Facebook’s Blacklist, Apple Trims iPhone Production and William Shatner Went to Space

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Speaker 1 hi everyone this is pivot from new york magazine and the vox media podcast network i'm kara swisher and daddy went deep in the paint last night kara did you why what do you do in florida in florida new york i'm in new york oh new york

Speaker 1 I'm up here filming the CNN Pleu pilot. Uh-huh.

Speaker 1 And which made me deeply insecure because we go into some bomb-like lair in the meatpacking district and they open up this huge elevator door and there's like 40 people there for, I don't know what.

Speaker 1 Oh, they're there for me for this pilot. Huge imposter syndrome, huge insecurity.
And then what makes it worse?

Speaker 16 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Don Lemon shows up and he's very handsome. He's very handsome.
He's very handsome.

Speaker 16 Did you say hi from me?

Speaker 1 I like Don Lemon. I said hi, and then

Speaker 1 I'm really fucking insecure. So I go to Shake Shack, which helps a little.

Speaker 16 Helps a lot. Wait, wait, why was Don Lemon there? I don't even understand.

Speaker 1 I'm not supposed to reveal the behind the scenes.

Speaker 1 Okay, whatever.

Speaker 1 Don, you know, Don's a sand and star. Anyways.
I get that. And then

Speaker 1 I'm still insecure. And then what do I do?

Speaker 1 I have

Speaker 1 drinks with Paul Rabel. Do you know Paul?

Speaker 16 Yeah, I love Paul Rabel. He's a lacrosse star.
Yeah. So

Speaker 1 not only a lacrosse star, greatest living lacrosse player. Not that there's many dead lacrosse players.
But anyways, he's the greatest, and he just retired.

Speaker 1 The guy looks like he was chiseled out of stone. He couldn't.

Speaker 1 He's also

Speaker 1 listen to a word he said. All I kept thinking was, how does the same species produce him and me? How does that, I'm the different phylum or genome.
Yeah. God.
And so that makes me deeply insecure.

Speaker 16 He's a perfect version of you, Scott.

Speaker 1 He's no version of me.

Speaker 16 That's true. That's just no version of me.

Speaker 16 What else did you do after that?

Speaker 1 No, and then I just went and got makers and ginger. But anyways, go ahead.
Now I feel better. Go ahead.
What did you do?

Speaker 16 I got my booster booster shot and my flu shot last night with Clara with me. Nice.

Speaker 1 Which booster did you get at?

Speaker 16 The Pfizer.

Speaker 1 The Pfizer. The Pfizer, yeah.
Yeah. Not as cool as us with the Moderna.

Speaker 16 All right, whatever. Nonetheless,

Speaker 16 I'm all boostered up.

Speaker 1 You're going to feel a little loopy. I just want to watch.

Speaker 16 They gave the flu shot at the same time. I thought that was super interesting.

Speaker 16 But Clara was enjoyable too. That's my evening.
This is what I do in the evenings. Then I made her dinner and we dipped chicken in applesauce.
That was my evening.

Speaker 1 Oh, I so win. I so win.
Yeah. I so win.
Paul Rabel and Maya Closing Ginger, I so win.

Speaker 16 Then, I want to get to it. Then I watched the Dave Chappelle special with my son Louis.

Speaker 1 Oh, I'm so curious. I watched it too.

Speaker 16 There's a lot of controversy around it.

Speaker 1 I'm so curious. Are we going to talk about that?

Speaker 16 Yes, we are in just a second. But before we get to that,

Speaker 1 Space, a final frontier.

Speaker 16 Wilden Schottner got back from space safely.

Speaker 1 I'm so filled with emotion about what just happened. I just, it's extraordinary.

Speaker 16 The Star Trek actor flew aboard Blue Origin's new Shepard capsule. He's the oldest person to fly in space or near space, I guess.

Speaker 16 Jeff Bezos greeted him on landing. At the same time, Blue Origin's undergoing, I've read several stories, about the employees at Blue Origin, overworking

Speaker 16 employees, mishandling harassment allegations, a dude culture under its CEO.

Speaker 16 And then also, Prince William suggested we should be more focused on saving the planet than having William Shatner shoved up in his paper.

Speaker 1 Well, then, we're all going to contemplate that suggestion. Prince William, Prince William has a deal.

Speaker 16 But we agree with him. You agree with him.
I'm just saying he's on your side. Space tourism is ridiculous.
I'm just saying.

Speaker 1 You're in violent agreement with Prince Williams. What does William think about climate change?

Speaker 1 You know what?

Speaker 16 They can have opinions. Why do you get to have opinions and they don't?

Speaker 1 But why do we have to care? That's my thing.

Speaker 16 Why do we have to care about your opinions? I think it's fine. I think he has the same opinion as you do.
He has the same exact opinion.

Speaker 16 Now, getting back to Blue Origin, they have a 20%, according to CNBC, attrition rate employed, which is really nerve-wracking when it comes to rockets, I think.

Speaker 1 What is the average, like 8 or 15%?

Speaker 1 I don't think that's terrible.

Speaker 16 Typical attrition is 8% to 9% a year. But anyway, they do have this issue around the CEO and the dude culture, which comes as zero surprise because it's a rocket thing.

Speaker 1 I'm sorry. A dude culture at an organization taking the wealthiest man's penis into space.
And they're shocked it's a dude's culture. Yeah.
Yeah. No, I think Gloria Allred's their general counsel.

Speaker 1 I mean, come on.

Speaker 1 Does that shock anyone?

Speaker 16 I know. I get it, but it doesn't mean it has to be so.
It doesn't mean that. Anyway, nonetheless, up and down for Bezos this week.
I do think.

Speaker 1 What does Prince William think?

Speaker 16 Hush up. Listen to me.
Listen, I'm glad they sent William Shatner. I think that was actually pretty smart.

Speaker 16 Anyway, we'll see how that goes. I think still, it doesn't matter.
Elon Musk is cleaning their clock is all that I know that I can understand. And doing real stuff, doing real man stuff.

Speaker 1 William Shatner, any 90-year-old doing anything like this, it is inspiring. I mean, I don't know if you saw his interview with Anderson Cooper, but the guy at 90 is really impressive.

Speaker 16 There's just nothing around it.

Speaker 1 He's a great character.

Speaker 1 And Blue Origin. I don't care.
I don't know what the attrition rate is. Their PR department is fucking genius.
The astronaut they put up who didn't have a chance to be an astronaut. I forget her name.

Speaker 16 Yeah, Wally Funk.

Speaker 1 Wally Funk. And then Shatner.

Speaker 1 It is an inspiring PR stunt. If they had been really smart, if they had been really smart.
What would they do?

Speaker 1 When Shatner came down on the capsule, the Blue Origin capsule, they would have had everyone dress up like apes.

Speaker 1 And then when he walked out, got out of the capsule and he'd landed back on Earth and everyone was.

Speaker 1 They should have filmed that. Just to see how a 90-year-old reacts to going into space and coming back and it's all apes.

Speaker 16 So he would Charlton Heston it. You know he Charlton Heston.

Speaker 1 Oh my God. That would have been the gangster move of the century.

Speaker 16 I'm so glad you're not a billionaire. I'm so glad you would have unlimited money to do shitty things to people.
That'd be true. Here's the deal.

