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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.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Can you get over how excited people are about our tour?
--:-- Scott Galloway: I know they are. Let's discuss it. Let's discuss it. We're selling very brisk ticket sales.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah, we're already, I think, like half sold out in San Francisco.
--:-- Scott Galloway: I think that's mostly because of you.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah. Or people are showing up to heckle.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Toronto. Toronto. Toronto. We're almost, we're like half sold out there, more than half sold out there.
--:-- Kara Swisher: So just to remind people, D.C., New York, Toronto, Chicago, San Francisco, L.A. Did I miss anything?
--:-- Scott Galloway: No, I don't think so.
--:-- Kara Swisher: You don't think so? Wait, seven.
--:-- Scott Galloway: The best comment though when we announced it was just say it, "You hate Arizona." Yeah, I know. People got mad. Other cities got mad at us. We come to those cities. We will come to those cities, which I think we probably should have included another Midwestern city besides Chicago.
--:-- Kara Swisher: No, no, no, no. The biggest miss is Miami. Daddy loves the hotties.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Yes, you're right. Miami would be good. Yeah. But we should go to, well, except if we go to some city, they're like, "Who the fuck are you?" Like that would be, there are so many cities that would be like that, like Altoona, Pennsylvania, for example.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah. I think that's mostly cities that aren't on the coast with a ton of liberal universities.
--:-- Scott Galloway: [Imitating a student] "I love Kara Swisher. She's my hero. She's here, quote unquote, teaching. And that is telling war stories about how awesome she is for 20 minutes."
--:-- Kara Swisher: No, no, that's not how I'm teaching. No, in fact, the school complimented me because she said all these people who do these kinds of things come in and tell war stories. And I don't. I talk to the students and engage them on the topics of the day. It's like a mini Pivot. Like we talked about the comedy thing.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Money pivot. That sounds compelling.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Talked about so many. Except they're paying $7,000.
--:-- Scott Galloway: No. No, it's good. It's a good course. I love famous teachers. They always add a lot of value. I also get to hang out with Alex.
--:-- Scott Galloway: They tell people to follow their passion after they're already rich, having made their billions from iron ore smelting. Let me just say, you have the professor, you have Prof G, and you haven't been inside a classroom in, what, 69 years or something?
--:-- Kara Swisher: I taught a class the other day. Stop it.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Where? Where?
--:-- Kara Swisher: First section, my AI upscaling thing.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Yes, but not at a university, correct?
--:-- Kara Swisher: No, I've been at, I've been at Oxford recently.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Okay.
--:-- Kara Swisher: I'm going to King's College soon.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Uh-huh.
--:-- Kara Swisher: I'm still, I still show up in the classroom.
--:-- Scott Galloway: But the university you're assigned to, you're not.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Oh, them. New York University. Yeah. It's amazing they still keep me on faculty. I think it's because, you know why they do. I mention more in applications than any other prompt at this point.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Oh, of course you are. You're very popular. You're a popular professor. And then they show up and get pissed off I'm not there and write letters to the administration. Have you thought about doing a course there or not?
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah, when I move back, I'll start teaching.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Oh, good. Oh, that'll be nice.
--:-- Kara Swisher: You know, they tried to give me the professor designation on the syllabus and I took it off. I didn't feel like I deserved it.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Because you're so humble. That's what people know you for is your humility.
--:-- Kara Swisher: A little hostile thing. You know why I think you're hostile? Because most people agreed with me on the comic thing. Did you notice in the comments?
--:-- Scott Galloway: On Kimmel?
--:-- Kara Swisher: No, on the comics that went, you know, the place where you're going to laugh your head off. Saudi Arabia.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Oh, Riyadh? Oh, what a shocker. The wokesters weighed in. I love how people are virtuous with other people's money.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Whenever you lose an argument you always are like, "It the wokesters." "It bots." No, I blame it on Russian bots.
--:-- Scott Galloway: That my go. No, they were like, "Scott, what should we pull out our military bases? Or the universities there?" You know what? What should we do? What should we do? But no, don't let Bill Burr go.
--:-- Kara Swisher: No, actually, you know what? He had the lamest excuse, I have to say. I was sort of like...
--:-- Scott Galloway: What did he say?
--:-- Kara Swisher: Why don't they all just say, "I want the money?" He didn't. He was like, "You know, they're regular people. They have McDonald's there." Literally. I was like, "You're stupid now? You're an idiot?" He's like, "Oh, my goodness. They're not on camels." I'm like, "No, they're the richest people on the fucking planet, my friends."
--:-- Scott Galloway: I'm going to AlUla, one of the coolest tourist places or sites in the world. I love the people there. I want Americans to move there and make a shit ton of money. I want to secure our fossil fuel energy pipeline. If Israel and the kingdom normalize relations, it'll be like the Iron Dome for Israel. MBS is keeping the fucking crazies in line, unlike some of the others. They're reforming like crazy.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Well, that's because he's brutal.
--:-- Scott Galloway: I am going to bear hug the kingdom. Invite me. I'm in.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Oh, my God. I'm not going. You know, when I wrote that piece about them in The New York Times many years ago...
--:-- Scott Galloway: Ooh, Will.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Are you teaching a class in Michigan right now?
--:-- Scott Galloway: Will, I'm glad you asked that. When I wrote a piece in The Atlantic... Let me just say... As I was touching myself to Rachel Maddow.
--:-- Kara Swisher: You are so insecure. You're so wildly insecure.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Anyway, I wrote a piece about why they're still investing.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Have you seen me naked?
--:-- Scott Galloway: It's common sense. I'm insecure. Right? I haven't seen you naked, and this is something that's going to be part of our tour, is me seeing you naked.
--:-- Kara Swisher: I actually have seen you partially naked many times, unfortunately.
--:-- Scott Galloway: So has everyone else.
--:-- Kara Swisher: I know. That's true.
--:-- Scott Galloway: But not the full Monty. I have not seen the full Monty. Daddy brings the egg salad, but the good egg salad with a little bit of bacon and the mayonnaise.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Let me finish my point.
--:-- Scott Galloway: I'm sorry. Go ahead.
--:-- Kara Swisher: I wrote a piece about why tech went to get money from the Gulf right after Khashoggi, right? It was immediately after Khashoggi. And I was like, "Can't they go to Singapore? Can't they go to, like, there's so many other choices and stuff." And it was a really interesting debate because a lot of people in Silicon Valley also, very similar to this, were like, "We shouldn't be taking money from them. We should be taking money from Singapore."
--:-- Scott Galloway: No, I agree. When they murder a journalist, we should make our companies less competitive and reduce the prosperity of people working for those companies.
--:-- Kara Swisher: You know, they dismembered him and, like, took video. He murdered him. I acknowledge that. I think it was a stupid, vile thing to do.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Yes. Okay. They've done a lot of stupid, vile things.
