Tech Stock Troubles, Epstein Fallout, and SF Mayor Daniel Lurie

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Speaker 18 She thinks this is her town. It is.

Speaker 17 Hello, ladies.

Speaker 17 No, it's it's hello men

Speaker 17 for you.

Speaker 17 Scott, Scott, it's hello men for you. Get the city right.

Speaker 17 Hi, everyone. Live from the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco, the best city on earth.

Speaker 17 This

Speaker 17 I just got a loud environment notification from Apple. All right.
I'm Kara Swisher.

Speaker 18 And I'm Scott Galloway.

Speaker 17 Before we start, I want to send a big thank you to our sponsors, Odu and Upwork. Please, again, give a round of applause for tonight's special guest, Mayor Daniel Lurie.

Speaker 17 So

Speaker 17 the Mayor has a short time here, but we've got a couple of questions. So let's start off with an easy topic, the housing affordability crisis here in San Francisco.

Speaker 17 The city has an estimated 830,000 people living on about seven square miles.

Speaker 17 San Francisco residential rents have risen the most in the nation over the past year, with apartment prices in the city jumping about 6% in that time.

Speaker 17 Average rent for a San Francisco apartment is $3,315 a month, which makes it the second highest in the country behind New York City's

Speaker 17 $3,360. 3,360.
You've proposed taller buildings and denser zoning. Critics have responded by calling you a gentrifier and Republican.
Talk about which one of those criticisms offends you more?

Speaker 17 Probably today with Epstein, probably Republican.

Speaker 17 Anyway.

Speaker 17 Talk about the Zoom.

Speaker 18 So we have a state mandate imposed on all 58 counties

Speaker 18 in the state of California.

Speaker 18 We've responded by putting forth what we call our family zoning plan, density along our commercial corridors and making sure that we allow the next generation of San Franciscans to have an opportunity to stay and live here.

Speaker 18 And it's on the high-resourced neighborhoods, the north and west side of town.

Speaker 18 Parts of our city have not been rezoned for 50 years.

Speaker 18 We need to build more housing. We need to build it along transit corridors and along commercial corridors.
And that's what we're focused on.

Speaker 18 And we've made a lot of amendments and we're working with our Board of Supervisors, which is our city council here in San Francisco and we're almost at the finish line on it and we want to be a city that does it our way and not the Sacramento way and so this family zoning is going to help us increase density in our city in the coming years.

Speaker 17 All right, one of the signs, so one of the signs of San Francisco's

Speaker 17 hospitality recovery, Blackstone is nearing a $130 million deal to acquire the Four Seasons Hotel. City hotel occupancy has rebounded 70%, up from below 50% in 2021.
However,

Speaker 17 there's discounts going on.

Speaker 17 Talk a little bit about what's happening commercially for the city, which got attacked by Fox News. You can boo.

Speaker 17 But talk a little bit about, it feels as if, to me, I'm seeing a lot more business generation. I'm seeing a lot more return.

Speaker 18 This city is on the rise. There's just no question about it.

Speaker 18 All the crime data is going in the right direction. We're down 30% year over year in terms of crime.
We're down 40%

Speaker 18 in Union Square and our downtown area. Our local law enforcement is doing incredible work.
We're using drones as a first responder. We're using license plate readers.

Speaker 18 When you commit a crime in San Francisco now, you're getting caught. And I think public safety has to be our number one priority.

Speaker 18 It has been from day one. And I think the small business community, our restaurants, our bars, they're seeing that.

Speaker 18 And I think big business, you had John Gray of Blackstone running along the wharf, Fisherman's Wharf, two weeks ago saying, buy San Francisco real estate. I mean, if that isn't a good sign,

Speaker 18 retail space, we got Nintendo, we got Zara, we got Unique Glow that left four years ago, is reinvesting at Forth and Mission.

Speaker 18 These major retailers, they're coming back to San Francisco because they know what we all know here in in San Francisco, and that we are indeed a city on the rise. We're the home of AI.

Speaker 18 It's all happening in San Francisco. It's not happening in Silicon Valley.

Speaker 17 No, it's happening in San Francisco.

Speaker 17 But let me ask you, because a lot of the blame for the affordability crisis is going to the tech industry, which you wanted to come back. Now, can you?

Speaker 18 Sure, but you're bringing that up, but that's what we said five, six years ago.

Speaker 17 Yes, correct. You're right.

Speaker 18 Okay, so

Speaker 18 that's like a narrative. And if we don't build more housing, it will get that way again.

Speaker 17 Absolutely. But a lot of these these companies, of course, famously left and kicked San Francisco on the way out.
And I actually ran into one of the people that did that in a beautiful bakery here.

Speaker 17 And I said, and I walked up to him, I said, get the fuck out of here. Like, we can't have our bread.
Like,

Speaker 17 they're back.

Speaker 17 And AI, of course, has led that. And companies like OpenA and Anthropic.

Speaker 17 How do you entice companies? And also, we have other companies like ELF and many others who have stuck with San Francisco. So, yay, there's the ELF people.

Speaker 17 We don't want to give up too much to these

Speaker 17 people.

Speaker 18 No, we want them to be invested in San Francisco. So, I say public safety.
We have to get our behavioral health crisis under control, which we're working on every single day.

Speaker 18 And then, third, I want everybody to know that San Francisco is open for business. We're stripping away red tape.
We're cutting bureaucracy.

Speaker 18 But then, my demand is that you as a company be engaged in our public schools, be engaged in our arts and culture institutions. Which they were not,

Speaker 17 which

Speaker 18 there was a lot left lacking, as you and I talked about for years.

Speaker 18 And I worked hard on it when I was running Tipping Point. And you'd see some good people, but I'm seeing more.
We started something,

Speaker 18 Scott, we started something called the Partnership for San Francisco, modeled after what New York City did in the 1970s when New York was really hit hard.

Speaker 18 We now have 35 business leaders that are home-based here or live here in San Francisco recommitting or committing to our city and helping not only revive us.

Speaker 17 They'll be part of San Francisco because mostly they seem like takers to me the last year.

Speaker 18 And

Speaker 18 I'm only interacting with those that will make sure that they commit, once again, to funding Muni.

Speaker 18 We have to make sure public transit is top-notch in San Francisco, that our arts and culture institutions are supported, that our public schools are supported. We started something,

Speaker 18 Manny's backstage, he and I started something called the Civic Joy Fund a few years ago where we're doing trash pickups across this city. This city,

Speaker 18 no one's coming to save San Francisco except for San Franciscans. And I want those companies engaged.
I want them involved. And they will be.
And we're demanding that of them.

Speaker 18 But we also need to entice people back because I want that revenue here. I want our public schools getting more of those tax dollars.

Speaker 18 And so I think it is a give and take, and they need to give more than they did in the 2010s.

Speaker 17 Absolutely, Scott?

Speaker 18 Just on an interpersonal basis, I've always been struck by, and I'm going to be clear, this is pure pandering,

Speaker 18 but I've always been struck by all of these people who,

Speaker 18 for lack of a better term, shit post San Francisco, these tech brothers.

Speaker 18 These people have more options than anywhere in the world, anyone in the world, and yet they all decide to stay in this hellscape.

Speaker 18 When you interact with these folks,

Speaker 18 what's the vibe?

Speaker 18 Are they constantly saying,

Speaker 18 what is the ask to you as they threaten to leave every day and don't?

Speaker 18 When they meet with you and say, it's awful here and I could go anywhere in the world, but I'm going to stay,

Speaker 18 what does the conversation?

Speaker 17 Go ahead.

Speaker 18 Mark.

Speaker 17 I'm kidding. We'll get to him.
Mark is not the worst. Hold on, on, Mark, just to be clear.

Speaker 18 That's not fair. Mark is far from the worst.

Speaker 18 Just to be clear, and for your listeners out there that don't know me, I'm 10 months into this job. I had never been in politics before.

Speaker 18 I ran because I saw our city going in the wrong direction and I couldn't sit on the sidelines and just

Speaker 18 complain. I wanted to get into the action.
And so it's been a different conversation over the last year and a half. We got caught flat-footed by the fentanyl crisis.

