The Tesla and Hertz Mystery, a Tough Election for Democrats, and the Squid Crash

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Speaker 19 Hey, everyone, this is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.

Speaker 18 And I have a great Dane that is going through heat and having stomach issues. This is literally season one, episode two of Chernobyl.

Speaker 18 Not episode one, where we set up the characters and find out that Russian firemen are humans too before they get radiated. Okay.
Literally, the reactor has blown up at the Galloway household.

Speaker 18 I am ordering hazmat suits. Do not get anywhere near my vicinity right now.
It is

Speaker 18 ugly doesn't even begin to describe what is going on. You have dog problems.
You have dog problems. Oh my gosh.
I thought kids were awful. I mean, this is...

Speaker 19 They're not awful. This is raw.
Why do you have these cats if you don't understand the burdens that come with that?

Speaker 18 Because they unconditionally love me.

Speaker 18 they're literally they don't complain they're never disappointed they never say i'm quiet and i don't share my emotions and then i don't do anything around the house i'm sorry about your dog i hope your dog recovers anyways how are you good how are you carol i'd like to discuss some photographs if you don't mind can we do that or are we not allowed to is this is this the part of the episode where we discuss my off-mic behavior yes is this that part of the episode uh people you approve or not approve it's either you're horrified and you're okay with it.

Speaker 19 You know what? Scott, you be you. That's what I say.
You know, people ask me about. Do I have any choice? No, exactly.
People ask me, like, do you believe you do? I'm like, whatever. What do you care?

Speaker 19 I'm always like, what do you care to people when people ask me about you and these kind of things? Scott posted some terrific pictures of himself. He looks great.

Speaker 19 I have to say, I think you looked fit and I like that you're celebrating your fitness and you were very fit. My son, Alex, was like, ooh, nice abs, essentially.

Speaker 19 But, or maybe it was Louie. It was probably Louis.
You looked good. I think I'm going to just support you in

Speaker 19 your continuing

Speaker 19 efforts to show off your body.

Speaker 18 I'm glad to see you're finally investing in our relationship.

Speaker 19 I think if it was total nudity, I might have a different issue. But I think probably.

Speaker 18 Big head and the twins want a little love. No, I don't think I want to see that.
Let's bring them out. I don't think anyone wants to see that, really.

Speaker 19 Yeah, I think you're right.

Speaker 19 I think it's fine. I think Stephanie Rule's comments were very funny.

Speaker 18 She is funny. Twitter knows Stephanie loves the dog.
Yeah, I know.

Speaker 19 But they know Stephanie loves the dog. They gave it to her.
They were were like, let him be proud of himself. Did you notice that? There was like a little shift towards Scott Galloway.

Speaker 19 I thought that was interesting.

Speaker 18 So let's be clear. 90% of it is narcissism.

Speaker 18 The 10% or the way I rationalize the irrational is.

Speaker 18 You know, everyone asks what my fitness secret is on a thing. And I'm like, it's very simple.
I've worked out four times a week for 40 years.

Speaker 18 It's been my antidepressant. It's been a ballast in my life.
Yeah.

Speaker 18 You are not. Your body, and I lecture young men on this all the time.
You are not renting your body. It is not a loner.
If you want to be less depressed,

Speaker 18 make more money, find a means of controlling your emotions and making better decisions, work out three to five times a week. It is a gift from God.
As a species.

Speaker 19 Yep, I do. It helps my sons for sure.

Speaker 18 As a species, we are happiest when we are in motion, surrounded by others. Sweat.
Yeah. Sweat.
Yeah. That's why I like it.
I'm trying to encourage it.

Speaker 18 And I'm going to keep doing it and I'm going to keep showing it off and and feeling not better about myself, but less bad about myself. I think you should do a book.

Speaker 19 I think you should do the Scott Galloway workout book. I think that could be interesting.

Speaker 18 What do you think? Yeah, the problem is it all falls down around alcohol and my diet. Well, you can talk about that.

Speaker 19 It could be that kind of book. You know what I mean? It could be really interesting.
I think that's a genius.

Speaker 18 I got a big thing on fitness in my algebra of happiness book, which you clearly did not read.

Speaker 19 No, but I mean a whole book about you working out and lots of pictures of you. That's what I'm saying.

Speaker 19 I like that. You know what I mean? I think it would be very interesting.

Speaker 19 I think people would like to hear how a regular Joe like yourself, you're not a regular Joe.

Speaker 18 You're a regular Joe.

Speaker 18 An aging athlete.

Speaker 19 Whatever. I think it would be interesting.

Speaker 18 You work out. You do pellets.
Are you still doing the?

Speaker 19 I am. I'm back to it.
I was off for a little while and got my pandemic 10 that I need to take off. So I've just started again.
I'm doing the Power Zones program on it.

Speaker 19 So I've gone four days now and I'm going to seven weeks. I'm going to do it.
And then I'm going to move on to another one.

Speaker 19 It's better if I have a program and people tell me what to do, or else I don't. I don't

Speaker 18 need that all day. I find that's really.
There's so many great apps. Even Dreamy Chris Hemsworth has an app.
The other thing is I think there's a connection. There are really good apps.

Speaker 18 There's a connection. Nike has a great app.
There's a connection between physical strength and grit and mental. And on the days I work out,

Speaker 18 I'm sorry, the off days, I try and test myself mentally, especially when I'm writing. I try and sit down, and this isn't easy.

Speaker 18 I open my laptop and I try and write straight for two hours with absolutely no distractions. Wow, good for you.

Speaker 18 And that is, I find that more difficult than doing CrossFit, to just say, I'm going to do nothing but write and edit for 120 minutes straight. I'm not going to look at my phone.

Speaker 18 I'm not going to look up. I'm not going to eat.

Speaker 19 I did it.

Speaker 18 You are really.

Speaker 19 I'm very productive that way.

Speaker 18 What is your, actually, this is a really, I think a lot of people would like to know. You're extraordinarily.

Speaker 18 productive

Speaker 18 or prolific. What is your kind of your method? When do you write? What is your process?

Speaker 19 It's interesting.

Speaker 19 Last night I was sitting in a car in a parking lot in Lorton, Virginia, because my son is taking this glass art class and it's three hours and it's a pain to drive there.

Speaker 19 So I literally sat in the car and did I did my column that's where I do it I can write anywhere yeah I can sleep anywhere I was one of I'm one of those people I really just do it I don't like over I don't agonize over it I just start writing and I don't like

Speaker 19 I just and I am very organized I spend the thing that relaxes me honestly is cleaning I clean and organize and stuff I'm a little anal retentive and I'm a lot anal retentive

Speaker 19 just going back to your writing because there's I think there's so many people who are follow you and admire you and admire your work what what is your laptop what is the software you have no it's a macintosh it's just a mac just not a very and google doc word what do you use uh everything i use i use a word i use word to write um but i use this thing called scrivener for my book i use uh evernote i do use evernote i use notes i use simple note um i i do a lot of notes i'm again i'm very list oriented and then i just tick down the list.

Speaker 19 And I think that's really how I do it. And then when I get ideas, I put them in a document and I work on it all week.
You know what I mean? Something strikes me, you say something I like.

Speaker 19 And then I have little pieces of paper. You can see them right here, just little post-it notes.

Speaker 19 When

Speaker 19 Oswat said too odious, the word odious really struck me.

Speaker 19 And then he called Bitcoin, I think either you or he called Bitcoin a version of gold. I thought that was just smart.

Speaker 19 And I just put version of gold and I'm going to figure out a way to say, you know, attribute it to him.

Speaker 19 And then

Speaker 19 And then I was on something else. I was talking to Evan Spiegel from Snapchat yesterday, and he was talking about diversity.
And he said he prefers to look at it now as a talent agenda.

