Pivot - Buzzfeed Layoffs, SCOTUS Confirmation Hearings, and MacKenzie Scott’s Donations

Episode Date: March 25, 2022

Kara and Scott discuss Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearings, layoffs at Buzzfeed, and a new social network from AARP. Also, Ben and Justin Smith announce the name of their new venture and more impressive donations from MacKenzie Scott. Then, a prediction on what’s to come for private companies across the U.S. Send us your Listener Mail questions by calling us at 855-51-PIVOT, or via Yappa, at nymag.com/pivot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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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 the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.

And I'm Scott Galloway. Hey, Scott. How are you doing today? The question is, how are you doing? I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Scott Galloway. Hey, Scott, how you doing today? Yeah, the question is, how are you doing? I'm getting a little bit worried here. I'm okay. I'm doing okay. Yeah? Yeah. How's San Francisco? How's Tales of the City? Oh, it's wonderful. I love San Francisco. Everywhere we turn, we turn a corner or a different part of the city, and it just looks so beautiful. And we all say, the hellscape that is San Francisco. It's, you know, hopefully it looks like people are moving back. All the restaurants are full.

I am hopeful. Good. Well, just a brief moment to recognize the incredible life of Secretary Madeleine Albright. She saw the U.S. as an indispensable nation when it came to using diplomacy backed by the use of force and defend democratic values around the U.S. as an indispensable nation when it came to using diplomacy backed by the use of force and defend democratic values around the world. Her family fled the Nazis. She was really sort of the connective tissue or the biggest evangelist for the importance of NATO. Bill Clinton said of her, few leaders have been so perfectly suited for the times in which they served. I love what she said after 9-11 or when she was responding to terrorist attacks.

She just looked into the camera and said, our memory is long and our reach is far. I just thought she was so forcefully, she defined the term forcefully yet dignified. Yeah. And to that point, she was the most senior woman to have ever served in U.S. government. She was a canny expert official, I have to say. Can I tell one quick story about her? Did I ever tell you this story? I've met her a couple of times at dinner with her and stuff like that. And one time when I was at the Washington Post, I was covering a dinner. I used to cover events, like the lowest rung on the totem pole. And the Shakespeare

Theater here was awarding an award to Patrick Stewart. And she was a huge fan of his, an enormous Patrick Stewart fan. And she was Secretary of State at the time. And she came to the dinner and was at her table. I was seated at the same table. And she was just gushing about Patrick Stewart. She was so smart. She was so funny. She was a little naughty. You know what I mean? Like she was really funny. And she goes, let's go to the bathroom. And so, cause I was supposed to interview her for the thing. So I go to the bathroom with her and she's, she was shorter than me, which is hard to do. And we get at the bathroom and there was a woman in the bathroom who was super drunk, this woman, an older woman.

And she looked at Madeline Albright and she goes, you go girl. And Madeline Albright was like, thank you. She goes, I love you. I love you, Madeline Albright. You go girl. You are always doing the right thing. You go girl. And Madeline Albright goes, you know, thank you. I appreciate it. I really appreciate it. And the woman kept

yelling, you go girl, you go girl. And Malin Albright turned to her and said, thank you so much, but I really actually got to go. And she went into the booth and went to the bathroom. And it was, it was so funny. She was so, she like handled it so perfectly and diplomatically. The woman was over the moon. She charmed Patrick Stewart. She charmed the crowd. It had nothing to do with diplomacy or all the other amazing things she did. But, man, did she make me laugh when she did that.

She was a truth teller. I remember another one of her famous statements. There's a special place in hell for women who don't help other women. Yeah, that got her in trouble. You know what? She told it like it was. I said that to some last night. I was like, that was kind of correct. Not just women, but men, too. Bill Clinton describing her said she was a passionate force for freedom, democracy, and human rights. That's a pretty nice thing to have a former president say about you. That's like checking a lot of boxes in terms of what it is to have a meaningful life.

Anyways, Madeline Albright, a wonderful career of service and demonstration of strength. It was fantastic for America. Anyway, today, BuzzFeed is trending down. We'll tell you why. And we'll talk about the Judge Jackson hearings and what her confirmation might mean for big tech. But first, Mackenzie Scott is investing in some new homes, but they're not for her. The philanthropist donated over $400 million to Habitat for Humanity and some of its affiliates. It's her largest donation yet. She also gave $275 million to Planned Parenthood. That's the largest single donor gift that Planned Parenthood

has ever received. And she still has $49 billion to go. So what do you think, Scott? Look, I'm incredibly impressed with the co-founder of Amazon, Mackenzie Scott. And I think she's an inspiration. And she is not only doing a lot of good for these organizations, a lot of good for these organizations. But I think she's inspired a movement back or toward giving. And that is when you get to a place where you are trying to help others without recognition, without thanks, without your name being etched into the side of the building, without thoughtful meetings with the mayor of the city to talk about your views on education as a function of cashing your check, you know, that's when you get to giving, or the true meaning of giving. And she is the true meaning of giving. And I've been following this for a while. I think it's inspiring. It's

inspired me. And- What about how she's giving it? How she's giving it? Because a lot of these, you know, they have these massive organizations. It sounds like it's her and her husband, her new husband, who's a science teacher, I believe, writing checks in the living room. That's what it feels like in a lot of ways. I'm sure she has an organization. But it doesn't, it's not quite as, the way tech people do it, they do it like it's a tech thing or a business. They do it like it's a transaction. They do it, they set up, they hire a

bunch of people who have the right degrees from the right schools, and they put out RFPs, and they create bureaucracy in an organization. And then they want input because, you know, this person, by virtue of the fact they have a lot of money, has really deep, interesting thoughts on this particular problem. And she just pushes the money out there. And the thing I like about it is we're talking about two high-profile organizations, Habitat for Humanity and Planned Parenthood, but she also gives money to Cal State Fullerton

for a mental health crisis line for at-risk LGTBQ youth. She really is an inspiration. And I've taken something from her. And as always, I want to relate this back to me. You gave $400 million to someone? $399. But I have rethought my giving. I'm being serious here. I'm trying to do more giving anonymously and talking about giving anonymously, I realize doesn't make an anonymous. But just pushing the money out, just cutting people checks, sending up wires,

rather than taking the time of the organization, rather than providing your input. I'm also, I'm committed, and I think a lot of people that feel blessed like me, I'm going to give more than I spend every year as a means of governing my out-of-control consumption. But I look at her, and I think, I don't want to say the other type of giving discouraged me, but I thought, okay, I give something to X organization and then Bezos steps in and gives a billion dollars to build a clock and you just feel like, okay. Oh, the clock donation.

