Sheryl Sandberg's Next Move

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[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: So, Scott, how was your long weekend?

Scott Galloway: It was wonderful. I had the boys in New York and it was a contrast in the difference between having an 11-year-old and a 14-year-old son. I wanted to spend time with each of them alone, so I took my 14-year-old son for brunch. His favorite thing to do now with me is to try and just get through time with me and then ask if he can leave early and go home on his own. He loves to go take the subway. Even if he's just walking ahead of me 100 meters, like before even the check gets there, he's like, "Can I go home?" He's waiting the whole lunch to go home.

Kara Swisher: You are an embarrassment.

Scott Galloway: And then, in contrast, my 11-year-old said, "I want to go to the Edge," which is this observatory deck at the top of Hudson Yards. We take this elevator up, and he's like, "Oh my gosh, look at the elevator. Look at the videos!" We go there, and there's this thing where they have a clear glass floor where you stare down 100 stories.

Kara Swisher: Cellophane would suck.

Scott Galloway: He lays down. He's like, "Oh my God, lay down next to me and we'll get a picture. This will be awesome." Then we sit there and we're 110 floors up and he says, "Can I have a Coke?" I'm like, "What the hell, go get a Coke." He gets a Coke, comes over, sits down, and he looks at me and he means this. He's like, "Isn't this awesome?" I have one 14-year-old who nothing impresses him, and I have an 11-year-old where everything impresses him. I'm really trying to lean in and enjoy and not take for granted the wonder.

Kara Swisher: It shifts back and forth.

Scott Galloway: It shifts back and forth. It's shooting one way with a 14-year-old. It's shooting towards "How do I get away from him?" That'll go for a while.

Kara Swisher: I think he'll get over that in about 20 years.

Scott Galloway: No?

Kara Swisher: Before that. No, I had a great weekend in San Francisco with Louie.

Scott Galloway: What did you guys do?

Kara Swisher: We loved spending time together. Not recently, but the last time. He's in the woods right now. Louie's in the woods. We hung out. We went out. We walked around. We had dinner. We hang. We like each other. Just like I hang with Dr. Swisher this week, my brother.

Scott Galloway: Oh, by the way. Let's discuss that. Hold on. He's left here. He's broken up with you. Your brother is having an affair with my boyfriend. George has moved on.

Kara Swisher: I find out on Twitter.

Scott Galloway: For a better man. That your brother, a doctor that I cannot compete with, is spending Sundays with my boyfriend. They went walking today, I think.

Kara Swisher: That's got to stop. Okay, I'm just saying. It's a second date. That's got to stop. He also shaved. Jeff had a beard. We went to Annapolis this week because my aunt got real sick, so we couldn't go out to West Virginia. But we went on a boat and stuff. He had this beard, this sort of old man, John Stewart-y beard, and he shaved it off. I was like, "Where'd the beard go for brunch?" He's looking good. He cleaned himself up for George Hahn. Just FYI.

Scott Galloway: What I'm stuck on is I've never heard anyone in a disappointed tone say, "We couldn't go to West Virginia." I've never heard anyone say that in the exact tone you just said.

Kara Swisher: I wanted to see my aunt. But anyways, tell your brother, hands off my man.

Scott Galloway: No, he's over. Hands off my man.

Kara Swisher: It's so exciting. They're going to have a Hamptons wedding, and then you and I will preside over it, obviously. We'll have to be the presiders. It'll be great.

Scott Galloway: I think Jeff's wife would be kind of pissed.

Kara Swisher: She's fantastic. It is just hilarious. Are you gay? Let's have a look at you. Sure, you're not gay. You're not gay. Anyway.

Scott Galloway: Your wife's so pretty. You have sex with her?

Kara Swisher: I'm like, every summer solstice, like clockwork. Yes, indeed. In any case, Jeff and I are going to my nephew's wedding this weekend, along with my mother, everybody. We're all coming together. My ex-wife, et cetera.

Scott Galloway: Anyway, today we'll talk about the surprise announcement from Sheryl Sandberg, which I just hold back just for a second.

Kara Swisher: OK, we're not going to get to that yet. We'll look at the FTC's pursuit of Amazon. Also, we'll take a listener question about innovation. But first, an economic hurricane is coming, according to Jamie Dimon. He made the comments at a conference this week. He says the company is praying for, quote, bad outcomes. What the hell, Jamie Dimon? Speaking of someone who's presided over some bad outcomes. What in the world does he mean? What do you think?

Scott Galloway: I like Jamie Dimon a lot. I think he's one of the few leaders who calls it as he sees it. Even if it costs him. He was one of the first guys to say, before it was cool in the midst of the euphoria, that I think crypto is something near a scam. He's like, "We got to play in it. I get it. We have to make some bets in case I'm wrong. But I just don't get it." And he wasn't afraid to say that. I think a lot of us, especially of a certain age, get bullied into saying, "Well, there's got to be innovation here," even if we don't think that.

Kara Swisher: Oh, I do think that. But go ahead.

Scott Galloway: Even at the same time, if we do think there's likely something there, the people who think it's a total scam get angry. There's no being in the middle. I think Jamie Dimon is unafraid to call out stuff. And by the way, he's right.

Kara Swisher: He also has done some deals. Come on. Jamie Dimon's right in the middle of a ton of bad internet deals.

Scott Galloway: Well, it would be impossible not to. That's his job. They're arguably the premier investment bank in the world. They do more deals than anybody else. He's involved in this Twitter deal. He's on Elon's side.

Kara Swisher: Right, yeah.

Scott Galloway: But he said something I love about recessions. Someone said, "What is a recession?" And he said, "Something that happens every seven years. And it's been 13 years." He's just looking at economic history and saying, when interest rates are this historically low and inflation is this historically high, how do the instruments here read anything but bad weather ahead? He's not afraid to say that. People are giving Janet Yellen shit, and the reality is she said, "I was wrong about inflation." I love that when a politician or a political appointee actually has the backbone to say, "Yeah, I got it wrong." You just don't hear that anymore. And you don't hear heads of investment banks doing anything but being cheerleaders anymore, which is not healthy. So, I agree with him. As usual, Jamie Dimon is calling it as he sees it.

Kara Swisher: Nonetheless, what does "bad outcomes" mean from your perspective?

Scott Galloway: Everyone's wondering now whether it's going to be a soft or a hard landing and how bad it could get. You've seen periods where the market has gone flat to down for 10 years. Housing starts are already cooling off really fast. It's gone from white hot to hot to looking like it's going cold really quickly because of increasing mortgage rates. Spending down, debt up. The S word, stagflation, where you have both higher prices and a lack of productivity. This could get... and I wonder if it's a good thing.

