Mark Zuckerberg’s leaky staff and the silver lining to WeWork’s downfall

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Hi, everyone.

This is Pivot from the Vox Media Podcast Network.

I'm Kara Swisher.

And I'm Scott Galloway.

So Scott, it's a pretty slow news week this week.

What do you think?

Yeah, just sort of sit back,

you know, pull the...

pull the lazy boy back,

crack open a Mike's Hard Lemonade, and

let's examine the shit show that is our life and the world that surrounds it.

It's amazing.

This is like every week, like only a couple days was it

Ukraine gate, and now we have shooting immigrants in the legs.

We've got

so much stuff.

So much stuff.

And we work, obviously, continues.

Yeah, but just in the leg.

I mean, we're not, we're a humanitarian people, Kiara.

Just in the leg.

We don't want to kill them.

We just want to maim them.

Maim them for the rest because they're, you know, they're doing so well already in their lives.

We want to just give them that extra little horror show that they can take away from the United States of America.

All right, so much to do.

But first of all, the big story breakdown, obviously, is we're going to do a little something different.

On Tuesday, friend of the show, Casey Newton, who you call Schmacey, from The Verge, broke a big story.

Someone inside Facebook secretly courted Mark Zuckerberg talking to employees for two hours about Elizabeth Warren, TikTok, and his refusal to testify in several countries, among other topics.

Scott, you and I are definitely going to have some things to say about this.

But first, we're going to play a mini interview I did with Casey on Tuesday, right after he broke the story.

And let's take a listen.

Karen, thank you so much for having me back on Pivot.

Yeah, so tell me, tell us what you did today.

You had an astonishing scoop.

By the way, you've had amazing scoops all year around social media, including around content moderators on Facebook that were just devastating as far as I was concerned and beautifully reported.

But today,

boom.

Well, thank you.

So the story today was somebody shared with me two hours of leaked audio from internal Facebook meetings where Mark Zuckerberg held a Q ⁇ A with his employees.

They could kind of come up to the mic, ask whatever they wanted.

And in them, he makes a variety of newsworthy comments about his plan to sue the government in the event that Elizabeth Warren gets elected and tries to break them up, you know, how they plan on crushing competitors like TikTok and all sorts of other things.

So there were a lot in there.

So let's unpack a couple.

The first, go through the main ones.

The first one is suing the government.

Yeah.

So, you know, someone asks, listen, what are we going to do in the event of an attempt at a breakup?

And

basically, how seriously are we taking this?

And Zuckerberg says that in the event that Warren wins, he predicts that there will be a case where they try to break up Facebook.

And Zuckerberg predicts that they will win.

He says that they just have a better case and that if you broke up Facebook, they wouldn't be as good at fighting election interference and all sorts of other things.

Because they've been so good so far.

Yeah, well, so, I mean, his argument is because we are big and because we have so much money, we can actually invest in fighting this stuff.

And the dig that he takes at Twitter is, you know, he says, this is why Twitter isn't as good at fighting election interference.

They can't invest as much as we can.

The amount of money we've invested in security is larger than the revenue of their whole company.

So that's kind of...

Let me just say, in the words, Matthew McConaughey and that fine movie that he did, I don't read how to lose a man in 15 days or whatever.

Bullshit.

What do you think?

You don't have to have an opinion, but it was really an astonishing claim given their poor record, even if they've improved the situation.

I see it from both sides because, you know, when Facebook was really small and was limited to college dorms, it was also really good at fighting election interference, right?

Because nobody tried because it was small.

Like, I think there's a good case to be made for a small size.

And I think that sort of the more social networks you have, the more communication platforms it is, or that there are, the more friction there is if you're a bad actor, if you're a Russian agent and you want to swing the election, all of of a sudden, you know, what if you had 40 places you had to go attack, you know, instead of three to four?

So I think that's a big factor that often gets left out of the size discussion.

Agree.

I think innovation in small companies, of which Facebook sits over like lard on a, like on chicken soup, is the problem, that there's not enough of these things

to be able to do this.

And I think to claim otherwise that bigness is great is not is shocking from a company that's trying to be innovative.

Yeah, and it sounds like Microsoft, actually.

Well, sure.

And

you see this sort of over and over again, where there will be some upstart competitor and Facebook takes it apart, apart, figures it out how it works, clones it, you know, launches it in some other country, perfects it, and then it takes over the world.

And we saw it with Instagram stories, and I'm sure we'll see it again.

Another part of the story is where he talks about TikTok.

Somebody says, hey, TikTok is up and coming.

Like, what are we going to do about it?

And so Zuckerberg talks through how, well,

we built an app called Lasso, and now we're taking it to countries where TikTok isn't already big, and we're going to perfect it there.

there.

And then we're going to take it to places where TikTok is big and we're going to compete with it directly.

So really interesting insight into how they handle these threats tactically.

Well, I call it shoplifting.

I mean, why don't they think of this in the first place?

I mean, that's really, you know, look, you know, I have my teens, Louis, and Alex.

They don't use Facebook, they use Instagram sometimes, but I have to say, like, come up with a product as good like TikTok might be a start.

Yeah.

But you can't because you're too big.

So they have a division called like, it's like new product experimentation, NPE, I think it's called.

And they are trying to do that.

And they've brought in some founders of like social companies that, you had initial success.

And they're going to try to create a homegrown success, but they haven't been able to do it at a large scale in a long time.