Speaker 16 I wish they would stop doing stunts at Blue Origin and actually do.

Speaker 16 But that's all they have, Kara.

Speaker 1 No, they don't.

Speaker 16 He has unlimited funds. No, no, no.
You can really innovate and they could really compete. I think they could.

Speaker 1 I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 When the United States was producing cars that got eight miles to the gallon and didn't have airbags, we were sending people a quarter of a million miles and landing them on a rock rotating several thousand miles an hour.

Speaker 1 We didn't even know what the rock was made of. And then we figured out a way to get him back safely.
And we want to celebrate. I mean, this is literally like,

Speaker 1 I find the whole thing so ridiculous. I mean, literally ridiculous.
I think this is totally ridiculous.

Speaker 16 So does Prince William. You and he are on the same page on this issue.
You're together. Anyway, let's get to Dave Chappelle because I did watch it last night.
Netflix won't apologize.

Speaker 16 That's the message of co-CEO Ted Sorrandos, who we had at Code recently sent to employees who are angry over Dave Chappelle's newest stand-up special, The Closer. Chappelle's new set features several,

Speaker 16 I don't know if to say anti-trans and anti-queer comments. They're just, they're jokes.
They're jokes is what they are, including a bit where he brags about beating up a lesbian.

Speaker 16 That one, I, it was not offended.

Speaker 1 That was wrong. Sorry.
That, that actually gave me pause. I thought it was.
That one didn't bother me.

Speaker 16 See, as a lesbian, I was like, oh, he's just doing his same thing.

Speaker 16 Let me just like, in the memo to staff, Sarando said, we have a strong belief that content on screen doesn't directly translate into real-world harm. That one, I was like, yes, it does.

Speaker 16 But nonetheless, it was a really interesting situation.

Speaker 16 Netflix is seeing a lot of employee, they're seeing less user complaints than they are employee complaints. And they're bringing in a trans activist to talk to the company.
They are having town halls.

Speaker 16 They, of course, are famous for their say what you think culture. So,

Speaker 16 you know, it's roiling the company, which is, and, and, uh, and the, and the Bella Bajaria, who is the head of programming there, and

Speaker 16 Sarandos are standing firm. Um, so I'd love to get your thoughts on it.
I have thoughts on the show,

Speaker 16 but go ahead. I can start, whatever.

Speaker 1 Well, I always go first. You go first and I'll give you my thoughts.

Speaker 16 I think this is where I'm. My first premise is comics get a wide berth and it's not the same as.

Speaker 1 100%. Thank you.

Speaker 16 And it's not the same as, you know, people are like, well, Facebook, he's saying, you know, things that Facebook doesn't do any editing, even though they do do editing, right?

Speaker 16 So that's a different thing. They're just spilling toxic waste all over the place.

Speaker 16 This was an editorial decision, and they're acting like it was an editorial decision, and they're taking responsibility in that regard, including when things turn negative.

Speaker 16 But in terms of comics, I think there is a, there should be a huge, huge birth for all comics. That said, they really should have more trans comics on this on the thing.
Like they just should.

Speaker 16 They should try to, they talk about their diversity. I don't see a lot of them there.

Speaker 16 So if they're talking about lots of voices, they should have lots of voices that can push back and et cetera, et cetera. Third thing is that's special.
A lot of it's really funny.

Speaker 16 But at the same time, at some point during the thing, I'm like, something happened to you. It was a young comic where someone called you transphobic.
And I get feeling angry about that.

Speaker 16 But at some point, an hour into it, I was like, that's enough. That's enough.
That's enough. You know what I mean? Like, I just, I felt like he won't let it go.

Speaker 16 And he tries to link himself with empathy.

Speaker 16 And I was like, all right, like. Okay.
Like, why, why this group of people that you have to continually do your jokes on? And there's like a wide world world of people to do it.

Speaker 16 And again, I don't pick his jokes, but at some point it was like, All right, that's enough of those. That's that's

Speaker 16 something's wrong. It turned into something really like unusually why this group of people, why? And it is because when he was a young comic, there was that story.
So that's how I feel. I feel like

Speaker 16 you know, he just can't stop talking about it. And

Speaker 16 I thought that was odd too. So, what, and kind of and mean, and mean, and uh, not ultimately not funny by the end.
I don't know. What do you think?

Speaker 1 I think we're sort of, you know,

Speaker 1 brothers or siblings from another mother on this. I entirely agree with you.
I think that it's important. Comics advance the dialogue.
Comics say things that make people uncomfortable.

Speaker 1 And whether it was George Carlin, Michelle Wolf got radical pushback from the right.

Speaker 1 Your friend got pushback when she kind of... Kathy Griffin.

Speaker 1 And my sense is, yeah, it should start a dialogue when they're out of line okay fine uh but i don't think you ruin their careers or you're trying to get and that's what i don't like about any of this and people said well what's the difference you know i had this conversation yesterday and they say scott you're constantly criticizing facebook for putting up hateful content if people find this hateful what's the difference i'm like well facebook takes content and if it ends up that it's hateful and really upsets people, it promotes it beyond its natural organic reach because it finds value and shareholder value in it.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 that is not what is going on here. And first off, I love David Chappelle.
I think he's a genius. I think he's incredibly talented.
And I,

Speaker 1 so for example, I think

Speaker 1 the same show

Speaker 1 published a fantastic one-hour show of

Speaker 1 what I thought was probably the most moving

Speaker 1 hour of comedy I had seen in a long time. And I believe her name is, and I hope I get this right, Hannah Gadsby.

Speaker 16 Hannah Gadsby.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And

Speaker 1 it was just very moving. And I would imagine some people on the far right found it, it might have found it offensive.

Speaker 1 But I think it's important that these individuals say things that make us uncomfortable in the context of humor, because I really do think it helps people think outside of their bubble.

Speaker 1 And at least somewhat, I think humor is an incredible way to take, in some ways to take down the volume and actually empathize as opposed to antagonize.

Speaker 1 And I think many of the cultural influences in our society that have advanced the rights of people have been comedians.

Speaker 1 And I think part of acceptance to a certain extent is when a community is actively ribbed on a regular basis.

Speaker 1 And I don't, I'm not, I'm not saying that that exonerates people from saying hateful things. There was a moment in the show where he talks about,

Speaker 1 see, the moment that didn't bother you, actually, I thought, wow, that's a little rough.

Speaker 1 He talks about someone kind of getting in his face and that he basically says something along the lines of like, you know, bitch, I'm about to go crazy on you.

Speaker 1 And it's like, he has so many young viewers. I would have thought, you know, you got to be careful.
People look up to him in such a way.

Speaker 1 You just shouldn't be talking about casually creating a laugh track out of violence.

Speaker 1 He does it a lot.

Speaker 16 He doesn't do it a little bit. You know, he calls women bitches,

Speaker 16 people of color. Yeah, I don't.

Speaker 1 I think there's a difference between that and someone in a community that's,

Speaker 1 I don't know, taking a lot of shit and saying

Speaker 1 and talking about small acts of violence. I do think young people listen.
I just would have said of his agent, I don't know who he talks to. He should probably just cut that out.
That's just not.

