Elon Musk’s Outer Space, Scott-Free August Preview, and Guest Ian Rogers

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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, and I'm a little sad, Scott.

Scott Galloway: Why are you sad, Kara?

Kara Swisher: Because you're going away. You're leaving me once again.

Scott Galloway: Well, that's nice. Thank you for saying that.

Kara Swisher: I'm not really that sad, but go ahead.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, daddy's a bit of a strong flavor. I'm not an acquired taste, so I think it's good to give people a little bit of a break. And I think the key to managing any brand is scarcity. So I'm going to be scarce for a little while.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. And also, I don't like to work.

Scott Galloway: I don't like to work here.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, that's true. That's true. But I miss you, Scott.

Scott Galloway: I appreciate that. And then you come back all fresh and delightful.

Kara Swisher: I do.

Scott Galloway: A little freshen up.

Kara Swisher: A little freshen up. Speaking of fresh, Taylor Swift was amazing!

Scott Galloway: Oh, you went to Taylor Swift.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I got you friendship bracelets.

Scott Galloway: I got your friendship bracelets. I would like that.

Kara Swisher: I have them with my son, actually, or my sons. I have several for you. One says reputation. The other says haters gonna hate. Others says swift as fuck boy. Was it great? People say she puts on an amazing show.

Scott Galloway: Scott, let me just say, by the way, it was crawling with Silicon Valley people who had the fancy seats. I had good seats. I had good seats, but not like the fancy down on the floor seats. I have a couple of observations. What an astonishing performer. She delivered what's beyond a thousand percent? First of all, the visuals were amazing. She used visuals beautifully on these screens that were like a theatrical show. Beautiful and amazing. She shifted from elaborate dance stuff and moves to her gal with a guitar or a piano. Amazing. She commanded this stadium. I think it was 75,000 people. She held them in the palm of her hand. She also did 44 songs, Scott, three and a half hours. I can't even, and without much of a break. Costumes were astonishing. Her dancers, she gave a lot of space to them. They looked like they were having fun. They made her look good. Then she spoke to the audience and she's highly intelligent, but her connection with the audience is... The girls around me were a lot of young girls, a lot of teenage girls losing their minds. But also older women, a lot of dads. A lot of dads, like Pivot. Let me just say, I did a lot of selfies with dads who are there with their daughters. They were thrilled to see me. They don't agree with you on Taylor Swift, by the way. They said, teach Scott about Taylor Swift. And I said, okay, I shall.

Scott Galloway: No, no, no. Actually, I've got news about this. Taylor Swift will have another album coming out soon because she waved at a boy and he didn't wave back. So that's going to be another album.

Kara Swisher: Do not. These Swifties. Let me just tell you, Amanda made this point. If she decided to have an insurrection, everybody would follow her. It was crazy. And the merchandise. You're right. She could storm the Capitol. She really could. These people love Taylor Swift. I got to say the whole experience was astonishing. Astonishing.

Scott Galloway: So I just have one observation around Taylor Swift because I'm into data. Do not insult her.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: No, no, no. She has 500 songs about guys leaving her, but zero songs about blowjobs. I think it's time we stopped ignoring the connection.

Kara Swisher: That's good. You're going to miss me in August. That's not good. You're going to miss me. Let's just say, and I'm going to give that because you insult Barbie, which is up at a billion now. Just so you know, she's at a billion. News about that. It is hot Barbie and it's lady summer. Let me just say of the money spending, she has affected the economies. They take it to Swifty Clara. The Fed has talked about it. The Fed has talked about her impact. And along with Barbie, I just feel like there's something happening here with the ladies. So I'm just making that point.

Scott Galloway: Okay, so I saw Barbie.

Kara Swisher: Oh, oh, oh, okay. Let's hear it. Let's hear it.

Scott Galloway: I just think it was such genius, threading the duality of life and measured humor that was insightful, yet didn't take itself too seriously around identity politics. I really think it's one of the movies of the ages in a deeply relevant statement about our society.

Kara Swisher: Oh, my God. You're fucking with me, right?

Scott Galloway: I walked out.

Kara Swisher: What? What? I walked out, yeah.

Scott Galloway: What do you mean? Why?

Kara Swisher: I mean, I bought a ticket. I went in. I sat there for 45 minutes. And as usual, I had to go to the bathroom. And it's one of those theaters where it's a pain to go to the bathroom. I just didn't have the... I don't know. I was too embarrassed to go back. And I was a little bit high on edibles. And I'm like, I'd rather go to Carl's Pharmacy. Here's how I saved the night.

Kara Swisher: Why did you like it? It's literally crossing the billion mark. But okay, go ahead.

Scott Galloway: I'm a 48-year-old guy with erectile dysfunction who drinks bourbon and watches Goodfellas and war movies at night. I mean, how could I like Barbie? Seriously, come on.

Kara Swisher: It's funny. And by the way, I just want to say, I want you to say one nice thing about it. But go ahead.

Scott Galloway: I think she's spectacular. I think he's spectacular. It was clear the set design was beautiful. I get why people like it. There was some really... That's not what I will say is this. When I read the book Moneyball, it's about analytics and sports. I'm aware, yeah. And I heard they were making a movie. I'm like, how on earth are they going to make a movie? And they made a fantastic film out of something I never thought could be made into a movie. What I will say is it's not easy to make a movie about Barbie because it's so charged. It could just go so many wrong ways so often. And I thought they threaded the needle perfectly. I thought it laughed at itself, but it also had deep meaning. I love the black and white scenes with the mother and the daughter. That stuff always tugs at my heart. But yeah, I saved the evening. I left. I walked out.

Kara Swisher: What was happening when you walked out and had to pee? What was happening when you were peeing? You didn't even get to Casa Dojo Mojo with Ken? You didn't get to that?

Scott Galloway: They were... America Ferreira, is that her name? And her daughter pulled up to save her from somewhere.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. From Mattel.

Scott Galloway: From Mattel. Yeah. That's where, that's why. You didn't get back to Barbie Land with Ken?

Kara Swisher: I went to something better. I went to this place in Aspen called Carl's Pharmacy and it has all these old toys. And I got, get this, I got a Stretch Armstrong. I got a miniature version of an Etch-A-Sketch. I got a lint brush and a Clark Bar and the book Dune. I mean, how do you know I was on edibles without knowing I was on edibles? And then I went home and just stared at my purchases for an hour and I watched TikTok. It was a fantastic evening. I don't get why Barbie is so popular.

Scott Galloway: There's a whole dude section. There's a whole male identity section. I get it. I get it. I still don't understand. How can she be so popular when her knees don't even bend?

Kara Swisher: That's good. That's good. You know what's going to have to happen now? You need to watch the rest of it and you and I are going to watch the rest of it. You and I in your apartment in New York.

Scott Galloway: This qualifies as workplace harassment. The matriarchy is again forcing me to do things I don't want to do.

Kara Swisher: Oh, you're such an idiot. The women are making money and making shit happen. And you're eating edibles and playing with Stretch Armstrong. That pretty much sums it up. That's a surprise to you. More women, more single women-owned homes than single men. Women are killing it.

Scott Galloway: Good for them. Killing it.

Kara Swisher: Let me just say, speaking of killing it, my Kia is under a tree. My Kia, my beautiful, sexy Kia.

Scott Galloway: Oh, I saw that. What happened?

Kara Swisher: Well, I was at Taylor Swift or she was crushing it. She was crushing it and my car got crushed. So DC, these trees are down. Listen, we had a really bad tree fall, but there's tree falls all over DC. Amanda was trying to get home last night and had to go around because there were so many trees down everywhere. And it was a big storm, 80 miles per hour. The Kia was... Thank God the Bolt was at the airport. Thank God. And a tree fell on the car. It's under a tree. And there's so many trees down, I don't know when they're going to take the tree off my car. But it got... I don't know what's happened. It's very damaged. I would say it's very...