It's very Microsoft, Hand.

It's like, why don't we just open Snapchat and copy whatever they're doing?

That's what it feels like.

It's felt like that for Tony.

So in terms of

the tonality of this, I think that was what I was struck with.

Sort of, I have seen it.

And I know it.

And I keep telling people as he had just been up on Capitol Hill wearing his suit and tie, visiting President Trump, being super earnest.

Senator, I'm here to really cooperate with you.

You know, I'm interested in regulation.

I'm interested in this.

And he just got off with a great, easy fine from the FTC, $5 billion, which should have been 10 times the amount.

So why have this attitude?

Like, I guess he can't hide it, like, right?

Like, underneath the disdain for Washington and any kind of control on their nonstop party in Silicon Valley, they're victimized if they don't do it.

That's what I felt, the victimization, poor little me, that kind of stuff.

Yeah, I mean, I think that, like, in the in the transcript, there are many places where he is deferential to the government and talks about wanting to work with the government.

And of course, it's easy to say that because usually government regulation winds up benefiting the entrenched powers, right?

So there's actually very good self-interested reasons to want regulation.

And I think Zuckerberg wants them.

I think, you know, when you're hearing him say, we're going to go to the mat and fight, part of the job being a CEO is to be a cheerleader.

And when the troops are restless, you stand up and you say, don't worry about it.

We got this.

We're putting together a team.

You know, we're going to go fight them.

So I think this is exactly what you would expect somebody in Zuckerberg's position to say.

Oh, you're so kind, Casey.

That's why you're so good.

That's why this piece is so good.

It just lays it out there.

It's like,

let's hear from Mark Zuckerberg, which I think is important.

I think that's true.

He lets it out sometimes in interviews with me by accident.

He trips, and then you see.

But I think it's really fascinating to hear his voice.

So, you really do get his, he really did get his point of view that I am familiar with.

And I think you are.

Yeah, and I think that's why he shared it on his own Facebook page, you know, like in part, like I do think that they felt a little bit backed into a corner because it sort of looked like he was, you know, talking about the government behind its back.

So they wanted to get out in front of it.

But also like this story really does.

Oh, I didn't know that.

Yeah.

Put it on yourself.

Yeah.

So Zuckerberg posted it on his own page and said, like, this conversation wasn't supposed to be public, but now it is.

Go take a look.

The dog eats itself.

Okay.

The dog eats it.

Yeah.

So we do appreciate the link from Zuckerberg there.

Thanks, Mark.

But yeah, they want to kind of take ownership back of that narrative.

That's actually a smart move on their part.

Where does it go from here?

What do you think the impact's going to be?

Washington's all like, ah, and the detractors are like, ah.

And then the tech bros are like, so what?

So what?

Big deal.

Yeah, I mean,

my mentions have mostly been Elizabeth Warren Stan saying, yes, queen.

But there have also been a lot of Silicon Valley tech people saying, like,

what a smart and thoughtful leader.

And honestly, like, to me, that just makes me feel good as a reporter.

Like, in a case like this,

who cares about my opinion?

Just like read it and like think about it and reflect on the size and power of this company and what it means and see how the CEO thinks about it and watch him talk about it more candidly than he usually does in public.

Like to me, that's the value of it.

So, Scott,

Schmacy, what do you think?

So, well, I want to ask you, what do you think is the most newsworthy item in that story?

Or what do you think is most surprising?

Because I think you get a viewpoint of him.

I think overall, a lot of of this stuff, you know, I think the Warren things is not a surprise, of course, but he hasn't said it publicly.

So that's interesting.

Like

the disdain of Warren.

I think

the fear of TikTok, which we know they have to have, but he says it, like obviously in sort of his bluster about them, because they're real good.

I think that,

you know, I think it's a very typical meeting that a lot of people are in in Silicon Valley, but at the same time, nobody gets to hear it.

And so he puts on his best, you know, big boy pants and tie and comes to Washington, and it's all nothing burgers.

And this is an actually interesting discussion.

That's my, that's my takeaway from that.

Yeah, I thought the thing that kind of struck me as someone who, you know, has, I've never managed a big company, but I manage small and medium-sized companies, is that people are recording his conversations and then turning it over to Casey Newton.

Right.

It just, it creates, that would send a chill over me every time.

I mean, I don't know how big or how small these meetings were, but it kind of, you know, it's reminiscent of people everyone deciding to blow a whistle on

Mark Zuckerberg.

I thought the interesting thing, first off, you were right, the big winner here is Senator Warren.

He's kind of identified her as the most likely candidate to win the nomination.

The other thing that was sort of interesting was their strategy to take on TikTok, because if you look at Lasso, kind of their response to TikTok, which is a direct ripoff, it doesn't look like they've been putting the resources into it that they've put into other products.

And I was under the impression that they were just going to,

as you would put it, adopt or shoplift some of the features of TikTok into Instagram and then use their billion users

versus their 500 million on TikTok to try and overwhelm it.

And I also wonder if just in the last month if TikTok has lost any momentum.

TikTok is really interesting.

I mean, it's clearly, it's sort of at that point where

it's either going to bump up against

the Titanic or the big ship, the mother ship that is Facebook and bounce off of it, or it's going to actually ram it and start, you know, show that there is, you know, the disruptor can be disrupted.

But

I didn't find, you know, it's sort of, it's like pornography.

It's Silicon Valley pornography to hear something that you weren't supposed to hear.

