Flight Cancellation Chaos, SNAP Ruling, and U.S.-Canada Trade War

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Speaker 13 Ladies and gentlemen from Toronto, Ontario, welcome to this live recording of the Pivot Podcast with your hosts, Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway.

Speaker 12 Hi, everyone, live from the Queen Elizabeth Theater in Toronto. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.
I'm Kara Swisher.

Speaker 13 And I'm Scott Galloway.

Speaker 12 And where are we, Kara?

Speaker 12 Toronto!

Speaker 12 This is the first stop on our Seven Cities in Seven Days tour, which should challenge our relationship quite a bit. We're spending all our time together.

Speaker 12 Before we start, we want to say a big thank you to our sponsors, Odu and Upwork.

Speaker 13 Or as I like to say, touching.

Speaker 12 Okay. We're taping this show for audio and YouTube distribution.
So look pretty. You will be able to hear it or watch it next week.
And let's begin.

Speaker 12 We've got a lot to talk about tonight, Scott, from terrorists to tourism to local politics and beyond. We're making these in each city, whether we go to Boston, making them local.

Speaker 12 We're localizing them. That's what we're doing.
So, we're going to talk a lot about Canada and things like that. We learned up on y'all.

Speaker 12 But first, how was your flight here? My flight here? Yeah.

Speaker 13 I feel like you're setting me up. My flight here was fun.
It was great.

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 12 Not mine. Not your mine.
Not mine. No.

Speaker 13 See, this is when she asks a question, it's not really because she wants to know me. She wants me to say, Kara, how was your flight?

Speaker 13 By the way, just a quick fun fact, there are more raccoons in Toronto than kids under the age of 10.

Speaker 12 Okay, good to know. True story.

Speaker 13 True story. 5% of Torontonians are vegan.
I don't know if that's especially high or low.

Speaker 12 Is it Torontonians or Toronto?

Speaker 13 Well, it's Toronto, but it's Torontonians, no?

Speaker 12 Torontonians? No? Hello.

Speaker 13 Passport coming my way.

Speaker 12 He was literally, we're in the car here the entire time. I haven't seen him in a while on ChatGPT, having a relationship with the chat bot the whole time.
And this is what he was doing.

Speaker 12 He was asking questions like this.

Speaker 13 I'm in a relationship. I'm in a synthetic porn relationship, and I just, I'm addicted, and I can't.
And plus, you're like,

Speaker 12 you're not doing this. No, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 13 That was sexist.

Speaker 12 Yeah, okay.

Speaker 12 Okay. Anyway, flight cancellations.
Mine was three hours late, actually. Across the U.S.
could rise 15% or even 20% if the government shutdown continues.

Speaker 12 The FAA started off by cutting around 3% of flights at select airports, including mine. We're taping this Saturday.
By the time it airs, that number could be up to 10%.

Speaker 12 Here's,

Speaker 12 what what do you think of this? What's going on? It's bad for everybody, business, tourism. I thought I almost wouldn't make it here.

Speaker 13 It feels as if somebody has asked ChatGPT that how could we most elegantly reduce the prosperity of Americans? Because we generally think of innovation as things that can capture economic value.

Speaker 13 So we think about e-commerce or search or social because a small number of companies were able to sequester the value through IP or distribution and capture value for a small number of companies.

Speaker 13 But if you look at the most impressive innovations in history that really change things, they're typically things where we're the winners.

Speaker 13 And that is no small group of entities called a Delaware Corporation are able to skim massive value. So it's consumers and the public that is able, really are the big winners.

Speaker 13 And some of those things are, I believe, the greatest innovation in history is the Western nation middle class, longer story, but close up there would be vaccines.

Speaker 13 And by the way, if you don't think vaccines are the biggest innovation in history, your head's up your ass and I can't save you.

Speaker 13 But literally, tens of millions of kids every year get to be adults because of vaccines. But no one company has really been able to sequester and capture shareholder value.

Speaker 13 Another example would be the PC. Think about just the, you were basically able to put a $30 million supercomputer from 1970 on everyone's desk for about 300 bucks by 1995.

Speaker 13 And then the third biggest, I would argue, innovation in terms of how it's changed the world is we're going to be in seven cities in seven days, skirting the surface of the atmosphere for at seven tenths the speed of sound for very little cost.

Speaker 13 Whereas to get across the U.S. just 100 or 150 years ago, we'd begin eating our nieces and nephews.
Yeah.

Speaker 12 And so who do you think would survive that? You or me? Me?

Speaker 13 Oh, it's pretty obvious to you.

Speaker 12 Right?

Speaker 13 It would pretty be obvious for you. You own the prison.

Speaker 12 You need to be both gamey and stringy to eat. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 13 No, I don't think it would be like, how about some Scott with your makers and ginger? Yeah. If you bit into me.

Speaker 12 I would totally kill you and eat you if I needed to.

Speaker 12 Anybody call it?

Speaker 12 Go on, as you say. Okay.

Speaker 13 But anyway.

Speaker 12 I may have to in the United States.

Speaker 13 But if you, if you, first off, I would argue that the administration is trying to threaten people and has conflated coarseness and cruelty with masculinity and leadership and is basically trying to say, we're going to make your life miserable, and they're not afraid to.

Speaker 13 And I wonder, I mean, when you think about airline travel, there's few things that have created more connection, more global commerce. It's just

Speaker 13 deploying human capital to its best use, whether it's for a few days or over, you know, a couple of years. But I think it's amazing.

Speaker 13 And what's interesting about airline, if you think about the airline industry, again, going back to the notion that as capitalists, we like to think the greatest innovation creates a small number of companies with trillions of dollars in value.

Speaker 13 What's happened with the airline industry, if you added up the profits of Boeing Airbus, Bombardier, a Canadian manufacturer, I own a Bombardier plane, that was an incredible due ship.

Speaker 12 That's why his trip was easy.

Speaker 13 Anyways, by the way, if you buy a plane from Bombardier, you're getting it for 50% off because Canadian taxpayers continue to bail that company out. So thank you.

Speaker 13 But essentially, if you added up all of the profits and losses of all the airlines in history, all the jet manufacturers in history, this year they're at break even.

Speaker 13 So there's something around the notion that, and I'm going to bring this towards a ton of time.

Speaker 12 I'm waiting for you to land the plane, but go ahead. Yeah.

Speaker 13 This is where Kara says, is there something?

Speaker 12 Yes, I'm thinking there's a bigger problem.

Speaker 13 Is there something resembling a period at the end of this? Right.

