The Biggest Moments from Code, the Latest Robinhood Controversy, and the Future of Fitness Apps

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Hi, everyone.

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

I'm Scott Galloway.

And I'm Kara Swisher.

And Kara is, I hope we are not recording because Kara is in a robe and holding on to a...

a jar of drugs.

It's something out of like a bad 70s porn film.

I don't know what's going on.

Here I am in LA being sick,

continuing to be sick.

Yeah, it's, we got to get you past that.

So I know I got a zebra.

I am basking in the, in the glow of your code.

I thought it went off really well.

How are you feeling about everything?

I'm feeling good.

I think it was really good.

I thought there were substantive interviews.

I think everybody was sort of, I hate to use that phrase, but leaning into it.

I thought we did a good job on the COVID protocols, pretty strict.

And I think people were appreciative, but I don't think we were overwhelming at the same time.

I think we were respectful and safe.

And

there was a lot of great stuff.

I think all the interviews were great.

I don't know what else to say.

You know, everybody was terrific, including you, Scott Galloway.

Daddy went out last night.

Daddy went out.

Did you?

Oh, God.

Really?

Yeah, you went to Korean barbecue.

I did Korean barbecue and a Z-PAC, and I was out.

So that was that for me.

That's pretty good, too.

So I know.

I'm sorry.

I never went to any of the shows.

Y'all went to the parties and had all kinds of drama.

I did nothing.

We've got a couple of topics for Banner today, Kara.

First up, there's a huge hashtag circulating around Twitter saying Ken Griffin lied.

And essentially, there's a, I don't want to call it a conspiracy theory, but a theory that when Robinhood halted trading in certain meme stocks, it was because their biggest client, Citadel, who pays for their order flow, which in and among itself is very controversial, had a financial stake in a company or a hedge fund that was getting absolutely killed because they'd gone short GameStop and was basically losing hundreds of millions.

And the theory is that Citadel put pressure on Robin Hood to stop the bleeding and stop trading in GameStop.

I don't, I haven't seen any evidence of that.

I actually think that Ken Griffin is too smart to engage in that.

I don't like Robinhood for a lot of reasons, but I just think it was a capital call.

When you buy a stock, I believe you have to pair it with a seller, and there's a certain amount of capital required.

And I just don't think they had the capital to do that.

And the reason the hashtag is is because he told Congress he'd never spoke to him, right?

Well, and they're now, and they found phone records that

contradict that.

I just, it'll be very interesting, but I think a guy like Ken Griffin

is very good, has a very healthy fear of jail because he doesn't need, he has everything he needs.

I always say this guy wouldn't do that.

I don't, so I don't, it'll be interesting to see what comes out, but there is a, there is a very strong sentiment now online that they found these phone records and it contradicts his testimony under oath.

And there's all these memes with

Madoff on them.

But

it's going to be interesting to see to see where, you know, if and where this goes.

Yeah,

well, we'll see.

Well, they're going to need proof.

My feeling is they need proof.

I mean, I don't like these guys either, but they need proof.

Yeah.

At this point.

Moving on to more people with badges.

The Federal Privacy Bureau is coming closer to reality care.

On Wednesday, the U.S.

Senate heard arguments for a privacy bureau that would live inside the FTC.

Democrats want $1 billion to fund the new effort.

And I think we have a clip.

Here's an exchange between Senator Gary Peters and Morgan Reed, president of the App Association.

Some smaller data brokers have suggested that they should be completely exempt from reporting and disclosure requirements, that they're a small business, and that it's absolutely burdensome.

Well, you've already had the question is, should

Congress consider FTC exemptions for data brokers?

Should we treat them like we do your average small business down the street?

No, because they aren't the small business down the street, and they're not the point of inflection, right?

They're not the point at which you, the consumer, engaged with the activity that provided your data.

So they're opaque to

most users.

And so, no, I don't think that they should be exempt completely because they're no different than the local small business or the bike store.

I think there should be a privacy bureau.

I think it's a great idea.

The FTC cannot handle all the things that are happening around data and digital issues.

And a separate agency is what's required, even though I'm not a lover of big government, but it's like stupid at this point.

Yeah, it does feel as if, you know, privacy, issues around privacy, they're just getting so complicated and they move at the speed of light.

This is another case where regulation and legislation just hasn't kept up with technology and advancement.

There's just so many new issues, just as they are creating fairly large panels.

There's a lot of academic research around bioethics because there's been

an explosion in innovation around certain types of research and medical research and cloning.

It doesn't feel as if we have...

