Lessons from Afghanistan, the California Recall, and this week’s Friend of Pivot is Nathan Allebach aka The Steak-umm Twitter Guy

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Hi, everyone.

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

I'm Kara Swisher.

Scott Galloway is somewhere watching Anderson Cooper.

So I'm joined by journalist, author of the daily newsletter, wake up call, and founder of Katie Couric Media, Katie Couric herself, who is also a badass.

Hi, Katie.

Hi, Kara.

How are you?

Good.

I'm most excited to have you, I have to say.

Oh, that's so funny.

I've had a lot of dudes lately, and it's just, this is really nice because you and I have a lovely rapport, and you have lots to say about lots of things.

Well, I don't know if I really do, but I'm happy to be here, Kara.

Big fan, Kara.

Yeah, I'm also

testing out

co-hosts.

So, you know, if I have to kill Scott at some point, which is obviously inevitable.

No, I won't, but you understand he's going to cancel himself at one moment in his life.

So therefore.

I think he already has a million times, but somehow he's able to live to do another podcast.

That's true.

I don't understand it, but nonetheless, I have to be, you know, be prepared.

You know, I have to be prepared.

That's true.

You have to have a succession plan for you too, Kara.

Yes, exactly.

I'm not going anywhere.

I'm speed dating, essentially, and co-hosting, essentially.

Excellent.

Excellent.

All right.

Must be fun.

Have you been having fun with all these new people?

Yeah, it's interesting.

Yeah, I did have my brother this last week, which was great.

We talked a lot about COVID.

He's a doctor, as you know, in emergency rooms in San Francisco.

So,

in fact, I'm in San Francisco this week.

And I've noticed Alphabet's autonomous vehicle from the company Waymo has launched a robo-taxi service.

It's everywhere.

You see Waymo things driving around San Francisco, which is kind of interesting.

It's kind of nice to be here back.

This is two years.

I haven't been in San Francisco.

I know.

I read that you were back for the first time in a long time.

I don't know.

I read like 12,000 newsletters, Kara, and somebody mentioned the fact that you were back in San Francisco for the first time.

So are you saying that these taxi cabs are running around the city, driverless?

Driverless, yes.

Robotaxi Services.

And have you gotten in one?

No.

I've driven behind them and they seem fine.

I consider hitting them sometimes to see what happens, but then I think, no, it's a rental car.

I should probably do that.

And there's someone in there, Kara.

Yes, I know that.

I understand that.

But just a light tap, just a light tap to see, you know, the Elon Musk of it all, essentially.

I have no desire to be in one of those, but I did see, I don't know if you went to CES a couple of years ago, they were fascinating kind of choppers, air taxis that would

fly around, you know, these urban areas.

And I don't think they were autonomous.

They might have been, but they're going to be.

But

they were vertical lift and takeoff vehicles.

It was like something out of the Jetsons.

And that

looked fascinating and terrifying all over the world.

No, that's going to happen.

That's how it's going to go in cities like New York is

you take off atop of one building in this sort of weird helicopter-like thing, and then you're going to, you know, land on another one, and you're going to an elevator, and then you're there in two minutes versus 30 minutes.

Now, when is this going to happen?

Do you think you'll be dead, Katie?

Really?

Yes, but not

that's see, that's why we need a successful children.

Yeah, your children's and my many children's will be, will be riding them.

But would you, you don't wouldn't ride a robo-taxi, you wouldn't get in without a driver right now.

I don't, I don't think right now, I think probably in a year or so, after I see more data and hear about the accident rate,

I might be willing to do it.

But no, I'm not a big, you know, funny care, I'm kind of a risk-taker in some ways.

But when it comes to my personal safety and the thought of dying, I'm really not.

Right.

Well, that's many people are like that.

Not everybody in this country, unfortunately.

We'll talk about that.

Like, I wouldn't want to go with Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk.

Really?

If he asked you in his little ship, you wouldn't want to do that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

First of all,

I don't know if I'd want to be in close proximity to either of those guys, but I'm not sure I'd want to even go up in space.

I don't know.

Let me just be fair.

Elon does not do those stunt rides.

He has not done any of those.

It's Richard Brown.

That's right, Richard Brandon

because he thinks they're stupid.

He just wants to go to Mars and not come back.

That's his plan.

So, really?

Yeah, that's it.

That's his whole, that's his whole plan.

Would you go with any of those guys?

No, I don't want to go to Mars.

I don't want to go.

No, you can't come back.

You have to stay there for the rest of your life.

And you get, I interviewed an astrophysicist who is an astrobiologist, actually.

And he said, you just get, unless you're hundreds of feet underground with dirt all over you,

you get shorter because your bones start to contract because of the gravity, and then you get dumber because of the radiation.

So you essentially turn into a tronglody under the.

Well, I don't need either of those things.

We don't need either.

But you know what?

I think because, Kara, I remember in fourth grade, I had a diary entry when the Apollo crew blew up on the launch pad and the three astronauts were killed.

And then, of course, I covered Challenger and Columbia.

And I don't know for those reasons, those are so indelibly etched in my consciousness.

The idea of kind of putting myself in that kind of danger just isn't all that appealing to me.

Yeah.

Yeah, I know.

I don't either.

I'm not that kind of adventure.

Speaking of indelibly stuck in our minds, January 6th insurrection, the House Select Committee is still investigating.

Now it's demanding the records of 15 social media companies, the companies including Facebook, Google, Parlor, Snapchat, and Reddit.

So two weeks to hand over the records related to the attack.

They were quite heavily used, especially Facebook, Messenger, and other things.

So they're looking at information connected to the spread of misinformation, the efforts to overturn the 2020 election to prevent certification results, domestic violent extremism, and foreign influence.

What do you make of where this committee is going and the role social media companies?

Obviously, it starts and stops with Trump, but where do you imagine this going?

Well, I think it's incredibly important to get access to those records.

I guess these companies have two weeks to respond, but

it seems like transparency for most of these companies has not been their big calling card.

But

I guess they can be compelled to release this kind of information and be transparent.

But

I think it's really important.

I think it was a shame that there wasn't a bipartisan commission to investigate January 6th and that now it has got to be politicized, and with

both sides kind of putting their

flags down about privacy, et cetera, et cetera.

But I think it's critically important to really understand how this thing came together.

And also, I'm really interested.

