Trump’s tax returns, Amazon’s home drone, and NYSE President Stacey Cunningham on upcoming IPOs

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

Scott Galloway: And I'm Scott Galloway.

Kara Swisher: So I can deduct my haircuts?

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: Totally.

Scott Galloway: Totally. Because the only reason I don't have long, beautiful blonde locks of hair is I didn't realize it was a tax deduction.

Kara Swisher: All right. We're going to talk about that in a minute. But first, let's talk about a couple of things. True story. I had a ponytail in graduate school.

Scott Galloway: Okay. True story. Good to know. Good to know.

Kara Swisher: First of all, you're not, of course, asking about my Elon Musk interview, but it went rather well. He said a lot of crazy things.

Scott Galloway: Was he on Sway? Did he come into the gay club?

Kara Swisher: Yes, he did. Yes, he came into the gay club, and we danced all night. It was great. He was really nice. How'd it go? A lot of stuff. He was talking about the election. He hasn't decided. He wants to wait for the debates.

Scott Galloway: He hasn't decided. Indeed, he has not. Because there's just not enough information to know anything about these things.

Kara Swisher: He wants to wait for the debates. He wants to see if Biden is all there. I think the quote was, he wants to see how Biden does.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, it makes sense to evaluate someone in that setting. Did you say anything about, I'm curious, what is, did I told, you always ask me, this is your dirty secret, what should I ask these guys? And I said, ask them about Virgin Galactic. Did he talk about that?

Kara Swisher: He did not. He sort of was like, they're fine. He was glad they were doing it, but I think he feels like he's in the cappered sea. And then we talked about Neuralink, which I thought was the most interesting part.

Scott Galloway: Really? Say more.

Kara Swisher: Well he was talking about a story that he had read an essay about meat flaps. That we are flapping our meat flaps essentially. And it was an essay about another being coming here and saying, "I can't believe they're made of meat essentially." That we need a faster way to communicate using AI, and our meat flaps are too slow. Our lips are too slow. And our meat tubes, which is our throat, is too slow. So, if you remember that movie, the computer got bored with Joaquin Phoenix's slowness. And so he says we need to be faster. So he wants to put an upgradable chip into our brain so that we can keep up. And because we're made of meat, because we're a meat species, a meat species.

Scott Galloway: I'm wondering if the real objective is for us to slow down, but it's an interesting thought.

Kara Swisher: Speed up with these chips and they would be upgradable. Like you get an iPhone 1, an iPhone 2, that kind of thing. So that we'll not only never be in the moment, we'll never be in the microsecond. We'll just keep cycling and then freak out. We cannot move fast enough with 10 fingers, our meaty fingers. Anyway, secondly, the judge ruled on TikTok ban from the App Store. Again, this thing is just a morass. I don't know what else to say about it. Scott, I don't know. What do you think?

Scott Galloway: Well, we just continue to cement our notion that with this Joey Bag of Donuts economy, like, oh, we're banning you? Oh, wait, that's illegal? Just kidding. Okay, who threw my fundraiser? You get to be the tech... This isn't a way to run an economy.

Kara Swisher: No.

Scott Galloway: The world has felt so many emotions toward us since World War II, envy, anger, resentment, envy, and now the primary sentiment is pity. Pity. And we just continue to evoke... I pity the fool. We're the fool.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. And this notion that we're supposed to take seriously what our leadership says about banning something and then they wait for the Chinese to blink, they don't blink. And then what do you know? They say, well, you should have never said that because it's illegal.

Scott Galloway: Well, it's a badly crafted policy. It's not even policy. It's just some executive fiat that Stephen Miller is writing somewhere. It's ridiculous. Like, we have to get incompetent people out so we can actually make something called this quaint thing called policy that we used to make.

Kara Swisher: And decisions.

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: And this is not the way to do policy. And again this will drag on as we said until after the election and then we see because it's November 12th. So I don't think it's going to be top of mind to the Biden administration to obsess about TikTok at this moment, but they should obsess about Chinese hegemony in the internet. That's my feeling.

Scott Galloway: I'm using the word hegemony a lot. You hegemonic. Hegemonic.

Kara Swisher: Speaking of your hair again, big story time.

Scott Galloway: Undeniable big story time.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, yeah. The New York Times has acquired President Trump's tax returns. Not all of them, not everything, but quite a lot. After years of speculation, the Times finally acquired Trump's tax returns showing that he paid a total of $750 in taxes in 2016 and in 2017. And in the 10 of the previous 15 years, Trump paid no taxes, reported losing more money than he made. He was using these loss carry forwards, I think that's what they're called, in an accounting term. He's also in a decade-long battle with the IRS about a payment they gave him back, which I don't believe they gave him money back. As he said, they're idiots for doing it, and I agree. But they're in a battle to get it to claw it back. He also seems to owe hundreds of millions of dollars. The Times said $420. Others are saying a billion dollars. To who God knows who. This is a guy who's just, as my grandmother might say, robbing Peter to pay Paul. What do you think? And do you think it'll have an impact?

Scott Galloway: So I think there's deeper takeaways here. And that is, if you think about, as I get older, what I realize is, as a younger man, and I think a lot of people do this, it's easy to conflate luck with talent. And if you look at the cohorts that have produced the most millionaires and billionaires in America. It's people from real estate and entrepreneurship. And you might think, well, does real estate and entrepreneurship attract a smarter, harder working breed of person? And I don't think that's it at all. Although we'd like to think that about ourselves. What it is, is that the game is tilted for those two industries. If you look at the tax policy around real estate, there is no other asset class. If I bought $100 of Apple stock and it keeps going up, I can't depreciate it 3% a year. We can do that in real estate. Real estate generally appreciates. It is crazy.

Kara Swisher: Too bad.

Scott Galloway: I agree. It appreciates, but for tax purposes, we can depreciate it.

Kara Swisher: Right.

Scott Galloway: We can, if I sell that Apple stock at a gain, I trigger a taxable event. But with exchanges in real estate, I can sell a $500 million property, and as long as I roll it into another like-kind property, it continues to grow tax-free. So, we have decided that people who go into real estate and people who own real estate are a favored cohort. And then with entrepreneurship, we've absolutely done the same thing. I've taken advantage of 1202 where if you're a shareholder in a company for longer than five years and it has less than $50 million in assets, you get the first $10 million tax-free. And that makes absolutely no sense. None of this does. That's supposed to encourage starting companies. I don't know anyone who started a company knowing what the tax rates are. But we have sort of rigged and tilted the game. The other thing that's obvious here is he's engaged in massive tax avoidance. Possible fraud. There's a lot of flim-flammery going on here.

