And the Facebook issues don't concern you.

Speaker 14 You think it's the PE, the headline news here or the headline risk is reflected in the PE and that it's a decent buy and that Amazon, even at a P, I think a Ford P of 60 is actually a decent buy.

Speaker 14 You like those two the most? Yeah, I do.

Speaker 17 And so Facebook, you know, from an investor perspective, Facebook trades at something like a 25% discount to Google, even though they have a similar growth profile.

Speaker 17 So the market's already pricing in a lot of regulatory

Speaker 17 reputational risk into Facebook shares. And the market may well be right, but as an investor looking at it, you've got a fair amount of downside protection.
Amazon as a stock has traded sideways.

Speaker 17 It's flatline for almost 18 months now. And the business has continued to grow.
And it's a deep in investment mode now. So I think that that valuation can be a little bit misleading.

Speaker 17 I think when you get a good core asset, if you were to pick one of these companies and hold it for the next five years, the one with the best market opportunities, the best management team, best track record, you'd pick Amazon.

Speaker 17 And when you see an Amazon that's traded sideways for 18 months, that's the stock to buy, the most compelling long in that group.

Speaker 15 So when he talks about Facebook, you know, it being priced in, can you explain to people who are furious at Facebook

Speaker 15 why Wall Street doesn't care? doesn't matter. Obviously, just there to make money, but explain that sort of just clearly as why that happens.

Speaker 17 Yeah, so you're so Kara, you're saying why Wall Street doesn't care about the reputational issues, the ESG

Speaker 17 complications around Facebook. And my answer to you is, well, if you look at the numbers, Wall Street actually does care.

Speaker 17 So if you look at the valuation of Facebook versus Google, again, these two stocks have, I think, very similar growth profiles. They're probably going to grow their earnings 20 to 30%.

Speaker 17 I know that's a broad range, but I think that's true and the market is willing to pay 25 percent less for facebook than they are for google because the market fears that there's going to be some sort of event out there that's going to dramatically reduce the earnings growth outlet for facebook either it's going to be regulatory action some sort of breakup some sort of business practice change so i think the market is anticipating much greater risk for facebook than it is for google

Speaker 14 So Mark and I talk a decent amount. And I asked him, I think a year ago, I said, what's your favorite pick? And you doubled down on something that I can't stand.
And that was Uber. And you were right.

Speaker 14 And I look at Uber and I think, here's a company that's never figured out a way to be profitable, has all sorts of headline risk. And yet you like it.

Speaker 14 You think it's a good buy. Your turn.

Speaker 17 Yeah, yeah. Goodbye, not a goodbye, but a goodbye.

Speaker 17 Yeah, I like Uber. Look,

Speaker 17 when I dug into the history of the internet companies, and I've covered them for 25 years, I tried to put together a couple of characteristics that I thought helped explain the successes and the failures along the way.

Speaker 17 Companies that face really large total addressable markets are TAMS. You know, it's pretty high up in my list.
Companies with, I like, I prefer founder-led companies.

Speaker 17 That's obviously not Uber, but I think Darikash Rashahi is generally a very good manager. I've tracked him for a long period of time.
Companies with compelling value propositions, i.e.

Speaker 17 people would pay more for them,

Speaker 17 like Netflix, people were willing to tolerate price increases.

Speaker 17 And I think people, we've learned over the last year and a half, people are willing to pay more for Uber because the the value proposition of ride sharing is so high.

Speaker 17 I put these characteristics together, and Uber looks to me to be very interesting. And the stock, I'd say, is dislocated.
I mean, the stock is

Speaker 17 well off its highs.

Speaker 17 And that's one of the things I tried to, in this book, what I tried to do is do, I go to investors and I say, look, you want to minimize two risks when you're investing in public markets, valuation risk and fundamentals risk.

Speaker 17 Fundamentals risk is companies that blow up on earnings, have dramatically decelerating revenue growth, margins plunge, et cetera. And then you want to try to hedge out or minimize valuation risk.

Speaker 17 And the way you do that is you identify high-quality assets that are facing large market opportunities. That's Uber.

Speaker 17 I mean, there's two trillion-dollar plus markets that they're facing, delivery and ride-sharing. And they're the global leader

Speaker 17 in most markets in those segments. That's a pretty good combination.
The stocks dislocated a lot of issues around it, but they're going to come out of COVID stronger. They just hit profitability.

Speaker 17 And I think you'll have a sea change in the number of investors that'll come in and buy it.

