Elon’s Twitter Buy, Urban Hellscapes, and Guest Dr. Laurie Santos

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Kara Swisher: Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher. Scott Galloway, I cannot believe it, on the day Elon is trying to buy Twitter, is out today. I'm joined by writer, actor, and media personality, and sometimes Pivot co-host, George Hahn. I'm thrilled that you're here. George, good to see you again.

George Hahn: Cara, it's such a thrill to be here. Thank you. So thank you for asking.

Kara Swisher: Of course, you're my first choice, honestly. I thought it would be fun to talk to you after. And by the way, Scott thinks every now and then, because he's such a loudmouth, we need a palate cleanser. And you are a palate cleanser, as if I had to pick one.

George Hahn: That's what he said to me yesterday. Give me a minute. Give me a minute. I'll shed that real fast.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, did you watch the Grammys last night?

George Hahn: I did not. I was on a plane to Vancouver. I'm in Vancouver right now. I didn't because I still have PTSD from the Oscars. I'm in that place where for the next few award shows, I'm going to have to watch them through my fingers.

Kara Swisher: Right, right, right. I did see some clips and I'm sure you heard as well. By all accounts, it was actually a fun show.

George Hahn: Yeah, yeah. I think there wasn't too much. Zelensky appeared. Justin Bieber's outfit. I noticed you tweeted about it. Tell me about what you thought about that.

Kara Swisher: He was channeling David Byrne. Preet prompted me and he showed up and he said, "George, can I get a ruling?" And I immediately thought of David Byrne and his Stop Making Sense Talking Heads drag, which was fantastic. And Bieber's just kind of doing his own riff on it. It's fine. What really concerned me is that Justin, along with many others starting with Timothée Chalamet, there is that term "so-and-so lost his shirt." Well, it seems like everybody literally lost their shirt. No one's wearing shirts now. Shirts are very last year.

George Hahn: No, it was interesting. The host of SNL, I'm totally blanking on his name.

Kara Swisher: Jerrod Carmichael.

George Hahn: Jerrod Carmichael. He wasn't wearing a shirt, but he looked good, I have to say. I kind of like it. What do you think?

Kara Swisher: I think it depends on who's doing it.

George Hahn: You took a picture of it. That's why you took a picture of it.

Kara Swisher: Oh, of me? Yeah, you did it. Yes, I get that. You look good, though. You look good.

George Hahn: You're very kind. Some can pull it off, and it's not necessarily an age thing because Lenny Kravitz showed up. I don't know if you saw what he was wearing on the red carpet.

Kara Swisher: No, I didn't.

George Hahn: But he had on tight leather pants. He still pulls it off.

Kara Swisher: Yes, he pulls it off.

George Hahn: And boots that nearly went – he was Catwoman from the waist down. And then shirtless, but he wore this chainmail halter.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

George Hahn: It worked. It worked. Lenny Kravitz looked great.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. What about Chalamet? What do you think of Chalamet?

George Hahn: I think Timothy's having fun.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

George Hahn: You know, you're young. Have some fun.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. These are the days where you're in your 20s. Everybody wants to have sex with you. Like, find yourself. Okay. All right.

George Hahn: Okay. Well, speaking of finding yourself, Louis C.K. apparently isn't canceled. He won the Grammy for Best Comedy Album just days after Will Smith resigned from the Academy over his conduct at the Oscars. Smith, by the way, says he's willing to accept whatever punishment the Academy doles out. The obvious question, why is Smith's bad behavior potentially punished? And Louis is back, I guess. And he was whipping out his ding dong.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, he was whipping it out and showing it to—

George Hahn: That's my word for penises, just so you know, ding-dong. But go ahead, move along.

Kara Swisher: Or dong, as you know, I've got to ask Preet about that. I don't like that. Yeah, yeah. I don't—yeah. But, you know, listen, it's been a minute since the Louis situation, and comedy is tragedy plus time. So it's been a little time.

George Hahn: Yeah, yeah. He is funny. I'm not excusing it.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

George Hahn: In terms of craft, I think Louis C.K., minus the incident or the stuff.

Kara Swisher: Many incidents, apparently. But go ahead.

George Hahn: Incidents, yeah, several. He is a master craftsman when it comes to joke making.

Kara Swisher: Right.

George Hahn: A modern genius. The whole situation really disappointed me. I liked and admired his work so much. He's a real artist in that world. I haven't seen a special. Some of his competition in the category was Louis Black, whom I adore. Chelsea Handler, that was a good special. Hers was a good special, although Chelsea hits it with the drugs a lot. Like, I get it, Chelsea, you like to be high.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, well, everybody's got their thing. With Dave Chappelle and the trans stuff. I mean, what's interesting, I've been thinking about it a lot because I did think Chappelle, that particular segment, was super transphobic and he has a problem with it. I interviewed Kathy Griffin about that. At the same time, he's a genius. I think I've decided to give comics a real wide berth now as I think about it and sort of evolve my opinion. In this case, I don't give him a wide berth for whipping out his penis.

George Hahn: I don't either. It's gross and disgusting. But it's an interesting issue. But on stage, I give comics the hitting or the penis whipping. It's just, I don't know what to do. It's really hard to figure it all out. Although I'm pretty much on the side of, yuck, like you awful creepy fuck. Reminding me of this early 90s album from Sandra Bernhard titled "Excuses for Bad Behavior." And now we're here. Like now we're living it.

Kara Swisher: Yep, yep, yep. I mean, what's interesting is people voted for Louis C.K. knowing about his behavior. So they've obviously forgiven him for it. Will Smith's slap came only after the votes were cast. So anyway, it's interesting. It's an interesting time. Got me scratching my head.

George Hahn: Yeah, it is. It's interesting. And so, you know, people want to watch it. I think people should watch what they want to watch. And sometimes, with Chris Rock, people are giving him a hard time over the tasteless Jada Pinkett Smith joke, while also saying he didn't deserve it. I think Jerrod Carmichael made a great point during his monologue on SNL. He's a comic. He's wonderful. I'm not going to talk about it. I want to be clear, up top, I've talked about it enough, kept talking about it, kept thinking about it. I don't want to talk about it. And you can't make me talk about it. But I got a question. Do you want to talk about it? I urge everyone to go watch his monologue. It really is delicious. He really is. Masterful opening monologue.

Kara Swisher: He did. So today, just so you know, we'll talk about a lot of things. Elon Musk's new Twitter, not his new tweet, but his new Twitter. He's bought a big chunk of the company, nearly 10%. We'll get some news about Sarah Palin and other loudmouths. I know you love to talk about them. And then to cool down, we'll speak with Dr. Laurie Santos about happiness. But first, Discovery and WarnerMedia will merge in the coming days. Advocacy groups are saying the merged company is failing Latinos. The alliance of groups, including Edward James Olmos' Latino Film Institute, says Discovery has zero Latino showrunners, directors, and executives in 2021. That seems odd and strange when you think about all the different companies with all these hits and everything else. Anyway, that's going to happen next week. And then David Zaslav takes over. He's sort of an old schooler. I suspect he's like, "Oh, God, now I own a big company." He's sort of been toiling away over at Discovery for a long time where he's not gotten as much attention. So he better be ready for this kind of attention on all kinds of fronts the way Bob Chapek is at Disney. I don't know. What do you think? You have to represent.

