Facebook gets into audio, WeWork's SPAC, and Friend of Pivot Preet Bharara

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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.

Scott, you're very quiet today.

Speak up.

Am I?

Hello.

All right.

Come on.

What's going on?

What's going on?

A little late?

A little quiet.

What's going on?

Yeah, this is one of those days where,

you know, I've been like 10 minutes late and like two minutes away from losing my keys.

And just

been a crazy morning.

Well, I'll be there on Thursday.

So this will all be.

You're coming in.

I'm coming in.

And it's growing.

More and more family are showing up.

You're bringing it up.

I know.

I'm sorry.

I do have children and I cannot leave them behind with just like a snack.

Oh, I'm good at that.

I'll show you how to do that.

Okay, good.

All right.

Well, we have a lot to talk about, and we will also be.

taking photos of our lovely time together.

But first of all, the Biden administration has officially blamed and sanctioned Russia for its role in the SolarWinds hack that compromised computer systems in multiple government agencies, as well as private companies.

We had brought on Nicole Pearl Roth, and you really like talking to her.

What do you think about that?

You know, this is so strange.

I was not, as you know, I was not a supporter of President Biden during the campaign.

And I don't know if you feel this way.

I feel like every decision he's made, it's like, oh, yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah.

And it's just such a weird feeling.

He's doing a lot.

It's such an unusual feeling over the last four years.

I'm like, what the fuck?

Very busy people.

Yeah.

And competence is sort of the new, you know, is in vogue again.

Yeah.

I think the Russians understand strength.

What's interesting, or I found interesting, about the Solar Winds Hack is supposedly they showed restraint.

Supposedly they were worried about causing too much damage for fear of poking the bear too hard.

So look, we're...

I think Russia is a failed state.

I think once you get out of the side of Moscow, you see just how economically dire the situation is, the lack of diversification in the economy.

And

unfortunately, when an economy or a society is backed into a corner, they become more dangerous.

I think Russia is turning slowly but surely into a failed state.

their success or ability to rally their people is around kind of foreign creating foreign adversaries.

Yeah, Navalny is going to be interesting.

He's on a hungry

day 20 and his wife said he's near death.

His daughter said he's near death.

And they're trying to force,

fried chicken in front of him.

And then they put candy in his, in his, in his prison garb.

The whole thing, I think they're really playing the fire with this guy.

He is really quite, has become something of

a figure in terms of pushing back on what's going on.

Now, the Biden administration didn't push back on the Russia bounty stuff because there wasn't quite enough evidence yet about that.

But there's a number of issues that we have with Russia that I think they're probably behind the scenes pushing back rather significantly on this.

And then this solar winds thing is really that's being run by a woman.

Maybe we'll get her on here, Ann Neuberger, who's really competent, like fixing of it, but it's really massive.

This is a massive hack.

And

there should be reprisals along with these kind of things, these sanctions, backroom reprisals that we don't see.

Well, the new proxy wars, whether it was Afghanistan or, I mean, arguably Vietnam was a proxy war where superpowers don't want to directly confront each other because they can spin out of control and do nuclear Armageddon.

But the new proxy wars are these cyber attacks.

And the thing we don't talk about is we're actually pretty good at that.

And those don't get as much.

I know we are.

Those don't get as much publicity.

They're meant not to get publicity.

Yeah.

We do.

I think that's right.

Do them quietly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What's interesting is I interviewed the head of the CIA's technology division today, and some of the stuff they're, she's of the physical stuff they're doing, and they're working on drone technology, all kinds of physical stuff, because of the idea of like you pull out of Afghanistan, you still have to have some eyes on the ground.

And so they're working on all kinds of different things.

And I think it's going to be a really interesting next year of who's going to dominate both the physical digital space with, you know,

sensors, et cetera, and then in the cybers area.

And it's certainly going to be the sort of the battleground for hegemony.

Of course, the real rival is China in this area, but Russia can make plenty of trouble and they have.

Speaking of our government, NASA announced that it awarded a contract to Elon Musk's company, SpaceX, for $2.9 billion to take astronauts to the moon for a space landing spot.

It's the space race between Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, who is working on this,

a moon-landed landing area.

They're going to use the moon to be sort of the base to jump off on from.

And so this is another win for Elon Musk over Lockheed and other companies, too.

Yeah, look, there's just no doubt about it.

And what would be interesting is everyone credits Elon Musk, but what he clearly is also a genius at is greatness and lunar landers are in the agency of others.

He must have an ability to attract incredibly talented engineers.

And it's interesting, and I don't know,

you know, there's all these articles on the tip of the pyramid below Bezos.

You know, who are the 15 most powerful people other than Bezos Amina?

You don't see a lot of those articles on Musk.

It's all about him.

And I wonder if at some point.

Well, Gwynne Shotwell is the CEO of SpaceX, and she doesn't go out a lot.

I think I've tried to get her to do an interview, and she's like, no, you can talk to Elon.

You know what I mean?

That's what they basically say to me.

I would argue that, you know,

Elon strikes me as the kind of person that's like, well, okay, you can go on a remote podcast for your book club, but other than that, it's all about me.

I just don't, I get the sense.

I get the sense.

I mean, Amazon's done a really good job of saying, hey, meet Andy Jassy.

Or Jeff D.

Clark.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I would argue that Musk has not done

at the same time, he's become a mythical character, which has resulted in incredibly cheap capital.

But short term, they're the winner.

But long term, I really do think the winner is NASA here because they're taking advantage of this, the mother of all midlife crises where two guys are sword fighting with their dicks in space and they keep trying to

NASA.

Is going to put people on the moon for less money than it would cost taxpayers by playing these two off of each other.

And they're in the battle of egos.

It results in cheap capital for the government.

So

I think the big winner here is NASA and taxpayers who are going to get space cargo and space hauling at a fraction of the cost it would cost to develop internally at NASA.

Yeah.

So Rezos' space exploration company is called Blue Origin, and it was also the SpaceX beat out Blue Origin, which have been really focused on this.

They have different ways of going about it, but it's kind of an interesting thing.

And it should be, you know, more and more, you know, Musk has won a bunch of defense contracts.

You're going to see that his companies

wander into lots of spaces, a lot of defense spaces.

And it's, it's an unusual thing.

I talked to him really briefly about it separately, you know, the difficulty level of getting into the defense sort of arena and beating out not Jeff Bezos, but it's the bigger, it's the bigger sort of Lockheed Martins types that he, that he was sort of like, you don't get in here.

This is, this has been an uphill battle to get within this buying area.

But they certainly have made the investments.

We'll see where it goes.

I think SpaceX is the most interesting part of his business.

I know know Tesla, everybody focuses on that.

Well, the analogy I would use is that some of the big players in the early stages of the internet were the people who figured out a way to move data, basically transported data broadband, right?

The Cisco's of the world, the infrastructure guys, the telco guys.

And I would argue that SpaceX, to a certain extent, is bandwidth, and that is the ability to transport atoms into space, which is really difficult.

But their Falcon product, if you will,

is hauling more stuff into space reliably and cost-effectively.

And so I think of that as almost kind of the new broadband: your ability to transport things into space, which is really difficult and really expensive.

But right now, they're kind of the call it space band winner.

Yeah, yeah, it's an interesting area.

We should

have a space person on.

I like, I've had a couple space people on Sway, but I love this idea of, I would love to get Gwen Shotwell on here, but she won't do anybody.

She stays low.

She stays low.

She does not come out.

But let's go on to our big stories.

We've got two of them today.

And also, a wonderful friend of Pivot, as you know, is coming on.

So, Facebook is pushing into the audio space.