Speaker 15 Right. But the profitability has got all these things hanging off of it.
You all don't mind those, right? The earnings before everything, essentially.

Speaker 17 Yeah, that's true, Kara. But, like, you know, you first have to get the earnings before everything before you get to the earnings.
You know, it's like it's the leading indicator.

Speaker 17 So, yes, you we all at the end of the day want to see big chunks of free cash flow. Companies,

Speaker 17 a lot of companies go public in the tech space that aren't profitable. It doesn't mean they can't be profitable long term.

Speaker 17 So, you have to figure out what's wrong with the business model that doesn't allow them to be profitable, or maybe there isn't.

Speaker 15 But you see their opportunities as bigger than their problems. That's behind them, essentially.
Right. So, so, what about the smaller player, like a Lyft behind them?

Speaker 15 How do you look at the whole market in general?

Speaker 17 I always prefer the leader in the segment, but you know, I like Lyft as a play. But, Carol, this is one of the big lessons I had.
Like, scale, scale solves most problems in the internet space.

Speaker 17 You and I have looked at Amazon forever. There were investors who, for the first 10 years of that company, said there was no way that company will ever be profitable.

Speaker 17 The first year I worked on Wall Street at Morgan Stanley, the head of

Speaker 17 the bank, Morgan Stanley, where I was, stopped me in the hallway and said, you know, Amazon will never be profitable. And he was the wisest investor on Wall Street.

Speaker 17 So he was probably right, but he wasn't because scale solves almost everything and it's going to do the same thing with Uber over time.

Speaker 15 Okay, so Bitcoin has better 10-year returns than Amazon and Facebook. How do you look at that? How do you figure that into what's happening?

Speaker 15 It is an internet stock, really, aren't they, in a weird way, or internet investment type of thing. Yeah,

Speaker 17 I'm not smart enough to figure out Bitcoin.

Speaker 14 You and me both.

Speaker 14 So, Mark, your thoughts on Airbnb, and I'd love to get your thoughts on two or three companies, sort of the new guys that you're excited about that should be in our radar screen that look like they

Speaker 14 could bust into that tier one.

Speaker 17 Airbnb is one of those. Spotify would be another one.

Speaker 17 Those are two kind of out there a little bit on the edge of names that could be, you know, long-term could be multiples higher than where they are today.

Speaker 17 Airbnb is a wonderful example of a founder-led company, great product innovation. I mean,

Speaker 17 they've revolutionized the way that people can list their homes, residences, you know, for rent, and then people can find places to stay.

Speaker 17 Like they practically single-handed created a new category of travel that's extremely broadly adopted by millennials.

Speaker 17 There's a lot of growth in Airbnb, very profitable business model, almost too profitable, frankly. I think they should be investing in a lot of new long-term growth opportunities.

Speaker 17 They should be investing in business. They should be investing in experiences and in China.
But I understand why they're not doing that near term.

Speaker 17 But I think long-term, they should definitely be taking down those margins, investing for growth. I like Airbnb.
It's a huge TAM, trillion-dollar-plus TAM.

Speaker 17 I love T-TAM companies, companies that are addressing, attacking trillion-dollar-plus market opportunities. Airbnb is one of them.
Spotify is a great case, too. Here's a founder-led company.

Speaker 17 I mean, music's going to be is on everybody's phone

Speaker 17 worldwide, 3 billion smartphones. I think Spotify has the ability to be on a half of those.
That's a billion and a half.

Speaker 17 And they've shown how they can make money through both subscriptions and through advertising revenue. It's not that profitable, but let's scale, you know, do its trick.

Speaker 17 Over time, this will be a nicely, very profitable business.

Speaker 15 What about companies we've never heard of? Like, what are some of the ones that you are looking at? What areas are you looking at?

Speaker 15 Because one of the things is young people are doing their own thing, whether it's run-up meme stocks like AMC or GameStop,

Speaker 15 GameStop.

Speaker 15 How do you look at that trend with these younger investors don't trust traditional investing?

Speaker 15 How do you imagine that's going to shake out?

Speaker 17 You know, one of the things I things that kind of inspired me to write this book is there's something like 15 million new investors that came into the market over the last two years during the COVID crisis.

Speaker 17 Uh, people were looking for things to do at home, and so there's a lot of this day trading that came up. There's nothing wrong with day trading and meme trading.

Speaker 17 I just think you can make just as much money investing in the market and not taking these pot shots at what are oftentimes just expectations games.