George Hahn: Yeah. I mean, it's kind of a no-brainer. And the Latino community has every right to be going, "Hey, hey, with this."

Kara Swisher: Yeah, yeah. What's going on?

George Hahn: Yeah. Yeah, sorry, not sorry. You got to represent.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I think it's interesting because when you move from, when you're not prepared for the onslaught, because these partisanship and culture wars are, even though people are actually concerned about inflation and day-to-day life, when you look at polling, it's going to be a part of the corporate scene, no matter how you slice it going forward. And so depending on what side you're on, and the right is just as aggressive as the left in calling people out. Bob Chapek got caught in a squeeze here because he did the wrong thing on the gays and lesbians in Florida. And then when he started to do the right thing, Ron DeSantis attacked him. So I don't envy these CEOs. They're paid an enormous amount of money. But it's a really difficult squeeze for a company when they have to pick a side, essentially.

George Hahn: Well, I am sometimes, and sometimes not, a fan of Anna Wintour. But she says one of my favorite things about this very thing. You have to stand for something.

Kara Swisher: Yes, it just depends on what you stand for.

George Hahn: Well, she's had her own share of controversies, by the way.

Kara Swisher: Sure. In that area.

George Hahn: But I mean, in general.

Kara Swisher: She got whipsawed in that regard. Yeah, yeah, I would agree. I would agree. And I think it's hard for... You have to stand for something. Well, David, welcome to the Thunderdome. I think you're going to find it a little different than having a controversy on Guy Fieri. Whatever. I think it's going to be a little more than that. That was the biggest star Discovery has had. I like Guy Fieri anyway.

George Hahn: Yeah. I watched Diners, Drive-Ins, and whatever it's called.

Kara Swisher: Also, the White House's Jen Psaki is maybe headed to MSNBC. She reportedly will host a show on Peacock, also on the regular channels. What do you think about this sort of revolving door? It seems like it's not just her. It's on the right. It's on the left. They just hired Mick Mulvaney somewhere. I forget where. Mick Mulvaney at CBS. That got a huge controversy. So what do you think about these things?

George Hahn: Well, it depends. I think Mulvaney is a different thing, and Stephen Colbert had an incredible monologue about it.

Kara Swisher: He did, indeed.

George Hahn: CBS News has hired the ex-president's former chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, to, quote, "provide political analysis across the network's broadcasts and platforms." For more, we go to The Late Show's own media analyst, Stephen Colbert. Stephen, your thoughts? What the f***? Psaki, that doesn't surprise me. The conservative ones go to Fox. Jen Psaki's going to go to MSNBC. Not really a surprise. But the difference, as I see it from where I'm sitting, is that Jen Psaki is not a liar.

Kara Swisher: Oh, okay.

George Hahn: She doesn't stand up there and lie to everybody all day when she does that.

Kara Swisher: Well, the right thing she does. But go ahead. Go ahead. Of course they do. But she's also very good at her job. It's the formula now. It's what you do. Like Nicole Wallace and others. I don't know what I think about it. I don't blame her. I got to say, what's his name? Sean Spicer's over at, what, OWN or one of them? I forget. He went over there. But listen, we're saying Sean Spicer went where? We don't know.

George Hahn: I know, I know.

Kara Swisher: But then who else went? What was the other press secretary for Trump? Kayleigh McEnany.

George Hahn: Yeah, she went over.

Kara Swisher: And then Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who's running for governor and stuff like that. They either go into politics or they go on to one of these things. I still think this formula that cable has has got to be overhauled. I just feel like it's just a lot of people screaming at each other. And I get why you would scream to the converted, but it seems – I don't know. It just doesn't illuminate, George. It doesn't.

George Hahn: Well, as a junkie of public radio—

Kara Swisher: You are a junkie.

George Hahn: I broke up with cable a long time ago.

Kara Swisher: You did?

George Hahn: I cut that cord a long time ago. And I'm an NPR listener. And so when you listen to something like NPR, which really kind of feels like the grown-ups' table. Nobody's yelling. Although some people think it's shaded, but go ahead. They're pretty good about getting both sides. And the people on the right show up and they say, "Thank you, it's a pleasure to be here," and they do their bit. But nobody's yelling. And then when I turn on or see a clip from cable news, it is jarring, the contrast in tone.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

George Hahn: And it seems like sort of almost childish by comparison.

Kara Swisher: It is, 100%. I try not to, although I've been watching, obviously, the imagery from CNN. They're doing a very good job in Ukraine. And less good job covering inflation and stuff like that, which is interesting. They could do the same thing on all these topics. There doesn't have to be a war with really awful imagery, which I think does bring people in at the same time. They're doing great reporting.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, let's get on to our first big story. Elon Musk frequently owns people on Twitter, but now he owns Twitter, at least a big chunk of it. On Monday, an SEC filing revealed that Musk had purchased more than 9% of the company. That makes him the largest shareholder, and that is a big deal. I have been waiting for some rich person on the right or left to do this, and who knows where he is? He's all over the place. Scott asked a good question last week. What does Elon want from Twitter that he doesn't already get? When we were talking about starting his own, because he did a poll about whether you should start a social network. As clever as Elon is, he decided to buy one. He's never gotten even close to getting kicked off of Twitter, which people were like, "Oh, now he can't get kicked off." He actually stays within, whether you like his Hitler memes or calling US senators "Senator Karen," like Elizabeth Warren. It's fine. I think this is really fascinating. People got mad at me because I said it was fascinating, but it certainly is. And Twitter jumped on the news. So the markets expect him to do something. It doesn't mean that others won't come in. I'm surprised. He's the exactly right person to do this. And he was actually quite close, has been close to Jack Dorsey. It doesn't have integration with any of his other companies. Maybe it does. Although Marc Benioff tried to buy Twitter at one point. So tell me, what do you think about this?

George Hahn: It doesn't surprise me. I'm still kind of unclear about the why. Like, it's not like he needs the cash. What is this about? He hasn't been canceled. He can say and do kind of like whatever he wants. And I guess we're going to talk about it later with our guest. But in terms of this being a pursuit of happiness, what more do you need?

Kara Swisher: Oh, I think, no, I don't agree with you. I think he is so linked with Twitter. He loves it. He's obviously like you and I, addicted to it in some fashion. I think he's got a point of view on this about free speech. He did that when he did Starlink in Ukraine. "No one's going to let us decide what goes over this thing." I think it fits in exactly with his worldview in that he probably felt Twitter had gone too far in policing people. He is going to have, if he continues and others jump in, enormous pressure on this management. It is probably something nobody expected. Although when you think about it, it makes perfect sense that he would be the one to do it. I always thought a rich person would move in, but if it was Soros or Thiel, that would be too much. This guy is sort of in a weird spot. People who hate him think he's too right-wing. People who love him think he's just saying it like it is. I would think he would be for putting Trump back on the platform. That would be my guess. Is he for that? I don't know. That's the thing. I think, I imagine. He's a little bit of a mystery that way. He didn't want to vote for, when we last interviewed, he didn't want to vote for Trump. At the same time, I think he has some things in common, right? Like some things he agrees with. So especially around this idea of being censorious, I think this is really interesting. And I think people are losing their minds that their beloved Twitter could get in the hands of a billionaire like this. And 10% gives you enormous clout within a company to make changes. More than most shareholder activists. And let me just say, the stock of Twitter has been very low, as Scott has talked about a lot. This is an activist shareholder moving in in a very different way. So I don't know. I think it's kind of smart on his behalf. It's his money, but it's up 30%.

