Elon Pushback, Trump's Distraction Trap, and Disney Earnings

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Kara Swisher: You're my junkyard dog. I like that. Thanks for saying that. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.

Scott Galloway: And I'm thinking of doing ketamine recreationally tonight.

Kara Swisher: Why?

Scott Galloway: Well, I used to have this incredible ability as a young man to disassociate. I was basically sleepwalking through life. I didn't care much about anything. I'm having trouble disassociating from all this bullshit.

Kara Swisher: Oh, yeah.

Scott Galloway: And so I think I'm going to a Fashion Week party tonight. I don't have my kids. I push my meetings back until 10 a.m. tomorrow. So that all spells ketamine for the dog tonight.

Kara Swisher: Really? So I'm going to try it.

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: I don't even know how you take it, though. Do you know how you take it?

Scott Galloway: I don't, Scott. That was a medically supervised ketamine trip. Yes. There's a big difference. Tonight, I'm going to do it to like me more, have a few moves.

Kara Swisher: Why don't you just go down to Washington with the gang that's taking apart the government? I think they probably have some information on how to do that. That is not tomato, tomato. Me at a fashion week party, hitting the moves, thinking I like me a little bit more than usual, doing ketamine with some strange person.

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: By the way, I don't know, as opposed to going to Washington, that is not tomato, tomato. Okay, I'm just saying. That is huge. I want to have a good time tonight. I want to forget everything. I want to disassociate.

Scott Galloway: You can't. You got to be awake, sweetie. You got to be awake. You got to be woke, as they say.

Kara Swisher: Do you snort it? Do you inject it? Or what I'm hoping, do you shove it up your ass? Hello, ladies. Who's got a glove? Who's got a glove? All right. Listen to me. You can't disassociate. There's no disassociation allowed.

Scott Galloway: Oh, daddy can disassociate.

Kara Swisher: You can't. You have to be in this. You got to like, everybody's writing me like, I can't keep up. But I'm like, you know what? It's the long fucking run with these people. You got to stick in there. They rely on your exhaustion. They rely on you being overwhelmed. And you need to not. You need to just keep going. Why do you want to disassociate? You have to associate. That's how we win. We associate. They're disassociated people, these people.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, that's right. Thank you.

Kara Swisher: Why don't you do a happy drug? Like not one that's so ruminative.

Scott Galloway: What's a happy drug?

Kara Swisher: I don't know. I never take any drugs, so I have no idea. Yeah?

Scott Galloway: I don't know. So let me answer that. That's called MDMA or X. And I took it a couple times in college. And I remember thinking to myself, I don't have an addictive personality. But I remember thinking, this is so good, I cannot do this again.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, well, then do that. Do that. Do that.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I don't know. You'll try to hug me. You'll call me and say loving things, which would be disturbing to me, but that's okay.

Kara Swisher: No, it makes me happy. It does make me fucking crazy.

Scott Galloway: I know, but there's a lot of hugs happening. I never took it. I never took it.

Kara Swisher: There's hugs, right? There's a lot of hugging and dancing. Do you know the initial use case? It was psychiatrists in couples therapy who wanted them to open up to each other.

Scott Galloway: Oh, interesting.

Kara Swisher: I don't know. Never tried it. Never will. I'm high on life, Scott Galloway. I'm high.

Scott Galloway: I hate it when people say that.

Kara Swisher: I know, I do too. It's the least expressed. I don't need drugs.

Scott Galloway: Well, I do because of people like you. Although, let me say, I'm looking out the window right now. I just got back on a red eye from Los Angeles. I was in San Francisco, Los Angeles.

Kara Swisher: No, you look nice. Thank you.

Scott Galloway: I'm wearing the same clothes I was out to dinner at a very fancy, the Mother Wolf in Los Angeles. Have you been there? It was really good.

Kara Swisher: Mother Wolf. I have a secret project going on there, another secret project, which will soon be revealed. But it has to do with lesbians in Washington. That's all I'll say.

Scott Galloway: I heard about this. I won't spoil it for you, but good for you. I'm convinced you're pulling a Scott when his kids were little, and that is you're coming up with a lot of reasons to leave the house right now.

Kara Swisher: No, I'm not. I've got to go to San Francisco. Oh, my God, it's terrible. I'll miss you guys so much. Unlike you, I do very short trips, and I come back on red eyes. So I'm here. I took the kids.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, don't do that.

Kara Swisher: I took Claire at a school this morning and made the kids lunch. I get back so I can do that. One of the, I went out, you know, I went out with two people, my brother and friends of mine to Zuni, which was amazing.

Scott Galloway: Cafe Zuni?

Kara Swisher: Yes. It was great. San Francisco was great.

Scott Galloway: Well, I'm glad you're back and you need to stop taking red eyes. Okay. When you turn 70, such as yourself, you, as a gift to yourself, you need to stop doing red eyes.

Kara Swisher: I don't do red eyes anymore.

Scott Galloway: Oh, really?

Kara Swisher: I don't mind. It was a lay down bed. I slept. That's fine. That's fine.

Scott Galloway: Your sleep, your nutrition, your sleep, your nutrition, and your exercise are the three pillars and you need to prioritize sleep. You don't sleep while I'm playing. I have no more red eyes for you.

Kara Swisher: You know, I'm wearing my aura ring and it tells me that I'm quite ready for the day. It's weird. I don't sleep. You're rested and ready?

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: I don't know why. I think it's lying to me. Anyway, we've got a lot to get to because I need to be rested and ready.

Scott Galloway: By the way, I have an aura ring and I just downloaded my data and it says one thing. Try ketamine tonight.

Kara Swisher: Uh-uh. Don't do it. Don't do it by yourself.

Scott Galloway: I can't wait. I just think I'm going to like me.

Kara Swisher: You're not going to like it. Don't, please don't.

Scott Galloway: I'm going to feel better about everything. It's not an insurrection. It's a dance party.