You know, whatever it is. But this type of giving really is inspiring that there's no reason why you can't cut big or small checks. I bet there's a big debate in the philanthropy community about what she's doing with what, say, the Gates Foundation, which is very targeted to solution, you know, solutions like vaccines or malaria, which I also sort of admire the way they did that because they solved a problem, one single problem, which was massive in some of these countries. So I kind of like that too, like pick something to really focus in on. Now, they've had some missteps, obviously, the Gates Foundation, but it's kind of an interesting,

just a completely separate approach. I just wonder what inside the philanthropy world. I'm sure they don't like it because it doesn't involve jobs and very, very like important conferences and get togethers. But there's room for both. The Gates Foundation is pioneering and trying to be an innovator. It's trying to say, okay, what is the place where we could put, you know, where's something we could do something new that we get a bigger ROI just as he approaches, I would imagine, his venture investing. And what he found, and I love this about Bill Gates, was that it was infectious diseases in Africa and also just to come up with a cheap way of manufacturing and distributing toilets, that sanitation was a huge problem. And then he's an innovator. He's a very deep thinker. But you also need agility

and people who just say, there's some amazing organizations set up. People need homes. And this gets hate. But if you were to, I think, I don't call it the safest bet, but if you were really to think where food insecurity for children comes, where you're talking about at-risk youth, when you're talking about civil liberties, when you're talking about rights. Yeah, they don't give to those often. Well, if you were to try and, in my view, encapsulate many of the things that we're worried about and promote as Americans, almost all of them lead right into Planned Parenthood. 100%.

And people like to think of Planned Parenthood as something that's all about the termination of pregnancies. That's a very small fraction of their resources and their efforts. It's about health. It's about specifically health focused on our most vulnerable women and women who just know they can go to a dependable place for all types of health issues. And so this is a planned here. I think there are a few organizations that represent more about what's great about America than Planned Parenthood.

Years ago, Sheryl Sandberg gave a pretty significant gift to them, and it was like a million. It was a significant amount. And she goes, what do you think? And I said, why didn't you give 50 million? She's like, you're a jerk. I'm like, no, I'm serious. You need to really lay up like a marker if you're going to give them money, like give them real money to do something. They were at the time under siege from Congress, Republican Congress at the time.

And this is just, this says everything, this number. It's a significant number. What's interesting about her giving, I've talked to people she's given to. They never talk about it. They ask them not to talk about it. But they said not in a rude way. But they don't even know sometime it's coming in. It just like, they were just contacted. Like there was no like dating. There was no nothing. They just said, here's the money. Can we not just,

I don't want you to talk about how we gave it to you if you don't mind, but it was a check. It was essentially a check. I mean, they did sort of say there was no strings attached. It was essentially a check. I mean, they did sort of say there was no strings attached. There was no direction. They trust us. But there was no discussion with her. I'll tell you that.

She doesn't want to have a building. She doesn't want to visit the campus. She doesn't want an honorary degree. She doesn't want to appear at Davos. I just, everything about her is fantastic. I don't know. I just think she's just, I love that she's doing this. And she still has so much money left. So we'll see. Speaking of the opposite, Nestle is cutting some of its Russia business after criticism from Ukrainian President Zelensky. The Swiss food

giant will still sell baby formula to Russians, but not Kit Kats. Nestle says it will donate any profits it makes in Russia to humanitarian relief organizations. Let me just say, this is the two companies my son, Alex, talks about is Nestle and Coke Industries. He talks about Nestle and he knows the whole history of Nestle and baby food, etc., etc., etc. And this is the one company that stuck out in his brain about Russia as a consumer. And he looked up what they made and didn't want to buy anything again. And he already had a bad attitude towards Nestle, which I think was a good thing to have. So it's kind of interesting since we talked to Jeffrey Sonnenfeld about this, the pressure that's building on these companies.

Yeah. And I don't this feels like a bit of a head fake to me that they're saying we'll donate our profits or we're taking KitKat out but not the baby formula. KitKat is more iconic, but it's probably not nearly. I just don't think – I think there's a lot of good excuses for not getting out of Russia and including it hurts the people. My attitude is you've got to bring so much pressure. It's got to be brute, blunt force. Sanctions are supposed to replace much more, much more errant, reckless methods of diplomacy, which is war. And you can make all sorts of excuses for why people need to have great tasting chocolate or why they need baby formula.

Well, I see why they're doing that. But it's a PR win, too. This sounds terrible. We like to think that, oh, we say we have no quarrel with the Russian people. I believe populations have to take responsibility for their leadership. Also, guess who's killing babies in Ukraine? So, your government is doing that. Well, I got serious fast. I know. Sorry. I was channeling Jeffrey Sonnenfeld. You've become a Sonnenfeldian, haven't you? Oh, I love Jeffrey. I think he's doing really important work. And not only that, what you said is always, one of the things you said is always struck me as prescient. You're like, you're going to leave. Just leave now.

Gonna leave. And I think Jeff will bring a lot of pressure there on these organizations. I asked him to send me his list, and I publish my list on my feed every once in a while if he's still there. There's all sorts of good excuses for why you should stay. And you know what? You should leave. Some people said it's sort of, as you were saying, sort of virtue signaling. But not using the products is an important thing. You want to signal in any small way you can instead of feeling hopeless. And I don't agree when people say that at all. It makes me kind of crazy. If my son feels better, and I think he went out of his way to find out what they made, thinking about it, talking about it, reading about the history of Nestle and their very blighted history around a lot of things. He made decisions.