George Hahn: Well, the Washington Post has an owner.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, exactly. Right. So, I mean, he's not going to be the full owner, but he might be able to afford it. But it's certainly, shareholders have got to cheer this because they felt that Twitter is undervalued for a long, long time. And it has been. It's the same as it was when it was public or something like that. But you, like, again, the idea that him claiming that he's being censored, how exactly?

George Hahn: I don't. Well, he just, no, he talks about free speech in general. I don't think he himself has claimed. I haven't seen that he might have at one point. But you've talked about this.

Kara Swisher: Yes. I'm going to push back a little bit.

George Hahn: Okay.

Kara Swisher: Twitter's a private company. And when we agree, these are their rules. This is their code of conduct. And if you're not going to abide by it, we're a private company. This is not the public square. Twitter can kick me or you off whenever it wants to.

George Hahn: Right. Well, it has to go along their guidelines. I'm surprised I haven't been suspended yet.

Kara Swisher: I know. No, come on. They love you. But here's the deal. That's correct. It's a private company, and therefore he can buy it. And he could change the rules if he wants, their rules. If he gets enough influence on the board, et cetera, he can change their rules. And so that's how he's doing it. He's not like yelling from the sidelines like a Ted Cruz or whoever, or Josh Hawley. He's actually going to buy it and change the rules. And I think, I suspect they made some very hard calls on Trump and some others, and he would take those brakes off. I think he would. He would change those rules. I'm not sure he'd go as far as Alex Jones, but he might. He might be like, "Look, good ideas, bad ideas, they need to be out there all at once." And of course, he's not taking in mind that these things can be terribly abused and manipulated by people. But people are really losing it. They love Twitter and they don't want someone they don't agree with owning it. And right now, Jack Dorsey was sort of managed to be in both worlds, very free speech oriented. And then he seemed to make the right decisions at the right time, whether it was Alex Jones or Trump or whatever that the left liked. And he sort of got pressed from the right, but he managed to sit in the middle. Elon is a really interesting character to put in the middle of this because you just don't know where he's going to come out. Although he does tend towards loudmouthery, I guess. I don't know what to say. He does tend towards attacking Democrats and Biden, for example. But he doesn't necessarily not attack the other side when he feels like it. He's just – some people find him to be authoritarian focused. Here's my – and I think Scott might feel the same way. I can't remember exactly what Scott said about it. Scott should be thrilled because the stock is up. But go ahead.

George Hahn: There is that. But I'm sorry. The fact that a guy, the way we worship the ultra wealthy and powerful people, and he is excused from behavioral norms, from manners, from being a gentleman. Like, what is your problem? What he has said about Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Like, what the hell happened to you? Your mother loves you, right?

Kara Swisher: Yes, she does.

George Hahn: Was it because dad wasn't in the picture? Why are you like this? Why is it okay for him to be a dick? He's a dick. But because he's rich and powerful, we're supposed to go, "Well, it's okay." It's not okay.

Kara Swisher: It's just what he is. I don't think it's an excuse. He can do what he wants. And I think in this case, he can buy this. It's a private company. You're saying it's a private company. I'm not supporting it or not. I'm just surprised no one's done it. And I do think there's only a very few people who could pull something like this off. Jack Dorsey was one of them. And, of course, he was even pressure-free because the stock. This has gotten the stock up 30%. And this is literally the plot of Succession at the end of the season when Alexander Skarsgård's character was going to be bought. And then he ended up pumping his stock that allowed him to buy Logan Roy's company, right? This is sort of fantastic. It's like following along those playbooks. And I don't know why I didn't think "Elon buys Twitter," that kind of thing. Now, again, this could be a pile-on of others. There might be some in Silicon Valley that come with him. He's got a whole crew. And so you could see Marc Andreessen getting in here and others. And so it changes the equation quite a bit because it's a private company. And so as much as people don't like that Twitter does what it wants because it's a private company, he can do what he wants because he has money and can buy it. And he can. And I don't like – I will not – I don't want to sit next to him at Thanksgiving dinner table. Like, no.

George Hahn: Oh, okay.

Kara Swisher: I don't even want to go to the same house.

George Hahn: You know, it's interesting that it doesn't have to fit in with his other things because Twitter is really two things, a news vehicle and a marketing vehicle. And so, you know, he will have influence. People say, "Oh, he's not going to –" I'm like, "Sure he will." Like anyone who has that much, they can influence the board. They can influence – and there's no particular stock here that keeps one person in power. Jack Dorsey, who actually – when I interviewed Jack Dorsey last time, I said, "Who's your favorite person on Twitter?" He said, "Elon Musk." I think they're quite close. It's my impression. And so I don't know that for a fact, but it was an interesting choice. And he thought he was enthusiastic and he said what he wants and this and that. And so I think he can have enormous influence now. And it could set off a bidding war for this thing. Marc Benioff has wanted to buy it. Peter Thiel could get in here. There's all kinds of people who have the means to do this. And before, people didn't want to touch Twitter because it was so toxic. And in this case, why not touch it, why not grab it? And I think this is fascinating. This is going to be real interesting. And it's going to be hard for Scott because as much as, as you know, Elon called Scott an insufferable numbskull on Twitter, which was enjoyable to all of us, including Scott. But he loves to dump on Elon. But Elon's the reason this stock is up, which...

George Hahn: Elon's punching down. You think?

Kara Swisher: I guess. I don't know. Elon, every time, Elon goes after anybody based on his money and his following. Every move he makes is a punch down.

George Hahn: Okay. All right.

Kara Swisher: Well, in any case.

George Hahn: That's the price of being on top.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I guess so. He doesn't need to. I've talked to him about this. I think it's ridiculous, but that's all right. He can do what he wants. If I was his mother, I'd tell him to dial it back, but he does what he wants. But I ain't his mama. His mother is actually a model. She's quite beautiful and she has a point of view. She got mad at me once. That was scarier than Elon getting mad at me, which happens periodically. Anyway, I like her so much. I really do.

George Hahn: I do too. I do, even though she got mad at me. I don't care. She's his mama. That's okay.

Kara Swisher: He polled his Twitter followers and asked if Twitter's algorithm should be open source, which was interesting, and 80% said yes, which creates a whole other fork in the road here. There's already an open source version of Twitter called Mastodon. So that's interesting. Anyway, we'll see what happens. Scott, I can't wait till I get Scott's point of view because he must be torn today.

Kara Swisher: All right, George, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, the blue-red state divide is growing, and we'll speak with a friend of Pivot, Dr. Laurie Santos.

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Kara Swisher: George, do your impression of Julia Fox, please.

