Pfizer's covid-19 vaccine, China looks at fintech regulation, and Lyft President John Zimmer on the future of gig work

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Hi, everyone.

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

I'm Kara Swisher.

And this is Scott Galloway broadcasting live from the Mandarin Oriental Dim Sum.

You know, Kara, I just want to be clear.

It's too easy.

Okay, Kara, let's be honest.

We should absolutely not gloat.

No gloating here.

We're not going to gloat.

We're way above this.

Oh, wait.

Oh, wait.

Hold on.

Hold on.

Do you hear that knock at the door?

I hear a knock.

Oh, wait.

Who is it?

It's science.

It's those bad boys called science.

Oh, wait, there's another knock at the door, Kara.

It's competence.

We're going to get rid of those showy bag of donuts.

We're going to recognize greatness is in the agency of others and bring in some real fucking gangsters into this cabinet.

Oh, wait, but there's another knock.

There's another knock.

Who is it?

It's JC.

It's Jesu.

It's Jesus.

Jesus who begins and ends with love the poor.

We are about to start loving the poor again.

Jesus has been throwing up in his mouth for the last 45 seconds and he's feeling much better.

Oh, another knock.

It's immigrants.

Well, welcome back, my brothers and sisters.

And finally, hello, fathers who can tell their sons that they can be proud of the most famous father, the man who is supposed to be a role model,

Joseph Biden, but we are not going to gloat.

We're not going to gloat.

Oh, God.

Scott,

we're not supposed to gloat.

It's just not nice.

There's 79 people that did not vote for this man.

I could cry right now.

Oh, God.

I feel like I'm in the first few minutes of a six-month exhale.

Well, listen to me.

No gloating.

We are going to be measured.

We are going to say welcome everybody, even though they don't want to be welcomed.

And even though they were sore winners and they're sore losers, we are going to be kind and good, correct?

Because we won.

Oh, fuck that.

There's a level of criminality here that should absolutely be prosecuted.

What do you think?

Are you crazy?

I've already been tweeting all morning.

It's interesting because unlike you, I do have Trumpy relatives who are very upset.

My mom decided she accepts the Joe Biden presidency.

She accepts it.

I was literally like, no one cares if you accept it or not.

It was very funny.

And then proceeded to make up terrible names for

the vice president, the vice president-elect, and also impugn her as a woman in ways that I am not going to repeat.

Anyway, there you have it.

They're not going down softly.

What are your takeaways?

You know, it was interesting.

The numbers are rising for them, so it looks a little better.

So I think it'll go away quicker.

I think that there'll be recounts, obviously, in Georgia, which was very close, by the way.

And so have been been other states in the past.

So I think that's prudent to do that.

I think the numbers are rising in places like Arizona and other places, but we'll see.

You know, they have to be called.

One of the things that's irritating this morning is the GSA is not going to give in so that Biden can get started on the transition.

There's some monies that go from the government and emails and things like that.

So

they're being kind of shitty about that.

But that's all right, whatever.

It'll all get done.

And by the way, there's now a

Twitter account for the dogs, which are great.

So I'm excited about them.

First rescue dog.

First rescue dog going to the White House.

And they're adorable.

They're really cute.

You know, it sounds dumb, but I like dogs.

And it's weird for someone not to like a dog

to me.

And I get if you're allergic to it, that's very different.

But if you just don't like dogs, it's a weird situation.

I like dogs being in the White House.

I think it's a nice thing.

Yeah, it is.

Like cats, dogs, et cetera, like that.

So I think it's good.

I think

the futures markets are up.

Everything's up.

Everyone's pretty excited that there's

going to be a transition, I think.

And of course, the vaccine thing, which we'll talk about in a minute.

So I think people feel pretty good.

What do you think?

What do you think?

I think there's a lot of interesting takeaways here.

So it strikes me that

a woman of color, I believe, gave

Biden.

First off, let me just say, Madam Vice President is super exciting.

But it was another woman of color that, in my opinion, really played the critical

role in this election, and that was Stacey Abrams.

Stacey Abrams, sure.

And also,

Congressman from South Carolina, he basically delivered the election to Biden.

Do you realize after the first debate, Biden's chances of winning?

Do you know what they were?

Do you know what the odds were that he was going to be president?

It was 100 to 1.

Yeah.

You were not on his side, as you recall.

You kept calling him Sleepy Joe, but I'm not going to rely on it.

I didn't call him Sleepy Joe.

I just said he had absolutely no chance of winning.

I never called him Sleepy Joe.

It's about his slowness.

But anyway, go ahead.

Yeah.

Well, let's be honest.

And we can say this.

I can say this now because he's going to be the president.

He's a wonderful man.

A good man is going to the White House.

This is the worst candidate to win presidency in a long time.

Why is that?

I think every Democrat was headed towards November 3rd with this nervous feeling looking down in their car at a blinking red light that said check engine, just hoping that we were going to get there in time.

I don't think he was a strong candidate.

And

me know, this is 60

cents a cloth

won this election, specifically a mask.

If it hadn't been for COVID-19, Trump would have won on a landslide.

Probably.

And the fact that he was so dismissive and incompetent, if he had just worn a mask early and said, this is serious, and made some, just some

attempt at coordination and demonstrated some competence, he would have won.

And President-elect Biden's discipline, I mean,

he didn't really lay out or take any real stands here.

They just said, all you have to do is not be Trump and wear a mask.

And they did that brilliantly.

But let's be honest, he wasn't a great candidate.

Here he is.

I think he seems more lively since the election for sure.

He's got good momentum.

He's got good momentum.

And I have to say, I think his speech was excellent.

I thought Kamala Harris's speech was great.

I think he's got, I think he's, you know, he's a consilitator.

He's not a, he's, you know, it was interesting to watch sort of Connor Lamb and AOC sort of have a slight dust up in on the Twitter for a minute.

Although I don't really care.

I'm glad there's two kinds of people in the Democratic Party.

Who cares?

I think it's going to be an interesting time, but I think he is very akin.

He's someone who's going to try to reach out no matter what.

It's his nature to do that.

It's been his nature his whole political career.

So if people are going to be surprised by that, if he's going to cooperate with Republicans, you better get ready because he's going to.

What was interesting is which Republicans are reaching out.

Dakonda Lisa Rice just reached out.

Obviously,

George Bush just sent one out.

W sent one out.

Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski, a whole bunch of people have extended olive branches, essentially.

