Joe and Mika's Mar-a-Lago Visit, Big Tech Derails KOSA, and Guest Kristy Caylor

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Speaker 4 I brought politics, sex,

Speaker 4 wicked.

Speaker 4 I am literally the Dave Chappelle of the Cultural Zeitgeist.

Speaker 5 Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.
I'm Kara Swisher, the end of my cold.

Speaker 4 And I'm Scott Galloway. Yeah.

Speaker 5 How do I sound, Scott?

Speaker 4 You sound better.

Speaker 5 Better. Although it was an exhausting weekend, I had Sal's birthday, so we had a million three-year-olds running around.
So I had plenty of time to rest. That's a lot.
That's a lot. I know.

Speaker 5 It was a lot. Where are you now?

Speaker 4 Son Yostoy in Mexico, in Cabo San Lucas, at the Baja Summit.

Speaker 4 Yeah, where I'm meeting people who will say things like, yeah, after selling my company, I decided to take a year and really focus on my sleep.

Speaker 4 Not exaggerating.

Speaker 5 Wait, what is a Baja Summit? So in the world, that's a good question.

Speaker 4 It's a community, you know, God, everything's a community now. But these young, interesting people got together and bought a mountain somewhere and then started inviting people.

Speaker 4 The way I would describe it is learning man.

Speaker 4 And that is during the day, it's a bunch of TED Talks. And at night, everybody does X and listens to DJs.

Speaker 4 And, you know, you meet people in vertical farming who are trying to explain why they're poly or not poly.

Speaker 4 Polyculing.

Speaker 4 A lot of guys in their 50s who either, my sense is they're mostly rich kids who have pretend jobs, who wear beads, and are like, I don't know, one twist of psychotic fade away from being Jim Jones.

Speaker 4 It feels very culty, but it's also very interesting, and they get good speakers. And it's also, it's a lot of fun.
Everybody's really friendly.

Speaker 4 They've done a, it's an interesting thing. It's quite unique.
I don't know how.

Speaker 5 Wait, how did you get invited to this Young Persons Thing? Young Persons Thing Academy Festival.

Speaker 4 So I don't know if you've heard but i i speak quite a bit and yeah they invited me at summit at sea two years ago and i did that and i really oh it's these people i really enjoyed it and they said do you want to do the cabo thing and i have speaking gigs out on the west coast so and rather than giving me a speaking fee which they don't do they let me bring a bunch of people so i brought a bunch of my friends who like me are in their arrested adolescents midlife crisis and so we're all partying down here it's a ton of fun i'm really enjoying myself so man children in other words you're not listening to any of the speeches are you I don't go to other people's content, let's be clear.

Speaker 4 I'm not interested in what anyone else has to say.

Speaker 5 Is there anything you learn from it?

Speaker 4 I had a really illuminating conversation.

Speaker 4 I had like a two-hour lunch Arnold Palmer sojourn meetup with Jessica Yellen, and she always kind of helps me understand what's going on in the world and the media.

Speaker 4 And I find her very thoughtful and very interesting.

Speaker 5 Oh, that's good.

Speaker 4 I listened to, you know, Peter Diamandes talk about, you know, that we're going to be growing ears in our refrigerators and all the other crazy shit that's not going to happen.

Speaker 5 Oh, Oh, Jesus.

Speaker 5 And what else?

Speaker 4 The woman who runs OnlyFans spoke.

Speaker 4 That was sort of interesting. Creator economy, if you will.

Speaker 5 That has nothing to do with life extension, but okay.

Speaker 4 Sure. You know, a lot of biohacking.
It's, I don't, I'm pretty sure you would hate it. I would hate it.
Yeah, you would hate it. But it's,

Speaker 4 yeah, I think it's fun. And

Speaker 5 I'm open-minded these days. You kind of have to be, don't you?

Speaker 5 We've got a lot to get today, including how Trump's cabinet picks are moving markets. Plus, our friend friend at Pivot is Christy Kaler, the founder and CEO of Trashy.

Speaker 5 That's kind of your name, my name for you, and clothing, recycling, and rewards platform. We've got, you know, there's a lot going on.

Speaker 5 You saw Joe and you over here in the real world, Joe and Mika shared on Morning Joe that they went down to Mar-a-Lago.

Speaker 5 Speaking of trips and sojourns, I don't think unless they were hanging out with Elon, I'm not sure there were any psychedelics happening.

Speaker 5 But to meet Trump face to face for the first time in seven years to, quote, restart communications, uh even though she i think he called her dumb as or something like that and he he would he was passing around information about joe killing uh one of his aides but let me have mika try to explain what they thought was important to meet with trump let's listen and for those asking why we would go speak to the president-elect during such fraught times especially between us i guess i would ask back,

Speaker 6 why wouldn't we? Five years of political warfare has deeply divided Washington and the country.

Speaker 6 We have been as clear as we know how in expressing our deep concerns about President Trump's actions and words in the coarsening of public debate.

Speaker 6 But for nearly 80 million Americans, election denialism, public trials, and January 6th were not as important as the issues that moved them to send Donald Trump back to the White House with their vote.

Speaker 6 Joe and I realize it's time to do something different. And that starts with not only talking about Donald Trump, but also talking with him.

Speaker 5 What do you think of this move? I mean, a lot, they're getting a lot of clapback, largely because they were like really, at some points, I'm like, calm down, Joe and Mika, about Donald Trump.

Speaker 5 But it's a pretty big shift for them, given how loud they were. And so, you know, essentially, calling them a fascist every morning on morning television.

Speaker 4 I think they're doing exactly what they should be doing. I don't, he's the president.
They command the highest rated show on MSNBC for four hours each morning. They talk a lot about politics.

Speaker 4 So to engage with the freely elected president, I'm surprised at the pushback. I think that's exactly what they should be doing.
Maybe, and what am I missing here?

Speaker 5 I think they were particularly vehement. It's interesting.
A lot of people who are like, he's such a fascist, he's a dictator, are now

Speaker 5 going the opposite way. So which, who do you believe? Did they ever believe that?

Speaker 5 And he had, he did say some pretty salty things about him, beyond belief, salty,

Speaker 5 including, I think she called her dumb as a prick. I forget what he called her.
Something about her facelift, this and that. It was pretty ugly.

Speaker 5 And then, but they didn't say what happened at this meeting. If they're going to be real reporters, I get it.
Otherwise, I'm not really clear. They didn't say what happened at the meeting.

Speaker 5 It was on background. But what's the, I don't, I don't know.

Speaker 4 It just seemed they were super vehement and now they're shifting rather quickly, but I guess well the far right when people who are the sig of fans in the media they get criticism the they in my opinion they were I like Joe and Mika because A, I think it's great TV.

Speaker 4 I think they just do a fantastic job. Two, I think they've they've haven't pulled any punches.
They call it as they see it. And I quite frankly, I think it reflects what

Speaker 4 well both on the president and on them. He's the president.
If they're going to have a four-hour show every morning and talk about politics, to have a direct dialogue with him, I think, is important.

Speaker 4 They're putting their egos aside. He said some insulting things.
Fine. He's the president.
We'll go down there and talk to him.

Speaker 4 And I also think it reflects well on him to a certain extent that he's engaging with people in the media who've been critical of him. So I don't, I see this as a feature, not a bug.

Speaker 4 I don't understand why people seem so triggered by it.

Speaker 5 I just think when someone's, it's interesting because I know you talked to Charlemagne, the God, but he was talking about this.

Speaker 5 He called Donald Trump fascist, and then he was sort of perplexed why Biden would be so friendly, given he went on and on about, I think it was about credibility and believability.

Speaker 5 If you really think this, what are you doing? I think it's a good thing to discuss. They felt like a branch of the Democratic Party to me.
That's what they felt like when they were going on and on.

Speaker 5 I don't think they're journalists at all. I think they're discussioners or

Speaker 5 something. Commentators.
But I mean, then actually, I mean, she spent a lot of time with people who had been dying of abortions because of Roe.

Speaker 5 I don't know. It just, they were, I felt like they were a branch of the Democratic Party.
So that's just me. I guess I heard them differently than you might have.

Speaker 4 Yeah, but you're, I think if the president's people called Kara Swisher and said, we'd like you to come down and talk to the president.

Speaker 5 I think they called him, but go ahead. Or

Speaker 4 whatever it might be. I think you do a service to the country and to people to go down, be Kara Swisher or be Joe and Mika, ask hard questions and try and engage.

Speaker 4 We need more, I don't want to call it forgiveness or grace or generosity, but we need more reasons to interact with one another as opposed to just writing each other off.

Speaker 5 Yeah, that's true. It's just these two.

Speaker 5 They were super in Trump's tank and then they were super anti and now they're like, I want to know what happened at the fucking meeting. That's all.

Speaker 5 Like, I don't believe why they're keeping it from us.

