AI Blunders, The GOP Cries Censorship, and Adam Neumann’s Comeback

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[Podcast Theme Music]

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

Scott Galloway: And I'm the Fifth Dimension. [Singing] Would you like to ride in my river, oh, blue? Would you like to ride in my river?

Kara Swisher: Oh, my God. [Laughs] Huh? So, Scott, explain why we're playing the song "Up, Up, and Away" by Fifth Dimension.

Scott Galloway: Because I was sharing a moment from my childhood with this great song, and I incorrectly said it was from the Tijuana Brass. I went down a rabbit hole. I pulled it up and got fascinated with it. Their lead singer, Florence LaRue, is like crazy hot. Not that that means anything. I've got a lot of Fifth Dimension on my playlist.

Kara Swisher: They did "The Age of Aquarius," right?

Scott Galloway: Yes, "The Age of Aquarius." Or "Inside Aquarius." They had like five top-selling albums.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, they did. It's a nice sound. Set the record straight. Thank you. And we got to hear some lovely music together. That was nice. By the way, we were together this morning on CNN Morning Show.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. Wasn't that nice?

Kara Swisher: There we go. What were we talking about? Poppy and Dawn. They couldn't say "Pussy Ass Bitch" on the show, but we did say it.

Scott Galloway: They played it. Oh, they played "pussy ass." They didn't say it. I didn't know if we could say it, right? Did you wonder?

Kara Swisher: No, here's the thing. You can say it. I cannot.

Scott Galloway: Well, that's fair. I cannot. But I'm saying I think they bleep it, right? Wouldn't they bleep it? Or maybe not. I have no idea.

Kara Swisher: Well, it was in Congress, so we should be able to say it. I barely remember. I did chocolate mushrooms last night, and the hit time was 8 a.m. I don't remember anything.

Scott Galloway: Congress spent our taxpayers' dollars blowing the top off Chrissy Teigen's pussy ass bitch. That was her tweet, too.

Kara Swisher: Oh, my God. And Donald got defended. That guy, the misogynist, sexist, weirdo, whatever. All those things. Anyway, we'll talk about that in a minute. By the way, speaking of pussy ass bitch in that area, my mother-in-law did not want us to characterize her gift, which I love, as a penis candle.

Scott Galloway: Okay. It's a dick candle.

Kara Swisher: Well, no, it's not. A dandle.

Scott Galloway: Okay, let's call it a dandle.

Kara Swisher: A dandle. Okay, I just want to move along from that. But nonetheless, they're lovely. You can get them at MoMA. And Scott declined my kind offer to give him one.

Scott Galloway: I like it when candles make me feel insignificant.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Thanks for that. "Penis Candle" should be the name of our next podcast. That's what I said. What do you think?

Scott Galloway: Anyways.

Kara Swisher: Okay. Let's move on. You did pick a good time to leave Twitter. I hope you did. On Wednesday, Twitter experienced a wave of technical issues that left many users unable to tweet, follow, or send DMs. It's not clear what caused the issue, but errors have Twitter CEO Elon Musk spooked.

Scott Galloway: Well, if you fire a lot of people and then you try to put in new things... I think he was putting in a new—whenever you do anything big change, like we said, you could have problems. He reportedly directed staffers to focus on site stability ahead of the Super Bowl Sunday because he sold some ads. Historically, it's the highest grossing revenue day of the year. I suspect it's not going to be one of his highest revenue grossing of history.

Kara Swisher: We've got a lot more Twitter talk later in the show, but today we'll zero in on Big Tech's week in Washington and the threats from all sides. Also, Adam Neumann lays out his plans for his latest venture, and Scott Galloway can't wait to invest. And we'll take a listener question from a small business owner with a bone to pick. But did you get off Twitter?

Scott Galloway: Oh, no. I'm back. I'm getting really good, though. I wrote a tweet I'd love to put out tomorrow. I'm like, "I choose crazy."

Kara Swisher: Oh, right. That's true. From normal. That's Sarah Huckabee's response. Did you see Sarah Huckabee's response? That was crazy. Speaking of crazy. My gosh. "The dividing line in America is no longer between right or left. The choice is between normal or crazy." You got to give her kudos. It's not that easy to be that angry and that boring at the same time.

Scott Galloway: Yes, she was. She was. I was fine with the thyroid cancer thing, which I feel terrible for her to have. But then she started off on that story. And I was like, "Land it, Sarah. What is going on?" Then she went off onto something. She didn't define anything. Did you know that? She didn't say what CRT was. So half of America was like, "What?"

Kara Swisher: Yeah, she covered a lot. She did a tour of the angry, woke kind of stuff. It's interesting, though. That speech is kind of the kiss of death. I mean, Bobby Jindal.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. Marco Rubio, although Senator Rubio still plays.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, he sweated, right? He drank water or whatever he had. But they try to find someone. It's almost like it's a little bit cursed. It's a great opportunity, but oh, well. I don't know. Whatever. It was a terrible speech, Sarah. And you get busy with the Latinx thing over in Arkansas. I'm sure it's the most major issue of your citizens.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, the AI race continues, but competitors are stumbling out of the gate. Alphabet shares fell 7% following a demo of Google's new AI chatbot, Bard. In a $100 billion blunder, the company released a promotional video where Bard gives the wrong answer to a question about the James Webb telescope. We talked about this, the wrong answer. You said you rely on it. I said, wrong answer. What do you think? They lost a lot of money for it. They look like idiots.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, it does feel as if, regardless of whether or not—I was on Ian Bremmer this morning on PBS because I'm fancy.

Kara Swisher: You're fancy.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. But in the short term, regardless of whether AI lives up to the promise, it does feel like it's going to create a transition or a reallocation of about half a trillion dollars in market cap from Google to Microsoft.

Kara Swisher: Maybe. Well, it's kind of already happening. Temporarily. We'll see who. Microsoft's above $2 trillion. I think if and when they release an actual demo of being powered by AI, I think that's going to cause a lot of excitement. But yeah, momentum definitely has its own momentum. And they're playing catch up. And that was very much a self-inflicted one. I think it's commercial with the wrong answer.

Scott Galloway: And then Microsoft, of course, unveiled its AI updates to Bing and Microsoft Edge. And reporters found incorrect answers there, too. The chatbot told one reporter that Tom Hanks was behind Watergate.

Kara Swisher: I think he was in a movie about Watergate. He wasn't? Not that nice man. Did you see "Bridge of Spies"? Yes, I did with Tom Hanks. That was great. He's great. Steven Spielberg, also "The Fabelmans." He has seldom been in a movie that is bad.

Scott Galloway: Microsoft says the Bing chatbot will supply more detailed answers.

Kara Swisher: "The Money Pit"?

