UFOs, The State of Tech, and Guest Lakshmi Rengarajan

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Scott Galloway: Rinse takes your laundry and hand delivers it to your door. Expertly cleaned and folded. So you could take the time once spent folding and sorting and waiting to finally pursue a whole new version of you. Like Tea Time You. Mmm. Or this Tea Time You. Or even this Tea Time You. Said you hear about Dave. Or even Tea Time Tea Time Tea Time You. Mmm. So update on Dave. It's up to you. We'll take the laundry. Rinse. It's time to be great.

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

Scott Galloway: And I'm Scott Galloway.

Kara Swisher: Happy Valentine's Day, Scott. Did you forget to get me something?

Scott Galloway: You know, I'm glad you remembered. I'm glad you remembered. What'd you get me?

Kara Swisher: Wait, am I your Valentine? Let's start with that. Let's start with the baseline on that one.

Scott Galloway: I think the better question is, what haven't I gotten you?

Kara Swisher: Yeah, no, I'm not, as you might imagine, I'm not huge on Valentine's Day.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I can't imagine. How about you? Do you celebrate Valentine's Day?

Kara Swisher: I'm not a big fan either, I have to say. It's kind of a cooked up thing. That said, all the family's going out to dinner together to get oysters tonight.

Scott Galloway: Oh, yeah, you're that oyster thing. That's good. I always think that stomach flu is a good way to kick off Valentine's Day.

Kara Swisher: Oh, nice. Nice. I never get stomach food from oysters. They're the best things in the world. Or whatever it is, stomach food poisoning.

Scott Galloway: So in other words, there's no candy on the way or flowers or anything else?

Kara Swisher: Oh, no, it's there. Perfume. It's already there.

Scott Galloway: Oh, okay. All right. So not your holiday. What is your holiday, Scott? If you had to pick a holiday, what would it represent?

Kara Swisher: Oh, hands down, Halloween. Come on. Halloween, of course. You could dress like a lady. Women dress up like sluts and I get to wear a wig. Hello. Win-win. I sometimes dress up with Kara Swisher. It's a really good costume.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. There you go. You know I'm scary. I give you that. San Francisco is a good place for Halloween.

Kara Swisher: Shut up. I'm having it. I'm here in San Francisco right now. And again, walking down the street they are like, "Where's Scott?" Everywhere I go. "Where's Scott? Why are you back in San Francisco?" I have to have some things to do. I'm always here. I come every month. I have a house here. I love San Francisco. I'm looking at a beautiful view tonight. It's a beautiful day. It's in the 60s. It's very nice.

Scott Galloway: I think you're running for mayor again. You're like this big San Francisco show, chamber of commerce thing. I think you're going to announce your run for mayor.

Kara Swisher: No, I got some things. I got some things. My mom has moved here, so I'm helping her sort out her stuff. So things like that. Anyway, there's a lot going on here in, not just in California, but all around the world. Obviously, UFOs, very exciting. The winners and losers of Super Bowl on the marketing side, I thought they were okay. They lost my mind on them, but they were good. We'll talk about where the opportunities lie for tech in 2023. We always talk about the layoffs, but I want your thoughts. I want to plumb your brain for what you think people should focus on. And we'll also speak with a friend of Pivot, Lakshmi Rengarajan, about another kind of opportunity, dating apps, because it's a Valentine's Day episode. Love is all around. But first, the Super Bowl and its ads didn't disappoint this year, but viewers in some markets saw a very different kind of car commercial.

[Audio clip plays] Narrator: Tesla full self-driving will run down a child in a school crosswalk. 90% agree that this should be banned immediately. Why does NHTSA allow Tesla full self-driving?

Kara Swisher: Well, that's a message. The Tesla attack was funded by tech entrepreneur Dan O'Dad. He's made it his business to talk about this a lot. He himself is very wealthy. But Tesla CEO Elon Musk wasn't watching TV when the ad appeared. He was spotted at the game sitting besides Rupert Murdoch. That was a pair. Two guys who both know what it's like to lose a fortune buying social media apps, as it turned out. Musk joked on Twitter, of course, that he and Murdoch were discussing Dogecoin, the cryptocurrency jumped 5% for a short-lived bump. You know, supermodels get talked about, but are they worth it, really? Do they cause attention, or what's the deal? There's some good ones. A lot of them were tech-oriented, as they always are. Ram's premature electrification was very funny about EVs. T-Mobile's grease ad with John Travolta was cute. Workday, everyone's a rockstar was cute. There was one for Jesus. What do you think about these? Is it worth the $7 million for 30 seconds of airtime?

Scott Galloway: So the ad itself is not. What may be worth the million is the attention it gets before and after. If you can bring together that creative magic, I think it's a positive cultural thing. I think your vendors, your suppliers, your employees get a kick out of it. And do you remember that commercial with the kid dressed up as Darth Vader trying to make the Volkswagen start? It was such a cute commercial. Occasionally lightning does strike. And those commercials get exponentially fantastic ROI. Because what I found is my 12-year-old summarized it perfectly. I didn't watch the Super Bowl last night. I didn't even know who was in it until the day before. And I used to watch it for the ads. Now I no longer do that. But my 12-year-old said, "Yeah, I'm watching it for the ads." So advertising everywhere is a bug, not a feature, except in the Super Bowl, it's a feature. So people come to play. It also usually says something about our society. Last year, we had these commercials on crypto with Larry David talking about using a certain crypto platform. This year, I don't know if it's because I'm a little down, but I found it sort of... if the cultural references here aren't good ones. And that is, as much as I like people ribbing Tesla, revenge ads or shitposting ads, I don't like. I don't like ads on Jesus. That's the right, good for them. But it's like, that's where we are. We shitpost each other and we talk about Jesus. I mean, it kind of summarizes America.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. So I found the ads a little bit... There were some really cute ones. Anything with Breaking Bad in it is cute. I saw that on YouTube.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, they were doing Popcorners, which are delicious.

Kara Swisher: What did you think of the ads? I thought they were okay. I didn't think they soared to great heights. And usually there's one or two that are very, very funny. I thought the only one I thought that was really good was the premature electrification. It was funny.

[Audio clip plays] Narrator: Are you excited about buying an electric vehicle, but worried that it could leave you unsatisfied? I don't know if they count anymore.

Kara Swisher: That's what I really wanted to get your thought on.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I think you're right. Because you could do more damage on Twitter in a second or on social media or wherever to create virality year round. So I think the idea of supermodels was virality, right? This virality. And now it wasn't... the Ben Affleck one for Dunkin' Donuts was cute, not the greatest idea in the world, but cute. But I just don't know what the point is anymore.

Kara Swisher: Right? I don't. I think about it, advertising in general used to really be so influential and create this year-long halo effect. And now it's just there and gone. I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong.

Scott Galloway: You're onto what is a bigger trend. First off, go to Cannes and it's a bunch of ad execs giving each other awards, trying to talk about how relevant they are as they go to their executioner party on the beach. Google or Facebook are petting their hair before they shoot them in the face. The story I always talk about or bring up is that, and I love the story because it makes me seem important, but right out of business school, I met a guy named Warren Hellman. He was at the time kind of the top private equity guy in the world. And he took a shine to me, and I would loosely describe him as a mentor. And he asked me, I started a strategy firm called Profit. He asked me to attend two years' worth of board meetings for what was at that point the most valuable private company in the world, and that was Levi Strauss and Company. And I used to fly around the world. And he would ask me to listen to the board meeting. And he's like, "I don't want you to talk to anybody. And I want you to stand up and tell us what you think."