It just makes sense to be thinking about data, transparency, and privacy and to have

a group charged with applying, looking at these issues in a thoughtful way that has a budget, looks at it probably mostly through the lens of technology or at technology companies.

With experts.

With experts.

Agreed.

I agree.

It makes sense.

I know we hate the idea of creating another agency, but our government is not, even though there's a lot of stone in Washington, it's not set in stone.

We have to respond to the regulatory issues of today and to call out around, oh, no more big business.

I mean, big government.

It's crap.

We need it.

We need it.

Yeah.

I just want to bring up what tech stocks have been doing this week.

The Amazon and NVIDIA were hardest hit, but they all kind of sold off a little bit.

I would argue this is barely a sell-off.

It's kind of like they've plummeted to the values that they were, I don't know, four or six weeks ago.

It's just the rip up there has been just so incredible.

But they did and all told lose about $200 billion.

It was pinned on rising yields.

So just very basics around the correlation of the relationship between bond yields and stock prices.

When bond yields go up, it makes fixed income investments, essentially bonds more attractive.

And people, the theory is people are less inclined to try and find a return in the stock market.

And people just reallocate capital out of the stock market and into the debt market.

So as interest rates have just gone to zero slowly but surely over the last 13 years, it's been rocket fuel for the stock market.

So anyways, this checkback was blamed on increasing yields.

I would argue it was just these companies letting out some steam.

They've just gone up.

They've just had such unprecedented climbs.

But what we also saw was Bitcoin also went down.

And one of the things that the Bitcoin Taliban that can't have an intelligent conversation around the upsides and the downsides of crypto.

Do you say Bitcoin Taliban?

They're going to like that.

Well, there's, okay, come at me.

But

it's Tesla.

And by the way, Bernie Sanders bros are the same way.

And that is

their feeling is they are very aggressive.

They don't have a dialogue.

Unless you kind of surrender to the narrative, you're the enemy.

But one of the narratives around crypto was always that it was uncorrelated.

That one of the most attractive things about it is you were decentralizing and decoupling from the markets, which were either one corrupt or you wanted more diversification so you could find a safe asset that wouldn't be correlated if and when the crash comes and these, you know, what some people believe are over

are overhyped stocks or overvalued stocks.

And the reality is that's just not true.

When we had a huge

drawdown in stocks at the beginning of the pandemic, Bitcoin plummeted to like, I think it was like 5,000 bucks, believe it or not.

And Aswat DeMotaran, who's kind of like, I don't know, my hero spirit animal, I would argue, is the best teacher in graduate education.

He has a very interesting theory on this.

And that is in the 80s, the big theme in finance departments across the world, in academic institutions, was the fact that you could get risk-free return from diversification.

That if you didn't own two stocks, you owned 10.

And the further you diversified them, you managed to hold on to yield and return with lower risk.

And diversification became sort of this truism in the world of investing.

And the problem is everybody listened and started diversifying all over the world in different asset classes, different geographies,

different companies.

And that meant, well, you think, well, that's a great thing.

What it's done, Kara, is it's made everything correlated because everybody owns a little bit of everything.

And so when people,

when stocks go down and they have margin calls or they need liquidity, everything from an Australian iron ore stock to a bond in Turkey gets hit.

And there's no difference here.

Crypto.

And it just did.

Just prove that.

And so I love this notion that diversification at the end of the day has resulted in greater correlation globally.

I find that just fucking fascinating.

Fascinating.

Overwhelmed.

I'm sorry.

So we've been talking about such issues on what?

Hello.

What is it?

You break the news.

Break the news, Kara.

Break it.

The dog is getting a show on CNN Pleu.

Pleu?

CNN Pleu.

It's It's canal.

Yeah, canal.

It's French.

It's going to be in France only.

CNN France.

The news show will focus on news and conversations where business and technology collide.

You don't have a title.

You're going to tell me what your title is?

I'm hoping it'll be no mercy, no malice, but I got to figure out if we can do that.

All right.

And you're launching in the first quarter of 2022.

Tell me what this is at CNN Blue.

Other than an enormous mistake by CNN, it's

clear.

The The final frontier of streaming is news, and I would argue business and politics.

And CNN has decided that they need to play in this, and they're making a huge commitment to an OTT network called CNN Plus.

I mean, I'm all kidding aside, and

I have the tapes to show this.

This really is a kind of a bucket list dream come true for me.

I love CNN.

I love the people there.

I love the talent there.

Why didn't you start there

in the first place?

Because they didn't call.

