Tim Cook takes the stand in Apple vs. Epic trial and a Friend of Pivot on app dating

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

Scott Galloway: And I'm Scott Galloway. And I have an impromptu game for us to play.

Kara Swisher: What? No.

Scott Galloway: And for the fans at home, I want you to know that Kara wasn't expecting this. And it's called Guess Which Guest Was on Pivot?

Kara Swisher: Okay.

Scott Galloway: So as you may or may not know, Kara has another podcast. It's not doing very well. It's a bit of a thud, but it's called Sway. And it's from, I think it's from the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: Anyways, so I'm going to name three people, and I want you to guess which guest did Kara get for Pivot versus Sway? Okay. CEO of Apple, Tim Cook.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, or the COO of DoorDash. Which one was on Pivot? Which one was on Pivot? One guess, Kara. Who did you get for Pivot?

Kara Swisher: We could have gotten the CEO. Okay, hold on, hold on. Let's keep playing. This is getting good.

Scott Galloway: Okay, all right, keep going.

Kara Swisher: Okay.

Scott Galloway: Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris.

Kara Swisher: I haven't had her on yet.

Scott Galloway: Senator. Just go with it. This is my fucking game. Okay. Senator Elizabeth Warren.

Kara Swisher: She is coming on. Okay, haven't. Okay, yeah.

Scott Galloway: Senator Elizabeth Warren or Acting Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the SEC. Who was on Pivot?

Kara Swisher: None of them.

Scott Galloway: Who was on Pivot?

Kara Swisher: None of them.

Scott Galloway: Okay, and so you have Evan Spiegel. You had Evan Spiegel last week on Pivot.

Kara Swisher: I did this week, yeah.

Scott Galloway: Oh, wait, I'm sorry. You had him on Sway.

Kara Swisher: Sway. He was on Sway. Yeah.

Scott Galloway: He wrote me a thank you note.

Kara Swisher: He wrote me a thank you note. A handwritten thank you note.

Scott Galloway: Those glasses are not a joke. They're for creators. They're not for users. But Evan Spiegel actually writes people handwritten notes. Look at this. He sent me a note. He sent me a note.

Kara Swisher: He's dreamy.

Scott Galloway: He's dreamy. I can't believe he writes thank you notes, but look, you don't believe me. Evan Spiegel. See?

Kara Swisher: So what's the deal with those IM Devo glasses?

Scott Galloway: Okay, so it's really interesting. They tried to do Spectacles before where you just took pictures using these yellow glasses. They were cool. They were kind of cool. But he said that they had a better uptake than I think they had. They certainly didn't sweep the world. I'll tell you that. But he's been interested in this idea of how to collect stuff as you move through the world. So this is his move into AR, really. So there's a lot of activity. What they're going to do is do all this AR stuff. So I was in my backyard. I could see the planets swirling around my backyard when you look with these glasses. They're not for users. They're for creators to start to create these AR experiences. Then they will have a product for consumers, which is going to be, he said, up to 10 years away. So they're trying to seed the world with this AR material that could be used by consumers eventually. That's who they're for. And it's a jump from filters. They popularized filters at the company. That's what it's about. It's another step in that. So it's a big swing for the fences for him, as usual. In any case, he was on Sway. That makes sense.

Kara Swisher: Mark Zuckerberg said that one of the greatest technological challenges is trying to figure out a way to get a supercomputer on something people put on their faces. That's still an enormous challenge.

Scott Galloway: Yep, it is.

Kara Swisher: It is. But I have to say it was beautifully done because it is. And you don't wait. Those are for people just making things. And they have a pretty cool software thing. They're going to take the people who make all those filters and help fund them and figure it out. It's a great idea, as usual, from Snap. Anyway, he's been doing really well. But first, let me give you, I know that you feel neglected.

Scott Galloway: A little bit.

Kara Swisher: Because all my major people are on the other platform, my other family. But a prediction has come true. The Securities and Exchange Chief, Gary Gensler, said the federal financial regulators should be ready to bring cases against bad actors in crypto and other emerging technologies. So they're not going to be ignoring that. So who is the first case do you think Gary Gensler will bring?

Scott Galloway: He's got a good reputation, I'll tell you that. Preet Bharara loves him.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, and he's a comer. I think he was a partner at Goldman, and he strikes me as somebody who wants to make a mark.

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: So I think he sees crypto as his legacy, but I actually think it's good for the crypto markets. I think a certain amount of regulation. I don't know if you've seen, I was looking at the markets today. You had this huge check back in crypto and Mark Cuban called it the great unwind. I'm like, not really. The crypto markets have fallen back to or dropped or plummeted to like March levels. They're still way up for the year. And if you look to their credit as a market, the elasticity or the resilience, Ether is up 800 bucks today.

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: So I think some guardrails, some regulation is actually probably going to be pretty welcomed by most of the serious players in crypto.

Scott Galloway: Would you put money in crypto right now? I am putting money in crypto, or specifically I'm putting money. I feel as if I have this crazy FOMO. One of my many shortcomings as an investor is I like to buy stuff on sale. When Michael Saylor told me to buy crypto or Bitcoin, it was at $18,000. I said, OK, I'll definitely buy it when it dips below $15,000. And it skyrocketed up to $60,000. Now that it's back to $30,000-something, I'm thinking about what I've decided. Instead of trying to buy a coin, I'm going to invest in the picks and shovels. I'm investing in a company called Ledger, which is cold storage hardware wallets. Supposedly 10% by dollar volume of all crypto is stored on this hardware wallet. So I'm investing in the picks and shovels.

Kara Swisher: Who carries them? Who has the hardware wallets?

Scott Galloway: Anyone who wants to take advantage of the decentralized nature of crypto and doesn't want it on a platform that can be hacked. The idea of security. If you put this in like a safety deposit box? It feels like a very elegant Apple meets USB drive and it's not connected to the internet. Cold storage means there's just less chance of a bad actor hacking it because it's literally off the grid.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: And with crypto, people... So you have a device?

Kara Swisher: It's a device.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. It looks like if Apple made a USB. You can plug it in and then you can trade and store and distribute. It's basically for the distribution and storage of this asset.

Kara Swisher: But you could lose it.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. But there's means of backing it up and things like that. It's basically a more elegant way of storing an asset in a more secure way. Anyways, I'm investing. If I sound like I don't know what I'm talking about, trust your ink seeds. But I want to invest in Levi's as opposed to the mine. Levi's, a company built on denim. Picks and shovels is the strategy I'm going with because I just don't have the stock.

Kara Swisher: You also don't like Coinbase, though, because you think the fees and everything else are ridiculous.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, but I think Coinbase, the analogy we use is AOL. I think it's the great initial on-ramp into the world of crypto. And they have the capital. It'll be interesting to see what kind of moats they build to build some sort of differentiation. But right now, as far as I can tell, it's just a retail on-ramp into crypto with exorbitant commission structures where their margins will come under attack.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, that's true. And it's overvalued.

