Stock Market Surge, Kara's X Defection, and Guests Samantha Bee and Joanna Coles

Summary

Podcast Summary: Pivot Episode – "Stock Market Surge, Kara's X Defection, and Guests Samantha Bee and Joanna Coles"

Introduction and Personal Anecdotes

The episode kicks off with Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway engaging in their signature banter, setting a relatable and humorous tone. They delve into personal experiences, with Kara sharing a recent trip to the dentist for a tooth implant and her daughter Clara’s sudden dental emergency. This segment not only humanizes the hosts but also seamlessly transitions into broader discussions.

Kara Swisher [02:00]: “I go to the dentist to get... they put that you screw a screw into your jaw, essentially, and then it hurts like the fucking dickens.”

Scott Galloway [03:56]: “The first time I had a tooth pulled, I fainted.”

These anecdotes highlight their ability to blend personal stories with humor, making complex topics more accessible.

Stock Market Surge and Trump’s Victory

The conversation shifts to the U.S. stock market's impressive performance following Donald Trump's election victory. Kara and Scott analyze the factors driving the surge, noting the historical highs achieved by major indices like the S&P 500 breaking 6000 points and the Dow briefly crossing 4400.

Scott Galloway [10:11]: “It's impossible to time the markets if you're going to go into the markets. I've said this for a while, go into low fee index funds and dollar cost average in don't go in all at once because it's difficult to time the market.”

They discuss the disconnect between market performance and underlying economic fundamentals, attributing the rise to investor sentiment and political certainty rather than substantive economic improvements.

Kara Swisher [08:22]: “That's because he's hanging with the President. Everyone's got the... It's not on any underlying improvement in anything. It's just that he's not on fire. He's on hype, I guess.”

Elon Musk’s X (Twitter) Terms of Service Update

A significant portion of the episode addresses Elon Musk’s platform, X (formerly Twitter), particularly the recent changes to its Terms of Service. Kara expresses her concerns about the new legal stipulations forcing lawsuits to be filed in a specific federal court in Texas and the platform’s use of user data for AI training.

Kara Swisher [32:00]: “X has updated his terms of Service to say that any users lawsuits against the platform will have to go to a federal court in Northern District of Texas.”

Scott Galloway [34:00]: “You're saying he has... He's smarter than every other corporation or he wants.”

They debate the implications of these changes, with Scott likening it to standard corporate legal strategies, while Kara emphasizes the unusual nature of the jurisdiction selection, highlighting potential biases in favor of conservative parties.

The Role of Media and Podcasts in the Election

Kara and Scott explore the influential role of media, particularly right-wing media and podcasts, in Donald Trump's electoral success. They critique the legacy media's slower adaptation to new platforms compared to their right-wing counterparts, which have effectively harnessed podcasts and social media to engage audiences.

Scott Galloway [17:55]: “I think it's impossible to time the markets... The markets like certainty. They hate uncertainty.”

Kara Swisher [12:50]: “And I think you're about to be arrested by the RFK army. Whatever.”

They highlight how figures like Joe Rogan and the Daily Beast have shaped political discourse, arguing that Democrats need to innovate similarly to effectively compete in the evolving media landscape.

Interview with Samantha Bee and Joanna Coles

Guests Samantha Bee, a comedian and writer, and Joanna Coles, Chief Content Officer for the Daily Beast, join the conversation to discuss their perspectives on media, politics, and the future of podcasting.

Samantha Bee [40:12]: “It's like creating a constitution for yourself or figuring out what your red lines are, too, because there are people that I would not... I'm not really interested in having people on.”

Joanna Coles [40:49]: “I'm changing my voting status. I'm changing my party affiliation to independent. Just as a little.”

They delve into the challenges of navigating a polarized media environment, the importance of economic sustainability in journalism, and strategies for fostering meaningful conversations in their podcasting endeavors.

Joanna Coles [47:46]: “We have a very robust business model. We haven't been valued like Vice or like BuzzFeed at preposterous valuations with all sorts of venture capital money that came in.”

Samantha Bee [55:28]: “I'm here to have fun. I want to talk about Trump. The one thing that I can not be is completely interested in the news cycle at all times of the day or night.”

Their insights underscore the necessity of adapting business models to ensure the longevity and impact of media outlets amidst changing consumption patterns.

Wins and Fails Segment

In the closing segment, Scott shares personal wins and challenges from the week. He expresses disappointment over the election results, highlighting the closer-than-expected margins and the implications for future political dynamics. However, he finds solace in discovering new music and appreciating positive content on emerging platforms like Threads.

Scott Galloway [72:40]: “This has really rattled me more than any other election outcome. And I struggle. I'm easily, you know...”

Kara Swisher [76:03]: “My win is Carrie Lake losing in Arizona. Couldn't word my sister worst politician.”

This segment offers a candid look into the hosts' personal reflections, balancing the analytical depth of the episode with authentic emotional responses.

Conclusion

Kara and Scott wrap up the episode by reinforcing their commitment to providing sharp, insightful commentary on tech, business, and politics. They encourage listeners to engage with their content and join the ongoing conversation, emphasizing the importance of adaptability and resilience in the rapidly evolving media landscape.

Kara Swisher [81:07]: “It's really interesting. As we struggle forward, we don't always agree, but we know how to disagree. That's our new motto in case you're interested.”

Overall, this episode of Pivot delivers a comprehensive analysis of current events, enriched by personal anecdotes, expert guest insights, and thoughtful discussions on the future of media and politics.

Transcript

[Kara Swisher]

Support for this episode comes from the Current. The Current podcast is back with an exciting new season featuring marketing executives from the world's most influential brands. Tune in to hear what's driving conversation in the fast moving world of digital advertising with unique insights from brands as diverse as Hilton, Instacart, Moderna, Major League Soccer and more. And in this presidential election season, the Current explores what a national political advertiser like the National Republican Senatorial Committee and a major senior CPG brand like Hershey can learn from each other. Listen in and subscribe to the [e-mail] or wherever you get your podcasts. Support for Pivot comes from Fiverr. Hiring top talent can take months, which can mean time and opportunities lost. Well, with Fiverr Pro, outsourcing talent for your business can be simple, quick and effective. Fiverr Pro is an all in one solution for premium freelance talent. You can connect with dedicated hiring experts who will help you find your perfect match. Plus, you get access to project management tools and flexible hiring options designed to handle projects of any size. Fiverr Pro empowers you to build faster, scale smarter, and turn today's projects into tomorrow's growth. Visit pro.fiver.com to sign up and use the code PIVOT for 15% off any service.

[Scott Galloway]

Support for PIVOT comes from Solidym. 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 AI era demands. Learn more at storageforai.com.

[Kara Swisher]

I'm super excited to be next to you in the old folks home. The two of us.

[Scott Galloway]

You're going to be wheeling me around. Are you kidding?

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah I am. I make sure people stay away from you and they don't grab your junk.

[Scott Galloway]

People are going to have to look over my head and over the back of the wheelchair to see you, but you're going to be pushing me around.

[Kara Swisher]

Don't touch his junk. I'm protecting him.

[Scott Galloway]

Bitching at me.

[Kara Swisher]

Where is his applesauce? Where is it?

[Scott Galloway]

Change his catheter. He's in a bad mood.

[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]

Scott, you can't Believe what just happened to me just now.

[Scott Galloway]

Go ahead.

[Kara Swisher]

I go to the dentist to get. I'm having an implant, as you know, because I'm an old person. I'm losing my teeth and they're just checking on it. You know, they put it in and it hurts a lot.

[Scott Galloway]

Look, I just want you to know I'm in favor of implant. If you feel better about.

[Kara Swisher]

I want that kind of implant.

[Scott Galloway]

Oh, wait, I'm sorry. Never mind. Go ahead.

[Kara Swisher]

Go ahead. A tooth. A tooth implant.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah, I know.

[Kara Swisher]

So they put that you screw a screw into your jaw, essentially, and then it hurts like the fucking dickens because, well, it heals, but then it's healing and they want to look at it. So I brought Clara because today public schools have us. Because it's Veterans Day. Dentist looks at her and says, how's that tooth doing? Because she has a dead tooth in the front that she fell on when she was a little kid. And we cleaned it out, and it's been sitting there looking gray and whatever. It just sits there. And he goes, if there's a pimple on her gum, then we have to take it out. And she opens her mouth, there's a pimple on the gum above the tooth. It's an abscess. They pulled the tooth out, like, seconds later. And she had to have nitrous oxide, which I'm sure you enjoy. And now she has not one front tooth. Just suddenly. She took it like a champ. I gotta tell you, I would've been freaked the fuck out if I went with my mom and was just hoping to watch Smurfs. And there you.

[Scott Galloway]

Well, just to give you a sense of what a real man. How a real man behaves, the first time I had a tooth pulled, I fainted.

[Kara Swisher]

Why?

[Scott Galloway]

True story. Why?

[Kara Swisher]

Was it like a frat or something? It's like a frat stone.

[Scott Galloway]

No, it wasn't. Like, yeah, eat a goldfish when we're pulling your tooth. No, I was. When I was, I think, a little bit older than Claire, it's one of my first memories. Don't you love how I turn a cute story about Claire into me?

[Kara Swisher]

I know. That's okay.

[Scott Galloway]

It's fine. And my father has something called petite mal, which is mild epilepsy.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh, yeah. Seizures. Yeah.

[Scott Galloway]

I had a stage in my life for a good probably four or five years where I was fainting a lot, which, by the way, is really good for your social cred. Anyways, and that was one of the first times I fainted. I'm at the dentist. They pulled like two teeth. The first time I went to the dentist, I think I was 8 or 9. Well, not even that. Maybe 11. My parents weren't that sophisticated. And I had 8 cavities. My first trip to the dentist, I had 8 cavities.

[Kara Swisher]

Me too. Same thing. You know why? Guess why, Scott Galloway. We probably didn't have fluoride in the water where we grew up, which was. Let's make this political, New York. Well, I'm just saying this fucking lunatic wants to take fluoride. It is. And guess and I have. Have like so many cavities too. Same thing. We have bad teeth.

[Scott Galloway]

I. I think they should put tooth pair fluoride, nad, testosterone into the water. A little bit of Cialis into the water. Just like, why not? The water supply is here for us.

