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Hi, everyone.

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

I'm Kara Swisher.

And I'm Scott Galloway.

What is up with the news this weekend, Scott?

I go away.

Pick up my son at college and bring him home from NYU.

And like drama all over the place.

Mergers, drama, Bill Gates, everything, like all over the place.

Elon Musk hating on Bitcoin, etc.

All right, let's start with Bill Gates.

We have to talk about this.

The New York Times published an article making allegations that the Microsoft founder made many unwanted advances on employees over the years.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Bill Gates' 2020 resignation from Microsoft's board of directors came after the board hired a law firm to investigate a romantic relationship, an inappropriate one he had with a Microsoft employee.

Another, I guess it was Daily Beast, said he hung out with Jeffrey Epstein and got marriage advice from him, which I'm not sure about that one, but he did hang out with him more than he said, and it was an issue of contention.

And then Bill Gates' money manager was involved in a sexual harassment issue with a person at a bike store.

I don't even understand it.

But Melinda was not happy about how that was handled, plus the Epstein thing, which led to the divorce, which is where we are, which is where she will be one of the richest women in the world.

Anyway, so what up?

What up, Scott?

I think you were surprised.

Yeah, I actually was really shocked by it, to be honest.

You know what, Kara?

I only know what's in the news, and

you know these people

on a personal level.

I'd just be curious.

You just have more authority to speak to this issue than I do.

I don't know them.

You know, there were rumors that they had an unhappy marriage, but like there's lots of rumors about people, right?

I don't, it's not what I cover.

So, and you know, he had a pretty, I mean, everyone sort of knew

Microsoft.

And it's been chronicled and there were several real problem situations people there.

They had a lot of partying in the early days.

And, you know, there was a whole report about strippers in the early days.

He was a single guy.

I don't know what to say, but they had a wild, they had some wild times there early on.

I think the more problematic things is it came this report came in the middle of the, or the woman he had an affair with wrote a letter to the board, and it was right in the middle of the Me Too stuff.

And so the board was trying to figure out what to do in that situation.

And the woman wanted

his wife, Melinda French Gates, to read it.

You know, I think one of the, when these things surface, and there were not just Gates, there were a whole bunch of CEOs, if you remember, there was a series of CEOs who had affairs at work.

I can't remember all of them, but there were a couple and they had to step down, right, at that time because it was the timing, et cetera.

And

some didn't.

Some, you know, I mean, it's, it's a really problem.

I think I think the one that I was, so that's the question of what happened there in the Wall Street Journal one.

And then the one on Epstein, I don't know if he went there too much, or as you know, you said that, you know, he, it looks like he had a much more significant relationship.

I do not, that says nothing about anything else.

He just hung out with him.

And then the Times one was essentially someone awkwardly making a series of date requests at work and not one.

Like he met his wife at work.

So that's fine.

I mean, that happens all the time too.

And he married her and lots of people meet at work and go out.

And that's, you know, sometimes problematic, sometimes not.

But in this case, it looks like he made a bunch of them, like a lot more

sort of saw work as a dating pool, I guess, in some fashion.

So I think it was the number of them.

And so, you know, I don't know.

I think this is not

good.

It's disappointing.

It's at the same time

until I see more.

You know what I mean?

I'm sort of waiting to see more.

They had an unhappy marriage, I think, is the, and he was

trying to get some date people, I guess, on the side or something.

I don't, again, I don't know the inside of anyone's marriage.

So I don't know what that was personally.

But, it's gotten into a mess of trouble when he's trying to actually put out some really interesting stuff about climate change, et cetera.

So it's a real black eye for him, I suspect.

Yeah,

as you point out, I was really shocked when I read this.

And

I think you're right, or where I think you're ahead of, I think you need to bifurcate the issues.

And that is someone pursuing extramarital relationships after.

you know, a 27 or during a 27 year marriage.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that that happens a lot.

And it's easy to be judgmental, but it happens a lot.

And we don't know the dynamics of that relationship.

What is more troubling is that, and I always go to, what's the learning here if you're a younger person in a company?

And the learning is if you're a 20 or 30 year old, you know, 30 something and you meet someone and you want to establish a relationship, and there's even some risks in that.

But when people are spending, we're asking people to spend so much time at work,

young people are supposed to meet, fall in love, and mate.

And that's going to happen at work.

And I'm going to a wedding this summer of two people who met at work.

And so I don't, that's going to happen.

And that's what happened with them.

What is not acceptable, especially in this age, once you get to a certain level of power and influence in a company, your fly needs to be up and locked at work.

Well, he's a public company CEO of a massive propeller.

That's my point.

He became the wealthiest man in the world based off the stock of the company that he founded and then he was on the board of.

And boss, if you're the wealthiest man in the world, it not only gives you the obligation, but quite frankly, it gives you the opportunity to take that shit off campus.

It's just,

that's just, that's just not the sandbox.

I think it's interesting.

He travels all over the world.

I was surprised he didn't meet people.

Exactly.

And then, and then the other thing is that made me,

that I thought about this, that there's a positive, I think that this is an example of how strong Microsoft's board is.

Yeah.

I think the board did the right thing.

They kicked them off.

I I mean, can you imagine how easy it would have been for them to make all sorts of excuses for Bill Gates?

They do have a strong board.

They do.

And this is the difference between Microsoft's board and Tesla's board.

Their CEO engages in massive market manipulation and they're like, well, Elon's going to be Elon.

And then Bill Gates, arguably the most iconic figure in the history of technology, who's made a ton of money for everyone sitting around that table, he does this and they say, sorry, boss, this reflects really poorly on you and on us.

You're out.

And I think it really speaks to the character and good, good corporate governance.

But it's easy to judge people personally.

I don't think we should do that.

But you get to a certain level in a company where you garner that kind of wealth, that kind of authority, it reeks of an abusive power and it just reeks of just terrible judgment.

Well, it's interesting.

They have John Thompson on the board.

He's a long time.

He's been there a long time.

He's the chair.

He became the chair during this, I think, during this situation.

They've got Penny Pretzker, who was, you know, was a commerce secretary.

Yeah, it's a commerce secretary, and she's obviously a very wealthy private investor.

You know, they've got a really interesting board.

And at one point, Reed Hastings was on the board.

They have

Padmasri Warrior, who was very topic, another top tech executive at Cisco and CTO of Cisco,

and is now working on all kinds of stuff.

You know, so it's an interesting, it's definitely an interesting board, a very strong board.

