Meta Ends Fact Checking, Trump Tries to Redraw the Map, and the Los Angeles Fires

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Speaker 17 Tell me about Breathwork. How did that go? How did your blowjump go? I mean, Breathwork.

Speaker 17 Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.
I'm Kara Swisher.

Speaker 18 And I'm Scott Galloway.

Speaker 17 Scott, I am so glad I am not at CES right now. Do you know what's happening?

Speaker 18 What's happening at CES?

Speaker 17 Nothing. Nothing.
That's the whole point.

Speaker 17 You used to go all the time. So did I.

Speaker 18 No, I've only been once. Oh, really? Yeah.
And the highlight was I saw Casey and the Sunshine Band at...

Speaker 18 one of their parties. I found CES just remarkably uninspiring.

Speaker 18 it just didn't do anything for me.

Speaker 17 It is. I used to go year after year after year, and I'm so glad I didn't go.
Yeah, it used to be relevant, like a lot of, you know, those gatherings that were relevant and then don't become relevant.

Speaker 17 It served its purpose for many years.

Speaker 17 I spent so many years there and stuff.

Speaker 17 We've got a lot to get to today. There's a lot going on.
You're in New York still, correct?

Speaker 18 I am in New York. I've had, I'm on my PRP shots this morning, and then I went to my dermatologist.
Wait,

Speaker 17 I got to get to breath work. I'm sorry.
How did I forget? Wait, what's the PRP?

Speaker 18 PRP is they take your blood, they spin it, and then they take, I think, the platelets and inject it back and whatever joints are hurting, which is... What? Yeah, no, it's actually quite effective.

Speaker 18 So my shoulders have been hurting. I've never had, I've been injury-free for most of my life, and my shoulders have been hurting.
And I've been doing these PRP injections.

Speaker 17 And they work. Interesting.

Speaker 17 I had that frozen shoulder. Women get it at like 50.

Speaker 17 And I had a steroid injection, and it worked. I have to tell you, it didn't work.
I just had steroids. That's why I'm so matcha.
But you did this. Wow.
And what's your second thing you did?

Speaker 18 I went to my dermatologist where they literally, all he does is look at everything on my body and go, yep, that's got to come off.

Speaker 18 And then occasionally he goes, well, we should just, just in case, we should probably take this off. I come out of my dermatologist seven, eight pounds lighter.
Wow.

Speaker 17 Oh, my God. All your little skin things, whatever they're called.
Do you have a lot of them? I've never seen you naked, you know?

Speaker 18 You don't have to cover it up.

Speaker 17 Never. I've seen you somewhat naked, like in cool.
No, like, I don't remember a lot of skin problems, but you know, I don't, I didn't look hard.

Speaker 18 No, but as I'm getting older, everything's growing. The weird thing is, you start thinking, what's going on on the inside?

Speaker 18 But yeah, and I got Botox. I don't know if you, I'm actually crying right now.
You just can't tell.

Speaker 17 You have Botox?

Speaker 18 Yeah, I get Botox.

Speaker 17 Why?

Speaker 18 Because I'm a narcissist.

Speaker 17 Where do you get it done? Let me look. Let me look.
Let me look at the situation. No, I don't.
I'm laughing. Listen, Nicole, kid.
I'm laughing right now.

Speaker 18 I'm horrified.

Speaker 17 The fact that you do so many of these things is like, you're like the Kim Kardashian of our relationship here. I don't do any of these things.

Speaker 17 I don't do Botox, fillers, all your, all your, whatever the hell you're doing. Tell me about breathwork.
How did that go? How did your blow jump go? I mean, breath work.

Speaker 18 It was actually pretty interesting. The kind of music, the sound drums I found really interesting.
I found a... What?

Speaker 17 You did a sound bath?

Speaker 18 No, they do these, I don't even know, the person's going to use, the guy's going to call me and get all pissed off that I didn't describe it correctly, but they have these kind of sound drums or buckets, and they, and then he kind of sings with it.

Speaker 18 And

Speaker 17 I thought it was quite nice.

Speaker 18 I don't know. Shit, I don't know.

Speaker 18 Anyone who will hang out with me and I pay them, yeah, I'm down with.

Speaker 17 So wait, what did you learn?

Speaker 17 Give the people who can't afford sound drums and breathwork a little tip.

Speaker 18 What did I learn? I learned that I have too much money and I'm affected. Okay.
And that I'm spending money on sound drums.

Speaker 17 Okay.

Speaker 17 But give me something. Come on.
I got to know. I I told you about my ketamine trip.

Speaker 18 I guess it's supposed to be, it's supposed to be therapeutic.

Speaker 18 And what I will say is at one moment, they put, he like does something with the sound drum to create some vibration and then he put it on my chest.

Speaker 18 And I did go into sort of,

Speaker 18 have you ever done acupuncture?

Speaker 17 Yes, of course. Yeah.

Speaker 18 And you know, the thing I love about acupuncture is, you know, that when they leave after the needles are in, that sort of conscious, subconscious sleep or relaxation?

Speaker 18 I don't think there's anything like that. I think it's really restorative.

Speaker 17 I love acupuncture, also acupressure, but I love, I did acupuncture for a while. I had a lot of stuff in my sinuses that worked really well.

Speaker 18 Yeah, so I had that kind of sleep or relaxation for five or 10 minutes, but I was just open to it. And this guy seemed lovely and really into it and really wanted to do it.

Speaker 18 And so I was, yeah, why not? Shit, I'll try anything at this point.

Speaker 17 So what's our next move?

Speaker 18 Tomorrow I'm doing my

Speaker 18 I get my teeth cleaned every three months because I have terrible dental hygiene. So I try and compensate by, I literally walk in and and I'm like, don't give me floss.
Don't give me a new toothbrush.

Speaker 18 I brush my teeth once a day. I have shitty teeth.
I see you every three months. I don't want to lecture.
And I also tell them, and by the way, I love nitrous.

Speaker 18 And I just sit back, I play 80s music, and I let them go at it. I do it every three months.
Anyways, when I'm in New York, I do all of my acupuncture chiropractic.

Speaker 17 All of your ablutions. They're called ablutions.
Your ablutions. Is that what it is? Yeah, it's a word.
It's a big word. You can look it up if you need to.
That's amazing.

Speaker 17 I, of course, I interviewed Amy Klobuchar this morning. I interviewed

Speaker 17 the CEO of Yonder, who makes those pouches for kids. So, you know, kids in concerts, really.
They're doing a great business,

Speaker 17 you know, hiding away your phone, essentially, keeping kids away from their phone.

Speaker 17 It's a very easy and physical way to do so. How's Senator Kay?

Speaker 18 What did she say?

Speaker 17 She's good. She's lively as ever.
Let me tell you.

Speaker 17 She's like, I'm here to win. I'm like, okay.

Speaker 17 She's just, she's like a, you know, she pops to the the top like a, like a rubber ducky. She's right up to the top.

Speaker 10 No, no, no.

Speaker 18 She's like the biggest balls in Minnesota. She does.

Speaker 17 She's like, we're going to pass that legislation this year, Kara. And I'm like, okay, you're not, but okay.
Don't hold your breath.

Speaker 18 No, but I mean, more power to her.

Speaker 17 You know, she's in charge of the inauguration, essentially. And also, she did an overhaul of the security at the Capitol.
We talked a little bit about that.

Speaker 17 And she was in charge of that and got shit done.

Speaker 17 Yeah.

Speaker 18 And she's a fairly young senator at 81 or 82. She's one of the younger Democrats.

Speaker 17 Yeah, she gets shit done. She's a get shit done kind of lady.
And that she's in charge of the inauguration, that must be like a, ugh, God. You know, she goes, and we're going to show up.

Speaker 17 Unlike when Trump didn't show up, we're going to show up. Biden's going to show up.
We're going to transition power.

