Twitter’s Reorg, Comedians v. Spotify, and Friends of Pivot Charlie Warzel and Anne Helen Peterson

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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 inside Scott Galloway's lair in New York.

Scott Galloway: And did a male escort named Patrick show up with a bottle of Jack, some starch, and some cough syrup? Because if you did, just tell him next week.

Kara Swisher: I did. I told him you'll be here later in the week to deal with him. He was lovely.

Scott Galloway: I've got to have my hobbies, Kara. I've got to have my hobbies.

Kara Swisher: I know. It's lovely. Thank you for letting us stay here. We completely trashed the place, as I said. All your houseplants have died.

Scott Galloway: Are you going Johnny Depp on me?

Kara Swisher: Yes, I'm going Johnny Depp.

Scott Galloway: Are you going Johnny Depp? Are you trashing the place?

Kara Swisher: It's hard to trash it, though. It's a very lovely apartment. It's so pretty. I wouldn't want to do anything to it. But I have to say, Claire has gotten very used to it. That's all I have to say. She likes living the big life, and she's enjoying it. She's running around in circles throughout. She's decided your son's room is her room. So we're not leaving. We're going to squat. We're squatting. What do you think about that? And also, there's nobody in this building. It's just us.

Scott Galloway: No, no one lives there. It's like one of those buildings in Mayfair where just literally no one's there.

Kara Swisher: No, the doormen are like, oh, look, people with children. It's like, anyway, it's really interesting. Now, occasionally I wake up there and there's no one around and there's nothing. And I'm like, did I overdose on ED drugs and I'm in heaven or hell right now? Because there's literally just nobody. Anyway, we're enjoying looking at your Netflix playlist and your other various playlists and things like that.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. I really like, you know, Eat, Pray, Love is pretty much on everyone. And it's nice. It's very nice.

Kara Swisher: That and Riverdale.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, Riverdale.

Kara Swisher: No, Riverdale wasn't on there. I just want to say not.

Scott Galloway: Well, no, it wasn't. It was not in your playlist.

Kara Swisher: I very much enjoy this total violation of my privacy being shared across the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Scott Galloway: No problem. I'm not going to talk about Inside Your Closets. I didn't actually go Inside Your Closets.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, so today we have a lot to talk about. We've got a lot to talk about. There's things happening at Twitter. We're going to speak about the future of work with Anne Ellen Peterson and Charlie Wartzel. And we're going to talk about comedians and all kinds of things. But let's start first with what happened to Chris Cuomo very briefly. Cuomo, Chris Cuomo, we should point out, has now been terminated here at CNN. That's the latest breaking news. He got fired, as I said he would. They fired him after they found additional information in his review of his behavior.

Scott Galloway: You were right again.

Kara Swisher: Well, about this kind of stuff. It's kind of obvious where this was headed. But I think there was a wrench thrown in here. Jody Cantor and others had a story at the New York Times, a reference to accusations of sexual misconduct from a junior colleague in another network, presumably ABC, where he used to work. And just it ended the way it ended. There you have it. Now it's a question of who's going to take over for him. What do you think?

Scott Galloway: Well, you know who I got a nice Hanukkah greeting from yesterday was who I hope is Steve Young coming off the bench for Joe Montana is Michael Smirconish.

Kara Swisher: Oh.

Scott Galloway: So supposedly he's, I don't know if he's taking over. But anyways, I'm an enormous fan of Michael Smirconish. I think he's one of those guys that kind of does the work. And not only that, he broadcasts from Philadelphia, which is kind of a gangster move.

Kara Swisher: Interesting. I suspect it's going to be Jake Tapper. That would be my guess.

Scott Galloway: Jake? JT?

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Jake Tapper? They need a handsome man to replace a handsome man.

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: No, Jake is good. Or Nicole Wallace. Brian Stelter wants it. I think it should be us. I think they should put us in Prime time.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. What do you think? Get us off of the Plus.

Kara Swisher: Get you off of Plus and move you right to the big.

Scott Galloway: You want the play. You don't want advertising. You don't want to be foisting opioid-induced constipation meds on America.

Kara Swisher: That's true. And if we just want to go 10 minutes or 30 minutes, you literally – so I'm bragging now. I do think I had opportunities at the network and on Plus, and I so, so much prefer to be on streaming than on ad-supported. I'm just saying.

Scott Galloway: I think we would cause, like, a massive storm, and then we would be gone, like, completely.

Kara Swisher: I think we would do something bad. I think that's why.

Scott Galloway: If you're going to go down, go down with all guns blazing.

Kara Swisher: Well, it couldn't be worse. Right? Could it be worse than some of the other anchors? Come on. We could keep up. We'd be in Daily Mail all the time.

Scott Galloway: Okay. What happens at CNN in a year happens at Fox. We're not going to go with it. We're not going to do compares. I had a little argument with someone. They're comparing to Fox. I'm like, let's not just remove them from the experiment here because they're not normal. They let them go on campaign rallies. They have different rules over there at Fox. So it's not the same thing. These are normal rules that are going on there.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, Nonetheless, I was correct. Anyway, also speaking of money, Donald Trump's media group says it raised a billion dollars from investors. I question.

Scott Galloway: That's a lot of money.

Kara Swisher: The investors' identities have not been disclosed. Probably most of Saudi Arabia would be my guess. Also this week, Trump's yet to launch social network True Social. Acknowledged that its source code comes from another social network, not a surprise, called Mastodon, which is a disturbing. So Donald Trump's lied about his finances almost continually in his life. And, of course, there are repercussions for lying this time. But do you think he raised this amount of money, Scott? You raise money all the time. That's a lot of money.

Scott Galloway: That's an enormous amount of money. Yeah, I don't – well, one, I wouldn't be at all surprised if we found out that he's exaggerating slash lying. That would be sort of in character. But I'm also – I'm inclined to believe he could raise a billion dollars. A guy like Donald Trump could be the anchor for a conservative social network. People do like the idea or people are drawn to the notion that social media has become too consolidated and there's enough people who would be drawn to another network. And if you were going to try and start a politically based social media network, he would be the premier get. And he is. And he's taking – he's trying to take advantage of that and he's raised a billion dollars. My guess is the SPAC – I don't know if he's putting it into the SPAC or this new company must be putting it into his existing SPAC. If the stock runs up and we find out he's selling like a madman. I don't think this – this is – I don't want to – the pump and dump was sort of licensing to a certain extent. He already does his buildings, puts his name on it, sells the condos, gets it. So I don't – the answer is I'm not shocked he's raised a billion dollars. I think this is going to be a company that's not going to succeed because he's just not known as a great operator. What do you think?

