Uber buys Postmates, Taylor Lorenz talks Clubhouse, and Big Tech will testify in Congress — but Congress has already lost

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Hi, everyone.

This is Pivot from the Vox Media Podcast Network.

I'm Kara Swisher.

And I'm Scott Galloway here to announce my new line of clothing from the gap that Elon Musk has endorsed.

He has not endorsed anything, including your presidency.

Let me just say something.

I think you missed me quite a bit over the weekend.

You contacted me.

I dialed in.

You signed on.

I know.

You dialed in.

That was sad that was kind of sad but people called you i never call anybody you never call me you just wanted to chat you missed i did you really do no you can't quit me as they say in montana

it's true

listen to me we got a lot to talk about the joke you were making is elon musk has gotten the shorts you know he's selling shorty shorts he had a vaguely sexist picture of a lady in shorty shorts uh but he was taking a victory lap on the fact that his stock is is 1336 something like that and the shorts are getting killed um but but but you know you you were anonym

you did not short it, but you definitely had a dubious questions around it.

Well, hold on, hold on.

Let's pause there.

I just want to be, we should be totally clear.

Last year at South by Southwest in front of a cast of thousands, when the stock was at 330, I said that this company was going to crash.

It went to 230, and I thought I was a genius, and now it's at 1,200.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So don't try this at home.

Don't try this.

Don't try this at home.

Do not try this at home.

But let me just let you take a victory lap on Lemonade, which is an insurance company.

They're disrupting the system.

So, you know, you get a lot of hard time about stock picks online from particular people.

But let's talk about

this.

Is the insurance disruptor?

And also, you had also said Airbnb is going to be enormous.

So, let's talk a little bit.

Let's read, let's listen to the tape of what you talked about, and then let me hear from you about how you think about stock picking.

Go ahead, Rebecca.

I'll give you on Lemonade, the insurance disruptor.

Airbnb will will be enormous.

I think there are companies that are going to come out of this so strong that,

if you will, the downturn, the deceleration gave them the opportunity, I don't want to call it shed dead wood, but basically get in fighting shape, cut costs like crazy, come back.

Their profits will be stronger.

A lot of these companies have laid off 20, 30% of their staff.

Their revenues are going to return.

They'll hire back 5% of those people, and their profitability is going to skyrocket.

And they're going to come into this either through a direct listing or if they want it to be a branding event, they'll pay Goldman and JP Morgan 7% not to market their securities to their own crony, corrupt institutional investors.

All right.

So Scott, you were saying that this was going to be a big deal and it has been.

So talk a little bit about your systems, your systems.

So

first off,

I've sold and bought I've sold one stock in the last five years and purchased two.

The company I sold was Facebook.

It's difficult to be as sanctimonious as I am and own stock in Facebook.

So I sold it despite the fact I think it's going to continue to go up.

But anyway, and I've purchased two stocks in the last five years.

The first is Twitter.

Twitter, if it commands the space it occupies, changes their CEO, doubles their

new product release and innovation, and moves to some sort of a subscription model, just makes that the fast-growing part of the business.

I think it's $100 stock.

$30 billion market cap versus $700 at Facebook.

That has all kinds of upside and downside protection because it would make an acquisition if it got much cheaper.

But, anyways, the other stock I have purchased is I looked at,

I do an online strategy course at PropG, and essentially the course is I've tried to just articulate all the elements that these companies that have the four, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google have in common, and then see if you can apply that same criteria.

And it's everything from vertical to networking effects or some sort of AI, likability,

and ability,

visionary storytelling such you can access cheaper capital.

Anyways, I have this list of things and I've applied it to a bunch of private companies and I found one company that kind of checked all the boxes and that was lemonade.

Right.

And then if you look at the market dynamics and market dynamics will always trump specific company performance.

You have 60% of the world's economy is now precluded from the IPO market, whether it's media, travel, any sort of hospitality is off the table right now to access the IPO market.

So you have a reduction in supply of IPOs, but at the same time, the demand, mostly from institutional investors, nobody likes to say this out loud, but they are living their best lives and have more money than ever.

So you have a lack of supply, too much demand.

So I decided, okay, this company is a disruptor.

It's going into an industry that is so fat with margins, and that is i.e., insurance.

And in a monopoly era, if you can establish a reputation as the disruptor, get access to cheap capital, click all the boxes around the T algorithm, as I call it, enter into a market with more cash and demand than supply IPOs.

Boom, a ton of people trying to get through a crowded door.

So I used every contact I had to try and get allocations.

Not enough, there's a lot of money with not enough stuff to buy.

So it has, and it's an attractive stock and it's disrupting in the correct way.

Very smart CEO.

See, these are all the different, you left out the fact that CEO is really an interesting and visionary storytelling.

The ability to articulate a vision that results in cheaper capital such you can pull out your future port.

In addition, the biggest macro trend is we keep talking about COVID being an accelerant.

What you have, and this has happened with Tesla too, is the world has fast-forwarded 10 years.

And typically a stock price is something resembling the consistency of those cash flows, the size of them, and the risk of them.

And then you go out three, five, okay, even 10 years, and then you discount it back at a discount rate.

Right.

And what the market has said now is we're going to go out 10 years to the future, and we're going to discount those cash flows back at a rate of zero.

So Tesla just passed the value of Exxon, which which is kind of interesting.

And they've essentially said we're going to look at Tesla and value it as if it will continue to perform the way it's performing for 10 years.

And it's now more valuable than any automobile company, including Toyota.

So if you look at, if you can find the one disruptor in fat and happy industries, whether it's financial services, whether it's hospitality, or I thought the fattest are going to be education and healthcare, but there's no disruptor that's emerged there yet.

But the disruptor in what is arguably one of the fattest industries in the world, if you're getting taking, if people are taking you to dinner playing golf with you and they don't really like you, that means they're in an industry waiting to be disrupted.

And there is more golf and insurance than any industry in the world.

Yep, yep, yep.

So this was, this has checked every box in the world.

And I thought, okay, this will be the second stock I've purchased in five years.

So do you have any predictions for Tesla then?

Are you then saying, whatever, buy the Tesla at any price?

My viewpoint on Tesla is quite frankly, I am too emotionally involved.

I can't be an accurate.

I don't, I find some of the things that Elon Musk has said and done offend me personally.

And so it has given me an inability to evaluate the stock.

What I would say is to anybody is, I mean, if someone's asked me on Tesla, I'd just say don't get near it because if it got cut in half, it would make sense.

But at the same time, if it doubled, you know, this guy's a visionary.

He's the Edison of our generation, and the stock does not seem to trade on any sort of fundamental.

So buyer, beware.

I don't think Tesla is investing.

I think it's gambling at this point.

All right.

Okay.

All right.

Still, you're still still good.

Anyway, we will talk about this more, by the way.

Eliminate up 200%.

Did you see where it is?

Yep.

Is it going to stay there?

Is it going to stay there?

I don't know.

I would say this, though.

A lot of people have asked me, are you going to hold?

