Amazon’s podcast acquisition, what led to Slack losing its lead, and Trump's move on 230

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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, we are...

We are in lettuce, as they say.

Did you hear about this?

Amazon is in talks to acquire podcast company Wondery for $300 million.

So what does it mean for competitors like Spotify and the industry as a whole?

And mostly, what does it mean for you and I, Scott Galloway?

So Kara, do you know Hernan Lopez, the CEO of Wondery?

I do not.

He's a wonderful guy.

And it's just, it's nice to see companies like that that are pretty, pretty bold.

I think he got into podcasting or what I will call long-form, creatively driven original content on the pod in the podcast format or medium.

There's just no doubt about it.

That was a risky, bold bet.

And it's nice to see entrepreneurs and companies companies and the people who back companies like that do well.

So

I think that's sort of uniquely American.

That was sort of a crazy idea.

And they did something exceptional.

They did a fantastic, they do a fantastic series called Business Wars.

They did a great documentary called We Crashed.

And they sort of said, okay, we're going to be the HBO of podcasting and really put a lot of production values into it.

And I can't imagine, I bet their first one they spent $5 million on and made $100,000.

I mean, it's just one of those things where it really was visionary, and it was interesting to see.

It's just good for them.

So that's my first comment.

May I just make the note that he is facing a legal battle of unfederal issues around money laundering and wire fraud over his work at Fox, I think it was.

Ternan is?

Yes, yes.

Oh, I didn't know that.

He seems to lovely.

Mr.

Lopez, yes.

He's charged with money laundering and wire fraud over alleged bribes involving broadcasting rights to the World Cup and high-profile soccer internments.

He's He's pleaded not guilty.

He says, I'm completely confident when I have a chance before the jury, if I ever get to trial, I'll be vindicated.

But he says he has no intention of stepping down.

But nonetheless, he did a very good job with podcasting.

This is literally news to you.

Is he personally charged with it or is it just company?

Yes, indeed.

Yes, indeed.

Well, let me just put my two former Fox TV executives.

Let me just impersonate or parrot every douchebag VC and CNBC.

You know, money laundering pales in the face of innovators.

It just, we should overlook these things.

This is working if they can come up with great podcasts or cloud-based applications.

Crime is really not crime.

It's a quirk.

He says he's innocent.

It's a feature, not a bug with these individuals.

Talk about pulling the rug out from under me.

Sorry, I thought you did your homework.

He's Hernan.

Is it Hernan?

I had breakfast with him in the Soho house, and he seemed like a lovely guy.

That's pretty much all of you.

I like a lot of them.

There's this ultra story in Entrepreneur magazine three days ago, 13 leadership lessons with Wandering founder and CEO Hernand Lopez.

So obviously, Amazon doesn't mind.

You brought up number 14.

Don't launder money.

Yeah.

Don't launder money.

Amazon doesn't mind.

300 million.

Let's focus on us and not Hernand's legal issues when it comes to soccer rights.

But go ahead.

First, it was, I mean, if you think about this, fulfillment or so this notion of featurization where you take a business that is profitable in and among its own right or that portion or that part of the value proposition is profitable you make it you you paid numbers for it that don't make any sense to vastly take the multiple on earnings can't justify what is it is being acquired for because you're using it as a feature or a point of differentiation to sell something else so fulfillment when you used to order a calfalon from or a chenille pillow from pottery barn the pillow is 49.95 and they would charge you 29 to ship it and shipping shipping used to be for william sonoma something they made three to to $5 million in EBITDA a year.

And then Amazon came in and said, not only are we going to take shipping from seven days to two days to 24 hours to 45 minutes in some areas, we will make it free, price it below costs because we're going to use it as a point of differentiation and feature for Prime and the Amazon platform itself.

And then slowly but surely, entire industries became featurized.

Hollywood, the entire industry

has been featurized.

Where it's like, okay,

sell toilet paper.

I'll spend $350 million for every ME, whereas HBO only has to spend $70 million, which makes it just unprofitable.

But if I can sign up or make or raise my NPS scores on Prime, it's worth it to me.

And podcasts, officially, as of yesterday, have been futurized.

And that is the numbers they are paying not only don't make any sense now, they don't make any sense for the revenues these companies will likely produce in the future in and among themselves.

But but if Amazon, if Spotify, who knows, you know, if Apple can use distinct IP, and not only, here's the thing, this is the kind of thing.

I want to differentiate between Amazon and Spotify.

Years ago, when one of the very big names that was on Amazon, I kept telling this person that they were there to sell toilet paper and they should get a cut, a VIG, of the toilet paper sales.

I said, you're not there because of your talent.

You're just a way to sell toilet paper, essentially.

You're the wrapping of what they're trying to do.

But there is a difference between Spotify and Amazon.

Are they featurizing it to do what?

No, because their business is content.

Spotify is verticalized.

Spotify is doing what Netflix did with House of Cards.

They're like, okay, at the end of the day, what we become is a co-op for all of the music industry.

And the beauty of Spotify, and it really is incredible what they've done, no medium, not newspapers, not television, has figured out a way to take the entire medium and put it on one elegant app that figures out what you want to watch next.

Think about it.

Think about how dramatic would be.

Think about in television if there was one app on your phone that had all TV and created playlists of television shows that seemed to be fairly attuned to your taste.

And all of TV was on one app and searchable and elegant and easy.

What Spotify has done is remarkable.

Now, what they're doing is they're having their Netflix house of cards moment and realizing they need original, ownable content.

And so they're buying, and they figure out, okay,

to get Taylor Swift to be exclusive to Spotify is even too expensive for Spotify, but they can come in and buy original podcasting.

But what's happening here across the other guys is that typically the areas that get featurized are areas with really high NPS, because what it does is it creates an emotional connection.

