Facebook's privacy fakeout, WeWork's reckless IPO, and Reagan the welfare queen

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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 uh how are you doing scott you're in new york i'm in palo alto

I am in New York and I'm hangry.

I haven't had breakfast or lunch.

So this is going to go either really well or really poorly.

Okay, if you're angry.

This isn't a Snickers commercial.

So

I just want you to know I'm investing in the relationship.

I drink every night.

And last night I decided to have bourbon instead of clear alcohol because my voice, I've

noticed the next day, sounds deeper and sexier.

And I want this show to be successful.

So

I'm abusing different substances because I want you to make more money.

Your dysfunctions have no interest to me, just so you know.

Oh, are you kidding?

These are the grooves and the cool things things in the persona that is me.

These are the

kind of the fun, interesting quirks.

All right.

And Nasa, don't make fun of my hobbies.

But I'm not inviting you to my axe throwing next week.

I'm going axe throwing in Brooklyn next week.

Okay, I won't make any lesbian jokes.

I will resist the temptation.

Let's go with the axes.

We lesbians have a good, we have a good handle on the axes.

What else?

Listen to me.

I'm sorry, go ahead.

We need to talk about actual things rather than your skills.

Let's roll.

Let's Let's light this candle.

So I think we have to start again with Facebook.

We talk about Facebook a lot, but they had F8 this week and Mark took the stage.

He made, he talked about, said the word private or privacy at least 412 times.

He tried to make a joke that nobody laughed at about privacy.

You should just not do jokes.

That's my feeling.

But and then there comes the news that, you know, these FTC things, which I wrote about, the fine, you and we talked about the fine being bigger.

I wrote about that in the Times this week.

Thank you for the idea.

I quoted you in it

life goals you know what my other biggest life goal happened this week Oprah called my new book the algebra of happiness a wonder a wondrously weird collection of short stories

I am one you know I am wondrously weird Kara wow I don't know if that's a compliment from Oprah oh I'll take it I'll

take it I'm sorry all right here's the deal so anyway so we talked about there was there was a story talking about there might be a privacy czar at Facebook essentially or there are groups outside so what what do you think about this I have myself, I will volunteer like it's the Hunger Games.

I will do that job if they want.

I will take that job.

I am putting myself in.

I'm doing like the

Mocking Jay thing.

I'm going to put my fingers up.

Well, no, as I refer to them, the Enhanced Interrogation Network has found privacy.

And I think if they're really serious about privacy, they should hire a very accomplished...

lawyer as chief legal counsel who violated the privacy of millions of Americans based on their ethnicity.

Oh, wait, maybe not.

Maybe not.

Wait, hold on.

Okay.

What do you think the idea that they have these privacies ares within Facebook to watch?

It's basically an ombudsman, right?

Is that the concept?

Yeah, and they paid someone a billion dollars to deflect and lie to us.

Her name's Cheryl Samberg.

This is more illusionist tricks/slash bullshit/slash lipstick on cancer slash

the mother of all beards.

The encryption slash privacy thing is a head fake.

Hey, look over here.

This is lipstick on cancer.

Where they're really headed is they've decided they want to create the largest secure encrypted network of 2.6 billion people.

And where they're headed with is transactions because what's going on is, you know, the marketing, classic marketing funnel, right?

There's sort of awareness.

Explain it to me.

Explain it to those of us who don't think about classic marketing funnels, but go ahead.

Okay, so suppose, so the metaphor for all of marketing, and it's a metaphor that's worth probably $10 or $20 trillion, is how do you get people to be aware of your product, then consider buying it, and then think, okay, I'm going to buy it.

That's intention, and then action, and then purchase, and then loyalty.

And supposedly, the funnel narrows as you go down.

Fewer and fewer people.

Everybody knows Mercedes.

Some people want to buy it, but few people actually end up in the showroom.

And classic marketers have spent a ton of time, and we at business school spend a ton of time trying to figure out a way to create a funnel and then move people down it.

And the reality is the funnel is actually shifted to more of a wine glass because if you're at Audi.com and you start outfitting or configuring your A6, technology can figure that out and you start getting served ads from Cadillac and Lexus.

So, actually, the funnel looks more like a wine glass now because now, once we get to consideration and intention, other marketers, technology-driven marketers, start stepping in.

