Pivot - Cable Wars, FTC vs. Amazon, and Elon vs. the ADL

Episode Date: September 8, 2023

Scott is back! He and Kara waste no time digging into Charter vs. Disney and the FTC’s possible Amazon suit. Our Friend of Pivot is CEO and National Chair of the Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt. He shares his thoughts on being on the receiving end of Elon Musk's latest tweetstorm. You can follow Jonathan at @JGreenblattADL. 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

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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 New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.

Who let the dog back in? He's back from Scott Free August, Scott Galloway. That's right. Who's invaded Earth? Armies from the planet Wokistan. Refusing to face adult realities. Airing a set of petty grievances. Who will save us?

Who is standing between you and MSNBC and anyone with the last name Swisher? Jesus Christ, Kara, stop it with the family already. When Saul came out of Amanda, did he want mother's milk or did he want a mic?

Enough already. This is not a Kentucky wedding. Who will save us? He's angry he's got erectile dysfunction, but he's your angry professor with erectile dysfunction. That's right. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, it's definitely not Savannah Guthrie. It's the dog. Oh, God. Oh, good God

I did that hungover I'm really hungover, Cara Are you? Oh, my God That was not easy Well, I have my own song, Scott I have my own song Let us cue it

Here we go Yes And I'm bad like the Barbie. I'm a doll, but I still want to party. Pink felt like I'm ready to bend. I'm a 10, so I pull in a can. Here we go. Stay, stay, Nikki. Oh, little Barbie's pretty. Yes. Scott Free August is over. Scott Timber has arrived. Welcome back.

Oh, by the way, Barbie's well over a billion dollars. I just want to point out, since you've been away. What's the obsession? Oh, God. Because it makes money, along with Taylor Swift. I'm just making. You do Wokastan, but. Because it makes money along with Taylor Swift. I'm just making, you do Wokastan, but Wokastan is very profitable in any case. Did I tell you I saw Taylor Swift? I saw Taylor Swift. You did, yes. Give me a quick rundown of what you've been doing

and then we'll get to the show. You know, wonderful August. I was in Colorado, in Nantucket. I've submitted my outline for my next, next book. My next book's coming out in March. That's already done, but I have to submit a proposal for my next book. So I did some writing. What's that on? Women? Well, my next book's on financial security, but my book after that, you know, I'm writing a book on masculinity. So I've increased my testosterone that I'm shooting in my ass every week. I'm going to start shooting it in my eyes, see if that helps. By the way, by the way, speaking of testosterone, and I just want to take very seriously. Well, I got a lot of feedback from people that the profanity and the penis jokes are just a little much.

And I want you to know that I have listened. So I'm in the hospital and I'm walking down the hall and I look in this room and I see this guy like furiously masturbating. Like he's angry at it. Like it owes him money. Right. So, and I'm like, Jesus Christ. I said to the doctor, I'm like, what's going on there? He's like, he's suffering from this rare condition where if he doesn't climax, the semen builds up and it's unhealthy. And I'm like, okay, I get it. And I keep walking down the hall and I see in another room, a patient getting oral sex from a nurse. I'm like, what's going on there? And he's like, same condition, just better health plan. Better health plan.

I'm sorry. If you don't want profanity, listen to the fucking Daily or Day Explained. They are starting doing penis jokes on the Daily, I think. I've heard Michael Barbaro is considering. I have not heard that. I listen to the Daily. I've not heard any penis jokes. Oh, by the way, last night, you know who I ran into? So it's fashion week here. And I like to go out because I like both fashion and the people it draws, specifically people who like alcohol.

the bar and says, hello, Scott. And I'm like, God, is this an off-duty cop? Very sober, very straightforward. And we just sat there and looked at each other and it was so out of context. And I finally, I'm like, oh my God. You dated her. I'm like, Naima, Naima, it's fashion week. Oh yeah, that's not a surprise. And we just stood there and looked at each other. And then she's like, well, good to see you and left. I just, I barely, I was so out of context. I didn't, I didn't recognize her. Yeah, she's very fashionable. Thank you for that lovely comment about my fantastic son. We got hundreds of letters, you know, about Louis.

Well, and your brother. You have your brother and your son. Yeah, I know. But that was useful. AI and medicine. But let me just say, we got so many letters about Louis. We really did. No, he was very good.

He was very good. But the whole family thing has got to stop. Yeah, I think that was good. It was a really successful show. It might have outperformed you. I'm guessing it did. Yeah. Anyway, we have a lot to talk about, Scott. Are you ready? Because there's tons of news. You missed a lot of news. So we have a lot to talk about. Today, we'll talk about the Charter versus Disney battle, the FTC versus Amazon battle, and the latest on the Hollywood strikes. Our friend of Pivot is Jonathan Greenblatt, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League. His organization found itself in Elon Musk's crosshairs this past weekend. He joins us to talk about that. First, 15 million Spectrum cable viewers are without access to ESPN, ABC, and other Disney-owned

channels this week. My children would melt down. It's actually, I think, in New York. My mom's Spectrum person. Charter Communications at Disney failed to agree on a renewed distribution deal, limiting Spectrum's customers' access to top channels. The two companies have released statements blaming each other. Charter Communications CEO Christopher Winfrey suggesting Spectrum will move on if they cannot come to an agreement. Disney claims Spectrum customers have been having to wait up to three hours on the phone attempting to cancel their subscriptions. The disagreement comes at a tough time for cable. The TV industry has lost 25% of its audience the last five years.

Basically, these cable companies don't want to pay too much for these channels, especially since Disney puts a lot of stuff over the top. Talk to me about this. This is a big deal, I think. Many people, even though there's been these beefs between cable companies and the channels for money, people seem to think this is quite serious. Yeah, they're describing it. Most people are saying this is a moment, and things have kind of hit a breaking point. And just the piece of data that stuck out to me is, so cable

companies make their money by charging you $100 or $150 or $200 and say, well, if you want to have ESPN, you have to have the star mega Joey bag of donuts package that includes the Food Networks 5, 6, 7, and 8, all this bundling. And they consistently raise prices faster than inflation. And the content companies in the studios kept increasing their affiliate fees. And just so people don't know, this is what they get for putting those on there. And they make a ton of money. They make a ton, ton, ton of money. If you want ESPN, it's not $4 per house this year. It's going to be $5. And also, we need you to pay $2 for the learning channel or whatever.

Meanwhile, the number of homes with cable television has shrunk 40% from $100 million to $60 million. So if the cable companies, in order to maintain the same profit margins, that would mean that they have to charge every cable subscriber, they're having to pay three times as much for the same content. And whether it's the whole supply chain, whether it's the rider strike, what's going on with studios, the tail wagging the dog all comes down to this, and that is you have a pipe coming into consumers' homes that carry

zeros and ones. You have a dumb appliance called the television. So, the question is, all right, what comes over and what is the ecosystem there through that pipe onto that dumb appliance? And you can have, and this is the analogy I use, I can have all of cable television, or most of it, CNN, the Food Network, and I use it through Hulu. And they charge somewhere between $55 and $75 a month to get those cable channels. In addition, you have to endure ads. Or for $12 a month, and actually a better analogy would be the commercial version of Netflix at five bucks a month, you can have Netflix. And if you look at consumers, especially young people, the majority of them, distinct of the price, would choose Netflix over the rest of

cable television. So you have an ecosystem where one product costs $50 or $60, and the other costs somewhere between $5 and $12. The cable television ecosystem, the entire ecosystem, the unions, the riders, the distribution agreements, the content, the cable companies, the whole ecosystem is collapsing on itself. And in addition, it's a downward spiral because in order to maintain their margins, they've got to charge increased affiliate fees, which makes cable, the cable bundle more expensive, which means more consumers cut the cord and then there's even less money. Right. And address the getting it over the top, though, too.