Kara Swisher: Anyway. Oh, that's funny. That's a good joke. That's a good one. Okay. We've got a lot to get today, including Democrats finally showing some backbone and Trump's plan to create a sovereign wealth fund. This lunacy is every single day. I forget what, yes. Well, anyway, plus earnings from Disney, Alphabet, and Spotify. But first, I think we know, both know why Google searches for the word coup are up this week. Elon Musk, who is now a special government employee, whatever the fuck that is, has had a very busy couple days, has essentially shut down USAID, offered buyouts to every member of the CIA, and his Doge team got access to the IT systems of Medicare and Medicaid, NOAA, which is weather agencies, and other agencies. We're going to talk about Trump and Gaza and the craziness in a bit, but I want to start by focusing on Elon. Overall thoughts, what we've been seeing, Trump still thinks he's in control, saying this week Elon can't do and won't do anything without approval. You'll be shocked to learn that Senator Susan Collins is very concerned about Elon and Doge's actions. People at the Trump White House, they're leaking all over the place that he's too big for his britches. I'm like, when did you start to notice his pants were tight, my friends? He's totally too big for his britches all the time. You've been saying, where are the Democrats? They're starting to show signs of life, protesting Elon's power grab at a rally outside the Treasury Department. Some House Democrats are trying to subpoena Elon to testify before the oversight committee. They're making a lot of trouble. The motion didn't pass. It probably will pass at some point. Democratic Senator Chris Murphy was on Morning Joe talking about the game plan for his party. Let's listen.

[Audio clip plays: Senator Chris Murphy]: People understand that we are the minority party. We don't run the White House. We are the minority in the House and in the Senate. But we need to act like a real opposition party in the middle of a constitutional and democracy crisis. That means we should not be moving forward nominees or legislation in the United States Senate. Democrats should not be giving votes to nominees or to legislation in the United States Senate until Republicans get serious about this crisis.

Kara Swisher: I think he's been pretty good. Jamie Raskin has. Obviously, AOC is terrific. So talk a little bit about the Elon situation and making, you know, they're making him the villain so that it sort of offloads it from Trump in a weird way. He's sort of the, I'm calling him a heat-seeking shield for what they're doing. But there's protests that have popped up around the country. It doesn't mean anything's going to happen, criticizing particularly Musk. So talk a little bit about this and what the Democrats should do.

Scott Galloway: You said something that really resonated with me, and that is I've fallen prey to what is a really smart strategy on their part, and that is the invasion of Greenland or somehow some fucked up weird strategy for clearing out or the ultimate, I don't know, apartheid or whatever they're planning to do in Gaza or invading the Panama Canal or accusing a helicopter or saying that the people responsible for a helicopter crash are somehow a function of DEI. You're exactly right. And it struck me what an idiot I was being. That's nothing but weapons of mass distraction from what effectively a second insurrection by the same president. And insurrection is probably the wrong term. It's probably more of a coup. But you change the entire negotiation between someone, two people, when one person holds a gun to the other person's head. And what they have done, they're very smart and elegant here. Instead of a bunch of Duck Dynasty mobs with trucker hats and goatees getting out of their RAV4s, it's the wealthiest man in the world who, in my opinion, is trespassing in federal property and has enlisted a bunch of acolytes and has stopped making payments for things like Head Start or the funding of AIDS programs or malaria treatment. There are people being carried out in stretchers that are in hospitals because they don't have funding. And it's not that these programs and this funding, whether you agree with them or not, or think they should be subject to review, are a function of laws that were passed by three branches of government. And they figured out a way to say, look over here at this helicopter crash or it's DEI or we have a plan to clear out Gaza to distract you from the fact that we now have an insurrectionist or a coup being led by the world's wealthiest man. I think the Republicans are thinking, I can't believe they're letting us do this. And as long as we're kind of in favor of this, and now they're in a position, when you hold a gun to someone's head, it changes the complexion of negotiation. It's no longer, oh, you need laws to do this. It's like, well, we might turn the payments back on for Head Start, but let's talk about it.

Kara Swisher: Well, no, we're not going to discuss it. I don't think they're going gangster enough. They probably just unmasked, because of their recklessness, the names and identities of CIA officers, which is an incredible act of treason and stupidity. I think they did that on purpose, from what I understand. They wanted it. They were sending, what Scott's referring to is they sending emails not in a way that's safe to the White House. They wanted things like that. So I want to know who are these young, highly intelligent, highly motivated zealots following him into these buildings and shutting off payments to schools and headstarts. I want to know their names.

Scott Galloway: Well, you know, they're trying to, the local officials are trying to make that official. The newly installed Trump are threatening people for naming their names, just so you know. But go ahead.

Kara Swisher: Oh, yeah, but they can unmask CIA officers who've put their lives in harm's way to try and keep our Americans safe. I want to know who their names are, and I want to see Democratic governors saying, I'm going to do everything I can in my power to use the full faith and to the letter of the law to put you folks in prison. I think what you're doing is trespassing. I think this is a coup. And be clear, just because the new insurrectionist who was elected, I don't believe this is legal. And I'm going to hold the people accountable who are trespassing and part of a coup accountable. To just sit back and say, this is horrible and this is unlawful, we need to go gangster here and say, look, we are not negotiating around this stuff. This is illegal. This is a coup. This is the unlawful seizure of power. We are not going to engage in these bullshit, ridiculous arguments over Gaza and Greenland. We are going to hold the people accountable. Here are their names. Here are their faces. And we have contacted the local authorities in where these kids live, these young adults, and we are going to hold them accountable. We need to start hitting back in a way that disrupts what is the unlawful seizure of resources that have been leaked. You might disagree with them. Fine. That is not anyone's right. Our elected representatives pass these laws.

Scott Galloway: No, we get that. I think repeating, it doesn't matter because they are blowing through stop sign after stop sign.

Kara Swisher: It doesn't. See, this is a very typical. I've talked to, I would say, a half a dozen governors, senators, congresspeople this week. And they were like, well, we're going to say something. And I was like, he's going to break the rules. Like I said, you don't understand. He's not going to stop because you tell him he's bad. There's no way he's stopping. And like, look at everything he does. He blows past the SEC. He keeps going. He does lawsuits against the press. He does lawsuits against competitors. He blows up rockets until he gets it right. I was like, this is a person with a high risk tolerance who has noticed that when you break things or break rules or open your company when the government of California says not to, they don't stop you or it's very hard to stop you. And in the very act of doing it, even if he gets stopped later by a judge or whatever, because legal is slow moving, as you know, even if he gets stopped later, he's already broken it, right? Instead of reforming things, which is what they should be doing if they don't agree with this stuff, they're destroying them. And if you read any Peter Thiel, any of their stuff, this is what they talk about, the destruction of a liberal democracy and then starting from scratch with a unified CEO theory, which is essentially a dictatorship. This is, and the question is, a lot of them are like, what do we do? They're literally asking me, what do we do to stop him? I was like, I just don't, I was like, you don't, you actually don't have the means to do so because these poor people are in these agencies. And when these idiots come in, these children, these arrogant little pricks come in and say, we're going to call the federal marshals or the president has ordered you to step aside. They kind of have to, you know, you have to be resistant and be walked out by security. And then security doesn't know which one to listen to, right, essentially. I've had, we've been critical of Democrats, and I've heard from about six Democrats, one senator, five representatives. And he says, well, what would you do when we talk a little bit about messaging? And I'm like, but that's not enough. And he said, well, what do you want me to do, walk down there and stop them? I'm like, yeah, I'd like to see all, whatever it is, 48 or 49 U.S. senators and any Republicans that want to join. I'd like to see a couple hundred members of Congress go to the fucking building where this is and demand to go in and physically stop this and let them arrest you. I'm like, fine, let America see that there are still people who believe in government in the U.S. and democracy. Let them arrest you. I'm like, go down there. This guy I'm talking to is a former, this representative, a newly elected guy, a former service member. I'm like, dude, if someone attacked our shores, you put yourself in harm's way. I mean, march down to wherever this fucking building is where all these acolytes and the high sparrow are and walk in there and demand they stop and let them arrest you. For Democrats, this isn't the time to come together. This is the time to come to the rescue. Get together, all of you, wherever the building is, wherever they're actually shutting off payments to veterans.

