Paramount's Hostile Bid, Elon's EU Threat, and Meta's Metaverse Cuts

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Speaker 1 I had death threats from like the writers of SpongeBob SquarePants.

Speaker 4 Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.
I'm Kara Swishher.

Speaker 1 And I'm Scott Galloway.

Speaker 4 How was your weekend, Scott?

Speaker 1 How was my weekend? Yeah.

Speaker 1 It was pretty. I don't think I left the house.
It was kind of pathetic.

Speaker 4 You didn't go to Christmas parties?

Speaker 1 No, no Christmas parties.

Speaker 4 Oh, you're a bad king, Wenceslas.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I went to Five Hertford, where finance bros and the Russians who love them go. What?

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's a club of private members.

Speaker 4 I went to a Ukrainian resistance party, which was great.

Speaker 1 Same, same. Ukrainian resistance party, private members club in London.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I know. Same.
It was cool.

Speaker 4 It was a restaurant here who it's a Ukrainian restaurant that's raising money for

Speaker 4 Ukrainian issues, but it was fun. It was all the Ukrainian food, and it was a great bunch of speeches by reporters and stuff.
That was cool.

Speaker 1 I think they should start referring to everything, referring to Ukraine as NATO. NATO, which we spent a shit ton of money on.
The core mission of NATO was to repel a European invasion by Russia. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And that is what Ukraine is doing. Like, what's, I was saying over the winning, what is the fucking point of NATO, Kara, if they're not in Ukraine right now? Right, right.
What's the point?

Speaker 1 What's the point?

Speaker 4 Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 1 What's the point?

Speaker 4 Well, we should be there, but we've got an incredibly corrupt administration who's

Speaker 1 hand in glove with the Russians.

Speaker 4 There's a lot to get to today, though. Let's get you straight to news because there's so much going on, Scott.

Speaker 4 Paramount is launching a hostile bid to buy Warner Brothers Discovery after it lost out to Netflix.

Speaker 4 Paramount is going to Warner Brothers shareholders with an all-cash $30 per share offer, valuing the company at around $108 billion, including debt.

Speaker 4 That would be for all of Warner Brothers studio streaming and cable networks, including CNN. There's various valuations for

Speaker 4 the cable networks

Speaker 4 and CNN that

Speaker 4 they valued at $1, and others valued it from $3 to $5. David Ellison appeared on CNBC a little while ago ago with Wresting White Lotus bro face saying we're really here to finish what we started.

Speaker 4 Let's listen to what he said about whether Trump is in his corner.

Speaker 1 What I would say is I'm incredibly grateful for the relationship that I have with the president, and I also believe he believes in competition.

Speaker 1 And when you fundamentally look at the marketplace, allowing the number one streaming service to combine with the number three streaming service is anti-competitive.

Speaker 4 Yeah, the person who's touting his relationship with Trump and has the saudis and jared kushner in his deal is worried about unfairness meanwhile before paramount moved donald trump said netflix acquisition of warner brothers could be a problem it's a normal thing to say he's a he didn't say anything wrong there given the combined market share but not to worry he plans to be quote involved in decision he also i know right like they never president's never

Speaker 4 supposed to that's the whole point you're not supposed to be involved that's right uh trump also confirmed of course he is confirmed he can't stay out of this one come on recently he met with netflix ceo ted sarandos the white house calling ted fantastic sarandos said last week he was confident the deal would be approved because it's pro-consumer and pro-innovation but politicians on both sides are expressing concern senator elizabeth warren called it an anti-monopoly nightmare we haven't seen what she says about the ellison bid yet i'm sure she's just as mad as that about that one hollywood is also up in arms with many warning the deal could negatively impact jobs and movie production ah where do we start let's start with the hostile takeover i guess because some recent news.

Speaker 4 Paramount's bid is backed, as I said, by Redbird. That's Jerry Cardinali, three Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds, as well as Affinity Partners, which is Jared Kushner's private equity firms.

Speaker 4 Nothing to see here, folks. There's a lot to see here.
The Saudis and Jared Kushner. That's a nice, toxic cocktail of crap.

Speaker 4 Trump, you know, whether he's going to weigh in here. Of course, he is.
There's also a $5.8 billion breakup fee that Netflix will pay if the deal falls apart.

Speaker 4 I don't know if they have to pay it if they pick another.

Speaker 1 I was thinking about that, too. I don't think so.

Speaker 1 Of course not.

Speaker 4 Yeah. So

Speaker 4 why don't you start? I've got lots of things to say, but why don't you go first? Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's going to sound strange, but what David Ellison said there, I actually think is right.

Speaker 1 I don't particularly want the family that's going to potentially control TikTok and is trying to, is engaging in open cronyism by saying, we can get this approved because my

Speaker 1 dad has his finger up the ass of the president. I just don't,

Speaker 1 that's wrong, but what he's saying on a macro level is, I think, correct.

Speaker 1 Let me walk you through my emotional roller coaster. I thought, oh my God,

Speaker 1 like, I was so dumb to count Ted Surround us and Netflix out. I thought that Paramount was going to walk away with it.
Yeah. And do you want to say Tara was right here?

Speaker 4 No, go ahead.

Speaker 1 Go ahead. Did you think Netflix did just?

Speaker 4 I did not think Paramount was going to get it.

Speaker 1 I thought it was sound. Well, the Phallado is not song here.
Yeah, I know. Anyway, so I mean the first round, but go ahead.
So,

Speaker 1 but you know, you never want to underestimate Ted surround us. It ends up that Ted very deftly flew to Washington and

Speaker 1 had an hour sit down with the president. And Ted, if anything, is incredibly likable.

Speaker 1 And he doesn't come across as political. He comes across as super smart.
You just like the guy.

Speaker 1 And he's also probably one of the most, I don't even say underrated, but one of the most seminal figures in technology and media in the last 20 years. What they've done there is just nothing short of.

Speaker 4 With him and Reed Hastings, let's give him credit too.

Speaker 1 Well, Reed, I would say Reed is like the visionary, but Ted and his other co-CEO have been probably the best operators in media. They just, they're just very good.
And

Speaker 1 so he pops up and all of a sudden I see pictures. I'm like, oh my God, that sly fox just

Speaker 1 snuck into the hen house when no one was looking. And then Ellison goes hostile.

Speaker 1 And actually, I think other than the president saying he's going to be very involved in taking meetings, I think the president is sort of saying, the president said one thing that is absolutely true and correct.

Speaker 1 And I hope he sticks to it. And that is whoever has the highest bid wins.
Yeah. And that's how it should be.
Whoever shows up with the biggest check should get this.

Speaker 1 And if they don't, they should file a lawsuit under the Revlon laws. But I personally think we talk a lot about affordability.

Speaker 1 I mean, there's a few things around affordability, whether it's lower education, lower healthcare costs, but also a key component to affordability, and we don't like to talk about it because it's boring, is competition.

Speaker 1 And if you let Netflix and HBO combine, you're basically taking Walmart and putting LVMH on top of it. And you have 300 million at Netflix, 130 million at HBO.

Speaker 1 Now, there's some crossover there, but I think basically the streaming wars, some people would argue, well, no, it's about YouTube, but how we traditionally think about streaming, that war is over if

Speaker 1 HBO and Netflix are allowed to merge. So I don't like this.
I'd like to see it go to Comcast or to be blocked with Netflix. I actually think, I mean,

Speaker 1 this is just an antitrust nightmare. Who will not matter? And then I'll turn it back to you.

Speaker 1 Whatever the fuck SAG AFTRA or Brian Cranston or name your star that's going to start virtue signaling after they get 40 million a year for their shit.

Speaker 1 No one cares what they think. I mean, we'll nod, but

Speaker 1 they would call their agent if ISIS started a streaming network, if

Speaker 1 as Ricky Gervais said. So they will be a total non-factor here.
I'd like to think it's just going to go to the highest bidder.