Speaker 13 I wonder if AI is going to be, I'm hoping AI becomes one of these innovations where no small number of companies are able to aggregate trillions of dollars in value and that is we win and i think there's some geopolitical concerns here i think china is going to dump into the market a bunch of inexpensive llms to go after the juggler of america they're sick of fucking with them but i think that ai could be more like the airline the pc or the vaccine industry and that is it could end up benefiting all of us but it's not a small number of companies aren't going to be able to sequester that kind of value i don't know how i got here i don't either i'm like watching this go anyways my flight was fine how was was yours?

Speaker 12 Woo! I'm going to be on his plane tomorrow

Speaker 12 to Boston.

Speaker 12 Here's the problem is that this is a, I was thinking that if I miss this flight, given I have to fly commercial, as opposed to you, for example,

Speaker 12 like we have all these people working for us. We have this whole tour going and it just eats into economic vitality.
We've sold out. We've sold out everywhere.
It's all the people.

Speaker 12 You come here, you go to dinner, everything that leads to it.

Speaker 12 And then this, this idiot who was on, like, I forget what stupid reality show he was on, Sean Duffy, is running our transportation department. Secretary of Transportation.
Okay, fine, whatever.

Speaker 12 The idiot, the incompetent moron.

Speaker 12 And then he just, they're using it as a political pawn, which is grotesque. And then from the safety point of view, two planes almost collided in LA today.
There's going to be

Speaker 12 a collision in mid-air or something terrible is going to happen. And airlines are among the most safe thing to do in general compared to almost any other transportation, which is.

Speaker 13 There was a real visionary innovation around the FAA. And that is, I mean, if you think about

Speaker 13 from

Speaker 13 Kitty Hawk to a man landing on the moon, I think it was 70 or 80 years. Yeah.
I mean, just the innovation there has been incredible.

Speaker 13 But what was really visionary about the airline or the air transportation industry is they said, it feels very unnatural.

Speaker 13 I don't know how many of you are like this, but out of the the blue, I started getting on planes and I think, why am I sweating and feel like I'm going to die? And I realized that I had anxiety.

Speaker 13 It was the first time I noticed I was getting old and suffering from depression and anxiety was on a plane when I started freaking out.

Speaker 13 And when I did some research on it, it is not natural.

Speaker 13 Our species is not used to skirting along the surface of the atmosphere at 500 miles an hour. So every, you know, 300,000 years of instinct says to you, get the fuck to the ground.

Speaker 13 This is not a good idea. And so it is a very anxious process.
It's much more anxious than going at 0.1, the speed of sound, on the ground in a four-wheeled vehicle. You just get anxious in a plane.

Speaker 13 And the vision of the FAA and different regulatory bodies around the world is related to transportation, air transportation, and said, whereas we're making auto safety one Sigma, We're going to make planes for Sigma.

Speaker 13 I love aviation.

Speaker 13 I invest in aviation companies, and they're generally speaking really shitty businesses because the cost and time to get FAA certification is so intense because they decided early on we are going to make this the safest form of travel

Speaker 13 because

Speaker 13 you naturally just feel so unsafe in this thing.

Speaker 13 If you knew as many people who had been hurt on an airliner as you knew people who had been hurt in an auto accident, you'd never get on an Air Canada flight.

Speaker 13 You'd be like, no, I think I'll just take the greyhound or what I used to call the dog. You'll take a bus.

Speaker 13 But it was visionary because now most of us, while anxious, get on a plane because we see those stats that the most dangerous part of your airline travel is the ride to the airport.

Speaker 13 So it was somewhat visionary.

Speaker 12 Yeah, it could have been standard light. And of course, we're blowing it, as always.
We're blowing it with this stupid thing because people become, there's lots of...

Speaker 12 statistics showing people are now cutting flights for going to Thanksgiving and Christmas. The economic toll will be gigantic on this whole thing.
And so

Speaker 13 it's almost as if we were so fucking stupid we'd impose tariffs.

Speaker 12 Right, exactly.

Speaker 12 We'll get to that. We'll get to that in a minute.
But one of the other things, the United States is these snap food benefits.

Speaker 12 Last week we talked about which we correctly predicted that Elon Musk would get his trillion dollar pay package, which he's not going to get until he meets all kinds of criteria.

Speaker 12 But it wasn't related, but it had the juxtaposition with these snap food benefits. The Supreme Court is letting the Trump administration continue to hold back full benefits.

Speaker 12 That's actually a very smart smart move by Judge Jackson, who's a liberal justice, because it goes down to the circuit court, who will probably quickly force him to do so.

Speaker 12 And not that the Supreme Court, she wanted them to make the decision because it's a more liberal court than the Supreme Court. So actually, it was a smart chess move on her part.
So

Speaker 12 Judge Jackson currently is in charge of the emergency decisions.

Speaker 12 She sent the appeal back to the First Circuit Court of Appeals, can handle the matter quicker, will probably decide against President Trump and his people who want to stop children from eating food.

Speaker 12 And, you know, one of the things that's happening is you have these juxtapositions of very wealthy people, largely tech people, and children, and people who are desperate for food.

Speaker 12 And of course, there's all this misinformation online about the use of SNAP, that you can buy all manner of things, which you can.

Speaker 13 Yeah, hair extensions.

Speaker 12 Yeah, whatever. It's quite racist in general.
But again,

Speaker 12 another bad black eye on the United States. We're going to to get to tariffs in a minute.

Speaker 13 It really does reveal the ugly side of the United States, and that is my dad used to say that America is a terrible place to be stupid.

Speaker 13 And I think that was a harsh, unfair way of saying America is a terrible place to be unfortunate.

Speaker 13 And capitalism at its core does believe in winners and losers, that we create an incentive system where people who work hard, are talented, and also, quite frankly, really lucky can have an extraordinary life.

Speaker 13 And quite frankly, the people who aren't as lucky or as talented don't have as nice a life. That is a basic trade-off that we opt for in a capitalist society.

Speaker 13 But when the net gets so low that people just massively hit, it just hit the ground, it reveals something ugly about a culture, especially when it's been recognized the kind of prosperity that America has.

Speaker 12 Huge prosperity. This is astonishing that we're allowing kids to be starving in the United States.

Speaker 13 Well, where I was headed with this was that a budget and fiscal priorities on behalf of voters reveals reveals a nation's character. And this is America's character right now.

Speaker 13 And that is somewhere about 22% of America's population is under the age of 18, but 40% of SNAP recipients are kids.

Speaker 13 So we have decided to over-index in the wealthiest nation in the world, the number of kids who go hungry. That is a really poor reflection on our values.

Speaker 13 Because effectively what's happened in the United States is people my generation, really Kara's generation, because she's much older than me.

Speaker 12 I am not much older than you.

