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

Summary

Podcast Title: Pivot
Host/Author: New York Magazine
Episode: Elon Pushback, Trump's Distraction Trap, and Disney Earnings
Release Date: February 7, 2025

---

1. Introduction and Banter [01:50 - 06:22]

The episode opens with light-hearted banter between hosts Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway. Kara humorously contemplates using ketamine to cope with her stress, leading to a playful discussion about substance use and mental health. Scott emphasizes the importance of staying engaged and avoiding disassociation, highlighting the relentless pace of their work environment.

Notable Quote:

• Kara Swisher [02:01]: "I'm thinking of doing ketamine recreationally tonight... I don’t care much about anything. I'm having trouble disassociating from all this bullshit."
• Scott Galloway [03:10]: "You got to be awake, sweetie. You got to be awake, as they say."

2. Elon Musk’s Influence and Power Grab [07:00 - 15:32]

Scott delves into Elon Musk’s recent actions, portraying him as a formidable force within the government. Musk has taken significant steps, such as shutting down USAID, offering buyouts to CIA members, and accessing IT systems of Medicare, Medicaid, and NOAA. These moves have raised concerns among lawmakers and officials, prompting debates about Musk's expanding influence.

Notable Quotes:

• Scott Galloway [07:00]: "Elon Musk, who is now a special government employee... has had a very busy couple of days. Essentially shut down USAID, offered buyouts to every member of the CIA and his DOGE team..."
• Kara Swisher [08:09]: "That is nothing but weapons of mass distraction from what effectively is a second insurrection by the same president."

3. Democratic Response and Accusations of a Coup [15:32 - 27:25]

Kara criticizes the Democratic Party’s handling of the situation, arguing that their responses are insufficient and distracted by other issues. She describes Musk’s actions as a coup, emphasizing the illegal seizure of power and the disruption of essential government programs. Both hosts express frustration over the lack of decisive action from Democrats to counter Musk and Trump’s maneuvers.

Notable Quotes:

• Kara Swisher [15:32]: "This is a coup. And it’s not a slow-moving coup, it's a fast-moving coup."
• Scott Galloway [21:03]: "This is perfectly designed for someone like him, to behave... He's not particularly creative in new methods of this kind of stuff."

4. Disney’s Earnings and the Streaming Wars [28:40 - 51:10]

The conversation shifts to Disney’s financial performance. Disney reported a 4.8% increase in revenue, with its experience business and entertainment divisions seeing growth. However, Disney experienced a 1% decline in subscribers due to price hikes. The hosts compare Disney’s streaming efforts to Netflix, highlighting Netflix's superior subscriber retention and lower churn rates.

Notable Quotes:

• Scott Galloway [47:25]: "Disney beat expectations, reporting a 4.8% increase in revenue..."
• Kara Swisher [50:56]: "Netflix has so much gross tonnage that their churn is only 2%. Disney is number two, but it's at 4.8%."

5. Alphabet (Google) and AI Investments [51:10 - 57:27]

Alphabet’s financial performance is discussed, noting a 12% revenue growth and a focus on AI investments. The company plans to invest $75 billion in capital expenditures to enhance its AI offerings. Scott remarks on Alphabet's diverse revenue streams and substantial user base, reinforcing its market resilience.

Notable Quotes:

• Scott Galloway [51:10]: "Alphabet's Overall revenue grew 12% compared with 13% in the same quarter last year..."
• Kara Swisher [57:27]: "Do you know what percentage of Disney's content budget is spent overseas? Like 4%, right?"

6. Spotify’s Remarkable Growth [57:27 - 59:47]

Spotify emerges as a standout performer, showing substantial growth in revenue, gross margin, and operating income. The platform has achieved 675 million monthly active users and a 40% year-over-year gross profit increase. Scott praises Spotify’s strategic management and user engagement.

Notable Quotes:

• Kara Swisher [59:47]: "Spotify is probably the most impressive performer from where it was say 12 or 24 months ago."
• Scott Galloway [59:48]: "Their platform growth is accelerating. Their total monthly active users hit 675 million."

7. Uber’s Financials and Robo Taxis Partnership [59:47 - 60:39]

Uber reported a lower-than-expected operating income of $770 million but noted an 18% increase in trips completed. The company is gearing up for the public launch of Robo Taxis in Austin through its partnership with Waymo. Scott commends Uber’s strategic approach to autonomous vehicles.

Notable Quotes:

• Scott Galloway [60:05]: "They are doing incredibly. Spotify is probably the most impressive performer..."
• Kara Swisher [60:39]: "Incredibly well managed. I just think you got to give it to Dara."

8. AI Trends and Predictions [61:23 - 68:57]

Kara and Scott explore the evolving landscape of artificial intelligence. Kara predicts a surge in unicorns within the application layer, driven by customized AI solutions across various industries. Scott anticipates significant investment shedding in the infrastructure and LLM (Large Language Model) layers as market dynamics shift.

Notable Quotes:

• Kara Swisher [61:23]: "I think you’re about to see dozens of new unicorns in what I'd call the application layer."
• Scott Galloway [68:00]: "There's room... like, let's think of new ways to do things."

9. Concluding Remarks and Final Thoughts [68:57 - End]

The hosts wrap up the episode by reiterating the urgency of addressing Musk’s and Trump’s actions as detrimental to democracy and national security. They emphasize the need for decisive action from elected officials and highlight the ongoing challenges in the tech and business landscapes.

Notable Quotes:

• Kara Swisher [68:57]: "If you think Elon Musk is gonna lose on the pedophile case or with the SEC, he’s got an ability to take risks and stick it out."
• Scott Galloway [66:27]: "What they’re doing is a hostile takeover of government. Probably illegal."

---

Key Takeaways:

• Elon Musk’s Expanding Influence: Musk’s recent actions within government agencies are perceived as a power grab, leading to significant political and legal pushback.

• Democratic Response Critiqued: The hosts argue that Democrats are not effectively countering Musk and Trump’s maneuvers, describing the situation as a coup.

• Corporate Earnings Insights: Disney shows steady growth despite a slight subscriber decline, Alphabet continues to invest heavily in AI, Spotify excels in user retention and revenue growth, and Uber is advancing its Robo Taxis initiative.

• AI Industry Forecast: A predicted boom in application-layer AI startups, with significant transformations expected in how AI integrates into various sectors.

• Call to Action: Emphasizes the necessity for stronger bipartisan efforts to safeguard democracy and resist undue influence from powerful individuals like Musk and Trump.

---

This comprehensive summary encapsulates the major discussions from the "Pivot" podcast episode, providing clear sections and notable quotes to ensure a thorough understanding for those who haven't listened to the episode.

Transcript

[Scott Galloway]

Support for this show comes from Attentive Marketers and decision makers know it takes the right tools to actually get your message out there and make sure it sticks. That's what Attentive is designed to do. Attentive is an SMS and email marketing platform to help marketers transform every interaction into a personalized experience. By adjusting each message's content, tone and timing. Attentive's advanced AI helps marketers build and connect with the right audience for messaging that performs and results that transform, ready to take customers on a journey created just for them? Visit attentive.com pivot to learn more.

[Kara Swisher]

Exclusively on ESPN. UFC 312 Saturday Reigning middleweight champion Dricus Du Plessis defends his title in a rematch against Sean Strickland. And Zhang Weili defends her strawweight title against undefeated tatiana Suarez. UFC 312 Saturday at 10pm Eastern. Buy it on espnplus.com ppb Support for Pivot comes from Attio. Attio is an AI native CRM built for the next era of companies. Its powerful data structure adapts to your business model, syncs in all your contacts in minutes, and enriches everything with actionable data. Attio's AI research agents tackle complex work like finding key decision makers and triaging incoming leads. You can also create email sequences, real time reports and powerful automations, all to help you build what matters your company. You can join industry leaders including Flat File, Replicate, Modal and more. You can go to attio.com pivot and you'll get 15% off your first year. That's attio.com pivot.

[Scott Galloway]

You'Re my junkyard dog.

[Kara Swisher]

I like that. Thanks for saying that.

[Scott Galloway]

Hi everyone, this is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.

[Kara Swisher]

I'm Kara Swisher and I'm thinking of doing ketamine recreationally tonight.

