Bluesky's Moment, Crony Capitalism, and Guest Julie Scelfo

Summary

Pivot Podcast Summary
Episode: Bluesky's Moment, Crony Capitalism, and Guest Julie Scelfo
Release Date: November 26, 2024

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Hosts:

• Kara Swisher – Tech journalist
• Scott Galloway – NYU Professor

Guest:

• Julie Scelfo – Founder of Mothers Against Media Addiction (MAMA)

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1. Opening Banter and Personal Updates (02:04 - 09:35)

Kara and Scott kick off the episode with light-hearted banter about their recent activities. Scott shares his experience in São Paulo, enjoying local culture and cuisine, while Kara discusses her participation in events like the Miami Book Fair and her upcoming pilot for CNN's "Off Script" alongside co-host Audie Cornish and Van Latham.

Notable Quote:

• Kara Swisher (04:12): "I'm going to go to one [F1 race]. I'm going to go to one."

2. Formula 1 and Leadership Changes (09:35 - 15:13)

The conversation shifts to the success of the Broadway adaptation of "Wicked" and the film "Gladiator," both of which achieved significant box office milestones. Scott praises Greg Maffei, the departing CEO of F1, and criticizes John Malone's decision to reclaim the CEO position, arguing it led to decreased shareholder value at Warner Bros. Discovery.

Notable Quotes:

• Scott Galloway (05:03): "John Malone is the single smartest person we've ever had on our stages of our events, period."
• Kara Swisher (14:45): "Donna Langley, who's running Universal, she's in line for something big."

3. Social Media Platforms: BlueSky vs. Threads (15:13 - 35:36)

Scott and Kara delve into the competitive landscape of social media, focusing on BlueSky and Meta's Threads. They analyze user growth, engagement metrics, and monetization strategies. Scott emphasizes the importance of targeting mobile users for better returns on investment, while Kara appreciates the diverse content BlueSky offers compared to Threads' more polished approach.

Notable Quotes:

• Scott Galloway (16:30): "The first litmus test should be what size screen does this media end up on?"
• Kara Swisher (53:42): "I think Blue Sky's grab that [news]... that's why they're doing well."

4. Interview with Julie Scelfo: Protecting Kids Online (50:58 - 81:36)

Introduction of Guest:
Julie Scelfo discusses her organization, Mothers Against Media Addiction (MAMA), drawing inspiration from Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). She highlights the alarming rise in suicide rates among adolescents and the detrimental impact of social media on youth mental health.

Key Topics:

• Kids Online Safety Act (COSA):
  Julie explains the bipartisan support for COSA, its objectives to enforce age-appropriate design on social platforms, and the resistance from major tech companies funded by significant lobbying efforts.

• Parental Education and Advocacy:
  MAMA focuses on educating parents, advocating for policies to protect children, and promoting safer technology practices in schools.

• Challenges and Strategies:
  Julie emphasizes the need for systemic solutions over individual remedies, such as enforcing stricter regulations on social media platforms and promoting transparency in content moderation.

Notable Quotes:

• Julie Scelfo (63:43): "We are a grassroots movement of parents fighting back against media addiction and creating a world where real life experiences and interactions remain at the heart of a healthy childhood."
• Scott Galloway (65:42): "These companies are able to really control the conversation."

5. Crony Capitalism and Regulatory Concerns (81:36 - 94:47)

The hosts return to discuss broader economic and political issues, particularly focusing on the upcoming SEC chair appointment by President-elect Donald Trump. Scott critiques the SEC's current role, arguing it protects management over investors and calls for leadership that understands both law and technological innovation.

Notable Quotes:

• Scott Galloway (37:14): "The problem with the SEC is the SEC is mostly there... they're there to protect management."
• Kara Swisher (40:55): "Scott, you keep doing that. I can't wait till you're 83 and we throw you onto the ice flow."

6. Closing Remarks and Upcoming Segments (94:47 - End)

Kara and Scott wrap up the episode by sharing personal reflections on friendships and the importance of balancing online and offline interactions. They also promote upcoming events and encourage listeners to engage with MAMA to support online safety legislation.

Notable Quote:

• Scott Galloway (85:41): "These are wins, feelings of camaraderie and genuine connections with friends."

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Conclusion:

In this episode of Pivot, Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway navigate a range of topics from the competitive dynamics of social media platforms to pressing legislative efforts aimed at safeguarding children's online experiences. Their insightful discussions, complemented by a compelling interview with Julie Scelfo, underscore the intersection of technology, regulation, and societal well-being. Listeners gain valuable perspectives on the influence of crony capitalism, the critical need for effective regulation in tech, and grassroots movements striving to protect the next generation from digital pitfalls.

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Notable Quotes Summary:

• Scott Galloway (05:03): Praise for John Malone highlights significant leadership dynamics in major corporations.
• Julie Scelfo (63:43): Emphasizes MAMA's mission to combat media addiction and protect youth.
• Kara Swisher (53:42): Attributes BlueSky's success to its balanced approach to news and entertainment content.

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Key Takeaways:

1. Social Media Competition:
   The rapid growth of BlueSky and Threads showcases the evolving landscape of social media, emphasizing the importance of user engagement and platform differentiation.

2. Regulatory Oversight:
   The SEC's leadership choices have profound implications for market regulation, investor protection, and the balance between fostering innovation and preventing crony capitalism.

3. Protecting Youth Online:
   Grassroots initiatives like MAMA are crucial in advocating for policies that safeguard children from the adverse effects of excessive media consumption and online exploitation.

4. Economic and Political Intersections:
   The integration of business leadership and political appointments can significantly influence market dynamics and legislative outcomes, affecting both investors and the general public.

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For more insights and detailed discussions, subscribe to Pivot on your preferred podcast platform or visit nymag.com/pivot.

Transcript

[Scott Galloway]

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[Kara Swisher]

Support for the show comes from the new season of Crucible Moments, a podcast from Sequoia Capital. Life is filled with Crucible Moments, those turning points where a tough decision can change everything. Sequoia Capital's podcast Crucible Moments asks founders of some of the world's most important tech companies, like YouTube, DoorDash and more, to reflect on those critical junctures that defined who they are today. Tune into the new season of Crucible Moments now. You can catch up on season one at cruciblemoments.com or or wherever you listen to podcasts.

[Scott Galloway]

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[Kara Swisher]

I see you. Get the fuck on. I'm going to hand you a new one today.

[Scott Galloway]

Oh fuck. We're still talking about Wicked. Jesus Christ.

[Kara Swisher]

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

[Scott Galloway]

And I'm Scott Galloway.

[Kara Swisher]

And what were you doing ahead of this? And where the in the living fuck are you?

[Scott Galloway]

I'm in Sao Paulo and they have all these wonderful accoutrements. No, still. I got here at 6am from Vegas. You didn't ask me how F1 was.

[Kara Swisher]

I shall in A second.

[Scott Galloway]

Anyways, I'm in what is my favorite hotel in the world? The Sao Paulo Rosewood. And they have all these cool Brazilian cultural items. And I've been walking around. I always try and entertain our producers, who are increasingly nonplussed by my humor. And I was rubbing my belly, and I had this big Brazilian thing. And then a guy I travel with came walking out, and he wasn't even phased when he saw me rubbing my belly and shaking some sort of Brazilian music item. He basically looked and just kept on moving.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah. So your lover, your side piece. Whatever.

[Scott Galloway]

It's so nice. One of the nice things about. Let's be honest, there's a lot of nice things about being wealthy.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah.

[Scott Galloway]

One of the things I love.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah.

[Scott Galloway]

If I find a friend who's not doing anything, I'll be like, come with me to Brazil. And most people will go, sure, sure.

[Kara Swisher]

Do they have to carry?

[Scott Galloway]

He's Brazilian, so he knows people here so he can set up hookers. I mean, really cool restaurants for us.

[Kara Swisher]

Okay. All right. Okay.

[Scott Galloway]

And, yeah, I love it down here. I love food.

[Kara Swisher]

And now you're audibly eating fruit. What is that? Fruit Is that.

[Scott Galloway]

It's Brazilian. Everything tastes better here. Everything's hotter. And all the food tastes better in Brazil.

[Kara Swisher]

What is that, a watermelon?

[Scott Galloway]

It's watermelon. Whatever it is, it's lovely. I'm trying to. I'm trying. Any more fruit? For the first time in my life, I had.

[Kara Swisher]

So you can be more regular, right? More regular with the fruit.

[Scott Galloway]

Oh, I'm good. I'm good. Every seven days, I take a dump. I'm like one of those Aliwood Eskimos. That's probably a hate crime.

[Kara Swisher]

I had a friend ask me, just got surgery. How to get a dump. You know what you do? I eat an apple a day and hot coffee in the morning. It'll. It works every day. Thank you. Yeah. Just a little. Little bit of constipation advice for you. How was F1?

[Scott Galloway]

It was really.

[Kara Swisher]

You kind of. You kind of stuck it to them a little in your piece. But go ahead. Go ahead.

[Scott Galloway]

You thought so.

[Kara Swisher]

A little bit, like, little too much. Much too little. Too ahead of their skis. That's what I got out of it, but go ahead.

[Scott Galloway]

Oh, really? Speaking of which, I actually had breakfast Saturday morning with Greg Maffei, who's departing CEO. And by the way, let me just say, John Malone has decided to take back the CEO spot at Liberty. The guy's 83. When will these people learn to move on? Seriously?

[Kara Swisher]

He's the. Can I give you some? I know Greg pretty well from Microsoft. He's in my first book and I like him now. I didn't like him back then. I have to tell you, John Malone is the single smartest person we've ever had on our stages of our events, period.

[Scott Galloway]

Oh, I don't doubt it.

[Kara Swisher]

Period. Like by far.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah. But at 83, he's decided to retake the helm as an operator.

[Kara Swisher]

I don't know. He had some health issues, I thought.

[Scott Galloway]

That's what I know, but that's my point. And by the way, Greg Maffei purchased F1 for four and a half billion dollars in 2017. And it's worth over 20. F1 has been an enormous success. Anyways, I'm biased because I like Greg, but I think he's an exceptionally talented executive. I think John Malone. I don't know what happened here, if Greg is really retiring or if he was fired, but I would offer the John Malone, despite being. I agreeably or I agree with you, the smartest person in the world. He fired the wrong guy. Zaslav is cut shareholder value Warner Bros. Discovery by 70% and managed to take a third of a billion dollars out of the company. They fired the wrong guy. One guy has built value, one guy is destroying it. Shouldn't Milan be taking the helms of Warner Brothers discovery?

[Kara Swisher]

Interesting, interesting. He owns a big bit of it and he has a lot of control over it, that's for sure. This guy makes bets all over the place. He sort of reminds me of a Rupert Murdoch character. And Rupert was quite lively at age. Much more impressive than Rupert, I would agree. That's what I mean. I'm saying Rupert was fine now and is like whatever, wherever that is.

[Scott Galloway]

He basically invented cable tv.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, exactly.

[Scott Galloway]

I mean, he made these enormous investments in stealing the ground that everyone thought was crazy. And he understands how to like maneuver the chess pieces. I agree with you. He is really the. He's probably the smartest guy we don't talk about.

[Kara Swisher]

He was also early aol. I've. I've run into him a zillion times, interviewed him many times. And I have to tell you, and this is someone who's interviewed, you know, Steve Jobs was close in a different way.

[Scott Galloway]

Ah, now we're name dropping. No, I'm just saying, speaking of F1.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh my God, who am I gonna Compare him with?

