Amazon union defeat, Alibaba’s antitrust fine, and Walter Isaacson on CRISPR

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

Scott Galloway: And, Kara, this is Preet Bharara. Bharara? Bharara? What's his name? Preet Bharara.

Kara Swisher: Bharara.

Scott Galloway: Oh, my God. He's joining Vox.

Kara Swisher: He is. What do you think about it? Bharara. What am I talking about? Why am I—oh, God. Bharara. Preet Bharara. I think—what do I think, honestly? I think there are a few people who have fallen further faster, as evidenced by he's now on Vox.

Scott Galloway: Let me get this. Manhattan DA to a podcaster to Vox.

Kara Swisher: Oh, come on. I mean, something's gone wrong.

Scott Galloway: Why can't you look at it as we're building a powerhouse brand here?

Kara Swisher: A powerhouse brand. That's what's going on. That's what's going on. That guy is seriously classing up the joint. He has heavy-duty brain. He's got a lot of brain matter going on. But also, just you can listen to his voice. And I can now say this, that he's joined the illegitimate world of podcasting. I think he would be a very gentle lover. I imagine him, that voice, after a bout of lovemaking saying, honey, honey, I'll make some Hot Pockets and break out the Lancer's wine. I just think he'd be a very gentle lover.

Scott Galloway: I'm not going to go into the history of some lawyers in New York, but there's quite a few that have issues. That guy's got a brain the size of Vox. He's huge. I mean, he's seriously, I don't know what we're paying him, but he basically classed up the joint. Classed up the joint. That's a big deal for us.

Kara Swisher: Spank off. We're going to be hanging with Preet quite a bit. He's coming on. I'm going to bring him on next week. And you're going to be your best behavior. You can be nice to him when he comes on and discusses.

Scott Galloway: Oh, no, no. I've already decided he and I are going to be very close friends.

Kara Swisher: Okay, good. He and I are going to be very close friends. He's wonderful. He's really great. And he knows where all the bodies are buried. He's Mr. Legal Expert and all kinds of stuff. And he's actually, he's a really, he has many interests beyond just legal. I think he's really kind of enjoyed getting fired by Trump.

Scott Galloway: Well, he made a career out of it.

Kara Swisher: Well, yes, but he also is a very good legal person. Anyway, all right, listen. Well, the Southern District. I mean, actually, the Southern District, if you could SPAC that thing.

Scott Galloway: Yes, I know. That's one of the best brands in the world. Did they base the Billions guy on him?

Kara Swisher: They may have.

Scott Galloway: Oh, that's interesting. That's interesting. Because you know what my other opening was going to be?

Kara Swisher: No.

Scott Galloway: I'm Scott Gallo, and I just matched on Tinder with the Queen of England. Is it too early for her to date? Is it too soon? Is it too soon? Where did you come up with that? I got to be honest. He's single. I got to be honest. Older women love me. Women my age and younger women want nothing to do with the dog. Can you imagine if she fell in love with you? That's like a movie. She met you in front of me. I can see it. I can see it. And then you can do an Oprah interview together.

Kara Swisher: I'll tell you one thing though. That Prince Philip guy, he's another hottie. That guy was hottie. We're going to move on. That guy was hot. Okay. Do you see that guy in a kilt?

Scott Galloway: I do. That guy was a tall drink of lemonade. Okay. And he was a class act. Rest in peace.

Kara Swisher: Not every time. He had some missteps.

Scott Galloway: Look at his life as a movie. Don't focus in on the few frames that weren't great. That guy was a classic.

Kara Swisher: There were quite a few of those frames. Anyway, it's fine. You know what? Rest in peace, Prince Philip. Call me. Queen of England, call me.

Scott Galloway: Okay. Microsoft is acquiring speech recognition firm called Nuance.

Kara Swisher: Good segue.

Scott Galloway: I don't know how to segue from that statement. But nonetheless, they bought a $16 billion deal and nobody's paying attention. Everyone's focused on whether some stuff's good for the world or not. Healthcare. Healthcare. Cloud products for healthcare.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Well, thanks for that thoughtful analysis of the situation.

Scott Galloway: Well, they're all getting into the big businesses of healthcare. It's speech recognition. Just say cloud and healthcare. We can't be wrong.

Kara Swisher: Nuance is a speech recognition. It's a long-time speech recognition company. So it's like I'm feeling sick or the tone of voice or things like that. It's really going to be important. Telehealth is a big deal. Even though my brother gets all mad about it, telehealth is a big deal. And how it's not going to be doctors. It's going to be more computerized. It's 100% the way it's going to be.

Scott Galloway: So pre-pandemic?

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: What percentage of visits were virtual?

Kara Swisher: Oh, do you have statistics?

Scott Galloway: I do.

Kara Swisher: Okay, then give them to me.

Scott Galloway: Well, guess. What percent of doctor's visits were virtual pre-pandemic?

Kara Swisher: Huh. Between, I have no fucking idea and I don't care.

Scott Galloway: Correct. Okay, what is it? 0.8% of visits were virtual. Do you know what they were during the pandemic?

Kara Swisher: What?

Scott Galloway: 30%.

Kara Swisher: Wow.

Scott Galloway: And so this is, I mean, again, largest, I always get hit hard. People say it's not a consumer industry, but I would argue the largest encapsulated industry in the world, US healthcare, is we've never seen a channel shift like that. I don't think in any, I mean, okay, so theaters went from 5 billion a year to zero, but that's $5 billion. 30% of healthcare is arguably, you figure two thirds of the 3 trillion are services that can be done outside of a doctor's office. So the potential market is 2 trillion. So you had what was effectively a $600 billion transition in channels. I mean, we've never seen anything like that.

Kara Swisher: I know. It's going to be a big deal. So everyone's got to get their tech going correctly, not just their, you know, following HIPAA laws, but how tech is going to work and how people are going to do this. And so there's going to be a couple of players, Amazon, Microsoft. Google has tried and is not as aggressive in this area now. And Apple. Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon.

Scott Galloway: So Siri was this failed thing sitting on top of an iPhone. I wonder if they'll incorporate voice. I said a few years ago, I thought wearables, AR, 3D printing were all stupid virtual reality. But the technology I've always been bullish on that I thought was the most important technology the next 10 years was voice. And I wonder if they're going to incorporate this into Office and they'll have niche like Office for Hospitals or Office for Healthcare and incorporate it into – because that to me seems like – you know, Microsoft Office is kind of their iPhone. And I wonder if they're going to build around that.

Kara Swisher: Say that again. That was really smart.

Scott Galloway: Well, I'll say it in a deep Glaswegian voice. It was – yeah, I think Office is their – all these guys have kind of one thing that is their gangster move. Amazon, it's Prime. Apple's the iPhone. And I think, obviously, Microsoft Office is the strongest recurring revenue relationship in the history of business.

