--:-- Kara Swisher: 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.
--:-- Scott Galloway: 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, and I have a doctorate.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Thank you. What? I mean, you got a doctorate?
--:-- Kara Swisher: They gave the commencement address at Cooper Union, and they gave me an honorary doctorate. So you may call me Dr. Swisher now.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Dr. Swisher. Your family now has two doctors.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah, exactly. Mine's a fake one, but there I am. I don't have a PhD or anything near it. I have a master's degree, but certainly not a PhD. People all the time introduce me in media as doctor because I assume every professor has a PhD.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Oh, really?
--:-- Kara Swisher: Which I don't, just to be clear.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Yeah. How was that? How did your commencement speech go?
--:-- Kara Swisher: It was great. I have to tell you, Scott, you want to feel better about the world? Meet young people. The student who was giving the address was astonishing. Just a great speech. They are honest about things, but hopeful and yet at the same time not stupid. He talked about how he hates the word "resilient" and being referred to as resilient, which I agree with. Like as if you get used to being under siege. He was great. It was just great.
--:-- Kara Swisher: The woman who runs Cooper Union—it's a small but really interesting school right in the heart of the East Village. It combines art and science. There's architecture, there's art, lots of engineers, mostly engineers. It reminds me of that Steve Jobs idea of art and science together. You can see it in action. I was super impressed. It used to give every student free tuition. They had some setbacks, and they're trying to get back to that now.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Was this your first speaking engagement at a commencement?
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yes. Yes. Yes. I did a high school commencement once. By the way, that's not me wanting to know about you. That's me prompting you to ask me if I've ever spoken at a commencement.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Did you ever speak at any kind of commencement, any kind of transition of people to a next thing?
--:-- Kara Swisher: I've spoken at one college commencement. Do you want to guess where and when it was?
--:-- Scott Galloway: I would if they were smart—UCLA because you went there—but Florida State University?
--:-- Kara Swisher: FSU, yeah.
--:-- Scott Galloway: I was the student speaker at the Berkeley commencement.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Oh my goodness. When you went there? That's a real flex. Wow. Were you elected then, just like this kid that was so amazing at Cooper Union?
--:-- Scott Galloway: I wasn't elected. Oh, I guess I was selected. Someone from student government came up and said, "We'd like you to be the commencement speaker."
--:-- Kara Swisher: Oh, wow. Yeah, because usually they get selected now in a vote or competition. Wow, that's great. What did you say? Let me hear a very short version.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Oh, it was all about my mom. My mom was sick. So it was very emotionally manipulative.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Oh, but it was probably heartfelt. That's called heartfelt, Scott. It was probably true. Did you have hair at the time?
--:-- Scott Galloway: A lot of hair. I had good hair. As a matter of fact, you know how I got to Berkeley? My mode of transportation was a skateboard and a ponytail. I had a ponytail in graduate school. That was a good look.
--:-- Kara Swisher: That's how you lose your virginity at 19. Have a ponytail and a skateboard. The skateboard actually probably helped.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Yeah.
--:-- Kara Swisher: You would probably be a good commencement speaker now, I would think. You're very inspirational.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Yeah, yeah. I told you, you helped Alex, for example. You inspired him. And Louis wants to talk to you about your man book. He has thoughts about men and his friends and friendship. He's someone who wants men to be more emotional friends.
--:-- Kara Swisher: We are. I think a lot of young men are mistaking friends for real friendship. We're online. When I first moved to New York, I didn't have friends. I had wingmen. I needed to go out, needed partners in crime. But I didn't really appreciate what it meant to invest in and receive friendship. I don't think men in general are very good at it.
--:-- Kara Swisher: This is what Louis was talking about. He's made some other friends that are more friends. He struggles with it because he wants emotional friendships with men. He wants more from his friends than just, "Hey dude, let's drink or let's go to a strip club." I said, "You need to talk to Scott Galloway about this." This is what you're writing about a little bit in this book. He has some thoughts he'd like to share with you.
--:-- Scott Galloway: If we run out of ideas, we'll turn to his doctorate mother.
--:-- Kara Swisher: You have to call me Dr. Swisher.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Dr. Swisher.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Dr. Swisher is in the house. Yeah, it was great. We have a lot to talk about. Lots has gone on, including last night. And of course, the HBO Max rebrand, which you've been having a good time talking about.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Oh my God.
--:-- Kara Swisher: But today we have so much. I want to get to that rebrand first. But first, just so you know, we're going to talk today about Ron DeSantis and the Elon Musk experience—a failure to launch, as they're calling it, or disaster. Get it? DeSantis, disaster. The Surgeon General says social media is a new smoking, and we'll take a listener question about the HBO Max rebrand. We'll get to that in a minute.
--:-- Kara Swisher: But I want to start with something that's super disturbing to me. Speaking of Ron DeSantis, students at a Florida elementary school can no longer read the poem that Amanda Gorman read at President Biden's inauguration. It was a beautiful poem. The school limited access to the poem after a single complaint from a single parent. The parent complained that the poem is "not educational" and contains "indirect hate speech" while misidentifying the author as Oprah Winfrey. Last week, Governor DeSantis signed into law a requirement that schools pull challenged books within five days of receiving complaints. This is ridiculous.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Let's listen to part of the poem the parent pointed out. "We've braved the belly of the beast. We've learned that quiet isn't always peace. And the norms and notions of what just is isn't always just-is. And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it. Somehow we do it. Somehow we've weathered and witnessed a nation that isn't broken, but simply unfinished."
--:-- Scott Galloway: She's so impressive. That was impressive. I remember that. It was very moving.
--:-- Kara Swisher: LGBT book bans are increasingly common, but a report by the Washington Post found that a majority came from just 11 people. 11 people in our nation are doing this. The serial complaint filers accounted for 6% of all challengers but were responsible for 60% of all filings. It's a loud group. And just in time for Pride Month, I'll note, Target will remove some of its LGBTQ plus merchandise after backlash threatened its workers' safety. The retailer has featured Pride products in June for more than a decade.
--:-- Scott Galloway: If you think about what we have now—a campaign conducted by certain parents and student unions to ceremonially ban books. Books targeted or those seen as subversive or representing ideologies opposed to a certain viewpoint. Books mostly written about coming of age, about views contrary to what you would call conservative American Christianity. What I just said there is the exact description—if you go to Wikipedia and read the first paragraph, but take out the word "Nazi"—of how Wikipedia describes the Nazi book burnings. To not call on the past around how, and immediately say to yourself, "This is how it all starts."
