--:-- 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: What have you been up to, Scott?
--:-- Scott Galloway: I am in Munich.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Why are you in Munich? This is what the staff wants to know.
--:-- Scott Galloway: My friend Steve Saraceno has a fund called Activant, which is a venture capital firm. I like Steve a lot, and he asked me to come speak at his annual meeting. So I'm here, on the... wait, the Haasenplatz? Somethingplatz. Everything is *platz*. I'm looking outside, and this puts me in a good mood. There's both a Ukrainian and an Israeli flag, and I think the flag of a local football team. I just think they get it here. I just think they get it.
--:-- Kara Swisher: All right. Well, there is a vast right-wing movement happening there, though they didn't quite make it this year. They didn't quite make it into power. But people seriously... people don't realize—I'm interested in German history. If you were to try and pick a country that had been the most liberal, most welcoming of immigrants, appreciative of art, respect for the sciences, academia, free speech, a thriving gay community over the last 200 years—if you were to rank all our societies—I think, distinct of this 11-year descent into horror that was the Holocaust, probably number one on the whole would be Germany. Other than this 11-year descent into darkness.
--:-- Scott Galloway: It's interesting. This week I went to a screening of *From Russia with Lev*. It's about Lev Parnas. A lot of the stuff that Russia is trying to do is very similar to what Nazi Germany tried to do. The attempts to bring down liberal democracies, how enduring they are—as enduring as liberal democracies are. It had so many echoes of that to me. The whole hijinks to overturn democracy by autocrats. But the best part was at the very end of the movie. This Lev Parnas, who was up with Donald Trump trying to create chaos in Ukraine with Rudy Giuliani—you remember he went to jail for a different thing—he has shifted the way a lot of these Republicans have shifted. These sort of Trump people, like a George Conway or an Anthony Scaramucci or Alyssa Farah. At the end of the movie, which was produced by Rachel Maddow and others, he ended up meeting with Hunter Biden, apologizing to him.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Oh, really?
--:-- Scott Galloway: Yeah.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Is that because he's trying to stay out of jail?
--:-- Scott Galloway: No, he's going to jail for something else. No, he just has... there are a lot of those people who have shifted now. Like a Michael Cohen, who were really up in the grill of Donald Trump in a very slavish way, who have shifted and are now the opposite, very intense on stopping him. There's definitely a... I don't know if they study this, but I find there are a number of individuals—Trump, I think Musk has adopted this—and that is the first thing you do when you're guilty of something is accuse everyone else of it. The far right, who screams censorship all the time, basically dominates in terms of news pieces and podcasting. If someone screams they're being censored, it means they won't shut the fuck up and they're literally everywhere.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah. It is the autocrat's playbook. The moment people start to sense you're up to bullshit, accuse everyone else of the same thing.
--:-- Scott Galloway: They do.
--:-- Kara Swisher: It's an expression I've used a lot lately: every accusation is a confession.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Oh, I like that.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah, you like that? You can use it. Borrow it. Say you want to attribute it to Kara Swisher. In any case, you won't, but that's okay.
--:-- Scott Galloway: I give tribute all the time. I give tribute. Co-host Kara Swisher. I give tribute. Give me tribute.
--:-- Kara Swisher: I'm going to New York tonight to interview Bill Gates about his documentary for Netflix. We're doing it at that Paris theater.
--:-- Scott Galloway: How to pick up chicks at work?
--:-- Kara Swisher: No. We're going to stay out of that topic. It's about the future.
--:-- Scott Galloway: You're going to avoid that whole thing?
--:-- Kara Swisher: I'm going to avoid it, if you don't mind. What floor are you going to? Have you heard him on Bill Gates? What are you doing later? But I'm going to interview him about his thing of the future. It'll be interesting. I'm going to go up to New York and come right back.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Ask him about nuclear. I think he's been a fantastic voice on nuclear.
--:-- Kara Swisher: I'm going to. That is one of the topics on this show on Netflix. It's about things going forward. He's interviewed all kinds of people, including his own daughter who strafes him about his email usage.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Look, I now feel bad because a lot of people do different things with their money. This guy is trying to figure out a way to cure malaria. We could do a lot worse with wealthy men than Bill Gates.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Oh, we are doing a lot worse. He is a complex figure. He gets attacked online for his vaccine stuff. He's like the new George Soros in a lot of ways for the right wing.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Oh, yeah. There's conspiracy theories everywhere. But I think he's actually a fairly simple guy. He's really fucking smart. He got really fucking rich. And he's really fucking horny. And didn't... probably all of a sudden woke up and it's like, "I'm the sexiest man in the world and I've never enjoyed or experienced this."
--:-- Kara Swisher: Also his wife, Melinda Gates, his ex-wife, is also doing a lot of amazing things. Big backer of Kamala Harris. She's very impressive. Anyway, all right. Now that we've covered that, I'll know what not to ask. I don't really care about his personal life. We've got a lot to get to today. Kamala Harris and Donald Trump laying out dueling visions of the economy, including a great interview by our friend Stephanie Ruhl. She was very touched that we mentioned her last episode. We're going to mention her this episode. She did. Rising star or star that's even rising more.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Yeah, I thought he liked bimbos. I love that line she had because Donald Trump called her a bimbo. "Some dumb, dumb, dumb as a rock bimbo," whatever. She had a great rejoinder to him this week and then moved on to interviewing Kamala Harris in a very sharp interview. What did you think of that interview?
--:-- Kara Swisher: I didn't see it. We're going to talk about it in a second.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Oh, we are going to talk about it. I did see it. OpenAI is moving closer to a for-profit company following more high-profile departures, with the biggest one being Mira Murati, who I've interviewed several times. But first, Meta's annual Connect conference brought lots of wearable news. And it wasn't just the sweatshirt that Mark Zuckerberg chose to wear on stage. It displayed the Latin phrase meaning... I think it meant "All Zuck or Nothing." A play on *Aut Caesar, Aut Nihil*. It was so strange. His style journey is really interesting to me. But that aside, we shouldn't talk about his clothes.
