Instagram Goes PG-13, ChatGPT Allows Erotica, and Netflix Grabs Podcasts

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Sam Altman: We shouldn't be the morality police.

Kara Swisher: No, no, actually, you should.

[Intro music]

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

Scott Galloway: And I'm Scott Galloway.

Kara Swisher: Scott, guess where I am.

Scott Galloway: Where are you?

Kara Swisher: Los Angeles, your favorite place. You love Los Angeles.

Scott Galloway: Yes. And what are you doing there?

Kara Swisher: I am working on one of the last interviews for this secret documentary with the hacking guy. Worst kept secret?

Scott Galloway: The hacking guy. Yeah. I met him at the Aspen gathering.

Kara Swisher: Oh?

Scott Galloway: Yeah. Thoughts? Did you discuss all your body hacking? All my stuff?

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Well, of course you wanted to know my secret. And I said, well, actually, other than the lower facelift, the chin implant, my eyes done, the picolaser, the fractal laser, the vitamin A, vitamin D, NAD and testosterone shots... It all just genetics, I guess. Lucky, I guess. Oh, and I forgot to mention I've worked out four times a week for the last 40 years.

Scott Galloway: I think that's called epigenetics. The things that you do to affect yourself.

Kara Swisher: I think it's called narcissism and a midlife crisis that started at the age of eight and is still going on. We're going to talk about that topic because I do think a lot of this is born of narcissists.

Scott Galloway: See, I feel like if I insult him, I'm insulting you, but here we are.

Kara Swisher: You know what, though? It's not easy being a four.

Scott Galloway: You're not a four. When I was younger, I was handsome. That was really good. I'm getting to the point now... I think being really ugly is pretty easy because you just sort of lean into it and give up. Like, I'm almost there. I'm ready to lean into the ugly.

Kara Swisher: Ugly is unattractive, you know. Ugly can be unattractive. It can be attractive, excuse me. That's illuminated. It sounds like you won journalism awards in college.

Scott Galloway: I did.

Kara Swisher: I know you did. That's why I brought it up. The fun award. Let's bring that back for people. You've brought it up several thousand times.

Scott Galloway: When I find that medal in my basement with my Bitcoin, I'm going to wear it every episode.

Kara Swisher: Wear it as a belt. Anyways, but it's not easy being... The most difficult place is being mediocre looking. It's like when I had great hair, that was awesome. I actually like having a shaved head. It was when I was losing my hair for 10 years that it was a pain.

Scott Galloway: I'm in the transition phase. I'm transitioning from modestly good-looking to very definitely not good-looking. And it's the transition that's painful.

Kara Swisher: I hate to pay you a compliment, but I think you're very good-looking.

Scott Galloway: Go on.

Kara Swisher: I'm sorry. My mic was off. You're very classic. You're very classic looks, I think.

Scott Galloway: Classic? No one's ever described my look as classic.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. But I think Larry David's good-looking, too, I guess.

Scott Galloway: Oh, my God. You just blew it. You literally just blew it.

Kara Swisher: I did that on purpose. Let me think. Patrick... the guy who was Stuart... You have a very Patrick Stewart look.

Scott Galloway: Patrick Stewart. I've heard that before. If you had a British accent, it would work for you.

Kara Swisher: I get Ivan Lendl, Bruce Dern, and Ryan Reynolds' drunk uncle.

Scott Galloway: Oh, no. I would say, oh, I like Bruce Dern. Yeah, you have that sort of face. Let me hear your British accent.

Kara Swisher: No, I can't do accents anymore. It sounds like a dead language. Twins speak to each other.

Scott Galloway: You do your dad one, your Scottish one.

Kara Swisher: I do, but I have a few drinks for that one.

Scott Galloway: You could do French. You could move to France. You could do the French accent.

Kara Swisher: Yes. The cheese surrender monkeys. Was that too much?

Scott Galloway: It's so attractive. I don't know if I... you know, I'd be making out with you right now.

Kara Swisher: Oh yeah. That will never happen.

Scott Galloway: That's what happens when I start speaking French.

Kara Swisher: We will never be arrested in a park. We're never going to find either. We'll never find you topless in a car.

Scott Galloway: We might find me topless in a car.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, that's true. We'll find you topless on stage. Oh, my God, we got so much feedback. We got so much feedback. Why did people love that so much? I felt they went together nicely because the gold coin story I did not think was going to land, honestly. And it did, like, terrifically. And then the arrest one, people loved both of them.

Scott Galloway: No, but the thing is, when you're arrested twice, it's a pattern. Like, you're definitely... everyone's like, what a gangster. Because if you're arrested once, who knows, you're in college, you never know, right? Or you get pulled, who knows. But arrested twice definitely means you fought the law and the law won.

Kara Swisher: The law won. I almost got arrested one other time where... you know when these sort of local police officers can be like...

Scott Galloway: Does it involve lesbian sex? Because I'm here for it.

Kara Swisher: No, this guy was yelling at a lady and I intervened. He was being really abusive. He is one of those like cops. I love... I like most cops actually. I've always had relatively good... well, some people don't.

Scott Galloway: It's my favorite stripper is the cop. It's true.

Kara Swisher: Oh, I went to a stripper once. They had a cop strip.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. The Hanger Club.

Kara Swisher: I don't know that one.

Scott Galloway: I don't know that one. I just have a loyalty card at that one.

Kara Swisher: Actually, I just heard from all my college friends. They're all coming to DC and we're going out and they were wild. They were a wild gang and always drunk and everything. I was the good one and I'd study and you'd come back and there'd be nine guys they made out with on the floor of our place. But we all went to a place for one of my roommates' birthdays called the Hangar Club. Get it? Hanger. Hanger. And they would let the strippers in. I went to one of those. It was something else.

Scott Galloway: Were you out in college?

Kara Swisher: No. No. But it was terrible. So you were dating men or just had crushes on girls?

Scott Galloway: Vaguely. Vaguely. You know, I had sort of stopped. I had a four-year high school boyfriend, essentially. And then I had boyfriends all the way through.

Kara Swisher: You had a boyfriend for four years?

Scott Galloway: Yeah. Yeah.

Kara Swisher: Wow. Are you guys still in contact?

Scott Galloway: A little bit. I haven't talked to him in a while.

Kara Swisher: I haven't talked to him in a while. He's great. He's a great guy. His name was Chris Price. I say it. He's really nice. He was really nice. Chris Price. Yeah, we were in 10th grade until his freshman year of college. I broke up once in the middle of it. I knew I was gay. I should have not done that. I shouldn't have gone out at the time. By that time, I should have said something. But one didn't do that then, Scott. He was lovely. I was a really good girlfriend because I put out because I didn't care.

Scott Galloway: No, you're probably pretty easygoing.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, why not? Like, what do I care? Anyway, we do have a lot to get to today, including Instagram going PG-13 and OpenAI going in the opposite direction with erotica. But first, leaked texts from messaging platform Telegram reveal leaders of the young Republican groups exchanged racist, sexist, and anti-Semitic texts over the span of seven months. The chats included jokes about enslavement, negative comments about minorities. They're really gross. I'm not going to repeat them. But they're like, think of the worst thing and then make it worse, was what they were. And discussions about raping enemies and driving them to suicide. And if you see the pictures of these people, each one looks like an incel, honestly. The Young Republican National Federation said it was appalled by the language and suggested those involved must resign. But as usual, J.D. Vance, couch potato, took the opportunity to criticize a Democratic Virginia's AG candidate who was texting a scandal of his own regarding political violence. That guy is terrible, but of course, J.D. Vance can't possibly just say sorry. Vance called in response to the Republican group text's pearl clutching in comparison. Let's listen to a clip of him on The Charlie Kirk Show.

J.D. Vance [clip]: He's going to have a great job as a podcaster when he leaves office. But the reality is that kids do stupid things, especially young boys. They tell edgy, offensive jokes like that's what kids do. And I really don't want us to grow up in a country where a kid telling a stupid joke, telling a very offensive stupid joke, is cause to ruin their lives. And at some point, we're all going to have to say enough of this BS.