Scott Galloway: Wow. Yeah, yeah. I saw that. I know.

Kara Swisher: Isn't that my sexy level is going to decline since I don't have the Kia to drive around?

Scott Galloway: Yeah, that's going to be a big problem. That's going to be a big problem.

Kara Swisher: But I have the Bolt. I have the Chevy Bolt still. Thank God. And there's big news about the Bolt. Yes, they're bringing it back.

Scott Galloway: Oh my God, I'm so happy. I actually think you probably had a hand in that.

Kara Swisher: I might have. General Motors loves you. You're a total General Motors spokesperson.

Scott Galloway: Yes, but I love the car. I love the car. I love my car. I actually, guess what I rented here in San Francisco for the week? Guess.

Kara Swisher: What did you rent in San Francisco?

Scott Galloway: A Chevy Bolt.

Kara Swisher: A Chevy Bolt. Yeah. Yeah. I love my Bolt.

Scott Galloway: Good for you. They had Teslas everywhere. And let me just say, Teslas, no one was taking them. Everyone was taking the Chevys and the Kia Niros. And it's interesting renting an electric car now. Rental services are really leaning into it quite heavily. It's pretty cool. I was with my boys on Saturday, and because Aspen has a lot of wealthy people, Audi was doing this big demo with all their EV cars. There's some good-looking electric cars coming from Audi.

Kara Swisher: There are. There are some amazing ones. The Jaguar. I was in the memo with Alex. I was here for my son's weekend. By the way, I want to inspire the audience to have a couple of contests. I ordered a Rivian, but it's going to come with the steering wheel on the left side, as cars do in America. I need to buy a car in London, and I'd like to crowdsource. What car? I want our audience to decide what car I should have. What car do you think I should buy, Kara?

Kara Swisher: I don't know. I think depending on what the electric cars are there, there's probably a lot of charging around London. EV's big in London. Honestly, Scott, you should get a Bolt. It's planning a next generation.

Scott Galloway: That is not going to happen.

Kara Swisher: It would be so cool if you talk about it.

Scott Galloway: That is not going to happen. It would be so cool. It would be a Dojo Mojo Bolt. They're using GM technology, but it reportedly reduces battery costs.

Kara Swisher: Ooh, don't use those terms in the same sentence, GM technology. That's not what their spokespeople are supposed to do. Avoid the whole GM and technology phrase. I'm going to save you a spot to get in line for that one. I'm going to say, with my friends at GM.

Scott Galloway: Anyway, by the way, I'm going to drive the Chevy Bolt over to Twitter headquarters, where, speaking in other news, he rebranded HQ to X, running into some legal issues. They're so stupid. I don't get it. And again, there's reasons to talk about them. There's reasons not to. But have you been getting the change on your app? It's changed, too. It's really ugly. I'm locked out again. It happened. I got locked out, did a ticket. It was really weird, Kara. I don't know if it was a glitch or they're just trying to reconfigure things. But my account on Twitter had a gold check. And I was identified as a media account for some reason. And then so I got a gold check. I'm like, what is a gold check? And I said, it's a media account. And then I got locked out. It's a business account, too. I don't even know. Is that right? And then I haven't been able to get back on in the last 48 hours. So I've been on Threads a lot.

Kara Swisher: Well, that's probably a gift.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, probably.

Kara Swisher: Okay, let's get to our first big story. While we're all down here getting annoyed about the Twitter rebrand, is Elon Musk conquering outer space. We have talked about how powerful his Starlink satellite service is and how far behind everyone else is. This is something that Time's had a big piece on. I've been warning about it for a year now. SpaceX launches about 60 internet satellites every week. I think there's 4,500 up there. Starlink accounts for more than half of satellites orbiting the Earth. These are lower satellites. Jeff Bezos hasn't launched a single satellite, so he's got to keep up in that. Elon Musk tweeted in April, quote, "Between Tesla, Starlink, and Twitter, I may have more real-time global economic data in one head than anyone ever." This is... We talked to Ashley Vance last week about the Wild West out there. But one private citizen is in a position to yield a lot of power. Starlink has already dominated space. He also, as the story noted, another big issue is that the war in Ukraine where officials say, and this is where I started paying attention to it, they're fully dependent on Starlink and Elon can disable internet access wherever and whenever he wants. He's already done that several times, apparently. U.S. government is a big SpaceX customer. It's really complicated because of this. Taiwanese officials are refusing to use Starlink because of its economic ties with China. It's nerve-wracking that one person can decide this stuff. Also, someone who really doesn't know anything about foreign policy. Do you have any thoughts on this?

Scott Galloway: Look, I do think there's something around... So let me start. And I said this last week, and I felt like it was hard for me to say this. But I do think we're at a point where when individuals have this kind of money and this kind of power and don't need any guardrails, it's probably gone just too far. And the last time we had this kind of money was in the Gilded Age of this concentration of wealth. So I do think there's something to that. And for the first time in my life, and I would be subject to this, I actually believe we should probably consider something. I don't know if we need a wealth tax, but we definitely need to restore progressive taxes where once you get to this point, you do pay. When Reagan took office, the top tax rate, if you made over a million bucks, was 70%. By the time he left office, it was 27%. And if you look at income inequality, that was sort of the starting gun. And in addition to income inequality and resentment and a lack of faith in the system, it creates a small number of people that just have too much power because of Citizens United, they can kind of weaponize the government. Okay, speech over on income inequality. The two things to consider here are, one, it's a defense issue, and then ultimately might be an antitrust issue. And that is, if you're Northrop Grumman and you're selling Trident-class submarines and you sell them to make money and you're a publicly traded company, you want to be the nation that errs on the side of markets and lets people make a lot of money and lets people innovate. So I think the fact that we attract people like Elon Musk, and there's just not getting around it. The guy's a visionary and he makes big, bold bets. And to dominate low-Earth orbit satellites. Now 50% of all satellites are dominated by him. He got government assistance. I'm sure there's government subsidies everywhere, but he figured out a way to do it. And I think that he and SpaceX should recognize incredible wealth from it. I think they deserve it. I think he's a visionary. I like the fact that America is the place where you can make tens of billions if you're a visionary like that. There's two things. One, most defense contractors, and this is now really a defense contractor, have to register with the defense department and clear all sales and all business through the defense department. And that to me seems like a pretty simple fix here, that this has huge defense overlay concerns. And so he needs to coordinate and register with the defense department as a defense contractor. And that's not to say he shouldn't make tens of billions and become by far, maybe the first trillionaire. And how you tax that is a different issue. But it needs to be coordinated with the defense department, because when one man can switch off battlefield technology in what is the war in Europe. It's just, we were here six months ago. It's a bad idea. And then the second issue is, you know, if Lina Khan really wanted to get out ahead, by the way, her office called me. She clearly, they're clearly upset. I've not been nice, although I did apologize. Anyways, enough about me. I think Lina Khan should get ahead of this and really look at what it means to have one company have a 50% market share of lower satellites. Also, I believe our air and our space, our infrastructure, and that we should really be looking at a multilateral basis around what kind of taxes and regulation. It inhibits research, astrophysics research.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, it does. No, one person. It feels like the beginning of a Bond movie and he'll be dead by the end of it, that kind of thing. It feels like a villain in a Bond movie. That's sort of the basic plot of one guy owning whatever the heck it is. Yeah. And so that's troublesome. I think the idea that one person who's unstable would be a kind way of putting it, or capricious is another issue. The thing is, he's out front of a lot of things, right? He was out front with this Starlink, out front, 100%. You got to give it to the guy.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, out front.