George Hahn: [In a high-pitched, affected voice] Oh, my book. You wanted to ask me about my book. Well, it started as a memoir, but now it's just kind of... now it's just my first book. And if I may say so, it is a masterpiece.

Kara Swisher: Explain who you're doing.

George Hahn: [Continues the impression] I just love that. Oh, you're still going. Okay.

Kara Swisher: That's not a vocal fry. That is a vocal like flipping on the grill. I saw her in *Uncut Gems* with Adam Sandler. She was Adam Sandler's sort of secret mistress girlfriend. And she was good. I thought she was very sweet and charming in the movie. That movie is a 90-minute heart attack. Really a stressful film to watch. Anyway, you did it. That was a beautiful Twitter thing. I'm sure Elon will like it as the owner of Twitter. I want you to do the rest of the show in that voice.

George Hahn: No, please don't.

Kara Swisher: Okay, alright. So we're going to get on our next topic. America's blue cities are hell holes, apparently. At least that's what you'd think if you read the Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal. A recent piece in the Post claims that murder and rape rates in San Francisco are up by double digit percentage points. But as Peter Calloway points out, who is a public defender, that's only true because the numbers are so low. A single instance raised the rate significantly. In case homicides went from 10 to 11 people. Meanwhile, the group The Third Way found that among the top 10 states with the highest murder rates, eight are red states. So this has been a meme. I've been on Twitter just this past week. I was just in San Francisco, and I literally went to every part of the city. I walked myself around. There are terrible parts, including downtown Soma and Tenderloin, as always. They're just horrific and lots of problems in the streets. Other parts have improved. Now, everybody's complaining about petty crime, and I don't think it's petty. Breaking windows, cars, bike stolen, package theft, homeless people yelling, mentally ill homeless people yelling at people. I was also just in New York City. There's been a lot of really significant crime, very high profile crimes. But there is this attack. My point was that it's cartoonish to talk about any city this way. And they've seized on San Francisco in this way. Listen, there are absolute problems, no question. But it really is very complex. And nobody wants to talk about that, including post-pandemic. So you live in New York City and you went through the same thing. People are going to say your city is dirty and awful and we should leave. And yet you can't ignore it. New York City, Mayor Adams recently cleaned out homeless encampments across the city. And San Francisco, they did that too. They pulled out a lot of these homeless encampments. So tell me what you think about these very real problems of these cities without falling into the cities as hellhole myths or shitholes, as Donald Trump might say.

George Hahn: Well, it was the whole "city is a hellscape" narrative that kind of made me internet famous. I did a video that went very viral. And it was that same kind of narrative. "New York City streets are like a fucking hellscape." I mean, there was like people and violence and looting and fires everywhere. And the streets are lined with people doing things like getting ice cream, gay ice cream. Molly Jong Fast and I actually were calling bullshit on it because we're actually here. That was in the summer of 2020 in the wake of the George Floyd killing and the demonstrations. I think Meghan McCain got famous for saying it was a hellhole and everyone was like, "What the fuck are you talking about? Then leave. Get out. Then leave." That is my thing. But going back even further, Kara, there has always been this middle American relationship with the big city in general that has been colored with fear and distrust. It's where those weirdos are. You're going to get mugged and you're going to get raped. It's where weirdos go.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

George Hahn: New York City usually bore the brunt of this for a long time.

Kara Swisher: 100%.

George Hahn: And people are afraid of the big...

Kara Swisher: I grew up in Cleveland. I remember in the late 60s, after the riots, there was the white flight. Everybody went to the suburbs. And to this day, there is a mistrust of city folk and public transportation is like dirty. So they've got a very Batman version of the city, which is interesting. And at the same time, you don't want to fall into the truth. See, what happens to me in San Francisco is you've got these people who want to get Chesa Boudin out. He was the DA, who has actually been doing more prosecution of rapes and murders, which is interesting if you actually look at the statistics. At the same time, he's been tone deaf to very real, and I don't want to call them petty crimes, because if you live in a city, it creates a real problem. My neighbor got assaulted by a mentally ill homeless man. And then you have those people who are trying to paint him a certain way. You have the Board of Education that got recalled because they went too far. They went too far on the lab, like ridiculous. They should have been focusing on schools, and they were focusing on renaming things. I get why they do that in San Francisco, but in the middle of the pandemic, parents didn't want to hear this. There's a tension around that. He is probably going to get recalled. And at the same time, you have those on the left pretending it doesn't exist. So it's a real problem when you are in these cities. But they become these... I keep saying it's nuanced. It's nuanced. There's much more going on. And nobody wants to ever talk about how to solve them versus either virtue signaling on the left or virtue signaling on the right. And again, cities are returning, rents are up. I found New York and San Francisco to be vibrant, vibrant.

George Hahn: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: And I was struck by New York. And I was struck by San Francisco, same thing. Nonetheless, it's a problem. So how do you change that? There was a story in the New York Times today about the gulf between red and blue states. In terms of being run, they have all these anti-trans things. And it's happening in the red states. And in the blue states, they're doing the opposite, which is further protecting trans people, gays and lesbians, women, abortion, etc.

George Hahn: Still going back to what I was talking about before, look at an electoral map. Look at the electoral map after 2020, 2016. The cities are blue. Everything else red. The city, like the Emerald City, is where people go to get out of where they came from to share ideas. Ideas and thinking and conversations happen in cities that don't happen anywhere else. To answer your question, managing and running a city is a work in progress. There are problems. There will always be problems. There is no such thing as a utopia in American or global society. And it's work. We have problems here in New York. We always have. We always will. Is it perfect? Never going to be. Do I want to live here more than anywhere else? Absolutely. I've been accused of being in this sort of liberal bubble. I'm in a bubble, excuse me. I walk a block and I hear five or six different languages. There are people of different colors, backgrounds, educations, customs, cuisines, clothing, you name it. Orientations, gender IDs. How is it where everybody else is? Tell me about their bubble. I love that about this.

Kara Swisher: Yes. I said that once when they were talking about someone. I have a lot of relatives in the red states and they are red people. It's isolated. It's like a snow globe.

George Hahn: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: And one of the things they said is, "You all never visit us here. You don't get our point of view." I said, "When did I see you in San Francisco to get my point of view?" It goes both ways, sir. Thank you. You know what I mean? So it was interesting. I was like, "Come over here and see how we live. Come and see." Someone tweeted at me, and I thought it summed it up well. "Republicans keep stoking fear and hate while we Democrats keep hoping that facts are more important than feelings. We never learned." Both sides, they don't understand these are feelings and stuff. Democrats have got to get a hold of themselves on this stuff. It's really hard. At the same time, I get completely offended when the Republicans try to reduce it into this scaremongering. And it is worse. It is worse. Guess what? The city used to be... New York City, I lived there during David Dinkins. It was terrible. I went to Columbia. Then there's a Charles Bronson movie era. And who was it who said to New York City, "Drop Dead"? Was it Ford? "Ford to City: Drop Dead." Look, if you want to live in a rural area, live in a rural area. You don't need to dunk on cities. A lot of the people who've left San Francisco, all they do is dunk on San Francisco. I'm like, just go to your little home and be happy where you are. So I think there's a very difficult and almost intractable problem with some of these issues in the city. No matter what you do, whether you move these encampments, which some people are like, "You can't do that to these people." You have others who are in the middle, don't like the homeless encampments, yet also feel for these people. And this is just what a city is, like you said.