Kara Swisher: Well, that's the key distinction. Is it tax avoidance? Tax avoidance, anyone who makes over $100,000 a year engages in. And that is there's this entire industry, kind of the rich industrial complex of tax avoidance professionals. They come up with ideas and encourage you to be aggressive around your taxes. That's tax avoidance. Apple does it.

Scott Galloway: Right.

Kara Swisher: Almost any wealthy person does it.

Scott Galloway: Yep.

Kara Swisher: Okay. So that's bad. But that, again, you don't need to reform the individuals or you don't even need to reform the IRS. You need to reform government who can simplify the tax code.

Scott Galloway: It's just striking, Kara. You could go 0% federal income tax up to $50,000, call it 20%, $50,000 to $500,000 or a million, and then go 30% or 40% for anything above a million. And you'd get approximately the same tax revenue. And instead, we make it so Byzantine and so complicated such that the more complex it is, complexity is a tax on the poor because they can't afford the time or the professionals to navigate that complexity. So massive simplification around tax reform is desperately needed.

Kara Swisher: You're right. Tax avoidance people do. And that's what you would say Jeff Bezos is doing. But this feels full of flimflammery, like the Ivanka money that you were joking about the haircuts, which may actually be a fair deduction for him because it is his brand. The moving around of money saying he sold something to take a loss and then getting shares back. There seems to be like 900 instances of possible fraud here, like tax fraud. And I think there's so many of them. You know, Wesley Snipes went to jail on like one thing and he said like one tiny thing. And so there seems to be at least a dozen examples of possible fraud. And what really drives me crazy is, and I do think this will have an impact on the voters, this 750 was a very smart way for the Times to push it out. Like, he paid no taxes, you did. And it may be because of fraud, not because of tax avoidance. And it was interesting, Rick Santorum went on one of the shows. They should take him off permanently off of all these shows because he's such a ridiculous, like thoughtless person.

Scott Galloway: I don't think that's true. I like Santorum.

Kara Swisher: I don't like him.

Scott Galloway: But he went with the, oh, so what if he avoided taxes?

Kara Swisher: How in the world can someone talk? Who pays for the military? Who pays for the, this is not a selling point is it's great to get out of taxes because, you know, who pays for the higher people? Who pays for the, like, stop it. Stop it, you fool. I'm sorry. And so that to me is a really losing argument. I do think people do resonate is if they push in this, he didn't pay taxes and you did, that's one. And he thinks you're a loser for paying taxes. And secondly, where's the fraud here? And that's more after post this whole thing. It gives really insight into the influence that others have on him. And then secondly, post this thing, he's in legal trouble here from a tax point of view. And that's how Al Capone went down. That's how a lot of people go down.

Scott Galloway: You're bringing up the key distinction, and that is there's tax avoidance. You try and write off your haircuts or flights that were personal, not professional. And the IRS tags you, says, no, you're full of shit. We're going to fine you penalties plus back taxes. That's tax avoidance. We have a system for rectifying that. Unfortunately, the algebra of disincentive isn't strong enough such that people have become too motivated to be too aggressive around their taxes once they get above a certain income level. But what you're talking about is tax evasion. And that is saying, claiming to one party, this is how much money I've made. This is how much this asset is worth such that I can borrow against that asset. And then turning around to the government and giving an entirely different set of numbers. That's fraud. The other thing that I think is more frightening is when you look at Donald Trump. There's a decent chance, if he is not reelected, that he could go broke. There is a decent chance. He owes Deutsche Bank $400 million. Who's the largest investor in Deutsche Bank? The Chinese. If you look at who has financed, we still can't figure out who's financed all these ridiculously bad business deals. He's arguably, if money is a decent metric for your business acumen, this individual has the worst business acumen of any individual in the last 30 years. So that puts us, that is a national security risk. The first thing you do when you're interviewing to be a spy, they like, okay, who do you owe money to? Who are you fucking? Who do you care about? And then they reverse engineer those links back to actors who might not have our best interest and they say where do they have leverage. And the reality is his obligations, his financial situation, his contacts, his constant business dealings post the presidency all point to one thing. If the guy isn't a Russian asset, overtly, too many bad actors have leverage on this guy.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, there's a lot of people. It's not just the Russians. It's like, you know, everybody, everybody seems to—

Scott Galloway: All of these licensing and royalty deals from these banana republics?

Kara Swisher: But not just oligarchs. It's like a lot of people. It's like, how did that happen? A lot of people. And what's really interesting to me, there's two things. I was fascinated. He made a lot of money from The Apprentice. That's what he was trying to avoid, the money. He made like $500 million, real money that he earned through The Apprentice. And that was impressive. But then he tried to shield it. That's where he made money, and then he put money into all sorts of crazy schemes. It was fascinating how much money he did do well on, on something that was built on fakeness. So his image at Brandeis was built on his business acumen, which sucked, but then he used it to leverage it into other things. And then he tried to stop paying money. He should have just paid taxes on his apprentice money, which he didn't want to do. We just pay taxes overseas. He just doesn't pay taxes domestically. In any case, that's where the money was made. That's where he really did like $500 million. That's a pretty good net.

Scott Galloway: But not nearly as good looking or talented.

Kara Swisher: Well, I suspect she's not doing a lot of these things. She better not be, at least. And then the second part that was really interesting to me was not just the deductions, because those are just like, oh, you're kidding me, right? We can argue those all day long. I think the Ivanka one looks funny. There's a couple that look funny, like the kids in the beautiful house that was owned by Eugene Meyer that they said wasn't a home but was a home and was misclassifying things. That stuff the IRS always gets you on, like always gets people on. But I think it was the idea of how many people are into this guy for money. I think you're right, 100%, the loans. And that he needed to run for president in order to increase his marketability. That's what he was doing. That's what he was trying to do. And then he won by accident, essentially. He was doing it for other reasons, and then he won. And so he decided, oh, I'm going to move my little grifty circus over here to try to take advantage of it. But what would you do to stay in office, including incredible criminality?

Scott Galloway: Exactly, he's gotta stay in office now. He's got to. If you lose, if you lose, it might mean that you're-

Kara Swisher: He's going to jail.

Scott Galloway: Yeah it might mean that you're broke and going to prison. So what would you do?

Kara Swisher: Well and his children and his children. And that really what the story is is that and even if he stays in office they're going to get him. They're going to get the kids. You know, these – the dam has broken on where it's going. And, you know, if I was the – think about the New York Southern District. There were a lot of people who were ex-prosecutors, and they were like, this fraud, this fraud, this fraud, mail fraud, this fraud. They were like, this is good. This is good stuff that's right here. And so I think that's really where it is. His children are now under, will he throw his children over the wall kind of thing, so to speak, speaking of walls.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I don't think it's Bernie Madoff. Supposedly the deal with Bernie Madoff was he tried to orchestrate a kind of a drama at the end to make sure that the government said, okay, the kids were not involved. I don't think Trump would do that. I think Trump would absolutely send Tiffany to prison before he would go.

