Elon Pushback, Trump's Distraction Trap, and Disney Earnings

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I like that. Thanks for saying that.
Hi everyone, this is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.
And I'm thinking of doing ketamine recreationally tonight. Why? Well, I used to have this incredible ability as a young man to disassociate.
I was basically sleepwalking through life. I didn't care much about anything.
I'm having trouble disassociating from all this bullshit. Oh, yeah.
And, I think I'm going to a fashion week party tonight. I don't have my kids.
I push my meetings back till 10 a.m. tomorrow.
So, that all spells ketamine for the dog tonight. So, I'm going to try it.
Yeah. I don't even know how you take it though.
Do you know how you take it? That was a medically supervised ketamine trick. There's a big difference.
Tonight, I'm going to do it to like me more, have a few moves. Why don't you just go down to Washington with the gang that's taking apart the government that I think they probably have some information on how to do that.
That is not tomato, tomato. Me at a fashion week party, hitting the moves, thinking I like me a little bit more than usual, doing ketamine with some strange person.
Yeah. By the way, I don't know, as opposed to going to Washington, that is not tomato, tomato.
That is huge. I want to have a good time tonight.
I want to forget everything. I want to disassociate.
You got to be awake, sweetie. You got to be awake.
You got to be woke, as they say. Do you snort it? Do you inject it? Or what I'm hoping, do you shove it up your ass? Hello, ladies.

Who's got a glove?

Who's got a glove? All right.

Listen to me.

You can't disassociate.

There's no disassociation allowed.

Oh, daddy can disassociate.

You can't.

You have to be in this.

You got to like,

everybody's writing me like,

I can't keep up.

But I'm like,

you know what?

It's the long fucking run

with these people.

You got to stick in there.

They rely on your exhaustion. They rely on you being overwhelmed.
you need to not, you need to just keep going. What do you, why do you want to disassociate? You have to associate.
That's how we win. We associate.
They're disassociated people, these people. Yeah, that's right.
Thank you. Why don't you do a happy drug? Like not one that's so ruminative.
What's a happy drug? I don't know. I never take any drugs, so I have no idea.
Yeah. I don't know.
I don't take any drugs. So let me answer that.
That's called MDMA or X. And I took it a couple times in college, and I remember thinking to myself, I don't have an addictive personality, but I remember thinking, this is so good, I cannot do this again.
Well, then do that. Do that.
Do that. Yeah, I don't know.
You'll try to hug me. You'll call me and say loving things, which would be disturbing to me, but that's okay.
No, it makes me happy. It doesn't make me fucking crazy.
I know, but there's a lot of hugs happening. I never took it.
I never took it. There's hugs, right? There's a lot of hugging and dancing.
Do you know the initial use case? It was psychiatrists in couples therapy who wanted them to open up to each other. Oh, interesting.
I don't know.

Never tried it.

Never will.

I'm high on life, Scott Galloway.

I'm high.

I hate it when people say that.

I know, I do too.

It's the least express force.

I don't need drugs.

Well, I do because of people like you.

Although, let me say,

I'm looking out the window right now.

I just got back on a red eye from Los Angeles.

I was in San Francisco, Los Angeles.

No, you look nice.

Thank you.

I'm wearing the same clothes.

I was out to dinner at a very fancy, the mother wolf in Los Angeles. Have you been San Francisco.
You look nice. Thank you.
I'm wearing the same clothes. I was out to dinner at a very fancy Mother Wolf in Los Angeles.
Have you been there? It was really good. Mother Wolf.
I have a secret project going on there, another secret project, which will soon be revealed. But it has to do with lesbians in Washington.
That's all I'll say. I heard about this.
I won't spoil it for you, but good for you. I'm convinced you're pulling a Scott when his kids were little,

and that is you're coming up with a lot of reasons to leave the house right now. No, I'm not.
I spent a lot of time. I got to go to San Francisco.
Oh my God, it's terrible. I'll miss you guys so much.
Unlike you, I do very short trips and I come back on red eyes. So I'm here.
I took the kids. I took Claire at a school this morning and made the kids lunch.
I get back so I can do that. But one of the, I went out, you know who I went out with tooth people?

My brother and friends of mine to Zuni, which was amazing. Cafe Zuni? Yes.
It was great. San Francisco was great.
Well, I'm glad you're back and you need to stop taking red eyes. Okay.
When you turn 70, such as yourself, as a gift to yourself, you need to stop doing red eyes. I don't do red eyes anymore.
Oh, really? I don't mind. It was a lay down bed.
I slept. That's fine.
That's fine. Your sleep, your nutrition, and your exercise are the three pillars.
And you need to prioritize sleep. You don't sleep while I'm playing.
No more red eyes for you. You know, I'm wearing my aura ring and it tells me that I'm quite ready for the day.
It's weird. I don't sleep.
You're rested and ready? Yeah. I don't know why.
I think it's lying to me. Anyway, we've got a lot to get to because

I need to be rested and ready.

By the way, I have an Oura ring and I just downloaded my data and it says one thing.

Try ketamine tonight.

Uh-uh. Don't do it.
Don't do it by yourself.

I can't wait. I just think I'm going to like me more than I think.

You're not going to like it. Don't.
Please don't.

I'm going to feel better about everything. It's not an insurrection.
It's a dance party.

Anyway.

Oh, that's funny. That's a good joke.
That's a good one. Okay.
We've got a lot to get today, including Democrats finally showing some backbone and Trump's plan to create a sovereign wealth fund. This lunacy is every single day.
I forget what, yes, well, anyway, plus earnings from Disney, Alphabet, and Spotify. But first, I think we know, both know why Google searches for the word coup are up this week.
Elon Musk, who is now a special government employee, whatever the fuck that is, has had a very busy couple days, has essentially shut down USAID, offered buyouts to every member of the CIA, and his Doge team got access to the IT systems of Medicare and Medicaid, NOAA, which is weather agencies, and other agencies. We're going to talk about Trump and Gaza and the craziness in a bit, but I want to start by focusing on Elon.
Overall thoughts, what we've been seeing, Trump still thinks he's in control, saying this week Elon can't do and won't do anything without approval. You'll be shocked to learn that Senator Susan Collins is very concerned about Elon and Doge's actions.
People at the Trump White House, they're leaking all over the place that he's too big for his britches. I'm like, when did you start to notice his pants were tight, my friends? He's totally too big for his britches all the time.
You've been saying, where are the Democrats? They're starting to show signs of life protesting Elon's power grab at a rally outside the Treasury Department. Some House Democrats are trying to subpoena Elon to testify before the oversight committee.
They're making a lot of trouble. The motion didn't pass.
It probably will pass at some point. Democratic Senator Chris Murphy was on Morning Joe talking about the game plan for his party.
Let's listen. People understand that we are the minority party.
We don't run the White House. We are the minority in the House and in the Senate.
But we need to act like a real opposition party in the middle of a constitutional and democracy crisis. That means we should not be moving forward nominees or legislation in the United States Senate.
Democrats should not be giving votes to nominees or to legislation in the United States Senate until Republicans get serious about this crisis. I think he's been pretty good.
Jamie Raskin has. Obviously, AOC is terrific.
So talk a little bit about the Elon situation and making, you know, they're making him the villain so that it sort of offloads it from Trump in a weird way. He's sort of the, I'm calling him a heat-seeking shield for what they're doing.
But there's protests that have popped up around the country.

