Pivot - Disney's "Epic" Deal, Biden's Memory, and Guests Zoë Schiffer and Kurt Wagner

Episode Date: February 13, 2024

Kara and Scott discuss the Taylor Swift effect on the Super Bowl, and pick their favorite ads. Then, they've got opinions about the new special counsel report that raised questions about Biden's age and memory. Plus, Disney reports blockbuster earnings, and announces a new investment into Epic Games. Our Friends of Pivot are Zoë Schiffer, Managing Editor of Platformer, and author of “Extremely Hardcore: Inside Elon Musk's Twitter," and Kurt Wagner, social media reporter for Bloomberg, and the author of "Battle for the Bird: Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk, and the $44 Billion Fight for Twitter's Soul." Follow Zoë at @reporterzoe and Kurt at @kurtwagner8 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. And I'm Scott Galloway. Scott, where are you now? You're somewhere else. I'll give you a hint. I'm drinking a tiger beer. Actually, that's not much of a hint. I'm somewhere off the southwest coast of India. I'm in the Maldives. Maldives. Very nice. What is it? This is like a geographic thing. You're just hop scotching across the globe, correct? Is that

what's happening? You know, Kara, I'm going to be dead soon. And I finally have some economic security and I want to literally devour life and do a bunch of crazy shit. I only have my kids for a few more years. So I'm yes to pretty much anything. Oh, cool. Is there a date that you're dying that I could be dialed in on? Sooner than I'd like. But, I mean, if you think about how fast, I get a lot of strength and perspective from my atheism. I think this is, I don't think this is a dress rehearsal. So, while I'm still modestly healthy and have a bunch of people I enjoy spending time with, and I'm blessed with resources, and I don't take that for granted,

and I like to think that I recognize my blessings. But yeah, you want to go to the Maldives? I'm a yes. Okay. All right. Well, that's good. You know, we never talk about religion. It's interesting. I'm agnostic, actually. And honestly, I do feel the pull of having been, you know, raised Catholic of religion. I don't get pulled in by it, but I do definitely feel differently than you about that issue. Yeah, you've always talked about, I mean, I joke that atheists or agnostics are just closeted atheists. I think there's more atheists out there than people think, because it's somehow seen as a negative. You're seen as less, not only less spiritual,

but less holy and less righteous if you don't believe in a superman. And I think about this a lot because my kids have had absolutely no exposure to religion, and I think they've probably lost something because I was exposed to a lot of different religions, and I know you were exposed to religion. And I do think religion gets... The highlights of religion, the highlight reel on religion right now is pretty negative, right? It's kind of central to when you have good people do good things, bad people do bad things, but when you have good people doing a lot of really hideous things, usually religion is involved. And so it gets a lot, I think it has a bad brand right now, but my experience, and I think yours, and I'll ask you if

you have the same experience, I won't put words in your mouth, but I was exposed to, I went to temple, I went to church, I went to Presbyterian. When your dad's married four times, you go to a lot of different religious institutions. And it was a positive in my life. And I never bought into the lineage. I never bought that there was an invisible friend in the room with us. But on the whole, it was just a bunch of good people trying to share something and feel connected. I found they were very patriotic, wanted to help each other. And I have some people in my life, religion plays a really positive role. Well, like a lot of things, the best of it is terrific. The worst of it is absolutely the worst.

You know, If, Invisible Friend, there's a new movie coming out Ryan Reynolds is doing called If, which is about actual invisible friends that kids have. But I don't think it's a super being thing that I have. It's just that it can't, I just, I do kids have. But I don't think it's a super being thing that I have. It's just that it can't, I just, I do feel energy. And I'm not sounding like a California person, but I've been to places where I have felt something. You know what I mean? And it may be myself.

It may be, I do feel a pull to it. And I don't know why that is. And I don't explore it at all. I'm not interested in exploring because the hatefulness of so many religions towards gay people or women or you know what I mean, I just can't do it. But I certainly have hopes that there's something beyond us that I guess that's why I'm a real agnostic. I really am. I don't know. I didn't expose my kids to religion at all. They went we went to a lot of different synagogues and Unitarian stuff, but we never pressed it.