Scott Galloway: Oh, no, no. He's been in a lot of movies. Oh, "The Money Pit." You're right. That's right. Okay, but not bad. Not bad. But Microsoft says Bing's chatbot will supply more detailed answers to search. It's just better search.

Kara Swisher: "Turner and Hooch." Okay. Why don't you become a chatbot? You just all of a sudden yell—I get it wrong a lot. I get it wrong a lot.

Scott Galloway: Those are—you do, you do.

Kara Swisher: I get it wrong a lot. The 12th Dimension. Anyway, they'll be able to provide itineraries for trips. I don't—okay, sure. Microsoft also seems to be putting safeguards on its bot. A reporter at Insider asked the bot to write a cover letter and it responded, "That would be unethical and unfair to other applicants." Whatever. We're in the early stages of this thing. We'll see.

Scott Galloway: We'll see. Yeah, who knows. The original Internet was pretty wrong a lot in any case.

Kara Swisher: But there was—you know what one of the first early Internet sites was? With a video?

Scott Galloway: I give up.

Kara Swisher: Something you were deeply involved in or covered or started. I did cover it. It was a picture of—it was a video of a coffee maker where they were doing a lot of these early Internet stuff at a university. And you watched the coffee brew. That was what it was.

Scott Galloway: That's a great story. Do you have more of these in your book?

Kara Swisher: I do. Jesus Christ. Do you know what? Guess what? I have a whole section on you.

Scott Galloway: Do you? Oh, yes. Really?

Kara Swisher: You're in it.

Scott Galloway: I like that. Thanks.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, it's profane. Anyway, there's a Walt section and a you section. They contrast really nicely.

Scott Galloway: Which is bigger?

Kara Swisher: Probably Walt.

Scott Galloway: Who has a bigger dick handle?

Kara Swisher: No, I'm having lunch with Walt this weekend.

Scott Galloway: Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. We're going to go over some things. And then you and I will go over some things. I want to be factually correct, unlike these chatbots.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, more layoff news. Walt Disney will cut 7,000 jobs and over $5 billion in spending and reorganize the company. The new structure will rearrange the company into three divisions: entertainment, ESPN, and theme parks. He's really tightening it up. The monetary cuts will include $3 billion from movies and TV. Bob Iger clarified the company does not intend to spin off ESPN, but it's ready to be spun off if he wants to. So, Scott, one of the benefits of this is the proxy fight with Nelson Peltz is now over, according to all kinds of reports. He has announced that he is okay. He's ending the proxy fight. He's very happy with the restructuring. Obviously, the stock has gone up. He has a billion dollars worth of stock. That's a lot of stock. You have to give respect to that. He had a website called "Restore the Magic," and he liked what he saw from Bob Iger.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I would bet it was a little bit different than that. I would bet Bob called him and said, "Nelson, what do you want to do here?" And he said, "Well, X, Y, and Z." And Bob said, "Nelson, this is what we're going to do." And gave Nelson the impression that this stuff was his idea and said, "Nelson, if we do these things and I announce them in 48 hours, would you stop the proxy fight? It's a distraction." And he agreed. So I would bet they coordinated on this. He went on to Jim Cramer, who's been hand in glove with him on this thing, it feels like. Then he also said he's open to becoming friends again with Iger. "I agree. I'll pick up lunch or breakfast again next time, I promise. I didn't realize until I just watched this. Now it's his birthday. I might even send him a gift." I mean, I just can't even. Whatever. Okay, fine. Yeah, see you on the golf course.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, whatever. Oh, God. It's a win for all of them. It's a win for Nelson. It's a win for Bob. It's a win for shareholders.

Scott Galloway: Exactly. I'm glad he pressed him. I'm glad he did it. He's, as usual, proving that he's quite good at being the CEO rather than a retiree.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, this is definitely the year of efficiency, so to speak. The market liked it. Year of efficiency. We should have a theme song for that, but go ahead. There you go. And cutting staff, reorganizing, and something I hadn't thought of, and it makes a lot of sense, is I guess Comcast owns a third of Hulu and they own two thirds and everyone pelted the markets saying, okay, they have to buy it, they buy the rest. Or sell it.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I actually think they're going to sell it now. Yeah, yeah. Help pay down the balance sheet. Also, I'm just not entirely sure. What do you make of Hulu? What is...

Kara Swisher: I use it. I watch it. It's sort of the one I forget about. And I'm like, "Oh, what's on Hulu?" The only reason I use it, and I do use it, but I don't have to make any money off of it, is for live TV. Occasionally, I want to watch the State of the Union or something. It's expensive. There's some very expensive sports. My son signed up for a sports practice. They're telling me it was like $90, $100 a month, some basketball things. We could watch basketball in Croatia.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. And they were sort of the pioneer in advertising on streaming. But I think now they cut costs. They have so many amazing businesses. They cut costs. Disney Plus has a very strong positioning and signal around what it stands for. Hulu is kind of like "The Handmaid's Tale." I feel like Hulu struggles for an identity.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I think we don't need this many. I just don't. It's like one of those friends you call at the last minute when all the other friends are busy. You're like, "Oh, Hulu." And every now and then there's some very good things on there. It's like you and me, essentially.

Scott Galloway: I was waiting for that.

Kara Swisher: No, you and I had a lovely dinner last week with Jihan and my son and my friend. And it was good. By the way, Jihan—George Han—calls Bob Iger a DILF, just so you know.

Scott Galloway: DILF, yeah. I've heard that before. I'd have to agree.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, Salesforce is also dealing with another activist investor. It's fifth, Dan Loeb's Third Point. He's a tough customer. He probably took an unknown size. He had taken a stake in Disney and pushed to spin off ESPN unsuccessfully. But he's in there. There's all of them. The whole party is in Salesforce, only one or two in Disney. But this is interesting. Them sort of coalescing. They're trying to make some money, these hedge funds. I would have picked, if I were going to come in behind someone, I would have picked Disney. I think Disney's the better buy right now. But yeah, it's Salesforce. Salesforce has gotten a lot of attention. Elliott's in there. There's another one. I forget. They're all in there, all the names, which is interesting. Someone told me I was asking why they got in there. They said they get behind each other and they—you know, Loeb wants Peltz to make the trouble to get the—they only want the stock up, right, essentially. So they tend to get in behind and draft off the others.

Scott Galloway: I think that's a little bit of a recent phenomenon in that sense. There aren't that many big targets where these guys have raised so much capital that there aren't that many opportunities to put a billion, $2 billion to work in a great company that's kind of—I don't want to say on sale—but trading down. And so they read these decks and they're like, "Well, what Nelson's saying is making sense. He's doing all the hard work. I'll just come in with some capital and hope there's a raise in the price." And then they get to exit more easily and save face. They're not accused of being short term if they sell after a few months if the stock pops or whatever.