Kara Swisher: You keep saying good things. You always like a little cleanup, don't you? You like a little cleanse.

Scott Galloway: Well, here's the thing. Young people need their shot. When you prop up the economy artificially and you artificially keep assets and real estate artificially high, all you're doing is transferring opportunity from young people.

Kara Swisher: You talked about that with the stimulus. You said it keeps businesses that shouldn't be in business in business, although this was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of situation.

Scott Galloway: The whole thing was pitched as "We're building bridges to the other side." They were building piers for bad businesses, and they were putting gold-plated bridges on the ones that were going to survive anyways. Most of the money ended up in the market. Savings went up. Now we have a bunch of zombie companies that had no business being in business. I think we really got the stimulus wrong. We're in for a rough ride. We'll see how rough. And you know what? It's a good thing. It's part of the cycle of the economy.

Kara Swisher: The cycle of the economy. It's the circle of life.

Scott Galloway: Circle of life. There you go.

Kara Swisher: The hurricane comes and clears out the savannah.

Scott Galloway: There you go.

Kara Swisher: Is there hurricanes on the savannah? I don't know. I don't care about mixing metaphors. All right, Jamie Dimon, we'll see what happens. It's a pretty good bet. I don't think it's the most shocking prediction at all.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, a Texas law that regulates how social networks moderate content is on hold again after the Supreme Court blocked it on Tuesday. It's waiting. It's not the end of it. The federal appeals court will consider the law soon and could return it to the Supreme Court, but they didn't sound too pleased with it. It was interesting, and it was a weird amalgamation of people on either side of it. It was not what you'd think from a political point of view. What thinks you of this?

Scott Galloway: Let me be honest, Kara. I have a view on it, but it's an uninformed view. I think your view is probably more informed. You go first here.

Kara Swisher: I think these are private companies. They can do as they damn well please. 100%. That's what I think. The government can't make companies take up or put down or keep up anything. They can decide if owners, like say Elon Musk, wants to let all hell break loose and all the shit flying, he can have a shitty flying social media site. If he doesn't, he doesn't. I just feel like companies have free speech too, and they can do whatever they want. It's appropriate that the Supreme Court blocks this if they believe in free speech.

Scott Galloway: I don't think free speech is absolute. If lawmakers were to say, "You have to be subject to the same libel laws if your content is inciting violence, is spreading misinformation that results in economic or personal harm around health care, around serving people content that turns them into radical fundamentalists," that's one thing. But this was purely political. It's "We don't like the fact that we're going to politicize and create this foment, this falsehood, that you are moderating conservative content." All the research actually shows if there is a bias of these algorithms, it's a bias toward elevating conservative content. I don't think these companies or algorithms are inherently malicious. But what you find is the truly crazy shit on the right from Representatives Gosar or Taylor Greene is so incendiary and so stupid.

Kara Swisher: Did you hear? "We're going to not have any straight people in a few years." All I do is make straight people. Did you see she said that?

Scott Galloway: Well, I'll come back to that.

Kara Swisher: My son did the same thing with me. Go ahead.

Scott Galloway: If you look at every generation, more and more people are reporting they're gay. I suppose about 2050 we're all going to be gay.

Kara Swisher: Maybe they were quiet before. If you read *Secret City*, a new book about Washington and gayness, they kept it to themselves. Maybe there were lots of gays around before. Anyway, please proceed.

Scott Galloway: I think there's some of that, but I also think that for the first time in a long time in certain metros, it's not only not discriminated, it's almost become a little bit fashionable. I think it's a worthwhile conversation, and I'm about to trigger a bunch of people from Wokistan.

Kara Swisher: Yes, you are.

Scott Galloway: I had this dinner conversation last night with my son.

Kara Swisher: I'd love to hear your view on it. He was showing, and then he moved into plastics in the water supply. But nonetheless, we told him about the Marjorie Taylor Greene thing. And he goes, "Actually, statistically, there are more..." and then he was bringing out all his statistics. Do you know what percentage of the population supposedly is gay, according to Pew and confidential surveys?

Scott Galloway: Well, that declare gay.

Kara Swisher: I do agree that people are being more fluid, gender fluid. I think it was not allowed forever. There were so many people pushing down. There were more people who, when they had the consideration of it, think about it in a different way. The second thing is, a lot of people say they're gay and they're not. I mean, they can decide anything they want. I had a nephew who said, "I'm gay." And I'm like, "Do you sleep with men?" And he's like, "No, I do not. But I declare myself gay." I felt like an old bitty essentially. He was going out with a woman and they both declared themselves gay. I felt like a very old gay person.

Scott Galloway: I agree. More people, especially where there is more tolerance, there's more. But I bet the same amount of people are in those scary areas where it's very scary to come out. They're just hiding. But the majority of research that is done privately... and maybe people are repressed or even afraid to tell an anonymous survey. But generally speaking, the research to date shows that the public believes there are more gay people than there are. Most research shows that the actual percentage of the population that identifies as gay is around 5%. Because in terms of influence over industries, gay people over-index in industries that have an outsized influence in our society. I'm making a generalization and a stereotype here, but in terms of urban centers and media that have a disproportionate amount of influence.

Kara Swisher: Why wouldn't we go there? 100%. But the moment you say anything that says this group is distinct and might behave differently, you open yourselves to criticism.

Scott Galloway: The reality is most people overestimate the actual number or percentage of the population that is gay.

Kara Swisher: I think there's just more fluid. You have someone like Harry Styles, or Madonna's son always looked fantastic in this dress that she used to wear. There's a lot of different expressions going on in certain centers. And it becomes fashionable.

Scott Galloway: Yes, but it's also fantastic. I agree. On the whole, it's a good thing.

Kara Swisher: Linda Carter today was talking. She was the original Wonder Woman. She was like, "If you don't think she's a lesbian icon..." She was like, "This is the truth." And everyone was going back and forth. Wonder Woman? Linda Carter is a lesbian icon? No, no, no. Wonder Woman was a lesbian icon. You're not a lesbian. She was a lesbian icon for a lot of people, especially the Amazons, the whole outfits, the whole thing. We all loved it. She was talking about that. It's Pride Month and stuff. It was just interesting, the reaction back and forth. I think people are just being more open-minded about stuff. I would recommend this book, *Secret City* by James Kerchak. He works for Tablet, I think. More conservative gay guy. I did a Q with him. It really quite good about the hiding. It brought back to mind a lot of hiding myself included because I wanted to go into military intelligence and I couldn't way back when until they changed a lot of things. Anyhow, I don't know how we got on this from social media. Social media sites should be able to put up whatever they want and take it down and we can complain about it.

