Elon's OpenAI Lawsuit, EU's Big Tech Regulation, and Guest Tom Scocca

[Podcast Intro - Advertisements]

Narrator: As marketing channels have multiplied, the demand for content has skyrocketed. But everyone can make content that's on brand and stands out with Adobe Express. You don't have to be a designer to generate images, rewrite text, and create effects. That's the beauty of generative AI that's commercially safe. Teams all across your business will be psyched to collaborate and create amazing presentations, videos, social posts, flyers, and more. Meet Adobe Express, the quick and easy app to create on-brand content. Learn more at adobe.com slash express slash business.

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

[Podcast Intro]

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

Scott Galloway: And I'm reading your book.

Kara Swisher: You are, finally. How nice for you to do that.

Scott Galloway: I downloaded it on Kindle and I'm already 50 pages in. And it's surprisingly tolerable.

Kara Swisher: Oh, my God, Scott. You've got to be careful. We got a lot of emails from women that are like, what an asshole. But go ahead. Sorry, tell me about tolerable. What does it have to do with?

Scott Galloway: Your tone last week was somewhat rude, I would say. But go ahead. But what does it have to do with women?

Kara Swisher: Anyways, okay. I'm just saying, I got a dozen and a half emails from women who thought you were dismissive. But go ahead. Keep dismissing me.

Scott Galloway: Which part?

Kara Swisher: Tolerable. The part where I said, did I botch your book and I'm reading it? When you say someone's book is tolerable, it's rude. It's rude. It's just rude.

Scott Galloway: I don't feel like you're being rude to me today because I'm having a great week with my book. How about that?

Kara Swisher: Okay. Anyways, I'm enjoying it. Thank you. It's sort of a, I would describe it almost as sort of a history of the internet a little bit.

Scott Galloway: It is indeed.

Kara Swisher: Overlaid with your, kind of your, a little bit of your, drips of sort of your personal life through that period.

Scott Galloway: That's right. Yes. They asked me to put that in. I was resistant to that but they were correct to do that. Yeah, I sort of 50 pages in and started reading it last night and a lot of stuff I forgot about. But anyways, I'm enjoying it.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, yeah.

Scott Galloway: I tried to make it, they wanted more of a personal one and I thought that was an interesting and I tried to make it for regular people. It's not really written for techies. You'll see as it goes in, but it gives you a good history of the internet if you're just interested in that.

Kara Swisher: No, it's not a tech book. I don't see it as tech. I see it as more like, at least so far, it's more like a period piece. I mean, technology was such a big part of the era. It kind of, I wonder if people look back on this era, and I wonder if it'll be defined by technology.

Scott Galloway: I think it'll be defined by tech and hopefully not fascism.

Kara Swisher: I moved to fascism, but.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, we're moving that way.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Quickly.

Scott Galloway: Anyways, it feels.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. It makes you somewhat, or it makes me somewhat nostalgic for.

Scott Galloway: It's crazy. And how they shifted from one dominance to the other. I mean, like things were in and out, like Yahoo was in and then it was out and AOL was in and then it was out and, you know, how people lived and died. And of course, who survived and who we thought was going to survive is really interesting. And then the Renaissance, I mean, you realize from 1999 to 2001, the most valuable company in 1999 was Cisco. Because, well, all of a sudden, everyone got very intoxicated and excited about the Internet. They became massively overvalued, crashed, and everyone thought, oh, let's go to the safe bet. Let's go to infrastructure, bid up Cisco. It lost 90% of its value. You know who also lost 90% of its value? Amazon.

Kara Swisher: Amazon, that's right. And came back. Amazon.bomb. I think I mentioned that. You'll get to that. Everyone thought. You can find a lot of articles from the beginning of the millennium where a lot of really intelligent analysts were saying this is an obvious bankruptcy.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, that was the one he got so annoyed at was the cover. Remember the cover of, was it Barron's? It was Barron's, where he was a picture of Jeff Bezos as a bomb with a thing going off called Amazon.bomb. And it drove him nuts, that particular cover. But there were lots of people that were doing, and then, you know, it shot up so fast and then it shot down really. But yeah, people were worried about that business and it was touch and go for a lot of them.

Kara Swisher: You know, it's a little like Tesla, a little like right now, NVIDIA is the hot, hot company.

Scott Galloway: Now I think it's still a substantive company.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: But it's like a little like Cisco right and there's going to be competitors to it although it's hard to compete in this particular space as quickly but it definitely it got echoes that what I was trying to do was echoes to them to now and stuff like that. So I was right. I mean the cautionary tales I think there a couple of things. One, I think power corrupts. And I think, and it kind of, we're talking about this today with Apple and the EU, but you know, these companies have just become too powerful as a function of our idolatry of them, our belief that there are new gods, heroes, our worship of money. They're extraordinary. That technology is the closest thing to Jesus and magic that we have. But it also, I mean, on a very much more mundane level, it strikes me, and I'm thinking about this a lot, the power of diversification. Because it would have been so easy to sell Amazon after it was down 80% and think, that's it, I'm done. And so easy to just keep piling into Cisco. But the key is you do a little bit of everything. Because you know what? It just showed me looking back, no one has any fucking idea.

Kara Swisher: No, they don't.

Scott Galloway: We're all guessing.

Kara Swisher: That's 100% true. We're all guessing.

Scott Galloway: Well, some of the things you can have some sense of. Like right now, the companies that have data are going to do better, you know, as we move into this age, but they're going to be totally overinvested as usual, right? As they did with crypto, with everything else. Now, this is obviously a more substantive business AI, but it's still going to be overinvested. Like, where do you put your money precisely?

Kara Swisher: But okay, so, but you talked about crypto. What's up 50% year to date? Bitcoin.

Scott Galloway: Bitcoin. I mean, who would have thunk that? And NVIDIA looked overvalued before it went up another 100%.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I know. Even now. Even now, I had someone sit next to me at one of these events, and they were like, wow, I didn't get into NVIDIA three weeks ago or whatever it was, and now I regret it. Should I do it now? And I was like, I am not going to tell you one word. I don't have any idea.

Scott Galloway: So I've been thinking a lot about this because the majority of the questions, I get questions from mothers about their sons, and I get questions from young men about careers and investing. And I used to give individual stock advice. I no longer do that because the biggest question I'm getting now is, is it too late to get into NVIDIA? And I can make a really good argument for why it's not and why it's absolutely too late. And here, I think, is the closest thing to a correct answer without trying to dodge the question. If you buy a low-cost index fund, by virtue of the success of the Seven Samurai or the Magnificent Seven, and the fact that an index fund is weighted, about 31 or 32 of your money is gonna be invested in these seven great companies but 68 will be invested in other things. So you can't get too badly hurt.

Kara Swisher: People are throwing in the towel and just buying.

Scott Galloway: They are. Everywhere I go, people are talking about NVIDIA, just NVIDIA. They're not talking about other stocks, although they're talking about tech stocks being up, but they're used to those going up. It's a really, it feels a little frothy, feels a lot frothy.

Kara Swisher: Oh, there's definitely an AI, I mean, Anthropic raising at 19 billion, and then companies that technically aren't even really producing chips for AI. Just sticking AI onto their thing. You know, I'm an AI. I'm care AI. Care.ai. As you know, I'm already an AI. But anyway, it's a really interesting time. I think you'll be interested with the history stuff. It is so many, you know, they have the expression, history doesn't repeat itself, it rhymes. That's what it feels like right now. So I think that's why it's a good thing to look at. You know, you just don't, mostly you don't know.