Kara Swisher: Someone was going through the Disney thing with Loeb. I guess Peltz got in around 100 and he got in a little higher, 120. So he's got to stick around to get this stock up. It did pop with these Bob Iger changes. So it's interesting. It seems kind of old school to be doing this, not really investing in things. But I guess this is what they do.

Scott Galloway: This is going to be the year of the activists. There's just a ton of big—you're probably going to see—I mean, we already see one activist at Google. It was down. You're probably going to see another one piling into Google behind, I think it's TCI. There's just too much—for the first time, stocks are not at constantly pinging all-time highs. And also the strategy here that just appears to be the gift that keeps on giving is come into a company and say, "Figure out what 10 or 15 percent of your workforce you're going to lay off." And they're all doing it. The markets love it. And they don't even have to do anything that complicated or that difficult other than, quote unquote, efficiency.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, it'll be interesting. I keep saying we should start an activist firm, Scott.

Scott Galloway: You do keep saying that.

Kara Swisher: We'd be so good. We'd be so irritating. We'd be—we just like—we'd be irritating. Trust me on this.

Scott Galloway: It's hard work. It's overrated.

Kara Swisher: I know, but we're professionally irritating already. Why don't we make some dough?

Scott Galloway: I give you that. We got that down.

Kara Swisher: All right. Speaking of which, let's get to our first big story. Republicans finally got through to Twitter customer service. In a Republican-led hearing this week, House members grilled former Twitter executives about alleged censorship and the company's handling of the Hunter Biden laptop story. Former execs, including Yoel Roth, had to painfully explain Twitter's decision-making process to House members, including Marjorie Taylor Greene. But here's an exchange between Republican House member Byron Donalds and Yoel Roth after Roth explained that he didn't have a contact with anyone from the Biden team.

Byron Donalds (audio clip): But the email is very clear: "More to review from Biden team." The response three hours later at the bottom: "Handled these." What does "handle these" mean?

Yoel Roth (audio clip): My understanding is that these tweets contained non-consensual nude photos of Hunter Biden, and they were removed by the company under...

Byron Donalds (audio clip): Hold on, real quick, Mr. Roth. How could you know so much about the content of these tweets? I mean, as far as I'm concerned, these are just web addresses. I don't know what's in these tweets. You have these things committed to memory that you know the content, but you don't know who you talked to at the Biden team?

Yoel Roth (audio clip): Sir, I didn't meet with the Biden team.

Kara Swisher: Wow, this is so ridiculous. What an idiot. I'm sorry, Byron, you're an idiot. You can see naked pictures and should take them down, non-consensual. But the hearing produced one shocking example of U.S. government trying to censor Twitter. Guess who it was? President Trump's White House called the company to remove the tweet by Chrissy Teigen that called Trump, quote, "a pussy ass bitch." This is such a waste of taxpayer money. And they looked idiotic because it turns out it was the Trump administration who had the most meddlesomeness. None of this is censorship and none of this is a conspiracy theory.

Scott Galloway: Well, it just goes from dumb and this literally is "Dumb and Dumber." It's the first premise that Twitter has an obligation to free speech is just dumb. CNN or Fox, if they don't bring on AOC or Ted Cruz to comment on something, are they censoring? Correct. They get to censor. That's called a media company. It's not a censor. Take the word out. It has nothing to do with First Amendment. They try and call balls and strikes. They get it wrong all the time. They got it wrong on the Hunter Biden thing. They probably shouldn't have suppressed the story in the New York Post. And they changed it pretty quickly. But they also got it wrong over letting a president continue to organize an insurrection on their platform. That's correct. And the only assertion here that was troubling and worth digging on was: did agencies or individuals from the federal government put pressure on them to produce or delete certain content? And what we found is that there was no there there. The FBI did not put pressure on Twitter. There's no evidence that the Biden administration put pressure on Twitter to pull the story down. What we did find out is that, in fact, the federal government, specifically the person who is the commander in chief, was putting pressure on Twitter to take down a tweet. And it's just the whole thing. I watched the whole thing and I'm like, head in hands. You can imagine the CCP in China going like, "Just send every balloon we have over there. They're idiots." They're dumb. They make assertions that aren't true. And then the only one who was at risk here was Yoel Roth, who got death threats. And they started it because they made up stuff. I'm sorry, this group of Republican House members are liars, actual liars about things. And they just make it up. Twitter can decide what can live online or not. It's not a public square. It's a private company. They can do what they want. They made a lot of mistakes on both sides, by the way, but mostly in being acquiescent to the Trump administration. So they didn't get in trouble. It was so clear what was going on here is these very liberal people were worried about seeming too liberal. And so they bent over backwards to let a sitting president just cause an insurrection. That's pretty much it.

Kara Swisher: I thought the low moment—the real low moment—was Representative Clay Higgins said, "Your lawyers know essentially that you could be arrested for interfering with election." Okay, so I immediately look up, who is Clay Higgins? Clay Higgins did not graduate from college, joined the police force where he resigned from the police force under investigation that he assaulted a suspect while handcuffed. And went on to be the manager of a car dealership. Nothing wrong with that. There's dignity in any work. But this is an individual that is telling the general counsel or former general counsel of Twitter that they're going to be arrested. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that Mr. Representative Higgins doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about. "Shut the fuck up" is what I keep thinking the whole time. And it's just—I'm like, okay, here's a guy who's totally unqualified and saying arrests are coming to people who agreed to testify. And also, what do they want from the—everyone there has been fired. What do they want from those people?

Scott Galloway: Actually, Yoel wasn't fired. Yoel left, right? Yoel left because he couldn't deal with it.

Kara Swisher: Oh, I thought he was fired.

Scott Galloway: No, no, no, no. He left. I mean, Vijay Gade certainly was by Elon, but Elon kept—remember, Yoel stayed and tried his best. He's a terrific guy. He doesn't deserve all this crap that he got.

Kara Swisher: But let me just say the clearest explanation of the hearing came from another House member, Democrat Maxwell Frost. Here's what he said. He's one of the youngest—I think he is the youngest member of Congress.

Maxwell Frost (audio clip): I've been sitting here for over two hours and I'm still not really seeing the point of this hearing. Is it to solve the problems of the American people, what people are struggling with? No, we get it. My Republican colleagues wish that the Hunter Biden story would have helped them win the 2020 election. And that didn't happen. And so they're angry about it. And that's the point of this hearing.

