Struggles at Dispo, Trump's own social media network, and the 411 on NFTs

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

Scott Galloway: And I'm Scott Galloway.

Kara Swisher: Oh, you're very slow today. You're low. A little slow. You weren't on Bill Maher this weekend, were you?

Scott Galloway: Go on. Is he having you back?

Kara Swisher: He hasn't invited me. No, I didn't even get so much as a, "Hey, thanks, pal." I didn't get any. Yeah, not a box of flowers. William.

Scott Galloway: I thought he'd want to grab Mexican food the next time he's in New York. I imagine we were going to become friends. Maybe he's just holding back a little bit.

Kara Swisher: You needed to stick with Ando. I'm sorry. Anderson Cooper really is your true one.

Scott Galloway: What we have, what Ando and I have, is hard to replicate.

Kara Swisher: I would like that to come. You bring Ando onto the show. That's why I want to see what you would do.

Scott Galloway: You know, our friendship is so precious, I don't like to lean on it for these types of things.

Kara Swisher: Speaking of precious, Elon Musk is sparring with Bernie Sanders.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, that's really precious. And internet pros have never been at greater odds. In one corner, Bernie Sanders used Elon Musk's outsized wealth, along with Jeff Bezos and others, to highlight wealth inequality in the U.S., which is pretty easy to do for Mr. Senator Sanders. On the other hand, Elon Musk said he's using his fortune for good, that he's going to move us to other planets. That's what he's spending his money on, honestly. And the bros went, "Nice job, Elon."

Kara Swisher: First, he's going to invest in edibles.

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: Anyways, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Kara. What do you think of this? What do we think?

Scott Galloway: I think it's ridiculous. Bernie Sanders is making a very good point. And he is like, "No, my money will be used for good." He's like, what is he, Andrew Carnegie, and he's giving everybody a library? I don't know. Okay. I mean, okay, he's right. He's right. Elon Musk has added the GDP of Hungary. He's going to peace out and move to Texas so he doesn't have to pay state income taxes, which he's been an enormous beneficiary of. Capitalism is just not about having someone worth $170 billion and paying the lowest tax rate. But here's the problem. And I believe Senators Sanders and Senators Warren are inspiring. And I think they're right. And I think they are totally ineffective. Because here's the thing, Senator Sanders, you, Jones, for any camera or mic and make these indignant speeches about income inequality, you've been a senator while we Democrats controlled all three houses and you weren't able to get minimum wage up beyond $7.25. Well, you are right that in the 60s, billionaires paid or the top 1% paid an average of 60% of taxes and then the 80s went to 40%. Three or four years ago, it became common knowledge that billionaires now pay the lowest tax rate. And who was in the Senate? Senators Sanders and Warren. So I'm kind of – you're right. You're right.

Kara Swisher: Well, they have been going on for a while about it. They weren't in power to be able to do anything about it before, really.

Scott Galloway: Okay. Well, I don't know. The Republicans always seem to be empowered to hold back change.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. We controlled, while they were senators, we controlled all three houses. And they like these big, bold, jonesing for the camera and the lights ideas. Let's make college free.

Scott Galloway: Jonesing is your new word today.

Kara Swisher: Jonesing. Let's make college free. That's not going to happen. And any sophomoric analysis leads to a basic conclusion that the majority of people in college are middle or upper income. So that is nothing but a transfer of wealth from poor households that never apply to college to people in college. Let's cancel off student debt.

Scott Galloway: What would be effective then for Bernie Sanders to do?

Kara Swisher: Well, you know what would be effective? Because you call attention to this, this GDP of Hungary thing you say all the time, which I do too. Eliminate capital gains tax deduction. Just eliminate it. Why is Elon Musk paying 22.8% but a person working on the factory floor at Tesla is paying 34%?

Scott Galloway: Regular income, yeah.

Kara Swisher: You know what's effective? Senator Michael Bennett, who is terrible at jonesing for the cameras.

Scott Galloway: Jonesing again, yeah. The day word.

Kara Swisher: But meanwhile, for the last five years, he has been behind the scenes pushing for earned income tax credit for children, saying for $40 billion, not $4 trillion, we can take 40% to 60% of child poverty and eliminate it.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, effective.

Kara Swisher: And all that hard work and good legislation has resulted in a bailout bill that is the least, or the bailout package, the most recent one, is the least bad of its kind because almost half of it is going to people versus only 50, 60, or 70% going to Delta or some restaurant that we make a cartoon over. He's effective. You know who's effective? Senator Amy Klobuchar, who's doing the work around antitrust. You know who's effective? Representative Cicilline, who spends less time jonesing for the camera.

Scott Galloway: Of which, let me just switch to the representative of David Cicilline, who runs the House Judiciary Committee's antitrust panel, says he and fellow Democrats are preparing to bombard big tech with a series of small antitrust lawsuits through May. That's right. Little attacks. Just so they don't have to do this big honking one. What do you think of this strategy?

Kara Swisher: Perry Mason. What do you think of Perry Mason?

Scott Galloway: I think it makes a lot of sense. What they're trying to do is they're trying to atomize the defense. And that is they're saying, okay, if we have one big effort and we let this massive army known as the lobbyists, the PR spin machine, the billions of dollars, the legal, every spare lawyer in America that will line up behind Facebook, will line up behind the Facebook and Google and big tech army. They've decided it's going to be better to try and do an assault from the air, from the sea, and from the land. And we'll go after different parts. Small ones. What do you think?

Kara Swisher: I think it's a great idea. Actually, I hadn't even thought about it.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, because these things, like the wheels go slowly. You know, it's like, like they move very slowly. And this is kind of an interesting strategery. I like it. I like the strategery. I'm not a lawyer, so I'm going to have to consult with some lawyers. But I do think that it makes sense to try to get things done more quickly and more strategically, just like you were talking about with Michael Bennett. Like there's a lot of like big talk that never happens.

Kara Swisher: But that's exactly the point, is Representatives Cicilline and Senators Bennett and Klobuchar have decided, you know what? It's more important that we have a better America than I get my name in lights all the time.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. I'm reading her book. I read her book this weekend, Antitrust. It's very big. It's very thick. She's fantastic.

Kara Swisher: She is. I'm talking to her this week. I'm talking to her after the hearings for Sway. I think it'll be really good. I think she's really-

Scott Galloway: That's a shocker. Someone I admire and constantly build up to highlight her effectiveness.