Kara Swisher: And what a great professional pain in the ass. But go ahead. What a great assignment. It set off a career being an asshole. What a great assignment for a 28 year old.

Scott Galloway: And they asked two other people to do it, to sit in on each of these board meetings. One was Lee Clow. He did the Apple ads, the Think Different ads. And then a guy named Nigel Bogle from BBH, which was the hottest creative agency in the UK. And the three of us, they would talk about ads. I would talk about strategy and direct to consumer, whatever. And I still go to a lot of board meetings because I have been able, I'd like to think, to sort of reinvent myself. I thought e-commerce is the next thing. I got out of brand and I got into tech. Anyways, I haven't... I've probably been in... I wasn't in as many board meetings last year. I was probably in 20 or 30, but I used to be in 50 a year.

Kara Swisher: Wow, that's a lot. That's what you've been doing, not buying me flowers and candy.

Scott Galloway: You do sound like my girlfriend. Anyways, I haven't seen an ad man or an ad woman in a board meeting in 10 years.

Kara Swisher: Wow.

Scott Galloway: No one cares what they think. Keep in mind that the titans of yesterday in the world of consumer were Maurice Levy, Martin Sorrell. It was WPP, IPG, Omnicom. They were like the juggernauts. They were the Google of yesterday.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, power guys.

Scott Galloway: Google and Meta will lose the value of each of those companies or gain it in one trading day. They have... if you want to talk about diminished power. And then the other personal story I would talk about is right when I started, moved to New York, you did summer shares out at the Hamptons. And the bells of the ball, the masters of the universe were all these 30-something people who worked for the premier company in the world, the most influential baller company in the world. And that was Condé Nast.

Kara Swisher: Right.

Scott Galloway: And 20 years later, almost all of them have had this slow burn to irrelevance.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. To be the associate publisher of Vanity Fair or Bon Appetit or Vogue was the job. They were making, in their 30s, they were making half a million bucks a year, the best parties. And the worst thing about what happened to people in print is that it was a slow decline. The best thing that could have happened for them is if it had just been shut off. Instead, there were always signs. They were always trying to reinvent themselves. But the ad-supported ecosystem, unless you work for one of the big guys, it's a shitty business.

Scott Galloway: Well, I do think it's the here and gone thing because we are titillated every day by social media, by constant news, by 24-7. And so I don't think anything breaks through. Like, how do you break through? And that's the idea. Every now and then there's something, but I can't think of something that's broken through, even shows as they make them. And then at the same time, because of the way it's done now, right now Twitter is running ads next to tweets from Holocaust deniers, according to a report from Media Matters. In the latest blunder, ads for companies like MailChimp and The Wall Street Journal were spotted alongside tweets from neo-Nazis and anti-Semites. Elon's getting rid of the blue checks. He tweeted that legacy blue checks will be removed soon. Those are the ones that are truly corrupt. How ridiculous and stupid. And meanwhile, Twitter's making millions off of content of accounts that were previously banned, including misogynist Andrew Tate and jailed misogynist Andrew Tate, possible rapist, apparently. It's really like if you're an advertising person right now, I don't know what you do because the other stuff ain't so sweet either, right? And it's declining too and the effectiveness, the constant, and I use the word titillation, it's just we're constantly attacked by news and information that it cheapens all of it. It doesn't, nothing sticks out and things are here and gone essentially.

Scott Galloway: Well, whenever you transition one substance to another for economic gain, whether it's oil to petroleum, or in our instance, people don't really recognize, and there's no real malice here, there was deliberate obfuscation. But the transition or the refining of attention to dollars has been, I would argue, more damaging than carbon emissions. And it just happened everywhere, whether it's getting more and more outrageous and salacious with ads, whether it's convincing 15-year-old girls to basically engage in soft porn on Instagram, whether it's constant catastrophizing in the news media, whether it's media that demonizes the other side to just tune in... after the break, why Ted Cruz's father killed JFK. It just, the attention economy and the ability to translate attention into shareholder value, I think it's been more damaging than carbon emissions.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, it's interesting. How do you find out about things?

Scott Galloway: Things bubble up for me, either on social media, I hate to say it. Also, I'm pretty religious about reading those emails every morning, whether it's Dealbook or The Economist or CNN or The Information.

Kara Swisher: I know you love Semaphore.

Scott Galloway: I find that I'll find something in there that I... I think Puck is what I read the most.

Kara Swisher: Puck, you read Puck the most?

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I do.

Kara Swisher: That's really interesting. Yeah. I like it a lot. It's very valuable to me.

Scott Galloway: By the way, I'm in... Let's go back to me. I'm in... You leave the apartment. You take off. You don't even say goodbye.

Kara Swisher: No, I did try. I did try.

Scott Galloway: You don't even say goodbye.

Kara Swisher: I tried. You were in your little thing. You were yelling at someone on the video, but go ahead.

Scott Galloway: I was yelling at myself, Kara. No, you were yelling. I could hear you.

Kara Swisher: I was yelling into a mirror. Anyway, I was practicing dirty Valentine's laundry here, but I was doing yoga and I was doing my favorite movement.

Scott Galloway: You were in one of your screamies.

Kara Swisher: I was doing my favorite movement, crippling anxiety pose. I also texted you.

Scott Galloway: What are you so needy?

Kara Swisher: I literally texted you. I tried to say goodbye. I left you, Bill Cohen. Don't even go.

Scott Galloway: OK, let's be honest. What if we're going to be real here? I'm the least needy person you have ever met. As a matter of fact, one of the big reasons my relationships have ended is because I am not needy enough. I don't care.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: Oh, you're leaving. OK. OK. What was your point of my leaving without saying goodbye?

Kara Swisher: I'm doing the podcast. You're out. But I hear a really deep masculine voice and I think, "Oh, Kara's still here." But it wasn't you. It was Bill Cohen. I'm sitting in my podcast and I'm trying to focus on my call and I hear this very familiar booming voice. And I can't. I'm like, "Who the fuck is in my house?" And I go out and I see the very handsome Bill Cohen in my living room. I'm like, "What is Bill Cohen doing here?" By the way, Bill Cohen is one of the founders of Puck. I'm like, "This is going to be interesting." And he was on some very important Zoom call talking about junk bond rates. So I just waved at him and he waved at me like this was not unusual. Like, "Oh, yeah, I'm in your house unannounced." This is...

Kara Swisher: Are you offended? And it ends up... I like having strangers in my house because I'm lonely and I need people to stop by. I really do love having guests.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. And he's like, "Oh, yeah, I did something with Kara. And she said to just make yourself at home." You literally, you make yourself at home more than anyone I know. We had to finish a call. Our call went late. And I said, "I'm sure Scott wouldn't mind you staying here."

Kara Swisher: So you don't give him a heads up. Wait, hold on. We had your sister-in-law stay at my house. I didn't even know she was staying there. I wake up and I see this very pleasant lady. And I'm like, "Hi, how are you?" And then Bill Cohen's in my living room. And I guess I'll never get to stay there again. Anyways, you treat it like the international co-op house at Berkeley.

Scott Galloway: You know what? You said, "Whatever, Kara." And then you don't actually mean it.

Kara Swisher: No, I do. I'm just giving you a hard time.

Scott Galloway: All right, whatever. You weren't supposed to be there. Okay? You weren't supposed to be there. And then you were. I like that.

Kara Swisher: So you use my house when I'm not there. I come home. The garage is on fire and the dog is pregnant. You're worse than a 17-year-old whose parents are gone.