Kara Swisher: I think he would, too.

Scott Galloway: That's a terrible thing to say, but I believe it.

Kara Swisher: I think he would, too. And so that's what's, I think they're going to be in, they can try, here's the thing. By the way, there's no evidence that Tiffany's involved here. I don't want to say that. They can try to keep in office. The only thing that'll work is if he wins and he can manage to pull off a dictatorship. Now, he's been pretty incompetent at writing, even though he's done innumerable damage and done all kinds of dictator-y things. He's not very good at being a dictator. So can he pull off, become a complete dictator before the law comes for him and taxes? I don't think he can do it. Let's go on a quick break and come back to talk about Amazon's new home surveillance drone and the friend of Pivot, Stacey Cunningham, the president of the New York Stock Exchange.

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Kara Swisher: All right. Welcome back, Scott. Have you paid your taxes, by the way?

Scott Galloway: I have.

Kara Swisher: Wait, have I?

Scott Galloway: I just paid a lot of taxes. I got to tell you, I just paid a lot of taxes.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I spend way too much.

Scott Galloway: There's too many people.

Kara Swisher: I spend way too much time on taxes. We need tax reform.

Scott Galloway: And you know what? It's a source of stress.

Kara Swisher: It is. Speaking of stress, Amazon introduced their newest home gadget, the Ring drone that hovers around your house looking out for disturbances. Amazon announced the product at their Echo event last week and the Internet exploded with privacy concerns and questions, obviously. Unlike conventional security cameras, it roves around the home autonomously in the air and can be looked in on by Ring employees. But Amazon Devices SVP David Lemp told The Verge, "I'd be more worried about a camera on your phone than I would be about a drone." Now, oddly enough, Elon brought this up, and he didn't know about it. And he was like, it's so amazing that if the government did this, everyone would be up in arms. And Jeff Bezos is running around saying, "I'm just going to put a drone in your house." What do you think of this?

Scott Galloway: I think it's awful. See, I empathize with it because I actually have drones running. I actually have this technology in my house.

Kara Swisher: You what?

Scott Galloway: I have drones that roam around my house. They're called Gangster and Zoe. And when there's danger in any room or not, they go in and check it out.

Kara Swisher: Are these pets?

Scott Galloway: And when there's—

Kara Swisher: These are pets.

Scott Galloway: They will alert the neighbors and the whole neighborhood at 4 a.m. when there's no danger by barking. And not only that, there's zero—

Kara Swisher: So you have dumb drones.

Scott Galloway: There's zero emissions drones because Gangster eats Zoe's shit. So there's absolutely no emissions. But then—anyways, the notion I thought when it first came out, I thought—

Kara Swisher: And the first came out, I don't know about you, but I thought they meant a drone that kind of circulated the circumference or flew around the circumference of your house outside.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, that's all right. Maybe if you have a compound or something, or you want to make sure that your kid doesn't go in the pool or where the shooters are, where the dogs, of your house outside.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, that's all right. I'm all right with that. Maybe if you have a compound or something or you want to make sure that your kid doesn't go in the pool or-

Scott Galloway: Where the shooters are.

Kara Swisher: Where the dogs, whatever. Is there a strange car there? Okay, I get that. But roaming around your house-

Scott Galloway: I know, I know.

Kara Swisher: It's just-

Scott Galloway: But you know something? I think they're very smart. I don't think they have any intention. I think this is the equivalent of the microwave with propellers. Remember the Amazon microwave?

Kara Swisher: I know, but why do it? I remember, I mean-

Scott Galloway: Because we're talking about it.

Kara Swisher: Yes, I know. But why do we want to talk about this? Like I get the drones delivering things. At first everyone's like, they're going to fall out of the sky with your packages and going to kill people. Like that I was like, okay that sounds a little dangerous but okay I can see it. I can see that, okay sure, whatever. Walmart is droning rapid tests within a mile, granted it's only within a mile of their Las Vegas Walmart and it's a total press release, but let them try that out. Try not to kill people. If they kill people they should be sued out of existence. That's fine. Let me—this is what do you think of this? What's going on? I want to be in the meeting where they said, okay, we're going to release this. Like, who was in that meeting? What was said? They better took notes from that because I just want to be in that meeting where they're like, yeah, this is what we're going to do. And someone didn't go, what? Huh? So I'm in my den on my Roche-Bobois Mahjong couch smoking a spliff and a drone comes rolling in? A drone comes rolling in with a camera? Oh, that's going to make me relaxed.

Scott Galloway: I'm going to buy you one for Christmas. I'm going to follow you around. That's going to be relaxing.

Kara Swisher: I mean, the whole thing is just, I don't have any cameras in my house. My son has unplugged them all. We have a Nest in this house that we bought. It was here. But he unplugged everything completely. But what's the use case? Do you understand? What's the use case here? When does it pay off? What's the pay off?

Scott Galloway: When you're not home.

Kara Swisher: But then they get a sense of your home. It just roams the house. So I don't like that either. Like if someone can hack into it, they can see the inside of your home and case it. So I don't like that either. And this way, instead of like a static camera, they can really case it. Let's go over here. Let's look over here. It's like a creepy person hovering around you. So just really hovering. I just don't get it at all. What does this tell us about Amazon's product ambitions?

Scott Galloway: Yeah, but what Amazon has is Amazon has such cheap capital that they can try crazy shit. So, for example, Amazon has filed patents for a floating warehouse. So, an airhouse that floats in the sky.

Kara Swisher: Sure.

Scott Galloway: He loves to float things in the sky, Jeff Bezos. That's his thing. Based on my eighth grade physics class, that is, what's the word, impossible. But not only that, there are journalists trolling the US Patent Office to see what interesting patents Amazon always files and they write a story on it. And then they actually filed a patent for a defense mechanism against projectiles to attack the floating warehouse. These are both patents filed by Amazon. And my sense is when you have this kind of cheap capital and you have a bunch of young people that like to play with toys and do interesting things, they're willing to try stuff. Also, the only thing I took from this is they see Ring and the home as being a big strategic initiative. And if you think about it globally, if you think on a macro sense, the commercial real estate business is a multi-trillion dollar business in the United States. We're going to spend between 10, conservatively, and 40% less time in the office, which means you're going to have somewhere between a half a trillion and $2 trillion in stakeholder value transition or morph from commercial real estate to the home, which means we're going to be spending, think about all the money spent on security in office buildings, right? So, it makes sense that Ring should be a strategic initiative for them. This would work for office buildings.

