The New McCarthy Era, A.I. on the Rise, and Guest Mike Allen

Narrator: Not all journalism is the same. Take The Guardian. Our coverage has something unique. Fierce independence. Nobody owns us or tells us what we can and can't say. So we're free to report the whole picture. We connect what's happening in Washington to the rest of the globe. Expose corruption wherever we find it. And give fresh perspective on everything. From wellness and soccer to culture, the climate and more. Read, watch and listen to The Guardian for free at theguardian.com.

Narrator: AI agents are getting pretty impressive. You might not even realize you're listening to one right now. We work 24-7 to resolve customer inquiries. No hold music, no canned answers, no frustration. Visit sierra.ai to learn more.

Kara Swisher: Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher. Kara, it's not about me, and I think we need to bust right into the news. I just don't want to dwell on me. This isn't a big deal.

Scott Galloway: Wait, what is that?

Kara Swisher: Okay, it's a little bit about me.

Scott Galloway: Kara, do you really know your co-host? Is he the kind of guy that after seeing France lose to the incredible Argentinian team, goes to a Doha library and reads to underprivileged kids? No, that's not him. Is he the kind of guy that takes an edible, gets on a camel, and then interrupts the shooting of *Dune*, getting warmer? Is he the kind of guy when he's in Bangkok, is disturbed when he takes a prostitute home and finds, in fact, that she is a woman? Because you know what they say, prostitutes today. You don't know which one has nuts. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, from the Vox Media Podcast Network, it is most definitely not Audie Cornish. Who is it? That's right, as Elton John reminds us on his seventh farewell tour, the bitch is back. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, it's the doll. Oh, yes, you're welcome.

Kara Swisher: God. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, good God. That's good. Make it stop. Oh, my God. That was good. You are definitely not Audie Cornish. I'll tell you that. She's good. That's the only one I listened to while I was gone. She's good. I'd like to be her neighbor.

Scott Galloway: Would you? Don't you think she'd be a great neighbor?

Kara Swisher: I suppose. I guess. I'd be like, "Hey, can you watch my kids?" And she'd be like, "Oh, gosh, God." And she'd watch my kids.

Scott Galloway: She would watch your kids, Kara. There'd be a lot of eye-rolling neighbors, what she would be. By the way, that was "Money for Nothing" by Dire Straits. Mark Knopfler, one of the great lead guitarists. And back when you didn't need to be attractive to be a rock star. Kara, how are you? We missed you so.

Kara Swisher: Did you? Did you?

Scott Galloway: No. I'm great. I'm doing really well. Went to the World Cup.

Kara Swisher: Where the fuck have you been? You've just disappeared off the face of the earth.

Scott Galloway: I went to Dubai, then Doha, then back to Dubai.

Kara Swisher: You were like there forever. What were you doing? Were you making investment deals like Jared Kushner?

Scott Galloway: I was trying to do some of that. I was watching a lot of football with my boys. I absolutely loved the World Cup. It was wonderful. And then I went to Bangkok with my boys and to Chiang Rai and then to Phuket.

Kara Swisher: And I went to Chiang Rai. What's Chiang Rai? There's two different places.

Scott Galloway: Oh, okay. I'm a little bit triggered that you don't understand Thai geography. If you just invested a little bit of time in Southeast Asian culture.

Kara Swisher: All right. So you went to Thailand.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, we just had a wonderful time. A ton of time with the family. I find, if I'm away from my boys for longer than a couple of days, it's literally like I've lost a limb. And I found that after spending four weeks with them, you want to chew your arm off.

Kara Swisher: No, I don't agree with you as usual. I've had it. I have had it. I am so long family right now. I literally couldn't wait to go back to work. I spent my whole time with my family. I miss them all every day. Oh, my God.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. They're awful. We were all together.

Kara Swisher: No. One's going through puberty. All of us are together, including one girlfriend. Although, you know what? I did have that all-important... I have a 15-year-old boy, and we did have that all-important sex talk. I wanted to talk to him about safe sex. So I brought in a banana and a condom, and I'm going to tell you how to put a condom on. And he said, "What's the banana for?" And I'm like, "I can't get hard on an empty stomach." That's right. It's good to have me back. By the way, that's the comedy of Dan Natterman, a total comedic genius.

Kara Swisher: Oh, good God. Anyways, enough of that. You had heart surgery.

Scott Galloway: I had heart surgery. Thanks for asking.

Kara Swisher: You had heart surgery. I liked the flowers you sent and the calls you made to me. Yes, I did. I had the heart surgery. And I'm here to say that I am fine. But thank you for asking.

Scott Galloway: You seem more loving.

Kara Swisher: No, not even slightly. I have a cyborg heart now. I have a device in my heart that closed the hole that was there. And it was a day surgery. It was amazing. So I didn't lose a step, I would have to say.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I was a little like, I thought it was a little bit over the top about how everybody, all the Twitter love you were getting. I'm like, "Jesus Christ. I'm more at risk when I go get Invisalign installed." I did some research on your heart surgery, and everyone's like, "Best of luck to you. We're thinking about you. Go, girl. You're such an inspiration." And I'm like, "It's more dangerous to get your teeth cleaned than what you had done."

Kara Swisher: Oh, really? No, I don't think so. They went up through a vein into my heart. If they had missed one thing, I could have been dead.

Scott Galloway: You were in and out. You didn't even spend the night in the hospital, correct?

Kara Swisher: I did not. I went in at 7, hung around for a couple hours, and then had the surgery, woke up, and just hung out in the hospital until three o'clock when a friend of my brother's drove me home. It was very nice.

Scott Galloway: And didn't some little boy from a poor nation have to give you his heart? Isn't that how it works?

Kara Swisher: No, no. They put this thing in, this umbrella something or other, and it went in and it was fine.

Scott Galloway: Heart flap harvesting in some little village somewhere?

Kara Swisher: No, they didn't harvest anyone's heart. It was a piece of plastic. And now I am well. I am well. And then the rest of the vacation was the family all together in San Francisco.

Scott Galloway: Oh, you're in the Bay Area for the whole time.

Kara Swisher: Yes, we were there for a week. I was there for two weeks, and then we were in Palm Springs for a week, which I love. I love Palm Springs.

Scott Galloway: You love Palm Springs?

Kara Swisher: I stayed at the Jerry Lewis Estate. That's where I rented it for the family. It wasn't a big house. It was a small house. It had a pool, though.

Scott Galloway: Was it a Neutra? There's a lot of Neutra architecture out there.

Kara Swisher: It was a lot. Amanda and I went on an architecture tour, a bike architecture tour, which was cool. And all the gays kept inviting us in to look at their own beautiful homes. And then we went out to Hot Springs by ourselves. We did a few little dates. I love Palm Springs. It's great.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I love Palm Springs. It was great. We should all go there.

Kara Swisher: So we should do an event there. There's all this cool stuff going on there. I loved it. It was great. And then I'm back here working away.

Scott Galloway: Working away. Yeah, thanks for covering me.

Kara Swisher: Oh, no problem. I kept seeing in my feed new Pivot podcasts.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, yeah. And I listened to your podcast on, I forget his name, the guy with the car company. I thought that was just okay.

Kara Swisher: Tony Fidel?

Scott Galloway: Who? No, the guy with the hair transplant who's like a man child, supposedly worth a lot of money. He's lost a billion dollars. I forget his name.

Kara Swisher: Oh, Elon. Yeah. I listened to that one. That one's pretty good, but I really enjoyed Audie Cornish. I thought she was good.

Scott Galloway: Audie was very good. I was trying people out as usual. I'm always waiting for you not to come back from whatever sojourn that you go to. You never know with you. You probably did a deal with like Doha TV to do a TV show.