Scott Galloway: And be liable for it.

Kara Swisher: And be liable for it. And we can bitch at them and call them amplified weaponization. And there should be privacy laws and stuff. But Texas has no fucking business being in the censorship business. This is pure politicization.

Scott Galloway: I can't get off the gay thing. Let me just go back to it.

Kara Swisher: All right.

Scott Galloway: You know what I hope? I hope we get to a point soon where in terms of fluidity, non-binary, binary, gay, straight, it goes way down in terms of the stack ranking for identifying somebody.

Kara Swisher: I agree. It just becomes... but it's not. I feel like right now it's become the number one or number two thing in terms of how you identify somebody. At some point it just needs to be, "Yeah, they're this," and it doesn't really matter. Straight people are still fascinated. I hate to tell you, I always get, "How did you have kids?" All the time. I go, "For fuck's sake, with my tummy. With my uterus. I had a baby."

Scott Galloway: I've made so many good lesbian friends because of you. One of the many wonderful things I get from our friendship is that I have women who happen to be lesbian reaching out to me. One woman who's a fairly well-known and fantastic journalist has been so kind to me because of my relationship with you. I've established a nice friendship. You have opened up so many nice friendships for me. I'm being very sincere.

Kara Swisher: Well, now you've lost George Kahn, so I don't know what to say. That bitch, Dr. Swisher. You stay away from my brother.

Scott Galloway: I'll tell you, if I have to pick, I'm going to pick Jeffrey Swisher.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, Elon Musk is calling. He's a very handsome man. He's a wonderful guy, and he's great. And he's a doctor. I can't compete with that.

Scott Galloway: No, he's a really good doctor, too.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, Elon Musk is calling Tesla's employees back to the office. The Tesla CEO told employees that they should spend a minimum of 40 hours per week in the office or quit. These are top employees, actually. He doubled down on Twitter, saying employees who want to work from home should, quote, pretend to work somewhere else. This made me laugh, I have to say. It was funny. I kind of am with him on that one. He said if the factory workers got to be there, they have to be there. I kind of loved it. I don't like all his other ridiculous pontificating on whatever subject of the moment, whether it's like trans fat or whatever. Now he's commenting on everything. But this one, I think he's correct about. What do you think?

Scott Galloway: I had the same reaction. I'm on Team Elon. I think there's certain industries and manufacturing is one of them.

Kara Swisher: We're really not on Team Elon, but in this one we are.

Scott Galloway: Okay. It's impossible to make a car, almost impossible from home. If the factory workers, the frontline workers, need to be there, the managers and the marketers need to be there. Having said that, I can't imagine that people didn't immediately point out the irony: not only are you not here, but you've decided you can be the CEO of another company. Is anybody else allowed to be the CEO of another company?

Kara Swisher: No, he is. He's unique. Come on.

Scott Galloway: Well, I get it. But look, let me go back to my original statement. Speaking of Jamie Dimon and David Solomon of Goldman, they've both said everybody needs to be back. I do think there will be certain companies in certain industries that say, "We've decided that work means being at a physical place between these hours." I spoke at a communications company yesterday in Dallas. I think it is really difficult to scale culture remotely. I've seen this firsthand at my startup. It's one thing to take people who've worked together and have them be remote for a while. I do think there's a huge unlock for people who are tasked, and it's usually women, with a disproportionate amount of the care for others in the household, whether it's aging parents or kids. There's an enormous unlock around not having to commute five days a week. To not incorporate that as a benefit for people who have real needs and can add to society and can make homes healthier... I think you should offer that.

Kara Swisher: All right. But let me just say, he's talking about top executives and I think they can afford child care. Easier. One of the things that was interesting, I thought it was kind of a dig at Apple. I couldn't tell. Was that, like, people say you can't make great products without being together. And some people say you can. But what's the last great thing they made? It was something like that. I think he's right. I think proximity does breed creativity within people.

Scott Galloway: A hundred percent.

Kara Swisher: I've been remote working almost my whole career. But everyone, like the same thing with social media companies putting up what they want. Every employee should decide for themselves. And then they will get the employees they want and the ones that don't like it can leave. That's my feeling on that. But I kind of agreed with them on this, especially that company. That particular company needs the executives to be just where the workers are.

Scott Galloway: Someone said that the most ambitious young employees want to be in the office. And they got huge blowback from people who said, "Well, I'm ambitious. I just don't have the option to be in the office." At my firm, Prop G Media, you know who wanted to be in the office was the young people. Especially in cities, they're living in such small apartments. They're at an age where they want to make mentors, friends. They got a WeWork-like thing in Brooklyn and said, "We're going in." They go in every day, which just shocked me.

Kara Swisher: I think that's a good thing.

Scott Galloway: I think it's a good thing, too. And you want to talk about unpopular? I had at all of my companies a mandatory 8 a.m. Monday morning meeting.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, you told me this.

Scott Galloway: And then what we also had, and this was less unpopular, we actually liked it. The senior executives, we used to do a call every Sunday night to talk about the week ahead. We'd get on the phone.

Kara Swisher: Those are not necessary. Unnecessary.

Scott Galloway: When you're growing a company, I don't know. Might not be in the right way, but it's my way.

Kara Swisher: Hustle porn. That's hustle porn.

Scott Galloway: Well, you like porn. I like both those things.

Kara Swisher: I like both those things. Yeah, you like hustle and porn.

Kara Swisher: All right, let's get to our big story. Sheryl Sandberg is leaving Meta, something we predicted would happen. After 14 years as chief operating officer, she announced her departure on a Facebook post on Wednesday, where she talked up the company's contributions to women's equality and safety. Mark Zuckerberg said he has no plans to replace Sandberg's role in the existing structure. He sort of spread it around. He tapped chief growth officer Javier Olivan, who has a very good reputation, by the way, to take the title of COO, but he has many fewer things than Cheryl had. Nick Clegg has a bunch. Other people have a bunch. Marnie Levine, who is one of her people Cheryl has brought up. Sandberg said she would focus on her foundation and philanthropy and would continue to serve on Facebook's board of directors. People don't know this. She's also, I believe it was noted that she's getting married this August, remarried after her husband died several years ago. What do you think? Why is she leaving now? Stephanie Ruhl tweeted, "Why now?" Like that really big with caps. What thinks you about this? There's a lot of regulatory or pursuing legal action against Facebook. More is on the way. There's going to be *Super Pumped* coming up from Brian Koppelman with Mark and Cheryl for *Super Pumped* Season 2. But nonetheless, this relationship is coming to an end, unlike ours, this very long-term, 14 years. Half of it very good, half of it not so good, as Casey Newton pointed out. What thinks you? What thinks you, Scott? Go ahead.

