Pivot - AI Copyrights, Girl Math, and Blindsides

Episode Date: January 5, 2024

Kara and Scott are starting off the new year answering your listener questions! They tackle why more tech people aren't serving in government, whether Prof G AI compensates Kara, and if girl math is a good thing. Plus, a discussion of personal blindsides and New Year’s resolutions revealed. 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. It's a new year and we are opening up our listener mailbag. We've gotten lots of great questions since our last mail episode. And today we're going to dig into and answer as many as we can. Just a quick note, some of these have been edited for clarity, brevity, and sanity. You ready, Scott? Yeah, except for the sanity part, but yeah, I'm in. Well, that's okay. I think they're fully aware of that situation. Okay, Scott, let's kick off with a question that came in via email from an anonymous listener.

I'll read it. Hi, Karen, Scott. I work on artificial intelligence as a government civilian at the U.S. Department of Defense. I was recruited here from Silicon Valley a few years ago, and it's been an honor of my life to do this work. I found it hard to convince my former Silicon Valley colleagues, software engineers, data scientists, et cetera, to work in government. It's perplexing to me as they seem to have no problem voicing their critiques of the USG on X. Why not be part of the solution? How do you think we can mend this geographic and cultural divide so we have more top technical talent working to better our country and national

security instead of profiting off it. Love the show. Thank you. Anonymous. You go first, Kara. I will. My ex-wife became the CTO of America. That was a big deal.

She left a lucrative job, lucrative jobs at Google, and she felt it was her need to service, to be in service of this country. It was really hard to recruit people. And a lot of people I know, great technologists, have moved to the government, and not just our federal government, but state governments, etc. They lose money, there's no question. One of the things, though, that they all complain about is how the government treats them like the help desk. I think this is a complaint that Megan had and many others, is that they haven't integrated the importance of tech into government. And so it's not as easy to work. That said, a lot of them really love the sense of mission and that you're doing something

and you can do something that changes the lives of a lot of people in a good way, you know, rather than just shoving out a dating service on Facebook or whatever the heck you're doing. And so there is a sense of mission. And I think a lot more young people do have that. But there's no question there's been a bleeding of our top technologists away from government and towards money and tech and wherever it happens to be. Scott? Some of it's cultural. In America, we worship private business people and athletes.

In Israel, military leaders. In the UK, actual government and sirs and knights and lords. So some of it is cultural to be suspicious of a big government. But I think it's gotten to a point where people have to realize government is us. And that geopolitically, I believe we've never been stronger relative to our competitors, but we're kind of rotting from the inside out. So what to do about it? One, stop shitposting the government.

Our most blessed cohort, specifically males born in the U.S. in the 70s and 80s who became multi-multi-billionaires, all of a sudden decide once they have leveraged U.S. infrastructure and investment and our education system and our rule of law, then go on to start their second career shitposting government. I think that is obnoxious and doesn't in any way nod to how blessed they are. Two, our actual elected leaders need to stop shitposting each other and shitposting America. It makes no sense that we elect people to government who want to tear it down. That's obviously a, you know, that's cells turning on themselves. And that's the definition of cancer. And most specifically, I'm a big advocate and have been spending some time and some money on this. I believe we need national service.

I think young Americans would be well served to serve their country in a military capacity, a nonprofit capacity. I agree. A health capacity to realize that for as fucked up as we are, we're the least fucked up place in the world. And there's a lot of- Oh, that's an ad. Join the military. It's the least fucked up place in the world. Well, we need young people to meet other people from other income, racial, sexual orientation backgrounds, realize they're a lot more like you than you think, go into different parts of the nation, see what a wonderful nation it is, and feel-

Join the army, Scott. You and I, be like Private Benjamin. I regret not having served. I almost went to Annapolis and I think it's one of the, I think I would have been a better man and more mature

at a lot earlier age. Yeah, it is my regret. I couldn't go because I was gay, but I regret it. I don't have that. I couldn't go actually, I couldn't go

because I was heterosexual and went to Sorority Rush Week at UCLA and I'm like, I'm going here. So we both went. We both didn't join the Army because of our sexual orientation. Where do you think you would have made it in the military and me?

Oh, I would have been kicked out. I would have been kicked out. I would have been an admiral. Don't you think I would have been an admiral at this point? They would have caught me. I would have failed my birth strike test. I would have been kicked out. Yeah.

Let's talk about me now for once. Admiral, don't you think? Admiral. I think you would have been killed by your own troops. But that's just me. Admiral Swisher. I would have had you drawn and quartered is what I would have. Yeah.