[Scott Galloway]

240 miles an hour of name dropping.

[Kara Swisher]

Okay, listen to me. I interviewed Steve Jobs. I don't know what to tell you.

[Scott Galloway]

And the Swisher team is seven laps ahead on the name dropping F1.

[Kara Swisher]

Just because you never actually did these things. It's fine and you're jealous, but nonetheless, he is really quite something. I would not count him out at 83. I had heard that he had health issues, so that was the issue. But, you know, I think you can.

[Scott Galloway]

Count everyone out at 83. I'm an ageist. I'm sticking with my ageism.

[Kara Swisher]

All right. Okay. You keep doing that. I can't wait till you're 83 and we throw you onto the ice flow.

[Scott Galloway]

You'll be pushing me around.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh, really? Okay, well, I'll make sure you have plenty of fruit so you can be regular. Tell me about F1. Was it good? What has happened?

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah, it was. Last year was the first one in Vegas. I met a bunch of buddies of mine from LA and another buddy of mine from New York, and we went to this great party. My friend Scott Sartiano, who's this great entrepreneur who started Zero Bond, had a big party Saturday night, which is incredible. You know, you probably never feel this way, but I was so tired. But it was such a great party and the conflict of, like, I'm never at great parties like this, but I'm so tired.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah.

[Scott Galloway]

And anyway, so I obviously go to sleep early. But the race was great. These other guys, Jason Strauss and Noah Tubberberg, have this amazing nightlife company that did this incredible viewership deck from the Bellagio and. Yeah, it's just. I had a great time.

[Kara Swisher]

Good. I'm going to go to one. I'm going to go to one. Yeah.

[Scott Galloway]

No, I want you. I want you there to witness my debauchery and judge me. Can't wait to have you.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh, I totally don't want to go with you. No, I'll go with you.

[Scott Galloway]

It's not your scene. It's not your scene.

[Kara Swisher]

I know, but I want to see it, like, a lot. There's a lot of ladies going to it. Like, friends of mine go in packs.

[Scott Galloway]

Of ladies, 40% female fans.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah. Packs of ladies. I'm not a pack lady person, but, you know, whatever. I thought I'd try it out. I'm not curious.

[Scott Galloway]

I see it more at, like the Miami Book Fair or Subaru Convocation or whatever.

[Kara Swisher]

I had a great time there. I had a wonderful time.

[Scott Galloway]

Oh, you did go to that. How was that?

[Kara Swisher]

Yes, it was wonderful. I was interviewed by Ben Mezrich, who did the book that ultimately led to the Social Network. He did a bunch of books that always get made into Movies, Good movies, actually. Dumb money, stuff like that. And we had a good time. It was packed, let me just tell you. Packed with young and old people and really vibrant and fun. It was at Dade University, Miami Dade or something. Yeah, it was lovely and really fun. I was sort of like, oh, I can't believe I'm getting on this fucking plane. I was in New York and I was like, oh, I should cancel it. And then I didn't, and I'm glad I didn't. It was really lovely. I was pleased to see so many people in person, and I was surprised how many. It was fun. It was kind of funky and fun and packed. And the guy who owns books and books, Mitch some. He was terrific.

[Scott Galloway]

So you and I had much different weekends.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh, yeah. You know, but I'm just saying it was great. Yeah. And I got back from New York and I posted about. I did my pilot for cnn. I'm not supposed to say anything, but here I am. It was good.

[Scott Galloway]

What are you piloting?

[Kara Swisher]

What's the show? A show called off script. I already posted on social media. I'm sure the CNN people are losing their minds. But it's called off script. And it's with Audie Cornish and Van Latham, who is so cool. He's my new Scott, essentially.

[Scott Galloway]

Oh, that's good to know.

[Kara Swisher]

But he's handsomer and taller. He doesn't have as much hair as he's handsome.

[Scott Galloway]

You're new Scott, but he's more handsome and taller. Well, thank you for that, Kara.

[Kara Swisher]

He wears a cowboy hat, so he's great. And so it's. It's interesting. We're. We're going to. I'm going to put some of the interviews in the feed, in my on feed.

[Scott Galloway]

What's the premise of the show?

[Kara Swisher]

A little like a dinner party, a conversation, like us talking in kind of a cool setting. A little less. No. And I'm telling you, it's good. No, you're wrong. You're just jelly. You're jelly. When it's a big hit, you're going to be. Stop it. You're so jelly.

[Scott Galloway]

Well, the good news is launching it. Launching on cnn, you're going to. Right. Right out of the gates. You're going to have dozens and dozens of viewers. Dozens and dozens of viewers.

[Kara Swisher]

I have. No, I've tried basically one thing at CNN, and you tried six or seven different TV things.

[Scott Galloway]

Five. I'm 0 for 5.

[Kara Swisher]

I'm just saying if I have a.

[Scott Galloway]

Hit here, you still want to do tv. You're trying to beg me to come on tv.

[Kara Swisher]

And I'm like, no, begging you.

[Scott Galloway]

The world has said I have a face for podcasting.

[Kara Swisher]

I am zero begging you. I think it's an interesting thing. And I think. Here's the thing. I read one of these dumb media reporters.

[Scott Galloway]

Here's the thing.

[Kara Swisher]

Here's the thing. I read like, it's all over. I'm like, well, why? Can you make good stuff? Yes, you can. If it switches over to digital, they cut the costs. Right? I think there's some still juice in this lemon to squeeze. That's my. Not in the current configuration, but I do. And I think calling anything like it's over is really dumb. That's my feeling.

[Scott Galloway]

Let me just break it down and say what's actually going on here? This is called. This isn't a midlife crisis. This is midlife crisis. And I check the box with beef and prostitutes. You check the box with tv, Same thing.

[Kara Swisher]

You'll see.

[Scott Galloway]

Same thing.

[Kara Swisher]

Look, you know what, everyone, like, you're.

[Scott Galloway]

Trying to impress somebody by.

[Kara Swisher]

I am not. I enjoy it. I'm interested in the challenge of it. And everyone, like, yelled at me when I did podcasting. Let me tell you. Guess what? Everyone yelled at me when I picked Scott Galloway. And you know what? I said? Fuck it. I think this guy has some sun in it.

[Scott Galloway]

Me and cable TV is.

[Kara Swisher]

I'm just telling you, every time people tell me I can't do something, I'm like, go fuck.

[Scott Galloway]

I'm sticking with beef and prawn.

[Kara Swisher]

All right, listen, we got a lot to get to today, including Trump finishes filling out his cabinet and threads rolls out some changes as blue sky grows to the sky. Plus, our friend of pivot is Julie Scelfo, the founder of Mothers Against Media Addiction, or Mama, which is what all my four kids call me. But first, let's get to something that also annoys you. Glicked weekend was a huge success. Wicked opened at $114 million domestically, making it the biggest box office launch of a Broadway adaptation, which is incredible and the third biggest domestic TV debut of this year. I think Wolverine was one of them. Deadpool and Wolverine. And I forget the other one. Internationally, wicked hit about 164 million. Gladiator is in its second weekend. It placed second place domestically with $55 million and $220 million worldwide. Overseas, it had debuted before. Wicked is now all over the world. They're both all over the world. You didn't go to either. So you're gonna tell us all about it? Please do. I am gonna Go see Gladiator this weekend.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah, it's. Movies are making a big comeback. They're only down 10% this year. They are going to do $10 billion in box office revenue, whereas video games are going to do 180. And we still talk about movies, right? Okay, yeah, I'll probably see them both. I'll see Gladiator because I like the franchise. I'll see Wicked because you said it was great and I trust your judgment.

[Kara Swisher]

It was, it was interesting. There's a guy who was forced to go to by his girlfriend. He's like, ugh, why am I going to the stupid thing? And then she taped it at the end. He's like, that was beautiful. So I'm hoping you're going to leave in the middle of it. I know, like you did with Barbie, you're gonna leave. I miss the Defying Gravity song. But I'm excited to see both. I really am. I like both. Interestingly, Wicked was 72% women tickets and Gladiator was 62%. I thought that was pretty low of men buying tickets. Not in groups.

[Scott Galloway]

We don't hang out.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah.

[Scott Galloway]

Let me just remind you, one in seven men can't name a single friend and one in four men doesn't have a best friend.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah. Anyway, I'm excited to see both and I think they've done a beautiful. Let me just say, once again, reiterate, John Chu, who I just interviewed, did a great job. But Donna Langley, who's running Universal, she's in line for something big. Like I say Disney, but something like else. It was, it was really well done. Gladiator cost about $100 million more than Wicked. So it's gonna have to make that up. It's 250 for Wicked for both, for two movies. Each movie. There's another one coming out next year because it's a two parter. But Gladiator costs a lot more as an individual movie to make. But Donna Langley, who runs Universal in this area has really made a big bet here and she's. It looks like she's paid off, including tons and tons of marketing, which I think you would have found interesting. It was all over the Olympics. It's been all over everything. They've been just everywhere. This, this movie's been all. And so is Gladiator. It put stuff on TVs, it did a ton of marketing and it seems.

[Scott Galloway]

To have paid off well. You know how witch is, right? In cursive.

[Kara Swisher]

I'm gonna curse you.

[Scott Galloway]

That's kind of cute.

[Kara Swisher]

That is cute.

[Scott Galloway]

That's kind of cute.

[Kara Swisher]

Where'd you get that? Where'd you get that? That's a good one. That's actually somewhat clever, right? That was well done. Anyway, it is much smaller than videos, 100%, but I don't think it's comparable. It's a very nice. It brings back moviegoing a little bit. You're right, it's down quite a bit. Box office is down by this year. 10%, something like that.

[Scott Galloway]

Some number I've said this morning. I always, like, try and draw it to something resembling a learning. And so many young people want to be in media, and it's a wonderful business in terms of creative outlet. It's pretty simple. When you're picking media, the first litmus test should be what size screen does this media end up on? And there's an inverse correlation between the return on your invested capital and the size of the screen. If you're producing content or you're in the ecosystem producing media, for a giant screen, a movie theater, you could be an 8 on a scale of 1 to 10, and you will get a return of 5. If you're going into a smaller screen that's on the wall in your living room, you could be an 8 and you'll get a 6 or 7 or maybe an 8. Still a big business, still a real business. But the majority of capital, human and financial, in the entire TV industry has been sequestered, sucked up, usurped by the shareholders of Netflix for a variety of dynamics. And then if you're creating content or media that goes on a small string on a phone, you can be a six and you're probably gonna get an eight in terms of return. So, kids, don't let you know, mama, don't let your kids grow up to be in film or tv. Have them figure out a way to develop compelling content that can be consumed on a mobile device.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah. Or that you could take this stuff and make, move it up. You have to be thinking of it all the time. You have to be thinking of it constantly.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah, but think about our medium. Our medium is basically a phone and then AirPods and the smallest screen in the world. Oh, my God, I just saw something brilliant.

[Kara Swisher]

What?

[Scott Galloway]

The smallest screen in the world are AirPods that go in your ears. Oh, that's cool.

[Kara Swisher]

I like it, Scott. See, in real time, this is what I bring out in you.

[Scott Galloway]

There you go.