What's interesting is who has not, and they're continuing.

That's right.

It's who hasn't.

We are

every Republican senator.

Yeah, it's interesting.

There's just three or four of them that have.

And a lot of them are doing the sort of middle of the ground, which is like,

if everything's everything's fine, it's good.

If not, you know, he has every right to do it.

And I think what's interesting is them trying to assuage the feelings of one person, which I think they have to because they want to run in 2024.

And if you, right now, if you piss him off, it's a bad time to piss him off.

Even if it's not going to matter in four years, because I think it's not going to matter.

I think he's going to fade away quickly

because he can't help himself.

And as to the COVID thing, I think he couldn't respond in any other way because that's how he responds to everything.

You know, rank and competence, a disdain of science, a disdain of experts.

And so he couldn't have responded any other way.

He could have said.

He couldn't have.

He didn't care if any other way.

He could have demonized the Chinese.

He could have gone after it.

He literally, he handled this.

If they could do it again, they would have done it differently.

I don't think he controls himself.

I think this is the same.

These are his thematic ideas throughout his life.

Just like Joe Biden's thematic ideas is compromise, this guy's thematic ideas is science sucks, ground people suck,

who cares, death is death, who

I'm shocked you're going as easy.

It's not easy.

I just don't think he had the capability.

Let me finish.

You're going as easy on the Republican senators who haven't congratulated.

The peaceful transfer of power, there's so many things we took for granted.

That is, that is kind of one of the legs of the stool of a democracy.

Is that unless you say with valid elections, we look forward to working with the next administration, The reason why China is so vulnerable is that

if you try and boot one party out of office, it's revolution.

Here we have the opportunity to go back and forth between different parties, but if you don't have a peaceful transfer of power and the Republican senators who refuse, who are just all sitting on their hands and

all of a sudden aren't saying anything, they're basically saying, you know what, I don't buy, I'm not going to support the peaceful transfer of power.

I'm not going to support a key to our democracy because I'm worried about what Trump will say and what happens to the base.

I've been doing it for four years.

This has been like, this is nothing fresh.

That's all I'm saying.

It's like, are you surprised?

Now I'm going to stand up.

No, not for when he talked about, you know, military people, not when we talked about people of color, not when he talked about people with issues.

Everything.

Come on, this guy, they've done every single time.

You know what the mandate was?

He talked about

attacking women, and they were like, oh, well.

It's interesting.

People always like, the press tries to find a mandate in every election.

The mandate here was no mandate.

If you you really look at it, you can

Republican women picked up seats in the House.

The only mandate you can take from this election: well, there's two mandates.

One, they wanted Trump out, or America wanted Trump out.

And two, the only other mandate here is the Green Wave.

And I'm not talking about the Green New Deal, I'm talking about marijuana.

Marijuana.

That was the big winner that people aren't talking about.

The other big winner, I mean, there's so many interesting second-order effects here.

I cannot imagine how much money outdoor billboard broadcast local news stations and anything print and and the georgia representative for google and facebook you really a billion dollars could pile into georgia yeah over those senate elections and it's really interesting because georgia

you know i the the two republican candidates got the most votes they they didn't get enough for to avoid a runoff but there's momentum on the democratic side stacey abrams is just a juggernaut she is that is going to be very strange i think it's going to actually bring up some very very uncomfortable things about money because it could be a billion dollars going into Georgia.

It'll be tough.

I think that Warnick's really quite an impressive candidate.

I think he's going to wipe the floor with Ellie Lauffler.

The other one's going to be tighter, although I'm impressed by John Ossoff.

But we'll see.

I bet Georgia will split the baby.

That's how they're going to do it.

And then we'll be where we are.

Anyway, it's very exciting.

And I know that you're shocked that the Republican senators aren't doing this, but they are just, do you think Ted Cruz is going to be anything but

a quizzling puts it?

But it's an opportunity.

I just strategically.

He's not going to take it.

Why would he take it?

He doesn't have to take it.

I think of one of them.

I think, like,

it's like if you stab the prince, you've got to be willing to kill him.

He's dead.

And for them to come out right now and say, look, peaceful transfer of power, there's no reason we, you know, he got a lot right.

There's no reason we can't continue these principles.

But I welcome and look forward to working with

President-elect Biden.

I just think at some point at risks and leadership payoff, I think it would pay off or not.

I would expect zero from them.

If they don't kick people in the teeth, I'm surprised.

Anyway, let's move on to big stories.

Okay.

Other big news this week, just today, is that Pfizer says they have developed a COVID-19 vaccine that has been 90% effective in early trials.

Remember, they are early trials.

Pfizer developed the vaccine with German drug maker BioNTech, it's called.

The company plans to ask the Food and Drug Administration for emergency authorization of the two-dose vaccine.

It's a very difficult vaccine.

It has to be frozen,

cold, and other things like that.

And they don't know how long it will last, but nonetheless, it's a big breakthrough.

Executives say it will have manufactured enough doses to immunize 15 to 20 million people by the end of the year.

Again, not very many, but still it's a good thing.

And it probably means good things for the other companies.

And one thing to note is that Pfizer did not use, was not part of Operation Warp Speed.

They did sign a say around distribution.

They certainly will work with the government, but they did it on their own.

So they're not part of the effort.

Of course,

Vice President Prince tried to take credit for this, but Pfizer and Pfizer pushed back pretty hard, saying they were not part of the government warp speed effort, which was interesting back and forth this morning.

So what do you think about this?

This is a good news, good news, and it comes sort of perfect timing in a weird way.

Well, it's very exciting.

When you think about you don't want to bet against humanity, right?

And the thing that separates us from other species is cooperation.

And this is what you would have hoped for across some of the prevention efforts around COVID-19.

It was more of a globally coordinated response.

And this is, I think, an American company who is tax sheltered in the Isle of Man working with Germans.

I mean, it is sort of a cross-border victory.

I take this with a grain of salt because I remember I get invited to these Master of the Universe conference calls where it's all these headshot titans talking about the world.

And I remember the one I was in in May and June saying, and these were gentlemen who were all on the board of Name the Hospital, who quote unquote have inside information saying that pretty much they were assuring me we'd have a vaccine distributed by September, the month, you know, this past September.

So I look, I just, I'm hopeful, but we've, we've had some headphakes before on this.

So we'll see.

But the markets love it.

The markets love Biden.

What's interesting, or I thought the most interesting thing about the market this morning in the face of this great news about a vaccine is all the home stocks that were were skyrocketing.