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah. They're targeting—it's thinly veiled. If she were a white poet whose parents lived in Alabama and she drove a pickup truck, would they have banned the poem? This is such thinly veiled bigotry and weirdness.
--:-- Scott Galloway: And there aren't enough people who are old enough or unfortunately know a World War II veteran or a Holocaust survivor. And then you have the world's most powerful man saying to a famous target of anti-Semitism that he hates humanity. We have essentially these book burnings, but they can't burn books anymore because they're digital, so they just ban them. Folks, Western society has been here before. That story doesn't end well.
--:-- Kara Swisher: It's such a small group of people. Right-wing commentator and dickless wonder Matt Walsh tweeted about his movement: "We can't boycott every woke company, but we can pick one. It hardly matters which, and target it with a ruthless boycott campaign. Claim one scalp and then move on to the next." First of all, I don't even want to say about a person like this. He's the one that always attacks trans people. The less said the better.
--:-- Kara Swisher: It's a very strange thing. So few people are involved in this. It's something you talk about a lot—the intolerant minority, and not even just a minority of the minority is doing this. Most people sort of shrug their shoulders. There was a great video of a Target employee. She's like, "There's nothing wrong with this Pride stuff." She was handling it well. This guy was being aggressive at her, saying "pedo" and "grooming" and all this stuff. She handled it beautifully but was completely like, "Can I help you with something? Do you want to buy something? Please leave me alone." Most people are like, "What are you talking about, you stupid person?"
--:-- Scott Galloway: I think it's a lesson for both sides. At Netflix, when people were upset about what Dave Chappelle was saying, Ted Sarandos came out and said, "Words are not violence. If this offends you and pushing the boundaries, letting comics push the boundaries of saying uncomfortable things offends you, you shouldn't work here." At the same time, school districts and the CEO of Target need to say, "If this offends you, you shouldn't shop here." There's more of it from the far right. But just to be fair, some of those dangerous things around—
--:-- Kara Swisher: Come on, Scott. You're doing it again. It's all from the right right now against trans people, against gay people, against black people. You're not seeing the left-wing person march into Chick-fil-A and say, "You're all too religious." It doesn't happen. Or let's have legislation against the people of Hobby Lobby. It's just not happening. Let me be clear. It's much more dangerous. It's much more cruel from the right.
--:-- Scott Galloway: But there is still an emerging narrative and a temptation on both sides of the poles to try and shame people and deny them of their right to catalyze a conversation when you don't agree with them. That if you don't adopt the narrative, you are a bad person and someone that is dangerous. That happens from both sides, Kara.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yes, but on one side, it is just words, as you say, and the other, it's action. It's actual action.
--:-- Scott Galloway: That's true. On the far left, they're not passing legislation.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah, I agree. There's a very big difference here. And they've gotten taken, physically taken. You're doing it again. You're doing it again. I'm calling Christiane Amanpour so we can discuss this because she said "both sides" is not neutral.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Ever since you got your doctor, you're unbearable.
--:-- Kara Swisher: That's Dr. Swisher to you, and doctor is in and declaring you sick in the head.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Anyway, this is going to go on because this is how they operate on the fringes and into the middle, trying to cause us all so much divisiveness. Let me just say, Amanda Gorman, your poem was beautiful and deserves widespread reading. It probably will sell a lot more copies because these imbeciles target it.
--:-- Kara Swisher: In tech news, Meta will sell Giphy to Shutterstock for $53 million. That's the first time it had to sell off an asset because of antitrust regulations. It originally bought it for $300 million. It was ordered by UK competition authorities to divest. They'd fought it for a bit. I guess it's not working for them. And they had to divest it anyway in this year of efficiency and begin another round of layoffs Wednesday, by the way, targeting 10,000 business employees. Lost a lot of money here.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Well, that's the way it goes. They probably were like, "Oh well, let's just move along." It's an easy give. I was never entirely sure—I'm trying to go back to the original justification for purchasing it for half a billion bucks.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Explain what Giphy is for people who don't know.
--:-- Scott Galloway: It creates those wonderful little videos or memes that you can insert into a tweet or a piece of online content. It's a way of differentiating a piece of content. It's really fun and really interesting. If you type in "Kara Swisher commencement speech," I don't know what you get.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Nothing. It doesn't show up on Twitter, FYI.
--:-- Scott Galloway: But I guess the idea was, if we go vertical and we own this media company that differentiates our content versus content posted on another platform. But I guess they were never able to justify it, or they were worried about raising any trust flags if they didn't let people post or use Giphy for other platforms. My understanding is I can go on Giphy and post it on other platforms. So, 90% decline, destruction in value. Good for the employees at Giphy—they built something really cool. And Facebook shareholders overpaid for it by 10x.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah, and there we have it. Move along. It's probably fine at Shutterstock. I use them all the time. I like them.
--:-- Scott Galloway: You love them. You went on a Giphy orgy this morning with your review of the DeSantis thing, which we'll come back to.
--:-- Kara Swisher: I thought it was a pretty good review. If I say so myself, it was very doctoral. I'm thinking of changing it to a doctorate on fuck-ups. We'll talk about that in a minute.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Jack Sweeney, the man who ran a Twitter account tracking Elon Musk's private jet, is now focused on Governor Ron DeSantis' move. Ron DeSantis uses a lot of people's private planes, by the way. Users can now follow the flight path of DeSantis' private plane on DeSantis' Jet on Twitter. The account displays public flight data with a 24-hour delay. That keeps it in line with Twitter's rules. Last December, Twitter banned the Elon Jet account for posting coordinates in near real time. This may be the only way that voters see the governor's travel. Earlier this month, DeSantis signed a law protecting travel records of state leaders from public disclosure. How ridiculous. Democrats have criticized the bill, saying it doesn't allow for transparency and allows donors to have secret influence ahead of a presidential campaign. That law really perplexed me.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Whether or not some of these travels should be public if taxpayers are paying—in a lot of places, the governor uses private jets and turns it into a Clarence Thomas situation. What do you think about that?
--:-- Kara Swisher: I think you need to separate. If you're using public transportation that's taxpayer funded, there should be a different set of transparency requirements than if you're a private individual flying your own plane.
--:-- Scott Galloway: But if he's using rich people's planes and their in-kind donations to go to campaign events, that's kind of different.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah, then my understanding is the laws—or it used to be—you had to document that donation as a campaign contribution and then it becomes public domain.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Where I'm headed is, I'm not sure we should be allowed to track people by their license plate. People pay tolls on highways. That's technically somewhere. Someone could probably reverse engineer it and find your traffic. If you can track someone's plane, shouldn't you be able to track them in their car? I'm not sure you should be able to track someone by plane.