[Kara Swisher]

I move away the chaff. And then we come to the heart of things. Interesting. Amazon is investing in their $4 billion in anthropic think of things that are going up and to the right. As part of the investment, Anthropic has agreed to make AWS its primary cloud and training partner. That's probably what this money was for. And use Amazon's in house AI chips. Anthropic has been discussing raising funding at $40 billion valuation, as is Elon Musk's ex AI. OpenAI raised $6.6 billion in October bringing its valuation to 157 billion. I think Musk's is higher than that now, but they're up and to the right. So this is Amazon's play here. Anthropic with Claude.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah, it's the same people. Microsoft is having kind of weird tension. They don't want to be too reliant on the shitshow of corporate governance. It is OpenAI. Amazon is Anthropic. I mean they're all sort of intertwined. Intertwined. It's all going to the same players but just the capital appetites of these companies. They're sort of reliant on the biggest players that can offer. Compute. But just the voracious appetite of these companies to build bigger and bigger LLMs. I mean if you read that these kind of these white papers from. Is his name Dario? The kid or the guy? The guy from Anthropic and then Sam Altman. They basically put out these long thought pieces saying I'm really smart, please invest ten more billion dollars in my company. We have never seen an industry that is this capital hungry. And I wonder, as excited as the market is, I wonder there's going to be a player here where the capital is going to run out because the amount of.

[Kara Swisher]

Who do you think? Anybody.

[Scott Galloway]

Well, it's kind of already happened. You know who the first victim was that couldn't raise the amount of capital they needed was inflection.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah. That got sold to Microsoft.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah. So it was kind of a weird acqui hire courtesy of Reid Hoffman. But these things they're talking about the next big model that these things go on could cost 1050, 100 billion. I mean Altman's using throwing around the T word trillion. I just wonder at what point one of these folks hits a wall. The investment I would like to make right now and if you know the CEO, please introduce me. I want to make an investment is perplexity. I think their positioning around AI driven search is a really elegant brand positioning. And the guy is also a total attention whore which I think is smart. The whole like hey New York Times, use me, I'll replace all your journalists. That's a total play for pr. It's totally craven and it's totally smart.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, yeah, he's an interesting character. He really irritates a lot of people. I don't know him. I don't even know the anthro I met. The Anthropocene, I think. I don't know. I gotta get. I gotta do some meetings. I gotta do some meetings.

[Scott Galloway]

Do some original reporting.

[Kara Swisher]

I shall. That's what I do all the time. All day long, my friend. Speaking of which, I was, you know, there was this report that TikTok CEO Sho Chu is consulting Elon Musk about the incoming administration. I talked to TikTok people. They said this is overblown beyond belief. You know, everyone's relating everything to Elon Musk, talking to them, including the Chinese leaders which have leverage over Musk, hoping to be beneficial in the Trump administration. I have. I think this is all being over exploited except for the people they're bringing in to their Doge thing again, and I don't want to call it Doge. Department of Government Efficiency. People involved in the early stages. Investor Marc Andreessen, hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, former Uber CEO who was disgraced and fired. Travis Kalanick and boring company president Steve Davis. Davis is a longtime factotum of Musk's. And Mark, well, we know Mark and Ackman. He's loudmouth. They're all the loudmouths, essentially. And Travis, that was fascinating choice.

[Scott Galloway]

Can you say more about what? You put out a text. What does Travis have to do?

[Kara Swisher]

What's going on here? They're all part of the same mob scene there. It's Shervin Peshavar, if you remember him. Emil Michael. Yeah, they're all part of the same crew. And it's just the crew. It's literally like watching Lucchesis are coming in, essentially. Allegedly, it feels like that. And they bring with them some people who have talent and some people who are. Are really dumb or terrible. Mostly terrible. And some people hangers on and some people. And there's a lot of those. And all of whom are beholden to Musk and suck up to him. That's their thing in common, all of them. Or they want their. Or they're really thirsty, like Bill Ackman. I know you like him, but he's so thirsty for being not who he is. Mark Andreesten, I think is probably the most malevolent of this group. Smart, obviously successful, but really an unpleasant character overall.

[Scott Galloway]

Who amongst them do you like?

[Kara Swisher]

Not this group. None of I Don't know Steve Davis. I've heard he's smart. I mean they're all.

[Scott Galloway]

I mean, I like Travis Callender because he throws a great party and invited me like three years ago for Halloween.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh, did he? Okay, well, we did a lot of reporting on him and he ended up being fired, so. And justifiably so. He presided over a really toxic. You can go watch all the movies and read the books. He's just a toxic person, but you know, toxic.

[Scott Galloway]

Do you think that's fair?

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, I do. I think he created a toxic work environment.

[Scott Galloway]

I mean, Goetz is toxic. Do you really think Travis was toxic?

[Kara Swisher]

Yes. You've not read any. You've clearly not read any of the books.

[Scott Galloway]

You clearly have not read anything.

[Kara Swisher]

You have not read anything.

[Scott Galloway]

As I said at the Miami Book Fair.

[Kara Swisher]

As I said. Yes, I do. Yes, I do. I think he. I think compare him to Dara Kos Rashahi. That's all he would say. Dara. He's created a Nazis smart. He's great. He's great. And you know the stuff that Travis.

[Scott Galloway]

I like the guy who worked with Lyft too. David, the CEO of Lyft. He's a good guy.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, they're fine. They're all great. They're all fine. Like this guy had to make it a hand waving.

[Scott Galloway]

Travis throw fest.

[Kara Swisher]

Decent guy like his. No, he's not.

[Scott Galloway]

No, I'm sorry, not Travis. What was I saying? Oh shit.

[C]

Dar.

[Scott Galloway]

Oh no. Brian. Brian Chesky. We like Brian.

[Kara Swisher]

Lovely, lovely. Everybody's has their faults, but this guy just went out of his way to be a douchebag. Like really in a way that was really icky. You know, the whole thing with women, the anti women stuff was heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy. And that may not bother you, but it bothered me.

[Scott Galloway]

So. Is there an air hockey table involved? There's different. No, there's something.

[Kara Swisher]

No.

[Scott Galloway]

Okay, hold on. I do think I've been thinking a lot about the Department of Education recently because this ridiculous bullshit that we want to eliminate what is probably the best forward leaning investment in history and that's the Department of Education in my view. I think it's paid more dividends than NASA or whatever. There are different levels of mendacious and I think one of the things we need in the senior year of high school for kids is one a class on and I love the word use adulting. Right? My kid can do integers but doesn't understand the interest rate on his Green light credit card. We need to tell young people to train them about sexuality in a more thoughtful, real world place. Specifically how to express traumatic interest while making someone feel safe. And three, I think we need to bring back civics and teach kids just how incredibly fortunate are that the best decision they ever made was to be born in America. And finally, I really do think we need much more thoughtful and concerted training and education around critical thinking. Because all right, people are conflating people who've had scandals, who've been unfaithful outside of their marriage or whatever, or New York magazine hit pieces on podcasters which made no fucking sense to me. Or taking advantage of a White House intern. That is worse. But it's not in the same goddamn league as having sex with a minor. And we tend to group all of these things into the same thing. They're not. Some activities are right. You know, people are human. People fuck up, fine, and then people should be disqualified. Matt Gaetz couldn't get a job at a law firm much, much less be attorney general.

[Kara Swisher]

And neither could some of these people. And now they're running government stuff. Neither could some of these people.

[Scott Galloway]

Right, Right.

[Kara Swisher]

But I'm just like, yeah, if Matt Gaetz is your bar. Everything else, it's like saying, don't be evil. Everything else to the left of it is like, whatever, right?

[Scott Galloway]

Cam Bondi looks like fucking Thurgood Marshall because she's following Mac.

[Kara Swisher]

I know, I know. Exactly. That's exactly. And she certainly is not. There's all kinds of reporting on her behavior, but they seem all very shifty and crony. One of the ones that is really just now, Brandon Carr, who's going to be the head of the fcc. Thank God they don't have that much power. Tells Maria Bartiroma he's going to make sure the government no longer treats Elon Musk unfairly. I'm not sure when that happened. And says he's going to take a look at blocking George Soros from buying radio stations if this isn't crony capitalism. All these. Come on, seriously.

[Scott Galloway]

But Elon Musk can buy MSNBC and Twitter.

[Kara Swisher]

No, he's not going to buy that. You know what I mean? It's like, who's the. These people?

[Scott Galloway]

That should be a new name for your number 7 million rated skin. It should be called these People. That would be good. These People.

[Kara Swisher]

These People. These People. And I just got.

[Scott Galloway]

You're welcome. I want to credit executive producer from executive producer Scott Galloway.

[Kara Swisher]

Welcome. I welcome your doubt because happened before when I started a blog. Happened before when I started podcasting. Happened before when I Picked Scott Galloway. I'm good with your doubt. I love your doubt.

[Scott Galloway]

You conflate me with cable television.

[Kara Swisher]

I'm just saying I see something. I see something. Something I see.

[Scott Galloway]

I. After working my ass off for 30 years, I'm an overnight success because of Kara Swisher. There's some truth in that.

[Kara Swisher]

No, there's some truth in that. No, there is some truth in that. I'm sorry. That's what I'm saying is that, like, I don't. Like I have to listen to my own instincts here. So I'm going to do that. It's part of an entire ecosystem.

[Scott Galloway]

I got to be honest, I was rolling with some pretty hot ladies in F1, and a bunch of times the casino people yell out, hey, Prof. G. And I felt like I should text you and say, thanks for the. This. Thanks for this.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, it's nice. So, anyway, they're not. They're just like, I'm sorry. All I say, Charles Kuk, is Dar Kos Rashad. He has managed to turn that company thing, and he spent a lot of time doing all kinds of stuff. At one point, he was like. He wrote memos that was like, you all shouldn't. Should only fuck each other if you're not in the direct line thing. And I can't fuck any. He had so much.

[Scott Galloway]

Like he was a kid, he was immature. I would describe his immaturity. I wouldn't describe him. Look, you know better than me. I don't think he was malicious. I would describe him as very immature and shouldn't have been the CEO of a company of that amount.

[Kara Swisher]

Perhaps. Perhaps. Speaking of msnbc, people are in a panic that Elon's going to buy it because he tweeted it about buying it. It's ridiculous. It's not. I've talked to the Comcast people. They're going to spin it off, and then it'll be a shareholder thing. They're not going to turn around and sell it to Elon Musk. It's just not going to happen. And he could buy shares in it once it's a public company in about a year, something like that. But from what I kind of. I kind. I had some discussions with Comcast people. It kind of makes sense to put it off in one thing. And they'll either rise or fail based on what they make and if as much as they digitize it. That's my feeling. Right. I don't. I don't know what else.

[Scott Galloway]

We talked about this. This good bank, bad banks, makes all the sense in the world. These are, these are good assets. They still make a ton of money. There's still a lot of seven year olds that buy a lot of, you know, insurance and reverse mortgages and in Buicks and still invest in mutual funds thinking that some guy who looks old like them knows how to pick stocks, which they don't. So there's a lot of money to be made there. The thing is they're declining assets. And what they need to do is.

[Kara Swisher]

But they don't have. All I'm saying is they get all the money now. So they could do. They could actually make good things. They could shift around. You know, everyone thought one thing was you could shift with this money. Before, they used to send all the money over to Peacock or whoever. Now they get to keep the money and they can either figure out something forward to do with it or continue to milk it either way.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah, but they'll acquire other failing cable assets. It's still spinoff cash flow. They'll consolidate the back end and they'll move to a stock that offers a dividend like a mature company. And they'll come up with new stuff, just as long as it's not crazy, stupid expensive. They can't afford to be in the streaming market. That's why they're getting out. That's a race to the bottom, being led by Netflix, which has 38 gallons of gasoline for everyone. Everyone else has. But this is a smart. We talked about this. This is a smart move. It'll be good. The whole industry is going to be smaller. It's not going to be as high paying. It is leaking market share to other formats. We're about to have much more competition. Basically, what do you call an anchor that used to make $3 million and left in a huff because they only offered her 1 million? A podcaster. You're going to see. Essentially every news anchor in America is about to have a podcast.