Kara Swisher: Yep, that's exactly the point of this. We need more youth. We need more youth. Congress gets older every day. He essentially said "what the fuck" politely, right? WTO. We need more individuals who look at the world and can represent—the average age of an American is 38. The average age of Congress is 64. That means for every 40-year-old Congress person, we have someone who's 88. Or crazy. I mean, the Marjorie Taylor Greene stuff. Honestly, honey. Camilla Soprano. Stop. Come on. You got to love the outfit. You got to love the outfit.

Scott Galloway: I actually did like the outfit.

Kara Swisher: But whatever she wants to wear, knock yourself out. But shut up. Just shut up about this. It persists online. Even after today, people are like, "Oh, no, it really happened." I'm like, "No, it didn't." Go find another—go investigate Sasquatch. We still haven't found Sasquatch. So go out. Go for that. But they weren't planning this.

Kara Swisher: Biden's best moment at the State of the Union. The reason why we tune into these things is occasionally you're looking for an unscripted moment that reveals something. He was really good on his feet.

Scott Galloway: He was. Anybody who doubts it, contact my office. I'll give you a copy of the proposal. "That means Congress doesn't vote. Well, I'm glad to see you. I tell you, I enjoy conversion." He drove them in. He drew them in perfectly.

Kara Swisher: Well, but not only that, he came across as gracious and didn't flinch. Not sleepy. Was not scared, didn't get angry, just said, "Okay, so we can all agree that Social Security, Medicare." He was very good on his feet. And it's really important for him because he would be a lock on renomination right now if it wasn't for one thing. And that is what I would argue are really credible concerns about his age. He seemed pretty lively to me.

Scott Galloway: Well, that's my point. I think he showed what I'll call real—I don't know what the term is—neuroplasticity or agility. The ability to kind of respond like that in real time. You can't do that if you're losing it.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, that's right. You know what I think you should do? Tell me what you think of this. If someone called me and said, "What would your advice be to the president around State of the Union?" I think you should pull an FDR and say, "I just want to say thank you for your grace and your patience. As many of you know, I suffered with a stutter for much of my life, and it's reappearing as I get older. And so I hope you know that I have the words and I have the ideas. Sometimes I just can't get them out as clearly as I would hope." I think he should say that.

Scott Galloway: He did pretty well. I don't think he'd stumble. They all stumble. Are you kidding? They all stumble. It's just you don't notice.

Kara Swisher: No, but he does have a speech in front of him. He does, but he's had that forever. If you go way back and look again. He took a different approach on the State of the Union, the correct one, speaking about the dangers that social media poses to children. Let's listen.

Joe Biden (audio clip): We must finally hold social media companies accountable for experimenting or running children for profit. It's time to pass bipartisan legislation to stop big tech from collecting personal data on our kids and teenagers online, ban targeted advertising to children, and impose stricter limits on the personal data that companies collect on all of us.

Kara Swisher: He widened it at the end and targeted. Why don't we just age-gate it? Yes. I think this is among the things. I like this stuff, but occasionally I'd like to see actual—"I am proposing a banning of TikTok" or "I am whatever it is." I think that was a moment where he should have said, "I'm going to present legislation" or whatever it is.

Scott Galloway: Well, yeah, but you can't ban TikTok. Facebook collects just as much data.

Kara Swisher: He should have all of them. Of course they can ban TikTok. Why not?

Scott Galloway: I know, but that's not the problem. The problem is Facebook. The problem is Instagram. The problem is all of them. Your point all along, and it's the right one, is we need some sort of systemic approach to privacy.

Kara Swisher: Yes, that's correct. I get it across all of them. TikTok is a national security threat. As much as I hate the people at Meta, they are Americans, and I don't think they wake up and think, "How do I undermine American democracy?" No, "How do I make money off of it and undermine American democracy?" Even if it hurts the Commonwealth, that's not their objective.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. They're sociopathic, but they're not psychopathic in the sense that they're not trying to hurt America. They're just ignoring the hurt to America. The CCP vis-a-vis whatever entities they control, every Chinese company wants to hurt America. So I think one is more about national security and others about antitrust and mental health and all that stuff. But I absolutely think he should have said, "I want to ban TikTok. And also I want to age-gate social media."

Kara Swisher: The other things he did was talk a lot about big tech's power and the tax system. Let's listen to that.

Joe Biden (audio clip): The tax system is not fair. But now, because of the law I signed, billion-dollar companies have to pay a minimum of 15 percent. God love them. I propose we quadruple the tax on corporate stock buybacks and encourage long-term investments. But Big Pharma has been unfairly charging people hundreds of dollars. We cap the cost of insulin at $35 a month for seniors on Medicare.

Kara Swisher: So a lot about antitrust, this idea of stopping online platforms from preferencing their own products. There's a lot in there. Even though Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are largely pro-corporate power, he's going more populist. And someone wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal today, "Is Joe Biden Bernie Sanders in disguise?" kind of thing.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, but I don't think the populist stuff is especially—I think you immediately—they go to this kind of rage, populist, conspiracy stuff on the right. And the left goes to this populist rage against the ghost in the machine that is corporate profits. And I don't think that's effective either. I think the gangster move for one of these politicians—and I've been thinking a lot about this—is we can bring taxes down as long as everybody pays them. And that is if you were to get rid of or have a unified rate similar to what Reagan did across personal or across current and long-term capital gains. There's no reason that sweat should be taxed at a higher rate than money. The money the money makes gets taxed at a lower rate than the money that work makes. Why?

Scott Galloway: Because old people make their money through work, old people make their money through stocks and houses. That is ridiculous. It's nothing but a transfer of wealth from the young to the old and the poor to the rich. In addition, corporations should be taxed. If they want to license their IP and engage in a double Dutch sandwich to reduce tax avoidance, if they want to do a reverse merger so their profits are taxed in a low domain, we've got to repatriate those taxes. I believe if you were to tax corporations at their fair level, their actual income and profits that they get from this country at 30 percent, and then you were to tax anyone who makes over a million bucks a year 30 percent, I think the actual effective tax rate across the rest of Americans would be somewhere around 15 or 18 percent. You could lower taxes. You just said everybody has to pay them. Everyone has to pay them.

Kara Swisher: One of the others – I agree with you on all this. I think it's interesting. He's moving towards trying to attract back working class people from the Republican Party. That's what he's doing. It's very clear. And I think he can do it. I honestly think he can. He seems like he's pulling a little Sanders in that the attractive parts of Sanders and Warren. He's pulling in the, he's whacking back at them. He's being dark branded a little bit. I think it's very effective. He also attacked something else, went with the Swifty fans attacking all kinds of fees, overdraft fees, credit card fees, hotel resort fees. I just paid a hotel resort fee. It was ridiculous. I cracked up when they mentioned that.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. I mean, like, thank God, resort fees. Those fees can cost you up to $90 a night at hotels that aren't even resorts. I mean, the Russian army, TikTok, teen depression, it's resort fees.