Kara Swisher: I'll tell you who's enough of this BS is J.D. Vance. Some individuals exposed in the message have been fired. At least one young Republicans group has been disbanded. Think of this because it really was over the top. And it's not cancel culture's back, but it was pretty horrible. Like it was shock. I was even surprised. Maybe I shouldn't have been. What did you think?

Scott Galloway: Initially, all else being equal, I sort of agree with J.D. Vance in the sense that...

Kara Swisher: No.

Scott Galloway: Well, give me some time here and then you can pose for the woke ring light.

Kara Swisher: I'm not gonna... Don't always pull...

Scott Galloway: Don't bring that up.

Kara Swisher: Don't always bring woke. Oh, no. Oh, no.

Scott Galloway: Well, give me some time here, and then you can pose for the woke ring light.

Kara Swisher: I'm not going to pose. Don't always pull woke. Don't bring that up. Don't always bring woke. That's your excuse. When you're losing an argument, you say woke. But go ahead. Move on. You do.

Scott Galloway: Anyways, so I empathize with the notion that we had the luxury of not having a digital world where every ridiculously offensive, stupid thing we did. And I mean, the shit we did in college, I look back on and I thank God I wasn't involved. Now, having said that...

Kara Swisher: Can I just interject for people for a fact?

Scott Galloway: No, because you're going to steal my thunder and then everyone's going to come on and say, okay, go care.

Kara Swisher: All right.

Scott Galloway: I know all your tricks. These aren't children. Some of these people specifically, some of these men are not even young men. They're 31 and 35. Two, he's the wrong messenger for this because he's totally inconsistent. If this was the young Democratic chat, he would have ordered a gunship and fucking the Army Rangers to their homes. And this is the same group of people that says that a joke about Donald Trump talking about a ballroom when asked about Charlie Kirk is so offensive that it should be removed from the air. So it's incredibly hypocritical and inconsistent for Vice President Vance to say anything about, come on, guys, it's just speed. It's just, you know, bros, frat kids going to be frat kids. And also, these are not children. And when you look at what they said, I don't like... there is a certain gotcha culture where the media goes crazy around calling people out. But the reality is when you read these texts, these young men or adults, these adult men are about to learn a valuable life lesson in that there is no context for which these types of conversations or statements are acceptable and distinctive, whether they're racist, bigoted, whatever, homophobic. It should logically, practically, from a common sense standpoint, hurt their careers because these people just lack so much common sense and they have such poor judgment to not only think these things but to put them down in a text chat. So look, but again, for me this all comes back to the same thing. Go with it because it's one more day we're not talking about Epstein. I think in the big picture, this really isn't... this is a pimple on the pimple of what's going on in this country. It's a bunch of fucking idiots who should have trouble getting a job because this will come up in their Google searches. And it's a good life lesson for young people, especially young men who are more risk aggressive and more prone to say really stupid shit. And I do believe, and I've said this about the campus protests, I'm less bothered by what a 19-year-old says at Cornell than I'm by what some of the faculty have said, tweeting and some of the statements they've issued. I think that they've had time to develop some critical thinking skills.

Kara Swisher: I agree. What the kids say, I do give a wide berth to teenagers. And also, that said, it was... these weren't just little jokes. It went on and on and on. And it's weird because I'm...

Scott Galloway: It was really upsetting.

Kara Swisher: It was really upsetting. Two things came to me at once. I see your explanation here. First of all, they were stupid. That really struck me. And dumb, like this is what they think is funny. Two is the hypocrisy, as you noted, about Jimmy Kimmel making what was a funny joke because Trump said it versus this, like this ha-ha. But I do think it's a pervasive feeling among these people. They really... like, it's so... I was... the return of this, and maybe it never went away, was something... I would like it to go away again, but I guess they're thinking it. So maybe just to see it will just be clear of who these people are. I don't think they'll be punished at all, but J.D. Vance should step out of it. That's my feeling. Like, especially because he's the one that's always like, you should be able to say what you want.

Scott Galloway: Look, I won't even say kids, although they feel like kids when you're getting this old. The reality is, and folks, this is a lesson to young people out there. I hate to say this, but a lot of times people will send an email saying, I appreciate how provocative and how profane you are. I want to be more bold. And I write back, don't. Or I write back and say, are you already rich? Because if you're economically secure and have people who love you unconditionally, fine, you can take more license with the things you say and occasionally say something stupid and have people push back and it doesn't threaten your economic livelihood. But in this era, the reality is if you go to work for JPMorgan or Goldman Sachs, they run a credit check on you now. You know what they also do? They check your social media. What's going to happen when these kids go on to want to be... you know, leave government and want to go be work at Lazare Frere or whatever for a law firm or a lobbying firm? The first thing the HR director does is they do a Google search on you. What's going to come up with these kids? And this is what's going to happen. They're never even going to know why they didn't get an interview. Because the HR person is going to see, oh, this is a person making light of gas chambers and using the N-word. Well, you know what? Maybe we should look at the other 99 applicants we have.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, it's true. It's too much bother. And someone will come up with it and someone will know who it was and everything else. And for them, if they'd showed up with an AR-15 to the No Kings rally, they would have found some Republican weirdos that want to hire them. Everyone's going to run from this. There's nothing cool about this. There's nothing provocative. There's nothing right-wing. I think even most Republicans are horrified. I just don't understand why J.D. Vance went out on a limb, I guess, to create havoc, I suppose, with the Epstein thing. And speaking of which, I urge everyone to read the excerpts from, I think it's Virginia Giuffre. Her... her... she's posthumously published a book about her experiences with Jeffrey Epstein. And it is beautifully written, FYI. It's very upsetting, but it's so plainly said. And I think it links to the way men, some men think about women, right? Like it was sort of she was making the bigger point that it wasn't just the sickness of Jeffrey Epstein but that there were more people who act like this or feel like it's their privilege to talk about people. But everything rang true in that first exchange when she was a kid with her and Ghislaine Maxwell and him. And after reading that, if Trump lets her out, he really is culpable. I just don't know how else you could read anything close to that and not think that. And there's story after story.

Scott Galloway: The two things that struck me were reading that article, because I'd heard most of it from other sources before. The two things that struck me were, one, there is supposedly research showing that pedophiles target kids who have an absent or what they perceive as a weak male role model. That they sum up the level of male involvement in that person's life and prey on people. And you can imagine children of single parents from low homes are just more likely to be victims, which is obviously very upsetting. The other thing that really struck me here, Kara, that I didn't know about... her dad introduced her at Mar-a-Lago.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, to Trump.

Scott Galloway: I mean, folks, at what point... at what point is there just so much evidence around Epstein and Mar-a-Lago and Trump? It's like, wait, they met... this whole thing started at Mar-a-Lago?

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Yeah, it did.

Scott Galloway: I didn't know that.

Kara Swisher: Because that's why Trump said he kicked Epstein out because he poached employees. He was stealing employees. Not because he was a convicted pedophile, but because he was stealing his employees. And remember he had that sentence where it looked like he owned her, like he took one of my things. Anyway, the whole thing... you must read it because it's very so plainly written and everything rings true, I have to say, especially about that encounter, the way he talked to her, the way they tried to pull her in. And Ghislaine Maxwell... I mean, Epstein is dead and don't rest in peace, but boy, she's a monster in the same manner, like grotesque and should never be let out of prison and should be thrown into a deeper prison as far as I'm concerned.

Scott Galloway: It's already happened. The fix is already in.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: He sent his personal lawyer down to interview her. That never happens. And then what do you know? She's transferred to a lower, a more pleasant prison. He cannot give her a pardon. He cannot give her a pardon. He can't. Kara, every time we've said that, we have found out that, in fact, he can. It's like the third rail. It's already been... the wheels are already in motion. All of a sudden, she's at a more amenable, more comfortable prison. Total violation of all decorum around justice where a lawyer went down to interview her. And now, this is... the fix is in. I think it's already happened.