It doesn't mean anything's going to happen, criticizing particularly Musk. So talk a little bit about this and what the Democrats should do.
You said something that really resonated with me, and that is I've been, I've fallen prey to what is a really smart strategy on their part, And that is the invasion of Greenland or, you know, somehow some fucked up weird strategy for clearing out or the ultimate, I don't know, apartheid or whatever they're planning to do in Gaza or invading the Panama Canal or accusing a helicopter or saying that the people responsible for a helicopter crash or somehow a function of DEI. You're exactly right.
And it struck me what an idiot I was being. That's nothing but weapons of mass distraction from what effectively a second insurrection by the same president.
And insurrection is probably the wrong term. It's probably more of a coup.
But you change the entire negotiation between someone, two people, when one person holds a gun to the other person's head. And what they have done, they're very smart and elegant here.
Instead of a bunch of Duck Dynasty mobs with trucker hats and goatees getting out of their RAV4s, it's the wealthiest man in the world who, in my opinion, is trespassing in federal property and has enlisted a bunch of acolytes and has stopped making payments for things like Head Start or the funding of AIDS programs or malaria treatment. There are people, you know, being carried out in stretchers that are in hospitals because they don't have funding.
And it's not, these programs and this funding, whether you agree with them or not, or think they should be subject to review, are a function of laws that were passed by three branches of government. And you have, they figured out a way to say, look over here at this helicopter crash or it's DEI or we have a plan to clear out Gaza to distract you from the fact that we now have insurrectionists or a coup being led by the world's wealthiest man.
I think the Republicans are thinking, I can't believe they're letting us do this. And as long as we're kind of in favor of this, and now they're in a position, when you hold a gun to someone's head, it changes the complexion of negotiation.
It's no longer, oh, you need laws to do this. It's like, well, we might turn the payments back on for Head Start, but let's talk about it.
Well, no, we're not going to discuss it. I don't think they're going gangster enough.
They probably just unmasked, because of their recklessness, the names and identities of CIA officers, which is an incredible act of treason and stupidity. I think they did that on purpose, from what I understand.
They wanted it. They were sending, what Scott's referring to is they were sending emails not in a way that's safe to the White House.
They wanted things like that. So I want to know who are these young, highly intelligent, highly motivated zealots following them into these buildings and shutting off payments to schools and head starts.
I want to know their names. Well, you know, they're trying to, the local officials are trying to make that official.
The newly installed Trump are threatening people for naming their names, just so you know, but go ahead. Oh yeah, but they can unmask CIA officers who've put their lives in harm's way to try and keep our Americans safe.
I want to know who their names are and I want to see a Democratic governor saying, I'm going to do everything I can in my power to use the full faith and to the letter of the law to put you folks in prison. I think what you're doing is trespassing.
I think this is a coup. And be clear, just because the new insurrectionist who was elected, I don't believe this is legal and I'm going to hold the people accountable who are trespassing and part of a coup accountable.
To just sit back and say, this is horrible and this is unlawful. We need to go gangster here and say, look, we are not negotiating around this stuff.
This is illegal. This is a coup.
This is the unlawful seizure of power. We are not going to engage in these bullshit, ridiculous arguments over Gaza and Greenland.
We are going to hold the people accountable. Here are their names.
Here are their faces. And we have contacted the local authorities in where these kids live, these young adults, and we are going to hold them accountable.
We need to start hitting back in a way that disrupts what is the unlawful seizure of resources that have been leaked. You might disagree with them, fine.
That is not anyone's right. Our elected representatives pass these laws.
No, we get that. I think repeating, it doesn't matter because they are blowing through stop sign after stop sign.
It doesn't, see, this is a very typical, I've talked to, I would say, a half a dozen governors, senators, congresspeople this week. And I would, they were like, well, we're going to say something.
And I was like, he's going to break the rules. Like I said, you don't understand.
He's not going to stop because you tell him he's bad. There's no way he's stopping.
And like, look at everything he does. He blows past the SEC.
He keeps going. He does lawsuits against the press.
He does lawsuits against competitors. He blows up rockets until he gets it right.
I was like, this is a person with a high risk tolerance who has noticed that when you break things or break rules or open your company when the government of California says not to, they don't stop you or it's very hard to stop you. And in the very act of doing it, even if he gets stopped later by a judge or whatever, because legal is slow moving, as you know, even if he gets stopped later, he's already broken it, right? Instead of reforming things, which is what they should be doing if they don't agree with this stuff, they're destroying them.
And if you read any, Peter Thiel, any of their stuff, this is what they talk about, the destruction of a liberal democracy, and then starting from scratch with a unified CEO theory, which is essentially a dictatorship. This is, and the question is, a lot of them are like, what do we do? They're literally asking me, what do we do to stop him? I was like, you don't.
You actually don't have the means to do so because these poor people are in these agencies. And when these idiots come in, these children, these arrogant little pricks come in and say, we're going to call the federal marshals or the president has ordered you to step aside.
They kind of have to. You have to be resistant and be walked out by security.
And then security doesn't know which one to listen to, right, essentially. I've had, we've been critical of Democrats.
I've heard from about six Democrats, one senator, five representatives. And he says, well, what would you do when we talk a little bit about messaging?

He's like, but that's not enough.

And he said, well, what do you want me to do, walk down there and stop them?

I'm like, yeah, I'd like to see all, whatever it is, 48 or 49 U.S. senators and any Republicans that want to join.

