Warner Bros. Discovery For Sale, OpenAI’s Browser, and Netflix Earnings

Summary

Pivot — Episode Summary

Episode Title: Warner Bros. Discovery For Sale, OpenAI’s Browser, and Netflix Earnings
Release Date: October 24, 2025
Hosts: Kara Swisher & Scott Galloway
Podcast by: New York Magazine & Vox Media Podcast Network

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Main Theme & Purpose

In this fast-paced episode, Kara Swisher (reporting from Seoul) and Scott Galloway dive into three major business/tech stories:

• The potential sale and breakup of Warner Bros. Discovery
• OpenAI’s ambitious launch of a new web browser
• The latest quarterly earnings from Netflix and Tesla (with plenty of lively sidebar commentary on the media, politics, AI, and society)

The duo bring their trademark blend of insight, irreverence, and razor-sharp banter, dissecting shifting power in media, the accelerating impact of AI, and the persistent chaos of American politics.

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Episode Breakdown

1. Setting the Scene (Kara in Korea)

• Kara is recording from Seoul and shares vibrant impressions: lively streets, health-focused culture, strong social infrastructure, reverence for healthcare, and a “civil society” approach (03:00–05:00).

  • “When they say ‘how are you?’ the word is ‘how is your body?’” — Kara Swisher (04:42)

• Scott cracks dark jokes (“I had a Korean friend—he died. So young. So young”) and the two spar about K-Pop’s global influence and cultural exports (02:34–03:45).

• Both discuss the country’s proximity to North Korea and underlying geopolitical anxiety.

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2. Main Story #1: Warner Bros. Discovery’s Sale (07:00–24:12)

Background

• Warner Bros. Discovery is officially exploring a sale/split, with clear interest from major players (e.g., Paramount’s Ellisons, Comcast, Amazon, Apple, Netflix).
• CEO David Zaslav is seeking to maximize value before a potential breakup.

Key Points & Insights

• Scott recaps his 2023 prediction: “I think you’re going to see an activist at Warner Bros. Discovery. The stock is now down to a point where I think there’s a lot of upside ... There’s blood in the water.” (07:53)

• Kara frames the sale as the ultimate “activist” move — companies circling a weakened legacy giant for assets.

Deep Dive

• Discussion on how the WarnerMedia–Discovery merger “never made sense,” creating a “mismatched portfolio” of slow-growth (cable/news) and expensive-growth (streaming) businesses:

  • “The marketplace finds the shittiest part of the business and assigns that multiple to the entire thing...” — Scott (10:43)
  • Zaslav is called out as on track to rival Marissa Mayer as “the most overpaid CEO relative to shareholder destruction.” (12:00)

• Suspected outcome: Nepo-billionaires (Redstones, Bronfmans, Ellisons) will win out, because traditional rational buyers (like Comcast) cannot justify these prices to shareholders:

  • “Media has become ... a spa retreat for the nepo-billionaires.” — Scott (12:32)

• Kara and Scott agree news assets (like CNN) are likely to be spun off and/or sold to private equity — neither see Ellison/Larry as seeking "media control":

  • “I don’t think Larry Ellison is that Machiavellian... I think they will probably sell [CNN].” — Scott (14:52)

• AI’s role in drastically slashing Hollywood costs is highlighted as the likely Ellison play for Warner/HBO — Kara’s example: “You could take a cost from like $3 million to $30,000.” (16:16)

  • “Big-budget content production is the most vulnerable thing to AI right now.” — Scott (24:17)
  • Both predict layoffs and disruption in Hollywood’s creative ranks.

• Legacy news brands:

  • Brief lament for the decline of iconic brands like CBS, Face the Nation, etc.
  • Kara: “Unfortunately, journalism is a shitty business.” (19:17)
  • Rising digital subscription success stories with strong editorial voices are pointed out (The Atlantic, Wired).

Commerce, Content, and Creators

• Creator economy trend:
  • Top writers/reporters are increasingly going solo for more money and autonomy via Substack, podcasts, etc.
  • “You were the premier tech reporter at the Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal. You make a half a million... You make 10 or 20 times that, finding a guy who tells dick jokes and doing your own thing.” — Scott (22:04)

Prediction

• The Ellisons will likely acquire the studio/streaming side, sell off news/cable, and attempt a fusion between AI and Hollywood IP; traditional players like Netflix will stay out unless a content library is available cheap to compete with YouTube’s volume.

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3. Main Story #2: OpenAI’s Atlas Browser and AI Search War (32:00–40:08)

• OpenAI launches mega-browser Atlas:

  • Sam Altman pitches it as “a once in a decade opportunity to rethink what a browser can be.” — Kara (32:01)
  • Browser will “remember everything you read,” not just your search queries — privacy implications debated.

• Scott loves competition disrupting Google:

  • “The second biggest tax cut in history would be the breakup or more competition in Big Tech.” (32:52)
  • Explains Google’s enduring dominance — Chrome has 3B users, 70% market share; user “inertia” makes it hard for competitors to take share, but OpenAI has to “become Google before Google becomes OpenAI.” (35:28)

• Chrome and Gemini:

  • Google’s Gemini AI is rapidly gaining ground — reportedly the strongest LLM on benchmarks and user growth (37:00–37:43).

• Browsers and UI trends:

  • Kara and Scott discuss how search is becoming product-centric (within Maps, Amazon, etc.), not just web-wide.

• Reddit’s Lawsuit Against Perplexity AI:

  • Ongoing “scraping” wars — question of who owns/controls valuable user-generated content. “It’s open season on everybody’s content.” — Kara (40:09)

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4. Main Story #3: White House Demolition/Remodel Scandal (45:00–54:45)

• Trump is demolishing the White House East Wing to build a $300M, 90,000 sq ft ballroom, underscoring his disregard for norms and expectations of leaving office:

  • “He’s normalizing federal troops in cities ... He has no intention of leaving ... You don’t initiate an enormous construction project when you know constitutionally you have to leave in three years.” — Scott (45:27; 47:07)
  • “It looks like a weird mutated tumor onto the White House. That’s my architectural determination.” — Kara (47:23)

• At a personal level, both hosts share stories about their visits to the White House:

  • “The Situation Room ... you can hear the microwave in the kitchen.” — Scott (50:24)

• Trump’s $230M DOJ Claim:

  • Trump is demanding damages from the DOJ for investigations in which he was implicated.
  • Hosts scoff at the absurdity and point out hypocrisy.

• Statutes of Limitations & Political Prosecutions:

  • Scott urges Democrats to catalogue statutes of limitations and potential crimes for Trump appointees and staffers:
    “He might be safe because he’ll probably be dead or he’ll pardon himself, but there are thousands of people, and I’d start naming names.” (55:56)

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5. Earnings Breakdown: Netflix and Tesla (60:34–72:36)

Netflix

• Q3: Revenue up 17%, net income up 8%, but misses on profit expectations due to Brazilian tax hit.

• K Pop Demon Hunters is a runaway global success — the most watched movie in Netflix history (325M views).

• Stock drops 10% but remains one of the “best-run companies in business” (62:00–63:00).

• Expansion into toys/merch (Mattel/Hasbro), continued subscription dominance, but future growth will be international.

• Media Consumption Shift:

  • Kara reports “highly specific” TV watching, streaming targeted shows (Diplomat, The Gilded Age).
  • Trend towards “mini soap operas” and snackable, algorithmically curated social media content.

Tesla

• Record revenue, but profit falls short (blames tax credit pull-forward and margin pressures).

• Delays to mass production of “CyberCabs” and the Optimus robot.

• R&D/AI spending is ramping up, regulatory credits are declining (old games over).

• Robotaxi launches in Austin/SF, but autonomous driving still lags Waymo in usability/speed.

• The Musk Pay Package Debate:

  • Scott defends the package from a capitalist standpoint, but objects to tax avoidance.
  • “What I am not comfortable with is someone who aggregates that kind of capital and then pieces out to Texas and engages in massive tax avoidance.” — Scott (72:14)
  • Both find Musk’s language about “my robot army” deeply problematic.

• Autonomous Car Adoption & Safety:

  • Growing interest by women in driverless (Waymo) rides for perceived safety. Scott confesses male privilege in not understanding this before.

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6. Prediction: China vs the West, AI Edition (77:01–80:28)

• Scott predicts a new era of Chinese “open source” AI warfare:

  • China, frustrated by US tariffs/trade hostility, will retaliate by releasing “open weight”/open source AI tools that undercut US tech monopolies.
  • “If I were in charge of CCP defense and strategy, I would be saying to Xi ... Let’s release deepseek and deepseek-like competitors that are free, open source, and ... take the Magnificent Ten down and take your whole fucking economy down.” (79:40)

• Analogy: Like Old Navy for single moms ("80% of the Gap for 50% of the price"), China will give the world high-quality free AI, undercutting US tech giants.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Warner Bros. sale:
  • “Media has become basically just a spa retreat for the nepo-billionaires.” — Scott Galloway (12:32)
• On journalism's brutal economics:
  • “Unfortunately, journalism is a shitty business.” — Kara Swisher (19:17)
• On AI’s impact on Hollywood:
  • “Big-budget content production is the most vulnerable thing to AI right now ... They're just going to go line by line and go, do we really need 22 costume designers for our shoot in Sweden?” — Scott Galloway (24:15)
• On OpenAI’s challenge to Google:
  • “Sam has to figure out a way to become Google before Google becomes OpenAI.” — Scott Galloway (32:52)
• On Trump’s White House expansion:
  • “You don’t initiate an enormous construction project when you know constitutionally you have to leave in three years.” — Scott Galloway (47:07)
• On Musk's pay:
  • “If I make shareholders 4 or 5 trillion, will you give me a 10 or 20% commission on that? ... What I am not comfortable with is someone who aggregates that kind of capital and then pieces out to Texas and engages in massive tax avoidance.” — Scott Galloway (72:42)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [03:00] Kara’s reflections from Seoul — social cohesion and healthcare
• [07:00] Warner Bros. Discovery: Sale rumors, Zaslav’s strategy, merger’s failures, nepo-billionaires
• [16:16] AI’s threat to Hollywood and cost-cutting in production
• [22:00] Creator economy vs. legacy journalism
• [32:01] Launch of OpenAI’s Atlas browser — competitive dynamics with Google
• [40:08] Reddit’s lawsuit against Perplexity and content ownership
• [45:00] Trump’s White House demolition — symbolism and legal fallout
• [52:00] Trump’s DOJ claims and legal boondoggles
• [60:34] Netflix and Tesla earnings — streaming hits, global trends, autonomous vehicles
• [77:01] Scott’s geopolitical/AI prediction: China’s open source AI counteroffensive

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Tone & Style

• Language: Highly conversational, sharp, irreverent, loaded with personal anecdotes, sarcasm, and barbs.
• Dynamic: Classic Swisher–Galloway banter—Scott swings from policy wonk to comedic provocateur, Kara steers, challenges, and grounds the conversation in reporting and lived experience.