Disney is putting a lot of their stuff on the channel. Well, that's what Charter's saying. Charter's saying, we can't continue to raise prices to fund the sword that beheads us. Right, right. This isn't working. Yeah. So what happens here? What do you imagine?

It's really interesting because I had Barry Diller on last week, and he was talking about just this thing. And he was saying double down on linear distribution, that the companies raced to catch up with Netflix and can't do it. Only Netflix can do it. And that maybe they should go back to the old system where it was very transparent how money was being exchanged. I didn't think this was correct, but it was an interesting idea is that in the chasing, they've collapsed the system. And now they're collapsing it with the cable companies too. There's no value for the cable companies. I just think of it economically or looking at the entire ecosystem, the two big themes, and I've actually been meeting with private equity firms and some players in the industry to see if there's something to be done here. And the two call signs will be consolidation and what I call good bank, bad bank. And what do I mean by that? There are all these cable channels and they need to cut costs. And the way the term they use for cutting costs is consolidation. And that is they need one person in Czechoslovakia selling the big bang theory and shark week, not three. They need

one CFO. They're just going to have to consolidate, pair up together. And what I mean by good bank, bad bank is that if you look at Viacom, whose stock is down 75% in the last three or four years. This is Paramount. Sherry Redstone has to do something. Paramount Plus is actually a pretty good story. It's the little streamer that could. It's growing. But the problem is every one of these guys, whether it's Time Warner or Disney,

they spend the first 10 minutes talking about growth and streaming and about the future. And then the CFO on the remainder of the earnings call has to apologize- How much it costs. For not only how much it costs, but how the ice cube of their cable business continues to melt. And so what I think they're going to do, I think what you're going to see is one or more companies emerge that will take these cable assets into a bad bank structure and just say, look, declining assets that are cash flow positive are really great businesses as long as you can cut costs faster than the decline in the business. And these businesses usually don't decline or go away as fast as people think. Well, AOL, AOL, Dial-Up still exists. AOL still exists.

And it's very profitable. Actually, Yahoo's doing great under Jim Lanzone. Yeah, who's doing great? But if you were to take all of these assets, this is now a distress play. And they're going to have to exit the consensual hallucination that these cable companies or ad-supported cable is ever going to be nothing but a shadow of itself. It's just, I don't care how talented you are. And where I think it goes, I think the proxy for where we end up with these types of stations is

there's a gentleman, I forget his name, he started Five Hour Energy and he's now a multi-billionaire. And he's going in and buying up these regional sports networks. And then he uses AI to produce minimum viable content at a fracture of the cost. And so, what you have is that all of these folks continue to believe, oh, no, we're making $400,000 a year flying San Francisco to Tokyo as the pilot on Pan Am. This world's going to last forever. No, it's not. You're going to be making a lot less than that. And the airline industry is going to become all about cost cutting. How does the consumer get affected? Well, I think, well, the consumer wins here. The consumer's already won. And if you just watch Netflix, you save somewhere between seven to 12 days a year in advertising.

But you need to get that internet access through a Comcast or any of these people. Well, the cable guys, the pipes, they'll still make money off the pipes, but I think what might end up happening, and I think this is actually a good move on Time Warner, I think a brand like CNN becomes Intel inside. And that is everyone from Amazon Prime to Netflix has a little logo that says CNN. And if you want 10, 12, 20 minutes of news at that moment, and sometimes it's refreshed every 30 minutes

during the insurrection. Other times it's refreshed every couple hours. And they say, do you want to build a huge newsroom or do you just want to have a CNN kind of Intel inside app that's over the top and streaming? But the consumer, I mean, think about, look at it this way. 100 million households probably, I don't know, 60 or 80 million get content over a cable. You know, $25 billion spent on original programming. That means $3,000 per household is being spent to deliver euphoria and breaking bad to you. I mean, the consumer has just killed it. It is. It's great for the consumer. So, eventually, you'll have a, like,

so interesting because Jason Kyler said that to me years ago. I have this actually in my memoir where he's like, there's going to be this dumb TV and you'll just buy stuff over it. And it'll be either consolidated or offered to you, but it will not be a cable bundle. It'll be like Roku or minimum viable. Which is having struggles, by the way. But the world of bifurcate, right? I mean, I'll give you an example. You know what I think would just kill it is a voice-controlled layer of innovation on top that you pay $300, $500, $800, and it's everything. It's

just literally everything. And I just say, because you know what is getting in the way of my consumption? When I change, I've lived in several different homes, I can never find anything I want. And then, oh, I forgot my password. I would pay a substantial premium for a user interface where I just, using voice control, said, okay, I want to watch, you know, I want to watch Peaky Blinders and whatever it is. And I forget where it plays in my password and everything, or Hulu says you've changed locations too many times. And then the rest, because of income inequality, the rest is just going to be these incredibly cheap ad-stuffed minimum viable product. But it'll be a bad bank. Someone's going to roll up all of these cable channels into a distressed bad bank.

Yeah. All right. Well, we'll see. We'll see. But in this fight, what happens? It reminds me of the writer's strike. It reminds me of the, I don't know. The bottom line is the model just doesn't work.

The writers should not be picketing Disney. They should be picketing a 17-year-old's home who is watching TikTok. That's what Barry Diller said. He said tech also. He goes, Netflix and tech are the enemies. He goes, we've always been in business 100 years together. We've had fights, but we're not the problem. It's them. It's them. Anyway, let's move on to another one. The FTC will likely sue Amazon later this month. The target expected to be Amazon's marketplace, shocker, shocker, where third-party merchants pay a commission on each sale and mark the fourth complaint from the agency targeting Amazon. Previous suits centered around the failure to delete data collected about children illegally spying on ring doorbells

and duping customers into signing up for prime memberships. Oh, Jesus, Louise. It's not the only legal issue Amazon's facing. On Wednesday, the European Commission listed six tech companies as Gatekeepers, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, and ByteDance, which is what we were just talking about, giving them six months to bring their services into compliance. This is this new rules about Gatekeepers, and they have certain things they have to follow. What do you think about this? This is probably the big one, the marketplace for Amazon. I think this is wonderful. And I would argue that Europe has had a striking lack of innovation across almost every dimension

in the last 40 years, except for regulation. And people say, people think regulation, they think, oh, that's ugly or bad. No, you can be innovative around regulation. Innovation can create more competition. And I just want to go meta for a second. I think the- Not meta, meta, meta. Go ahead.

I'm going to go big picture. So I'm going to go headset incel. I don't know. I mean, I want to go big picture. Anyways, it's good to have me back. It is. It's good to have me back. Anyway, so I think the problem, the biggest problem, the ground zero for the problem is

that AL America, the root of polarization or that gives people the anger to then go on social media and then the profit incentives to pit us against one another. I think the blast zone, though, the ground zero is one thing. And that is that a 30-year-old man or woman for the first time in our nation's history is not doing as well as his or her parents were at 30. That is the ultimate compact any society has, is that if you play by the rules, your kids are going to do better than you. And when that breaks down, it creates rage and shame across households between generations, and people start blaming the government and each other and looking for culprits.

