DOJ/Google showdown, RIP Quibi, and a listener mail question on Airbnb IPO

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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.
I'm sorry, Kara, just a second. I need to tuck in my shirt.

Hold on, just one second. You know what? Listen, tuck you.
Listen to me. Go tuck yourself.
It just goes on and on and on.

Go tuck with me. This is a story.
And this is so Scott Galloway. We should have music.
What's up, everybody? I'm not sure I like that. A few people have called me and said that.
But you know what?

Really? This is a story that keeps growing. Oh, my God.
Lily, did you just say that? Listen, first of all, let's fill the people in on why, once again, we're talking about the nether regions of men.

You know what? I have a friend who literally saw the second person. It was Jeff Toobin.
No, they had a region. I had a friend.
It's a woman who had a story who saw it, heard it. And

then there's their second one. And all she texted me was men.
That's all she texted me. Okay, apropos of nothing.

How do you think we should be dealing with workplace sexual harassment happening on Zoom? New Yorker writer and CNN analyst Jeffrey Toobin was caught exposing himself in a Zoom meeting.

And then, of course, the internet exploded when we saw a video of Rudy Giuliani, America's mayor uh lying on a bed uh in a in a in a scene from the new barat uh movie coming out where he was impersonating a luge driver okay with his hand on the stick

oh

what do you think scott here you go this is your like there's two there's if third we'll make it

first off i'm not sure i appreciate that somehow you provide you acknowledged i'm just wondering

this is literally the only thing you've ever acknowledged i have domain expertise in.

You're master of the domain. Yes, you are.
Oh, my God. You brought it to the Seinfeld joke.
All right. I do.

I don't know if I'm qualified for this, but you just knew, first off, okay, men, right?

Your comment was actually quite insightful because when you heard about this, you just knew it was a dude, right?

Well, hello. You just knew it was a dude.
Which one? Two. Well, yes, right? Yeah.

It's funny you say that you use the word sexual harassment when it comes to Jeffrey Tubin. I'm like, it might be workplace indecency.
I'm not sure it's sexual harassment.

It's definitely unfortunate for those who watch Bogota.

My first kind of notion was,

and I was wondering if I was struck by that term hypothy, where I'm providing more sympathy to men than they deserve. Yeah.

Which, by the way, is a term I want to give correct attribution to

Kate Mann.

Okay.

Anyways, I think it's a neat term, hypothy.

But

first off, I immediately thought, okay, what is the New Yorker doing?

If a webcam model, they constantly defend sex workers, but if a webcam model broke out a New Yorker, to me, that's more like sexual workplace obscenity. But the notion that

it's like someone in their office getting caught doing that.

Here's what it, at the end of the day, is we have a sudden and unexpected collision of work and home that we weren't expecting. And here's the thing, okay?

As far as I know, as far as I know, the majority of men masturbate. As far as I know, the majority of men who masturbate do it to some sort of visual aid.

And the majority of men who masturbate with a visual aid use a computer or some sort of device.

And unfortunately, all of those things have collided at a velocity we weren't expecting with work.

And I just, were people traumatized? I feel like he's played a pretty big price here.

I'm talking about the price here, but I'm talking about like what this is like, it's just a fast, it's like, I'm amazed it didn't happen.

How did it take so so long?

How did it take so long?

You had the ultimate line here. There by the grace of Zoom, go we.
That was perfect. He is, I don't know, the Christopher Columbus of workplace masturbation.
I don't know what you want to call it.

He has broken new ground. As a matter of fact, I heard he's up for a pull it, sir.
I've heard he's up for a pull it, sir. Oh, my God.
I couldn't do this all morning.

No, let me just say, you say, I can't believe you think it's me. And then you have 90 jokes.
Let me just say, let me just give that, point that out to people.

It's like, how could you think I would know anything about this? Pull it, sir. Get it, huh? Come on, you have to hand it to him.
Master of his domain. I think you're being heavy-handed.

I think you're being heavy-handed. How long do you want to go? Seriously, I can do this all morning.
I'm faux bullshit about the fact that you are not fully baked on this topic.

Let me just say, fully fully baked. Fully baked.

So, anyway, so you gotta have your hobbies, Kara. You gotta have your hobbies.
Now, Giuliani is another

situation. You can get caught on video.
Don't just have a A different situation.

We need to slow this down a little bit. We need to slow roll this.
What is your view on the tubin incident? Sorry, the tubin? I think it creates a new verb that I'm enjoying.

Here's the deal. It's embarrassment.

It's hard to recover from these kind of embarrassments. It's like people being caught with their pain.

It's happened in lots of analog ways, I think. You know, people being caught having sex in the work bathroom or whatever.

It's just that it creates, it's a Zoom situation with all your colleagues. It creates a whole different, it's a whole different level of a workplace indecency embarrassment, which has happened.

Like, look, it just has.

I mean, if you live, work in a newspaper, you've heard stories of people having sex in the bathroom, this and that, whatever. You know, everybody's got these things going.
It's not great.

I'm not sure how you return to, say, the airwaves after this one.

You know, Hugh Grant certainly did. Others did.
You know what I mean? Like when he had that whole thing with

the prostitutes and stuff like that. So people return.
it's just now

now there's just that it's just you're it's unfortunate what do you think the appropriate return and then it became a new

twitter

um

i think for the other workers it was the right to suspend him for a little while yeah probably it's probably you know it was he shouldn't have been having doing it during a during a workplace interaction that it was bad judgment which is what he said it was a word he was in the middle of like right now you started matching i would have a problem with that like it's like bad judgment even I've been freaked out by that I know exactly think about it so think about it that's all I'm saying so for every for everyone involved it's not great uh the the let's move to the Giuliani thing it's a really interesting first of all there's the spurat movie looks fantastic this is Sasha Baron Cohen who's just killing it on every aspect

and he's the one that dressed up in a Trump costume at one of the conservative events and so I think it was CPAC and and and then he's got giuliani he always manages to catch someone he's he's actually caught trump and and sort of zing them.

And I love this kind of pranking. I do.

But this one seems really icky and menacing, actually.

And of course, Giuliani is saying he was lying down in a bedroom with a young girl after being invited there after a flattering interview to tuck in his shirt because the

lavalier came was taken out. I don't even understand that.