Scott Galloway: No, I left you a very handsome man and I had a very pleasant person. Anyways, Puck. Back to Puck. You asked how we get information.

Kara Swisher: All right. So finish this up. We got to get to the big story, which is UFOs. You're absolutely right. We've rewired our brains such that we need constant stimulation. Constant. And there's just no getting around it. I do think TikTok should be banned. But when you have 1.7 billion people and 50% of them, or 850 million people, are creating content, from 850 million, you're going to get 85,000 amazing creators.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, you are.

Kara Swisher: Who, using technology, can put out bite-size, snackable, interesting content. It is. And TikTok has immediately zeroed in on the wonky weirdos I love.

Scott Galloway: Yep. That's where you get your information.

Kara Swisher: You know what I did last night? I sat on my computer. I didn't watch. I had the Super Bowl on the background. I turned it off. I watched SNL shorts. I watched some stuff from different economists. And I just went down a rabbit hole on various video platforms. I think in a word, the ad guys, the ad-supported guys. I always tell people, don't be in an industry that is ad-supported.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, well, good. It's just going away.

Kara Swisher: This is the insight I wanted to get at you. I had this feeling. We took the long way home on that one. Okay, speaking of which, let's get to our first big story.

[Audio clip plays] Narrator: If you're just tuning in, the War of the Worlds has begun.

Kara Swisher: In the last week, the United States says it shot down three UFOs, or as the military likes to call them now, unidentified aerial phenomena. That's in addition to the Chinese spy balloon shot down off the coast of South Carolina, which was floating over the U.S. for a while. The U.S. government has been light with the details. NORAD described two objects as cylinder-shaped, said one was the size of a small car instead of the truck, three trucks, things that the balloon was. Meanwhile, China's foreign ministry claims the U.S. violated Chinese airspace with balloons of its own. China says American balloons have floated over the country 10 times in the last year. The U.S. government denies these claims. This is, of course, taking up all the... CNN has become the ancient alien network right now. Everybody's ready about it. But there is a bigger idea here. First of all, why now? The U.S. does spy on other countries. China spies on our country. But this is sort of bringing this idea of surveillance into sharp relief, like the idea of surveillance and where it's going. Aerial spying could affect private companies like SpaceX. It launches satellites to the U.S. government, including the National Reconnaissance Office. I don't even want to know what they do. SpaceX is trying to distance itself from its work in the Ukraine with drones, etc. There are the idea of killer satellites, etc. So what do you think of this story? Because it's not going away. And I assume they've always been here, these things. And I don't think they're alien aliens from like another planet. But what are your thoughts about how this story is spinning out suddenly?

Scott Galloway: It's really a function of altitude. And that is, we have balloons over us, right? But if something is literally present in your child's prefrontal cortex, we don't mind that. And then if a satellite, if a Chinese satellite is coming over U.S. territory, but it's whatever, 70 miles up or however far it is, we don't mind that or we can't do anything about it. It's in the middle that we get upset, right? And so it's interesting, but I think you're going to find pretty much everyone is engaged in this, or everyone that can afford it is engaged in this, including us. And we're now having kind of proxy wars where we start shooting down each other's balloons as a means of saying, "Okay, we don't want to go to war directly with you, but we're going to shoot these things down." I don't think these balloons... I think we're right to shoot them down, but I think it's much more insidious to have TikTok. And I think the real race over intelligence comes down to two things. It comes down to something very technically sophisticated, and that is satellites and listening devices. But still, the more advanced we get, the more we recognize that the need for soft intelligence and that is human assets on the ground.

Kara Swisher: Right.

Scott Galloway: And the greatest kind of corporate espionage is humans. And I think a lot of them come through our universities and end up at big tech firms. And then what we do when we realize they're spying on behalf of the CCP or someone else is we turn them. And you know how we turn them with America? We just say, "Do you want to stay here or do you want to go back to Shenzhen?" And we turn them.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: But there is so much human capital. That's the best intelligence you can find. But I find it all fascinating.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I know. It's really interesting that now, of course, I always assumed they were there sort of floating around. Everyone was spying from the top with these satellites. There's been a million movies of that. There's so many satellites up there. SpaceX is one of the places. There's a lot of tech people involved in low orbit satellites or something like that. And so I'm assuming they're listening all the time, like all the time, and they're floating things and they're looking at. And what's interesting is that you mentioned TikTok and the TikTok CEO is scheduled to appear for a House committee next month. Is it just we should expect this, that they're up there doing this and we should try to shoot them down? And then, of course, there's the whole, is it actually an alien here that we keep shooting at, right? Is this like peep probes from another planet kind of thing, which is ridiculous. This is some country, likely China, who's doing it and we're doing it to them. And so it does bring up this whole idea of being watched constantly or manipulated constantly, or from above, from the middle, and below, essentially.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, but we had the Gary Powers U-2. We used to fly U-2s over the Soviet Union, because it was a race to see who could fly higher, such that you'd be out of the range of anti-aircraft missiles. And basically now, we have aircraft that fly almost to the Kármán line. So we do this to each other all of the time. I think the next war is likely going to be... the next proxy war is going to break out in space.

Kara Swisher: Space, yeah.

Scott Galloway: I think we're going to figure out and be able to identify which satellites are not good actors according to us. And we're going to come up with sophisticated technical reasons for how they malfunction in space.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, there's a whole idea about this, killer satellites that take down other satellites. And of course, this James Bond movie 25, 30 years ago. It also comes down to this idea of us versus China, which is continuing to get... I don't know if it's getting... I don't mind them fighting it out with balloons. I'd rather have that than in the Taiwan Straits, right? So let us fight over balloons. I don't know if it escalates to more, but certainly everybody's sort of tough on China. That's sort of a brand, speaking of brands, for all the Republicans and the Democrats.

Scott Galloway: Well, this is the thing about war. We have decided, proxy war, we've essentially outsourced war to military families and younger kids. And then we've outsourced war to Ukrainian soldiers and we figured out a way that we don't even have to put American boots on the ground. And we entered in these proxy wars and then these wars that are fought with technology and means of saying, "Okay, we hate each other and we're going to fight each other, but we're never going to get close to something that resembles a real shooting match because we realize the downside there could be terrible because neither side wants to back down." And that's what Ian Bremmer says is the real risk of escalating the war in Ukraine. Because effectively what you have now is NATO is at war with Russia. That's effectively what, and I'm on the other side, I'm the war hawk or part of the war hawk community says the only way to end a war is to win it. And that's actually not true, but the best way to win a war or end a war is to win it. But there's all these kinds of different types of proxy wars popping up where we're bumping each other, seeing what the other side is willing to endure. At the end of the day, it makes for great media. It's kind of fascinating, right?

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: No, CNN, constant. It's like literally like, "Is it an alien?" I'm like, "It's not an alien."

Kara Swisher: I wish it was an alien.

Scott Galloway: Do you wish it was?

Kara Swisher: I kind of wish it was an alien, don't you? It's about time they got here and fixed it.

Scott Galloway: You think? Or ate us. Either one.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I don't know. I think if I had to pick aliens or no aliens, I would go with the whole no aliens.

Scott Galloway: No, I totally want aliens to arrive.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Be cool.

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: I'm so sick of the story now. I want a new story. That's the theory.

Scott Galloway: A new story is getting better. Your story, you stay at amazing apartments and invite strangers over. How could your story be any better? You are the type of person who says "I'm not sensitive." You got a young wife. You locked and loaded with new kids. Listen to me. How could you be sick of this story? I also left a drone in your apartment so I'm watching things very carefully. I have a satellite in your apartment and it's there.