Speaker 19 And I just like that two words together. So I write it down.
And then I start, and then I spin out from that and stuff like that. So I don't have to do that.

Speaker 18 In your process, do you kind of

Speaker 18 do you do a lot of research? Do you go online and try and find interesting stories? Or do you just have a few themes?

Speaker 19 I have themes that I stick with. I have themes that I stick with almost constantly.

Speaker 19 A lot of it.

Speaker 19 And then they change. Like right now, climate change tech is really interesting to me.
So anytime I see something, I keep educating myself throughout the week. But I don't, what I don't do is agonize.

Speaker 19 I just type. I literally am like, it's like you're like I'm a plumber.
Like I'm fixing the, I'm fixing the toilet. That's what I'm doing.
Like, I don't think about it.

Speaker 19 I think a lot of writers agonize, and I just don't. I just get it done.
So I'm just going to.

Speaker 18 And is there a time of the day you find you're more

Speaker 18 productive?

Speaker 19 After I clean something. After I have to clean first because it's the cleaning part.

Speaker 18 I drink. You clean.
I drink.

Speaker 19 It settles my mind. I settle my mind by cleaning.
Someone's always like, why are you cleaning? I'm like, I like it. I like it.
And it makes me calm.

Speaker 19 So that's what I do. I clean before I write.
It sounds really crazy.

Speaker 18 There's a great book on mental illness called The Unquiet Mind.

Speaker 18 And it's an interesting book just to understand not only everyone talks about flow, but mental illness or this book is an interesting means of understanding what I'd call a lack of flow and how you can get to flow.

Speaker 18 Maybe think of that.

Speaker 19 It's entirely due. My son was telling me, doing this glass class where he does a lot, he does a lot of, it's not glass blowing, it's glass, whatever.
You make art out of glass.

Speaker 19 And he said it calms him just to look at the, at the, you know, he's so in his head with work.

Speaker 19 Alex, he's so in his head with work. And this makes him, it's like, he's like, it's like meditation for me and working with his hands.

Speaker 19 And so whatever you find, as you said, working out, cleaning, whatever it is, whatever calms you down is what you should be doing.

Speaker 19 And in my case, it's has to do with paper towels and cleaning cabinets.

Speaker 19 Anyway, this is too much information. Let's talk about the other things.
I agree. Thank you for asking me that stuff.
And I really did like your pictures. I thought you look great.

Speaker 19 So a couple of things. The cryptocurrency squid cratered this week after its founders seemingly cashed out tokens worth millions of dollars.

Speaker 19 Squid launched in October and skyrocketed to over $2,000 per token before disappearing from social media. The project was named for Netflix Squid Game.
There's going to be a lot of these, correct?

Speaker 19 These kind of little startups that come and go.

Speaker 18 Well,

Speaker 18 this isn't even a startup.

Speaker 18 I mean, there will be a lot of startups that have legitimate founders and don't. I've started a couple of them that are, that are, you know, kind of running on a

Speaker 18 hope and a prayer. And then when the cheap capital runs out, they crash.
This was a fraud.

Speaker 18 I mean, what's so strange about this time is it's become so frothy that the haze or the froth is literally dying every red flag white. And that is, there are red flags everywhere on this.

Speaker 18 If you went to the site, there were misspellings everywhere. Yeah.
You could buy the coin, but you couldn't sell it.

Speaker 18 I mean, and then they had what's called a rug pull. And that is when people try to redeem and there's no liquidity.
The thing, the thing went from, what, $2,100 a share to zero? And

Speaker 18 I mean, so this is, this will be further fodder for why the SEC should issue another, another thought piece, which will say absolutely fucking lootly nothing.

Speaker 18 But they have to, they really do need to step in here because squid coin threatens every legitimate coin. And there are, there's a ton of interesting innovation.

Speaker 18 But this is.

Speaker 19 This happened in the early internet. It did.
Remember? You just, it just did. There was a lot of this stuff going on, and it did hurt the rest of them,

Speaker 19 the ones that were legitimately trying to do things.

Speaker 18 Yeah, it's, it's, um, this was, this was, we're just going to look back on this. There's going to be so many articles going, how on earth did we not see this coming?

Speaker 19 Yeah. Yeah.
Well, they didn't actually ever regulate the internet, but in this case, it has to be because it has to do with money and things like that. Very significant.

Speaker 19 Other thing that was, I think, a little bit disturbing to the market, and I tweeted about it and everyone sort of responded was Zillow is quitting the home buying business.

Speaker 19 This is sort of a trend thing started by Opendoor, which is still doing fine. It looks like it's, I think, it has results this week, or maybe they just did.

Speaker 19 The CEO said the housing market is too unpredictable. What they would do is buy houses, renovate them, and then sell them, essentially become flippers.
Flippers, I guess.

Speaker 19 It needs the companies to offload 7,000 houses worth over $2 billion, which could impact the housing market.

Speaker 18 You just determine

Speaker 18 that being an iBuyer was too risky, too volatile, and ultimately addressed too few customers, too narrow.

Speaker 19 They're also cutting 2,000 jobs, but they were trying to sort of mimic some of the interesting startups, which is not the worst idea, but obviously the job market is tighter.

Speaker 19 Getting people to work on these houses, I think, was one of the issues. They misjudge the cost, which is incredible because they have all the data on these houses.
What are your thoughts?

Speaker 18 This is a disaster.

Speaker 18 First off, Zillow, which is an incredible company, if you think about Google, you know, is an unbelievable search engine and social,

Speaker 18 or Facebook, or an unbelievable, you know, social, Zillow is both of those things for what is one of the largest asset classes in the world, and that's U.S. Residential Real Estate.

Speaker 18 I mean, they own, I think they also own Street Easy. They have so much data and

Speaker 18 they have managed to exit the stranglehold of Facebook and Google, and people go directly to Zillow. They have incredible data.

Speaker 18 They have incredible ad tech that if you're a broker in Short Hills, New Jersey, you have to be on Zillow. That's just the go-to for this enormous asset cloud.
It's an incredible company.

Speaker 18 Stock's gone from $200

Speaker 18 to $75 based on the excitement over iBuying and then the disaster of it.

Speaker 18 And what's also interesting is that there appears to be no contagion here, and that it appears to be an operational issue specific to Zillow. And that is open.

Speaker 19 I'm a surprise from Rich Barton, who I've known for many years.

Speaker 18 His brand took a huge hit here. Rich Barton Barton was seen as one of these kind of iconic Reed Hastings-like executives.

Speaker 18 I would argue he would probably be fired if there weren't two classes of stock. This is the kind of thing that CEOs do and should get fired for.
This is a fucking disaster.

Speaker 18 I personally think that, I mean, they'll be fine. They have over $3 billion on the balance sheet.
They have a lot of debt, but it's not coming. It's at low cost, not coming due for a while.

Speaker 18 And the core business is just an unbelievable business. But when you announce like one day, I mean, think about this.

Speaker 18 His statement that the real estate market was unpredictable. Actually, the real estate market has been one of the most predictable asset classes in the world

Speaker 18 since March or April. And that is, it keeps going up at record rates.
So the fact that they're losing this much money,

Speaker 18 I mean, it was almost, I don't want to say it's hard to lose money in real estate right now, but what they achieved is pretty incredible because supposedly the real estate market's going to go up another double digits this year in a low interest rate environment that you just never see that.

Speaker 18 So the fact that they were able to figure out a way to lose this much money, it speaks to the notion, and people have always said this, that real estate is a local business.

Speaker 18 You need to walk the property.

Speaker 18 You need to see the way it's angled versus the sun, whatever it might be, right?