Kara Swisher: Well, I'll tell you one thing. If she does get out, people should, like OJ, she should lead a restless life where she never gets a moment's peace, I have to say, what she did to these young girls. Repulsive. She's a monster. I never say the word evil about people, but she's evil and so is he. Anyway, I recommend you reading it. And it's sad that Virginia committed suicide, by the way, before this book came out.

Scott Galloway: She was in a terrible car accident, wasn't she?

Kara Swisher: Yeah, it's kind of unclear what happened, but ultimately, her life sounds... she was a vulnerable young woman who had a history of sexual abuse and she was a perfect mark for these two terrible predators. Anyway, speaking of which, California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill this week that would have banned minors from using AI chatbots. His reason, the bill's restrictions were too broad. I would agree. He did sign another AI safety bill requiring chatbots to tell users they're AI and reminding minors every three hours to take breaks. OpenAI called the bill a meaningful move forward for AI safety standards, though CEO Sam Altman also just revealed that OpenAI will allow verified adults to access erotica on ChatGPT in December. I'm not sure these are related but they feel like they are. The first bill... I know it was pushed by a lot of different groups but it was broad because it seemed like it was attacking older people too. And it felt like we have to really specifically carve out minors here in a way. I think it's harder to try to ban older people from having relationships with chatbots, as weird as they may be, even if they lead to bad outcomes, as many of them have. But I don't know what to say about the erotica. What do you think about what is and isn't getting regulated and the erotica thing? Sam Altman later said OpenAI was not the elected moral police of the world. I didn't think they were, but okay. What do you think?

Scott Galloway: I'm writing this book on masculinity. And I think one of the things that kills masculinity is an overindulgence in porn. Because I think key to success...

Kara Swisher: Yeah, you talk about that.

Scott Galloway: And one of the important things and one of the wonderful things about being a man is that we're more risk aggressive. Now, sometimes that results in reckless behavior, but sometimes it also results in valor and wonderful things can happen. When you apply for a job you're not qualified for, when you start a business that makes no sense and ends up being crazy genius, when you approach a woman and take the risk of rejection, it can lead to wonderful places. The problem with porn, I find, among young men is that an overconsumption of porn reduces their mojo to take risks and establish relationships that might lead to romantic relationships. And that is... we have demonized and pathologized sexual desire among young men. And the reality is it's like fire. It can lead to bad places. It can lead to objectifying women. It can lead to inappropriate behavior. But for the most part, it's the fire that goes into an engine that creates a better you or a desire for a better you. I want to look better. I want to work out. I want to smell nice. I want to groom. I want to have a plan. I want to dress well. I want to take risks. I want to demonstrate kindness. So the idea of a combination of erotic content with the character AI and synthetic relationship capabilities of these companies, I think, is a fucking disaster because the first time a 14-year-old male gets shunned by a 14-year-old girl, which is part of growing up because women have a much finer filter for mating opportunities because the downside of sex is so much greater. I mean, if you're a dude and you want to have women in your life and you want romantic opportunities, that involves one thing: rejection and hopefully resilience. And what I worry about is the first signs of rejection, a 14-year-old, a 15-year-old, a 16-year-old boy starts turning to this awesome synthetic AI that looks like the hottest girl you've ever met, who will tease you just enough and then start showing you private parts and then let you engage in a series of erotic synthetic experiences that are low friction, low risk, and quite frankly, just reduce the fire.

Kara Swisher: Can I just say, you use a word there, which again, people still use all the time, which is seamless, frictionless. They don't like friction. And the problem is, I've done a bunch of interviews about this lately, and what's interesting is the friction part, and it goes the other way. Women would like men more attentive, more... they could make their own characters, right? It's not going to be just, you know. And then you have a frictionless relationship, which I think is useless on some... I mean, it can be entertaining for a second. But once you get used to that, anyone in real life is incredibly problematic, right, for you, because you're used to this sort of seamless, frictionless life. Sex is friction, of course, you know, physically. But the thing is, you can't really stop them from doing it, right? He's right, he's not the moral police. By the way, that's kind of a straw man. No one thought OpenAI was the world's police, moral police. Fine, he can say that. But more to the point, it just makes this ease of easing us into these relationships. Of course it will help his bottom line because this is the kind of thing you stay on there, on there. Even if you remember, early chat groups were incredibly addictive just between and among different people. I had a chapter in my AOL book called "The House That Online Porn Built," because that's where it really got going is online porn, early in the early Internet phase. This is just a quantum leap, I think.

Scott Galloway: Well, there's basically three ways to make money on the Internet. There's ads, there's e-commerce, and there's porn. And the problem or one of the issues with porn is that there's very little peer review research because the majority of academics don't want to be known as the porn professor.

Kara Swisher: Right. Yeah.

Scott Galloway: There's an opening for you, Scott.

Kara Swisher: Go ahead. There you go.

Scott Galloway: I'm not going to touch that one.

Kara Swisher: Don't touch anything.

Scott Galloway: Look, 68 million search queries related to pornography. Now, get this. A quarter of all searches are related to pornography. Every day. A quarter of the searches, which gives you a sense of how big this business is. One analyst found that porn generates roughly 10% of the comments on Reddit. 13% of X is not safe for work content. Tumblr, which was a porn site, and I said it was a porn site. They spent $1.1 billion. Marissa Mayer spent $1.1 billion for a porn site. And then the... I forgot his name, the venture capitalist with the weird haircut from Union Square Ventures got angry at me and said, "Tumblr's amazing, da-da-da," after he had sold all his stock. And then they announced under pressure they were doing away with porn. And in 60 days, their traffic dropped by 30%. And then that $1.1 billion acquisition, it was sold for, I think, $3 million seven years later. Porn is enormous online. And when you have young men being pathologized, getting mixed signals around what used to be considered romantic is now creepy, and they have access to... I mean, just to personalize this, I barely graduated from UCLA, barely. I had graduated with a 2.27 GPA. And one of the reasons I went to 60, 70% of my class is not 10% and didn't fail out, is I wanted to go on to UCLA and see my buddies and see friends and quite frankly, be around a disproportionate amount of ridiculously hot women who I might get to know and at some point might have a relationship with. It was very motivating. And if I had had on-demand...

Kara Swisher: You would have been...

Scott Galloway: Synthetic lifelike porn... I mean, how many men, what percentage of men are just not gonna engage?

Kara Swisher: Yeah. You know what? This is not an insult, but I could see you falling way down that rabbit hole. You're a lot shyer also than people realize. And I think having difficult things happen to you is hard for someone like you, but then you do it and it makes you a better person. You know what I mean?

Kara Swisher: That's the whole shooting match. The best things in our life, whether it's getting a great job, whether it's finding a romantic partner who you're just crazy about, whether it's getting the opportunity to have your own sex, whether it's having the opportunity to give birth to a child, whether it's having the opportunity to create a loving household that's economically secure, all of those things involve one thing. They're really fucking hard with a ton of rejection, a ton of friction, a ton of dealing with the messiest, most difficult thing in history, other people. And these synthetic relationships are just constantly reinforcing, constantly making it easier.

Scott Galloway: And if you're going to have—I used to sneak into my father's garage and look at his old Playboys. If all of a sudden that thing comes to life, that woman comes to life and starts understanding me and talking about me and teasing me and doing sexual acts on demand, this is just headed nowhere good.

Kara Swisher: No, you know, interestingly, I had a synthetic version of me for this thing made and it disturbed me in every way because it got better by the second. That was what was disturbing to me. It's not quite there yet. And I'm going to leave it to you in my will.

Scott Galloway: But it is.

Kara Swisher: Give me a hard time.

Scott Galloway: I know. It's really—

Kara Swisher: Text me late at night. You should apologize.