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For Listeners Who Missed the Show…

• This episode offers a rich review of a pivotal moment in media and AI, with disruptive acquisitions, technology launches, and massive cultural changes all colliding. The hosts break down complex business and tech trends with clarity, while venting their frustration at the decadence and decay of both Hollywood and the American political system. It’s a must-listen for anyone tracking the struggle for power — whether in entertainment, Silicon Valley, or Washington.

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End of Summary

Transcript

[Kara Swisher]

Support for the show comes from Crucible Moments, a podcast from Sequoia Capital. Every exceptional company story is defined by those high stake moments that risk the business but can lead to greatness. That's what Crucible Moments is all about. Hosted by Sequoia Capital's managing partner, Roelof Botha, Crucible Moments is returning for a brand new season and they're kicking things off with episodes on Zipline and Bolt, two companies with surprising paths to success. Crucible Moments is out now and available everywhere you get your podcast [e-mail] Listen Listen to Crucible Moments today. Support for this show comes from Apple. Before it was Pivot, it was just an idea. And the place where my ideas could take flight was always on my Mac. I've been using a Mac for everything since I started using computers and of course an iPhone. I got one of the first ones. You know, I use my Mac all the time when I'm doing podcasts, especially when I was traveling. But I used it in the very beginning of doing podcasts when I did remote stuff. No matter what you have an idea for, whether it's an innovative piece of tech, a groundbreaking policy or short story concept you can't get out of your head, go for it. You just need to get started. Great ideas start on Mac. Find [e-mail] Mac.

[Scott Galloway]

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[Kara Swisher]

Little do they know that you would put out. That's the thing. Hi everyone, this is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher from Korea. Hello Scott.

[Scott Galloway]

How are. So give me your impressions of Seoul. Tell me all about it.

[Kara Swisher]

Well, I'm drinking bubble tea, of course. I was in the Gangnam region today with all the lights and all the young people and all the plastic surgery area. It's great actually. It's very clean. It's very vibrant. Young people wandering everywhere. It feels good. I mean, I think they feel very emboldened by pushing down the martial law thing. Cause they're good at and we're not. And it feels very vibrant. It feels like it's. It's not a lot different from last time I was here, I'll be honest with you. But I like Kuriel quite a bit. How many times have you been here?

[Scott Galloway]

Well, you know, it's painful for me because I. I had a Korean friend who died. He was so young. So young.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh, no. Can't believe you took that joke.

[Scott Galloway]

That's good. That's. That's the only Korean joke I could find that was only mildly racist.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh my God. That is.

[Scott Galloway]

Get it. So young. So young. Okay.

[Kara Swisher]

Anyway, that's pretty good. I went to a company that does robotics today. I was in this, this neighborhood, this gang neighborhood, talking about, you know, they do. You would like it because they're very like preventive healthcare. But it includes a lot of facials and like I said, and plastic surgery. And the person I was talking about says, oh, you go to lunch, you get your nose done and then you go back to work. I was like, what? So it was kind of interesting. I'm trying not to make it sort of like if you go to Times Square and that's New York, but it's not.

[Scott Galloway]

But how would you like give me the analog. Seoul is the cross between X and Y city. I haven't been to there in 30 years.

[Kara Swisher]

You know, it's a little like New York and Los Angeles is so vast. I mean, I've been driving in this car.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah, it's a little, I'm sorry, late night drinking spots and hot Uber drivers.

[Kara Swisher]

And constant, you know, Korean fried chicken. And the food is, actually, the food is. It's interesting. One of the reasons is because even though, you know, there is like a lot of like, well, like everywhere in cities, there's a lot of drinking and stuff like that. But it's a very healthful, like you don't see unhealthy looking people anywhere. Everybody looks really fit. And the food is pretty basic. It's the rice, the protein, lots of vegetables and stuff like that. And so. And then one thing that I was talking about today is healthcare is like so revered. And everybody take. There was a word and I'm, I'm blanking on the. I'm not going to mangle it in Korean. But decency, humanity, they just treat people like civil society. They could, they can't. They're like, how do you have your healthcare there? When we're sick, we have one pain. We go to the doctor and we take.

[Scott Galloway]

40% of Korean households do not have medical or dental debt.

[Kara Swisher]

Correct. That's right. You know, just. They were sleeping sort of like shocked.

[Scott Galloway]

70% of them are not obese or overweight.

[Kara Swisher]

Yes, exactly. That's exactly right. And so. And they. They care a lot about their body. And when they say, how are you? The word is, how is your body? So it's a. It's a. It's a really interesting. They've got lots of problems, obviously. There's this great wealth gap and everything else is, you know, as, you know, depicted in movies like Parasite and others. But I have to say, around the healthcare and longevity, they're quite dedicated, which is why I'm here. So I'll let you know at the end.

[Scott Galloway]

When I was in elementary school, I had a pen pal in North Korea, of all places.

[Kara Swisher]

North Korea?

[Scott Galloway]

In North Korea, Yeah. And I wrote. Yeah. And I remember writing once, how are things in North Korea? And he wrote back, I can't complain.

[Kara Swisher]

That's a joke. Why do I fall for it? Why do I fall for it? It is weird. Let me just tell you one thing that's weird. They were also talking about the high. It's a high. I'm not. I'm going to ignore you completely with your Korean jokes. I thought you'd start singing golden or take for from K Pop Demon Hunter.

[Scott Galloway]

Is that K Pop Demon Hunter?

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, but, you know, that's from the United States. Those are Korean Americans and Korean Canadians who did that production. But it's very popular.

[Scott Galloway]

I'm sorry, Kara, I don't see race.

[Kara Swisher]

When it comes to anime anyway. It's just. It's become popular over here. But it's actually a lot of things go from here. You know, K Pop and that whole cultural Korean stuff has really moved global in a lot of ways. But what was I going to say? I can't remember before you told that terrible joke. Oh, it's weird to think that I'm this close to, like, North Korea. Like, it must be so stressful to be near a country that wants to bomb you out of existence and stuff. So I don't know.

[Scott Galloway]

Let's go to a pro Pali rally at Columbia.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh, stop it. Don't even.

[Scott Galloway]

Sorry.

[Kara Swisher]

Don't even. With this.

[Scott Galloway]

Couldn't resist.

[Kara Swisher]

Trump is like, ripping the White House down. I'm not even gonna like, Oh, I agree.

[Scott Galloway]

Have you ever seen a visual metaphor that's more accurate?

[Kara Swisher]

So much. We'll get to that. We'll get to that. I mean, seriously. I'm sorry. Everybody gets a pass except for Trump. Anyway, I think. I mean, like, release the Epstein files. That's all I have to say about this.

[Scott Galloway]

Like, it's hey, has anyone heard from the first lady? I don't get it. If she doesn't have to, if she doesn't have to put up with them, why do we. She doesn't even live there. Like where is she?

[Kara Swisher]

She's not there. Not the word for Melania. Cuz they have that weird patio now they've got oh my God, the next president, if it's Democrat is going to be like, what the heck am I going to do? Anyway, we'll talk about that in a minute because we've got a lot to get to today, including Tesla and Netflix earnings which are really interesting and OpenAI taking aim at Google with its new browser. But first, Warner Brothers Discovery announces week it's officially exploring a sale after getting takeover interest for some are part of the company. Earlier this year, Warner Brothers announced a plan to split in two, separating its studio and streaming from its legacy cable networks. CNN is the most famous, but they have several. Now it's open to an alternative separation structure. I mean, David Zaslav's saying the obvious because it's rejected three takeover offers from Paramount's David Ellison. Other rumored suitors include Comcast, Amazon, Apple and Netflix. Scott, we've been talking about but you predict in 2023 that Warner Brothers could face an activist investor. Let's listen.

[Scott Galloway]

I think you're going to see an activist at Warner Brothers Discovery. The stock is now down to a point where I think there's a lot of upside as Zaslav to his credit is reducing debt. And the assets here are trading at about even including the debt, about half of what they paid. They paid ATT for the asset. So I think that there's blood in the water. People see these assets have declined to a level where there's a decent amount of upside with not too much downside.

[Kara Swisher]

So it's not an activist investor, but it is, you know, other companies, it's the ultimate activist.

[Scott Galloway]

Isn't an acquisition.

[Kara Swisher]

True, true. But it's these are companies that want to what we've also talked about, which is taking them cutting costs and consolidating, which is a theme you and I have talked about quite a lot. The idea of sort of taking, you know, moving and why should there be abc, NBC, cbs, cn, et cetera. But that's not really the focus here. It's the studios and streaming I think probably. So talk a little bit about this because one of the things I've talked to a lot of people about this and they feel like if the ellisons get to $26 a share, I think they're in the 24 area. It's a done deal essentially. Zaslav is trying to make an auction happen, I guess, and he's already in the money. He's going to do really well himself. But he's trying to argue that split apart. It's 30 dol or whatever once you split the two together. So why should they take a cheap offer from the Ellisons? And the Ellisons are trying to get the studio and the streaming cheap because once you split them up, there are a lot of suitors. Right. The only issue is that the others have one, money problems comparatively to the Ellisons, and two, not a friend in Trump like the Comcast. Brian Roberts is not a favorite of Trump. Amazon probably is more so. Who Apple probably is more so. Netflix probably not. And so there'll be difficulties in picking up any of these things except for the Ellisons, which is of course because we live in an autocracy. So friends of Trump get what they want. Antitrust concerns of course, would be there, but not in this administration. And it does in a weird way make a lot of sense to consolidate some of these assets with other assets. It just depends if the gimmes are spread around. But what are your thoughts on this?

[Scott Galloway]

Well, so there's suitors that do it for economic reasons and that is they see an opportunity to create scale or consolidate the back end or for growth. So they're buying it for financial reasons. There isn't a financial buyer here because this thing, the majority of its assets are in decline. And it never made any sense, not.