--:-- Scott Galloway: The head of the finance department at NYU Stern, David Yermak, did fantastic research 10, 15 years ago. Because it's public information, he was tracking the tail numbers of CEOs. He found that when CEOs were traveling to a vacation spot the day after their earnings, and you could see where they were planning to go with the flight manifest, it meant the earnings were going to be positive. Because if a guy's headed to Anguilla the day after his earnings, it means he's about to post good numbers. It was amazing research. But reverse engineering it to here—I don't know if that should be public domain if you're a private citizen flying your own plane.
--:-- Kara Swisher: I get your point. I see your point there. I do. I think people are going to do this anyway. This is sort of stunt and pranky at rich people. It could be dangerous. But if it's 24 hours, I don't care if it's 24 hours. It's like reporters digging up, "He flew here and then flew there." But people that are public servants really do need to say where they get their private planes from. Most people would be like, "Yes."
--:-- Scott Galloway: And we get to say Elizabeth Warren, while she engages in class warfare, is using private jets to get places. I think that's fun. I think that should be open season.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah, absolutely. And it often is. It's an attack vector. But in this case, Ron, you're such a chode.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Speaking of a chode, let's get to our first big story. On Wednesday, Governor Ron DeSantis officially kicked off his campaign for the presidency in a Twitter Space with Elon Musk. But like a SpaceX rocket launch, things didn't go quite as planned. Failure to launch. The event started late, had technical difficulties, and drew fewer than 600,000 listeners before crashing completely. It relaunched a few minutes later and had several different problems. People kept getting thrown off. It ran for about an hour but didn't ever regain its full audience. People are pegging it at 150,000 to 200,000 concurrent users. Of course, the Twitter people are like, "Oh, there's millions," but they're trying to do it over time.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Twitter users called the event a disaster. Get it? DeSantis? So did Trump and others. Biden had funny tweets. Jon Stewart had funny tweets. Musk backer Jason Calacanis said it was a DDoS attack, maybe. No evidence, just made it up. They made up a lot of things saying this was the biggest online event. Then everyone posted what the actual biggest online live events were. BuzzFeed's exploding watermelon in 2016 attracted more than double. Travis Scott's Fortnite concert was 12 million. There are lots of other things that have been successful. He would have been better doing an event that everybody covered and then going on Fox. It was a tiny, tiny audience for this thing and also an audio disaster. Any thoughts?
--:-- Scott Galloway: I do have thoughts, but I want you to go first here because you wrote what I thought was a really interesting tweet storm. I want your take and then I'll respond.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Let me go over it very quickly. I was reacting to something Linda Yaccarino wrote, where she talked about it as a "rare and unscripted" conversation.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Let me guess. She thought it was a success. I'm just going to go out on a limb here.
--:-- Kara Swisher: She didn't mention any of the problems. She said things like, "Freedom of speech is priceless." No one doesn't have freedom of speech here. "Rare and unscripted conversation." It was completely scripted. But she liked it. I think if you got her with a whiskey, she wouldn't say that. I made the point that if she was running NBC at the time and the cameras fell off, she'd be apologizing and giving givebacks to advertisers right away. She'd be wondering, "What the fuck happened here?" That's the kind of person she was. Not pretending it was anything else.
--:-- Scott Galloway: She has to do that, right?
--:-- Kara Swisher: But she definitely would be the one calming down advertisers and not using her credibility to not be honest about this business performance. They're trying to become a media company. This company is trying to become a media company. And it was a fuck up. That's just what it was. It also took the attention away from DeSantis because the medium was the message. This medium doesn't work.
--:-- Kara Swisher: When they did get down to it, David Sacks, who was the moderator, called him a junior varsity moderator. Elon talked more about themselves and not DeSantis. It's like a bad—I think Joe Rogan's very talented and very entertaining. This was like Joe Rogan on a really bad night. Then they kept attacking the press. That's their favorite thing. They seem obsessed with calling us irrelevant and then never stopping to talk about the media, which is weird.
--:-- Kara Swisher: I like unscripted conversations. I like when people get to talk. I had a Twitter Spaces. Mine always had glitch problems, and they were very small in comparison. It wasn't that much smaller than this, actually. When this stuff happens, it's not good. I was comparing it to my Mark Zuckerberg interview with Walt, where he sweat. That wasn't a good interview. He sweat. It was bad. It didn't say anything. It had no insight. It was just sad. He gets nervous, I suppose. But he went on to build the biggest company ever. So what? If they really want to do media and they don't have to be reporters, they have to do a better job. They have to be prepared. The tech has to work. And they have to stop saying everything was great.
--:-- Scott Galloway: First off, I'd like to announce that I'm running for the open seventh seat of Florida and I'm using the premier technology escalator. I'm going to come down an escalator, or I'm going to launch it on Foursquare and a dozen people showed up and crashed the site.
--:-- Scott Galloway: The bottom line is this was really bad for the governor. One, anytime you get anywhere near Elon Musk, he thinks he's God. The first 30 minutes, any question, he would turn to himself and talk about Twitter. In addition, it was bad for Musk because do you really want to get in a car from the guy who brings you, "I can't host a podcast"? The technology glitches here. It was the worst of both worlds. They tried to pretend it was unscripted. It clearly wasn't. They had the governor. They had a series of bait questions from people including someone who's supposedly going to be a possible VP candidate. The story today isn't about any of the themes he talked about. It isn't about him. The story today is just about what a fuck up it was.
--:-- Scott Galloway: The thing about Governor DeSantis and his office is, today they have been very disciplined about message. Well, not today. Since this presidential campaign, I think they've fucked up with the Disney thing. They've done a series of fuck-ups. His comms group—I don't agree with the message—but they've been very disciplined around format and venue. It was such a missed opportunity because the reality is, and we don't like to say this on the left, Florida is an enormous success story.
--:-- Scott Galloway: If he'd gone to Tampa St. Pete—when you go to cities in Florida right now, you're surprised at the upside. You go to Tampa St. Pete and you go to the Dolly Museum and you're like, "Jesus, this is a great city." You go to Orlando, you see the economic vibrancy. You go to Miami with even some of the impact problems it has—it's still the coolest city in Latin America and it happens to be in America. Florida is—there's just no getting around it. I don't know why he didn't focus on that. It's a success story. He should have done an Amy Klobuchar-like announcement that was very kind of, very Florida. He should have done it from a great success story in Florida. He has a lot to work with. The reason he's going to be a formidable candidate is there's just no getting around it. Florida is doing really well on most dimensions.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Except for the book banning, but go ahead.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Thank you for that, Dr. Swisher.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Anytime.