Kara Swisher: I tried. I tried. It was called *Doha Plus*, and it's already been canceled. Me and Al Gore.

Scott Galloway: Well, there's been a lot going on since you've been away. Things have not stopped just because you're away. Kevin McCarthy is finally Speaker of the House after 15 votes. We'll talk about what that means for the tech industry. He's quite close to the tech industry, and the Republicans are not. We'll chat about ChatGPT, how tech companies are capitalizing on artificial intelligence, and we'll speak briefly with Axios' Mike Allen about politics, the news business, and the soul of wit. I think that'll be very exciting. Are you glad to be back? Are you glad to be here?

Kara Swisher: Yeah, back in London. I'm just kind of glad to be back in the swing of things. I was on the road for five weeks, and I find, as I get older, travel is harder and harder for me. I don't like travel that much. I like home.

Scott Galloway: You're right. I've always been like that.

Kara Swisher: A lot of photos of you in bars in Doha. A lot of eating by yourself.

Scott Galloway: I was by myself a lot. So how was the World Cup? How was the World Cup itself? Was it exciting?

Kara Swisher: In a word, amazing.

Scott Galloway: Was it? Did you love it?

Kara Swisher: It was a pretty good match, right? The final between Argentina and France was arguably the best football match in the history of the World Cup. But the ones before it were good too, right? Yeah, Morocco was an inspiration. Saudi Arabia beat in the initial rounds the ultimate winner of the World Cup. Croatia did an incredible job. The fans from Morocco were incredible. The stadiums. I mean, I understand there's a lot of justified concerns about Qatar and the Gulf in general. But in terms of a host nation, nothing like a quarter of a trillion dollars helps you put on an amazing World Cup. And there's just no getting around it. It was flawless.

Scott Galloway: How is the no liquor situation?

Kara Swisher: Well, it's funny because AB InBev actually hosted me. I presented to the board a few times and they're really nice people and they'll say, "What can we do for you?" And I'm like, "Two words, world and cup." And they hosted me and my family. Super generous. And we had a bunch of Bud Zeros and my boys just love rolling around the hotel lobby with a Budweiser. My 12-year-old thought that was the coolest thing in the world. Just hanging out, yelling at strange people, holding a beer.

Scott Galloway: Okay, good. A non-beer, right?

Kara Swisher: Yeah, but it was amazing.

Scott Galloway: Did you hang out with Elon Musk there? He was there.

Kara Swisher: I saw on Instagram, someone said, I was literally about 40 feet from him, but no, we didn't.

Scott Galloway: I mean, we made out in the men's room, but other than that.

Kara Swisher: Of course, yeah.

Scott Galloway: So, are you getting ready for, are you excited to see me in Europe?

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I am excited to see you. We're going to Munich, and then you're coming to London to see my home.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. Yeah, it'll be really nice. I'm excited to see you. We're going to do some quality snuggling, okay?

Kara Swisher: It'll be nice. That's where we met. We're going to where we met.

Scott Galloway: Spoonie?

Kara Swisher: That's right. So we're going to DLD where I thought, "Who is this asshole?" But I like him. Anyway, it's going to be fun. We're going to do a live pivot in both places. And we're going to hang out and talk about 2023 and where we're going next, Scott, you and I on our long journey.

Scott Galloway: We're going to renew our vows.

Kara Swisher: Renew our vows again.

Scott Galloway: Oh, God. I was in Thailand at a resort. We met this really nice couple. I thought I could be friends with them. And then they told us they were renewing their vows. I'm like, "That's it. We can't be friends with these people."

Kara Swisher: That's a beautiful place. I love Thailand. I love Bangkok. I love all of Thailand. So we have a lot to talk about things. There's been a lot going on politically, actually. Echoes of January 6th with the insurrection in Brazil. Thousands of pro-Bolsonaro rioters stormed government buildings over the weekend. They smashed windows, climbed on roofs, ransacked government offices. 300 people have been arrested. Brazilian President Lula da Silva blamed Bolsonaro for encouraging the attack, called the attackers fascists. Bolsonaro denied any responsibilities, reportedly been in Florida hanging out with Steve Bannon since December. Sounds familiar. I don't know about you, but it sounds familiar. Any thoughts on this?

Scott Galloway: I think it's really upsetting. You've talked a lot about Brazil as an innovative place, Argentina and Brazil. America is that shining beacon on a hill, whether it's reality TV or capitalism or equity markets. The rest of the world has a tendency to look at what we do and take it very seriously and model it. And there's a dark side to that. That is you have B-level fascists or domestic terrorists who are not held to account for organizing an insurrection and resulting in the death and injury to government employees. And the whole world has to see our representatives, regardless of what you think of them, cowering in fear. And a president who tells this mob to take a noose and hunt down his vice president and a speaker of the House and isn't held accountable. I'm kind of over this both-sides-ism. President Trump is a stain on the American fabric. Until he is held accountable and all his other people are complicit in this type of domestic terrorism, and that's what it is, other nations, democracies all over the world, are going to register this and think it's okay. So I think this is terrible.

Kara Swisher: Well, they've tried hundreds and hundreds. They're getting off with light sentences, although getting a lot of yelling at them by the judges essentially.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, that's... I saw that too. But you do feel for them. You read these things. And they did go down rabbit holes. Social media should be held responsible. In Brazil, it certainly was off the charts there. A lot of the misinformation and the organization happened on social media. But at the end of the day, until everyone talks about coming together and moving forward, I think the key step to that is accountability. And I think until the leader of this insurrection is subpoenaed and tried for this type of domestic terrorism, I don't think we can move forward. And I think it's only going to spread. We talked about the domino theory in Southeast Asia and Vietnam. That didn't happen. This is a real domino theory playing out, though. "Oh, I lose an election. I'll coordinate on social media." And what price do I have to pay? What price did Trump pay? He hasn't paid any price.

Kara Swisher: Well, we'll get into that when we talk about Kevin McCarthy. He's definitely becoming relegated to the sidelines in the Republican Party. But yes, you're right. He hasn't gone to jail and he certainly hasn't been... There's been the January 6th committee. There's been a look at it. It's just a question of whether he's going to pay anything for his misbehavior and an insurrection. Someone who is paying is Jack Ma. He's giving up control of Ant Group, the fintech giant behind China's Alipay app. Ma founded Ant Group eight years ago and has controlled it through a web of holding companies. Ma has rarely been seen in public since clashing with Chinese regulators in 2020 over Ant's planned and canceled IPO. He'll remain one of its major shareholders, but CNN estimates his stake will drop from more than 50 percent to just 6 percent. What's happened to Jack Ma is really so much, remains shocking to me. And even though there's all these debates of whether tech platforms should be controlled by one person, China's not putting up with it at all. And it's really quite breathtaking given how popular he was, he has been with Chinese entrepreneurs.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, it's just fascinating and chilling at the same time. The CCP has definitely taken very meticulous notes on what's playing out in America and said that these individuals who become almost like nation states in terms of their power and through leveraging technology and the idolatry of innovators and the power of money, and they've said, "That dog's just not going to hunt here." And for all of these tech billionaires here who shitpost the government and don't want to pay their taxes or move to low tax domains and say government should just get out of the way, I mean, to at least nod your head to the fact that the equivalent here would be if Jeff Bezos started insulting Biden, for whatever reason, and all of a sudden, and this happened, he disappeared for four weeks. And then he showed up five weeks later in Tokyo and said, "I'm no longer in e-commerce. I'm going to paint." Oh, and by the way, my stake in Amazon's gone from 16% to 1.6%. That is what is happening in China.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, agreed. Agreed. It'll be interesting to see where it goes and why. I'd love, there's got to be a bigger story here, which we'll never get to see, like how it happened and what he's doing. He was such an ebullient entrepreneur and so aggressive. I've known him for a very long time. I would love to talk to him. I don't think he's able to talk, I suspect, or he's been very cooperative. I don't think he has a choice. He's sort of been stripped of his fame, essentially.