[Scott Galloway]

Why?

[Kara Swisher]

Well, I used to have this incredible ability as a young man to disassociate. I was basically sleepwalking through life. I didn't care much about anything. I'm having trouble disassociating from all this bullshit.

[Scott Galloway]

No.

[Kara Swisher]

And so I think I'm going to a Fashion Week party tonight. I don't have my kids. I push my meetings back till 10am tomorrow. So that all spells ketamine for the dog tonight. Really? Do you want to try it? Yeah. I don't even know how you take it though. Do you know how you take a medically supervised ketamine trip? There's a big difference. Tonight I'm going to do it to like me more.

[Scott Galloway]

Why don't you just go down to Washington with the gang that's taking apart the government? I think they probably have some information on how to do that.

[Kara Swisher]

That is not tomato, tomato. Me at a Fashion Week party, hitting the moves, thinking I like me a little bit more than usual, doing ketamine with some strange person.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah.

[Kara Swisher]

By the way, I don't. As opposed to going to Washington. That is not tomato, tomato. Okay? I'm just saying, that is huge. I want to have a good time tonight. I want to forget everything. I want to disassociate.

[Scott Galloway]

You got to be awake, sweetie. You got to be awake. You got to be woke, as they say.

[Kara Swisher]

Do you snort it? Do you inject it, or what? I'm hoping. Do you shove it up your ass?

[Scott Galloway]

Hello, ladies.

[Kara Swisher]

Who's got a glove? Who's got a girl?

[Scott Galloway]

All right, listen to me. You can't disassociate. There's no disassociation allowed.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh, Daddy can disassociate.

[Scott Galloway]

You can't. You have to be in this. You gotta. Like, everybody's writing me, like, I can't keep up, but I'm like, you know what? It's the long fucking run with these people. You gotta stick in there. They rely on your exhaustion. They rely on you being overwhelmed. And you need to not. You need to just keep going. What do you. Why do you want to disassociate? You have to associate. That's how we win. We associate. They're disassociative people. These people. Yeah, that's right. Thank you. Why don't you do a happy drug? Like, not one that's so ruminative.

[Kara Swisher]

And what's a happy drug?

[Scott Galloway]

I don't know. I never take any drugs, so I have no idea.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, I don't have an answer. So let me answer that. That's called MDMA or X. And I took it a couple times in college. And I remember thinking to myself, I don't have an addictive personality, but I remember thinking, this is so good. I cannot do this again.

[Scott Galloway]

Well, then do that. Do that.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah. I don't know.

[Scott Galloway]

You'll hug. You'll try to hug me. You'll call me and say loving things, which would be disturbing to me, but that's okay.

[Kara Swisher]

No, it makes me happy. It does make me fucking crazy.

[Scott Galloway]

I know, but there's a lot of hugs happening from. What? I never took it. I never took it. There's hugs, right? There's a lot of hugging.

[Kara Swisher]

And, you know, the initial, its Initial use case. How they. It was psychiatrists in couples therapy. Wanted them to open up to each other.

[Scott Galloway]

Oh, interesting. I don't know. Never tried it, never will. I'm high on life, Scott Galloway.

[Kara Swisher]

I hate it when people say that.

[Scott Galloway]

I know. I do too. It's the least expressive.

[Kara Swisher]

I don't need drugs. Well, I do because of people like you.

[Scott Galloway]

Although let me say, I'm looking out the window right now. I just got back on a red eye from Los Angeles. I was in San Francisco. In Los Angeles.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh, nice having you.

[Scott Galloway]

Thank you. I'm wearing the same clothes. I was out to dinner at a very fancy the Mother Wolf in Los Angeles. Have you been there? It was really good Mother wolf. I have a secret project going on there, another secret project which will soon be revealed. But it has to do with lesbians in Washington. That's all I'll say.

[Kara Swisher]

I heard about this. I won't spoil it for you, but good for you. I'm convinced you're pulling a Scott when his kids were little. And that is. You're coming up with a lot of reasons to leave the house right now.

[Scott Galloway]

No, I'm not.

[Kara Swisher]

I gotta go to San Francisco. Oh my God, it's terrible. I'll miss you guys so much.

[Scott Galloway]

Unlike you, I do very short trips and I come back on red eyes. So I'm here. I took the kids. I took Clara to school this morning and made the kids lunch. I get back so I can do that. One of the. I went out, you know, I went out with two people, one, my brother and friends of mine, to Zuni, which was amazing.

[Kara Swisher]

Cafe Zuni.

[Scott Galloway]

Yes, it was great. San Francisco was great.

[Kara Swisher]

Well, I'm glad you're back. And you need to stop taking red eyes when you turn 70, such as yourself, as a gift to yourself. You need to stop doing red eyes. I don't do red eyes anymore.

[Scott Galloway]

Oh, really? I don't mind. It was a lay down bed. I slept, it was fine. It was fine.

[Kara Swisher]

Your sleep, your nutrition, your sleep, your nutrition and your exercise are the three pillars. And you need to prioritize sleep. You don't sleep well. I'm playing. And I don't have no more red eyes for you.

[Scott Galloway]

You know, I'm wearing my aura ring and it tells me that I'm quite ready for the day. It's weird, I don't sleep.

[Kara Swisher]

Are you rested and ready?

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah. I don't know why I think it's lying to me. Anyway, we've got a lot to get to because I need to be rested and ready.

[Kara Swisher]

By the way, I have an OURA ring and I just downloaded my data and it says one thing. Try ketamine tonight.

[Scott Galloway]

Uh, don't do it.

[Kara Swisher]

That's what it's saying.

[Scott Galloway]

Don't do it by yourself.

[Kara Swisher]

I can't wait. I just think I'm gonna like me.

[Scott Galloway]

You're not gonna like it. Don't. Please don't.

[Kara Swisher]

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

[Scott Galloway]

Oh, that's funny. That's a good joke. That's a good one. Okay, we've got a lot to get today, including Democrats finally showing some backbone and Trump's plan to create a sovereign wealth fund. This lunacy is every single day. I forget what. Yes, well, anyway, plus earnings from Disney, Alphabet and Spotify. But first, I think we both know why Google searches for the word coup are up this week. Elon Musk, who is now a special government employee, whatever the fuck that is, has had a very busy couple days. Essentially shut down usaid, offered buyouts to every member of the CIA and his DOGE team, got access to the IT systems of Medicare and Medicaid, noaa, which is weather agencies and other agencies. We're gonna talk about Trump in Gaza and the craziness in a bit, but I wanna focus. Start by focusing on Elon. Overall thoughts, what we've been seeing. Trump still thinks he's in control, saying this week Elon can't do and won't do anything without approval. You'll be shocked to learn that Senator Susan Collins is very concerned about Elon and Doge's actions. People at the Trump White House, they're leaking all over the place that he's too big for his britches. I'm like, when did you start to notice his pants were tight? My friends, he's totally too big for his britches. All the time. You' saying, where are the Democrats? They're starting to show signs of life. Protesting Elon's power grab at a rally outside the Treasury Department. Some House Democrats are trying to subpoena Elon to testify before the Oversight Committee. They're making a lot of trouble. The motion didn't pass. It probably will pass at some point. Democratic Senator Chris Murphy was on Morning Joe talking about the game plan. First party, let's listen.

[Kara Swisher]

People understand that we are the minority party. We don't run the White House. We are the minority in the House and in the Senate. But we need to act like a real opposition party in the middle of a constitutional and Democracy crisis. That means we should not be moving forward nominees or legislation in the United States Senate. Democrats should not be giving votes to nominees or to legislation in the United States Senate until Republicans get serious about this crisis.

[Scott Galloway]

I think he's been pretty good. Jamie Raskin has. Obviously AOC is terrific. So talk a little bit about the Elon situation and making, you know, they're making him the villain so that it sort of offloads it from Trump in a weird way. He's sort of the, I'm calling him a heat seeking shield for what they're doing. But there's protests that have popped up around the country. Doesn't mean anything's gonna happen. Criticizing particularly musk. So talk a little bit about this and what the Democrats should do.