I'd like to see a couple hundred members of Congress go to the fucking building where this is and demand to go in and physically stop this and let them arrest you. I'm like, fine, let America see that there are still people who believe in government in the U.S.
and democracy. Let them arrest you.
I'm like, go down there. This guy I'm talking to is a former, this representative, a newly elected guy, former service member.
I'm like, dude, if someone attacked our shores, you put yourself in harm's way. I mean, march down to wherever this fucking building is, where all these acolytes and the high sparrow are, and walk in there and demand they stop and let them arrest you.
For Democrats, this isn't the time to come together. This is the time to come to the rescue.
Get together, all of you, wherever the building is, wherever they're actually shutting off payments to veterans. Well, they move very quickly is the problem.
They don't quite know where they're going. They have the advantage here in that regard is they can show up at various places and you don't know where they're showing up.
Well, we have very talented smart people too with smartphones. I would create a group of people, elected representatives, that go to these places where they are and say, I believe you are breaking the law.
You are not an elected official. You need to leave this federal government building.
And if the Capitol Police, respect the law, if the Capitol Police show up at the order of the president and say, you need to vacate, I would not vacate. And if you get arrested, fine.
I think, I'm not a fan of breaking the law. I think the law is on our side here.
I think these guys are breaking the law. And just because you have permission from the president, let's fight it out in court and find out, well, can the president break the law? Because as we have seen, the president has been stopped.
Anytime this shit gets in front of a judge, it usually gets stopped. So do you have the right as a citizen and an elected representative, or do you have the obligation to get in the way, legislative, verbally, legally, and quite frankly, at this point, physically? I'm not suggesting violence.
I'm not suggesting these elected representatives have license to walk into any federal building. Millions of people have elected them.
Find out where this shit is going on and go down there and say to these people, what you are doing is illegal. I get it.
The issue is, even when the judges stop them, though, they say, oh, we have security clearance, but no proof of it. They're persistent.
Elon Musk has said to me- Move fast and break things. It's Mark Zuckerberg.
That's correct. This is what they're doing.
And like Elon Musk has said to me, we have self-driving in a year. We have self-driving in a year.
We have security clearance. Anything, like one of them was like, how do you know they don't have it? I go, because their mouths are moving.
They're lying. They lie as a practice in order to get to the next thing.
They're high risk takers. They're willing to, they know you're not going to stop them, you know, ultimately, because it takes effort.
They don't want to govern. They want to break.
And even though they're in charge of the government, they want to, they don't want to reform it. They want to break it.
They want to destroy it. They want to take it down to its studs so that they can then rebuild in the way they see fit.
And the arrogance of these people, I cannot tell you, you could like fuel a rocket to Mars with the arrogance of these people. And what's interesting is there's a bunch of lawsuits filed, as you said, as part of the counteroffensive.
Unions, federal employees, and others are challenging the legality of Elon and Doge to get access to federal systems, destroy agencies, or push people out of jobs. I'm telling you, Elon also loves a legal fight, right? He doesn't care.
He doesn't care. He waits people out.
This is perfectly designed for someone like him to behave. And every one of his actions is very much the way he's behaved.
That's one thing. When I said, he's not going to listen to that, he's going to go to the next one.
And someone was like, how did you know? And then he did it. And I'm like, because this is his little act, right? This is the same thing every time.
He's not particularly creative in new methods of this kind of stuff. But one of the things that's important to keep in mind is that he does have a pattern that he does all the time.
And so do all these people, by the way. They all have the same pattern of making a mistake, whether it's for your teen girls and making them feel bad and going, we so sorry, we're so sorry, we're so sorry.
And I think that's the one thing is not fully appreciated, that they're not sorry, nor will they pay attention to the law. Even if a court orders, you know, right now, court orders Musk out of the Treasury computer payment system so it can sort out whether the Doge is a legal government entity.
You know, are they out? They were in there before. Or, you know, that's the whole thing.
I don't know if they're actually, nobody knows that they're out. And then let me say the last thing.
What they're going to do is find little cherry pick costs that look bad, right? And make things up because they just lie. They just lie.
Like money laundering. Money laundering or they're criminals.
This thing about subscriptions and Politico, it was $24,000 at USAID. They were using their Politico Pro, just like you'd buy a subscription.
And may I point out that Elon, the government pays Elon $15 billion for his wares. And so it's petty and unbelievable nonsense.
And they'll cherry pick stupid little things, a lot of them inaccurate, like the condoms to Gaza, for example. A lot of them deeply inaccurate or based on stories that are specious.
So they'll keep doing that constantly so that we're like cats chasing a laser pointer.

But this is, but just moving to what we can do, the Democrats at this point, I mean, I remember talking to Ray Dalio about elected officials and he's like, and by the way, this is, he was like, this is war.

Take the gloves off.

I mean, this is like, this isn't try to understand or empathize with the people who elected this guy. In my opinion, this is war.
And they essentially, they're challenging the constitution and democracy. I don't think it's time for us to try and figure out, like, understand them.
What I would say is, and I've heard from a lot of Canadians who appreciate our thoughts around the tariffs. And one person called me who, Canada's actually strangely, there's like 12 families who kind of, I don't want to say run everything, but kind of own the majority of stuff.
I mean, I'd like to think that America came to the aid of a lot of nations in real times of crisis over the last hundred years. And we want to keep doing that.
I mean, at this point, I believe that nations need to come to the aid of America at this point. And to the extent that people feel frustrated or worried about America no longer being the shining beacon, leading democracies all over the world or setting the tone.
What Canada did was it, I'd go, I think you need to be very Machiavellian strategic. A province in Canada has canceled a hundred million dollars contract for Starlink.
They've said, we're just not going to continue to fund the lead of a coup. I'd hit them where they're in their soft tissue.
And that is, if you think America plays and should continue to play a vital role in our democracy and be that shiny beacon on a hill, and you are using Starlink or your government is in negotiations around subsidies, whatever it might be for EVs or Tesla, I would make it clear that you are not going to support an individual who's leading a coup in a nation that has, for the most part, been a really staunch ally. I'm now at the point where I can't call them Republicans.
I think they are both kind of surprised and giddy that they're getting away with this and also scared of crossing Elon for fear they'll be primaried by Twitter and his hundreds of millions of dollars, which he can do now, given the fact that we let one man amass $400 billion in power. and two, you know, they're surprised.
And also, quite frankly, Kara, I think Senator Murphy's fantastic. We come across as neutered and feckless at this point.
We are like, look over here. Oh, I can't believe you would say it was DEI around a helicopter.
You are exactly right. That is a sideshow.
And may I say the media is doing the same things. These headlines in some of these papers, it's like innovative way to deal with government.
I'm like, it's a coup. Stop saying this.
And one thing I did have as a theme in my book was the juvenileization of men and the coddling of them and persistent sidelining of women in Silicon Valley and people of color or anybody that was different. And this is a 30 years

going of this idea that these people have the right idea. And I found some stories that I wrote.

