Uber threatens to shutdown app over AB5, Airbnb's surprise IPO and a listener mail question about WFH with Andrew Ross Sorkin

Support for the show comes from Saks Fifth Avenue.

Sacks Fifth Avenue makes it easy to shop for your personal style.

Follow us here, and you can invest in some new arrivals that you'll want to wear again and again, like a relaxed product blazer and Gucci loafers, which can take you from work to the weekend.

Shopping from Saks feels totally customized, from the in-store stylist to a visit to Saks.com, where they can show you things that fit your style and taste.

They'll even let you know when arrivals from your favorite designers are in, or when that Brunella Cacchinelli sweater you've been eyeing is back in stock.

So, if you're like me and you need shopping to be personalized and easy, head to Saks Fifth Avenue for the best follow rivals and style inspiration.

Support for this show comes from OnePassword.

If you're an IT or security pro, managing devices, identities, and applications can feel overwhelming and risky.

Trellica by OnePassword helps conquer SaaS sprawl and shadow IT by discovering every app your team uses, managed or not.

Take the first step to better security for your team.

Learn more at onepassword.com/slash podcast offer.

That's onepassword.com/slash podcast offer.

All lowercase.

Hi, everyone.

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

I'm Kara Swisher.

Scott is out this week.

He's actually gallivanting with David Gregory in Nantucket, if you can believe it.

I got photographs by proof last night.

It was disturbing.

And I'm joined by Andrew Ross Sorkin, who he is deeply jealous of for a number of reasons.

But I'm deeply jealous of Nantucket.

No, you aren't.

No, you are not.

You do not want to be there.

You are perfect where you are.

It is a sea of corduroy and white people.

And whale belts and white people.

It is really

sucker.

And it just says to me, someday, like, it's so flat, it's disturbing.

It's a disturbing.

It's very pretty.

It's very pretty, but you are glad to be here.

I'm glad to be here.

Anyway, Andrew, for for those who don't know, besides his fantastic hair and his Canadian citizenship, is a New York Times columnist and founder of Deal Book and, of course, a CNBC Squawk box anchor.

And he is incredibly popular with our listeners.

People are going to start believing you about this Canada thing.

I was born at Roosevelt Hospital.

Scott keeps putting this idea that you're so nice, but I said you weren't as nice as he thinks you are.

But indeed, you are very nice.

You're nicer than Scott.

That's all that matters.

I spent the day with Scott yesterday on Pivot Live.

So I've had a lot of Scott.

He was dying to talk about, he was mad because there's so much news.

And of course, there's a lot to talk about, Andrew.

Let's talk like some of the smaller stories.

Kamala Harris is Joe Biden's running mate.

And I'd love to know what you think that means for Silicon Valley and Big Business.

Secondly, the former CEO of Pinterest, Francois Bauer, who abruptly left the company in April, is suing Pinterest for allegedly firing her after she complained about sexist treatment.

I talked to her and I'm going to be writing about her in a column in the New York Times.

I'm hoping to talk to the CEO of Pinterest, Ben Silberman, too.

Apple Willingers, it's Rundle this fall, which Scott talks a lot about.

What do you think?

Start with Kamala.

What do you think going on with Kamala?

I think if you are in the world of technology, living in Silicon Valley, not only do you breathe a sigh of relief, you might have gotten up out of your chair with some kind of standing ovation because I think the chance that she goes after big tech in any meaningful way is next to nil.

Next to nil.

Now she has been calling me in four years, but I know I agree to I agree.

People think that she, because she has spoke, she spoke out against Twitter in one of the debates.

She did revenge porn stuff.

She's interested in the privacy issues.

I think she is, I think there will be action on privacy because that's something she had done as attorney general in California, not as effectively as the current one who's trying to work with it, who is much more hostile.

She may do things around the edges.

Clearly, look, she has a history.

She was a lawyer.

She was an attorney general.

These are what people do.

But in terms of the big actions, the kinds of actions that I think

some, frankly, all the way on the left and even some all the way on the right would like to see, I think are unlikely.

Yeah.

Well, what if they bring Elizabeth Warren in, say, as the head of the FTC?

Well, that gets interesting and gets interesting pretty quickly.

I'm curious actually what role Elizabeth Warren takes.

I mean, we talked about it on the last pod.

And, you know, does she have more power as a senator?

Does she have more power in the administration?

By the way, I think you're only going to give up that seat if you think that you can replace it with another another Democrat who may have similar views.

So I think there's a couple of permutations and steps that have to take place before we get there.

But yeah, if Elizabeth Warren is at the FTC,

she can do some pretty interesting things.

Yeah.

What I wonder is if they let her.

I mean, I think they're mildly interested, the Biden people, but they're definitely down the center.

You know, Heath has also expressed some problems.

And, you know, I think it's not a big issue

in the election at all.

I don't think people are thinking about everything else but big tech, although it's on their their minds.

I think it's there.

This is the kind of something that's going to be, I think, has to be sort of shoveled out by people who keep going and going and going and continue to, because I don't think you're going to get people mad at Amazon necessarily or angry, even though I think people are more irritated at Facebook, getting them really angry to take action is difficult.

It's just going to have to be, we have to not let these companies be so big.

That's really, you know, like seatbelts.

Sorry, we're not going to let this happen.

It's unsafe and stuff like that.

Well, but by the way, they can limit, look, without breaking these companies up, they can do lots lots of things.

They can effectively limit them from getting bigger.

They can limit them from buying other companies.

And once you do that, it changes the dynamic.

You know, a lot of people would argue that unto itself, going after Microsoft, even if you don't think they ultimately broke up Microsoft, that that changed the landscape of Silicon Valley and technology.

Yeah, but she's not the most aggressive one.

And she has a lot of ties to the tech industry.

She does.

She's sort of a, she's friendly-ish, I would say, very much like a lot of the people in Congress.

Although I think Nancy Pelosi is much more hostile to tech, given even though she represents San Francisco.

And a lot of these companies are there.

But I think she's, you're right.

She's, she's close to a lot of people.

Her brother-in-law, if people don't know it, Tony West, who's also mentioned as a possible person in the Biden administration, is the general counsel of Uber.

There's a lot of links.

There's a lot of, and I don't necessarily think that affects her or not, but

they're within that universe.

They're within that universe.

It's hard not to be.

And she knows, she does know everyone.