Because they didn't ask me, Kara.

uh you have to be asked but i'm going to be doing a show on the intersection between technology and society and business and the wonderful thing about ott is that if we have 20 minutes of content one week that's fine if we have 40 minutes no commercials i think they've told me to kind of lean into my irreverence i've said have you seen my content you know are you worried at all and are they ready for you they claim they're into the you know the crazy um so

i really like that and they've hit the jackpot anyway cnn Plus got a show.

Thank you.

I think this is a show and you discovering me and making me an overnight success after working my ass off for 30 years is a big part of the reason I got this show.

So thank you.

And let's be honest.

I'm so glad I turned down their offer.

Oh, no, I didn't.

I didn't get an offer.

Let's be honest, I've outgrown you.

I'm Hillary Swank leaving that other guy who didn't get more movies.

Whatever it is.

You know, I've outgrown you.

I've outgrown you.

No, you haven't.

You'll be back.

Don't you worry.

I've outgrown you.

I'm McClain Stevenson going on to leave.

This is like a rubber band relationship.

I'm Shelly Long.

I'm too big big for cheers.

I should be doing it.

Listen, I want you to be the game a little bit.

Yeah, exactly.

Shelly Long.

I'm Shelly Long.

I'm due for movies.

I'm due for much bigger things.

Money Pit and Troop Beverly Hill.

Definitely.

Let me just give you a piece of advice.

It's a very good quote that I love.

I want you to like, you should be you.

You absolutely should be you.

But there's a quote by Dorothy Salisbury Davis.

I just looked it up.

Don't sell your soul to buy peanuts for the monkeys.

Don't sell your soul to buy peanuts for the monkeys.

Hmm.

You don't have to do antics.

You're very smart.

You have a lot of insight.

You deserve insight.

You don't think I do.

I like your antics, but I'm saying two things that you want to do, right?

Two things that you want to do.

Not things that are crowd pleasing.

Right.

That's what the peanuts are to the monkeys.

Two things that you want to do.

Don't sell your soul for the peanuts, for the monkey man.

No, you be you in any way you can.

Just what you're doing should be insightful and bring people.

Daddy with a capital D.

D to the A double D Y.

Hello.

Good luck.

Jeff Zucker.

Call me if you need advice.

Okay.

Call me.

Literally, what is the over-under for the second time my show gets canceled before it airs?

What's the over-under?

30%?

50%?

I have a unique skill to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Thank you for your role in this.

Thank you for seeing us.

I'm super excited.

All right.

When we come back, we'll debrief on code and take a listener question.

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off.

Okay, Kara, time for our big story.

Code.

We, I really you, I just showed up and looked very pretty.

I thought I looked good.

You did look good.

Yeah, I thought I was good.

You went around if you were like the ambassador.

You know what?

I really do.

I'm, I care for you, and I wanted this to be successful because we haven't done it in a while.

I thought this was an especially important code for you and for us and for Vox.

And I overcame

the fact I don't like people and I went around and I tried to meet everybody.

I literally tried to meet 400 people.

Yeah, you were like the matrix D.

Anyways, I tried to be the hostess with the mostest.

You were excellent.

You did a great job.

Except for one part, but we won't discuss later.

No, we should discuss that because I want to evolve as a person.

Well, you were angry at me or a bunch of people.

You didn't agree with Sam Harris, which I think a lot of which was fascinating.

And I think I always try to bring in views I don't agree with.

Last week, The Lancet, a preeminent medical journal, one of probably the five best medical journals on earth, is now referring not to women, but to bodies with vaginas.

Now, this is whatever you think about the politics around trans rights, and

I am super liberal on that point.

This is where

scientific rationality and the English language go to die.

But I thought you had a really intelligent conversation until you got to this idea that people with trans,

this whole obsession with the word woman.

Right, when we can't actually use

the word woman as a noun in a medical context or in any other context without fearing for the that there's going to be a witch burning, you know, based on the on a kind of activist culture that has been leveraged by social media.

And

that you have seen that kind of capitulation to dogmatism and bullying

just writ large across our institutions media academic corporate and it's

it's it's not being exaggerated it's often spun even by your co-host on your podcast as being exaggerated but

it is also in reaction to you know very troubling trends on the right And Ina, for you to push back at you pretty hard, and it deservedly.

Scott, Ina Friedwith Axios.

Maybe it's, you know, I am one of those women who was born without a uterus.

So I'm curious, help me understand why it is that in order to deal with these massive issues, climate change, the virus, et cetera, why do we simultaneously have to dehumanize and delegitimize transgender and non-binary folks who

are speaking their truth about their identity.