One was called The Men and No Women of Facebook, and The Men and No Women of Boards. And one of

the things that was interesting is I was able to put those headlines because I controlled my own

media. You can't believe what a bunch of idiots, they have such disdain for people.
And the press is treating it like it's like an equalized thing. And it's just not, I'm finding it so frustrating.
I even, you know, I, you know, I'm on CNN and on Friday, I was like, this is a hostile takeover. You need to treat it.
Stop talking about DEI and the plane crash. You can talk, right? Stop.
You need, this is what this, it's a hostile takeover of government, probably illegal. And you can't look at it like, well, look at that kind of things.
I just, I'm perplexed as to why it isn't a five alarm fire everywhere, all day long, every minute in the media. No, your house is on fire.

You shouldn't be arguing over the pattern of the couch. It's just, and all of these things are important, but this really is, again, I think our elected representatives who have contacts overseas should be calling them and saying, you need to put pressure on Elon.
You need, and Trump is doing the same thing that Zuckerberg did to Sandberg. He's using him as this very powerful and effective heat shield such that if he does go too far, and in fact, they do find this is illegal and they start, Trump can back away and say, oh, I didn't know they had done that.
Yeah, they went a little too far. He's done that.
Yeah, he's done that. So he's basically, I mean, to a weird extent, Elon Musk is a $400 billion media platform weaponized Sandberg.
He's a heat shield. And he's like, you understand this technology and how to go in there and shut off payments.
And what they're hoping is it resets or recalibrates the playing field for negotiation. Let's start from you're getting zero, despite the fact that our elected representatives passed this law that says Head Start is a good thing.

And this is, they went right to the mechanism for the payment. I mean, it, and it's, I don't understand.
This is illegal. I would just, very simple.
This is illegal. And I believe the people involved in this will be prosecuted.
That is, that is what I'm planning to do. They won't be prosecuted by this Justice Department because all they're doing is getting rid of the threatening companies that have DEI.
That's the first thing Pam Bondi did. Again, another weapon of mass distraction.
That's not going to go anywhere. What could go somewhere, in my view, legally, is to say, these are the laws, and I believe you and these 25-year-olds have broken and I plan to do everything within my power to enforce these laws.
Yeah. Okay, Scott, let's go on a quick break.
When we come back, Trump continues to flood the zone with crap. Scott, we're back and President Trump is making all sorts of headlines this week.
Trump surprised pretty much everyone with a plan for the U.S. to take over Gaza and turned it into a Middle East Riviera, Maragazo.
That's the joke, which is not funny, actually. Though some administration officials are walking that back a bit.
His cabinet nominees, RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, appear to be on their way to confirmation.
He's reportedly getting closer to an executive order abolishing the Department of Education. He's doing everything by executive order because he doesn't want to bother with legislators.
Questionable executive orders, I'd say. We talked a few weeks ago about the strategy of flooding the zone with shit.
Let's talk a little bit about this and how people can avoid falling to trap of distraction, Trump throwing up these crazy ideas and orders while Elon is making this power grab. It's quite coordinated from what I can tell, although I don't think Trump knows what he's doing.
Courts have done a few things to keep them in check. They're stopping him from, he already was in the treasury, now they're saying get out of the treasury, who knows if he will, because again, liars, all of them.
A federal judge did block the birthright citizenship order this week, but then Trump was busy signing executive orders, outlining plans for a government-run sovereign wealth fund, which would potentially be used to buy TikTok, that's called state-run media. The fund would also support other national endeavors like infrastructure projects.

I don't know what to say. Talk a little bit about this strategy as a marketing thing.
I hate to say that, but this is, and then we have a story in the New York Times. It's like, well, it's good that he's shaking up the difficult problem in the Mideast.
Maybe it will create fresh ideas. Now, I was sort of like, what?

Like moving people against their two million people? up the difficult problem in the mid-east maybe it will create fresh ideas now i was sort of like

what like moving people against their two million people against their will to where they've lived their whole lives is a fresh new idea i mean and as if no one because especially because gaza is absolutely destroyed like again they destroyed it and now now they've destroyed it they can't go back, that kind of thing. Well, okay.
But before we even get to the notion that Egypt, I mean, look at the borders. Look at the Gaza border with its neighboring nations.
No one wants to take these refugees, whatever you want to call it. That is such a, I understand the argument.
It is an interesting argument. The notion that we're setting up a situation where nothing's really going to be different and eventually we're going to face the same problems in two, five, 10 years again, that's a powerful argument.
So the notion that we need to be creative and thoughtful, fine. This is not the time.
If you go into the emergency room, okay, the term

stop the bleeding originates from a very logical place. And that is if you go into the emergency room with a gunshot or you've fallen and hit your head and you're hemorrhaging blood, they don't take your PSA.
They don't talk about, they don't say check his or her cholesterol. They stop the bleeding.
Everything else at this point is a worthy conversation that should be had by our elected representatives. But if we let a coup be successful and change the complexion of the negotiation, whereas opposed to arguing over who is prosecuted here and under what laws and how do we immediately arrest this coup such that we're not negotiating?

Well, will you give us 50 percent of the funding back for Head Start, dear person who wasn't elected to make these decisions? Focus on stop the bleeding and the bleeding here. America is bleeding out in a small building somewhere that has access, that is being remotely accessed by different locations, by a group of people under the cover of dark to stop payments based on programs that were passed by laws by our elected representatives.
This is a coup. And it's not a slow-moving coup.
It's a fast-moving coup. And everything else is an ER doctor saying, okay, they lost their leg and they're going to be dead in three minutes if they continue to bleed out.
Let's find out what their good and bad – let's figure out what their blood pressure. I mean, no, none of that's important at this point.
Stop the bleeding. This is our focus.
Well, here's the problem. Ketamine.
I know, ketamine, exactly. But this plan, literally, Israeli defense minister said he instructed Amelie to draft a plan to allow voluntary departure of Gaza from residents.
The only way they're leaving is if you ethnically cleanse them. And I know- None of it makes any sense.
You know, it's funny, like one of the right, most of the conservative think tanks are sort of like, oh dear, like right now, if you look at at someone they were like no this government thing isn't good this gaza thing isn't good and they're like don't be hysterical and use the term ethnic cleansing but i'm like only the comedy shows are getting it right like the daily show they keep to have different euphemisms for what it is, like voluntary departure or moving them as refugees.

And the word was password of the day is ethnic cleansing.

And they keep doing different words and they go back when they have the wrong word.

