Hate on 8chan and why Scott's not quitting Equinox

So, your AI agents.

They make the team that uses them more productive, right?

But if they aren't connected to other agents, or your data, or your existing workflows, how productive can they really make your teams?

Any business can add AI agents.

IBM connects your agents across your company to change how you do business.

Let's create Smarter Business, IBM.

Mike and Alyssa are always trying to outdo each other.

When Alyssa got a small water bottle, Mike showed up with a four-litre jug.

When Mike started gardening, Alyssa started beekeeping.

Oh, come on.

They called a truce for their holiday and used Expedia Trip Planner to collaborate on all the details of their trip.

Once there, Mike still did more laps around the pool.

Whatever.

You were made to outdo your holidays.

We were made to help organize the competition.

Expedia, made to travel.

Hi, everyone.

This is Pivot from the Vox Media Podcast Network.

I'm Kara Swisher.

And Kara, this is Scott Galloway, Equinox member.

Our first topic.

No, we have to talk about that.

I'm very depressed.

Why?

There's a lot of, like, we'll get to that first.

First, we're going to talk about the most depressing story, obviously,

which was a man shot and killed 22 people in a shopping center in El Paso, Texas, at a Walmart, in fact.

And it was one of the several shootings this week.

There were others in Gilroy, California, and Dayton, Ohio.

But we're talking about this awful topic.

There's a tech angle.

The police say about half an hour before the El Paso shooter opened fire, he posted an anti-immigrant, anti-Hispanic manifesto on 8Chan.

Scott, have you ever been on 4chan or 8Chan or any of these sites?

You know, I haven't, Karen, I barely, I don't really even know what they are.

Can you give a brief overview of what they are?

Yeah, what happens is these sites, a lot of people have been sort of shoved off of other sites.

And so they coalesce around a couple of these sites, one of which was started by someone who wanted a full free speech 4chan was not free speech enough and so they went to 8chan

and the guy who actually founded it wants the wants it closed down because he thinks it's negative for the world and negative for the people who use it but it's a place where they can post these manifestos and trade and hate and it's where you can say anything you want and so it's it's used for these killers as havens for killers to post their opinions about what they're about to do so do you think they should be shut down

um

yes i do yes i do i think they're they're just havens for killers and racists and everything else.

And

I don't know how you can shut them down, but I don't think that other companies should be supporting them.

And there's a lot of companies

that

support them, essentially.

One of them, which was Cloudflare, which is an internet infrastructure company, it's really a security company.

On Sunday, the company cut off service to 8chan, a move that was only done once before for a white supremacist site, the Daily Stormer, if you remember.

At first, Cloudfair was saying it wouldn't do anything this time.

The guy who runs it, Matthew Prince,

is a very staunch free speech advocate, but then it changed its mind, and critics have been asking, why is it so different than Christchurch or any of the other awful things 8Chan has hosted in the past?

So, you know, it's a really bad situation.

It's a really problematic one.

And let me just play this, and I'd love to get your thoughts.

Two years ago on my old podcast, Too Embarrassed to Ask, I interviewed the CEO of Cloudfair, Matthew Prince, who has done done this shutdown.

This was after they pulled the plug on the Daily Stormer, and even then he was deeply conflicted.

Here's what he said.

That doesn't feel right.

I think we need to have a conversation about if we're going to regulate content online, where is the right place to regulate it?

And

I'm the son of a journalist.

I believe deeply in free speech.

That's what we talked about around the dinner table.

I think it's one of the things that makes this country so powerful.

But it doesn't have the same force around the rest of the world.

What does, on the other hand, is an idea of due process, an idea that there are a set of rules that you should follow and you should be able to know going into that.

And I don't think that the tech industry has that set of due processes.

That's really arbitrary.

And we didn't follow principles of due process in this case.

Yeah, so look, I have a backstory here.

A few years ago, a few years ago, 10 years ago, I was put on the board of Eddie Bauer by the debt holders or some of the equity holders, and it was about to go into reorganization.

Eddie Bauer,

bad merchandise, a dusty brand, poor execution.

The thing was going into bankruptcy, but there was still value there.

So we went through this auction where you try and get a stocking horse bidder and then find someone to buy the firm.

And at that time, the highest bidder was a firm that just does licensing, meaning that they would fire everybody and then just license the brand and produce goods overseas and crappy goods.

Well,

not always, but typically not of the same quality as a vertical manufacturer.

And 1,200 people were going to lose their jobs.

And we decided to reopen the bidding process to see if we could find someone to buy the company and hold on to most of the employees.