Amazon's down.

So all the companies that were benefiting from us being locked in our homes are actually a little bit down today.

And when I say down, I mean they've lost 1% off their 60% gains.

But the markets love it.

A vaccine is a,

you know,

a thoughtful,

effective distribution of a vaccine would be wonderful for the world.

It'd be wonderful for science.

Hopefully it convinces people about one of the greatest things that humanity has ever stumbled upon or worked towards, and that's vaccines.

So, I look, I'm excited, but I take it with a little bit of cautious optimism.

You do have to realize, I did a very good interview with Monsev Slawy, who's running warp speed, and he was sketching out, even if something good happened right about now, which he said he would.

He actually, if you go back and listen to that, he's quite accurate at what's happening.

He did talk about it not getting to the general public for a long time, and he was talking into next summer.

And so, it will go out first to healthcare workers, and then it will go to the elderly and people in in need, in distress, in areas where they could easily die of COVID.

And then it will go out to the general public.

And

the military is going to be part of getting these doses out to people.

And again, this particular vaccine requires, I think,

two immunizations.

And then also the way it is handled is critically important because you can really, the efficacy goes down quite a bit if it's not correctly refrigerated in the way it's supposed to be.

So, you know, there's other vaccines being worked on that are not refrigerated.

There are some that are one dose.

So it will be quite a while.

But I think

it's a dose of good news that people need it.

And of course, the stock market took and ran with it.

What was interesting is to me the executives pushing back really hard about that about it.

It wasn't a government effort and everything.

So a lot of these biotech people, and I've talked to a bunch of them, just didn't want to work with the government because of the politicization of the COVID.

And they didn't want to be linked

with an administration that had

sort of

had pushed herd immunity and things like that.

But the Germans did give money to this firm, by the way, the German government, which has been handling their crisis in a different way than we have.

But you're right,

this is a big deal, but it's not the only deal.

And so we have to think really hard about where we're going and when we're returning.

And probably if, I hate to tell it to people, but it's probably next summer before there's real breakthroughs in terms of immunization for a wide range of people across the globe.

And after

the kind of momentary lull or excitement from the results of the election,

I think unfortunately the media and all of us are going to turn our attention back to COVID-19, which has gotten uglier and uglier.

And

it is going to be ⁇ the thing is, we have not endured COVID-19 during the winter.

And

if you look at infection rates, it looks as if there is a correlation between...

My brother's a doctor said it's just coming off the charts, even in places that are good.

And you have to be careful.

Well, look at when when Florida was bad.

Florida was bad in the summer months because we have to go indoors.

And when you look at what's happening now, the sunshine states aren't getting hit quite as hard.

It's all about when you have to go indoors.

Yeah, 100%.

The winter is, this could be, you know, you just hate to say it.

This could be a really ugly winter.

And we haven't been, I don't think we want to face it.

I think everyone's exhausted and distracted with the election, but I think pretty quickly we're going to turn.

turn back.

And I hope the Biden administration, it's too bad that we have to go back.

Well, they did note that in their statement.

It it was interesting because Trump did all caps I won kind of thing and Pence tried to take a lap which he doesn't deserve to take and Biden's statement was so considerate it was like this is great but it's only the first step continue to wear masks we are not out of the woods and then he named that group of people for his COVID which was full of actual scientists it was such a pleasure including Rick Bright who

Trump had washed out he was a whistleblower about the behaviors of the Trump administration so that was that was sort of a slight troll although he's highly qualified for that job.

But the people on that

committee were sort of the gold standard of

that.

Yeah, exactly.

You couldn't have cast it better.

It sort of was

the guy who's working for Trump, that idiot, Scott, whatever that guy from Stanley wants to say his name.

He's such an imbecile.

But they're still running it for a while.

And so that's the issue: will they use the opportunity rather than do press releases?

And of course, I think none of them, even though there was just a recent outbreak in the White House, will be wearing masks or pushing anyone.

But what's interesting to me is the governor of Utah just put a mask mandate on, I think it's a Republican governor, throughout the whole state because it's so bad there.

And so you're going to see masks.

You know, Biden has talked about a mask mandate across the country, but governors are already doing it, including Republican governors, which is they can't mess around with this stuff.

It's just like,

I don't know if we're, I know we're at record infections.

Are we at record hospitalizations?

Yeah, we're record everything.

Yeah, so it's just

look,

this is a time,

and

not that anyone's going to listen to us, but

if someone was advising Trump around how to try and, you know, I don't know, diminish the damage of his legacy, I still don't think it's too late for them to get much more aggressive around masking.

And anyway,

this is going to be.

It's playing golf and having legal things.

I mean, if he was concerned, he wouldn't be playing golf two days this weekend.

And by the way, it's been a beautiful week, gorgeous weather here.

It's a hurricane down here.

Yeah, it's unusually 75 degrees outside, I think, right now, which is really weird, which is good because everyone's outside.

In any case, this is a good news, but we are, as usual, because we are so considered and we don't play loud music and gloat.

Not us.

Not us.

We think this is a good thing.

Rescue dog going to the White House.

Rescue dog going to the White House.

Dogs are back.

Did Trump even have a dog?

This weirdos didn't even have a pet.

He hates dogs.

He hates pets.

He doesn't like the fur.

Are you kidding?

They never have dogs.

You got to have a dog, everyone.

I have always had dogs with my kids.

I think it's very healthy, cats and dogs.

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

And by the way, use rescue dogs.

I always have all rescue pets, and I think it's a really important thing to do.

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

When we come back, we'll talk about more issues with about the halted ant group IPO, and we'll have on a friend of Pivot and Lyft CEO, John Zimmer, who you're going to be able to talk to him about all these issues you have.

I think you'll find him a little different than the Uber people.

Yeah.

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

He kept saying, no, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's going to tell you the truth.

How do I present this with any class?

I think we're past that, that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

Aka Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

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All right, Scott, we're back.

Analysts say that China's halting of Ant Group's IPO could slash the company's value by as much as $140 billion.

Oh my God, I almost choked on that when I saw it.

If Ant's $280 billion IPO valuation is halved, it would essentially mean the company's worth less than it was two years ago.

China is doubling down on the need to regulate financial technology.

Not a surprise, it is China.

Really important information in those things, but this is what's happening.

A week ago, it was supposed to be the biggest IPO in history.

Where does this leave Ant, Scott?