Kara Swisher: Right. All right. So, Nuance calls itself conversational AI, just remember. So, it's voice, you know. Conversational AI. It's not just healthcare, but it's financial services, too. But healthcare is where it's really done deeply. It's been building deep domain experience in that area. So, it's clearly a move in that direction is this idea of, you know, giving more tools for its customers, 100%. It's a great, once again, Satya Nadella, very smart. He's a very canny man, I have to say.

Scott Galloway: He is canny.

Kara Swisher: And Microsoft's been in speech systems for years. A hundred years ago, there was another one, Dragon Systems. They have been, they had Cortana, if you remember, all kinds of things. So it's not an area they don't know about, but I think it's just tech applications and healthcare is going to be a big, big business, and especially artificial intelligence. Thank you. That is my speech.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, you really went out on a limb there.

Kara Swisher: Oh, I'm just kidding. It's very profound what they're doing here. They're making smart things. They're buying smart things. They're buying smart things that fit in nicely with their stuff.

Scott Galloway: Now, Netflix, interesting, will be the first U.S. streaming home for Sony Pictures theatrical releases. This is now a big shift by these big studios. But meanwhile, Warner Brothers CEO, Jason Klaher, says starting this next year, the company's biggest movies will debut in theaters before moving to the streaming service.

Kara Swisher: I think they're going to move very fast to the streaming service, though. So it's sort of a little pap to the filmmakers for four seconds, but it's not going to be any 90-day kind of window.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. Look, I just watched. I just watched. I was forced to watch. I had a bro night with my 10- and 13-year-old boys on Friday night.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: And I said, what do you want to watch? And, of course, it was Godzilla and King Kong.

Kara Swisher: I had to do that last weekend.

Scott Galloway: Oh, my God. It's like – it's literally – why would they even make a different movie? It's the same goddamn movie the first time. It's the same plot line. Mattel said it's the most intense movie about wireless charging he's ever seen. It's just, I don't, it's like they say, okay, how do we spend a quarter of a billion dollars such that we can justify people having to take their son? I literally don't get that movie-making genre.

Kara Swisher: You know, I liked it a lot better than I thought. That's what I would say about it. But we saw it.

Scott Galloway: There is a class of movies, the kind of blockbuster, basically movies that appeal to 15-year-old boys, that can stop, do a drive-by to this dying complex called the movie theater and pick up a half a billion to a billion dollars. And it's like, it's kind of reminds me of the office argument. The fastest way to process information is binary, either zero or ones. And we want to categorize everything as we're all going to go back to the office or none of us are. And the reality is 98% of companies are going to be somewhere between. And what you're going to see in movies is that you will still have first-round movies that stopped by the movie theater for a four to 12 week window. But the world has shifted dramatically. And you're going to see a lot more films. The power has ceded dramatically to the streamers. You're going to see a lot more films go straight to-

Kara Swisher: Well, I watched Thunder Force this weekend, which is Melissa McCarthy and Octavia Spencer, which was clearly for the- It was a kind of a satiric superhero movie, essentially, of buddies. And I know it felt like one of those movies that Melissa McCarthy does that just goes out and moves around and does okay. And it was fine. It was exactly where I wanted to see it on my screen.

Scott Galloway: Well, yeah, that's the equivalent of straight-to-video for the digital age.

Kara Swisher: But it wasn't straight-to-video. It was a little better than that. Like, you know what I mean? Like, they weren't... So, I just think this is just inevitable and this is just a... The move to the theaters is only for very big films like the next Black Panther or whatever, which you do want to see in that way. But most of these movies do much better, whether they go to Netflix that Sony Pictures is doing. Everyone sees the writing on the wall of this is going.

Scott Galloway: I think that's right. Anyway, Scott, you're on the cover of New York Magazine this week. Hello. Tell us more.

Kara Swisher: Well, finally, New York Magazine has decided to do their own Sexiest Man Alive 2021.

Scott Galloway: They did not.

Kara Swisher: It was a toss-up between me and George Clooney and Michael Jordan. No, I'm talking about, by the way, if I were the Sexiest Man Alive, would I be like Johnny Depp or Brad Pitt or George Clooney and go on to win it twice and be worth hundreds of millions of dollars? You know who I'd be the sexiest man I've ever met with people? Nick Nolte. Like somewhat talented, but probably should have never been on the cover and has some serious fucking demons to deal with. I am the Nick Nolte of New York Magazine. Anyway.

Scott Galloway: Anyway. What's the thing about? We got to get to big stories. What is the thing about? I'm sorry. What is the piece about? I haven't eaten. I'm like literally hallucinating right now.

Kara Swisher: I see that you did CrossFit and haven't eaten, but I had a lovely lunch, a very healthy lunch. So we talk about, I'm fascinated by the idea of volatility.

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: And that volatility as embrace is directly correlated to how shitty your life is. And essentially, I think America is breaking down because for the first time in our nation's history over an extended period of time, a 30-year-old's life is shittier than his or her parents' was at 30. And I think that is the root or the incendiary underneath the Me Too movement, Black Lives Matter, the GameStop movement, these mass shootings. I think it makes everything worse. Volatility. And what happens if you're in a supermax prison, a life sentence, you want volatility. You would opt for a nuclear strike on your city if you're sitting in isolation in Supermax. And when your expectations and your desires and your hopes for a better future go down, you want volatility. And so we're embracing cryptocurrencies. We're embracing mob squeezes in the stock market. We're embracing, to a lesser extent, we're embracing conspiracy theories because volatility, all we have done, All we have done the last 20 years is the shareholder class that speaks to their senator on average once a month and that controls and has weaponized the government. All they have done is effectively tried to suppress volatility. So in 2008, there was almost a financial crisis. So we spent $700 billion to make sure that we didn't go into depression. But baby boomers have now decided they not only won't tolerate a depression, they won't tolerate a recession. So we have issued $6 trillion in stimulus to make sure that there's champagne and cocaine party keeps going, even if the hangover is going to get much, much fucking worse. And so we have this massive suppression of volatility. And unless you let the gale forces of creative disruption blow, young people never get a shot. So what we want to do is keep existing businesses in business owned by baby boomers such that young people can't come in and release that restaurant for 50 cents in the dollar.

Scott Galloway: Right, which we talk about here. So you brought together in this piece, it's called The Unified Monetary Theory of Beeple and Biden. And it's got all kinds of good art, Scott. I just got to tell you. It's a very sexy looking story.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, it's already getting some heat, which I'm excited about. And even one of my colleagues at NYU said it wasn't awful. That's what he wrote. This isn't awful for you. He wrote for you.

