Apple’s ChatGPT Deal, Uber Earnings, and Guest Adam Moss

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Scott Galloway: Rinse takes your laundry and hand delivers it to your door. Expertly cleaned and folded. So you could take the time once spent folding and sorting and waiting to finally pursue a whole new version of you. Like Tea Time You. Mmm. Or this Tea Time You. Or even this Tea Time You. Said you hear about Dave. Or even Tea Time, Tea Time, Tea Time You. Mmm. So update on Dave. It's up to you. We'll take the laundry. Rinse. It's time to be great.

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

Scott Galloway: And I'm Scott Galloway.

Kara Swisher: You know where I am, Scott? I'm in New York. Where are you?

Scott Galloway: Where am I? I'm in London. I'm tired. I had to take Leah to the vet last night. She wasn't feeling well. And then this morning, my son—it's really cute—my son is going on a full week trip to Ireland, and he was so excited he got up at four in the morning. So I fed him Lucky Charms in the spirit of Ireland.

Kara Swisher: Oh, they're magically delicious.

Scott Galloway: They are. I like Lucky Charms, I have to say. And I was trying to come up with Irish stuff. I'm like, and I like it too, you know, Irish Spring or whatever.

Kara Swisher: So where are you in New York? Are you at my place?

Scott Galloway: I am not. I'm staying at the Standard Hotel. I am getting a Webby. They had a party for me last night.

Kara Swisher: I didn't see you there.

Scott Galloway: I heard, but I did a video for you.

Kara Swisher: You did? Oh, good. I'm excited to see that. I'm a little nervous, honestly. You haven't seen it yet?

Scott Galloway: No, they haven't showed it to me.

Kara Swisher: No.

Scott Galloway: You know who showed up for me last night at the party at the top of the Standard Hotel in the Boom Boom Room?

Kara Swisher: Everyone on this podcast shows up for you every day. But who showed up for you last night?

Scott Galloway: All these people. And Don Lemon was very nice and said lovely, sweet, and loving things about me. D. Lamont. D. Lamont showed up for me.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Recently married Don Lemon.

Scott Galloway: He was. His husband also came. I'm just saying a lot of people came to the party. And they had little sunglass pins that everyone wore on their lapel. I have one for you. I know you'll wear it. I'm sorry.

Kara Swisher: It was iHeart. Who was it again?

Scott Galloway: Webby. Webby. Webby.

Kara Swisher: And we're getting—besides my Lifetime Achievement Award, which means I'm 30 years out from death because I'm getting a lot.

Scott Galloway: Three years. Three years. I'm getting a lot of Lifetime Achievement.

Kara Swisher: No, no. Life expectancy on Lifetime Achievement winners is not 30 years. Just so you know. They think I'm dying.

Scott Galloway: What do you think? They're not giving Lifetime Achievement Awards to Ryan Gosling. No, it goes to like Clint Eastwood. He's the next one up.

Kara Swisher: Oh, so let me test my thing out on you, because by the time it ends, you know, you have a five-word speech. My thing is, "Lifetime achievement, not dead yet." What do you think about that? Yes?

Scott Galloway: Not that good at all.

Kara Swisher: That's five words.

Scott Galloway: Not that good at all. No, no, I'm good. I'm not going to say that. No, no, I was saying that your five-word thing was not that good at all.

Kara Swisher: Give me a five-word speech, because it'll be done. I'll come up with something, but I need some time.

Scott Galloway: Oh, wait, I got it. I got it. "I owe it all to him." And they'll figure out. They'll know what's going on.

Kara Swisher: No, no, that's not happening. Anyway, we've got a lot to get to today, including the latest earnings from Uber and Warner Brothers and Apple finally making some AI moves. Plus, our friend of Pivot is former New York Magazine editor-in-chief Adam Moss, who has a new book, *The Work of Art: How Something Comes from Nothing*. But first, Sony and Apollo Global want to break up Paramount. This is interesting. This story just keeps on going. If the two companies win the battle for Paramount, they plan to keep the studio business and sell everything else that includes CBS. Paramount Pictures would become part of the joint venture with Sony and Control and Apollo taking a minority stake. Everything else, as I said, CBS, the cable channels. There's a lot of stations across the local stations across the country. And Paramount Plus, a streaming service, would be up for sale. The proposed plan hasn't been presented to Paramount yet. Many people don't want it to be broken up, including the person in control, Sherry Redstone of the Redstone family, which owns National Amusements. Obviously, there's been Skydance, which they let that last. That's David Ellison, and he's trying to keep it together in some fashion with Jeff Zucker involved and Jeff Shell, all these people. And Bill Cohen very smartly wrote where Warner could come in and grab CBS and the studio. The issue with Sony is, of course, it is not an American company, and that's going to be a regulatory issue. The Skydance one is all kinds of thorny issues around shareholder lawsuits. So what do you think about this?

Scott Galloway: So when a company is trading at this lower price—essentially we talked about the conglomerate tax—these things have no synergy anymore. They don't appear to have any synergy. So when you break them up, it's accretive to shareholders because Paramount, even though the Paramount asset would be sold or Paramount Plus, it would get a good number because overnight, you know, the cost to acquire this many consumers for a streaming service is very expensive now. So somebody would say, well, rather than spending another five years and X billions of dollars, let's just pay that to these folks and take Paramount Plus and boom, overnight we have another—I don't know how many subscribers they have. And then CBS and MTV, the assets that are in decline but have huge cash flows, would get a decent number by a financial buyer or somebody rolling these things up. And then the film studio has a lot of value, but would do better attached to another big film library. So what this says is that this asset is now trading for less than the sum of its parts. And Apollo's coming in and said, okay, I'll give you an example. Apollo just did this. Apollo did this in a similar way to Yahoo. Apollo got Yahoo for $5 billion. It had a billion in cash. It sold off Yahoo Japan for $1.6 billion. So essentially, Apollo bought Yahoo for $2.4 billion and then was able to finance the entire transaction just by recapitalizing their debt. So they never even had to invest. They just took it. And it's making money now.

Kara Swisher: That's right.

Scott Galloway: So this has been such a—the agita, the dysfunction, the poor fiduciary responsibility of Sherry—this has been handled so poorly that the financial buyers now see an opportunity to just come in and break this thing up.

Kara Swisher: Right. So that's what's going to happen. Now, this idea of Warner coming in, because there is a lane for David Zaslav here. He's got the money to do it. It would combine the Paramount assets with Max, would work really well. The streaming service could go right over to Max. They've already been consolidating in lots of ways, the way Disney has been doing with Hulu, for example. They get a bigger studio. Warner's been doing rather well. They do have debt and other issues, but bringing that down, their cash flow is quite good. I thought Bill's idea was fantastic.

Scott Galloway: Which idea is that, Kara?

Kara Swisher: With Warner coming in.

Scott Galloway: Oh, I see. I think what Apollo is betting is that the Skydance—my understanding is the Apollo deal is basically, all right, we're paying you one price, we're paying all the shareholders the same price. Skydance said, okay, it's Sherry who's in charge. She owns the super voting shares. Right. And so we're going to come up with this Frankenstein-like deal structure that gives her a better price than the rest of the shareholders. Right. We buy it and then sell ourselves to it. It's very complex. Right. And I think what Apollo has said is that when the adults put on their big boy pants and big girl pants and realize that all of the lawsuits here are going to make this deal nearly impossible to close, that they will reluctantly agree to do the cleaner deal and that we're going to just sit here.

Kara Swisher: But why with them? Because Sony, there's going to be all kinds of regulatory issues around Sony buying and then consolidating the media landscape down to fewer studios. I don't think they're ever going to get out of Washington.

Scott Galloway: I think they'll get past that one because—

Kara Swisher: I don't.

Scott Galloway: So you don't think the Apollo deal works?