Speaker 13 Essentially, old people have figured out a way in the U.S. to vote themselves more money.
The DN democracy is working too well. And those old people vote.
So as a result, we are now spending more.

Speaker 13 You know those massed, ICE-like, weird secret police force? We're now spending more money on ICE in the United States than we're spending on

Speaker 13 children.

Speaker 13 So

Speaker 13 your budget reflects your values. And I think this is bringing to light some very ugly things about America that we have decided we're no longer capitalism believing in winners and losers.

Speaker 13 We're about the hunger games. Where if you win, it's a life you couldn't have never imagined.
But for everybody else, you die a pretty slow, ugly death.

Speaker 12 Yeah, it's a really,

Speaker 12 we'll see how it goes. I don't think it's a particularly good look for.

Speaker 12 Go ahead. You can.

Speaker 12 I think it will have implications.

Speaker 12 I think between the ICE raids and the cruelty of them and SNAP benefits and the juxtaposition between Trump tweeting 17 photos of the Lincoln bathroom, which has a lot of marble now, and the Oval Office, which I don't even understand what's happening in that Oval Office.

Speaker 12 So much gold is happening there. And then this ridiculous ballroom.
All of it. together is, I think, an indictment on the Trump administration.

Speaker 12 And it looks like I'm like waiting for three spirits to visit him on Christmas this year. That's my feeling.
You know, that's what's happened to Marjorie Taylor Greene, in case you're interested.

Speaker 12 So

Speaker 12 we don't know what to think of that. I think it's a scam.
We all think it's a scam. We know it, but we're here for it.
We're fine. As long as she's the best.

Speaker 12 She is the, we were talking about, there was this poll recently of who was the leading,

Speaker 12 who was the Democrat, and it came up no one. You know, it was 17% no one.

Speaker 13 But I feel like it's Marjorie Taylor Green is the leader of the democratic party at this point don't you think well there they did some analysis where they tried to figure out so trump's popularity has really taken a dive and they tried to suss out what yeah

Speaker 12 yeah sussed it out well yeah they they figured out he's a mendacious

Speaker 13 um

Speaker 13 the

Speaker 13 and they think they think a bunch of there's some academic research now saying that the one thing that they think has had the greatest uh impact on his popularity has been the visual image of them tearing down the East Wing.

Speaker 13 And we are a highly visual species, so it's not,

Speaker 13 these visual metaphors are incredible.

Speaker 12 For the ICE people, there's a lot of visuals now.

Speaker 13 But they say that image of a crane tearing down the East Wing has somehow connoted or inspired a visceral reaction. Yeah.

Speaker 12 And what he's going to put in front of the American public. I don't know what the next president's going to do.
Presumably it's.

Speaker 13 You know what it's going to look like? It's going to look like the the best whorehouse in Iraq.

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 12 Can you imagine going?

Speaker 12 By the way, the East Wing wasn't all that, but that's okay. They shouldn't have torn it down.
They should have renovated. That's what I felt.

Speaker 12 So we're going to go on a quick break. And when we come back, we're going to talk about the U.S.-Canada trade war, which won't be awkward at all.
Yeah.

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Speaker 12 Scott, we're back recording live from Toronto. Hello, Toronto.

Speaker 13 Oh, my God. Yeah.

Speaker 12 Scott has remained dressed this entire time.

Speaker 12 It's early in the program. You have so much respect for your Canadians.

Speaker 13 It's early in the program.

Speaker 12 In Austin, the shirt came off in the middle of the day.

Speaker 13 I get the sense the ladies want a little dessert.

Speaker 12 They don't. Little dessert.
They don't. That's right.
No. Surrender to the dog.
They do not want a little dessert. What kind of dessert would you be?

Speaker 12 I'm thinking chocolate pudding.

Speaker 12 Or, no, vanilla pudding, excuse me. I'm sorry.

Speaker 13 I'm a tall drink of lemoncella.

Speaker 12 Lemoncella?

Speaker 13 Like lemonade, like a tall drink of colour.

Speaker 12 I know what limoncella is. All right.

Speaker 13 Move on. Okay.

Speaker 12 I'm trying to think of what dessert you are.

Speaker 12 I'll think about that later.

Speaker 12 Anyway, we're back, as I said, recording live from Francis, so it's a great time to talk about trade tensions between the U.S. and Canada.

Speaker 12 Elbows up.

Speaker 12 Since President Trump took off...

Speaker 12 We're paying attention. Since President Trump took office, the U.S.
has imposed sweeping tariffs on Canadian imports.

Speaker 12 Many Canadian goods face up to 35 percent tariffs, and steel and aluminum face rates of 15 percent.

Speaker 12 After four decades of close economic partnership, Prime Minister Mark Carney is saying it's time to date other people. He's looking to double exports with countries other than the U.S.

Speaker 12 within the next 10 years.

Speaker 12 His government's new budget proposes spending 280 billion Canadian, that's 200 billion U.S., over the next five years to help offset the effects of the u.s's trade war attract investment increase defense spending by the way carney is two seats away from a majority government a conservative mp defected to the liberals um he's doing rather well and of course there was the doug ford ad which angered president trump um which you i wasn't seeing it coming from doug ford i'll be honest with you but i'm i'm also down for that so talk about what's going on here because that of course incensed Trump.

Speaker 12 And we're sorry about the World Series, by the way. Not really.
No.

Speaker 12 I'm from California. Too bad.
Sorry.

Speaker 13 I grew up in LA and I was rooting for Wade for it. The Blue Days.

Speaker 12 Were you worried?

Speaker 12 You are such a suck up to Canada. True.

Speaker 12 I tweeted about it. That's because you were conceived here.

Speaker 12 So talk a little bit about the terrorists because it's a really difficult situation. And of course, he continues to say

Speaker 12 you do not want to be the 51st state, I assume.

Speaker 12 Thank you. But he keeps talking about it.

Speaker 12 It's demented, obviously.

Speaker 12 But talk a little bit about where the tariffs are.

Speaker 13 By the way, we'd like it. We're progressives.

Speaker 13 We'd win every Democratic House.

Speaker 13 Can you imagine what would happen if Canada became the first 51st state? We'd be so fucking liberal, it'd be out of control.

Speaker 12 Yeah, it's true.

Speaker 13 Anyways, so just a little bit bit of context.

Speaker 13 We have

Speaker 13 the strongest alliance in the world. Churchill said the only thing worse than fighting with your allies or fighting with your allies is fighting without your allies.

Speaker 13 And I think America right now is taking for granted a lot of things. We're taking for granted the FAA.
We're taking for granted Veterans Affairs. We're taking

Speaker 13 granted competence in the administration and across all of our great public sector employees. But we're also quite frankly taking for granted our friends.