Speaker 1 I'd also like to think that the economists of the DOJ and the FGC go, all right, is Netflix going to be able to extract unfair pricing from consumers? And

Speaker 1 if they're the only game in town,

Speaker 1 back-end revenues are already off the table. There's no more Seinfeld deals anymore.

Speaker 4 But that's what they were doing before.

Speaker 4 This is what Holly was mad about.

Speaker 4 You go finish, and then I have a lot to say about this.

Speaker 1 Well, okay.

Speaker 1 My point is when you have consolidation and concentration of power it benefits the shareholders of those of those con those the winners of that concentration but a it reduces it creates a lack of leverage for the consumer so prices go up and b it leaks strength and leverage and compensation from labor to shareholders so to a certain extent i would like to see anyone but comcast or potentially unfortunately paramount because they're sub scale i'd like to see the deal blocked and i love ted sternos and i love netflix okay here's what I think.

Speaker 4 First of all, it's a bigger market. Like, look at the two cases, the court cases.

Speaker 4 I'm going to start with that that just got lost by the Department of Justice was there's plenty of competition for Facebook and Meta and there's plenty of competition for Google, right?

Speaker 4 They've lost those because the whole landscape has changed. You sort of pushed off YouTube.
YouTube is where everybody streams. I'm sorry.
Look at the statistic.

Speaker 4 If you look at any of the watching data, YouTube is far and away the most important way, especially young people, get their news and information.

Speaker 4 So you're leaving out the fact that YouTube is enormous here and is the actual competitor. Secondly, there's tons of different, you can't like say streaming is its own thing anymore.

Speaker 4 Everything is TikTok is part of that. So is Instagram.
So

Speaker 4 the market is so dissipated that nobody gets a thing. Like it doesn't, nobody gets control of anything.
There's plenty of competition.

Speaker 4 And I think Netflix has a very good case to be made that there's lots of competition. That's one.
Two, I don't know. I just got

Speaker 4 over the weekend, some Trump people contacted me and they were like, what do you think? And I said, I think, you know, backing the winner is what he'll do.

Speaker 4 And so you noticed him saying Ted was fantastic and he wasn't pro Ellison necessarily, right? He just said competition, which is the right thing to say.

Speaker 4 And so, you know, Trump's very interested in Netflix because he thinks they're winners.

Speaker 4 And let me just tell you, Hollywood, I'm so sorry to tell you, but they have won because many years ago, 15 years ago, Jeff Bugas called them the Albanian army. Do you remember that?

Speaker 4 Like they, who are they? Hollywood has persisted in backing shitty economics, like really shitty economics for themselves. They overpay themselves.
Just everything they do is all about

Speaker 4 feathering their own nests. And we talk about that with David Zasloff and others.
It's never about figuring out what's next. Instead, they blame Netflix for inevitable changes that consumers like.

Speaker 4 So the problem isn't Netflix. The problem is Hollywood didn't modernize itself fast enough and stayed in the same old economics, the same old patting of the backs, et cetera.

Speaker 4 So it just is like, I don't, I don't know if I think there's much more competition for them than you think.

Speaker 4 Secondly, they've changed the game they have, but Hollywood certainly had every opportunity to do so and were warned so.

Speaker 4 I put up, I'm going to finish my rent in a second, but I put up an interview I did with

Speaker 4 Reed Hastings, Jason Kyler, Reed Hastings, who ran Netflix, Jason Kyler, and Chad Hurley that I did at Sundance in 2009. And I was like, these three companies are going to change everything.

Speaker 4 They put us in a basement, Scott, and yelled at us for saying what was obvious. This is going to be a streaming environment.
This is going to, all the economics are wrong.

Speaker 4 The way you people pay yourselves. They stuck us in a basement.
And we were like, fine, these are the companies that are going to take over everything.

Speaker 4 So to me, it's Hollywood's own fucking fault for their ridiculous salaries, the way the economics are so, they're like, it would make, you know, it would make a third, you know,

Speaker 4 an Eastern Bloc country blush in terms of the corruption, I think, that goes on there. That said,

Speaker 4 I like a lot, I think, but I, and I also think there's lots of different entertainment happening, like in podcasts and everywhere else. So there's lots of choices.

Speaker 4 The thing about the paramount bit is this is a group of people whose, it's sub, it's sub-small. It's too small, by the way.
And they have an they have an existential crisis.

Speaker 4 It's like a rich kid buying a yacht. This is a yacht for this kid.
And you would, you would,

Speaker 4 you know,

Speaker 4 think about the track record here. It's good to know how to run a public entertainment company before buying a very important one.

Speaker 4 I think the, I think, I'm sorry, David Ellison is a very nice guy, but he's completely inexperienced and over his skis like most of Trump officials.

Speaker 4 Like, like, he has no business running this company. I'm sorry.
He just doesn't. But he gets played constantly.
He got, he gets in fights, stupid fights with people.

Speaker 4 It's just he's utterly, the only qualification is he's friends with Trump and his daddy has money. I and he makes bad decisions one after the next.
So that's another thing.

Speaker 4 I mean, I don't really care if he wants to blow his fortune, all power to him, but he does, he's not the best owner of this. It's, it's a non-economic thing.

Speaker 4 Bringing in the Middle East and sovereign wealth funds, no thank you. I don't think so.
And Jared Kushner, double no thank you.

Speaker 4 And the last thing I would say is that Comcast is the bidder that should get this because that, you know, they really need to bulk up and they are really good good operators.

Speaker 4 It would make perfect sense.

Speaker 4 And it would, it would, it would be, you know, they could spin, CNN should be spun off the way Versent was and then let figure that part out.

Speaker 4 But what what what David Ellison was trying to do here was try to get this on the cheap and it didn't work, right? That's what he was doing.

Speaker 4 And Netflix, very deftly, by someone who is an experienced operator, came in and did an end run around him because, I'm sorry, David, you're not very smart about any of this stuff.

Speaker 4 And you just, you know, the fact that you,

Speaker 4 him going on and on about unfairness is, I'm like, listen, Richie Rich, it's not happening. You know, call Cadbury the butler and let him explain economics to you.

Speaker 4 So I just don't, I don't, I don't see, I think Netflix has plenty to push back.

Speaker 4 And I don't think they would have moved forward if they didn't think they had either a legal chance, which I think they absolutely do, or an in with Trump, which from what I can understand from the Trump people, there's a lot against this, but there's a lot of people who see that Trump needs to be a little bit for this too.

Speaker 4 So it's not a done deal in that regard. But they, of course, were going to do this no matter how you slice it.
They were going to try to make it into something. So that's my rant.

Speaker 1 Thank you. A lot there.

Speaker 1 So let's start with, it doesn't matter whether David Ellison would be a good owner or a bad owner. We don't get to decide that.

Speaker 1 And that's socialism if all of a sudden we start making value judgments on who should own something or who's not.

Speaker 4 I just say he's inexperienced. He'll do a terrible job.
But go ahead.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 an AT ⁇ T is allowed to buy Time Warner and realize it was a stupid idea idea and then sell it.

Speaker 4 I didn't say he couldn't. I'm just telling you he would be, Hollywood will be sorry if it gets him.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 okay.

Speaker 1 So I am sympathetic to one argument and not to the other. The argument that you're making is around market definition.

Speaker 1 And what you're saying is that the way we would define the market in front of a, if it goes to the Supreme Court, is that, no, it's not the market for streaming.

Speaker 1 It's the market for eyeballs and all entertainment and all video. I think that's a really good argument.
I personally think that

Speaker 1 I think it's its own category. I do think that premium streaming, where you acquire subscribers and they pay a monthly subscription fee, I do think that qualifies as its own market.