But, anyways, the key is who can actually own the funnel?

So, if you look at the top, YouTube and Facebook are sort of the gangsters of awareness.

They do a great job, pretty inexpensively.

You move down to intention, and who's the Jesus Christ of intention?

Oh my gosh, Google, right?

They figure out what you want, you tell them what you want, and then it starts nudging you one way or the other.

And then, the, you know, the

Dalai Lama of kind of the bottom of the funnel is Amazon, because the most expensive shelf space in the world is where you check out because you have to spend time there.

Your kid starts grabbing chocolate, it's impulse purchases.

So that's the most expensive, valuable shelf space in the world.

And Amazon has created a checkout shelf space that is the size of Texas.

And as a result, Amazon Media Group is the fastest growing media property in the world.

So the key is who can own the entire funnel.

And if you look at last week's earnings, it looks as if all of a sudden Amazon might have the entire funnel.

And that is they have top of the funnel with the marvelous Mrs.

Meisel and Amazon's Echo.

They're now the second largest search engine in the world and the largest search engine when people are looking for an actual product.

More people do product searches now on Amazon than on Google.

And again, they have that checkout bottom of the funnel.

So they can own the whole funnel.

And if they don't have to violate your privacy in doing so by sucking data and getting out of the dirty advertising, they use the data, but they don't misuse the data, correct?

That would be the goal.

Aaron Powell, Jr.: Well,

it's not that they're more moral.

It's just that you don't tell people.

You don't go on Facebook and talk.

You don't go on Amazon to talk about your diabetes, whereas you do on Facebook.

And then Facebook has individuals that don't care about your privacy.

I mean, Amazon could technically get really,

it could be scary because they now have a listening device in your house.

But to their credit, so far, it really doesn't look like they've abused that data or abused that kind of interface.

But now, circling back to Facebook, they could give, I mean, let's be honest.

I'm really concerned about privacy, said no one ever at Facebook Inc.

or no one with any power.

Or that's a great way to basically signal, hey, fire me eventually, to start actually generally

giving a shit about other people's privacy.

But what Facebook's trying to do is everyone thinks Zuckerberg is going after Snap.

No, he's not.

He's going after WeChat.

WeChat is probably the most impressive platform in the world right now.

That is exactly right.

We've talked about this, that he wants to be more like that.

It's an easier business, too, and it gets him in less trouble.

So the second brightest mind in business, Mark Zuckerberg, has decided, okay, I need to go down the funnel and I'm going to create the largest encrypted network, which is perfect for payments.

And I'm going to become the condonest turned into Walmart because Hermes and Christian Lou Bouton will sell and distribute through Instagram because Instagram looks awesome.

Amazon does not.

Hermes would not be caught dead on Amazon, but

they might sell through Instagram stories if all of a sudden they had a commerce and a secure payment platform across

everyone in the world.

The wine glass.

There you go.

Back to the glass.

It's a wine glass.

Let me just say that should be your next book, The Wine Glass.

And by the way, do you know there's a ⁇ speaking of drinking games, there's a drinking game every time you say gangster on our show.

Gangster?

No,

you got to come up with a new one.

Yeah, no, that's an awesome word.

That's an interesting thing.

It's an interesting question of whether he can do this, whether he can move to price.

It really is fundamentally changing everything Facebook has been into something else.

Do you buy it?

Do you think these people have to do it?

I think it'll be unsuccessful.

I don't think that's why people use Facebook.

I don't think they think of it that way.

I think they've tried a number of times to do this kind of things, the messaging.

They've tried.

They haven't been successful on the messaging.

I mean, it's big.

It's obviously big.

And WhatsApp's important, but I think they've never really put their mentality is still in advertising, direct advertising community, that kind of stuff.

So I think it's going to be hard to shift focus like this.

It's going to be very difficult, especially with the executives they have there.

Did you see their earnings?

Did you see Facebook's earnings?

They absolutely blew them away.

And they do.

Instagram stories.

Instagram stories now, which in my view, Instagram stories and Amazon Media Group are now the two most powerful marketing platforms in the world.

And Instagram stories, I think, I don't know if it was year on year or quarter on quarter, grew from 2 million advertisers to 3 million.