Only the comedy shows are actually calling out this stuff for exactly what it is. Only the comedy shows are calling it a Nazi salute that Elon did, are saying this is illegal, are just explicitly doing it.
And I guess it's under the cover of comedy because some of it's very funny, but it's actually quite strong, I guess. I don't know what else to say because that's where I'm seeing the best coverage of this stuff or the best commentary, I guess.

Yeah, I just like again, I'm just remiss to engage in a conversation about how ridiculous it is, because I don't think it's I don't think it's going to happen. I don't I think this is, again, an attempt to say, look over here.
Let me talk about gender in the workplace as I figure out a way to create algorithms for profit to make it more likely that your 15-year-old girl is going to engage in self-harm. Look over here.
I have a book signing. Yeah, the wealth fund thing.
You know, someone, they wanted me to go and talk about the wealth fund. I said, that's fucking ridiculous.
State-run media. It's not allowed.
And they're like, well, what do you think it would be? I'm like, I don't. I don't.
What do I think of the Loch Ness Monster? You're like asking me. It's not, doesn't exist.
Or maybe that does. But the wealth fund, I'm sort of like state-run media.
Does everyone have a problem with state-run media in a country with a First Amendment? Like, yeah, I do. Like other countries do have sovereign wealth funds that invest surplus income.
The U.S., by the way, runs a budget deficit, so we don't even have money to put into this sovereign wealth fund. I mean, you understand sovereign wealth funds better than I do, but this is nutty.
Like, it's not to buy TikTok, what? Look, a sovereign wealth, yeah, they play different roles. In the case of the kingdom, it's like, we need to figure out a way to transition away from fossil fuels.
We have a ton of money. We want to be strategic.
We want to turn it into more, a greater return. We want to be thoughtful about it such that we can then make the investments we need to pivot away from an economy that's dependent upon a sea of oil, which is going to dry up in 30, 57 years, such that we entered the quote unquote modern world.
In Norway, it's a means of saying, okay, Norway owns one and a half percent of the world's stocks and they create an incredible standard of living for their folks because they have thoughtful people trying to figure out how to invest their excess capital to a greater ROI than their competition. America doesn't need sovereign wealth fund.
We have so much capital being invested privately. That's the financial argument.
But the other thing is when you buy one firm, a sovereign wealth fund invests and tries to find alpha dislocation for the benefit of its citizens. We don't need that here.
In addition, the sovereign wealth fund, again, is a distraction from what he's really suggesting. And that is the government owning a business, which is socialism.
And a media business, a media business. It's not like it's potatoes or something.
But the UK made a very compelling argument in time. I see why they probably thought that we need manufacturing to come back.
And we have this really compelling guy who built the Pontiac GTO and we're going to bring manufacturing. We have an opportunity here to be one of the largest shareholders in this amazing new technology and manufacturing brand called DeLorean.
And so they made him better. I believe that the critics of Republicans were right to criticize Obama for some of his subsidies around solar firms.
The whole Republican argument is that the public sector shouldn't be in the business of picking winners and losers. I kind of get that.
Now, if you're going to do it systemically and say we want to support companies who are building our chips for defense reasons, fine. But this is the state controlling the means of production.
And even saying this, I'm taking the debate. This is never going to happen.
But again, I go back to where we're bleeding. So this, again, is another distraction.
It's a stupid idea. It will never happen.
They know it, in my opinion. Maybe he just thought about it and thought, I'm a deal guy.
I can make money here for the government. No, we don't want to own TikTok.
We want to regulate it or ban it. We want to promote the rule of fair play and even playing fields such that startups have a shot and everyone is playing under the same rules.
And meanwhile, if you, in fact, have an algorithm that can be reverse engineered to polarization, radicalization, or self-harm among teens, maybe you should be subject to the same liability as traditional media. Okay, that's the government's role.
The government's role isn't to start cosplaying business. Trump has been cosplaying business his whole life.
This is the reality of Trump. If he had invested his father's massive fortune, which he inherited, in any index fund, he'd have more money than he has now.
But he's been cosplaying business. He was hugely insecure.
I ran across Trump businesses all the time doing business. And the general reputation of Trump and his family was they were a bunch of rich kids who didn't know what they were doing, that they just weren't very good at what they did.
He's been cosplaying business his entire life. And this is, again, him thinking, I've got an idea.
We'll own TikTok and we'll make money.

That is not a government role.

It's not.

And again, here I am taking the bait.

Yeah.

Look over here.

No, but it's just not happening.

It's just such nonsense.

It's fucking nonsense.

Like, nonsense.

Every time they ask me a comment on anything, I'm like, it's nonsense.

What else can I say?

This is bullshit.

This is such.

There's no interest.

Sometimes I think it is good. Like, let's think of some fresh ideas, right? Let's, huh, what should we do here with this? How do we protect our national security and yet protect the first amendment? Like, how do we do that? Like there's always a room and that's the good part of Silicon Valley.
Like let's think of new ways to do things. Let's, and by the way, they don't have, let me just say this attack.
I'm going to just have one slight rant here. I got contacted by Bijan Sabat.
Do you know him? He's a great investor. He was in Twitter early and stuff like that.
And he's written a piece called, there are people in Silicon Valley that are not like this, just so you know. And he wrote a great piece called Public Service, the Backbone of American Democracy.
And he really didn't like this one line in these Doge press releases where he says, the way to greater American prosperity is encouraging people to move from lower productivity jobs in the public sector to higher productivity jobs in the private sector reveals a staggering ignorance of the essential work performed by those in government. It is not only offensive, but also demonstrably false.
I was so happy to read that, He simply put, the narrative that the private sector is inherently superior to the public sector does disservice the millions of Americans who serve their country every day. It risks demoralizing a workforce already under strain and undermines the very institutions that protect and advance our shared values.
These people who have had so many

frigging failures of their startups, they fuck up so much. And Donald Trump is the top fuck up, the top fuck up of business.
They're allowed to say they're innovative and they then insult government officials who have done a pretty fucking good job keeping us safe every day. And it's so offensive and so easy to insult the government and its workers.
And they have fucked up so many times that we should start making lists of all the different stupidities they have perpetrated. I find it, the whole thing, it's nonsense.
There's also, there's parsing kind of mendacious to just stupid and dangerous. The CIA, I've had the pleasure of working with several officers.
These are incredibly bright people, incredibly skilled. And instead of going to work for Google or Procter & Gamble, they decide to serve their country and they take enormous risks.
And the fact that they have so little regard for a national security apparatus that they might be unmasking these folks, either recklessly, negligently, that is 100% the right word. It's traitorous and it's stupid because what is the likelihood? The Central Intelligence Agency recruits out of every top business school, every top college.
They try and find the best and brightest from a very early age. Do you think you're more or less inclined to go to work for the Central Intelligence Agency right now, knowing that your own government might out you? What if you're overseas on assignment right now? Oh, sleep well tonight.
They might know who I am and what I'm doing here. And by the way, it's not like these guys lose their pension if they're found out.
It's not like they get fired. They are tortured and then murdered trying to protect our shores.
And you have people who have so little regard for their sacrifice and their patriotism. Let me just take one thing we've got to move on is someone who is very interesting.
Some of his comments is Bill Gates. He's on a book tour for a book called Source Code.
He has met with Trump because he's trying to stop him from defunding AIDS things. And he has to do that.
He's the president. He's got to go in there and make his argument why not to.