George Hahn: Was it Tom Cotton who recently tried to paint this picture that like, "Why would you want to be in the cities where you're on public transit? Where you have to be with other people?" They want to make you live in downtown areas and high-rise buildings and walk to work or take the subway or ride an electric scooter or whatever it is that Pete Buttigieg takes to work this week. I remember, Kara, when I lived in Cleveland for three years, I didn't have a car, which was weird to people. I took a bus to a funeral not far from where I lived downtown. My brother called me while I was on the bus. He said, "Are you going to Father So-and-So's funeral?" I said, "Yeah." He said, "Do you need a ride?" I said, "No, I'm on a bus." And he goes, "Ugh, why?" That was his response. That is the sort of Midwestern or smaller town perception of, "Oh, you're going to share space with people who aren't necessarily just like you?" Yes, that's how I get around.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You must have been... It freaks people out.

George Hahn: It does, it does.

Kara Swisher: Here's the thing. I was an anomaly.

George Hahn: Yes, you are still an anomaly.

Kara Swisher: In any case, we're going to bring it, because we're going to talk about happiness next. We're going to talk, because you know what? Be happy where you fucking are. Like, stop it.

George Hahn: Yes.

Kara Swisher: You don't need to drag another group. And that applies to the left and the right, but the right does it a lot.

George Hahn: Well, no, they both do, honestly, at this point.

Kara Swisher: Listen. After enduring this Elon stuff this morning, I have a theory. These people on the right with the culture war and these cards they're playing...

George Hahn: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: These are people who were not... they didn't get to sit at the cool kids table in the cafeteria in high school and they're still bitter about it. And they have made it their life's mission because they're not funny. They're not clever. They're not even sometimes interesting. And so this is their petty payback.

George Hahn: I suppose. But the cool kids could have been a lot nicer. Let's be clear.

Kara Swisher: Agreed. I'm not a fan of the mean girls. Were you a cool kid?

George Hahn: Were you a cool kid?

Kara Swisher: No, I was kind of in the middle. I was friendly with the jocks, even though I was not sports. I was friendly with the theater kids. I was friendly with the kids who wore black and smart.

George Hahn: Yeah, me too. I kind of got along with everybody.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I was right in that middle too. It was interesting. The cool kids can be assholes, by the way. FYI. Anyway, let's bring in our friend of Pivot, Dr. Laurie Santos. She is a professor of psychology at Yale, where she teaches the university's most popular course in over 300 years. That's a long time. *Psychology and the Good Life*. She's also the host of *The Happiness Lab*, a podcast based on her course. She joins us today to finally reveal a secret to a happy life. Welcome, Dr. Santos. Thanks for being here.

Dr. Laurie Santos: Yeah, thanks so much for having me on the show.

Kara Swisher: So we're just talking about... you just wrote about "Yale's happiness professor." I don't know if you like being known as that. It says "anxiety is destroying her students." There's been a lot of articles lately about this idea of bringing our own fears and anxieties to kids, the impact of social media on it, the lack of... there's all kinds of reasons. So can you talk to me a little bit about your piece and what you were talking about, this anxiety destroying your students? I noticed that I have some teens and I don't think it's destroying them necessarily, but it's definitely an issue.

Dr. Laurie Santos: Yeah. To be fair, I didn't write that quote. That was the New York Times blow quote to kind of... But I do think, if you look at the level of mental health dysfunction we're seeing in our college students, it's really unprecedented. Nationally, over 40% of college students report being too depressed to function most days. Over 65% report feeling overwhelmingly anxious. So more than two thirds. What we're seeing is around 10% of students regularly report being suicidal or at least feeling so suicidal that they've seriously considered taking their life in the last year. That number is more than 10% nationally.

Kara Swisher: Which could be pandemic-related, correct?

Dr. Laurie Santos: No, this is actually pre-pandemic. The last National College Health Report was 2019. Some of these numbers have gotten even worse. There's this open question of what has happened. These rates of depression and anxiety in many cases have doubled in just the last eight or nine years. So it's not just the normal "maybe it's more awareness" or "it's the pandemic."

Kara Swisher: Or we're studying it more. Maybe they were unhappy before and we didn't know it.

Dr. Laurie Santos: Yeah. And I think there is something to that. Students before a test, back in my day, would say, "Oh, I have butterflies in my stomach." Now people are like, "I'm anxious." Or, "I'm upset that this boy didn't call me back." Now, "I'm depressed." So I think we have more clinical terms for this. But again, if you look at real markers like cases of suicide, all of these rates are going up quite significantly. The big question is why. I don't think we have a great handle on exactly what the answer is yet.

Kara Swisher: Well, what would be your feeling if you had to... obviously Facebook got an enormous amount of attention for Instagram. And I don't think the research is quite there yet. I think it got a lot of attention because politicians and the media can seize on this. It's anecdotally quite true. You can see it if you talk to kids.

Dr. Laurie Santos: I mean, if you plot the rates, even just if you plot the rate of iPhones or just having a smartphone and these rates of depression, the curves hang on to each other perfectly. But of course, correlation doesn't equal causation. Another thing that we know is different is parenting styles. I get anxious, as a Yale professor, I get anxious parents calling me about students' grades, about students' rooming situations. This is anecdotal, but it's different than it was five years ago. You really have parents stepping in to solve kids' problems in a different way. Lots of scientists like Julia Lythcott-Haims writes about this a lot. She's a former Stanford dean who talks about what this teaches kids. It teaches kids that everything's scary, from the tiniest roommate problem to getting a B-plus on an exam. That is a level that parents need to call in. But it also teaches kids that they're helpless. There's a sense of learned helplessness happening in this generation where they don't solve their own problems.

Kara Swisher: It's interesting because I'm kind of the opposite. People would imagine I'm much more controlling, but I'm not. I was talking to one of my kids yesterday about something. I'm not going to say what it is because it's very private. And it was something significant. I literally was like, "You got to figure that out for yourself. I don't know. I don't have an answer." Often with my sons, the older ones, I'm often like, "Yeah, well, good luck. Good luck with that. Hope it works out for you." I think I tend to let them do it because they need to struggle. They need to figure it out more than others. But I do see parents, it drives me crazy at schools, doing everything for their kids. Making sure there's the most safe they could be. I find it really disturbing to watch these poor kids.

Dr. Laurie Santos: We know, there's some lovely work on what happens cognitively when you do this to kids. There's a scholar, Julia Leonard, here at Yale. She studies if you give toddlers a problem box to solve, like a puzzle box, it's hard but they can kind of figure it out. You look at what happens when a parent intervenes, when they say, "Oh, let me just do that for you." What she finds is that if you give them new puzzle boxes, kids will look to help more quickly. They'll generalize, basically, "I'm not good at solving these problems. Otherwise, why would someone jump in?" We think of all these actions as just getting kids through the hump. But functionally, what parents are doing is teaching kids, "I don't believe that you're able to solve this." Which either means the problem is huge or you're just not that good at this stuff. I think parents don't mean to be doing this. This isn't what parents intend to do.