--:-- Scott Galloway: For people on the ground living in Florida, they're like, "I'm getting a great value here. I have a nice quality of life. I have low crime. I have good schools. And by the way, I pay no state taxes." That's a winning value proposition. But instead of focusing on his assets, he travels to Elon Musk on a platform that breaks down. The story today is everything that went wrong. This was a real misstep because he does have a lot to work with.
--:-- Kara Swisher: I'm not so sure. There are a lot of problems in Florida, by the way, and there's been lots of documentation. But fine, it's a very vibrant state. So are many states. He should be leaning into his strengths. No question. He cannot help—I think he's probably doing this so he can suck up to him and get money from donors, Elon and his whole group of people around him. That would be my assumption. Being a lapdog to a billionaire is not a great look for someone who's supposed to be strong.
--:-- Kara Swisher: I think he's been messing up a lot with the Disney thing. Error, unforced error. This was unforced error. It gives people like Trump, who is so skilled at this, so skilled at these kinds of things—he had stuff out immediately and it was funny. It was well done. It was a good slap-slap on this guy. Now they've got a new name: Disaster. They've got a new one. He finally found it. It wasn't "Meatball Ron." It wasn't "DeSanctimonious." It's "Disaster." He was doing all this talking about—they weren't challenging him. Then we had to hear what David Sacks and Elon Musk think about things. They need to stop talking, those two.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Agreed.
--:-- Kara Swisher: But this is the governor's shot and his opportunity. We consistently overestimate ideological issues and social issues' impact on people when they go in the voting booth. We underestimate quality of life issues. There's a large swath of Americans that will vote for whoever they think is going to put more money in their pockets.
--:-- Scott Galloway: That's correct.
--:-- Kara Swisher: I don't know if you remember Mayor Frank Jordan.
--:-- Scott Galloway: In San Francisco? Yeah.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Rudy Giuliani. Deep, incandescent blue cities. Once every 20 or 30 years, the quality of life gets so bad that they vote a "quality of life" person. There are a lot of states and cities post-COVID where the quality of life has taken a big hit. That's what the governor should be focusing on. Don't know why he's not. Why is he hanging out with Elon?
--:-- Kara Swisher: Well, you know, Elon does get attention. Look, he probably thought, "We're going to get so much attention. It's a new medium. For Elon."
--:-- Scott Galloway: Agreed.
--:-- Kara Swisher: But you can see why they thought this would be a good idea. The execution here was abysmal. I mean, it sounded like a podcast in 2012 where they said, "We're going to try this new thing called podcasting. Bear with us."
--:-- Scott Galloway: Yeah.
--:-- Kara Swisher: I think when you stand next to Elon, no one's looking at you. They're looking at him. He's a black hole of attention.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Tension. Exactly.
--:-- Kara Swisher: One of the things that's interesting is right wing personalities, of course. And then it was sad when they're trying to say it was good. Just say it was bad. Just please stop. And then they were all hurt about it, like, "Oh, the media is going crazy." We're like, "No, we're just pointing out you suck."
--:-- Right wing personalities are going all in on Twitter. This week, The Daily Wire announced it will upload full episodes of its podcast to Twitter, which Elon was asking them to do. Tucker Carlson still plans to host a show. He reportedly is rebuilding his home studio after Fox News repossessed the set and equipment. God, it costs them more to go get it than the stuff costs.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Oh, God.
--:-- Kara Swisher: There's a lot of right-wing creators going there, but this brand reputation just took a massive hit. The Axios-Harris brand reputation poll found that Twitter placed 97th out of 100 companies. I don't know what the last three were. But even though the world's biggest ad agency said it no longer considers Twitter to be a "high risk" platform for advertisers, that's just because they're giving Linda a chance.
--:-- The whole announcement was a really good idea. It could have been a win for both of them if it had been well produced. This was a good idea for Twitter. It was a good idea for DeSantis. The execution was... I would be furious if I were the DeSantis folks. And I would be enraged if I were Musk.
--:-- Scott Galloway: He looks... wait, you want me? I'm sorry, you're trying to create autonomous driving technology and you can't do a fucking podcast?
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah, yeah. Apparently there wasn't much planning. I'm excited to read the reporting out of this. I can tell you, when they had lots of people, it was always glitchy. Like, "What? Hello? What? Hang up. Rehang up." You've been on those things with me when I did them.
--:-- Scott Galloway: There was 200,000 people, supposedly, that listened to it, that stuck around for the 20 minutes. What you and I are doing right now, we'll have more people listen.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah. Ron, come on our show. So, the DeSantis announcement gets fewer people than the announcement of Kara Swisher's doctorate.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Yes, yes.
--:-- Kara Swisher: He should have partnered. They should have partnered with news outlets. It's just their constant vituperative hatred of the media. And of course, that means they're obsessed with the media. It's really getting in their way. Just build something good. Just build a good product.
--:-- And in contrast to that, as much as this was a disaster for DeSantis, it was a victory for Trump on CNN. He just owned them.
--:-- Scott Galloway: He just owned them.
--:-- Kara Swisher: And it was... I hate to say it, but he's the OG. He's the OG on that stuff. He just totally manipulated the medium. And by the way, they had an intelligent person trying their best to fact check a serial liar. They filled the audience with sycophants. This was just a shit show.
--:-- Scott Galloway: 1984 called and wants its technology back. Honestly, someone tweeted that DeSantis is hoping Trump goes to jail. That's what would be his end, right? But I think Trump could beat him from jail easily.
--:-- Kara Swisher: From jail? With his hands tied, shackled behind his back.
--:-- Scott Galloway: I actually think the governor's a more formidable candidate than people are saying right now. I used to think he was done. I actually think he's got a lot of talking points that are going to be pretty effective.
--:-- Kara Swisher: All right, Mr. Beto O'Rourke's boyfriend. Okay, we'll see how that works out.
--:-- Scott Galloway: I do not. Hello, Dreamy.
--:-- Kara Swisher: That was a nice pick. And then who'd you pick after that? And who did Kara pick the whole time? Biden. You did pick Biden. I think he's... we're going to take a break. You think he's more formidable. I think he's charmless. He makes Nixon look charming. That's hard. He's very wooden.