The company plans to announce a host of new audio products, including Clubhouse Competitor, apparently, who knows when, and a podcast discovery apparatus in partnership with Spotify.

Now, listen, it's done stuff like this before, which is called frictionless sharing and things like that.

It's not clear what they're doing on Spotify.

It'll probably just surface their podcast onto Spotify and vice versa, I guess.

They're reportedly looking into an audio-only version of Rooms, which launched as a competitor.

Zoom has not set the world on fire necessarily, but this is sort of a lift from Clubhouse.

And obviously, Twitter is in this space.

Spotify is going to be in here.

Discord,

you know, there's all kinds of players in this audio-social space.

What think you of this?

Another copy by Facebook or what?

And Mark's going all out today talking to everybody but us about this.

Is that because of me?

Is that what you're saying?

I think it's me.

You think it's you?

It's not you.

It's me.

It's not about me.

It's about you for once.

This one is me, I think.

But go ahead.

Go ahead.

Offensive and more offensive.

Yes, right.

Look, I think there's what I call an NPS or an emotional arbitrage, and that is if you can find categories that people become emotionally wedded to that aren't that expensive, there's an NPS arbitrage.

So Amazon could only get so much goodwill delivering your Nespresso pods within 48 hours and 45 hours.

But if they can hook you into a TV program, you start feeling very emotionally connected to Prime, whether it's through Transparent or the Marvelous Mrs.

Meisel.

So there's kind of what I call, for lack of a better term, an NPS arbitrage.

And it's just very hard to get a high NPS score around e-commerce or broadband or, you know, delivery, where you get the high NPS is in entertainment.

And even within entertainment, the NPS arbitrage, and we've been talking about this for a year.

Yeah.

You know, when people come up to you and

either you or me and they're friends with us, you know, they've listened to a podcast.

People don't come up and start talking to me as if they're my friend.

When they read something they've done or they've seen me on TV, they come up.

They're like, oh my God, we know each other.

We talk for an hour.

So this NPS arbitrage around podcasting is enormous.

In addition, when Andreessen Horowitz, I think of Clubhouse, it's almost like...

when a VC decides they're also an operator, I think they've done most of the rounds and that $4 billion most recent valuation.

$100 million, billion, $4 billion.

Again, I think that number is a bit of a head fake because we want to maintain momentum.

And my understanding is I've never been on Clubhouse, but some of the people I follow who are on Clubhouse are saying that it's losing some of its mojo.

But at the same time, if you look at the numbers, they're amazing.

Yeah, but the numbers, the download numbers are down.

I think I'm worried about, for them, I'd be worried about the end of the pandemic, that people are not doing this thing, that

they don't have enough of a hook into people.

And obviously, people like you and I don't go there because there's no monetization.

There's no, like, why bring a new interest graph, build it for them there.

I feel like, why am I building a house over in like

whatever?

People all the time call me.

I'm not exaggerating.

Every day, I want you to room on Clubhouse.

I'm like, why the fuck am I going to make Mark Andreessen rich?

Right.

Yeah.

I do think that way, too.

And I mean, I get all,

you know, I get these.

Oh, I bet they want you on there.

But it's just sort of, okay.

And then Twitter comes in.

Have you been on Spaces?

I did Spaces.

Yes, I've been doing them every week.

I find them really interesting.

And it's really good.

I think that Twitter is.

There's some glitches, but it'll figure it out.

You know, interesting,

Kayvon, who runs Product Arizona every week, to watch it.

Cause I think I get lots of, I mean, pretty good members.

And so it's improving.

It's not perfect, but it's not bad.

And my interest graph is there.

My interest graph is there.

But this is what I think is going on in the boardroom of Clubhouse right now, which is essentially, I think, the Monday morning partners meeting at Andreessen.

I think that they probably are getting a little bit of humility and they're probably going to say, we need to get out while this getting is good.

And supposedly Twitter made a $4 billion acquisition

offer for them.

I wouldn't be surprised.

And

this would have been my prediction on Friday.

I think Clubhouse is acquired in the next six months as they start to recognize.

Because look, Mark is on the board of Facebook, Mark Andreessen, and he also does Clubhouse and Substack too.

What do you imagine who would buy it?

Because I think Facebook would

not pay $4 billion for it.

Oh, I don't think they're going to.

I think they're going to have to come up with an elegant way to not disclose the terms yeah but look at clubhouse has some momentum it has a following um and this space is is heating up because of the intimacy or the nps arbitrage of voice and audio which is really interesting that it's kind of reinventing itself but uh one of the bigger players i i don't think i think clubhouse is

has attracted just the way tesla has attracted a bunch of sharks because all of a sudden the automobile market has grown from 100 billion in value to a trillion in value on the backs of a six or $700 billion increase in value of Tesla.

The fact that Clubhouse supposedly gets a $4.5 billion valuation, which I think is a bit of a head fake, has kind of made the audio space overnight worth twice as much as it was just six months ago.

And then Twitter.

Twitter and Facebook, who are all looking for more hooks, as you said, or more affinity, say, okay, voice, let's take our you know, let's Facebook says, let's take my hundred engineers and Twitter says, okay, let's take my one engineer.

Right.

And

start innovating around this.

And I just wonder if Andreessen Horowitz goes, okay, some bigger sharks are showing up.

We're going to

find the record.

I do think this is a feature.

It's a really interesting feature, but I think it's a feature.

And so,

you know, you wonder if it's Instagram again or if it's something like, you know, Yo, or

I just, I don't think it's Instagram.

And I also don't think any of these companies do media very well as much as, you know, there's these big articles touting Andreessen Horowitz for doing their own media.

I think it's just PR.

It's just very dressed up PR is what they're doing.

I think it's worth that.

I think it's rich old white guys who don't like the press, so they want to control the press.

I actually think there's a really, there's a really uncomfortable element to it.

Yeah.

When people are like, I don't like our coverage, so I'm going to create our own coverage, which I guess is kind of content marketing.

Yeah.

Or maybe I'm just jealous that they have to do it.

They've got more on there than that.

That's the thing.

The really powerful stuff isn't that

noise.

It's actually

some of the other spaces.

But we'll see where it goes.

I mean, because there's a lot of multi-level marketing, there's a lot of cleaning up.

I just, it'll be interesting.

Interestingly enough, I had the CEO coming on to Swayed this week and he canceled, saying he's really busy.

He, they, they pitched me.

We agreed.

Everything was confirmed.

And then they said they were busy.

I suspect it, I suspect their funders were like, don't get near Kara Swisher or something.

But they can't.

That is actually very telling.

You know what that is?

Well, it was highly unprofessional.

I can tell you that.

It was really weird.

More than that,

this is, in my view, what's happening.

Our numbers suck.

She's about to find out that our numbers suck, and we don't want those questions.

Yeah, I guess.

It was really like, I have to say, I was looking forward to it and I wanted to talk about it.

Just, you know, the subset guy had the cojones to go on.

Like, you know what I mean?

Like, this was like so unprofessional the way they did it.

And, you know, whatever.

They can talk to whoever they want and make their choices, but you don't, you don't pitch someone and then cancel it.

You don't pitch the jungle cat and then not show up in a tree with a metal.

Friday, my staff spent time getting ready for it.

Like, this is bullshit.

I was pretty pissed.

I think it was completely Andreas and Horror Woods generated.

Anyway, we'll see what happens to them.

I think it's a good product, but they have a lot of competitors.

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

We'll be back to talk about WeWork SPAC and our friend of Pivot and new colleague Preet.

Let's practice that

Barara.

You got it?

Barara.

Got it?

Carrara.