Why?

I don't understand why those two things are in conflict.

This idea that it's inconvenience to, and then call it wokistan or call it cancel culture.

Yeah, so I just use that word.

To be clear, Sam denied.

No, I get that.

He didn't, but he does the same thing.

It's the same idea is that, oh, we're so inconvenienced and it's so unscientific.

And

now you're making a caricature of his comments.

That's not.

No, I get it.

So I didn't, I didn't, but let me just be clear.

I did not even know that this was an issue.

And also, I do, I like that Nina got up and she was visibly upset.

And we gave her a lot of time to

have a bit of a dialogue with Sam.

As I understood it, and I didn't even know this was a thing.

I'm so out of touch.

Really?

Sam was saying, Sam was saying that we're at a point now where we're not allowed to even use biological terms such as, or gender terms such as woman or man

because people find that offensive, that we can't even agree on a common vocabulary to try and have thoughtful discussions that advance the rights of different people.

His viewpoint was we can't even have a common dialogue, a common vocabulary anymore.

I don't think he was saying, oh, don't be ridiculous.

You shouldn't be able to use certain words.

No, but it's attached to it.

This is not the example you need to do.

It's attached to a much bigger issue, which is

aggrieved.

White men.

I'm just, I'm sorry.

It's what it is.

And I get that in some cases, it goes too far.

We understand that.

That's not the issue.

But they fixate on certain things where they could be respectful, understand the complexity of it, and not just, hey, you know, this is, look, you can't even say this.

Come on.

It reduces

topic.

What I didn't get from the conversation, and it's a genuine question, is what

is

what is the ask for?

To stop using the terms woman and man and to use the term born with a vagina, born with a penis.

What is the actual issue?

What's the ask?

I don't know if there's an ask, but

there's a lot of asks.

That's not true.

But the idea is, is to,

I get why on, if you do it in a reductive way, you can make your argument that way.

But it's not reductive.

This is a history.

And by the way, it's continuing, as you know.

Republican legislatures across the country

are aiming.

And you know, our friend Stephanie Ruhl

flap back.

That community is enduring tremendous bullshit, a tremendous discussion.

And continues to.

And this is just so much bullshit on top of it that they just need to do why.

You know, it just, it's just, it's not that, you know, here we are indulging.

They just lump it in with things.

You know, it's not a grab basket of cancel culture.

Sometimes the left goes too far.

There is no question.

By the way, meanwhile, the right over here is moving into, you know, the left is arguing with itself.

Well, the right is moving in an extraordinarily

he did have an interesting point on this.

Well, just that I thought it was, and I hadn't realized it.

He said the far right is basically, he believes, been mostly excluded, that the far right is mostly seen as crazy and doesn't have that much influence.

But the far left has garnered quite a bit of influence, that they still, they do get quite a bit of,

they're taking very seriously and have more influence.

Yeah, I thought that was really an interesting observation.

I hadn't thought about it because he said, when you see these people marching at Charlottesville, for the most part, the majority of America lawmakers really do write them off.

And we don't, you know, they're not taken seriously.

The president didn't.

The president of the United States didn't.

He continues to use them.

You mean President Trump?

Yes, President Trump.

Not President mine, of course not.

He continues to use them for his political advantage and to scare people.

And so this is not, this is a new fresh time that requires people to not be so inconvenienced on both sides, by the way.

FYI, because what's happening is these

extremist parts of our society are pressuring us to disagree.

And it's just, I don't know what else to say, but it's unkind.

At the very least, it's unkind.

And it's not thoughtful.

And,

you know, pulling out this, I don't get to say what I want.

You know, I had an interesting discussion, and then we can move on with a really high-ranking CEO.

He's like, I never get to say everything I want anymore.

And I was like, probably a good thing, right?

I was like, you know what?

Good.

You shouldn't say everything you want anymore.

You've been getting to say anything you want for your whole life.

And maybe you should start thinking about,

and not to be like, it's not woke, Stan, to say, can't you just be, look at there are people who have suffered that you have no idea about or what they've gone through.

This is a group of people, especially this group of people, that continue to this day to be continually attacked.

And that you have to do this argument and not and make it this big a deal is just,

I just understand.

The nicest moment was where the biggest insight

for you was, if you had to pick one or two.

Here's overall, I thought all the speakers came to talk and say significant things, right?

I don't, I think people were, first of all, were dying to get together.

That's the one thing is the attendees were thrilled.

I had so many people like, I'm so happy to be here,

which I thought was great.