And you're right, they did, you know, they did act.

It has, I don't say that there's women on it, but there's a lot.

There's the CEO of Galaxo, SmithKline, obviously, probably close to Gates because of a lot of the

medical stuff he does with his foundation and stuff.

So, yeah, and then there's Sachinadella, of course, who's, I think he's, I'm not sure he's on the board.

Is he on the board?

Yeah, he's on the board.

He's the CEO.

Yeah, yeah.

So, it's just, it's a really interesting situation for sure.

I mean, and I think they acted correctly.

They investigated it, looked like, you know, without fear or favor, and then decided it was

problematic and said so.

So there you have it.

Yeah, I just, and the other thing I thought about, wow, someone is very angry at Bill Gates.

And

someone is leaking all of this, leaking these letters, leaking these inside baseball.

And I don't think it's anyone on the board because they had a couple of years to leak it.

Yeah.

And I don't know if it's the woman he was having the relationship with.

The obvious pick here, but I don't want to, I don't, nobody knows is his

soon-to-be ex-wife, but somebody is very angry at Bill Gates.

Well, it looks, it looks like it's not a very,

it's not going to be a particularly cooperative divorce, as say the Bezos one was, even though Bezos essentially left his wife for another woman, too,

whom he met outside of work.

But

he, you know, that was sort of a very cooperative divorce.

And to me, and I just wanted to finish that.

I think there's a big distinction there.

I think there's a big distinction.

I think that the

really disappointing or the real,

the real, what I would call professional lack of judgment here was

doing it at work.

I mean, I just like, he's such a smart guy.

He is.

And it's just such, and in a lot of ways, it's kind of tragic because this is an individual who's literally trying to, you know, cure malaria.

I mean, could save the lives of millions of people.

Yeah.

And to on a risk-adjusted basis, take these kinds of risks when, quite frankly, whatever he was looking for was probably available elsewhere at a much less collateral damage.

It's just like, this isn't the kind of guy you would think that would make this sort of risk-adjusted, self-inflicted error.

He's an awkward social person.

I mean, I'm not, that's not an excuse by any means for him.

I mean,

I've heard he's flirted with different people and it's awkward.

It's never, it's never, I've never heard anyone said it was menacing or anything like that, but still in the workplace, it's unwelcome to do it multiple, multiple times.

And again, he, my guess is he met his wife there.

He's like, oh, that's where you meet your, you know, I think in his head, that's, that's how he thinks.

And she was a very high-level executive at Microsoft.

Not high, high, but, you know, she was in the, she was in the group.

And there weren't that many women there.

Are you talking about his wife or the woman he had?

His wife.

And his wife.

He met his wife there.

So maybe in his head, I don't know.

I'm not making excuses for Bill Gates.

This is a bad look.

This is a bad, bad, bad look for him.

And again, we haven't gotten along that well over the years, but it's it's it's both um i thought the board acted i think that's the best way to take away the board acted correctly and uh seemed to have tried to take care of it.

You know,

people will complain that they didn't say anything publicly, which you know, billionaires get a pass here, but I think in this case, probably handle it.

I don't think so.

I think letting him, letting, I mean, letting it be his idea, maintaining the integrity of the company, maintaining his ability to do the good work he's doing, not embarrassing him, his wife, and his family.

Yeah.

I think they did the right thing, quite frankly, not making it.

You forget these companies.

You know,

it's there's so much emotion at work.

There's so much emotional work.

Anyway,

this was a sad story.

This is a really sad story.

And he really had bad judgment.

I think that's pretty much it.

Speaking of bad judgment, Elon tweeted that he would not be creating his own cryptocurrency unless Dogecoin is unable to make changes about sustainability practices.

So, you know, it's kind of a why-IATA.

Like, he's been doing all these anti-Bitcoin stuff.

Please tell me what's going on here, Scott.

There's never been anything like it.

I think the clearest blue flame daily newsletter is a guy named Matt Levine from Bloomberg.

This guy, every time I read something, I'm like, God, I wish I'd written that.

And he's just so funny and insightful and all that prolific.

Him and Ben Thompson, I just, these guys, their brain is just most, I can't imagine they sleep.

But he had the right take and that is what would an investor, Warren Buffett or J.P.

Morgan, pay for a little bottle and you rub it and a genie comes out and says, here's an asset and you can buy as much as you want and then you can say something and take it up 10% and sell and then say something else and take it down 10% and buy and then wash, rinse and repeat.

What would you pay for that?

And that's what Elon Musk has now.

He has a liquid 60 billion in DojaCoin, $2 trillion in Bitcoin asset that he can take up or down 5% to 10% based on a tweet.

Yeah, it's interesting.

You know what?

It's interesting.

Let me just go through it.

This is from a CNN article.

So a user named Crypto Whale, that guy, tweeted, Bitcoiners Bitcoiners are going to slap themselves next quarter when they find out Tesla dumped the rest of their Bitcoin holdings.

With the amount of hate Elon Musk is getting, I wouldn't blame him.

And Musk replied an hour later, indeed, which, of course, like leaves that open.

But then as the price fell, and then also

Coinbase started going down also.

He tweeted, followed up the tweet, writing, just clarify speculation, Tesla's not sold any Bitcoin, which you had suggested the other day.

But it still went down

to

42,000.

It was way up at 60.

And so he really is causing all kinds of gyrations here, which

in an area that's not regulated, of course, at the same time.

But he is a public company CEO with ownership of some of this stuff.

So it really starts to get

problematic here.

I'd love to know the behind the scenes here.

Why did he start doing it?

And then he did his Twitter poll, a Tesla to accept Dogecoin,

which he did too.

So

I don't get it.

He's launching a coin.

He put out a tweet the other day saying, we wouldn't do it unless DojaCoin didn't improve, which I read is coming soon to a theater near you, the Tesla coin.

And I just, the guy has so much, I mean, he's clearly a genius, right?

He clearly might,

he already has probably put a dent or created momentum around the electrification of internal combustion engines.

He could

put a man or woman or just people on Mars, which is very exciting.

And this at a minimum is just a weird distraction.

And you know what a board member is supposed to do?

A board member, every once in a while, is supposed to call the CEO and say, what the actual

maybe something happened here because he sort of what he was into Dogecoin that he wasn't.

I want to know what happened.

I want a great reporter like Matt or someone else to come tell me what happened there.

Tell me what happened, who has really good sources.