I guess it went down his front shirt and he was talking. That's his excuse.
I don't know. I just feel like...
you don't understand it because it's bullshit. It's bullshit.
You don't lie down.

I have been in lavalier incidents with many people, and they do not. I've not had one of them lie down.

And I've been in lavaliers with people in hotel rooms where we're doing tapings, and no one has ever done that in the history of my lavalier.

So it's weird. It was weird.
And I think he was touching himself. That's what I think he was doing.

But I don't know. Who knows if he says that's what he says.

And so it's in, I don't know, I don't know if it'll matter because he's sort of been on the downward slide of weirdness and from his, you know, America's mayor to this.

And, you know, the fact that I think the problem is, is he's such a close advisor to President Trump that you're sort of, if you work for, speaking of workplace, President Trump, to have this, you know, Randy old goat running around, you know, doing weird things.

And I think the one thing people pointed out is it was so easy for Barat, this guy, to get him. Like Russians, the Russian intelligence must be like fantastic.

Like, this is like the easiest mark in town. And so, that's that, that's the area that I'm like, wow, it's absolutely true.
This guy is like a walking, talking,

you know, useful idiot, essentially.

I mean, I had a, well, I'm curious if you went through the same kind of emotional role that I went through. The first thing was, I can't stand Rody Giuliani, and I really like Sasha Baron Khan.

So I immediately thought it was great and funny and couldn't wait to see it. And then my next emotion was,

you know, when you start,

this was entrapment. This was leading someone to a room under a false pretense with hidden cameras, and it's a 70-plus-year-old man.
Yeah.

And leading him to a place that was, that was very humiliating and embarrassing. And he took the bait.
And I think, you know, the big loser here is America.

When we start doing that to each other for profit, despite how despicable the person on the other end is, he was the mayor of the largest city in America. It just makes us look terrible.

It makes us look terrible. And it was for profit at someone else's expense.
And even if you don't like that person, it does reveal something I think uncomfortable and unhealthy about our society.

I get that, except this is a guy who spent the last few weeks doing the same thing. Then my next emotion, my next emotion

is that this is a guy who is trying to entrap the children of his political enemies and is spending time overseas in Eastern Europe.

And if he is this dumb and naive to what is an age-old method of the KGB, which is the honeypot,

where you just

use a young woman to put you in a compromising position,

he really doesn't have the faculties or the skills or the discipline or the judgment to be in any way

working anywhere near the White House. And it reflects incredibly poorly on him.
And again, nobody, the White House,

greatness is in the agency of others, and idiocy and incompetence is in the agency of others. Look at who this White House surrounds himself with.
But the whole thing, it started for me.

It started like funny brat. I got to see that.
Oh, good, good for them. I can't stand Mayor Giuliani.
And then the more I thought about it, I thought, you know, this just isn't good for America.

This is, there's just something very unsuccessful. You know, Rudy Julian hasn't been good for America for a long time.
Well, yeah, I agreed. I don't know.

I feel like in this case, especially what he's been doing the past week, which I, you know, whatever is happening with his hard drive and trying to expose pictures of a guy who has a drug addiction with his pictures, just

couldn't happen to a nicer guy. Let me just say, tuck him.
Tuck him. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.
Tuck him. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

It's just too much. It's too much, too much what he's been doing.
And I get that. I get you're right.
It's bad for America. It's stupid.
But this is, again, an age-old thing, a honeypot thing.

And he has too close proximity to the President of the United States for this to be just okay. And feeling bad for him.
He should be never allowed in the White House. I feel bad for him.

I feel bad for America. And I worry that this is going to become standard practice for different movies and different versions of jackass.
Barat's done it before. He did it with, if you remember,

if they start moving down the food chain and move to 70 plus year old elected representatives everywhere and start pulling shit like this, I don't know. I just don't know if that's healthy.

The fact that they don't know it's Barat, that to me is just amazing.

Who doesn't recognize them? I know. When he was like in the house with all those people, I was sort of like, God, do you have any? And what is your information, Diet?

This guy is so ridiculous.

Anyway. And by the way, that's not the most disturbing thing about the movie.
It's supposed to be most disturbing thing about the movie. It's just how ridiculously fucking racist our nation still is.

Yes, that is. That's why

I think he is a real.

His stocks got you want to talk about, we said, and by the way, who was our loser on Monday or Tuesday? Who was our loser? Who? Who was it? Our loser.

You're really not investing in this relationship. My loss.

My loss, I said that no political figure had fallen further faster than Rudy Giuliani. You did.

We did. I know.

Let's find out. And by the way, I think a person's stock who's increased more than almost anybody is Sasha Baron Cohen.
He's gone from kind of.

He's already been wise on issues around big tech companies, which brings us to our big story. Yep, good segue.

The Department of Justice filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google, which is a long time incoming, a 57-page filings as the company has violated a series of federal laws to protect their monopoly on search and advertising.

They accuse Google of locking up deals with giant partners like Apple, which has been out in the open for a very long time, making it impossible for other companies to compete.

As a reminder, Google has about 80% market share in this space. The DOJ, in the United States,

elsewhere it's higher. The DOJ is joined by 11 state attorneys generals.
There's issues around this, which we'll talk about.

Senator Elizabeth Warren, who has been very vocal about the breakup of big tech, said in a tweet that the DOJ should have gone even even further in their lawsuit.

I actually recall him saying the same about other tech companies, too. But it's a start.
So, Scott, any surprises? What do you think?

They get kudos for the narrowness of it, because the narrowness increases the likelihood that the punch will land. It's interesting.
They're starting around.

It definitely has echoes of the DOJ case against Microsoft 20 years ago, and that is they're kind of going after their bundling.

And that is, Microsoft used to bundle Explorer an office with computer hardware manufacturers and demand that that was bundled onto every Dell computer or what have you.

And Google has been paying people a lot of money, whether it's Apple or even like Mozilla. Mozilla could get big time hurt by this.

Mozilla gets about $450 million by making Google the default search engine.

And their view is making it the default search engine everywhere has given them a market share and the ability to pay more than maybe the economic terms.

So why would Google pay Apple five or six billion dollars a year to be the default search engine, even when that may not even economically make sense for Google?

It creates so much market share and so much momentum that nobody ever has the economic incentive or an economic opening to create a competitive product.

Just so you're aware, there are other choices, but they are the default. There's, I think, Yahoo is there, MSN might be there.
I haven't even looked in years, but they are essentially the default.