Scott Galloway: Oh, my God. That's so funny. But, yeah, I think there's something here. I think that if we're not careful, whether it's your ability, it all comes down to this one thing. The general compact in our society has to be that our 30-year-olds do as well as we did at 30. If that's not working, full stop. Don't pass go. How do we have more protection of people on low cluster wages than minimum wage? How do we have vocational on-ramps for the two-thirds of young people that don't get a college degree? How do we transfer wealth back to renters from homeowners and get rid of this ridiculous mortgage interest rate cap tax deduction? How do we help people who make money through their salary, i.e. younger people, by not charging lower taxes on current income versus investment income? We need a serious retransfer. And it's no longer about doing the right thing. It's about self-preservation because at some point when the bottom 40% of America and young people see the two men are worth more than they are, they will figure out a way to take their wealth away. That is the basis of economic history. At some point when the bottom half figures out the fastest way to double our wealth is through volatility, whether it's violence. Trouble. Under the auspices of another worthwhile movement, whatever it might be, under the auspices of going on Reddit, the hostility, the justified hostility is created a desire for volatility because our government won't let the markets be volatile on their own.

Kara Swisher: All right. Okay. All right. Everybody read it. Scott on volatility. What a shock. Anyway, it's an excellent article actually. It's not as bad as it could have been.

Scott Galloway: What does he say? It was less My professor said I never hear from this guy And he kind of my rock star I don know It like this wasn awful for you Okay This was not awful for you. This was not awful for you.

Kara Swisher: All right. Big stories. We're going to big stories. Amazon Workers in Alabama Warehouse have voted against unionizing. This was one of the biggest efforts in organized labor movement in Amazon's history. Workers cast nearly 1,800 votes against a union, giving Amazon enough to defeat the effort. Ballots in favor of the union were fewer than 30% of the votes tally. Now, it wasn't all the people there. I think about half, a little bit more than half voted. It seems like a small loss, but this is the biggest movement to unionize at Amazon, garnering interest all the way up to President Biden. But Amazon has gone on an aggressive campaign to squash the efforts, arguments workers have access to rewarding jobs without needing involving a union. Amazon has 1.3 million people now. It's hired about a half a million in the past year. And now has the freedom to handle those employees by its own will. What do you think? What do you think? You said this. You said this. This is your correct prediction.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, this is a big deal. And what you have is an organization that's the second largest employer and the only organization in the history of the United States to hire a half a million people, maybe even the world, in just 12 months.

Kara Swisher: Right.

Scott Galloway: So arguably it represents there's always a tension between capital and labor. So Amazon is capital. Labor, there's real issues here. There's a lot of stories coming out of the warehouses, essential workers. This has literally put on stage the biggest issues around the tension between capital and labor and in between the role that unions play. And by a vote of two to one from workers in Bessemer, the crisp answer is they don't play a role. This is – I think this is basically – it's that notion of how did I go bankrupt slowly and then suddenly. We're in the suddenly phase for unions. This is, I think, I mean, keep in mind in almost any vote, you know, you win by a few points. They got the shit kicked out of them.

Kara Swisher: They did. Let me just push back on something. I think in other parts of the country, it's going to be different. I think in New York, they're going to start organizing in New York near JFK. Queens, biggest union town in America.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, that's what I mean. I think it's going to be different every year. This is by no means over for-

Kara Swisher: I'm sorry, that's the Gordia. Queens is, wait, is JFK. Anyways, sorry, go ahead. Go ahead, go ahead.

Scott Galloway: This is going to be a long-term effort by the unions in other parts of the country. This is not the most perfect. Like you said, people had been elevated through Amazon through these parts of the country. Other parts of the country are much more union-oriented and don't and have more things. So I think it's going to just continue these skirmishes all over the country for Amazon. This is going to be their number one issue besides the marketplace issue that they have.

Kara Swisher: I think that is a significant problem. This is going to be their issue going forward, just like it is for anyone who has this.

Scott Galloway: You know what was my eye-opening move? I have a long, I don't know, history with unions. I was a 16-year-old box boy and then a box boy my freshman year at UCLA. And the reason I was able to pay for my fraternity bill and my tuition is because a union made sure that a box boy at San Vicente Foods made $8.50 an hour instead of $4. And it was life-changing for me. It meant I could afford to go to UCLA. Play. And by the way, San Vicente Foods did just fine overcharging for food to sell to people in Brentwood. And so I've always had a very strong connection to unions. But at the same time, I remember when I went on the board of the New York Times, I thought, gosh, these have got to be the most pro-union people in the world. And it became apparent in about a hot minute that the shareholders, the board, the controlling family had nothing but contempt for the union. Nothing but contempt. And I thought, well, what's wrong here? And the reality is unions have done a terrible job managing their brand among the public.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I would agree with that.

Scott Galloway: And no 25-year-old who has their shit together comes home and says, mom, dad, great news, I'm going to work for the union. They've just managed their brand terribly. The brand has these terrible associations of corruption, of not upskilling the workers at the same pace. They try and leverage situations to increase their compensation through exogenous situations as opposed to upskilling their members. So I just – look, and I almost worry. I worry that unions give us cold comfort. We need antitrust. We need minimum wage. Unions aren't doing their job. How do unions get organized going forward to appeal to young people where it would work in Bessemer? I'm not so sure it would work in Bessemer. Good luck with that. Good luck with that.

Kara Swisher: I know, but there's ways to do it. They do it in other parts of the world where unionization is much healthier.

Scott Galloway: I think that brand has the same resonance with young people as Sears and Blockbuster at this point.

Kara Swisher: All right. But I do still think employee initiatives are not going away for Amazon. They have too many people working for them. I just, yeah. It is a big vulnerability for them and also an asset. Now, they could also lead the lobbying on minimum wage, getting it up to $15. They could lead on all kinds of health benefits. And as you said, instead of tweeting obnoxious things, they could just be a leader in this area. Take a negative and turn it into a positive for themselves.

Scott Galloway: I agree. I think they will lip sync to increasing the minimum wage, but there are no union dues involved in minimum wage. And so I don't think they're going to be a warrior for minimum wage. And I also think the biggest hit to unions that's happened in the last decade-

Kara Swisher: I'm talking about Amazon, but go ahead.

Scott Galloway: Is unfairly or fairly, they were seen as trying to exploit the pandemic to increase the compensation of their teachers instead of putting kids first. That's a broken relationship. And I think that that just, if you're a parent and you hear from a union that we're not sending our teachers back who average age, primary school teachers, average age is 33. I mean, they're not exactly a vulnerable group. I thought unions really handled that poorly. And it's hard to categorize, it's hard to generalize and stereotype unions because there's just, you know, there's several hundred and some are outstanding and some are corrupt. But I literally think this was a seminal moment. I think this was, I don't want to call it the last nail in the coffin of unions, but this is turnout. I think the fat lady is on the stage here for unions.