And I just feel it's OK to let people feel involved and hopeful in the world that they can do something. I mean, he's not going to like grab a, you know, a Kalashnikov and head to Ukraine. But it's kind of an interesting I think I agree with you. Just get out. Just get out. But there's, you brought up a broader notion, and that is around the concept of virtue signaling. And I'm friendly, a former colleague at NYU, and now he's at the University of New Mexico,

evolutionary anthropologist, Jeffrey Miller. He's really, he said something that really struck me, and he said, virtue signaling is a good thing. And that is, if you get pride and reward from talking about something or an action you're doing that's good for the world, that means that you believe other people will be inspired by it. That means that you are saying, this is who I am, and you're more inclined to live up to those morals once you articulate them. And he said, I think we should do away with the notion of virtue signaling as a bad thing. There's nothing wrong with saying, I'm doing the following thing. I'm proud of it. It makes me feel good. It makes me feel better about myself.

And I hope that you will see that it's a good thing and that you will engage in it, too. And then he said, and it struck me like, well, it's okay to talk about the good stuff you're doing. And if you feel good about it, good for you. Maybe spread those good feelings. I liked when he said, and I say this to a lot of people such as yourself that accuse me, being woke. He goes, it's better than being asleep. That's what I say to people. What are you, asleep?

Oh, that's good. Oh, my gosh. Better than being asleep. You got us there. And then you have to, no, but the woke bullshit, the fake news bullshit, stop with the words. It means you have no argument if you call someone woke. You have no argument. You have no argument. You have to use dumb, dumb, shortcut

words. That's what my teacher... Woke-istan. No, you're wrong. It's not because I love San Francisco. There's so many... Anyway, I'm not going to argue with you. Anyway, speaking of which, the AARP is launching its own social network just for Scott Galloway.

The new network is called Senior Planet Community. Free for users, no advertising. Interesting, interesting. I'm excited about this. I went on. My username is Prostatitis. I thought so. What's really interesting is when you go on, they ask you, the first thing they do is they give you a survey.

And the first question, like they have, they intersperse jokes. And one of the questions was, boxers or briefs, which I thought was really funny. Oh, really? Because going back to the commercial, like those moments when they asked Obama. And you know what I answered? What? Depends. Oh, yeah. That's good humor.

Oh, my God. That's good incontinence humor from the AARP. Oh, my God. Get it? Depends. I heard you. Depends. I'm not laughing.

I spent the day with my brother yesterday who tells just as many dumb and dirty dad jokes as you do. Dr. Swisher? He did. D-Swish? He took my son to see Stanford where he went for calls. They biked around. Wow. That's super impressive that your son's even thinking

about it. It's a reach, but he's got straight A's. And he's got sports and he's got lots of interesting hobbies that he actually does and not for the benefit of college people. They'd have to widen the streets and enlarge the dorms. That would cost tens of millions of dollars in infrastructure. I know. And we're going to go look at Berkeley today. That's where we want Vanilla LeBron. I think he loves California. He's so happy here.

So I think he may end up in California. I hope so. Why wouldn't he? Those are all great institutions. Those are the finest public school in the world, Berkeley, and the school that gets more applications. Get this. The school that gets more applications than any university in the world, UCLA. Yeah, he's going to look at USC and the Claremont Colleges. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

That'll put a huge strain on our relationship. All right, okay. Anyway, let's get to our first big story. Things are not clicking at BuzzFeed. The company laid off workers at Complex and BuzzFeed Video. Employees at BuzzFeed News were offered voluntary buyouts. And the news division lost three top editors. This is such a sad story to me because I got to say,

having BuzzFeed stole a lot of my employees when I was running Recode and I think in All Things D. And I have to say, it was such an interesting place that really produced a lot of amazing news, did a lot of innovative things. They certainly spent a lot of money because they outspent me a lot. But it was a really, I feel bad about this story. I want this to work, not just because we're at Vox and we have a similar business, but I always had such, I was always in such admiration of all the interesting things they were trying in journalism. What thinks you? You're right. It's more of a marker

on our society, and that is that the bottom line is we're moving towards a society where rich Republicans buy football teams and rich Democrats buy news organizations, because news organizations, bottom line, are shitty businesses. And if you look at BuzzFeed, I mean, first off, it's got a $600 million market cap. It's down, it's off at least 50% since its IPO, which describes the majority of growth companies have gone public now in the last 24 months. But I mean, things like Open Door or Robin Hood are worth $4 billion, $9 billion. And this company is worth $600 million. And they want, I don't know if you saw, but if you look at BuzzFeed, it's actually they've done a good job. They have commerce revenue.

They have sponsored custom publishing. And then they have their online display revenue. What is not working, unfortunately, what just doesn't work is the newsroom. It wasn't that much money. It loses $10 million. That seemed small to me. Yeah, but on a company that's got to be profitable and is only doing $30 million in EBITDA, it's like, well, you can increase your EBITDA by a third. What's this market cap now?

It's about $600, $650 million. But my guess is they have a— Remember when it was $5 billion to Disney? Do you remember that? They decided not to buy it. Oh, this thing for the last 10 years. I mean, it's just— Yeah.