Speaker 16 Yeah, you know, I don't know. I think he wants to do that.
I mean, the whole thing's called the closer, and he just, he wants to say his piece.

Speaker 16 And it really, I did finally understand was that whatever happened in Oakland when he was a young comic, where there was a story where they talked about punching down. At some point, like, I get that.

Speaker 16 I like, like, they continue. And people don't hear the show.
And then they have opinions about the show. And I was like, by the end, he was kind of punching down.
He really was.

Speaker 16 I have to, you know, in a way that I was like, all right, a few things. Discuss the controversies around you.
Do it in a comic way.

Speaker 16 And then at some point, you're like, you're just not, you aren't going to get over this, are you? Like that kind of thing. And so I thought that was, it became not funny by the end.

Speaker 16 And then, and then the one thing I, I didn't like was when he had a supporter who was a trans comic

Speaker 16 who he used, he hung everything on

Speaker 16 her.

Speaker 16 Everything on her.

Speaker 1 This is the one that killed herself? Yeah.

Speaker 16 And then complimented himself about

Speaker 16 giving a trust fund,

Speaker 16 her daughter, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 16 And I was like, are you like, did you link her death with this? Is that, do you know about whether this was the case? Like, I was like, cut it out.

Speaker 16 Like, you know, the exact thing he accused everybody else of, he was absolutely doing. And so

Speaker 16 it was interesting, but I do still think, I think the Netflix employees should do walkouts. I think they should complain.
I think they should send a message to CEO Ted Sorrenders.

Speaker 16 I think Ted can have his opinion. I don't agree with him on the content on the screen doesn't directly translate.

Speaker 16 It doesn't maybe directly, but it certainly translates. And I would recommend people seeing a movie called The Celluloid Closet.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. It's been around forever.

Speaker 16 It was a book by Rito Russo. It's the documentary is narrated by Lily Tomlin.
If you want to understand why people don't like gay people, watch that. Why for years didn't? I made my mom watch it.

Speaker 16 I think it changed her a little bit.

Speaker 1 Well, we've been running an ad against gay people for about 50 years called The Media.

Speaker 16 And trans people, the last part is trans people are under siege right now in a way that is, you know, I can take the let when I early on when I was gay, I didn't like the lesbian jokes.

Speaker 16 But now I'm like, oh, whatever, it's fine. Make dyke jokes all over the place.

Speaker 16 But

Speaker 16 this is a community under siege. And this obsession with talking about them continually when there's so many better targets seems a little much.
That's what I would say. But interesting controversy.

Speaker 16 I can't believe we agree.

Speaker 1 There's two components of it.

Speaker 1 I think we're largely in agreement that comedians should have a wide berth. They advance the dialogue.
What we're doing here is one of the key positive externalities of comedians.

Speaker 1 It's forcing people to talk about it offline and

Speaker 1 have a dialogue around this. For him personally, the guy's such a genius.

Speaker 1 He has such a powerful platform that I think when you have that type of powerful platform, you do need to think more broadly around the impact you're having on society.

Speaker 1 And one, he comes off as defensive. Yeah, he does.
I did not like invoking the name of someone who is deceased and positioning her as his buddy and supporting him.

Speaker 1 I thought that was inappropriate.

Speaker 1 And two.

Speaker 1 And two, you know, you got to decide how you want to use your platform. And he decided to use this platform to basically say, this is why I'm right.
This is why you're wrong. This is why I'm right.

Speaker 1 And a guy like that has so much power to sort of, I don't know, liberate groups

Speaker 1 or

Speaker 1 advantage or help his community think maybe a little bit more

Speaker 16 empathetic. I found I came away, like, this guy's a little smaller than I thought, right?

Speaker 1 A little smaller. He came across as defensive.
Yeah. He came across as, you know, using all his humor and all his skills to say, this isn't why I've grown.
This is why I was right. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And I just, I'm like, boss, you don't need that.

Speaker 1 You're, Jesus Christ, you're probably one of the most influential comedians of the last 25 years.

Speaker 1 Like, I don't, at the end of the day, at the end of the day, Kara, I think you just could have shown a little bit more grace. Yeah.
That's what it comes down to.

Speaker 16 Agreed. Agreed.
And it does do harm. It does directly translate to harm.
It just does.

Speaker 16 In any case,

Speaker 16 it's interesting the debate's going. We'll see what happens within Netflix.

Speaker 1 But Netflix, I think Netflix is totally on the right.

Speaker 16 I think Netflix. Except for that one sentence.
I was like, it does.

Speaker 1 What was the one sentence?

Speaker 16 We have a strong belief that content on screen doesn't directly translate into real-world harm.

Speaker 1 Come on. Come on, Ted.

Speaker 16 It does.

Speaker 16 All of this does. Eventually, it does.
Eventually it does. And that I will stick to on a lot of things.
That doesn't mean these comics shouldn't say it, but just stop pretending it doesn't.

Speaker 16 Or it doesn't have some effect. Anyway, speaking of effect,

Speaker 1 have you seen Squid Game? Do you want to talk about that?

Speaker 16 Oh, yeah, I know, right? Is everyone going off the camera? Although there's been,

Speaker 16 I think it's Abu Dhabi. They're recreating it, but without the violence, the game.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's going to be a stint.

Speaker 16 I know. You know, some rich people somewhere are doing it for real.
You know that. Like, you get that.
Like, there's some hunt.

Speaker 16 Anyway, one last thing is Texas-based airlines are telling Governor Greg Abbott where to shove his anti-vaccine mandate.

Speaker 16 Southwest and American Airlines said this week that they'll comply with the federal government's vaccine mandate for large companies.

Speaker 16 This puts them in conflict with the Texas governor, who tried to ban vaccine mandates via executive order. Both airlines have said federal law supersedes state law, and they are correct.

Speaker 16 So there'll be lots of lawsuits all over the place, but

Speaker 16 I think they're right. These are forward-facing companies with customers, and that's how they have to think about the public health.

Speaker 1 Oh my God, this is so ironic.

Speaker 1 I literally just got an email, a text message from the head of public relations for Blue Origin asking if I would take a William Shatner action figure and live stream me shoving up my ass.

Speaker 1 What do you think? Yes or no? Am I in?

Speaker 16 Can you get to the topic?

Speaker 1 That's called a Tuesday night for the dog. That's called a Tuesday night.

Speaker 16 I'm going to buy you a seat on one of these and say, don't let them come back.

Speaker 1 That's there is no way I'm getting on that shit. And by the way, you know how space tourism ends?

Speaker 16 A crash.

Speaker 1 In a fucking flash. And I hate to say that.
Space is dangerous business, folks. Yeah, probably.

Speaker 16 All right.

Speaker 1 I'm going to take that action dollar. No man has gone before.

Speaker 16 Greg Abbott is going to lose this one, correct? From, I mean, he's using it as a political thing.

Speaker 1 I fucking love this. The cruise lines.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 These are not liberal. These are not bastions of progressive oak people.
The cruise lines and the airlines are saying, hey, governor, while you're over there, you know,

Speaker 1 absolutely prostrating yourself to the far-right, old white evangelicals in Iowa, a lot of stereotypes there, a lot of identity politics in that statement.