And in fact, just to finish this up, when I came, when I was at Code trying to interview Lorraine Powell Jobs,

she wanted to be interviewed with Kamala Harris.

They're very good friends, which is interesting.

She's like, can I bring a friend?

And I was like, who?

And said, Senator Harris.

I'm like, yeah, you can bring her.

So it's an interesting, it's an interesting time.

It'll be interesting to see if she does.

But people change.

People also change once they get in different positions.

Different positions.

You bet.

CEO of Pinterest.

Oh, my goodness, Francoise.

She's a big deal.

She was a big executive at Google, a big executive square, very well liked at both places.

I've been doing a lot of reporting.

And she wrote a corker of a memo about Pinterest and the

atmosphere there.

So here's the thing.

And look, you're doing the reporting on this.

I'm a spectator on this.

I have never thought of Ben Silberman and the Pinterest crew as a

Silicon Valley bro crew.

I never thought that.

And look, I'm a guy.

Maybe I misunderstood this.

I didn't think there was a lot of chest pounding and fist bumping and all of that.

Yeah, it's not that.

So, you know, reading that was powerful stuff.

It was fascinating to me,

the issues that clearly she was confronting.

Yeah.

And to me, always the question is,

you know, how much of this is a function of a terrible culture?

Is it a terrible culture?

Was there a fit issue?

Was it genuinely sexism?

And trying to, you know, unspool that and really get to the core of it, I think.

I shall unspool it, but I will say she is not without cause.

I have found, you know, it's not, it isn't a sort of chest-bumping bro culture, but it's, it is nonetheless, it's sort of the softer side of bros, but it's still bros.

You know what I mean?

And it's not, it's interesting because there's a lot of prominent women who have left that company in high positions, who left and gone elsewhere more than, you know, Google tends to keep a lot of women, which is interesting in high positions.

And

this, this company has lost a lot.

And not just women, but a number of men.

There's been a lot of movement in the executive team.

So that always signals.

Can I ask you a bro question, a valley pro

question?

You know, over the past couple of months, maybe longer now, we've had a couple of high-profile female CEOs who have been pushed out

and questions about those cultures.

And

I actually just want to hear your view of that relative to this, because I was talking to somebody last week about this and they were saying, is it a bro issue?

Is it a sexism issue?

Is it just that these companies are startups run by young people who don't know what they're doing?

Is it that they're just all growing at crazy speeds and going too fast?

Is it a combination of all of those things?

I think all of the above, a lot of the companies you're talking about, aren't actually Silicon Valley companies.

Their way bags, the wings, yes.

Wings, they're in New York.

Well, here's what I think: all of the above, all of the above, but it's really interesting.

And secondly, a lot of these, several of these companies, Away and Wing, they had sort of these lofty ideas about fairness, and they use that as part of the branding, I think.

And also, they were trying to, and they didn't walk the talk.

I think that's one of the, so they were seen as hypocritical in that regard.

And that's always a, you know, you should never, when you, Google still suffers from don't be evil, you know, that you know what I mean.

Like,

and then every time they're evil, everyone goes, they said, don't be evil.

Um, but I do think it's really interesting, you know,

it's some of its race, too, like in terms of white women running.

There's all kinds of things mixed in here.

But I do think women tend to get the gender judgment much heavier than men.

It's really, it's not just, there was another one, Carda, the woman left, and wrote a really persuasive piece about it.

Obviously, go back to Ellen Powell, who I actually did talk, I did talk to last night.

I wanted to get her take on this.

There's a genderedness to it that I think Francoise actually depicted quite well, being left out of meetings, being sidelined about where the real decisions are made.

And it tends to have not at every company, for sure.

She had a great time at Twitter.

She had a great time at Google, although she did acknowledge that there were problems there too.

But she's never seen it to this extent.

You know what I mean?

Like in one place.

And so I think this is going to be tough for Ben Silverman.

I'm going to talk to him.

So I'm going to wait to hear from him

today, hopefully, and see what he has to say.

But he does portray a softer side of these things.

And so you might be deceived.

But I think there's something quite

from what my reporting so far, there's something dysfunctional in that culture there.

Well, I'm forward to that report.

As there are in most startups, you know what I mean?

Like there's a, and when they're successful, it's like a dysfunctional campaign.

You know, when you, if Hillary Clinton had won the presidency, you wouldn't have seen all those books about how dysfunctional a campaign is.

It would have just won, you know, and by the way, the Trump campaign is dysfunctional.

The Trump White House is dysfunctional.

They just won.

You know, that's, it's, it's, it's the same thing.

All right.

Last thing, very quickly before we get to Uber, Apple introduced the Rundle.

I mean, that's, that's where everybody's going, these rundles, these bundles.

The bundles, the big, big bundle.

Yeah.

Well, you know, I'm an Apple fanboy.

Do you know that?

I, yes, I'm obsessed.

It's a problem.

It's an addiction.

I actually just bought it.

Or like Walt Mossberg was.

I just bought two new Mac Pros literally this morning.

By the way, there's a delay.

Look, I have kids and school's starting.

By the way, for those listening,

you can't get them till the middle of September at this point.

For real.

No, this is what's happening.

Well, school starts hopefully the day after Labor Day, so we can only hope.

On the bundle, I'll probably be a buyer.

I think some people would be a buyer.

Having said that, look,

if Tim Cook is listening, the Apple News Plus service is still one of the worst services around, and it pains me every day.

I used to be a subscriber to Texture

with all those magazines, the Netflix and magazines, and I loved it.

And then it came to Apple, it was bought by Apple, and then they ruined it.

So I don't know.

They're terrible at certain things.

And I don't know whether if you're interested in film or TV, I just saw the new Tom Hanks film, which was great on Apple.

I saw

The Banker, which was also spectacular.

But,

you know, if the discounts there, the other question is, are they going to make money on these things?

Because what you keep seeing them do is every year, if you buy a new device, you get a free subscription.

So is there really going to be service revenue on the other side of that?

What happens to this?

But it's been growing.

The service revenue has been growing with AutoMusic and others.

And so I think it's smart to do this.

They just have to get better at it.

I think some of their Apple TV stuff is good, but as Scott says, it's a lot of really mediocre content with huge distribution and they will go upwards as did Netflix.

And that's where Netflix

is in trouble.

Netflix still has the best content of all of them.

And, you know, Disney has a lot of old content and some good new content, but they all have to, like,

and NBC, same thing with Peacock.