Kara Swisher: I think if Warner Brothers came in right now and said, we'll do that deal, they will get over Sony.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. I mean, keep in mind, I think the argument they will make—and it was the argument that Time Warner made when they acquired, or when AT&T acquired Time Warner—that like, all right, the reason you try and ensure there's not a concentration here is to ensure that there's not such a lack of competition that it takes prices down. And the reality is these guys are now distressed assets competing against much deeper pocketed players. And also there's different accommodations you can make, such as when Rupert Murdoch wanted to acquire, they basically, he became a citizen. I mean, there's ways. I don't think—actually the FTC and the DOJ are probably going to look at this and say, all right, the big tech guys are soaking up everything now, including in media, and a consolidation in this category probably makes sense. And Sony isn't a threat to American companies. At least economically, I think the economists they bring as expert witnesses are going to make a pretty compelling case that to block this would be bad for the consumer.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, but except it's Sony. Sony is a foreign company. Sorry, if you have both competition and foreign company, that says no to me. Like, it's not just one thing, it's the other. And right now the mood in Washington is let's ban TikTok. Like, let's not have foreign. They can't. They have to be consistent. And then CBS could easily fold into CNN. They could sell off the locals to like a Tegna, right? Sell off the locals. The Paramount Streaming Services fits dovetails into Max. It just seems to—I don't know, if I was David Zaslav, I'd be calling my bankers and getting my version of Apollo.

Scott Galloway: I think you're thinking logically, because the nuance I would add is the sentiment in Washington isn't anti-foreign, it's anti-China. And Japan is an ally.

Kara Swisher: They're not going to—no. Why wouldn't Warner come in here? They'd be the better buyer.

Scott Galloway: They might if they offer a better price.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: But I don't think—I think there'll be less resistance to Sony as a potential. I don't think senators of the DOJ or the FTC are going to find Sony to be a threat.

Kara Swisher: I don't know. I'd make a lot of noise about foreign ownership. Anyway, we'll see. We'll see where it goes. Sherry, you're not getting the better price is what's really going to happen here. We'll see. But that deal was far too complex. I was like, what? They're buying it back? They're doing this? It seemed ridiculous and open to so many fantastic lawsuits that it was too much.

[Transition]

Kara Swisher: Speaking of controversy that got settled rather quickly, Apple is apologizing after everyone hated its new iPad Pro ad. The ad showed an industrial press crushing symbols of creativity, like a trumpet, cans of paint, cameras, suggesting it could all fit into an iPad, which I'm calling the Ozempic iPad. You may borrow that freely. The Internet—it's a very thin iPad, and that was the point. It's all down in here kind of thing. The Internet didn't like it. Many people suggesting it was a dystopian view of technology taking over human creativity. Everybody weighed in. Ad Age responded on Apple's behalf, saying the ad missed the mark and that Apple said it will not run the ad on TV. What do you think, Scott?

Scott Galloway: I kind of thought it was cool. It also is—for people who don't know—it's an Internet trend on TikTok, actually. There's a lot of this crushing of things and breaking of things. You know, years ago on the Internet, there used to be put everything into a mixer and see what happens. Remember that? They put shit in a mixer and we got to look at what occurred by the end. "Will it mix?" I think it was called "Will It Mix." So this is a long tradition of destroying things, but not good from a company that's well-known for backing creators or at least having that image.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, but the trend—I know what you're talking about. Me and my sons used to watch it on YouTube, just as they take a Snickers bar and put it in a 10-ton compressor and see what happens to Snickers when it's under 10 tons of pressure. But I watched the ad. I thought it was really rattling. I thought this was a rare misstep. I put on Threads, this was the worst ad from the best advertiser or the best brand in the world.

Scott Galloway: What rattled you about it?

Kara Swisher: You see all these beautiful objects and you imagine art and you imagine artisanship and you imagine creativity. And then they crush it all to give you a piece of technology. To me, it was might as well saying, we don't—

Scott Galloway: Well, Scott, it all fits in there. That's the point. In their skinny Ozempic iPad. But go ahead.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, but I thought it was like, let's get rid of Juilliard and just have computer science classes. I just thought it was awful. I really—I usually don't mind shit like that. By the way, it'll have no impact on Apple stock because every time there's a controversy, no one cares. Or at least investors don't care.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, they acted quickly too.

Kara Swisher: But it was very—whoever approved this ad, I'm like, you didn't think this would offend artists? I thought it was really—

Scott Galloway: Yeah, a lot of people spoke out. That's because they think Apple's better, right? They think Apple's better. And then it looked like they were giant tech man attacking. Like they already hate the rest of them. And it's like, oh, these people are now, you know, suddenly tweeting nasty things on Twitter. You know what I mean? It was like, oh no, did they get that person too? That kind of thing. This is something we're not going to remember. We'll remember it as the one misstep, but it is—if you watch the ad, I had a much more visceral negative reaction than I thought I was going to have. Because I don't think of myself as someone who is, you know, one of these protect artists at all costs, but I thought, Jesus, they didn't find that offensive? That they're saying all art can be distilled down to technology.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, yeah.

Scott Galloway: Which object upset you the most?

Kara Swisher: The trumpet.

Scott Galloway: The trumpet.

Kara Swisher: The trumpet. Yeah, I thought that was really upsetting. The trumpet being crushed. Some of it was cool. I like the paint. I'm sorry, I like the paint going. I love when they do that. I love when they squash paint and it splatters. It's cool. I like the paint. Like, I don't care if paint gets splattered. Anyway, let's move on.

[Transition]

Kara Swisher: Speaking of someone else who was disappointed, RFK Jr.'s VP pick, Nicole Shanahan, is hurt. Oh my God, I love this. This made my night. After the Daily Beast published a story detailing her rise to the spotlight, the article titled "Is Nicole Shanahan the Most Dangerous Woman in America?" recounts Shanahan's path to VP pick, including her relationship with Google co-founder Sergey Brin, alleged affair with Elon Musk. They had everything in here. They had her lawyer, her startup, her shitty startup, her failures at being a lawyer, etc., etc. She responded to the article by saying she had been slandered and had to take a walk to shake it off. She didn't, of course, say what was wrong with the article. So she'll probably try to sue because she's got apparently $1.8 billion from Sergey. I wish I had married Sergey for $1.8 billion. I would have had sex with him for $1.8 billion. Maybe not. I do it for—you will do it for—so what did you think?

Scott Galloway: I saw Joanna and I was like, you know, everyone that was sort of slagging you for making your dumb Lauren Sanchez joke, which I thought was funny myself—you know, that she was going to have a correspondent, which was obviously a joke from her. I thought, there you go. You did it. They hit all the high points because I know a lot of national reporters were scrambling and calling me right after it because I was like, I told you there was a great story there. I mean, a few things. It's a great coming out party for the Daily Beast and Joanna's stewardship there too. The best media or best kind of investigative journalism, whatever you want to call it, is they state the obvious that no one's talking about. Nicole is the most unimpressive person to ever be taken unseriously as a president or VP. She has absolutely no business. I mean, the whole—

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: She makes Dan Quayle look qualified. I mean, Dan Quayle got all that shit, if you recall, but he was a legislator.

Kara Swisher: Dan Quayle was qualified. He was a senator. I mean, she has no business. It's ridiculous that she would have entertained this option. And even her response to it was she stopped at a farm stand to say hi to the farmers and talk to this young man who made her feel better. And it's like, well, okay, when the Sixth Fleet is under attack from a hypersonic missile from China, are you going to go to Tulum and do an ayahuasca trip? I mean—

Scott Galloway: I know. I don't believe she did that. I believe her not.

Kara Swisher: They said out loud what everyone was thinking, that her only skill is having sex with really rich men. I thought they just had the goods. They were showing exactly what happened to her startup. You know, everyone's like, she's a startup. She's not. I'm sorry. It's just—I have met all the startup entrepreneurs and her company made zero impact anywhere. It was just, you know, certain people like her socially. That's for sure. I've heard about that. But that's part of like the crowd that goes down to, like you said, Tulum and does the Watusi down there, whatever they're doing. It's a very social reaction to her. And she's utterly unqualified, utterly. I'm sorry, it's a woman I have to say this about, but I would say the same if, I don't know, David Sacks decided to be vice president. She planted it. Like, come on, are you kidding me? Although he's more qualified. I can't believe I'm saying that.

Scott Galloway: David much more qualified.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, Joanna, good job. They also did a very good story about the founder, two really actually significant founders, Katarina Fake and Stuart Butterfield, two both excellent entrepreneurs. They started a bunch of companies together and then apart. They got divorced. They have a child who had a real terrible situation with their kid and a predator. And I thought they did a great job on that story. I didn't think it was prurient. I thought it was a great, interesting story. And I think they're doing some good stuff there, Joanna. Good job.