Scott Galloway: Well, they move very quickly is the problem. They don't quite know where they're going. Like they go from they have the advantage here in that regard is they can show up at various places and you don know where they showing up

Kara Swisher: Well we have very talented smart people too with smartphones I would create a group of people elected representatives that go to these places where they are and say I believe you are breaking the law. You are not an elected official. You need to leave this federal government building. And if the Capitol Police, respect the law, if the Capitol Police show up at the order of the president and say, you need to vacate, I would not vacate. And if you get arrested. Fine.

Scott Galloway: I think I'm not a fan of breaking the law. I think the law is on our side here. I think these guys are breaking the law. And just because you have permission from the president, let's fight it out in court and find out, well, can the president break the law? Because as we have seen, the president has been stopped. Anytime this shit gets in front of a judge, it usually gets stopped. So do you have the right as a citizen and an elected representative, or do you have the obligation to get in the way, legislative, verbally, legally, and quite frankly, at this point, physically? I'm not suggesting violence. I'm not suggesting these elected representatives have license to walk into any federal building. Millions of people have elected them. Find out where this shit is going on and go down there and say to these people, what you are doing is illegal.

Kara Swisher: I get it. The issue is, even when the judges stop them, though, they say, oh, we have security clearance, but no proof of it. Like, they're persistent. Elon Musk has said to me—

Scott Galloway: Move fast and break things. It's Mark Zuckerberg.

Kara Swisher: That's correct. This is what they're doing. And, you know, like Elon Musk has said to me, we have self-driving in a year. We have self-driving in a year. We have security clearance. Anything, like one of them was like, how do you know they don't have it? I go, because their mouths are moving. They're lying. They lie as a practice in order to get to the next thing. They're high risk takers. They're willing to, they know you're not going to stop them, you know, ultimately, because it takes effort. They don't want to govern. They want to break. And even though they're in charge of the government, they want to, they don't want to reform it. They want to break it. They want to destroy it. They want to take it down to its studs so that they can then rebuild in the way they see fit. And the arrogance of these people, I cannot tell you, you could like fuel a rocket to Mars with the arrogance of these people. And what's interesting is there's a bunch of lawsuits filed, as you said, as part of the counteroffensive. Unions, federal employees and others are challenging the legality of Elon and Doge to get access to federal systems, destroy agencies or push people out of jobs. I'm telling you, Elon also loves a legal fight, right? He doesn't care. He doesn't care. He waits people out. This is perfectly designed for someone like him to behave. And every one of his actions is very much the way he's behaved. That's one thing. You know, when I said, he's not going to listen to that, he's going to go to the next one. And someone was like, how did you know? And then he did it. And I'm like, because this is his little act, right? This is the same thing every time. He's not particularly creative in new methods of this kind of stuff. But one of the things that's important to keep in mind is that he does have a pattern that he does all the time. And so do all these people, by the way. They all have the same pattern of making a mistake, whether it's for your teen girls and making them feel bad and going, we're so sorry, we're so sorry, we're so sorry. And I think that's the one thing that's not fully appreciated, that they're not sorry, nor will they pay attention to the law. Even if a court orders, right now, court orders Musk out of the Treasury computer payment system so it can sort out whether the Doge is a legal government entity. Are they out? They were in there before. That's the whole thing. I don't know if they're actually, nobody knows that they're out. And then let me say the last thing. What they're going to do is find little cherry pick costs that look bad, right? And make things up because they just lie. They just lie. Money laundering. Money laundering or they're criminals. This thing about subscriptions and Politico, it was $24,000 at USAID. They were using their Politico Pro, just like you'd buy a subscription. And may I point out that Elon, the government pays Elon $15 billion. So everybody, for his wares. And then they, so it's petty and unbelievable nonsense. And they'll cherry pick stupid little things. A lot of them inaccurate, like the condoms to Gaza, for example. A lot of them deeply inaccurate or based on stories that are specious. So they'll keep doing that constantly so that we're like cats chasing a laser pointer. But this is, but just moving to what we can do. The Democrats at this point, I mean, And I remember talking to Ray Dalio about elected officials and he's like, and by the way, this is, he was like, this is war. Take the gloves off. I mean, this is like, this isn't try to understand or empathize with the people who elected this guy. In my opinion, this is war. And they essentially, they're challenging the constitution and democracy. I don't think it's time for us to try and figure out, like, understand them. That what I would say is, and I've heard from a lot of Canadians who appreciate our thoughts around the tariffs. And one person called me who, Canada's actually strangely, like, there's like 12 families who kind of, I don't want to run anything, everything, but kind of own the majority of stuff. I mean, I'd like to think that America came to the aid of a lot of nations in real times of crisis over the last hundred years. And we want to keep doing that. I mean, at this point, I'm, I believe that nations need to come to the aid of America at this point. And to the extent that people feel frustrated or worried about America no longer being the shining beacon, leading democracies all over the world, or setting the tone. What Canada did was it, I'd go, I think you need to be very Machiavellian strategic. A province in Canada has canceled a hundred million dollars contract for Starlink. They've said, we're just not going to continue to fund the lead of a coup. So I'd hit them where they're in their soft tissue. And that is, if you think America plays and should continue to play a vital role in our democracy and be that shiny beacon on a hill, and you are using Starlink or your government is in negotiations around subsidies, whatever it might be for EVs or Tesla, I would make it clear that you are not going to support an individual who's leading a coup in a nation that has, for the most part, been a really staunch ally. I'm now at the point where I can't call them Republicans. I think they are both kind of surprised and giddy that they're getting away with this and also scared of crossing Elon for fear they'll be primaried by Twitter and his hundreds of millions of dollars, which he can do now, given the fact that we let one man amass $400 billion in power. And two, you know, they're surprised. And also, quite frankly, Kara, I think Senator Murphy's fantastic. We come across as neutered and feckless at this point. We are like, look over here. Oh, I can't believe you would say it was DEI around a helicopter. You are exactly right. That is a sideshow. And may I say the media is doing the same things. These headlines in some of these papers, it's like innovative way to deal with government. I'm like, it's a coup. Stop saying this.