[Kara Swisher]

You know, you're about to be arrested by the RFK army. Whatever.

[Scott Galloway]

Fuck that guy, right?

[Kara Swisher]

Honestly, I think they're going to dump him. That's. I'm going to. I'm going with. That's my prediction. In any case, Clara, good job. I have to say, that was just like, well done. And we're going to. The Tooth Fairy's coming tonight. What's the going rate for the Tooth Fairy?

[Scott Galloway]

Did she get a gift? They used to give you stickers and candy and stuff?

[Kara Swisher]

Yes, two toys. She got two toys from the toy chest and I just gave her Halloween candy. Anything soft. She has to eat soft foods today, so I gave her applesauce and Halloween candy. So hopefully we'll have more cavities after that.

[Samantha Bee]

Just.

[Kara Swisher]

You want them to feel better. Oh, she's like, bereft. She was breath, but she handled the whole thing well.

[Scott Galloway]

Good.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh, I'm deleting Twitter right now as we speak. I have tweet, delete, and I'm trying to delete. Do you know how many tweets I have? 171,000.

[Scott Galloway]

You've tweeted 171,000 times?

[Kara Swisher]

Either replied or liked. I guess it's all of them. But I downloaded the whole thing. It's a mother of a file. But it takes 17 years to delete all your tweets. I'm deleting 55,000 right now. It's taking 109 years.

[Scott Galloway]

Well, I understand. So I'm. I haven't been on Twitter in two years, but I haven't deleted my tweets. Why are you deleting them?

[Kara Swisher]

Because we're going to. We're going to talk about why I'm doing that, but I'm deleting them. And then shutting down my Twitter account. Remember I just left it there dormant.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah.

[Kara Swisher]

But as of Friday, you're subject to Elon Musk's new terms. We will talk about that.

[Scott Galloway]

You mean the First Lady? Elon Musk, the First lady.

[Kara Swisher]

Don't you love that? Elania? Elania.

[Scott Galloway]

That's good. That's good.

[Kara Swisher]

I know, it's so weird. It's like. You remember that Bob, remember that movie with Richard Dreyfuss and what's his name, Bill Murray? Bob came and stayed. He was a therapy patient of Richard Dreyfus. And then he never left. What about Bob? That's what it's like. It's an episode of what About Bob and the Trump Family. Let me just tell you two things. I've gotten calls from Trump people. They're like, Elon's a little odd. I think you were right. And I was like, uh huh. Good luck, enjoy, he's yours. And then they also noted to me that they think that he might end up fighting with Trump. And then someone else told me he was. They mentioned my name and they said they're gonna. He's gonna buy CNN so he can fire me.

[Scott Galloway]

He's gonna buy cnn, actually, come to think of it. My God, for a fraction. I bet. C. What is CNN's worth right now? CNN's probably worth somewhere between 5 billion. Not a rational buyer. It's worth probably between 5 and 10 billion. He pays.

[Kara Swisher]

Nice to meet you. Not a rational buyer.

[Scott Galloway]

I know.

[Joanna Coles]

Welcome.

[Kara Swisher]

I know I have Alania. Alania. To meet you. Anyway, yeah. Anyway, they're not going to sell to him.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah, I don't. For the right money, they. Oh, for the right money, they would absolutely sell. It's John Malone. The people on the board are very charity driven. God, that's a weird. If that would. Oh my God, can you imagine?

[Kara Swisher]

I have a contract. So I'm sorry. Although he doesn't honor contracts, so I don't know.

[Scott Galloway]

Anyway, but just to be fair, he's on fire right now. His stock is crazy up. Tesla's up 31% in the past five days.

[Kara Swisher]

He's still Elon.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah. Anyways.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, well, whatever.

[Scott Galloway]

Big bad.

[Kara Swisher]

That's because he's hanging with the President. Everyone's got the. He's got the power kind of thing. It's not on any underlying improvement in anything. It's just that. So he's not on fire. He's on hype, I guess.

[Scott Galloway]

Right. I love how the President is handing the phone over to Elon and Major, like talking to Zelensky and hands it over to Elon.

[Kara Swisher]

Whatever. Good luck. Good adult toddlers running the country. It feels so safe. Anyway, we've got a lot to get to today, including the not so hidden dangers in X's new terms of service, which we'll talk about the right wing and right wing media starring role in Trump's victory. Not just Elon, but right wing plus our friend a pivot are the hosts of the Daily Beast podcast writer Sam Be and host obviously, along with Daily Beast Chief Content Officer Joanna Coles. I think a lot of things are going to get thrown down with those two sassy games. But first, as you said, the US Markets overall continue to soar. All three major indexes had their best week in a year, hitting record highs in the wake of Donald Trump's win. They were already doing well. The S and P broke 6000 for the first time in its history on Friday, and The Dow briefly crossed 4400. The Russell 200 index, which is small cap stocks, was also up 8% at the end of last week, its largest weekly increase since April 2020. Tesla stock, as you said, continues to rise, surging 8% on Friday, pushing the company's cap past $1 trillion. Again, I must add, this is not on any fundamentals. This is on Elon Hype, essentially. Trump Media also jumped 15% after Trump said he had no plans to sell his shares. It's a meme stock again, zero under Look, Tesla's got cars and a business, a really solid business. Trump Media has no business. It just is just a stock. It's just an empty stock. But it still is worth that. It's worth what it's worth. So how long is this going to keep the momentum and is it a good time for investors to dive in? I don't know. It's sort of like the Nvidia problem.

[Scott Galloway]

It's impossible to time the markets if you're going to go into the markets. I've said this for a while, go into low fee index funds and dollar cost average in don't go in all at once because it's difficult to time the market. Now historically speaking the market looks very expensive. But let's talk about its run up. It's a variety of things. Some of it is a lack of the markets hate uncertainty and generally speaking, investors like okay, good or bad, you're candidate or not, the election is over, we can focus on other things. And the markets like that. They like certainty. They hate uncertainty certainty.

[Kara Swisher]

Now we know for four more years.

[Scott Galloway]

What I said my podcast Profit markets. My co host is 25, and essentially the markets are rationally reacting. Trump is saying he's going to lower corporate taxes from 20% to 15, which means they'll have more earnings, which means they'll have more profits. So that logically means your share of those profits, which is what a share of stock entitles you to, should be worth more. That makes sense. What people haven't squared the circle on around here is I own a lot of stocks, and so I've gotten wealthier the last four days. But I would argue Ed Elson has gotten poorer because when he turns, when he's our age, the homes, the stocks that he owns, in my opinion, will be under more strain than if we had not run up deficits. And to be clear, the Biden administration is also guilty of this. Not as guilty as Biden. From George Washington to George Bush. $7 trillion total in deficits under the Trump administration, 8 trillion. Biden has not been much better. He's been better. But all of this spending that he's talking about and all these tax cuts, it adds up to great stimulus for you and me. This is great for you and me. It's going to be additional spending. It'll prop up businesses, lower tax rates, prop up stocks.

[Kara Swisher]

I said that to one of my poor relations who called the globe. I'm like, I'm going to do great. You, not so much.

[Scott Galloway]

Well, it's so interesting. There's definitely a theme or zeitgeist in society where even people who don't own stocks and homes are like, yeah, but one day I'll be able to take advantage of ridiculously low tax rates when I'm rich. It's a unique dynamic, but all I see is people believe. The stock market believes there's no increase in innovation, there's no increase in R.

[Kara Swisher]

And D. There's no, they're saying no fundamentals of Tesla. There's no fundamentals happening at all.

[Scott Galloway]

There is, is they're saying, we're gonna take young people's credit card, which still has a lot of credit left on it, a lot of limits on it, and we're gonna run it up and pull prosperity forward from young people when, you know, from when they were gonna own their future self, their own stocks in their houses. So.

[Kara Swisher]

Which is what you've been talking about for the past two years.

[Scott Galloway]

But I just sound amazes me that people haven't connected the dots. The young people who disproportionately pivoted to Trump because they believe their economic prospects are Better haven't recognized that all he's doing is pulling your prosperity forward.

[Kara Swisher]

To me, you know, there's a saying for that.

[Scott Galloway]

Go ahead.

[Kara Swisher]

Do you know what it is?

[Scott Galloway]

I don't.

[Kara Swisher]

There's one born every minute. Oh, there's one born every minute. A sucker. Anyway. Interesting. The Federal Reserve will have an interesting job going forward, especially with all this stimulus to cut interest rates by a quarter percent point last Thursday. They did that last Thursday. Is also getting credit for driving markets up because of that rate cut. But the battle might be brewing between Trump and his advisers and Fed Chairman Jerome Powell. Powell fielded multiple questions about his future at the Fed during a presser last week. Let's listen. Some of the President elect's advisors have suggested that you should resign. If he asked you to leave, would you go? No. Do you believe the President has the power to fire or demote you? And has the Fed determined the legality of a president demoting at will any of the other governors with leadership positions.

[Scott Galloway]

Not permitted under the law?

[Kara Swisher]

It's not going anywhere. Mr. Powell, they've sparked before. He was appointed Fed chair by Trump in 2018, but later became a target. His term does not expire until 2026, and it looks like he's not going anywhere. I don't know how they can push him out. He may have to pay for his legal fight him. But he seems to be pretty adamant. What do you think?

[Scott Galloway]

I don't. I don't. I think this is a fight that's not going to materialize because one, Trump's lawyers will say we can't. And two, you know, in terms of.

[Kara Swisher]

Tweet at him. Tweet at him.

[Scott Galloway]

Well, fine. I don't think. I don't think Chairman Powell scares that easily. Also, you know, the most important person relative to their media coverage on the planet right now is Chairman Powell. He literally put on a masterclass landing an economy in a soft landing with headwinds of COVID inflation 500, the greatest acceleration in interest rates we've seen. You had Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders saying you shouldn't be raising interest rates this much. That's just hurting Americans. You had people on the right saying this is going to be bad for markets and crash the markets. We never went into recession. He pulled off a masterclass. He will go down in history. Arguably, if any serious economist. If they say, give us the top three chairmans of the Fed. I think he's numbers one, two and three right now. So I don't think, oh, they'll pick Volcker. Volcker well, but here's the thing. His book, his hero is Paul Volcker, who did the same thing he did. Paul Volcker came in and said to.