Scott Galloway: I think they basically do what every autocratic government does through intimidation. They're like, "Okay, here are your cousins, your sisters, and your family. And they're going to start dying or being imprisoned unless you fall in line." It's happening across the globe in Iran, everywhere else. Interestingly here, one of the more interesting things that companies use to control people, non-compete agreements have nowhere to go. A proposed rule from the FTC would ban non-compete clauses. I'm sure you're very familiar with these. Chair Lina Khan said the agreements deprive workers of higher wages and businesses of talent pools that they need to build and expand. The agency estimates the rule would increase worker wages by $300 billion per year. An estimated 16 to 18 percent of U.S. workers have non-compete provisions in their contracts. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce opposes the rule, calling it blatantly unlawful. What do you think of these?

Kara Swisher: You know, they're not very enforceable is what everyone always tells me in tech.

Scott Galloway: Outside of California, if you're an officer of a company, they're very enforceable.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. All right. Talk about this idea.

Scott Galloway: So let me be clear. I take back any negative thing I've ever said around Lina Khan. I think this is a hugely important move. I had a company acquired. I'm a big boy. I signed the non-compete. And basically, all I had to do was stick around in the company for three years and I was going to make 10 plus million dollars. After about three months, I realized that it wasn't worth the money for me. And when I told them I was leaving, they began sending me letters from their legal firm saying they were going to sue me if I did anything. And effectively, what you have is a chilling on the economy because some of the best and brightest can no longer look at all these incredible companies that Facebook acquired and all these incredible entrepreneurs. They've gone on to do absolutely nothing. They're sitting on the sidelines, rest investing. And they can't because they'll get sued. And granted, we're big boys. We took the money and we sign these things, but what it does is it lowers wages across... I mean, you shouldn't have sympathy for officers or people who make millions of dollars, but someone who's making 150 or 200 grand and might get a good offer to a competitor or another platform can't go. And companies now use acquisitions to kill companies, kill innovation, and then the employees. So what it does is it suppresses wages, it suppresses innovation, and who it does benefit is the entrepreneurs that sign these things and get huge payouts do well. And also the company that is able to establish monopoly power because Kevin Systrom or an entrepreneur who started a business intelligence firm that might compete with its acquirer can go off and start anything similar. It helps monopolies entrench their monopoly power.

Kara Swisher: It does. I've always found them super irritating. One of the things I do to them is I edit them and I say, "But this is left out," and I leave myself a giant hole. And I definitely get that's the one place whenever I do contracts, I get pushback from employers. "Well, what does this mean?" I got in a beef with The New York Times over my succession podcast thing I did. It was finally settled, but it was irritating. I try to write as much as possible because they try to be as broad as possible when they're doing it, so you can't do anything. And I thought, why do you care if I don't want to work for... I don't mean the Times, but in general. I have done this. I've done it at Vox. I've changed the non-competes. I don't even know why they're there at all. And since I was living in California, it didn't really matter. Suppress wages and innovations and startups.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. I think what people want to do is they want to buy you to stay, right? And then you should be able to decide if you want to stay for the money. They can buy you to stay. They can say, "All right, here's golden handcuffs. We're going to pay you millions of dollars every year you stay. And if you leave, you leave it." I left several million dollars when I left the firm. And I think that's fine. What isn't fine is they use intimidation in law firms to start sending you letters. I'm not exaggerating. Every week for a year.

Kara Swisher: What did you do?

Scott Galloway: I basically at one point said, "Okay, sue me. I'm starting another company." And look, I'm not the victim here because I was paid a lot of money and I had lawyers review the contract and I knew what I was signing. But what they do is, and this is their playbook, is they try and intimidate you and threaten to sue you and threaten to shut down your new firm and your firm won't be able to raise money. And you end up deciding, "Okay, I'm not going anywhere near this field." Even something that could be interpreted as near the field.

Kara Swisher: Very broad, yeah.

Scott Galloway: And then what happens is, not for senior level employees, but mid-level employees that are now signing these things, can't go anywhere in their sector, which suppresses their wages. And so the shareholders of the monopoly get more money. The senior level employees who sign these things who get huge payouts, it creates income inequality, it suppresses innovation, and it suppresses wages at a mid-tier. These things are terrible. I understand how the U.S. Congress said it's blatantly unlawful. I think this is a very popular thing. You're right. Lina's done a great thing here. They'll probably try... some people will try to sue her back. But I would agree. Talent pools need to build and expand.

Kara Swisher: All right. Speaking of no talent, let's get to our first big story. The House of Representatives finally has a speaker but doesn't have a leader. That's a harder question to answer. Kevin McCarthy signed away much of his position's autonomy in his deal with the Chaos Caucus. Among those concessions, any one member of Congress can call for a motion to vacate, essentially a vote of no confidence. Democrats worry that McCarthy's concessions could lead to total gridlock on key bills like raising the debt ceiling. Were you paying attention?

Scott Galloway: I really was watching. This was good TV because C-SPAN was there. Best season of C-SPAN so far, right?

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I know it is. It was so exciting.

Scott Galloway: It was very exciting. What are your thoughts on this, Kara?

Kara Swisher: I was so riveted to the ridiculous drama. I hated myself for watching it. I was watching Stephanie Ruhle, actually. And I kept texting her because she interviewed Lauren Boebert. She did the whole thing. It was sort of like a weird drama. And it was interesting from watching democracy in action kind of thing, which means they're all a bunch of idiots, essentially. But it was also interesting to watch the dealmaking in real time. I think he's given... I think he desperately has desperate ambition and wanted this job and will have no ability to do anything. I don't think he cares about doing anything. That's what it seems like, because he's certainly already... the election was difficult enough for him to do a good job here because of how small it is and how easy it is for centrist Republicans to wander over to the Democratic side on a lot of bills. So that's a problem. I think that he puts himself at risk and has for this chaos, this right wing chaos group that just doesn't really want to govern. They just want to make a mess. I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing, you know, but the Republicans are in charge. I think they're going to pay for it at the ballot box and you're going to have two houses of Congress controlled by the Democrats in the next election. And it's just... is it embarrassing? I don't know. It's just the way things work. But I don't think they've made themselves disagreeable to big business. And what's interesting, he's also going to have a problem with the Chaos Caucus, which I'm just going to keep calling it. He opposed antitrust legislation. He didn't want to empower Lina Khan and the FTC. One of his closest confidants is a lobbyist whose clients include Apple, SpaceX, his name's Jeff Miller, and Amazon. He adopted the Republican Party line regarding big tech, taking issue with the industry's censorship and its relationship with China and collusion with Democrats. But honestly, I've talked to lots of tech people and he's out there looking for money and friends almost constantly and agreeing to do all kinds of deals with these people. So I don't think he's an unfriend of tech. I think he's quite close to tech. Obviously, he's from California, but that doesn't mean he has to be. I don't know. What do you think? How did it look? When did you get back? Were you watching it?

Scott Galloway: You know, I think the Republican... and granted, there's some bias here. But if you think about how the Republican Party was in news... by the way, I just longed for the days when George Santos was Speaker of the House. I found that much easier.

Kara Swisher: That guy. I forgot about that story.

Scott Galloway: Look at the Republican Party. You got George Santos, a guy who essentially just made up everything. And I think the most interesting thing about that story is that we really pay a price when we don't have local journalism.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, right. We do. Although local journalists did alert people. It's just that nobody else cared. Nobody listened.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. And then you have Matt Gaetz all of a sudden becomes a power player.