And of course, you have talked about Apple doing its own search engine, which would, of course, also bring possible antitrust actions.

So it's a really difficult thing because some of these businesses like search and advertising do coalesce around one or two people, companies, excuse me, not people.

And so, you know, it is a very

controlling shareholders in both those cases. Yeah, exactly.

But this idea of how we get to some sort of innovation in this area is difficult to think about. Like, what are the reliefs here?

It's hard to think of remedies. The things they could do, not be the default.
Who gets to be the default? Who gets to pick and choose winners here? The government?

you know it's kind of an interesting problem of what the remedies would be so i think that's one thing two i i wrote a column in the times talking about that this is you know this had been going on you know the ftc back in 2013 and and before that that the staff of the federal trade commission recommended this

this exact thing when it was less powerful when it was not did not have 80 percent but had a very large percent of the market um and the ftc uh commissioners rejected it, rejected doing this and taking any action and asked Google to make some, you know, you know, cosmetic changes really around the edges.

And here we are, you know, 10 years later. So that's one is that the fact that this has taken so long for the company that you would have gone for first, which was Google.

But it also sort of begs the question of where is Facebook in this advertising lawsuit? Because Facebook is the other company that has the,

you know, Google point right at Facebook if they're not going after Facebook. That's one thing.
Two, there's other, many other things that need to be done at the same time.

And it would be nice if this was coordinated in some fashion because it's not one company like Microsoft when it was very easy to think of Microsoft as the Darth Vader of all this.

This is systemic. This is a systemic problem that this government is not coordinating on

across the

many remedies they have.

And then the other thing that really did strike me was that

they didn't include all the states, which I thought, you know, in the Microsoft trial, there were 20 states involved. And the states they picked were

very Trump-friendly states. And so that's my worry.
It's that it's not going to be coordinated across states, across government stuff.

And it's because Bill Barr, credit to Bill Barr for finally getting this through. A lot of his prosecutors didn't want to go yet, which, you know, people can be too cautious.

So I worry about the whole thing not being enough and being a slap on the wrist, and then everybody moves on to the same exact situation. Aaron Powell, Jr.: Well, that's the fear.

The fear is that, in exchange, that an October surprise was more important than a legitimate, you know,

high-tensile strength case.

But

it's narrow. It's 14 states, but all this, actually, it can expand.
The states can take up their own issues around anti-competitive practice and focus on

the ad market where Google is anti-competitive, maps where Google is anti-competitive. It doesn't mean they're not going to go there.
They're about to start.

One of the greatest tools or weapons that the federal government has is discovery. They can begin now asking for documents and

they can go where this takes them. But I think this is actually.
I think Google's been preparing for this for decades. So they gave them so much.

They are so ready for this. And I bet there aren't that.
Google's been very careful for a long time. They've been knowing this is coming for a long, long time.

And I know inside that they really do are very careful what they say in um inside of uh inside of the company what they send to each other what they put in notes and so I think it's going to be very difficult and then the issue is who's going to be the search competitor who duck duck oh who the search competitor the search competitor should be a recently spun YouTube that overnight responsible for its own sharepress launches its own search engine I think it's far too late I think it's one of the things that I mean I had an Tim Wu and I argued on it but then Jamil Jaffer came onto my side which is interesting because this it what to do is, I think the problem with what to do is that it finally, it's good that they finally did it, but is it too late?

And what is the remedy? And that's going to be a really interesting question.

And I think it'll be interesting if Biden wins, if this continues in this fashion or if they shift it, whoever the Attorney General is

shifts it around.

Because actually, no matter who wins, it looks like Bill Barr is not going to be there because he wouldn't prosecute Hillary Clinton, et cetera, and Joe Biden.

The same thing last night with

this weird announcement by, I got to say, the DNI,

whatever, the national security advisor to President Trump, the, what's his name, Ratcliffe, really is a political hack.

And he, you know, he's like making, like, that Iran was trying to hurt President Trump.

These countries, and then the poor FBI director had to just sit there, like, why are we making this ridiculous politically motivated announcement?

These countries are hurting our country in order to create distrust around the election.

And are they just magnifying it? And of course he focused on Trump, like, oh, they're trying to get Trump. I'm like, the whole, most of it has been aimed at Democrats by Hillary Clinton, et cetera.

It was politicized, but they did say your vote counts. And I mean, a lot of this, they were hoping, Trump has been hoping for the same sort of October surprise

that James Comey, the former FDI director, handed him. And that is, James Comey did it for different reasons.
I don't think he's corrupt.

I think he's just such a radical narcissist that he had some vision of him being so impartial that the cameras would love him if he decided to release this memo.

And Trump was hoping for the same sort of October surprise, and the best he got was them to say, okay, there is interference.

But

I forget the individual's name, did say,

Ray, he did say, look, your vote count.

It says, the whole thing, anytime you deal with these individuals, you feel sorry for them because they're trying to do their job.

And the only way they can do their job is to maintain their job, which means giving up all integrity and an oath of fidelity. And the whole thing just makes you want to shower.
Or let me put it.

You know what it does?

Ideally, it makes you want to vote. And that's the good news, is over 40 million people have voted.
More people in Texas have already voted than voted for Trump in 2016.

So hopefully this is just another point of motivation for. We'll see.

I found it to be like Chris Race tried to say almost nothing because he was correctly saying we're trying to protect elections.

John Ratcliffe, literally over the past two, three weeks, over the past weeks, he's the director of national intelligence, really is a hack. He's a political hack who

it is astonishing how much he's trying to use this

for Trump's own aims. And, you know, you contrast that.
There's some other people in the administration

who

the guy who's the head of national security is going around the country to swing states now, like talking about these issues. All right.
It's just enough.

It's enough with the politicization of things that shouldn't be politicized. And you're right.
Voting is the only way out of here. But we'll see what happens with the antitrust.

Give me one. What do you think is going to happen with this antitrust situation if Biden gets in? Oh, Biden will pick it up.

This is narrow enough where they can take the ball, and even if they don't like the ball, they'll dust it off and run with it. And it might go,

you know, this is a long time coming. I think they're smart not to try and have this big grand bargain.
I think they'll find stuff in Discovery that'll help shape the next day.

It's coming against Facebook. Google is probably the right place to start.

Who's next? It is the right place to start.

