Pivot - Actors Strike Ends, OpenAI's Big Moves, and Guest Mattie Kahn

Episode Date: November 10, 2023

Kara and Scott discuss the winners and losers from the GOP debate, Disney's latest earnings, and why Rivian seems to be bucking EV trends. Then, the 118-day SAG-AFTRA strike is coming to an end, but who's really coming out on top? Plus, OpenAI makes a big announcement that Kara calls a "power move." Finally, our Friend of Pivot is Mattie Kahn, who writes about girls being a force for change in her new book, "Young and Restless: The Girls Who Sparked America's Revolutions." You can follow Mattie at @mattiekahn Follow us on Instagram and Threads at @pivotpodcastofficial. Follow us on TikTok at @pivotpodcast. Send us your questions by calling us at 855-51-PIVOT, or at nymag.com/pivot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Support for Pivot comes from Virgin Atlantic. Too many of us are so focused on getting to our destination that we forgot to embrace the journey. Well, when you fly Virgin Atlantic, that memorable trip begins right from the moment you check in. On board, you'll find everything you need to relax, recharge, or carry on working. Buy flat, private suites, fast Wi-Fi, hours of entertainment, delicious dining, and warm, welcoming service that's designed around you. delicious dining and warm, welcoming service that's designed around you. Check out virginatlantic.com for your next trip to London data, and a matching engine that helps you find quality candidates fast. Listeners of this show can get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash podcast.

Just go to Indeed.com slash podcast right now and say you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.

And I'm Scott Galloway. And man, Scott News. I know, it's everywhere. It doesn't stop. It doesn't stop. It's crazy. All in our wheelhouse. Yeah, a lot going on.

By the way, just a quick, in our weekly segment called Let's Talk About Us, and pat ourselves on the back. You won Best Podcast of the Year. Yes, I did. Oh, I wasn't going to push that in your face. Yes, for Succession. Although, much deserved, let me just say. By the way, as good, let's bring this back to me.

As good as your Succession podcast was, they thought, oh, that's a good idea. Let's do one for Apple's We Crashed. Yes. And I did it. It was that bad. Oh, it was. They had the worst guests. They scripted me.

I got in fights with the producers. It was awful. It was awful. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You know what HBO did? And quite correctly, they got out of the fucking way. Not Apple.

Not for me. There was a guy who I work with, Michael Gluckstadt. I think that's how you pronounce it, right? He was amazing. He's in comms and stuff like that. But I got to say, they were like, what do you want to do? And that's how you do these things if you want to make them interesting. You deferred it. You ask, what does Kara Swisher want to do? No, not Kara Swisher, but what does the talent want to do? What is the person who- The talent being you.

Well, you being the talent for We Crash. Yes, but yes but yes but let it you disarm me with kindness i know i'm just saying i and also by the way i had i did love we crashed i have to say it was really good and you could do a lot with that it was good this the episode the series was great it was it was my podcast that fucking sucked yeah um but i have to say the series but the succession was so good it was hard not to be good at it. It really was good. No, but you did, you and the producers, I had several people tell me that they immediately hit play on the, and they did a great job elegantly promoting it. It said, and now go to the podcast for Succession hosted by Kara Swisher. It really was, I mean, more than you doing a great job even was it kind of, it was the first time I'd seen that elegant cross-media promotion.

Yeah. They did a nice job. Anyways, congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. I was really appreciative. It was really fun. I hope to do another one for them at some point. I don't know what show right now is hot. Anyway, we have a lot to talk about, by the way. The actors strike coming to an end after 118 days. What a waste of time. Oh, I know the actors don't think that, but both of us do. OpenAI is making some big announcements, and we'll chat with author Maddie Kahn about her book, Young and Restless, The Girls Who Sparked America's Revolution. is important because there's a lot of stuff around young girls and women, both having to do with abortion and also having to do with what's going on on meta and some of the social networks. There's a lot to talk about there. Did you watch the Republican debate last night? I watched some of it. I actually found it kind of boring. Did you? Yeah, it was like the little kids table as Amanda

calls it. That's the perfect description. Did you see it? Yes, I did. I did watch it. I liked when Nikki Haley called Vivek Ramaswamy, Vivek Scum, after he noted her daughter used TikTok. Well, I want to laugh at why Nikki Haley didn't answer your question, which is about looking at families in the eye. In the last debate, she made fun of me for actually joining TikTok while her own daughter was actually using the app for a long time. So you might want to take care of your family first. Leave my daughter out of your voice. The next generation of Americans are using it. And that's actually the point. You have her supporters propping her up. That's fine. I thought that was kind of a low blow by him that he may have been making a point,

but he's such a jerk. He comes off like such an asshole, essentially. Yeah. But you know what? You don't use people's children just for political points. Agreed, agreed. And especially a guy who is, you know, could argue comes across a bit of a, you know, physically in his voice and his age as a bit of a child himself. Yeah, yeah.

He is really, I think he's fallen further faster. She, I thought, and granted, I have a bias here. I thought she clearly won if there was a winner. The real winner was Donald Trump. You got to give it to the guy. Strategically, he's been very smart. His polls just keep going up and up. He's now at 63 points. DeSantis came across as like a robot minus the charm. He's just- I know. I agree. He's just, every time he sort of, his voice goes up a little touch, you're like, oh, wow, you're really awkward. But he did attack Trump a little bit. He says he's a lot different guy than he was, and this is the most they're going to do to Trump. Trump is their opponent. They really should be attacking Trump, but they won't do it. Although Haley has stuck with this federal ban on abortion would be nearly impossible to successfully implement. She was being honest.

I think she's right. She's been very consistent on that topic. She had the most articulate explanation of how the Republicans should handle the abortion issue around just like I'm pro-life. If they're not, that's the way it is. We'll have to figure out a way to get along. And don't criminalize women. Don't criminalize it. Yeah. I's the way it is. We'll have to figure out a way to get along. And don't criminalize women. Don't criminalize it. Yeah. Yeah.

I think she is the best. I mean, here's the problem. The primaries are basically a race to see who is most unelectable in the general. Yes. Right. Yes. Yes. Because effectively what you have is the way elections are run is with kind of the rabid zealots.

You got to inspire the base. And then the way you got to get them to turn out. And then in my post this week on Immersion of Malice is about what I call swingers. And then the swing votes in the middle. And I think that both I think both Biden and Trump are going to turn out the rabid or the zealots on each party. I think the turnout is going to be huge. rabid or the zealots on each party, I think the turnout is going to be huge. So then it comes down to who, in fact, would get the win over the most moderates in these small number of counties in a small number of states. And what voters tend to like, if you look at the way it goes back and

forth between Democrats and Republicans, is they like a contrast? They do believe in a balance of power, and they get sick of drinking the same taste over and over. If it was Haley versus Biden, I think she would win handily. But they're not, I think if it's Biden-Trump, and again, I'm terrible, political predictions, you're better than I am at this stuff. I think Biden wins because I think, I just don't see any moderates breaking for Trump. But she is- Very appealing. Very appealing. She's done herself well. For 2028, she set herself up very well. 100%. And my fear is that he picks her as his feet. But anyway, I thought she was-

Well, she's understood that Trump is the actual opponent. She's the only one that really has. She never looks good. I was talking to someone who's close to her. I was like, she never looks good when she's mouthing right wing stuff. It doesn't feel comfortable with her. And she does it to be tough or whatever. And she's just more naturally, you know, listen, let's talk about like the big loser Biden. He won all over the place in the elections on Tuesday. I mean, for a loser, he's looking great.