Kara Swisher: I think it's just – he's just the front. It's the licensing. It's like Trump stakes and it will either go or – I think it's very hard to create. I know this idea that Twitter is putting out, which is Blue Sky, which is to create lots of social networks is kind of an interesting one. I think these things tend to coalesce around one place. And this will all be conservatives yelling at each other, essentially. And I think that's a problem, no matter whether it's this or Getter or Parler. It's not as fun when everybody's not there. And I don't think everyone's going to join True Social, except for just looking at the traffic accident that is Donald Trump on the Internet. I think he has to get back on Twitter if maybe he has a chance.

Scott Galloway: You know one of his big supporters is one of the big owners at Elliott obviously so I mean that's where he has to go back to so I don't it's going to be a lot of money being flushed I mean I don't I know the guys I don't know I don't think they're gonna get anywhere near this or maybe no no no no Elliott's in Twitter Elliott's in Twitter but I think he's got to get back on Twitter that's really it that's the game it's the game and I think these things tend to coalesce around a single network as much as Twitter tries hard not to be that or was doing things that are trying to create more. There's just one network and it's where everybody is. And I just don't see, you can't make a party happen, right? Like you can't make a, I don't know. Unless the dog is there with his prostitute, Patrick.

Kara Swisher: Well, you know, he's become our new sitter for the kids. It's very exciting.

Scott Galloway: Patrick?

Kara Swisher: Yeah, Patrick.

Scott Galloway: He's great and very good looking.

Kara Swisher: In any case, I think this is going to go down and he's going to grab some money. It's a money grab by Donald Trump. And I don't think he cares one whit how he makes money. You know, his SPAC, Digital World Acquisition Corps, you know, the SPACs traded about 10 bucks and announced their target. The thing announced what it was doing. It ran to 175, and now it's at 45. I mean, this is just kind of crazy town. By the way, SPACs are coming undone, but different story. People want to own a piece of Donald Trump. All the little MAGA people can buy a piece of it, whatever. There's one born every minute, as they say. So, whatever. Let's see if they make something, I doubt it. That would be my, I would bet against it becoming anything of substance.

Kara Swisher: But speaking of terrible stories, the parents of the Michigan school shooting suspect have been charged with involuntary manslaughter. These parents are really quite horrible. Police launched a manhunt when they failed to appear. They went on the run for their arrangement. I mean, they're denying they did that, but they were found in a basement of some, I don't know, storage room or whatever. After being arrested, parents both entered pleas of not guilty. Prosecutors say The parents allowed their son free access to the gun used in the shooting. It sounds like they ignored warnings from the school. There were civil lawsuits against the shooter's parent in Columbine. What do you think about this? Seems particularly egregious. This is so sad. And it feels preventable, but maybe not. I don't know.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I think I think every parent is sort of your worst nightmare. Right. The where I think we'll go, though, is the first order stories will be about gun gun control. But I really think this brings up a host of other issues. And one is I think we have totally conflated our liberties with a lack of citizenship and selfishness. And I think this reflects an ongoing trend where that famous quarterback that people look up to has decided not to be honest about his COVID status and takes away people's autonomy. And when you're parents and you ignore – I mean, other than showing up with a fully loaded semi-automatic pistol and saying, I'm going to school to kill my classmates right now. I mean, do you realize my understanding is that –

Kara Swisher: Yeah, he seemed to be writing that on pieces of paper. When it hit the news that there was an active shooter.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. The mother thought it was him. His mother texted him.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. And said, don't do it. Right.

Scott Galloway: So, it sounds as if they knew the kid was not only – I mean.

Kara Swisher: I mean, it's such an – at some point, your dereliction of duty or responsibility to each other, at some point, you become so derelict, it becomes reckless endangerment of other people. And you are criminally liable.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. And I think this is – I mean it's going to raise a host of issues and that is are we as Americans ignoring our responsibility to each other and just a basic citizenship in the pursuit of liberty, whether it's your right to own guns and be part of gun culture or your right to show up to a restaurant even though you haven't been vaccinated or tested in the last 24 hours. And then the other thing that's going to bring up, Kara, and we deal with this a lot, I've been on the board of my kids' school and just at NYU, is the balance between the rights of parents and students and the power that schools have, and specifically teachers. The teachers kind of felt powerless here.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Well, they tried. They warned. And they couldn't – no one looked in his – I suspect the teachers didn't want to do that, like didn't want to overstep with the parents there. The parents didn't look in his backpack. And then they allowed the parents to leave without taking the kid. And they probably felt they couldn't force them into it. They didn't want to get into a beef with these parents who sounded insane. And so, yeah, you're right. They have powerlessness. And how are they to know? I mean, there was a good article in the Times about how it was debating how are they to know that this kid was, you know, about to go off. And it was an interesting article because some people said they should have known. Other people said, you know, it's really hard. A lot of people make threats and it's nothing. I think, unfortunately, everyone's going to have to be on high alert every time now, right? Like every possible. But to me, if someone did a thing saying, I can't stop the thoughts and I want to shoot everybody and I just got a gun.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, and I'm searching for ammunition in class.

Kara Swisher: Searching for ammunition, yeah.

Scott Galloway: I mean, I'll tell you one thing. And, again, it brings us to so many issues. There's such an incredible divide whose gulf is broadening between public and private schools. And public schools just don't have the resources. They're intimidated. And not only that, wealthy parents who have the resources to be more engaged in schools and can be more thoughtful around the nuance are all pulling their kids out of the public system and putting in the private schools. And the key, there's been a lot of studies done on K through 12. And what's a greater indicator of success in a school is not even resources. It's parental engagement.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: Guns. If there were a state that said, do what you want, but if you want to live here, you can't own a gun, I would seriously consider moving to that state because I understand that people have a right to guns. I understand that hunting is important. Britain, Europe, Europe, all out of Europe. Or kind of Manhattan to a certain extent. But the reality is there's a lot of us who would just rather not get no upside from it and just have all downside. Just have to worry about our kids going to school with a mass shooter have to worry about the guy who cuts you off pulling a gun out of his glove box. We just, there's a group of us who would just rather not be around guns and aren't caught up in this both side liberal, liberal bullshit, spineless of, well, I love guns, but, well, you know what? I fucking hate guns. Not many liberals say that. Not many liberals say that. Oh, they all start off with, well, I'm a proud gun owner, but I think we need sensible gun rights. Nah, well, some politicians, that's because the pushback is so hard. It's kind of ridiculous. But nonetheless, this is, I hope they go to jail too. This is really, and the running off on the kid. Now, look, this kid's a murderer. But boy, the parents running off. And a lot of gun owners, I think, hope they go to jail. I think a lot of responsible gun owners are like.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, what the hell?

Scott Galloway: Yeah, they seem insane.

Kara Swisher: They seem insane. So many families got ruined here. Their family is done. These four families have to bury a child. I mean, it is just, oh, God. It's like, it's just, there's just nothing around it. It's just awful. I don't know.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. For one thing.