No, Barara.

No, Carrara.

Anyway, let's talk about WeWork when we get back.

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okay, we are back.

Let's talk about WeWork coming back.

It's coming out with a SPAC.

As we talked about that, it could happen.

This is the company

we were very not very nice to for a long time.

And now, after disastrous IPO, which we pointed out, I think, as a public service, especially you, Scott, in 2019, WeWork was attempting a noob debut with a SPAC, which gives the company more leeway than a traditional IPO.

The shared office providers expected to merge with a SPAC called BoX Acquisition Corp.

The SPAC values values we work at $9 billion including debt, which I think is the number you had talked about originally, oddly enough.

What think you of this?

We've talked about this.

What do you think?

So look, when the facts change, I change my mind.

And you have, one,

you have a company whose valuation has been cut by 80%.

So I don't like...

you know, I don't like Tesla at this price.

But if Tesla went to $70 from $600 or whatever it is, I might change my tune.

And the fact that the valuation here has been cut by 80%, and also they have the winds of COVID at their back.

And that is in pulse marketing, it's dangerous, but I'm very involved in two small businesses.

And we, at one place, we had beautiful office space, five-year lease, 80 bucks a foot.

And

the pandemic came, and I said, I stroked a check for about a million bucks to the landlord to get out of it.

And when we go back, I am going back for, I want a few things.

I want flexibility.

I want less space, but I want that space to be more communal and quite frankly, more aspirational and just more fun because it's the young people who really want to get back and find mentors and friends.

And all of that, all of that feeds into WeWork, who, by the way, a lot of their competitors, whether it's Notel or Regis or whoever, are impaired.

So

like I said, and also I'm a fan of the CEO, Sandeep Matrani.

So

I'm, I'm, you know, we've said this before, I'm bullish on WeWork and bearish on Compass

in terms of real estate.

So I think WeWork, I think WeWork is sort of the

rises from the ashes here.

Masio Shison, speaking of rising and the Vision Fund, they had a big valuation on this mother.

Look,

they've had big wins with Opendoor, less, you know, obviously not as good with

Compass.

They just invested in a company I'm an investor in called Better.

You know, you got to get Masa's due.

He's like, you know, he's got kahonas the size of Korea.

I mean, he just doesn't, he was not, he was not cowed by this failure.

And, and the thing that will go down in history with WeWork is you had

arguably, I would

the greatest negotiator in the history of private markets exploiting the situation, recognizing that Masioshian needed to save face, they needed to get him out of there.

I mean, effectively, you had one man, Adam Newman, garner a $1.6 billion valuation for losing.

I'm sorry, he garnered a $1.6 billion commission for losing $11 billion of other people's money.

No one has ever been able to pull that off before.

People get angry that, okay, you're the CEO and you've increased stakeholder value by a billion dollars and you pay yourself $50 million.

Oh my God, a 5% commission.

They get outraged.

This is, this is a, what, a, a 20% commission on money lost.

Yeah.

I mean, we've just never seen anything like it.

And Adam Newman is the person that comes out of here as the smartest person in the room.

As far as I know, he didn't do anything illegal.

Indeed, I don't think he behaved rather well.

Any story?

You were in a recently popular Hulu documentary about the WeWork fail.

What was your

tell us about it?

I haven't seen it yet.

I'm going to see it with you this weekend.

Probably you'll like me to watch it.

But go ahead.

Over and over and over.

It's my screensaver.

My screensaver.

I like it.

Alex loves this kind of stuff.

Yeah,

I did it about six months ago, and it was in the midst of COVID, and I was a total prima donna.

They're like, come to our New Jersey studio.

And I'm like, I have one hour, and you come to my place, or I'm not doing this bullshit.

I was total Beyonce, but she's probably nicer than that.

Anyways, so they came over and they did this thing.

They just asked me a bunch of questions.

And I ended up in this documentary.

And what's most interesting is, you know what I got the most comments on after the documentary was, oh, that was insightful comments.

Everyone wanted to know about my bar cart.

And everybody's zeroed in on the alcohol I drink.

All the comments are on my rolling bar cart and how it was like literally right next to me.

What was your takeaway if it was six months ago?

It was like, this was a disaster.

You did the backward looking thing.

Did you have any, what did you, what was your takeaway from the entire?

I just think this is, I think it all comes down to

kind of instinct.

And I think you had a guy, again,

I believe if you tell a 30-something year old guy with long hair that he's Jesus, he's inclined to believe you.

And it was, I think this guy genuinely thought he was going to be president of the world and that he deserved to be a trillionaire.

Yeah, he did.

You know, I think his wife was kind of awful.

Yeah.

And this, the notion that we should have voter class rights that give our kids the right to this, even if they don't own any stock.

It's just a level of narcissism and weirdness.

And then you have Masayoshi-san, who I think the biggest virus that infects successful people is believing that their success is their fault.

And Masayoshi-san made the greatest investment in the history of the private markets, put 50 million into Alibaba and got 100 million back.

And that has created this belief that his craziness is

not always crazy.

Yeah, it's genius.

The craziness is sometimes crazy.

There's just no regulators there.

And I don't know if you've seen his deck on the singularity.

It's literally like when I'm on edibles, I sound rational compared to this deck.

I thought this thing was from the other

character.

He was planning.

Do you realize leading up to the IPO?

He was planning to put another 10 or 12 billion into WeWork.

Yep.

And his limited partners, I think it was the Mubalaba Fund or PIF, basically sat him down and said, we don't know where you're smoking over there, but we don't have access to the same hallucinogens.

And we need you to sober up.

We need to do an update on the Vision Fund and its results.

Some of them have been okay.

Some of them have been less than

some wins.

I think they did.

Whatever they did, they did some.

But not the kind of they were throwing money.

I remember all the Silicon Valley people who competed with them were like, this guy's just throwing money around.

Like stupid, stupid money.

He's an interesting guy.

I've spent a lot of time with him.

I really enjoy it.

Crazy, just like that.

He was talking about committing Harry Carey on the stage of All Things D once, which was interesting.

He's just, he's really interesting and energetic and you can see why he attracts such attention and also seems earnest

in a way in a way yeah um you know he and jack ma are sort of uh similar in their different but similar people and we'll we'll talk about jack ma on thursday because what's happened to him is really there's a great i think jack

i think if jack ma was 6'2 and white he'd be the most famous business person in the world i think jack ma

i think he's really something he's

underrated is that someone has instincts that you that are hard anyway it'll be interesting to see what happens.

All right, last question.

Then we're going to bring on our incredible friend at Pivot, Preet Barara.

And one of the things I want to ask, where is WeWork's stock going to be?

Comes out at 9 billion.

What do you think?

I don't know how people are going to respond to the SPAC because it's got such an overhang on it.

But I think WeWork

is a good stock to own for the next couple of years if you can get it at $9 billion because

you have growth, you have a differentiated offering, and you have they've gone from a messiah to a manager, which is an accretive move for shareholders.

So I like it.

Good management, growth story, differentiated product.

Market that's probably open to it in a lot of ways for the next couple of years at least.

The disruption in office space, I believe, plays to their strengths.

Absolutely.

So I'm a, you know, I might, anyways, I'm a, I'm, I'm cautiously optimistic.

What do you think?

I agree.

I think, I think they're in a good position and it's a much better, it's, it's still a lot of money, what it's worth, but we'll see how they do.

Well managed?

Sure.

Why not?

Anyway, let's bring in our friend of Pivot and a new colleague who's here to

class up the joint.

I'm here to class up the joint.

My new close friend.

My new close friend.

He doesn't know this yet.

By the way.

Speak.