--:-- Kara Swisher: So my point is someone contacted me from Saudi people who knew the Saudis, they like, "Don't go to Saudi Arabia, Kara Swisher." I was like, "Okay," because I called them a thug. But just a quick question: How many kids will be shot in Saudi schools today?
--:-- Scott Galloway: Oh my God, stop it. Don't do that. Don't do it. How many people in the kingdom do not have health care? We are not the same. How many people in the kingdom are going to go bankrupt when they find out their wife has lung cancer? How many women are allowed to do everything that they're supposed to? How many gay people get to survive?
--:-- Kara Swisher: Scott, we're not doing this.
--:-- Scott Galloway: They have shame. They have absolute gender apartheid, and it's terrible. And the only good thing you can say about it, but you need to acknowledge it, is it's headed in the right direction. And our gender apartheid is headed in the wrong direction in this country.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yes, that is correct, but we're still far apart. I'm sorry. You're not going to—I'm sorry. The United States is—even in the state it's in is drastically—
--:-- Scott Galloway: I'm not even getting paid to be a mouthpiece for the kingdom.
--:-- Kara Swisher: I know, you really are.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Somebody send me a check.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Send him a check. You're going to get—the comments, everyone.
--:-- Scott Galloway: All the woke commenters, we're going to move on. But nonetheless, I am correct and I won the fight. My tagline should be, "I don't read the comments."
--:-- Kara Swisher: I don't read the—you do read the comments. So I think that it was a good debate. And I think, you know, in your heart of hearts that it was kind of skeevy for those, for the comics to do it. I'm not thrilled with the military base. I'm not thrilled, but I get it. But comic, to sign like a censorship thing, I'm going to just stick with my guns on this.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Anyway, we have a lot to get to today. I'm going to have the last word there, including OpenAI launching a new video app. That's actually fascinating what's been going on. Pete Hegseth, of course, ranting at top military officials about beards and outfits. But first, the U.S. government officially shut down this week, kind of a big deal, after Congress failed to reach a deal on funding. As of this recording, it doesn't look like this is getting settled anytime soon. The White House is now withholding billions of dollars in funding for Democratic-led states and preparing to carry out massive layoffs. Democrats are calling Trump erratic and unhinged. He does seem a little bit more so and say he's more focused on posting deep fake videos of Hakeem Jeffries in sombreros than negotiating.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Meanwhile, about 750,000 federal workers are expected to be furloughed and services across the government are being disrupted. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is suspending operations, so no jobs reports and other key economic data for the time being. They're also targeting blue states. Russ Vought is saying it explicitly. I'm going to ask your overall thoughts and the best messaging for both parties right now. And I'd love to hear your thoughts on the political economic consequences.
--:-- Kara Swisher: But I did talk to some Trump people yesterday, some of the more reasonable Trump people, which there are. There are indeed.
--:-- Scott Galloway: I hate to tell you, but there are.
--:-- Kara Swisher: And they were slightly worried because the crazies have taken over in the Trump White House. And they were talking about things like this was crazy, that it should last 47 days because that's the number of his presidency. They're like Taylor Swift. They're like Swifties, these people. They're interested in numbers. And that they're very interested in a full, they're talking about a full prostration of Democrats. Some of the reasonable Trumpies are worried that nothing's going to happen. And of course, everyone alludes to his mental issues, like that he's really losing a step or two. It's been noticeable in several of his appearances. So anyway, so that was kind of frightening to think about, like sort of the crazier people in charge of the situation with no interest in negotiating.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Well, generally speaking, the American people do not like shutdowns as a means of negotiation over policy and spending. Their attitude is, and I think this is the right or an understandable viewpoint, is that you're supposed to figure this out at the ballot box, negotiations on legislative process. You're not supposed to be taking the budget and the operations of the country and the livelihood of government workers hostage. And it has not worked in the past. The last couple of shutdowns were threats from the Republicans who wanted funding for a wall or wanted cuts to Obamacare. And they blinked because the nation said squarely, "Don't use this as a tool for negotiating public policy."
--:-- Kara Swisher: Can I just make a note? The last three have been under Trump, but go ahead.
--:-- Scott Galloway: So anyways, my point is these things don't usually work and Americans aren't fond of using this as a political cudgel or wrench. Having said that, and there might be some bias here, I think if you look at the surveys, the majority of the blame so far is being levied at Republicans or more blame, I should say. It's like 34 to 24. And the Democrats here and the leadership are being shockingly strategic.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Explain.
--:-- Scott Galloway: They are not saying, "Oh no, we want to renegotiate the tariff nonsense," or "We want you to stop these rounding up people with ICE." They have been very pointed. "We want you to extend subsidies so people can have healthcare," because people are about, potentially millions of Americans are going to see their healthcare become unaffordable and it's going to primarily target the most needy. And I wouldn't be surprised if the Democrats' demand around that would have more impact positively if they get what they want on Republicans. So I think they are strategically going after an issue that is both the moral high ground and a function of affordability and likely to divide the Republican base.
--:-- Scott Galloway: And in addition, the Democrats were just screaming out with two words, three words, "Do fucking something." This is something. This is saying, "Okay, sorry, you've got to come to the table." So I actually think this is strategically, and again, there's a lot of bad things about this, but keep in mind, folks, when the Republicans say, if they continue to do this, if they continue this battle, we're going to fire people, not because those people don't add value, not because those people aren't important to landing planes safely on runways, not because those people aren't important to defend our shores, not because those people don't ensure that lower and middle income people can enjoy one of the great assets of the earth, and that is our national parks.
--:-- Scott Galloway: We're taking the Hamas approach, and we're just going to embed them in this fight, even if they get killed or put out of work. That is just a pure collateral damage hostage strategy. They have said to Democrats, "If you do this, we're going to start firing innocents. And also, we're going to target your stuff." It's explicitly political. It's explicitly. They're embedding government workers in the midst of the firefight for no other reason than they say they'll be martyrs on behalf of our great Republican battle.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Which some of them want. Let's be clear. Let me just say some of them. I mean, you can see Russell Vought getting a hard on about firing people and getting rid of government. It's very clear. Same thing with Stephen Miller, who's demented. He gave a demented speech about immigrants the other day, more demented, and let me just caveat that. Think about the messaging so far. Now, I sent you the Bernie Sanders and AOC one, which I thought was adorable.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Great messaging.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Great messaging. They looked terrific together. They were very articulate about what they want. This is all we want: people shouldn't have their health care doubled in price, right? It was pretty clear. What is the next step to do? Because I think that John Thune is sort of puffing out his chest, who seems to be a reasonable person away from Trump, right? He seems to be one of your typical decent legislators who has been pretzeled in the Trump administration. But he's sort of going, "Yeah, we're not doing anything." Like, I mean, I know that's a posture, and I'm not a particularly good negotiator. I'm like, "This is what I want. This is what I want. I just want this. Thank you." I'm not strategic that way or tactical, I guess. But he's sort of doing the posturing.