[Kara Swisher]

The studio and streaming or the CNN part.

[Scott Galloway]

But if you look at, but I think if you look at top line revenue here, this isn't a company, this is not a growth company. And also this stuff, I mean, the problem is you have a mix match of assets and that is the streaming company. The marketplace values growth, but that growth is expensive. And then the other stuff, the market does value ebitda, but that stuff's declining. So what you have is, is the marketplace wants a clean story. And if it was just HBO and say Warner, the movie studio that created a vertical integration of content to the streaming platform, and HBO still has an amazing culture and still manages to punch above its weight class, it would trade at a much larger multiple, but at the same time, and then it has these other assets that would trade at a lower multiple with a strong ebitda. And when you have a mix match of assets in terms of growth complexion and where they are in the business cycle, the Marketplace finds the shittiest part of the business and assigns that multiple to the entire thing. So the merger never made any sense. Except for David Zaslav and David Zaslav. So what? Mark Zuckerberg and Shel Sandberg? There's few people who have made more money while causing more harm to young people, right? But they have added tremendous shareholder value. From a shareholder standpoint, they deserve their. Their billions. The most overpaid CEOs relative to shareholder destruction were probably Marissa Mayer, who managed to fuck up everything at Yahoo and walk away with a quarter of a million dollars. But she's about to lose the crown to David Zaslav because David has taken out about, I think, a third of a billion dollars so far for taking the stock from 24 bucks where it was when he talked people into merging it, and has still managed to take that much money out of the company. And my guess is, I mean, this is what's going on. I've been on these boards before. He's pretending there's other bidders. No sane, rational buyer can bid on this. This is who can bid on this. The children of people who made $90 billion in one day who want to go to the Academy Awards and have a big vision for AI and will overpay for this thing. And look what media has become. Media has become basically just a spa retreat for the. For the Nepo billionaires. Who are the players here? The Bronfmans, Sherry Redstone, David Ellison. What do they all have in common? They're children of billionaires. Because any rational buyer, Comcast, any rational buyer looks at this thing and says, it doesn't pencil out for our shareholders.

[Kara Swisher]

The thing is. Let me just interject. Bill Cullen, who's been very smart on this, I think is noted that maybe Daddy won't do this. Daddy's a. Larry is a little too smart at the same time. Why not? It's like a good while, the getting's good. And it would help Paramount to have the assets of Warner and hbo, and then they'll just spin off. They don't care about news. I'm sorry? They just don't. All their choices tell me they don't care about news. But, you know, merge them together, cut costs, and then spin it off to some PE company, I mean, the cable networks, and then bleed them dry. Cable and news, essentially. Is that how you see it? Or will they keep it just because? Why not?

[Scott Galloway]

I don't know what is in Ellison. I mean, at the end of the day, Larry Ellison is to David Ellison what Peter thiel is to J.D. vance. And that is when Larry Ellison calls his son David. David can never say no. It's like, look, boss, you have one credit card and it has my name on it and you're allowed to use it. But in any moment I can tell you no. And what I think is going to happen, I think the Ellisons are going to get this. And Zaslav is pretending there's another suitor, which there isn't at this price. And he's also, I'll bet, spending more time trying to figure out his exit.

[Kara Swisher]

Package or how to stay in here. How to stay in here and have.

[Scott Galloway]

A fake role or pretend. All I know is he's going to figure out a way to get another one to $300 million for selling the company at the price he talked other people into buying it for several years.

[Kara Swisher]

Slightly above.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah. And this guy's gonna walk away with Marissa Mayer like compensation for adding no value here. But what I think they would do is I quite frankly, I don't think, I don't buy into these hair on fire that they're trying to control the media. I don't think Larry Ellison is that Machiavellian. I don't think they're going to try and take CNN and turn it right wing. I think they will probably sell it.

[Kara Swisher]

I don't think they want to deal with it. Yeah. Like a PE firm.

[Scott Galloway]

So I agree with you. What I do think they'll do is say, okay, David, you get to go to the Academy Awards because we'll own Warner and hbo. And I think they're going to take AI And Oracle's newfound kind of like oral is kind of a distant. Oracle is sort of a distant number two now to Nvidia and try and figure out a way to substantially reduce the cost of the production, the means of production and create kind of a new a true Quibi. Meg Whitman and Quibi said we're bringing together the best of of Silicon Valley and Southern California, which I always thought that's in and out on a sourdough bun. But these guys are going to try and take content and say, all right, they have amazing franchises, amazing ip. The biggest problem here is we need to reduce costs across the board by 30% and we can do that with AI and we understand AI and you're just going to see millions of tiktoks of creators in the Hollywood community crying into their camera about how, you know, they no longer need 73 costume designers especially.

[Kara Swisher]

That's the example I've used Many times is they don't need costume designers. They can do storyboards. They can do all manner of things, you know, much cheaper. And it takes the cost from. You know, someone was telling me you could take a cost from like 3 million to 3, 30,000. Right. Versus something else. And I think one of the things that's hard here is people are very in love with the idea of a CNN or a cbs. But these are declining audiences. So where do they. I think it's smart to grab this before. Because if there would be an auction for the studio and for Warner, Warner and hbo, there would be, I think, I think there'd be a lot of interested buyers for that asset. Right. So if it gets away from the CNN part of it, that's a problem for the Ellison. So they want to get it on the cheap, right? Presumably, or without a lot of trouble, without a lot of bidding. That's my assumption.

[Scott Galloway]

None of these things are cheap. I mean, Warner Brothers discovery now is in October of 25. Right now it's trading at a PE of 67. I think they want Warner and they want HBO. They want growth assets. The other stuff they can sell to a PE player for cash flow. That's consolidating the back end. I don't think their desire is to control the world of news. I don't think they want to step into that Thunderdome. But you have. I mean, you could see them right away doing a second auction to pay down some of the debt. If they're going to take out debt against this and then try and as I said again, bring together the peanut butter and chocolate of AI. You are, I think what you've said. I think all these newsrooms, just for fun, I watch CBS, ABC and NBC Evening News. And they're what, 24 minutes and six minutes commercials. 22 minutes is the same fucking thing. And then they all pick a different feel good story.

[Kara Swisher]

It's the same formula.

[Scott Galloway]

You know, again about a moose that keeps showing up because this old lady fed it once. And they're literally. Why on earth is the difference? Their newsrooms are no different. Yeah, they're just no goddamn different.

[Kara Swisher]

They are. Listen, every now and then, as does any news organization, they come up, up with a good one, right? Like so CBS, 60 Minutes still is quite good, for example. I bet they sell that off. I bet they sell that off. That's my prediction here. CBS Sunday Morning is great.

[Scott Galloway]

I can't. You know what? I don't know what I would do if I wasn't able to watch Andrew Ossorkin, explain the stock market to an 83 year old Leslie Stahl. I just don't.

[Kara Swisher]

No, but she watched it more than.

[Scott Galloway]

What that wasn't more demand.

[Kara Swisher]

Don't be mean to Andrew and don't be mean to Leslie. No, no, here's this. It's a good brand. It's still great. There are pieces of it that you could, you could presume I could do something with it.

[Scott Galloway]

Scott, Face the Nation is an important.

[Kara Swisher]

I had a couple of those assets. I would have lots of ideas of how to digitize it and make it more.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah. And you'd take something they spent a billion dollars on and make it worth 120 million. These things don't. Unfortunately, journalism is a shitty business.

[Kara Swisher]

Well, I wouldn't have to pay $120 billion. So one of the things, you know, it's really interesting here is that. Yeah. And what the media gets all, you know, like, oh no, cbs. And I was like, you know, they're declining businesses, like really by an audience point of view. And that's, that's the problem. And when you talked about abc, cbs, they are all the same. Many years ago, I'll tell a very brief story. I was with. I'm not going to say who it was. It was a. I was on this network thing and they showed a package, you know, when they do those packages where like the anchor sits there and interviews people on a, like a, like a, a gradiated stage where people are sitting. It was a big news event that happened 10 years before. And they interviewed people from the day. Right. And I was sitting next to Ken Burns, who had just done this really wonderful documentary on the Gettysburg Address, which just happens to be one of my favorite pieces of writing Right. In our American history. And so I was talking to him during the package and the host turned to me and he said, why aren't you watching my package? And I don't know why I said this. And I said it without thinking because I was very interested in talking to Ken about this documentary. Cause it was so good. I said, well, if it was interesting, I'd watch it. And he looked at me and goes, well, that's harsh. I go, it's not interesting. Like it's the same shit. You're always doing the same exact setup. And this was five, 10 years ago. And I just was like, you have to make stuff people want to watch. Right. Like. And I just couldn't look at it. And that's what. They all are the same in some ways. And there's little Points of difference sometimes that are really promising. I still think 60 Minutes is an amazing brand. I think you could do a lot with that brand. And it does rather well online. Once they get it up there, look.

[Scott Galloway]

These things are being picked apart limb by limb because you have something like the Atlantic, which does an amazing job and brings together, I think, some of the most talented writers in the world. But I think a guy like Derek Thompson is prolific and has tapped into like, you know, he's under the age of 40, so he feels like their grandchildren walking around these places. He goes to Substack and he's making more money on Substack now. I think a lot of the truly great individual contributors are going to use the platform for prestige and then veer off and do their own thing.

[Kara Swisher]

Nice to meet you. What do you think? I've been doing all this stuff at the New York Times.

[Scott Galloway]

Exactly.

[Kara Swisher]

But here's more tricks. Let me just say the Atlantic under Jeff Goldberg and also Wired under Katie Drummond, they found invigoration in terms of higher subscriptions. They're doing pretty good with those. Only the editors that are invigorating are doing okay, like comparatively to the individual players, but go ahead.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah, but you're the perfect example. And that is, you were at the Washington Post. You could be the premier tech reporter. You were the premier tech reporter at the Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal. You make a half a million. Okay, sorry. And the Wall Street Journal. Excuse me. Off with his head. Anyways, let's be generous and assume with comp and everything, and you make a half a million bucks a year.

[Kara Swisher]

No, that's because I created the conference. I made more than that.

[Scott Galloway]

But okay, 150, 200. My point is, it's crazy. You make 10 or 20 times more than that. Finding. Finding a guy who tells dick jokes and doing your own thing.

[Kara Swisher]

And now racist.