I'm on the board of a company called OpenWeb that helps. It's a piece of software that manages the comments section to get greater engagement. We're now worth more than BuzzFeed because it's a software technology-driven organization that takes existing media and helps monetize it. But if you're in the business of creating media other than streaming, and by the way, streaming is about to get the shit kicked out of it, I think. But if you're in the business of original content or a media company online, just tough. It's just really, really a hard business. Yeah, the fourth core revenue increased 18%, but as Scott said, earnings dropped 12% to $34 million, really, which caused Wall Street to go crazy-ass, thought that Jonah Peretti, who's running it, should shut down the news division. Is this the last time a digital media company will go public? Probably not, but what do you think? No, there'll be something, but this shouldn't have been a public company. If you're kind of sub a billion and you're subject to this sort of scrutiny and shareholder pressure, I think they would have been –

Stay private? Well, stay private or sell to a bigger company, a bigger sister, so to speak. Companies like this, the distraction, the cost, it costs $2 to $5 million a year just to be a public company. And that hits your bottom line right there. So, I mean, for example, I believe a bigger, you know, a bigger media company or even a finance company or a payments company, excuse me, is going to come in and probably buy Vox. Because here's what you have with media companies. You have tremendous engagement, you have tremendous goodwill, you have tremendous attention, but it all sits on top of the world's shittiest business model, and it's called competing with Google or Facebook. Be that business model.

Please explain. Well, if you're, I mean, say you're Binance or say you're, Christ, I don't know, Coinbase, or say you're Block, the fact that you could get so many people, maybe you could have so much content around finance and news and do push notifications to people based on your payments and just get more people on your platform to say, all right, it's the content component of this company, right? And we're going to focus on finance. We're going to focus on news. But when you're on Coinbase, you get so public that the investment app I'm involved with, it's really a social network and it's teaching constant news.

It gives you more stuff and they don't want shitty content, right? Which you see when I look at Fidelity, when I go on there, it's kind of shitty content, right? It's not very good. Well, that's exactly right. But even talking about valuations care, public, based on our last round of financing, is now worth more than BuzzFeed. Care, public, based on our last round of financing, is now worth more than BuzzFeed. So they wouldn't do it, but there are no shortage of literally $10, $20, $30 billion payment companies that could come in. Are you advising people to do this?

Are you an advisor? I'm advising big companies to do something very similar, but not on these specific names. But think about it. Just an example, a Twitter could come in and have a really robust additional content for less than a 2% dilution. This thing is so cheap now. So what you have with media is media is being featurized. Just like movies. Just like.

A hundred percent. That's the right analogy. I told you I said it to one of the producers of Amazon video, Jill Soloway, who made Transparent, which sort of put Amazon Prime video on the map. And I said, you're there to sell toilet paper. You understand, right? She was like this and this. I was like, you know, just like in the old days, like whoever, GE Theater or sponsored by Soap Suds or whatever. That's what you, whatever it is. You're there for Apple to sell iPhones. You're there for Amazon to sell this, blah, blah, blah.

So anyway, it's interesting. It's sad because, you know, BuzzFeed won a Pulitzer. So many good reporters, so much good journalism, even though we all make fun of them for their lists and everything else. But they produced some astonishing journalism in their time. But look at them all, Cara. Axios, Quartz, they all do, in my opinion, they all do a great job. They all have what I call to all of the negative externalities of Google and Facebook.

These companies have really positive externalities. They've done some great work. They've brought us news we wouldn't have known about without them. And guess what? It's a shitty business. Speaking of which, their former editor-in-chief, who actually kind of made it that way, Ben Smith, revealed the name of his new venture with Justin Smith, who left Bloomberg. It's called Semaphore. Not what I was expecting.

Yeah, S-E-M-A, you know, Semaphore. That sounds like if you read Strunk and white and then you want to talk dirty. Yeah, exactly. Don't you think so? Right. They said it was a word that would work in 35 languages. And, of course, one of those words is soup. Semaphore.

So I wrote a tweet at Ben Smith saying, oh, for love of God, I hope it's soup. Because that's a word that a lot of people around the world know. And then when he called it semaphore, I said for the, I did a semaphore, you know, which spells a different way. And I said, you know, what the fuck for the love of chicken soup did you do here? Like essentially. But I don't understand the name. What do you think, Mr. Brand, brand consultant? So first off, in branding or marketing, the hardest thing is naming because everything's

taken. And what you want is you just want basics. At a minimum, you want something where A, the URL is available. Two, you want something that's easy to say, pronounce, and spell. And then ideally, you want something that connote something about the associations you're trying to build or says something about the business you're in. Naming is a nightmare. I'm aware. I named Pivot. I named Land of the Giants, I think, at Vox. I named Pivot. I named Pivot. No, it's a great name. I also named Code, and I named All Things D, which I didn't like as much. Code is good. All Things D, which I didn't like as much. Code is good.

All Things D is good. Pivot? And I named Sway. Times did not want to do Sway, but I did not understand this one, I got to tell you. We should have been Zoom Media. The jungle cat and the dog. Right, it's true. So they're reportedly trying to raise $20 to $30 million to launch the publication.

I'm sure they're visiting Singapore and the Saudis, et cetera. Would BuzzFfeed news be dealing with these same issues under ben smith they say they're avoiding venture capital instead seeking investments from wealthy individuals like monocle does that also if you call smith's plan is to reportedly go all in on the 2024 election scott which is interesting that worked for him at politico in 2008 but the media media, it's a crowded environment. How will Semaphore stand out? I think it's going to be fascinating.

And I think what you're going to start to see, which I think is going to be hilarious, I think you're going to start to see Vice President Harris and Secretary Buttigieg go off the record and start needling at each other, because I think they're the two ones from the cabinet, if you will. But I think they're already, look at, at i mean you already see it all shaping up desantis is already trying to distance himself

from trump he's trying to pull a young everybody is mel bow brooks just did geez louisa did you see that yeah he's such a i did you know it's like it's like one villain turning on another they're all awful i don't care well you know who's really hurt all these folks is the invasion of Ukraine because all of a sudden people are like, all these people who looked up to Putin, they're realizing that this is the definition of toxic masculinity. Yeah. In any case, what would you do if you and I were raising $20 to $30 million to launch a publication? We would do. What would you think? What we need is another 200. It's just to do this well, to do this, to do,