[Transition]

Kara Swisher: We have a lot to get to today, including Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman, and big tech is facing new rules in the EU that could be a major turning point for regulation. Plus, our friend of Pivot is writer and editor Tom Scocca. Tom's powerful essay in New York Magazine about his personal medical mystery turned into a huge reaction online. Really interesting. We should talk more about health care, and so we are. But first, today is Super Tuesday, which should solidify a Biden-Trump rematch despite Nikki Haley's Washington, D.C. primary victory. Congratulations, Nikki. And Thursday is the State of the Union, which will offer Biden a chance to make a case for the second term. It's a big, important speech. Apparently, it's going to be short, which is probably a good idea. On Monday, the Supreme Court said that Trump will be allowed to appear on Colorado's 2024 primary ballot, reversing lower court's decision that he would be disqualified over the insurrection.

Scott Galloway: I think that's the right decision.

Kara Swisher: Polling of national registered voters currently shows Biden with 43 percent support lagging behind Trump's 48. I honestly think Trump is peaking, but we'll see. What do you think about where Biden is, the State of the Union? You spoke to David Leonhardt of The New York Times on the Prof G about whether we're talking too much about Biden's age.

Scott Galloway: As a journalist, I'm a little bit haunted by a Gallup poll that came out after the 2016 campaign that asked Americans what they'd heard about each candidate. And the number one thing that most Americans reported hearing about Hillary Clinton was about her emails. I think Hillary Clinton's emails were a legitimate story. Surely they were not the most important thing about Hillary Clinton in 2016. And I worry a little bit that those of us in the media are at some risk of repeating that and talking so much about Joe Biden's age in particular, that we come to make it seem like the only issue in this election.

Kara Swisher: I was interested that you did that because you've been whacking on the age thing far too much as far as I'm concerned. But tell us about that.

Scott Galloway: I like the thing. I've been transparent about it. If they have Biden's corpse and they can somehow animate it and occasionally he can say something, I'll vote for him over fascism. Tom Brady was the greatest quarterback in history and now he's too old. But biology doesn't care about, this is my fear.

Kara Swisher: So you were not persuaded by David, but go ahead.

Scott Galloway: I'm an ageist. And you know who else is ageist? Biology. And here's the really upsetting, conflicting thing for anyone who cares about our democracy. Biden runs the risk of going from being one of the best presidents in history to one of the worst because this narcissism that affected Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Senator Feinstein has unfortunately infected President Biden. If he were to crown support a younger, capable person to be the president, he would go down in history as one of the greatest presidents, and that person would beat the shit out of the fascist who was running.

Kara Swisher: You might add rapist, fascist, rapist, but go ahead.

Scott Galloway: Okay.

Kara Swisher: That felt dismissive.

Scott Galloway: Okay, go ahead. Anyways, just calling him fascist wasn't enough.

Kara Swisher: Okay, fascist.

Scott Galloway: No.

Kara Swisher: Fascist, and he's actually, yes.

Scott Galloway: I think that the technical term that Judge used was he's guilty of sexual abuse, which is as far as I can tell the same thing.

Kara Swisher: I think they said rapist, but go ahead.

Scott Galloway: Anyways, and I just, I'm really worried about this, that this same level of narcissism and a bunch of people around. And if he gets a nomination, which I think he will, I'm planning on taking my 16-year-old son to one of the swing states and canvassing for him because I think it'll be a great experience for my son. And I want to be able to say that I did my part standing up to fascism. But let's be clear, the same narcissism that infected Justice Ginsburg and Senator Feinstein and a lot of people across both aisles is a huge risk right now. He is taking an enormous risk because I personally think if he stepped back and said I'm throwing my weight around Governor Newsom, Governor Whitmer, pick your candidate. They put someone young and competent on the stage with Trump, I think he wins by 10 points. He or she wins by 10 points. I think they are really playing a dangerous game here and they're dealing with an issue that gets worse every day. Having said that, if he's the nominee, I am going to do everything I can. And I think you will, too.

Kara Swisher: It's such an uncomfortable place for Democrats right now. See, I honestly think Trump is cognitively disabled. Also, he just is more lively about it. He mixed up. He thought Obama was president the other day. He's missing words all the time. It's all the time he does this. So I'm not sure why he's not getting equal and complete attention for this, because it's disturbing the way he does it. He's like, you know, he's off on another thing. And as to rapists, just so you know, the judge clarified the basic legal distinction without a real world difference. He said the jury found that he was of sexual abuse, but in the real world, as commonly understood, the jury found Trump did was in fact rape. So he's a fascist rapist. So I'm correct in that. But that's not focusing on enough. Like you're going to elect a fascist rapist with a cognitive disorder.

Scott Galloway: Or the 27 other women who accused him of the same thing.

Kara Swisher: That's correct. He's a rapist. I would say that to his face. The fact that he has cognitive disability that is significant, it looks significant to me, makes me even more worried. I think David was right that this is not equally... You have one guy who has cognitive issues, no question, who gets a lot of shit done. And you have one guy who's literally threatening revenge and all kinds of manner of repulsive things who is cognitively disabled, also has fascist tendencies and is a rapist and also did an insurrection. I just don't know.

Scott Galloway: This is what I think David was making an excellent point on your show. The fan overlap is huge on our points here. One, we agree that a threat to the West, much less America, much less women's rights, much less democracy as we know it, much less the economy, is the prospect of the fascist rapist being reelected. We agree on that. We agree that President Biden gets an unfair scrutiny of which the same problems apply to President Trump. Where I think we part company a little bit is I am more disappointed that Democrats and President Biden haven't done the math and gone, I know, let's ensure the fascist rapist doesn't get back into office, and let's find somebody young and capable, including the president of the fifth largest economy in the world, California, or an outstanding leader and Democrat, Governor Whitmer, and let's make sure, let's make our top priority that this fascist rapist is not reelected. And I don't think, you know, to me, that's the priority here. Because this, you know, you feel like every election is the most important election in your life, or at least that's what they tell you. This does feel that way.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. I don't know. I don't know how you engineer that at this point. That's, I mean, I think it's a pipe dream.

Scott Galloway: You might be right. It might be too late.

Kara Swisher: I don't know how you engineer that. So we got to, you know, go right. We're riding with Biden. That's the situation. I think this state of the union is very important. Most people think it should be short and sweet, should be attacking Trump and should be fast, like not at long.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, he should come out swinging crisp.

Kara Swisher: Swinging crisp. He did a very good job last year, as you recall, when they were in the Medicare thing. So everyone thinks it should be crisp, fast, short and strong. And we'll see as it starts to, things start, as soon as you see more of Donald Trump, I think more people, I get that people are like, they've forgotten him a little bit, but I think they will start to remember him. We'll see. We'll see. But you're right. It's a very dicey, as usual, we're down to a dramatic stakes in American politics. It used to be pretty boring, and now it is not. It is really disturbing.