Everyone's like, he's such a loser. I'm like, he won everything. Like, in red-leaning Ohio, favored enshrining the right to abortion in the state constitution. That's all she wrote. There you go. Democrats also flipped the state house in Virginia,

which Youngkin was supposed to be such a just a masterful politician. I guess he wasn't. Big win for Governor Andy Beshear in Kentucky. And I thought the most pertinent thing he said, which Haley could also say, which is, there's no left and right, only forward. I thought that was a fantastic little line. And I think Haley should move into that zone too. I think people are dying for that kind of stuff. He's appealing, he's effective, he's sensible, he doesn't attack. Just a really smart politician.

He's got a big career out of him, obviously. Lovely family. Emotional dad. Did you see how he sort of broke up when he was talking about his kids for a second? Just, you know, weepy dad. Lovely husband. His wife looks fantastic. Everything about him is great.

And Haley could move into that zone from the Republican side. You're interviewing Congressman Dean Phillips today who's running for president. Why are you doing that? Well, so anyone who's under the age of 100 with a D next to their name, I want to give some sunlight to in terms of running for president. And it's dropping. I think it's dropping on my property pot today. But he is he's he's a very thoughtful guy, very impressive guy. He's sort of cut from the cloth of a super successful business person who's now in public service. He's a third term. Gelato, right? Yeah. And also, and this is where he won me over, Belvedere vodka.

Oh, I just feel like what the hell is this guy? I'm sorry. That makes for a great soft serve. Gelato. Got it. See, I would skip dinner, get fucked up, and then say, let's go get Froger. Anyways. Okay.

But he's a really thoughtful guy. He's super impressive. He's handsome. He's young. He's clearly public service minded. He's probably not going to be president. But I think what could happen is I do think he'll actually poll reasonably well. And as we said in the last thing, I think it'll inspire more people to jump in.

But he's a reasonable moderate who is, you know, has a depth to him. I think he's got a real, I mean, I could imagine him in eight years being a vice president. I don't think he's going to – I don't think he – I think he would not stand to much scrutiny under the bright lights on a presidential debate stage. No, I'm not voting for the gelato guy. I'm sorry. It's just like – look, Gavin Newsom's run a country. I agree. Pritzker's run a – any of these governors has done it.

Or even mayors. Mayors are fantastic. I want someone who's these governors has done it. Or even mayors. Mayors are fantastic. I want someone who's run stuff that's government. He's worth a look, though. Sure. He's an impressive guy. I'd rather have Mark Cuban. If you want to impress me or any of these people, they're fine.

I just don't think business necessarily translates into government, although there's some nice practices. Well, why can't you have both is what I would argue. I guess, yeah. Gelato. I just can't get past gelato. Gelato? Just can't get past. He's super successful.

I get it, but gelato. Actually, if you listen, I don't know if you saw him on Bill Maher. How hard is gelato? How hard is gelato? Well, it's harder on business. I guess, but not gelato. Anyways, good man, super successful, has turned to public service. And when you listen to him, he's just sort of infinitely reasonable.

And unfortunately, he probably has no position in American politics because he's a moderate. No, not so. Look at Andy Beshear. No, I honestly, no, I don't think that. My take on this guy, and you know, we have different opinions, narcissists, like massive narcissists. Every time I hear him, I'm like, oh, really? Why do you say that? I mean, aren't they all narcissists? Look at me. He has a look at me tendency. I just don't, I'm not, he doesn't. And you don't think that, you don't think the president would qualify as that? I guess, but this guy, I just, he is not qualified in any way.

That's, that's my issue. It's like really, truly not qualified. I agree. That doesn't seem to be a criteria any longer for president. No, but no other public. Yeah. But Donald Trump is a terrible person and a terrible president. Yeah. And I agree with you. He's worth a look and he's smart. And just I don't think Andrew Yang was qualified to be president. But I think Andrew Yang doesn't get the. You agree with that. Good. So But I don't think Andrew Yang gets the credit he deserves for inspiring a discussion about universal basic income and the fact that we need to move away from this lie that we don't redistribute income. We do. And that there should

be, in the wealthiest nation in the world, there should be a floor that provides people with a basic level of income such that they can feed their family or not be homeless. And you know what? Andrew Yang, people don't give him enough credit here. He is the person who normalized that discussion. Before it was like, we're America. You got to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, which translated to cutting food stamps for single mothers. So he had, I think we are better off.

I don't think Andrew Yang, I wouldn't interview Andrew Yang on my podcast because I didn't think he was qualified initially. I think he was pushing Dean Phillips, I believe. He's actually, Andrew introduced me to Representative Phillips. And America is better because Andrew Yang ran for president. I agree.

I like John Anderson. I like all these people. I liked even that crazy Perot. I liked him. I liked him in there too. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. I think it's important. You know, who's looking, giving a little glance at Phillips is Sam Altman. Really? That's interesting. Oh, yeah. He's been having little meetings with him. He wants to find anybody but Trump. So he's looking at all the alternatives because he's worried about the Biden situation. So he was given a glance at Dean Phillips. Well, if there was ever a kingmaker, let me get this, a billionaire who is the foremost thinker on AI, he'd be a good guy to have in your corner. He was giving him a look and down, up and down, apparently.

Well, we'll see. We'll see. It'll be an interesting race once it gets into the wider landscape. We'll see. But I don't mind different people there. But let's move on. Disney's earnings was a good report card for Bob Iger. Disney Plus added 7 million subscribers to the third quarter.

The company also announced a profit jump of almost 700 million, up from 250 million a year ago. Experiences division, which includes its theme parks and cruise lines, saw operating profit grow 30% compared to the same period last year. He announced they will officially combine Disney Plus and Hulu's streaming app in the spring of 2024. Losses in streaming, still big, but half as much, I think, something like that, doing a lot better, or maybe a third as much. I think he was very articulate. I listened to part of that, what he was talking about. I think he was like, I'm cutting costs, I'm going to cut more costs. I'm cleaning things up. We're going to focus on streaming and cruise. Obviously, the

big black eye was TV ads, which are not doing great. People are, including at Warner and other places, Dave Zaslav also talked about the problems in, or his CFO did, the problems in TV advertising. That's really the problematic area. Pretty good. What do you think? It was not really a contrast. What was interesting is looking at Warner Brothers Discovery and compared to Disney.

And they both have this huge weeping sore of linear TV that was down, I think, 11% at Disney and 13% or 12%. And that's faster. That's even faster than people thought. And most of it is going to YouTube or TikTok because advertising as a percentage of the economy is actually stays relatively stable. It doesn't go up a lot. It doesn't go down a lot.

The real contrast here, though, was the difference between what I'd call seasoned executives. And that is Zaslav kind of gave no one anything to hold on to. And that is the CFO would really spooked the market and why Warner Brothers Discovery, I think, had its worst one-day performance ever, maybe, on the back of its earnings, whereas Disney stock went up. Is that, one, Disney has the parks, which continue to just be the gift that keeps on giving. Disney looks like he's holding on to the strategy or he has a plan. I've always said a young man, if they want to attract a mate at bare minimum, you don't have to be wealthy. You don't have to be good looking. You have to have a plan. Even if you don't stick to that plan, it's like, yeah, I'm working. I'm an apprentice learning how to weld. And I have a plan and I'm

going to buy my first home in three years. You need a plan, right? That's what people, that's what mates want to know, that you have a plan such that you can protect their offspring. Anyways, Iger had a plan. The headline news from the Warner Brothers discovery call that spooked the shit out of everyone is we may not be able to continue to pay down our debt and de-lever at the current. Which he's been doing. Which he's been doing. Which he's been doing. And that's sort of, if you look at Warner Brothers Discovery, I think it's got about $45 billion in debt, enterprise value of $70 billion. And if they pay the debt down $2 or $3 billion, then technically, if you think the assets