--:-- Kara Swisher: And I think from talking to some Trump people, there's a group in the White House which is like, "Let's let it last forever. Like, this is great." Like, they're very, they're giddy.
--:-- Scott Galloway: The anti-government techno-libertarians, just let it all burn down. Let's start over.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yes, exactly. And so how do they thread that needle? He's saying, "We're not going to negotiate until the government is open again, and then we'll cover this." And the Democrats should be saying, "We don't trust you," essentially, correct? I mean, I don't know. What would be the posture for each of them going forward?
--:-- Scott Galloway: Well, so I'm a big fan of Senator Thunes, mostly because he's just very handsome and in great shape.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yes, I thought so. His hair.
--:-- Scott Galloway: But also, he does strike me. I've actually met the senator. I think he's a reasonable guy. He obviously has conservative values, represents conservative states, South Dakota. But he is a reason. He's in the seat he should be. And I think he will be a productive member, productive majority leader and a productive, hopefully someday, minority leader.
--:-- Scott Galloway: What I would do, and I had a phone call on this last night, is I would take U.S. senators. And so Senator Warner did a great job. Someone, and it might have even been a planet question, saying, "Why are you, why do you continue to advocate for giving health care to illegal aliens?" And he immediately said, and this is what is so just mendacious about the Republican talking points right now. "Folks, we are not going to have a country. We're not going to have a democracy. We're going to turn to Ouija boards and horoscopes if there is not an objective truth. And the objective truth is there is no law or legislation in effect or being proposed that would give health insurance to illegal aliens."
--:-- Scott Galloway: And yet Speaker Johnson continues to go on these shows and say this lie. And then they fact check him and he just starts talking about, "Well no, that not true." And it's like, "Okay, Speaker Johnson, you didn't answer the question because you know you're lying." And also, "What do we want? We want people dying in the streets? Oh, I'm sorry, you don't have an effective visa. We're going to let you bleed out here in the parking lot."
--:-- Scott Galloway: So Senator Warner immediately said, "The premise of your question is factually incorrect. No one is proposing or asking for coverage for illegal immigrants." What they should be doing, and my advice to the person I was speaking to in comms yesterday, I would literally send 535 congresspeople out to districts, specifically Republican districts, and I would interview people on their porches who clearly look, smell, and feel Republican and talk to them about what it would mean if their premiums for Obamacare double. I'd go right into enemy territory.
--:-- Kara Swisher: You know that's what Bernie and AOC are about to do.
--:-- Scott Galloway: And go right in and say, "Hi, who are you? I'm so-and-so. I'm a single mother. I struggle with diabetes. My kid has cerebral palsy. I don't know what I'm going to do. I don't know what I'm going to do." I would go right into the deepest, reddest states, which, by the way, tend to be the ones that need the most federal funding.
--:-- Kara Swisher: That's right.
--:-- Scott Galloway: And make it very human. "Well, who did you vote for last time?" All of them are going to say Trump. "Okay, fine. Let's get that out of the way. Tell us about your health care. Tell us about what would happen to you if this resolution goes through and there's not an agreement to keep the tax credits or funding for Obamacare premiums, what would happen to you and your children?" And then show their Trump flags that we are in Trump country. Because the smartest thing about, I think, what Leader Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Schumer are doing is they're fighting over a topic that's going to divide Republicans.
--:-- Kara Swisher: So let me ask you another question, because one of the other talking points is that Schumer is doing this at the behest of the left. He's worried about being primaried by AOC. And so they're being pushed into the shutdown by the left. I've just noticed that one as a big talking point.
--:-- Scott Galloway: It's hard for me to relate to, quote unquote, the other side. I don't think that's a very effective talking point.
--:-- Kara Swisher: What is their most effective talking point then? What would you do if you're the Republicans?
--:-- Scott Galloway: The most effective talking point is the following, that shutdowns are not meant to be taken. The government is not meant to be taken hostage. We negotiate policy in the chambers of Congress and at the voting, at the ballot box. Which Thune was saying. That's their most effective message. I hate to say it, if it were true, providing healthcare to illegal immigrants would be an effective talking point. I think the Democrats and the media has done their job here. I thought George Stephanopoulos was actually quite strong on this. He just pushed back and said, "That is not true. That is just not true." I think that's gotten out there that it's not true.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah. Or they'll do anything.
--:-- Scott Galloway: I think a guy like Thune standing up there just saying, "Look, we can't continue to have these shutdowns." And then, of course, once the Democrats are in charge, they'll take the shutdowns hostage.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Right. It only goes to November 19th, I think. It doesn't even solve the problem, right? That's the thing. It just kicks the fucking can.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Well, that's it. We keep just kicking the can down the road until we actually get reasonable people to say, "All right, at some point, we got to stop behaving irresponsibly and stop spending $7 trillion on $5 trillion in receipts." This is just going to keep happening over and over.
--:-- Kara Swisher: They do think they're going to peel off Democrats. They peeled off, obviously, Fetterman, who is essentially Republican, and then the independent guy. And then they peeled off the Nevada senator who just didn't believe in shutdowns. But I don't think they're going to peel anybody else off. I don't think they're going to peel. I was talking to Tina Smith last week in Minnesota, very centrist, very reasonable. She's like, "No way." She didn't seem lefty to me. She's just like, "This is ridiculous. We're going to, you know, this is, we're not." She was adamant about the situation. So I don't think they're going to appeal anyone. And she would be someone you could peel off, presumably.
--:-- Scott Galloway: I don't know. These things have a habit of, I wouldn't be surprised if they come to some sort of accommodation where the Republicans say, "Okay, we'll give you something around, we'll give you something that results in funding for these healthcare premiums, and we'll pretend that it was already in the bill or something."
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah, other Republicans will do that.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Yeah, I think they'll figure out a way because there will be so much chaos surrounding the president right now. And this has been a bad week for him. I always pushed back when people say, "Oh, he's senile." I've always said, "I think President Trump comes across as remarkably robust. I think he's dumb. I think he's strategically totally inept. I think he goes on, rambles on weird shit. But I've always thought he presents as robust."
--:-- Kara Swisher: I don't know. I'm just telling you. Go watch some. I'll send you some videos. Because it's really, it reminds me of his father, Fred Trump, who they pretended he was just fine. But we'll see. We're not doctors.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Well, hold on. For the first time.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah, but we have eyes and ears. You know, if you met my dad in the last year, you would say, "OK, he should probably not be president."