you were talking about actual journalism. One of us needs to become a billionaire first, and then everything will work out. I'm telling you, these companies, other than the ones that really establish unbelievable depth and brand and global presence and innovation around digital, such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, sort of. I'd love to see the, you know, I wonder what the numbers there are. I think they've probably hemorrhaged money, but it doesn't matter because it's basically the likability shield for the wealthiest man in the world or the second wealthiest man in the world. So do you think it'll work? What would we do besides being a billionaire? We think we have no other choice. You cannot be a media

company. But I'm going to have to have you assess Vox then. They've stayed private. They're I think marginally profitable. What? They did some mergers. What? What do you do? Well, first off, this is part of a 40-year trend. The evening news

used to be a public service from the broadcast network who felt that, okay, we're making so much money running ads for Tang during the Partridge family that we got to spend some money and bring you the evening news. And then folks saw a profit motive if they went 24 hours. Then in order to keep you engaged, they started making it more opinion and novelty than news. And slowly but surely, hardcore news and journalism became so expensive to do well, and so much bad news was available for free that the entire industry, just the news industry, has become a public good as opposed to a business. So I think the prospects, I think sometimes it's darkest before it's pitch black. I think it only gets worse. Vox, I think, is a little bit different. And

we're talking our own book because we're shareholders. But it's sort of established, it has established just a ton of momentum in what is one of the few ad-supported mediums that's growing, and that is podcasts. And just by virtue of some of the personalities in the audience we get, we get kind of premium rates. I don't think we should be public, but someone will absolutely swoop in and buy this for a reasonable price. Yeah. Jim's been very smart to me. He doesn't jump at every... I always complain to him about that, but I have to say there's some wisdom in it. He's measured. He's very measured. I always complain to him about that, but I have to say there's some wisdom in it. He's measured.

He's very measured. He's measured. Jim Bankoff, that is. Jim measured. Jim Bankoff. Anyway, Scott, we're going to go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about the Judge Jackson hearings and take a listener mail question about student housing.

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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. Procrastination, putting it off, kicking the can down the road. In. Plans and guides that make it easy to get home projects done. Out. Carpet in the bathroom. Like, why? 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 with our second big story. Judge Jackson's confirmation hearings are over after some very long days. As usual, the senators did most of the talking and

general buffoonery from the Republican Party. But Judge Jackson had some things to say when it came to antitrust. Here's her exchange with Senator Klobuchar. How would you characterize the goals of our antitrust laws? The antitrust laws protect competition and, as you said, therefore protect consumers and competitors and the economy as a whole. She added the word competitors because antitrust law is usually based around consumers. So everyone was reading the tea leaves. It could be notable that she added that. I noticed it myself.

It could be about Amazon, Google. She left herself open. And she is reportedly friends with Jonathan Cantor. Both of them send their kids to a school that my kids have gone to and one who goes there, which is Georgetown Day School. who goes there, which is Georgetown Day School, which they were talking about critical race theory. Ted Cruz, as usual, sticking, you know, as the persistent Joe that he is, started to attack the curriculum at Georgetown Day, but it wasn't in the curriculum. It was on some website for resources. And of course, his own school in Houston, where his kids go, had the same books on them. He kept holding up books about anti-racist babies. But in any case, where his kids go, had the same books on them. He kept holding up

books about anti-racist babies. But in any case, in the tech area, the judge also answered questions about Section 230. Senator Mike Lee asked if Congress could strip 230 protections from a tech company that was censoring political speech. Here's what Judge Jackson said. The criteria that you identify, it would be relevant, I think, as to whether or not the government is seeking to regulate along viewpoint lines under the First Amendment. That is something that is generally impermissible. Thank you, Mr. Kierman. She kind of shot him down because she was trying to say that she would let tech companies censor political speech. They, of course, have no speech.

This is one of the Republican talking points about tech companies. There's no proof. They just say it over and over again. And certainly if there was proof, it would be a big problem. But what do you think about this? I thought the Senate came up. What do you think about this? I thought the Senate came up.

I thought this hearing and this process really lost here because when I listened to Senator Blackburn's comments and Senator Cruz's comments, it just feels like they're trying to get an emotional reaction out of far-right potential donors as opposed to really having a dialogue around the qualifications of the judge. Yeah, she said that. She said that. They would say, you know, they kept saying child porn and to try and, you know, I'm protecting you from child porn about asking a judge ridiculous questions around her decisions around this, you know, this topic.

They, I also, quite frankly, on this side, I thought Senator Booker's constant rambling on about how proud he was, was very performative. It's like, Jesus Christ, ask a fucking question. I think he's like that. I have to tell you. He's very, he does speeches like that all the time.

But anyway, I agree. It had nothing to do with her qualifications, which are myriad. I thought Senator Durbin was outstanding cloud cover for her. He would clarify things just to say, just for the record, this is what is actually happening. Senator Kay, as always, like shows up and actually does the work. And rather than talking about what an inspiring moment it is, and it is to have the first black woman sit on the Supreme Court, public high school education, Ivy League Law School, Supreme Court clerking, public defender on the sentencing commission, a district judge, and also on the Court of Appeals. Just impressive. How many people, how many sitting Supreme Court justices tick all those boxes?

None of them. None of them, except the one, Judge Jackson, who hopefully is going to be confirmed. So, distinctive what a nice, important moment this is for the country on several dimensions. She's just ridiculously fucking qualified. Yeah. You know, it's interesting. They tried to push back that the Brett Kavanaugh hearings became a circus. But, you know, look, they got nothing on her in this thing.

This whole CRT thing was ridiculous. My son, Louie, joked, see, Mom, I told you I went to a CRT, Indoctrination Academy. It just was – everyone understood how ridiculous so much of this was. Well, they're promoting a book burning. They're like, we found this book in your library. I'm like, you know, that kind of language goes very ugly places. Cruz's kids' school's library. It's ridiculous.