are worth the same, the equity value should increase $2 or $3 billion. And that's kind of what value investors have been looking at here. So when the CFO sort of said, well, things are so bad, we may not be able to de-lever at the same rate. And Zaslav didn't really provide any vision for why things are going to get better. Whereas Iger said, I got a plan, right? I'm buying the rest of Hulu. I'm doubling down on streaming. There's evidence that streaming is working for us. We added seven or eight million subscribers. And the parks, don't worry, the parks are just fine. And cruises. Cruises are doing well. Yeah, live entertainment is what it's all been. And if you listen to both calls, it's just sort

of a contrast. Even a little thing I noticed, Zaslav said, you know, we're turning this into a real company again. And I thought, well, it wasn't a real company three years ago when it was worth four times as much, boss. I mean. Yeah, he's a bit of, yeah, he does that. Yeah. Iger is a smooth operator. Iger is really, really smooth. And here's the bottom line. The ability, storytelling, whatever you want to call storytelling charisma, is now, I would say it's 51% narrative and 49% numbers. Because if you actually look at the numbers between the two firms, they weren't that different. They're both dealing with the same issues, but one was up and one had its worst day in its history. And the contrast here, so Disney stock is up 1%, effectively flat year to date. Warner Brothers

Discovery down 2%. Netflix up 47% this year. This is all- Well, I think I was headed that way. I feel like for the first time I was like, okay, they're going to get this thing to, with the Hulu, adding Hulu in, they're going to be in the Netflix position at some point. That's how I felt when I saw it, you know, when I was listening to it, is that they're going to get to a profitable streaming business. I think every CEO needs a compelling tagline that says, this is our strategy, this is why we're differentiated, relevant, and sustainable. And Bob Iger's tagline is the following. We are going to be the most profitable media and entertainment company for serving every household that has children globally. Because if you have children, you have to have the Mandalorian and then you have to take them to see the Star Wars experience, Rogue Nine at Disneyland. They have a monopoly on what it means to inspire children.

People are worried about Marvels. Like I said last time, you know, I love the Marvels, but that, you know, some of their franchises are getting a little old in the teeth and they have to reinvigorate them. And they get the Hulu stuff, but there's a lot of really good stuff on Hulu. They have to have more than just children. They've got to offer to Hawaii. The bottom line is what I think. Households with children generally have more money. Households with children are held hostage to their children.

We are, yes. And if you continue to have the singular streaming network that you have to have if you have children, and you have the singular experience out of home if you have children, that's a good wrap. Netflix isn't coming for that. Netflix can do a Stranger Things pop-up in London, but they're not going to have, you know, it takes decades to build these parks and these cruise lines. But you also don't cut Netflix either because you like what's on there. You just don't,

you don't cut it. Oh, no. Netflix is the car, but you buy accessories. there. You just don't. You don't cut it. Oh, no. Netflix is the car, but you buy accessories. Zasloff is selling a lot of content, and there's a lot of controversy over selling a lot of content back into Netflix again in order to make money. And there was a really good article, I forget, maybe it was on Puck, but is it right for Zasloff to be selling the content back, helping Netflix arm Netflix again? He has to. He doesn't have the money. He's got to continue paying down that debt. And it might be, and also it might be the right strategy, but he doesn't have any choice.

He's got to pay down that debt. Agreed. Anyway, we'll see what happens. But Bob, good job, Bob. And their company is doing good. Rivian is upping production and cutting exclusivity ties with Amazon. Rivian's 2019 deal with Amazon

stated the company could sell, only sell its electric vans to the retailer, with Amazon committing to buy 100,000 vans by 2030. Amazon, which owns 17% stake in Rivian, will reportedly still stick to that purchase plan. The EV company will produce 54,000 vehicles this year, up 2,000 from projections. Rivian's boost in production is a contrast to recent moves by other auto companies who have cut back, citing a dip in demand. You know, these companies go through this valley of death. And, you know, Rivian's a very attractive truck. It really is.

You know, obviously Ford is trying. They've got competition from whenever that Cybertruck comes out, which is definitely a, you know, if you want that, you want that. But if you don't want it, you don't want it. It's a certain look. You know, some of these companies are going to make it through this valley of death, even though the customer demand of EVs is still weak. I have one on order. I ordered it two or three years ago. You put a thousand bucks down and I finally got that email saying, configure it and we'll deliver it. And I've decided to go carless for a few years. Oh, all right. Okay. Yeah. But when I move, you know, if and when I move back, well, when I'm, I should say it's not if, when I move back to the

US, I'm getting, I'm getting a Rivian. I think it's a great, it's perfect for Aspen. There you go. I think it's a really handsome car. I don't know. You see a lot of them around. Yeah. I think it's a, I think it's a great car and I like the competition. I also, I ordered a new SUV and I like the competition. I also, I ordered a new SUV, and I named it Karen. It's a white Suburban. That's good. That's good. Oh, by the way, my neighbor, I have these incredibly lovely neighbors

who just got engaged, by the way, and they're the loveliest couple, just in general. And I was putting out the trash last night, and he goes, what's with the hooker jokes? This is across the yard. What's with the hooker jokes from Scott? And I said, oh, there were a lot more. And he yelled, okay, boomer. And then went back in the house. Okay, boomer.

Yeah. He thinks you're a boomer. Yeah. I'm technically Gen X. This is what's happening to me. In my home, I get yelled at from the neighbors about your jokes. Anyway, Rivian, congratulations. Bob Iger, congratulations. Okay, let's get to our first big story. After 118 days, the SAG-AFTRA strike appears to be over. The union announced on Wednesday that it reached a tentative agreement with studios.

Not a big surprise. It was expected. The deal still needs to be approved and ratified by the members. The full terms of agreements aren't out yet, but as of this recording, SAG-AFTRA did reveal some details. On X, the new contract is valued at a billion dollars and includes a minimum compensation increases, a streaming participation bonus, and provisions for consent and compensation when it comes to AI. Still, we don't know a whole lot, but in terms of getting back to work, movies that shut down midstream will be the first to start back up,

including Deadpool 3. You must be excited. TV shows should follow pretty quickly. California Governor Gavin Newsom said last month the Hollywood strikes cost the state more than $5 billion. So based on what we know, I just think this went on for far too long and people lost the narrative here. But what do you think?

Well, I haven't seen the details. But generally speaking, the market trumps any dynamic, specifically a union that doesn't have – I mean, here's the thing. The tails wagging the dog here are that more and more, there are 1.7 billion people on TikTok. One in a thousand creators on TikTok are as talented as these good folks at SAG and AFTRA. Bottom line is, this is an industry that has too much human capital. So it has very little leverage. And I had dinner with a couple of producers the other night. And there's just tremendous, we talk about income inequality, there's tremendous human capital inequality. And that is, they said, everybody wants the same

people. And so, the top, I bet the top 100 actors garner 50, 60, 80% of the total revenue. And the other question that would be fair to ask here is you cost the economy, I heard, $7 billion, not $5 billion, to get a billion dollars. There's got to be a better way than this. Yeah, I would agree. I think it was, you know, compared to other strikes, you'd see the UAW did very well. It made sense. Analysts estimate that the higher labor expenses will add 10% to the cost of making a show, and studios are expected to compensate by cutting back on production, which they've already did after the writer's strike. Netflix announced this week that it would scale back on the number of films made each year. And also, you know, people are starting to also use a lot of the other content. Say, for example, on Netflix,

the guy, my trainer, the guy I work out with, he's watching something called Blue-Eyed Samurai, which was from Japan, which he's loving, which was on Netflix, which he found. I'm going to go look at it. It's a cartoon, I guess, or it's animated. People are finding all kinds of things that they get from around the globe. It's actually getting consumers to try and look around. And so that's going to be an interesting thing. And then the New York Times wrote, celibate feelings compete with resentment over work stoppage and worries that the business era that is coming. It is a different business era, Hollywood. I'm sorry to tell you. And I think they do sense this right now. Most of the smart, both producers and actors and writers that I know, they do understand what's about to happen, which is cuts in the number. And

it's given these studios a minute to say, do I really need that person? Do I really need this? What do I actually need versus just saying yes to everybody and let's all go to the polo lounge for a drink, essentially. I would bet the amount of money, and some of this is because they were all spending at an unsustainable level, but I would bet the amount of money spent on writers and actors, distinct of these new agreements, these quote-unquote historic landmark agreements, will be less because the whole industry is consolidating. The whole industry recognizes they have huge competitive pressures from human capital that charges a lot less and from Netflix, which is tapping into foreign production.