And the hedge fund manager, a 24-year-old who gave me a great lecture about the invisible hand, called and said, you're not doing your job.

You have a fiduciary obligation to shareholders full stop.

And you're not there to pretend you're a social engineer.

And I called a guy named Stuart Stein.

And I think it's important that young people always have a kitchen cabinet of people on their shoulder when they're dealing with business or personal issues.

And this guy was part of my kitchen cabinet.

And he said, well, actually, Scott, when a company goes towards bankruptcy, it enters what's called the zone of insolvency, where your fiduciary obligations aren't just to shareholders, but they're to the debt holders and to the community and to the employees.

And I think slowly but surely companies have moved towards this notion that their board of directors is fiduciaries for stakeholders, not just shareholders.

And what I find in business and our society is that we have what's these kind of comfort absolutes, where when we're faced with difficult decisions, we just go, oh, First Amendment, or oh, just represents shareholders.

And the reality is the world's not that simple, and you have to take into mind other stakeholders.

So I find that when people wrap themselves in a First Amendment blanket or a censorship blanket, what they're really saying is, I don't want to have to think about nor defend this really hard decision.

And I think in the case of these organizations, especially something like 8Chan or 4Chan, if it's what you say it is, unless it's a trap, unless it's a Venus fly trap for domestic terrorists or pedophiles, I say that companies have a responsibility to have a thoughtful conversation around whether they want to engage in supporting that organization.

So I like the fact that we're moving away from what I'll call these comfort absolutes.

Yeah, I agree with you.

I think it's a really difficult problem.

I mean, what's interesting about Matthew Prince is in his quote, it just drove me.

He's an interesting man, and I had a very good interview with him, but he's very typical of these Silicon Valley types where they don't want to take any responsibility for anything and they want all the benefit.

And they don't want to make any hard decisions.

And one of the things that he said in his quote just irked me, and in fact, I wrote a New York Times column about it, was that he goes, Finally, enough is enough.

And I was like,

hey, dude, enough has been enough for a very long time.

And they said, we need to start a conversation about online hate.

I'm like, we've been having it.

It's just that you refuse to do anything about it, and you're in a position of power here.

And so it was sort of irritating.

The whole encounter irritated me.

And

it's so typical of these tech companies, which are just literally abrogating responsibility at every step of the game and benefiting from them at every step of the game.

And these things have impact.

And the other thing is, why dump Daily Stormer and not this one?

Why do this and not this one?

And so, you know, they really have to have some rules that they keep in place where these sites are either they're toxic or they're not, and they're going to support them or they're not.

And that's, I don't know, it just seems

they make it needlessly difficult.

We're going to, as consumers of these companies, is going to have to recognize that occasionally they get it wrong.

The New York Times got their headline wrong because

they have to make discretionary calls around this stuff.

And discretionary calls means that you have to say, all right, if they're making discretionary calls, they're occasionally going to get wrong.

I know Matthew, he came and spoke to my class.

He struck me as a pretty nice, thoughtful guy.

And by the way, just purely distinctive, the ethics here, it was a brilliant move from a branding standpoint.

I mean, he's got, he is now, or Cloudflare is now seen as this kind of righteous, starchier hat, white household name.

It was a brilliant move, strictly from a PR standpoint.

But going back to the gun issue, and

I promise myself,

we keep promising each other we're not going to delve into politics.

Go right ahead.

You have, I mean, obviously you hear these, just these gripping stories about a woman who's bleeding out of her head because she's just been shot in the head, FaceTiming her husband, and the only, you know, her last words are, I need to get to my kids.

I mean, the unimaginable horror on this kind of first circle of victims.

But I mean,

you'd want to somehow figure out a way for Mitch McConnell to feel the disaster, the empathy, and the stress that it literally, that it creates across all parents.

My kids' school school now has a guy as of six months ago on campus sitting around looking at his phone that has a sidearm.

And he just sits on campus hoping and waiting that some guy.

And I call him, okay, you're now the guy, you're the first guy that gets shot.

That's what you are if something terrible happens here.

But it's really, it's not to protect the kids.

It's to protect the parents who are in a state of hysteria right now.

And the amount of stress, it's like I'm going to Nantucket this week.

And of course, the moment I decide to go to Nantucket, the beaches are cleared because there's a gray white.

My son.

Yeah, it's a lot of sharks.

Yeah, my son in his wetsuit literally looks like a dinner bell for shark week.

And all I can think about is: okay, I can't let,

how do I not let my kid into the water?