Scott Galloway: Well, I'm making a crude analogy here that will offend a lot of people, but I think of similar to the way I think about Hamas. I think about Donald Trump and that is over time they reveal themselves. And I think as we get closer to the election and swing voters who swing voter is Latin for they just don't care about politics. They're like me in my 20s and 30s, like, whatever, yeah, I'll vote. But I have bigger fish to fry than to be obsessed with MSNBC and CNN every day or Fox. And I just think as the election goes on and there's more of a bright light on both of these candidates, I just don't think he's going to get new voters. People are saying he's getting people, interesting enough, from non-white communities. But the thing that time is not biology is not on our side. Unfortunately, we are taking risks, I think, that are just too big to take. But time is on our side in the sense that time has a way of revealing. For example now 80 plus percent of Americans support Israel in the war because over time they have learned more and more about the murderous corrupt strange culture that is Hamas. I think the same is true of Trump. I think as people spend more time watching him over the next eight months.

Kara Swisher: Well, we'll see about that though. I have to say young people, every young person I talk to is not pro-Israel. They're not inbuilt pro-Israel.

Scott Galloway: So, they are.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, the numbers are 80% right now.

Scott Galloway: I'm just saying the numbers.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, yeah, I know. There's been a renewed support for Israel as I think the truth around Hamas has started to drip out.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. That last attack seemed rather egregious and the kids dying.

Kara Swisher: I think, I'm just saying, I'm hearing from a lot of young people that's not the case. Including Louis, which is interesting. And he's, you know, he's a very smart breeder and everything else. I think the death of children. Anyway, we have to go on. We'll see what's going to happen. We'll watch the State of the Union. We'll see how the State of the Union is.

[Transition]

Kara Swisher: The IRS is cracking down on wealthy tax cheats. 25,000 letters are sent to people who make over a million dollars a year with additional 100,000 letters to people who make over $400,000 a year. The letters will target top earners who declined to fill out tax returns called non-filers and will extend back to 2017. Who does that? The IRS says it believes the letter targets amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid taxes. Over the last decade, IRS audit rates have gone down 86% for earners making more than $5 million a year. Have you checked your mail, Scott?

Scott Galloway: I was just wondering.

Kara Swisher: I haven't gotten one of these letters of you.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, no. No, I'm very intense on filing. I have a great accountant.

Kara Swisher: Oh, no, I've never not filed my taxes. I had someone who didn't do it for years, but the government owed them. They just never filed a very rich person. It was weird.

Scott Galloway: That is weird. And then they got money back. It was weird. But I don't know. What do you think about this? Any thoughts?

Kara Swisher: Look. The IRS has, of course, been politicized again. There are few investments that show a greater return, guaranteed return on investment than investments in the IRS. And they're not going out and harassing people. They're just enforcing the law. For every dollar you give to the IRS, they go find $12 that Americans, corporations, foreigners, foreign corporations owe the government. They're not harassing anybody. And complexity favors incumbents and wealthy in the corporations. And if you have the money to have Starlink or GPS, you want to run your boat race at night because others don't have that technology. So every time they add a page of complexity to the tax code, it favors the rich. And this is why. You make the tax code more and more complex, which means your tax filing as a rich person is dozens, if not hundreds of pages. And then you get your Republican senator, who basically represents the 1% of corporations, to defund the IRS. And then boom, they don't have the resources to audit wealthy people. Because everyone's like, well, AI. Well, you know who AI is increasing the audits on? Simple tax returns, lower and middle income people. You need highly trained, expensive people to audit wealthy people. So the incentives are the following. If you're wealthy, which means you have a complicated tax return, your incentive is to be as aggressive as possible around your taxes, not to declare income, to pretend certain personal expenses are business expenses, to see if you can slip shit under the radar. Because guess what? The radar is turned off for rich people right now. So this is another example of a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. When they want to cut IRS funding, I'm always like, this is the best investment. That makes no sense.

Kara Swisher: 100%. As much as much as...

Scott Galloway: 12 to 1.

Kara Swisher: 12 to 1. All right, we got to get on.

[Transition]

Kara Swisher: President Biden is moving to block internet-connected Chinese cars from the American auto market, calling the risk to national security. Ah, they're bringing in cars now. Biden is calling for the Commerce Department investigation into security threats, including fears of operating systems could send sensitive information to China. If TikTok isn't enough, the cars are next. China has expanded production of EVs in recent years and with smaller options selling for less than $11,000, way below most American-made EVs, which average over $50,000. Chinese EVs already face high tariffs on top of the usual 2.5% tax on foreign-made cars, a special 25% tax on Chinese vehicles have been in place since 2018. This is BYD, which has, oddly enough, an investment from Warren Buffett. They're thinking of creating a plant in Mexico. Obviously, this is a big Elon Musk thing too but also GM and Ford and the others. These are doing very well these cars across the globe. And so they want to enter the US market even though we do not enter their market quite as easily.

Scott Galloway: We talked about this last week. BYD is probably the most important company that you've never heard of. And just such that I don't sound too inconsistent here, I think that a media company that has figured out a way to addict young people to the extent that they spend more time on that media company than all other media combined, and that is the frame through which they perceive the world. It is clear that the CCP, in my view, has decided to try and shape young or future civic, business, military, nonprofit leaders around their frame and get us fighting against each other. I think that is an existential threat. I do not see that threat with cars.

Kara Swisher: Cars, yeah. Except for taking American businesses. That would be it, taking American businesses.

Scott Galloway: Okay, but here's the thing. They don't allow our media companies into China. So you could kick TikTok out based on just asymmetric trade relations. However, they do let Tesla into China. So I don't understand. My attitude is, yeah, charge the tariffs, make it part of our, have Gina Raimondo, who's an incredibly impressive person, make sure that we're getting access to their market. But I do not see a security threat from Toyota or BYD. I just don't see it.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I agree on the security threat. I thought that was over. I think he probably got pressure, not, you know, Musk has been saying this, but I think from the car makers, I think it's a competitive pressure because they make them. I think one of the things someone was writing me from China who knows a lot about this, he said one of the issues of whether they can pass US crash test rules, that they're not, there's a lot of people, he said, he lives in China, he's an American, but lived there forever, said that a lot of people don't want to get in BYD cars because the crash tests aren't as, so that'll be a big challenge for them. But if they meet all our criteria, they certainly should be able to compete here. But I think these companies are worried and they don't want to compete against Chinese car makers. I don't think they're a security threat. I mean, where you're going in a car.

Scott Galloway: I don't either. Having spent a decent amount of time in China and having learned a little bit about their supply chain, all they need is give us the blueprints for your safety standards and we will figure it out faster than anyone in the world at a lower cost.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, but he was saying there is worry within China of these things. They have to meet our crash test, so it doesn't really matter.

[Transition]

Kara Swisher: Okay, let's get to our first big story. Elon Musk is suing OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman saying they abandoned the company's original mission to develop AI for the benefit of humanity and not for profit. In the lawsuit Musk accuses OpenAI and Altman of being in breach of contract and violating fiduciary duty and asked that OpenAI be required to open up its technology to others. OpenAI is pushing back against Musk in a lawsuit and an internal memo to employees. Chief Strategy Officer Jason Kwan writing, we believe the claims in this suit may stem from Elon's regrets about not being involved in the company today. Translation, he's a loser. I believe that's their attitude there at OpenAI. In fact, I know it is. First of all, as I said on X, for those not a lawyer, my summary, tough toenails, AI Karen. Vinod Khosla, who's an investor in OpenAI, posted about the suit saying it feels like a bit of sour grapes. Most lawyers that have written about it says there's no merit. It's not a contract. This was not a contract. And it's just a lot of grievance by Elon Musk. Most contract lawyers think it's not. But Elon always does a pitch over the plate in an attempt. Lawsuits are his love language. What do you think about the lawsuit, Scott?