Scott Galloway: Can I ask you a professional question?

Kara Swisher: Sure.

Scott Galloway: So, you know, Bobby Kennedy was on Bill Maher when I was on, right?

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: And I got to know him. By the way, incredibly likable guy. Obviously. And impressive in person. He is charisma.

Kara Swisher: For sure.

Scott Galloway: And all that. To be fair, he's been great on the environment. He's been a leader around the environment and some issues. Anyways, I got to know him. And his head of comm said we'd really like to come on the Prof G pod.

Kara Swisher: Oh, no.

Scott Galloway: Okay. So I met with the team and I said, Bobby Kennedy wants to come on the Prof G pod. What do you think? What would you do?

Kara Swisher: Me? Not have him on.

Scott Galloway: Not have him on. Why?

Kara Swisher: Maybe. Maybe.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, see? It's not a slam dunk, is it? It took me a while to think about it.

Kara Swisher: I have to say, not because of like—listen, I've interviewed lots of—you know, I had the Parler guy, if you remember, right after the thing. I didn't agree with most everything he said. And he, of course, ended up getting fired from that interview. I don't mean to say you're not qualified to take this guy on, but I think you will give him the benefit.

Scott Galloway: That wasn't the answer I was looking for, Kara.

Kara Swisher: Well, I think I wouldn't be qualified, I don't think. I think he's a tough customer.

Scott Galloway: Oh, yeah, right.

Kara Swisher: I don't think I would be. You're not qualified to bring this guy on. You need a lot of prep on this one. A lot of prep. And you need to counter him because he lies almost constantly and misrepresents things he's said. And so even getting him spewing stuff is a problem. Like, catching his many, many misconceptions of everything and countering back is a very—but unless you're an epidemiologist, you're not going to be able to do that.

Scott Galloway: Right, exactly. And so that's why we decided not to.

Kara Swisher: Well, some reporters are more qualified than others to do that and stuff. That's if that's just on certain things. He spouts off all kinds of conspiracy theories, you know, and doing the "some people said." So I think it's a very difficult interview. And he's charismatic, which is hard to deal with when someone seems reasonable and then throws in a lie here and there. I think that's difficult. This is why I would have a very difficult time with this fella.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, took me a couple of days to figure it out. The other thing is, this is not an insult to you, but you give people a lot of—you try to come to comity with people and you're uncomfortable in discomfort.

Kara Swisher: Comedy or comity?

Scott Galloway: Comity.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: Don't start joking around with RFK. That's like a death knell for your career.

Kara Swisher: No, I didn't know what you were saying. Yeah. Agreed. Yeah. Comedy. I think you try to see the best side of people, and I think this is a very cynical, disturbed person. So I think you are too nice. You're too wanting to come to some—can't we all get along? And in some cases, no, we just can't.

Scott Galloway: No, my interviewing style—I believe in what Sam Harris said, that you want to present people in their best light. And that just might not be the right approach to this.

Kara Swisher: Right. I don't know. What does your staff think?

Scott Galloway: Oh, it was universal no. The general view was, realistically, he doesn't have a path to presidency. So if Donald Trump called and said, we want to be on your podcast, I'd have him on and I would do my best to be prepared. Right. In that case, I'd say yes. But they said he really doesn't have a path. All he's going to do is potentially be a spoiler. And the general sense was that he has been—while he's been very good on certain topics—that he's been so reckless. What I told him, I texted him back, and I don't think he'd mind this one, maybe he would, but I'm going to say it anyways. I said, the general view is that you've been so reckless on the issue of vaccines that we don't want to platform those ideas for fear that they'll get the resonance they really legitimately don't deserve.

Kara Swisher: He gets one in. Liars always, persistent liars always get one in. And you have to really counter them. I think I did a good job in that Parler interview where he started saying, "many people say," and I said, "nobody says that. And here's the nobody who says it." You have to be real tough and vicious almost. And I think it's a quality I like about you. You're not capable of it. I don't think you're a killer.

Scott Galloway: You just feel bad because you said I wasn't worthy. I wasn't up to it. Now you're trying to backtrack.

Kara Swisher: I don't think many people are up to it. I don't think many interviews do a good job with him. Honestly, real people.

Scott Galloway: I'm marrying Nicole Shanahan.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, okay. You too. She should be heard about that. Anyway.

Scott Galloway: She is hot. I'll give her that.

Kara Swisher: Let me just say, Nicole, you're hurt. Get back on the porch and get out of the yard with the big dogs if you're hurt in politics. She didn't even respond. She just said she's going to a farm stand. Big dogs. Big dogs. If you want to play in the big league, get used to it. Same thing, you know, when Linda Yaccarino was upset about us having you all wroth. Get off, get back on the porch.

Scott Galloway: This is pure sexism. If she had been a man, they would have torn her to pieces.

Kara Swisher: What? Who? This is sexism. This is a form of sexism. There's a lot of sexism that hurts women. This was sexism. Nobody wanted to say the truth. And that is she has absolutely no business being vice president.

Scott Galloway: Oh, the opposite. This is reverse sexism. They treated her with kid gloves because they're like, oh, no one wants to go after a nice, attractive young woman because they're going to feel like they're being misogynist. Not us, though. I'll tell you that. We don't have that problem.

Kara Swisher: Let me say, girls or boys, you want to play in the big leagues, you have to deal with the big leagues.

Scott Galloway: That's right. That's feminism. Same opportunities, same accountability. Everybody.

Kara Swisher: I don't even like whiny tech people. "You're being mean to me." Too bad. Give back the billions and get away. Go away. Go away with your billions.

[Transition]

Kara Swisher: Anyway, very quickly, breaking news as we tape, Melinda French Gates is resigning from the Gates Foundation, something I just recently said publicly I thought she would do. She just announced on X her last day will be June 7th as part of her separation from Bill Gates. She received an additional $12.5 billion for her charitable work. She said she'll focus on contributions in the future on groups to help women and families. She started doing that through her Pivotal and some other things she does, her investments. I wish her well. She's a very smart and savvy philanthropist and investor. So there you have it.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, but there's gossipy, I guess it is. Go ahead. The moment when I realized the statement that MacKenzie and Jeff put about each other—"we look forward to new opportunities." I mean, it was just so fucking ridiculous, right? I feel like Melinda and Bill are having a more honest divorce.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: She is having trouble hiding her disgust with him. When she went on national TV and said, "I warned him about Jeffrey Epstein. I told him I was uncomfortable with him." That is literally throwing him under the bus.

Kara Swisher: I feel like she probably did. Some of these stories, I was like, hmm, I wonder where these came from.

Scott Galloway: Oh, no, no, no. It might be true. But typically when there's this much money on the line or people thinking about their kids, they will come in there this high profile. They swallow their feelings and they pretend that this is like an enhancement to their—that they're consciously uncoupling, even despite the fact they fucking hate each other. She is not hiding this. When she threw him under the bus and intimated that he was closer with Jeffrey Epstein than she was comfortable and warned him—what was the truth? That is ugly. And my guess is she wants nothing to do with this guy, including showing up at annual meetings at whatever this philanthropy is.

Kara Swisher: But she wants to do her own thing. She wants to do her own thing. She's a very—you know, she was a very competent product executive there. I dealt with her long ago. And she's been one of the driving forces of the Gates Foundation. It's not just him. He talks more than she does, but she's been critical to that foundation. And she just wants to do her own thing. Give me the money. See you later. Goodbye. Good for her.

Scott Galloway: Good for her.

Kara Swisher: Good for her.

Scott Galloway: Good for her.

Kara Swisher: Good for him. He's got a new girlfriend, right?

Kara Swisher: He's dating Bobby Kennedy. No, he's going out with another tech executive who died's wife. That's what I understand. I don't know this for sure, but I'm pretty sure that's it. I don't think he's getting married again. That's what I believe. I hope they're both happy. I like both of them.

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, whatever. Good. Good for them. She'll do a lot. I have this dream of reuniting her, Lorraine Powell Jobs, and Mackenzie Bezos and the Wojcicki sisters into a massive political force. I have this dream.