Well, that promoter score.

In other words, everyone hates their cable company, but most people love their streaming network.

Right.

There's just certain industries that create an emotional connection.

And so what's happening is that emotional connection of an industry is being monetized.

People love Modern Family.

They don't feel as passionate about,

I don't know, they don't feel as passionate about their software package or even their handset.

And so things like music, things like television, they're being featurized because they can create greater NPS and greater affinity and greater customer loyalty.

And you're going to see, you could go down, and this is obviously talking our own book here because I think we're probably the premier IP in technology meets business.

But you're going to see so many

names and IP and podcasts go for irrational numbers as a means of

the featurization of IP around podcasts has begun.

We're going to use a feature.

Are we a bug or a feature?

I think we're both a bug and a feature.

I think the answer is yes.

We're going to be used at some point, our stuff will be used to sell, as you said, more paper towels, more handsets, or make subscriptions more loyal.

But if you could go through industry and find the highest NPS

and those ones will likely be purchased at an irrational premium, it'd be an interesting exercise to go through and say, okay, what are the highest NPS industries?

And those companies will likely be acquired.

Ah, interesting.

Interesting.

What do you think?

That's my take on it.

What's your take on this?

I think it's lettuce time for Kara and Scott.

That's what I'm saying.

What does lettuce time mean?

Is that your way,

what I call champagne and cocaine?

I guess.

I don't do that.

Or disco.

It's disco time.

It's really interesting, but it's sad to think of like this is content as a feature.

Like, like we make content.

Well, I do.

I don't know about you.

But I make content because I like think it's an actual product that you people want to consume and not in order to help Jeff Bezos sell toilet or Apple sell handsets or

Spotify do whatever it's doing.

You know, I think they're more in the very clear content space comparatively.

They're like Netflix.

They're very much like Netflix.

But you know, it's the sort of the the Netflix's and Spotify's world versus these big conglomerates like Amazon and

Apple that are using it for other means.

In any case, it's not economic.

It doesn't make any economic sense.

That's the one thing, is it doesn't like selling,

I think the journal was saying this, or one of them was saying that it's a $40 million in revenue.

And you and I don't think that's probably accurate necessarily, or that it has everything glommed in there.

But that's still an enormous run-up for a company that does that.

And it's also dependent on hits, right?

Dependent on getting the talent when there's enormous amounts of competition for that talent.

Aaron Powell, Jr.: Yeah, it's just, when you think about it, I would bet that their trailing 12-months revenue look more like $20 million in terms of actual revenue.

So that's 15 times revenues.

But if you can get people listening to Amazon music more, if you can get people using their Amazon show and their Amazon speaker and just basically spending more time with Alexa, it's probably worth it.

I mean, they can just monetize that.

Anything that takes the NPS of their voice and

content products up, you know, a one basis point in NPS and loyalty is worth a lot of money to Amazon.

So, I mean, they're very, they're very, I think actually this is kind of a no-brainer because if they get something interesting, if they get, end up getting what ultimately might become the HBO of podcasting,

and they have the con, they have the muscle, they have the creative talent, they might do crossovers in terms of movies and podcasts.

You know, I'm sure they'll like.

There's a lot of that, actually.

Wonder is very strong on that.

That going back and forth between the two.

It's a really interesting time.

It continues to be a happy time for podcasting people.

But what you're going to see is, I think

this goes to my prediction: is I think you're going to see what I'll call multi-platform content creation is going to get some legs behind it.

And that is, I bet the next three or six big original series on Amazon Prime Video also launched concurrently with an audio version podcast on Wondering.

So they'll start, the creatives will start saying, okay, when we greenlight Transparent, we need to have a series, a podcast series.

Yep.

That's already happening in a lot of ways, but in a more substantive way, you're right.

We're going to need to monetize it across multiple platforms and add new dimensions to it and have the podcast version, the original scripted TV version.

I think it's so interesting in terms of, I think there's going to be a ton of innovation.

I know I'm rambling on here, but I had a conversation with Judd Apatow and then I think his name's Chris Malendrino.

Judd Apatow, I think, is one of the best film storytellers of our time right now.

And Chris Malendrino is kind of the Disney of our generation.

He did the Minions series.

And I said to both of them, I said,

you know, they're both trying to figure out the industry is moving so fast.

And

I said, it's all about format for you.

And that is, if you look at the movie The King of Staten Island starring Pete Davidson.

Yes, Pete Davidson.

I think it did okay, not great at the theaters.

And I said, the problem here is the format, and that is you should have taken 120 minutes, turned it into 240, and then sliced it into eight 30-minute segments and put it on a streaming video platform.

Yeah.

And then I'm like, the next time.

And then Chris Malangino, I said, the next time you do a minion series, a minion movie, which I love and think is genius, don't make it an hour and a half.

Make it four hours and again, do eight 30-minute segments.

Because if you think about the Mandalorian.

I was just talking to some from Netflix about this.

He says he says that to them all the the time.

Like a lot of them, they say,

they still want to make the movie.

That's what Lucas filmed.

Lucas' film and the guys from Disney are geniuses.

Somebody said, The Mandalorian will make a billion dollars at the box office.

We've got it all storyboarded out.

We're about to kick off production at Pinewood Studios.

And someone, some visionary at Disney said, no, we're not.

We're going to do a four-hour movie and we're going to slice it up into, you know, eight, 30-minute segments.

And now they have people totally attached to Disney Plus for several years waiting for season two.

100%.

You know, The Queen's Gambit was a movie.

It was it really.

Yes.

That blows my mind.

I just finished that, by the way, last week.

Yeah.

Just finished it.

And then they decided, and he was sad.