Speaker 18 We did not protect families and kids going and taking Muni to school. There's people smoking fentanyl, and we were just like, that's okay.

Speaker 18 So I saw some of our challenges up close and personal walking my kids to school.

Speaker 18 And so the conversation I've had over the past year with these people is,

Speaker 18 I'm fixing it. I want you here, but you better help me fix it too.
And so I don't, I haven't heard of it.

Speaker 17 What does that mean?

Speaker 18 How do they help you fix it? What's the ask? The ask is

Speaker 18 when you come back to work, be in the office five days a week. Don't necessarily just have your kitchens and your cafeterias inside.
Go shop at the local businesses.

Speaker 18 Like get out, fund public transit

Speaker 18 because your employees take transit here.

Speaker 17 Rather than special buses.

Speaker 18 Yeah, that's right. So

Speaker 18 my ask is, it's...

Speaker 18 That conversation that you're talking about, it was, you know, four or five years. And what we all know the answer to this is when San Francisco is at its best, this is the greatest city in the world.

Speaker 18 It's the most beautiful city in the world. It's got the most innovative ecosystem in the world.
We got Stanford, we got Cal, we got UCSF right here.

Speaker 18 We got OpenAI, we got Anthropic, we got a new company that called Cursor. I mean, we have, Kara knows, you guys know this, like

Speaker 18 every city that you've stopped in, six straight, they would die to have one of those companies in their city.

Speaker 18 We have them all, and they better get involved in our community, and that's my ask of them.

Speaker 17 So just a couple more questions. Last month you talked President Trump out of sending a surge of federal troops here to Hellscape.

Speaker 17 Trump says he backed off because you, quote, asked very nicely what is wrong with him.

Speaker 17 A lot of big tech guys reached out to him on your behalf, which I think is fine but horrible that this is the way it goes. It's like it's an oligarchy if that's the case.

Speaker 17 If the rich guys have to do this, Jensen Wong and Sam Altman. Very different strategy than Gavin Newsom's, but talk about that.
Like, what

Speaker 17 is it? Does it still hang over your head? Does it like, could he still threaten you if he decides?

Speaker 18 Well, let me just tell you what I said to him: that this is the greatest city in the world

Speaker 18 when we are at our best. Our local law enforcement is crushing it when it comes to driving crime down.

Speaker 18 We are the innovative ecosystem of the world. I think what happens in places like DC is they have this old narrative of San Francisco.

Speaker 18 Just like the conversation with some of these tech people that were leaving, but you walk through, I walk through the ferry building today. Every place is leased out in that building.

Speaker 18 It's got amazing food. You walk through North Beach.
It's packed right now.

Speaker 18 I mean, every neighborhood in San Francisco, the sunset is doing incredibly well. And so we just have to, my conversation with him was telling him what is actually happening here in San Francisco.

Speaker 17 God, you have to suck up to that guy. I mean, honestly, I couldn't be mayor.
I'm so glad I didn't run.

Speaker 18 I just have to be like, there was, there was just, it was just facts, is what I said.

Speaker 17 And it was straight facts. Yeah.
Do you expect, what will you do if they decide to do he decides he needs to get out of, say, the Epstein situation and decides to distract people?

Speaker 18 I can, so this is a question. You and I have talked about this.
I am the mayor of San Francisco, and it's first off, I love my job.

Speaker 18 Second off, this city is so incredibly important and special that I just stay focused on what I can control. I cannot control what's going on in D.C.
I can't control what's going on in Sacramento.

Speaker 18 People ask me questions about different things happening around this country. I'm like, I can control public safety in San Francisco.

Speaker 18 I can work hard to tackle this fentanyl crisis, and we can make life easier for our small business owners. We can build more housing.
We can fund public transit.

Speaker 18 I can't, I'm only 10 months into this job. The idea that I could control anything outside of San Francisco, and you know you can't necessarily control what's going on in your own city.

Speaker 18 So I just relentlessly stay focused on what I can control.

Speaker 17 Well, God saved me for that one. So I have one last question and Scott might read.
San Francisco is a major

Speaker 17 hub for autonomous vehicles with companies like Waymo and Cruise operating driverless taxi services. I've been riding them for years.
Cruze. Not Cruise, Cruz is out, sorry.

Speaker 17 That's right. They had some issues.
But Waymo just announced it's going to start offering driverless rides to freeways here in San Francisco, as well as Phoenix and Los Angeles.

Speaker 17 I've been driving in Waymo for years, actually.

Speaker 17 I'm a fan. I know not everybody is, but Uber is in a robo-taxi testing phase here and plans to roll out of service late next year.

Speaker 17 Two-thirds of San Franciscans now support autonomous vehicles, but critics say they're entrenching car-dependent infrastructure. safety concerns.

Speaker 17 Obviously, recent a Waymo struck and killed a beloved San Francisco cat named Kit Kat in the mission district.

Speaker 17 So, talk about this idea of balancing innovation with the city's first transit policy and climate goals.

Speaker 17 Because, I mean, I know Gavin Newsom had a deal with the Google founders trying to put a chairlift in San Francisco up the hills.

Speaker 17 I remember that.

Speaker 18 Listen, I think we're going to always be on the leading edge here in San Francisco. I always want us to be on that.
I think we put guardrails in place. We make sure safety is forefront.

Speaker 18 This is state regulations, as you know.

Speaker 18 And I think Waymo is incredibly safe, and they're doing really great work.

Speaker 18 And I don't think that means that you can't go all in on transit and you can't go all in on making sure that people that are walking and biking and driving all feel safe.

Speaker 18 Like, I don't think it's an either-or.

Speaker 18 Waymo is has been

Speaker 18 incredibly popular for our tourists. And as you said, like two-thirds or more of the city now understands it.
It's safer than you or I getting behind a wheel.

Speaker 17 Yeah, I just had a biker get in front of the Waymo, and all the humans drove around it like a crazy person, but the Waymo was behind it for hours.

Speaker 17 And at first, I was like, you asshole. And I'm like, oh, it's San Francisco.
It's fine. It's fine.

Speaker 17 Last question for you.

Speaker 18 What isn't working? What do you think is presenting a bigger challenge than you hadn't, than you'd anticipated?

Speaker 18 Scott, I think the pace of change, just,

Speaker 18 I'm constantly frustrated. I'm constantly wanting us to go faster.

Speaker 18 But I will close with this because one thing that I'm really proud of that we did as a city is that with this government shutdown, we were able to get and cover the 112,000 San Franciscans that were going to go missing from food from their food stamps.

Speaker 18 And

Speaker 18 we

Speaker 18 moved heaven and earth.

Speaker 18 And from the time we said go, and we got, we put $9 million in, and Crankstart Foundation put $9 million in, and we had a press conference on the city hall steps, and we said, we got you, San Franciscans,

Speaker 18 seven days from the start to the time we put in the mail access to gift cards for people, we got it done in seven days.

Speaker 18 It reminded me that when government is at its best and when it wants to work, it can, but too often it takes so long and the people deserve faster bureaucracy, you know, faster government and that's what we're trying to do every day here in San Francisco.

Speaker 18 All right. All right.

Speaker 17 Mayor Lurie, thank you so much. We'll let you get back to work.

Speaker 18 Good to see you, Kara.

Speaker 17 Always. Thank you.

Speaker 17 Let's have another round of applause for Mayor Lurie. All right.

Speaker 17 Okay, we need to take a quick break. When we come back, we'll get to some of the latest headlines.

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Speaker 17 Scott, we're back. See how that worked?

Speaker 16 Incredible.

Speaker 17 That was an interlude there.

Speaker 17 We're taping this on Thursday when stocks are having their worst day in a month, taking a massive dive in the wake of the record six-week government shutdown.

Speaker 17 The SP fell around 1.6%, the Dow dropped 800 points, the NASDAQ about 2.3%. Tech and AI stocks got hammered.
Something you and I have been talking about these past seven days in our togetherness week.

Speaker 17 NVIDIA, Broadcom, Alphabet all slid on valuation,

Speaker 17 Meta, Disney crashed on disappointing earnings. Markets also soured on a chance of December Fed rate cut dropping.
So talk about this AI. People have been sort of...
talking about it incessantly.