Kara Swisher: Anyway. All right, Scott, it's time for our first big story. Twitter's new CEO isn't wasting any time, even though you say they're going to sell. He's busy doing things. On Friday, Agrawal announced a massive reorg at the company. Twitter will split into three new divisions, consumer, revenue, and core product. the head of engineering and the chief design officer will step down as part of the restructuring. You know, he's making moves. He's making changes. He's being a CEO. Post said it was meant to bring together employees previously divided by job function. You know, this always happens at companies. They do by functional, then they change and they go back. This happens a lot. So getting rid of two executive ones is a big move. So what do you think?

Scott Galloway: Well, so I do have the opportunity to coach a lot of CEOs. and what I tell new CEOs is the following. I'm like, you have cloud cover to pretty much do anything you want right now. You have kind of a six-month honeymoon period. It's probably 12 months where you can make big changes in the board. The board's not going to fire you or get in your way. Or usually, I mean, they can hire you and say, we don't agree with your strategy, you're out of here. They give you a lot of rope and they expect you to make changes. And you get more license, you get license to fire people and hire people and reorg and make, you know, kind of develop your own strategy, put your own signature on things before the board starts heckling from the cheap seats based on the performance of the company. So I think this is absolutely, you know, he's obviously been thinking about this for a while. I think he has to do something. The sharks are circling here. The stock is down. Hiring an internal candidate was a little bit risky. He doesn't have the same rope everyone else has because the question is, well, you were there and, you know, this hasn't worked. Speaking of powerless he might have been powerless right

Kara Swisher: Well supposedly Jack gave his employees a lot of autonomy I think it hard not to when you not there

Scott Galloway: But he has basically six months to like make shit happen Regardless, he has to get the stock up in three to six months or this thing attracts just a ton of sharks, which will be hugely distracting for him on the board.

Kara Swisher: What do you think about changing it into these groups? It's just a lot of times you see these shakeups happen and they do this. They re – I mean, I remember Yahoo's been reorganized a hundred times and it didn't really matter. And then sometimes it's cross-functionality. Sometimes it's individual, autonomous, you know, just whatever. I'm always like, huh. But this is consumer revenue and core product. I don't quite understand it, but of course that's meant that way. What do you think needs to happen here? If this wasn't going to sell, what kind of thing would you be doing here?

Scott Galloway: So, I don't think – so, look, one of my many weaknesses as a manager is organizational strategy. I just – I'm not good at it. I don't understand it. I've always thought that the key is having direct lines of accountability and hard metrics to hold people accountable. But – so, that's my way of kind of abdicating any sort of thoughtful input on org strategy. I think Twitter's challenge and what they're not doing, what they should be doing, is I think they need a fundamental shift in business model.

Kara Swisher: Yes, you've talked about it.

Scott Galloway: Regardless of how many times you reorg, the bottom line is Twitter is subscale in a market that's increasingly consolidated and has not been able to offer a product or an audience that advertisers are willing to pay a premium for. And the result is they just have a substandard business model. And the place that this company commands or occupies is so much greater than the space it commands, so to speak. In other words, its influence is so much greater than its revenue that that says to me it's not about organizational structure. It's about fundamental shift in business model. They need to get out of this ad-driven digital market. They are subscale. They cannot compete with Google and Facebook. They have proven for the last decade they can't compete against Google or Facebook, nor have they kind of carved out these elegant niches that Pinterest and Snap have. And this is my go-to, Kara, but I think it's right. They need to start charging people or they need a subscription.

Kara Swisher: I agree. The more I think about it, I totally would pay. I'd pay for it. I'd pay for it. I'd pay for lots of things.

Scott Galloway: Well, because when I initially brought it up, you said, ah, no, no, nine, nine. I'm saving my money for Patrick.

Kara Swisher: I'm changing my mind. And that's what we do here at Pivot. You're evolving.

Scott Galloway: I'm evolving on this one because I actually would pay for, but they'd have to have better stuff. They'd have to give me better stuff if I'm paying, right? So, like, I get all the value I think I get out of Netflix. I certainly use it a lot. Like, I think about what value I get out of things I pay for. Recently, I told you I just subscribed to the Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Chronicle. And boy, the stories are a lot better than they used to be. I feel like I'm getting good value.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, they are good. I think the LA Times does a great job. The Chronicle has gotten a lot better. It's like I read a lot of their stories now. And so, and I didn't. And I find them worthwhile. And so, and worth paying for. And so, you're right. This is something I have not paid for ever. And I get so much worth out of it already. Every Sunday, I used to walk to I Enjoy Bagels. on Westwood Boulevard, pick up bagels and shmear for me and my mom, and we'd read the calendar section of the LA Times.

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: Anyways, a little majestic history.

Scott Galloway: That's a nice memory.

Kara Swisher: It is a nice memory. We'll see. I think it's good that he's making moves like this. Let's see what happens. But this is a company that's been a lot of people that are not powerful because Jack Dalton had the last say. So now they have a real live CEO, and let's see how that goes. That should help.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, it should help. I've been doing a lot of interviews, you know, because people love to call a critic.

Kara Swisher: Right.

Scott Galloway: What do you think of this new CEO's chances? I'm like, well, let's assume he's half as talented as Jack. If he's there full time, he'll be five times as good because Jack was there 10 percent. And if this guy's not half as good, but he's there 100 percent, that means he'll be five times as good. And just to give you – just to whet your appetite and shareholders and management and the board around what could actually happen here, every corporation in America, every corporation globally over $100 million, has a Twitter account, which slowly but surely they use as their vehicle for communicating to the broader world. And what if you said to them, hey, Reuters, hey, Fiat, hey, Petrobras, you're going to get to continue to use this, but we're going to provide you with these analytics that tell you the engagement around stories, what regions people are interested in, how people clearly feel, what type of people like, didn't like this type of information or press release on your new legacy 450 jet or your this Reuters story, but you're going to pay $1,000, $2,000, or $5,000 a month. That's nothing for these guys.

Kara Swisher: Yep, 100%.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, they really do undersell themselves. They really have wildly undersell themselves. In their first earnings call, they go, okay, their first earnings call, they go, 30% of the Fortune 10,000 are now paying us a monthly subscription, and the stock doubles. because the market's going to go, finally, this company is commanding the space it occupies. It's moving to recurring revenue, which would be differentiated from Google and Facebook. And the stock goes fucking crazy. Right now it trades at like, I think, four to six times revenues and the other guys trade at 15 to 20. So I'm just kind of, I'm just like, enough already. Don't reorg.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, it's very precious. It's been a very precious. Someone who just left there told me it's such a precious company inside. They're so precious about everything. And they just have to stop thinking small. That's what they do. They think small. Precious. Stop being precious. You're big. You're powerful. Anyway, we're going on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about Spotify's PowerPlay, which it is making. And then we'll talk to friends of Pivot, Charlie Wurtzel and Anne Helen Peterson about remote work. They have a new book out.