Kara Swisher: And now he's talking interesting about, and I would agree with him, it's something I don't mean I'm out front, but this electrical issue, because we've been talking about nuclear and other ways to make electricity. But there being a global electricity shortage. He's completely right. The question is, even if he's prescient, should he have this power? And I think that these satellites are something I have been very concerned about. And I told you this story where a Ukrainian official came up to me at a party in Washington many months ago and said, can you get Elon to turn this on? And I was like, what? I wasn't mad at him necessarily, because I just think he's an idiot when it comes to foreign policy. He sounds like a Russian asset in things he says, and sometimes a Chinese asset. But it's not his fault for that. He is what he is. But our U.S. government should have never let it get to this situation. Like what are they doing? Why are they putting so much power in the hands of one person who is unstable in some fashion?

Scott Galloway: You have to, if you're going to have legislation, it has to be based on rules that apply to everyone. And you have to ensure that you're not looking at his personal peccadillos. He's allowed to be eccentric. He's allowed to change the name of his companies to X. But I just think there needs to be legislation around, all right, our next infrastructure in terms of communication, data, and battlefield technology is going to revolve around this technology. And think systemically about whether any one individual, one country, what is our role in it competitively geopolitically and make laws kind of from top down, not like, well, we don't like Elon, so we're going to try and make things hard for him because he deserves... Look, I don't like the guy, but at the end of the day, capitalism and the ability to attract innovators who do bold, visionary things like this is more important than what anybody personally thinks about his behavior. People are allowed to be erratic. They're allowed to be unstable. And there's a big opportunity here for them to make a ton of money. I mean, the Starlink service, I have friends who are big voters. They said that the GPS maritime industry was overpriced and a shitty product. And now basically Starlink is just amazing. They buy this thing, it comes in a box, they take it out. And all of a sudden they have incredible internet, incredible GPS. They deserve... The employees at Starlink, Elon Musk deserve tens or hundreds of billions of dollars. This is part of SpaceX now. People think it might spin out.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: But the idea of a communication system that could gather most of the world's data and again, has defense implications. We have decided as a nation that our elected representatives and our appointed officials get to make these decisions. And that's not to say it doesn't weave with capitalism. Lockheed makes a shit ton of money, defense contractors, and even the Speaker of the House or the former Speaker of the House gets to trade on that inside information based on who gets defense contracts. Another talk show, another talk show. But there is some real big concerns here, but they need, quote unquote, system-wide legislation that impacts anybody who wants to control the skies.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I still think it's certain things government should be ahead on. They're just not, whether it's AI, whether it's this. I wish Bezos would frigging get in there, Jeff.

Scott Galloway: Agreed. Stop making out on your yacht and get your ass in there.

Kara Swisher: You're very, very tight ass, actually.

Scott Galloway: All we need to do to inspire the space race with Bezos is to start putting satellites in thongs. And I think he'll be much more interested.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of making out on the boat pictures of him. Good for him.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. Good for him.

Kara Swisher: I just wanted to get some satellites up there. It's not the only thing we need to come up, Jeff, okay? Just that was a little penis joke I made. I made a Jeff Bezos penis joke.

Scott Galloway: Oh, I had a penis joke. My penis is like an EV. It's touch to start. At least it used to be. No longer.

Kara Swisher: No longer.

Scott Galloway: No, it's like an EV that's not working. Now it's like a Tesla, a defective Tesla.

Kara Swisher: Oh, God. That's really bad. Scott Free August. Scott Free August. You have one more penis joke. I give you one more penis joke. But actually, we're going to make the next section all about you. Scott, we're going to go on a quick break. When we come back, a preview of Scott Free August. And we'll speak with a friend of Pivot, Ian Rogers, who you have an investment in his company about crypto wallets. We wanted to talk to him for a while.

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Kara Swisher: Scott, we're back. This is your last episode before Scott Free August.

Scott Galloway: Well, it's mostly Scott Free August. You'll pop in for two episodes we previously taped with listeners and some questions and answers. So you're not going to be gone. You're like a ghost in the machine.

Kara Swisher: We have a lot of fascinating guest hosts coming on to co-host with me while you're gone. I'm going to announce some of them. And for each, you tell me what question you'd ask if you were here. Some of the stuff that you would ask, okay? Okay, first one, Savannah Guthrie, the co-host of the Today Show. I love Savannah. I think she's an amazing interviewer. We're going to talk a lot about media and interviewing and styles and stuff like that. What do you think we should talk about? Keep in mind, she cannot make penis jokes, nor can she call Elon a chode. So go ahead.

Scott Galloway: Well, I would describe Savannah Guthrie as like the world's greatest pilot of the 747, but it's the 1970s and it's Pan Am. But I think it's really interesting when you speak to a super successful person in a medium that's dying. What are her thoughts around TV as a medium? I think the two of you should ask each other what have been your most interesting interviews over the last 24 months.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I think we're going to do that. I find Savannah is someone who doesn't get as much attention for interviews as she should. I think she's great. I think she does really strong interviews. There's lots of good interviewers. Christiane Amanpour is good. A whole bunch of people. Obviously, Chris Wallace is very good in TV, especially. John Swan is quite good. But Savannah, always, Gayle King is quite good. There's a lot, actually, in TV. And I think she really does cut to the chase.

Scott Galloway: Three women. I feel triggered. I feel triggered.

Kara Swisher: All right, good questions for Savannah. Good questions for Savannah. We are going to talk about interviewing and media. Joanna Stern, the senior personal technology columnist for the Wall Street Journal, an old friend of mine, someone I think does beautiful... Talk about someone leaping into the future. She does all kinds of videos, has been very heavy on TikTok and other places for a long time now, obviously working for an older institution. What do you think we should talk about besides Apple Vision Pro?

Scott Galloway: Okay, mixed reality headset. How fucking stupid is this? I would ask her what does... Okay, is that how I should put it? How fucking stupid is this? On a list of one to ten, something like that. That's what I should do.

Kara Swisher: Okay, all right, okay. All right, all right. Will Hurd, who's running to be the GOP candidate for president, he got booed over the weekend for saying Trump was only running to stay out of prison. I thought he handled that beautifully with those crazy screaming memes. Very classy guy, Republican, again, from Texas. What should I ask him about?

Scott Galloway: Well, look, I feel like the most significant thing that happened to sort of reflect just how numb we've become in our nation, outrageous and unacceptable behavior, is that the person who is polling at number two for the Republican nomination has passed legislation that forces schools in Florida to whitewash slavery and talk about the benefits of slavery. You'd like to think of it as a society, we become more evolved and we try and bring people together. The fact that we're now in 2023, have a candidate for president who decides that the way to become president is to inflame Democrats. We no longer vote for people based on how they bring us together. We vote for people who do the best job of tearing us apart because we're so angry at the other side. And it's just such an affront to not only non-whites. It's such an affront to those of us in Florida that would like to think we live in a modern society. And that's the racist issues. Then there's Disney, and then there's the abortion stuff that he passed under the cloak of darkness. He's just a terrible candidate. And they had more laughing videos. He's a... Will Hurd is black, right? He's the guy from Texas.

Kara Swisher: Will Hurd is, yes. Yeah.

Scott Galloway: I just... I don't... I guess my question is, you know, I don't want to know. What's his vision for the Republican Party when that shit is happening in the Republican Party? And they can't get any traction beyond... I mean, DeSantis is dying, obviously. But Trump is surging. For how the economy could be doing better than it is right now.

Kara Swisher: Great question. Yeah. He, of course, left Congress, as you know. It was very up and coming. But the new GOP is a very different animal right now. I don't know what it is. A beast, really, to Donald Trump. If he was a Democrat, he'd be polling at like 15% right now. That will hurt.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, that's a really good point. He'd be polling at 15%.