I'm watching something that they bought.

from Britain called The Captive or Capture or whatever.

They've got to really, nobody is really as good as Netflix is.

They all have distribution.

And I think it's smart for them to start to bundle these things.

And then the other thing is, though, and this is the conundrum for all of them, and I'll see, it would be very interesting to see what happens with Apple, especially this fall into,

you know, what, 12 months or eight months into COVID, you know, production obviously has stopped.

We'll see whether it really restarts in the next couple of weeks.

But if it doesn't in a meaningful way, there's just not going to be a lot of fresh shows, fresh movies, fresh product come December, come January, February.

And then, you know, do you say to yourself, you know what?

I burned through everything.

I'm going to turn this thing off for a month or two and I'll see if they come back with something new later.

Yeah, that'll be interesting.

There's all kinds of, I've been talking to a lot of Hollywood people about how they're going to do this.

And some of them, they have some interesting solutions, including constant testing, but, you know, it's still going to be just like school.

You just, you never know.

Well, they're going to know.

Some of them are trying to create like the NBA bubble, but then the other, you know, some of them also could be like, you know, Major League Baseball could turn into the Marlins.

Exactly.

And these are celebrities and they don't like getting sick.

In any case, we will move on to big stories, Andrew.

Uber is threatening to shut down their app in California if California forces the company to classify drivers as employees instead of gig workers.

This week, under California's new AB5 law, the judge prohibited the rideshare company from classifying drivers as independent workers.

The order will require Uber and Lyft to provide benefits and unemployment insurance to older workers.

Both companies are appealing the order within the next 10 days.

And Uber's CEO, Dara Khosrashahi, told our friend Stephanie Ruhl on MSNBC that quote if the court doesn't reconsider uh then in california it's hard to believe we'll be able to switch our model to full-time employment quickly which means no more ubers in california now we're having uh dara on the show next week pivot live next week we're going to ask him about all this he also wrote a big piece in the new york times um saying that they're open to this kind of stuff it was probably the furthest anyone's gone on this topic uh but what do you think is this a real threat i think it's a real takeout i think it's a gutsy play and i think the customer always wins.

And so we'll see,

does the customer vote effectively in favor of Uber?

And does the customer win over the employee?

And is the employee the customer to some degree?

Because there are some employees out there or drivers, if you will, that don't want to see the service go under either, even if they're not going to get everything that they want.

And so

hard knocks.

This is what he's doing.

Now, Scott calls Uber and Dara also lipstick on cancer.

So

this is like pushing this around.

I think the idea that Dara did bring up in that piece was we do have to change the classification of workers in some way.

Now, California is taking a very strong stance as employees.

Dara Uber is going the other way.

There is a middle ground here.

What do you imagine there'll be a middle ground?

This is a law.

This is a new law in California that is going into effect.

Well, look, if the...

If the law effectively gets voted down,

which could potentially happen at some point, then you could be into a situation where you do find that middle ground.

Right now, there is no middle ground.

So you have to play, either say, I'm not doing this, or we're going to do it this way.

So I, and I, and as I said, I think the customer is going to win.

And I think the employees are going to win.

And I think the, or drivers, I should say, who are not employees, because I think that they're going to start calling their local officials saying, don't shut us down.

Don't shut us down.

I mean, look, you saw this happen, by the way.

And every, this is actually sort of, and you could argue this is the magic of what Travis thought,

despite all of the critique of Travis.

Travis's view was, get ahead of the regulators.

If you can own the market, people will love you and the regulators will

have to placate you.

They'll have to placate you.

And I think to some degree, I'm not saying that's what Darris' strategy is, but a little bit of sort of they've now gotten to some scale and size where there's a lot of damage that happens if this thing doesn't keep going.

What does Gavin Newsom do?

I mean, this is not, this is something he's talked about.

He and I have talked extensively about reclassifying workers in general.

And this was years ago.

When he was lieutenant governor, he had nothing to do.

He was able to call me a lot.

And we did talk about this idea of like, what is a new worker?

What is like, he was very obsessed with the concept.

And this was before all these controversies.

How do you, how do you, what is the pathway here for all these?

Because most people feel that gig workers were going to, are going to be, you know, I think President Obama talked about this before he left office.

Absolutely.

We've talked about this.

This is the,

but this is the big way to solve this.

The big way to solve this is that every single American has a, I'm not going to call it a a human right because maybe that goes too far, but everybody gets unemployment insurance.

Everybody gets benefits.

Everybody gets some form.

I'm not a UBI guy, but everybody gets some form of health insurance, of course.

You know, in a world where that's portable, of course, and in a world where people are going to be moving around and culturally, that seems to be the way things are headed, you need to set up a system.

Doing it piecemeal, forcing Uber to do it or a Lyft to do it in one type of industry or one kind of subset and not in another is complicated.

By the way, in California, in Hollywood, for example, and I don't know why people aren't screaming about this, look at all of the workers there who are independent contractors, who, by the way, are oftentimes working.

They may not be working 12 months a year, but they're working nine months a year.

And sometimes they're working 18 hours a day.

Journalists live in this sort of weird, freelance, independent life oftentimes.

Right.

Yes, it does affect them.

Yes, AB5 has affected them.

I know.

There was some discussion of that.

So I think it's a bigger issue, frankly, than just Uber and Lyft.

And I wish it was

not just contextualized that way, but approached that way.

Because I think what really happens is people sort of target one company or two companies that they think are rich and wealthy and whatever, but they're not really addressing the sort of larger complexity.

The argument against this.

I mean, the thing that springs to mind is that all these people like Travis got wealthy off the backs of workers.

And I agree with you.

When you got, when you paid, every time I paid $4

and they'd be like, look, you got this right, I was like, doesn't cost $4.

Somewhere someone is getting screwed or over, or it's the BC money.

And so, you know, they had, they had one argument you make is they have a business model that just doesn't work.

Sure, but I would argue that the capitalistic answer to that to some degree, though I'd like to solve it on a more organic level, is taxes, something we don't do enough of in this country when it comes to people making

what some people think of as

obscene amounts of wealth.

And so when Travis sold his shares, I pray to God he paid capital gains.

As you know, I wish the capital gains rate was higher.

You know, I prefer, I have lots of views about taxes, but I think you can, you can, there are, there are solutions on all ends of it.

You just have to think about it like that.

You can capture it at one end or you can capture it at the other end.