Scott Galloway: Wow.

Kara Swisher: I have a dream. Anyway.

Scott Galloway: It's a good idea. You should do that.

Kara Swisher: I know that. I've said it publicly many times. Okay, let's get to our first big story. We've got a lot of earnings news to dig into. Let's start with Uber, whose first quarter earnings are somewhat a disappointment. With an unexpected loss of $654 million, it was attributed to a legal issue, these legal bills and some key investments losing value. I think it was a one-time kind of thing. Operating profit was $172 million up from the same period of the year, but less than half of what analysts expected. Uber is citing softer-than-expected demand. It's also dealing with mounting these legal bills and key investments losing value. The shares fell 6% on the earnings news, while its competitor Lyft reported higher than expected Q1 earnings. Very quick thoughts.

Scott Galloway: Well, look, Uber over the last year is up 73%. So I just think this might be the stock got a bit over its skis. I think the most impressive thing about ride hailing is Lyft. I didn't think Lyft was going to exist. And Lyft has proven that there's an opportunity for a second player here. Uber has performed really well over the last two or three years. And what's interesting here is that a lot of this loss was a function of them marking down their investments in other companies, their corporate investments. I actually think corporate investments are about to enter a golden age because of what Microsoft has recognized by investing in AI. So I think you're going to see more and more corporate investment. Microsoft has invested more in AI than the rest of all other VCs combined. So I thought it was interesting that that what hit hurt them this quarter. But this is just a blip. Uber is doing really well. The whole space is doing really well. They consolidated the market into two players. They're raising their prices. They offer great services, great use of technology. They have locked user bases. And the companies are performing really well. I didn't read much deeper into it than that.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I think so, too. He's a very competent CEO, by the way.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, he's done a great job. He deserves a phenomenal amount of credit.

Kara Swisher: Moving on to Warner Brothers Discovery, where the latest earnings were a mixed bag. The company reported a 7% year-over-year drop in revenue to $9.96 billion. But the streaming side of the business had good news with 2 million subscribers added since the end of 2023. That was impressive. And a 72% jump in adjusted core profit of $86 million. I think it looks like he was saying that it's going to make some dough, like real dough. He didn't say adjusted at all. Warner Brothers is also teaming up with Disney to offer a bundle. This is no surprise. We've talked about this. Disney Plus, Hulu, and Max in the U.S. starting this summer. Smart, smart idea. I think I will probably do that. I think the streaming is moving in the right direction. The bundle plan seems good. Thoughts?

Scott Galloway: Good thoughts? I thought it was strangely... Well, first off, it's very similar. What Apollo has envisioned is what is going to happen here. And that is Max, their streaming company, I think it might be worth more if it was just trading on its own. Because this always has the overhang of a big business that used to be great that's in decline. And eventually when they shed their cable assets to a kind of a bad bank strategy and they can just focus on Max and maybe have the movies, Warner is part of it for vertical integration.

Kara Swisher: Well, if they shed or consolidate, but go ahead.

Scott Galloway: Right. Or both. And, you know, this is one of my stock picks. This, Disney, and Alphabet were my stock picks for 24. I think Warner is now trading at a distressed price and ultimately will probably attract an activist if it goes much lower than this. Also, strangely, Kara, I think this is somewhat correlated in an adjacent way. Did you see Reddit's earnings?

Kara Swisher: Yeah, very strong.

Scott Galloway: Reddit's revenue was up 48%. So if they grow their business from a half a million to a billion, that's an incremental 500 million in revenues. And what people don't realize is that the ad business is remarkably consistent. It's been about 1.5% of global GDP. It never goes much less than that, but it never grows much more than that. So when Google, Meta, Alphabet, I'm sorry, when Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, and now new players, Snap, Pinterest, and now Reddit, if Reddit adds an incremental $500 million in online advertising, it's not the economy growing. It's $500 million either coming out of Alphabet and Meta.

Kara Swisher: Nope. Who's it coming out of?

Scott Galloway: It's coming out of CNN. It's coming out of ABC. It's coming out of Condé Nast and Hearst.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, because that's where you get the results.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, people just look at Warner Brothers. I think if Warner Brothers sheds its ad-supported business, it's never going to trade at the multiple it deserves.

Kara Swisher: Oh, interesting.

Scott Galloway: And then you have the overhang of the debt. The debt's gone down a lot. They've taken a lot out of that debt. It's actually getting to...

Kara Swisher: Yeah, Zaslav has been a disciplined operator.

Scott Galloway: But every time you see these companies add more than the growth of the economy, it's coming out of traditional media players, including cable. And the thing is, these companies are actually decent assets. But when you mix them with growth assets, you have to decide, are you a teenager or are you a baby boomer? And if you just have assets that spend huge cash flow at supported cable but are in decline, that's actually a business that can be a very good business because you can focus on that business, cut costs faster than the decline of the business and print cash and actually do okay. But that money, but the other business, the streaming business is growing faster, but it needs capital. And the mix of the two business models, the market hates it. It doesn't like it. So it values the whole thing at the shittiest business. But when you see these digital platforms continue to grow their revenues by tens of billions, that's just coming out of traditional. That said, their studio business is very strong. They've had a good year. But that's always up and down. And I think Max is going to continue to do really well. It's a good business, and it is now trading. You are going to see, I think the stock is at $8 or something. This stock gets a seven, definitely a six handle. Not an Apollo. Would Apollo go hostile? I don't know. But like an Elliott's going to show up and say, we have an idea. Sell these assets, keep these.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Interesting. Are you part of that? I think you're signaling some calls you've been having recently.

Scott Galloway: Well, the best way to predict the future, Kara, is to make it.

Kara Swisher: Oh, I see. You're involved with something. You're involved with something. I feel it. I know when you're dissembling.

Scott Galloway: I'm marrying Nicole Shanahan.

Kara Swisher: You are. You're going to marry Nicole Shanahan and buy Shanahan and fire me. That's your whole plan. Because she'll be mad at me for pointing reporters in the correct direction. I love it. I thought it was you that dropped a dime on her. I love it when information age women have a pillow fight. It's like a prison film for the modern ages. I really enjoyed it. It got me kind of hot. Let me just say this is all I did. Reporters called me. I said, "There's a story there. Why don't you do your fucking job?" That's what I said.

Scott Galloway: When I said you really signaled this about when he announced her as his pick about four or six weeks ago, you like, "What do you think of her, Scott?" And I go on and I do my thing. And he like, "Yeah, someone should really look into her background." You knew this all along. You said, "Yes. Someone should do some work here and look into her background. Not me, because I'm lazy." If I had been a beat reporter, I'd have had it out weeks ago. Now I'm contacted by all the reporters. I'm like, "Do your fucking job." It's not even that hard, by the way. This is not heavy lifting reporting here. This is right out on the floor kind of stuff. So just do your job. Find the facts and report them. Don't try to do a hit job. It's all there and you can find it. And every single person who has the audacity and arrogance to run for something should expect scrutiny. Sorry. That's the way it goes. That's my feeling. Or become a CEO. Expect the scrutiny.

Kara Swisher: It is ridiculous she even accepted that position. It is ridiculous. Let's not go back there. Let's focus on the next thing. Who's dumber, him for picking her or her for accepting it?

Scott Galloway: I don't know. He needed the money. Whatever she has. I didn't know if she got $800 million. I had heard numbers like that and I couldn't believe it. But I think I do believe it now from what I've checked. That's a lot of fucking money. Man. Again, both of us would do it for half, Sergey. We would totally diddle do for half. Anyway, or less than half, even a hundred. What's our lowest price?

Kara Swisher: What's our lowest price?

Scott Galloway: No, let's not even go there, Kara.

Kara Swisher: Let's not even go there. Right?

Scott Galloway: I don't know. I mean, take me to a play, and if they're good seats, you got me.

Kara Swisher: I mean, I'm just so much cheaper than that. A hundred were drunk, Sergei. Come on, we'll marry you, both of us. All right, let's discuss the New York Times. The Times gained 210,000 digital subscribers last quarter. Largely, users sign up for the bundle of news, games, and sports. They love that Wordle. Adjusted operating profit was $76.1 million, an increase of nearly 41% from last year. Go, Meredith Kopit Levien. And let me say, Joe Kahn gave the stupidest interview ever with Ben Smith from Semafor, but Meredith Kopit Levien is killing it. Wordle all day, the fuck long, cooking, sports, whatever. It shared that it spent a million dollars in its first quarter on the lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI. That's an investment, I suppose, and seeing where that goes. So what do you think? Let's give Meredith some kudos.