Speaker 5 And so I don't know. It feels like a little bit like a Comcast wants to play nice because he's threatened to take away the full broadcast licenses of NBC and CBS, I believe.

Speaker 5 It feels a little, I don't, that's why I think people are doing that is he's made all kinds of, you know, I have to say, I do think Charlemagne has it right. It's like, let's hope he's not a fascist.

Speaker 5 And if he is, call it out. But what he said was fascist.
The things he's been saying are. And so, I don't know.
I don't know. It's just weird.

Speaker 5 It's just, it's, you know, anyway, they have a very liberal following and have been particularly vehement. So the shift was rather dramatic.
Fair enough. Okay.

Speaker 5 This is interesting. This is, I love this.
See, I like humor in dealing with these people.

Speaker 5 The Onions acquisition of Alex Jones' Infowars has been paused while a federal bankruptcy judge reviews the auction process.

Speaker 5 The parody site was named as the winner of the bankruptcy auction last week, but lawyers for Jones complained how the auction was handled.

Speaker 5 A group of Sandy Hook families who filed the defamation lawsuit against Joan agreed to accept smaller payouts to increase the value of Onion's bid.

Speaker 5 A hearing to review the auction process will be held this week. The CEO of the Onion parent company has said the sale is still underway as part of the standard process.

Speaker 5 I love this. I thought this was very perfect.
It's a great way to use satire to buy up Alex Jones's stuff. I don't know.
I kind of like this one.

Speaker 4 I mean, this was the first time I thought if there is a God, he has a sense of humor. Yeah, exactly.
I love this. And I actually thought about, I wish I'd known or been more on top of this.

Speaker 4 I'm really curious what it went for because it gets a lot of traffic.

Speaker 4 I think to turn it into a nonprofit talking about gun control or for a podcast that's on the left to take it and just absorb the traffic.

Speaker 4 Supposedly also with the purchase, you get a lot of supplements. I guess that's how they made their money.

Speaker 4 Seriously, you get supplements. Onion was saying we don't know what to do with it.

Speaker 4 I don't know if the, it sounds to me like the auction is probably going to go through.

Speaker 4 The fact that it was filed by Jones's people just seems like, I don't know, grievance grievance or whatever it is. Yeah.

Speaker 5 I just love it. This is how you, you know, this is how you show.
I think the onion has gotten really good since Ben took over.

Speaker 5 I think it's really fun. I think he's having a lot of fun with it.
I think it's humor. You know, the right spent a lot of time,

Speaker 5 did a lot of humor stuff. And it might as well be funny, right? And biting and cutting in a really clever and witty way.
I think it's a really nice way to

Speaker 5 like, especially this son of a bitch, you know, he deserves all the embarrassment and shit, but just being angry at him is not enough to mock him, I think is always the best way. I love mockery.

Speaker 5 I love mockery, Scott.

Speaker 4 Well, there's, you say, what can you do about it? This is a vile person

Speaker 4 who has brought more despair to people who are already grieving tremendously. I mean, this really is a vile human being.
And the question is,

Speaker 5 you know, I think he should die, but go ahead.

Speaker 4 Well, then, and this is something I've struggled with my entire life, the difference between being right and being effective.

Speaker 4 And I like to virtue signal and cry into TikTok or scream on Twitter about Alex Jones. You know what's more effective? Making a shit ton of money and then go buying his assets out of bankruptcy.

Speaker 5 That's more effective. Exactly.

Speaker 4 If you really want to push back on this stuff,

Speaker 4 then

Speaker 4 don't go on Twitter, send some money to Planned Parenthood. Don't cry into TikTok.

Speaker 4 Identify some candidates who you think you could get behind and start bringing some presents to.

Speaker 4 Yeah, like it's, you know, to a certain extent, the Peter Thiels and the Bill Gates of the world, they get the fucking assignment. They're not on social media screaming.

Speaker 5 Although lately they are. Did you hear they're all victims?

Speaker 5 They're the resistance.

Speaker 4 No, they're the counter-elite is the term I know.

Speaker 5 The counter-elites. The counter-elite.

Speaker 4 I'm worth $13 billion, but I'm the counter-elite.

Speaker 5 Counter-elite. I am the resistance.
Such a rebel. They are the death star, the rebels.

Speaker 4 Such a rolling stone.

Speaker 5 Oh, my God. They're so fucking.
See, that's what they're doing now. They're becoming like the way they annoy liberals annoyed them, right? They're counter-elites.
They're the resistance.

Speaker 5 They're the fighters. Give me a fucking break, you rich fox.

Speaker 5 I love this. I love what the onion's doing.
It's time for us to start being mocking bros. That's what I say.

Speaker 5 I've been listening to a lot of bros because I've had to listen to Charlemagne's podcast with Andrew Schultz, who I do not think is funny. I think he's a horse's patoot.
Really? I think he's great.

Speaker 5 He had the, I think, I think he, I don't know, he's loud enough. I would think he would like.

Speaker 5 I see the appeal. Let me just say, I see the appeal.
I do, but I think we can do better. Anyway, here's another thing.

Speaker 5 Speaking of mockery, unfortunately, Mark Zuckerberg has given his wife another gift.

Speaker 5 Let's just listen and we will decide if we like it or not.

Speaker 8 Oh, skin, skin, goddamn.

Speaker 5 Oh, my. It was an acoustic cover of Get Low by Mark Zuckerberg and T.
Payne, which Zuckerberg recorded as an anniversary gift to his wife. Part of me loves it.

Speaker 5 The other part is, can't you just get her like, I don't know. On Instagram, he said the song was playing when he first met his wife at a college party.
I kind of like it, and yet it hurts my ears.

Speaker 5 How do you feel?

Speaker 4 I love it. I think it should be private.
I don't, I don't.

Speaker 5 He loves to perform it with that statue. Remember the statue of her in the backyard?

Speaker 4 But when you do that, it's not a gift for her. It's a gift for you.
You want people to look at you giving someone a gift. And so I love this.
I think it's hilarious. I think it's great.

Speaker 4 I think it's important to, with relationships,

Speaker 4 look, women, women love gifts more than men. And women have a special relationship with cocaine, jewelry, and gifts.
And if you're a guy and you don't recognize those things,

Speaker 4 you don't understand women. And maybe you don't get jewelry, but trust me on this,

Speaker 4 you need to buy a woman in your life that's important, your mother, your spouse, your girlfriend, jewelry. And that's part of the assignment: things you don't get, you don't need to get.

Speaker 4 You just need to get that they really like these things.

Speaker 5 But you like the song, you just like would like, he does perform everything. He has to be like

Speaker 4 it's fucking adorable. And it's for if it's for him and some of their friends and he does it at a party, but putting it out, I think it just cheapens a little bit.

Speaker 4 But let me, let me, on the the whole, more power to you, brother. You got the money.
You got someone, you're in a relationship. You love that person.
You've done something creative and unique.

Speaker 4 I think we need more of that, not less of it.

Speaker 5 What would you make for me?

Speaker 4 I swear, I knew you were going to ask that.

Speaker 5 What would you think?

Speaker 4 I think I would do some sort of bad karaoke or rock lobster or dancers mess around.

Speaker 4 Has anyone seen it?

Speaker 5 Would you be naked? Would you be naked?

Speaker 4 No, I wouldn't want to upset you.

Speaker 9 Yeah.

Speaker 4 I've been working out a lot lately, though, in the testosterone. Naked, I look 59 and 7.8.

Speaker 5 It's all coming together.

Speaker 4 And since the scrotum left, it's gone from sad elephant to really healthy anteater.

Speaker 5 I feel like there needs to be a performative performance by you at me to show your love. I feel unloved.

Speaker 4 Oh, no, just do as I say, not as I do. Whenever I do anything nice for other people, I want everyone else to know about it.

Speaker 5 Yeah. Right.

Speaker 4 You know, whenever I give money, I want to make sure that like they put out a press release.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I definitely have the same problem problem as him, but I can recognize it because I suffer from the same thing.

Speaker 5 Mark, keep being awkward. Keep being awkward.

Speaker 7 You be you, my man.

Speaker 5 You be you, my man. That's all I got to say.

Speaker 4 You showed those people in high school. When they wrote in your yearbook, stay cool.
You aren't, but you got really fucking rich. That's even better.

Speaker 5 You're leaning into uncool. You keep doing that.
And by the way, you can't sing. Okay, but that's okay.
It's okay. It's the thought that counts.
Anyway, let's get right to our first big story.

Speaker 5 The post-election Trump bump has come to an end with the markets closing lower last Friday and the SP 500 and NASDAQ seeing their biggest one-day losses in two weeks.

Speaker 5 The downturn is being attributed in part to President-elect Donald Trump announcing RFK Jr. as his health and human services secretary.

Speaker 5 Shares of major vaccine and drug makers, including Moderna, Pfizer, and AstraZeneca, tumbled in the wake of the news.