Scott Galloway: I had coffee with Ted Sarandos a few weeks ago. By the way, a lovely guy. And about 12 years ago, I bought what was for me a lot of stock of Netflix at I think 12 bucks a share, and it fell to 10 in December. So I sold it to take the tax loss and I never bought back in. And now what is it at 500? And I remember sitting there as I was talking to Ted thinking, as lovely as he is, if I owned a shit ton of shares right now, I would like him so much more. But here's the thing, I'm not going to sue the company because I fucked up and made a bad decision and lost a lot of money and power. And that's all this is. There is no agreement stating between them and Elon Musk stating how they would operate the company. He left the company. These were his decisions. He tried to take over and then was rebuffed and left. But this is literally a child stamping his or her feet because they quit the team. And then the team goes on to the national finals. And so they get daddy, they sue the team. I mean, this is legally laughable except for the part when you have a billionaire with armies of lawyers, he will harass them and he will make their lives more difficult. This slows down commerce, it slows down innovation and it is literally harassment by litigation. There is no legal merit here. There is no business principle here. It is a guy going, wait, I control space. I sort of control EVs. I can't believe I fucked up and I don't control AI. I know, I'll sue them.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is there anything bad about it? Essentially, I've talked to people there, and this is the, I mean, they wanted that memo out there, obviously. Vinod's been very aggressive and very, fuck this guy, essentially. And, you know, I think they're basically, he just feels like a loser and he's not the cool kid. He's not the cool kid in AI. And he was there early, that's for sure. He talked about it extensively 10 years ago. But he definitely made a power play, as he is wont to do. This is one of his moves at every company he's been at. He always makes a power play and either gets rebuffed or he wins. Often gets rebuffed, as early companies he certainly did. And this is what he did here, and he didn't win. And he's trying to, you know, put light onto, he's backing the people who were against Sam Altman, the decelerationists, yeah. He's been backing them. A lot of people feel he was involved in the attacks on Sam, for sure. I wouldn't put it past him. And that he's just mad about it. You know, he just wants to be in it and his Grok is not doing as well, although he has tons of chance with Twitter, I guess. But regrets is a nice way of saying you're a loser, I think, in the thing. Is it bad if it doesn't go to trial?

Scott Galloway: I mean, he's being pushed back in his other trials. There could be some inner workings revealed in the discovery, of course, Microsoft partnership. You know, there's proprietary technology here. Is there any risk at all? Sure. I mean, you have a company that's trying to move a million miles an hour that has a ton of different considerations while they think about effects on humanity, managing a high-growth company. I mean, Sam Altman has a difficult job. And all this does is it says, okay, I have no justification. I'm just going to distract you and make things harder for you. So it absolutely damages OpenAI.

Scott Galloway: And judges, if they do their job, will dismiss this type of lawsuit quickly to say, you are getting in the way of commerce and there's no legal basis here. I don't... And generally what I find is that very wealthy people recognize their power. And if they have character, and I've never bought the trope, the Senator Warren or the populist trope that rich people are inherently evil. I've actually found in general, very wealthy people get there because they have high character and they establish allies along the way. And they're measured around litigation. They don't go out of their way to sue people because they realize they have more money.

Scott Galloway: This guy sees litigation as a means of trying to true up the world to his standard. And his standard is, I should control the world. And let's just ask a global question here. Are we better off? We're better off for Elon Musk. I still believe that. He's been a pioneer around EVs, what he's doing in space. I don't think you'd want to press a button and have him disappear or have him move to another country. But might it be a better idea to have him doing his thing and a guy like Sam Altman, who thus far strikes me as very thoughtful, controlling the most important company in AI? Or would we want Elon Musk to control it?

Kara Swisher: Yeah, he's trying to fuck with them. And it'll work. They already are. We're already talking about it. Some embarrassing things might come out. And not only that, Sam Altman and key principals to this company and key funders are probably going to have to spend time in court or give depositions. And also, they're going to have to be very careful about anything they do or say. It'll pull back their risk aggressiveness, which is part of being an entrepreneur and growing a business. This is just bad for the economy. It's bad for business. It sets the wrong precedent for other people. This is what Trump does, too. The lawsuits, the aggrieved lawsuits. It's a thing.

Scott Galloway: He's moving. There was a good article in The Times by David French about how close Elon and Trump are to MAGA, like this idea of aggrievement and lawsuits and anger. It was interesting.

Kara Swisher: It's just, he's such a loser. Interestingly enough, you mentioned both Ted and Sam. Ted is going to do my interview tonight at LA Live, which is sold out here in Los Angeles, where I am. And Sam is doing one on Thursday in San Francisco. So is Reid Hoffman and Gavin Newsom. So it'll be interesting to see if it comes up with any of them. Unfortunately, I think this type of aggressive litigation is effective in the sense that it just places a chill over society and business. I mean, it just everybody right. And when billionaire it started with Peter Thiel deciding to put a media company out of business because he had a ton of money. This kind of stuff puts a chill on journalists. It puts a chill on investors. It puts a chill on CEOs. I mean, it's just not the way-

Scott Galloway: Although I have noticed more people pushing back. OpenAI had pushed back really hard. Alex Stamos is doing one of my interviews in Seattle, and he wasn't talking publicly before. You know what I mean? Because they have the lawsuit by Elon. Elon goes around suing everybody to try to shut them up. And I think people are like, fuck you, essentially. But still, it causes money. It's expensive. It creates all kinds of issues.

Scott Galloway: Two-thirds of jobs are created by small and medium-sized businesses. If you're, say he just starts, and I think he's already done this, say he just, any competitor, first off, he called for an AI pause publicly because supposedly he's concerned about the fate of the world. And it comes out he was trying to catch up, that he was going full force with his own AI efforts and had no interest in pausing. But if big companies just start suing, and to be clear, big tech is guilty of this. They just start suing small companies left and right, they can put them out of business. It's difficult for the small company to wait around for the judgment. It's difficult for them to recruit employees. Do you know what it's like to raise money under the auspice of a lawsuit filed by Elon Musk?

Scott Galloway: Or quite frankly, a lot of these companies, including some of our favorites, Apple, Amazon, are very quick to send cease and desist letters. When I left my last company, I wanted to start another company. They immediately started sending me letters. And I'm like, okay, I want to work. I'm not going to compete with you, but I'd like to work. And in their view, it was, unless you sit around and do nothing for the rest of your life, in our view, you're competing with us. That's how it came across to me. And we're going to hire this really angry, mean law firm. And the only reason they back down is because I'm rich and they know I can defend myself. But what if it was 10 years ago or 20 years ago when I didn't have the money and I was trying to start companies? I wouldn't have been able to raise money. I would have just backed down from this big bad corporation who had absolutely no legal merit, none whatsoever. Every lawyer I talked to said, yeah, you're going to win this, but it's going to cost you a bunch of money. What if I didn't have a bunch of money? It's a nuisance. It's a nuisance lawsuit. Anyway, Elon, get some therapy.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, Big Tech faces new regulation in the EU, a big deal. We'll speak with a friend of Pivot, Tom Scocca, about his powerful medical mystery essay.