--:-- Scott Galloway: So, look, the president last week has had a couple of instances specifically. The one that sent the shivers down my spine when he said, "Oh, so we're sending two submarines. I'm not going to tell you we're off the coast of Russia. And there's two N words and you can't say either of them." And it's like, "Jesus Christ, is this guy lost his shit?"
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah, what am I seeing on TV? Is that real?
--:-- Scott Galloway: Yeah, I was just, I thought, "Is this AI?" And his voice was weak.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah, I think something's going down. Anyway, we're going to move on.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Video game maker Electronic Arts is being taken private in a deal valued at $55 billion, the largest leveraged buyout of all time. The investor group includes the Saudis' sovereign wealth fund, private equity firm Silver Lake, Jared Kushner's firm Affinity Partners. Obviously, Jared is right in the frigging center of this. And also, for people who don't know, MBS stays up all night and plays video games, apparently. That's what I was told by several people who hang with him. The deal requires approval from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., but it's—please, it's going through. It's because it's Jared Kushner.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Scott, you and I predicted in March that we would see a deal like this. Let's listen.
--:-- Kara Swisher (in clip): I bet a lot of these companies may go private. Do you ever see one of the very big companies going private?
--:-- Scott Galloway (in clip): That is an excellent point. If you look at some of the fallen angels and you look at the amount of money capital sitting on the sidelines in private equity, it's over $4 trillion of capital waiting to be deployed. I think we're going to see, I did my predictions check yesterday, I think we're going to see the biggest take private in history this year.
--:-- Kara Swisher: There we had it. We were so smart, we called it. What do you think of this deal and others will follow suit? Obviously the players. I know Egan pretty well. Obviously Kushner was right in the middle of it because of his close ties to the Saudis and his getting the money from them. It's a big deal to go private. The company has sort of struggled over the years, although they have some hits. It's run by this Australian guy who's a surfer. He got all tight with Egan and then they have houses next to each other in Hawaii, apparently. And then they pulled in Kushner, obviously, who was the unguent here, whatever, the grease in this particular deal. So putting Kushner aside, and again, the Democrats are corrupt. They just do it for small ball, right?
--:-- Kara Swisher: Hunter Biden shouldn't have been on the board of any company. He just shouldn't have been. But he gets hundreds of thousands of dollars. And Jared says, oh, I know how to be nepo corrupt, but I'm going to do it for billions. And not only that, he hasn't done anything illegal. He's raised money on the back of his father's influence, and he's doing a big deal. These deals are not easy to get done. So congratulations to him.
--:-- Scott Galloway: This is a smart deal. First off, essentially, the Gulf is desperately trying to diversify away from a fossil fuel economy. They know the oil runs out, they're not sure if it's 30 years or 80 years, but they basically got... The bad news is they have to diversify away from this fossil fuel economy. The good news is they have almost limitless capital to do it.
--:-- Gaming, which is bigger than the TV and motion picture industries combined, doesn't nearly get the amount of attention it deserves. It's a huge industry. It's intellectual property. It would invite a new generation of young people. The other companies they have investments in are better in mobile. And also since 2020, the gaming industry stocks have underperformed the market. So this thing was, I don't want to say it was on sale, but what you have with Electronic Arts is they're kind of dominant in the old world. That is consoles and handsets. You go buy a game. The future is around mobile and free games.
--:-- When you look at the amount of time that young people, who are very attractive consumers—especially young men—spend on video games relative to the advertising they capture, there's an enormous opportunity. Remember those charts we used to see that would show people spend 7% of their time reading newspapers and newspapers get 19% of ad dollars, and people spend 30% of their time on the internet but it's only getting 4% of ad dollars? This is like 20 years ago. You knew that eventually they would calibrate to the time spent. Dollars effectively lag but eventually catch up to our attention. That's the big opportunity.
--:-- The kingdom has some investments in companies that are really good with mobile and free. The company had underperformed. It diversifies the economy in the Gulf. I like it because I think it brings us closer together. My bet and hope is that the kingdom goes capitalist and continues to party in Mykonos as opposed to going Islamist and fundamentalist, which the older folks' leadership wants. So I like this deal. I think it kind of works for everybody.
--:-- Kara Swisher: EA has always—we've had the heads of EA at my various conferences years ago, and they were always sort of struggling in the digital age. I mean, obviously video games are digital on some level, but it was always like they moved from executive to executive. They had a lot of executive sturm und drang over at that company. The question is, are they going to be able to compete with the ones from China, the ones from all over the world, Japan and everywhere else? I think they've always had an issue with that. They definitely need the money in order to try to reassert themselves.
--:-- They kind of remind me—I know it sounds crazy—but like a broadcast company, like CBS. Like, "Oh, what are you going to do with this piece of shit?" Because they were older. EA always seemed behind the eight ball constantly compared to especially China or any of the other many video game hubs—Korea, all the different places where really interesting innovations were happening.
--:-- Scott Galloway: No, okay. So I would just say that to try and personalize this or humanize it: EA is Tom Brady. Maybe it's not winning Super Bowls, but it's young and it's strong and it's vibrant. CBS is Tom Jones. Awesome in the 70s. Ooh, sexy in the 70s. But on his final, on the back nine. By the way, I love Tom Jones.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah, I'm just looking at their memes.
--:-- Scott Galloway: What's up, pussycat? Whoa, whoa, whoa. God, that guy's a genius.
--:-- Kara Swisher: They have all the sports stuff. Madden was their big one, but their sports are the biggest, most important games. And that does dovetail into the Saudis with their investments in sports and things like live golf. It's a great take private. What's the next one?
--:-- Scott Galloway: The next one? Well, that's my big prediction at the end of the show, and I'm very excited about it.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Oh, wait, okay, all right. Okay, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, OpenAI's new video app is out.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Scott, we're back with more news. OpenAI is taking on TikTok, Reels, and YouTube with a new AI video generator app, Sora 2. The app will feature user-generated clips and feeds with algorithm-driven recommendations. Notably, Sora 2 will include copyrighted content unless copyright holders opt out. What a fucking set of... Anyway, OpenAI has been notifying studios and talent agencies about that over the last week. They're losing their minds, obviously.
--:-- Meta also just introduced Vibes, a feed of AI-generated videos that will live in the Meta AI app. A lot of it is AI slop. Some of it is funny. Gavin Newsom has been making Fantastics or different AI-generated videos making fun of Trump and Vance and everything else, which are quite good. But talk about the copyright opt-out. And Disney just separately sent Character.AI a cease and desist letter to stop using its copyrighted characters without authorization. Talk a little bit about this. What will happen here?