And a lot of it comes down to purchasing power and the quality of your life. And if you look at what's happened in the last 40 years, if you look at the price of housing, the price of food, the price of education, they're up between nine and 12-fold. And your salary in the last, I think it's actually the last 60 years, has gone up six-fold. So a young person just doesn't have the same quality of life or purchasing patterns. And people use this bullshit, well, what about Netflix? Or they can go to get an Uber. On the really important stuff, buying a house, getting the certification you need to engage in this economy, the costs have gone up. So, the most basic solution to our biggest problems is really just two sides of the same coin. And that is, how do we increase the earnings power and the income of young people, such that they can have kids, such that they can buy houses? And how do we bring costs down? And so, there's a lot on the, call it the revenue side, right? Vocational programming,

more seats at freshman colleges, right? Helping kids feel better about themselves. They make them more economically viable, right? Give them the skills such that they can compete and capture more revenues. And programs and a fiscal policy that doesn't rob from the poor and transfer it to the elderly. Now, on the other side, in terms of bringing costs down, there's several things we need to do. One, we need massive legislation that you can sue any district that gets in the way of this nimbiest bullshit culture that's made it impossible to build housing, right? We should go after, you know, revoke the tax-free status of universities that have enormous endowments

but don't expand their freshman seats faster than inflation. The other thing we need to do, quite frankly, is have an incredible trust-busting era. Because this is what happens when you go in, when Teddy Roosevelt goes in and breaks up oil, When we go in and break up the telcos, it unleashes massive innovation and costs come down on the consumer. So this is, and I'm going far afield here, but this is part of the ecosystem saying we need to bring down costs. And here's what's happened with Amazon. Amazon is the largest online retailer in the world. This is where young people shop. And 10 years ago, their third-party marketplace, which is now the majority of their revenue,

where they host a retailer and the retailer is responsible for all the costs. Yeah, they get a VIG. They have to pay a VIG. That's right. They pay a VIG. And that VIG 10 years ago, 7 years ago, was 19% of revenues. And no one could compete with that. eBay couldn't compete with it. Lululemon, Target, JCPenney, Se no one could compete with that. eBay couldn't compete with it.

Lululemon, Target, JCPenney, Sears couldn't compete with that. It was a great deal for consumers. And then once everyone got cleared off the decks, including Red Envelope doing Chapter 11, thanks very much, in 2008, once they consolidated it all after their predatory pricing, they engaged in monopoly abuse. And now that percentage VIG has gone from 19% to 34%. So the monopoly that is Amazon, they've increased the tax on consumers,

online consumers, third-party retailers by 60%. Yeah, it's a good business. VIGs are good business. You know, years ago, I don't know if you remember, a micro-executive, I think it was Nathan Mierval, talked about a VIG, and everyone lost their minds. Remember, they were just like, they can't take a VIG, they can't take a VIG. This is what these companies do, every one of them. You know, whether you're talking, no matter who you're talking about, there is that price, and especially when there's no other choices. Now, Amazon would argue there's lots of other retail choices. People can do retail elsewhere.

That's going to be their biggest argument. Or we're not the biggest retailer. We're a small part of the giant ecosystem of retail, and they include offline. But online, they aren't. But, you know, if you want to distinguish them. They're 50 cents on the dollar. Yeah, exactly. But they tend to say, oh, but in the larger scheme of things, we're only 20%, whatever the number is. What's interesting is whether this government or any government can hold them to account, right? If Lena Kahn, you know, she's had ups and downs. John Cantor, same thing.

You know, John has done better in some areas, but it's going to be a very difficult thing. And they are going to attack her as being anti-Amazon. Obviously, she was made famous by her essay about this and that she's got, and it was so interesting. Someone from Amazon was Obviously, she was made famous by her essay about this. And it was so interesting. Someone from Amazon was like, well, she's got an ax to grind. I'm like, yes, she said it. Yeah, it's called knowledge. That's her ax. It's not an ax. She's grinding an ax because she believes it. It's not a personal thing.

This is what her specialty is, is you and how much power you have. I will be interested to see if our government has the wherewithal to, one, be able to fund this stuff, two, be able to keep it up and face down the onslaught of lobbying from these companies, because they are, they, you know, they're loaded for bear in that regard. And even though, you know, the Justice Department's coming after Google, Apple is still to beat TBD, I would hope they would voluntarily lower their VIG, because I think that's the only way for them to get out of this. It'll be interesting to see. And I don't know if our government can. The European Commission certainly does it, but it's not. They're a drop in the bucket, even if it's, you know, signaling that they're doing the right thing. Our government's the one that has to really move here. And it's been very unsuccessful. I actually spoke to Lena Kahn a couple weeks ago and mostly just listened. And I think I find she's very measured and thoughtful. And I think anyways, I think she's in the right seat.

But the way I think they need to message around it to get more politicians and voters on their side is an economic argument. Because I think what they've done, this kind of Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, big is bad and we hate billionaires, I don't think that resonates with people. I think what resonates with people is that as a capitalist society, what you want is tax cuts. And people love tax cuts. And the way I would frame this is the following. The greatest tax cut in the history of corporate America would be to break these guys up. If you don't think corporations will all of a sudden become more profitable when they have several

folks competing for their marketing dollars, because this is the genius of Google. Google does not provide any differentiation. Catalogs provide a differentiation for Williams-Sonoma. Broadcast commercials provide a differentiation for Nike because they have the skills to do them, catalogs and commercials, better than anyone. And they maintain competitive differentiation. The genius of Google is that everybody has to use it, but no one can ever establish competitive advantage. So it goes from a point of differentiation to a tax.

And if you had three search engines bidding for your marketing, your digital marketing dollar, you can bet this tax that's levied on everyone called search, which is now $150 billion industry, it would be a $50 or $60 billion per annum tax cut. Well, now they will argue that Amazon search, Google search, there's lots of alternatives. Of course, it's all the big players. And they should all be broken up. Yeah, yeah. One of the things that's, I'm going to quote Diller again, he was talking about Apple's VIG that they get for the App Store. And he said, why are they different than a credit card company that charges two to 3%? Like, why do they have to charge that much percent? Yeah. And

he's like, they're just like credit card companies that help you. And I was like, well, the banks are part of the safety of that. And he goes, yeah, they do safety. I was like, they are arguing they do safety, they do vetting. And he goes, what do you think credit card companies do? There's no competition. What was really interesting, and because he did know Jobs also, he's like, he made that number up. Like, he just made it up off the top of his head. It wasn't like this. He just decided it. And I think he's 100% correct. And I think once there's arguments like that and people start to see that the VIG is happening, I just wonder when the moment is it actually happens, where they actually lose in some fashion. Because they don't lose.

They don't lose. I've been saying it's coming, but I've been in some fashion, because they don't lose. They don't lose. I've been saying it's coming, but I've been saying that for a decade. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, not only prices come down, but also one of the many negative actionalities of competition are things you don't see. And that is a lot of companies you don't miss because they could never get out of the crib because it kills innovation. Spotify had hands down the most innovative platform around music in my view. I think

it's remarkable what they've done, that they've taken an entire medium and distilled it down to a searchable single app, single icon in your phone. We played the theme to Superman, which I think is very appropriate at the beginning of the show. Do you know how easy it was versus trying to find Peaky Blinders, which takes me about 30 minutes, it calls to my 13-year-old, and then I give up. I found the theme to Superman from John Williams in about two seconds. And here's the thing, its stock is flat the last five or seven years. Well, it's also made some real stupid errors around podcasting, etc. Okay, it's spent too much, but I mean, come on. When Spotify has to pay a 30% VIG

to the monopoly around the App Store, they just can't compete with Apple Music, which in my view is an inferior product and is now, for the last two years, has been growing faster than what I think is the superior original gangster, and that is Spotify. And that is, if Spotify can't compete,

how on earth can any of these new companies compete? And in fact, it's why they wandered into podcasts, because they need something else, right? Well, they tried to go house of cards. They tried to go vertical. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, which is interesting. Anyway, we'll see what happens. One would hope. We keep thinking this should happen, and lots of people do.