I mean, it's like when all of a sudden the Japanese started making better cars than the U.S., and all of a sudden, you know, the unions in Detroit and Detroit automakers lost a lot of power. It's kind of the same dynamic here. The human capital in Los Angeles and in the traditional media ecosystem is just all of a sudden incurring, it's really incurring sort of the forces of technology and globalization and has almost no leverage. And again, and I sound like a broken record here, they're trying to squeeze blood from the wrong rock here. So anyways, I'm glad they're back to work. These linear companies needed to freshen up there.

What will be really interesting, though, is just to see what happens to linear TV. See Disney, see Warner. Like it's just going to cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut. It's not how people are consuming information anymore. They're consuming it on YouTube. As I told you, my friend moved over to YouTube. My kids watch everything on YouTube. Or they'll, they do not watch network television.

They watch streaming. They watch, they definitely watch streaming. You know, it's just, it's a, it's an utterly changed economic environment. It was interesting because we've gotten a lot of attacks by Hollywood people. But at the same time, a lot of people have come to us and said, thank you for telling the truth about what's happening, which is interesting. You know, that they really feel like we're being honest about where they're going. I love actors. I love writers. I love, you know, I mostly think the studios will do whatever's in their interest, but the studios will do whatever's in their interest. That's what they're going costs by using AI is happening in every single industry. And Hollywood is not going to be immune from what's happening with lawyers, with doctors,

with writers, with newspapers, et cetera, et cetera. Absolutely not immune to what's happening. I don't know if I made this analogy before, but I went to the sphere and I was thinking about it. I love U2, so it was peanut butter and chocolate for me. But I'll go see, I would go see, I don't like country music. I would go see country music at the Sphere. The platform is much more important to me than the content at a place like the Sphere. And that's how I think Hollywood, at least in this decade, when Netflix can take a good but not a great series starting,

you know, starring a hero that saved a prince from the horrors of Buckingham Palace. I'm talking about Suits, of course. They put it on Netflix, and they put it on their home screen, and they make the most watched series in history. So it's clearly the platforms are... You'll never give her, like, credit,

will you? That's a very successful thing, and she's part of it. But go ahead. Well, they're just awful human beings, Kara, but other than that, I wish them the best. Okay, move along. Leave this poor woman alone.

You and Megyn Kelly are like obsessed with her and Piers Morgan. Do thee take grosser to be your lawfully wedded wife? You are in a little tiny group of haters that includes Piers Morgan and Megyn Kelly and Scott Gellar.

Literally awful people. A little troika of Megyn Markle hatred, but go ahead. I don't even know where I was going with this. Anyway, Suits, Netflix can now, Netflix is now the dominant, Netflix is the sphere. And great, it's great to have you two there, but it doesn't matter. It's like the platforms are now, they can turn suits into the most watched series in history. And they'll do it, you know, and so all of a sudden they have all the leverage. Effectively, the entire strike, if you were to distill it down to one action, the SGA, AFTRA, SAG, they basically rented dump trucks, went to Warner Brothers Discovery, Disney, Paramount, filled their trucks full of cash, and then drove it over to Netflix. That is the net effect of what has happened here. Well, we'll see. We'll see what happens. I think there'll be certain winners.

I think Disney is one of the winners, will eventually be a winner. But you're right. You're right. Stocks at a 10-year low, Kara. I know that. But I'm saying they, to me, have—years ago when Iger did an interview with me once, he did say we're almost not big enough. And I think he was right. Anyway, I'm not sure that was a victory for labor like it was for UAW or UPS or whatever.

But we'll see. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll chat about open AI changing the game yet again. We talk a lot about young men on the show. But our friend of Pivot, Maddy Kahn, has a new book out on young women and their impact on activism. Fox Creative. This is advertiser content from Zelle. When you picture an online scammer, what do you see? For the longest time, we have these images of somebody sitting crouched over their computer with a hoodie on, just kind of typing away in the middle of the night.

And honestly, that's not what it is anymore. That's Ian Mitchell, a banker turned fraud fighter. These days, online scams look more like crime syndicates than individual con artists. And they're making bank. Last year, scammers made off with more than $10 billion. It's mind-blowing to see the kind of infrastructure that's been built to facilitate scamming at scale. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of scam centers all around the world. These are very savvy business people. These are organized criminal rings. And

so once we understand the magnitude of this problem, we can protect people better. One challenge that fraud fighters like Ian face is that scam victims sometimes feel too ashamed to discuss what happened to them. But Ian says one of our best defenses is simple. We need to talk to each other. We need to have those awkward conversations around what do you do if you have text messages you don't recognize? What do you do if you start getting asked to send information that's more sensitive? Even my own father fell victim to a, thank goodness, a smaller dollar scam, but he fell victim and we have these conversations all

the time. So we are all at risk and we all need to work together to protect each other. Learn more about how to protect yourself at vox.com slash zelle. And when using digital payment platforms, remember to only send money to people you know and trust. Thumbtack presents the ins and outs of caring for your home. Out. Indecision, overthinking, second-guessing every choice you make. In. Plans and guides that make it easy to get home projects done. Out. Beige on beige on beige.

In. Knowing what to do, when to do it, and who to hire. Start caring for your home with confidence. Download Thumbtack today. It's been almost a year since OpenAI released ChatGPT to the public, kicking off an AI gold rush. The company shared what's coming next at their inaugural OpenAI Developer Conference this week. They always have these conferences when they get big. The announcements included

introduction of custom GPTs. This was fascinating for people to create their own. An upcoming app store and a new turbo model of chat GPT-4. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman spelled out the company's vision in his keynote. Let's listen to a bit. We believe that AI will be about individual empowerment and agency at a scale that we've never seen before, and that will elevate humanity to a scale that we've never seen before either. We'll be able to do more, to create more, and to have more. As intelligence gets integrated everywhere, we will all have superpowers on demand. We're excited to see what you all will do with this technology and to discover the new future that we're all going to architect together. Love that, Sam Altman. But honestly, it sounds like the App Store on super steroids, essentially. That's what's happening here. They're becoming a

platform. That's what jumped out at me about this announcement. A number of people on X were comparing Sam Altman to Steve Jobs after that presentation, I would agree. But it was the App Store. That's what it seemed to be. And they're becoming a platform. What do you think? I think you're right, but the App Store is arguably one of the most valuable businesses in the world.

Yeah, it's the new App Store. And as someone who spent, or my team spent a couple months trying to figure out how to build a PropG.ai and then basically, no, anyone can do it by just going to the platform. I think we should have waited two or three months. Look, I was blown away by this. And it indicates why software continues and technology continues to every year grab more and more of the world's GDP.