It's ridiculous. But the stuff around tech was interesting. At 230, the Supreme Court could take action. Clarence Thomas wants a 230 case. He's previously said the government should regulate social media like common carriers, which is interesting. That would be interesting. That's the government regulating speech, FYI, which is not allowed under the First Amendment, as Judge Jackson so correctly noted. Jackson's recent opinion in tech, the other stuff, was a ruling against Uber in a case involving alleged discrimination against users in wheelchairs. Uber had asked for the case to be dismissed,

arguing that Uber platform was just a conduit between passengers and drivers. Judge Jackson disagreed and let the case move forward. I like that. I would agree with her on that one. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce hasn't weighed in on Judge Jackson's nomination, which is interesting. It endorsed all three of Trump's nominees to the Supreme Court. Go U.S. Commerce, because qualifications mean nothing. The Judiciary Committee is going to vote on the nomination on April 4th, which seems a million years away. But let's hope it just goes through pretty easily. And then we'll see what happens.

But I don't think they put a glove on her. I thought they were incredibly disrespectful to a woman of color who is so eminently qualified that she could run circles around them every day of the week and twice on Sunday. And let me just say, Ted Cruz couldn't eat the scraps of her law knowledge. I think he's a lawyer, but it's just an unqualified and terrible person judging someone who is so far above him as to be Mount Everest. So I don't know. What do you think? My biggest fear here, Cara, is all of a sudden, under the notion of centrism, some narcissist Democratic senator who shall remain nameless is going to pop up and say they have concerns.

I don't think that's going to happen. That is my biggest fear here. So, hopefully, this just happens crisply and violently. Yeah, they tried to anti, you know, she was against police. That didn't work. They tried a whole bunch of things. Everything's deflected off of her. Nothing stuck.

Yeah, one of the centrist senators said it was all bullshit what the Republicans were doing. So I don't think they even tried very hard, except for Ted Cruz, who seems to be in a different narrative than the rest of the world. Anyway, let me just say something, Ted Cruz. No one wants you to be president. Everyone dislikes you from way back in high school, actually. And in fact, write essays about how much they dislike you. Anyone I talk to in the U.S. Senate hates you, whatever side they're on. Just, I hope you get defeated at some point and go the way of Rick Santorum, where you have a CNN contract and you get to blather on, but no one will like you there either.

Anyway. Okay, Scott, let's pivot to a listener question. You've got, you've got, I can't believe I'm going to be a mailman. You've got mail. Hey, Scott. Hey, Kara. This is Nicole Coomber. I'm faculty at the business school at the University of Maryland. Listening to your discussion about Berkeley was really interesting because we had a recent dustup over some housing in College Park where they wanted to build some graduate student housing, which is in short supply, and the homeowners were able to convince students that it was an environmental issue. Also, just kind of curious your thoughts on how asynchronous and online education fits into this, especially if it's done by these bigger universities like the University of Maryland.

Thanks. Love the show. Y'all are great. Bye. Okay, Scott, this is interesting. In California, Governor Newsom signed a bill that removed a court-ordered cap to enrollment at Berkeley. Scott, I'm going to let you take this one away. I live near, I don't live near College Park. I have a lot of friends whose kids go there. Great university, beautiful campus, beautiful area around it. What thinks you? Higher ed is the tip of the spear for our society, for America. And do we want our society to be a rejectionist culture that affords incredible opportunities to cohorts, the children of rich people or to the freakishly remarkable? Or do we want it to be a great place for good kids to

establish remarkable trajectory in their professional lives and also their own spiritual. When you graduate from college, you become less likely to have a heart attack. You become more likely to get married. You become more likely to have children. You become less likely to suffer from severe depression. It's as if we have this miracle pharmaceutical and the 10 most prestigious or the 100 most prestigious pharmaceutical companies have decided, you know, we're going to limit access to this pharmaceutical. And we play into this notion on a much broader scale with a scarcity economy that says, once I have a big business, I'm going to spend all my time trying to suppress the

entry of other new businesses. Once I have a house, I'm going to try and make it harder for anyone else to build a house. Once I have a degree from a great institution, I'm going to try and make it harder for anyone behind me. We have to bust out of that. And the fact that they've weaponized kids at universities that, quite frankly,

are severely woke. Oh, no. Better than asleep. Okay, kids, good for you. You're just making it harder for the people who didn't get in. Don't blame the kids. Don't you dare blame the kids.

This is the homeowners. Okay, homeowners who have figured out a way to tap into a narrative and an orthodoxy that's run amok on campuses. But anyways, this is we need to absolutely flip the script here. We need to take our finest universities. We're great at media. We're great at software. We're great at weapons. We're great at higher ed. We need to bust out of this rejectionist, nimbyism, scarcity culture. There's a huge going to leverage the advances in online learning to dramatically expand their enrollments and consolidate the market. And I could not have been more wrong. They have doubled down

on their exclusivity and recognize the only way we can continue to charge people $62,000 a year is for the full dead poet society experience. So we're not going to have as much online learning.

You have to be back on campus. And here's the thing. They all say, well, we don't have the capacity. It's a space issue. And guess what? If you take half your sessions online, I'm not talking about classes online, but half the sessions, and I can sit in any class and tell you which sessions you should take online where there isn't a lot of interaction. Overnight, you theoretically double the supply, and we can start moving back to where higher ed was. Let me push back on a couple things. Students really want to be there.

They really do. You know, my son really wants to get back. Alex really wants to go somewhere. And so there is some analog. I think within education, analog has worked a lot better in K through 12, toddlers, everything, college. It's a really important tab. And not just, you know, Dead Poets Society. It's the idea of socialization or something.

So how do you fit those two together? Do you shift students through a campus? Do you, what, you just expand them? There's got to be, it's not just online to expand it, although that's a great idea too, and they should do more of it. I know MIT has done a lot of that. A lot of colleges have, but what's the real solution if kids, if they can make it affordable, can get there, can be there physically? Because there is benefit from networking. You have to imagine Judge Jackson benefited from being at Harvard and the networking that went on and the friendships he developed and the professors she had meaningful relationships with. So answer that question because I think it's more important

and it's hard to solve for, I guess. So first off, let's distinguish between K through 12 and higher ed. Right, okay. K through 12, it's my view, and I think there's a lot of evidence here, needs to be in person five days a week. Yeah, seven.