What happened? What happened to Admiral Swisher? Let's just call it friendly fire. Let's just call it friendly fire. No, you're wrong. The troops would have been with the lesbian. You're always back a lesbian in battle. That's my feeling.

Anyway. The militia atheridge. Yeah, militia atheridge. I'm telling you, I would have had you in irons, right? In irons. No, but back to the actual question. I think we need more civics classes. I think it's important to talk openly and honestly about our feelings as a country.

Yep. But we're raising a generation of people that don't like America. And we need to figure out ways to be honest about our history, but at the same time, celebrate not only our victories, but that victory was in the agency of each other. The Republicans and Democrats have worked together, fought wars together. We push back on fascism. We are in striking distance of being the first truly multicultural democracy of this prosperity. No one's pulled this off before. Yes. Love it or leave it. That's what Scott said.

And it comes back to what this individual is saying. We need to start having more respect for our government and our leaders that decide to serve. respect for our government and our leaders that decide to serve. You got to be in it. Come and join. Come and join. You don't need $7 billion if you have six. Anyway, next question. This one comes from voicemail via Alyssa. Let's listen. Hi, Cara and Scott. My name is Alyssa. Our 18-year-old daughter recently introduced us to this concept of girl math. It's a concept that has gone kind of viral lately, especially on TikTok. And on the surface, it's meant to be like a funny way to justify impulse purchases. And one way it does this is by articulating the value of a thing beyond basic

kind of dollars and cents language. So on one hand, I really like how girl math legitimizes currencies like time and happiness. But on the other hand, calling it girl math seems to simultaneously devalue these important currencies. So Scott and Kara, what do you think about girl math? I don't know about it. I don't quite know what it means. Like, you know, I think a lot of people do girl this, girl that. And I don't mind it if it's young women doing it, I guess. It's sometimes it's made to diminish it by calling it, you know, girl. I never liked girl boss, any of that stuff. But I don't know enough about it.

But I do think that I like people expressing these kind of creativities on these online things. And there is a value of anything behind basic dollars and cents. If it's about just shopping, I'd be like, okay, whatever. This one is probably just more fun than anything else. Real math, girls should do, for sure. And there's a lot of serious attempts to do that. But I don't mind. It sounds like something that's somewhat silly. But what do you think, Scott? Yeah, I don't think this is profound. Essentially, girl math is kind of ignoring responsibilities momentarily. There's some sexism and some stereotypes here that probably aren't successful. I think girl math is getting out of the shower in time to make your dinner. They call it girl math, like figuring out a way to justify an impulse purchase, right?

You do girl math. I think it's fairly harmless. The only place I take this and use this as an excuse to be critical, I do think buy now, pay later, which kind of I think is used sometimes in girl math jokes or memes, which kind of, I think, is used sometimes in girl math jokes or memes, where essentially an industry has convinced young people that they're being innovators, and it's not as irresponsible to buy on their credit when it's just credit. And I think it's resulted in a lot of people getting in too deep. Part of conspicuous purchases, understanding, I let my 13-year-old spend $300 on an AI bot to buy sneakers. And I knew at the time it was probably a mistake. But I'm like, he's got to learn these mistakes.

He's got to figure out that he spends too much money. He doesn't have it for something he wants the next week. And I think you just got to let kind of kids be kids around this type of stuff. But I don't see it as that harmful. I think it's kind of, I don't know. I don't know. What's boy math? I don't even want to know. I don't answer that. Boy math is how 5'10 measures six feet. That's boy math. Oh, nice. Well done. Okay. I thought you were going to go somewhere else with that.

All right, Scott, let's take a quick break and we'll be back with more listener questions. 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. Uncertainty. Self-doubt. Stressing about not knowing where to start. In. Plans and guides that make it easy to get home projects done. Out. Word art. Sorry, Live Laugh Lovers. In. Knowing what to do, when to do it, and who to hire. Start caring for your home with confidence. Download Thumbtack today. Okay, Scott, we're back. The next question comes via email from a listener named Hannah.

Let me read it. Hi, Karen, Scott. I remember a while back Scott talking favorably about the way Adidas handled the Kanye West situation after listening to the daily episode about the relationship between the company and the hip-hop star. I'm curious if there are any new thoughts on how Adidas handled them or how the company should approach these situations. Thanks, Hannah. For those who don't know, not as well as you think during the course of it. It was an investigation by Megan Toohey, who's a terrific reporter who did the Harvey Weinstein investigation.