Kara Swisher: Well, they're kind of usurious. I would agree with it. It is bad. The airline fees, concert fees, everything. I think it's the power of Taylor Swift. They're fighting, of course, the Republicans are fighting to protect bank overdraft fees and things like that. So I like the fee attacks. I'm for it. It's definitely a time.

Scott Galloway: Popular. Popular. Occasionally, if you look down at your hotel bill and it's like nightly room rate, $300. Bill, $1,180.

Kara Swisher: Exactly. It's like, what? I was like, I didn't go in the pool. Like, if I go in the pool, you can use the resort. Didn't use the resort. I just walked through the lobby, essentially. Anyway, I think he did very well. And I think it's an interesting moment for the Democratic Party. By the way, you can also hear me discuss the State of the Union on my other podcast. A couple of weeks ago, I had three Republican strategists. Now I had three Democratic strategists. And it's really good. It's an On with Kara Swisher. So we discussed it.

Scott Galloway: Do you have another podcast?

Kara Swisher: Yes, I do. They were surprisingly upbeat on Biden. And these people had not been upbeat on Biden, but they were loving it.

Scott Galloway: The Democrats or the Republicans?

Kara Swisher: Democrats were loving Biden. And these Democrats who have been very critical of Biden were very loving, including one who worked for Bernie Sanders.

Scott Galloway: Anyway, he's doing great.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: All right. Let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about Adam Neumann's new pitch, your favorite guy, and take a listener question about minimum wage.

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Kara Swisher: Scott, we're back with our second big story and your favorite entrepreneur, one that made you famous in various and sundry fictional depictions of the WeWork scandal. Adam Neumann wants his tenants to plunge their own toilets or something like that. In a video released this week, Neumann finally describes the value prop behind Flow, his new real estate venture. Here's an edited clip.

Adam Neumann (audio clip): So number one, management company, branded technology first. Number two, real estate, asset management, a company that can buy real estate and asset manage real estate. Number three, financial services. And the fourth pillar is this mechanism that's going to take some of the value and share it with the value creators. If we can actually create a better experience in the building, then the building performs better and makes a higher NOI. If the building makes a higher NOI, then we'll be able to raise more money and buy more buildings. If we buy more buildings, then we'll be able to run more buildings and have more users in those buildings. And those users are going to start using our financial services.

Kara Swisher: Okay, that's not all. Neumann goes on to describe some of the benefits of having tenants who feel like they're owners, except they're not. Adam, here's another clip also edited.

Adam Neumann (audio clip): And then if we are able to take this value creating mechanism and share with the residents a portion of the value, it's going to make them feel ownership. If you're in your apartment building and you're a renter and your toilet gets clogged, you call the super. If you're in your own apartment and you bought it and you own it and your toilet gets clogged, you take the plunger. And it's the difference between feeling like you own something to just feeling like you're renting, from being transactional to actually being part of a community.

Kara Swisher: Those comments were made in November last year at a conference hosted by Andreessen Horowitz, a big investor. A16Z has invested $350 million in Neumann's Venture. I think this is nonsense. He invented apartments, rental apartments. This is really a big moment. I don't even understand what he's done. He did this before with WeLive. But please, Scott, I'd like you to give me your thoughts. Actually, I don't get the sharing of the economics. I mean, I get it conceptually, but I don't think it's going to work.

Scott Galloway: I do think if you think about residential real estate and rental real estate, it's probably the biggest asset class that doesn't have great brands. I mean, can you name a brand in the apartment industrial? There are millions of apartments, a multi-trillion dollar asset class.

Kara Swisher: Turn them into like hotels is what you're saying, hotel brands.

Scott Galloway: 100%. We have them in – it's weird. We don't really have them in, I mean, there's Equity Office or there's, you know, there's certain places that the Related Group is known for having really nice buildings. But for the most part, they're institutional brands or they're brands that have a reputation in the investment markets and they can raise property, whether it's Sam Zell's REITs or office REITs. But there isn't really a single one. Post Properties tried to do this. A company in the southeast tried to do it with apartments. But it makes sense that if you're a young person and you're mobile and you're getting moved around a lot. I'll give you an example. I'm a member of something called Inspirato, which is basically residences and luxury vacation spots.

Kara Swisher: Yes, the rich people holiday rental thing.

Scott Galloway: Yes, got it. Thank you. But they do – it's really smart. They have the same little things. They have the same technology in every house. You only have to figure out once how to turn on Netflix. They have the same type of refrigerator. They even have the same kind of decor. They have the same – they learn from you and they put the same food in the refrigerator. And it has a brand.

Kara Swisher: Sure.

Scott Galloway: There is no brand in rentals. So I think that's actually – the problem with it is it's all about buying right, which means buying slowly. So these companies like the iBuying things like Zillow, which basically closed their iBuying, and now Open Door, which is a total shit show going to zero in my view. Real estate is a slow local business. It's all about buying right. But the idea of trying to brand – I get it. A national series of apartments. Buy the buildings. You know, I talked to Brian Chesky about this. He's like, that seems expensive to buy all these buildings and then maintain them. And he goes, why not just put, you know, just have a company over it that does that business.

Kara Swisher: In the management business.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. And he's like, the rest of it, I don't, he goes, there's not enough money in the world to do this. And then the problems are rife when you really start to wade in here. He was right away, was like, no, no, thank you. They'd come to them, I think on some level, but it feels like WeWork. He did this before. WeLive didn't work, as you remember.

Kara Swisher: Do you remember WeLive?

Scott Galloway: Yeah, but that was more of like a cult. That was more like, hey, everybody, put on Nikes and drink Kool-Aid.

Kara Swisher: In the same, yeah. But you could do it in a city. But it would take 10 years and you'd have to do it smart and methodically. And he's not interested in any of that.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. He's definitely like a big thinker. He's very charismatic.

Kara Swisher: Very. He can raise a ton of money. What about the investing part? Would you want them to invest for you? Do the tenant landlords invest for them? And why would you plunge your own toilet if you rented something? The whole point of renting is you don't have to plunge your own.

Scott Galloway: I thought it was that if the economics of the building were better, you got some back. I didn't know it was a financial services company. That's where it all gets confusing and weird and a lot of jazz hands. But the thing about Adam is the reason why tech investors love him is he's all about scaling really fast. But here's the problem. When you scale that fast in an asset class that doesn't have network effects like renting desks or apartments.

Kara Swisher: Right, yep.

Scott Galloway: Like iBuy just overpaid. iBuying thought they could bring an algorithm to buying apartments in Nashville. And what it ends up is the best way to buy real estate is to really understand the color and the nuances of that local real estate and that thing you're buying and get a feel for what it's worth or not worth. And it's very hard. Even the institutional guys that went into Florida and bought tens of thousands of apartments found out it's really hard to manage them. Some they got right. Some they got wrong. Real estate is a local business. And unfortunately, it has a certain friction to it and a slowness to it that just doesn't fit with his mentality around investing.