No, I speak.

I know because I have a transcript.

Okay.

Oh.

That has been prepared by my staff of.

Your last podcast.

Oh, no.

Wherein Carol learned how to pronounce my name.

I did.

Very well done.

Thank you.

I think you mispronounced it when I was on your podcast, too, but I'm so polite.

I know you should.

And you seem so lovely, and I wanted to be your friend.

Oh, don't.

It's boring.

By the way, it's it,

Pri, don't believe that it doesn't raise your blood pressure to hear that the former head of the Southern District has a transcript of what you said.

It's very relaxing.

I just, and I'll thank you.

I'll mark it as Vox Exhibit 1.

Okay, that's true.

In the live stream.

Multiple people, including on our team, friends of the family.

In real time, as you were having a discussion, my phone was lighting up.

And why was it lighting up?

Might you ask?

It's because

the professor, yeah, he says, I think he, he being me,

would be a very gentle lover, which I don't quarrel with that.

But he went on to say,

I imagine him

that voice after a bout of lovemaking, a bout

of love making.

That's how that's how lawyers roll

saying quote

honey honey let's i'll make some hot pockets and break out the lancer's wine that's good to keep so that's that's where i i gotta lodge some complaint i don't know if it's with the epsilon

that's hard hr i think that's some kind of

great case this is what we do don't tell bankoff we do a fake i thought you were serious people no we do a fake sexual harassment lawsuit

and then we get all the money, and then we split it.

I just want to be serious for a moment.

Preet, now that you're part of the family, whether you want this or not, you are now my one call.

And you know what I mean by my one call?

No, oh, no.

You know when you get arrested and they say

this is your one call.

So, dude, I need your cell phone because dad is like, well,

guess who daddy is using his phone.

You might want to call.

a lawyer who's practicing as opposed to podcasting.

Just so you know, listen.

You're comforting.

You're comforting.

Hush, Scott Galloway.

Now, listen, Preet is a former U.S.

Attorney for the Southern District, very famously, hosted the Stay Tuned with Preet podcast and best-selling author of Doing Justice.

So we have so many things to talk about.

Tell me why you came to Vox, and then we'll talk about other things.

This is going to be a long one.

To be with you.

No, you didn't.

No.

What were you doing?

You get fired by Donald Trump.

Tell me what happened after that, how you got to where we are right now.

How long?

Well, so

I decided to write a book.

I did not want to immediately return to the practice of law.

And, you know, I'm not sure that law firm life was my immediate preference.

Sure.

And I started teaching at NYU Law School.

And in the course of things, my brother, who had a media company at the time and a brand called Cafe,

which is kind of fledgling, he said, why don't you come and take that over and do something called a podcast, which I thought was going to be, you know, kind of a part-time on-the-side thing.

But, you know, we were very successful.

Yeah.

And when you get to the point where you explore who your brother is.

Explain who your brother is.

Are you taking a selfie selfie of the?

Yes, I am.

I'm going to put it up on the internet.

Go ahead.

I was just noticing

that your name here

on Squadcast is Gentle Lover.

That is so good.

And here's what's going on with us at this point.

Gentle Lover.

Kara says fair-minded moonwalker.

I didn't know.

And then I look over to Galloway, thinking he's going to have some clever little appellation, and it's Scott.

Scott.

You know, Squadcast gives them to you.

All right, go back.

So you did this thing with your brother.

So my brother is also a trained lawyer, Columbia Law School, went to the same law school.

and he practiced for a little while and became a business person he started a company called diapers.com which he sold to i tell very famously i would often begin speeches comparing him to me yeah uh when i became us attorney i thought i was the big deal and i was the sort of the winner in the competitive family sweepstakes so a family of underachievers is that what you're saying my brother then yes he sold to him he sold diapers.com which by the way he sold under the slogan the diapers uh we're number one in number two so imagine imagine how proud my parents were that's good good.

And he sells it to Amazon for $540 million, which is basically his way of saying, hey, bro, I see your whole U.S.

attorney thing and I raise you $540 million.

So you start this company and start doing podcasts, right?

Correct?

Yeah.

And we have a newsletter and then

we have a subscriber option also.

Right.

And it just, it just grew and grew and it became much more of my time.

And then we started adding contributors and adding podcasts about the law, about national security, about cyber, about all sorts of things.

You know, and a bunch of people came calling, thinking that there was real value.

And that's the most

gratifying thing about this is doing the work that we recognize, and we have a large listenership, and they recognize.

I don't know if it's the most gratifying thing, but it's interesting to see the market appreciate and validate that too.

It's an interesting time with all these things.

Do you want to know what really happened?

Do you want to know, really?

I mean, that's okay, that's the press release.

What happened?

Bankoff decided he wanted more perceived class, and so he overpaid for your, whatever you're doing.

Dude, you're literally, you're like a bow tie turned into a button.

Bankoff overpaid for you just to try and class up.

He's like, I

got such a low bar with you, but then it's not an overpayment, isn't that?

That's right, exactly.

That shows how much he needs to do that.

I have a real question.

All right, ask a real question.

Should I put all my Vox money into WeWork?

Was that what I was hearing about?

Yes, that's right.

We work in Alibaba.

That's where you go.

Yeah.

So, look,

a very serious question.

The over-under, I would like to get

the percentage likelihood that President Trump ends up in jail oh okay

I don't do those percentages okay ratios

where does he stand where does he I think you're at Vox this is no longer this is no longer a place to be measured and responsible

I say 41.9% no

people talk about all these places where he has jeopardy right um and they sometimes conflate the civil cases with the criminal cases there's not that much criminal activity there's some people looking at stuff based on the election interference in Georgia.

I don't know that that's going to go anywhere.

There's some people who are musing about whether or not the insurrection will cause them to have liability.

That's a little bit interesting, given there was already an impeachment on that.

I don't know that that would be the Department of Justice.

I don't know if they have the will to do that.

But the thing that most people have been talking about for the longest period of time is the business of Cy Vance and the Manhattan DA's office.

Right, the taxes.

You know, Cy Vance is a pretty cautious

person when it comes to bringing cases.

Some have argued too cautious.

You know, he argues otherwise.

And, you know, he's done a couple of things that draw attention.

He's hired somebody, Mark Pomerance, who's a very noted lawyer in New York for a long time, to sort of have an independent flavor.

You know, they've hired an outside forensic accounting firm.

And given that he's in his last months of office, he's not seeking re-election.

There's a primary in that race in just a couple of months.

It seems like he's making efforts to make a final decision and a likelihood of a charge before the DA's election in November, or at least before the new DA is sworn in next year.

No guarantee of that.

They could have a change of heart.

But the way I read the T leaves, it looks like they have a feeling there's going to be a charge and he wants to make sure that every T is crossed and I is dotted.

Scott's question about whether or not Trump will ever see jail time, well, there's got to be a conviction and there's got to be a sentencing.

We're getting a little bit ahead of ourselves but i think you're likely to see a charge from the manhattan da yeah but let me let me let me pause at this because my impression is people say well he's he's had the oxygen and his platforms taken away from him and he's gone quiet my sense is and you advise these people or my sense is a defense attorney has said to him dude tone it down for a while there's too many people trying to put you in jail that's not your sense you're shaking your head no because i don't think that any defense attorney is capable of advising him yeah in a way to i mean the most important time for him to have kept his mouth shut was during the mueller investigation during the first impeachment during the second impeachment when he was literally the president united states and not just defense lawyers but also advisors

probably telling him that because you get yourself in hot water yeah if he just kept his mouth shut in the days leading up to the inauguration

he wouldn't have been impeached again and he wouldn't be off twitter so

i don't know that anybody can advise him i mean this is one of the reasons he can't get a good lawyer because he doesn't pay them, number one.