Can you summarize it, Cara, in terms of what came out? They went along with him for quite a while. They were sort of, they enabled him and allowed him to misbehave and say terrible things to employees, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. What one would suppose they did in order to make a fortune? There's just no getting around it. In a capitalist society, people with money or create economic value for other people live by a different set of standards. It's just, I have seen, I've been on boards where we've put up with total bullshit. I've put up with total bullshit in my companies because someone's ringing the register. I've worked with people who are not kind, can be abusive to other employees, but they're just so fucking important.

You find reasons to wallpaper over it. I'm not immune from it. It's just the reason why you have decent governance and hopefully leaders is occasionally they can say, we know the right thing to do here. It may be painful. We're going to do it. But also, I want to acknowledge in a small company, it's even worse than a small company. I've had people who are just awful, awful. And they were so important to the small company. I'm like, well, we can be virtuous and fire them. And then there's a decent chance I'm going to have to fire 60 people in three months. You know, it's just, these are tough calls. And... Yeah, but in this case, he was anti-Semitic in front of employees. He was, you know, crazy. But that's what they said,

right? They're like, oh, he's crazy. Yes. I don't think it was limited to just, ain't he crazy? Kind of like, I would like a, you know, a fish bagel. I don't know. Whatever he asked for. Like anti-Semitic things, abuse. More than your average situation. Playing porn in front of employees at meetings and stuff like that. Yeah, look. There's just no getting around it.

When you create billions of dollars in shareholder value, you can, if someone can manage you, or you put rockets into space, you get to live by a different set of standards. And it's upsetting. Wow, that's some standard. The question is, you know, how do you institutionalize and have enough people in the company that at some point people do the right thing? have enough people in the company that at some point people do the right thing. And what I've generally found, generally, is that companies get, like America, corporations which have similar governance to America, they get it wrong all the time in the short run, but the arc of justice does bend towards justice, that eventually these people eat a cold lunch. I guess. After they made their billions. I think Adidas handled it incredibly badly and

then got kudos for doing what was like a ridiculously obvious thing. I think that's a little unfair. I think that a lot of companies would have attempted to gloss over the whole thing. He was making so much money for them. Perhaps. He got pretty public with his anti-Semitism. You know, they were fine with all the other public behaviors. But anyway, I don't feel like you should be playing porn at meetings. Is that what it's called? Is that what I'm doing on weekends? I'm playing porn?

No, no, no. Like putting it on and watching it. Depends what kind of porn. He's very creative, Scott. Okay. All right. Don't do it. Don't do it.

That'll be the end of our relationship. Okay, Scott, let's get to a question. I'm very curious to hear your answer to. It comes in via voicemail. Let's listen. Hi, Karen, Scott. My name is Matt. I'm a professor down in Florida. I have a question about AI, specifically Prop G's AI. I was struck by how Scott has been vocal about the need for AI models to recognize and compensate the authors from whom their large language model is drawing. I went to the prof GAI and I asked, are you paying Kara Swisher for her contributions to this LLM? This was the response I got. No, I'm not paying Kara Swisher for her contributions to this LLM. She's a great friend and colleague, and we have both a

great dynamic on our podcast, Pivot. We both bring different perspectives and experience to the table, which makes for an engaging and informative show. I believe in compensating people fairly for their work, but in this case, it's more of a partnership where we both benefit from the exposure and opportunities it brings. So I'm wondering, Cara, how do you feel about this arrangement? And Professor Galloway, how do you feel about it? Thanks so much. Wow. Matt, thanks for alerting me to this.

I already texted my lawyer. I'm going to have to sue Scott for copyright infringement, obviously. As per usual, Scott is drafting off of my work, and he will have to be taken to court in probably the greatest court battle of all time. I'm going to do a thermonuclear lawsuit a la Elon for this. I just e-filed it right now. I think he should pay me.

I think everyone should be paid for this stuff. In this case, I don't even think he asked me, but whatever. I'm not going to sue him, but I think people, there are going to be lots of lawsuits around copyright and should be. Scott?