Speaker 17 Michael Burry, famous short seller, has been talking about it a lot.

Speaker 17 So is it because the AI earnings don't support valuations, or is it a healthy reset?

Speaker 18 Yes.

Speaker 17 Okay.

Speaker 18 So look, America could best be described right now as just a giant bet on AI.

Speaker 18 It's hard to imagine a period, maybe back with the railroads, where our economy has been this dependent on a small number of companies.

Speaker 18 You have 10 companies that now represent 40 percent of the S P by market value, which represents 20 percent of global value. If these companies sneeze, the whole world is probably catching pneumonia.

Speaker 18 And if you look at the multiples historically, the Schiller index, which looks at the PE ratios on an inflation-adjusted basis,

Speaker 18 it is higher than it's been since they've been tracking it for 99% of the time. And it's in the top 1% right now, periods, in terms of an index.

Speaker 18 The Buffett index, which measures market cap as a percentage of GDP, typically trades around 85%.

Speaker 18 It's trading at 220%.

Speaker 18 So, and I want to be clear, when quote-unquote people like myself are convinced something is about to crash, that means it's usually about to skyrocket.

Speaker 18 And then I throw the towel in and then it crashes.

Speaker 17 So I'm having Tesla with Scott.

Speaker 18 I'm having PTSD because I was here from, I went to, I graduated from the hospital business. I lived in San Francisco from

Speaker 18 1992 to 2000, started two companies, Profit and Red Envelope.

Speaker 18 I remember in 1997 thinking everyone, the economist, everyone, Wall Street Journal, all the smartest people, Julian Robertson, all these incredibly smart investors said the dot-com, they perfectly called how the dot-com bubble would unwind.

Speaker 18 First it would be B2C, then it would be B2B, and then it would go to the infrastructure guys, the plays. Everyone was like, well, it's not B2C, go to B2B, and then go to Cisco.

Speaker 18 And Cisco and Amazon lost 90% of their value from 1999 to 2001. But the people who called it in 1997, the NASDAQ doubled from that point.

Speaker 18 But what you have is is so frightening because, quite frankly, the string that might get pulled by some of the companies that are headquartered here, I mean,

Speaker 18 I'd like to give the mayor some talking points.

Speaker 18 In the last five years, as much as people ship post California, there's been more wealth created in a seven-mile radius of SFO International Airport than in all of Europe in the last 20 years. I mean,

Speaker 18 it's striking how much value has been created here. But the string that might get pulled here is just so extraordinary.
And I think it goes something like this.

Speaker 18 A large large company announces that they're scaling back their investments in LLM.

Speaker 17 A large non-tech company.

Speaker 18 PepsiCo or Toyota says, look, on the earnings call, we made this enormous investment in site licenses from OpenAI or Anthropic, and it's just not showing any ROI, or it's not showing the ROI we had anticipated.

Speaker 18 We're scaling back. And it's not OpenAI that could take, in my opinion, the market down.
It's OpenAI, which is the front, the helm of the bobsled.

Speaker 18 And then the company that could take the the global economy down right now is one that is worth more than the entire German stock market, and that is NVIDIA.

Speaker 18 And that is, this company is worth $5 trillion.

Speaker 18 Take every company, publicly listed company in Germany, and half the company is publicly listed in France. That's what NVIDIA is worth.
And so there is no soft landing. And if NVIDIA

Speaker 18 got cut by 60 to 80 percent, it still might not look cheap. And if you lose $2 trillion in market cap from the S ⁇ P, there's just nowhere to hide.

Speaker 17 Right, because the other companies are the ones that are suffering from this, was it magnificent seven or 10, is that they didn't get affected by tariffs.

Speaker 17 They didn't get affected by all kinds of things.

Speaker 18 But the president, so this is the dark side of the run-up here, and that is I believe that AI

Speaker 18 has this, without these 10 companies, The market, the S ⁇ P would be flat, possibly down, and we'd already be in a recession and GDP would be negative.

Speaker 18 And quite frankly, and you never know where externalities are going to come from, I don't think the president would have cloud cover to be sending mass secret service or secret police into cities if the market was down 2 percent.

Speaker 18 Because of the idolatry of the dollar and our obsession with wealth and innovators in this country, as long as the markets are up, most damaging metrics in history are the S P and the NASDAQ, because they give the illusion of prosperity.

Speaker 18 They are not the mainstream economy.

Speaker 18 And also, when the markets are up 16 percent, and as of this morning 14 percent, it gives cloud cover for the administration to kind of do whatever they want because everyone's like, well, as long as the market's up, they must be doing something right and I'll forgive them.

Speaker 18 So what you're going to see, I believe, is a series of nonsensical, crony, autocratic

Speaker 18 financings where they back debt to buy more chips and create these circular deals.

Speaker 17 Because we've been talking about the, Scott and I lived through the first internet part, which was this, there's a company called Purchase Pro, and it was like, that was one of them.

Speaker 17 But there was all this round-tripping where the same $5 would go from AOL would invest, and then they would spend on AOL and et cetera.

Speaker 18 NVIDIA invests, I know, I think.

Speaker 17 $300 billion, wasn't it? No, well, right now. $300 billion.

Speaker 18 Right now,

Speaker 18 NVIDIA invests billions of dollars in OpenAI in exchange for them buying NVIDIA chips. That's a related party transaction.
There were a ton of them going on in the late 90s.

Speaker 18 We were all buying each other's crappy software.

Speaker 18 And then when we realized that consumers weren't showing up at the level we'd anticipated for the great world of e-commerce, the whole thing, the downward spiral.

Speaker 18 I mean, these deals just feel very late stage 90s. It is different this time because these are real companies with real earnings growth.

Speaker 18 But when you're open AI committing to $1.2 trillion in spend on $12 billion in revenues, and by the way, I'd love to see the actual legal language behind these commitments to buy $300 billion in compute from Oracle.

Speaker 18 Because there's no way

Speaker 18 they're not going to have an out. I think a lot of this is marketing.

Speaker 18 I think saying, I need 40 nuclear power plants and I'm going to buy 300 billion and compute is saying, Jesus, you should see the size of my dick. You haven't seen it.
But just wait. I am so confident.

Speaker 18 in my business that I'm going to commit to a $300 billion deal. I bet this deal similar to a tariff deal is a quote-unquote framework.
And it's marketing saying, I know more than you.

Speaker 18 And these huge deals, they're trying to scare away competitors.

Speaker 17 So one of the things when you have these kind of deals, it does create this froth. And even, as you said, these are companies with actual customers.
Certainly OpenAI has many others.

Speaker 17 But it creates this,

Speaker 17 it so reminds you of the dot-com thing, except in the dot-com time period, to start a company was inexpensive. And there were lots of them, right?

Speaker 17 It was relatively inexpensive to start something up and gin it up comparatively. Right now, you need data centers, you need energy, you need water.

Speaker 17 The amount of money spent on real things that they're spending on or committing to, they just announced something in Wisconsin and Louisiana, Meta did, et cetera.

Speaker 17 Now, Meta has plenty of cash because they make a lot of money through advertising right now.

Speaker 17 At some point, it's going to be good for maybe one, possibly two players, and everyone else

Speaker 17 assumes going to be shit out of luck in this scenario. It's not going to be lots of companies.

Speaker 18 So I have a different view on this, and that is because the majority of the people running these companies are under the age of 45, they don't remember airlines, vaccines, or PCs. And that is,

Speaker 18 I think the greatest innovation in history other than the American middle class is vaccines. It saves millions of people's lives every year.

Speaker 18 And

Speaker 18 by the way, if you don't believe that, your head is

Speaker 18 so far up your ass, I can't save you. But

Speaker 18 I would imagine almost everybody here believes that.

Speaker 18 We have come to believe that any huge tectonic innovation from technology can be sequestered by a small number of companies who create IP modes, create distribution modes, brand modes, such that they can accrete trillions of dollars in value or hundreds of billions to shareholders.

Speaker 18 There is no technology that's changed my life more than the ability to get in a plane and skirt the surface of the atmosphere at eight-tenths the speed of sound.