--:-- Scott Galloway: Well, I just want to send a message to Sundar and Satya and Sam. I opt out. Take this as notice. I'm opting out. Do not crawl my shit. Of course, if I want to play, if I want to use someone else's likeness, or if I want to start reproducing—I'm in my gym right now and I'm looking at my weights and they say Rogue. If I wanted to start in China producing plates that said Rogue on them, does Rogue have to call me before and say they're opting out of IP protection? No, there's no such thing. The whole point of IP is people don't have the time to send a letter to everybody and say we opt out. Why do you think they think they can do this?
--:-- Kara Swisher: This reminds me of—remember YouTube kind of played this game and then later did the deals? They just went ahead and did it. Remember they said, "You have to find your stolen content and tell us"? Remember that one many years ago?
--:-- Scott Galloway: Well, this is the dynamic at play. These companies with a leadership position are helped by ignoring laws. By starting your ride-hailing app in Argentina without going through the bureaucratic process of getting business licenses. By showing that kind of growth in this market, you make so much fucking money that it's worth it to face the legal ramifications. So they've done the math and they've said, "If we can maintain the kind of growth we're going to have by molesting other people's IP, even if it eventually gets swatted down in court, we'll have more than enough money. We're better off economically."
--:-- It's the analogy I've been using for 10 years: when there's a parking meter in front of your house and it costs $100 an hour, but the ticket is 50 cents. You break the law. That's what they're doing here. They're saying they know this will eventually work its way through courts. The biggest IP owners in the world will hit them hard and they will start paying, similar to what YouTube has mostly done. YouTube used to be able to put anything on your videos—a Beyonce song to start it, whatever.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah, they did. The Family Guy starring in a Star Wars film with Darth Vader. And everyone will have their hair on fire. But by the time they actually get a judge to say, "No, you can't do this," they'll have accreted another $100 or $150 billion in market cap.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Exactly.
--:-- Kara Swisher: This was sort of the YouTube playbook. I remember when YouTube said, "You need to find your stuff and tell us." I was like, "Why don't you not create a thieving service? You have to tell us who's shoplifting." You know, we've given them shoplifting tools. But it was really astonishing. The idea that all of them—Character.AI, the Disney stuff on there, so much copyright thievery happening again—and they just do it over and over again. It's like Lucy with the football and Charlie Brown with the media companies. Ultimately, this has to be stronger copyright protections in Congress, presumably. But it's really quite astonishing that they continue to have this much cheek. They're thieves. Years ago, Walt Mossberg called Facebook and Google and all of them rapacious information thieves. And let's add OpenAI to that list.
--:-- One good thing they did after people died: they rolled out some parental controls this week, allowing parents to adjust settings on their teen's account. They'll also be notified if an account shows signs of potential self-harm. Let's see how well they do that. I can't believe they didn't do that in the first fucking place, but there they are.
--:-- Now, in this genre, a lot of people in Hollywood are also up in arms over an AI-generated, quote-unquote, actress that some talent agencies are reportedly looking to sign. She's very attractive and looks very real. They must have crafted her out of a bunch of appealing actresses. Her name's Tilly Norwood, and she's really quite appealing, I have to agree. They're going crazy because they didn't make it out of anybody, but it looks like they made it out of all of them.
--:-- But you're in the AI mix right now. I'm disturbed by the AI Scott Galloway picture that you sent me. You partnered with Google Labs for a new project called Portraits. They created an AI version of you to answer questions and provide life and career advice. Let's listen to this AI Scott answer a question.
--:-- AI Scott Galloway (in clip): Hey, it's Pop G. Ready to get started? I got a good job offer, but it's in a random town. What should I do? A job offer in a random town? That's a classic fork in the road. What kind of job is it? And what are your career goals long-term?
--:-- Kara Swisher: Oh, wow. You sound so—not you, but you kind of you-adjacent. So talk about this. How are you feeling about it?
--:-- Scott Galloway: Well, I'm genuine. I want your view on this because, quite frankly, how I feel about it has changed dramatically. I get between 10 and 30 emails a day from usually thoughtful young men, sometimes mothers, asking for mostly professional and career advice, or sometimes investment advice. "I'm 30, am I too old to go back to business school?" "I have gotten into this school with a full ride, but the better school is not giving me money. What should I do?" "How do I ask for a raise?" Those kinds of questions. They're usually really thoughtful young men who take a lot of time to write to me, and I can't get back to all of them. I can't get back to 1% of them. And you feel bad. You feel like you're ignoring them. I'm constantly virtue signaling about trying to help young men, and then some young man takes a ton of time.
--:-- I don't respond to people under the age of 18, because I think parents should decide what the influences are in terms of their kid's life. Anyways, about 18 months ago, we built a thin layer of innovation on top of an LLM and created ProfAI. It answered about 200 or 300 questions a day. We thought it was really cool. Then about nine months ago, a woman who is one of my graduate student instructors at Stern—who is just so impressive, I'd use her name but I don't want to get her in trouble—came to me and said, "We can do this, but much better." At Google Labs, we're going to launch a series of thought leaders to answer questions. There's no money involved.
--:-- Kara Swisher: So it's an AI masterclass, essentially?
--:-- Scott Galloway: The idea is that people who want to answer questions and that you might get some benefit from understanding how they feel about things, but you don't have access to them. It's from Google Labs. I felt sort of funny in the beginning about working with Alphabet, but I really trust this person and think a lot of her. So they ingested all your things. They crawled every podcast, every newsletter, every public appearance, and created a visual of me. I actually think the voice is okay. You can ask this thing almost anything. We spent a lot of time on safeguards. No one under 18, no advice around mental health.
--:-- But the reality is, in between the time when we started developing it nine months ago and now, Kara, I have become increasingly freaked out about AI companions and synthetic relationships. One, I have a nightmare that I wake up and find out that some kid hurt himself and he had a series of AI relationships, including one with me. I would never want to read that. Two, on a more mendacious level, I worried that if I created an ability to have a dialogue with me, it might someday reduce a young man's motivation and mojo to establish mentorships in the real world. With real men. With a teacher, their dad's friend, their scout leader, whatever it is.
--:-- So the thing launched. I said to them, "Look, I'm increasingly uncomfortable with this. I don't know how to reconcile it. I worry that synthetic relationships are attacking what's mammalian about us, especially among young men."
--:-- Kara Swisher: So what happens to it? Do you still have the rights to your things? You're lending it to them? What is the situation?
--:-- Scott Galloway: One thing I built in was that I can take it down at any time. I said to them, "Let's launch it for 12 hours and look at the data," because I don't want this out there. And quite frankly, Kara, the interview you did with the parents who lost their son really rattled me. I am increasingly uncomfortable with synthetic relationships doing anything that replace a young man's mojo to find relationships in the real world.
