Apple’s Privacy Changes, Amazon’s Flawed Leave System, and Friend of Pivot Pamela Paul

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Hi, everyone.

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

I'm Kara Swisher.

And I'm Scott Galloway.

So what's up, Scott?

How you doing?

I'm excited.

I just opened my,

or the first of many potential Halloween costumes.

This supply chain shit is really fucking with my Halloween plans.

There's not enough Halloween costumes in your repertoire.

I bet you have plenty of dresses that you could wear.

Oh, well, that's always the case, but that's the other 51 weeks a year.

I like to go, we're talking wigs, we're talking, you know,

it's, I mean, it's one thing to slow down the global economy.

It's another thing when I can't get a really awesome, well-fitted Deadpool costume.

I have a full-size Poe costume from Teletubbies, if you want to borrow that.

That was a close second, but I'm going with Deadpool.

Oh, all right.

Okay.

You think you'll look good in that outfit?

I was going to do it as an astronaut,

but it doesn't show off my sleek svelte figure.

I'm going with the tight Deadpool costume.

Oh, all right.

Okay.

All right.

Okay.

That sounds good.

I thought you were going to be.

Huge crowd pleaser.

I thought you were going to go as like Liz Cheney or something like that.

Liz?

Elizabeth.

Yeah.

Elizabeth.

You would be good as that.

All right.

Speaking of not looking good at all, this has been a rough week for Facebook.

On Monday, a consortium of publishers rolled rolled out news stories based on Francis Haugen's documents, which they did not choose to share with me, but Kara Swisher.

There's new reporting on Facebook's failures to police content in India, which I think is much more important than almost any of these other stories.

Its relationship with lobbyists in over 30 stories.

Nick Clegg told employees to expect, quote, more bad headlines in the coming days.

And so, you know, they complained about this.

John Panette, who you like quite a bit, I like John myself,

had said it was some sort of conspiracy, which was kind of ridiculous for the group most responsible for conspiracy theories.

He was horrified that it was people were spreading misinformation.

Information, right, whatever.

Yeah, okay.

Okay.

Talk about the mother of all kettles calling something black.

Yeah, exactly.

So Ben Smith wrote actually a pretty good story on the problems with this consortium.

I have a problem with this consortium because I think...

Say more, why do you have a problem with it?

Because I think you get cooked by your source.

You know what I mean?

This source seems to be in full control, and I'm not sure.

Isn't it multiple sources?

It's just one?

No, it's haugen and then they all broke it because they also have other sources etc etc i just feel like it it tarnishes her uh if it looks like it's cooked even if it's not i and and this idea of of i don't know the press cooperating like this i don't she should just give them individually to each I'm not a big fan of the consortia, although it has worked in the Panama papers, but this is a little different.

It feels funny.

I don't know why.

Not that they they didn't give it to me.

I'm not a news reporter.

I get it.

But

it feels like she's more controlling of the story than I like.

I just would like the documents to speak for themselves.

And there's been a lot of good stories, too.

It just, I don't know.

There's something.

Read Ben Smith's column on this.

I think I have his point of view about it.

Because as someone who's further from it,

I love it.

I see when Facebook tries to delay and obfuscate and downplay the incredible

damage they do to the Commonwealth and society at large, they're very coordinated, very methodical,

incredibly well planned.

There are 900-person PR communications.

There are hundreds of lobbyists.

They're billions of dollars.

There are law firms all act in concert with one another.

And what's been really impressive and just interesting about the Haugen, the whistleblower thing, is how coordinated it is.

Yes.

All right, let's go on national TV.

Then we hit Congress.

Then we have a website.

We have a website.

It's bankrolled by another billionaire.

Yeah.

We're going to get a consortium of journalists together and coordinate the releases across the court.

Quite frankly, they're fighting fire with fire.

Facebook has benefited from a disorganized, chaotic, atomized

competitive set.

This is a fair analysis.

The enemy is saying, let's bring a fraction of the coordination and and Machiavelli to this because it is really cooked.

I mean, none of this is being done by accident, but I'm like, finally, finally,

they have been fighting Facebook panzer tanks on horseback and they decided to start producing their own tanks.

All right, okay.

I see that point.

I just feel like Facebook will take anything to take advantage of.

And it gives them,

you know,

we're being, this is a consortium.

Like, it just, I get it.

It's like, if you think of it like the Panama Papers or some of the others of those, you know, where they coordinate across, because there's so many documents, yes.

The thing is, of course, as usual with journalists, it all fell apart, like, because the New York Times did something to this.

And that's fine.

I just, it's, um,

I just think anything that gives Facebook an in is problematic for me.

If you don't look as clean as possible, an in an in and in.

And I think they take advantage of that.

And I think that they're very clever, but I agree with you.

It needs, it requires persistent and consistent reporting on this stuff and not just her documents to really get others to also give up some documents and you know at some point um i i do think and i'm going to be writing about this i do think it's the end for mark zuckerberg i think he's got to step down as ceo or move himself upwards as you talked about

yeah or or or the new the new thing and i think probably um i was trying to think of who would be the the c in the thing we talked about last week i do think it this is rolling in a way that's not um

that it must the penny must be dropping

because they, they're becoming more aggressive in a way that is not the way they usually react, I guess.

And it's not good.

It's not, Mark just can't just be quiet for a little bit because the next time this comes up, they'll be blamed.

The board will certainly be blamed for, and it will come up again if they don't do something significant.

But what you got right and I got wrong is,

so I've always said, you know, waiting for management's better angels to show up.

Don't hold your breath.

Waiting for consumers to decide.

Consumers talk a big game about ethics and then they go buy Facebook stock.

I'm guilty of that because we're focused on our own economic security.

Well, the reporting today.

Oh, before we tape, but go ahead.

I sold my stock a year ago.

But anyways, or I thought, okay, it's time for the feds to show up.

And you've been saying this all along, and you know who's actually fomenting change here, is their employees.

And what's so shocking, or one other thing that

shocked me reading through

this material, is that employees are writing emails saying, we just met with management.

They're full of shit.

We told them what is going on.

We raised all kinds of alarms.

And they smiled and looked thoughtfully at us and decided to do nothing.

And they're not only what Facebook has been doing to the media and to lawmakers very effectively, It's running out of steam internally.

And that is not everybody.

I'm sorry, go ahead.

Can I, let me just say, it's the researchers and the academics who are doing it to them, right?

Because these people are not our troublemakers by nature, right?

So they hired a lot of troublemakers and lots, not just a few, like a lot of people.