That board really doesn't like to,

they have a let Elon Elon kind of attitude.

It's not a board.

I agree, but I'm telling you, I've spoken to a bunch of them and they're like, let Elon be.

I'm like, all right, okay.

Anyway, we have to get on to the big story.

Speaking of Let ATTV, ATT is spinning off Time Warner and merging it with Discovery Plus in a new standalone company.

The abrupt move will combine the reality TV streaming power, Discovery, which includes networks like the Food Network, HGTV with Time Warner's HBO Max, Warner Brothers Studios, and CNN, an effort to compete with heavy hitters like Netflix and Disney.

Discovery CEO David Zaslov will run the combined business, which is interesting.

It also, an effort for ATT, will unwind its 2016 deal with Time Warner.

The $85 billion deal included the phone company's debt.

The deal took several years to gain approval.

It battled the Trump administration, if you recall that.

The announcement after all that said this week it will receive $43 billion in combination of cash, debts, and securities.

And the company will still start with $55 billion in debt.

I just don't, what a, you know what it says?

John Stanky is a shitty strategist, a media strategist for this company.

And I, you know, I don't know what to say, especially, you know, I like David Zeslov, but again, he's an old media type personality.

What do you think, Scott?

You must have a lot to say here.

Yeah.

So look, the most expensive trip ever taken was Verizon and AT ⁇ T's trip from New Jersey and Dallas to Los Angeles.

Yeah.

To go to the Oscars.

Yeah.

They, they,

Verizon leaves $5 billion

less rich.

They went, they bought Yahoo AOL.

Tim Armstrong sold it for $10 billion.

It's worth $5 billion just a couple of years later.

Yeah, which you think is worth more.

But go ahead.

Yep.

Fourth most traffic innovation.

Anyways, and then AT ⁇ T, it wasn't 85 with the debt.

It was more like 110 or 120.

It makes Jeff Bugis look like a genius.

He sold at the top.

And then the company, they get supposedly $44 billion in debt relief from the new entity, or they're taking $44 billion.

So that's okay, $44 billion.

And they're going to own 71% of the new company, which to make this a wash, that means the new entity would have to be worth $100 billion in equity, which it will not be.

So this also looks like it's going to be something that acknowledges the valuation has been cut in half.

Now, having said that,

a step back when you're on the wrong path is a step in the right direction.

Yes, you are.

And to Stanky's credit, he said this isn't working.

And

how do we have some sort of peace with honor here and make this mistake or the exit wounds as least damaging as possible?

Putting it into a spin, an independent unit,

and then to bulk up with Discovery is the right move because it creates arguably the third or fourth player.

The consolidation is happening.

This will be a company with $20 billion in original content budget.

It will be a dramatic.

I don't know how that synergy is going to work together.

I don't know if Don Lemon is going to be naked and afraid or Anderson Cooper is going to be hosting Shark Week.

I don't know how these things play together.

But Zaslov's challenge is he's going to do what very few traditional media executives other than Bob Iger have been given license to do.

And that he's going to have to walk through the valley of death and make such extraordinary investments and take his EBITDA down in order to move people from analog cable where they don't have access to consumer data to streaming where they have access to it and hope that the market, similar to what they've done with Disney, tolerate that decline in EBITDA because they see the great world of streaming.

But this was strategically, in my view, a very, very strong.

I could have bought it.

I was trying to think.

Now, one of the things, obviously, Twitter and CNN acquisition is not going to happen, Scott, as much as you like that.

Still could.

Still could.

But this, I mean, okay, but what did we say?

We said at t is going to spin this thing yes and they have right no i know but i like your twitter cnn thing i like that a lot so

at t needed to reduce debt they've done that they want to get the most money they can they're putting it into pure play because this is what happens in conglomerates yeah investors unless they say immediate synergy they find the shittiest business and they value the whole business at that multiple and that's what they were doing with at t and at t and verizon have these amazing businesses they do 5g yeah and they're like

he said after lecturing and not like that can you imagine the culture clash here a bunch of dallas republicans and a bunch of New York Democrats.

Well, you know, when Richard Plepler left, like, you were like, oh, yeah, this, you know, he couldn't stand Stanky, like, and the rest of them.

And he didn't want to be lectured.

Listen, Stankey lectured me about media.

And I was like, are you talking?

He's real tall.

And I was like, I can't hear you up there.

Like, I don't want to listen to you.

But it was really astonishing the lecturing that went on by these phone people about media to media people.

And I know media people can be obnoxious, but literally they knew nothing.

about it was all such nonsense the stuff they were spewing they they were on stage at code a number of times whether whether it was Randall Stevenson or Stanky.

And I was always like, I kept thinking in my head, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.

Like the whole time.

And so, you know, maybe they'll do what the thing is.

They're competing with these tech companies and Netflix, which have done a fantastic job and have tons of money for content creation.

That said, look, I'm watching last night, I watched two HBO shows, The Never's.

It's all about badass women.

And Mary Diston.

Mayor.

She's so good.

HBO still has some of that secret.

They do.

But like to throw, not to throw, to have Plepler like, you know, take his Gucci loafers and go is a real well, you know who's the next exit?

Jason Killer.

Oh, right.

Yeah.

Zaslov came out on top.

Yeah.

Well, someone told me, someone pretty high up said he's at one of these restaurants looking for a job right now.

So yeah.

Yeah.

But look, I had a different experience with John Stankey.

I haven't had a lot of interaction with him, but he basically called me and said, what should we do?

And seemed very humble and very thoughtful and listened a lot.

And so I had a different.

Not to ladies.

He's not so.

So, but look,

this was, again,

a mistake is bad, not acknowledging the mistake is worse.

And I think this is probably, as I think about it, a bulking up in a spin, trying to get some of that multiple, no one was going to pay the money they wanted in an asset purchase.

But they've already made the wrong decision.

I don't mean to insult David Zeslov, but he's just not the future leader of media.

It's like you put him against Ted Sarandos and Reid Hastings.

Give me a break.

It's like,

they're going to just dunk on him over and over again.

Even the, even the, you know, I don't know.

I just am like, oh, God, this, I like him, but he's so old media.

But maybe people like him.

People like him.

He's, you know, what we never talk about, though, is a lot of this is dictated by your shareholder base.

ATT has a shareholder base that wants a dividend and was never going to let Stanky make the types of investments they need to make to pulse.

Keep in mind, the cable bundle does three times the profit of the streaming video companies now and has a third of the valuation.