Right.

I guess so.

I just feel like it's, it's, it's one of these things where Silicon Valley is pushing forward business models that advantage them and not other people and are paid for.

Eventually, we pay, the taxpayer pays for these workers like right now during COVID.

And so they're offloading costs onto 100%.

But by the way, I would argue that's true of Amazon.

I'd argue that's true of Walmart.

I'd argue it's true of basically anybody who's paying minimum wage in America today.

And we have to figure this out.

It'll be interesting to see who, among the politicians, do you see anybody really thinking hard about a real solution,

not a screamy solution on either side?

Who do you imagine?

He's got my same first name, but he didn't do very well, did he?

Yes.

Oh, yang.

Yang.

What if they make, what are they going to put and put him in?

That's a great idea.

What are they going to put him in in this?

I don't know.

He wants something.

He does want something.

He's been pretty active on Twitter recently.

I'm not sure where he fits in the grand

Game of Thrones that will probably take place.

Yeah, he really is.

If in fact there's a Biden win.

I love that if he gets it.

That's right.

I love that he's aggressive about it.

I do.

And everyone's like, oh, Stacey M's and Andrews, they're asking for jobs.

I'm like, so what?

It's a big deal.

They want a job.

You know what I mean?

They want to do something and they are asking.

And I just love that they do.

I don't find that a problem at all.

It's not untoward.

I just have heard a lot of criticism of both of them for that, but I like it.

Yeah, Andrew Yang would be a really interesting person to bring forward.

Who are you like?

You spend time with so many of these people.

I do think that they think they hung a lot of these companies think they hung the moon when they're just getting a, getting a freebie.

You know what I mean?

It's sort of like people from the Midwest saying, don't give people

whether it's

welfare or food stamps or whatever form of that.

And they themselves are getting it too from the government, whether they're farmers.

You know what I mean?

Like that's everybody's getting a handout, just so you know, and whether it's a tax handout from the rich or a farming subsidy or whatever.

And so I think we have to recognize this is not a new fresh thing to be helping people and to re-characterize it as, you know, everyone deserves

not to be ruined by health care and unemployment.

And I think that maybe perhaps this COVID thing has taught people that.

Is there a politician, though, that you know, you interview so many of them constantly and I listen to so many of your great interviews.

Is there someone that you think think could, I mean, like an Andrew Yang type that's, is there anybody out of the box who's really out of the box?

I think perhaps, again, Elizabeth Warren

has the intelligence.

You know, you can say Bernie Sanders and AOC.

AOC could evolve into that, I think.

I feel like

she's so canny.

You'd imagine, of course, she sort of stakes out one side pretty strongly on the left, but she's got to be thinking, she looks like someone who could understand that this is a complex issue, right?

or katie porter there's a whole bunch of people that really if she becomes senator from california speaking of which that her name is being bandied about to replace kamala harris if they win um you know i there's a lot of people who can think hard about this issue and not immediately go to their sides right that's what happens and this is we've got to stop going to our sides on this issue and i republicans i don't know they they would like everybody to be a serf in some ways a lot of people to be serfs but they just you know elected a q anon uh person to the house that's insane insane

insane we we'll go to that later anyway andrew let's take a quick break and come back to talk about airbnb's ipo speaking of interesting new business models and bad predictions by the way and bad prediction and a listener mail question about working from home

every day millions of customers engage with ai agents like me we resolve queries fast We work 24-7 and we're helpful, knowledgeable, and empathetic.

We're built to be the voice of the brands we serve.

Sierra is the platform for building better, more human customer experiences with AI.

No hold music, no generic answers, no frustration.

Visit sierra.ai to learn more.

Support for Pivot comes from Groons.

If you've ever done a deep internet dive trying to discover different nutrition solutions, you've likely had the thought, surely there's a way to improve my skin, gut health, immunity, brain fog without offending my taste buds.

Well, there is.

It's called Groons.

Groons are a convenient, comprehensive formula packed into a daily snack pack of gummies.

It's not a multivitamin, a greens gummy, or a prebiotic.

It's all of those things and then some for a fraction of the price.

In a Groons daily snack pack, you get more than 20 vitamins and minerals, six grams of prebiotic fiber, plus more than 60 ingredients.

They include nutrient dense and whole foods, all of which will help you out in different ways.

For example, Groons has six times the gut health ingredients compared to the leading greens powders.

It contains biotin and niacinamide, which helps with thicker hair, nails, and skin health.

They also contain mushrooms, which can help with brain function.

And of course, you're probably familiar with vitamin C and how great it's for your immune system.

On top of all, groons are vegan and free of dairy, nuts, and gluten.

Get up to 52% off when you go to groons.co and use the code PIVOT.

That's G-R-U-N-S dot

using the code PIVOT for 52%

off.

Okay, we're back here with Andrew Ross Thorkin.

Okay, this may come as a surprise, but Airbnb is planning an IPO this month.

The Wall Street Journal reported the company will confidentially file with the SEC and shares could be offered by the end of the year.

The company was supposed to go public earlier this year, but those plans were halted because of the pandemic.

In the meantime, the company laid off a quarter of its staff, and Airbnb's private valuation dropped to 18 billion from 31 billion.

Now, I interviewed Brian Chesky not long ago, and he didn't rule it out this year, but he said he didn't know.

He wanted to see how things were recovering.

And things had started to recover because people were renting Airbnbs for longer.

And

the travel business part of it had really dropped off the face of the earth, but it was being replaced by other businesses still.

What do you think?

Now, talk about this prediction.

Is it a good time to go public?

People are dying for IPOs.

You know,

I don't get it.

But

as I said, I don't get this market at the moment.

So, yes, if the market stays at this sort of, you know, Dave Portney, everything goes up way, sure.

Maybe this is a great time.

Maybe it's a great time to go and get a lower valuation today,

get some cash in the door.

But again, we don't know if they're going to do it as a listing or a direct listing or they're actually going to raise cash out of it.

get in the door and then by the way the valuation if you i mean you want to believe two three four years from now, people will be going to Airbnbs the way before.

So that maybe that's a good strategy and a supply constrained IPO world, bankers and investors desperate for stuff.

But you sighed why I sighed because

you have to think between now and next and next spring or next summer is going to be a very, very

choppy world.

And, you know, the unemployment numbers are going to be real and you're going to see people out of their homes.

And it just, it could, look, it could go, it could spiral in lots of different directions.

