The Great Resignation Continues, J&J’s Two-Way Split, and Friend of Pivot, Blake Scholl

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Scott Galloway: Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Scott Galloway. And today, Cara is out. We'll talk more about that. So we're happy to be joined by MSNBC anchor and NBC News senior business correspondent, Stephanie Ruhle. Stephanie, how are you?

Stephanie Ruhle: I am very well. Thank you so much for having me, Scott. It's a rare day that Kara is not here, but it's a big day for her. And so I'm happy to pinch hit for the day.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, it's, you know, it took a miracle to bring us together, Stephanie. It would take a miracle to keep us apart. But in this instance, it was a miracle to bring us together. Kara and Amanda have welcomed a baby boy, a beautiful, bouncing baby boy. Rumor is that they have decided, and I'm humbled to name it Scott. The last part of that is not true. I thought it was named Elon.

Stephanie Ruhle: Oh, thanks for that. Thanks for that.

Scott Galloway: I think this is a huge victory for women. I want you to comment on this. But typically it's only been men who have a family, get divorced, make a shit ton of money, and then marry someone much younger and start a second family. So I think it's nice that women are getting in on this action. Your turn.

Stephanie Ruhle: Wow, that's how you're referring to Kara? Oh, come on. She's a baller. Nothing wrong with that. Having a new family. I think it's a good thing. I'm thrilled about it across the board. I'm going to remove it from Kara. But I do think you're right in that the way we look at couples, the way we look at power structures. You know, if you see an older guy with a younger woman, you're going, "Oh, yeah, that's a baller guy." And it is what it is. You almost never see the reverse. I'm not going to say that's Kara. I'm going to say Kara Swisher is living her best life unapologetically, as she always has. And more people should do the same.

Scott Galloway: Right on, sister. Okay, let's move on to less interesting and aspirational things. Steve Bannon surrendered to federal authorities on Monday. He was indicted on criminal contempt of Congress last Friday after refusing to comply with the committee investigating the January 6th insurrection. The House of Representatives find Stephen K. Bannon in contempt of Congress for refusal to comply with a subpoena. He's expected to appear before a judge as we record this. Meanwhile, Trump's former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, may also be indicted. He's ignored the committee as well. Stephanie, you've been covering this. What are your thoughts here?

Stephanie Ruhle: Begrudgingly, because blah, blah, blah. What are we doing today? Giving Steve Bannon and Donald Trump exactly what they want. Breaking news, Steve Bannon walking into a federal courthouse. Steve Bannon, who's an extremely wealthy man, who doesn't ever want or need to conform. He doesn't truly care about politics. Remember, look at interviews you've seen with him years ago. He has studied authoritarian regimes. His goal was always, "Let's just blow up the system." So he walked into a courthouse today, walked, sauntered in, smiling, waving, talking to journalists, promoting his radio show. And what's going to kill me the most? Tomorrow morning, if we're sitting here using soundbites from crazy stuff he's going to say on his radio show today. And I struggle with this because the Trump school of thought has always been "go shameless or go home." There is no such thing as bad press. And here we are across the board talking about him. And it's this question to the Department of Justice and Democrats: how many more times are we going to get him? Subpoena is coming. They're in trouble now. And yes, he's now appearing before, surrendering himself. But everybody else takes their subpoenas and blows their nose with them. These subpoenas have made the most important birdcage lining we've seen over the last four years. And this is a moment where if you're going to subpoena these people, what are you actually going to get out of it? He did bad things. Let's see it. Steve Bannon loves being a Trump martyr and he loves the fact that he can be. And you're going to see the likes of Mark Meadows and others not be able to take it to the wall as far as Bannon can, because those guys actually need to make a paycheck and they want to have jobs going forward and they want to be relevant. Bannon wants to blow up the system. What do you think?

Scott Galloway: Well, I'm curious. I was sort of more hopeful in the sense that I believe two of the biggest threats to our society right now are insurrectionists and rejectionists. And rejectionists are this exclusive culture that me and my colleagues are a part of where we take pride in rejecting 90% of people to upward mobility in college. But I think insurrectionists, specifically elected officials who kind of urinate on the constitution and won't even acknowledge the safe and efficient transfer of power and won't endorse or authorize the election, I think of them as insurrectionists. And the people who were provided agency and were party to this insurrection, I think should be strapped to a cannon and have their remains shot out over the hills of Washington, D.C. But anyways.

Stephanie Ruhle: Okay. But hold on. That is, don't get hyperbolic. Like, let's get real in the how serious it is. If we let these people ignore the law, if democracy stops working, how devastating that is. And a lot of people don't realize that. But I am hopeful. We are sentencing many of the people who stormed the Capitol to jail. We are putting them in prison. We are tracking them down and prosecuting them. I saw this, and what you're saying, and you might be right, you're closer to this than I am, I saw this as progress that he has, as you said, waved the middle finger at these subpoenas. And now we are coming for them. We are arresting them or asking them to report to the Department of Justice. You don't think this is going to amount to anything?

Scott Galloway: I want it to.

Stephanie Ruhle: I agree with you that it is progress. It's frustrating that it's taken as long as it has. And you just want to be sure that what we're actually watching them do is run the clock. Trump himself hasn't even exerted executive privilege. It's absurd that Steve Bannon is saying executive privilege. He didn't work for the administration. He was just a private citizen doing who knows what. And Trump is no longer the executive. So, yes, I agree with you. It is a huge positive to see these insurrectionists being sentenced. I mean, they are facing real jail time. It's good that Steve Bannon has to turn himself in. I guess my enthusiasm is far more tempered than yours is. Because I'll believe it when I see it. I'm still waiting on Trump's taxes, aren't you?

Scott Galloway: There you go. We'll move on from Bannon. Let's talk. Speaking of kind of arrogance and megalomania, Elon Musk keeps bullying U.S. senators on Twitter. This week, his new victim or new target, Bernie Sanders. Elon told Bernie, "I keep forgetting that you're still alive." If I were Senator Sanders, I would have responded, "Yes, alive and legislating, bitch." But anyways, Bernie has more grace than me. After Sanders called for billionaires to pay their fair share of taxes. Last week, Elon tweeted aggressive insults at Senator Ron Wyden and called him "an insufferable numbskull." What is your view of all these late night tweets from Elon?