--:-- Kara Swisher: So let me ask you a bigger question. Some of the stuff they're making with AI, to me, is solving problems that aren't that big. I get that you can't get to everybody. I get that you want to reach out to more people and you want people to have access to your wisdom. But it seems like a lot of this stuff they're making is not problems we have. And I think it's hurting problems that we have with what you're just talking about—men especially making mentorship relationships. What are we solving here by doing this, except for you feel guilty about not being able to get back to all the young men? Is that the real biggest problem to use all this technology, all this effort? Do you see it as ever being a good thing? I guess it's just a better Google, right?
--:-- Scott Galloway: I think there's more upside. I think if you're 85 and in a state or county senior's home and you've lost the capability to communicate and all your friends are dead and you've lost, for whatever reason, your strength from your family and you want to talk to someone about the Packers—it's almost an age thing for me. I think over 80, let Character.AI, let them have at it. Because quite frankly, the downside's not that great. Anyone under the age of 18 shouldn't be on a Character.AI. And I have slowly but surely come to believe that these synthetic relationships have more downside than upside.
--:-- Kara Swisher: I would agree. Let me just interject. I just did an interview with Sherry Turkle, very famous MIT psychiatrist. She's done a lot on this, talking about artificial relationships for a long time. Everything she had predicted has now come home to roost. One of the things she was noting is it used to be sort of an outlier. People did these relationships. She goes, "Now it's at the dead center." She has friends who are having trouble with their husbands or wives that are having relationship problems, and they spin up their best gay friend to give them advice about...
--:-- Scott Galloway: Right, except that what it does is—say women have issues with men not listening to them or not being sensitive enough. So now you've got a sensitive man talking to you. And men have issues...
--:-- Kara Swisher: And we aren't, folks. We all have to learn how to deal with insensitive men. That's right. So she was talking about men wanting a very acquiescent female. Which is why, getting back to Tilly Norwood, she is exactly what Hollywood studios want. An actress who doesn't get old and doesn't act up. Or doesn't start to demand things.
--:-- What Sherry was saying—the one thing that I thought was interesting, and I love your observations—is there's no there there. There's nothing behind it except for stuff you inputted. You're not there, Scott, as Scott AI. It's not you, really. I think you would react if someone asked you. A general question is one thing, but a more complex question—it just doesn't. You shift and move as a person and this doesn't. There's no there there.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Well, okay. So I don't think it's that there isn't a there there. A repository of all of Peter Attia or Andrew Huberman's advice on creatine for women versus men—there's access. These are neuroscientists who are thoughtful and I think fairly measured. There's value in having access to that put in sort of a narrative format. I do think there's an upside.
--:-- However, I see the downside. I'll be snarky here. Women are constantly saying they want a more sensitive man. Well, that just leaves two people in the car crying in a parallel parking spot that is still empty. That's snarky. But here's the bottom line: the most rewarding things in life, hands down, come from navigating, figuring out shit, and then the victory of doing really hard things. There is nothing harder than having relationships. That's what's so wonderful about them. When you figure out a way to come together with someone and decide you want to have kids with them. When you figure out a way to get your kid off screens and come to some sort of agreement. When you figure out the pecking order of high school and establish your crew and your friends. When you figure out how to navigate all the bullshit and frustration and bureaucracy of work. The end is where mammalian is, and that's what real fucking victory is.
--:-- Kara Swisher: So what are you going to do with this thing? Are you going to kill it?
--:-- Scott Galloway: This is where I am today. I had them pull it down after 12 hours. And by the way, Google Labs could not have been more cooperative, empathetic.
--:-- Kara Swisher: You have a loud platform, but go ahead.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Yeah, but they've spent a lot of time on this. It launched yesterday, and we were going to let it go for a little bit to look at the data. I looked at it and I thought, "I'm just not down with this. I've got a bad feeling about this." I emailed, I text messaged my friend there last night, and she said, "I'll pull it down right now."
--:-- Kara Swisher: All right. Okay. Well, that's what we're going to do. Can you send it to me so I can hang out with you all the time? Can I have it?
--:-- Scott Galloway: So you can yell at it?
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah. You know, here's the thing. I don't like Scott AI. I like Scott. That's how I feel about it. Years ago, Martha Stewart said she was going to start Marth AI. I get it. Put an I at the end of her name. I thought, for stuff like that—how to boil an egg, how to make mashed potatoes—that makes perfect sense.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Well, robo advisors are basically synthetic stockbrokers.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Right, exactly. Those kinds of things, cooking tips, things like that make sense. Although I do like a good chef talking about cooking. I think you made the right decision.
--:-- Scott Galloway: I find most life lessons come from Twilight Zone, the old series. Which, by the way, is the first time I ever saw Robert Redford—in Twilight Zone.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah, that's right, in that great episode.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Remember that episode where this criminal is shot and he goes to heaven? He's in heaven and every woman he approaches says yes and wants to date him. When he goes up to the blackjack table, it's blackjack every time. There's huge lines to get into the hottest restaurants and they're like, "Right this way, sir." He starts getting sick of winning all the time. He says, "Come on, guys, this is supposed to be heaven." And the guy turns and goes, "My brother, this is not heaven."
--:-- Kara Swisher: Whoa, mind blown.
--:-- Scott Galloway: That's the point. The greatest yeses in your life involve one thing: a shit ton of no's.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah. That's the whole shooting match.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Could they make Scott AI be more of an asshole? So that it's more like regular life.
--:-- Kara Swisher: I'm getting there organically.
--:-- Scott Galloway: I'm getting there organically.
--:-- Kara Swisher: That's what they have to do. Like, ugh, what?
--:-- Kara Swisher: Tell a dick joke suddenly. Anyway, Scott, let's go on a quick break now. And when we get back, we'll talk about Hegseth declaring the military free from wokeness and body-shaming generals.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Scott, we're back with more news. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says he held nothing back while addressing senior military officials in Virginia this week. Let's listen to some of his—and I have to say it was a crazy rant by someone who has moved on to other substances, it felt like. Go ahead.
--:-- Pete Hegseth (in clip): If the Secretary of War can do regular hard PT, so can every member of our joint force. Frankly, it's tiring to look out at combat formations or really any formation and see fat troops. Likewise, it's completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon and leading commands around the country and the world. It's a bad look. It is bad and it's not who we are.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Trump followed the sentiment. Let's listen to a clip. Someone who happens to be actually fat. Go ahead.
--:-- Donald Trump (in clip): If you don't like what I'm saying, you can leave the room. Of course, there goes your rank. There goes your future.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Uh-huh. That was one of the few laughs. The generals looked horrified by the entire thing. The president also suggested the military use quote "dangerous U.S. cities" as quote "training grounds" and told reporters at the White House that he would fire generals on the spot if he didn't like them.