--:-- Scott Galloway: He looks like he has no friends. He literally looks like he has no friends. No friends. No friends. And he looks uninterested in people. Like he doesn't like people. And I'm sorry, you're not being president if you don't like people. Technocrats are fine. Just go run a state. That's great.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Okay, let's have him and Kamala Harris on the same ticket and we'll call it... "Brightens up a room by leaving" ticket.
--:-- Scott Galloway: I don't know. You can do better, Republicans. Honestly.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Anyway, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about the Surgeon General's new warning and take a listener question about HBO's latest streaming rebrand, which Scott has a lot to say about.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Scott, we're back with our second big story. The Surgeon General says that social media may pose risk to young users.
--:-- Scott Galloway: You're kidding.
--:-- Kara Swisher: In a new report, Dr. Vivek Murthy says that there are "ample indicators that social media can have a profound risk of harm to the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents." The report calls on tech companies to enforce age restrictions and create strict default settings for young users around privacy and safety. It also calls on governments to create health and safety standards for tech platforms. However, the report didn't condemn social media use for all young people, and it didn't define what healthy social media would look like.
--:-- I think a lot of people who've been in this for a while were a little bit underwhelmed, but it was long in the making. We talked to the Surgeon General on this topic in March of last year. Scott asked him about age-gating specifically. Here's what he said.
--:-- [Audio clip of Vivek Murthy]: Part of the challenge we have, though, Scott, and you're getting at the heart of it with your question, is that we actually need data to understand the impact on children, right? We have some data. We have alarming rates of depression and anxiety that have increased in our kids. We have clear evidence, in fact, that the suicide rate has increased significantly in the 10 years prior to the pandemic in young people. We have record numbers of young people who are saying they feel persistent feelings of hopelessness and sadness. We know that things are getting worse for our kids.
--:-- Kara Swisher: He stopped short of calling for age-gating, which you asked him specifically about. The Surgeon General has the power to recommend but not enforce, I guess. I think a lot of people felt he could have been stronger. Facebook responded. They had already done some of the things he suggested, like automatically sending accounts to private if a user is under 16. Your thoughts on this?
--:-- Scott Galloway: I think Surgeon General Vivek Murthy is already the most significant surgeon general we've had in decades.
--:-- Kara Swisher: All right.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Yeah. He is attacking probably, in my estimation, what is the most dangerous emission of our time, and that is rage and loneliness from these companies. If you read the actual report, it is steeped in rigor and research. I know this personally. I'm low on the totem pole of experts around this stuff. He called me, him and his team called me several times to try and really get to the heart of these issues. Several of my colleagues have been contacted by him. He is a serious person doing serious work.
--:-- He talks a lot about his own struggles with loneliness as a young man. He's a father. And it's all steeped in academia and his experience as a doctor. This is someone who is doing exactly what he is supposed to be doing. He is trying to prevent a tragedy. He's raising the issue.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Your friend Jonathan Haidt did not think it was enough, for sure. Others did. Like they wanted an even stronger statement, cigarette level, I guess. And I get that. But he doesn't have that authority. He has the public forum.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Yeah. And what Surgeon General has raised an issue, has gotten more attention around an issue of more importance in the last 40 years?
--:-- Kara Swisher: I'm just telling you, a lot of people think it's largely a symbolic position where they stand behind the president when they're actually doing things.
--:-- Scott Galloway: In their outfit.
--:-- Kara Swisher: In their outfit. And then they go on to sell Life Alert. This has been a position... he is hands down addressing an issue that is difficult. He's doing it with rigor.
--:-- Scott Galloway: And I also think loneliness with AI, people are going to start withdrawing even further, especially young men. And to what your son's comments were about, he's directly saying... I've already parroted one of his lines. He gave me the line: "People are mistaking friends for friendship." And he talks about the need for third places where we make investments in things like parks and leagues and bring people back together.
--:-- The thing I like about him is that he does stuff with grace and he errs on the side of science.
--:-- Kara Swisher: He is. He's a classy doctor like myself. He never makes personal attacks. He never tries to inflame the other side. He's just like... science.
--:-- Scott Galloway: No, he's a very measured, science-focused approach.
--:-- Kara Swisher: But he's sincere. He is seen as a good actor. He's earnest. He is trying to protect the well-being of our children. I think he should do this all the time and be very firm about it. I just feel like you've got to really lean into this heavily. If it's going to be like cigarettes, you're going to do the age gating and be a leader. You can still be a leader even if you don't have enforcement. Press, press, press, press and a little less nice.
--:-- Scott Galloway: He always does try to find the middle. He seems like that kind of person.
--:-- Kara Swisher: But in this case, I think he could have even more impact if he was highly specific and really weighed in there, even if it's not his to weigh into. And this age gating has a lot of issues. It's nuanced. They could have more data about our kids, their IDs, birth certificates. It's different than porn or cigarettes because that's a physical thing. Kids go in and buy cigarettes. This is digital information online using a digital product.
--:-- So speaking of regulating social media, TikTok is suing Montana. Not a surprise. We said they probably would, citing First Amendment violations. So are a bunch of TikTok users. Montana's going to lose. No proof. They shouldn't be doing this, as we said. But the problem for TikTok is there was a report in the Times this week that says TikTok user data is regularly shared in a Slack-like tool that employees use to address user complaints. The data can include a driver's license and is accessible to employees in China.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Yeah. This is the issue. Even if they're not malevolent, it seeps right through.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah, but you said it. This creates unnecessary momentum for TikTok because people are busy and all they'll see is that the court overturned the decision to ban TikTok. And people say, "Oh, it's illegal. They shouldn't do it." And no, they'll decide that a state can't overturn a ban on media, that that's a bad idea. So this was an unforced error, a purely political move by someone who should be an operator, the governor of Montana.
--:-- But TikTok, I mean, it's already happening. I think Senator Warner's RESTRICT Act made a lot of sense. They were good actors here. And I'm worried it's losing momentum. TikTok is going to the tried and true playbook: just wait them out. They're like a cat. The public and our elected officials are like a cat chasing a dot. Just wear them out, and then they'll need a nap. And then have some dumb person like the governor of Montana do something.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Yes. Let me just reiterate, TikTok is a national security threat. It is the ultimate propaganda tool. The people running TikTok in the United States deserve to be really wealthy. They're good people who have built an amazing product. There is no sunlight between a Chinese company and the CCP, and the CCP is now running the largest streaming network that is bigger than all other streaming networks combined for people under the age of 25. And every day, our next generation of military, civic, nonprofit, and business leaders are going to feel a little shittier about America because the CCP has its thumb on the scale around content reaching our young people. It absolutely needs to be banned or spun. And we can't let up here. We can't move on to the next thing.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Exactement. Exactement, as I like to say.