I thought that was a great part.

And I thought we gave them really great content.

And the speakers also came.

to really were excited to talk, I think, about various issues.

Obviously, you know,

Gendadella, I thought, was tremendous.

But he's very good and was funny, too.

And, you know, took a few dings at Amazon and TikTok, the TikTok deal.

Well, then I just sort of have to ask about TikTok.

Tell me what happened there.

It's the strangest thing I've ever sort of worked on.

I figure.

It's the strangest thing I've reported.

It's unbelievable.

I mean,

it's, I learned so much, Cara, about so many things and so many people.

Well, the thing that made news was Elon saying that just

should focus on on getting to orbit not lawsuits

you can't you cannot sue your way to the moon okay

you know how good your lawyers are yeah

hello passive aggressive minus the passive and that made a lot of news

that made a lot of news this is a lawsuit from blue origin about a lunar lander contract that elon has at space has gotten with nasa um Amazon responded.

What did they say?

What did they do?

Well, just hours later, they sent a 13-page list to our friends at The Verge detailing litigation and other legal actions filed by SpaceX against the government going back as 2004.

So they were like, Come on, boss, what's good for the good for the goose?

And then Elon responded on Twitter saying, SpaceX has sued to be allowed to compete.

Blue Origin is suing to stop competition.

Yeah, tomato, tomato, boss.

This definitely is like their sword fighting with their dicks has gone.

Now it's not in space.

It's here at code.

Yeah.

But it strikes me as very strange that these guys are,

it strikes me as a little bit childish the way they're kind of going after each other like this.

They clearly don't like each other.

He said they don't speak.

I would think guys like that would talk.

No, they don't talk.

Yeah, that strikes me as weird.

Yeah, no, well, here's the thing.

Elon is so far ahead of everybody else.

He's always a factor in space that he's got in cars.

I mean, like everywhere that he competes.

You know, the space stuff, he's got like most of the cutting-edge stuff, and they're all sort of racing to keep up.

I mean, the numbers are very clear.

I think he enjoys having a little back and forth.

He likes the game, you know, and I liked it.

I like that he talks about it.

You know, he talked a lot about Mars and stuff like that.

So I enjoy, I don't mind this.

I think it's funny.

And I love that Amazon kind of without a sense of humor responds.

You know, they could have done something funny.

And by the way, why was Amazon responding when Blue Origin is owned by Jeff Bezos?

That's what I'd like to know.

Yeah, that seems a little bit weird.

You know what I thought was the nicest moment or the nicest panel was the one on psychedelics.

I was very,

I come to the stuff and I look, I look for insight.

The more I find as I get older, I'm looking for something that, or I feel something that creates an emotion or emotional response.

And I found it very

moving.

I think his name was Sanjay on the psychedelics panel.

What's the institute he runs?

Joe Green, I forget.

Yeah, Nickian.

Nickian.

Yeah, thank you.

And he talked about his daughter's

anorexia and the role that psychedelics played and that his bipolar,

his bipolar condition was treated or that psychedelics played a role in that.

And I thought that was very

brave of him.

And also, I thought it was moving.

And I didn't realize the exciting thing or the thing I took away from that panel is they're talking about things ranging from obesity to criminal recidivism.

There's a lot of potential treatments here.

And then Rick Smallin had a great question, and that is, there's no free lunch with anything.

And he was right.

He was literally reading my mind.

And that is, what is the downside when everyone is doing these kind of guided, these guided trips?

But in that company field trip, it's basically opening kind of the Williams Sonoma of psychedelics.

I thought that was really interesting because I think so many of us are a bit confused about where to start.

I am going to do, and it's going to be actually an episode on my program at CNN Plus.

I'm going to do one of these guided trips.

I've been scared to do it, but I'm going to do it.

Yeah.

Which one?

Ketamine therapy?

I'm going to do it through.

So that guy.

That's what they do at Field Trip, Ketamine Therapy.

Yeah, ketamine.

It was that guy, Ronin.

I thought he was, he struck me as just a very level-headed guy.

And I like the idea of having a senior executive in one of these companies make sure that I'm treated well or that shit doesn't go wrong or whatever, which I don't think it does very often.

I think it's a lot less dangerous or risky than you might think.

I don't know why it intimidates me.

But anyways, I'm going to do it in the documentary.

That'll be good.

See, I'm not sure I need to, I'm not sure I want to see me or my issues.

I don't, that's what scares me about it.

Right.

Really, you should.

You'll be happier.

Do you think?

Okay.