And I'm just totally stressed out.

The amount of stress that guns causes parents across this land is extraordinary.

And obviously, the victims, that's, you know, those people's lives and the lives of their families are ruined.

But the amount of stress and heartache this is causing across America is sort of a, it's just, it's just incalculable.

It's just so strange.

And I'm curious, I don't see a lot on, okay, well, what can be done?

We're sort of all outraged, but what, if you today decided, I mean, other than registering to vote or making a donation to the service member who's running against Mitch McConnell, I'd say, what do you do?

I think you did, if I was doing it, you ban assault weapons.

Well, okay, but how do we get there?

You and I are on board.

How do we get there?

How do we make it?

They did it in the Clinton administration.

They did it.

They did it.

They did it.

They just let it lapse.

And shootings went down considerably.

Oh, no doubt it works.

More guns, more dust, less guns, less dust.

It's pretty straightforward.

We don't have a monopoly on mental illness or video games.

We have a monopoly on mentally ill people with access to weapons of war.

I mean, it's straight fucking math.

Well, it's anybody with them.

Honestly,

just ban assault weapons to start with.

And, you know, they were able to, I mean, Trump was able to ban bump stocks, you know, by executive order.

You know, I don't know.

The whole thing is just,

what happens is they rely on our ability to get exhausted by it and not be so exhausted that we don't.

Turn to something else.

And that's the

issue.

And they're right.

Yeah, and they're right.

It keeps happening, we keep forgetting about it.

It keeps happening, we keep forgetting about it.

Well, that's why I find these people ultimately so cynical about what's happening.

Now, the same thing is this

thing where you made a joke about Equinox, and it's kind of a weird pivot to make, but it's the same thing is that this guy who runs Steve Ross, Steven Ross, he owns Hudson Yards, which everyone abhors in New York, apparently.

And he also owns a number of brands that are, you've talked about this issue.

I was thinking about you a lot.

Bluestone,

I think it's Creamery.

He owns

Pure Yoga, SoulCycle.

Yeah, Pure Yoga, Soul Cycle, Equinox.

You use Equinox, I use SoulCycle.

And he is giving, after the week of the racist

tweets by Trump, he's still giving this giant Hamptons party, the most elite place on earth

for President Trump.

And

it set off a flurry on the Internet yesterday among people who use these things because most of them are

the

elite, wealthy people who did not know this was going on.

And then people did.

Thoughts?

Well, so let me ask you, and you go first and I'll go second.

Does it affect your affinity and likelihood to patronize Soul Cycle?

I know you're sorry.

No, I'm not going going to use it anymore.

You're done.

Really?

Done.

Yeah.

Wow.

Wow.

I just, it's dumb.

It's a discretionary purchase.

I know it's expensive.

It's plenty of money.

And so it's like, I don't need to do it.

I don't need to.

And even though they tried very hard, the CEO of Melanie Whalen, who I like quite a bit,

had put out a statement that said, you know, none of,

we don't agree with this and

none of the money goes to politicians.

He's a passive investor.

He's the owner.

He's like, he makes all the money.

So it's kind of really hard.

The same thing Equinox did.

Equinox is used by a crazy amount of gay people and stuff like that.

Soul Cycle is supposed to be for diversity in women.

And

I put it akin to if Rose Macario of Patagonia, which has been selling its environmental record and they do lawsuits and stuff like that, and you buy into that brand because of what you like about it, suddenly was an oil driller in

pristine areas of the wilderness.

It's just, you just don't have to.

You don't have to buy that stuff and everything.

I don't know.

So I respect that.

And I think you're walking the walk.

I'm going to continue to go to Equinox.

My decision is going to be, I think, indicative of most consumers, and that is I talk a big game and then I want that little black dress for $9.99 from HM, which means somebody in Bangladesh is working for poverty wages and the supply chain is just polluting like crazy.

I do think there's a distinction between something like Equinox and Soul Cycle and Patagonia, who rests its brand on being overtly kind of socially conscious.

I think Equinox and Soul Cycle are trying to be progressive, but it's basically just a gym where there's more good-looking people wearing more Lululemons, so they charge a premium.

No, but seriously, it does bother me.

I agree with you.

It's like they sell and sell and sell.

They have neons.

They sell the idea of what they are, and then in fact, their owner is completely different.

I'll go even further than that.

I find with progressives, look, I think that we're very good at accepting people who don't look like us.

We're not very good at accepting people who don't think like us.

And 49 percent of the nation voted for Trump.