--:-- Wow, that was a real disaster, I have to say. The visuals from the military leadership were sort of set at all. And, of course, they leaked the hell out of the thing. Also, Hegseth's focus on looks and outfits. They were expecting a strategic discussion about U.S. military forces around the world. And instead they got a rant by someone who was a lower ranking person and someone who was a five-time draft dodger about how to run the military, but focused only on looks, essentially.
--:-- Let me tell you one other thing someone else told me: the reason he did this, it was all from Hegseth, because he is considering a presidential run, which I thought was insane when I heard it. And that people, other forces who are not so keen on Pete Hegseth running for president and think it's ridiculous, got Trump to go to try to ruin his mojo there. I thought it was hugely embarrassing for everybody, especially the military, which had to sit there and put up with it. Any quick thoughts?
--:-- Scott Galloway: There has never been, possibly in history, a room with more competence, bravery, honor, humility in one room than there was in that room. It was a security risk to have them in one place. You don't think there was GRU and CCP taking photographs and saying, "These are the most—let's find their devices, what algorithms are on, their kids, their movements." That was just a stupid security risk.
--:-- And for a guy who was—first off, I'm very into fitness. There is no—to hold a general who served honorably, probably in Vietnam as an 18-year-old who has overseen combat. Okay, Pete, I want to see what you look like at 65. I mean, the notion that he has any license being demeaning to that room is literally laughable.
--:-- And all of this bullshit around, you know, "I get it, beards, whatever." That's supposed to attack especially men of color. Some men have issues with shaving, but go ahead. It's so performative. It's so stupid. It doesn't result. It makes us weaker.
--:-- And you're talking to the—he was a major, which means if he had been much better and spent another 20 years in the armed services, he might have been able to pack the bags for the people who ended up in that room. To lecture these people on leadership and what they need to do to be—
--:-- Kara Swisher: It wasn't even on strategy. It wasn't on our position in the world. If he had said, "Now we're going to be this," instead it's all performative.
--:-- Scott Galloway: The other part is him talking them about being individualistic. This guy, there's not more of a fop in that cabinet than this guy. He's got funny socks. He's got weird things on the inside of his jackets. He's got tattoos. He wears the stupid glasses. This guy is one—speaking of individualistic—this guy just relishes in it. And to act like he's some paradigm is kind of fucking ridiculous. He's such a ridiculous, performative clown. And the fact that he's thinking of running for president, I mean, oh my. And this was what he was using this. He was wasting taxpayer money to give himself a shine up. And he ended up looking like a clown.
--:-- The two features that are always present in a room of leadership from our armed services are, one, competence. These people are literally charged with deploying lethal force in a thoughtful way, and they're responsible for a ton of young men and women's well-being as it intersects with some of the most complicated supply chain, technology, geopolitics in the world. And these people figure out a way to do it. From a young age, one of my roommates was ROTC. I'm 24 doing fucking PowerPoint decks talking about taking over some refrigeration company in Wisconsin. And my friend was commanding 1,200 19-year-olds.
--:-- I mean, these people demonstrate competence, and then the second key feature, which these people do not demonstrate in any fashion on stage, is humility. They don't brag. And the other thing that the armed services represents—and it's not to say it hasn't had its problems around racism—but it's been an enormous means of lifting up people based on character and competence. There's nothing that melts away racism and homophobia like being in a foxhole where both of your lives are under threat. All you care about is the competence and the character of the man or the woman next to you. You're not thinking, "Well, I don't like Puerto Ricans." And so the armed services have been an amazing means of creating equality and progressive advancement.
--:-- And then when you have these guys up there with this "you need to be fit and you can't have beards," they bring up—I said "fat boy" and "little man bombed," right? And misogynistic. I do—I got to be honest—I do agree with one thing. I think in combat, the standard should be gender neutral. I think if you're applying to be in a combat position, you have to qualify by being able to drag somebody 90 feet if they're wounded. I get that. But the reality is today's combat is more about—I think I would bet less than 2% of our armed services. And you know who are also warriors? The man or the woman that agrees to get in the driver's seat and drive a fucking fuel tank across a highway of IEDs.
--:-- Kara Swisher: That's correct. I mean, the whole thing was such an embarrassment. And listen, President Pete, you're not going to be the Pete that's president. It'll be Buttigieg.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Oh, let's hope he's the Republican nominee. Let's pray that he's the Republican. If he runs for president on the Republican side, I will donate money to his campaign because that means the next president is going to be a Democrat. Literally, he makes Sarah Palin look smart. It was such a disaster, Pete. And you got totally—they shoved other people who don't agree that you should get this little fancy shine-up.
--:-- Kara Swisher: There was a whole machination happening among Republicans on how Trump ended up there. Who also, by the way, when he said cities should be used as training grounds, that is dangerous and scary and ridiculous. And I'm sure those military people all thought that.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Just as long as he doesn't use the N-word.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Oh, I know. Yeah, don't use it.
--:-- Kara Swisher: YouTube, lastly. YouTube will settle a lawsuit over banning President Trump's account for over $24 million. YouTube banned Trump's account in 2021 after January 6th and reinstated it later. The settlement funds will go to building the new White House ballroom. It's so ridiculous. As a reminder, other big tech companies have done the same with similar lawsuits—Meta settling for millions and X settling for millions. Oh God, why are they settling? They did nothing wrong at the time. It was very dangerous and they reinstated. It was the right decision at the moment. They shouldn't be paying off these bribes. That's what they are, they're bribes. I don't know. Your thoughts?
--:-- Scott Galloway: Yeah, I keep waiting for someone just to hold the line and say no. I mean, all it means is they're going to come back again. You're setting a really terrible precedent. I mean, these companies are the same companies that fight people tooth and nail when their 15-year-old gets served content that encourages suicidal ideation and self-harm. They'll go to the mat for that shit. But when it comes to the president being butthurt about something that was said, they'll settle for tens of millions of dollars. They're ridiculous. They look like such toadies. They look like toadies, these unctuous—right down to Sundar Pichai. I like Sundar Pichai, but Sundar, you're an embarrassment at this moment to me, I have to say. I've known you for many years, and I know you don't care what I think, but just really, I get your little problem. You should have held out. You'd have looked smarter.
--:-- Kara Swisher: All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Okay, Scott, let's hear that prediction. I'm curious who you think's going private. How interesting. What's a fallen angel?
--:-- Scott Galloway: Well, we talked about this. My picks were—and this isn't my prediction—but there's just some really big iconic companies that have a lot of IP and revenue that probably should be either acquired or taken private. My favorites were Boeing, Intel, and Target. But I think you are about to see—and we predicted this. By the way, our prediction at the beginning of this year was that M&A was about to boom again, and it was in a deep thaw at the beginning of the year. What did the investment banks announce? Record M&A. The universe of companies that Palantir can potentially acquire right now has gone up 1,000x.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah. If you don't do it, you're stupid, right? Their banker can show up.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Well, when you're trading at 100 times revenues, anything you acquire that's trading at less than 100 times revenues—which is every company on the planet—is accretive to your earnings. The way I would describe it is if your stock doubles, then effectively everything else has become 50% less expensive.