--:-- Scott Galloway: I'm also a French doctor.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Anyway, let us pivot to a listener question just in your wheelhouse, Scott Galloway. You've got mail.
--:-- [Listener voicemail]: Hi, this is Emily from Phoenix, Arizona. I just wanted to hear Kara and Scott's take on HBO Max transforming its brand to just Max. My friends and I are making fun of this relentlessly and also just scratching our heads because the HBO brand is, in our opinion, one of the best out there, certainly as far as television goes. So changing it to Max just seems very bizarre and it kind of seems like, what's the reason for that? And are they the stupidest company ever? Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Oh, I'm going to let you go on this. But I have to say, I was at CNN this week because of the DeSantis stuff. I saw the Max thing. And it doesn't look good. They took out all this stuff. And there's these big Max things. I brought you stickers, Max stickers they have lying around. It's jarring when you see it, I have to say. And it's not jarring in a good way. Like, "ooh, attractive." It's, "ooh, unattractive." And everybody thought that in the lobby. Everyone's like, "No, this is not pleasing to me." And again, there's the Skinamax thing that we like to talk about. And HBO is great. And I love that someone from Phoenix is like, "Are they the stupidest company?" I love that these people are sitting around thinking about it. But your thoughts, Scott. You have a lot of them.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Well, I started a brand strategy firm. I've taught brand strategy for 20 years. It's hard to think of a stupider move. Brands like this take decades to build. And I have a real bias here because some of the most moving moments in the history of television, whether it's the Prince of Dorne saying "I will be your champion" to Tyrion Lannister, or the mother in Six Feet Under looking at the photos of her family and sobbing. HBO has literally built one of the core associations of a brand over decades: we have assembled a culture of creativity that is fearless in storytelling and moves people.
--:-- If you were to try and embody the zeitgeist of cultural America over the last 40 years, somewhere in that word cloud would be the letters H-B-O. And you're going to turn that into Max. And the only reason they can come up with is "people are confused. We need something that's more literal that explains what this actually is. And HBO, we shouldn't lead with HBO. We have so many other things." Right? So are people going to mistake The Sopranos for a show about singers? So we're going to turn it into the big mafia show? I mean, this is Matsushita turning their brand name to shit.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah. I had Vox. Vox is Ox? I went crazy last night.
--:-- Scott Galloway: You did. You looked like you were doing edibles and thinking of names.
--:-- Kara Swisher: And I'm sure people will get used to it, but it's not a happy brand transition, right? Remember when Airbnb did that thing and everyone thought it looked like a vagina?
--:-- Scott Galloway: I don't remember that.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah. It could go away, I guess, and you just get used to staring at the vagina. But this is companies and organizations praying that over several generations, they can build intangible associations of this quality and this depth. So how did it happen?
--:-- Scott Galloway: I have a feeling that David Zaslav is like, "Why is HBO there?" I can see it coming right from the top. I think the majority of bad decisions in corporate America are made by guys in midlife crisis and ego. And this guy comes from the Discovery side of the house and thought that Discovery was an amazing brand. And if I'm going to give up Discovery and we want something new, and not only that, we need something new that I'm the CEO of. I don't think he wants to give any credit to the guys who built HBO.
--:-- I mean, Wells Fargo was bought by Norwest, a boring mortgage company in Minneapolis. But they were smart enough to know, "If we're going to pay this kind of money, we need to go with the right brand." And they changed it to Wells Fargo, right? Dayton Hudson had this little growth company called Target. And they said, "You know what? Our kid is now bigger and stronger than we are. We're going to call the whole company Target." People don't make dumb moves like this. These things are incredibly hard to build.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Where do you think it's going to go? Will it matter? Will we just hate it, get used to it and hate it? A lot of people feel the branding, the fonts, look like Maxi Pad ads.
--:-- Scott Galloway: It'll be seen as an example of where David Zaslav screwed up. The whole industry is under attack right now. So consolidation, you can understand the strategy operationally around trying to bring it together. I can see the beginning of this conversation. I think he probably dominated it and everyone shut up. And he made this decision. I'll bet you anything he made this decision because any consultant, anyone in the marketing department with an IQ over 80 said, "Shouldn't we think about it being HBO if we're only going to pick one brand? Shouldn't we go with the brand that means quality and great storytelling and the ability to capture the moment?" Instead, we're going to call it Max.
--:-- Kara Swisher: You know what they should have called it? Zazz.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Zazz. Zazz hands. There's a song, "A little bit of Zazz."
--:-- Kara Swisher: This is just literally every brand strategist, my mentor who taught me everything I know about brand strategy, David Aaker, is literally just sitting there with his head in his hands.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Yeah, yeah.
--:-- Kara Swisher: But when Datsun became Nissan, that made absolutely no sense. But you're used to it. Ultimately, you're a brand person, people get used to it, right? They'll be like, "Oh, it's Max."
--:-- Scott Galloway: Yeah, but it's like ultimately they get used to a shittier product. I mean, he basically took HBO. If you had $10 billion and you tried to recreate a brand like HBO, you probably couldn't do it. It'd be one in 10 chance you could do it. So he's taken tens of billions of dollars or at least billions in equity, and he's taken it into the street and created a fire to warm his ego.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Because he didn't invent HBO. He invented something else.
--:-- Scott Galloway: This is... whenever you can always reverse-engineer really brain-dead moves to a guy in his 50s or 60s who is making a decision from ego, not from business or shareholder value. This is one of those moves. This is one of those decisions where I actually think... and boards should not dictate strategy. They should, generally speaking, not get involved in operations. But someone on the board who actually understands branding and assets should say, "You're taking billions of dollars and you're emulating it."
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yep, yep, yep. Like, what are you doing? Disney would never do this, you know. And by the way, they have a name, Marvel. If you changed it to Marvel... that was going to be the name of MSN back in the day, by the way. But they have names that would be good, too, but they would never do this. Marvel's a good name for something like this.
--:-- Scott Galloway: No, they understand brand. They wouldn't. And they wouldn't have a new CEO who came in from Lucasfilm and go, "We're going to call it THX" or something. They would just never do that.
--:-- Kara Swisher: No. But this will go down as one of the great brand disasters. You know, Discovery would have been a better name than Max, honestly.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Agreed. Agreed.