Speaker 1 We're going to focus on what's good for the economy.

Speaker 16 And our business, yeah.

Speaker 1 And our businesses. And stop playing politics with our businesses.
And the cruise line stuck up the middle finger to Governor DeSantis. And the airlines are sticking up the middle finger.

Speaker 1 I mean, the Republicans are supposed to be pro-business until they see an opportunity.

Speaker 16 They also have got to know. They've got to know what most of their customers think.
And I suspect they know that customers would like a vaccination.

Speaker 1 100%.

Speaker 1 I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 You hear a lot of cruise line people saying 90-year-old people who take cruises going, no,

Speaker 1 I'm comfortable. Liberty, give everyone serving my buffet food.
Let them, they don't have to be vaccinated. Do you think anyone's saying that? Getting on, getting on carnival and then airlines.

Speaker 1 So it's just so cynical for Republicans to say they're pro-business until they're trying to get one more straw at the next Iowa caucus from a governor who wakes up every morning and says, Hello, Mr.

Speaker 1 President. Yeah.

Speaker 16 And then Trump's going to screw them anyway. So, like, calm down, boys.
That's what I say. Anyway, let's get on to our first big story.

Speaker 16 Facebook keeps a secret blacklist of supposedly dangerous organizations and individuals, obviously you, Scott. And now we know who's on it, thanks to the intercept.

Speaker 16 The list contains more than 4,000 entries.

Speaker 16 There's terrorist groups, you'd expect, but also politicians, writers, charities, hospitals, and some long-deceased historical figures who probably don't post that much. The list is tiered.

Speaker 16 The most restrictive tier is largely made up of terrorist groups from the Middle East and South Asia.

Speaker 16 Many American white supremacist groups are classified in the lower tier, meaning they're subject to fewer restrictions. Anyway, what do you think about this?

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 this is going to probably shock people. I think Facebook got it right here.

Speaker 1 And actually, I think they should be applauded for this.

Speaker 1 They've actually made more

Speaker 1 effort and I think more progress around actually linking and acknowledging offline behavior with who should be allowed online. And

Speaker 1 I... I absolutely think these organizations should be doing it.
I think they're trying to be thoughtful about it.

Speaker 1 I think a lot of these people who start white supremacist groups or you know, are quote-unquote, for lack of a better term, radicals from any political spectrum, I don't think they should be allowed on Facebook.

Speaker 1 And I think Facebook should err on the side of doing too much of this, not too little. And

Speaker 1 so

Speaker 1 I think they got it right here, and I applaud them for it. And I think more platforms should take a cue.
I don't think it's your right to be on Facebook or Instagram.

Speaker 1 I think it is their obligation when their platform reaches a population the size of the southern hemisphere plus India to be really thoughtful about the damage some of this content can do.

Speaker 1 So, I actually think what it is, though, is it's a government, you know.

Speaker 16 We do, you do have things like the Southern Poverty Law Center, et cetera, who makes these lists.

Speaker 16 I think linking with these kind of groups that they that have already been tracking this is a smart thing. Um, I do,

Speaker 16 it could move into a problematic area, just like every like, because this is not just the Southern Poverty Law Center. This is a group of people that can do something.

Speaker 16 This is a Southern Poverty Law Center with an ability to shut voices down, right? Southern Poverty Law Center just lists things, and that's that, right?

Speaker 16 They don't really, they can pressure, they can do things. These people actually have an ability to turn the on-off switch on or off.
And so

Speaker 16 they just have to acknowledge and weigh into it and realize that they are going to get it wrong a lot of times and that they're going to run into a buzzsaw of political opposition because some of these groups have ties to U.S.

Speaker 16 politicians.

Speaker 16 And so they're not comfortable making these calls, but they have to either get comfortable making these calls or let someone else make the calls for them. And so, which is problematic.

Speaker 16 And especially because right-wing content does do better on Facebook. It just does, and Facebook's acknowledged this.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but

Speaker 1 I feel as if we can't have it both ways. We can't criticize them for letting content go unfeathered, especially on algorithms.

Speaker 1 And at the same time, when they try and edit that content and leave really noxious, dangerous content off and create lists, they get criticized. My feeling is they don't do enough of this.

Speaker 1 They are a media company. By the way, you're on the blacklist of Facebook.
I have inside information. I'm on the like, who gives a fuck list.
He has no influence list.

Speaker 1 Anyways,

Speaker 1 but I think they get it right here. I think every media company ultimately has to make editorial choices.
And I'd rather see Facebook err on the side of being too harsh. And then they got criticism.

Speaker 1 Where they got criticism was, okay, they disproportionately ban

Speaker 1 Muslim groups versus white supremacist groups. And I'm like, well, our government's been doing that.
Americans are a lot more scared of

Speaker 1 anyone that's a threat with a different color skin than anyone who's a real threat, and usually a bigger threat with the same color skin, i.e. domestic terrorists.
So, you know, kind of welcome.

Speaker 16 My only point is wading into this is very complex because then everyone's going to have a what about, what about, like just we were talking with David Chappelle.

Speaker 16 Why are you talking about this over this? Why are you doing this over this? So any group that's either aggrieved or actually

Speaker 16 been subject to all kinds of discrimination is going to be pissed. And so we have to acknowledge Facebook as a media company and that's what they're going to be doing.

Speaker 16 And they're too big a media company.

Speaker 16 That's the second part, which we have to click in is their their power is too vast and uh and needs to be smaller like that that just the way we did with oil or railroads or whatever i think that's and it just happens because it's linked to media that it's so but you know remember william randolph hearst there were a lot of problems with him for many years when he was he was the

Speaker 1 rosebud

Speaker 1 yeah at the beginning of that movie i was like oh it's it's the sleigh got it okay have you been to the hearse castle i have i love it it's great oh my god i'm like the parties i could throw here but at the same time it's sad don't you think it's big i don't like it's not you say that i don't like big houses i think they're lonely yeah i forget about the day my boys are out of the house i'm in a big house i'm like that's it just bring on the opium i'm ready i'm done your house isn't that big your house isn't that big It's a little big.

Speaker 16 Yeah.

Speaker 16 Yeah. In any case, Rosebud, I think this is going to be a big issue for them.
And they, you know what they have to do?

Speaker 16 They have to suck it up and accept the criticism for things like this because they're doing, they're making choices. And making choices, just like with Ted Sarandos, that's what leadership is about.

Speaker 16 And they are too big. So I think that's where they're going to fall.
And you know, Sarandos, you can turn the switch to, you know, to Disney or HBO or whatever.

Speaker 16 In this case, they have a lot more power.

Speaker 1 And this feels alien to say, but on this issue, and

Speaker 1 I can feel I'm getting like spontaneous backne or something weird's happening to my body on this issue,

Speaker 1 Facebook got it right. Well done.

Speaker 1 I think they're doing the right thing here and I think they're setting an example for other online platforms.

Speaker 1 Jesus, that feels weird.

Speaker 1 Who am I? Who am I?

Speaker 16 Yeah, you back me. Backnee.
I love that word. Backnyne.
That's a great thing.

Speaker 1 Remember Bacchney? I used to get Bacne.