And they're certainly not faithful in any way in that regard, as I was, because my grandmother and stuff. Anyway, it's interesting. It's interesting when you think about it. Actually, it leads into what we're going to talk about in a minute, which is the Super Bowl ads. There was a Jesus one that I actually liked quite a bit. And I was talking about it. I was wondering how we were going to do that segue. Well done.

I know, but there was. It was. It was actually, when it came on at first, my wife is Jewish. She was like, oh no, the Jesus one. And there was also one that was, there was a bunch of controversial ones, but that one I thought was well done. It was about Jesus washing feet.

And I thought it was very, I love all the stories of Jesus. I really do. I really do. I think they're wonderful. Love the poor. That's a good place to start. Love the poor. Do you want to your neighbors? You're doing, I mean, there's a lot of good lessons in there. Yeah, there are. So that's what I liked. I thought they did that really well. Anyway, we've got a lot to talk about today, including the Super Bowl, including a debate over Biden's

mental fitness after special counsel report, Disney's big move in the world of gaming, big deal. Plus we'll talk to two friends of Pivot, platformer Zoe Schiffer and Bloomberg's Kurt Wagner, who have new books out about Elon Musk and Twitter, who just tweeted a boob joke, which, okay, fine. But let's talk about a Taylor Swift game. I heard her boyfriend won the Super Bowl. That was a Hillary Clinton joke, actually, who put it up. A lot of people are enjoying tweeting and stuff like that,

and not just tweeting, but threading and putting Instagram and things like that. Social media is at its best at fun things like this. The Kansas City Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers 25 to 22. I felt bad because I'm from San Francisco, but I still was happy. Taylor Swift's boyfriend won. It was a very close game. Both teams played incredibly well. At the last minute, Patrick Mahomes really did push it out, like really showed more energy and stuff. But that Brock Purdy was amazing. I think he was the last player drafted in the draft. They call him Mr. Irrelevant.

Yeah, nice story. He was. It was great. Nobody played badly. It was a great game. Taylor created a brand value of more than $330 million for the Chiefs in the NFL, according to data from Apex Marketing Group. Look, she was chugging beer. She was slamming beer. She wasn't just chugging. She was slamming them with Blake Lively and Ice Spice, which was very funny to watch. But they didn't pull away to her too

much. And she was quite respectful. At the end, when he came out after he gave crazy speech, he was like, ah, like he had that sort of screamy, you know, fantastic speech at the end. She was very deferential to the mother, which I kind of liked as a mother. I was like, if my son won this, he hugs me fucking first before the billionaire famous person behind me. And she did that well. But it was a good game. Tech was well represented. Elon Musk was there. Tim Cook, Jack Dorsey, for some reason, they kept saying Beyonce and Jay-Z and some guy, and he was wearing a Satoshi thing. He was there. He obviously works at Tidal with them. This year's Super Bowl ads cost $7 million per 30 seconds, with female NFL viewership

increasing 11% between July and December because of Taylor Swift. I think more women-centric brands like NYX Cosmetics and CeraVe, which very funny ads, appeared in the Super Bowl commercials. Michael, Sarah, just very funny in these ads. And of course, President Biden released a video on social surrounding the Super Bowl. He's gotten onto TikTok. He criticized food companies for shrinkflation, calling it a ripoff. But he also had a really funny TikTok ad about his choice, his game or halftime. It was good. They're quite good on social media. The person running Biden's social media is really good. And the TikTok stuff looks like a good start. So it was all over, I think, a positive. It was sort of like the Grammys, quite good. What do you think? And you had a favorite ad? I'll talk about mine in a minute, but love your thoughts.