And

I know that people have been saying, oh, it's congressional overreach, blah, blah, blah.

But I'm interested in hearing about the phone calls that went on between Jim Jordan and Donald Trump and Goetz and Trump and, you know, and Mark Meadows.

And

was there some kind of planning prior to the rally in front of the White House to kind of incite this crowd?

And

I think that's critically important.

What was going on behind the scenes?

Well, you can see a lot in social media.

There's texts and there's a lot of technology that actually does chronicle when these, when the timelines of these things, it's very hard to fake a timeline when you've been using.

digital devices.

One of the things that's interesting, you did a really, I would say, devastating interview with Sheryl Sandberg a while back.

I don't remember when that was, but were you

in 2019.

So when you look at what happened here, when you think about that interview where you really gave her a hard time and she, she's very, she tries to sort of sail it.

Did I really go?

I mean, I think I just asked her, I think I honestly, I would not characterize it as giving Cheryl Sandberg a hard time.

I think I asked her some very legitimate questions.

She put herself in a position.

She's, you know, really famous for kind of trying to personalize and deflect hard questions.

And, and I thought it was really important at that moment in time when the heat was really starting to

be on Facebook and the way it was conducting itself with hate speech and political ads and that speech that Mark Zuckerberg had given to in front of Georgetown.

You know, I think that she was at that speech.

Okay, well, she had some hard, you know, hard questions that she needed to ask.

So,

you know, I think it was interesting because I'm reading an ugly truth right now.

And

she expected it to be a friendly, a friendly environment.

But, you know, you can't really have all those things going on around you and not be not anticipate really tough questions.

Yeah.

I thought that was a great interview with Cheryl because I think you showed that her attempt to deflect.

I think deflect was the exact word is that she's quite good at it and you didn't allow her to do so.

And actually, if you look at it again, I urge people to look at it again.

It really does.

You sort of start to see their strategies today as they try to deflect what happened on January 6th and their role in it.

And I wouldn't say they're in the primary role, but they're certainly critically important.

Speaking of controversies, Katie, since we have you here, you were asked, we have to ask you about the Jeopardy situation since you guest hosted earlier this year.

And now, here is the guest host of Jeopardy, Katie Curry.

Thank you, Johnny Gilbert.

Welcome to Jeopardy, everyone.

It is such a thrill to be here guest hosting a show.

My Bialik is filling in as regular host when they restart the search process.

Do you have a chance again?

Or what do you think?

What did you think about that?

Was that just a like for you?

I was happy to do it for two weeks.

You know, I really have tremendous respect for Alex Truvak.

I mean, who doesn't?

Find me one person who really doesn't.

But did you want to be host?

Did you want to actually?

I did not.

I did not.

I mean, listen, I was flattered that I was a guest host and I was the first woman.

right on to fill in.

But at the same time, no, that's not a job that would necessarily appeal to me, even though I think it would be really fun for a lot of people.

I can't believe Sony didn't do a better job

than Betty Mike and that you had to have a reporter from the ringer go through all those podcasts.

But look at all the people who have said dumb things in the past.

Those were pretty dumb.

Those are the things.

Oh, yeah.

Not

really.

They were really dumb.

They were beyond dumb.

They were offensive.

Yeah, I'm not sure there's going to find a Katie Kerrig thing saying talking about boobs and

no,

I doubt it.

But I'm just saying that, you know, you've seen Alexi, the woman who was going to be the editor of Teen Fogue, who said some inappropriate things.

And I think it's just a really important reminder for all you young people listening.

Young ears.

Too late, Katie.

Your digital footprint lasts forever.

Too late.

You know, be mindful if you're trying to be provocative or funny or even, you know, off color.

You've got to remember that

it probably will come out.

Well, nobody's safe.

I have no idea.

What do you think?

I think my biolec needs to get it.

That's what I think.

Or Ken Jennings.

I mean, obviously he's a fan favorite, but it seems like she should get it.

Oh, no, LeVar Burton is the fan favorite.

Oh, the fan favorite.

You're right.

He is.

That's right.

That's right.

But I think she should get it.

That's who I'm going for.

Yeah, but now I guess she's being put under the microscope for some of the things that she has said about vaccines and something about scheduling or her kids' vaccines.

And she also wrote a piece, I guess, in the Times during Me Too.

She did.

Seeming to kind of blame the victim a little bit and talking about the way she comports herself,

which got a lot of backlash as well.

But anyway, we have to get to the big story.

Today is the ostensible deadline for the United States to pull out of Afghanistan.

Obviously, that's what I've done.

I know.

How the U.S.

and 97 other countries, including the U.K., France, Germany, released a statement agreeing to to continue to help those fleeing Afghanistan.

The statement said, we've received assurances from the Taliban that all foreign nationals and any Afghan citizen with travel authorization from our countries will be allowed to proceed in a safe and orderly manner to points of departure and travel outside the country.

There's all the risks involved, including bombings.

The countries also stated it will continue to issue travel documentation for designated Afghans.

So you just said shit show.

Let's break down shit show from your point of view.

You know, you've covered a lot of these things.

I've covered it from the beginning, and I went to Afghanistan a couple of times, and it's just heartbreaking because it seems like,

you know, it's deja vu all over again, as Yogi Berra would say.

I mean, here it was, the, what do they call it, the graveyard of empires, and the Taliban was in control from 1996 to 2001.

They're back in control.

And of course, the big question, Kara, as you well know, is can the Taliban, and what is the Taliban, by the way?

Is it a monolithic organization?

It's, you know, is it a ragtag army full of like disgruntled 19-year-olds?

I mean, can the Taliban be trusted?

I think is the big question, right?

What do you make of the

new and improved Taliban?

Yeah, I know.

It's like Taliban 2.0 and the neither gentler Taliban.

I don't think so.

I feel like we're being pretty naive to put so much power in the Taliban.

And, you know, I was reading a New York Times article that said, you know, Afghan citizens

have to obtain passports from the Afghan Interior Ministry, then secure visas and approval and approved travel documents from foreign governments before they can leave, which could take months, even years, the reporter pointed out.

And it might provide information that will allow the Taliban to exact retribution on people who want to leave the country.

So I don't know, Kara.

It sounds pretty iffy.

And then you've got ISIS-K,

you know, doing these terrorist attacks.

And then they're trying to take credit for making the U.S.

leave Afghanistan.