[Kara Swisher]

Carter, Reagan, he won at Greenspan. Greenspan Volcker, no.

[Scott Galloway]

Greenspan is seen as keeping interest rates artificially low too long. Volcker had the stones to raise interest rates to like 15 or 18% to tame inflation. He said you just can't have inflation. But basically the memoir that Powell would be seen caring to Fed meetings as a signal for what he was planning. The memoir on Paul Volcker for a Fed chair to raise interest rates 500bps and 18 months takes real backbone. And it was the right thing to do. I just don't think, I don't think, I don't think Trump wants to fight that battle. So I don't think he's going anywhere.

[Kara Swisher]

It'll take them away from other things. His attention span is short and so anything that's hard, I think you said that it's gonna be difficult for him. And this guy looks like he's not budging. Jerome Powell doesn't give a fuck. That's my, it was my vibe from that meeting. Anyway, another thing that's interesting, this is a big meme that's going on a little too much now. People media is overplaying this now we've noted that Trump harness podcasts, YouTube and non tradition along with the bro vote to great success. We've talked about this for a long time, but now there's tons of pieces about this. One piece in the New Republic argued that the year it became obvious that right wing media had more power than mainstream media, which another thing we've talked about for a long time and that it was Fox News, Sinclair X, Joe Rogan and others who quote fed their audience's diet of slanted and distorted information made it possible for Trump to win. Elon Musk has been telling his followers you are the media now, which we've heard before. Again, I think it's getting a little overdone in my opinion, but it's true and it's also getting overdone. That said, Democrats were slow to move away from legacy media, slower as they always have been because they've owned legacy media for a long time compared to the right which has been dabbling in radio and everything else for much because they were kept out of the mainstream media except for Fox. Mark Cuban posted podcast that he thought this explanation was only partially relevant for Trump's victory. I thought this was a smart observation as always. He thinks it's about social media echo chambers. He says that he told Harris to focus on reverse engineering the algorithms for each demo, but the campaign was stuck in 2020. It's a complex story. I think it's partially. And I thought Mark had a really good point, that by just saying Dems, you need your own Joe Rogan. It's not the answer.

[Scott Galloway]

Well, I called you the other night. I'm obsessed with data and also the affirmation of strangers. And I'm always looking at the rankings of our podcast. And if you type in what's the most influential category in podcasting as it relates to an election, I think it would not be politics. I think it would be news commentary, because that's where people tune in to hear about the state of the world and the Top of the 10 top news commentary podcasts, which, by the way, I would bet get dramatically more listenership. Not only dramatically more listenership, but younger, more valuable consumers in terms of politicians or people running for office or advertisers. They're much more powerful than the top 10 cable.

[Kara Swisher]

Who's in there? Who's in that list?

[Scott Galloway]

I was headed that way. So eight of the ten. Eight of the ten are hard. Red. Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Charlie Kirk, Dan Bongino. I mean, yeah, what a party. I forget that other guy a little bit older. I forget his name. It was John Boyd on Levin.

[Kara Swisher]

Mark Levin.

[Scott Galloway]

Mark Levin. The two blue, the two lone islands of blue. At number six is pivot and at number 10 is on with Kara Swisher. You are literally the only islands, the only safe passage of blue in the top 10 news commentary of the most popular or most influential medium, I believe.

[Kara Swisher]

Now, don't crooked medias get in there. Don't crooked media.

[Scott Galloway]

They're categorized under politics and they're number one or number two. If they were categorized under news commentary, I think they'd be number one or two. I think that's a fair point. But for whatever reason, Apple doesn't categorize them as news commentary.

[Kara Swisher]

I think they are in news if it's just news. You know what's interesting? What I was just thinking, one of the things the right wing does do better, and I do think, I don't know if they're more powerful is they join together a lot. They go on each other's shows, they cross promote. They're always, you know, how Rogan's doing, the comics. That guy Tony Hinchcliffe is from is a Rogan acolyte down in Austin. They all work with each other as a group. And I think one of the things we should do is like hang with the crooked. We should do something where we're always cross promoting among our group. They exist, but they're little islands. But I think it's a little more complex than let's make a Joe Rogan. You know, I think it's just that seems reductive. The legacy media has just woken up to something we've known all along is that we have a lot of influence in the podcast space. Much more so than they realize. Like your little pod. I always get your little podcast. I'm like, I think we probably sold more books than a Washington Post review in by far or whatever. It happens to me.

[Scott Galloway]

Look at, okay, MSNBC, a million people, average age 70. Rogan gets 15 million downloads, average age 34. I mean, where would you rather be? And if you really. But the reality is a lot of these people, okay, so what do Megyn Kelly, Tucker Carlson, Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly. I'm reading people in the top 15 here. What do these people all have in common? They were fired by traditional media. This is essentially. This looks like the outplacement office at McKinsey. It's all these formerly important people looking for a new job. And quite frankly, you want to talk about revenge of the formerly fired or of the fired from broadcast, they have found a home in podcasting and there's just no getting around it. Though you have to acknowledge that traditional media was missing a big mark. These people have tapped into the same strategy that Rupert Marduk tapped into 30 years ago.

[Kara Swisher]

I agree. I do think media didn't fall down on the job of reporting on it. I just don't think they're getting to people. I think that's a bullshit. They ignored it. I'm like, no, there was a lot of reporting. It just was how they're getting to people. That said, the reason I say it's overreach is because I think you're the media now. You're not media now followers. You're just not. You're not going to all. You can be noisy, you know, and stuff like that. But one of the things that was interesting, you know that constant jazz hands wanker Chamath Palihapitiya who you know of Mr. Spack, he wrote I canceled my New York Times and Washington Post subscriptions, just reallocated the money to subscribe and follow the following folks on X whom I believe help get me accurate news, including Michael Shellenberger, Kaneoka the Great, the chief nerd. I periodically publish accounts I subscribe to On X and you may want to consider supporting them as well. Worst case, consider following them. This guy, I once saw him buy, I was noting several bottles of $10,000 wine one night and now he's on a budget. This, we're going to hear endless amounts of this bullshit.

[Scott Galloway]

I just think what he's saying is that he feels like he's getting better information and better follows on Twitter than he has in traditional broadcast media.

[Kara Swisher]

That's fine.

[Scott Galloway]

Look, whatever this is going to, there's going to be a lot of navel gazing the Democratic Party. There's going to be more navel gazing across traditional media.

[Kara Swisher]

Yes. But the Washington Post and the New York Times does great reporting. Suzanne Craig. They just do. I'm not arguing to do this stuff I hate, but go ahead.

[Scott Galloway]

Well, there's just no getting the most influential medium in this election. And I think the most influential election over the next or the most influential medium over the next four years. Podcast. I'm predicting next year. I'm doing my predictions deck. I think podcast revenue next year is going to grow faster than Meta Alphabet or Amazon. And all of a sudden advertisers are waking up to the fact that they go where attention is. Money always falls attention. And also the nitro meets glycerin here is that advertisers of 34 year old male is three times as valuable, if not five times more valuable than a seven year old woman. Because the seven year old woman is smart. She's not in her mating ears. She's not spending money on stupid high margin coffee and SUVs, drinks and liquid. Yeah. I mean, and you know, Adidas and Nike. She's not doing that shit anymore. She's like, okay, I'm only going to buy money. I'm only going to spend money on smart things, right. That are low margin and other than pharmaceutical ads, I mean basically watching cable TV right now, these shows is essentially a lesson in how much it sucks to get old. Oh, you're constipated and you have restless legs.

[Kara Swisher]

I'm getting a series of young advertising people. I can't mention all of them yet because they aren't up yet. But suddenly, I mean, we're sold. I would love to do a dance. How great we're doing. But I still just hate that they feel the need to say the New York Times and Washington Post suck and they're terrible. They're not. They do a wonderful account.

[Scott Galloway]

I don't think people are. Yeah, yeah, he was.

[Kara Swisher]

He was.

[Scott Galloway]

They're the.

[Kara Swisher]

Those Nozzles are.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah, they're the last of a. They're the best of a dying breed and they do a good job. There will always be room for them. I think they will. The problem is, you know, Meredith Levian is doing an amazing job and has figured out the business model there. Washington Post is important, but it's a shitty business. Okay, that's two. I just named 10 podcasts that are making a bunch of money. The economics are so much different.

[Kara Swisher]

Well, I think CNN's still making money. You want?

[Scott Galloway]

Well, I thought we were talking about newspapers.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, I know, but I'm saying media writ large.

[Scott Galloway]

CNN makes a lot of money. And not only that, I hate to say this. Cnn, the New York Times, Washington Post, and Pivot. Quite frankly, from just a pure economic standpoint, the election worked out really well for us. Contrarian media does better when the other guy or gal is in the audience.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, yeah, I think we'll do very well with this. And sadly, I sound like Jeff Zucker.

[Scott Galloway]

But what is also happening in podcasting is that the biggest podcast, the biggest podcasting platform is the biggest streaming platform, and that is the biggest podcasting platform is now YouTube. And that is if you are not getting more views from your podcast on YouTube, it means that your podcast is not thriving.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, we're moving. We're both moving that way with all our properties. So we're going to be heavy on that this year. Anyway, I want to mention, just to finish up this section, the last episode of mom with Kara Swisher, I assembled a panel of experts for a post election deep dive pollster Kristen Saltis Anderson, who's also on the Chris Wallace show with me, explained what she thought. This is an interesting take. I find her to be one of the smartest pollsters around. She's been correct about everything that she thought the biggest media moment for Trump was. It was not Joe Rogan. Let's listen. I think it's. It is important to note that Joe Rogan's podcast appearance was not actually the thing that had broken through the most in the month before by a long shot. The thing that had broken through the most was Donald Trump working a shift at McDonald's. So while I'm. This is not to say that the podcast election isn't a thing, but I do think that it's not just about the medium. It's about things that are a unique message, that are unexpected, maybe they're memeable. There's something that amuse, entertain, make your jaw drop, whatever. Like that is still the Stuff that breaks through the content still matters, even as the medium is changing.

[Scott Galloway]

For the record, Donald Trump did not.