[Kara Swisher]

You said something that really resonated with me and that is I've fallen prey to what is a really smart strategy on their part, and that is the invasion of Greenland or somehow some fucked up, weird strategy for clearing out or the ultimate, I don't know, apartheid or whatever they're planning to do in Gaza or invading the Panama Canal or accusing a helicopter or saying that the people responsible for a helicopter crash are somehow a function of dei. You're exactly right. And it struck me what an idiot I was being. That's nothing but weapons of mass distraction from what effectively a second insurrection by the same president. And insurrection is probably the wrong term. It's probably more of a coup. But you change the entire negotiation between someone, two people when one person holds a gun to the other person's head. And what they have done, they're very smart and elegant Here, instead of a bunch of Duck Dynasty mobs with trucker hats and goatees getting out of their RAV fours, it's the wealthiest man in the world who in my opinion is trespassing and federal property and has enlisted a bunch of acolytes and has stopped making payments for things like Head Start or the funding of AIDS programs or malaria treatment. There are people you know being carried out in stretchers that are in hospitals because they don't have funding. And it's not. These are these programs. And this funding, whether you agree with them or not or think they should be subject to review, are a function of laws that were passed by three branches of government. And you have they figured out a way to say, look over here at this helicopter crash or it's DEI or we have a plan to clear out Gaza to distract you from the fact that we now have insurrectionists or a coup being led by the world's wealthiest man. I think the Republicans are thinking, I can't believe they're letting us do this. And as long as we're kind of in favor of this, and now they're in a position. When you hold a gun to someone's head, it changes the. It changes the complexion of negotiation. It's no longer, oh, you need laws to do this. It's like, well, we might turn the payments back on for Head Start, but let's talk about it. Well, no, we're not going to discuss it. I don't think they're going gangster enough. They probably just unmasked, because of their recklessness, the names and identities of CIA officers, which is an incredible act of treason and stupidity.

[Scott Galloway]

I think they did that on purpose, from what I understand, wanted it. They were sending. What Scott's referring to is they sending emails, not in a way that's safe, to the White House. They wanted things like that.

[Kara Swisher]

So I want to know who are these young, highly intelligent, highly motivated zealots following him into these buildings and shutting off payments to schools and head starts? I want to know their names.

[Scott Galloway]

Well, you know, they're trying to. The local officials are trying to make that official. The newly installed Trump are threatening people for naming their names, just so you know. But go ahead.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh, yeah, but they can unmask CIA officers who put their lives in harm's way to try and keep our Americans safe. I want to know who their names are. And I want to see Democratic governors saying, I'm going to do everything I can in my power to use the full faith and to the letter of the law to put you folks in prison. I think what you're doing is trespassing. I think this is a coup. And be clear, just because the new insurrectionist who was elected, you know, I don't believe this is legal. And I'm gonna hold the people accountable who are trespassing and part of a coup accountable to just sit back and say, this is horrible and this is unlawful. We need to go gangster here and say, look, we are not negotiating around this stuff. This is illegal. This is a coup. This is the unlawful seizure of power. We are not going to engage in these bullshit, ridiculous arguments over Gaza and Greenland. We are going to hold the people accountable. Here are their names, here are their faces. And we have contacted the local authorities in where these kids live, these young adults, and we are going to hold them accountable. We need to start hitting back in a way that disrupts what is the unlawful seizure of resources that have been Leaked, you might disagree with them. Fine. That is not anyone's right. Our elected representatives pass these laws.

[Scott Galloway]

No, we get that. I think repeating it doesn't matter. Cuz they are blowing through stop sign after stop sign. It doesn't. See, this is a very typical, I've talked to, I would say a half a dozen governors, senators, congresspeople this week. And they were like, well, we're gonna say something. And I was like, he's gonna break the rules. Like I said, you don't understand, he's not gonna stop. Cause you tell him he's bad there' way he's stopping. And look at everything he does. He blows past the sec, he keeps going. He does lawsuits against the press, he does lawsuits against competitors, he blows up rockets until he gets it right. I was like, this is a person with a high risk tolerance who has noticed that when you break things or break rules or open your company, when the government of California says not to, they don't stop you. Or it's very hard to stop you. And in the very act of doing it, even if he gets stopped later by a judge or whatever, because legal is slow moving, as you know. Even if he gets stopped later, he's already broken it, right. Instead of reforming things, which is what they should be doing, if they don't agree with this stuff, they're destroying them. And if you read any Peter Thiel, any of their stuff, this is what they talk about. The destruction of a liberal democracy and then starting from scratch with a unified CEO theory, which is essentially a dictatorship. And the question is, a lot of them are like, what do we do? They're literally asking me, what do we do to stop him? I was like, you don't, you actually don't have the means to do so because these poor people are in these agencies. And when these idiots come in, these children, these arrogant little pricks come in and say, we're gonna call the federal marshals or the President has ordered you to step aside. They kind of have to. You have to be resistant and be walked out by security. And then security doesn't know which one to listen to. Right.

[Kara Swisher]

Essentially we've been critical of Democrats and I've heard from about six Democrats, one senator, five representatives. And he says, what would you do when we talk a little bit about messaging? I'm like, but that's not enough. And he said, well, what do you want me to do? Walk down there and stop them? I'm like, yeah, I'd like to see all, whatever it is, 48 or 49 US senators and any Republicans that want to join. I'd like to see a couple hundred members of Congress go to the fucking building where this is and demand to go in and physically stop this and let them arrest you. I'm like, fine, let America see that there are still people who believe in government in the US and democracy. Let them arrest you. Go down there. This guy I'm talking to is a former. This representative, a newly elected guy, former service member. I'm like, dude, if someone attacked our shores, you put yourself in harm's way. I mean, march down to wherever this fucking building is, where all these acolytes and the high sparrow are, and walk in there and demand they stop and let them arrest you. For Democrats, this isn't the time to come together. This is the time to come to the rescue. Get together, all of you. Wherever the building is, wherever they're actually shutting off payments to veterans, well, they.

[Scott Galloway]

Move very quickly is the problem. They don't quite know where they're going. Like, they go from. They have the advantage here in that regard is they can show up at various places and you don't know where they're showing up.

[Kara Swisher]

Well, we have very talented, smart people, too, with smartphones. I would create a group of people, elected representatives, that go to these places where they are and say, I believe you are breaking the law. You are not an elected official. You need to leave this federal government building. And if the Capitol Police respect the law, if the Capitol Police show up at the order of the President and say, you need to vacate, I would not vacate. And if you get arrested, fine. I think I'm not a fan of breaking the law. I think the law is on our side here. I think these guys are breaking the law. And just because you have permission from the President, let's fight it out in court and find out, well, can the President break the law? Because as we have seen, the President has been stopped. Anytime this shit gets in front of a judge, it usually gets stopped. So do you have the right as a citizen or an elected representative, or do you have the obligation to get in the way legislative, verbally, legally, and quite frankly, at this point, physically. I'm not suggesting violence. I'm not suggesting these elected representatives have license to walk into any federal building. Millions of people have elected them. Find out where this shit is going on and go down there and say to these people, what you are doing is illegal.

[Scott Galloway]

I get it. The issue is if even when the judges stop them, though, they say, oh, we have security clearance. But no proof of it like this. They are persistent. Elon Musk has said, move fast and break things. Mark Zuckerberg, that's correct. This is what they're doing. And like Elon Musk has said to me, we have self driving in a year, we have self driving in a year. We have security clearance. Anything like one of them was like, how do you know they don't have it? I go, because their mouths are moving. They're lying. They lie as a practice in order to get to the next thing. They're high risk takers. They're willing to. They know you're not going to stop them ultimately because it takes effort. They don't want to govern, they want to break. And even though they're in charge of the government, they don't want to reform it. They want to break it, they want to destroy it. They want to take it down to its studs so that they can then rebuild in the way they see fit. And the, the arrogance of these people. I cannot tell you. You could like fuel a rocket to Mars with the arrogance of these people. And what's interesting is there's a bunch of lawsuits filed, as you said, as part of the counteroffensive. Unions, federal employees and others are challenging the legality of Elon and Doge to get access to federal systems, destroy agencies or push people out of jobs. I'm telling you, Elon also loves a legal fight, right? He doesn't care. He doesn't care. He waits people out. This is perfectly designed for someone like him, like, to behave. And every one of his actions is very much the way he's behaved. That's one thing. When I said, he's not gonna listen to that, he's gonna go to the next one. And someone was like, how did you know? And then he did it. And I'm like, because this is his little act, right? This is the same thing every time. He's not particularly creative in new methods of this kind of stuff. But one of the things that's important to keep in mind is that he does have a pattern that he does all the time. And so do all these people, by the way. They all have the same pattern of making a mistake, whether it's for your teen girls and making them feel bad and going, we so sorry. We're so sorry. We're so sorry. You know, And I think that's the one thing is not fully appreciated, that they don't, they're not sorry. Nor, nor will they pay attention to the law. Even if a court orders you know, right now, court orders Musk out of the treasury computer payment system so it can sort out whether the Doge is a legal government entity. You know, are they out? They were in there before. You know, that's the whole thing is I don't know if they're actually, nobody knows that they're out. And then let me say the last thing, what they're gonna do is find little cherry pick costs that look bad, right? And make things up. Cause they just lie. They just lie.