So is there going to be some kind of tit-for-tat and internal

sort of competition between the Taliban and ISIS-K

with the more radical

elements of the Taliban?

I don't know.

It sounds like a recipe for disaster.

How would you cover it as a report?

You know, you've been there, you've covered it, and obviously you've covered it from lots of angles, including being an anchor.

How do you cover something like this?

Some people, someone was just complaining about the media.

I was somewhere, I forget where I was.

They were saying it was overwrought in terms of how they're covering it.

How do you assess it?

Like when you're looking at, you know,

I've seen those criticisms too, but I think it's pretty hard if you're on the ground.

People are dying in stampedes.

People are climbing on C-17s to escape the country.

They're throwing their babies into the arms of U.S.

military personnel.

I think it's pretty hard not to get overwrought.

I challenge those people who are critical of the media to go on the ground in Afghanistan and do a completely unemotive report.

So, you know, listen, there's so many different ways and there's so much smart writing that's being done on it.

You know, there's how do you cover it from a policy perspective?

How do you cover it from like, what lessons have we learned?

It seems the U.S.

does this over and over and over again.

Can we, in fact, quote unquote nation build?

Can we change a country?

into a vision of what we think it should be?

Right.

On the other hand, how did 9-11 change everything?

I remember interviewing George Bush, George W.

Bush, who campaigned against nation building, the idea of committing troops and

blood and treasure to military conflicts or to conflicts overseas.

And he said September 11th changed everything for me.

What I really appreciate and try to do when I cover these things is look at the long arc of history and how, you know, over a 20-year period, what has been achieved?

Why did we pull back funds from the State Department to develop infrastructure?

Why did we spend so much money on the military?

You know, Jeffrey Sachs had a good article about that.

$2 trillion, so little of it went to rebuilding infrastructure and systems within Afghanistan that could have, I think, won hearts and minds over the military.

Well, you know, not just 9-11 has changed it, but the reductiveness of, you know, people, it happens that in vaccines, everyone's either Dr.

Google or experts on Afghanistan, and it sort of muddies

understanding of it.

Everyone feels, it feels very reactive.

Everything, every move feels very reactive and even more so because of the, you know, the non-dulcet influence of social media.

And

policymakers are affected by that, it seems like.

And then the group thing that I think results from social media, right?

The piling on,

you know, the provocative tweet or

then I think that that gets more attention, it gets more conversation going.

So I think you're right.

Everything is geared toward sort of pithy, reactive, and not necessarily deep thinking perspective on some of these big, huge events.

But, you know, I just try to read as much as I can and look at many different perspectives.

I interviewed my friend Kevin Barring because he was in Afghanistan with me.

He's a reporter for Defense One.

Just because it was interesting.

We followed Bob Gates around Afghanistan and went on this international trip together.

So it was really interesting to talk to him.

And then I reached out to General Petraeus because I covered both Iraq and Afghanistan with him.

And, you know, and people forget, like, Afghanistan was called the forgotten war for so long because so much of our attention was diverted to Iraq, you know, for what?

Right.

And then we know how that turned out.

So

last question, when you see, when you you see Trump and Biden sort of duking it out, even though both are on the same side, kind of, you know, in terms of intent,

again, it's being used.

Well, it's a blame game, Kara.

I mean, look at Trump is the one that negotiated with the Taliban.

He set the May 1st guideline.

He kept the Afghan government out of the negotiations, right?

And then Biden.

You know, what's interesting to me, I think obviously he was jonesing to get out of there and has been for a decade.

But why he didn't consider,

and was it PR reasons to have it before September 11th?

I don't know.

Why he didn't really consider or wasn't better served by the State Department and his military folks surrounding him.

You know, he could have changed that date.

He could have made sure that things were put in place.

And I don't know exactly what happened, but I think we're learning more and more about conversations that have been going on in the Pentagon and the the White House.

And I think it's a big disappointment.

And I think it's going to have a really huge impact on the midterms and perhaps the rest of the Biden presidency.

Who knows?

I guess a lot of it depends on what happens in the next, you know, in the next year.

See, I think people are forget this stuff.

They wanted, everyone wanted out of Afghanistan, the regular people and don't care.

They don't care about the Afghanis, honestly.

Even though people sort of give lip service to it, I think in general, in this

sort of twitchy twitchy environment we're in, newsmaria.

Yeah, maybe you're right.

But what's next?

I'm not sure.

What's going on with TikTok or whatever?

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

And we come back, we'll discuss California's recall election, speaking of which, and we'll talk to a friend of Pivot, Nathan Olabak.

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

California's Republican-led recall election to remove Gavin Newsom as the state's governor is underway as ballots have made their way to register voters.

What's at stake stake in the September 14th recall?

It's a matter of life and death.

Why are Californians uniting to vote yes to recall Gavin Newsom?

We've lost jobs and businesses are leaving.

It's really fascinating.

He may lose.

He may get it back again, but he may lose.

California has gone through the recall process 179 times since the amendment was voted into play in 1911.

Just one of those attempts has removed a governor from office, and that was 2003 when Arnold Schwarzenegger came into office.

Although California is a deeply Democratic state, Newsom might lose to his seat to a right-wing talk show host, Larry Elder, because it's determined by a major, it's crazy, a majority vote.

So, if he doesn't get 50%, yeah, if more than 50% say yes on the recall, Newsom has to step down and he'll be replaced by whichever opponent gets the most votes on the ballot, even if it's 15%.

And there's a lot of people in the system.

So, tell me what I people think that he's going to lose, actually.

Do you think he's going to get recalled?

Yes.

That's here in California.

Interesting.

Well, if that's a scuttle button, California, I mean, I did read some articles in preparation for our podcast era.

And it sounds to me that he is not going to get recalled.

I guess the big concern is voter turnout

for people mailing in their recall ballots that are mailed home.

Even my daughter Ellie said a lot of people really aren't paying attention to it.

And so this hardcore, anti-Newsom Republican faction is super motivated.

It's not unlike the primary process.

But it was funded by some internet people.

There's a bunch of internet people money.

And on the other side, Reed Hastings is supporting Newsom.

And his name is Sunday.

Even while it's costing $200 million, which seems like a ridiculous waste of money to me, I guess, Gavin Newsom, I think people are really frustrated by the way COVID was handled and all the businesses were closed.

And of course, going to the French laundry.