Speaker 13 Canada has the largest undefended border in the world with the U.S. That says something.

Speaker 13 It would cost us somewhere between $20 and $50 billion a year if either side decided to militarize their border. But we don't because we trust and we like each other.

Speaker 13 Canada went to World War I, a colony, came back a nation. On a per capita basis, they lost eight times as many people as America won.

Speaker 13 They were actually went to World War II or entered World War II before we did. They were in Afghanistan with us.

Speaker 13 So this has been this unbelievably prosperous relationship where in the words of Animal House, quite frankly, you fucked up, you trusted us.

Speaker 13 And that is about somewhere between 60 and 70% of exports from Canada go into the U.S. It's about 17% of ours.
That's a bit misleading because of the exports that come into the U.S.

Speaker 13 from Canada, they're generally low-margin products. They're oil, petroleum, lumber, and they're in companies that trade at at a P multiple of about 20.

Speaker 13 Whereas the products that we import or export into Canada are more like automobiles, electronics, iPhones, pharmaceuticals that have double or triple the operating margins and usually our revenues in a company that trade at about a multiple of 20 to 30.

Speaker 13 So for every dollar of exports that we push into Canada, we recognize about three times the shareholder value. So trade, if you will, between the U.S.
US and Canada is asymmetric.

Speaker 13 And that is for every dollar we push into you that you buy versus every dollar you push into us, we get triple the amount of shareholder value.

Speaker 13 So if anyone's getting, has been taken advantage of over the last 20 or 30 years, it's been Canadians. We benefit more from this trade than you do.
But we've decided

Speaker 13 We've decided, and this is what is just so sclerotic and stupid, economically stupid about what we're doing.

Speaker 13 We've decided because it's like going through an angry divorce and one partner is much wealthier than the other and has said, well,

Speaker 13 I'm going to damage myself more, but because I have so much more money, it's going to hurt you more.

Speaker 13 So it's not only irrational, the bottom line is it's just, for lack of a better term, it's just unkind. And what you're seeing is Carney.
By the way, I don't know if you know this.

Speaker 13 I have another podcast called Prof G.

Speaker 12 No, I haven't heard of it.

Speaker 13 My most viewed podcast with this is this guy who reached out to me, his office, and said, we want to come on your podcast. And it was Mark Carney.

Speaker 13 And I had no idea who the guy was.

Speaker 12 You had no idea who the guy was.

Speaker 13 I didn't. I'd never heard of the guy.

Speaker 12 You're the Prime Minister of Canada.

Speaker 13 No, no, no. This was during the election.

Speaker 12 That's why I called.

Speaker 13 And he came on. And by 70 minutes later, I'm like, hold me, that guy.

Speaker 12 I'm like, dad?

Speaker 12 Dad?

Speaker 12 Seriously, that's the dad I wanted. Wait, wait, you didn't have those feelings for Justin Trudeau?

Speaker 13 Justin's more like I'd like to roll and pick up chicks with Justin.

Speaker 12 Justin's like... That seems to be his job right now with him.

Speaker 13 I met him in person like three days ago, and I'm like, Jesus Christ, look at this guy's skin.

Speaker 13 And he's beautiful. He looks like he's in a fucking boy band.
He doesn't look like...

Speaker 13 Anyway.

Speaker 13 Where were we? Bring me back.

Speaker 12 Mark Carney, what do you think of him?

Speaker 13 Anyways, so what are these leaders doing? Trump and the trade wars have absolutely accomplished what he was hoping to accomplish. They've inspired a massive flurry of deal making.

Speaker 13 That's the good news. The bad news is it has nothing to do with us.

Speaker 13 So essentially, every world leader is on a global tour trying to figure out new supply chain and new alliances that don't include America.

Speaker 13 And the unfortunate thing about this is that if and when Trump is out of office in 28, it's going to take us a decade and at a minimum to repair these trade alliances.

Speaker 13 Because once you establish alliances with other nations for your lumber and for your parts and for your, whatever it might be, your petroleum, your oil, whatever it might be, you're not going to say, I'm sorry, girlfriend, we can't trust you.

Speaker 13 The next time some weirdo comes into office.

Speaker 13 When COVID hit, I was on the board of a company called Urban Outfitters, an apparel company.

Speaker 13 And we recognized that 70 or 80% of our tops were coming from a 10-mile radius of Shenzhen that basically got shut down. And we said, okay, never again.
We can't be this.

Speaker 13 Supply chains were maximized for no slack and just pure efficiency, which made us vulnerable to a supply chain shock.

Speaker 13 What Canada is going through is sort of a self-imposed own-gull COVID from America, where they're going to diversify their supply chain and never put themselves in a position again where they need to trust this meth lab that they have an apartment on top of.

Speaker 12 So one of the things that

Speaker 12 actually your point, your point about it being a good thing for Canada, I think absolutely, because it creates a situation where you have to be one of the issues around Canada, I'm sorry to insult BlackBerry because when I had my baby, I was holding a Blackberry

Speaker 12 in the delivery room in my hand because I was texting with someone at the time.

Speaker 13 Wait, so you actually bird the child.

Speaker 12 Yes, I did. You know that.
Okay. Louie.
Oh, my God.

Speaker 13 Don't say anything.

Speaker 12 You need to invest. Don't say anything.

Speaker 12 You need to invest in our relationship. He's coming tomorrow to the Boston, Louie.
Louie. Oh, great.
Okay. I actually had him.
I had a cesarean scar. Do you want to see it right now? Oh, God, no.

Speaker 12 Okay, good. All right.

Speaker 12 But now I'm getting back.

Speaker 12 Anyway, I love BlackBerry, but one of the innovation, a lot of the innovations in technology didn't happen here as much as it should have because of the dependencies on the United States.

Speaker 12 And it's a good thing to get out from under

Speaker 12 a dependency because, with the U.S., BlackBerry was absolutely out front in terms of innovation, in terms of usage. But as you know, it got run over.

Speaker 12 It got run over by Apple and Google and everything else. And that to me was, and again, Waterloo is an astonishing technology school.

Speaker 12 Did you know about Waterloo? A little bit. Yeah, okay.
You didn't?

Speaker 12 So one of the things that I think is interesting is how can you revive innovation in places like Canada, like and not rely, because the reliance on America, I was looking at a list of American, the most valued companies in the world, and they're all U.S.

Speaker 12 companies, whether it's NVIDIA or Apple or Meta or Alphabet. And it's really important to establish and not just to support them, to really think about innovation within each of your...

Speaker 12 countries and to get off the relationship with the U.S. may not be the worst thing for most countries in the world, given how repugnant we are at this moment, but also because it's important.