And you're right.

It's well done.

It's well done.

I was just on Instagram.

I never go on Instagram, but I was on there and I was like, God, these advertisings are really good.

These advertisements, they have very good.

Very well done.

They do an amazing job.

And by the way, everybody blew away their earnings.

I had a lot of four things that I didn't want.

Everyone blew away their earnings.

Literally everyone.

Twitter, Snap, Amazon, Facebook, except who missed?

Google.

Google.

You know,

we hate it when monopolies miss their earnings, said the market, and took Google down 7%.

What do you think is going on?

What do you think is going on?

It's really interesting.

I wonder if, so everyone immediately said, well, Amazon Media Group's starting to eat into actual Google's business.

I wonder if it's also Instagram stories.

But it's really interesting.

For the first time, what looked to be the most powerful marketing platform in the world is actually starting to take body blows or the growth is slowing down.

I mean, most people would pray for Google's problems, but it's the first time they've missed, I think, ever on their projections.

And it was because it looks like because A, Amazon Media Group and Facebook, Instagram stories are starting to do that.

The dollar.

They had the dollar was their thing.

The dollar?

What?

The currency problem?

Currency problem, yeah.

By the way, quick fact.

Google does about 6 billion pounds in business in the United Kingdom.

And you know how much they pay in taxes?

Or do you know what the profit they reported is?

Zero.

They reported a profit of 50,000 pounds.

They're like, tell them we have a profit of 50,000.

We can't say negative.

Yeah, that tax stuff is going to get into it.

There was a good story in the New York Times about nobody pays taxes.

Amazon, I think, was at the top of that list.

It was an interesting story.

I'm going to go off script here, but I've been asked by The Economist, and I like to say that because it makes me sound smart.

The Economist has asked me to write an article on capitalism, so I looked up what is capitalism.

Do you have to have a byline?

They don't let you have bylines in The Economist.

They're willing to give me a byline, Kara.

Granted, I think I'm going to be literally buried somewhere on the deepest, darkest web.

It's a wonderful publication that I don't read.

I buy it so I can walk around airports and people go, oh, he's so smart.

But I don't actually.

I don't read it anymore.

But that's another issue.

But I've been thinking a lot about capitalism, and basically capitalism is supposed to be that the means of production are owned by the private sector and also the spoils are divvied up by the private sector.

The more you believe in capitalism, the more you think kind of government should just get out of everyone's knitting.

And to a certain extent, we all have government intervention.

And child labor laws are a form of socialism, arguably.

But anyways, I'm convinced that mortgage tax deduction, capital gains, Social Security, which I think is all of these things are nothing but a transfer of wealth from young middle class to old rich people.

I mean, we like to think of them as, oh, we're helping the poor not be, or the old not be poor or buying the American dream or whatever.

But you know what else is an incredible tax on young people?

Is complexity.

Because complexity favors the people with money and lawyers and tax accountants.

So the more complex the tax code gets,

the better it is for General Electric, Google, Apple, and the more fucked middle American, middle-class, and medium-sized companies.

We talked about this issue that people in the middle are the ones getting through.

So that'll make it very interesting for this election

if Democrats can get that through, that the rich are getting richer and you're not, even no matter who they are, the the tech companies.

But it is amazing how few taxes these companies pay.

It's just, you know, of course, why wouldn't you?

Why would you not try not to pay taxes?

I think I don't agree with Donald Trump on that, but that's what people will do.

They're trying to avoid and do all they can if it's complex and they have lawyers.

They certainly will do that.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: So Reagan had, speaking of taxes, Reagan had this

fairly racist.

Ronald Reagan?

Ronald Reagan.

Remember him?

Good hair?

Yes, I do, but I believe that.

Good hair, dementia.

Good hair.

Whatever.

Most overrated president in history.

Started this long

spiral down of fucking middle class.

But he had good hair, so let's call him the gipper.

Anyway,

so this guy basically had this kind of racist and disparaging imagery that he painted of, I think he called them welfare queens.

And it was clearly racist.

And he basically said there's this whole group of people out there who are milking the government and taking your tax dollars and gaming the government.

You know who the mother of all welfare queens is, Kara?

Ronald Reagan.

I don't know.

The mother of all welfare queens

on a cosmic level is Jeff Bezos.

