Tokyo Games Can't Catch a Break, Klobuchar Targets Vaccine Misinformation, and Friend of Pivot Eliot Brown

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Hi, everyone.

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

I'm Kara Swisher.

And I'm a competitor in the Olympic sport of sunbathing, and I'm proud to announce I brought home bronze.

I'm bronze.

Where do you get these terrible jokes?

Dad, have you been watching the Olympics?

No, and neither has anyone else.

That's not true.

Amanda Katz has been.

So is the Golden Child.

28 million people saw the Olympics in Rio.

10 million tuned in.

Yeah.

I mean, we've talked about this.

The viewership, and I think we predicted this.

Viewership's down 45, 50%.

Yeah.

Why do you think that is?

Well, one, it's a perfect storm of bad things.

It's all the oxygen that's supposed to build up athletes has been talking about the terrible situation that Japan and the IOC and the athletes are in, too.

No one knows where the fuck to watch it.

Everyone cuts the cord, so it's like, where do I watch it?

Peacock.

I'm not doing that.

And then, I mean, do you even have, I don't even have live TV anymore.

So it's a great thing.

I do, but I don't know where to watch it.

You're right.

It's too confusing.

I watch it on TikTok.

The only time I've seen any Olympics coverage right now is on TikTok.

Interesting.

Interesting.

Well, I do think, I think there's not an excitement around some of them, although, and getting, you know, getting you going on on a lot of them, like the swimmer, that woman, swimmer, king, or some others.

You don't feel invested in it, except for, I have to say, Simone Biles.

I will be watching that.

And the women's soccer team still.

I still like watching Megan Ruffino kick ass is always a pleasure.

But I think probably Simone Biles is the big star here, right?

I mean, I'm trying to think of who else.

There's some skateboarding chick and there's a bunch of stuff and a dude, but I'm not that interested in skateboarding as a sport kind of thing.

I know I'm going to get like pummeled by people, but you know, I just feel like there's no,

maybe there will be a breakout star, but it doesn't feel like it.

It doesn't feel like the same level of marketing that goes into this, I guess, the marketing part of it.

And we're exhausted from COVID and arguing about vaccinations.

I think this Delta variant popping up in this period, you know, is really,

along with all these climate.

crises.

Speaking of which, COVID isn't the only problem threatening the Olympic Games this week.

A tropical storm may hit Tokyo today.

Organizers have rescheduled medical.

Literally when it rains on cores.

I know.

It's the surfing.

They have surfing competitions.

Even if the storm misses the city, it could disrupt Olympic venues.

A Russian archer fainted from the heat.

It's very hot there.

Tennis stars are calling the humidity brutal.

Having spent time in Tokyo, pre all this situation with climate change,

it is a warm place to be, as I recall when I was living there in the summer.

It's quite hot.

You lived in Japan during the summer?

I did.

You are such a complex person.

When Louis was born, we brought him, I won a fellowship to something in Tokyo, and I was there for six months.

It was lovely.

I had a great time there.

Anyway, the Olympics are really kind of limping a little bit, I have to say.

You're right.

It is.

And we were correct that it would.

Where do you imagine anything bringing it back?

Or maybe just some exciting storyline?

You know, it's interesting because

the last bastion of the ad-supported media complex was supposed to be sports and live TV.

And in the last 12 months, we have seen just a dramatic decline of between 40 and 60 percent viewership of the Academy Awards, the Golden Globes, Golden Globes, Super Bowl is down 8 percent, and now the Olympics.

And so you think, okay, is this the beginning of the end for the ad-supported media complex?

And I don't think the

Olympics viewership

is going to come back.

I think it's a structural change down.

But at the same time, viewership of the Euro Cup and viewership of the World Cup are still pretty strong.

So I'm trying to wrap my head around is the ad-supported nature of it.

I quite frankly think that a big component of this is that there's a generation of, think how much the media landscape has changed in the last four years.

Event television.

Well, four years ago, I used to have, I'd walk in, I'd turn on the TV, and NBC would pull up, or I'd be watching Must See Thursday night, whatever it was.

And it was about 10 years.

And 10 years ago, but okay.

Well,

it feels like yesterday.

It is.

It's been 15 years for Matthew Perry in his own head.

Anyways,

I'm not sure what I meant by that.

Although, hey, look at Jason Kyler was toting his horn about the friends reunion.

2.8 million signups for anyway.

Go ahead, HBO Max.

Yeah, but that's just because everyone wants to see a train wreck and see Botox in action.

They're doing pretty good.

They're doing okay.

I don't mind him trotting it out for people given how screwed he's gotten in the deal.

They have good programming on HBO Max.

They do.

It's getting better.

Anyway, keep going.

Your point being about must-see TV.

Go ahead.

Well, anyways, but now,

and I think there's a lot of people like this.

If you were 15 and now you're 19, A, you don't have cable.

Yeah.

You're not, you maybe have Hulu and live TV.

So where do you watch?

And you're like, there's no fucking way you're signing up for Peacock.

I mean, as sexy as Chuck Todd is, you are not signing up for Peacock.

Peacock.

You are not.

Peacock.

It's a distribution problem.

And I think.

I'm going to be in your bonnet about Peacock.

Peacock, you're right.

Peacock, you're right.

But the others, I think, are doing really well.

I only watch streaming television, by the way.

Peacock Option, my second book, Algebra of Happiness.

And you know what's happened so far?

What?

Nothing.

Nothing, Kara.

Okay,

nothing.

You know, let me just try to give you a little lesson.

The only way you're going to be successful on television with Kara Swiswisher.

No, is with Kara Swisher.

I am the secret sauce of Scott.

You know what?

You keep going alone, and I'll let you do it for a little while.

It's you and me, baby.

That is where it's going to happen.

And so you just wait and see.

Speaking of which, I am trying to expand my horizons.

I got on the conservative social network getter this week and I have over a a thousand followers there i feel it's fantastic i it's actually a very good app let me just say from a tech point of view it's very easy to use it's looks like twitter it's a cleaner twitter it's it's actually quite attractive it's got a few it doesn't have enough news sources you can't you can you can do gifts but you can't do all the things you can do on twitter not that twitter is the most functionally you know fantastic feature functional thing uh in in the 20 whatever how many years it's been going um but it was launched by former trump advisor jason mail who is still i think a trump advisor.