Kara Swisher: I'm fine with that. They already have, like, this would work for office buildings. Fine at night. Sure. You know what I mean? Not during the day, but at night, sure. And you know you're being tracked, whether it's your email, ding, ding, ding, whatever it is.

Scott Galloway: Right.

Kara Swisher: That makes sense. I just want to be in that meeting, Scott.

Scott Galloway: Do you?

Kara Swisher: I'd literally like to be there and say, what the fuck, scream what the fuck, like, throughout the entire meeting until they stopped. That's what I would like to do. So, let me ask you a final question, and then we're going to get to our friend of Pivot.

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: You expect them to stay in this device area, right? Would you put this in your home? What would you put in your home besides your badly behaved pets?

Scott Galloway: I'm actually getting a rapid test today, and I'm all for home stuff. And we have people in and out of our home all day. So I'm not a privacy person. People get freaked out about privacy. But I think Ring is really interesting technology. What I'm more about is not – I'm not as worried about the companies. I'm worried about good government that appoints thoughtful judges who regulate these things. And so for me, I think it's really interesting when companies do interesting things. I think this is interesting. I'm going to get one tried and just try and understand what is the payoff here. I'm not having them in my home. But the thing that bothers me, again, is not that Amazon needs reforming. It's the DOJ, our judges, our privacy regulation. We need to resource the regulatory body so we can make good decisions around what's legit and what isn't.

Kara Swisher: I just don't want them in my home. I just don't know why. They look at my things, they know enough about me. I thought it was a joke.

Scott Galloway: I buy a lot of things.

Kara Swisher: I thought it was the Onion when I first read about that.

Scott Galloway: I did too. It was weird. I thought it was a joke.

Kara Swisher: You know what? Here's what we're going to do.

Scott Galloway: Yeah?

Kara Swisher: We're going to get this thing and it's going to be in your home and you and I will try it because I'm not putting it in my home. There's no way.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I don't know. I don't, but I still don't understand the payoff. The Roomba.

Kara Swisher: The Roomba. It really is. You know what? We know what I need? I need a neural link in my head so I can beat the drone in my house. Does that make sense?

Scott Galloway: No, I don't think that's going to happen.

Kara Swisher: I don't think we want stuff in our brains.

Scott Galloway: Would you put, I would completely.

Kara Swisher: You'd put something in your brain?

Scott Galloway: Absolutely.

Kara Swisher: Huh.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised. I wouldn't be surprised if there is, I mean, it would make sense, right? We have stents that go in brains sometimes to drain liquid. We have pacemakers. It makes a lot of sense that we're probably at some point going to have stuff go in our brain to help with.

Kara Swisher: I think the next application will be epilepsy or seizures.

Scott Galloway: Yes, that's what he was talking about.

Kara Swisher: He was talking about seizures, people that can't walk, brain injuries. That's where he's aimed at. Obviously, it's going to move on to people so that I can do instant jujitsu without learning it.

Scott Galloway: Oh, by the way, by the way.

Kara Swisher: It's going to be my win.

Scott Galloway: Speaking of instant jujitsu, have you been watching Cobra Kai?

Scott Galloway: I'm going to. We're going to get to it. Let's get to it. It's wonderful. But first, we're going to move on to a friend of Pivot. Okay.

Kara Swisher: We have Stacey Cunningham, the president of the New York Stock Exchange, here to talk about the IPO landscape. Welcome, Stacey.

Stacey Cunningham: Thanks. Thank you both for having me.

Kara Swisher: I'm letting Scott lead this one because he's Mr. Stock.

Scott Galloway: Oh, yeah, that's right. Stacey, nice to see you. Thanks for being here. So NYSE, big brand. And I remember learning that the biggest difference was that it was an auction market versus a NASDAQ as a dealer market. But not that I know what that means, but give me the pitch. I'm on the board of a company that is about to file its S-1. Give me the pitch for NYSE versus NASDAQ as a listing public company.

Stacey Cunningham: The biggest difference is we trade stocks differently. So every company that's listed on the New York Stock Exchange has somebody who's accountable and responsible for overseeing trading. So they have a market maker. And that's a real differentiator. What it leads to is better market quality, which means cost savings for investors and cost savings for the company anytime they're trading their own stock. You see that especially during periods of volatility. What we layered on top of that is we bring you into our network and our community. We have 75 of the S&P 500 listed here. We can use our brand and visibility to amplify your message and get your message out there. And then we have a whole set of tools to help make you a better public company because, as you know, Scott, it's not so easy to be a public company.

Scott Galloway: Well, let's talk about that. A lot of companies have decided that it's not only not easy, it's not attractive, and the number of public companies has declined dramatically. Why do you think fewer companies, why are there fewer public companies? What do you think the primary culprit is?

Stacey Cunningham: So I think that's a great question, and it's an important question. There's another question that I want to touch on after that. It's not just so much why, but what does it mean? So what's the downside to that? So one, companies have access to money in the private markets now in ways they didn't historically. So when you think about the reasons a company would choose to go public, it traditionally was primarily driven by a need to raise money. And then secondary or tertiary reasons were having the visibility of a public listing to attract new customers or investors, also to have the liquidity for early investors and employees, or currency to engage in M&A. Because there's so much capital in private markets, you're seeing more companies waiting longer to go public. And the drivers to going public now are not about raising money and more about those other reasons, especially in a lot of the tech companies that are looking to – they've been paying their employees in stock or options for several years. Their employees want to buy a house.

Scott Galloway: Yep.

Stacey Cunningham: They need to go public to be able to actually have that liquidity. So that's been a big driver. One thing that I think is important that we talk a little bit less about is so what? What are the downsides of companies not being public as quickly? And really, there are three things. And the first one is most concerning to me. It contributes to the wealth divide when the fastest growth years for a company are only available to a few.

Scott Galloway: 100%.

Stacey Cunningham: And I think it's really tragic. The U.S. markets, the capital markets, our system, our capitalism has really been built on a dreamer, an entrepreneur can come start a company and grow and that's okay. But it's a story of shared success. If it's no longer a story of shared success, I really do think it changes the fabric of our nation. Second, there's a lack of discipline and governance in the private markets that doesn't really get introduced by the public markets. And so if companies grow much bigger, their bad habits grow alongside them. And then third, valuations in the private markets aren't based on a lot of buyers and sellers coming together. It's based on the opinions of a few individuals.

Kara Swisher: So fantasy is what you're talking about.

Stacey Cunningham: At times. Could be fantasy. There's a few people with not as much information as you would get in the public market. So those reasons, the fact that those things are downsides, I think we really should recognize as an issue for our country, because I do think that that's a trend we need to swing. 2020 is helping reverse that.