One of the things I'm hearing from some of the researchers who I know, some of whom I know well, some of whom I don't, is that they don't love some of the media stuff that's going on because they think they're focusing on the wrong things.

Like they think the

India stuff and the foreign.

Can you say more about that?

You said you thought it was the biggest thing here.

I do, because I think a lot of the, you know, I just interviewed Maria Ressa, who just won the Nobel Prize, and she had warned me about this in 2015 with data.

And that's what got me on.

If I had to pick one person who woke me up to this, it was Maria Ressa many, many years ago, because she brought data.

And she's like, look, Kara, look what they're doing to me and other reporters in the Philippines, for example, people in the

activists and others.

And she had taken that data to Facebook and they ignored it.

And she'd said, I can't believe they're ignoring this.

You know what I mean?

Like at the time.

And I think one of the issues is you saw things in Myanmar, a lot of sloppiness, a lack of familiarity with language, et cetera, et cetera.

And you saw it all over the place, not in the United States.

And then it came here.

And she was saying that.

She was the canary in the toxic coal mine here, very much so.

And so I think one of the things the researchers are showing is like the teen thing is great for news, but it's not, it's a little more complex.

And I think in that case, Facebook deserves some credit credit for at least taking doing the research, but it's still not clear.

There's whole lots of issues that go into teen girls.

And it's easy to get angry.

Facebook's the reason teen girls aren't happy.

Hollywood's also the reason.

So is fashion.

So is, do you know what I mean?

It's a complex situation that's made more so by Facebook and Instagram, for example.

Absolutely.

Amplification, no question.

And it's a new entrant, just the way people decried TV or printing press when it showed up.

And so I think the stuff that people, the initial stuff that was focused on creates enragement and probably gets people moving.

But the real stuff is the very,

the stuff in other countries that then morphed over here.

And I think a lot of the researchers are saying that to me.

Like the real stuff that they did was ruin countries, like elsewhere where we weren't looking.

And that's what you need to focus in on.

Of course, that's what a researcher would say.

Like they want their research to be true.

They like the directionality of it, but they don't like necessarily the focus of the media.

And I'm like, media people

can be very superficial in many times and go for the hot headline.

So I don't, I agree with you that the damage, I mean, when you have Mina Marie's militia targeting ethnic groups, I mean, that's like, that kind of takes shit to a new level, right?

Yes, a new level is what I would say.

And we,

but my sense is that I think the reason they're going to go down is, I think, is,

or, and there's so many reasons, but I don't think it's Dean Depression.

I don't think it's anti-competitive behavior, although that criminal case, that cartel case in Texas may ultimately be the reason for the first perp walk, some SVP or something, because you have criminal remedies and cartel pricing.

But I think it's the insurrection.

I think there's still more to come out about what they knew about what was happening on their platform.

And they said, okay, let's bring this up on January 7th again.

Let's revisit this.

I mean, it just feels like you use the term, and it sounds like they have just mastered this externally.

And we we didn't realize the extent that they'd mastered it internally, the slow roll.

Right.

Right.

Thoughtful, that's interesting.

We need to look into that.

But everyone back to work today, though.

I mean, it's just sort of, it feels as if, and it feels to me like it's just going to get worse and worse the more we learn about January 6th.

Yep, I think so too.

That's why I'm saying this is this is going in one direction alone.

And they won't stop.

They won't stop.

You saw those protests for Kylie,

whatever the fuck his name is, the guy who won't take the vaccine, the basketball player.

They broke into the Nets from Stadium and Barclays.

Just like, they're insane.

They're insane.

They just, they like about protesting that they won't let him play because he doesn't have a vaccine.

Anyway, it is not to stop until something happens.

That is the way it's going to go.

Just very briefly, PayPal says it won't acquire Pinterest.

So who?

Now it's in play.

It's in play.

This is, I don't know if you have any, I don't know if you've talked to anybody, but I can tell you what I think is happening here, and I'm curious to get your take.

But,

you know, they put out a thing saying we have no interest.

I think what happened,

this was reported by what I feel like are fairly credible journalists who fact-check this stuff.

They won't just go on one source saying, oh,

I mean, the numbers were there.

Everything was there.

Pinterest was oddly quiet.

They didn't come out and deny it.

I think what happened was, and companies do this, PayPal said, all right, we're going to do this.

They had interest from Pinterest and they float the idea and they they see how the market responds.

And the market didn't like it.

Unlike when Square decided to buy, I think it was after pay, and basically paid for the acquisition on the day of the acquisition because their stock was up more than the cost of the acquisition, PayPal's stock went down 5%.

And Pinterest didn't go up.

The markets didn't seem to like this.

And then you had the double whammy of Snap reporting shitty earnings because Apple is flexing their power.

Yeah, we'll get to that.

So I think basically PayPal, the PayPal board, and my guess is in any negotiation, Pinterest has decided, well, actually, we want more.

And they've probably gotten very confident in their, in the terms around the discussion.

And PayPal probably said, you know what?

We'll come back to you in 60 days when your stock's been cut 30% because you're going to endure the same pain.

Yeah, I think it's still in play.

I still, the idea of it as something you and I have talked about is still in play in some way.

But I think you're completely, that sounds, that sounds plausible.

I would say that's.

Yeah, they floated it.

It didn't work.

Everyone that's out supported, including Pinterest, is about to be taken to the woodshed courtesy of Apple.

So PayPal's like, let's talk about this again in 60 days.

All right.

Okay, well then time for you've led us into our first big story.

Apple's privacy changes are causing calamity for big tech companies, some of them.

More could be on the way.

Apple's new feature makes it easier for users to opt out of ad tracking.

In fact, you have to opt in.

That's bad news for companies that make money by serving up ads.

Last week, analysts heard about how the changes were affecting Snap Inc.

Snap shares fell 27% on the news.

It's the worst day ever in the market.

The changes are expected to affect Facebook, which talks about their results today, Google, Twitter, and other tech companies.

These companies are built on advertising.

So they're trying to both Google and Facebook are trying to push back on it.

So what?

So tell us about this, Scott.

There's other ways to make money, of course.

We'll talk about that in a minute, but what do you give us some insight?

It's great to control the rails.

And when you control the rails, either through an operating system that is so dominant or you actually control the physical item that people absorb the information through,

you're in charge.

And Zuckerberg has realized this for a long time and has desperately been trying.

You know, they were talking about a phone, they were hoping that their Oculus is, but when you control the rails, you can make these sort of decisions.

And Apple wants a subscription app-based economy, they do not want an ad-based economy.

And so, when they can come in and basically do what Google used to do to everybody, do a Panda.