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Kara Swisher: Scott, we're back with our second big story. comedians want more money from streaming platforms, but Spotify isn't laughing. The streaming network removed the work of hundreds of comics, including Kevin Hart and Jim Gaffigan, after negotiations over royalty payments broke down. There's a really interesting new company called Spoken Giants, a rights management group representing comics wanting a royalty on copyright for its clients. Current streaming deals pay comics as performers of their work, not as writers. This whole economy of Hollywood is shifting rather dramatically. no one's got their hands out at these companies. Obviously, the music people were the first to go at people like Spotify. This has been going on for a week. We saw a similar complaint in 2007, Writers Guild strike. Writers said they weren't getting royalties from DVDs and streaming. This is not a new thing. Writers have always sort of been at the back of the line in these things, and it's a big hardball move that Spotify removes them. So what do you think?

Scott Galloway: Well, most importantly, have you noticed that in my house there's no food, just alcohol?

Kara Swisher: Yes, I have.

Scott Galloway: You have noticed that? I just wanted to get that out there. I know it's a little weird, but I'm glad it's on the table.

Kara Swisher: It's really nice. We looked up all the cost of all the champagne that we're born.

Scott Galloway: Oh, no. I have several million dollars in champagne. The dog likes the bubbles. By the way, when you have strange people over your house, if you say, would you like champagne? It's always a yes. It's always a yes, Kara.

Kara Swisher: We did not partake.

Scott Galloway: No one ever says no to champagne. Sorry to tell you.

Kara Swisher: We did that with the two small children. Help yourself. Help yourself. Anyways, I'm sorry. Spotify.

Scott Galloway: You're right. I had some of your nut butter. That's what I partake in.

Kara Swisher: I have nut butter?

Scott Galloway: Yeah, you have that butter in little packets. Everything is adorable.

Kara Swisher: I did not know that. Patrick must have left that.

Scott Galloway: Hmm. Who knows where that butter's been? I rolled around in your cashmere, and that was it. That was the entire.

Kara Swisher: I love that.

Scott Galloway: You love that term, cashmere.

Kara Swisher: Cashmere.

Scott Galloway: It's alpaca. It's alpaca. It's very soft.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. But get back to Spotify. What does this have to do with paying comedians on Spotify, et cetera?

Kara Swisher: So you're right. The whole ecosystem and compensation model is that they will actually pay talent more up front. Yes, that's how they're doing it. But they want all the rights on the back end. And this is just who has more leverage. Comedians – I think of the world of comedy. It's a bit fragmented. I would imagine Spotify has just said, look, we've made huge investments in upfront content and we want the downstream royalties. The people who represent the comedians, it all centered around this one rights group that kept charging or asking for rights. They'll work it out and they'll settle.

Scott Galloway: But there's – I think talent for the most part. I do think this is a great era for talent because of the insatiable appetite of deep-pocketed players trying to use content to increase loyalty across Amazon Prime or Apple or what have you. But the fundamental compensation metric has changed. Only the most powerful, a guy like David Chappelle, has the power to get downstream economics. Typically, it's no longer the Seinfeld model where you get paid X per episode and then all sorts of royalties on the back end. The stars of Seinfeld have gotten somewhere between half a billion and a billion in back end royalties.

Kara Swisher: Yes.

Scott Galloway: Now you no longer get that. The Simpsons' Marge person is like a billionaire. There's some crazy amount of money.

Kara Swisher: Oh, yeah. Or Matt Groening. By the way, they deserve it.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. Instead, it's "we'll pay you real cabbage up front. But boss, once it's ours, it's ours, period." And anything that comes from that. The real battle here, Kara, is going to be over intellectual property as it relates to NFTs around the IP. This is the thing with Quentin Tarantino. Pictures of him writing the script of Pulp Fiction or that iconic image. Who owns that?

Kara Swisher: Right, right. And the same thing when Oculus starts doing these Oculus things. I think what's really happening is the way it's been done is just not the way it's going to be done. Other people are copying the Netflix model, Disney and others. They wouldn't have gotten into that beef with Scarlett Johansson quite that way if they didn't want things to change rather dramatically. They don't want to keep – it is a complex way to pay people and only the people at the top get paid. Nobody understands it. There's always lawsuits about who didn't get paid where. It needs to be cleaner. But you're going to see everyone trying to grab a piece, especially writers. There are so many pieces to Hollywood that it's going to be an interesting time in the next two years to see who gets the most economic benefit from whatever they make. I don't know who's going to win or lose.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, and then there's the middle people, the middle women, the middle men, the agents taking their 8 percent and causing them to be mad.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, and at some point, do you decentralize? I have a wonderful book agent, and I actually give him more than he asks for because he gets involved in the content. But what happens to agents? For example, books. You get an advance. And they always say your agent's no good. Then you get royalties on the back end if your book outsells the initial advance. People typically say you have a shitty agent if you ever get royalties because the idea is you're supposed to get an enormous upfront advance.

Scott Galloway: Yep, yep.

Kara Swisher: And unless it's a runaway hit.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. And that just seems like – I get these royalty statements every month saying, "Oh, we're exceeding expectations in Bulgaria. Here's a check for $345." It just feels very inefficient.

Kara Swisher: It does. It does. I don't even understand it. I'm often confused. It feels like the blockchain. There's something to do with the blockchain that's going to happen here.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. 100%. It'll be interesting to see who owns – the idea of ownership. As we said, if you're an IP lawyer right now, what a great thing to go into.

Kara Swisher: My nephew is going into IP. He's at Harvard, and he's going into IP.

Scott Galloway: Oh, he's at Harvard. A white guy from a Cole family at Harvard. That's a shocker.

Kara Swisher: But he picked IP.

Scott Galloway: That's a shocker. I'm just saying he's interested in IP.

Kara Swisher: That's a shocker. He's such a sweetheart. Who says, "My aunt is a lesbian at the New York Times" for his street cred? He does not. He's lovely.

Scott Galloway: At Harvard. I feel you. My nephews are lovely. I feel you. He's going to be an IP lawyer?

Kara Swisher: The Swishers are hardworking people, no matter what. I'm just telling you, we are.

Scott Galloway: You're a group of overachievers. Lucky did something right.

Kara Swisher: Lucky did something right. I had dinner with Lucky at your apartment. She said she thinks you're still gay, by the way.

Scott Galloway: No, she said he could be.

Kara Swisher: He said he could be. Or one of those straight people. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Scott Galloway: No, no, it was very funny. She's like, "Maybe not." She wasn't sure.