And if someone wants to host a fundraiser for him, I don't think we should be committing economic war against that person.

I just don't

I'm going to work my ass off to get Trump out of office.

I'm going to give money.

I'm going to canvass.

I'm going to do my part.

But I think bipartisanship has to go places if you really think of it as a belief as opposed to just a word.

I don't think you can commit economic war against people who happen to support the president.

And I don't like them.

I think they're stupid.

I don't understand them.

But

there were people who hated Obama and Hillary.

And does that mean that they should not work with my companies?

Do they have a moral obligation?

Oh, come on.

Boycotting is an age-old tradition.

Everybody, it's been going on.

Remember Anita Bryant and the orange juice with gays and so this is not an unusual thing to do.

Like Chick-fil-A, for example, super anti-gay.

I let my kids eat it all the time.

I tell them what it is, they make a decision.

Right.

They think the chicken is the best chicken ever.

So I don't eat it.

So it's just, I think people can make individualized decisions without, what I think the left does all the time is we constantly are the ones giving in and saying we'll try to be bipartisan when the other side just never does.

Look at the behavior of Mitch McConnell this week.

He's just not going to pass it.

So if he was feeling bipartisan or think it's an important thing, he would do it.

And so we get played constantly on the left by the right, constantly.

Now that I've outed myself as someone who's going to continue to go to Equinox, I have to enter the fitness protection program.

Kara, get it?

The fitness protection program.

You go ahead.

I just think everyone should be able to choose.

That's all.

People can make their choices.

And I think boycotts are an age-old tradition.

The right does it, the left does it.

I think it's perfect.

You know, when a lot of people didn't want to go to Disney because they had the gay days, fine.

That's your choice kind of thing.

I think it's good.

100% get it.

So you,

the Apple card, I want to pivot to something happier.

The Apple card.

Can we talk about the Apple card?

Yes, please, Because I've been using it the past couple of days.

Really?

And what do you think?

I haven't used it yet.

I've just downloaded.

Yes, they gave it to me early.

Yeah.

Did you get on the thing if you used it yet?

Yeah, that's right.

I haven't used it yet, but I got on it because I know Kara Swisher.

That's right, exactly.

It's great.

It's great.

What are the things you like about it?

I'll tell you about what I think I like about it.

What do you like about it?

And I tell you where I think it came up short.

And let me do the negative parts, which is Apple Pay is not available everywhere.

So I don't have the physical card with me yet because it hasn't been delivered.

It's a titanium card which you'll love because you can also kill people with it apparently.

Sounds like a weapon.

But it's this very sharp titanium card.

I don't have it yet and so where it is not available, which is several places, I've noticed, it's available in a lot of places, but not as many as I thought.

And so that's a problem, not being able to use it.

The thing I like about it is no numbers on it.

I like the instant ability to see things and where I purchase them.

I like the financial information they give in this app, which is really well done.

I like the fact that they're not trading on your information, that they don't have it, that it's encrypted.

I like that their business isn't marketing on top of making money from

interest rates and late fees and stuff like that, which exist on all credit cards, obviously.

And I just like the ethos of,

I just trust Apple.

I think that's what it is.

I trust them more than other companies.

Yeah, I thought that was a great summary.

Another incredible brand move is they're going after privacy.

And the individual who helped me get signed up said we're all about simplicity, transparency, and privacy.

And I thought it was interesting that they're incorporating privacy really deftly into their kind of core identity.

The one feature you didn't mention that I really liked, or I really like, is that when you get your bill, it uses artificial intelligence to badge the location.

Instead of having some funky merchant code that you can't figure out where did I spend $200, it says, oh, you spent $200 at this gas station

in Ontario or whatever.

And I'm going to go to the next one next to it.

And it has a map.

However, I asked the individual, I said, okay,

this morning I was literally looking at my Amex bill and I saw all these charges on iTunes and I wanted to know, are these legitimate, what was being purchased?

Because I'd like to know, it's my kids using my iTunes account.

But I want to know, A, is it fraud?

And B, I want to know what they're buying.

And I said, well, why haven't you been able to use that given it's a closed network and you more than anybody know if they're downloading Dora the Explorer or something else?

And she's like, oh, well, we haven't figured that out.

Which I think is bullshit.

In other words, my sense is transparency.

Yeah, I agree.

Transparency is great for them until it might reduce their revenues.

Right.

And the thing that would be easiest for them to tell you what has actually been purchased, they've decided, oh, we can't figure that out.

I agree.

I had an issue with that, too.

But go ahead.