[Ad Break]

Kara Swisher: Scott, we're back. Apple started the week off on a rough note. The company was fined $1.95 billion by EU antitrust regulators for limiting competition among music streaming rivals with its App Store. This is focused on Spotify. Apple plans to appeal the fine and called out Spotify as the biggest beneficiary of the decision. Meanwhile, Apple and other companies are also facing a deadline to comply with the EU law known as the Digital Markets Act this week. There's two laws that are going in place, but this is a big one. The law requires the big tech companies to overhaul how some of their products work so smaller rivals can gain access to users. The era of self-regulation appears to be over for these companies, at least in the EU. Some examples: Google will change how it displays certain search results. Apple will give iPhone and iPad users access to rival app stores and payment systems. What effect do you see coming? Because there's nothing happening here in the U.S., even close to this level. What do you think about this?

Scott Galloway: I've always loved Margrethe Vestager. I think she's just a gangster and smart. Once again. And I think there are different forms of innovation. I mean, essentially, there aren't a lot of universities or hospitals with the names of founders of Google or Facebook on them in Europe. And they get all of the downside—the weaponization of their elections, the coarseness of their discourse, the income inequality, the monopoly abuse—but they don't get as much upside as the US. And as a result, they're much more inclined to take action.

Scott Galloway: And I also think generally speaking, and I've been thinking and hoping and predicting this for five years, and I've been wrong if not late, I think the worm is turning. Big tech has done such a great job of putting really attractive people out there to say, "We're proud of our progress," or "It's still early," or "This is a tragedy and we need to do more here," or really gorgeous commercials showing their new baby and the searches they're doing for a crib. They have become so likable. They have wallpapered over what incredibly mendacious fucks they've been. And I think people are fed up.

Scott Galloway: Now specific to this case, if you look at Apple, Apple's market capitalization, or their ascent over the last 10 years to become the most valuable company in the world, hasn't been a function of earnings growth. It's been a function of multiple expansion. It's gone from about a P/E multiple of 15 to where it sits now at 27.8. So even without that multiple expansion, they have effectively transitioned pretty well, or they have dramatically increased the part of their business that is recurring, specifically the services part. And the services part of their revenue is music, iTunes, it's Apple TV+, but more importantly, what's considered recurring revenue is the revenue they get from the App Store.

Scott Galloway: And this is what the App Store is. You use the analogy of a credit card. They provide infrastructure, technology, acceptance, security that the merchant and the consumer will both get security and payment. But imagine Visa took a 30% fee and then said overnight, "You know what? We're going to go into the apparel business and we're going to acquire Lululemon. And if you shop at Lululemon, you don't have to pay that 30% credit card charge." Then overnight, no other apparel company can compete with the apparel companies that Visa owns. And that is exactly what has happened here when Apple went into Apple Music relative to Spotify. Spotify can't compete. So in sum, I love this and it's overdue.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I think we'll see if they appeal the fine. I think they're going to end up paying it. Just for the only reason I said 27 is 27.1. And actually, Apple's not the most valuable. It's Microsoft right now. Apple market cap is 2.69 trillion. Microsoft is 3.09 trillion. And its P/E ratio is 37, 38 almost.

Scott Galloway: It's higher margins, not hardware.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. And NVIDIA, 72 P/E ratio. Market cap close to Apple of $2.5 trillion. I mean, it's really amazing. But I agree with you. These companies have been playing fast and loose with the rules. And Europe doesn't care. Margrethe Vestager, you know, big hair, don't care kind of thing of what they're doing. And I think that at least someone is regulating. Now people can complain about whether it's overregulation by the EU, but in the era of no regulation or self-regulation which has happened forever, especially in this country, it says something to our own regulators here that they have to do something about it.

Kara Swisher: And these companies have played far too long as our national heroes, and they are in many ways. They're great companies. But honestly, they shouldn't be able to be advantaged this significantly. And going into the next era, they are very advantaged. If you think you ain't seen nothing yet. Speaking of which, Apple's slow progress in artificial intelligence space is making investors impatient. According to a new Wall Street Journal report, CEO Tim Cook did tease an upcoming AI announcement at last week's annual shareholder meeting saying, "Later this year, I look forward to sharing with you the ways we'll break new ground in generative AI." He had to say the words. They killed the car plans and put renewed focus on AI. We talked about that last week. What do you imagine they will say? I guess within the Apple universe, the uses of AI and making your products all work together, a lot of assistance, things like that would be my guess. But what do you think?

Scott Galloway: I don't know. I would imagine they'll do stuff around saying that we're going to leverage other people's investment in AI to make it more consumer friendly. We have a history of taking existing technologies and making them more utile and more user-friendly. I would imagine they'd do stuff around healthcare would be a place I would guess they might start, but I don't know. You know more. My guess is you know more about this than I do.

Kara Swisher: They don't collect as much information, right? They don't have these big caches of things they can use. They don't have a social network. They don't use your information in quite the same way. These other companies, their business plans were based on advertising, right? And they're based on attention. And Apple's products are based on utility of the product. Now, they're not perfect in the privacy space, that's for sure. But that's their value to people, presumably. One of their values, not all of it. It's also beautiful products and things like that. So I think it'll be used to make their products more intuitive, to recommend things. And I think they'll probably ask you if you want it, I would guess. They'll be very, ask you again and again, "Would you like your music to be generated in a way?" Not just beyond recommendations, just to make the products more intuitive. I think that's where they move. And healthcare probably, but I don't know. It just depends on what, because you got the watch on your hand. You got a lot of stuff that they have, but they are definitely hindered by their privacy personality. They have to really stick to it because people will be ready to find them sneaking on you. That's where they'll be.

Kara Swisher: People assume Google's sneaking around behind the scenes, and people assume Facebook and Meta are doing this, and Amazon, that they are using all the data you give them willingly. And I think with Apple, they're going to be... It'll be interesting to see what they get, but I suspect it's to make the products more seamless than ever.

Scott Galloway: It's just amazing that amongst the many impacts that AI has had, AI literally overnight made Sundar Pichai look like a bad manager.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, it did.

Scott Galloway: I'm not exactly... This is over.

Kara Swisher: Explain what happened briefly.

Scott Galloway: Well, 12 months ago, if you'd listed five of the greatest CEOs in history, much less right now, Sundar Pichai would probably be on every list. But then overnight, what feels like overnight, and it's been 12 to 24 months, the greatest increase in market capitalization registered in history over 12 months has been AI-inspired. And a lot of that inspiration and original IP started at Alphabet, and yet they've missed out on it. So overnight, he's gone from hero to goat. All of a sudden, Alphabet looks flat-footed and is trading at a price earnings multiple less than the average on the S&P. It's the only big tech. It's the only one of the Magnificent Seven that trades below the average P/E of the S&P.

Scott Galloway: And the same thing, and now that, "Why aren't we hanging out with the cool kids?" Or "Why did mom, why don't we have the new Wii game?" That anger that everybody else has this cool thing. "How come we missed out?" is now starting to affect Apple. If Apple wasn't, this feels to me like it's the perfect opportunity, other than they don't do this, for Apple to find the number three or four LLM, generative AI, that doesn't quite get the same uptick and do an acquisition. Because Apple could take a different... This stuff, Apple has so much trust. They're in dicey privacy areas. This has been their brand.

Kara Swisher: I think it's much harder. I think it's much harder.

Scott Galloway: But Google should be dominating this right now. It really is quite amazing.