--:-- Scott Galloway: No, you know what, we should. Because he decided to wear it because he knew it would get attention, just like Melania wore the "I Don't Care, Do You?" jacket, which was boneheaded. This was just kind of silly. But he's got a new style. Anyway, the company announced a lower-cost model of its Quest 3 virtual reality headset, a prototype for Orion augmented reality glasses, a new Llama model with the ability to process visuals, celebrity chatbots with AI voices of stars like Kristen Bell and John Cena, and a new feed feature called "Imagine for You" with AI-generated content based on your interests and current trends. They also made a new limited edition cool set of their Meta Ray-Bans, which are transparent. And I just bought a pair myself. It was a lot. People there said it was a very good event. I have to say it was very lively compared to the Apple event a week or two ago. Meta is behind competitors in releasing AI models that can process visuals, as I said. But he's here. He's doing that. What thinks you of what they announced?
--:-- Scott Galloway: It was a lot of glasses. I was thinking of you the whole time.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Well, I think the most important thing about this event was clearly his fashion. I think he told the stylist, "I'm going to look like a cross between Brad Pitt in *Fight Club* and Tom Jones when he hits 60." There's just a 60s compelling yet creepy—mostly the latter—vibe to the look. I can't tell whether I like it or not.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Do you like it?
--:-- Kara Swisher: You know what? I like people who live out loud with their fashion and their physical appearance. That's why I like when high school kids dress really funky. I think it's kind of cool to explore. Let's be honest, he's a 17-year-old, right? He is, even though he's not. So anyways, I like the fashion. But in terms of the event itself, I think Mark Zuckerberg is on a mission to no longer be subject to the whims of Sundar Pichai or Tim Cook's power because they control the end distribution. I think he just decided five or seven years ago, "I have to establish controlled distribution." This is typically when a brand gets above a certain market cap, it has to establish direct-to-consumer channels to control their brand or they're subject to the whims of their distributors. They have tried. Their phone was a disaster.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Well, and the portal.
--:-- Scott Galloway: The portal. Oh, remember the portal? Oh my God, I forgot. But he is... Zuck's commitment to trying to establish vertical distribution through hardware means he is willing—and his access to cheap capital all adds up to—"I am willing to go so hard at this that I can offer 80%." Let me back up. One of my first consulting assignments was for The Gap. This was in 1992, my second year in business school. I was trying to start a strategy firm. I called Don Fisher, who was a Cal alum, and said, "I'm trying to start a strategy firm." He said, "Okay." I met with the head of strategy, this guy named Mark Bucko, who's now a minister. I said, "Just give me any question and I'm going to try and go answer it." He said, "What should we do with the Gap brand? Are there opportunities for brand extensions?" I came back and said, "Demographics are destiny. The underserved market in casual apparel is single mothers. Single mothers are especially cognizant of their daughter or son's self-esteem at school because they generally have less money. They're very worried about their kids post-divorce. But they don't have very much money. So what if we did essentially 80% of Gap for 50% of the price?" They said, "Great." Mickey Drexler loved it, launched an entire sub-brand called Gap's Old Navy. Then it became Old Navy.
--:-- Kara Swisher: So you're responsible for Old Navy?
--:-- Scott Galloway: I can't take credit for it. I just confirmed the market as single mothers for it. I think it was Mickey Drexler's vision. Old Navy is now much bigger than Gap. Old Navy was the fastest zero-to-a-billion retailer in history. A really decent business strategy: while everyone tries to up each other with a better product and incrementally go higher price based on power, "80% of the premier offering for 50% of the price" is an amazing strategy. Those are the brands that grow fastest zero-to-a-billion, whether it's Southwest Airlines doing that to American, Delta, United. What Zuck has done is he's taken the mixed reality headset and said, "I'll give you 80% of the product from Apple for 10% of the price."
--:-- Kara Swisher: Right. These are the Ray-Ban Meta glasses, correct? The Orion looks a lot like the Snapchat one. I do think there's a market here. At some point, they will have the micro cameras and the processing technology to have a seamless experience on glasses. I have to admit, my son uses those—I forget what they call them—the Meta glasses.
--:-- Scott Galloway: The Ray-Bans.
--:-- Kara Swisher: He used them skiing. I kept looking at them. He was like, "Take a photo." I'm like, "What?" He was talking to his glasses, and he really liked it. He doesn't use them a lot, but he did use them.
--:-- Scott Galloway: So I'm getting a pair of prescription ones. They're Ray-Bans, which is, of course, my brand. I think it's interesting—they're surprised by the popularity of them. Let's be clear, Snapchat is the one that really pioneered this stuff.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Well, Google had Google Glass, but that didn't really work out. Someone at some point—I know you're anti "put on your face" stuff—but at some point, the heads-up display is the way it's going. I was really interested in what Snapchat, Meta, and Apple are just continuing through with it. They've decided this is the next computing paradigm. I just got the new iPhone yesterday. Very not easy to set up, but Apple is still a really great experience in the store. Shea, by the way, thank you for helping me. What's really interesting is as I was sitting there, as we were putting the new iPhone together and transferring everything—which is such a nightmare still, and Apple's the easiest version of it—I thought, "There's got to be a new phone paradigm finally." Everything they fixed on the new iPhone, and I like a lot of the features around the camera and some of the new stuff, they've made marginal improvements in all the ways you do things on the phone and made it easier, better looking, et cetera. There has to be—this paradigm is almost over. I kept thinking as I was looking at the app paradigm: it's almost over. Where do you think it's going? Do you think the next paradigm is just voice or AI?
--:-- Scott Galloway: Heads-up display.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Heads-up display. Voice with a heads-up display in some way. Is that spatial computing? I guess. I don't know. I just felt like this is the last few of these because I think they work really well, like a book does. A book still works well. But I just feel like they have not changed this paradigm well. There's nowhere else to go with this phone, right? And Apple is the best one. Anyway, I don't know if you've gotten the new one, but try it out and let me know what you think.
--:-- Scott Galloway: I think of the phone as essentially the most elegant supercomputer ever invented, and it'll ultimately power adjacent products. What do I mean by that? Your watch isn't a wearable. It's a second screen for your phone. If you think about what you're talking about—spatial computing or real interesting applications of AI—what do you need? You need a supercomputer, you need a wearable, and you need really elegant software. To me, this all adds up to Apple.