Kara Swisher: She wasn't sure. But she thought you had fantastic taste.

Scott Galloway: And I said, "He does indeed." He does. She approved of your apartment.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, I fed her pizza. That's one of my hobbies that we've never explored. I love furniture.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, yeah, yeah. She loved – she thought it was quite comfortable.

Kara Swisher: I love that Lucky was in the house. How nice. She was. Yeah, she wandered down here. Anyway, I think this is an area that's going to cause a lot more problems, including for us. What do we get paid? Through every facet of anything that has IP, this is going to be an area that's changing rather drastically. People either going to Substack or owning a piece of it or renegotiating deals, and on the other side platforms having power too. Who wins in this equation? We'll see. I don't know if people get mad about knocking these comedians off or not.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. We go through a lot of our negotiations, which is very stressful for me because I realize I have got to make you very rich with your 17 children.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, you do.

Scott Galloway: The compensation here is strange, but what happens every year is what's happening in tech: whenever there's a digitization of anything, there's a consolidation. I would bet the top 1% of podcasters make 130% of the revenue. 99.5% of podcasters lose money.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I bet.

Scott Galloway: Not us.

Kara Swisher: Well, that's my point.

Scott Galloway: I would bet that the top 50 podcasters make all of the profits. It's so consolidated. What Spotify has done, which is remarkable and doesn't get the credit it deserves, is taken an entire medium—audio—and distilled it down to one icon on your smartphone. No one else has been able to do that. It's searchable. It's easy. They have tremendous power.

Kara Swisher: They do. The New York Times just launched an app today, I think it was, around audio. They have a lot of partners. I think New York Magazine is on there. I think Pivot's on there. So they're trying to create an app where there's a centralization of this stuff. You'll see a lot more of that.

Scott Galloway: Oh, really?

Kara Swisher: Yeah, we're on that app, I think. It's very exciting.

[Transition]

Kara Swisher: All right. We're going to move on to our Friends of Pivot. Charlie Warzel and Anne Helen Peterson, reporters and authors of the new book, *Out of Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working from Home*. Welcome, Charlie and Anne. Let's just get right into it. Your dog just barked and interrupted the beginning of our show. What kind of dog do you have, Anne? Let's get to the important stuff.

Anne Helen Peterson: That particular dog is an English setter mix.

Kara Swisher: Ah, very regal.

Anne Helen Peterson: Regal and noisy.

Kara Swisher: And noisy. Yeah. So let's get into working from home. That's a typical thing—people have kids or dogs or whatever. But that's sort of the top line of everything. A lot of people are changing how they're working completely and thinking about work going forward, mostly information workers, not people that actually have to show up in stores. Talk a little bit about your premise of the big problem and the bigger promise. Each of you, weigh in.

Charlie Warzel: I think we're at a really interesting moment, an inflection point. For years, knowledge workers have wanted more flexibility. They wanted to take Friday and work from home. They had a family emergency and needed to spend a couple months taking care of their parents. They were always met by employers with this idea: "If we leave the nucleus of the office, something dangerous is going to happen. Productivity will go down. Company culture will fray. The fabric of the organization will fall apart." So they were denied a lot of that flexibility for years. Now we have a situation where we were all forced into this experiment. There have been difficulties, obviously, and we're doing this during a pandemic. But some of the broader things have worked. The system has held together. Things haven't fallen apart completely. We're realizing that we can do this thing that we've been told we couldn't do because it was a red line. I think a lot of workers are coming to this idea: "What else were we told that was BS? What else about the way we work are we just doing because it makes a certain group of people feel more comfortable?" Executives or management who like butts in seats because they can see people around. That is the nugget. That is the main thing that is unlocked in a lot of people's brains—this possibility.

Kara Swisher: What is the negative part of that, though? Many companies are attached to this in-office model. There are a lot of studies showing people work too much when they're remote, when they're online all the time. Talk about the negative aspects of this shift.

Anne Helen Peterson: The negative is you just work all the time. I was well-practiced in that before the pandemic because I was an academic. Academics have had a lot of flexibility with their schedules. When I was in grad school and then a professor, I made most of my hours besides those I was teaching. What that meant was that all hours of my week were open to be colonized by work. That's where I learned a lot of my worst tendencies in terms of how I think about using my time, whether I feel like I've had a good week. When people started working from home for the first time during the pandemic, there wasn't a lot else to do. Why not work? You roll over in the morning and start working. It's 8 p.m. and you just keep working.

Scott Galloway: I'm curious. We're coming up on two years where essentially we've been working from home. What have you found getting a little deeper? Some job functions in some industries are better suited for remote work than others. Have you done any analysis or have any theses around the types of industries that are hurt least and most by the movement to remote work?

Charlie Warzel: The immediate answer is people are like, "Oh, tech is much more suitable to this. They're more nimble in how they think about work and experimenting. They're not terrified by asynchronous working. A lot of tech companies were already experimenting with this before the pandemic." But I actually think the companies that benefit most are the ones we don't associate with nimbleness. Law firms, accountancy firms, nonprofits—things that are very staid or traditional in the fact that they used to be "we are in the office for these certain hours and this is how we work." Opening the door to thinking about, "Well, what if we work a slightly different way? What if we think about whether we need a receptionist? If we're going to have an extra person, what will their role be? What if we start to reconsider the billable hour?" Those are larger paradigm shifts that are really important right now.

Kara Swisher: People do want to go into the office, Charlie. Men and people over 50 support returning to the office most. Do offices work better for some people than others? Scott has a premise that young people should be in an office setting for not just dating, but socialization. I know having kids in school, physical school is better. There's no question over remote. Is there some reason why there's this difference? Do some people benefit from being in the office?

Charlie Warzel: Yeah. The conversation gets very binary very quickly—"Are we all going to be in the office? Are we all going to be dragged back in?" It's not the case. Everyone works differently. There are reasons. Everyone's brain is different. There are plenty of people who want to be in there, who benefit from it. I'm one of those people. I start to feel detached from an organization if I am away from the nerve center for too long. It starts to affect my performance because I feel like I'm not a part of that organization. It can be a little dangerous for me professionally. When I was at the Times with you, I would come into the headquarters once a quarter or something like that. I think that's important. If we adopt this binary mentality, it's going to be even more painful because everyone works differently. I would say, though, that the culture benefits a very specific type of person. There is a person at the top whose job is probably the most fuzzy in terms of output. Some management is just very hands-on. It's hard to say what the tangible product is at the end of the day outside of the bottom line. Some of that product is the way you relate with employees. Those people—I feel for them. It's a little bit scary. Their job completely changes.