Kara Swisher: And one thing I did have as a theme in my book was the juvenileization of men and the coddling of them and persistent sidelining of women in Silicon Valley, and people of color, or anybody that was different. And this is a 30 years going of this idea that these people have the right idea. And I found some stories that I wrote. One was called The Men and No Women of Facebook, and The Men and No Women of Boards. And one of the things that was interesting is I was able to put those headlines because I controlled my own media, that you can't believe what a bunch of idiots, they have such disdain for people. And the press is treating it like it's like an equalized thing. And it's just not. I'm finding it so frustrating. I even, you know, I'm on CNN and on Friday, I was like, this is a hostile takeover. You need to treat it. Stop talking about DEI and the plane crash. You can talk, right? Stop. You need, this is what this is. It's a hostile takeover of government, probably illegal. And you can't look at it like, well, look at that kind of things. I just I'm perplexed as to why it isn't a five alarm fire everywhere all day long, every minute in the media. Now, your house is on fire. You shouldn't be arguing over the pattern of the couch. It's just in all these things are important. But this really is I again, I think our elected representatives who have contacts overseas should be calling him and saying you need to put pressure on Elon. You need and Trump is doing the same thing that Zuckerberg did to Sandberg. He's using him as this very powerful and effective heat shield such that if he does go too far, and in fact, they do find this is illegal and they start, Trump can back away and say, oh, I didn't know they had done that.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, they went a little too far. He's done that.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. So he's basically, I mean, to a weird extent, Elon Musk is a $400 billion media platform weaponized Sandberg. He's a heat shield. And he's like, you understand this technology and how to go in there and shut off payments. And what they're hoping is it resets or recalibrates the playing field for negotiation. Let's start from you're getting zero, despite the fact that our elected representatives passed this law that says Head Start is a good thing. And they went right to the mechanism for the payment.

Scott Galloway: I mean, I don't understand. This is illegal. I would just, very simple. This is illegal, and I believe the people involved in this will be prosecuted. That is what I'm planning to do. They will be prosecuted by this Justice Department because all they're doing is getting rid of threatening companies that have DEI. That's the first thing Pam Bondi did. Again, another weapon of mass distraction. That's not going to go anywhere. What could go somewhere, in my view, legally is to say these are the laws, and I believe you and these 25-year-olds have broken, and I plan to do everything within my power to enforce these laws.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. OK, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, Trump continues to flood the zone with crap.

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Kara Swisher: Scott, we're back and President Trump is making all sorts of headlines this week. Trump surprised pretty much everyone with a plan for the U.S. to take over Gaza and turn it into a Middle East Riviera, Maragazo. That's the joke, which is not funny, actually. Though some administration officials are walking that back a bit. His cabinet nominees, RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, appear to be on their way to confirmation. He's reportedly getting closer to an executive order abolishing the Department of Education. He's doing everything by executive order because he doesn't want to bother with legislators. Questionable executive orders, I'd say.

Kara Swisher: We talked a few weeks ago about the strategy of flooding the zone with shit. Let's talk a little bit about this and how people can avoid falling into the trap of distraction. Trump throwing up these crazy ideas and orders while Elon is making this power grab. It's quite coordinated from what I can tell, although I don't think Trump knows what he's doing. Courts have done a few things to keep them in check. They're stopping him from—he already was in the Treasury, now they're saying get out of the Treasury. Who knows if he will, because again, liars, all of them. A federal judge did block the birthright citizenship order this week. But then Trump was busy signing executive orders, outlining plans for a government-run sovereign wealth fund, which would potentially use to buy TikTok. That's called state-run media. The fund would also support other national endeavors like infrastructure projects. I don't know what to say.

Kara Swisher: Talk a little bit about this strategy as a marketing thing. I hate to say that, but this is what he's doing. And then we have a story in the New York Times that's like, "Well, it's good that he's shaking up the difficult problem in the Mideast. Maybe it will create fresh ideas." Now, I was sort of like, what? Moving two million people against their will from where they've lived their whole lives is a fresh new idea? Especially because Gaza is absolutely destroyed. They destroyed it, so now they can't go back, that kind of thing.

Scott Galloway: Well, okay. But before we even get to the notion that Egypt—I mean, look at the borders. No one wants to take these refugees, whatever you want to call it. I understand the argument. It is an interesting argument. The notion that we're setting up a situation where nothing's really going to be different and eventually we're going to face the same problems in two, five, ten years again, that's a powerful argument. So the notion that we need to be creative and thoughtful, fine. This is not the time.

Scott Galloway: If you go into the emergency room, the term "stop the bleeding" originates from a very logical place. If you go into the emergency room with a gunshot or you've fallen and hit your head and you're hemorrhaging blood, they don't take your PSA. They don't check his or her cholesterol. They stop the bleeding. Everything else at this point is a worthy conversation that should be had by our elected representatives. But if we let a coup be successful and change the complexion of the negotiation, whereas opposed to arguing over who is prosecuted here and under what laws and how do we immediately arrest this coup, such that we're not negotiating, "Well, will you give us 50% of the funding back for Head Start, dear person who wasn't elected to make these decisions?" Focus on stop the bleeding.

Scott Galloway: The bleeding here is America bleeding out in a small building somewhere that is being remotely accessed by different locations, by a group of people under the cover of dark to stop payments based on programs that were passed by laws by our elected representatives. This is a coup. And it's not a slow moving coup. It's a fast moving coup. Everything else is an ER doctor saying, "OK, they lost their leg and they're going to be dead in three minutes if they continue to bleed out. Let's find out what their good and bad cholesterol is." None of that is important at this point. Stop the bleeding. This is our focus.

Kara Swisher: Well, here's the problem. Ketamine.

Scott Galloway: I know, ketamine, exactly.

Kara Swisher: But this plan—literally, the Israeli defense minister said his instructor immediately to draft a plan to allow voluntary departure of Gaza residents. The only way they're leaving is if you ethnically cleanse them. None of it makes any sense. It's funny, most of the conservative think tanks are sort of like, "Oh, dear. This government thing isn't good. This Gaza thing isn't good." And they're like, "Don't be hysterical and use the term ethnic cleansing." But I'm like, only the comedy shows are getting it right. The Daily Show has different euphemisms for what it is. "Voluntary departure" or "moving them as refugees." The word of the day is ethnic cleansing. And they keep doing different words and they go back when they have the wrong word.