Scott Galloway: Speaking of trends, all these direct listings, it's not a new thing, but you have the Palantir direct listing, Airbnb, it looks like it's a direct listing. Talk a little bit about how that's changed. And then of course there are SPACs, which I'd love you to get into. But talk a little bit about the direct listing. What are you expecting from these direct listings? These will be big public offerings.

Stacey Cunningham: Yeah, they're not offerings yet because they're not selling shares, but public listings, right? And these aren't unrelated topics. If a company is staying private a lot longer, and now they're very large public companies, they can start to ask themselves, if I'm not going public to raise money, do I have to do an IPO? If an IPO is all about raising capital, why should I do an IPO if that's not why I'm going public?

Scott Galloway: That's precisely what they're asking.

Stacey Cunningham: Yes, exactly. And Barry McCarthy, the CFO of Spotify, was the first one to ask that question to really say, I want to be a public company. I want the liquidity and the currency and the visibility, but I just want the market to determine my valuation and not have it be artificially constrained.

Scott Galloway: By investment bankers and their friends.

Stacey Cunningham: Yeah, their allocations go to a handful of people, and then there are lockups. And so you really don't get to a mature state for a company for several, several months before you start to see with uninhibited, what are buyers and sellers? How do they value this company? And with a direct listing, you got to that point much more quickly. Both Spotify and Slack, interesting fact, were two, at the time of their listings, the top five largest opening trades in the history of U.S. markets as a direct listing, because all buyers and sellers could come together at the same time. And they weren't the top five largest companies, but there was a real interest in finding that price discovery at that process. So yes, Palantir has said they're going that route. We actually have two direct listings scheduled this week. What would the next step, the next innovation we're layering on top of that is what if you do want to raise money? So the direct listing decoupled capital raising from being public. What if you want to do that at the same time? So we filed with the SEC to introduce capital raise.

Scott Galloway: This change will change, right? It's a real change. Explain that for your tech company why you would do that.

Stacey Cunningham: So you can conduct a primary offering as a direct listing on the stock exchange. What it changes is it's not an allocation going out to a handful of people. You're letting the market determine your value.

Scott Galloway: And why would – is this because of a request or you see where the puck is going? They don't want to – they consider it like a prostate exam. A lot of them use that term with me because they're all men.

Stacey Cunningham: Well, you're still filing audited financials.

Kara Swisher: Sorry. Sorry, go ahead.

Stacey Cunningham: I wouldn't know. I'll be honest. Anyway. You're still filing audited financials.

Scott Galloway: I've got to have audits. It's cost of capital, right?

Stacey Cunningham: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: And you look at that first day pop.

Stacey Cunningham: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: And a lot of companies see the first day pop and think, well, great, it's 100%. That's a great IPO.

Stacey Cunningham: Well, not if you're the one that sold it the night before.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. So they want the market to help eliminate some of that first day pop. Talking a little bit about governance, isn't a manifestation for a lack of governance or to get the governance light and meanwhile have the retail investors, have the branding event, have the currency. Isn't the thing that has filled that void SPACs? Because it strikes me that SPACs are just an attempt to reduce governance, reduce scrutiny, just add water IPO. And traditionally, SPACs have underperformed the market. This year, they've overperformed. Aren't SPACs a canary in the coal mine? Isn't this story going to end poorly?

Stacey Cunningham: The SPACs of yesteryear are very different from the SPACs that we're seeing today. And again, companies are still filing audited financials and going through that process. If you're going to be a public company, you have to be comfortable with transparency. There's just no way to avoid that. Rightfully so, right? That's what makes our market so great. When you look at how companies are evolving, they're asking themselves the questions, what's right for me? And I don't think that direct listings or SPACs are going to replace the IPO, but companies are going to choose the way, the path to public that fits their needs. A SPAC gives you more control because you're negotiating with one counterparty and figuring out what the value is of your company and agreeing to those terms. A direct listing reduces your cost of capital. And an IPO gives you the process and the experience of sort of the tried and true process. And many of the companies like the idea of being able to have some control over who their shareholder base looks like when they first list.

Scott Galloway: And when you look at the market, it feels like there's a lot of canaries in the coal mine right now, whether it's multiples on earnings, whether it's companies rushing to the public markets. This feels like, I think we've had the biggest market for the greatest amount of money raised through IPOs in September in history, right?

Stacey Cunningham: Yes.

Scott Galloway: Does aid—I realize it's difficult for you to make market commentary, but I'm going to ask you to make market commentary. This feels like a top or feels frothy. And how does that impact a business like the NYSE? How do you insulate yourself against a potential serious correction that makes people lose faith in the markets? When you go into your boardroom, do you say, all right, how do we put in place some guardrails or some, looking at what could be a pretty ugly scenario here if some of this froth or some of these bubbles begin to pop? And related to that, why is the stock market tending to perform well during the COVID-19 situation?

Stacey Cunningham: So, all great questions. And I will say from a business standpoint, we've been around for 228 years. We've seen all sorts of market conditions and all sorts of market events.

Kara Swisher: So we old is your...

Stacey Cunningham: I'm just saying that market conditions don't have that level of direct impact on our business, right? Trading becomes busier and we're a diversified business. And so there are different aspects of our business that pick up during all conditions. Importantly, you talk about the level of companies coming public. And I do think that this pandemic has showed the value of the capital markets. So we talked a lot about the fact that companies are staying private. When the going got tough, a lot of the companies in the private markets had to raise money at much higher costs than companies in the public markets. We saw businesses that were negatively impacted by the pandemic, like the airlines or hospitality industry or restaurant industries, be able to raise money very quickly and very efficiently back in March and April. Over $120 billion has been raised to date on the NYSE through IPOs and follow-on offerings. So many of those companies that had been private are looking to take advantage of the fact that they should get public because they're not quite sure when the next downturn might be or how long it might last. I think it was a little bit of a wake-up call and we're seeing the pendulum swing the other way. With respect to resiliency in the markets, certainly that's something that we focus on to make sure that investor confidence remains high. And it is great to see the level of retail engagement that is in the market because I do think it's important to share that success. But at the same time, we want to make sure they're educated because it's not a good thing.

Kara Swisher: You just asked the Robin Hood question, which Scott and I talk about a lot. Is it being unduly frothy because of that?

Stacey Cunningham: Well, we need to make sure that retail investors understand the risks. This has been a bull market for so long, with the exception of a very rapid downturn and recovery in one year. The markets don't always recover that quickly. So we do need to make sure that there's an educational experience going on so retail investors aren't the ones that end up holding the bag because they weren't able to recover quite as quickly as professionals.