Kara Swisher: Okay, good. I like those. Okay. Don Lemon. Lemon Limon. De Lemon. De Lemon. Formerly of CNN, you might have heard. Yeah. What should we talk to Don Lemon about?

Scott Galloway: So many things. He's a lot of fun. Inside baseball, like what does he think the future of CNN is? And then I'd go personal. I would say, look, boss, the history of big, iconic anchors, and he's one of them, who leave platforms usually fade to black. What are you going to do to stay relevant?

Scott Galloway: Like what's your personal plan for your career? Because all of these guys and gals leave with a lot of confidence. And what they find is that the platform was—

Kara Swisher: Well, he was fired. He was fired.

Scott Galloway: So same with Tucker. You're right. But what's his plan? He was making several million dollars a year and was a household name. Assuming he wants to maintain that type of relevance and income earning power, what's his strategy? What's his plan? Does he go to another network? Does he start his own thing? Megyn Kelly, I'm obsessed with metrics and desperate for other people's affirmation. And I looked at news commentary at the time. We're like number, we kind of hover between number like two and eight in news commentary. And we're surrounded.

Kara Swisher: By right wing.

Scott Galloway: We're surrounded.

Kara Swisher: We're at a Trump rally.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. Literally. We're at the, what's it called? CPAC? We are surrounded by right wingers. It's crazy. We're sitting there holding the fort down.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. And then turn on an episode of Knight Rider. And then we have some real fun. We pull out the saran wrap.

Scott Galloway: Okay. The starch. I don't want to hear. I don't want to hear.

Kara Swisher: What is your point about Megyn Kelly? Because I really like to stop talking about her.

Scott Galloway: Well, no. So we're literally, if you look at the top 10 news commentary podcasts, we're progressive, right? You're literally the fire chief and the deputy mayor and the mayor of Pakistan. I'm kind of along for the ride.

Kara Swisher: I knew that was coming.

Scott Galloway: And everyone else around us is like crazy, crazier, and craziest. It's like Mark Levin and then Matt Walsh.

Kara Swisher: Oh, God.

Scott Galloway: And then it's like, Megyn comes across as the sanest one.

Kara Swisher: Oh, no. No, no, no. Oh, compared to these folks? Have you seen who we're next to?

Scott Galloway: Who we're next to? I know that. They're all crazy. They're all crazy. Megyn Kelly's taking a left.

Kara Swisher: I actually like Megyn. I like Megyn.

Scott Galloway: Go listen. I will send you some choices. I've been on Megyn's show.

Kara Swisher: Okay. I like her.

Scott Galloway: She's become terrible.

Kara Swisher: But okay. Anyway, nonetheless, Don Lemon. Those are the good questions. Those are good for her.

Scott Galloway: Oh, DeLamone.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, DeLamone. Anything else? I like the personal stuff. How old is Don? Is he 50?

Scott Galloway: No idea. I suppose. I don't know. He's like one of those guys, you can't tell if he's 25 or 85. I don't know. He looks very good. Don Lemon. I'm going to look it up. Someone asked me how old you were. They thought you were 45. I said, no, no. He's 57. My kids don't know how old I am. I lie every day. They have no idea how old I am.

Kara Swisher: That's around your age.

Scott Galloway: Well, look, I would ask Don. We're about the same. You're 58, right?

Kara Swisher: No, no, no. I'm 49.

Scott Galloway: No, you're not.

Kara Swisher: No, you're not. I'm 49. And naked, I look 48 and seven-eighths.

Scott Galloway: No, you're not 49. You sound like my kids now. I'm lying about my age. I just want everyone to know I'm lying about my age.

Kara Swisher: 58. You're 58.

Scott Galloway: I am not. The internet is wrong. The internet is wrong. Ask ChatGPT several times and we'll get to 48. I would ask Don. I like the personal stuff. And that is, I know, given that I'm younger than Don, but can relate to his generation.

Kara Swisher: Not much.

Scott Galloway: No, he's 57. You're 58. But go ahead. I think there has been such a really positive evolution around the way the world and people, the general public views gay people.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: That's the good news. The bad news is I remember when I was in college and starting work, the workplace was a very homophobic place.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: And I'm sure I don't need to tell you this.

Kara Swisher: No.

Scott Galloway: But I would just like to know what was it like starting out as a gay black man in the media world in the 80s?

Kara Swisher: Good one. That's good. What was that like? We'll gay it up. We'll gay it up for sure.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, that's not.

Kara Swisher: While you're gone. We'll have a little gay party. There you go. Good. All right, speaking of gay, George Han, who literally vacationed with you when he fills in. He'll be in your house in Aspen or wherever. He's coming to Nantucket.

Scott Galloway: White on white.

Kara Swisher: I don't remember where you are. White on white. I don't know what ridiculous vacation spot you're at at any time. Anyway, George Han, what should we talk about with George Han?

Scott Galloway: Again, I like the personal stuff. George Han is my Twitter friend. He's the first person I've ever reached out to on Twitter and said, let's meet him. And now he's vacationing with you. And let's meet offline. And I'm very fond of George. But I think George is a really soulful, interesting guy. And I like the personal stuff. One, you know, George is a successful actor, but he hasn't, like, broken out. And I think, you know, I would talk to him about his career in Hollywood. I'd also, you know, he's single. I'd ask him about relationships and what it's like to be single in New York. I like the personal stuff.

Kara Swisher: Yep.

Scott Galloway: And I think George just brings kind of a humanity and a turn of phrase. And he just kind of, he's one of those blue flame thinkers who can kind of summarize stuff well. But I like, one of the reasons I love talking about George is we talk about faith and our moms. You know, I like the personal stuff from George.

Kara Swisher: He's going to be on when we have the Republicans on, which are the group that does all those fantastic drag queen depictions of Republicans, which are my favorite thing.

Scott Galloway: Jesus Christ, we've totally gone fucking woke.

Kara Swisher: Well, you're gone. You're gone. They're really funny.

Scott Galloway: Can we have any more woke? Barbie is a billion dollars, Taylor Swift a billion and a half. We're all woke and somehow we're kicking ass financially. Did you see that someone did a map of the U.S. based on whether Barbie was doing better at the box office or Oppenheimer? And it was fascinating. It was literally exactly the political map. Every state that Barbie's leading in was a Trump state in 2020. And every state that was Oppenheimer was a Biden state. And the five states, this is all true.

Kara Swisher: Oppenheimer's kind of woke.

Scott Galloway: Agreed. But the five states where there was even are all the swing states. It's just amazing that these two movies are totally correlated with political values. I mean, it's fascinating.

Kara Swisher: But again, I would say Oppenheimer is quite a liberal movie. Both of them are.

Scott Galloway: I think that's right. I think they both are.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. I think there's a lot. There's a real groundswell of tired of this book banning. I've heard from lots of people in Florida. They're tired of book banning. They're tired of the abortion thing. They're like, what the hell? Like, we care about economics, jobs, and what are we going to do about AI? Like, things, real things. And then you have this group of crazies who love Trump. That's it. That's really pretty much the electorate right now. Anyway, any topics we should not forget that we want to keep the light on, keep warm for you? Any topics?

Scott Galloway: I'm fascinated by what is going to happen with AI. I mean, this is what's happened. Technology has built a thin layer on top of a lot of thick investment by middle-class investors, whether it's GPS or DARPA or even space technology. And then these people come in and they put in a kind of a thick layer of innovation and they make billions. Every company, I don't care if it's Alphabet or Apple, can reverse engineer it to hundreds of billions of investments by the middle class. And what a lot of these companies have done, especially Meta and Alphabet, is they wedge themselves. They take other people's content and they wedge themselves between that content and the consumer and find a low-cost, user-generated way of creating their content such that they don't have to pay for it. Whether it's TikTok, and AI appears to be kind of going the same way. And I'm just very interested in what should the regulation be as it relates to 230, what are the business models, who are the winners, what are the potential threats. I see a huge threat around AI misinformation coming up in quarters one and two of next year around the election. But I do think, from what I call a strategic standpoint, I do think that Pivot has to be a place where people come and get some sense of perspective and explainers around AI. So I think as a tech journalist, I think we should go a little bit deeper around AI and what's happening there.