Speaker 18 That is just such an unbelievable unlock. It took my parents seven days crawling across the Atlantic and six months' salary to get to America.

Speaker 18 People to get to San Francisco 150 years ago used to have to stop and eat their nephews and nieces on the way. I mean,

Speaker 18 but guess what? As of today, as of today, if you added up all the profits and losses of the airline manufacturing industry and airlines, it's a break-even.

Speaker 18 Vaccines, no one's made a lot of money from vaccines. Moderna stock is now 90%.

Speaker 18 I was on the board of Gateway Computer, which I realize is almost as weak a flex as you saying. I've been taking Waymos forever.

Speaker 17 Smell you. Scott last night, look, Waymos as we were driving in.

Speaker 17 Check that shit out. Check it out.
Oh, my God.

Speaker 18 So I could masturbate in the back and no one would care.

Speaker 17 Anyway,

Speaker 18 that was even awkward for me. Did you do that today?

Speaker 17 Is that what you did today when you were away from me?

Speaker 18 Don't rag on my hobbies.

Speaker 17 Okay.

Speaker 18 Anyway, so

Speaker 18 vaccines, PCs, we put a supercomputer

Speaker 18 on everyone's desk that costs $30 million just 15 years prior. The entire PC industry has been a shit show.

Speaker 18 What I was saying with Gateway Computer, we were the second largest computer manufacturer in the world.

Speaker 18 We sold the company for $700 million, which is what Google loses or makes in about three minutes in a trading day.

Speaker 18 My thesis is the following, that the ability to reverse engineer other LLMs because of AI and the second factor, the CCP is so sick of this idiot fucking with them that they have said the easiest way to go for the juggular in America is to do in the 80s what they did with steel when they started dumping steel into America.

Speaker 18 I believe China right now is planning to dump massive AI LLMs at a fraction of the cost, a fraction of the energy consumption. It's going to take these companies down and really fuck with our economy.

Speaker 18 That's what I would do if I were she. So one,

Speaker 18 I think we're going to be the winners here, just as we were the winners from airlines, PCs, and vaccines.

Speaker 17 And the internet.

Speaker 18 But I don't think a small number of companies are going to be able to sequester the kind of value we are anticipating.

Speaker 18 So in sum, I think we're going to win as a society, but the markets I think are about to get an absolute shit kicking as the string gets pulled by on these small number of companies, which we have become way too dependent upon because if I'm in China I'm like I really would like to fuck with this guy I am going to dump so many cheap LLMs and AI into the ecosystem that these guys won't be able to support have any sort of pricing power yeah very I agree with you on this this is it's a really problematic you start to see it in including just this today they used AI to do a hack for the first time a fully AI powered hack which was there's all kinds of things the CCP can do to hurt us and meanwhile they spent a lot of time kissing up to Trump in order to get things, you know, doing the gee or me argument that we talked about.

Speaker 17 But let's move on to the latest Epstein news. The lawyer that got Jelaine Maxwell transferred to a minimum security prison has egg on his face today and much more.

Speaker 17 In a Twitter spat with George Conway, Deputy AG

Speaker 17 Todd Blanche seemed to admit that Wednesday's Epstein document dump undermined the interview he had with Maxwell pre-transfer. And interview is doing a lot of work in that sentence right there.

Speaker 17 The transfer looked even worse after Wednesday's document dump showed that Trump and Epstein were tighter than people thought.

Speaker 17 Scott, do you think she'll have to go back to the old prison? I'd say a hole down at the bottom of the ocean would work for me.

Speaker 17 Thoughts? He did. He admitted he didn't know the things, although the Justice Department has all these,

Speaker 17 has

Speaker 17 10 times more documents.

Speaker 18 So what I don't like about Democrats is that, and I consider myself a proud progressive, but I think oftentimes we get caught grasping for a virtue pen or pin as opposed to really focusing on what impacts the material and psychological well-being of more Americans.

Speaker 18 I hope Telaine Maxwell dies in prison, but I don't really care.

Speaker 18 I think the more important thing that impacts people is we have bastardized, perverted, and ruined a very important process of our justice system, which is clemency and pardons.

Speaker 18 And there are really talented people who are

Speaker 18 there are people

Speaker 18 because of things like three strikes, because of incompetent representation, because of mental illness. There are just

Speaker 18 a lot of people who are imprisoned, and then there's great work done to uncover DNA testing that finds out that they are, in fact, innocent of the crimes, or that they're spending life in prison because they stole a car antenna out of a Kmart.

Speaker 18 And this whole process is an incredibly important process. And it has been totally perverted by this notion that essentially in America, we've monetized health care.

Speaker 18 In Europe, healthcare is about trying to keep people healthy. Here, it's about trying to figure out a way to make the pharmaceutical and the obesity industrial complex profitable.

Speaker 18 We have monetized health care in this country. It's the best place in the world to be sick if you're in the top 10%.
It's one of the worst places to be in the bottom 90.

Speaker 18 We pay double per capita for health care to be more anxious, depressed, obese, and die sooner. And now, who would have thunk it? We're monetizing the pardon and clemency process.

Speaker 17 Well, this is not a surprise. This is a coin-operated program.
Well, that's my point. You know, I agree.
I mean, it's one of the problems that we have here, though,

Speaker 17 is the relentless lying. And obviously, you at the time, when Epstein first, when Elon first tweeted, the Epstein thing, remember you were like, oh, I said, uh-oh, because I saw.

Speaker 18 You get the sense I was wrong and you were right.

Speaker 17 I don't know where this is going. That is threat.

Speaker 18 Whenever we revisit history, it ends with, and I was right.

Speaker 17 Well, I was. You like.
The new biography from Kara Switch. No, no, no, no, no.
Dot, dot, dot.

Speaker 17 I was right. But

Speaker 17 the thing is, I was right.

Speaker 17 So, but he did. He slopped it off.
And you said it's not. I said, this Epstein thing is going to blow up like a Roman fucking candle.

Speaker 18 I said it wasn't?

Speaker 17 Yes, you did. But he threatened.
Elon, when he threatened to ruin Trump, he put a tweet out when he was on his way out of Doge, when Doge,

Speaker 17 you know,

Speaker 17 he saw the files is what I thought, and he made veiled threats. But then he took it down when he realized he went too far.
But when he put that up, I went, oh,

Speaker 17 Elon, I know what you're up to, because he knew. And so it's become this phenomenon, I think, is...
a problem for Trump.

Speaker 17 It looks like much of the House and the Senate are going to let this thing go through, this

Speaker 17 release, the Epstein files. It looks like it right now.

Speaker 17 So let me finish. The release of the documents right now, though, is such an online phenomenon.
It's crazy. It already was with the QAnon gang, but now everyone's participating in it at this point.

Speaker 17 So

Speaker 17 talk about what's happening here because

Speaker 17 just what's been released now is crazy and problematic for the president, obviously. And I think

Speaker 17 he hasn't had an eruption all day.

Speaker 17 J.D. Vance is gone.
I don't know where he went. He usually gets on and gets all mad about things and, you know, sits on a couch, et cetera.

Speaker 17 And he has not been a Van. I have to.
I don't think he fucked a couch, everyone. I think I, I don't.
I don't think he fucked a couch. But the fact of the matter is, I think he could.
See,

Speaker 17 that's where I feel about him, right?

Speaker 17 I'm like, yeah, sure, he'd fuck a couch, right? But I don't think he necessarily did. I don't care if San Francisco.

Speaker 18 I'm glad we cleared that up.

Speaker 17 You know what? It's San Francisco. It's great alternative media.
Okay. All right.

Speaker 17 What do you imagine the repercussions?

Speaker 17 Because if there is, if this starts to really slide and it has that feeling of slide, especially because it's, now we don't have to believe everything Jeffrey Epstein, that heinous monster said, but it had the, it has the...

Speaker 17 the feel of something sort of late stage Trump for some reason to me. And I think a lot, like you saw Louisiana senator, John Kennedy, who pretends pretends he's like foghorn leghorn.