Speaker 5 What do you think? Shares of Eli Linley and Novo Nordisk fell. He's against Ozempic, by the the way, as processed food stocks, including PepsiCo, Coke, and General Mills.

Speaker 5 The markets were also reacting to Jerome Powell saying the Fed is in no hurry to make further interest rate cuts. What's your take on this? And the pick in general?

Speaker 5 He says he wants to make America healthy again. They have to stop with this.
make America whatever again.

Speaker 5 America was never healthy. Let's start with that, R.M.K.
Jr., which I loved eating a McDonald's on the private plane with Trump and Elon Musk.

Speaker 5 It was someone likened it to making the cop take the drugs just to make sure he's not a cop

Speaker 5 yeah that was making the new guy do drugs to make sure he's not a cop yeah oh he looked such in pain what a fucking asshole he talks about mcdonald's being poisoned and then he's sitting there with one what a dumbass that guy is anyway what do you think of this it's like when you're in vegas and a pro asks you to show your genitals and make sure you're not a cop i just heard about this i wouldn't know firsthand but i've heard that happens

Speaker 5 um big head and the twins stir anyone wants to see big head and the twins that's fine i'm waiting for that rock lobster video with that i want that for my birthday it's december is my birthday, but go ahead.

Speaker 4 Look,

Speaker 4 the market has been remarkably right, and I see that as a negative forward-looking indicator because Moderna on word that Kennedy would be head of HHS was down 21%.

Speaker 4 Pfizer down seven.

Speaker 4 Eli Lilly, I mean, this is.

Speaker 4 This is tens of billions, if not even maybe over 100 billion in market value drawdown because this guy has a reputation. He can't fool anybody.

Speaker 4 He is crazy anti-vax with the, with the key, you know, the operative term there being crazy.

Speaker 4 It's very disappointing because what I would argue is that whenever you have the far left on the far right come together on something, it's a really bad fucking idea, whether it's reckless spending, anti-Semitism.

Speaker 5 Yeah, you're right. He's left.
He's so far left, he's right.

Speaker 4 That's what I mean. Well, that's what happens.

Speaker 4 They meet

Speaker 4 they come together at crazy. And actually, the anti-vax movement.

Speaker 4 originated on the far left. You know, don't let corporations put

Speaker 4 corporations put crazy shit into your body. And then the far right picked it up because for some reason, science and experts became associated with the left.

Speaker 4 And I would argue, and I think this is, there's real evidence here, that everyone is so fucking fascinated by innovation and metal chopsticks, grabbing a rocket and photo sharing apps and GPS, and rightfully so, it creates a lot of economic value.

Speaker 4 But if you were going to talk about how we come together as a species and use communication and education and cooperation to accomplish something really incredible, the most positive innovation of the last couple hundred years I would put forward is vaccines.

Speaker 4 And there is nothing that has come out of our great academic institutions that's been privatized, that has capitalist, that has capitalist fuel, that also government weighs in and says we can distribute these things in low-income areas that have saved more lives than vaccines.

Speaker 4 Maybe is it food distribution? I don't know what it would be, or pesticides, maybe.

Speaker 4 In my view, vaccines kind of arguably some of the best things ever i am so pro-vax if anyone's holding edibles or vaccines meet me in the bathroom and i'm going to show you the only thing better than feeling high is not feeling unwell He tries to be cute about it and says I have questions.

Speaker 5 And I don't think that's the case. I think he's done more damage.
I call him best friend of measles and polio. I think Zeke Emmanuel, who's the brother of Arian and Rahm, appointing RFK Jr.

Speaker 5 to the HHS is a big mistake. While I'll admit he has a few important ideas on chronic disease and processed food.
I mean, yeah, everybody, we all think processed food sucks.

Speaker 5 These are overshadowed by his problematic views on vaccines that threaten to walk back major progress we've made.

Speaker 5 Above all, appointing people like RFK Jr., who will bend to Trump's every whim, is guaranteed to be truly dangerous.

Speaker 5 I think he's right. I think that's 100% right.
We can agree with some of the things, but this guy is anti-vax. I'm sorry, all you people.
He's not questioning it.

Speaker 5 He's truly anti-vax and try to to stop pretending it's otherwise.

Speaker 5 What do you think of the GLP drugs?

Speaker 5 The impact on U.S. economies and global economies.
I mentioned drug maker Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly saw shares drop.

Speaker 5 Are people going to listen to him here enough to do lasting damage to the industry?

Speaker 5 Kennedy has been critical of things like Ozempic in the past, calling it a drug that will, quote, gladden the wallets of big farm execs and think everyone should rely on eating better produce, I guess.

Speaker 5 That's his thing, which I think everyone should eat more produce, Robert, but seriously, seriously.

Speaker 4 The really upsetting thing about RFK Jr. is that, in my view, he is so good on a number of issues.

Speaker 4 He talks about the unholy alliance between the food industrial complex, PepsiCo, General Foods, you know, McDonald's that want to get you addicted.

Speaker 4 Let's go meta on this. So when our species left the savanna, there was an absence, there was a dearth of sugary, salty, or fatty foods.
It was really hard to come across these things.

Speaker 4 And so when you found them, you gorged. There was an absence of safe free play because there was always threats everywhere around.
There was an absence of mating opportunities.

Speaker 4 80% of women on this planet have reproduced, only 40% of men.

Speaker 4 So when you get industrial production of all of these things, people develop addictions to food, addictions to gambling, addictions to porn.

Speaker 4 And what GLP-1 has done, as far as I can tell, is it's like scaffolding on our instincts.

Speaker 4 And it says, look, even though you can find more calories than you can consume based on industrial production, almost anyone can eat as much as they want, they can gorge, we're going to turn off that signal.

Speaker 4 And people on these drugs report that they're drinking less alcohol, they're biting their nails less.

Speaker 4 What's even more amazing about these things is not only are they eating less shitty food, the people on these drugs are eating more fruits and vegetables and grains. It's as if this thing is

Speaker 4 actually calibrating what's good for you and what is bad for you.

Speaker 4 And when you look at the one thing Americans share other than a Netflix subscription and Amazon Prime, it's that we are 70% of us are either obese or overweight.

Speaker 4 And obesity is the COVID or it is the epidemic that kills more people every year than COVID. ever did.

Speaker 4 But because there's so much money involved from large corporations and hospital clinics and knee replacement and kidney dialysis and statins and pharmaceutical and McDonald's, we pretend that you're finding your truth.

Speaker 4 No, you're not. You're finding fucking diabetes.
And he is very good on this issue. And then all of a sudden, it's like, huh?

Speaker 4 What you want to, this bullshit that he said repeatedly, that the best thing you can do when you see a woman with a newborn is go up to her and say, don't get her vaccinated. Jesus Christ, really?

Speaker 5 Do you know her? His cousin, Carolyn Kennedy, who's U.S. Ambassador to Australia, I didn't know that.

Speaker 5 It doesn't tend to speak up, said a lot of negative things about him this week. There's a whole story on it.
She goes, others are just getting to know him, but she said everything he says.

Speaker 5 I don't think most Americans share them.

Speaker 5 He's, you know, he's denied he's against vaccination, just so you know, styling himself as a vaccine safety activist who questions corporate influence on science.

Speaker 5 His critics say he's promoted conspiratorial ideas about public health intervention, widely viewed as one of the most important advances.

Speaker 5 He's embraced a depunk theory on vaccines can cause autism, has questioned COVID-19 vaccinations. He's also been leaked to a measles outbreak in Samoa.

Speaker 5 And, you know, Kennedy, Carolyn Kennedy, the daughter of JFK and Jackie O'Nassis, obviously, said her family was united in terms of our support for public health sector and infrastructure, the greatest admiration for the medical profession.

Speaker 5 And Bobby Kennedy has a different set of views. It's very unusual for her to speak out.
His whole family says he's as crazy as can be.

Speaker 4 I just hope he comes clean. And I'm being serious here about steroid use.

Speaker 4 I've seen him without a shirt on.

Speaker 5 He's 70. Looks good.

Speaker 4 That guy's on HGH or some sort of, or DECA. He's on some sort of, and by the way, I'm not sure.

Speaker 4 I'd love to hear him defend it and talk about it, but he doesn't want a needle around a vaccine to stave off polio or rubella or measles, but it'll inject human growth hormone to look jacked at 70.

Speaker 4 So I would, and by the way, he might have, I take creatine and it's brain protective and heart protective. I'm not, hormone replacement therapy, I think is,

Speaker 4 they're finding it's a very positive thing for both men and women. A lot of people say that the biggest instance of malpractice was discouraging women from hormone replacement therapy.

Speaker 4 So I'd love to know his views on it. But just be clear, as someone who works out a lot and is meaning to look like Monty Burns despite every fucking thing I'm trying to do,

Speaker 4 that guy is on,

Speaker 4 is on some form of steroids. And I would just...

Speaker 5 Can you just say allegedly?

Speaker 5 Say allegedly right now.