Stephanie Ruhle: Listen, I think, I mean, you've been in the, you're closer to the line of fire than I am.

Scott Galloway: You mean in the line of fire?

Stephanie Ruhle: I think it's hugely disappointing. Elon Musk is one of the most successful, brilliant, wealthiest people on planet Earth. What he's proven himself to be is like the world's most expert Twitter troll. And it works. I mean, this nonsense last week of "I decided to conduct a Twitter poll about selling stock." If you believe that, then please, time to make me the cover of next year's Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, if you believe that's sincere. No, Elon Musk is looking at his extraordinary inflated stock price and saying, "There is nothing that justifies this. I'm going to take the money and run." But by saying to the world, "You guys decide, should I sell a little bit of stock here?" Somehow, he has snookered people and they believe it. His expert level of trolling is so hugely disappointing given the position of power he's in. But I'm also blown away by how it works.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, it really is disappointing because you just got to give it to the guy. And first off, he's putting people in space. He's electrifying the world. It's just impossible not to acknowledge his immense accomplishments. And as a result, he aggregates 40 or 50 million followers who I think are predominantly young men. And they really look to this guy for leadership and as an example. And he sets a tremendous example on a lot of levels. And then he says to Bernie Sanders or Senator Sanders, "Oh, I forgot that you were still alive." Or he makes a very crude statement around Senator Wyden. And you weren't, okay, on a risk-adjusted basis, that just is, I don't see how that's good for Tesla because these people actually are pretty powerful and just financially or from a shareholder standpoint, they can pass laws that are bad for Tesla, much less Elon. It's also, what does that do to young men's impression of the greatest deliberative body ever? And that's the U.S. Senate.

Stephanie Ruhle: Your last point, I think, is the best one, because is it really bad for Tesla? I'm thinking no. Is he really pissing off lawmakers and they're going to seek revenge? I highly doubt it, mostly because when you actually look at what lawmakers do. Republicans win and lose, Democrats win and lose, but you know who wins every time no matter what? Really, really, really wealthy people. I would be surprised if I saw some egregious regulation that's going to hurt Elon Musk or Tesla as a result of this. But watching him unnecessarily humiliate, disrespect our elected officials is beneath the position of immense power that he's earned. And it's just disappointing.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, you'd think you would show, I don't know the word I would use, you'd like to think you'd show a little bit more grace. But anyways, this was, I mean, it's entertaining, but it's sort of, okay.

Stephanie Ruhle: Well, sure. I do think that there's a large population of people that found Trump and Elon's form of irreverent behavior after hearing all these people in public life pretend they like each other and act civil and never really say anything. I think there's a certain authenticity to these statements that people are really drawn to. They're very raw. They're not managed by six PR executives, "say this, but don't say that." The CEOs of General Motors and most senators and presidents kind of get to a mic and say a whole lot of nothing. And these guys do tap into an authenticity, a certain lack of self-consciousness, a certain lack of, I'm going to say what I believe real time that people are very drawn to. The question is, has it just gone too far?

Scott Galloway: Scott, I'm drawn to it too. I just want them to pull back 20%. Because the problem is your average person in a position of power is no longer speaking anywhere near close to their mind because they're so worried, they're so consumed with saying on script and saying absolutely nothing, it gets us nowhere. And that's a problem because I do want to hear from the smartest minds in science and business and technology and government. I want to hear from them. But at this point, so many of them say nothing out of fear of getting crushed.

Stephanie Ruhle: Yeah. It's refreshing that the Elon Musks of the world, right? Like a junior version of it years ago is when Jamie Dimon used to get himself in hot water. When he would be insensitive for what he would say and people would crush him for it. And I'm not saying he shouldn't be criticized, but when you go after these people so hard, their response is that I'm just going to say nothing. And I'm not complimenting or insulting Jamie Dimon, but I do want these people to speak. I just wish that Elon Musk could take the power that he has, speak the truth that he does, but remember, come on, like you don't need to say "you're still alive." And Scott, to me that comes from adrenaline addiction. Elon, like the rest of us, have been home for a year and a half. Guys like that are used to going into the office and their factories and sporting events and getting worshipped by everyone around them. They're not getting to experience that right now, so they're going to get worshipped on Twitter. And that part's sad.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, it's weird. One of the strangest things that's happened to me is when he tweeted at me. It didn't really impact me because I don't think we have much crossover in terms of followership. But my 11-year-old son came home from the fifth grade on Thursday, the day after, and he said, just kind of trying to be coy, "Daddy, what's a numbskull?" And for those of you who don't know, Elon Musk called me an insufferable numbskull. And I'm like, "Oh no, he saw the tweet." And I'm like, "Why are you asking?" He said, "Well, because people said that your dad is a numbskull, that Elon thinks your dad is a numbskull." And I said, "Oh, it's his Twitter buddy. People say mean things about each other. You don't need to worry about it." But I thought the fact that this so fast traveled to the fifth grade in Gulfstream and that my son comes home worried that Elon, who he's taught and admires, thinks his dad is a numbskull. I'm like, "Wow, this has really gone full circle. This is really, there's something weird and wrong about all of this."

Stephanie Ruhle: Okay, but that full circle is about the mob that everything is black and white for. Somebody's the hero and somebody's the villain. I think it was like two years ago, Elon Musk tweeted at me and I was wrong. I don't know. I can't even remember exactly what it was. I'd read an article about how Tesla, and I'm probably getting this wrong, maybe doesn't match 401ks or something like that. And I think I just posed it as a question. Like, "What's the deal with that? How could he do that?" And he came at me and said, "Because people get stuck." And I was wrong. I think that's what it was. And that's obviously helped my people way more. And I was like, "You know what? You're right. My bad. Glad you're doing that." To me, you can have a provocative, you can come at somebody and they can come at you and you can say, "Great, I just got smarter for it." However, that mob after that just goes so hard that you're the worst person ever, or you're a numbskull, or you're an idiot, or you're this. And that's what's unfortunate. You and I could yell at each other all day, but as two people who are invested in making the world better and smarter, and without a doubt, that what Elon Musk is doing, he can leave the sucker punching people on the side knowing what a powerful influence he is.

Scott Galloway: So let's move to-

Stephanie Ruhle: There's no way he would have tweeted that at you if he knew it would have come back to your fifth grade son. And I guess that's my hope.