[Kara Swisher]

Money laundering.

[Scott Galloway]

Money laundering. Or they're criminals. This thing about subscriptions and Politico, it was $24,000 at USAID. They were using their Politico Pro, just like you'd buy a subscription. And may I point out that Elon. The government pays Elon $15 billion. So everybody for his wares. And then they. So it's petty and unbelievable nonsense. And they'll cherry pick stupid little things. A lot of them inaccurate, like the condoms to Gaza, for example. A lot of them, deeply inaccurate, are based on stories that are specious. So they'll keep doing that constantly so that we're like cats chasing a laser pointer.

[Kara Swisher]

But this is. But just moving to what we can do, the Democrats at this point, I mean, I remember talking to Ray Dalio about elected officials and he's like. And by the way, he was like, this is war. Take the gloves off. I mean, this is like, this isn't try to understand or empathize with the people who elected this guy. In my opinion, this is war. And they essentially challenging the Constitution and democracy. I don't think it's time for us to try and figure out, like, understand them. What I would say is, and I've heard from a lot of Canadians who appreciate our thoughts around the tariffs. And one person called me who Canada's actually strangely like, there's like 12 families who kind of, I don't want to say run anything, everything, but kind of own the majority of stuff. And I was like, I mean, I'd like to think that America came to the aid of a lot of nations in real times of crisis over the last hundred years. And we want to keep doing that. I mean, at this point, I believe that nations need to come to the aid of America at this point. And to the extent that people feel frustrated or worried about America no longer being the shining beacon leading democracies all over the world or setting the tone, what Canada did was I think you need to be very Machiavellian. Strategic province in Canada has canceled a hundred million dollar contract For Starlink, they've said we're just not going to continue to fund the lead of a coup. I'd hit them where they're in their soft issue. And that is if you think America plays and should continue to play a vital role in our democracy and be that shiny beacon on a hill and you are using Starlink or your government is in negotiations around subsidies, whatever it might be for EVs or Tesla, I would make it clear that you are not going to support an individual who's leading a coup in a nation that has for the most part been a really staunch ally. I'm now at the point where I can't call on Republicans. I think they are both kind of surprised and giddy that they're getting away with this and also scared of crossing Elon for fear they'll be primaried by Twitter and his hundreds of millions of dollars, which he can do now given the fact that we let one amassed $400 billion in power and two, they're surprised. And also, quite frankly, Kara, I think Senator Murphy's fantastic. We come across as neutered and feckless at this point. We are like, look over here. Oh, I can't believe you would say it was di run a helicopter. You are exactly right. That is a sideshow.

[Scott Galloway]

And may I say the media is doing the same things. These headlines in some of these papers, it's like innovative way to to deal with government. I'm like I said, it's a coup. Stop saying this. And one thing I did have as a theme in my book was the juvenilization of men and the coddling of them and persistent sidelining of women in Silicon Valley and people of color or anybody that was different. And this is a 30 years going of this idea that these people have the right idea. And I found some stories that I wrote. One was called the Men and no Women of Face and the Men and no Women of Boards. And one of the things that was interesting is I was able to put those headlines because I controlled my own media that you can't believe what a bunch of idiots. They have such disdain for people and the press is treating it like it's like an equalized thing and it's just not. I'm finding it so frustrating even you know, you know, I'm on CNN and on Friday I was like, this is a hostile takeover. You need to treat it. Stop talking about DEI in the plane crash. You can talk, right? Stop. You need. This is what this. It's a hostile takeover of government. Probably Illegal. And you can't look at it like, well, look at that kind of things. I just, I'm perplexed as to why it isn't a five alarm fire everywhere, all day long, every minute in the media.

[Kara Swisher]

Now your house is on fire. And you shouldn't be arguing over the pattern of the couch. It's just. And all these things are important, but this really is. Again, I think our elected representatives who have contacts overseas should be calling him and saying, you need to put pressure on Elon. And Trump is doing the same thing that Zuckerberg did to Sandberg. He's using him as this very powerful and effective heat shield, such that if he does go too far, and in fact they do find this is illegal, and they start, Trump can back away and say, oh, I didn't know they had done that. Yeah, they went a little too far. Let the police.

[Scott Galloway]

He's done that. Yeah.

[Kara Swisher]

So he's basically, I mean, to a weird extent, Elon Musk is a $400 billion media platform weaponized. Sandberg, he's a heat shield. And he's like, you understand this technology and how to go in there and shut off payments. And what they're hoping is it resets or recalibrates the playing field for negotiations. Let's start from. You're getting zero. Despite the fact that our elected representatives passed this law that says Head Start is a good thing. And this is. They went right to the mechanism for the payment. I mean, it. And it's. I don't understand. This is illegal. I would just. Very simple. This is illegal. And I believe the people involved in this will be prosecuted. That is, that is what I'm planning.

[Scott Galloway]

To do by this Justice Department, because all they're doing is getting rid of threatening companies that have dei. That's the first thing Pam Bondi did.

[Kara Swisher]

Again, another weapon of mass distraction. That's not gonna go anywhere. What could go somewhere, in my view, legally, is to say, these are the laws. And that I believe you and these 25 year olds have broken. And I plan to do everything within my power to enforce these laws.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah. Okay, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, Trump continues to flood the zone with crap. Support for FIT comes from 1-800-Flowers. Roses are the classic way to say I love you. And with Valentine's Day coming up, you can start planning the best way to say it. I'm sending roses right now to Scott Galloway. You can gift a beautiful bouquet to a special person this year with the help of 1-800flowers.com they offer stunning, high quality bouquets and each one is crafted with roses picked at their peak and cared for every step of the way. They're shipped fresh to ensure lasting beauty. And right now, 1-800-Flowers has a special offer. When you buy one dozen, they'll double your bouquet to two dozen roses. So you can get double the roses for free. I just got my roses here and I'm looking at them right now and I have to say they're very beautiful. I like cut roses. I don't like cut flowers that much, but I happen to love cut roses. They smell delicious, they look fantastic and it's a great Valentine's Day. It's a classic. It's a classic. At as they say, the bouquets are selling fast. You can lock in your order today. Win their heart this Valentine's Day at 1800-flowers.com to claim your double your roses offer, go to 1-800-flowers.com pivot. That's 1-800-flowers pivot. Scott. Get ready for dozens of roses.

[Kara Swisher]

I like calla lilies and you don't touch me anymore.