Speaker 12 Because I think of BlackBerry, I just, they

Speaker 12 dominated. They dominated the early technology era of mobile computing and then absolutely didn't.

Speaker 13 Yeah, look, it's this is the question I get most. I live in London right now, and it's like, why can't we, you know, one company.

Speaker 13 So I think NVIDIA right now is worth more

Speaker 13 than the Canadian GDP. Is that right? Yeah, it's worth $5 trillion.

Speaker 13 Anyways, the bottom line is you don't command the space you occupy in terms of technology. There's just no getting around it.

Speaker 13 And we can talk about BlackBerry and root for a company that's been irrelevant for 10 years.

Speaker 12 But

Speaker 13 you got great universities, you got a great culture. I think there's something to the, I mean, I hate to admit this, but the ready-fire aim regulatory environment in the U.S.

Speaker 13 does create a lot of fast-moving opportunities. In addition,

Speaker 13 I would describe the benefit of the U.S. as being, kind of comes down to one word, and that is risk.

Speaker 13 So the people, you know, when I describe, I don't know if this is true of Canada because 50% of the people living in Toronto were born in other countries.

Speaker 13 But when you describe, when people, when I'm in the U.K. say, why? are you guys doing so much better than us? And it's like, well, you're the ones that decided to stay.

Speaker 13 And so, for example, what you need is, quite frankly, you need 10 or 20 Shopifies. Because what happens is a company starts, it gets huge, they have huge liquidity events.

Speaker 13 The people who started these companies decide to stay there because they collect mates and dogs. And then they start a VC firm and start salting the environment with more and more venture.

Speaker 13 In addition, and this is unfortunate, but the environment in the US where there's more upside because of lower tax rates on the wealthy, we have a very strange tax system.

Speaker 13 It's progressive, right, until you get to about the 99th percentile. And then once you get to the 99th percentile, it plummets.

Speaker 13 So the tax rate on someone in the 99th percentile, if you're living in a blue state, might be 52 points. The tax rate on the 25 wealthiest families in America is 6%.

Speaker 13 And the superpower of Americans is their optimism, but it's also the Achilles heel because all of us in America think our kid is in the top 1%.

Speaker 13 And I can prove to every one of us, 99% of our children are not in the top 1%.

Speaker 13 But what it creates, and then we have a very low safety net. So, what it creates is an incentive system where people are encouraged to take more risk because there's just so much more upside.

Speaker 13 But there's got to be something else, and I'm not sure entirely sure what it is. Why, you know, when you get to the Canadian border, quite frankly, those unicorns somewhat stop.

Speaker 13 And the honest answer, I don't have an answer. Yeah, well, it's an opportunity.

Speaker 12 But we're going to move on, but it's really, it's just an interesting time. I think ultimately, Trump taco, you know, he will taco the thing out.
Trump always chickens out.

Speaker 12 And so at some point, he'll repair those relationships, although he has to wake up first.

Speaker 12 Anyway, we're going to, he's been sleeping a lot lately in meetings.

Speaker 12 He just did yesterday when that guy fainted, the Ozempe guy fainted. Anyway, we're going to go on a quick break.

Speaker 12 When we come back, we're going to talk about something New York City has in common with Toronto, a progressive mayor.

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Speaker 12 Scott, we're back recording live from Toronto.

Speaker 12 We love it here. What?

Speaker 13 How much do we love it here?

Speaker 12 I do. I know.
We're moving here.

Speaker 13 Another 20 years of global warming, this is going to be the greatest city on the world.

Speaker 12 Yeah, it's going to be great. Yeah.

Speaker 12 Seriously. So back in the U.S., we had one local election that transfixed the whole country, the New York City mayoral election.

Speaker 12 Toronto's mayor, Olivia Chow, is a progressive who campaigned on affordability issues when she ran in 2023, like a certain newly elected mayor.

Speaker 12 Her advice to him in a recent interview, she was talking about the issue that defines affordability is housing, not so much free buses. I just want to ask you a question.
You've got a thing from...

Speaker 12 How do we pronounce it? Mom Donnie.

Speaker 13 You have no thing for him. You have a thing for him so you can pander through

Speaker 12 the Pakistan liberals. No, no.
Here's what I think.

Speaker 12 I want to ask you this question.

Speaker 12 You taught, you're on this incredible book, Tour, and Scott's book is number one on Amazon right now, Notes on Being a Man.

Speaker 12 I'm going to throw you a bone there because it's worthwhile to be that way. But here is a man who is the description of the men you're talking about, right?

Speaker 12 Who is respectful, who's community-oriented, who has gone around the city and met people, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I'm just curious.

Speaker 13 A rich kid living in a rent-controlled apartment?

Speaker 12 No, it's not right. No,

Speaker 12 listen,

Speaker 12 Cuomo was in a rent-stabilized apartment too before.

Speaker 12 I find it interesting, but these are the kind of people you want

Speaker 12 men to be like or look up to or not. You don't think so?

Speaker 13 Oh,

Speaker 13 honestly, I hadn't run the macho test on Momdami.

Speaker 13 I think he's a super impressive young man. I think he's an incredible candidate.
I think the Democrats can learn a lot from him. I thought he ran a great campaign.
He's bold. He takes risks.

Speaker 13 He's smart.

Speaker 13 And I want to be clear. We talk about this a lot.

Speaker 13 I think once someone is elected, you have an obligation as a citizen to rally behind them and hope for their success and support them and let them prove you wrong.

Speaker 13 Voting, when you go to a voting booth, we're not in a suicide pact.

Speaker 13 You know, one of one of the things I keep seeing about, I've been thinking a lot about, quote unquote, the mating crisis because I wrote this book on young men.

Speaker 13 Another, yet another reason why young people aren't hooking up is because women are becoming slightly more progressive and men are becoming much more conservative.

Speaker 13 And women don't want to, the moment a dude starts talking about his conservative values, she's like, okay, I'm out.

Speaker 13 And I literally try to think, can you nick, can you think of anyone when you were dating when you were single?

Speaker 13 Well, maybe you did.

Speaker 12 I've never been single.

Speaker 13 You've never been single? No. I've been single most of my life.

Speaker 12 Anyway.

Speaker 12 A month. I was single for a month.
Single for a month? Well, you know, I'm beachfront property in Malibu.

Speaker 12 Among lesbians, at least. Go ahead.

Speaker 13 Yeah, I'm the part of the beach that washed away and it's gone forever.

Speaker 12 Anyways, but I can't remember. You're the inland empire, I guess.

Speaker 13 I can't remember what the political leanings were. And it's yet another reason why people are writing each other off.
But

Speaker 13 to your point, as I think about it,

Speaker 13 I think of masculinity as being three things.