Kara Swisher: She wants to talk for an hour about antitrust. We're talking about her giant book, They Could Kill a Poodle.

Scott Galloway: Oh, but we're bringing your brother on. I gotta get you. Jesus Christ. Who do you want? Who do you want? Who do you want? You get such sloppy seconds in this relationship.

Kara Swisher: No, you do not get sloppy. Are you kidding? This show is killing it. I will find you a good name.

Scott Galloway: You were supposed to bring on Ando.

Kara Swisher: I bring on everybody. You could bring on. I will bring on. I will bring on Ando.

Scott Galloway: Okay. We're spending so much time together recently that we're a little bit sick of each other.

Kara Swisher: I know. It's springtime. It's summer. You're getting ready for your summer off. We have spent no—

Scott Galloway: By the way, I just feel like I need to disclose. We have absolutely no relationship outside of CNN. None. None.

Kara Swisher: I'm going to get Ando to come on. I'm going to, like, pummel him on the Twitter and say, Scott says you're his friend and you're jonesing to come on to the show.

Scott Galloway: I'm intimidated by him. I don't think I could handle that. I'm too intimidated by him.

Kara Swisher: I'm getting him to come on. He'll be funny. He'll do his little cute laugh. It'll be great. It'll be fantastic. Listen, I want to talk to you about Florida, though. Florida man. Miami.

Scott Galloway: Oh, God.

Kara Swisher: What the hell is going— What is wrong with Florida? Like, they're facing new emergency lockdowns to help stop the spread of COVID-19. As flocks head to Miami Beach for spring, like, what in the living hell was going on down there? I'd never seen anything like it. And I thought last year was bad.

Scott Galloway: It's just a shocker. We have it in a state where people eat each other's faces. Old people bump into each other in their overly long cars from the 60s. We have alligators being eaten by African pythons released by pet owners that seem to only— All I want to know about is Miami Beach. I mean, Florida, let's be honest. In the woman's book, The Corpse Had a Familiar Face. I am aware of the situation in Florida. But what? Where are the police? What happened? They had to gas these people. They had little pepper bombs or whatever. What is going on?

Kara Swisher: Look, people, there's so much pent-up energy.

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: They feel like Florida. Look, words matter and actions matter. And I do think that a lot of the horrendous things that have happened in the news recently are a function of it. When our leaders don't take more resolute stands against certain types of behavior or crime, it leads to bad places. And this is a smaller example of that. And that is, when Governor DeSantis wasn't aggressive about closing the beaches last year, when we've adopted this attitude of, well, you know, we're going to let... It's sort of over, but it's not. It's sort of over, but it's not. And oh, look at us. Where's our apology? Florida's definitely taken sort of a Trumpian stand on COVID. And to their credit, some of the data supports what they've been evangelizing. But where it leads to is it leads to this notion that come to Florida where there's no COVID and behave responsibly. So we kind of invited this. Our leadership invited this. And then you end up with mayors overwhelmed. They can't control the mob.

Kara Swisher: DeSantis is popular, I believe.

Scott Galloway: DeSantis is popular. Yeah.

Kara Swisher: He is popular in Florida. We'll see. We'll see. Governors can fall from grace really fast.

Scott Galloway: Yes, I noticed that with the Cuomo.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, and the Newsom. They can go up and down. But I look, it's just, I find it really discouraging and upsetting because there's still a lot of people who are very vulnerable.

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: We're seeing five percent infection rates which are up again. They're up again. I don't know. What do you think?

Scott Galloway: I don't have a lot to say. I don't even know what to say. If my child was there, I'd be furious at him. That's—

Kara Swisher: You know, I was just thinking, where are the parents here, like, with these kids partying? Like, I guess, like, the parents are like, what the hell? I'm so sick of this.

Scott Galloway: It is sort of, but they did it last year. If they hadn't done it last year when things were bad, it's just, I don't know. I don't know what to say. The pictures are really bad. But, you know, we'll see what happens, I guess, maybe.

Kara Swisher: You know, it's YOLO. It's YOLO. It's what's happening. Like, YOLO times 50. I don't think there's anything we can do at this point. I think everyone sort of had it with COVID. Done. Next.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, people are reaching. There's just no doubt about it. People are reaching the limits, which makes it even more important that everyone get a job.

Kara Swisher: Yep, 100%. Okay, on to big stories. There's so many stories around, Scott, but this is a big story. This is a big story. Dispo, the once promising photo sharing app, but still is promising, was quite high on the Apple App Store, is facing challenges after its founder, David Dobrik, faced allegations of sexual assault. It's actually allegations in the group that he's around. He wasn't accused of it. No, David gained popularity on Vine and then on YouTube has been facing allegations. The group around him, I forget what the name of the group is, but it's a little group around him that does like things. They do sort of stunts and things like that, facing lots of different allegations, racism. Now there's new racist stuff, anti-Asian stuff. They're just surfacing all the sort of antics that he did, which are all juvenile and some of which are racist, a lot of which are sexist. And then, of course, behaviors by his gang around him. I think it's called the Vlog Gang or something like that. He started a photo sharing app also called Dispo, which had gained a lot of traction. But following these investigations of these sexual assaults and other issues, the app's rating dropped below two stars on Apple's App Store. The venture capital firm Spark Capital, which led the startup's $20 million Series A financing in February, announced it would sever all ties with Dispo, which means it's pretty bad. And then Dobrik said he'd be stepping back from the company.

Scott Galloway: Wow, this is a fast one.

Kara Swisher: This is kind of a cool app, I actually have to say. He is sort of a funny character and super popular. And it's sort of in that there's a whole gang of those YouTube people that have had problems, and he's the latest.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. So I've come to my view is that media interprets things based—49% of it is the content of what you say, and 51% is who says it. So you go first.