[Scott Galloway]

So. So young. So young is racist. I'm making fun of.

[Kara Swisher]

I understand. I'm gonna.

[Scott Galloway]

I love Korean baseball players. They often hit it out of the park.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh my God. Oh, Jesus.

[Scott Galloway]

Is that racist?

[Kara Swisher]

I'm finished up with this. So. So what happens? So I. The news to pe, the studio stuff, the cable.

[Scott Galloway]

The cable. The ad supported cable stuff gets sold off, you know, to. To just get them. Just get rid of that shit. It's more trouble than it's worth for them. And no, but they're getting this. I think the deal is probably done, Kara, because no rational buyer. They're going on record and they're creating. I doubt Comcast is anywhere Comcast is like, well, call us if you take 11 bucks a share. Because that's what we would need to pay for this thing. To be able to explain to our shareholders in an earnings call why we paid. We can't justify anything above that. David Ellison's criteria are different because he is the son of a guy making $90 billion in a day when he announces a contract with OpenAI. So. And that's what media's become. It's become a series of irrational buyers whose parents are worth hundreds of billions of dollars. This thing goes to the Ellisons. They will spin off the news. It's not a Machiavellian attempt to control the. To enter thought control. They'll get as much as they can. And then I think they're going to use Warner and HBO and some of the content or some of the studios as their playground to do really interesting.

[Kara Swisher]

Shit with AI and on TikTok. Yeah. Which they also have control over.

[Scott Galloway]

That's a really. You know what? I hadn't thought of that. That's the most important thing here.

[Kara Swisher]

That's the most important thing here.

[Scott Galloway]

That is really an interesting. Taking that content and slicing it up and putting it on TikTok. But it all comes back occasionally. Have one of those mind blown moments. When I was in the Fantastic Four, the credits took seven minutes.

[Kara Swisher]

I know. I just did that the other day.

[Scott Galloway]

As many. As many people worked on the Fantastic Four as work at Palantir or Reddit. And it's a risk. They don't know how this thing's gonna do that business other than healthcare. I think big budget content production is the most vulnerable thing to AI right now. They're just gonna go line by line and go, do we really need 22 costume designers for our shoot in Sweden?

[Kara Swisher]

Do we really need Sweden? Do we really need. Every single thing will be, you know, every single thing will be.

[Scott Galloway]

And all. All the existing guys, Iger and Zaslav, they are still very empathetic. And also because they're all 100 years old, they don't want to rattle the unions in SAG AFTRA's cages like this. But Allison, honeybear, don't give a. He's gonna be like, put out 10 blockbuster.

[Kara Swisher]

Although he is known as talent friendly, he was involved very deeply in the Mission Impossible movies, the new Star Trek movies, and of course in Top Gun.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah, he's a rich kid. I just had dinner with a friend of mine who's an amazing producer and does these incredible films. Kara. Whenever I meet someone at an event and they say, oh, I'm like, what do you do? I produce documentaries. I'm like, oh, how did your husband get rich? I mean, the people in this business, it's like meeting a kid who's working in an okay job, not a great job in New York and living in soho. It's like, oh, your parents are rich. No young person can live in Manhattan now unless they're working for JP Morgan or got transferred by Meta or their parents are rich. And every player now in film production in Hollywood effectively is someone who is so frighteningly talented they manage to break through. They're literally the. The. And they're. And they're there, but they're in the 0.1%. They're the Michael Jordans of content. Or their parents are putting them through holidays.

[Kara Swisher]

They're in the system. They're in the system. So you don't think Netflix is going to try to wade in here in any way? Netflix, that's the wire that you had, Netflix.

[Scott Galloway]

I don't. I think. I think Netflix is becoming like Apple in the sense that we'll just do it. I think Ted Sarandos realized our culture is so strong, so powerful.

[Kara Swisher]

That's what the CEO said.

[Scott Galloway]

We don't buy shit and then try and integrate it and deal with whoever's running Warner Brothers. We don't. We don't. We have a way of doing things. We're outstanding at it. And if he was going to buy anything, if Strandos was going to buy anything, he should buy Disney because he would just. He would. That would be. They have a succession problem. The content. They could have Disney as the fam. As Netflix family. They would just own streaming. They would. It would just sort of be game over. But I don't even think if I'm Ted Sarandos, it's like we're so good at doing what we do. The existential threat. The only reason Netflix would potentially weigh in here is that they want to get a ton of content so to compete with YouTube. So, for example, 20% of television viewing time last month is 12.6 of YouTube, 8.3% of Netflix. Netflix is squarely figured out YouTube is their competitor. And if. If you look at what Netflix does need, though, and the only reason they might weigh in here and buy some of this content or buy pieces of it post acquisition by the big price they can't compete with, with the Ellisons is Netflix's content library is roughly 36,000 hours long. Right. That's their entire library. 36,000 hours. That's the same amount of content that YouTube users upload to the site every 70 minutes. So every hour YouTube is uploaded content equal to the entire Netflix library. And what you have is the two are going to come together. YouTube content has, is going to get much better. The only thing, the only the thing moving podcasts in and out of the top 100 is the quality of their video games. And then you're going to see Netflix start to look more like YouTube and that is they will figure out ways to have quote unquote, a deal with a podcast. The deal with podcasts they just did is essentially them dipping their toe not into podcasts but into a form of user generated content that costs much less. So you've got to see the means of production and the content come down on the one end and the quality is going to go up on the bottom.

[Kara Swisher]

Some things on the news because I agree with you that they're like this week it's all like the tear. We'll talk about the tear down the west because it's really kind of grotesque. But, but what you said about why don't they take my two interviews a week on on and make them into a show. I was like, I had Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris. You could have done a great like.

[Scott Galloway]

By the way, it was great. I, I, I don't like to watch your stuff. The But I did break down the interview with Bernie was great.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, it was.

[Scott Galloway]

He's great.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, he was good.

[Scott Galloway]

He was good.

[Kara Swisher]

I could take a billionaire. I don't want them all good billionaire.

[Scott Galloway]

It's fine. Yeah, some of them believe in democracy.

[Kara Swisher]

Did you like his little democratic voice? That was my favorite thing. Oh, I didn't believe it. He had a tiny little voice for the Democratic establishment that made me laugh hysterically.

[Scott Galloway]

If like literally, if that guy was 70 years younger, I'd vote for him for president.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, a lot of people that's why he was all the Trump voters. Anyway, let's move on. Let me ask you one more quick question here. One more very quick and answer quickly. So if you had would something like Versant want to buy a CNN and then merge the newsrooms and then have two good brand, two decent brands to try to work with or not at all? Like why bother? They get the. Because they lost all the news stuff. They lost all their news stuff to NBC so they're building their own news organization. So why want to take a shortcut and get. Because CNN has a very good news organization around the world.

[Scott Galloway]

I think, I think it's Just, I think it's all about. I think it's all about price. I don't. You know, there's a bunch of these upstarts and who's backing them. CNN would probably. It would go for above market because it's such a powerful brand. But CNN, it has really stumbled the last 12 months. I think its viewership is down something like 30%. I mean, it is really hurting right now. And it's not even the content. I think Anderson Cooper, Caitlin Collins, Dana Bash, Jake Tapper, they consistently. Michael Smerconish, they consistently. Fareed Zakaria. They have some of the finest journalists in the world.

[Kara Swisher]

Right. And across the globe, by the way, which people don't pay attention.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah. And backed by a What a. A 1200 or 2000 person newsroom, like these guys. They're great at what they do. It's the distribution and the business model that's fucked. And that is nobody's turning, even turning on the screen. That is their primary distribution channel and they haven't figured out a way to monetize it on a very small screen.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, it's tough. That's all I was saying. Someone could consolidate these two and be the news organization and invigorate it.

[Scott Galloway]

Comcast could buy it.

[Kara Swisher]

Comcast could buy it, but so could Versant. Anyway, we'll see if that happens. I think it's gonna be a P.E. and then, you know, hasta luego for Kara Swisher. Anyway. In any case, ostiluego for Kara Swisher. Anyway, that's it.

[Scott Galloway]

You're going to North Korea and you're not coming back. So young, so young. He died so young. Oh, my God.

[Kara Swisher]

I'm not gonna let you do this anymore. Okay, I'll start making Scottish jokes in a second, so let's go. Move on. Yeah.

[Scott Galloway]

Oatmeal salmon.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh, there, you did it. You did it. I knew you would. You're not even drinking.

[Scott Galloway]

What do the brightest people in Scotland have in common?

[Kara Swisher]

What?

[Scott Galloway]

They left Carol.

[Kara Swisher]

Okay, all right. Very good. Okay.

[Scott Galloway]

That's actually true. OpenAI some of the finest minds in the history of SC and economics.

[Kara Swisher]

I'm getting like exclamation points from the producers. OpenAI has launched a web browser, Atlas. Sam Altman called it a once in a decade opportunity to rethink what a browser can be. The launch comes a few months after the company said it would be interested in buying Google's Chrome had it been forced into a sale. Chrome has 3 billion users worldwide. Talk a little bit about this and also Reddit has sued Perplexity AI alleging the company scraped the comments of millions of Reddit users on an industrial scale again. And these I'm going to comment on. Last one. These wars are going to break out all over the place until the numbers get right when they start paying. Perplexity has been the one that usually gets into the most trouble here. But talk a little bit about this browser because this browser knows will remember everything you read, not just where your search was. They're going to be like super browsers essentially.

[Scott Galloway]

I love this. I love competition. I think it's good. I think the biggest, the biggest tax cut but in the history, in modern economic history would be if the Chinese and American leadership decided to kiss and make up and stop cyber attacking each other and take their tariffs to zero. The second biggest tax cut in history would be the breakup or more competition in big tech. I mean people don't realize you are paying a huge toll. You don't realize it because it's paid vis a vis advertisers trying to reach you. But probably the biggest corporate tax in America other than federal income tax is the tax of Alphabet. To reach consumers in terms of advertising, right? In terms of advertising, you have to be on Google. If you want to acquire customers online, which is where all customers are now, you have to start increasingly buying search keywords and boost your videos on YouTube. These are the biggest toll boosts in the history of mankind for corporations. And they don't have competition. So every year they raise their prices or the taxes they charge consumer and B2B brands greater than inflation. So these companies need competition. There's some more existential things going on here. One, Sam has to figure out a way to become kind of Google before Google becomes OpenAI. So him launching that's exactly well said. Him launching a browser makes a lot of sense. I like that it tracks your searches. I think all of the concern that was in your voice around privacy. I understand, but anyone talking about privacy is usually over the age of 50 and lives in Brussels or DC. Young people will tell Uber everything about where they a thin layer of AI on top of your Uber records which by the way, you cannot delete. You cannot delete your Uber record, your Uber driver history and that you people will be able to figure out if you just terminated a pregnancy, if your sexual orientation. I mean they'll be able to figure out everything based on where you're going.