Speaker 17 No, she's got, she's can-do spirit.

Speaker 18 Yeah, we play by the rules and we're like, we take the moral high ground and then get our asses kicked.

Speaker 17 Yay for us. I didn't know if she was being moral.
She just was being, this is the Constitution and this is what we shall do. She's not a moral lecturer person.

Speaker 18 Yeah, yeah, I know, I know. By the way, I don't think I've been as angry as I've been in a while until that fucking asshole decided not to shake the vice president's hand.
Did you see that bullshit?

Speaker 17 Yeah, there's all these excuses. He had a cane, he had a Bible, whatever, dude.

Speaker 18 Jesus, dude, really?

Speaker 17 He's such a douche nozzle. What a douche.
I think the wife was embarrassed. I felt like the wife was like,

Speaker 18 Yeah, I got that sense too.

Speaker 17 I mean, not that that's ruined her minute, by the way. Well, I mean, let's ruin her minute.

Speaker 18 Wife being embarrassed is somewhat redundant, so let's just focus on him.

Speaker 17 I like why

Speaker 18 You're in the rotunda. Your wife's being sworn in.

Speaker 18 I saw that and I thought, am I missing something here? Anyway.

Speaker 17 angry old man shaking his fist.

Speaker 17 She was dignified and she handled it perfectly.

Speaker 17 The two women handled it perfectly, let me just say. And I don't know what the wife could have done except hit him with the cane.
Identity politics.

Speaker 18 The two women. I don't even see gender care.

Speaker 17 I know you don't, but still, they handled it well.

Speaker 17 But we've got a lot to get to today, including Meta's decision to end its fact-checking program and Trump's Trump's efforts to redraw the Western Hemisphere, which I call risk for dummies.

Speaker 17 But first, we need to talk about the devastating fires in Los Angeles.

Speaker 17 As we tape this, four separate fires are burning in Los Angeles. None of them contain, very difficult.
Of course, Donald Trump knocked off its rude as fuck note. It's a really difficult situation.

Speaker 17 The winds are incredibly strong, hurricane-like winds, fires, dry.

Speaker 17 tinder-like situation there, a lot of brush.

Speaker 17 They cannot contain it, Donald Trump, you fucking dumbass. I'm sorry, but seriously, shut the fuck up until you're president.

Speaker 17 So they're in several places and including parts of the beautiful parts that probably Scott knows well. I certainly do, Pacific Palisades, which is a beautiful part of Los Angeles, Pasadena now,

Speaker 17 another area of the valley that's moving up towards Brentwood, all these areas.

Speaker 17 We're supposed to actually tape this episode with Bill Maher. We're going to talk about his new special, Bill Maher, Is Anyone Else Seeing This, Which is a wonderful show.

Speaker 17 I have to say, I saw a preview of it. You enjoyed it.
I loved it. You know, he goes a little bit on the anti-woke stuff, but his anti-woke stuff is fucking funny.
So I'm there for it.

Speaker 17 He does a lot of great Trump stuff.

Speaker 17 It's funny. That's all I ask from my comics: be funny, right? Even offensive is fine, but make it funny and not mean and mean-spirited.

Speaker 18 You know what? My three favorite comedians who I think, and I think comedians play a huge role in our society:

Speaker 18 Ricky Gervais,

Speaker 18 Michelle Wolf, and

Speaker 18 Bill Maher. I think all three of them are just incredible thinkers that

Speaker 18 really make you think about much, you know, they're not only funny, but super intelligent.

Speaker 17 Actually, you put up, what's his name? The guy who's on the daily show. Ronnie Chang is so good.
And, you know, they're all good. They're all good.
Everybody is fantastic.

Speaker 17 I just think comics are so Michelle Bateau has a new one out. They're so funny.
They're all different, but they're funny. And that's, and they're like on target.

Speaker 17 Anyway, he he had to reschedule, do the situation out there in California. I've been to where he does his podcast, and it's in the danger zone.
It absolutely is. I heard that.

Speaker 17 It is in the danger zone. Absolutely.
Absolutely.

Speaker 18 We should come back to this, but I never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity to talk about something totally unrelated. Okay.

Speaker 18 The top three reasons why women are attracted to men. Oh, no.

Speaker 17 Do you know what they are? No. Is this a joke that you still have?

Speaker 18 Oh, I'm asking a guess now. No, this isn't a joke.

Speaker 17 This isn't. Okay.
Breath work. Good breath work.
Go ahead.

Speaker 18 So he gives mean breath work.

Speaker 18 Number three is kindness. Actually, being nice to your parents.
Women want someone who is kind and reflects

Speaker 18 goodwill towards strangers without any reciprocal expectation because they think this person will, if things don't go well, treat me well.

Speaker 18 Number one is that they need to signal resources, either having a lot of resources now or have their act together.

Speaker 17 That's your favorite, but go ahead.

Speaker 18 No, it's not my favorite. It's science.
Okay. It's my favorite fact.
And then

Speaker 18 they have to have a plan and they're act together such that they show that they at some point might be able to provide for them and their families and protect their young.

Speaker 18 The number two, though, the second most important is intellect, because if you make good decisions for the tribe, everyone's more likely to survive, including the offspring.

Speaker 18 And you know, the easiest way to communicate or the crispest, most efficient way to communicate intelligence?

Speaker 17 Humor. 100%.

Speaker 18 People who are funny are either, you know, some, about 20 or 30% of them are just so outrageous and crazy, but that doesn't last very long. 70, 80% of people who are really funny are high IQ.

Speaker 17 Oh, interesting. Clever.
That's true. Yeah, that's why I like you.
You're funny.

Speaker 18 Anyway, sorry. Back to the fires.

Speaker 17 Back to Alliant Fire. But tens of thousands of people are evacuating.
Obviously, you've seen the photos. You've seen the videos.

Speaker 17 This is the most...

Speaker 17 This is when social media is useful, right? You can see what's happening. The government is doing a great job of communicating information of where everything is, how people should get out.

Speaker 17 There's all these really interesting, like Steve Gutenberg helping out.

Speaker 17 The federal government says it's sending assistance, but the fire department is struggling with resources, water. A lot of this stuff is uphills.

Speaker 17 And someone was explaining, sent me an email explaining these water tanks don't fill up fast without electricity. This is very,

Speaker 17 you know, whenever you drive in California, when you're driving down the five to Los Angeles from San Francisco, the one thing that always occurs to me, especially as I'm going through the grapevine there, which is an area of the road, is California is a desert right down to the sea.

Speaker 17 It really is, you know, and it's just been populated and water's been brought in and made it a lush environment, but it's a very dry, desert-like environment.

Speaker 18 And especially the Santa Ana's ripping through.

Speaker 17 And the Santa Ana's come in. And I recommend everyone read Joan Didian's classic essay about the Santa Ana's and what they do to people.
And it's the famous quote from that.

Speaker 17 It shows us just how close to the edge we are. And boy, are they on edge

Speaker 17 on the edge in Los Angeles? And of course, we're thinking about everyone out there and hoping for the best.

Speaker 17 But I've never seen so many stark and, you know, almost, they're not beautiful, but

Speaker 17 they're just arresting photographs of everything

Speaker 17 that you're getting there. I don't know if you had any feelings watching this.
It's, you feel like you're there in a weird way.

Speaker 18 Well, I went to UCLA and there's a... a thread or a chat group on WhatsApp of kind of the nine of us who are roommates and who have stayed really close since college.

Speaker 18 And one of my friends, Jeff Browdy, has lost his home. He lives in the Pacific Palisades.
And all of them have been sending out photos of like,

Speaker 18 I mean, just stuff burning down that we used to go to.

Speaker 18 You know, the Palisades Village is gone. Maestra, I think it's a restaurant called Maestra.
They just keep sending these pictures out of things that have been destroyed and even some videos.