Scott Galloway: I would love to put forward a couple hypotheses and you guys confirm or nullify them based on your research. If you think about putting on makeup, blow drying your hair, putting on a pantsuit or a suit, commuting on the Long Island Railroad, you're talking potentially about 10 hours a week. The average cost to put someone in a steel tower—this amalgam of steel, glass, and asbestos—is between $25,000 and $30,000 a year for security, the building, and snacks. So $30,000 per employee, 10 hours a week. We keep looking at this through the lens of reduced productivity. Isn't this the most accretive productivity tool in history that we have decided to make everyone? If I start from an additional 10 hours and an additional $25,000 for me to split with all my employees who have gone remote, don't we start from a position of strength? Isn't this an unbelievable unlock?

Anne Helen Peterson: Yeah, you just made the argument. We can quote you in the end of the book where we have this letter to employers that's basically like, "Why not do this now?" What are you losing? The one thing is that within that scenario, you have the capacity for employers to look at that money saved and say, "We're not going to funnel this back into supplying our workers with any sort of ergonomical setup at home. We're not going to help fund third spaces so people can get out of their homes. Instead, we're just going to cut it from our budget, use it to save money, and then start surveilling employees on their computers."

Kara Swisher: Talk about the surveilling. I remember Bloomberg. They sort of plugged in and out and they'd have to always say where they were. I found that really disturbing. Now employers can really follow what people are doing keystroke by keystroke. The remote work divide is going to be very real. You mentioned at the beginning, if you're a chef, you can't work remotely. There is an inequality right there. But within knowledge workers, the people who get to work remotely, there's going to be a serious inequality that's going to have to be monitored or codified. You're going to get the crappy bosses who don't trust their employees who install keyboard monitoring software. You have people even more chained to their desk and less free during their work days than they were before. Going back to the point about unlocking productivity, unlocking more hours—if you look long term, it is such a benefit for companies to have their employees happier or feel like they have more flexibility in their lives. It's ridiculous to me that people don't see the long-term value of employees not being miserable all the time at work.

Scott Galloway: Mm-hmm. I have two more hypotheses I want your response to. If you want to get a group of people in denial together, get the owners of office buildings together. Supposedly, we all can't wait to get back to the office. You're talking about a multi-trillion dollar asset class. There's this narrative that we want to get back. I read somewhere that we're at 34% back in the office. Tell me how this isn't one of the greatest destructions in demand and value of one of the largest asset classes in the world—commercial real estate. How on earth does this space, other than the really top-shelf space that Google wants, not get absolutely the shit kicked out of it?

Anne Helen Peterson: Totally. I was on a podcast six months ago with someone who was making the case to go back into the office. This was the CEO. He just kept talking about, "But what about the people who own this real estate? They're going to get totally screwed." That was his case to try to get workers back in the office.

Kara Swisher: We're worried about them? We care about them? You wouldn't worry about the people in the stores and in the sandwich places.

Anne Helen Peterson: Yeah, it trickles down. We address this in the book. This is where you need municipalities and also people who own these buildings to start thinking in innovative and imaginative ways about the way forward.

Kara Swisher: Homes, right?

Anne Helen Peterson: Well, and there's lots of discussion about what you can do with one of these buildings. Is it transferable? Can you turn them into co-working spaces? Can they be more like a WeWork than something that is owned and leased by the companies? Right now, people are so stuck on this idea of wedging people back into the old way of doing things instead of actually trying to think about anything interesting.

Scott Galloway: The second order effect that I'm most fascinated with—and people don't want to talk about it because they immediately go to some horrific situations of abuse of power—is that one in three relationships begin at work. When we don't have that, when people aren't meeting that way, aren't we going to see everything from a decline in birth rates to delays in household formation to a massive increase in online dating, which leads to an increase in what I call mating inequality? People don't like to admit that they met their wife or husband at work because everyone raises their eyebrows like it was someone predatory. 99% of relationships that begin at work don't involve something predatory or terrible. It's school, it's work, and then it's online—those are the three buckets where people meet others. What happens?

Anne Helen Peterson: I love this question, first of all, because Charlie and I met at work when we were at BuzzFeed.

Kara Swisher: Okay.

Anne Helen Peterson: That was also a time in my life where I had no other friends outside of BuzzFeed. A lot of my friends today are from work. This also happened when I was in academia. I remember trying to date when I was in grad school and closing the online dating bucket to just people who were also in grad school at the University of Texas because I was like, "No one else can understand my life." That's part of the reason you start dating someone at work. It's an opportunity to meet someone, but also the rhythms of your day and the expectations of your profession—it's easier to understand that when it's someone working alongside you. I will say, though, that this was not how it used to be. People primarily met their partners through groups outside of work. That was in part because women weren't in the workplace. But it was church, it was community groups. Those communities, those agoras, aren't coming back. This is the primary argument of the book: one of the reasons we don't meet anyone else outside of our workplaces and we don't have friends outside of our workplaces is because we work all the time. The only way to rebuild these loci of collectivism is to stop working all the time. To stop having our bodies in the workspace, but also to stop devoting all of our time to those two principal time consumers for middle class people: your job and parenting.

Kara Swisher: Right. Absolutely. Last question. You both went remote years before the pandemic. So did I. I have not been in the office forever. Charlie, I don't think I even went into the New York Times maybe once. It's a nice building.

Charlie Warzel: So far?

Kara Swisher: So far. I don't like buildings. Do you recognize any of the struggles everyone went through the last two years? Each of you, give us a piece of advice to pay attention to as this moves forward. I think this is done. I think people are not going to be going back into work. Even though a lot of people have called me from the Times saying, "I kind of like being in the office." That's a newspaper environment. But talk about what advice each of you would give. Charlie, you start.

Charlie Warzel: If you're going to commit to having a remote work environment, then use it. The thing I did in 2017 was I worked all the time because I was worried about losing the privilege of working remotely. So all I did was have a longer work day from home. Actually using a flexible work environment means changing your day fundamentally. Figure out the things in your day that you need, that you want to do that make it better, more precious—the rhythms of your life that you need. For me, it's working out in the middle of the day. It helps center everything. I build the whole day around preserving a small block of time in the middle of it that, if I was in an office, would be impossible.

Scott Galloway: Charlie, could you take your shirt off? Is that inappropriate, Kara? Yes, Chris Cuomo.

Kara Swisher: Listen. I'm sorry, Charlie. Go ahead.

Charlie Warzel: I have a chest for radio.

Scott Galloway: Sorry. This is what I deal with.

Kara Swisher: Thank God we're not in the office because right now I'd be in HR.

Charlie Warzel: No, honestly, it's just about figuring out how to protect your time and your work day. If you're making use of a remote lifestyle, it should be fundamentally different than it is in the office. Otherwise, you're not really gaining the benefits. You're just porting your job over to your house. Whether it's kids or working out or whatever—the big thing I want to do with my day is I need to be there every morning at drop-off or pick up with the kids. You arrange the day around something like that. That would be my first piece of advice.