Kara Swisher: Only the comedy shows are actually calling out this stuff for exactly what it is. Only the comedy shows are calling it a Nazi salute that Elon did, are saying this is illegal, are just explicitly doing it. And I guess it's under the cover of comedy because some of it's very funny, but it's actually quite strong. I don't know what else to say because that's where I'm seeing the best coverage of this stuff, or the best commentary.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I just—look, again, I'm just remiss to engage in the conversation about how ridiculous it is because I don't think it's going to happen. I think this is, again, an attempt to say, "Look over here. Let me talk about gender in the workplace as I figure out a way to create algorithms for profit to make it more likely that your 15-year-old girl is going to engage in self-harm. Look over here. I have a book signing."

Scott Galloway: The wealth fund thing. Someone wanted me to go and talk about the wealth fund. I said, "That's fucking ridiculous. State-run media. It's not allowed." And they're like, "Well, what do you think it would be?" I'm like, "I don't. What do I think of the Loch Ness Monster? You're asking me? It doesn't exist." Or maybe that does. But the wealth fund—I'm sort of like, state-run media. Does everyone have a problem with state-run media in a country with a First Amendment? Like, yeah, I do. Other countries do have sovereign wealth funds that invest surplus income. The U.S., by the way, runs a budget deficit, so we don't even have money to put into this sovereign wealth fund. I mean, you understand sovereign wealth funds better than I do, but this is nutty. It's not to buy TikTok. What?

Kara Swisher: Look, a sovereign wealth fund—in the case of the kingdom, it's like we need to figure out a way to transition away from fossil fuels. We have a ton of money. We want to be strategic. We want to turn it into a greater return. We want to be thoughtful about it such that we can then make the investments we need to pivot away from an economy that's dependent upon a sea of oil, which is going to dry up in 30, 57 years. So it's a way to enter the modern world. In Norway, it's a means of saying, "Okay, Norway owns one and a half percent of the world's stocks and they create an incredible standard of living for their folks because they have thoughtful people trying to figure out how to invest their excess capital to a greater ROI than their competition."

Kara Swisher: America doesn't need a sovereign wealth fund. We have so much capital being invested privately. That's the financial argument. But the other thing is when you buy one firm—this is a sovereign wealth fund investing and trying to find alpha dislocation for the benefit of its citizens. We don't need that here. In addition, this is the sovereign wealth fund, again, is a distraction from what he's really suggesting. And that is the government owning a business, which is socialism. And a media business. It's not like it's potatoes or something.

Scott Galloway: But the UK made a very compelling argument in time. I see why they probably thought that we need manufacturing to come back. And we have this really compelling guy who built the Pontiac GTO and we're going to bring manufacturing. We have an opportunity here to be one of the largest shareholders in this amazing new technology and manufacturing brand called DeLorean. And so they made him that. I believe that the critics of Republicans were right to criticize Obama for some of his subsidies around solar firms. The whole Republican argument is that the public sector shouldn't be in the business of picking winners and losers. I kind of get that. Now, if you're going to do it systemically and say we want to support companies who are building our chips for defense reasons, fine. But this is the state controlling the means of production.

Scott Galloway: And even saying this, I'm taking the debate. This is never going to happen. But again, I go back to where we're bleeding. So this, again, is another distraction. It's a stupid idea. It will never happen. They know it, in my opinion. Maybe he just thought about it and thought, "I'm a deal guy. I can make money here for the government." No, we don't want to own TikTok. We want to regulate it or ban it. We want to promote the rule of fair play and even playing fields such that startups have a shot and everyone is playing under the same rules. And meanwhile, if you, in fact, have an algorithm that can be reverse engineered to polarization, radicalization, or self-harm among teens, maybe you should be subject to the same liability as traditional media. Okay, that's the government's role. The government's role isn't to start cosplaying business.

Scott Galloway: Trump has been cosplaying business his whole life. This is the reality of Trump. If he had invested his father's massive fortune, which he inherited, in any index fund, he'd have more money than he has now. But he's been cosplaying business. He was hugely insecure. I ran across Trump businesses all the time doing business. And the general reputation of Trump and his family was they were a bunch of rich kids who didn't know what they were doing, that they just weren't very good at what they did. He's been cosplaying business his entire life. And this is, again, him thinking, "I've got an idea. We'll own TikTok and we'll make money." That is not a government role. It's not.

Kara Swisher: And again, here I am taking the bait.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. Look over here.

Kara Swisher: No, but it's just not happening. It's just such nonsense. It's fucking nonsense. Like, nonsense. Every time they ask me a comment on things, I'm like, "It's nonsense." What else can I say? This is bullshit. Sometimes I think it is good. Like, let's think of some fresh ideas, right? What should we do here with this? How do we protect our national security and yet protect the First Amendment? How do we do that? There's always room. And that's the good part of Silicon Valley. Let's think of new ways to do things.

Kara Swisher: And by the way, let me just say, I'm going to have one slight rant here. I got contacted by Bijan Sabet. Do you know him? He's a great investor. He was in Twitter early and stuff like that. And he's written a piece called—there are people in Silicon Valley that are not like this, just so you know. And he wrote a great piece called "Public Service, the Backbone of American Democracy." And he really didn't like this one line in these DOGE press releases where it says, "The way to greater American prosperity is encouraging people to move from lower productivity jobs in the public sector to higher productivity jobs in the private sector." He says it reveals a staggering ignorance of the essential work performed by those in government. It is not only offensive, but also demonstrably false.

Kara Swisher: I was so happy to read that. He simply put the narrative that the private sector is inherently superior to the public sector does disservice to the millions of Americans who serve their country every day at risk, demoralizes a workforce already under strain, and undermines the very institutions that protect and advance our shared values. These people who have had so many frigging failures of their startups, they fuck up so much. And Donald Trump is the top fuck up, the top fuck up of business. They're allowed to say they're innovative and they then insult government officials who have done a pretty fucking good job keeping us safe every day. And it's so offensive and so easy to insult the government and its workers. And they have fucked up so many times that we should start making lists of all the different stupidities they have perpetrated. I find the whole thing just nonsense.

Scott Galloway: There's also parsing kind of mendacious to just stupid and dangerous. The CIA—I've had the pleasure of working with several officers. These are incredibly bright people, incredibly skilled. And instead of going to work for Google or Procter & Gamble, they decide to serve their country and they take enormous risks. And the fact that they have so little regard for a national security apparatus that they might be unmasking these folks, either recklessly, negligently—that is 100% the right word. It's traitorous and it's stupid.