It's really interesting.

I initially saw a conspiracy in it, and that's not to say it's not true, but I initially thought it was

the Chinese

government weighing in and saying, no, you better do exactly what we want when we want it.

You're a tool of the government, and we're going to stop the IPO

until you sign up or sign on.

And what it looks like is that they basically have stepped in and maybe done what American regulators should have done before these companies blitz scaled.

And they're,

at least on the surface, being thoughtful around, all right,

if you're a bank and you're loaning money and you create a certain, and you have this kind of dominance, which can create a certain fragility because if something were to go wrong with Ant in terms of it being overextended or

if it gets hacked, that you have an anti-fragile financial system that could create real panic or real problems.

And so what they've said is they said, if you want to be a bank, you have to have the capital reserves

and the loan reserves of a traditional bank, which, by the way, makes it a shittier business, right?

It makes it because you don't get the same asset light.

It's much more fun not to have business licenses or not to be subject

or not to be subject to legal liability laws.

I mean, the thing that

all of these guys have had, in addition to great innovation, great engineering, great marketing, is they haven't been hampered by the regulation that the rest of the industry had been subject to, right?

And

Ant was on its way to being the non-bank bank that wasn't, that had all of the great taste of a bank, but none of the calories, specifically the capital reserve requirements.

And they've weighed in and said, okay, you need to, if you're going to be a bank, you need to have the

calories.

And then all of a sudden these analysts are saying, well, if it's a bank, it should trade it two times book, not four times.

And And they say the value is going to get cut in half.

By the way, if this thing really, if the value really does get cut in half, wow, is that a buy?

If this thing gets valued like a traditional bank,

this is going to be a great buy.

But it's just staggering to think that this move could shed $150 billion.

You could shed the value of Airbus and Boeing off a company that was at the finish line because they said, okay, you're a bank.

It's a very lofty valuations.

But so do you think fintech should be regulated?

You see the United States taking similar measures in the future?

I mean, again, there isn't one,

it dominates in China, and you don't have one fintech company dominating here.

There's quite a lot of players, actually.

Aaron Powell, Jr.: I think it's situational.

I think the regulations that have come crumbling down around health tech and remote medicine and telemedicine are a wonderful thing.

I think deregulating across that industry has been fantastic.

I do think on the flip side, though, that this general narrative that comes out of Silicon Valley of

If you regulate us like you regulate traditional industry, you're not embracing innovation, and you're not a capitalist, you're a socialist, and we need social media networks that can be weaponized and own other platforms.

And oh, by the way, you should have an electronic trading platform that addicts young men, and even if they commit suicide, we don't regulate you like we would regulate anyone else.

That narrative coming out of Silicon Valley needs to be cauterized.

And we should absolutely look at fintech and say, all right, where apply the same game theory and scenario planning and capital reserves and sarve and oxley and say, what would happen if one of these guys went down?

Could we end up with lines around a bank?

What could happen?

So

I'm all for what I'll call thoughtful examination and, if necessary, regulation.

We have pivoted way too hard to the other end of quote-unquote blitz scale at all costs to society.

And we.

There's no player in the United States like there is

ant dominant.

They're like the Amazon of China in that regard.

And so is Alibaba in a lot of ways.

So I think you're not going to necessarily see that, but individually, like with Robin Hood, which is what Scott was referring to,

is critically important.

I think they, and I do think the financial, I don't think they're running amok the way, if you remember in the beginning when a lot of these genetics companies, you know, went against the FDA and they got slapped back pretty hard.

I do think these companies are in store for a lot more financial regulation, certainly under a Biden administration than anything else.

And so you're not going to see that sort of boom in fintech in the same way without the regulations.

And this is a sector that is used to being regulated.

And you also see the pressure from the banks who get regulated all the time to make sure everyone else gets regulated as much as they do, or else all the regulations are removed.

And so

I don't think you're going to see that, but you're right.

It doesn't make as much money if it's not as regulated.

Well, and that'll be the argument.

They will say, but look at Ant.

Do you really want the Chinese fintech to overrun what has been an incredibly strong financial services sector?

Also, fintech is pretty strong.

That's one place the UK has excelled, is they have pretty strong fintech.

So they'll turn it into, Silicon Valley, will turn it into a nationalist argument.

But look, we have erred on the side of too, in my opinion, too little regulation in the face of our idolatry of innovators.

All right.

All right.

On that note, okay, we're going to bring on a friend of Pivot.

John Zimmer is the president and co-founder of the rideshare company Lyft.

Welcome, John.

John, welcome to Pivot.

Thanks for having me.

All right.

So we have lots to talk to you about.

Scott has been, as you know, pillaring Uber, and you get off for some reason because you're a nice guy.

You're the nice guy of ride-sharing.

But let's talk a little bit about what happens in California now that Prop 22 has been passed.

How does it interact with AB5 and how will it affect drivers outside of California?

So why don't you give us the overview?

Sounds good.

So first, this wasn't a no on AB5.

This was a yes on Prop 22, which adds benefits, allows drivers to remain independent contractors, adds benefits like healthcare subsidy, disability protection, and more.

And this is a win-win for drivers, for riders, for the California economy, and obviously for Lyft.

And it allows us to continue to expand the number of earning opportunities we have in California.

And it sets the stage for a new model of independent contractor plus benefits that we can work across the country to establish.

Yeah, but you know, people didn't see it that way.

It looked like you guys were spending enormous, and what is it, $200 million against a smaller group, and that it looked like you were trying to change employment law in a way that was not kind to the drivers

or those that work in a gig economy.

Nearly had 60% support for this measure.

Yes, they did.

And so I believe people did see it that way, the majority of people.

Drivers, six to one, prefer to be independent contractors.

And so,

zooming out, the question is: let's look at labor law.

Unions and workers have fought for decades to establish labor law.

That is important.

That is

worthwhile.

That is valuable.

And let's look at the new work opportunities that exist today with platforms and say, how can we both get those protections while not

taking a one-size-fits-all approach to people that are using this platform in hundreds of different ways.

I could use it one hour, one week.

I could work full-time for three months and then never come back to work.

I could skip two months.

There's all these different ways I might use it.

And so the idea is: let's have benefits.

Let's have benefits that scale with the amount that you use this service.

So,

when you think about it, the idea of changing work, you're taking a more conciliatory approach than Uber, which has been very aggressive on this.

How do you differentiate this idea of changing the idea of what work is?