And hear my logic.

Jeff Bezos.

I'm going to let you go on just for a little bit.

Hold on.

Then we're going to talk about my stories.

Go ahead, guys.

Yeah.

It's all about me.

Go ahead, go.

Tell me about that.

I am intrigued.

I cannot look away from this possible traffic accident.

Go ahead.

Someone said that listening to our podcast is like watching NASCAR, and then at any point, something comes out of my mouth and there could be a fire crash.

Yeah, I'm waiting.

This one I'm going to go with.

I'm watching you spin out of control, but go right ahead.

Okay,

so here it is.

The wealthiest man in the world has all his wealth wealth tied up in his stock, and he never sells his stock, so he never triggers a capital gain or taxes.

So how does he fund his lifestyle?

Simple.

He borrows against his stock for somewhere between one and a half and two percent.

I can borrow against my stock about 2.9%.

That means he can borrow from Jamie Dimon for 1.5% to 2%,

right?

So he hardly, he never triggers a capital gain.

In exchange for that, there are literally hundreds of billions, well, not hundreds, okay, tens of billions of government subsidies going to Amazon in the form of, hey, bring our HQ here to here or put your AWS, new data center here.

He gets effectively 17% of all those transfers of government to Amazon because he owns 17% of the stock.

So I think if you add up the direct transfers from government, if you add up the fact that he doesn't pay really any taxes because he never triggers a capital gain, what we have is the mother of all welfare queens.

And that is if you have a $20 trillion economy and call it a $5 trillion tax base and money going in, and we're all paying money into that big $5 trillion tax base, right?

You pay taxes, I pay taxes.

You pay a lot of taxes.

You've been on this tax thing.

You must have just paid a lot of taxes or something.

I did.

I know I did.

I was pretty pissed.

Well, we all write checks.

Almost everybody puts money into that pot.

And then money goes out, $500 or $700 million to our military or whatever, a trillion dollars to Social Security.

And you know what?

Jeff Bezos don't.

Where money also goes out?

It also goes out to Jeff Bezos.

The net effect of our economy on the world's wealthiest man is that he is the mother of all welfare coins.

All right.

Okay.

I see your point.

I'm not sure I like your imagery, but okay.

All right.

Let's see how that goes.

Hey, by the way, for the first, I got forwarded several

people forwarded your AI article to me, and they actually said it was thoughtful, so I almost read it.

Yes.

But can you tell me why people seem to be marginally impressed with what you wrote?

Because I'm a brilliant Scott.

That's really brilliant.

That's that brilliant.

It was an essay written.

I've been doing this crazy PowerPoint that I give a lot when people ask me to speak around what I think the next big trends are.

And

a decade ago, Walt Mossbury and I wrote an essay saying smartphones would be, this is 2007 or 9, so somewhere long time ago, I think it was 2008 maybe.

We were talking about how smartphones were going to be the next big thing where all the new companies were going.

And this was pre-Uber, pre-all these companies.

And so we declared Web 3.0 was about smartphones and mobile phones and cell phones and this whole, and

it was really prescient.

If you go back and read, if you actually read it in our original essay, it's quite prescient.

We really do call it.

And then, so then I decided to call it again.

And so I've been putting together this,

I just, I change it all the time, this PowerPoint, about what I think the big trends are, and among them AI.

And my point is like, there's not one trend now, there's six, and they're all intersecting.

And they include AI, robotics and automation, changes in self-driving and transportation, end of privacy.

continuous partial attention, continuous partial hacking, and political and social unrest.

And so I brought it all together in a 2,000-word thesis about where the next era, not Web 3.0, but Web X.0 is coming from.

And so I was like, this is why it's going to be super complex because there's so many,

it's not one thing.

Like I think the cell phone or the iPhone really changed everything.

There's not one thing now, there's 10, and that's why it's going to be hard.

And a lot of them require very sophisticated regulatory schemes.

And so that was what my essay was about.

And my whole point was that we've got to do something about it because these are not as easy.

These are not, what's coming next is massive changes.

We're at the cusp of another massive change.

That was my.

Okay, so a couple questions.

Do you think AI is underhyped, overhyped?

And when you say massive changes, can you put some more flush in the house?