Speaker 4 That guy, I mean, I would argue, I would speculate that he might be in fact taking some sort of human growth.

Speaker 5 And I would just like him to speak openly about it and get his views on it because they seem to be somewhat contrary to this notion but don't put i do think that picture did a lot of damage honestly if he cares so much why with him with the mcdonald's box the big mac how the fuck could he do that after he called it poison like what a dumbass he's just such a dumbass anyway should investors be worried about these um trump cabinet picks impacting markets the stocks of major defense contractors also dropped last week following pete heg seth announcement god the washington post wrote a story about him and he looks he he he looks very dangerous as a person.

Speaker 4 Why do you say that? I'm curious why, I mean, I'm asking for an answer, not, not as a comment. Why do you think he seems dangerous?

Speaker 5 I was reading the story. He looks like, look, this guy, whatever happened in that encounter with this woman, I think he attacked her.
This is my, this is my feeling, Pete. This is what it looks like.

Speaker 5 He was already downstairs bothering women when this woman came and got him, right? That's that, that he doesn't even question. He sounds like

Speaker 5 he reminds me of a sexual harasser. He reminds me of, I've had that happen to to me in college.
He looks like the guy in college.

Speaker 5 He has the tone and ability of, every woman looks at him and goes, cover your drink when you're around this fella. That's, you know what I mean, that kind of thing.

Speaker 5 And between him and Matt Gates, I mean, they feel like weird sexual aggressors.

Speaker 5 But, you know, whatever, whatever Pete Hagg says, the fact that he paid off a woman, you know, it's just like Bill O'Reilly, you know, oh, you know, I just paid her off because he did.

Speaker 5 And then there were tapes where he did say the things she said he said, right? So they're just all such weird.

Speaker 5 This, this whole gang of, of this GOP are all fucking each other down there at Mar-a-Lago. It's weird.
It's a weird group of people. I'm sorry.

Speaker 5 Like, you know, there's the rumors of Corey Lungowski and Christine Noam. There's the rumors of, like, they all seem like Caligula down there.
I don't know. It just, like, yikes.

Speaker 5 I find, you know, they talk about liberals being loose. I feel like they're like creepy.
And I don't know.

Speaker 5 And then the guy who gradually grabs someone's some man's nuts, you know, it's always something.

Speaker 4 Yeah, the only thing is, I would push back a little bit.

Speaker 4 I think it's unfair to conflate Peter Hegseth, is that his name, with Bill O'Reilly, where Fox paid some woman 20 or 30 million dollars after supposedly he was forcing her to watch gay porn and then describe it to him.

Speaker 4 You don't pay someone 20 or 30 million dollars just to make a nuisance lawsuit go away. Matt Gates supposedly has a witness, a credible witness, that says she witnessed him having sex with a minor.

Speaker 4 That's pretty serious shit.

Speaker 4 And in the case of Pete, first off, he served very honorably. He 20 years, I think two bronze stars.
I mean, he really is a decorated service person.

Speaker 5 Got it.

Speaker 5 Hold on, let me finish. He's completely unqualified for this.
Let me finish.

Speaker 4 I think he does not have kind of the executive management experience or the gravitas around that would qualify him to oversee 3 million people. I agree with you there.

Speaker 4 He did pay somebody off to drop a suit. I don't see, I got to think that's going to go away because it doesn't accomplish what it's supposed to.

Speaker 4 You can see a scenario where someone accuses you of something, and to make it go away, you just pay them. Let me be clear.

Speaker 4 I don't think he's qualified for the position, but I do think it's unfair to compare him to what Matt Gates is undergoing.

Speaker 5 Yep, okay.

Speaker 5 I mean, the whole gang of them. It's just something's happening down there, something in the water.

Speaker 4 I'm curious. I don't understand.
Well, I think I understand incentives. What is the Machiavellian weird 5D or 0D chest that's going on with putting gates forward?

Speaker 4 Is AG, I don't, do they think if they create havoc

Speaker 4 havoc.

Speaker 4 If they go, this guy's, if they offer a blood offering and Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski convince the people, and especially there's 20 or 30 Republicans who've said no fucking way, then does it make some of their less crazy but still grade A crazy picks more likely to get through?

Speaker 4 What's the strategy here?

Speaker 5 I think so, unless there isn't one. He just feels like it.
He was on the plane at the last minute and did, he had another person for AG, and then suddenly it was Matt Gates.

Speaker 5 You know, I think sometimes it's just like his whim at the moment. He just wants to do what he wants to do.
You know, here's another one.

Speaker 5 Trump has yet to name his Treasury Secretary, though he's reported meeting several contenders at Mar-a-Lago. This is a critical job, right? A critical friggin job.

Speaker 5 He said he wants someone big for the role. Apollo's Mark Rowan is in the mix now.
I have a lot. You you and I have regard for him, as is former Fed governor Kevin Warsh, another very qualified person.

Speaker 5 Elon Musk threw his support behind Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Luttnick over hedge fund manager Scott Besant, who many, many people on Wall Street I have been checking think is highly qualified in an ex post over the weekend.

Speaker 5 So, I'm not just because Elon threw his Luttnick has a terrible reputation compared to Scott. Besent and is obviously a look-at-me kind of fella, right?

Speaker 5 This is lunacy the way they're deciding this important job. And the same thing with the AG.
That one, I think he was on the plane with Matt Gates and just decided, let's fuck with the liberals.

Speaker 5 Or I don't, I honestly don't know. Loyalty?

Speaker 4 I don't know. But I would argue that the nominees for Treasury Secretary are incredibly impressive and competent and normal compared to the nominees across all the other stuff.

Speaker 4 They're all... I mean, Howard Lutnick, I know people have some issues with, but generally speaking, these are talented, smart, accomplished people who you can imagine in the role.

Speaker 4 I'm a big fan of Mark Rowan. I like that I've spoken at Apollo conferences where he's spoken.
This guy is a blue flame thinker. He is.

Speaker 5 That's what he is.

Speaker 5 Okay, great. Yeah, sure.

Speaker 4 And also,

Speaker 4 the reality is, now, granted,

Speaker 4 Kennedy could do a lot of damage with HHS, but you're going to have pretty serious checks and balances.

Speaker 4 The reason why this position is so important is regardless of policy, if the economy doesn't grow, everything just gets harder to do. And the adult in the room needs to be the person

Speaker 4 around economic policies, in my view. This is

Speaker 4 everyone says, you know, Taylor Swift was person of the year last year. No, it wasn't.
It was Jerome Powell. These people have more impact day to day on people.

Speaker 4 I think America is a platform for two things, primarily, and this is where I think Democrats have fucked up because they've lost this.

Speaker 4 One, defending our shores and our citizens, and two, creating the atmospherics of prosperity so you can develop economic security for you and your family.

Speaker 4 If you want more rights given to people, help them get more money. That's the easiest way for them to gain rights.
So I like this.

Speaker 4 And the thing I also really like about Mark Rowan, although I have no influence over these picks, is I thought in contrast to some other famous billionaires, he handled the anti-Semitism on campus really well.

Speaker 4 He was forceful, yet dignified. He had a problem with the president of Penn.
He got his big game trophy on the head, and then he went quiet. He didn't start talking about reforming education.

Speaker 5 He wasn't Phil Ackman.

Speaker 4 Yeah, he wasn't, look at me, look at me. He's like, this is my objective.
I'm upset. They fixed it or they took action.
And now he's gone back to his day job.

Speaker 4 So this guy strikes me as having a decent amount of humility, forceful yet dignified. And I'm telling you,

Speaker 4 we want a high IQ person in this role.

Speaker 5 Yeah, he really is. If anyone spent any time with him, he's really a sharp cookie.
He really is. He's well regarded.
I mean, that would be a good, serious pick.

Speaker 5 Like, I wouldn't, I would like him in a Democratic or a Republican administration, someone like that. Lutnick seems like a horse's patoo.
I'm sorry. He just does.
He just does. He's always on.

Speaker 5 He loves being on camera and he strikes me as an unserious person in that regard. I get his reputation, but having checked, I've called like a dozen people.
Nobody likes him. They like Scott Besant.

Speaker 5 And I think the issue around Scott Besant is that he worked for Soros, which I think you either work for Soros or a bunch of different people as a great investor.

Speaker 5 Like that, that's what you're holding against him. So he's a little independent.
I think that's their issue. I think that's why Elon wants someone like Howard Luttnick he can push around.

Speaker 4 I mean, I know a lot of people work for George Soros. When it comes to money, George Soros just don't suffer, fools.

Speaker 4 That's correct. The Soros funds are very serious, very competent, and

Speaker 4 they aggregate outstanding professionals. That's a

Speaker 4 having worked for George Soros, and it's not a political position. He was there to just make George richer.
I mean,

Speaker 4 that's what he's there for.

Speaker 5 I know, but I'm just telling you, that's what's going down over there. But I do think one of the things, it's critically important.
This is a serious question.