Kara Swisher: All right. So this idea of infinite growth and appreciation in real estate, that really has to happen. And it's so cyclical. Let me read your takedown of WeWork's S1. You said WeWork had no scale effects. Let's see if residential estate is any better. You also wrote of WeWork, "There is no flywheel effect. The ancillary businesses are stupid, just stupid." In his Flow panel, Neumann went out of his way to describe the company's services as a flywheel. He likes a flywheel.

Scott Galloway: I remember, I mean, you're taking me back now, but I remember I was in Nantucket at an Inspirato, and I got the draft of the S1 for the WeWork, and I started reading through this. I remember saying to my family who was going to Nobadeer to go surfing, I had a great day planned. I'm like, I can't go. I've got to read this. This thing's unbelievable. I've got to read this. And I wrote that thing. And the rest is history, Kara. Now I'm here with you. So, but at one point they were flying Bombardier Global Expresses into a mountain every week. That's where so much happened to me. That's where I said that David Solomon or DJ Saul was a horrible DJ and a worse fiduciary for taking this garbage public.

Kara Swisher: And then the charming guy he is, he texted me like, let's go to coffee. I've had that call. Go ahead.

Scott Galloway: But he's not, I would argue that Adam is just not interested in building sustainable value. He's interested in packaging something and being a salesman and trying to become king of the world. He lost me at plunger.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I just don't. I don't think you can. I think these guys are so attracted to how do you scale really fast. And the reality is the majority of real enduring wealth, unfortunately, is built slowly because it involves a lot of thoughtful decision making, which is really hard to do.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. And every VC in the world is looking for something. And interestingly, let me just say, as part of the investment, A16Z now owns stakes in many of Neumann's buildings. If Flow is a flop, they retain the stake.

Kara Swisher: Oh, God. I'm like, I can see the inside of this meeting with Adam. Let's talk about plungers. I know exactly who did it. And it's just, it's nonsense. I'm sorry. Would you invest? I feel like nonsense right away. But you don't. You seem a little bit more, oh, it could work, I guess, I suppose.

Scott Galloway: Well, no. The reason why this is a much better investment is because if they buy hard assets and rental properties, they might overpay. And if they use leverage, they could lose all of their equity investment. But the idea of bringing a brand to rental units makes a lot of sense. It's all about where you buy in the cycle. It's a good idea. The problem is VCs don't have the right time horizon for real estate investment. There's a group of families in New York, and all they do is buy these low-rise office buildings and just buy them slowly. They don't lever up. And they're billionaires now, but they've done it over generations.

Kara Swisher: And they're having trouble now, too, right? And they said it's cyclical. It's utterly cyclical.

Scott Galloway: Well, cyclicality is a function, simply put, of how much leverage you have on your property. You can survive any cycle if you don't have too much leverage on it.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I get it. But this is what's going to happen. They'll go to banks and they'll say, we're Andreessen Horowitz, lever us up like 20 to one.

Scott Galloway: Adam, it's all about scale. Scale in the real estate business, getting big fast means overpaying. There's just no getting around it. You can't be opportunistic. It's just like, get bigger, get bigger fast. And that's their whole, the entire VC model that makes sense across processing power and network effects. ChatGPT, they need to get big fast. They need to spend billions of dollars to establish a leadership position.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: But that same mentality, that same speed is actually the opposite of how you build value in real estate. Real estate is a fantastic way to get rich slowly.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. You know, it just reminds me. This is like throwing a little WeWork, throwing a little WeLive, making it have kombucha on every floor, that kind of thing. That's what this is. It's like a dog's breakfast of all his former stuff. I'm sorry. Adam is incredibly charming. But I feel like this is, oh, yeah, yeah. This is all I can think is, oh, yeah, yeah. I don't know. Would you invest? Would you invest in this?

Scott Galloway: Oh, no, I wouldn't get near it.

Kara Swisher: Not near it. Because why?

Scott Galloway: I wouldn't get near it. I can see what's going to happen here. He's going to create a lot of excitement. He's going to do a lot of ribbon cuttings. I don't think Adam Neumann's actually interested in doing the hard work of building value. I think he should run BizDev for an enormous company because Adam Neumann set a new record. And that is we resent CEOs who make hundreds of millions of dollars, but usually they make hundreds of millions when the company and the shareholders have made billions. And so that's a real issue is what about CEO compensation? Now, what's unique about Adam Neumann is he's the first person to get hundreds of millions of dollars in commissions for losing billions of dollars of other people's money. I've never seen that before. So he's an unbelievably charismatic guy. He's a great salesperson, but he's not interested in building anything slowly. So he finds VCs. He says, we can scale this fast. He's an ingenious salesperson. Why isn't Andreessen Horowitz in here? For the life of me, I can't figure out how they would get anywhere near this.

Kara Swisher: Right. I don't understand. They were in Clubhouse. Well, Twitter you could almost make an argument for. They want to stay close to Elon. Maybe had some ideas about payments. Whatever. Throw $200 or $300 million in. That's not a lot for their fund. I can kind of say that. But real estate, VCs and real estate, unless it's like what Brian said, who's going to forget more about real estate than we're going to know. If you put a thin layer of management, for example, hotels, owning a hotel, the hotel business is a shitty business. Owning hotels is a shitty business. It's usually the third owner. The business that works and what they all do, none of these companies, the Four Seasons, none of them are hotel companies. They're management companies. And they find some guy who's in a midlife crisis who wants to own the local Four Seasons. And they say, okay, you own it. We have certain standards you have to live up to. And we take 8% of the top line.

Scott Galloway: So any year we make money.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, and if it doesn't work, they go get another one. They go find the next billionaire that wants to say he owns the Four Seasons Austin.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. And they take a management fee, and it's an amazing business. That's what all of them do. Starwood. And it's a brand. You know, like the Four Seasons. I always call Four Seasons Holiday Inn for rich people. You always know what you're getting. They do an amazing job. The business of actually investing capital. It's very capital intensive. It's management intensive. And I own apartment rental units. The key to it is going to every property, looking around, doing your diligence, understanding traffic patterns, understanding how long does it take? What are the schools like there? What if we knock down this bathroom and put it here? It's a local business. It's also if you're patient and have some skills, it's probably the most consistent way in America to get wealthy.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Because it's so incredibly tax-advantaged.

Scott Galloway: 100%. 100%.

Kara Swisher: Well, good luck, Adam. As usual, you'll do well. We know that. And you look fantastic, by the way.