And it's not bad.

And I have to say, I am enjoying being the liberal on there.

I'm like Dinesh D'Souza of Getter, except except on Twitter, except I'm smarter, obviously, than he is.

He's an imbecile.

But I like it.

It's interesting.

I'm getting a lot of crime.

There's a lot of crime things.

Marjorie Taylor Greene's a big thing on there, and she screams a lot.

I, you know, Sean Hannity screams a lot.

And I just like, I like tweak them the whole time.

I'm finding it enjoyable being like the bad girl of Getter.

I like it.

And actually, I've had some good discussions, too.

We've unfortunately been misled.

And that is, we think that the thing that is awful and the thing that makes us upset, we believe, is conservative or liberal viewpoints when we don't share those viewpoints.

And the reality is the majority of us don't mind a good discussion.

And the majority of us find value and merit in the other side.

What we don't find value and merit and what creates, starts to unravel the fabric that is America and democracy one thread at a time is is when these platforms not only allow but promote incendiary behavior from bots and people who just weigh in.

I'll give you an example.

I wrote my blog post last week on no mercy, no malice was on space and basically saying, I missed the days of public capture and NASA, and we've effectively decided to create a tax structure such that we defund NASA and billionaires have more money.

And that's who's going to be in space.

I noticed all your space stuff.

Yeah, and we're going to have a lot more private.

And all of a sudden, my comments, my comments on my blog, I get anywhere between 50 and 500, got really ugly on this one.

And I thought, okay, there's certain subjects I call Taliban subjects, and no one can have an objective conversation.

Any VC-backed company you question the value of crypto, Bernie Sanders, there's just some things you can't have a rational conversation around.

And I said, why did the comments get so ugly this week?

And they said, it's because we started doing some limited testing of advertising for your blog on Facebook.

And so there's huge opportunity for social media.

That's why TikTok is succeeding.

That's why Snap is succeeding.

In my opinion, this is why

Snap is

crazy.

Crushed it.

Crushed it.

Crushed it.

And by the way, I just want to, so what happens?

There's a very example.

Someone whose company I have said is overvalued is now circulating on Twitter.

Me on CNBC three years ago saying Snap is the walking dead.

And they don't say, well, this is a video from three years ago.

And since then, I've said, okay, I was wrong.

Yeah, we have.

And who led that?

Kara Swisher.

But

there is opportunity on both the conservative and the progressive side for all of us where we'd be interested as long as it's civil.

I would like to agree.

I like to dunk on Sean.

When Sean handed me switched back, I like vaccines and oh, maybe I don't.

I said, pick a lane, Sean.

I think people like, I mean, I'm making a lot of jokes and I'm not being mean.

I'm making a lot of funny jokes, which I like, but I'm putting up really good and I'm responding to the dumb ones like Ildonaldo Trumpo, who I don't like very much, but it doesn't matter.

I'm making jokes.

I'm not I'm keeping it light.

But at the same time, when in the comments, I've had so many good discussions of people who disagree with me.

And so it's really

if it's civil, you're not agreeing.

You're not going to agree, but it's civil.

It's been, there's been some crazies that are like vaccines are from demon Bill Gates.

And I'm like, no, they're not.

They're not.

And I think by putting the information out there, I'm putting up New York Times stories.

I'm like, well, if you don't agree with this, think of this.

Or Sarah Huckabee Sanders kept saying Trump vaccine, everyone should take take it.

I'm like, let's give her a calling.

That's fine.

Just call it the Trump vaccine if you're going to take it.

I don't really care at this point.

We have to pay you all to take the friggin vaccine.

So it's, it's been, I'm enjoying it.

I'm enjoying myself both to dunk on people in a very funny way and also to have discussions.

And the discussion parts are really interesting.

And I think they're sort of like, we're glad you're here.

J.D.

Vance keeps talking about people having children, Democrats not having children.

And I'm like, I have more children, double the children you do, sir.

But why don't you start talking about policy issues like child care, this and that?

And like a lot of conservatives like, yeah, why doesn't he talk about policy around it?

And I was like, yes.

Like, I know it sounds crazy.

It's not, I don't think I'm going to change some of these people's minds, but I think it's really like, if you're going to be part of the resistance, you need to go behind enemy lines.

Yeah.

And they're not enemies.

Many of them are.

My point is you need to go, you need to be open to being on Getter.

And when someone shows up and says, like a good comment on my post was, Scott, you're overestimating the risk.

There hasn't been a launch fatality in 10 years.

That's a fair point.

I do that at the times when people write me nasty things.

I write them back and then suddenly they're not my friends, but they're like, oh, okay.

And I was like, as long as you're civil, I'm happy to talk to you, even if we disagree.

And here's why I did this.

Here's why I asked the question this way.

And so it's interesting.

Anyway,

you need to get on there with me.

As long as it's a real person and not a bot that is angry because you

questioned the value of their portfolio companies.

So they are keyboard cowards hiding behind fake accounts attacking you for totally unrelated there is that it is suffers from that too but and it suffers from a lot of a misinformation and a focus on literally crime anti-vaxxers are a little bit too strong on there and there's a lot of like biden is is addled whatever you know what whatever i don't i they it feels like fox news twitter version of fox news but nonetheless i like being there and i think you should sign up and then the two of us should have a nice we'll go on let's do a live getter we will i'm going to ask some if we can do that yeah it'd be great all all right time for the big story

senator amy klobuchar is taking aim at vaccine misinformation with some new proposed legislation her new bill will strip social networks of section 230 immunity for spreading false health information section 230 currently protects internet platforms from liability for third-party content obviously some of the stuff had been stripped away before around pornography and sex sex work and things like that so it's it's another step on this area it's controversial though klobuchar's proposed bill is called the Health Misinformation Act.

It allows a Secretary of Health and Human Services to define misinformation and declare an emergency.

A representative for Facebook said the social network, quote, looks forward to working with Congress and the industry as we consider options for reform.

So, you know, I don't know.

What do you think about this?

It's like, like, I didn't love it when they were doing the sex, you know, sex trafficking stuff.