Kara Swisher: Some do.

Dr. Laurie Santos: Yeah, maybe some do. But hopefully not many. The consequences are bigger than I think parents sometimes assume.

George Hahn: I agree. When I was growing up, the notion that there were guys whose parents kind of did everything for them... I was lucky enough to have parents who didn't. They were more like Kara. "You're going to figure that out on your own. You're going to have to go do that apologizing. You're going to have to have that conversation. I'm not going with you." I've often had this joke, but I'm kind of not joking when I say it kind of feels like if your teenage kids like you, you might not be doing it right.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, exactly. I always liked my parents, of course. But when I was a teenager, God, I wanted nothing to do with them.

George Hahn: So yeah, if you're a parent and you're worried that your teenage kids don't like you, don't worry. I can't say it because I don't have kids, but I think it's a similar thing. If your teenage kids don't like you, you might be doing something right. If your teenage kids are messing up, you might be doing something right. If they're getting the worst grades they've ever got in their first semester of college, that's good. That means they're challenging themselves. That means they're sorting it out on their own and making the appropriate kinds of failures. I think today's kids are really failure deprived. I think it really connects to their mental health. It's one of the reasons you become anxious. If you've never messed anything up, then the tiniest mess up seems enormous. It seems like the kind of thing that you should be really worried about.

Kara Swisher: So one of the things that's interesting when you talk about something like that is the ability... you're talking about resilience in a weird way. I know that there's been books about that or grit or whatever you call it. It is much harder with social media there. There's no question. I just happen to have kids that aren't ruled by it, but they definitely... I've had so many instances of people leave you on read, like on Snapchat, or judging if they don't text you back because of the immediacy of it. It definitely does affect them. That's one thing I was talking about with one of my sons. He's like, "Well, they didn't text me back." I'm like, "Well, then they didn't. I don't know what to tell you. You're going to go play the guitar. I don't know what to say." But it does bring on an extra added level of not just FOMO, but also anxiety that you're somehow left out. When you say correlation doesn't mean causation, where are the studies on this? Because I do think it's very clear that for not just kids, but everybody, this constant barrage of information, which is either upsetting or you can see visual stories... Not that they weren't there when we were growing up, but it was much... we had Nixon, we had everything, the falling apart of this and that. At one point I thought pollution was going to kill us all that week. But how do you look at social media and where it is? How do you study that?

Dr. Laurie Santos: Yeah, it's tricky because we don't have a great control group. Ideally we'd have a control group of a whole generation that wasn't on social media, but I don't think such a control group exists. If they did, they'd be maybe non-neurotypical in their own way in the current generation. So it's hard. What we do know is that anytime you look at these kinds of correlations or experimental studies where you have people get off social media for a little bit of time, rates of things like depression and anxiety do go down. But it's nuanced. There's evidence, for example, that active Facebook use—Facebook is the platform that's been studied the most just because it's been around the longest—where you're really connecting socially and taking part in groups, not just passively lurking, there's some evidence that that doesn't have as much of a mental health hit as passive social use. So it kind of depends how you're using it, who you're using it with, what you're using it for. I actually think one of the biggest hits that social media has on teen mental health is through their sleep. There's lots of evidence that a ton of 15-year-olds wind up sleeping with their phone. Even 13-year-olds are sleeping with their phone. I know what happens when my phone is with me at night. It's very tempting to look at it. It means I'm sleeping less. Just a hit on sleep can have a huge effect on students' mental health. I actually think we could solve a lot of this mental health crisis if we just got students to sleep more. One of the easiest ways to get them to sleep more is to move their phones away from...

Kara Swisher: That's an Arianna Huffington thing.

Dr. Laurie Santos: Yes, exactly.

Kara Swisher: Remember the bed? She tried to give me one. I'm like, "Get that bed away from me."

George Hahn: I have one and I actually have my phone sleep in the bed and it's helpful. The phone goes to bed.

Kara Swisher: She did. She did.

George Hahn: The phone goes to bed. I go to bed.

Kara Swisher: Wait, there's a bed for your phone?

George Hahn: It's like a little doll bed, but it's for your phone. So you don't have to be worried about your iPhone. It's comfy. It's over. It's got a little charging port. It's very functional. It's somewhere else. It doesn't go on...

Kara Swisher: It sounds like a masterpiece.

George Hahn: [Laughs] You know, the reason I do keep my phone... He's channeling Julia Fox who makes him happy.

Kara Swisher: So are billionaires happier than the rest of us? What are the things you look at in this class? Besides getting away from social media, what makes people happier than others?

Dr. Laurie Santos: Yeah, it's not what we think. It's not money. It's not accolades. It's not this stuff.

Kara Swisher: Well, I should update, right? It depends where you are.

Dr. Laurie Santos: If you're living well below the poverty line, if you can't put food on your table or a roof over your head, yes, giving you a living wage is definitely going to help. Right now, though, in the U.S., or at least in a 2009 study in the U.S., if you start earning over $75K, doubling or tripling your salary isn't going to have any improvement in your long-term happiness. It's not going to reduce your stress levels. It's not going to improve your positive mood, even though we think it will. I think this is the problem. One of the biggest things I teach in this class is that we have misconceptions when it comes to our happiness. We think more money. We think better grades. We think more accolades. We think changing our circumstances is the path to happiness. But often it's about changing our behaviors and our mindset. Becoming a little bit more present, becoming a little bit more grateful, engaging in more social connection in real life. These are the paths to happiness. It's not getting the raise and the promotion at work that we thought. It's really different than we often expect.

Kara Swisher: The jump from happiness between someone who's making at least $75K—basically your housing, your food, and your health insurance is taken care of relatively painlessly—and the measure of happiness from those people to billionaires is not that large, from what I understand.

Dr. Laurie Santos: That's right. There's always new studies and controversies over this. There's a famous paper by Danny Kahneman and Angus Deaton, two separate Nobel Prize winners. That was the paper that showed $75K. At that point, any more funds, you're not going to get much happier. There was a recent paper by Matthew Killingsworth that sort of challenged this. What he finds when you look at really big ranges, yeah, you can see some wiggle room, but the wiggle room when you look in the paper is teeny. It's like you can go from a 60 out of 100 on a happiness scale to a 61 out of 100 on a happiness scale, but you have to quintuple your income. You have to go from like $100,000 to $700,000. What I often say to my students is, "Okay, you could put in the time and energy to quintuple your income. Or you could write three things you're grateful for in your gratitude journal at night, and that will have a five-fold increase on your happiness bigger than quintupling your income."

Dr. Laurie Santos: You could talk to a stranger on the train, and that will vastly and much more significantly improve your positive mood. So it's not so much that money doesn't make us happy. It just doesn't move in as big a way as we assume.