Because this is a big topic you and I have talked about over the years, lots of politicians, is the idea of what an employee is has to change, obviously, with all these, not just you, but all the other ways to work.

And this pandemic has sort of underscored that, that issue of benefits and health care and things like that.

So

how do you get to a conciliatory approach since this has been so not conciliatory?

Yeah, I mean, we've taken that approach since the beginning.

I know you and I have talked for a while.

This is my first time meeting Scott.

Excited to meet you, Scott.

But, you know, I came into this from a hospitality background, you know, and knowing that the worker is incredibly important to the success of the business.

You know, we came into this to change transportation, to make our cities better.

And we take a huge and feel a huge weight of the responsibility of what we're doing in cities.

And then, you know, while trying to change transportation, all of a sudden we created 2 million work opportunities where 1% of the U.S.

workforce is earning income on the platform.

So we absolutely, it's our responsibility to listen to the workers, to listen to policymakers, to listen to and talk to labor leaders and not be scared of that.

And that's what I've done.

That's what we've done.

I've learned through that process.

This is, you know, part of the new model.

And as we go across the country and other states and hopefully look at federal policy, we'll continue to listen to all sides.

All right, Scott.

Yeah, so look,

to your point, almost two-thirds of California voters

went for this.

But let's be clear:

this doesn't offer minimum wage.

It doesn't offer access to paid leave.

Should we talk about minimum wage?

Because there's a 120% guarantee.

Minimum wage.

When the app is on.

So you could work for five hours and not make anything.

If you are in an area where there's no riders and you turn on the app, correct.

So if I work at a McDonald's and there's no one in the restaurant, I still get paid.

Yeah, but let's talk about that.

That's a good point.

It's a fair point.

So what we did is we said 120% times minimum wage.

So, if minimum wage goes up, it's still 120%.

Yeah, let me finish.

Yeah.

Okay.

When the app is on, right?

If it's when you have a rider in the back seat.

No,

it's during engaged time.

So, when you're on your way to a rider or when you're with a rider, both of those times.

The one time that you're pointing out that is not covered is when you're sitting there with no requests coming to you.

So, I could park in the middle of nowhere and not get any rights.

If you were to be, and that's why we went over minimum wage, we did 120% because there are times like that where that happens, where that is part of the work.

But if you were to do that for all times, then what would happen is the companies would have to create schedules.

We would not be able to just have an app that you could turn on and earn money at any time, no matter where you are.

No company, no competitive company could do that.

Even if we did it, which wouldn't make any sense, someone else wouldn't do it.

It just doesn't work that way.

If you had the app on and everyone was earning money from the second it went on, it would lead to shifts.

Shifts don't work for this workforce.

And so there's puts and takes, but that's why we went over the minimum wage for the periods when you either are on your way to a rider or with a rider.

No access to paid leave, no access to unemployment insurance, workers' comp, no overtime or not a single day of paid sick leave.

We're facing a raging global pandemic, and it's basically made it impossible for gay workers to unionize.

Where do I get that?

Let's talk about those two points.

That's totally fair.

So, first of all, it does include a health care subsidy, which is cash for your health care.

At 15 hours of that engaged time or more, you're getting 50% of that subsidy.

At 25 hours or more, you're getting 100% of that subsidy.

I heard you on sick leave.

On these other pieces like sick leave, what I think is a great national policy is to create a savings account for these workers for portable benefits where they can use it for things like sick leave or health care, whatever is most important to that individual.

On the unionization piece, I've had union leaders come and tell me, we do not believe we could unionize your workers because they are so transient in nature.

And so my point is, yeah, so let's work together.

Let's create a new model.

I've sat down for respecting their privacy and the confidentiality and the politics on their end.

I haven't said, you know, who I've met with, but I've met with probably every major union in some form, whether it's their

local leader or otherwise, and had conversations.

We don't have to be at odds.

We can create a new model of work together.

I am not against that.

But it is.

Look, Elon, Ewan, I don't want to re-litigate it.

Californians voted.

You got almost two-thirds.

So

let's move on to your point.

And I believe you, that more drivers wanted this than not.

California voters

got to decide they decided.

So let's talk about the business.

I look at ride-hailing, and I see a company, I see a business right now that has been, it doesn't look to be profitable, looks to be, I don't know if it's cyclically impaired or structurally impaired because of COVID-19.

I'd love to get your thoughts on that.

And then I look at Lyft, which right now doesn't have the scale of Uber.

How do you, when you look at Uber, if you look at this as a duopoly or two big players, how do you, John Zimmer, what's your vision for how you differentiate from Uber?

How do you guys carve out something that results in greater margin profitability?

What is your strategy as it relates to the bigger player?

Yeah, so we are 100% focused on creating the best consumer transportation platform.

We're not trying to do everything like our competitor is.

So what does that mean?

That means that, you know, if you're in New York City and you want to take a bike, you know, we actually own Citibike, we own Baywheels, we own the Divi system in Chicago.

So we've stayed invested in Bike Share while they've divested.

We've created a rental car business, a consumer rental car business, as well as a fleet business for our drivers while they've divested that.

And

we have other pieces of the kind of consumer transportation stack that they won't have.

So as we create a subscription service in transportation where this is heading, if you want to get access to all the different ways of getting around, you will only be able to get that with Lyft.

That's number one.

Pause right there.

Subscription service to transportation.

I like the sound of that.

Can you say more?

What do you mean?

Loves a rundle.

So, in the same way that you have an ATT, Verizon, or T-Mobile plan, I see the future of transportation is that you get, instead of minutes, you get your miles and maybe unlimited access to bikes and transit and things like that to provide your full portfolio of transportation.

Today, Americans spend $9,000 every year owning and operating a car, the average American household, and they use the car 4% of the time.

That was the light bulb for me from hospitality.

This is horrible occupancy.

And so the idea is instead, for less money than $9,000 a year, we can get you a monthly subscription plan to give you all your transportation.

You never have to deal with car insurance, maintenance, any of that ever again.

That's where this is heading.

And if you do not have all the different modes, which Lyft has and Uber doesn't, then you will not have the best consumer experience so that's how we win so you think about when you think about the idea of a transportation company versus a

versus anything else which uber is has so many parts you're absolutely right when you're it will rely on gig workers on the gig working so what it would be a vision for a model of gig working you're talking about working with unions who have to publicly say this sucks um what is what would be the model for you these these public such as you were talking about savings plans.