Speaker 17 There are going to be more people buying the stock a week from now.

Speaker 17 The lesson I've picked from 25 years of looking at tech stocks, fundamentals matter. Like companies that generate more revenue over time, more profits, those stocks go up.

Speaker 17 I know they can be very volatile at times, but that's the lesson. That's Amazon's gone up 160, 66,000% since its IPO.
A lot of volatility, but fundamentals got better. The stock got better.

Speaker 17 So that's what I try to get people to focus on. Focus on long-term investing because fundamentals do drive stocks.

Speaker 14 Mark, I'm curious what you think of the whole iBuying phenomenon. I mean, Zillow, I thought that was really interesting news.

Speaker 14 But it feels like the core business has never been healthier. Is this an opportunity to stock off from 200 to 65? I know you follow Zillow.
And then also, do you think that

Speaker 14 that throw up or miss,

Speaker 14 does that seem like it was specific to Zillow, or do you think it could infect the entire space, including Opendoor and others?

Speaker 14 Give us your thoughts on what happened in the iBuying space in the last couple of weeks.

Speaker 17 I listened to the pivot last week when you talked about, when you dissected what happened at Zillow, I think you largely got it right. I think this is specific, idiosyncratic to the company itself.

Speaker 17 This was a company with a great competency in generating marketing leads for real estate agents and helping consumers find the home of their dreams.

Speaker 17 And then they went into a different business, one that involved buying and selling homes and renovating homes. It's a very different set of competencies.
That was always the risk behind Zillow.

Speaker 17 I made a mistake on this.

Speaker 17 I gave them the opportunity. I upgraded the stock a couple of months after they went into iBuying opportunity.

Speaker 17 I thought I knew there was execution risk, but I thought there was a big TAM expansion, total adjustable market expansion. And they just shot themselves in the foot.

Speaker 17 I haven't seen this kind of mis-execution, this kind of blow up in such a short period of time.

Speaker 14 Agreed. Shocking, right? I mean, it really was.

Speaker 17 It was truly shocking.

Speaker 14 I'm a big fan of Rich Barton. He's been a great entrepreneur, but born of envy.

Speaker 15 Born of envy. That's why he did it.
It was not, it was because he thought he was missing something.

Speaker 14 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 15 I don't know.

Speaker 17 It seems like it so i know i i think the core business is attractive but i don't think you can buy the stock now i think this is going to be in the in the woodshed for uh for probably a year or something like that probably need management change

Speaker 14 would you come out of the woodshot which won't happen it's dual class shareholder right yeah that won't happen right it could happen no it won't happen you're right okay this is a dangerous one mark give me the bull case on tesla yeah yeah

Speaker 17 You know, I don't cover Tesla, Scott.

Speaker 14 We'll try. Come on, Mark.
There's no way you don't read about it. You have to have a view on Tesla.

Speaker 14 Today you do.

Speaker 15 The insefferable numbskull wants a view. Come on.
Let's go.

Speaker 17 Step back a little bit. If you just think, you know, this,

Speaker 17 is Tesla addressing, you know,

Speaker 17 trillion-dollar plus TAMs? Yes. Do you have a founder-led company? Yes.
Is it one of the most innovative product companies that we've seen of the last decade? Yes.

Speaker 14 Is it overvalued?

Speaker 17 Probably. I'm almost certain that it is near term, but again, I don't cover the stock.

Speaker 15 Oh, Scott, I think you're in trouble. I think that was.
My brother, come on.

Speaker 14 He's left you.

Speaker 15 He's left you.

Speaker 14 I have one last question.

Speaker 15 Mark. When you look at a lot of this legislation, now the billionaires tax didn't pass, but there's lots of proposals.
There's this Amy Klobuchard Tom Cotton thing.

Speaker 15 There's all kinds of regulatory issues. How do you price those in? How do you think about where that's going? Because it's got to be part of your calculation.
And do you think it's for the better?

Speaker 15 Scotts makes the argument that this breaking things up is for the better or some of this regulation is for the better. What do you, how do you look at it?

Speaker 17 Well, Karen, I absolutely think this regulatory focus is for the better. You know, we've seen, these are extremely powerful companies.

Speaker 17 You know, we have to go back a long time before we've seen companies this relatively powerful. So absolutely, they should be scrutinized.

Speaker 17 They, and some of them have developed into monopolies. Now, whether they've actually caused consumer harm, I think that's very unlikely.