But it was sort of like, there wasn't really anything I would.

argue that surprised me.

I thought you were going to be able to do that.

But you're an insider, Scott.

I mean, here's the thing.

When you see people's obsession with the leaker, like, listen to what he's saying.

Like, who the freak cares who leaked on him?

There's a million people in these things.

It happened to Tim Armstrong many years ago.

I don't know if you remember with the pregnant thing.

Like every day, it's happened to Bush.

It happened to remember Romney or whatever.

I mean, this is something everyone's got to realize that

they're on all the time.

And courtesy of Mark Zuckerberg, everybody's on all the time.

So too bad that it gets taped.

I don't care.

Like, it's a typical insider media obsession with that.

I don't care.

I think it's just a really, he actually spoke like he actually speaks.

And he's got to understand that everybody's listening at all times.

And maybe he didn't get that lesson.

I'm not sure why he didn't.

But everything he says is, you know, this is a man that covers up his camera.

Like, he's got to know people are listening.

And so I do think there's just the tonality is very, very defensive.

You know, it feels like I've been in like a Google all-hands like this.

And they were even more sort of out there trash talking.

people, I thought the most interesting part, there's so many interesting parts of this, but the interesting part I thought was sort of the trashing of Twitter for what's the point.

Like, that was petty.

It was so Gatesian.

It was so Gatesian to me.

Who is his mentor?

So I just, he seemed very vulnerable for someone

who shouldn't be vulnerable in any way.

I thought that was what was interesting about it.

Yeah,

the Twitter comment was sort of telling, I'm convinced that they keep Twitter in business so they can claim they have a competitor, that they could crush them at any moment.

Also, the notion, this kind of national champions argument that we're the only ones that can solve the

the problems of our own making,

that size matters, yeah, they are building, and there is an argument that

the amount of R D they're investing, they're kind of making these nation state-like investments in quote-unquote cybersecurity or whatever you want to call it, elections hacking.

But there's some pretty simple solutions here.

One, if they refuse to take any political advertising and they implemented mandatory identification for people on the platform, which would substantially slow their supernova business model, But that's, you know,

there are some, I don't want to call them easy fixes, or if they did what is going to probably happen to them, be broken up.

But if they're too big, if they're too big to fail, if they're too big to be broken up and their size creates natural monopoly-like benefits, like a power company, like a utility, where it makes sense to have one big player as he is arguing, then we regulate those companies.

We call them natural monopolies, and we put in regulators, and we say, okay, we're going to see everything you do.

We're going to make sure that you're not squashing competition.

We're going to make sure that you're not enabling bad actors.

So it's kind of one or the other boss.

Either you're too big to be broken up and you're the only one, the natural monopoly argument and need to be regulated or you're going to be broken up.

Common carrier or something like that.

We'll be talking a little bit about Trump on Twitter in the next point.

But I do think that they,

I think they were super defensive.

One thing that continues to strike me about Facebook is, you know, he never talks about products.

Like, he talks about copying other people's products.

He talks about fighting back at the government.

Where's the talk about things they're making?

Like, this has always been a company that is not as interested in the product as they should be.

And that's why they're just not as, that's why they have to use these like muscly things.

And I think if he focused more on product and stop, he'd be better off, his own product that he thinks of himself, not that he copies from other people.

This has been an ongoing story at Facebook.

He's always scared of something, and then they copy it, and they're either successful, whether it's a phone, whether it's whatever, whatever's the hot thing of the day.

You know, he's sort of in in the only the paranoid survive mentality.

But I really wish he would just use his creativity and maybe make something fresh and original.

And that's my disappointment with Facebook.

It's like, it's just dull.

It's just a dull company.

And

I wish he would.

I just wish they would focus on that.

Maybe it's just not this company.

It's a copycat.

It's a really good copycat.

And look, Walmart did that a lot.

A lot of companies do that.

They have one good idea and then they copy the rest of their lives.

So I don't know.

One question I have for you.

So does this make Elizabeth Warren more likable?

Because Facebook is so unlikable.

Someone on Twitter yesterday was tweeting, here's how Mark can stop Elizabeth Warren,

support her.

Well, first off, I don't think it's fair to say they're not being innovative around new products.

I mean, haven't you gone out and purchased the Portal TV?

They have now, you know, they now have a

closet and come back.

No, not the actual Portal.

They now have a product where you can turn your home television into the monitor for Portal TV and you put sort of a sound bar above it.

Anyways, does it make Elizabeth more likable?

No, it makes it more formidable.

And I think if you, you know, you get asked for predictions a lot.

I get asked a lot for predictions around 2020 all the time.

And my current prediction and subject to change is it's Warren losing to Trump.

I just don't think

I don't, you know, she, hands down, has ran the best campaign by far of the Democrats.

She has so much momentum right now.

She does look right now.

Right now she looks like she's going to be the nominee.

You know,

and this sounds awful, and I'm not, I'll vote for it and I'll canvas for her, but the incredibly impressive older white woman, substantive who's not likable, we've tried that and it was a disaster.

She's kind of Angela Merkel minus the charm.

And I just think

that doesn't work.

But she right now has the most momentum.

It's no doubt about it.

She's the one that he sort of has anointed her, you know, one of the brightest people in the world has said she's going to be the nominee.

So she, if anyone came out of that conversation as a winner, hands down, it was Senator Warren.