Speaker 5 I think they're trying to get someone like Mark Rowan or Scott Passent, who to me are very serious selections, to say yes on tariffs. They may not be able to quite as easily.

Speaker 5 I think this has to be a person who makes the calls in a way that's not,

Speaker 5 it has to be political, but not, you know what I mean, in the interests of the economy, according to them and their theories.

Speaker 4 How do I make long-term adult

Speaker 4 non-political decisions that are going to help?

Speaker 4 I mean, here's the issue: prosperity is here similar to the future.

Speaker 4 It's just not distributed equally. How does this person make really good decisions that ensure we can argue over a bigger pie? We're always going to argue, but the pie grows.

Speaker 4 And this person has to absorb a massive amount of data and also make hard decisions. Chairman Powell,

Speaker 4 raising interest rates 500 points

Speaker 4 angered almost everybody. You know, Elizabeth Warren was pissed off about it.
People on the far right were pissed off. And he's like, no, this is what we got to do, folks.

Speaker 4 And as a result, inflation came down faster in the United States and I think any G7 country and it was already back to its target level. And

Speaker 4 that kind of leadership, intellect, and quite frankly, folks, even though America seems to be against it, expertise and people who have PhDs who actually studied this shit.

Speaker 4 Anyways,

Speaker 4 this is like the only,

Speaker 4 it feels like this is the only substantive conversation around his nominees other than, wait, let me get this. Someone saw him having sex with a minor.
Let me get this. He's against vaccines.

Speaker 4 And I mean, it's all dancing with the stars. And then we go to PBS for a few minutes.

Speaker 5 I'm like, what are you doing? frittering away your chance here. I mean, it's just, he's just, you know what? He's trolling and pranking and he's got to cut it out.

Speaker 5 He's got to cut it out on this serious topic. So he really wants to be historically, you know, know, he's still, he's just a terrible person, Donald Trump, but he could help a lot of people.

Speaker 5 Anyway, let's go on a quick break.

Speaker 5 When we come back, big tech leads the charge to derail the Kids Online Safety Act, and we'll speak with a friend of Pivot, Christy Kaler, about how our company is reducing clothing waste.

Speaker 5 You know, I'm a big recycler in the era of fast fashion.

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Speaker 6 Scott, we're back.

Speaker 5 A campaign against Kids' Online Safety Act is in full swing as the bill has been stalled in the House for months.

Speaker 5 A new report from the Wall Street Journal details big tech's willingness to dump cash into lobbying efforts and lean into culture war issues, with liberal lawmakers' lobbying efforts focused on concerns the bill could censor LGBTQ youth, although I think they fixed that part of it.

Speaker 5 And with conservative lawmakers, the focus is on potential for censorship of anti-abortion positions.

Speaker 5 Meta and Alphabet have spent nearly $90 million in the last three years lobbying about a range of issues, including COSA.

Speaker 5 COSA would assign platforms the duty of care, which would hold them accountable. for addressing issues like mental health disorders, bullying, and sexual exploitation.

Speaker 5 You know, also at the same time, Brandon Carr has been over at the FTCC. He wrote part of Project 2025.
He's also very anti-tech. So interesting times.

Speaker 5 It'll be interesting to see what happens in the Trump administration because it has a very strong anti-tech,

Speaker 5 especially J.D. Vance.
So do you think they'll hold firm? Are they going to be more empowered once Trump takes office? I'm not so sure.

Speaker 5 You know, I think they may be wishing for the Biden administration again.

Speaker 5 So So what do you think? $90 million they're spending.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I just look.

Speaker 5 This is,

Speaker 4 I thought we were going to get this one. Now I'm not as sure.
There's been 40 congressional hearings on child safety and social media, and there's been zero laws.

Speaker 4 And this is not perfect, but perfect is not on the menu. And I thought we were going to get this.

Speaker 4 And now it looks as if the delay in obfuscation and the weaponization of our government and the fact that there are that ByteDance has one lobbyist for every 11 members of Congress.

Speaker 4 Meta has one for every eight. Amazon has more full-time paid lobbyists living in D.C.
than there are sitting U.S. Senators.

Speaker 4 And money has always played a role here, but essentially big tech has really mastered the art. I think there's a lot of backroom deals that involve our security apparatus, but 5%

Speaker 4 of

Speaker 4 kids under the age of 18 qualify as being addicted to drugs or alcohol. 5%.
And that's a lot.

Speaker 4 If you know 10 households with two kids, that means somewhere there's a kid who's an addict to drugs or alcohol. With social media, 27% qualify as addicted.

Speaker 4 There's never been, I don't think there's ever been an entity, a sector, or a private company that has ever been this guilty of addicting our children than big tech.

Speaker 4 And yet there's absolutely no laws. And so I got excited that this seemed like it was going to go through.
And now it feels like big tech is winning again.

Speaker 4 and they every day they have their lobbyists out there giving money playing golf coming up with thoughtful reasons around why you should be express your concerns and now it feels like it's at risk i find this all very discouraging but i don't feel like i have the insight to handicap it what do you think is going to be here uh

Speaker 5 i i think they just don't want any regulation whatsoever i think they want no laws whatsoever and so they're nitpicking every single one of these laws there's there's been lots of problems with cosa There's no question about that.

Speaker 5 But they've managed to do different things to it. There's not going to be any rule that's going to be good.
And that's the point. They don't want any law.
They don't want anything at all.

Speaker 5 They don't want a privacy law. They don't want antitrust renewed.

Speaker 5 They will hold this stuff up as much as they can.

Speaker 5 And it's going to take like serious bipartisan work together away from all the censorship versus hurting LGBTQ youth, both of which concern, I'm concerned with with both of them, right?

Speaker 5 By the way, more the young gay people, but

Speaker 5 they don't want anything passed. They don't want a duty of care.

Speaker 5 They don't want a duty of care. And every other industry has a duty of care in some way, whether it's an airplane or a pharmacy, you know, big pharma.

Speaker 5 Maybe they manipulate things, but can we get one on the friggin books and then figure it out from there? They just don't want any slight bit of edge to get them stop.

Speaker 5 And that's, and they will do anything it takes that's this has been a historical thing for these people and they'll do it as long as our our regular i i'd even be like go brendan carr even though i think some of his things are loony i'd go go lena kahn go just to just to muck up their works for five seconds but you know you saw amy klobuchar get mowed down you saw ken buck get mowed down like it doesn't really matter they mow everybody down and congress hasn't passed a major bill to protect children online since 1998 amazing COSA does put in place protections for kids online, like regulating addictive features and harmful content.

Speaker 4 I mean,

Speaker 4 this is tech lobbyists

Speaker 4 continue to maliciously stir doubt on Capitol Hill using one unfounded narrative with Democrats and another with Republicans.

Speaker 4 I mean, with Republicans, they've been stating that COSA censors speech. What the fuck? We're worried about a 12-year-old's speech.

Speaker 5 Yeah, Johnson has said it's a, I love the principle, but the details that are very problematic.

Speaker 4 And let me tell you what's behind all of this. The six most popular social media platforms earned roughly, get this, $11 billion

Speaker 4 in just one year. Advertising from advertising that targets, wait for it, children.

Speaker 4 Children. Social media companies have existed with very little regulation for 30 years and want to keep it that way.
I mean, okay, so what's going on here? $11 billion is at stake.

Speaker 4 COSA would not censor, limit, or remove any content from the internet, and it does not give the FTC or state's attorneys general the power to bring lawsuits over content or speech, no matter who it is from.

Speaker 4 The bill passes First Amendment scrutiny because it is content neutral. We're talking about kids here.

Speaker 5 Yeah, they don't want to do anything. They just, they play them, they play these sides perfectly.

Speaker 4 And this is light touch good regulation. It's important to note that there's no new rulemaking power for the FTC in COSA, nor any ability to create rules about content.

Speaker 4 So this whole free speech bullshit doesn't hold water.

Speaker 4 It's $11 billion they're making, and we have seen evidence everywhere that social, the more time kids spend on social, the more likely they are to be depressed, anxious, and engage in self-harm.

Speaker 5 You know what we need to do, Scott? What's that, Carol? Can I just tell you? You and I need to go down to Mar-a-Lago and discuss this with the president.

Speaker 5 What do you think?

Speaker 5 I would do it.

Speaker 4 I'd just like to see the two of you in the same room.

Speaker 5 Go share a McDonald's. I like me.
Can I just say I love fucking McDonald's? I do. I do.
I do. I eat it not infrequently.
I don't eat it very much.

Speaker 5 I know it's bad for me, but I got to tell you, I love it. I take the kids.
Amanda's always horrified.

Speaker 4 You go to Mar-a-Lago. I want to go to Tulum with Don Jr.
I'd like to roll.

Speaker 5 We have to go together. Me and Don Jr.

Speaker 5 You can go hang out. We should go together.
We have to make sure Elon's not there, the guest who wouldn't leave because he'll come at us.