[Scott Galloway]

This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. I'm Kathy Jones, Schwab's chief fixed income strategist. And I'm Liz Ann Saunders, Schwab's chief Investment strategist. Between us, we have decades of experience studying the indicators that drive the economy and how they can have a direct impact on your investments. We know that investors have a lot of questions about the markets and the economy and we're here to help. Join us each week as we explore questions like how do you evaluate corporate bonds and what sectors of the stock market are outperforming? So Kathy will analyze what's happening in the bond market and at the Fed, and I'll give you our latest analysis of the equities market and the U.S. economy. And we often interview prominent guests from across the world of investing and business. So download the latest episode and [e-mail] oninvesting or wherever you get your podcasts. What makes a great pair of glasses? At Warby Parker, it's all the invisible extras without the extra cost. Their designer quality frames start at $95 including prescription lenses plus scratch resistant, smudge resistant and anti reflective coatings and UV protection and free adjustments for life. To find your next pair of glasses, sunglasses or contact lenses, or to find the Warby Parker store nearest you, head over to warbyparker.com that's warbyparker.com Scott, we're back and President Trump is making all sorts of headlines. This week, Trump surprised pretty much everyone with a plan for the US to take over Gaza and turned it into a Middle East Riviera. Mara Gazo. That's the joke. Which is not funny actually, though some administration officials are walking that back a bit. His cabinet nominees, RFK Jr. And Tulsi Gabbard appear to be on their way to confirmation. He's reportedly getting closer to an executive order abolishing the Department of Education. He's doing everything by executive order order because he doesn't want to bother with legislators. Questionable executive orders, I'd say. We talked a few weeks ago about the strategy of flooding the zone with shit. Let's talk a little bit about this and how people can avoid falling the trap of distraction. Trump throwing up these crazy ideas and orders while Elon is making this power grab. It's quite coordinated from what I can tell, although I don't think Trump knows what he's doing. Courts have done a few things to keep them in check. They're stopping him from. He already was in the Treasury. Now they're saying get out of the Treasury. Who knows if he will because again, liars, all of them. A federal judge did block the birthright citizenship order this week. But then Trump was busy signing executive orders outlining plans for a government run sovereign wealth fund which would potentially use to buy TikTok. That's called state run media. The fund would also support other national endeavors like infrastructure projects. I don't know what to say. Talk a little bit about this strategy as a marketing thing. I hate to say that, but this is. And then we have a story in the New York Times. It's like, well, it's good that he's shaking up the difficult problem in the Mideast. Maybe it will create fresh ideas. Now I was sort of like, what? Like moving people against their 2 million people, against their will to where they've lived their whole lives is a fresh new idea. I mean, and as if. No, because. Especially because Gaza is absolutely destroyed. Like again, they destroyed it and now they've destroyed it. They can't go back, that kind of thing.

[Kara Swisher]

Well, okay, but before we even get to the notion that Egypt, I mean, look at the borders, look at the Gaza border with its neighboring nations. No one wants to take these refugees. Whatever you want to call that is so true. I understand the argument. It is an interesting argument. The notion that we're setting up a situation where nothing's really going to be different and eventually we're going to face the same problems in two, five, ten years again. That's a powerful argument. So the notion that we need to be creative and thoughtful. Fine. This is not the time. If you go into an emergency room, okay, the term stop the bleeding originates from a very logical place. And that is if you go into the emergency room with a gunshot or you've fallen and hit your head and you're hemorrhaging blood, they don't take your psa, they don't talk about, they don't say, check his or her cholesterol, they stop the bleeding. Everything else at this point is a worthy conversation that should be had by our elected representatives. But if we let a coup be successful and change the complexion of the negotiation, whereas opposed to arguing over who is prosecuted here and under what laws and how do we immediately arrest this coup such that we're not negotiating well, will you give us 50% of the funding back for Head Start? Dear person who wasn't elected to make these decisions, focus on stop the bleeding and the bleeding. Here. America is bleeding out in a small building somewhere that has access that is being remotely accessed by different locations by a group of people under the COVID of dark to stop payments based on programs that were passed by laws by our elected representatives. This is a coup. And it's not a slow moving coup, it's a fast moving coup. And everything else is an ER doctor saying, okay, they lost their leg and they're going to be dead in three minutes if they continue to bleed out. Let's find out what their good and bad. Let's figure out what their blood pressure, I mean, no, none of that's important at this point. Stop the bleeding. This is our focus.

[Scott Galloway]

Well, here's the problem.

[Kara Swisher]

Ketamine.

[Scott Galloway]

I know, ketamine. Exactly. But this plan, literally. Israeli Defense Minister said he's instructed the military draft a plan to allow voluntary departure of Gaza from residents. The only way they're leaving is if you ethnically cleanse them. And I know none of it makes any sense. You know, it's funny, like one of the right. If most of the conservative think tanks are sort of like, oh dear. Like right now, if you look at some of, they were like, this government thing isn't good, this Gaza thing isn't good. And they're like, don't be hysterical and use the term ethnic cleansing. But I'm like, only the comedy shows are getting it right. Like the Daily show, they keep saying they have different euphemisms for what it is, like voluntary departure or Refugee, moving them as refugees. And the word was passed. Word of the day is ethnic cleansing. And they keep doing different words and they go bah when they have the wrong word. Only the comedy shows are actually calling out this stuff for exactly what it is. Only the comedy shows are calling it a Nazi salute that Elon did, are saying this is illegal, are just explicitly doing it. And I guess it's under the COVID of comedy because some of it's very funny, but it's actually quite strong, I guess. I don't know what else to say because that's where I'm seeing the best coverage of this stuff or the best commentary, I guess.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah. Look again, I'm just remiss to engage in the conversation about how ridiculous it is because I don't think it's going to happen. I think this is again an attempt to say, look over here, let me talk about gender in the workplace as I figure out a way to create algorithms for profit that make it more likely that your 15 year old girl is gonna engage in self harm. Look over here, I have a book signing.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah, the wealth fund thing, you know, someone, they wanted me to go and joke with the wealth fund. I said that's fucking ridiculous. State run media, it's not allowed. And they're like, well, what do you think it would be? I'm like, I don't, I don't. What do I think of the Loch Ness monster? You're like asking me, it's not, doesn't exist. Or maybe that does. But the wealth Fund, I'm sort of like state run media. Does everyone have a problem with state run media in the country with the first Amendment? Like yeah, I do. Other countries do have sovereign wealth funds that invest surplus income. The U.S. by the way, runs a budget deficit, so we don't even have money to put into the sovereign wealth fund. I mean, you understand sovereign wealth funds better than I do, but this is nutty. Like it's not to buy TikTok. What?

[Kara Swisher]

Look, a sovereign wealth. Yeah, they play different. In the case of the Kingdom, it's like we need to figure out a way to transition away from fossil fuels. We have a ton of money. We want to be strategic, we want to turn it into more a greater return. We want to be thoughtful about it such that we can then make the investments we need to pivot away from an economy that's dependent upon a sea of oil which is going to dry up in 30, 57 years, such that we entered the modern world in Norway. It's a means of saying, okay, Norway owns 1 1/2% of the world's stocks and they create an incredible standard of living for their folks because they have thoughtful people trying to figure out how to invest their excess capital to greater ROI than their competition. America doesn't need a sovereign wealth fund. We have so much capital being invested privately. That's the financial argument. But the other thing is when you buy one firm, a sovereign wealth fund invests and tries to find alpha dislocation for the benefit of its citizens. We don't need that here. In addition, this is the sovereign wealth fund, again, is a distraction from what he's really suggesting, and that is the government owning a business, which is socialism.

[Scott Galloway]

And a media business. A media business. It's not like it's potatoes or something.

[Kara Swisher]

But the UK made a very compelling argument at the time. I see why they probably thought that we need manufacturing to come back and we have this really compelling guy who built the Pontiac gto and we're going to bring manufacturing. We have an opportunity here to be one of the largest shareholders in this amazing new technology and manufacturing brand called DeLorean. And so they made him better. I believe that the critics of Republicans were right to criticize Obama for some of his subsidies around solar firms. The whole Republican argument is that the public sector shouldn't be in the business of picking winners and losers. I kind of get that now. If you're going to do it systemically and say we want to support companies who are building our chips for defense reasons, fine. But this is the state controlling the means of production. And even saying this, I'm taking the debate, this is never going to happen. But again, I go back to where we're bleeding. So this again is another distraction. It's a stupid idea. It will never happen. They know it. In my opinion. Maybe he just thought about it and thought, I'm a deal guy, I can make money here for the government. No, we don't want to own TikTok. We want to regulate it or ban it. We want to promote the rule of fair play and even playing fields such that startups have a shot and everyone is playing under the same rules. And meanwhile, if you in fact have an algorithm that can be reverse engineered to polarization, radicalization or self harm among teens, maybe you should be subject to the same liability as traditional media. Okay, that's the government's role. The government's role isn't to start cosplaying business. Trump has been cosplaying business his whole life. This is the reality of Trump. If he had invested his father's massive fortune, which he inherited, in any index fund, he'd have more money than he has now. But he's been cosplaying business. He was hugely insecure. I ran across Trump businesses all the time doing business, and the general reputation of Trump and his family was they were a bunch of rich kids who didn't know what they were doing, that they just weren't very good at what they did. He's been cosplaying business his entire life. And this is again him thinking, I've got an idea. Will own TikTok and will make money. That is not a government role. It's not. And again, here I am taking the bait. Look over here.