Speaker 18 It's just, it really feels kind of apocalyptic.

Speaker 17 Yeah, there's a fish inn right there on your way out to Malibu that I took the kids to a hundred times when they were kids and it's gone.

Speaker 17 All these places, all these places I've been to, all these beautiful homes. The whole Runyon Canyon area is so beautiful.

Speaker 17 If you've been there and hiked or walked around, and

Speaker 17 it is devastation everywhere. And what it is, is doing creeping closer and closer into Santa Monica, North Santa Monica.
It's moving south, which is scary.

Speaker 17 Pasadena,

Speaker 17 a historic synagogue has gone up in flames, gone.

Speaker 17 Fire is, you know, I'm in a, you and I are both in the frozen tundra here. Washington got hit by a big snowstorm, freezing.
Fire terrifies me in a different way.

Speaker 17 I find it, you know, yeah, it has this, these pictures you're seeing are so apocalyptic of the sunrise in Los Angeles

Speaker 17 and what the smoke does to the light.

Speaker 17 It feels like the end of the world. It really does.
And it is for many people there, by the way.

Speaker 18 Yeah, it's

Speaker 18 I, the only fire I've ever really experienced was when I was living in Berkeley in the 90s, the Oakland fire.

Speaker 17 That was a big one. Yeah, that was a big one.

Speaker 18 That was devastating.

Speaker 18 But the thing that's just bringing back a little bit to technology and the state of our world, the thing I find kind of disappointing is that there's always a move to reckoning and accountability and who's at fault.

Speaker 18 And the moves keep starting earlier and earlier. And I can't help but go on threads now or Instagram Reels.
And one side is blaming blaming the Democrats there.

Speaker 18 It's like, and other people are saying, oh, it's climate change. It's like, let's just take a, let's just take a beat and see what we can do to help these people out before we decide who's at fault

Speaker 18 and what's at fault. There will be, there will be plenty of time for that.
But right now, let's just try to figure out how to get. people out of harm's way and figure out a way if you can be helpful.

Speaker 18 The politicization is just, it happens right away.

Speaker 17 It does. But these fires have been going on for a long, long time, by the way, and it's still almost intractable.
If you live in California, you understand the massive issues around this.

Speaker 17 There's no, in many ways, because of the population growth and people liking to live there, it's beautiful. It's a wonderful, you know, Pacific Palisades is just beautiful.

Speaker 17 I don't know how else to put it. It's a beautiful

Speaker 17 created beautiful homes, beautiful vistas. There's too many people there for the environment over decades and decades and decades, hundreds, a hundred years, right? Same thing with Florida, right?

Speaker 17 Too many people. It's a very dangerous area with hurricanes and everything else.
And it's hard because it's an incredibly difficult situation. I completely agree with you.

Speaker 17 I thought Donald Trump's tweet,

Speaker 17 I wanted to reach, I was so angry about it. I was like, how dare you? And I think Newsom is there trying to do a good job, trying to bring new firefighters in.
This is a terrible problem.

Speaker 17 Anyway,

Speaker 17 one of the buildings that's at risk is the Getty Villa, which is also a beautiful place. There's amazing antiques there from the Roman era, I believe, and Greek eras.

Speaker 17 And there's, of course, the other Getty Museum, which is also possibly at risk, less at risk than the first one.

Speaker 17 That's at risk, too, which is another really wonderful place out there.

Speaker 18 It's beautiful.

Speaker 17 And you cannot get it back, essentially. I'm hoping they're getting all those

Speaker 17 antiquities out of there, but it's probably hard to do. It just came on very quickly.

Speaker 17 It sounds like a dumb shift, but speaking of Getty,

Speaker 17 in another news and tech news, and we'll talk about it only briefly because photographs are such an important part of this.

Speaker 17 And I'm seeing these names on all the photos, you know, as I'm watching this stuff. But Getty and Shutterstock are planning to merge in a $3.7 billion deal.

Speaker 17 They provide these license images and videos. You're seeing some of, and there's a lot of user-generated stuff, by the way, in Los Angeles.

Speaker 17 I interviewed Craig Peters, who I think is a very smart CEO of Getty, recently. I thought we had a terrific interview about sort of the challenges.
They're suing Open AI.

Speaker 17 They're in lawsuits and stuff like that because they're trying to adjust their business models for the AI era.

Speaker 17 Both stocks went up.

Speaker 17 They have to merge.

Speaker 17 They absolutely have got to 100% merge at this point in terms of to fight off the inevitable coming from AI, which I thought was,

Speaker 17 I'm not surprised by this, but it's probably a good move on

Speaker 17 Craig's part.

Speaker 18 When I was running L2 and we would put out research reports on, you know, we were a business intelligence firm and we started with luxury brands. Sure.

Speaker 18 And we used to collect just 1,200 data points across social, mobile, digital marketing. And we'd put out these reports saying, you know,

Speaker 18 our digital IQ report on European luxury brands. And we would look for,

Speaker 18 I loved picking out this great imagery and I'd find a great image of Sophia Loren or Gina Lola Brigida or something really interesting. And I would have to pay Getty 1200 bucks to license this image.

Speaker 18 I mean, this stuff's, it was a very lucrative business.

Speaker 18 And similar, the analog here is Netflix has essentially come in and been so disruptive that everyone else is having to bulk up and consolidate and cut costs.

Speaker 18 And the equivalent here of Netflix is OpenAI and Sora, in my view. My son convinced me to

Speaker 18 upgrade to the, you know, the kind of premiere, whatever it is, open AI

Speaker 18 subscription plan that includes Sora. And I was playing with Sora yesterday.
And I thought if I was still running L2,

Speaker 18 I would be prompting the shit out of things to get interesting covers using Sora and also Midjourney.

Speaker 18 And so the means of production, the protection, the barriers of entry around IP are these walls are falling and these guys absolutely need to consolidate.

Speaker 18 And you're going to see fairly significant layoffs. You're going to see they're going to continue to aggressively sue.
But I wouldn't be surprised also for the next 12 to 24 months,

Speaker 18 one of the 100%, one of the bigger,

Speaker 18 my bet is Anthropic. Somebody comes in and takes them out in exchange for using that data.

Speaker 18 I mean,

Speaker 18 Adobe has Firefly, and one of the things about Firefly, this image repository, is they've said everything here has been paid for.

Speaker 18 And

Speaker 18 a means of trying to get any sort of advantage in what is the category that is,

Speaker 18 you know, if Anthropic can develop any sort of edge, it's probably worth the $8 or $12 billion they'd have to pay for this thing. Right.

Speaker 18 So I think this is, I think this is step one to this combined company. They will let them do the dirty work of cutting costs and laying off 30, 40, 70% of their employees.

Speaker 18 right-sizing it, getting it much more profitable again. And then I think you're going to see an AI company in 26 come in and purchase it.
Come and buy.

Speaker 17 It's a great property, actually. And also, you know, I agree with the payments.

Speaker 17 One time, one of my staffers used a picture without permission, and that cost me a fortune because they by accident did it, and we had some rules around it, and they just put it up.

Speaker 17 I can't, I paid an enormous amount of money to settle that one. And I was like, oh, my God.

Speaker 17 And so we always, you know, were very strict, either using it in the commons, the Wikipedia Commons photos, but it was a very expensive situation. Even pictures of myself, I don't own anymore.
Right.

Speaker 17 I have to be very careful when I'm sending out pictures because if Getty took them, for example, they own my image, which is weird if you think about it. But,

Speaker 17 you know, in the future, I don't, I won't take pictures for them. I'm like, you have to give me the rights or something like that.
But, but it's a really, it's, it's a really interesting business.

Speaker 17 I do think there is, just from this fire, and I know AI pictures are getting better and better, but they still have a weird look to them, I guess.