Scott Galloway: I just don't think it's worth the value of General Motors right now.

Kara Swisher: But you're not buying coin itself.

Scott Galloway: I'm a no-coiner. I've never purchased a coin.

Kara Swisher: No-coiner.

Scott Galloway: I'm a no-coiner.

Kara Swisher: Are you a no-coiner? But you're a vaxxer. You're a no-coiner vaxxer.

Scott Galloway: I am vaxxed and unwaxed. As we know, we've seen that picture.

Kara Swisher: Speaking of all these little expressions, SPACs may be going out of fashion. The Wall Street Journal is reporting a reluctance of startup CEOs with IPO. With SPACs, the numbers are down 12%, I think, since May. Again, this was something with tons of people running into the space. Lots of people we know, including, I think, you. What think you of this situation on Wall Street? Another thing that I'm sure the SEC will be looking at strongly also.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, look, there seems to be a pattern across every major technology innovation class or financial innovation, whether it's junk bonds, the internet, or SPACs. The innovation comes along. It's very exciting. A lot of the early movers, the early pioneers make a lot of money. It attracts a massive amount of capital. The market gets out over its skis. Then there's a bit of a crash slash correction. But coming out of it, you find there are enduring companies. Junk bonds are a static part and an important part of our financial markets. Amazon was birthed from the dot-com and the dot-bomb generation. I do think SPACs are going to be a static part of the financial ecosystem. It's just that we have, I think, 270 SPACs searching for a company right now. It's a great time to be a seller. And the majority of SPACs that are publicly traded are more than 50% off their highs.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, they are.

Scott Galloway: There's just no getting around it. SPACs, in addition to being a financing event where you get to go public sooner, they've had to reach further into the barrel and find companies that weren't ready for prime time. And the market, it's not even the SPAC market that's tightening. It's the pipe market. Because to buy a company, you have to get bolt-on or staple-on debt financing in the form of a pipe.

Kara Swisher: Right.

Scott Galloway: And they're the adults in the room going, sorry, this just doesn't hold water. A lot of these companies, typically when you go public... These pipes, yeah.

Kara Swisher: You go public knowing that your next two quarters numbers are kind of baked. You know they're going to be good or exceed expectations. And with these companies, a lot of them, their projections are already missing.

Scott Galloway: But the bottom line is it's a great time to be a seller. And when you think about this, Kara, the interesting thing about SPACs is that from the moment they SPAC, they have 24 months to do a deal or they have to give their money back. The sponsors have to come up with about $10 million or 2% to 4% of the gross proceeds. And then they lose it all. So you're about to see... I'm on about four company boards. I get an inbound from someone looking to de-SPAC probably every 48 hours. Their desperation is only going to grow because it's not even 24 months. If a SPAC doesn't de-SPAC within six months, it begins to smell.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: So you're going to have probably, I think the number is something like $70 to $100 billion. These are inbound looking to buy your companies. "Heard you're going on the board of Open Web. We would like, we're a SPAC." I mean, that one I'm getting every 48 hours.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, and what do you say? What is it you actually say to them?

Scott Galloway: I give them the name and the email address of the CEO and say that at this point, we're just looking to build a great company. We're not looking to SPAC. But I pass them on to the CEO.

Kara Swisher: Right.

Scott Galloway: So the level of desperation, and these are credible SPACs with very credible operating groups. But the number of...

Kara Swisher: So give the case why you would and why you wouldn't.

Scott Galloway: Well, I'll tell you about a company I'm involved in that is SPACing. I'm an investor in Better Mortgage, which is a company founded by this tech genius named Vishal Garg that has said, all right, there are 200 intermediate steps between applying for a mortgage and getting approved for one. There are indeed. That involve humans and regulation and paper and unfortunately, sometimes systemic racism. He said, if we can use technology and AI to collapse the supply chain, I can get a mortgage approved in 40% of the time and pass all of those savings back to the borrower. The level of business they're doing and the productivity per employee is off the charts. It's a company doing billions of dollars. Then a SPAC came along and said, we want to do this. The most attractive thing about the SPAC that they agreed to, I'm not on the board, I'm just an investor, was that SoftBank showed up and said, we will do the pipe. This means the SPAC will get done. It's credible. It also shortens your time to market, your time to a public company because they have already done a lot of the SEC filings. So basically it's time to market. You get to take advantage of a good market. You get your just-add-water IPO. The reason not to do it is that if you're building a company and feel like you're not ready to go public and you want to build an enduring company and you feel as if you have the option and don't feel the need to get out right now, going traditionally through a J.P. Morgan or Goldman... The way I would describe it, the whole world goes iOS or Android. If J.P. Morgan or Goldman take you public via traditional IPO, you're the iOS, whereas Android is the guy SPACing right now. That's not to say that they're not great companies.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I agree. It's time to market. What are your thoughts?

Scott Galloway: I think the pipe is critically important. This is private investment in public equity commitment. It shows that someone believes in it. That's really what the pipe is. It gives them money to do things with. Without it, it makes it much harder. It's a private investment in public equity when they do a SPAC and then they have some room to breathe.

Kara Swisher: I don't know. I think one of the things that's shown is the IPO process, like your mortgage process you just described, is slow and onerous and problematic. How to get people cashed out, how you get these startups into a position where they are liquid is a really interesting one. So I think people are like, SPAC, SPAC, SPAC. Oh, now they're terrible. I think probably the truth is right in the middle.

Scott Galloway: That's right.

Kara Swisher: Right in the middle. Overcorrection on both. The pendulum is never in the middle. But when Paul Ryan had a SPAC, I don't even know if he managed to land it somewhere. I was like, huh, why does he dare? I just remember being like, hmm, hmm. Joanna Coles, I got. I'm okay. I got that. But Paul Ryan, I was like, I don't think so.

Scott Galloway: But what will be interesting in three to six months, when some of these SPACs start lapping their one-year anniversary, which means they now have a gun to that, you are going to see Panic at the Disco.

Kara Swisher: Possibly.

Scott Galloway: It's going to be very interesting to see how desperate these companies are and the companies they are willing to SPAC with. I wouldn't just take any old SPAC. That's all I'm saying.

Kara Swisher: Not any old SPAC. Okay, time for big story. Apple CEO Tim Cook took the stand on Friday in the Apple versus Epic Games antitrust trial. Epic makes it an epic trial about Epic and Apple. The trial will wrap this week. Reminder, Epic Games is known for a popular game, Fortnite. They sued Apple, claiming that the company had created a monopoly in its app store and uses power to make unfair cuts from other companies. Apple currently holds dominance over the $100 billion app market that could change depending on how the trial turns out. Tim Cook laid out Apple's high-minded values around privacy in the defense, but he also gave a lot of information about the company.