--:-- And I think we're going to see a titanic acquisition or merger from Netflix. I think there are so many existential threats, clouds forming around Netflix right now. I mean, Sam Altman putting out these AI-driven videos and saying it's so you can communicate with your friends and family—that is a lie. He's doing this and trying to pretend it's friendly such that every Hollywood producer starts going, "Jesus Christ, why can't we start producing films for $3 million instead of $300 million?" So I think there are some real existential threats to a stock that is now worth, I don't know, $440 billion. That stock, by the way, one of my great investments—I bought Netflix at $12 a share. It's now at $1,146. The part of the story I left out is I sold it at $12 a share to take the tax loss and never bought back in.
--:-- But basically, Netflix now has almost a half a trillion dollar market cap. And I think they face some real threats. They need to do something.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Well, the gangster merger of the ages would be the following: Netflix and Disney. Because look, it's very synergistic.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Oh, and then Ted could run Disney. How fantastic. Ding, ding, ding, ding.
--:-- Scott Galloway: So there's this co-CEO, this guy named Greg Peters. I saw him speak at Cannes and I thought, "Jesus Christ, this guy is so bright."
--:-- Kara Swisher: He is bright. By the way, let me note a woman who's at the top of that business, Bela Bajaria, is doing all the programming. Amazing. They have an outstanding—and then Ted Sarandos is like built in a factory from parts of legendary CEOs. He is so good. I saw him on stage recently and they asked him these really pointed questions.
--:-- Scott Galloway: I like Ted.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Well, first off, he has the primary competence of any great CEO, and that is he has outstanding hair.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Yeah, he has good hair.
--:-- Kara Swisher: He has very good hair. Good with talent. Good with talent, smart, not afraid of anybody, any question, he handles it. The guy literally reeks of aplomb.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Anyway. Aplomb. You're aplombing, Ted.
--:-- Disney's leadership right now is Neville Chamberlain in a cashmere sweater minus the dignity. Right? That's their—and who the fuck? And then the number two is a woman who's gotten dragged down by the Kimmel shit. They are desperate for leadership. What does Disney have that is absolutely singular and can't be threatened by OpenAI? It has the parks and cruise lines. But the IP at the parks—Cinderella and Darth Vader are getting tired. Put Stranger Things in there. Stranger Things, Wednesday. Can you imagine a Stranger Things ride at Disney?
--:-- Kara Swisher: He's saying "Hunting Wives." The whole lesbian ride for me.
--:-- Scott Galloway: The streaming market—you have Netflix and Disney. It's over. Hulu's in there. Remember? You have Disney, Netflix. National Geographic is in there. It's over. Over.
--:-- Kara Swisher: I love it.
--:-- Scott Galloway: It would give them such heft. They would own place-based entertainment and they would own streaming media. They would own cruises, parks. And also Netflix is going into live events too.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Also comedy.
--:-- Scott Galloway: They don't have comedy. It solves their leadership problem.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah.
--:-- Scott Galloway: This would be—anyways, $210 billion or $200 billion Disney, $450 billion Netflix. Netflix would own, call it, 70% of the combined companies. This would be the first trillion-dollar pure play entertainment company.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Will it get passed by?
--:-- Scott Galloway: Well, that's the thing. It might not now.
--:-- Kara Swisher: It might not now, yeah. Or maybe not. My point is they can't. If there's debt, they couldn't have done it seven months ago. Ted's pretty Democratic. Remember, Ted's pretty down Democratic highway. But my point is, as soon as there's—under Biden, it couldn't happen. And if there's another Democratic administration, it won't be allowed to happen. This is the window.
--:-- Let me add something to your deal. Snapchat.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Snap's probably more trouble than it's worth.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Not really. It's like a great system. They can shove all kinds of shit on it. Like, why not own it? Like the way TikTok owns it.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Because it's kids and it's—
--:-- Kara Swisher: It is. So is Disney.
--:-- Scott Galloway: No, but there's not a feature—
--:-- Kara Swisher: There's not a feature. Put it in your saucepan and think about it.
--:-- Scott Galloway: There's not a feature on Disney Channel that lets you see people around you the drug dealers are using. People don't go on the Matterhorn and start self-cutting. Snap has got real issues. I don't think they want near it. I don't think Ted Sarandos would want anywhere near Snap.
--:-- Kara Swisher: All right. I'm just saying they'll get on a social platform, too. Think about Tesla and Snapchat.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Okay. That was a great prediction. This feels like your Whole Foods one. I like it. I love it. And I think it has to happen. I'm going to tell Ted to do it.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Okay. We want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business, tech, or whatever is on your mind. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show. Or call 855-51-PIVOT.
--:-- And don't forget, we're going on tour. We'll be coming to Toronto, Boston, New York, D.C., Chicago, San Francisco, and L.A. Because we hate Arizona.
--:-- Scott Galloway: We hate Arizona.
--:-- Kara Swisher: We don't. We love Arizona. We'll go there sometime. I love Arizona. But anyway, we're very excited to see the fans. We are going to be there for you. We're going to try to put on our best show. We're going to dress up. Scott's going to do a strip tease. I have some surprises for Scott that he doesn't know about.
--:-- Scott Galloway: You know it.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Visit pivottour.com for tickets.
--:-- Anyway, before we go, I just want to mention legendary conservationist Jane Goodall, who died this week at age 91. I had the opportunity to speak to her back in 2020. Let's listen to a brief portion of that interview.
--:-- Jane Goodall (in clip): I will never ever believe that the way for change is confrontation and aggression because people change when you reach the heart. And so, you know, when people ask me, "What do you do when you meet somebody who's behaving in a way that you really dislike or something?" Try and find a connection. Maybe they have a dog or a cat or a horse or a child or something. Just for one minute, if you have a short time to talk to them. And then stories. Tell stories.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Oh, what an amazing woman. What an amazing life. Be Jane Goodall, everybody. She just was. I love that interview. It was fantastic.
--:-- Anyway, Scott, by the way, you've been fantastic today. I don't know what's in your Wheaties, but very fine.
--:-- Scott Galloway: That's just Hannah Carey. That's Hannah Savio. Lots of stuff.
--:-- Kara Swisher: You're not Jane Goodall, but you're on your way. And again, send me Scott AI because I'm going to have some times with him.
--:-- Okay, that's the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot. Be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back next week. One special thing: Clara Jo Swisher-Katz, happy sixth birthday this weekend. We're very excited to have a fantastic mermaid party.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Nice.
--:-- Kara Swisher: And now, read us out.