And he has been defending USAID.

He's someone who was very arrogant about government.

When I met him, he was super arrogant.

He now is like, I was arrogant.

And let me tell you, there's some amazing people working for the government.

I've had government, there's dedicated, important people doing important work.

If you partner with the government, he's very quietly doing the right messaging around why this is wrong. And every now and then he's like, what Elon's doing is nonsense and irresponsible and here's why.
I don't think I'd like him to yell more, but I have to say I was pretty surprised how explicit he is being. There's very few other leaders that are doing that.
None of them.

Like, none of them.

He was the only one that you see, because he knows he doesn't have a price to pay because he's Bill Gates, right?

So he can do that.

So all you other rich fuckers who don't think this is right, not saying anything, is heinous

on your behalf.

Anyway.

All right, Scott.

Let's go on a quick break.

When we come back, we'll talk about this week's earnings. Scott, we're back.
There's lots of earnings news. We still have to talk about earnings.
Disney beat expectations, reporting a 4.8% increase in revenue. The company's experienced business, which includes parks, cruises, and resorts, rose 3%.
Its entertainment division saw a 9% jump in revenue. Disney Plus saw a 1% decline in subscribers following an increase in prices last year.
They're doing pretty well. Their streaming business is quite stabilized, and it's moving forward.
At some point, you run out of subscribers, essentially, and there's a lot of churn, etc. Alphabet, I'm going to go through them, and then you can comment on.
Shares of company are down almost 6% in the last five days at the time of the taping. Alphabet's overall revenue grew 12% compared with 13% in the same quarter last year.
Advertising revenue grew 10.6% compared to 11% last year. The company announced plans to invest in above expectations $75 billion in capital expenditures as it continues to build AI offerings.
One of the things they did note is they're going to stop all their efforts in DEI, because they're going to, unlike Costco and Apple, they've decided to cave. And there are threats from Pan Bondi and state attorney generals, and they've just decided to cave in all their different programs.
Not Spotify, shares are up 12% in the last five days at the time of the taping after the company reported its first profitable year. The company reported 40% gross profit growth year over year and operating income of 477 million euros.
Monthly active users grew by 35 million, up 12% for the year. Lastly, Uber reported a lower than expected operating income of 770 million.
3.1 billion trips were completed on the platform, up 18% year over year. Uber also announced its ramping up for a public launch of robo-taxis in Austin through its partnership with Waymo.
Waymo is killing it in San Francisco, I can tell you that. Well, then the company is optimistic about the autonomous vehicle market.
Admit, there are many, many years to scale. They're absolutely right.
So which one of these would you like to take? Well, I'll touch on each of them and then try and extract what I think is an interesting theme. So Disney, essentially the streaming wars, everyone's fighting to be Lyft.
What do I mean by that? Netflix is running away with it. Definitely.
So everyone's fighting for number two. And I don't want to say they've given up, but Netflix, I mean, just to give you a sense, in 2015, Disney price to sales was four, Netflix was five.
So they saw them in kind of spitting distance of each other from a shareholder standpoint. As we sit here today, Disney trades at two times revenue and Netflix trades at 11 times revenue.
Disney, they lost 700,000 subscribers, but that was in the face of a price increase. Now it wasn't a huge price increase, but it does show kind of the strength of Disney's positioning around family.
Whereas Netflix added 19 million subscribers, Disney's added, Disney Plus has added 13 million. The big thing comes down to churn.
And that is, there's this really uncomfortable dynamic where everyone but Netflix has to reinvent their entire customer base every 10 years or two years, because they go on and they download the entire season at Ted Lasso, and then they cancel Apple TV Plus. And Netflix has so much, so much gross tonnage that their churn is only 2%.
Disney is number two, but it's at 4.8%. And then the other guys have even higher churn rates.
Can I just make a note here? Real competitor, and this is me talking to Hollywood people yesterday, is YouTube. YouTube is the competitor of Netflix.
Oh, 100%. That no one talks about.
They are killing it. But to your point, total share of video viewership is like 8% or 9% for Netflix.
YouTube is 11%. You could argue YouTube is the number one streamer, but it's still categorized as a different sector.
I think they're going to do a lot more originals, FYI, but go ahead. Disney's Parks, Cruises, and Resorts continues to be the gift that keeps on giving.
Revenue up 3%, but the operating income was up 6% to 8%. Disney's done a good job incorporating ESPN into a pretty compelling bundle with Hulu.
Moving on to Google, their full year revenue grew 14%, but people are freaked out about slower than expected cloud growth because they see that as a proxy for their AI offering. So they took the stock down a little bit.
They're also worried about the amount of capex. Their capital expenditure is supposed to increase to 75 billion.
The thing about Google though, is that they have five separate businesses that do more than 30 billion in annual revenue. If their stock were to go down, I mean, look at it this way.
That's like saying they have the revenue power of five different Starbucks or five different visas with different businesses. They are just a series of cash volcanoes, seven products and platforms with over 2 billion users, Search Maps, Gmail, Android.
They're just doing incredibly. Spotify is probably the most impressive performer from where it was, say, 12 or 24 months ago.
And that is they essentially set quarterly record highs for revenue, gross margin, operating income. The stock has tripled in the last year.
Their platform growth is accelerating. Their total monthly active users hit 675 million.
Their premium subscribers up 11%.

Their average revenue per user or ARPU is up 5%.

And now kind of what I'll say, and I'll come back to him in a second, but the big theme

here or something hopefully resembling insight is the following.

If you look at the acceleration in Spotify stock and in Netflix, I believe that that's more than just growth in the category. It's effectively, so Netflix now has more than 50% of its production overseas.
And if you look at Spotify, less than 1% of its artists garner more than 92% of its streaming revenues. Effectively, with the scale that these companies have, and by not sharing analytics or information, what Netflix has done is it has transferred a massive amount of capital, earnings power, money from the means of production, specifically artists, to Netflix shareholders.
And that is, when you put something on Netflix, they don't tell you how successful it is. They might produce it in Spain or in Seoul, but they basically extracted a shit ton of capital from California based employees, from actors, from producers and said, we're kind of the big dog here, and you have to operate under

this new religion or this new operating model. Because by the way, if you don't want to be in

our Netflix drama, there's 179,000 other SAG-AFTRA people that are looking for work.