Speaker 1 I never had it. But I was really fortunate.
It started, it cleared up and it moved to my face. Did you see my prom photo?

Speaker 16 Yeah, I did. You looked handsome.
I have one that I'm going to send you. I'm going to put it up of me in college.
I look exactly. So the true story.

Speaker 1 True story. I didn't think I had a prom date.
And I, you know, 12th grade, 6'1, 130 pounds. And this is a nice story.
And it's about me. Okay.
Prettiest girl in the school. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Prettiest girl in the school. Yeah.
Asked me to prom. Wow.
Wow. And I was not the most popular.
I was not the most handsome, but I made her laugh.

Speaker 1 I was such that, and I posted that picture. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And of me and the other guy who's in the photo is still my closest friend, Ana Markman.

Speaker 16 I feel like I'm in a John Hughes movie right now, but go ahead.

Speaker 1 I found that photo and it like, like, it brought back so many memories anyways. I posted online and everyone's, everyone's been really kind and nice.

Speaker 16 Yeah, especially about the hair. I was like, whoa, that's a lot of hair you got going on.

Speaker 1 That's what everyone talked about, the hair.

Speaker 16 Well, there's a lot of hair going on. I went to all four proms.

Speaker 1 All four?

Speaker 1 There's four proms. Oh, you went to a private school.
We could only find one.

Speaker 16 No, there was four. I went in 9th grade, 10th grade, 11th grade, and 12th grade.
I had a boyfriend who was in 11th grade when I was a freshman.

Speaker 16 I had a boyfriend who was in a class, 11th grade, a different one when I was in 10th grade, same boyfriend in 11th grade. And then I went with a friend of mine in 12th grade.
I went to all the props.

Speaker 1 Yeah, those are nice.

Speaker 16 Yeah, I had a lot of boyfriends. Kara Swisher had a lot of boyfriends.

Speaker 1 You little, you saucy.

Speaker 16 I am. Saucy little saucy little minks.
I was an easy girlfriend to have. I was.
I was like, I never really was like clingy, and I would have sex with them.

Speaker 16 That's pretty much why I was a great girlfriend. Anyway,

Speaker 1 that's a cocktail every young man likes to hear.

Speaker 16 Lesbians make great girlfriends to straight men.

Speaker 16 I was like, they're like, oh, or you're not very clingy. I'm like, no, I'd like you to leave.

Speaker 16 All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break.

Speaker 1 Can I get you an Uber?

Speaker 1 Can I get you an. Are you done? Can I get you an Uber?

Speaker 16 Out of here. Okay, let's go on a quick break.
When we come back, we'll talk about. You think that's funny.

Speaker 1 John Hughes is spinning in his grave, thinking, How come I didn't write that comedy?

Speaker 16 All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about Apple's supply chain problems and take a listener mail question.

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Speaker 16 Scott, we're back with our second big story. Apple will make fewer iPhones this year due to a global chip shortage.
Apple has said it may cut iPhone 13 production by up to 10 million units.

Speaker 16 They do sell a lot of those things. By some measures, the global chip shortage is getting worse.
She said it was going to eventually get better.

Speaker 16 The length of time between the chip orders and deliveries have grown from nine months for nine months in a row as of September.

Speaker 16 Apple has also struggled to make enough of the new Apple Watch Series 7, but that might not be such a big deal.

Speaker 16 Reviews of the Series 7 say it's nothing to write home about, although it's a very attractive-looking watch. Why are we getting so bad at making things? Let's talk about supply chain, Scott.

Speaker 1 Well, let me start where I would finish in that you always like to find a lesson for young people.

Speaker 1 And kind of the biggest, I don't know, or the biggest decision, the biggest decision a young person will make is who they decide to partner with or

Speaker 1 have kids with. That's the biggest decision you'll make in your life.
And if you make the right decision, everything burns a little brighter.

Speaker 1 And if you make the wrong decision, everything's just harder.

Speaker 1 But probably the second most important decision for a young person is where they decide to allocate their most finite capital. They usually don't have a lot of money, and that's their human capital.

Speaker 1 And it's the boring shit where you make a lot of money and get really rewarding careers.

Speaker 1 And supply chain right now, understanding logistics, understanding how you move products around or how you look at how content is produced, how it's distributed, that stuff is, that is where shareholder value gets created.

Speaker 1 The biggest, the most accretive moves in history in business, whether it's Apple opening stores or Amazon making this bold visionary investment in what no one was thinking about, and that's how do they get your stuff faster,

Speaker 1 has created trillions of dollars in shareholder value. And we've taken our supply chain, our global supply chain for granted.

Speaker 1 And what's happened is a lot of companies have gone to the lowest common denominator in terms of price and they become very regionally vulnerable.

Speaker 1 And that is, if you're a shoe company that does a disproportionate amount of your manufacturing of your shoes in Vietnam and there's a supply and the supply chain, supply chain put me out of business.

Speaker 1 So let's let's go to the fifth segment of every show. And then, you know, how do we talk about Scott?

Speaker 1 My, My, almost my entire net worth was in red envelope.

Speaker 1 I kept doubling down and there's a lesson here and that is once you get to 30, you should never have more than 50% of your assets in any one asset. And I don't care about stories about Zuckerberg.

Speaker 1 I just don't do it. Diversify, even if it hurts.
I had 90 plus percent of my net worth in red envelope.

Speaker 16 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And then

Speaker 1 all of a sudden, Christmas is coming.

Speaker 1 2000 and holidays, 2008. And the dirty secret, especially retail, is you lose money for 50 weeks a year and you you make money, a ton of money, for like 11 days before the holidays.

Speaker 1 And all of a sudden, everything hit at once. A Wells Fargo credit analyst said, I don't like the markets.
We're pulling in credit lines, so we didn't have the same access to credit.

Speaker 1 Everyone talks about the equity markets. It's the credit markets that start economic implosions.
And two,

Speaker 1 there was a longshoreman strike, and all of our merchandise was stuck on one cargo container 30 miles off of the Long Beach.

Speaker 16 And by the way, there's a cargo container slowdown.

Speaker 1 FYL. Everywhere.
Like, have you seen these pictures of ships being parked offshore? So there was a strike.

Speaker 1 And then the software

Speaker 1 at our distribution facility on the Kentucky, Ohio border, the software in these guns that's shooting out labels sent about 40,000 gifts to the wrong address.

Speaker 1 Now, think about what happens when you send the wrong gifts before holidays to 40,000 addresses.

Speaker 16 Think about the customer service logistics.

Speaker 1 And you know what happened? Our stock went from $8 a share, $10,000, don't forget, whatever it was, to zero in

Speaker 1 chapter 11 in about 25 days. Wow.
So I went from, oh, I'm done, I'm economically done to, oh, wait, I'm 40 and starting over economically. And it was because of supply chain.

Speaker 16 Supply chain got scottish. So

Speaker 1 back to modern day, and there's a geopolitical aspect here.

Speaker 1 We have taken for granted a global supply chain and then COVID came in and interrupted it. And the chip shortage has had huge ramifications across the auto industry.

Speaker 1 The question, and I've been working with a couple companies on this, is that is there an opportunity to revisit your pricing?

Speaker 1 So in a very, in a kind of the land of undetened consequences, car dealerships

Speaker 1 are more profitable than they've ever been.