Scott Galloway: What is the likelihood? The Central Intelligence Agency recruits out of every top business school, every top college. They try and find the best and brightest from a very early age. Do you think you're more or less inclined to go to work for the Central Intelligence Agency right now knowing that your own government might out you? What if you're overseas on assignment right now? Oh, sleep well tonight. They might know who I am and what I'm doing here. And by the way, it's not like these guys lose their pension if they're found out. It's not like they get fired. They are tortured and then murdered trying to protect our shores. And you have people who have so little regard for their sacrifice and their patriotism.

Kara Swisher: Let me just take one thing we've got to move on. Someone who is very interesting with some of his comments is Bill Gates. He's on a book tour for a book called Source Code. He has met with Trump because he's trying to stop him from defunding AIDS things. And he has to do that. He's the president. He's got to go in there and make his argument why not to. And he has been defending USAID. He's someone who was very arrogant about government. When I met him, he was super arrogant. He now is like, "I was arrogant. And let me tell you, there's some amazing people working for the government. There's dedicated, important people doing important work. If you partner with the government..." He's very quietly doing the right messaging around why this is wrong. And every now and then he's like, "What Elon's doing is nonsense and irresponsible, and here's why."

Kara Swisher: I don't think I'd like him to yell more, but I have to say I was pretty surprised how explicit he is being. There's very few other leaders that are doing that. None of them. Like, none of them. He was the only one that you see because he knows he doesn't have a price to pay because he's Bill Gates. So he can do that. So all you other rich fuckers who don't think this is right, not saying anything is heinous on your behalf.

Kara Swisher: Anyway. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about this week's earnings.

[Ad Break]

Kara Swisher: Scott, we're back. There's lots of earnings news. We still have to talk about earnings. Disney beat expectations, reporting a 4.8% increase in revenue. The company's experience business, which includes parks, cruises, and resorts, rose 3%. Its entertainment division saw a 9% jump in revenue. Disney Plus saw a 1% decline in subscribers following an increase in prices last year. They're doing pretty well. Their streaming business is quite stabilized and it's moving forward. At some point, you run out of subscribers, essentially, and there's a lot of churn, et cetera.

Kara Swisher: Alphabet—I'm going to go through them and then you can comment. Shares of the company are down almost 6% in the last five days at the time of the taping. Alphabet's overall revenue grew 12% compared with 13% in the same quarter last year. Advertising revenue grew 10.6% compared to 11% last year. The company announced plans to invest above expectations $75 billion in capital expenditures as it continues to build AI offerings. One of the things they did note is they're going to stop all their efforts in DEI because they're going to—unlike Costco and Apple, they've decided to cave. And there are threats from Pam Bondi and state attorney generals, and they've just decided to cave in all their different programs.

Kara Swisher: Not Spotify—shares are up 12% in the last five days at the time of the taping after the company reported its first profitable year. The company reported 40% gross profit growth year over year and operating income of 477 million euros. Monthly active users grew by 35 million, up 12% for the year.

Kara Swisher: Lastly, Uber reported a lower-than-expected operating income of $770 million. 3.1 billion trips were completed on the platform, up 18% year-over-year. Uber also announced it's ramping up for a public launch of robo-taxis in Austin through its partnership with Waymo. Waymo is killing it in San Francisco, I can tell you that. The company is optimistic about the autonomous vehicle market, but admits there are many, many years to scale. They're absolutely right. So which one of these would you like to take?

Scott Galloway: Well, I'll touch on each of them and then try and extract what I think is an interesting theme. So Disney—essentially the streaming wars, everyone's fighting to be Lyft. What do I mean by that? Netflix is running away with it. So everyone's fighting for number two. And I don't want to say they've given up, but Netflix—just to give you a sense, in 2015, Disney price to sales was four, Netflix was five. So they were in kind of spitting distance of each other from a shareholder standpoint. As we sit here today, Disney trades at two times revenue and Netflix trades at 11 times revenue.

Scott Galloway: Disney lost 700,000 subscribers, but that was in the face of a price increase. It wasn't a huge price increase, but it does show the strength of Disney's positioning around family. Whereas Netflix added 19 million subscribers, Disney Plus has added 13 million. The big thing comes down to churn. There's this really uncomfortable dynamic where everyone but Netflix has to reinvent their entire customer base every two years because they go on and they download the entire season of Ted Lasso and then they cancel Apple TV Plus. And Netflix has so much gross tonnage that their churn is only 2%. Disney is number two, but it's at 4.8%. And then the other guys have even higher churn rates.

Kara Swisher: Can I just make a note here? The real competitor—and this is me talking to Hollywood people yesterday—is YouTube. YouTube is the competitor of Netflix. No one talks about it. They are killing it. Total share of video viewership is like 8% or 9% for Netflix. YouTube is 11%. YouTube, you could argue, is the number one streamer, but it's still categorized as a different sector. I think they're going to do a lot more originals, FYI, but go ahead.

Scott Galloway: Disney's Parks, Cruises, and Resorts continues to be the gift that keeps on giving. Revenue up 3%, but the operating income was up 6 to 8%. Disney's done a good job incorporating ESPN into a pretty compelling bundle with Hulu. Moving on to Google—their full year revenue grew 14%, but people are freaked out about slower than expected cloud growth because they see that as a proxy for their AI offering. So they took the stock down a little bit. They're also worried about the amount of CapEx. Their capital expenditure is supposed to increase to $75 billion.

Scott Galloway: The thing about Google, though, is that they have five separate businesses that do more than $30 billion in annual revenue. If their stock were to go down—look at it this way. That's like saying they have the revenue power of five different Starbucks or five different Visas with different businesses. They are just a series of cash volcanoes. Seven products and platforms with over 2 billion users—Search, Maps, Gmail, Android. They're just doing incredibly.

Scott Galloway: Spotify is probably the most impressive performer from where it was, say, 12 or 24 months ago. They essentially set quarterly record highs for revenue, gross margin, operating income. The stock has tripled in the last year. Their platform growth is accelerating. Their total monthly active users hit 675 million. Their premium subscribers up 11%. Their average revenue per user, or ARPU, is up 5%.

Scott Galloway: Now, the big theme here, or something hopefully resembling insight, is the following. If you look at the acceleration in Spotify stock and in Netflix, I believe that's more than just growth in the category. Netflix now has more than 50% of its production overseas. And if you look at Spotify, less than 1% of its artists garner more than 92% of its streaming revenues. With the scale that these companies have, and by not sharing analytics or information, what Netflix has done is it has transferred a massive amount of capital, earnings power, money from the means of production—specifically artists—to Netflix shareholders.