Scott Galloway: He looks good. He's still married. I can't remember the fact he's still married. They have a very close relationship.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, they're really tight. They're a unit. All right, Scott, let's pivot to a listener question. You've got mail.

Scott Galloway: Hey, Kara, Scott. Scott, you recently and in the past have said you think a minimum wage should be raised to $25 an hour, regardless of the impact it has on small business. Being a small business owner myself and coming from a city with a low cost of living, I have two thoughts on this. First, I believe this would further entrench the large monopolies our government has allowed to thrive. Two, as a small business owner, I can tell you with 100% certainty that this would tank my business that provides for my wife and my two kids. I've always believed a better solution to the ridiculous $7 minimum wage we currently have is a federal law that mandates local governments set their own minimum wage, but require that they benchmark it to local cost of living instead of a one size fits all approach that you've recommended. What say you, Professor Galloway?

Kara Swisher: What say you, Professor Galloway? I shall leave this to you. It's a very good point by this very good listener.

Scott Galloway: Simply put, he's right. There you go. It should be indexed to the cost of living of either a state or a region. It probably needs to be a region. I think there should be exceptions probably around companies with, say, fewer than, I don't know, 10 or 20 employees. I think there should be an exception for people under the age of 18. I want my 15-year-old to get a job. It would be harder for him to get a job with a $25 minimum wage. If he's going to get a job at CVS or as a lifeguard, I think it'd be okay to have different rules for him. I think it'd be okay to say, all right, in Mississippi, $25 an hour would put a disproportionate number of businesses out of business. But let's index it to, okay, what is the poverty line? Let's go 20% above the poverty line. It's an algorithm that looks at the cost of living and wages. And we set a floor. But I think we're of like minds on this. And that is the floor needs to be or the number needs to be a lot higher than what it is now. But he's absolutely right.

Kara Swisher: Should there be a floor? Should there be a floor and then do it based on the region? I don't know the difference.

Scott Galloway: Well, so say it can't go below a certain amount. It's at seven, right? Seven, whatever. Well, no, I think in some, I think minimum wage needs to be somewhere. I can't imagine it would be any lower than $14 or $15. And also, I do believe that there are just some small businesses that should go away. I think there's some big companies that are very dependent on cheap labor that their stocks would get hit hard and I think it would be worth it. There's no free lunch here. But his point is a good one. And that is if you live in a small town in Mississippi and you make 18 bucks an hour and there's two of you, you can have an okay life. And so why would you do away with those businesses when you can get what you want on 18 bucks an hour? And that's what he's saying and he's correct.

Kara Swisher: This is a good answer. And Scott, that was a good answer for you too. Do you think it's going to happen?

Scott Galloway: No, unfortunately, this impacts disproportionately young people, poor people, and they're underrepresented in government. A good thing for a politician like Sleepy Joe could be a good topic. Look, if you wanted to, I think if you did the real analysis here, we don't talk about this a lot, but when you look at relationships, right, I think relationships are kind of the key component, the central component of what makes a healthy society and a rewarding, productive society. And the thing that really frays relationships is financial strength. I think if you look at obesity, I think if you look at depression, I think if you look at deaths of despair, if you look at opioid addiction, it all comes from the same place. And that is just massive shame and rage around financial strength. And so I would argue that if you were to substantially increase minimum wage, the amount of social services we end up paying in mental health, incarceration, medical care for people who are morbidly obese because they can't afford to eat well, kids who struggle developmentally because there's huge economic strain. And I think financial strain is the reason there's a lot of marital agita. Anyways, I think we get the money back. I think the best investment we could – a pretty easy investment we could – not easy. A really thoughtful investment that would have huge ROI is leveling up the part of our society. It's like college loans. It'll pay it back. It'll pay it back. You know what my son Louis said? I thought it was super smart.

Kara Swisher: By the way, he loved seeing you.

Scott Galloway: That's nice. He really did. He mentioned it several times. He said, they should pay me to go to school. So it would help our economy in the end. They should pay all of us to go to school because it would be a better economy.

Kara Swisher: There's a term for that. Yeah. The University of California in the 1950s to 1990s. They felt the same way. He's in this new economics class, and he loves it. I made him take it. I said, you need to take it. And he's like, ugh, I don't want to. And he loves it. He's really enjoying it a lot because it's making him think about UBI and everything else. And I really thought that was interesting. He just said it off the top of his head. It was interesting.

Scott Galloway: Well, we do. The model a little bit is, it's interesting, PhD students get paid.

Kara Swisher: Yes, they do. We find the best. And by the way, you want to talk about attracting the best and brightest from all over the world. We find these incredible people and then they come and they learn and we pay them. They have responsibilities. They teach. They do some work. But we pay them.

Scott Galloway: Right. And one of the things, one of the colleges, I'm not going to say which Alice got into, they actually pay you. They pay for your, you don't pay for education, but later when you have a salary, you have to pay a certain percentage back to the school. It's kind of, it was so creative and interesting. I didn't realize that.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, that's going to be legally challenged because they think that it's, to a certain extent, kind of indentured servitude. But people have talked about that for a long time. It's interesting. I like all interesting ideas around all these things. So we should be more creative about the way people are paid and the benefits that society gets from them. Anyway, great question. If you've got a question of your own and you'd like answered, send it our way. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions.

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Kara Swisher: Okay Scott, let's hear a prediction. And I think it should be that I was right about Joe Biden.

Scott Galloway: But go ahead, move along. That's a prediction.

Kara Swisher: Well, you know, I just want you to acknowledge it because you did read it. I mean, you didn't post it that I was right. I was saying he's gonna run and he's still in good shape.

Scott Galloway: I don't know if he's going to run. We'll see. Nonetheless, you listen to my podcast about it. But in any case, he's doing a great job.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I agree with you. All right. And by the way, I wrote, I'm constantly talking about Twitter and posts, but I wrote one of my most popular things. I underestimated Joe Biden.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, you did. And people like thousands of likes.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, you did. You don't listen to me. You don't listen to me. You have no respect for me.

Scott Galloway: I listen to you. Sometimes I don't hear you, but I listen to you.

Kara Swisher: You have no respect, no respect for my intelligence about these things.

Scott Galloway: Huge props and respect. Anyways, you pussy-ass bitch.

Kara Swisher: You pussy-ass bitch, I was right. Okay. Anyways.

Scott Galloway: By the way, Trump is a pussy-ass bitch. I think that was quite accurate.

Kara Swisher: I was just like, that's what we're talking about on CNN? That's the state of the nation right now?

Scott Galloway: Accuracy. Thank you, Chrissy Teigen. Do you know John Legend's on the board of Vox?

Kara Swisher: Yeah. I remember when we presented to the board, and I'm like, that guy looks like John Legend. And I'm like, it is John Legend.