[Kara Swisher]

Work a shift at McDonald's. Yeah, but it looked like he did. For what it's worth, that was Washington Post reporter Isaac Arnstorff. Great reporter. Chiming in with that clarification. I thought Kristen made an excellent point. Like, I think she's talking about a bigger picture, which I like. I appreciate.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah, I thought the. I thought the three biggest moments were actually. I mean, if she has the data.

[Kara Swisher]

You know, she does have the data.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah. But I would have thought the three biggest were call her daddy Joe Rogan and then the debate. But she's saying that it was the McDonald's thing because it got a lot of shampoo or echo effect across social media. Yeah.

[Kara Swisher]

And people noticed it and picked up the debate. Did what? They were all up there. But she said the McDonald's thing was very important, which we all made fun of. But it works.

[Scott Galloway]

The most insightful. The most insightful comment on polls was made by Madonna in the movie Truth or Dare where she suggested that her employees take a poll and stick it up their ass.

[Kara Swisher]

Okay, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, why people might want to leave X for good this week if they haven't already. And we'll speak with friends of Pivot, Samantha Bee and Joanna Coles. Support for Pivot comes from Vanta. Whether you're starting or scaling your company's security program, demonstrating top notch security practices and establishing trust is more important than ever. Vanta automates compliance for SoC2, ISO7001 and more, saving you time and money while helping you build customer trust. Plus, you can streamline security reviews by automating questionnaires and demonstrating your security posture with a customer facing trust center. All powered by Vanta AI. Over 8,000 global companies like Atlassian, FlowHealth and Quora use Vanta to manage risk, improve security in real time. You get $1,000 off Vanta when you go to vanta.com pivot. That's vanta.com pivot for $1,000 off. Support for the show comes from Deleteme. When your data is compromised, that can lead to phishing, identity theft, and endless spam calls. Even if you're not in the public eye, it's incredibly easy for bad actors to find personal info online. Well, Delete Me wants to help. Delete Me is a subscription service that removes your personal info from hundreds of data brokers so you can rest easy while their team of experts does all the hard work of wiping your and your family's personal information from the web. I've tried Delete me myself and I was pretty astonished by how much information was there about me and I was astonished by how much personal information was on the web about me and in such detail and in such combination using DeleteMe. It was really interesting to be able to, via their dashboard get rid of as much as possible, take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Deleteme now at a special discount for our listeners. Today you get 20% off your delete me plan when you go to JoinDeleteMe.com pivot and use the promo code Pivot at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to JoinDeleteMe.com pivot and enter the code pivot at checkout. That's JoinDeleteMe.com pivot code pivot.

[Scott Galloway]

Support for Pivot comes from Miro Innovation is a vital part of growth for any business. But once teams move from discovery to development, a lot of time the innovation stalls and you're face to face with outdated process management tools, context switching, team alignment and constant updates. But now you can take a big step towards solving these problems with the Innovation Workspace from Miro. The Innovation Workspace comes loaded with AI enabled tools for every step of the process to help teams get from idea to output faster, and with AI powered tools that can accelerate through the full innovation cycle all the way to launch. Plus, the AI summaries can condense documents, stickies and overall board content in seconds from ideation to execution. Now you can create an intuitive, intelligent innovation workspace that gets everyone on the same page to rapidly innovate, iterate, develop and ship with Miro. Whether you work in product design, engineering, ux, Agile or marketing, bring your team together on Miro. Your first three Miro boards are free when you sign up [e-mail] that's three free boards at M I R O.com.

[Kara Swisher]

Scott we're back. X has updated his terms of Service to say that any users lawsuits against the platform will have to go to a federal court in Northern District of 10 Texas. To be clear, this is as of November 15th. On Friday, the platform is if you're still on the platform, I'm coming off on Thursday. The platform is not located in the district, which frequently rules in favor of conservative parties. That's his favorite place. The Northern District is already the venue for X's lawsuits against liberal watchdog Media Matters and the suit accusing advertisers of boycotting, which Mark Andreessen idiotically weighed in on. Mark, for someone so smart, you're so stupid. The initial judge on those two cases recused himself from the antitrust case after it was revealed he owned shares of Tesla, but it's still Elon's favorite judge. So if you were on there and you. And you want to sue Elon and Twitter, or Twitter X, you need to do it in that court in Texas. As of Friday, if you're still a user of the service. Also in X's new terms of service, by continuing to use X after November 15, users will agree that the platform can use their data to train AI models. I'm right now deleting all my tweets because I don't want him to use them, as many as I can. So what do you think about that?

[Scott Galloway]

I understand that. I understand your logic now around wanting to delete your. I'm not as worried about data being used for AI models. The reason I got off is I don't want to. You summarized it perfectly for me. I don't need to paint this guy's fucking fence.

[Kara Swisher]

And so you're still on there. I'm saying as long as you're a member of his service, you can't. If you ever have a beef with them, you have to go to Texas.

[Scott Galloway]

Well, I know that, but it's standard procedure for any corporation to try and get trials moved to the most favorable jurisdiction, including. You're a cheat.

[Kara Swisher]

Not like this. This is unusual. I've talked to a dozen lawyers. This is unusual.

[Scott Galloway]

I'm sorry, I have no comment. Tell me what's going on here, Kara.

[Kara Swisher]

All right. The headquarters is in Bastrop, Texas, which is a different district than this one. They're pointing that nobody, most of them, point where their headquarters is, whether it was San Francisco or whatever, somewhere near. It's not some random district in Texas where he has his favorite judge. There is judge shopping. This is unusual.

[Scott Galloway]

Isn't it standard procedure for corporations and defendants to go jurisdiction or as you called it, judge shopping?

[Kara Swisher]

No, it isn't.

[Joanna Coles]

It.

[Kara Swisher]

Not like this. It's standard. Say Delaware or, you know, to. You have to have some good reason. This is what these lawyers tell me. It's unusual to pick a thing that has nothing to do with any of your businesses. They're just putting it in there because they can. It's like saying everyone will be tried in Kuali Lamp.

[Scott Galloway]

Well, doesn't that mean someone in the government isn't doing their job by letting Them do that.

[Kara Swisher]

I don't think it's illegal.

[Scott Galloway]

So why wouldn't everyone do it? I don't understand it. You're just saying he has. He's smarter than every other corporation or he wants.

[Kara Swisher]

Well, I think Shame. Shameless. More shameless.

[Scott Galloway]

I mean, you don't. What, you don't think other corporations are shameless?

[Kara Swisher]

Scotts don't normalize.

[Samantha Bee]

This.

[Kara Swisher]

This is strange.

[Scott Galloway]

Moving to the jurisdiction that is most favorable to him and his shareholders. You don't think everybody has nothing to.

[Kara Swisher]

Do with any of his companies.

[Scott Galloway]

You think other companies go, oh, that's. That's. That is not right. I will. I will not move it to a more favorable court.

[Kara Swisher]

But they haven't. Look at that. They haven't. Why haven't. They don't. I'm sure people have thought of this, but they don't do it. People don't do it. They. It has some affiliate probably because they have more conservative lawyers. And he doesn't care to be conservative. That's my guess. It might backfire, who knows?

[Scott Galloway]

But it. Has it been approved, Proved.

[Kara Swisher]

It's done. Done. He just says it. He just says it because it's in the terms of service. And by using the service, you agree to the terms of service.

[Scott Galloway]

No, no, I'm not talking about terms of service. I was talking about. He's moved his. He's moved his headquarters to Texas. And if you move your headquarters to.

[Kara Swisher]

But not to this.

[Scott Galloway]

Not to this district. Okay.

[Kara Swisher]

It's a different district, which is less kind to him. Where his headquarters are is a different district than this district. This is this. There's two judges in this district and he also owns Tesla stock.

[Scott Galloway]

Aren't there conflicts of interest rules against that? If you're a judge, don't you have to accuse yourself?

[Kara Swisher]

Well, he took yourself out of one case. He's like that woman in Florida. He recused himself in some cases and then he doesn't. It's literally like the plot of Roadhouse.

[Scott Galloway]

But my understanding is when she did that another court, it was an effective delay tactic. But eventually her decisions weren't. They. I mean, I still like to think there are. That the legal system is still a pillar. That's mostly standoff.

[Kara Swisher]

Yes, you would think that, but we are living in a version of Roadhouse. Like the big guy gets to decide. I don't know what to say. This is not normal. This is not normal. It is not. Anyway, very quickly, everyone wants to be a digital nomad. Now that Donald Trump has won a second term as president, you know the threats of moving to Canada. But Google searches for best countries to move to and how to move to Canada peaked. Over 50 countries including New Zealand and Japan offer digital nomad visas. Digital nomading, which I think you kind of are also boomed during the pandemic when working in office was rare. And now back to the office mandates are more common. Who's going to follow Scott and be a digital nomad? I think that's just an empty threat for most people.

[Scott Galloway]

I'm not a digital nomad. I'm. I'm. The tail is wagging the dog and the tail is our kids. We basically dictate where we're going to live based on what would be the most interesting experience for them and what would be the best high school. But something I have noticed here that's really big in the UK is it's non dominant thing and that is people who were non domiciled here and were paying more favorable tax rates based on a country of origin where they established tax status which includes many of the wealthiest people in London. The new government has said that shit's over. And if you've been here a certain amount of time, you got to pay UK taxes which for a lot of people is a much greater tax rate tax not low. And they didn't think, including me, I didn't think these folks are going to move. I have a friend who, who's moving to Italy and leaving his family here. I have another friend who's moving back to Hong Kong. They estimate that their treasury is actually going to collect less receipts with higher taxes because what they fail to realize is that rich people can move. Rich people are the most mobile in the world. And until we have some sort of multilateral minimum atm, alternative minimum tax, you're just, you know, folks are going to, folks are just going to keep moving.

[Kara Swisher]

Rich people will find the way through just like Trump did with the taxes. Like when he said why shouldn't I cheat? Not cheat, why shouldn't I try to get out of taxes? I think he was truthful. Are you a digital nomad? You don't think you are?