Kara Swisher: Is there a worry about the difference between, we talk a lot about there being the stock market economy, which Donald Trump points out all the time, versus the main street economy, which you can just look on the streets, stores closing. On my street, there's a dozen stores have closed, jobs, everything else. How do you square that circle? How do you put that in a perspective for people who don't have stock portfolios?

Stacey Cunningham: I think we look at the indexes and we see them as a proxy for the market or sometimes falsely for the economy. And they're really based and heavily skewed by a handful of large tech companies that have performed well. So if you're trying to get a pulse on the overall economy, looking at the broad-based indexes really isn't the best way to do that. And then some of those small businesses aren't reflected in the stock market at all.

Kara Swisher: Or people.

Stacey Cunningham: Exactly, exactly. And so I do think it's important that when we put our energy to how do we recover, we are focused on the small and mid-sized businesses that aren't necessarily reflected in a market. That's forward-looking. And the market tends to be optimistic that maybe not in six months, but in a year, we can start to support businesses again in a more normal way. There's a view that things could return quickly if we start to see improvements in fighting COVID-19.

Scott Galloway: Stacey, I thought your initial comment was so relevant to our society, and that is that when Google went public after a few years has shot up, I don't know, 20...

Kara Swisher: A billion.

Scott Galloway: A lot, all right? And now it feels as if companies are staying private so long that the majority of that value accretion is sequestered to mostly white, mostly already wealthy people. This is a trend that really, really, unfortunately, accelerates income inequality in some of the most frightening ways. There's a reason that black and Latino families, households have $20,000 in net worth, white families, $150,000. And the dynamic you described is only going to make it worse. And then I look at the NYSE and I see, okay, this is a global brand. You're probably one of the 100 most recognized brands in the world. You're probably not one of the 100 biggest businesses. Isn't there an opportunity for the NYSE to get in the business of secondary sales with private markets and try and democratize some of the opportunities to invest in private companies? Because they're popping up everywhere and they don't have the credibility, they don't have the brand, they don't have the technology that the NYSE could bring to it.

Stacey Cunningham: It's a fantastic question, Scott, and it's one we talk about a lot. It's an obvious area of growth for the NYSE. My concern is if we don't have the protections in place in the public markets for investors, why open up the private markets in a way that doesn't provide equal access? And we believe in democratization of access and providing more opportunity for investors. Salesforce, I'll give you a stat, is up 5,600% from when it went public in 2014. That growth happened in the public markets for anyone else to participate in. If we focus our energy on providing more access into the private markets, we're not really opening it up for everybody else to participate in. And so really addressing some of the risks and concerns around the public markets is a way to get that access available to people more broadly and to the demographics that you're describing who are left out at times right now. And I think that is concerning. We look at the evolution of the markets. And things like SPACs and direct listings, SPACs in particular, are a way to get companies public sooner and get out to the market sooner. And that's why we actually didn't list SPACs in 2017. We adjusted our listing standards and evolved for what we're seeing happen in the market, much like we would tech companies. Many people don't realize that the New York Stock Exchange didn't used to allow companies to list that weren't profitable.

Scott Galloway: You're over and under on SPACs?

Kara Swisher: Scott and I are starting a SPAC.

Scott Galloway: You're going to start a SPAC?

Kara Swisher: Why not?

Scott Galloway: You're in good company.

Kara Swisher: You're in good company. There are a lot of that. You're honest over and under. We're buying Quibi. I don't know if you've heard.

Stacey Cunningham: Yes.

Kara Swisher: We're buying Quibi.

Stacey Cunningham: Yeah. I think there is an opportunity to continue to evolve the SPAC mechanism to bring more companies public. I don't think they will continue to look exactly like they look today. I think we're going to see an evolution in what the fee structure looks like and how...

Scott Galloway: Well, I think across all of these ways to go public, you're going to start to see a bit of a blend. And tech companies are adopting some of these mechanisms now. And we've been welcoming all these companies to the New York Stock Exchange for the past 15 years and having a lot of conversations around how do we continue to evolve our markets. And frankly, tech was one of them. I mean, we didn't used to list tech companies and now 70% of tech proceeds are raised on the NYSE since 2014.

Kara Swisher: Stacey, they want what they want. You give them what they want because they deserve more. That's how you should do it.

Stacey Cunningham: Well, no, I think it's how do we start to solve problems, right? How's the world evolving? Let's disrupt things and innovate.

Scott Galloway: Last question for me, and then we have to go in a second, is China. All right. There's the Shanghai market, the increased tensions with China, impact on the New York Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ. What do you think that is?

Stacey Cunningham: I would go broader than New York Stock Exchange or NASDAQ. If you think back in time, Amsterdam was the financial capital of the world, and then London was the financial capital of the world, and now New York is. We can't take that position for granted. And we need to recognize the fact that our markets are so strong because we balance investor protection and investor access. If we start driving companies elsewhere, we might lose that position of gravitational pull. So we need to solve the problems around investor protections, but I don't think we should be too complacent about the fact that we're always going to be the financial capital of the world.

Kara Swisher: All right, Scott.

Scott Galloway: I don't know, Stacey, you're the CEO of Dayton Hudson. You need to launch Target and it's in a private market. It's all the action now and all the money, all the value, all the fling and the bling, all the splash and the cash has happened in the private markets. We need you, Stacey. Come to the private markets. Come to the light, Stacey.

Stacey Cunningham: Have you seen 2020? They're making my case for me.

Scott Galloway: All right. Got it.

Kara Swisher: Oh, Stacey. All right. Stacey, have you paid your taxes?

Stacey Cunningham: I'll sell the no chip. I'll sell the no chip from the NYSE.

Kara Swisher: Oh, she just got you, Scott. Let me just tell you. Wait, wait. I'm sorry. I got to interrupt. Does the NYSE, the movie set for CNBC, should it ever open again?

Stacey Cunningham: Yeah. It is open. It's been open since Memorial Day.

Kara Swisher: Oh, really?

Stacey Cunningham: Yeah, we were only closed for a few weeks.

Kara Swisher: It feels a little COVID-y.

Stacey Cunningham: Yeah, I'm not sure I'm going back to the time zone.

Kara Swisher: I didn't like when I said that. I think I said that here.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, you did say that, Kara.

Kara Swisher: I did. I will tell you, you can come in and watch as they clean this place down every single night. But we have roughly 350 people that come in here every single day since Memorial Day and no COVID outbreak.

Stacey Cunningham: I did not know that. I did not know that. It's the safest place I come.

Kara Swisher: I'll come to the airport before I get in an airplane, but I don't know.