I think when a stock goes up this much,

you need to be careful and let it settle.

I personally am probably going to take my basis off the table.

Right.

Because if a stock's up, if a stock's up 200% in two days.

Yeah.

That's just got, that's just kind of, that's crazy.

But I want to be supportive.

I've like the company.

I don't like to trade stocks, but when a stock's up 200% in two days.

Many people do that.

Good idea.

All right.

Speaking of which, we're going to talk about issues like how you do stock trades at our live stream event series, Pivot School.

Speaking of which, we're going to host that in August with a lot of big names.

This week, Sarah Fryer, the CEO of Nextdoor, agreed to come on.

We've got some other big names and announcements to come in the weeks.

You can buy tickets at pivotschooled.com.

We've already sold hundreds of them, Scott.

People wanted hundreds and hundreds.

We're going to sell.

We want to get 5,000 people there.

Is that right?

Something like that?

That's a lot.

Sarah?

I don't know.

I just made that up off the top of my head.

But let's speaking of which, I'm going to actually,

maybe we should get Uber's CEO, Dara Kosrashahi, who I recently did a podcast with.

He's buying Postmates.

He could not buy Grubhub, the food delivery company.

The Ride-Hailing Giant acquired the company for $2.65 billion in stock.

Uber announced Monday morning.

It will continue to combine its food delivery and Uber Eats with Postmates.

Together, they would have about a 37% share of food delivery sales in the United States, but their competitor, DoorDash, would still be the biggest player in this space with 45%.

Uber is moving into the delivery space after showing losses in its core ride-hailing business during the pandemic, although that's apparently recovering, but they lost almost $3 billion last quarter.

The food delivery business is doing great, as you might imagine.

Revenue rose 53%.

I spoke to Khost Rashahi on Rico Decode a few weeks ago when the company was in talks to buy Grubhub, which it lost out to European competitor called Just Eat Takeaway.

I've never heard of them, but there you have it.

I was asking about the possibility that this was going to be a food delivery duopoly.

Here is what Dara said.

This market is much broader than some people are presenting it to be, right?

Restaurants delivered directly, dominoes, et cetera, delivers directly.

Grocery is delivered directly, including hot food, et cetera.

So I think that I would disagree with the definition of market.

This market just got bigger.

Like we're getting into grocery as well,

both organically and and inorganically so i just think that this delivery of food and essentials to homes is an enormous market and i don't see anyone or any two having 90 of that market it's way too big a market there are way too uh many players getting in All right, that's what he would say.

That's what they all say.

That's what Amazon says, etc.

So what do you think, Scott?

What do you think about this?

He got the smaller player.

You think the regulators will allow it?

And then what happens here?

Well, first off, it is a smart move, right?

They have the ability here.

This is a true pivot.

It's not a restart.

It's a pivot.

And that is they have this business.

I predicted they were going to spin it off.

I was wrong.

They're not only not spinning off, they're doubling down, they're bulking up.

And the question I have, and I don't know if you've heard anything, is that initially they were going to go after the bigger player.

They were going to merge with DoorDash, right?

Grubhub.

No, Grubhub.

They were going to buy Grubhub, but you could go back to the buy the Europeans.

Yeah.

Yeah,

they were going to buy Grubhub, DoorDash was the Europeans, and they ended up buying, or it looks like they're buying Postmates.

But

them and DoorDash were going to be such a huge part of the market

that they would potentially raise antitrust concerns.

And they say the deal was scuttled because of price.

And I'm curious if it was price or the fact that they got early signals back from their lawyers in D.C.

that this will never go through.

I think that's the, I think the second, you know, it's interesting because the restaurant industry is not a united group, right?

It's all over the place and states.

That's the problem.

It's fragmented, which you've talked about quite a lot um if they had bought a grub hub which was pretty much triple the price i'll double double and a little bit more of the price uh i think that would have called an attention to them controlling i think 57 percent of the market and and then post and then uh door dash with the other big group um and so the question is two things one is this assuming this is allowed and i don't even know if that's an assumption but i'm assuming they've gotten signals that this one's okay what does door dash do right so DoorDash is a big player.

I think this gives Uber Eats movement in Miami and Los Angeles.

I think Postmates is super popular.

I think in those cities, I forget which ones.

But what does DoorDash do?

Now, DoorDash doesn't want to be in the lift position, right?

Even though it has a bigger market.

Do they get sold to an Amazon or a Walmart?

I talked about that this morning on CNBC.

But do they just sit there with 45% of the market and split it with, essentially split it with Uber Eats or what?

What do you imagine is going to happen?

Two is not great.

Two delivery services is a problem as far as I can tell.

Well, there's different dimensions.

If you're a restaurant and there's no one restaurant that I think has more than 3% market share, and if the people that stand between you and the consumer set around this massive transition and channel how people consume your product, I mean, we're literally going from, you know, the percentage of people that are going to consume this industry's offering, basically restaurant food, through a new channel, it's going to grow hundreds of of billions of dollars.

And they're going to have, those players are going to have all sorts of power.

And the fewer of them, the more power they have.

So we're talking about three already have 80 or 90% power.

If it moves to a duopoly, that's even scarier.

But

I think what you just said is the interesting statement.

And that is somebody.

I don't know if it's an Amazon.

I don't know if it's a Walmart.

I think those are two interesting players comes in.

I was trying to think of who.

You know, or is it what's the biggest restaurant company in the world?

Who comes in and says, all right, we're, you know,

I don't know, but this is a very dynamic market.

The problem is there's a lot of really intelligent economists at the DOJ that should be looking at the long-term effects of this because these things are really hard.

If you approve them, they become really hard to unwind.

And whereas there used to be 20 antitrust investigations,

there were basically nine times as many antitrust investigations initiated two decades ago.

Now there's very few.

And if you let this thing go through without real scrutiny and the DOJ is outgunned, they don't have their budgets cut every year, and this thing grows through, you might end up in another instance where you have a few, a number of small players, as we do in tech, that basically starts the margin from what is one of the biggest employers in a really robust industry, and that's the restaurant industry.

So, this is this warrants a lot of scrutiny.

But from a pure shareholder standpoint, if you're Uber, I think this is a, there's just no getting around it.

And I'm not a big fan of that.

What is it?

Let me off to the side.

What is DoorDash has to either sell or get bigger, right?

Either get bigger or sell.

Whatever.

That's right.

And Lyft, what does Lyft do now?

Like Lyft.

If I were Lyft, I'd have bankers fired up everywhere reaching out to everyone.

Or, yeah, just saying, they need to bulk up fast.

Absolutely.

This has become War of the Worlds, and

they're Pluto.

They've just been downgraded from planet to lunar, you know, lunar object.

So Pluto is always a planet to me, but

there'll always be a planet to me.

We'll always have Paris and Pluto.

Pluto.

We can't go to Paris now, Scott.

They won't let us in, Americans.

I know.

We'll get to that in a minute.

So you would imagine, I think Lyft is kind of, would Lyft and DoorDash merge?

That's an interesting question.