And by the way, she had 12,000 people there at Union Square Park last week.

I think you're underestimating her and her life.

You might be right.

You know, I'm not underestimating her.

I think

you underestimated the U.S.

public.

And the rot in the Trump administration right now.

Look at the piece on the ⁇

we're not joking about these shootings.

Everybody's dropping a dime.

I cover,

as a reporter, this is going nowhere but down.

Like, everyone's going to drop a dime.

and he doesn't have control of it as and he's got really shitty people around him.

Like that's, you know what I mean?

They're not like killers.

It's like it's not like it's you know Lee Atwater and company around him.

This is like the dumb and dumb.

It does feel like the B League.

Yeah.

So we'll see.

I mean it just a lot of his stuff is got is just a mistake.

Everything he's doing is and I and I again, as someone who's watched every episode of The Apprentice, this is the moment everybody got tired of him.

Like everybody got tired of him.

And I remember that moment and the ratings went down.

His ratings are about to dip rather significantly.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Well, it would be interesting.

It would be also interesting.

I've always believed it's all about the economy, that if we go into, you know, if we hit, if, quote-unquote, his growth agenda and juicing the marketplace with $2 trillion in debt results in Q1 and Q2 of next year unleashing growth, and there's an argument for it.

Or if we go into recession.

I'm going to worry, though.

I mean, let me just read a quote from New York Magazine.

Thank you for mentioning me in that article and Pivot.

I appreciate it.

Did I not?

No, you didn't.

No, it's okay.

It's all about you, you, Scott.

CNBC wants to be friends with Jamie Dimon, Masioshi-san.

It's hard to believe that the prom queen is addicted to diet pills and a heroin addict.

The fall from grace here has been so dramatic and yet so fucking obvious.

That was a great quote.

Thanks for that.

Thanks for that.

So how do you feel about this?

Like, it's a distressed asset.

That's what you wrote.

Yeah, so this is, I mean, there's just going to be so much.

This is so interesting because I don't think in the history of business we've seen a decline.

We've seen falls this great.

We've never seen falls this precipitous or happen this fast.

So 24 days ago, Goldman was quoting that or was saying estimating this company was going public at 60 to 90 billion.

And,

you know, so now it's not only zero.

I believe if you if you let's play this out, right?

So you're the two guys, you're Sebastian and

who's the other one?

Sebastian and Gunter or Sebastian and Martin.

No, Martin.

Oh, shit.

What's the third one?

Anyways, they're great.

You're the new co-CEOs, and you have basically six months.

They run out of money.

They have $2.5 billion in cash.

They have to keep half a billion dollars in reserve because of loan covenants.

So you got $2 billion to play with, but you're burning $60 million a week or $700 million a quarter, which means you hit a wall, a flaming wall, at the end of Q1.

And StockBank is the only one that will put money into this.

And there's nothing worse than losing $12 billion

than losing, you know, except for losing $14 billion.

So these guys basically have to come back with such an incredible triage triage plan that says we're firing 500 people a week,

we're closing 40 WeWork offices, we're in negotiations with people everywhere, HR lawyers everywhere, avoiding lawsuits everywhere, and they have to come back with a plan to Masasan to say, look, if you put another $1 to $2 billion in, which they will need some additional capital, in two years, if we execute perfectly, if we execute perfectly, this thing might be worth $3 to $5 billion.

And I think the cold hard calculus that begins to emerge or distill or come into view for SoftBank and Monsasan, who is the only source of capital at this point and their only life raft, will be, you know what?

We should just rip the band-aid off now, declare Chapter 11, and then we can blame it on Adam Newman, because in three months they're going to own this.

If it goes,

the kind of risk-adjusted upside here is going to be much less than the risk-adjusted downside, given all the risks.

And I think there's a good chance in the next four to eight weeks we see we decide, you know what, it was Adam's fault.

We didn't realize it would have gone on here.

And they declare bankruptcy through the whole thing.

And then they cherry pick out one or 200 offices and restructure the thing, or it might be a pre-pack.

The other interesting question here is on those $700 million

of sales, not all of them were sales.

Some of them were lines of credit.

A lot of them were mortgages on big buildings for Adam Newman.

My question is, and the really interesting question here, and he is by

He is absolutely going to have to go into

the unicorn protection program.

There's going to be such anger towards him.

And I'll come back to it.

Did he keep all the money?

It's not clear.

Someone will.

That's the correct question because if it was lines of credit and any sort of debt, the question is: was it secured by his stock?

At which point, the people who are screwed are J.P.

Morgan and the people who lent him that money guaranteed by the stock, which is worthless because he'll just say, okay, boss, here's your stock.

If you can't pay them back, what will be really interesting is: did he sign personal guarantees?

Because if he signed personal guarantees, there's a chance we might see two bankruptcies here, a corporate bankruptcy and a personal bankruptcy.

So

the term we work, Adam Newman and bankruptcy are going to be bandied around more

in the next few weeks.

But this is just ⁇ I'm obsessed with the business.

So do you feel guilty, Scott?

Do I feel guilty?

Yeah.

I feel it's your fault the whole thing.

I do, but not for this.

I have a lot of things in my life that I feel guilty for.

We is not one of them.

No, the problem is the business.

You're right.

You're just pointing it out.

You just point it out.

Not the end of the

There's an enormous silver lining here, and that is that Adam Newman, SoftBank, and unfortunately, we'll come back to them, the employees, are the ones that incurred $50 billion in notional losses.