We'll see if it does. Okay, let's get to our first big story. The WGA strike has been going on for nearly 130 days. SAG-AFTRA, which is the actors, a little over 50 days. What do you think, Scott? You've been away sort of this whole time, and when you left, it was happening. When you came back, it's happening. One estimate, the impact on the Hollywood strikes on California's economy is almost $5 billion. Warner Brothers Discovery announced this week that earnings likely take actually a hit, even though they're saving money and they're doing better in that way, though Barbie has generated $1.4 billion in global box

office receipts for what it's worth. Talk about what's happening here. Again, we talked earlier about what Dillard told me. He feels like if things continue, it's worth. Talk about what's happening here. Again, we talked earlier about what Dillard told me. He feels like if things continue, it's going to collapse the industry even further than it was collapsing. I don't know if it's the air traffic controller strike. They're the coal miners. I think this is going to break the backs of these unions. I think that they're going to have to come up with some sort of accommodation. They're going to pretend there's a victory here. They'll accept a fraction of what they've asked for because it's the same coin, but just a different side of the same coin, what's going on with

Charter and Disney. And also, to a certain extent, I don't think they have the kind of public support they were hoping for. It makes for great TikToks to have an outraged Bryan Cranston saying mean things about Bob Iger. But I personally don't under, I think they've overestimated just how precious they are. That 90% of America has to deal with the supply demand economics of getting, you know, less money than they need. And the reality is there are too many studio execs. There are too many writers. There are too many actors for an industry that is not going to be able to pass on fees. Look at your cable bill that are greater than inflation. The consumer has had a gag reflex. They're like, you know what? I am not paying 80 bucks for marginal cable television. Especially younger ones. And what's interesting, when you look at the share prices this summer,

Apple and Amazon are doing better than Paramount and Warner Brothers and Disney. Disney's down. I want to play a clip from that interview with Diller where he mentioned a strategy for the studios. I'd love your reaction. Well, I think one fundamental thing, they should certainly get out of the room

with their deepest, fiercest, and almost conclusive enemy, Netflix, and probably with Apple and Amazon. I agree. Because they're in, you know, Netflix is in one business, and they are the rulers of the business they're in. The other two, Apple and Amazon Prime, are completely different businesses that have no business model relative to production of movies and television. It's just something they do to support their Prime or something they do to support their walled system in Apple. strike, what the WGA and SAG have done is they have decided to transfer tens of billions of dollars in market capitalization from the broadcast guys, from the Disneys, the Time Warners, the Viacoms, to Netflix, Amazon, and Apple. And he's right. If I were Netflix,

I'd be in the room nodding my head and acting very concerned. And their model and their content queue is so deep that despite the strike and the actors think, oh, consumers are just going to freak out when you can't see season eight of The Witcher. Guess what? Netflix has grown their subscriptions during the strike and their cash pile has grown so fast because what essentially the unions have done is created a multilateral pause on spending that they just announced an additional stock buyback. So, first off, he's absolutely right. I mean, Viacom, Disney, and Time Warner are not on the same side as Netflix. The strategy to get more money here, I mean, a decent strategy for making money is to find the biggest pile of money and stand as close to it as possible. The biggest pile of money is in tech.

And tech is crawling their data to inform their AI models. it was going to integrate AI into its Office Suite platform, the market capitalization of Microsoft went up $175 billion, which is more than the value of every media company except for Disney. So they're fighting the wrong enemy. They should be saying, look, they should be hiring the most aggressive lawyers, triple their lobbying budget and say, okay, Apple, okay, Amazon, okay, Meta, okay, Microsoft, we have found using our own AI that your AI is crawling the shit out of our IP. He did talk a lot about that. He's doing lawsuits. He's the one leading all that. That's who they got to go after because they're trying, I don't know what the term is, they're trying to get child support from, you know, a woman who's been fired. They just don't have the money. Right. Should they negotiate diff separately with the tech companies versus these,

should these companies go around and say, we're just going to negotiate ourselves? Because they have all different interests, you know, I don't know. See, they've chased the streaming thing so far. They're sort of and they have to go that way. They can't turn around in their quest to keep users. But the economics collapsed the previous the bridge before they got across it, really. Yeah, I think this is I mean, this really is a moment. They're not only going to get a deal they don't want, but they're weakening the industry they're dependent upon to extract more money from. It's like, okay, I need you to pay me more, but I'm going to kick you so hard on the balls, you're not going to be able to survive.

And by the way, the company that doesn't need unions because it's got more and more production coming outside of the U.S., I mean, this is just, I just can't get over what a gift this is to Netflix, Apple, and Amazon. You know, it's interesting because I did talk to a lot of writers. They feel like they have solidarity. I keep saying you're fighting the wrong people. You know, you're fighting. Who feels they have solidarity?

The writers. They feel like one of the things they are making, the new point they're making is we're without work a lot of the time. So we're used to not working, which I was like, is that really a good thing? Is that, you know, I was like, wow, what an industry where you're used to not working or you're out of work for, you know, for months and months of the year. I think you are going to see so many U-Hauls leaving and heading back to Kansas because I was really moved. The Washington Post had this article on this young man who, I think he was a baseball player, and he'd finally started, he just, you know, great story. I really want to be an actor.

And he got in a car and moved out with his dog to LA. And it was a story showing that now he's washing windows and there's nothing wrong with that kind of work and just trying to get by. And he was literally on the cusp. He was starting to get good paying roles. And I think you're just going to see tens of thousands of people leave LA because the industry is about to take a structural step down. And the innovation, the innovation around content, quite frankly, isn't going to be more content and more Emmys and more successions and more euphoria. It's going to be minimum viable content at a fraction of the cost built from the ground up using AI. Yeah, we'll talk about that AI

because that's another, obviously, area, how it's used. Some people are talking about residuals from AI training data should be made mandatory. Obviously, Diller talked a lot about copyright and intellectual property laws currently in place.

He would like more from Congress, but he said, we can use the ones we have and sue. He goes, I'm not waiting for Congress. I'm just going to use what we've got. And then hopefully Congress will update them, update these copyright laws, which they haven't done in forever. And a few weeks ago, a federal judge rejected an attempt to copyright a piece of art generated by AI. The decision, Judge Beryl Howell wrote, human authorship is a bedrock of requirement of copyright, but acknowledged that we are approaching new frontiers. I think the Drake's, the fake Drake song is trying to get a Grammy. So what do they do in that regard? Like, how do they, I think, I think Dylan's probably right, you just sue them. You just sue them.