What do you think? And do you have a favorite ad? I'll talk about mine in a minute, but love your thoughts. You know, I didn't see the ads. I had to wake up at 7 a.m. here to see the fourth quarter, and I woke my boys up, and we then watched the replay where you just see the plays. I mean, you can watch the whole game in like 30 minutes if you just see the plays. So I didn't see the ads. Look, I think Taylor Swift showed up, didn't see the ads. I think Taylor Swift showed up and a game broke out. I think Taylor Swift is the story here. And whether you're sick

of hearing about it or you think it's hurt the game, which it is not, she did what diaper changing tables and bathrooms could not do. She did what having Janet Jackson and female performers could not do. She increased female viewership and increased the value of every sports franchise in the NFL, probably by 10 or 20 percent by virtue of this romance, which by all, I mean, through all angles in my viewpoint, feels like a very healthy, loving, supportive, you know, great romance. And anytime you see a positive, positive role models for dating, I think it's wonderful. And so it's- Also, he dresses so well. Did you say that outfit he had

on? Yeah, they're both lovely people. And she's a phenomena. And she has increased economic value of these things. So I think it's, you know think it was all about her. The other thing that got less reporting, that's the downside to this, is that now that sports betting is legal, get this, 26% of America bet on the Super Bowl. In addition of all the addictions, gambling has the highest suicide rate. Because if you're addicted to alcohol or meth or cocaine, people notice and will try and intervene. And sometimes they're successful and sometimes they're not, but oftentimes they are. You can mortgage your house, spend your kids' tuition money,

lose everything, and nobody around you has no idea. And you feel as if there's no way out, except one way out. So I'm know, I'm worried about this. Yeah. Well, way to bring it down, Scott. But yes, you're right. Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift. I would agree. I think we have to get our arms around gambling. I would agree. I think it's something that said, something like the Super Bowl, I guess you're not going to avoid it. It was happening behind the scenes anyway. In front of the scenes is I'd rather have it there, so we were aware of it. You

know, there's always been betting at every sporting event, especially this one. A quarter of America. I know. But I suspect it was pretty high before. We didn't see it. And I don't want to totally infantilize people. I think people, if you can go, if you can raise your hand and go and fight for your country or decide to drink yourself to death, I think you should be able to gamble. But I think we need more financial literacy in high schools that teaches people about basics of financial literacy, especially among young men. Explain to them biology and neurobiology and that they are more pre-wired to be prone to risk-aggressive behavior, including gambling. I mean, there's an adjacent story here about the stock market. There's $3.5 trillion in transactions

in the markets every year in the NASDAQ and the NYSE, and about $300 billion of it is IPOs and secondary offerings, which is what the markets are supposed to exist for. The markets are basically supposed to be there to raise capital for companies so they could grow. So about 80, 90% of transactions in the stock market are really just speculation, which is a fancy word for gambling. Gambling is a real issue. And I'm not going to infantilize men, they should be able to do what they want, but they need to be made aware of these risks. And my fear is that there's a lot of young men who think that trading fucking Solano is somehow investing. It's not, It's gambling. And gambling is a lot of fun. I love it. I do it a lot. I think it's a ton of fun, but it's consumption. And 90% of people who do it are going to lose everything.

And I don't think they're taught that at an early enough age. Yeah, I would agree. Okay, bummer. I'm going to talk about the ads because they were so good. Speaking of selling a shit. I hijack the conversation. so good speaking of selling i'm sorry i hijacked the conversation i have always i ads have not been as good in the past recently but these ads spectacular really good favorite oh my god all of them the dunkin donuts one with ben uh affleck and um matt damon and and j-lo and um tom brady hysterical dunkings go see it it's called dunkings Dunkings. And it makes, Ben Affleck allowed himself to be seen feckless. And J-Lo's looks were fantastic. And stupid little things like she had a diamond encrusted Dunkin' Donuts thing. I thought it was brilliant and funny.