Kara Swisher: And I think it's an opportunity for them. It's good to lose. It's good to lose badly. They've been losing a lot. They've had a lot of good the last 30 years. I got it. But there's a way to win. There's a way to have a winning argument to workers. Look who's taken workers' rights. It's the Republicans with populism. You know what I mean? Like there's an opportunity to win back. It was interesting that I don't think Biden lost anything by doing this, saying he's for the workers.

Scott Galloway: Oh, no downside.

Kara Swisher: But why isn't the United States Senate the strongest union in the world representing all workers? That's what I understand.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. Yeah.

Kara Swisher: All right. Well, interesting. It's a big win for Amazon. I don't think it's over. Scott does think it's over. So for unions, I don't think it's over by any stretch.

Scott Galloway: I think they'll double down in areas they can't win. That's you kissing the ass of your master's in fine arts book club. I know how smart you are.

Kara Swisher: No, I'm not. I was in a union. I was in a newspaper union once. I'm not anymore. I'm still in a union.

Scott Galloway: Are you?

Kara Swisher: Yeah, UFW for my classification at Stern.

Scott Galloway: Oh, what is the UFW? No, I'm sorry, the UAW. Somehow United Auto Workers ended up representing a certain classification of academics or professors at Stern, and I pay dues, or I used to pay dues.

Scott Galloway: Wow, I think I'm in SAG because I was on Bill Maher once.

Kara Swisher: You might be in SAG. I think there was, they like enter you into something where you can join SAG. Because I've been on a bunch of TV stuff, but otherwise I'm not, I don't, I don't believe I'm in any unions. And I have mixed feelings on them, but mostly positive if they're done correctly.

Kara Swisher: All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. And we'll be back to talk about Alibaba's first big antitrust find in China and have a friend of Pivot, bestselling author, Walter Isaacson.

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Kara Swisher: We are back. Let's talk about Alibaba's first major antitrust fine in China. Over the weekend, Chinese regulators hit the Asian e-commerce giant with a $2.8 billion antitrust fine. Its official said Alibaba had broken the country's anti-monopoly law by preventing merchants from selling their goods on other shopping platforms. To get into context, Alibaba reported profits of more than $12 billion in the last three months of 2020 alone. Then the Ant Group, an affiliate, a financial affiliate behind Alibaba, announced a sweeping overhaul of its business in response to demands from Chinese government as part of a rectification plan, which sounds scary for a communist country. The company said it would apply to set up as a financial holding company, which would bring closer supervision and requirements. Ant also said it would change the way it collects and uses personal information to improve data security and prevent abuse. The company says it will improve corporate governance, better adhere to rules about fair competition. Gosh, sounds like things maybe we should do in this country, but China just decided it. I don't know, you know, there's stuff behind the behind the scenes stuff here, but interesting moves. What do you think?

Scott Galloway: Well, we did do this in this country. And that is we find, the FTC fined Facebook 5 billion in July of 19. It was the largest in history. And distinct to the fact it was barely, and this is a scale of things now, the previous biggest fine was 22 million. So this, you know, this was literally 500 times the size, but it was less than 1% of Facebook's market cap, and the stock went up 3% the day they announced the fine because the market pays. Did you see what happened to Alibaba's stock today? Up. 8%.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, there you go.

Scott Galloway: So we've been to this movie before, and quite frankly, if I were, and I'm thinking about this, I only like to buy stocks I'm going to own, at least think I'm going to own for five years. Alibaba is going to, I think similar to Facebook, the year after they cleared up this insecurity, the market hates unknowns. I think this thing is up 20% to 30% by the end of the year. If you look at it right now, it's trading in a multiple of earnings that looks like a meddling internet company in the US. I think Alibaba, relative to its performance right now, is the cheapest internet stock in the world. I do think people are nervous about what China could do at any one time. I think that's the, and more effectively than antitrust people here or how slow we move around these things?

Scott Galloway: I don't, I see, I would argue that that's a bit of an American perspective. I would argue we're more volatile and have our head way up our ass much more, other than being a communist autocracy. And I'll give you that we have a better system as it relates to the internet and antitrust. We've got nothing on them, nothing. And Ant is a juggernaut, Alibaba, everybody. We're so, and I'm guilty of this, we're so narcissistic. We think that all innovation takes place within a seven-mile radius of SFO. Alibaba is more innovative than any. Finance, delivery, grocery, payments. They are everywhere. E-commerce. They're all our internet companies working together in one. Cloud. It's just like they kind of dominate. Jack Ma is a fascinating character. And if they can manage to put this behind them and Jack Ma doesn't end up behind bars and there's some what I'll call greenfield where they say, okay, we put this behind us, that stock goes to multiple of revenues versus multiple of EBITDA. So I'm just very bullish on Alibaba. And we've been to this movie before. Once the quote unquote fine is put behind them, the stock tends to trend up. So this is a big story. They've come to an understanding, the government and Alibaba, I suspect.

Kara Swisher: Including, you know, and it's also just the ownership of these Chinese companies. There's a lot of data leakage going back and forth between the government and the companies. But it's interesting that the Chinese government got – they're making a statement here by controlling Ma in some way.

Scott Galloway: Well, the government is supposed to regulate these guys when they get too big. But this was an equivalent, what I'll call slap on the wrist. Their stock's up 8% today.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. So what is a fine supposed to do? You know, when you get a parking ticket, you don't come home and celebrate. Or when you get a speeding ticket, you don't come home and go, we just got richer, everybody. I got a parking ticket. But when you fine a big tech company, you come home and they're richer. They're wealthier. So I think this is really interesting. And Alibaba is a juggernaut. In my view, Alibaba is the best value internet stock in the world.

Scott Galloway: By the way, Charlie Munger made his first public stock purchase in seven years today. Or a Friday. Alibaba.

Kara Swisher: Alibaba. Yeah, I would agree. He's quite a character, Jack Ma. Maybe we'll get him to come over to the U.S. and talk to us about things.

Scott Galloway: I like that.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, he was wonderful. At Code, he talked so fast. He was so excited about all the various things he had done. And he's really quite a, he's a fascinating character. Can we leave the panel you suggested at the beginning of the call?

Scott Galloway: No, we haven't asked yet.

Kara Swisher: Oh, come on.

Scott Galloway: No. Come on. Let's just say the name of it. Rub the dog's belly.

Kara Swisher: No, we've got to ask. We've got to ask and find out. Scott wants to do a panel at Code, which is coming at the end of September. Can I give the title of the panel?

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: Aggrieved White Males.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. Oh, that's going to be the best.

Kara Swisher: I'm going to see what I can do. I'm going to see what I can do. There's a lot of us out there. You picked two great ones other than me.

Scott Galloway: Okay. This is so good.