Scott Galloway: Oh, see, I think you give more credit than that. I don't think he gives a shit. If he doesn't realize at this point what 40 million people do when he just kind of errantly dunks on people. If he doesn't realize the second order effects of that, he's smarter than that. He knows, you just don't give a shit is the bottom line.

Stephanie Ruhle: I don't think you're right there. When you even take a school bully, when they make fun of someone, they don't ever realize the impact on that person. They don't realize how it impacts them and their brother and their sister and their friend. When somebody's throwing a punch, they never think about the reverberations. And you're right. Maybe it's not in his, but if you actually said to him, "I want you to know, this is what came back from my son." He's a human. He's a dad. I remember when he was on SNL, you were the person after, and you gave him a lot of credit. And when he was on SNL and he actually showed this shred of vulnerability, that was sort of like, to me, his kind of winning moment there. And I think that's what you had said after. So if he doesn't give a shit and he has this zillion person following, I hope he starts giving a shit because he can do great, even better things than he does.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. And by the way, I don't want to dramatize it. It wasn't a big deal.

Stephanie Ruhle: Come on, you are a numbskull, Scott.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, well, no, but I'm sufferable. You suffer with the dog every once in a while. You know, I'm sufferable.

Stephanie Ruhle: Yes, that's true. You are a sufferable numbskull.

Scott Galloway: There you go. A hundred percent. So just real quick, let's talk about that tall drink of Texas lemonade, Beto.

Beto O'Rourke [Audio Clip]: I'm running for governor and I want to tell you why. This past February, when the electricity grid failed and millions of our fellow Texans were without power, they were abandoned.

Scott Galloway: What do you think of this?

Stephanie Ruhle: Listen, we'll soon find out, because when people talk about the Lone Star State and what Texas is, it's confusing. We're forgetting that the demographics in Texas have changed so much in the last 10, 20 years. Look at the city of Austin, Texas. It's exciting that he's doing this. Matthew Dowd, a former Republican, is running for lieutenant governor. These are not super far left progressives. These are kind of like this new level of what more centrist Democrats could be in a state like Texas. It's really exciting. But at the end of the day, this is a state that has the most restrictive abortion laws. This is a state that is having you think about Southlake, Texas and firing a principal over critical race theory that they're not even teaching. They're going to pay that principal for the next two years. Imagine the school district having that kind of money that they're so offended by a principal who didn't actually do anything wrong. They're going to pay him for another two years when that person's the highest on the food chain inside of a school. Imagine how that money could go to teachers and janitors and actual students. So on one hand, wow, this shows that you've got the Lone Star State changing. But on the other hand, I don't know about that. Texas is Texas.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. And he goes in with some real disadvantages. I think Abbott is already sitting on a war chest of 55 million. It's going to be a challenge, but I don't know. I'm on board. I'm with Team Beto. I'm excited about it.

Stephanie Ruhle: But remember, you're on Team Beto from Florida and from New York. And remember how much support Beto had against Ted Cruz. Ellen DeGeneres and parties in New York City, he's got to win in Texas.

Scott Galloway: Fair point. Okay, Stephanie, time for our first big story. Johnson & Johnson this week announced that they're going to go through a breakup and that there's a general recognition that with some of these companies, the whole has actually become less than the sum of its parts and they're paying a conglomerate tax. Any thoughts on the breakups of GE or the self-imposed breakups of GE and J&J?

Stephanie Ruhle: I would just say from a really nerdy, old person sense of nostalgia: wow, how corporate America has drastically changed in the last 20 years. I can't think of a more powerful conglomerate decades ago than GE. Most valuable company in the world. Jack Welch, best CEO. There they are saying all these pieces don't add up. We need to break up. While you have Facebook, Google, Amazon truly embarking on world domination. And they scoff at the idea of breaking up.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, they're conglomerating. It's really interesting. And by the way, it's a good move. GE has some great assets. And what I've found when I've served on boards of companies, typically what happens is the CEO conglomerates because he or she gets paid more based on the size of the company. The compensation committee says, "All right, the CEO of a company of this size generally gets paid between X and Y." In addition, the CEO gets to diversify their risk because with more distinct business units, they smooth out their earnings. But here's the thing. Investors don't need CEOs to diversify for them. I can go buy shares in an aircraft company and then in a health imaging company separately. I don't need the CEO of GE to do it for me. It creates complexity. And then what happens over time is the market begins to push back on this complexity. And when I was on the board of the New York Times, basically they would take assets which were valuable assets, the Seventh Avenue building in America, ownership in the Red Sox, About.com, a digital asset. They find the shittiest business in your portfolio and then they assign that multiple to the entire business and you end up paying a conglomerate tax. So the breakup is actually creative. And look at PayPal, which was spun from eBay and is now worth five or 10 times what the original parent was worth.

Stephanie Ruhle: But Scott, you're also being rational. The key for any CEO of a public-

Scott Galloway: Sufferable even, I'm sorry, go ahead.

Stephanie Ruhle: ...is growth, growth, growth. And when you cannot grow organically, which giant businesses cannot, they're like, "Let me merge, let me buy things." Even if it doesn't work in the long run, it works right now. And for CEOs, they don't live in a world of long term. Very few CEOs are founders who have their C-class shares of stock who care about anything long term. They just need to win for the minute.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, but there is a difference. For example, I think when Google buys Waze or Amazon buys a lot of logistics companies, these bolt-ons that are sort of accretive to the current business operations. Yes. And then when there's ITT that owns O.M. Scott's, a fertilizer company, and a peanut butter company, these things have nothing in common with each other. And there's literally negative synergy because investors can't figure out what the opportunity is.

Stephanie Ruhle: Yeah, that was part of the comedy of the show 30 Rock. "I'm Jack Donaghy, new VP of development for NBCGE Universal Kmart. We own Kmart now." No. That was like the basis of "here's this microwave business." Like none of it ever made sense. As nuclear guidance systems.

Scott Galloway: Yes.

Stephanie Ruhle: So I think it makes sense. I just think for corporate America historians, it's just like this bizarro moment of nostalgia. And wow, how the world's changed.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, it's going to be really interesting. The other thing I think I saw today was that Apple is putting the CEO, I don't know if it's the current or the former CEO of J&J, which only speaks to Apple's ambitions to get into the healthcare business.