--:-- Kara Swisher: I don't know. Except Discovery, you think of Guy Fieri. That's pretty much what you think about.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Is that right? I think of sharks.
--:-- Kara Swisher: You think of sharks. Anyway. I just want to give David Zaslav some credit. I think he is really helping the mental health of Americans because what he's saying to every American is, "You're not the only one that makes really expensive mistakes."
--:-- Scott Galloway: Yes, you and Elon Musk, we've seen that.
--:-- Kara Swisher: My favorite also. They already realized they fucked up. They posted on Twitter and Instagram a big logo that says, "Introducing Max." And then right below it, it says, "The One to Watch for HBO." It's like they've already realized they fucked up. Creators are getting mad, too, because of the way they're phrasing it and stuff like that. There's a whole controversy. Maybe we'll talk about it next week. Even Amanda was like, she turned it on and it offended her. She was watching Succession, episode nine. And she's like, "I was just offended by the font." You know what I mean? I'm like, "I don't want that. I want HBO."
--:-- Scott Galloway: It was funny. HBO, there'll be case studies written for decades, and not only around brand, but around culture. HBO was a 120-pound flyweight that was beating Larry Holmes. They were spending $2 or $3 billion a year, while Netflix was spending $17. And what are we talking about around the water cooler? We're talking about Succession and Game of Thrones.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah. Do you know what HBO stands for, of course? Because my family was one of the company's families. Home Box Office.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Yeah.
--:-- Kara Swisher: And it was a self-expressive benefit. My dad used to brag. I remember at cocktail parties when my dad was trying to sleep with all the other wives at the party, he would say, "Oh, well, we only watch HBO." That made him a baller. That was his big thing.
--:-- Scott Galloway: He didn't say "Home Box Office."
--:-- Kara Swisher: No, well, at the Galloway household, we'd only watch HBO. And it's like, "Oh, yeah, that's going to get her."
--:-- Scott Galloway: It used to just be movies. It used to be shitty movies when it started.
--:-- Kara Swisher: I remember it because we had it on our cable. You don't remember. I love it. The Mind of the Married Man and then the Gary Shandling show.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Yeah, Gary Shandling.
--:-- Kara Swisher: They had some really good stuff. They were like early Fox. Remember early Fox network? That kind of stuff. It was good. It was really good. Rest in peace, HBO.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Rest in peace. Let's change the name of our podcast to HBO. That's what we should do.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Good. It'd be good. Here we are. The Doctors on HBO. Dr. HBO. Let's do that.
--:-- Scott Galloway: The one thing that I have to say is all the different HBO streaming services. HBO Go, HBO Now, HBO Max. HBO Joey Bag of Donuts.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah, I know. HBO Lite.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Yeah, I used to call them a joke. I'm like, "What's the name today? HBO Plus?"
--:-- Kara Swisher: Oh, my God. Max was a good name. Anyway, if you've got a question of your own, that was a very good session there. If you've got to go, David, call us. Call Scott and Kara. The doctors are in. Anyway, if you've got a question of your own and want it answered, send it our way. Go to nymag.com to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. We love a voice question. Thank you, Emily from Phoenix, Arizona. Great question.
--:-- All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Okay, Scott, let's hear a prediction. You said you had one, you were saving it, or maybe you have a new one.
--:-- Scott Galloway: My prediction is, after listening to the shit show last night with the presidential announcement or the candidacy of Governor DeSantis, and we're speaking on stage at Cannes, which I'm really excited about. We need a friend to pivot. I did ask Linda Yaccarino.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Well, my prediction is around Linda.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Yeah. And just to ensure Linda does... I'm not sure Linda's going to come on stage with us now, but I don't think there was ever any chance she was going to come on stage.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah, I probably shouldn't, Linda, but you should.
--:-- Scott Galloway: I will tell, and I'm committing to this, every CMO in the room. And this is really essentially... the Cannes Creativity Festival is kind of like a contest around, "Let's give awards to the advertising that sucks the least."
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah.
--:-- Scott Galloway: And let's... you know, we're all pilots on a 747 for Pan Am, and we think we're important, but let's be honest, our days are numbered. And let's go to a party hosted by our executioners, Google and Meta, on the beach.
--:-- Kara Swisher: On the beach.
--:-- Scott Galloway: But what I will say to every CMO in the room, and we will get a ton of them, and I'm speaking in a couple places, and I will repeat this: the fastest way between a CMO and an unceremonious exit is to advertise on Twitter. This is an individual running this company who threatened to sue advertisers who left. When an individual sells his stock, says he hates humanity, is subscale, clearly has all sorts of technology issues, but they want to get advertisers to advertise on Twitter. So if you're a CMO, literally on a risk-adjusted basis, the stupidest thing you can do... you would be better off starting a meth addiction in terms of your own professional trajectory than advertising on Twitter.
--:-- And this goes to my prediction. She is pushing a rock up a hill that is going to get bigger and heavier every day. She will be blamed for not restoring the ad revenue that he has recklessly alienated. And she will leave or be fired within 12 months.
--:-- Kara Swisher: He has... this is the mother of all... Linda, come on stage with us, please.
--:-- Scott Galloway: This is the mother of all...
--:-- Kara Swisher: Let me get this. Let me get this. "I might sue you if you advertise and then leave. I might threaten to sue you. I might say that you individually... I'm not scared to go after people less powerful than me and use the population of the UK and Germany to say that you're a sex criminal if you do something I don't like."
--:-- Scott Galloway: Or shrill. The doctor is shrill.
--:-- Kara Swisher: But advertise with us. And she will be blamed for it.
--:-- Scott Galloway: They're going to give her a chance, though. They like her. She's very well liked.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah. And he's such a loyal guy.
--:-- Scott Galloway: She will be blamed for not accomplishing an impossible task. And that is to get people to advertise on something that was always subscale, but now it's subscale and toxic and dangerous for people's careers. And they will hold her responsible and she will leave.
--:-- Kara Swisher: I'll tell you what's more important, Scott. The numbers aren't very good.
--:-- Scott Galloway: The numbers aren't very good. Like, let's get away from wokeness and he's obnoxious. If it worked, they'd do it, right? The numbers aren't good. That's all. It's not an effective advertising platform. That's where he will place the blame, on Linda Yaccarino.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah, he will. He won't say, "Linda, I gave you an impossible task. What can I do to be helpful? I'll tone it down. What can I do to help score advertisers?"