Speaker 1 And I get the argument and I'm sympathetic to it that YouTube is the biggest streamer. I get it.
I've even said that before. But saying that

Speaker 1 to a certain extent, comparing HBO and Netflix to YouTube is a little bit like saying, well, there are three companies that control all of poultry right now, and prices continue to rise faster than inflation.

Speaker 1 So we should break up big chicken, which I think we should do. And then the chicken people would say, we're not competing against each other.
We're competing against beef, poultry, kale, granola.

Speaker 1 So I do think this, I do think streaming is its own definitive market. And I think the evidence of that, Kara, is that as the market has begun to consolidate a few years ago,

Speaker 1 pricing has gone way up. Pricing and streaming is

Speaker 1 accelerating. So I don't look look at this as

Speaker 1 I

Speaker 1 by far the best operator and the nicest guy and the best American in my view of all of this is Ted Sarandos. I don't think that's how you decide this.
I think you decide who the highest bidder is.

Speaker 1 And then the FDC and the DOJ economists go, will this extract substantial leverage and capital from labor and consumers to the shareholders of the oligopoly here?

Speaker 1 And I believe that there's a very solid case, as much as I don't, I'm not fond of the Ellisons, that it would be good to have a bulked up Paramount, a bulked up Comcast, and it might present a leakage of power and leverage and capital from labor and consumers to shareholders if you let the Netflix Warner Brothers deal go through.

Speaker 4 Again, I think you cannot leave YouTube out of this. You just can't.
And I think that's their, I think that's their ace and the whole is showing the enormous.

Speaker 1 What show are you watching on YouTube?

Speaker 4 I'm just telling you, usage time, I get that, but I think streaming is part of a,

Speaker 4 look, every Every decision that's recently been made by judges on this stuff talks about a broader landscape. That's why Facebook got out of its jam.
And that's why.

Speaker 1 Do you think those are the right decisions?

Speaker 4 Yeah, I do, actually.

Speaker 1 So you don't think Facebook is a monopoly? You don't think Facebook should ever spend Instagram?

Speaker 4 I think they were, and I think they leveraged it, but no, I don't. I don't.
I don't. I've said that over and over again.
I think they are abusive of the power they have, but I don't.

Speaker 4 I think they have plenty of competition. I think TikTok is an entertainment platform.

Speaker 4 And I think it takes up people's, however, you extract money from people, whether it's through advertising or subscription, it's the same difference to me.

Speaker 4 And so I think that they, what's interesting is where Disney is on this, you know, and, you know, I suspect they're sitting on the sidelines going, oh, for fuck's sake, I actually know this,

Speaker 4 that they,

Speaker 4 where do they go? Like, it seems to me you're going to see a lot.

Speaker 4 Like, look, if Netflix does get Warner, Paramount's got to do a deal with someone, whatever, unless they just want to spend dad's money, which he certainly can do, but they're too small, right?

Speaker 4 And this was something many years ago I said, I was like, I can't believe I'm saying this, but Disney's too small. And so where does Disney go to me is really interesting.

Speaker 4 This is what's going to happen for the next couple of years, these consolidations, whether you like it or not. And

Speaker 4 look, I really think they're

Speaker 4 this bringing in the Qataris and the Saudis and Jared Kushner says, tells me everything I need to know here, like kind of thing. It's really quite grotesque.

Speaker 4 And I don't think the Saudis should be owning any of our news organizations. I'm sorry, they shouldn't.
And neither should the French.

Speaker 4 Neither should, you know, Saudis more than the French, but in any case,

Speaker 4 it just doesn't create, you know, talk about global news. Like, why aren't we discussing what's going to happen to CNN if it's merged with? Why isn't that as important as the streaming market?

Speaker 4 And so I just feel like it's none of these choices are great, but it's inevitable that consolidation is going to happen, whether Hollywood likes it or not.

Speaker 4 I don't mean to be a hostile to Hollywood, but they sat on their fucking hands. Well, this is not a new, fresh thing.

Speaker 1 And what would you, I can't believe I'm defending Hollywood, but what would, what would you have had Hollywood do, quote unquote? I assume you mean the creative community.

Speaker 4 The creative community has watched this slow-moving

Speaker 4 growth of net. First of all, they disdained it.

Speaker 4 Tried be covering it at the time. I was at, I literally,

Speaker 1 I had death threats from like the writers of the New York Times. No, I know that.

Speaker 4 Well, you had the same thing. It's like, you know, with the writers, we need 19 people in the room.
Like, even as I do stuff today for CNN and other thing, I'm always like, what are you here for?

Speaker 1 What are all these people doing here?

Speaker 4 What are all these people doing here? Every time I go on Instagram.

Speaker 1 You go to the Today Show and do a six-minute segment and there's 14 people.

Speaker 4 Right. And I'm sorry.
I agree.

Speaker 4 Everyone should have jobs, but have they really sat there and thought about, and the other thing is, this is where I go to ultimately is like, who's making the things that consumers like?

Speaker 4 Guess which grew? By the way, like one of the things I think that is affecting Trump here is his son and wife like Netflix, right? Like they use it. What do consumers like?

Speaker 4 What has been better for consumers?

Speaker 4 Probably Netflix, right?

Speaker 4 Like what precisely, I just, I just think it's just a time that this is, I'm so sorry to tell you, but you had a chance to change yourselves two decades ago when this started to happen.

Speaker 4 Instead of insulting Netflix, maybe you could have copied it. Maybe you could have done more mergers or more technology stuff.
Maybe you should have said, maybe our economics are insane.

Speaker 4 Like, why are we paying? I'm sorry to say, I have a lot of friends who are anchors and get these millions of dollars to these anchors when the audience was declining.

Speaker 4 Like, to me, it's not their own fault, but it really is from an economic point. And then why do you let David Zaslov have these massive salaries? Like, why does this go on? Like, essentially, so

Speaker 4 I'm happy to have tech people actually get in here a little bit

Speaker 4 in some ways.

Speaker 4 But one of the things that drives, I'll tell you, drives me crazy about this Ellison bid is I was at that meeting where they were, where they introduced it and they kept saying, we're going to take tech and change things.

Speaker 4 And I was like, uh-huh, specifically. And they're like, tech, change things, AI.
I was like, uh-huh, right.

Speaker 1 How?

Speaker 4 Right. And so I would like some, if they put out a very clear, this is our plan, we're very transparent, all of them, I'd like to see it, like what their plans are.

Speaker 4 Still, I think Comcast should have it all. That's my feeling because

Speaker 4 I think they have the right things. And you spin off CNN, maybe they merge with Versent.

Speaker 4 But they, let me just tell you, you, the news organizations should get as much consideration here as Larry Ellison and the Saudis should not control CNN, CBS, and TikTok.

Speaker 4 Sorry, that's just as bad as the stream. It's worse than the streaming business.
So anyway, that's where I am on this.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 it's interesting because usually you and I are in

Speaker 1 different positions. I usually am on your position, it's kind of the capitalist argument.
And I would argue I'm taking kind of the antitrust or the labor slash consumer argument here.

Speaker 1 But I think at the end of the day, the decision should be based on an analysis of what has happened in terms of pricing power.

Speaker 1 And typically, actually, the courts, while they've made decisions around Alphabet and Meta, basically letting them go ahead or

Speaker 1 having feckless remedies in terms of after they find them guilty of monopoly power and saying, okay, here you have to pay $10.

Speaker 1 The primary, typically court cases lose an antitrust when they go from four to three. And that's what's going to happen here.

Speaker 1 They don't like the consolidation going to this level. Also, I think at the end of the day, the ultimate litmus test for whether the concentration has gone overboard here is in pricing.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 in the last year, you've seen on average among the big five, I guess, streamers, their prices, they've raised their prices 12.6%,

Speaker 1 which is vastly outpacing inflation.