What do you mean by hypershylhyde?

Underhyped.

I think AI is underhyped.

I think the changes that are going to be wrought through AI as it moves everywhere.

It's obviously been here.

This is not something new, but as you move into more sophisticated and

there's general AI and specific AA, there's bad AI and good AI.

There's all kinds of different things.

But I think

the companies that really get their arms around around the uses of AI are the ones that are going to dominate.

And so I think it's underhyped.

I think it's just the way the internet was underhyped.

I think AI is underhyped.

So, okay, so as far as I can tell, the only way that AI impacts my life is if I'm watching

season two, episode three of Transparent, Amazon has figured out that I might like episode four, and they start counting it down, and they play it without my permission.

Other than that, how does AI impact your life?

Oh, everything.

Lots of things.

Everything.

It will do everything.

It will anticipate everything.

And it will be able, you know, just even just in,

as you move into into self-driving, for example, you need a massive optimization system to understand how cars move around.

And it's such a complex or where they're going to move or what they're going to do.

And you just need, you need so much data to understand this.

And I think the issues I was talking about is that what data goes in here?

Where do you get the data?

Is it dirty data?

Is it, you know, it's just, it's just, the amount of data that's going to be able to be part of the system is really quite breathtaking.

And so the question is, who can figure this out for all kinds of things?

And

not just anticipatory things like that, which is part of it, but it's chatbots.

It's everything.

It's every single thing.

And so that's, it's going to be like the internet.

I guess I don't know how to explain it like the internet.

It's sound like someone hyping the blockchain right now.

It's going to be every.

The blockchain is going to be important.

I didn't talk about the blockchain in the SA.

I don't quite understand it yet because I'm not going to be able to do that.

So I just want to, just for the purposes of a discussion here, autonomous driving, I think, is a little bit, or what do you think of the, I'll put the argument forward, that everyone was talking about AI is Latin for firing cashiers.

And Amazon opens their ghost stores and uses AI so you can walk out and not have a cashier.

And I think most retailers have decided it's cheaper to hire someone at 10 bucks an hour than to implement AI.

Right now.

Right now.

Well, okay, autonomous driving.

I think autonomous driving is an incredibly overhyped technology, even though it was mentioned several dozen times in the Uber movie.

You would be the person who would be sitting there in your like cart with the horse saying, these cars, I don't get them.

Who am I going to speak to if I don't have an Uber driver?

Who the hell is going to talk to me?

You're not going to have an Uber driver eventually.

You aren't.

Not you.

Maybe not you.

You'll probably be dead from all of that.

So then what's next when you say Web X.0?

What is next?

Oh, look at this.

Beyond Meats just went public, right?

This is interesting.

This is just meat.

I didn't even write about this, but I was Beyond Meat just was going public today or something like that.

This is the plant-based meat or whatever.

And you know, there's a lot of players in this, including the meat people were involved in Beyond Meat.

They sold to do their own version of it.

And obviously, there's possible foods and all kinds of things.

I think that's a really interesting area.

I think, you know, it's a lot about execution and marketing and getting people to change habits.

But I think that's super interesting.

Ag tech.

Ag tech, I think, is interesting.

See,

by the way, I hate that name.

It's terrible branding.

I do not want to go beyond meat.

If we get to the meat station, I'm getting off and staying there.

I could eat meat three times a day.

By the way, best marketing campaign ever.

Sybil Shepard, a vegetarian, James Garner, who had a triple bypass, talked, becoming the spokesperson for the National Pork Association in the 80s, and the best tagline ever, the other white meat.

Oh, I love that.

I love that.

That's how I describe in business school.

They all have us come and pitch our classes to the snotty little kids that are paying a lot of money.

And I just get up there and I say, my name's Scott Galloway.

My class is brand strategy, better known as the other white meat.

And the milk one.

You'd have to like the milk one better, the milk.

The milk one was.

What was that one?

Was it?

With the milk mustache.

Oh, yeah.

Got milk.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, that was cute too.

That was brilliant.

No, that was cute.

That was brilliant.

The meat one.

There's never a good meat strategy.

Anyway, I think those are interesting.

I started talking about trends that are coming up and that we, this is a big, big, lots of big important changes coming.

That was what it was about, essentially.

That's what it was about.