[Kara Swisher]

Don't I know it's. But don't I know it. I get called by all of them.

[Scott Galloway]

Let me just give you some numbers here though. You want to talk about income inequality? There are 3 million podcasts. 600,000 put out a podcast every week. Right. I would venture that maybe generously, 600 or one in a thousand. One percent make money. When I was on and I like this story because it makes me look good. When I was on crew at UCLA, we had 10 oarsmen go to the Olympics out of a total of 2,800 since it became a varsity sport. Meaning that approximately 0.3% I was three times more likely at the age of 19 to end up in the Olympics than having a top podcast. So this is how difficult it is to get to a sustainable podcast right now. It is more difficult if you end up being a varsity athlete at a university. There's a greater likelihood you'll end up in the Olympics than have a successful self sustaining podcast. I did that on my own. Isn't that good?

[Kara Swisher]

We should go to the Olympics, you and I. We compete in shot put.

[Scott Galloway]

Shot put.

[Kara Swisher]

So that, that thing with the ice where you, where you, where you could do the sweeping thing and I could do the curling.

[Scott Galloway]

No, here's the thing. This is what I tell kids that are athletes. My kids have the perfect amount of athletic ability and that is they're good enough to play on their teams, but they're nowhere near good enough to have any delusions of grandeur that they're going to get a college scholarship or play professional sports. That is just the right amount of athletic skill. Because, because I was an athlete, but I had absolutely no chance of doing anything. I didn't have those delusions. I got on with my life and I went and got a job. My friends who were world class athletes, a couple of them went to the Olympics in Seoul. A couple of them ended up playing triple B ball. Now two went on to be huge. Troy Ekman and Reggie Miller were also my class, but those guys were freakish. But the majority of them by the age of 28 or 29, were just starting their lives. It is a really, really difficult way to make a living. And what I tell young people in sports is unless you're getting bright flashing green lights that you're going to be in the 0.001%. I mean, some of the. Ed O'Bannon was like a. The guy was a God on the basketball court and he didn't, you know, he lasted one year in the pros. It's a very, it's a very difficult way to make a living. But here's the good news. What I tell young people is the same skills you bring to sports. Teamwork, knowing how to lose grit, real discipline, competitive, like just an incredible drive. All of these things apply all of them to a profession that you get better at as you get older. Business, medicine. Because here's the wonderful thing. I go to the US Open every year and I was thinking about this. I would rather be Rafael Nadal or Roger Federer. If I could switch spots to be the number one or the number two in the world, I would do that. But the number five guy, I'd rather be me because I get to buy my way into the U.S. open. And I'm not nervous. I get to enjoy it more than him. And this guy is the number five player in the world. Do you know who the number five player in the world is?

[Kara Swisher]

No.

[Scott Galloway]

Neither does anybody else unless you're super into tennis. So here's the thing. Find an industry that you get better at as you get older. Don't go into modeling, don't go into sports. I would even say most of the creative industries, most people. That hormone leaves you when you're 30 and you start learning about the world and you stop being a genius. Find a profession you get better at as you get older.

[Kara Swisher]

Good piece of advice by Scott Calloway. Very nice.

[Scott Galloway]

That's why you took a chance on me. Like cable news.

[Kara Swisher]

I did. You'll see. You're gonna see cable news.

[Scott Galloway]

I like your show with Chris Wallace. I like it. Why wouldn't they just reinvent you and have you be Chris Wallace?

[Kara Swisher]

I don't know. I actually like this one better. I'll tell you why I like this one. It feels like a podcast video with on video. That's what it has that vibe. And so I kind of find it. It was really fun to make and some. I was also. We'll play some later on. Have I got news for you. Which is showing very strong ratings.

[Scott Galloway]

Actually up 61% from 10 people to 16. I'm sorry, go ahead.

[C]

No, it was.

[Kara Swisher]

It's doing rather well, Scott. And if you get a sponsor attached, you can do. Really. I will just tell you on. For example, I just got all the numbers. We're way up in terms of revenues and watch people listening it. But the revenues have gone up quite a bit in the past year.

[Scott Galloway]

But you're making my point. And I did this chart which I'm especially proud of. Do you realize we need somewhere between a third and a seventh of the people to reach 100,000 people as any cable news program? Yep, I agree. And so on. Somewhere between a third and the seventh of the audience, we can make as much money. And if you get the same audience, which we do as a decent cable show and you can do it with five people. Do you know how many people it takes? I mean, you see it. You go into cnn, dc, every studio, how many that show you're producing or you're going to do for cnn. How many people do you think touch or spend a lot of time on that show to produce what is either 21 or 42 minutes of good content.

[Kara Swisher]

I don't actually know, but it was a lot smaller than before and that was good because everyone was really lively.

[Scott Galloway]

So a dozen people in the control room editing, sound, all that shit.

[Kara Swisher]

You're right.

[Scott Galloway]

At least.

[Kara Swisher]

Yep, you're right. But we have more than just a few. Anyway, it's really interesting. I mean, he's absolutely right on his poised for next year to grow like enormously and stuff like that. So you're absolutely right and we're in a good spot. I like my podcast most of all. Don't.

[Scott Galloway]

Which one, which one do you enjoy the most? I'm curious.

[Kara Swisher]

This one.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah, me too. Thanks for saying that. I enjoy this one the most.

[Kara Swisher]

This one.

[Scott Galloway]

This one. I agree.

[Kara Swisher]

I like all the others, so I really enjoy the others though. Anyway, let's get to our first big story. President elect Donald Trump will be picking a new SEC chair. I want to. I don't love focusing everything on this Trump picks because some of them are so asinine, some are okay. But Gary Gensler announced last week he'll be stepping down and leaving the SEC on January 20 to delight of crypto bros everywhere. Trump has yet to reveal Gensler's replacement. This will be a really important replacement, but the pick will likely be someone friendlier to both Wall street and crypto. Gensler's departure is not no surprise to anyone. Bitcoin surged past 98,000 dol if I get what it is today. But Mark Cuban posted. Gary Gensler is leaving the SEC about two years too late. I believe his stance on crypto was the reason so many young crypto owning men voted Republican, which was interesting. You know, Mark said we're crypto, not agnostic. Positive, but not like douche nozzle people.

[Scott Galloway]

Positive Mark or us.

[Kara Swisher]

So no, I think, I think we're all the same place Mark is. I think Gensler really did try. I see why he was doing it, but at the same time he was unusually obstructive. You talked to at one of our events about this. So what do you think they should do? I mean Kamala Harris was much more embracing of it, but not as much as Trump. So anybody you think and let me just. I'll get to Scott Besant or however you pronounce it in a second. But who should be the head of the sec because you don't want like this crony capitalism that you might be seeing. You know, Mark Cuban and Elon Musk have had cross purposes with the SEC for many years, obviously. But thoughts I Don't know.

[Scott Galloway]

I would go. I mean, it'd be nice if you could find someone who's a little bit younger and a little bit more in touch with some of the new technologies. Keep in mind no one likes the regulator in bull times and everyone blames the regulation for under regulation. When shit gets real and people lose their money. Yeah, very good point. I'd love to see a guy like David Solomon. I think he understands the markets, I think he's forward looking. But at the same time, this is a long winded way, Kara, of saying I don't know. The crypto thing has garnered a disproportionate. Other than musk. You would argue that as an asset class, no asset class dominated this election in terms of swing voters like crypto. Crypto, there's some wonderful things about it. It has established itself as a tangible asset class, specifically Bitcoin and visionaries like Michael Saylor who have done defied all odds in terms of corporate governance. Miami also issued billions of dollars in debt on the backs of the creditworthiness of a company in business intelligence and then went out and bought Bitcoin, which is just fucking crazy. And meanwhile the stock's up nine and a half fold. I mean, this guy really is a visionary. I'd like to see someone who understands these technologies, but at the same time, the sec. The problem with the SEC is the SEC is mostly there. It's supposed to be there to protect investors. Now part of protection is not only regulation, but it's also ensuring that the markets are robust and people can make money and embracing risk. And generally speaking, America errs on the side of a lack of regulation such that we can let our horses run. But the problem with the SEC over the last 20 or 30 years, I would argue, and I have a lot of, I've had a lot of involvement with the SEC because I was an activist investor. Is they're supposed to be there to protect investors. They're not. They're there to protect management. And that is they implement all these rules where if you buy more than 5% of shares, you have to disclo your intentions. They give management the benefit of the doubt. They basically have been weaponized by management to transfer money from shareholders and the general public to management. And so that needs to change. But you probably, I would think with the SEC wants someone who understands the law, understands innovation, because I mean, just slow your roll around the crypto thing, guys. Because if all of a sudden these shit coins come back and you convince a bunch of retail investors to invest in this thing. You could see a lot of good people lose everything. Everything. Right, exactly. So the notion that we just want to embrace somebody who's just going to try and I mean basically what crypto has said is just put a guy in there that's going to figure out a way to irrationally, artificially explode the value of my Bitcoin. And that's again, there's a common thing among cronyism and kleptocracy and that is do whatever is required to transfer money from the entrance or the people who don't have have money yet to the incumbents that already own this shit. And that's not the way you operate America. The way you operate America is created a playing environment such that young people can move up the ladder, they can save more than they can spend and they can start investing in assets at a reasonable price instead of just pumping up the value of every market. Housing, crypto and stocks such the incumbents like me get richer and richer.

[Kara Swisher]

Now speaking of which in this will be interesting to see who they pick. I think he'll end up picking someone. He seems to be very calm on the Wall street pick like you know, very normal.

[Scott Galloway]

They're credible.

[Kara Swisher]

They're credible. Donald Trump made a flurry of these nominations when we spoke last week. He nominated the most important was Scott Besant for Treasury Secretary. Claiming that Besant will make America rich again. America is rich, you dumb fuck. Just not the right people, right? Not everybody.

[Scott Galloway]

It's not evenly distributed. It's what William Gibson said about the future prosperity is here. It's just not evenly distributed.

[Kara Swisher]

That's correct. This election follows an internal battle in Trump world that advisor likened to a knife fight fight with that would have been Fun with Bessent vs Howard Lutnick. Besent was once a protege of George Soros. As we said was not a negative thing. Major Democratic donor, which is a concern for some Trump allies. But like Trump, Besset favors tariffs and deregulation. I'm not sure how much he favors the tariff part. I suspect deregulation certainly. He's also been an advocate for blockchain and digital assets. Probably very. In probably a very normal way. Trump seems to be pleasing Wall street with his choice. But not Elon Musk who is pushing for Lutnick probably because it can control him. By the way, Bessette would be the first openly gay treasury secretary. I think that's kind of interesting.

[Scott Galloway]

We should also point out to be fair, I think the LGBTQ community on a number of levels Actually did pretty well in this election.

[Kara Swisher]

Meaning.

[Scott Galloway]

Well, the first transgender woman elected to Congress.

[Kara Swisher]

Yes. Democrat. Yeah.

[Scott Galloway]

There was a decent amount of victory and progress around the LGBT community in this election.

[Kara Swisher]

Well, not, not the laws that are coming, Scott. I mean, I'll be. Again, I'll be living with you in London at some point.

[Scott Galloway]

It's worrisome for come on over, the weather's fine. That's a lie. That's a lie.