Speaker 18 You need to understand: is there mildew? Are there termites? What's the school district? All that stuff. And algorithms couldn't figure it out, or at least they couldn't figure it out for Zillow.

Speaker 18 But this was, if you look at what happened here, it's breathtaking.

Speaker 18 And the dynamic it sort of reflects, again, coming back to Froth, is that they chose growth over everything, even when it meant, it reminded me of CyberShop, this e-commerce company that started, started in the late 90s and went public.

Speaker 18 And it used to go buy this hot toy called Furbies for $29 and then sell them for $19 so it could show incredible top-line growth.

Speaker 18 And they were going and buying houses for X that had a resale value of 0.8X

Speaker 18 just to show top-line growth. And you know what, Kara? For a while, it worked.
The markets had only been a lot of fun.

Speaker 19 Here's something interesting. Barbara Corcoran, who's a very famous, obviously real estate person, she's also on Shark Tank.

Speaker 19 She She said, like many others, the company was likely tempted to control the entire house hunting market since Zillow had access to sellers. Probably saw Keith Raboy and others over

Speaker 19 at Opendoor and were like, we can do that. That's our business, right? That's one thing.

Speaker 19 The other thing is the idea, first of all, they're unloading 7,000 houses, that they didn't understand the cost structure. You know, Barton was obviously founded the travel site Expedia.

Speaker 19 Also, he's clearly a talented entrepreneur. But, you know, using algorithms to buy homes, repair them, and sell them is really not the, they just didn't approach it.

Speaker 19 And what was interesting is at the time, Keith Ruboy, who was an, as I said, an investor, he's a venture capitalist in Opendoor,

Speaker 19 said this was going to be a problem, which I, and of course, everyone was like, oh, it's just, you know, sour grapes, et cetera, from a competitor. But what's interesting is that

Speaker 19 it seems like lots of people saw this. You know, lots of real estate people at least were sort of not surprised by what happened here.

Speaker 18 But the real estate industry poo-pooing iBuying is sort of similar to Jamie Dimon poo-pooing crypto. Everyone's like, okay, boomer, you just don't get it.

Speaker 18 And also, it is an incredibly inefficient market. Anyone who sold a house and sees

Speaker 18 a nice guy or a nice lady

Speaker 18 roll up in their Jaguar every Sunday and put out balloons and then get 5% to 6% of the transaction, you're kind of like, okay, this is very inefficient.

Speaker 18 And it's a market that is ripe for disruption. But this was,

Speaker 18 it's striking how dramatic the fall was. I buying is less than 1% of transactions, but institutional buying of rentals is up to 20%.

Speaker 18 This could have easily been a chill that could have really rattled the market.

Speaker 18 If all of a sudden, the next day, Opendoor also made a similar announcement, you could have seen a real chill in the market. But it looks like this was

Speaker 18 endemic or specific to

Speaker 18 Zillow. It's just very interesting, but the housing market

Speaker 18 has been just on such a tear.

Speaker 18 And iBuying and institutional buyers coming in, typically when institutional buyers come in, it reflects a top. And everyone complains that it's going to drive housing up.

Speaker 18 It does in the short run, but oftentimes they screw up and then there's a fire sale and there's an opportunity to go in and buy stuff cheap because nothing, no asset, whether it's a company or a house, there's no better deal than trying to buy an asset that's been orphaned by a large company because they just want to house it.

Speaker 19 Yeah, and one of the things they tried to blame it on the labor market. And then everyone was like, Everyone else is doing fine, like in the same market.
And so

Speaker 19 they did say they couldn't just predict the prices accurately, which I can't believe with, you know, that they had all this data.

Speaker 19 The other thing is, as you said, it's interesting because you have a company like Carvana, which is kind of doing this, which is also intriguing because the way buying cars is broken, right?

Speaker 19 It's been a broken thing. And buying a house has sort of been a broken thing, but you can't make it necessarily any easier just by algorithms.

Speaker 18 Aaron Trevor Burrus: Well, the auto industry,

Speaker 18 I spoke to the management team of one of the

Speaker 18 what was previously the most valuable automobile company in the world until Tesla came along. And pre-pandemic, less than 2% of cars were sold online.
Now it's 30%.

Speaker 18 And the automobile industry is suffering from the same challenge that the banking industry is.

Speaker 18 And it's even more extreme in that the banking industry sees their operating system as a ready-tailer and a bank branch. And they've been letting the tail wag the dog.

Speaker 18 And that is they build their business around a bank branch that needs 50 million in deposits to be profitable and they try and drive people into the bank branch.

Speaker 18 And young people in the emerging wealth does not want to deal with a bank.

Speaker 18 And the same is true of cars. And that is young people don't want to deal with an auto dealership.
They don't want to go to the outskirts of town and walk into a dealership. And look at Tesla.

Speaker 18 They've dispersed the sales of automobiles to their website. And then when my Tesla breaks down, I don't even take it there isn't a Tesla dealership.
They come out and they repair it in my garage.

Speaker 18 And the problem with the traditional automobile supply chain infrastructure is that their quote-unquote partners are the wealthiest guy. When I was in Africa, I stayed

Speaker 18 ridiculous. And it was owned by a billionaire.
I'm like, how did this guy make his money? It's like, he's the largest Toyota dealer in Texas.

Speaker 18 And so you have this infrastructure of independently owned dealerships that have been amazing partners for these automobile manufacturing companies.

Speaker 18 But the reality is they're turning into a little bit of a legacy liability similar to bank branches.

Speaker 18 But you're going to have a much harder time closing things for the long-term health of the business because these are entrepreneurs.

Speaker 18 It's the worst experience.

Speaker 19 It's the worst experience. We're going to get into cars in a second, which I think is.
Terrible retail. Terrible retail.

Speaker 19 But we're going to get that in one of our big stories. But I agree with you.
It's a real, there's more to come on this story. It's really, and the implications for Barden, too.

Speaker 19 Just very briefly, Facebook is getting out of the face business, maybe, shutting down facial recognition platforms citing growing concerns about the use of the technology.

Speaker 19 There's lawsuits. There's been lawsuits of plenty that caused Facebook a big chunk of change.
Facebook told Gizmodo it's limited to Facebook app only, not other apps like Instagram.

Speaker 19 There's a lot of like fine print, and also they're going to continue to reserve the right to use it. It obviously was used as a growth hack many years ago for people.

Speaker 19 You know, you post a photo and then you can see your, so that you can say your photos on Facebook and this and that. So

Speaker 19 good move, but you know, I'm sure there's a lot of hooks to it. I mean, because it's Facebook.

Speaker 18 I don't understand this. And I mean, I don't know what the story is behind this story because

Speaker 18 to unlock my Apple phone, they're using facial recognition.

Speaker 18 But the difference is people trust Tim Cook and they don't trust Mark.

Speaker 19 Also, there's been a lot of scraping by companies like Clearview AI of Facebook on these photos.

Speaker 19 It wasn't giving them enough bang for the book kind of thing and causing all kinds of headaches. And good.
Good on them. Good.
But they're probably they're doing it for probably very selfish reasons.

Speaker 19 Anyway, we'll see where it goes. I think they're not nearly out of this business because it's only on the Facebook app.

Speaker 19 But again, they want a little credit and I'll give them a slight amount of credit, but I think probably they're doing it for not the reasons we'd imagine them doing it. Anyway, time for the big story.

Speaker 19 The big Hertz Tesla announcement is getting odd. Tesla's shares soared last week after Hertz said it would purchase 100,000 vehicles.
Then Elon Musk tweeted, no contract has been signed yet.

Speaker 19 Hertz disagrees, said the deliveries of Tesla had already started. And now Hertz said it will buy back $500 million of its stock.

Speaker 19 The biggest seller is an investment fund associated with its chairman, Greg O'Hara.