They're all brilliant and funny, all of them. The Beyonce ad for Verizon, where she's trying to break the internet, was she never jokes. And she joked. And they had the guy from was she never jokes. And she joked. And they had the guy from Veep, who was really funny, really making fun of herself about lemonade and everything. It just was, she made fun of herself in a really fantastic, funny, witty way. I thought where Jason Momoa was with the guys from Scrubs

and they did a flash dance thing was hysterically funny. I didn't know Jason Momoa was with the guys from Scrubs, and they did a flash dance thing. It was hysterically funny. I didn't know Jason Momoa could sing. And at the end, a friend of mine, Jennifer Beals, is there. I was hoping she would be, and she was, and they did it exactly perfectly. Just there was a lot. They're all good. I didn't see one I didn't think was clever, but that was T-Mobile. That was T-Mobile. Yeah, that was a T-Mobile ad. That was really, really good. What about, I just read about the ones of the guy who's angry at the self-driving technology at Tesla. Oh yeah, he put that in again. I like that. It was a bad ad. I was like, can't you make it better? But it was a bad ad. He did that last year, I think. Strange, no? I think it's strange. I guess, whatever.

You got the money, have fun. Yeah, exactly. And there it's strange. I guess, whatever. You got the money. Have fun. Yeah, exactly. And there was a controversy over the RFK ad, and now he just apologized for it because a PAC that was affiliated with it was trying to copy an ad by his uncle, JFK, obviously, and he had to apologize. It was terrible. I think a Trump supporter is the one who paid for it because

they're trying to fuck with Biden in that regard. And boy, was the reaction. He never apologizes because he's such a fatuous popinjay, but he did, like using the memory. And they're all like, get the fuck off of JFK's lawn right now, which was interesting. But they were all creative. I thought they were, I don't think there was a real loser. And there used to be a lot of losers. I thought they were all pretty, if they're spending that much money, they had creative people doing it. I thought they were good.

I thought they were fun and enjoyable. You should watch them all with your kids because they're funny. The Flashdance one is very funny. The only one I saw on YouTube was I saw the one with Jennifer Aniston about forgetting stuff. And she sees David Schwimmer.

Yeah, that's right. It's fun. It's fun. Anyway, that's right. It's fun. It's fun. Anyway, it was good. It was good. It was a great Super Bowl. Very similar to the Grammys. Highly enjoyable live television broadcast, right?

So I think it was probably a win for CBS. It sounds like it was a win all around. Yeah. I think they previewed a bunch of their shows, which they did a nice job. They pushed the NFL very nicely. There was several NFL ads that were good, too, that were funny. And I know it sounds dumb, but it felt very Taylor Swift-y. It was great entertainment, great fun.

Everyone's having fun, except the right wing is losing its fucking mind. And I have to say, the very best, Joe Biden had the best tweet. He tweeted right after a picture of him as a dark Joe Biden with the eyes, with the laser eyes. And he just wrote, just like we drew it up. So he's playing into the conspiracy theories around that this was planned by the CIA, the Taylor Swift win and this and that. If they did, they'd have Travis Kelsey have the last carry for the touchdown, FYI. But there's, you know, all these conspiracy theories around her that he was going to propose to her or back Biden in the middle of it. And I thought Joe Biden took advantage of it beautifully, just like we drew it up. Like, you fuckers, we didn't make, you know, this wasn't

a conspiracy theory for the CIA to hurt Donald Trump. And then the person who had the worst social media, I think, was Donald Trump himself, taking credit for Taylor Swift's success and trying to kiss up to her. Yeah, he did a tweet where, or a truth where he said, he goes, I signed and was responsible for the Music Modernization Act for Taylor Swift and other musical artists.

Joe Biden didn't do anything for Taylor and never will. There's no way she could endorse crooked Joe Biden, which she's done before, by the way. The worst and most corrupt president in the history of our country. Be a disloyal to a man who made her so much money. Besides that, I like her boyfriend, Travis, even though he may be liberal and probably can't stand me. Are you fucking he didn't do anything about so full of lies and taking credit for her. And what I wrote is taking undeserved credit for her enormous success is classic and heinous, but it reads as if he's stone cold terrified of her

and her power and realizes after a lifetime of terrorizing women, that this is the one who can actually end him. Even her boyfriend frightens him. It's incredible that he couldn't just say, congratulations, he has to take credit, which is sickening. Bill Maher had a really interesting take on Taylor Swift.