The other thing that's I think really interesting is the security features where your numbers is not on it and numbers can change because credit card fraud, I get contacted probably two or three times a month via text message saying, was this charge yours?

And if it's less than 20 or 30 bucks, I just say yes, because the idea of having my credit card shut down and then re-registering across all the different sites is such a pain in the ass that I've decided a tax worth paying is to have a little bit of fraud on my card.

A little bit of fraud.

That's where they test it, and then they buy a big thing, like a boat.

Yeah, but here's the thing, Carol.

When they say they're calling you for your protection, no, they're not.

They're calling you for their own protection because you are not liable for more than $50.

You're not liable for any fraudulent charges on your card.

So when they call you and say we're going to shut it down and make it a pain in the ass for you to re-register everywhere for your protection, no, it's not.

It's for it, they're covering their own ass.

You're not liable for any fraudulent charges.

Perhaps.

In any case, it's really simple, which is what I really liked about it.

When we get back, we will talk about Facebook.

Scott, it's time to take a break and we'll talk about wins and fails and our predictions for the week.

We'll be back after this.

As a founder, you're moving fast towards product market fit, your next round, or your first big enterprise deal.

But with AI accelerating how quickly startups build and ship, security expectations are also coming in faster, and those expectations are higher than ever.

Getting security and compliance right can unlock growth or stall it if you wait too long.

Vanta is a trust management platform that helps businesses automate security and compliance across more than 35 frameworks like SOC2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and more.

With deep integrations and automated workflows built for fast-moving teams, Vanta gets you audit ready fast and keeps you secure with continuous monitoring as your models, infrastructure, and customers evolve.

That's why fast-growing startups like Langchain, Ryder, and Cursor have all trusted Vanta to build a scalable compliance foundation from the start.

Go to Vanta.com slash Vox to save $1,000 today through the Vanta for Startups program and join over 10,000 ambitious companies already scaling with Vanta.

That's vanta.com slash box to save $1,000 for a limited time.

Support for Pivot comes from LinkedIn.

From talking about sports, discussing the latest movies, everyone is looking for a real connection to the people around them.

But it's not just person to person, it's the same connection that's needed in business.

And it can be the hardest part about B2B marketing, finding the right people, making the right connections.

But instead of spending hours and hours scavenging social media feeds, you can just tap LinkedIn ads to reach the right professionals.

According to LinkedIn, they have grown to a network of over 1 billion professionals, making it stand apart from other ad buys.

You can target your buyers by job title, industry, company role, seniority skills, and company revenue, giving you all the professionals you need to reach in one place.

So you can stop wasting budget on the wrong audience and start targeting the right professionals only on LinkedIn ads.

LinkedIn will even give you $100 credit on your next campaign so you can try it for yourself.

Just go to linkedin.com slash pivot pod.

That's linkedin.com/slash pivot pod.

Terms and conditions apply only on LinkedIn ads.

So, Scott, we're back.

Are you there, Scott Galloway?

I am.

Or are you working out at Equinox because you're a class trader?

We need class traders according to Anand Gear Dadas.

Yeah, that's true.

I heard the call.

I heard the call.

Yeah, I am a class trader, I guess I am.

So, Facebook, you discussed it earlier.

They're rebranding its WhatsApp and Instagram to be WhatsApp by Facebook and Instagram by Facebook.

Speaking of brands, like I'm using the Apple card because I trust Apple.

Oh, my God.

Now I wasn't using Instagram and WhatsApp.

Now I'm really not using Instagram and WhatsApp.

This is it?

I think it's a fail.

What do you think?

Yeah, my mind was just blown.

Because typically, when you have brands with this type of equity, you don't want to pollute them.

And right now, Facebook has some baggage.

Instagram and WhatsApp are pretty clean brands.

And Facebook's an amazing brand because of its ubiquity, and it does have a lot of positive associations, and people interact with it every day.

But there's some baggage there, right?

Facebook has been dented and banged up.

creating sort of this master brand or sub-brands, turning WhatsApp and Instagram into sub-brands, usually would go the other way.

So this doesn't make business sense, except that what it does is it does two things.

One, it outs Mark Zuckerberg is he clearly thinks Facebook is kind of the lead dog here and it's really all he cares about and he doesn't have nearly the affection for the other brands to the extent he's willing to damage kind of billions in brand equity.

But two, I think there's more Machiavellian than that and that is I think he's trying to again conjoin the triplets and make them one entity such that if and when the DTC or the FTC and the DOJ get their act together and come in and start talking about breaking them up, he can say, well, if you try and separate us now, you're going to kill the entire baby.