--:-- Kara Swisher: It does. It does. I just feel like there needs to be a breakthrough. I don't know what it is. I'm glad they're making investments here. Anyway, we've got to move on. But it's a cool time. I'm excited. I'll be wearing them, and I'm going to show them to you because I think I'm going to see you soon. And speaking of Mark Zuckerberg, the Meta CEO is done with politics, according to a story in the *New York Times*. But I'm sorry, Mark. Politics is not done with you. For the past few years, Zuckerberg has reportedly expressed cynicism about politics, saying both parties loathe technology. Once again, he's being overly dramatic. He has pulled back from some of his philanthropic efforts to avoid blowback. However, Zuckerberg has spoken to former President Trump at least once or twice over the summer. I'm not sure if he's spoken to Kamala Harris. It's interesting. He's just had it with politics. But of course, he is one of the biggest lobbying organizations. I happen to like the lobbyists here for Facebook, for Meta. I don't know if we're seeing him go down an Elon path, but it's the same victimization thing that he's always carried around. Like, "Nobody likes him, and they loathe." It's so reductive. They don't loathe technology, Mark. They have problems with some of the stuff, and he never takes responsibility for his stuff. So I was a little disappointed in this article.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Look, there's nothing wrong with Mark Zuckerberg that couldn't be fixed with him having any sort of empathy or any sort of realization about the incredible harm he has done to youth, the ability to weaponize his platforms, not only weaponize elections but create conspiracy theories that often end up in serious injury or death. Also, the fact that he has made our discourse globally—in terms of the competitive advantage of our species, which is communication and cooperation—he's made that much worse and turned arguably a feature into a bug. Other than sort of fucking our species, young people, and democracy, we've really got no reason to complain about Mark Zuckerberg. So, Zuck, buddy, you go Tom Jones. You deserve it, my man. You deserve it.
--:-- Kara Swisher: I really don't like this victimization that technology people have. They really do have it. There's a great essay, speaking of Facebook, by Chris Hughes, one of the co-founders. He's quite progressive and stayed progressive. He talks about why they're doing this, and it does all center around victimization in a lot of ways—feeling like they're the brilliant people and we don't appreciate them. He has a unique insight and is also sympathetic to his founders. But I have to say, speaking of Bill Gates, he has changed rather drastically. He used to have this problem. I think he has it a lot less. Maybe he's older, maybe he has adult children to tell him to stop it, Dad. But Gates used to be like this much more than he was. Tim Cook is never like this. He never gets angry about government. He's an adult. At some point, Mark, you have to stop feeling like a victim. You've done some astonishing things, but we can criticize you and express our own cynicism towards you. It's a strange quality that he represents more than others. And Elon has taken it to ridiculous extremes. This victimization of "we hate you"—it's not that.
--:-- Scott Galloway: I think you're correct in a lot of ways. But I don't think Trump should threaten to jail him. That's terrifying. These threats to jail Mark Zuckerberg and everything else. If he has a problem, he should pass laws and sue him in court. That's very different from "we'll put him in prison," which is really frightening. I think there's definitely room for more CEOs to say, "We're a for-profit entity. We're here to leverage your skills and build a platform and create economic security for you and your family. We're going to be good citizens. We're going to be thoughtful. We're going to ensure, based on laws and what it means to be a good person, to not discriminate against people based on their sexual orientation, their race, their ethnicity, their age. But for the most part, folks, I'm not here to tell you my politics. I'm not here to position the company as being left or right because that comes with a certain amount of pressure for employees up and down the food chain to please the people that have impact over their well-being." I think there needs to be more companies who are forced to put out an Instagram post on what they feel about whatever it is—Israel or Gaza or Black Lives Matter—to say, "You know what? We're good citizens. We comply with the law. But we're here to make money. And we respect everyone's rights to do whatever they want, off hours, free speech, march for the dolphins, whatever it is. But we are in the business of shareholder value."
--:-- Kara Swisher: The problem with a company like Meta is they're involved in the social problems.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Well, media is where you spend your time. When more people are spending more time on Meta than any organization or media company... Meta's platform is the most successful thing in history. Three billion people are on these things every day. There are a billion... Communism isn't as big. The Kardashians isn't as big. Capitalism isn't. This is the biggest, most successful thing in history. He has the ability to sway so much public opinion that the responsibility of trying to do it in a thoughtful way and err on the side of being less coarse and make sure you're creating a safe place for kids... The thing that strikes me, and I've switched a little bit over the last six months based on some of the conversations I've had with people who run nonprofits—a woman named Sarah Gardner trying to protect children online—is I do think Tim Cook does an especially good job of managing his brand. The reality is, as I think about it, Tim Cook—and this is going to sound harsh—is just a very elegant drug dealer outside of junior high school.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Oh, wow. That's going to sound harsh. Too much?
--:-- Scott Galloway: Yeah, I'd say so.
--:-- Kara Swisher: He and Mark Zuckerberg—and Mark is sort of his supplier or his front end—but basically during your most formative years, when your brain is formed during puberty, these folks are getting kids addicted to massive dopamine hits. I know we're going to talk about this later, but Apple has the power to just shut this shit down for people under the age of 16. And so does Meta for most of the applications these kids use. And they choose not to.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah, they have a great responsibility. They really do. I think they just feel like they're making chickens, and it's not the same thing. Anyway, I'm going to push back on the drug dealer thing, but I see your point. I get your metaphor. You're right. Cinder's also passing out to SMAC. Cinder as well. I shouldn't have left him out.
--:-- Scott Galloway: And the people who make Doritos.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Okay, let's get to our first big story on that note. OpenAI is reportedly working on a plan to restructure the company into a for-profit benefit corporation. What a surprise.
--:-- Scott Galloway: I'm shocked, Kara. I'm shocked.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Me too. Shocked. No longer controlled by the nonprofit board. The news broke shortly after CTO Mira Murati announced she was leaving the company. OpenAI's chief research officer and vice president of research are also departing. One of them is very close to her. One interesting new detail about the restructuring plan: Sam Altman might be getting a 7% equity stake. He didn't have one, which is interesting. It makes sense. We talked a lot about this over the last few months. Even when I saw Mira the last time, I said, "It's all about the money going." When I started to see these eye-popping valuations, the nonprofit was going to get run over like so much roadkill. A for-benefit corporation is a different kind of thing, but it's pretty much a basic for-profit company. I'd love to know about the timing. The restructuring doesn't take place within two years. New investors could ask for their money back, according to the *Wall Street Journal*. New investors in its current round of funding won't face a cap on profits like previous investors. Sam obviously is getting a stake. The valuation is allegedly around $150 billion, and everyone's bellying up to the bar for this one. But then there's the departures. Is it a cleaning of the house? Mira is a very high-profile woman in tech and someone who's really been running the company. He posted on X—I think he was trying to front-run this—"Leadership changes are a natural part of companies. I obviously won't pretend it's natural for this one to be so abrupt, but we are not a normal company." Which is true. I think he's very clever at front-ending things. I was trying to think last night if there was a company in tech that's had this many early people leave. I was thinking AOL a little bit from the early days when Bob Pittman came in. Same thing with Microsoft. Same thing with Facebook. Maybe one or two people. A lot of key people stayed. So I can't think of a company except maybe way back when. He's brought in Kevin Weil and more professional executives. I haven't done any reporting, so I don't know what's actually going on. What's your take?