Kara Swisher: He seems... Amazon is entropic. Microsoft and OpenAI... It has not. It definitely has to tread, speaking of hindrances with Apple, it's privacy. With Google, it's scrutiny, it's federal scrutiny. There's still the overhang from search. And so they have to be very careful about what they do in that regard, because they're already subject to Justice Department investigation and case. So it'll be, I think, and he's a by nature cautious person, Sundar is. He just is. And the Gemini thing, they'll fix it. They'll fix it fine. It's just that they should have every advantage here. And they certainly haven't advantaged as much. But anyway, we'll see. It'll be interesting what will happen in the space. Obviously, it's nice to see giants fighting with each other and feeling insecure. All of them are insecure. It's crazy how insecure they are.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, let's bring in our friend of Pivot. Tom Scocca is the editor of the Substack Indignity, my favorite name for a Substack, who recently wrote an essay for New York Magazine titled "My Unraveling." In the essay, he opens about a mysterious and confusing medical condition that sidelined him for months as doctors struggled to diagnose him. I brought you here to scare Professor Galloway health-wise, but it was a wonderful essay. You're a wonderful writer. So talk about the piece. Explain what happened. It really resonated with a lot of people. You wrote in the essay, "It was my bad luck," the attending doctor said at my bedside, "to be an interesting case." You also say, "The able and the disabled aren't two different kinds of people, but the same people at different times." I had my health scare with a stroke and they diagnosed that pretty easily. That was an easy one. But I've had other ones around blood and stuff like they've never figured out. Talk a little bit about what happened to you and why you write that to be an interesting case.

Tom Scocca: I guess an interesting case is one where they can't really exactly decide what's going on or figure out what all the symptoms add up to. And even from inside, like or especially from inside, I couldn't tell what was going on. So it started with just sort of weird things happening, like pain in my shoulder, flare-ups like carpal tunnel, my ankles swelled up really big and it was hard to put my shoes on. And so that was enough to sort of start going around and seeing doctors, especially when your lower extremities swell up. They want to make sure you're not having congestive heart failure. So I went to the cardiologist and she was like, "Your heart's great. There's nothing wrong with your heart." I went to a rheumatologist and he was sort of checking for various things. He was pretty sure there was some kind of autoimmune inflammation going on, but as to what kind it was, it was not clear. A dose of steroids back then didn't really change anything.

Tom Scocca: And then that just sort of kept going. New things would change and new symptoms would come up. My ankles stopped swelling, but I started getting shortness of breath and having some real problems with fatigue. And so going along, getting kind of worse and worse at catching my breath. I started checking my oxygen and I was having trouble maintaining oxygenation. But it was this chronic, annoying thing that was limiting my activities. And they couldn't figure it out. They couldn't pin down what it was or come up with a treatment that would do it. When the breathing issues became the most salient part of it, I went to the pulmonologist, passed the test at the pulmonologist. My breathing was officially fine, even though I wasn't managing to get myself enough oxygen all the time.

Tom Scocca: So it's this weird diffuse thing. At some point when you're dealing with specialists, when you're passing all the tests, eventually passing the test becomes a problem. Because they don't know what it is.

Kara Swisher: I have noticed that. It's not a particularly ringing endorsement of the healthcare business in the United States. You wrote, "The medical mystery column doesn't usually dwell on how slowly the inquiry goes in our fractured healthcare system." Talk a little bit about that.

Tom Scocca: Yeah. The way that our system works is you get referrals. The doctor giving you a referral may or may not know if the doctor that they're referring you to is covered by your insurance. You're always having to call them up and see if they're in a network. You have to call them up and see if they have an appointment within the next four months. I think I just got a notification today for some medical appointment that I'm pretty sure I tried to make last summer. So you're constantly chasing these things. You're getting billed across multiple different portals. Just figuring out how to pay your bill, where to go to pay it, is its own hassle. And all the while, of course, you're trying to get to the bottom of this thing and trying to make sure that your records are being shared from one provider to another.

Tom Scocca: So at some point in all this, as I was talking to the specialist and the cardiologist was sort of taking it upon herself to help shepherd me through this, maybe because she knew that it wasn't a heart problem. She was like, "Really, the best thing for you to do would be to check into the hospital and just get everybody to look at you." But of course, this is America. You can't just present yourself at the hospital and say, "I'd like to lie down for a few days and get looked at."

Kara Swisher: How are you feeling today health-wise?

Tom Scocca: Pretty decent. I mean, the medication works. Large doses of steroids got me back on my feet and we're trying to bring the steroids down and substitute other immunosuppressive drugs. So I can basically go around like normal as long as I don't try to do too many things in a single day.

Scott Galloway: Nice to meet you, Tom. And let me just say you look healthy and obviously not a doctor, but you look healthy.

Tom Scocca: That's good to know.

Kara Swisher: So give us the biggest kind of surprises about dealing with our healthcare system to the downside? And I think people know those or hear a lot about those, but also any surprises to the upside about what happens when you get sick like this about our healthcare system? And maybe there were none, but surprises to the downside and upside.

Tom Scocca: The downside is that feeling that you're really just sort of trying to solve this on your own. You're like wandering through a maze and there's nobody to step up and take control and look out for your interests. When you have a mystery like this to unravel, it's really your job to solve it. And how much persistence you have and how much organizational skill you have, how much time you can bring to this problem is sort of what helps determine how well you navigate the system. And of course, the sicker and less able to do stuff you are, the harder it is to stay on top of your own needs and care in the system.

Tom Scocca: As far as the positive surprises go, once I got myself into the hospital, it was a very responsive setting and people were really engaged with trying to figure out how to help. But you had to get yourself to the hospital.

Kara Swisher: I think one of the interesting things that's happening now is, especially around COVID, I have a lot of friends with long COVID, and they have not been able to be figured out. Doctors get very frustrated by having to figure out things that aren't easy, like "Ah, you have a cardiac blockage," things that are obvious that they've done over and over again that they can diagnose relatively easily. Many years ago, when I was pregnant, I had low white blood cells. And I had dozens of tests for leukemia, AIDS, everything else, and they were never able to figure it out. Never. Ultimately I was diagnosed with neutropenia, which means low white blood cells. And I said, "That's not a diagnosis, that's a description." And they were arguing with me. They're like, "That's the diagnosis." I go, "You don't know why it is." And it's to this day, I don't even know what my... I gave up on it after a while. It was crazy.

Kara Swisher: But a lot of people with long COVID and a lot of these persistent health issues, whether it's Lyme disease or chronic fatigue syndrome, get sucked up in a system that if it can't be solved in seconds, it's very... The reason I wanted to bring you here is because different tech companies have been trying to solve this problem, whether it's One Medical with Amazon or things like that, which still don't solve the problem at all. There's no... When we've had people on talking about how to do that, none of them have been able to come up with it.

Tom Scocca: Yeah. It's a great moment when they just read your symptoms back to you in medical language, like "benign positional vertigo." Like, yes, those are the words for what I just... That's right. I told you I was dizzy. You're bringing back benign positional vertigo to me. Thank you.

Kara Swisher: How would you solve it? Because so many people suffer from chronic conditions that are confusing to doctors and they refuse to say... At one point I had a doctor, he wouldn't tell me that he couldn't diagnose. And I said, "Can you just say, 'I don't know'? I would prefer that." But how do you see? Is there any way to solve it? We talk about AGI a lot. We talk about all kinds of things that could bring a lot of information up there. Do you see any way to do that?