Scott Galloway: So not only is it about revenue, but it's about revenue mix. So not all revenues are created equally, and the market values different revenues differently. The revenue increased 6%, which is better than inflation. Ad revenue declined 2%, but digital subscription revenues increased 13%, and that's what the market was focused on. So if you can not only supplant or cauterize the declines with other parts of the business that are going faster, then your margins go up. So this is exactly the kind of revenue mix change that the market wanted. She's talked about it. Daily use is the word she always uses.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: And she keeps under-promising and over-delivering. So she's developing a good reputation on the street. Operating margins were up 300 basis points. That's fantastic. Warner Brothers is down 28%. Jesus Christ, I didn't know that. Year-to-date, NYT is flat, and the S&P is up. But even, I mean, I hate to say it, they're like the best of a sorry lot. I mean, New York Times, as well as its performance, is up 1%. The S&P is up 11% because there's seven companies that are up 30%. It's just crazy. Software's really eating the world.

Kara Swisher: It's true. They're not getting the credit. It's because it's small. I keep saying that. And it's like, the New York Times, the juggernaut. I'm like, it's a small business. And it's a good one. It's a good small business. Should it continue its current strategy? I wouldn't say do anything differently. What else can they do? What could they add? My sense is they're doing exactly what they should be doing. Give me one thing they could add, like a Wordle. What could they add? The New York Times?

Scott Galloway: Yeah. I would take DealBook and I would try and turn it into a subscription competitor to Bloomberg. I have said that for a decade to the Canadian. I've said that for a decade. That would be my idea. That was my idea when I was on the board. I'm like, let's spin DealBook and charge $3,000 a year for it. And hand him a pile of fucking money. That's what I said.

Kara Swisher: All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, Apple and OpenAI's latest moves. We'll speak with a friend of Pivot, Adam Moss. I'm looking forward to it about creating art.

[Ad Break]

Kara Swisher: Scott, we're back and we're learning more about Apple's AI plans. The company has closed in on an agreement with OpenAI to use ChatGPT features in the next iPhone operating system. Makes sense, according to Bloomberg. Apple has also reported still ongoing talks with Google about licensing the Gemini chatbot. No deal has been reached. We're expected to hear more about Apple's future at the annual developer conference in June. They got to do stuff on their own, too, although they're stymied by their privacy, love of privacy. I think they've got to integrate all this stuff into the phone to make it a better assistant for you, getting rid of the Siri stuff, which sucks. Is it better to do the outside companies? They have relied on Google for Maps over the years and Search and things like that. Remember, they tried their own map thing. Although I hear their maps have gotten a ton better. What do they have to do here?

Scott Galloway: I think it's smart. I think they look at how much capital is going into this. I mean, what do they have? Apple has distribution. Apple is the premier distributor of zeros and ones in the world. And if you distribute your zeros and ones through their device, your zeros and ones get greater monetization because it's a wealthier consumer. The billion wealthiest people come through the iOS store. So they're going to leverage that by saying, you know what, we could spend 10, 20, 80 billion dollars to develop a competent search, but instead we'll just cash Alphabet's $28 billion a year check. There's going to be certain categories where they're better off buying Levi's instead of going private label, right? Because in this instance to go to make their own denim would cost tens of billions of dollars. And they're going to be able, what the chief economist at Apple and consultants have all said is that there is so much capital going into the development of AI and you are going to be the great white rhino. Everyone is going to want to have exclusive or semi-exclusive deals to be powered by OpenAI that the amount of money they're going to be willing to pay you. And the margins you're going to get on that money are so extraordinary that we should really, probably doesn't make sense for you to develop it in-house. It makes sense for you to do what you did with search.

Kara Swisher: I mean, to me, one of the things I've been talking to a lot of people about is where's the monetization around these companies? And some of them don't have any, right? And some of them are thieving things. And where are the clients and where do they do well? And you can see all of the monetary benefits accrue to the big players. Like in terms of Facebook and Google, they'll be able to really make advertising really easy and interesting. Like they're going to use AI to improve their existing businesses and make them more efficient and make them more targeted, everything. They'll be giving masses of tools to deploy. Same thing with Microsoft, deploying masses of tools around just things like email or automate different things. And Apple is in the perfect pole position to do this for its users, to draw them further into the ecosystem. If you had an Apple with Siri that fucking worked, Siri sucks. Like, I can't tell you, but if you had an AI assistant, you would have trusted from Apple in a way that was better, that you had a relationship with. You could see that developing. And then you would stay in the Apple ecosystem. And they'll do it well, right? They'll deploy it really well. So it'll be interesting because they really can use all the data they collect that they collected over the years because it's supposed to stay inside the phone, but it could be used to make the phone better. They cannot be cute with privacy. Even if it's just a marketing employee, they cannot be. They'll be caught every time they do something compared to other people. Because we all know Google's a rapacious information thief. We don't think Apple is. In any case, and that's the promise of using them. Anyway, we'll see.

Scott Galloway: You brought up something really interesting, though, and you just inspired a thought, and that is...

Kara Swisher: I inspired you.

Scott Galloway: Apple is arguably the strongest consumer brand in the world. I don't think it's the strongest brand in the world. I think MIT, Stanford, the United States are probably the strongest brands in the world. Nobody gives Apple $300 million to put their name on the side of a building.

Kara Swisher: I was thinking Lucky Charms, but go ahead.

Scott Galloway: There we go. They're magically delicious. You know what is probably one of the most disappointing brands in tech over the last decade?

Kara Swisher: What?

Scott Galloway: Siri. When I hear Siri, when I accidentally say the wrong thing on my iPhone and Siri comes up, I have a rush of disappointment. I don't want anything to do with Siri. I just think it's a total...

Kara Swisher: I say "fuck you, Siri" all the time. All the time.

Scott Galloway: It's this OpenAI or whatever. It's kind of a chance to rebrand their...

Kara Swisher: It's time to turf Siri. It really is. It's time to bury Siri. It just hasn't worked.

Scott Galloway: No, it sucks.

Kara Swisher: All the assistants do. I like "Hello Google" and they just suck. They don't help. Even Alexa. Alexa's lost a lot of brand equity over the last two years. They just don't work. Everything else works pretty well. And it doesn't... I have quibbles here and there with mapping and this and that, but they're quibbles. I hate Siri.

Scott Galloway: I hate Siri.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, it's like that U2 song that's been embedded in my iPhone for 20 years that I can't unload.

Kara Swisher: I can get that off for you.

Scott Galloway: It's Siri. It's Siri just pops up when I don't need it.

Kara Swisher: Siri's going to be, quote, hurt by our feelings about Siri. Get on the porch, Siri. Get on the porch with all the people who complain. OpenAI has a big event, by the way, happening just a few hours after we record. There's some reports the company will be announcing a Google Search competitor or a new voice assistant. Sam Altman posted, "Not a search engine," but I think he's calling it something else. I think it is. The other day, he did say there would be new stuff that, quote, feels like magic. He's trying to channel Steve Jobs, I guess. What do you think they're going to announce? Any thoughts?

Scott Galloway: I don't know. This stuff is super impressive. But my sense is they're all converging on the same company. They're all becoming – my view is that all of these companies, essentially seven of the ten most valuable companies in 1980 were energy firms, and then seven of the 10 most valuable companies in 2024 are big tech firms. Then I started thinking about this and this is what I wrote in last week's No Mercy No Malice. But at the end of the day, I think these companies are all becoming energy companies. And what is driving value is their compute, their cloud services. And effectively, just as the most valuable companies in the world refined fossil fuels into petroleum to power factories and trucks, now the most valuable companies in the world create the petroleum, essentially compute, to power iPhones and our LLMs. And they're all becoming the same company.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I would agree. We'll see what he posts. He's got a lot of good jazz hands from Sam Altman. I got to say, I think the driving force of him is not becoming Netscape. That's really what he's doing. He's like, "I'm not becoming Netscape." We'll see where it goes. But we're looking forward to talking about it on Thursday. Let's bring in our friend of Pivot. Adam Moss is the former editor-in-chief of New York Magazine and author of the new book, "The Work of Art: How Something Comes from Nothing." Welcome, Adam.