Kara Swisher: Well, okay. It's really interesting because it comes at the same time. You know, there's this controversy around Teen Vogue and some racist tweets and homophobic tweets that Alexi McCammond, I think, sometimes. She was made editor of Teen Vogue, and then they unmade her before she started. You know, in that case, actually, Elizabeth Spiers wrote, I think, the best piece about it. You know, you immediately have to veer into this stupid cancel culture thing when, in fact, in this case, it's accountability. In the case of Dobrik, I mean, he just decided to be an asshole. It's sort of like the other guy on YouTube that was standing in front of all those dead bodies. And once again, I'm blanking on his name. And another YouTube star. But, you know, he did a lot of these things. And then there is controversy around Dispo, too, that he took the idea from someone. There was someone alleging that. Probably Spark Capital's like, I don't know, although it was gaining. It's a really interesting app where you take pictures and then they show up the next day in these disposable camera look. And teens really liked it. It's quite a creative photo app. But, you know, you have to decide what's accountability and what's unfair. In the case of Alexi McCammond, it's very complicated. I think it's Anna Wintour is at fault for hiring her as someone who wasn't particularly – she didn't have any experience running a magazine, but she sort of has the buzz as a political reporter covering the Trump White House and this and that. She also got pulled into another scandal over at the White House, which I won't go into. But I think they just used the opportunity in this case to deal with it because Condé Nast is under such pressure around diversity issues, justifiably, and has had, you know, from the Kamala Harris thing to previous people, books that have been written about it, about the company, including someone who was with him for a really long time, Anna Wintour, calling her a colonial dame, which was not very nice, but that's what he said. But and so it's, you know, it's hard to take apart what's accountability. Before, you just used to get into trouble and then you'd leave. Now you call cancel culture out. And at the same time, what David Dobrik was doing was pretty icky. And I can't believe people invested in him in the first place. But, you know, they were looking for money. What do you think?

Scott Galloway: I think the two are totally different. They both have lessons. And one's a lesson for young people. And another I think is a cautionary tale for all of us and especially for parents. With respect to Dispo, look, there's a lesson here. There are wonderful things about being an innovator and being young and understanding technology. You get unfair or unwarranted idolatry. People think you're cooler than you are. You have the opportunity to make tens of millions of dollars by the time you're 25 or 30. But boss, nothing's for free. And one of the things you have to pay or one of the things you have to do is that you cannot in any way have your corporation or yourself personally, when you reach a certain level of seniority in an organization, put yourself in a position to have credible accusations levied against you of this sort. And through due process, we'll find out hopefully what happened here and if there was a crime here, if it was just terribly poor judgment. But if you want to be a player in our capitalist society and appreciate its fruits and its incredible spoils for innovators, you can't put yourself in a stupid fucking position like this. You don't let this shit happen. You don't let three people in any way associated with your firm go into a room to have sex when they're drunk.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, this is called the vlog squad, just so people don't know. Setting yourself up to get talked.

Scott Galloway: He's 24 years old.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, but if a 24-year-old is old enough to make millions of dollars or raise $20 million, then he needs to be old enough to go— I'm not giving him the age excuse. I'm just saying he—what happened is these allegations happened, and then everyone's sort of reassessing his previous work on vlogging and these stunts that he did. The media mob takes it. And by the way, there was another incident. One of their posse was pranked. They dressed up a guy as a woman, they convinced him to kiss her, and then post his embarrassment, he has categorized this as a sexual assault. So now the media is saying that Dispo and these individuals are associated with multiple plural sexual assaults. Is that fair? Maybe, maybe not. But when you're the CEO of a company, when you're the principal of a company, nothing's for free. And if you want the opportunity to make tens of millions of dollars at a young age, it means, boss, you got to be clean as a whistle. And you got to be the adult in the room. And I remember when I first started my company, my first firm profit, we used to go to Mexico every year. Everyone would get ridiculously fucked up. And I've decided in today's age, I wouldn't do that. I just wouldn't want to put the firm and people's economic livelihoods at risk. So this is just capitalism. And Spark is doing the right thing. They're like, look, we just can't be associated with this.

Kara Swisher: Well, should they have checked it before? How much due diligence can you do? And then talk about the Alexi McCammond thing. Like, what do you...

Scott Galloway: Well, that's the right question. Now, in terms of Condé Nast, I think this is frightening. And let's come up with a different word for cancel culture, because now cancel culture is being thrown back in our faces and say, no, it's just an excuse for people that don't want to be held accountable. When you are 17, I mean, everyone who hasn't done something stupid or said something stupid and offensive at the age of 17, raise your hand, all right? And way to go for you. But the majority of us have, but we didn't live in an era where there was a hot mic following us around our entire lives. And the notion that we are now the woke mob, I don't know. To a certain extent, Condé Nast was put in a terrible position because actually I think the thing that caused it was Anna Wintour initially supported her, but then the advertisers started withdrawing from Teen Vogue. And at what point, okay, just keep in mind, folks, and there's an entire generation of people, and I've been trying to be more cognizant of my behavior, that online have decided they have a certain standard of purity, which, by the way, they have no intention of upholding personally.

Kara Swisher: Yep, yep, yep, yep.

Scott Galloway: And okay, just be clear. This mentality, this lack of forgiveness is coming for your children. And guess what? If she had committed manslaughter and gone to jail for two or three years and then been released from prison and gone on to be a reporter for Axios and gone on to become appointed for Teen Vogue, the woke mob would have found that an inspiring story of renewal. The statute of limitations-

Kara Swisher: Oh, don't blame the woke mob. This is Condé Nast. I'm going to put it right on Condé Nast.

Scott Galloway: But it was the woke mob that came after the advertisers.

Kara Swisher: They didn't care about – this happens a million times with advertisers. This is the Condé – let's put the blame where it belongs, which is on Condé Nast management and directly on Anna Wintour. I'm sorry. That's where it is. She hired her and then got spooked and decided not to do it by these advertiser things. That's where it is. And this – advertiser pressure happens all the time. This is not a new and fresh thing for different people. Okay. So I think Condé Nast should have said, I think they showed incredible power to us. They should have stuck with her.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. But there's a bigger point here, though, and that is we can't continue to – we shouldn't try children as adults.

Kara Swisher: That is a completely fair thing. I don't think that had anything to do with it. I thought that they decided they made a mistake in hiring someone without any actual experience.

Scott Galloway: If you commit manslaughter and they can't find enough evidence against you, there's a statute of limitations for five years. But racist tweets don't have a statute of limitations.

Kara Swisher: Well, you know, of course, then people that insulted her, they found they did tweets that were problematic, too. The people that were sort of putting it on. I'm still going to place it directly on Condé Nast and Anna Wintour. Either stick with her or, you know, they could care less about the staff and what they think. They care about the advertisers and then they can't take another. They have previously had so many racially based incidents, like problems there, that they're throwing this woman under the bus for their own problems. That's my feeling.

Scott Galloway: Okay. Okay, but you're talking about, you're going very, I get it, you're going very tactical of the situation. This represents a more serious disease in our society. And it is out of control when we decide to take notes and go back and start fucking up people's lives and livelihoods because of stupid things they did at the age of 17.