Speaker 17 But he said, he's like, well, I think I should, you know, I'm going to vote for this thing. And I don't care if I get a sombrero.
Like, I was like, which is, I thought at first, oh, he's so racist.

Speaker 17 But then I realized Trump put a sombrero on Hakeem Jeffries' head. So anyway, my point being, what do you think the

Speaker 17 couch fucking Epstein files? What do you think?

Speaker 17 What do you think is happening here? Do you think?

Speaker 18 We're going to reheat your soup for you. You're fine.

Speaker 17 What do you think is going to happen? I feel like a QAnon person, but do you

Speaker 17 think is going to happen here? And

Speaker 17 strategy it out for us.

Speaker 18 So the reality is, and you've pointed this out, I think I'm better than your average bear at predicting business outcomes. I'm worse than your average person at

Speaker 18 I would have thought

Speaker 18 that we crossed about eight.

Speaker 18 I would have thought launching a meme coin the Friday before your inauguration where people could billions of dollars into essentially a Swiss banking account that you then monetize.

Speaker 18 There's been so many red, the orgy of corruption here has been so extraordinary. Taking a plane from a Gulf state.

Speaker 18 I always thought, oh, this is it. This is the red line.
And so I don't know if this is the red line.

Speaker 18 The thing I can't figure out, though, or so supposedly every morning on his calendar, he has quote-unquote executive time where he just watches Fox News and hangs out, right?

Speaker 18 And what I imagine is he meets with his decorator for the East Wing and then he meets with his comms consultant talking about the Epstein files. And I think it goes something like this.

Speaker 18 Decorator comes in, mood bored, and like, I want it to look like the best whorehouse in Iraq. I think that's.

Speaker 18 And two, he says to his comms person around Epstein, I just want to look so fucking guilty. Just, I want to look like, I want everything I do, my body language, everything I say.

Speaker 18 I just want to convince people I'm guilty. Because there's been a lot of people who've gone to the island and they've come out and they've said, huge error in judgment.

Speaker 18 I shouldn't have been down there. I shouldn't have cohorted with this guy.
It was really stupid. And people have forgiven Trump for so much more than that.

Speaker 18 For him to be this panicked, it just looks and smells and feels like there's something really ugly here. And typically with a crime,

Speaker 18 it's not the crime itself that you get in trouble for. It's the cover-up, right? Martha Stewart wouldn't have gone to prison if she said, yeah, I traded on insider information.

Speaker 18 I didn't know what I was doing. I'm really sorry.
It was her lying and trying to cover up.

Speaker 18 Americans actually, although I don't think they'd forgive him for this, but in general, Americans like to forgive. What they hate is people who won't come clean.

Speaker 18 So I don't, and his body language is so extraordinary. I wonder if this is the event.
the kind of singularity or the apex kind of predator, and that is people start fleeing from him.

Speaker 17 But I think it's the polling numbers, including especially with Republicans, actually. The Republican numbers are down.

Speaker 17 And then all of a sudden, all his defenders are now trashing him, which is interesting to watch. But who is that?

Speaker 18 They're other than Mace and

Speaker 17 Cat Turd, et cetera, those people. They are.
They're starting to really. The thing they're most mad about is him insulting American workers over Chinese workers.

Speaker 18 It's just so,

Speaker 17 I mean. They're not mad about pedophiles.
They're mad about American workers. Whatever.
They are mad about this.

Speaker 18 I will put it back to you because I have been just so wrong on this for so long.

Speaker 17 I do think this is it.

Speaker 18 When you say it, what happens?

Speaker 17 Well, I think Moore will be ⁇ I think he can ⁇ it may not get ⁇ I think if it passed ⁇ it is going to pass the House.

Speaker 17 I have a feeling it might pass the Senate because you don't want to be on record as trying to quash this kind of stuff.

Speaker 17 He will get to his desk. He is going to have to veto it, right? He is going to veto it.
If he vetoes it, it might not get out, but it will then get out.

Speaker 18 Yeah, but it okay, first off, I think more stuff.

Speaker 17 To me, what has to happen,

Speaker 17 these emails, and by the way, I spent all day reading them.

Speaker 17 These emails are problematic enough.

Speaker 17 There's a photo, and Epstein has referred to it. There's a video.
There is definitely a photo of him in some fashion. And that will get out.

Speaker 17 And then it'll, because as you said, visual stuff is what people respond to. People are very upset about the East Wing Wing because visually it's repulsive to look at.

Speaker 17 And so if there's a photo, I think, you know, the pussy-grabbing thing was voice, which was problematic enough. But there's a photo like what happened to Andrew, I think it's game over.

Speaker 17 And then we have President Buck and Jay. But if forced to speculate,

Speaker 18 if forced to speculate, the thing that I think I would guess happens when you have a sycophant,

Speaker 18 unusual gentleman running your FBI that is claiming the

Speaker 18 the files have been released to the extent that is legally possible, which is a lie, and you have your own personal attorney running the DOJ.

Speaker 18 I just wouldn't put him past them to do what I would call a soft release. And that is, they release stuff and claim it's a full release, and it just says the names of all these Democrats.

Speaker 18 But quite frankly, I just, why would we think it's not above them?

Speaker 18 to engage in the corruption of bastardizing, lying, and altering the it here when they have implanted or embedded up and down the supply chain a group of corrupt people.

Speaker 17 You know, I'm a big believer, as people know when I covered Silicon Valley and the leak. And I think there's going to be people leaking this stuff over, and it's going to be drip, drip, drip.

Speaker 17 And this is something I think, you know, it would be super ironic that this guy gets taken down by emails.

Speaker 18 You love that.

Speaker 17 Hillary Clinton must be like.

Speaker 17 You know, they were on her. It was a big joke on the internet.

Speaker 17 The thing that was on her server

Speaker 17 was she was trying to help a young girl get out of Afghanistan was what got leaked for her. And for him, it's, you know, all this.
Yeah,

Speaker 17 I would say this is worse. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 17 Yeah.

Speaker 17 Anyway, we'll see what happens. I think this, I just, I don't know.
I feel like we're going to have President J.D. Vance by the end of 2026.

Speaker 17 I get it, but he is the president of the.

Speaker 18 You think this ends his presidency prematurely. Yes.

Speaker 17 He'll be sick. He'll be that, bad, bad, bad.
Yeah. I do.
I think he's not going to make it to the end.

Speaker 18 Be careful what you wish for. I think J.D.
Vance is going to be a good idea.

Speaker 17 I agree. Hello.
I just called him a couch fucker to San Francisco.

Speaker 17 J.D. or alleged couch fucker.

Speaker 18 Is all of the calories with none of the great taste of stupidity that doesn't get things done?

Speaker 18 This guy is, do you want Peter Thiel to be president? Because that's who's going to be president.

Speaker 17 Yep. And by the way, who is also in the Epstein emails, FYI, a lot of people are in there.
He was just, they're just joshing.

Speaker 18 I've got to be honest. I love the stuff about Larry Summers getting dating advice.

Speaker 18 Larry Summers.

Speaker 17 To me, the worst thing today was Megan Kelly sort of parsing

Speaker 18 age. Age.
It's not as bad as we thought because it's 15-year-olds, not five-year-olds. Yeah.

Speaker 17 It's 10-year-olds. 10-year-olds? Yeah.
Five-year-olds are worse for her, I guess.

Speaker 17 The whole thing was demented. Like, it was demented.
I listened to the whole thing because I was trying. I'm like, okay, she can't have said that.
And I'm like, she said that and more.

Speaker 17 Like, it was really, to me, and in a different age, that would have been career ending. And it's not.
She'll just rage her way through it with her fan base. Yeah, I don't.
Well,

Speaker 18 I don't. I like the fact.
I think we need less career ending stuff when people fuck up because if we're going to have 24 by 7 media, I think you have to have.

Speaker 18 a little why does anyone want to run for anything if they

Speaker 18 have you noticed in in this guy the mayor, he's unique because he doesn't want to, I generally believe he doesn't want to do anything after this because he wouldn't come on my podcast.

Speaker 18 I can get anyone on my podcast right now because they're all running for president. And he said no, which means he has no desire to move on beyond being president.