Scott Galloway: First off, you have to acknowledge that Gates and Balmer, Jobs and Ive, and Zuckerberg and Sandberg are right up there in terms of creating shareholder value and building an unbelievable business, which isn't easy. They basically created or dominated or are the iconic technology firm in a space that has become increasingly important that no one even imagined. She was the adult in the room. She was 38 when she joined a 23-year-old.

Kara Swisher: That's correct.

Scott Galloway: Casey pointed this out. It's sort of like the first seven years and the second seven years. But the first seven years, she established herself as one of the most competent, socially-minded people in business. To not acknowledge that is to not have any nuance. She built that business. She built the key part. That business was chaos before that.

Kara Swisher: Believe me, I covered it. And guess who scooped that story that she went there from Google?

Kara Swisher: Nonetheless, she changed that company's profile. It was really a chaos factory before that. It really was. He couldn't have done it without her. And some people think that's a bad thing, of course, because he couldn't have done it without her. The interesting thing is that if she had left in 2015 or 2016, I think she would be either she'd be governor or she'd be probably one of the premier candidates or names being tossed around to potentially get the Democratic nomination in 2024.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I would agree. I think she was on such an incredible trajectory. And here's what the last seven years are. She's also going to be known as kind of the dark knight or the high priestess of really dark communications.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: And that is whether it was digging up dirt that ended up being anti-Semitic on Soros, whether it was spreading lies about assaulting teachers on TikTok, whether it was going on the media and saying other platforms didn't have the security measures we did January 6th and having all media go, "Okay, now you're just lying to us." Whether it was a 900-person PR and comms department where there seemed to be a couple hundred people doing nothing but managing her obsession with the perception of the Russian hack instead of – she seemed to be spending more time managing her perception and delaying obfuscating the public's perception of really bad things at Facebook rather than actually addressing the problems.

And here is the conflict. And this is the difference between whether she will be a viable candidate for office, which I think she absolutely plans to do, and whether she's kind of a footnote in history. And that is she has positioned herself as someone who's an enormous and powerful advocate for women in the workplace. And she's written eloquently about it. She's a powerful figure. She sets a great example for women in the workplace. At the same time, just as George Carlin said, if you're pre-birth, the Republicans got your back. If you're preschool, you're fucked. If you are a woman at work, you could argue that Sheryl Sandberg has your back. If you're a 15-year-old woman who suffers from an eating disorder and Facebook serves you up an algorithm for an extreme dieting website, you're on your own.

And this is the conflict and the tension around Sheryl Sandberg's legacy. Is it to position herself as an advocate for women and to have played a key role in what is, at the end of the day, a massive uptick in depression, especially among teens, especially among girls, is the conflict, the irony, the tension that is Sheryl Sandberg. So I think it's going to be very interesting what her legacy is.

Kara Swisher: You're being rather kind. You had called her a number of other names before, which is interesting. You're being very – I like this. I like this analysis. I would agree with you. I think she is a complex figure, and people always think I'm too nice to her. The reason I'm too nice to her is I think it should focus on Mark Zuckerberg. And often, whatever the case is, whether it's Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton, whether it's Amber Heard and Johnny Depp, they both sound vile. You know what I mean? It's addict versus addict playing out in real time. And she gets the bulk of the problem here. If you look at the British case, you're sort of like Johnny Depp's a scary character.

So I think that one of the problems she had was what the thing that got the company into a great space is exactly the problem she had later when it got to be more serious. And she may not recall this conversation. I actually do have to call her and ask her because it's going to be in my book where I called her around 2060. I had thought she should leave the company when Dave died in May of 2015. I liked Dave very much. I would consider him a friend. People loved him. I've never heard anyone say anything bad about him. He was a wonderful guy. He was a very good judge with her. He was a very good person who would probably give her great advice. I think he would stop her from doing some of these things. He was just a very good person and someone, I think, who would have been a good influence on her had he continued to live. It was a tragedy that he died. I think she should have left then. And you're right. Her legacy would have been very different.

She could have been – she has a hard time being – not being smooth. I don't know what else to say. She's such a smooth operator of an executive, very perfect, very with the hands, everything about it. And I think she just felt like Mark was very kind to her and personally, too, when Dave died. And I think they developed a bond. And so she was loyal to a fault and also was part of it, too. So wasn't listening. And we had a conversation about the Russian stuff in 2015, maybe. And she said I was overstating it. I said she was underthinking it. And I said, "We'll see what happens. But you've got to come clean." And I think when she did the thing on January 6th, about January 6th, that was really sort of the top of the "don't do this." What are you doing? Why are you doing this kind of thing? But go ahead.

Scott Galloway: You pointed this out to me. And you're absolutely right. At the end of the day, the real blame or the real credit lies with the top guy. And it's a guy and it's Mark Zuckerberg. And I think Mark Zuckerberg is brilliant. And quite frankly, I think he weaponized Sheryl Sandberg. He immediately recognized that she is incredibly compelling. She's incredibly charismatic. She is an icon for 51% of the population. Let's weaponize her and turn her into the ultimate heat shield against any sunshine that shows what is actually going on here because it is pretty ugly. And he deployed her brilliantly.

And here's the thing. There have been executives who have lied more than Sheryl Sandberg. There's never been an executive who has lied longer. No one has ever survived the number of blatant falsehoods for as long as Sheryl Sandberg. And he deployed it brilliantly. And everyone after her, whether it's Nick Clegg or the guy who was running PR before her, Kevin Rose, no one has had the half-life of bullshit before the media goes, "You know what? You're just being paid to lie, and we don't believe anything you say." Sheryl Sandberg was the premier weapon of mass distraction ever deployed on the business community. And Mark Zuckerberg was brilliant. And unfortunately, if she had left six years ago, I think she genuinely would be a viable presidential candidate.

Kara Swisher: I agree. I agree. I think she would have moved away. I think she might have done some really interesting things around her foundation. I think it's interesting to think about what she's going to do next because philanthropy is what she's talking about. I don't think she's going to start a company.

Scott Galloway: I know what she's going to do next. I don't think she's going to run a company. She's 100% not running.

Kara Swisher: I'm telling you, she's not running.

Scott Galloway: No, this is what she's doing, Kara. She can't run without Dave. I always thought when Dave died, that was the end of it. I don't know if she's going to win. I know what she's doing. I think she's not going to run. I think she's going to try to pull a Bill Gates before, you know, the philandering thing. I think Bill managed to revive his reputation. He had a Darth Vader reputation. And through the philanthropy and through all these good acts and measured and statesman-like stuff, he returned his reputation.