Speaker 18 Yeah, they look computer generated, but they'll get better.

Speaker 17 They will. But these pictures from Los Angeles that are the real thing are heartbreaking in a way that I have yet to see any picture done by AI yet.
We'll see. We'll see.
Same thing with text.

Speaker 17 Hasn't been heartbreaking yet. And again, I recommend

Speaker 17 everybody to read that Joan Didian essay if you want to have your heart broken again.

Speaker 17 One of our greatest writers.

Speaker 17 So let's get to our first big story.

Speaker 17 As one headline put it this week, Mark Zuckerberg and Meta are finding new ways to kiss Trump's ass. I would move around to the front, actually, in that one.

Speaker 17 That followed Zuckerberg announcing on Tuesday that Meta is ending its fact-checking program, essentially.

Speaker 17 Meta's platforms will instead use a community note system similar to X that will apparently, quote, reduce censorship. Rules on hate speech are being loosened.

Speaker 17 If you look at what they've done, it's an astonishing thing, the things they've taken out.

Speaker 17 And Meta's content moderation team will be moved from California to Texas, where there is less concern about bias because Texas people have no bias. I've never seen it ever.

Speaker 17 Zuckerberg shared a video, explained his decision. So let's listen.

Speaker 19 The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech.

Speaker 19 So we're going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms.

Speaker 17 I'm going to let you start, Scott, because you went on Morning Joe and had quite a moment. I did the same thing over on the BBC, on the BEEB in London, but go ahead.
Tell me your thoughts. Well,

Speaker 18 the keys to a thriving democracy are threefold. You have to have strong institutions that people respect.

Speaker 18 You have to have shared stories that we're the good guys and we won World War II for the right reasons and Americans' hearts are in the right place and believe in the founding fathers and the rights of people.

Speaker 18 And you also have to have kind of a lot of social capital within smaller networks, whether it's your church or your neighbors, or maybe you served, you know, how you feel about people who also served in the Marines or whatever it might be.

Speaker 18 And slowly but surely, social media is eroding all of those things. And this is just another example of how those three things will continue to come down and be eroded.

Speaker 18 You have somewhere between a half and two-thirds of Americans, depending upon their age, now get their news from social media.

Speaker 18 And today, when I was on Morning Joe, I called Trump an insurrectionist and a rapist. And Mika had to stop the show and say that Trump was found liable for sexual abuse.

Speaker 18 Now, imagine in contrast what you're going to be able to say about anything, health, elections, what you should do when a fire breaks out in the Pacific Palisades on

Speaker 18 Meta. I mean, we are all going into, we are all separating further and further.
And to think that this doesn't have not only implications around candidates or politics, but violence.

Speaker 18 Look what happened in 2017.

Speaker 18 There was violence against the Rohingya. Myanmar.

Speaker 18 And a year later, there were rumors circulated on WhatsApp, Unfettered, and people were being pulled out of cars in small towns in India and hanged because of rumors around

Speaker 18 kidnappings. I mean, this, remember Pizzagate? That started on social media.
So

Speaker 18 four years ago, he called it moderation. Now they call it censorship.
And I got to give it to the guy. I do think he's a brilliant businessman.
He said, okay,

Speaker 18 this guy has threatened to put me in jail.

Speaker 18 I'm going to turn chicken shit and turn it into chicken salad and come up with a way to please him and potentially reduce up to $5 billion of costs in the safety and security team.

Speaker 18 The move to Texas is actually not political. It's a means of quiet firing 30 to 60% of the staff because they won't move.

Speaker 18 And if you take, say he saves three or four of that $5 billion, it trades at a P of 30. 30 times 4 would be 120 billion, owns 50.

Speaker 18 He just made another $18 billion while managing to kiss Mark Zuckerberg's ass.

Speaker 17 No, Donald Trump's ass.

Speaker 18 I'm sorry, excuse me.

Speaker 18 While managing to kiss even more.

Speaker 17 No one wants to kiss Mark Zuckerberg's ass, but go ahead.

Speaker 18 And just a larger point here and the point I made on Joe Scarborough's I broke into my indignant self, preachy self.

Speaker 18 My question is the following. Where are the fucking men?

Speaker 18 Where are the men that recognize, okay, I've made tens of billions of dollars here. I lead a remarkable life.
My kids have incredible opportunity.

Speaker 18 I have a broader selection set of mates than I deserve. People laugh at my jokes.
I get to dress like this, but go ahead. I'm going to live five or ten years longer than most people.

Speaker 18 I get to do remarkable things because of this operating system called America and the blessings of America. And yet I have absolute fucking lutely no fidelity to those values.
None of them.

Speaker 18 What is the point of having this much money and this much power if you have to bend the knee? to a kleptocrat.

Speaker 17 But it's more than that. Let me just say, let me do my little rant now because it's more than just bending the knee.

Speaker 17 Of course he's doing it in his self-interest and his his business interest which is always mark someone was like i think it was on piers morgan he's like are you surprised i'm like no no this is what he's like this is what i've told you he's like for different you know i wrote a piece in the new york times where i was like this guy is the most dangerous person on the planet like he is he has amplified and weaponized everything and then he doesn't want to take responsibility.

Speaker 17 Let me tell you, I've talked to a lot of people inside Facebook and Meta. They are sick to their stomach, Mark, just so you know.

Speaker 17 I know Joel Kaplan Kaplan is kissing your ass to get the job that he got, but let me just be clear. So many people called me this past week.

Speaker 17 The first person who was this first PR person was like, we got to get off threads now. Like, I've had so many calls, sick to their stomach seems to do it.

Speaker 17 And they should be sick to their stomach because you are a sad and shameless weather vane. In four more years, if the Democrats take over, you're going to shift again because that's what you do.

Speaker 17 You have no values whatsoever.

Speaker 17 And one of of the, I thought Will Ramis did a great piece in the Washington Post, of all places, where he cited, he goes, Mark Zuckerberg cited a cultural tipping point to justify dumping fact checks and relaxing hate speech rules.

Speaker 17 Meta ending fact checks in the U.S. made headlines, but the real ballgame here is a broader repudiation of the idea that a company is responsible for bad stuff on its platform.

Speaker 17 As Zuckerberg puts it, bad stuff. Mark, you don't bad stuff.
What thinks he's going to like, like stub a toe? These people, people, you put people in danger.

Speaker 17 The company never really wanted that responsibility, and Trump's election allows them to shrug it off. And

Speaker 17 they never wanted to. That's the thing is, first of all, these fact-checking systems do make mistakes.
So does community notes. So does AI.
But you have to employ, if you want to build your fucking...

Speaker 17 Social media network, you need to have all of them at work. And to impugn these fact checkers, by the way, they have conservative fact checkers.
They're not all libtards, Mark.

Speaker 17 Sorry, they're from conservative publications. If you want want to do that, you need fact checkers that make mistakes and then you correct them.

Speaker 17 You need AI. You need community notes to wholly embrace what they're doing at Twitter on top of it with X is repulsive.
Mark, he hates you.

Speaker 17 Just so you know, they laugh at you behind your back, in front of your back, they laugh at you.

Speaker 17 And the fact that he cannot, he switches his tune. I've had conversations where he says, Kara, AI was going to do this someday.
Kara, community is going to do this.

Speaker 17 Kara, moderation is going to do this. I don't believe a word coming out of your mouth anymore.
Honestly,

Speaker 17 you say mendacious fuck all the time, Scott. And I got to tell you, it's exactly what's happening here.

Speaker 17 Now, secondly, when he put UFC CEO and Trump crony Dana White on the board, that also upset people inside the company.

Speaker 17 And they tamped down the criticism on internal Facebook boards among employees because this guy

Speaker 17 was caught on a videotape hitting his wife.

Speaker 17 His wife hit him, but I spent years, years

Speaker 17 talking to my sons about never hitting a woman. No matter what, if she hits you, I don't care.
Right?