Speaker 13 Provider. I think every man at the outset of his career should assume that at some point he needs to take economic responsibility for his household.

Speaker 13 And sometimes that means getting out of the way and being more supportive of your partner who's better at that money thing.

Speaker 13 But I don't think it's a bad idea to start out saying, I'm going to have to be economically viable in a capitalist society that disproportionately evaluates men and my self-esteem is largely based on my economic viability.

Speaker 13 I'm not saying that's the way the world should be, but it's the way the world is too. Once you have that prosperity, you move to protector.

Speaker 13 I think this is the part of the program that the men we're supposed to look up to for masculinity, specifically the richest man in the world and the president, have totally missed the whole protector part of masculinity.

Speaker 13 And then, three, procreation. I think sex and being horny and wanting to have sex makes you a better man.

Speaker 13 It makes you want to dress better, smell better, have a kindness practice, be resilient, make an approach while making expressing romantic interest and making someone feel safe.

Speaker 13 Stop demonizing sexual desire. It's an amazing thing.
It makes men better men.

Speaker 13 Mom Dami.

Speaker 12 Mom Donnie, you got it. Yeah, you got it.

Speaker 13 Stop it. Stop shaming me.
I get him right.

Speaker 13 I think he's a great role model for, as I think about it, I think he's a great role model for young men. He takes risks.
I think he's happily married.

Speaker 13 He seems to be talking about protecting other people. So as I'm thinking about this real time, yeah, I think he's a great

Speaker 12 best of luck to him.

Speaker 12 In any case, what do you want? In any case, I think he's a great role model. And, you know, I'd even fuck him.
So would you.

Speaker 12 So,

Speaker 12 but you would. That hair.
Come on.

Speaker 13 A few beers, you never know. I'm not sure.
Yeah, okay. I mean.

Speaker 12 All right. And I know you hate very quickly, we have two more things, and then we'll get to questions from the audience.

Speaker 12 I know you hate the idea of state-run grocery stores, but here in Canada, most provinces have government-run liquor stores. Some states in the United States have them.

Speaker 12 That's okay, though, right?

Speaker 13 No, it was a bad idea here, and it was a bad idea there.

Speaker 13 When Alberta got rid of their government-owned liquor stores, the number of liquor stores tripled, the number of employment tripled, and the number of products available to consumers was up eightfold.

Speaker 13 That's nothing but a transfer of wealth from consumers to the government for shitty service. There are certain things the government does really well.

Speaker 13 They're really good at taking care of our national parks, they're really good at collecting taxes, they're really good at the Navy, they're really good at the DMV.

Speaker 13 Someone from the DMV should not be picking out your produce or your alcohol. The private sector does some things really well.
One of them is grocery.

Speaker 13 We do not need food-sponsored food lines called government-owned grocery stores. Grocery is the last thing that should be nationalized.

Speaker 12 It's the idea of getting better nutrition to poor people who now can't get it. And give them money.
Give them money. Well, we are not giving them money because of Snapchat.

Speaker 13 The problem when government gets involved on a lot of this stuff is it creates an infrastructure where the majority of the money does not end up in the pockets that you're supposedly helping.

Speaker 13 If you want to get more food or make food more affordable for people, what you do is you give them money, more money in their pockets, $25 an hour minimum wage, which he is proposing, which I'm a huge fan of, and then let them force Trader Joe's, Kroger's, Loblaws, or whatever you call it up here, to compete against each other and battle it out in this full-body contact violence called the private sector.

Speaker 12 All right. We will talk to him.

Speaker 12 I see your point, but

Speaker 12 I appreciate you acknowledging he's a good role model for men. And he is a good role model.
I'm glad you pointed that out.

Speaker 12 Last Last thing. Tourism is down between the U.S.
and Canada.

Speaker 12 Last year, Canada was the top source of international tourists to the U.S., generating over $20 billion in spending and supporting 140,000 American jobs. In the first half of this year, the U.S.

Speaker 12 saw a 25% drop in Canadian, we miss you, Canadian visitors.

Speaker 12 This summer, for the second time in nearly 20 years, more U.S. residents travel to Canada, largely escaping, than Canadians traveling to the U.S.

Speaker 12 Why don't you think they want to come see us, Scott?

Speaker 13 It's so funny. We suppose these tariffs are going to reinvigorate the manufacturing sector.
But here's the problem. Nobody wants to work in the manufacturing sector.

Speaker 13 You don't get to take your dog to work

Speaker 13 on the shop floor. And 11% of the American public works in manufacturing, yet 80% of Americans think we need more manufacturing.
We have this fetish around manufacturing.

Speaker 13 And the reality is over time, America has been very good at arbitraging out of low-wage jobs into more service, more information, more innovation industry.

Speaker 13 12% of American public is employed in the tourist industry.

Speaker 13 So our obsession with trying to falsely, sclerotically, idiotically prop up the manufacturing sector with quote-unquote tariffs is taking down faster an industry which is higher margin.

Speaker 13 and employs more people called the tourist sector.

Speaker 13 When you come to Disneyland, we get much more money, much more margin, support much more jobs than if we tariff your shit such that our lumber is more competitive.

Speaker 13 This, again, if you were looking, it's as if the Trump administration said to ChatGPT, How can I elegantly reduce the prosperity of Americans inch by inch and make it almost irreversible?

Speaker 12 It's not that elegant. It's not elegant at all.
But what could bring Canadians back to us?

Speaker 13 What could bring Canadians back?

Speaker 12 Yeah, what could we do?

Speaker 12 Fuck, a new president. I mean

Speaker 12 so

Speaker 12 let me get a prediction from you because you know what

Speaker 12 the world

Speaker 12 are you coming for the world cup?

Speaker 12 No, they're not coming for the World Cup. Are you coming for the World Cup?

Speaker 13 I'm coming to Vancouver. There's two cities, two cities or three cities in Canada.
Toronto, Vancouver, and then...

Speaker 12 Montreal.

Speaker 12 There's lots of cities in Montreal.

Speaker 13 I used to come every year year in June to Canada for tourist reasons. Anyone want to guess?

Speaker 13 F1 Montreal.

Speaker 12 Oh, my God.

Speaker 13 Oh, my God. Hello, European food and hot women.
Did I just say that?

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 12 So

Speaker 12 what could we do? Say Trump leaves. Right.

Speaker 12 His tiny minion doesn't win. Katie Vance.

Speaker 12 The most

Speaker 12 uncharming person in politics that exists.

Speaker 13 Talk about bandering. Yeah.

Speaker 12 South Park has him exactly right yeah um what could the what would you the first thing the u.s should do to get tourists back to the u.s

Speaker 12 canadian tourists

Speaker 13 i i just don't i think all we need to do

Speaker 13 is make america america again i i just don't i don't think we need advertising i don't think we need disneyland at niagara on the American border.