Kara Swisher: There's a huge difference between Bill Gates and Sheryl Sandberg. Come on. Go ahead. All right. Tell me.

Scott Galloway: I think Bill Gates manages his reputation as a function of wanting to solve really big problems. And I think he'd rather stay out of the limelight.

Kara Swisher: Okay.

Scott Galloway: I think Sheryl Sandberg will use her philanthropy solely as a means to set up everything to run for Dianne Feinstein's seat in 2024. She is going to run for the Democratic nomination for Dianne Feinstein's seat as soon as people – at some point, somebody is going to have to have a talk with Senator Feinstein and say you've had a—

Kara Swisher: People have had talks with Senator Feinstein. She doesn't seem to be listening.

Scott Galloway: 2024, Sheryl Sandberg is going to – I don't know. She will absolutely do polls, run trial balloons. And I believe because, quite frankly, she's had more and more difficulty reading the room as she's gotten older. She is positioning herself to run for Senate. She's totally different than Bill Gates. I don't doubt her intentions. I think she really does care about women's issues in the workplace and gender balance. But I think everything she does is posing for the cameras for an election. And she's going to run in 2024.

Kara Swisher: Here's what she should do. Not any of that. She should be doing real philanthropy. I'm not talking about what should, should. She should be – if I was, I am speaking to her a little bit, but let me just say, if I were her, and this is what I would tell her, she should try to really do the actual work and not for what you're saying. Like really make significant strides in the area she's talked about, which is women equality. She's very outspoken on Roe, et cetera. When she gave at one point a couple of years ago, I had to do an interview with her and she gave $1 million to Planned Parenthood. I thought she should have donated and told her this, $100 million.

Scott Galloway: Well, in a similar story, I gave 17 bucks to the local animal shelter. And she's like, "Fuck you." And I was like, "Well, 10 million is nothing to you. That's like me giving $20. Give me a break." If you really mean it, put it up there. I think her step would be to go out into the wilderness for quite a long time and come back with some results. I think it's a mistake for her to run, and I hope she does not.

Kara Swisher: If we're going to talk about should, she should stick around, use all her skills to become CEO of Meta, and then shut the fucking place down.

Scott Galloway: They won't ever. That's never going to happen.

Kara Swisher: That's what she should do. She should become CEO and then shut the company down.

Scott Galloway: As powerful as she was, she does not have power there. Mark Zuckerberg.

Kara Swisher: No, I agree. I'm joking. Become CEO and then shut the company down. This is not an individual who can stay out of the limelight. And by the way, most men suffer from that same thing. There is no way she is going to fade quietly into the dark. No way. Go and do some real lifting, heavy lifting. That's what I would do. Go quietly, do some heavy lifting and then come back. And then maybe, maybe you'll—

Scott Galloway: But you know her. I'm putting forward a thesis. I don't know her. Everything I have seen from her is that like a lot of men who are powerful, she is very focused on advancing her own power and public profile, which includes political office. I think she looks in the mirror every day and says, "Hello, Madam Senator, Madam President." I don't think she says, "Hello, person who's going to change, who's going to develop a cheaper toilet for Africa," which is what Bill Gates is trying to do. I don't think that's her mission. I think her mission is to be an elected leader and increase her power. And by the way, there's nothing wrong with that. That's what most men do.

Kara Swisher: I think she'd spend her money to do a local election media stuff and really – if I were her, I'd start buying up local media sites or something like that. They're looking for a chief of staff or a foundation. Do you want to apply? Shall I apply? Should we apply? She has a foundation? Oh, that's right. That makes sense. Yeah. She has a big – well, they all have them. But I would really – I hope she does not do that. And I hope I get a chance to tell her that. Probably she might listen to this. I think she needs to go and do the real work. And by the way, let me just say from the reaction of just one tweet I made, people do not forgive her and never will. They think she destroyed democracy.

Scott Galloway: But when I did win over the series. I'm just saying. It may be irrevocable, but I don't know. Who knows? When I went on Twitter and just started putting out a bunch of snarky tweets, I got a lot of pushback. And it depressed me. So you know what I did? I did my favorite thing. I go to that strip club where they spit in your face. That always cheers me up.

Kara Swisher: You got more, "Hey, don't be so mean to Cheryl." I got, "Hey, she's the handmaiden to sedition." I got a lot of that. And I can see all sides of this. Honestly, she's such a complex character. But she definitely was responsible for Facebook. I don't think she had as much power as he did. I think that's a much different place than you think inside there. I think Mark rules the rules.

Scott Galloway: Well, let me ask you a question. She should have left. She should have left. That would have been powerful. Talk about staying too long. She should have left. Because if she left in 2015, I think her name would be mentioned every time you talk about presidential contenders. Let me ask you this, and it's a sincere question. Has she been a net good or a net negative for women?

Kara Swisher: I don't think she should represent all women. I don't think that's a fair thing. Has Lindsey Graham been a net good or negative to men as Trump? I don't think it's a fair thing. She's an executive, and so I'm not going to answer that question.

Scott Galloway: Okay, it's absolutely a fair question, Kara, because she's tried to position herself as the premier advocate for women. Lindsey Graham isn't saying "I'm representing heterosexual men."

Kara Swisher: No, you shouldn't. I think there's a lot of complex characters in the feminism pantheon. I don't know. I don't think anybody represents anything. Madeline Albright, an enormous positive for women. Probably. Hillary Clinton. I will say, I think Hillary Clinton has been a net positive for women. Not always, but she will be. I think she will be.

Scott Galloway: Well, okay, net. I'm using the word net. Net. Net positive for women. Sheryl Sandberg, question mark.

Kara Swisher: I mean, no matter how you slice it, Sheryl Sandberg has created more wealth for people through her efforts at Facebook than most executives in Silicon Valley. I just look at some of these baby boys that behave so badly. And then we let them go on and laugh. "Ha, ha, ha. It's so funny when Elon insults trans people." Anyway, in any case, Sheryl Sandberg's never going to do something like that. So let us just read. We've been predicting this for a while. Let us play ourselves to give ourselves some credit. What do you think?

Scott Galloway: I couldn't predict anything that Mark Zuckerberg was planning to do.

Kara Swisher: I think both he and Sheryl are going to move along.

Scott Galloway: Both of them?

Kara Swisher: Mm-hmm.

Scott Galloway: And do you think they'll bring in someone from the outside to be safe?