Speaker 17 Maybe he doesn't like you because he's coming on mine.

Speaker 18 Actually, he already went on yours, and you know, our deal in this relationship. When you bring in a third person, I at least get to watch,

Speaker 18 anyways.

Speaker 17 Oh, God.

Speaker 18 Where were we?

Speaker 17 So

Speaker 17 profoundly uninterested in

Speaker 18 you. What I was saying, essentially, unfortunately, the reason politicians are so boring and so starched is they're worried about saying something indelegant.
I'm not talking about Megan Kelly.

Speaker 18 And I think the Democrats, quite frankly, need to be more forgiving and have fewer purity tests and be more focused on.

Speaker 17 I agree. You know I agree with it, but I don't agree.
I don't agree when you say, hey, it's a 15-year-old. We can all understand that.

Speaker 18 Yeah, but you hate Megan Kelly and she hates you.

Speaker 17 No, no, no, that is not my. I don't hate her.

Speaker 17 No, of course not.

Speaker 17 I advise her to go into podcasting, a thing I regret to this very day.

Speaker 17 She's very good. I get it, but this, you have to,

Speaker 17 I'm sorry. There's certain things you're right.
You shouldn't be careful about that. It's a giant fucking distraction.
No, it's not. It's a heinous thing to say.

Speaker 17 Okay, but why are we?

Speaker 23 But why are we spending

Speaker 17 I just think it was particularly heinous on a heinous day of things.

Speaker 18 Yeah, she's a fucking podcaster. What we say is not that relevant.
The emails and what's going on with him are the news.

Speaker 17 Yes, absolutely. I agree.
I still think she's heinous. Anyway,

Speaker 17 all right, we need to take another quick break. And we come back.
We'll get to some more, a little more news, and then listener questions. So get ready.

Speaker 1 Support for the show comes from Odoo.

Speaker 3 Running a business is hard enough, and you don't need to make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other.

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Speaker 12 Thousands of businesses have made the switch, so why not you?

Speaker 15 Try Odu for free at odu.com. That's odoo.com.

Speaker 17 Scott, we're back.

Speaker 17 Secretary of State Marco Rubu has directed visa officers to deny entry to people with chronic health conditions like obesity, diabetes, and cancer, citing potential health care costs.

Speaker 17 They'd have got it right in. Yeah, I know exactly.
The guidance also flags retirement age and having dependents with disabilities as a reason for denial.

Speaker 17 The White House claims it's just enforcing an old policy,

Speaker 17 not letting in people who would be a drain on taxpayers, but immigration lawyers say it's a massive expansion who can be turned away.

Speaker 17 About 16 percent of adults worldwide are obese, probably largely here.

Speaker 17 What does this sound like? It's not give give me your tired, you're poor

Speaker 17 kind of attitude. What historical government does this remind you of, Scott?

Speaker 18 Look,

Speaker 18 I don't think anyone has.

Speaker 18 This is a tough one

Speaker 18 because, I mean, it's sort of the one thing we share in America, except in wealthy cities where you all go to Equinox.

Speaker 18 By the way, I went to the Equinox in my hotel today. The hottest men.

Speaker 17 Okay. My God.
Did you hook up? Whew. Wow.
Yeah. And a back of a Wimo.
Yes.

Speaker 18 Now,

Speaker 18 so 70% of America is either overweight or obese. That's the one thing we share.
70% of Americans aren't anything, except we're obese and overweight.

Speaker 18 So that seems very strange to me that we wouldn't say, oh, you're uniquely American if you're obese.

Speaker 18 But at the same time, I do think that,

Speaker 18 and it can go up and down. If you're an outstanding roofer, And you don't have a criminal record, we need roofers.
We need people to

Speaker 18 take care of our elderly. We need people to keep our prices.

Speaker 18 I'm a big fan of going up and down the supply chain in terms of who we let in, but I do think there should be criteria around who will or who won't be a drain on the system.

Speaker 17 I just don't know if that's the right thing.

Speaker 17 Because

Speaker 17 they're taking snap and this is all about cruelty, just cruelty to various people. It's not, and again, the real obesity problem is here in this country.
They don't want to address that.

Speaker 18 But on a meta-level, this is what happened. When progressives wouldn't enforce the border, fascists will.
We stuck our chin out.

Speaker 18 We let a quarter of a million people come across the border in one month under Biden by going asylum. That's all they had to do.

Speaker 18 And so the general cadence and rhythm of politics in America the last 10 years is the following. We are well-intentioned progressives.
We do really fucking stupid things.

Speaker 18 We let a transgender woman show up at an NC2A meet and compete, right?

Speaker 18 And I'm not suggesting that a transgender athlete in junior high school leave it up to the school if it gives her confidence, fantastic.

Speaker 18 But when we let transgender athletes compete for medals and money and we all just ignore it, fine. When we let a quarter of a million people come in, and then what happens,

Speaker 18 we have this severe reaction of fascism from the right where they start pulling the names off of people who have served honorably and we decide in a little nod to the gay community's contribution to the military that we're going to name a secondary frigate after Harvey Milk and they decide to take the fucking name off.

Speaker 18 I mean, that's just, that is just so, or they're now kicking all transgender service people out of the service who have served honorably, which is not only mean and cruel, but it makes us less safe.

Speaker 18 But let's be clear, folks, we stick our chin out, in my view.

Speaker 18 And I know that's not popular among this audience, but when we go fucking insane and do things that are well-intentioned, but we built an infrastructure and an apparatus where people like me can pay themselves well and have no accountability or measurable outcomes, then sweep in this ridiculous fascist argument that we should cut funding to universities under the auspices of anti-Semitism.

Speaker 18 We take good intentions way too far, focused on virtue, not on actual on-the-ground material or economic or psychological well-being, and they over-correct with what feels like fucking 1933 Germany.

Speaker 17 But see, Scott, Scott, that's the thing.

Speaker 17 I might agree with you on some of that, but it's the level of cruelty and how far they go.

Speaker 17 You know, the left can be censorious and then the right bans books. Like, it's a very different level of.

Speaker 18 We're saying the same thing.

Speaker 17 But when you have something like this, what should be the criteria of who comes in?

Speaker 17 People who are useful that we need here in this country and to kick people out, not people who are hardworking, paying their taxes, et cetera.

Speaker 18 You know how I feel about this stuff.

Speaker 18 I think it's we need people to

Speaker 18 look, the reality is this. People say immigration is the secret sauce of America.
Okay, I don't know what that means.

Speaker 18 The most profitable part of immigration is illegal immigration because these people pay so

Speaker 18 they call them undocumented workers. They have all sorts of documents.
They have taxpayers because we want to collect Social Security payments for them. They have phone contracts.

Speaker 18 They have driver's licenses. They have insurance contracts.
They have cable bills. We paper them up all over the place so we can collect money, right?

Speaker 18 So the notion, and we've been turning a blind eye to this for 40 years because the reality is they come in, they don't tax our services, they commit less crimes, they go to the emergency room less, and they pay Social Security taxes, and generally they return home before they collect Social Security.

Speaker 18 They're the most profitable, flexible workforce in history. Having said that,

Speaker 18 having said that, you do need borders. You do need some sort of system for evaluating.
And I personally believe that being born on planet Earth does not give you a birthright to live in America.

Speaker 18 Otherwise, we're going to have a billion people on our shores. So there needs to be criteria.
Some of it needs to be based on true political asylum and where we can help people.

Speaker 18 But I do believe at the end of the day, we should let in people that are most accretive to our economy and our society.

Speaker 18 I think there should be a criteria, and I think we should say no to a lot of people.

Speaker 17 Yeah, well, I still think this is cruel. I just think it's just, they're just doing it for

Speaker 17 performative ways. Okay, last question.
Then we're going to get to audience questions.

Speaker 17 Now, do you see why I'm so positive about San Francisco? Why I love it? He always gives me a hard time, but I love it.

Speaker 18 I lived here for 10 years. I was married.
We were doing things like going sailing and going biking in Mount Tam. And I thought another 10 years of this, and I was in tech.

Speaker 18 I'm going to go into the garage, turn the

Speaker 18 car on, and leave the door down.