[Scott Galloway]

No, I didn't. No, I'm very much stationary. I think of a digital nomad as somebody who says I have a job where I can make good money, work remote and I'm going to move to Mexico City. I'm going to move to a lower cost of living. I did move when I moved from New York to Florida. I recognized a very accretive, it was very accretive in terms of my Lifestyle because when I moved in 2010, it was much less expensive in Florida. These geographic or lifestyle arbitrages ultimately get starched out as it has in Florida, as real estate has doubled or tripled in the last 13 years. But I go, I mean, I'm now living in a city that's as expensive or more expensive than New York. I would again at this point. I spent the first half of my life focused on making money. I'm going to spend the next half focused on and this is a great thing, spending it. And my reductive analysis is the following. Having molested the earth for the last 35 years. America.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh my God.

[Scott Galloway]

America is the best place to make money. Europe is the best place to spend it. I'm focused on spending money right now. So I'm living in Europe, but it has. I don't think of myself. As a matter of fact, my life would be. I'm getting on a plane tomorrow at oh, fucking dark hundred hours.

[Kara Swisher]

I'm going to meet me.

[Scott Galloway]

I mean that's right. I'm going New York, New York for 50 hours. Then I'm going to Cabo San Lucas for Summit, then I'm going to LA for Netflix, then I'm going to Vegas for a speaking gig and then I'm going to fucking south. F1 and F1. Yes.

[Kara Swisher]

Can I just tell you, the world's tiniest violin is playing for you right now over somewhere. I can't do it. Wait.

[Scott Galloway]

I'm about primarily what's good for my kids, where I can make money and where I can have the most fun. And then I'm going to Sao Paulo for a speaking gig and then I'm coming home.

[Kara Swisher]

Don't you make these choices, Scott. If I was a therapist, I say don't you make these choices.

[Scott Galloway]

I've said this. My worst day is most people's best day. But I'm a nomad. But it's not being. I wouldn't qualify as a digital nod. Digital nomad is someone in ad tech.

[Kara Swisher]

Super exciting to be next to you in the old folks home. The two of us, you're going to.

[Scott Galloway]

Be wheeling me around. Are you kidding?

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, I am. I make sure people stay away from you and they don't grab your junk.

[Scott Galloway]

People are going to have to look over my head and over the back of the wheelchair to see you. But you're going to be pushing me around.

[Kara Swisher]

Don't touch his junk. I'm protecting him.

[Scott Galloway]

Bitching at me.

[Kara Swisher]

Where is his applesauce? Where is it?

[Scott Galloway]

Change his catheter he's in a bad mood.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh, I will take such good care of your Scottish. I will die, like, in seconds, and you will be weeping.

[Scott Galloway]

I'm counting on it. I'm counting on it.

[Kara Swisher]

Anyway. All right, let's bring in our friends of Pivot. Samantha Bee is a comedian, a writer, and a contributor to the Daily Beast. Joanna Coles is the Chief Content Officer for the Daily Beast. Together, they host the Daily Beast podcast. Sam and Joanna, welcome.

[Joanna Coles]

Thank you so much for having us. It's so fun to be here.

[Kara Swisher]

I know. We're having a podcast fest here. It's been one week since the election, so we're mostly past the initial hot takes. Let's hear your colder takes. So why don't you start with Sam?

[Joanna Coles]

Well, when it first happened, I was a little comatose. I will say that I had wrung out all of my emotion. I could not summon a single tear. And then I kind of hibernated for about 24 hours. And today I woke up feeling very much like we need to straighten our spines, stiffen up titanium, and just get really fucking real. I definitely changed. I will say that I did this. I'm changing my voting status. I'm changing my party affiliation to independent. Just as a little. Just as a little. Unsubscribe.

[Samantha Bee]

Subscribe.

[Scott Galloway]

That'll show up.

[Joanna Coles]

You know that'll show up. You go, that'll show up.

[Scott Galloway]

You are such a gangster.

[Kara Swisher]

You can be on CNN panels now. I don't know who I'm gonna vote.

[Joanna Coles]

I know exactly. I'm not really. It's not that I'm like, GOP curious. I'm more like a little Democrat. Celibate. I think that's. That'll be my empty gesture for the next few years.

[Samantha Bee]

She's coming over to the Libertarian side.

[Joanna Coles]

Stop it.

[Kara Swisher]

Libertarian light. No, no, no. Actually, the numbers aren't quite as impressive as people. They're putting out all the numbers today, which they're. They won fair and square, but the numbers are a little closer than they thought.

[Scott Galloway]

Wait, hold on. Kara, just. Just let exactly. What happened? They fucking destroyed us, Kara. They went 7 for 7 in the swing slide.

[Kara Swisher]

I understand, but the actual. I get it, but the act. I will send them to you, Scott.

[Scott Galloway]

The actual results are they. They won everywhere where it mattered. That's called winning by a landslide.

[Kara Swisher]

I understand that, but it's not a landslide. Again. I keep sending you landslide numbers. 100%. No is the wrong word. They run in the right places. Is where you did it. Go ahead.

[Scott Galloway]

That's like saying I had, I had had a landslide because my PSA is low, but my cholesterol is fucking off the charts.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, but you don't have a landslide if a football game is like 32 to 28. It's not a landslide. Anyway, Joanna, let's talk about you. Go ahead, go ahead.

[Samantha Bee]

Well, I was just going to say, isn't the total number of votes in the blue wall states actually that they won by fewer than the number of people who canceled their subscriptions to the Washington Post?

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah.

[Samantha Bee]

That's good.

[Kara Swisher]

Thank you, Joanna, Go ahead. How are you feeling? Clever, obviously.

[Samantha Bee]

Well, I. Well, in my dreams, I feel clever. I feel slightly more optimistic than Sam does, partly because I spent some time with people who've spent some time with the Trump transition team, and they say that Donald Trump's motivation is he's got two things that are driving him. One, obviously immigration. And he wants to make a big deal of that. And there will be lots of photo opportunities of that. And then like everything else, he touches it. It'll slightly fall apart that he really wants to work on the economy. But actually what he really wants to do is have a good time. He spent the last four years with the threat of jail over him. That goes away. Now he can't believe what he's pulled off. He spent the last few days having world leaders call him and business leaders call him and say, well done. He's in his happy place. He wants to be admired. He wants to be king of the world. He wants to sit behind his Oval Office office desk and have people come and kiss his ring. That's what he wants.

[Joanna Coles]

So rumspring in the White House, we can all look forward to that.

[Kara Swisher]

That'll be exciting. Yeah, interesting. But he has brought some characters with him. We'll cause him trouble. But anyway, we'll talk about in a minute. We talked a lot on our show about how was the podcast election. We've said that on Pivot quite a bit. And Trump going on the right wing and Manosphere podcast. What do you think about the role? We debated it back and forth. I think it's a little bit overblown, but true as we're doing rather well and growing and doing well financially and at the same time, Mark Cuban posited it was a little more complex than that. It's about sort of that reverse engineering algorithms to reach people. So how do you think liberals can and should compete in the space moving forward? Joanna, first.

[Samantha Bee]

Well, if I were Carmela, I would have done the Joe Rogan podcast. It was Unfathomable to me that she didn't do that and that she didn't fly and go down there and kiss the ring of this man. That's got extraordinary reach. And also, I think, you know, people like the fact that it goes on and on and on. I mean, I'm impressed that people have time to listen to it, but obviously they break it up over days or at least hours. But to have a proper conversation with someone, to actually try and get to know them, which is not what traditional media does, that has people on and just tries to get them. And I think that that's one of the mistakes of the legacy media interviews, that there's always this sense of hostility. And, Scott, you're living in London at the moment. The BBC has led the world in this. I mean, there was a wonderful but very controversial interviewer called Jeremy Paxman, who once asked the same politician the same question 32 times. He just kept asking the question to try and break the politician down. And in the end, I think it's self defeating because the audience, audience sees it, they don't like it, and you're not getting to know someone better.

[Joanna Coles]

It's a really interesting conversation. It's like, very hard to think about because as I'm sitting here and we're all talking about this and kind of breaking it down, we're trying to figure out who we're gonna have guests, which guests we're gonna have on the podcast and what kind of guests and what feels right going into this. It's like creating a constitution for yourself or figuring out what your red lines are, too, because there are people that I would not. I'm not really interested in having people on and laundering their reputations.

[Kara Swisher]

Who.

[Joanna Coles]

I don't know. I mean, I don't know.

[Samantha Bee]

Is this.

[Kara Swisher]

I know you have a list, Kelly.

[Joanna Coles]

Okay. Kellyanne Conway.

[Kara Swisher]

All right. I'll say.

[Joanna Coles]

Like, why have her on? Why have her on?

[Samantha Bee]

You see, I think it's interesting to have people on because I want to be able to ask them questions, particularly people I don't agree with. Sam is a bit more. Well, when we met to do this podcast, Sam reminded me that she was a fake journalist because she used to play a journalist on the Daily show brilliantly. Absolutely brilliantly. I always feel that everybody's worth a question, but as long as you can ask an honest question, I just have.

[Joanna Coles]

A thicker red line around the people I will and will not talk to. Will I have to bend that? What does that mean? What does that look like? I'm Trying to figure it out for myself.

[Kara Swisher]

So you at that Republican convention asking, what's the world you're looking for? Choice, Remember? That was one of my favorite things. One of my favorites, Scott.

[Scott Galloway]

So, Joanna, join the lady pool.

[Samantha Bee]

Scott, come on in the water to the side here.

[Joanna Coles]

The water is so amniotic.

[Scott Galloway]

Hey, I went to a WNBA game.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh, I love that you work the word amniotic and some fluid. Fluid.

[Scott Galloway]

So you're Joanna. My understanding is you're a large owner in the Daily Beast now, Samantha, you're a contributor to the Daily Beast. Is that right? And starting a podcast. So I think of the daily basis, this really cute, interesting media property that's hemorrhage money and makes no sense economically. What are you planning to do to Joanna? To bring new. To bring in new. Bring new life and figure out how the Daily Beast competes in this new media age and is a viable economic entity.

[Samantha Bee]

Well, what we're interested in is people, politics, power, and pop culture. And there is a space in the market.

[Kara Swisher]

Do that again. Do that again.

[Samantha Bee]

I can do it fast. I can do it slow. I can do it backwards and heels. People, power, politics, and pop culture.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh, wow. Okay. Also penis a little bit, but that's my reading of the place. But go ahead.