Everyone's got a surplus and the economy is doing well.

And, you know, it's funny, you know, and it has the lowest rates among many states.

So what do you think is behind it?

I think these internet guys have really

decided they want to replace him.

Then there's some other internet guys that don't want to.

I think there's a very strong anti-vax group of people here.

I was driving across the Golden Gate Bridge yesterday to go visit my brother and Marin, and it was lined with anti-vax people with all kinds of signs, which was interesting.

I think there's a lot of people.

They've had a number of protests out there, and some have turned violent, I read.

Yeah, they weren't getting a lot of beeps.

They were getting a lot of fingers from people, actually, which was interesting.

But the question is, were the people with their fingers up going to vote?

That's really what it is.

They could win by inertia.

And then you'll have Larry Elder for a year.

I don't think he'll stay in office, not like Schwarzenegger.

Well, Larry Elder sounds pretty, pretty, deep, pretty crazy to me.

And the thing is, I think that when Gray Davis was recalled, they had Arnold Schwarzenegger on the ballot.

And a lot of things that I've read

say, because there's nobody with the name recognition,

you know, in the what, how many people are on the ballot running against him?

Like 100?

I don't even know.

Against

Newsome.

That,

I guess, and Gavin Newsome is urging people to vote no and not even

write anything on the second question.

But, you know, it sounds like Gavin Newsom has made some pretty serious sort of faux pas going to the French laundry and being hypocritical.

This is a restaurant he went to where he ate semi-indoors, and it looked ridiculous and elite.

You know, there's a lot of pictures of Nancy Pelosi in an outdoor event, too.

There's there's all these photos.

Um, at the very same time, people who are unvaccinated are literally just falling over dead.

Right.

But I think this anti-elitism is really hurting Gavin Newsome.

You know, his kids going to private school and saying he relates to families who have their kids on Zoom.

And,

you know, I think that's sort of the way of the world.

It's, it's class.

class warfare.

And

I think he is the recipient of a lot of class resentment.

And, you know, conservatives in the state of California.

And as you said, this sort of cabal of internet people, which I didn't really know about, who are they?

There's a whole bunch of them.

There's PAX of them who've been funding these ads and sort of pushing it.

Someone like Jamath Polyhapatia, usually a very reasonable person, sort of on the Jason Calicanis.

There's a bunch.

There's bunches of them putting on.

What I read is they're not very well financed, the anti-Newsom contingent.

They aren't.

Reed Hastings has really stepped in on the other side of the Netflix founder and has actually put his name out there.

He has done a lot of various things, including anti-Newsome things in the past, I think.

And he has put his actual name, you know, it says Reed Hastings and the Democratic, this and that, which I think is interesting.

And isn't Larry Elder in trouble for not disclosing something of business?

some kind of business deal.

Yes, or no, he's like, he's really quite unqualified.

It's just that someone with 15% of the

electorate can win over someone who was duly elected governor.

California is such a screwed-up electoral system.

It feels always like there's some wacky thing on the ballot or that people are voting for.

And this is the case that they can do these kind of things.

What's interesting, like you said, it was started in 1911 by progressives who didn't want concentration of power.

And

it's now cutting both ways, right?

I don't know.

Absolutely.

It seems like, I don't know, I wouldn't want to be, and Gavin Newsom's running for re-election in the fall.

So what's the point?

$200 million for what?

Think of what that money could have gone to in California.

It's the cross of all our politics, right?

You know, like, it's all over this country.

And you were talking about the midterms, which people, you know, usually the party out of

office wins, but nobody knows right now.

I was talking to someone who's like, oh, the Democrats are going to win the Senate.

And I was like, what?

Like, huh?

Like,

it's a very different time from when you were.

It seemed, you know, it almost seems quaint.

You did such a death.

It was a devastating interview with Sarah Palin, which you're so famous for.

But, you know, it seems quaint that you sort of put that, you know, you put, you showed that exactly what was happening there.

Now it seems completely normal.

She's, she seems almost normal compared to a lot of the people.

Right.

Marjorie Taylor.

Tara Green.

What would you do in that interview, Katie?

Oh, my God.

I don't know if I'd even want to give that woman airtime, Kara.

Well,

because she's down Sarah Palin Avenue.

You you know what I mean?

She's way down.

Like Sarah Palin, you know, times 27.

I mean,

I think Sarah Palin, you know, was incompetent.

And I think, honestly, in fairness to her, her speech pattern and the way she expressed herself, some of the things she had to say were not that out of the mainstream.

I think it's just that the way she expressed them

was so sort of confusing and kind of a, you know, jabberwocky.

Yeah.

So, um, but, but I don't, I don't know.

I, some of these people are, are truly, truly terrifying, saying if someone comes to your door encouraging you to get a vaccine, that, you know, we're going to show our Second Amendment rights.

And I mean, it's really scary shit.

And it's

emboldening and enabling and encouraging a lot of really scary violent behavior, as we saw in the Pittsburgh Synagogue.

I mean, these, this words have consequences, you know, and these words are going to continue to have consequences.

And I think it's really, really true.

Yeah, the fact that Larry Elder might be governor of 50, but they just like, and he's wacky, you know.

John, my husband always says people get the president they deserve.

Yeah.

But

I hope that's not true.

No, you know, he's saying that, you know, if

people are ill-informed and not using their head when making their decisions.

But, you know, I try to have more faith in the majority than that.

I don't know how you would.

I don't know how you would do that same job today.

Honestly, I have to say, like, it would be very difficult.

You know, I brought on Jason Miller on Sway on my podcast and people lost their minds.

He's, you know, I just was like, and it was a tough interview, but it was, it's just really interesting of what people are hearing.

People didn't want you to talk to him at all.

And he has the platform Trump's probably going to emerge on.

So I thought that was worth talking.

And he's got tremendous influence in how decisions are made.

I mean, I think that's a bad reaction.

I think

you want to understand what people are thinking and what motivates him.

If you were doing Sarah Pillan, you'd get incredible pushback for having done an interview with her.

It's really, I mean, you got celebrated for it and it was a great interview.

Well, she was the vice presidential candidate.

I know.

Because people actually wrote me, let's give Trump no attention often.

Let's not give him attention.

That's your, the problem is you're giving him attention.

I'm like, he's running the Republican Party.

Like, I'm sorry.

Is that attention?

Okay.

It's fine by me.