Well, congratulations on that.

Thank you.

It was a relaunch of Recode and Vox Together.

It was all kinds of things.

So I decided to pontificate for a while.

On the Recode site rather than the New York Times site, I'm going back on tomorrow to pontificate on the New York Times site.

Recode, New York Times, Tomato Tomato.

Multi-brand strategy.

That's what I am.

Multi-brand strategy.

Hold on.

Speaking of multi-brand, I just have a bone to pick.

You and I, you both used to be on CNBC every week.

Yeah.

They've literally stopped calling me.

I have been verbatim from CNBC.

So by the way, CNBC, in my view now, is catheter television.

Literally look at the ad.

Okay, Russell Slake Syndrome, opioid-induced constant.

Anyway, ad break, we're going to take a quick break.

If you're watching CNBC, it means one thing.

It means your life fucking sucks.

All right.

Literally get your life alert and watch another financial news station.

Hush Sky.

Now, we're going to take a quick break.

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Scott, if you calm down, I'm not even going to do that.

No, I have calmed down.

By the way, I think that was a Vinson Fields.

Hold on.

I think that.

Don't rush me.

Love me.

Don't judge me.

Anyways.

Always judge you.

Listen, so that was a great ad, but you know what would be a better ad is if we showed an old man named Chuck spending time with his grandkids and tried to defraud seniors into believing that, in fact, we had a trading system and we could run an ad called Trade Like Chuck, or is that what it's called?

Oh, wait, no, that's CNBC Defraud.

Oh, my God, stop.

Seniors.

I'm not going to let you get away with this.

Trade Like Chuck, everybody.

In any case, that's how you spend more time with your grandkids.

And fails.

Right now, you're a fail, but let me just start by saying

that.

Disney Avengers opening weekend.

I saw it fantastic.

It was a fantastic movie.

Fantastic.

There was a fantastic, great.

End game?

Great.

I'm going to see it tomorrow with my voice.

Perfection as a movie.

Exactly what I wanted.

Really?

Very long.

Perfection.

Amazing.

Even though someone stole the bag that was sitting next to my chair this weekend when I was watching it.

You're shitting me.

And no kidding.

I had a sheet in it.

I bought a bottom sheet and that was gone.

Gone, gone, gone.

And some Mother's Day cards for my family.

I'm sorry to hear that.

It's fine.

The movie was fantastic.

It was fantastic.

So, what do you think about that?

That Disney seems to, someone was just telling me, I'm going down to Los Angeles tonight, but someone was just telling me, you know, Disney owns everything now, it feels like.

They're sort of on all cylinders.

They've got that.

They've got all kinds of things going on.

What do you think?

So, look, Disney is, you know, it's kind of

revenge of the old school.

I think Walmart and Disney

are kind of the two, I would argue, the only two legacy firms, if you will, out there that are landing counterpunches on these tech monopolies.

And I think Bob Iger is one of the few people who can pull it off that has the assets and the credibility.

So I'm rooting for Disney.

I think

Disney is amazing.

What do you think?

I think they're great.

I think he's, I have a lot of admiration for him.

And I think the movie was so well done and so beautifully marketed.

And just everything was flawless.

It was flawless.

I was thinking, what a flawless everything that they did.

And the numbers of people at the movie theater was astonishing.

Like, I could, I think I had to go at a weird time.

It was really amazing.

And my fail this week is this Amazon ring hiring, doing crime reporting from the photos from the.

Yeah, what was that, Samor?

It's a ring, which I have in my house, actually.

Before they got bought by Amazon, I'm not sure what to do with them right now.

They,

you know, they can take pictures of things.

They have like a blog that I actually look at because it's like hard not to look, but people doing awful things like taking packages.

It's mostly people taking packages, Amazon packages, which is kind of funny, ironic.

And now they're requiring a crime breaker to make stories out of some of these things

that are on the ring that get photographed.

So it's instead of just like, you know, those cop shows where it's from the from the thing that's on the cop's shoulder, now this is what's coming out of your ring, I guess.

I'm not really clear.

I think it's just,

it's gonna go wrong.

It's gonna go wrong.

Scott, that's my fail.

What about you?

Okay, so a lot of wins here.

Okay.