There's really, we should bring on someone more thoughtful and knowledgeable about this stuff and us to say, okay, there are some kind of hanging chads.

There's some things that

should be

that are just going to make

they're going to be in the news, Roku and Shopify either as most likely acquirers.

There's just some interesting things out there.

That's going to happen.

That are either going to change hands or go acquire.

There's the mother of all bulking up is going to take place right now.

There's some very interesting banks.

Pinterest.

Pinterest.

Yeah.

What happens with Pinterest?

What happens even with Snap?

Yeah.

There's just got to be, there's going to be some movement here because things are accelerating, Kara.

The future is being pulled forward.

You're going to have not 10 years, but three years of M ⁇ A, I think, in the next six months.

Good prediction.

Speaking of hanging Chads, we're going to take a quick break and come back and talk about the big four tech executives who are headed to D.C.

for a hearing in late July.

And then we're going to talk about TikTok and Clubhouse with our friend of Pivot Taylor Lawrence.

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Okay, we're back.

This month, the CEOs of Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple are all going to appear in front of Congress as part of an antitrust investigation and a story broken by none other than Kara Swisher.

Anyway, this is shaping up to be an all-day event with testimony from Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, Jeff Bezos, and Tim Cook.

The executives have all agreed to appear voluntarily, which is controversial, but because of the pandemic, it is still unclear whether they will be there live in person.

A lot of people think this is not a good idea because they'll be able to escape scrutiny together.

And at the same time,

a lot of people don't think it's enough time for them and that they should have been subpoenaed so they could keep them there for days and days and days and days.

So Scott, what do you think of this?

This is David Cicillini, who chairs the House Antitrust Committee.

It's not clear if it's going to be in front of the Judiciary Committee or just the Antitrust Subcommittee.

What do you think about these?

I think we're already being played, or I think Congress has already been played because by bringing all four of them, you create this amorphous impression of all of big tech.

And the reality is, you know, it's kind of the mother of all reduction.

And that is Apple is an entirely different company than Facebook.

It requires regulation of the app store or maybe even spinning the chip unit, which no one ever talks about.

Facebook

should just be broken up and or face much more severe penalties or even civil or criminal charges.

And what's going to, the biggest beneficiary here is they, because they are all coming together, none of them are really going to be singled out and they're not going to get the opportunity to go really deep around specific,

you know,

what the remedy, the problems and the remedies for Amazon are just much different than any of the other companies.

And the real winner here is Mark Zuckerberg, because if it was just him solo for two days, it would get really ugly really fast.

But instead, they're going to be like, we like Tim Cook.

They're going to spend, they're not going to be, no one is going to get, there's going to be safety and numbers here.

And so for them to all show up together, there's going to be a general assumption and general conclusions around big tech.

And there will be, this is incredible delay and obfuscation through the safety and numbers.

Because they don't have to necessarily appear in person where they can't do the whole hand thing, the whole visuals.

I think Jeff Bezos is not going to show up.

I think he's very

germ-aware with COVID.

So they have to stop.

I didn't know that.

Yeah, I think he's been sticking.

No, I don't know.

It's not clear.

I just don't know which one of them is going to come.

I know

he's been not seen, if you've noticed that.

Zuckerberg has been a little more seen, but I think they're all, they have an excuse to not come.

And I think it's a good excuse, by the way, not to physically come, even if they try to do social distancing, et cetera.

So that's why.

They can, but it's less like, you know, if you have someone like,

I don't know who's on these committees.

Is AOC and Katie Porter on them?

It depends on which committee, whether it's going to be this.

You want the subcommittee asking questions so fewer people ask questions, right?

If you have the whole House Judiciary Committee, it's run by, I think, Nate Nadler.

Yeah.

So that's going to be like one of those ridiculous things.

And if there's four of them, see, a lot of people thought they should do it one every day, like one every day.

And they have, because they have different concerns.

Now, the question is, one, will people,

they probably said we're only going to do it if we do it together.

You know what I mean?

Like that makes sense.

But it's interesting because my feeling is people will attack Zuckerberg.

Sundar and Tim will sit in the middle and they'll just sort of lick Jeff Bezos up and down.

You know what I mean?

That's right.

I think that's a correct description.

Yeah.

So all of them together is not a great thing.

At the same time, they've never appeared.

So it does put focus on this topic.

So maybe that's really the point here.

Yeah, we'll see.

I think we're going to get played.

I think Bezos is going to be

fantastic.

Yeah, I think it's going to be like Howard Hughes when he testified where everyone was worried about it.

And he ended up making the Senate panel he testified in front of look ridiculous and he came off looking great.

You know, I think Bezos is kind of the.

the Howard Hughes of our generation minus the Norosi's.

And he's just an incredible visioner.

Anyways, I think they've already won.

I hate to say this.

They're going to be really well prepared.

Tim Cook is just going to be exceptionally likable.

Bezos will be exceptionally visionary.

People

go after Zuckerberg, but they're going to run out of time going after him.

And then Sunder is, you know,

I think he'll just stay the hell out of it.

I think he'll just try and stay away.

He'll smile, smile and wave kind of thing.

We'll see.

Have you heard anything from these companies in terms of what they're preparing for?

No, I think they're just, I just think they're safety in numbers, safety in numbers, and they can just put mark in front of everybody like shove mark in the front and so i think that it depends on the questioners too you never know you can get a real back and forth

you know and some of these zooms can be even though in person has that drama of the of the of the room and the and the all the photographers click click clicking down at their feet which you're not going to have obviously and the you know the whole visuals of a of that kind of thing you have that but you're not going to have that at the same time i don't know if you've seen some of these zooms go crazy they really, there's some real like, but then, of course, there's going to be crosstalk there.

And that's harder to do, to control if you're the head of the committee.

And I don't think Nadler is going to be able to do that.

So, so, but I've seen some really testy Zooms going on.

And so, that's the question.

If, say, I don't, again, I don't know if someone like a Katie Porter, but if someone like that comes in and really pushes them, the question is, does it really last?

Because, look, AOC and Porter did a great job.

First, there was the first Mark Zuckerberg hearings, which were terrible, and Mark came out great.

And then there were the second ones where Mark got sort of taken to task by AOC and Katie Porter, if you recall.

So if you have people like that, it just, what's the result?

And I think people aren't really paying attention.

That's one of the issues.

And I like Representative Cicillini.

He's going to come on pivot, by the way, in the next week or two.

We can ask him that question.

What is, and he's been quite strong, you know, about their power.

It's just the question of whether you can get the American public to pay attention to it, given

President Racist over here and the coronavirus here.

And so that's the issue is are people going to get angry about this?

The only thing I think that would add the most value to these is if we could have some sort of

citizen representative that at the end of these things we get to ask, get to ask not questions of the panelists, but of the people that sit on these committees.

Okay, you've done 14 of these committees.

You've spent this much,

but only 4% of you have a background in technology or engineering.

Do any of you have the qualifications to be asking these questions?

To

you talk a big game, you've said the following things.