And people buy AT ⁇ T stock to get a 5% dividend.

So then we're never going to let Stankey make the requisite investments he needs to make to compete with the Netflixes of the world.

And with the business.

You're letting him off.

He should have been fired.

Come on.

Like, you make this many mistakes.

I don't fight.

I want to be clear.

He owns,

you want to talk about foul balls?

Talk about DirecTV.

They purchased that thing for like $55 billion and they basically sold it for $15.

They will claim they're cleaning up Randall Stevenson's mess, but Stanky was the head of strategy.

He has to own this too.

So, yeah, I'm not, you're right.

This is, but look, a bad decision is wrong.

Not fixing it is worse.

This is a self-inflicted wound.

They have taken, they're trying to heal themselves.

They had to do this.

They did this from a position of weakness, quite frankly.

My guess is they were shopping all these assets around and they realized

we're not going to get the price we wanted.

So they're putting it in.

And they've been very kind of cagey around valuation.

I think when the numbers, when people actually get their pencils out, I think what this is going to show is that $120 billion acquisition was turned into a $60 billion company.

And so they'll take a, I think they're going to have to take a fairly substantial write down.

But just in terms of the future of HBO and CNN, which I adore, I think they're just incredible assets.

I think this gives them a chance at getting the pure play.

And Zaslov, I don't know him at all.

People would love him.

He's not Jason Kylar, who pissed everyone off telling them the truth.

Jason was just telling him the truth and just did it in a way they didn't like to be petted.

But, you know, it would be interesting to see if Jeff Zucker stays now.

That's an interesting thing.

I think he will.

I think I read he's Zaslov's friend.

Oh, I bet.

Oh, I bet they hang out and do cigars and brandy all the time.

I could see that.

Well, that's what all white guys do.

Well, honestly.

That's all we do.

I just, it's like John Saggie gets to be CEO.

Like, everyone moves up into the list.

That's all we do.

We take our possibility

watch football.

Like, honestly, like, losing all this money, he gets to be the CEO and then goes, 5G.

Like,

fuck you.

You don't know.

I mean, who knows?

Anyways,

I want him to come.

You know what?

We're having code, and you and I are going to grill him if he comes.

He has no guts to come.

Just do you have guts to take care of me?

Remember, the short girl biting your knee at the last event.

What about girls biting my knees?

What are you talking about?

When we were at an event, literally, he ignored me.

This is a Bill Gates party?

No.

What are we talking about?

We were at some event, the Vanity Fair event or whatever.

And Stanky and the Mandel, they're so friggin' tall.

They're ridiculously, insanely tall.

And like, I I was talking to him and they like treated me like I was like, it was, it never really happens to me that much, but these two were like lecturing me on media.

And I literally was like, I got to get out of here.

Like, what, who's this annoying girl?

I could just see it.

It doesn't usually come out quite so clearly, but I got to tell you.

John, come to code and me and Scott will give you, have a few questions for you.

Questions.

I want to go to the Vanity Fair party with you.

It's just so we look like Ichabod Crane dropping his daughter off a kindergarten.

Let's go.

Let's go and bother celebrities.

We would be good at that.

Anyway, John, you're not a nonsensical, ridiculous money loser.

Come and come to come.

Well, that's an invitation to Camp Jr.

You know what?

He should.

Yeah, I'm going to have Hans Vesberg if he doesn't.

That's what I'm going to do.

I'm going to just play that.

Vesper is that.

Verizon.

Verizon.

He took over after the last disaster.

He's cleaning up that one.

Anyway.

Yeah.

Anyways, I'm excited to see what Zaslov does.

He's got, look, he's got three or six months.

He throws a good dinner party, I'll tell you that.

To go gangster and really pulse the streaming and take and try and take the bottom line is he needs to keep he needs to milk the shit out of the ad business and make huge, uncomfortable investments to get a direct relationship with consumers vis-a-vis streaming and say to the market, we are the number two, maybe even the number one if he really wants to enter conceptual hallucinations.

Good for talent.

They'll get all kinds of money in this deals.

But many years ago, you know, Discovery, you may not know this started in the Washington area.

I've been there, yeah.

Yeah.

And I did a profile when they were starting, and they were trying desperately to get on cable stations, essentially.

It was a guy named Jon Hendricks who founded the company.

And I did a little profile.

I went and visited him up in, I don't know, it was Bethesda or Rockville or something like that.

I think it was Bethesda.

And I wrote the single best lead I've ever written in my whole life for the Washington Post.

Yeah, it's a high bar.

You've written a lot of people.

I'm telling you, this was my lead.

This was my

quote from John Hendricks.

It was.

Sharks and Nazis, Nazis and sharks.

Thank God for Nazis and sharks.

And it was because that's what made Discovery.

They did endless Nazi, Nazi history shows, essentially.

You know, I've watched all of them.

What?

I watched all of them.

They're all on Discovery.

And then Shark Week.

And that was the best quote I've ever got.

Chocolate and peanut butter.

I'm just saying.

Nazis and Sharks.

Sharks and Nazis.

Thank God for Nazis and Sharks.

You know what?

I think Discovery has one of the best brands in media.

They do.

Remember the Learning Channel?

The Learning Channel.

TLC.

I think they're doing it.

I like the idea of Naked and Afraid with Anderson Cooper.

No, you said Don Lemon.

Right?

Yes.

Did you ever go on Naked and Afraid?

I interviewed someone who was on Nick and Afraid.

I would not, Kara.

I would not.

I can honestly say I would not.

You know what we should go on?

Return to Amish.

They have a show called Return to Amish.

You and I could go back to the Amish.

You are all over the place.

You would look good in an Amish hat.

Yeah.

You could pull that off.

I don't think I would so much.

It's a little handmaid's tale for me.

Anyway,

we'll take a quick break.

We'll be back to talk about Twitter's new subscription service.

Scott, right again.

And friend of Pivot, Glad President Sarah Kate Ellis.

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Okay, Scott, we're back.

Twitter is announcing its new subscription service, Twitter Blue.

Oh, once finally, finally, I want you just to talk about this.

I'll just give some facts.

The tiered service is rumored to cost $3 a month and is testing features that include the ability to undo tweets, charge to use a dashboard app tweet deck, and create super falls, which would allow you to follow a creator or publisher for a monthly subscription fee and get exclusive content.

Twitter has also made several new product announcements over the past several weeks, including updating its warnings for potentially offensive tweets and rolling out Tip Jar feature to allow users to make donations to some creators.