[Samantha Bee]

Well, when appropriate, Cara. When appropriate. But I would say that we're not. What we're trying to do is rethink how we talk about people and power, which I think people are very interested in. We have a very robust business model. We haven't been valued like Vice or like BuzzFeed at preposterous valuations with all sorts of venture capital money that came in. That's not our business model. But we've got very robust subscription growth. We have advertising both programmatic and brand. We've got events coming. We've got all sorts of plans to actually take the Beast brand, which is extremely robust, and expand it. And so far it's doing well. And I don't think I'm breaking any confidence.

[Scott Galloway]

A lot of awareness.

[Samantha Bee]

It's a great brand, and Tina Brown and Barry Diller started that brand. It's been fantastic. There was a sort of moment when I think it veered into the arm of the Resistance, which is not what Ben Sherwood, my partner, and I are interested in doing anymore. But I will tell you that we've just had our first profitable quarter.

[Scott Galloway]

Oh, great. Congratulations.

[Samantha Bee]

I think possibly ever in the history of the Beast, actually.

[Kara Swisher]

So can you address that pushback from the Resistance? You got a pretty tough piece in the New York Times. That was tough. I would say fair if you thought it was. But talk about the pushback, because it seems to be aimed at you in.

[Samantha Bee]

Well, the pushback was from people who've left.

[Kara Swisher]

That's. Yeah, they still can be accurate. But how did you take it? Did you just say. I just dismiss it and out of hand.

[Samantha Bee]

I think what the piece highlighted was that the Beast had lost money ever since it had begun and that it had lost audience for the last eight quarters, quarter after quarter, Q and Q. It had lost money and it had lost readers. So I'm not sure that that's a winning strategy.

[Kara Swisher]

Right. But is there anything in there that made you pause? When I read criticism, I listen to some of it, for sure.

[Samantha Bee]

I think increase in readership and increase in revenue is extremely encouraging, actually, when you're running a business. Yes. When you're running a business, I would.

[Scott Galloway]

Argue that there are worse things than being criticized, a new media property being criticized by the New York Times. I think you want that. Wear that like a badge of honor.

[Samantha Bee]

Well, I think what was interesting for us was when you got to the end of the piece, they actually discussed the numbers, which are very positive. So I think what, you know, what happens in journalism is you talk to people who will talk to you. Obviously, lots of people who'd worked here that didn't like our vision for the Beast, which was to make it profitable and successful.

[Scott Galloway]

Your vision was to fire them. Those are the people who spoke at the Times.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh, come on. You can't disagree.

[Samantha Bee]

No, that wasn't our vision, actually. Our vision is to grow a business that has more original journalism. That's what we're leaning towards. And you can only do that if you have an economically viable base. And the thing was about to be sold. The thing was about to be sold.

[Scott Galloway]

And it doesn't matter how wonderful a property you are if you're not economically sustainable.

[Samantha Bee]

Right.

[Scott Galloway]

Anyways. So, Sam, I don't know if you consider yourself a comedian or a commentator.

[Joanna Coles]

I don't know what I consider myself. I'm just going with the flow, to be honest with you.

[Scott Galloway]

Just consider. Just considered.

[Joanna Coles]

Yeah.

[Scott Galloway]

Curious how. I'm curious how in this, things are so polarized, so angry right now. How have you, if at all, tried to adapt your career in terms of the mediums, the approach you take, how you make money? How has your quote, unquote, business model changed in the face of how much the environment has changed and the media landscape has changed?

[Kara Swisher]

She has also fired everybody, too.

[Joanna Coles]

I was fired, so. But, you know, I knew that I was going to be fired, so it wasn't like a huge surprise. And I had a really good run at my show. My business model has changed in that I now only do things that are pleasing to me personally and professionally because I have the freedom to do that. I am in a privileged position to be able to consider every job that comes along and kind of weigh it against what my own own needs and desires are like. I do things.

[Scott Galloway]

I have to do podcasts with needy, insulting people.

[Kara Swisher]

You love it. I completely made you. Anyway, go ahead.

[Scott Galloway]

Totally Tina Fey to her Alec Baldwin. It is so rewarding to rejuvenate a flailing career. It is so rewarding.

[Kara Swisher]

You are Alec Baldwin and headed that direction. But let's go on anyway. Let's move on. Good. Tell us about what is different like comedy. Like, look, you saw Tony Hinchcliffe and stuff, the whole group around Joe Rogan, you know, the bros helping each other. What is comedy now as a business? How do you look at it? And obviously the Daily show is doing okay. It's doing. They have this group of people that's kind of interesting.

[Joanna Coles]

It is my greatest pleasure to kind of be out, to actually be independent of that world and consume the products that I like to consume and not have to worry about it too much. I'll tell you truly, I'm not. There's no one job that I'm personally gunning for. I. I really mean it when I say that I do things that interest me. It interests me to do this Daily Beast podcast because I really like Joanna. I think she's spicy and fun and I love to be at the ground floor when things are rebuilding. That's exciting to me. I'm writing a book. That's exciting to me. There's nothing that I'm doing just for money. I probably should, but I'm not that interested in it. I'm not that interested in re entering. In trying to reenter the world of political comedy. If it doesn't, if there's no place for me in it, that's perfectly fine with me. My life is quite happy and I'm quite happy to be a commentator in this capacity. That's enough for me. It checks that box.

[Kara Swisher]

Right. But beyond you, what is. What is happening in the comedy world? It's obviously gone TikTok. It's gone social media. There's all kinds of independence. Whether it's someone like Louis CK or whoever. A lot of these people are doing things on their own. How do you look at the comedy ecosystem now? It Used to be there was a way to go and you ultimately got the show right. Or the standup show on hbo, et cetera.

[Joanna Coles]

Right, right, right. I mean, that is. The entire ecosystem is so different. It's very much like. It's just spread across so many platforms. People can access whatever it is that they want. People can become a famous comedian in half a year because their TikToks did great. And they can suddenly fill stadiums and be doing stadium shows. It is a really super different landscape. And there's also a tremendous amount of hand wringing about censorship and people trying to stop people's messages from getting out. And these are all very successful, usually male comedians who make it their business model to pretend that someone's coming for them or their point of view. Obviously, it's just not true. And it's not something that. It's not something that I'm participating in. I'm doing my own show. I literally did a show called how to Survive Menopause because that's really important to me. And I. I think it's so fucking funny and so untapped. And I had stuff I wanted to say and I did it. And I did it on a stage in front of hundreds of screaming women. And it was like exactly where I wanna be. Exactly talking about the self, selecting exact things that I wanna talk about. And I do think that there's more of an opportunity for that in comedy. And I'm harnessing that opportunity for myself.

[Scott Galloway]

Men are also interested in how to survive menopause.

[Joanna Coles]

Oh, yeah, you should be. You should come to my show, Scott. You know what? I'll come to and I'll do the show for you in person.

[Kara Swisher]

You'll love it.

[Scott Galloway]

I like that. I'll invite some funny.

[Samantha Bee]

I attended the show and it was full of middle aged women throwing their underwear at Sam.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh, lovely. That's great. Visual underwear, very dry underwear. Oh, my God. Good joke.

[Scott Galloway]

I'm blushing. There's few things I blush at.

[Kara Swisher]

Amniotic fluid. Once again.

[Samantha Bee]

All right, Scott. You would blush at the show. You would blush at the show.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah, you guys should call your show caller Granddaddy.

[Kara Swisher]

All right, let's get back to you.

[Scott Galloway]

I just made that up. That's pretty good.

[Joanna Coles]

That's pretty good.

[Scott Galloway]

That's pretty good.

[Samantha Bee]

Is it though?

[Joanna Coles]

Is it?

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah.

[Kara Swisher]

That was good.

[Scott Galloway]

That was good.

[Kara Swisher]

It was good. It was ages ago.

[Scott Galloway]

Can I ask Joanna a question? My questions are more interesting than yours on this topic, Cara.

[Kara Swisher]

All right, go ahead. If it's about the podcast, let's talk about their Podcast. Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead.

[Samantha Bee]

Well, Cara was the first guest on our podcast. I was first. We were a bit like Trump. We wanted to pay homage to the doyenne.

[Kara Swisher]

I'm sure they wanted to ask you, Scott, but the invitation was lost in the mail.

[Samantha Bee]

Well, I think we have have an ask out to Scott, but he just ignores my text.

[Scott Galloway]

It's. It's building from the premiere podcast. Anyways, the. I think the Daily. I'm fascinated by the Daily Beast brand. I think it has huge awareness and I think it has this nice modern, cool feel to it. I always thought the best thing about the brand was, quite frankly, was the design, which I think is super important. You could go into, you could go into podcasts, which you're obviously doing. You could. Look, the cruel truth of capitalism is you have finite resources and the only decision you have to make make, it's not what to do, it's what not to do. So are you going to do. Where are you going to put the majority of your wood behind original journalism? Are you going to do it more around? I would love to see the Daily Beast going to events. Do you want to put a bunch of cool content that's more fun and, I don't know, joyous but gossipy behind a paywall? Like what? I'm just curious.

[Samantha Bee]

Well, we have a paywall. I mean, here's the first thing we're doing is right, sizing the business. Right?

[Kara Swisher]

I paid for it. Who paid for it? Kara Swishman. They complained about yourself.

[Samantha Bee]

Thank you very much. Yeah, but it's much better now because we've changed the text.

[Scott Galloway]

I was going to, but I heard the first podcast sucked.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, yeah.

[Samantha Bee]

Well, that was the guest. That was the guest. Look, the first thing we're doing is right, sizing the business, we've changed the tech. So hopefully you don't bump up against a paywall or a subscription that you've paid for that doesn't recognize you. We've changed the content management system. There's a lot of sort of reorganization that needed to happen. It was a 15 year old business running on a 15 year old proprietary tech. So we had to change all that. We've done that. So we've got a lot of things coming. We have a sort of three year plan for expansion of the Beast. And our ultimate goal is to have lots of original journalism as well as summaries of other stories going on there, as well as lots of opinions about what's happening out there and to have a really robust Daily Beast network. But you can't do it overnight. I mean, I was fascinated that New York magazine did a piece on it two and a half weeks after I'd started saying, why isn't it already done? This is never going to work kind of thing. You're like, A, women get much more critical press than men, but B, it's like, seriously, does anybody know what it's like to turn a company around? This is not the first turnaround I've done. Ben Sherwood, my partner, has done turnarounds, too. You have to right size the business before you can do anything. And that's what we're in the process.