Yeah.

I mean, this is the thing.

Social media is giving everybody a megaphone.

So

every person you hear from,

you got to kind of, you got to kind of shut them out and go with your own.

I can't

not be influenced by them.

But it's hard sometimes.

You know, sometimes I write back people on Instagram, like,

Why aren't you supporting our troops?

And I was like, what?

I just did a whole tribute to all the fallen service members in Afghanistan.

What's that have to do with what are you talking about?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Don't respond to them, Katie.

Call me when you want to do that.

Once in a while, I do because they just bug me.

Yeah.

Well, speaking of social media, we're going to bring in our friend of Pivot.

Nathan Alabak, creative director of Alabak Communications.

Nathan is a writer covering internet culture, advertising, and conspiracy theories, as well as the Twitter personality known for causing the Steakem account to go viral.

I love this guy, Kara.

I love this guy.

I saved him.

Hi, Katie.

Hi, Kara.

Thanks so much for having me.

Good.

So let's listen to some vintage advertising from the Steakam brand.

Got a minute?

Then you've got time for a hot steak sandwich.

Keep steak'em frozen till you're ready to eat, then stick them in the frying pan.

60 seconds later, take them off the heat and fix them up any way you can.

Try steak'em on a roll with cheese.

Top it any way you please.

Steak'em sandwich steaks.

They're 100% pure beef and nothing else.

Fast forward to steak'em branding on Nathan's Wash.

I'm going to read one of his tweets.

Quote, we are just a frozen meat brand tweeting into the void, hoping to provoke thought, inspire unity, and relay useful information.

Really not the same kind of tone.

So Katie, take it away.

Well, Nathan, first of all, congratulations on your success.

You have how many Twitter followers at this point?

It's somewhere over 200,000, I think.

Yeah.

Well, I've been fascinated reading about you this morning.

I did my homework for this podcast because Kara terrifies me.

But, you know, I think what you're doing is so fascinating.

And tell us how you kind of found your voice on Twitter because it's very distinctive.

I know you go for authenticity and I would say it's observational humor and insight.

But why don't you tell everybody how you, why you started doing this and how you found that voice?

Yeah, sure.

So I started through our agency running the Twitter account in mid-2017.

And there was little to no oversight at the beginning because the account had about a thousand inactive followers.

The client didn't take it that seriously in comparison to like Facebook and Instagram and the rest.

So there was a lot of room to kind of experiment with the voice and figure out what was working, what wasn't working.

And it was just a few months of me and our team just kind of working through, you know, what are some bits that people are connecting with, you know, what are other brands doing?

Because I honestly wasn't super familiar with like Wendy's doing like their sassy clapbacks.

Like I wasn't super familiar with like what other brands were even doing on Twitter.

So it was it was a lot of just figuring out, you know, what the landscape looked like and what people were open to hearing.

And like you kind of alluded to there, I think.

Because I had such a little oversight from the beginning, I was able to kind of be more myself, like be a little bit more human in interacting with people.

So So people felt it was a lot more personal off the bat, which again, at the time, I was just kind of messing around figuring this out.

There wasn't a whole lot of strategy behind it.

So you didn't have like all that research that they always have to say this.

I mean, that's why I think it works so well, Nathan.

It was very sort of spontaneous.

It was very you.

They're incredibly

sort of world-weary, right?

I mean, talk about what you, they're sort of world-weary and like, oh, it's just a frozen steak.

Well, it's calm down.

Because I feel like if you weren't, if it wasn't a brand saying the things that we were saying, I think the tone would almost sound condescending to a lot of people.

And I think it does still sound condescending to people as the brand.

It's kind of like, why is this meat brand lecturing us about, you know,

critical thinking or media literacy or whatever.

So I think,

but we try to use neutral language and we try to moderate the language.

We try to make it sound, you know, as safe as we can, but also in a way that's touching on things that people are thinking about and things that people care about.

Because as everybody here knows and people listening, Twitter is a super toxic platform.

It's a 24-hour news kind of machine and people are always looking for the latest hot takes and the latest thing to get mad about.

So I think the fact that we took that kind of moderate approach to trying just to figure out like, let's pump the brakes, let's depolarize.

Here's how we can think about this kind of surface level concept in a way that inspires thinking versus like us.

But you're not particularly friendly, but you're not particularly, like you talked about, I agree with you.

You're funny in a way that is not like necessarily eat some steaks, eat some steak'ems, right?

Like that's what's the goal?

And why do you think it works?

Go ahead, Katie.

Oh, go ahead, Katie.

I wanted to ask you about the, to follow up on Kara, like, does this really sell steak'ems?

To me, it's, it's, it's, you're delivering truth bombs.

You're helping people connect the dots.

And what does it really have to do with selling your product?

And what has it done for sales?

Yeah.

So so we do have data from the past couple of years over various like spikes, I would say, because we basically, especially in the beginning, around 2018, we started to pick up on this.

We weren't running other advertising anywhere.

So we kind of correlate, you know, a lot easier.

Okay, we see this clear spike in sales here.

And this is right when we had this massive viral moment that hit national headlines, et cetera.

So we can correlate to a certain degree.

It's a little harder now because obviously the pandemic, especially frozen foods are like flying off the shelves.

So it's not as one-to-one, I would say.

But I think overall, I mean, like the PR net benefit of like of earned media that the brand's gotten has been pretty unprecedented.

So there's that element of it.

And then there's also young people, right?

Young people think it's cool.

Exactly.

So that's what I was going to say.

I mean, the product's been around since the 70s.

So I think it has this kind of legacy impact where, you know, a lot of people, maybe Gen X and U have a memory when they were growing up eating it, but a lot of millennials.

In college.

Yeah, yeah, in college.

But a lot of millennials and Zoomers aren't familiar at all with it.

So, you know, this is kind of their introduction to it in a lot of ways, which I think the style of Twitter has helped reach them.

And in fact, you did this because you wanted to connect with younger consumers, right?

I mean, you wanted the brand to be more relevant.

So it sounds to me like, like even sort of brand recognition, having these bon motes, so to speak, come from the stakeums account.

I mean, it's so random and sort of very much kind of fits in with sort of the Twitter ethos, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's a secret.

Yeah.

We have a lot of people talking about the stakeholders.

Did you go to other social?

Did you think about Facebook or TikTok or, you know, or Snapchat?

Why Twitter?