--:-- Scott Galloway: First off, Sam Altman is the business leader of this generation. I think what this all comes down to—one, I appreciate that they're just coming out of the closet and saying, "We're a for-profit company. We always have been. Let's stop the nonsense." If you stab the prince, you better kill him. All of these people, or at least some of them, were involved in the coup. They fired him. Then he came back. My guess is he said, "Okay, I'm going to stabilize everything." The moment everything's stabilized and it looks like we're going to raise money at an enormous valuation, these people were on the green mile ever since he came back. You don't try and pull a coup. If you want to kill Erdogan, you better make sure he's dead. Because if he survives the coup, you're going to be executed. The notion that these folks weren't dead the moment he was reinstated as CEO is laughable.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Well, a lot of the employees backed him. And Mira did switch.
--:-- Scott Galloway: She switched? You mean after he came back?
--:-- Kara Swisher: No, no, no. She was part of him coming back. She had several of them. Apparently, she went and complained about him. But then she thought they used her complaints to try to kill him, which she didn't intend. She was just complaining about some of his ways, which are very aggressive. But he's been touting her. They've been making her the face of the company for the past year or so.
--:-- Scott Galloway: I think it's natural when you go through something like this that anyone that was involved—friendly or not, or thought they were doing the right thing for the company by creating this sort of chaos and not killing him, and he gets to come back—you're dead. You're dead. No matter how sorry you are and you changed your mind or you didn't have a role, he's going to clean house. He has the capital and the equity to get incredibly talented people. I don't think this is a threat to the company. I think these are very smart people. I like it in the sense that my guess is these folks will go start competitors that will be subscale and get squashed.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah, they have. Several of them have, as you know. It's interesting because a lot of the people who were there at the beginning were indeed true believers in the safety thing, in the nonprofit version of it. They really were. When you talk to those people, it's a belief system with them. I remember talking to Mira at one point, and I was like, "You know the money's going to run everyone over. You get that." And she's like, "No, we're here for this and good." A great technologist. But I was like, "I don't care. The money is too big. Do you see how big that money is? It's going to get bigger. There's no way these capitalists, these very greedy capitalists, aren't going to run everybody down. The money will win over everything." I think that's what's happened here. I'm trying to pull up this data, but basically when you're talking about ChatGPT or OpenAI, they are literally running away with it. I hope there's other folks, but basically the monthly site visits to ChatGPT are now about the same and will blow by Amazon. They get 2.9 billion visits per month. Gemini, Alphabet's offering, with all its advantages—that probably has more IP around this and sort of invented it—is it $342 million? It's an eighth of it. Then the LLM I use, Claude from Anthropic, has $65 million. It's one-fortieth of the site. And then Mistral. If you really look at the valuation...
--:-- Scott Galloway: Why do you use Claude over...
--:-- Scott Galloway: I'm just curious.
--:-- Kara Swisher: I like it for writing. I find generally... so people are under the illusion that, okay, I like to write. I think, "Oh great, I'll write my next book on masculinity using ChatGPT and Claude and I will just get paid." No, that doesn't work. It spits back a chapter that is so anodyne and sterile and devoid of anything. It's all chip, no salsa.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Right.
--:-- Kara Swisher: But it's a fantastic thought partner. It's like, "I could really use something on this." It's like... I don't know, jerking off to primetime TV. It's just not really going to get you there.
--:-- Scott Galloway: [Laughs] Oh, he's keeping going. Okay. Yeah, I don't really get that one. Anyways, it's very anodyne. I stole that word from you. But it's an amazing thought partner. And I find what I use it for every week with my newsletter, No Mercy, No Malice, is I know it needs to be 1,500 words. I don't pay attention for longer than 1,500 or 2,000 words. I always end up somewhere between 2,200 and 2,500. And what I've found they're great at is editing and reducing. I say, "All right, take this from 2,200 to 1,800 words, punch it up. Where are the key points? Where would I insert data?" And then I'll go back and say, "Where did you cut and why?" It's like having a great thought partner. And what I have found is around editing and looking at the written word, I like Claude's approach more. When I say "in the voice of Scott Galloway," it does more than just add in dick jokes. It adds in data. Whereas ChatGPT just comes up with a dad joke.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Oh, I see. Interesting. So for you, Claude. But most people say...
--:-- Scott Galloway: Most people on my team say they use both, but they tend to defer to ChatGPT. And the new one is supposed to be amazing. And it's such a... I love the marketing gimmick where it takes longer to pretend it's thinking. That is such jazz hands.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah, it's like the car on Uber. Like, there's no car.
--:-- Scott Galloway: So interesting.
--:-- Kara Swisher: One of the things... I just interviewed Mustafa Suleyman, who's running Microsoft AI. They just announced a whole bunch of Copilot things that sound exciting. It'll be interesting to see which ones work and which ones don't. And when you said that it's basically a good copy editor for your use case... I used to say about certain editors I had who weren't very good, "You have the soul of a copy editor." I wasn't meaning it to be insulting—I value copy editors—but they thought they were more and they weren't. They were just good copy editors. And they didn't have that creativity. It's very hard to not make it dull. It requires humans still. I have not seen any of these things that make it better creatively. Better ideas, better tightening I hadn't thought of, but it's the soul of a copy editor.