Kara Swisher: Great. Okay. Anything else? Obviously, Trump indictments will be happening while you're gone, I think. You know, the reality is both of us really, really like politics. Politics is so saturated, and it's so emotional, and it triggers so many people. I'm trying to figure out topics that bring people together as opposed to divide them because politics is just so polarizing. The other thing I would like us to do or like you to do, and I will start with the first entry. We need to crowdsource. We need to change our theme music. Our theme music feels like you're on trial in the future. It's just I don't like our theme music. It needs to be updated. So we're going to get new music. And I want to propose the one to beat is this song. Cue it, Taylor.

[Music plays]

Kara Swisher: That's right, Cara.

Scott Galloway: All right. Wow.

Kara Swisher: Oh, no, man.

Scott Galloway: Oh, my God. I'm back in gay bars. That's Wham!

Kara Swisher: That's right. That's right. George Michael, one of the great artists. By the way, all of my artists are dying of opioid overdoses. There's a great Wham! documentary. Did you see it? It's fantastic.

Scott Galloway: Not, but I will now.

Kara Swisher: You must. You must. Unless you put workplace pressure on me to see it. You need to see it.

Scott Galloway: The matriarchy.

Kara Swisher: That's great. But literally, Prince, George Michael, and Tom Petty, my three favorite artists.

Scott Galloway: Oh, my God. All died of opioid overdoses. And, of course, the media decided to cover it up and stay with something else. Michael Stipe and R.E.M. should not leave the house. Everyone I listened to in the 80s.

Kara Swisher: And also, I don't know where the guys from the English Beat are, but they should stay at home. I thought you'd go for The Cure over Wham!

Scott Galloway: I like The Cure. It's a little bit dark, although The Head on the Door is an amazing album. Anyways.

Kara Swisher: God, Scott, you are so gay. It's crazy.

Scott Galloway: Gay by day, straight by night. I swear. I literally just had a memory of like a gay bar. Like, oh my God. I've been to almost every gay bar. And just a little pro tip to my straight brothers out there, go with your gay friends to the gay bar because there's always sisters there and they think you're really evolved and are just more inclined to give oral sex to a guy who seems progressive. Anyways.

Kara Swisher: Okay, Wham! All right, everybody, he wants Wham! I want, I would say, Taylor.

Scott Galloway: No, I'm not doing Taylor.

Kara Swisher: What about Beyonce?

Scott Galloway: How perfect. How perfect is "I'm Your Man"? One, because I'm self-absorbed. And two, you're a lesbian. Get it? You're a lesbian. I'm your man.

Kara Swisher: I got it. I think when people hear us come on, they're like, oh, I'm happy. I want to dance.

Scott Galloway: Yes, you're right.

Kara Swisher: Okay. I feel good. I feel nice. Everyone, send in emails about what you want or text us or on threads. You're obviously not on Twitter because Scott is once again banned. We have to bring in a friend of Pivot. Ian Rogers worked for many years in digital music. He contributed to the launch of Apple Music, in fact. Then he became chief digital officer of the French luxury company LVMH. Big deal, which includes brands like Louis Vuitton and Sephora. Now he's the chief experience officer at Ledger, which makes hardware crypto wallets, which look like USB drives, but for crypto, full disclosure, Scott is an investor. I'm also on the board, so I have to be especially careful.

Scott Galloway: Oh, even more. Especially careful.

Kara Swisher: All right. Hi, Ian. I was just, we were just having a gay disco moment. And so I'm glad you're here.

Ian Rogers: I'm glad you're here. Thank you very much. I'm glad to be here. I wondered where the party was. I found it. There it is.

Kara Swisher: So first question, is it more fun working with the Beastie Boys or cryptocurrency?

Ian Rogers: Oh, that's a good question. They, you know, they actually have something in common for me. I mean, I always like to be at the front of where things are. And with the Beastie Boys, we did, you know, the very first time anybody recorded from the soundboard and turned them into MP3s and pissed off their record label. That was us. The first time that a record label did a radio station was with the Beastie Boys record label. So I like to be there at the beginning of these things.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, your career has kind of an unusual line where you've gone from, you know, to music to luxury to this. How did you get to crypto?

Ian Rogers: Well, what happened, you know, as you said, I spent 20 years in digital music from Winamp and Yahoo Music to Beat Music and Apple Music, and then did five years as the chief digital officer at LVMH. And when I did, I moved to Paris and I met the then first seed investor in this little crypto company called Ledger. That was eight years ago. So it was smaller at the time, Pascal Gauthier, and we became friends. Two things happened. One, I got to meet the incredible team at Ledger and the really, you know, the technical team at the company is second to none when it comes to digital security. And then also during the pandemic, Tony Fidel and I were sort of pod families. And we really wound ourselves up just with the timing, realizing that the technology is here. We're leading increasingly digital lives, as we saw during the pandemic. We will certainly have digital value in our digital lives. And that will be not only digital cash, but also ultimately our identity. I mean, ultimately, your passport will be a digital document. And so if that's the case...

Kara Swisher: So you thought it was critically important to have a hardware crypto wallet.

Ian Rogers: I think there's something because, you know, I think that, I mean, you and I have been on the internet for a similar amount of time, unlike many others.

Scott Galloway: Oh, no, she's been on much longer. Much, much longer.

Kara Swisher: We can have this debate. We're talking vacuum tubes here.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, okay, all right. Move along.

Ian Rogers: But I had this memory. He was there at Winamp. If he was at Winamp, it was early.

Kara Swisher: Exactly.

Ian Rogers: So I had this memory, 2002. I had a cell phone in my pocket. I knew the internet was a big part of the future lives of humans, but the cell phone I had in my pocket was terrible at the internet. You know, in 2002, I had a computer on my desk, I had an iPod, and I had a cell phone that folded in half and made phone calls, right? And that was my similar revelation is that we will have digital value in our lives from digital cash to digital identity, and our phones are fundamentally bad at protecting that value. You know, so from my perspective, and again, to draw an analogy that I know means something to you and I, the revelation I had was that a company like Ledger is akin to Cisco. Because in the late 90s, when AOL and Netscape and Microsoft were duking it out, Cisco was sitting on the sidelines saying, we don't care who wins. Guess what? Human beings are going to use the internet and we'll be fine. Right. And that's where I feel.

Scott Galloway: Explain the device, because it's a device that I famously have a hard drive, a little thumb drive with Bitcoin on it that I haven't been able to find that I had in very early days of the internet. I bought it for $50 each, I think, each Bitcoin. I have 10 of them. I can't find them.

Ian Rogers: Okay.

Scott Galloway: So talk about this. I know. I'll find them someday. Talk about these devices, because this is, let me just quote something else. The Pew Research Center found 75 percent of Americans, and I'm staying away from Sam Bankman-Fried and others, but I'll ask you about that in a minute. But heard of crypto, heard of crypto are not confident in its safety or reliability. This government is obviously cracking down. SEC sued the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange. Those are the exchanges. Elizabeth Warren, this is sort of a long winded question, but crypto has become the payment method choice of rogue nations, drug lords, ransomware gangs and fraudsters to launder billions of dollars in stolen funds, evade sanctions, fund illegal weapons programs, and profit off devastating cyber attacks. I'd like you to answer for all that. Both the reliability, safety, and it's you and the drug lords, essentially. Yeah. Where was your board when all this was going down? Sorry, go ahead.