He had to cut so much of it.

And then the people from Netflix was like, don't cut it.

Make it into an eight-part, six-part series, whatever it was, how many parts.

Anyway, fascinating times.

People have to rethink.

I love that you're giving Jed Apatau and the Minion guy advice.

In any case, Scott.

I'm not saying they're listening.

Yeah.

They're listening.

I give anyone I meet advice.

I am so good, Kara, at living other people's lives.

I know exactly what other people should do.

Don't look at what's going on in my life.

Don't look at what's going on in my life.

Do as I say, not as I do.

Fair point.

All right.

In other words, just so you know,

Amazon, by the way, while it's busy doing this, it's also rolling out Monitron from AWS, which is the scariest sounding product ever.

It's a new tool that allows factories everywhere to monitor their workers.

Why don't they call it Skynet?

You know what?

It's just like, could they, they probably were like, let's call it Monotron to terror.

They do use it in their own facilities and now they're, they're monetizing it.

Smart group of people over at Amazon, no matter how you slice it.

Explain to the people what that is.

They have it in their own factories.

It monitors workers and machines.

It just monitors them if they're doing everything right.

When you're in an Amazon factory, when I was there,

like how you do the boxes, they watch you and then tell you how to get better.

Essentially, like to be more efficient.

Like you're grabbing the wrong box.

You're grabbing it in the right, wrong way.

You're not doing it.

One guy was like, you have to do it this way.

Are you sure it's called?

Wait, I'm sorry.

Are you sure it's called Monitron?

Isn't that called Marriage Tron?

You're doing it wrong.

You're doing it wrong.

Jesus Christ, you're fucking useless.

They love to monitor.

That's a Galloway house.

As you know, they love to monitor everything.

They're monitorers.

I know.

I know.

They're hall monitors of all time.

Let's just say they have a lot of information about you and I and their workers, and now they're going to get it all around the world.

And they're selling it.

They do that.

They're a logistics company.

Let's remember Amazon is not just all these other things but logistics is at the heart of what they do all right we're going to move on to big stories

salesforce has officially bought slack something we have long predicted not necessarily ferrous for but that slack would sell we speculate about this for some time but this week the 28 billion dollar deal went through salesforce ceo mark benioff called the move a bet that the pandemic driven shift to remote work isn't temporary the deal still needs regulatory approvals 55 of slack shareholders have committed to supporting the sale It's absolutely going to go through.

It's interesting.

Slack didn't do, it hasn't done very well in the pandemic.

I didn't think they had enough tools.

I think people were using it exactly the same way.

And of course, there's competitors like Teams, which is really up the ante in lots of ways, including in video.

So what do you think?

I mean, I just think they couldn't compete, right?

And they had to go, had to sell, as we've talked about.

I just, the more I, and I don't, I'm not, you know, I'm still trying to fully understand this.

But when I think about this, I think this could probably be the best acquisition of 2020.

And tell me why.

Well, like most acquisitions, the market doesn't like it initially.

When Facebook bought Instagram, people totally second-guessed it.

That's right, they did.

It's $28 billion, which is a lot.

And I think Salesforce is around $200 billion, so it's about a 14% dilution.

But think about what it does.

I think about Salesforce being kind of a CRM first, then cloud.

And

basically, there's one or two people in your company usually that have any idea what Salesforce is.

Like, I know all of my companies use Salesforce, but I'm not entirely sure what it does.

Occasionally, they yell at me for not putting stuff into Salesforce, but I don't really understand it.

Slack is going to almost take the entire thing, what I would call it.

It's almost like busting a move to consumer, because the majority of the smart young people in your company are in Slack, and all of a sudden, they're going to have an interface and a direct relationship with Salesforce.

And it takes them from cloud-based CRM to true enterprise productivity.

It plays into the incredible dispersion of work from home.

I mean, and it also says the whole, the marketplace is going to go, okay, let's look at Microsoft, the most valuable company in the world, one and a half trillion dollars.

Who's a close second to Microsoft for the first time?

Salesforce at 200 billion.

I think this stock, I think Salesforce, whose stock has consistently gone up, I think it's going to keep going up.

I think this is really a visionary,

strategic activity.

And Slack really couldn't, I mean, Microsoft did look at Slack early on.

They tried to buy it, went poor, went public.

Several times, Peggy Johnson was leading that effort there.

And, you know, Google certainly looked at them.

They were looked at by everybody who would make sense.

You know, and what's interesting is what happens now to Zoom and others.

Like, who sucks that up?

And I think they have to be sucked up at some point.

That's a purchase by Mike.

Well, probably by Salesforce again.

So what do you think of this?

I think, you know, I had, I've listened, been on the receiving end of Stuart Butterfield saying he's not interested in selling because he wants to build a business.

No one says they're interested until they sell.

I know, but he was particularly adamant about it.

And so were the investors.

And I was like, there's just no way you're getting out of this one.

The people you're competing against are so good, you know, and Microsoft will just gin it up and they're quite good.

You're in an area where they're, you know, some companies like Spotify or YouTube, it's like, don't sell.

They suck.

You know what I mean?

But in this case, their competitors didn't suck.

They just were slow.

And

once they caught up, once they started to catch up, and again, I think they weren't keeping as many executives there as they needed to, a couple of executives left.

I think it was, you know, it's exhausting to try to be the little guy, even if you have the better product.

And they couldn't, the security issues, the selling into corporations, this is a business that really requires heft.

It's sort of like, it's interesting.

I interviewed the two scientists who did BioNTech, who just created this Pfizer vaccine that Pfizer is distributing.

Pfizer did not create it.

This German company did, but they were saying we couldn't distribute it.

We couldn't do the trials by ourselves.

We're too small.