It'll probably be Facebook next. Yeah.
It'll probably be Facebook. Because there's a lot of consumer sentiment to support or ill will towards Facebook to support, and they have two-thirds of social.

It just makes, I think that's the next place. Yeah, probably through the FTC.
Yeah. I think funding of the FTC would be the thing I would like to see next.

Well, you know, one of the most exciting strategies for unlocking growth, and you always like to think about revenue upside, is to go industry by industry and oxygenate those industries.

And not only that, to look at antitrust not as a punishment, but as a reward. Well done, John.
You're trying to sell. And when I am head of the internet, I will try to sell that as you as my deputy.

General Consulate of the Internet. Let me say, you would be my deputy, and then you would have a Zoom problem, and I'd have to fire you spectacularly.

It's going to be great. That's not my brand.

Yeah, okay. Oh, now you don't want to work for the federal government, Scott.

The feds? Yeah.

Just the facts, man. Just the facts.
All right. Scott, let's go to a quick break.
When we're back, we'll talk about the fall of Quibi and a listener mail question.

Support for the show comes from Odo. Running a business is hard enough, and you don't need to make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other.

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That's odoo.com.

Support for the show comes from Odo. Running a business is hard enough, and you don't need to make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other.

One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting.

Before you know it, you find yourself drowning in software and processes instead of focusing on what matters, growing your business. This is where Odo comes in.

It's the only business software you'll ever need. Odo is an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that handles everything.
That means CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, and more.

No more app overload, no more juggling logins, just one seamless system that makes work easier. And the best part is that Odo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost.

It's built to grow with your business, whether you're just starting out or you're already scaling up. Plus, it's easy to use, customizable, and designed to streamline every process.

It's time to put the clutter aside and focus on what really matters, running your business. Thousands of businesses have made the switch, so why not you? Try Odo for free at odoo.com.
That's odoo.com.

And we're back, Scott.

Something that you predicted, we've talked about. After barely six months, Quibi, the short-form video app, is shutting down.

Who could have seen that coming? You did. Would you like to take a battle? Everybody says

hindsight is 2020. I got a call from the CFO of Quibi before it even launched and said, you have to stop dancing on our grave before we've even been birthed.
I thought this made

absolutely no sense before it even launched. Everyone's saying

before

it even launched.

I wrote a blog post on No Marism Else called Four Weddings and a Funeral, and I said, basically, Quibby is going to be stillborn. This is the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

First off, what we really. I don't know why you thought it was stupid.
Go tell me. Okay, a couple, this is what we need.

A couple of sextagenarians telling millennials what UI UX they need to interact with with media. They don't even understand what media does.

That is just so. Also, great companies start small, they validate a concept, and then they almost always pivot to something that's working.

This was, we're going to start with a billion and a half dollars. Yeah, it was a little loud.

If you look at media consumption, it barbells. It's either 30, 10 to 30 second TikTok videos or it's an hour-long mindhunters.
There was no evidence that people wanted a five-minute video.

It just, everything about nothing. And also, just in terms of just

sheer fucking math, Apple is providing, Apple is providing a billion dollars worth of content for every 80 cents a month you spend on Apple TV Plus.

And Quibby came in to a howitzer fight with a squirt gun and said, I know we're such geniuses, we'll figure out a way to charge you $4 to $5 a month for a billion dollars in content.

It was a terrible value proposition, a terrible strategy with management that had absolutely no concept of what their target audience wanted.

It just, and even at South by Southwest, I went to hear Meg Women, and her strategy was, we're bringing together the best of the Bay Area and Los Angeles. I'm like, what is that?

An In-N-Out burger on sourdough? What does that even mean?

That is what that is. That would have been a hit.
That sounds pretty good. That sounds pretty good.
That sounds delicious. There's our business.
Now, that's a business. It's a winner.

So it could be wasn't short form video. It was short form business.
I mean, it's hard to imagine. Even WeWork at its peak didn't burn through $2 billion

in less than six months. And now the lesson.
I thought Hollywood was like lining up to do those deals. You know, Vox Media had one too.
I think they did. I don't know.
Corner Media invested in it.

But the good news is, the good news is, especially when you're 69, the best thing is an entrepreneur is success. The second best thing is to fail fast.

And I always say to people when their businesses just crash fast, I'm like, this is a blessing. I took 10 years to fail at Red Envelope.

That is the worst professional experience I had, not because the experience itself was that bad, but because it took place over a decade.

And

the only truly finite resource is time, right? And so what if 69-year-old Jeffrey Katzenberg, what if it had taken taken him 11 years to figure out this thing didn't work? So

to a certain extent, I think it's a good thing they failed this fast, but this business is a mix of hubris, a mix of

I find the whole thing is going to be a fascinating case study, but rest in peace, Quibby, we barely knew ye.

Typically tombstones that

go from like 2020 to 2020 are very sad. This one is not that sad.
This was predictable. So they talked about returning money to their shareholders, some of the money.
I think there's a billion.

There's some money left that's going back to shareholders.

They tried to sell it. How do you think those meetings went?

Well, you know what? The indication of the fact that the market may crash here is that supposedly, supposedly, they were entertaining serious discussions about selling it to a SPAC.

And I do think to their credit

SPAC.

Keep in mind, that's how ridiculous the market has gotten for SPACs. By the way,

I have received in the last five business days, three calls to either invest invest in or go on the board of a SPAC. SPACs are so out of control right now.

My ex called me, should I invest in SPAC? I'm like, no, no, you cannot. No.

Megan, how is Megan? Anyways, she's good. So to their credit, like Meg Whitman and Jeffrey Katzenberg are both class acts.

And something that I do think is a class move when you're an entrepreneur, always save enough money.

So you can pay your payroll taxes, be generous with severance, and close the company down responsibly. Because the real rookie move that a lot of young entrepreneurs make

they literally crash into a wall. They enter into consensual hallucination that we'll figure it out.
We're having discussions. They don't want those stories.
They don't want those stories.

But that's the class move. That is, quite frankly, the benefit of having senior citizens as the founders here is they're like, no.
Many times you're going to call them old.

Well, who would you pick to a meeting? I had that issue with Jeffrey when he brought me the idea. We were having breakfast in Los Angeles.

I'm like, why do you think you know what young people want to do? Start a business.

Start a business in Life Alert

or in cruise ships or something. Yeah.