Adam Moss: Thank you very much. Really happy to be here.

Kara Swisher: I am a quiet super fan of yours. I've always admired everything you've done in magazines and everywhere you've been. So just let me acknowledge that.

Adam Moss: That's nice. Thank you.

Scott Galloway: Likewise, I should say. I'm a louder person, but you're quieter in the contributions you've made. And I see it, but many people don't.

Kara Swisher: But let's do it. After you left the magazine, this is a different kind of book. And I like the idea of making something from nothing. That's how I think of things as a maker. After you left the magazine world several years ago, you started painting. I'd love to, you write about painting. It was like a bad affair. I loved it even as it tortured me. I'd love to ask you why you did that because I'm always trying to do different things. Talk to me a little bit. It's going to dovetail in a second around where this goes, but talk a little bit about that.

Adam Moss: Sure. Yeah, well, in magazines, I've always been sort of an unusually visual editor, very interested in the way that images and text kind of play with each other, and very involved with photography and graphics of all kinds. So that's just been a consuming interest of mine forever as part of my old career. And then I have a house in Provincetown that used to be an art school. So in the art school, you can see ghosts of the painters who've been painting there for 100 years. And eventually it just got into me. And I just decided, well, I'm here. I'm interested in images, so let me just throw a canvas on an easel and see what happens. And I just one summer I painted a painting a day for about 20 days. And I made some paintings, all of them awful, but really loved it. And yeah, that's what got me hooked into painting. But I was still doing it kind of not even really a hobby until I left the magazine. Then I got serious about it.

Kara Swisher: Wow, that's amazing. For people who don't know Provincetown, I have many works of art from Provincetown on my walls in my home. It's a wonderful artist colony and the artists, the visual artists are really astonishing. I have so many things I just stare at all the time in my home that I love so much from there and the light is so beautiful there, obviously. But the book is actually a combination of your conversations with painters, musicians, filmmakers, even sandcastle builders, who I love, creating art. Talk about how you decided who you wanted to talk to. You call some of these people your art crushes. And I'd love to say, how did you come up with this idea of writing about this? Because everyone expected you to write, "Here's how I made a magazine." Because you worked for the New York Times Magazine, New York Magazine. They're artistic in their own way. They're creations. Who would read that?

Adam Moss: Well, basically, I left the magazine, I started to paint, felt extremely frustrated by my own failures as a painter and felt that there was something I didn't understand about the way that artists talk to themselves. And so I decided to eventually talk to a bunch of them and try to understand how they think. So I started with friends who are artists who I've always kind of revered and been mystified by how the hell they do that. And then built from there with a little bit of a magazine head. I wanted to make portraits as a painter. So I wanted to talk to a portrait painter. But then I was sort of interested in how an abstract painter works. So I did that. I have this huge fan crush on Stephen Sondheim or Moses Sumney, various musicians, or Louise Glück, the poet, and I just tried them out and saw if they were interested in the project. You had to be a particular kind of person to be interested in the project because you had to be essentially ready to kind of sit on a shrink's couch. Because what I was trying to do was not just trace the practical steps. The book is a series, I should say, a series of narrative case studies and the evolution of a single poem or a single song or a single play. I wasn't just interested in the, "I did this, then I did this, then I did this," although I was interested in that. But I was also interested in their state of mind as they were going through it. And for them to kind of ask a question that they don't often ask themselves, which is, "How did I do this?" Most people are scared to ask that question because they think they'll break some covenant with wherever their juju is coming from. And these people were actually interested.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. And many of them, Stephen Sondheim died soon after. Right. And so did Louise, right?

Adam Moss: Yeah. So far only two.

Kara Swisher: No, I mean, I have to tell you, I don't, you may or may not know this, but she is my inspirational poet, period.

Adam Moss: I didn't know that. That's fantastic.

Kara Swisher: Yes, 100%. And actually, the quote that starts the book is from "Circe's Power," which is, "I never turn anyone into a pig. Some people are pigs. I make them look like pigs." I was like, that is my motto for my career. That was the book and everything I do, which is really, and then I just love her.

Adam Moss: Yeah, she was sort of terrifying. And then I just fell madly in love with her.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, she's an astonishing poet. People don't really understand how astonishing she is. So, I mean, it's kind of a question, but were there certain traits or behaviors these people have in common? Because terrifying is possibly one of them. I suspect Sondheim is sweeter than he seems.

Adam Moss: That was not a universal trait. That was true certainly for some of them. I would say that obsession was probably the most important one. There's a great James Baldwin quote that making art isn't about talent, it's really about a whole lot of different things, but it's mainly about endurance. And that endurance proved to be, I think, very important, particularly for the kind of artists I was talking to who were very accomplished. Art is really hard. Things fly in your face to subvert you all the time constantly, and you need a certain kind of stamina to get through it. So that stamina is born of a kind of obsession. So I would say that that was the most important. They're disciplined, they have focus, they can live somewhere in this very difficult equilibrium space between child and adult, where they can play and they also have the rigor, the discipline to bring in adult control to whatever they're trying to make. Or their own adulthood.

Kara Swisher: Very not unsimilar to tech people who have failed miserably mostly.

Adam Moss: Yeah, I think that's true.

Scott Galloway: Nice to meet you, Adam. Congratulations on the book.

Adam Moss: Nice to meet you too, Scott. Thanks a lot.

Scott Galloway: Have you noticed any patterns of how the evolution or the makeup of artists is changing? Is it the same DNA, the same characteristics, the same attributes are steadfast and enduring?

Scott Galloway: Or do you see younger artists present a different mix of characteristics and skills?

Adam Moss: I wouldn't say characteristics and skills are changing. I think they endure. They're the same skills you make when you're having conversation or you're cracking a joke. They're just basic to what storytelling is. I heard you, Scott, in an episode not too long ago, talk about storytelling as the most pivotal skill that you wish people understood. And I agree with you. And that storytelling skill is universal and I think applies whatever.

Obviously, the tools and the mediums of storytelling have changed. Creating a meme is a creative act that didn't exist X number of years ago. All of these so-called content creators are actually making something that is a creative act as well. I think that tools morph all the time, mediums morph all the time, but the basic structure of the way you make something is true, has been true forever.

It's very basic to me. You have the kind of imagining stage, then you have a judging stage, something that nobody talks about, where you bring an intellect to bear on what it is your imagination has created. And then there is the sometimes very tedious and very difficult shaping stage, which is essentially where technique comes in. All of those are important in the making of anything. And they're true whether they take ten years or whether it happens in an instant.

So when you think about this, one of the things you've been using a lot in this conversation is "maker." And I think about maker a lot. For a while, the tech industry grabbed the idea—"We're makers," remember the whole thing? But I actually think it's a great word. Often when people ask me if they want to change their career, a lot of people in journalism come to me and say, "How did you do this?" And all I say to them is, "What do you want to make?" It's like a cook.

Kara Swisher: Can you talk a little bit about that? Because a lot of what you're talking about is not unlike chefs. Tech people use it a lot, but it really does sort of encompass a lot of different acts of creativity. And then how do you want to make it, right?

Adam Moss: Yeah. I mean, in fact, I have two chefs in the book. One, Samin Nosrat, who did *Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat*. And the two chefs who make a whole bunch of restaurants near my house, Jody Williams and Rita Sodi. I wanted to explore that. As you mentioned before, they're sandcastle makers. I wanted to see what would happen with making something that was meant to perish at the end of the day.

There's a chapter that's about the making of jokes, the writers of *Veep* making two jokes through a progression of alts. I could have done the book on a pitcher creating a pitch. I thought of bringing engineers into it. I actually thought of bringing tech into it. But at a certain point, the book became too unwieldy and I had to draw a line somewhere. My own definition of art was pretty elastic. I'm with you in that the making is really what interested me. I wasn't too rigid about what it was that they were making.