Could it spiral upwards?

I don't understand how it could continue to spiral higher from a market perspective.

I can only hope that the economy does it, but it requires the government assistance.

It requires so many things.

So there's just too many variables for me.

Well, one argument you can make is the customers who Airbnb are not, are people with means, right?

And they're dying to get out.

Right.

They want to, they want to, or at least have, are not quite as under siege financially.

That's one argument.

There's that argument.

There's the argument that you could drive to wherever you're going.

You don't need an airplane.

I mean, yes, I can make the bullish argument.

Brian was talking about that, that people were, instead of going to, like, say you're in DC, you're going to West Virginia, you're driving there, or you're driving somewhere from California, drive to Oregon and stuff.

So they're seeing an uptick and that kind of things, which makes sense because people are desperate to get out.

100%.

But at the same time, I think that his business.

I mean, I know he thinks it's a hedge on the airline or the more, if you go on Apple Mobility and you look at that data tracking, the more people are moving, the better it is for his business.

I just, I think it's very hard to turn around and say somehow this is magic for Airbnb.

This is a magical moment for Airbnb the same way it's a magical moment for Amazon.

Right, right.

But you're right.

But I do think potentially, because a lot of people feel this is the one quality company coming out of Silicon Valley in a long time.

And that it is a business that eventually will be fine.

Now, of course, same thing with gig workers, people making money in a different way and effects on cities,

you know, especially as rents drop, I mean, which is interesting, because you have the rents dropping, which was a big argument against them, and not enough rents now.

There might be enough rentals, right?

It's a kind of an interesting

that is good for us.

So I think there's one distinction though between the Airbnbs and the Ubers of the world, because one is taking people's labor.

The other is effectively, hopefully using an asset more efficiently and actually creating potentially revenue for people who might not otherwise have it.

I've always had a huge regard for Brian and what they've created.

I just don't know in this particular environment, you know, how well, you know, how much it thrives relative to

how well it was thriving only six months ago.

They cut their airline plans.

They cut all kinds of, he talked about that, all the things they cut, the ideas that they had that they just put in the closet essentially for later.

But what do you, if you were sitting in that room and decided to do this, what is the argument?

The argument is the same argument that, you know, we were talking about Barry Diller the other day,

you know, buying a piece of MGM.

The argument is not now, when, not now, when, buy it, buy it now when everybody's fearful and

get it on the ground floor.

The valuation is significantly lower than it was.

And in the same way that you would believe, hopefully, that Vegas will be back a couple of years from now.

This will be back.

You know, by the way, not to bring it back to Barry Diller, but Barry Diller continued his investment with Expedia right after 9-11.

A lot of people thought nobody would get on airplanes again.

He basically said, I can see farther than you can.

It's a little bit of the Jeff Bezos bet, which is, I'm just going to, you know, my time horizon is going to be longer than yours.

And so if, if you could, if you could play that out, it could work for you.

I think this is what I would do.

I would be like, you know what?

We're just, we have a good product.

Again, I focus a lot on product.

And Scott and I argued this yesterday about

TikTok.

It's a great product.

You can't fight the great product.

And I think people like it.

And there's all kinds of issues off of it, including the impact on cities, which I think is eventually going to get sorted out.

These party houses, houses, which is going to get sorted out,

all problematic, but still, it seems like this is a business that makes sense on a lot of levels to a lot of people.

And people like it.

People like the product for all its different problems.

I mean, if you remember

the problems they had around orgies, if you remember.

I do.

I'll never forget.

I'll never forget.

Brian.

Go ahead.

No, I was going to make a bad joke that

only Scott Galloway would tell.

Yes.

Okay.

Go ahead.

Go for it.

I better not.

It's better not to.

Oh, come on.

Andrew, make an orgy joke, please.

Please, please.

That's for Scott.

All right, okay.

I will say this.

I've had the best answer I ever got in an interview.

I think one of them was from Brian when I interviewed him right after this, this whole orgy situation.

This has happened when people messed up.

I had an orgy in a house and made a mess of it and the woman sued and made it, just wrecked this apartment, which seems.

totally, you know, there was all kinds of issues, people dying, people putting cameras in houses.

They've had all kinds of things.

And Brian was really beside himself.

And of course, they were very young management team and stuff and so he wasn't as well trained from a PR point of view and he and I said well what are you going to do about this and he goes you know Kara they've been having orgies in hotels for years like for decades now and I was like That is the best answer to anything.

The hotel industry had, you know, had been on its high horse.

And hotels are dangerous in so many ways that don't get reported.

And so it was a great answer.

They've been having orgies in hotels for decades now.

It was a great answer.

Anyway, let us move on to listener mail.

On Monday, you asked listeners to tell us how they're feeling about working from home.

And we got a range of answers.

You have a lot of popularity, Andrew Ross Sorkin,

or Andy, as I like to call you.

A lot of people say they like the flexibility, but miss the social interaction of being at the office.

But here's one specific question.

Roll the tape.

You've got, you've got, I can't believe I'm going to be your mailman.

You've got mail.

Hi, Kara and Andrew.

My name is Matthew Kobach.

I'm a big fan of the show, and I also love that Andrew is guest hosting this week.

I'm calling you from the road and I'll explain why after I ask my question.

So the conversation around where we work is binary.

You either force people to work from home or you force people to work from the office.

But it seems to me that there is a really obvious third option that no one ever talks about.

Why not just let your employees work from wherever they want to work?

So have a dedicated office space for the employees that want to work from the office.

Let the employees that want to work from home work from home, let your employees switch between the two, or if they want to work from some third location, let them work from there as long as they have access to Wi-Fi.

And the reason I'm calling from the road is I work for a company that recently implemented this policy, and it has completely changed the way I think about the future of work.

So my question to you is, do you think more companies will do this?

Why not have the best of both worlds?

I look forward to your answer.

That is a really good question.

You know, let me just start.

Yahoo had this, and then Marissa Mayer ended it because she wanted people at the office working together.

And Basecamp had

an office.

They are a very distributed company, and he just closed it because nobody was using it as well.

But go ahead, Andrew.

So

the question that I,

look, I think that's where maybe this is headed, but I think there's so many little, not even little, big parts of this that have to get figured out first, which is we live in a world of what I describe as proximity to power so if you have an office and you're the CEO of the office and you say you're going in on Tuesdays and Thursdays guess what half the place is going to show up historically people who worked from home were not trying to climb the corporate ladder they were doing it because they cared about a balanced lifestyle they might have families whatever it is

The question is how that all works in the future.

