Twitter Competitors, Lab Leak Theory, and Guest Mehdi Hasan

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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 from Los Angeles. How you doing, Scott?

Scott Galloway: Wow, from L.A. Yeah. What are you doing in L.A., Kara? I mean, by the way, I'm in London, but what are you doing in L.A.?

Kara Swisher: I'm here in L.A. for the Upfront Summit, hosted by Upfront Ventures, and I'll be interviewing, among other people, Jamie Lee Curtis, and also the head of Universal Pictures, Donna Langley, together, about her Oscar thing, them about the Oscars, essentially. Then I'm interviewing Mark Benioff, which I can't believe it's worked out so perfectly, because he turned in really good earnings yesterday. So we're going to go back and forth here. And then I'm appearing on the Love It show, the John Love It show. And tonight he tapes it at a comedy club. And then some other various and sundry LA type things.

Scott Galloway: He's the Pod Save America guy, right?

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Yeah, he's a great guy. I like him. He's a friend of mine. He's good. It's a fun show. He does it at a public venue typically. And it's really fun. A lot of drinks and stuff like that. It's fun. I like it.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. I'm glad you're there. Where do you stay when you're in LA?

Kara Swisher: What do I? Oh, I stay at Brooke's. I stay at Brooke's. She always has a beautiful home. Yeah, Brooke Hammerling is a friend of mine and I stay at her house. I don't like hotels, Scott. I am not a hotel person.

Scott Galloway: Really? I can avoid it unless they're really beautiful. Like I stayed at the White... You can stay at the Berlioz Hotel or stay at the Waldorf. Those are two. LA is a great hotel city.

Kara Swisher: It is. I have stayed at beautiful hotels here. That is fair. But I prefer to stay with friends. I like that. I like it better. Anyway. Get my car. I drive around. Anyway. But it's freezing. So it's colder than DC, which was a little bit of a shock. But we'll see. We'll see. Anyway, what are you doing? How's London? Speaking of cold.

Scott Galloway: I'm back. I'm jet lagged, which means I'm an even bigger asshole than I usually am.

Kara Swisher: Good, good. Consistency.

Scott Galloway: It's good to be with the dogs. You know, kids are all right. But it's really good to see the dogs.

Kara Swisher: You are the worst. I'm intervening. I'm calling British whatever it is you call it.

Scott Galloway: I went to this concert last night. There's this great club called Coco, and it's such a unique concept. Of course, it's a members-only club because I'm very fancy, Kara.

Kara Swisher: Yes, I know you are.

Scott Galloway: And it's such a unique idea. They took essentially like a Soho House kind of zero bond kind of club idea. And it butts up to a really beautiful concert hall.

Kara Swisher: Oh.

Scott Galloway: And so you have your fun, aspirational dinner with other hotter, more interesting people, i.e. everyone other than me. And then they have this member's entrance into the venue. And you see this crazy concert with a DJ. But you're in your nice, safe, older person balcony. It really is. Hello, Mr. Elite. Man of the people, Scott Galloway. Oh, I have no desire to be that. Anyways, it just amazes me how basically the economy, the market is totally morphing around what I call the 1%. And that is, you know, I think of Disney. Disney used to be everybody bought those stupid books with ABCD and E-tickets and waited in the same line. And now you have the FastPass. Well, that's not enough. If you can afford $5,000 or $6,000, you get a VIP tour with some really high EQ person from Wisconsin who bypasses the entire line and gives you a hand signal to take the ride again if you want. And the whole world, and this is, there's, you know, it's great to be in the 1%, but I think it's kind of a negative looking forward indicator. Prime means the revolution is coming. The whole world is being optimized for the 1% and these members clubs are popping up everywhere. In New York there's Soho House, Zero Bond, Casa Cipriani, 5 Hertford is opening there. And it just slowly but surely, everything going Iowa Western right? They can take a restaurant, they can take going into a restaurant and waiting their turn. No, I guess not.

Kara Swisher: When you say they, who's they? You mean?

Scott Galloway: The 1%, like mostly. I mean, because restaurants. I was in New York last weekend, as you know. And it was hopping, I have to say, everywhere. It's packed.

Kara Swisher: It's packed. But it wasn't just the 1%. It was all over the place. Now, if you're in Manhattan, you're probably the 1%.

Scott Galloway: No, I wasn't. You may not feel like it, but you're in the 1%.

Kara Swisher: No, no, I was in Brooklyn. I'm just saying it was young people. It was all young people. I didn't feel like, it did not feel like Club Coco. It was a brewery. It did not feel like Club Coco. It felt like most people could walk in. Anyway. My $28 hamburger and down in dirty Brooklyn. My hamburger was not $28, but nonetheless. I don't roll like you, Scott. I roll a little less. You roll larger. You just like to put on this facade that you're a woman of the people.

Scott Galloway: I'm not a woman. I never say that. Not once. Not once do I say that. Oh, yeah. I'm educated in America with an excellent education, and I've worked hard. Educated in America? That's the least thing in the world. I've gotten all the advantages. Didn't you get all these medals from Georgetown and go to a private school? I mean, anyways.

Kara Swisher: I did. Will you try? You've been very insulting to me lately.

Scott Galloway: I'm not insulting. This is how I express affection.

Kara Swisher: You need to dial that back, Mr. Coco. Anyway, today we'll talk about Jack Dorsey's new social media app. Also, the COVID lab leak debate is back, and we'll speak with friend of Pivot, Mehdi Hassan, about how to win arguments with your friends, enemies, and podcast hosts and others. But first, Elon Musk's latest master plan. I call it the master baiting plan. The Tesla CEO unveiled a five-point plan for, quote, fully sustainable Earth on Wednesday. Thanks, Elon, at the company's first live stream, Investor Day. The so-called master plan, through whoever, was short on specifics. And honestly, it read like Bill Gates' book from two years ago and many other people's books from many, all the sort of glom together. What was missing from the nearly three-hour presentation? Any new product updates, such as plans for a more affordable electric vehicle, any new vehicle models at all, any information on the robo-taxi fleet he promised us during his last master plan. Tesla shares fell more than 5% in after-hours trading following the event. I mean, it was like, let's have heat pumps. Oh, good idea. It's happening already. We already had several people at Code like that last year. And, you know, lots of people. There was nothing fresh in this master plan for the universe. It was very weird. I watched it and it seemed chaotic. And you know, I'm glad he's talking about it, I guess. What the event did reveal though is Tesla does plan to open a new factory in Mexico. Great. And they're way ahead in manufacturing. The Cybertruck is expected to ship at the end of the year. We'll see about that. Engineers are planning to cut assembly costs by 50%. Sounds great. And Elon says they're developing a humanoid robot. I felt it was Master Plan Two, which he promised a high density urban transport, and all he delivered was the Las Vegas loop, which has a single lane tunnel. I think it's just a lot of hand-waving, I'm sorry to say, even though I like the topic.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I couldn't help. And granted, I look at all of this through a biased lens because I don't like the man, but I felt like the thing in the room that we weren't talking about was Twitter. He struck me as a CEO who's been distracted with other things and he got a bunch of notes and talking points from his comms and IR person and got on stage and kind of winged it. It felt to me like all icing, no cake. I mean, past presentations, he's gotten up there with new products and kind of done what I feel are very compelling things, and this just felt like a lot of jazz hands. This felt like a CEO whose promise has gotten way ahead of the performance, in my view.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. And the other thing I'm really on to this notion, and I'm thinking of writing a book on it, is we talk about—

Scott Galloway: Didn't you just write a book?

Kara Swisher: I'm trying to finish a book right now. By the way, advice to anyone out there, never write a book. Never write a book. God. It's both. It is like, ugh, every day. I don't know if I'm going to make it. It's such a slog. I have March 31st as my deadline. We'll see. But go ahead.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, my agent said, what's a reasonable deadline? I'm like, I don't know. When we colonize Mars, don't ask me.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. So anyways, but this notion that we're so focused on the emissions from fossil fuels. And it struck me when he was up there saying we can have a world without fossil, you know, we can have a world that's all electric and it won't cost us a fortune. Kind of portraying himself as a savior by reducing carbon emissions.