Speaker 19 I don't know what to say.

Speaker 19 Explain this to me, Scott. I'm confused.

Speaker 18 Well, we're just in uncharted territory. You have a company that was bankrupt purchasing $4 billion worth of cars.

Speaker 18 And it increases the value of the automobile company in 30 days by the equivalent of five General Motors. It goes up $130 billion in value.

Speaker 18 So a bankrupt company buys $4 billion worth of cars and the automobile manufacturer that sold those cars increases $120 billion in value. I mean, we're in, there's just no doubt about it.

Speaker 18 We're in crazy town right now.

Speaker 18 What also just struck me as strange here, and Oswald said it, he said, you can't find intrinsic rationale to value Tesla right now. It just, it makes absolutely.

Speaker 18 It makes absolutely, Tesla is now worth more than the entire automobile manufacturing

Speaker 18 globally industry and throw in Boeing and Airbus and maybe every specialty retailer. And then what was interesting or what I find interesting is the brand implications.

Speaker 18 And that is Tesla recognizes they're a luxury brand and they look at all the cars and the fleet sales coming out of Hertz and someone reminded them that it is not great for your brand to have a bunch of champagne colored Ford Tauruses being sold to consumers after Hertz is driven the shit out of them for 24 months.

Speaker 18 And I wonder like who sat Elon Musk down down and said,

Speaker 18 having a disproportionate number of cars in the Hertz fleet may not be great for our brand? Because all of a sudden, he's backpedaling. Right.

Speaker 18 And I don't understand why. I don't even know if it's a brand issue, a deal issue.
I don't know what's going on here. But when you have two CEOs, you never see this.

Speaker 18 The CEO who just made the largest purchase in the history of the company,

Speaker 18 the CEO of the automobile company is saying that, no, the deal isn't official. And then Hertz is saying, yes, it is.

Speaker 19 Yeah, and also they had hired Tom Brady to promote the pact,

Speaker 19 which is another sort of the football player. You know, it's completely,

Speaker 18 I'm not sure who's in the wrong here, right? Correct? We don't know. But what I'll tell you who's in the wrong, though, in my opinion, that they're buying back $500 million of stock.

Speaker 19 Yeah, there you go.

Speaker 18 I mean, what did they

Speaker 18 give me a fucking...

Speaker 18 Okay, I think the moment you buy back stock, you become ineligible for the next decade of any sort of government assistance, loan, bailout. So let me get this straight.

Speaker 18 The chairman is going to buy back stock. There's something that

Speaker 18 stock buybacks are an efficient way to return capital to shareholders, but it just strikes me as really.

Speaker 18 I just, you'd hate to see the same thing happen again, where all of a sudden Hertz hits a tough batch of the economy and they go, we're in this together and we're great employers and we need a government handout.

Speaker 18 I would love to know, and I don't know, what Hertz took during the pandemic in terms of economic relief.

Speaker 18 But I think rental cars, I don't know about you, but I just never need to, I find renting cars or the traditional thing where you fly into an airport and then go to a strange parking lot.

Speaker 18 I find the whole thing just, and then you get in and it smells like cigarettes.

Speaker 18 I find the whole thing just not an interesting experience.

Speaker 19 Yeah, that's true. But some many people, I use it a lot.
I use it when I used to travel.

Speaker 18 You rent cars in strange cities? Yeah.

Speaker 19 The cigarettes, the whole thing. Yeah, that's right.
And I get in fights with the Hertz. I use Hertz, actually.

Speaker 19 Anyway, it's an odd story, and you should continue to unfold. Obviously, people think these contracts tend to be negotiated even after they're agreed to, and this and that.

Speaker 19 It's sort of, it's a good thing for Hertz because a lot of the customers are demanding electric cars.

Speaker 19 And of course, Tesla doesn't want to be seen as selling at a discount, which they say they aren't, which Elon said they weren't.

Speaker 19 Some of the rules are you can't use them for an Uber kind of thing. Anyway,

Speaker 19 it's a really complicated story.

Speaker 19 There's a good Wall Street Journal story that I read, and I still don't understand what's happening, like what's going on here. Presumably, it'll be sorted out, but

Speaker 19 Tesla has more demand than

Speaker 19 supply at this point, still.

Speaker 18 Sounds like you should head to a parking lot in Virginia and get things sorted for us.

Speaker 19 I will. I shall.
I shall not.

Speaker 18 Do some reporting.

Speaker 19 But I shall do some reporting because I think I don't know enough here. But they're not supposed to use the cars for ride shares.
There's rentals that, and this and that. But I think it's,

Speaker 19 I think it's a very complex story. But the

Speaker 19 hurts coming out of this bankruptcy is going to be a much more interesting story, I think, than any of them, because whether business travel is back, whether people use these things.

Speaker 19 And as you said, this might be a broken system as it is. But what is the solution, right? What is the actual solution when you want to rent a car when you travel?

Speaker 18 It goes back to a key thing we've been talking about, and that's dispersion. And that is simply put that the rental car counter and the place where the rental cars are stored in a garage,

Speaker 18 those things not only don't add any value, they add negative value. And

Speaker 18 we are moving to a point in enterprise kind of pioneered this 30 years ago. They used to drop off the car at your house.
They did.

Speaker 18 And just as I never need to go to an auto dealership again, I never need to go to a rental car place again.

Speaker 18 And if I'm renting a car, and I think they can do this, and I think people who rent cars probably have the money to do this.

Speaker 18 They should meet you at the curb, you get in, and then he or she takes that fucking stupid bus back to the rental car.

Speaker 19 No, I agree. There's been a lot of startups in this area, and they've all kind of flamed out.
A ton. There's been a ton.
There's been a ton. It's a very logistically complex thing.

Speaker 19 And you have to have the right employees. Speaking of labor shortage, you really do.

Speaker 19 Enterprise is probably the best experience of all of them.

Speaker 18 Great company.

Speaker 18 And I keep going down these rabbit holes, but Enterprise employed the same thing that Chick-fil-A employed, and it doesn't get enough attention, and that is they push equity and ownership down to the desk.

Speaker 18 And that is the guy or gal running every Chick-fil-A owns a big piece of that Chick-fil-A.

Speaker 18 And also at Enterprise, they had created incredible career paths for people starting at the locations and made them owners. Yep.
And so when you're in an enterprise, you just can feel it.

Speaker 18 The owner is a difference.

Speaker 19 There's a big difference. Let's go on a quick break.
When we come back, we'll talk about the election results in Virginia, big news, and elsewhere, including New Jersey.

Speaker 19 And also take a listener mail question about your kids' cell phone.

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Speaker 19 Scott, we're back for our second big story. I mean, the politics, the Democrats canary in a coal mine has died officially.

Speaker 19 Election results around the country are in, and Democrats lost races, big and small. Republicans took the governor's mansion in Virginia.
Len Yonkin.

Speaker 21 We're going to introduce choice within our public school system.

Speaker 19 New Jersey governor, current governor, incumbent Phil Murray, defeated the Republican opponent by the slimmest of margins.

Speaker 21 I am humbled to be the first Democratic governor re-elected in the great state of New Jersey since my dear friend, the late governor Brendan Byrne, did this in 1977.

Speaker 19 Seattle might elect a Republican to citywide office for the first time in 30 years. Obviously, there's all these

Speaker 19 defund the police things failed in many cities. That said, Michelle Wu became the first woman and person of color, she's quite a progressive, to win in Boston.
There's a lot going on here.

Speaker 19 There's a lot of fascinating things.

Speaker 19 And let me just begin by saying I just wrote a piece where I said that Glenn Youngkin should send a basket of flowers to Jack Dorsey because he managed to distance himself from Trump and yet be Trumpy at the same time, be Trump-light, essentially, or more Romney-heavy.