I remember it when I was on the board of the New York Times, we went to about.com and overnight there was a Panda update, and our revenue to about went down 60%

in 24 hours.

And all of a sudden, a company that we could have sold for a billion dollars wasn't worth what we paid for it.

And there's different forms of vertical.

The Android operating system is so powerful.

Technically, that's vertical.

They're more powerful than the phone itself.

But when Apple can flip a switch and say, we're moving to a cookie-less world,

it's going to wreak havoc everywhere.

And the net effect, the second-order effect, is companies ranging from Twitter to Snap are all of a sudden and Pinterest are going to say, we want to be on the last helicopter out of Vietnam called the ad-supported business model.

Because if you're not Google or Facebook, you're the yellow pages.

You're in a shitty ad-supported business that's in structural decline.

Everybody says digital marketing.

Digital marketing is an awful business unless you work for Facebook, Google, or Amazon.

Well, even they are sort of trying to figure out what to do.

And we'll see the impact today.

We don't know this at the time of we're taping this because the results aren't out yet, but we will later today.

I think it won't be as bad as people think.

Everyone is going to look for evidence of it.

I don't think it's going to be as bad as people think

because

they control so much of the ecosystem.

But I think the really interesting thing here is that it's going to put almost every ad-supported media company that is not Facebook or Google into play because they're now officially in really shitty businesses, but they command an extraordinary amount of attention.

And there's going to be other players, specifically FinTech, they're going to say the arbitrage here is to to monetize your attention in different ways different ways so how so tell us so there's obviously all kinds of things you could do um subscriptions are are a possibility can can a model like that work for apps like snapchat are they useful enough i i my kids do find them useful i don't know if they they're not used to paying for them the most obvious one is square acquires acquires twitter twitter you can already start doing remission and transfer payments but rather than running ads figure out a way for me to get into payments or pay for stuff or shopify says says okay Pinterest or okay they're doing it with Spotify the Shopify Spotify deal is really interesting they're saying okay all this attention we're going to make a more seamless handoff to buying stuff and make it super easy you know the word where everyone's everyone's moving towards super app and everyone has their own entree into it but the companies that are going to be more aggressive super app everyone the ones that are going to be most aggressive trying to get to the super app future are going to be the fintech guys because they're playing with the house's money their their valuations right now are so incredible but companies like

companies like Twitter, Snap, Pinterest, where

they don't command the valuation they occupy in terms of attention, it's an attention economy.

They command more attention than market capitalization.

Whereas fintech companies command more market capitalization than attention.

I really have to write about super app, what that means, the idea of a super app.

So many people elsewhere have been talking about it.

100%.

100%.

And

power abhors vacuum.

And the two closest things to super apps were Tencent and Alibaba.

And everyone, there's a ton of insecurity around those companies as there is around any Chinese company.

And so all of a sudden, it creates an opening for a company, an American company, to say,

we are in the pole position to be the first global super app.

And that company's market cap is going to go crazy.

And then they can go start use that capital, pull the future forward and start buying more and more attention.

Do you know who just said super app to me?

Shockingly?

Ken Buck, Representative Ken Buck, was talking about the need for super apps versus these individualized silos of power.

He said, let them all compete together.

It was really interesting to hear it from a congressman, so therefore I have to write about it.

So,

what about insights into ad fraud?

And then we'll have to move on to our next story.

But

this idea around views, and there's some data around that.

There's been stuff put out with Facebook talking about how, wait till they find out, we don't know, kind of stuff.

So, ad fraud is really going to be a bigger thing among marketers, presumably.

It has been.

Well,

if you look at dollar volume, I mean, it's supposedly on some of the most well-known digital platforms we know, oftentimes two-thirds of the reported views or clicks are bots or fake.

And so by that metric, if you times it by the global digital marketing market and

organized crime, the biggest business in organized crime, even bigger than drugs, is digital ad fraud.

Now, having said that, even if 60% of Facebook and Google's clicks or YouTube are fake, it's still better than all the real views that billboards and TV get.

In other words, it's priced in.

It's still, even if 60% of it is fake, even if you have to give 60% of your money to the mob, it's still a better business.

It's still a better way.

Google and Facebook, I mean, do you realize I'm on, so my online ad company, Section 4, we're about to go raise a shit ton of money.

We're going to spend 40% of it or 50% of it on Google or Facebook.

And everyone's like, that's so hypocritical, Scott.

And I'm like, well, okay,

I'm not into coal-fired plants, but I turn on my lights, boss.

If you want to build an online bid, do you realize something like every, I said this at this panel I was on a Green Mantle, and you could visibly see a gasp.

All these people in the world room from all around the world investing billions in startups.

I'm like, every dollar you're investing in a startup, at least 40 cents is going to go to those two people.

And I pointed to two senior execs from Google and Facebook.

Google and Facebook get 40 cents on every dollar invested in a startup right now.

Anyway, it's just,

and everyone talks about ad fraud in a right.

Still interesting what Apple's doing.

Apple's sort of reordering it.

It probably will make Facebook and Google more powerful in the end, unfortunately,

and hurt a lot of these smaller companies like Snap, which has been trying very hard.

That first-party data.

That's the key.

That's another term you're going to hear a lot about, people who actually have first-party data.

Another thing.

And

can build a digital corpus of somebody.

Yep, absolutely.

On their own and offer it.

Yep, absolutely.

All right.

Scott, we're going to go on a quick break.

We come back.

We're going to talk about Amazon employees getting shortchanged, and then we'll talk to a friend of Pivot, Pamela Paul.

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

This is a terrific story by Jody Cantor and many others at the Times.

Amazon's leave system is short-changing workers, according to this story in the New York Times today.

It's something we've talked about with workers before on a Twitter spaces, et cetera, but this is, they've got the goods here.

Amazon employees say that a patchwork of software and uneven policies make it difficult to take paid and unpaid leave.

Some workers have been fired when software mistakenly labeled them no-shows.

The problem affects blue and white-collar workers.

Amazon actually had someone talking about it who's trying to fix it for Amazon.

It's that now the second largest private employer and one of the largest leave administrators in the country.

It's a huge HR miss.

It's something that I've heard in bits and pieces.

Again, a lot of workers talk about this.

But this sort of outlined

what it's like when that happens to people.

Good reminder, there's still tons of jobs that can't be done remotely.

Amazon hired a half a million people in 2020.

So talk a little, did you read the story?

It's an amazing story.

I did.

Yeah.

I thought it was good, but I'm generally, I don't want to say on the side of Amazon here, but the labor shortage is so exceptional right now that...

It's just not an Amazon.