Tim Cook [Audio Clip]: Privacy, from our point of view, is one of the most important issues of the century, and safety and security are the foundation that privacy is built upon. Technology has the ability to vacuum up all kinds of data and we like to provide tools to circumvent that. That said, not everybody...

Kara Swisher: He laid out a lot of stuff. Apple is facing similar lawsuits from federal regulators, the European Union, and other class action suits that will be affected by the outcome of this trial. So what do you think, Scott? And she's kind of asking questions right in the middle. I wouldn't say she's pro-Epic by any stretch of the imagination, but she's not anti, she's not pro-Apple either. It's interesting. She's asking sort of down the middle questions again.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, this will be very interesting. I need to make another disclosure. I'm an investor in Epic.

Kara Swisher: Oh, OK. Wow. What aren't you an investor in?

Scott Galloway: Chipotle, the company I love. The one I couldn't get into. So look, this will be very interesting. It'll set the tone for a lot of antitrust. But this is, they have monopoly power. It's not to say they didn't deserve it. People always look at it through the lens of, well, did they earn it? Yeah, they earned it. Congratulations. But that doesn't mean we don't go in and break it up. We've become so strange around forgetting our legacy of antitrust. We act as if they have to be bad people or doing something wrong. It's like, no, we make a concerted evaluation and decision that at a certain point, a company, earned or not, if it has monopoly power, it begins to reduce competition and results in a level of negative externalities that are just bad for the economy, bad for job growth, and bad for the tax base. I think we're at that point with iOS. I'm shocked that they aren't getting out ahead of this and lowering the fees. At 30%, it just feels kind of rich.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, it does.

Scott Galloway: So I'm shocked they're not trying to get out ahead of it. But his go-to is we've made these huge investments in privacy. I think what will be interesting is to say, okay, what percentage of your revenue, what percentage of your top-line revenues have you really invested in privacy? Does that warrant a 30% tax on this stuff?

Kara Swisher: It's interesting. They had a lot of experts. They had MIT economists, Stanford economists, University of Michigan economists. There were all kinds of people arguing the whole thing. I thought the judge handled it well. Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, as the judge in this case, is really not on anybody's side here. She smacked Epic a little bit around substitutes, saying there are other places. "Your formulation seems to ignore the reality that customers choose an ecosystem. There's a lot of evidence to trial the foremarket of devices. It is Apple's business ready to create a particular kind of ecosystem." So it's interesting. That looked like she was leaning Apple's way. Then the attorney representing Apple was making some points and Rogers said, "I guess you were saying this quality, the price has gone down, but it hasn't gone down to justify super competitive profits, which is the point you are making here." So I don't know what she thinks, honestly. She's sort of making a good point on one hand, on the other hand kind of thing. It could take months, but nonetheless.

Scott Galloway: Lots of good judges are supposed to do, right?

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: So I think it's super interesting and it'll set the tone for a lot of stuff. It strikes me that they've become so powerful in that ecosystem that it's one of two things. Either big is good and makes sense, and you need to have scale to make the requisite investments in security and safety, which means, quite frankly, it's a utility and should be regulated. Or we'd all benefit if Epic and other people could charge a lower fee for their own in-app purchases. I think it's just very difficult to make the argument that this level of concentration of power is good, but we're not a utility. So I think that's a very difficult needle to thread.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I think she's going to do something interesting. Her questions were great. I have to say, I was like, huh, those are the questions I would ask. She said, "If I decide the relevant market is gaming, but there are other factors showing anti-competitive conduct, how would that impact your analysis?" She asked Apple at one point. The lawyer said that would make me very sad. I just was like, she kind of stuck it to everybody in a lot of ways. She cut holes throughout both sides. Everybody tries to make their little case of everything. I think she was asking the right questions. It'll be interesting. I think she'll probably maybe go for a settlement of some sort. But the real fight Apple's facing is with Spotify. They're in actual competition. In this case, it's about payments, right? And a little bit of data, essentially. What do you have to pay? What's the toll of this road? The judge also had him address app store profits that seem disproportionate. That's what she was saying, disproportionate. But I think the issue will be Spotify. This is not over by any stretch for Cook or Apple if they win. I don't think there's a win here at all for anybody.

Scott Galloway: Well, I don't know if he did it on your show, but Barry Diller made an interesting point. Look at the infrastructure that the credit cards put in place. They're ubiquitous. They make massive investments in security and technology such that anywhere in the world, you can pull out your MasterCard or your Amex or your Visa. It's basically a triopoly. They run it and they figure out a way to process and transfer money and put the promise of money securely and safely. In exchange for that, they charge two to 3% of the transaction. Apple is everywhere, safe, secure transactions, but they're taking 30%. It's not even the fees that struck me. It's the scope or the breadth of them. If you look at every streaming video platform, I don't care if it's Disney+, Netflix, Hulu, somewhere between 3% or 4% and 12% and 15% of their top-line revenues, which probably translates to a third of their profits, go to Apple. Because anyone who's downloading an app to play any streaming service...

Kara Swisher: It's a good business.

Scott Galloway: It's a good business. Own the rails, I'll tell you.

Kara Swisher: We've talked about that. I argued that in my column for The Times this week. You talk about Discovery, AT&T together, it's not enough. Are you kidding? That's a tiny little nothing, like you said, a pimple on the ass of tech, essentially. I think that's what you said. Anyway, it's going to be an interesting case, but this is not far from over. We'll see where she goes. But I really did admire the judge, Judge Rogers's questions. I thought she was quite sharp on both of them. I love that. I love when a judge does that. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. We'll be back to do a Scott mini lesson and talk to a friend of Pivot about app dating, one of your favorite topics.

[Ad Break]:

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[Return from Break]:

Kara Swisher: Okay, Scott, we're back. You wanted to do a mini class today. You want to discuss why big is inherently bad or is it?

Scott Galloway: Hmm.

Kara Swisher: So it is inherently bad.

Scott Galloway: Okay.

Kara Swisher: Big does make sense.