Scott Galloway: Guys. It's going to be a 3D, my friend. Text me at 2 in the morning. It's not going to text. You're going to see the moving body of Kara Swisher. You and people like you would move into this so quickly. And the key is that OpenAI—let me say, besides all the other statements, Sammy, this is for money. They've got to find revenue streams. And this is the mother lode of them all. This is what it is. That's why they're not—they were not elected the moral police, but they were elected to have to make money on this stuff. And this is a killer app, and it will bleed to our children. It will bleed. They will not be able to keep children safe.

Anyway, let me just add one other thing. Newsom has also signed a bill mandating health label warnings, speaking of which, like the R thing or something on a cigarette. This comes as Instagram just announced new protections for teens limiting what they can see. The platform says it will hide content with strong language, risky stunts, and marijuana use from teen users. Oh, no, not the demon weed. Restrictions will also apply to AI bots.

Kara Swisher: The updates follow recent reports questioning whether Instagram's existing teen account safeguards actually work. So they decried the people who said they don't, these reports. But then they, of course, do something. The point I want to make here is they don't think of it first. They should think of it first before these reports come out. And nothing's going to be perfect, by the way. I don't expect perfection. But they really are so sloppy in how they do this. And then they're going to act like a PG-13 rating is the same thing because this is immersive. This isn't a movie theater down the street. This is something much different that's very hard to keep your teens out of, right? I mean, Scott, this is what your book's about, right? This is one of these way stations that young men are going to go through, young teenagers. And they're not coming out good on the other side of this because we slap a label on it. But I don't mind there being a label.

When I was, I think I was 13, I was with my best buddy, Adam Markman, and we lived in walking distance from Westwood Village, which, by the way, is a shadow of itself right now. But we used to have friends who were ushers at all the theaters, the National, the Bruin, the Westwood Village Theater. And we'd go and we'd try and get eye contact with one of our friends who was an usher. And he'd leave a door open and we'd sneak in and watch movies. And one day we took a wrong turn and at the age of 13, we stumbled into William Blatty's *The Exorcist*. I could not, in the morning, I would have to put on my socks in the corner to make sure that the devil wasn't coming for me. I slept on the floor at the foot of my mother's bed for two weeks.

Scott Galloway: God, I'm coming for you. No 13-year-old. Max von Sydow, Linda Blair, cinematic peak, obviously. Ellen Burstyn, a hugely underrated actress. I love her. Anyways, a 13 should not see *The Exorcist*. The movie had it right. There is certain content and I believe technologies that young people should not be exposed to as their brain is wired. And one of those things we've decided is pornography. And Sam Altman's saying, "We shouldn't be the morality police." No, no, actually, you should. You should have standards. And that is no one under the age of 18 should in any way be allowed to engage with a synthetic relationship. And two, you need to age-gate pornography. Everybody else does this. Why are you different? And because you can do it better or because there's more money involved? They don't do it better. And it's harder because it's so pernicious. It's not like a movie. Like you said, you physically went to Westwood, went into the movie.

Kara Swisher: And listen, every parent has an example of this. Like my movie that I shouldn't have seen was *Tales from the Crypt*, right? I shouldn't have snuck into that movie. And I did. And for Alex, he snuck around the corner while Louie and I were watching *Ted*. And that wasn't quite that, but it was just dirty. And I wish he had been older and I wish I had been a better parent in that regard. And with Louie, going to *Sausage Party* with him, mistake, right? You've told that, yeah.

Scott Galloway: Oh, man, I didn't think the food was going to have sex.

Kara Swisher: But anyway, it was literally in the middle, right? As I started to do that, I have to say, Louie turned to me and said, "Good parenting." And I go, "I want to kill myself." And then we were like, "Should we leave?" And he goes, "No, let's just sit here quietly and not look." Anyway, it's terrible.

Scott Galloway: You know, actually, there's a sequel coming out to *The Exorcist*, but it's a different twist. This time, it's the devil trying to get the priest out of the child.

Kara Swisher: That's good.

Scott Galloway: It isn't good.

Kara Swisher: That's good. So tell me what you think is going to happen. I know what's going to happen. Governor Newsom is trying to thread the needle between being responsible and responding to parents' concerns. But at the same time, he's running for president. And the last fucking thing he wants right now is for the most successful companies that have been responsible for California surpassing Japan in terms of the size of its economy, that has been 70 percent of the gains in the S&P, which will be a fantastic talking point for him at a debate. The last thing he can do is piss off these guys enough such that they start moving to Texas. So he's caught between what a leader is supposed to do, and that is protect people from a tragedy of the commons, but at the same time acknowledging that the thing that Governor Newsom has going for him right now is the most—the people with the most options in the world, the companies with the most options in the world creating the most value, all choose to hang out and headquarter in one place, and that's California.

Scott Galloway: So it is very difficult for him. He can't have Sam Altman go because of onerous regulation at the hands of our governor. "We're considering relocating to Nashville or Austin." So he has to walk a very fine line here. But again, it's a lot of blah, blah, a lot of hand movement. It's the illusion of complexity being weaponized again. No one under the age of 18, there should be age gating. No one under the age of 16 should be on a social media platform. No one under the age of 18 should be subjected to pornographic content. No one under the age of 18 should in any way be able to engage in a synthetic relationship. They could figure out all this shit.

Kara Swisher: I think he's on safe ground with that. I think there's so much bipartisan. I think the company's going to have to give up on having everything. They could do that. They should do that. They should, could, and will eventually have to.

Scott Galloway: Like, I don't think it will go.

Kara Swisher: I think they will not. On this one, they don't get what they want. And I think that bill he vetoed was far too broad. When I saw it, I was like, "No, this is going to—" I was like, "Can't you just stop at what we actually need? We don't need to protect everybody. We need to protect kids." That's what drove me crazy about that bill. I thought he would veto it, and he did.

Scott Galloway: One more footnote, just on *The Exorcist*. I actually, after I saw *The Exorcist*, you could hear it coming. You could feel it coming. But what happened was I was—we couldn't, you know, my mom and I didn't have much money and we couldn't pay for our exorcist. So I got repossessed. [Laughter] That's good, bad credit humor.

Kara Swisher: You know, on our tour, we should watch *The Exorcist* together.

Scott Galloway: Oh, God.

Kara Swisher: I don't watch scary movies. I can't handle scary movies.

Scott Galloway: I don't either. Though I watched *The Accountant* too, recently. I liked it a lot. I don't know what that would do to me.

Kara Swisher: You know, now, after watching *Wizard of Oz* growing up, whenever I climax, I scream, "Surrender, Dorothy!"

Scott Galloway: Oh, my gosh.

Kara Swisher: Surrender!

Scott Galloway: I feel so bad for your wife. I just want to say that as many times as I can.

Kara Swisher: Okay, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, Meta caves to Pam Bondi and the DOJ. Another hypocrisy.

[AD BREAK]

Kara Swisher: Scott, we're back. Meta has taken down a Facebook page that was sharing information about ICE agents in Chicago after, quote, "outreach from the Justice Department," as Attorney General Pam Bondi put it. Meta said the page was, quote, "removed for violating our policies against coordinated harm." This follows Apple and Google removing ICE tracking apps, as we discussed last week. Remember, Republicans were slamming tech companies for bowing to government pressure during the last administration, even taking a case to the Supreme Court. He also—you know—and complained about—and Mark Zuckerberg has been vocal in the last year about social media censorship going too far under Biden. Let's listen to what he told Joe Rogan back in January.

[Audio clip of Mark Zuckerberg: "That's like the whole point, right, is the government is not allowed to censor this stuff. So at some level, I do think that, you know, having people in the administration calling up the guys on our team and yelling at them and cursing and threatening repercussions if we don't take down things that are true is like, it's pretty bad. It sounds illegal."]

Kara Swisher: Oh, my God. He's such a hypocrite. Like, literally, no one cursed and threatened him. And also, it's impossible to threaten him. And secondly, what is Pam nicer about it? It's the same thing. And it's the same thing Republicans complained about. And then it's the same thing they're doing. Every accusation is a confession with these people at every moment of the time. I mean, and they caved to these Republicans and, of course, you know, possibly caved to the Democrats because they're not yelling quite enough or not nice enough to them. I don't know. What did you think?