Scott Galloway: If somebody showed some talent for what you thought this person could be a great storyteller, potentially a great artist, what are the skills you would want that person to learn? I know a lot of artists who never reach their potential because they lack certain skills to bring their art to the world and never get the recognition I think their talent deserves. If you spotted that type of talent in a young person, what are the skills that round out that core DNA that can help them bring their art and their talent to the world?

Adam Moss: Well, I think the first thing I would say is that if they have interest in anything in particular, if you're a parent who hopes that your child will be able to do something like this at some point, it's a good idea to get them skills trained early. Training is a little bit like an athlete. You have to achieve a certain amount of body memory in order to make something later. But in general, it kind of doesn't matter what you're doing as long as you learn.

I would say mostly, Scott, it would be learn how to fail and then persevere through failure. Failure is just a giant part of all this. Failing is what made me want to give up painting and why I kind of wanted to do this book. I did not have the push. I did not have it in me to keep going. I think eventually I got that back. Learning to fall down is important and learning to get up is important. It's like all of these functions. It's also like acquiring language. You experiment. You get validation for what you're doing when you experiment. You get faith and confidence to move forward. All of these things are the same no matter what you are doing.

Kara Swisher: Let me ask you one question. Is there one person who surprised you with their process or their outlook? Some people are very matter-of-fact. I think I'm a matter-of-fact maker. I don't sit around. I remember the woman who wrote *Eat, Pray, Love*. She was like, "The wind goes through me." And I was like, "This is bullshit."

Adam Moss: Yeah, Elizabeth Gilbert. Yeah, she did.

Kara Swisher: I remember listening. I was there and I was like, "Oh, give me a break." But whatever. That's her, the wind rushes through her brain and then something sticks. I'm much more practical. Is there anyone that surprised you, that you thought they'd be one way and they were another?

Adam Moss: Surprises come in all sorts of ways. Sheila Heti came to my house.

Kara Swisher: Explain who she is.

Adam Moss: Sheila Heti is the writer of a considered one of the pioneering books of autofiction called *How Should a Person Be?* She's a novelist and a writer of all sorts of things. She's got an amazing mind. She came to my house with this pile of papers. I should say also that the book is full of artifacts, process artifacts of the making of things. It's kind of like a book of archaeology. You can trace the beginnings of things through these documents. She brought over this pile of papers which she had invented an entire cosmology, almost like a tarot-like code, which the reader never saw. She just did it in order to understand for herself what is the world that she wanted to create for the book. So that's one kind of surprise.

Andrew Jarecki, who's a documentary filmmaker, did this amazing movie called *Capturing the Friedmans*. It started as a clown movie. He was a tech guy. He invented MovieFone. Then he wanted to be a movie maker, so he decided he would teach himself how to be a movie maker by making a movie about party clowns. Then he learned that one of the party clown's father was in jail for allegedly abusing a whole bunch of kids, and his brother, the clown's brother, was in jail with him for aiding and abetting. Andrew just threw away his party clown movie and made a child abuse movie instead. That's a masterpiece. And he had no experience really as a movie maker. A little bit of experience, but not much. So that's a surprise.

Then, just to your friend Louise Glück—

Kara Swisher: She's not my friend, but I love her.

Adam Moss: You know, we talked about this poem called "Song." "Song" started as a dream. She just got this rather prosaic line in her head that when she woke up from the dream, there it was. "Leo Cruz makes the most beautiful white balls." As she was describing it to me, she said, "It's really a nothing sentence, don't you think?" I said, "Yeah." She said, "Well, to me, it was the most beautiful sentence I had ever written in my life and the most beautiful phrase I'd ever written in my life." And she constructed this entire poem around it. So in some ways, the mundanity of that, or the different ways we each experience that set of words, was as much of a surprise as anything else.

Kara Swisher: Although the next line is critical. The next line, which is, "I think I must get some to you, but how is the question in these times?" What a great poem that is.

Adam Moss: That is the great line after it. Yes, it is.

Kara Swisher: But it's all a stepping stone situation. So you do one, then the other, then the other.

Adam Moss: Yeah. And the last line of the poem, "The fire is alive, the fire is still alive."

Kara Swisher: Yes, yes. It's a great poem. Everybody must read Louise. She's amazing. The last line is, "And he says, 'You're dreaming again.' And I say, 'I'm glad I dream the fire is still alive.'" What a great line.

Adam Moss: Yes, a line she just workshops and workshops and workshops. And you can see it in the papers. It was "the fire was still alive," "the fire is alive," "the fire..." Which to me, I get so excited by that, to see the entrails of a mind in action, a creative mind in action. It's kind of what the book's about.

Scott Galloway: So having spent a lot of time with some of the great artists of our age, would you validate or nullify the thesis that artists are tortured or more prone to depression than the general populace?

Adam Moss: I think I would nullify it. But I do think the process of making art is full of torture. But I don't think they're temperamentally more tortured. I didn't see evidence of that. I mean, it was a data set of 43.

Scott Galloway: It's an interesting take. To be successful at anything just requires a lot of frustration and torture.

Adam Moss: Yeah, absolutely. And putting up with despair. Despair just comes with the process. It's tedious. Getting back to what I said before about endurance, you need to have something that obsesses you, otherwise it's not going to work. Good ideas are kind of cheap, but you need the idea that attaches itself to you and won't let go.

Scott Galloway: But aren't you sort of identifying the key attributes of success in any field? And I say that as a liberating insight. To be truly great at anything requires a certain amount of endurance and resilience.

Adam Moss: I agree with that. Yeah.

Kara Swisher: Do you consider tech people creative in the same way, or are they just rapacious information thieves, as I often think of them? Just today, web publishers braced for carnage. It's Google ads, AI answers. Big tech giant is rolling out AI-generated answers to displace links to human-written websites, just sucking in everyone else's creativity and spitting it back out at us. Thoughts?

Adam Moss: Well, I think that they are thieves of creativity, and I think they're also creative themselves. It's a dynamic. A lot of their creativity works.

Kara Swisher: They're creative at stealing.

Adam Moss: Yeah, they steal. All artists steal. Picasso said that, and it's universally true.

Kara Swisher: Not quite the same.

Adam Moss: So your next book will be on a work of tact?

Kara Swisher: Yeah, absolutely. Something comes from nothing. All right. Anyway, Adam Moss, I am a huge fan. I remain even more so. It's a terrific book. It's really good for anybody who's thinking of making anything. And it's worth reading all these things. And you have been working on more newspaper stuff, right?

Adam Moss: Yeah. I kick around.

Kara Swisher: Are you going to go back to that at all ever for full time?

Adam Moss: I never want to be a manager or boss again, so I'm not going to go back to a job job. But the questions of journalism and also, per the book, the questions of the way journalism is morphing interests me an enormous amount.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, we appreciate it. Really worth the read again. The book is *The Work of Art: How Something Comes from Nothing* by Adam Moss. Thank you very much.

Adam Moss: Thank you, guys.

Scott Galloway: Nice to meet you, Adam.

Adam Moss: Nice to meet you too, Scott.

Kara Swisher: All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for Wins and Fails.

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Kara Swisher: Okay, Scott, let's hear some wins and fails. Would you like to go first or would you like me to?

Scott Galloway: You go first, Kara.

Kara Swisher: I mean, the win is this Aurora Borealis. I thought the world was ending and I thought how beautiful. I love the ones that say, "This is it outside my 7-Eleven." I like them all. I thought San Francisco ones were particularly beautiful with the Golden Gate Bridge. But people in planes, I think it was Teddy Schleifer had one from Spirit Airlines. It was beautiful. The universe is beautiful. It made you feel like you were a speck in a good way. You understood that there are greater things out there. Even though it's just a storm, it was beautiful. It was just what I needed, looking at all those pictures. One of the great things about social media and the internet is it delivers those pictures that you never would have seen by just regular people. I thought that was a beautiful, creative, and gorgeous thing to watch. That made me feel better all week long, given all the bad news.

And it's hard to pick between bad news. One is Louisiana moving to make abortion pills controlled dangerous substances. And book banning and all this stuff is just continuing in the South, especially. It's heinous. All of these solar storms were nothing but wokeness, people trying to turn the sky gay. It went very pink.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, gay. It was a gay sky. Good. Gays are going to take over from you, you people.