Stacey Cunningham: There was a really interesting study that an academic did when the floor closed because they saw that the trading quality was not as good when the people weren't involved in the process. And there were some academics that ran studies. So we committed to the floor. Yes, it's a useful marketing tool, but it also means stocks trade better.

Kara Swisher: Do you have good masks that you could give me? Maybe I'll come.

Stacey Cunningham: Yes, we have one with like a...

Kara Swisher: They have it all. They have it all. All right, if you have good masks, maybe I'll come back. But certainly before I go to Scott's house, that's for sure.

Scott Galloway: There we go. Anyway.

Kara Swisher: I've got a drone. I've got a drone flying around.

Scott Galloway: I know you do, Scott. It's the safest place I come. I'll give you that.

Stacey Cunningham: Well, actually, New York, to your point, Stacey, New York is supposed to be the safest big city in the world right now. Yeah. I mean, seriously, we've been open since Memorial Day. Everybody wears their masks, everybody social distances, and we've had no problems. So I think it's a good testament to how you can come back to work safely.

Kara Swisher: Good. Thank you, Stacey. I'm coming to New York this weekend, so maybe I'll stop by.

Stacey Cunningham: Come visit.

Kara Swisher: No, I'm getting married, Stacey. I'm not going to come visit you.

Scott Galloway: I want to get married on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

Stacey Cunningham: Kim Cramer will marry you.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, it ain't happening.

Kara Swisher: I'll get divorced a minute later. Let me just tell you. That's how that'll work.

Stacey Cunningham: Well, congratulations.

Kara Swisher: Thank you.

Scott Galloway: All right. Thank you so much for coming. We really appreciate it.

Kara Swisher: You're very sassy.

Stacey Cunningham: Great to talk to you guys. Thank you, Stacey. Appreciate it. Thanks. Bye.

Kara Swisher: All right, Scott. Wait, wait, wait. Hold on. Hold the phone. You're getting married this weekend?

Scott Galloway: Yeah, yeah, yeah. This weekend?

Kara Swisher: Yeah, yeah. In New York. A secret wedding. All I can say is, you know why? You're not invited and neither is anybody else. Just my family.

Scott Galloway: Just your family?

Kara Swisher: We have to get married because of the adoption and stuff like that.

Scott Galloway: Well, you know the only difference between a gay and a straight wedding, right?

Kara Swisher: What?

Scott Galloway: The parents are crying at both, just for different reasons. Come on.

Kara Swisher: That's good gay straight wedding humor. We can discuss it. It's a COVID wedding.

Scott Galloway: I want to see what luck is wearing to the wedding.

Kara Swisher: Oh, God. It's a COVID wedding is what it is. But we're going to have a big one that you're both going to get invited to next year. A big one.

Scott Galloway: A big-ass wedding. A real one. Nice.

Kara Swisher: But we can't. Anyway. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails.

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Kara Swisher: All right, Scott, wins and fails. I know you just asked about my wedding. Yes, I'm having a COVID wedding is what I'm having. And just a small one with just the family. We don't want anyone to die. It is outside as a tiny group of people. And then we'll have a big one next year where everybody can exchange air with each other without masks once we get the vaccine.

Scott Galloway: Thank you. And you'll be invited.

Kara Swisher: You know, you'll be doing the serving at the big wedding.

Scott Galloway: I'm in.

Kara Swisher: You'll be doing the bartending and things like that.

Scott Galloway: I'm in. You know, I love to dance. I'm a great dancer.

Kara Swisher: You know who thinks I'm a great dancer? I don't think you're a great dancer.

Scott Galloway: Vodka. Vodka thinks I have amazing rhythm.

Kara Swisher: You've used that joke before.

Scott Galloway: It never gets old.

Kara Swisher: It gets old.

Scott Galloway: It never gets old.

Kara Swisher: It gets super friggin' old. I can't believe you're getting married. That's good for you.

Scott Galloway: I'm going to tell you, you can't believe. What do you mean? That's nice.

Kara Swisher: I'm a marrying kind of lady. That's nice. I'm a sadie, sadie married lady. That's what I say to me. Anyway, yes, yes. We shop for rings, et cetera.

Scott Galloway: Where are you registered? Can I make lesbian jokes?

Kara Swisher: No.

Scott Galloway: Okay.

Kara Swisher: No, you can't.

Scott Galloway: You're not registered at Subaru of Ronkonkoma or German Shepherd Rescue?

Kara Swisher: No. You know what? You know what?

Kara Swisher: Keep going. Keep one more. You get one more. One more lesbian wedding joke. Those were pretty good. I had a Subaru many years ago. I do not have one anymore.

Scott Galloway: That's a shocker.

Kara Swisher: I don't have any car. That's a shocker. No, I had it pre... No, I knew her when I was a lesbian. And there he is throwing out stereotypes. All right. Vox Media HR on speed dial.

Scott Galloway: Yes, exactly.

Kara Swisher: Listen to me. It's fine. It's fine. You know, I couldn't marry you, so I had to get married to someone else. That's how I feel.

Scott Galloway: You never know. At my age, I'm thinking about it.

Kara Swisher: No, you're not. Never is going to happen.

Scott Galloway: Listen to me. Wins and fails. Failure would be Mrs. Scott Galloway as Kara Swisher.

Kara Swisher: I love your wife, by the way. She's amazing. She's a long-suffering person.

Scott Galloway: Oh, her. She's long-suffering.

Kara Swisher: Okay, here's the deal. I'm going to do... So there's not a fail around Amy Coney Barrett nomination. I think the Democrats have to tread very carefully with this particular nominee. It's really fascinating to watch all the people who are fans of hers who do not agree with her. That is fascinating. She's obviously brilliant. I think a lot of people say that. I do think they need to focus in. They will fail if they focus on her. They need to focus on health care, LGBT stuff, whether health care is going to be overturned and abortion. That's where you focus, not on the person, on the topics.

Scott Galloway: Thank you. Even more specifically, they've got to stay away from her faith.

Kara Swisher: And that is, you know, we're—

Scott Galloway: They have, they have.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, it's, but that's—not on the person, on the topics. Thank you. Even more specifically, they've got to stay away from her faith. And that is, you know—

Scott Galloway: They have.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, but that's a bear trap to any link.

Scott Galloway: Well, the right is trying to say that Democrats are going there, but they aren't. They're just making this fake thing on it.