Speaker 5 But we need to go and talk about this with him because that's the kind of people we are. We're looking for common ground.

Speaker 5 Honestly, I would go down there if we could talk to him about something like this, right? For this, it's worth it for me. And I would eat the McDonald's, President Trump.
I would eat it.

Speaker 5 Anyway, all right, let's get to our friend of Pivot.

Speaker 5 Christy Kaler is the founder and CEO of Trashy, a clothing, recycling, and rewards platform. They also just recently started doing tech stuff, getting rid of all your tech crap that you have.

Speaker 5 I'm really intrigued by this company, although I find it that I'm sort of confused about how it could possibly work out because everyone has their sad recycling stories, Christy. You know what I mean?

Speaker 5 Like you find out you recycle and it doesn't work. So explain what it is and how it works exactly because there's a lot of clothing that ends up in a landfill, right?

Speaker 11 Yeah, 85% of our clothing ends up in landfill. It's actually 17 tons, million tons per year.
So it's about 112 pounds per person in the U.S. every year.

Speaker 11 So I think the universal truth is just everyone has too much stuff.

Speaker 11 And typically recycling is actually kind of either inconvenient, we don't know where the clothes go. Even Only Goodwill sells about 27% of what they collect.
And we're like, what happens next?

Speaker 11 So with Trashy, we created a product called the Take Back Bag, which is really fun and exciting.

Speaker 11 And people do it from the convenience of their own home. They fill it up with anything from any brand in any condition.
So it's,

Speaker 11 you know, quite convenient on that sense too. And they mail it back to us.

Speaker 5 So this is soft clothing, shoes, shirts, things like that. Yeah.

Speaker 11 So your shirts, your shoes, your bags, your accessories, it can be towels and sheets. You send it back to us.

Speaker 11 And then we have a big recycling center where we meticulously sort and grade all of the product.

Speaker 11 It actually goes into one of 253 grades. So it's a very detailed process.
And then we find the next best use for it.

Speaker 11 So that can be reuse, that can be recycling, that can be downcycling, fiber recycling, but we control the whole process. So we have complete visibility into it.
We know where it goes.

Speaker 11 And so where most programs are opaque, we provide a lot of transparency.

Speaker 5 Fashion, fashion, for people to know, it's come a huge industry, particularly in the last few years with the rise of companies like Shein and Timu.

Speaker 5 Scott's a big proponent. I'm going to get him, pull him in in a second.
But just so you know, Amazon, interestingly, just launched your competitor in that field last week with a storefront called HAL.

Speaker 5 You You know, because they got in trouble because they were just throwing everything out. Like if people return stuff, they just threw it back out when they didn't ever return it.

Speaker 5 I'm just curious, what's your take on these companies? And I'll note a couple of stats. The average consumer buys 60% more pieces of clothing than they did 17 years ago.

Speaker 5 Not Carrou Swisher, but others. The number of times a garment is worn and declined is around 36% in the last 15 years or so.

Speaker 5 So talk a little bit about people are moving into this, but you wonder if you have the disappointment you've had in the recycling business, which has shown that most things you recycle don't get recycled.

Speaker 11 Yeah, I think there's a lack of transparency in the recycling process. It's a very kind of antique network of people recycling clothes.

Speaker 11 So you don't get a lot of transparency and visibility into what's happening. But to your point, we're consuming more.
I mean, do you guys know how many products she and puts out per day?

Speaker 4 7,000?

Speaker 11 Yes, between 2,000 and 10,000 per day. So on the macro scale, we've moved, I mean, it makes Zara look like luxury.

Speaker 4 I should get a free treat to Mar-a-Lago.

Speaker 5 I thought that was outstanding.

Speaker 5 Seriously, that was outstanding.

Speaker 4 Look how impressed Chris is.

Speaker 5 Seriously.

Speaker 5 Anyway, go ahead.

Speaker 11 Sorry. No, so we've moved from fast fashion to instant fashion, which I think is why everybody's taking note.
Like, we have to do something about this.

Speaker 11 We can't keep putting that much product out into the world. It's estimated that we lose about $600 billion in value every single year.
It's remarkable, obviously, the Sheehan effect, the Temu effect.

Speaker 11 You talk to kind of the increased consumption numbers. I think it's time that we all kind of took note that we need to do something about it.
It's estimated that we lose about $600 billion

Speaker 11 into landfill every year in value from fashion, textiles, technology, toys. But most business models really are not that effective.

Speaker 11 So either people don't do it because it's not fun or it's not convenient or it's not rewarding. There's not like a what's in it for me kind of component to it.

Speaker 11 And so, you know, those are the pieces we really play with, um, all embedded with like how do we build a really good business model that works.

Speaker 11 We need to get the flow of economics working, we can't just say we need to do it because it's the right thing.

Speaker 4 Nice to meet you, Chrissy. One of the things I like about what you're doing, I find it sort of ineffective, unrealistic to believe that you're going to talk young people into consuming less.

Speaker 4 I also, and I'm an investor in the space, I think young people need more access to products for a lower price.

Speaker 4 But at the same time, trying to figure out a way to deal with one of the externalities here, I think it's really important.

Speaker 4 What,

Speaker 9 I mean,

Speaker 4 the fear I have is that people worry that recycling was nothing but an attempt by people to make them feel that they were actually addressing the problem.

Speaker 4 And there's been a lot of information that recycling, quite frankly, is just

Speaker 4 more emotional benefit than actual benefit.

Speaker 4 What happens to these products if organizations like yours don't get a hold of them and repurpose or recycle them effectively?

Speaker 11 Yes. I mean, I think the term recycling is often applied in a very broad way.

Speaker 11 And so sometimes people take products in, they kind of skim the cream off the top, try and resell them for profit, and the rest unfortunately ends up in landfill. That's not discussed.

Speaker 11 I think that's pretty, pretty typical, even with the modern resale platforms. I think,

Speaker 11 unfortunately, that's often done at lowest cost. So they're bundled up, they're shipped offshore.
We have a whole concept called waste colonialism that we talk a lot about.

Speaker 11 But it's really the infrastructure to properly process materials hasn't been modernized in order to handle the volume and handle it with precision so that we can actually keep 95% of what we collect out of landfill, which is what our process is able to do.

Speaker 11 It doesn't mean that it's perfect. Some things are downcycled, some things are reused.

Speaker 11 You have to have kind of a broad approach to where these products products can go um but taking them in in the first place is really critical we have a gap in the collection cycle um and we have a gap in in sorting and really the transparency around sorting and and where things are being recycled after that so explain the business model then to us what what what is the business model because that's where the dis you know you you you have these colorful bags you put i've done it a couple times and then you get stuff right correct you get rewards yeah you unlock deals uh you can so basically business model works that we've created this as i said kind of recycling service.

Speaker 11 It comes in the form of this package that's fun and bright and convenient. Customers are willing to pay for that.
So that really creates the relationship.

Speaker 11 And then after recycling, you unlock deals and rewards at places you like to shop. And that can be anything from like Uber.
and DoorDash to Nike and Adidas.

Speaker 11 So it's a broad range of rewards, which we found really important because I think

Speaker 11 you don't always want to recycle your jeans and buy new jeans. You might want to recycle your jeans and buy dinner.

Speaker 11 It's just a much broader, universal kind of incentive platform that gets kind of the consumer into their next step of kind of their journey in a way where they're also extracting value.

Speaker 5 So you're not like chastising them saying, you know, oh, you shouldn't buy things. It's that

Speaker 5 you don't want them to go to better places, presumably.

Speaker 11 We want to collect them all. I think I totally agree.
It's unrealistic to think that consumption is going to slow down.

Speaker 5 There's nothing we can do to do that, frankly.

Speaker 11 You know, that train's kind of left the station. If we can engage on the post-consumer moment, if we can say, hey, we know you've got that pile.
We know you've got cords and chargers hiding in a door.

Speaker 11 Let us help you.

Speaker 11 Most of the time, people are like, how did you know?

Speaker 5 Like, because we do this.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 from what I understand,

Speaker 4 Timu and Shein are going to be responsible for 20%

Speaker 4 of all

Speaker 4 holiday purchases, which is just.

Speaker 5 And now, Hall, which Amazon is trying to copy them, but go ahead.

Speaker 4 That's right.

Speaker 5 What, I mean,

Speaker 4 other than just the consumption culture,

Speaker 4 more for less, what do you think is going on here? Because we had typical fashion, then we had fast fashion. I would describe this as on-demand fashion.

Speaker 4 Can you talk about why this category has just become,

Speaker 4 I mean, it really is.

Speaker 4 The explosion here is staggering. Any thoughts as to why these companies have become so dominant so fast?

Speaker 5 I mean, I think you have a

Speaker 11 few different forces at play at the same time, which is the Sheians and Temos of the world have kind of hacked cost of goods and speed to market.