I think the incentives are lined up the right way.

I think it's in Amazon's best interest not to abuse employees or not to develop a reputation.

And remember all the hoopla around Amazon raising minimum wage to $15 an hour?

It's now $22 an hour plus a $3,000 signing bonus.

Yeah.

And other things.

So

to me, the incentives are right here, and Amazon should and will fix this.

And I also think OSHA and lawsuits will also kick in here.

But I don't, you know, for the first time in a long time, and it's a wonderful thing.

If you think about our economy bucketed into three primary stakeholders, right?

You think about consumers, you think about shareholders or investors, and you think about workers.

Consumers have won like crazy.

I don't care what anyone says.

We get a billion dollars in content for every dollar a month.

Consumers have just been the big winners here.

That's the crux of this article.

You show up at the airport, and if you're waiting in line for United, you start tweeting, and they start tweeting back at you for customer service.

If someone sends you something the wrong size, oftentimes you call them and they say, just keep it.

It's just incredible the way consumers have garnered investors, including management.

NASDAQ up five-fold since 2008.

Workers, simply put, have been fucked.

I mean, just literally haven't had a raise in 30 years.

And it's hopefully readjusting or recalibrating in a very significant way.

Hopefully, hopefully.

Although there's some discussion that a lot of the inflation that impacts specifically people around housing and food is going to wipe out all those gains.

But I think this takes care of itself because I think Amazon, I can tell you as someone who's on the board of a company with

12,000 frontline workers,

we are spending the majority of the board meeting talking about

economic and non-economic incentives to get people to show up for work.

This is Panera, presumably.

You can't say that.

Yeah, Panera.

But it's, and it's a good thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

One of the things that's interesting, Amazon did sort of cop to it.

And I think one of the things that went throughout this story, which I thought was interesting, is they've been, as you said, they've been focusing on consumers almost exclusively to the exclusion and shareholders to the exclusion.

Not really shareholders, they just let that take care of itself because it has,

but

to the detriment of employees.

And I think with this many employees, Amazon has, it will be the biggest employer in the country, relatively.

So I think Walmart's the top one.

They all have to spend more time thinking about employees, about leave, about paid leave, about all kinds of things.

And, you know, at some point,

to me, it's not going to end post-pandemic.

Everyone said the great resignation will end.

Our demographics show this is not the case.

There's not enough people to do the work that needs to be done.

There just isn't.

And so, from a population point of view, these companies are going to have to make less money and focus on employees just the way they, this particular company has a laser focus on consumers.

Like, you don't like the mayonnaise?

We'll come pick it up and bring you another one or keep it yourself or do this.

Like, I had something they messed up and they were like, we'll send you a replacement instantly.

And I was, I wasn't even asking for that.

I was just wanted a refund.

And then you don't have to pay for it at all.

And I was like, well, who's paying for that?

Like, you know what I mean?

Like, I didn't ask for that.

And it was, it was all Amazon and it was fascinating.

And I was trying to figure out how they're going to afford it.

And then I, of course, they're taking it from this kind of behavior.

And what's really depressing about the story is the confusion.

Like people who work there are on hold the same way we might be with, say, the gas or water company, right?

They get on these phone trees that they can't even say who they are.

And again, we had a Twitter spaces with a bunch of employees and they they were, this was the thing they were talking about, was that they mess up their time off, they fire them, they miss things, they didn't, you know, this is the most technologically adept company around, can't manage HR.

So perhaps they might want to get into that business and fix it for themselves and then offer it to others.

Might be a good business for Amazon.

Well, that's an interesting thought.

That's what they do with every other expensive cost line.

But the learning here, I think, is that the conventional wisdom was, and every company was saying this, we're, you know, relentlessly and ruthlessly consumer-driven.

And it's a very interesting exercise to go through and say, what stakeholder are we going to focus on?

And the common answer was always, oh, we're

either shareholder driven or consumer driven.

And the reality is there's huge opportunities to be focused on other stakeholders.

HBO's success is that they have always been the best place for talent to work.

And talent, the best talent in the world consistently will do something at HBO for less money than they could get at Hulu or somewhere else because they are very focused on talent.

A company I'm involved with, Better Mortgagers, is going public, has said if we can treat our mortgage counselors better and they make more money in an industry where there's like 90% turnover, it'll pay off because we'll have more people who know what they're doing.

I think Netflix is more employee driven.

There are

different stakeholders you can focus on.

Shopify is not consumer driven, so to speak.

It's retailer driven.

They said Amazon, because of Amazon's consumer relentless focus on the consumer, their retail partners hate them.

Let's make the retailer our core constituency.

So there's this default knee-jerk gag reflex around over-consumer-driven.

You know, think it through because there's other ways to skin a cat.

A and B, this huge that turned into ProLogis.

I remember Hameed Mogadan, who I think is one of the biggest brains in the world of real estate, always used to say, we're not tenant focused, we're not investor focused, we're partner focused.

We find developers and we develop a reputation for being great partners.

And so it's an interesting conversation with companies.

What are our stakeholders and don't immediately back up into this common diatribe of, oh, we're consumer focused.

There are different ways to create shareholder value.

So can I ask you a question?

Because you're not supposed to talk about happen support means, but what is the worry?

How do you get people to work better besides paying them more and stuff?

Is there a bigger thinking around this, how to handle employees going forward?

Well, so what you'll hear across all boards is that people want a sense of purpose.

Supposedly the number one retention vehicle for any company is if you have a friend.

So creating environments where they, and it's harder at a restaurant.

I mean, that's what Google does.

I think Google's genius, in addition to their engineering, is their cafeteria.

Because people have friends there.

They go to work and they have friends and they like coming to work.

So it's

being part of something greater than yourself, feeling like the company is investing in your career and kind of taking an active approach and managing your career.

It's having opportunities for mentorship and growth.

Feeling like the company, I mean, there's all these non-economic things.

I'm much more Darwinian.

I'm like, just pay them more.

Yeah.

This is all a bunch of blah, blah.

Just pay them more.

I don't know.

People don't, I think.

I think they're right.

And that's the pushback I get.

Yeah.

100%.

And the soft stuff, I will say this.

I'll give you an example.

At L2 and a Profit, I started a brand strategy firm.

Every March, I used to take the entire firm to Cabo and say, no spouses, no work.

We're just all going to have a great time.

And I'm not exaggerating, Carrie.

It was always in March every year.

No one would ever leave in January or February because they would wait for this trip.

They were just so.

We did a lot of that.

Walt and I did a lot of that.

And I have to say, those were our best years for employees.

We spent a lot more time.