Had the consensual hallucination gone on for another 30 days, then it would have been retail investors that would have lost $50 billion.

They would have incurred the downside here.

So I actually think this is probably the biggest victory for the markets, although it's already cleared the IPO class for 2019.

Remember our prediction at the beginning of the year that the IPO class would lose more money than it made?

We're about to get there.

It got off to a strong start.

Now they've almost, you know, two-thirds of them lost money.

So, on a gross basis, the IPO class is probably going to be a net loser by the end of the year.

Everyone's saying we're going out later in the year.

Airbnb looks at the shit show that is these IPOs and says we're going to do a direct listing.

I mean, there's so many ramifications.

The NYC and the NASDAQ are going to get hurt.

Investment banks are going to lose IPO fees.

There's a whole ecosystem of lawyers.

The whole entire IPO has been threatened by this notion.

Not all because of you.

Yeah, that's right.

That's right.

You're going to take Trump down.

That's right.

There's a bunch of hounds, but there's only one dog.

That's the Grande Pero.

Here he is.

Look at him.

He's just back from the groomer.

There is going to be

a lot of living with you anymore.

Anyway, it's time to take a break when we get back.

We'll talk about wins and fails and our predictions this week.

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Okay, we're back now.

We talked about Facebook.

We talked a little bit about your we, your we situation, we, Scott.

Scott, there's a lot going on this week.

What is your first win or fail?

Well, first off, Kara, and I, I, you don't know much about me because you continue not to make the requisite investments in our relationship, but uh, we, we, the Galloways got a new puppy.

We got a dog.

And a fail or a win?

Well, I don't know.

We'll see.

Um, that's a big commitment.

It is a big commitment to join our,

we have a dog, a 13-year-old Viesla, a Hungarian Viesla, who's just been kind of an enormous source of joy for us.

And we got her about the same time

our oldest son was born.

But anyways,

I really wanted a steel blue Great Dane.

I grew up with a Great Dane.

I think they're just such gentle giants.

I've just dreamt.

Dane, that's your dog?

I want two things.

I want two material things in life.

I want a steel blue Great Dane, and I I want a Bombardier Challenger 300 with a Devon 10C configuration.

Steel Blue Great Dane on, presumably, because you're not going to ever travel again.

If I say to people, hey, let's go to Vegas, like, I'm not going to Vegas with that guy.

But if I say, hey, let's go to Vegas and like Challenger 300, they're like, yeah, I'll go with that guy.

He's interesting.

So, anyways, that's not going to happen.

So, I kind of deferred to the steel blue great Dane.

Totally indulgent, way too big a dog.

And, of course, huge friggin' dog.

I have like rescue dog, tiny rescue dog.

Okay, so

that's the story.

So my family, of course, comes home with a rescue dog from Puerto Rico that we think is a dachshund.

I'm not sure.

It could be a Doberman as far as we know.

But I was thinking, Kara, I think it's nice.

I was all bummed out at the beginning.

Like, the only thing I wanted was a steel blue grape name, blah, blah, blah.

But I think it's nice.

I was thinking about the fact that I get overridden so much as a function that I have attached to people and that I'm no longer in control of my life.

It's in the short term, it's sometimes frustrating, but it's a good thing that there are people that just have taken away a lot of my decisions, if you will.

And you didn't get this dog.

You don't have this dog.

Oh, no, we have a dog.

We have a tiny little, we think it's a dachshund.

I don't know what it is.

I mean, he's a lovely little guy.

That's a lot of dogs' names.

Well, that's the thing.

I had a naming contest on Twitter.

And everyone,

the two biggest names were Newman and Gangster.

And so, of course, I loved gangster.

And I did my best job on my nine and 12-year-olds.

I'm like, we're calling it gangster.

And they said they thought it was hilarious.

And I'm like, no, we want to call it Felix.

So, Cara, we settled at Felix.

Oh, my God.

So, Felix, the rescue dog, is now in the Galloway house.

Felix?

Felix is a cat, the wonderful, wonderful cat.

Oh, that hurts.

Oh, you're right.

There was a cat named Felix.

You should have stuck with gangster.

And that one, you should have made up the title.

And gotten the name.

I don't get the jet.

I don't get the great Dane.

I get the rescue Puerto Rican mother.

Someday, I'm going to get you a Great Dane someday.

I appreciate that.

For your dotage.

I'm going to get you a great Dane.

And then it's going to make you break a hip.

And I'm going to feel slightly bad about that.

Yeah, those things get hip dysplasia.

I'm going to get hip dysplasia pretty much.

Probably not.

The two of you could have bad hips together.

I probably wouldn't feel bad.

There you go.

There you have it.

All right.

So your win is your dog.

My win is my dog.

I have two fails.

Do you have any fails?

I have two fails.

No, go ahead.

Go for it.

Right.

So the first is

I think that there, in every cohort, if you will, there are laws that we're all subject to, but every cohort kind of has its own code, and that is a certain set of rules that they abide by.

In academia, for the most part, like venture capitalists, we don't say critical, or we try to avoid saying outright critical things of each other.

There's peer review where you actually, you question each other's research, but as a whole, you don't see a Harvard economist calling a University of Chicago economist an ass or an idiot.

VCs, have you noticed venture capitalists?

It's full-body contact competition, but they never, they have kind of this white guy cashmere club, as you would call it, where they don't say never anything negative about each other.