--:-- Scott Galloway: 100%. My team is constantly coming to me. I'll say, "Okay, I need you to write up a page on... I think there's a great rotation coming out of flows of capital into mature markets, into emerging markets. And I want to look at the ratio between the MSCI for the world versus the US to make my point." And they come back with a paragraph, two paragraphs. I'm like, "Okay, this was clearly written by AI. I want you to write it. And then I want you to use AI to edit it and come up with more examples." But AI can't be the source code. It can be the seasoning. It can be the condiment. It can heat it up, make it more spicy. But you've got to scramble the eggs here. You've got to make your points. Otherwise, it sounds like a fucking computer wrote it.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Let me shift back to OpenAI. What do you think of this governance for this type of company? The way they're doing it is this for-profit benefit corporation. But it's essentially a for-profit company.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Oh, stop it. The benefit corporation means they have to have certain goals. It's like all this bullshit invented by Union Square Ventures where they called it a "for-benefit" profit. "I'm going to give 1% of profits in 10 years to save the whales or girls who code." God, give me a fucking break. You're in the business of for-profit—this is what you do and you're good at it. And what we need to do is start taxing you more than the lowest tax rate since 1939 so that we can use the money to help girls and to help... yeah.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah, and then we'll have voters decide how to spend this money. I agree. I just want them to be a for-profit company that... and then have the government watch the troubles, the safety issues. Have the government and the companies and advocates all decide on safety together. That's what I would prefer. But talking about valuation here, I mean, I just think it's hilarious. I'm actually interviewing Lina Khan later today. The notion that this isn't more concentrated... I mean, technologies...
--:-- Scott Galloway: A German sound. Sorry, go ahead.
--:-- Kara Swisher: That was just a German. What are you doing here?
--:-- Scott Galloway: See, they're coming for you, Scott.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Go ahead. Sorry. Lina Khan.
--:-- Scott Galloway: That's my favorite brand of marijuana. It's called "They're Coming, They're Coming." My second favorite edibles? Gorilla Panic. That's the best name of an edible. Anyways, or Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.
--:-- Kara Swisher: So let's go back to OpenAI and valuations. I just think it's ridiculous. All of these technologies have faster adoption, and a leader and a monopoly player emerges faster now. And that monopoly player is OpenAI slash Microsoft. And also, it's the best investment. If you look at a multiple on revenues of these companies, Anthropic trades at 40 times. OpenAI, which has much more momentum as a market leader, based on this $150 billion valuation they're supposedly raising at, is trading at 44 times. And then you've got Hugging Face, Perplexity, and some other smaller players. They're raising money at 142, 150, and 157 times revenue. So my attitude is if you can invest in the market leader that's running away with it at 44 times, that's where you want to put your money. And just to give you a sense of how expensive the entire space has become, publicly traded SaaS companies trade at six times revenues. And consumer companies—the old guard—trade at like 0.2 to two times. Media companies, one and a half.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Anyway, interesting.
--:-- Kara Swisher: All right. Well, we'll see what happens, Sam. I don't know who else is left to leave. I think that's about it. He's really cleared out. He's going to have no trouble finding really smart people.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about Kamala Harris's economic vision and take a listener mail question about the growing role of private equity in businesses.
--:-- Ad Break: [Advertisement]
--:-- Kara Swisher: Scott, we're back with our second big story. Vice President Kamala Harris laid out her vision for what she calls a pragmatic approach to the economy in a speech this week. Harris promised a "new way forward"—that's her expression—for the middle class and outlined plans for tax incentives to spur next-generation industries. In a one-on-one interview with MSNBC's Stephanie Ruhle, Harris explained why she supports raising corporate taxes. Let's listen.
--:-- [Audio clip plays: Kamala Harris: "But we're going to have to raise corporate taxes and we're going to have to make sure that the biggest corporations and billionaires pay their fair share. That's just it. It's about paying their fair share. I am not mad at anyone for achieving success, but everyone should pay their fair share. And it is not right that the teachers and the firefighters that I meet every day across our country are paying a higher tax than the richest people in our country."]
--:-- Scott Galloway: Supreme ruler. Stephanie Ruhle.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah, this is sort of Bernie Sanders-y, but, you know, I'm a capitalist. Talk a little bit about her plans and messaging here. I thought it was a very good interview. I think it started off slow for her, not for Stephanie, and then she got going and I was like, "Oh." She finds her footing. It takes her like literally minute 16 when she turns on, and then it was super interesting. I thought it was a very solid interview. She pressed her on where the money's going to come from if the House and Senate turn Republican, how can you pay for these things? Talk to me about it, and then we'll move on to Donald Trump. But I'd love to know your thoughts on her announcements.
--:-- Scott Galloway: I am a capitalist, but I think this is what I would call it. Corporations are paying their lowest tax rate since 1939. The wealthiest Americans are not paying their fair share. I get that Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren ran on this, but unfortunately it just sounds like reheated Sanders and Warren populist rhetoric, even if it's right. Where I think she misses an opportunity here is to appeal... This is the problem. When someone starts saying "we need to raise taxes on the rich," that's what people hear. People think, "Okay, I'm the head of M&A transactions for Skadden Arps. My husband is a very successful chiropractor with three clinics. We make two, three million bucks a year. We live in Manhattan in order to have these baller jobs. We're paying 52% taxes."
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah, welcome to Kara Swisher.
--:-- Scott Galloway: And while no one feels sorry for me, I get it. Kara, you're probably paying 45, 48 percent tax rates. And here's the thing. This is the nuance she should add that would make her argument so much more powerful. She should say, "The people who get most screwed are the people who play by the rules, work their asses off and are super successful, but are not billionaires. They're paying 50 cents on the dollar."
--:-- Kara Swisher: Well, I think she was saying that billionaires and corporations. I think she was not saying... "Billionaire" has become code for everybody. I think she needs to outline specifically who she's talking about.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Here's the bottom line. If we talk about tax rates, that's a misdirect. It's not tax rates. It's the tax code. Because while people are supposed to pay in a progressive tax rate, as soon as they make the jump to light speed and no longer become earners but owners...
--:-- Kara Swisher: They're coming for you.
--:-- Scott Galloway: It's all coming. Anyway, I mentioned edibles and they used AI. Raid is room. Anyways, the people who get most screwed in our tax code, and no one has really captured this, and it'll resonate with a lot of people, is our workhorses. The people who've done really well and live in blue states. What tax rate do you pay, Scott Galloway? I've been very open about my tax rate. I've paid over the last 10 years a tax rate of 19%. So I have a self-imposed tax rate now. I take all the money I spend in a given year and I give that much or more away. Because I realize—I want to be clear—I take advantage of every loophole. Section 1202, when I sold my company, first $10 million were tax-free. Does that make any fucking sense? The answer is no. That makes no sense. The tax code has gone from 400 pages to 4,000. And trust me, folks, that incremental 3,600 is there to fuck the middle class. And the way that happens is wealthy people and corporations weaponize government and say, "I got an idea. When someone sells real estate and it's a commercial property, let them roll that into another property without recognizing a capital gain. I got an idea. If you start a company, the first 10 million are tax-free. I got an idea. Opportunity zone. Let's help the poor." No, you're not helping the poor. You're helping rich people. You invest in these areas or you invest in small business, and you get to defer your taxes. And if you hold on to the stock for 10 years, you pay no taxes. It's the tax code.