You've made absolutely no progress around any legislation around any of this.

Why is it you are so ineffective?

There should be a series of questions to the people who are grandstanding and creating all this movement without any progress, i.e.

our elected representatives that talk a big game about big tech and want to

be want to pose for the cameras, be seen as tough, and then go shake Jeff Bezos' hand and then do absolutely nothing.

So it feels as if I'm at the point where I want to start questioning these guys and saying, just simply put, how can you be so upset about this yet so ineffective?

Yeah.

The thing is, what can they do?

I think a lot of the whole Trump thing, everything else has shown how little impact Congress can really have.

They just went on two weeks.

They just went on two weeks without doing anything about coronavirus, around people's jobs, around rent, around anything.

They just, they couldn't agree.

Like, so, and so, you know, into the void goes whether it's Trump or these tech companies.

And I think that's the issue is what do they have except for calling people together?

And

there is certain PR-ness to having these testimonies, right?

There is

physically look really good.

There can be a moment.

There can be a moment where someone asks a question they're not prepared for, and you see you've had actually a couple of those moments

with people.

But at the end of the day, the only thing that passes for bipartisan legislation is legislation that flattens the curve for rich people, Whether it's immediate stimulus of $3 to $5 trillion, which will be seen as a hate crime against future generations, the only time that we can get our elected representatives to come together is when they agree to explode the deficit to flatten the curve for rich people and spread Vaseline over it with some sort of narrative around how it's going to help Americans and demonstrate leadership.

Other than that, they've become entirely ineffective.

The institutions have been defunded.

You're right.

I think one of the most interesting things that will be written about historically as it relates to our union is the fact that Trump, more than anything, has demonstrated that our elected representatives have way more power than we thought our institutions do.

Yeah.

That our institutions are primarily feckless and can be overrun by elected representatives.

Because no one thinks they're going to do that.

Yeah, yeah.

Brazenness.

Brazen and lack of shame.

Just like the new White House strategy is,

we're going to teach people to be numb to the deaths and to live with it.

That's their strategy, which might work.

I don't think it will work, actually.

People are very angry about this.

4% of the world's population, 26% of the infections, and 25% of the deaths.

Incredible.

American exceptionalism.

But wait, we had more time to prepare for it and we spend more money on health care.

Oh, wait, that should mean they should be.

I mean, it's just, the numbers are getting, you know, what Stalin said, one death is a tragedy.

Yes.

Millions are statistic.

We are now into statistic mode where we can't even absorb.

just the amount of death, disease, and disability that has been levied on this country by A, a lack of citizenship by us,

and B, extraordinary incompetence and negligence at the federal level.

It's just been.

It's these pictures that keep coming in.

It's the same thing.

And I think one of the things, I think they're related, this idea of people not caring.

They like their phones, they like their maps, they like their dating apps.

You know what I mean?

Like, they don't, they're willing to put up with this much behavior in order.

Like, I keep writing the same friggin' column over and over again, saying these people have enormous power.

And they, they've gotten people used to it.

And I think if they have have a friendly face like bezos is charming and and interesting and he really is the same thing with elon same thing with all of them i don't think elon presents that danger i think he's actually making things that are important but like tim is very

you know sundar is really very charming and very you know earnest very much likability the only one that you don't like is zuckerberg and you do see whenever i write a facebook thing the enormous amount of dislike toward this particular ceo and i don't know why because he's actually a very nice guy.

You know what I mean?

Like, it's a really interesting thing.

There's something about him that people don't know.

I'm sure Mussolini's friends found him fucking.

No, no, no, no, no.

He wasn't terminating.

You know what I mean?

He's the only one that seems to attract ire.

General ire.

I don't like that guy.

There's something wrong with that guy, which I think is, I'm not sure.

Common sense.

I would argue that's common sense.

Okay.

In any case, there's not enough anger to compare it with giving up your Instagram or giving up your TikTok or giving up.

The personal liberty thing is going to be.

I'm just struck.

I've been traveling a decent amount, or I've been in Florida, New York, and the Rockies.

I'm in the Rockies now.

And it strikes me that in Florida, 11,000 new infections yesterday, and people just aren't masking.

Then I was in Montana, 21 infections, and almost everybody is masking, including when I went to, I took my boys to see old faithful.

And we're outside and almost everyone has a mask on.

I would call that.

citizenship.

And there's just this weird vein in America where people say, we'd like to blame our federal government, but I think a lot of the blame is the man and the woman in the mirror where it's like, well, okay, my kid might have to go through a metal detector and

Mrs.

Smith, my homeroom teacher, might have to be trained and have a Glock in her desk.

But that's the price we have to pay for freedom care.

But if you make me wear a mask in a Walmart for 10 minutes, that's tyranny.

Yeah.

That's tyranny.

There's so many videos of people.

There was a lady throwing masks on the ground.

There was another, like, there was one woman went into a Canadian hospital, and the Canadians aren't having any of it.

She had a finger problem and she was like, I can't believe they wouldn't let me without a mask.

And there was this nurse with tats up and down her arm.

She looked fantastic.

And she was like, yeah, you're not getting in.

Like, she was like, you ain't getting in.

Like, she had a mask and she was, no, she was like, no freaking way you're getting past these guns, right?

Great state of Colorado, they're masking.

They're masking like crazy.

Yeah, it's interesting.

I think that, but I do think it's a link to this is why aren't people more, like,

people are aware of being played by these tech companies.

I'm going to get back to tech and then we're going to talk Taylor in a minute around Tic Tac and stuff.

But why don't they get, is it that they get enough stuff from them, or is it that it's too exhausting, or they sort of know they're being spied on and they know that they're being made into,

you know,

you know, they're making the entertainment or whatever.

I just don't know.

I just, I, I, I wonder, it's the same level of like,

I don't know.

Get us back to our splitting of the atom.

The splitting of the atom saved the world.

And all of a sudden, as from 1945 on, our church attendance and reliance on a super being has gone down.

But our questions have gotten grander and more difficult to answer.

And into that void steps this magic that we don't understand that offers us almost magical-like results.

And that's technology.

And our idolatry of technology, combined with our fascination with the dollar, has led a cohort.

of the wealthiest technologists and innovators emerge as our new Jesus Christ.

And we afford them a dangerous level of license.

And we are fascinated with these devices.

We're obsessed with them.

They have addictive qualities and they generate a ton of money and a ton of shareholder value.

And our 401ks are up and we know someone whose daughter made a million dollars by the time she was 27 and they're the new Jesus Christ.

They're the new deities of our society and it is really, really dangerous.

But it began with the splitting of the atom and technology entering the space that spirituality used to hold in our lives.

Yeah.

So therefore, President Kanye West.

In Colorado, obviously there's edibles here.

It's pretty obvious.

It's pretty obvious.

And they're legal.

All right, listen.

And they're legal.

Speaking of entertainment and other things, actually a very serious issue, this idea of what we put up with, we're going to move on to a friend of Pivot when she arrives.

Oh, but wait, can I do?

We have a quick ad.