Speaker 17 These are the people he's bringing onto the board of Meta right now because he happens to like doing

Speaker 17 MMA. And by the way, Mark, the reason all those MMI fighters hang with you is because you're rich.
They don't think you're that good.

Speaker 17 It's great to hang out with a rich person. And I'm glad you're doing it.
I'm hoping you're having fun.

Speaker 17 But this, the whole thing couldn't get worse except for what Amazon did about giving Melania $40 million. No, that wasn't even as bad.

Speaker 17 And these, when these guardrails are removed, it is going to be disastrous for people. Scott, take over on your indignancy, please.

Speaker 18 Well, I just, I feel a need to just fact-check myself and disclose that on the international

Speaker 18 markets around Meta, I do believe they're going to maintain some fact-checking and safety and security because I do recognize that there's real danger overseas for people.

Speaker 18 I mean, this has so many negative ramifications, one of which being that News Corps, when they say SmartMatic and Dominion have been weaponized in an election and they knew that was not true and decided to put it out anyways or promote it because they knew it would tickle the censors of their viewers.

Speaker 18 And then Dominion says, you have defamed us because this has hurt our business and you knew you were lying. And the courts say, yes, this qualifies a defamation.

Speaker 18 You have to pay them $774 $774 million.

Speaker 18 And

Speaker 18 then Iger's worried about a suit from the president, a retribution from the president, and ABC has to pay.

Speaker 18 The companies that are now having to spend a ton of money on moderation and are chilled and scared and have to stop an interview with me because I call someone a rapist instead of a sexual abuser.

Speaker 18 Folks, be careful.

Speaker 17 Slow your roll.

Speaker 18 Everyone from News Corps, from the Wall Street Journal to the BBC to Wikipedia to the Washington Post, they're all shrinking and going away.

Speaker 18 And there's been all these articles recently about some anchors, including anchors we know and love, having to take pay cuts. So congratulations, your lamestream media is going extinct.

Speaker 18 And you're going to have to get all of your news from social media, which is a fucking food fight around whichever algorithm grabs the most novel, i.e. conspiracy, i.e.

Speaker 18 false narrative to punch out there. I mean, these traditional media outlets do play an important role, and they are having their windpipes are being crushed right now.

Speaker 18 They can't compete with companies that

Speaker 18 have no liability.

Speaker 17 That have no regulations, that have no rules, that have no liability. They cannot.

Speaker 18 It's a great business model, folks. And

Speaker 18 the fact that I could go on meta and say incredibly defamatory things about people with fake accounts and say ridiculous things about health claims or whatever it might be.

Speaker 18 And the more ridiculous it is, the more inorganic reach it gets because the algorithms love it.

Speaker 18 I mean, we are literally moving to an idiocracy.

Speaker 18 And the companies that we're serving at, that played a key role, whether you think it's News Corps, whether you think it's Comcast, they are having the oxygen sucked out of the room.

Speaker 17 There's two things I can say.

Speaker 17 The video, you must go watch it because it's full of things that are not true about a lot of things. He was just, he took a swipe at the media because he's a mad little man.

Speaker 17 He's mad because they're mean to him. You know,

Speaker 17 he actually said, if you want to leave because I've done this, you're virtue signaling. No, Mark, they just think you're an asshole.
Let's just like, I'm sounding like Bill Maher.

Speaker 17 They just think you're an asshole. They're not virtue signaling.
They think you're an asshole. That's why they're leaving.
And you make shitty products compared to, say, a Steve Jobs, by the way.

Speaker 17 And let me just tell you, Steve Jobs would have been horrified with all of these, all of these behaviors. Absolutely.
He believed in the free press.

Speaker 18 From a shareholder standpoint, I hate to say this, Kara, it's absolutely the right move. And did you see the words on his video?

Speaker 17 I get it.

Speaker 18 He said the words where it was, I was like, oh my God, these guys are so good and so mendacious. It was more speech and fewer mistakes.

Speaker 17 Oh, right.

Speaker 18 Is the way they framed his video? No, it's not. It's less moderation, more

Speaker 18 misinformation. That would have been the title of this video.

Speaker 17 And then they wrapped themselves in the First Amendment stuff. I don't think they've read it.
I think it's too long for them.

Speaker 17 I mean, it's first, so they should be able to find it, but they haven't read it. I mean, it's ridiculous.

Speaker 17 And then what they do is they get, I was on an interesting panel with Piers Morgan because it was some right-wing people and stuff like that. And I was like, don't you see what they're doing?

Speaker 17 They're trying to get us all fighting with each other.

Speaker 17 And then they're sitting up at Mar-a-Lago with President Trump getting all the goodies because they're going to make us argue over Invermectin or this or that or the other thing.

Speaker 17 And they're all reaping the benefits of that. Let me just tell you, right-wing, they're not your friends.
And by the way, a lot of those right-wing people get that.

Speaker 17 If you notice Bannon, Loomer, Charlie Kirk, they're suddenly on an anti-tech guy thing because

Speaker 17 they know

Speaker 17 a thief when they see them. And Walt Mossberg, many years ago, called a lot, especially he called Zuckerberg an information thief.
And the Google people, that's what they are.

Speaker 17 They're information thieves stealing our souls. They're stealing our information.
They're stealing everything.

Speaker 17 and without anyone in place to stop them in any way whatsoever, including great senators like Senator Klobuchar. And Trump will hand it all to them for a payment or to get close to them.

Speaker 17 And maybe he, you know, there was a lot of conservatives who were quite worried about the power of big tech, and I hope they continue to be.

Speaker 17 And I don't really care the reason if they think it's censorship or whatever. I would like some laws to go into place to stop this nonsense.

Speaker 17 The last thing is, of course, after not putting political content before the election, now instagram head animaseri who also runs threads say they'll be adding political content recommendations on instagram and threads after the election interesting that's an interesting development of course because these people are opportunistic at every single turn whether it was beacon way back in the day whether it was anything they do is always in their self-interest just keep that in mind um Should Blue Sky seize the moment here?

Speaker 17 That's my last question, then we'll move on.

Speaker 18 Well, it's interesting. Blue Sky is supposedly raising money money at a valuation of 600 million.
And

Speaker 18 I immediately thought, Jesus Christ, now I got off of Twitter. Now am I going to have to get off of threads and Instagram? I mean, at some point, do we have to get off those platforms?

Speaker 18 Blue Sky is raising money. It's growing its user base by a million people a day.
I thought, wow, that seemed

Speaker 18 pretty inexpensive. But this is.

Speaker 17 Yeah.

Speaker 18 I don't know. I'm kind of befuddled as to what's going to happen.

Speaker 18 It feels like any real source of information that doesn't I mean there's so many layers here quite frankly I'm so pissed off

Speaker 18 that because we have a guy who looks like he's about to go into hospice as president

Speaker 18 Trump and Musk are president

Speaker 18 We can't even we can't even maintain any semblance of a media presence because the people around Biden aren't confident enough to put him on stage in front of a place where he might actually have to answer questions.

Speaker 18 So President-elect Trump is basically President Trump, and they're already making public policy speeches. Elon Musk has more power than President Biden right now.

Speaker 18 And all President Biden can do is have a highly scripted moment where he wraps a metal around Bono. I mean, this is, it is, I have never

Speaker 18 yay,

Speaker 18 yay, and meanwhile, everybody, and then we talk, and then Trump gets on and starts talking about invading Greenland and we all look over there it is it is just insane that we have we don't have the leadership and we don't have the balls or the charisma to get out there and push back on the narrative here

Speaker 18 where are the fucking Democrats here Elon and President-elect Trump are dominating

Speaker 17 the media landscape right now you do see a few in the tech so you see Cuban speaking out you see a bunch of them they they are trying they are trying I think they're going to get, I've gotten lots of emails from some tech people.