And he said that Taylor Swift could swing the election. Yeah. Yeah. And his, I mean, it was really interesting what he said. She's from Pennsylvania. She's white. She's dating a white guy. She's a country star. And she doesn't even need to endorse Biden. She just needs to encourage people to turn out the vote, because who will she turn out? She'll turn out young people. And younger Americans tend to be browner, which means they're more democratic. She could literally swing the election. The strategy that would be just so genius here, if she in fact would like to see, I can't imagine any woman who's-

She is. She backed Biden before. And she was anti-Trump, but go ahead. Yeah. So we know she's pro-Biden, but here's the thing. The strategy is not to be pro-Biden. She should never use President Biden's name. She should never use Donald Trump's name. She should just talk about turning out the vote. Exactly. But she backed Biden before. I don't think there's anything wrong with it. She could say, what a heinous rapist. Like, I don't know. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. We got to be smart here. We got to stop. We got to stop trying to shame people into not voting for Trump. We got to be smart. If you get young people to turn out, he wins. her attacking Marsha Blackburn and backing Democrats because of her safety. Anyway,

it was interesting. It was an interesting thing. Anyway, it was a great Super Bowl. Kudos to it. Now let's move on to our first big story. Special Counsel Robert Herr has released his report on President Joe Biden's handling of classified documents. Report concludes no criminal charges against Biden are warranted and also says there was evidence that Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials as a private citizen. There were a number of references to Biden's cognitive abilities, notably calling him a sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory. I have to say this was the media coverage is out of context of what I read the entire thing. And if you read it, which no one will, nonetheless, this is what happened.

It was damaging. Biden lashed out at special counsel during a press conference late last week, particularly at the claim that he could not remember the year his son, Beau, died. That was the guy was talking about strategy around a trial. Biden did mix up the president of Egypt and Mexico at a press conference that said Donald Trump mixed up the presidents of, I think, Turkey. And then he thought Nikki Haley was Nancy Pelosi. So let me just equalize that. Donald Trump also weighed in saying if Biden was going to be charged with classified documents, and neither should he calling his own case selective persecution. It is not. It is not. So it obviously created a lot of things. People were furious about the number of stories in The New York Times and columns. And I would agree there were seven of them talking about Biden's age and nothing. And they did not put what Trump said a day later about letting the Russians attack Europe in the same spot. It was very weird media selection. I never say the media is biased, but boy, was that something to see. It's still a problem. And a large amount of people believe both are too old, I think over 60%. More people believe Biden is too old compared to Trump. Let's not equalize it.

Trump has 91 indictments. It's not comparable. But it's still a problem. So, and you've talked about this a lot. So, what do you think about this? Well, how do you get beyond this? I think you saw him moving out last night during the Super Bowl, even though he didn't do the traditional interview. He did a ton of social media. It was all very clever, funny, making fun of himself. He's got to get out there, I think, ultimately.

What are your thoughts? I saw it simple as either really poor judgment or a planned hit piece, because he was there to talk about the legal veracity of these documents, which the president, President Biden, turned over versus President Trump tried to hide and destroy evidence. And again, it goes back to what my friend Dov Seidman says. It's not what you do. It's how you do it. back to what my friend Duff Seidman says. It's not what you do, it's how you do it. And basically, the special prosecutor did his job to the extent that it was clear. He said, this was an error in judgment. As soon as he recognized his error in judgment,

he fully cooperated, and he's the one that disclosed he had these documents. So he drew sharp relief between the two cases and did his job. He's not there, though, to be a neurobiologist and make comments that anyone reviewing this thing would go, you realize this is going to be blown up into something much bigger, and it has no legal frame. It's not appropriate. Now, the larger issue here is that when you have a 77 or 78-year-old obese man and an 81-year-old man, there's about a 7% chance every year that they're going to die. So essentially between now and the election, there's a little less than a coin flip chance that one of these two slips and breaks a hip or something like that. And what is just so upsetting and frustrating is that America produces more remarkable people, I believe, than any nation in history. We have remarkable

military leaders. We have remarkable artists, business people. Every time I go to Washington, as much as we shitpost Washington, I meet remarkable people. And we end up with two people, quite frankly, that just should be nowhere near the White House because of biology. It has nothing about their character. Let's just put that aside right now. People this old should not be put in positions that require this exacting, a cognitive, physical, and emotional and mental stamina, which nobody has at that age. I don't care if you're fucking Jack LaLanne. This is just insane. But anyways, here we are. Here we are. But the reality is they're both really old men.