Speaker 1 So what I would like to see is good economists say, what is going to happen here over the next five or 10 years with three players instead of saying, no, we don't want just three players in this market.

Speaker 1 Your argument will be the big one. And that is what defines this market and who is included in that.

Speaker 1 But I do think there's a pretty big distinction psychologically, in terms of consumption, in terms of business model and revenue, and why people go to each of these platforms between, I get that everyone's competing for eyeballs at some point.

Speaker 1 I get that. But I do think these are different markets.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I don't. I don't.
I just, I watch people as they're shifting and the time spent. That to me is, by the way, these markets have to consolidate.

Speaker 4 I'm sorry to say there are too many costs and they have to consolidate. It's not something

Speaker 4 there's, it's going to consolidate.

Speaker 2 It doesn't really matter.

Speaker 4 And one of the things that's interesting is the Trump administration, through its lawyer, Macon Delrahim, who now works for Paramount. This is one of his moves.

Speaker 4 It feels making all over the place here,

Speaker 4 was to say AT ⁇ T couldn't buy Warner, right? Which set off this whole thing, by the way, which is kind kind of think about it.

Speaker 4 So they lost, and all the things that they said were going to happen never happened. Like all these things.

Speaker 1 Well, they were trying to bulk up against the digital guys. That's right.

Speaker 1 I was on record as saying it's ridiculous to get in the way of that. Can I just go through the pricing here? Yeah.

Speaker 1 So let's look at the big five: Apple TV, HBO,

Speaker 1 Hulu, Disney. And I'm going to do 2019 prices versus 2025, six years, right? In 2019, Netflix was $12.99.
Now it's $18.

Speaker 1 Disney, ad-free, in 2019 when it launched was $7.

Speaker 1 Now it's $19. Hulu with ads has gone from $6 to $10.
HBO Max, standard ad-free, has gone from $15 to $18.50. And Apple TV Plus has gone from $5 to $13.

Speaker 1 So it appears even with just five players who aren't bulked up, their pricing power has been extraordinary. And again,

Speaker 1 I want to see economists go, okay, at some point, there's too much transfer of power from consumers and labor to shareholders in a concentrated, oligopolistic environment.

Speaker 4 Yes, except that these prices are going up because this costs too much, right? They're selling ice cream that costs a dollar for 50 cents, right?

Speaker 4 They had to get into just like, aren't you the same with AI right now, the amount of money they're spending for their revenue streams? And eventually they're going to start charging us more?

Speaker 4 That's obvious, but they are over, they had overspent. The reason Hollywood overspent so much is because they waited so long to compete with Netflix.

Speaker 4 I kept going, you need to pay attention to Netflix. Hey, over here.
And they didn't because they like their town cars and their flowers and their first-class tickets and their...

Speaker 4 entourages and their staffs. Like it was so exhausting to deal with Hollywood.
And in some ways, tech was a relief to deal with, not now, but they were for sure.

Speaker 4 And so I just feel like these prices were going to go up anyway.

Speaker 4 And there's still, even if there are five, they're going to go up until everything settles on what it costs and what they spend right and that's and where people are going and i i think leaving i think their greatest argument here for netflix is youtube youtube and and but and again

Speaker 1 that's the argument

Speaker 4 you need to watch what apple and amazon and disney are going to do like what you have to think of what's next and there's going to be

Speaker 4 you know, handing it over to Nepo Mogul, fine, whatever, if you want to do that. But next is going to be another one of these and another one.

Speaker 4 So we have to figure out what that means and then what we can extract from these companies like Netflix in order to help consumers, right? What can we actually get?

Speaker 4 But I don't think the Trump administration is interested in any of that, like helping consumers whatsoever. I don't think they're interested.

Speaker 4 And honestly, of all people to argue for antitrust, the Ellisons really aren't the ones to be doing it. It's sort of like, it's laughable on some level, but fine.
They can do whatever they want to do.

Speaker 4 It's just, I don't think the Trump administration is even slightly interested in consumer pricing whatsoever.

Speaker 1 No, I think he's positioning it such that they both get so close to the finish line and get so hot and bothered that he says, I need whoever gives me a quarter of a billion dollars for the Trump presidential disco,

Speaker 1 he gets this, or I give it, I give a nod to the DOJ or the FDC.

Speaker 4 Yeah, exactly. The whole thing is so fucked up because it's so corrupt.
And Jared Kushner's should not be in this. I mean, what a ridiculous, this guy can't keep his finger out of any fucking pie.

Speaker 4 It's really really kind of like grotesque in some ways. And of course, that makes this even, that's why I'm like, are you kidding me? You're adding the Saudis and Jared Kushner? Who are you?

Speaker 4 Who have you not entered? And like, you want to give some to C. Bannon? Like, who do you want to, like, I'm just like, what loathsome crony do you want to do?

Speaker 1 Well, it's just when you have. When you have an $85 billion check, there are very few people domestic, just that you need to bring in a lot of checkbooks for that.

Speaker 4 I know, but why that checkbook? There's plenty of checkbooks. They have Apollo.
That guy's smart. So I don't know.
We'll see. It'll be a a really interesting battle royale.
And of course,

Speaker 4 I don't think they care about consumers whatsoever.

Speaker 1 I don't trust my instincts around this any longer because I got this one wrong. What do you think is going to end up happening here?

Speaker 4 Well, one of the things that I think someone told me was that I think Sarandos has frozen his competition for a little while. Like everybody's frozen now, which I think is brilliant, right?

Speaker 4 He's ahead. And he's, look, the stock is suffering, obviously, but I think he's frozen.
I'm always on,

Speaker 4 I always always am like, oh, what did Netflix do? And then it turns out to be the smart thing. I like their ballsiness.
I like they take risks when they did the discs to streaming.

Speaker 4 Boy, was that a fucking existential moment? And then they said, no advertising. Okay, we're going to do advertising.

Speaker 4 We're not really going to do deals, which was a fucking head fake, a fantastic headfake. Oh, we're doing the deals.

Speaker 1 No, I think they believed it at the time.

Speaker 4 No, I don't.

Speaker 4 It's been reported. It was a head fake.

Speaker 1 They were. No, no, no.
I mean, over the last 10 years, they have not been acquisitive. No, they haven't.
Build versus buying a million. But the recent one was a head fake.

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 4 I think he's frozen the situation in place beautifully. And we'll see where it goes.
I think this is going to take forever.

Speaker 1 It's going to be a couple of years.

Speaker 4 Yes. And so that's smart.
In and of itself, that's smart.

Speaker 4 But let me tell you, Hollywood, buckle the fuck up because this is not the, this is the beginning of what is a massive change in how Hollywood is made. And it, it has to happen.
I'm sorry.

Speaker 4 I know you're all going to now hate me like you hate Scott, but I'm sorry to tell you you had the chance to change it a long time ago and didn't take that chance.

Speaker 4 And, you know, they'll talk about creativity and I agree with that, but I don't think creativity goes away. It's just, this is what's going to happen because this is the industry that has not.

Speaker 4 innovated nearly enough as a group of people.

Speaker 4 I think actually press has innovated more than Hollywood has, I would say.

Speaker 3 Media certainly has. Not enough either.

Speaker 4 Anyway, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, Elon calls for the EU to be abolished.

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Speaker 4 Scott, we're back. These meddlesome kids.
Elon Musk is denying reports that SpaceX is holding a share sale that would value the company at $800 billion.

Speaker 4 He posted on X over the weekend that SpaceX has been cash flow positive for years and only runs twice Julie's stock buybacks to give employees investor liquidity.