Kara Swisher: There's plenty. There's plenty of those people. All right. Let's bring on a friend of Pivot. Walter Isaacson, someone I've known forever, is the author of a new book called *Codebreaker*. He's also the best-selling author of so many things, including the book *Steve Jobs*. And Walter, welcome. I feel like you've got so many things behind your name that I don't know which one to pick, but we've known each other for decades, I guess.

Walter Isaacson: I think friend of Kara is probably the most important and somebody who, when I go to the gym, listens to both of you all the time.

Kara Swisher: All right. Very nice, Walter. So Walter's from the South, so this is his very polite way of saying such nice things about us. Anyway, let's talk about you and this new book. And I do want to get back to sort of where we are with Apple at some point at the end, since you wrote that massive book on Steve Jobs. So tell us about Jennifer Doudna. I did an interview with her also on *Sway*, but talk about why you chose her as a subject and where does she fit into the other narratives you've written?

Walter Isaacson: You and I grew up in the digital revolution, with the Steve Jobses and the Bill Gates, and it produced amazing things. It brought microchips into our homes with our personal computers and iPhones became platforms. And I thought that's totally transformative. But as I looked at the beginning of the 21st century, starting with the sequencing of the human genome and of course climaxing with gene editing tools and, for that matter, RNA vaccines that we can program, I realized that molecules are the new microchip. And the first half of this century will truly be a biotech revolution, just like you and I lived through the digital revolution. And Jennifer Doudna is this, as you know, because I've heard her on your podcast, but also I've spent the past four or five years hanging out with her, is a perfect entree into that because she discovers the structure of RNA just the way Watson and Crick helped discover with Rosalind Franklin that of DNA. And she and her advisor figure out how RNA can replicate and be the source of life on this planet. Then how it can be a guide for gene editing tools. And now we're using it as a messenger to create vaccines. mRNA, messenger RNA. Messenger RNA to create vaccines. And of course, she's thrown herself into the moral and ethical issues. So there's a lot of colorful characters in my book. But like any writer, it's good to have a central character that I can hold their hand and the reader can hold our hands. And we go step by step through a journey of discovery.

Kara Swisher: Scott's going to have a question, but can you generally explain CRISPR for those who don't know what it is? Just very briefly.

Walter Isaacson: Yeah, it's simple. It's just something bacteria have been doing for a billion years. They have clustered repeated sequences known as CRISPRs in their genetic material that takes mugshots of any virus that attacks it. So if the virus attacks again, they cut it up using a guide RNA. And that's pretty useful in this day and age of us getting attacked by viruses. What Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier and others discovered was a way to repurpose this, to recode that guide so it would cut our own DNA at a targeted spot. So we could say, cut out this genetic flaw or cut out this gene or fix this. And so they repurposed the CRISPR system of bacteria to be a gene editing tool for us.

Scott Galloway: So in any exciting technology that hits sort of this parabolic increase in outcomes, there's externalities. And when you obviously really got to know this field, what do you see as the two or three biggest risks we face with this explosion or this envisioned explosion in biotech, if you will?

Walter Isaacson: I think that first we should say it's going to be a godsend in so many ways. People who are blind, who have sickle cell anemia, Huntington's, Tay-Sachs, cancer, all these things are going to fix. Having said that, the two biggest things I worry about are, A, if this sort of genetic supermarket isn't free and it won't be, the rich could buy better genes and we could exacerbate the inequality we have in our society. Not just exacerbate it, but encode it into our species the way in *Brave New World* or in *Gattaca*.

Scott Galloway: Meaning they don't get sick or they don't get…

Walter Isaacson: Or they have children that are six inches taller than the ref. Or they decide, with all due respect to Scott, that I want a full head of blonde hair for my child. And they edit their own children, and they buy better genes for their children. And eventually, it could even be things like memory or intelligence or height or muscle mass or eye color or anything. Secondly, I think if we let this just be a free market thing, that it could end up being what I would call a free market eugenics. Now, eugenics, we think about the Nazis or even Cold Spring Harbor in the early days of the United States 20th century, where the government mandates certain master race things. I'm not worried about that. I'm worried about individual choices where people edit out the diversity of our species. Behind me, you can see on your little Squadcast thing, these big doors that open to a balcony on Royal Street. I remember walking with your two sons and they were visiting once. And Royal Street is filled with all sorts of characters, short and tall and fat and skinny and Creole colored and black and white and gay and straight and trans and deaf and hearing-enabled. And that's what makes our species so cool and so great and creative and resilient.

Kara Swisher: Right.

Walter Isaacson: And if we allow people to say, I want to edit out anything that I call a deviation from typical, that's a bad thing too.

Kara Swisher: Depending on what typical is.

Walter Isaacson: Correct. Right. I use typical because whenever I use normal, people say, well, that's a normative term. So I'm trying to figure out typical for me on height is say whatever I am, five foot seven. And if somebody's being born at four foot six, you might say, if that's a genetic condition, we should fix it. And they can be typical species height. But if somebody's going to be born like I am at five foot seven, then that's an enhancement.

Scott Galloway: You wouldn't, correct? It's your genes. This is not for existing people. It's your children.

Walter Isaacson: Right. Although even with muscle mass, that can be regulated. We have myostatin. That's a genetically controlled in our body. And in theory, you could, especially in younger children, have greater muscle mass. But height is something you probably, yeah.

Scott Galloway: No, no. I won't go into your Twitter feed, but I know that Scott doesn't need more muscle mass.

Kara Swisher: Even Walter Isaacson is mocking me.

Walter Isaacson: By the way, Walter, when I read your stuff, you definitely sound five foot eight. Just so you know.

Kara Swisher: Thank you.

Walter Isaacson: Five foot seven. Just so you know.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, you're taller than you look on a podcast.

Kara Swisher: That's a nice thing to say. Go ahead, Scott.

Scott Galloway: Well, just around the fears around income inequality, aren't we already there? Zolgensma is this drug, a knockout drug for muscular atrophy that basically cures an incurable disease, but you need $2.1 million for two doses. And I just got a GoFundMe for it from a couple in Holland trying to raise money for their daughter. And I don't think they're going to make it. And I think the kid's going to die. I mean, aren't we already there?

Walter Isaacson: I'm hearing these things. One of the things is people say, well, we shouldn't use CRISPR. I get 12. I'm not kidding you. I can scroll through my phone here. 12 a day at least of people saying, I want to show you the picture of my four-year-old son or my 12-year-old granddaughter. And he has this, or she has that. Can you get me in touch with Dr. Doudna? Can you help fix it? And as you say, that's heart-rending. So that's why I don't want to stop research into this, because we can fix genetic diseases. Secondly, Jennifer Doudna has taken the problem that Scott, you illustrated, which is it can cost a million dollars to fix sickle cell in the patient that got cured last year. How do you bring that cost down? There are a couple of ways of doing it. One is that you can do it in the body so it doesn't mean taking out stem cells. There are ways to make this much cheaper. But the other way to do it is to do it in the sperm or the egg or the early stage embryo. So it's inheritable and it means that you wipe out sickle cell once and for all for one quick edit and that's cheaper. But that's a line we have to be careful about crossing, making inheritable edits.