And so I find it discouraging that those are the two people we've produced. But this, in my view, was either very poor judgment or a naked hit piece. Because to think that this wasn't going to go crazy in the media and that they were going to zero in on this shit was just not to be honest with the impact. I thought the media could have done a much better job because Trump has been saying, like literally at Pennsylvania and the North Carolina, he said a series of incoherent things. The point I was trying to make actually on Chris Wallace, the show, because they were like, this is a big problem. Like, are you Trump?

You know, he's not as Trump isn't as bad. I'm like almost worse because he says incoherent things. I'm used to it, Trump. He lies so much that we don't think it's cognitive decline. Someone wrote he Trump is incoherent and occasionally is coherent and Biden is coherent and is occasionally incoherent. But more more than that, Biden has always had gaffes, right? He's definitely old, no question. He has more gaffes than ever. He always has gaffes. Trump is getting increasingly insane. It reminds me, and the reason I think Biden gets

more attacked for it is because he's that, I'm thinking of a nursing home. He's the nice guy in the nursing home and occasionally can't find his apartment, right? That kind of, like, I'm going to use a metaphor. Trump is the guy in the cafeteria who accuses everyone of stealing his fork or his jello or whatever. The reason he seems more vigorous is because he's louder, but that doesn't make him any less cognitively disabled, right? He just seems vigorous. And that's true. But the crazy one in the nursing home is the one I'm worried about. The loud one is the one I'm worried about. And not the sort of friendly old guy who's effective, by the way, speaking of which. Now, the day, let me just say, the day after his comments encouraging Russia to

do whatever the hell they want to any NATO country, doesn't mean defense guidelines. This is a dangerous, incoherent person who already was problematic. The NATO Secretary General said Trump's words could undermine security and put American and European forces at risk. These comments, and Nikki Haley even said this kind of comment that makes Joe Biden look clear-headed. Joe Biden is clear-headed about this. These comments are, if he's not incoherent, then he's dangerously leading us into a world war. It's just astonishing that there's even a comparison between the two and that equalization of this. And the fact that the New York Times did not put this on the very top of the thing and

kept referring to Joe Biden's, that stupid report was, I think, a dereliction of their duty. I never say that about the media. But in this case, when I heard that out of his mouth, I was like, are you kidding me what he just said? Dangerous. And if he meant it, he's dangerous, and if he's incoherent, he's even worse, more dangerous. Your thoughts? Well, someone called me over the weekend and said, you know, if you were asked,

the Democrats, how would you deal with this issue? And I said, you're getting one thing right, but you're forgetting the second, you know, you got the peanut butter right, but you're missing the chocolate. Him taking it is humorous. Humor reflects intellect, and it makes light of the issue, and you kind of turn the situation around. And they're doing a great job of having Biden joke about it. Where they're failing is that it should be the following. That is, no one person runs the largest country in the world. It's never been one person. It's an entire infrastructure. It's a person running a company.

This is the most robust, youthful, vigorous administration in history. We have, for the first time, a young woman as vice president. We have a secretary of transportation who is just into his 40s. We have secretaries of state who are young and vigorous, not old men from Exxon. And by the way, young, vigorous people who work really hard, you're loyal to them and you create a culture of youth and loyalty and innovation. And that's what they have in the White House versus this revolving door of old white men, including fucking Peter Navarro, who's going to prison. I mean, if you want to talk about an administration, you don't talk about the president, you talk about the presidency. And this is a group of people who are the most youthful, robust, and innovative in

history. And that's how they should position it. Yeah, he's old. There's nothing they can do about it. But look at who he surrounds himself with. Although Republicans use that as they're all really running it in his place, that he's just weak and at Bernie's. So I was on a panel, I think it was Brett's season, called Weekend at Bernie's. Fuck you on that one. I got to say, I couldn't say that on the air, but he's not weak and at Bernie's. Yeah, that's right.