Speaker 19 I don't know what you would call him.

Speaker 19 And he used critical race theory, et cetera, all this stuff that was swirling around on social media, but managed to keep Trump away from himself.

Speaker 19 And Trump not being on Twitter and on social media probably helped because he would have been dealing with it every day, had that been the case.

Speaker 19 So people seemed to think this guy wasn't like Trump, and it helped because these were the voters that rejected Trump in the 2020 election.

Speaker 18 Scott?

Speaker 18 Yeah, so

Speaker 18 I also think that Governor-elect Jankin should send flowers to the squad and Joe Manchin and Kristen Sinema because what could

Speaker 18 Governor McCoff, what could he say that he has done for the people of Virginia? I brought you hearing aids for seniors. I brought you pre-K.

Speaker 18 I brought you family leave. No, he couldn't say any of those things.
Right.

Speaker 18 And

Speaker 18 so the Democrats literally have

Speaker 18 the Democratic Party has given people running for office the weakest hand in the world right now.

Speaker 18 And in addition, I think the Republicans have been very smart around messaging, and that is critical race theory is not being practiced anywhere in New Jersey or Virginia, but they have managed to basically position us as critical race.

Speaker 18 theorists by virtue of the fact that, okay, you're saying standardized tests and gifted classes are racist. You have safe places at schools.

Speaker 18 True or not, they have figured out a way to position us as out of touch and a bunch of privileged people lecturing each other. And they've done a great job

Speaker 18 absolutely cementing this notion that we are

Speaker 18 out of touch. And it is really the fact that we have splintered into three different parties, the Democratic Party,

Speaker 18 the squad, and then the narcissists posing as moderates, they have just played us like a fiddle. And I'll tell you, we almost lost New Jersey.

Speaker 18 New Jersey, where there are a million more registered Democrats. Because here's the thing.
People would,

Speaker 18 you know, if you, the notion that we are going to shame the other side, our moderates, through being very persistent, very loud on Twitter is going to work. It's not.

Speaker 18 It's just absolutely going to not.

Speaker 18 And we come across as being so out of touch. We control all three houses of government and we can't get anything done.

Speaker 18 I think people would rather vote for people who they don't necessarily agree with or that they find distasteful, but get shit done. Yeah.

Speaker 19 But we can't get shit done without free helping them. It's distasteful.
That's the thing. Trump really does engender, like, not him to

Speaker 19 with these moderates. And I think Jung did an excellent, Trump sort of immediately was like, well, because of me.

Speaker 19 And I'm like, no, actually, he, it's not good news for Trump because I think they've found a way through the Trump,

Speaker 19 you know, the alley where you get beat up, essentially,

Speaker 19 when you go with Trump.

Speaker 19 And so there's, there's, there's either been these, what they call rhinos, the Republicans in name only, the sort of Liz Cheney gang, or the, the group that is just so obsequious, like Nikki Haley or even Ron DeSantis, et cetera, who are obsequious and it works where they are, but it doesn't work nationwide and it doesn't work with independents.

Speaker 19 They don't like Trump and they don't like you kissing up to him. And this guy managed to keep close with Trump without him staining him, right? That was what was really interesting.

Speaker 19 He looked like a banker. He was a banker.
He's from the Carlisle group,

Speaker 19 you know, with the fleece and the khakis and everything else. And he managed.
The Allbirds. Yeah, the Allberts.
He was just like, it was perfect.

Speaker 19 And then he used, he's sort of like the old-timey Republican, which you dog whistle racism, you know, just the way the Bushes did around

Speaker 19 Willie Horton.

Speaker 19 That was a Leotwater special. They sort of do that.
And

Speaker 19 they're good at that part or scare people about gay people or

Speaker 19 whatever things they want to scare white people with essentially um and then they remove themselves from it so they're not like and trump is so explicit and they prefer to be implicit and that's what young did he was implicit rather than explicit um and therefore got the benefit of both doing these things attacking critical race theory etc um uh and then also distancing himself from it.

Speaker 19 It was really, it was, it was quite a thing to watch. It was quite a thing to watch.

Speaker 18 The most successful or the best-selling soft drink in the world is the Republican Party's new strategy, and that is Diet Coke.

Speaker 18 And everybody here is going to be, the new strategy for the next two years is going to be Trump-like.

Speaker 18 And that is embracing his policies, embracing his political incorrectness, embracing his lack of fear around saying, you know, quote-unquote inappropriate things, calling things out, positioning us as out of all those things.

Speaker 18 But just don't embrace the man. Just don't let him on stage with you.
And this is, this, he is literally, they are going to adopt this playbook.

Speaker 19 They're going to be Trump-like. He knows it, by the way.
That's why he was so like,

Speaker 19 you could see him like, where do I fit in this power structure? I'm like, you're the prop. You're now the prop, just so you know.

Speaker 18 His endorsement is still hugely powerful, though.

Speaker 19 Yeah, with that group. So you got to keep that little group that you need.
You need the

Speaker 19 Trumpies on, you need the diehard Trumpies. But the Independents don't want that.

Speaker 19 One of the things I thought, I thought when the race was lost when McAuliffe said, with talking about,

Speaker 19 you know, parents are sick and tired of keeping their kids home.

Speaker 19 They don't, you know, they're tired of masking, even if they did, like a lot of these people were vaccinated, followed masking rules, you know, and, but got exasperated by schools, right?

Speaker 19 Got exasperated and then started to see things they didn't love their kids being taught. Although everybody disagrees on that, if you're a parent, you're like, oh, really?

Speaker 19 You know, I always do that when I see them. I'm like, that book? Okay.
You know, why? And, and what, and when

Speaker 19 McAuliffe said parents should stay out of school, no curriculum.

Speaker 18 Yeah. I was like, what?

Speaker 19 No.

Speaker 19 Like, it doesn't mean we run it, but then you allow the crazies to take over these school boards all over the place, which is happening, of course, some of which are disturbing, like trying to censor certain books that are

Speaker 19 wonderful books, like Toni Morrison's Beloved.

Speaker 19 and important books. But when he said that,

Speaker 19 I was even like, what? What did you just say? Like, I have no say in my child's education. Are you kidding me? Like, don't say that.
Don't say that. And

Speaker 19 especially to women who shifted over to

Speaker 19 Youngkin rather significantly. Anyway.

Speaker 18 I actually, I think it was, it was a tone-deaf statement. They, they grabbed it and ran with it.
Yeah.

Speaker 18 As someone,

Speaker 18 I've been on the board of my kids' school. I know what he is.

Speaker 18 I do think at the end of the day,

Speaker 18 schools, schools, I think it's it's we haven't

Speaker 18 it's sort of like advertising. Anybody who watches TV immediately believes they're a mild expert on advertising.

Speaker 18 And anybody who knows someone who had COVID thinks all of a sudden they're a junior epidemiologist. And anyone with kids thinks they have insight into learning.

Speaker 18 What I have found is that it is similar to being on the board of a company. You are there to support the person.
You are there to provide advice.

Speaker 18 They get to make decisions because ultimately they need to be held accountable. And if you don't like the way the school is run, you fire the headmaster or the CEO.

Speaker 18 But I don't, I had a real problem with a lot of parents, and I know this is not what you're saying, a lot of parents showing up and deciding that they had PhDs in education. And

Speaker 18 it was just like, okay, we understand you have kids. We understand you have a choice here.
We understand you have a huge vested interest in what we do here.

Speaker 18 But your job is to put pressure on the board to fire and hire the right guy or gal and then let them make the decisions, quite frankly, because this is not easy.

Speaker 19 I think this was under a backdrop of people being cooped up at home. They're being told what to do, told what to do with their kids.