If everybody's remote, maybe you could actually actually deal with this.

And if everybody's in an office, but once you start doing the hybrid thing, I think that it's the pull of human beings to be near each other, not only to be near each other, but to be able to whisper into the ears of their bosses is going to be so powerful that even if they wanted to be at home or wanted to be traveling or whatever they're doing,

that it's going to be complicated.

And someone's got to figure out

how to nail that.

What if there were days where the boss was in the office?

Now, it's interesting you say to parse power.

I have been working from home for 20 years now.

Like literally, I hate going to the office.

And in fact, you know, even though I'm not a Times employee, they're always like, come in their office and say hi to her.

I'm like, no, I don't want to talk to you.

Yeah, but

you've climbed the Kara Swisher corporation ladder.

Right.

Without, and you can do that if you're the principal, 100%.

Yeah, but I'm not the principal.

It's an interesting thing.

I do still maintain relationships with people in power by text or calling or stuff like that.

And so I think it's just a different way of looking at it.

i think but the but the question is whether everyone's maintaining their businesses some people are growing their business obviously during this period and like it better the question are people going to start getting promotions from home are they going to be moved into completely new roles um yeah it's one thing to sort of maintain the status quo it's another to be able to train people be able to not just create a culture because i think that actually oddly could be done remotely but to be able to create those relationships where then you genuinely trust people that you may have never even met before, yeah.

There's a couple of companies in Silicon Valley tried, like Base Camp, like WordPress, you know, have tried that.

It worked really well because people like it.

And

they do do things that bring people together.

I mean, Jason Freed was talking about having events where they're together.

I do think there's a question of creativity, but when I think of newsrooms, like look, that's where you and I have grown up.

Do you go in the office a lot?

I don't think you do.

No, I do.

I mean,

pre-COVID, I did.

I was in New York.

I was there.

I may not have been there all day because I'd be running around the city doing interviews and meetings and whatnot.

But no, I went in and it was in part, not FaceTime per se, but it was in part

relationships and people that I knew and wanted to know.

And sure, look, I also worked in the London Bureau for many, many years and you're completely remote.

So it's doable.

I don't want to say it's not, but eventually, at least in.

in the context of the journalism that I world I lived in, you always needed to come back home at some point.

And so what is home, right?

I think the tech companies are leading the way on this.

You can go or not go, and they will build you offices, just like you have studios for, you know, NBC.

And you will find it easier to not go into the studio.

You will find it easier not to eventually.

What's interesting is if there's sort of these we work, if we work comes back, this resurgence to replace offices, because I think big offices are finished.

The idea of big offices, I think smaller workspaces are

and sort of starting to experiment, which something that's that, again, tech companies have been doing for a long time with workspaces, even what desks look like.

You know, I remember at Google, there was a Quonset hut, there was an open plan, there was lockers.

They were testing everything to see what was returning.

I think the

densification idea, which was such a false euphemism for, you know, basically having everyone sit on each other's laps in an open floor plan, I think that's over.

And I think that that has been a major realization for a lot of people.

Yeah, there's no more laps sitting at Google.

And in fact, they had an issue with that in some cases.

um but the back to scott galloway humor back to scott galloway humor uh but actually it was factual um but i think what's interesting is whether they're going to be tax write-offs or employees like i'm using a home i have right now and i'm going to write it off i do all my work here and i my accountant was like you're doing all your work write off put a mortgage on it write it off and stuff like that so it'll be kind of interesting from a tax point of view but what it would the last question i have before we get to your prediction is how do you create creativity amongst and between people i mean you and i both interviewed read hastings There's a new book out called No Rules, Rules, and he has talks about talent density and things like that.

How do you create excitement between people and creativity?

Because so many businesses, you know, there's certain people, by the way, let me just, before we finish, that have to work from a place, whether it's a restaurant or it's a, whatever it is, who have jobs that you do, you have to physically go to.

And that is going to not change.

And they have a harder time of it.

And they need public transportation and support in these offices.

But a whole lot of them don't.

so how do you create creativity in that regard so at least over the past pandemic that i've lived through now and we have a team on deal book and obviously the the at times and then i i have a team that i work with at squawkbox i've actually found it's less the creativity is not necessarily happening in the zoom meeting that's not how it's happening it's happening in a lot of one-on-one emails calls slacks very idiosyncratic, trying to almost replicate the time that might have happened when you bumped into somebody.

But I'm much more, I don't know if you've had this happen to you.

Productive.

Well, A, more productive, but B, you know, in the old days, or pre-key, pre-COVID days, you know, you'd have to schedule a meeting with somebody.

If you wanted to call them, you'd send them a text, can I call you at this time?

Now it's like back to the future.

It's like 20 years ago.

I just call you.

And if you pick up, you pick up.

If you don't, you leave a message.

But there is this idiosyncratic thing.

And I think it's,

but it's on the employees and the managers to keep those relationships moving and to be almost you know extra dedicated towards having the having those you know that kind of back and forth because I think when you lose it and I've had even a couple of days here and there where I've lost it for whatever reason I've I felt the just the difference yeah well what's interesting is whether you have declines in things like sexual harassment or racial incidents and things like that what although someone just told me there's a big problem now because on slack people lose their minds and they think they're on reddit one second and they're on slack and they there's there's there's still incidents.

Yeah, I hear two things on that.

I don't know if you about you.

So the Slack thing, everybody acts like they're on Twitter and they say crazy things because it's faceless.

Right.

But then on Zoom, I have, I've heard some people say they think it's actually, it, it democratizes the room because everyone's in their own little box and it either nobody has power or I've heard the exact opposite.

And I actually recently read a

piece by a tremendous gender reporter at the New York Times talking about the opposite effect, which was that women felt that they actually had less of a seat at the table.

So,

interesting.

There'll be studies.

People are doing studies.

I just heard about a study on this, but it'll be interesting.

It's a really interesting time.

Matthew, thank you so much for that excellent question.

I do think we're going to be doing a hybrid answer to this going forward.

I think there's just no other way, especially because the fast-forward companies are doing it.

And Andrew thinks offices are coming in.

No, no,

let me take it back.

I do think it will be hybrid, but I don't think it'll just be willy-nilly hybrid.