Right. Yep. Trump just kept firing them and then they kept turning on the guy and either running against him or ending up in jail. That's not youthful. That's about as primitive as you can get. insane, you know, all this stuff. I'm sorry, it's just not the same with Joe Biden and the equalization of it cannot be allowed to happen. And I absolutely get why people do it because most people have the kind of old guy, most people know the old guy Joe Biden is, they're not used to crazy, like really malevolently crazy old people. There's only a few of those, right, comparatively. And so that's what they're

worried about. What they should be worried about is a highly incoherent person who's becoming increasingly incoherent, is overweight, is clearly been red-pilled in a way that's really disturbing, and is, you know, even just attacking Nikki Haley's husband. Where's her husband? Where's her husband? He's deployed in the military. He's fighting over serious. You fucker. Like, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck you. Like that kind of thing. And you know, as someone whose dad was in the military, it's astonishing. And he did it before. He did it, the Reds, the Gold Star family did it with John McCain. Oh, come on. I don't like people who've been captured. But here's the problem. There's no such thing as shaming people and they're not voting for the guy.

No, there isn't. They've got to focus. They've got it. They've got to play offense. And and I think they should absolutely highlight and get some of that youth out there, because the way I would position it is the president is old. There's no getting around it. He still has a good these. He makes great decisions.

You want to don't measure behaviors. Don't measure gaps. Measure results. The results here are the best in history. Don't measure behaviors. Don't measure gaffes. Measure results. The results here are the best in history. Jobs, low unemployment, they're the best in history. His age is an issue. He has the most youthful presidency in the history of the country. Yeah, good.

I like that. Scott, they should hire you. Decide what team you want. One of the things, they should also like vitamin this man up and get him out there. They got to like, you know, there's ways to make people cognitively like sharper and just let him sleep. Get him out there. You know, everyone who has gets you and I both know it. We get when we get tired, we start to make mistakes. Right.

So and we're not that old. But it happens. So anyway, we have to go on a quick break. I think they should hire you, Scott. When we come back, we'll discuss Disney's new adventure with Epic Games, a big deal. And we'll chat with friends of Pivot, Zoe Schiffer and Kurt Wagner about Elon Musk's chaotic reign at Twitter. Fox Creative. This is advertiser content from Zelle.

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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. Scott, we're back. Disney has turned the corner and entered a new era, according to CEO Bob Iger, following a blockbuster first quarter earnings report. Earnings per share rose 23 percent, beating estimates the company cut streaming losses more than expected to $138 million.

Pretty good. Manageable. And also says it will boost its cash dividend by 50%. Disney also made a slew of other announcements, including an ESPN streaming service in 2025, an exclusive version of Taylor Swift's Ears Tour movie that will stream on Disney+, Smart Move, and a Moana sequel. Also, Frozen is coming. I got that directly from Bob Iger, which, of course, he wants me to spend more on Frozen. And perhaps the biggest

news of all, Disney is getting into gaming, acquiring a $1.5 billion stake in Epic Games, the makers of Fortnite. Scott, you had talked about Disney being a buy, one of your buys. Talk about the move into gaming. You predicted this in various forms over the last few years. You thought Disney should acquire Roblox, or

Netflix would buy Epic. I think he's doing, you know, he has Nelson Tell's proxy fight looming. I think he's doing his Bob Iger thing. So what do you think about this? Yeah, I pick two or three stocks every year. My picks this year were Alphabet. I think this year is the Empire Strikes Back in terms of generative AI. I just think the data set they have to work with, your calendar, your YouTube viewership are just unparalleled. And I picked