[Scott Galloway]

It's just not happening. It's just such non. It's fucking nonsense. Like, nonsense. Every time they ask me to comment on anything, I'm like, it's nonsense. What else can I say? This is bullshit. This is such. There's no interest. Sometimes I think it is good. Let's think of some fresh ideas. Right? What should we do here with this? How do we protect our national security and yet protect the First Amendment? How do we do. Like, there's always room and that's the good part of Silicon Valley. Like, let's think of new ways to do things. And by the way, they don't have. Let me just say this attack. I'm gonna just have one slight rant here. I got contacted by Bijan Savat. Do you know him? He's a great investor. He was in Twitter early and stuff like that. And he's written a piece called There are people in Silicon Valley that are not like this, just so you know. And he wrote a great piece called Public Service, the Backbone of American Democracy. And he really didn't like this one line in the. These Doge press releases where he says the way to greater American prosperity is encouraging people to move from lower productivity jobs in the public sector to higher productivity jobs in the private sector reveals a staggering ignorance of the essential work performed by those in government. It is not only offensive, but also demonstrably false. I was so happy to read that, you know, that the privates. He's put simply put, the narrative that the private sector is inherently superior to the public sector does disservice the millions of Americans who serve their country every day. Every day. It risks demoralizing a workforce already under strain and undermines the very institutions that protect our advance, our shared values. These people who have had so many friggin failures of their startups they fuck up so much and Donald Trump is the top fuck up, the top fuck up of business. They're allowed to say they're innovative and they then insult government officials who have done a pretty fucking good job keeping us safe every day. And it's so offensive and so easy to insult the government and its workers. And they have fucked up so many times that we should start making lists of all the different stupidities they have perpetrated. I find it, the whole thing just, it's nonsense.

[Kara Swisher]

There's also, there's parsing kind of mendacious to just stupid and dangerous. The CIA. I've had the pleasure of working with several officers. These are incredibly bright people, incredibly skilled. And instead of going to work for Google or Procter and Gamble, they decide to serve their country and they take enormous risks. And the fact that they have so little regard for our national security apparatus that they might be unmasking these folks either recklessly, negligently, that is 100% the right word. It's traitorous and it's stupid. Because what is the likelihood the Central Intelligence Agency recruits out of every top business school, every top college. They try and find the best and brightest from a very early age. Do you think you're more or less inclined to go to work for the Central Intelligence Agency right now knowing that your own government might out you? What if you're are overseas on assignment right now? Oh, sleep well tonight? They might know who I am and what I'm doing here. And by the way, it's not like these guys lose their pension if they're found out. It's not like they get fired, they are tortured and then murdered trying to protect our shores. And you have people who have so little regard for their sacrifice and their patriotism.

[Scott Galloway]

Let me just take one thing, we've got to move on. Is someone who is very interesting. Some of his comments is Bill Gates. He's on a book tour for a book called Source Code. He has met with Trump because he's trying to stop him from defunding AIDS things and he has to do that. He's the President, he's gotta go in there and make his argument why not? And he has been defending usaid. He's someone who was very arrogant about government when I met him. He was super arrogant. He now is like I was arrogant. And let me tell you, there's some amazing people working for the government I've had. There's dedicated important people doing important work. If you partner with the government, he's very quietly doing the Right. Messaging around why this is wrong. And every now and then he's like, what Elon's doing is nonsense and irresponsible. And here's why. I don't think I'd like him to yell more, but I have to say I was pretty surprised how explicit he is being. There's very few other leaders that are doing that. None of them like. None of them. He was the only one that you see because he knows he doesn't have a price to pay because he's Bill Gates. Right. So he can do that. So all you other rich fuckers who don't think this is right, not saying anything is heinous on your behalf. Anyway. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about this week's earnings.

[Kara Swisher]

Hey, this is Peter Kafka. I'm the host of Channels, a podcast about technology and media. And maybe you've noticed that a lot of people are investing a lot of money trying to encourage you to bet on sports right now right from your phone. That is a huge change, and it's happened so fast that most of us haven't spent much time thinking about what it means and if it's a good thing. But Michael Lewis, that's the guy who wrote Moneyball and the Big Short and Liars Poker, has been thinking a lot about it, and he tells me that he's pretty worried. I mean, there was never a delivery.

[Scott Galloway]

Mechanism for cigarettes as efficient as the.

[Kara Swisher]

Phone is for delivering the gambling apps. It's like the world has created less.

[Scott Galloway]

And less friction for the behavior when what it needs is more and more.

[Kara Swisher]

You can hear my chat with Michael Lewis right now on Channels, wherever you get your podcasts. All right, so here's the deal. Take a former world number one. That's me, Andy Roddick. Add in a journalist who knows everything about tennis and a producer who's still figuring out how to spell tennis. We get served with Andy Roddick, the weekly podcast where we break down the game we all love. We cover the biggest stories, talk to the sport's biggest stars, and highlight the people changing tennis in ways you might not even realize. Whether it's Grand Slam predictions, coaching changes off court drama, or the moves shaping the future of the sport, we've got it all. This podcast is about having fun, sharing insights, and giving fans a real look at what makes tennis so great. Catch serve with Andy Roddick on Spotify, Apple podcasts, wherever you listen or watch us on YouTube, like, subscribe, follow all that good stuff let's get started.

[Scott Galloway]

Scott, we're back. There's lots of earnings news. We. We still have to talk about earnings. Disney beat expectations, reporting a 4.8% increase in revenue. The company's experience business, which includes parks, cruises and resorts, rose 3%. Its entertainment division saw a 9% ju in revenue. Disney saw a 1% decline in subscribers following an increase in prices last year. They had been. They're doing pretty well. Their streaming business is quite stabilized and it's moving forward. At some point you run out of subscribers, essentially, and there's a lot of churn, et cetera. Alphabet. I'm going to go through them and then you can comment on. Shares of the company are down almost 6% in the last five days. At the time of the taping, Alphabet's Overall revenue grew 12% compared with 13% in the same quarter last year. Advertising revenue grew 10.6% compared to 11%. The company announced plans to invest above expectations, $75 billion in capital expenditures as it continues to build AI offerings. One of the things they did note is they're going to stop all their efforts in dei because they're going to. Unlike Costco and Apple, they've decided to cave and there are threats from Pam Bondi and state attorney generals and they've just decided to cave in all their different programs. Non Spotify shares are up 12% in the last five days at the time of the taping. After the company reported its profitable year. The company reported 40% gross profit growth year over year and operating income of 477 million euros monthly. Active users grew by 35 million, up 12% for the year. Lastly, Uber reported a lower than expected operating income of 770 million. 3.1 billion trips were completed on the platform, up 18% year over year. Uber also announced it's ramping up for a public launch of Robo Taxis in Austin through its partnership with Waymo. Waymo is killing it in San Francisco, I can tell you that. Well, then the company's optimistic about the autonomous vehicle market. Admit it, there are many, many years to scale. They're absolutely right. So which one of these would you like to take?

[Kara Swisher]

Well, I'll touch on each of them and then try and extract what I think is an interesting theme. So Disney, essentially the streaming wars, everyone's fighting to be lift. What do I mean by that? Netflix is running away with it.

[Scott Galloway]

Definitely.

[Kara Swisher]

So everyone's fighting for number two. And I don't want to say they've given up, but Netflix, I mean, just to give you a sense. In 2015, Disney price to sales was 4, Netflix was 5. So they saw them in kind of spitting distance of each other from a shareholder standpoint, as we sit here today, Disney trades at 2 times revenue and Netflix trades at 11 times revenue. Disney, they lost 700,000 subscribers, but that was in the face of a price increase. Now, it wasn't a huge price increase, but it does show kind of the strength, strength of Disney's positioning around family. Whereas Netflix added 19 million subscribers, Disney has added. Disney plus has added 13 million. The big thing comes down to churn, and that is there's this really uncomfortable dynamic where everyone but Netflix has to reinvent their entire customer base every 10 years or two years because they go on and they download the entire season of Ted Lasso and then they cancel Apple tv, Us. And Netflix has so much, so much gross tonnage that their churn is only 2%. Disney is number two, but it's at 4.8%. And then the other guys have even higher churn rates.