Scott Galloway: Okay, well, let me just do this. Professor Scott Galloway, take the stage. I want to be LA Law. There we go. Look, big isn't necessarily bad. It makes sense to have one US Navy. It makes sense to have one IRS. It makes sense probably to have one Florida Power and Light. When we decide that we need scale and that it makes sense, we typically regulate those companies and voters or regulators get to make sure that those companies aren't abusing their size and their monopoly power. If you look at what's happened in our economy over the last 30 years, the top 50 companies in the world added about $4.5 trillion of market capitalization in just the last year, making their combined net worth about a third of global GDP. So what do we have? We have the top 50 companies massively leveraging their consolidation and power to increase their profitability, at the same time decreasing their tax rate. As you get more profitable, you can hire more lobbyists. We begin to fetishize innovators. All of a sudden, they're paying lesser taxes, meaning that future generations and smaller and medium-sized companies have to pay more. So what do they do with all this additional capital? Republicans and this 900-person communications department at Facebook will say, well, we make these forward-leaning investments in CapEx. And Joe Kiernan and all the business apologists on CNBC will say, they make huge investments in our future growth. But that's not true. This is what they do. The actual share of R&D has gone down. What they use that capital for is stock buybacks, which are good. They increase the share price, which increases the compensation of employees, but mostly the CEO who's seen his or her multiple on the average worker salary go from 50 to 300 in the last decade. Actual R&D has gone down. In 1990, IBM was the world's largest publicly listed company and devoted 9% of its revenue to cap expenditures. In 2020, the largest market cap company, Apple, which is the Jesus Christ of every innovator's eye, their spend in R&D is 3%. So R&D down, employment down, new business formation down. The companies that have the greatest concentration and power in the sectors, whether it's computer hardware, search, or social, have an absolute collapse in new business formation. Why do we care? Is small good? It is good. Two-thirds of new jobs are created by small and medium-sized companies. And this is what you end up with as a consumer. On Saturday fucking morning, a guy shows up who was supposed to be at my house sometime between 12 and 4. They give you a four-hour window. Doesn't show up. Shows up Saturday morning at 8 a.m. banging on my door saying, "Hi, I'm from Comcast here to fix your cable." I'm like, "Oh, you must be a monopoly because no other shithead would have been supposed to be here yesterday and not show up and then show up at 8 a.m. on Saturday and act like nothing is wrong." When an EpiPen goes up 1,100% because a company with cheap stock, because they've massively juiced their stock with share buybacks, goes and buys a smaller pharma company and then jacks up the price 1,100%, that's called a concentration in power. Then you look at the other side and you say, "Scott, are breakups good?" Yeah, breakups are amazing. They're amazing. Point to a breakup where it didn't end up increasing jobs, increasing shareholder value, increasing tax base.

Kara Swisher: Where is big good? I'm going to interrupt you. I'm the annoying student in the front row. Where is big good?

Scott Galloway: Oh, I think that—

Kara Swisher: Besides the Army.

Scott Galloway: In business. I was making the argument that media is too small now, even when you combine them, because it's not enough. As you and I said last week. But this is the problem. It leads to it getting worse and worse. So my publisher, Penguin Portfolio Random House, and by the way, great branding, just rolls right off the tongue. They're now too big. But because we have these giant monopolies, we're letting little monopolies form, because no one can logically say—

Kara Swisher: Trying to get out of you. Yes.

Scott Galloway: Because no one can logically say, okay, let's keep Time Warner from being acquired by AT&T because they've got to take on Google. Well, guess what? They probably shouldn't be allowed to merge. But they're facing a billion-strong player called iOS and a three-billion-strong player called Android. So where does it help?

Scott Galloway: In some places where, like, electricity grids, even certain cable companies that have to make staggering CapEx, you can make an argument that a monopoly does make sense. And then we put a regulator in from the government to make sure they're not jacking up the prices on low-income households. We make sure they're behaving as decent citizens.

But these companies, this is what happens. They lower their CapEx. They take all of that cabbage and put it back into share buybacks. And guess what? Who owns 90% of American stocks by dollar volume? The top 1%. So this is what we have: a destruction in jobs, a destruction in new business formation, a destruction in the tax base. Government gets overrun by lobbyists. We have a lack of new business formation. And we have fucking Comcast knocking on my door at 8 a.m. on a Saturday morning.

So this is all about Comcast knocking on your door. Big, on its own, is not necessarily bad. What we have allowed here in terms of consolidation and power is bad for every stakeholder except one: the CEO, who has seen their compensation skyrocket. And unfortunately, in these dual-class shareholder structures, they get to make the decision.

The biggest tax cut on the American public—whether it's a woman looking to get medication for her child with diabetes, someone looking for better cable, or someone looking for more innovation in retail—the biggest tax cut would be to triple the budget of the DOJ and go in and start breaking all that shit up.

Kara Swisher: I like it. I like it, Scott. All right. Okay. What do you think is going to actually happen?

Scott Galloway: Oh, I think it's starting, but I've been saying that for a while.

Kara Swisher: All right. What do you think? Well, it's like your Twitter thing. I think in some cases, my God, I don't know how these media companies are going to fight Google. I made that argument in the column. They've got to bulk up. I agree. They've got to bulk up. So what do you do if that's the case? You break up Google. That's right. That is fair. You break up Amazon. That is fair. You regulate the app store. That is fair. It's just an almost intractable problem, I have to say. It's really quite... I don't quite know what to do about it. Honestly, we talked about that today on CNBC. I think you're right. I think sometimes big is better, but I like your idea of mini-monopoly, Scott. I think that's quite brilliant, actually.

Anyway, anything else? Anything else, Professor Galloway?

Scott Galloway: No. Look, the economy is two-thirds small business. Do you know what percentage of new businesses are less than a year old?

Kara Swisher: What?

Scott Galloway: 7%. And during the Carter administration, it was 15%. So we like to make this cartoon about how wonderful small businesses are. You know what? We've decided we fucking hate small business. We've decided we don't like innovators. We call the big companies innovators. You know where they focus the majority of their efforts? Tim Cook marching into a chamber to talk about why they should continue to extract 30% a year from app stores.

Kara Swisher: Well, you know what? They're keeping us safe, Scott. From privacy.

Scott Galloway: Or privacy, yeah. And here's the thing. We act like it's a punishment. It's not a punishment. Congratulations. You win. You've done an amazing job. Now we're breaking your ass up. And guess what? You're going to be worth more money.

Kara Swisher: All right. And Professor Galloway, that is an excellent lesson. The lessons of Scott.

Scott Galloway: There you go.

Kara Swisher: Okay, Scott, thank you for that mini lesson. It was very exciting. But let's bring in our friend of Pivot. Nancy Jo Sales is a *New York Times* bestselling author and the author of a new book, *Nothing Personal: My Secret Life in the Dating App Inferno*. Well, that's an image. She has also released the 2018 HBO documentary *Swiped: Hooking Up in the Digital Age*, and she was the author of that very famous *Vanity Fair* story about Tinder. She's here to answer all our questions about dating apps and about her book. Nancy Jo, thank you for coming on to Pivot.

Nancy Jo Sales: Thank you. Hi.

Kara Swisher: So tell us about... you've been writing a lot about dating for many, many, many years. It started with that Tinder piece that sort of got everybody all up in arms, or hot and bothered, as you might say in the dating business. Talk about why you decided to do this and some aspects of what this book's about.