I mean, we paid very well too, I think, more than in fact, we did compared to other places.

But the highest ROI retention vehicle for young people, hands down, and people don't do it, the highest ROI retention vehicle is really robust, disciplined, thoughtful,

long reviews.

Young people crave feedback.

Yep, 100%.

And a quick trick for any manager, any observation you make around someone who reports to you, email to the file.

When someone feels like you are taking, for lack of a better term, I'll call it a maternal interest, an emotionally vested interest in

their professional career,

that's worth $10,000, $20,000, $50,000 a year to them.

Not an extraordinary thing.

Really robust,

fluid, thoughtful feedback is the greatest ROI in terms of retention.

All right.

Well, on that note, Scott is going to come and give everyone a trip to Cabo here on the staff.

Hola amigos.

I'm not going to Cabo with you ever, ever.

Anyway,

don't, please.

Just give the young people your credit card and tell them what stays in Cabo or happens at Cabo, what happens in Cabo.

You know, Travis Kalanick sent a memo like that, and look what happened to him.

Anyway, let's bring in our friend of Pivot.

Pamela Paul, editor of the New York Times Book Review and author of 100 Things We've Lost to the Internet, which she wrote during the pandemic.

Welcome, Pamela.

Thanks for having me.

So let's talk a little bit about the,

it's a great title for a book, obviously, and you know books, presumably.

So

fewer people remember life before the internet every year.

So tell us why you decided to write about this topic and give us sort of of an overview of what the concept was.

Well, it's funny.

I actually started to write it before the pandemic and I had a little bit of panic when we went into lockdown because we were all very grateful to

have the internet under lockdown.

I mean, it is unimaginable to think about what life would have been like just having access to health information, access to products, being able to order things that could be delivered to our doors if we were lucky enough to have jobs that could be done remotely.

This was our, you know, this was our survival.

So I thought, uh-oh.

But as the pandemic progressed and we spent more and more time increasingly online, I think it brought home a lot of what had been the originating idea of the book, which is to say, The internet has given us many, many things, but as it has giveth, it has also taken away.

And because technology moves so quickly, we don't take a lot of time to pause and say, wait a minute, like, what was it like before we had, say, Amazon or Fresh Direct or Facebook?

What was it like before we all carried the internet around in our pockets on these things that we persist in calling phones, but which really we use very rarely as a telephone?

And so, what I wanted to do was kind of document all of those changes for better and for worse.

Right.

Okay.

Can I say, you're editor of the New York Times Book Review, speaking of lost books?

Did it particularly strike you?

Because if you think about it, one of the first areas that got hit were books.

And obviously, Amazon kind of led the way on that.

Well, you know, the internet obviously disrupted a lot about the books process, certainly distribution.

I mean, it very much affected retail.

And it's also affected production in terms of the kinds of books that get sold.

Again, you know, you could argue about which of that is better and which is worse, depending on your tastes.

Maybe the fact that anyone could self-publish at the drop of a hat and have it distributed and get to readers really quickly is a good thing.

Some might argue that it's a bad thing.

It depends on your level probably of literary snobbishness.

But books themselves have stayed around.

And I think that was actually one of the interesting things about lockdown is that books thrived.

I mean, unfortunately,

book stores had a really tough time, as did many retail establishments.

But books themselves did well.

And I think one of the reasons is that books can be the antidote to a lot of the inattentions and distractions of the internet.

But if you were thinking more broadly about,

I mean, it's just been, there's been like a slow creep of, you know, making our discourse more coarse or teen depression.

I mean, there's some really, really kind of frightening things that have gone slowly simmered to a boil.

When you look back 20 or 30 years,

in terms of the really profound things, what do you think the internet has taken from us?

What would you say your top two or three?

Oh, God.

Well, you know, look, I need very little incentive to go to the darkest place.

And I try not to do that too much.

I'm already there.

You're there.

Okay.

I will join you.

Are you a glass half empty kind of person?

Welcome back.

Oh, my God.

The class is like,

is gone.

Yeah, I mean,

here's one of the things I tried to do in the book.

Before I get to that very dark place, I will say this book came from the darkness.

It came from a place of, I need to write about all the things that are upsetting, infuriating, depressing me, and making me sort of, you know, tear my hair out over our future, the future of us individually, collectively, as a nation and as a planet.

You have found your people.

You have found your people.

That's where I was coming from, temperamentally, emotionally.

And then the book itself, when I started writing it, you know, I started from a place of, this is where we have, this is where we are, and this is where we are going.

And then I went to, this is how we got here.

This is how this technology took hold and slowly trans, or very quickly transformed everything.

And then the last bit that was left was, wait a minute, what was it like before this?

And ultimately, I got rid of those, those two first things.

In part, because there are many books and op-eds and podcasts.

And I mean, that's all we talk about, right?

We talk about like, like, what does this mean?

What's happening today with Facebook and with Twitter and with, you know, TikTok?

And what is it?

Where is it all going?

And then we a little bit talk about, you know, wait a minute, how did these companies take over in this way?

How did our minds get taken over in this way?

How did our lives become this?

And the thing that we don't talk about is what was it like before?

But if you'd like me

to stay for a moment on that third thing, I mean, I think, you know, again, you could get very, very big and talk about, you know, privacy, democracy, our minds, our emotional well-being.

Those are things that I think that are, if not gone, at least like very much at risk in a lot of ways because of the internet.

I tried to really, though, I did try to kind of drill down more into the everyday to sort of stay away.

Or if I talked about privacy, I wanted to talk about it maybe in a few ways that are less remarked upon because we all know that we essentially have no privacy.

But what I thought about in this book is, well, hmm, maybe we're a little bit complicit in that.

Maybe we're giving it away.

And the chapter on privacy in this book, I looked at children's privacy and the way in which parents of all people who are so keen, and I'm a parent, of protecting our children also inadvertently, sometimes willingly give it away, give our children's privacy away.

And one of the things that you, you know, loss is obviously a negative connotation.

Is there anything that's been better from your perspective?

Now, I I am actually an internet, you know, I've been pushing the internet for a long time.

I just don't like what these people have done to my house, my beautiful house of the internet.

But what do you like better?

What do you think is a better experience?

Because there's tons of stuff you could think about that is better for different people, depending on who they are.

Yeah, you know, and also like some things are better and they're worse, you know, like one of them is getting lost, right?

Like, who gets lost now?

It's pretty hard to get completely and utterly lost, unless, of course, you lose your signal to the internet.

But in general, we just don't get lost anymore.

And most of the time, that's good.

And when I wrote about that, I sort of thought about like, wait a minute, what did it used to be like?