And number two, he doesn't listen to them.

Yeah.

But he seems to have been doing okay.

He's still not in jail.

So let me shift to another thing.

You're known for aggressively taking down corruption on Wall Street.

If you are still in practice, how would you look at the Reddit GameStop stop situation and what's going on on Wall Street?

Because there's so much activity now with all these companies.

Things are changing there, obviously.

Yeah, you know,

some of that fear has quieted down.

And I understand how there are people on sort of different sides and the people who hate the hedge funds and the people who love the hedge funds.

I'm sort of quizzical about why people put so much money in hedge funds given their record.

You know, when it was very much in the news and I was thinking about it on a more regular basis, I'm not sure what criminal activity you could charge anybody with.

People are allowed to say what they want, generally speaking.

People are allowed to trade as they want, generally speaking.

You know, maybe there's some rulemaking that the SEC, the new SEC chair, can engage in.

But I didn't, and in talking to people sort of

off the record, I didn't see any immediate criminal penalty for any side of that in GameStop.

So I could be wrong.

I don't think so.

Let me ask you another question.

Tech companies, all these lawsuits.

How do you think the Southern District is taking on tech companies?

There's a Justice Department also, there's an FTC, antitrust.

So

it's the one area that the Southern District doesn't do, that local U.S.

Attorney's Office doesn't do.

They don't do antitrust.

It's local.

You're right.

That's handled

by

the U.S.

Department of Justice that have field offices that do antitrust.

It's interesting.

I haven't finished reading yet, but I'm interviewing Amy Klobuchar, Senator Klobbershore, on her book.

Giant book.

It's very long.

Antitrust.

I did it.

Did you?

Yeah.

Can you send me a chance?

I'm going to turn a poodle with it, is what I told her.

Say that to her.

She didn't get the memo.

The political memoir is supposed to be thin and hopeful and not say.

Yeah, it's a lot.

You know,

let me just say, I had two delivered to my house.

I have a lot of package these in my neighborhood.

They stole both of them and then threw them back into my lawn.

But go ahead.

So I don't know how, you know, the interesting thing about the Google lawsuit is

there's something for conservatives and liberals there.

But I also think there's a little bit of a,

you know, an aura of politicization around things that the Trump administration did because Trump couldn't keep his mouth shut.

So, you know, when Trump talks about the politics of conservatives getting their voice heard or not heard

and then something is done you know action is taken that seems to be consistent with what trump would want

you worry a little bit about what people think of that right but it's it seems to have been adopted and and carried forward it didn't have to be by the biden administration so we'll we'll see you know on the it's hard for prosecutors to do much in criminal law we talk about the ways in which you can go after companies for things.

The criminal law is a big, blunt instrument.

And you have to show a, beyond a reasonable doubt, provable violation of a particular statute.

And much of what the debate is that you guys talk about a lot and that you and I have talked about, Kara,

has to do with

regulation.

It has to do with Congress taking action, whether it's on Section 230 or something else.

I don't think there's a lot for criminal prosecutors to bash people over the heads with, given the things we're talking about.

But Scott talks about this.

Go ahead, Scott.

Yeah.

I'm just curious.

Have we reached a point, though, where it feels to me like there's certain individuals who feel that they're above the SEC and to a certain extent above the law, specifically some people who try to put men on Mars, and they feel like they can basically announce private equity buyouts that are essentially proven false.

And the SEC finds them $10 million.

I guess what I'm saying, is there a different set of standards legally and in terms of enforcement for certain Jesus Christs of the internet?

I don't know who you're talking about.

There shouldn't be.

And

there's no double state.

The way I thought about this when you're talking about really prominent, powerful people is, you know, naturally human beings want to get things right.

And naturally, when you're going to go after somebody who has a lot of resources, and quite frankly, as a matter of fairness and justice, you want to be right because you can destroy someone's reputation and destroy you know, their pocketbook because they have a certain, you know, reputation in the community and in the business world.

And you want to be careful about that.

You want to be careful about that when you investigate and prosecute politicians and don't undo

duly elected officials

time in office.

So I think you take a lot of care and you make sure that you're not being overly creative.

And so I don't know the particular things that the SEC might do with respect to that individual.

who has big problems otherwise because of the car accident that I guess happened.

But I'd like to think, and certainly I think under Gary Gensler and this administration, no one's going to get a bye just because they have a lot of money.

I'm almost by definition,

the kinds of people and institutions that the SEC regulates are powerful, moneyed, wealthy entities and people.

And I certainly never thought that way when I was in office.

So can I ask you a question about where law is going?

I mean, if you were in office right now, what are the things that

law is going, big law?

But if you were running the Southern Districts, what are the areas of interest for agencies like yours?

Like, or, or, or,

with, with

broadly speaking, what are the big important areas that I'll say, I'll name two areas.

Again, I'm not as close to it.

I don't get, you know, the threat matrix stuff anymore like I used to.

Um, one thing is something that

became a huge issue, a developing issue when I started 12 years ago.

And I think we're having another wave of it.

And that's all things related to cyber threats, whether it's coming from the hacktivists or it's coming from

random individuals who are trying to make money and steal your bank accounts, or I think most importantly, nation states.

And, you know, a lot of this goes on behind the scenes, but there's, you know, very deeply involved agencies, not just the FBI, the Secret Service, and the Intel agencies, who care about and think about what a cyber war could look like.

And then second, in a completely different direction, although not fully different, still harm to

infrastructure here in the country is domestic terrorism.

When I took office in 09, the Southern District had a long and storied history of going after sort of organized international terrorism.

You know, I was a few months on the job when Faisal Shahzad tried to blow up Times Square.

We tried Ahmed Ghulani, the last person who was tried, who was taken in Guantanamo Bay.

That case sort of put an end to that.

But now you have

people in this sort of right-wing universe, and not just in the right-wing universe, but in other

places as well, who are not as organized, who you can't find evidence that they trained in Afghanistan.

They don't have the same tripwires that they're sending, that send messages to law enforcement.

There's debate about a domestic terrorism statute.

So I think, and you hear people like Joe Biden and others talk about this, we really need to think about a way to keep folks safe in the country

because you're having individuals who are getting radicalized.

And it's harder to make a conspiracy case against them.

And then most recently, the rise in hate crimes.

I think

there's a big worry about that.

So the insurrection, I think, has awakened a lot of people to this.

So those would be two of my priorities.

You saw the Oathkeeper was on 60 Minutes.

I did.

I missed the interview, though.

Yeah, you should see it.

It's terrifying.

And it's sort of like, yeah, law enforcement's helping us.

This is, you know, who knows what he's saying is true or not.

But you suspect looking at the donations to Kyle Rittenhouse from...

legitimate police officers,

what's going on here in terms of worry about that.

So if you, those are the areas you would look into, right?

Yeah, and also,

maybe the spirit of your question was not about this too.

You know, we have a big criminal justice reform issue.

We have a policing issue.

I have my television to my left is paused on the summation of the defense lawyer in the Derek Chauvin trial.

And

I don't think we'll have a verdict by the time this airs, but pretty soon thereafter, probably this week.

And it's going to say a lot about people's confidence in policing, in prosecution, in the nature of

the laws that relate to police discretion.

And I think, you know, we've seen a year of reckoning, and now you have a moment of actual decision on the thing that caused appropriately millions of Americans to protest and make their voices heard last year.

Now you're going to get literally, quite literally, a verdict on it.

What do you, how do you think they did?

And do you have a question?