Nancy Jo Sales: I did that article. It was viral. It caused a big kerfuffle among the dating industry people, especially Tinder, which famously tweeted at me over 30 times in one night. They were so angry about that piece in 2015. Then, I was simultaneously doing a book about girls, teenage girls and their social media use. It was a bit ahead of the curve in terms of looking at the harm of everything, not just celebrating it as "what the kids are doing."

While I was reporting all of that, I saw that dating was changing very, very quickly. I interviewed a research scientist at Kinsey who said that this is the biggest change in mating we've had in 15,000 years, since the agricultural revolution. It's really unprecedented, but I think we're all just kind of like the frog in the pot. We don't always realize how much our behaviors and attitudes about dating—what the scientists call "mating"—are changing.

Then I did the film, and I did this book that just came out, *Nothing Personal: My Secret Life in the Dating App Inferno*. I did this book because I had all of these experiences of my own that I hadn't talked about. Also, I felt like even with the film, which was on HBO, somehow the critique of dating that I hear from all of my sources—from young women and men too on Twitter, on social media—doesn't make it into the mainstream discussion we're having now in "Techlash" about how tech companies need to be more accountable to their users. It just hasn't translated into how we talk about Tinder and Bumble and Match Group. It's really important to talk about because they've done this monopolization of one very central aspect of human life: intimacy.

Kara Swisher: Right. This is Scott's wheelhouse, this idea of one about women and girls and how they feel about these dating apps. Scott?

Scott Galloway: Well, yeah. First off, it's nice to meet you, Nancy Jo. I think your work is really interesting, and there's not enough attention on what I call the dating economy. The majority of your work brings to light some of the misogyny or hooking up culture and why that's bad for women, particularly as weaponized by tech. I 100% agree.

What I don't think gets as much attention as it probably warrants, though, is that it's also bad for men.

Nancy Jo Sales: Oh, yeah. Oh, definitely.

Scott Galloway: If you apply the Gini coefficient to mating inequality, there's greater mating inequality than there is income inequality. Tinder showed that if you have a room of 100 people, 50 men and 50 women, four men get the attention of 46 of the women. The bottom line is women are much more discriminating than men. Men are much more inclined to swipe right than women. Doesn't that create a mating inequality that is bad for both parties?

Nancy Jo Sales: I think it's bad for both parties, absolutely. I talk about that a lot in my book. It's a very big theme because it was through my own experience with dating mostly younger men. When I went on Tinder, there weren't a lot of people my age. I went on in my late 40s into my early 50s. I'm off all of these apps now. But I was able to see firsthand through relationships, through dates, through hookups, how young men are affected by all of this.

One of the running characters in the book is a young man I had a relationship with for several years. We watch his evolution from a fresh-faced boy come to New York into a raging fuckboy. I hope it's clear that this is done with great sympathy, seeing how it was the effect of the technology, the access, pornography, internet porn. He was a guy who grew up in a house in the deep South, very poor, had no internet access. It wasn't until he came to New York for a job, got a phone, then suddenly he's on apps, watching porn. It's all very interconnected.

He was also really challenged in the ways that a lot of young millennial men are: not being able to get a good job, make enough money, accrue assets and savings. Feeling really behind the eight ball. All of this played into how the dating app culture affected him, as something he used as a recreational way to feel powerful.

Kara Swisher: Well, except they're not powerful. One of the things I have noticed from everyone I know, including my own son who uses dating apps—we had a discussion about it last night—they feel bad. It feels powerless. My friend who's gay uses them, he feels bad about it. My women friends who use them, they feel bad about it. My son, who's young and handsome and should not be feeling bad about dating, feels bad about it. There's something inherent in it that makes everyone feel bad. It makes everyone feel exhausted. Why is that?

Talk about that idea. Because when you brought that up many years ago, everyone was like, "How dare you, Nancy Jo Sales?" Especially when you talk about how women get talked down to by men in a really negative way. At the same time, that's also debilitating to them, I think, even though fuck them. But it's not a way to behave. There's no way to live.

Nancy Jo Sales: Well, let's look at the macro. If you take it away from men, women, people who identify in other ways, away from sexual orientation, if you just look at the macro of the business, the business model is engagement. As with all social media, the business model is engagement. It really doesn't matter if you're a man or woman or whatever. They just want you to engage with the app. I think the business model is flawed. I think it's a bad faith proposition to tell people—which they do, and in some countries their ads are banned because they're seen to be lies—that they're going to match you with the person of your dreams or find you a soulmate. In this country, we see these ads and think, "Oh, dating apps are my fairy godmother. I'm going to find my soulmate and ride off into the sunset." That's the lie of the advertising.

But the business model is actually engagement and addiction and constant, endless swiping, which is exhausting. That's a word that comes up a lot when I interview people about apps, men, women, whatever. It's exhausting because I think it is labor. It's unpaid labor. In a lot of cases, you are paying to labor for them. You are paying into their business model, which is that they get you hooked. You are swiping, swiping, swiping, giving data, answering questionnaires, exchanging messages where you might mention things that you buy or places you've been. This is not a good faith proposition for anyone.

Scott Galloway: To be fair, isn't it somewhere between one in three and one in five marriages originating on a dating app? People are connecting for a long time.

Nancy Jo Sales: No, that is not correct.

Scott Galloway: Correct the record then. What is it? What percentage of marriages are people who met on a dating app?

Nancy Jo Sales: That is not correct. I don't know what data you're referring to. The most reliable data we have is from Pew Research Center, which said in 2020 that 12% of Americans overall—and this wasn't marriages, this was marriages or long-term commitments, and we don't even know from the data what "long-term" means—but marriages or long-term commitments of Americans overall, and 39% of dating app users. So you could say, "Well, that's 39%." But for businesses that promise to find you the person of your dreams, is 39% really enough? Also, for the time that they get you in there and get you hooked, the amount of time you're giving them... If there was a COVID shot that had 39% efficacy, would you take it? 39% does not sound good to me.

Kara Swisher: So what do you think is going to happen, speaking of the pandemic? How did they change during the pandemic? And how do you expect that to change as people get vaccinated? Just this weekend in my neighborhood, it looked like mating season was on. It was crazy. Nice to see, I have to say.

Nancy Jo Sales: Everybody's saying it's really a curious thing. Here we are on the precipice of what a lot of my friends in New York are saying is going to be like the 1920s. This is going to be like the summer of love. People are so excited to get out, to start dating and meeting people in person again. The way the dating apps used the pandemic was a study in disaster capitalism. All of a sudden, this was truly the only way to date.