World leaders have a code, and that is they don't assassinate each other.

They've decided if we start killing each other, it's just generally bad competition.

Every now and then, but go ahead.

Yeah, but for the most part, we're really fond of this thing called life.

So, as a general rule, we don't assassinate world leaders.

And we also, as a rule, the mob has a rule, and that is they don't go after families.

They don't kill families because they're all fond of their families, and they sort of have an unwritten pact that we don't go after families.

Yeah.

I would be, if I was the, if I was Donald or Ivanka, or what's the other one?

The one that's on SR.

Eric Trump or Tiffany, I'd be very worried right now because what basically what Donald Trump has said said is that it's okay to go after kids.

And when he enlists foreign governments to kind of go after Hunter Biden and basically accuse him of things that he could end up in jail for and use the office to attack the president.

They're not true, according to every single report.

But go ahead.

If they were, well, look, according to Fox, there's real credibility there, so I believe

anyway.

At some point, there's going to be another president.

And at some point, that president's going to have political allies across the geopolitical spectrum.

And what if that president decides to go after, you know, Don Jr.?

I bet there's a lot.

He just doesn't get it.

He doesn't realize, look, you don't go after people's kids with these BS accusations and try and enlist foreign governments to go after people's children.

Yeah, he'd never do that because he never does anything like that.

Come on, this is like his whole jam is just

so short-sighted, and it shows such a lack of perspective around his own family.

It's just, it's, it's a total break of code.

Toxic narcissist.

How else would he do this?

He doesn't care about his kids.

Tarsicist.

A tarsistist.

And then my other loss is that people, or I don't think the media has been focusing around we on what is kind of, in my view, one of the more interesting stories, and that is just 30 days ago, there were 3,000 to 5,000 new millionaires.

And that is the employees that had been at Wii longer than two or three years probably all had at least a million dollars.

in equity value based on the valuation they were certain they were going public at.

And

I've been in these shoes before when I was in my early 30s and Red Envelope was supposed to go public at a $600,08 million dollar valuation.

It is impossible when you get near the goal line not to start counting your money.

It's impossible.

Yeah, I heard from someone from WME this week about that.

They're like, I was buying a house.

Well, it's impossible.

I'm not buying a house now.

It's impossible for your husband not to be looking at bigger houses.

It's impossible not to call your parents and say, hey, let's start looking into that family cruise and reunion we've always wanted.

It's impossible to think, wouldn't it be great to get a two-bedroom and think about another kid?

And you can imagine 3,000 to 5,000 people have literally gone from, say, $1 to $10 million in wealth they had to zero.

And it's like, oh, well, okay, it's easy to be cynical.

It couldn't happen to a nicer group of people.

But you know what?

That's a lot of heartache.

And you're about to see an amount, a level of animosity unleashed.

Think about this.

I'm a nice person.

I work hard.

I make $130,000 as a VP of operations at this cool company called WE, which after taxes isn't a lot of money to barely enough money to think about a kid living in Hoboken or Brooklyn.

And all of a sudden, oh, but wait, I have $3 million in Wii, and I've worked my ass off for the last three years and listened to all this Jesus talk, but it's finally paying off.

I'm finally going to have a nest egg here.

Oh, wait, am I going to have health insurance?

I mean, that's the question now.

Am I going to have to apply for Cobra to have health insurance?

So there's, I think, the real toll here.

Everyone's talking about soft banking.

Who gives a fuck?

They're going to be fine.

I don't care if they have this money.

It's the real tragedy here, if there is a tragedy, is

the employees of Wii, who are really, I would imagine, really feeling hurt right now.

Have ruined the Brooklyn real estate market

single-handedly.

Single-handedly.

Do you think?

I feel great because I can buy there now.

But here's the deal: it's not just them.

It's also like I've heard from people at William Morris and some of the other companies that have seen real declines.

We never talked about WME.

We never talked about that.

It's a collection of great assets that aren't profitable.

So

I always thought, how does this thing get out?

That's kind of adventures, Hollywood adventures in private equity and rolling up.

It'll be interesting to see.

There's actually a clause in there, if I read the S1 correctly, that their core asset, which is

the UFC,

the cage fighting, is if they didn't get it public, it reverts back to KKR, I think.

And that's kind of the crown jewel.

So it's going to be very interesting what happens there over the next several months.

Yeah, they've got to pay the agents more.

There's a lot more, there's got to be a lot more investment, just like with Wii.

You know, these agents can go anywhere.

I think they're nervous.

And by the way, this is not a group of people that likes to, you know, will just tuck their tails in and be sad, you know,

at a coffee shop in Brooklyn that they didn't get to have the, you know, house they wanted, the apartment they wanted.

This is a group of people who are super aggressive that don't like it.

And smart.

And by the way, very talented, full disclosure, I'm represented by WME.

If you are wondering why on earth a guy like me has representation, trust your instincts, but it's kind of, it makes sense.

They represent Oprah, Adele, and a dog.

And a dog.

I had meetings with them.

There you go.

WME.

I had meetings with them.

I'm not represented by anybody.

I've had meetings with all of them.

I don't want to be represented by anyone.

Oh, you have scary representation, and her name is Kara Swisher.

That's right.

I just feel like every time I'm in these meetings, I'm like, I'm smarter than you.

Like, I don't know.

Death out is different.

They pet you, don't they?

They bring you special drinks and stuff like that.