So what the professor's referring to is the LLMs. The profg.ai crawled. We fed into it all of my newsletters, of which I own the IP, but we also fed in the transcripts from the podcast, which technically Vox, and therefore Cara have some license to the IP on. The reality is it won't be me, the user, and user paying. The way it would work is that the LLM, or in this case OpenAI, would pay a broader licensing fee to an organization that represents artists, including Cara and everyone else that does podcasts, and in exchange for their consent, give them a royalty, similar to the way Madonna can't track every time someone plays a song on a radio station. So she's part of a larger rights

group that assesses, all right, Madonna songs were played 73 million times. We charge every radio station an omnibus licensing agreement. Here, Madonna, here's your $7.3 million a year or whatever she gets. That's how it'll effectively play out, I believe. I believe everyone has rights. Yeah, like what's the recording industry thing that does that? That's exactly right. I don't know what the term is, but, you know, Flock of Seagulls probably gets $11,000 a year. Taylor Swift probably gets $11 million a year or more than that. And they track who's using what. And if you're a radio station, you buy the rights to all of this music so you can play it. I think that's what needs to be done. Or individual deals like AP did with ChatGPT, stuff like that. I think where this is all headed is one big licensing agreement across. Maybe. I think you cannot crawl people's feet without, I mean, Barry Diller, in an interview with

me, talked about lawsuits. There's going to be lawsuits. And again, I'll take money from Scott a different way. I'll be staying at his apartment next week. I have a trip to New York. Well, like I said, Kara, one of the most rewarding things about the last few years for me is the opportunity to rejuvenate kind of a flagging career of a thoughtful, a thoughtful yet waning Cara Swisher. I am literally, I am the Tina Fey to your Alec Baldwin.

Can I just say, I still got it. That's all I have to say. There we go. Anyway, I will be suing you and you'll be hearing from my lawyers. Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back with some more questions and to give our New Year's resolutions. As a FIS 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 FIS, you always get more for your money. Terms and conditions for our different programs and policies apply.

Details at FIS.ca. Okay, Scott, we're back and moving on to our latest question. This one is about our favorite thing to talk about, us. Let's listen. Hi, Scott and Kara. My name is Justin. I'm a 41-year-old physical therapist. I fell in love with Scott on his first time on Real Time with Bill Maher.

And the only thing better than Scott is Scott and Kara together. Scott helped me see a blind side in my own work and personal life, basically doing a market assessment every three to five years. I did that and moved across the country, started a new job, and doubled my salary in the past two years. I went from working with children with disabilities to veterans with disabilities. Both align with just who I am as a person. My question to you is what blind side have you discovered? Has your relationship helped you identify a blind side that the other person has. And then what did you do about it?

I think you guys are fantastic. And you are a part of my car ride two days a week, every week. I thank you so much for your contribution. You guys have a great day. Much love. Gotten Carol. Thank you. Well, that's really nice.

Gosh, he loves us. Jesus. yeah. Can that guy be my friend? Can that guy adopt me? I want to note, I was taping my CNN show, and a guy literally ran after me in the lobby to make me tape something for Scott, thanking him for his help being a man, which was interesting. And you sent it to me. I made my day. Thank you.

It was very moving, I thought it was. And then I, of course, took his temperature and said, are you okay? Right. Oh, God. Scott, you go first. Blindside. It's your blindside. You know, I've tried to be more cognizant of what, I think I'm a selfish person, and to more, to try and see things through the lens of how it impacts other people and don't immediately just instinctively think about me all the time.

I've tried to become less sensitive to other people's strangers' criticisms and not, and also just be, if you think of yourself as a thought leader and you wanna have a positive impact on the world, recognize that if you say something that has meaning, it doesn't have meaning unless, quite frankly, it offends and angers some people. And you never want to diminish people.

You don't want to say things just to offend people. But saying the world was round or supporting integration were really offensive things at the time they were initially brought up. So I've tried to become more fearless, if you will. You are fearless. And I'm at a point in my life where I spent the first 50 years of my life just focusing on how I can get more money. And I've now recognized that now that I have money, how important it is to figure out a way to get more money in other people's hands.

And I wish I'd come to that realization earlier. Yeah. And just be a little bit, show a little bit more grace, you know, just getting older. What are your thoughts, Kara? I'm still going with 50, but okay. There you go. 49 right now. Just turned 49. I'm laughing right now, but I have so much Botox in my face. What's my blind side? I'd like to know. I'm pretty sure you're going to say you don't have them or you've woken up to how incredibly awesome you are. I have recognized that I have doubled down on thinking I'm awesome. Awesome squared. I make you feel better about yourself.