Kara Swisher: Here's the key. I've decided my life is so profane and outrageous and uncomfortable that you just got to go full weird. Weird. If you're a decent human being, like an honorable citizen 98% of the time, you get in trouble with the 2%. You just got to go full.

Scott Galloway: All right. See, I'm trying to help you do that. I'm trying to help you do that. Next visit, who shall I have in the apartment? Who shall I have? Maybe I'll party with Stephanie Rule and we'll bring all our cable friends in. I don't know what's going to happen. Who's to say? I don't know. Couldn't, you know.

Kara Swisher: And of course, you didn't buy her any Valentine's things either.

Scott Galloway: My favorite Bond used to be James Bond. But then I started taking Viagra and decided I wanted to be Roger Moore. Moore. Get it? The worst Bond. Except for his first outings of Bond in, what was it? Oh, God. I love. Live and Let Die? Roger Moore?

Scott Galloway: Live and Let Die. Yeah, that was the first one. Yeah, most beautiful Bond woman ever. Jane Seymour.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, Jane Seymour. She was great. She was the card reader, the tarot card reader.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. She was great. I love Bonds. Anyway, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about where the big tech layoffs are taking the industry and where the new jobs are. And we'll speak with friend of Pivot, Lakshmi Rengarajan.

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Kara Swisher: Scott, we're back. It's another week, another round of layoffs. Meta isn't planning to lock in staff budgets anytime soon, according to the FT, leading to speculation of another round of job cuts next month, probably, at their Metaverse area. Microsoft cut at least 600 employees late last week, axing members of its Surface, HoloLens, and Xbox units, as well as its industrial Metaverse division. Again, more Metaverse layoffs. A lot of these layoffs target the more long-term moonshot products that they were excited about, where they were innovating. With budgets tightening in Big Tech, let's talk about where the opportunity might be, because you can't just tighten your way to the next thing. Obviously, AI. And according to the World Economic Forum, 75 million current jobs will be displaced by machines and algorithms, but 133 million new jobs will be created as well. So here you are, all these things happening, things are up and down. I'd love to hear your thoughts first for the big companies, and then we'll talk a little bit about startups. What is the move here for these companies?

Scott Galloway: Well, first off, and I feel like I've been a small cog in the wheel here, I am disheartened and disturbed when I read comments on my blog from young people about how down they are on capitalism in America. And I just don't think that's an accurate reflection of where we really are. And I think it's from the constant catastrophizing of media.

Kara Swisher: And again, talked about this topic. I like it. Go ahead.

Scott Galloway: Well, let's talk about media with all the headlines. OK, granted, let's talk about all the layoffs through COVID and then all the hiring. For each company, how many people they've laid off during COVID and how many people they've hired. Microsoft, a lot of news has laid off 10,000 people. It's a lot of people. Do you know how many they've hired through COVID?

Kara Swisher: You've seen that more.

Scott Galloway: More. 30,000. 77,000. That doesn't make headlines. Google has laid off 12,000 people. Ton of headlines. Google layoffs. How many people did they hire through COVID? 68,000 for a net high. Salesforce, world of shit, right? Activists. Mark has been asleep at the switch. A lot of people are second-guessing Mark. They laid off 7,000 people. Oh my gosh. Through COVID, they hired 31,000. Amazon laid off 18,000 people. Big news. Oh, my God. Amazon. Oh, but wait. All the headlines for the 18,000 layoffs. Not as many headlines around the 30 months identified as the COVID period. They hired 746,000 people.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, close to a million.

Scott Galloway: Meta, 11,000 layoffs, but 42,000 hires. So it's like, OK, what exactly should be the headline here?

Kara Swisher: What is their promise if they hired all these things? I mean, if you're in that job when this is the idea of relentless year of efficiencies, where does the innovation come from that allows you to get to the next level? Or are you in stasis as a big company?

Scott Galloway: You can guarantee everyone is trying to pivot to something around AI. Meta is kicking themselves because they had a lot of interesting AI, which they made nothing of. Google is furious that OpenAI is getting all this credit for what they feel is technology that they played a big hand in. I think if you're laid off from one of these companies, there is so much opportunity right now, both in the information economy. You find some smart people and you say, you know what, we're just going to try and find interesting data sources and see if we can feed them into prediction engines and see what we come up with and see if it's data anyone will buy. There's a huge amount of opportunity to sit down, sign up for all of these things and brainstorm. There's also huge opportunities in the Main Street economy. I'm coaching this young man who's handy, doesn't like college, was never a good student. And unfortunately, in America, his parents have shamed him because he's not a good student. He dropped out of college his first year. And the whole house came crumbling down. I feel like I'm coaching his parents, not him. And that's okay. It's not the worst thing in the world. He's amazing with his hands. He's a craftsman. He came over and he helped me set up my studio. I told him, you need to get an apprenticeship. Go for six or 12 months, become an electrician. You make a shit ton of money. And guess what? Everything will be fine. We have to stop shaming young men and women that don't end up at Google or KKR. There are a lot of ways in the mainstream economy. As a matter of fact, I would argue it may even be easier, especially if you don't have the certification from these luxury brands posing as education institutions that let in the rich and the freakishly remarkable. If you're neither of those things, it's not a bad idea to get a trade.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I would agree. I talk to my kids a lot about that. Because we're not letting in immigrants, you can, with any sort of skill around plumbing or electric right now, you spend two to five years really learning the trade. And if you're good at business and willing to work hard, I think you're making an extraordinary living. But all of these kids are like, no, I want to—if you do what your parents want, you go to school and go into the information, high prestige economy. And if you do what your society is telling you to do, you become an influencer. I'm like, no, there's a third lane here. Let me ask you, though, let's talk about the startups. BeReal, which is a very good product. Their downloads are down 95% from their 2022 peak. You take a picture on BeReal, that's not performative. They just say, now you have to take a picture. The venture capitalist Sasha Kaletsky tweeted that the numbers show how difficult it is to keep consumer app growth once you've crossed a chasm. Home fitness startup Tonal, another pretty cool product, is looking for a buyer after spending big on hiring. It's sort of the Peloton of this year. So if you were a venture capitalist right now, it feels like there's a lot of stuff been tried and a lot of stuff's not sticking. This is the same theme of advertising. It's not sticking. What do you imagine is going to stick besides being a plumber?