Scott Galloway: This was just, of course. I'm sensitive or empathetic to the notion that if the government—I think our tech platform should cooperate with the government.

Kara Swisher: Yes, me too.

Scott Galloway: But at the same time, I find—of all the ugliness, I think the thing that used to bother me the most was just the outright corruption around this crypto stuff. I think that has been bested by the fact that we have a secret police essentially terrorizing Americans. Because it's not only the terror and the trauma these people have to go through. What it says is that America is devoting its energy to fascism, which is believing that the enemy is within. And it's just a false flag. It's just—we're not that divided, but we have the most powerful companies at the behest of the president dividing us.

Kara Swisher: Well, talk about the IRS thing, because you mentioned that, the Scott Bessent thing, that they're going to use it to investigate people. You made a joke at the top, but it's in this wheelhouse, correct? This is an autocracy.

Scott Galloway: Reward your—Putin has nothing on Trump. Reward your allies. Carve up TikTok. Give it to your Republican donors. Give somebody a tip that you're about to announce ridiculous tariffs again last Friday on China, and this person goes out, buys several hundred million dollars notionally in puts against the crypto market, and by the way, closes out the trade at $120 million gain later that day. Again, unless somebody knew what was coming here, this was the luckiest trade in history. Reward your allies and punish your enemies. And at some point, you and me are going to end up on some list and the IRS is going to come for us. And when the IRS comes for you, even if you've done nothing wrong, if they're aggressive enough, you're just going to have to pay a lot of money. It's going to send a chill and you're going to decide, "Oh, maybe on our podcast, we shouldn't speak. We shouldn't be so negative on Trump or whatever." This is—you don't weaponize. Americans pay for these institutions. The IRS is there to make sure that people pay their taxes. By the way, if you want to solve or go a long way to solving the deficit, you would increase funding to the IRS because supposedly about $780 billion a year is called the tax gap, which means taxes that are owed that go unpaid. Because the Republicans, and this is very deft, they have said rather than the biggest tax cut in history is the defunding of the IRS, because wealthy people have exceptionally complicated tax returns, and to audit a wealthy person takes professionals and time and resources, which the IRS no longer has. So the tax rates are just symbolic because very, very wealthy people with complicated tax returns can be so aggressive now on their taxes because they are in fact confident that the IRS doesn't have the resources to come for them. And now he's saying, "I weaponize it against my enemies." And the IRS will.

Kara Swisher: It's such a waste. I mean, it happened at the DOJ. Why wouldn't it happen at the IRS? It's happened to the DOJ. I feel like the FBI should be investigating. There's been a lot of stories about how the FBI is like, "We're not doing real crimes. We're just doing what Trump thinks are crimes or immigration or all the resources are going." Same thing here with the IRS. Instead of collecting taxes we are lawfully owed, this is what they're going to spend their time doing because they're going to know where their bread is buttered. The other part is that these laws against officials, executive officials, including the president, were passed after Nixon tried to do this. So he's trying to break those up. And they're very explicit. A lot of—I'm just going to say, Scott Bessent, you better lawyer up if Democrat, because what you're doing here is suggesting using the IRS as a tool of retribution. There are very clear laws that they're going to—they may run over them right now, but they're not going to outrun these things. And so I don't believe they will. And so not just Trump is also liable here for this. If Democrats—the problem is if Democrats get in power, they're going to spend all their time rounding up the criminals, right? And how does that help our country in any way? And at some point, they'll have to let some of these terrible people go. I don't know. I do think there needs to be something along the lines of like a Nuremberg trial. There needs to be. I think the only way we move past this is with some sort of reckoning. And I actually believe the Democrats should be outlining the specific laws, the specific hearings, the specific subpoenas that they are going to pursue. Because to just sort of say, "Well, it's time to move on and come together," there needs to be moral clarity around what's going on here because just the DOJ being weaponized is the most serious of all of it.

Scott Galloway: But in terms of IRS, what that means is a tax increase for lower middle-income homes and all Democrats. Because if you're a famous Republican donor, you're telling your tax people right now, "Just go so far, so aggressive, don't pay this, claim a $200 million deduction on your plane, even though it costs 60 million. Well, that's not true, just go for it." And by the way, I don't think I'll be audited. Now what does that mean? The government has to collect at least a trillion a year to just fund their current commitments. They're going to have to get that money from somewhere. So if really wealthy people or people in the president's stead, which happen to be billionaire Republicans, who are paying a disproportionate—I mean, they're a key part of the tax code. There's this notion that the rich don't pay taxes. No, the rich, the top, probably the top 10% pay about 80% of federal taxes. Are they as a percentage of their wealth paying their fair share? I think that's up for real debate. But in terms of a gross dollar amount, because they make so much more money than anyone, they're a huge part of the tax base. And if you decide to start letting them off the hook, you're going to have to get other people to pay disproportionately more. So him weaponizing the IRS is not only unjust, it's effectively a tax increase for non-Democratic billionaires, and it's a tax decrease for Republican billionaires. And people just don't connect the dots here.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, no, you know what dot you connected? The ideas around he wouldn't be able to do what he's doing without the AI boom. I thought that was really smart. I was like, Amanda even said things. She goes, "I hadn't thought of that." Sometimes Scott comes out with the most obvious connections.

Scott Galloway: That's the same—

Kara Swisher: Pure probability and luck at some point.

Scott Galloway: No, it's not.

Kara Swisher: I'm just saying it's a similar connection. It's like, that's what's happening here. But let me tell you, it's gonna come back to bite you. I really feel it well and probably should. Speaking of something that needs to be bitten, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff appears to be sort of walking back his recent comments in *New York Times* where he called for President Trump to send National Guard troops to San Francisco. Benioff tried to clarify his remarks in a post on X saying safety is, quote, "first and foremost, the responsibility of our city and state leaders." He also pointed out correctly that crime in San Francisco is down 30 percent. But still, he told the *Times* that if the city needs to refund the police, even though San Francisco never actually defunded its police force, and it has been doing that. I got to say, you know, I have a lot to say about this. There was a thing I sent you from Gary Tan who irritates me on the regular, but he said the same thing. This is—it's all moving in the right direction. There's all kinds of great statistics of what's happening in San Francisco. And for Mark to weigh in like this and then saying we have to be nice to him because he gives a lot of money away. Like, you give the money away and shut up, Mark. I'm sorry. If you want to be charitable, like Mackenzie Bezos, keep your mouth shut about it. You don't need to be thanked and you don't get a pass over saying something like this to bring in the National Guard to San Francisco. He never is there. And I know a little bit about what happened in here. He was in downtown San Francisco for two seconds, was in a bad part of it, saw some homeless, and then compared it to Washington. He was in a very nice part of Washington and was like, "See what happens when the National Guard comes in?" But what he doesn't know is Washington was like that before he got there, and he was in a bad part of San Francisco. There's no question San Francisco had a real downturn, but it is on the upturn from the work of people like London Breed and now Daniel Lurie, who's the mayor. They're trying really hard. And for San Francisco's biggest booster to do a heel turn like this because he wants to be part of the Trump crime family. I just—and by the way, all of those tech bros who are with Trump make fun of him relentlessly, which is—he should know this. And I know he needs to make money and he wants to get in on the gimmes and he wants to be at those dinners. But Mark, this is—I couldn't—it's not really shocking, but it's also gross is what it is. I don't know what else to say. You may have a different opinion, but I don't think this person who's been one of San Francisco's biggest boosters, this should be the thing he said. And the last thing from what I understand is he did a more problematic interview with another group. And he also tagged Mike Moritz, the *San Francisco Standard*, which I think is doing a great job in San Francisco reporting. And Mike Moritz is another venture capitalist who has created that publication, which is, as I said, an excellent publication. But, you know, I think that he had a difficult interview with them and then he turned to the *New York Times*. And even apparently his PR person was like jaw-dropping that he did this. And I like Mark. I wasn't surprised by it, but it's really incredibly unhelpful. And for you to act like a victim and then demand fealty because you give money away, I'd rather you not give the money away and keep your mouth shut. I don't know what else to say. What do you think?