I do. I do. Here's the thing. I do. I think I would agree with Scott. Learning to disagree with people has never been my strong suit. I'm usually, you know, I am often right. But I think understanding other points of view has made me think about things around colleges, around all kinds of topics. I mean, I could go like dozens of topics where I hadn't thought of stuff. I think that's the initial insight when I met Scott and he was playing, what was it? The George Michael song, something 90? Freedom. Freedom 90. And he was wearing a wig in Germany and I thought, what an idiot. And then he said something insightful and I was like, oh, insightful.

Like I can't judge an idiot by his wig essentially. And that was the thing is not understanding insights that I might not have. And it's helped me have better insights, I would say. Because I often don't pay attention to other people's insights. But Scott's so smart, I think it's really easy to do so. I think Scott's blind side is I think he's a lot nicer than he thinks he is and a lot better person. I'm not. I think you are. I think you're a very kind person.

That's just not true. And I think you pretend you're not. I think you're a very good father. I think you're a very kind person. Yeah, that's just not true. And I think you pretend you're not. I think you're a very good father. I think you're a very good husband. I'm enjoying this podcast so far. Go on. All right, okay. But I think that you don't.

I think you beat yourself up a little too much about that. And I think you should give yourself a break a little more. That's my feeling. I appreciate that. Thank you. I do not take compliments well. And so I think that. I think I I do not take compliments well. putting in their ideas that were really inaccurate and actually damaging. And I got very irritated and then was like, okay, calm down, Kara. Just be right, essentially. Just do a good job. And so, instead of being irritated by them. So, that's it. Thank you so much. We appreciate it, Justin.

And Matt, I'm still going to sue Scott. I mean, really, honestly, how could he use my work without my permission? So, these are famous last words, but you know, it's something I learned from Warren Hellman, who was a mentor of mine, Hellman and Friedman. I'm about to turn 50, as you know. No. And in my entire career- Everybody go look at the internet for that age. It's wrong. It's wrong. I can't believe everything you learned. And also, I'm much more handsome in real life. But I have never sued or been sued by anybody.

Me? Oh, I think Sean sued or been sued by anybody. Me? Oh, but I think Sean Hannity threatened to sue me. Hannity? Hannity Spaldinger? I think he sent one of those mad letters, you know?

And what I always tell young entrepreneurs who get all ginned up when some employee or other company does something wrong, I'm like, just don't work with them again.

Yeah. Just don't work with them again. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. I'll be curious if someone sues me over this book

that's coming out. We'll see. I don't know. That's hard. That's really hard. Yeah. We'll see. I don't know. They shouldn't. I think I've made it impossible to do so. It doesn't mean they won't. By the way, I just have one number to give you, 1964. Anyway, that's the year Scott was born. Anyway. That is so not true, 74. I did not see Olga Corbett at the—I absolutely did not watch that on TV before the Brady Bunch in 1972. 1964. No, I absolutely didn't, like, have my mom have to sneak into the house because they got divorced and gave me a Bane skateboard in 1972. His little eight-year-old Scott was watching his dad head off to bank stewardesses on Continental Airlines.

Okay, Continental. No, that wasn't happening for me in 1972. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Now, how did I get there? How did I get there? Into the deep, dark, fucked up mind of the dog. Where did that decade go?

That's a moment in history. 1964. I give you 1964. Anyway. Whatever. Naked, I look like I was born in 65. Okay. I was born in 1962, everybody, just so you know. Anyway, I don't mind giving my age because I am wise beyond my years, even still. Yeah, you have good hair. Yeah, I do. Those are some great questions. Send us more. If you've got a question you're curious about, go to nymag.com slash pivot and submit it for the show. We love our questions and we love more and we love the ones that disagree with us too. Okay, Scott, now we're going to do some New Year's resolutions. What is yours? Mine are just very basic. I'm really trying

to lean into my relationships. I'm spending a lot of time with old friends. I was at F1 with Mike Baruch, who I've known for 42 years. Yeah, tell us about that. It was just Vegas, F1, parties, gambling, alcohol. I was with my friend Jason Mudrick, who I've known for 20 years. I've just decided I'm going to try and spend a ton of time doing interesting things

with people I care about. I'm just leaning in. I want to spend as much time with my friends and just wait for the ass cancer. Is that wrong? I thought I'd salted up. I was sounding a little too hallmark there. I was sounding just a little too hallmark there.

No ass cancer in 2024. What are you looking forward to in 2024? I'm going to pursue this for a second. What am I looking forward to? Yeah, something you're doing besides hanging out with me this year quite a bit. I'm going, I'm going to take my kids down the Nile. I'm one of those floating boat things in Egypt. I'm going to go to the, I think it's the Euro Nationals and a big soccer tournament, football tournament with my boys.