Kara Swisher: So I do think there's a lot there with you talking about health care and taking away your health care, taking away your right to an abortion that has been in for a long, long time. So I think that's where you go. You don't talk about her because she's clearly someone who is well-liked at Notre Dame and someone who seems to be walking the talk of her faith. And, you know, she's a tough—I don't like them calling her ACB, though. I think let's just have RBG and letting her keep that. And we can make up a new nickname for this, Justice, if you like, but we'll see. It's going through, no matter how you slice it.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, and if you think about real strategy here, I think to even focus on her—see, the Republicans are just so much smarter than us. The Republicans never got into a debate about Merrick Garland. They didn't talk about him. What they said is they went straight to, we should not be appointing a lifetime appointment when we're 33 days away. And I think the only thing you can do right now is to support Mark Kelly. He could be potentially seated and have an impact on this. And I also think the other thing you could do is, is it Jamie Harrison who's running against—to go online and donate or express your support on social media right away for Mark Kelly and Jamie Harrison. He's close. Jamie specifically, because I think we need to send a lot of, you know, you do need at some point need to send a message to senators such as Lindsey Graham that integrity does mean something.

Kara Swisher: I know. What a suck he become. He was always a suck, though. Honestly, I always thought of him as a suck. But he just sucked up to a person we liked better than this person he's sucking up to.

Scott Galloway: But it's won or lost in the Senate. And that is, if we can show enough reason for another Republican senator to say, all right, I'm not doing this, then that's your only chance. But if you argue, I think, on her merits, I don't, you know, my understanding is she's a legal scholar. Let me put it this way, we've done worse if you're just talking about legal scholarship.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: So it's going to be...

Kara Swisher: It'll be interesting. It'll be interesting. I was thinking, there's just, there's a lot here. And I think this tax thing might sort of send that. It's so interesting. Like we just go from one thing to the next. All right, your win or fail very quickly.

Scott Galloway: My win is Cobra Kai. I think it's wonderful.

Kara Swisher: Oh, I love kind of... From Supreme Court to Cobra Kai.

Scott Galloway: There you go. Which is a Karate Kid reference for people who don't know. Yeah, and it's one of those intergenerational media, so hard to find. The Umbrella Academy is another one. Lost in Space is another one. But things you can enjoy with your kids, it's usually, you know, you're watching the Emoji Film and want to put a gun in your mouth. Or you're watching Game of Thrones and they can't watch it with you. But this is both.

Kara Swisher: Wait, do they come back good? Does Cobra Kai is bad? Cobra Kai is wonderful? What are you talking about?

Scott Galloway: It's wonderful. Cobra Kai is the bad studio. Not the show, but the group of people at Cobra Kai.

Kara Swisher: Oh, don't spoil it for me. I'm only on season two.

Scott Galloway: All right. But it has a resonance for me because I was raised by a single mother in Tarzana, and I recognize all the streets. And it's also, it's unexpected. It talks a lot about perceptions aren't always what they seem. It talks about a kid who kind of comes off the tracks as an adult. And I think it's really nice. It's really well done and fun and my kids love it.

Kara Swisher: Good. I'm going to watch it. The original movie Cobra Kai was the bad, Daniel was the good one. They were the bad. But he's kind of the protagonist in this.

Scott Galloway: It's complicated. They're complex.

Kara Swisher: All right. Okay, they're complex. I mean, they always were. It's just good to see Ralph Macchio working. First off, he and Tom Cruise, whenever they are injecting lamb cells.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, he looks good. The guy looks 19, and he's 58.

Kara Swisher: I've always liked him. Yeah, he's very likable. He seems like a nice man. I've always liked those. Those movies were just very important to me growing up. Pat Morita.

Scott Galloway: Yep, that was a great movie. It was really lovely.

Kara Swisher: Elizabeth Chu, Leaving Las Vegas, one of the great films. There were lots of fascinating people.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, she was the girlfriend, I think, if you remember. In the cool car that he drove.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, okay, that's a good one. Do you have a fail?

Scott Galloway: I don't have a fail today.

Kara Swisher: All right, okay. All right, do you have any predictions about Tuesday's Trump-Biden debate? We don't usually do them.

Scott Galloway: Other than you and I are going to have indigestion.

Kara Swisher: I mean, I go to this club called the Ocean Club. Cannot fuck up. Where it's like the average membership is, I don't know how old they are, dead. And I saw one guy run over another guy with his walker and they started getting into it. And I said to the people, I'm like, that's the debate. That's what we're coming to. That's the debate. The Tuesday night, here it is. All right. What would you do if you were Biden? He cannot screw up. This is like literally.

Scott Galloway: I would just stick to a series of talking points. I wouldn't even. Cannot fact check Trump. I almost wouldn't even just acknowledge him. I would almost pretend as if he wasn't there.

Kara Swisher: Oh, interesting.

Scott Galloway: And just do a series of talking points about integrity, about the middle class. Nice guy. I'm the nice old guy, not the crazy old lunatic who doesn't pass tests. I would almost like just pretend he's not there.

Kara Swisher: Oh.

Scott Galloway: Cause I gotta be honest, I'm nervous about the whole thing.

Kara Swisher: Nervous it is. I don't know if I can watch it. Anyway, we'll see. I agree. I think he should not fact check him in real time because that will be the entire debate. I think he should just say his piece. Healthcare, healthcare, healthcare, your rights. This guy crazy. That you know and he doesn't pay his taxes. I'd throw that in there. I'd throw a few, you know, a few of those punches in. A few of those things? What do you think? What do you think? I'm nervous. I'm nervous because Trump will do anything. Like, right? He might start to throw the podium around. He might try to hug Biden. What if he tries to hug Biden? Like, who knows what he'll do at this point. Like, right?

Scott Galloway: He'll try to touch him, for sure.

Kara Swisher: And then Biden has got to, like, have to run. I mean, the whole thing could be super awkward if he tries stuff like that. You remember how he creeped around behind Hillary Clinton? And Hillary's biggest regret when I interviewed her was I should have turned around and said, you creepy fuck, get away from me. Which she didn't. And he could do that. He could try to re-physically touch him. That'll be a problem. And he's got to figure that one out in his head. Anyway, we'll see how it goes. Who knows? Who knows with Trump? He certainly spends a lot of time public, so he's used to it. The thing is, he's not preparing, so he feels like he's Rocky from one of those movies where Rocky didn't prepare and made fun of everything, and then he got shit kicked out. I think Biden's preparing. So it could be that, too. He's too arrogant. He doesn't think he needs to prepare for Biden. I think he does. Anyway, don't forget, if you have a question about tech, hacking, or the election, please email us at pivot at voxmedia.com to be featured on the show. And Scott, read us out.

Scott Galloway: Today's show was produced by Rebecca Sinanis. Fernando Finete engineered this episode, and Erica Anderson is Pivot's executive producer. If you like what you heard, please download or subscribe or check us out wherever you listen to podcasts. Please recommend us to a friend. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.

Kara Swisher: Gangster and Zoe, zero emissions, eating each other's...