Stephanie Ruhle: Listen, the company's based in New Jersey, Scott. For me, I always root for any business that's based in New Jersey, Johnson & Johnson.

Scott Galloway: Well, J&J has been one of the best performers in the Dow. I mean, it's an incredible company, really innovative and has obviously played a key role in the pandemic.

Scott Galloway: All right, Stephanie, let's go on a quick break. And when we come back, we'll talk about the great resignation and discuss supersonic air travel with a friend of Pivot.

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Scott Galloway: Okay, welcome back, Stephanie. We're back with our second big story. The great resignation keeps getting greater. Last month, 4.4 million Americans quit their jobs. That's a new record. Some sectors saw more workers quit than others, including hospitality, education, and health services. Wages are up. However, and this is a big however, when you adjust for inflation, that's not true. Earnings are still down 1.1% on the year. Purchasing power is going down for people who have to spend a disproportionate amount of their income on things like healthcare and education and food, which continue to skyrocket. I'd love to get your take. I went on CNN to talk about inflation on Saturday, and it was one of those experiences where about halfway through the segment, I realized I had no fucking idea what I was talking about. I'd love to get your take on inflation, whether you think it's transitory, what the view is from Washington, just sort of inflation, your turn.

Stephanie Ruhle: So the first thing I would say is-

Scott Galloway: You're exhausted already.

Stephanie Ruhle: We cannot look at inflation in isolation. All of this is tied to the pandemic. And we do have to remember, while this is super difficult, especially for middle and lower income people, we have to remind ourselves where we were a year ago. This time last year, our restaurants were shutting down and laying people off. Fast forward a year, those same restaurants can't hire enough people. They're charging $20 for a hamburger. And here's the thing though, we can't get reservations at those restaurants. This is a really complicated thing. Even before the pandemic, we had a bifurcated economy. If you were invested in the market, if you owned a home, if you had a white collar job, you were doing really well. If you were a saver who didn't have any sort of market investment, who were lower income, you were in a really bad spot. Now things have gotten only worse. So here's where we are with inflation. Yes, the government knew it was going to be a rocky economic recovery. And that's why we saw a lot of accommodations being made, rent moratoriums, eviction, mortgage moratoriums. We have the expanded child tax credit. You've got the families of 60 million kids right now getting on average an extra $430 a month because of that. We're going to see for senior citizens on Social Security, we're going to see an inflation adjustment next year, 5.9%. Those are positive things. But here's the big problem. One of the things that will push price, that will slow inflation would be fixing the supply chain issues. That would be great. That's not going to happen overnight. Two, the Fed would actually take action and raise rates a little and stop buying bonds. That would be awesome if they would do that because it makes no sense. The last time inflation was this high, the early 90s, you had your Fed funds rate above 5%. What would be the problem if it was at 2% now? But the third leg is when prices are this high and demand starts to fall away, then businesses will stop raising their prices. But this is something that people don't want to hear about. This takes you to, when I say, a bifurcated economy. Demand isn't slowing. While this is catastrophic for middle-income people, for low-income people, for wealthier people, we might not like higher prices, but we're paying them. We're expecting record holiday retail sales. We're going to get retail numbers from some of the biggest retailers this week. And while we're saying this is devastating how expensive gas is and how much cars cost, you can't find a used car because people saved up their disposable income. They own stocks. The value of their home is up. And so you've got wealthier people that can afford to pay these higher prices and they're lining up to do so. Unfortunately, those wealthier people that aren't really impacted by inflation, even though they don't like it, because they're paying more, everyone has to pay more. So what we're experiencing is sort of the worst case scenario for people at the bottom. Yes, there's more financial cushion, but these are the people that are going to suffer from inflation. And when we keep saying to them, "Oh, it's just transitory," what does that mean?

Stephanie Ruhle: That's like saying you're a little bit pregnant. We're going to deal with this for quite some time. And you bring up the great resignation. You know, the Biden administration is going to sign into law the hard infrastructure bill. Great. And we need new roads and bridges. We need Wi-Fi in rural America. But one of the things we keep hearing is, and it's going to create so many great jobs. Here's one of the issues, Scott. We have lots of jobs right now that are open that aren't getting filled. We saw an enormous amount of people quitting their jobs last month. So what is it that's going to get people to go back to work? And my last point would be, it's very good to see higher wages. We want higher wages. But if you think higher wages aren't impacting prices in some places, that's not true. Look at the restaurant business. When restaurants are paying their workers more, when their input costs go up, they're in turn raising their prices. Not to say that they shouldn't pay their workers more. They damn well should pay them more. But that does impact prices. And to simply not acknowledge that and say, screw that. Corporate America should pay people more wages and pay their CEOs less. I agree with that. I wish they would do that, but they're not going to.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, how's that happen? If Poteley says my input costs more, my guacamole costs more, my labor costs more, and I'm going to charge you a dollar more for a burrito, we're buying—

Stephanie Ruhle: Worth it.

Scott Galloway: Yes, we're buying lots of burritos. And when they have their investor calls, none of their investors are saying to the CEO, don't raise the price of your burrito, you should get paid less. So yes, in a perfect world, those executives would say, wait a minute, it's time to finally narrow the gap of worker pay and CEO pay. But they're not doing that. They're just charging more money. And right now we're paying that. And that is why it's so devastating for people at the bottom. But to say that like everyone's suffering, everyone isn't suffering. And that's what makes this complicated. And it's what makes inflation persistent.

Stephanie Ruhle: Yeah, it's really wild. It's sort of the perfect storm. If you think of inflation, just very roughly or crudely speaking, it's more dollars chasing fewer products. And so you have fewer products—a lot of them are trapped offshore or we're just having more hiccups in the supply chain. So try and get a sub refrigerator right now. At the same time, we put trillions of additional cash into the system. In Europe, where they are experiencing the same supply chain problems, you haven't seen this type of inflation because their stimulus hasn't been quite as—I don't want to call it overboard—but we, I think we're coming to the conclusion we may have overdone it on certain components of the stimulus side.

Scott Galloway: I want you to talk about that. Because when we say maybe we overstimulated the economy, people get very upset and they say we shouldn't have given the stimulus checks. We shouldn't have given expanded child tax credit. No. No, that's not what I'm talking about. I don't think that's what we're talking about. We're talking about the Fed keeping rates at zero. Buying corporate bonds.