Or run for president. Do it every day.

Two things. Run for president.
Two things. What happens to all this content? Where does it go? Does it just not happen? What happens to it? Do we really care?

Does anyone really care with Chrissy Tate and his Judge Judy goes? Do we really care? All right. And I'm not sure.
It wasn't bad.

I think the agreement was not bad. The agreement.
They get to take it back. They get to get it back.

Yeah, I think the content reverts to the owners, but everyone talks as if the content - you couldn't get ⁇ 'cause they got like 17,000 people to agree to pay five bucks a month for this thing.

So clearly, the content, quite frankly, just doesn't have that much value. So the notion that it's going to be a big sale.
There is too much of other good stuff. You're right.

For a lot less money, for a lot less money, if no money at all, kind of thing, which is really interesting. And also, you can just like take, you know, it's so interesting.

Speaking of which, very briefly, you should talk about what's going on with TikTok and the Trump administration. I think they have until mid-November, at least.

But, you know, they're just chugging along doing kind of interesting content. Like people are doing, and they've just removed QAnon from it very quickly

and stuff like that this week. And QAnon and white supremacists, they've clamped down on that.
It's really interesting that that's what's really great. And of course, that's what.

gets attacked because of the Chinese ownership. But it'll be interesting to see what the next content startup is, if there's going to be one.
This has been tried a lot.

This just happens to be big numbers. Quibi is.
But

where is the next opening for content startups, if at all, speaking of large companies taking over everything? Well, that's an interesting one.

But what have the media companies that have been successful had in common? One, they figured out a way to create media inexpensively by having other people create their media.

And two, they're algorithmically driven. And so Quibi was neither of those things.
It was expensive content and the algorithm didn't seem to be offering anything that unique.

I think TikTok is just a juggernaut. But again, going back to the Trump administration, talk about a poor allocation of resources.

Nothing has happened. As it relates to the Trump administration, I don't even think this Oracle deal is going to go through.
I just think the whole thing was such a giant talk about masturbation.

This was just

I don't get it. In terms of where, now, now, and this goes back to Antitrust.
Everything's linked back to Annie Trust in my view.

All of Hollywood, this unbelievably huge, profitable industry that basically drives a ton of wealth, whether it's a gaffer, a boom,

or

producers living in the Hollywood Hills, has been featurized. It's no longer, in and among itself, a profitable business.

It's a means of a higher NPS score to differentiate another business that sells paper towels or handsets, which just kind of blows my mind.

That's interesting. Well, but think it's now an industry.

It's now an industry that should have, that has no viable new entrants because a new entrant can't come into an industry where you need an entry price of $5 billion and a willingness to lose money for a decade.

Who can do that? The answer is big tech can do that and no one else can do it. So if you create content, it's great.

But as a viable media company, there really isn't any viable media company right now.

If they're in the business of content creation, unless they've already made the jump to life speed, like Netflix, they can announce they're spending the defense budget of Canada on content because they have a stock price greater than the automobile.

I mean, the whole thing, Tim Williams. Netflix or whoever, all of the ones can suck up all the really good talent.

The best thing we could do for our economy, the best thing we could do for our economy is to have Professor Tim Wu be

special counsel to the Attorney General.

If we go through industry by industry and really look at these things and start deploying antitrust and regulation, you could oxygenate so many industries because you know what the the air above los angeles not only orange the oxygen is leaving because it's a small number of players control its own fault here for just ignoring what was happening when they had the power to do something about it i don't think they're victims by any stretch of the imagination in this what do you think they could have done

they were the way they approached tech was so uh

you know they just were just didn't approach it in the way that it needed to be approached like this was coming at them for the longest time and they had plenty of money and means to do something about it during all those years they just were like this is our great you know the whole idea right now of returning to you know as you see i just watched which is going to be great uh ma rainy's black bottom you know the press tour for it they had uh viola davis and uh george c wolf on a zoom call like it was so much less expensive it was perfectly fine discussing the movie you know what i mean like and i was like all those premieres all that ridiculous dressing up all that it's not returning like the you know they think it's going to go back like going into movie theaters, everything has changed drastically, like in a way that I think they haven't realized.

And that is something that they, I think they were

speaking of play acting, play acting the whole industry for the longest time.

And it just changed out from under them when it was so clear that it was going to, that this, that this entertainment business was going to shift drastically. They're not going back to theaters.

People are going back to theaters in a smaller way and eventually, you know, you know, much smaller, but could be better, could be a better way.

I want to to go to theaters, but I want a fully great experience because I get a pretty good experience at home. And there's never been better content.

The creators are doing great as far as I, I mean, everything I've seen on TV or movies has been like, I saw this

Sherlock Holmes

sister thing on, I think it was Netflix or Hulu, whoever it was, was fantastic. Everything is really great.

It's just that the way the system they set up there is just ridiculous on so many, I mean, it's just like now looks so so quaint at this point so we'll see so Quibby

we hardly knew ye as Scott says goodbye what's Jeff Kasenberg doing next from your perspective what do you think what would you do if you were him

he'll be an investor and go on boards I don't think he'll be I you know this is aegis I think entrepreneurship is a young man's game I started an online education company last year and I just forgot how just how ridiculously fucking hard and exhausting it is.

I think it's very difficult to start a company. I mean, there's research showing that the most successful entrepreneurs are actually in their 40s,

which quite frankly, I don't buy. I just think entrepreneurship

You have to be stupid. You have to be too crazy to know you're going to fail.

You have to have no perspective on life, so you don't want to spend any time with loved ones because the only way you can carve out a niche is to work 24 by 7, in my view.

This notion, this hallmark, this hallmark channel vision of a startup where we all have balance and find the right role for everybody. It's Vietnam.

If someone isn't adding value, you have to fire them that night. It's cycling through 50 people to get up to the right core of 15.
I mean, it is real. You did a startup.
Yeah.

These things are just exhausting.

I agree with you. I think people a little older have a little more experience not to make stupid drive-in to the wall

things. I did it in my 40s.
You're right. I think you're going to be a little bit more.
Well, that's your board, and that's maybe a couple of people on your management team.

But I still think, I think entrepreneurship is a young woman's game is a bottom. Young woman's game.
I think it's, I don't know. We'll see about that.

But in this case, they're going to go onto boards, Meg Whitman, the rest of them. Good try.
Suppose Meg Whitman is being considered for a cabinet post. Oh, sure.
She would be.