See, I'm completely self-confident.

I'm happy with myself.

I'm happy with my self-hating self.

I'm fine.

I'm down with it.

No, you wouldn't be a very good candidate for that.

No, I think it's an interesting thing.

I think what's interesting about it was that these are going to to be businesses and they're going to be,

I think one of the things we're going to talk about, we're going to, our next event's going to be PivotCon, is this changing healthcare system.

And I think both the panels on the body and the mind were really interesting because one of the messages was, whatever you think, some of this stuff is going to be quackery, some of it's not.

The healthcare system and how we treat ourselves needs to change dramatically.

And it's also a financial opportunity.

And the way it's set up really is not about health in any way.

It's about treatment.

And so

I just really look forward to delving into, besides climate change tech and Bitcoin and changing of the financial system, I don't think there was a non-interesting

interview.

He said something

that I took down, and that is, what is your highest value?

Like as a company, what is the kind of the one value you will not negotiate on and pursue?

And I thought that was very instructive.

And I thought, I have this whole thing.

Growth is not a value.

Growth is not a value.

That's right.

It's hopefully an outcome.

But anyways,

I do

this exercise with my students, my brand strategy classroom.

I'm like, think about yourself as a brand professionally and personally and establish.

Paul Romer, Nobel Prize winning economist and a colleague at NYU, used to say, and it really moved me.

He said, you have to have a code.

You have to have your own code.

You have to identify early in your life what your code is and what's not negotiable around your values.

And he was essentially saying the same thing.

And I thought it was an interesting exercise that every leadership team should say, what is our highest value?

Like at the end of the day, what is the value we're trying to evangelize and promote and spread around the world?

I thought that was very interesting.

And it got me thinking about my own companies.

Yeah.

But I thought

he was referencing Facebook.

A couple of years ago, he told me in an interview that Facebook was like a cigarette company and everyone's sort of come around to that idea.

Honey, it's more like an opiate company or a gambling company.

But he was, that's what he was discussing.

And Facebook wouldn't come.

We asked them.

There were a lot of Facebook people in the audience.

I think they were smart.

I think they should keep a low profile right now.

I mean, I'm not talking about what they should do, but the smart thing to do is they should just, there's no winning for them right now because the truth is there.

The truth is coming out.

And there's just, it's what it's indefensible.

Their shit's just indefensible.

And everyone's just sort of sick of the spin and sick of Nick Clegg and his accent.

Everyone's just saying, okay, you're charming and you're British, but you're full of shit.

I think they're smart.

If I were advising them, I'd say, yeah, just keep it, keep it on the low right now.

There's no, there's, there's no winning for them on, for anyone on any stage in the world right now.

Well, Scott, maybe there's a good to be not winning for a minute.

How about that?

Well, sister, I'm with you.

We're brothers from another mother on this one or sisters from another father.

I would be transparent, utterly and say, okay, here's what we did wrong.

And by the way, we're going to be running that full Elon Musk interview and a few other interviews from Code next week on this show.

Should we pivot to a listener question, Kara?

Let's do that.

Let's do it.

Anyway, it was a good time had by you.

Well done, Kara.

Well done.

Thank you.

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

You've got mail.

Hey, Scott and Kara.

This is Lisa, and I'm a big fan of the show.

I'm a library director for King County Library System.

We're one of the biggest library systems in the country.

Our libraries are beautiful, and for many years, we've encouraged the public to come in all day, get on the internet, take your kids to story time, practice English as a second language.

Now, obviously, meeting in person has been upended.

And while I continue to fiscally support e-resources and e-books, I'm very worried about public spaces, especially the most democratic of all.

What do you think is the future of the public library?

And what should we be doing to be more relevant and to continue to thrive and survive?

Thanks.

Huh.

I love libraries, but I'm worried, I would say.

I would love to take my daughter and upcoming new son to the library, but obviously COVID has put a problem with her going.

So I don't know.

I spend a lot of time in libraries, but I think kids do not.

What do you think, Scott?

Yeah, there's a lot here.

So I don't go to fundraisers very much or ever.

Going in a windowless room and eating chicken so we all feel good about ourselves and spend $500 so they can spend $300 on a bad dinner.

That whole circuit really turns me off.

But the one thing I do go to is there's this thing in Delray Beach that's run by a friend of ours called Laugh at the Library, and they try and raise money for the Delray Public Library.

I think there's a bigger issue, and that is one of the real downsides to dispersion or the fact that we're all withdrawing to our cohorts and distancing.

is I think the ugly cousin to dispersion is segregation.