Speaker 4 But the latest valuation might be a sign of what's ahead for the company's future. SpaceX has informed investors that it plans to pursue an IPO in 2026, according to the information.

Speaker 4 I don't believe anything Elon says, so whatever. Elon's also spending his time, because this is an important thing, calling for the European Union to be abolished.

Speaker 4 This comes after the EU fined X $140 million for violating its Digital Services Act.

Speaker 4 Regulators called the blue check verification system deceptive and also criticized the lack of transparency in X's ads.

Speaker 4 Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, called this EU fine an attack on all American tech platforms and American people by foreign governments. Sit down, Marco, little Marco.

Speaker 4 And are we about to see an U.S.-EU showdown i think people in the in europe are quite nervous i suspect thoughts i i think the you the eu is just fine i mean first off

Speaker 1 musk wants them to break who the cares i i mean i don't think anyone's going to lose any sleep over what he thinks i think there's going to be another brexit uh referendum if i was uh your kier starmer that's what i'd do i'd say let's do brexit again You mean a reverse Brexit?

Speaker 4 Yeah, reverse Brexit. Let's bring it up for a vote.
I think it could save his ass anyway.

Speaker 1 So, by the way, just to be clear, just in terms of fact-checking here, Netflix didn't merge with Warner Brothers. They basically slid into Warner's DMs at 3 a.m.

Speaker 1 You up? And Warner Brothers said yes before checking who else was in the room.

Speaker 4 Do I get to run the studio? Do I get to swan around? says Dave. By the way, Dave gets the prize here.
Dave wins no matter what. It's ass off.
Go ahead.

Speaker 1 Oh, God. I just hope this thing gets stretched out 15 years, so he'll be 90 trying to spend that money.

Speaker 1 I actually think the EU is really stepped up. And I have a tendency to look at at everything through the lens of Ukraine.
And for too long,

Speaker 1 the EU didn't have its act together, expecting Big Brother to provide this military umbrella and didn't pay their fair share, especially Spain and a couple of other countries.

Speaker 1 And they are getting their act together. And they've basically said, America, I love America comes up with a peace plan that is basically parroting Sergei Lavrov's talking points.

Speaker 1 Like, this is what Russia wants, and this is a plan we want. And the nice thing about this is it doesn't really fucking matter because

Speaker 1 America is still relevant in that it still has surface-to-air defense systems that are really important.

Speaker 1 But the EU industrial base is actually pretty strong, revving up, producing really good weapons. They have stepped up in terms of financial support for Ukraine.
And quite frankly, the U.S.

Speaker 1 has withdrawn financial support, and all they really do is sell weapons purchased from...

Speaker 1 from the EU and deliver them to Ukraine. And a couple of times they've stopped.

Speaker 1 JD Vance has gotten in the way of arm those arm uh shipments but my point is the u.s has become less and less relevant uh in ukraine and i think the eu is for the first time a union again and that is i think the ukraine war one of the one of the many benefits of this in terms of occupying the space they command is that the eu is trying to get along and be more coordinated uh so i don't i don't think musk's saying i just not i think it's meaningless i think it's him gasping for to control the news cycle on something that's meaningless.

Speaker 1 They're not going to respond. Why should they?

Speaker 4 Yeah, I think that's right. Now, they're going public.
They're obviously at some point going public.

Speaker 4 He likes, he likes the money, and it's a good way for him to get liquidity, I suppose, to do other nefarious things.

Speaker 4 I think they're probably going public this year, as they,

Speaker 4 as many people think they are. With the EU stuff, I just, I'm not kidding about rethinking Brexit.
I think this is the time. Like, most people in England think it's a mistake, was a mistake.

Speaker 4 So why not go and revisit it? It would give Starmer a lot of power. Like if he and defocus from his negatives, which are quite high from what I understand.

Speaker 4 But the idea that Europe as a union should be without the U.S. as its sugar daddy is a great idea, I think.
I think it's just,

Speaker 4 you know, and also there'll always be a cross purposes over. I mean, Marco Rubio's statement could have been made by Obama made a similar statement many years ago.

Speaker 4 Like, how dare they regulate our tech platforms? And that's fine and good, except we never regulate them.

Speaker 4 So maybe if we had a little bit more control over our tech moguls, maybe they wouldn't have to do this and go so far as they tend to do. That's just my feeling.

Speaker 1 It, I mean, I agree. The rejoin pathway, the UK would have to start from scratch because every member nation would now have to approve it.
And

Speaker 1 some may hesitate. The UK would be expected to comply with a full body of EU laws and regulations.

Speaker 1 Already, the UK government, by the way, Starmer, has publicly ruled out a return to the EU.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 so look, it just,

Speaker 1 I agree, it makes sense at a 30,000-foot level, but I think the politics here

Speaker 1 make it, the unwinding was so complicated

Speaker 1 that it's probably

Speaker 1 not going to happen.

Speaker 1 In terms of SpaceX, you know, and we're going to do a predictions episode, but I think the new AI in terms of a frenzy around cheap capital and some stocks just going ape shit next year is, in one word, is going to be space.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 if I were the IR, the head of IR for SpaceX,

Speaker 1 I would basically just have one talking point, and that is, okay,

Speaker 1 Meta, you own. two-thirds of all social media on this thing called Planet Earth.
Alphabet, 90% of searches on Planet Earth.

Speaker 1 Amazon, 50% of e-commerce and a small piece of planet Earth called e-commerce. We at SpaceX have 90% share of fucking everything else of the universe, the 100,000 galaxies, the 10 million universes.

Speaker 1 We have 90% of launch capability. We control two-thirds of the satellites.

Speaker 1 And space is transitioning from narcissism and Katy Perry going into space and billionaires and space tourism, which was just fucking stupid. And it's moving to connectivity,

Speaker 1 which will be,

Speaker 1 you know, we

Speaker 1 see satellite communications, yeah.

Speaker 1 And then the next frontier where I would invest if I could find the right companies, the next huge space, I think, is going to be space defense.

Speaker 1 Anyways, my point is

Speaker 1 in SpaceX,

Speaker 1 if you look at what happened in terms of the plummeting price and processing power, the increase in bandwidth,

Speaker 1 all of these things,

Speaker 1 the next seminal figure we're all going to talk about and have some sort of Musk law or Moore's Law is that essentially the cost to get a kilogram of material into space because of the Falcon Heavy or whatever they call it has declined by 90%.

Speaker 4 Yeah. No, let me pay Elon.
I remember when he started talking about putting up all those

Speaker 4 low orbit satellites at the time. I remember having a conversation and there were two people who were doing this, oddly enough.

Speaker 4 It was Elon, who I talked to about quite a bit, and Jerry Yang had a company like this,

Speaker 4 interestingly, after he left Yahoo. And I was really riveted to this idea.
And it was such at the time, I can't underscore how much of a risk it was at the time, by the way, everybody.

Speaker 4 This was, I know y'all hate Elon, but I have to tell you, this was a great,

Speaker 4 a great move, like really in terms of thinking ahead, like nine steps when he had his mind not so fucking.

Speaker 1 Visionary, bold, risky.

Speaker 4 I think

Speaker 4 it's decrepit now. But at the time, it was really something unusual.
And there were only a few people talking about it.

Speaker 4 And Jeff Bezos was sort of talking about rockets, but not really, not like this, not on this like very...

Speaker 4 Yeah, well, they do now, but I'm just saying

Speaker 4 it wasn't this sort of systemic, put these low orbit satellites. And again, Jerry Yang had a company too, and I don't know what happened to it, but those are the two people I discussed it with.

Speaker 4 And this was a long, anyway, I think it has to go public. I think he's got to continue his lead and continue pushing forward.
He lost his lead in Tesla despite the stock going up.

Speaker 4 He's definitely lost his lead.

Speaker 3 He shouldn't lose his lead here.