Stephanie Ruhle: Buying corporate bonds. Let's say this one more time. I still, it's unfathomable to me. The only people the Fed are really serving right now, keeping rates at zero, are over-levered investors.

Scott Galloway: They're rich people, yeah.

Stephanie Ruhle: And if over-levered investors feel a bit of a sting, so be it. It makes no sense why the Fed has been buying bonds below U.S. Treasury for all of these months and keeping rates at zero. Explain that to me.

Scott Galloway: Well, you also said, and I think you demonstrated leadership here, and I think you got a lot of shit for it. Because I got a lot of shit for it. And that is a $750 billion PPP where we created this cartoon of the cupcake bakery owner that just needed an extra little help to get to the other side. And it was firms like mine, Section 4, an ed tech firm funded by multi-billion dollar VC funds. And we were eligible for a quarter of a million dollar giveaway. And my CFO came to me and said, just sign here. We're going to get a quarter of a million dollars for the relief. I forget what was called program, as long as we don't fire anybody. I'm like, fire people? We're hiring 60 people in the next three months. And I sat down with my board and to their credit, they all looked around and said, we're not taking this money.

Stephanie Ruhle: And you think about—how many other businesses did that?

Scott Galloway: Well, I'm virtue signaling, but my guess is the majority took it. But the PPP program, like a lot of the bailout, a lot of that $7 trillion—I've said this for a long time. We threw some loaves of bread and some circuses for the poor and two thirds of it ended up in the market such that the already rich could get much richer. We absolutely overdid this. A hundred percent. And right now, when you look and you say, what has the economy done for savers? Nothing. You literally earn zero. There is no rational reason why rates should be at zero at this point. They should be where they were after the financial crisis. Why? And that has caused the stock market to trade like a video game. And people say like, listen, the Fed can't take action out, it would spook the market. So tell me, what does spooking the market mean? Would it mean that the market would get shaken and maybe we would start trading anywhere near fundamentals? Okay, that might be constructive and okay. And you know who benefits from this kind of disruption or these gale force winds of tumult and volatility in the market going down 20 or 30 percent? Young people. Because I don't know about you, but when I was coming into my prime income earning years, I was able in 2008 to buy Amazon and Apple for one twelfth of what they're trading at now because the market let things crash. And now all we're doing is aggregating and accumulating all this dry brush. And when you don't let the gale forces of disruption howl, all you are doing is transferring opportunity and capital from young people to old people. To keep the current rich rich or make them richer is nothing but siphoning opportunity from young people who would like the opportunity to buy stocks and homes in Brooklyn on sale. And the government was not comfortable letting them go on sale.

Stephanie Ruhle: Scott, that's because we have seen corporate America and investors figure out a way to browbeat, to influence, to headline influence the Fed into keeping the punch bowl full. There's no reason. Right. Go before COVID. Go before Trump was in office. Remember before Trump was in office when he would argue against rates being at zero, saying this is screwing senior citizens. This is screwing people on a fixed income. And then Trump was elected. And he basically said to Jay Powell, you're my boy now. You better keep rates at zero because that's good for the market. It's not. But investors know at this point, let's just hang tight and the Fed will save us. Remember, you had the biggest private equity giants in the world using Steve Mnuchin, using Jared Kushner to make their way to the Fed to make sure that they were going to get bailed out, that all of their middle market companies were going to get bailed out. Those companies could have gone by the wayside. But those private equity giants are bigger than ever, thanks to the money they've got from the government in the last year and a half. And then they just got a big French kiss from Congress because carried interest is still in the tax law.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, we've literally decided that we're just not willing to endure any pain whatsoever, especially the shareholder class. I mean, we're literally the mother of all kicking the can down the road. At some point, we're going to start breaking toes. It's just a matter of when. But we are willing to let our poorest, most vulnerable people suffer, right? We're sitting here continuing to debate, hold on. So we don't think it makes sense to give four weeks paid leave after a family gives birth, right? And I see all sorts of lawmakers willing to say, oh, we're going to think about that. Yet I can't find one single lawmaker to come on my show and explain to me why the full value of a private corporate jet can get written down year one. Now, they signed off on that. That's in our tax law. Nobody talks about that, but they were wink, wink, nod, nodding all the way to the bank. So it's okay for somebody buying a private corporate jet to write that whole thing down year one, but we can't get enough Congress people to come on board and say, just a few weeks after you give birth to another human.

Stephanie Ruhle: So that—it all plays into, and this is where it's going to come back to haunt the economy. We've seen this great resignation. If you really drill down on it, it's the great resignation of women. And that is the female participation in the labor force has regressed 30 years because the bottom line is a lot of schools are still having interruptions. And because we don't offer childcare, affordable childcare, a lot of women have decided, you know what, I just can't handle all of this. And I'm—let's be honest, it's usually the women that are the caregiver, both up generation taking care of parents or down generation taking care of kids. And unless we give them some capability to return to the workforce, they're not going to. And so it's becoming an economic issue.

Scott Galloway: Even a word choice you use there, right? Women are choosing to stay home. Go to any one of these families' homes and see what a disastrous, chaotic year this is. A hundred percent. And what learning loss has been like for children. And I will say the one thing successful working parents throughout history—more often than not working mothers—have in common is we've all had good child care.

Stephanie Ruhle: Yeah, agreed.

Scott Galloway: And a school, a good school to manage your kids' education.

Stephanie Ruhle: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: So we keep—you know, you have parents who are in despair over this. Right. It's almost right at 3:30 today. I don't care how good either one of us is at our respective jobs. If we knew that our kid needed to be picked up at school and we couldn't get there and they were sitting in that weird chair outside the vice principal's office with their feet dangling. You've been in that chair before. I've been in that chair. Even if it was only twice in our lives when our mom was late to pick us up, that scars you forever. All of us know that. And so you've got parents who are saying, I just cannot manage this unpredictable school and going back to work. And they have gotten some additional support from the government. So they're saying, let me just take this time to get my household in order. But this whole, like people are just sitting home and living it up. Show me where. This has been a very difficult year for working families.