Speaker 12 We have Niagara too, but go ahead.

Speaker 13 I just, this,

Speaker 13 I mean, let's be honest. We're pretty much the same goddamn people.

Speaker 13 We're fraternal or maternal twins, right? And the fact that we don't, we just, we love each other so much, we take each other for granted.

Speaker 13 It's like you wake up in the morning and you're spooning your wife and you just, you forget how wonderful it is. It just, this is not a Canada and America.
Like we're you and you're us.

Speaker 13 And the thought that we even have this kind of.

Speaker 12 No.

Speaker 12 No, they don't think so. They don't want to be spooned by you, Scott.

Speaker 12 And neither do I, but that's another issue.

Speaker 13 This is really interesting, though, because we Americans are so narcissistic.

Speaker 12 That's correct.

Speaker 13 That

Speaker 12 Scott was shocked by that.

Speaker 12 I was not.

Speaker 13 Americans feel much better about Canadians right now than Canadians feel about Americans.

Speaker 12 Yep.

Speaker 13 So,

Speaker 12 Scott, they hate us. They really hate us.

Speaker 13 So

Speaker 13 I don't think there's anything we can do other than what I would call just going back to a sense of normalcy and someone who doesn't declare war on his friends.

Speaker 12 Yes, I would say. The one thing we could say is we're so sorry.
We are so sorry. That's what I see.
That's how you do it.

Speaker 10 Thank you. Thank you.

Speaker 13 Thank you.

Speaker 12 Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 13 That's how I was conceived here.

Speaker 12 Look at you were surprised by that. They don't like us.
I'm just telling you. Anyway, we're going to finish up and then we're going to get to questions from the audience.

Speaker 19 So, let me get this straight. Your company has data here, there, and everywhere.
But your AI can't use the data because

Speaker 12 it's here, there, and everywhere.

Speaker 19 Seems like something's missing. Every business has unique data ibm helps your ai access your data wherever it lives to change how you do business

Speaker 19 let's create smarter business ibm

Speaker 12 okay all right so we're gonna scott in his head is going love me canada

Speaker 12 It's going to be all night tonight with us discussing this. So let's get some questions from the audience.
Where are they?

Speaker 12 okay right here. There's a podium here.
So we would love any questions you have. There is no question

Speaker 12 too rude. And Scott made it through the entire show without a dick joke.
So you should be happy.

Speaker 12 Thank you so much.

Speaker 12 We've been watching and we're kind of terrified as to what's happening in America.

Speaker 12 And

Speaker 12 we've been watching the dismantling of democracy with the legal systems and the military and I could go on with 250 things

Speaker 12 to say. There's a lot

Speaker 11 these days.

Speaker 12 So my question to you is what is your suggestion? Because it seems to be there's a mobilization around Donald Trump and all of his followers. Who are we supposed to follow on the opposite side?

Speaker 12 What is your suggestion? There needs to be a leader. Well, the recent election leads something, didn't it? Didn't the recent election.

Speaker 12 It was down in the city councils. And we're very hopeful that, and I think that says to us that the American people have a voice.

Speaker 12 They do. But who's leading that voice? Who's going to take it to the next level? And that's my question to you.
We don't know right now. You know, we don't know.
We don't know who the Democrats are.

Speaker 12 There's a lot of Democratic Party officials. There's other people maybe you've not heard of yet.
There's leaders.

Speaker 12 My whole take on whether you like Mamdani or not is we contain contain multitudes is how the Democratic Party should be.

Speaker 12 Not that we have to agree on socialism or Abby Spanberger in Virginia is much more conservative, or if you're Jared Paulus in Colorado, the Democratic Party has to say, Here's the three things we care about, affordability, dignity, and democracy, or something like that.

Speaker 12 And I think it's really going to be interesting to see who emerges. But there's some great candidates.
It's just a question of the fever.

Speaker 12 Trump is a fever that the United States has all the time, whether from the Salem witch trials to

Speaker 12 the McCarthy era to the Civil War. We have fevers that are really ugly and grotesque.
And I feel like we're going to come out of this. And

Speaker 12 this sad, decrepit, cruel man will be gone. But we'll see.

Speaker 12 He's got a lot of people who love him.

Speaker 12 Absolutely. Any quick things?

Speaker 13 Yeah, but to build on Kara's point, America has been in very dark places before and has actually tested our democracy and the democracy has been damaged and like a muscle that's damaged, it's grown back stronger.

Speaker 13 At one point, slave owners controlled our quote-unquote democracy. Right after the Great Depression, there was Henry fucking Ford.

Speaker 12 Fuck that guy. I mean, he's dead, but he should be deader.

Speaker 13 Veterans were marching on the Capitol, and this guy named, this young general named Douglas MacArthur opened fire on them.

Speaker 13 We were essentially putting, we were interning people because of their Japanese background in camps.

Speaker 13 We have been through very dark times, and each time we have come back, learned from it, and come back stronger. So that's not an excuse to be complacent, but our democracy is being tested.

Speaker 13 I think a lot of Americans are recognizing that a lot of our blessings we've taken for granted. So I'm hopeful that our democracy like a muscle is being tested and it's going to grow back stronger.

Speaker 13 We've been through worse before.

Speaker 12 I also believe in young people.

Speaker 12 Again, New York, mayoral, you can have all the feelings you want about it. Young people voted and they said what they wanted and they said we don't want an ass-grabbing,

Speaker 12 terrible, Trump-loving Democrat. So we'll see.
I believe in young people. That's who I believe in.

Speaker 20 Hello, Scott Guerra. My name is Daniel.
I'm here with my wife.

Speaker 13 It's our first anniversary tomorrow, and we both love you.

Speaker 12 Congratulations.

Speaker 20 Thank you. We both love you.
And I wanted to ask, both of us have worked in advertising. I had an agency that I exited last year and I'm still working, you know, as a strategist and consultant.

Speaker 20 She works in advertising. A question is, and I also teach in post-secondary.
So my question for you mostly, Scott, is are we screwed to work, continue to work in these industries? Should we pivot now?

Speaker 12 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 20 What are your thoughts on that?

Speaker 13 It's situational because I'd say if you're over the age of 40 and you have senior level sponsorship and you're doing well and you own relationships, which is always the key in a services industry, I would say ride it out and keep going.

Speaker 13 If you're younger and thinking, okay, I have some options in other industries, I think you want to get out of the outsupported ecosystem. I think it's going to be a difficult industry.

Speaker 13 It's better to be good in a growing industry than great in an industry that's flat or declining.