Scott Galloway: When you put something on Netflix, they don't tell you how successful it is. They might produce it in Spain or in Seoul, but they've basically extracted a shit ton of capital from California-based employees, from actors, from producers, and said, "We're kind of the big dog here, and you have to operate under this new religion or this new operating model." Because by the way, if you don't want to be in our Netflix drama, there's 179,000 other SAG-AFTRA people that are looking for work.

Kara Swisher: And can I just make a point? They also put out so much content that's pretty good. None of it's really one of the way—someone was telling me a story who was with last night, who used to work at Google with Susan Wojcicki, the late Susan Wojcicki. And they were thinking about getting into originals and they walked her through the economics of Hollywood because she wasn't familiar. She had been very successful at Google and she had just taken over YouTube. And they walked her through it. And she got up and she goes, "This isn't a business. Only one hit carries all the losses." She immediately clocked the problem. She goes, "This isn't a really sustainable business if you don't have this one hit." And she goes, "Why are they operating like this?"

Kara Swisher: And I think she had insight into the idea that if you had a lot of little hits or spread it out with stuff that people like, you would do a lot better. And that's what Netflix has kind of done here. They have nothing—every now and then they have a big one, but all the others are fine. And they help sustain the fact that it's a good product. You find efficacy in the product. You find pleasure in the product. Same thing with Spotify. At its heart, it's a good product. I don't know what else to say. It's enjoyable to use. You find what you want. Maybe it's not like soaring like an HBO can be sometimes, but every now and then it is. It's a good product. That's how I feel about both those companies.

Scott Galloway: There's two ingredients to the secret sauce here, and it's an asymmetry. Both have to do with an asymmetry of information. If Deadpool does $1.3 billion, the agent for Ryan Reynolds and for Hugh Jackman know that, and the next time they want to do Deadpool meets Fast and Furious 18 or whatever, the agent from WME goes to the studio and says, "I know how important Hugh Jackman is," and they extract a shit ton of pound of flesh. In streaming, the only evidence that Ben Stiller has that Severance got more than one viewer is they order seasons three and four. So the asymmetry of information always benefits the person that has symmetrical information. When Jennifer Aniston's agent knew that the Thursday night lineup depended on the pillar of Friends, the people producing and acting in Friends could extract a lot of revenue. No one in streaming has any fucking idea.

Scott Galloway: And then the second big number out of the Disney earnings that fascinated me and explains why Netflix trades at 11 times revenue and Disney at two times, is that now more than half of Netflix's content budget is spent overseas. Some of it's done to be more multinational. But the majority of the reason they do it and the reason why they're building big studios in New Jersey is because New Jersey just supersized their tax subsidy. They realized if we can produce two eights in Spain or Seoul, instead of producing one possible eight or nine in L.A., go with the eights overseas. Over 50% of their content budget is now spent overseas. Do you know what percentage of Disney's content budget is spent overseas? Four percent. Like none.

Scott Galloway: So essentially what Japan did to Detroit, Netflix is doing to Los Angeles. And I don't care. You want to talk about nuclear code secrets? When we launch our series on Netflix and I say, if I call them and say, "I am not working with you again unless you tell me how many people downloaded this relative to your other dramas," they're going to say, "Well, it was nice working with you, Scott."

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: Because they don't want anyone to have that leverage. So asymmetry of information and the globalization of content production. And a decent product, a pleasurable product.

Kara Swisher: Oh, it's a fantastic product.

Scott Galloway: Right. But all of those benefits—I mean, this is a straight line. There's a lot of innovation, a fantastic product. But you want to talk about a massive flow to the bottom line and who it's coming from beyond the natural growth, organic growth of the sector? It's coming from the gaffer, the lighting guy, and the woman who wrote season four of SpongeBob SquarePants and used to make 200 grand a year. And Netflix has said, "You know what, I figured out a way to pay you 40 grand." And all of that capital coming out of high production states and people has moved to Netflix shareholders. And it represents a much broader trend in our society. That is the notion that we give a shit about stakeholders and not shareholders is just not true. Everything is run for shareholders. And by the way, there's some upside to that. I'm not arguing that it's the wrong way, but be clear, folks. Everything is now optimized to transfer as much capital as possible from states, from workers. The workers here are not being prioritized.

Scott Galloway: Production in Los Angeles was off 40% year on year, not because they're not talented, but because they're too goddamn expensive. And Netflix has found a way to keep them in the dark and then hire 80% as talented a person overseas for 30% to 40% of the price. It's a transfer of wealth from artists at Spotify and from the creatives in Hollywood to Netflix and Spotify shareholders. And Spotify has made the jump. So they have so much leverage. They are now extracting revenue from the bottom 99.9% of artists. They're going to make less and less money.

Scott Galloway: All right. Very quickly on Uber. Incredibly well managed. I think you got to give it to Dara. He and Apple were the ones that said, "No, I'm not going to jump into the shallow end head first here and make huge capital allocations to autonomous." He pulled back. He said, "I'm going to wait. I'm going to rent other." Just as—I mean, they're good at this. Uber's innovation is Airbnb's innovation. That is, "I'll build a thick layer of software on top of other people's capital expenditure on top of their apartments, their houses, and their cars." So it's in their DNA to say, "Why don't we just ride? Why don't we just be the remora fish off of Google's multi-decade, multi-tens of billions of dollars investments in autonomous?"

Scott Galloway: That's where we should be riding. That's where we should be playing the game. He is doing a great job of managing that company.

Kara Swisher: You're right. It's on top of it. I got to say, Waymo is so integrated into San Francisco now, and you're going to see it all over the country. It's so convenient. And they live together with Uber, by the way, in a very comfortable way. I took both in San Francisco this week, and both were great. Prices are still too high for all of them. And I know they need to make money and stuff, but it's a really interesting time. You're right, Dara's done a nice job here, and there are no competitors, really. I mean, Lyft is sort of a competitor, I guess.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, one more quick break, and we'll be back for predictions. Okay, Scott, let's hear a prediction.

Scott Galloway: Well, if you think about the three layers in AI, there's the infrastructure layer, the Nvidias of the world. There's the LLM layer, the Anthropics, the ChatGPTs, and then there's the application layer. The entire infrastructure and LLM world was thrown into disarray when, shocker, China came up with something cheaper. But I think what you're about to see is a golden age of dozens of new unicorns in what I call the application layer.