Kara Swisher: All right. Anne?

Anne Helen Peterson: My big piece of advice is that whatever you were doing the last two years, that's not the future of flexible work. I get a lot of people who respond to a piece saying, "I'm totally on board with everything you're saying, but I'm so lonely at home." This pandemic is eventually going to end. You're going to be able to work at your friend's kitchen table. You're going to be able to go to a coffee shop. You're going to have third spaces. You're going to go into the office when and if that's appropriate. Also, we will have more accessible and reliable child care, because that is a huge thing that has made working from home difficult. Hopefully we can change that with systemic changes. Otherwise, there's a whole lot of exciting changes that are possible. We have to be able to imagine them.

Scott Galloway: I'm absolutely fascinated by this topic. I think of all these incredible second order effects. We talk a lot about burnout amongst young people. Isn't some of it just leading up to these jobs? Kids enter work burned out. This is a little bit outside of your domain, but you seem like thoughtful people, so I'm going to ask it anyway. I'm also very good at pivoting every question to a story about me. My 14-year-old is working all the goddamn time between studying for the SSAT or the pre-SAT, trying to figure out a way to get into the right high school so we can get them into the right college. It's out of control. I wonder if by the time people show up at work, they're already burned out. It's not that they're burned out after two or three years of Morgan Stanley or McKinsey. They're burned out from being on this hamster wheel since the age of 12. Have you seen anyone take advantage of the remote work trend to try and figure out a way to decrease this burnout among young people? Are young people just complainers? What is the relationship between remote work and the burnout phenomenon?

Charlie Warzel: I can speak personally that this is what happened to me. I was on the hamster wheel very early—very competitive high school and all that. One thing I'm seeing from younger people and the way remote work can play into this is when you come into an office and you've never met anyone, you have a different relationship to the space. You can kind of see some of the BS for what it really is. There are a lot of people who are looking at this—what I'm most heartened by with Gen Z coming into the workforce is this real skepticism of careers in general. They're saying, "Okay, so I give everything I have all the time to this organization for 40 years, and afterward I get 10 years to myself to do the things I want to do that I put off this whole time after being on the hamster wheel and studying for the PSATs and learning how to play the oboe because it's good for college admissions?" They're like, "That's a bad deal." I really like that idea because that's how you take a little bit of that power back—you start to question the fundamental deal at the heart of it.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, exactly.

Charlie Warzel: Remote work isn't the genesis of that necessarily. I think that's a generational thing. But it helps you see the office and your workplace for what it is: a collection of people groping around in the dark trying to figure out what to do.

Kara Swisher: Anne, last word.

Anne Helen Peterson: A lot of millennials kept that feeling—"What is going on? Is this the rest of my life?"—that existential crisis at bay longer.

Anne Helen Peterson: Right. Because the recession forced us to just put our heads down and work. I think a lot of people, that's just what they do. You put your head down at work because precarity forces you to. Millennials are experiencing that come to Jesus moment, for lack of a better word, in part because of the pandemic now in their late 30s, and especially because they're dealing with the intersection of these work thoughts with parenting as well, and the overwhelming work and exhaustion of contemporary parenting. Whereas I think Gen Z is coming to this realization a little bit younger. I'm really interested to see where it goes.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I think it's fascinating, including with UBI. All kinds of trends are all sort of happening all at the same time. It is a really fascinating time. We should all work less except for me. I like to work. I happen to like it. And I like parenting. So here I am for the rest of my life. Anyway, the book is called *Out of Office*. It's a terrific book. Anne and Charlie, thank you so much.

Anne Helen Peterson: Thanks for having us.

Charlie Warzel: Thank you.

Kara Swisher: All right, Scott, that was fascinating. Should we work less? We work kind of hard, don't we?

Scott Galloway: I think there's a population of people, and I would include both of us in this population, that decide to work a lot because we either—

Kara Swisher: I love it.

Scott Galloway: Well, A, you love it. I do it because I want to be more relevant and attractive to other people and have bling. But whatever your reason, there's a group of people that just want to work a lot. I don't think remote work unlocks a lot of opportunities for self-care and care. But I also think it's an unlock if you want to be more productive and work a lot. More importantly, I have a story about the University of Texas where the professor went. Do you want to hear my story about the University of Texas?

Kara Swisher: Go ahead.

Scott Galloway: I applied to nine business schools. I got into three. UT gave me a conditional acceptance. I was so excited because, being the responsible young man I was, I wanted to go back to graduate school for arrested adolescence. I wanted to go for football and partying. So I thought, "Oh, I'm going to go to the University of Texas." I enrolled at the University of Texas, the McCombs School. And I fell in love, Kara. I said to my girlfriend, the woman of my dreams, "Look, I'm going to the University of Texas. You should apply there." She said, "I'm going to Berkeley for graduate school." I said, "Well, I'm going to UT." She said, "Well, I'm going to Berkeley." I said, "Well, I'm going to Berkeley." Anyways, I followed her. I was supposed to go to the University of Texas, and I ended up following her to Berkeley.

Kara Swisher: You missed that party at the moment. You missed that, yeah. Hook 'em Horns.

Scott Galloway: Hook 'em Horns. And now I love the Haas School. Absolutely love the Haas School. You never know where life is going to take you, Kara. Never know it. Look at you. Look at me. You're in a loft with sharp objects with several kids.

Kara Swisher: I know. That's true. Who knew? I know exactly where I'm going at all times. Anyway, that was really interesting. What's happening with work is very interesting.

Scott Galloway: It's fascinating. It's fascinating. It really is interesting. It's going to have a lot of second-order effects. I'm telling you, people aren't thinking about the implications on society.

Kara Swisher: Third order. That's a thing. Fourth order. Fifth order. Yeah. It's going to be really interesting. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for Wins and Fails.

[Ad break]

Kara Swisher: Okay, Scott, Wins and Fails. You start.