Speaker 1 Because what they haven't had, because the supply chain of automobiles was so robust that, quite frankly, the industry just produced 5% or 10% more cars every week in demand.

Speaker 1 So you would go in and you could buy a Nissan Altima. I don't know what the price is, but if you bought it for $28,000,

Speaker 1 the thing literally was costing $26,500 to produce. Right.
And so they were making no money.

Speaker 1 And now, because there's a shortage and they have half the volume, the auto dealerships for the first time have something that low-wage employees have for the first time in 30 or 40 years.

Speaker 1 They have pricing power.

Speaker 1 And just being able to price an Altima at $7,000 above what the dealership has to pay for it instead of $1,500, even if they only sell half as many, yeah, they're doing a lot better.

Speaker 16 I'm going to interject. One of the things that's interesting is I interviewed Farah Stockman last night.
She has a new book called American Made, What Happens to People When Work Disappears.

Speaker 16 And she chronicled this ball bearings company that had to close and move to Mexico. It was more around the NAFTA stuff, but how they sort of became acolytes of Trump, the people.

Speaker 16 It's a really great book. It's called American Made.
And one of the things we talked about was the idea of the global supply chain moving closer to even in this country. And how does that happen?

Speaker 16 And one of her points was a lot of American manufacturing was just old, right? That it was back to this particular factory, which was called the Cadillac, it's called a link belt.

Speaker 16 It was called the Cadillac of bearings,

Speaker 16 just got old and not innovative.

Speaker 16 And so we were sort of discussing whether more and more companies through this would either make their own chips, for example, with chips or whatever, or that the supply chain would move closer again back to where

Speaker 16 the customers are. And it was a very interesting discussion about

Speaker 16 how this has caused a lot of political roiling and gave Trump an opening, right? So it is interesting if you could.

Speaker 16 She was talking about the Biden,

Speaker 16 the infrastructure billing. She says, there's a lot in there that we should be doing.
It's just there's so many things we need to be doing and fixing.

Speaker 16 But the idea of moving manufacturing back here, which I think is a really interesting concept,

Speaker 16 is just what you're talking about,

Speaker 1 is the idea of things closer to the consumers, which well, our supply chain has been designed around mostly around low cost, go to the lowest cost source.

Speaker 1 And then when you have an interruption like this, it takes costs, it makes them skyrocket.

Speaker 1 So what they're saying is what we need is a more dependable supply chain and one that takes advantage of proximity.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 a lot of the advances in robotics have made actual onshoring technology.

Speaker 1 If you combine some of the incredible innovation around robotics and also the fact that if you domestically produce it, you save a lot in transportation or you have more flexible supply chain, it's worth the incremental cost.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 I think what a lot of people or companies are finding is that the total focus on low costs that resulted in producing 80% of your tops in one region of China made you very vulnerable.

Speaker 1 And the other thing is, and I always go to where are the dangers here, I think probably, in my view, one of the most underreported stories, I think the most dangerous place in the world, or potentially the most dangerous place in the world where World War III might break out, and I know that's a nice thought, isn't Afghanistan, it isn't Ukraine, I think it's Taiwan.

Speaker 1 You know, everyone used to talk about, so we fought for basically half a century and came up with fake wars and proxy wars to try and control control supply routes and supply of oil.

Speaker 1 And I think the new oil, if you will, or the new resource that is strategically and geopolitically just incredibly important is chips. And Taiwan plays a huge role in chips.
And I think China is...

Speaker 1 I think China is

Speaker 1 spending a lot of time, and they're very smart, trying to do what I'd call a creeping invasion of Taiwan.

Speaker 16 I think it's a really, we have to think of manufacturing as an asset in this country again. And also helping politically because it calms people down when people have work.

Speaker 16 You know, all the studies showing people need to work because it gives them meaning, even if it's a small job. One thing, just I'm going to take it off a different way.

Speaker 16 Apple's in these, once they get these AirPods and watches to us, they're putting health monitoring in quite heavily, thermometer, all kinds of stuff within these watches.

Speaker 16 So they're really doubling down on services, especially health services. And they have a big event coming up next week where they're going to unveil new MacBooks and possibly these new AirPods.

Speaker 16 Prices might be higher. People who buy Apple goods are used to higher prices, so it's not, I doubt it will have that much of an impact.
I think they're just moving forward.

Speaker 16 I mean, I think they'll just have higher prices and people are vying with Apple doing that. But it is interesting that they're sort of trying to make these AirPods

Speaker 16 into more than just

Speaker 16 that is improving hearing, a conversation boost.

Speaker 16 I was looking at the Watch 7 because I keep buying Apple watches and then not wearing them. All the stuff on and around health monitoring is really interesting

Speaker 16 and also slightly scary, I guess. I don't really know what anyone cares about my heartbeat.

Speaker 16 But anyway, it's just, I think Apple couldn't be okay if they moved forward heavily into championing manufacturing closer to home.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 there's a lot here. So I think that, I mean, first off, we always talk about underhyped or overhyped, which is the title of my presentation that I did for you.

Speaker 1 And by the way, I spent a lot of time on that, Kara. I don't think you've acknowledged that I send you the fruit best question.

Speaker 16 You did a great job. I said great job.

Speaker 1 Everybody else just gets on stage and has you ask questions and then they peace out. I spent like fucking four weeks with my team.

Speaker 16 You did a beautiful job.

Speaker 1 Anyways,

Speaker 1 anyways, that's right. Mary Meeker with erectile dysfunction.
Here he is. Here he is.

Speaker 1 Okay, so

Speaker 1 the thing that doesn't get a lot of attention or doesn't get the attention it warrants is

Speaker 1 AirPods. I mean, they are, if AirPods were its own business, it'd be a Fortune 50 business.

Speaker 1 Think about all the attention the Apple Watch got. It's been blunt.
AirPods are the iPhone if they weren't made by the same company that makes the iPhone. They are just an

Speaker 1 enormous innovation and an enormous business. And also, I think this is so exciting because

Speaker 1 if you look at the largest, arguably largest consumer business in the world is U.S. healthcare.
It's also the most disruptible. Four out of five people aren't satisfied with their healthcare.
And

Speaker 1 I think about you.

Speaker 1 You've been very open about your stroke. I think we'll get to a point where you are looking at an iPhone to unlock it now.

Speaker 1 Agreed. The technology is there.
It might go, alert, Kara, something is going on. Get to a medical professional immediately.
Agreed.

Speaker 1 It might be able to say, and your AirPods, your temperature is elevated right now, and you're also in an area with a lot of COVID, reported COVID infections. Please get somewhere and get tested.

Speaker 1 This is super exciting because the bottom line is doctor's offices and hospitals are ridiculously unpleasant and intimidating places. And people go.

Speaker 16 I didn't have doctor's appointments for two years. I did them all in San Francisco when I was there.

Speaker 16 It wasn't unpleasant, but I definitely was, if I had had telehealth in a much better way, I probably never would have gone back to that.

Speaker 1 I'll use this as an example. And like this will, if things go really, go really poorly here, this will be a very downloaded episode.
I have a dot. You can probably see it on my forehead.