[Scott Galloway]

Can I just make a note here? Real competitor, and this is me talking to Hollywood people yesterday, is YouTube. YouTube is the competitor of Netflix.

[Kara Swisher]

The real that no one talks about.

[Scott Galloway]

They are killing it.

[Kara Swisher]

But to your point, total total share of video viewership is like 8 or 9%. For Netflix. YouTube is 11. You could argue YouTube is the number one streamer, but it's still categorized as a different sector.

[Scott Galloway]

I think they're going to do a lot more originals, FYI. But go ahead.

[Kara Swisher]

Disney's parks, cruises and resorts continues to be the gift that keeps on giving. Revenue up 3%, but the operating income was up 6 to 8%. Disney's done a good job incorporating ESPN into a pretty compelling bundle. With Hulu moving on to Google, their full year revenue grew 14%. But people are freaked out about slower than expected cloud growth because they see that as a proxy for their AI offering. So they took the stock down a little bit. They're also worried about the amount of Capex. Their capital expenditure is supposed to increase to 75 billion. The thing about Google though is that they have five separate businesses that do more than 30 billion in annual revenue if their stock were to go down. I mean, look at it this way, that's like saying they have the revenue power of five different Starbucks or five different Visas with different businesses. They are just a cache, a series of cache volcanoes. Seven products and platforms with over 2 billion users. Search, maps, Gmail, Android, you know, they're just doing incredibly. Spotify is probably the most impressive performer from where it was say 12 or 24 months ago. And that is they essentially set quarterly record highs for revenue, gross margin, operating income. The stock has tripled in the last year. Their platform growth is accelerating. Their total monthly active users hit 675 million. Their premium subscribers up 11%. Their average revenue per user, or ARPU, is up 5%. And now kind of what I'll say, and I'll come back to Uber in a second. But the big theme here, or something hopefully resembling inside, is the following. If you look at the acceleration in Spotify stock and in Netflix, I believe that that's more than just growth in the category. It's effectively so. Netflix now has more than 50% of its production overseas. And if you look at Spotify, less than 1% of its artists garner more than 92% of its streaming revenues. Effectively with the SC that these companies have and by not sharing analytics or information, what Netflix has done is it has transferred a massive amount of capital, earnings, power, money from the means of production, specifically artists, to Netflix shareholders. And that is when you put something on Netflix, they don't tell you how successful it is. They might produce it in Spain or in Seoul, but they've basically extracted a shit ton of capital from California based employees, from actors, from producers, and said, we're kind of the big dog here and you have to operate under this new religion or this new operating model because by the way, if you don't want to be in our Netflix drama, there's 179,000 other SAG AFTRA people that are looking for work.

[Scott Galloway]

And can I just make a point? They also put out so much content. That's pretty good, right? None of it's really the way. Someone was telling me a story who was with last night, who used to work at Google with Susan Wojcicki, the late Susan Wojcicki. And they were thinking about getting into originals and they walked her through the economics of Hollywood because she wasn't familiar. You know, she had been very successful at Google and she had just taken over YouTube and they walked her through it and she got up and she goes, this isn't a business like what only one hit carries all the losses. Like, she was like, she immediately clocked the problem, right? Like she goes, this isn't a really sustainable business if you don't have this one hit. And she goes, why are they operating like this? And she was, I think she had insight into the idea that if you had a lot of little hits or spread it out with stuff that people like you would do A lot better. And that's what Netflix has kind of done here. They have nothing. Every now and then they have a big one, but all the others are fine. And they help sustain the fact that it's a good product. You find efficacy in the product, you find pleasure in the product. Same thing with Spotify. At its heart, art. It's a good product. I don't know what else to say. It's like, enjoyable to use. You find what you want. Maybe it's not like soaring like an HBO can be sometime, but every now and then it is. And it's so that's, you know, it's a good. I don't know what else to say. It's a good product. Like, that's how I feel about both those companies.

[Kara Swisher]

There's two ingredients to the secret sauce here, and it's an asymmetry. They both have to do with an asymmetry of information. If Deadpool does $1.3 billion, the agent for Ryan Reynolds and for Hugh Jackman know that. And the next time they want to do Deadpool meets Fast and Furious 18 or whatever, the agent from WME goes to the studio and says, I know how important Hugh Jackman is. And they extract a shit ton, a pound of flesh in streaming. The only evidence that Ben Stiller has that severance got more than one viewer is they order seasons three and four. So the asymmetry of information always benefits the person that has symmetrical information. When Jennifer Aniston's agent knew that the Thursday night lineup counted depended was resting on the pillar of Friends. The people producing and acting in Friends could extract a lot of revenue. No one in streaming has any fucking idea. And then the second big number out of the Disney earnings that fascinated me and explains why Netflix trades at 11 times revenue and Disney at 2 times is that now more than half of Netflix's content budget is spent overseas. And some of it's done to be more multinational. But the majority of the reason they do it and the reason why they're building big studios in New Jersey is because New Jersey just supersized their tax subsidies. They realized if we can produce two eights in Spain or Seoul instead of producing one possible eight or nine in LA, go with the eights overseas. Over 50% of their content budget is now spent overseas. Do you know what percentage of Disney's content budget is spent overseas?

[Scott Galloway]

I Bet none.

[Kara Swisher]

Like 4%, right?

[Scott Galloway]

None. Like none.

[Kara Swisher]

So essentially what Japan did to Detroit, Netflix is doing to Los Angeles, and I don't care. You want to talk about Nuclear code secrets. When we launch our series on Netflix and I say, if I call them and say, I am not working with you again unless you tell me how many people downloaded this relative to your other dramas, they're going to say, well, it was nice working with you, Scott, because they don't want anyone to have that leverage. So asymmetry of information and the globalization of content production and a decent product.

[Scott Galloway]

A decent, pleasurable product, oh, it's a fantastic product.

[Kara Swisher]

But all of those benefits, I mean, this is a straight line. There's a lot of innovation, a fantastic product, but you want to talk about a massive flow to the bottom line and who it's coming from beyond the natural growth, organic growth of the sector. It's coming from the gaffer, the lighting guy, and the woman who ran, who wrote season four of SpongeBob SquarePants and used to make 200 grand a year. And Netflix has said, you know what? I figured out a way to pay you 40 grand. And all of that capital coming out of high production states and people has moved to Netflix shareholders. And it represents a much broader trend in our society. And that is the notion that we give a shit about stakeholders, not shareholders, is just not true. Everything is run for shareholders. And by the way, there's some upside to that. I'm not arguing that it's the wrong way. But be clear, folks. Everything is now optimized to transfer as much capital as possible from states, from workers. The workers here are not being prioritized. Production in Los Angeles was off 40% year on year, not because they're not talented, but because they're too goddamn expensive. And Netflix has found a way to keep them in the dark and then hire 80% as talented a person overseas for 30 to 40% of the price. It's a transfer of wealth from artist at Spotify and from the creatives in Hollywood to Netflix and Spotify shareholders. And Spotify has made the jump. So they have so much leverage, they are now extracting revenue from the bottom 99.9 of artists. They're going to make less and less money.

[Scott Galloway]

All right, very quickly on Uber.

[Kara Swisher]

Incredibly well managed. I just think you got to give it to Dara. He and Apple were the ones that said, said, no, I'm not going to jump into the shallow end head first here and make huge capital allocations to autonomous.

[Scott Galloway]

He pulled back. He pulled back.

[Kara Swisher]

I'm going to wait, I'm going to rent other. Just as. I mean, they're good at this. Uber's innovation is Airbnb's Innovation. And that is I'll build a thick layer of software on top of other people's capital expenditure on top of their apartments, their houses and their cars. Right. So it's in their DNA to say, why don't we just ride? Why don't we just be the remora fish off of Google's multi decade, multi tens of billions of dollars investments and autonomous. That's where we should be riding. That's where we should be playing the game. He is doing a great job of managing that company.