I think the prosecutors did a really, really good job.

Yeah, me too.

And I don't always think that.

Yeah, me neither.

And I can be critical.

I'm not saying that to someone.

I think the opening was particularly great.

The summation this morning, I thought it was very, very good.

I don't think it was perfect.

I think it could have been tighter and more focused.

But the prosecution has a lot to work with.

And I sometimes say to students and to people

who asked me the question,

sometimes prosecutors win because they just have the evidence.

And you can be the best defense lawyer in the world.

But if you have a video of a guy shooting a guy

and your client wants to go to trial, there's not a lot you're going to be able to do about it.

And here you don't have a guy shooting a guy, but you have a guy, Derek Chauvin, with his knee in the back of the neck of George Floyd for nine and a half minutes.

And you have the, I mean, every bit of that

is incredibly powerful.

And you have the medical testimony and the experts going back and forth.

But as the prosecutors, I think, correct, and the prosecutor has done a great job of that.

But as they say, the bottom line is, even before you get to any of that, you can decide this case basically on the video.

And that's what they have on their side.

So I expect a conviction on

at least the manslaughter and the murder three.

Maybe the murder two.

I mean, one of the reasons you know the prosecutors are a little bit worried about murder two

is that the murder three, I don't want to get too technical, the murder three had been eliminated from the trial and the prosecutors fought, the prosecutors fought really hard to get this lesser count put back in.

Right.

Because you want to give the jury a menu of things they can convict on.

But I think they've done a great job.

Scott?

Yeah.

So first, I just want to acknowledge, I thought your answer around

what individuals you decide to devote prosecutorial resources to.

I thought that was one of the more thoughtful answers.

And it's heartening that people

in your position weigh the potential downside and damage and don't take lightly going after someone.

I thought, anyways, I heard that and I thought, what the fuck are you doing at Vox?

You should be running for Senate.

But anyways, not the guy on billions, Scott.

Anyways,

well, sort of.

I would love to hear your voice over on whether you believe there's criminal activity or if it'll ever come to a trial on Representative Gates.

Oh,

it's a very frustrating thing to be

on this side of the fence, I don't have any access to FBI 302s or interviews.

What's a 302?

Calling all cars.

It's the name of the form.

It's the name of the form.

I'm trying to show that I used to actually have that kind of job.

Yeah.

So the 302, what is that?

That's just the form that FBI agents fill out when they do an interview or there's a development in a case

so that they keep track of the investigation.

So Matt Gates, there's a lot going on there.

There are a lot of leaks.

There are a lot of people talking smack about Matt Gaetz.

Including himself.

Including himself.

And that's a sign because all those people are potential witnesses and maybe they kept quiet before and maybe they're not going to keep quiet now, not just with the press, but with the FBI and with prosecutors.

But most importantly, you have an actual guy in the form of Mr.

Greenberg who has pled guilty to, I'm sorry, has not pled guilty, been charged, and looks like he's going to plead guilty.

And one of the reasons you think it's going to be very bad for Matt Gaetz is his lawyer, Greenberg's lawyer, basically taunted from behind microphones after a proceeding last week, taunted Matt Gates and said he's not very, something like he's not, shouldn't be very comfortable right now, right?

Yeah.

Basically saying, my guy is flipping and is going to help himself and is going to testify against you.

And there's a lot of particularity to the charges against Greenberg.

And there's a lot of particularity in some of the reporting, particularly at the New York Times, about the kinds of things that Greenberg was doing with Matt Gates.

So ordinarily, I'm more circumspect in predicting things.

Here, it seems a charge, I'm not going to give a number,

a charge seems quite likely, also in combination with just my general observation to Mr.

Gates, which is that he's not a careful man.

No.

And there's a lot of track record.

I mean, if you believe the reporting, There are Venmo records, there are probably texting records, there are videos.

Yeah, he's sloppy.

And I think he talks to a lot of people.

He has no business being in Congress.

And the other thing he has going against him is the fact, and I think this is not insignificant if the reporting is to be believed.

The investigation was begun when Bill Barr, who I have no love for or affection for, was the attorney general.

And he didn't see anything there that caused him to want to quash the investigation,

apparently.

Even though on other occasions, there's things that Bill Barr seems to have done that favored supporters of the president.

So that combination of things, Greenberg, he's not careful, the leaking.

So his move is

to attack Greenberg, right?

That's what he'll do.

That's what they'll do.

Yeah, I mean, the way that you're going to be able to do Michael Cohn, right?

Yeah, I mean, in some ways, I've suggested before that Trump is kind of brilliant because the kind of people he surrounded himself with are liars and scoundrels.

And then one day, when the liars and scoundrels decide they're going to flip on Donald Trump, as some of them maybe have contemplated, the defense is, what are you talking about?

Those are liars and scoundrels.

You can't believe anything that they say.

So you always attack the cooperator because it is true.

One challenge is going to be, well, how slimy a guy is Greenberg?

Very.

And how is he going to appear?

Look, that's one of the problems with Michael Cohen.

Michael Cohen never got a cooperation agreement from my old office.

And is it because he wasn't fully truthful?

Maybe.

Is it because he was being selective in who he wanted to cooperate against?

Maybe.

Is it because they thought jurors wouldn't really

like him and believe him because he's lied?

I mean,

it's not great when one of your witnesses actually has lied and that's one of the charges he pled guilty to is lying.

You know, the cross is very formidable.

Yeah.

And one of the things you pled guilty to was lying, right?

In a formal situation, right?

Just like this one, right?

Right.

That's tough.

Would resignation from Congress be considered currency?

Would a prosecutor see if Representative Gates said, okay, I'm in trouble here,

is resigning or the offer to resign currency that potentially cauterizes or staves off more aggressive prosecution?

Or do prosecutors just not care?

Like, this is the law.

We don't care if you resign or not.

That is really a profoundly excellent question.

And I don't know that there's a solid answer.

The way I thought about it, we investigated and prosecuted a lot of state representatives when I was in office.

And we didn't really link the two.

If you're guilty of a crime, you're guilty of a crime, and you don't get a jail-free card.

If you resign,

it may be something that I think appropriately, depending on the circumstances, is something that affects

a plea deal and what the recommendation of sentencing would be, because part of sentencing is contrition and acceptance of responsibility and leaving office.

arguably is a sign of that.

You know, I teach law at NYU Law School and I've been reading people's papers this week.

And one of the proposed topics

that I gave students that they wrote about was whether the Southern District should have prosecuted Elliot Spitzer after he was technically guilty of a violation of the Mann Act, which relates to prostitution.

And my predecessor made the decision not to prosecute him because the general policy was in the office that we didn't prosecute Johns and we didn't prosecute the sex workers, only the people who engaged in the traffic.

And if there was coercion,

and a number of students addressed this very issue

of what was the relevance of Spitzer's decision to resign.

And I don't know what it was because it wasn't my decision to make, but I think it can factor in at the margins and unsentencing, but otherwise, you shouldn't be able.

If you're a teacher and you commit a crime and you quit,

depending on the seriousness of the crime, I don't think you get a bye.

Oh, Scott, you're in trouble then.

Oh, sorry.

Not anymore.

My one call.

Have you seen who my one call is?

He's not going to answer that call.

He's not going to.

Just do classes.

Who talks on the phone?

I'm your one text.

Is that there you go don't text don't venmo don't

i have i have another question i'm going to start all right last question and then we're going to find out what next for preet at vox media but go ahead scott well i i want to ask the same question but i want to go more meta i

you're you're a let's be honest you're you're a pretty impressive cat right you you're like you've had this crazy career where it's sort of

you know, not the question is what you're, what you're going to do.