--:-- Kara Swisher: It is amazing.
--:-- Scott Galloway: When Donald Trump said, "Why shouldn't I take advantage of it?" Everyone was mad. I'm like, "Well, why shouldn't he if they let him?" Of course. That's the only thing I thought that he said was sensible. Greedy fuck, but nonetheless sensible.
--:-- Kara Swisher: I just listened to Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner. They wrote this book called *Lucky Loser* about Donald Trump's money. They're the ones that broke all those tax stories. Really amazing reporters from The New York Times. And they essentially said that. He took advantage of every single possible thing. And instead of being mad at him, be mad at the tax code.
--:-- Scott Galloway: 100%.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Now, he veered into other things where he said things were worth more than they were. But the whole system is designed to let him do that, right? To let him then violate real laws and stuff like that.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Once you make the jump to light speed and you can afford to have really talented people navigate your taxes... And by the way, I think just as prisoners of war have an obligation to escape, I think you have an obligation to your family to pay the minimum amount of legally owed taxes. No one's going to say at your funeral, "You know what, what a great woman she was. She paid more than her fair share of taxes." No one's going to say that. What you need to do though, is if you believe in a progressive society where the middle class isn't a naturally occurring organism, you've got to vote for people that are going to actually restore... We need an AMT. We need an alternative minimum tax that says above a million, two million—pick a high number—you pay at least 30%. Because here's the thing. No one loses anything. People above a certain amount of money, it doesn't reduce their happiness, but you can take that money and make a lot of people much, much happier.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Well, let's talk about Donald Trump. He's been touting his own economic plans, which include courting foreign companies to set up factories in the U.S. with low taxes and little regulations. That's not a new, fresh thing. He also keeps talking tariffs. He needs to stop talking about tariffs. The latest, he said he'd impose a 200% tariff on John Deere if it moves production to Mexico. He had talked about an infrastructure week that never happened, and that did happen under Joe Biden. What's interesting is Harris seems to be blunting his dominance on the economy. Voters favor him on the economy in most polls. And again, Susanne Craig talked about this—the image of Trump versus the reality of Trump. He's not a very good business person. Away from the tax stuff, he fails at businesses and overspends. And this book is riveting in that regard. But he's losing. He still has the economic thing because of *The Apprentice*, probably. His lead is decreasing. Trump now averages a six percentage point edge on the economy over Harris. It was a 12 point lead over Biden. She's bringing it much closer, which is a good thing for her. Because the two areas he wins on are immigration and economy. She wins on almost everything else. But she's going to the border again. She went to Republican voters in Pennsylvania this week who really appreciated meeting her. What do you think of his plans?
--:-- Scott Galloway: I think if she can zero in on the tariff problem, which she did do in this interview with Stephanie—how dangerous this is and how they never did infrastructure week—it might really start to chip away even in the short amount of time left. The most profane word among citizens as it relates to an election and leadership is the "I" word: inflation. Inflation literally brings down societies and causes revolution because if the amount of money I'm making doesn't keep up with the increasing price of goods, I have to go from meat to no meat to potatoes to "I can't afford to pay the tuition for my kids after school." And people get really, really angry. What I would do is just try and literally tattoo the guy with inflation on his forehead. Say, "Okay, he's talking about tariffs that will double and triple the cost of items here. And at the same time, he wants to kick out people who are potentially here legally that are an unbelievable... These are the most... you are going to see rampant inflation with this guy." I would be all inflation all the time. And the other thing that I think is going to help her that we're not talking about—Microsoft and a power authority are talking about restarting Three Mile Island. That's going to create billions of dollars in economic growth in Pennsylvania. It's going to create jobs. And it is happening in the right state at the right time. If I were Vice President Harris, I would be repelling down one of those water coolers at Three Mile Island and say, "Here I am. I love nuclear. Hello, Pennsylvania."
--:-- Kara Swisher: And then she goes to the fracking facility.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Yeah, and then I'd go to an oil rig and say, "On weekends and evenings, what do I like to do? I like to frack." I would be all over inflation, economic growth. I think she has a real powerful message here in contrast to him. I can't for the life of me understand what he's doing. But just going back to John Deere—I used to have the most amazing John Deere lawnmower, and I had something really weird happen. A frog jumped under the lawnmower, and it was terribly... he wanted to Kermit suicide.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Kermit suicide. Oh my God.
--:-- Scott Galloway: I actually drove a John Deere tractor. I mowed lawns when I was a kid. When I was a teenager.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Did you really?
--:-- Scott Galloway: For money. I love my tractor, my little John Deere tractor. It was a great little tractor.
--:-- Kara Swisher: I did it with a regular manual mower. I cut out a stroke. My dad was like, "It builds character." Jesus. Literally in the Ohio summer.
--:-- Scott Galloway: That was my favorite job. It was so pleasurable to cut grass. You feel so good afterwards.
--:-- Kara Swisher: I'm going to ignore every lesbian joke running through my head.
--:-- Scott Galloway: I just don't say it, Scott. Don't say it. Okay. In any case, Kamala, start embracing just regular millionaires. Repel down a nuclear tower. "Hello, White House. Hello, White House. We have your answers. Call us, Kamala. Don't call just Stephanie."
--:-- Kara Swisher: She wins.
--:-- Scott Galloway: We're going to the White House.
--:-- Kara Swisher: We're going to visit. We did already. I don't know how I feel about that. I'm intimidated by the White House. I was intimidated when I went with you.
--:-- Scott Galloway: You missed her the last time we were there. She ran right into you. You ran out.
--:-- Kara Swisher: I know. I heard you guys basically hung out.
--:-- Scott Galloway: We hung out because... I'll just tell you, she's like, "Where's Scott?" She did say, "Where's Scott?"
--:-- Kara Swisher: I don't believe you. Did she really say that?
--:-- Scott Galloway: She did.