Kara Swisher: I know, right? Sitting there with his punchable face.

Scott Galloway: I think that's what's happening. But look, they're winning. These people have been elected by people who just say, "Cause chaos. We don't want government. We literally want it to just stop. We would like to go to zero." And they're winning. But I just wonder, I don't know how long he lasts. To me, he's always come across as a very weak leader. And that is... I'll say whatever's... it's like purely the pursuit of power and nothing else. And I don't think that sort of inspires a lot of loyalty. He's given away so much. It just seems to me that this is just the beginning of his problems.

Kara Swisher: On his resume. I know it was so interesting because he sort of had a shit-eating grin the whole time. And I was like, "Why do you want to do this?" I don't have a sense of why he wants to do it. I did have a sense with Nancy Pelosi and previous Republican speakers. It just feels like he just wants the job, no matter what. And you're right, seeing the visuals of Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert, who barely won her election. She's going to lose the next one, I think, because that guy is very popular. The guy who was 600 votes or something in a very red, a ruby red district. I think she's sitting there like she's really functionally... she really doesn't know what she's saying. The interview with Stephanie was... I couldn't believe Stephanie had her on, but nonetheless, she just didn't know what she was talking about. The interview that really hurt her was the interview on Fox.

Scott Galloway: Fox, yes.

Kara Swisher: So Sean Hannity was on the side of Kevin McCarthy. I mean, when Fox turns on you, it's like, "Okay, you really got a problem."

Scott Galloway: Yeah. And that was weird. And then it's like, "Why am I looking at these people and not actually...?" I'm sure the real legislators are like, "What the fucking hell is going on here?"

Scott Galloway: Like, you know, that guy with the bad rug on his head was trying to attack Matt Gaetz. Yeah, we almost became whatever, I don't know if it's South Korea, that assembly that regularly breaks out into fistfights.

And then what struck me was Kevin McCarthy said, "I want to secure the Southern border. I want to take wokeism out of our schools." And I don't agree with his version of either of those things, but I can see why they're at least talking points. And then the third thing, which just struck me, is he wants to defund the IRS again. He wants to do away with us.

It's like, okay, let me get this. They're so the party of the 1% that they want to defund the IRS such that wealthy people with complicated tax returns can continue to not pay taxes. That's correct. Because what the IRS and Kevin McCarthy are saying is that on a risk-adjusted basis, don't pay your taxes when you're wealthy because there's a lesser and lesser chance you're going to get audited.

Also, it was interesting because the visuals of Biden with McConnell doing infrastructure stuff and meeting, it just was like, that's functional. Biden at the border, functional. And they're just doing this ridiculous pizza box delivery stuff.

I think the press didn't do itself any favors by the coverage. It was so breathless. "And now this one, now this one." I get why the political press does that, but I find it really... is anyone talking about what it actually means or is it just sort of fun to see who wins class president? Because this is a meaningless class president. So I was a little bit disappointed with that because it was so breathless. And I had no idea why it mattered. And I don't think it'll have any impact. I think you'll have zero impact on anything. They'll continue not to do anything about tech. It'll just bump along and nothing will happen.

And there was a lot of legislation that was passed, good legislation. Newt Gingrich made the speaker a partisan position. It used to be mostly an administrative position. The controlling party just put up a person who kind of ran the meeting. It was like, "OK, who's going to run this? Who's going to count the votes? Who's going to gavel?" It wasn't meant to be a person who was sort of partisan. It was meant to be someone who made sure that everyone got time to speak.

So I was hopeful for a moment, and it didn't happen, that they were going to pick someone outside of Congress to come back and say, have Kasich do it. He seemed like a nice guy and organized. I thought that was an interesting idea for a while. But I thought it just further... it's like, OK, you're winning on the far right. You want chaos and total intransigence and you don't want government to do anything. OK, you're winning. Yep, I agree.

Kara Swisher: I think it's not going to go anywhere. One of the things that's interesting is that it'll be interesting to see how the voters... I don't think the voters were paying a lot of attention to it, although it was embarrassing. But I do think they're going to do all kinds of dumb, loud things and not actual governing. And that's really where they're going to lose. Because I think voters have said in the last election, we're tired of this noise, we're tired of election denialism in the case of Republicans, and we'd like you to do something. And I think that's going to be the real problem.

And I don't know, it just seems pretty sad when you think about what they're capable of doing. And the other thing that's a little frightening is he's second in line for the presidency, right? This guy who's such an oaf. The Senate is very calm. It looks like the Senate is very calm, but they can't do anything without the House. So I suspect behind the scenes, they'll do a little more cooperation because they should be thinking about helping the American people and not sitting around trying to target individual government officials and do this woke mine drivers bullshit. But they will. That's what they'll do because that's what they've given into that wing of the party.

I do think a couple of the things that the side asked for was actually kind of... I agreed with, like term limits. I was like, yes, push the term. Yeah, I agree. 100%. Yay. I was sort of, there were a few things I was like, yeah, let the legislators not have to vote on giant packages they don't read, force things through. Do individual pieces of legislation. I felt that was actually correct. But of course, the power mongers don't want that. It means they're not going to do anything, which is probably a good thing.

Let's go on a quick break. When we come back, tech giants adapt to the world of AI. We'll speak with a friend of Pivot, Mike Allen, about the benefits of brevity.

[Ad Break]

Kara Swisher: Scott, we're back. While you were gone, AI just suddenly got real big. Suddenly, everyone was talking about it. It's put some tech companies on the defensive. Late last year, Research Lab OpenAI released its bot ChatGPT for public testing. The bot impressed many with its lifelike answers. Now, Microsoft, which is backing this, has reportedly incorporated the bot into its Bing search engine. So Bing is coming back, according to The Information.

But other companies aren't opening the pod bay doors for new tech. The New York Times reports that Google management has declared a code red over the chatbot. They've also been working on their own. Meanwhile, Google and Apple have been using AI voices to read audiobooks. Let's listen to a clip.

[Audio Clip: AI voice reading from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz] "Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry and Aunt Em. Their house was small, for the lumber to build it had to be carried by wagon many miles. There were four walls, a floor, and a roof, which made one room; and this room contained a rusty-looking cook stove, a cupboard for the dishes, a table, three or four chairs, and the beds."

Kara Swisher: Huh, that sounds good. I don't know. It works fine. What do you think about this? I mean, were you paying attention to this? Google has its own LaMDA chatbot. Remember when that engineer said it was sentient, which it's not. So they've been slower to do it, but Microsoft is back here. Maybe Bing's going to make a recovery. Maybe this is the future of search. It certainly gives a lot of wrong answers. But what do we think of this? Or is it just another silliness that will go away?

Scott Galloway: Well, it is powerful. I spent a bunch of time with my youngest, my 12-year-old, asking ChatGPT questions and seeing what it came back with. First we started with visuals, you know, "give me a Great Dane drinking Zacapa in the format or the design of the old masters" or whatever.

Kara Swisher: You did this with your child? Okay, go ahead.

Scott Galloway: He's really into this stuff.

Kara Swisher: Zacapa? Okay.

Scott Galloway: He's got to have role models. Anyways, and then—

Kara Swisher: I'm going to do a London intervention on your children.

Scott Galloway: Did I tell you I was hanging out in the lobby and yelling at people holding a Bud Zero?

Kara Swisher: Yeah, you told me that.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I'm filing this all away for the report I'm going to need to do to London officials when I take your children.

But we said, okay, write a poem, write a story, summarize Harry Potter in two pages or less. And I mean, it really is very, very powerful. And right now, I think it's great marketing for Bing because it kind of gives... I mean, has anyone heard of Bing in a while? So, there you go.