And

we needed the help of Pfizer to do this.

And so they made perfect partners.

And this seems to be the same kind of thing is that here's this innovative group of people making a great piece of software.

It's sort of hit a wall because these things inevitably do, right?

You've got to really have a great sales force.

You've got to have security.

You got this.

And

they're hooking up with a company that will...

you know, sort of like Kindbar selling to Mars.

Like there's only so far certain people can go before you can't go any further.

And I think that was the case here.

I didn't think, I thought it was always a feature of some other person's company.

By the way, sign that I think I bought for what?

What did you bought for?

One and a half million dollars.

Yeah, I was going to say Daniel Lubeski is such a wonderful man, you know, who basically wanted to start a company that helped facilitate connections between, I think, the Palestinian people and Israeli people and tried to come up with.

He has a foundation.

But he's really a wonderful young man who brings together kind of purpose-driven companies and obviously an incredible business acumen.

So good for Daniel.

Anyways, off top.

He got it in, you know, actually, business was

problematic under the pandemic because people would eat them at the offices.

It was bought, sold into offices,

cafeterias.

And, you know, the deal they made that was so big for Daniel was

with Starbucks.

You know,

I know a little bit because he owned the code.com.

I tried to buy it from him.

I tried to buy when we did the code conference.

And I think it was code conference.

He owned whatever the thing I needed, the URL.

And

he said he would lend it to me, but I had to do a conference on peace.

I'm literally warlike.

But he was lovely.

He was like, if you could do a conference and focus on peace, I'm like, yeah, no, not Kara Swisher's brand.

But it's like that.

Like, he could only go so far.

And he actually said it very clearly.

He needed the haft of Mars and the distribution and the international.

And this is the same kind of thing.

It's a great piece of software that was made actually out of a failed gaming company, which was called Glitch, I think.

And

he's taken it as far as he can.

And Stewart's done this before with Flickr and other things.

And so I don't know how long he'll stay there.

Although a lot of people, Brett Taylor, who also had another failed sort of social network, was sold into Salesforce.

Same thing.

Mark is good at doing this.

And of course, he wanted to buy Twitter.

You know, if you remember, people forget that.

So it's a good purchase.

It makes sense.

He was in a good spot because nobody else could buy it.

Like, I don't think Google could have gotten through, gotten it through.

Microsoft certainly couldn't have.

It would have been very difficult.

So it's

Daniel Lubetsky.

How?

Let's get back to.

Yeah, let's get back to the importance of candy bars.

Let's get back to me.

Healthy candy bars.

So I think you know this, but I peaked at the age of 32 in

1999.

I was starting an internet company and I had a shaved head, so everybody thought I was a fucking genius.

And I got invited.

I was given this thing called, or asked to be a global leader of tomorrow.

And that means we get to come to Davos.

They pick 100 people a year.

Yeah, my ex-wife was one.

Yeah, and we're supposed to educate the CEO of Exxon about the future.

And everybody thought we were the next big generation of, you know, we were Paduans, so to speak.

And on the plane,

all these gorgeous Audis pick you up at the Munich airport, and they have these things.

And in my car were a bunch of guys I didn't know or my minivan.

And it was Pierre Omediar, Daniel Lebetsky,

Mehmed Oz, and me.

We were four of the hundred of that year.

I wonder if we were there the same year.

Well, my question is, what the fuck happened to me?

What happened to me?

Pierre Omediar is like buying and selling islands and nation states.

What another nice man.

Mehmed Oz, whatever you think of him,

he is a force in the world of media, right?

Daniel Lebetsky is selling candy for a billion and a half dollars.

And I'm stuck in the middle with you, my lover.

Stuck in the middle of you.

I wonder if we were in this

fan.

Because I remember hanging out here at that.

I went as the wife of a global leader of tomorrow.

And I just wandered around with a special bag and badge and bothered people because I didn't have the press badge, which is less good than the global leaders of tomorrow.

They call it the white badge.

It was a big one.

Whatever.

I wandered around.

I told you my whole thing.

I used to just hang in the coffee room and like talk to people and annoy them.

And at one point, I have to tell you this story.

This is really funny.

So I'm in the coffee room and I'm like the wife of, and this woman was getting coffee.

And I said, hey, how you doing?

What do you do?

And she's like, I'm the prime minister of Latvia.

Well, of course you are.

And I went like this.

I go, that's a good job.

That's a good job.

That's what I said to her.

That's what I said to the Prime Minister of Latvia.

That's a good job.

And I didn't know what to say.

Riga's an awesome party town.

I've been to Riga.

I get that, but I literally was like, I can't believe I said that to the Prime Minister of Latvia.

Anyway.

I remember.

So I don't know if you noticed about me, but I like to drink.

And I remember going down to my hotel to the bar.

And on the left of me was Warren Beatty.

And on the right was Yasser Arafat.

And I'm like, I like this.

Whatever's going on here, I like this.

I hate Davos.

I hate Davos.

It is where rich people lick each other up and down.

That's insane.

I was invited three times and haven't invited me back in 15 years.

I got to get back.

I got to get back.

But they don't invite me.

The head of it, Klaus, whatever, Klaus

doesn't like Professor Schwab.

He doesn't like Kara Swisher.

I think it's impossible.

I think he's smart at just keeping the bar pretty high.

I suppose.

I don't like Davos.

I'm on the record about that.

Anyway, Scott, let's go on a quick break.

I don't like it either, but please invite me back.

Please invite me back.

You need to invent something.

You're not keeping up with the people in your minivan.

Oh, yeah.

And when we get back, we'll talk.

I can see that like careening through the Swiss Alps.

It would be really funny.

All right.

Let's go on a quick break.