Speaker 18 And that their kid has to stay at home if they leave for Thanksgiving. Do you know?

Speaker 19 Yes, I'm just saying. People were tired of being told,

Speaker 19 even like among, especially among the liberal groups of people, the parents I know, they're like, what are they telling us now? Like, nobody's liking this. And I think this guy

Speaker 19 hit at that frustration when most people are reasonable. And most people are reasonable, by the way.
They're not, these groups of crazies are just noisy and loud, just the way any group like this is.

Speaker 19 But I think it did hit at this, like, now what are they telling me what to do? And, and, and, like, and then he was there with like, don't let them tell what you, what to do.

Speaker 19 And you're like, yeah, I don't want to, you know, I don't know.

Speaker 18 It was interesting. Just case in point, I have a, I have a family member.
I do not have a big family. Um, we really wanted to get all the cousins together for Thanksgiving.

Speaker 18 And one of the schools that one of the cousins is in has explicitly said if you leave for Thanksgiving,

Speaker 18 your kids need to isolate when they get back.

Speaker 19 Isolate, not just test?

Speaker 18 I think it's both.

Speaker 18 And you think, okay, so now the school is dictating my ability to have family gatherings over the holidays.

Speaker 18 And it is really,

Speaker 18 and the school is trying to just be responsible and their heart's in the right place.

Speaker 19 But

Speaker 18 I mean, here's what it comes right down to, Kara. People, wrongly or rightly, have decided whether or not the pandemic is actually over or burning out, that the pandemic is over.

Speaker 18 They're like, okay, I've played by the rules. I've done my best.
People are going to die. But I think people have sort of mentally decided,

Speaker 18 I'm kind of done. Let the chips fall where they're going to fall.

Speaker 19 And I'm vaccinated, right? And so what, I'll take the risk kind of thing. Yeah.
It was the numbers on this are really interesting, the shifting numbers back and forth.

Speaker 19 And these, the power of these independents, I guess you'd call them, that shift back and forth, whether it's New Jersey or Virginia, I really and they are very affected by online stuff too, like this suggestion.

Speaker 19 And so a lot of the stuff really worked. And the, and then when you, I think what the Democrats did that was a stake is they're like,

Speaker 19 you know, if you're for the, for him, you're racist. And it's like, no, don't do that because

Speaker 19 they're not, not all of them are. They are.

Speaker 18 Not only that, they counter that with, well, when you look at everything, and this isn't true, but when they position far-left Democrats as looking through the lens of everything, through the lens of race, then boss, you're the racist.

Speaker 18 And that's how they've positioned us. They've positioned us as fighting racism with segregation at a young age.

Speaker 18 And moderates go, no, the first thing we should teach our kids is about shared experience and victories and hopes before we start telling, saying to people, and I don't think most schools are doing this.

Speaker 19 Which they do. Let me just,

Speaker 18 they take

Speaker 19 little dumb things. Yeah, go ahead.
Yeah.

Speaker 18 I'm talking about messaging. They've positioned us as saying, okay,

Speaker 18 and this isn't true, but there's enough data points they can pull, they can make a character of

Speaker 18 an anecdote. At the age of eight or 19, oppressors on this side of the classroom, oppressed on this side.

Speaker 18 And the Republicans have been masterful in positioning us as privileged people that want to lecture each other. And the Democratic Party has been a disaster around positioning.

Speaker 18 I also think there's some remnants. I think that, and again, there's no elegant way to lose a war, but I think our exit from Afghanistan was just bungled so badly.
We can't get anything passed.

Speaker 18 This is, I'm hoping this is a low point. I do think that the House and the Senate Democrats are going to get the message here.

Speaker 18 I got to think this is a really fucking ugly call this morning talking about what happened last night.

Speaker 18 And I got to think Nancy Pelosi is calling the squad and calling Joe Manchin and Kristen Sinema and say, get your shit together.

Speaker 18 Get your shit together. Did you see what happened last night?

Speaker 18 So I'm hoping that this is a burning platform, which the Democrats needed to say, okay,

Speaker 18 this is going to get really ugly in two years if we don't get our activity.

Speaker 19 Yeah, I thought Jonathan Shade, who I don't always agree with, did a quite a good short story about this, which I think

Speaker 19 If you ask most progressive analysts why Republicans usually try to change the subject away from publication, have seized on schools as their message, they'll answer you'll hear something like, because they're racist.

Speaker 19 There's a lot of truth to this. The Republican Party has a huge number of racists in it, and those who aren't still, by definition, tolerate racism by the party's leaders.

Speaker 19 A non-trivial part of the backlash to education comes from parents who are offended by accurate teaching about slavery, reconstruction, and structural racism, or don't want their kids to be exposed to Toni Morrison.

Speaker 19 The actual policies Republicans are pushing on schools are illiberal to make the mockery of their professed belief in free speech.

Speaker 19 And yet, this kind of response has made it difficult for liberals to acknowledge that maybe Republicans are focusing on schools, at least in part, because they detect genuine policy failures that have alienated part of the Democratic constituency.

Speaker 19 I think that's, and this last thing, let me just read it because I thought it was so good.

Speaker 19 The overlapping debates over school closing and racial equity have both characterized by heavily moralistic language, compressing the issue into a false binary.

Speaker 19 It's possible to favor some measures to contain the pandemic while wanting to keep schools open or to support unvarnished history without the Robin D'Angelo jargon. That's the white fragility book.

Speaker 19 Anyway, I thought that was great. I think this is a really interesting thing.

Speaker 18 I agree. I was worried the same morning.

Speaker 19 They got to get on the phone and stop.

Speaker 19 You know, don't let the, because Republicans are deeply cynical. That's what it is.
And, you know, they're going to keep doing it.

Speaker 19 And, and then one of the things that I was at a party, and one of them,

Speaker 19 you know, it's quite liberal group of people. And they're like, can you believe he's saying this? I'm like, yeah, I believe it.
Like, of course he wants to win. Like, what are you talking about?

Speaker 19 Like, yeah, like that, you have to stop pretending they're not going to be this cynical and do this and just move in there with some elbows, some sharp sharp elbows.

Speaker 18 Sharp elbows.

Speaker 19 But you know, I advocate that.

Speaker 19 The militia ethics.

Speaker 18 Sharp elbows?

Speaker 19 No, no, I'm playing as tough a game as they do. And

Speaker 19 instead of agonizing and attacking each other.

Speaker 18 Our messaging has just been abysmal.

Speaker 18 Anyway, I feel bad for Governor McCoff. I thought he was a good governor.
I think he's a very decent man. And we sent him.
He was a good governor.

Speaker 18 We poured honey on him and sent him hunting for bears in that election. We just did not help him at all.

Speaker 19 That's a visual.

Speaker 18 The edibles are kicking in.

Speaker 19 I'm assuming he's not posing like you do. That's it.

Speaker 18 I'm taking off my shirt. No, I'm taking off my shirt.

Speaker 19 Please, for the love of God, don't. No.
Gunshots in town.

Speaker 19 I feel triggered. I feel unsafe.
Okay, Scott. I really don't.

Speaker 19 I don't ever feel unsafe around you. Let's pivot to a listener question.

Speaker 18 You've got, you've got. I can't believe I'm going to be a mailman.

Speaker 18 You've got mail.

Speaker 19 This one came in an email from Sarah Smith. I'll read it.
I'm curious why tech isn't developing exciting mobile devices suitable for the tween age group.

Speaker 19 I don't know any parents who are thrilled about getting a smartphone for their kid, yet we'd all like to have a way to contact them that isn't a flip phone.

Speaker 19 A friend of mine is considering an Apple Watch for his almost 10-year-old. Is this the best option? If you want to be able to contact your kiddo, but don't want to have full access to the web.