Speaker 18 There's nowhere to

Speaker 18 get a cocktail after 10 p.m. here.

Speaker 17 Everyone,

Speaker 18 everyone wants to go to Sonoma and go wine tail. Fuck.

Speaker 18 Oh my God. Oh, and the technology industry.
We're saving the planet. I have never met a more rapacious bunch of douchebags who would fuck their sister for a nickel.

Speaker 18 But we're saving the whales. We're saving humanity.
So fucking unattractive.

Speaker 17 Okay.

Speaker 18 Oh, my God. Come to New York.
Hello. Hello.
They drink. They love to make money.
Anyways, so true story. I said to my wife, I said,

Speaker 18 We decided to get divorced, and I said, I want the dog, you can have all of our friends, I'm never coming back.

Speaker 17 Well, I love San Francisco.

Speaker 17 I literally had the best day.

Speaker 17 I walked around Noah Valley, and I walked, it was pouring rain, but it was lovely. I love it, San Francisco, and the rain.

Speaker 17 I had oysters. And by the way, my son Louis is moving back here, so I'm very excited.
He was born and raised here. So

Speaker 17 thanks, Scott, for that terrific

Speaker 17 ad for San Francisco.

Speaker 17 We'll take one more quick break. We'll be back for some audience questions.
We're very excited.

Speaker 1 Support for the show comes from Odo.

Speaker 3 Running a business is hard enough, and you don't need to make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other.

Speaker 20 One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting.

Speaker 4 Before you know it, you find yourself drowning in software and processes instead of focusing on what matters, growing your business.

Speaker 19 This is where Odoo comes in.

Speaker 2 It's the only business software you'll ever need.

Speaker 6 ODU is an all-in-one fully integrated platform that handles everything.

Speaker 8 That means CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, and more.

Speaker 7 No more app overload, no more juggling logins, just one seamless system that makes work easier.

Speaker 19 And the best part is that Odo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost.

Speaker 22 It's built to grow with your business, whether you're just starting out or you're already scaling up.

Speaker 24 Plus, it's easy to use, customizable, and designed to streamline every process.

Speaker 25 It's time to put the clutter aside and focus on what really matters: running your business.

Speaker 12 Thousands of businesses have made the switch, so why not you?

Speaker 15 Try Odo for free at odoo.com. That's odoo.com.

Speaker 17 Scott, we're back recording live from San Francisco here.

Speaker 17 In the city by the bay, and my favorite place on earth, we're ready to take some questions to the audience, and we love hearing from you. We might not get to everyone tonight.
We're going to try.

Speaker 17 We've been trying in every city. We're getting biggie long lines.
That said, keep questions short so we can get to as many people as possible.

Speaker 17 But let's just look. I have a special person starting.

Speaker 17 Let's show this clipping photo here. So you might want to look at it.
Okay, this is a picture of Scott Galloway as a kid doing taekwondo.

Speaker 18 Where did you get this?

Speaker 17 Exactly.

Speaker 17 So let's bring the lights up, please, so I can see where people are.

Speaker 17 This is in the. So, hi.
Hi. What's your name?

Speaker 18 Debbie Brubaker.

Speaker 18 Jesus Christ, really?

Speaker 17 Hi, Scott.

Speaker 17 This is apparently, or Scott thinks so, his fourth-grade girlfriend?

Speaker 17 I'm thinking so.

Speaker 17 That's her up there.

Speaker 17 He's right there.

Speaker 18 They do still brick. Debbie and I were the smartest kids in the third grade, and they used to send us to fifth grade for math and English, and we used to hang out.

Speaker 17 We did, and I am thinking maybe you had a crush on me, and

Speaker 17 maybe I had a crush on you, but I am now on Kara's team. I back for the other side.

Speaker 17 But I haven't seen you in 50 years.

Speaker 18 She didn't know who I was when they asked her the current.

Speaker 17 Yeah, she's not online. Is that right, Debbie? Get on the thing.
Get back up here, Scott Gallery. Stop making out with your third-grade girlfriend,

Speaker 17 who is, of course, Scott's always like, everyone I went out with became a lesbian. I'm like, let me find one.
Let me find one for you. It's so easy.

Speaker 18 I should have known. We spent the night in your dad's camper and you wouldn't even kiss me.
We're playing Truth or Dare, and you're like, nope. Debbie,

Speaker 18 it's so good to see you.

Speaker 17 So do you have a really quick question for us, Debbie, by the way? You're not on social media. Do you have any questions for us? I am not on social media at all.

Speaker 17 Good for you.

Speaker 17 I'll just tell a quick story, but my stepsister, who's here, is a huge fan of both of you. She listens to Pivot

Speaker 17 every podcast. And she, I guess, heard you say something about me and being the smartest girl in third grade.
And she texted me, I guess she almost got in an accident. She was driving.

Speaker 17 And she texted me immediately and said, Do you know Scott Galloway from fourth grade? And I said, Yes, I do.

Speaker 17 And

Speaker 17 that led to other things that got me here and I I've never seen you bald or tall

Speaker 17 it's it's not a good look is is there it is it are you gonna change back for them don't maybe I'd like to get to know you

Speaker 17 anyway Debbie thank you so much they really appreciate it

Speaker 18 there too

Speaker 17 so nice thank you what a thrill yeah come to our party thank you all right next up uh my butler casey Newton. Hi, everybody.
Oh, Casey.

Speaker 27 Great to see you guys.

Speaker 17 My sons call him Gacy.

Speaker 18 That's right. Yeah.

Speaker 27 I'm a huge fan of the pod. I actually had a crush on you, Kara, when I was in fourth grade.
So it's nice to see you tonight.

Speaker 27 You know, I thought in the San Francisco fashion, I might ask another AI question. Okay.

Speaker 27 I noticed in your analysis of the potential crash, you did not seem to take into account the possibility that one or more of these companies creates a pretty effective digital worker, something that you could swap in for many, many thousands of employees.

Speaker 27 And so I wondered, is that because you don't think it will happen? And if you did think it might happen, how might it change your analysis?

Speaker 18 I'm sorry, an effective digital workplace?

Speaker 27 What we might call HEI around here, a worker, like something that you could, you know, use software instead of hiring a person, automation.

Speaker 17 So

Speaker 18 I think these companies are incredible companies, and I do think AI is going to,

Speaker 18 so every year I pick a technology of the the year, I do a predictions deck at the end of the year, and I picked AI two years in a row.

Speaker 18 And actually, this year, I picked, I actually think GLP1 is bigger than GPT-5 in terms of on-the-ground impact on Americans' lives. I think these things are going to be incredible.

Speaker 18 I just doubt they're going to be able to live up to the expectations built into, if you look at Casey, at the market cap they're at, built into any sort of reasonable forward price earnings,

Speaker 18 built into the the valuations of these companies is the assumption that they're going to either create $3 to $5 trillion in incremental revenue for their clients or save $3 to $5 trillion.

Speaker 18 And so far, I don't see a lot of AI moisturizer or cars that are designed or driven by AI, autonomous, you could argue. What I see so far is efficiencies, which is Latin for layoffs.

Speaker 18 And if you do, so what you see is you hear about firms saying we're going to save 10 or 20 or 30 or $50 million on legal costs or compliance, which again is Latin for layoffs.

Speaker 18 And if you do the math, only 160 million Americans work. Assuming

Speaker 18 you need to find $1 trillion a year in efficiencies to justify these valuations. An average salary of 70 or 80 grand, including

Speaker 18 office load, 100 grand, let's just assume.

Speaker 18 To save $1 trillion in efficiencies to justify the valuations, that means you need to find 10 million fewer jobs, or there needs to be a labor destruction of 10 million jobs.

Speaker 18 If of 160 million total employment, stick with me, I know this is boring, if half the industries are immune to AI, plumbers, chiropractors, nurses, whatever, that means 80 million people are quote-unquote vulnerable.

Speaker 18 And the only way you could justify these valuations is one of Three things needs to happen.

Speaker 18 They come up, all of a sudden we start using all these AI-driven products that convince us to spend more money, or

Speaker 18 we have a 12.5 destruction in the labor force across the industry susceptible to AI, which is chaos.