Kara Swisher: Do you know he introduced it at one of our Codes and he yelled, "Bing! Bing!" over and over again, Steve Ballmer. There you go. It's now, I think, one of the 10 most valuable startups in the world. 29 billion.

Scott Galloway: Whether or not... I predicted in my prediction stack that AI would be the technology of 2023. And I want to be clear, I don't know if it will actually have tangible impact that makes it the technology of the year, but it's going to be the next thing that everyone's going to get huge FOMO around, and you're going to see $100 billion in market capitalization leak to the company.

Kara Swisher: Yes, I agree with you with that. The subscription search engine Neeva that I'm an investor in has pivoted to AI-driven search. And all of a sudden, we have new life and people are calling us and want to partner with us. So AI is about to become the new Web3, the new metaverse, the new whatever you want to call it. It does have uses. I think one of the things about Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, you never really had a use, right? It was just speculative assets. So you're like, what am I using this for? In this case, people are experimenting when you actually get to use it, right? And it's interesting.

I just wonder if it's going to be interesting and then not interesting, like a lot of things, like Clubhouse was, right? It was useful and then not. And so I do think that there's all this worry. As usual, there's one stupid worry, which is AI-generated text cheating in schools and writing term papers. I mean, kids already do a bad job of that enough already. And they're trying to figure out a way to digitally watermark the text and stuff like that. But people always find ways to cheat. To me, that story has been written way too many times.

But it makes sense that a lot of accounting is done by computers really now, right? Anything that can be digitized will be digitized. And some of this stuff shouldn't be done by people. Some of this text shouldn't be done by people and it could just as easily be read by AI. People were going freaky about that. I know there's an industry of reading books, but if it's done by AI and costs less, why not do that? You don't still use horses, you use cars. And so it makes sense. There's usefulness here. I do see there's usefulness here when you finally begin to see it. Some of it is just a parlor trick, though, to me. A lot of it is right now.

Scott Galloway: It strikes me that the analogy is what robotics did to manufacturing, this will do to the information age or information workers. So if you're an editor, voiceover...

Kara Swisher: Edit stuff, yeah.

Scott Galloway: This is just going to... just as a robot doesn't want holidays or doesn't get payroll taxes or demand health insurance, for drafting today's big stories... There's a producer that drafts all these stories for the local radio station, for the guy who comes on and reads the weather. All they're doing is pulling other people's words.

Kara Swisher: That's right.

Scott Galloway: But at some point, the chatbot, you'll be able to instruct it and say, "Okay, go find me the most interesting news stories out of Asia. Put it in bullet form." And the woman who used to put that together for Tom Keene at Bloomberg is going to be out of a job. But I think at the end of the day, this is progress. I don't think it's going to have the kind of societal... I think a lot of people are more fearful of it than they should be.

Kara Swisher: It is like automating a lot of stuff, but go ahead.

Scott Galloway: It's elegant, but it's also wrong a lot. And I think there's going to be a huge opportunity for more referenceable AI that says, "This is our summary. This is the references we drew upon," because it gets a lot of stuff wrong. But it's fascinating.

Kara Swisher: You know, we used it. We used it a little bit. We had Casey and I did a session in San Francisco that we put on.

Scott Galloway: I listened to that. It was good.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. And one of the things I think Casey was really 100% correct about is that it's fine that you can see the usefulness in it as opposed to other new technologies. And I agree with that. I think you can really start to see that this makes sense, just the way you wouldn't do spreadsheets anymore by hand. Why would you? Why would you not have... I think your robotics thing in manufacturing is exactly the right metaphor.

I think one of the things that's hard for people is that it does sound a little stiff, right? Some of it does. When it was answering, it sounds like someone who doesn't quite know English, for example, when it's in English. Some of the times they did ask who's the most powerful tech journalist. It was me, which was accurate.

Scott Galloway: You started asking questions about yourself?

Kara Swisher: No, no, no. Naima did. I had to go very narrow. I'm like, "Who's the most popular professor at NYU who's still active, who has a podcast?" and finally it found my name.

Scott Galloway: And they found your name, yeah.

Kara Swisher: I do think it's interesting. We'll see. I think what's exciting is people will make what they want to make of it, right? Some of the picture generating stuff is kind of silly and porny to me. I think it's just a game. Again, it's like, okay, great. Show me a dog dancing on a table. It's fun, but you're not going to do it every single day of your life. So what's going to be the thing you're going to do every single day of your life with it? And that's what'll be interesting, I think. And it'll make things easier that are very rote for people.

What's more interesting is this: Apple soon will announce its augmented reality headset. It's coming. The device will run on a new operating system, xrOS, and will likely be called Reality Pro. They're using their own chips, everything else. They're sort of taking a little thing from Tesla, doing everything on their own, not getting captive by a supply chain situation. What do you think? It's been late. It's been years and years late, for sure. It was supposed to debut in 2019, 2020, 21. Now it's going to be pushed out to June. January was when it was coming out. Now it's coming out. Where do you see it? Is it the next iPhone, next Google Glass? Or are you just uninterested? Something that isn't very useful. We'll see when we see it, right? So far, I don't find a use for these things on a daily basis. But what do you think?

Scott Galloway: Well, I couldn't have envisioned... I'm not exaggerating. I spend between $600 and $1,000 a month on AirPods. I have them everywhere.

Kara Swisher: AirPods Max? You have Max, right?

Scott Galloway: I have Max, and I give them as gifts. I always keep a spare pair around. They're like keys and sunglasses for me. I just lose... I'm always five minutes away from losing my AirPods. If I was in the Doha airport, it's almost instinct for me if I see an Apple logo to just go pick a pair of AirPods, knowing that I'll either need them or I can give them away and that people love them as a gift.

And I find them... they're now saying that if you use certain modes with AirPods Max, if you put the phone in between you and the person you're speaking to when you go into a certain mode, it's as good or better than a $10,000 pair of hearing aids.

Kara Swisher: Oh, with the AirPod Max, it's so interesting.

Scott Galloway: And so I think these things are revolutionary. I think it's incredible. And I never would have guessed that. So I'll reserve final judgment until I actually put a pair on and get to wear them and try them. But my general gut is that I believe anthropologically, we don't want anything that limits our peripheral vision or that doesn't make us look more attractive to other mates.

And I think sunglasses and fashion... the tech community other than... if I had to bet, Kara, I think this is going to be the Hermes Apple Watch. I think it's going to get a ton of press. It'll be cool. And it fades away. I think they'll make the best version of it. It's just a question whether you find it necessary and need to use it all the time. But I just don't see wanting to put this on and isolating myself. Maybe if I'm trying to meditate or I want to see Thailand and not with you, something like that.

Kara Swisher: You want to see Thailand with me.

Scott Galloway: I know, but you know what I'm saying. Not Scott's Thailand. Scott's Thailand is different than Kara's Thailand, let's just say. I could see using it once a week. I think Apple will be the best one, right, of something I don't really want. It's like the best bread maker. It'll be the best bread maker. I think it still ends up in the drawer with the Fitbit and the Nike FuelBand. I think it's going to be more Segway than AirPods.

I wish they would work on the car, but maybe they'll just be making the software for a car. You even asked me about my Chevy Bolt, which I love.

Kara Swisher: Oh, you're into the Bolt?

Scott Galloway: Oh, yeah. My Bolt is fantastic. I sold all my vehicles. I now have no carbon-producing vehicles.

Kara Swisher: So you're like I was.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. I sold everything. The Kia is still around, of course.

Kara Swisher: Now, Kia has a very successful... you should buy the Kia EV. It's hard to get. It's got really great reviews. There's a Niro, N-E-V-O.