--:-- Kara Swisher: He's just going to make her life impossible and then hold her responsible for what an awful job she has.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Yeah, I would love to know what's going on inside her head. In addition, she's not the CEO. She's the COO.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah. I'm going to handle product and strategy. She's going to handle business and revenue, meaning I need someone to blame. That's what he said. I need someone to blame.
--:-- Scott Galloway: She did walk into this, and I think she thinks he's less terrible than he seems. She was smart to take the job. Even if it doesn't work out, no one – I didn't know who Linda Yaccarino was. I mean, I run advertising for NBCUniversal. Great. Is there anyone else here I can speak to? No, I get it. She wanted to raise her profile, and she should.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Let's timestamp this. 12 months or less.
--:-- Scott Galloway: 12 months.
--:-- Kara Swisher: All right. Okay, we'll see.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Literally, this is the mother of all. Let's pour honey on her and send her hunting for bears. I mean, God.
--:-- Kara Swisher: That's a visual. She's a tough lady. We'll see. But they didn't do a good job for her. That's the platform I want to advertise on. They don't understand technology, and they might humiliate me in front of 120 million people. Yes, take my money. I wonder which presidential candidates will do it. They'll be like, no, I don't think so. I'll just go on Fox News.
--:-- Scott Galloway: I think after seeing what happened, where the black hole of attention, Elon Musk couldn't resist, this, the technology issues, all of the negative press they're getting. I mean, people will go on the platform.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah. But they're not. I can't believe I said this in my long tweet storm was just hand it over to Tucker Carlson. He knows how to do media. He does. He puts on a good show. Even I hate the show. It's a good show.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Several years ago, right when I was just getting to podcasting, I heard from Andrew Yang's people saying, Andrew really wants to come on your show and talk about his candidacy for presidency. And I remember I wrote back and said, the fact that he wants to be on my podcast totally makes him an illegitimate candidate, in my view. And by the way, I got to know Andrew and we become friends. And I think he's a good man. And I think he's had a positive impact on the world of politics. For the first time, people are actually considering some form of UBI. I don't think the child tax credit would have gotten anywhere without him creating cloud cover around UBI. I think he's a good man. But I remember, you know, he was literally, the medium, you summarize it perfect. The medium is the message here. And the medium yesterday was a fucking shit show. And so the message. The message was this sucks. The message was this just doesn't work.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah. Yeah. And also look at Elon over here. Anyway, do you have a prediction?
--:-- Scott Galloway: I do not. I don't know. I do not. I do not. Although I was right about it being a shit show. I forgot. I have another right one. Linda Yaccarino is going to come on the show after she resigns. And it's going to be a great show.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Linda, we'll help you get a job. We know everybody. She's a talented woman. She's going to be fine. We will help you get a job. I'm already talking about her as if she's already left.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Oh, we'll see. We'll see. As they say on Succession, it's a knife fight in the mud. Life is a knife fight in the mud.
--:-- Kara Swisher: By the way, I'll have a prediction. The end of Succession is going to be a big viewership. I can't handle it. It's too emotionally traumatic. I have two podcasts on it. That's how good it is.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Two.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah. Is this week the-
--:-- Scott Galloway: Sunday, yeah. It's done? It's over?
--:-- Kara Swisher: Mm-hmm.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Wow. I don't know how they could do any more surprises. Are Shiv and Tom going to strangle each other? I have to even like skip through. I'm not saying a word. I say no words. People should not be that mean to each other. And also, as someone, light of my life, you know, I know your father's passing had a big impact on you. My mother said, it's getting a little much. He's dead. Just put him in the ground. It's getting a little much. It's getting a little rancid. It's getting a little much. He didn't like you. He wasn't nice to you. Put him in the ground and start spending his money.
--:-- Kara Swisher: I have to say, I love all the speculation. And the funniest one was the person who said, Tom and Shiv are going to have a baby and Cousin Greg is going to imprint on it, like the end of Twilight.
--:-- Scott Galloway: No, it's going to be Rosemary's baby. It's going to be the spawn of Satan.
--:-- Kara Swisher: There's no baby. This is a week happening. There's no baby happening. It's a week. I might fast forward. Who knows?
--:-- Scott Galloway: By the way, greatest series finale in history, in history, was on HBO. It was the series finale of Six Feet Under.
--:-- Kara Swisher: I agree. That was a masterpiece.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Dick in the fucking gut, wasn't it? A masterpiece. The Sia song. And the only way they can match that is that they fast forward. And Greg, Cousin Greg, is the Sia of Waystar and banging models and doing blow off the ass of really, really hot, really hot male and female prostitutes. I am so here for that.
--:-- Kara Swisher: HBO. I can't believe. H to the B to the O, bitches. HBO. I cannot believe that you and I agree on the best finale.
--:-- Scott Galloway: That's true. And also, by the way, rest in peace, Tina Turner. And we agree on her greatest song, What's Love Got to Do With It. Although I will say, It's Only Love with Bryan Adams. Jesus. Everything. His voice contrasted with hers. Everything she did. Everything she did. I listened to Tina Turner one year when that big album came out that she got sort of revived again. I lived in New York, and I listened to it on play and play and play again. And I just loved Tina Turner. Also a decent actress, Mad Max. I think it was Beyond Thunderdome.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah, Thunderdome.
--:-- Scott Galloway: And just a cool person. If you look, there's a lot of interviews showing up with her online. And they're all fantastic. She's just hysterically funny. She was with Mike Wallace at her beautiful estate. She had an estate in the south of France, where we'll be. Not at the estate. And it was gorgeous. She had an infinity pool overlooking the Riviera. And he goes, do you deserve this? I think he says this to her, which is kind of a weird question. Do you deserve this? But she handles it so beautifully, and she goes, I deserve more. And just the way she did it was quiet and like, fuck you, dude.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Well, you know who bought that estate out of probate already?
--:-- Scott Galloway: Who?
--:-- Kara Swisher: David Zaslav. He's there now in Cannes.
--:-- Scott Galloway: By the way, what's the chance I'm going to get offered another CNN show right now? Not at all. Less than zero. I'm not, I'm entirely serious. We're going to have a conversation after this. We are changing the name of our podcast to HBO. Read us out. Just leave us out. Do not say HBO once more. Read us out.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Today's show was produced by Lara Neyman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie and your tot 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 next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Be sure to tune in to Girls, to Game of Thrones, to The Wire, and to Pivot from HBO.
--:-- Kara Swisher: That's good. That's good.