And can I just make a point? They also put out so much content that's pretty good, right? None of

it's really... Someone was telling me a story who was with last night, who used to work at Google with Susan Wojcicki, the late Susan Wojcicki.
And they were thinking about getting into originals. And they walked her through the economics of Hollywood because she wasn't familiar.
You know, she had been very successful at Google and she had just taken over YouTube. And they walked her through it and she got up and she goes, this isn't a business.
Like what, only one hit carries all the losses. Like she was like, she immediately clocked the problem, right? Like she goes, this isn't a really sustainable business if you don't have this one hit.
And she goes, why are they operating like this? And she was, I think she had insight into the idea that if you had a lot of little hits or spread it out with stuff that people like,

you would do a lot better.

And that's what Netflix has kind of done here.

They have nothing, every now and then they have a big one,

but all the others are fine.

And they help sustain the fact that it's a good product.

You find efficacy in the product.

You find pleasure in the product.

Same thing with Spotify.

At its heart, it's a good product. I don't know what else to say.
It's like enjoyable to use. You find what you want.
Maybe it's not like soaring like an HBO can be sometime. But every now and then it is.
And it's, so that's, you know, it's a good, I don't know what else to say. It's a good product.
Like, that's how I feel about both those companies. There's two ingredients to the secret sauce here.
And it's an asymmetry. They both have to do with an asymmetry of information.
If Deadpool does $1.3 billion, the agent for Ryan Reynolds and for Hugh Jackman know that. And the next time they want to do Deadpool meets Fast and Furious 18 or whatever, the agent from WME goes to the studio and says, I know how important Hugh Jackman is.
And they extract a shit ton of pound of flesh. In streaming, the only evidence that Ben Stiller has that Severance got more than one viewer is they order seasons three and four.
So the asymmetry of information always benefits the person that has symmetrical information. When Jennifer Aniston's agent knew that the Thursday night lineup counted, depended, was resting on the pillar of friends, the people producing and acting in Friends could extract a lot of revenue.
No one in streaming has any fucking idea. And then the second big number out of the Disney earnings that fascinated me and explains why Netflix trades at 11 times revenue and Disney at two times is that now more than half of Netflix's content budget is spent overseas.
And some of it's done to be more multinational, but the majority of the reason they do it, and the reason why they're building big studios in New Jersey is because New Jersey just supersized their tax subsidy. They realized if we can produce two eights in Spain or Seoul, instead of producing one possible eight or nine in LA, go with the eights overseas.
Over 50% of their content budget is now spent overseas. Do you know what percentage of Disney's content budget is spent overseas? I bet none.
Like- 4%. Right, none, like none.
So essentially what Japan did to Detroit, Netflix is doing to Los Angeles. And I don't care, You want to talk about nuclear code secrets.
When we launch our series on Netflix and I say, if I call them and say, I am not working with you again, unless you tell me how many people downloaded this relative to your other dramas, they're going to say, well, it was nice working with you, Scott. Because they don't want anyone to have that leverage.
So asymmetry of information and the globalization of content production.

And a decent product, a decent, pleasurable product.

Oh, it's a fantastic product.

Right.

But all of those benefits, all of, I mean, this is a straight line.

There's a lot of innovation, a fantastic product.

But you want to talk about a massive flow to the bottom line and who it's coming from beyond the natural growth, organic growth of the sector.