Kara Swisher: Let me ask you a question because one of the things, you know, you and I and also Scott has watched sort of the internet sort of morph into something pretty ugly when everyone had this hopefulness around it. And it's a, you know, when you get into gene editing, it's even more like the idea. And there's been a million sci-fi movies. Like I can't, there's dozens and dozens where people do this, not just *Brave New World*, but, you know, so many of it. When I was a kid, there was a, not a kid, a younger, young person. There was a play called *Twilight of the Golds*, if you remember, which was editing out gay. It was terrifying to me as a gay person. You could edit out the child of this couple who was a gene editor. What do you, who, Jennifer talks a lot about the ethics of this, because she had the issue with the Chinese doctor who was using the technology to, I think it was clone. Is that correct? What were they doing?

Walter Isaacson: No, no. It's an interesting question because what the Chinese doctor did was make inheritable edits in very early stage embryos to eliminate one of the receptors for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. There was shock. Everybody was upset. You shouldn't be, that wasn't really necessary. You shouldn't make inheritable edits. Well, after this year of the pandemic, the notion of doing edits that might make us less susceptible to viruses, you have to remind me, okay, what was wrong with that? Now, obviously it was wrong because we're not ready. It wasn't safe. He was a sloppy doctor. But if we could safely edit out receptors for certain viruses and know that we didn't have unintended consequences, it'll take a while before we can know all that.

Kara Swisher: So who gets to decide? That's the thing. I mean, the internet's sort of been run like Wild West, and you see where we are. There's nobody getting to decide any of this stuff. Or it's just grown up without decision-making. So who's on the front lines of this? I know she's talked a lot about this, but who gets to pick what's—because it's a big, wide world with lots of people with money, lots of different opinions on humanity. How do you figure that out once this medicine is out into the public?

Walter Isaacson: Well, I think we have to have some social consensus. And by we, I mean you and me and Scott and everybody listening to this. We shouldn't just give it to the politicians or the scientists and say, you figure it out. And that's why I wrote this book, because the science isn't all that hard, but the moral issues are, and we should all have a right to chip in, whether you're in the disabled community or differently abled community, or you have a child with genetic disease, or you don't want us messing with mother nature. We should all talk about this. The biggest issue, and I deal with it in the book, it's somewhat complex, but y'all have talked about this on your podcast before, is to what extent it should be regulated by government and society as a whole, and to what extent should it be individual choice? And on a lot of reproductive decisions, of course, we like leaving it to individual choice. That's what we do in a free market system. But if you left everything about gene editing to individual choice, you would have this problem of editing out the diversity. You would have this problem of the rich buying better genes. And so maybe it's like vaccine distribution. Some people will buy the way to the head of the queue, but not many people actually did because we had a social consensus of here's how we're going to distribute this new vaccine. And I think we need to develop that with CRISPR as well.

Kara Swisher: But who?

Walter Isaacson: Yeah, I think it'll, I mean, we already have two groups working on it. Jennifer has gathered all what I call the national academies, which is the Chinese Academy. There's a character in my book named Dong Qingpei who's been working on it. And they've put the doctor who did that early stage embryo editing into jail because they decided it was a violation. The Royal Academy in Britain, Europe, the United States, National Academy of Sciences. And Jennifer and David Baltimore and other people you know, Peggy Hamburg are part of that process. The WHO is doing a parallel process, and we do have to try to get, but it's like basically the regulatory agencies. It's not that hard. Like the FDA, you know, people can get off-label drugs or do treatments the FDA hasn't approved, but not much. I mean, most people don't, and if we get a consensus of the FDAs around the world, we can keep this genie or this gene in the bottle to some extent.

Scott Galloway: You're kind of genie. Scott?

Scott Galloway: Yeah, my question is more, I'm interested to get into the head of Walter Isaacson. I read Andrew Roberts' biography of Churchill, and I had the same feeling when I finished that book than when I finished one of your books, and that is, you know these people. And more than anyone maybe who's alive today, you know better the most successful people or the most impactful people in the history of our society. And so my question to you would be, of all of these people that you know really well, a few questions. One, who in your view was the most self-actualized or led the most rewarding life, just personally? Who was the most tortured? And then my third, and I'll repeat them again if you need, is if you decided, and I'm not saying this is the right decision, but if you decided you wanted to raise young men and young women that might have a chance to have that kind of impact on the world. Do you see any commonalities in terms of how they were raised or their upbringing? So let's start with happiest, most tortured, and then any insights as a parent?

Walter Isaacson: Well, when it comes to most happy and driven, you also get the most tortured because he's one of the great people with, it contains multitudes, and that was Steve Jobs. I mean, he really was self-actualized. He really invented himself, had, as Kara and I have talked about many times, a reality distortion field that sometimes worked. But he also had a lot of demons that caused him to be a pretty rough character. Jennifer is a much more happy person, but she too has insecurities that come from being a young woman until girls don't do science and being an outsider in Hilo, Hawaii, where everybody else was Polynesian. So I think most of the people in my books have some extent been outsiders, especially Leonardo being born out of wedlock, gay, left-handed, and having to go to Florence. He gets accepted, but he keeps asking, how do we fit in? And Jennifer's always asking, How do I fit in? And Steve Jobs always asking as an adopted child in this weird environment, how do I fit into the cosmos? The other thing that they share is this amazing curiosity that's a basic curiosity. I call it the tongue of the woodpecker because Leonardo wrote one day in the tongue of the woodpecker. He wrote in the margin of his notebook and the 10 things he wanted to know that day, describe the tongue of the woodpecker. Now, how do you, I mean, you have to get a woodpecker, open his mouth. I mean, who, but he was just basic curiosity on that. And he writes, why is the sky blue? And I realized Einstein had that in his notebook. Jennifer thought about that as a child. I'm looking outside these windows. I see a blue sky. I've outgrown my wonder years. I quit asking so many stupid questions as grownups would tell me, don't ask them. But they all refrain from outgrowing their wonder years. And they not only have a passionate curiosity about basic things like blue skies, why water swirls when it passes a rock, they also have a curiosity about all aspects of nature. They are able to see patterns that ripple across nature. As you know, Steve Jobs loved calligraphy and dance and music and theater when he was at Reed College, but also coding. And he's the one who, and Kara's been to so many of those, when he launched a product, the last slide was always that intersection of two streets, the liberal arts and technology. Well, Leonardo's Vitruvian Man is that exact same intersection. He's standing there naked, self-portrait in the science and the humanities of our cosmos. So people who see patterns across nature because of their curiosity tend to be the most creative.