Speaker 4 Anyway, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, Meta makes cuts to the metaverse.
What a surprise.

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Speaker 4 Scott, we're back with more news. Meta is considering cutting up to 30% of employees in his Metaverse unit, which work on VR headsets since 2020.
The division has lost more than $70 billion.

Speaker 4 Meta will reportedly shift savings from the cuts to its augmented reality glasses, which are a very fun thing, but kind of, I think, minor.

Speaker 4 But meanwhile, in the other latest Meta AI moves, Meta is acquiring AI wearable startup Limitless, which makes a small AI pendant that can record conversations and generate summaries.

Speaker 4 And the company has struck several commercial AI data agreements with news publishers like CNN Fox and USA Today to provide real-time answers to queries while compensating publishers, I guess.

Speaker 4 The $70 billion loss, I mean, you in particular, and me too, thought the metaverse was idiotic. I love that you can make a mistake like this.

Speaker 4 Mark Zuckerberg can afford to make these $70 billion mistakes and not suffer a second for it. It was a stupid idea, but he did move from it, I guess.

Speaker 4 That was, I think he just wanted to change the name of the company because he was so sucked up into social media disasters. But at the time,

Speaker 4 you know,

Speaker 4 I don't get these pendants and anything else. I'm not on board with those at all, including it.

Speaker 4 Open AI. You know, that's the right thing to do, I guess, right? You should focus on AI and advertising and AI offerings, presumably, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah, look,

Speaker 1 you know, easy to pat ourselves I was the original hater of headsets and metaverse I said it when it wasn't cool where everyone was talking about spatial computing and

Speaker 1 and then I said the Apple one was

Speaker 1 just as fucking stupid we have an instinct we

Speaker 1 the things we can eat and the things can eat us don't come directly at us they come at us from the side or behind us and so we are very have someone walk behind you in Manhattan just for a block and you start getting very uncomfortable.

Speaker 1 And no one did any goddamn consumer research.

Speaker 1 And what they found when they did research was that 40% of people within like 20 minutes were nauseous because you're not supposed to have your peripheral vision cut off like that.

Speaker 1 And the idea of a bunch of cyborgs rocking around in their own world, even when they were outside, it was sort of anathema to like everything.

Speaker 4 I never liked the outside stuff. I liked the inside movie watching work stuff.

Speaker 1 Oh my God, it was so, it was also fucking stupid. A legless universe.

Speaker 4 Also, the legless, yeah. Didn't have legs, as it turned out.

Speaker 1 The whole thing, the whole thing was ridiculous. But when you're meta,

Speaker 1 you can burn 70 billion.

Speaker 1 So this was like a, I don't want to say a speed bump for him. It was definitely a pothole.

Speaker 4 He does move fast when he fucks up.

Speaker 1 Well, I don't know. Really, I mean, this is a good five years, right?

Speaker 4 He kind of,

Speaker 4 he loved this thing.

Speaker 1 He really did. He went all in on this.
He was very.

Speaker 1 I do think the place where all of this R ⁇ D will pay off is in Smart smart glasses. I do think Meta is going to have a very strong offering there.

Speaker 4 You think it's a big market, though?

Speaker 1 I don't think it's a big market. I think that at some point where a lot of us are going to have kind of whatever you want to call it, virtual VR, AR-enabled glasses.

Speaker 4 Not glasses. They're going to be the AirPods with video.
I'm still not into these pendants either. I don't like any of that.

Speaker 4 I think it has to be like in your ear. Like, I feel like in your ear.

Speaker 1 What you're saying is the most practical vision is that the AirPods get more harmonious with your iPhone. Right.
And your iPhone becomes your headset.

Speaker 1 And you're walking by, you're looking for an apart you're in Soho and you think, oh, I love Crosby. What I love this street.

Speaker 1 What apartments are you know, hey, Siri, what apartments are available here?

Speaker 1 And it uh and you hold up your phone and as you scan around, it tells you what apartments are available in the building you're looking at and what they're going for and click here to speak to a broker.

Speaker 1 I mean, there's just a lot of stuff.

Speaker 4 I feel like that's how it's gonna go. But these I would would you wear a pendant? I'm like I feel like an old person.
I've fallen and I can't get up.

Speaker 1 I don't know. No, I mean, I've been forgetting to put on my diaper.

Speaker 4 My mother won't wear a pendant. She falls every five minutes.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, I wouldn't wear a pendant. I wear a bunch of crazy bracelets on my wrists, though.
I still have a wrapper.

Speaker 4 Yes, I wear this because I find it useful. I wear this because it's a watch, too.
And you're used to it.

Speaker 1 I wear this because it makes a random sexual encounter more likely if I have a panora eye.

Speaker 4 But let me just say the one thing is on Star Trek.

Speaker 1 You took a lost right over that.

Speaker 4 I did. I'm ignoring it.

Speaker 4 On Star Trek, they all had those things that they hit.

Speaker 4 I think that's where this is coming from. Remember, they always hit it and talk to it, the little thing, their little chest thing.

Speaker 1 I don't remember that.

Speaker 4 Captain Kirk always hit this little metal on his

Speaker 4 chest.

Speaker 1 I just want to know who was hitting Lieutenant Uhuru.

Speaker 1 They had a rock on the show. Do you remember?

Speaker 4 Really? Speaking of which, the New York Times is suing Perplexity AI, claiming, besides, New York Times is also

Speaker 1 good segment. I know.
Speaking of which, Uhuru and Captain Kirk getting it on.

Speaker 4 No, I was just thinking more AI stuff. I've moved on from that.

Speaker 4 By the way, New York Times did two ballards lawsuits, once against the Trump administration for the Pentagon. Crap, they're pull.

Speaker 4 But they're suing Perplexity AI, claiming that the AI startup copy and distributed millions of articles.

Speaker 4 The lawsuit also alleges that Perplexity is paywalled stories, sometimes attributed hallucinated content to the Times.

Speaker 4 The Times says Perplexity ignored multiple requests to stop for nearly two years. I mean, oh, yeah, yeah, perplexity.
They're always in the middle of this.

Speaker 4 They

Speaker 4 feel like they're the bad guys. Like, I don't know.
What is happening over there?

Speaker 1 Yeah, but you hear less and less about perplexity. Yeah, I know.

Speaker 1 It feels like it's kind of

Speaker 1 fading away. Some of the research analysts here are prompted to use it, and they like it.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 yeah, look, I've said for a long time, I thought the old school guys should band together and basically hire Barry Diller to be their tag dog and go after these guys and say, look, you know, if you're going to.

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 I really enjoyed actually your, I think it was your interview with Jessica Yellen. And she said something, I love insight that's obvious.

Speaker 4 This is news, not noise, Jessica Yellen. Yeah, Jessica Yellen.
She's great.

Speaker 1 Yeah, not Fed Chair Janet Yellen. Yeah, right, exactly.
Jessica Yellen. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Anyways, she said something that was so, I love obvious insight.

Speaker 1 I didn't think of it that way. And she said that traditional media still

Speaker 1 shapes the narrative. All these platforms, they're all inspired.
It's like they provide the coal.

Speaker 1 And you may burn it and offer different means of electricity on different platforms, but the coal, the raw content that shapes all of this comes from the NYT, the Washington Post,

Speaker 1 CBS. I mean, it starts on traditional media.
And the problem is, is that these guys need to get more aggressive about recognizing that value from the downstream people who are making all the money.

Speaker 1 Because, and I said this, when I first went on the board of the New York Times, we got to turn off the Google crawlers. Right, right.
And what is it? We got to turn them off.

Speaker 1 And, and we got to consolidate with the Murdochs, the guys at the FT, the new houses at Condon Ace, and we got to license it all and create a bidding war because Bing was still a thing back then.