Well, we...

We've tried TikTok and like we've had some varying success there and we've been using other platforms on and off over the years, but especially with organic reach.

I mean, organic reach is almost dead for Facebook and it's more and more difficult for Instagram.

With Twitter, it's such an easy platform to just get hurt.

You know, like you could have no following, you could have no paid budget and you can put a tweet out there into the ether and suddenly it blows up if it's like the right reply to the right person at the right time.

So I think it was just an opportunity to explore and to kind of figure out what worked for the brand.

And then we've been able to like extrapolate a lot of the voice and a lot of the things that have worked on Twitter to other platforms then.

You know what's really interesting, Kara, I think that from everything I've read, this works because of Nathan and not to blow smoke, Nathan, but it's, you know, people say you're incredibly well-read, you're clever, you're really smart.

And I can attest from reading some of your medium posts about conspiracy theories, which honestly sounded like a doctorate.

Oh, geez.

You know, first of all, they're very long, Nathan.

Can you kind of maybe get a better

there?

But, but no, like, Kara, they are so well researched.

I don't know.

I read some of me.

What's interesting?

Well, I have, because one of the things that's interesting is the Twitter feed reads like someone who is like unloading their college education on us like you know what i mean like oh oh yeah that i remember that and i think it works really well because it's super smart it doesn't hide from smart right that's one of the things and it's and then the juxtaposition of it being a steak brand like a frozen meat brand is sort of funny but when you're doing the conspiracy theory stuff what made you do that because then i understood why the steakum tweets are the way they are once I read those.

So talk a little bit about that.

Yeah, I think the conspiracy theory and the misinformation bits just just kind of naturally arose last year in the height of COVID in the beginning, just because there was so much of it.

It felt very unprecedented online where obviously we've all seen misinfo over the years, but it felt like a boiling point almost.

And it felt like a lot of people were talking about how, you know, oh, those stupid people over there and, you know, how absurd this one conspiracy theory is and a lot of hot take commentary like that.

But there wasn't a lot of good, what I would consider like long-form analysis kind of breaking down why some of these things things were happening.

So like you alluded to there with some of the work that I've done just in my free time, that's where I kind of started to pull from being like, you know, I've done a little bit of research on like the sort of psychology of conspiracy theories and the history of why some of this stuff has come to be.

And I thought it'd be interesting just to kind of take the bits of that that are the most depolarized, the most kind of easy to grasp and just break them down into these like, you know, short spurts through the stakeholder account and see what connected.

And I guess just again, with the timing of it, with the pandemic then i think it really it hit a lot of people so it worked at the time i was i was going to ask you nathan why do you think it resonated so much particularly during the pandemic and i you know and i i love the way that you kind of read and listen to podcasts and kind of write notes and but but you talked about especially young people feeling just so disconnected and so miserable that that that sort of the the tenor of what you were doing seemed to really resonate.

Can you expand on that a little bit yeah i i think a big part of why the stakeholder content is connected with younger people specifically is the fact that we don't shy away from the fact that we are a brand and what we're doing is advertising there's sort of like a meta self-awareness to it that puts it puts some people at ease it puts other people you know more on edge you know the people that are already kind of cynical and and critical to advertising and manufacturing consent and just the whole the whole ecosystem of how media and marketing kind of interact i think those those people look at it like it's malicious and it's kind of dystopian that what we're doing.

But I think generally a lot of young people who just maybe spend time scrolling through Twitter or TikTok every day and they're getting kind of mundane and run down from the sort of attention economy of all of it.

I think seeing a brand kind of break these ideas down that they've been thinking or hearing about in other spaces in a really self-aware way is kind of like a, oh, whoa, I'm not used to seeing that on my timeline.

It kind of takes them out of the sort of the, I'm using a lot of buzzwords, but the kind of like doom scrolling nature.

You know, you get caught in that cycle, and then you see something that snaps you out of it, and you're like, oh, wait.

And then you take a second, you get to the end of it, and you're like, oh, I just was advertised to.

And that kind of creates a weird dissonance there.

And I think I'll have a lovely stake.

But when you think about the conspiracy theories, Katie and I were just talking about them.

You know, she's done a lot of interviews that today would have gotten twisted over.

You know, if you think about any of the big interviews,

I would love to have seen the reaction of, say, the Pale interview today in the Twitter space, which she would have done and different things like that.

But this sort of age of conspiracy theories and mistrust, which is not new and fresh.

It's been around.

It's just been more accelerated.

So, how do you look at the platforms?

Because you often talk about them

with the Stakehams brand.

What can the platforms do to catch it earlier rather than damage?

Damage control is what all they do is damage control.

And

that's the big thing.

I talk to friends about this all the time.

Everything that they're doing is reactive instead of proactive.

And it feels like the sort of distrust is so heavily built in to the platforms at this point from both like far left, I'd say politically and far right and kind of people in between have gotten cynical to the whole to all of them as well.

I think creating more transparent messaging, it's like it's a cliche at this point because everybody says something like that.

But I think something along the lines of, you know, being open about their processes and how they're analyzing what constitutes misinformation and what are the gradients of that?

Because obviously it's like, it's a spectrum, right?

It's not this like, oh, this thing is fake news and this thing is not.

Sometimes it's that simple, but oftentimes it's more complex.

I think that's where the distrust builds.

The distrust doesn't really build over, oh, so-and-so got this fact wrong and now they've been suspended or whatever.

It builds from the more gray areas that aren't then coherently explained by the platforms.

And then they just make these decisions kind of on a whim.

Which Zuckerberg alluded to just recently.

He's like, so it's confusing.

I'm like, okay.

Yeah, super helpful.

Thanks.

Well, you know, Kara, you know, I'm on this and Nathan, I'm taking part in this Aspen Institute Commission on Disinformation.

And

I think you're so right.

I think transparency is

job number one, because if we don't know how the systems work, we don't know how things are being channeled to people, how they're rating content, how they're correcting content,

it's really hard.

And if researchers can't really have access to it, it's really hard to come up with things that are more proactive and less reactive.

and i noticed at the end of one of your posts you put a lot of things about media literacy you know which puts so much onus which is i think critically important but it puts so much onus on the consumer and i think obviously we're going to have to go from from both channels and uh you know it'll be interesting when we come up with some of our recommendations if if they're going to fall on deaf ears or i mean what do you guys think kara particularly facebook

do you think facebook is going to change and

no, no, that's been reactive from day one on every topic, whether it's privacy or whatever.