It's not clear yet when this new subscription would launch.

They're taking their sweet time and who would be available.

But Scott, all yours.

Huh, Twitter and subscription.

Well,

you would have sucked that.

Oh my gosh.

I mean, just literally.

I know it appears.

As Snap has become the product development department for Facebook, who is the strategy department for Twitter?

Scott Galloway.

Fox Media Podcast Network.

Scott Galloway.

As the beard and his nose ring are having the sweat of some monk rubbed on the small of his back by Sean Penn as they talk about whether Uranus should be upgraded to a planet back from an asteroid.

The dog is telling those shitheads what the fuck to do here.

Yeah.

Now, look, have you, did you, by the way, I'm not a product.

Close to what you want?

What do you, what do you think?

I I don't, I, okay.

Now you deflated me.

Now you're not.

Okay, sorry.

I just want to know what you think of the service they're talking about.

It seems confusing.

I don't, I'm like, I'm not even sure I'd pay three bucks for that because I don't understand what it is.

I still think they should move to a pay per follower count.

And rather than, I mean, they're product guys.

I think of myself as a strategy kind of a guy and I have a lot of respect for product people who actually understand and do the testing and the consumer research.

But I read it and I thought, would I pay three bucks?

I thought the pricing was weird.

Three bucks?

$2.95 a month?

I thought that was weird.

And I still think it should be zero to $10,000 or a nonprofit or zero to $100,000 free, $100,000 to a million, $10 a month.

Above a million, it starts going like crazy, like parabolic, like $100 or $1,000.

And I think everyone will whine and say they won't pay it.

And then they pay it.

But look, it's a step in the right direction.

Strategically, it's smart.

But I am sick.

I have been so fooled by these people.

This is about the eighth time they've launched a subscription effort.

And then it kind of tomorrow never ends up being today.

So

we'll see.

Twitter stock was $41.65 in 2013 and now it's $51.83.

It's not really.

You think?

Do you think Twitter shareholders?

I think I was there for a while in February, it was up to 72 and that was its highest.

Do you think Twitter shareholders want to go on asylum retreat with Jack Dorsey and just stare at him?

Well, at least it's not $17.

Remember, it was down at $17 or whatever.

Every one of their peers is up between 3 and 8x.

Twitter's been an enormous disappointment.

It's as if they had a part-time CEO, Cara.

It's as if they had a part-time CEO.

And by the way, by the way, have you seen the product innovation at Square?

Yeah.

Oh, my God.

Let's look at Square's stock.

There's one family, and all the kids are wearing like beautiful, cool clothes and in a gorgeous house, and mama's happy, and the dogs are well-fed.

And then there's another house in a fucking double wide talking about subscription.

Yeah.

And it's like

square stock has been down just the past month.

What?

So it's only up 1,100% in the last 24 months?

It's up at 245.

Now it's at 197.

But the max, it's been up from almost nothing, $1,1,12 to now it's at $20.

Yeah, so it's up 20.

It's up 20 fold.

It's up 20 fold and Twitter is down.

Well, anyway, look.

It's close to its original public offering.

Yeah.

Oh, God.

I'm just

going to handle this.

I need to go smoke a cigar and have bourbon as a white guy.

Got you.

You need to pay for it.

By the way, by the way, Kara, I'm at an age where I don't need alcohol to have a good time.

I need something much fucking stronger.

I either need meth or something named after a woman like Molly.

I need, I am so ready for more strong.

Oh, wait, I forgot.

I was going to say something.

I think it was $10 over the course of its history.

Google's gone from $58 in 2004 to 2,271.

That would have been a good stock to have.

Even Pinterest.

Even talking about soapstone kitchen counters and your favorite wedding, which you can't have because of COVID, is like tripled in the last.

Yeah.

Let me look at Pinterest.

And then there's Twitter.

And then there's Silent Retreat.

Yeah.

Let's see.

And then there's 29 to

56.

Not great.

Okay.

Okay.

Namaste, you fucking idiot.

Get on it.

So what do you want them to do?

Let me just,

yeah, what I want.

Well, that's pretty easy.

Okay.

Get a full-time CEO.

Besides that.

And go get a full-time CEO and buy with

your stock, a cheap media asset, start developing vertical content and base subscription on the actual value you're adding to someone, base it on follower account, take 2%, 3%, 10% of your revenue be recurring.

As long as it's going faster than the core business, the stocks of triple digits.

And then I sell my shares and stop talking about you.

So you still own

talking about fucking Twitter.

Anyways.

Do you like the name?

I like the name.

Twitter Blue.

Twitter Blue.

Twitter Blue.

That is nice.

Good for you.

That is a nice name.

Good branding.

Good branding.

All right.

Let me say, I love the product.

I'm addicted to Twitter.

Yep.

They need to do Twitter.

We should run Twitter.

We should run Twitter.

Did I tell you I was on Anderson Cooper last week?

No, what happened?

You know, he was just a little bored.

I thought, I'll call up my good friend and I'll bring him on.

Yeah.

And guess what?

You know that picture I took on my counter of

my salute to Miley Cyrus' wrecking ball?

Yes, that was lovely.

He put it on screen and then he put my great Dan on screen.

So this is a message to all you kids out there.

Be careful what you do on edibles.

It might end up on CNN.

It might end up on CNN.

He told me it made him uncomfortable.

I'm mad at Ando this week.

I'm mad at him.

Why are you mad at him?

Because

he did a 60s minutes show on facial recognition.

And it's literally the pioneering research has been done by women of color.

And he managed to find a white guy.

with cool glasses and talk to him.

I just had done a podcast on this, so I really was up on it.

And I was like, there's this one woman who's at MIT who did the pioneering work and he managed to get the white guy to talk about it.

Just, I was like, Andy.

Well, he's talking.

Well, this week he's doing a great, um, a great story on LGBTQ rights.

And you know who he's interviewing?

You'll like this.

A white guy, John Stankey.

That's good humor.

See how I bring it all together.

Oh my God.

All right.

We're going to get

lesbian.

We're going to go right

now.

We're bringing on our friend of Pivot.

Sarah Kate Ellis Ellis is the president of GLAD, the U.S.

nonprofit monitoring defamatory coverage of the LGBTQ community for many years.

It's been around.

I'm a very good friend of theirs.

This week, GLAD released the Social Media Safety Index, the first ever baseline evaluation of LGBTQ safety across social media platforms.