Full stop. And we leverage technology. We teach them technology, but they are in school. Full stop. And we leverage technology. We teach them technology, but they are in school. Full stop. Now, the argument that people make that you've kind of referenced is that,'t have enough campus lawn or enough socialization to handle additional students. They say we don't have enough tenured faculty and we don't have enough classrooms. Right. So what you do is – And housing. And housing. You get rid of this NIMBY bullshit and also you expand classroom capacity because here's the thing. 90% of our faculty – Yeah, I know.

Cara, are teaching tiny classes because no one's interested in taking their classes. So you take the courses that people want to teach. I love when you go this way. Go ahead. Shitty classes. Well, okay. I used to teach 60 kids because the room would only hold 60. Now I teach 300 at NYU.

And some of it's online and some of it's in person. And guess what? The socialization, the leadership. Kids are really good at scaling beer, unprotected sex, student council, football games. They scale that really well on their own. That is not the gating factor here. The excuse, the false flag that administrators and faculty continue to put out there and that we buy is that we don't have the classrooms and we don't have the faculty. Okay. So, get rid of some professors or move them into more popular areas. Then force them to be more accountable. And given that we've raised tuition 1,400%, let's ask that you teach maybe twice as many people. The other stuff,

the socialization you're talking about, which I agree is hugely important, will not take any hit whatsoever if occasionally you do a stats class or a history of Greece or the Ellingtonia, the history of Duke Ellington, which I took at UCLA. Some of those sessions can be taken online to free up the real friction or what they claim is the friction, and that is faculty and classroom space. So the smaller classes online and the bigger classes. Which one? Yeah. Well, here's the thing.

I have 36 podium hours for brand strategy, 12 sessions. Take four of those sessions where I'm just lecturing. I'm talking about brand architecture. I can use the help of video. I can use polls. I can actually do really cool things online. Yeah. And look at – take four of the 12 sessions online, and then technically or theoretically, you should be able to expand your supply by 25 or 30 percent.

The kids are still going to get together and make connections and do that – take advantage of that incredible campus environment. You can also overbuild on those campuses. Georgetown University used to get criticized because they build on every square inch of their little spot because Georgetown is a real fancy area, right, of Washington. And they used to get criticized. But one of the things they did when I was there was build housing, housing, housing, housing, housing because they didn't want to keep encroaching. They knew there was a problem, especially because it's one of the more expensive areas of Washington, D.C. And there was a lot of tension between the town and gown. And it's absolutely, they kept like one lawn thing, and then they built very innovative fields on top of buildings. And at the time, people insulted them. But now I see

it is somewhat wise by those Jesuits. They jammed people in there so there could have more people at the university. And I remember thinking that was bad at the time, but now I'm thinking they built ugly buildings. That was one of the issues. But it was an interesting technique, and it was always housing and classrooms they were building, like a lot of them, which was interesting, you know, on every square inch. Well, a couple of things. One, you mentioned earlier in the program that you're taking your son to Berkeley. Yeah. And you said, well, no one's there.

Well, guess what? 20 weeks a year. Yeah. There's no one there. I know. We need to do what Dartmouth does. Dartmouth starts the quarter mid-summer. There's way too much fallow capacity supply.

I agree. I agree. We don't use. You know what we also need to do? A great university needs to open up a campus in the South and say, it's like the Navy SEALs. Anyone could show up, but a lot of you aren't going to make it. Make it just entirely skills-based. There's all sorts of interesting things we could do. Two-year programs. Why don't you become dean of the world, Scott?

Of the world? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Dean Wormer. There's a lot of people who want to support me for that. Yeah. No, I don't think so. No. Occasionally, I get called to interview for a deanship and I say I would be the worst person in the world. Actually, I've gotten some fairly interesting calls. But what I do is I send them a list of people who are much more talented and much better with people than me. Where? Give me one. Give me a name. I mean, it's one thing to be asked to interview. I wasn't offered a job, but I get asked to interview at all sorts of schools. Schools are really trying to embrace innovation. I will say that. They like the idea, or maybe they just want an innovator to interview so they can say to whoever, we interviewed this guy. And then they'll

get the other guy or woman, yeah. But schools, I've actually been encouraged lately. I think schools do see the issues and they are trying to address it, but there is no reason why we can't dramatically... I mean, Christ, like I said, we can scale Google 24% a year, but we can't scale higher ed more than 1% a year. There's a lot of issues we're going to have to face around demographics and who gets in and capacity and supply and cost because you know what I'm getting for the first time ever, Kara? I'm getting calls from kids in between their first and second year in business school saying, I'm thinking of dropping out. This isn't worth 70 grand. I've got a great job.

I don't want to go for another nine months. college system, proposed an alternative this past weekend on Twitter. Find the smartest and most driven 18-year-olds in the world and give them tenure, say a decade plus of salary, resources, and work at whatever they want, and a smart peer group in exchange for a small percent of future earnings. What do you think of his idea of taking a percent of their earnings? That's sort of like a loan. That's been proposed for a long time. We pay for your education. Feels wrong. And you give us one or two percent. Oh, it's like the military. My dad did pay for your education. Feels wrong. And you give us one or 2%. Oh, it's like the military. My dad did that for the military. Well, you serve for a certain amount of time, though. It's not a percentage of your salary, right? You just serve for an amount of time. I get it. I think it's headed in the wrong direction.

I think we need to flip. I think the opportunity is to flip the cost. You have corporate profits at record highs. You have student debt at record highs, which means we need to transfer the cost of higher ed from the students to the corporations. And here's how you do it. You say to Google, you say to Amazon, you say to Salesforce, 30 kids in my class are going to get offers from Amazon. You say to Amazon, we have an opportunity. We have an opportunity for 100 universities, or I'm sorry, 100 corporations. We're going to fast track your ability to get the greatest human capital in the world, but you are going to pay for it. And we basically pivot the cost from the kids to the corporations. Corporations should be paying to recruit at these great universities. The greatest ROI, absolutely the key asset of any company isn't artificial intelligence.