Speaker 17 I know we can debate Facebook on that, but I think some of that debate has just gone way too one-sided. That's a personal view.
But these companies should absolutely be regulated.

Speaker 17 They're extremely powerful companies. I don't think they should be broken up unless there's something you'd have to find really good smoking guns on these names.

Speaker 17 The two that are, I think, most in the wheelhouse for regulators, probably for good reasons, are Google and

Speaker 17 Facebook, but for very different reasons. Google for antitrust reasons, Facebook more for regulatory privacy reasons.

Speaker 14 So I have a final question.

Speaker 14 Mark and I are friends, and whenever we get together, we spend about 10% of our time talking about stocks, and we spend the other 90 talking about being a dad to boys and kids.

Speaker 14 I'd really like to know. I think of you as a very soulful, wonderful father, Mark.
I'd love to know what advice you have

Speaker 14 and what you've learned coming through COVID as a dad. Like what advice would you give to men

Speaker 14 raising kids?

Speaker 17 You can't spend enough time with your kids. I guess that's my

Speaker 17 takeaway. And

Speaker 17 I've got

Speaker 17 three teenage boys and one 21-year-old. And I just, it's just precious.
You won't get the time back. So spend as much time with them as you can.
That's it. And lead by example.

Speaker 17 They watch what you do rather than what you say. And increasingly, sometimes it's hard to get them to listen to what you say, but they watch what you do.

Speaker 17 So do the right thing and they'll do the right thing too.

Speaker 15 Very nice. Very nice.
Can I ask you one last question? You didn't answer my question. One company we should be paying attention to, smaller, that you're like, hmm, I'm entranced with that company.

Speaker 17 I thought you would sort of like my Spotify idea. I know it's a long time.
Spotify.

Speaker 14 Yeah. Okay.
Yeah.

Speaker 14 Do you think it's an acquisition target?

Speaker 17 No, I don't think so. I think it's got one fourth.
Here's the quick example I'd ask you to think about. It's got one fourth of the market cap of Netflix.
I love Netflix and I've covered it forever.

Speaker 17 And Spotify's got one fourth. And just think about it.

Speaker 17 How many people around the world are going to put or want to have video on their phones and how many are going to want to have music on their phones? It's about the same number.

Speaker 17 The rough monthly subscription is about the same price. So that market cap delta, you know, long term strikes me as being really different.
And it's too wide.

Speaker 17 And they both have, one of the things I love to see is companies, consumer companies with pricing power. Netflix has raised price and they've done it successfully.
Amazon Prime raised price.

Speaker 17 They did it successfully because they have pricing power. They've got wonderful value propositions.
Spotify has just begun to do this.

Speaker 14 All right. Okay.

Speaker 15 Well, that's fantastic. The book is called Nothing But Net, of course.
It launches today. Thank you, Mark Mahaney.

Speaker 17 Thank you, Kara. Thank you, Scott.

Speaker 14 How much do we love Mark Mahaney?

Speaker 15 We do. He's a lovely guy.

Speaker 14 He's a very decent man.

Speaker 15 All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails.

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Speaker 15 Okay, Scott, wins and fails. I'm going to go first.

Speaker 15 I think the win, which a movie I have not seen, is The Eternals, which really killed it at the box office, 71 million in North America and 162 million globally.

Speaker 15 Even though it got bad scores, all these Marvel, like demented fans were trying to knock down the number. It was called a review bomb.

Speaker 15 It did great. It was too, for them, it was too

Speaker 15 long, too thoughtful, and too gay, I guess. That was one of the issues.

Speaker 14 Too gay.

Speaker 15 Yeah, because there's a gay character in it, a superhero. First one, I think.
Anyway, all this, like all these, these demented Marvel fans.

Speaker 15 And I'm a Marvel fan and I do not like the demented Marvel fans. And it did really great.

Speaker 15 It's very, it's a, it's a very different different Marvel movie, but nonetheless, the Marvel brand pushes through.

Speaker 15 And since they were worried about word of mouth on social media, et cetera, did hugely well. And I'm excited to, I'm excited to see it because I like when they, they, this is a cast.

Speaker 15 It's an incredibly diverse cast. That's not why I like it.
I just would like more different kinds of Marvel movies, which is great. So very pleased with that.

Speaker 14 I'm very nice.

Speaker 15 And my fail is this Big Bird thing. How ridiculous.
They were always attacking Big Bird. My kid loves Big Bird.
So stop it.

Speaker 14 Thank you. Yeah, I didn't get that.
I thought that was sort of weird.