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: And I would argue that Elon Musk is an enormous, you know, coal-fired plant of a more dangerous emission. And that is an economy that rewards grabbing people's attention regardless of how damaging or divisive the things you say are.

Scott Galloway: That's a really good insight. And I think this guy is literally the biggest coal-fired plan in history. And that is his own needs, an economy that rewards attention over why you're getting that attention has resulted in a level of rhetoric and a desperate need to command the news every day that quite frankly is not productive, it's divisive. And I think this guy is literally the biggest coal-fired plan in history. And that is his own needs, an economy that rewards attention over why you're getting that attention has resulted in a level of rhetoric and a desperate need to command the news every day that quite frankly is not productive, it's divisive.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: And whether it's weighing in on Dilbert or accusing a former head of safety who he didn't like of a sex crime with his Ph.D. thesis. Those are noxious emissions that are damaging to the world.

Kara Swisher: I like this metaphor a lot.

Scott Galloway: So I'm all on this thing because if you think about it, Biden's climate bill, it claims that we'll be able to reduce emissions in the U.S. by 40%. Would it even be possible if and when we recognize how dangerous the emissions are from an attention-based economy, would it even be possible at this point to reduce divisiveness, polarization, and teen depression by 40%? No. Could we even do it? No. So, you know, so while he's off talking about this Jesus complex of saving the world from carbon, I'm not, I think we should be worried about climate change. I don't think, you know, I think we're addressing it. And that's not to absolve us of making the requisite investments. But I think we have a better chance. I think the most dangerous emission in the world is this emission of rage.

Kara Swisher: I would agree. I think, look, of all the people who have changed the course of history in terms of getting us to electric, he's the keeper, right? He's the catalyst.

Scott Galloway: The catalyst, no question.

Kara Swisher: And that is his great, I met some people at this event last night, this dinner, some people who knew him pretty well. And one of them thanked me for being so tough on him. I'm like, I wish you would focus back on this stuff and in real time, like, and actually do it rather than waste his frigging time. I said, he's ruining his legacy, which is this.

Scott Galloway: Oh, yeah.

Kara Swisher: But a leader talking about this stuff is a great thing, always, right, to folks, especially the people follow. And now it looks like he's just masturbating, Master Plan 3. Like, Master Plan, stop it. Tomorrow belongs to me. I will build some Master Plan. None of these ideas are fresh and new, one. Like, literally, it was Bill Gates' book, who he spends a lot of time insulting, by the way, who's probably doing more in terms of investing and focusing on it. But Elon's got a particular ability to focus people on this. He got to run this company which is really remarkable, Tesla remarkable in manufacturing, et cetera, et cetera. It's obviously overvalued but nonetheless it's way ahead of everybody else. And like, he now humanoid robot. Okay, sure. Like why? Like focus on making Tesla better. Focus. And one of the things I'll say one more thing that we got to move on is I was, I got out of Hertz yesterday and, you know, I could pick, you can pick whatever car you want now, if you're in there, whatever gold circle. And there were lots of Teslas. I didn't want to get in one. I honestly, I was like, I'm not using a Tesla. But there was the Kia Niro. There was a Chevy EUV. And I was getting into the Kia Niro because I wanted to try it, right? They didn't charge it at Hertz. They didn't charge it up. It was down at 94 miles. I was like, hey, why don't you charge this fully so it doesn't lose the charge so I can use it? And they're like, well, you should go to your hotel and do that. And I thought, what is wrong with you people? I would have totally taken it. But I didn't know, I'm not staying somewhere where there's a charger and I didn't want to, you know, hunt around and everything. It's just, we've got to get on the plan here. And this guy could do it. And instead, he's doing the rest of this. And tomorrow, he'll, after all this, you know, master plan one, master plan two, he's going to say something stupid about, I don't know, Beyonce.

Scott Galloway: Well, then he'll be dead when he does that.

Kara Swisher: But it's just, he's such a waste of space at this point, given his promise. It's one of those. Anyway.

Scott Galloway: I love Hertz. I bought a car from Hertz because I find that buying a car from Hertz is like marrying a prostitute. It may look good on the outside, but you have no idea who's been in it or what they've done to it.

Kara Swisher: All right. Okay, fine. I have not been in a rental car. One of the nicest things about my life is I have not been in a rental car location or desk in a decade.

Scott Galloway: I either take an Uber or have a nice man pick me up in an internal combustion car getting four miles to the gallon.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. I do not. I like it. You know, several of my friends were like, why didn't you take an Uber? And I was like, I like a rental car. Anyway. You go to the thing and you rent the car? I just go. I get to the bus. I get on and I don't have to wait. I don't wait in any lines. I just get it. Anyway. Anyway, moving on. TikTok now has time limits for teenagers. The app will prompt users under 18 to enter a passcode in order to spend more than 60 minutes on the app. For users under 13, a parent will have to set a passcode in order to extend watch time, and then it will only be 30 minutes. TikTok announced the change on the same day the House committee voted to advance legislation that would empower President Biden to ban the app. Are those changes good? I mean, sure. Sure.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. I mean, what's not to like about this? They put the passcode in. It won't stop them. It's a stop sign, right? I spoke at a WPP event in Miami, and I went on this rant about, it was just so funny, you would have loved it. The woman running the event kept looking at me. So at first, I talked about Walmart being in the Bible Belt, and she looked at me and she's like, they're here, they're like stop talking. And I start talking about TikTok and she's like, they're here, stop talking.

Kara Swisher: Oh wow.

Scott Galloway: And I went into my whole TikTok should be banned trap.

Kara Swisher: Oh yeah.

Scott Galloway: So what are the nice people from TikTok? Dude, they just couldn't be nicer. They came up and they gave me a TikTok backpack for my kids.

Kara Swisher: What? Oh, nice.

Scott Galloway: And we were joking like, is there a listening device in here? Like back to the thing. There is. And by the way, I just want to be clear, every person I've met at TikTok is lovely. I would like them all to get really wealthy. I would just like to see their wealth created as a function of a spin to American investors.

Kara Swisher: Yes. You've made your opinion clear. Yes. Yeah.

Scott Galloway: But look, yeah, I think they're doing anything they can to try and spread Vaseline over the lens of the greatest propaganda tool in history. And I don't doubt it's the right move. It doesn't do anything to address the fundamental problem. And you know what's weird? I now believe, and I'm trying to find another academic to do the actual hard work or research here. I believe it's been happening the last few years. I think, and it's almost impossible to come up with the attribution, but Jonathan Haidt spent a better part of a decade to find that correlation does equal causation when it comes to social media and teen depression. I think in 10 years, someone like Jonathan Haidt is going to find that the poor feelings, the cynicism, and the general negative outlook that young people have in America is largely driven by social media, that the algorithms like to elevate. And also, also, I think they're going to find a lot of it came from TikTok. And we'll never know. We'll never know if it was intentional.

Kara Swisher: No, it was before TikTok. Facebook was doing this.

Scott Galloway: Oh, no, they're all guilty of it. They're all guilty of it. But one has it as a motive for geopolitical purposes and the others just have it as a profit motive.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, okay, but now in terms of the ban, civil liberties and digital rights groups are pushing back. Some bring up First Amendment rights and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo says the ban on a single company would be short-sighted. Any reaction to that, Scott?

Scott Galloway: Yeah, look, I don't... Michael Bennett is now calling for a ban. I think this is really just the more I think about it, spending time on TikTok and what I see. And it's just, I don't even like to go. I think a better argument or an easier way to get done would be like, well, let's just look at trade policy. What does China of our media assets and companies, what does China allow into China?