[Kara Swisher]

That's a l. But talk about Besant. I think you're wrong about gays and lesbians. I think Sarah McBride seems to be like a class, class act. And compared to Nancy Mace who's.

[Scott Galloway]

Well, it's double edged because she was elected. Right?

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, right. That's right. I have nothing but regard for her and I like how she's rolling. We'll see how she does Besent.

[Scott Galloway]

Talk about Bessent, hedge fund manager. And the thing that shocked everybody is that of course they think that Soros somehow is the enemy. He's very qualified. I like you need someone. The thing that gives me hope or the respite, the consolation, the silver, not even line, the silver dotted silver line in all of this is that Trump does appear to think, okay, when it comes to laws, it doesn't matter. When it comes to the Department of Education. Oh, it doesn't matter. But at least he's smart enough to know none of this shit matters if the economy isn't well run. The economy is the mothership and I would argue their picks and the people they're vetting, including Scott Besant. He's an adult. He understands the markets. He's a very bright guy. So I'm heartened by this pick. And not only that, this is, you could argue, this is the only pick. You know, typically in a nod to the other party, they would give someone from the other party, you know, Department of Transportation, just to try and pretend to be, to try and pretend to be bipartisan. That shit's gone out the window. And they're not only, not, not only not bipartisan, they'll pick the fucking craziest person as long as you supported me, regardless of how ridiculous your lack of qualifications are when it comes to the economic running the economy, I think Trump says at least he believes, okay, this shit's for real. And regardless of the fact this guy worked for Soros. And I want to be clear, I know a lot of people who've worked at Soros Fund management.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah.

[Scott Galloway]

It's not about their political views. It's about their ability to make Money.

[Kara Swisher]

Right.

[Scott Galloway]

And that's what he's decided here. He's gone for a brain over politics. So I think this is a great pick. I'm excited about it.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, I was much calmed down by this one. And, you know, Stephanie RHL was telling me this was the guy that was good. There was another one, I forget who is. Pam Bondi, as you noted, is Trump's new choice for Attorney general, again following the lowest bar of all. Matt Gaetz stepping aside last week should have been no surprise. Bondi is a former Florida Attorney General who later served as Trump's defense team during his first impeachment trial. She's worked as lobbyists with clients including General Motors, Amazon and Uber. She currently leads the legal arm of a right wing think tank with ties to the Trump transition team. There was some kerfuffle about her dropping a case against Trump University and getting a $25,000 donation by Trump. She's certainly the more conventional choice, although she seems to be an election denier. That's what it looks like. And, and by the way, her brother is an attorney who represented Tesla in the SEC fraud case against Eli. These people's interconnectedness is just something to see. Like, it's really something, you know, again, as you said, she's not as bad as him, so. Oh, well, here we are.

[Scott Galloway]

She'll fly right through. But just back to the thing I noticed about Besson was this morning the stock market opened up four or five hundred bucks. You know what you're hearing in the markets right now? A gigantic fucking exhale. They're like, yeah, when they said, okay, if they put. I mean, what are they going to do? But you know, the head of his paper route in charge of treasury, nobody.

[Kara Swisher]

Liked Lutnick, I'll tell you that. No, I heard terrible things about Lutnick from Republicans, Democrats. They thought he was just a thirsty, a thirst trap for attention and was not qualified. I think they think this guy is certainly qualified. Anyway, a few. That's right, a few. Anyway, Bonnie, we'll see. She'll pass through. We'll see what she can get done. Before we say goodbye to Matt G, want to share A clip from CNN's have I Got yout for your? Which is a very popular program, up 61% where I was a panelist this weekend, the subject of Gates came up, who, by the way, is on Cameo now. So we can buy one if you want.

[Scott Galloway]

We gotta do something.

[Kara Swisher]

No, we got it. What should we have him say? The dog and the. And the jungle cat are My favorite.

[Scott Galloway]

I would love to. I would. See, just have our. I'd like him to give my 17 year old boy dating advice and just see what he comes back with.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh, no.

[Scott Galloway]

Is that wrong?

[Kara Swisher]

All right, go for it.

[Scott Galloway]

Is that wrong?

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, it is wrong, but it's right.

[Scott Galloway]

His favorite air hockey table.

[Kara Swisher]

That's wrong.

[Scott Galloway]

I don't know. We gotta do something and see if.

[Kara Swisher]

He does it and play it up. He'll not do it. He's not Josh Santos.

[Scott Galloway]

We wanted. These guys wanted someone to be attorney general who for 500 bucks.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, we'll say whatever. Anyway, he's so grotesque. He's gonna be on Dancing with the Stars next. Or maybe he was already. Anyway, I think you'll enjoy the question I asked my fellow panelists and all lesbians comedians Amber Ruff and Jenny Hagel. And then there were Roy Wood Jr.

[Scott Galloway]

I don't see sexual orientation. It doesn't matter.

[Kara Swisher]

In any case, let's listen very quickly, ladies. Isn't Matt Gaetz the kind of guy you dated just before you became gay? Yes. He was the last exit ramp.

[Scott Galloway]

He was the one where you're like, if I.

[Kara Swisher]

Let me try. Nope, can't do it. Anyway, it was fun. It was a really. Actually, it was a very fun show. It goes on just before Bill Maher. I mean, they're trying to build something fun on Saturday night and they, they rebroadcast Bill Maher, which is cut. Bakuta idea. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, another big week for Blue sky as threads make some changes. And we'll speak with friend of Pivot, Julie Scelfo about kids online safety legislation. Quite a controversial issue. Support for Pivot comes from Fundrise. Investing in private market real estate is unique. You're not dealing with the yo yoing whims of the stock market market. Instead, you can create consistent income and unlock long term earning potential. Take the current real estate market, for example. Interest rates are high, demand is low, and so are the prices. It's a situation that fundrise is trying to make the most of, which means you can too. The fundrise flagship Fund is a $1.1 billion private real estate portfolio. And right now, fundrise is looking to expand it. It's a fund that's designed to deliver that long term earning potential that makes real estate investing so unique. Unique. You can get in on a diversified portfolio of some of the tried and true real estate investment strategies. You can add fundrise flagship fund to your portfolio in minutes by visiting fundrise.com pivot that's f u n d r I s e.com pivot carefully consider the investment objectives, risk charges and expenses of the fundrise flagship fund before investing. This and other information can be found in the fund's perspective at fundraising. This is a paid advertisement. Support for this show comes from arm. Have you ever thought about the technology that makes this podcast possible? Whether you're listening on your phone, in your car or via a laptop, there's also the data centers that make it all work. One company is at the heart of it all. It's the same company that powered the smartphone revolution and is helping define the AI revolution. That company is called ARM designs compute platforms for the biggest companies in the world so they can create silicon solutions to power global technology. Arm became a Nasdaq 100 company in less than a year of its IPO and is proudly NASDAQ listed. ARM touches nearly 100% of the globally connected population. 99% of smartphones are built on ARM. Major clouds run on ARM as well as all major mobile and PC apps. Now their engineers are tackling the insatiable demand for compute and power efficiency that AI is creating. AI enabled ARM CPUs are able to provide the compute platform for the global AI revolution in the years to come. But for now, relax and enjoy this podcast. It's very likely running on your very own ARM powered device. Visit arm.comdiscover to learn more.

[Scott Galloway]

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[Kara Swisher]

Scott we're back. Blue Sky's growth doesn't appear to be stopping with the platform crossing more than 21 million users keeps adding a million users a day while the the threads has five times more daily active users than bluesky. Ahead of the election, that lead has now been reduced to 1.5 times, according to SimilarWeb. So people are really using it. Meta now seems to be feeling the heat, introducing new features suddenly. Oh, competition brings innovation and copying, including custom feeds around topics or people mimicking Blue Sky's capabilities. That's an old Meta trick. Let me just tell you. That's a Facebook original. So bluesky is still small compared to Threads. Quite small. But it's growing fast. Adam Masseri, the head of Instagram, seemed to downplay Blue sky numbers, sharing that Threads has more than 50 million signups in November alone. Agreed. Threads have been seeing a million new users a day for the last three months. Agreed. But it's very exciting that a young. That a small little thing is doing really well. I'm going to just give briefly Blue Sky's financials. Blue sky was initially launched as a spinoff of Twitter under Jack Dorsey. The company has since cut ties with him. That was interesting. Kicked his ass out. Now majority owned by its employees. On the latest episode of on with Care, Swisher, I assembled a panel of experts to talk Blue sky threads and Exodus decoders. Nilai Patel shared what he learned about Blue Sky's financial prospects from CEO Jay Graber. Let's listen very quickly and then I'd love your thoughts on this, Serge.

[Scott Galloway]

So I interviewed Jay on Decoder earlier this year. I asked her how you make money. This is before the explosion. Maybe she has new ideas now. But a lot of their ideas are really interesting. Right. She said we're going to sell people out algorithms. We're going to allow people to compose lists and sell lists. Well, there's some amount of, like, how should we do paid tweets that everybody has in the back of their mind. Like, this should be a native subscription platform. So I think their idea is to sell user experience and then to build an ecosystem of basically like B2B SaaS products where other people want to start BlueSky servers. We'll see how it goes.

[Kara Swisher]

Right.

[Scott Galloway]

They've got a long way to go.

[Kara Swisher]

I've been contacted by so many very wealthy people about investing in this thing and very big names that people I like actually who are meeting with them and talking to them. So thoughts very first on the surge and then I'll get to the investment soon.

[Scott Galloway]

You know more about this than I do. I just got on. It's the hottest new product introduction and I know that's not. It didn't happen in 2024. But this is the hottest new product in tech right now. No doubt. Its user base has gone from 3013 million to 23 million in just two weeks. Its usage, its daily active usage is now greater than.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, yeah, it's getting there. It's close.

[Scott Galloway]

This is the. This is the hottest product in tech right now. And what I would ask you, I flip it back to you and is that in one simple question. Why? What about it is working well, you.

[Kara Swisher]

Know, I think it's fun. It's actually fun. And look, I don't think you have to necessarily choose. I like both. I really do like Threads. When Amanda was joking about it, she said Blue sky is like the coolest bar you've ever been to. And why are you over at the Cheesecake Factory? And I'm like, the cheesecake is delicious. Like, you know, I think that's probably right. A good metaphor. I like it's better for Threads, is better for marketing my stuff, honestly. And actually has a nice vibe too. And it's a little more like Instagram with text, you know, like, I can see. Like, I don't find the really funny videos that I like. I find them on Threads much more. Like, I know it sounds dumb. Chopping up food in creative ways or doing kind of cool karate moves, or it's a guy who mastering the art of camouflage to disappear in any setting. He's an artist who camouflages and then stands in front of things. I wouldn't have found that on Blue Sky. I would be uncool. So I'm fine with that. But I do like it. They're much funnier people. They are assembling a news forward group of people. A lot of journalists, a lot of Pauls are coming over. They're replicating that part of Twitter, the news feeling. And that's something that Threads had pushed away from, which is now they're now moving back, letting people choose politics if they want. Like politics and news. They were very much against it. And so days later, you'd see things that happened days before. So I think Blue Skies grab that. And I think that's why they're doing well, because some people like news out of these things, some people like entertainment out of them. And so I think. And it feels like old Twitter, but not in a toxic way. I don't think it's an echo chamber. By the way, guess who's building the echo chamber. Elon Musk is building an echo chamber over on his service. And to pretend otherwise is ridiculous. I mean, one of the stories that just came Out. Is that how he's minimizing links to stories so that people don't get to see them? He's creating an echo chamber too. And that's what some of these things are. But I like them both. I like them both. So let me ask you about the money part though. They've raised $15 million in Series A funding back in October. And then there's already interest in a new investment round. I again, I've heard from lots of people, the CEO has said the platform is billionaire proof because it's not one centralized feed of content. And again, this echo chamber, I don't, I think it's a nothing burger. But talk about why you would or would not invest in this.