I've helped, I've given them some advice on it and what to do and how to create it.

They have done this in the past around movies and television and all kinds of things.

And that is the first time they're looking at social media, which is important because all kinds of anti-gay hatred is all over it, including especially around trans people right now with all these lawsuits across the country.

So tell us more about the index.

What does it measure?

And why is the metric important, Sarah Cade?

Well, hi.

Thanks so much for having me.

I'm grateful for being here.

So here's the deal.

The reason why we did this is because

Research report after research report showcases that the most harassed and the most, the group that has the most hate speech against it is the LGBTQ community.

By far, the only second to that is Muslims at 46%.

LGBTQ is at 64%.

That's a report from the ADL.

Pew research shows that

one out of six LGBTQ people are harassed online daily.

So while we've been doing this and releasing this, we've asked, people have asked us, oh, can you get us some examples of people?

And I say, ask any LGBTQ person and they will tell you if they have a social media account.

So it is an imperative for our community.

As we know, government is dragging its feet.

They're taking so long to regulate this industry.

Right.

And it's going to be very hard in that area to regulate, by the way, from speech and speech.

Yeah, well, I mean, you can really draw a direct line.

Those bills that you were talking to, there's a hundred, over a hundred anti-LGBTQ bills.

You can find all that misinformation that builds up those bills on the social platforms.

Yeah.

So, so what is the metric?

Why, what is the metric are you going to use?

How are you going to grid them A's, B's, C's?

Like, you've done it before with movies.

You call attention for years and years.

You've all like pointed out various and also rewarded things that were good, done well in movies.

Absolutely.

There's a hammer and a carrot we use.

That's our approach.

I always say you can't move what you don't measure.

And so we were going to give grades this year, and we decided to forego that because they all failed.

And what we did instead was provide them with a roadmap to success to get rid of a lot of this hate speech, to get rid of a lot of this harassment and this misinformation.

And we gave them the ways to do it.

We will be giving grades next year based on this roadmap that we've provided and how they've performed against it.

But we will be holding them accountable all year long

as this goes day to day.

So the way that we've put this report together, which is what I think you're asking me, is that we did, first of all, we created an advisory committee of some top minds at the intersection of LGBTQ advocacy and technology.

And then what we did was a literature review, because quite frankly, there's so much out there, and you two know this better than anyone.

There's so much out there already.

It's never been viewed through the LGBTQ lens.

And so that's the lens that we put on it.

And then what we did was we did a review of all these, we did the five major social media platforms.

We reviewed their policies, their forward-facing policies, and then we tested those policies to find out how they actually enforce them or if they actually enforce them.

Yeah, and they really didn't.

Scott?

Sarah Kay, nice to meet you.

I did something I almost never do for one of our interviews, and that is I prepared.

Oh, no.

And

a piece of data that actually, like, it really like kind of stilled me, for lack of a better term, is that

so suicide's a second leading cause of death among young people, 10 to 24, and LGBTQ youth contemplate suicide at three times the rate of their heterosexual peers.

There was a study by the American Pediatric Foundation that found that 51%

of transgender male teens reported attempting suicide, 30% of transgender female teens.

You know, it feels to me like if there was a place that almost everyone on the political spectrum would agree is a worthwhile effort is trying to change those numbers,

what can we do?

Like, what

this to me seems like a, this to me really seems like a legitimate crisis that warrants a pretty serious action plan.

Well, thanks for pointing that out.

And yeah, it is, it's horrible, those numbers, and it's scary, and it does point to a crisis.

And I think one one of the places that we could really help these kids is on the social media platforms because this is where they go to meet each other.

This has been a lifeline for our community.

That's why it's so sad to see it being weaponized now, right?

This has been an organizing tool, a lifeline for so many LGBTQ people to find each other because it wasn't safe on the streets or in a bar or in public spaces and places to meet each other.

So, making this place safe for LGBTQ people

would change that number dramatically.

And I can say that because you can easily see how despicable it is online.

The first comment when this was announced last week and it was written to me was,

as a gay woman, they said, you should never feel safe.

You don't have a right.

That was the first comment made on this.

What was it on?

What platform?

It was, yeah, on Twitter.

Right.

So let me ask you, are there any platforms doing a better job at protecting LGBTQ users?

Because let me just remember, AOL was one of the first places these chat rooms started where gay people could meet each other.

Planet Out was funded by them.

I mean, I'm real old, so I remember it, but it was one of the first places that actively used social media essentially for good, like in terms of meeting, feeling safe.

I remember Megan, my ex-wife, ran Planet Out for a while and she was like, we have 61 members at Vatican Vatican City, whatever.

And it was like, you know, a hundreds here, but it protected them in a safe way.

And same thing with the dating apps and things like that.

But in this case,

are there any platforms that are better?

Or what is, or what are the worst, really?

I think probably is a better question.

I would say there aren't many platforms that are better.

TikTok might be, but it's so new that they, they, you know, they just have to sit to get off the floor in this, in this, right?

Facebook is the absolute worst.

The harassment.

Oh, my.

Really?

Really?

I know, I know, I know.

I'm preaching to the prior here.

But they are.

Why?

Because it's the biggest or what?

Well,

you know what?

That's a great question, Kara.

One of the big problems, transparency.

We don't know why it's the worst, but 74% of LGBTQ people

that they've been harassed on that site and that they've had hate spewed at them so I think we don't know why I it could be because it's the biggest it could be because it's the most prolific and that people are on it more often than not but we don't have the transparency have they cooperated with you they just won't well no I mean

here I they are um open to the discussion they were grateful for the report we took them through the report.

They were grateful for that.

But at one point, I said, and they're, and they've acted, they took life site down.

You know, there's, there's going to be some.

Look, I think this report is actually going to move the bar forward.

I can see it already is.

I know the meetings that are being had because of this report.

It's not single-handedly going to change it, but it is going to make it a little safer for some people in our community.

At the end of the day,

why does a not-for-profit have to create a report on people who are monetizing hate and harassment?

That was my question back to them.

And I think that's the bigger question is that this monetization of hate is at the expense of marginalized communities, especially the LGBTQ community.

That's a much bigger discussion.

And that's where we really need government to step in and be and take action.

Do you think?

So when someone comes on Facebook and says something hateful as they did to you, do you have any research or gut feel for how much of it is just a generally hateful person and how much of it is bad actors who are purposely trying to divide us and using this hatefulness and pouring gasoline on it and leveraging a platform that doesn't enforce identity, that doesn't enforce standards, that doesn't prevent hate speech, that will meet with you and tell you they're proud of the progress we've made and find your report just fucking fascinating and then do nothing.