Scott Galloway: I met with this incredibly impressive young man yesterday who founded a company called Rogo. They take all of these financial data streams, whether it's CapIQ or Bloomberg, and then they put a layer of intelligence, AI-weaponized intelligence, on top of it. They turn an investment banking analyst from someone fighting on horseback to someone in a panzer tank. You can type into this AI that's customized for financial services or institutions, "Put together an IPO roadshow deck for a fast fashion company that does this revenue, and these are the concerns." And it'll put together a 60-slide deck of which 48 are pretty good. So you can basically do the job of three analysts. They'll say it's making people more productive, but it's going to result in massive layoffs.

Scott Galloway: Anyways, I think you're about to see dozens of unicorns in the application layer. I do think that the infrastructure and the LLM layer is about to shed tens of billions of dollars as people realize the moats aren't as big as they thought. If Sam Altman can copy everything out there, someone's going to be able to figure out a way to copy Sam Altman's shit. But the additional customization or artisanal AI application layer in healthcare, financial services, fitness, and all sorts of things is going to create a bunch of branded consumer AI applications. That's what Airbnb is, right? That's what Uber is. They took existing infrastructure and breakthroughs, branded it, and created interesting vertical niche applications.

Scott Galloway: I mean, this guy, I had breakfast with this kid, 25. Jesus Christ. I'm like, can I come back as you?

Kara Swisher: By the way, I'm going to be him tonight under the influence of ketamine.

Scott Galloway: No, you're not.

Kara Swisher: I'm going to get a call from the police and I'll have to come get him or something.

Scott Galloway: No, by the way, you're not my call. Preet Bharara is my call. I literally have him. I'm about to make him and his phone number tonight my screensaver.

Kara Swisher: Oh, that's a good idea. Call Preet. Tonight, it's like, this is the guy. Here's his number. I've told Preet this. I just need you to do one thing. You can ask me for anything, but if you see my name come up, I need you to answer. And I'm not calling to say hi.

Scott Galloway: I'm not calling to say hi.

Kara Swisher: Oh, wow. Okay.

Scott Galloway: Anyways, I've told him I'll send millions of dollars to this law firm he's now the rainmaker for. Anyways, but I'm not calling you. I'm calling Preet.

Kara Swisher: All right. I would leave you. I would scold you. I would.

Kara Swisher: I'm going to make a very brief prediction. There's a lot of new polls out. The Economist had a poll that back in November, 47% of those surveyed Republicans said they wanted Elon Musk to have a lot of influence in the Trump administration, while 29% wanted a little, and 12% wanted him to have none at all. Today, the number of Republicans that say they want him to have a lot of influence has fallen substantially to 26%, according to this story in the Hill. Meanwhile, 43% of Republican respondents said they wanted Musk to have a little influence, and 17% said they want him to have none at all.

Kara Swisher: I see that, but I have to tell you, I had thought they would have a falling out. I think he is, as I have said, little pussy for Trump the mob boss, essentially. He is the heat shield. He is the junkyard dog. And I think Trump understands this intuitively. There's one thing about Donald Trump, he has an intuitive sense of things. Musk is good for him because he gets the shit done, even if it's illegal and he's willing to. And nobody else is. As much as these insiders are going to complain about him being bigger than his britches or overstepping, I think maybe he might be around a little longer. I think I was wrong about that falling out. I wish I wasn't, but I do think even if people are indignant, this guy has an ability—everything has shown when everyone thinks Musk is going to lose on the pedophile case or with the SEC, he's got an ability not just to take risks, but to take ridiculous, heinous risks, and to also stick it out. So I don't know. I think Trump recognizes that it's good to have a junkyard dog.

Scott Galloway: You're my junkyard dog. I like that. Thanks for saying that. Get away from her.

Kara Swisher: Anyways, this is insanity or crazy, but I would describe it more apt as late-stage syphilis crazy.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, that's what they were saying.

Kara Swisher: But the thing is, that can go on for years. You can have syphilis for a long time. Please don't get it.

Scott Galloway: No, no, no. Unfortunately, the good news is I'm so unattractive and unappealing now that you have to have someone else to engage in giving you syphilis, and that's just not going to happen.

Kara Swisher: That's the word we use enough, syphilitic. It's a great word, isn't it? Let's use it several times. I used to like the word encephalitic, but that's not syphilis. That's a brain disease, cloudiness, but syphilis. I do like syphilis.

Scott Galloway: Can I tell you, Amanda's always like, "Scott used that word wrong." She's such a word person. Several times you've used words that are—

Kara Swisher: She means I used it incorrectly.

Scott Galloway: Incorrectly. That's correct.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Anyway, she's often doing that to me. I'm like, "Did he?" I don't know. She's like, "You need to tell them." I'm like, "I'm not telling him." I forget. I completely forget the minute she tells me.

Scott Galloway: I wouldn't mind her. Your texts are mean. If she calls me and says, "You meant this," I'm open to that.

Kara Swisher: All right. I'll tell her. I'll tell her. She can be your spelling lady.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, elsewhere in the Kara and Scott universe, which is growing by the second.

Scott Galloway: It's expanding.

Kara Swisher: This week on Prof G Conversation, Scott spoke with Mo Gawdat, the former chief business officer of Google X, bestselling author, and founder of One Billion Happy. Let's listen.

[Audio clip plays] Mo Gawdat: The truth is the world is not ready for what is about to hit us. Whether you take the simple things like the economics of the world and how they will change as a result of AI, all the way to the change of the dynamics of power and the resulting deprivation of freedom, all the way to how the economics of the world are going to change and how the jobs are going to change and how the human connection is going to change and our understanding of reality is going to change. These are decisions that are not made by us anymore. Think about it this way: Spider-Man says with great power comes great responsibility. We've disconnected power from responsibility. There is massive power concentration concentrated in hands that do not answer to anyone. [End clip]

Kara Swisher: Well, ketamine, I say. He's a very thoughtful guy, Mo Gawdat. I really enjoyed the conversation with him. And basically, you should listen to the conversation, but basically summarize: Sam Altman is reshaping the way we think about things, the way we approach problems, potentially what types of weapons are developed. And he was kind of like, "Who the fuck is Sam Altman to get to do this?"

Scott Galloway: Right, that's correct. Who the fuck is Elon Musk? Who the fuck are any of these people? But that's where we're going.

Kara Swisher: Okay, Scott, that's the show. We'll be back on Tuesday with more Pivot. Read us out.

Scott Galloway: Today's show is produced by Lara Neiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie and Todd Entry, this episode. Thanks also to Drew Bros, Miss Saverio, and Dan Shulon. Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.

Kara Swisher: Who is that guy in the corner, at that Fashion Week party? I get the sense he likes him a lot.

Scott Galloway: That's the dog.