And even though

I get why they were doing it and it makes for good political fodder, what do you think of this?

I think you're better better versed and have a more thoughtful view around this stuff just because of the industry you're in.

But my general viewpoint is that let me start from a dissenter's voice is increasingly important as it becomes more the unconventional wisdom.

To a certain extent, the smaller the fragment or the less the less popular that viewpoint, to a certain extent, the more important it is that it gets some sort of oxygen.

Otherwise you end up going down groupthink.

That's a step towards totalarianism where all of a sudden you decide a group of people get to decide what type of content is dangerous right so i think you have to have uh some level of appreciation for the dissenter's viewpoint the issue i have the issue i have is that when you have and i'll use fox news because i think these cable networks should be subject to the same scrutiny when the principals and the anchors of fox news are all clearly believe the vaccines

Well, they've all, in my senses, they've all gotten a vaccine.

Yeah.

Well, we don't know.

But anyway.

Well, okay.

I'm going to go out on a limb here.

When Rupert Murdoch got it in December, I don't even know how he had access to it in December.

And then all of a sudden they start claiming, oh, that's privacy.

You shouldn't ask me that.

That's my way of saying, well, I've gotten it.

But they make a concerted effort, and it's a coordinated attack on vaccines and vaccine and create vaccine hesitancy because they see profit in it.

I think if they can link that type of disinformation and disingenuous editorial planning to profit, I think they should be subject to liability.

Well, they are.

Fox News News can be sued.

Obviously, they're being sued by the voting machine companies.

They can be sued.

Social networks cannot be because of this Section 230.

I don't understand why they don't have the same scrutiny as CNBC and Fox.

Well, that is the debate about 230.

Some people think it's really bad.

If you take it away, then it creates a real chilling effect on it.

And the other part is,

when you're talking about public health, as you know, from everything, it's part science, it's part a lot of things, and things change.

And that's the thing, you know, I talked about Fauci with it, and that's what's made him demonic to the right, which is ridiculous when he says, okay, they may flip back with mass guidance again because as things change, you have to shift.

And so I'm not sure I want the Health and Human Services Secretary to decide what can be on these things.

I think we have to pressure these companies into.

doing the right thing and trying to keep as I don't know if I want a bill doing this.

I have to say it's,

you know, and if we're going to remove it, we have to really think about the repercussions of as, you know, you could remove it.

What's to say you can't remove it on election misinformation.

You can't remove it on this.

As you know, I'm a huge, I think they're the most dangerous thing around, but I'm not so sure I want the health and human services because what if it's Trump's health and human services?

I don't, you know, I don't, I wouldn't like that, and I don't necessarily trust any of them.

And so I think it'll be interesting to see what happens to 230.

And I know that Senator Klobuchar is sort of focused on it and the liability.

You do have to give these companies some level of liability.

The question is, how do you do it so that it doesn't turn into this, you know, lawyer, lawyer employment fund kind of law?

And that's really the problem: is what does it do?

There's so many people I think are smart that are worried about the repercussions of doing all this.

And now, you know, I guess not everyone can agree on sex trafficking, but this is not something that's going to cause a lot of people to say, yes, let's back that.

But this kind of stuff does make me nervous.

The number one source of disinformation, I feel like it's almost a link to profitability.

I think you're allowed to make honest mistakes with speech, but when you have a doctor, and I use that term loosely,

who is the number one source of disinformation, and he uses Facebook to promote his alternative therapies.

Yep, that guy.

And it's clear that there's...

The Times wrote about him this week.

It's clear that there's a connection between Facebook liking controversy and amplifying its content because it creates such rage.

And then there's a direct profitability link.

And then you can also, quite frankly, I think you could link this misinformation to death, disease, and disability.

And I think when you're profiting off of information that you could easily determine is not accurate or not scientifically backed, this is a whole different game when you're talking about health care.

And there are carve-outs to 230.

I think that you need to take action.

I think, quite frankly, Klobuchar, she's so powerful in the Senate and she has such a good reputation on both sides.

I would like to see them go one step further.

The misinformation thing we have to deal with, that's a structural issue.

I think the short-term fix we need, quite frankly, is I think we need the Senate to pass a series of legislation that starts cutting off transfer payments to people who don't want to do what the government wants.

And the government wants you to get a vaccine and sees economic

or not France.

Exactly.

France hasn't come that far, have they?

Macron said something really powerful, and that he said, people have essentially conflated

absence or freedom from oppression as freedom from responsibility.

And the reality is

the two are entirely different.

And that is your absence of oppression is

a function of your willingness not to take absence of responsibility.

That's the whole point.

That the nations that end up with the least oppression are the ones where the citizens engage in the greatest level of responsibility.

And we have conflated the two.

And it just, you believe that you're being oppressed if you're asked to be a citizen.

Yes, this is true.

And yet, I do not feel like the Health and Human Services Services Director is the one I want to decide what information and misinformation is.

It's so, everything is so politicized that it's almost impossible.

I do think we should be required.

You know that.

I think we should be required.

If you don't want to get the vaccine, just like any other thing that you won't do, you know, like rabies, not rabies, excuse me.

Rebellion,

you don't get to do things.

That's all.

Okay.

Your choice, your life, that kind of things.

And then let the legal system sort it out if you're allowed to.

And I think judges, most judges would be like, you're a threat to public.

I want this to be in the legal system and not in government, like if that makes sense.

Well, even the Second Amendment, which people hold very dear to them, you distinct of your rights.

You cannot bring a gun on a flight.

You cannot bring a gun into a school.

So why would we allow you to bring a much more, in many ways, a more dangerous gun into crowded places?

Why would we allow that?

Why wouldn't we have some sort of, when we are having death everywhere, why wouldn't we have some sort of elegant screening mechanism that says, fine, you want to cash our check, our transfer payment, you have to show proof of vaccination.

You want to take your kid to a public school, you have to show proof of vaccination.

I just don't,

it's enough already.

And so 2.30 and the nuance around 2.30, and there's some really interesting things there.

Because, for example, Facebook took down content talking about whether or not the virus had originated in a Chinese lab.

And so, and then you think, okay, we should have seen that content.

So, it is very difficult for Facebook and everybody else.