How much of it do you think is true hate?

And how much of it do you think is potentially bad actors trying to exploit and amplify that hate with plant forms that are built to amplify controversial content?

I apologize for the long-winded question.

No, it's a great question.

And I don't know the answer, but I do know this: that we have been working with Facebook for a year and a half to get

ads that have misinformation about HIV prevention, it's called Prep for All,

taken down.

We met with them not too long ago, a year and a half later, and they finally have found a way to stop this a little bit.

Not fully, there's not a full,

you know, response to it, but a year and a half later.

There are 16 bad actors that are sending out these ads that are literally scaring, especially gay men, not to using a preventative health

pharmaceutical.

Ads that discourage people from taking

HIV.

Yeah.

And Facebook's allowing.

It's a pill, but

it serves it.

I apologize, I'm using the wrong term, but this basically, I don't want to say, it prevents it, right?

Yes.

Yeah.

And Facebook has decided to cash the checks of people who are dampening the uptake of this, resulting in more people getting HIV.

Is that right?

Facebook in action equals more HIV.

Do I have that algorithm correct?

You do.

It is.

It actually is.

And we have scenarios.

We have the data around that.

We have people who have gone to their doctors and refused the help because they said they saw these ads.

You know what's interesting too is I remember at YouTube, you haven't mentioned Google and YouTube because YouTube is a real center.

I was talking with the CEO, Susan Wojski, and she said, one of the things is they took down someone for a lot of anti-gay stuff, like really hate speech, essentially.

And and what he did is he became an he made ads out of them rather than the content became ads and then the this the ads went on to gay sites like gay friendly sites and all the gay people are like what are you doing putting ads on our so she was like i didn't even know they were going to do that like it was like they didn't have control of their platform and that they let the anti-gay ads get on

gay sites.

It was astonishing.

Like, and she was like, oh, and it was like, I don't know what to say to you.

Just shut him down.

All everything, every part of him shut this guy down.

And it was, it was difficult for them to wrap their heads around the damage it causes.

Well, one of the, so one of the companion pieces to this report is an index that we're

launching that is going to be very much like the ADL Symbols of Hate Index so that people have a place to report those things.

There's no place really to go except to outer space to report those things, but now you can come to glad.org and you can report it.

We will record it.

We're not going to be able to handle it all because I I imagine the influx is going to be overwhelming, but we're going to prioritize them.

And they'll be prioritized probably mostly on how viral they're going, right?

So that how big of a damage can they do?

And then we're going to be fighting back on them.

What do you need from my last question?

What do you need from a regulatory point of view?

And then Scott might have a final question, but what do you need?

Like a reform of Section 230, liability?

What do you think will work?

Because you've just sort of entered this thing that we've been talking about, white supremacy, whether it's it's this and that.

What do you imagine would work for?

Because you're all sort of,

whether it's anti-Semitism or racism or whatever, it's all the same kind of use of these tools to create problems for marginalized communities.

So, what do you need from a regulatory point of view?

I don't know the particulars of what I need just yet.

I do know that we need help and we need them to step in.

I think just like they stepped in on the auto industry or tobacco, this is is a runaway car.

And we need somebody to throw up some stop signs and talk about, you know, how to make better breaks.

And then I think also what we want to do is

I want people to know about this report because I think it's really important, obviously.

And I want, I also think that.

We need people to report this and to stand up for this and to support each other on this because it is, it's unbelievable what's going out there.

And, you know, you talk about YouTube.

There's this, there's this site called PragerU that literally target is the LGBTQ community.

They create videos and pay for them to go viral so that they can paint a picture of who the LGBTQ community and they make money off of it.

They're making money off of it.

So we need them demonetized.

You know, on the other side of this too, what's really important to understand is that we're the most censored on these platforms, too.

So when people start to say, oh, you're trying to censor the internet, no, we're not trying to censor the internet.

We're the most censored on the internet.

If you look at it, we get taken down the most by using the word bisexual or lesbian.

Lesbian was a word that was being shut down.

We get demonetized the most as creators.

We're really seeing it from both sides as the LGBTQ community.

Scott, Scott, last question.

My question is really more personal.

I'm just curious, who are your heroes?

Who do you think

is fighting the good fight in your eyes?

I think,

you know, I live in a community now where we're seeing it come into the schools.

There is no offline and online anymore.

There's just life and they've blended.

And so we're seeing what's going on online come right into our middle schools, our elementary schools, our high schools.

It's disheartening.

I think that my heroes right now are those mothers, fathers, and parents who are standing up in the schools.

It's pretty rough out there right now.

Especially the trans stuff, especially with all these bills that are going to be

trying to demonize athletes.

I mean, attack kids.

I mean, that's

showing up in our schools.

And I'm in a suburb outside New York City.

I'm not, you know, and we're seeing it.

Yeah, amazing.

By the way, Kate's also a former media executive, right?

You were at, was it Time?

Yeah, that's the one thing I wanted to say.

I was at Time and Condé Nass, but we, you know, I've been a lot of these meetings.

And so I understand journalism.

I wasn't a journalist.

I was on the business side.

And every meeting I have at these social media platforms, I say, who worked in journalism here?

Not one hand.

They don't know how it works.

They don't understand how the world works in that.

And how we built a model back then then that was fair and equitable and gave voice and platform to all, but didn't use it as a weapon.

Yep, indeed.

All right, just real quick,

who in the House of Representatives or in the U.S.

Senate do you think has shown leadership and courage around these issues?

You know, I think,

of course, Elizabeth Warren has been at the forefront of this.

I think a lot of people are really starting to, I think the past few years has been an education for these folks.

I really think they were just opening their laptop for the first time, quite honestly.

And now they're starting to understand, especially in the past year, what we've seen happen and transpire and how much the offline world has impacted, or the online world has impacted the offline world.

So I think we're going to see more heroes coming.

I'm hopeful for that.

All right.

Sarah Kate Ellis, I'm glad.

I urge you.

Where can people get the report and look at it?

Everyone gets Fs.

F's all around.

Like my son's scientist

grade this year, but go ahead.

F's all around.

It's at glad.org.

Glad.org.

Okay, so it's out and everyone can look at it.

And we look forward to more in the future.

This is a really important area and it applies across the spectrum, not just with the LGBTQ people.