Speaker 1 And I remember the lawyers were like, that would be antitrust. I'm like, we're dying here.
We're dying.

Speaker 1 And you're worried about antitrust that if we bind together and try and license our content?

Speaker 4 You're very nervous people.

Speaker 1 Anyways,

Speaker 1 this is

Speaker 1 if you really, if you think about

Speaker 1 there's value add and then an influence and then there's your ability to monetize it. And the real tragedy of old media is that its influence is winning from a viewership standpoint.

Speaker 1 But in terms of the actual stories that get circulated online,

Speaker 1 they're still shaped by traditional media. And I hadn't thought about it that way.
I thought that was really insightful.

Speaker 4 Yeah, absolutely. That's where they get their thing.
Especially the New York Times. Like there's certain ones they get it from and others.

Speaker 4 I mean, no one's quoting very much from the Los Angeles Times anymore. A little bit.
They do it every now and then, a good story. But

Speaker 4 it's a very small number, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post still to an extent, although, again, although as much as its news editor is trying hard to do it,

Speaker 4 it's a declining asset.

Speaker 4 But you're right, absolutely. But I like the New York Times did it anyway, and I like that they sued the Pentagon.

Speaker 4 I like that Costco sued the government about tariffs.

Speaker 4 You're seeing, as I said, a little bit of a backbone here. And I think Meredith Levian is really sharp in terms of, they got to do this.
They got to put it on record.

Speaker 1 But I I don't get, though, again, why wouldn't the NYT bind together with every other media organization and go after perplexity? They do. I think they kind of do.

Speaker 4 They talk to, I think they coordinate. I mean, maybe I don't, but I think they probably do.
I don't know. Anyway, Perpexity, stop stealing our shit.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Thank you.

Speaker 4 All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for Wins and Fails.

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Speaker 4 Okay, Scott, let's hear some wins and fails. Do you would you like to start?

Speaker 1 Oh, you go first.

Speaker 4 Well, I want to say congratulations, even though we aren't one of them for the Golden Globe's best podcast. Lots of people tried to get it.
Like,

Speaker 4 Ben Shapiro was like paying a lot of money for marketing to get it.

Speaker 1 I didn't even know they had that. The nominees are out of the way.

Speaker 4 Yeah, no, no, this was a big thing happening.

Speaker 4 So they're Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard. It's not us, just so you know.
Call Her Daddy, Good Hang with Amy Poehler, the Mel Robbins podcast, Smartless. I love those guys.
And Up First from NPR.

Speaker 4 No, Joe Rogan, no Megan Kelly, no Ben Shapiro. Those guys.

Speaker 1 Those are all great. Those are all great podcasts.
Dax is great. I think Mel Robbins is great.

Speaker 1 They're all great.

Speaker 4 Oh, my God. Probably the Smartless guys because I like them so much.

Speaker 1 The smartless?

Speaker 4 Although I like the NPR people. I say the NPR people.
Anyway, congratulations. Of course, it should have been us.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah, next year.

Speaker 4 But congratulations. And my fail is.

Speaker 1 You know what? Soon enough, you're going to be so old. They're going to give you a lifetime achievement awards.
They're going to go that way. Oh, you think?

Speaker 4 I'm already getting those. I'm already getting those.
I'm really already getting those. It's kind of crazy.
My fail is,

Speaker 4 you know, sticking with this

Speaker 4 deal, this is happening. Hollywood really has failed to understand.
They're still fighting previous fights.

Speaker 4 And I think they have to start thinking about what entertainment is and how things have changed. And they're always, um, they're always just talking about the last turn of the screw.

Speaker 4 And it's, it's kind of over in a lot of ways.

Speaker 4 And so, therefore, how do you like, I am, I still get struck by the two most popular movies with consumers were Weapons and Sinners, very creative one-person things.

Speaker 4 Um, and I get their inclination to fight for theater. You know, they want to be in the theaters for longer.

Speaker 4 This is this fight with Netflix over 14 days, over 45 days, and they want to be in the theater. Well, if you want to do that, then make yourselves an economic world where you can do that.

Speaker 4 Like, it doesn't mean you can't do it. It means that you can't just blame Netflix for doing its business.
You have to figure out how it is.

Speaker 4 If that's what you want, figure out an economic way to do it instead of bitching and moaning about Netflix. Like, I'm sorry, they've made a product people want to buy, buy and they have a theory.

Speaker 4 So have your own theory. And I really wish Hollywood would take that.

Speaker 4 If you want to be in theaters, figure out a business where theaters work economically, even if it just breaks even, instead of blaming everybody for your woes, most of which are due to economics that don't work anymore.

Speaker 4 And that's for everyone across every industry. Everyone else doesn't moan this much.
Hollywood likes to moan a bit.

Speaker 1 Thank you. I can't wait to see if an extra from Star Trek decides you're the devil like they did with me two years ago.
Yeah, they will.

Speaker 4 I'm sorry. I just can't.
I don't want to hear it. I like do something about it.
Thank you.

Speaker 1 I like it.

Speaker 1 So I don't, they're both kind of fails, but I'll position one as a win.

Speaker 1 Traditionally, American armed services, when a combatant is disabled and no longer presents a lethal threat, we offer them quarter, which is essentially mercy.

Speaker 1 And I had Admiral James Dabritas, former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, which, by the way, is the coolest title ever. Yeah, I know, Supreme.

Speaker 1 I just, you know what, ladies, don't, or, or guys, I mean at a bar, don't go up and say, may I meet you? Say hi, I'm the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO. Just take it from there.

Speaker 4 Your name is Supreme Allied Commander Pivot.

Speaker 1 100%. I'm getting in trouble for suggesting certain people have sex and propagate.

Speaker 1 One guy called me and said he felt objectified. I'm like, well, dude, we've been objectifying women for thousands of years.
Why can't I objectify you? Anyway, that's true.

Speaker 4 Was that Jake Tapper?

Speaker 1 By the way, I still think Michael Barbaro is probably just fucking a crazy weirdo in the sack. What do you think?

Speaker 4 What do you think? He's not speaking to me because of our last.

Speaker 4 I agree. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Anyways,

Speaker 1 okay. Where was it?

Speaker 4 Let me just say, you can glow up Ezra Klein all you want, but Michael Barbero wins hands down over there. Thank you.

Speaker 1 Ezra Klein's had a glow up.

Speaker 4 Oh, my God. I got to tell you, he's like, hello, ladies.

Speaker 1 I told you my safe word with Ezra. What? Maybe.

Speaker 1 All right. Move along.

Speaker 4 Move along.

Speaker 1 Call us Ezra.

Speaker 1 All right. So that is what we're doing.
Abundance, build more housing. Well, there's some fucking insight.

Speaker 1 Okay. Okay.
So, but listen, there's actually, I just want to break down why we offer quarter to enemy combatants when they are no longer a threat to us. One, it's just the right thing to do.

Speaker 1 We're human beings.

Speaker 1 We treat people better. We have a certain decorum around humanity, and we set a strong example with the rest of the world.

Speaker 1 The Imperial Navy in World War II machine-gunned sailors who were in the water.

Speaker 1 So did U-boats and the Nazi from the Third Reich. Nazis did the same thing.
We did not. If enemy combatants were in the water, we scooped them up, and we put them in a prisoner of war camp.

Speaker 1 It's the right thing to do. Number two, it gives you tactical advantage on the field because if people think they're going to die anyways, they're less likely to surrender.

Speaker 1 If they believe you will give them quarter, they're more likely to say, I surrender. And also, you get incredible intelligence from the people who do surrender.
So you can interrogate them.

Speaker 1 And then third and finally,

Speaker 1 when you blow and murder, and these aren't war crimes, these are murders, because this isn't a war, these are murders.