Can we do a quick ad?

Do your ad.

Do your ad.

I have a voice review.

Although we cut on her.

And it's related to our guests.

Hold on.

All right.

Okay.

Hi, everybody.

It's Scott Galloway, co-host of Pivot.

There hasn't been...

a social media platform of any significance founded since 2011.

That changes today.

People have been clamoring, clamoring for a platform that gives voice to a sector that is 84% male and yet victimized.

Yes, your wait is over.

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Introducing Douche House, the social platform that brings you all of the toxicity of Twitter and Facebook without the scale.

How do you know if you're right for Douche House?

Does your Twitter feed place you somewhere between an asshole and a jerk?

Do you conflate luck with talent?

Do you mistake media dissent for attacks?

And finally, finally, do you admire Trump's victim complex and attacks on female journalists?

If so, then douche house is for you.

Why not try it today?

Go to www.douchehouse.com slash pivot for 20% off the chance to kiss my ass.

Douche house, because you're interesting.

I'm putting that up on the air.

Back to the program, Kara.

Back to the program.

By the way,

have you been invited to Douche House?

I mean, Clubhouse, Talk House.

I was.

I was.

And then suddenly I can't get in.

It's interesting.

I was going to come and knock some heads because of Taylor, who's coming on in a second.

I was invited.

Now I can't get in.

And I think that, you know, who knows why?

They've suddenly gone silent on me.

So

yes.

I was invited.

I was invited by a senior person on one of the platforms who said, we need more diversity on this thing.

And I listened to that audio.

And after listening to the audio, I decided to download the app so I could erase it.

All right.

Now that we've introduced Douche House, Scott, your new product, on the line, we have New York Times tech reporter Taylor Lawrence.

She covers the internet culture and deeply in the know about TikTok.

Briefly, before we get to TikTok, Taylor, we're going to talk about your being subjected to nasty online harassment last week that was egged on by some tech investors on Clubhouse, which is what we're talking about.

So we're going to talk about that.

But let's first talk a little bit about sort of TikTok.

One of the things that I flagged today

around TikTok was the idea, there was a really good tweet about the idea that all teens are now on TikTok, essentially.

High school musical movies made it seem like teenagers do nothing but randomly break out into dance, and TikTok proved that to be true.

Just give us sort of an update of where TikTok is.

Then we do want to get into this issue around

that you've been facing.

Yeah, well, dance is obviously still huge on TikTok, but I've actually been interested to see how the platform is really evolving past dance.

I think that, you know, dance is sort of the format that's most synonymous with it.

But you see kids, you know, dancing, but also engaging in political expression or sharing thoughts or, you know, just making kind of short commentary on things.

To me, it's much closer to kind of how kids would use YouTube as this expression of identity.

So it's not just, it's not just kids dancing.

Right, but it's also people doing various things.

You saw the adults jumping into shoes.

They're doing like a lot of, like, there's a lot of,

you know, production values going into a lot of the kid, the other kid who was jumping from different superheroes and things like that.

It's sort of where creativity does live.

I got caught in TikTok for an hour yesterday just enjoying.

There's a lot of cooking TikToks too.

And I mean, there's sort of like every single genre, makeup, shopping, you know, it's everything.

What's the downside?

What are you seeing?

What are you worried about, though, on there?

I think that, I mean, I do, I think that one downside is this pressure to go viral.

I think, you know, followers aren't as important on TikTok, but it is kind of hard because

once you publish like a hit video, it kind of can be frustrating because then your next video can just do like a thousand views.

It doesn't even matter if you have half a million followers.

So

there is kind of a pressure to perform, which there is on sort of all social networks, which I think can be overwhelming.

But the political part of it is important.

K-pop fans used it to supposedly buy out tickets for the Trump rally.

India announced that it's banning the app.

Does it get further dragged into everything?

It's very political.

I mean, I would say that, you know, when you think about youth activism today and where it's being expressed online, TikTok is sort of at the forefront of all that.

I mean, obviously, if you want to think of downsides, the app as well, it is a Chinese app.

And there are certain concerns around user data and privacy that come with that.

So I think it'll be kind of interesting to see where it goes and kind of where,

you know, how the app handles problems of misinformation and some of these kind of more thorny political issues that people are starting to make videos out of, like Pizzagate.

So, Taylor, can you summarize?

It's just incredible that TikTok's been able to carve out this gigantic piece of the pie when it felt like social media was all but over.

Can you summarize what the magic is here?

How have they been able to sort of come and be so successful?

How do you describe TikTok to someone who hasn't used it in terms of its value?

I say it's sort of a short-form video app.

Kind of like Vine, it does allow for this very easy expression of creativity.

I think one brilliant thing they did was break that idea of the follow graph, which now just seems so archaic when you think of these modern social networks.

It's like up to the user to kind of figure out distribution of their own content.

You know, TikTok pioneered the For You page, which is this very advanced algorithmic way to deliver content to people.

And it sort of lets each piece of content find its own audience,

which is much better than something like Instagram or Twitter, where you have to kind of like keep up this consistent persona or, you know, post sort of content in certain buckets to kind of keep your followers engaged.

So I think that, I mean, I think that was their big innovation and just allowing for more kind of creative tools.

Do you think the new CEO from Disney means they're planning an IPO?

Oh, gosh.

I don't know about all the IPO stuff, but I do do think that it means that they're sort of taking the American market very seriously.

I know they're beefing up their LA office, too.

And do you imagine they'll spin it off to deal with the China issue?

Because

that's gotten a lot of attention.

It will continue to get attention, I think, no matter what.

I think also as these, especially young people, use the platform to engage in sort of political behavior and activism, it's only going to get more attention from lawmakers.

So we'll see.

I think that the hiring of a U.S.

CEO is certainly a move to kind of thwart some of that.

But we'll, you know, we'll see if they take the big step of breaking it off.

All right, let's move into

Clubhouse.

What happened?

Explain for everybody what this site is, because you know, you cover not just TikTok, you cover all kinds of social media.

And here's an attempt by a bunch of, you explain it.

You give the, give the information and then tell us what happened to you on it.

Sure.

So Clubhouse is an audio-only social network.

It's kind of similar to like a bunch of Discord voice calls.

if you could have people, you know, also listening to calls as well as just like, you know, participating in them.

So you'll sort of have this group of listeners and group of speakers and you can kind of bump people back down and forth.

So it's it's interesting.

I mean, if you think about audio, there's not much that's been done in terms of like real-time audio communication.

I think especially in quarantine, Clubhouse was this app that people got really excited about.

It was a way to kind of, a new way to connect with people synchronously in this really fun format.

I was one of the first users of the app.

I mean, I downloaded it pretty much immediately.

You know, there are almost no other journalists on the app.

And,

you know, I always download everything as soon as it comes out just to change.

I didn't.

And now I can't get in.

Yeah, which is just insane.

And, you know, I was really excited about it.

I think that from the get-go, there were this sort of large community of VCs.

on there, you know, probably interested in funding it.