They're actually super smart people.

I know they are, but I'm creative.

And, you know, and they see that.

I like the WME people.

I do.

It's just, I don't care.

You know what they do?

You know what they do that's interesting?

And this is what's interesting about representation of any sort.

It's easier for other people to fight for you than you sometimes.

It's easier for them to have interesting or difficult conversations.

And also, a really good fiduciary or evangelist for you, whether it's a mentor, whether it's an agent, they can see you in a different light.

And that is not even necessarily a better light, but they see you in a different light.

And the reality is...

I don't like people fighting for me.

Oh, Karen, everyone needs people fighting for me.

I'm like the Irishman.

Everybody needs people fighting for me.

I want to see that movie so badly.

Everybody needs someone fighting for them.

All right.

Okay.

So you say.

Not Kara Swisher.

In any case,

my fail of the week, I wrote a column in the New York Times about

Mr.

Trump on Twitter.

Now, interestingly, I didn't say for them to kick them off, but everybody took it that way, which was fascinating.

I just suggested that he's a dangerous person.

So your article is getting a lot of pushback.

You wrote that, summarize for the people out there.

I'm going to represent you.

I'm going to pretend I'm Erica, who fights for you every day.

Tell us about that article.

Tell us about that

seminal piece that's created all this stir.

I was just making the point that he's continually violating it.

And he does this one that he did sort of halfway with

the pastor,

you know, using his talking about civil wars was dangerous.

And like, think about it.

Think about what you're allowing your platform to be used for.

And then last night, he did it.

It's a coup, an regular impeachment inquiry, which is completely normal.

It's not completely normal, but it's not outside the bounds of this country.

It's done in the correct process, just like the whistleblower

has been doing things the correct way.

He's saying words like coup on Twitter.

The president is,

I'm just saying,

we're in a different zone, and maybe you should,

maybe we should think hard about what this means.

And everybody came in, there wasn't a lot.

There was also support of it.

It's really interesting.

Kamala Harris, for example, was like, kick him off Twitter.

But other people had good ideas.

Maybe limit his likes, maybe not limit retweets, maybe do something to indicate that this kind of language, like the President of the United States

saying something's a coup that is a, that is, is, is dangerous.

And it goes against, you can just look at any of the rules of Twitter that he's,

you know, he's, what he's done.

And, you know, I'm not saying it's an easy situation.

And I, and I wrote they'd be daunted by the incredible responsibility.

And so I just, I just want people to think about what is happening here.

Because essentially,

it's been hijacked by those who want to take, as I said, advantage of its porous and sloppy rules and poorly enforced rules.

And so it's just an interesting situation.

And it's scary.

And I wanted to point it out.

And then everyone's got on their high horse whether they're like.

First Amendment, which I'm like, it doesn't apply to Twitter.

Like, I just, I have to sit there and explain to people what the First Amendment is, which is exhausting.

And then free speech.

And I'm like, not so much.

It's not really a thing, actually.

And then you have others that say, knock them off on Twitter.

I just want to hear all the things.

I was just trying to cause a ruckus, which I think I did.

So

you right now remind me of Toronto, Denver, and Columbus, Ohio,

when they submitted their RFP or their proposal to be the HQ2 of Amazon.

And it's just so adorable that you think that you have any chance this is going to happen.

Oh, I don't think it's going to happen.

I do not think it's going to happen.

All you need is a stock chart of Twitter from the IPO to Donald Trump's election.

It basically gets cut in half.

And since the day he was elected, it's doubled in value.

Yeah, but look what happened when I started suggesting regulation four years ago.

Don't push it.

Has given Jack Dorsey a half a billion dollars.

Every employee of Twitter is going to go into that voting booth.

I want them to feel bad.

And they're going to pull Trump.

No, I'm going to tell you, I want them to feel bad.

I want them to feel terrible.

I want them to feel awful about what's happening on that thing.

And that's my job.

I'm just going to point it out.

I am so addicted to Twitter.

You're not addicted to Twitter.

I am.

I'm not.

That's okay.

If it went away tomorrow, I'd be fine.

Like, I don't care.

Like, it's fine.

I like it.

You know, it's like I liked a lot of things.

And so I think that they, I think it's just an interesting thing just to, you're like hyper-cynical.

I think there are, once you start like, WeWork, you suggested the math.

I have people fighting for me, Carol.

No, I'm just saying.

You suggested WeWork's math was off.

And look what happened.

I suggested a couple of years ago that maybe tech responsibility is something we should think about and continue to bang on that drum and look where we are.

I think we do have.

We're fucking knower.

Yeah, look where we are.

Bang louder.

Bang louder.

You need representatives banging with you.

No, we're not going to be able to do that.

No champions.

We're going to get me an agent.

Oh, God.

Why would I pay 15% of my agent?

I would love to represent you.

Unless I have to, like a lawyer.

Unless I have to.

I'm not hiring.

That's scary.

I hire smart people who work with me.

That's what I do.

That's not to say.

I don't have smart people.

Anyway, we're not going to argue about this.

Everybody needs a rescue mud from Puerto Rico and up and down all day.

That's what you need.

Yeah, that's exactly what I need.

You need a great Dane, is what you need.

Now, predictions.

Predictions.

Awesome.

Okay, so I'm the one-trick pony here.

In the next 60 days, we have a bankruptcy at we.

Okay.

And so 60 days, bankruptcy.