When we come back, we'll talk about Trump's latest move to repeal Section 230 and a listener question.

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Okay, Scott, we're back.

Oh, God, the exhausting Donald Trump, among the other things.

See, now

he's gone beyond this with his 46-minute whatever the fuck that was,

is vowing to veto the defense spending bill unless Congress repeals Section 230, as you know.

In a tweet, Trump said, quote, Section 230, which is a liability shielding gift from the U.S.

to big tech, I don't even know what that means.

The only companies in America that have it, corporate welfare, exclamation point, is a serious threat to our national security and election integrity.

Our country can never be safe and secure if we allow it to stand.

What bad writing, but essentially he wants to attach 230 to the defense bill.

If he doesn't get his way, Trump is threatening to nix this year's National Defense Authorization Act, which never gets nixed.

And all the senators and congressmen are like, no way, Trump, good luck.

And they took it out.

They stripped it out.

So, or they're stripping it out.

So what's the deal?

What do you think?

Why is he so fixated?

I mean, it's just part of this like dementia or what's happening here.

So my youngest son,

my oldest, his nickname is Favorite.

My youngest son, his nickname is Terrorist, or at least that's the nickname in my mind.

And every day,

he constantly, my 10-year-old son, is constantly assessing the household and all the personalities in the household for their weaknesses and their vulnerabilities so he can strike.

And he usually strikes like clockwork about 15 or 20 minutes before he's supposed to go to bed.

It just the whole house kind of implodes into a big, I don't know.

He starts hitting his brother.

He starts arguing.

He gets tired.

And

we used to respond to the behavior by saying,

that's wrong.

We'd start parenting him and getting in his face.

And he would get back in our face.

And the whole thing would just kind of digress.

And

we just hate the idea of our kids going to bed on a bad note.

So we spend a ton of time trying to ease him down off this ledge.

And actually, Sam Harris said something to me that

really, I don't know the term, has moved or registered me.

And he said, instead of trying to, I asked him for advice on parenting, he said, your natural reaction is to parent, to coach, to be a role model.

And he said, more often than not, what he's trying to do is just

love their kid.

Not think about whether it's right or wrong, but just love them.

And I tried that and it did not work.

But anyways,

what we ultimately end up doing is just saying to our 10-year-old, that's it.

Go put on your pajamas.

Yeah, you're right.

We're all awful.

Your brother deserves to be hit.

Just go brush your teeth and put on your pajamas.

And what is obvious is that our son is lashing out and wants is kind of desperate for relevance and attention.

And it's time for Donald or the president to go brush his teeth and put on his pajamas.

This is nothing but him acting out.

This is a desperate plea for for relevance.

It makes no sense.

Attaching our national defense to Section 230.

I mean, it's just kind of.

It's weird.

I was like, all of it's weird, but this one was particularly odd.

Why this?

Because he's getting labeled?

I think that's what it is, right?

The labeling or diaper Dawn.

I think that made him upset.

No,

you said it.

You know how we have this extraordinary ability to take almost any story and reverse engineer it to candy?

And then our experiences at Davos, because I won't say this about you, but I'm a narcissist, which is the bad news.

The good news is I know it.

This guy, take that narcissism times 100.

He just wants to be in the news every day and express and say, okay, okay.

I mean, it's this sort of every day.

I have to be the story and I'll show you.

Nobody aired it except for maybe own, right?

Well, everyone's just starting to ignore the guy.

Yeah.

Everyone's just starting to say, okay, yeah, yeah, right.

Yeah.

It's just not, it's gotten kind of, I mean, it really is.

We talked about martial law, and everybody ignored it.

That was astonishing.

Made me nervous, frankly.

Yeah,

he's going to fire Bill Barr.

That makes me nervous.

Like, he's definitely trying every.

And then, you know, they roll out that woman yesterday that looked like Cecily Strong, the woman you don't want to talk to at a cocktail party.

Did you see that video?

I didn't.

She was so crazy.

She was in a Michigan hearing or something that she was so crazy.

Rudy Giuliani was telling her to calm down.

She was just like, it was a bizarre exchange.

And it's like, what's the theory here?

Because he's pretty good on his brand.

Like,

what do you think has happened here?

Because I think he's always been pretty canny about how he presents himself as the fighter or tell it like it is or whatever.

This seems not, maybe I'm missing something here, but it feels like he's off his crazy game.

Yeah, but even Umberto Echo, the Italian philosopher, calls it the Monica Lewinsky, Monica Lewinsky effect.

And that is our society now rewards people just for being famous, just for being relevant and maintaining a certain level of awareness, regardless of what it is, what the catalyst is for that awareness.

And

I hate even grouping, I think Mona Lakowinski is actually an impressive woman.

She's wonderful.

I'm just going to hit you for being mean to her.

Yeah.

Well,

I'm sincere.

I didn't mean to be mean to her, so my apologies.

I do think she's an impressive person.

It's a thing.

But she's famous for something that a lot of people would say is probably not great for our national character.

Anyway, I'm going down a rabbit hole here that has absolutely no upside for anybody.

For you, but go ahead.

There you go.

God damn it.

I was in a car with Pierre Omediar.

Twice.

Federal charges for money laundering.

Why are you talking about that?

My buddy Hamas.

Great God.

Why didn't you know this?

Anyway, let's

finish your thought here.

What is he doing?

If I did due diligence on people, I wouldn't be on this podcast right now, Kara.

My gosh.

Anyways.

Listen to me.

I want you to explain what's going on from a brand management point of view.

It's awareness.

It's awareness.

The guy.

I mean, nobody ever thought Trump condominiums were going to be

tastefully done in interesting layouts.

It's just,

98% of purchases are done through organizations, brands, and services that we have heard of before.

So awareness immediately makes us feel safer.