Scott Galloway: Well, first off, I advise VC firms. My advice is to sit on your hands and do nothing right now, because what's happening in the housing market is happening in the venture market. Everybody's anchoring off. Joe sold his house for $800,000 15 months ago, so I should get $800,000. Well, no, the market's changed dramatically. Even if they put their house for sale, they don't want to accept a lower price. Meanwhile, buyers read everything in the news about a recession or housing price coming down and think, oh wait, this house is worth $650. There is a stasis or a standoff. The same thing is happening in the small business and entrepreneurship community. Companies that raised money still have capital. They raised a lot of money. They're cutting, but they don't want to think about the next round. They don't want to acknowledge that their valuation is probably down 50, 70, maybe even 80%. Time is so on the side of venture investments. Now, what field would I go into? I think there's a ton of opportunity in what I'll call tech-enabled services. I'll tell you where I'm investing. I'm investing in a company very similar to the company I called L2, called Zero100, that collects a ton of data and research on supply chain innovation. Every company, slowly but surely, is elevating supply chain to top-level decision-making capital allocation. They're realizing that supply chain is how Amazon won, and it's also how almost every company got taken down through COVID. So it's no longer this necessary evil. It's a key component of strategy. It's a tech-enabled firm, but it's a bunch of smart people writing research, hosting events, and helping big companies figure out their supply chain. I think a company like that—and I want to be clear, we're not going public for $5 billion—but it's a great business. The guy who runs it is a fantastic operator. He'll build it slowly. He'll build enduring value. In 7 to 10 years, we'll have a company doing $30 million or $40 million in ARR that'll get sold for $200 to $300 million. That's an amazing way to make a living. What you have, in a world of zero interest rates where money is free, is you end up with WAG. You end up with the concept you talk about. It's a Q concept. It's not a business. And you end up with Cathie Wood talking about Bitcoin at a million dollars. You end up with just all of this crap. It's got to get cleaned out. There's a lot of underbrush that needs to be burned in a bit of a super fire, which will spawn new ideas. The first advice I give to entrepreneurs, and I'm old school, is that what makes a business is not expenses. Don't build a different structure. It's not even customers. Because in order to aggregate enough customers to be able to make money off an ad model, you have to be at such scale and raise so much capital. The thing that makes a business is revenues. Find something that a person or a company will pay you for immediately. That's how I always built businesses. Granted, I never had a big win. All my companies kind of did tens of millions and got sold for three to six times revenue. But I found that that is a lower risk way of building enduring value. I was writing my book, *Algebra of Wealth*. I know how to get you rich. That's the good news. The bad news is the answer is slowly. It's thinking thoughtfully about—you can go cashflow negative for a little while.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I do think this idea of boom is not—I think people have got to let go of it a little bit in tech, especially as it's the next boom. They tried to boom with cryptocurrency. They tried to boom—I do think AI, but now they're over-investing in it, right? I think it's a slow growth kind of thing. There may not be some—unless aliens show up and give us new technology, which is my great hope, as you know—it's not going to be—it feels like we're in that period where, even though AI is the biggest thing, climate change tech, they're going to be very slow in how beneficial they're going to be. I would agree with you. Start off slow and stay slow for the longer. It's not going to be this sudden crop of billionaires just out of nowhere.

Scott Galloway: One of the things you have to recognize as a young person, and I didn't, is that big flaw in the species. Because until literally the last 100 years, we didn't live past 38. We have a very difficult time calibrating time. Simply put, we don't know how fast time is going to go. Young people are all looking for get rich quick. How do I get to a hot company that's going to sell for a billion dollars in three years? How do I buy the new cryptocurrency that will triple in the next 30 days? Generally speaking, there'll be a lot of well-publicized, small number of them that do just that. But the majority don't. The thing I would tell people is imagine that the next 20 years is going to go really fast, because it's going to. I know you can't imagine it now. But what could you build that with relative certainty over 20 years, you'd make really good money? At the end of that 20 years, you'd have real money. I've been thinking this way a lot because I'm writing this book. I made hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in my 20s. I shot out of the gates really fast. I was even at one point in my 30s making $500,000 to a million dollars a year. And then between the Great Financial Recession, the dot-com bust, and a divorce, at 42, when I had my first kid, I was almost broke. I'm embarrassed by it. If I'd just been not so fucking stupid, and I had the same mentality a lot of these kids have—I'm swinging for the fence, I'm good at what I do, I'm on the precipice of a big win—Red Envelope is going to go public, I'm going to have tens of millions of—

Kara Swisher: Yeah, you're already spending it a bit.

Scott Galloway: I have an investment in this tech company that I got to invest in alongside Kleiner Perkins, who knows no more than the rest of us. I'm going to make $10 million there. I was always close to those big hits, but they never happened. I had lifestyle creep, and I kept spending more and more. Then 2008 comes, wham, ran over by a truck. My kid comes out, and I tell this story. I remember being in the delivery room, and I was so nauseous I couldn't stand. I had to sit down. I was in a bad, bad way.

Kara Swisher: Because you didn't think you could provide?

Scott Galloway: Oh, 100%. This is what I felt. I mean, granted, childbirth is disgusting, and I don't think men should be in the delivery room, but that's another conversation.

Kara Swisher: They should not.

Scott Galloway: Yes, yes. I'm a Ricky Ricardo fan, but go ahead. Here's why I was disabled. It had dawned on me that with all of my blessings, all of my luck, and all of my talent, I was at 42, and I wasn't in the position I should have been. I not only failed myself, I had failed my son. That fear and that shame literally washed over me like a fucking tidal wave. If I'd just been a little smarter, if I'd just shown a little bit more stoicism. Here's the thing in America, we believe we're all exceptional. A good thing about America is we reward the exceptional more than any nation in the world. But the better thing about America is you don't need to be exceptional. Live below your means just a little bit. Put money away. Put it in low cost ETFs. If I had just put—it would have been so easy for me.

Kara Swisher: And you did it too.

Scott Galloway: To put $10,000, $50,000, $100,000 away in low-cost diversified ETFs, it would have been so easy. At the age of 42, instead of being in a delivery room terrified, I would have had $5 million, $7 million in the bank.

Kara Swisher: That's how Kara Swisher invests, in case you're interested.

Scott Galloway: The most powerful force in the universe is compound annual growth rate. But instead I thought, I'm exceptional. I own a million in Red Envelope stock. Guess what? Dot com, no you don't. There is an inverse correlation between return on investment in your human and financial capital and how sexy a job is. Full stop. I like your dullness. I enjoy your dullness. You know what works at a bar? I'm saying this to the guys. I have a plan. I'm courageous. I have a plan. I'm an adult and I make really good money. It doesn't have to be cool.

Kara Swisher: That's exactly what we're going to talk about with our next guest. So let's bring in our friend of Pivot. It's Lakshmi Rengarajan. This leads in perfectly, Scott. He's the co-host of *Land of the Giants: Dating Games*. Lakshmi's work has focused on how to help people connect in real life and how to offset the weariness of online dating. She previously worked at Match.com and at WeWork as director of workplace connection.

Scott Galloway: Oh my God, this should be interesting.

Kara Swisher: Welcome, Lakshmi.

Lakshmi Rengarajan: Can I just do a quick gushing moment? Is that okay?

Kara Swisher: You may gush. Gush away.

Lakshmi Rengarajan: Kara, I've been following you for so many years. Thank you so much for everything you do. I adore all of your work. Thank you. And Scott, I have to tell you, I discovered you when I was at WeWork, and I was there for the crash and all of that. I just want you to know, your content helped me and a lot of other people process what was a really difficult few months. So I wanted you to know that. Thank you.

Scott Galloway: Thank you for saying that, Lakshmi.

Kara Swisher: We were recording.

Scott Galloway: Don't worry. Yeah, good. Well, good. We're glad to help you out.

Kara Swisher: I think Scott really did a lot of really important work during that time period. And I appreciate your things. But let me say, you also, besides, you were director of Workplace Connection there, which is one of the big pulls of WeWork, was the idea that you could meet people and socialize and the drinking, et cetera. And then you also worked at Match.com, but now you've been working on this show, *Land of the Giants*, which is focusing on different things every time they do it. This time it's the dating games. So give us an overview of the work you've done in the field of dating and how you feel about dating culture as it stands today, or connection culture, I guess, because that's what you're really doing.

Lakshmi Rengarajan: Sure. So it's actually back in 2009. Online dating was already a big thing. It was before Tinder, but people were dating online and that had started. I started already noticing the change in people, the disposability, the snap judgments that had already started. I was doing this project where I interviewed all of these couples that met at work. Almost every couple told me that the person that they were with was not someone that they liked immediately, that this person had kind of grown on them over time.