The question is what you're not going to do.

I would love sort of, if you can, a non-bullshit answer here.

What, where do you want to be in five years?

Do you want to be in office?

I got to consult my contract.

Do you want to be

you strike me as a guy, as a man with a plan?

Like five years, where do you want to be?

So this is a non-bullshit answer that will surprise you.

I don't really have a plan.

You know, the funny thing is, so the only thing I ever planned that I definitely absolutely wanted to do was become a line prosecutor at SDNY.

You know, I knew that in law school.

I knew that when I was in private practice.

I changed firms to work with alumni of the Southern District so that I could impress them and they would write me good letters of recommendation.

That was very intentional.

And that's what I did.

And five years into that job, that's the best job I'll ever have.

There's this weird opportunity to go work in the Senate.

And I hadn't fully, I think, made my bones as a prosecutor.

I would have tried more cases.

I wanted to do different kinds of things.

And this opportunity came along.

And I took it because I got to work on the Senate Judiciary Committee, being chief counsel to Chuck Schumer at the beginning of 05, 05, when everyone predicted there were going to be at least one, if not more, Supreme Court vacancies.

There hadn't been one in 11 years, stable court from 1994 to 2005.

And Senator Day O'Connor stepped down and this idea, and it was not a plan.

I thought, what could be more fascinating than to go work on the Hill on Supreme Court confirmations?

Yeah.

And so I did that.

But now it turns, so people try to reverse engineer my career.

It turns out that going to the Senate, working for Senator Schumer, staying there until the Democrats won won back the Senate, and then

this unknown individual, Barack Obama, becomes president.

I'm now in the right place at the right time.

Senator Schumer, based on his trust in me and experience with me, recommended me to become the U.S.

Attorney.

I never would have predicted, there was no people think I had a plan.

Like, that's what he was doing.

He was trying to become the U.S.

Attorney.

I wasn't.

I had no plan.

I'm going to have a plan.

My plan is always to do a thing that is interesting and that uses your brain and then crush it.

And then my plan is success.

And maybe that sounds so bigger podcast newsletters,

focus on legal.

Yeah, no,

I don't know because

we just entered this marriage with Vox.

But I think over the next few years, there's a lot of opportunity to educate people, to inform people, to entertain folks, maybe in ways that haven't been done before, not just in sound.

But there isn't a came to value.

There's a lot of audio-visual, there are documentary possibilities.

It's only been four days, but all of those things are on the table.

And all of those things I think can happen.

And then in the future, yeah, if they're leadership opportunities, of course I'm open to them.

Oh,

but

what I've been focusing on for the last few years,

once we saw the impact you can have, even from just podcasting, and

our followers are very loyal.

And I think they appreciate calls to action to make the country better.

that

we grew a business and I wanted to make it successful.

And Jim Bankoff thought it was worth, you know, and Marty Mo thought it was worth doing.

And so for right now, my focus on this.

Would you go back to prosecuting?

I mean, look, right now they're considering making the Supreme Court bigger, which I think is never going to happen.

No, I don't think so.

Would you ever consider going back into

politics or something like that?

Yeah, look,

I was 17 years in public service,

17 and a half years.

And I was so into being in public service that even when an odious man was elected president, when he asked me to stay on and remain in public service, I said yes.

It was Donald Trump.

He changed his mind and he fired me.

So I always have a love for public service.

And in fact, you know, a number of our podcast hosts have been called back to public service

because it's important work.

I don't see that for some time because I got this and I want to, and I want to build this and I want to do right by

our listeners and our followers.

Yeah, but I'm not that old.

So someday in the future, I'm open to it.

When you're president, Carrie, you can can appoint me to say.

I'm not going to be president.

That's a thought.

I'm sorry.

I just got to ask one more question.

I got to ask you.

All right, go forward.

Go for it.

Look at this.

It's now the Preet and Scott Show from NYU.

Stay tuned and stay tuned with Preet.

It's part of the box media podcast network.

We're going to do that.

Of course, let you do the whole show.

Snooze around.

Snooze around.

The boss is going to listen to this.

It's like, oh, my God.

It's plenty.

We give them plenty.

Go ahead.

I mean, it's a Preet.

Yes.

Advice to your 25-year-old self.

Oh.

Advice to younger men and women, just out of school or not out of school.

Like, where would you give me one or two things that changed your life for the better?

What advice, what advice do you have for young people?

Yeah.

So it's a little bit what I just said.

Don't plan so much.

You know, I once, when I was in the Senate, there was this young group.

I can't remember if they were like Harvard or Yale law students.

They all wanted to be masters of the universe.

And

one of those young people asked me the question because they saw where I was.

They thought I had a big deal job.

I was chief counsel to a significant senator.

And they said,

how do we do that?

How do we become powerful?

And I gave them a whole speech about how, you know, I didn't come to the Hill.

I was old for the Hill, like in my mid to late 30s.

But one of the reasons I got to be successful at the Hills, I learned some craft.

Like I learned how to practice law.

I learned how to try cases.

And then it just fell into my lap.

when the Justice Department under Bush was misbehaving and there was a whole investigation into the politicization of the Justice Department back in 2007.

Yeah.

I was one of the only people in the entire committee, and it's very impressive lawyers, but one of the very few people who could take a deposition

and who could do an investigation because I had learned some craft.

So you have a lot of, so this is advice, you know, generally, but all, but specific to highly ambitious people, and there's nothing wrong with being ambitious.

But learn a trade, learn how to do something.

We have too many people in power who have never done anything except be sort of on the path to power without learning how to paint or to code or to try a case or to build something.

Right.

And I think the more leaders we have who actually have done something, have learned a craft or a trade, the better off we will be and the better off those people will be.

I think it opens up opportunities.

There is

answer.

Classy answer, Scott.

Classing up the joint.

Classing up the joint.

You already did.

It's like by 150%.

This is so good for us, Scott.

Come on.

That's how we think of everything pre-just so you know.

Is it good for Scott and Kara?

And this is good for Scott and Kara.

I think so.

Should we pin it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I literally

made a little joke about our name.

I couldn't believe it when I read it.

You'll be doing tequila shots with us soon enough.

Don't worry.

Don't worry about it.

Anyway, Preet, we're very excited you're here.

I'm going to plug your things.

Stay tuned with Preet podcast.

And what other podcasts?

Name.

We have the Cafe Insider.

Okay.

So

cafe.com slash insider to sign up.

It's great stuff.

We're announcing a new co-host

in today or tomorrow.

I think I can't say yet.

Oh, goodness.

This doesn't come out till tomorrow.

Tomorrow, yeah, tell us.

I think I can tell you.

Go ahead.

So Ann Milgram has been nominated to be the next DEA administrator.

Oh, wow.

And the new co-host will be lawyer extraordinaire classing up my joint, Joyce Vance.

Oh, wow.

You may know Joyce from commentating and other things.

I sure do.

She's brilliant and great, and she's going to

make me look good.

Okay.

This is going to be fantastic.

This is going to be great.

We're very excited for you you to be here.

Besides Cause of the Joy, this theory of legal and sort of the information.

Oh, and third degree with Ellie Hoenig.

That's another podcast we have.

We have a whole bunch.

And doing justice based on.

We got a whole bunch.

Yeah.

Yeah.

All right.

All right.

That's why we're here.

Thank you, Preet.

You're the best.

We really appreciate it.

And we'll be getting you better into this.

Welcome to the family.

Welcome to the family.

You always return the family's phone calls from prison.

All right, Scott.

He may.

Be a gentle lover.

I don't know, but he's certainly a gentle colleague, don't you think?