You just sue them until Congress acts and maybe it will get them going in some, but waiting around for laws or updates. They should have done what we should have done at the New York Times 15 years ago. And that is shut off Google and say, unless you're going to pay to crawl our content, we're not going to let you crawl it. And we should have bound together with Condé Nast and Pearson and News Corp. And let me, you know, as is- You know, the New York Times pulled out of his coalition and he goes, because they think they're going to make some deal that they're not going to get. Well, that was our problem was

arrogance. We always thought we were singular and that, oh, and the publisher and the senior executives of New York Times just got so excited to have drinks with Steve Jobs as he literally pulled up a dump truck and took billions of dollars from us. But we excited to have drinks with Steve Jobs as he literally pulled up a dump truck and took billions of dollars from us. But we got to have drinks with Steve Jobs. Yeah, he's a good person to have a drink with, but go ahead. But let me just, as is a proxy for me being back here, let's turn this back to me. I'll give you an example.

So in the Prof G pod, we're experimenting using AI. I've always thought, okay, I'm interested in having a Spanish-language version of our market show. I'm interested in Latin America, and I want to have a Spanish-language version. We talked to interpreters about 24 months ago, and it was going to cost us about $2,000 to $3,000 a show to put out something reasonable in Spanish. This is an interpreter. Yeah, not my voice, an actor, an actor who could get the nuance using AI. And we keep trying this and it's almost there. We now can launch a Spanish version of Prop G and the dick jokes, the humor, the sarcasm, the emotion all come through, and we have native Spanish speakers listening to

this, nearly perfect. And if it works, guess what I'm going to do? I'm going to launch it in Portuguese, Japanese. Now, what does that mean? It means that there's probably over the short term, a lot of money is going to flow to AI technology because this is a different type of AI. There's a lot of money there. But the content producer or the interpreter or the voiceover actor in Korea and in Portugal is going to lose money. And so AI is just going to start creating minimum viable products

for a fraction of the costs. And it's going to wreak havoc on the creative community. So let me ask you, what did you think about this? You know, this is something Dillard said. He goes, I get why they're doing it. I get why they're doing it. But we have to know that they're not going to give us anything, that we've been through this battle with these people before.

They just want to take. And that's what they do. And we should just be honest about it and not be angry at them. That's what they do. How do you feel about de-employing people? My attitude is that creative destruction is a key component of capitalism. I think everyone has an obligation. I mean, you're talking about the morality here.

I feel absolutely no guilt innovating, trying to make more money. And I want to put my competitors out of business, Kara. Should we do a Spanish version? I want us to be bigger than Joe Rogan. And I want to make more money than Joe Rogan. And I think that capitalist self-interest at the center of it is key. But I think where the morality comes in and how I have changed substantially is I used to see everyone I worked with as a cost center. And that is when someone got off the elevator at one of my companies,

I knew exactly how much money they made and I knew how much value they added. And there were two bubbles. And if one bubble, the compensation got well ahead of how much I was paying them or how much value they were adding, I fired them. And what I have decided to do as I've gotten older is I've said, okay, a signal of victory and an investment in the company is to compensate people really well. And that's where I like to think that I've evolved. And that is, if you put money in your employees' pockets, especially young people, you're investing in the economy, you're investing in society, you're investing in relationships, you're investing in child growth and population growth. And you have to make sure your company is economically viable because no pay cut is worse than when the company goes out of business.

But I used to see how I have tried to evolve from a standpoint is to realize that paying people really well is a great investment and good for the economy. But in terms of our competitors, I want to fucking kill all of them. I want them to go out of business. I want to beat the shit out of them. That was a little aggressive. This is a good continuing thing. I think as this goes on, I would agree with you and Dilla and others, this is not good. And he was like, we have to separate from these tech people and maybe create a new system that we're good at. And he was making the point, there's a distribution, TV's already everywhere, why did we run away from it so quickly? And I get consumer changes and habits and things like that.

He goes, but there's got to be a way we can do this without chasing things that we're never going to be able to catch, which I thought was a very, very salient point, but they're not listening to him. Neither side is. And it was sort of super interesting. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll speak with a friend of Pivot, the Anti-Depamation League's National Director, Jonathan Greenblatt. Affirmation League's National Director, Jonathan Greenblatt. Fox Creative. This is advertiser content from Zelle.

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Knowing what to do, when to do it, and who to hire. Start caring for your home with confidence. Download Thumbtack today. Scott, we're back. Let's bring in our friend of Pivot. While many of you out there were kicking back and enjoying the Labor Day weekend, Elon Musk was tweeting about anti-Semitism and the Anti-Defamation League. In a series of tweets, Elon said he was pro-free speech but against anti-Semitism. Then he posted about a 60% drop in advertising revenue, blaming pressure on advertisers by the ADL. His next move to threaten a defamation suit against the Anti-Defamation League.

It's unclear at this time whether legal action has been taken. Joining us now to discuss this all is the CEO and National Director of the Anti-Defamation League, who's been on the show before, Jonathan Greenblatt. Hi, Jonathan. How are you doing? It's good to see you and always nice to be on the show. So how are you doing? I know you can't get into the specifics of legal activity or what you've called the threat of a frivolous lawsuit, which billionaires tend to like to do. But give us your thoughts on what's overall thoughts on what's happening here. Well, look, I think we need to just on what's overall thoughts on what's happening here. Well, look, I think we need to just understand the context as we consider what this action means. I mean, we're living in a moment right now

where antisemitism has reached literally record levels since ADL started tracking antisemitic acts of harassment, vandalism, and violence 40-some-odd years ago. Literally, the number has reached a level we've never seen. It's actually about 500% greater today than it was just a decade back. And over the last month, we've seen a wave of swatting attacks against synagogues, bomb threats against Jewish institutions, propaganda distributions all over the country. We literally had neo-Nazis marching out in the open last weekend in Florida in a scene that was reminiscent of Charlottesville. So in all of this, this hashtag that was launched

on Twitter last week, ban the ADL, that was literally created by white supremacists, okay? When I see the management of Twitter engaging with it, elevating it, amplifying it, like, I'm not just disturbed and disappointed. It's dangerous for the Jewish community. That's what I'm really focused on. You met with its ex-CEO, Linda Iaccarino, we can call her Twitter, last week, tweeting afterwards you'd had a frank and productive conversation. What can you tell us about the meeting? Because here you have meeting with her. I don't know what's happened since she got there, but she can be a reasonable person. And then he keeps tweeting white supremacists. He keeps tweeting,

basically blaming the Jews. That's what most people think. Yeah. I mean, they think that for a reason, because that's what's happening online right now. But if you step back to last week, Linda and I finally connected. It was a Zoom meeting like this. It was the first time we've met, but we have a number of mutual friends in common. She has a very good reputation, as you're sort of alluding to. And it was a positive, constructive discussion. I mean, to be clear, I am not going to stop clawing out anti-Semitism. I will ferociously fight this until my last breath. But like a better, healthier, safer Twitter, that's good for the Jewish community.

That's good for their advertisers, good for the world. And she seems to share that sentiment. So we talked about that. And was she angry about your studies? Because that's what they're thinking of suing you over. We did not talk about any of those. She did not have an issue or a beef with you all. She did not blame you for advertising fall.

Linda did not blame us for advertising fall off. The issue of our studies did not come up in the conversation. And these are studies. Explain. You've done studies showing. Yeah. So let me, as you know, and as Scott knows, none of these social media companies are great on any of this stuff.