Well, first off, look, the earnings from every company but Google were just unbelievable.

So a ton of wins in the earnings season.

Also, and I'm shocked we haven't talked about this.

I thought Biden's announcement was actually pretty well done.

And I think it's another interesting lesson in marketing, choosing the medium.

So live events are a medium, but they're riskier.

Kamala Harris's live event was a huge win.

There was an electricity there.

She just nailed it.

And she's attractive and looks good in direct sunlight.

And so does Corey Booker.

And he chose a live event, but it didn't work because people didn't show up and it kind of fell flat.

That's a problem.

It is.

But Senator Biden was smart.

He said, okay, I'm 76.

Under natural light, I look like an underwater plant.

I look like I just shouldn't be alive and by the way i'm pretty sure that's a hate crime he's doing pretty good second second one today uh but he did attacking him come on he's like he couldn't get do better he did a he did a really good well you know the thing is i'm convinced joe biden has a vision for the country but the real question is does he have night vision okay

but i got to tell you your friend beto is fading fast he could he was hired i heard that they had like things they couldn't fill up he couldn't my new hero is in the race so he announced this morning my hero announced.

Michael Bennett.

Senator Michael Bennett.

Two objectives.

To restore income mobility to the middle class and also to restore integrity to our government.

This guy, I am such a huge fan of this guy.

Senator Michael Bennett,

fully recovered from prostate surgery or prostate cancer surgery.

He says he's become more deliberate.

This guy is thoughtful, not afraid to stand up to the far left.

I just,

I'm going all in on this guy.

I love Beto.

I'll have him as a lover.

I'll have him as a lover.

But I am marrying Senator Brown.

You know, it's interesting.

Pete Buttigage is on the cover of Time magazine with his partner, Chason, who I love on Twitter.

He's really wonderful.

That was interesting.

I still am a Kamala fan, I've got to say.

I still should be able to do that.

Yeah, Mayor Pete's the guy who shows up to a party 30 minutes early with ice, right?

He's just like, he's the guy that says, I'm here to help.

I'm here to help.

They're all doing pretty good.

They're all doing pretty good.

All the front ones are all doing.

They're all doing pretty good in a lot of ways.

I think they are.

They're all doing good.

They're good choices.

There's a lot of good choices.

Let me just say, I won't feel bad about almost any of them, I have to say.

I hope so.

I hope so.

We'll see.

I mean, Trump really

aimed at Biden, though.

Boy, did he go after him.

And then, of course, all that does is legitimize Biden.

That's a gift.

Yes, that's a gift.

That's a slow fastball.

Is there such a thing as a slow fastball?

Anyways,

that's a gift to Biden because what he does is legitimizes him and cements him as the frontrunner.

All of Trump's advisors who he doesn't listen to are like, oh, God, don't say ignore Biden.

Yeah, they did that say, Jared doesn't like it.

Jared.

Yeah, Jared.

You know, he was a bad thing.

Speaking of advisors, I think Bill Barr was a fail this week.

Oh, my God.

On a cosmic level.

I think he's gone.

Oh, my God.

Stephen Moore just went down.

How can I have a lead,

whatever you think of politics, this guy's led an honorable life of public service and oppressive guy?

How can I really fuck up my reputation just before I die?

I mean, literally, it's like, how can I exit on, how can I leave the room and not only say I'm a whore, but I'm a cheap whore?

Oh, wait, okay.

I mean, this guy literally

feels some food in you.

All right, I'm moving into predictions.

We got to wrap up.

I'm having Tristan Harris soon to talk on my project.

Tristan.

Oh, my God.

That guy's a gangster.

Oh, he's drinking.

Big brain.

Big brain and very handsome.

His thing is humans, the dehumanizing of humans, whatever.

Yeah, how we're basically all biomechanically addicting.

He's a prediction.

He's a fan of this guy.

I know, so I'm going to talk to him.

I talked to him in this very room I'm in

two years ago.

Tristan.

Tristan.

All right.

Prediction, please.

Okay, so a few things.

Okay.

I think Spotify is getting into acquisition territory.

There's no one company.

There's no monopoly like every other medium in music.

There's Apple with a shitty service growing faster than Spotify because they're a monopoly and they own the rails.

Amazon and Music, another

part of the oligopoly crowd.