[Scott Galloway]

Oh, I mean, you're talking to a guy who invested in Post.

[Kara Swisher]

Post. Yeah.

[Scott Galloway]

Look, there's social media. Why would you do it? To make money. There is an enormous. The rivers are reversing all the money that's gone into traditional media. The weird thing about media spend is it is arguably the most resilient business in the world. For about 100 years, advertising or media spend or ad supported media has been approximately 1 1/2% of GDP. In a recession it goes to 1.4 because what a lot of people. I'll go back here, a guy named Tyler Johnston, the CMO of Dreyers, he was my first client out of business school for my brand strategy firm Profit. We went into a recession, it was 92. And he said, we're increasing our ad spending because this is just as all the bigger players are pulling back. This is a unique opportunity for us to grab share at a lower price because ad rates have come down. So generally speaking, media spending is incredibly resilient, but it never goes that much greater or that much lower. What's different is where the money goes.

[Kara Swisher]

Grabs.

[Scott Galloway]

Oh my gosh. And the amount of capital still up for grab. You know, we talk about cnn. CNN still does a billion dollars. I mean, there's a lot of money still up for grabs here and now there's going to be money up for grabs among the bigger players. And when you have an entity like that, if they raise money at a valuation of 15 million million, that probably means it was sub a billion. You don't raise 15 million on a billion. You don't issue one and a half percent increase in shares. That probably means it was at somewhere between 50 and 200 million. Oh my gosh. I mean, I'm immediately thinking, does Kara Swisher know this guy? Because I want him to open up the round so I can get in. This is.

[Kara Swisher]

It's run by women, but go ahead.

[Scott Galloway]

This is a company they will do. I wish this was predictions day. They will raise a round. They will announce a round in the next 90 days, if not sooner. At a billion dollars plus. This is the hottest product and the hottest category in the world. And that is a media company that can scale, that has network like scaling ability and everybody is talking about it. So. Yeah, why would you invest? So you could make a shit ton of money?

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, I would think so. I think they're trying very hard to make sure that people know people can take their things with them. The CEO was a woman. Jay Graber has been an advocate of decentralization, empowerment. So you're going to get.

[C]

That kind.

[Kara Swisher]

Of attitude towards it. It's not here for very heavy privacy rules. They love moderation. They toss people off. They feel it's a whole. They're creating a whole different thing.

[Scott Galloway]

Censorship.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh, stop it.

[Scott Galloway]

Censorship, censorship. Let me spread misinformation.

[Kara Swisher]

And if anyone holds me accountable, it's not Elon Musk. There's story after story.

[Scott Galloway]

I will throttle content that I don't like. That's not censorship.

[Kara Swisher]

That's correct. Thank you. So that's really interesting. And then the COO is a woman. It's a woman run. It's woman run. But it's not like Precious in any way.

[Scott Galloway]

You got us in there. King of the king of the woman. Amazonia slash Subaru loving slash. Isn't that good for the right man? Wasn't around at the right time. Oh, that was wrong.

[Kara Swisher]

Okay. In any case, you get over there. I'll put you in touch. I don't know them. I don't know Jay Graber. I just think I like what I hear. It's like, we'll make what we feel like making you fuckers and if you don't like it, get out of here kind of thing. I like it. You know what I like the best? They were going to make it as a sub brand of Twitter and Jay refused. And then it was spun out and then they dumped Jack Dorsey. That's my favorite part of the whole equation. I love it.

[Scott Galloway]

Jack, who speaks in those hushed tones.

[Kara Swisher]

Jack's gotten a little stronger, could easily.

[Scott Galloway]

Build the biggest beard oil product in the world. I'm going to give you the sense that I give a flying fuck about the world like Sam Altman, because I speak in hushed, measured tones.

[Kara Swisher]

In any case, we love Blue Sky. It's great. And Amanda, you're right at the same time, I do like threads. I'm sorry, I'm not going to have. I don't have to. Things I like, I like. If I feel good after using a product, product, I like it. And I know it's Mark Zuckerberg, but I like what they've done there. And I like Reddit. I like there's all these really good products. So.

[Scott Galloway]

Have you seen Reddit's stock price?

[C]

Yes.

[Scott Galloway]

Jesus Christ.

[Kara Swisher]

I know. Isn't that crazy?

[Scott Galloway]

Jesus Christo. By the way, who said. Whose prediction was that the third most traffic site in America was vastly undervalued at a $5 billion IPO value? Who said that?

[Kara Swisher]

Scott Galloway.

[Scott Galloway]

That's right. What's it at now, Fitz? Tripled. That bitch has tripled. Get us into Blue Sky. Get a beast guy.

[Kara Swisher]

All right, okay, we will do that. I will not do that at all. But let's bring in our friend of Pivot. Julie Scelfo is the founder of Mothers Against Meaty Addiction, or Mama, that's my name, with my kids. Mama is a grassroots initiative working to protect kids from smartphone and social media addiction, as well as to keep them safe online. Welcome, welcome.

[C]

Julie, good morning.

[Scott Galloway]

Hi.

[Kara Swisher]

Hello. How you doing? All right, so talk a little bit about the organization. There's certainly been a lot of legislation lately and everything else, and this is one of Scott's big topics. So talk. We've talked a lot on Pivot about cosa, the Kids Online Safety Act. It was passed the Senate in summer. It's now stalled in the House. Social media companies have been waging expensive campaigns to gum up the works. At the same time, there are some issues with it. So let's talk about how you started the organization you modeled against. Mothers Against Drunk Driving, I guess, which was formed in the 80s. Yeah.

[C]

Well, I'm a longtime journalist. I've been a practicing journalist for 20 years. I used to be a staff writer at the New York Times. Before that, I was at Newsweek, and I basically was what you would call a bad news beat reporter. And I covered youth, mental health and, unfortunately, suicide. And I was watching suicide rates go up and up and up in adolescence. And then these same problems were trickling down to kids at younger and younger ages. And when suicide became the number two cause of death for 10 year olds in the United States. You know, I've covered some pretty tough stories in my life, but that really shook me. I'm also a mom and I'm like, what the heck are we doing? So I realized there was a lot of groups out there doing great work, but said in order to organize parents at scale, we needed sort of a model where millions of us could join together and get our voices heard. So that's mama. And we're a grassroots movement of parents fighting back against media addiction and creating a world where real life experiences and interactions remain at the heart of a healthy childhood. And we're focused on building chapters.

[Kara Swisher]

How many people now, Mothers Against Trump driving had huge wins, right? They had huge wins all over the place.

[C]

They had huge wins legislatively, and they also had huge wins in terms of changing the culture. Right? So that's really what we're about, is helping develop new norms, empowering parents to stand up and fight back against all the BS tech hype that we hear from the finance industry all the time and give people the power to say, you know what, kids like, deserve to be kids and grow up and acquire the basic building blocks of mental health, of social experience, and also the tools they need to be academically successful.

[Kara Swisher]

You are speaking to the choir here. But talk about cosa, the good and the bad of it, because there was some issues around it. Are you optimistic that it will eventually pass and become law? And what if not? What's the most important legislation right now happening?

[C]

So COSA has to pass by the end of this year, and the reason it has to pass by the end of this year is because it took basically five years of work by hundreds of people. And remember, it's not really controversial at this point. We had 91 senators tripartisan support pass it. And in the House, it has bipartisan support. It has 64 co sponsors, 32 Republican, 32 Democrat. The only two people in the country who seem not to want to pass it come from the state where just last week it was announced that Meta's building a $5 billion data processing center. So we're talking about the House Majority Leader, Mike Johnson, and we're talking about Steve Scal, both from Louisiana. So MAMA actually launched a chapter in Louisiana just last week. There's a lot of ticked off parents there. I mean, it's like the one thing can't we all agree on is that we shouldn't exploit children for profit. And most people do agree with that. So I am optimistic that the most critical parts of COSA can get attached to the budget bill. But it's gonna take work. And I know Mama's working on it. You know, members of mama, other groups, we all are expressing to our leaders that we expect this to get done.

[Kara Swisher]

It's been too long, Scott, so thanks.

[Scott Galloway]

For your good and important work, Julie. So there's a direct, most recent. All the studies basically show the same thing, including the most recent one from Oxford, and that is there is a linear relationship between self harm, anxiety, depression and use of social media amongst adolescents. And finally, the data has been so overwhelming, it's hard for almost everyone to ignore anyone to ignore. So if we have bipartisan support, it's not that Mike Johnson and Steven Scalise are against it, it's that there's an entity behind them telling them to be against it and hiding behind something. Are those entities Apple, Google, Meta, all of the above. Who are the mendacious fucks actually getting representatives to delay and obfuscate this bipartisan or as you said, tripartite.

[C]

So we mamas try and use polite language, but to talk about the tech lobby, you can see all of the groups you just mentioned are part of it, and Even groups like LinkedIn, Pinterest, don't forget that when the age appropriate design code passed in California, that the tech lobby sued to prevent its implementation. I was at a roundtable with the first partner of California a couple weeks ago and a representative of Meta was there. And during the discussion, it was a close, closed door discussion, she said, oh, we absolutely know that age appropriate design is critical to keep kids safe online. And then I said, oh, so excuse me, does that mean you're gonna drop your lawsuit? So, you know, we know issue one does incredible research in this space. We know that the tech Lobby has spent $90 million in the last three years to block this. We know that the tech lobby has put out these crazy talking points. They say to everybody on the left, if you pass the Kids Online Safety act or other legislation, it's gonna put LGBTQ lives at risk. Which isn't true. They tell the people on the far right, if you pass this legislation, you're going to block pro life content and you're going to censor conservative voices. So we now have.

[Scott Galloway]

And just to press pause, there's nothing about this that would imply any level of content moderation.

[C]

Not only is there nothing about it, but you have far right conservative politicians saying those are tech lobby talking points, don't listen to them. Right? So we know it's a bunch of garbage.

[Kara Swisher]

It's the duty of care thing, correct? Explain the duty of care.

[C]

Right, So a duty of care is like something really simple that says if you're making a product that's going to be used by children, we should have a duty of care to make sure kids will be safe. On it, really simple things like privacy settings by default, at the most private, it still gives parents choice, right? You're Kim Kardashian. You want anybody in the world to be able to contact your child, be famous, fine, go in and change the settings. But for the millions of the rest of us, the default settings are the most private. So that you don't have strangers soliciting your 10 year old daughter for nude photos. Or like we saw on TikTok, where kids, teenagers are being offered money in order to strip, they're being encouraged to create child sexual abuse material. I mean, Scott, you referred to those studies. But it's not even just the studies, the outside studies. We have Meta's own data. They put out a Press release on September 12th bragging about all this great stuff they were doing to decrease the amount of suicide and self harm content. And in the bottom paragraph of that press release, they acknowledged taking action on 12 million separate pieces of suicide and self harm content this year, just between April and June. Okay, that's 48 million pieces of suicide and self harm content just on those platforms. Like what the heck are we talking about here?

[Kara Swisher]

Right, and let me in that vein. Meta announced Instagram teen accounts back in September, also with built in privacy features. They also announced a new feature last week that allowed users, including teens, to reset their recommendation algorithm. Do you see any movement by them? They're trying. It can't feel just a way to cover their ass when it comes to protecting kids. But. And is it Meta that's the problem? They have Instagram, obviously, which is where more of the younger people are, but then there's TikTok and everything else. What do you think about these teen accounts? Is that them just covering their butt again?