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: I had lunch with the most interesting guy. This guy named Jamil Anderlini. He's the new editor-in-chief of Politico in Europe. He's such an impressive young man. And he kind of ran me through a history of the rise of Xi Jinping and what's going on with the CCP. And it is frightening. I mean, it is really how many people have been imprisoned, how they're basically, this guy's kind of become the Putin of Asia. And I would be very, I'd just be shocked if they didn't have full-blown strategy meetings around, oh my God, we found the ultimate hypersonic missile, the ultimate defense shield, the ultimate offensive weapon and it's called TikTok. I would love to have this thing as a geopolitical weapon. Anyways. Very nice TikTok, the band, but teens will go right, will blow right through that stop sign. We'll see.

Kara Swisher: You think so? Because of the compelling, addictive nature of your terrific product that could be a propaganda, the greatest propaganda tool in history. And it also makes Scott feel bad. So anyway, let's get to our first big story. Jack Dorsey is back in the social media game, but this time he's inviting others to play. The former Twitter CEO launched his new app, Blue Sky, in the iOS app store this week. It's an invite-only beta. A review from TechCrunch shows that on the surface, it looks a lot like Twitter. But under the hood, Blue Sky does something different. It runs on an open source protocol, which gives developers the chance to build their own social media apps with their own algorithms and moderation policies. It's pick the kind of thing you want, essentially. Pick your own social media network if you don't want any Kanye, if you want lots of Kanye, whatever. It also lets users move freely between different apps. That's drawing comparisons, not all of them favorable to Mastodon, another social media network built on a different, but similar network. What's he doing here? What do you think he's doing? Everyone thinks it's not being discussed as monetization. What's the play? If anyone can make an app on this protocol, someone could just make one without ads. MyMassDown runs on donations, for example. Blue Sky started as an in-house project at Twitter while Jack was in control, and it got $13 million for R&D, I think mostly from him. So what do we think?

Scott Galloway: You know, I don't know that much about this. In general, I'm just a big fan of competition. I love the idea of multiple players coming after Twitter's launch. Jack Dorsey, you have to give him credit for being a genius product guy. But where I go is an odd place. And that is I go to corporate governance. Just another indication of just what a feckless board Twitter is. Let me get this. The CEO and the founder gets to go start a competitor. I mean, I don't like non-competes. But when the CEO who's made billions.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: I think he's still an owner.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, you're not supposed to go start a competitor.

Scott Galloway: I just can't believe the board never thought to put in a non-compete for the founder and the CEO. But anyways, I hope there's a lot of competition. I love, I'm super happy and enjoying my investment and involvement in Post. And the weird thing is-

Kara Swisher: This is Post News.

Scott Galloway: Post News, yeah. And it's just a much cleaner, friendlier, more benign, more informative place to have a dialogue around news. And what's strange is I'm really fascinated. I have been so addicted to Twitter for the better part of a decade and purposely not spending. I've reduced my time on it about 80%. I took 100% off for 60 days. Now I'm back to about 20%. And you make some observations. One, it's really good for your mental health not to be on it. And two, I can't get over it. I'm kind of back to, I looked up some people who are fairly controversial but interesting. And what you realize is you forget, you don't realize how small Twitter is until you're off it. And that it's the same people who believe that the world is that world. And it's not. And they're talking to each other and they think that the ratio or the number of likes is an indicator of veracity or truth in the world. And what you realize is it's a small group of people literally screaming at each other who are under the impression that this tiny nation called Twitter is the world. It's not. It just feels, when you go back to it, it just feels, it feels remarkably small.

Kara Swisher: I only do it every now and then. I just did a big trans rant because I'm kind of getting pissed at the New York Times coverage of trans issues, but that's neither here nor there. And then I put it on Post of course. But there are plenty of competitors. Speaking of which, former Twitter staffers are behind startup Network Spill and T2. Among the frontrunners, insiders point to Cohost, Hive Social, Discord, Post, and now Kevin Systrom who I'll be interviewing at South by Southwest. Artifact, which is more news-focused, but there's a social element to it. Discord has 150 million active users, raised nearly a billion dollars across 16 rounds. Mastodon, about 1.3 million active users, a little smaller, raised less than $100,000 in 2021, according to some reports. Hive Social by the way is about a half a million active daily users, raised less than half a million dollars. Flipboard announced this week that it's still around, by the way, that it is joining the fediverse. That's what this is called. Mastodon users are able to view their feeds in the Flipboard iOS app. So that's kind of interesting, this fediverse, which is kind of a weird word. So what do you think is going to break out? Because you do want to break out, or are they going to remain small like this?

Scott Galloway: I don't know. I feel like I'm too close to it because I'm an investor in one and I have a bias against Musk and Twitter. I don't have a feel. I'm curious what you or Casey thinks in terms of an honest. I'd love to see Walt Mossberg break all these down because whenever I read reviews of his tech, I found he was just a genius of being dispassionate.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, this is good. This is not good.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, this is good. And I can't do that with these things. I'm too close to it. What are your thoughts? What do you think the good money is on?

Kara Swisher: I don't know. I think it's all over the place. You have to settle in one suburb, I guess. I think they're all going to be small, right? And Twitter could have been the one, right? Of course, it could have been. It always remained so small. And then it got ugly. And now Masterplan runs it. So it's not good anymore. And by the way, Twitter could use some work under the hood. The site experienced at least four outages in February, according to the organization Netbox. That's compared to nine outages in all of 2022. Putting the technical errors aside, see, this is what I'm talking about. It's there, Scott. The problems are there.

Scott Galloway: Discourse is still rubbing some people the wrong way. Comedian Hasan Minhaj deactivated his account on the air this week while hosting The Daily Show. Elon didn't make Twitter terrible. Twitter has been terrible for years.

Kara Swisher: He's right. I would agree with him. You and I have talked about this a lot. He's made it terrible, you know, kind of thing. But it's just, it's just, it's just stress. The things that have been bad about it he sort of doubled down. So I don't know if the good people aren't going to just scatter to the winds and in these different things. And if there's one, and the one is probably Instagram and Facebook will continue to be for the vast majority of regular people, the place where people are. But again, I don't know how you could figure out where everybody goes, right? It's like a small town that scatters to the winds, essentially.

Scott Galloway: If you think about it, you're trying to disrupt them. Clay Christensen would say, and this is what we're trying to do at Post, you focus on a niche or an area that's not covered well and start to kind of, you know, climb up the leg, if you will, until the incumbent sees this great white in its torso is halfway in the great white's mouth. But anyways, I think in the strategy that I'm trying or that I think is the right one is to try and find responsible, fact-checked, great news organizations and say, let's try and work together to develop another source of cash flow through micropayments. I mean, I really, in my book, I'm talking about this. I really do think, and I think I got this from you, the original sin of the internet was that they built such amazing ad technology and they built such shitty micropayments technology. And if it had been, if you had said at the very beginning of the internet, all right, how are we going to finance this thing? Either through advertising or through payments, where every time you get great content or something inspiring, you either sign up for some sort of membership or you pay one cent or two cents. I'm not sure that we automatically would have assumed it would have gone advertising.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, not necessarily. And it's been so terrible for us. So I think that an opportunity is to say, okay, how do we do relationships with everyone from News Corp to UK to the BBC and figure out a way to give them some of the money for the content. Because the reality is, and I was having a conversation with a woman we know who was running this great news startup that's primarily using Instagram. And I'm like, I love you. I love your business. The problem is, whenever you're dependent upon Meta or Google for your business, you ultimately get fucked. Every one of them. Every one of them. I don't care who you are. You never hear someone saying the last decade of partnership with Meta has been great, said no company or individual ever. I'm hopeful that we move to a point where people are sort of used to in a very elegant way saying there are all these Reuters articles and most of them are free but occasionally there's one that's more in-depth and it says okay this is 25 cents. And you like click here. And to me that just is a healthier model. Anyway, we'll see. We'll see what shakes out. I think it's very hard. People are very addicted to the anger on it, on Twitter. And they're addicted to the movement. It feels like it's moving, right? There's a reason I put the trans thing up there. I wanted certain people to see it, right? But I put it over on Post. I put it over on another one. And I think probably if I had to guess, it would be Instagram will regain its status in some fashion. I'm spending more time on Instagram. I've noticed that. I'm embarrassed to say it, but I've noticed it.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, it works well.