I think we are moving towards a better system there.

But short term,

and there's some good news, vaccination rates have started to tick up again, but

this is all hands on deck.

Yeah, but

these exceptions are carving out.

I mean, one of the things she did say, Senator Klovich, are we need a long-term solution?

Doing all these carve-outs not, I think, is not what we need to do.

I seldom disagree with her, but in this case, I do.

And I think that the pushback is going to be, one thing is Republican support.

And of course, now Republicans are going back and forth on vaccines and deploying them.

And without Republican buy-in, it's not going to happen, right?

But I think there's a lot of issues here that these carve outs.

And we need a long-term solution for Section 230 and the liability of these platforms.

And that's a longer-term discussion that we simply can't have in this political environment.

We just can't.

We just can't

do it.

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

And when we come back, we'll take a deeper look at increasing data privacy concerns following the outing of a Catholic priest.

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We're back, Scott.

The writers who doxed a Catholic priest using location data from his Grindr account have defended their actions, even as they're drawn fire from privacy activists and other Catholics.

The publishers of The Pillar newsletter, which is, I believe, on a substack, says their work was inspired by a New York Times series that highlighted the dangers of location data being sold on the open market.

More revelations seem likely.

The Pillar reports that it found patterns of location-based hookup app use at more than 10 locations connected to the Archdiocese of Newark.

This was an incredible story written about these two people working for Catholic publications, and they moved away because they didn't think they were doing enough to investigate this stuff.

And the people they used to work for are like, we didn't have access to this and decided from an ethical point of view that it wasn't correct.

A spokesman for Grinder says the app is not a source of the data, but the details are slim of how they got it.

This is a really interesting story.

because on one hand, there is all the hypocrisy, and I got a lot of pushback when I said this seems creepy to me.

And hypocrisy of these priests being so anti-gay and then being gay themselves.

But it's also that these guys are sort of very cavalier in this article

where they talked about what they were doing, and they felt that they seemed to be on a crusade.

I hate to use that term here, but that's what it seems like about these priests.

And so there seem to be advocates in a lot of ways.

And yet they are still reporters.

What do you think about this, this idea of being followed everywhere?

It touches on a lot of things.

I think that there has to be some liability that if you're a response, if you're a platform and you have people's data and you let that data be accessed or you access private data of an ordinary citizen and it really defames them or has a tangible impact on their ability to make a living, I think there's got to be a liability in there.

I think more people need more checks around ruining people's lives.

The thing that struck me about it was just the level of homophobia we have still in our society.

Because I asked myself, I wondered, okay, if a religious figure had been found to be on apps hooking up with women,

would we have cared?

Would this have been a big story?

I mean, remember, Gawker did this awful story about just like a mid-level executive at a media company in New York who was going on apps and he was married with two kids and

was getting male escorts.

And the thing that made it titillating in like a reveal for more clicks so Gawker could make more money was that, okay, if it had been a married executive, you know, having sex with other women, having affairs, no one would have cared.

And it's like, well, why do we care?

Why do we, why is it,

I understand the hypocrisy, but

I really feel for this guy.

I think, you know, his life, his life, I don't want to say it's ruined, but

this is a very difficult moment for him.

Remember the governor of New Jersey?

Yep.

He was forced to resign because he was having affairs with men.

If he'd been having affairs with women, he could be a president.

Well, you know what's interesting?

This is interesting.

It says this guy named Ed Condon and J.D.

Flynn.

There's a big story in the Washington Post.

I urge everyone to read about them.

They had broken away from a long-standing Catholic news agency that they worked at.

They were journalists.

We aim to do serious, responsible, sober journalism about the church, from the church and for the church.

We want the pillar to be a different kind of journalism.

And then they did a story that, as the Post notes, mainstream news organizations would be unlikely to touch.

And they have argued that this is the right thing to do, but one Catholic writer described it as a witch hunt aimed at gay Catholic priests.

100%.

You know, these two are quite conservative in the conservative side of Catholicism.

And it does feel like, you know, this conservative Catholic media scene is

really

if he'd been having sex with female members of his congregation,

which happens a lot.

He'd be shamed.

And then in two or three years, he'd be back.

This guy's never going to be back.

Yep.

This guy's never going to be back.

And it reflects something ugly in our society still

that we find it more interesting and more call-out and more gotcha if you're having sex with people of your own sex.

Now, granted, the Catholic Church is a homophobic organization, so they're calling out their hypocrisy.

But at some point, if it's a legal app and people,

I mean, were people really depending on this guy?

And I don't understand, and I'm not even a fallen Catholic.

I'm a rabid atheist.

Were people really calling on this man for guidance and spiritual leadership because he was a celibate?

And

I understand that you'll take that down.

This is a bigger discussion within the community.

Let me just read the two quotes in the post from these two people.

One is Condon.

There's nothing to recommend the indiscriminate naming and shaming of people for moral failures just because you can.

That is unethical and it is not something we believe we've done.

The other reporter, the guy, the guy runs the reporter, runs the newsletter, Flynn, said people are entitled to mortal failures and repentance and reconciliation and legitimate good reputation.

There's a difference between that and serial and consistent immoral behavior on the part of a public figure charged with addressing public morality, isn't there?

And they were pointing to a New York Times opinion piece about the dangers of leaked, this leaked smartphone data and use of such data to identify a person who was near the Capitol on January 6th, which was

different.

The New York Times quoted one man who was interviewed and agreed to his name being used.

So the writer of that, Charlie Wurzel, said this is ridiculous.

These two are

in no way represent what I was talking about.

And I think this quote is perfect.

This was the nightmare scenario we were talking about to some degree.

To see it happen is just confirmation of just how dangerous this type of information is, despite the fact that I don't think there are any ethical similarities with what we did.

And this, it obviously makes me feel terrible that our work was used as a justification in this.

This is really,

I mean, it's interesting because people are going to do it

once this cat is out of the bag, as the story points out.

This is the problem.

And now everyone's going to just do it now that the

sled's over the edge, I guess.

It feels as if there needs to be some sort of, if you're not a public figure, if you ruin people's lives by accessing data that they thought at some point would be private,

it does feel like either the platform or the individual, I mean, I hated to see Peter Thiel put Gawker out of business the way he put them out of business, but I also liked it.