And then there's Spotify, which has the best service out there, mostly because they're willing to lose money.

And Spotify went out at $150.

It's now, I think, at about $130 or $138.

I think they're getting to acquisition prices.

And also, the other company I think that could be.

Being bought, you mean?

Yeah, being bought, being acquired.

And then the other company that I think there's a chance might get acquired before they go out is Slack.

Slack.

And then

people have tried.

People have tried.

Microsoft.

Google has tried.

Yes.

Microsoft made a really big push to buy that.

Big push.

Yeah.

And then, and by far, and i i've been

i don't know if i've been wrong or right on this the most the most overvalued private company in the world filed their for their ipo we work 100 kara we work let's take a regis it's basically register it's basically taking a floor in a building you know register temporary office and put in a cool bar and some craft beer and pretend we're an internet company and it's just it's supposedly going out at a valuation or trying to go out at a valuation of 45 billion dollars yeah i mean this literally is the pets.com of this era, if this thing gets out at a $45 billion valuation.

Good one.

That was a good one.

Okay.

And what do you think is going to happen in the stock?

Prediction.

Well,

I don't know if it's going to get out.

I don't know what the price it gets out at.

But if you do the math here, it looks as if the floors that we work,

if it gets out of this $45 billion valuation, the floors that we work leases are technically more valuable than the entire building that leases them that floor.

This thing just makes no sense.

I mean, at least it makes Lyft look like a great business.

It's incredible that you want to talk about entering into consensual hallucination with the marketplace.

By the way, their founder, Adam Newman, I mean, it's this thing, this valuation is burgeoning on fraudulent, but I'm coming back in my next life as this guy.

Have you met this guy?

I do know him.

Oh my God.

He's so thoughtful and nice, and he looks like that Argentinian polo player, Nacho.

That everybody loves.

I'm like, Jesus Christ.

I was asked to come interview him.

You look great, but your business is nearly fraudulent.

It doesn't matter.

Let me just break it down.

Okay.

Whether he's dreamy and worth 10 billion or dreamy and worth a billion, that's still fucking dreamy, right?

That's capital D dreamy.

Anyways, next life, I'm coming back as that guy.

All right.

On that note.

But his company is

a joke.

That is ridiculous.

Ridiculous.

Redonculous.

Redonculous.

All right then, Scott.

It's time to go.

What else do you have on tap for this week?

Well, you always ask me that.

I'm going to see Endgame tomorrow night because you love it.

And I'm taking my kids to IPIC.

I got the kids this week.

I'm excited about that.

I get to be solo dad this weekend.

I'm kind of excited about that.

Bond with my eight-year-old who is not.

I'm having trouble connecting with my eight-year-old.

How do I connect with him?

You just don't worry about it.

Don't worry about it.

Don't worry about it.

Okay.

That's what I said.

That's been my father's strategy.

I'm on Bill Maher tomorrow night.

I'm going to be in Bill Maher time.

You're on Bill Maher?

Yeah.

Fucking it.

That's it.

I'm going on strike.

I am going on strike.

You're on Belmar.

And then I'm going to go to the salt conference in Las Vegas where that's a scaramucci situation.

I've had it.

I've literally had it.

I'm actually

next week.

Stephanie Ruhl is hosting my book signing at Stern.

That's the only thing I have that's even in the same

realm as that.

She's fantastic.

She's wonderful.

When is your book party?

I didn't get invited to your book party.

When is your book party?

Well, you know what?

We have a list, and it's 400 people, and you came in at 4.03.

So you just missed the cut.

I'm writing Simply right now.

You just missed the cut.

All right.

I wouldn't have come anyway.

Anyway, Scott.

Oh my God, that pisses me off.

I would be so awesome on Bill Hill.

Is it because I'm unattractive?

Is he looksist?

Is he looksist?

I have no idea.

I know what I want to do on.

Whatever.

In any case,

Rebecca Sinanis produces this show.

Nishat Kirwa is executive producer.

Thanks also to Eric Johnson.

Thanks for listening to Pivot from Fox Media.

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

If you like what you heard, please subscribe, rate, and review Pivot on Apple Podcasts.

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

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

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

But what does it actually mean to be well?

Why do we want that so badly?

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

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

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

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