Kara Swisher: I know under the auspices of I'm going to regret asking, what is it about the Times coverage of transgender issues that's bothered you?

Kara Swisher: Oh, well, it's not just Times coverage. Gosh, I would have to— Do we need a bigger boat? We need a bigger boat, but I wrote a very long thing. Look, the coverage that they have been doing of trans people is over and above the actual problem. So, you know, the obsession with this topic, including with Dave Chappelle. Remember when I said, Dave Chappelle, he can joke about it, but why an hour and a half? A powerful person talking an hour and a half about a topic brings attention to it.

Kara Swisher: There was a great piece in the Washington Post. I think they're doing about this, it was called, "The State is at War with Our Family, Clergy with Trans Kids Fight Back." It was about a Missouri bill. It was so fair and even-handed about this family. I think a lot of people, this topic is made more controversial to gin up political advantage. And this piece was really good. I wanted to celebrate it. Because I think the right's entire game is to get fair minded people to think it's a fair fight so they can do what they want, which is to restrict transgender health care, period, for everybody.

Kara Swisher: In fact, there's now a whole spate of new state bills restricting transgender health care for adults. That's their game. That's their actual game. So I don't mind writing about like, let's reconsider J.K. Rowling. Sure, you can do that. What's happened at the New York Times is there was a whole spate of these stories. Let's reconsider, but lots of them. And when a big company like the New York Times does it, it sets the agenda, right? And I don't say they shouldn't write it, but suddenly it's the biggest thing. Detransitioning kids is the smallest mathematical amount. People, I mean, it's the smallest math. I'm like, why don't you write about poor kids? You know, they did, but I dislike this kind of focus from very powerful people.

Kara Swisher: So what happened is a bunch of people who worked there wrote a note complaining, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And then it got into the typical, "We don't have advocates here at the New York Times and anyone who did it will be warned for signing this letter," which I always hate. But powerful news organizations never see themselves as advocates too, by over-focusing on alleged crises where none of the numbers actually bears out the excessive coverage. And they think they're being fair and they wear it like a shield, but really they want control of the people that work for them, right?

Kara Swisher: There was a quote by Astrid Herndon, as a black journalist, I've seen how charges of activism can be used to discredit journalists of underrepresented backgrounds who may come to work of reporting with a different lens. Different lens doesn't mean advocacy. I think the New York Times is just as much an advocate by picking and choosing coverage as anybody else. And I'm all for debate. I'm all for fair coverage, even if it's painful. But over coverage is happening.

Kara Swisher: And something Amanda said, and I'll stop my rant in a second, was that you wonder if anybody there has trans friends, right, at all. One of the things that reminded me of, and this is what I did write about, when I was a young gay person at the Washington Post, there were all these editors advocating, covering the side that wanted to quell and change people like me, even though they were deeply inaccurate and lying. And I was like, why are we covering people who are at their heart lying to you about what's actually the real thing? So when I pointed that out, I was called an advocate and emotional. And I was like, you're publishing errors about the gay community, errors.

Kara Swisher: I was young, and so I didn't have as much pull. But I was a news aide, and they had this egregious gay photo of an old gay trope. And I objected to it. I said, this is not the gay community. Can you just go out and do reporting on it or something? And I joked and said, we contain multitudes. There's lots of, it's a little more complex. And the right wing was just trying to fuck with gays. That's all they were doing in order to gain political advantage. So what I did is back then they didn't have digital photography. I took the photo, put it in my desk, and I left it there and they couldn't find it. And so they did, I offered a better one. It wasn't me being propagandized. It was just a more accurate photo than the one they used. And I don't regret it for a second.

Kara Swisher: So I just feel like over coverage can be advocacy in a way and they pretend it's not. That's all. So that's my rant. Thank you.

Scott Galloway: I think it's a really important point. And I think that those progressives, and I consider myself a progressive, we just play into conservatives' very ugly factions' hands by wanting to engage in an outrageous debate over "Don't Say Gay" in schools. As someone who has kids in school in Florida, as someone who has served on the board of their kid's school, this is less than a non-issue. We're trying to figure out a way to teach them the skills such that they can go on and be productive citizens. And because we get outraged by it, when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a cultural war. And this is what the Republicans want.

Scott Galloway: I have a friend who's running for re-election and asked for communication or thoughts around the transgender issue. And I'm like, I would leave it at everyone deserves dignity and rights. That's right. And we should err on the side of grace. But don't take this up as like, die on this hill. They just write a lot about it. And then they get curdled. And you know why? Because transgender people yell at them.

Kara Swisher: And I'm like, you know what? They yelled at people at Stonewall. Pesky, aren't they? That's where they focus on free speech. I was like, they're angry and they've been beaten down. And really, is this the big issue of our day? And we're playing into the hands of people who want to restrict and eliminate, not just restrict, but eliminate.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, we should move on. Our next topic is perfect on that, which is we're going to quick break. When we come back, the debate over the origins of COVID are raging again. We'll speak with a friend of Pivot, Mehdi Hassan.

[Ad Break]

Kara Swisher: Scott, we're back with the debate over the origins of COVID-19, which is still raging and still polarizing. Another thing that should have been more widely reported on all sides, by the way, in this case, unfortunately, the conspiracy theories took over. So it seems if you said lab, you know, that it was a conspiracy, the Chinese trying to kill the entire world, and it became sort of anti-Asian. But if you've forgotten, there are two dominant theories of how the pandemic got started. One, the virus jumped from animals, it's called zoonotic, to humans, most likely at a market in China. Two, the virus spread because of a lab accident in China. There's actually a third that it was a purposeful accident in China, which that's what got everybody against this second one.

Kara Swisher: The lab theory got a boost this week when The Wall Street Journal reported the Department of Energy, based on classified information, now considered the lab leak to be the more likely source. That stirred up all the finger pointing all over again, specifically at big tech companies. Republicans saying the report is proof that big tech censored information that is not true. Senator Eric Schmitt of Missouri tweeted, "We've known all along, but federal actors colluded with social media giants to censor anyone who dared to question the origins of COVID-19." GOP Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, that piece of work, tweeted, "We need accountability for both the Chinese Communist Party and big tech." I think we certainly need accountability for the Chinese Communist Party. We're not getting it.

Kara Swisher: But interestingly, there is no consensus in the intelligence community about this. Of the eight intelligence agencies, four lean towards the natural origin theory with low confidence. And the conclusion from the Department of Energy was made with low confidence. The FBI also supports the lab leak theory with medium confidence. The two remaining agencies remain undecided. We're not going to know because the Chinese government isn't going to let us know, even if it was an accident. So I don't know what to say here. It's just that Facebook and Twitter did in the early days remove posts about the virus being manmade. So thoughts, Scott?

Scott Galloway: I actually think that the GOP has a really valid point here. And I was, you know, I fell into this. The notion or the thought that this might have originated from a lab in Wuhan was immediately assigned by the left as being racist and a conspiracy theory.

Kara Swisher: Well, listen to their language when they did it. They did say it was purposefully, it was very, it had an anti-Asian tone, but go ahead.

Scott Galloway: But the truth doesn't care about your feelings and what's politically correct. And the reality is it is now a very viable cause that there is credible evidence that this may have in fact originated as most likely an accident from a lab. There were two or three lab workers hospitalized. I think it was late 2019. And I want to be clear, I was guilty of this. I immediately thought, oh my God, that's just racist, jingoist bullshit. And the reality is there was some veracity to it and we should have taken it more seriously.

Kara Swisher: Agreed.