Ian Rogers: So, I mean, that is a lot. I think, really, the fundamentals of crypto, from my perspective, are, again, we lead digital lives. We will have digital value, right? And all technological innovations, you know, all in history have created a gold rush, the bubble bursts, and then you get 30 years of sustained growth. And, you know, what's more high stakes than digital value, right? So digital value is going to bring in the snake oil salesman even more than a revolution of information did, right? And I think that that's, you know, very clearly what we've seen. Really, you know, I say this not with a lot of joy because it's been so hard for the industry, but what's happened over the last year has been great for Ledger because Ledger is about these fundamentals of security and self-custody. When you have Ledger, a run on the bank is not possible because you actually have custody of your own funds and you have them securely. So a lot of what we've seen in quote unquote crypto is really about giving your value to someone else and then crossing your fingers and hoping they give it back to you when you ask for them.

Kara Swisher: Right, to these exchanges, right.

Ian Rogers: And so that's fundamentally not crypto. You know, so I think that, you know, when you look at the fundamentals, you have, you know, you have security and decentralization. And I think that, you know, the thing that people should ask themselves is, you know, how do you have security without decentralization? In other words, which centralized database would you like all of humanity's information to live in? Google, iCloud, you know, Facebook, US government, Chinese government, like which one do you want? So actually, I think the fundamentals are very sound. And, you know, these are all very unfortunate growing pains of a gold rush.

Kara Swisher: How do you assure people even just a little device? Now, I'm kind of a weird case because Wenceslas Casares, I did an interview with him and I just bought some just to try it, right? He said, just try it. And that was that. At the time, it wasn't going anywhere, really. And I understood the reason I did it so early was because I thought we're not going to have currency. Why are we carrying a dollar around? I kept saying that to people. They're dirty and they're ridiculous and they're subject to drug lords and ransomware gangs, et cetera, and kidnappers. And so how do you reassure people when I ask people, where do you think your money is? And they're like in the bank. I said, there's no money in the bank. There's no actual physical. It's not like Gringotts in Harry Potter, right? It's not sitting there in a pile of gold. How do you convince people that this is the system, I guess?

Ian Rogers: Well, I think that there are two separate questions in this. One is about how do you bring people into crypto? And the other is how do you tell them that Ledger does what it says it does, which is secures in your hands your digital value? I think that first one is quite hard, and it's not really the job of Ledger to convince people that crypto has value. It was not the job of Cisco to convince people that the internet was where they were going to spend a lot of their time. You needed an ecosystem of applications that people really found valuable to grow up on top of that. So I think that our assumption is that there are many, many, many people out there doing that. We just had ECC in Paris, and there are so many applications that are being built on top of this technology. But then the question is, what do you need in terms of security, and why can't your phone do it? And it's because your phone is being asked to do so many things that you can't trust what you see on it. It's like if I asked you to protect a billion dollars in gold bars in a building, and then I said, oh, and by the way, I'm going to put a nightclub and a kindergarten and a shopping mall.

Kara Swisher: It sounds like Mar-a-Lago.

Ian Rogers: So, Ledger devices are purpose-built for security, and there's security all the way to the screen. Unless you have a secure screen, you don't have security. Unless you have a secure element, you don't have security.

Kara Swisher: How is it going to change rather than just the device? Is it that the only way to do it is an actual physical device or is there something coming?

Ian Rogers: You know, I mean, I think, as you know, in every industrial transformation, there's an unbundling and a rebundling, right? We unbundled compact disks into digital downloads and then we rebundled them into a subscription service. So in our case, you know, the unbundling is, you know, your phone and your ledger. And then ultimately, they will be rebundled into a secure device. And I think we'll kind of look back at the time when we did all of our work business and all of our banking and everything on the same device that our kids played Candy Crush on as one of those like, oh, my God, can you believe that people did that sort of things? Because, I mean, we know how insecure things are. We know about data leaks. We know about, you know, we know that we don't really own our own data. I mean, I just went through a move from an iPhone, you know, back to an Android phone. And you really feel how little you own of your own digital life. I think ultimately we do reach a different place where we have much more digital sovereignty, but we need a secure device to get there.

Kara Swisher: But talk about the controversy around the optional recovery service, because I would want an optional recovery service.

Ian Rogers: Well, I wish you had the recovery service. Your example is actually a great one.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Ian Rogers: You know, one where, you know, you.

Kara Swisher: Well, this was like whatever it was. But still conceptually, I mean, you know, I got the call from a friend, you know, just a couple of weeks after we had the controversy around Recover, which I'll talk about in a second. And he had a friend who had lost his device and his seed phrase. And I said, you know, the sad thing is, is if he had Ledger Recover, which I am kind of taking arrows for right now, he would have his value. And today he doesn't. So Ledger Recover is a seed phrase backup and recovery service. When you set up a hardware wallet such as a Ledger, you get 24 words, which are your way to cryptographically recover your accounts and your value. So if you had those 20 words, 24 words or whatever, however many there were in the case of the wallet that you set up, then you would be able to recover your wallet today on any wallet, on a ledger very easily. But obviously, now you've got to think about, well, geez, what do I do with these? And it's a big mental hurdle for people, right? They're used to forgot password, click here, right? They're not used to, you know, lost my recovery phrase, oh, you're screwed, right? Which is the way it works. So we've built a service which encrypts shards into three, your secret recovery phrase, puts it with three different custodians in three different jurisdictions. And using your government ID, you can recover your wallets in case you lost them. Now, for the hardcore crypto community, which is very much opposed to any kind of custodian, that goes counter to what they believe like you should do. But there are roughly 400 million people who own crypto today. And we believe the next bull run will bring in half a billion more. And we need to build the products that those people need. So we aim at security.

Kara Swisher: Right. It's not going to be the same. Early internet people were also irritating in that regard, you know, how they wanted it to evolve. And it's going to evolve into a commercial activity. I'm looking at the story I wrote of Wences. It was actually 2014, early. And he had just sold this Lemon digital wallet platform to LifeLock. And then he got $20 million in funding for Zappo, which was a cold storage vault and wallet, fully insured by Meridian Insurance. And he compared it to a safety deposit box at your bank, which is interesting, which is not much different from what you're saying right now, correct?

Ian Rogers: Correct. By the way, Wenceslas was the person that turned Pascal Gauthier on to Bitcoin as well to tie our stories together. And yes, Pascal and I were just in Washington. And the description that really resonated with people on the Hill was that Ledger is a digital safe. And I didn't encounter anyone in Washington that doesn't think American citizens should own their own value in their own safe, their own assets in their own safe. But then the next step is to say it's a connected safe. And right now my passport is in my backpack in my hotel room, which is a pretty insecure place for it to be. But if my digital identity was in my wallet protected by cryptography, not only could I produce it anywhere and carry it with me really without worrying about losing it, because I can always kind of reinstate it if I did lose it, but I can also federate what's in it. You know, when I check into the hotel here in Europe and they ask for my passport, there's a lot of data in there they absolutely do not need. You know, you think about it from a privacy perspective.

Kara Swisher: Oh, 100%.

Ian Rogers: So for my, you know, all they really need to know is, you know, the information they need to have legally, you know. And if it's, you know, if you're trying to get into a bar, they don't need to know your name and your address, which you give them when you give them your driver's license. They simply need to know, are you provably over the age of 21? And this is what the concept of a connected digital safe gives us.

Kara Swisher: It's so funny. I'm reading this story from two days. As it evolved, we recognize two key themes people continually ask about Bitcoin industry to address trust and accessibility. And then I say, you can say Mt. Gox again. I mean, it's so funny that it's still the same thing.