Kara Swisher: That's great. That's a fantastic answer. I'm going to ask one more question about Jennifer herself. When you're thinking about a character like Jennifer Doudna, who won the Nobel Prize this year, my funniest encounter was hers. She said, I didn't get to have a ceremony. And then I said, well, you get one next year. And she goes, no, we don't. We don't get any, you know, go to Sweden and do the whole mall thing. But one of the things is, what is she focused in on now? Is it pandemic stuff? Because we talked a little bit about it. So how, looking out at what's happened over the last year, we've been taken down, digital and advanced as we are. We're editing genes, this and that. We've been taken down by a virus, essentially, just like that, because we're so physical. But what is her outlook on that?

Walter Isaacson: All right. Almost exactly a year ago, early March of last year, she sent her son, Andy, to Fresno by train to be in one of Dean Kamen's, you know him, first robotics robot building competition. And at 2 a.m., Jennifer wakes up, nudges her husband, Jamie, and says, we got to go pick up Andy, because this pandemic seems to be spreading. They're closing the book. So Andy's an only child. So when they arrive, you can imagine he's not happy, but they convince him to come along. And just as they're leaving the parking lot, they get a text saying, robot competition canceled. And so Jennifer, when she gets back to Berkeley at about 7 a.m., summons scientists, 50 of them, to a meeting, partly in person, partly by Zoom, to say, how are we going to pivot and repurpose what we're doing to fight the coronavirus. So for the past year, she's been using CRISPR to make home detection kits, which you'll get in a few months. They'll be emergency authorized, but it's not yet manufactured. You can just sort of like a pregnancy test, have saliva, put it in the machine. Do I have COVID? Do I have, my kid have strep throat? Is that tumor resurfacing? People, it'll be like Steve Jobs' iPhone. It'll be a platform that people build their own apps on. There's so many platforms off of this pandemic.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Walter Isaacson: And the platform will be supposed to say, I can use this machine to study your gut microbiome to see if you're eating the wrong yogurt or something. So this will bring biology into our homes the way the first personal computers in the 1970s brought microchips into our home. And so she's working on these home detection tools. She's working on a very advanced way of looking at just using CRISPR to kill viruses rather than stimulate our immune system. And she's working on testing technologies. She's also doing what Scott asked about, which is, all right, we've used CRISPR to cure sickle cell. It costs more than a million dollars. How do we get it down to at least $10,000 where maybe insurance companies and Medicaid can afford it?

Scott Galloway: So, you're limited to one more person you can do a biography on.

Walter Isaacson: Oh, good one.

Scott Galloway: Who is it?

Walter Isaacson: Well, I'm going to have to consult with you all. I actually, you know, if I don't go back in the Wayback Machine, there are three or four people around today that have that curiosity across disciplines. Obviously, Bezos is very interesting. Elon Musk is interesting, but perhaps we're still in the middle of the story. I want to see how we're old enough to know how this movie ends, what's the next reel of this movie. I am deeply fascinated by Bill Gates and somebody I admire and in some ways has been a subject of controversies that are unfair. But he has that interest across so many different fields. He bought Leonardo's scientific notebook, which is the Codex Leicester, because he understands the beauty of Leonardo being interested in things. So with Bill Gates, whether it's climate change or vaccines, but also creating personal computers, being one of the people who did it, but now doing nuclear energy, it gives me a chance to look at many different things. I haven't decided yet. So it's those three. And I've probably gone too far.

Kara Swisher: I got another one. Dolly Parton.

Walter Isaacson: You know what? It's a joke. It's not a joke. It's not a joke. I'm playing her songs now. Singer, songwriter, donor. Fascinating person. We missed Mardi Gras here because it was closed down. So instead of having floats, people decorated their homes as floats. And people drove by them. And my favorite on St. Charles Avenue was a shrine home float to Dolly Parton. Send me photos. With all of her music and a big, big picture of her and the vaccine she had helped to fund. Dolly Parton. You know, it shows that the human species, even in times of a pandemic crisis, can rise to this challenge. I find Dolly Parton riveting as a creator and, you know, the best-selling songs of all time. I'm sure she feels the same of you.

Kara Swisher: No, I doubt it. I don't know if she knows who I am, but best-selling songs of all time. People don't realize. Writing. Really? Yes. Like. *I Will Always Love You*.

Walter Isaacson: Yeah. That's why she's so rich, to be able to give all that money to Moderna.

Scott Galloway: Scott, any last questions? You don't know. Which one of those? What do you think of those three?

Kara Swisher: Are you asking me?

Scott Galloway: Yeah. Which of those three you mentioned?

Kara Swisher: Oh, hands down Bill Gates. Not Dolly Parton.

Scott Galloway: Which one?

Kara Swisher: Hands down Bill Gates. Hands down.

Scott Galloway: All right, Scott. Hands down. That means that if I do this, you will have me back.

Kara Swisher: Okay. He is so good, isn't he? He is such a charmer. And I will put you in the acknowledgement.

Scott Galloway: Oh, my God. He's such a charmer.

Kara Swisher: Okay, all right. I truly agree with you. I just think you can get into anything. Climate change.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, you got it. You get into anything through him.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, and Musk isn't over. We could be in for the Howard Hughes portion of this. You know, Howard Hughes was this brilliant.

Scott Galloway: Howard Hughes.

Kara Swisher: Howard Hughes. No, I'm not going to do Howard Hughes. I'd rather do Dolly Parton.

Walter Isaacson: There's one moment. Definitely Bill Gates.

Kara Swisher: I'm glad we've reached that consensus.

Scott Galloway: Eventually Musk will be the one. 100%. But don't tell anybody.

Kara Swisher: All right, I won't.

Scott Galloway: Good. Stay ready to stay with us.

Kara Swisher: All right, Walter, thank you so much. We will be down in New Orleans as soon as we can.

Walter Isaacson: New Orleans, love it.

Kara Swisher: What? Love it.

Walter Isaacson: All right, thanks, Walter.

Kara Swisher: Bye.

Walter Isaacson: Bye-bye.

Kara Swisher: All right, Scott, one more quick break. That was so amazing. We'll be back for wins and fails.

[AD BREAK]

Kara Swisher: Okay, Scott, wins and fails. And try to be as intelligent as Walter Isaacson if you can. That would be impossible. And plus, that guy is so charming. Isn't he charming?

Scott Galloway: He's a charmer. Oh, my gosh. Charming guy.

Kara Swisher: They were saying he was going to run for Louisiana mayor of New Orleans, but he didn't. That's got to be an awful job. He's way too smart for that. Anyway.

Scott Galloway: Way too smart.