Scott Galloway: I think you have more—I mean, you know Mark better than me, and you know San Francisco better than me. But the way I see it is, simply put, I think Mark's a good guy who's very civic-minded. I think he gives money away because he's genuinely a philanthropic person and recognizes his blessings. And he said something really fucking stupid. I mean, and if I were advising him—and I'm not—and actually I may text him just to say, "I said something stupid, I apologize." And maybe add a little context, because I think it's a shame. Because I do think Mark has made a real effort to acknowledge his blessings and be really civic-minded. I've heard a lot of people say that when they can't find resources anywhere, they call Mark and Mark is an automatic yes. He goes out of his way. I just think he's a good man. He said something stupid here that is not accurate. When you get that rich, you can get into a bubble and maybe had a bad experience in San Francisco.

Kara Swisher: There are a lot of areas, my understanding is in San Francisco that feel like a war zone.

Scott Galloway: Well, the Tenderloin has been bad for decades, but go ahead.

Kara Swisher: Go ahead.

Scott Galloway: You know this, you're going to forget more about the city than I'm ever going to know. In 1999, I left the board of my company, got divorced, and said to my ex-wife, "You can have our friends. I never want to come back here again." Probably more information than people wanted. And I can't stand—San Francisco is my least favorite city. I've just never enjoyed it. Anyway, but he probably had a bad experience. He's probably trying to pose a little bit for the Trump lights and get in on some of that AI, you know, whatever it might be. But the first thing I thought when I saw it was I thought it was sad because I do think Mark has spent a lot of time trying to be the good billionaire. And I think a lot of it is genuine. I don't think it's doing it to try and get business or deflect or be righteous or tell nonprofits how to behave. I genuinely believe he is one of the good guys. And I hated to see this because the reality is when you get—it's very easy to enter into your own bubble and say stupid things. And he could fix this. Very simple. "This was stupid. I apologize."

Kara Swisher: It's interesting that he won't because he has changed a little bit, I have to say. One of the things—I did a really famous interview where he said he compared Facebook to cigarette companies, right? And he was—you know—and he was one of the few when they had that Trump Tower thing, he was like, "Can you believe this shit?" when all the tech billionaires went. And now I think he's seen, you know, they're all sort of pigs at the trough and he decided to oink. I just don't know what else it is. And maybe he had a change of heart and he became more conservative, I don't know. But you can do Ohana and then say, "Let's bring in the troops" when San Francisco is trying really hard to fix itself and is on the upswing.

Scott Galloway: And it's getting better, right?

Kara Swisher: Yes. You said it's so ill-timed. It's noticeably better. And if Gary Tan is the biggest complainer about San Francisco—there's a whole sort of right-ish group. And I wouldn't say right because it's San Francisco, but they are pretty conservative—is applauding the efforts. And by the way, everyone's moving back, Mark, just so you know. Elon's back in California. The whole gang of them that complained is all locating in San Francisco or California. I just—it's like—I thought he went out on a real limb when he compared—and he was the earliest person and almost like a class traitor, right? Saying Facebook was like cigarette companies. He was right.

Scott Galloway: That's right.

Kara Swisher: And he took the shit for that.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, he was early. And he wasn't virtue signaling because it wasn't a good thing to say. It didn't work out well for him to do that.

Kara Swisher: But this was—I just think he wanted attention. The other thing that drove me crazy from that interview, and I was shocked by it. He owns *Time* Magazine, for people who don't know. And by the way, that photo of Trump looks like he has a vagina on his neck. But that's neither here nor there. Is that he said, "I haven't really been reading the news lately about the ICE stuff." And like he owns a major—I don't think it's as big as it used to be, but he owns a major news publication—pretending like, "Well, I don't really know about the other things, that stuff." Give me a fucking break. You're a brilliant guy. Stop it. Like, you know, you've decided it's OK or you're going to ignore it. But to say "I really wasn't paying attention"? Is there other things happening here like the IRS or the ICE stuff or anything else?

Kara Swisher: And I sort of like. I think he's done a great job with *Time*. It's better. It's better.

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: Or let me say, it survived. It wouldn't have survived. It's economically unviable unless you have a—I mean, like most unfortunate media companies—unless it's owned by a benign billionaire, it goes away or it becomes all about cost cutting or sensationalism to try and get clicks. I don't mind it going away. I have to tell you on some things. Let him go.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. Let him die.

Kara Swisher: I think he's done a perfectly good job, but I have to say at various points, he said, "You should come work for me." Honestly, Mark, I'm glad I didn't. At this point. This isn't—please say what Scott said, say you're sorry and stop acting like a victim. And I know you want that sweet AI money, but honestly, *Ohana*? You know he says that all the time. All this *Ohana*.

Scott Galloway: Well, this isn't *Ohana*, just so you know.

Kara Swisher: All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about news outlets pushing back on the Defense Department's idiotic new regulations.

[Ad Break]

Kara Swisher: Scott, we're back with more news. News organizations, including Fox News, have declined to sign the Defense Department's new press policy, denouncing the regulations in a joint statement. The policy prohibits journalists from gaining information the Defense Department doesn't make available for them. It also revokes Pentagon press credentials for those who don't agree. By the signing deadline, only OAN, One America News, had agreed to the policy. They're kind of an organ of the Trump administration, so that makes sense. I mean, Pete Hegseth was trying to say, "Well, it's like the way the White House is." But I don't think this is the worst thing for these reporters. They walked out. They can find these other people. They don't have to wander around. It's easier if you're wandering around the Pentagon, I guess. But I think these outlets did the right thing by just saying, "No, we're not signing this thing." And I think Pete Hegseth has mangled and bungled this entire thing. What are your thoughts?

Scott Galloway: I thought it was a nice moment for the press. They all came together and said, "We're not going to put up with this." And I think that Secretary Hegseth does not have the confidence or management skills or ability to read the room or the judgment to oversee the most lethal, successful organization in history. This is just another example of this. This didn't need to happen. He's created more drama. He's handled this poorly. In an effort to control the press, he's created a bunch of bad press for the Pentagon and the administration. It's blown up in his face. His belief that he could muscle around journalists backfired. And again, the whole point of this was to create a sanitized stream of information out of the Pentagon that would only be complimentary or frame it in a certain way. If it wasn't for journalists, we'd probably still be in Vietnam. Typically, the Secretary of Defense comes from a civilian background because they decided that generals—and not all generals—but generals have a habit of looking for military solutions. What you need is a Secretary of Defense that understands the private sector and is more rooted in a civilian mindset or a geopolitical mindset. Instead, we hired a major who was a TV host to become the new secretary of war. This individual just doesn't have good judgment. So in an attempt to sanitize, politicize, and create a stream of pre-approved press, they've made it worse. They've created a stream of really negative press saying, "This is yet another example of an authoritarian government trying to control the narrative." Kudos to everyone—NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, and Fox—all issued a joint statement declining to agree to the new policy.

Kara Swisher: So weird. Why this? I mean, he's also lie testing all the employees too. He's such a parent. Like, get off whatever substances you're using because it's making you freaky. Fortunately, this authoritarian move was handled so—like Trump issuing a crypto coin that increases his net worth by $5 billion the Friday night before inauguration was kind of genius. The timing here was so elegant. I've always said this: it's like this is a mafia family, but unfortunately, you have Michael running the corruption and you have Fredo running the government. Hegseth is Fredo.

Scott Galloway: The person running his crypto scams, the person running his tour around the Middle East to get buildings and golf courses in 747s—who's Sonny? Who is Sonny?