Speaker 17 They're like, I'm fucking sick of this shit. You know what I mean? And I think they're getting ready to get up again.
We certainly have gotten up, I think, don't you think?

Speaker 17 I have to say, I got to say, speaking of getting up, the very best insults were Jimmy Kimmel this week.

Speaker 18 Mark Zuckerberg showed up to

Speaker 20 debase himself at Mar-a-Lago shortly after the election. Today, he released a suspiciously Trump-friendly announcement.

Speaker 18 Hey, everyone.

Speaker 19 I want to talk about something important today.

Speaker 20 What? The fact that you're dressed like a molly dealer from Chechnya?

Speaker 17 No?

Speaker 20 Oh, okay, go on.

Speaker 19 First, we're going to get rid of fact checkers and replace them with community notes similar to X starting in the U.S.

Speaker 20 Oh, good. Facebook's going to be similar to X now.
No fact checkers. This is like Del Taco announcing they're done with health inspections.

Speaker 17 I thought it was great. I thought some of our comics, getting back to comics, are doing a fantastic job tearing these people down.

Speaker 17 I think Daily Show did a great job.

Speaker 17 They're doing some really good,

Speaker 17 you know, social commentary. And I know we don't have the power.
We just don't have the power to actually change things. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break.

Speaker 17 When we come back, we'll talk about Donald Trump's plans for world domination and take a listener mail question about responsible podcasting.

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Speaker 22 Before you know it, you find yourself drowning in software and processes instead of focusing on what matters, growing your business.

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Speaker 17 Scott, we're back with our second big story. Speaking of which, you just referenced it.
President-like Donald Trump seems fixated on geography this week.

Speaker 17 He's talking about annexing Greenland, renaming the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America, reclaiming the Panama Canal, making Canada 51st state. A lot of this is is just nonsense, and he knows it.

Speaker 17 He's also considering declaring a national economic emergency to provide legal justification for his tariffs on allies and adversaries, according to CNN.

Speaker 17 Greenland has a lot of minerals. There's a reason to possibly do a deal with them.
That's certainly true. And it's a big military, important military spot.

Speaker 17 The Gulf of Mexico thing is just inane. The Panama Canal, we could do a deal down there if we wanted to work better.

Speaker 17 And Canada, Canadians have got to be fucking pissed as hell, and they never get pissed.

Speaker 17 A lot of this is, you know, chest thumping, I think, on some things, but we look idiotic.

Speaker 17 I did love

Speaker 17 the new head of Mexico who got in front of a map and was like, I think we'll call America Nuevo, Mexico. And she sort of slapped back at him, making fun of him.
But we're a laughing stock.

Speaker 18 Well, look, Panama, the Panama Canal is a small business.

Speaker 18 It's strategically and militarily quite benign.

Speaker 18 It's been kept open. It hasn't been politicized.
And the total business of the Panama Canal, it made about $5 billion. It's just not, quite frankly, unless it was threatened,

Speaker 18 it's not that strategically important. It serves its purpose, but it's not a big business.
It doesn't have a lot of economic value. Greenland is an entirely different matter

Speaker 18 because of global warming and the fact that so much of the ice in the polar cap has melted. You know, did you ever see those shows?

Speaker 18 There was an amazing show, I think it was called The Terror by Ridley Scott about some British

Speaker 18 explorers who tried to

Speaker 18 find the passage across.

Speaker 18 I forget what it's called, but that the Northwest Passage, right?

Speaker 18 Well, Russia's lost access to a warm water port with Syria, but if all of a sudden the polar cap melts, a bunch of different countries are going to have access to everybody else for their navy.

Speaker 18 To the Arctic, yeah. And so that is strategic.
Greenland is strategic.

Speaker 18 Everyone talks about, in terms of scenario planning around World War III, that Greenland would play an incredibly important role in terms of refueling bombers and submarines. So that is strategic.

Speaker 18 But what I don't get is when you start

Speaker 18 on a more metal level, what you don't realize, or what we don't realize, or what I would say Trump doesn't realize, as powerful as we are, we're about a third of the world's economy.

Speaker 18 And without allies, we haven't accomplished anything on our own. Greatness is in the agency of others.

Speaker 18 If you want to expel Hussein from Kuwait, if you want to take on Nazi Germany, if you want to implement sanctions, you have to have the cooperation of your allies.

Speaker 18 And every president has understood that until this one. So when he starts saying dumb shit like we're going to rename it the Gulf of America or starts threatening places like Greenland, he just,

Speaker 18 all he's doing is saying, you know what? We're going to have fewer and fewer allies around the world. And at some point, he's going to need allies.

Speaker 18 When, you know, if China goes into Taiwan and we want to expel them and we want to do it crisply, he's going to need Japanese intelligence. He's going to need South Korean reconnaissance.

Speaker 18 And these people are going to go, we don't trust this guy.

Speaker 18 They're going to start coming up with

Speaker 18 contingency plans to form alliances against him. Now, having said that,

Speaker 18 there is an unintended consequential benefit here, and that is most Western nations now are massively increasing their military budgets because they don't feel they can count on the military umbrella.

Speaker 17 Defense stocks are rising. That's right.

Speaker 18 Because

Speaker 18 everyone from Germany, you know, these places are all saying, we, we've got to take our military budgets up.

Speaker 18 Having said that, that is probably a good thing because they were too reliant on Big Brother, who is benign Big Brother. And now they're like, Big Brother's fucking crazy and is addicted to meth.

Speaker 18 We don't know what is going on with this guy. So there are so many different ideas and Bremer on the pod yesterday.
There are just so many different layers to this.

Speaker 18 We are in uncharted territory with a guy who pops up and says, we want Greenland. I mean, that's where you're focused.

Speaker 17 Right. You know, again, you know, and of course, Musk backed him.
I mean, they want the minerals there.

Speaker 17 There's all these rare earth minerals there, and China's been sucking up all the rare earth minerals around the world. Get it.
Why don't you just say that? Why don't you just say that?

Speaker 18 But we're just, we buy them right now.

Speaker 18 It'd be a lot less expensive to continue to buy them than try and take over Greenland.

Speaker 17 Exactly. I mean, just, why not just say that, though? Why not just just have a code like here? This is an important thing.

Speaker 18 I mean, I'd Advil, I don't invade the 7-Eleven.

Speaker 18 You did.

Speaker 17 I saw you do it, but you didn't do it. You went in.
It's a whole team, and of course, you failed because you couldn't open them. That's my breathwork guy.

Speaker 17 With your breathwork, you're the least scary duo.

Speaker 18 I'm like, let me put this drum on your chest. Lie back.
I'm going to get a slurpee. I'm going to get a slurpee and a four-day-old hot dog, and we're going to do some sound work here.

Speaker 17 And these right-wing people are all like, well, actually, it's genius. I'm like, oh my God, he's like the crazy guy in the corner.
He's not genius. He's just crazy.

Speaker 17 My worst part was that Don Jr., he went with Charlie Kirk and some other guy who's like head of office personnel in the White House, three idiots.

Speaker 17 I call them Five Head and the Morons as they're the new Eurovision band. They went to Greenland and they're taking selfies there.
Like literally, you people, you're morons.

Speaker 17 You're absolute morons and you're making the U.S. like more.

Speaker 17 They're like someone on one of the, someone said in one of of the commentaries, they're like those guys in high school or in middle school that used to sit back and write boobs on a calculator and laugh hysterically.

Speaker 18 Yeah, but it's just such, it's such a lack of respect for people. It's, all right, you're an unelected rich kid's son who's, all right,

Speaker 18 and you show up in some sort of like military

Speaker 18 government. You make us look like such assholes.

Speaker 17 Moron, you're such a, you're so, you have no game whatsoever. Speaking of no game, Trump's BFF, Elon Musk, is focusing his attention on Europe, once again, obsessed with...
pedophiles.