So, you think it's going to take government intervention?

Never done better financially.

I don't, there's no incentive for them to do it, and they don't think they're wrong.

You know, I mean, one of the things there's really what's interesting that you're releasing this disinformation and what Nathan's writing about is that there's a lot of people saying, so what if there's disinformation?

There's disinformation policed.

You've seen a number of pretty prominent internet pundits talk about that.

Don't be, you know, mommy state.

Don't do this, don't Don't do that.

And I think they don't understand the insidious nature of propaganda and how it works, you know, in any era.

You know, it sounds crazy, but, you know, Hitler didn't need Twitter, right, to do what he did.

Neither Mussolini didn't need Instagram, et cetera, et cetera, or Stalin didn't need, you know, whatever, TikTok.

Although that idea is kind of crazy to think about.

But one of the things, Nathan, I'd love you to, when you think about that, because you are in the brand space, you are in the advertising space, but it does veer right over into propaganda really quickly.

This particular medium is quite good for it.

How do you do better?

Is the media sort of chasing it?

Is it that people aren't media literate?

Is that people will fall for anything?

Where do you see an out on this?

Because you talk a lot of the stakeholders.

I've learned a lot of things from the stake brand for some reason that I'd forgotten.

I think you both just touched on.

I mean, I think there has to be more of an institutional push to get some of this stuff in legislation because individually, it seems like what the state, what stakeholder is doing in a sort of weird advertising way and what a lot of other, you know, smaller public institutions and even some private institutions are doing is trying to empower the individual.

It's like, hey, you know, the internet's a crazy place.

You put on your critical thinking cap, learn how to be media literate.

And that's great.

Like you said, Katie, we should continue to do that.

But I think on a mass media level, it is just so discouraging to see this stuff happen because you know, you know, it's like with the vaccine hesitancy.

It's like, okay, we all know you have the power individually to maybe convince your mom or your sister or someone that's super close to you, but you as an individual don't have much power at all over your community at large, over your state, over your, you know, it's just, it dissipates the broader these problems get.

So I think there has to be some public pressure mounted to push for legislation, whether, like you alluded to before, whether it's reform on the platforms themselves or it's some kind of new,

like some new policy that does push, like, a, like, maybe reinvigorates media literacy within the public institutions.

But I think even that, that's a long-term fix.

I mean, to kind of get it through the education system versus something at a top level that's kind of like, let's curb this, you know, before it.

Well, I'll let Katie ask the last question, but I'll note that it's actually companies that are doing this, like whether it's Stacoms, whether it's Patagonia, which is essentially fuck you, Tucker Carlson.

You know, I don't know if you saw their recent, they're doing a lot of edgy stuff.

Or, you know, Disney pushing back on Ron Ron DeSantis.

That's a big deal when they did that.

So it is interesting that companies are, some companies are leading the way into this.

You know, people aren't paying as much attention to the Disney DeSantis thing, but boy, is that's not good for him.

Well, it just stays running.

There are the governor of Florida.

Yeah, just real quick.

I mean, I definitely think we're at a time, especially in the post kind of the pandemic world that we're in, especially since the BLM movement last year kind of took off.

We're in this position where I think a lot of brands are forced or being pressured to position themselves in causal ways you know it's like what's something that we can stand behind whether it's a social justice cause whether it's an issue of the day something that's going to differentiate them in this kind of space where everybody's trying to be everything all the time and and nobody's really um taking heart you know you saw a lot of brands during blm say like you know we stand black lives matter whatever and then they they did one post and then have never talked about it again versus the sort of ben and jerry's model which is like let's make this part of you know our our actual brand identity So I think you're seeing more and more pedagogy as one of the words.

And in fact, that, not to do a shameless plug for Katie Kirk Media, but that's really the whole foundation for our company.

You know, we're taking quote unquote purpose-driven brands, companies that need to take positions and

really explore.

important issues, whether it's climate change or gender equality or social justice or, you know, racial justice, and trying to do storytelling with a very, very light touch because it's quote unquote brand supported, not branded content.

Because you look at the Edelman Trust Barometer, you look at the business roundtable, these companies, in order to retain employees, especially younger employees, Nathan, as you know, they want to work for a company that cares more

about things other than just the bottom line.

They want to feel proud about the company they're working at.

And as trust in institutions like the government and financial institutions has declined you know people are looking to corporate leaders you know that's why you know ken chenault and and ken frasier you know are speaking out on voting rights in georgia and and that's where i think the vacuum is being filled in many ways and so we saw this as a big opening kara democracy is up to stake do you understand this understand the

we understand the task Anyway, Nathan, thank you so much.

Nathan,

you can watch him on stage.

I mean, where do you reach your medium post?

I'm just at Nathan Alabach everywhere.

So you search my name, I'll pop it.

Pat Nathan Alabach.

And are you making a single day?

Are you sporting a munch?

Are you sporting a mun?

Because I was looking forward to seeing your long hair.

Oh, yeah.

I've got the money.

Yeah.

Sorry.

What's the money?

What's a money?

Next time I'll get it.

I was going to get a money.

It took me a second there, too.

But next time I'll wear it down for you, Katie.

Thanks, Katie.

All right.

Okay, Nathan.

Thank you so much.

Okay.

Bye, Nathan.

All right, Katie, one more quick break.

We'll be back for Wins and Fails.

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so wins and fails katie come on wins and fails i have just one win today if you'd like me to start yeah you start do you know jojo suwa Yes.

She's a dancing fiend.

She'll become the first contendant on Dancing with the Stars to compete with same-sex partner during the show's 30th season.

She is an absurd figure.

My two-year-old daughter loves her

and

thinks she's the best.

I think she's crazy looking, but nonetheless, she's highly entertaining and she's come out as a lesbian.

And

she is going to dance with the stars with a lady.

I think it's great.

Go.

That is awesome.

And I have no idea what this whole segment's about, Kira.

So you're going to help me.

So wins and dance.

Give me a win this week and a fail this week.

Something that you think worked really well and something that failed.

i think what fail was all these conservative talk show hosts who are having these deathbed conversions and saying they wish they had gotten vaccinated um

and i guess some people see that as a win people say you know darwin take the wheel or national natural selection but i see it as you know a failure to respect and appreciate science.