Scott Galloway: And so I sort of feel about Scott, but go ahead.

Lakshmi Rengarajan: Exactly. It's how I think a lot of people feel about Scott. Go on.

Kara Swisher: There's your co-host. There's your next co-host.

Lakshmi Rengarajan: Okay, good. But I saw this change in people. We're losing this sort of gradual attraction, this thing that happens with people. I was at this lunch and learn where I worked and I had just gone for the free pizza. There was this guy there that I didn't notice at all. He could have just been wallpaper to me. He gave this presentation about sports marketing. It wasn't just about sports marketing. It was sort of about his life and how he arrived at this moment. He had slides and he told this really important, sweet story. I remember he started to look different to me. In the course of those 20 minutes, he started to look different to me. Then I was talking to this group of women outside afterwards. They were like, "Oh, that was a really good presentation." I said, "Were any of you kind of turned on?" They were like, "Yes, yes. What was that?" It was because this person had sort of been dimensionalized and we were getting context on him. So I took note of that. I started experimenting with in-person events and storytelling and slides and how could I slow down the process of dating but still make it a really efficient and fun experience. I did that for several years. That's what caught the attention of Match.com. That's how I went there for a while.

Kara Swisher: So you wanted to fix them. You wanted to get rid of the judgy stuff, the disposability. When you got there, what did you want to do to fix them? Because their algorithms don't get as much scrutiny as other social apps, like how they're doing them.

Lakshmi Rengarajan: I was brought in for a lot of reasons. I was brought in to try and change our events business. I think I was brought in to bring my opinion and what I was learning in the field. There's a lot of people that report on dating. There's not as many people who are actually trying to build something different. But long story short, I don't know that anyone really wanted to hear from me. I was hired for those insights, but when I got there I ran into a lot of, "Well, we're going to make this button green instead of blue because green is more engaging." I don't even know that people knew what I was saying, quite frankly.

Scott Galloway: So let's double click on something you said. A lot of people over time, at least on initial encounter, weren't interested and found that they became increasingly interested. It's very reductive, but I've generally found that guys get turned on with their eyes, women get turned on with their ears. One in three relationships begin at work. If it requires a certain level of persistence or trying again or expressing interest... First off, you're told as a man that if you express anything resembling romantic interest at work, you're a predator and should be fired. Two, how do you even begin to talk about the reality that sometimes it requires a little bit of persistence? Haven't we just basically said to the entire mating community that a third of all mating opportunities are going away? Everyone has to go online. You're not supposed to meet at work. Haven't we, through certain norms which are justified because of some of the terrible things that have happened in a professional workplace, haven't we just essentially destroyed a third of the alchemy and points of inspiration for relationships?

Lakshmi Rengarajan: Yeah, we have. I've heard you talk about this and I'm with you. I don't feel like I can necessarily comment on workplace romances per se. But I think what you're pointing at, the thing that we have to remember, is whether we like it or not, we have spent decades making work the de facto town square. That was one of the few places where you could go and slowly get to know people over time. That's the thing that we have to take away. Remember that a lot of your co-workers, a lot of your friends, a lot of the people that you adore were not people that you liked initially. You got to know them over moments. You got to know them because they cleared your coffee mug, because they spoke up in a meeting. I'm not advocating for workplace romances, but I think the takeaway is that people unfold over time. Work is one of the few places where people can unfold over time.

Kara Swisher: So how do you get unfolded online? Because everyone crafts their online persona and it must impact what you do. I find it all—I've never used an online dating service, but they seem performative to me and not real. My son took his off. He finds them ridiculous. They're not real. And then of course, it's harder to meet in person, as you say. How do you fix the world of online dating? Because that's where people are doing this now, if other venues are not available to them.

Lakshmi Rengarajan: I get it. I know that everybody wants advice. The way I like to think about it is rather than advice, because when we give people advice, we suggest that there's a right or a wrong way to do this. I like to give people considerations. Think about the pool that you've been placed in, which is what we're doing in *Land of the Giants*. We're not blaming the dating industry, but we want you to know the pool that you've been placed in and what chemicals are in the water. That's where you start. You have been placed in a pool where marketing yourself and standing out is more important than developing the skill of how to get to know other humans. My advice to people is to remember and be very aware of how dating online has changed you and changed everybody else.

Kara Swisher: What about fixing the apps themselves?

Lakshmi Rengarajan: I don't know that anyone will listen to me about fixing the apps. But what I do know is that we need to care about who is building our apps and who's going to be building the future of dating. I tell people, if they want to know what app to go to, I would go look at the founder. That will tell you a lot about what's being built and how they inform their world and the decisions that they make. Do I think we can fix dating? No. But do I still want to empower people to date differently and date well and be aware? Yes.

Scott Galloway: I'll put forward a thesis and I would just love to get your response to it and go more meta than just online. In my dating, women date or mate socioeconomically horizontally and up, men horizontally and down. Over 50% of women say they would never date a guy shorter than them, and it's probably close to 80% because it's an embarrassing thing to say. Women now own more homes than men. Single women own more homes than single men. Men are maturing later, getting mixed signals about being aggressive, not being as economically viable. My friend Chris Williamson, who has a great podcast, described it perfectly to me. He said that for the last three decades, women have been getting taller and men have been getting shorter. I hear women, and we all hear this story, and I know a bunch of them. I know all these great women that are not only not mating, they're not even dating. It's not because there aren't men out there. It's because we're not producing enough economically or emotionally viable men. Have you given any thought to big picture solutions, whether it's through technology or society or social programs, that can get men growing again, if you will?

Lakshmi Rengarajan: There are a few things I think about more than this. There's a lot to say here. I know that this is a topic that you care a lot about. One thing that I hear in your voice, and I've heard this several times, is that you are hearing a depth of honesty that not a lot of people get to hear. You're not just hearing dating frustration, I think you're hearing some despair. We have to be very mindful of that. As we are talking to people about how to date better and how to find a partner, I think we also have to be really careful not to depict singlehood as this awful deficit and this awful thing. It does not define success. It does not. I just want to make sure we're having both conversations. One thing that I learned from designing events for such a long time is men are visual, but they also are much more open-minded. They're less choosy.

Kara Swisher: That's the way I was saying they're less choosy, right?

Lakshmi Rengarajan: They have a big range for what they find attractive. But what happens is when they're on the apps, the most shallow side of them is being cultivated over and over and over. The side of them that does have range and doesn't just look at women for how they look or how old they are or what their weight is, that side of them gets suppressed. Then you have the same thing happening with women. I know the surveys say that women are obsessed with height. In a survey format that is true. If you really talk to women, really talk to them, and they're not just responding to a form, they're not as hung up on that as you might think. They are hung up on that in the moment when they're asked to make a snap judgment. But the thing I learned over and over is if you can delay people's judgment, and that is something the apps do not let you do. They prey on your snap judgment. That's where events and in-person is so important. If you can slow the process down, you get a different side of people.

At one of my early events, the first couple that ever got married from one of my events — I love sharing this story because I think it says a lot. The guy was 28 and the woman was 36. That was the first couple that ever got married from one of my events. He even told me later, he said, "Yeah, I probably would not have picked her out. But by the time I got to know her, I was in. She's amazing." So that number was not going to deter me.

Kara Swisher: So you're talking about in-person things. These apps, you're never going to fix them because they're designed for click, click, swipe, whatever. They're designed for speed. They put forth this message of efficiency.