Kara Swisher: That is, I think, true. But in this case, I think there's a whole lot more going on here than that. And I think it's Condé Nast. Condé Nast has suffered from things they deservedly have been criticized for, and they don't want to take another one, so they're going to toss this woman out the door before she got there. I think that's where it begins and ends. Anna Wintour can't make one more mistake, so instead of stepping aside herself, she pulls someone else down.

Scott Galloway: Well, come on. She wasn't going to step aside.

Kara Swisher: No, but she had the Kamala Harris cover before that. There were dozens of issues.

Scott Galloway: The Kamala Harris cover? I wouldn't describe that as a groundbreaking racism.

Kara Swisher: I know that, but I'm saying that was the most recent one. There were like dozens and dozens of things at Condé Nast.

Scott Galloway: This isn't a Condé Nast problem. It's a societal problem.

Kara Swisher: I don't think so. I think Condé Nast is like just, they had misbehaved before and this woman's paying for it. But I don't think they care anything about what their staff thinks. I really don't. I don't think they, they don't seem to have done that in general. And they throw their staff under the bus all the time. That's what they did here.

Scott Galloway: Let me just say the person who had the problem before, David Dobrik, it was Logan Paul, who, remember he took the video in the Japanese suicide forest and then YouTube dealt with him. Anyway, this is not a new thing. That behavior, you absolutely should be thrown off for. And then David Dobrik, absolutely. I feel like that's perfectly fine.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, Scott, we're going to go on a quick break. We'll be back to talk about Trump's new social media platform and a friend of Pivot on NFTs.

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Kara Swisher: Okay, we're back. And so is former President Donald Trump. Apparently he'll be returning to social media, this time with his own social network. This weekend, longtime Trump advisor, Jason Miller, told Fox News that Trump will be, quote, returning to social media probably in the next two to three months on his own platform that will attract, apparently, tens of millions of new users and, quote, completely redefined the game. Reminder, Trump was permanently banned from Twitter after inciting riots at the Capitol in January. Scott, and he might or might not be off of Facebook. That's going to be TBD. What do you think, Scott?

Scott Galloway: Look, I think greatness is in the agency of others. And Donald Trump built a brand sort of the greatness is in the agency of PR and self-promotion and then calling on our kind of worst instincts, I think. And the reputation that Donald Trump and the Trump organization has always had is that they're terrible operators.

Kara Swisher: Yep.

Scott Galloway: That where they make money is by taking their brand and making it famous, whatever it's famous for, and then licensing it. But they're not. And like building technology, unless somebody – if he were to say I've partnered with the guys who ran, I don't know, Friendster, or I've got a team of 200 engineers lined up, then maybe. But this stuff, this stuff is difficult. He's not an operator.

Kara Swisher: No.

Scott Galloway: Anyways, I would not go long on this. What do you think?

Kara Swisher: I think it's ridiculous. I think beyond that, if they can't do it, they can't do it is my number one thing is that he won't do it. It's like Trump steaks would be an easier lift for this guy. And that failed. And Trump water. All of them. They're just, he's like trying to put his name on the scene. And also social networks really are network effects. And that means everybody's there. And the reason he was popular on Twitter is because not just his fans were there, but all the politicians, all the media, all the detractors, all the bots. And you need all of it. They were just as important. No one's going to – I'm not joining the Trump network just to listen to him. I didn't join Parler, right? I know what's on it. So he would be better off like helping revive Parler again or something like that. Maybe he is. Maybe that's part of it. My guess is he ends up on Clubhouse.

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: That's where you should go, don't you think? Just go to Clubhouse and take it over. Take over a section of it. Take over one that he hasn't shit all over and stay there until he shits all over it and they kick him off, really. I think that's what he should do. Why wouldn't he? Why wouldn't he? I think this is destined for failure. It just doesn't have everybody. Everyone's not at the party and these social networks need everybody at the party.

Scott Galloway: And then other thing is, you know, everyone was talking about Twitter, and I love your comment on this, going down after Trump left.

Kara Swisher: Well, it's up $20 since he left office, $25. Down?

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Remember everyone said, "Oh, he's not going to be on it. It's going to hurt Twitter's business."

Scott Galloway: Yeah, if management and the board had more of a backbone and their words foot to their actions and they actually gave a goddamn about the Commonwealth. There's a movement to purity here. Their immunities are kicking in. There's a citizen effect taking place. And that is Snap and Pinterest have been more vigilant about trying to keep their platforms less toxic. And guess what? They have appreciated faster over the last 18 months.

Kara Swisher: That's right.

Scott Galloway: Twitter's moving. Twitter's moved to purity here. It has resulted in a massive accretion in shareholder value plus some threatening subscription also. There's some very hopeful things here. The companies are being rewarded public. And again, I'm an investor. Public is the immunity to Robinhood. And guess what? It went from $100 million in valuation to $1.2 billion. There is a citizen accretive effect here that is very healthy. And you can do well by doing good. And Twitter's just starting to figure out that being a handmaid to sedition was not a good business strategy. And neither is anything Donald Trump does that requires execution. And this requires a lot of execution. It's all so much bullshit. And they won't. And by the way, you don't see them leaving Twitter either. So they stay. That's where politicians are.

Kara Swisher: OK, next up, Friend of Pivot. Here to clarify all things cryptocurrency and NFT, we have Scott's colleague, chairman of the Department of Finance at NYU Stern, David Yermack. David, thank you for— Professor Yermack, thank you for coming.

David Yermack: Thank you for the invitation.

Kara Swisher: No problem. So can you just give us an explanation? I've written about it recently and I had Beeple on today on my podcast, but give us a blanket explanation of how these NFTs work.

David Yermack: An NFT is a collectible and they reside on a blockchain, which means that they can't be replicated. And if you own one, you own the only one. And so the market for NFTs resembles the market for comic books, baseball cards, rare coins, and stamps, all sorts of other things where the intrinsic value of the object is really not so high, but the fact that you have the only one or one of a very small set is what confers the bragging rights and the prestige. And in this case, the scarcity is assured by cryptography, which arguably is something that would defeat counterfeiting and other ways of forging and replicating these assets. There are markets for art where sometimes you see forgeries of Rembrandts and so forth. With NFTs, those kinds of concerns go by the board because you don't have to worry about people replicating. The blockchain gives a degree of uniqueness and security that no other registry system ever has in history.