[Kara Swisher]

And when Uber, they don't need AI to do it.

[Scott Galloway]

They could do it now. So as long as there's a Coupon and utility and I can see that my QX60 is parked around the corner. Violate my privacy. That is what America has said. It's listening to our phone conversations. And by the way, I'm down with that. As long as we have judges who are going to say no ice can't use this information to start rounding up people, you know, I'm all about violating my privacy in exchange for utility. As long as we have thoughtful judges who err on the side of civil liberties. Anyways, uh.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh, Scott, ahead.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah, yeah. The operative term there is if. Right. So what I think is the more interesting thing here is first off, keep in mind, consumers are pretty lazy in terms of getting used to a certain UI. And even with all the existential threat that OpenAI supposedly poses to Google Search, they get, I think roughly 96 times the traffic of ChatGPT still. And Google search impressions were up 49% year over year. Alphabet was my stock pick of 2025 because I think people overestimate the threat, if you will. Chrome has roughly a market share of 70%, making it the most dominant web browser. Apple's web browser Safari, even without unbelievable.

[Kara Swisher]

Access, is that Microsoft's.

[Scott Galloway]

Safari's at 14%, not Safari, that's Apple.

[Kara Swisher]

Chrome is.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah, Chrome. No, no, no, Chrome is. You're thinking of Internet Explorer. Chrome is alphabetical bet, 70%, 70% share.

[Kara Swisher]

And what is Internet Explorers?

[Scott Galloway]

Well, remember Microsoft attempted to get into the game with Internet Explorer, remember, and put Netscape out of business?

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, no, I know, but what is their market share?

[Scott Galloway]

I don't think it registers. I mean basically between Chrome and Safari and then you have the weird ones like DuckDuckGo and shit like that. But basically what Sam has said is I want to bring AI into search or into browsing. And I mean, so let's look at some of the facts. Google has an extremely strong competitor to ChatGPT and Gemini. Gemini has actually gained more share than any other company in AI. They have 400 million monthly users. It's now the fourth most popular free app on the Apple App Store. Just two months ago in August, it didn't even crack the top 50. And according to multiple benchmarks and betters on both Calcium Polymarket, Google currently has the best performance performing AI model either way, I think in my opinion, yeah, you're right. Alphabet still at 29 times earnings, is a steal for the. For roughly the multiple of S P, you're getting a search business with 90 plus percent market share. The largest ever streaming service in the world, a dominant AI effort, a digital ad network. Google Chrome, Waymo.

[Kara Swisher]

Love you some Google you. Love you some Google.

[Scott Galloway]

2. Two other businesses that do over 30 billion annual revenue and four of the products have 2 billion users. The most interesting thing about all of this in my view is that and the presages what might happen geopolitically, and it'll be my prediction at the end of the show is that technically the new browser is open weight or open source and it's actually built on the same technology that Chrome is built on, which Google spends, or Alphabet spends like $100 million upkeeping. And essentially I think this says a lot about the future of AI. And I'll come back to this. But Sam has to justify a half a trillion dollar market cap. So what he says is, okay, I'm going to be the next browser and I'm going to be Alphabet. And Alphabet's trading at a trillion and a half or $2 trillion. I don't know what it's at right now, but why can't I be a better version of Alphabet? And by the way, when you look at Google searches, what is the first thing you see? You see that AI summary at the top?

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, you do. Let me introduce you because I've covered these companies for so long, but Chrome really came in and laughed, you know, Explorer and Safari and all of them very quickly, you know, in terms of how they, in terms of market share. But it is moving away from the browser. So the more Chrome moves into an AI, a chatgpt like environment, the better for it. Right. I remember interviewing Ben Horowitz once and he goes, there's never going to be a funding of a search engine. There's never going to be a funding of a social network and there's never going to be a funding of business, a big commerce platform because of Amazon, Google and Facebook at the time. He goes, why should we? And so why should we? Because you haven't seen a lot of innovation in Chrome. You haven't seen a lot. And it took OpenAI to get Chrome to innovate. Right. It didn't happen.

[Scott Galloway]

And they came in through a side door.

[Kara Swisher]

Yep, exactly.

[Scott Galloway]

And so Sam Altman's vision wasn't to have a browser or a surgery.

[Kara Swisher]

Right. But you know, it always changes things, so it's nice to have it. Honestly, I feel I don't use browsers. I browse, I'm trying to think of where I search. I guess I search within maps, within Amazon, within. Like the search search has dissipated all over the place. But it's still owned by the same groups of people, which is interesting. Any thoughts on we'll get to your prediction at the end, but any thoughts on the Reddit suing? Perplexity Some people don't like this lawsuit, others thinks it's why is that you.

[Scott Galloway]

Know more about this than I.

[Kara Swisher]

You know, Mike Masnick was like, this is a stupid lawsuit. But you know that some of this stuff is, is available and so they can do it. Other people, you know, I think it's what it is is another indication of who gets to own the information and who gets to scrape it and what people do with it. But it's open season on everybody's content. That's just, that's my feeling. And so everyone's gonna try to defend the content they have no matter what it is. You know, Reddit certainly has created a really valuable property full of information that they should take advantage of by themselves that others will take advantage of. Okay, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, Trump' house demolition Support for this show comes from Vanta. Here are a few things that are probably essential to your company's survival in the modern world. Internet access. A tax id A great snack pantry. Well, here's something else that's essential. Trust. 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Support for Pivot comes from LinkedIn jobs as a small business owner, your work hours aren't dictated by the hands on a clock. Your business is on your mind 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So when you're hiring, you need a partner that works just as hard as you do. That hiring partner is LinkedIn Jobs. When you clock out, LinkedIn clocks in by making it easy to post your job. Share it with your network and qualified candidates that you can manage all in one place. LinkedIn's new feature can help you write job descriptions and quickly get your job in front of the right people with deep, candid insights. Either post your job for free or pay to promote as promoted jobs. Get three times more qualified applicants. At the end of the day, LinkedIn wants you to feel confident that you're getting the best, because the most important thing to your small business is the quality of candidates. And based on LinkedIn data, 72% of small business owners using LinkedIn say that the platform helps them find high quality candidates. Plus, you can let your network know you're hiring by adding the hashtag hiringframe to your profile Picture to get two times more qualified candidates. Find out why more than 2.5 million small businesses use LinkedIn for hiring today. Find your next great hire on LinkedIn. Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com pivot that's LinkedIn.com pivot to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. Scott we're back with more news. The White House is demolishing the entire East Wing to make way for President Trump's 90,000 square foot ballroom. The teardown should be finished by the weekend. Trump initially claimed his privately funded ballroom wouldn't interfere with the existing White House structure, which was a lie he's also now saying the ballroom will cost $300 million, $100 million more than originally estimated. The White House is dismissing the shock and criticism around the. The deposition is manufactured outrage. No, mostly he's a liar. Release the Epstein files. That's what I have to say about this. What do you think? The pictures are still very upsetting in some weird way. Although the White House has been renovated before, there is a need for a bigger room for some of the functions. There it is. If you've been to the White House, they're quite small, actually. They're shockingly small. And they should have a lot of functions, but there's plenty of other land around the White House they could have built these things on. Instead, he just did this because he felt like it. Probably. It is safer. I'm gonna try to. Try to understand. But he did it without asking anybody, essentially. And of course, it's the people's house, not his house, but it's his house, as it turns out. Thoughts?

[Scott Galloway]

So, okay, there's the clutch in your pearls. This is a desecration. It's not your. What this means is the following, is that he is normalizing federal troops in cities. He's creating data around the election process, and he has no intention of leaving because I won't. If I'm renting a place, I won't put in a new refrigerator, much less tear down an entire wing. So let's be honest, folks. You really think he'd go through this if he was planning to leave in 36 months?

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah. It's his new Mar A Lago. He's building Mar a Lago?

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah. And so to me, immediately, like, okay, when do we wake up and realize the guy's not planning to leave? He's making long term renovations. I mean, how long is it going to take to even do this is to build this thing? It's not. So. But he's planning to leave, but he's going to. So, look, I find the whole thing, yet again, everything's adding up to the following. He wants to normalize sending troops into cities during the election process to make sure, whether it's to discourage people from voting or to lie or to show up. Bill Maher said it perfectly. It's like what happens when two people show up to inauguration and he's basically saying, okay, if the second person tries to show up, who legitimately wins, I'm going to show up with troops and masked agents that are basically my secret police. That's where I see this going. And this is Just more evidence that he's not planning to leave. You don't initiate an enormous construction project when you know you constitutionally have to leave in three years.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, I would agree. I think, you know, I think a lot of people think this. Right. Or put whoever in place that he wants to, because as you say, which my favorite expression these days, biology is undefeated. He seems more addled than ever, missing words and everything else.

[Scott Galloway]

The only reason I'm not worried.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, right.

[Scott Galloway]

Biology's gonna take care of him.

[Kara Swisher]

Right? Except then. Then what? Right? And would it be interesting. Let me just posit that that doesn't happen and a Democrat becomes president, what do you do? He's gonna gold this thing up, right? All over the place. Gonna be so ridiculous. What do you do? When you walk in there, you have this ridiculous, over badly sized ballroom next to east wing was quite. It's not really lovely. I don't love the White House, I'll be honest with you. But it was to scale, right? And so this looks like a weird mutated tumor onto the White House. That's my architectural determination. It's a tumor. It's a tumor. But what, what do you do the next day with this weird patio and then the, and then the thing, this behemoth, this grotesque golden behemoth. What do you, what do you do? Nothing. Right?

[Scott Galloway]

I don't know. I just, I, I know what happened here. He sat down with some crazy right wing, probably hot blonde decorator. And, and what decorators do is they say, all right, I want mood boards. Like, tell me what they, you know, they try and make you feel special, like you're involved in the process. And they say, I redid my place in Manhattan. And they said, what do you want it to look like? I'm like, I want it to look like what it is. A professor who's done fairly well. Yeah, that's what I want it to look like.