And I was definitely one of the proponents that was like, no, this is a cool, interesting new format.

Let's take it seriously.

And, you know, let's look into some of these younger users that are using it in more innovative ways.

Unfortunately,

the app has just become dominated by the most toxic

sort of sex of the tech community.

You know, these sort of toxic users go on there and use it to kind of bash people and say things that they'd be too scared to say on Twitter or in public.

It's given them, you know, this little place.

my colleague aaron griffitt compared it to the rosewood which i guess is some place in silicon valley where people hang out yeah

it's it's a it's a rest it's a bar in the middle rosewood is a hotel but there's a bar there that all the vcs go to and they

uh and we're no moving on from that yes yes yeah i heard that yeah okay well anyway uh scott is incensed by what's happened i want first of all wait before she goes what's happened to you the harassment so they were explained so we can talk about it fully.

Yeah, so basically, you know, a few of these Clubhouse users, power users that are consistently invited up, platformed by Andreessen Horowitz, have been sort of consistently harassing me for months.

They've just been saying really negative stuff about me, talking about me on Clubhouse, you know, posting some tweets about me, kind of telling other people in tech that have reached out to me that they're saying all this.

And it's just been annoying to deal with.

I mean, I don't even cover these people.

I don't even write about DPCs.

So,

you know, finally, it just got to a point where I was just so frustrated with all of it.

I posted a tweet about Steph Corey, the CEO of Away, sort of did this Instagram rant about the media.

I pretty sharply criticized it on Twitter.

And for some reason, that set them off.

They said that you were not showing the right screen.

It seemed ridiculous because she started the whole thing, but go ahead.

Oh, I mean, her whole screed was ridiculous, and I don't think she should have posted.

And the company has since said not so much, but go ahead.

So the company's upset by that, too.

The employees her own employees you know has wrote this big open letter and even i believe her co-founder you know said that this is not what we want from the co-founder so i think it was very valid to criticize this woman who is extremely rich and is you know very influential you know tech person or whatever she's she runs a luggage company but it's considered tech so um

anyway that really set them off and basically since then i've just been um dealing with sort of harassment non-stop harassment doxing and um just just horrible accounts being set up against me, people saying just awful things.

Now, I just want to say, I mean, I don't know that these specific people in tech are behind these accounts.

I think it's probably like their fanboys who they're

signed to them.

So yes, I know.

Yeah, it's just a bad group of people.

And it's so disappointing the way that Clubhouse has handled this.

I mean, what a whiff.

You know, you'd think that, hey, I'm the CEO of this new hot social app.

You know, I know that trust and safety has been a big issue for Twitter, Instagram, all of this.

You know, maybe I would want to speak out against this or take some precautions, you know, issue some community guidelines.

They've done none of that.

Okay, so Taylor, just some rules of the road when I ask questions, because you haven't been on the show before.

Typically, my questions are an opportunity for me to talk about me and

for me to make a comment in the form of a question.

So let's start.

So I have raised over $100 million from VCs, many of whom are probably on Douche House.

Two,

I've invested tens of millions of dollars in private companies.

So I would, by most standards, I'm probably one of the biggest, 100 biggest VCs in New York.

And my question is,

how can you not realize how just fucking awesome we are?

I mean, we're 84% male and we have managed to include 3% people of color in our ranks.

How can you not, how can you not?

acknowledge how awesome you are we are.

And also, Taylor, I did a search on your New York Times articles, and your persecution of us just must end.

The last three articles we've written, Taddy and Devon, the ultimate TikTok rom-com, then Shane Dawson and Jeffree Star losing followers and losing ads.

Oh my God, these attacks must stop, Taylor.

YouTube personality Jenna Marvel apologizes for blackface video.

It may be time to dust off your roller skates from June 24th.

The attacks on us must stop, Taylor.

Don't you realize how awesome we are?

All right, Scott.

Just stop it.

Stop it.

Scott, ask an actual, that's very cute.

That's adorable.

And she's very pleased by your thing.

What is your question?

Well, what is it?

I just don't get it.

What is it about

how did this become zero to toxic faster than any social media platform?

In history, how did this become so ugly so fast?

Is it just that it's like Twitter on steroids?

What are the dynamics here that have led the limited partners of Andreessen Horowitz invest in toxicity at a speed of which we've never seen before?

What do you think the elements are?

What can be learned here such that the next people that want to start a social platform don't end up in this ugly place?

Well, I think, you know, here's an example of a social platform that just does not take any user safety issues into concern from the get-go, from the get-go.

I mean, this is an app that's been around for months.

You know, they consistently talk about it being in beta test.

They've never rolled out blocking.

They've never rolled out any kind of safety concerns.

They've also courted other users.

You know, there's many men on there who have been

accused of sexual misconduct, sexual harassment, sexual assault.

You know, if you think about who you want for your community of beta testers, it's just crazy that you would cultivate this community of sort of like you sort of invite some of the most toxic men on the internet and have them be your beta tester community and then be surprised that something like this happens.

Yeah, they say that a lot of people said there's other groups on this thing, but it seems to dominate with these people.

And actually Casey Newton noted, is Clubhouse the first social startup to self-immolate over content moderation crisis before leaving closed beta?

So talk a little bit about that.

Is there other stuff on there?

Let's try to be slightly fair to them in terms of that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I've spent, I have to show you my screen time because I have spent hours and hours and hours on this app.

I am part of a community of users

who, you know, used to be on there every night.

And yeah, there is some cool, exciting stuff.

Obviously, not every single room is full of toxic conversation.

I've made myself have made friends on the app.

Unfortunately, the largest and most influential rooms are those run by Andreessen Horowitz people.

You know, Felicia Horowitz's Saturday night dinner party that she has on the app, you know,

that's what hundreds of users are turning in for.

You know, they're not tuning in for you and your five other friends who are just having basically like a voice, you know, a voice chat.

About Hamilton or whatever.

Right.

Yeah.

And, you know, when they bring these people in, they bring these like high-powered kind of celebrities in, you know, they'll have DeRay, for instance, come in and talk about.

Yeah, exactly.

An activist, you you know, talk about stuff.

I, I, you know, that's, it's been interesting, but since they don't allow journalists on the app, the questions are just abysmal.

I mean, I remember, you know, when Ben Horowitz actually- Why wouldn't they allow journalists?

I didn't even know that.

Oh, yeah, it's very active.

And I actually, you know, asked the founder explicitly to please invite journalists.

And it's, it's absolutely an attempt to shield themselves from criticism.

I mean, listen, we heard one hour of the conversation.

That got leaked, right?

Correct?

Explain.

Yeah.

So an hour of the conversation on the app got leaked to Vice last week.

You can listen to it.

It's on SoundCloud now.

And I just think, you know,

just that hour is just so shocking.

It's these tech people just bashing the press, saying horrible things.

You know, that shows why they don't want the media on there.

You know, these people are upset that they're being recorded because they're saying things that they think are sort of.

It's really too bad because

I do think I love the New York Times.

I love the Wall Street Journal.