So when a big building in Chicago says Trump on it, even though it probably means 12-karat gold,

and a ridiculously over-the-top

bad, yeah, bad fashion,

It still is worth it because people immediately go, oh, the Trump building.

And so he's figured out that awareness is more important than necessarily what generates that awareness.

And also, I just think the guy can't stand to not to feel as if he's irrelevant.

He's like, I'll show you.

You know, it's like when someone's fired and they all of a sudden get angry and start acting out at work.

And there is a lesson here for young people.

And that is what I coach young people around is you can spend 10 years at a company.

The way you behave the last 30 years is important to your memory, impression, and brand.

30 days, yeah.

Is the first nine years and 11 months?

And that is, people remember how you leave.

And it doesn't matter if you've been fired.

It doesn't matter if you've been treated poorly.

If that has happened, call a lawyer and go gangster.

Otherwise, you're gracious.

How can I help?

How can I transition my responsibilities?

You thank people.

You take time to be gracious because 50%, think about this.

You can spend 10 years developing a great reputation as an organization.

And what's just as important is how you leave.

And the temptation is to all of a sudden start airing grievances and stick up the middle finger on your way out the door to the elevator for the last time.

Grievances is his brand.

Grievances is all he does.

That's such a bad move.

People remember how you leave.

Anyways, I guess.

You know, I think the question is what will happen to the Section 230?

Even the Republicans are like, this needs to be done in a bipartisan committee way to figure out what to do about reforming

230.

It's almost like defund the police.

It's like, get rid of 230.

That's not the thing.

It's actually reform 230.

And

I think it's interesting that the Republicans just have ignored it as usual.

And there's a lot of people.

Well, you know what's going to happen.

You know what's going to happen.

Nothing.

That's exactly right.

Nothing.

Zero.

Nothing's going to happen.

And tech companies aren't even reacting.

Nothing's going to happen.

They're not even bothering.

They're not even putting out press releases.

They're not even, no one, because the reality is, you know who gets sued?

Who?

The New York Times.

Every time some batshit, crazy person comes and comments on any story and says something slanderous, the New York Times could get sued.

Yep.

So this is

you and your ability to bring in really thoughtful guests, including that guy from the New York Times to talk about 230.

I have been totally educated about 230.

I went to gross oversimplification and I was a banned 230 guy.

I remove it.

And what you realize is, no, it needs to be modified.

Complex.

Complex.

Yes.

Complex.

100%.

And Donald Trump is the lead.

Nothing's going to happen.

Nothing's going to happen.

All right.

Moving on let's take a listener mail question presented by yappa which is pretty friggin cool i saw it on twitter but go ahead you've got you've got i can't believe i'm gonna be a mailman you you've got mail

hi kara and scott love your show my name is leela and i live in scottsdale arizona i support our local food bank that serves most of the state And I've seen firsthand as this pandemic continues the increasing number of cars stretching for blocks waiting for groceries.

Scott's mention of one-third of New Yorkers being food insecure reminded me of a question that's been on my mind for a while now.

Would you both give us your thoughts on how the grocery industry, farmers, food distributors, and logistics tech experts might find additional ways to coordinate in order to accelerate emergency food distribution, decrease the number of food deserts, and decrease the amount of food waste in this country?

Is this even doable?

Thanks.

Wow, that's a great question.

Yeah.

From Scottsdale.

You know,

the food insecurity is astonishing right now in this country.

And again, it requires to me a federal response, once again,

a federal response to coordinate in a coordinated way across states.

And we're not seeing any kind of federal coordination of even vaccine distribution.

Everyone's sort of left to their own devices.

And so I think it's super difficult because the federal government is not concerned.

The current administration is not concerned with.

this issue at all.

It has never mentioned it, has never discussed it.

And so among the many things it's never discussed that it needs to.

The issues around food waste, I've always been

astonished that there hasn't been more technology and other

solutions brought to bear on food waste.

It's always been, you know, you read a story every now and again about this terrible issue of how much food we have and how much it goes to waste.

There's all kinds of reasons for it, perishability and things like that.

But I've always sort of been amazed that no one's really taken on this issue in a way that would match food to people who are food insecure.

Yeah,

I find it jarring when you see some of these statistics come

sort of full force in the midst of a pandemic.

And I think there's just no getting around it.

If our national character, I think, has been revealed to be a lack of character.

And it's not just about food companies.

I think, as I always do, I go to World War II with immediately when the war broke out, a Chrysler factory

was converted to a factory.

And within two weeks, they were building Bradley tanks.

And over the course of the war, that one factory in Michigan punched out more tanks than the entire Third Reich.

What company has immediately converted to fighting this pandemic?

And also, it happened with PPE, too.

PPE, the stuff.

It was just everything we do needs to be coordinated federally.

And things like this, it reminds me of.

100%.

But you could see like a Whole Foods or Amazon or delivery grocery partners responding to this.

That's a volume.

That would be a great question.

It's not just Big Food.

They should have said, okay, we have 110 million households.

All of them need to be tested every week.

So we need Glaxo, Amazon, Walmart, Apple.

We need all of you to come together.

And we need to.

But they had that press conference.

It was a bullshit press conference.

We need all of you to come together.

Profits are at an all-time high.

NASA's at an all-time high.

And today, today, we have more deaths and more infections eight months into the pandemic.

So, okay, if the markets are at an all-time high, savings rates are at an all-time high, your stock is at an all-time high, and more Americans are dying every day, then perhaps, perhaps, corporate America under the auspices of leadership and, quite frankly, some sacrifice.

You know what we also did in World War II?

Everyone's talking about their individual liberties to wear a fucking mask.

We put 5,000 men in jail who avoided the draft because we decided this is about sacrifice.