Scott Galloway: I would buy a Kia, but I still have hopes of having sex again.

Kara Swisher: Okay. All right. Nonetheless. No Kia for the dog.

Scott Galloway: So I have no cars, no planes anymore. I'm going carbon negative for a year just to feel better about myself.

Kara Swisher: Oh, my God. Wow.

Scott Galloway: And so there's this amazing service in London called Wheely, which is basically Uber but better. And I just got picked up in a Mercedes EQS 450, which is the new EV for Mercedes.

Kara Swisher: Oh, my God. It's incredible.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, it is. It's incredible. It doesn't have that stupid... the Tesla has that computer screen right in front of you. This has the whole dashboard. It's beautiful. But it's super modern and it's got those Mercedes finishes. It's comfy. It's plush.

Kara Swisher: I was in the Lucid. I went to visit Lucid in California when I was there and I was so impressed by their stuff. There's a lot of ex-Tesla people. The guy was great. The CEO was like, "Listen, they're way ahead of us in lots of things, but we're going to catch up eventually." He was good because he really did admit they were way ahead in terms of manufacturing and stuff like that. But boy, is that one impressive, beautiful. I got driven around by one of the engineers, one of the top engineers who's this German guy. I almost was killed because he was driving like a German person on the Autobahn. But boy, the pickup, the comfort, the luxury. Audi, Mercedes... there's a ton of fantastic EVs. I predict you're going to get one of those at some point.

Scott Galloway: I'm waiting for the Range Rover to come out with their EV next year.

Kara Swisher: Okay. You don't want the Chevy Bolt like me? It could be twinsies.

Scott Galloway: It could be twinsies. I wouldn't fit in a Chevy Bolt.

Kara Swisher: How big is that? I guess you would. Alex got in it. It's fine.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, he's taller than you.

Kara Swisher: Apple, we're very excited to see it, but we doubt we're going to use it very much. It's our bread maker of tech right now.

Scott Galloway: Air fryer.

Kara Swisher: No, I use my air fryer. By the way, I bought an air fryer. Your recommendation? I'm unimpressed.

Scott Galloway: Really? Why?

Kara Swisher: Louis is mad I got one because he says it's a convection oven. He goes, "Use your stove. It works just fine." I was like, "I love my air fryer." Anyway, let's bring in our friend of Pivot, Mike Allen. He is the co-founder of Axios, the author of the site's daily AM and PM newsletters, and the co-author of Smart Brevity: The Power of Saying More with Less. All right. Welcome, Mike.

Mike and I have known each other a long time. Remember that time when I told you to become entrepreneurs? That worked out well for you.

Mike Allen: I would say it was good advice. And you always get good advice from Kara Swisher.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. You were at Politico at the time and you didn't have a piece of it. And I said, you should start your own thing. I remember it was a place in Washington, a restaurant with you and Jim. Nonetheless, how's it going? You got bought by Cox. Can you explain that rather briefly? What's going on? You guys started Axios, which we'll talk about brevity in a minute. But that was sort of the premise of it, is very quick, important news you need to know. Tell me why you sold. What was the deal around that?

Mike Allen: Yeah, the premise behind Axios was the fire hose was just too much. And people want to know what's new, why it matters, in smart brevity. And every morning telling people what they need to know, the most important stories, turned out to be super popular with people. We now have Axios, Axios Local in 26 cities across the country, Axios Pro subscriptions, Axios Events. And Cox Enterprises, which bought Axios, loved the fact that we were doing journalism in a way that also was a good business.

So Cox has journalism in their bones. They started a century ago with the Dayton, now the Dayton Daily News. They, of course, have the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. And they've gotten rid of most of their legacy media properties, now in cable, now in the lifecycle of the auto. But they loved Axios. They said, "We like what you're doing. We want you to do more of it. We want you to do it faster." So Cox Enterprises turned out to be a fantastic partner.

Kara Swisher: And you had almost sold to Axel Springer, correct? There were reports of conversations with Axel Springer.

Mike Allen: Yeah, we did. And we sold to Cox Enterprises.

Kara Swisher: Great. But they bought Politico, which you guys started too. I remember when I visited you out in that newsroom. So why now? Because a lot of digital news media is seeing struggles: Protocol, The Recount, Future.com. I don't consider that a journalistic institution. But nonetheless, what was the theory of selling now? Is that you needed more heft or why did you do it?

Mike Allen: Yeah. And Kara, by the way, Politico, which was started by me, Jim VandeHei, the CEO of Axios, John Harris is the founding editor of Politico. We're there with Roy Schwartz, who's a founder of Axios. So Jim, Roy, and I left Politico to start Axios, and Politico sold for a billion dollars. So it turned out to be a pretty good idea.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, it was very good. I wish you had owned more of it. But why now? Why sell now? What's the impetus for doing it?

Mike Allen: We love Cox. We weren't planning to sell. We were very picky about who we might tie up with. And what we liked about Cox Enterprises, and we found our values were very aligned, was their generational thinking. Like Jim VandeHei, Axios CEO, has always talked about this as a forever company. How do we build something that will way outlive us? And that's how Cox thinks. Cox Enterprises thinks for the long run. They want us to build for the long run and they wanted to invest in us to grow Axios National, all of our national and global coverage, including 24 newsletters, Axios Local, which will be in 30 cities very soon. We're hiring for a couple more.

Right now, you can get Axios Local in 26 cities every morning. Something that sets Axios Local apart that will interest the two of you is that every single one of our Axios journalists is from there. So we don't hire people in Brooklyn and send them to Des Moines or to Austin. They're all from there. And they write for their neighbors. They write for people in Denver or in Tampa.

Kara Swisher: Which has been tried a lot. There's been Sidewalk from Microsoft over the years. First off, my congratulations.

Scott Galloway: So, they paid $525 million for Axios. And I'm going to go out on a limb here and speculate that that's probably not a creative acquisition, that they saw they paid a premium or what I call a strategic premium. And is that premium a function of how they think they can grow you or they're hoping to Axios other properties within the Cox enterprise? What's the strategy that resulted in the kind of multiple that paid for your company?

Mike Allen: Scott, this is very much about growing Axios. So we are a standalone company. We're still Axios employees. Alex Taylor, the CEO of Cox Enterprises, is the chairman of our board. And they're fantastic and supportive partners. But one of the big ideas behind this, what attracted them and what attracted us, was Axios with its culture, its theory of the case, its leadership, its colleagues that we would build from here.

And so I mentioned Axios National, Axios Local, Axios Pro, which are subscriptions in both the deals space, an extension of Dan Primack's Pro Rata franchise, now in media deals, healthcare deals, and Axios Policy in healthcare and others. All three parts of Axios would grow in the years ahead. And so Cox Enterprises said, "We like both what you're doing, why you're doing it, how you're doing it. We want to be part of that forever company."

Kara Swisher: So when you think about what you're doing, one of the things... listen, we tried to do something like Zareka. We never were as ambitious as you were, but it was the same idea. And there's lots of people, whether it's Punchbowl or various people, Puck. There's many others starting up by journalists, entrepreneurs or "reportrepreneurs." Jessica Lessin at The Information does a subscription service. When is peak too much of this? Or does it take from national media? Because you are hooking up with a legacy media company. What happens to all those? And how do you look at the market, especially with the fallout in advertising, subscriptions, et cetera?

Mike Allen: Kara, what we've found is there's more demand than ever from people to be smarter, faster about the topics that matter most. And people talked about peak newsletters. And like what Jim has said is that it's peak shitty newsletters.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, like peak shitty podcasts, but go ahead.