Let's be clear about that, right? And Twitter was really bad before, let alone now. So let's also be clear about that. However, what we do at ADL is we work with the data that we have, and we do these fact-based analyses. Now, Elon and others may say, well, you don't have all the data. Well, then share it with us. I'd like nothing more than transparency so we fully understand the numerator and the denominator. But what we've seen over the past,

not just nine months, really nine years, has been white supremacists, QAnon, you know, enthusiasts, conspiracy theorists running amok. And he's let them back on. He's brought them back on. A number of people are back on the platform who had been removed for violations of the terms of service. They continue to say things, post things, publish things that are not like questionable. They are absolutely unambiguously hostile, and they're feeding the fire of this environment where, again, Jews and other minorities, not just Jews, but the Jewish community feels a degree of vulnerability.

And, you know, I am flying out tomorrow or today to attend the funerals tomorrow in Jacksonville of the people who were killed, you know, in that hate crime that happened last weekend. I mean, the fact of the matter is this radicalizing people online has real world implications. And normalizing anti-Semitism and, you know, weaponizing hate is bad for the world. And when it's the leader of the company doing it, it's problematic. Scott? Good to see you, Jonathan. Hi, Scott.

So I think a more difficult problem, and I think you guys do your best to establish the nuance and thread the needle here, is the line between free speech and when something becomes hate speech, right? Right. When is it discourse that's uncomfortable, but it's true discourse, and then when it turns into hate? What is, in my opinion, less opaque is that the go-to, the playbook in the emergence of Nazi Germany was, I know, let's blame the Jews. I mean, that's what it came down to. Let's blame the Jews for society's problems. And what we have here is the wealthiest man in the world, arguably the most powerful man in the world, who is blaming the Jews, full stop. It strikes me as very strategic that he chose your organization to blame for their decline in revenue. But isn't this how it all starts?

Generally speaking, the most powerful, wealthiest American should not start with blaming the Jews? Short answer is yes. The longer answer is like demagoguery isn't anything new. Blaming the Jews is as old as the hills. Last November, after the trusted safety team was fired, after a bunch of these extremists were replatformed, ADL was one of about 60 organizations, this coalition that called for a pause in advertising until these issues were kind of

clarified and cleaned up. But the only group that Elon is talking about right now is the Jewish one. Now, look, I have spoke to Elon Musk, you know, like I didn't think he was an anti-Semite and I still, you know, I will take him at his word. The problem is when he elevates, when he engages with, when he casts blame, like it creates the conditions in which anti-Semitism is raging right now on the platform. What does he say to you? What is he, when you spoke to him? Well, I haven't spoken to him in the last week, but look, I think he understands, Elon appreciates that dialing back extremism and hate is better for the world. And he wants to do that. He has many Jewish friends, as he's told me. Oh, that's an old one.

Well, I know. We've heard some of my best friends are, you know, fill in the blank. Jonathan, I just want to press pause there. I think you're being generous and incorrect. I see no evidence he wants to dial it back. I see a ton of evidence he wants to dial it up to enrage. Well, that was what he told me before.

Now, flash forward to today, Scott, what I'm grappling with, struggling with, is again, this is a person who I've engaged with who's told me that, and yet right now, we see anti-Semites and extremists, yes, being riled up, and they feel emboldened. And Scott, we know, and Kara, we know they feel emboldened because at ABL, we follow them, and this is what they're saying. We feel emboldened. There's a Christian nationalist who runs Gab, and I think we've talked about him, Kara. His name is Andrew Torba. He's a real piece of work. He's a raging anti-Semite. And he has basically said,

we, the white supremacists, have the richest man in the world on our side. We're winning. And that sentiment is out there. And so let me be crystal clear about this. We're two weeks away from the Jewish holidays of Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, et cetera. Jews will all be convening in synagogue. And the reason why my community, I've heard from people all over the country, is so, by the way, all over the world in the past week, they were already on edge. And this has just pushed people to the point of no return. Two things. Earlier this summer, Twitter sued the Center for Countering Digital Hate.

I know a nonprofit group that criticized the company's handling of hate speech. I know a lot of my academic friends will not talk to me publicly now when they were very willing to do so. Two things. One, does it chill you to this threat of a lawsuit? Is there a lawsuit? And then secondly, have you actually spoken to this threat of a lawsuit? Is there a lawsuit? And then secondly, have you actually spoken with any Twitter slash X advertisers to stop? They're blaming you for doing that.

He's, did you do, I actually don't care if you did, but did you? Well, look, to the question of has ADL spoken to advertisers, run some campaign? The answer is unequivocal no. That's why this is a frivolous claim. Like we literally haven't called them an anti-Semite. We haven't called Twitter anti-Semitic. We're not running some active campaign of any sort. So like on the facts, Elon and these other people are flat out wrong.

Well, John, watch his hands, not the mouth. That's what I was saying. Well, I hear that, but these claims that he's making are just not true. But to your other question, like, am I deterred? Am I intimidated? Not for a second. I mean, look, I would prefer to deescalate here because I think the world would be better off if ABL wasn't fighting a $22 billion lawsuit. The whole idea that is so preposterous. Is it happening? Has it been filed? I don't know.

I mean, I only know, like you, what Elon is tweeting. Well, he was going to do a cage match with Mark Zuckerberg and he did have the Coliseum. But I will say, I will say, like if Elon wanted to have a public conversation slash debate about this, I would say, bring it on. Because I am not deterred. I am not daunted for a second. And I'm not going to relent in calling out anti-Semitism, whether it's on Twitter X, or it's on, you know, Meta's products, or it's in the political arena.

Like, I could care less. That my job, the only, my job description is protect the Jewish people. And that's what I'm trying to do. So have you talked to Linda this week post that? We have not had a verbal conversation. And her, what does your text conversation say? I reached out afterward. I was so bewildered by last weekend's lunacy.

I reached out and was like, look, I probably wouldn't characterize it like that. But I basically said, I don't know what just happened, but I thought we were going to try to work together to make Twitter, I think, a better Twitter, a healthier Twitter system, better for the world. And, you know, we'll see where it goes. You've dealt with anti-Semitism and anti-Semites. When you try and diagnose this, do you have any sort of ability when you see a company behaving this way? Is it generally they're trying to embolden and cement relationship with a part of their customer base that likes this provocative or likes this type of content? Is it someone who themselves has suffered trauma and is acting out

in hateful ways? When you come across anti-Semitism in corporations and with individuals, are you able to see patterns around? I mean, just, I can't figure this one out. It's bad for business. It's bad for him. It's bad for the country. There's just, I don't see any, I see very little upside here other than inflaming a small group of people that don't have a hell of a lot of money or influence, or maybe they do. Like what. Do your best. What's going on here? Well, I think so. I can talk to you about patterns, Scott. So when I see anti-Semitism and corporations get caught up in this, brands, sometimes, number one, it's a kind of negligence, right? They don't realize they have a problem. They're not paying close enough attention.

Exhibit A, Adidas, right, where they were having a CEO transition. They're off in Germany. They really did not appreciate the lunacy of Kanye West's derangement. So you have that. Well, let me just press pause there because I would argue that Adidas actually handled that. I would argue that they responded swiftly and correctly. Well, I would definitely say not swiftly enough because I was talking to the chairman of the board and said, if you don't deal with this, we're going to have some things to do publicly. Yep. But in the end, they did, Scott, entirely.

And now we have, like, by the way, I don't believe, as I've said publicly to you, Kara, like, I don't believe in cancel culture. I believe in cancel culture. So with Adidas, we called them out when they were slow, and then we embraced them when they moved quickly. And we're finding ways to work together. Like, that's better for the world. So number one, sometimes the companies don't get it. Secondly, sometimes there are weird ideologies at work. Like Gab is a good example of some twisted, demented platform.