George Hahn: I was talking to Scott one of the last times I saw him, last week actually, and I mentioned my tailor, the guy around the corner from me who alters my clothes. He's from Korea. Loves what he does. Loves his job. He's not making a fortune. I walk the dogs past his shop at like 10:30 on a Sunday night, and there he is. I can hear classical music playing and he's mending a garment. And I say to myself, he won. He won. He is so content there. Whether it's the bartender who loves his job and is not looking to have a yacht and a penthouse, if you found that happiness, that contentment, you won.

Dr. Laurie Santos: Yeah. On my podcast, *The Happiness Lab*, I interviewed this guy who on Yale's campus goes by Marty. He's the pest control guy. If there's a mouse in some student's room or we find a cockroach in the dining hall, he gets called. And he's the happiest guy. When you talk to him, he's like, "I think I have the best job. I got a company truck I get to drive around in. I have all this social connection. I talk to people all the time and I help them solve their problems. They feel kind of gross and shameful about it, and I come in, I get to chat with them, and I fix it." You wouldn't think snakes and creepy crawlies would make your job great, but he's happy. Not a single one of my Yale students is like, "When I grow up, I want to be a pest control operator."

Kara Swisher: Right, right. No, they want to just chop each other.

Dr. Laurie Santos: But they all still think they want to be happy. So I think we need to come to terms with the fact that our conception of what a happy life is might be wrong.

Kara Swisher: Talk a little bit about those connections. Is it having family? Is it friendships? Is there something that adds more than anything else to it?

Dr. Laurie Santos: It's really all of the above. It's great to connect with really close personal friends and close family members, but there's evidence that talking to a stranger on the train on your commute to work can significantly improve your positive mood. It's really just other humans in real life, not scrolling through your social media feed. Talking in real life. I think we've all felt the hit of this a little bit with working from home and the pandemic. We're losing these weak tie mini interactions. But those are the things that often fill up our leaky happiness tire, much more than we often expect.

Kara Swisher: So three million students have taken this course on Coursera, correct? It's enormous amounts. Why do you think so many people are seeking this answer to happiness?

Dr. Laurie Santos: Yeah, I think we've always been worried about happiness. It's in the Declaration of Independence, right? It's up there with life, liberty. But I think lately we've been sold a lot of false promises. Look at my Yale students. So many of them believed, "If I killed myself in high school and I didn't sleep and I put everything on hold, then I'd get to college and I'd be happily ever after." Then they get to Yale and it's like, oh, the carrot just moved. Now I have to get into medical school or I have to get my investment banking job.

Kara Swisher: The achievement wheel.

Dr. Laurie Santos: Exactly. I talk about it all the time when I meet students.

Kara Swisher: It's the American dream, not the American promise.

Dr. Laurie Santos: Yes, exactly. But the dream is wrong. If we dream to have a close relationship with our family members and a job that just gave us enough money, we might be good. I think the reason so many people are seeking out answers is that the current culture isn't giving them to us. People are putting time and effort into improving their well-being, and it's just not working. So they're like, "Something must be wrong." That was true before, and then the pandemic hit. People had a little bit more time on their hands, and so many folks signed up online to learn more.

Kara Swisher: What makes each of you happy?

George Hahn: What makes me very happy is when I am able to—my dreams are not grand—when I'm able to pay for my housing, my food, and feed my dogs and have my health insurance taken care of painlessly, and maybe some nice shoes to wear, and friends to share things with. I love sharing things and I love being with friends. So that makes me very happy.

Kara Swisher: What about you, Dr. Santos?

Dr. Laurie Santos: Yeah, my husband makes me happy. My students mostly, most of the time, make me happy. Springtime makes me happy, just walking around and seeing the daffodils poking up. I've just planted some pumpkins and they're doing that thing where they're just coming out. Baby pumpkins make me happy. I think a final thing that makes us happy that we're all deficient in right now is time. A lot of work in social science on what's called "time affluence"—the sense that you have some spare time. I know when I'm famished on that, I'm not feeling so good. So yeah, those are the things.

Kara Swisher: Time affluence. You're affluent in time, George.

George Hahn: I like to clean. I mean, I love my family. I love my kids. My kids make me the most happy.

Kara Swisher: Your kids bring you a lot of joy.

George Hahn: They do. One time I was having a problem at work, and I literally said this to someone. They were being a pain about something dumb. And I go, "You know what? I don't give a fuck. My kids love me." And they were like, "What?" And I'm like, "Fuck you. That's true." Mic drop. It was great. They were sort of shocked. I was like, yeah, I don't really care what you think of me.

Kara Swisher: But what's interesting is when I was talking to these students—getting back to students, and then I want to finish up with one more question, and George might have one more—I was having dinner with a group of Stanford Business School students, all of whom were delightful. It was a really great group of people, men and women, quite diverse. But they all definitely had that anxiety. And they asked me what they should do to be successful. What's my prescription? And I said, "You gotta quit more. You gotta just stop." I think I'm much more successful than most people because often when I'm unhappy, I stop. I'm like, "Nope, now I'm gonna do this." I do that with one of my sons right now with a college. I'm like, "Don't frigging worry about it. It'll be fine. It literally will not matter at all." One of the things I used to do in my kids' school with homework—it's my bete noire at schools, the amount of homework that makes them anxious. I used to tell them, "Don't do it. It doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter." And I would have teachers call me, "Stop telling your children homework doesn't matter." I'm like, "It doesn't. It doesn't. Let me just give you that piece of information. It doesn't make them smarter. It certainly makes them more anxious. If they get bad grades, so be it." It was a really interesting thing when my son then got a D in Spanish. And this is why I decided I was the best parent ever. He goes, "Louie, a D? What the heck?" And he goes, "At least it's not an F." And I was like, "Well, it is an F, but good for you. Good answer, Louie."

George Hahn: George, any last questions? Dr. Santos, the older I get, I feel like the less I know and also the less I need. When I was in my 20s, I moved to New York to pursue work as an actor. It's not that dreams have shifted over time, but the older I get, I find that the less I need. I don't have grand designs. I don't need a palace. I'm not looking for a Ferrari. I just want a few good relationships, I want to have some good laughs before I go, and enjoy the people in my life. I don't need the catalog that gets thrown at us, particularly on social media. Am I crazy?

Dr. Laurie Santos: That sounds like great strategies. Go for experiences, not material goods. Be present. Be social. All of those are right out of my happiness playbook. But this is also something that gets better in middle age. If you look at the arc of happiness across a life, it too is not what you expect. You look at every wrinkle commercial and think, "Oh my gosh, as soon as I hit 40, it's downhill in terms of happiness." But actually, as you leave work, as your kids leave the house, that's often a big boost in happiness. Retirement, another big boost in happiness. The trajectory is an upward one.

George Hahn: I now have a four-month-old.

Dr. Laurie Santos: Oh, I see. Yeah, that'll—18 years. It goes by fast.

George Hahn: I don't care. I'll be dead.

Dr. Laurie Santos: But that's the thing. A thing to look forward to is that even as your body's kind of breaking down, overall, statistically speaking, your well-being will probably go up.

Kara Swisher: What do you think the biggest challenge to finding happiness is? I know you don't want to stack rank them, but there probably is one big challenge. And what's wrong with sadness, I guess? What's wrong with sadness sometimes?