Speaker 17 His new nemesis is UK Prime Minister, I think it's Kair Starmer.

Speaker 18 Kier Starmer, yeah.

Speaker 17 Kier Starmer. He's also endorsed Germany's far-right party.
He's pushing out all sorts of conspiracy theories and misinformation, particularly about these grooming gangs.

Speaker 17 I've got a bunch of information.

Speaker 17 Even the person who took over the thing said Starmer did a very good job and moved it forward, rather. There was a slowness at the beginning of it.
There's no question of that.

Speaker 17 But there's no proof of the things Elon's alleging, at least.

Speaker 17 They were definitely slow, but he is bullying the world. He's worked in the U.S.
and now

Speaker 17 he's moved on. And these European leaders all released statements seemingly

Speaker 17 together. They pretended it was apart, but they were all the same statement.
What's it like there in England?

Speaker 17 Obviously, people are always concerned about issues around children being abused, but he's taking, he could give five fucks about these women at all. That's right.
You know, at all.

Speaker 17 He's using it for something else, probably to attack their online safety bill that he doesn't like, et cetera, et cetera. What is your take from living there?

Speaker 18 You know, the honest answer is I don't know.

Speaker 18 I'm in a bubble here, but occasionally my bubble at least is somewhat translucent. I can see out of it every once in a while.

Speaker 18 In London, I'm in a bubble that's totally opaque, and I just don't feel qualified to.

Speaker 18 The only thing I would say is just looking at it from a game theory standpoint, at some point, these Western nations are going to get together and say, we need contingency plans where we don't necessarily rely on America.

Speaker 18 And

Speaker 18 it's really, it's dangerous for us because what people don't realize and they take for granted is the North American Treaty Organization, NATO, has probably been the most important alliance.

Speaker 18 It has kept a peace since the end of World War II. The fact you attack one, you attack all of us.

Speaker 18 And together, you've seen this happen in repelling what was supposed to be this ferocious force in Ukraine because NATO and Europe and the U.S. rallied around it.

Speaker 18 I think the reason that Xi has decided not to climb into Taiwan is probably saying, okay, if the West binds together under the auspices of the West in cooperation, you know, we always, we're like siblings.

Speaker 18 We fight, but when shit gets real, we, we, we have each other's back in the West. And I worry that's no longer going to be the case.

Speaker 18 I worry that we're going to be divided because the biggest brother with the best job, who has the most money and is, quite frankly, the strongest, is just unreliable, has just gone off, is just kind of,

Speaker 18 we don't know how to deal with this person.

Speaker 18 And this is not, this is a huge security risk for us because I think a lot of nations will notice and think this is the time to strike. They're divided.

Speaker 14 They'll argue over it.

Speaker 18 We have conservative commentators who seem to be more fond of Russia.

Speaker 18 I mean, at some point, point, I can see certain conservative commentators, if she were to go into Taiwan, thinking, yeah, that's the, you know, that's a, that's what a real man does.

Speaker 18 I just, we're just

Speaker 18 what I'm hoping for is, and I think there's a little bit of this across Europe, or when I speak a lot in Europe, what I sense is they're thinking, okay, we just got to get through the next couple of years.

Speaker 18 He's getting older. And things will calm down again.
I think people, what's interesting, and I was talking to people in Brazil, they give America the benefit of the doubt.

Speaker 18 They seem in some ways less freaked out than we are because they think American institutions are so.

Speaker 17 Oh, I think the, I find the Europeans freaked out. Everyone I talk to today is just over the, they're like, what is he doing, Elon Musk?

Speaker 18 Well, Elon, Elon is just a different,

Speaker 18 I don't know, it's so hard. There's so many moving parts here.
They're so unpredictable.

Speaker 18 And it's not, I don't,

Speaker 18 I find myself almost sort of like resigned to like, okay, I'll just see what happens tomorrow tomorrow because I don't know how to process this.

Speaker 17 Let me tell you, someone from Facebook who Amanda ran into

Speaker 17 said,

Speaker 17 said something about, doesn't like what's happening there and said something like, just let it happen. Just let them do it.
Let them see how it turns out when they do it.

Speaker 17 I think a lot of people are in that zone. Like, okay, let's watch this play out.

Speaker 18 Yeah, catch the car.

Speaker 17 Catch the car. Go for it.
It's all yours. Like, that's a little dangerous for some people, but

Speaker 17 a lot of people seem resigned that way. Okay, Scott, let's pivot to a listener question.

Speaker 17 This question comes from Stacey in Los Angeles. Stacey, I hope you're safe and you're doing well.
Let's listen. Hi, Karen.
Scott.

Speaker 34 Question for you with all of the talk about podcasts recently. As traditional media consumption continues to wane and people are increasingly turning to media like podcasts for their news,

Speaker 34 What measures can we take, you take, everyone take, to stem the tide of myths and disinformation in this space?

Speaker 34 There's obviously been lots of discussion about regulating social media, but what about podcasts? What are the potential checks and balances when it comes to things like fact checking?

Speaker 34 And I think my biggest question is really, how can we collectively encourage responsible podcast listening and producing? Wanted to hear your thoughts on this. Love the show and never miss it.

Speaker 34 Keep up the good work. Oh, and this is Stacey in Los Los Angeles.

Speaker 17 Thanks. Oh, Stacey, that's a great question.
You know, actually, we do have regulations, libel, defamation. You know, even Joe Rogan can be sued, FYI.

Speaker 17 And he says a lot of nutty stuff when he gets on there.

Speaker 17 You know, it just depends on the listenership. Some people just like, for example, those pro.

Speaker 17 I use Joey Rogan as the example. Some of his stuff is good.
Some of it's nutty. Some of it's absolutely inaccurate.
And he does not pay, seem to pay a price for that. He does get pilloried.

Speaker 17 At some point, probably someone will sue him and he gets to be sued sued just like we do or anybody else. So there is a check and balance on most media, just not Mark Zuckerberg.

Speaker 17 So, you know, I think it's there, you have to pick and choose your podcasts as you feel like, especially in areas you know, that seems right, that doesn't seem right.

Speaker 17 You have to, we have pack checkers on our, on our podcasts,

Speaker 17 as Scott and I know, we have things get changed on our podcasts when we make mistakes.

Speaker 17 And so we think that's important. I have them over on on.
I think you have them over on Prof G, Scott, checking, make sure you're accurate.

Speaker 17 Because accuracy in the end, away from opinions and our thoughts on things,

Speaker 17 accuracy is really important because then we look like horses' ass if they're not correct. Scott?

Speaker 18 Yeah, look, I do think in podcasting, there is, it's become sort of the, I don't know, it's the new, it's the new lamestream media in the sense that it reflects some of the same dynamics of media.

Speaker 18 It's ad supported. There's, there's fact-checking.
There is

Speaker 18 where, as you said, we're liable. We're legally liable.

Speaker 18 If we say something false, we know it's false, and it defames or slanders someone or something, and it's malicious, we can incur economic harm, and we have to pay for insurance.

Speaker 18 So it is similar to media that way.

Speaker 18 Also, the most popular podcast over the last several years in news has been the daily from the New York Times.

Speaker 18 And there is a lot of conservative, I think it bifurcates, and that is, I think a lot of podcasts

Speaker 18 are not news, they're commentators, and people have to decide whether they find it entertaining or interesting. I think the key to trust is checking several outlets from kind of different angles.

Speaker 18 Like go to the FT, go to the BBC,

Speaker 18 and then check it against something more conservative, the Wall Street Journal, whatever it might be.

Speaker 18 But there is no, it used to be, I didn't get nearly as many questions around who can I trust. It's become a big issue.

Speaker 18 And there are now, I think the podcasts that are sort of rising to the top are one of two things.