Kara Swisher: Yes. So my win is there's a consortium of CEOs getting together with direction or shepherding from Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, who I think is becoming the most influential academic in the world.

Scott Galloway: Agreed.

Kara Swisher: To talk about actions they can take or to at least create, maintain in the news cycle these ridiculous voter suppression laws in Georgia. And I think it's really a, you know, everyone talks about companies shouldn't be politicized. But I think these are Ken Frazier and Ken Chenault who reek of integrity, have a vested interest, and have decided they want to use their blessings and their hard work and their success to ensure that the people behind them have an easier time than they did getting to the top of corporate America. And I think it's just a wonderful thing. It's a win. These guys, it represents risk for them. It represents damage to shareholder value in some ways. It would be easier for them just to not do this stuff. It's not easy to coordinate a bunch of CEOs and get on the same page as everything. And Georgia has managed to unify competitors and get them on a call. I'm fascinated the Republican Party is giving up. This group of people is going to do what they want to, and they are not going to listen. Mitch McConnell's statement about don't get into politics, like, screw you, Mitch, like, in terms of that.

Scott Galloway: I think you're right. I think you're right.

Kara Swisher: All right. What's your fail?

Scott Galloway: Well, I just – there's something around the brain, I think, once it hits 50. I don't know about you. I think I understand cryptocurrencies better than 99% of the public, and I don't understand cryptocurrencies. That's about right. And I think that basically bank CEOs have so badly missed crypto, and Coinbase is supposed to go public on Wednesday. I think it's a direct listing. We will talk about that Thursday, I think. It's a direct listing, which means they try and pair the demand by coming out at a first trade that better calibrates the actual demand. Regardless, I think the stock goes up. I think it's a monster. And I think a decent question in the boardrooms of Credit Suisse or UBS or JP Morgan or BAML or Goldman Sachs is how the fuck did we let Coinbase happen? I mean, Coinbase is basically an exchange in a trading desk of a financial asset that on the day of the IPO is going to be worth more than Goldman Sachs.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: And these banks, granted, they're hamstrung in terms of –

Kara Swisher: You know, they poo-pooed it. I was around, remember?

Kara Swisher: Yeah, because they don't understand it. Years ago, I kept saying this is important. I did the same thing. I'm like, it's going to zero, which is code for me saying I don't want to put in the time to understand it.

Scott Galloway: Yep, I agree. I'm glad you've come to that conclusion. As an aggrieved white male.

Kara Swisher: I'm just, well. But anyways, my loss is, I think the bank CEOs and boards have to ask themselves some questions. This is now a $2 trillion asset class. And people want to trade in it. And now we have Stripe, PayPal, and Coinbase. And there will be transactions in it. There will be transactions. They are all worth more than the traditional banks. So if you're on the board of one of these companies, you're like, okay, what the actual fuck? Isn't this the business we're in?

Scott Galloway: Do you know what? A grieved person? I agree with you. I'm going to do very quick wins and fails. I think the prosecution in the trial, in the Derek Chauvin trial, really is what it is. I think he's doing a great job. Great job. They could have just not done as good a job. I think they're doing an excellent job making sure it will be very hard for this jury not to convict. I know this has been a history. I know this could happen again and again. And it keeps happening again where cops get off for egregious behavior. But I've been watching a lot of it, and I'm very impressed by it.

Kara Swisher: Well, the blue wall has been breached here. Cops generally have a fraternal order of not speaking ill of each other, and they've all said what happened here was—

Scott Galloway: But the prosecution's very sharp. I've been watching them, and I don't do— Not as good as Marsha Clark. Remember her?

Kara Swisher: Oh, God. I love that they got bonuses and then someone said, other than letting a murderer off scot-free, what did you decide they should get bonuses for? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was a case. And then she went on like Inside Hollywood or something. I'm like, oh, gosh. That's my win. I'm sorry.

[Discussion continues]

Scott Galloway: And ultimately, the fail is this thing this weekend that got so much play, the viral video of the officer shooting, pepper spraying the black army officer who was in the car. He was trying to get out safely of the car. And this officer just escalated beyond belief what could have been a very simple stop. It shouldn't have been a stop in the first place, a new car. But the video itself was so astonishing, the kind of behavior, the aggressive behavior by the cop that was, it cannot be explained away by you don't understand what it's like. It was really eye-opening. This officer's been fired. Virginia's looking into it. But I thought this guy, this lieutenant, handled himself in a very, what would have been a dangerous decision for him, beautifully and really was calm, cool, trying his hardest to de-escalate. And the cop was just problematic on every level.

Kara Swisher: Thank you. There you go. There you go. So two cop things. So anyway, we have a lot to come. There's a lot going on this week. There's going to be a lot about the pandemic. I just did a great interview with Dr. Michelle Williams, who runs Harvard's Chan School. And we're going to talk a little bit about opening the country up because the Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell says the U.S. economy is about to start growing much more quickly. But he also said that he's worried and the outlook has brightened substantially. But at the same time, he warned against reopening the economy too soon amid a new spike in cases. So maybe we'll talk about that on Thursday, how we're going to open. As you know, I had my, I don't know if you read my Twitter feed, but I had my first giant lesbian outdoor dinner party and we were all so excited to see each other again.

Scott Galloway: Thank you. Yeah. That sounded, you called it saucy. It was saucy.

Kara Swisher: We hadn't seen each other in like a year. It was great. We were all vaccinated and we still did it outside, but it was really, it was a—

Scott Galloway: I feel triggered. I don't like to identify social events by their sexuality.

Kara Swisher: Well, it was all lesbians. Their sexual orientation. Okay, fine. Whatever. And you want to do a panel called a grieved white man. Okay, great. Okay. I'm not aggrieved white heterosexual men. Okay. And in fact, that's who it is. Which is all redundant.

Scott Galloway: Exactly. That is all redundant.

Kara Swisher: All right, Scott, that's the show. We'll be back Friday for more.

Scott Galloway: We will. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit your question to the pivot podcast. The link is also in the show. And please read Scott's excellent cover story in New York Magazine. Nick Nolte. Volatility. Sexiest Man Alive, 1997. Volatility.

Kara Swisher: Scott, read us out. Today's show was produced by Rebecca Sinanis. Ernie Entretott engineered this episode. Thanks also to Hannah Rosen and Drew Burrows. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or if you're an Android user, check us out on Spotify wherever you listen to podcasts. If you liked our show, please recommend it to a friend. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media, the home of Preet Bharara. Bharara? Bharara? You know, we should have him on. We should have him on with Brett Favreau. Preet Bharara. Brett Favreau and Preet Bharara. I don't know even how to say that. By the way, he and I come back, check out the friendship that is going to develop between the dog and Preet. Check it out. First we need to learn how to pronounce his name. We'll see you Friday. Have a great week, Carol.