And the problem with dispersion and not having places, great public places like libraries is we're not touching and feeling each other, and we're not going to have as much empathy.

And libraries were a great place where a lot of people from different backgrounds came together to just be in each other's company.

And I think these public places and our lack of mixing, if you will, is a big threat and one of the most unfortunate things coming out of this pandemic.

And there's just very few things that are more benign and more wonderful than a library.

The question is, realistically, is as much all the good feels we have about them, are they still practical?

Is the new generation going to use them?

And it's a real question.

So what could they become?

I don't know.

Is it got to be a place that has just such extraordinary bandwidth?

Do they build podcast studios?

Do they have creative studios that you can rent out and lease?

I mean, you used to go for basically the library used to be really the card catalog.

And then as you needed to find a source, you'd go to this giant card catalog and then you'd go to the fourth floor and find your book on microbiology or whatever.

And now we have Google.

These things just aren't, they aren't needed, but there are a lot of points of learning and production that we still, that still large swaths of the community don't have access to, or just a quiet, nice place to go and get work done.

You know, should it be kind of the new, I mean, to a certain extent

that Soho House and Ace Hotel and all these big lobbies that people go to work to, they've kind of to a certain extent usurped that role from libraries, right?

That's exactly right.

So should libraries take it back?

And again, it's just more

basically a lack of trust in our institutions.

We've decided, oh, that should be privatized.

But everybody likes a library, but there's just no getting around it.

They're going to have to innovate and make the offering more compelling.

What are your thoughts, Garrett?

Well, I think, you know, one of the things that I like, I still use libraries for

my sons, who are older now, is going for reading time, story time, things like that.

um there's certain things they do there um that are you know where the kids can interact with each other those were all totally useful um reading time uh sitting just sitting with other kids and reading that was great but all it was all about the community aspect of it um obviously it can't be a place just to take a book out because Look, the numbers are in the numbers and people still read books and people need access to books they don't have to buy.

So that's important.

I just feel like if they move move into a more community space and program a whole lot more, just program the shit out of it, that could be something that's interesting.

Speeches,

things for kids, artwork.

Book signings, all kinds of stuff.

Book signings.

But then again, then you run right into the private, like then bookstores.

It just goes.

The problem is that people are withdrawing into their own little pods.

That's right.

And

they can get everything as accessible on the internet.

Everything.

Right.

And so, and it's easier and it's cheaper and it's really hard.

I don't quite know what you could do, but create the things you were talking about.

It's hard,

Lisa.

I'm not sure.

Yeah.

And it's unnecessary, but it isn't, if that makes sense, I guess.

Yeah, we all agree.

We all agree we like libraries.

Now, quite frankly, they've got to prove that we should and that it's worth it's worth the investment.

Okay, Carol, one more quick break, and we'll be back for predictions.

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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.

Kara, do you have any predictions?

I predict that I am someday not going to be sick.

No, I predict, Scott.

That's your area.

That's your CNN Plu area of expectations.

Hello.

Hello.

Hello.

That's right.

Okay.

So I have a couple predictions.

The first is: I don't know if you saw the news, but Amazon and Apple are making big entrees.

And we predicted this.

I said that Amazon was going to be the fastest-growing $1 billion plus healthcare company in the world.

And they were lining up their troops at the border with Halo and Whole Foods, and they had the infrastructure to take health care, or at least primary health care, maybe diagnostics, and take it from a defensive driven industry to an offensive one and manage your fitness, manage your health.

Well, they've announced a bunch of initiatives and products focused on fitness and health alongside Apple is also doing this.

And my prediction is that a lot of, if you think about fitness apps and even the meditation apps, what they are is streaming media companies.

They're basically, they're competing with Netflix.

And I think these companies, as a lot of industries

have incurred, are about to be rolled over by big tech.

I think Amazon and Apple are coming into all types of wellness and streaming media, if you will.

And I think organizations like Calm and Headspace are really going to suffer.

And a lot of these fitness apps that have gotten some traction are, in my opinion, just going to be run over.

So Amazon and Apple, and it's going to be another example of how big tech just kind of flips a switch and rolls over a lot of innovators.

But I think the market is about to get very ugly for meditation and fitness apps.

That's my first prediction.

Oh, man.

My second is COVID's enduring feature, and we keep saying this, will be seen as an accelerant, not as a change agent.

One of the things that's accelerated massively is income inequality.

But what we don't talk about is there's going to be a much greater,

much more scrutiny on vaccine inequality.