Scott Galloway: So look, I think they have a point that it's just a politicization of everything. Every issue you immediately, almost unconsciously, identify as a left or a right, and that identifies how you feel about it. The ESG, the train accident, whatever, all the things. The whole point of academia, and one of the reasons I love the basic notion of a university, is at least initially, we're supposed to pursue the truth fearlessly, regardless of who it offends, regardless of the narrative. And I would argue that, unfortunately, we've lost a lot of that pursuit. Occasionally we get distracted from that pursuit.

Scott Galloway: When you're talking about a virus that's killed at least 7 million people, probably a lot more than that, 1.1 million in the US, regardless of what might offend you or what is seen as jingoist or racist, where the fuck did this thing come from? The thing that leads me to believe that, in fact, it did come from the lab is that if it didn't come from the lab, the Chinese would be cooperating around validating that it didn't come from the lab. But the fact that they have literally resisted any thoughtful attempt by the World Health Organization or neutral bodies to go in and investigate this means most likely they're hiding something.

Kara Swisher: I agree with you. I do think, I've read a lot on this, to go to zoonotics is the first thing you should do because typically that's where they start, right? That makes sense. But listen, remember Jon Stewart got slammed for backing the lab leak theory on Colbert in 2021. Here he is reacting to the latest news on his Apple Plus TV show. Let's listen to Jon.

[Audio clip plays] Jon Stewart: The larger problem with all of this is the inability to discuss things that are within the realm of possibility without falling into absolutes and litmus testing each other for our political allegiances as it arose from that.

Kara Swisher: What he said. Exactly what he said. And he's no, he's, I would not call him a conservative. I would call him progressive, quite heavily progressive. But he's right. He's 100% right. I think one of the problems is to entertain the lab leak theory, because it was put out as a lab leak on purpose kind of thing. And there was all that anti-Asian violence at the time, if you recall. Nonetheless, people should have calmed the fuck down and said, we don't know. I think "we don't know" might have been real good at that moment for all the agencies. And they don't, you know, at a time of crisis, people always need to explain things they don't know. And that's, to me, the real shame here. I think Jon's right. I think you're right. The most productive way to do the discourse is say, everyone calm the fuck down. We don't know why this happened, right?

Kara Swisher: One thing, David Wallace-Wells, who used to work for New York Magazine, now is at the New York Times, said that no matter the origin of COVID, and someday we will know, presumably, we should be having a conversation about lab safety.

Scott Galloway: Absolutely.

Kara Swisher: These labs are terrifying to me. Not to say that they shouldn't exist or that we shouldn't think about and do all kinds of like, what if, what if, and test things to know what could happen. But when you start doing that kind of stuff there could be trouble. Speaking of, every movie on lab leaks, Hollywood already imagined this a hundred times. And so it's really important to be able to say, I don't know, and tell the public. I think that was the greatest problem with the CDC in their response is they couldn't possibly say, we don't know.

Scott Galloway: It's just so strange what we'll go to war for and what we ignore. If something had showed up with different colored skin and a turban and killed a million Americans, we would be on the verge of, we would probably consider a nuclear strike. But because it's one three thousandth the width of a human hair, even if it came out of China, even if it was possibly deliberate, which I don't think it was, but it was reckless. If in fact it did come out of a lab, it was reckless. And they, by the way, owe the global community total transparency here and a big fucking apology and reparations if it did come out of a lab.

Scott Galloway: Also to use it as inspiration for a universal global agency around controls and general standards. Something like this, what we've seen here. What if it had been a virus that mutated faster? You literally could have wiped out a quarter of the world's population. And we all have a vested interest in transparency here because this has hurt the Chinese economy. So it just strikes me that if you want to be a global citizen, a good global citizen, I mean, we have weapons control, we have global organizations around poverty, around hunger, around whatever. It strikes me that we probably need some sort of uniform standards around lab safety.

Kara Swisher: Yep, 100%. And by the way, they should pursue both things. Zoonotic, I think we will never know probably because of the way the Chinese government is. But certainly, we've got to talk to each other more. They've got to drop the anti-Chinese stuff to be able to talk about it. It could have been our lab leak, right? So I'm not an expert on this, but we have to consider all the origins of everything and talk about it without adding anti-Asian stuff and without adding, "You're all trying to censor us." I don't think that's the case. I think these scientists try their very best. And in times of crisis, they tend to— And these tech companies too, by the way, these tech companies shouldn't be in this business of deciding this stuff, period.

Scott Galloway: I think if you go to incentives, it oftentimes explains the best likely explanation. And I do think, because if you look at the behavior of them trying to not cooperate around any investigation around the lab theory leak, that lends veracity to the notion it was a lab leak. The reason why I don't think it was intentional and no one knew this, but I actually think when we look back over history over the last 100 years, I think COVID-19 and our response to COVID-19 will be seen as a great geopolitical cause of descendants of the U.S. I think our response, our vaccines, our economic response, as harsh as it is to say, and this in no way diminishes the loss of life, I think America comes out of COVID having reestablished its dominance. And so I don't think China would have wanted to play a hand in that. But I think my point is in 2050, we're going to look back and go, you know, being very unemotional about it, COVID-19 and America's response to it helped reestablish U.S. dominance globally.

Kara Swisher: It's a really interesting thing that we certainly did make a mess along the way, though, with every issue, every single issue. But it's a perfect segue to our guest. Let's bring in our friend of Pivot. Mehdi Hassan is the author of a show on MSNBC and Peacock and the author of "Win Every Argument: The Art of Debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking." Welcome, Mehdi.

Mehdi Hasan: Good to see you. Thanks for having me, guys.

Kara Swisher: So speaking of arguments, we were just talking about the debate over the lab leak theory. You hosted some conversations about COVID's origins. When the news came out, you tweeted, "It's hard to have a good faith disagreement about a major issue if the issue itself has been hijacked by bad faith folks." Unpack that for us. We'd love your thoughts on this.

Mehdi Hasan: Yeah, a lot of people got very upset. I haven't had a response to a tweet like that from kind of crazy right-wingers for a long time. I've been trolled on that for days. I got properly ratioed. People are very upset with that tweet. I think it's because they read it as some kind of admission of a conspiracy by the liberal media to stamp out this story. When, in fact, it's the very opposite. I actually covered the lab leak story on my show back in June. I had to go back and check. June 2021, I hosted a debate between Alina Chan, who's one of the biggest lab leak proponents, and Angie Rasmussen, the virologist, who's a big critic of it. So we didn't run away from it.

Mehdi Hasan: But I have a longer memory than most people, I would like to think. I think our media culture is dominated by people with very short-term memories. There's always a reset button. I hate to go along with that. And I haven't forgotten 2020. I haven't forgotten Donald Trump standing in front of crowds shouting, "Kung flu, kung flu." I haven't forgotten Peter Navarro saying the Chinese Communist Party created it in a lab and sent Chinese people to infect the rest of the world. I haven't forgotten the Washington Times and Daily Mail running biolab, bioengineer, bioweapon stuff in January and February of 2020. So there was a lot of nonsense around this stuff.

Mehdi Hasan: It's always been plausible that it leaked out of a lab, but it was always a natural disease. No serious person ever claimed it was a bioweapon. And the problem was it was very, very quickly hijacked by the bioweapon conspiracy crowd and by the anti-China racist hawk crowd. That's undeniable. Go back, pull up the clippings, pull up the clips. I might do it on my show next week, in fact, because it frustrates me that people are acting like we should have all just sat down in March of 2020 and said, let's have a good faith, impartial, reasoned debate about whether it came from the wet market or whether it came from the Institute of Virology. That was not what was happening.

Mehdi Hasan: Donald Trump was president of the United States, trying to deflect blame for crazy deaths here in America, talking about disinfectant, and began by praising Xi, his friend, but then decided to blame China and the China virus for everything else. So it's nonsense. And by the way, one last quick point, the story that's come out this week does not vindicate anyone. It's low confidence for everything. Not even just low confidence. No one in the story is saying it was related to a military program. Tucker Carlson went on air this week and said, what did he say? He said it was engineered in a lab as part of a military bio lab. The House GOP's position is that this was related to a Chinese biological weapons program. No, the intelligence specifically says we do not believe that.