Speaker 11 So they can really, you know, drive that frequency of launch in a way that nobody's been able to ever before. So that 10,000 styles a day, I mean, they often pride themselves on 98% sell-through.

Speaker 11 They're not making these decisions nine months in advance. They're making them two weeks in advance.

Speaker 5 And so

Speaker 11 they've really figured the market out. So like that kind of demand cycle is really fast for them.

Speaker 11 I think obviously social media and our access to kind of trend, information, product is really important in driving this forward, particularly with the Gen Z kind of community.

Speaker 11 That's where everything exists.

Speaker 11 And so it's a rush. It's, you know, it's pretty human nature to kind of have that consumption cycle.

Speaker 11 And I think there's a really interesting conflict in values because it's often the same, you know, people who are like, we need to save the planet,

Speaker 11 which is an interesting tension that we're facing.

Speaker 5 Right. Which Patagonia has done, right? If you think about it, a bunch of other

Speaker 5 Patagonia makes a big deal or you return them and they fix them. I did that for Louie.
He happens to like this one Patagonia jacket and they fixed it.

Speaker 5 You know, and he preferred that, which was instead of a new one, which was interesting. But you're now moving into tech recycling.
What is now? I know Apple does that to an extent.

Speaker 5 What is tech recycling? Because that's because I've got cords from the 60s, essentially,

Speaker 5 or whatever.

Speaker 5 Where do those go?

Speaker 5 Why are you doing this? And where do those go? Obviously, you want to do as much stuff that you can actually make money from. Presumably, you can from this stuff.

Speaker 11 Yeah, I think it's getting the consumer engaged is one piece.

Speaker 11 And so, what we found is like we've, we've had helped, we've helped, we've distributed over 600,000 take back bags just for textiles in the last 12 months.

Speaker 11 And when we speak to consumers, they're just like, please do more, like help me more. So we know the demand is there on the consumer side.

Speaker 11 To your point, like Apple and other platforms have kind of their buyback programs, but they're not handling old chargers, cords, the actual drawer stuff that you don't know what to do.

Speaker 11 And so.

Speaker 11 in a similar format, you know, we see there's just such a huge opportunity and we build the supply chain to support that so we can take those products back and recycle them into materials um into componentry alternatively that typically ends up in landfill so it's pretty similar stats to to textiles but you can make money from presumably that's a lot of money it's like yeah it's copper off of it's i wouldn't call it a lot of money but there's a revenue stream to it which helps the business model work so that you know that value that i mentioned that goes into landfill typically um we're extracting some of it

Speaker 11 so we can we can right rather than garbage pickers rather than garbage um you're getting the you know the metals the plastics, the componentry where possible.

Speaker 11 And then all of that's, you know, when we take back electronics, it's incredibly important too. The data sanitation.

Speaker 11 So the supply chain piece of what we do, the integrity of that is really essential to making this work well. and delivering on your promise.

Speaker 5 Yeah. Yeah.
It would be bad if that

Speaker 5 started killing people by doing that.

Speaker 4 So people have zeroed in, I would argue, unfairly on fast fashion. Do you think that Apple and Nike, because of their incredibly positive brands, get a bit of an undeserved hall pass?

Speaker 4 Or is fast fashion really that much worse than some of the other kind of more aspirational brands that have supply chains in China?

Speaker 11 It's a great question. I mean, I think on a unit-by-unit basis, fast fashion is

Speaker 11 a key player in those statistics that we just quoted and the growth of that consumption cycle.

Speaker 11 I don't think that gives these brands a pass that are kind of the incumbents with large supply chains and large businesses.

Speaker 11 Patagonia, I mean, I think they've done amazing work, but but their business is a billion dollars a year. I think it's growing.

Speaker 4 It's a pimple on the elephant.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I get it.

Speaker 11 I get it. But it's, I mean, they're still producing product.
So I think that, you know, overall,

Speaker 11 if you're making product and you're selling it to a consumer, 85% of the time, it's ending up in landfill. Everybody should be engaged.
in this conversation.

Speaker 4 Let me ask you, just a quick follow-up. Who in your mind is the worst and the best of a large iconic brand or retailer?

Speaker 4 Everyone from Walmart to Amazon, if you were to pick the people doing their level best and the people doing the worst,

Speaker 4 which brands would be at the top and the bottom of your list?

Speaker 5 Oh, gosh, that's a really tough question to call people.

Speaker 11 I mean, I think actually Nike has done good work, particularly on upstream supply chain historically

Speaker 11 and materials innovation, and they continue to do that. I do another best.
I do think Patagonia has led the way, not as large in kind of changing consumer mindset.

Speaker 11 Worst, I would say, right now,

Speaker 11 knowing the Shein team's kind of working on things a little bit, I don't know if the Temu team's working on things in the same way. I would say that's bad.

Speaker 11 I would say Amazon's, you know, pretty responsible as well.

Speaker 4 You would say Amazon is responsible. Yeah.

Speaker 11 Not like they're not being responsible.

Speaker 5 They're responsible for the problem as well. Oh, I see.
Excuse me. That sounds right.
Yeah. They throw everything in the trash when you return it, FYI.

Speaker 5 If you send something back, it never goes anywhere. It's like crazy.
I almost don't want to return things to them. Anyway, perfect.
This is great.

Speaker 5 Christy Kaler is really interesting business as a CEO and founder of Trashy. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Christy. Thank you guys.
All right, Scott, we are so solutions-based, aren't we?

Speaker 9 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 5 That's right.

Speaker 5 Let's mail a box of trashy down to Mar-a-Lago on our visit. Okay, one more quick break.
We'll be back for wins and fails.

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Speaker 4 okay scott let's hear some wins and fails who go first my win is going to shock you i met a guy down here who just sold his company and he reached out to a friend of mine who knows

Speaker 4 First Lady Alania

Speaker 4 and said, I'd really like to get my, and this is a serious story, true story, my resume in front of Doja or Department of Government Efficiency, because I'm interested in going to work for a group in the government that is very focused on solutions.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 they have said, Vivek and Elon, to their credit, in my view, that if you're looking to bring a private sector innovation, work your ass off vibe to this group, We want to hear from you.

Speaker 4 And I do think there's value in trying to restore some of the aspirational, more merit versus tenure-based culture to government work. I think that it's lost a lot of prestige.

Speaker 4 People still have a lot of prestige for our folks that serve at the highest levels or serve in uniform.

Speaker 4 But I worry that some of our best and brightest young people, unlike Israel, even unlike the UK, don't think I'm really good at what I do, which logically means one of my options should be to go to work in a government role.

Speaker 4 And so I do like that they're trying to create this aspirational feel around it. I think that's a positive, and I wanted to call that a win.

Speaker 4 My fail is I just want to just, again,

Speaker 4 the fact that we're normalizing the notion that somehow vaccines are bad, just some, just some stats here.

Speaker 4 U.S. childhood immunization from 1994 to 2013 prevented 732,000 deaths and 21 million hospitalizations from vaccine preventable

Speaker 4 diseases. COVID-19 in the U.S.
prevented 139,000 deaths in just the first five months, reducing projected fatalities by 20%.

Speaker 4 And then

Speaker 4 overall, vaccines save millions annually by preventing infectious diseases and their complications, highlighting the need for robust immunization programs

Speaker 1 worldwide.

Speaker 4 I mean, these things really are,

Speaker 4 if you were to hold up something that is like, okay, our species kind of gets it and there's real hope here, the measles vaccination prevented millions of deaths, but in 2023 saw a 20%

Speaker 4 rise in global cases, preventable cases, due to poor coverage, leading to get this 10.3 million cases and 107,000

Speaker 4 deaths. So the World Health Organization says over 22 million children missed their first vaccine dose, contributing to outbreaks in 57 countries.

Speaker 4 So, anything that normalizes a notion that these things are 99.9, there are just so few things that create so much positive that prevents so much death, disease, and disability across communities, quite frankly, that really need it.

Speaker 4 These things are inexpensive. They're easily distributed.
So,

Speaker 4 I really hope that we check back on what is a, you know, get the easy stuff right, you know, and this is the easy stuff. These things work.
They're a gift. Yeah.

Speaker 5 And also, by the way, let me just say, Operation Warp Speed, which was one of the better things of his administration, he's, he really is moving away from it. I'm like, you fucking idiot.

Speaker 5 That was something really amazing that you did. Like, take fucking credit for that thing.
That was impressive. And I know people do like to trash Trump all the time, trashy Trump.

Speaker 5 But that was something that was great. That was something

Speaker 5 that was intuitively good, right? Like, so it's possible. I don't believe he's walking away from it.
That drives me nuts.

Speaker 5 Okay, I agree with you on

Speaker 5 the government thing. The only thing I would say about that is they also trash government workers incessantly in a way that's cruel.