I thought this is a morally bankrupt organization that decides to ruin the lives of people because it can for clickbait.

And

I don't know if there's, if you can legislate your way out of this, but you read this stuff and you think, okay, our morals have not cut up, just as our instincts haven't cut up to industrial food production and we're obese.

It feels as if our judgment and our morality and our concern for the welfare of other people and our forgiveness has not cut up to these technologies.

Yeah, it is going to be.

The fact that they can drag this guy's, this is just a name.

I get these stories that came out and the hypocrisy arguments.

I get them.

As a gay person, person, I get them.

And I remember in the Reagan administration, there were several gay people that were doing anti-gay things.

And there was a whole debate about outing.

And I was not, I was like, at the time, it was very dangerous to be outed.

I still, some days I'm like,

you got to think, if it's someone who's very dangerous to gay people, I get it.

But it's this, this tracking them is just

there's a well-known senator who is, you know, I don't, I, I don't, I'm not going to mention who it is, but I, I, I, I don't know why you would do that to him, and I don't like him either.

So I don't know what to say.

It's really, um, it's a real problematic thing, and I don't think I would make this choice, but these guys seem like advocates and of a type.

Anyway, it's a very, it's something to keep watching.

And I think them using, they should just own up to what they've done and stop trying to pretend, trying to say they're ethical.

It's, it's, it's questionably ethical is what it is.

Do you know how ugly, how fast and how ugly this could get or how ugly, how fast it can get?

Oh, yeah.

A thin layer, a thin layer of AI on top of your Uber data.

If someone gets Uber data, I can tell you, someone will be able to tell you if you just terminated a pregnancy, if you're HIV positive.

I mean, it's not going to take much with just GPS data to start figuring out that people are being...

Do you know what I've always noticed?

The freakiest people on the outside are less freaky than people who are less freaky and are more freaky on the inside.

That's always been an observation.

In San Francisco, they keep their freak on the outside.

They're pretty normal on the inside.

Anyway, there was always some weird.

I think that's an interesting observation.

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

He's the co-author of The Cult of We, We Work, Adam Newman, and the Great Startup Delusion.

He joins us from the Wall Street Journal, where he's been writing about electric vehicle startup boom, which is cool.

Elliot Brown, welcome to Pivot.

Glad to be here.

So, Elliot, I just, we have to give you credit.

I know that you think that Scott got too much of the credit for the WeWork decline, but Elliot has done a lot of the great reporting that

we thought you were great too.

Stirring it up.

We credit you.

Yes, you do.

We've heard you do.

I know.

We know that.

We know.

But let me just say, you did amazing work.

Many reporters did, but you are among the top ones who did that.

And so we want to give you much credit.

So tell us a little bit about the book.

Obviously, Scott knows a lot.

I'm going to let Scott lead this, but tell us a little about the book to start and then Scott will jump right in.

Good to be here.

I think that the sort of like short version of the book and what we found was like trying to follow the money because we knew a lot about WeWork beforehand.

And so this was sort of like, why did so many smart investors and a lot of them actually were smart investors

get and CEOs of the largest banks, you know, get very personally involved and bullish on WeWork?

And how did like, you know, this, the whole financial sector convince itself that a, you know, the country's most valuable startup was really actually just a mirage, right?

I mean, it was a real estate company in tech clothing and then imploded in a really spectacular fashion.

So the short version is why smart people do dumb things.

And that's a lot of what we focused on along with, you know, some tequila jets and

luxury homes.

I'm curious, Elliot, what in the book, this story got a lot of coverage.

It just captured people's imagination and they just kept tuning in.

What are one or two things that you found that are in the book that people might not know that you think are really interesting or that is different than the conventional wisdom around the story of WeWork?

I mean, one of the things that, you know, is a little more recent now that we have a coda to it, but is like just how rich Adam got while everyone else, the CEO Adam Newman got, while everyone else, you know, lost lots of money.

So

he's left now with around, he and entities he controls have left with around $2 billion in cash and stock and you know the company has lost a combined 11 billion in its existence yeah so that's one facet and then another facet on the investment side was just like there was a lot of stuff that seemed really dumb on the surface it's like oh softbank commits to spending four billion dollars after a 12-minute tour and um you know and this is our second largest startup investment ever and so we thought there was more to that.

And then you you dig in and actually we learned there really wasn't much more to it.

I mean, and this kind of happened again and again at the stages of financing throughout WeWork's rise, where you had principals of these really large investment firms committing

within minutes of meeting Adam.

And then they'd go do the due diligence.

And I guess this is a new thing we found.

We found that like these investors would at Fidelity, at the Chinese private equity company at SoftBank, would look into it.

Analysts would like type numbers into spreadsheets and be like, oh, well, this is a real estate company and it's really overvalued.

Right.

And yet then the investment would still go through.

So why?

Because

the short version is because it was a bubble and bubbles warp minds.

And so you could get the, you know, that plus the charisma of this really magnetic salesman, Adam Newman, would mix with a fear of missing out.

And so then suddenly you had Fidelity and T-Row Invest, T-Row Price and SoftBank convincing themselves that, oh, yeah, well, Adam's really charismatic.

He convinced me in the room that this thing is a tech company and is going to just like take over the world in a few years.

And I just don't want to listen to all these like 20 other reasons that seem pretty obvious that are concerns.

And I'm just going to look at this one or two that is really like the way to get off because otherwise, how do I don't get to spend my money.

My job is to spend money to make money and there's not enough places to spend it.

Do you think there's any, I've just been shocked that some DA that says, wakes up in the morning and says, hello, Madam

or Mr.

Governor every morning, doesn't see an opportunity to go after Adam Newman.

I mean, just the level of grift here.

You know, you have Elizabeth Holmes about to go to court, right?

So we were wondering the same thing.

I think the answer is just how much is legal in the financial system.

I mean, it's not illegal.

The laws were broken in your mind.

Yeah, I mean, nothing big.

Like, I mean, he would lie publicly about them being profitable and sort of, I think, in his head, say like, I have an asterisk.

But then when they showed investors' numbers, as long as they asked the right questions, they would get the real numbers.