[Transition]

Scott Galloway: Okay, Stephanie, it's time for my interview with a friend of Pivot. Okay, let's bring in our friend of Pivot, Blake Scholl, founder and CEO of Boom Supersonic. Since the Concorde shut down in 2003, the world has been without passenger supersonic air travel. Blake hopes to change that. He said he wants Boom supersonic jets to fly to any destination in the world within four hours and for $100 eventually. So this was my idea. I am super excited about Boom and, quite frankly, just the change in quality of life that would register if we're able to get back to supersonic travel. Welcome, Blake Scholl.

Blake Scholl: Hi, Scott. Thank you for having me.

Scott Galloway: You're so welcome. So let's bust right into this. I think a lot of people feel that, especially I've spent the majority of my professional life on the road, thought that, okay, a huge unlock would just be supersonic travel. And I remember reading somewhere that if you factored in maintenance delays, that it was actually faster to get from New York to London on a traditional 747 than to take the Concorde, that the technology and the engineering just wasn't there. What has happened in the last 50 or 60 years that now makes supersonic viable?

Blake Scholl: Well, we've had a change in basically every fundamental airplane technology except speed. So we've got new lighter weight materials like carbon fiber composites. We've got significantly more efficient turbofan engines that are cleaner and quieter. We've got sustainable fuel, which supports carbon neutrality. And last but not least, we've got digital engineering, meaning we can iterate much better on our airplane designs and come up with aircraft that are significantly more efficient. And so that's—the big problem with Concorde really was cost. A round-trip ticket across the Atlantic on Concorde in today's money would be about $20,000. And for most people, that is a bucket list item. It's not transportation. And so it wasn't a scalable product. It didn't have economies of scale. But fast forward to today, the Overture aircraft will be profitable at fares 75 percent lower than what was charged for a Concorde. And what that means is this can be much more like a business class kind of experience. It can work on hundreds of routes around the planet and really change the way tens of millions of people get around the planet.

Scott Galloway: So there were a lot of issues with the Concorde. Let's start one by one. The booms, the sonic booms were a real problem, right? What, if anything, has changed around the environmental impact of just the sonic booms?

Blake Scholl: Well, there are really two noise questions that are historically challenges for supersonic aircraft. One is the engine noise. Concorde flew with converted military engines that were just rip-roaring loud. And so forget sonic boom, it rattled the windows around JFK or Heathrow. And so you have to solve that problem. And you solve that problem with some innovations in the aircraft design, but also by using modern converted commercial engines. And so Overture meets the same noise standards as any modern subsonic aircraft. So you won't notice when Overture flies over if you're in an airport community. And then the sonic boom is a complex question. As you may know, today there is still a ban on supersonic flight over land that was put in place in the 1970s. And so it should have been a noise limit. But instead, we literally put in place a speed limit. And so from a regulatory perspective, it doesn't matter how loud the sonic boom is. You're still not allowed to fly over land. And so the way we're approaching that is with Overture One, we're focusing first on trans-oceanic routes. So we'll be two times faster over water. Over land, we'll fly right under the speed of sound. So you never make any kind of sonic boom over land. And it turns out those are the flights—LA to Sydney, New York to London, San Francisco to Tokyo. The flights that are trans-oceanic tend to be the most painful ones today. So it's a great place to start. And then in version two, when you can get from Tokyo to Seattle in four and a half hours, but it takes longer than that to get from Seattle onward to Washington, D.C., we expect to get great support in converting that speed limit into a noise limit. And then Overture 2 will be able to do transcontinental overland flights unrestricted.

Scott Galloway: And can you see—is it once you get over, so you slow down to pre-sonic or subsonic, and then when you hit the West Coast where it's populous, and then you get to Montana where there is no one, you can go supersonic again. Is that kind of what might happen here?

Blake Scholl: Well, I think there are kind of three stages to this. Stage one is supersonic flight over water, high subsonic over land. Stage two is supersonic corridors. And actually, Kansas has already announced that they're going to have a supersonic corridor.

Scott Galloway: I love that.

Blake Scholl: Australia has announced there's going to be one between Sydney and Perth.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, it makes so much sense.

Blake Scholl: Absolutely. So I think that'll be phase two where you've got specific corridors. And then phase three, with sonic boom mitigation technology on the airplane, you'll be able to have unrestricted high-speed flight everywhere. So that's the future. You just get there in steps.

Scott Galloway: So I remember my dad used to take me to John Wayne Airport when I was a kid and cover my ears. And this was back when there was no security in John Wayne Airport before it was called that. It was Orange County Airport. It was basically a restaurant where they had gates and you just walked out. We used to watch the 737s and the whisper jets land. He always said to me that the engines were the more sophisticated technology, that the engines could actually go 1,000 miles an hour, but it was the fuselage and the avionics that didn't support the technology. Where have the biggest advances in technology been? And where's the friction in what I would call reliable and economic or economical supersonic flight?

Blake Scholl: Yeah. So the big three advancements are aerodynamics, materials, and propulsion. And so from an aerodynamics perspective, if you look at Overture next to Concorde, it is a much more intricately tailored airplane thanks to optimization through digital engineering. The ability to do thousands of simulated wind tunnel tests. You won't find hardly a straight line anywhere on the airplane because it's so intricately tailored for high-speed flight. And then number two is lighter weight materials that also allow you to create very complex shapes. So the ability to build a lot of carbon fiber composites is a big deal. Overture will be a completely carbon fiber airplane, and you can actually mold the carbon into whatever shape you want. So you get this idealized aerodynamic shape out of simulation, and then you realize it with a strong, lightweight carbon structure. And then last but not least is the engines. And yes, the engines for supersonic flight have been around for a long time. However, today, they are cleaner, quieter, and more efficient than ever before.

Scott Galloway: Who will manufacture your engines? Are you a manufacturer, an assembler? What is vertical and what are you contracting out?

Blake Scholl: It's a great question. So our industrialization looks very much like a Boeing or Airbus in that we design the airplane, we own all the key IP on the airplane, and we assemble the airplane ourselves because that's where you control quality. But we will work with some of the same companies that build parts for Boeing and Airbus on subcomponents for the airplane. So, for example, Rolls-Royce has a dedicated team working on the engine. And we expect to fly. So it's going to be a Rolls-Royce engine, not a Pratt & Whitney.