Kara Swisher: Right. So why are we suddenly hearing about them? And are they a fad? Because I think everybody's super— I was like, don't worry, it'll sort itself out. It's just a way to do transactions, essentially. But talk about why you're suddenly hearing about them and if you think they will go away. I don't, but go ahead.

David Yermack: No, I don't think they'll go away either. And we have had booms and busts in the collectibles markets. You may remember the big bubble in comic books around the year 2000 and so forth. But there have been markets in fine art for hundreds and hundreds of years. And there's a whole network of auction houses and galleries and appraisers that feed that market. And one of the enduring questions about why is a Rembrandt so valuable is it because it so exquisite to look at that people get so much pleasure? Or is it simply the bragging rights, the prestige of being rich enough to be able to afford one? And I think NFTs answer that question very much on the side of the second argument, that you can brag that you have the only copy of Jack Dorsey's first tweet. And if it's authenticated by a blockchain, even though other people could replicate and look at the exact copy. So anyone could copy Beeple's file and have a perfect rendering of it, but there's only one first edition. And collecting is partly about pleasure and partly about money laundering and wealth storage and so forth, but it's really about showing off and bragging. And I think that's what's driving the NFT market. And these are rather timeless human emotions that I think will always be with us.

Scott Galloway: David, does the original— does the person who owns the asset or owns the IP— does that ownership transfer or have power in this new medium? Or does it make sense to just raise $100 million and start creating NFTs of every valuable piece of IP ever and claim that you own it?

David Yermack: We don't know the answer to that yet. And you're seeing people rushing supply onto the market. Just today, Time Magazine created three new covers that they were going to auction off in NFT form. And they did this simultaneously with the publication of a series of articles about NFTs. Now, will anyone bid for these? I'm not sure. I think in any kind of fad where asset pricing is rising quickly, whether it's on Wall Street or a market like this, you will see more supply emerge to the point that the market becomes flooded and probably drops.

Scott Galloway: That's right. But my question is, I'm sorry to interrupt you. My question is, what if Time put out NFTs for covers of National Geographic? Could National Geographic say that?

David Yermack: National Geographic could sue them because they have a copyright. So, you know, you do have property rights for people who could be held accountable in court who infringe on them. You have interesting questions of jurisdiction, like in what court would you bring such a case and under exactly what statute? But I think many of the laws that have been around for a long time that apply to ownership rights of intellectual property would transfer very easily to NFTs.

Kara Swisher: Right. Would they make them more ironclad, these copyright laws? I would think so, if you could transparently see who owns it and it's a very clear ownership path.

David Yermack: Yeah, certainly the proof that you can offer in court may be a lot simpler on a blockchain because you can show an uninterrupted chain of custody and so forth. There have been real disputes about who owns a certain painting or who owns the royalties to a piece of music that has been sold and resold through many hands. Often it's very difficult to tell, but the promise of a blockchain is to fix those rights very unambiguously. It clarifies the ownership and the property rights for sharing of royalties and profits in a much better way.

Kara Swisher: And then artists can continue to hold them, right? Because in some of these contracts, for example, with Beeple, he's going to be— if it sells again, he gets a portion of that. You can write anything into these smart contracts.

David Yermack: Yeah. In fact, it's a very popular proposal. And I think it's even mandatory in Europe that an artist holds a residual royalty to resale. So it's a little bit like having a call option on the value of your work that is perpetual. If the thing gets sold and resold at auction, there are 10% of the profits filtering back to you. I think this is an interesting contract. But on the other hand, if the artist is retaining that residual right, the work should sell for a lower price in the first instance. You're only getting 90% of the upside and Beeple is keeping 10%. So you should only pay 90 cents on the dollar. And to the extent that Beeple may think the market's overheated, Beeple would be better off selling the whole 100% instead of holding that residual option. But who knows? This is what makes a market. And if artists want to retain 10% or even 50% residual, it's something that technology very easily admits.

Scott Galloway: Look at Jeff Koons. He should have held on. You know what I mean? Like a lot of people.

David Yermack: It's very easy to look backward and identify people who should have hung on to their work. Caravaggio should never have sold his supply until 400 years later. But if you look at all of the art that's being produced at a moment in time, most of it turns out to be worthless and has very little value in the future. And the studies that tend to encourage these kinds of things don't take account of the very high failure rate. It can be very hard to tell in the moment that a canvas or a digital piece that you just produced really will be popular in 50 or 100 years. But certainly for the ones where that turns out, yeah, you wish you had retained more of the value for yourself.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, 100%. So let's try and project what might happen here. When you think of traditional IP film media, they don't pay to start on the movie, they pay to market it, right? And I've always felt art is— the most successful artists are not only the best artists, artisans, they're the best marketers. And this feels like it's literally 99.9% your marketing acumen versus 0.0001 intrinsic value, right? Other than the scarcity component you talked about. Aren't the natural players here, the ones that could really make bank, the social media platforms that could create their own marketplace and then promote and market the NFTs that they own and just kind of make crazy bank?

David Yermack: I think that this is an interesting point. I'm not sure that they have the advantages in security that you get from the decentralized platforms. One of the things about the work of Beeple and many of the other popular NFTs is that they are on the Ethereum platform where there's really no gatekeeper and nobody who can censor or take down or change the rules because it's a decentralized, essentially a self-enforcing set of algorithms that governs this. If you put it on Google, you're working for Larry and Sergey or Amazon, you're working for Jeff Bezos. And so I'm not sure that people in the end will trust the social media platforms to protect the integrity of the property rights the same way that you see on the decentralized blockchains. So the lack of a so-called trusted third party or a gatekeeper is part of the value proposition of the NFT.

Kara Swisher: So what else could be made into NFTs? Like it's not just someone— I think someone I was talking to saying you can put a house on it. You can put other things. Does it have to be a collectible?

David Yermack: Well, I think you're making a more general point about fractional ownership.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, that is what happened to the Beeple's. The guy bought them and now he's fractionalized the entire collection and he's selling coins. I think he's B20 coins.