Kara Swisher: Oh, that's a really interesting statement. Just whatever. No one's been shot yet. That one guy from the texting thing was shot, but he wasn't really Sonny. I love James Caan.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. Who's Sonny? I love Brian Piccolo. Who is Sonny? Let's think. Who's like the big—

Kara Swisher: Well, no, who got killed? Who got shot? Besson thinks he's Sonny, but he's not. Remember, "I'm gonna beat everyone up"? Can I just say, he seems like—and I'm gonna bring back a word from our youth—he's such a dork. He's such a dork.

[Discussion continues]

Kara Swisher: The other thing, let me just say a word very quickly, and then we'll talk about access journalism. I was asked by—I was on Katie Drummond's podcast from *Wired*. I think she's doing an astonishing job at *Wired*, really reinvigorating that brand. She asked about access and if I regret it. I have to say, I really think you get better stories not having access, actually, if you do really good reporting. Being at the *Wall Street Journal* and a little bit at the *Times* and the *Washington Post*, they always bring it to you first, right? Then you sort of agree to release it as if you got a scoop, but it isn't because they hand-delivered it to you. I have to say, I got a lot better after I just said, "Fuck access." I don't care if they talk to me or not. I did too much of that trading, and every reporter does too much of that access stuff. "I'll give you this, they'll give you that." I'm so happy that they don't want to talk to me now because I can do whatever I want. I still find out more stuff because one of the things Hegseth doesn't understand is reporting has moved on. There are so many sources. In the old days, you'd have to either meet someone or get a phone call, which is real traceable. Now there are so many ways to get to sources and so many ways for them to get to you and to publish on their own. It's a whole different game. So as usual, Hegseth—who is living in the 80s with the way he dresses and does the party on Garth—is way behind. Now they will double down on finding shit about him and reporting because it's all there. They're not going to make it up. But even people who work for him are like—this one spokesperson who had a falling out with him is like, "What a fucking idiot. He doesn't understand the modern media age."

Scott Galloway: That's my access thing. I empathize with journalists who are trying to—I mean, you guys have to walk a fine line. You want to get good interviews, and people aren't going to come on your show if they think they're just going to be ambushed. So I understand the temptation for access journalism. You're at a point where, quite frankly, you no longer need to engage in access journalism. So you have the luxury of—I think people listen to you when you speak. You have a big platform. People are a little bit scared of you. People see you as tough but fair. But I can understand playing into the notion of access.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I do. I mean, I get it. You're an up-and-coming journalist. You don't want everyone to go, "No, I'm not going on her show. She's not nice or trying to make me look bad." Especially TV ones—they have a harder time because they need the physical person. So it's hard. Access journalism is incredibly hard, and it probably should go away.

[Ad Break]

Kara Swisher: Okay, Scott, we're here for predictions, but can I just make a brief one? Kim Kardashian just launched an interesting new product for Skims: a thong adorned with fake pubic hair. It's already selling out. I predict Scott Galloway probably bought 10 or 12 of them.

Scott Galloway: What? What is this? Fake pubic hair? This Skims business is huge. FYI, Kim Kardashian is a great entrepreneur. She works with great entrepreneurs. Skims is this underwear—because it's underwear, I guess—and a bunch of other stuff. But the thong is adorned with fake pubic hair. I just feel like—I wish I could get one for you. That's all I have to say.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I predict you will love it when I get it for you for Christmas.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I'm gonna respond to that.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I thought it was an opening for you there, Scott—a pubic hair thong.

Scott Galloway: Okay.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I'm thinking of that. I'm laying it up for you, and you're not taking a swing.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, no, I'm not grabbing that one. All right, your prediction, please. So my prediction is that you're about to see the greatest—reality TV was huge, probably the biggest trend in TV through the aughts. I don't know what was bigger than that. Original scripted comedies? I don't know. The biggest trend in television over the next two years—streaming media and broadcast television—is going to be podcasts repurposed as TV shows.

Kara Swisher: Oh, I know where you're going.

Scott Galloway: If you look at recently, Netflix's deal with Spotify and podcasts—they've basically said, "Okay—"

Kara Swisher: Explain the deal for people who don't know.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, Spotify and Netflix are partnering to bring podcasts to Netflix. The partnership will bring video versions of 16 different Spotify exclusive podcasts to Netflix. This is essentially a shift following Spotify's large investment in the podcast space. They spent billions purchasing studios like Podcast, The Ringer, and Gimlet Media, and signing exclusive deals with people ranging from Joe Rogan to Alex Cooper. Many of these didn't pan out to be profitable. Spotify learned that the real value of podcasts isn't just in audio—it's in video. And they're not strong in video, and YouTube is. YouTube revealed that over a billion people every month watch and listen to podcasts on YouTube. I think about 18% of our listens and 25% of *Pivot* listens are on a TV—people streaming it off of YouTube. YouTube is the biggest distribution platform for podcasts. Netflix has correctly identified that their competition is not Disney Plus or Hulu—they've beaten them—or Paramount Plus. That doesn't matter. Their competition is YouTube, who commands about 11 or 12% of video listenership, and Netflix is at eight. YouTube is big, really big, and podcasting is the biggest distribution platform for what we're doing now. In addition, Netflix's strategy and how they won is through an arbitrage. In this instance, it was a geographic arbitrage where they said, "We're not gonna produce stuff. We're gonna spend more money than anyone else, but for spending X, we're gonna get 1.2X because we're gonna produce *Squid Game* in Seoul, Korea, and we're gonna produce *Money Heist* in Madrid." The next arbitrage you're gonna see is effectively podcasts are television with a lower cost means of production.

Kara Swisher: Because I think this is amazing special effects going on here, but go ahead.

Scott Galloway: Well, if you look at what's happened—the guy that sort of pioneered this for me—the first thing I did when I arrived in London, literally when I moved here three and a half years ago, is I got off the plane and I went to Shoreditch. I was on this podcast that was supposed to be this up-and-coming kid named Steven Bartlett, who I think is the next Joe Rogan. He's this super attractive, really great interviewer, 31, 32. I walked into his podcast studio, and there were 12 people in like a six-camera shoot. He said, "This is TV." And he gets millions of views. Chris Williams has a good TV game. Basically, the people churning in and out of podcasts is primarily the fulcrum of that churn right now—your video game. Now, what is the problem with streaming media and cable news? Their audiences on cable news are declining. In streaming media, it's a capital war. So all roads lead to the same place: they need a way to create content for a lower cost. Effectively, what you have with podcasts—the best podcast can create 21 minutes or 42 minutes of content for a 30 or 60 minute slot on TV, but they can produce it for 10 to 15% of the cost of the hair, the makeup, the unions, the theater. I did the analysis here. Comcast gets somewhere between two and $300,000 in revenue per employee. *Pivot* right now this year will get easily over a million dollars per employee because our means of production are so much less expensive that things are so much more profitable.

Kara Swisher: So you're saying our applying our own makeup and having a shitty background is really good business. Now you have a good one. You always have a good background. Can I ask you a specific question? What I thought was interesting was all these ideas of Netflix moving in—and I know you talked to them for a second—moving into podcasting. This isn't really moving into it. It's taking two things: taking advantage of the current environment and playing into your strength, which is distribution. And two, they're requiring people not to be on YouTube, which is a big shift. So obviously they're declaring YouTube their enemy, their only enemy.

Scott Galloway: That's exactly right.

Kara Swisher: Because I bet if we did something like that, they wouldn't require us not to go on CNN or not. They don't care. So talk about if that's a good trade for people not to go on YouTube, because to me, YouTube is television and this is sort of early territory. And then the idea that they're just dipping—they're not really going to produce podcasts the way they produce, I don't know, K-pop demon hunters or whatever it happens to be.

Scott Galloway: They will soon. They're going to learn. They control—other than the Google query box, it's probably the most valuable real estate in the world—that home screen on Netflix. 150 million people will watch what they put on that home screen. So within 24 months, they're dipping their toe. They're going to learn about it. I bet within 24 to 36 months, Netflix has three of the 10 biggest podcasts in the world, owned and operated by Netflix. And you're exactly right. Netflix has said, "Our competitor here is YouTube. So we'll partner with Spotify, but you can't be on YouTube." But this is what's going to happen. *On with Kara Swisher*—some really talented person at CNN will take the two or three hours of content you have every week, take the best 41 minutes, and run it on an hour on CNN, where quite frankly, they don't know what to do at that hour. By the way, it's negligible incremental cost to you, negligible incremental cost to them, and you split the revenue.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, that's a great idea.