[Kara Swisher]

That's what it looks like.

[Scott Galloway]

And what he did was he said, I want this place to look like you walked into the best Iraqi whorehouse. And they have delivered against it the decorator. This feels like you are in Baghdad at a brothel. But it's a high end brothel. But it's a high end brothel.

[Kara Swisher]

Really.

[Scott Galloway]

I mean, it's, it's absolutely perfect. It's. Anyways, it's not enough marble.

[Kara Swisher]

We need more marble.

[Scott Galloway]

And as Forest comeset. And that's all I have to say about that.

[Kara Swisher]

But what, what do you do the next day? You're the Democrat who, you're like, oh, My God, what do you do, let everyone come in.

[Scott Galloway]

By the way, the only. I've only been to the White House once, you know, without me.

[Kara Swisher]

Yes, that's right. Yes, you've been.

[Scott Galloway]

And I didn't want to go. I was intimidated. I had to bring a. I met you in the lobby. I was wor. I don't. I don't. The idea of seeing all those people and having them kiss your ass like I knew they were going to. Yeah, you definitely like the Vice president. Cass Swisher. Come on. Hug you and kiss you. Secretary Blinken, Cara Carol and all the. And the only other thing.

[Kara Swisher]

Some people like me, oddly enough. So strange. So strange.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah. Key word. There is some.

[Kara Swisher]

Well, no more than you think. More than you'd think. I don't know. Why?

[Scott Galloway]

Well, you're exceptionally likable, I guess.

[Kara Swisher]

I don't know. I literally say I dislike you and think you're a bunch of fascists. And they're like, yeah, I come to our party.

[Scott Galloway]

The other thing that struck me about my one tour of the White House was I could not relax living there. There were two things. One, the situation room, where you're deciding whether to have nuclear war or not. You can hear the microwave in the kitchen. And I'm like, can they smell popcorn when they're popping it out here? It's actually really.

[Kara Swisher]

It's small.

[Scott Galloway]

It's poorly designed, in my view.

[Kara Swisher]

Those off, like the West Wing, the offices are like, weirdly, a warren of very uncomfort. It's a very. He is right. That it's kind of a mess. It's in terms of. As a building, like, as a. As an office building. And.

[Scott Galloway]

And then I thought, how does anyone relax here? There are 140 people here who look like they're about to invade Fallujah. It is. There's. That place is armed to the teeth. And like you get up at night to grab some milk. I guess the residence is different. And you're going to run into someone with an AR15 and people military. Like, there's no taking the dog for a walk anyway.

[Kara Swisher]

We'll see. It's just grotesque. And release the Epstein files. Thank you. Just release the Epstein files. I don't know what they're going to do tomorrow. I'm, like, waiting to see what are they going to paint the Washington Monument so it looks like the penis that it is. Anyway, Trump is demanding $230 million, by the way, from the Justice Department, saying he deserves compensation for federal investigations into him. According to the New York Times. The compensation is tied to two claims Trump filed against the DOJ before his second term. One is tied to the investigation of Russ interference in his 2016 campaign. The other, the FBI's 2022 Mar a Lago search. I'm sorry, sir. We have the pictures. Payment would likely come from taxpayer money would have to be approved by the doj, potentially by Deputy AG Todd Blanche, Trump's former attorney, personal attorney. Trump commented on the unprecedented nature of all this, to put it mildly, when asked about his claims. Let's listen.

[Scott Galloway]

It's interesting because I'm the one that.

[Kara Swisher]

Makes the decision, right?

[Scott Galloway]

And you know, that decision would have.

[Kara Swisher]

To go across my desk.

[Scott Galloway]

And it's awfully strange to make a decision where I'm paying myself. In other words, did you ever have one of those cases where you have to decide how much you're paying yourself in damages? But I was damaged very greatly. And any money that I would get.

[Kara Swisher]

I would give to charity. Oh, my God. Lie. Huge lie at the end. Enormous lie. And by the way, yes, he has made decisions where he pays himself. It's the presidency. And evidence in action is cryptocurrency. And his children. But his children, his adult sons and anyway, I don't know. We're not paying him, are we?

[Scott Galloway]

I think we probably are. And keep in mind, if the federal government comes for you and the case ends up, let's assume that this was politically motivated and there was no legitimacy or veracity, and these things were politically motivated and unjust and unethical. Let's assume that happens quite a few times when the federal government comes to protect people. If you're found guilty, which he was in one case and not in others, when that happens to average American citizens, they. The government doesn't pay them back for their legal fees. So. But we've become.

[Kara Swisher]

Now we're going to have to pay everybody.

[Scott Galloway]

We've become. No, sometimes in, I believe in certain legal cases, if you win, I think if you win a civil case, sometimes the other side has to pay your legal fees.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, but not the government.

[Scott Galloway]

But if the government comes for you and you're found innocent, they don't pay you back your legal fees.

[Kara Swisher]

Too bad. Don't.

[Scott Galloway]

So anyways. But we've become. This has become normalized. And to think that this is not going to happen. He got to appoint the head of the doj. Now, to think that they're going to stand up to him. Keep in mind, there are whatever 53 Republican senators. These people were freely elected. You'd think they'd have balls, right?

[Kara Swisher]

They don't.

[Scott Galloway]

They're watching this guy, Senators, and this guy sent people after them to kill them on January 6th. I just think it's hilarious that they try to. They try to position the protest last weekend as violent and weirdo. I'm like, no, that was January 6th. If you're looking for violence in people who hate America, just go back to the protests of January 6th, if you can call it that. It was an insurrection. But the notion that these people are going to stand up when they can't get duly elected senators, who he sent a mob after to kill, and they won't stand up against the guy. To think that Pam Bondi is gonna say, this is a bridge too far.

[Kara Swisher]

No, no. Here's the thing. Trump's not gonna pay for this, but if they do this, they will. At some point, all his minions are gonna get got at every. That's who I'd go for if I was. I'd get all of them. Like, Trump will get away with it. Just everybody knows he's gonna get away with it. But the minions, not so much, I think.

[Scott Galloway]

Oh, I. But see, this is where. This is the opportunity. And I'm in one of the shortcomings in the Democratic Party right now. If this goes okay, take the ice, Whatever. Sending people to. Sending people to El Salvador. There were people all along the supply chain that made the decision to send American citizens, incarcerate them, and send them out of the country. I would be drawing up all sorts of bills and publicizing them, saying, the statute of limitations on these crimes, whether it's crypto crimes, whether it's fraud, whether it's lying in front of Congress. Congress. Just keep in mind these laws. The statute of limitations are longer than 37 months. And this is exactly what we're coming for you for. You may think you feel safe now, and you better hope you get a pardon, but I would be drawing up legislation that says, or basically advertising a guy like Senator Murphy or Senator Bennett or Senators Klobuchar and say, these are the crimes we believe have been committed, admitted, and he may be the head of the crime family, but the soldiers go to jail, too. And he might be safe because he'll probably be dead or he'll pardon himself, but there are thousands of people, and I'd start naming names.

[Kara Swisher]

He'll pardon himself and his family. Can I tell you something? Several of the Trump people I've met said they're asking for pardons already.

[Scott Galloway]

Why wouldn't you?

[Kara Swisher]

And at first I was like, what what did you do? He goes, not nothing. And I said, well, he goes, oh, they're coming for us. Like, and we probably deserve, kind of said we deserve it. Like, it was really weird.

[Scott Galloway]

This is an orgy of corruption.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, they're coming for you.

[Scott Galloway]

And where the Democrats, again, the Democrats should be articulating exactly what crimes they believe have been committed.

[Kara Swisher]

Greg Kazar has. But go ahead.

[Scott Galloway]

Lists of hundreds of people they believe have potentially engaged in these crimes. And then next to their name, what the statute of limitations is on that crime.

[Kara Swisher]

That's a great idea.

[Scott Galloway]

Let's make that list and start saying. Okay, be clear folks. Throughout for our 250 year history, the White House and the DOJ flipped back and forth. At some point we're going to have the gavel, we're going to have the power of the purse, we're going to have the power of subpoena, and we're going to have our own doj. And unlike this correct, corrupt doj, we will be holding people to the letter of the law. And these are the letters that you have violated. And this is their statute of limitations. Because the world is shaped on incentives. What incentives right now are there not to engage in this corruption?

[Kara Swisher]

They're not getting enough money for what they're gonna pay. Trump is. And the Trump families, he'll pardon himself and his family and a few choice people, but everybody else, you're gonna be shit out of luck. Anyway, we have to move on. Scott, let's go on a get back. We'll talk Netflix and Tesla earnings, which are super interesting.

[Scott Galloway]

Support for the show comes from pipedrive. I've spent plenty of hours speaking to entrepreneurs and the one issue that always seems to pop up, they struggle with their sales process. It's all too common to jump between back and forth emails, scattered notes and forgotten follow ups, and spending more time chasing paperwork than actually closing. That's where pipedrive comes in. Pipedrive is a top rated CRM tool for small to medium businesses. With Pipedrive, sales teams are equipped to close deals at a much faster rate. The visual sales pipeline shows you where every deal is, what stage it's in and what needs to happen next, all in one dashboard. Plus, pipedrive lets you automate your follow up so no leads slip through the cracks. And its AI features can analyze your sales process to take your business to the next level. It's a powerful yet simple CRM. CRM built by salespeople for salespeople. Join the over 100,000 companies already using Pipedrive right now. When you use My link you'll get a 30 day free trial. No credit card or payment needed. Just head to pipedrive.com pivot to get started. That's pipedrive.com pivot and you can be up and running in minutes.

[Kara Swisher]

Support for this show comes from Apple. Before it was Pivot, it was just an idea. And the place where my ideas could take flight was always on my Mac. I've been using a Mac for everything since I started using computers and of course an iPhone. I got one of the first ones. You know, I use my Mac all the time when I'm doing podcasts, especially when I was traveling. But I used it in the very beginning of doing podcasts when I did remote stuff. No matter what you have an idea for, whether it's an innovative piece of tech, a groundbreaking policy, or a short story concept you can't get out of your head, go for it. You just need to get started. Great ideas. Start on Mac. Find [e-mail] start sl Mac.