This is the same, it's the same song, just bad as ever.

Anyway, we appreciate it.

Thanks for your good work, Sarah Kate.

Thank you very much.

All right, Scott, one more quick break.

I'm thrilled that you brought research to bear here.

We'll be back for Wins and Fails.

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Okay, Scott, wins and fails.

I have a win.

Go for it.

Go for it.

Murder dirter.

Mayor of East Town.

That was your win two weeks ago.

I don't care.

This week was crazy.

I can't tell you what happened, but oh my God, I was like, what?

Shocking.

This is, you watching it now?

By the way, that's...

Are you watching it now?

Are you kidding?

I love it.

I didn't know.

I love it when it comes out.

Oh, okay.

By the way, that one scene, and I won't give it away, but that one scene in the house,

and this episode,

did that take you back to another famous movie,

one of the great movies of the early 90s?

Finals of the Lamps.

100%.

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

That was literally, it sent chills up my spine how similar it was to that one scene.

And for people who haven't seen it yet, you'll know exactly what we're talking about.

Yeah.

It's really.

I got to say, I was like, what?

I never go when when I'm watching.

I did not expect that.

And also the comedy scene, but we don't have to give anything away between her and Gene Smart.

Come on.

That's a spoiler.

It's not a spoiler.

It's comedy and drama together.

I have to say, love the murder dirter.

Everybody must watch murder dirter.

Make John Stanky some money.

I mean, maybe, okay, thanks, John Stanky for Murder Derter.

That's right.

There's a pattern here next week.

Your win's going to be.

Mayor of Downton or whatever her name.

Anyways, all right.

On to whatever you're doing.

I have lots of fails this week.

Go ahead.

Your wins and fails, please.

My win and fail is sort of the same thing, just different sides of the coin, and that is the CDC's updated guidance around masking.

And that is, I actually think the CDC does so many wonderful things, but one of the most important things they've done is issue communication guidelines.

And they are kind of speaking with some of the, one of the loudest voices in the world right now, trying to make sense of all of this, very difficult situation.

And

they put out a guidance saying that if you're fully vaccinated in certain situations, situations, you don't have to wear a mask.

And I actually, they got immediately criticized.

And I thought, well, actually, at some point, when you're telling your kids at the age of 25, they should never drink, they stopped listening to you altogether.

And I think that

their comments need to have veracity.

And I think they also have to acknowledge how people are actually behaving and what's realistic.

So I think the strategy was right here.

Now, the fail, the fail is that they missed an opportunity to put some guidelines on it to say states where they have over 50% vaccinated or a lower than 1% infection rate can go to that.

They had an opportunity to create goals, which would have been really meaningful in this fight.

And two, whenever you're communicating something that's really important,

you want to pre-bake it.

In other words, what I tell, what I coach CEOs is if you have something really important you're talking to the board about, You don't want it to be a surprise.

You want to check in with everybody.

And where they really, I think, failed here is they should have gotten all the governors online, which are to a certain extent, if you think about them being a manufacturer's brand.

And there's the customer, the retailers, and then there's the end consumer, which are citizens, but the customers or their stakeholders are governors.

They should have got all the governors on the phone a few days before and said, this is what we're thinking.

What do you think?

And even if the governors had disagreed, they would have felt like they were briefed.

And all these governors that are responsible for implementing this and enforcing it felt blindsided.

So right strategy, really ham-handed.

I think everyone's super confused.

Everybody, like everybody, my family alone, we were having dinner in New York and I was like, can we eat inside?

We ended up up eating outside, but because it was a beautiful weekend.

But I got to say, we had an argument about like nobody knew what to do.

It was like, you know, my one son, who's very cautious, was like, masks on.

And the other was like, whatever.

Like, because the CDC says, so everyone now goes CDC, CDC, which is interesting, but you could almost apply to everything.

I agree.

I think it's really problematic.

Fail, please.

Was that a fail or a win?

No, that's my other, I have two wins.

My other big win is U.S.

government,

CDC, Pfizer, and Walgreens.

I took my 13-year-old son to get his first vaccine, and it was one of those moments where

one of those moments where I really felt very emotional.

I just thought, I'm so fortunate to be in a society that mostly embraces science, and I'm appreciative to Pfizer.

I'm appreciative to Walgreens, and my son brought it up to me and wanted to do it.

But it just felt very good to have

my son participating in this effort and to not be a fiber in this web of death snaring people.

It was just a nice moment.

So I'm very grateful.

Okay.

I mean, I have a fail.

Let me try and think.

I don't really have a fail this week.

I think the vaccine, I think we're sending vaccines abroad, 20 million vaccines abroad, which I think is great.

We can send a lot more if we have them.

I don't know how to feel about Parlor being back on the apps for it.

I think I probably think it's a good thing if they have new rules on hate speech.

I'm not, I think that's a good thing because I was a part in getting that.

taken down.

So

I wasn't a part.

The CEO was.

But I think that was, I can't tell if it's a winner or a fail, but that's what's happening.

It's something.

It's something.

You're going on a a limb there.

It's something.

It's something.

All right.

Matt Gates is going to be a fail.

That's, we're going to watch that one, but I don't care about him.

He's such a loser.

So I don't really know.

The best thing that happened to Matt Gates was Bill Gates.

That story is like, I'm on the back shelf.

Seriously.

Seriously.

Matt Gates is like, I'm buying Windows.

Thank you, Bill Gates.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's

another Gates.

That is a great line.

Scott, once again, as usual, fantastic insight.

Fantastic insight.

But let me just tell you, Matt Gates, but Bill Gates dude is not even close to what Matt Gates is alleged, allegedly, allegedly is supposed to be doing.

We'll see what's going to happen.

It's going to unveil now because the guy who was his little friend

in their little escapades has now pleaded out.

So we'll see what happens to Matt Gates.

Hopefully bad things.

Anyway, Scott, that's the show.

We'll be back on Friday for more.

This was a very educational show.

Very educational.

Lots going on.

Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit your question for the pivot podcast.

The link is also in our show notes.

Please read us out.

Today's show was produced by Rebecca Sinana, Sony Intertot, engineered this episode.

Thanks also to Drew Burroughs.

Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts.

Or if you're an Android user, check us out on Spotify or 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.

Thank you, U.S.

government.

Thank you, Pfizer, and thank you, Walgreens.

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

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

But what does it actually mean to be well?

Why do we want that so badly?

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

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