Kara Swisher: I think they will. That would be the shareholder-driven thing to do, to hit the reset button. Because Sheryl's not going to take over for him. That's not going to happen now because they need to clear the whole thing out. And I think the Bezos move gives them a little more permission to do this. Just so you know, the Sheryl Sandberg and Dave Goldberg Family Foundation oversees two nonprofits that build on the work of Sandberg's books, *Lean In* and *Option B*. So we'll see. We'll see what happens. But I really appreciate your analysis here. I thought you were just going to yell, but you didn't. You had some very good analysis here.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, but I mean this sincerely. You opened my eyes to the fact that, Scott, at the end of the day, it's about number one. And I actually, everyone, you just said he was very kind to her. I think he absolutely weaponized her. I mean, cry a river. She made a billion dollars.

Kara Swisher: I'm talking about the reason she was so loyal to him. I think that there was a lot of closeness after Dave died in terms of both him and Priscilla. I think there was a lot.

Scott Galloway: Okay, again, armchair therapist. I think he's a fucking sociopath bridging psychopath and uses stuff like that to say, "And go out there and tell them we're proud of the progress we've made around January 6th and see if they go for it. See if they go for it."

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I can't believe she did that. I texted her. I was like, "What are you doing? What the hell?" So I don't. But you're right. You've always said you've been consistent. At the end of the day, it's about the CEO. He controls the company. And he's still there.

Scott Galloway: That's right. He's still running it and he's betting it all on Meta.

Kara Swisher: Oh, how much do we love that? That makes me so happy. By himself. Anyway, we're going to have a quick break. We'll do it very quickly. We'll talk about FTC's pursuit of Amazon and take a listener question about innovation.

[Ad Break]

Kara Swisher: Scott, we're back with our second big story. The FTC is ratcheting up its antitrust probe into Amazon. Government lawyers are reportedly looking into Amazon Web Services, as well as the company's acquisition of MGM earlier this year, as Lina Khan said they might when they let it go through. The FTC let the deal go through, but they said they could revisit it. Now might be the time. Lina Khan is said to have taken a personal interest in the probe. I will say she asked me about it, about MGM, and I was like, "It's not competitive." I don't even think it was competitive. There's so much entertainment competition. That's what I answered to her. I said other things are much more important when it has to do with Amazon and antitrust. So what do you think? Amazon Web Services has $13 billion in operating income in 2020. MGM sold to Amazon for $8.5 billion. If you look at the cloud hosting in the top 100,000 websites, Amazon has 34% market share. That's bigger, but I still think there's a lot of competition. AWS outages affected everyone from Netflix to Disney Plus to Coinbase to Pinterest. You think AWS could become its own company. I'm not sure either of these things. I think the marketplace issues are the most important thing around Amazon. I don't know. What do you think, Scott?

Scott Galloway: I think, and I understand why. The FTC is under-resourced and they're outgunned. So they're like, "What can we get our arms around?" But they're being heavy-handed with the wrong issue here. Amazon's purchase of MGM, I mean, that's just pretty trivial. Now, granted, you could argue it's an example of the fact that they have so much market capitalization, they can do uneconomic deals. Okay, fine. That's an example of monopoly power. But if you actually wanted to make a difference in terms of competition in the marketplace, you would say, "All right, you can't be both the platform competing against your competitors. You can't use AWS to subsidize and create a value proposition for consumers no one else can compete with on the retail side, funneling profits from one end to the other." This is sort of, you're focused on the wrong thing. You have a patient with cancer and you're like, "We're going to take the wart off your foot."

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: It's not even a wart. They're like, "Okay, we got to do something we can be successful at. We can get our arms around." This is not the problem. They're not going to be successful at it. Even Hollywood people, they just think they overpaid for it, but they don't feel that bad about it. Amazon Prime Video isn't the problem. Them having access to Rocky isn't the problem. So I look at this and I say, "Okay. I understand that you're trying to have a win here against a big name. That makes sense strategically. But you're being heavy-handed with the wrong issue here." It just doesn't.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, and I'm not even sure with AWS. You know, maybe they have some documents we don't know about or something like that. But it seems like there's Google. There's lots of people in this space. I think there's choice, right? I think it feels like maybe. I'd like to see some of the proof. That's what I'd like to see. With MGM, I'm sorry. I think it's a rabbit hole. She shouldn't go down. I think the marketplace issue is really the issue, and it may not be an antitrust issue. She's risking a loss on an issue that even if she wins, the downside's greater than the upside here. What's the upside? That she gets a victory and Amazon has to re-spin or the acquisition doesn't close of MGM?

Scott Galloway: Yeah, it did close.

Kara Swisher: What? On spit. What? Anyways, I think it's another example. We are perplexed. We are perplexed. Lina, we'd like some answers. So please explain. There may be stuff we don't know. But in any case, there's bigger fish with Amazon, I suspect. And I suspect none of them are going to get got. In any case, Scott, let's pivot to a listener question, which is sort of along these lines. You've got mail. The question comes via email from Jeremy from Brooklyn. I'll read it. "You often talk about how Facebook is not an innovative company, which I agree with. My question to you both is, why aren't they? They clearly throw boatloads of money around for smart people. I work in tech and personally know a few folks who either work there now or in the past who are all bright, creative, and driven people. So I can't imagine lack of talent is the problem. Why does Facebook tend to fail at creating innovative products despite access to the same capital and talent, whereas a company like Apple or Amazon often succeed?"

I don't know what to tell you, Jeremy. Some things people aren't innovative. They just aren't. There's some cultures that aren't innovative, that aren't fast moving. And they just, I can't, there's all kinds of reasons. Either they're fearful or people are safe with all their money or, God, there's all kinds of reasons companies don't have to be. I don't know, Scott, you run companies more than I do. I just, people are either creative or they're not. And I don't know, you can foment creativity like we talked about, the flow state, but I don't know. You have to, it's hard. Go ahead, Scott.

Scott Galloway: Well, first off, you can't immediately – the term innovation has become almost meaningless because it's used so often. And if you look at economic history, it's not the innovators that create the most shareholder value. Facebook was not the first social media platform. Remember Friendster? Apple was not the first company in object-oriented computing, nor were they the first company to have an MP3 player. It's not the innovator that creates shareholder value. They get mud on their face and arrows on their back. It's the company that takes someone else's innovation and runs with it and does a better job of it.

Now, what's unusual about Facebook, to Jeremy's point, is that they have been less able to diversify their revenues than anyone else. So Google gets real revenues from YouTube. Amazon gets enormous revenues from AWS. Facebook's percentage of revenues that they get from advertising has gone in the wrong direction. It's gone from like 90 to 97. And if I were to try and devise a strategy to undermine, kneecap, weaken the corpus that is Facebook, I would invent this distraction called the metaverse and specifically the Oculus to pour billions of dollars down a sinkhole. Not only are they not innovative, but they are so, in my opinion, they've created a culture, and I think this goes back to Sheryl Sandberg, where I think Mark Zuckerberg, I don't know this, but I think for them to be going this hard, this long at the metaverse, it just shows that you can't tell. No one told them to stop.