If you could put it out right now, what would be the model you would pick?

Right now, I'd say that you create this portable savings plan that

the company is putting money into the more you work.

And then there are rules, regulations on how you can draw down that money for

sick leave, paid time off, for healthcare benefits, even potentially for retirement investment.

So let's create a pool of

self-employed savings account type opportunity.

And

in terms of labor,

that's a live conversation.

That's an ongoing conversation.

I believe, personally, that it would be much more fruitful if we find ways to work together than

if we're always at odds.

And then in what Scott was talking about, the subscription, how much a part of that would each of these elements be in terms of helping the workers?

Would they get a percentage of that?

Is there some way to have them share in it as you grow, say, the subscription bundle?

So, I mean, there's workers on the bike share program, there's workers on rideshare and rental cars, there's tons of job opportunities for sure.

So, the job opportunities and earnings should be increasing along with that.

You know, one thing that we explored when we went public was the opportunity to

grant stock to workers.

Upon going public, we did find a way to do it such that top drivers did receive a one-time stock grant.

It is quite complicated, the laws around this.

And so I would love to innovate there as well.

I think that would be a great opportunity to allow everyone to ride in that upside.

I appreciate that you don't want to define your business model in the context of a competitor.

But I think, okay, how does Lyft differentiate here?

Have you given any consideration?

Because I occasionally see a vehicle drive up and it has both a Lyft and an Uber sticker in it.

Have you thought about trying to go vertical and A, either actually invest in or have proprietary or differentiated experiences through your own?

And I know you've done that a little bit with your bikes and your scooters, but get more vertical in terms of owning or operating the cars.

And then it looks like your biggest competitor is no, I don't want to say not in the ride-hailing business, but as now it looks like a bigger food delivery business.

Are there other businesses you're interested in, whether it's logistics or food delivery, or are you doubling down on ride-hailing?

And transportation.

yeah so the first point on experience absolutely uh think about that a lot if you remember back in the early days uh you know lips yeah

a pink mustache yeah

always called lips uh and uh you know people got in the front seat it was called lift your friend with the car there was a fist bump and so we did focus early on on the experience i think it's fair to say you know as as this went from something that nobody thought anyone would be doing you know getting into a ride with someone they hadn't met to now being being, you know, billions of rides happening, the behaviors changed.

And I think it's a fair point to say now is the time to rethink that experience.

How can we add to it?

We are thinking about that.

Our original creative director came from Virgin America, who I think did a phenomenal job creating a much better airline experience or in-cabin experience.

As you move towards, to your point, getting more involved with the fleet of vehicles, you can do that more.

And we have begun to think through that.

We do have that fleet business I mentioned.

and so there is more we can do to the vehicle than Uber could because they don't have that part of the business.

So that's absolutely something we're thinking about and we have much more work to do there.

What was the second?

Oh, sorry.

The second part was other business lines.

Yeah.

Delivery is interesting.

So we, you know, we've said, oh, we're 100% focused on personal transportation.

Now, if there is a logistics opportunity, which we believe there is, that helps our drivers and obviously helps the business that is differentiated, then I'm interested in in it.

What I'm not interested in doing is creating another consumer delivery platform where you can go on an app and that app takes 30% from the local restaurant to get you your food.

So what we're doing is we're talking to local businesses.

We're talking to larger retailers and saying,

what is working about these delivery models?

What isn't?

And what they're telling us is that we don't want to pay 20, 30%.

to Uber Eats and these other platforms when we're just looking for someone to help us with the logistics.

You have million plus drivers.

What if you could plug in and provide those job opportunities?

But if they order organically from us, we don't have to pay that 20 or 30 percent commission.

So that's actually the approach we will take.

So you're going the Shopify approach towards

in a sense, just for delivery.

You know, Shopify could even be a partner, you know, if they want to plug in.

You know, you know, think about all these websites.

They have, you know, USPS, UPS.

They could also have, you know, Lyft delivery as one of those options.

It's very, very early, but it is something we are looking at.

So when you're thinking about all the other modes of transportation, which is the most promising?

Because you've got sort of, I used a lift this weekend several times, actually.

I was on a bike and then on a scooter.

And

how do you look at this shaking out the other transportations, whether it's scooters or bikes or public transportation, especially during this pandemic?

I haven't gotten on a public transportation in

six months, essentially, and I ride it all the time.

Yeah, I mean, I believe deeply the value of public transportation.

Logan, my co-founder, served on a public transit board before he started this company.

And so I think post-COVID, public transit will be important.

I hope the federal government helps the states out because they're in a tough situation right now to pay for transit.

I also think congestion pricing, which is politically challenging, but the best way to reduce traffic, where you take the additional revenue from people that can afford it and you put it into transit would be a great public policy solution.

Aside from transit, which I think will have still a good future, but have a tough few years, I think the bike is phenomenal.

I mean, it's like people got super excited about the scooter because it was different and new.

I think they got overexcited about it.

I think the form factor will probably change.

You know, could there be a seat?

Would that be better on a scooter?

Probably.

And, but the bike, the e-bike is such a great product.

And so what we're seeing in New York City with Citibike, we've added e-bikes and it's becoming a material portion of the trips.

And you can go, you know, many more miles than people were going on the pedal bikes.

And you have electric ones, too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You've had a bunch of others.

When they flooded into the market, I know you only have a few more minutes.

When they flooded into the market,

that sort of messed it up for all of you, correct?

When there were so many of them?

Yeah, I think it was,

I mean, we took a slightly different approach.

Everyone was saying, hey, let's throw a bunch of scooters into the market.

Let's throw a bunch of e-bikes into the market.

And we went and looked at the company, it was called Motivate, that owned City Bike, that owned these bike systems in all major cities and said, and they had these docks, right?

The stations, if you're familiar in New York City.

And everyone said, that's the old dinosaur technology.

It's all dockless.

It's all, you know, scooters.

And we were like, I'm not so sure.

I mean, in a city in Manhattan, obviously things, if you have

bikes and scooters strewn everywhere, you know, New Yorkers won't take that.

And so we saw, the future of bike share is a station-based system where you can actually charge in the station, which we're experimenting with now.

And

that is the approach that, and we have an exclusive contract with the city of New York to do that.

So we've taken a different approach.

We participated in some of that early kind of scooter action, but we've scaled down and I think right-sized that as well.

Scott?

What, just

in terms of your culture,

what would you describe as Lyft's superpower?

Is it technology?