Scott Galloway: That's right. Do you remember my joke? And they said, well, why do you think, hey, they said, I couldn't wait for the show. I couldn't focus on any, you know, they asked me a series of questions. He's very handsome, man. I couldn't, he's very handsome. I couldn't focus on anything they were saying because I had a joke lined up. And finally they go, well, why do you think the SPAC market is so terrible? And I'm like, because all of you loves all of me. And there was just an uncomfortable pause and no one got the joke.

Kara Swisher: I forgot. I thought that was great. They shouldn't have us into anything. They shouldn't. They should not let us in. I've served on a lot of boards, and I'm walking to the Vox board, and I feel like a seven-year-old about to throw up on himself.

Scott Galloway: Hey, hey, what do we think about the money? Jay Penske, should we torture him?

Kara Swisher: Jay, we're ready to torture you, too. Yeah.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, so what Kara's talking about is Vox raised $100 million, I think at a pre-400 or plus a 500 or a pre-500 or plus a 600. Something like that. I don't know. But when you think about it, it's a real victory.

Kara Swisher: I actually do know, but I'm not telling you, but go ahead.

Scott Galloway: Well, aren't you important?

Scott Galloway: Yes, I am. That is a real victory for Vox because if you look at a lot of publicly traded media companies right now—whether it's Gannett or BuzzFeed, I don't know, after the tripling of the stock—Vox in the private markets to raise $100 million in this market means the business is actually fairly healthy.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: Anyways, congratulations to Vox and Penske. And Jay Penske, get ready for us. We're so excited.

Kara Swisher: I rented a Penske truck recently.

Scott Galloway: I bet you did.

Kara Swisher: Moving Louie up to NYU.

Scott Galloway: I can see you in a Penske truck. That fits.

Kara Swisher: It was good. It worked.

Scott Galloway: On your way to a photo shoot at Vanity Fair.

Kara Swisher: You're so jealous.

Scott Galloway: Anyways, okay, so. Prediction. My prediction—and we talked about it before—I used to think that Disney was going to buy the rest of Hulu. I think they're actually going to sell it. And I don't know if you saw in another prediction around a sale of streaming, Warner Brothers Discovery has decided that they're not going to, they're backtracking on their initial strategy of creating one super bundle. With HBO Max and Discovery Plus, they're gonna keep Discovery Plus a separate entity. And I think what that means is they're keeping it distinct such that they can sell it.

Kara Swisher: This acquisition, Time Warner's just the acquisition that people love to overpay for.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, they do.

Kara Swisher: And I think that the numbers are obviously pretty weak so far. The stock has really not performed well.

Scott Galloway: No, it hasn't. Since Discovery Plus, since Aslov bought it, and I think he sees the writing on the wall. He's gonna have to pay off some debt and divest of some assets. He doesn't mind doing it either. So him keeping Discovery Plus separate makes it cleaner for a sale. Anyway, so I think two predictions of the streaming market. I think Disney's actually gonna sell Hulu, not acquire the rest of it.

Kara Swisher: To Comcast?

Scott Galloway: Yeah, or to a third party. But it's likely—I mean, they're playing chicken with each other. They're both all trying to posture that they want it or don't want it to try and get the best deal. But also, I think you're going to see Time Warner, or I'm sorry, Warner Brothers Discovery now, divest Discovery Plus to somebody, maybe to Disney even.

Kara Swisher: Although, will they have the money?

Scott Galloway: Anyways.

Kara Swisher: You're right. I think you're 100% right. He's got a real problem there. And I'm going to do a tiny prediction. As Bob showed, you can really shake things up pretty quick if you've got the skills, the mad skills, which he has as being a CEO. My prediction is that the olds are really showing they still got some juice in the tank.

Scott Galloway: The olds?

Kara Swisher: The olds.

Scott Galloway: You know, Bob Iger, over 70, President Biden doing the olds, me being a fashion model now.

Kara Swisher: I was wondering how we were going to work here. You're kind of an olds, but not quite yet, not as old as me.

Scott Galloway: But I'm saying what Biden showed in that thing is political experience matters. The ability—he's an old hand at this, and he handled it beautifully. He ran right over those loudmouth Republicans. And Iger did the same thing with pouts. He just handled them.

Kara Swisher: I appreciate the Golden Girls moment where this nation needs.

Scott Galloway: What this nation needs is more young people in positions of power.

Kara Swisher: I agree. I'm saying that, but don't count out the olds.

Scott Galloway: I just want to put them on an ice floe.

Kara Swisher: No, you don't want to put Bob Iger on an ice floe. He'd look good. I'm joking. I'm joking. All right, I'm just saying. I'm one of them. I'm getting old. I'm going to be 48 next year.

Scott Galloway: No, you're not. And don't you think you are more productive than ever? You're not going to be 48, but okay, sure. Don't you think you're more productive older?

Kara Swisher: I do.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I'm more productive because greatness is in the agency of others, and I surround myself with really talented young people who every year get more facile technology. I'm just disappointed that what I see, Kara, quite frankly, is I see young people who can't afford to have children. I see young people who have the deck stacked against them. And I see an America who's not investing in youth and creating a situation where young people feel so shitty about the future and they can't afford to have kids.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: So I think a lot of that is because we have old people in Congress. So Social Security is safe, but child tax credit goes away. And the first states that determine the president happen to be the oldest and widest states.

Kara Swisher: Oh, they're changing that. The Democrats just changed.

Scott Galloway: And that's a great move. That's a baller move.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. But we—I mean, it's pretty straightforward. Whether it's Nobel Prize winners or the best rock and roll music or the best tech companies in the world, they all have one thing in common. They're started, written, or inspired by people in their 20s. I like the young. I'm not saying—I'm just saying the old did a good job this week.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, okay. I'll give you that.

Kara Swisher: A win for the land of the walking dead.

Scott Galloway: No, they're not walking dead. Season 14.

Kara Swisher: You're wrong again. You didn't. Oh, God. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. You don't have to like age. Age is not a concept. It absolutely is not.

Scott Galloway: I think we should also encourage young people to—

Kara Swisher: How about that? How about both? How about both?

Scott Galloway: That's what Biden was talking. You can have both.

Kara Swisher: The answer is yes. Yes. The answer is yes. All right, Scott. Good prediction. I think you're correct on that one. All right. Let's read us out.

Scott Galloway: Today's show was produced by Lara Neyman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie and Jertot engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Emil Saverio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things in tech.

Kara Swisher: Also, special thanks to our friend and co-worker, Nick from Second Peninsula. We appreciate your good work over the last year.

Scott Galloway: And also, more importantly, we appreciate the Fifth Dimension.

Kara Swisher: Thank you, Nick.