Speaker 19 Any advice for the 9 to 12 crowd? There are phones. There are phones that are, there's a product called our producers are putting here, Relay.
It's a screenless push-to-talk phone marketed to kids.

Speaker 19 There's not a more featured phone. I don't believe there's too many featured phones like that beyond flip phones.

Speaker 19 which of course at one point I gave to one of my kids because they were driving me crazy with all their apps

Speaker 19 and they didn't didn't know what to do because it only makes phone calls essentially.

Speaker 19 So I don't know, Scott, what do you think?

Speaker 19 Should there be different phones for kids or versions that are kid? I don't imagine any of them. Beeper.

Speaker 18 What? Go back to a beeper? Beeper. I don't know.

Speaker 18 For me, the phone plays a critical role in the father-son relationship is it's the only thing I can threaten to take away that has any impact.

Speaker 19 Oh, wow.

Speaker 18 Go to your room. Okay, fine.
They love going to their room.

Speaker 18 I literally have no leverage over my kids whatsoever

Speaker 18 other than taking away their phone. That is the only thing they respond to.
Yeah, I did that too.

Speaker 19 I did that too.

Speaker 18 You know, that's it.

Speaker 18 Other than that, we have absolutely no leverage.

Speaker 18 I'm sure there's also, I would imagine, I don't know this. I would imagine even on iOS, there's like a kid version.

Speaker 19 Yeah, you can do all kinds of things. There's things you can, Sarah, you can do things on Apple phones that really make them.

Speaker 19 And there's Verizon apps that allow you to know what they're doing and to restrict times. And I did one thing where I turned off the phone after, I don't know, nine o'clock at night.

Speaker 19 And the first, I didn't tell them.

Speaker 18 We take their phone when they go to sleep. Oh, do you?

Speaker 19 Yeah. I just, I just turned it off just, and then they were like, well, my phone's broken.
I'm like, no, it's not. I have complete control of your phone.

Speaker 19 You can do all kinds of things like that. But you should have, here's what you should do.
Talk to your kids about the uses of phones. I gave my kids phones pretty early compared to most parents.

Speaker 19 And we had a long talk about the uses of it, when they could use it, what they could have on it.

Speaker 19 I don't like to monitor my children.

Speaker 18 Would you check the content on your phone? I don't.

Speaker 19 We've had arguments over that in our house all the time you know what my ex-wife and i argue about it quite a bit um she's much more monitor oriented i would say and i am over the years not not now but um but i i do not think you should track your children i just don't i just i have a thing about that something you said really resonated with me and it was something along the lines of we all have the right to have secrets and it's one thing when i find very objectional content in the the history of my kids YouTube viewership at the age of 11.

Speaker 18 I think that you have an obligation to kind of check in and see what they're doing on YouTube. But I don't think, I think people have the right to have secrets.

Speaker 18 And even I'm not sure if that's true, an 11-year-old, but my son, my oldest now, is 14. And we have some pretty heated arguments in the house.
I'm like, you know what?

Speaker 18 I was doing stuff at 14 that I didn't want my parents to know about, and that was okay, or that would have been embarrassing.

Speaker 18 And I don't know if we need to be the East German Stasi just because we can. Just because we can monitor their entire lives doesn't mean we should.

Speaker 19 Yeah. I did it once on Snapchat with one of my sons.
He was off mute.

Speaker 18 And you pretended to be the girl. I found him.

Speaker 19 You went online.

Speaker 18 Hey, handsome.

Speaker 19 Heard your apostle. No, he just was.

Speaker 19 He was gone. He was gone from the house at an hour I did not like.
My other son had been playing, turning on the sonos and waking him up a lot, you know, doing that game that they do.

Speaker 19 Like, I don't know. You'll see what happens.
You can turn on loud irritating music. And I, and he came in, my younger son, and said, No, he's not here.
I couldn't annoy him.

Speaker 19 Like, he didn't get annoyed because he wasn't here. And it was in the middle of the night.
And then I did track him that time because I was

Speaker 19 both irritated and also worried. And so, but in general, I tend to think either you talk to your kids about it.
And I do check in. Like this morning,

Speaker 19 one of them was listening to YouTube. I'm like, what are they listening to? And it turned out it was about the Continental Congress.

Speaker 18 And I was like, oh, okay, good.

Speaker 19 But

Speaker 19 I try not to spy. I don't like it.

Speaker 19 I just don't like it. I don't know.
So the advice is for the younger, younger people,

Speaker 19 there are a lot of things you can put on the phones that are.

Speaker 19 Apple Watch is not a bad idea.

Speaker 19 What else? I don't know. Flip phones tend to be a lot of fun.

Speaker 18 Isn't that asking a kid to be bullied when he shows up with an oyster phone? Isn't that? Isn't that saying, hey, wear this members-only jacket? The kids will love it.

Speaker 19 Those are cool now, Scott.

Speaker 18 But

Speaker 18 it is amazing. It is amazing how fast I with these technologies.

Speaker 18 I have the boys this week. So I let my youngest son sleep with me and we had the dogs in the bed.
And

Speaker 18 this morning, the first thing he

Speaker 18 set an alarm for 7.20. The alarm goes off.
Like literally, I can't get this kid out of bed. He pops up and he goes, Alexa, announce.
Nobody likes you, Alec. That's his younger brother.

Speaker 18 That's the first thing that runs through his mind is we need to announce the entire household. The first thing we need to hear at sunrise is nobody likes you, Alec.
Can I tell you?

Speaker 19 It does not. That's his first

Speaker 18 synhouse fire when he wakes up is he wants to terrorize his brother.

Speaker 19 Yeah, that happened this morning in my house, too. And it was like,

Speaker 18 and then when you know what we did for the first 10 minutes with my youngest is we searched for like 20 minutes for the almond joy that I had eaten the night before from his Halloween table.

Speaker 18 Oh, it did. But I was very earnest in the search.

Speaker 18 I don't know where it went.

Speaker 19 Got to be here. There's almond joys.

Speaker 18 Oh, they're the best.

Speaker 19 Oh, mounds and almond joys.

Speaker 18 Candy's from heaven.

Speaker 19 No, no, I'm going to send you a box. Oh, gross.
I'm going to send you your own box. You just stop taking your kids' candy.
You got to stop doing that.

Speaker 18 Sometimes you feel like a nut, Kara. Sometimes you feel like a nut.

Speaker 19 Sometimes you live like a nut, like Scott Galloway. Anyway, that was a good question.
Send us more.

Speaker 19 If you've got a question you're curious about, go to nymag.com slash pivot and submit it for the show. A lot of people on Twitter this week had a, had lots of questions from

Speaker 19 our guests. They loved Oswat.

Speaker 18 Oh, my gosh.

Speaker 18 Twitter loved Professor DeModaran.

Speaker 19 Yep, they did. They did.
They did. And we'll have him back again.

Speaker 19 So lots of questions to ask questions we'll ask him and see if he'll answer them and different things like that so scott one more quick break we'll be back for predictions

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Speaker 19 Okay, Scott, give us this week's predictions. Make it snappy.
Make it snappy.

Speaker 18 In the next five days, we're going to see more progress around the

Speaker 18 Build Back America bill or the infrastructure on both bills. We're going to see more progress in the next 72 hours than we've seen in the last 72 days.
I think this was

Speaker 19 explain yourself.

Speaker 18 Well,

Speaker 18 nothing brings people together like being bombed from overhead. I mean, it's pretty clear that

Speaker 18 the Republicans have literally taken us behind the woodshed and kicked the shit out of us last night. And this is going to give create the burning platform to unite all this ridiculous infighting.

Speaker 18 The best way to defeat an enemy is to atomize them. And they've not only split the Democratic Party in two, they've split it in three.