Scott Galloway: Year of efficiency. Sorry, I have to say it every time I hear the word.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Efficiency is a very powerful message for men in particular. They love that idea. But I would argue this isn't an efficient way. You're getting volume, but you're not — I would actually say it's not efficient.

Lakshmi Rengarajan: I agree with you, especially for women, that society has to stop evaluating their success through the lens of romantic success or not.

Scott Galloway: I would say, though, that I do think it's actually more important and key to a successful development and maturity. Kara, you talked about both your sons having girlfriends. I'm really hoping my 15-year-old son gets a girlfriend. I think men without — and it's increasingly happening — men who do not have relationships by the time they're 30... I think women who don't have relationships have much greater social connections, are more aware, more mature, more professionally adept, better at gas on, gas off, saving money. I think a man, if he hits 25 and hasn't had a romantic relationship, I think he literally comes off the rails. He doesn't have guardrails, doesn't develop any social skills. I think men fail if they don't have these relationships.

Kara Swisher: Well, it's interesting. My son does have a girlfriend who's gone on for a while now, he's 17. The other one did have a girlfriend. His new thing was he's going to wait till a woman asks him out, which has taken a long time. If he doesn't want to be the — and my other son and I are like, well, you're going to wait a long time. I have to tell you, it's not going to happen. So when you're thinking about live events, this idea of constantly — because there's not church, there's not other places — obviously we should have a Pivot singles event where we all talk about Kara and Scott. But I'm going to tell you something very weird. I get approached by so many couples, several well-known couples actually. Someone just texted me who listened to Pivot together, and that's their point of connection. That's where they met. I know it sounds crazy, but they had a point of connection, and then they could debate which one they liked better, me or Scott. Obviously me. But it was really interesting. I was like, huh. So we're helping couples that exist feel better with each other because they're spending a little more time on a topic they like. It's fun for them to debate it. So offline is just superior to online, no matter how you slice it, even though online is the way it's going with dating.

Lakshmi Rengarajan: Yeah, no. Well, I'll caveat that. Yes, events are great, but most singles events are absolute garbage. In the hierarchy of event types, singles events are usually pretty low in terms of quality. The standard has always been just shove a bunch of single people into a bar, give them drink tickets, and hope something happens. Singles events, rightly so, have a bad reputation. What I was trying to do, and maybe I'll do this again someday soon, is to elevate that. How do you use environment? How do you use the size of the crowd? How do you use stimulus? People need to have something other than "we are all single" as a point of connection. All of those factors need to be put into consideration.

If I could say something — you said something about your son, Scott. And I've never said this publicly, but I feel like this is the place to do it. One of the reasons why I think this industry doesn't get the same scrutiny that Twitter or TikTok or any of these other places get is that the moment when we start to see a piece of tech and we start to see its downsides is when we see it affect children. Think about The Social Dilemma at the end when the product manager sees his child on Instagram. That's the moment when he realizes the impact of the product. We don't have that in dating. We don't see adults in the same way we do children. The hearts of adults are just as important as the welfare of children in this context because of the implications. People building products don't see their "children" experiencing the impact of that product. That is why it does not get the same scrutiny as other forms of tech.

Kara Swisher: So let's do the tips. Finish up with the tips. Scott, if you have any more questions, but what are some of the tips you have now?

Scott Galloway: Well, I heard your episode last summer about how people always want you to set them up.

Lakshmi Rengarajan: Yes, they do. I'm good at it.

Scott Galloway: But I do lying. Don't do my method. I lie to them. I make things up and I set them up via dissembling. But go ahead.

Lakshmi Rengarajan: Here's what I would say. There are a couple of things to remember when you're trying to set someone up. One, never tell them that you're setting them up. Don't use that word. Never use the word "match." Never say that you guys are perfect for each other or anything like that. The phrase I like to use is really simple but very powerful: "I think you guys might get along." That's it. "I think you guys might get along." That way, you as the person doing the setting up, you're kind of out of it. You don't feel responsibility if it doesn't work out. You've just created a little container. The language is really important. You've taken the pressure off. Then those two people can decide if there's something more.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, you should meet. Professionally, personally. I try to do that with Scott, with friends.

Lakshmi Rengarajan: "Get along" is better. It just pushes the person just a little bit more. That little bit can make all the difference. The other thing, and this is really important — Kara, I know people approach you all the time, and I feel like you would crush this. I have this thing I call a "lodging line." It's a little tiny thing you say about the person you're trying to set up that lodges into someone's heart and opens them up a little bit. When people set people up, they tend to talk in these boring, well-meaning platitudes. "They're amazing. They're wonderful. You'll adore them." That doesn't do anything. You want to give a tiny line about the other person that evokes a visual and tells you something about their character. Can I give you a quick example?

Kara Swisher: Sure. It's not like, "Oh, I'd fuck them." But go ahead.

Lakshmi Rengarajan: Well, if you want to throw that on at the end, I'm not going to tell you not to.

Kara Swisher: No, I'm not.

Lakshmi Rengarajan: I mean, you are Kara Swisher. You can get away with more F-bombs than most people. So go for it. But the thing you want to do — I'm going to give an example from this week. I'm sitting in the studio with Chris, the audio engineer at Vox. I'd been telling him for the past couple of weeks I was super nervous about this interview. Last week I was like, "Oh man, I just know my computer is going to break down. The one time I get to talk to Scott Galloway and Kara Swisher, I'm going to have a tech issue." He was like, "Look, I will book a studio. I will sit in the booth with you and you're going to be great. We're going to make this work." First of all, Chris is engaged. So sorry, he's off the market. But you just heard something about him. It wasn't deeply personal. You weren't being told what to think about him. But you probably pictured this guy who looked out for somebody, booked a room, sitting over there having my back. That's the kind of stuff we need to share about each other, especially in a world where we're all getting flattened by our screens. We as people need to do that little bit of extra work to dimensionalize people when we try to set them up.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I think what you're talking about is powerful in this notion of third places where random encounters where things like pheromones and humor and body language can play a role when they can't play a role online. I'm just curious — you got a 19-year-old man and woman in front of you. What advice would you give them around trying to find or develop good skills that result in good relationships and potentially finding something that turns into a romantic relationship?

Lakshmi Rengarajan: Let me add man and man, woman and woman.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, okay. I'm going to be —

Kara Swisher: Hold on, hold on, hold on. Before you start shaming, I said a man or a woman. I didn't say gay or straight.

Scott Galloway: All right, okay. Go ahead.

Lakshmi Rengarajan: It's official.

Scott Galloway: I know what advice I give to gay men.

Kara Swisher: What?

Scott Galloway: "No means maybe and yes means anal."

Kara Swisher: Okay, and there we have it. Sorry, Lakshmi.

Scott Galloway: Is that wrong?

Lakshmi Rengarajan: Yes, it is. Yes, it is.

Scott Galloway: I listen to the show.

Kara Swisher: From the Vox Media Podcast Network. We were so good. We almost got out.

Lakshmi Rengarajan: I prepped for this moment. Don't worry. Go for it.

Kara Swisher: Okay.

Lakshmi Rengarajan: A couple of things. One philosophical thing, then one very practical thing. Philosophically, please remember that most of the people you like and care about were not people you liked immediately. You got to know them in moments.

Scott Galloway: A second coffee.