Unfortunately, I don't think that's really going to change that much because I think the addiction is real. The social conditioning they've done has made people feel less able to even talk to each other in person. They feel like this is the only way to date. Even before the pandemic, I interviewed people—gay people, straight people, all kinds of people—who said, "I will be in a bar and see someone across a room and I will go on Tinder to see if they're on Tinder or Grindr." Someone in my film says, "If I see a cute guy in a bar, I'll just go on Grindr and see if he's on Grindr. I won't go up and talk to him."

Kara Swisher: Is there a right way to use these apps as a tool, or are the designs fundamentally flawed? These things should work in some way, right? There were analog versions of this before. What would you ask of these companies to make a healthier ecosystem around establishing productive, healthy relationships?

Nancy Jo Sales: It's interesting. A tech investor reached out to me on DM. He said he invests in dating apps and read this op-ed I did in *The Guardian* before the publication of my book. He said, "Gee, I didn't know any of this." Well, you don't know about it because *The New York Times* and people like that do not... I'm sorry, *The New York Times* does a lot of great reporting on a lot of things, but dating culture is not one of them. They tend to be very "Modern Love"—it's cute, it's a cute meet, you're going to have a date with Timothée Chalamet and clink rosé. It's hopeful. That seems to be what they think people want to hear.

The harms are really serious. We have serious data now on rape, sexual assault, harassing messages, dick pics, all this kind of stuff. If this guy hasn't heard of it, it's not necessarily that surprising. Anyway, he said, "What do we do? I want to tell these places where I invest what to do to fix this." I'm not a tech person. I'm a journalist and an author, now a memoirist. I don't know the answers in terms of tech. I do know there are certain things about these platforms that I don't see how you can fix, like the male gaze being how men see women on these apps. But I do think there needs to be a radical reimagining of it. The first step towards that is talking about what's really wrong with it and not pretending that just because Tinder donates some money to a sexual assault organization—which is good, please do that, they need your money—that doesn't change what's happening.

Scott Galloway: Is there any site that is good? Is Bumble?

Kara Swisher: Let me just interject here. I went on Tinder and I was really upset because I found that it deleted my account if I didn't mention hiking or dogs in my bio. So I started going on Tinder just to find women who would share their HBO Go password. I felt like we needed a little levity. Didn't we need a little levity? Come on. Dating, come on.

Nancy Jo Sales: Very little.

Kara Swisher: Very little.

Nancy Jo Sales: There are women who say that they call it "Tinder pizza." They get guys to send them pizza as a way to talk to them. "If you send a pizza to this address..." I don't know how they're keeping them from knowing their addresses. But anyway, the Tinder pizza.

Scott Galloway: See, that's the problem. What you just said is a problem, because I think that this is all problems.

Kara Swisher: God. No, no, no. You're... No, no, no. Go ahead, Nancy.

Nancy Jo Sales: No, keep going. Your joke is not a problem. You're not a problem. You're wonderful.

Scott Galloway: Thank you. But you mention the way that there are transactional things going on.

Nancy Jo Sales: Yeah, that's the reality problem. The transactional nature of it. There's a lot of sex work, which I'm not dissing sex work. I'm just saying that people who use these apps aren't necessarily going on there to fall in love. They're going on there because they can't pay their rent and they need somebody to give them money for sex. There are people going on there because they hate women and they want to attack.

Scott Galloway: Let me put out just around that, because that's serious. Misogyny and technology that increases misogyny, as we've seen across these other platforms, is really ugly. I'm going to put forward a thesis, and I think you're going to disprove it because I haven't done research around this. I would think that similar to Airbnb and Uber, identity is really powerful. When people go on these apps, is there some inclination to behave better? Are you safer to a certain extent on a dating app because the company knows who both parties are? There's identity involved. Has that not led to some good things?

Nancy Jo Sales: There is not safety on dating apps. I think there's less safety on dating apps than even in person, in a random situation. It's virtually anonymous in a way. Also, they don't do anything to respond. ProPublica did a big story in 2019, and then they followed up with a couple in 2020, even one recently in 2021, about how dating apps trained their workers to spend four minutes—four minutes tops—talking to people about their sexual assault concerns. Anybody who's a sexual assault survivor knows that's not enough time to talk to somebody when you have a problem and need to report it.

I don't think they're responding in the way that they should. They're doing the bare minimum. There's a lot of criticism right now. People like me are coming out and saying stuff. In Australia, they've had a lot of consciousness raising around dating apps. They've had protests connected to sexual assault, Me Too stuff. There's been a lot of pressure in those countries, in New Zealand and Australia. So Tinder last week said they're going to do this thing where the AI will know if you're about to send a harassing message or a dick pic and have a little thing pop up on the screen that says, "Don't send a dick pic."

Kara Swisher: No, no, I don't know why I find that funny. I apologize.

Scott Galloway: Well, you're right to laugh. Is a minority reporter on dick pics? What is going to happen?

Kara Swisher: Well, wait, wait. Jeff Bezos, put the camera away. Right. Oh, my God. Worlds colliding. Sorry.

Scott Galloway: You've hit the nail on the head, or the dick on the head, by bringing that up. Somebody who's going to send a dick pic isn't going to cease because Tinder says, "Are you sure you want to send that?" Like your mom's like, "Are you sure you want to send that?" But really, my question is, why doesn't that message say, "If you send that, you will be kicked off this app forever"? Just start kicking people off. Isn't that more impactful?

Nancy Jo Sales: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: So I have a last question, Nancy. This is a really important topic, even if it's grim. Scott, too bad.

Scott Galloway: No, I love Scott.

Kara Swisher: You having advice? Scott will get to ask you the last question then.

Nancy Jo Sales: I especially love Kara. Kara, you're in my book. Did you know you're in my book?

Kara Swisher: No. Am I?

Nancy Jo Sales: Yes, I do. I read parts about her. And of course she is.

Kara Swisher: No, that's not what I meant. Anyway, in any case. Swipe right on the book mention. All right, listen. Am I allowed to have a hero?

Scott Galloway: Yes, you may. You can have me as a hero. It's fine.

Kara Swisher: But let me ask you this question. You yourself did this. What advice do you have for people who want to use these dating apps? They're going to use them, and they're here to stay, I think. So what is the most unexpected... for yourself, if you had to give advice to someone using them? I know at the end of the book you say "go look at ducks" essentially.

Nancy Jo Sales: No, I don't say that. I don't say go look at ducks.

Kara Swisher: No, I know what your point is. But the issue is, what would you want people to do who are using these? What are your best practices if you're using these things?

Nancy Jo Sales: I do not think people should use them. I think they're harmful. I think they're bad for you. We all agree there's a terrible instance of rape, sexual assault, harassing messages, unsolicited messages. You yourself said people feel bad when they use them. My son took his off.

Kara Swisher: Took his off. Did a short Tinder stand. He took it off. He didn't feel good.