So they're trying to pull things together such that they can claim, well, the spaghetti can't be unwound, otherwise you'd kill the entire company.

So I think this is a prophylactic move against antitrust.

I think the DOJ is a bad thing.

Well, what about as a brand move?

What is your thought?

It's stupid.

It's really stupid.

These are such powerful brands.

These are global brands.

Each of these brands is probably one of the 20 or 30 strongest brands in the world right now.

And the idea that you would make them less distinct and create that, do away with that diversity of asset base is just, it's just, it's heresy in the world of branding that you would take three amazing brands

and mush them together.

It's just weird.

It's like, I don't know what the equivalent would be.

It's like Lexus or Toyota saying, we're just going to call it the Toyota Lexus.

I was like, well, this has a distinct identity and a ton of brand value.

Why would you start polluting and confusing both brands?

So it makes no sense from a business standpoint.

I do think Mark Zuckerberg is a brilliant businessman, and I think he's decided that the brand equity that they will sacrifice is outweighed by his ability to claim that they're one company and you can't break us up.

All right.

So I think it's a fail.

What is your fail of the week?

I agree.

I know why he's doing it.

I think it's a bad idea.

That's my fail.

I think it was,

you know, I think that Facebook,

it's a lesson in really poorly managed brand architecture.

It just doesn't, it doesn't make any sense.

And

I hope the FDC and the DOJ send a letter going background saying, just because you've decided this is one brand doesn't mean we're not going to come in and break it up.

Should we decide that's the right thing to do?

Yeah, I think that was one of the things.

Obviously, also this week, Facebook wrote to Congressman David Siciline that TikTok is a serious competitor and that in 2018 it was installed more times than either Facebook or Instagram.

And obviously Siciline, who's going to be on the podcast soon, is one of the Democrats who's thinking about whether Facebook should be broken up.

So they're now trying to make a competitor.

Like that's, again, that was a fail to me.

Like, oh, Facebook, you really have to stop.

Like, I see what they're doing, but they're definitely making moves because, you know, the government is moving in on them.

Yeah, 100%.

What's your fail this week?

Fail this week for me is the activity around Google, the accusation that Google is traitorous again, that continues by the Trump administration via Peter Thiel.

And they were pushing the idea

they're investigating Google because they discriminate against right-wing employees.

And they focused on a right-wing employee, Kevin Cernike, who was, of course, was on Fox News, which got Donald Trump's attention.

And then he started on suppressing negative stories stories about Hillary Clinton and trying to undermine him.

And I just think this is just,

I am not a defender of Google most of the time, but in this case, it's ridiculous.

It's a ridiculous attempt to do business via politics.

Aaron Powell, Jr.: Well, and this got overshadowed again with all the mushroom clouds and dumpster fires everywhere.

But supposedly Trump is considering an executive order around these platforms.

an executive order to try and diminish or to try and reduce the amount of conservative bias.

It's like, okay,

what's that going to look like?

I mean, you want to talk about our heads start spinning around First Amendment and censorship when the president's going to put out some sort of executive order demanding.

It's not going to work.

Yeah, I can't imagine the mechanism.

I just don't see how on earth that would happen.

I don't.

Well, the fact that he's doing it, it's like between Fox News and Peter Thiel, this is just insanity.

Again, to defend a giant company like Google is not my easiest stance, but in this case, I think it's just

the executive order to do that without any proof whatsoever, except for this idiot who worked at Google, who, you know, whatever.

It's not, I'm sure it's not great to be there at the kombucha social hours if you happen to love Trump.

So what?

Like, so what?

Work somewhere else or just, you know, say your piece and then argue with people.

But this idea that he was discriminated against just because he doesn't, you know, there's such, talk about like snowflakes.

They're just snowflakes.

I don't know what else.

That's what they use, the term snowflakes.

So that was a fail for me.

this game.

And I don't know where it's going to happen, but it must be very concerning to Google.

It has to be very concerning.

Do you have a win?

A win, yes.

I actually,

it's something I tweeted about last night.

The Beanie Friedman, did you see Booksmart?

I love BookSmart so much.

I'm so sorry I didn't do better.

But she's an amazing actress.

She just holds the screen like nobody else.

She's also from Ladybird and BookSmart, and she's going to play Monica Lewinsky in season three of American Crime Story about Bill Clinton's impeachment.

And Monica Lewinsky is one of the producers.

I just am so excited about that.