Mehdi Hasan: And by the way, only two out of the eight intelligence agencies that have looked at this say that it's lab leak. Four say it's zoonotic, from the wet market. And by the way, the two that say it's lab leak, one of them is the FBI. And I thought we don't trust the FBI anymore.

Kara Swisher: Well, they don't.

Mehdi Hasan: So there's two very viable ways this could have happened, right? And both should have been investigated. And probably all our agencies should have said, we don't know until we do know. So let's entertain both of them at the same time.

Kara Swisher: But talk about this. What is the specific case? Tell us about the argument styles and the left and the right. Because this tweet by you really did get a lot of attention.

Mehdi Hasan: So, I mean, Twitter is not the greatest place to have arguments. I keep telling myself that and I keep doing it again and again. I'm sure you're in a similar boat. I was going to have a chapter in my new book about arguing on Twitter and then I thought, well, no, maybe that's for a sequel. But look, I think what the COVID as a whole handling of the pandemic and why I actually think the right have won a lot of the messaging battles on vaccines, on masks, on lockdowns, on school closures, and now perhaps on lab leaks, is because A, the right wingers have a very clever tactic, which is to declare victory in the middle of the game when the game's not over and say we won, and allow kind of both sides media to indulge.

Mehdi Hasan: They did it on Mueller. The Mueller report. Oh, they misrepresented that before the findings were even out. And they've now left a legacy where everyone thinks the Mueller report showed no collusion or showed Trump did nothing wrong, which is not what the Mueller report shows. And I think similarly now on COVID, it's a very clever tactic to declare victory. And separately, the whole approach to pushing back against COVID mitigation measures was very cleverly framed by the right as freedom, liberty, standing up against suppression. People in America love that stuff. These are the values that appeal to Americans. And they very quickly realized that if you make something about identity and about values, you win. And liberals, leftists, progressives, members of the academic community, the scientific community, they think if we make it about the facts and the figures, just one more peer-reviewed paper, then we win. That is not how the human brain works. That's not how people, that's certainly not how Americans engage in debate or persuasion.

Kara Swisher: So your book, "Win Every Argument: The Art of Debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking," do we want to win every argument? Isn't there a need for debate or conflict to take on a level of consideration and acknowledgement of other points? It strikes me that we're in a situation now where we don't want to win every argument.

Mehdi Hasan: It's a great question. A lot of people have asked that question. So let me address it in a couple of ways. Number one, I 100% agree with you. You should not want to win every argument. I make it very clear in the dedication page on the front of the book that I do not win arguments with my wife and I don't want to win arguments with my wife. So I'm very clear about situations where you don't want to win every argument. But people have jumped on the title and said, "Win every argument? You shouldn't want to win every argument." I mean, I could have written a book called "Drive Every Car." Doesn't mean I'm telling you to go out and drive every car. Literally, I'm saying, here's a set of skills that allows you to drive every car. You can choose when is the best moment to win that argument because some people don't have a choice, Scott.

Mehdi Hasan: Some people need to win an argument. It might be a job interview. It might be something their job depends on. You might be a prosecutor in court where you have to convince this jury to stop this person you believe is a murderer from getting off. So the point of the book is to say, here is a skill set that you can learn that should help you win any argument you choose to win. Because the reason I wrote the book is because I hate when people say, "Well, you were just born this way. You came out of the womb doing this stuff." No, I'm saying actually anyone can pick up these skills. They've been around since Aristotle.

Mehdi Hasan: And just on your point about, you know, should you want to win every argument, in the big stuff these days, I think people should want to win. For example, democracy. I believe that democracy is at stake in America right now. I believe there's an existential threat to our democracy, our free press, etc. Those are arguments you cannot shy away from. Those are arguments you cannot keep your head down on. And those are arguments that my side, I would argue the pro-democracy side, is in fear of losing because we're confronted by people who've degraded our public discourse. We're confronted by gaslighters and BS merchants who aren't interested in the rules of formal debate or facts and figures. And therefore, I would like to see people who believe in democracy and freedom be equipped with the rhetorical tools to win those very vital battles.

Kara Swisher: So when you think about that, how do you have good faith disagreement? Because there doesn't seem to be any good faith. It's always a one up kind of thing and a dunk. And obviously, I've gone way off Twitter. Scott's sort of gone off Twitter. You clearly haven't. I'm just using it as the example because it is a very small little world. Speaking of echo chambers, it's the echo chamber there is. But what is a good faith? How do you have a good faith disagreement? And how do you decide when to engage and when to walk away?

Mehdi Hasan: It's a great question. And I talk a lot about the phrase good faith in the book and about the need. And I genuinely believe in good faith disagreement because I believe that democracy cannot survive without it. It's the reason I wrote the book. It's the reason why I enjoy debating and arguing and value it so much. I quote the French essayist Joseph Joubert: "It's better to debate an issue without settling it than to settle it without debating it." There's an intrinsic value to the process, to truth-seeking in that way.

Mehdi Hasan: And I think you're right. It's really tricky. People say, what is a bad faith argument? How do you define it? And, you know, it's like the Supreme Court definition of porn. You know it when you see it. There's so many different ways to engage in a bad faith argument. People who shift the goalposts, people who make claims without any evidence whatsoever, people who only engage in abusive ad hominems. Those are people you should probably walk away from. I was going to write a chapter in the book on when to walk away from an argument. I didn't. Maybe that's saved for a sequel because there are arguments that I choose not to have, to go back to Scott's earlier question. People say to me, "Would you have Marjorie Taylor Greene on your show?"

Mehdi Hasan: No, I wouldn't. I wouldn't have an argument with Marjorie Taylor Greene. It's pointless. She's a grifter. She's not interested in any facts or figures. She doesn't even believe most of what she's saying, probably. Why would I give her a platform especially on live TV to spew uninterrupted nonsense? So there are some arguments you should walk away from.

Mehdi Hasan: But good faith arguments... I mean, I write a chapter in the book on listening, right? Something we don't do in arguments. And I'm a bad listener, I say that openly in the book. My wife laughed at me when she heard I was writing a chapter on listening. Listening, empathetic listening, is a very important part of having a good faith argument. Because if you're just having a debate where you're waiting for your turn to speak, then that's not a good faith debate or argument. But if you're actually critically listening to what the other person is saying, if you're empathetically listening to what an audience is saying, for example, in a political context, then actually everyone feels like they have a stake in the conversation and everyone feels like they're going somewhere.

Mehdi Hasan: I give the example in the book of the 1992 Town Hall in Richmond, Virginia, where a questioner asks George Bush senior, Bill Clinton, and of course, ridiculously, Ross Perot, how the national debt has affected them. Bush isn't paying attention, looking at his watch, gives a nonsense answer about interest rates. Bill Clinton goes up to the woman and says, "Tell me how it's affected you." And that's the beginning of a great conversation, someone who's automatically persuaded by one person in front of them.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. So you sent us a clip of an interview you did with John Bolton. Set us up for this and what were you arguing about?

Mehdi Hasan: So John Bolton has done a lot of interviews. John Bolton is a man who I don't like, but I respect him as a debater. He's a very clever guy. You can't question his intellect, whatever else you question about him. He's been debating since his Yale days. And he agreed to come on my show in 2020. I don't know why, I was surprised. And we wanted to do an interview with him and we looked at what he was promoting, his book. And I didn't want to ask him what everyone else was asking him. I like to ask questions that other people aren't asking.

Mehdi Hasan: I looked in his book and he hadn't mentioned the fact that he gave speeches, paid speeches, for an Iranian opposition group called the MEK, who are nuts. They're a bunch of cultist misogynists. So I decided to press him on that angle.

[Clip plays]

Mehdi Hasan: How much of your antipathy towards Iran is to do with geopolitics? How much of it is to do with the fact that you've had a long association with a group called the MEK, which was once a terrorist group banned by the State Department while you worked there? You don't mention it in your book. This is really about as low as it gets.