Lakshmi Rengarajan: I'm going to push back on that for a second, Scott. I get the sentiment of "be open-minded." But when someone hears that, it actually comes across as a little condescending. Like, "Oh, you're doing it wrong." Here's the thing to remember to your coffee comment: most dates right now are happening in coffee shops and at restaurants, which makes sense. But this is a terrible environment to get to know somebody. I understand why people do it. But if you look at all the dating advice out there, it is all around navigating this very narrow box. "Did he pay for the check? Did they order something? Were they nice to the server?" You're trying to get to know somebody in this very limited context. You're putting so much pressure. It's like being in a Law & Order episode. Everything is being determined in that moment. Please keep that in mind. These are not the best ways to get to know people. I understand you have to do it, but don't try to draw a complete picture about somebody in a Starbucks.

Scott Galloway: I couldn't agree more. I describe every date I had in a restaurant as me doing controlled boasting. Me just sitting there trying to be more impressive than I was.

Lakshmi Rengarajan: Yes, exactly. That's what everyone's doing. Just remember this isn't the best environment. The second thing: you have to work on getting people to share bits of their story as opposed to their pitch. Most people are trained to pitch themselves. You have to get people out of pitch mode. I'll give you an example of how people do this inadvertently. A very common question when people are dating is, "What's your family like? Are you guys close?" Sounds like a good question. It's not a good question because it puts people in a state of being judged. Not everyone identifies with the word "family." That is a very privileged word. Not everybody has good associations with family. You're putting someone on the defensive. But it seems like a good question. Here's the question I tell people to ask, and it will change the trajectory of your conversation: "What was one great thing about your upbringing?"

Kara Swisher: Okay. That's good. Very different.

Scott Galloway: "Nothing, I was beaten daily." There could be a bad answer.

Lakshmi Rengarajan: But think about it. Scott has talked a lot about his upbringing. I'm going to hear more of that. Everybody has had an upbringing. But not everyone has had a family in the way we tend to think about family.

Kara Swisher: Oh, that's good. I like that. That's really good. You don't have to tell everything. Interesting. My son, he's not dating, but he's meeting different people. One thing he's doing is not telling people that his moms are lesbians. There's one woman who likes him who's super anti-gay. So he's like, "Oh, interesting." I said, "Have you told her?" He's like, "Not yet. Not yet." Then he moves on to tell me something wonderful about your upbringing. Anyway, this is so helpful. Lakshmi, we're going to have you back on again. Thank you so much. You can hear more from Lakshmi on this season of Land of the Giants, as well as on her podcast, Paired by the People, wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you so much. This was delightful.

Lakshmi Rengarajan: Thank you so much.

Kara Swisher: That was riveting, Scott. We should be Yentas.

Scott Galloway: We should. I feel like it's a whole new business line for us. What do you think? Yes? No? Okay.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I like it. But anyway, that was really fascinating. We should do more on that topic. We'll be back for wins and fails after the break.

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Kara Swisher: Okay, Scott, let's do some wins and fails. I'm going to start this week. We're going to have them on on Thursday, but this book, *The Epic Battle for a Meaty Empire and the Redstone Family Legacy* by James Stewart and Rachel Abrams, covers Sumner Redstone's manipulation of family and girlfriends, according to *The Times*. We see in precise detail the misogyny of Redstone's lust as he decides that his wealth and professed love for these women give him something like the rights of a king. He determines that each of them has betrayed him in some terrible way. One by one, he cuts them off. It's real dirty. It's crazy. You got Les Moonves and Sherry Redstone, who managed to wrest it all away from all of these terrible men. This is going to be a great book. It's a great story. Very enjoyable. I love a good media succession. It's the real-life *Succession*.

Scott Galloway: I like that.

Kara Swisher: And then with FAIL, a story that just appeared in *The Washington Post* today. It's something you talk a lot about. The CDC did a report. Let me just read the top: "Teen girls in the United States are engulfed in a growing wave of violence and trauma, according to federal researchers who released data Monday showing increases in rape and sexual violence as well as record levels of feeling sad and hopeless. Nearly one in three high school girls reported in 2021 they seriously considered suicide, up 60 percent. Almost 15 percent of teen girls said they were forced to have sex, an increase of 27 percent over two years, the first increase since the CDC started doing it. Almost three in five teenage girls reported feeling persistently sad or hopeless every day for at least two weeks in a row during the previous year." Girls are really not doing well. You talk a lot about men not doing well, but this report is so disheartening to read. It's a failure of our society, both girls and boys. But this one's really tough to read. That's my fail.

Scott Galloway: Just picking up on what you were talking about, there was some other interesting housing data that came out. A third of all houses sold in 2022 were all cash buyers. One in three houses being sold, someone shows up and pays all cash. At the same time, you think, "Oh great, the economy is doing really well. People are flush with cash." At the same time, first-time homebuyers is at a 40-year low. What does that tell us? If you're already rich, you're killing it. But if you don't yet own a home or you're young or trying to establish a family, it's increasingly difficult to buy a home. This kind of NIMBYist culture we have that skews favor to the incumbents and people already with capital is making it more and more difficult for young people to acquire an asset that is the primary means for building wealth in America. You take pride in it. It has huge benefits of creating a space for you and loved ones. Over time, a lot of people end up at the end of their lives with the majority of their... My mom retired. The only reason she could retire is because she had a home in Westwood that we bought in the early 80s and ended up selling when she needed to retire. This is how the majority of America builds its safety net, builds wealth. First-time buyers, young people, are just giving up. My fail is America continues to have this rejectionist, luxury positioning that favors the incumbents. We need massive new permitting. We have a housing crisis. We could build dramatically more homes in the next 10 years and not have enough. The housing data is my fail and the continued transfer of wealth from young people to old people.

My win is I was on TV with you last week. I won't say names, but someone could probably figure it out pretty easily. I went home. I was with you. I wasn't feeling great. I was like, "Why the fuck was I on there talking about this? I know nothing about this."

Kara Swisher: Yeah, you complained at the place. But go ahead.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I was a bad man. The anchor, someone I would call a friend, called me at one in the morning and said, "Are you doing okay? Are you all right?" I said, "Yeah, I'm just a little jet lagged and I was pissed off. I don't think I did very well." But it got me thinking, and this is a skill I did not develop until I was in my 40s. The easiest way to express concern, and tactically the easiest way to get someone to like you and care for you, is to express how much you like and care about them. So often you register in your life, "I get the sense they're not doing well," and I didn't reach out to people and say, "Hey, are you doing okay?" I remember thinking, I feel so much closer to this person that they would take the time to call me and just ask that one simple question. That's my win.

Kara Swisher: I think it's really nice. I think it's an easy way to just reach out to people and say, "I notice. I care about you. I'm reaching out to see if you're going." It is in person. Absolutely. I agree with you. It was interesting because not just you but many of your friends talk to each other about other friends. That's another thing you should do. Say, "Hey, that person seems sad. We should do something."

Scott Galloway: Do something.

Kara Swisher: I do that a lot with lots of members, including you. It's really important to do that. It takes two seconds. It takes two seconds to do so. Or say, "Leave them a man in their apartment so they can have a nice chat."

Scott Galloway: There you go. Leave them Bill Cohen.

Kara Swisher: I did say goodbye. I texted you.

Scott Galloway: Oh, Drew wouldn't let me interrupt you, by the way, FYI.

Kara Swisher: So I feel bad now, but I was meant to say goodbye, but he wouldn't let me. So let's blame Drew on this one.

Scott Galloway: There you go. Message, Scott. I care.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, we do also 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. We'll be back on Friday for more. Again, we're going to have James Stewart and Rachel Abrams here to talk about this book. We're very excited. There you go.

Scott Galloway: All right.

Kara Swisher: Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Indertut engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Neil Silberio. 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 later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Cara, have a great rest of the week.

Scott Galloway: You too. We'll see you next time.

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