Speaker 14 Strange.

Speaker 14 Do you think PBS seeing it was an overreach to kind of politicize Big Bird?

Speaker 15 No, they did it before.

Speaker 15 When he got another vaccine like years ago, oh my God, stop it.

Speaker 22 Well, there's all kinds of people and they're all in a line and they don't look like they're buying candy. And there's a sign that says, don't wait.
Vaccinate.

Speaker 15 Sesame Street is not.

Speaker 15 It is actually, like I'm talking about, communal, not even just community,

Speaker 15 commonality. What do we have in common? Like these people have to stop.
They need to shut the fuck up. Thank you.

Speaker 14 Stay away from big bars. Spoken as a real

Speaker 14 bridging communities there.

Speaker 14 Shut the fuck up. We all need to come together.

Speaker 14 Shut up

Speaker 15 and stop yammering on to me. I don't want any more yammering.

Speaker 23 My win is,

Speaker 14 I think there's a ton of win. I think the infrastructure bill is really exciting.

Speaker 14 You know, if you think of, if you think of America's transportation and infrastructure as our house, we're the wealthiest person in the world. And they come to our house and I see what, you know,

Speaker 14 the roof's leaking. So I think it's just, I think that's a big victory for us.

Speaker 14 I think

Speaker 14 the Pfizer COVID pill is really exciting. So I think there's a ton of silver linings here.

Speaker 14 My fail is,

Speaker 14 and

Speaker 14 I'm trying to

Speaker 14 hold this up as

Speaker 14 an aim of mine. I feel like

Speaker 14 there's an absence of male role models.

Speaker 14 And, you know, the wealthiest man in the world and the president used to be Barack Obama and Bill Gates.

Speaker 14 And I recognize all the controversy around Bill Gates, but I think Bill Gates has demonstrated a lot of concern for the world. And I think Barack Obama is the role model I would want my kids

Speaker 14 to look at in terms of his excellence, his commitment to the country,

Speaker 14 his fidelity to his wife and his daughters. I think he's an outstanding role model and tremendous grace, Really, really goes out of his way never to be critical of anyone individually.

Speaker 14 I think he's an outstanding role model. And now our role models are an individual who mocks the disabled, our former president, and somebody who goes on, you know, on Twitter high to say about a U.S.

Speaker 14 senator that you're, you,

Speaker 14 I just, where are the role?

Speaker 14 You know, there are some great role models out there. I, you know, I think Amy Klobuchar, Andrew Yang is a great role model.
Steph Curry is a great role model.

Speaker 14 The former dean of my school, Peter Henry, this huge athletic, decent Broad Scholars are great. There's a ton of them out there.

Speaker 14 I just wish they, I wish more people with more following would do what, you know, follow Mark Mahaney's lead, and that is young men are watching. Yeah, young men are listening.
And

Speaker 14 I'm trying to show more grace because I reckon if I say something, young men start emailing me and asking questions. And when you have tens of millions of people, mostly young men following you,

Speaker 14 these guys

Speaker 14 will do as you act. Right.

Speaker 14 My loss is I do think that a lot of men are not taking the same responsibility or commitment that past men have and service role models.

Speaker 15 Yeah, I think this is absolutely true. I think you're absolutely right.
I think about that a lot because I have two sons.

Speaker 15 uh who i who you know raised by lesbians um i think a lot about people like my brother who has been great uh my older brother has been very great has spent more time My younger brother has not spent as much time with the kids, but he's a terrific guy.

Speaker 15 But my older brother especially has been just recently, both of my sons were like, we want to spend more time with him

Speaker 15 because he's such a good role model to them. And it's really important.
It's just the little amount of time, like, because we live across the country and stuff like that.

Speaker 15 And especially with the pandemic. So it's been really important.
I do, I think about that a lot. And then I think about my own sons being good role models.
Like my,

Speaker 15 they both took care of Clara this weekend and they were really gentle and kind. And I thought, well, I've done something right somewhere in this, in this entire art.

Speaker 15 And so it's a really interesting thing to think about, you know, and obviously men can have female role models, just like you said, and should.

Speaker 15 You know, and

Speaker 14 do the work. Show fidelity to your country.

Speaker 15 Angela Merkel shall be the one.

Speaker 15 Yeah, absolutely. So I think that's really, really, really important.
And I agree with you. And I think we have to think, as I said, commonality, not community, commonality.
It's my new thing.

Speaker 15 I'm going to be, I'm thinking about it.