Scott Galloway: You chose Rolls-Royce. Why did you choose Rolls-Royce over a Pratt?

Blake Scholl: Well, they're the Rolls-Royce of jet engines. There you go. But more seriously, Rolls-Royce did the Concorde engine. So they have a deep, deep expertise in supersonics. And additionally, their widebody engine technology is much more readily adaptable to high flight than what you find from other engine companies.

Scott Galloway: So you mentioned Airbus and Boeing. And Airbus and Boeing wouldn't have been viable private businesses without massive indirect and direct subsidies. I mean, they have benefited from defense spending. I believe Airbus, at least initially, got huge government subsidies. Are you getting anything from this infrastructure bill? How do you make a commercially viable aircraft? What is going to be the cost to produce each one of these? And can you, unlike what I believe is other manufacturers, survive without that initial boost or steroid of government subsidies? Or maybe you're getting that.

Blake Scholl: Yeah, we are completely privately funded today, aside from a relatively small amount of R&D work we do with the Air Force.

Scott Galloway: How much money have you raised? Have you announced that?

Blake Scholl: Yeah, no. Publicly, we've raised about a quarter billion dollars, 270 million.

Scott Galloway: And how much will you need before the first Overture rolls off the assembly line? How much money do you think you'll need to raise?

Blake Scholl: Well, so the money we've raised so far has allowed us to build and roll out XB-1, which is the prototype. That aircraft is actually running the engines later this week on the aircraft for the first time. And then with Overture, we've got about a billion in equity to go. And the interesting piece of the story is there's just significant capital leverage here. About a billion in development costs—sorry, funded by equity that levers up through customer prepayment, supplier co-investment. And yes, we expect to get some incentives, for example, around job creation around the final assembly line. So the total between $6 billion and $8 billion development cost. But then when you look at the sales forecast for this airplane, it sells at $200 million a copy. We're going to need about 1,500 Overture airplanes to carry existing international business travel supersonic. So that's about a $300 billion market. So the capital is actually quite well leveraged. Billion in equity, $6 to $8 billion in development cost, and then $300 billion market. And it's a high margin product as well because this is a relatively small airplane. Therefore, it actually costs less to build than a 787, but sells for more than a 787 because it carries the highest value passengers. And thanks to being faster, you can do up to twice the flights of the same airplane and crew.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. And this is sort of blowing smoke, but I believe it. I think you're vastly underpricing yourself. I think there's an enormous market at $20,000. I know a lot of people, and granted, some of this is a function of my privilege, but there are a lot of people who would pay $20,000 round trip New York to London to go in three and a half hours versus seven. I think the market at a much higher price point is much bigger than you would think. Because the bottom line is the sad truth is the top 1% who is your market have killed it the last 20 years. It's just a lot of these people are paying $80,000 one way to fly private. And if you offer them 10 or 15,000 one way to go twice as fast, it strikes me that there's just enormous, there's a really big market for this.

Blake Scholl: Yeah. And I think you're right. There's a huge market. And especially in the early days, the airlines that adopt this first, as you know, United has placed the first firm order for Overture aircraft. And the folks out there first are going to enjoy first mover advantages, probably really high market clearing fares. But ultimately, we want to continue to reduce the cost of high-speed flight because we want anyone to be able to benefit from the ability to connect with people anywhere on the planet.

Scott Galloway: And when you look at this, so when do you think the first one enters service?

Blake Scholl: So we're about three years away from first airplane off the assembly line in '25, four years to start a flight test in '26, and our goal is to be certified through all the safety testing and ready to carry passengers in '29.

Scott Galloway: Got it. And so between now and then, you've got to raise another $750 million. You've already got a firm offer or a firm order from United. What does that mean? Does that mean they've actually given you cash or it's just a press release? They've given you capital.

Blake Scholl: No, they've given us cash, significant non-refundable money and more of it coming as we achieve milestones. United has already spent far more money on Overture than British Airways ever spent on Concorde.

Scott Galloway: So it strikes me that I would have thought that the natural place for this would be NetJets, not United Airlines. That somebody, that the market amongst masters of the universe who want this plane, because my understanding is it's somewhere between the size of a Gulfstream 650 and a 737 or an Airbus Neo, that it's kind of in that middle market? How many square feet? Give us a sense of the size of the plane.

Blake Scholl: Yeah. With a really generous layout, it seats 65 passengers. And if you put it in a business jet, private jet kind of configuration, you can put about 20 people on board and still have a stateroom and a living room and a king size bed. So the aircraft is primarily meant for airlines because of two things. One, our goal is to build the most affordable supersonic flight possible for as many people as possible. And number two, as long as that speed restriction is still in place over land, 80%, for example, of Gulfstream miles are still flown over land. And so I do think there's an opportunity in fractional fleets like NetJets, where it complements subsonic aircraft. And for example, you could fly from someplace inland to the coast on a Gulfstream, then hop on Overture and go across the pond, and you could go skiing in St. Moritz instead of in Aspen. So there's something there, but the anchor market is very much the airlines.

Scott Galloway: So Blake, the only real friction I see in your business, bigger market, technology is advanced, feels like you have a leadership position here. I think the biggest obstacle is that you seem like a humble, graceful guy. I think you need to start being an asshole and tweeting out aggressive things to people and you'll start raising billions of dollars overnight. So, Blake, bring out your inner Elon and start tweeting profane, vulgar things at people and everything will start falling into place. That's my advice for Boom.

[Stephanie Ruhle laughs]

Scott Galloway: Wait, but I'm being serious, Blake. Real quick, what's your background? Biggest influences in your life?

Blake Scholl: I do feel very lucky to have my dream job. I'm a software guy by training, which is a school for computer science. Started my career at a little bookstore in Seattle called Amazon. Got to have a $300 million P&L when I was 24 and have been flying for fun since I was in college and never understood why our e-commerce and our cars and our computers and our phones are getting better, but our airplanes are actually getting worse. And so I started Boom seven years ago intending to change that.

Scott Galloway: I think this is so exciting. And just a quick fact before we sign off, it takes longer to get from New York to Dallas on a commercial airliner now in the air. It's slower than it was in 1970. So while everyone's obsessing over FAR with Virgin Galactic and SpaceX, I think the real market is fast. And that's how do we get to our family, our business meetings, get to where we need to be faster. Blake, I think this is so exciting. I'm going to follow Boom really closely. And we really appreciate you being on the show. And if it's okay, we'd like to have you back on a regular basis to update us on Boom's progress.