Speaker 18 And I can't imagine that Schumer and every party leader and Pelosi are sitting down

Speaker 18 with their caucuses and saying, okay. Okay.

Speaker 18 Any questions? We need to figure this shit out pronto. So I think we're going to see a lot of progress.

Speaker 19 Although, you know, you never know. I think the Republican Party is going to see a bit of a fight with Trump.
I think Trump's not going down like this. Like, he's going to assert.

Speaker 19 He has no ability not to assert himself. So I don't think it's over.
Some of the emails were so not chill.

Speaker 19 Because he's got a lizard sense of what's happening, which is they're trying to... trying to like put him on a shelf and

Speaker 19 preserve him in amber to get rid of his grosser characteristics of which are very gross.

Speaker 19 And so they want to keep him from volcanically erupting.

Speaker 19 But unfortunately for Trump, as I said last year, his tools get less and less. The rallies

Speaker 19 don't work with the independents.

Speaker 19 The fans are the fans, no matter, like it's sort of like, that's what it is. And so

Speaker 19 I think there'll be fractures over on the other side, too.

Speaker 18 I have a media recommendation for the weekend. I have a show for you.

Speaker 19 Go for it.

Speaker 18 A really important original scripted miniseries from Hulu,

Speaker 18 Dope Sick.

Speaker 19 Oh, I've heard that was good. I've seen ads for it.

Speaker 18 It's fantastic. And just give me a minute here.
Michael Keaton, who's

Speaker 18 similar to John Travolta. Everybody talks about his comeback, but the reality is he never went anywhere.
This is an incredible actor and an underrated actor, in my view. Nominated for Birdman,

Speaker 18 started with Night Shift and Mr. Mom,

Speaker 18 was fantastic, in my opinion, was the best Batman. I think he's

Speaker 18 Beetlejuice. He was wonderful as an addict in a movie in the 90s.
And in this, he plays a small-town doctor. And I won't spoil it, but the show is about the opioid crisis,

Speaker 18 which is claiming more Americans

Speaker 18 every year, than the entire Vietnam conflict. And for two of the last three years, for the first time in our history, we've actually seen a decline in life expectancy.

Speaker 18 But more than that, the show is really about, in my view, the show is

Speaker 18 about love. There's a young lesbian couple in it trying to just live their lives.
Michael Keaton is a widower that misses his wife and can't get past the death of his wife.

Speaker 18 And it got me thinking about public policy, and I realize this is going to sound very, I don't know, existential, but we have unfettered access to guns. We have unfettered access to capitalism.

Speaker 18 We encourage and clear all obstacles out of making money. We have pretty much unfettered access to free speech.

Speaker 18 To get in the way of people being able to decide where their heart wants to go, and I think that's what this program is about, is incredibly unproductive and incredibly un-American.

Speaker 18 And I come back to this legislation that we're not going to have maternity leave. We're going to tell people who should and shouldn't be in emergency rooms when people are sick.

Speaker 18 We're going to have tax policy that gets in the way of people loving who they want to love.

Speaker 18 I think that this show, it really struck me that the key to America, if you really want to talk about central freedoms, it really is about caring for who you want to care about.

Speaker 18 And it just, I think it is such a

Speaker 18 lovely series that really touches on a lot of things. Anyways, Dope Sick with the incredible Michael Keaton, and it's on a very important issue that we should really

Speaker 18 have literally ripped apart the heartland of America for the last decade. I shall watch it.
Fantastic show.

Speaker 19 Not until I go see The Eternals, which is coming out the next Marvel movie.

Speaker 18 I love it. Really?

Speaker 19 I don't have to know that it's the next Marvel movie. Angelina Jolie is an Eternal.
Guys in Tights? Gemma Chan. I think it's Gemma Chan.
And Camille Nanjani. It's like this incredible cast.

Speaker 19 It's very long, and I don't care.

Speaker 18 I'm going to.

Speaker 18 Wait, is it a superhero film?

Speaker 19 Yes, it's the Marvel. It's the next Marvel movie.
It's like, you know, these side Marvel movies.

Speaker 18 Jesus Christ, make it stop.

Speaker 19 No, I shall not make it stop. Make it stop.
No, it was wonderful.

Speaker 19 They're wonderful, all of them. You may not insult my Marvel movies.
And then, of course, you and I are going to go see Top Gun Maverick together.

Speaker 18 Oh, I'd like that.

Speaker 19 Yeah, that'll be fun.

Speaker 18 We're going to fly into the danger zone.

Speaker 19 And you can, you can see

Speaker 19 somewhat shirtless if you want.

Speaker 18 Not underrated.

Speaker 18 He is an artist that's not underrated. No, no, no, no.
Tenny Loggins is not underrated.

Speaker 19 Oh, my God. I love that movie.

Speaker 18 Everybody foot loose.

Speaker 18 That guy is living on the beach somewhere, and he should be really grateful. He could have very easily not hit it big.
Tenny Loggins.

Speaker 19 Yeah, well, that's just the song. We're talking about the movie.
Because you know what? Maverick's going to be in trouble again in case you're interested because

Speaker 19 he's brash and he does what he wants. That's what's going to happen in the movie, just so you know.

Speaker 18 I think they should bring back Val Kilmer.

Speaker 19 He might have. Is he in this one?

Speaker 18 He might be. I don't think so.
I don't think Val's ready for the screen anymore. I think his agent's like, look at Tom Cruise.
He looks like he's 22. And Val Kilmer.

Speaker 19 When he's chewing the gum. Remember that chewing gum thing with that fantastic chisel jump jaw.

Speaker 19 Yes. He has the chisel jaws.

Speaker 18 Kelly McGillis. Yeah.
Kelly McGillis, remember her? Yes.

Speaker 19 Hello, hottie. She later moved into being a lesbian.
Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 18 Mm-hmm. Yeah.
We know that. We know that.

Speaker 18 I don't see sexual orientation. I just see her and Harrison Ford making sweet, sweet, Amish love.
Oh, my God, was that hot? Was that hot?

Speaker 18 And then Alexander Goodnough, the Amish man in the waiting in the wings. A lot of sexual attention.

Speaker 19 Anyway, I'm excited for the channels. I will watch Dope Sick, though.
Anyway,

Speaker 19 this has been a great show.

Speaker 19 We'll be back on Tuesday for more. We're having so much fun, Scott.
Are you excited for PivotCon? Many people have asked me about it. I'm excited.

Speaker 18 I'm super excited.

Speaker 18 It's going to be awesome. Miami, we're going to have,

Speaker 18 Aswath is going to be there. We're going to have, hopefully, super, super deep thinkers around crypto.
It's going to be, I think it's going to be a lot of fun.

Speaker 18 And Senator Rubio, it'll be like Sophia Coppola at the Oscars. Can I come? Can I come?

Speaker 19 We should have Rubio. Anyway, anyway, we'll be in Florida.

Speaker 18 All we need to do is send him an invitation.

Speaker 19 He'll be there. Going to Florida.

Speaker 18 Does anyone there have a cousin in Iowa? Okay, I'm in. I'm in.

Speaker 19 All right. I'm in.
Okay, Scott, read us up.

Speaker 18 Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin. Thanks also to Drew Burroughs.
Ernie Intertod, engineer this episode. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts.

Speaker 18 You're being an Android user. Check us out on Spotify or, frankly, wherever you listen to podcasts.
Thanks for listening to Pivot from Fox Media.

Speaker 18 We'll be back next Tuesday for another breakdown of all things tech and business. What is the least American thing? What is the least American policies we could ever have?

Speaker 18 Anything that gets in the way of why we are here, and that is to be courageous with our heart and to love whoever we want to love.

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