John Bolton: The fact is that Hillary Clinton, perhaps someone you support, took the MEK off the U.S. list of terrorist organizations. How about that? I speak what I believe.

Mehdi Hasan: She took it off in 2012. You were speaking with them in 2010 when they were still a banned group.

John Bolton: Yeah, look, you're simply wrong on your facts on this.

Mehdi Hasan: No, you were there in Paris in 2010 speaking at the MEK rally when they were still a banned terrorist group, according to the State Department.

John Bolton: Nobody buys my opinion. And you can ignore that if you want. I'm very comfortable. I have never said anything other than what I believe. And we are now, sir, 20 minutes into this interview which you said was for 15. All right.

[Clip ends]

Kara Swisher: That didn't seem good.

Scott Galloway: Yes. Mehdi, can I ask a question? I don't, and I struggle with this as someone who's a podcaster and interviewing people. And there's a reason we let Kara lead the interviews. When I hear that, I feel like you're purposely putting him on his heels to score points with your liberal viewership, that you aren't having a productive conversation, that you are so aggressive there that you yourself are reducing the likelihood of a productive conversation.

Mehdi Hasan: So, obviously, I disagree with you on that. And I understand my wife actually takes a similar view to Scott, that some people don't like such confrontations. And I think the American media suffered because your point of view has dominated and we haven't had enough challenging conversations. The reason why I have partly succeeded in a career here in the US, and people like Jonathan Swan did well with their Trump interviews, is because people are quite frustrated that American interviewers have been so deferential to people in power for so long. That we engage in both-sideism and don't really call people out.

Mehdi Hasan: And not just that, but I'm talking about the tone. Yes, sometimes you do need a bit of, you could call it aggression, combativeness, belligerence, whatever it is. Someone like John Bolton, who filibusters, who has talked over and bullied interviewers for years. It took 20 years, 20 years from the Iraq war, whatever it was, 18 years at the time, for someone to ask him, as I did later in that interview, does he have any qualms? Does it rest on his conscience that tens of thousands of people died in Iraq because of him? I think those are questions that need to be asked. And a lot of American interviews, sadly, are a little uncomfortable asking such questions.

Mehdi Hasan: And I take your point about scoring points for liberal viewers. Maybe that's part of it. I'm not going to pretend otherwise that I want to get views. But I also think it's about holding people to account. I do what I do because I want to hold people to account. Otherwise, I'd go be an accountant.

Kara Swisher: Do you think you're just as tough on people from your side of the aisle, liberals, when you do that?

Mehdi Hasan: Yeah, I try to be. And in fact, liberals get very upset because sometimes they expect a kind of softball interview from a fellow liberal, especially on someone like MSNBC. No, I try and hold people to account. If you watch my exchange with Ron Klain on Biden's support for Saudi Arabia, it was a tough interview.

[Clip plays]

Mehdi Hasan: MBS, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, was behind that killing. And yet you haven't held him accountable. Why?

Ron Klain: It's been our government's longstanding policy not to personally sanction heads of state, leaders of government in countries where we have diplomatic relations.

Mehdi Hasan: He's not the head of state, though.

Ron Klain: Because we need to also...

Mehdi Hasan: Ron, he's not the head of state.

[Clip ends]

Mehdi Hasan: Jen Psaki is someone I've grilled before. She put the quote on the book saying that. Look, is it tonally the same? Not necessarily. But then, for example, Tony Blair. If Tony Blair was in front of me and someone I've never got to interview, oh, I would push him as aggressively on Iraq as I push John Bolton, regardless of the fact that he's a center-left prime minister who I once voted for. So I think there might be tone differences, but no, certain issues, people need to be pressed. I try and be tough on everyone. Obviously, certain people, Kara, the reality is, we live in an age right now where one group of politicians are particularly deceitful and offensive and bigoted. And that is reflected sometimes in the tone of my commentaries, that's a reality.

Kara Swisher: The issue is, though, it does, and I try very hard to get as many people from all sides of the puzzle and not to be both sides of them, but more to be like, at some point it degenerates into a way that's not illuminating to people in any way. And so you have to be very careful not to seem, because one of the reasons I don't watch cable that much anymore is I'm like, it's this, I know exactly what's happening. It never illuminates. It's a lot of fire, but no illumination whatsoever.

Mehdi Hasan: Well, that's not always the case. And I would say, watch my show and you've been on my show. And when you're on my show, it's certainly illuminating. So I wouldn't want people not to watch you when you appear on my show. But I would say this, look, to go back to Scott's point about is it productive? I say context is everything. We have very, very productive interviews with experts and with interesting people such as yourself on my show. But then we do have the more lively, combative interview with people like John Bolton.

Mehdi Hasan: What I would say to you, Scott, is let me turn it around. Let's say you were sitting with John Bolton talking about the MEK. What would you have asked that would have been illuminating that he would have engaged in good faith?

Scott Galloway: I would have brought up the point and I would have said, "What do you say to people who say it's hypocritical and that you're sort of bought and sold as evidenced by this?" And I would have let them respond. And I probably wouldn't... Look, you have a style and you have a show on MSNBC and I don't. So you kind of win. But when I hear that tone, and again, it's hard because it's one clip, right? And my guess is we should look at the entire body of work. But I find that that's easily going to, it sounds to me like that's going to digress into a food fight where the person doesn't trust you and it just thinks you're trying to embarrass them.

Mehdi Hasan: So here's the thing, Scott, what I would say. Number one is if you did that, he would be delighted because there's no follow-up to point out that he's lying to the viewers about when he spoke to the group.

Scott Galloway: Well, I think you can say what you said.

Mehdi Hasan: Well, that doesn't feel accurate.

Scott Galloway: So it's a tone issue.

Mehdi Hasan: That's great. But just on the wider point, Scott, that you're making, I just want to address this really important point. I say this in the book. Sometimes you're not trying to persuade the other person. I'm not really interested in whether John Bolton agrees with me. He's not going to change his mind. He's John Bolton. I am interested in the audience seeing that people in power can be held to account for their lies. They can be held to account for what they've done. And I think that's what's been missing too much from our discourse. Sometimes you're not trying to convince the other person. You're trying to convince the third person. You say the liberal audience to point score. I'm saying the American public that needs to hear some sharp conversations. And perhaps sometimes my tone is off. I'm only human. But I do think the style is very important to be tough. I do think that's important.

Kara Swisher: Okay, so let's talk about a place where it doesn't happen in social media. Tactics do change online, and we talk about different argument cells for the left and right. There's no winning on social media. It's just one dunk after the next, back and forth, and then it degenerates, you know, to what Scott was very quickly, which is no one's hearing a thing at all. So how does that change online, and why do you think that is?

Mehdi Hasan: I agree with that. That's where I would 100% agree with Scott. Twitter is a place where it does just descend into kind of mob mentality, dunking, race sharing. It's really bad. And if I wasn't so addicted to it, I would have probably cut myself off a long time ago.

Scott Galloway: 100%. You and me both, brother.

Kara Swisher: Why haven't you both?

Mehdi Hasan: I mean, it's an addiction, Kara. I don't know what to say. I'm not hiding. I've told my family. 100%. I was getting palpitations when I thought that night a few months ago it was all going to shut down because of technical problems. It's a place I both love and hate at the same time. I do think there is some value. I wouldn't write it off completely. I'm not one of these people who's like, "This hell site." It has huge advantages in terms of reaching audiences I could never reach otherwise, in terms of connecting with people I could never connect with. And some debates are really interesting.

Mehdi Hasan: Let's go back to what we started with, the lab leak debate. There are some fascinating conversations going on between scientists on Twitter right now. They're really interesting people that 10 years ago, you and I would never have been able to connect, we would have to go find some boring paper they wrote on their university website to find out what they think on this issue. Right now I can see really interesting scientists who I follow unpacking that Wall Street Journal story that Department of Energy Intelligence Assessment and making good points. So it's out there if you want to find it and be part of those more productive conversations. But sure, we're going to do the dunking along the way. That's human nature in an age of social media, sadly, right? Which cleverer people like yourself understand much more than I do about those kind of incentives.