And that is, they said, okay, we're massively upgrading the product. You can now upload enormous amounts of data for these LLMs to analyze. We have decided we're taking out fear. We're giving you umbrella protection liability from any copyright infringement, which I thought was extraordinary. They had to do that. I'm on the board of Mya Tech Startup section, and the CEO uploaded the board deck to ChatGPT 4.5 and said, act in the voice of an aggressive growth board member. Give me feedback and ask me questions. And the questions it came back with were chilling. They were so insightful. And I mean, they kind of provoked an interesting conversation at the board level. It was like we had another board member in the room.

And while they're doing all this, while they're offering custom chatbots, the ability to make these things more relevant, they've updated the input or the news up until April. They've updated the amount of data they're scraping up until our current events up until April. They dramatically lowered the costs. And this is the key difference between technology and every other business. Businesses measure their power and their leverage by management's ability to raise prices. And since whatever you want to call it, Moore's law, the gestalt in technology is let's massively upgrade the product and let's lower prices.

If this had been a consumer company that said, we've dramatically improved the quality of this car, this scarf, this soda, this streaming media platform, the immediate next sentence would be, as a result, we're raising prices 15% because we have the margin power. Instead, these guys say, the product is just distinctly better and we're massively cutting costs. I was totally blown away by this thing. Yeah, I think the move to the platform is the power move, he is going to have this chatbot app store. It's a consumer business model. It's very, it's Steve Jobs' playbook. They will compete with Apple and Microsoft,

although Satya Nadella, by the way, Microsoft invested $13 billion in opening the AI smart investment by Satya Nadella. He made a surprise appearance at the conference, very happy with that partnership, saying you guys have built something magical. The word magical is an Apple word. That's how you talk about Steve Jobs. This copyright shield he talked about was also important, which OpenAI would cover legal costs for copyright suits,

which are common. Companies offer similar protection over IP claims, including IBM, Microsoft, Amazon, Getty Images, and Adobe. Altman said in his keynote, the products the company is currently launching are going to look very quaint compared to what's coming. Interesting thing to say, but you could see the directions these are going in. And he will repair the problems that the App Store had, which is dominance. He's going to have to be paying attention to where Apple went awry, including feeling like they're a monopoly. He's certainly going to have to deal with that. But he's got a map of someone else's successful launch. So this to me is the, it really is the app store of this era. I don't see there's any other way of looking at it.

Yeah. And I'm hopeful that Sam Altman becomes the foil and young men and women and stock analysts and the media start comparing him to Elon Musk and say, you can be a visionary. You can come up with, you can change the world. And it doesn't necessarily mandate that you're an asshole. And I think we need that. I think, unfortunately, the legacy of Steve Jobs not being an especially kind person in certain moments. He wasn't a public asshole. I agree. He was inspirational. I know you were friends with him.

I'm not friends with him. I knew him. Okay, but he comes off as warm and cuddly compared to Musk. But he also, anyways, I'm not going to shitpost a dead man. I don't think he was a great role model for CEOs. And I speak from experience in that when I was growing up in tech in the 90s, we all thought that acting like an asshole and being harsh on your employees was an indication of genius. And that was largely because of our

idolatry of Steve Jobs. And Elon Musk has now said, you not only have to be an asshole to your coworkers, you need to be a mendacious, weird person accusing people of sex crimes, of not paying severance. I mean, he's taken it to an entirely different level. And that trend needs to be reversed. And I'm hopeful that Sam Altman will have the same type of credibility as a visionary, as someone who creates hundreds of billions of dollars in shareholder value, while being a thoughtful, kind person that cares about the Commonwealth. We need a contrast here. We need a solvent, a foil, a zig when this guy, Musk, is zagging. And I hope that's Sam Alden. I would agree. I wouldn't compare Musk with Jobs ever. Not at all. Similar, but not the same.

But we could argue that. Look at the photograph on the cover of Walter Isaacson's book. Yes, I get that. Musk is trying to do that. He is nothing like Steve Jobs, let me just say. I agree. But one of the things that I would say is that there are pushbacks against Sam Altman and others, including Microsoft, Apple, everyone else, in that there's a real pushback from other VCs, from other startups that don't get funded by the big companies that a lot of this push for regulation, a lot of their dominance is to preserve their...

Is to ring fence it. Is to ring fence it. And so they can't... These startups cannot compete. And I would say that's something they need to pay attention to. They want to win completely now versus in the marketplace of ideas. I think that is going to be an increasing issue, open source versus this, versus Sam being sort of the face of the establishment, I guess. And I

think there's going to be a lot of fighting over that, of where regulation is going. I think Sam has the upper hand and has endeared himself to regulators. And so regulation is coming and should, but people are worried about that. And I think we have to pay attention to that because he's so appealing that he has an advantage. What AI apps would you like to see them develop? Oh, I don't know anything. The thing is, how could you have thought up Uber? How could you have thought about bad apps and good apps? I just couldn't have thought them up. I don't know. Everything, everything. An app on, I don't know if you like Succession, if you like, you know, everything about Succession, everything about, it's like a super search. It's super Google. You know what I mean? Like,

Google should have done this, essentially, but didn't for lots of reasons. You know, people who have content have an advantage here, like Professor GAI, right? Or Martha, remember Martha Stewart when I interviewed her talked about Martha AI. I think that makes sense. She has so much amazing content and you could turn it into like, who knows? I have no idea. People are going to be very creative, I think. I'm excited. It's the next step. It's the absolute next step for this stuff. And there'll be a billion of them. So that's good. Yeah. I think there's a really big opportunity. And someone told me that Sam listens to this show. I think there's a huge opportunity if he really wants to show that

he has concern about the Commonwealth. I think one in healthcare. Yeah, he's interested in that. I'm convinced a third of America is so intimidated, underinsured, lacks knowledge that their lump in their breast turns into full metastatic breast cancer, that they end up with a melanoma that could have been treated, that they have, you know, depression that is really starting to harm their lives. I think that putting out in concert with, you know, the National Institute for Health, the American Pediatric Association, in concert with the National Institute for Health, the American Pediatric Association, medical journals, get doctors involved. I think this is a huge opportunity to push preventive healthcare out to the corners of the U.S. I mean, I'm wealthy, and I'd like to think fairly educated.

I have trouble accessing healthcare. It's just, can you imagine what it's like for a poor single mother to try and say, I feel a lump in my breast. Okay, who do I call? How much is it going to cost me? Should I be worried? Should I not be worried? The amount of stress. My child has diabetes.

I don't, I mean, and then work with mentors and big brothers of America to try and start pairing young men with the right resources and job training and reinforcing messaging and offline help to try and really attack suicidal ideation and self-harm among young boys and girls. There's just a ton of things that could be done here. There's going to be a ton of things. This is going to be a wellspring of creativity, I think. Someone has to do it. I think there'll be a lot of pushback on them being the Apple version of this, the Apple store of this. We'll see.

We'll see where it goes. There's certainly plenty of competition from the bigs, but let's hope there's a lot of competition everywhere and we don't, again, coalesce into single, powerful organizations, which seems to be the way things work. Anyway, speaking of the young, we're going to talk about women in this case. Let's get to our friend of Pivot. Maddy Kahn is the author of Young and Restless, The Girls Who Sparked America's Revolutions. The book looks at how young women became forces for change throughout American history, fighting for labor and voting rights, racial equity, reproductive freedom, and more. Welcome, Maddie.