Because we've all probably forgotten.

Remember, like before you left someone's house, you had them write down directions, and then you had to put the directions like on the seat next to you if you didn't have someone holding it.

Do you remember the AAA packet of maps?

I am.

Yes.

These things are hilarious.

Remember, like

the road with a big unfolded accordion?

Where's Linden Avenue?

Yes.

Right.

And they were never updated.

Like 83.

You'd go on the back, look at it alphabetically.

I'm sorry, 83.

Oh, my God.

No, completely.

And no one knew how to fold those things back up, you know, and you would have like a ton of them in that, in the side compartment of your door in the car.

And they're still there, which is still in the car and doesn't work for drinks.

Bye.

That's right.

So like you don't get lost.

So that's mostly good, right?

But there are things that are kind of lost.

There are some things that are gained.

So again, I'm going to the negative here, but one of the interesting things is that now that we're all using GPS and we're all using, you know, various mapping apps, we no longer are going along the same routes that we're quote unquote supposed to go on, that like urban planners designed around us, that gas stations were built on, right?

And so you find yourself like, Everyone's had this experience where you're driving around and you're like, this is not the normal way to get to wherever it is.

Like, you're on some crazy back road and you're going through all these twists and turns in a purely residential neighborhood.

So, I wanted to think about those things.

Like, also, what is it like for people who live on those streets that have become like the optimized route to get everywhere?

Like, they did not plan to have all those cars going by them.

Yeah, that's an interesting one.

Yeah, I was having a discussion with my kids when they were younger about phones that are pay phones.

That was quite a something.

I was like, you stand.

And then I thought that was a good thing.

That was an actual good thing.

Yeah,

a good thing.

I mean, I remember I was in Iceland recently with my kids.

And well, not recently.

It's been the pandemic recently, but pre-pandemic, I was in Iceland with my kids.

And I turned off the mapping app and I decided we would try to like get back to where we were going according to like a very tall steeple.

And that was super fun for a little while.

And then I was like, I'm really hungry.

New Finland.

Mom, we're in Newfoundland.

That's right.

There's a polar bear.

And then I was like, you know, I'm really hungry.

I just want to get to dinner.

I'm going to turn the mapping device back on.

And, you know, my youngest child was like disappointed.

He thought, no, no, no, that was so much more fun when we were lost.

We're pioneers.

We're pioneers.

The framing here is, I think we, even if we all acknowledge we're net gainers, we're net gainers from pesticides and fossil fuels, but we still decide that there's some negatives and we have a thoughtful conversation.

I was at a concert this weekend and a friend of mine, he said something that really stilled me.

And I love you to comment on it.

He said that these companies have taken

from my kids any anonymity.

And that is, he said, if I could give my kid either, if I had a choice to give them a bottle of jack and car keys

and marijuana or give them snap and give them Instagram, he goes, can you imagine what it's like to see your full self at the age of 15, 24 by 7?

And I thought that was such an insightful comment that when we were growing up, when we said something stupid in math class, when we liked a program that other people didn't like, when we wore a stupid outfit, whatever it was, we escaped to our houses, we escaped to our sports leagues, and now 24 by 7, our full self is on display.

And that's just got to be so taxing for young people.

It's got to be, it's just got to raise their adrenaline to 24 by 7.

It feels like we've just stolen that from our youth.

Do you have any thoughts on this notion that we've taken away the anonymity and every kid is now faced with his or her full self, 24 by 7?

Oh, completely.

I mean, I have two chapters in the book that touch on this.

One of them, one of the lost things, is uninhibitedness, right?

Like you're never going to do a wacky dance, like at a party being like, whelp, you know, like only a few people would have seen that because anyone can take out their camera and record it and post it.

And it's online essentially forever.

And no matter, you know, Snapchat, all of those disappearing things, like anyone can screenshot them.

Whatever is captured on the internet is, you know, essentially never going away.

And that means that like if you completely flub it at the School of Play, it's no longer something that just is over the next day.

The other thing that's gone is no one will remember in the morning.

You know, that whole idea is gone.

Like that used to, you know, after a really stupid night in college.

That's been a problem for Scott, you know.

Right.

You could console yourself with like, well, no one will remember this in the morning.

Now, of course, there is a little bit of a new variant of that, which is that because the internet moves so quickly, right, people will move on.

And yet, and again, going back to the dark side, maybe they will go on and they'll move on to scandal number 33 and number 434 of that particular day.

But the record is still there, right?

The record is still there.

Even though you're talking about it, the kids probably don't know they have lost anything because they've lived in this.

They've swum in this ocean, right?

So so they, this is how they think it is, they don't know any other way, right?

Well, the book, I thought, you know, it's interesting.

People will read it differently depending on their age.

For some of us, it's like, oh my god, right.

Oh, yeah, I remember that.

And then for younger people, it's like, here is your guide to the pre-internet life.

Like, this is what it was like in the before times.

I had this thing happen.

Now, this is not an internet technology.

This is like a super basic technology, but there are many internet equivalents of it.

So, like many people, I have a few different sets of keys to to the car, but I had, you know, couldn't find any of the ones that have the little beeper remote opener thing.

And so, you know, how you just have that one that's like the key of despair, that's just the key on the chain.

So I took that out and I was going out to the car with my 16-year-old daughter.

And I went to open the car with the key.

And she said, oh my God, you can open a car with a key?

Like it just, you know, had never occurred to her.

And that's essentially what a lot of pre-internet life is like for digital natives.

Yeah, absolutely.

I have one more question that Scott will probably have one more.

People go on these digital detox retreats that, you know, we've written about it a lot in the New York Times and everywhere else.

The vinyl records sales are now up.

Do people, is there a romance to the time before?

No, I think there is a desire, but it's really hard.

I mean, it's very, it's interesting that there are these retreats, right?

It's like yet another product and service sold to us that's sort of based off the internet economy.

Really, you can do your own retreat.

Just leave your phone at home and go on vacation.

Now, who would do that?

Well, not me.

I can't do that, but maybe some people can.

Like we can all at least, we have the option to make these choices.

One of the interesting things I think about technology and about upgrading tech, you know, to and adopting various apps and

different, you know, internet technologies is that like any other product or service, it's sold to us and it's marketed to us.

Like if you use this deodorant, you will be more confident.

You will smell nicer.

You will look more beautiful.

And most of us can tell, oh, that is a marketing message.

That is to sell as a product.

With the internet, it's so effective, right?

And then with the deodorant, we could be like, nope, I choose not to.

I choose to have my natural smell.

But with the internet, if you choose not to, right?