I don't get excited about that much television, but I think it's great.

Nice.

Nice.

Yeah.

You have to see BookSmart.

What's your win?

You know, it's funny.

On the way over here, I was trying to think of a win, and I don't have a win, and I feel like it's my right not to have a win.

My question is, it's strange.

Do you remember when 9-11 happened, there was a pretty large cohort of people that had serious anxiety or couldn't fly?

I never understood that.

I was here when it happened.

I thought, okay, if you know someone that was hurt, or actually no one was hurt, people were murdered.

Very few people got injured.

They either survived or they were killed.

But it sent a large portion of people into a funk, right?

And which is understandable.

But I never really understood that.

And these shootings were...

When you lived in New York and you weren't in a funk, everyone I knew in New York.

Oh, I saw the buildings come down.

I mean,

I was right there.

And I just,

I know that sounds terrible, but I just, I thought it was obviously tragic, but it didn't put me into any sort of depression or cause any anxiety.

And this shooting, I don't know if it's because I'm getting older, but these shootings this week have really sort of rattled rattled me.

And I'm trying to figure out, is it the age?

Is it having kids?

Is it finally developing an overdue sense of empathy?

What is it about events?

And I would love to find who the, you know, the premier psychology.

What is it about certain events that you're not close to have an impact on you versus those that don't?

But this, it feels like this one was different.

I don't know why.

Was it for you?

Has this like rattled you?

No, it's just an ongoing feeling of depression over the fact that this is, I don't know if it's depression corrected, that this just doesn't end.

It gets ratcheted and ratcheted up, and you are constantly pushing back on what is, you know, racism, like that, you know, and then and then you have a group of people, like, I don't know, like Tucker Carlson, for example.

It's just such a

gone fishing.

He should stay fishing.

Who are just like, there's no such thing as this.

And when it's so clear that it is, you feel like you're being propaganda, you're being manipulated.

You feel like you're living in Soviet Russia.

Yeah.

And you know how I address and fix my depression?

How?

Equinox.

Here's the thing, Kara.

As a species, compromise.

As a species, we are happiest.

Shadow white man.

We are happiest when we are in motion and surrounded by people we love.

And I want to give a shout out.

And as you said, you still have back fat.

None of you have to do that.

There you go.

There you go.

But you know what?

When I go to Equinox three times a week, I look 53 and 7-8 nude as opposed to just 54.

It's working.

It's working.

But But shout out.

If you're feeling depressed like me, it's really easy.

Get outdoors, exercise, sweat with people you love.

That's where we are happiest as a species.

Not an equinox or soul cycle.

As Christy Teigen said, I'll meet you at the library with weights.

I'm going boogie boarding with my eight and 11-year-olds.

Truth be told, we might be chum.

We might be a little tasty snack.

And oh, by the way, what great timing.

I can't turn on a TV and see a great white shark like eating the shit out of a seal that looks like a little boy in a wetsuit.

I am a mess, but I am going to go into the water and go boogeyboarding with my kids this weekend.

It's lucky most people in the world have a worse life than you.

Any predictions this week's film?

Oh, shame me.

I feel so shame.

Oh my God, I'm enjoying my life.

Yes.

There's immigrants down in Texas that are being mistreated.

But I'm so upset for you that you can work out now.

I'm so glad.

Anyway, what is your predictions?

I don't mean to Equinox shame you, but I think I will for several weeks.

Well, we talked about so I like there's a

I always talk about stocks that I don't that I think are going to get cut in half, but the stock that I really like now and I'm looking at, if you will, or thinking about I only buy stocks that I can give to my kids, is a stock we've talked about.

I think a stock to watch is the real real.

I went, they have

oh, yeah, I think this thing is a juggernaut.

I think if you look at some of the companies that have created tens of billions of dollars in value, they monetize these fallow assets, whether it's cars or apartments, and And the Real Real

is I think there could be something.

I think this could be, if you will, a $30, $50, $100 billion market cap company.

And I think it's built some moats around it.

I don't think their competitors are that strong.

There's a network effect, explosive growth using the Internet.

And they've also, similar to what Uber's done, but in a better way, have figured out a way to assemble a group of

humans or organic intelligence.

So my prediction is we talked about Beyond Me getting cut in half and I got a bunch of crap on Twitter for always being Debbie Downer.

So I think Real Real is going to do really well this year.

I think it's interesting.

Julie Wainwright, I covered her for many years, but she had several companies for this, including Pets.com, where she got killed.

And didn't really make a recovery for a long time.

I've known her really well.