And I've always thought that the Wall Street Journal was an evangelist for business.

And the New York Times kind of saw itself playing more of a role of being a watchdog.

And I think the New York Times, up until about five or ten years ago, had a bias against business.

And I would argue five or 10 years ago, they fell in love with tech and entrepreneurs like everybody else and started idolizing them.

But there is, I think there is a valid conversation around does the New York Times have a bias?

against entrepreneurs and tech billionaires.

Do they have a bias?

And then invite people and have some evidence.

Like in about two minutes i just did a search across venture capital startups entrepreneurship in your name

on the new york times and then i did the same thing on the wall street journal and there's a difference but what mostly comes back is that media still suffers from this massive sycophantry of innovators not that they're targeting them there's an interesting conversation here some of the some of the editorial some of the reporting has been weak and bad, just as it is in any industry.

But invite the people on to have a productive conversation.

Don't immediately...

I think he's talking about me.

I think he's talking about me because I am tough on them.

But I think what happens is what's really interesting to me is that they picked Taylor to do this because Taylor understands these mediums, I think, which is interesting.

And you write about these mediums.

And one of the things is this is the kind of stuff they say to each other

by themselves and complain about this whole victimization mentality that they have, this constant victimization of the world's most rich and powerful people.

And so these, it's not lost.

Some of these are investors in Facebook.

Like, let's be clear, Mark Andreessen's on the board of Facebook.

You know, it's, it's really very interesting to watch how they do this.

And I think it is this victimization question.

So let me ask, just have two more questions.

Scott may have one more is how do you imagine audio this because you can't really moderate audio, right?

Like what's the, that's the difficulty here.

You can watch it on Twitter.

You can see the, you can start to label things.

When you're in social media, when this starts to become audio or and video, what happens

i think it's really hard i mean number one if you're gonna know knowing all of that about audio as a platform i think you need to be very intentional about the community that you foster right if you are gonna build this audio platform you should kind of have built-in moderation steps um and you should kind of openly say, look, we're not going to, you know, host white supremacists on here.

We're not going to host harassment on here.

That's not the kind of stuff.

We're going to take reports of that stuff very seriously because it's not what we want.

I mean, you see Discord now, also a big player in audio, and a lot of people go on there to have these voice chests during gaming.

They're trying to broaden beyond gaming.

They're making, you know, they're paying all this lip service to like, well, we don't want these groups on here.

This is who we want.

So I think part of it is just tone setting, you know, from the platform level.

And then in terms of moderation, I think you need to build in sort of roles and community guidelines.

I'll point to Discord again, although they have huge problems too, but you can designate different roles, you can block people, you can boot people, and all of that just

helps with moderation.

Of course, Clubhouse is going to have a struggle, and that's why they should be

more intentional than others about it.

Right now, they're being less intentional, and that's what's so frustrating.

Oh, Taylor, be clear.

It's over.

The limited partners at Andrews and Horowitz right now are emailing for an emergency meeting.

They're already worried about, they're already getting calls.

from their limited partners.

I'm sorry, the general partners.

Their limited partners are like, let me get this.

We invested 10 million, you guys invested $10 million million at a pre-90 million on a company with two people such that you could demonstrate how fucking toxic you are.

This is over.

This is over.

Is there a promise in it?

Let's just see.

Taylor.

Okay, yeah.

How would you fix it?

I'm sorry.

How would you fix it?

I think that there's promise in audio.

I mean, if you think about what like TikTok success, right?

Part of TikTok's success was leveraging the power of audio and introducing this idea of kind of like audio remixes, audio memes.

So I do think that we're seeing interesting innovations in the audio space.

I don't think that Clubhouse is it.

But, you know, again, also Discord try to say that they're scaling out, trying to get more people on it.

I do think that there will be more kind of like real-time synchronous audio events.

There's also a bunch of startups like Fundo and all these other things, like Cameo is now offering,

you know, these calls.

I think that, yeah, so I think that the space is interesting.

I don't think Clubhouse is a good execution of it.

What's this medium called?

Like, what would you call it?

And does it survive on its own or does it become an adjunct to other mediums?

Does it become the next, does it v 2.0, a podcast?

I don't even know how you describe this medium.

What's it called?

Yeah, it's a good question.

I mean, I don't, we need some marketer to come up with a catchy phrase.

I do think that it's podcasts are also a version of this expansion of.

of audio.

And obviously, if you think about sort of like wearables and AirPods, just there was this social network called, I think it was called Ttyl that was this like always-on social network, AirPod social network that I tried a couple of years ago.

It's horrible, but

you know, interesting, interesting concepts in this space.

It is ironic, I just want to say that they're targeting me because i generally um am very optimistic about technology and i my stories usually explore the promises of new technology um

but um you know in this case i think i can confidently say that you know this yes let me just be clear they are targeting taylor and other actually it's often young women uh especially they're targeting you they use you and the term bounce

and teller bottle that was that was actually they're targeting a reporter who's who's a young woman, actually, who wrote that story.

I had nothing to actually do with it.

But using the term bounty, you better be very careful.

I can't imagine.

I can't.

I listen, but the woman who wrote that was a young woman reporter.

This is not, there is a very direct link between sexism and these attacks and the toxicity of tech bros and silicon.

Well, you mean from an industry that's 84% male?

Which, which, which is great.

I actually had someone say, well, she's just being, she's speaking up about it.

She should keep quiet.

And I was like, are you kidding me?

Like, no.

Like, the fact that you all can't speak up is the problem.

Not that Taylor speaks up for herself.

Sorry, Taylor.

I'm not speaking for you.

But

what are you doing about that?

Let's finish on that.

What do you imagine you should, is there anything more you can do except speak up?

Yeah, I mean, I'll see.

I mean, I'm very outspoken on the internet,

much to sometimes my boss's chagrin.

But, you know, and I mean, I'll just keep cultivating sources and, you know, reporting.

I mean, I think I don't deal with these tech VCs.

They're pretty much irrelevant to my beat.

I really report on sort of the next generation of entrepreneurs and creators and

people doing cool things on the internet.

So I'm just going to keep that.

And let's be clear: it's their followers that do this so they can take away their own culpability.

They create a situation, and their followers do things like doxing and harassing.

We were subject to it, and it wasn't them.

They just started whistling the dog whistles, and that was how it worked.

Exactly.

So, Taylor, I just have one thing, and one last thing.

As someone who is, you know, and I'm playing the the victim now, attacked and targeted on a regular basis, there's two observations, and you're a lot younger than either Kara or me, especially Kara.

I'm much younger than you.

But what you should really take away from this, and I'm being serious now, is two things.

One is you probably got it wrong or aspects of it, and it's a moment for reflection.

But two, if you don't get targeted and attacked, it means you're not saying anything.

So, sister, keep on saying things.

This is a function.

This is a symptom of your progress and the fact that you are making it.