Kara Swisher: I can see this room already. Let me just say, I have been in discussions with Mark and many other people. I could spend hours with Evan Spiegel talking. I can spend hours with Kevin Systrom, Brian Chesky. I'm just trying to name some of the creative people, I think. You know, Tim Cook is fascinating to talk to. I cannot spend hours talking to Mark Zuckerberg. I mean, he gets all, there's a word salad that goes on about community. And then I don't put the phone down, but I certainly am like, "I would like a fresh idea here." It's never, you know what I mean? Like kind of when I met you, you were head full of fresh ideas. I really wanted to talk to you. You thought I was going to say you were boring, but you are not. I can't explain why some people, someone keeps, people keep asking me lately how we met, but I got to say, I just really wanted to talk to you. And that's how I feel about a lot of creative people when you meet them. And then you meet other people, you're like, "Oh, God, kill me now. Get me out of this dinner party." And I think that's – it's not innovation. It's creativity. And you're right. Some people take advantage of creativity. Facebook definitely did that around buying Instagram and other things. They're good at buying – just the way Bill Gates was very good, opportunistic. But it wasn't creative. Steve Jobs was creative. And so I don't know why. It just is. There's usually one person or two people at the top. In the case of Snapchat, it's Evan Spiegel. In the case of Apple, it's obviously Steve Jobs and Johnny Ive. And to an extent, Tim Cook. He is really innovative around supply chain. He really just is.

Scott Galloway: Well, I mean, there's a lot of things. There's been so much research around innovation and creativity. And it's not only about coming up with new ideas. It's having the willingness or giving people permission to fail. And it's also killing ideas when they're not working to say, "OK, this isn't working. We're going on to the next thing." And it's also what gets very hard about creativity with a company as successful as Meta is what's always hanging over the cloud that comes over every decision is, "Will this innovation threaten our legacy business?"

Kara Swisher: Yeah, they do think like that a lot.

Scott Galloway: Whereas if you look at Apple, they said, "I know, let's take this wildly profitable, huge juggernaut product called the iPod and let's turn it into a button on the iPhone." I mean, that's a key component of creativity. You don't let – if somebody says we can make this better and we're uniquely positioned to make this better, the majority of big companies go, "Yeah, but it's going to threaten this amazing thing called our legacy business. So we'd rather –" I mean, AT&T never wanted – when it was a big company, they never wanted to do fiber or sell because they're like, "Dude, do you know how much money we're making off our long-distance lines?"

Kara Swisher: Yep. That's true. Someone's going to eat our lunch. It might as well be us.

Scott Galloway: That's right. So smaller companies that have less to lose are generally much more creative because they take more crazy swings at the bat or swings at the plate. They don't have to be small.

Kara Swisher: You know, I just, if you spend any length of time with Facebook people, process is all. Any company that is non-creative, process takes over of anything else. Process. It's like process meetings. I remember the *Wall Street Journal*. That's—I know, but I was at the *Wall Street Journal* and I'm thinking, I'm in way too many fucking meetings. Like, it was just, I can't explain it. It's just, it's a—I stopped listening to the people I'm talking to often at Facebook for years. And I was like, oh my God, I'm so bored. And I don't know why. And every time I saw Elon, I was like, that's cool. You're crazy. You know, that kind of stuff. And so, whether you like him or not, it was always interesting. I don't know. Good question, Jeremy, from Brooklyn. But I have to say, that is how I felt when I met Scott. What a creative mind he has. So anyway.

Scott Galloway: That's really the nicest thing that's happened to me all day.

Kara Swisher: You are. It was true. I also said, "What an asshole," as you know.

Scott Galloway: I aspire to be creative.

Kara Swisher: What a jerk. But wow, I didn't think of that.

Scott Galloway: I don't mind that. Anyway.

Kara Swisher: I don't mind that at all.

Scott Galloway: I know. I know you don't.

Kara Swisher: I don't mind that at all. Which is why we get along.

[Transition to listener mail segment]

Kara Swisher: All right. If you've got a question of your own 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. Our last episode, which included questions on dating, was so popular. We're going to do a whole episode on dating. This is very exciting for me because I have my 30-year high school reunion coming up. And I want to stand up in front of everybody and say, I give people advice now on dating. That's important to me.

Scott Galloway: By the way, it's my 40th, but let's just pretend it's my 30th.

Kara Swisher: So this is for me. This is all about me. Send us your questions about dating. One more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails.

[Ad Break]

Kara Swisher: Okay, Scott, I'm going to go first. *Top Gun* now has a record for the biggest Memorial Day opening weekend. It made an estimated $156 million this opening weekend. It marks the biggest opening of Tom Cruise's career, which Matt Bellany predicted in our last quarterly predictions episode. I predict that *Top Gun: Maverick*, which comes out on May 27th, will be the biggest opening weekend of Tom Cruise's career. Let me just say, I'm thrilled by that. I'm wearing a fighter school T-shirt. But that said, let me just say one thing that Casey Newton pointed out. His mom, Sally, doesn't want to hear us talk about *Top Gun*. I'm not going to say why, but she has issues around the Scientology. And so let us not—

Scott Galloway: Oh, God, really? We can't enjoy movies now because of people's off-camera behavior?

Kara Swisher: I know, but I'm just going to point it out. Not everybody. I got a couple of people saying that, and I get it. I just think it's—I think it's been around for a long time.

Scott Galloway: Tell us, Mom, when someone is that good-looking, you forgive a lot of their shit. You just—you got to forgive a lot of their misgivings.

Kara Swisher: Repulsive antics around Scientology. Okay. And there you have it, Sally, our discussion about that.

Scott Galloway: So can I make two observations about *Maverick*, *Top Gun 2*?

Kara Swisher: I went and saw it. Yes, go ahead.

Scott Galloway: But you need to win. My kids have now seen it twice.

Kara Swisher: Whoa, really?

Scott Galloway: Two things really stuck out. First off, there's just no getting around it. This guy has a deal with the Dark Prince. He has done a deal with Satan because he is about to turn 60. And notice how when they brought back Val Kilmer, they had to build into the storyline that he's about to die. That's why he looks the way he does. And then they didn't even—because he was good looking, Val Kilmer.

Kara Swisher: Oh, my God. By the way.