Speaker 18 They're either incredibly entertaining, or people think if I'm going to listen to the daily, it has a bias. It's the New York Times.

Speaker 18 I hated the New York Tated, absolutely hated the interview with Anthony Blinken. I thought the reporter that did that brought so much bias in her, the way she framed her questions.
That's Lulu Garcia.

Speaker 18 But go ahead. Having said that,

Speaker 18 they do fact check. They take it very seriously.
And,

Speaker 17 you know,

Speaker 18 is it a word salad for saying I don't know?

Speaker 17 Yeah. Well, it's just like regular media, Stacey.

Speaker 17 We've got, that's what we have to do. And we use fact checking.
Every podcast is different. Most of them do use fact checkers.

Speaker 17 I'll tell you that, many of them, because they're worried about the things that you worry about and getting it wrong. And especially,

Speaker 17 especially ours. We think it's really important.
And we take things out when things are wrong and fix them all the time.

Speaker 17 Anyway, if you've got a question of your own that you'd like answered, send it our way. Go to nymag.com/slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-Pivot.

Speaker 17 All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions.

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Speaker 17 Okay, Scott, let's hear a prediction.

Speaker 18 Well, okay, so collectively we're disappointed in the lack of leadership, spine, testicles, manhood that is being represented by our tech leaders not standing up for the American values they've benefited so greatly from.

Speaker 18 Having said that, just looking at it very unemotionally, the AI company of 2025

Speaker 18 is going to be meta.

Speaker 18 And if you look at the kind of grist or the fossil fuel for AI,

Speaker 18 it's raw training data. And Meta has more unique human language data than Google, Reddit, Wikipedia, and X combined because of the amount of time and content on it.

Speaker 18 Terms of attention, nine out of 10 internet users,

Speaker 18 Sans China, are active on Meta platforms monthly. And in terms of compute, get this, Meta has purchased more NVIDIA Hopper GPUs, the latest and most advanced AI hardware, than any U.S.

Speaker 18 company other than Microsoft, giving it unmatched AI training and deployment capacity. And you're also going to love this one.

Speaker 18 And I just want to acknowledge this, while we were early and I think right around

Speaker 18 mixed or around

Speaker 18 VR headsets, you know what the tech product of 2025 is?

Speaker 17 No, what is it?

Speaker 18 Meta's Ray-Band smart glasses. They're sold out in the majority of stores in Europe.
They have greater margins. They retail for 300 bucks.
They look good.

Speaker 18 The Financial Times reported that Meta plans to add a small display to the Ray-Bands in 2025. The display would likely be used to show notifications or responses for Meta's virtual assistant.

Speaker 18 The tens of billions of dollars of investing and the steadfast commitment he's had to technology, micro cameras,

Speaker 18 and VR, when you match their data,

Speaker 18 when you match their consumer interface, when you match their GPUs that they're purchasing, and you match their progress in

Speaker 18 smart glasses or hardware, I think that the AI company of 2025 is going to be meta. I think this guy is really fucking smart.

Speaker 17 All right, you know what he is, but he's an asshole.

Speaker 17 The thing that

Speaker 17 I think is going to might happen, and I know you like to insult Apple, is they too have a lot of great stuff. I think, as you say, the

Speaker 17 second bird gets the whatever. What's your expression?

Speaker 18 Second mouse gets the cheese.

Speaker 17 Mouse gets the cheese. They'll come in with a glasses that's better looking, better done, possibly, and hopefully do that.

Speaker 17 They've done that a number of times and used all the experience they've had with their stuff and created glasses that you that are. And by the way, I like the meta ones.

Speaker 17 They have limited use, but I like the use that they have, if that makes sense.

Speaker 17 And I like that it has limited use, but I feel like Apple could possibly come in here and grab it from them if they wanted. Well,

Speaker 18 that's what they do. But I just look at the data.
I look at the investment he's making.

Speaker 17 It's a lot of money to spend on glasses, though.

Speaker 18 The data they have, the money he's spending on GPUs and the access, the consumer access they have. And I just thought, oh my gosh,

Speaker 18 this guy is playing chess.

Speaker 18 Anyways, that's my prediction. Do you have any?

Speaker 17 No, I don't. I don't have a prediction right now.

Speaker 17 By the way, people really enjoyed our debate about the post, so we'll do some more of it as it moves forward.

Speaker 18 As it moves forward. I want to run the style section.

Speaker 17 Can I run the fashion section or the style section yes a hundred percent scott i want i'll do the movie reviews yes i'll do the tv reviews yes to anything scott wants that's how i'll say it that's scott scott's part of the package oh thanks i like it i'm on board then i hope it works out for you it's a great idea i'm on my seventh billionaire and they all kind of like it i'm just telling you i'm in for 30 000 okay if if i don't get through to jeff i'm getting through to lauren that's what i'm gonna somehow finagle a lunch with lauren because i think she's the brains of the operation lauren you're the brains of the operation we all know it anyway that's the show.

Speaker 17 Elsewhere in the Scott and Kara universe this week, as he mentioned, Scott kicked off the year with Ian Bremer to discuss the geopolitical state of play and the top risks for 2025. Let's listen.

Speaker 18 The U.S. in particular has just fundamentally rejected the idea that we're going to be global leaders supporting rule of law and multilateral institutions.
It's America first, baby.

Speaker 13 It's our way or the highway.

Speaker 35 And we're going to tell other countries, you're going to work with us us and do the things we want our way,

Speaker 35 or there's going to be hell to pay.

Speaker 17 And so, yeah, that sounds a lot like a reversion to the law of the jungle, that the powerful and strongest countries and people get to do what they want. Scott, that sounds like a great interview.

Speaker 17 It sounds really nice, really well done. I love Ian.

Speaker 18 Yeah, and his and my back and forth actually got quite salty over

Speaker 18 Israel,

Speaker 18 but we're friends. And he and I have a similar relationship to you, and that is we can disagree and still like each other.

Speaker 18 But

Speaker 18 I'm a big fan. He's my Alec Baldwin.
Alec Baldwin has hosted SNL 17 times and Ian has now been on Prof G eight times.

Speaker 17 Yeah,

Speaker 17 he's a good Perry and thruster with you, so to speak. And I'm not, that's not sexual in any way.
I know. Perian thruster.

Speaker 17 A little hot. I don't know what that means.
A little hot, a little hot.

Speaker 18 Do you all have a strap on?

Speaker 18 Where's the battery going, the Perian thruster?

Speaker 17 No, I've done that sword fighting. You keep your mind out of the gutter.

Speaker 17 I hope your your breath work went well with him. Anyway, you can find the rest of that interview over at the Prof GPod.
We'll be back on Tuesday with more pivot.

Speaker 17 And again, to the people of Los Angeles, I love Los Angeles. One of my, and so does Scott.

Speaker 17 And I just want to note that California, Hollywood, Silicon Valley, everything else contributes so much to this country. It's a giver.
state. Great point.

Speaker 17 You should worry about wither California and stop ducking on it because it's a giver state. Guess lots of red states are not.

Speaker 17 And so you should hope that everything goes well in Los Angeles and everywhere else. It contributes so much to this economy.
Such an important thing.

Speaker 17 You should get in there and help and do whatever you can to help the citizens there. We're really sorry for what's happening there.
Sagat, read us out.

Speaker 18 Today's show is produced by Larry Names, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Andretod engineered this episode.
Thanks also to Jubros, Mia Severio, and Dan Shulan.

Speaker 18 Nishak Kurwa 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.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 1 Support for the show comes from Odo.

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

Speaker 21 One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting.

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Speaker 24 This is where Odo comes in.

Speaker 25 It's the only business software you'll ever need.

Speaker 5 Odo is an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that handles everything.

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Speaker 24 It's time to put the clutter aside and focus on what really matters, running your business.

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