I think it'll be,

there'll be structured to the hybrid.

You'll come in three days a week or whatever it is, and you'll be, and there will be the proximity to power issue.

You will be trying to be there when other people are there that you desperately want to suck up to.

Seal, sucking up never changes, no matter what, how much digital things happen.

Sucking up is still a long time practice of people in this country.

Anyway, Andrew, one more quick break, and we'll be back for your prediction.

Support for this show is brought to you by CVS CareMark.

CVS CareMark plays an important role in the healthcare ecosystem and provides unmatched value to those they serve.

They do this by effectively managing costs and providing the right access and personalized support.

The care, empathy, and knowledge that CVS CareMark provides its customers is proven time and time again with their 94% customer satisfaction rating.

Go to cmk.co/slash stories to learn how we help you provide the affordability, support, and access your members need.

Support for Pivot comes from groons.

If you've ever done a deep internet dive trying to discover different nutrition solutions, you've likely had the thought, surely there's a way to improve my skin, gut health, immunity, brain fog without offending my taste buds.

Well, there is.

It's called groons.

Groons are a convenient, comprehensive formula packed into a daily snack pack of gummies.

It's not a multivitamin, a greens gummy, or a prebiotic.

It's all of those things and then some for a fraction of the price.

In a Groons daily snack pack, you get more than 20 vitamins and minerals, six grams of prebiotic fiber, plus more than 60 ingredients.

They include nutrient dense and whole foods, all of which will help you out in different ways.

For example, Groons has six times the gut health ingredients compared to the leading greens powders.

It contains biotin and niacinamide, which helps with thicker hair, nails, and skin health.

They also contain mushrooms, which can help with brain function.

And of course, you're probably familiar with vitamin C and how great it's for your immune system.

On top of all, groons are vegan and free of dairy nuts and gluten.

Get up to 52% off when you go to groons.co and use the code PIVOT.

That's G-R-U-N-S dot C-O using the code PIVOT for 52%

off.

Okay, Andrew, this is usually Scott's thing, but you are in the hot seat.

What is your prediction?

What is your prediction?

Just what is your prediction?

My prediction is that Bernie Sanders will find a way into a Biden administration if he wins.

Oh, how so?

Please illuminate us some more.

You know,

this is a completely wacky prediction.

And by the way, I was wrong with the other prediction the other day.

So just like, get out your salt shaker, the biggest one you got.

Okay.

Okay.

Right.

he is he's i think he's gonna end up campaigning for biden um at this point in his career does he have more power uh as a senator or in the administration could he do you know could he could he push them into a uh

a a place that he wants to be maybe could he create more excitement about it maybe

i i frankly i'm throwing pick a place pick a place you got to pick a place like an actual role yeah yeah an actual role not just wandering around yelling at people uh that's what i was really thinking the role might be or larry david That might be the role.

That might be the role.

Larry David should have a role in the Biden administration.

But what

pick a role.

I need you to, I'm going to press you first.

Just special advisor.

Special.

That seems like.

Yeah, I think he's going to be, and then he'll be mad.

You know what I mean?

Because he'll not have real power.

That's something you give to someone you just want to put off to the side.

Special advisor to the president.

Unless you're Peter Navarro and you get to wander in and scream at the president every now and then.

Yeah, but that's that.

That's because because that's a crazy, the way that he runs those offices.

It's like.

I don't know.

These predictions, because I was trying to come up with a wild prediction.

I thought that was

in wild.

I want you to put him in a spot, just see a senior advisor.

You don't think like a cabinet position.

I mean, you know, because all the cabinet positions have been so,

I mean, I was going to say, like, if I said education, then you know who I think of now.

And then I think that that's like a role that's not.

All right.

I'm going to press you just a little bit on the screen.

Who's education secretary?

If Biden wins, I'm going to go ahead and

get a lot of Trump people who knows, they'll bring in the next gang of people they'll bring in.

But let me go through them.

Education.

Very smart.

I honestly don't know.

This one I haven't given enough thought to.

The guy who

works with Lorraine Powell Jobs, Arnie Duncan.

Oh, Arnie Duncan.

Arnie Duncan.

Very smart guy.

You think he gets it?

That's my idea.

I just said it.

Didn't he do that under Obama?

Did he do that under Obama, though?

He may have, yeah.

I just, yeah.

He's going to go back to a lot of people he's comfortable with.

Um, uh, what about uh EPA, Jay Inslee?

That's not bad.

Yeah, um,

commerce,

you know, does anybody really want to be commerce?

Because commerce is always one of those jobs that feels like, you know,

like understudy to the Treasury Secretary.

Like you wanted to be the Treasury Secretary, and then you got that, or you got National Economic Advisor.

It's like a constellation.

It's like a constant, yeah, I agree.

It feels like a consolation prize, even though actually in this day and age, Wilbur Ross has you, I don't know if he's got power, but you'd think with all of the things going on

with huawei

i can't even go on come on yeah come on he's sleeping loosey speaking of sleepy joe sleepy wilbur um uh uh i say elizabeth warren for that one how about that how do you like how do you like the treasury then treasury secretary oh they i think they'd have a hard time putting elizabeth warren i'd love to see that just for the just to watch jamie diamond's head blow off that but who should they do it who who gets the job that's a tough one you know in olden times, Cheryl Sandberg, but no longer.

She's on the outs with them.

Could it be a Wall Street person or you think a Jamie Diamond or a live faint impossible?

No.

Okay.

No, no, no, no.

That AOC's head blops off on that one.

Or Bernie Sanders.

That is a

Doug McMillan.

Oh, that's a nice choice.

He's a lovely man.

Lovely guy.

Lovely people.

And he's not sleepy at all.

That's an interesting question.

That's a good question.

Last, let me give you two more.

Housing.

Who would you want in housing right now?

That's a great question.

Oh, this is so hard.

I know.

See, start thinking about it.

It could be Edarus Circle Column.

Last one, I'm going to, well, two more.

Department of State.

Department of State.

Well,

why, you have your...

Come on.

Give it to Susan Rice.

Susan Rice.

Add her CIA.

She can do that.

Sure, but then there's going to be these crazy hearings where you're going to be hearing about this sort of like Hillary Clinton Benghazi nonsense.

Whatever.

And you think that they're going to be willing.

Got Pompeo in there.

You think they're going to be willing to suffer through that?

They didn't want to suffer through that with the vice presidential role.