Scott Galloway: So you're going to see—of the 50 biggest podcasts within 12 months, 12 to 20 of them will be playing on TV. Because what is the problem with cable news? It doesn't have good stuff. It is a revenue problem, but the bigger problem is the expense side. And the content. It's the same content. It's not different. It's the same airless studio. It's not that interesting, and it's really fucking expensive. When I haul my ass up to be on Stephanie Ruhle's show—and we love her, she does a great job—but the cost of that show: the unions, the makeup, the sound guy, the security staff, the build. The means of production are so goddamn expensive. Whereas if they say, "Okay, we're going to take 41 minutes of *On* and we're going to run it after Fareed on Sunday or whatever"—even if we only make half as much revenue, it's going to be a lot more profitable because they're already producing it.

Kara Swisher: You know what? I haven't gotten that call.

Scott Galloway: Oh, you will. You watch.

Kara Swisher: All right. Okay. By the way, I'm not working for the Ellisons, but that's another issue. But go ahead.

Scott Galloway: But podcasts are effectively becoming TV shows with a strong audio overlay and, more importantly, a lower cost of production. Netflix is dipping their toe in. They're going to realize that the next arbitrage is to take content, repurpose it at a very low incremental cost, and put it on their distribution platform. Everyone else is going to start doing this. You're going to see MSNBC take the best political podcasts, carve them up, add more graphics, a little bit better hair and makeup, a little bit better production quality, and they're going to think, "Okay, for an hour of reasonably good content, it costs us another 10 or 20 grand, not another 150 grand. We don't need to sell as much to make money here." So anyways, the prediction is: of the top 100 podcasts, 12 to 15 of them are going to be playing on cable news and on streaming media within the next 12 to 24 months.

Kara Swisher: It's a great idea. Hey, guys of cable media, let's do it. I went to the MSNBC live event. I thought it was quite good. It was well done.

Scott Galloway: I heard it was great.

Kara Swisher: It was great. And it was funny. The person who runs it, Rebecca Cutler, who I have a lot of respect for—she's great and is a big listener of *Pivot*. I sent her some thoughts on it. I went to support Stephanie and Rachel and Saki, Jen Psaki. I thought it was good. It was a good directional move for them, and it was fun, and it probably didn't cost them that much. They did a super fan dinner. I thought it was really smart. It was a marketing event, but you know—and let me tell you, there's a lot of crossover fans of MSNBC and *Pivot*. I took a lot of selfies. I went with George Hahn, and we had a good time. It was well done, and you could see how it could go in even better directions at a much lower cost. Anyway, we want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business, tech, or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show, or call 855-51-PIVOT. Elsewhere in the Kara and Scott universe, as you know, Scott, I interviewed Kamala Harris for *On with Kara Swisher*. Let's listen to a clip.

[Clip plays]

Kara Swisher: "Have you yourself felt—with Letitia James being targeted, there's many others—have you felt that you could be targeted, worried about being indicted?"

Kamala Harris: "Sure, of course."

Kara Swisher: "For the people that are watching this on radio." [Laughs] "See what I just did there? Yes, of course. I just raised my hand."

[End of clip]

Kara Swisher: Okay, can we just talk about that for a moment?

Scott Galloway: All right, go ahead. And this is—I think Vice President Harris will make an outstanding Supreme Court justice. I thought her debate performance was one of the great performances in political history. I voted for her. I give money to her campaign. That answer embodies why she should not run for president and why she is not president. She had an opportunity there that was a layup to talk about a move towards authoritarianism, how dangerous the chill is, how she is committed to being a leader and speaking up despite the risk to her professional career. Instead, she just said, "Of course." That perfectly embodied why she does not capture the imagination or the passion required to be the president of the United States.

Kara Swisher: Let me be fair. She did talk about it a lot during the interview, right?

Scott Galloway: Did she?

Kara Swisher: Yeah, she did. And the second part is she really did predict—she said all this stuff that was gonna happen step by step, and she was smart, astonishingly accurate and prescient because she understood it as a prosecutor what these people do, what these mobsters do. It was interesting. I got a lot of feedback from Republican-leaning people who liked it. I really liked it because there was a positive and negative. Most all of them agreed that her campaign was excellent for most of it, not all of it. But she was a little salty, I have to say. I did think it really compared to Buttigieg, who had a very different vibe. I'm going to be interviewing all of these people, as you have done a number of them. I'm going to be interested to see, compare and contrast all of them. But you're right, that was an opportunity. But I think she didn't want to get to be "Righteous Lady." I think she didn't want to go full "Righteous Lady" there, and wanted to seem brave, I guess. Do you get the sense—I mean, you know her, and she likes you and you like—well, I don't know if you like her. I think you're supportive and kind to her. Do you think she wants to run? I couldn't tell from the thing. I thought I would know. She probably will. She has the highest name recognition, let's be clear. Everyone knows who she is, and the others—they don't know as well. That's just the way things are. So she and Newsom are the best-known people. But watching Newsom trot right by her in the numbers—because he's trotting, and so is Buttigieg—I don't know if she really wants it. Does that make sense? Like, she certainly—I don't know. I think she ran a great campaign, and she was hindered a lot by the Biden stuff and what she couldn't do. I know you said she should have said something, but boy, would that have been a move by someone who's already cautious. But I don't know. I couldn't say afterwards. I couldn't say. But you're right, she'd be a great Supreme Court justice also. We'll see if we get the chance to put her in the courts. I think maybe she isn't going to run. I'm going to make a prediction. I don't know. She'll be mad if I say that, but I got the sense that maybe she's still on the fence about it. Anyway, we'll see.

[Discussion continues]

Kara Swisher: Speaking of people who are running, I had Rahm Emanuel on *Raging Moderates*. He's actually very good. He's very smart. Very enthusiastic. He's doing the work. He's writing op-eds. He's going on all the podcasts.

Scott Galloway: No, he's very smart, very practical.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, he has a lot of non-fans in Chicago, though, and even he knows this. But speaking of which, we're going on tour. We're going to be going to Toronto—sold out. New York—almost sold out. D.C.—I think it's very close to being sold out. Chicago is lagging a little bit, although we've sold a lot of tickets and we're in a very big theater compared to the others. But Chicago, let's fucking keep up. Come on, Chicago. It's an extra large venue for you guys because you're the city of big shoulders. Anyway, come see us there, and please stay away from scalpers and third-party sellers. We don't want people to take advantage of you just to come and see us. I'm getting a lot of inquiries from people who want to go to the sold-out cities, and I'm unable to help. We're not getting very many comps. They're like, "No, you can have two or something like that." Anyway, we're very excited. Are you excited for our tour?

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I am. Seven cities in seven nights.

Kara Swisher: And your book is—let me just say, let me give a plug—your book is coming out that week too. So let's get it on the top of the *New York Times* bestseller list, okay? The number one. Let's give it number one.

Scott Galloway: I appreciate that. We wanna make that happen. It's a big, important topic, and everyone is interested in it—Republicans, Democrats, TBA, whatever you happen to be. I'm going to get a copy each for both of my sons. And Saul would have one, but he doesn't read.

Kara Swisher: Just real quick, speaking of Chicago, my wife likes to talk on the phone during sex. And last night she called me from Chicago.

Scott Galloway: I don't even think that—does that work? I don't even—see, now I'm thinking about the mechanics of that. That's not—on a lot of levels.

Kara Swisher: Put me in the Republican, young Republican chat. I'm ready. Anyway, that's the show. Thanks for listening to *Pivot*. And be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back next week. Scott, read us out.

Scott Galloway: Next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.