I love that analogy.

I'm just going to say it.

I love that analogy.

You know, then you're a Luddite.

Something's wrong with you.

You're resisting change.

Well, when we turn down other products and services, it's not like we're condemned in some way, you know, necessarily because you didn't buy this sweater.

It doesn't mean that you are resisting change.

And yet it's such an effective sell with technology.

Yeah, you may be just resisting cashmere.

Scott, last question.

So, Pamela, you mentioned you have kids.

Are you comfortable disclosing their ages?

Yes, they are 12, 14, and 16.

Okay, so you're in the thick of it.

I have 11 and 14-year-old boys.

What is your approach?

What do you do or not do to try and recognizing the impact that some of these technologies, what is your approach to parenting around the intersection between parenting and digital technologies?

Well, my children would describe it, I'm sure, as evil.

You know, again, one of the things that we all forget is that we have a choice.

to adopt things or not adopt things.

And when you're the parent, you have the choice, right?

It's really hard because your children will beg and plead and want these things.

But what I can say is

that

my kids were the last to get a quote-unquote phone.

And one of them actually still doesn't have one.

What was that age though?

Generally speaking, when did you give your kids a phone?

High school.

High school.

High school.

That's late.

Yeah.

That's brutal.

Wow.

Yeah.

That is late.

That is monstrous.

Even for your own utility, like being able to say, all right, when mom or dad come pick me up.

I mean, a lot of, you give up a lot of your own utility as a parent when you.

You do.

I mean, that's what's interesting too.

Look, it's easier for parents to have the phone.

It's so much easier.

It would be so much more convenient.

Halloween's coming up.

I would know where my kid is.

I have to, what you have to remember is, and that's what I was trying to do with this book.

Like, remember the before times.

In the before times, somehow our kids all went out for Halloween, right?

There were all these scary stories about like the poison apple and the kids getting kidnapped, but somehow it didn't happen.

And our kids remained alive and well at the end of Halloween night, even though we weren't able to keep track of them the entire time.

So I, it's harder for me as a parent in a way, right?

Like I have to let go of that control of knowing exactly where my kid is 24-7.

Well, Pamela, you'll be happy to know that in my neighborhood, this...

chill jerk across the street is threatening to give away supersized candy bars.

So I, any kid who comes to my house this Sunday night is getting a full rack of ribs, Pamela.

A full rack of ribs.

That's how you embarrass the dads down the block.

Hello, Flex.

By the way, that's the Twitter of the genius Simon Holland, the best dad jokes in the world.

I'm sorry, go ahead.

All right.

Thank you, Dad.

If you could pick one thing, wave a wand and get it back and replace it with what the internet has replaced, pick one thing.

Oh, wow.

Well, you know, this one's really personal to me, but it's for my kids, too, and for everyone in the future.

When I graduated from college, I felt like I absolutely needed to have a complete change

and to force myself really into the most uncomfortable position of all, which was to, I ended up, I moved to a city in northern Thailand.

I didn't know anyone.

I didn't have a job.

I didn't have any connections.

And it was pre-internet or like pre-you know, internet for regular people.

It was in the early 90s.

I didn't even have a landline, let alone a cell phone.

I was totally disconnected.

It was one of the hardest, most challenging times of my life.

It completely changed my outlook on many things moving forward.

And I think it is utterly impossible to recapture that.

So it goes back a little bit to what you were saying, Scott, earlier, like just to be completely alone, to be unobserved,

to be disconnected, not because you're choosing to, but because in a way you really have no other option.

Those kinds of challenges to go to put a backpack on and go traveling in China for six weeks by yourself and not even be able to make a phone call because because you didn't have a phone card and it was too expensive.

Like that experience is something that's lost.

And I think for me, it was so formative.

Maybe there are new kinds of formative experiences that'll come up that can somehow recapture that.

But it's something that I wish that everyone got to experience.

And I don't know if they'll be able to do it.

Yeah, unless they go into the wilderness.

My son's going into the wilderness for 80 days without anyone.

Oh,

I'm very excited for him.

No phone?

No, nothing.

Wow.

Yeah, watch the movie Into the Wild or read the book.

Oh, hush.

Scott, all right, Scott.

And thank you, Pamela.

Thank you, Pamela.

The book is called 100 Things We've Lost the Internet.

It's a terrific book.

I have read it.

It's so good.

Thank you so much for coming on.

Thanks for having me.

All right, Scott, that was fascinating.

Good questions.

One more quick break.

We'll be back for Wins and Fails.

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Okay, Scott, wins and fails.

What are your wins and fails?

I'll start with my fail, and it's more of a prediction than a fail.

Francis Haugen and Facebook and just the damage they do and their sometimes tone-deaf inability to read the room.

It's been the mother of all gifts and cloud cover

for another platform that is going to come under increased scrutiny, and that scrutiny is going to be warranted.

Any guesses?

Oh, hmm.

Google?

Specifically?

YouTube.

Yeah.

And that is,

I think some of the damage that Instagram has levied specifically on girls, I think YouTube will be found that there's a lot of evidence about some of the damage they've done on young men or boys.

And I think Susan Wojicki is an incredible heat shield.

I think she's very likable, very smart.

She is indeed.

But some of the data and articles coming out about their meetings feel eerily reminiscent.

A lot of earnest, thoughtful discussion, always opting on the side of free speech,

reticence, slow roll to take content down.

I think Facebook is in a world, it's getting all the arrows right now.

At some point, I think when they kind of start to fall, and I think the beginning or the end of the beginning of Facebook, I don't know what you would call it, but I think we're going to start to see as soon as the sun is getting so bright here that the heat shield that has been or the reflective, the reflective power of Facebook is going to start to wane, and there's going to be increased sunlight on YouTube.

All right.

I like that.

Okay.

Your win?

My win is occasionally you see a performance or something and it just inspires you and you feel like you're a part of the beginning of something great.

And I found I was late to the party here, but nonetheless, it's my win.

I watch Saturday Night Live and Succession both on Sunday nights.

I ping through, I watch the Cold Open, the monologue,

and then I watch Weekend Update.

And I watch the first act of the performance of the artist.

I never watched the second.

And this time, for the first time in a decade, I watched both.

But I think Brandy Carlisle, who I had never heard of before.

Oh my God.

Why?

All the lesbians know her.

Because I'm lame.

Anyways,

but I just thought she was incredible.

And I worked out this morning to her.

And I've always, my favorite artist is

Tom Petty.

And I've always thought, who's the heir to Tom Petty?

I think, and the thing I loved about Tom Petty was, quite frankly, he wasn't very attractive.