Is it marketing?

When you think this is the competence or the domain expertise that we really want to invest in, that

we're better than most other companies, what is your superpower?

It's infusing hospitality with technology.

It's in being human.

I think you guys have talked about it a lot.

If you just build a tech-only business to optimize metrics and numbers, and you forget what's behind the number, ultimately, that's bad for society.

You know, we're still seeing whether or not it's bad for business.

But I'm out to prove that when you infuse humanity or the way I talk about it, hospitality with technology,

and that you don't forget what's behind those numbers, that you can do a lot of good.

And we've got a lot of way left to prove that.

But people have counted us out when Uber had 30 times more cash than us and said we would die, and we've tripled our market share since then.

So we've made progress, we have more to do, and that's what we're going to prove.

does a just a follow-up?

How does a consumer register that humanity and hospitality relative to other ridesharing companies right now?

When they're thinking of tech only.

Yeah, I mean, I think the brand, you know, the way people relate to a company, you know, people don't relate to inanimate objects.

I mean, some people do, but that's.

But it's my relationship with the intangibles surrounding Lyft that make me that register the hospitality and the humanity.

Drivers.

The drivers.

Yeah.

The brand is not just you know the pink color is not just the name it's the drivers it's the way you're treated by customer customer support it's the email that you receive and uh you know again we have more work to do but the goal is that the the the brand experience that you would feel different getting your experience would be different with a lyft driver than an uber driver or another transportation correct got it yeah so you know i'm just working on my book about silicon valley and i describe i was working on the section about describing the

offices of Lyft versus visiting the offices of Uber.

I went from one to the other and the difference was so profound.

You had the Lyft offices, it was like craft beer and soft things and soft everything.

Everything was soft and lovely to sit on.

And then you go over to Uber and it was under Travis Kellenick and it was like you were visiting one of Dr.

Evil's lairs and you felt like if you look down at the ground, you could go right into the shark tank.

And like all the names of

the rooms rooms had things like Death Star and Killer Zone or something like that.

So there is a difference.

There's a difference in culture.

I have one last question.

You're about to report quarterly earnings in a week.

What are the big learnings you've had during the pandemic?

And how will you, you know, we talked to Brian Chesky and others about this.

What is your biggest learning?

And we know you got to go then.

Biggest learning is that by having a portfolio of transportation options that I've been talking about that, you know, you can protect in these situations.

Obviously, it's been been hard, it's been bad, right?

You know, we were down 75% at the peak, now back to about

halfway back to where we were.

But bikes are up year over year.

Rental cars are still popular.

And so the more that we build out those other options, the more diversified our overall transportation approach is,

the better the business, the healthier the business will be.

And what's the hardest thing that you've had through the pandemic?

What has been the most difficult?

Internal communications, managing the team through quite a bit of adversity,

you know, both what's happening on the nationally in politics and what's happening internally to the business

and

keeping people focused on the long term when everyone is kind of talking about the short term.

That's always the hardest.

And how many full-time employees at HQ and how many driver partners?

It's about 5,000 people at the company.

And then if you look at kind of monthly actives,

it's under a million.

But if you look at kind of how many drivers use it in a year period, it's close to 2 million.

So approximately 100 to 400 ratio of a full-time employee to driver.

Yep.

Wow.

Amazing.

John, thank you so much.

Thank you, John.

Good luck.

Thank you.

Good luck.

One quick question.

The vaccine news today, probably good news for companies like yours.

Great news for

society.

Yes, I know that.

We know that.

We just,

yes, good news for Lyft.

All right.

Thank you so much, John.

We really appreciate it.

Thank you.

All right, Scott, one more quick break.

Isn't John Zimmer nice?

Isn't he a nice fellow?

He seems very nice and very likable.

That's the problem.

That's the problem, Carol.

They're a different company.

They're a very

different company.

By the way, your question was all right.

Their stock's up 20% today.

The vaccine is.

Yep, of course.

We'll be back, though, after wins and fails.

Maybe that's a win, the stock of all these companies.

We'll be back after this.

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Okay, Scott, wins or fails?

What are your wins?

What are your fails?

I was really moved by, I think, is his name, Van Jones.

Van Jones.

Oh, Van Jones.

Do you like him?

He's fine.

He just hangs out with the Cushners quite a bit.

I don't know.

I like him.

I think he's very nice.

I like him.

I like him.

You like his criminal.

He's very, very handsome.

Dan Lemon.

He's very handsome.

He's very handsome.

Look, I think a win, and this is going to sound savvy.

I think this election is a big win for dads.

The president of the United States is always someone a dad nods to with his sons.

And

what do you tell your sons the last four years when you have a 10 and 13-year-old boy?

And look,

you may not like Biden's politics.

His son received the Bronze Star.

He's a decent man.

He's known loss.

He's humble.

What did you tell as a president?

What attributes did you ask your son to model?

And the reality is the president,

the president is always the male role model for a lot of young men, and it should be the role model for a lot of young women, too.

And I just think dads, I think a lot of dads to Van Jones, I was very moved by his emotion.

I think this was a great day for dads.

So the win is, I'm going to tell, I'm going to talk, I talked to my kids and I sat them down and they asked about Joe Biden and I just had a much easier time talking about Joe Biden than I had about President Trump.

I think this is a victory for dads.

So winners, dads.

Yeah.

He feels like an uncle to me though.

Uncle.

Uncle Joe?

Uncle Joe, yeah.

Yeah.

Uncle.

Yeah, I agree.

What's your win?

My win, obviously, Stacey Abrams, women of color.

Yeah, fantastic.

Kamala Harris.

Just great.

Great.

All of it.

By the way, on every aspect, on every side, like everybody's different.

I mean, there was Eva Longoria got a hard time because she looked like she was celebrating Latina women over

black women.

Look,

Stacey Abrams is the top, and I've interviewed her a whole bunch of times, and I've always found her so impressive.

And what was really interesting to me is what she did, and I think a lot of people pointed this out, is that she was pushed to be, she was in the vice presidential candidate area.

She was really pushed to run for Senate, as you recall.

And by the way, there's, as I said, Warnick is quite an impressive, and so is John Ossoff among the Democrats.

She didn't do it.

She didn't take the easy, she probably could have won the Senate seat easily problem because she's very, you know, she's, but what she did is this block and tackle stuff through Fairfight, which was her voter suppression group, and really just registering people.

She's just one of those door knocker type of politicians.