And so

that really, that's really, really troubling every time I see that.

Yeah, they depress me too.

And then they're 30 years old.

And I don't like the duncan.

A 30-year-old guy with

three kids and a child on the way.

His wife got the vaccine and they joked about being on different sides.

And he's 30 years old.

He dies of COVID.

You know, I just.

I have a family situation like that.

They just got the vaccine.

Thank God.

They did.

And

what put them over the top and made them do it?

I'm going to say who it is.

It's someone very close to to me.

The wife got the vaccine, was very prose.

Everyone in the family has gotten the vaccine, obviously.

I think hearing people complain to them, I don't think it was for good reasons.

It was everybody needs to shut up and leave me alone kind of thing.

Well, not because people, anti-vaxxers are dying of it.

Not to protect people?

No.

Actually, one reaction was, well, you got to die of something.

I said, why don't you just go drive into that wall there then?

What the hell?

It was weird.

It was weird, but it's nonetheless vaccinated.

So whatever.

It was a win-up.

I think, you know,

Nathan writes a lot about that, about sort of the reasons people are vaccine hesitant.

And,

you know, people dig their heels in more when

they're criticized or they feel like smug know-it-alls are telling them what to do.

It's really interesting from a psychological point of view.

So I think if you can somehow compassionately explain and help people understand, but that's pretty hard to do in big numbers, isn't it?

Well, it is.

It is.

It's hard to do in small numbers.

It's hard to get people off of the certainty.

It's also just a lot of people.

As you know, I talk about my mom a lot and Vox News, like watching, she was with me for a few days and I could see how it twisted her.

Like she had these ideas and I'm like, factually, this is correct.

No, no, no.

You know, and it took at least an hour to show things before I could convince, you know, and that's like iterates itself all over the place.

So it's a really, it's a bad media environment.

I'm excited.

Of course, I've invited you to code to talk about this and you're not coming.

But nonetheless, we would like to have you there to discuss this report you're doing.

So, very quickly, Katie, that's the show.

But talk about it.

So, you're doing this report with the Aspen Institute.

You're working on that.

And this is a disinformation.

You've got an amazing group because you have Chris Krabs, you got Rashad, as you mentioned, yourself.

It's a great group of people working on this report for Aspen.

You also have your media company, which you've mentioned, and your newsletter.

But your book is coming out.

How do you feel about it?

How do you feel about it?

It's scary.

It's scary because it's a memoir.

And, you know, you went there on a couple of things.

I was very pleased to see.

Yes.

I, you know, my husband, John, kept saying, you know, if you're not going to be honest, don't write a book.

So it's, that's what I say.

It's very honest.

I think it's probably going to ruffle a few feathers out there.

But, you know, it's from my perspective and,

you know, what I experienced.

And, you know, I think when you're a public figure, if I guess I was for many years, people write about you and you really don't have a chance to kind of try to reflect or express what it was like being in that position.

So it felt really good and liberating to kind of say, hey, this is what happened.

This is my experience.

And,

you know, hopefully it'll be illuminating to people and interesting.

I think a lot of people.

I'm

who people have ideas of that are not like what people think you're like.

It's very interesting.

People will be very, this will be a really interesting book, even though you did not give it the title that I wanted, but that's okay.

Explain the title.

Anchor monster.

Anchor monster.

That's what I wanted you to call it.

Because I want to say that.

Yeah, because

a network executive described me as such

to me and wanted me to print it, and I declined to do so.

What a dick.

And he wanted you to hate it.

And off the record.

And

he didn't want to say who he was.

He just wanted you to say that, which I think is sort of

very illustrative of the endemic sexism and the kind of double standard, which I get sort of tired of that term, but it's true that women, certainly of my era in TV news, had to deal with on a constant basis.

You know, it's interesting.

What is it called?

So people will.

It's called going there.

Going there.

I wanted to call it Moxie, but

nobody else likes that.

Well, Moxie, my dad used to say,

Katie, you've got Moxie.

It means spirituality.

You do got mom and name.

Katie Curric, but no.

And I also like the way the word looks with an X right in the middle.

I think that would have looked graphically interesting, but also it resonated with my life story, but nobody liked it.

So we did going there because it sort of has many different meanings.

I go there and I really tell the truth, but I had to go there and

at different points in my career and take chances and, you know, do

you have a fascinating career.

People should read this.

You know, Katie has done a lot of different things, including going to Yahoo, doing all this independent stuff.

And so it's a really interesting journey.

It's a very interesting.

And there's obviously things that you're going to want to read about that got more attention than other things recently around Matt Lauer and things like that.

Yeah, I talk a lot about me too, you know, Matt and what that was like, really how I processed that whole thing.

I talk a lot about losing my husband to colon cancer when he was 42, and our kid daughters were six and two, and I was 41, and my sister a few years later.

So

I would say it's incredibly candid and raw.

And I thought it was, I thought it was very, you went, you did the Catherine Graham thing, I mean, of all things.

And that was another, I think it'll be surprising to people and people will like it quite a bit.

I guess.

Do you think people, people do kind of pigeonhole people and caricature them, don't you think?

Let me just give you some advice.

What the fuck do you care?

You're Katie Couric.

Okay.

That would have been a good title for my book, Kira.

I'm fucking crazy.

Drop your mic.

I'm fucking crazy.

Drop the mic.

Drop the mic.

All right.

Kate.

I had so many good titles for your show.

Anyway, that's the show.

You can find a link to subscribe to Katie's newsletter wake-up call in the Pivot show notes.

Buy her book, which is on sale.

When?

Oh, October 26th.

But pre-picked anthem because it all counts for the first week, right?

All right.

Okay.

Always selling, Katie.

Okay.

We'll be back Friday for more.

Go to nymag.com/slash pivot to submit your questions for the Pivot podcast.

The link is also in our show notes.

Today's show was produced by Lara Naaman, Caroline Shagren,

and Taylor Griffin.

Ernie Andredot engineered this episode.

Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts.

If you're an Android user, check us out on Spotify or, frankly, wherever you listen to podcasts.

If you liked our show, please recommend it to a friend.

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

We'll be back later this week with George Hahn, actually, for another breakdown of all things tech and business.

And then Scott Galloway shall be back after Labor Day.

Katie, thank you so much.

Kara, so fun being with you, and thanks, ladies behind the scenes.

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