Speaker 14 I love that. The healer.
Shut the fuck up. No, no, I'm not.

Speaker 15 I don't know.

Speaker 15 You don't have to get along all the time.

Speaker 14 I was,

Speaker 15 you know what? There was, you can have civil arguments like you and I do. I think that's why we are in a community, but we have commonality.
That's where we come to.

Speaker 14 More than civil. We have affection.

Speaker 15 No, I was thinking of this discussion I had. I'm going to start.
I'm going to, I'm going to finish with this.

Speaker 15 I was thinking a discussion I had with Mari Zuckerberg very late one night here in D.C., a long time ago, when we were talking.

Speaker 14 Mark Zuckerberg, yes.

Speaker 15 And he was talking about

Speaker 15 community all the time. He was obsessing on it.
And it's really important to

Speaker 15 find commonality, like not community. And because he didn't, one of the things Amanda pointed out to me last night, we were talking about this is that he

Speaker 15 was looking for community, but he didn't care what kind of community got created, right? That's the issue, is he didn't care about the kind of community.

Speaker 15 And so some communities are great, like people, as Amanda pointed out, you know, like people who have kids who have a a certain cancer or something like that these are groups of usefulness right where you come together in something in common but the only ones that work as a community or as again i'm going to attribute this to amanda is there is not a them

Speaker 15 that you're not against a them right that's what's wrong with some of these communities connecting for the sake of connecting but not what for right and that's the problem is like there's no they're not they're connecting for the sake of connecting and then there's a them and then that becomes becomes really toxic.

Speaker 14 I want to give Mark Zuckerberg the credit where credit's due. He has built a community of people who don't give a flank fuck about society and are committed to doing anything to enrich themselves.

Speaker 14 I think he has done a good job of bringing those people together.

Speaker 15 The community's got to go. There's always going to be, you know, differences of opinion and this and that, but we have lost our sense of commonality.
I'm not talking about just

Speaker 15 grab hands and everybody love Betty White. That's not what I'm talking about.

Speaker 14 But what is the next follow-up question is, and I've been thinking about those, what is the connective tissue that restores that sense of community? Is it government? Is it church? Is it science?

Speaker 14 What is it?

Speaker 15 I'm not sure, but it's not, it's not this idea of

Speaker 15 creating these communities that have nothing, that always has a them, a them. We have to get them.
This is what we're aggrieved at. There's a lot.
Like, here's,

Speaker 15 it's a grift. It's a grift happening right now in this idea.
It's like, look what they did to you. Look what this, look what you can't say.
Look what you, look at that group. Look at this.

Speaker 15 This whole, the whole language around the Glenn Yonkin thing is just like not right. There's something off, and everyone's trying to grift into it.
And it's driving me crazy.

Speaker 15 Anyway, that's my situation. And

Speaker 14 I mean, something very upsetting has happened. And that is typically Americans rallied together and formed that connective tissue due to a crisis.
We did come together in 9-11.

Speaker 14 We've come together with past. Even you could argue the AIDS crisis, eventually, we did sort of come together, sort of, after a while.

Speaker 15 We were waiting a long time for that, but not really. Yeah, but

Speaker 14 I do think that ultimately, I think over the the long term,

Speaker 14 I think people started developing more empathy. Anyways, we can agree to disagree.
But what's happened here that's different is we had a crisis and it's actually frayed our connective tissue.

Speaker 14 We didn't come together at all around this.

Speaker 14 And so this is a, I think this is a really important conversation. What is the new connective tissue? Is it public service for young people to realize that we're Americans first? What is it?

Speaker 15 What is it doesn't, it doesn't have to be much, actually.

Speaker 15 It doesn't have to be much. It doesn't.
It just, it's just,

Speaker 15 I think what happens is you get this like everybody kumbaya, and we don't have to kumbaya. Anyway, that's the show.
We'll be back on Friday for more. Scott, read us out.

Speaker 14 Today's show is produced by Lara Naiman, Evan Angle, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Andreta, engineered this episode.
Thanks also to Drew Burrows. Make sure you're subscribed to the show on Apple Podcasts.

Speaker 14 Or if you're an Android user, check us out on Spotify or frankly, wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 23 Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media.

Speaker 14 We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.

Speaker 23 Mark Mahaney, the premier internet analyst in the world. So goddamn nice, so goddamn handsome.
He appears Canadian, but that is all meaningful. But what is profound?

Speaker 23 Mark Mahaney is a wonderful role model and a fantastic father.

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