David Yermack: People have been talking for many years about applications like a young athlete who maybe is still in college selling shares to their future contracts. If you're an all-American football player about to enter the NFL draft, you could syndicate 15 years of future salaries and then share them out and get the money up front in a lump sum. You could invest in all kinds of types of human capital of new MBA students, maybe a portfolio of 100 MBAs coming out of the top business schools and get a stream of their royalties. There's really no limit to this, but there are also interesting incentive effects. The athlete who pre-sells their contract right obviously has less incentive to train and perform. They don't bear the risk. And it's the same with a musician who pre-sells the royalties. If Taylor Swift could sell forward future albums, maybe they're not going to be of high quality. The songs won't be as well written and so forth. So there are very interesting incentive effects that I think will figure in this market in the future. And some of them are probably good. Some are probably bad. We're in a very early stage and don't fully understand these yet.

Scott Galloway: It's funny you say that because I don't think I would have ever written a book had someone not given me an advance. And I felt like I had to. The other question, and you kind of leaned into this a bit, if these are gold mines, who's selling the picks and the denim tents? What technologies— you mentioned Ethereum— but who makes money here? What's the technology or the companies that benefit if there's a craze in NFTs?

David Yermack: The people making money right now are the ones selling the mining hardware. We have a very clear analog that in the old days it was picks and shovels and pans. Today, it's essentially specially designed computer chips and circuits that are programmed to mine cryptocurrency. And some of these companies are going public. So there are now crypto mining companies that are being listed on the stock exchange because it's a fast growing revenue, very traditional business, really just catering to the crypto markets. And there's all kinds of things like podcasts that are attracting viewers to listen to people talk about crypto and so forth. The whole industry is circling the technology, if you will. And I think first and foremost, the hardware providers. But I'm teaching a university course and students are applying to go to NYU so that they can take this course. We're all benefiting from second order effects of people who are interested in this.

Kara Swisher: And that, of course, you have to locate. And it's a lot of the activities in China where they locate them next to energy grids and things like that, which is somewhat really interesting how this is all playing out. But what advice would you give for someone who's just looking on? Because when they see this NFT, I think it's sort of a consumer gateway into cryptocurrency, what these NFTs are in a lot of ways. But what advice would you give for someone looking to invest in cryptocurrencies or NFTs, which I think NFTs is probably an easier way for them to do so?

David Yermack: The timeless advice is to diversify. Unless you find some special skill that you can recognize digital art better than the next person. If you really feel that this needs to be in your portfolio, I would spread your money around and look for an overall rate of return and let the risks cancel themselves out rather than putting all your eggs in one basket.

Kara Swisher: Is there one area like art versus the tweets of Jack Dorsey versus the videos of sports stars and things like that?

David Yermack: Very hard to say. Again, diversifying. Some of these things like the Super Bowl highlights, it's hard for me to see that anyone can really fix a claim on that. But we've had baseball cards. I remember trading them in my youth. And I have a son now who is trading the NFT equivalent of sports cards. And I think I never put all of my allowance into baseball cards. I wouldn't recommend that he puts all of his weekly meal money at college into the NFTs, but maybe 1% or 2% and also own real estate and equities and bonds and everything else. But I think the market is small. It's a very volatile speculative market. And I think most of the returns that people get are likely to be by chance as opposed to by skill.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, but it does give cryptocurrency a little workout in something in the ways that it hasn't beyond a speculative instrument, essentially. I don't know.

David Yermack: The cryptos are growing very quickly, and many of them are specially designed to solve certain problems. The main value of Ethereum seems to be connections to decentralized finance, or DeFi, which essentially takes the insurance and risk management industries and makes it run by robots without many of the moral hazard problems. This is actually something very socially useful, but it's a rather subtle contribution that people don't really think too much about when they buy Ether. I think the blockchain is a platform that can host many of the markets that up until now have resided on very primitive types of ledgers, the double entry bookkeeping. We have a lecture by a colleague at NYU, Amy Whitaker, who comes in every term and looks at art gallery ledgers, which are literally recipe boxes filled with index cards where forgeries and missing cards and so forth have been huge problems that have led to litigation. And so the contribution here is better record keeping. And this can add value to all kinds of markets and human endeavors in medicine, in the arts, and all kinds of things. And so I don't think it's really about speculation in the long run. It's about a very novel technology that has a lot of social utility.

Scott Galloway: David, last question. When you look at it, it feels as if— okay, Bitcoin at $60,000, NFTs going for millions. It feels a lot of this is foam off the froth or froth off the foam of an economy that is just awash in cash. But there's also a notion that these technologies are decentralization, disruptive, and protecting us from or a way to kind of escape from the traditional norms and dangers of our central bank driven economy, whatever you want to call it. Do you think these assets are correlated? And if and when we see a correction in the market, you'll just see a lot of the air come out of the balloon here? Or do you think that they're actually inversely correlated?

David Yermack: Do you mean the crypto assets, the Bitcoins, the Ether, the NFTs?

Scott Galloway: Well, you tell me, but it feels like this whole genre or asset class somewhat trades together. And so far, it seems somewhat correlated to the larger economy. Bitcoin hit $5,000 when the market crashed last year. We all like to think it's not correlated, but it feels like everything's correlated right now. Do you think this larger space of crypto, NFTs, the hardware— do you think it becomes inversely correlated or correlated to the general market?

David Yermack: I think it's probably positively correlated. But I can tell you there's a lot of high level research among asset pricing experts beginning to look at this, and we'll be able to answer that better in maybe a year or two. But it's obviously important that the person who paid $69 million for the Beeple— they paid in Ether. They didn't pay in real money. And this was a person with a lot of Ether tokens that they had come into possession of by whatever means. And a lot of the ownership of art through history has been done because it's a store of value and a way to take a monetary instrument issued by a government and to transform it into something that is probably more permanent and enduring. And I think the person who bought the Beeple probably viewed it as less risky than a pile of Ether tokens.

Scott Galloway: Yep.

David Yermack: But on the other hand, if Ethereum collapses, I think the auction prices for NFT are probably going to go south too because a lot of the clientele for this are people with crypto profits that are looking to park it somewhere a little bit safer. And then do interesting financial instruments with them, which is what they're trying to do with it, at least in the case of Beeple.

Kara Swisher: So I have a last question. If Pivot were to make an episode into an NFT, what would be your advice?

David Yermack: Have me as the guest. Sell for billions, I'm sure.

Kara Swisher: No, if you could get someone like Jack Dorsey or Satoshi Nakamoto to be the guest and then turn it into an NFT.

David Yermack: Oh, nice. This guy's probably the one. Get Vitalik, the creator of Ethereum. There's all kinds of crypto celebrities who might lend their name on an experimental basis to a little test if you give them a 10% kickback of the royalty.