The problem was the investors were looking at the numbers and not seeing the obvious.

So it's a lot like, I mean, it's kind of more concerning than Theranos in that sense, where Theranos was someone lying to unsophisticated investors.

This is someone not lying to.

really sophisticated investors and yet they still like did something just as dumb that's a really good point have you followed we work since then sandeep Matrani?

They cut a lot of costs.

It feels like COVID, a post-COVID world, actually plays to many of the strengths of flexible, aspirational, millennial-friendly workspace.

Do you have any thoughts on kind of a new WeWork and its prospects?

And it's going through the SPAC route, correct?

Let's make that clear.

Yeah,

WeWork always has a way of finding the easy money out there.

Yeah, it's kind of like this weather vein now for what's going to happen with the future of the office.

And, you know, if companies like decide that they don't really know what they want and they want short-term space instead of long-term, well, they figure it out.

It makes a lot of sense.

So it could do well.

But it's pretty clear the world now views it as a real estate company.

And so it's never going to like be if just because people fill back the offices doesn't make it a $47 billion company again.

I mean, they're right now like an $8 billion company and they have a lot more desks than they did when Adam left.

And, you know, if they fill them, who knows?

Maybe it'll be a little more than that.

But it's, yeah, the rocket ship to the point where anyone will be caring about it or doing podcasts on it, I think is probably not happening anytime soon.

Well, one thing I'd love to know is because one of the things when I talk to previous investors, they're sort of not, you know, you called the great startup delusion.

They don't really care that that happened, right?

They were like, yeah, whatever.

Feels quaint now.

It does.

And they also have a sort of attitude like, oh, we made a mistake.

Like, well, that's all right.

Like, and in many ways, it didn't get public, which was, I think, a good thing, right?

It didn't get to the retail investor.

It got, it was money from SoftBank or

the Saudis or whoever it was.

Do you think like that?

I mean, it's just like, what's the difference?

Rich people lost money and they were stupid.

Like, I don't, I don't, how do you sort of justify that?

And then what do you, do you see others?

Another character, you saw, you know, Elizabeth Holmes was another one, Adam Newman.

There's many, many like this.

Do you see anything else that worries you on the horizon?

Yeah, so it's funny.

Like right after when we started writing the book, there was actually this big, people forget it now, but there was this big chill in Silicon Valley for a few months where it was hard to raise money if you were a late-stage company, especially if you had losses.

And suddenly SoftBank told all of its companies to start cutting and instead of growing forever.

But then, yeah, like people have completely forgotten that this thing existed.

I mean, it was like, again,

the country's most valuable startup was a mirage.

And so, yeah, today I think what's happened is the public markets have gone crazy again and are really kind of roaring and money is dumped into the economy.

And you see a lot of similar things in the electric vehicle sector

where it's really just

name names.

Sure, I mean, it's riding off the glow of Tesla.

That's, I mean, like, you can say many things about Tesla and about how they actually build amazing cars.

Um, and Elon Musk actually understands things about engineering.

However, it is a seven $650 billion company that, you know, is

builds fewer cars than Subaru in a year.

Yeah, and also makes a lot of money on decarbon is carbon

credits and uh bitcoin and lots of stuff like that and and so like adam scott has been scott has been dashed on these rocks before just so you know you're gonna get

dashed on the rocks i just gotta warn you you're not gonna get get attacked on twitter for just anything and everything once you out yourself as a tesla bear so so i have um i've reported on on lucid motors which just went public today or started on the stock exchange um

and

they i wrote a story just about the spec that they were going public with and how that was who that was what

churchill for churchill capital for civ

but who's a michael klein spec michael klein special right it was the second largest one and oh investment banker well-known yeah um yeah former citigroup um and their price after they you know on because it was became a meme stock on reddit it the price went up five times and so this company that was potentially merging with this other car company that hasn't sold any cars was implying a valuation of like 90 billion for the car company, which today still has a valuation of around 40 billion and it hasn't sold any cars.

40 billion is twice the size of Nissan.

It's like two-thirds the valuation of Ford, and it has not sold any cars.

So, I mean, you can think of amazing things about the future, but that's a very unprecedented thing to happen out there.

Indeed, there is.

Although, you know, someone's going to run the car companies, these car companies eventually.

When you look at that, what do you, as a reporter, like, look, Adam Newman's easy because he's got the hair, the Jesus thing going on, the wife who's problematic, the whole

private jets, the pot that he likes, is it pot, right?

That's your pot.

Yeah,

vents that suck pot out of his offices.

Yes, exactly.

He was, I recall smelling that.

Not that there's anything wrong with that in many cases.

But it was, he, you know, he's like that.

Like, are you going to, is there anyone like that that's doing that?

What I'd love to know what you think, why they felt for him over others yeah i mean that's you know particularly as like a working reporter at the journal it's hard for me to to sort of name names until it's more obviously happened but like i mean i think if you look around spack land that that is like you now see a lot of the same traits where there are these consumer companies going public they both have hypey spack sponsors that that will talk about how the company will be doing this revenue in five years uh and then you also have these ceos of these companies with no revenue or little revenue that are literally promising to make some of the fastest growing companies on the planet.

And they have very little to show for it.

But if they're selling their premise, like the premise of their investment is that they're selling to investors is this company is going to grow to 10 billion three years faster than Google did and five years faster than Tesla did because we say so in a PowerPoint.

Yeah, Scott?

So do you follow?

I know you follow the EV market.

Do you follow space at all?

Have you followed any of the new space companies?

That's what I was going to say.

Scott has this thing about space, like Virgin Galactic.

One of them has just been charged with securities fraud.

There's six new space companies.

And

I've seen a bunch of EV vehicle stuff line up for SPAC.

It definitely feels like there's some stuff you are going to be covering

in not such a good way.

Yeah, I think that's right.

Like I've followed Space Some.

I mean, these companies largely all have the same approach, which is essentially they're pitching what would have normally been a series A venture capital investor or a Series B venture capital investor, a vision.

yeah and

in theory the the vc if if it's not super bubbly will um be like okay well that's a good idea but that's really risky so here's this price but then what's happened is because they've opened it up to the public markets and because the public markets right now are yeah like very memey and and go off reddit then you get these and i talk to a lot of them because i message them on reddit uh you get these like 19 year olds in poland and sweden um you know buying the stock because they're excited by it and oftentimes oftentimes because they just, and they say this on the record, they're like, oh, I think it's overvalued, but somebody's going to pay a higher price than me,

which is not a great healthy sign of

health and stability.