[Scott Galloway]

Support for the show comes from Upwork. Hiring shouldn't be a hassle or a drain on your budget. Upwork says they're your one stop shop to find, hire and pay top freelance talent, saving you time and keeping costs in check all in one place. Upwork grants you access to a global marketplace filled with top talent in it, web, dev, AI, design, admin, support, marketing and more. Companies at every stage turn to upwork to get things done and find more flexibility in the way they staff key projects and initiatives. Posting a job on Upwork is easy and with no cost. To join, you can register, browse freelancer profiles, get help drafting a job post, or even book a consultation. From there, you connect with freelancers to get you and your business. Upwork makes the entire process easier, simpler and more affordable with industry low fees. Visit Upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That's Upwork.com to post your job for free and connect with top talent ready to help your business grow up. Wk.com upwork.com.

[Kara Swisher]

Scott we're back and it's time to talk about some earnings. First up, Tesla. Tesla's third quarter revenue was up about 12% from a year earlier, but profit fell short of expectations. That's because a lot of people rushed to buy cars, but then Tesla sold them for cheaper prices and there was ability to get loans, so people bought more. Vehicle deliveries were up 7% from a year earlier, but the company says it plans to hit volume production of Cyber Cabs and Tesla Semi in 2026. I wouldn't believe that. Also Musk was saying he has to create an army of robots and if he doesn't have control over his army of robots, he's trying to get his million, his trillion dollar deal which is going to be voted on in a week or two. And next Netflix shares of the company are down 5% in the last five days. The time taping after a miss of third quarter earning. Netflix cited ongoing dispute with Brazilian tax authorities for weak results. However, revenue for the quarter rose 17% and the streamer said a quarter ad sales in the quarter were the best ever. Powered largely by my favorite K Pop Demon Hunters. There's also gonna be some merch. Great news for Kara Swisher announcing Mattel and Hasbro will release K Pop Demon Hunters toys, plushies and games. Let me tell you among the toddler set in the young below 10 set. They're all dressing like Rumi for Halloween. Not my daughter and son, but all the K school. They're all dressing like roomie which is one of the main characters in the show. So thoughts on these earnings?

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah, I think Netflix is one of the best run companies in business. Their revenue increased 17%. That didn't meet expectations. Their stock fell 10% but the stock's been on a tear. Net income increased nearly 8% to 2.5 billion. Missing estimates by about 15% percent. Their operating margin was 28% and that was also short of the 32% that was expected. They highlighted a one time tax expense in Brazil of 600 of $600 million for why their profitability mixed that that by the way that that charge had been previously disclosed to investors on past earnings reports. So I think at this point a lot of people are just taking profits. K Pop Demon Hunters, which is a huge success.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, they keep hitting it out of the box park.

[Scott Galloway]

The movie was produced by Sony Animation but released directly to Netflix at the end of August. It's now the most watched movie in Netflix history with approximately 325 million views. So essentially the population of America has watched K Pop. I haven't seen it. Oh my God.

[Kara Swisher]

Will you please watch it so we can discuss it?

[Scott Galloway]

I only watch things starring my favorite actor, Hitler. Late at night. I take an edible, I have a makers and Ginger and I watch World War II in color.

[Kara Swisher]

You will love K Pop Demon Hunt and then we can sing it together on the tour. Are you ready for takedown? I'll keep singing it until you watch it.

[Scott Galloway]

That's what we need to do. The soundtrack is also top the Billboard Top charts, cross promotion, Netflix. Mattel and Hasbro have joined together to produce K Pop, Demon Hunter Toys. Look, the company. I still think, I think I wouldn't buy Netflix here. I think that their growth is going to be international. I think it's a great company. I think they'll probably grow into their product price. I'm of the mind now that I think just as we talk about cable cutters or people who cut the cord, I think we're going to start hearing about an entirely new generation of people that just don't own TVs. And also I think our desire for. I don't know if you've seen this trend. I forget what they're called. Mini soap operas. This one minute content. And these guys are smart. They'll figure out ways to get into those fields. But I worry. I. I just think everything's moving away. Well, I'll ask you this. I know you like the Diplomat. I've been struck in the last 12 months. All of a sudden I'm not turning on the tv and I realize that's anecdotal, but I'm supposed to be in the age where I'm sitting around watching Murder She Wrote. Are you watching less tv?

[Kara Swisher]

No, I'm watching specific tv. I like television. So, yeah, I watched the entire season of the Diploma, which is wonderful, as I said. And I noticed a lot of people and said, when I mentioned that, said, oh yeah, I did the same thing. So I'll watch, you know, specific Hunt. Like I always talk about hunting wise, but I'll watch Specific or the Gilded Age, like, but it's all over the place, by the way. And I'm watching this Martin Scorsese documentary. I think it's on. I think it's on Apple tv. But I watch specific things and I watch the hell out of them, if that makes sense. And some shows I do watch week to week, right, like the morning show. Well, that goes out every week. I'm actually in this episode, but this is my episode this week.

[Scott Galloway]

Really?

[Kara Swisher]

Yes, I'm on it.

[Scott Galloway]

Yes, it's lovely this week.

[Kara Swisher]

This week. Yeah, whatever this.

[Scott Galloway]

Oh, we'll definitely tune in.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, yeah, I got a bunch. I can't watch it here in Korea, so I'm not able to watch my amazing Emmy Award.

[Scott Galloway]

Just use a vpn.

[Kara Swisher]

I know, I didn't. I guess I could. So I don't, I'm tired. I don't, I don't care to watch myself on tv.

[Scott Galloway]

You don't know where you are.

[Kara Swisher]

I don't care. I Don't.

[Scott Galloway]

You don't know what's going on.

[Kara Swisher]

I don't care. I don't.

[Scott Galloway]

I saw Obey Spigwich. I saw a good movie. I saw a cute movie. I'm trying to go to the movies tomorrow with my boys. I saw Good Fortune with Seth Rogen as Ziz Ansaria.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh, it's supposed to be good.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah. And Keanu Reeves. The movie's actually not that well done. But it's a wonderful message though. It's really a nice.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh, okay.

[Scott Galloway]

Quite frankly, it's all about income inequality.

[Kara Swisher]

Okay. Yeah, I'll go see, like with movies. Like, I'm going to see Wicked. That's it. The new Wicked sequel. They're now making crazy rich Asians again. I'd see that in the theater. Like, it's just specific. I'm a very specific watcher. When I used to just watch whatever. As you and I grew up, we just turned on the boob tube and just stared, essentially. So I'm highly specific and I watch threads. I know it sounds crazy, but I watch Instagram.

[Scott Galloway]

That's scary, isn't it? I've noticed that too. I get so much of my information now.

[Kara Swisher]

But it's nice. It's easy to talk, snackable.

[Scott Galloway]

The algorithms are great. They figure out what we want.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, absolutely. But anyway, so Tesla, talk very quickly about Tesla. What's your thoughts on that?

[Scott Galloway]

Well, look, Tesla, it's a little bit hard to, to extrapolate from these earnings because there was a pull forward and that is that because the tax credits were expiring, a lot of people went in and, and bought probably more cars. Deliveries were up 7%. So this is the greatest revenue they've seen and registered in two years. But again, this is probably due to pull forward demand due to the expiration of the EV tax credit. And demand is expected to drop.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, and also other things. They've got some other things they get to put in their earnings that Trump got rid of about around the environment and not carbon, but another one, air quality or something.

[Scott Galloway]

Well, that's right. Because of the expiration of regulatory credits and also their increased spending on AI, their net income fell 36%. So last year they made about $2.8 billion from selling regulatory credits and about 40% from America. And this is essentially just lost revenue. And this quarter Tesla reported the regulatory credit revenue was down 44% year on year.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, yeah. All the little games are over and.

[Scott Galloway]

R and D expenses, including AI spend, rose 57%. They've got to enter the same spending war as everybody else, and it rose to 1.6 billion. And Tesla also blamed tariffs for scratching profitability, but provided no numbers. It's interesting because they're actually the most vertical automobile maker. They have more quote unquote, made in America parts than anything. The earnings call was really him trying to pivot to AI and robots, but so far it's off to a rocky start. They've delayed the production of the Optimus bots, abandoning previous plans to make. I think it was 10,000 robots.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah. Remember, whatever he says, it's nonsense.

[Scott Galloway]

And the head of Optimus is led from for meta. And not only that, this guy was pissed off at Elon because he made a point of saying, I left despite taking a cut in pay, which means you're angry. They also launched their Robotaxi service in Austin. And since then they've also expanded to San Francisco. And in both states cities, safety monitors are in the car during the ride. In sf, the monitor sits in the driver's seat. So that's. I don't know. I'm not sure.

[Kara Swisher]

In Waymo, so far ahead. It's crazy. And this is going to be hard to make money. There's so many players in this area.

[Scott Galloway]

You know what?

[Kara Swisher]

I.

[Scott Galloway]

You said something. I occasionally do listen to you, and you said something that's always stuck to me. And that is. It is easy to. It's difficult to have empathy for victims when you've never been a victim. And that is really registered with me because I've always said, oh, London is safe, New York is safe. You don't need to worry. There's a different set of fears for a guy who's 62190. And quite frankly, just like this is a bad thing, this is a dangerous thing to say. I have never been, I don't think, a victim of a crime. I've never been assaulted. I've never been mugged. I've never been pickpocketed. I've never had my phone stolen. So it's just not easy for me. And I have to realize I need to have. Have, you know, I need to have, you know, more empathy for people who are victims. And that. And the thing that really struck me is I have heard several women say the following. They hate getting in Ubers because the Uber driver starts chatting them up and they feel unsafe.

[Kara Swisher]

You can ask for a woman Uber, both Lyft and Uber, you can. And you can ask for a woman, but that's something.

[Scott Galloway]

Uber drivers have no desire to talk to me.

[Kara Swisher]

They don't you're not going to put out. Little do they know that you would put out. That's the thing.

[Scott Galloway]

Well, that's the thing. There you go. I will they sometimes I tip them off when I get them. No, but I thought that's the last fucking thing I would want to deal with is I'm coming home late from a dinner. And by the way, I want to be clear smoke some of these guys, Neuro's guys are probably just friendly, right? But they shouldn't have to deal with that shit.

[Kara Swisher]

Most. Most are most of them.

[Scott Galloway]

And that's why. That's why. And then on the Waymo caller the guy who runs Waymo was saying. I think it was the guy who runs Waymo says this that some of their biggest uptake has been by.