Mike Allen: If you have quality journalists, quality coverage, if you're not wasting people's time, if you're not insulting their intelligence, that is a very sweet spot. And people need, want, demand, consume that coverage more than ever. If it's brief.

Kara Swisher: Now, Axios has pioneered and mastered smart brevity, which is the name of this book that you have written, called Smart Brevity: The Power of Saying More with Less. Talk about that idea because a lot of people think students are struggling with news literacy and critical thinking seems to be in short supply. Should news reporting be getting snackable or how do you look at that? I think your stuff is very intelligent and short, but a lot of it was... I was watching, we're going to talk about the Kevin McCarthy thing in a minute, but a lot of it was just breathless, silly, you know, kind of who cares? It didn't have any meaning.

Mike Allen: Yes. No, that's the mistake of quantity for quality, and that's what we do in the book Smart Brevity, which I wrote with Jim VandeHei and Roy Schwartz, the other two co-founders of Axios. The big idea behind Smart Brevity, the book, is that anyone, whether you're a student, whether you are a boss, whether you want to be the boss, that you can communicate more powerfully by being sharper and thinking through what you want to say and thinking about the audience.

Like, Kara, you and I used to work at the Washington Post, and that's where those bad habits came in. It even goes back to school where you're never assigned to come up with one great idea or to make one important thought. No, instead we're told to write a thousand words or eight pages that we triple space. And then at the Post, quality was a proxy for quantity, that the longer you were, the more likely you were to be on the section front, even longer on the Sunday front.

Kara Swisher: I remember one time I opened up... you always opened up from the pun page, and then the entire two pages were full of text.

Mike Allen: Yeah, the notebook dump.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, and I opened it up once. I went, "Oh, for fuck's sake."

Mike Allen: And someone like Ben Bradlee was there. "What's wrong with that?" I said, "Everything. Everything is wrong with this."

Kara Swisher: You were right. I don't know what to say. I'm not going to read it.

Mike Allen: We discovered that, and the secret for your listeners is like gravity. It's just something that is true whether we care to accept it or not. Gravity is that most people are not reading most of what we write. And so what Smart Brevity, the book, does is show you how to think on the front end: what is the one thing that I want people to remember? What's a memorable, punchy, muscular way to say my big idea?

Mike Allen: And then just say it. Tell people why it matters. Give them some evidence. Give them the power to go deeper. That's a formula for being heard in a way that you never will be with those masses of text.

I was talking about Smart Brevity, the book, with one of the leading communications firms in the world. And they were saying that when they were done with the report, they would go to write a headline or get a pull quote, like one exciting part to put in bold type. And they would realize there was no pull quote. There was no big idea.

And that's what Smart Brevity does: it says, think about what that is on the front end. Stress test that. Think before you type. And it also works for you in other forms of communication, including we have Smart Brevity for presentations and Smart Brevity for Zooms.

The magic of it is it gives you time for a podcast like Pivot that's worth your time. It gives you time to read books, articles that are worth your time. But most of our communication is catch-up, transactional. And the way that it's presented now, we waste time hunting for the key point, hunting for what we're supposed to remember.

And like all three of us were taught when we were coming up, basically to hide it, right? If you have three or four good things, scatter them out through your text and make the reader find them. Smart Brevity says, no, you do that work, put it up front, and you'll be a much more powerful communicator.

Kara Swisher: Isn't brevity synonymous with economy? And you can have brevity in a long-form article. You just have to pack more punch. Isn't it a function of the intensity of the information, not necessarily the length?

Mike Allen: Yeah, no, that's a great way to put it. And what Smart Brevity says is that nine times out of ten, the best way to communicate is efficiently, right? I have one awesome stat. I have one great insight. I have one big idea. I want to sell you something.

Like I watch people trying to make a sale. There may be a good salesperson, and they maybe have a good product. And I watch the body language of the person they're talking to, and they've got the order. They're ready to do it. But what happens? We instinctively keep talking. And so very often, they'll raise so many issues that finally the person says, "Oh, think about it." When if they would have just stopped, they would have walked away with a signed order.

Same thing when you're asking for a raise, right? Our tendency is to say, "Well, I know these are tough times. I know you have a lot on your plate. I know we're kind of—" No. If you want a raise, tell them what you've done for them. Tell them what you're going to do for them. And then just stop.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, that's true. Give me the fucking money.

Scott Galloway: Let me say, one of the things with these brevity things, though, we just were talking about ChatGPT and the role of AI playing in writing news stories. We asked ChatGPT to write a fictional Axios story about Trump coming back to Twitter. Here's an excerpt of what it wrote as read by another AI.

[AI voice reading ChatGPT output] "Donald Trump, the former president of the United States, returned to Twitter on Friday after being banned from the platform following the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Trump's return to Twitter was met with mixed reactions, with some users expressing support for his return while others criticized the decision to allow him back on the platform. In his first tweet since returning, Trump addressed his supporters and vowed to continue fighting for what he believes in. 'I may be gone from Twitter, but I will never be gone from your hearts and minds,' he wrote."

Scott Galloway: Well, that was riveting and also very lame. So look at how flabby that was. We definitely need ChatGPT to ingest Smart Brevity, the book, because it has a lot of bad habits of writers.

If I were telling you that, I would be able to do it in like very snappily, muscular. I'd tell you that Trump came back and that people revolted online. But then we sit at a keyboard and we start using long words. We start using boring phrases like the chatbot did there. Smart Brevity says, think about how I would say it to you if we were having chips and salsa. Think about how we would say it to a human being, right? Like a human, not like a robot.

Kara Swisher: Beyond brevity, one of your things at Axios has been news breaking, right? That's what to me is at the heart of—tell me something I don't know. Always the gold standard.

Here's the problem that you may also face: a lot of your reporters, two have just left, to go to big publications. John Swan being the most famous one, right, who broke a ton of stories and was very cheeky about it, was a very cheeky writer too. How does that, if you're not going to rely on AI, how do you keep that going? That was a big issue with me at Recode. Every one of our reporters went to the New York Times or the Washington Post or Bloomberg.

Mike Allen: Well, you've moved around a little bit yourself. And people do. There's that Smart Brevity. But the great thing about Axios is that we have tons of great reporters. We're bringing in new talent now. And there's no question that that is vital. And it's something that the chatbot can't do.

Human relationships who have an instinct for a story, the connections for a story, who can see the story when it's in front of their face, which, as the two of you well know, is not necessarily a common trait for a reporter, and then can tell it in a way that makes me realize why I should care about it, why it matters.

Tell me something new. Tell me something that matters. In a kind of interesting way. In the sea of content out there, words that are always coming at us, that sharp, smart, new, important. What's new? Why it matters. Make me smarter about the things that matter. There's more demand for that than ever. And Axios has a fantastic newsroom of people to bring you that.

Scott Galloway: I just wanted to follow up on Kara's question because it touches on our first story. As the principal and founder of a company and someone whose company was acquired, what's your view on non-competes? We just talked about that FTC decision.

Mike Allen: So I am not the chief of our people team. And so I'm going to leave that to people who are experts in it.

Scott Galloway: Oh, come on, man. We'd like some brief thoughts on it. You're the principal of an organization that sold your company. Do you think that organizations that acquire firms like Axios should have non-competes? And what's your view on them?

Mike Allen: We have people who are experts on that, and that person is not me. I think that's no comment.

Kara Swisher: Oh, Mike, come on. We don't like them. Scott and I hate them. And I've signed them. Mike, you missed our conversation. This is a big topic right now because of Lina Khan. And I would imagine you're very thoughtful and knowledgeable on the topic. Anyways, you're all right. We're going to ask.