--:-- Kara Swisher: That was like... he ran out because the White House isn't quite impressive to us. I don't know, Blair. I think you're being generous. Although I did have that *Succession* deep moment when we're walking around this place. First off, the thing that struck me about that place is just how many badass men and women are walking around with machine guns. I feel like they could fight off the Russian army if they needed to. My one moment was you see this crowd of people following a guy, this handsome guy who just looks like he'd be Secretary of State. And it is Secretary Blinken. And this gaggle, this line running in and around Secretary Blinken as he's moving to his next very important meeting. All of a sudden he stops and he's like, "Kara!" I don't wait in line. And you come over. And then he came over to me and he said, "I saw you on Bill Maher," which was a nice moment for me. And then the line continued. But yeah, you're the definition of soft power.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Anyway, let's pivot to a listener question. This question comes from Mark.
--:-- [Audio clip plays: Mark Lowenstein: "Hello Kara and Scott, this is Mark Lowenstein. I am a longtime industry analyst in the telecom space. I've enjoyed your show for years. My question has to do with the role of private equity in our economy. It just seems lately that the headlines are all pointing to the negatives of private equity incursions into everything from doctor's practices to real estate to vet practices. And it usually seems, as amplified by the giant collapse of the Steward health care system recently, that the consumer is not at the winning end of these deals ultimately, since these PE deals are so focused on cutting costs. So I'd love you to actually take a balanced approach and talk about the role of private equity in our economy and maybe enlighten us with some examples where private equity is actually playing a positive role. Thanks so much."]
--:-- Kara Swisher: Ooh, he wants work from us. Yes, thanks, Mark. I'm not an expert here. I know Scott is much more involved with private equity companies. What is the area they've just moved into that people are a little nervous about?
--:-- Scott Galloway: They're really big in roll-ups in health care—dental clinics, dermatology clinics.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Right, I get that. But there was another area where there hasn't been private equity that they may be allowing them into.
--:-- Scott Galloway: I don't think they're legally prohibited from anything that's for sale. I don't see why they would be.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Oh, sports teams. Sports teams, I think it was.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Oh, yeah, they're moving in on sports teams.
--:-- Kara Swisher: That's what it is. To me, I'm not an expert in this. They're like the Borg. They'll just come wherever they can make money and cut costs. That's what they do. And their idea of themselves is that they're cleaning up the economy and cleaning out the bad fish, essentially the dead fish. And that's a good thing, even if it ends up collapsing certain industries. Of course, most people have the opposite—that they're rapacious vultures taking all the good bits for themselves and leaving us with hollowed out cities and companies. I don't know, Scott, give a good example.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Yeah, I don't buy the argument. I think it's populist bullshit. First off, let me acknowledge that any private equity partner, partner in a venture capital firm, partner in a hedge fund—there's absolutely no reason why they should get a lower tax rate on what is essentially a commission. The way it works in private equity and hedge funds is carried interest. The carried interest loophole, thanks to Kyrsten Sinema, where she wanted to support the private equity firms in her state... none. I've always said this: it doesn't bother me that our elected representatives are whores. It bothers me what cheap whores they are. But effectively, what these guys have figured out a way to do in hedge funds is if I buy a copier and I sell it for more, I get a commission. In private equity or venture capital, if you make money for your investors, even though you didn't put your own capital in, you get long-term capital gains treatment. It's called the carried interest loophole. It's the most insane, unfair part. The wealthiest people in America pay lower taxes than people who get a commission or a tip on something else. So let me be clear, the compensation structure of these firms is totally fucked up. Having said that, I've worked with a lot of private equity firms. They come in and you're right, they will cut costs. And a lot of times it doesn't work. But most times, it not only saves the company, it makes it stronger and it makes the employees and the community and the people who stuck with it wealthier. In addition, private equity also invests. I co-invested with Apollo and Yahoo. They bought it from Verizon and they are proactively investing to try and give Yahoo a fighting chance of being one of the key players. And Yahoo has thrived under private equity ownership. So the notion that they're just these evil folks coming in, it's just not accurate. You might say, "All right, there's tax loopholes we got to close here." But if you didn't have private equity out there, this is what would happen. The guy, Craig Spodak in Del Rey, has the best dental practice. He will eventually get bought by private equity. His ability to retire—small business and medium-sized business owners will make a lot less money because they won't have these giant pools of capital coming to them saying, "Look, rather than operating one dental clinic in Del Rey, let's operate 50 of them. We can all have one marketing, one CFO. This place is going to make more money. You're going to sell me most but not all of this company. And we're all going to make a lot of money because we have the capital, the infrastructure and the expertise to make this a more valuable, robust business." Are there examples of private equity bought firms where they lay on too much debt, they take out their money and then basically let the company die? Yeah, it's a lot of movies, starting with Gordon Gekko, *Wall Street*. But that is not a private equity player that comes in. These people aren't stupid. They're not going to just sell you the company at a price where you could just layer on a shit ton of debt. I remember talking to Jeff Bewkes, the former CEO of Time Warner, and an offer was made for his company by a rival that we talk about a lot. And he said, "No, I could go out and pay that just by borrowing debt. I'm not going to let you use my debt capacity to buy me out." So the notion that these companies get bought for a price where you could just go layer it with debt and then shut it down and the private equity players ride off into the sunset—that's just not economic reality. So they play a valuable part of the ecosystem. They juice up the prices of asset owners and small and medium-sized businesses. They should just pay more taxes.
--:-- Kara Swisher: I think we do get our visions from Hollywood, which finds the worst cases and portrays them that way. And obviously, there's been a lot of devastation individually, and it matters to everyone who's been devastated. But a lot of the time, they do grab things that are on their way down.
--:-- Kara Swisher: On their way down. But not everything does need consolidation. I'll give you one more quick example. A close friend of mine is the best cosmetic dentist in Los Angeles, David Frey. He did my veneers. And I don't know if you've noticed. I have a gorgeous smile.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Your teeth look fantastic.
--:-- Kara Swisher: I have a gorgeous smile. Yeah, it's my best feature, out of my sublime skin tone and the smile on my back with the tramp stamp. Anyways, he will eventually... his retirement is... he's at the age where he's got another 10 years left on his tires. He will eventually sell, I would bet, to a private equity firm that'll say, "David, we want you to keep growing and we're going to do a better job of marketing. We understand technology. We can buy the best software around scheduling. We can buy..."