And that is, it's estimated that by the end of the year, get this, America, we are supposedly going to waste or destroy 100 to 250 million doses of vaccine, enough vaccine to probably vaccinate three or four Central and Latin American countries.

And it's going to bring up a very interesting

conversation around wealthy countries versus poor countries.

And what is our obligation that if we're not going to use this vaccine, because quite frankly, we have our heads up our asses, should we be shipping that vaccine and putting our supply chain to work for the good of other people?

Similar to what we did in, I would argue,

what you've talked about.

Anyways, my two predictions, the fitness and the fitness and meditation and wellness streaming, streaming content apps out there are about to be rolled over or have huge pressure on them.

It'll be really interesting to see what happens with Peloton, by the way.

And then two,

I'm sorry, under the auspices of big tech, yet again, coming into

another category.

And two, I think vaccine inequality is about to become a much bigger story.

That's interesting.

Wow.

In any case, you're absolutely correct.

I actually did find something really interesting.

And let me say with a grain of salt, this was a poll done by a PAC from John Bolton, Trump's former national security advisor, who despises Trump.

But nonetheless, there's a poll that shows that numbers for Donald Trump are declining rather quickly.

And your governor, Ron DeSantis, is surging in the 2024 GOP.

I did not know.

Presidential candidates.

Yeah.

Now, again, grain of salt with where it coming from.

But I think that

his support is much softer than people think.

Trump or DeSantis?

Trump.

Trump.

Oh, we've said this all along, but some of it is just, I can't tell, I can't separate the bias here, but I've always thought

a guy that lost in what was kind of a near landslide, who's going to be pushing 78.

And by the way, he's toxic.

Anyone who gets near him has their reputations ruined.

And he's just positioned the Republican Party in an impossible position.

But at the same time,

he can get people elected or more than anything, get them not elected.

I just don't think that wine ages well.

And also, speaking of aging, I think biology, you know, he's an he's a very, you know, technically obese guy at the age of, what is he now?

75 or 76.

I just wonder when he starts to, quite frankly, slow down.

Anyway, but I've always thought he was, he was, um, that his prospects as a power, he'll still be a kind of a kingmaker, but I don't think, I, I think that brand's got to start waning.

But I've got to, I agree.

It's interesting.

We'll see what happens.

Obviously, Biden's numbers are way down because of the Afghanistan rebel.

That may jump back if he gets these things passed.

If he doesn't, big problems for him.

But it's a real end for a lot of people like Chris Christie, Nikki Alley, et cetera.

But there's this toxic, so I think the terms toxic and masculinity have been conflated.

And I don't even like to use the two terms together, but I do think there is a toxic masculinity when it comes to public policy and geopolitical decisions where we respect people who make these very bold moves that involve death.

and involve wars.

And actually, I think Biden people will say he got out.

He did not get out elegantly.

It was kind of a tragedy on certain levels.

I think people in the rearview mirror will see that as a leadership position.

They won't remember how we got out.

They'll just remember we got out.

Unfortunately, I think DeSantis, I hate to say this because I think it's depraved what he's done and his behavior.

I think people find that kind of stuff leadership.

Stuck to his guns despite the fact that kids were being admitted to ICUs and infections went up.

I think America has this sort of preoccupation with people who make these kind of weird.

We would rather somebody be wrong, but stick to being wrong with conviction.

And I do think that's a form of this sort of weirdness around kind of macho decisions.

I think it's very unhealthy and I think we're infected from it.

But I think both Biden and DeSantis are probably

are going to get, quite frankly, are going to benefit from

both those decisions.

Anyway, I want to thank everyone, including you, Scott, for all the stuff you did at Code.

The experiential team at Vox Media, including Adam Toe, the tech lead, for all their Albert Code.

I want to thank everyone, including Shannon Thompson, Michelle Berg, so many others, Jill Pendergast, who's been with me for years.

There's just so many people who contribute to Code, but especially you.

You've been a real friend and colleague during this time.

So give me a reason.

Thank you.

That makes me feel nice.

All right.

Today's show was produced by Lara Naaman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin.

Thanks also to Drew Burroughs.

Also, Ernie, the E-Man, E to the Engineat, engineered this episode.

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 Box Media.

We'll be back next Friday for another breakdown of all things tech and business.

On the psychedelics panel, the individual, the guy on the panel, I don't even remember his name, said, what is the common theme after everyone experiences psychedelics?

And he said, universally, universally, the recognition, the finding when you do psychedelics is that love is the answer.

I don't know what that has to do with psychedelics, but I like that, Kara.

Love is the answer.

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