I noticed you changed your name to the family.

Who's a colleague?

Colleague.

He's a colleague.

He's a colleague.

You saw what I changed my screen?

Yes, Preetz's close friend.

Good luck with that.

We are.

We are.

Okay, we'll see how that works out.

All right.

Scott, one more quick break.

We'll be back for wins and fails.

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Okay, Scott, wins and fails.

That was a win with Preet.

I think Preet's a win, don't you think?

Yeah, if you listen to

your interview with Senator Klobuchar, if you listen to our interview with Andy Slavet and you listen to that interview, you think, wow, distinct to the cartoon that's been made

of public servants.

Government continues to attract the best and brightest.

That guy is,

I mean, he just reeks of credibility and thoughtfulness.

Yeah, I always, when people say government's good, I'm like, that's not true.

There's some bad people in government, just like at every workplace, but there's a lot of very highly concerned.

That's crazy impressive.

Crazy impressive.

I hope, and I'll, I really do hope he, I mean, this is, as much as I'm excited about the, you know, Vox Media Podcast Network and the impact we're going to have on the world, I would really like to see him re-engage in public service at some point.

Me too.

Me too.

It'd be interesting.

It's interesting he didn't go into the Biden administration.

Yeah,

he strikes me as someone who,

sooner rather than later, gets the call, right?

Yep.

Yep, probably.

Anyway, wins and fails.

My wins and fail are about the same thing.

The vaccine now, I think it's one in two American adults have had their first shot.

I think it's fantastic.

We're making real progress against vaccine hesitancy.

But my fail is all the attention and noise and what I would call

really damaging exploitation of the news around the clots.

You know, we can lose, we can lose 140 people in three months to mass shootings, but if we lose one person to a blood clot, that's unacceptable.

It just strikes me that no one wants to look at the data.

And that when you stop, when JNJ seizes distribution because of the blood clots, it's really a testament to the safety of these things and the protocols.

And just the standards are so high around vaccines that if we had a fraction of that same safety standards around the rest of parts of our lives, it'd be a much better place.

And I see it as a strong signal that

vaccines are incredibly safe.

And when they aren't.

I agree.

My lovely wife, Amanda, got the JNJ vaccine and actually has a blood clotting disorder.

And so she was more of essays saying she'd take it again.

She'd take it again.

You know what the word is?

My sister just summarized it perfectly for me.

She's in San Francisco and she got, it was either, she got her first.

And she said, I said, how do you feel?

And she said, it's freeing.

Yeah.

And my message to everybody is I can't tell you how good, how strong, how empathetic, how patriotic you'll feel if you haven't already gotten this thing.

I think it's one of the most, it's,

and I don't know how you felt, but I felt,

I haven't felt that good

about everything

then after that.

Yeah, hope, hope, freeing.

My son's got it.

I finally, my son's got it this weekend, got it this weekend.

And so, yeah, because it's now eligible to all, every, uh, everyone over 16.

So, uh, it was great.

They got the Pfizer because the younger kids are getting the Pfizer vaccine and I feel great.

The only one that doesn't have it is my baby because you're not giving it to babies yet.

So that's the only, but they don't tend to get it.

In any case, it does feel freeing.

That is a good win.

What is your fail?

Oh, my fail is

my fails, and I got to, I'm totally got something stuck in my craw about this, is I'm just, I rate over the notion that Coinbase pretends it's not a broken IPO.

I just, I can't, it's, it's literally arguably one of the worst performing IPOs year to day.

Yeah, it's getting slapped around on the financial Twitter stuff.

Well, it's just,

I just, this whole idea of let's pretend there's an illusory thing called a reference price so we can claim that our IPO is a success.

And someone also, I want to point out, someone on Twitter pointed out that I talked about how institutional clients who get the pop in a traditional IPO are getting,

one of the positives there is that retail investors benefit because of

institutional buyers of those funds represent unions.

And someone on Twitter pointed out correctly that venture capitalist institutional investors also benefit the same people.

And they're absolutely right.

But the transfer, it's just a transfer of what I'll call that

pop from the institutional clients of investment bankers to the institutional clients of VCs who want to capture,

which is, you could make an argument that's neither here nor there.

It just is.

But it really, it bothers me that the media has taken the bait here and is not calling this what it is.

And that is a broken IPO.

All right.

That's a good call.

That's a good call.

And I think a lot of people are noticing that too.

Just my win is

there's yet another.

You know, I love Fast and Furious, as you know.

Oh, here we go.

But now there's another one, which is Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is coming out in September.

That's my first theater going, I think.

I'm very excited about it.

It's going to have Aquafina in it.

There's this guy named Simu, I think it's Liu.

He's in it.

It's just, go look at the trailer.

It's fantastic.

I'm so excited.

It's all big, noisy movies in a theater.

And you know, I've been hard on theaters, but nonetheless, I want to see these things in a big theater.

You know, what's more exciting, I believe, is the

Amazon $450 million on, it's not the Tolkien series, it's the...

What are they doing?

They're spending half a billion dollars on that.

Whatever.

That's great.

I'm glad they're taking Jeff Bezos' money and doing that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And, and, you know, I just feel like

even though I do think theaters are really troubled, and we talked about your experiences at the Cinerama dome,

I think

I don't know what to think about this.

This is my fail, but I don't think it's a fail.

I can't decide,

which is Apple is letting Parlor back into the App Store following moderation improvements.

A lot of people do not feel good about this because they think.

Parlor shouldn't be allowed back at all, but I can't decide whether it's a win or fail.

I think it's both.

I think it's, it makes me worried that these platforms get to exist at the same time.

I feel okay about it.

I don't know.

What do you think?

You know, I think.

Tim Cook told this to me in the interview we did, but what do you think about that?

By the way, it's another one, knives out is supposedly on contracts to do two sequels.

Yay.

I think if you really have a thoughtful, measured conversation and put your politics aside,

it's hard to not end up in an uncomfortable place where you're banning stuff.

So, I probably a positive.

Yeah, I think it is probably a positive.

Yeah, I didn't react badly about that.

And, you know, of course, as usual, the things are being mad at Apple for taking them off in the first place.

Glenn Greenwald has a stupid tweet once and again.

But the fact is, they're coming back on and

we'll see what happens there.

Interesting enough, while we're talking, Reddit is previewing Reddit Talk, a clubhouse-like social audio feature for subreddits.

So coming to iOS and Android.

So everyone's in the space, Scott.

It's time for us to jump in.

We already talk every week on this up.

But anyway, there's a lot going on.

Okay, Scott, that's the show.

That was an exciting show.

That was a lot.

That was a lot.

We'll be back for more on Friday, though.

At the same time, there'll be plenty to talk about.

There's so much news.

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

Link is also in our show notes.

Or read us out.

Today's show is produced by Rebecca Sonanas.

Arnea Andre Todd engineered this episode.

Thanks also to Hanna Rosen and 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 wherever you listen to podcasts.

If you like the 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.

Aren't we blessed to live in a country that continues to attract the best and brightest, to be thoughtful and measured around the connective tissue of the greatest nation and the greatest tensile strength and muscle in history, and that is the U.S.

government?

He's still not going to call you back when you're in jail.

He's my call.

He's my call.

He's not going to call me.

He's just, he's literally, he's going to be with me having a job.

You could hear it in his voice.

I'm going to say, let it go.

You could hear it in his voice.

Let it go.

Let's not get involved.

Let's move along.

Yeah, the show is now called Pivot with Care Swisher and the Preets Close Friend Scott Galloway.

That is absolutely true, Rebecca.

See you on Friday.

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.

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