Scott Galloway: My win is a distinguished life of honor and service: Senator Bob Dole. Born in Kansas, recruited to the Jayhawks on scholarships for football, baseball, and basketball—an incredible athlete. Then he signed up for the army and was severely injured in Italy. A shell lodged in his shoulder and then exploded, shattering his spine. He never really reclaimed use of his left arm. He claims, or credits, his surgeon—a survivor of the Armenian genocide—with telling him, "You can't focus on what you've lost. You have to focus on what you have." He supposedly credits him with having a greater influence on his life than any one of his family members. He went on to be a great senator, the Republican nominee for president in 1996. He was always partisan, but he was blunt, humorous, and always willing to reach across the aisle to try and get things done. When you think about how the Republican Party has morphed—this is a guy who was very conservative, but in 1964 and 1968 voted for the Civil Rights Acts, voted for the Voter Rights Act. He was what Republicans were supposed to be: about freedom and about liberty for everybody. I think the Republican Party has lost a lot of real heroes lately: John McCain, George H.W. Bush, and Bob Dole. I was thinking about what I like so much about these leaders, because I disagree with almost every one of their policies. And it's the thing that we've really lost here. What these three individuals had: John McCain was shot down in Vietnam and tortured. George H.W. Bush was shot down in a fighter bomber and had a submarine rescue him out of the water. Bob Dole, obviously a war hero. When he was shot, he was so badly injured. In the fog of war, the medics got to him and said, "We can't get this guy out of here. He's paralyzed. We can't carry him." You know what they did? They said, "What's the maximum amount of morphine we could give him to be comfortable before he dies?" Then, in his own blood, they marked on his forehead "M" for morphine so someone wouldn't show up and give him a second fatal dose. That's how badly injured he was. I think the thing we're really going to miss about these individuals, including Bob Dole, was that when you're fighting for your life alongside somebody, you don't see them as a Republican or Democrat—you see them as an American. I think the three of them always saw themselves and all of us as Americans first, before they saw themselves as Democrats or Republicans.

Kara Swisher: Well, that would be nice. Although, let me just say, of the two that you mentioned, we're not pro-Trump and we're scared of what happened with Donald Trump. And Bob Dole did embrace Trump rather significantly at the end of his life. I think it was a surprise to a lot of people.

Scott Galloway: Anyways, my win is the incredible public service and heroics of Senator Bob Dole. I think we're going to miss people who—I think the lesson, if there is a lesson here, is that we need some sort of public service that restores the connective tissue as Americans. When a third of us on both parties see people in the other party as our mortal enemy, we have lost the script around what it means to be Americans.

Kara Swisher: That is fair. And I think these three individuals never lost that script.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. Anyways, my win is Bob Dole. My fail is the messaging and poor strategy of the Democratic Party. We let the Republicans grab critical race theory, something they used very effectively to scare the shit out of parents. They're separating parents from influence over schools. They're trying to fight racism with more racism. They were very effective around messaging when the reality was critical race theory really isn't that big or prevalent a deal in schools right now. If you really look to try and find out how many teachers and how many schools are teaching critical race theory, they have been masterful at taking something, making a caricature of it, and then using it to be very effective. At the same time, on the Democratic side, there is a credible threat that Roe v. Wade may be overturned. The Democrats can't figure out a way to get their heads out of their asses and rally people to fight what is probably the greatest assault on liberties in a long time. Here's the opportunity and what they are missing: They will position it as a war on women. That is absolutely true. But the way they should position it—and it's true—is this is a war on poor people. Rich white women are going to have no problem getting on a plane to go terminate a pregnancy in Chicago wherever they need to go. This is a war on the poor. A single mother living in the South is going to have no options to terminate a pregnancy.

Kara Swisher: Yes, indeed.

Scott Galloway: White people in big cities, and they are coming after you. Even if they are pro-life, I think they will see the problem with that. Democrats are terrible at messaging and strategy.

Kara Swisher: But that's like a historical thing, isn't it? That's sort of the way Democrats do it.

Scott Galloway: There's no reason we can't change it.

Kara Swisher: Well, there's also a bridge too far that they won't do. They won't quite go as cynical as critical race. They won't—it was George H.W. Bush, by the way, who you said was a hero there, who did the Willie Horton stuff. It was Lee Atwater. They are willing to do those things to create—I'm sick of being right and not effective.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I get it. I get it. But it's very hard for them to go that far. Anyways, I think our fail is the Democratic Party, when there are real assaults on our freedoms, can't figure out a way to message effectively around it.

Kara Swisher: All right. Okay.

Scott Galloway: I do think the opportunity to describe this not only as a war on women, but a war on the poor and a war on rural states, is an opportunity for us to try and reclaim some of our lost brothers and sisters in the lower and middle income groups. Anyways, that's very political, my Wins and Fails. What are your Wins and Fails, Kara?

Kara Swisher: My win is Scott Galloway for letting me stay. Go on! I'm going to be singing a lot, just so you know. I'm just keeping you up. This is my new place in New York. I'm really excited about it.

Scott Galloway: I'm glad someone's using it. I'm never there.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, it's really nice. And then I think the fail is what happened at the school. As a parent, you're sort of like, "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah." You just sit there and go—I think a lot about parenting these days. It's really the things we're teaching our kids about sacrifice and honor. There are troubled kids. This kid was clearly troubled, no question. But the fact that he couldn't get help, that he did communicate—look, these people aren't born. Some people are born evil, I guess. But it's made. It's made in this way. And it's sad. I don't know what happened to him at the school. I don't know what occurred. But it brought me a great deal of sadness for every single person—except for those parents who I would literally like to slap silly if I met. And even them, I guess you have some empathy. Their lives are over.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I get it.

Kara Swisher: Their kid's life is over. Their lives are over. I don't know what they think this is like, the way to conduct your life. I'm always surprised when something like this happens. And them leaving, taking off on their kid, is just like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa." What was the goal there? Of running? I just don't understand it. That to me was not taking these things seriously. Doing "LOL" to your kid—"Oh, you didn't get caught"—that bullshit. And then taking off on their kid. That poor kid. I think this is a murderer, but still, leaving your kid who has already done something truly horrible and should also be in jail—the whole thing.

Scott Galloway: We talked about citizenship. It brings up the power of schools. But the core issue remains the same. We do not have a monopoly on bad parenting. We do not have a monopoly on juvenile mental illness. What we have is a monopoly on bad parents with kids suffering from mental illness and access to weapons of war. That's the thing we do really well. These families whose kids got killed—it reminds me of Alex Jones and all that. These parents have suffered the worst thing ever. Just the worst thing ever. And just for going to school. It's just ridiculous. So random and sad and possibly preventable. Not completely preventable, but boy, is it more preventable.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, that was my fail. And my win, of course, is Scott. So it felt a little sad this week. That really made me very sad, deeply sad. But in any case, there are things to look up for. New York is coming back, Scott, I have to say. It was packed.

Scott Galloway: Was it?

Kara Swisher: Yeah, it's on fire, especially down where you are. It's like Disneyland down there, isn't it?

Scott Galloway: Yes, it feels like that.

Kara Swisher: Essentially, there's a lot of trash and a lot of rats. But last night, I went out to get some formula, and rats aplenty. Anyway, I guess they're doing well, too. All right, so that is the show. We'll be back on Friday for more. And Scott, can you please read us out?

Scott Galloway: Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Under-Tott engineered this episode, thanks to Drew Burrows. Make sure you subscribe to this show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you 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. Gun control, teen depression at the hands of big tech—it's not the world we live in. The world is what we make of it. It is in our domain and within our reach to change these things. Thank you.