And I'm hard-pressed to think of another one of those. There aren't too many. But the real issue, Scott, and Cara, the real issue is that sometimes these people get caught up in the moment. And that's what I think is happening here with Elon. He gets caught up in a lot of moments, Sean. That may be the case. With trans people, with women. Look, it's hard for me to make sense of all of it. And I've watched him be very successful in other fields. But this

Elon and this moment is one where, like, I'll give you a counterfactual. Imagine if after the meeting with Linda, when these white supremacists started getting riled up, Elon had tweeted out and said, you know what? I'm glad Jonathan and Linda are meeting. We're going to work to keep Twitter or X, sorry, a zone where everyone could express their opinions, but we don't have to have hate on this platform. Like that would have been catnip to advertisers. He would have been lauded in the press. I mean, what if finding ways to work together constructively? Like, I think that works to everyone's benefit. So Scott, at the end of the day, I can't really give you a crisp answer to your question because I don't understand what Elon thinks he has to gain from this. And I know the

accusations he's making against us just aren't true. Well, it doesn't stop him. Watch the hands, Jonathan, not the mouth. Yeah. I mean, sometimes, let me be candid, running a big company like Tesla or SpaceX is complicated and hard. Running five or six at the same time, God bless him. But this is a good example where I think we would all be well-served if he could figure out how to dial it down, how to pull back, how to hit the pause button himself, and work with an organization like mine.

At the end of the day, that's all we want. Sure, John. Sure. Don't agree to a day, that's all we want. Sure, John. Sure. Don't agree to a cage match. Good luck with that. You can't do this work if you're not hopeful and optimistic. I got to tell you that. Well, it's your fault that the value of the company

has declined by half, obviously. You know, it's ridiculous. It's so ridiculous. Anyway, Jonathan, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. People can go to the ADL website to read your full statement. And thank you so much for joining us. Thanks, Jonathan. Thanks, Kara. Thanks, Scott.

All right, Scott, we're going to have a quick break in a second. But yes, you have a question. Well, you know him better than Jonathan and much better than I do. I like to think that when I see a corporate decision, I can reverse engineer it to something like what's going on or what they're thinking. I feel like I relate to these people. I can't for the life of me figure out what the fuck is going on here. I think he needs to, these people, not just Elon, to fast to find blame elsewhere. It couldn't possibly be how aggressive he's been with advertisers, how sloppy he's been. He's very good at his other companies and not perfect by any stretch, but good at what he does executionally in hiring people. And in this case, he gets all jazzed up in the middle of the night. You can look at the timestamps on these

things. Something's happening to him at 4 a.m. And I'm eager to read Walter Isaacs' book that comes out next week. I'm interviewing Walter about it, and I've interviewed Walter before about what he was doing. You know, I don't know what happens at 4am that causes him to do these things or whatever time or he's in some state or someone. He's very similar to Trump in the way that the last person who talked to him is what he reflects, I guess, sometimes. That seems to be coming to play. I just don't know why somebody's not saying, what is wrong with you? Like, including not just his Jewish friends, but, you know, they all tread around him so carefully because they want to make money from him. I mean, he's in the worst position of all time is who can he actually trust?

Because everybody's got their hand out, whether he can see it or not. And he's got to question every single person, every friend who say they're his friend, but they definitely don't want to be let out of the kingdom. So. You know, I think we're letting off too easy here as Linda. I agree. I think, Linda, I think you're supposed to be a fiduciary as a CEO for stakeholders. And the nation is a big stakeholder. Jews are a stakeholder. Investors are a stakeholder. Society is a stakeholder. And for the CEO of a company, a media company, when any individual, founder, whoever, says this, for her not to say, these comments were just unacceptable. And I told him on this, they are unacceptable. That's all she needs to say. You know what she tweeted about sports on the platform. And everyone would rally around her. And if she got fired, she'd get her full

payment. And instead, she's, quite frankly, she's being really cowardly around this. I would agree. She's coming to the Code Conference. Julia Borstein is going to interview her. So we'll see. I think she's just in the camp. I'm sorry. I am so disappointed in her in so many ways. in the camp. I'm sorry. I am so disappointed in her in so many ways. I think she probably is like, well, woke culture, blah, blah, blah, blah, that kind of stuff, I'm guessing. She's somewhat of a conservative. But Linda, this is just basic human decency. It's not the fault of ADL that your advertising sucks. It always sucked. And now it sucks further because your leader is really a problem. You know, I don't know. I agree with you.

Anyway, we'll see. We'll see where it goes. All right. One more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails. As a Fizz member, you can look forward to free data, big savings on plans,

and having your unused data roll over to the following month. Every month. At Fizz, you always get more for your money. Terms and conditions for our different programs and policies apply. Details at Fizz.ca. Okay, Scott, let's hear some wins and fails. I'm going to give you a wide berth here since you haven't been talking for a while. Go for it.

Can I start, though? Yeah, of course you can. That berth just got more narrow. No, no. Actually, you know what? Go first. Go first. Just like a woman. Here, I'm giving you a wide berth, but I'm going first. Go first. No, I'm not going to go first. It's like my relationship with my wife is a series of illusions that I have any input into a decision. Your wife, you should listen to your wife. She's so much better than you, but go ahead. I'll agree with you there. Anyways, yes. Thank you very much. I'll start with my fail. You know, when you're traveling, I remember when I first got a Eurail pass out of college in the backpack, and I traveled around Europe with my friend Lee Lotus, who, by the way, visited me and him and his husband, Tim, who's the godfather of my child.

being him and his husband, Tim, who's the godfather of my child. We've been friends for 40 years, 42 years. Anyways, an amazing experience. But I remember the first thing, one of the first things you learn is there were all these travel advisories that as a U.S. citizen, stay away from, don't go to North Korea, don't go to certain nations in Africa, don't go to Iran. And immediately, brands are so important geopolitically because the majority of, you know, only like 30% of Americans have passports or something like that. So your impression, your geopolitics, the products you buy, your immigration policies, who you decide to go to war with, not go to war with, are based on the brand perception of that country. And immediately when you see travel advisories that Americans aren't safe there, you think this is just a backward primitive country and I don't want to buy their products. I don't want to hire their people. It's about the worst thing that can happen from a brand standpoint to your country.

And now it's us. Canada has just issued a travel advisory to their LGBTQ citizens that they are unsafe in America. And they are. That's us. And it's especially acute in my state, where they've even called out my state of Florida. And let me just backward integrate this into a brand strategy story. I think Governor DeSantis had a real shot to be a viable contender. And people are saying, well, he's awkward.

You know, there's a lot of reasons why. But I think the primary reason is a brand issue. And that is, if you look at the vision, you have to have one message. And consumers are super busy, so you got to have kind of one consistent message. George Bush, Herbert Walker Bush wanted to be the education president. W talked about conservative or compassionate conservatism. Obama, keep hope alive. JFK, we're going to put a man on the moon, Lyndon Johnson, we're going to end poverty. These are big, wonderful visions. Reagan,

it's morning in America. Governor DeSantis' vision when he's asked why he's running for president, he has said pretty much verbatim, we want to go into the wokest cities in America and do what we did in Florida, and that is rid them of this woke ideology. So imagine a Democratic candidate saying, my vision for America is to go into the most conservative parts of the country and rid them of these conservative ideology. And Republicans themselves have said, boss, that's not what we need right now. We're divided. You're supposed to be the uniter in chief. And you're basically saying that you want to go divide us further. And this is just another... Well, come on, Scott. He's a

petty little shit. But go ahead. Go ahead. He's petty. Like, he wouldn't meet Biden at the storm. And Rick Scott, who's no winner in that, did. Like, it's ridiculous. But go ahead. Well, I mean, what's interesting is actually Governor DeSantis and his wife met on an online dating site. It's called OKKK Cupid. That's good. That's good. Anyways.