--:-- Scott Galloway: Which he doesn't want to do.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Which he doesn't know how to do and doesn't have the capital to do. It'll give him a retirement. It'll make sure that his business brings in more cosmetic dentists, more hiring. And the investors in the private equity firm, which largely consists of public pension funds, firemen, cops, widows, whatever. This is a key part of the economy.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Yeah.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Okay. All right, there we have it. Anyway, if you've got a question on your own that you'd like answered, send it our way. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show, or call 855-51-PIVOT. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions.
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--:-- Kara Swisher: Okay, Scott, we're going to hear a prediction. I'm going to make one. Jean Smart is going to be brilliant, as well as Maya Rudolph on Saturday Night Live, which is premiering this week. 50th year. Wow. Incredible. Lorne Michaels, you got to give it to him. You got to frigging give it to this guy. Everyone's like, "Oh, it's not funny anymore." It's been very funny for 50 years. I mean, on the whole, some bad stuff. But when you look at the people that have gone through there, they were showing sort of 50 years of it. You just are astonished by the talent that's wandered through that place. So it's going to be a great show. I love Jean Smart and Maya Rudolph is going to make a great Kamala Harris. So I'm very excited. So it's your prediction.
--:-- Scott Galloway: My prediction is that gaming and casino companies and rehab clinics, which by the way are being rolled up by private equity, and Novo Nordisk and GLP-1 drugs are all going to boom. And unfortunately, it reverse engineers to a pretty dark place. We are essentially, and I referenced this earlier in the program, using godlike technology to provide so much immediate dopamine to young people as their brains get wired that we set them up for a massive craving for dopamine, which makes them more prone to addiction. Now, 12% of boys and men over the age of 12 have a substance use disorder, compared to 6.5% of women and girls. Boys are especially vulnerable to this dopamine craving. About one in 10 children who play video games show signs of addiction, and 50% of American teenagers feel addicted to their mobile devices. Fast food triggers dopamine releases in the brain's reward system, and over a third of kids eat fast food every day. There's a new study that just came out that shows when a state legalizes gambling, there are 25 to 35% more bankruptcies. So what you have essentially is the brightest people in the world, the deepest resource people in the world, spending a lot of their time trying to get kids addicted to fast dopamine when they're young. The downstream externalities are just going to be enormous.
--:-- What are we supposed to do as parents? Our entire mission is to give them what I'll call "Slopa," and that is Slow Dopa. Like, I work out with my son. I was sold a bag of shit about this boarding school nonsense—that he'd be home on weekends. My son is home 24 hours on the weekend, and it is one of the worst things that's happened to me. Having said that, it's one of the nice things that's happened to him. Every night, or almost every night, I try and get on FaceTime with him for seven or nine minutes and I do this mini CrossFit workout with him. I just like seeing him, and he likes it because he's at the stage I was—he keeps growing, he's real thin, but he's starting to see muscles. The whole idea is slow dopamine. You work hard, you work out every day, and in six, eight, ten weeks, you get some dopamine. You study hard for your GCSEs in biology, you put it off, you get a nine on his GCSEs in biology, which we're hugely proud of. Our entire fucking mission is to create slow dopamine. Invest, be disciplined. You won't get the dopamine right away, but over time, you're going to feel something even more exciting and more rewarding. You're going to get a dopamine rush when you realize achievement and success from long-term investment. That's the basis of parenting, and the most well-resourced companies in the world are fighting us. They're trying to give kids a sense that they need immediate gratification right away.
--:-- I see it with my youngest. When he was on screens, action, reaction, action, reaction. TikTok, action, reaction. Don't like this video? No problem. I can get to something with dopamine. It's funny. It's titillating. Then he gets off the screen and it's like, "Where's the dopamine?" So you know what he starts doing? He starts wreaking havoc in the household to get a reaction. He has to have a reaction. I think we are setting up an entire generation of young people, maybe even more so among boys who are totally into online gaming, gambling, drugs. Richard Reeves, the president of the American Institute of Boys and Men, just came out with a really frightening study showing that deaths of despair have skyrocketed since 2000 and 2004. People who died by suicide, violence, gun deaths. But more than anything, it's been drugs, opiates, and drug addiction. I think we're going to continue to lose more and more as long as the greatest shareholder value increase in history is putting Tim Cook outside of junior high school with a bunch of smack. This is happening every day across America. We're starting to see signals. You legalize online gambling, there's an entire generation that needs that dopamine, and boom, bankruptcy skyrockets. My prediction: gaming, rehab clinics, Novo Nordisk—it produces GLP-1, which has been shown to be effective against these types of addictions—are going to skyrocket. It's going to be nothing but a transfer of wealth from government who has to cover those bankruptcies, cover those hospitals, and families are going to pay an extraordinary price.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah. Well, that's a big one. Wow. There you go. Wow. I'm going to go drink beer.
--:-- Scott Galloway: I'm going to the fucking tents for October 1st. I'm going to go drink beer.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Okay. I think beer. Go to the beer garden.
--:-- Scott Galloway: I forgot one thing. One more prediction for me. My brother, David, just turned 60.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Oh, nice.
--:-- Scott Galloway: I predict he's going to have a great next 20, 30 years of his life. He's been a great brother. I don't talk about him that much, but he's fantastic.
--:-- Kara Swisher: You've become increasingly fond of him just in the time I've known you.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Well, I don't love the conservative stuff, but that's okay. Separate the person from the politics.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Separate the person from the politics, Scott. I try.
--:-- Scott Galloway: He's a great guy. He's a great dad. He's a very good brother. He's a great son to my mom. Happy birthday, David. Happy birthday.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Can I ask you a question?
--:-- Scott Galloway: Sure.
--:-- Kara Swisher: When you're both really fucking old—which you are already, and he's getting there—when you're really old and you're hanging out and you're holding each other's hands and you're reflecting on life as you get towards the end, are you going to remember what a great guy he was and a great daddy was, or that he was a conservative?
--:-- Scott Galloway: Of course. Oh, thank you, Scott. Of course I will. I always remember what a great guy he is.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Take that, Bernie Brown. Take that. Oh my god, Esther Perel has nothing on me. We'll import another psychologist in here. Okay, Scott, that's the show. We'll be back on Tuesday with more Pivot. Please read us out, Scott.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Today's show is produced by Larry Naiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Intertot engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Bows and Mila Saverio. Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Gorilla panic. That is so my favorite brand of edibles.