Dr. Laurie Santos: The biggest challenge to happiness is that we get it wrong. We have these things that we're going for that we think, "Oh my gosh, once I get the Ferrari, the accolade at work, the A in Spanish..." You think you're going to get that and it works, but this is not how happiness works. The biggest problem with happiness is that we get it wrong. And the sadness question is relevant. One thing we get wrong is that we think true happiness, a true sense of purpose in life, is about being happy all the time. Like it's some sort of yellow smiling emoji beaming at you. That's not right. That's toxic positivity. What we know from truly happy people is that they experience all kinds of emotions. Truly happy people are okay with their negative emotions. They have the full gamut of experiences. I think this is another thing we need to do, especially my college students, is to find ways to be okay with negative emotions. It's okay to be sad. It's normative to be sad in the face of sad stuff. It's part of the human experience. Normative to be anxious in the face of certain experiences. We need to allow these things that might not feel so good at the time, but allow for a full human life.

Kara Swisher: Heartbreak and pain, they're part of the journey.

George Hahn: It's true.

Kara Swisher: Do you think it's going to change? Or is it just that we've dragged these kids into our own unhappiness in a way that's really significant compared to before?

Dr. Laurie Santos: I'm hopeful. A quarter of the entire Yale student body wanted to take my class. They were looking for evidence-based practices and strategies they could use to feel better. When I see these kids, they don't like this culture of feeling depressed and anxious, and they really want to do something to change it. When I talk to the young people today, I'm hopeful that we can come up with a better path.

Kara Swisher: It's an interesting thing because I spent a lot of time thinking about this with my own kids and the kids that I talked to. At this dinner I had, I was talking about ending a relationship. This person dragged me into couples therapy, which I always think is the last stop on the relationship train. And the doctor said, "How are you feeling, Kara?" I said, "I feel like watching television." And she was like, "What?" And I said, "It makes me happy. I like watching television. This doesn't. So I'd like to watch television." And then my person I was with goes, "You're blocking." I said, "It's working." I was like, "I don't know what to tell you." It was great. I was very happy. Give me a Fudgsicle and an episode of *Law & Order*. I'm very happy.

George Hahn: You said Fudgsicle. Wow. I love that.

Kara Swisher: Fudgsicles will make you happy.

Dr. Laurie Santos: I'm going to write a book called *The Fudgsicle Lab*.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, Dr. Santos, I love your podcast. It's great. It's called *The Happiness Lab*. I did not get into Yale, which made me unhappy briefly, and then I didn't give a fuck. But I'm revisiting all the schools right now that I didn't get into. Anyway, you can find *The Happiness Lab* wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you're lucky enough to get into Yale, you can have her as a professor. But you can also see these courses on Coursera. They're well worth your time. Thank you, Dr. Santos.

Dr. Laurie Santos: Thanks so much for having me.

George Hahn: Thank you, Dr. Santos.

Kara Swisher: All right, George. When I see you next, I'm bringing you a Fudgsicle. I'm just telling you.

George Hahn: Please. By the way, you know what else is going to make you happy? Watch *The Adam Project* by Ryan Reynolds. It always makes me happy. I love his movies.

Kara Swisher: I know. I don't care if they're shitty. They're great. All right, George, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions.

[Break]

Kara Swisher: Okay, George, it's time for predictions. I'd like you to make one. Please do.

George Hahn: All right. This is not a big reach, but my prediction is that we are going to see more horrible behavior from men that goes unpunished or even rewarded.

Kara Swisher: Oh, dear.

George Hahn: I was honestly surprised to see that Louis C.K. won. That actually surprised me. It was like, "Welcome back."

Kara Swisher: Really? Doesn't surprise any women. But again, the prediction is that we're going to see more men behave badly. And it's going to go unpunished. They're going to get away with it. I'm one of these people who does not get excited on Twitter when something is discovered in these investigations on January 6th or Trump. I think Trump is going to get away with all of it. And if he doesn't, call me when he is not arrested, not on trial, but when he is convicted. Then I'll get excited.

George Hahn: Yeah, because people get their hopes up in some fashion.

Kara Swisher: Yes, they do. You know what I say? Guess what? Someday he's going to die, just like everyone. This is how I think about it. I'm like, "Well, yeah, someday." And it's not my job to bring him to heaven or hell.

George Hahn: All that KFC, you'd think it would happen sooner.

Kara Swisher: Some people do well with that stuff. Look at Rupert Murdoch, still hanging on.

George Hahn: And then there's Jerry Hall. Powerball winner.

Kara Swisher: I mean, she got a guy. But you know what? Think about what you have to do for that.

George Hahn: I know. I'm just saying. She doesn't seem unhappy.

Kara Swisher: I saw the Warhol diary. She seems okay.

George Hahn: Yeah, that's good. That's a fair point.

Kara Swisher: Okay, I think Judge Jackson's nomination to the Supreme Court will pass. But some of the Republican virtue signaling has been really depressing. They all say she's qualified. They all think she'd be a good colleague on the court. They just can't suck it up for once. Seriously, you know this. You know how infuriated I am. This goes back to what I was saying about these people who weren't allowed to hang out with the cool kids at lunch. Or weren't invited to their parties. And they're furious about it. And they're furious that there is this Black woman who is the smartest one in the room, and it drives them nuts. Behind the scenes, they say the opposite thing, which makes me—I literally sometimes walk away from these people when they do that. I'm like, "I don't care. I like you less if you do that. I'd like you to be crazy as ever."

George Hahn: Speaking of my prediction, Sarah Palin announced that she'll run for Congress in Alaska. I think she's going to lose badly.

Kara Swisher: I hope so. I'll be sort of peripherally tuning into that show. I don't think Alaskans go for that bullshit. They can be very conservative, but I don't think they're that kind of conservative. The only hope she has is if the crazies come out. And I think they're less crazy up there in Alaska, although there's plenty of crazies everywhere.

George Hahn: There'll be more work for Tina Fey.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, I think she's not going to win, and it's going to be another sad, pathetic chapter to her sad, pathetic life. She electrified the populace for a very brief second, and she's managed to dwindle it down ever since.

George Hahn: Anyway, Kara. What are you going to do to be happy today? Tell me one thing.

Kara Swisher: Today, I'm going to take my dogs for a nice walk in Central Park.

George Hahn: All right. I think you're a very happy person. You bring happiness to people. I love your stuff on Twitter.

Kara Swisher: Oh, thank you. I try. Anyway, George, thank you for doing this. That's the show. We'll be back on Friday for more with Scott Galloway, who probably is now twisting himself into pretzels trying to figure this Elon thing out. And I can't wait to hear his perspective because it's hard because there are so many sides for him.

George Hahn: Scott's got feelings about it, like really distinct feelings about it. He's got feelings on all sides because he wants the stock to go up.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, I think he sold his Twitter stock, I believe. Anyway, will you please read us out as we go?

George Hahn: I would be delighted. Thank you, George. It'll be a masterpiece.

Kara Swisher: Today's show was produced by Lara Neyman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Endredot engineered this episode. Make sure you're subscribed to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to *Pivot* from New York Magazine and Vox Media. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.

George Hahn: A masterpiece. Masterpiece. Masterpiece.