Scott Galloway: Oh, my God. Not only good looking. Like so much better looking than Tom Cruise at the time. Not only good looking. Chiseled. And extraordinary talent. Did you see *Real Genius* or *Top Secret*?

Kara Swisher: I did. I loved him.

Scott Galloway: He can sing and dance. And he has great comedic timing. Val Kilmer at *Willow*. He was a rare talent. But to have him next to Tom Cruise, we had to give him near-death cancer. And by the way, he's actually— Oh, and then the neck thing? The neck thing old ladies wear? Because he has neck issues.

Kara Swisher: But also, in fairness to Val Kilmer, he is actually quite ill.

Scott Galloway: But notice how they didn't even dare bring back Kelly McGillis or Meg Ryan.

Kara Swisher: No.

Scott Galloway: Because guess what? They actually look their age. And they're like, we can't have that. We have to bring in another freak of nature, Jennifer Connelly, who's 51 going on 18.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, she looks good. I mean, she looks amazing. And she was age appropriate, which I—but to get a sense of how freakishly remarkable Tom Cruise is, they couldn't bring anybody back unless they had cancer.

Scott Galloway: Can I just clear up something about Jennifer Connelly's character? Someone was like, oh, she's representing single mothers. She was the daughter of an admiral who probably by then worked for a defense company, so she probably was rich. They're like, how could she have a bar, a Porsche, the house, et cetera? She was rich to start with. OK, sorry. That was weird.

Kara Swisher: And the other thing that I found really interesting is everything's become so politicized. Did you notice how they made the enemy totally neutral? No flags. He didn't know if it was Iran, China, or Russia.

Scott Galloway: It's Iran, right?

Kara Swisher: Iran. Well, okay, geographically. It's Iran. Here's the thing. If you think about it, okay, the landscape sounded like Iran and nuclear materials and fusion reactors, all that stuff. Except Iran wouldn't have access to third-generation fighters. Fifth generation fighters.

Scott Galloway: Fifth generation, whatever they call it.

Kara Swisher: Anyways, a great film. I don't even know if that's a thing, by the way, but fifth generation. All right, go ahead. What is your win?

Scott Galloway: I don't—I have a fail. I have Marjorie Taylor Greene once again.

Kara Swisher: Look, my win is the same as my fail, and that is the thing I got disappointed—I thought it was really interesting how the top story was the Depp/Heard verdict over Sheryl Sandberg leaving. I thought that was interesting.

Scott Galloway: I agree. And also just because I'm naturally morose, but I think there is a—I think it's important here that we not get distracted and that as we usually do, we move away from what was a horrific shooting last week. So I just want to—quite frankly, I want to bring it up again. And my win is I do think—well, obviously, we've been talking about the tragedy here. There is real—I was so inspired and moved and quite frankly just sort of rattled by—I don't know if you read about— There's a gentleman named Trey Ganem who is an artisan who met with all of the families and is making custom caskets. And these caskets, I mean, are not only so beautiful but so heartbreaking. There's one of Superman. There's another that has TikTok and softball. But he basically sat down with all the families and said, "I want to bury your kids how they'd want to be buried." But anyways, my point is, like, I really hope we don't do what we always do. And that is move on to bullshit like Heard and Depp and Sheryl Sandberg. There is a very important story that commands and deserves our continued attention.

Kara Swisher: But my win. Same thing with Ukraine and Uvalde. And by the way, there was another shooting in Tulsa. They've got to come up with gun reform. Same thing with Roe. We are not like you cannot. I couldn't watch a bit of that Heard thing. I thought it was sad and depressing and gruesome. Monica Hesse wrote a great column about it. About Heard and Depp?

Scott Galloway: Yes, read it. I've tweeted it. It's weird to obsess over this sad marriage, the end of this very sad and depressing marriage. And there are much more important. These children were murdered. We have to move towards gun reform. There's some movement in the Senate. We'll see. We've been there before. But it would be a huge fail if we don't do gun reform at this point. And remember, as they say, as it's getting a lot of traction, "well-regulated militia." Those words are in there. They're in there for a reason. And all of you who think you can do whatever you want, it says it in the—if you believe in the Constitution, then read it.

Kara Swisher: Well, Maureen Dowd had a really powerful—and I texted her article. And she just started off by saying, "America is not some mystical kingdom run by magical princes or fairies." She said, "This is our country. We have a democratically elected Congress and Senate that get to pass or not pass gun control laws." And she just—it was just a wake-up call. Like, don't get resigned. This isn't some fairytale thing we don't have control over. We absolutely have control over this. One hundred percent. But anyways, my win is—

Scott Galloway: It becomes hopeless.

Kara Swisher: It does feel hopeless though, to be fair.

Scott Galloway: My win is just the artisanship and grace and generosity of this gentleman, Trey Ganem. I can't imagine how heartbreaking it is for him to do this. But you literally see these caskets, and I would recommend everyone Google Trey Ganem. And I mean it really brings home in a very bittersweet way what has happened here. But my win is I just think this individual must just—I just thought, God, what an incredibly interesting, talented, and generous man this guy must be. Anyways, you see this. It was a beautiful thought, artistic thought. There's no happiness to become of this. It combines the depravity and at the same time the grace of our society. And it was my win as Trey Ganem.

Kara Swisher: My fail, by the way, is the stuff that's starting to come out about January 6th. These emails, this is a coup attempt. It's crazy.

Scott Galloway: Same or I haven't been following that.

Kara Swisher: I just follow it. It'll start to come out as they have the hearings and everything else this soon. And some of these emails from these lawyers of Trump's are—they're just literally trying to take over the government via non-democratic means. And there's no way—the fact that they thought they'd get away with it and they're continuing to get away with it is trying to seed people all across the country. Honestly, people should be more—they won't be, but they should be horrified by the attempt to subvert democracy, speaking of that.

Scott Galloway: Oh, wait. I forgot my fail. Is that bitch Dr. Swisher. Stay away from my man. Stay away from my man. They're walking right now in the park. Right now as we speak, they're taking a lovely sojourn in Central Park, walking the dog.

Kara Swisher: They're walking the dog. Yeah.

Scott Galloway: I don't know where you are.

Kara Swisher: They're not walking the dog. Anyway. And that does not—there's not a euphemism for anything else, by the way.

Scott Galloway: There you go.

Kara Swisher: Anyway. Okay, Scott. That is the show. We'll be back on Tuesday for more Pivot. We've got lots to talk about. Please read us out.

[Outro music begins]

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

Scott Galloway: Do you have two kids, one who rolls their eyes and the other that doesn't? Appreciate the one that doesn't. Appreciate the one that doesn't. Because soon enough, the eye roll is coming. The eye roll is coming. We'll see you next time.

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