[Scott Galloway]

You're right. It's on top of it, I gotta say. Waymo's so integrated into San Francisco now and you're gonna see it all over the country. It's so convenient. And they live together with Uber, by the way. That's in a very comfortable way. I took both in San Francisco this week and, and both were great. Prices are still too high for all of them and I know they need to make money and stuff, but it's a really interesting time. You're right. Dara's done a nice job here and there are no competitors, really. And I mean, Lyft is sort of a competitor, I guess. Anyway, one more quick break and we'll be back for predictions. Okay, Scott, let's hear a prediction.

[Kara Swisher]

Well, if you think about the three layers in AI, there's the infrastructure layer, the nvidias of the world, there's the LLM layer, the anthropics, the chatgpts, and then there's the application layer. And the entire infrastructure and LLM world was thrown into disarray when Shocker China came up with something cheaper. Right, right. But I think what you're about to see is kind of a golden age or dozens of new unicorns in what I'd call the application layer. And I met with this incredibly impressive young man yesterday who founded a company called Rogo, which is essentially, they take all of these financial data streams, whether it's Cap IQ or Bloomberg, and then they put a layer of intelligence, AI, weaponized intelligence on top of it. And they turn an investment banking analyst into someone fighting on horseback to someone in a panzer Tank. Tank. So you can type into this AI that's customized for financial services or institutions. Ipo, put together an IPO roadshow deck for a fast fashion company that does this. Revenues, and these are the concerns. And it'll put together a 60 slide deck of which 48 are pretty good. So you can basically do the job of three analysts and they'll say that it's making people more productive, but it's going to result in massive layoffs anyways. I think you're about to see dozens of unicorns in the application application layer. I do think that the infrastructure and the LLM layer is about to shed tens of billions of dollars as people realize the moats aren't as big as they thought. That if Sam Altman can copy everything out there, someone's going to be able to figure out a way to copy Sam Altman's shit. But the additional customization or artisanal AI application layer in healthcare and in financial services and fitness and all sorts of things is going to create a much of branded consumer AI applications. I mean, that's what Airbnb is, right? That's what Uber are. They took existing infrastructure and breakthroughs and they branded it and they created interesting vertical niche applications. I think that you're about to see a bunch of companies. I mean, this guy, I had breakfast with this kid 25. Jesus Christ. Like, I'm like, can I come back as you? By the way, I'm going to be him tonight under the Influence Academy.

[Scott Galloway]

You're just going to. I'm going to get a call from the police and I'll have to come get you or something. Something.

[Kara Swisher]

No, by the way, you're not my call. Preet Bharara is my call.

[Scott Galloway]

That's true. I call him.

[Kara Swisher]

I literally, I have him. He's. I'm about to make him and his phone number tonight my screensaver.

[Scott Galloway]

Oh, that's a good idea.

[Kara Swisher]

Tonight. It's like, this is the guy. Here's his number. I've told Preet this. I know. He's. I just need you to do one thing. You can ask me for anything, but if you see my name come up. Yeah, I need you to answer. And I'm not calling to say hi. I'm not calling to say hi.

[Scott Galloway]

Oh, wow. Okay.

[Kara Swisher]

Anyways, I've told him I'll send millions of dollars of money to this. To this law firm he's now like the rainmaker for. Anyways. But I'm not calling you. I'm calling Preet I'll ever get as.

[Scott Galloway]

A scold for you, I would leave you. I would scold you. I would. I'm gonna make a very brief prediction. You know, there's a lot of new polls out. The economists have poll that Back in November, 47% of those surveyed Republicans says they wanted Elon Musk to have a lot of influence in the Trump administration, while 29% wanted a little and 12% want them to have none. At all today, the number of Republicans who say Musk have they want him to have a lot of influence has fallen substantially to 26%, according to this story in the Hill. Meanwhile, 43% of Republican respondents said they wanted Musk to have a little influence, and 17% they want him to have none at all. I see that, but I have to tell you, I had thought they would have a falling out. I think he is, as I have said, he is little pussy for Trump, the mop boss. Essentially. He is the heat shield. He is the junkyard dog. And I think Trump understands this intuitively. There's one thing about Donald Trump, he has an intuitive sense of things. Musk is good for him because he gets the shit done, even if it's illegal. And he's willing to and nobody else is. And as much as these insiders are gonna complain about him being bigger than his britches or overstepping, I think maybe he might be around a little longer. I think I was wrong about that falling out. I wish I wasn't. But I do think, even if people are indignant, this guy has a stain. Everything has shown when everyone thinks Musk is gonna lose on the pedophile case or with the sec. He's got an ability to. Not just to take risks, but also take ridiculous, heinous risks, but to also stick it out. So I don't know. I think Trump recognizes that it's good to have a junkyard dog. You're my junkyard dog.

[Kara Swisher]

I like that. Thanks for saying that. Get away from her.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah, that's right.

[Kara Swisher]

Anyways, I mean, this is insanity or crazy. But I would describe it more apt as like late stage syphilis crazy.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah, that's what they were saying online. Syphilis crazy.

[Kara Swisher]

But the thing is, that can go on for years.

[Scott Galloway]

You can have syphilis for. Please don't get it.

[Kara Swisher]

But no, no, no. Unfortunately, the good news is I'm so unattractive and unappealing now that you have to have someone else to engage in giving you syphilis, and that's just not gonna happen.

[Scott Galloway]

That's not a word we use enough. Syphilitic.

[Kara Swisher]

It's a great word.

[Scott Galloway]

Let's use it like, several times.

[Kara Swisher]

I used to like the word encephalitic, but that's not syphilis. That's a brain disease. Cloudiness. But syphilis, I do like syphilis.

[Scott Galloway]

Can I tell you, Amanda's always like, Scott used that word wrong. She's like such a word person. The way she. Several times you've used words that she means.

[Kara Swisher]

I used it incorrectly.

[Scott Galloway]

Incorrectly, that's correct. Yeah. Anyway, she's often doing that to me. I'm like, did he? I don't know. Like, she's like, you need to tell him. I'm like, I'm not telling him. I forget. I completely forget. The minute she tells me.

[Kara Swisher]

I wouldn't mind her. Your texts are mean. If she calls me and says you meant this, I'm open to that.

[Scott Galloway]

All right, I'll tell her. I'll tell her. She can be your spelling lady. Anyway. Elsewhere in the Karen Scott universe, which is growing by the second, it's expanding. This week on Prof. G Conversations, Scott spoke with Mogadot, the former chief business officer of Google X, bestselling author and founder of One Billion Happy. Let's listen. The truth is the world is not ready for what is about to hit us. Whether you take the simple things like.

[Kara Swisher]

The economics of the world and how they will change as a result of.

[Scott Galloway]

AI all the way to the change.

[Kara Swisher]

Of the dynamics of power and the.

[Scott Galloway]

Resulting deprivation of freedom, you know, all.

[Kara Swisher]

Of the, all the way to how.

[Scott Galloway]

The economics of the world are going to change and how, you know, the.

[Kara Swisher]

The jobs are going to change and.

[Scott Galloway]

How the human connection is going to change and how our understanding of reality is going to change. And these are decisions that are not made by us anymore. I'm, you know, think about it this way. Spider Man's with great power comes great responsibility. We've disconnected power from responsibility. There is massive, massive power concentration concentrated in hands that do not answer to anyone. Well, ketamine.

[Kara Swisher]

I say he's a very thoughtful guy. Mogadot. I really, I really enjoyed the conversation with him. And basically you should listen to the conversation, but basically summarize like Sam Altman is, is reshaping the way we think about things, the way we approach problems potentially, what types of weapons are developed. And he was kind of like, who the fuck is Sam Altman to get to do this?

[Scott Galloway]

Right? That's correct. Who the fuck is Elon Musk? Who the fuck are any of these people? But that's where we're going. Okay, Scott, that's the show. We'll be back on Tuesday with more pivot. Read us out.

[Kara Swisher]

Today's show is produced by Lara Naiman Joy Marcus and Taylor Griffin. Ernie and her Todd entered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Bros, Ms. Svero and Dan Schulen. Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at NY Magic slash pod. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Who is that guy in the corner of that Fashion Week party? I get the sense he likes him a lot. That's the dog.