And you may think it's individual liberty to say, well, World War I was a terrible war.

I'm not signing up for the draft.

Fine.

We're putting your ass in in jail.

There is no leadership.

There is no mandatory federalization of our supply chain around food, around testing.

And it also,

and no one individual wants to disarm unilaterally.

I think a guy like Doug McMillan would absolutely participate in this, but he's not going to do it all.

If you remember, you've forgotten that press conference, Trump had.

He dragged them all out without masks, of course,

when they said they're going to do this in the parking lot of Walmart and this and in CVS.

I forget who else.

He had a whole bunch in there, but it was all bullshit.

One, because Jared Kushner organized it and two, Peter DeVaro was wandering somewhere around doing it.

And so the inclination was there.

But one of the problems is with food deserts after we come out of this pandemic, we already had grocery issues

in poor parts of cities, like that there weren't enough grocery stores, there wasn't enough produce, there isn't enough good food.

There's a lot of shitty food in these areas, but not a lot of healthy food.

And with the delivery industry where people are getting their groceries delivered now now and it's expensive, that's going to be a real,

there's going to be more groceries closing everywhere.

And they certainly aren't going to be locating in areas

that are

problematic for them.

And so that's really another worry.

And where the grocery industry goes post-corona.

Well, speaking of post-corona, someone has a book on it.

Where does the grocery industry go?

Well, I was glad to know you care.

Yeah.

Look.

That's a book by Scott.

By it.

It's called Post-Corona.

So look,

by the way, you didn't notice.

Oh, I'm not even going to.

What?

No, I'm not going to brag.

Tell me.

No, no, I'm not going to brag.

I'm not going to brag.

Oh, come on.

You just mentioned it.

You're like one of those people.

Like, I'm not going to say it.

I'm not going to say it.

Say it.

Are you number one?

Did you beat Jeff Bezos?

No.

No, I'm number nine on New York Times bestseller list.

And I'm one.

No, number eight.

I'm one position behind Doris Kearns-Goodwin.

Doris, I'm coming for you.

Number four, Fareed Zakaria, 10 Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World.

What is this?

Is this non-fiction?

What is number eight nonfiction?

Seriously, Fareed Zakaria number four.

His book, 10 Lessons, Who Was a Guest for a Post-Pandemic World.

What is his publisher BuzzFeed?

Anyways, I'm sorry.

Of course, I turned back to my channel.

I think Fareed Zakaria's ass, too.

Don't go after just

a battery skin, third.

And yet you want to be in front of him.

You want to be in.

Anyway, your book is doing rather well.

It's called Post-Corona.

Now, give us

anyways.

That was awful.

We're talking about food insecurity.

I think there was a huge opportunity for an individual, whether it was Satya Nadella or Mark Benioff, I know they're civic-minded to say, to call all this people in a room and to call this board and say, we're turning our company to the pandemic, and it's going to cost us shareholder value.

It's going to cost us revenue.

I think there was an opportunity for someone here to say, we're not punching out Buicks, we're punching out Bradley tanks.

We are the markets are at an all-time high.

Stocks are at an all-time high.

Homes have never been worth more.

There's never been more wealth in this nation.

And what company has pivoted to a crisis that is killing three times the number of people that the Axis power killed?

It's got to be Amazon to do this one.

Jeff Bezos, okay, he's 56.

He's going to be dead soon.

Life is going faster and faster.

I know this personally.

No, I'm the same age as Jeff Bezos.

Years become seasons, seasons are becoming months.

Jeff, you're going to be dead soon.

Are you going to be remembered for Amazon Prime or Transparent?

One of these guys, and let's be honest, they're almost always dudes, has an opportunity to say,

country, flag, and people's well-being supersedes anything here.

And we are turning our attention until the vaccine is out across 60% of our society.

We are turning our attention and our resources.

to the pandemic and to helping our brothers and sisters we call Americans.

And not a single firm has done that.

And there's been no leadership at the government to say, all right,

a bunch of you have to do this.

And I just don't, it reflects such poor character on us as a nation.

There's just no getting around it.

So I think it's not only disappointing from a national character standpoint, I think it's a huge missed opportunity for somebody to say, for a CEO to say, yeah, I sat down with our shareholders, I sat down with our board, and we've decided that this is the biggest existential threat of our generation.

And we want to tell our grandkids, we want to tell Americans that that we we heard the call we heard the call and it's not just groceries it's not just public sort of food yeah but groceries are important here's a good industry that is actually easy to do two companies really do come spring to mind to me that could really be in front of this uber you know and this is what we're going to do we're going to deliver groceries we're going to coordinate or uh because they're logistics or or amazon the those two companies should do something either together or in some way that would would be or walmart and walmart those are the three companies in this case, into the groceries.

Between Amazon, Walmart,

Google, and Apple, because you're talking about handhelds and technology that everybody has.

It's all about communications and information.

So that's about testing and tracing.

And then with Amazon and Walmart, you're talking about testing and food.

Those four companies, those four companies

could, in my opinion, save tens, if not hundreds of thousands of lives if they decide.

They sort of tried.

They tried with the tracing.

It's just, it has to have federal.

It has to have some federal information.

It's a lack of a case.

It's a lack of a similar question.

Is it Lila or Lila?

Reminder, for the month of December, we're partnering with Yapa to get more listener mail questions.

They're pretty cool.

Someone did a whole whiskey thing with Pappy Van Winkle for us, which was exciting, which when we were referring to James Carville, who I watched and enjoyed last night on MSNBC.

Anyway, go to nymag.com/slash pivot to submit your question for the pivot podcast.

That was an excellent one.

Food insecurity is a problem that we can solve in this country and we should, more people, especially leadership, should get involved much more.