I have one last question. I'm going to let you out of it, Mike, but you should answer. You shouldn't like them, just FYI, because you're an entrepreneur and you want to create when you want to create. And fuck those people, even if they gave me millions of dollars. That's how we look at things. But you may not agree. You're more polite.

Scott Galloway: That's very Kara. That's very Kara. It's much more Scott than Kara.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, can I—I'd love your brief thoughts on what happened this week on the Hill. We got to go. This is my last question.

Mike Allen: What was that? I hate to tell you, it's a preview of coming attractions. It was a very visceral distillation, manifestation of the dysfunction that we have in our politics. And the fact that Republicans won barely, but they won the House. And then they couldn't even seal the deal, couldn't take advantage of it.

Now that Kevin McCarthy is in as speaker, Axios has reporting today about the fast start that they planned. He's going to go with red meat, try and reward the hardliners that he brought in. So right away, they're going to go after big tech. One of the first things they're going to do is go to the White House, trying to get any communications they've had with the five biggest tech firms, whether it's emails, memos. And then it's off to the races with Hunter Biden and Anthony Fauci and you name it. They're going to go after it fast, both to make up for the lost time of the last week, but also it shows who has power in the Republican Party at this moment.

Kara Swisher: Wow. Scott, last question. What other media startups do you admire? Who do you think is doing a really good job?

Scott Galloway: Punchbowl is killing it. So Punchbowl started by Anna Palmer and Jake Sherman, which covers the Hill. They're awesome at what they do. They have the formula of, like, know what your one thing is. Be awesome at it. Do it better than anyone else. They're fantastic journalists. They have great business minds. The two of you are rare in that that's not a super common convergence. And they have it. And Punchbowl is great at what they do and is a very smart, successful media company.

Kara Swisher: That's something, yeah. You probably wish you had done a little more of that.

Scott Galloway: They definitely focused and they're punchy, punchy, punchy. And they were from Politico too. It's really interesting how these things evolve over time. There's going to be a lot more of them, I suspect.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, the book is called *Smart Brevity: The Power of Saying More with Less*. Mike, thank you so much. You're such a gentleman. Thanks for the conversation and congrats on what the two of you have built.

Mike Allen: Thank you. Congratulations to you, Mike.

Kara Swisher: All right, Scott. One more quick break and we'll be back for wins and fails.

[Ad break]

Kara Swisher: Okay, Scott, let's hear some wins and fails.

Scott Galloway: Mine is obviously not doing to Recode what all these other people are doing. I was too early to the game. We sold to Vox for a good sum of money, but we were very early in the idea of entrepreneurial journalists before everybody else piled in.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, 525 is a big number. I would bet that's like 12 or 13 times revenue. Good for him.

Scott Galloway: My fail is I just found it so disheartening what took place in Brasilia. It's just so obvious. The world looks to America for what's best and what's worse about it. And until we have some sort of accountability and send a strong signal that democracies are worth protecting and that there should be ramifications and people at every level should be held accountable, we're going to start to see this across all of the West and all of these traditional pillars of democracy that we took for granted. Those walls, I don't think they're going to fall down, but they're going to start getting chipped pretty hard.

Kara Swisher: What happens? You don't think this, for God's sake, what happens when it starts happening in Germany and people start—

Scott Galloway: They won't do it in Germany.

Kara Swisher: Well, shit, I hope not.

Scott Galloway: They get mad when you cross the street funny. So, okay, sure.

Kara Swisher: Anyways, my point is, I just think that's enormously disappointing. And I think that we, as voters in America, bear a lot of the responsibility. And I don't think people—I think we know, but we don't really understand just how much impact we have on the rest of the world. Anyway, so that's my fail.

Scott Galloway: My win is—and we've talked about this. I think Lina Khan, I think these non-competes suppress innovation, end up hurting middle class and upper middle income information age workers' ability to take their human capital elsewhere. You end up in shitty situations where you don't want to work somewhere, but your options are limited because the company that hired you—do you realize there are non-competes now for hairdressers and hair salons? So you can't leave.

Competition is just one of the pillars of why our economy continues to grow and continues to best other economies and offer prosperity and freedoms. And without competition, it begins to atrophy. So these non-competes are a menace, and they should be done away with full stop.

You want someone to stick at your firm? Provide them economic and uneconomic benefits. And if they choose to leave, they choose to leave. And if someone can offer them a better life, good for them. Good for them.

Kara Swisher: I would agree with you. I think it's really—for the Brazil thing, there's a good piece I'd point you to in the Washington Post by Elizabeth Dwoskin, how Telegram, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter were used to boost election fraud claims in Brazil before riots hit Congress and government buildings. These companies just still continue to—they're just vehicles of fomenting problems.

Scott Galloway: It's not their fault.

Kara Swisher: Look, it's the political leaders who are at fault, but it's still being used in that regard. I would agree with you. I don't know if there's anything to be done about it, by the way. So that's one of the problems.

I think my win is that we're focusing on really interesting things like AI and this emerging AI arena. Like you said, this is really interesting and there's lots of fascinating companies. Again, I'd point to another story that's great: Ben Thompson of Stratechery wrote exploring the impact of emerging AI epoch on doubt led by DALL-E, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion and ChatGPT on Apple, Amazon, Meta and Google. I think it's a really interesting time. I really do.

It's really the same thing with EVs. There's all this stuff that I find more interesting than some of the nonsense that's been going on before. So I'm sort of super interested in it.

Scott Galloway: And for thoughtfulness, I'm going to give a win. I think you need to watch a show called *A Trip to Infinity* on Netflix. It's a documentary. Alex made me watch it in Louis. And it's this wonder—we watched it all together. I'm not that smart after watching it. But it really—it's a little bit of popular science, but it's a lot of mathematicians, philosophers talking about infinity and what it means and what it is. And it was so—just take some time and do something in this world of reductiveness and Smart Brevity, whatever brevity. Take time not to be brief and really think hard about big questions.

This is all about stuff, science and infinity and numbers and space. And I just think you should try a little harder to be a little less brief and think really harder in the new year. Because a lot of this stuff—ChatGPT, EVs, healthcare, climate change tech—these are big fucking ideas. Start to think big instead of this small little bullshit that went on in Congress. They're small people fighting for small things, and we should be fighting for big things. That's what I would say, 2023.

Kara Swisher: I like that. Thank you. And watch that show. You'll like it a lot. It'll make your head hurt a little bit.

Anyway, Scott, I'm so glad you're back.

Scott Galloway: Thanks, Kara. It's great to be back.

Kara Swisher: No ChatGPT can replace you. Maybe. Not right this second. They can't replace us. They just can't. We're not digitizable.

Scott Galloway: We're going to Munich. We're going to Munich. I'll drink beer for both of us. And then in London, you will drink for both of us. We're going to have a great time.

Kara Swisher: I have my new heart to be able to outrun you if I need to at any point. We're going to have a great time. We're very excited to see our European fans. There's nobody like us. And in advance, we're sorry. And mostly for Scott. Okay? That's what I'm just going to tell Europe. That's all they need to know.

And also, we want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business, tech, or whatever is on your mind. Go to nymag.com/pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT.

Anyway, that's the show. We're so glad you're back here with your dirty mouth, your potty mouth.

Scott Galloway: Lascivious. Isn't that what they called us? Or called you or called me?

Kara Swisher: Lascivious. You're lascivious. I am a long-suffering spouse.

Anyway, we'll be back on Friday for more, and that'll be from Germany. We're very excited. Scott, I'm so glad to ask you to read us out.

[Credits roll]

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

Scott Galloway: 2023. It is going fast. Live your life. Tell people you care about them. Decide what it is you want to do, who you want to be. It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. We're all going to be dead and so are they very soon. The years are clicking by. You don't have time for this bullshit. Live your life.