Listen, no, you got nothing wrong, Sailor.

you know what like you know

no it's a moment for reflection there's usually a kernel of truth in each other what they do is they pick let me just tell you they only pick a tiny little thing that maybe you did wrong right a kernel

is not truth it's just like finding some tiny little way in to bring in their toxic like victimization bullshit it's a moment no no it's a moment for their reflection learning it's a moment for their reflection yeah it's a moment of learning for them it's a moment for them to reflect on their reflection we always say when we're wrong don't we too we always do Yeah, I admit when I'm wrong all the time.

All the time.

Your time, Scott Galloway, is done.

And we are going to, you and I are going to have a little.

I'm in the 11th.

Let me just say.

But Taylor, we really appreciate it.

I'm glad.

See, listen, what I have to deal with every day.

I'm trying to educate.

I'm educating.

The dog has his back.

I want gangster on these guys.

People attack you, Scott.

So I don't even know why you're even like...

Yeah, I've seen them come.

Yeah, they come for Scott.

They don't like you because you affiliate with them.

Anyway, Taylor, you do wonderful work.

Your pieces are always like 100% delightful.

And again, keep speaking up.

I mean, I know there's a price for it, but you certainly, you certainly are.

You should

appreciate it.

All right.

Thanks for having me.

All right.

Bye, guys.

All right, Scott, one more quick break.

We'll be back for wins and fails.

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Okay, Scott, we're back with wins and fails.

What do you say?

What do you say, Scott Galloway?

This is an extra long show.

I know.

Okay, so the fail's easy.

The limited partners who have just woken up and realized they've invested $10 million or their fiduciaries for their capital, Andreessen Horatz general partners have invested $10 million

at a pre of 90 and a post of 100 in a company with two people to create the company that's gone from zero to toxic faster than any company in history.

That's my fail.

Do you have a fail today, Kara?

I would agree with you on that one.

I think they just, it continues to show.

You know, and I talk about their victimization, how they think, like the people of Facebook think they're being acted upon.

It is really, I can't get it more clear.

And this was a video, this was an audio representation of the kind of victimization that the most powerful and richest people in the world could not understand why they're a problem.

They always try to pick at things.

And again, you're right.

Journalists should absolutely admit when they make mistakes, you know, all the time and say, we didn't get this one right, or we quoted people who weren't quite right or stuff like that.

And we do that.

It's just that they

take it to a level that's in it's just ridiculous.

And they try to make up these dumb narratives about clicks, which are just,

it's just so much bullshit.

It's just their click narrative is bullshit.

They're they sound like Trumpers.

They sound like, I don't know what else to say.

They sound like Donald Trump, each and every one of them.

And not

in the,

and it's really disappointing to me, given how much power and influence they have.

So yes, I agree with you.

Win?

What's a win?

So my win is Enio Morcone died at the age of 91

yesterday.

This is a guy who just led such an incredible life, didn't like to travel, so managed to do everything from his home in Rome and figured out a way to get people to move their skeletal structure, their digits, their respiratory system to move.

flesh and air through crafted metal, i.e.

instruments,

and then collide

those sounds with video video and frames to evoke incredible emotion.

This guy did, he was the composer for several hundred films, including Spaghetti Westerns.

He also did, he would make you feel tense

in an episode of The Sopranos.

He would make you feel sad.

I think one of the most beautiful soundtracks ever written for a movie for The Mission, he would make you feel

incredible emotion.

One of the most, I think one of the most emotional moments in filmmaking history was the final scene in Cinema Paradiso.

This guy was able to take movement and film and collide it with just such extraordinarily beautiful music.

And that was just half of it.

He could attach it to video and movement and make you really feel something.

So this is a guy who died at 91 and made an incredible living making people feel things.

What a life well lived.

Anio Morricone dead at 91.

Well, well done.

Right.

Well, very nice.

That's really good.

I would say, I'm trying to think of a positive because so much bad news is this week.

You know, again, it continues.

But I do think that I think a lot more people are becoming, you know, these numbers, these poll numbers are showing how

incredibly toxic, speaking of toxicity, the messages from President Trump are around, you know, he's doubling down on racism and coronavirus denial.

And, you know, that might, you know, shore up his, you know, especially some of the Supreme Court might shore up his support with evangelicals, you know, because they're ruling against him.

But

the polls seem to indicate that people are tired of this ridiculous show.

And

I don't think that's fair.

I think he's got his priorities right.

He's protecting the statues of enemy combatants.

I think that's where he should be focused right now.

Nothing else is going on here, kid.

It's just, I just feel like that people are taking coronavirus seriously.

Despite all the pictures of people partying and dancing, I have seen many more people sort of.

And, you know, I welcome even the crazy, the Republicans who've been so irresponsible.

I would say, I welcome them

to

the mask, you know.

And there's going to be fewer and fewer mask holes, as people call them.

And so

if you're a mask hole,

you really need to stop and care about civic duty.

But there's a lot of people who really do.

And so I'd like to call attention to that.

Well, you know, the lead on Trump's fundraising campaign, Kimberly Gafoyle, who, by the way, I met 15 years ago at the Sohouse, and she was nothing but lovely.

And she's the wife of Gavin Newsom.

I really enjoyed meeting her.

But

what's the follow-up call?

When you invite all of these, the wealthiest Republican donors who are likely going to skew a little bit older and male, which is ground zero, about one in five of those people, if they get infected, will end up in the hospital.

What's the call when you follow up and say, hey, thanks for coming to the fundraiser.

You need to isolate for 14 days.

I've tested positive.

Please send in your checks now.

That can't be an easy follow-up call from the fundraiser.

That can't be easy, Kara.

That can't be easy.

I hope she gets better.

How about that?

How about I say that?

The lovely woman.

I hope she, no, I'm not so sure about that.

She seemed really nice, smart, nice.

I don't know if you've seen her lately, but changed quite a bit in any way.

I feel triggered.

I don't see looks, Kara.

You know what I'm talking about?

I'm talking about what comes out of her pie hole.

Let me just tell you.

No, no, no, no, no.

Anyway, Scott, we have to go.

But pivot listeners who can't get enough of the dog and the dog can't get enough of Kara Swisher, the jungle cat, can go to pivotschool.com to get tickets to our live stream show in August.

They're going to be long.

There's going to be a lot of material.

We've got a lot of great guests.

We have links in the show notes too.

Don't forget, if there's a story in the news that you're curious about, want to hear about, or opinion on, email us at pivot at boxmedia.com to be featured on the show.

Scott, read us out and don't worry, I will be here Thursday for you.

Today's episode was produced by Rebecca Sonanis.

Our executive producer is Eric Anderson.

Thanks to our sound engineer Fernando Finette.

Also, special thanks to Drew Burrows.

If you like what you heard, please download or subscribe where you listen to podcasts.

Have a great rest of the week.

4% of the population, 25% of the deaths and the infections.

Exercise your independence, your respect for independence, your respect for others, your citizenship.

Let's all mask up.

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

We spend nearly $2 trillion on things that are supposed to make us well.

Collagen smoothies and cold plunges, Pilates classes, and fitness trackers.

But what does it actually mean to be well?

Why do we want that so badly?

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

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