Ian Rogers: Yeah, I was going to say, you say Mt. Gox. And that was actually, a ledger came kind of right then or in the ashes of Mt. Gox. But, you know, last year when Celsius went illiquid 5X day over day sales for us, Solana got hacked last August, right around this time. I remember I was on vacation last August. Solana gets hacked. That's a 6X day over day for us. And when FTX, you know, imploded, that was, we had our biggest sales day followed by our biggest sales day followed by our biggest Black Friday. And November turned out to be the biggest sales month in the history of the company. And then what we definitely didn't have on our bingo card when my daughter was getting married that weekend, SVB imploded. And that was not only a gigantic day for us, but a gigantic trading day for us too, because we have a companion app that allows you to buy, swap, and earn yield on crypto. And the trading on Circle that weekend.

Kara Swisher: Circle, or also an early one.

Ian Rogers: Exactly. That guy's a video company. It was huge because Circle de-pegged. And so it is we are sort of when people flee they flee to us. So right now the concentration for us is you know we sold more than 6 million hardware wallets but there are 400 million people in crypto. So that means the vast majority of people are insecure or centralized. And so, you know, right now, when the market, they're not in a lot of new entrance into the market, as you know, that's our market. But ultimately, there will be another cycle.

Kara Swisher: Last week, two crypto bills made out of the House Financial Services Committee. Obviously, government has to play a key role here, but it's been back and forth. You've got Gary Gensler, he just lost the case around Ripple. I just interviewed Chris Larson around Ripple, which is another company, and whether it's a commodity or an asset or a security. What do you need from government, from your perspective?

Ian Rogers: Look, I think what the industry really needs is we do need clarity, and we need to protect customers and innovation. And that's very doable. I think if you look at what came out of the House last week, I mean, I think the crypto community doesn't think that those bills are perfect, but they believe that they're necessary. I think that, you know, Patrick McHenry and Whip Tom Emmer, they do know what they're talking about. Like we've sat with them individually.

Kara Swisher: He's the chair of the House Financial Services Committee.

Ian Rogers: Exactly. And they are very well informed on what's going on and they understand the shape of what's to come. And they would actually like America to be a place where companies like Coinbase can be successful and thrive. So I think we need to protect customers, but we also need to protect innovation. That's what we need.

Kara Swisher: Okay. And so even – and I think Warren is correct in that we have to make sure it doesn't become just – every currency becomes traffickers.

Ian Rogers: Listen, if cash was invented today, it would be illegal.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. You have a history of a luxury brand space, which LVMH, most important luxury company in history, probably. Ledger has collaborated with Fendi. Why?

Ian Rogers: Huh?

Kara Swisher: Well, digital assets, or specifically NFTs, digital art, occupies a similar place in Maslow's hierarchy of needs as luxury goods. Severely declining prices, but go ahead. Why does someone buy a luxury watch?

Kara Swisher: They don't buy it to tell the time. They buy it because they like the craft. They like the brand. They like the aesthetics. They want to be a part of that community of people who appreciates that object. That's the exact same reason that I buy art from Art Blocks or CryptoPunks or Bright Moments. These are, I like the aesthetics. I appreciate the craft and I want to be a part of those communities. So I think there actually is a big crossover. And I think luxury brands are the ones who are doing it well. If you look at what Louis Vuitton just did with their Via case, if you look at what Dior just did with their sneaker, these are commercially successful in what is considered to be a very bad crypto market. And that's because they're talking to their customers and giving their customers what they want. That's what luxury brands have always done. Luxury goods have never been for everybody. They're for a particular group. And I think that this is why I went to LVMH to begin with, because the internet moves us from mass market to massive niche, as Jeff Jarvis said. We are collections of communities and these communities have digital access and digital value. So I think there's actually quite an obvious crossover. My personal belief is if we fast forward 20 years, fully 50% of all luxury goods purchases will be pure digital. And probably 100% of them will come with a digital component. I think it really makes sense as we live increasingly digital lives.

Kara Swisher: That was the dream. It hasn't quite, it's still stumbling away. That's why I said 20 years.

Scott Galloway: Look, in 1998 we all thought that the internet was happening tomorrow, but people told us it will never scale and everyone will never have broadband. In 2008 they told us everyone will never have a smartphone. And when Uber came out they said, "Oh, nice service for rich people." Right? So this is all the same. We recognize these dynamics.

Kara Swisher: Fair point. I had my first story for the Wall Street Journal was me surrounded in wires with a big scissors and saying, "You're not going to have a phone. You're going to have a mobile phone." It was 1997, something like that. And it got a ton of attacks. Anyway, Scott, you may ask a question now. You're out of your disclosure hole.

Scott Galloway: Okay. This has been great so far, but I think it's important we bring this all back to me.

Kara Swisher: Okay, good.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, as always. I first met Ian. So, I ran an analytics company called LT, focused on luxury brands. Me, Ian, chief digital officer at LVMH. We walk in. Here's this good-looking guy with tats.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: And I'm going to tell you a little bit about Ian's background.

Kara Swisher: Well, let's be clear. He's much better looking than you, but go ahead.

Scott Galloway: Well, I'll get a little while. I don't see how that's—

Kara Swisher: Anyways, all right. I'm looking at him right now. He's a very, very sexy man.

Scott Galloway: We objectify everybody, Ian, so you must accept this.

Ian Rogers: Sexy because I'm rich and that's about it.

Scott Galloway: Anyway, so we walk in. He's got these tats. Ian was a professional skateboarder, had a kid at the age of 17. Is that right, Ian?

Ian Rogers: Correct.

Scott Galloway: Single parent.

Ian Rogers: Turns 33 next week.

Kara Swisher: Wow, amazing.

Scott Galloway: Okay, hold on. Homeschooled her. Is that correct?

Ian Rogers: Also correct.

Scott Galloway: And now she's a PhD in physics?

Ian Rogers: She has a PhD in genetics from Stanford. Genetics. Undergrad from MIT.

Scott Galloway: We literally walked out of this meeting. We're like, "This is the most interesting man on the planet."

Ian Rogers: Wait, can I tell you, Kara, what Scott said to me when I met him? First words out of his mouth. So I come in. What do you think of me? I think I'm meeting an analytics company. I have no idea. It's Scott Galloway. We know Scott Galloway to be today. I think I'm just meeting the CEO of an analytics company. I don't know the background. I walk in, sit down. Scott walks, sits on the other side of the table. He goes, "Chief digital officer at LVMH. Is that like being chief electricity officer?"

Kara Swisher: Oh, wow.

Ian Rogers: Anyways, I think it is. Actually, you nailed it.

Scott Galloway: Look, I think, you know, I'm the skeptic on the board. And Ian and Pascal, by the way, the company just raised $100 million, $1.1 billion, 90 days ago. So there's clearly still a market for these kinds of companies. But the question I have for Ian, I think his career speaks for itself. But the thing I'm most fascinated about is we ask people a lot of questions about parenting. I'm fascinated by it. But we usually ask people who have the luxury of bringing a kid in under what I'll call kind of controlled environments. They're in a relationship. They have college degrees. They're making money. I would just love to know, in as authentic a way as you can, what it's like to have a kid at 17 and what advice you would have for people who find themselves at a very young age being a single parent. I was raised by a single mother. But what are your reflections? Everything's worked out. But I would imagine that must have been a scary moment. Anyways, having a kid as a single parent at the age of 17.