To start, let me just say, I'm working on a memoir at Silicon Valley, and I'll never forget a Goldman Sachs banker saying to me, well, the company's pre-revenue, which that's my favorite expression of all time, pre-revenue.

And, you know, people thought that about Amazon.

People thought that about lots of stuff.

Like, if you recall, like, maybe you don't recall, you might be much younger than I am.

But I'd love to know.

And people had that delusion then, just like you're calling the great startup delusion Google was part of that too everyone was not unclear before they got the advertising business what it was Amazon was sort of the poster child for that and Netflix you know you could go through each of them one at a time and there's listen there's a lot of like pioneers along the way that are dead like we forget all the ones that went down like MySpace and et cetera there were dozens and dozens of those what is the great startup delusion today?

So two things.

I mean, I guess that the sort of the thing that points out one of the issues today is Amazon lost a cumulative something like $3 billion, including the dot-com bust, before it became profitable for a full year.

WeWork lost that like last quarter.

And WeWork has, you know, besides a blip in 2012, the second-year business, they haven't been profitable ever.

So, I mean, just the scale of losses

that grow and grow is Uber hasn't been profitable, Lyft hasn't been profitable.

I mean, these companies are really old now.

They're over 10 years old

for Uber.

So, you know, the scale of profits is, I think, number one.

And then two is, I think like a thing that we really focused on for the book is just this notion of

the cult of the founder and founder control.

And so it's one thing to just believe the Steve Jobsian

and, you know, Jeff Bezos' concept of like, these guys see better than the public markets and a board of directors.

You just got to trust them and they're going to do it.

And that clearly does work for some actual visionaries.

But then what's happened in venture capital is they've convinced themselves that that that means you have to give the founder full control.

Now, it's modeled after Bezos and Jobs.

Neither of them had founder control.

Bezos just owned 40% of the stock and jobs got fired.

That's right.

Right.

But so what's happened today is you're giving these, you know, we say in the book, something,

it's when they give it to Adam, it was akin to giving a teenager the keys to the sports car with a tank full of gas.

I mean, you're giving them billions of dollars and no ability to say, don't do that.

And so that like

stuff like this is gonna happen.

There's gonna be other WeWorks where if it's not tequila and jets, it's gonna be like rum and yachts.

And there's gonna be really big implosions if you just have this

concept where founders are immortal beings and you give them full control.

Yeah, it really is peak founder, which takes me to another question.

Has, most importantly, has Rebecca Newman found enlightenment or opened another kindergarten?

Are things working out for Rebecca?

Because she strikes me as as really likable.

I'm really hoping things work out for Rebecca Newman.

Once again, it's not Cheryl's fault as much as Mark's, but let's go.

Yeah, I don't know.

Adam, he's got great hair, Karen.

I just loved his hair.

You're in love with his hair.

By the way,

I interviewed him on stage at a JP Morgan conference.

And after the interview, I thought, wow, that went really well.

And Jamie Diamond, who I kind of admire, he's tall and he's dreamy and he's very rich.

And he came on stage and he caught, he'd grabbed my, you know, we met eyes.

And I thought, oh my God, Jamie Dimon loves me.

He practically practically ran my ass over to get to Adam Newman.

I mean, he literally practically started French kissing Adam Newman.

I just couldn't get over the relationship these two had.

So this is my real question here.

It's like, what is going on with them?

Are they the Jared and Ivanka of Amaganset?

Like, where are they now?

What's their viewpoint?

Do their employees hate them?

Like, what is up with the Newmans?

What are they doing?

Yes.

Besides a reality show soon enough, I'm sure.

The Newmans are in Amiganset.

I have a friend who drove by the other day and just like

saw him holding a pizza box.

They have a new kid, so they have six kids now.

And he just bought a $40 million house in Miami, which I would note has, if you live there over six months of the year, has no capital gains tax.

And he just has a stock sale that has a huge capital gains bill.

They sold some of their property.

She bought the skills.

He's had it with New York governance.

He's had it.

It's had it.

Yeah.

Anyway.

All right.

So he's fine.

He's doing fine.

Yeah, billionaires are doing fine.

I mean,

he wants a second act.

We don't really know what it is.

He told people, like, oh, I want to do something in the future of living.

But then that seemed to fizzle.

Oh, no.

He'll be back.

I'm sure he will be back.

Did he talk to you for this?

He didn't talk to me.

We talked before.

It wasn't for lack of trying on our part.

But

we talked with his PR person some, but not much.

Yeah, I'm telling you, it's a shame because he is very good looking, Elliot.

It is really nice.

The reason the hair is so uh amazing is because uh he had a hairdresser that would follow him around.

Uh, and as with his surf coach, as with like the family of the surf coach, as with the school teachers that they employed for WeWork to go then educate their own children, the surf coach's children.

So, um, you know, the hairdresser was in the entourage.

I'm so glad we all got him.

Boy, did that, you know, this reminds me at the end of the whole AOL Time Warner debacle.

Someone who was at Time Warner was like, you know, when they shoved them all out, Bob Pittman, Steve Case, everyone else.

And they're like, oh, Carol, we got them.

I'm like, Steve Case owns half of Hawaii.

Everyone that you talk about has hundreds of millions of dollars, and your stock is

in the toilet.

I'm like, nice job getting them.

We're going to be

able to

be at the business school riding.

We do courses on negotiation, which is largely for faculty who don't want any accountability.

And so they come up with stupid classes that there's no output or measurable output.

But anyways, we'll be doing case studies.

This individual figured out a way to get a 20% commission on losing $11 billion.

That's never been pulled off in history.

You could argue that he is the greatest negotiator in history.

And we can learn a lot from kind of understanding the attributes.

We shall not.

One of the ironies is when he was CEO using WeWorks money, he did all these acquisitions at these really high valuations that just were sold for peanuts.

And so it's like he's kind of the world's worst negotiator.

The wave company.