[C]

I think it's like smoke and mirrors because all of these things that they're introducing are a way of putting the responsibility back onto parents and back onto kids. It's absurd. We don't ask parents and kids to make sure that cars are safe and install their own seatbelts. We don't ask parents and kids to make sure that the food supply is safe and that there's no ground glass in the baby formula. Like this is a systems level problem. We need a systems level solution. And it's not really controversial what needs to happen. It's just that a few people who are very rich and control these companies and have unlimited sources, unlimited amounts of money, and now controlled information sources by which most people get their news, they're able to really control the conversation. So that's why we started Mama. And that's why so many parents have been. We don't have to convince anybody to join. Right. We started this year hoping to be in six states by the end of the year. We're already in seven, 17 states. I think our waiting list is for 34 or more. We're moving as quickly as we can, but parents have had enough.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah, Scott, let's be. It's. I mean, the reason for this is the thing fueling this is these companies registered about $11 billion a year advertising to people under the age of 18. So this is about money, nothing else. And what I would ask you is we were talking earlier, Julie, about the importance of critical thinking. One of these things is not like the other. There's several entities here. There's Meta, which gets a disproportionate amount of blame, either deservedly or not deservedly. I've also thought that quite frankly, Tim Cook gets too much of a halt pass because quite frankly he's more likable. And then there's obviously Alphabet, which also controls. I mean, the operating systems here could age gate. Obviously Meta could do a better job of not trying to hide or wallpaper over the research which indicates that they are in fact depressing teens. Stack rank for us. Who you think from best to worst among the big platforms and operating systems have been most and least cooperative trying to figure out a way to keep our children safe.

[C]

You know, I can't create a hierarchy of who I think is problematic in this space. What I can tell you is that I think we need changes at every single level from all of these platforms. You know, we started Mama with a three part mission. Parent education, getting smartphones out of schools and demanding safeguards. And those safeguards need to happen both at the federal policy level and if Congress is going to continue to be dysfunctional, we are optimistic that our state lawmakers are going to move forward and create policies that keep kids safe. We've already seen that in a number of states. And we also know the devices themselves need to be made safer. I mean, my kids have iPhones, I use the parent controls. I've told Apple how old my kids are. And yet they have an app store that promotes apps that their rating are only for 17+ and they're promoting those apps to my 14 year old. Why are they doing that? You know, we take kids to see a G rated movie. You don't expect them to show R rated promos, you know, so the changes can happen at every single level and they need to happen at Every single level.

[Scott Galloway]

Well, why not just age gate? Wouldn't a simpler solution just be to age gate, to pass a law that says we age gate? Pornography, the military, alcohol, marijuana. Why wouldn't we just say no one under the age of 16 ever needs to be on a social media platform? And if you aren't putting in place the platforms and technology to ensure no one under the age of 16 is in a social media platform, you've broken the law. Wouldn't age gating just be a simpler solve here?

[C]

I think that is a great solution. I think there needs to be multiple solutions. Right? So we're open to a variety of ways of tackling this, but you brought up this question of whether, you know, who's more to blame than someone else. I mean, we want to see products that are safer. We want to see apps that are safer. We want to see transparency so that when these apps get rated, I mean, who's doing these ratings, right? Are they pediatricians, are they educators, or are they people who work for the companies? There needs to be transparency so parents know what's going on. And there need to be, you know, policies in place to ensure that you can't exploit kids for money. Enough is enough.

[Kara Swisher]

One of the things. Speaking of protecting kids online, Scott and I always say kids are under, overprotected, offline, and underprotected online, but protecting them is in an offline way. You're also trying to get phones out of school, something that a lot of parents push back against. Some do. Not a lot. So talk about your argument to parents who say phones are necessary for safety sometimes when kids are sick. And there's always workarounds in these cases. Both Scott and I are big proponents of this. As someone who has a lot of kids, I want no phones in schools whatsoever. It creates all kinds of distraction. Nobody's looking at each other. This is the place. They have community. There's so many, like, honestly, I don't even know why they're allowed in schools. Talk about that a little bit.

[C]

Well, you know, I came to this work not only as a journalist, but as someone who studied this weird thing called media ecology. And that was a name that Neil Postman thought of many years ago to look at how different media environments shape human experience. And when you add a new technology to the environment, the effect isn't just additive, it's ecological. Everything about the world and the way we understand things really changes. And so as a society right now, I think we're all just completely addicted to the idea that more media and more technology is always better, even though digital technology has advanced to the point that the scale and volume of exposure is literally making us sick. And so Scottish brought this up earlier. Like, what's happening in schools, it's not just the smartphones, right? We hear from parents all the time that their kindergartners are being forced to use tablets, that their first graders are being issued Chromebooks. These kids can't even carry an electronic.

[Kara Swisher]

That's been on for a while. That's been going on. Right.

[C]

But the volume and the scale of it is displacing other experiences that are critical for kids to grow up in a healthy way. So if the kids are doing math on the screen, they're not getting the building blocks they need to actually understand how math works. If the kids are interfacing with their teacher through Google Classroom, you have the most elite schools in this country all insisting their kids use Google Classroom, despite all the problems that exist on Google Classroom and the fact that kids have been able to access porn or informations about how to hang themselves through that portal. So there's real problems here. And the culture change piece of this, the society piece of this is that all of us need to start thinking differently about this tech. Yes, tech is good for some things. It's helpful, it can be fun, it can solve certain problems, but it also can take things away. So that's really what we want to see is parents thinking about it differently, educators thinking about it differently, and lawmakers thinking about it differently.

[Kara Swisher]

What do you say to parents who themselves are addicted to phone sense? Because that's what I always say. The problem in this room is not the kids. It's all of you. It's like, anyone 30 to 55, like, or something, whatever or beyond. But those don't have little kids.

[C]

I mean, 100%. I mean, look, you know, we know that we're addicted, too. But part of why I felt there was a need for Mama, in part, it's sort of a branding thing, right? Like, there's lots of nonprofit groups, but what's the. You know, you can have two white T shirts roll off the same factory with different branding, and one you'll pay $5 for in a package at Kmart, and another one you'll lay out 50 bucks for because it's got a certain brand identity. So, you know, putting these products aside and thinking about them differently so that we're not all just beholden to whatever the tech company says, oh, you have to upgrade this year, this product, or you're going to Somehow be left behind. Is it really going to make your life better? Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. So you have to think critically about that.

[Scott Galloway]

Scott, last question, Just a two part question. The first is, how are you funded? And two, great question, Scott. If somebody says, okay, I agree with this and I want to do something right now other than crying into TikTok or screaming on Twitter, what could they do right now that would help get COSA passed?

[C]

Okay, so parents should not cry, they should not scream, they should get pissed. And then they should go to joinmama.org, sign up to be part of our group. We have a form there that they can send. With just one click, they can send letters to their elected leaders in the Senate and in the House to explain how urgently they want kosa. That's the first thing that they should do. The second thing they should do is either join an existing MAMA chapter or start their own chapter. And the reason that we're organizing this way is because there can't just be one leader of the movement. So the people who are leading MAMA chapters are these incredible array of men and women who are already therapists. They're educators, they're teachers, they're knowledgeable. I mean, we have a speech pathologist who joined us because she's so tired of the increase in students who need help because they're not acquiring the early building blocks of language the way they need. So don't cry, be pissed, go to joinmama.org and become part of the movement. And the second thing you can do is support us financially. I mean, we were funded with a seed grant from the center for Humane Technology. We've had other foundations write us checks.

[Kara Swisher]

Tristan Harris.

[C]

Yep. Tristan Harris. So we're still waiting for some of the really biggest philanthropies out there to recognize the urgent need to get tech under control. They haven't connected all the dots. I love me some white papers, but people don't. The average person doesn't want to keep reading white papers. We started with RAND and Truth Decay. Then there was the Stanford Historian Education group that warned what would happen if we didn't give people the knowledge to differentiate different types of information quality online. So now we're coming together as MAMA and we are giving parents the tools they need to equip their children with the skills that they have to have to be able to function in a society that's so permeated by media.

[Scott Galloway]

Can I make a suggestion real quick? I'm on your site.

[Kara Swisher]

Sure.

[Scott Galloway]

I want to give Money. And I have add and you're about to lose me. There's no easy way to give money here.

[C]

Okay, well, we'll fix it. We're. We're a tiny team, Scott. We. We were hoping to. Like I said.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, big button.

[Scott Galloway]

Give now. Not here.

[Kara Swisher]

Give now.

[C]

Okay, we'll get on that.

[Kara Swisher]

That's what Scott said. All right. By the way, by the way, mama.org is the medical alert Monitoring Association. Just.

[C]

Do you think I haven't tried to buy that website?

[Kara Swisher]

Oh, I know they're not giving it to me. Maybe one of it's all white. I was like, board of directors, all white men. I'm like, what is happening here?

[C]

Yeah, you know, well, maybe some of your listeners can cough up some cash. By the way, I haven't paid myself in two and a half years, and I've donated the money to get this started. I just needed to see the change here. And thankfully, a lot of donors are understanding the value, but that's not something we spent money on, I think. I don't know how much they want for that URL, but hopefully we'll have enough to buy it soon.

[Kara Swisher]

Good luck. Good luck. Because I tried to get one and I never got it. So just. You have to work with what you got.net, or whatever.

[C]

Joinmama.org?

[Kara Swisher]

But you will not take money from tech companies, Correct?

[C]

I will not take money from social media companies. There are just too many parents whose kids have died because of social media, and it would break their hearts. And I don't want their money. I am not anti tech and Mama is not anti tech. So when you refer to tech, that's a very thing to say. And I wouldn't say that we'll never take money from any tech company. We are open to working with certain corporate partners that share our values. There's a few out there who remarkably recognize. I shouldn't say remarkably. The erosion of our information environment by all of this social media and so much garbage online is really making it hard for companies to do business. Talk to people in marketing. Talk to people in advertising. You have. Have blue chip companies that are paying for advertising on social media, and then their ads are showing up next to ads for fentanyl, they're showing up next to ads for naked children. Who wants that? So we really have to clean up the media environment. And I think mom is a big part of that.

[Kara Swisher]

Well, obviously met is one of them. But don't leave Google and Facebook out of the consideration for problematic companies or Apple or Apple. I was saying apple. Apple.

[C]

And we're not. And you know, Karen, Scott, when you're ready to wear your mama hats, I mailed them out to you.

[Kara Swisher]

I have them. I wear them. My kids were, like, thrilled with it, mostly because that's what they call me. Anyway. It's a very great organization, Julie. Thank you so much.

[Scott Galloway]

Thanks for your good and important work, Julie.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, I appreciate you guys.

[C]

Take care, Scott.

[Kara Swisher]

I thought you would like that. I did. Give them a big, big donation.

[Scott Galloway]

Give them a big old donation.

[Kara Swisher]

Big old donation.

[Scott Galloway]

I like that stuff. Our kids. Yeah, yeah, I'm really confident. Unfortunately, my kids had to endure this bullshit. The biggest source of tension and anxiety. Is this true? Yeah. Probably the biggest source of tension and anxiety in my household is the fucking phone. And I'm blessed with, like, incredibly healthy, wonderful young men. But occasionally something's up. And our first thing is, did something happen online? And you don't know online, you just don't know.