[Kara Swisher]

Of how the two of you already discussed what your approach to Trump 2.0 will be. I mean, I'm looking on the Daily Beast page. There's a lot of Trump.

[Samantha Bee]

Well, for example, this week we're talking to Adam Grant, the organizational psychologist, about how to deal with polarization in the workplace. Everybody, you know, regardless of whether or not you're working at home or you're working in an office, everybody's aware that you have to be very sensitive around other people's opinions. How do you. You still work effectively in an environment which may be increasingly polarized.

[Joanna Coles]

And I think that we actually haven't sat down and had those conversations about, like, what do we, what direction do we want to take? I mean, I remember in 2016 when I had my show, we sat down the day after Trump won, and we went, the show is totally different now. We don't know what it is, but we know that it is different because the world is very different. So what do we want to do? Like, are we just here to plant a flag and say, this is right, this is wrong? Like, what is the purpose of this? And we actually have not sat down to have that conversation, but we will.

[Kara Swisher]

Because what would you say if you had right off the top of your head right now, what does interest you? Like you said in your last podcast episode that you're worried about Trump's vengeance and retribution, what it means for the state of journalism, for example. And Daily Beast, by the way, published a piece last week, Trump loves the media glare, yet he also wants revenge.

[Joanna Coles]

Yeah, yeah, I think it's a really. I think it's, it's, it's important for us to sit and have this conversation. It's like, I haven't quite gotten to exactly what I do want it to be, but I know what I don't want it to be for myself.

[Kara Swisher]

Angry.

[Joanna Coles]

And I think I, I'm very willing to have interesting Hard conversations with people. But a podcast is a different experience than a straight interview show. Like, do we want to have combative conversations in a podcast? I'm not sure I really want for myself, and I'm not sure an audience is there for it. And it's a, you know, do we. Are we offering people something that they can't just get from reading an article? I do think that we. For me, what I love that we do do is we talk to reporters who are reporting on the ground. So I like getting that background information from people, and that is something that I think is very useful that we'll take forward. I'm not sure that we've developed our constitution yet. Exactly.

[Kara Swisher]

What about you, Joanna? What's interesting? How do you see Daily Beast covering the new Trump era?

[Samantha Bee]

Well, first of all, I like hearing what Sam has to say because she's always got a point of view of things. I like asking questions, trying to figure it out. We talk to a lot of people who are both on the Democratic side and on Trump's side. So we try and report what we're hearing, and we love to cover people. Donald Trump is the most interesting person in the world. He's just pulled off the most extraordinary political comeback that nobody saw coming. He didn't see it coming either. And here was a man who faced, you know, two options, either go to jail or be president of the United States. It's an extraordinary story, and I want to be able to cover that story with all the nuances that we possibly can to talk to all the people who are close to power and report back what they are saying, what they're feeling, what they're hearing. It's incredibly interesting. It's a massive human drama. I sometimes think we are all just characters. We're extras in his reality show that he's turned America into. And, you know, if you're in the media, it's a fascinating relationship with Trump. He is a tabloid president. The media created him. He had 16 seasons of the Apprentice before he ran. And he's brilliant at knowing how to get attention. His McDonald's gag was brilliant. His garbage vest was brilliant. He understands media. And if you're in the media, it's very interesting to pay attention. And he's not a regular politician. He's an entertainer first. He has fans, not just voters. And I think this is partly what the Democrats failed to really understand about him, that they were doing business as usual and he's not. Candidate as usual.

[Joanna Coles]

Yeah, I hate to use the word brilliant with respect to Donald Trump. I think Instinctive is more.

[Scott Galloway]

More so just so I can Virtue Signal. I like the Daily Beasts, but I love. I love Joanna Coles. Can you guys see this? I just signed up for the ad free model.

[Samantha Bee]

Thank you.

[Kara Swisher]

Thank you.

[Scott Galloway]

$110. So this.

[Samantha Bee]

Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir.

[Scott Galloway]

This Joey Bag of Donuts podcast called Pivot better pay off at some point. Anyways, my question is, Johnny, you've been in media for a long time. Sam, you've been in media on kind of the content side. Well, I guess you're on the content side as well as the business side, Joanna. But what are some media properties across anything that you really admire and you think are great role models or even just people who you think are doing a great job leveraging new channels of media? Who and what do you look up to in this landscape?

[Joanna Coles]

You mean other than the Pivot podcast?

[Scott Galloway]

Go on.

[Kara Swisher]

We are the number, obviously. Obviously.

[Samantha Bee]

Pivot. I love the information. I think Jessica Lessons saw a gap in the market which covering tech, other than Cara. Cara been doing this forever. But I think what Jessica's done with the information is really good. Tina Brown, former editor of the Daily Beast, has a very good substack. There's so much out there. There's just not enough time.

[Kara Swisher]

Pip, what about you, Sam? What do you consider?

[Joanna Coles]

Well, I identify like a gap in the marketplace because I miss Gawker. I still miss Gawker. That was a spicy way for me to get everything I needed at the beginning of every day. I liked it.

[Kara Swisher]

It was fun to read when it was at its best. It was fun to read when it.

[Joanna Coles]

Was at its best.

[Scott Galloway]

I like when they ruined people's lives for clicks for no fucking reason.

[Joanna Coles]

Well, I didn't like that part necessarily, but it was a snarky, fun way to start the day. Or interesting.

[Kara Swisher]

Let her have a choice, Scott. Go ahead.

[Scott Galloway]

Sorry.

[Joanna Coles]

No, it's over. I lost my train of thought.

[Kara Swisher]

So you ruined it.

[Joanna Coles]

You know what I mean?

[Kara Swisher]

You ruined it.

[Samantha Bee]

I did not predict that SAMB would be a Gorka fan.

[Kara Swisher]

I would. I could see why. And when it was doing the interesting stuff, you're absolutely like, look, Elon Musk has done it 26 times by tweeting at people, whether it's Yoel Roth or whatever. So just saying.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah, and we're so kind to him. You're right. Double standard.

[Kara Swisher]

You're right. Okay, fine. I liked part. Sam, I get it. When Gawker was at its best before, I do agree it degenerated in a way that was really Ugly. But when it was its best, it would make me laugh out loud. All right, last question. If you. When you're thinking about the next year of what you're going to be doing here and what you're doing besides Trump, is there anything else that's interesting to each of you?

[Joanna Coles]

Joanna, what's interesting to you?

[Kara Swisher]

Is it all Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump.

[Samantha Bee]

Well, you know what I'm gonna be really interested in next year, and I think this is gonna be a huge story, is assuming it comes to trial and he doesn't do a plea deal. Is the Diddy story how that happened in plain sight with all these celebrities who we know were there, how he managed to use celebrities as air cover for these freak offs where he was drugging people? I mean, Scott, maybe you can explain to me why is it this freak off and I'm not holding you up. I'm not holding you up.

[Scott Galloway]

Can't wait for this.

[Samantha Bee]

But the thing, the thing I don't understand in any of this.

[Scott Galloway]

This is called setting me up for failure.

[Samantha Bee]

So not. Scott, I am your biggest fan, but I'm very curious. One of the big differences, I think, I hope between. Well, one of the differences I observe between men and women is I don't understand why people want to have sex with people when they are drugged and unconscious. What is. Where is the pleasure in that?

[Scott Galloway]

And you're asking me because you think I'd be able to explain that?

[Kara Swisher]

No.

[Samantha Bee]

Cause you're a guy. Cause you're a guy. And I feel like this is something men do. Men. There are no stories of women doing this right now.

[Joanna Coles]

I'm gonna jump. I'm gonna jump to the defense of men in general. This is not a common.

[Scott Galloway]

This isn't a guy or a girl thing. This is a criminal psychotic behavior thing. It's not a.

[Samantha Bee]

Okay, that makes me feel bad.

[Scott Galloway]

A male, most likely a male district attorney will put him in front of a male prison guard very soon. Correctly.

[Samantha Bee]

Okay, that makes me feel better. I'm not anti men. I even gave birth to two men.

[Kara Swisher]

Explain us the rapey nature of men. Thank you. Next go. All right, 30 seconds. Okay, 30 seconds. Sam, you end up trying to get us out of that.

[Joanna Coles]

I can't get us out of that. That's actually what I'm here for. In the next year, I'm like, segue out.

[Samantha Bee]

Listen, that's going to be one hell of a story. Diddy story is one hell of a story.

[Scott Galloway]

Agreed.

[Joanna Coles]

I'm just. I'm actually here for. I want to talk about the Diddy story, too. And all. I mean, and I'm here for Joanna and her shameless approach to interviewing. And I'm here to have fun. I want to. Of course we're going to talk about Trump. Of course we're going to talk about the stuff that he does. But it's not like the world stops spinning. It's not like other stories don't emerge. And we want to talk about those things, too, because the one thing that I can not be is completely interested in the news cycle at all times of the day or night, whether I'm on TV or on a podcast. And so I think it's like an exciting opportunity.

[Kara Swisher]

Anyway, thank you, Samantha Bee and Joanna Coles, and be sure to listen to the Daily Beast podcast.

[Joanna Coles]

Thank you so much.

[Samantha Bee]

Thank you, Grantee.

[Kara Swisher]

Thanks.

[Scott Galloway]

Thanks, Sam. Thanks, Joanna.

[Kara Swisher]

All right, Scott, that was fun with the ladies. We should do a quadruple quintuple. Quadruple. A quadruple. All right, quadruple.

[Scott Galloway]

What's it called? Not a throuple, not a truffle.

[Kara Swisher]

What do you mean?

[Scott Galloway]

Like a foursome? I'm down. Okay, I'm down.

[Kara Swisher]

Polycule.

[Scott Galloway]

Oh, a polycule.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh, I like that.

[Scott Galloway]

They're both attractive women.

[Kara Swisher]

Anyway, we'll be back for wins and fails. You're a very attractive man, Scott Galloway.