Thanks. Thanks for having me. So explain to me why you wanted to explore this. There's a lot of ways to go here, especially some current stuff. But what made you want to explore this topic? So I used to work at Elle magazine and I worked at Glamour. And in the course of doing that work, I was just constantly coming into contact with very impressive young women. I had spent time with some of the girls who were involved in the anti-gun violence movement out of Parkland. I had spent time profiling Greta Thunberg. And I thought, I'll write a book about this incredible

generation of teenage girls who feel so different than the millennial women that I grew up with. And then the more research that I did, the more it became clear that actually this was a much bigger story. So it became a much harder book to write, but also a more interesting one. And what I ended up finding was that I could tell kind of an alternative history of social progress in the United States through the lens of teenage girls and their contributions to social movements. So earlier this week, for example, we saw the power of having abortion rights on the ballot, for example, resulting in some resounding victories for Democrats, including in Kentucky.

A lot of people are attributing some of it to an ad of a young woman who was actually raped by her stepfather and had a very convincing ad and spoke out in a way that people probably wouldn't have previously. I was raped by my stepfather after years of sexual abuse. I was 12. Anyone who believes there should be no exceptions for rape and incest could never understand what it's like to stand in my shoes. This is to you, Daniel Cameron. To tell a 12-year-old girl she must have the baby of her stepfather who raped her is unthinkable. I'm speaking out because women and girls need to have options. Daniel Cameron would give us none. Can you talk a little bit about, because you do look back on the pre-Roe era profiling 19-year-old college student who founded Jane, a sort of

underground network to help women get abortions, etc. And that's been, I've seen shows about that in documentaries. But talk a little bit about what's happening now. Yeah, totally. I mean, I think that you can look at this in two ways. First of all, for as long as we have had young women visible in this country, which is truly from the beginning, especially white women, that has been a very potent symbol for movements across the political spectrum. The protection of young women, of teenage girls, especially when they are conventionally attractive, especially when they are white, has brought a lot of people to the polls historically for a whole number of reasons. What I think we're seeing now and what I think we've seen since, you know, the dawn of second

wave feminism is that actually young women realizing in really potent and germane ways that they can harness their own image in a way that brings people out on issues that they care about. So to go back to Jane, you know, that is a case where a young woman coming out of Freedom Summer who had spent, you know, months and months and months advocating for civil rights gets back to her own campus and finds like, hey, wow, I've really been talking a lot about these social ills that I see around this country. And actually, things aren't so great for me either. Someone comes to her and says, I need an abortion, as many young women had to do in the pre-Roe era. And she reaches out to her own movement contacts and finds a Black doctor, actually, who will perform the service for a reasonable enough fee.

And then, like as it always goes for young people, word travels fast. And she actually ends up sort of accidentally in this business, because once you help one woman find an abortion, there are going to be more women who come calling. So she formalizes that process, sets up a hotline, and the Jane name comes from the fact that the women who volunteered for the service answered the phone and said, this is Jane. And they would get women who needed abortions in touch with providers who could offer them. And then over time, they realized actually one of their credentialed doctors who was supposed to be doing the service actually had never earned a medical degree. And rather than send them into a tailspin, it made them realize that

if he could do it without a medical degree, they could too. And they learned to provide abortions themselves. I wrote this book before the Dobbs decision, and I had to revise that chapter with the fall of Roe as a precedent in this country. And I think that the reporting that I've done since then has borne out that there are more and more young women who, just like Heather Booth before them, are taking this matter into their own hands and providing services in their own communities entirely separate from the ballot box. Obviously, it's very exciting for abortion rights activists to see that this issue has retained its potency, but I also think no one should be surprised to see that young women are

not waiting around for the laws to change. And you say the latest generation of girls has learned fast to hone the public voice and weaponize it. I don't think weaponize it. Use it to me. Talk about how technology has changed the game. In so many ways. I mean, there were always ways to get your voice out, but it used to be mediated through newspapers, radio, every technology of the day. Now, obviously, we know and we see all the time people, sometimes very young people,

gain hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of followers overnight. And that process of amplification, I think, has a lot of benefits. And I'm sure you two know better than anyone, has a lot of downsides. It's a lot of people listening all at once. That can be a really helpful and amazing platform. And it can also be paralyzing and a ton of pressure. One of the things I wanted to do in the book was not tell some sunny story of rah-rah, girls are amazing and they will save us. I think it's a huge, huge, huge load on the shoulders of young women and young men who become incredibly visible basically overnight and have to watch what they say, sometimes don't watch what they say, and have this microphone that they never really expected flung in their faces. So I think for the purposes of organizing, it's amazing.

I think one of the risks, and this goes for all the activists I spoke to pretty much for the book, young and old, if that work doesn't translate into real-world organizing, I think the perils are tremendous. Nice to meet you. Do you think there are any downsides to this? It feels like technology has given young people the opportunity to be activists, but in some instances they go on the hunt, I would argue, on campuses for fake racists or fake sexists. Do you see any downside to people who see their role as social activists and instead end up going after creating more division? Is there, I mean, is there an issue here? Have we put these powerful

weapons in the hands of young people that don't necessarily understand how to wield them? I think there is an issue for many reasons, including the fact that in a lot of ways, and this comes up in the book a lot, young people are actually fairly powerless in this country and all over the world. They can't vote and they can't start their own businesses. They can't have total agency over their lives. And I think when you are powerless in that way, sometimes the tools that you reach for aren't the ones that maybe you would 20 years later. That is the power and the conviction of young people, and it is the peril of young people. And that I think is clear now, but I

think that's always been clear. Because when you have this disempowered group of people who look out at a world and a future that they don't think has the fundamentals that they need to succeed, you're going to see things from them that feel dire and drastic and maybe anger that is misdirected. I also think at the same time that the burden of being young and feeling like the future has already been messed up for you, which so many young people that I spoke to for this book felt acutely, means that it's hard to think, yeah, sure, let me sit around and talk about strategy and figure out the best way to achieve my aims when the message from the world is nothing you do really matters because these crises are existential. One of the things that I think addresses the stuff

that you're talking about is reminding young people that they do have agency and that there are ways for them to pool their power together in ways that are meaningful. But I think schools have a huge role in promoting that idea and actually reminding people that there is something that they can do about the course of their own lives. So one thing that I feel acutely this week, but that I felt the whole time reporting this book, is that there's a much larger role for institutions to play in the lives of young people. You can't just bring people together and say, fend for yourself. It is going to lead to incredible polarization and division, especially because there is no one CBS News, NYTimes.com. There is no one place that young people are getting their information.

And I don't think that for the most part, for the young girls that I spoke to, that it thrills them. Are you sure it isn't TikTok? I think it is. I'm saying, well, oh, but that's not one. That's aggregated news from so many different sources. So I'm saying there is no one trusted source. And I think that that feels like a tremendous burden for young people. But talk about that flood, that idea, because you mentioned that, this idea of so much information going everywhere. And I think you see it on TikTok, you see it on everywhere else

where people don't have a trusted. And some people think it's good not to have a trusted thing because it's one group of people. However you like the New York Times or CBS, it was a group of white guys on the Upper East Side of New York making decisions for everybody. So that's what I always think about. And I've been in those rooms and it is the same exact people many, many decades ago. And I used to think, why are we listening to these people? When I was a young person, like, hmm, I was sitting in those rooms going, why is their opinions any better than mine or anybody else? But people have the ability to access these things.