Kara Swisher: I'm not sure. I mean, it is to the extent that all my records eventually got folded into kind of a unified chart system after I'd been to the hospital that I think helped make a difference. It helps that everybody can stay on the same page looking at the information. But it's really hard. I mean, I think it's sort of the magic answer to everything. But obviously, if everybody's health care was being paid for under a single system, and you weren't trying to coordinate across different coverage realms, I think that that would help. Just to help bring the focus back to the patient and not on how the building is getting managed. Yeah, it's hard. I don't know that there is a clear answer just because we invest medical science with this idea that it's going to have certainty and give you clear answers. And some of the things that happen to your body are like really diffuse and weird. And it's not like some sprocket inside you broke and they just need to replace the sprocket, especially when your body's attacking itself. It's really not necessarily amenable to being figured out and dealt with quickly.

Tom Scocca: Tom, distinct to your interaction with the healthcare system, just having a health scare like this, how, if and how has it changed your approach to life or the way you approach relationships?

Kara Swisher: I mean, it very much, you know, like I said in the piece, it was sort of the first time, I mean, I was, you know, I'm aware of mortality as like a fact and that we only have so many years in this world, but sort of when I got COVID in the middle of this, which was sort of, I think, then tipped me over into being sick enough that I had to go to the hospital, you know, that was when I started really feeling like my body really could stop working. You know, I'd been, before that, I'd been very lucky in my health overall in life. And like, I've had sort of robust health without putting much effort into it. And, you know, this like really, yeah, it made me think about the limited amount of time that I get and how to sort of apportion my energy and effort on things. I mean, how much time I have with my kids as they're growing up. It's just, you think about how to get more out of the life you got to the extent you can. But of course, you're also remembering to take your cup of six pills in the morning and you're trying to make sure that the steroids don't make you too crabby. You could try to readjust your existential outlook, but you're still trying to get through each day as you were before. Remembering to broaden your perspective can take some extra effort.

Tom Scocca: Absolutely. Let me ask you about your work thing. I have one last question. You were a very active and outspoken writer, a wonderful writer against a lot of things. I'm looking at some of the stuff you've been writing lately. You're writing about the New York Times' trans issues. You've written about Joe Rogan being an idiot. And you're a very sharp media critic, I would say. How does that affect your work? Does it change the way you think about work or doing things? Because you were always sort of a really, always, you always weighed in with just the right rejoinder to a lot of lunacy that was going on.

Kara Swisher: I don't know. I think that the actual work that I do has been sort of less affected by it than anything. And again, to whatever extent that sort of work can make a difference, you want to keep making a difference. So I don't think it's mellowed me any.

Tom Scocca: In terms of how you're working, but how do you look at work now? Because, you know, everyone's, there's just an article in the Atlantic saying it's the extinction event for media. Now you've been involved in all kinds of different media over the years. I mean, a laundry list of places. And all kinds of different extinctions. So I'd love to get your thoughts on that. That's my last question. Like what you, do you think it's an extinction? Because you've worked for just about everybody. I'm trying to think. You've been around the block.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I mean, yeah. It certainly seems like we're in a spectacularly bad time for media. There's something alarming about the way that the media employment market has come uncoupled from the rest of the employment market. Your feed is a mixture of great unemployment numbers federally and news of 300 more people getting laid off in your own industry. So yeah, it's a little scary to just contemplate that there may not be jobs out there. And it's fun to have your own publication and be pushing along on that, but it's very hard to get the money together. I'm part of this Flaming Hydra thing that just launched, which is, I think, an interesting and so far promising experiment in doing a little bit of something with scale, where instead of trying to take a small number of people and bootstrap the operations until you get enough readers, it started with a very large number of writers, like 60 writers, each of whom have their own following and audience and bring them together. And you're just asking each one for like one piece a month, right? But if you do that, then you have two pieces a day from writers people like and you have a sort of pretty large audience built in to start to start growing from as each person sort of tells the people who follow their work about this. Right, it's 60 writers. Flaming Hydra's 60 writers.

Tom Scocca: I find it fascinating. And you've been raising money various ways.

Kara Swisher: Right. So through Kickstarter to get it going and through the subscriptions. Yeah. And there was enough, you know, so far it's been paying out a little bit better than a dollar a word if you don't go over the assigned word count, which is, you know, if you can stack up enough dollar word pieces, you can get along.

Tom Scocca: So is that the future? I mean, it's a writer's co-op, essentially, is what it is, right?

Kara Swisher: Yeah. I don't know. I hope it's the future. I hope that it can grow and keep reaching people. And the guys at Defector are doing their thing. The people are sort of having some success with these kind of co-op models. Again, I think that what it depends on in part is that you've got to have an audience. You know, one of the things that made Defector a success was that because G/O Media just sort of ruined Deadspin and drove them all away, they could pick up a giant audience that had been built up over the years when they launched. And, you know, again, with like Flaming Hydra, you're collecting all these people. They all have built up their own readerships that could be sort of combined and drawn on. But yeah, I mean the problem is what do you do if you're not starting from a position of already having something in the bank? If you're just sort of a writer starting out and you want to get some traction and get your stuff out there? I don't know. It's really, really an unfavorable time for doing it. It's very difficult.

Tom Scocca: I would recommend people trying Flaming Hydra. It's really cool. I think it's a really cool thing.

Scott Galloway: Scott, last question?

Kara Swisher: I don't have one. I just want to say I'm really glad that you're doing better. And like I said, you look good.

Tom Scocca: Thank you.

Scott Galloway: And I really appreciate the piece. And I think when people read something like this, it gives them comfort in a very difficult time.

Kara Swisher: And scared.

Scott Galloway: They also become scared.

Kara Swisher: I bet you got a lot of, "Oh, there but for the grace of God, go I" kind of thing.

Tom Scocca: Right. You get both. You get the people who are incredibly relieved because they've been going through something like this where, again, it's like something where you feel very alone and very trapped inside your own experience. And then sort of the chance to read about somebody else who's been there means a lot to people. But yeah, I think it also scared people. Because again, I came into this from the position of somebody who was pretty stably healthy and doing well in middle age. And then all of a sudden I'm falling down because I can't walk. So somebody else who's middle-aged and walking along fine...

Scott Galloway: Have you thought about running for president?

Kara Swisher: I'm sorry.

Scott Galloway: Oh, stop, stop, stop.

Kara Swisher: I'm sorry. Go, go, go. Scott can't stop talking about Donald Trump.

[Laughter]

Kara Swisher: Anyway, anyhow, Tom, thank you so much. You can read the really good essay by Tom Scocca. He's a wonderful writer. He's one of my favorite writers. And people can go to nymag.com to read your essay and also go to Flaming Hydra. It's really cool. It's really nice. I'm not sure if I like the design of it, but I like the site itself. It's got some really great writers. Thank you so much.

Tom Scocca: Sure. Thanks for bringing me on to talk.

Scott Galloway: Nice to meet you, Tom.

Tom Scocca: Good to meet you.

[Ad break]

Kara Swisher: Okay, Scott, wins and fails.

Scott Galloway: Okay, just before we get to wins and fails, Kara, I want to apologize. I didn't mean to be dismissive of your book. I try to be funny and sometimes it lands and sometimes it doesn't. But I know how hard it is to write a book. And the last thing I want to do after you put in the effort is to be dismissive of anything you're doing. So I apologize. I did not mean to be dismissive.