[Scott Galloway]

Thanks for that. Support for Pivot comes from Life360. The holiday season can be joyful, but it can also come with a lot of to dos and unnecessary background baggage. Parties, families, work functions, the list goes on and on. And with everything that's happening, it can be difficult to keep track of the people closest to you, especially if you're someone with teenage kids. Luckily, the Life360 app can help you keep track of those you love and help get rid of those holiday jitters. With the Life360 app, you can keep track of where everyone is in real time to streamline family communication and coordination. Life360 is all about safety because everyone in your Life360 circle gets access to crash detective, roadside assistance, and SOS with emergency dispatch. And you can also get the details on their day to day with real time speed monitoring, 30 days of location history, and low battery alerts. All of that means you can have the peace of mind to relax and finally enjoy your holiday season like you're supposed to. Make everyday family life better. Visit life360.com or download the app today and use Code Pivot to get one month of the gold package for free. That's live 360 code pivot. Support for Pivot comes from Anthropic. If your company could tap into a powerful source of knowledge analysis and creative problem solving, imagine what you could achieve. Innovative ideas could be realized faster than ever. Claude the AI system from Anthropic empowers your team to rise to new levels of productivity and innovation by providing vast knowledge and rapid analysis. With Claude Claude, your existing talent can harness cutting edge AI to work smarter, brainstorm bigger and pursue visionary goals complementing human ingenuity. What a word salad. I'm going off script just to tell you I no joke, use Claude almost every day. I think it's fantastic. Claude is next generation AI assistant built to help you work more efficiently without sacrificing safety or reliability. Anthropic's Midway model Claude 3.5 Sonnet can help you organize thoughts, solve tricky problems, analyze data, and more. Whether you're brainstorming alone or working on a team with thousands of people, all at a price that works for just about any use case. If you're trying to crack a problem involving advanced reasoning, need to distill the essence of complex images or graphs, or generate heaps of secure code, cloud is a great way to save time and money. Plus, the Anthropic Leadership Team was founded in AI research and built Claude with an emphasis on safety. To learn more, visit anthropic.com Claude that's anthropic.com Claude Support for the show comes from HubSpot. Picture this. You're at a party and someone asks you what you do as a marketer. How do you even begin to describe it? You have to generate leads, score them content, contact them, create content, gather data, and tomorrow do it all again and wonder if it's even working. Marketers are spread way too thin, but HubSpot has a better way. With the help of Breeze and tools including Content Remix, now you can turn up one piece of content into a suite of assets. Pinpoint the best prospects with predictive lead scoring and level up your campaign's KPIs with a new analytics suite so your day to day becomes less busy work and more driving revenue through the roof. And most importantly, you'll have a way easier time describing what you do at parties. Visit HubSpot.com marketers to learn more.

[Kara Swisher]

Okay Scott, let's hear some wins and fails.

[Scott Galloway]

You know I have two wins. I need more wins. This has been a There's just no getting around it. This. This has been a rough week for me. I'm not even sure why because I know rational Nothing's ever as good or as bad as it seems. And I think, personally, I don't think my life's going to be affected that much. But I was just so invested in this and just so wrong about it. There's just no getting around it. This has really rattled me more than any other election outcome. And I struggle. I'm easily, you know, it's not easy to send me down to a pretty dark place. And I have a whole host of things that make me feel better. And a couple new things have actually made me feel better. Shocking. And I hate to admit it, but I want to call balls and strikes. One of those things is Threads. I've actually really enjoyed Threads, and I've found a lot of really interesting content on it. And I hate to say anything nice about Meta, but Threads has been nice for me this week.

[Kara Swisher]

I like to bang on it. And I gotta say, it's actually, you know, it depends on your algorithm, but the one you put this week up of Solace, with a picture of Carrie Lake covered by Vaseline made me laugh so hard.

[Scott Galloway]

Anyway, but the other thing is, I've really been enjoying. I found a lot of moments of peace in music, and there was two pieces of my friends. It's so funny. I've been finding some respite or moments of peace in music, and my friends have been sending me. They of course, listen to all this stuff, so they've been sending me all these different songs. Like, I love this one and two really stuck out for me. And that is. I'm not a huge Pearl Jam Eddie Vedder fan, as in, I'm not a fan, but he did a cover of the English Beat song Save it for later, and it's so lovely. And we're going to play it now. Two dozen other dirty lovers Be a sucker for it Cry But I don't need my mouth Just hold my. In my life Go home to a decision on you we also, also, I've. I stumbled across, I think on Threads, these three young men, they look as if they're in high school, they're probably in college. And I think it's called. They're called Penelope Road and it's a cover of Ventura highway, which I think is a. By the band America.

[Kara Swisher]

Thank you. They did it that way.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah, it sounded exactly like that. I can't tell the difference. But it was so nice because it was highlighting these three lovely young men. And it was one of the wonderful things about, quote, unquote, the Internet is just. I never would have found it had it not been served up to me, the algorithm said, figured out this guy could use a little Simon and Garfunkel like good cheer. Chewing on a piece of grass Walking.

[Kara Swisher]

Down the road.

[Scott Galloway]

Tell me how long you gonna stay here, Joe? Some people say this town, but anyways, my win is the Eddie Vedder cover of Save it for later and the COVID of Ventura Highway, America's Ventura highway, by this wonderful. These wonderful young men from a band called Penelope Road. Those are my wins, Kara.

[Kara Swisher]

Those are lovely. I love that song, Ventura Highway. That's a beautiful version of it.

[Scott Galloway]

It reminded me my friend Lee Lotus and I used to go to Vegas in his red Jetta, and then we'd get $40 from the ready Teller and we'd head to Las Vegas and we'd listen to the English Beat album. Was it Save it for Later? Anyways, I forget the name of the album, but it just took me back to just such a fun time in college.

[Kara Swisher]

Songs have so much. I went on I told you that podcast, Seven Life and Seven Songs. I wish you'd go on it. It was so eye opening to me what songs I picked and how they made me feel that way again. It's a great San Francisco standard podcast that I loved, that I just loved being on. It was so much fun. Okay, so I think my win is Carrie Lake losing in Arizona. Couldn't word my sister worst politician. I think I don't like her more than Trump. I don't. I can't believe it. It's not because she's a woman. She's just such a hateful person. And in a. In a. So was he. But it's just a different thing. I don't know. I. Look, people get mad at me for that, but I was. I found pleasure in that. I found pleasure in that for some reason, because she just. I want her to stop being so terrible as a person. And I think Meghan McCain, like, slapped her around. Loser keep. Loser get. Keep losing or something like that. Get onto the loser highway or whatever. Not a fan of Meghan McCain either, but she was vile about her dad. Anyway, that was a win for me. I know it sounds crazy, and the panel I'm gonna say is, I just talked to you about this just earlier, off the record, but I think I've noticed on threads, particularly is a lot of people getting up again, which is what Sam talked about. And I understand Trump won in the right places. But just keep in mind, and I've said this to Scott, Biden's margin with Trump was 7 million votes, 4.5 percentage points. And Trump's margin with Harris was 2 million votes, 1.3 percentage points. And it's not the landslide. They won in all the right places. And they did get the House and the Senate. I'm not sure they're gonna. We'll see. Well, the House. Well, has that been called yet? In any case, they're probably gonna get it. Just 250 votes. This is an interesting statistics. About 1.5% in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin. The difference between 200, 226 electoral counts and 270 for Harris at the Senate level. Democrats won Those states in AG group by about 10k votes, which means nominally 260k likely now remorseled ticket splitters and protest fights in the blue states put Trump in office. You cannot discount those. He doesn't have them in the bag. That's all I'm saying. So it was a much closer race and so you should be taking all you put Democratic politicians to take. Take this stuff, both beat yourself up, but also learn from the data. I think it's a really complex and interesting result as we get more and more information. But the one thing that I think that Scott got right is the winner podcast, the loser knocking on doors. I think that was something that the Democrats absolutely fucking miss like crazy. So that would be, I guess, my fail. Just pay attention. Pay a lot more attention. Everything's a little more complex than the hot takes you're gonna make about. And that's a good thing. And we'll see where he goes with this. But I think probably they have the right idea. He wants to just. Girls just want to have fun. And so we'll see if that would be the best case scenario. The worst case is all of his terrible things he said on the, on the, on the trail that he does. In any case, I would recommend going to see Wicked, as I recommended before. It's a wonderful, perfect movie for what's coming up. Also Moana too, which I will be going to, and Gladiator too. But I think Wicked just captures the feeling right now. And I'll just end on this is there's a line, I was giving a speech and this woman was really bereft about what had happened. And they're like, is Elon Musk. He's smarter than me. He's going to do this. They were particularly triggered by Elon Musk because he's so terrible a personality to be out there in front of Trump. He's so crude and obnoxious and look at me. And powerful and everything else. He does feel like a character in a Patrick Swayze movie where Patrick's gonna take him down eventually. But one of the things, there's a line in Wicked that she sings. There's a line that's very famous from Defying Gravity, which is the big song for girls and everybody in the musical, and they go, and she goes, I think the line is no wizard that there is or was is ever gonna bring me down. That's how you all should feel. He's not the wizard you think he is and he represents a lot of things, so they're not gonna bring you down. That's what I my fans out there anyway, we want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business, tech or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com pivot to submit a question for the show or 855-51pivot. We talked about so many good things today. I, I do enjoy talking to Scott Galloway. It's one of the highlights of the show.

[Scott Galloway]

I appreciate that. Thank you for saying that.

[Kara Swisher]

It's really interesting. As we struggle forward, we don't always agree, but we know how to disagree. That's our new motto in case you're interested. Okay, Scott, that's the show. We'll be back on Friday for more. Read us out today.

[Scott Galloway]

This show was produced by Lara Neiman, Zoe Marcus and Taylor Griffin. Ernie and Todd engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burroughs, Ms. Severo and Dan Schulon. Nishat Kirwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcast. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the [e-mail] pod we'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Cara have a great rest of the week.

[Kara Swisher]

Support for Pivot comes from Lingo by Abbott. Lingo is a new science backed system that powers healthy habit change. It's bio wearable and has an app that tracks your glucose in real time. And you don't just get data, you get a plan too. It gives personal insights and science backed recommendations so you can learn how your body responds to your habits and learn to eat 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 Combat.