Kara Swisher: But this stuff they're doing in the South with banning, I've just been reading a book. We're going to interview the author about book banning and teachers scared to teach, having to teach the other side to the Holocaust. It's repulsive what they're doing in these states to take away people's ability. The free speech people are becoming anti-speech and anti-knowledge, and it's really repulsive.

And at the same time, which I just referenced with Adam, these Google answers, AI-generated answers that are now at the top of search. I don't know if you've used search lately, but they're right there. And I have to say, they're really good. And this is the beginning. Obviously, Google has not innovated in search because they're the only one over many years. That's what happens when you're a monopoly. You don't innovate. But these are really good. And it makes me worry for human written websites very much. We're going to get all our knowledge through the Google strain of whatever they decide to do in AI, which is a depressing situation. So that's my fail. Your turn.

Scott Galloway: So my fail is the Biden administration.

Kara Swisher: The whole one? All of it?

Scott Galloway: Well, not all of it. But it's been a really terrible couple of weeks. And I'm going to be clear, I'm on Team Biden. I'm going to take my sons to some swing states and try and register or help with voter turnout. But they're playing defense, not offense. And now Trump is leading in almost every swing state. And oftentimes the polls underrepresent Trump.

I think he was late on what's happening on college campuses. I think it is incredible that they have not had really powerful surrogates, including Secretary Buttigieg or Newsom, out there talking about the economy more forcefully. I also think that probably the communications blunder of the year geopolitically was threatening to cut off weapons two days before the Israelis went into Rafah. We look feckless. We look impotent. To try and shore up his support on the far left, I thought it was strategically just made him look so weak. They are on their heels, not on their toes. They need to get on their toes. The last couple of weeks have been a terrible couple of weeks.

Kara Swisher: I just interviewed David Ignatius and he said the exact same thing. It's a very complex situation with Netanyahu and trying to get him to heel a little bit, but he's not going to, obviously. And the behavior is there. But he was saying surrogate. He goes, "I don't understand why there's not more strong surrogates." It'll make it feel like Biden is vibrant, even if Trump has cognitive issues, he seems vibrant. You need more surrogates because Trump is a good surrogate for Trump, for his base. Biden needs all the surrogates he can get. Young, vibrant, forceful. There's a bunch of them, too. And they should be out every night with talking points on every program.

Scott Galloway: You know who's literally the strongest surrogate for Biden right now? It's Jessica Tarlov.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. She was at the party last night also where you weren't.

Scott Galloway: I love Jessica. But they need 100 of those out every day, countering everything.

Kara Swisher: Wait, excuse me? Who sent two carrier strike forces over to Israel? No, we're standing down against the far... This is our... He could be so forceful on these issues. Yeah, abortion. And he feels like he's apologizing all the time. Someone said, "Stop talking about fucking bridges, because you can't eat a bridge." And then he draws a red line for Netanyahu that Netanyahu crosses 48 hours later, which, by the way, I'm sure they knew about, and they knew it was going to happen. The comms here is terrible. It's terrible.

Scott Galloway: Anyways, that's my fail. Stop playing defense, get off your heels, onto your toes.

Kara Swisher: We need Saki back. Jen Psaki. Psaki bomb. There you go.

Scott Galloway: My win is, in my opinion, my best piece of media to date was *One Day*, and it's been bested by *Baby Reindeer*.

Kara Swisher: Have you seen this? I'm not going to, but I'll tell you why, but go ahead.

Scott Galloway: Oh, my gosh, it's powerful.

Kara Swisher: Is it? I don't want to. It seems disturbing.

Scott Galloway: It's the first program in a long time I had to turn off because I couldn't handle it. And I went back to it. It is powerful. It's about a comedian. It stars the guy who was the comedian, a guy named Richard Gadd, and it's adapted from his autobiographical one-man show. And it stars Jessica Gunning. It's about stalking. A stalker. First off, she is amazing. He plays a bartender who has some empathy for someone. This woman ends up stalking him. It brings up issues of stalking, male rape, all kinds of abuse, insecurity, the things you'll do to try and get ahead professionally.

Kara Swisher: Oh, Scott, why are you watching this?

Scott Galloway: Oh, it is really powerful. And here's the thing. This piece of media is going to do a lot of good because all the things it brings up—subjecting your own morals for professional advancement, letting people take advantage of you sexually under the auspices of professional advancement, rape. All of these things are usually talked about openly and honestly through the lens of the woman as a victim. Men still aren't comfortable talking about them as the victims.

Kara Swisher: Oh, okay.

Scott Galloway: And this piece of work is going to make it much easier for men who have been subjects of sexual violence. It's a huge hit. People love it. People are talking about it. It is so well done. And the thing I love about it, there's no CGI. There's no dragons. There's no men in tights with capes. It is a very raw, authentic story about a young man. It's also about love. This guy's ex-girlfriend—he lives with his ex-girlfriend's mother, who gets a lot of comfort from him. And a woman is played by Nina Sosanya. It's not well-known people. It's all these not well-known people. And then this woman, Shalom Brune-Franklin, who must be the most beautiful woman in the world, plays his ex-girlfriend. This is such a powerful piece of media. I think it's going to be very meaningful for a lot of young men.

Kara Swisher: Okay. I may try it. I don't know, Scott. I don't know.

Scott Galloway: And not only that. The healthiest relationship in the whole thing and the most impressive person in it is a trans woman played by this actress, Nava Mau. And I love the fact that the focus wasn't on the fact that she was trans. The focus was on just how impressive she is. It's a very important piece of media. I think you should watch it.

Kara Swisher: I will. I've been watching *Hacks*, which I love. And the third season is getting kudos all over the place. It's worth it with Jean Smart. And it's one of my favorite shows about recovering your career and controlling yourself. The third season is getting crazy kudos. It's really into its own.

But the one I watched is *The Idea of You* with Anne Hathaway, having sex with a younger man.

Scott Galloway: I'll watch it. The 24-year-old boy band. You had me at Anne Hathaway having sex. I didn't hear the last part.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, she plays a 40-year-old woman who has an affair with a famous boy band person. And it is entirely satisfying on every level.

Scott Galloway: Good for her.

Kara Swisher: And it's not cringey satisfying. It's actually, you're like, "I am happy I watched that." It's like Lucky Charms.

Scott Galloway: Oh, good.

Kara Swisher: I don't care if it's bad for you. It's good.

Scott Galloway: What's it called? I haven't even heard of it.

Kara Swisher: *The Idea of You*, Anne Hathaway. Anyway, watch it. Anne Hathaway, and her clothes are spectacular. And she's really adorable. And it's great. And there's a lot of sex happening. So there you have it.

Scott Galloway: I like it. I like all those things.

Kara Swisher: Okay, good. And he's a beautiful, this guy, Nicholas Galitzine. He's adorable. He's just adorable.

Scott Galloway: I bet.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. So anyway, well.

Scott Galloway: Maybe he'll be a VP candidate someday.

Kara Swisher: That's true. *Baby Reindeer* really is a huge hit. Netflix once again shows what creativity those people have. They talk about creative. They're not just using tech to figure it out. They've got a good instinct. Anyway, good recommendations. Also filmed in Edinburgh. Finally, the Scottish media industry is alive and well.

We want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business, tech, or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com/pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT.

Just FYI, coming up on our other podcast this week on *On with Kara Swisher*, I've got Walt Mossberg and Marques Brownlee. Yes, together. Also known as MKBHD, the two most influential tech reviewers of the past 30 plus years. Brownlee is like Walt. It's great. And they never met each other. So I made them meet and talk about products and reviewing and things like that.

And Scott's *Prof G's Market Pod* has expanded to its own feed. Starting next Monday on May 20th, you'll get two new episodes a week, all focused on what's moving the financial markets, which is great. Any thoughts on that you want to add?

Scott Galloway: No, very excited. My co-host Ed Elson is this 25-year-old nice kid, and we just talk about the markets. It's meant to educate. It's great. It's a great show. So we're very excited about that.

Kara Swisher: Okay, we'll be back on Friday with more. Scott, read us out.

Scott Galloway: Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie and Chetad engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows, Emil Severio, and Nishat Krua of Vox Media as executive producer of audio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to *Pivot* from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com/pod. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. *Baby Reindeer*, trust me.