All right.

And then what is the next Jesus founder that's going to be ousted?

You know, that's a really,

I read that in the script.

I don't know.

I haven't, I mean, I've been so focused on this is, you know, right now there really is only one Jesus, and he's in, you know, the Unicorn Protection Program.

We haven't seen or heard much from him.

You know these people better than I do.

Is there anyone that kind of is guilty?

I call it the Yoga Babble Index.

Is there any company or individual who you think is kind of off the Richter scale in terms of their level of ratio of bullshit?

You know what it is?

Companies used to have numbers and then narrative.

So

someone accused Mark Benny off of this yoga babble and talking about society.

But

when you deliver the numbers first,

you have the right to engage in some yoga babble.

And it's actually a good thing.

It's numbers then narrative.

And what a lot of young CEOs in the unicorn era have

flipped is they think they can skip the numbers part and move right to the narrative around improving the world.

But do you see that ratio of yoga babble?

What company are you looking at now?

Yoga Babble or not?

Which one are you like, mm-mm, no, no, no?

What's your company?

The company I would love to see numbers on is Palantir.

Yeah, that's interesting.

I would be very curious to see what that looks like.

And I'd love to see the S1 on that.

We will.

WME didn't get out.

I didn't think that was yoga babble.

I thought that was

just a collection of assets that they were trying to pull a WPP where they smooth out a bunch of great assets.

But the problem was WPP was very profitable and WME wasn't.

I just couldn't figure that out.

Peloton is probably going to get pelted.

It's a great company.

It's wildly overvalued.

But I don't see, I'm trying to think if there's another company that's engaging in this sort of yoga babble.

And I don't, I haven't identified it.

I haven't seen the next one.

And also I want to.

Play Uber.

You've been whacking it Uber quite a bit.

Well, that's old news.

That thing's off 50 to 80 percent in the next 24 months because they've got to maintain the growth story.

Who's going to play Ronnie Mola from Rico asked on Twitter who will play Adam Newman in the movie?

And one of our producers, Eric Johnson, said it should be Adam Driver who plays Carlos to start with.

That's perfect.

You like that?

That's perfect.

I like it.

Although, I'm absolutely lobbing my or throwing my hat in.

I want to play Rebecca Newman.

Don't you think I'd be an awesome Rebecca Newman?

Seriously, look at me.

Imagine me with black hair and like a dress.

By the way, I have more legs than a bucket of chicken as a woman.

I have perfect legs for a woman.

Anyways, and I just want to be in the scene where she meets with people for five minutes and says, I don't like your energy.

You're fired.

I like that.

I don't know if that's true.

I think that already.

I think you do that already.

I got to do an investigative look into Scott Galloway's company.

I'm going to talk to your employees and see what they have to say.

Chipotle.

After hours of Little Sialis.

That's about it.

That's about it.

Who's going to play you in the movie?

Who's going to to play Scott Galloway in the movie?

If you could pick, and it's not Scott Galloway.

Bruce Stern.

We're bringing back Bruce Stern.

You know, Bruce Stern.

Oh, my God.

Of course I do.

That's perfect.

Coming home.

Yeah, I know.

Everyone said that.

Or either him or we're bringing back underrated

Ivan Lindel.

Either Ivan Lindel or Bruce Stern.

The big dog story.

Ivan Lindel?

Yeah.

And by the way, not that I'm obsessed with.

Tennis player?

Remember him?

Yes.

Let's get creative.

You need a representative to be creative.

See you in a different light.

That's right.

Oh, my God.

Wouldn't he you work for?

Ari Emanuel?

He calls me now and again, you know.

Does he?

He's a funny guy.

I'm thinking of bringing him back to code this year because he was so crazy when he was there.

But I think maybe not so much.

He's going to want to talk right this year.

I like the idea of the two of you next to each other.

That's definitely a choppy.

You'll be on stage for that one.

Oh, yeah.

That's right.

He's scary.

He'll scare the shit out of you.

You always promise that.

So, Kara Swisher, what are you up to?

We're talking about code.

Code's like seven months off and you're already pimping it.

I'm already pimping it.

I am working on that.

I'm doing lots of stuff.

I'm going to have a baby soon.

Not my meeting.

That's crazy.

I just think that's crazy.

I'm doing tons and tons of interviews.

We got a live pivot in New York in

two weeks, I think.

We've got a live pivot in San Francisco.

It's pretty much Scott Galloway and the baby.

That is really my life at this point.

It's a sad.

That makes me feel warm all over when you said that.

That was nice.

Thank you.

And only one of them is whiny, crying, and spakes up all the time.

There you go.

They're both adorable, though.

They're both adorable.

Yeah, that's exciting.

Exciting for you.

Exciting for you.

That's what you tell the dog and Scott Calloway.

Sit.

All right.

Enough of us.

I'm sick of us, and I love us.

All right.

We got to blitter piece out here.

Wrap it up.

Bring it home.

I've got to go out and buy canned food for my Civil War 2020 bunker.

Anyway, I will talk to you next week.

I'm so excited for you and your dog and everything else.

And really, you did a great job on WeWork.

I kid all much, but really,

it's a public service at you pointing that.

Public service, Scott Galloway.

I salute you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Kara.

Today's show was produced by Erica Anderson and Eric Johnson.

Thanks also to Rebecca Sinanis, Rebecca Castro, Drew Burrows, and Nishat Kirwa.

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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.

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