At the same time, you have the flip side, which is there's so much information that propaganda thrives in this area, that bad players can take advantage of that. And what they tend to do with young women is they tend not to focus it on the activism over real causes, but over makeup, over the influencers that get an outsized attention have to do with young women is they tend not to focus on the activism over real causes, but over makeup, over the influencers that get an outsized attention have to do with fashion and makeup

and everything else. And then it becomes just this giant noise machine, it seems to me. But maybe you don't think that. No, I think one of the things that I ended up talking about a lot with the young women living like alive now that I interviewed for the book is just to have the conversation that somebody is making money off of what you consume. Now, it used to be that we knew exactly who those people were. We knew the boardrooms in which they sat. We knew the kinds of conversations that they had. It remains true that even though I think social media is an incredible tool, and young women that I spoke to organized marches of 50,000 people overnight thanks to social media. So far be it

for me to demonize it, not at all. But I also think you have to recognize that it rewards a certain kind of information. There is no pure unmediated access. It's always going to be driven by what is rewarding the people who are responsible for and benefiting from those systems. So I just think that consciousness of how you're using it and how you're engaging with it, what it means to you to feel like this is unfettered access to information. No, it's mediated the same way information is always mediated. And you just have to be conscious of who is doing that, who it's benefiting, I think, to use it in a way that is beneficial. I always say, especially when parents ask me about this book and about whether I'm optimistic or feel hopeless about the state of young women in America today, that there is no going back. You can be despondent over how young people get their information, but there is no

putting the genie back in the bottle. So I think that we will all have to become more conscientious consumers. But I will say that the happiest activists I spoke to for this book, the people least beset by the kinds of issues that we all worry about are people who felt that what they were doing was direct action, not posting infographics on Instagram. So, hashtagavism. Yeah, exactly. And not even being part of a local chapter of a huge national network. People who felt like they were making their communities better where they were, giving access to services that people in their own worlds and on their own campuses needed. And I think that is a light in the way forward. So you mentioned institutions, and I agree that institutions have a role when they bring young

people together more than just letting them, I don't know, they should play a bigger role. So what counsel would you give to university leadership right now that is really struggling on a number of dimensions around how the role they play in informing or guiding, shepherding, educating young people? What advice would you have for university leadership? These kinds of issues are things that didn't come up as much when I was working on the book. But what I do think is true is that the idea that the learning that you do on campus is only happening inside the classroom is ridiculous. And these schools need to take it. It's so crazy. But Dartmouth has organized its Middle Eastern and Jewish studies departments, as a random example, to host forums that are open to students, available to stream online, where you can ask any question you want. Nothing is off limits, as long as it's in the form of a question. They expected, you know, maybe 20 people to come, 30 people to come.

Hundreds and hundreds of students have watched these and asked questions. And that is a model, I think, for universities dealing with the latest issue or any other issue. If you don't give young people a forum to ask the questions that are on their minds, to gut check what they're seeing on social media, they will come to their own conclusions. If you don't want that, you need to be a partner in that kind of learning. I think this idea that you can sit there and let students have at it amongst themselves is not proven to be super successful. And I think that all of our lessons of successful activism, meaningful change come from intergenerational partnerships. So there needs to be forums on every campus to have hard conversations. And the idea that those conversations aren't going to happen if you don't do that, they're only going to happen in ways that you don't think are terribly productive. So I think the Dartmouth example is a model. Yeah, it's interesting because I think they're scared of the students. That's my impression is that they're scared of what to say and they're also scared of their donors. So they're caught in the middle, right? They're scared of both sides of the

possibility rather than having real discussions. Yeah, but hiding from your students is not historically a great way to go. No, because on the other side, they have donors also pressuring them in the same way where dialogue would have been the better choice, not running the dialogue, but facilitating the dialogue,

which is their actual job, it seems to me. Let me ask you a question. I have just one more question. You mentioned Greta Thunberg, who's been highly effective using online tools and everything else. Is there other activists you think have been effective, young women activists? She obviously, she gets her share of attacks, obviously, but seems to handle them rather deftly and effectively in sort of using online forums to benefit herself and also get her message out. Can you talk about who you think has been effective beyond her or why she is so effective?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I do think that the Parkland activists, young people who were directly affected by a particular issue, were a potent reminder of what young people can accomplish, especially when they're speaking in the first person. I think that that's always been the most powerful mode of activism. This happened to them, and now they are emissaries for this issue. And I think they've been successful in a different way. Obviously, there are many examples of gun violence continuing since Parkland and of legislation that maybe some of us wish would have succeeded that didn't. I think what all of the young people who do this well have in common is they, first of all, have a command of these platforms. It's very adorable to see people who are less deaf try to respond to them. It's just like arguing in a different language that's not your native tongue. It doesn't go well.

I think that one of the reasons that Greta does such a good job is, you know, I came across a study when I was working on the book, a study by someone who was looking at the seeming disappearance of aggression in girls, really young girls, that by age three, boys were continuing, you know, to push and shove on the playground, but girls had seemingly grown out of that behavior. And look at how mature and fabulous they were. Well, actually, he was very surprised to see that the tactics of warfare for girls change that young and that from age three, they learn that they can be more successful at alienating their friends or their enemies, choosing sides, sowing disinformation campaigns on the playground just by using their words.

And he concluded, you know, girls are not nicer. They just have their own set of tools. Yes. That was just this morning in the Swisher household, the Swisher Gats household. I just saw that this morning. They bully relationally. Yes, they do. And I think that that has made them very good at social media, because what is social media but bullying relationally? Well, just in terms of, did you look at all, and I realize you're not an endocrinologist or a medical doctor, but there's some weird-

But please comment. Of course, yeah, my high school science teachers will be calling in. But there is something going on. Boys are maturing later, and my understanding is girls are maturing even earlier. later. And my understanding is girls are maturing even earlier. There seems to be something going on where an 18-year-old boy is really a 16-year-old girl. And they say it's the prefrontal cortex. But did you look at developmentally what appears to be happening and why and how it's impacting the way that girls feel about the world and also how they feel about boys? That's an interesting question. I mean, in some ways,

I felt like there was so much continuity in the ways that girls have matured for centuries. The idea that girls as young as 10 or 11 are working in the low mills and devising a plan to strike. They are 10 years old and they are plotting hundreds and hundreds up to thousands of activists and workers walking out at the exact same time in the pre-social media era. That kind of maturity was a constant in the book. I think that there are, like you said, many scientists who can speak to things like changes in body weight and driving girls to mature faster, things that I read about as a civilian but certainly would never presume to comment on as an expert. What I do think is true is that we have rewarded girls socially for being precocious, and that seems to have caught

up with them. We really applaud girls who are articulate, who command our attention, who are charming. I certainly feel like as a young person, I got the message that the more you could sound like a little adult, the more seriously people would take you. I think we find girls who sound like adults captivating, and we tolerate a kind of anger from them. I feel that we don't tend to reward ingrown women. And I think that that makes being a young activist very hard to grow out of. And I think that it's something that a lot of the girls that I spoke to for the book were scared of, making that transition from being a precocious, articulate young woman to being just another scold who the world doesn't really want to take seriously. A quick turn. There's a quick turn to becoming a bitch.

There really is. It's really amazing to watch. You know what I mean? Like, you're annoying. And you can see it in women politicians and everything, you know, when they're firm. Whiplash is so acute for these young women who felt like they had a platform. They were respected. They were taken seriously. And that really, I have to say, is one of the most depressing constants of the book.

In the 1800s, we had girls who were abolitionists who were touring the country, selling out theaters, and then they hit 24 or 25, and all of a sudden, it's not so cute anymore, and there isn't really a path for them to continue to command that kind of public voice. It's like child actors. It's exactly like child actors. Maddie, this is a really interesting book.

Obviously, Scott spends a lot of time talking about young men and the crisis they face, but this is a really interesting book. Obviously, Scott spends a lot of time talking about young men and the crisis they face. But this is a really important book to understand and where women are. And you tell it well, Maddie. You're very impressive. Yeah, very impressive. Anyway, you speak well. Oh, I speak well.

And you're not a bitch. No, I'm kidding. Not yet. I'm kidding. I'm teasing. The turn is coming. That's next week. Well, you know, I'm allowed to be one because I'm a lesbian, but otherwise, no.