People going hungry in the United States of America is appalling on every level.

All right, Scott, one more quick break.

We'll be back for predictions.

Okay, Scott, give us a prediction.

You kind of made one about a feature, not a bug, that kind of thing.

I would like another one.

Well, about so it doesn't happen often, but occasionally a 45-year-old man

has something happen that should have happened when he was 13 or 14, and that is his testicles descend at a later point in his life.

And I think all of a sudden, Republican senators at the age of about 80 are going to have their testicles descend.

And we're going to have the first override of a veto around this bullshit defense linking Section 230 to defense.

Good one.

And Trump has threatened to veto.

I think he's so desperate for attention and relevance that he will likely veto this Defense Act and demand that 230 is attached to it.

And I think

all of a sudden, Republican senators for the first time are going to reach down and feel these spherical things and decide, you know, at the age of, you know, kind of in the bottom of the ninth inning to show some leadership.

And I think they're going to override the veto.

So we're going to have our first veto override

in the next between

December and beginning of January.

That is an excellent prediction.

I'm going to make another prediction.

I think the Democrats are going to win both seats in Georgia.

Wow.

How do you like that?

Wow.

That would be really,

I don't know.

I think America loves balance.

It's really, that it's going to be really exciting.

I think Wood is doing the best job for Democrats ever.

That crazy lawyer in Georgia.

I watched that Sidney Powell and Wood thing.

They are really

a cup of conspiracy.

Several cups of conspiracy passed to crazy.

But I feel like, I don't know.

I just think quietly, Cece Abrams is

there yelling and screaming at all her little tiny little rallies.

And I think she's signing people up and she's a quiet one.

You know what I mean?

Like just working her little magic.

And I think, I don't know.

I think we might be surprised.

I know people like balance, but

I think they're really doing everything they can.

We'll see what happens with Trump this weekend going to Georgia, but I think he's going to say something crazy and tell people not to vote.

It's not too much of a prediction.

I know, but I think he's going to tell people not to vote.

Like that he has to keep up.

If he keeps up the, what was fascinating, which was one of my favorite moments of all time yesterday

in the Congress, was Mike Pence administering the oath of office to Mark from Arizona to be senator, astronaut Mark.

And then

it's Kirsten Cinema, whatever, I can't pronounce it.

And she was wearing a purple wig and

a a like this fantastic, I think it was a zebra coat.

The whole thing.

So Pence was accepting the election, like the certified results, swearing this guy in.

And then she was there.

And the whole scene was like, it's just one of these marvelous American scenes that I liked a lot.

So I miss that.

I don't know.

That's my prediction.

I think we're going to be able to do that.

Oh,

speaking of shows, I'm jumping around a lot.

Have you seen Industry?

No, but I'm supposed to.

Someone suggested it to us.

I think it?

Yeah, I'm curious.

Well, I kind of lived it.

I worked at Morgan Stanley right out of college, and it was kind of the

late 80s, and it was sort of the peak of the testosterone-filled investment banking.

You know, once I'm not exaggerating, once I was very insecure, I was from UCLA, and most of my 70-person analyst class, and you were given this impression that you were the luckiest person in the world to be part of this analyst class.

69 of them went to, like, no, like 60 went to Harvard, seven went to Dartmouth, and one went to NSEOT, and then there was me.

Oh, I'm sorry, and like 20 of them are are from Stanford.

Story of Scott's life.

So I was really insecure.

And every week, and I'm being very honest here, every week I decided once a week I was going to pull an all-nighter.

I was going to go to work Tuesday morning and I was going to go home Wednesday at 5

because all I had, I felt on these people was grit.

Work.

And in one of the, anyways, there's an episode about someone working too, way too, way too hard.

And it's a bit of a dramatization.

People weren't,

people were assholes, but they weren't evil.

And in this one,

and it's like, it feels, you know what what it reminds me of?

It reminds me of girls.

And that is some of the

behavior and the sex is shocking for someone of my generation.

I'm like, is that how young people, is that their approach to sex now?

And maybe, maybe it is.

But anyways, you should watch it.

And it takes place in London, which is the coolest part about it.

Everything usually takes place in New York or L.A.

They went from like Princeton to London to Goldman Sachs.

I had a whole bunch of friends who went to Goldman Sachs.

It's really, it's really,

I thought it was really

interesting.

I'm deciding whether I I watch The Undoing or not because everyone hate watches it.

So I have to wait and see if I'm going to watch that.

I think Hugh Grant's fantastic.

He's dreamy.

Speaking of dreamy.

He's great.

Let's get Luke Hugh Grant on this show.

I'd like to have Hugh on.

That would be great.

I love him.

I don't know why I love him so much.

Anyway, in any case, Scott, those are excellent predictions and a good recommendation.

Industry, watch that.

People seem to follow our TV recommendations.

They seem to like them.

Yep.

I'm going to watch Mank.

That's what I'm going to watch because I'm thinking of interviewing David Fincher.

All All right.

Yeah.

Anyway, okay, that's the show.

As a reminder, we love the listener mail questions and we're trying something new.

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

The link is also in our show notes.

Scott, read us out.

Today's show is produced by Rebecca Sinanis.

Fernando Finite engineered this episode.

Erica Anderson is Pivot's executive producer.

Thanks also to Hannah Rosen and Drew Burroughs.

Make sure you're subscribed 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.

Doris Kearns Goodwin.

I am coming from you.

Lincoln, blah, blah, blah.

Fareed Zakaria, Fareed Zakaria, you have nothing on me other than IQ credibility, buttery skin, great hair, a global platform, and a ton of charisma.

Other than that, I'm number eight.

I'm coming for you.

Doris and Fareed, sleep well tonight.

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