Kara Swisher: Where do you get inspired and find you can find good information?

Mehdi Hasan: That is a great question. So good information, I'm very critical of the American media, and people know that I've been very open in my criticism, even after joining NBC. It was easy when I wasn't at NBC. But one thing I've always said is like, I can disagree with the New York Times op-ed columnist or some headline, but the investigative journalism that our media still does is the gold standard. I think some of the stuff that people at NBC News, my organization do, people at the New York Times and the Washington Post, both foreign investigative journalism and domestic, I think is hugely valuable. And that stuff still inspires me. I'm not an investigative journalist myself. I don't think I have the skillset or could ever be that person, but I have great admiration for people who break these important stories and tell us what's going on behind the scenes, whether it's in China, whether it's in the United States. So that is something that inspires me.

Mehdi Hasan: If you're talking about holding people to account, the stuff I do, then, unfortunately, it is. I do look across the pond and I look at the UK where I do think it is slightly done a bit better. And maybe something you don't like, but that's a taste opinion for me. That is the kind of stuff I enjoy watching. When I saw Ben Shapiro, the hero of the conservative debate, right, the man who puts up YouTube videos saying, "I've destroyed X, Y, or Z on a college campus," when he goes and gets interviewed by Andrew Neal and then gets a BBC British interviewer who is a conservative, who basically runs rings around him, that for me is enjoyable. I enjoy that. I'm a nerd. I enjoy that stuff.

Kara Swisher: All right. Last question. Scott and I frequently argue. That's our entire thing. I think we argue well, actually. One of the more harmless arguments is about whether my Chevy Bolt is sexy. I'd like you to tell us who's winning that argument. Is the Chevy Bolt sexy as a car?

Mehdi Hasan: I think the Chevy Bolt is as sexy as the person driving the car. And that is how I would define it.

Kara Swisher: Oh, nice.

Scott Galloway: Oh, no. God. Let me phrase the question.

Kara Swisher: Yes, you should reframe.

Mehdi Hasan: I say in the book, always reframe.

Scott Galloway: Am I more likely to get a random blowjob in a Tesla or Chevy Bolt?

Mehdi Hasan: [Laughs] This is what I have to do. He's got his head in his hands. Let's bring back John Bolton. I can't, I can't. You've literally thrown me off. I wasn't seeing that coming. And look at him, he's flustered, he's speechless. I didn't see that coming in all the media interviews I've done. I didn't get that question.

Kara Swisher: The flaccid penis joke always ends up there. Go ahead.

Mehdi Hasan: What I would say to you, Scott, is, is that joke contributing to a productive discussion and illuminating our lives or not, Scott?

Scott Galloway: You know what the answer was? The right answer was no. No right answer involves Tesla is the answer, is what I would say.

Mehdi Hasan: There you go. I agree with that.

Kara Swisher: Oh, very well done. Anyway, last question. What's the most important thing? Not winning every argument. What is the empathetic here at listening, I suspect?

Mehdi Hasan: I actually think the more important than anything else, I have a chapter on it, is confidence building. Unless you have confidence, you can't do anything. You can't listen. You can't speak. You can't engage. You can't take a position. And we lack a lot of confidence in our societies. We defer to people who are overconfident. And I talk in the book about the need to build confidence because that's the stepping stone for everything else.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, that's the explanation for Elon for sure. Anyway, the book is *Win Every Argument: The Art of Debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking*. It's available now. The Mehdi Hasan Show airs Sundays at 8 p.m. Eastern on MSNBC and Tuesdays on Peacock. Thank you so much, Mehdi. I really appreciate it.

Scott Galloway: Thanks, Mehdi. Nice to meet you.

Mehdi Hasan: Thanks, guys. I appreciate it. Even the end question. Thanks, both.

[Ad break]

Kara Swisher: Okay, Scott, let's hear some predictions.

Scott Galloway: So I think there's going to be a fairly significant punitive award to Dominion. Dominion versus News Corp. It's just shocking to me. And I don't think anyone's gonna be surprised where I imagine you've landed on this or I land on this, but you call yourself Fox News. You're the most watched news program in America and the anchors and the CEO of the company and the founder know that they're lying and they continue to lie in an environment where we have insurrections, in an environment where people don't trust each other.

Scott Galloway: And I was trying to get to the human element of this. You're 92 years old, which means there's like a one in three chance you're going to die in the next 12 months. I mean, I'm just trying to get into this guy's brain. Is it because he hates the other side so much? Is it because he sees a profit motive? What is in your head when you decide to create a culture and you make the decision that we know this isn't true, but we see an opportunity to inflame our viewers that could lead to really ugly places?

Scott Galloway: In addition, the board should be voted out because 61%... let's just go to straight corporate governance distinct to the ethics and my virtue signaling and disappointment. This company is a publicly traded company. The board is supposed to show care of duty here and protect shareholders. 61% of the shareholders are not the Murdoch family. So, let's just assume that the Murdochs have their own motives.

Kara Swisher: People don't realize that. Point that out again. They're not the controlling shareholders in that.

Scott Galloway: So I'm not even going to try and figure out what's going on between his ears. But 61% of the shareholders invested in an organization that claims to be fair and balanced. And veracity, even for Fox News, directly impacts shareholder value. They are probably going to get a billion dollar plus fine here. By the way, where these companies make all of their money or most of it in terms of high margin money in an election season is from not only Republican candidates, but Democratic candidates advertise on Fox. And guess what? They were sharing information on Biden's advertising strategy with Jared Kushner.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: So there are so many things distinct of the ethics that are going to really damage the 61% of shareholders that aren't the Murdochs that the board really should be taking to account here. You are not doing your job. You are not representing stakeholders here. Yeah, they're shitty managers for sure.

Scott Galloway: So my prediction is one, there's going to be a serious award here. This is a very high hurdle to clear, and Dominion's lawyers have cleared it. I mean, they have presented so much evidence that they acted in bad faith. They knew they were spreading misinformation. They knew this would hurt Dominion. They knew they were lying. They had information that showed that this was not the truth, and they decided to engage in an editorial strategy to spread these falsehoods. They will get, in my opinion, my prediction is it's going to be a large, not only a large monetary award, punitive award, but you're going to see some board members rightfully be kicked out of the board here. There is no way you can be a board member of a media organization and not have heads roll when you have this type of reckless behavior, this negligence that results in this sort of shareholder damage.

Kara Swisher: I don't know. I've seen some pretty bad boards. Look it over at Tesla. It might be me just like screaming into the wind. Yeah, it's a very high bar. I mean, it's interesting. I've read all the various and sundry debates among media lawyers, and some of them think this is a slam dunk. Others do not. It's a very high bar. We'll see. I think they certainly deserve it, and it's a jury trial, but they'll keep appealing it all over the place. The good thing about it is it will distract them and the rest of his life Rupert Murdoch will be in lawsuits over this. There will be shareholder lawsuits for the next decade. It will occupy him until he's in the ground. And so good. That's what's going to happen. Probably one of the executives will have to go, like Suzanne Scott or someone like that. But this is what they're going to be doing the rest of their pitiful lives. So that's my feeling.

Scott Galloway: So anyway, this company is not backing off, FYI. They haven't and they won't. And they shouldn't. So anyway, great prediction. That's a really great prediction. We'll see.

Kara Swisher: We want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business, tech, or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. Scott, that's the show.

Scott Galloway: I like our arguing. I think it's actually okay. It's all right.

Kara Swisher: That's right.

Scott Galloway: If we're wrong, I don't want to be right, Kara.

Kara Swisher: That's correct. And we'll be back on Tuesday for more. Will you read us out?

Scott Galloway: Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Intertop engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Neil Saverio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. My good friend Scott Sabah is not feeling well. I am wishing him strength and good health.