Kara Swisher: Scott was just going to say how important you are, correct, Scott? Go right ahead.

Scott Galloway: Well, I was going to say this off my professor, but David is chair of the finance department at NYU, which makes him the most powerful person at Stern. Because basically Stern— let's be honest— David is the finance department in the seven dwarves. You guys roll your eyes every time the marketing department has anything to say. David's the most powerful person at NYU.

David Yermack: No comment, Scott. [He rolls his eyes.]

Scott Galloway: Our dean would object to that, except he's also finance. He's a finance. Where did he come from? The finance department.

Kara Swisher: People are getting very emotional about NFTs for some reason. I'm like, just don't do them then. What would you say to the average person with NFTs? It's fine. It's just another financial instrument. Just relax or beware.

David Yermack: It would really depend on what else they own. The advice about what to do with an asset is always contingent on—

Kara Swisher: Well, they don't own it at all. They just feel offended.

David Yermack: Other NFTs they should probably sell. But if they have $100 million in equity and they just came into this, see what happens. I have a 17-year-old daughter who's sitting downstairs right now, and she actually does digital art. She's been taking high school courses and so forth. And I told her to drop all the other classes, calculus and all the other— you know, chemistry— just do the digital art for the time being.

Scott Galloway: That's good parenting. Good parenting.

Kara Swisher: Good parenting.

David Yermack: She's skeptical. And I said, "I want you to Google Beeple and figure out what this Beeple is doing." Do the same thing. He's still making them. So far, she's still working on her other courses.

Scott Galloway: I'm sorry, Professor. Diversify your financial, but not your human capital. Come on. Come on. Diversify. One is a digital artist, I say.

Kara Swisher: I like it. I like how he thinks. Anyway. That's your portfolio.

Kara Swisher: Well, David Yermack is the chairman of the Department of Finance at NYU Stern. Thank you so much for coming on.

Scott Galloway: Thanks, David.

David Yermack: Thank you. Bye-bye.

Kara Swisher: Bye.

[The interview ends.]

Kara Swisher: Okay, Scott, that was fascinating.

Scott Galloway: So, Kara, let me tell you something about Professor David Yermack.

Kara Swisher: Okay. I do know his name. He's very famous.

Scott Galloway: And he's one of the reasons I continue to want to be affiliated with Stern and why it's so rewarding. That guy could make tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars a year working for a credit fund. And what he chooses to do is to try and figure out, do research and discover if there's a Michelle effect. And he tried to figure out the correlation between Michelle Obama's apparel and stock price movement. He then found the tail numbers of every jet, of every CEO, and determined that when they left for holiday, they planned to leave for holiday after the earnings call. That means that there was about to be an earnings beat. This guy is such a genius.

Kara Swisher: That was famous. I remember that.

Scott Galloway: This guy is such a genius and so creative, and he's decided my role is to—

Kara Swisher: I think he's a character on Billions. There's probably a character like that.

Scott Galloway: My role is to communicate that genius and that creativity to a new generation of finance people.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. He is— every time I speak to David, I learn something and I think, okay, that's why I am— why he continues to be important. I like it. But don't insult marketing people. They're fine too.

Scott Galloway: Don't worry. We get literally no respect.

Kara Swisher: I know. I mean, literally.

Kara Swisher: Just so you know, speaking of NFTs, we need to take a quick break. But first, Jonathan Mann tweeted at us that he used my catchphrase, "Fatuous Poppin' Jay," which I use liberally among the people, mostly in the Trump administration. But many people are Fatuous Poppin' Jays. Recently, it was Tucker Carlson. He turned it into a song with the intention to sell it as an NFT. He's been writing a song a day for 13 years. He sold the first 365 songs as NFTs. They sold out in 30 minutes. Let's play it.

[Song clip plays.]

Kara Swisher: So my question is, can I bid on an NFT that'll make that shit go away?

Scott Galloway: No, I think it's going to be brilliant. And I am the muse. I am like Mona friggin' Lisa. That's who I am.

Kara Swisher: Okay, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails.

[Ad break.]

Kara Swisher: Okay, Scott. Wins and fails. We are our own fail, apparently. We've got a lot of feedback from listeners on how we missed the mark on our interview with Andrew Duttoms.

Scott Galloway: We did miss it there. We really did miss it there. We should have been tougher on his company, Hymns.

Kara Swisher: I still think it's an interesting company, what it's been doing, and it could pivot into something else. But here is our resident doctor, Jeff Swisher, my brother, and your biggest fan, Scott Galloway.

Scott Galloway: You have a brother that's a doctor? Who knew?

Kara Swisher: Who knew? He likes attention himself to tell us where we got it wrong. I wonder where he got that.

Scott Galloway: I wonder, unlike his wilting flower sister. Listen, professor of marketing, look at me.

Kara Swisher: All right, let's listen to Jeff Swisher. You know what? That's not fair. I've become much more self-actualized. Just this morning, Kara, a bee landed on me, and I thought, I'm not scared. I take it as a compliment that it mistook me for a flower.

Scott Galloway: That's what you are, a delicate flower.

Kara Swisher: All right, let's listen to Dr. Jeff Swisher rip us a new one and then sew it back up because he's an excellent doctor. Go ahead, Jeff.

Jeff Swisher [audio clip]: Hey, Kara and Scott. You guys know I love you both, and I'm your biggest fan. But listen to me, as Kara says, as your actual big brother and Scott as your virtual one, you guys needed to do better with such a huge complex and promising topic as telehealth. This is such an important paradigm shifting field that it's really important to get it right. Rather than a master of the universe, founder, CEO, personally, I would have invited somebody with a more global analytic view. Like for instance, the extremely knowledgeable beat journalist Chrissy Farr, or the CIO of Kaiser Permanente, who's been at this game for a really long time. And they have been able to integrate virtual with in-person visits really quite well. Telemedicine has so much promise. It'll be awesome for pre-op screening and evaluation, some routine medical care, follow-up care, health promotion and wellness, but it's gotta be done safely and intelligently as well as ethically. And it's gotta work with doctors and other health professionals and not commodify us. It should ideally be an adjunct to physician-patient in-person interaction and not a replacement for it. Minor easily remedied problems with quick resolutions or the need for quick prescriptions, etc. It's such a small part of medicine. A lot of it is the experience and skill that a physician brings to the literal examining room table in an in-person interview and exam. There's so much more to say on this topic and so little time. But in general, you guys do great and I love listening to you. Thanks. Be well. And maybe you guys can have me back as a guest on Pivot again, and we can have a more substantive conversation on the subject of telehealth, because there's a lot to be said about it.