He didn't work out.

He wore stupid clothes.

He looked weird.

And he was so singular in his voice and ability to combine different genres.

I just think he's an incredible artist.

And I was thought, who's the heir to Tom Petty?

And I think she might be.

You know,

they've categorized her music as alternative country.

I like the fact that she's 40, that she's not one of these 19-year-olds who's super ripped and being managed by social media.

But I just absolutely was blown away

by Brandy Carlisle.

I have been a longtime fan of hers, and I will give you some of her old stuff, which is even better.

We'll get her to play at PivotCon.

I will.

I shall.

She's really great.

I don't know her.

I mean, all the lesbians know her, by the way, but that's okay.

She's in that genre.

But

she's wonderful.

She has, I think, my father's in my father's yard.

It's a wonderful song about her father and the things he collected.

And it's beautiful.

She's so much fun.

Such a unique sound.

Such an incredible voice.

She has amazing songs.

And all I have with SNL.

SNL, you got to, you have to, like, talk about sunlight.

There's no, studio musicians do not do well on SNL.

That place is not set up for a concert.

Yep.

And when you sound good on SNL, it means you know how to play live.

Yeah,

she sounded fantastic.

She did.

Let me give you a little tip.

Go get an album she did called The Story in 2007.

All right.

And her original Brandi Carlisle.

Get the story, and it will blow your friggin' mind.

Okay.

All right.

All right.

You should do that.

She's wonderful.

I'm glad you become a lesbian as usual.

I have just one.

I have one win that Scott likes Brandi Carlisle.

I have many other lesbians lined up behind her, so I will show you that.

And then I would say my fail was Dune.

I went to see Dune.

I'm talking to.

Oh, you didn't like Dune?

I saw it.

Did not.

It was boring.

It never got going.

They're just setting up the rest.

I literally,

I didn't buy Timothy Chalomet, Timothy Chalomet,

as a hero.

I thought the weird sort of, you know, I later read that apparently white supremacists love this book and everything else, which was interesting.

But this whole, like, he's here to save the people who looked very competent.

Just trust me on this.

What?

Take five milligrams of chocolate CBD and go see it again.

No.

Because I was in the theater going, this is not a good movie, but it's so beautiful to look at.

Okay.

And all they're doing, it's like the first episode of Game of Thrones.

It was boring, but they're setting up all the characters.

It was not boring.

It was nitty-hiting.

You're right there.

The movie kind of never got going, did it?

It's I just and then all Zendaya did was look backwards at him and I was like, look at the other guy.

He's hotter.

What?

I mean, it was ridiculous.

You know who the highlight was?

The fight scenes with Jason Mamo, I think.

Mamo was hot.

But whatever, you know, just did not like it.

I was looking at my watch.

You know how the costumes?

I thought it was like Handmaid's Tale with a bigger budget.

You know, they kept talking, like, the suits of the summer.

They kept talking about them and kept showing them again.

Like, here's the suits.

By the way, they flick off water and then you can drink it.

And then, by the way, the suits and the suits.

I was like, I got it.

The suits.

Like, it just was like,

yeah.

I kind of agree with you.

I kind of agree.

I kept waiting for it to get going.

Every time Stellen Skarsgaard emerged out of something gross, I'm like, oh, here he comes again out of something.

I got it.

He's gross.

Like, it was hitting you over the head.

And then I tweeted, it was Sandy and it was noisy.

That's what it was.

I like Sting in the original dude.

What was his name?

The guy from Sex and City?

Kyle McLaughlin.

Oh, Kyle McLaughlin.

I know Kyle McLaughlin.

He's a lovely man.

Let me just say he's married to a friend of mine.

And Jorgen Schemper, that famous German actor.

I think the people who made it didn't love it, as I recall from discussions with people who were.

Oh, my God.

And who is the mom in it?

Constantly crying.

I kept saying, oh my God, God, that's a good one.

Rebecca Ferguson, I think.

What else is she doing?

She's a Bond.

She was a Bond.

She was not a girl at all.

She kicked ass in.

I'm sorry, not Bond, Mission Impossible movies.

Sorry, Tom Cruise.

She's in Mission Impossible movies.

I think two of them.

That's right.

She's great.

She's great.

But the whole thing.

She's very weepy a lot.

I was like, enough.

Very weepy.

Enough, enough, enough, enough.

I got, and the darkness and the banging.

I was like, oh, Jesus.

I wanted to run over and watch Bond again.

That's what I wanted to do.

Anyway, I would say that was it.

My win was my beautiful weekend with the golden child.

We went and got pumpkins and picked apples.

It was lovely.

It's very, and we turned off our phones.

That's what we did.

Halloween.

We did it.

Daddy loves Halloween.

That is the one great thing about

the digital age is having a phone on you to take beautiful pictures.

And I love that.

I don't think you're missing the moment.

I think it's really nice to have them.

That's what I would say.

And my dad carried around a camera his whole life before he died.

And so I have tons and beautiful pictures of us as kids.

So I like cameras.

Anyway, that is the show.

A podcast recommendation recommendation for pivot listeners.

If you're not already, you should be listening to this season of Vox Media's Land of the Giants.

It's doing very well.

It tells the definitive story of Apple through our singular narrative approach.

This season includes the story of Tim Cook's succession of Steve Jobs, the story of the iPhone's creation, and a deep dive into Apple's codependent relationship with China.

You can binge the entire season this week, starting Wednesday, and we will be back on Friday for more.

I am looking forward to a good listener question for Friday's show.

If you've got one, submit it to nymag.com/slash pivot.

Scott, read us out, and I cannot wait to hear about

what Halloween costs to me you've selected for Sunday.

I think Sunday is Halloween.

I'm glad to see you're starting to invest in our relationship.

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

Ernie Andrew Tott engineered this episode.

Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or on Android user.

Check us out on Spotify or frankly, wherever you listen to podcasts.

If you like this show, please recommend it to a friend.

Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Box Media.

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

What Kara said is 100% right.

You got to trust us on this if you're a parent, and even if you're not, just take a ton of pictures.

Apple has this thing where they bring up pictures.

I did this yesterday, Kara.

It showed a picture of me and my youngest, and it absolutely just stilled me.

Take a ton of pictures.

This month on Explain It To Me, we're talking about all things wellness.

We spend nearly $2 trillion on things that are supposed to make us well: collagen smoothies, and cold plunges, Pilates classes, and fitness trackers.

But what does it actually mean to be well?

Why do we want that so badly?

And is all this money really making us healthier and happier?

That's this month on Explain It To Me, presented by Pureleaf.

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