Nancy Jo Sales: Well, your son is a person who's intact with his emotions, and he's protecting his emotions. I think anyone who wants to protect themselves and protect their emotions and protect their safety, emotional and physical, should not use these things. Should not use them. I don't think so. And I don't think you should look at ducks, although I do like ducks.

Kara Swisher: Okay. All right. Scott, last question.

Scott Galloway: Well, Nancy, first, I think you're doing important work. I think this natural assumption fomented by big tech and shareholders that "connecting the world" is just naturally a good thing and doesn't have really negative externalities that we need to be thoughtful around is a courageous message.

Nancy Jo Sales: That you're going to get a ton of shit for.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, a ton of shit for.

Nancy Jo Sales: Constantly, constantly, constantly. I get a ton of shit for it and people attack me every which way for it. But guess what? Young women especially say thank you. Thank you for saying that.

Scott Galloway: Let me just say, keep fighting the good fight. The connection you made that I think is really important is that we're in the midst of the largest unsupervised experiment in the history of human behavior in the form of porn. To think that that doesn't seep into people's relationships is naive. Unfortunately, my industry in academia, no one wants to be known as the porn professor, so there just isn't a lot of good research on it. But I guess the question I would have is—

Nancy Jo Sales: I make that point. I'm not trying to promote, promote, but read my book because I say exactly what you just said in the book. There's a deep connection between porn and all of this. The fact that dating now involves nudes, which are essentially self-generated pornography, is one of the big tip-offs about that. But anyway, I'm sorry to interrupt.

Scott Galloway: Let's assume that technology around key components of our society, including dating and mating, is out of the bottle and probably not going to be put back in. Then hire more women. Hire more women in your companies.

Nancy Jo Sales: Ask your question.

Scott Galloway: I'm asking your questions. I'm sorry. Go ahead.

Nancy Jo Sales: Well, you began to answer my question. What would you like to see us advocate and push these companies to do to make a healthier ecosystem?

Scott Galloway: Hire more women, hire more people of color. I think that if there were more people of color at these apps, the algorithms wouldn't be biased towards race. A 2018 study by Cornell says that dating apps are essentially racist. They promote racism not only on the apps but outside of the apps. I think if there are more people of color, more LGBTQ people, more women in these companies in positions of power and in the design of them.

Kara Swisher: So at Bumble, which was founded by a woman, do you find that that's a healthier ecosystem?

Nancy Jo Sales: No. Bumble was founded by a woman who, I'm sorry to say, is what they call a foot soldier for the patriarchy. The idea for Bumble was not Whitney Wolfe Herd's idea. It was the idea of the Russian mogul who does Badoo, Andrey Andreev. It was his idea. He came to Whitney and said, "Hey, we want to do this. You want to be the face of this thing? And we'll say it's a feminist dating app." This is not my conspiracy theory. This has been reported and it's known. He still owns, I think, 80% of it, and she owns 20%. It still made her enormously wealthy—she's one of the richest women in America according to *Forbes*—but they promote this. Newspapers like *The Washington Post* continually call it "the feminist dating app." I talked to feminist thinkers and scholars about it, and they said, "What is feminist about this? This is not feminist in any way, shape, or form. It just codifies..."

Kara Swisher: Is there anyone that is less bad in your view?

Nancy Jo Sales: I think there are people out there like Justin McLeod, who does Hinge. He's a good guy and he really wants in his heart to make this better and make it a better experience. I don't think everyone who does a dating app is an evil person. They want people to meet each other. Hinge for a while had this idea like, "Oh, we're going to be the app that you delete, and we're going to give you all this data about how many people on Hinge have met their long-term partner or spouse." I never saw that data, I think, because it doesn't exist. Or if it did, it wouldn't be a good advertisement. So I do think they want it to be better, but they're going to have to do a whole lot more.

Kara Swisher: All right. I come to one conclusion. Let your mama fix you up. That's what I say. Let your mama fix you up.

Nancy Jo Sales: Since you know about the ducks, you know that in the beginning of the book, I talk about the days of arranged marriages. I am not advocating that.

Kara Swisher: I know, but I feel like I would make good choices for my children.

Nancy Jo Sales: You would, but not everyone would.

Kara Swisher: I know, just me. I made choices for everybody. I would have been that girl, that young woman in the book who got out of Dodge and moved to New York City and became a factory worker and went on dates in the 1910s, which is how dating started. I would have been her and gotten in all kinds of trouble for that. Anyway, Nancy Jo, I love the work you're doing. I think it's great. I'm glad you're pissed. Keep fighting the good fight, Nancy Jo.

Scott Galloway: Keep fighting the good fight, Nancy.

Nancy Jo Sales: I love you guys. Thank you so much.

Kara Swisher: All right. Thank you. And good luck. The book is called *Nothing Personal*. And it's Nancy Jo Sales, who's very well known. She says, "My Secret Life in the Dating App Inferno." And when the word "Inferno" is used, that's not hot. It's just burnt. Correct, Nancy?

Nancy Jo Sales: Although there's a lot of hot sex in the book.

Kara Swisher: Okay. And moving on. Okay. Thank you so much. We really appreciate you being here.

Nancy Jo Sales: Thanks, Nancy Jo. Bye-bye.

Kara Swisher: All right, Scott. That was Graham. Graham.

Scott Galloway: It's a good thing you have that lovely wife of yours. I'll just tell you that.

Kara Swisher: Me too. I'm glad I was like... I grew up in an era where I just went to bars and got ridiculously fucked up so I could get the confidence to speak to strangers. That was much healthier.

Scott Galloway: Really? That was much healthier. Is that how you did it?

Kara Swisher: Pretty much. I never used a dating app, my friend. Never. Not once. Never. I just meet people. I just meet people.

Scott Galloway: Oh, well, good for you. Isn't that nice?

Scott Galloway: It's true. Isn't that nice?

Kara Swisher: It is nice, actually. I have to tell you, I would never be able to survive on a dating app. I got to be honest. When she said she was dating this lovely young man for a moment, I thought she was going to say it was Louis Swisher. I got to be honest. Cougar Town on this episode of Cougar Town.

Scott Galloway: No. All right, Scott, wins and fails. Wins and fails.

Kara Swisher: You know what I'm going to talk about?

Scott Galloway: I told you I banged a cougar and now I'm no longer allowed at that zoo any longer.

Kara Swisher: Oh, my God. That's my cougar joke.

Scott Galloway: Oh, God, why did I let you say that?

Kara Swisher: Listen, listen. That was way too serious. I'm going to go first. You know what my win is going to be? That shit was way too serious. What is my win going to be? I don't know. What's your win?

Scott Galloway: Mayor of Easttown, speaking of hot ladies.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Third week in a row. Let me just say, it's really catching up.

Scott Galloway: Hang on. It's becoming a big hit.

Kara Swisher: It is a big hit now. I was right about it from the beginning. This is a big hit. I have predicted online who was the killer.