Kara Swisher: There's my brother. He's right. I mean, I think we've been correctly shamed.

Scott Galloway: I think he's right. I think he nailed it. And by the way, since we did that interview a week ago, HIMSS is off 20% the stock. I think that's largely because of Jeff Swisher or Dr. Swisher, but because Amazon's announced they're getting in. But yes, he's absolutely right. And direct-to-consumer ED drugs is not the same as offering medical advice.

Kara Swisher: No, but I think one thing he fails, and I think doctors fail in general, is the experience with your doctor is broken. I'm talking about general stuff. I think he gets that. I do think he gets that. But I don't think doctors do in general. They think the system is fine the way it is for patients. And I have to say, so much more innovation could go into this in health. It just doesn't. In much more complex stuff, too. Not just erectile dysfunction.

Scott Galloway: I was thinking about your brother last night.

Kara Swisher: Were you?

Scott Galloway: I was thinking about— I think anesthesiology is the brightest pulse of our species, for example. You've got to know everything. You've got to keep people alive. Well, if you think about it, our superpower as a species is cooperation that results in trust. We trust that people will pull over to the side of the road when they hear a siren. We trust when we drop our kids off at school, they're not going to eat them. Our species' superpower is cooperation that results in trust. And when you think about the ultimate example of our species' superpower, it's deciding to let a skilled professional take care of you while you are unconscious. And they will manage the nether-netherland between consciousness and unconsciousness while people take pieces of you out of you. And you trust that this person has your best interests at heart. You may not even know their name, but they're so skilled. They're so worried about your welfare. And we've created a system of capitalism and empathy and attracting nice, smart people. It really is kind of like it's the helm of the bobsled of what our species grows.

Kara Swisher: You are correct. I would agree with you 100%. It's the most difficult job. And I really, when it's done well, it's so great. I had a procedure. Jeff's not allowed to practice upon me because I'm his sister. But man, the people he picks, they put me right out. And then I woke right up. It was fantastic, I have to say. And I didn't fear at all. And it's true. And you definitely can't do that online. You cannot give someone propofol. What are your wins and fails, Kara?

Scott Galloway: I think that was enough. That was enough?

Scott Galloway: That was enough. There's plenty to talk about this week. We will see.

Kara Swisher: Well, I've got to win and fail.

Scott Galloway: I think Florida's failing in terms of that, and winning is the vaccinations continue apace. I think that is a win. My fail is there needs to be a statute of limitations. We need to let kids screw up in a safe place and learn from it. And there are errors as children. We can't try them as adults. And what happened at Condé Nast, whether it's your point at Condé Nast screwed up here, we just need to be mindful that there's a difference between actions at 17 and actions at 27.

Kara Swisher: This is true. But I'm going to purpose that.

Scott Galloway: Here we go.

Kara Swisher: No, my fails are unedited, Kara. I don't know if you got the memo from our producer.

Scott Galloway: All right. Then my fail. Here's my fail. I'm going to have my fail then. My fail is that we do not take into account consequences of our actions and then try to act like we're a victim. When we do bad things, we should pay for them.

Kara Swisher: Is she acting like she's a victim?

Scott Galloway: Thank you.

Kara Swisher: No, no, no, not her. What are you talking about?

Scott Galloway: I'm not talking about this particular instance, but a lot of this cancel culture bullshit, like Andrew Cuomo pulling it. Stop like pawing women, sir.

Kara Swisher: You're conflating totally different issues.

Scott Galloway: I am conflating, but people like dump it in the same thing, like fake news. People dump it into the same pot. The two are totally different.

Kara Swisher: They are, but people don't do that. Cancel culture has become a thing, like fake news has become a thing. And it's very, there is some fake news. It's just not all of it, and they tend to use it as a country.

Scott Galloway: Okay, holding people to a standard you do not want to hold your own children to. Let me just put it that way.

Kara Swisher: No, I got that. Okay, so a win. I like that you're an election comment. Rather than the grandstanding of Senators Sanders and Warren, there are Senators and elected leaders just doing the hard work. And so my wins are Representative Cicilline, Senators Bennett, who's been pushing the earned income tax credit for children for years. and didn't get any credit for it when it got into the bill in a huge size. Do you realize that people under the age of people, households with income less than $50,000, they're gonna see their income increase 20% this year? That is a huge win for us and it's overdue. It is a form of UBI, which I'm not entirely sure I agree with, but I think it's a worthwhile experiment. We needed to level up this group and also Senator Klobuchar, who again, rather than posing for the cameras, is doing the hard work around antitrust. So those are my wins, good government.

Scott Galloway: Nice. You know who my win is?

Kara Swisher: Go ahead.

Scott Galloway: Dr. Jeffrey Swisher.

Kara Swisher: I knew you were going to say that. I knew you were going to say that. All the Swishers. Swishers in general.

Scott Galloway: There you go. There you go.

Kara Swisher: Okay, Scott. That's the show. It was a little testy today.

Scott Galloway: I like it. I like a little testy. A little spicy.

Kara Swisher: A little testy. A little salt around the room with that pivot margarita. We'll be back Friday for more as soon as we sign up for Trump's social network, and we'll be back. And it's like a shot of tequila. You don't really feel it until you walk away from the table.

Scott Galloway: So in about 30 minutes, you're going to think, I wish I'd been nicer to the dog.

Kara Swisher: That's true. I do. And someone just sent me a new bottle of tequila. So I will do that. I will drink before every show. Anyway.

Scott Galloway: That's what I do.

Kara Swisher: Go to nymag.com.

Scott Galloway: That makes two of us.

Kara Swisher: To submit your question for a pivot podcast. The link is also in our show notes. Scott, read us out.

Scott Galloway: Today's show was produced by Rebecca Sinanis. Ernie Indra Todd engineered this episode. Thanks also to Hannah Rosen and Drew Burrows. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts. Or if you're an Android user, check us out on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.

David Yermack: The wonderful thing about our society and our species is that incredibly impressive people opt for teaching, not money.

Kara Swisher: Thank you, Professor David Yermack.

David Yermack: And can be trusted, can be trusted when we are totally helpless.

Kara Swisher: Thank you, Dr. Swisher.