Speaker 13 Within your industry, if you decide to stay in it, I would say try and get as close to the relationships with the clients as possible.

Speaker 13 And also try to get good at buying media and creating content for a small screen.

Speaker 13 The return on investment of your human and your financial capital will be inversely correlated to the screen you're creating content for.

Speaker 13 If you're in the business of big screens, movies, that's a shitty business that's only going to get worse.

Speaker 13 If you're in the business of a medium-sized screen, TV, that's a huge business that's gone flat.

Speaker 13 But if you're in the business of designing creative for the small screens, it's champagne and cocaine, my brother.

Speaker 12 Okay, there you go. There you go.
I think Google and Meta are going to dominate AI advertising and to get, they're going to hold.

Speaker 12 And our country just recently, well, there's one case in Virginia right now with Google. They might break it up, but it doesn't matter.
They dominate everything in advertising. And he's right.

Speaker 12 Small screen.

Speaker 12 All right. Last question really quick.

Speaker 12 Make it a good one.

Speaker 12 Hi, I'm Kelly.

Speaker 12 I'm here with the bummer question.

Speaker 12 Oh, okay.

Speaker 12 So AI has been the fuel on the fire that is disinformation. Yes.
How do we curb that, or is the horse too far out of the barn, as my mom would say? It's not AI. It was here before.

Speaker 12 By the way, propaganda has been around since the beginning of time, let's be clear. It's just been amplified and weaponized in a way.
And social media has certainly done its job.

Speaker 12 So it's not a new thing.

Speaker 12 I think the question is, now that we have AI here and it's not as protected legally, at least in the United States, as social media is, it's time for our regulators to get very clear about guardrails, beginning with young people in terms of the usage and safety.

Speaker 12 Let me tell you, my whole book was about how they do not give a fuck how safe you are. They are people who have never felt unsafe a day in their lives, don't care about safety.

Speaker 12 They don't care about your safety. And so we have to engage as citizens to get our legislators to get a fucking backbone and start to really legislate.
reasonable guardrails.

Speaker 12 I'm not talking about innovation killing guardrails, but the fact of the matter is, as Scott's pointed out, the AI boom right now is allowing Trump to, it's kept the stock market up, which is allowing Trump to do all manner of heinous things.

Speaker 12 Like, that's an after effect. But we have to absolutely get control of the technology industry and pass.
We don't have any laws in our country regulating them.

Speaker 12 We have to start understanding how easy it's going to be to destroy all our democracies, not just the U.S., because we're so vulnerable, but everywhere, without understanding there should be reasonable and important legislation around transparency, privacy, usage, safety, all kinds of things.

Speaker 12 And it's not that hard. We do it with every other industry and it should be done here.
This is all I talk about now. And I want to start with young kids because everybody agrees on that.
Like

Speaker 12 everybody agrees on the safety of children. And so that would be my beginning.
Scott, why don't you end it?

Speaker 13 So you're zeroing in on what I think is the most important topic that has the least amount of coverage. And that is we're all like, what's going on with our kids? What's happening to our society?

Speaker 13 And it's because people don't want to acknowledge and the incumbents want to make sure we're focused on other weapons of mass distraction.

Speaker 13 But the thing that really ails the West right now is the following. Our economy in the United States is a giant bet on AI.

Speaker 13 The economy would be flat. The stock market would not be up 16%.
It'd be up 0%

Speaker 13 if it wasn't for the massive run-up in these 10 companies related to AI based on incredible expectations.

Speaker 13 So we've effectively connected the entire global economy. 40% of the SP is these 10 companies.
That represents 20% of global market value.

Speaker 13 If these companies sneeze, the whole world gets pneumonia.

Speaker 13 And these companies are in the business of a lot of things, but mostly they're in the business of dividing, polarizing, and sequestering people from one another.

Speaker 13 There is now, unfortunately, the deepest pocketed godlike technology has connected trillions of dollars in shareholder value to separating our children from their parents and each other and making them feel shitty about the flag, each other, and democracy.

Speaker 13 There is now, unfortunately, a profit incentive attached to evolving a new species of asocial, asexual youth. And it is terrible for the species.
It's terrible for the economy.

Speaker 13 It's as if we have connected a profit motive into planning our own extinction. So what do we need to do?

Speaker 13 No synthetic relationships for anyone under the age of 18, no phones in schools, no social media under the age of 16, and quite frankly, holding these companies to the same account as every other company.

Speaker 13 We need antitrust, we need fines, and quite frankly, someone needs to do a fucking perp walk.

Speaker 12 Other than that,

Speaker 12 But you need to get involved. And on that note, we want to thank you.
Scott's book is really amazing. It's called Notes on Being a Man.
Thank you. It's number one on Amazon right now.
Is that correct?

Speaker 12 I think it's going to be, he does, of course, because he's so insecure. He's like, it's going to be two or three on the New York Times bestseller list.
It's going to be one.

Speaker 12 And so I urge everyone to buy it in bulk so that he gets that little moment in the sun that he would adore. But it's a great book.

Speaker 12 And one of the things we'd like to end on, we want to thank, obviously, Canada, but one of the things we always talk about in this era of AI and separation and anxiety and partisanship is you got to get along with people you don't agree with.

Speaker 12 And obviously, Scott and I don't agree on a lot of things, but it's been a real journey. You saw it here right now.
I'm correct about Zoron.

Speaker 12 But it's really important that you have personal relationships in the real world. We talk about tech a lot.
We talk about online a lot.

Speaker 12 But the most significant relationships are with each other and unlikely ones where you have disagreement and challenge each other. And that's the most critical thing to do.

Speaker 12 We make our money with tech and media, but we really make our money because of a relationship.

Speaker 12 Don't you think?

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 12 Anyone, he can't stand it.

Speaker 13 I think we need to embrace our imperfect allies. Canada, hang with us.

Speaker 12 Please do. Thank you so much.
We love, and Americans love Canada. We really do.
Most Americans do. Thank you, Toronto.

Speaker 12 Thank you.

Speaker 12 Scott, read us out.

Speaker 13 Today's show is produced by Lara Naiman, Smith Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Corinne Ruff. Ernina Todd entered this episode.
Jim Mackle edited the video. Thanks also to Jabros, Ms.

Speaker 13 Severio, and Anne Shallon. Amazing ground support provided by Trish Harnato, Kelly Schwatner, Kaylin Lynch, and Nico Alvarez.

Speaker 13 And a big shout out to the Vox Experiential team, Tara Riley, Courtney Given, Abby Aronofsky, and Caitlin Berla. Nisha Coroz, Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts.

Speaker 13 Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media.
You can subscribe to the magazine at noimag.com slash pod.

Speaker 13 We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.

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