Ian Rogers: So, yeah, I mean, it's one of those things too, you're also too young to really be scared, right? So I wasn't old enough to have a life to disrupt yet. And thankfully, I also knocked up the valedictorian. Zoe's mom is brilliant. And we were together for the first two and a half years of Zoe's life. And then, the only thing I can say is you literally just put one foot in front of the other. I think I was too young to know to do any different, but we also had a great group of people around us. Zoe was kind of raised by wolves. She was raised by dirty skateboarders, first in Indiana and then in LA. But I always mention the community of skateboarding is super important to me. And it was really important in Zoe's life as well. I mean, really the Beastie Boys had a lot to do with that too. But I think kids need only one thing, which is unconditional love and plenty of that to go around for her. I think if you talk to Zoe, I mean, look, we all screw up our kids in our own special way, right? So she's had incredible academic success and continues to have success in her professional and personal life. At the same time, growing up with parents that are growing up on their own has its own set of downsides as well. I'm sure that Zoe would tell you that. I think, look, Scott, at this point, I've had the chance to do parenting in three different ways. I have an older daughter that I raised primarily by myself. I have a daughter where I've lived in Paris for seven years without her now. She lives on the West Coast with her mom. And in Paris, I'm a stepdad. And you know what you do in every single situation? You do your best. And it's never good enough, but you do your very best in all three of those situations. So I think I'm kind of lucky to have had these three different parenting experiences. One where I felt like super dad, one where I feel like absentee dad, and one where, stepdad, you're never quite dad. And it keeps you humble and really just like trying to give that love any moment you can.

Kara Swisher: Very nice. What a good question. Ian, thank you so much. I've wanted to talk to you for a while. Thank you so much. And I appreciate it. Again, Ian is the chief experience officer at Ledger. You should really check it out. It's very interesting. It's easy to write off crypto. I literally have just been thinking of getting back into it because I was like it seems opportunistic in my case to really be thinking about it because the currency is going to change so drastically despite all these stumbles. And you're absolutely right. From a historical perspective, all these things happen that way. Anyway, thank you so much, Ian.

Ian Rogers: Thanks, Ian.

Kara Swisher: Thank you both.

[Ad break]

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

[Ad for Tron Ares]

Kara Swisher: Okay, Scott, let's hear some wins and fails. Do you have any care?

Scott Galloway: Well, Taylor Swift. I'm sorry. That's your win. And Barbie. Barbie and Taylor Swift. Barbie again.

Kara Swisher: Jesus Christ.

Scott Galloway: Young girls. It was such a delight. I'm glad. And people felt hopeful. And someone tweeted something that I thought was absolutely true. I think it was Aaron Levy, who I love, who I think is really funny. And he did it on threads, actually. And he said, "People worried about AI." He had gone to the concert, obviously. He said, "You cannot replace this." And it felt so human, even in this giant frigging stadium. Everyone had little, and technology was used well. They had these lights on you that they have at concerts now. And it was beautiful. And I kept looking up at the lights or people putting up their phones, which sometimes used to annoy me. And I thought, every one of those is a person. And it's cool that we're all in the same place. And it was, I felt really good about people. I don't know how to explain it. It was such a commercial event. There were t-shirts everywhere. But it was really nice to be in a massive group of people and recognize people with creativity. Someone who's super creative. That was my win. My fail continues to be this thing over the slavery thing. Like, honestly, what is wrong with you people? I'm so glad Ron DeSantis is tripping, falling. And I can't stand Trump and I cannot wait till he gets indicted again. But honestly, this is just—and to defend it and continue to defend it. What is wrong with you? What is wrong with you? That's it.

Kara Swisher: So, all right. So mine, given that I'm leaving for a month, my fail is the dividers in the best example. And there's a lot of them. There's so many things that Florida could be doing right now. I mean, a lot of things. And the governor running for president decides to inflame the left and non-whites such that people on the far right who are so angry at the left can just think, "Wow, this guy hates the left. I like him." And it also happens on the left. People demonizing billionaires and saying there is no billionaire that didn't crawl over people. It's like, well, OK, what can we agree on? So instead of demonizing trans people, I think we can all agree that if one in five LGBT youth are going to try and kill themselves, that we need services to intervene and we need more support for LGBT youth. I think most Republicans would agree with that. If you think that billionaires are evil, well, that's not going to get anywhere. Let's talk about a progressive tax structure that most people agree on. Instead of fighting over race-based affirmative action, most people agree that there should be some sort of affirmative action. Politics used to be about where is the Venn overlap? And the overlaps are actually greater in America than people think. The majority of people think that we should have some sort of sensible or reasonable gun control, whether it's registration or some sort of mandatory training, whatever it might be. Assault weapons probably need greater regulation. And instead, our politics are now, "What will piss off the other side most?" So my loss is the dividers on both sides that are raising more money by just showing how much they can piss off the other side and just turn it to really self-fulfilling memes or tropes around. I'm not here to do anything for the country. I'm just here to make us angry at each other. And then my win is more of a challenge. I love taking August off. I feel very fortunate that everyone around me at Prop G and at Pivot is going to support me in this. And I'm going to try and I want to challenge the audience. I'm going to try and work out every day. I'm going to try and get as strong as I can be at the age of 48. But I invite everyone. I'll be talking about my workouts, although I'm thinking about taking a break from social. But also I'm going to try something I really struggle with: I'm going to try and be more present. And that is I've been thinking a lot about how this notion that the past is the most immutable thing in the world. I'm too much in the past, Kara. I think too much about my mistakes. I hold grudges. I beat myself up too much about the past. And the past is the most immutable thing in the world. There's literally nothing you can do about it. And then I think too much about the future because I'm successful and I'm constantly planning, but I'm never here. So my 30 days in August are going to be about trying to just slow down. I'm going to take a break from social. I'm going to take a break from my phone.

Kara Swisher: I like it.

Scott Galloway: I'm going to do a silent retreat, which won't be easy for me.

Kara Swisher: Oh, my God, really?

Scott Galloway: Yeah, right? Actually, it sounds kind of nice to me. Anyway, my win is not a win. It's a challenge to everyone, and I'm challenging myself because I struggle with all these things. This is it. This is all we have. And the country is doing well right now, I think, for all our problems. If you look at most things, we're making progress. We've got the country doing well. We're pushing back on a murderous autocrat. August is a beautiful month. So I'm going to try desperately, and I want to invite other people to—I do have a few tricks for being in the moment. The dogs put me in the moment. Working out puts me in the moment. Being with my boys puts me in the moment. And the thing that kills my in the moment is my phone. So I'm going to try and turn it off for full days at a time.

Kara Swisher: Good idea.

Scott Galloway: And I'm going to challenge everyone else to do it, to say, okay, let's embrace the only thing we really have, and that is the here and the now. And I will see you in September, Kara.

Kara Swisher: Yes, I know. I know, Scott. And to say, there's an expression: a real present is your presence. Get it? Presence, present.

Scott Galloway: I get it.

Kara Swisher: Get it. I think that's great. We will miss you a great deal, Scott. I have a little song for you before we go, but I just want to say, just for our listeners, we do have some listener mail stuff coming up. We want to hear from you all the time. We love your emails. Send us your questions about business, tech, or whatever's on your mind, including Scott's silent retreat. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. That is the show. Taylor, can we play? We'll be back on Friday for more, by the way, and the official start of Scott Free August, a month with no episodes with 58-year-old Scott Galloway. Taylor, please play the Taylor Swift song for me right now before Scott reads us out finally. Go ahead, Taylor.

[Music: "Stay, Stay, Stay" by Taylor Swift plays]

Kara Swisher: That literally sounded like the jingle to a breakfast cereal. It's like, we live in the suburbs and we're white.

Scott Galloway: Oh, let me just tell you, 75,000 teenage girls are headed to where you are. I've given your address and they're going to have to kill you in a ritual.

Kara Swisher: What dude didn't text her back that inspired that little jingle? Scott, stay, stay, stay. But actually, how can we miss you if you will go away? Read us out.

Scott Galloway: Today's show was produced by Lara Nehman, Travis Larchark, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Entretot engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows, Mille Severo, and Gaddy McBain. Make sure you're subscribed to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. All we have, all we have is the here and the now. And Taylor Swift. There you go.