Except for the wave company.

That's my favorite.

The wave company.

Yeah, there was a whole bunch.

I remember when they came to that to me and I was like, what?

Like, what?

What?

I remember saying what several times.

Anyway, Elliot Brown has great hair and he is the co-author of The Cult of We, We Work, Adam Newman, and the Great Startup Delusion.

You should read it.

It's a great book.

Elliot, thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

Very likable.

Yes, Scott, I think he was.

I think he was very likable.

Very likable guy.

He credited you in the book.

That's all you need to know.

What a thrill.

All right.

One more quick break.

We'll be back for wins and fails.

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Okay, Scott, wins and fails.

Quickly.

Okay, my win is

the women's water polo team, who could be best described as total badasses.

They dominated Japan.

They had a physical but great victory against China.

And also, there is really a lot of inspiration at the Olympics,

especially around age.

We have a 57-year-old table tennis star, Ni Shilon,

who is on the team.

Also, there is an 11-year-old that qualified to serve on the table tennis team for the Syrian Arab Republic's team.

There's a 57-year-old and a 66-year-old who qualified for the equestrian

teams and other sports.

Jake Gibb, oldest man in Olympic Beach volleyball at 45, also cancer survivor.

Sue Bird, who's going for a fifth women's basketball gold medal at the age of 14.

Megan's married?

I didn't know that.

They're married.

And the Evergreen 46-year-old gymnast Oksana Chuzabinita.

will also be at the Olympic Games.

So I think, anyways, I wanted to give some shout-outs to some amazing athletes.

After trashing the Olympics.

And then my loss or my fail is: this is a trivia question.

You know, how well do you know Scott?

Because you claim we're friends.

You tell people we're friends, but you really don't invest in our relationship.

Yeah, you do.

I've heard you do.

Anyways, I don't.

Anyways, so what do the following, what do these following organizations all have in common?

Okay, the student body at University High School,

Stanford, Duke, Kellogg, University of Indiana, University of Texas, Wharton, and now the Soho House.

Oh, and the Ocean Club in Florida.

What do all of these organizations have in common?

I don't know.

Did Scott Pegg?

Do you go there?

I don't know.

Okay, I applied for membership.

Okay.

All of these.

I either applied to college there or I applied to be a member and I was rejected by all of them.

Wow.

You got rejected by the Soho Club?

Soho House.

Oh, yeah.

I applied like six months ago thinking, oh, they're going public, which means they'll let in anybody.

I was wrong.

I was wrong.

I have to.

Do you want me to get you in?

I decline you.

I declare.

All my friends, I'll say that.

I don't want any friend I know to get it.

I signed an offer.

They couldn't believe it.

Yeah, I know.

Everybody wants care, blah, blah, blah.

Anyway, I did, and I said no, and I wouldn't use it.

But

why don't you call Brooke Hammerley and get in the San Vicente one, the one in LA?

I'm fine.

I wear it like a badge of honor.

I am fine being rejected.

Let me just say that again.

Stanford?

I was also rejected by Stanford.

What else?

Stanford, Warden, Warden, University of Indiana.

That hurt.

That hurts.

I apply to either of them.

University of Texas, Wharton, Kellogg, Duke.

Oh, I got rejected by Duke.

I forgot about that.

I ran for five different student body offices in high school and lost them all.

Sophomore, junior, senior class president.

And then the Soho House.

That one kind of hurts.

Wow.

Anyways, but my loss.

They do let everyone in.

They do let everyone in.

My loss.

It's what I didn't do.

I don't know.

56-year-old boring straight white guy.

It's not like I'm everyone's list for who we need more of.

That's so hard.

I'm going to find out what the situation is.

Erectile dysfunction is not a protected ailment yet.

Anyway,

so, okay, so

the company that owns the Sohouse went public.

So my loss is

they're trading at about a $2.5 billion valuation.

I got $2 billion in debt, 30 properties.

So as far as I can tell, they're valuing every property, which is essentially kind of a really nice restaurant and it's a good business model.

And I think they do a great job.

I go a lot and I love it there.

I go to the one in Miami.

I obviously have to go with a guest because they're a member because I'm not a member.

I think they do a great job, but this is an example of a frothy market.

This company should not be a public company.

And

their record, there's only one year they were.

I think it's like IHOP for rich people, but go ahead.

No, IHOP's an amazing business.

That's true.

It's an amazing business.

Sohouse,

its record profitability was in 2018.

They did 15 million in EBITDA.

This thing has somewhere between three and five billion in enterprise value.

This thing is just so ridiculously overvalued and it's a perfect example, I think, of froth in the market.

And it's not the rejection speaking, right?

Just makes, let's let's just.

But I'm used to that.

Which cost to get in?

I think it's like $3,000 or $3,500 a year, something like that.

Anyways, high relative debt, lack of near-term profitability, historical lack of profitability.

This thing just makes no sense as a public company.

And right now it's trading at a valuation of a fairly decent hotel chain.

So anyways, my loss is

not even that all these organizations have rejected the dog.

That's just common sense.

I get that.

I empathize with that.

But

as a public stock, and this is really more of a prediction, this thing is not going to hold its value.

It just makes no sense.

I would tend to agree with you, although they should let you in.

You know what I mean?

Right?

I tip big.

I'm a better version of me drunk.

They haven't seen me drunk.

Let me just tell you, there's a lot of people in there that are even less impressive than the dog.

Yes.

Yes.

That's how I would put it.

No, they've rejected me.

Haven't gotten in.

Haven't gotten in.

All right.

Well, anyway, I'm going to do a very quick win and fail.

Same thing.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders did an op-ed in the Arkansas paper.

She's a gubernatorial candidate there.

She said she had been vaccinated against coronavirus and urged others to do the same.

At the same time, she, of course, had a call about the Trump vaccine, and she had to then say, you should do what you want, which I didn't love.

So whatever.

Like it was a twisted.

piece, I have to say, but nonetheless, if it's, as George Conway says, if it saves lives, then I'm happy about it that's fine okay scott that's the show we'll be back on 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 read us out scott today's show is produced by lara naiman and evan engel ernie andretot engineered this episode thanks also to drew burrows 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 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 for another breakdown of all things tech and business.

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