It isn't technology. It's access to these students. It's access to incredibly well-trained, hardworking human capital that hasn't collected dogs and kids and is willing to work around the clock for 40% of the cost of that 40-year-old VP and do 110% of the work and add value. This is the secret sauce. Show me a company that's added $10 billion in market cap over the last 12 months. I'll show you a company that recruits incredible young human capital. Charge them for it. And it shouldn't just be just the high level, the smartest and most driven.

It should be everybody, like you say, when you talk about UCLA. It should be plumbing and electrical. One thing I have noticed here is a couple of stores are closed parts of the week because they can't get enough employees. And so they're focused on their most profitable times. So they're not open all the time. And that's what they were telling me at this one. There's a little ice cream place that makes delicious ice cream here. And they're like, we're only open. We figured out when our most profitable times and busy times were, and we're only open then because we can't get enough staff. And that's where we focus. We do just as well. And that was super interesting to me. But the ability to attract employees is

something everybody at every level is struggling with. So I would agree. Well, especially the front line. I was on a flight from Colorado to New York on United Airlines, and I hadn't flown in a while. They have had it. Yeah. It's like I made the mistake of keeping my laptop open while we were on descent, and this guy came over to me, and I thought he was going to take me and my laptop and kick our ass off the plane. They have had it. Can you imagine the last two years frontline workers have had? If I was a flight attendant with everyone yelling about meth.

I can't see that. They did say. I just can't see that. What airline from hell is that called? I would take super glue and super glue it onto someone's face if they gave me any trouble. Oh, God. Anyway, you've got a question of your own. If you'd like to answer it, send it our way. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT, which is a great brand, by the way. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions.

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. So a little behind the music for the fans here.

We've spent the last 10 minutes listening to Brenda Vaccaro yell at her family to be quiet. Alex, I hear you. You're like a thundering herd of elephants. Go sit down quietly. It strikes me. Everyone is so scared of you except anyone related to you. And by the way, is that Casey Newton in the background? You have the weirdest, wokest lifestyle. Is Maureen Dowd watering your plants right now? No, she lives in D.C.

It's Nicholas Kristof. He's here to wash the cars. It's like journalists roaming around your house. Yes, we're the Partridge family, is what we are. Okay, Scott, you got to really do a good prediction this week. Beyond streaming, that was last week. That was a good one, though. My prediction. So what's happened at BuzzFeed is basically an Easter parade compared to what's about to happen to private companies all across America. And that is the tail that wags the dog here is the public markets. The public markets have been creamed across growth companies. And every, or not every, 50 to 80% of boards of unicorn companies are asking the CEO to revise their plan for 2022 and

2023. They're going to look at the plan. They're going to send it back and say, we need you to make the following tweaks, which is Latin for we need you to lay off people. Oh, wow. Okay. The layoffs at BuzzFeed were actually not that big. I think it was like one and a half percent of the workforce. You're going to see in the next six months, once a week, and once there's some cloud cover from high flyers that do this, you're going to see layoffs in the hundreds of people

at some of these unicorns. They just got way out over their skis. And when the market, when VCs and their boards realize, no, we're not worth $3 billion, we're worth $300 million and we're going to run out of capital if we don't tighten.

There's going to be some major belt tightening over the next 12 months. Because you've been on your own company boards? Is that what's happening on your boards? Are the companies around? It depends which company. But every board right now, especially if a growth company where literally capital is infinite and it was just all about growth, is having to really take a hard look. A little nervousness.

A little nervousness, right? Take a hard look at the numbers. Well, when your benchmark for what you're worth is off 80%, you've got to recalibrate. So we're going to see. It happened to Fox and BuzzFeed. That's a great prediction. I think you're right. I think people at the same time, never been more jobs.

Unemployment is at record low. So lots of jobs out there. It's just where they are, correct? That's what you're saying. That's right. Will that create more startups? Will that create more startups? Your term is the right one, the great reassessment. A lot of people are deciding to start small businesses. And what I would tell the young people, I talk to a lot of young people when they get laid off, I'm like, don't bring your full self to work. This isn't about you. You're going to get, there's very few people that haven't been laid off at some point in their career.

This isn't – you know, ask yourself if it was about you. If you were an asshole or distracted or just not very good at this, then you need to learn from that. Otherwise, just mourn for a week and move on. But I've never bought that people should bring their full selves to work. I think that's just such BS. This is an inanimate legal entity that can provide economic security for you. Be loyal to the people there. But if you get laid off, it's likely not about you. And it's a great time to start a business. I'm more bullish on entrepreneurship, which creates

two-thirds of new jobs than I've ever been. And it's supported by the number of new businesses being formed. And the great thing about starting a new business coming out of a time like this is that consumers and businesses are reevaluating how they do business, which lends itself really well to new businesses. They're open to new ideas and new ways of doing businesses and new ways of spending money. So one of the silver linings coming out of the pandemic is a boom in entrepreneurship. It's very exciting. That is a fantastic prediction. One thing I did notice is, as you said, lots of businesses close after they got the money from the pandemic money. I've noticed a lot of little businesses opening all of a sudden, too, in the closed spaces. And new restaurants. So it's always, you know,

it is what it is. And there is renewal at some point sure okay there's certain there's certain pyrolithic plants that only germinate after a fire yeah absolutely okay scott that's the show we'll be back on tuesday with more pivot i will be in a quieter place my family's very noisy this morning very early in san francisco I'm not sure why. They usually sleep late. In any case, why don't you read us out and we'll see you on Tuesday. Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Evan Engel, Taylor Griffin, Casey Newton, Amanda Katz,

and Kara's 11 million children. Learning Energy Taught engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Neil Silverio. 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. Madeline Albright, Secretary Albright, forceful yet dignified. You go, girl.