[Kara Swisher]

Yes, I agree. I am thrilled. Both my kids really did get off all the social media sites. They literally YouTube and Reddit just for watching. But I'll never forget when Louis came to me and I said, oh, are you on that? And he's like, that makes me feel bad. And I was like, I love you so much. Like, he just understood that that was the cause of his unhappiness. So it just amplified normal teen problems for sure. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails. Support for Pivot comes from Lingo by Abbott. When it comes to healthy habits, you can spend a lifetime cycling through wellness trends, diets and workouts. But the hard part is figuring out what actually works for you and sticking to it. That's where Lingo comes in. Lingo is a bio wearable and app that tracks your glucose in real time. That means you can get personal insights and recommendations that help you learn how to eat in a way that works for you. I'm about to try out Lingo myself and I'm very interested to see what happens when I eat something in the morning. And what it really means is that oatmeal actually good for you? Or should you try eating an egg? It'll be interesting to track my unique glucose patterns, optimizing my nutrition and understanding the impact of that cookie. At 11pm at night, it's water resistant. No more chasing wellness trends. When you use Lingo, your body can tell you what works for you. The Lingo Glucose system is for users 18 years of age and older, not on insulin. It is not intended for diagnosis of diseases, including diabetes. For more information, please visit hello lingo.com.

[Scott Galloway]

Support for the show comes from Intuit if you're marketing to small businesses, then you know that reaching the right companies online can be challenging. Intuit SMB Media Labs is a first of its kind B2B SMB ad network built with first party small business audiences. Now you can connect with the businesses that need your services most. And with Intuit SMB Media Labs, you can reach millions of SMBs effectively and at scale, target by industry size, maturity, location and more across new and existing channels like Social, Programmatic and ctv. Unlock growth opportunities with tailored insights and expand your reach with audiences from Intuit SMB Media Labs. Learn [e-mail] support for our show comes from Sonos. The holidays are here. Well, maybe not technically, but they're coming fast. And we all know we've already hit shopping season. And if you're looking for the perfect gift, how about a brand new Sonos speaker? Great to listen to your favorite music or even your favorite podcast. We sound great on Sonos. Not only do Sonos speakers deliver incredibly high quality sound, they also went the extra mile to make their speakers look great, but enough talking points. So in sum, if I'm listening to music, the chances are it's coming from a Sonos speaker. Whether I have this thing I carry around with me, I have these little Sonos speakers that I carry with me. I have a Sonos bar for my tv. I think the world of this company. I know the management team there, they're nice people and I think they make a fantastic product. Whether you're hosting or gifting, Sonos is the easiest way to elevate the season and a smart speaker from Sonos is a no brainer. Sonos has great gifts for everyone on your list. Visit sonos.com pivot to wrap up your holiday shopping. That's sonos.com pivot.

[Kara Swisher]

Okay Scott, let's hear some wins and fails. You go first today.

[Scott Galloway]

I'm just doing two wins. I'm feeling good. I'm in Brazil. I have nothing to be feel failure about. We talked about the one win Blue sky competition is great. This one of the things that will help our guest implement better safety rules is competition. At some point people will have the ability to say to their kids no, you can only be on Blue Sky. I'm not sure we're going to be able to keep our kids off of social media. I would like to see age gating but the second best thing will be competition because someone will raise their hand and go, here's a competitive positioning. Let's not be awful and have content that results in a greater propensity to self harm. Somebody will produce a child seat that actually protects their kid from a head on collision as it's supposed to. So I think competition is great. Blue sky, we mentioned this, it's grown from 13 million to 23 million users in just two weeks. Usage is up five fold in the past two weeks. So that's the biggest win in tech right now. Week on week or month on month. It's Blue sky, my other win. And I talk about this a lot. I have really embraced the notion of making a huge effort to spend time with guys eyes. I'm, I'm a, I'm generally a yes to everything right now with the right to cancel. I did it this weekend. My friend, my good friend Orlando, my shant is literally meeting in Brazil. He's coming from Portugal. I every chance I get now on the back nine as I'm spending time with friends, my kids, my sons, you know, 14 and 17. And this is a good thing. It's heartbreaking but it's a good thing. They have that hormone coming over them going dad is just not that cool and I want to spend more time with my friends, not him or his friends. And that's great, that's what they should be doing. But I'm reinvesting all of that human capital into brotherhood and camaraderie and I'm just having the most rewarding time with friends. And it's nice you're at this age too. We can kind of, we can kind of count our blessings and talk about our kids and be more open and more vulnerable with each other. It's a different dimension, it's a different stage of friendship. Friendship and with men when you're in your 20s and 30s, we tend to be much more competitive with each other and trying to outdo each other and signal our success and you know, we're just sort of like boys and then it's just nice to get together after our kids or we can celebrate our kids victories. We can celebrate how blessed we are. We have quite frankly we have a little bit of money to do the we couldn't do when we were, when we were younger. And I'm just leaning in so much to male friendship in my, my advice is the following. Your friends who you think are busy and important, they may be both of those things but they love hanging out with other guys, especially Ones they have a history with and they can mock and be mocked and just sort of be kids again with. I'm just having such a good time with my friends. And it's so rewarding that we're finally at a stage in our lives where we can really lean into that kind of fraternal. And what I would say to men is if you wake up and you find out you're one of those guys that's a good person, person has some success or not, but you just aren't making much of an effort with your friends, it's not going to happen for you unless you make the effort. And the effort is worth it.

[Kara Swisher]

May I tell you, you can also be friends with women.

[Scott Galloway]

Oh, thanks for that. Jesus Christ, Cara. Really.

[Kara Swisher]

Thank you.

[Scott Galloway]

Just let this hang. Just let this be what you hang.

[Kara Swisher]

Okay? You love your man friends, your man posse. I always support your posse. Wait. Wait a minute. What are you talking about? I'm constantly trying to add to your.

[Scott Galloway]

Friends you can be friends with women. Well, news at 11. Really?

[Kara Swisher]

I'm just saying. Really? Do you know what the most popular TV show ever was? Friends. Where they were a whole group of.

[Scott Galloway]

Them and they all started fucking. I just want to hang out with Ross and whatever his name is. I'm friends with gay men. That's the same thing.

[Kara Swisher]

My son is going only with guys to go do something in Christmas time, after Christmas, going skiing. I highly support it, obviously. And I'm not particularly paying for that one. So is Alex. Can I just tell you one thing? Speaking of that, Alex is going with six male friends to Cancun at spring break. How do think that's gonna end?

[Scott Galloway]

Fraternity trip.

[Kara Swisher]

I know. Yeah. Well, no, it's just. Yeah, it's friends from the fraternity. Yeah, I'm thrilled. He's in a fraternity fy.

[Scott Galloway]

Is he gonna hang out with my favorite friend? First name T. Second, Keela.

[Kara Swisher]

I think so.

[Scott Galloway]

It's important that everyone get sick and throw up on tequila and not be able to smell it for 10 years. Because then, you know, it was like really bad tequila.

[Kara Swisher]

And I literally just said, just don't lose your. Like, don't like, listen. I know, I know. So don't say I don't support male things. I make my sons go on male trips all the time. I'm just saying don't get all sense. All right. Oh, positive. I'm sorry. I'm thrilled that both these gladiators that Glicket is doing well. Certain movies do hold a mood among people and I think these do. I think they're about. They're also they're political in their own way, even though these are old. Wicked was 20 years ago. So was Gladiator the first one 25 maybe. I think they talk about fighting back against autocracy and unfairness and there's a lot of political messages in them that are including a lot of Broadway shows that I think are important and I like how they're delivered. Both of them have a lot. There's a really good Slate article talking about how much they have in common. There's also things in common in these movies that I think are good to be reminded of, which is sort of individually fighting for your freedom. I just think and I don't want they're just fun too. But there are those elements in them that I think are beautifully delivered, especially by Paul Mescal and Cynthia Erivo. I think they deliver them in a really strong and both entertaining and also important. So I like those And I'm gonna stick by Glicked no matter what Scott says to me. And then negatively, this is just in Special counsel Jack Smith has asked the judge to dismiss the federal election interference charges against Donald Trump largely because he wants to dismiss it, though without prejudice, acknowledging the Justice Department policy prohibits prosecuting a sitting president. If she does that, then they can later bring charges against him after his second term White House term. And then the thing is he could pardon himself, which nobody's ever done, but he does a lot of things nobody's ever done. And so it's sort of like, oh, he just bought himself get out of jail free card. And that's kind of gross to me. And I hate to say this care.

[Scott Galloway]

But the American public bought him that card.

[Kara Swisher]

That's correct. That's correct. That's right. He got himself one. But we'll have the American public again story after story about non landslide. But I'm not gonna go into it with you anymore. I'm not arguing the point. But yes, he did.

[Scott Galloway]

I'll talk about it on my next guy's trip.

[Kara Swisher]

Okay, Shut up. In any case and you can talk.

[Scott Galloway]

About it on your new CNN show. Nobody's watching.

[Kara Swisher]

I have gals and guys on Nobody's watching because I have transcended you. Anyway, I find this. It feels so crony. It feels so Russia. This stuff feels so Russia. The brolgar, the, you know, getting off Prologarx. That's the.

[Scott Galloway]

That's Brohemian Rhapsody.

[Kara Swisher]

Rhapsody. Broligarchs is in the Atlantic. There's a very good story about called the brogards. I find them. I think this crony capitalism is giving me the shakes, I have to say. And that's what this is. It's crony capital that you advance. Like whatever Brandon Carr is saying, I'll help Elon and hurt George Soros. It's maybe they did this before in the quiet, but it's grotesque in the public, I'll tell you that. It's grotesque. And they're all such thirsty fucks that I don't know what else to say. Anyway, that's my feeling on that. I feel bad for law. Anyway. Okay, Scott, you've got to go. So we want to hear from you. Send us your question about business, tech, or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855. One pivot. I'd also like to invite our listeners to join me for a special live recording of on with Kara swisher presented by Elf Elf Cosmetics on December 3rd in New York City. I'll be chatting with Tubi CEO Angely Sood at the Whitney Museum. It's gonna be a great conversation. I'm really interested in Tubi.

[Scott Galloway]

Oh, fancy.

[Kara Swisher]

I know. I like Tubi's interesting. For tickets, visit voxmediaevents.comelfelf. that's voxmediaevents.comelf hope to see you there. Okay, Scott, that's the show. Have a happ. Happy Thanksgiving. We're going to be off for Thanksgiving. What are you doing?

[Scott Galloway]

Oh, that's right.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah. What are you doing?

[Scott Galloway]

I'm thankful for you, Kara, and the opportunities you presented. Thanks very much.

[Kara Swisher]

I feel the same way about you and your little brolagarchs I do. For more, please read us out and have a great time in Brazil.

[Scott Galloway]

Today's show is produced by Lara Neiman, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin and Christine Driscoll. Ernie Dur tot engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burroughs, Mia Severio and Dan Shulan. Nishat K 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. You can subscribe to the [e-mail] pod we'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Support for this episode comes from aws. AWS Generative AI gives you the tools to power your business forward with the security and speed of the world's most experienced cloud.

[Kara Swisher]

Creating highly advanced AI is complicated, especially if you don't have the right storage. A critical but often overlooked catalyst for AI infrastructures, solidigm is storage optimized for the AI era. Offering bigger, faster and more energy efficient solid state storage, solidigm delivers the capability to meet capacity, performance and energy demands across your AI data workloads. AI requires a different approach to storage. Solidigm is ready for everything the AI era demands. Learn [e-mail].