Yep, that would make sense. After her incredible run for governor, where she decided we should put up a border wall.
Oh, but wait, she has an undocumented worker for the last 30 years.

And about the moment she decided to run

for governor, she decided to fire her. Yeah, she sounds like a high-character person.
She sounds like a high-character person. All right, all right.

I think we're going to get a different Republican. What about Mitt Romney for his Secretary of State? And he doesn't have to go to a dumb dinner.
Mitt Romney is a very decent man.

Yeah, he voted for him.

I think he voted for his father. I think that's, he's not saying who he is.
He said he didn't vote for Trump, which is interesting. All these Republicans shifting over.
That's interesting. Oh, God.

You're warming my heart. I don't want to say it out loud.
I am feeling really good. Don't.
Don't feel good. It's going to be a disaster.
I interviewed Hillary Clinton yesterday.

What did she say? What was her thoughts on it? Oh, you'll hear. It's really interesting.
But I did ask her

what she would do in case of a Trump administration, and the answer you'll enjoy. You'll enjoy.
I'm going to hold it at that in any case. She has an answer.

Anyway, let's go to a listener mail question. You've got, you've got.
I can't believe I'm going to be a mailman. You do, you've got mail.

Hi, Kara and Scott. This is Jason McMillan from the Mountains of Colorado.
I appreciated the optimism about Airbnb. Kara, you're right.

Airbnb is flawless 99% of the time, which is an incredible achievement for such a seemingly risky structure.

As far as the upcoming IPO, I would love to see Airbnb offer a directed share program for their hosts. Seems like a great way to reward the folks who help build such a dynamic platform.

What do you see as the risks and rewards for offering this? Thanks, team, for trying to to keep the system honest. It's so nice from Colorado.
Colorado is a lovely place.

Talk about our great brand, Colorado, right? Yeah, exactly. Well, some of it, not all of it.
There's a lot of anti-well, lots of things in Colorado.

In any case, my favorite elected official, Senator Michael Bennett, the senior senator

Jared Paulus, an ex-internet. He's fantastic.

Governor Paulus, he's fantastic. I met him when he was selling greeting cards online.

And by the way, he was our biggest competitor. Literally, it was Pro Flowers and Red Envelope.
He goes on to be governor of fucking California out here with you. What went wrong? What went wrong?

And I didn't even have like a cool masturbation scandal to justify.

Jared was sort of this little odd duck with a little briefcase and everything else. He was great.
His parents were too hippies.

He's a new black in politics. That guy has substance.
That guy rakes some credibility.

I feel like I made him by advice. First openly gay governor, I believe.
He is, but he wasn't gay at the time. I was openly gay at the time.

But, um, but let me just say, I did, I did convince his parents to sell a company.

So it's going to be in my book and and now he's governor He got the money to do so They're great his parents were great Who started it in any case Airbnb I didn't say 99% because I think they've made a lot of stupid errors around parties and various things And and and and the way they presented themselves to cities when there was clear problems around

not no longer but this was one of their issues they didn't handle it as well as they could have but they're they've been overall compared to most companies I govern, they certainly are, they seem like geniuses.

So what do you think, Scott?

This is something that you talk about with Uber and everything else. So

I think that Brian Chesky would be open to this model. I think the difficulty is in executing it, correct? I don't know, Scott.
What do you think?

There are several tensions in our society.

A key to progress is conflict and debate. And there's been several opposing forces where the tension has been really productive in shaping our economy.
And it's government versus private sector.

It's a really unhealthy tension is fact versus fiction, where fiction has has become the new fact, and fact's been pressed out mostly by social media that wants to give fiction more oxygen at the cost of fact.

But the real tension that's gotten out of balance here is capital versus labor. And if you think about it, through the 50s and 60s, shareholder returns were awful.

And so shareholders showed up and said, we've had enough. And they started conducting activist campaigns and said, you need to tighten up the ship.
You need to stop paying your employees,

stop paying your employees as much as you're paying them.

You need to start returning more money to shareholders. And since then, the minimum wage has declined on an inflation-adjusted basis, and the SP has roared.

And basically, capital has been kicking the shit out of labor for the last 40 years. And so

I think it's dangerous to depend on the generosity of strangers and Brian Chesky, who I think might, in fact, put in place some sort of direct share program.

But we need some sort of regulation, whether it's an increase in minimum wage, an increase in the power or protection of unions, or some sort of taxation system where if a certain amount of equity or

your profits don't end up in the hands of your employees, even if you really wanted to go German, but we won't do that because anything Europe does, we assume, is socialist for some reason.

But Germany demands that a certain number of your

independent board seats or a certain number of your employees are on your board. But we need to put in place regulations and laws and a general gestalt in our society that returns more power to labor.

We have totally prioritized the consumer's king, a close second is shareholder, and a distant third is worker.

It'll be interesting to see if Branchesky does something like this because he's inclined this way. You can see he's someone who at least will entertain this when you talk about the people.

His parents are social workers. His parents are social workers.
His parents are so nice. I can't even tell you how nice his parents are.
They're lovely. Are they as nice as the Polis parents?

Let's get them all together for a brunch.

We'll get Jeffrey Katzenberg to come and talk to them about life a lot. They're lovely people, I'm just telling you.

The Paulses started that company, just so you know. Not Jared, but

he was involved. Yes, his parents out of a van.
They were hippies. And it was like, if you ever remember that show where Michael J.

Fox was on, where he was the conservative and his parents were the hippies. Yeah, that was the family ties.
That was Meredith Baxter Burney. But his father and mother started the company and

Meredith Baxter Burney out of the closet.

No, I did. I dragged her out.
No. In any case,

that was a welcome person to come into the gay world.

In any case, Brian would be open to this, I suspect. And I think they're thinking about it in the way Uber never thought about it.

I talked to Dara about this many times, and he sort of was said the right things, but didn't really mean it, I think, compared to Brian. I think Brian would think of this.

I think one of the things that he is aware of is how much difficulty there is among his super hosts and people like that who are really important to the model.

Before he was sort of more fighting city regulators and hotel industries, I think he thinks a lot about

a very unhappy group of folks who are important to his business, which are the hosts.

And so I suspect he's got to think about it. It would be really interesting if they put an employee or a host on the board.
I think that would be fascinating, one of their super hosts, someone who's,

you know, obviously inclined to like Airbnb.