Speaker 1 And I've been trying to get an appointment with my dermatologist to have the thing removed and looked at right as starts happening when you're when you're my

Speaker 1 yeah and between my travel schedule and everything and the fact that my dermatologist is like well we're in the Palm Beach office in December 18th I'm like okay I can't send a picture I should my doctors you send a picture yeah really mine mine's not like that but my point is

Speaker 1 well we have San Francisco doctors we send pictures and then if they they look at it they're like get in right now whatever you went to four fucking proms anyway so but I should be able to hold up an app onto my head and it should go, okay.

Speaker 16 You can, just not with your doctors. Yes, you can.

Speaker 1 Well, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about AI that says, get into a dermatologist right now.
Or, okay, you can do it when you get back from

Speaker 1 hanging out with, you know, Don Lemon at the studio at CNN Plus.

Speaker 16 Get yourself. I'm sure Don Lemon has a really good dermatologist.

Speaker 1 I think he and I are going to be good friends.

Speaker 16 I don't think so.

Speaker 1 No, I think he and I are going to be good friends.

Speaker 16 I don't think so. I think not.
Yeah. I think Donald Trump.

Speaker 1 And PC is going to get jealous of our friendship.

Speaker 16 No, I don't think so. I think none of this is going to happen.
Anyway, the onion, just so you know, this is a fun line on a funny note, had an article this week.

Speaker 1 Thank you, which is the onion.

Speaker 16 White House warns supply chain shortages could lead Americans to discover the true meaning of Christmas.

Speaker 1 That's good. Yeah, everyone's saying, order your toys now.
Yeah, whatever. I'm not sure.
You know what it's going to do, though? It's going to massively increase downloads of digital products.

Speaker 1 It's going to be literally the, not the last, but another nail in the coffin of toy stores because everyone's just going to, the digital supply chain is still pretty robust.

Speaker 16 There's plenty of toys in the toy store.

Speaker 1 I have just. My kid, we broke down and gave him Assassin's Creed.
Now he wants like a grand auto theft auto on a mother. No, no, no.

Speaker 16 I held the line on

Speaker 1 that one. No, just kidding.

Speaker 16 No, no. One time when that was happening, when I think it's Grand Theft Auto, I was like, don't they shoot prostitutes? And my son was like, oh,

Speaker 16 he goes, just bad ones. And I was like, what?

Speaker 16 No, no, no. They have guns.
I was like, no, like, it's not happening, boys. And I think that was a good motherfucker.

Speaker 1 No, the thing that really turned me off was it showed a bunch of high school senior boys trolling around going let's find us some lesbians

Speaker 1 anyway let's pivot uh to a listener question you've got you got can't believe I'm gonna be a mailman you got mail

Speaker 18 hi Kara and Scott this is Emily in Washington DC I've heard you talk favorably several times now about the German rule that puts employees on the boards of companies but if that's so great then why so many German scandals involving massive lapses in board oversight Volkswagen Deutsche Bank Wirecard etc.

Speaker 18 As Scott knows, a board should be able to push a company to innovate and change in ways that management might not be able to do on its own.

Speaker 18 But employees are very risk-averse about their own companies. So the more employees on the board, the less interest it would probably have in questioning assumptions or making major pivots, right?

Speaker 18 So how do you make the argument in the American case without our companies becoming less ethical, innovative, adaptable, and profitable? Thanks.

Speaker 16 That's a good question. I'm going to let you take this one, Scott, but I have to say, I think she's kind of right, but kind of wrong, in that I think you need more than one.

Speaker 16 And I think American employees are less go-along, get-along than other employees. But what do you think, Scott? You've been a very difficult member of boards so many times.

Speaker 1 So talk about this.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I've been on seven public company boards and about 15 private boards. And I find corporate governance fascinating.
And it's something I like. It's something, anyways, I think it's important.

Speaker 1 And so essentially, a board is supposed to, you're supposed to demonstrate two words: care and duty. You're supposed to act as a fiduciary and show concern for all the stakeholders.

Speaker 1 And you're also supposed to have a duty to basically understand the numbers and make sure that the audit committee isn't going to come up, isn't going to find unwelcome surprises.

Speaker 1 And I think that actually,

Speaker 1 I wouldn't link the two. I think that German employees or more employees on boards is a really good thing because

Speaker 1 power is a function of proximity.

Speaker 1 The reason that the number one person, the CEO at a firm, makes on average two to ten times what the number two person makes is the number one person is in the board meeting all the time and gets to sit and establish a personal relationship with the compensation committee.

Speaker 1 And they're always deciding, erring on the side of, oh, he or she is a good person and we need to be generous. And I mean, the CEO, everyone talked about CEO compensation.

Speaker 1 The thing that hasn't been done that's more shocking is the number one person literally makes a multiple of what the number two person makes. And it's a function of proximity.

Speaker 1 So having directors be more approximate, if you will, or closer to workers on the floor is really important because that is part of the reason that we're always, you know, I think if somebody really, I think if we on boards had much more contact with the people serving the food, the people at the cash register, I just think they'd make more money.

Speaker 1 I think we'd see that these are people who are good people trying hard and struggling, really struggling. So I think it's a good thing.

Speaker 1 Now, Germany, I think that's a different thing, some of the scandal there.

Speaker 1 I think what happens with great companies that have done really well and are icons of the nation, it's easy to enter into consensual hallucination that things are working or to overlook things or to just get, quite frankly, fat and happy and not do your work as a director.

Speaker 1 And I've been guilty of this. Sometimes on the train down to the meeting, I'm reading the board book the day before.

Speaker 1 And if I'm really good, I get the board, I look at it the weekend before, and I start highlighting things.

Speaker 1 And I will call the CFO before the board meeting and saying, I don't want to take too much time on the board, but I have questions about this, about this, about this.

Speaker 1 Our margins have gone from this to this. I don't understand why.

Speaker 1 That's what a good director is supposed to do. And what you need here is the same thing we've been talking about across big tech.

Speaker 1 You don't find Facebook $5 billion, you find them $50 billion, or you do a purp walk. The incentives are wrong here.
And that is the algebra of disincentive is wrong here or deterrence.

Speaker 1 And that is when Enron collapses, nobody,

Speaker 1 there's been like 11 directors that have ever had to even come out of pocket

Speaker 1 with money. And the bottom line is, if you're on the board of Theranos or if you're on the board of Enron,

Speaker 1 and you really fuck up like this in terms of oversight and governance, quite frankly, there should be a penalty. You should actually have to come out of pocket with your own money.
And guess what?

Speaker 1 Directors are going to start doing their, you know, start really thinking about reading that board book and asking the right questions.

Speaker 16 Or not being directors. Like, there is director's insurance.

Speaker 1 Or deciding maybe that's not worth the risk.

Speaker 1 But it's a really good gig.

Speaker 1 I mean, on most boards, public company boards you get between 150 and 300 000 a year in comp for what are effectively you know four or six days i mean it's everyone says oh we're not going to be able to attract good directors bullshit i have people calling me every week saying hey i would be willing to go on boards everybody wants to be on boards i just don't i don't buy that there's a line out the door of people want to be boards

Speaker 16 what's it like to be a difficult director it's a very is there a lot of pressure i mean you've had that happen at the new york times you had it in several that you talked about one the other day i think where you were kind of the the skunk at the the garden party.