Yeah, it's so fascinating how people perceive people. Not going to touch that. Don't say anything, Scott. Not going to touch it. You keep quiet. Don't say anything, Scott. You keep quiet. Say nothing. Anyway, Maddie, thank you again. The book is called Young and Restless, the Girls Who Sparked America's Revolutions. And it's really important to think it's also happened in the past as it is happening now. And it's good to look back and realize this is not necessarily a new trend, but it's interesting to look at what happened previously. I thought that was the most important part of the book to me to remember that. Thank you so much. We really appreciate it.

Thanks, Maddie. Thanks for having me. Okay, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails. As a Fizz member, you can look forward to free data, big savings on plans, and having your unused data roll over to the following month, every month. At Fizz, you always get more for your money.

Terms and conditions for our different programs and policies apply. Details at fizz.ca. Okay, Scott, time for wins and fails. I'm going to go with a win. I saw this story about this show on, I think it's HBO, called Our Flag Means Death. And it's about essentially gay pirates. And it's suddenly grown. I love series.

Gay pirates? Yes, it's a comedy. And it's by, and I'm going to. I think I went there in the 80s. It's a dance club next to Splash, isn't it? I think I'm pronouncing this correctly. It's Taika Waititi who did one of the Thor movies. He plays Blackbeard.

It's about, let me read the description. Wealthy landowner. I think it's Stead Bonnet has a midlife crisis and decides to blow up his cushy life to become a pirate. It does not go well. I just, I watched the first couple episodes. It's freaking hysterical. It's really good. Yeah, I was alerted to it because people are watching it like increase in viewership. It started off kind of weak, not weakly, but not a big hit. And now it's moving into, it's like, like suits or any of these things that suddenly people are really picking up on it. It's created by a guy named David Jenkins. But I really like, I really enjoyed it. I really, I was put onto it by a

historian. I really, really like it. Obviously the fail is Vivek Ramaswamy, who was just such a jerk, just a jerk. The way he talked to Nikki Haley, I thought she handled him well, but he just wants to be a contrarian jackass. And I think his candidacy just further proves that people just don't like people who behave like this. It's that, you know, he's doing better than others, but what a jerk. Like, I don't know what else to say.

What a jerk. Anyway, fail. Well, my win is know what else to say. What a jerk. Anyway, fail. Women and men and not only Democrats, but also Republicans, including Republicans in a kind of purple to red state, Ohio, or some people would even argue red of like, look, you're against it. We get it. Then don't have an abortion. But we we just don't. We have trouble. We recognize that these laws are especially punitive, not on just women, but young women and young women of color. And that an older, whiter electorate or, excuse me, representatives should really just stay out of it or not stay out of this.

But they really don't have the empathy they should for what a young woman by virtue of biology faces. Anyway, I'm going too far down a rabbit hole here. My win is women across America who I think the electorate is firmly saying, you know what, we need to have women's backs on this. Even if we personally have an issue with this, this is just a bridge too far what has happened here. you with this. This is just a bridge too far, what has happened here. And there's been like 24 litmus tests of the overturning of Roe v. Wade since its overturning, and all of them have gone down, or all of them have gone in favor of people who are pro-choice. And I think that's a really,

I think that's a wonderful thing. My other kind of win is the miniseries Love and Death, starring Elizabeth Olsen. It's fantastic. It also has Jesse Plemons and Kristen Ritter, who are both characters in Breaking Bad. And this guy named Tom Pelfrey's in it. He's like, I think he's a leading man. He plays a lawyer in it. But also, I've had the same, I call him my creative advocate, but I have a friend from college named Jonathan Taylor. And he did everything but design,

including designing my first catalog at Rent Envelope, designing my websites. Anytime I need a creative advocate, whether it's decorating an office or doing the design on a home I have, he's been my creative advocate. He's such a genius around this stuff. And I immediately texted him like, you got to check out the set design, the wardrobe, and the cinematography on the show. Because if you were raised in the 70s and 80s as I was, it is literally a trip back in time. Anyways, Love and Death is fantastic.

And Elizabeth Olsen just owns the screen. She is very good. She's such a talent. She's such an enormous, enormous. She was in WandaVision? Everything. Everything she very good. She's such a talent. She's such an enormous, enormous. She was in WandaVision? Everything. Everything she's in,

she's great. Oh, she's fantastic. She is fantastic. She's been in a lot of stuff, not just that, but just the Olsen sisters, the sister of the Olsen sisters. Just a really top-level actress,

actor, excuse me. I agree. She's wonderful. Anything she's in, it's like, anything she's in is really good. I agree with you on the abortion thing. They have to stop arguing about weeks. Anyone who's arguing about how many weeks has lost the narrative. Women want abortion rights. That's

what they want. And they're going to keep voting for them. And they have a lot of allies with men and young people. And this is a loser for Republicans, just a loser. They don't like the overturning of Roe v. Wade. And they don't love being called that they're going to kill babies up until birth. Nobody does that. It's just it's such a waste of time what the Republicans are doing. And they're going to lose every and it's going to continue. Mayor Pete, I thought, had the exact right kind of response to, you know, kind of where's the line or weeks.

He said it's not about where's the line or weeks. He said, it's not about where's the line, it's about who gets to draw the line. That's correct. And no doctors do things after 26 weeks. They don't. They just don't. Yeah. And this just, again, this is meant to trigger an emotional argument around this bullshit around, you know, Ron DeSantis claims he interviewed someone who was an aborted fetus that was put in a pan and now she's, you know, converse. I mean, it's just such incendiary, ridiculous nonsense. It's a lie. It's a lie.

Nobody does that. I mean. It's kind of the same narrative around, you know, when Jordan Peterson, who I do respect on a lot of levels, talks about, you know, young girls having their breasts surgically removed, like that's just against their will or after one meeting with their doctor. And if you look at the protocols around this stuff, there's so many checks. It's six months. It's a doctor. It's a psychiatrist. I mean, it's made up. It's a lie. Yeah, that's exactly right. Meant to evoke an emotional response from the majority of the electorate that doesn't have time to really look into these issues. I made a noise of Jordan.

That's my Jordan Peterson noise for you. It's whenever you compliment lots of people. I'm like, hmm. One thing I forgot, speaking of fantastic people that I forgot to mention, is Barbara Streisand has a book out and it's getting great reviews. She went there. She's telling it like it is. I haven't read it yet, but the parts I've read of it look fantastic.

She went there and I love that lady. She's the guidepost for so many others that came after her. I love her. Love her. Amazing voice. Amazing. Not just that.

She was right out front. She got all the slings and arrows of being a very, speaking of women who spoke their mind, she did and was thought of as difficult when all she did was say, this is the way I want to do it. Just a real artist. And I'm thrilled that her book is out.

And I'm excited. She says it's a doorstop and wanted it in two parts. I'm going to read the doorstop. Such a legend in entertainment and singing, everything. She's just amazing. Anyway, everybody should buy that book and make her even wealthier than she already is because she's fantastic. She deserves every penny. Anyway, I think that's it. I actually dated. You didn't date Barbara Streisand. I dated twins. One of them was named Barbara. And my friend said, how can you tell them apart? And I said, Barbara has really big tits and Bob has a mustache. How could you take

my love of Barbara Streisand and go to another boomer? Do you remember when she partnered with Barry Gibb? We've got guilty for that CD guilty. She's so good. No matter what, even her bad stuff is good. She doesn't like her bad stuff. I love all her stuff. I like everything she's done. Anyway, we want to hear from you, including you, Barbara. Send 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 Tuesday with more Pivot. Please read us out. Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Indertot engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows, Neil Saverio, and Gadda McBain. Make sure you subscribe to the show

wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Adweek's podcast of the year, of the year, the Succession podcast

hosted by Kara Swisher.