It's coming from the who it's coming from beyond the natural growth, organic growth of the sector. It's coming from the gaffer, the lighting guy, and the woman who wrote season four of SpongeBob SquarePants and used to make 200 grand a year.
And Netflix has said, you know what, I figured out a way to pay you 40 grand. And all of that capital coming out of high production states and people has moved to Netflix shareholders.
And it represents a much broader trend in our society. And that is the notion that we give a shit about stakeholders and not shareholders is just not true.
Everything is run for shareholders. And by the way, there's some upside to that.
I'm not arguing that it's the wrong way, but be clear, folks. Everything is now optimized to transfer as much capital as possible from states, from workers.
The workers here are not being prioritized. Production in Los Angeles was off 40% year on year, not because they're not talented, but because they're too goddamn expensive.
And Netflix has found a way to keep them in the dark and then hire 80% as talented a person overseas for 30% to 40% of the price. It's a transfer of wealth from artists at Spotify and from the creatives in Hollywood to Netflix and Spotify shareholders.
And Spotify has made the jump. So they have so much leverage.
They are now extracting revenue from the bottom 99.9 of artists. They're going to make less and less money.
All right. Very quickly on Uber.
Incredibly well managed. I just think you got to give it to Dara.
He and Apple were the ones that said, no, I'm not going to jump into the shallow end head first here and make huge capital allocations to autonomous. He pulled back.
He pulled back. I'm going to wait.
I'm going to rent other, just as, I mean, they're good at this. Uber's innovation is Airbnb's innovation.
And that is, I'll build a thick layer of software on top of other people's capital expenditure, on top of their apartments, their houses, and their cars, right? So it's in their DNA to say, why don't we just ride? Why don't we just be the remora fish off of Google's multi-decade, multi-tens of billions of dollars investments and autonomous? That's where we should be riding. That's where we should be playing the game.
He is doing a great job of managing that company. You're right.
It's on top of it. I got to say, Waymo is so integrated into San Francisco now, and you're going to see it all over the country.
It's so convenient. And they live together with Uber, by the way.
That's in a very comfortable way. I took both in San Francisco this week, and both were great.
Prices are still too high for all of them. And I know they need to make money and stuff, but it's a really interesting time.
You're right, Dara's done a nice job here. And there are no competitors, really.
And I mean, Lyft is sort of a competitor, I guess. Anyway, one more quick break and we'll be back for predictions.
Okay, Scott, let's hear a prediction. Well, if you think about the three layers in AI, there's the infrastructure layer, the invidious of the world.
There's the LLM layer, the anthropics, the chat GBTs, and then there's the application layer. And the entire infrastructure and LLM world was thrown into disarray when shocker, China came up with something cheaper, right? But I think what you're about to see is a kind of a golden age or dozens of new unicorns in what I'd call the application layer.
And I met with this incredibly impressive young man yesterday who founded a company called Rogo, which is essentially they take all of these financial data streams, whether it's CapIQ or Bloomberg, and then they put a layer of intelligence, AI weaponized intelligence on top of it. And they turn an investment banking analyst into someone fighting on horseback to someone in a panzer tank.
So you can type into this AI that's customized for financial services or institutions, IPO, put together an IPO roadshow deck for a fast fashion company that does this revenues and these are the concerns. And it'll put together a 60 slide deck of which 48 are pretty good.
So you can basically do the job of three analysts and they'll say that it's making people more productive, but it's going to result in massive layoffs. Anyways, I think you're about to see dozens of unicorns in the application layer.
I do think that the infrastructure and the LLM layer is about to shed tens of billions of dollars as people realize the moats aren't as big as they thought. That if Sam Altman can copy everything out there, someone's going to be able to figure out a way to copy Sam Altman's shit.
But the additional customization or artisanal AI application layer in healthcare and in financial services and fitness and all sorts of things is going to create a bunch of branded consumer AI applications. I mean, that's what Airbnb is, right? That's what Uber is.
They took existing infrastructure and breakthroughs and they branded it, and they created interesting vertical niche applications. I mean, that's what Airbnb is, right? That's what Uber is.
They took existing infrastructure and breakthroughs and they branded it and they created interesting vertical niche applications. I think that you're about to see a bunch of companies.
I mean, this guy, I had breakfast with this kid, 25. Jesus Christ.
I'm like, can I come back as you? By the way, I'm going to be him tonight under the Influence Academy. No, you're not.
I'm going to get a call from the police and I'll have to come get you or something. No, by the way, you're not my call.
Preet Bharara is my call. That's true.
I call Preet Bharara. All right.
I literally, I have him. I'm about to make him and his phone number tonight my screensaver.
Oh, that's a good idea. Call Preet.
Tonight, it's like, this is the guy. Here's his number.
I've told Preet this. I know.
He thought he was very touched. I just need you to do one thing.
You can ask ask me for anything but if you see my name come up yeah i need you to answer yeah and i'm not calling to say hi i'm not calling to say hi wow okay anyways i've told him i'll send millions of dollars of money to this to this law firm he's now like the rainmaker for anyways but uh you know i'm not calling you i'm calling pre i scold for you. I would leave you.
I would scold you. I would.
I'm going to make a very brief prediction. You know, there's a lot of new polls out.
The Economist had a poll that back in November, 47% of those surveyed Republicans says they wanted Elon Musk to have a lot of influence in the Trump administration, while 29% wanted a little, and 12% wanted him to have none at all. Today, the number of Republicans that say Musk have, they want him to have a lot of influence has fallen substantially to 26%, according to this story in The Hill.
Meanwhile, 43% of Republican respondents said they wanted Musk to have a little influence, and 17% they wanted him to have none at all. I see that, but I have to tell you, I had thought they would have a falling out.
I think he is, as I have said, he is little pussy for Trump the mob boss, essentially. He is the heat shield.
He is the junkyard dog. And I think Trump understands this intuitively.
There's one thing about Donald Trump, he has an intuitive sense of things. Musk is good for him because he gets the shit done, even if it's illegal and he's willing to.
And nobody else is. And as much as these insiders are going to complain about him being bigger than his britches or overstepping, I think maybe he might be around a little longer.
I think I was wrong about that falling out. I wish I wasn't, but I do think even if people are indignant, this guy has a – everything has shown when everyone thinks Musk is going to lose on the pedophile case or with the SEC, he's got an ability to not just to take risks but also take ridiculous, heinous risks, but to also stick it out.
So I don't know. I think Trump recognizes that it's good to have a junkyard dog.
You're my junkyard dog. I like that.
Thanks for saying that. Get away from her.
Yeah, that's right. Anyways, this is insanity or crazy, but I would describe it more apt as late stage syphilis crazy.
Yeah. Anyways, this is insanity or crazy, but I would describe it more apt as like late stage syphilis crazy.
Yeah, that's what they were saying. Syphilis crazy.
But the thing is, that can go on for years. You can have syphilis for a long time.
Please don't get it. No, unfortunately.
The good news is I'm so unattractive and unappealing now that you have to have someone else to engage in giving you syphilis, and that's just not going to happen. That's not a word we use enough, syphilitic.
It's a great word, isn't it? Let's use it like several times. I used to like the word encephaletic, but that's not syphilis.
No, it's not. That's a brain disease, cloutiness, but syphilis.
I do like syphilis. Can I tell you, Amanda's always like, Scott used that word wrong.
She's like such a word person. Several times you've used words that are— She means I used it incorrectly.
Incorrectly. That's correct.
Yeah. Anyway, she's often doing that to me.
I'm like, did he? I don't know. She's like, you need to tell them.
I'm not telling them. I forget.
I completely forget the minute she tells me. I wouldn't mind her.
Your texts are mean. If she calls me and says, you meant this, I'm open to that.
All right. I'll tell her.
I'll tell her. She can be your spelling lady.
Anyway, elsewhere in the Karen Scott universe, which is growing by the second. It's expanding.
This week on Prof G Conversation, Scott spoke with Mo Gadot, the former chief business officer of Google X, bestselling author and founder of One Billion Happy. Let's listen.
The truth is the world is not ready for what is about to hit us. Whether you take the simple things like the economics of the world and how they will change as a result of AI, all the way to the change of the dynamics of power and the resulting deprivation of freedom, all the way to how the economics of the world are going to change and how the jobs are going to change and how the human connection is going to change and how our understanding of reality is going to change.
And these are decisions that are not made by us anymore. Think about it this way, Spider-Man's with great power comes great responsibility.
We've disconnected power from responsibility. There is massive, massive power concentration concentrated in hands that do not answer to anyone.
Well, Ketamine, I say. He's a very thoughtful guy.
Mogadai, I really enjoyed the conversation with him. And basically, you should listen to the conversation, but basically summarize like, Sam Altman is reshaping the way we think about things,

the way we approach problems,

potentially what types of weapons are developed.

And he was kind of like,

who the fuck is Sam Altman

to get to do this?

Right, that's correct.

Who the fuck is Elon Musk?

Who the fuck are any of these people?

But that's where we're going.

Okay, Scott, that's the show.

We'll be back on Tuesday

with more Pivot.

Read us out.

Today's show was produced

by Lara Neiman,

Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie and Todd Entry in this episode.
Thanks also to Drew Bros, Miss Averio, and Dan Shulon. Nishat Kruwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio.
Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media.
You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.
Who is that guy in the corner at that Fashion Week

party? I get the sense he likes him

a lot. That's the dog!