Yeah.

She likes her, or else she'll be national security advisor.

Nobody should spend that.

You know what I mean?

Like, like that.

Attorney General.

Yeah.

Attorney General.

He's comfortable with her.

He likes

to be in there.

Oh.

I say Sally Yates.

Sally Yates.

She looks good.

She's been there.

She's done that.

She should be running it.

She's got a lot of

badass.

Are we giving a role to your, I don't know if he's a, is he a rival, a colleague, a peer?

Pre-Perara?

Pre-Perrara could also be Attorney General.

Yeah.

I like that Pri-Perara.

I do.

He's a funny guy.

He's great.

He would be great.

He's been, he's got a whole Twitter history now because he really goes crazy on Twitter.

It'll be interesting.

I think there'll be a lot of Republicans if he wins.

I think there'll be a lot more Republicans in the administration because they're going to want to be like, do a Gerald Ford kind of thing.

Like, let's all hold hands and stop yelling at each other and let's ignore the QAnon later.

By the way, though, you know, we have this conversation as if we're like talking about it as if as if Biden's going to win.

Hold on.

But are you looking at these crazy?

Are you looking at these betting markets?

Are you?

Because the betting markets are much tighter.

And I don't know what

to think about that.

It's going to be tight.

Tight.

It's going to be tight.

And in the Trump administration, I don't know.

It's this, his hair, his barber, you know, like he's run out of people.

They won't run out of the administrator.

It'll be filled with the people who want to be president next.

You know, you'll see the return of Nikki Haley, those kind of things, I think.

They'll come back to

the other side.

I got a prediction for you, by the way.

All right, go ahead.

Are you with your stories about Harris and Biden hating each other within three or four weeks?

Oh, yeah.

True.

Yeah.

Right?

Yeah.

I don't think they do.

No, but I'm saying that the whole issue has been that Biden supposedly wanted to have this partnership with somebody like Obama, and they really wanted to trust each other.

And you know that they're going to turn her into some kind of conniving something or other who's trying to become the president before he's even in the role.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that's Fox News.

My mother

already had the talking points of the Trump administration.

She literally typed the exact thing the Trump administration, like that.

It was astonishing to watch.

You know what I mean?

She was, of course, she's a Fox News fan, as people know.

And she literally typed exactly what the,

she, she wrote me.

I swear, it was crazy.

She wrote me,

biden won't know what hit him when she manipulated him when she this is and then the trump administration uh wrote the same things you know which is um these sort of ugly misogynistic talking points focus strictly on talking about how harris completes the radical leftist takeover of joe biden because he doesn't know uh what he's doing because he's adult it's just i was if you're a fan of

fox can you be a fan of chris wallace if you're a fan of chris wallace can you be a fan of fox

yes yes and yes

No, I'm a huge fan of Chris Wallace.

Yeah, there's a couple of people there that's he's he often goes against the grain.

That's why I was curious.

He does.

I just, I think they're so irresponsible.

Just the whole naming, though, the fact that

Tutcher

Carlson couldn't pronounce Kamala Harris was really, I mean, it's like a 10-year-old who wasn't raised right, but I don't want to even blame his parents because I'm sure they tried.

But misnaming her is just ridiculous.

Like, you don't have to like her policy.

You don't have to like her record.

You don't have to like her on a level as a politician.

But to mispronounce her name is really ridiculous.

It's vaguely, you know, it's just weird.

It's just weird.

It's just so aggressive in the worst possible ways.

So I think, but I think it's effective.

I hate to say it.

I think it's effective.

And that base is, I mean, I looked at my mom's tweets and I was like, okay, it works.

It works, unfortunately.

Yes, it's going to be a very tight race.

So we will, next, I will predict with our next host who's going to be the Trump administration

cabinet.

Sorry.

All right.

Okay, Andrew, you've proven yourself not only to have good hair, but to be an incredible co-host.

How is sitting in Scotch?

You are a very kind soul.

I'm not wearing shoes right now, as it happens.

Okay.

All right.

So I can't speak.

Not Scotch's.

I can't speak to Scotches.

He may be in flip-flops if he's on the beaches in Nantucket.

Yes.

Yeah, he is indeed.

And do you have any advice for me as your temporary co-host?

Advice.

Advice for Kara.

Yeah.

Keep doing what you're doing.

I love it.

That's so

boring and lame.

That's not.

Someday we will have someday.

Now we're just making Scott jealous.

That's just unfair.

We are.

No, we are.

We are.

I've decided this.

I've already decided this.

I'm moving on.

You know, it's me and wives.

I like wives.

I like a lot of wives.

Anyway.

Anyway,

thank you so much for watching.

Okay, we're going to move to Utah.

And Andrew is, Andrew Ross Verkin is a great journalist, and I really appreciate it.

Thank you for having me, Joe.

No problem.

And by the way, I do love Scott.

And we've been loving our live stream series called Pivot School.

They're terrific.

We've got great.

Thank you.

We love doing it.

We really did.

And it was.

It's just the camera and a lot of Vaseline, Andrew.

That's what it is.

Really, pretty much.

You can get tickets now for next week's show at pivotschool.com.

We have Dara Coast Rashahi coming on, along with a lot of amazing people and ideas and things like that.

And Scott's been doing some amazing presentations.

Thank you again, Andrew.

Today's show was produced by Rebecca Sinanis.

Fernando Finite engineered this episode.

Erica Anderson is Pivot's executive producer.

Thanks again to Andrew Ross Sorkin for co-hosting with me this week.

And have a great rest of summer.

Make sure you've subscribed to the show on Apple Podcasts.

If you're an Android user, check us out on Spotify or frankly, wherever you listen to podcasts.

If you liked our show, please recommend it to a friend.

Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media.

We'll be back next week with Amina Sao, co-hosting our breakdown of all things tech and business.

Commercial payments at Fifth Third Bank are experienced and reliable, but they're also constantly innovating.

It might seem contradictory, but Fifth Third does just that.

They handle over $17 trillion in payments smoothly and effectively every year.

And we're also named one of America's most innovative companies by Fortune magazine.

After all, that's what commercial payments are all about: steady, reliable expertise that keeps money flowing in and out like clockwork.

But commercial payments are also about building new and disruptive solutions.

So Fifth Third does that too.

That's your commercial payments of Fifth Third Better.

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

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

But what does it actually mean to be well?

Why do we want that so badly?

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

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