Kara Swisher: Thank you. You're very sweet. I know you didn't mean it. I did get a lot of people saying something, though, for the first time.

Scott Galloway: Well, I'm apologizing to you, not to them.

Kara Swisher: I know you are. I know you are. I know you are. Thank you. I appreciate it. And I'm excited for your book, too. We're very excited to celebrate.

Scott Galloway: Oh, I appreciate that. Yours comes out at the end of April, just for people if they want to pre-order.

Kara Swisher: Anyways, my win is, I don't know if you've seen this. Have you seen One Day on Netflix?

Scott Galloway: No.

Kara Swisher: It's a British romantic drama television series based on the 2009 novel by the same name, by David Nicholls. It follows the 20-year relationship of Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew, who met at graduation from the University of Edinburgh.

Scott Galloway: Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's now, they're doing a new one, right?

Kara Swisher: Well, I've just been, I don't know if they're doing a new one, but yeah, it's One Day. It's on Netflix and it's just about, it's just a very simple love story. The guy was actually in The White Lotus. He played the British kid. Well, anyways, it is wonderful and has a lot... First off, it's so wonderful that something that doesn't have zombies or dragons. It's just purely about a love story. And just back to what Tom was saying about your life, I'm trying to be much more deliberate and purposeful with my kids because I'm running out of time. And I'm watching this with my 16-year-old boy because I read something that just broke my heart. Do you know that 50% of Gen Z men have given up on dating? They're not dating. They feel like, just for a variety of societal reasons, they don't want to risk the rejection. And they find it difficult, they find it humiliating, and they're confused about it. And I'm watching it with my 16-year-old, and he's really enjoying it, because I want, if there's anything I could give to young men, and I think this is true of young women too, but I relate more, obviously, to young men, and I'm raising boys. It's that there's a reason that romantic comedies are two hours, not 15 minutes. They're really hard. There's a lot of rejection, but they're wonderful.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, it's a TV series. Do you know it was a movie with Anne Hathaway a while back?

Scott Galloway: Yeah, in 2011. And now it's a series that's so popular.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, it's such a popular series. I think they're making more of it for some reason. I understood they were going to keep going with it because it was so popular. No, it's got great reviews. It's really wonderful.

Scott Galloway: And then my fail is this ridiculous... So Democrats in Missouri are attempting to overturn a decades-old law that bans women from getting divorced while they are pregnant. So you are not allowed as a woman to get divorced if you're pregnant. And let's walk through this. So what is the number one source of death, of fatality for pregnant women? It's homicide. What are the incentives here if you're a violent psychopath who is in a relationship with a woman who wants to leave this abusive relationship? What are your incentives? I know, I'll get her pregnant because then it's illegal for her to divorce me. And in addition, as far as I know, pregnancy is primarily entirely sequestered to people born as women. And there are just very few laws that diminish the rights. I can't think of any that are sequestered to people born as men. I mean, this is just... They want us back in the Stone Ages. Baseline misogyny that results in psychopathic partners knocking up their wives so they can't divorce them, which puts a pregnant woman in harm's way. I mean, it's just so, we have this weird obsession with birth, but this hostility towards the person who's responsible for the birth. Anyways, similar laws are actually in Texas, Arkansas, and California. But this needs some sort of federal legislation that restores... Let's just pretend, I mean, one of the basic instincts that you should have as a man is to protect women. And it's basic, because if you don't protect women, we go out of business. You can have a village of 50 men and 50 women. And if 25 of the men die going to war or they're violent, the village can still survive. If 25 of the women get killed, that village goes out of business. So to not err on the side of protecting women while they're pregnant, it's literally the definition of misanthropic.

Kara Swisher: You know France just became the first country to explicitly enshrine abortion rights in the Constitution. This is breaking news from the Washington Post right now. Other countries understand this, understand women's rights. They really do.

Scott Galloway: This country is moving in a direction that is so dangerous. Mexico, a very Catholic nation, has just cemented... If you look at the nations we're headed towards, it's literally Iran, Turkey, North Korea. It's not a good list. It's not a room we want to hang out in.

Kara Swisher: No, I agree. I agree. I'm thinking I'm moving to France now, although I don't speak French. Anyway, my win, besides your lovely apology, Scott, thank you, was the two shows that I love: The Regime with Kate Winslet, which is speaking of strange Eastern European countries. She's the head of it, and she's hysterical. She's eating up every piece of scenery. She plays the head, a crazy head of a sort of like a Ceausescu character. And she's so funny. The costumes are funny. Everything about it, and she's doing an amazing job. And the other I'm excited for, and I haven't seen yet, is Shogun. They redid it. I loved the original one, which was kind of, you look back on it, and it's problematic. But the book was James Clavell. They've remade it. It's getting astonishing reviews. It's focused a lot more on the Japanese experience in it rather than the white guy. But the white guy's important in it also, but it's supposed to be fantastic and I am so looking forward to it. I have not seen it. I will report back once I have a minute to watch it. And the fail, I think, is the same thing with you, the rampant misogyny that's just stemming from Dobbs, which is really, and it's not just misogyny, it's homophobia, etc., that we are tracking, I think you're absolutely right, we are tracking on other countries that are not countries we should be tracking on, while other countries go in an opposite direction, which is more kindness and attention to women and their issues. And with Trump poised to dominate Super Tuesday, it's kind of, you got to give it to Nikki Haley making this final effort and now saying she may not back him, which I think... And again, two women in the Senate who backed her, Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins. It's really up to women to figure out what's going to happen in this race, in this presidential race. It's either a very anti-woman president, and that's what he is. He's, I'm sorry, I know we joke, he's a rapist. He's a rapist. The man's a rapist and he's an insurrectionist. And women have got to make this stand if men aren't going to do it for them. But I hope men will do the same. So that is my fail. I guess. It's the whole thing that goes with it. It isn't just pro-choice. It's everything else that goes with it.

Scott Galloway: Our nation has a lot of things to be proud of. We have more women being elected to leadership positions than ever before. There's something about, for some reason, the far right has taken aim at pregnant women. It just doesn't make any sense. I don't get it.

Kara Swisher: Because you don't exist as a thing. You're a vessel. That's why. They don't see you as a person. They see you as a vessel. Just read their stuff. That's what they think.

Scott Galloway: Anyway.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: On that note.

Kara Swisher: They're good luck. Let me just say, they're coming for my family, too. And good luck trying. Let me just say, I built some very strong men. They will fight for me. Including you, Scott Galloway.

Scott Galloway: That's right.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, we want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business, tech, or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. Scott, that's the show. We'll be back on Friday with more. I think I'll be in San Francisco then or maybe Seattle. I don't know where I am, Scott.

Scott Galloway: I'm going to Austin.

Kara Swisher: I don't know.

Scott Galloway: Oh, we're going to Austin.

Kara Swisher: Yes.

Scott Galloway: Oh, we're going to Austin. We're meeting in Texas. This weekend.

Kara Swisher: Oh, my God. We're doing a live Pivot and we're having a nice dinner, everything. It'll be cool. Why don't you read us out?

Scott Galloway: That's the show. We'll be back on Friday for more. Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Andretat, engineer of this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Emil Severio. Nishat Kirwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Kara, have a great rest of the week.

Kara Swisher: Thank you.