Speaker 5 By the way, there's so many amazing government workers, so stop insulting them that way. Like, oh, they all have to be cut, especially

Speaker 5 Ethan's just irritating, but Vivek Ramaswamy is just a, just always has to trash always has to trash people and never no one's ever good everyone sucks it's the same part of we're the counter elites they're not you're a bunch of elites stop insulting really good government workers some things work some things don't we can make it better that's my feeling on that one all right my win is i'm going to be seeing gladiator soon which is very exciting gladiator too

Speaker 5 um it looks gladiator too it looks really good i love that paul mascal i love i hear denzel washington's amazing i know i've talked a lot about wicked i'll get to that in a second but but i i'm so excited to see that movie.

Speaker 5 I'm going to go by myself. I'm going to go by myself to see.
That's how much I love the movie.

Speaker 4 It's supposed to be good. My

Speaker 5 son's going to move. But there's another movie

Speaker 5 that I have heard is fantastic.

Speaker 5 Aubrey Plaza, who I think is wonderful, is a movie called My Old Ass.

Speaker 5 And it's about this young girl takes, I forget who the other lead is, but she takes mushrooms and meets her older self, and they have this relationship. And I've heard it's wonderful.

Speaker 5 I'd love to meet my younger self. It would be just interesting.
I don't know. I don't think it'd be that interesting.
Anyways, go ahead.

Speaker 4 By the way, I saw Aubrey Plaza when I went to that WNBA game.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Which,

Speaker 4 as you know, I'm totally down to WNBA.

Speaker 5 You're a famous lesbian, Scott Calla.

Speaker 4 New unofficial spokesperson for the lesbian community.

Speaker 5 I knew you would like it. I'm so glad that worked out.

Speaker 5 My fail is, I think, like I said, with them insulting everybody and doing everything, I think they're overstepping really quickly and becoming sore winners. It's not, the numbers are really moving.

Speaker 5 And so now it's 49.3 versus 48.

Speaker 4 Oh, God, here we go again.

Speaker 5 No, let me just say they're now doing things like act, like calm the fuck down. This was not as close as you think that.
Besides that, but NFL players are doing the Trump dance. Did you see this?

Speaker 5 Like they're doing that stupid, weird, you know, jack off dance he does where he looks like he's jacking off two horses. Do you know the dance he does?

Speaker 5 They're doing that.

Speaker 5 This isn't going to endear you to anybody being sore winners. Just stop it.
Like, whatever. Do your stupid dance.
But so did this guy, this UFC fight. They're all doing the dance.

Speaker 5 Let me just tell you, you think liberals are irritating? You're fucking irritating too. And I agree, some liberals are irritating.

Speaker 5 But, you know, there's no, this is not, we need to, we do need to get along. And you're just being douche nozzles about it.
So whatever. It's not going to make me think you're better.

Speaker 5 It was close, Scott. I don't care what you say.

Speaker 4 We need to pivot to the center.

Speaker 5 We need to pivot to the center.

Speaker 4 Absolutely got destroyed. We need to rethink.
America is a platform for two things, defending its citizens and its shores and creating atmospheres to get more money.

Speaker 5 In any case, don't be a sore winner. Don't be a sore loser.
Don't be a sore winner. I'm just so hungry.

Speaker 5 You're just sore. Yeah.
Anyway, we want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business, tech, or whatever's on your mind.

Speaker 5 Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 85551-Pivot. We'll be doing another call-in show soon.

Speaker 5 Submit your voicemails with questions you'd like to ask us live on the air and let us know where to reach you.

Speaker 5 Also, Scott, I'm sure you remember Barbenheimer last year, but you're familiar with Glicked? Glicked, get it?

Speaker 5 Wicked and Gladiator 2 are coming out this Friday and people are planning to see both movies back to back. I have seen Wicked.
I'm going to take Clara to see it tomorrow night here in D.C.

Speaker 4 We can talk about how movies are making a comeback. Anyways, I'm sorry, go ahead.

Speaker 5 This you need to see in the theater. Wicked, you absolutely need, and Gladiator 2.

Speaker 4 You love that. You love Wicked.

Speaker 5 I love Wicked. It's really good.
You'll see. They're trying to recreate that Barbenheimer magic, which I thought was kind of cool.
I love that. That did bring a lot of people back to the theater.

Speaker 5 They did great.

Speaker 5 Are you going to go to either?

Speaker 9 No, you won't. I might go.

Speaker 4 I might go to, I'll definitely go to Gladiator.

Speaker 5 I'm not sure. In the theater, you want to see it, though, right?

Speaker 4 Yeah, I think so. I'll probably go see it.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 I like when these movies do well in the theater. I don't, you don't have to discount that experience.

Speaker 5 But speaking of wicked, I just spoke with the director of that movie, John Chu, for the latest episode of On with Kara Swisher.

Speaker 5 He explained to me how he used your favorite device, Scott, the Apple Vision Pro, to edit the movie. It turns out he's a closet geek.

Speaker 5 Steve Jobs is his god.

Speaker 5 He grew up in Silicon Valley, by the way. Let's listen.

Speaker 13 Once I got the Vision Pro, I found it.

Speaker 13 It changed the game for me because I put it on and I wasn't on a computer with my editor over somewhere else, which feels very limiting. I don't get interactive with it.
My blood's not pumping.

Speaker 13 But with the Vision Pro, I could make the screen as big as the room. And I could walk around and pace the way I do in the edit room.
I could lay on the couch the way I do in the edit room.

Speaker 13 And then I could bring it closer. We were doing visual effects on it.
And so I can give notes and use my finger to like mark things. And this is people in the Bay Area.
This is people in London.

Speaker 13 This is people in Canada. And 40 people are on this.
And I'm on my couch. And I can look at it, what it looks like 20 feet wide and what it would look like on an iPad.

Speaker 5 Anyway, it's a great, it's a really interesting interview. He's super geeky and in a really interesting way and also very creative.
And his movie comes out, obviously, the first part of it comes out.

Speaker 5 He's also working on all kinds of cool things.

Speaker 4 He's the director for Wicked?

Speaker 5 Wicked.

Speaker 4 He did crazy rotations. You know, supposedly, I mean, they're so excited about it.
They've already

Speaker 4 given a green light for a sequel, but it's about Mitch McConnell's sex life. It's called Something Wicked This Way Comes.

Speaker 5 Oh, that's good. It's a really bad

Speaker 4 politics.

Speaker 4 Sex.

Speaker 5 Wicked.

Speaker 4 I am literally the Dave Chappelle of the cultural zeitgeist.

Speaker 5 Mish McConnell. He shall be in our rearview mirror, and that's good enough for me.
Okay, Scott, that's the show.

Speaker 4 Where are you going next uh i told you i'm going to vegas for a speaking gig then i go to la i'll be at the beverly hills hotel again trying to find famous people to stare at and then i go to vegas for f1 and then i go to brazil oh my god you're life i'm going to be in new york this week all right i'm sure i'll hear about it i'm sure say hi say hi say hi to my doorman yeah no i'm not staying at your house they're putting me up i'm doing a secret thing a secret show a secret thing

Speaker 5 yeah okay i'm doing a secret i'm doing a pilot doing a pilot for a show nice good Yeah. All right.
I'm not supposed to talk about it, but I'm

Speaker 5 indiscreet. Yes, that's correct.
But she will. I don't understand secretiveness.
I don't understand secretiveness. It's not bragging.
It's transparent to you.

Speaker 5 Transparent. That's what we are.
We broke, as we said, we broke the fourth wall. I got a call from Stephanie Ruhl, by the way, who was complaining about us insulting cable while we go on it.

Speaker 5 We can do both. I was like, Are you going to bitch me out? Are you going to bitch me out in the morning? She called this morning.
I was like, no, we said it's a terrible economics, and it is.

Speaker 5 And your numbers are declining overall. And we love your show.
And it is. Our issue was it could be good.
There's ways to make it good. There's ways to make everything good.

Speaker 5 And we do it because we like it, correct Scott. And it helps our podcast.

Speaker 4 She's like you, although she'll call me. She won't even say hi to Stephanie.
She'll be like, you really disappoint me. And I'm like, oh, no.

Speaker 4 And I'm like, oh, no. And I get scared.
And also, I got to be honest, little turned on, little turned on. I don't know what's coming next.

Speaker 5 Now she's going to call me. Now she's going to call me.
I kind of like it. Stephanie, we love you.
Colin, yell at us. Colin, Colin yell at us.

Speaker 5 Anyway, I'm excited for the song you're going to make for my birthday. You have a month.
You have a month, less than a month. So get on it.
Okay, Scott. Okay.
That's the show.

Speaker 5 75 is a good one. Today's show is produced by Laura Naiman.

Speaker 4 I'm reading us out. Okay.
Today's show is produced by Lara Naim, Zilly Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Nutan engineering this episode.
Thanks also to Drew Burrows, Ms. Severio, and Dan Shulan.

Speaker 4 Nashaq Kirwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts.
Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media.

Speaker 4 You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com/slash pod. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business care.

Speaker 7 Have a great rest of the week.

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