But to me, I agree with you. I think the German model is

important. It's astonishing that they don't, not just one, like they have just one woman or one person of color, like a lot.
Like, so you create a board that really is truly,

you know, it's incredible. That's, it just, I think it adds to the, it creates, and it also de-escalates tensions that could happen.

And, and, and that person does, if you get the right person, takes their job seriously as that representative. And so, that would be interesting to put them on the boards.

The second is how you give, who you give people's shares to is, would be very difficult. I believe it was super difficult with

Uber drivers. It would depend if they were, you know, there was a whole employee thing that got sucked up into that.
So,

but in this case, these are not employees. They are not.
And so what do you, how do you reward them in some way? I think, I'm sure a smart lawyer could figure it out. I think they could figure it out.

Yeah.

But it also gives them a nice sheen for people looking to regulate them, for sure.

I haven't talked directly to Dara because we just interviewed him, but I've talked directly. One of the wonderful things about when I do these posts is I hear from people, including Brian.

And I think Brian is genuine that Airbnb does really, in fact, arbitrage these fallow assets, whereas Uber arbitrages an underclass. And so the two are just different companies.

One of the observations I would have or that I learned talking to Brian when I heard his background is just as in the 50s and 60s, basically managers had or CEOs had high EQ and they came out of manufacturing, then for a hot minute, they came out of general management, then for a hot minute, then marketing.

Now the kind of the core

domain expertise that funders look for

in a founding management team is technology. And I wonder if that's morphing to another

skill set, and that is UX or UI UX. If you think about Pinterest, Snap, and now Airbnb, the CEOs all come from a design background.

And I wonder if the technology is like manufacturing, hitting a limit in terms of differentiation.

And the real point of differentiation in tech is your ability to create the language of technology, and that's a superior UI, UX, and then, or UX, UI. And because Chesky came from RISD.

Yeah, he did.

Evan Spiegel was Stanford Design. Ben Silverman is also a design guy.

So I'm thinking, I mean, I'm just thinking about my own in terms of the curriculum at NYU Stern and from my own online ed thing section four. I'm thinking about what is the next wave of skills.

And I think design is actually going to be, you're going to see much, many more people with a background, a hardcore background in design in the c-suite um i don't know where his head is that but i think that airbnb

he's definitely a more a copacetic uh ceo thank you i think he's serious about trying to do something around this he is thinks about it for sure and i think he is influenced i it's really important people don't think these people have parents and stuff like that i think in his case he's very influenced by his parents um and his upbringing um and so it's going to be it's interesting and i think he's at least aware of it and let's see if he puts lip service to it or actually does but again it's so dangerous.

It's so dangerous to just wait for the innovators and the billionaires to save us, right? We need regulation. We need to recognize that as a percentage of GDP, as a percentage of GDP,

wages have never been lower. Wages have never been.
And look where that's gotten us.

It's gotten us to a point where we have to spend trillions of dollars on stimulus because 40% of America doesn't have 400 bucks and has absolutely no protective wear when a crisis hits. It's like

you pay now or you pay later, and when you pay later, you pay more. We just need to make more forward-leaning investments.
Agree.

This could be a very great opportunity for labor at this point to really jump back from this. And I think they could.
They really could. I think it really is a good example of people.

I think a politician who really does focus in on labor, like Bernie Sanders and others, I think is really

a big way. It was interesting.
I don't know if you saw AOC on

she was on Twitch. Like, she immediately attracted hundreds of thousands of users.
She was speaking about political star

among us, the game they're playing.

Her language, I think, is going to be very powerful going forward, things like that. Because it's combined with sort of a regular gal kind of thing going on.

Like, here I am playing Twitch, here I am doing this. Look, AOC is like, she pulled a Disney.
She's thinking about distribution. And the medium is the message.
And she's so smart.

She went on Twitch, gets a half a million people, and immediately signals. I mean, not only an incredible venue, but she immediately signals to the rest of the world.
It seems like such a basic

initiative and it's so smart. And you know what? No one else thought of it.
And she gets a half a million people. And what does it say? You see all this press: AOC Twitch.

AOC plus Twitch means she gets it. She would never start Quibby.
She would never start Quibi. She would never start Quibbi.
Pretty sure she's not an investor. That's kind of a prediction, Scott.

So we'll do one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions.

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That's odoo.com.

Support for the show comes from Odo. Running a business is hard enough and you don't need to make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other.

One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting.

Before you know it, you find yourself drowning in software and processes instead of focusing on what matters, growing your business. This is where Odoo comes in.

It's the only business software you'll ever need. Odo is an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that handles everything.
That means CRM, accounting, inventory, inventory, e-commerce, HR, and more.

No more app overload, no more juggling logins, just one seamless system that makes work easier. And the best part is that Odo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost.

It's built to grow with your business, whether you're just starting out or you're already scaling up. Plus, it's easy to use, customizable, and designed to streamline every process.

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Okay, Scott, we're recording on a Thursday, so we'll have to talk about the debate next week with one of our guests we're going to have.

But do you think the candidates have learned anything from the last shit show, essentially? And I want your real prediction, too.

I have no idea.

I'm less nervous. I always get, I've always been very nervous about these debates going in.

I thought Biden just has so much momentum. I worry there's

some sort of surprise coming. I think when you back

There's been a lot of surprises. They just haven't stuck.

When you back an animal into a corner, and

I think the president is facing jail time if he doesn't get re-elected. So I think he's going to ⁇ he's ⁇ he's ⁇ and he's not listening to advisors.

So I think the opportunities or the willingness or the likelihood that something ⁇ he tries something crazy are going up and up. And whether that tonight is a venue for Crazy Town, we'll see.

I think he's going to joke more. They said he's going to joke more.
He's going to be more likable. Yeah, that's likable.
I don't think his jokes work on everyone. His like stupid jokes about

love me. That's interesting.
You don't find the president likable and funny? That's a shocker.

You know the expression about Hillary Clinton, you're likable enough. He's not likable enough.
He's not even that. He's not even that.

It wasn't a joke. That wasn't a cool thing that Barack Obama did.
In any case, and Barack Obama, by the way, in his speech. He's on fire.
Oh, wow.

God, I missed him. I was like, oh, look.
Yeah, no, it was so much.