Like you got to go out and say hi and talk to people and convince people and at least get people to have your information.

Instead of creating these, she's very compromise-oriented.

And I think that is something that

people always look at her, some of the right and they're like, oh, she's liberal.

I'm like, you know what?

She's really quite compromise-oriented.

And it was interesting that her and Keisha Bottoms in Atlanta and several other women of color backed Joe Biden very early, way before other people did, you know, as public figures.

And I found that to be probably not the easiest call for her and others to make.

And I think she just is one of these.

I'm just going to do the work.

I'm just going to do the work.

And I really, you really,

even though she's so well known, she's not flashy in that regard.

She's not, you know, tweeting all the time and doing all this sort of virtue signaling all over the place.

She's just signing up voters, which is exactly what worked here.

Even though it was by the skin of its teeth, it worked.

So that's my win.

And my loss is, you know, you hope that we as Democrats take away some lessons.

We did a lot right.

I think we made a couple, almost managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

I think the Defund the Police narrative is a dumb narrative.

I hope we'd put it to bed.

Police reform is absolutely something we should look at, but defund the police was a, it really almost costs us.

The other learning here is that we need to start

reducing

minority groups to one group and assume that they all are the same individuals.

We don't do it with white people.

We could talk about white suburbans, white college educators.

We segment them.

And the Latino vote in southern Florida is much different than the Latino vote in Texas and California.

And

we need to just get smarter around realizing that cohorts, even in marketing, we've gone from, we've moved on from demographic targeting.

We go to behavioral targeting because an individual, whether they're white, black, or brown, who behaves a certain way is more like the other cohort that behaves a certain way.

So

I hope that we take away, we move away from distilling these groups, especially the ones.

I mean, you know what was fascinating here?

Neither party can win that way.

I have all the blacks.

I have all the Latinas.

It's just fascinating.

If you look at whites, they have voted for for the Republican nominee for president to the tune of between 56 and 58 percent.

They have not changed.

People are not changing.

America is changing.

Yeah.

It's incredible how consistent

voters have been.

They didn't come through the white.

Yeah, they just, and they never do.

Or they always do.

Think about it.

All the money, all the policies, all the distinctions.

And it's between 56 and 58 percent of whites

who vote for the Republican.

Jesus, white.

And so it really is.

Demographics are destiny.

And

this is what's happening here.

And we need to, as Democrats, be smarter.

It was interesting.

There was a shift of men, though.

White men shifted a little bit more than women did, which was interesting.

We'll see.

We don't have all the numbers yet, so we're not going to know what's going on.

But it was not white ladies who brought us home on this one.

The fail has to be Alex Trebek.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, that is that is upsetting.

Do you know they're still broadcasting his Jeopardies through December 25th?

Well, he taped them

last week, right?

Oh, God.

What a great one.

20 years old.

Great life, though.

Celebration.

Another person.

Quiet, decent.

He said he loved it.

He loved promoting that intelligence was cool.

That's what he loved about.

But you know what?

Alex Drebeck is back.

The idea is behind him, and he was just really, what a, just an enjoyable person to have in a way, in a place that's really important.

I think it affects a lot more people, Jeopardy, than a lot more people across the country watch that show thank you.

Not a bad way to go, though, right?

Wouldn't you like to be doing,

you drop it your podcast mic.

Oh, God.

Boom.

There we go.

Kara, are you sleeping?

I had a stroke, you know.

I could, that could happen.

What would you do?

What would you call the police?

What would you do?

What would I do?

Kara, what do you do?

I call your brother right away.

Josh.

I call him right away.

You kidding?

All right.

I get asked for back.

What fail is yours?

You can't insult Twitter.

They did a good job.

Who are you going to insult?

I'm a shareholder in Twitter.

No, I already have my loss.

My loss was Democrats.

I hope we learned from our mistakes coming out of the election.

All right.

Okay.

That's a good fail.

But otherwise, it's been, you know what?

Honestly, I'll give you a win.

Who did Giuliani at that four seasons landscaping?

Oh, it's that one.

I kept pinching myself.

Like, is this a joke?

I love it so much.

The crematorium, the porn thing.

It's just

so

from the risk diner.

Should we get him on here?

No, he's great.

Rudy?

I don't think he'd come on.

I'd be friendly to him.

Are you kidding?

He'd show up to an opening of a door.

Come on.

He would totally come on.

I just don't think we want it.

We got to get Rudy on.

We got to get Rudy.

We got to yell at us and whatever.

Oh, my God.

Now we can't.

America's Mayor, the 9-11 of Mayors.

Oh, my God.

Terrible.

That was terrible.

That was terrible, but I'm going to let it go.

All right.

What a difference a week wake makes.

As always, email us at pivot at Voxel.

America again.

America.

America, America.

He's not knocking at the door.

Oh, it's immigrants.

Oh, it's competence.

It's Jesus.

Love the poor.

We're back.

Jesus is no longer throwing up in his mouth.

It's going to be a hard road.

We still have COVID.

There's all kinds of economic issues.

I'm not doing the

little end zone dance that Scott is doing right now unnecessarily.

But we are glad that things feel a little better.

The vaccine is here.

Even though we've all been screaming at each other and are not all to blame as much, honestly.

No, we're not.

But the fact of the matter matter is, we're going to try to get along.

We're going to try.

I'm going to have Thanksgiving with my mom.

I can't believe it.

But I'm going to try.

Gonna try.

Gonna try.

The only issue I have is she's got to pronounce Kamala Harris's name correctly or she can't enter the house or have any turkey.

I don't mind her politics because she's got great fashion.

And I think that's more important.

She doesn't have politics.

She has Fox News, whatever they say.

Anyway, read us out, Scott.

Today's episode was produced by Rebecca Sinanas.

Fernando Finite engineered this episode.

Our executive producer is Erica Anderson.

Special thanks to Hannah Rosen and Drew Burroughs.

If you like what you heard, please subscribe or download.

All right, Cara.

Big sigh of relief.

America again,

we're almost done gloating.

I'm going to

a maximum of 47 months of gloating.

And I just want to say I hate.

We back, Europe.

We back.

I hate my life so much less today.

Thank you.

Thank you to the 74 million Americans and all the 75 men and all the good people.

And thank you to the other side for making it much easier.

As fucked up as we are, oh my god, you made it much easier.

Oh, that was awful.

That was very partisan.

Anyways, have a good rest of the week.

We love you, America.

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