Speaker 16 What is that like to do that?

Speaker 16 It's hard, correct? I mean, in terms of instead of agreeing with everybody,

Speaker 16 there's an impulse to shut down that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1 It's super fucking uncomfortable. I accused the most famous venture capitalist in the world and the most powerful venture capitalist in the world of using

Speaker 1 our company where I was on the board as a dumping ground for the failed products of his other technology companies.

Speaker 1 And it was absolutely the, not only was it right, it was the right question for a director. And on the way to the airport, they called me and said they were kicking me off the board.
Wow.

Speaker 1 And it was devastating for me. I mean, it was really devastating.
I like, I remember thinking, like, I got to the airport to return the car and I'm like, I don't even know what to do next.

Speaker 1 This is so clearly wrong. Right.
And I'm so clearly outgunned. You should call terrorists.

Speaker 1 I can't go up against a billionaire. I don't know what to do here.
I don't, you know, and the board dynamic was everyone try to figure out what the billionaire is thinking and get there first.

Speaker 1 But that is your job. It happened to me two months ago, and I know I'm trying to portray myself as a hero.
I get it wrong a lot.

Speaker 16 No, I imagine you're very difficult on boards, but go ahead.

Speaker 1 We're supposed to, you know what the boards of Theranos and Enron all had in common? Non-difficult. They got along really well.

Speaker 1 That's not our fucking job. Yeah, I agree.
Our job isn't.

Speaker 1 You want to be respectful. You want to be thoughtful.
You want to be open to pushback. You want to say, thank you for that.
I was wrong. I feel much better now.

Speaker 1 Your job on the board is to have a little bit of friction and sparks and say, that doesn't make any sense to me. What you're saying doesn't make any sense.
Or we need this. Because

Speaker 16 it's all so planned and so like, it's like a dance number when these boards have it's like a a lot of them are like country club meetings.

Speaker 1 It's like lunch after a round of golf.

Speaker 16 Yeah, do you remember Evelyn White Davis? She was a board activist. You know, she was a shareholder activist.
And she'd show up at meetings like Giant Food when I was a young reporter.

Speaker 16 And everyone would roll their eyes. And I was like, I love this.
She's causing them problems. And not everything she said was right.
She was a little, she was, some of her stuff was a little far out.

Speaker 16 But at the same time, I was like, good. She's she's asking them questions.
Good.

Speaker 16 And the stuff they do to limit your ability to ask questions as shareholders, the way it's sort of choreographed, is really ridiculous. These things are choreographed and they should not be good.

Speaker 16 There should be places where people get asked questions or public companies. Anyway, great question.

Speaker 1 But generally speaking, just to wrap this up,

Speaker 1 there is a difference between being right and effective. This is where I failed on boards, is that I've come in too hot and it's reduced my effectiveness.
And two, what I will say is I am shocked.

Speaker 1 I've worked with a couple hundred directors. I'm pleasantly shocked how many directors take it very seriously, really do a lot of work offline, and really get to the bottom of stuff.

Speaker 1 And also, I will say this, I think most CEOs appreciate.

Speaker 1 I have a reputation as being a difficult director, and there's no hiding it. And guess what? I constantly get asked to go on boards because CEOs, it stresses them out in the meeting.
But guess what?

Speaker 1 Most CEOs are usually pretty open to it. They like the pushback.

Speaker 1 As As long as it's respectful and it's not totally disruptive.

Speaker 16 Nobody likes,

Speaker 16 but a lot of them do reward board members with all kinds of Bennies, and so they behave.

Speaker 1 Well, we're rewarded the day we show up.

Speaker 1 Your compensation is fixed.

Speaker 16 Yeah, I get it.

Speaker 1 But you can tell when you get on a board if it's like a cooked board with all their buddies. But most of them aren't.
Most of them are trying to do their job. Okay.
All right.

Speaker 16 That was an excellent question. Send us more.
If you've got a question you're curious about, go to nymag.com/slash pivot and submit it for the show. Thank you, Emily.

Speaker 16 All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions.

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Speaker 16 Okay, Scott, give us this week's prediction.

Speaker 1 You know, I literally hadn't thought of one. I was trying to, I think it goes to, I think Apple and Amazon are going to bump up against each other.
So look, you know.

Speaker 1 They're all bumping up against each other in different ways, right? They're bumping up in video or they're bumping up in cloud, Google and Amazon.

Speaker 1 They're all kind of bumping up against each other in big ways. I think the next big bump, if you will, is going to be in healthcare between Amazon and Apple.

Speaker 1 I think they both see that one of the greatest opportunities to create shareholder value is the dispersion of healthcare away from doctors' offices and hospitals to our devices and our homes and our Alexas and our iPhones.

Speaker 1 And when you look at Amazon's wearable, the halo, and the fact that obviously Apple has a huge advantage in wearables, but at the same time, Amazon has a huge advantage in distribution and also in smart speakers.

Speaker 1 I think that they're both. You're going to see a flurry of new apps and programs and

Speaker 1 recurring revenue programs. And even Amazon, I think it's going to get into

Speaker 1 Diagnostic and Health. But I think Apple and Amazon are about to meet in a dark alley over healthcare and start going at each other.

Speaker 16 Meet in a dark alley not to cooperate,

Speaker 16 to fight.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, that was the wrong analogy. Duke it out.
That was the wrong analogy. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's about to be like an oh, it was kind of a brewing simmer. It was a border skirmish.
It's going to turn, I think Apple and Amazon are both going to be like,

Speaker 1 they're going to be both the fastest growing healthcare companies in the world for over a billion dollars.

Speaker 16 There's nowhere else to go.

Speaker 1 And they're going to go after each other.

Speaker 1 They're going to increasingly. It's like, okay, Elon, while Elon and Bezos are sword fighting with their dicks in near orbit, Tim Cook and Andy Jassy are going to have a real fight over healthcare.

Speaker 1 Like a bare-knuckled fight over who gets the lead. And Elon and Apple over cars.
So we'll see. Elon and Apple over cars.
The more important one is probably the fight between all of them and cloud.

Speaker 1 Yep. You know, there's more like iconic or interesting ones, and then there's the ones that are more important around shareholder value.

Speaker 16 Competition. Look at that.
I bet things will be better. There you go.

Speaker 1 Do you have any predictions?

Speaker 16 No, I don't. I never predict.
You're the predictor. I predict you will have more predictions.
Anyway, I predict that you will never have that hair back that you had in high school.

Speaker 16 And I predict

Speaker 1 that I will

Speaker 16 never go to another prom again, even though I went to four. Let's just point that out.

Speaker 1 Anyway. Ah, my prom photo.
Huge online.

Speaker 16 Anyway, let's read us out, Scott. Read us out.

Speaker 1 Today's show is produced by Lara Naiman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin. Thanks also to Drew Burroughs.
Ernie Andreta, engineered in this episode.

Speaker 1 Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts. Or if you're an Android user, check us out on Spotify or frankly, wherever you listen to podcasts.
Thanks for listening to Pivot from Vox Media.

Speaker 1 We'll be back next Tuesday for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Hello, little Billy Shatner doll.

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