Blake Scholl: I'd be delighted to, Scott. Thank you. Thank you for your kind words. Thank you for your support.

Scott Galloway: Thank you.

[Ad break]

Scott Galloway: All right. One more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails.

[Ad break]

Scott Galloway: Okay, Stephanie, it's time to move to wins and fails. Do you have a win and fail for us?

Stephanie Ruhle: Okay, the planet won on Friday because Taylor Swift's new album is out.

Scott Galloway: Well, hold on. If she can—I'm sorry, if she can write a ballad about—because she went out with Jake Gyllenhaal for eight weeks, I can be emotionally unstable. If she can be that dramatic, I can be dramatic all the time.

Stephanie Ruhle: You are that dramatic all the time. You just have a lot less—

Scott Galloway: They went out for two or three months and all of a sudden she's writing ballads about it. Come on, Scott, that impacted her. That impacted her.

Stephanie Ruhle: Her release on Friday, not just is her music a win, her reach, but again—

Scott Galloway: Do you like the album? You've listened to the album?

Stephanie Ruhle: I've listened to the album. If I listen to a Taylor Swift album, I could slip and break a hip.

Scott Galloway: You've actually listened to it?

Stephanie Ruhle: Yeah, of course I have. I'm a huge Taylor Swift fan, but more important—but I'm a fan of her music, but I'm a fan of Taylor Swift, the businesswoman who woke up and repeatedly said, why don't I own my own music? I am going to do it. And she outsmarted the system and her fans came with her. Bravo. Kudos. Her album's amazing. She was fantastic on SNL. That skit that she did with Pete Davidson, Three Sad Virgins, was next level funny. I absolutely loved it. The other win has to be today, the Biden administration is signing into law the infrastructure bill.

Scott Galloway: Right.

Stephanie Ruhle: We as a country don't like politics, don't care about politics. Infrastructure is something we need. We have crumbling infrastructure in this country. And the fact that you were able to get Republicans and Democrats to sign on to this is a huge win. And I know it's being overshadowed by the fact that there's still the human infrastructure bill. We're wrestling with inflation. We still have COVID. I'm not discounting any of those, but that's a giant win for the administration. What's your win?

Scott Galloway: Well, my win is the new Swisher. I talk a lot about happiness and young people. And what I finally learned as I got older is that relevance, the influence, your ability to make a good living, it's kind of all the means. And the closest thing I've found to an end, and I think just following your Instagram feed, I think you concur, is that there's just nothing more rewarding than figuring out a way to bring together the chaos and the alchemy and the affection and the disappointment that is raising children.

Scott Galloway: So I think that people who are good people, people who have character, people who can create loving, secure partnerships with others so they can raise kids in loving households... I think that is the ends. That is what this is all about. So, Karen, Amanda, I am thrilled for you. I think it's good for you. I think it's good for that lovely young boy and it's good for the planet. The good people decide to have children. That's my win.

Scott Galloway: Then I would couple my fail, I guess, this week. I'm experiencing some parenting fails in my own life. And I think one of the hardest things—you can be tough as nails in business and in your own life—I think the hardest job that we have is parents. When you make a decision at work, when you make a decision on Twitter and you fail at it, you suffer the consequences. I think parenting is by a mile the hardest job that we have. That I have. And I'm struggling with it right now. I would say that's my own personal failure right now.

Stephanie Ruhle: But are you struggling? And obviously, I don't want you to reveal anything personal. Are you struggling because you have too many demands on your time and you feel like you can't be there? Are you struggling just for the natural order of having teenagers who are a struggle?

Scott Galloway: I've got a teenager right now that is struggling and I'm not sure how to help them. And again, in your own life, you can make decisions. And when you make the wrong decision, you suffer the consequences. There's not a guidebook for parenting. And when you have a kid that's struggling, it makes me feel like I'm a human voodoo doll. The pain he's feeling is like a stake through my heart and it's crippling.

Stephanie Ruhle: Oh gosh. Any parent knows. And I mean this sincerely, Stephanie, I'm really sorry. We've all been there or are there. You have your world of work, you have your world of friends, you have your world of kids. Something comes off the tracks with one of your kids and everything shrinks to that kid. There's guilt, there's rage... it's hands down the most terrifying and upsetting thing I've ever been through.

Scott Galloway: It's why Elon Musk—I'm telling you, he's a father. You wouldn't... if he knew that your son heard you were a numbskull...

Stephanie Ruhle: Oh, I want to be clear. That was like a five-minute thing. And it just struck me. It wasn't a bad moment for me or my son. I don't want to pin that on Elon or anybody else. But you're right. It's when your kids come home and your professional life... it was the first time for me. I bet this happens a lot with you because you're pretty aggressive and out there and brave with your personal life. Like I don't put my kids on social. You do. Because I just couldn't handle the snarky comments people would make.

Scott Galloway: They're hard.

Stephanie Ruhle: Yeah. But it's really hard. But I also think that gives us—honestly, putting your personal life out there forces people that have you and my job to check ourselves when you could kind of fly off the handle. My goal is to be practical, to try to help people get better and smarter. And even if I screw up, I'm pretty honest with my kids about like, this is who I am and this is what I stand for, even if somebody is yelling at us in a restaurant.

Scott Galloway: Well, Stephanie, let's—

Stephanie Ruhle: I'm glad somebody's yelling at me in a restaurant, guys. It means they're watching, and that's what just paid for this dinner.

Scott Galloway: Well, Stephanie, let's finish where we started. We are thrilled that our good friend has brought another child into this universe who will have the same struggles and tribulations that we're having. And what I can say is that your upset and your stress right now is a function of the fact that we're fortunate enough to have these things we love so much. All our grief, all our anxiety is a function of our blessings.

Scott Galloway: So thank you, Stephanie Ruhle, for co-hosting on this joyous day. Get back to work. Keep it real. Keep it real. MSNBC news anchor Stephanie Ruhle. Thanks so much, Stephanie.

Scott Galloway: Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Andrew Todd engineered this episode. Make sure you're subscribed to the show on Apple Podcasts. Or if you're an Android user, check us out on Spotify or frankly, 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.

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