Speaker 18 That may not sound like a lot, but at the height of the automobile collapse, it wasn't that much labor.

Speaker 18 So we're either going to have an unemployment chaos across several industries, or these companies are going to get cut in half. Either way, I see tumult.

Speaker 18 But Casey has this amazing substack called Platformer. That's right.
And I'll put it back to you. Where do I have this wrong, and what do you think about that assertion?

Speaker 27 You may very well not have it wrong.

Speaker 27 I just know that all of the folks I talk to here who work in the industry, who run these companies, say 12.5%, like, yes, I can take that number of jobs out of the economy.

Speaker 27 So, I don't know if they're right, but that is certainly the assumption that is holding here right now.

Speaker 17 Or perhaps they don't know. Well, yes.
That's my assumption.

Speaker 17 That's always my assumption.

Speaker 17 And, you know, I think some of the clues to that is when OpenAI announced an erotica service. That means they'd run out of ideas, right? And they want to write to porn.

Speaker 17 I was like, ah, we're at porn now. Oof, that's a problem.

Speaker 27 All right. Well, thanks very much, John.
Love to see.

Speaker 18 Thank you for the question.

Speaker 17 You guys, we really do recommend Platformer. Casey has been a longtime friend of me.
He did live in my house, where Louis's going to be living in case you're interested.

Speaker 17 But he's a great, great writer and a great analyst, so you should read him. Next question: I'm Joyce, 25-year resident of San Francisco.
Worked in music first and then tech.

Speaker 17 Music got destroyed by streaming. Tech kind of has had its bubble too.
And now I work in Legal Weed. Oh, good.
My man is one of the.

Speaker 17 Hello.

Speaker 17 Yes.

Speaker 17 Consumer here. Yes.

Speaker 18 Did you bring some for the dog?

Speaker 17 I brought you.

Speaker 17 I did. I did.

Speaker 17 Oh, my God. That is you, my shot, right? Yeah.

Speaker 17 This called Sonoma Hills Farm. We're the first OCAL certified organic cannabis

Speaker 17 farm

Speaker 17 in the state.

Speaker 17 Yesterday wasn't encouraged in Congress.

Speaker 17 Well,

Speaker 17 hemp was banned yesterday. I think it was 76 to 20 years.
That makes sense, right?

Speaker 18 Right.

Speaker 17 You know, regulated parties are like, well, you know, hemp just kind of has this loophole and we've spent all this money.

Speaker 17 But at the end of the day, it was like the biggest step towards backtracking prohibition that we've seen in a long time. We have 24 legal states, 39 with, you know, medical.

Speaker 17 Cannabis helps with reducing anxiety. It was Mitch McConnell in the alcohol lobby that did that.
Correct. Yeah.

Speaker 18 You know, they have these amazing off-brand pharmacies here where you can get generic drugs. And I got some generic erectile dysfunction drugs.
The generic term is mycoxifloppin.

Speaker 17 Okay. What is your question? No, that's bad.
That's good.

Speaker 18 Doesn't that word just make you happy?

Speaker 17 Mycoxiflopin? No, it doesn't. It makes me sad.
Besides giving Scott drugs, what is your question?

Speaker 17 My question is: you know, 70% of Americans approve of legalization, and yet 24 people said yes yesterday and 76 said no. And here we are with 70% of the population able to buy legal cannabis.

Speaker 17 Meta will not let us advertise. None of the fintech companies let us use their software.

Speaker 17 So these business owners who probably ideated high now have these big companies and they're saying, no, cannabis, you can't play in this field.

Speaker 17 I'm interested in like why big business and government keep saying no to something that a massive swath of the population wants to do.

Speaker 17 I mean, it's a really, I agree with you, it's ridiculous, which is why so much of the action has been on a state level, right? Right.

Speaker 17 I find it's the same thing with gun control, when it's like 80%.

Speaker 17 There's a bunch of topics that are 80-20, and our Congress does the very opposite for all various and sundry reasons, depending on the topic.

Speaker 17 But something like this, this is a you know, it's a difficult industry. I know it's been through its ups and downs,

Speaker 17 especially the legal marijuana industry.

Speaker 17 It's been a tough road in so many ways.

Speaker 17 I think it's the alcohol lobby just had more power than the marijuana lobby, and somehow you have to gain more power. And I suspect when Congress is in 103 fucking years old

Speaker 17 and puts back the liquor and Mitch McConnell is long gone, which next week, hopefully.

Speaker 17 Or some of these people, it will change as younger people come up and don't. Because I certainly know among I have four kids, but my older kids, well, Alex just does protein shakes.

Speaker 17 But my, you know, they were not, they're not drinkers. They're weed people, right? Or

Speaker 17 that's the preference. And so it seems like all their friends are like that.
So I think it's just a demographic trend that's just going to take a while. Scott, do you have any thoughts?

Speaker 18 So this goes back to dating advice. I think substances play a really important role in a young person's life and they're not for everybody.
You may decide that it's not for you.

Speaker 18 I'm trying to drink less alcohol as I get older because I realize my 51-year-old liver cannot handle.

Speaker 17 51. He's not 51.
Just go with it. No, I'm not.

Speaker 18 Just go with it.

Speaker 17 He's Jaja Gabor of like podcasters. Anyways, darling, I am very I love being high.

Speaker 18 I'm a better version of myself, a little bit fucked up. And

Speaker 18 as I get older, I'm trying to reduce my alcohol content. And

Speaker 18 I replace it with THC and edibles.

Speaker 18 But I'm very serious, and I've said this, and I've had Andrew Huberman and Peter Atti on my podcast.

Speaker 18 I think one of the worst things, the second worst thing to happen to young people, the worst is remote work. One-third of relationships begin at work.
You need to touch people.

Speaker 18 You need to, with their consent, you need to,

Speaker 18 you need guardrails. If I hadn't had a a job at Morgan Stanley that demanded I got into the office, I didn't have the discipline not to walk my dog and watch Netflix and smoke a lot of pot every day.

Speaker 18 I needed the office. I made friends.
I found mentors. So, anyways, but the second worst thing is this anti-alcohol movement.

Speaker 18 Look at the most important things in your life, the relationships. Look at your best friends.
Look at your romantic relationships. Did alcohol play some role in that?

Speaker 18 Seriously.

Speaker 17 What about weed? She's asking for some of us it was weed.

Speaker 18 Weed, I would say the same thing. But my advice, generally speaking, to young people is drink

Speaker 18 and do some edibles and then go out and make a series of bad decisions that might pay off.

Speaker 17 Nice.

Speaker 17 And for the marijuana industry,

Speaker 17 you'll beat them at some point. You absolutely will.
Because the old people will die.

Speaker 17 But as Scott says, biology is undefeated.

Speaker 17 Anyway, we really appreciate this. and I'm so glad to see so many friends.
I have so many friends in the audience. My amazing brother is here, Jeff Swisher.
Dr. Swish.
His lovely wife, Dana.

Speaker 17 I don't know where they are.

Speaker 18 My good friend Robert May is here.

Speaker 18 Robert, I don't know where you are. Todd.

Speaker 17 Nice friend.

Speaker 18 Give me my first office space.

Speaker 17 Yeah. In any case, we really appreciate it.
We love San Francisco. We will be back.

Speaker 17 You can catch selected shows from this tour on YouTube and your podcast feeds. So that's all we've got time for today.
Scott, read us out.

Speaker 18 Today's show was produced by Larry Naman, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griven, and Kate Gallagher. Amazing support provided by Trish, Kelly Schwanter, and Kaitlyn Lich.

Speaker 18 And a big shout out to the Vox Media Experiential team, Riley Courtney, Given, Abby Aronofsky, and Caitlin Burlaugh. Make sure to follow Divid on your favorite podcast platform.

Speaker 18 Thanks for listening to Vivid from New York Magazine, Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nyman.com slash pod.

Speaker 18 We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Thank you, Kara Swisher, and thank you, you, San Francisco.

Speaker 17 Thank you, San Francisco. We love you.
Thank you so much.

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