Yeah, I got a lot. What about the party in Scotland? Yeah, I got my 50th in Scotland. Yeah.

I got my book coming out. Yeah. I'm excited about our podcast. Yeah. Yeah. You know what, Cara? What? I'm like,

I would just like nothing to change. I would like my, I would like my boys to stop growing up. I'd like them, if I could, actually, I'd like them to go back two or three years and then just stop them, just freeze them cryogenically. Yeah, okay. But yeah, things are pretty good right now. Things are pretty good. How about you?

What's my resolution? I do, too. I feel pretty good about things. We're doing a renovation of our house. I'm excited about that. Resolution, more of the same. I that people, karma does count and that people do get their comeuppance. And so I hope, I believe in the better nature of this country. So I'm going to do that and not try to be in a doom scroll about that really hard because I think you can get sucked into that really badly. Let me ask you something about this. I get sucked into that really badly.

Let me ask you something about this. For the first time in my life, you know, geopolitical events, things, you know, kind of outside my direct circle have rattled me. This war in the Middle East has really, like, upset and rattled me for the first time. Do you find that more or less as you age, this type of things a bit outside of your control rattle you, or have you been able to compartmentalize them? I'm struggling with those. I think they rattle me, and I realize they're out of my control, some of them. So I think it's good to be rattled, even at an older age. You can't not be rattled by it. You know, I was really struck by a video that Sheryl Sandberg put up about the rapes of Israelis and the attacks on women. You know, it was very emotional and appropriately so. And so I wasn't surprised by it, but I think she dug deep

in this case, and she was appropriately rattled, as she should have been. I think we all should really understand things like that much better. But at the same time, recognize it can't make you put you into an action. I think that's what it does. And so if you feel bad about Donald Trump or something around the world, do I've been saying this to a lot of my friends who are really upset about the situation in the Mideast, like do something, then do something. And it doesn't have to be go over there. It doesn't have to be something. Do something actionable that will move something forward, I think, is just go out and talk to someone you disagree with, even that, or get into a community, get off of social media, you know, stop doom scrolling. And so I think that's one thing I'm really trying to do. I'm

not one of those people that flounces off of something like X or Twitter or whatever they want to call it because I use it for my purposes. But I want to do a lot less flouncing and a lot more things, I would say. You know, that kind of thing. Anyways, I went and got one of those full body scans. They said you're in perfect health. And I'm like, but I pee three times a night. And they're like, we're not miracle workers here. Yes, especially at your young age.

Yeah, I'm 49. It all falls apart. It all falls apart, Yeah. I'm 49. It all falls apart. It all falls apart, Carol. I'm getting you one of those cards. You know when you get turned 60, there's all these sort of black-edged cards that talk about funerals. That's what happens when you turn 60. I'm going to be bringing one of those to Scotland. Just so you know.

Okay. Okay. Anyway, that's the show again we appreciate our listeners so so much we really do and we love when you come up to us we we do love it and we love your letters and even when you disagree with and are mad at us about you know whatever you're mad at us about typically a dick joke but other things you are very thoughtful and we appreciate it and even if we don't agree with you we appreciate hearing from you and if we don't agree with you, we appreciate hearing from you.

And also, of course, I'm excited to kick off another year of Pivot with Scott. It's been a pleasure. It's been a pleasure. That's right, Cara. If this is wrong, we don't want to be right. We don't want to be right. We are the finest couple in all of podcast land, I think.

Chocolate and peanut butter, champagne and cocaine, Fred and Ginger, Hitler and Stalin. Oh, wait, never mind. Never mind. I'll watch anything starring Hitler. Have you seen my Netflix home screen? It's literally, all I can do all weekend is watch crimes that humans have levied against each other. Please don't do that. Okay. Let's not do that. Let's watch something a little more positive. Let's watch a little Dwight D. Eisenhower this year. Let's do a little more Dwight D. Eisenhower and a little less that, because they lost, just so you know. All right. So please read us out again. Thank you, listeners. And thank you, Scott. Today's show is produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Andretod

entered in this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows, Neil Severo, and Gaddy McBain. Make sure you subscribe to wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for listening to Pivot and Box Media. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. 2024, be in the moment. You can't change the past. Future's more out of your control than we'd like to think. Just enjoy the moment. Tell people you love them. Forgive yourself. And recognize at some point, it probably is all going to end and not matter a lot. Be good to yourself, be good to others.