And now Jonathan Greenblatt. But look, this message, this brand message, this vision for America is you want to go into the 50% of American towns and cities and try and rid them of their ideology and be like, okay, good luck with that. And that's what America needs right now. We need more division. You need to further tear us apart. And the notion that we are now that country, that a wonderful country. I mean, who doesn't like Canada? That's the other thing I remember about backpacking. Do you know there were Americans that put Canadian leafs, Canadian leaf patches on their backpacks because they thought they would be less, that people would be more friendly towards them because they're from Canada.

And Canada, which is not a reactionary, not an extremist place, a wonderful neighbor, basically a friendlier, nicer version of America, has decided in an attempt to protect our citizenry, we have to warn them about the dangers they face in America. We're now that nation. We are indeed. Anyways, that's my fail. All right. You go first before I do my win.

I'll say I just spent some time in San Francisco and and there's a new Ikea downtown, Ikea, the store. They've opened these new concept stores that are in cities, and they're trying it out in San Francisco. Market Street is suffering in San Francisco. It's really interesting. What's happened is a lot of the neighborhoods of San Francisco are thriving, a lot of new stores. But certain areas like downtown and Soma and obviously the financial district are suffering because trends that are happening all over the country around drugs, homelessness, and also people not going back to the office. And so they opened this amazing IKEA downtown right in the center of it where there was a lot

of Nordstrom just closed. There's issues around people shoplifting, again, a problem that's across the country, but most initially in San Francisco, these gangs of people that come steal things. I have to say, and they're handling it really well the way people go in. They're sort of designing it for maximum safety and everything else like that. Really nice to see them trying something out. It was packed and full of people, which was great. You know, Ikeas usually are.

And I thought that was really, you know, there's thinking of other ideas in San Francisco to deal with all these empty spaces. One is pickleball courts in a mall. That's a thing. There's something called Pickle Mall. That's a big trend to bring people downtown. They're thinking of a soccer stadium.

I'm really liking some of these. And there's a really, there's going to be an interesting election there. Daniel Lurie might run this guy against London Breed. I just was, I was struck by a lot of the interesting ideas around not just San Francisco, but cities around the country trying to deal with this deficit situation in downtowns, especially. Even as neighborhoods thrive, because people are staying home, right? That's, which is an interesting, it's a really interesting situation that's happening. But I really was very heartened to see that. That's my win. And my fail is the Alabama, I think it's Attorney General, is saying he's going to

criminalize people leaving the state and chase people who help people leave the state for abortions. It's just, it's heinous what they're trying to do in terms of, if they want to do states' rights, that's where they are now. Now they're trying to extend into other states by criminalizing things. Meanwhile, Mexico decriminalized abortion and is about to have its first female president. Half of the Congress there is female. The cabinet is gender balanced. And now two women have won the primaries of the leading political. Again, another neighbor who's doing more. I mean, there's lots of problems in Mexico, but really kind of heartening that they're moving forward.

Because I don't know if you know this, but you couldn't vote. Women couldn't vote in Mexico until 1953, which was amazing. Anyway, go ahead. So for me, going into IKEA is like going into my son's room. I come out with 10 plates, three cups, and a pair of socks. No retail humor. They're a really good retailer, but go ahead. Yeah. I don't think I've been into Ikea in 30 years.

I've had a couch, the same couch for 20 years, and Louis is going to use it for his apartment in New York when he comes back from Argentina. Anyway, go ahead. That's a great story. Yeah. Anyway. I like it. Okay. So my win, and I promise not to cry. I lost two friends. I lost two friends in August. My friend Scott Sabah died at the age of 54, survived by his parents' leukemia, just kept getting worse, totally unexpected. And then my college roommate, there's this picture of eight of us in the fraternity who all lived together our freshman and sophomore years. Craig Marcus, this wonderful young man who was unusual in the fraternity in that he was the artist. And he went to the California School of Art and Design, I think,

and he got out his career, he got off to a faster start than any of us. And by the time he was in his early 30s, he was creative director of fairly well-known agencies back here in New York. Two sons, one is about to get his wings in the Navy, the other works at The Athletic for The New York Times. And Craig was diagnosed, again, survived by his parents by this rare nerve disorder and passed away. And my win is that Craig was not married, did not own a home, and had two sons. And quite frankly, just had a lot of this unexpected death, had a lot of, you know, loose ends, just the logistics around it. And three friends of mine, three guys in that photo, David Kingsdale, Jeff Browdy, and David, Jeff, and Gary Leshgold, twice when Craig was in the hospital, got on the plane immediately back to New York. These are guys who live in LA who have very busy jobs, big families. And it was

just immediate. They were on planes. And then when Craig passed two weeks ago, they came out for the entire week and did things like go through his apartment, clean stuff up, find the life insurance, handle it for the boys. And it struck me how much men really need to invest in friendships, that these friendships endure even in death. And so, it's sort of my win, if you will, is how enduring real friendship is. So, these guys were just wonderful to Craig, even after he was gone. Yeah. Oh, Scott, I'm so sorry. I know you were hard hit by that. You're absolutely right. Male friendships are critically important. There's even more statistics, and I know you're writing about this in your next book, around male friendships declining so precipitously. But I think your group of friends is very heartening.

I find it very heartening and lovely. I appreciate that. I have a guy staying with me right now, Mike Baruch, who I've known for 40 years. It's just been such an anchor in my life. Yeah. Yeah. It's just been such an anchor in my life. Yeah.

Yeah. And, you know, it was really kind of like, it was just so, I just saw it just come to just full bloom with Craig's passing. These guys, they're like, no questions asked, them on a plane. Yep. Decades later, decades later. You know, Alex went to Michigan on your recommendation, and he called me the other day. He goes, I'm making all these great friends. Oh, that's nice. And he's like, I'm not working school as much. I'm like, don't. I said, focus in on your friends. You know, I was thinking of you when I said that to him. And he's like,

you shouldn't tell me to party all the time. I said, I didn't say that. I said, spend more time social than you think. And so, it's, and by the way, thank you for that. You've been a real, he talks about you a lot, actually. That's nice. Thanks for saying that. But anyway, that's very touching, Scott. And I'm so sorry for your loss. It really does remind you of how short a time we have on this planet. But not us, Scott. We're together still.

We're still together. That's right. Anyway, we want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business, tech, or friends, or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT okay Scott that is the show

I'm so glad to have you back I genuinely miss you I did see you once over the holidays in Nantucket but over your holiday and I really look forward again I think the hosts were great but people loved Scott and I'm glad you're back and I think the hosts were great, but people loved Scott. They loved Scott and Karen.

And I'm glad you're back. And I'm excited to go to the U.S. Open with you. We'll have stories from there. And I'm glad you're back. There's a lot of news happening, a lot of important news. And your insights today were spectacular, as always. And I'm sure all the fans are glad to have you back. But I am, most of all.

Thanks for saying that. Okay, well, I'm going to read us out. Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Andretod engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows, Mia Saverio, and Gaddy McBain. Make sure you subscribe to the show

wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Investing in friendships pays off even after death.

Friendship endures.