She's actually coming to Code Commerce in New York

in September, so I'll be interviewing her there.

But I've known her for a million years.

And this was an idea.

I put up the email she sent me when she started it.

She goes, I've got this kind of interesting idea finally, finally, and talked about it and said, you should come visit our warehouse when we start doing it.

And so I'm really happy for her that this has worked out.

And it does meet a need that is, it's a nice, clean company that does like exactly a very helpful thing to a lot of people.

The whole idea of clothes, and I think I'd like to talk about this next week, the idea of actually owning clothes and how you move what you own around.

I'll be writing about that next week, where you can rent everything, Scott.

But it's a great company, you're right.

And she's a really terrific, interesting, very interesting, and one of of the few female CEOs in a tech-related company.

I'm going to make a little prediction.

The Disney stock getting cut because of the earnings and stuff like that, I think Disney's going to do just fine.

And I'll be really interested when they roll out this.

You know, they've had a bad history on the internet.

So I'm really excited to see what they do around this Disney Hulu ESPN stuff and how well they're going to do it.

We'll see.

They're really great in content.

They have seven of the top, what, 10 movies.

I think the the worries about them are premature.

100 percent.

I like your prediction more.

And I don't know if you saw, but yes, they announced they are moving towards this grand bundle.

They are bundling Disney Plus ESPN and Hulu.

Ad supported Hulu for what?

Exactly $12.99, the same price as Netflix.

So they're moving towards this grand bargain prime-like offering, which is absolutely

the way to go.

But yeah, I like your prediction more.

I think the market got it wrong.

It was off 5% after the earnings call, because let's be honest, this bundling and recurring revenue bundles are just extraordinarily expensive.

But I agree with you.

I think it's going to come back.

They have had not much success on the internet.

I've written about all of it.

They had Dig and everything else.

And they had the thing called Starwave.

They had all kinds of, they just had a, they've never really been that successful in internet offerings.

But I have to say, Bob Iger has been early to it.

He's been trying at it.

And I think

he will get it right.

If there's any meaty executive who will get it right, I think it will be him.

100%.

And where are you, this week, Care?

Where is I am on the Cape with the sharks?

and I don't go swimming that much, so I'm totally safe.

Yeah.

I also did the Bill Simmons podcast, and I'm trying to compete with all your podcasts you're doing with other people.

You're cheating on me, so I cheated on you with Bill Simmons, who was brilliant, and also John Lovett last week.

So I was around.

I know, but that's like, okay, I go play tennis with my friends, and you go to Wimbledon.

Bill Simmons and John Lovett those.

But we're going to interview a presidential candidate.

I'm saying that.

Stop cheating me.

Yeah, we are.

We're working with you.

It's teasing me.

It's going to happen.

It's like when my dad would always tell my mom he was going to buy her a rabbit coat.

That was a luxury item in the Galloway household, a rabbit coat.

And we never did.

We're still waiting on that rabbit coat.

You're going to have a rabbit coat, Scott Galloway.

I'm going to get you a rabbit coat.

We're going to have such a good time, and you have to behave and ask good questions.

Good questions.

What's the point?

I'm 54.

I'm an atheist.

I'm economically secure.

I have a core group of people who love me.

What's the point of behaving?

Reut Bader Ginsburg, Muhammad Ali, ali kurt cobe my heroes all have one thing in common circle slash behave all right okay all right on that note have a beautiful time i'll talk to you next week uh have a try to be careful when you swim and try not to wear bright colors and kick with your little feet because you are sharkbait sharkbait by the way you know what we have done so much crap to sharks i'm sort of like

well there's a lot there's a big pushback against shark week for being so sensationalist when the bottom line is for every for every individual that's that's bitten by a shark about a hundred million sharks are killed by humans.

Yeah, we've fucked with sharks, and I feel like they're tired of it.

In any case, I don't want anyone to get bitten, obviously, but sharks have had a harder time than I think people have.

For the most part,

we feel for the sharks.

We're feeling very lefty this week.

Yeah.

Anyway, today's show was produced by Rebecca Sinanis and Eric Johnson.

Eric Anderson is Pivot's executive producer.

Thanks also to Rebecca Castro, Drew Burroughs, and Nishad Kirwa.

Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcast.

If you liked this week's episode, leave us a review.

If you have any suggestions for what you want to hear us talk about on a future show, probably we won't listen to them, but send us an email, pivot at Voxmedia.com.

Thanks for listening to Pivot from Vox Media.

We'll be back next week with another breakdown of all things tech and business.