They've brought in the Marines. The Marines usually land first on the beach.
And he poked at Trump.

And he's now like, I'm just going to go for it.

Forget being the dignified Barack Obama. We were all like waiting.
We all knew he was going to show up. We all knew he was going to show up.
Well, he needs to show up.

He's like Guns N' Roses that comes out at 11 p.m. for a concert at 8.
You know, it's supposed to to start at 8.

He just built a lot of creative tension. So predictions.
Prediction.

So

I think between now and the end of the year, we're going to see two or three of the most volatile days in the history of the markets.

There are just so many canaries in the coal mine, the least of which...

is or not the least of which is these ridiculous SPACs where we've had four times the amount of capital raised

today, year to date, where they're basically betting on people's reputation and all a SPAC is and the NYSC the head of NYSC wants to

say it's different this time I would say relative okay so 50% of my friends who don't live in Florida are thinking about moving down and I'm not exaggerating 20 to 30 percent of my friends are either involved in or raising a SPAC right now.

And this has gotten totally out of hand when the markets are so horny and so frothy that they're willing to fund management teams without the benefit of a business idea.

And the markets say the market's incredible at supplying ideas and management team and things to buy when the capital is there.

And there's too much capital and it's reaching too far into the trough here to try and find shares to buy. And I think it's an indicator.

If you look at SPACs over the last 15 years, they're down on average.

Only one in three is above where it went public at. And

on average, I think they've returned negative 35%

versus the traditional IPO, which is up 35%.

So this is just, the canary here is coughing. And a big one is these SPACs.
In addition,

you look at...

the fact we're in a global pandemic, you look at the markets are at all-time highs, you look at a concentration of power, you look at Robin Hood, the fact that this ridiculous, these story stocks fueled by kids in their basements with a stimulus.

There are just so many, if the market goes down 10 or 12 percent of a day, we're going to say, well, of course it did. So anyways, my prediction,

we're going to see volatility, the likes of which we haven't seen before, sometime between now and the end of the year.

All right. Well, and plus, remember, Trump will still be president even if he loses for quite a long time.

Enough of a time.

He never quits. The thing about crises is they never come from where you're expecting.

What if all of a sudden people say, oh, oh, Biden is going to eliminate capital gains tax, he wins, and all of a sudden everyone starts selling their stock to lock in the 22.8

versus the 40 percent. I mean, you don't know what triggers it here, right? But it's like you don't know what triggers a fire, but

when you have a climate that keeps getting hotter, you have

a forest that hasn't been burned in a while, you know a fire is about to ⁇ the air is so dry right now, it's just going to take a lightning strike somewhere to really have a force fire on the markets right now.

Very interesting metaphor, lightning strike. There's still California fires, by the way, speaking of which.

I think that is a very good prediction. I think that is a very good prediction.
And I'm going to make a short one, if you don't mind. Yes, I can't wait for this.
They're about to hear that.

I hear that tone in your voice. I'm sorry, go ahead.
Here's the deal. They're about to shove through Amy Coney Barrett through the

Senate is shoving her through to become a supreme court justice

she will be the worst supreme court justice we've ever had well the good news is she'll only be around for 50 years yeah exactly let me just say that the story that that ap just uh i think it was ap that just put out about her um

her affiliation on the board for three years of a school that kept out not only gay kids but kids whose parents were gay and gay teachers and she was on the board of a school that did this she is a shameful shameful selection This is shameful over all these years, especially with two other justices talking about during it.

Now, this is a personal thing, but it's shameful that this, she didn't talk about it. She didn't have to answer questions about this, that she avoided questions.

She's a shameful person for not, at least if she has these terrible views, she should have said that. Stand on her two feet.
Yeah. Just say what you are.

And that she didn't, because she's a very smart, she's not like, you know, Clarence Thomas, who really couldn't is just not even close to her in terms of intellect, that she couldn't just honestly say what she believed is shameful.

And

shoving them through, throwing her through with this kind of information, which they, of course, they had, is just, she will be the worst Supreme Court justice in history.

And I hope I am proven wrong. Thank you.
Thank you. That was a good question.

Well, what was, I thought, one of the most telling moments of the hearings was they said, do you believe, I forget what it was, do you believe in a sexual preference?

She talked,

they presented with two kind of scientific things, and they said, do you believe that climate change is man-made?

And she said, well, you've given me two examples of clear, where there's a clear correlation, but I'm not going to take the bait and talk about something where there's a lot of political controversy.

And I'm like, there's not,

you know, if you ask 99 of 100 climate scientists, this isn't a controversy. This isn't, this is science.

We have thermometers stuck in the ocean all over the world that are registering a heating of the planet. I am not an environmentalist.

I think, you know, I'm one of these guys that thinks after our species goes out of business, the earth is going to belch for 10 years and then it's going to return to normal.

I've been shocked how fast our water and our air has returned to some sense of normalcy after a lack of commuting. So by any stretch of the imagination, I'm not an environmentalist.

But if you can't deny, or if you try to deny, or you think that that's somehow controversial, climate change, it goes, it all feeds into this.

And everyone has avoided, everyone has avoided the following.

She has said repeatedly that her work her legal work all is in service of the kingdom of god and that scares the shit out of me because maybe your god isn't my god and i i just it really to to use that as to to openly acknowledge that that is what drives you it's like oh no you're serving the constitution and the con anyway i i agree with you she

she is frightening she is right and she's going to be around

at least say who you are so we know that your feet.

Stand on your feet. And what you are

is obviously homophobic. If you served on a board like that, you are an obvious homophobe.
And that is just,

just say it. Just say what you are so I can see you.
And that's, that's what I feel about her. You know, it's on lots of issues.

But the one that really struck home that, you know, my son was like, okay, so, you know, my son's a stray kid. He's, as far as I can tell, he's a straight kid.

And he's like, that means I couldn't go to the school. I'm like, yeah, that's right.
This is, this is why elections count. So anyway, there you go.
What are you doing this week, Carib?

This week,

I'm interviewing a whole bunch of people for Sway, and I am going to watch the debates tonight and then work on some other stuff.

I'm busy all the time. I have a very angry column about Amy Coney Barrett coming.
I'll tell you that. Can't wait.
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Today's show was produced by Rebecca Sinanes.

Fran de Finite engineered this episode. Erica Anderson is Pivot's executive producer.
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