[Kara Swisher]

There's a woman who runs Waymo but there's another guy that runs it with her. But go ahead.

[Scott Galloway]

But have said some of their biggest uptake has been from women. And I'm like that just makes sense, right? You don't want to deal with it. And quite frankly if I could have a driverless car I was thinking about it, would I want to do it? My experience so far in driverless I haven't enjoyed other than the technical sophistication and the wonder because they go so fucking slow. It's like having your 16 year old over cautious driver.

[Kara Swisher]

I hate that they've gotten better. They're now like an aunt who's a good driver but it's too slow. It used to be grandma who's not such a good driver.

[Scott Galloway]

But the promise of the promise, they're faster.

[Kara Swisher]

I've noticed they're faster in San Francisco.

[Scott Galloway]

Oh, that's great. Think the promise of autonomous is the following. In London one of the most crazy frustrating experiences is the open road, no traffic and uncertain places where there's cameras. The guy is no joke, has to go 25 miles an hour and you're trying to get to Heathrow to make a flight and you're on a highway and you're just going 25. And the real, in my opinion the promise of autonomous promise is that you'll be able to do away with speed limits and you'll let the supercomputer decide if that thing can go 90 miles an hour.

[Kara Swisher]

That would be a great thing. That would be great. Yeah. Why do we have those signs at all anyway? We'll see, you know, we'll see. I think he'll probably get that pay package approved. Although the two big shareholder services who he keeps trashing Said, this is fucking ridiculous. And he said he has enough control that he'll be able to control his robot army, whatever that means, but not enough.

[Scott Galloway]

What do you think Bernie Sanders thinks of that pay package?

[Kara Swisher]

Oh, God, like it doesn't like it. He has to hit certain numbers, by the way, everybody. Like, if he doesn't, he'll find a way to get paid, this guy. But he said he doesn't have enough control if he's insane not to get fired. And I'm like, sorry, I think we passed that station on the train of Tesla at this point.

[Scott Galloway]

But let me take the other side of his pay package. I'm actually relatively unoffended by the pay.

[Kara Swisher]

Package because his mail lot of money.

[Scott Galloway]

Well, what he's saying is, what he's saying is, if I make shareholders 4 or 5 trillion, will you give me a 10 or 20% commission on that? In my opinion, from a pure capitalist standpoint, I sort of get it. What I am not comfortable with is someone who aggregates that kind of capital and then pieces out to Texas and engages in massive tax avoidance and that he makes. He pays a smaller percentage of his earnings earnings than a person on the factory floor. So don't get in the way of upside of compensation. But tax people have a progressive taxpayer.

[Kara Swisher]

It is linked to his performance. But that said, when he said my robot army, it made me frightened on humanity. He does this all the time. He's such a troll. Anyway, he'll propagate it, it doesn't matter. And we'll all be outraged. And then they'll tear down the West Wing and we'll be outraged anyway. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back.

[Scott Galloway]

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[Scott Galloway]

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[Kara Swisher]

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[Scott Galloway]

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[Kara Swisher]

Ever gone on vacation outside the country and felt like the food was just better? When I was in Japan recently, the produce and meat were amazing and even a minor skin issue that I usually have cleared up by the end of the two weeks. What's up with what we eat here?

[Scott Galloway]

Tomatoes are renowned, renowned for looking delicious but not tasting delicious.

[Kara Swisher]

Is some food actually better in other countries and what are they doing differently? A law passed in 1993 that said if you buying bread in a boulangerie, it must be made with four ingredients, essentially. Find out more this week on Explain It To Me. New episodes every Sunday, wherever you get your podcasts. Foreign. Hi, this is Bella Freud. Each week on Fashion Neurosis, I invite guests from the world of fashion, art.

[Scott Galloway]

Sport, music and literature to lie on.

[Kara Swisher]

My couch and explore the connection between fashion and identity. This week on the show, I welcome the actor Tessa Tom Thompson. Sometimes while I'm tidying, I'll just put on one of the heels that I've left behind and the idea of sort of like clomping around my house, sort of tidying in a heel. Yeah, I love Find fashion neurosis on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, Scott, let's hear a prediction. What is your prediction? Just so you know, New York City Mayor Eric Adams just endorsed Andrew Cuomo, which I predict will make Zoran Mondani the.

[Scott Galloway]

That'll give him another 11 votes.

[Kara Swisher]

Jesus, they want that Curtis to get out. Curtis ain't getting out. I think. I think Curtis is in with him and his cats are in it to winning.

[Scott Galloway]

I think Curtis is the Ralph Nader of the conservatives. He's like, no, it's democracy.

[Kara Swisher]

I like Curtis a little bit. I like. He seems insane, but I like him.

[Scott Galloway]

I like the hat.

[Kara Swisher]

I like the whole thing. I like the cats. I like, I like. I, I actually have enjoyed him weighing in during these debates. It's usually Mandani and Cuomo scream.

[Scott Galloway]

So was a guy like that. New York's such an amazing city, they always bring out an interesting guy. Remember the guy, the rent is too dumb. The guy with the black gloves, he just kept saying, the rent is too damn high.

[Kara Swisher]

He was right. They're trying to get him to pull out so that Cuomo is doing everything possible. That's nothing to do with the voters. It's like Trump's help get Air Adams out. You know, everything except appeal to voters, which would seem to me to be the thing to do if you want to be mayor of New York. But whatever.

[Scott Galloway]

Trying to get people to pull out often doesn't work.

[Kara Swisher]

Okay, let me hear this prediction, said.

[Scott Galloway]

My 15 and 18 year old. My prediction is the following. So America is run for profits. What dictates our society is shareholder value, the worth of someone's character, their ability to have healthcare, their ability to have freedom, their ability to have a broader selection set of mates is based on their ability to acquire shit or signal that they can acquire shit through monetary economic power. That's how American is run. The Chinese government is essentially run and China is run for control and for power. And one of the ways they do that is they're much longer term thinkers about what positions them long term geopolitically. And I think essentially what's going to happen here is the following. I was sort of blown away by the fact that this open weight browser that Sam Altman has basically shoplifted that anybody can use because it's sort of technically open way to sort of like open source. I think if I'm the ccp, I am pissed off. They have their problems but essentially Trump is really fucking with them with these sclerotic 100% tariffs, non tariffs and they are being very strategic. And they said, okay, we're gonna come for the heart and lungs of Republican voters and hey folks, I don't know if you heard but we buy 50% of your soybean crop crops from these red states. We're stopping and we're starting to buy from Argentina. And your president is stupid enough to give Argentina money. As we transfer business, that business is never coming back. Farmers are out of business. They're now going after rare earth minerals that are key play a real strategic role in everything from cars to missiles. And I think the next, I think after going for our hearts and lungs, they're going to go for our jugular the following way. I think they're going to release a series of open source or open weight AI tools that crush or put real pressure on our magnificent 10 and take down our market and put us into a western recession. If I were in charge of CCP defense and strategy, I would be saying to Xi, if we really want to go for the jugular, America is now a giant bet on AI. Let's make this a a bad bet. And the way we're going to do that is we're going to release a series of deep seek and deep seek like competitors that are free open source and essentially do the following. My biggest client, I started a strategy firm when I was 26. My biggest client was the Gap. We did a bunch of demographic research and the group we found that was most underserved and I could relate to this was single mothers who wanted their kids to feel good about themselves because they were very self conscious about their lower income and that dad wasn't around. And so we positioned what I thought was the most brilliant thing in the world at that time. And that, as we said, 80% of the gap for 50% of the price. And we targeted single mothers. And it was called Old Navy. And Old Navy went from zero to a billion faster than any retailer in history. I think China is about to go Old Navy with open AI or byd.

[Kara Swisher]

Going BYD on.

[Scott Galloway]

Exactly. But they're going to do it in AI and they're going to say, here's an idea. Have you been talking to a bunch of amazing AI tools that are all free, that you can build on top of? You don't have to pay a subscription fee. We're not going to pelt you with advertising. And guess what? We're going to take the magnificent 10 down and we're going to take your whole fucking economy down.

[Kara Swisher]

Make them five and a half. The magnificent five and a half. Oh, wow, that's really good. I like that. I like it. I like it a lot. And by the way, for people who aren't paying attention, she has just consolidated power over the ccp. He's made it smaller. He's gotten rid of people. He's really runs the show anyway. Great one, Scott. Okay, well, that's quite a. I like that. I'm gonna watch that one carefully. Anyway, we wanna hear from you. Send us your questions about business, tech or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com pivot submit a question for the show or call 85551 pivot. Elsewhere in the Karen Scott universe. This week on Prof. G Conversations, Scott spoke to one of my favorites, Heather Cox Richardson, a historian at Boston College, author and the voice of the newsletters from an American Very popular. Let's look. Listen to a clip. One of the things that frustrates me to no end is the idea that there was ever a United States of America that was not multicultural is simply a fantasy. And you know, we talk in history about how whiteness is a constructed category and you know that, you know, you get all kinds of pushback on that. But it is worth remembering that Irish immigrants to the United States were not considered white. You know, I just sit there and think, okay, we're just going to make it up, right? We're just, just going to construct our idea of what the past looked like. Because the reality has always been that the United States was about working together as communities within a very, very broad range of people. She is amazing. She's an amazing. And everybody should read her and listen to this.

[Scott Galloway]

I love her. I think she's an inspiration. I love a professor who's just like so passionate about a very narrow niche of the world and it's is like after working her ass off for 30 years, she's an overnight success. I just love that she's getting a ton of what I think is well earned recognition and attention. I love having her on. Wow.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh, good for you. Oh, good for her. Yeah, she's a very sharp historian and reminder. We're going on tour. We're gonna be going to Toronto, Boston, New York, D.C. chicago, San Francisco and LA. We're sold out in Toronto and San Francisco already. But please visit PivotTour.com for tickets. Especially you Chicago. We got an extra large venue for you guys cause you have big shoulders. Come see us there. Okay, that's thanks for listening to Pivot and be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back next week. Scott Read us out.

[Scott Galloway]

Today's show is produced by Lara Naman, Zoe Marcus and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Interchat Entering this episode, Jim Mackle edited the video. Additional support from Kate Gallagher and Annika Robbins. Thanks also to G. Burrows, Ms. Averro and Dan Shalon. Nishak Khuras Vox Media's executive producer of podcast. Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for listening. Listening to Pivot from New York magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com pod we'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Kara Safe travels.