Speaker 1 And when you murder two people clinging to a capsized boat, what you're doing is you're putting our own Navy SEALs in harm's way.

Speaker 1 Because other nations do, in fact, cooperate and have a certain decorum here. There are even rules in war.

Speaker 1 We decided at the end of World War I that poison gassing was probably not the way to go, and everyone respected that. We now have laws.

Speaker 1 We have laser technology where we could blind everyone on the field.

Speaker 1 We have bioweapons, and all nations have decided, no, let's leave that out of our toolkit. It could get really ugly really fast.
And generally speaking,

Speaker 1 generally speaking, when combatant enemy forces have captured or overrun American forces, they oftentimes take them prisoner.

Speaker 1 One, because they think they'll get money for them and they're worth a lot, but two, we have traditionally offered quarter to them. So this is morally wrong.

Speaker 1 It's tactically stupid, and it puts our servicemen and service women in harm's way.

Speaker 1 Well said. Well said.

Speaker 4 My supreme allied commander, Pivot, well said.

Speaker 1 My loss here is I'm just sick of these ridiculous conversations around affordability with no substance.

Speaker 1 And that is everyone talks about affordability and they expect a magic fucking wand to take egg prices down. It's pretty basic.

Speaker 1 If you want more affordability, there's actually common sense solutions that are hard and take time and take investment. One, we need to build five to 10 million more homes.

Speaker 1 We need to weaponize the private sector.

Speaker 1 Pardon?

Speaker 4 Eight million. Sorry, I've been saying eight million.

Speaker 1 Go ahead. We need to weaponize the private sector.
It's 40% of the consumer price index. So housing has become too expensive.
So we need

Speaker 1 rent freezes don't work. Rent control does not work.

Speaker 1 What works is providing incentives to the developer community and getting rid of these NIMBY laws and committing to building, as you said, 8 million houses over 10 years, manufactured homes, which on site are 50% less expensive and bring down the cost of housing.

Speaker 1 Folks, it's time. Universal healthcare.

Speaker 4 Can I add using

Speaker 4 new building methods they have?

Speaker 3 There's all these really creative new buildings.

Speaker 1 A ton of cool stuff. And by the way, takedown tariffs and some of these manufactured homes out of China are incredible.

Speaker 1 It's time. universal healthcare.
We spend $13,000 per person. The rest of the G7 spends $6,500.

Speaker 1 We need a national system that introduces real bargaining power into the system and a Medicare-like public option available to everyone under 65.

Speaker 1 You lower it by two or three years, every year for 10 years to give the private sector time to adjust. It is time.
And you would, by most analysis, you would reduce healthcare spending by 15 to 25%.

Speaker 1 That's about a quarter of our deficit. And then we need a tenfold expansion of public higher ed, income-linked tuition caps.
Basically, your tuition is based on the income of your parents.

Speaker 1 And also, if you have over a billion dollars in endowment, Dartmouth, Harvard, everyone else, it's not growing your freshman class faster than population growth. You risk losing your tax-free status.

Speaker 1 We're not fucking Chanel bags. We're public servants.
And then finally, and this goes back to my statement on Netflix, massive antitrust.

Speaker 1 Our industries are becoming way too concentrated. And when they become this concentrated,

Speaker 1 there is big pharma, big tech. I mean, go through all the big ag, go through all this shit.

Speaker 4 Have you been doing drinking with Amy Klobuchar?

Speaker 1 That's what's happening. Oh, I love Senator Kay.

Speaker 4 She's a lot of fun.

Speaker 1 Love Senator Kay. Let me say.
But the problem is, we think that, oh, if we tariff people and give money to farmers, that's going to bring down prices.

Speaker 1 I mean, folks, do basic fucking math around what actually works around bringing down comp, by the way, kiss and make up with China. Kiss and, will some people get hurt?

Speaker 1 Yeah, they make shit really cheap.

Speaker 4 You want to listen to this headline. Trade surplus with China just rose to a trillion dollars, whatever.
Trade circle. You know, it doesn't, they haven't been stopped by this people.

Speaker 4 Sorry, they've been.

Speaker 1 Okay, here's some stats about I have a China podcast now.

Speaker 1 It's called China Decode.

Speaker 1 The percentage of exports going to the U.S. from China has gone from 17% of their exports to 10%.
Meanwhile, since pre-COVID, since 2019, they have increased their exports 40%.

Speaker 1 So, folks, people all around the world are bringing down inflation by buying China shit. 82% of the gifts under the Christmas tree this year are guests are from, wait for it, China.

Speaker 1 You want to be able to buy your kids seven gifts, not five? Kiss and make up with China. They are better at making cheap, low IP shit than us.

Speaker 1 Should we have trade agreements that recognize and allow us to steal our IP, that they have to let our stuff into the markets? Yes. Get rid of all these trade restrictions.
Zero tariffs.

Speaker 1 Free trade agreements. All right.

Speaker 4 There's a breaking story. The White House plans $12 billion for farmers facing trade war fallout.
Why don't you just not do the trade war in the first place, Donald? Thank you.

Speaker 1 You want to talk about socialism and taxing some people and then redistributing it to farmers who are no longer competitive? And quite frankly, China's not coming back.

Speaker 1 Oh, but let's give a bunch of money to the Argentinians who the Chinese are now buying soybeans.

Speaker 1 Anyway, it doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 1 But if you want to talk about affordability, we one we need to bring down the cost of housing 8 million homes in 10 years there's a there's a clear blue line path to doing that two tuition price caps expand your freshman class uh three we need national uh we absolutely absolutely need nationalized socialized medicine bring it down eligibility for medicare option two to three years age age eligibility over a decade and finally massive antitrust concentration equals a leakage of power and economic viability from the labor force and from consumers to shareholders.

Speaker 1 And there's always a healthy tension between shareholders and or between capital and labor.

Speaker 1 Capital has been kicking the shit out of labor for 40 years, and it's starting to hurt the economy because the top 10% that

Speaker 1 owns all the shares is now responsible for 50% of the fucking consumer economy.

Speaker 4 All right. I like it.
I like you becoming a communist and allied commander, pivot.

Speaker 4 That's capitalism. I know.
Just, you know, Trump just promised executive order to block state AI regulations. Also, get out of there, Trump.
Anyway, we want to hear from you.

Speaker 4 Send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com/slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT.

Speaker 4 Elsewhere in the Karen Scott Universe this weekend on with Karis Fisher, I spoke with prolific author Margaret Atwood, she of The Handmaid's Tale.

Speaker 4 We talked about how women are bearing a lot of the cost of the Trump administration's policies. Let's listen to a clip.

Speaker 6 All dictatorships do this. I can't think of one that has not.
Sometimes they have nice slogans at the beginning: women hold up out of the sky, etc.

Speaker 6 But it doesn't usually play out.

Speaker 6 It sometimes plays out that

Speaker 6 a select group of women get fairly high-profile positions, and you can see that in the Trump government.

Speaker 6 There are a number of cabinet people, and certainly the White House spokesperson, they're all women.

Speaker 6 But that doesn't translate any more than it did with duchesses into the lives of ordinary women.

Speaker 4 Anyway, she was great. She was a really interesting and very long interview.
She's terrific.

Speaker 4 Okay, that's the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot and be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel.
We'll be back on Friday. Scott, read us out.

Speaker 1 Today's show was produced by Larry Namo and Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Kate Gallagher. Ernie Innertaut engineered this episode.
Jim Mackle edited the video.

Speaker 1 Thanks also to Drew Burrows, Mia Severo, and Dan Shallan. Nashad Karat is Box Media as an executive producer of podcasts.
Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform.

Speaker 1 Thank you for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine and onemag.com/slash pod.

Speaker 1 We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business care. Have a great rest of the week.

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