Scott Galloway: Who was the killer?

Kara Swisher: I feel like I made a good case. I'm not going to do it here, but I did it on—you can go look on the Twitter to see my guests.

Scott Galloway: On the Twitter?

Kara Swisher: On the Twitter. I love that show.

Scott Galloway: You tried to explain it to me earlier today, and I didn't understand. What?

Kara Swisher: Oh, you get it. I'm having trouble tracking all the characters and all the motives.

Scott Galloway: That's the whole point. That's the whole point. They're all related to each other. That's all you need to know. And they all have weird agendas they don't know about, and they all have weird relationships. And that's all you need to know. Go ahead. You go ahead. You go ahead. That is my win, and it's my fail that it will be over next week. Thank you.

Kara Swisher: The win, I think there's a lot of really great innovation to encourage people to get vaccines. I think some of the state lotteries are wonderful. And I think also, speaking of dating apps, some of the dating apps have agreed to make vaccines a criteria. And Andy Slavitt, our friend, worked with some dating apps such that people could request. And also it's now a criteria whether you're vaxxed or not. And I think there's a lot of great innovation and thoughtful encouragement around ensuring that we, I mean, this thing is a monster and it's on the run, but we shouldn't just let it escape town. We should hunt it down and put a stake through its fucking heart. And so I think there's some creativity around encouraging people who were maybe on the fence to get vaxxed. And my loss is that I think China has the opportunity to come, unfortunately come out of this pandemic as a new global leader unless we catch up and start going on the offense and manufacturing.

Scott Galloway: Well, see, now last week, though, you said they weren't getting their vaccines. They can't travel to Europe. So in that regard. Their vaccines aren't as good, but they've actually donated substantially more vaccine to other nations than we have. And their Belt and Road Initiative, foreign investment. I think that coming out of this crisis, like coming out of this is the biggest crisis, you know, arguably since World War II, it tends to reorder the geopolitical chessboard. And I worry that, I think, worry and also think it's a huge opportunity. Unfortunately, we have not shipped a single donated dose, I don't believe, outside of the U.S. yet. We've promised some, but we haven't actually gotten our act together. And I think not only the vaccines, but to take advantage of some of the wonderful organizations, whether it's the Peace Corps or Latter-day Saints, who had to recall about 20,000 other missionaries because of COVID, but to put Americans out on foreign shores with the best vaccines in the world and show what we're capable of. You know, I think we're spending all our time worrying whether Marjorie Taylor Greene is going to kill us someday or, you know, fighting over 9-11, I mean, excuse me, January 6th commissions and this and that. We do not have our eye on the ball here. And it's because these lunatics are scaring the bejesus out of the rest of us.

Kara Swisher: I think that's part of it. You're right. We don't ever – we're arguing over stuff we shouldn't be arguing over, like kids and trans. We're distracted. I don't know. We're distracted. Just put the fucking idiot in the corner of the room and ignore them.

Scott Galloway: Yes, exactly.

Kara Swisher: We got bigger fish to fry. We got bigger fish to fry. I think when you think about it, the fail – I have to say I do have a fail this week besides the fact that there's no mayor of Easton after next week. But I was talking about the AT&T thing earlier, and John Malone, who I think is brilliant, he said on CNBC today, which I didn't buy the claim, which was John Malone said it was brave for John Stanky for inking the recent deal with Discovery. It was brave of him to do. He essentially said that it was a good thing, that Malone said it was a good thing that he did, and it was brave of him to do so and good on him. He was about to cash a huge check. I get it. It was just incredible that they let him just say that because, you know, it felt like log rolling in our time. And I just sort of was shocked that he said that, you know.

Scott Galloway: Did you read the article in the Wall Street Journal with the behind the scenes where they went to a townhouse in the West Village and there was a picture of Steve McQueen? It literally sounded like.

Kara Swisher: Speaking of dating.

Scott Galloway: It sounded like something out of the. Corporate porn. In the 60s, it was like Jimmy Gardner meeting Angie Dickinson for high – it could not have been whiter and older.

Kara Swisher: I know. That's exactly why. I was like, are you kidding? These people aren't capable. Is this mad men? Literally, Ted Sarandos will blow them out of the water and, like, cut them into little pieces. I don't think it's over.

Scott Galloway: He's a schmoozer. Let me just say, I saw him in the polo lounge many times. But he's the guy at Netflix. He's the guy running Netflix.

Kara Swisher: I just was like – that was disgusting to me. I agree with you. I agree. Angie Dickinson and James Gardner. Seriously. It's like literally they're like, I used to party with these cool cats in Cuba. I mean, they could not have sounded more fucking older and whiter. Jesus Christ.

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: Okay, that's my fail. What's your fail? Your fail was that. You said China.

Scott Galloway: Have you seen the new LeBaron? That's a sweet ride. I mean, God.

Kara Swisher: They did. They sounded terrible. Oh, my God. And also it was like flirty. He sent him a stanky scent to David Zaslav.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, their little text messages.

Kara Swisher: I hope somebody comes in here and throws a bandages. Text messages? Like, oh my God. I know. I'm never going to. We're never. David Sassoff will never be on Sway or this show. So maybe you're happy about that. Or John Mullen. John Mullen is brilliant. I can't believe that. Brave. He was brave of making a mess and then cleaning it up. He was brave for bailing out my shitty company for billions. He was brave. He was brave for making a disgusting mess and paying himself a lot and then cleaning it up. What a brave thing to do. Oh, God, these people. Anyway, all right, Angie Dickinson. I really appreciate it. I like that you mentioned Angie Dickinson. Does anyone who's under like 50 know who Angie Dickinson is?

Scott Galloway: She's a policewoman. Look her up. Total gangster, policewoman.

Kara Swisher: Let me just say, look that woman up. That was the best show. Piper, was that her name on it?

Scott Galloway: Pepper. Pepper, yeah.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, she was great. And then the Rockford Files. Anyway, that's the show. We'll be back on Friday for more. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit your questions for the Pivot podcast. The link is also in our show notes. Today's episode was produced by Rebecca Sinanis. It was engineered by Ernie Indertot. If you like what you heard, please download or follow us. You know all the different places. Kara, I don't know. I actually think online dating. Yeah. I don't think it's, I'm not sure it's the technologies. I think it's, I think it's us. People. I think it's us.

Scott Galloway: What do you think?

Kara Swisher: I think it's us with technology. There we have it. Anyway. There we go. Anyways, we'll see you. I hope everyone has a fantastic week and we'll see you again on, when do we come back? When do we do this fucking thing? Monday.

Scott Galloway: Oh, okay. Friday. Friday.

Kara Swisher: Jesus, where am I? Where am I? Thank you, Rebecca. Jesus. We'll see you guys Friday.