Disney and Warner Brothers Discovery because I think the tech stuff that everyone loves is so fully valued in my view. I wanted to go after stuff that's distressed. And Disney's trading at a 10-year low, and it has unparalleled IP. I think Bob is a very solid executive. What they lost was the narrative, and it wasn't entirely sure what the strategy was. And I think he's sort of turned it around and appears to be playing offense. After the layoffs, streaming's now making money. The parks are just this unsung juggernaut of a business. I think they did $10 billion in EBITDA this year. And so Epic, just disclosure, Epic is one of my biggest investments. In 2021, I made a purchase in the private markets. There's all these platforms now that sell shares, secondary shares are from employees. And I did it for a couple of reasons. One, I wanted some exposure to what is a $180

billion market, the gaming industry. Epic has Fortnite, which I see as just an unbelievable. My 13-year-old is, I don't want to say addicted, but the reason I like video games more than social media is they are actual social. One of the nicest moments of my week is my son has this battle cry that he screams out from the room when he's playing Fortnite with his buddies. And they're really elegant in terms of how they monetize it. They also have sort of this underlying infrastructure. So I thought I want some exposure to the space.

Now, it adds to the flywheel at Disney because you can imagine they're probably going to come up with all sorts of rides, maybe even, you know, I got to think there's going to be a Fortnite movie series in the makings. So this is, and this also gives them- Yeah, they probably watch Barbie very carefully, right? They probably watch Barbie. 100%. And this gives them a chance to date maybe before they acquire the company. What was interesting is the valuation on it was about 21 or 22 billion, which was actually lower than the valuation was last year. But the moment Disney made the investment, it began trading up in the secondary market because everybody sees, you know, the validation of having Disney involved. I think this is good for Epic. I

think it's good for Disney. I think it's good for Bob Iger. You know, win, win, win. Yeah. Let me put some context in here. Disney has been in gaming. They tried Club Penguin, mostly for kids. They bought a bunch, I'm blanking on all the, Tapulous, they had a lot of app stuff and it didn't work out well for them. Maker Studio, remember that one? Maker, yeah, oh yeah, sure. That was a more video oriented,

it wasn't gaming, but they were in a lot of gaming stuff, especially around kids. My kids had Club Penguin. I write about it a little bit in my upcoming book, but they never were able to make it work

because they never really, they bought these companies, but they weren't committed to gaming. This is a very important gaming company. You know, this is, what it does is it puts them at odds with Apple, which is in a, you know, in a very serious legal fight over app store stuff with Epic. And the CEO is particular, I'm going to hopefully interview him soon. But it puts them at odds with Apple, which is one of their partner, right? Who's been, but it puts them at odds with Apple,

which is one of their partner, right? Who's been, Iger and Apple have been very close, but they have to get into, it's sort of like, you know, whatever you think of the Vision Pro, Apple has to get into spatial computing or facial computing really. And they have to get into gaming. This is a critical part.

Netflix has kind of dabbled in it by creating a gaming thing, but Disney's got to own this area in a really significant way. And this is what they do now, especially because the Nelson Peltz proxy fight is still looming. Iger addressed it in an interview with CNBC last week following the earnings report. Let's listen. The last thing that we need right now is to be distracted in terms of our time, our energy, by an activist or activists that, frankly, have a completely different agenda and don't understand our company, its assets, even the essence of the Disney brand. No, that's him. He's pushing back, and he has been. For his part, Pelz responded to Disney's

latest earnings, saying, it's deja vu all over again. We saw the movie last year and didn't like the ending. Nelson, you got to go away. Stop hanging out with Elon Musk, etc. I think he's going to fend off Peltz. Peltz is looking kind of, he's kind of ruining his brand here. He's doing things that are right for this company. And to sort of badmouth it when he's doing the streaming got better. This is a really interesting deal. The parks are doing well. I mean, this is a difficult turnaround for Bob Iger, some of which is his own fault, right? No question. But he was right about going into streaming, even though it's costly. So I think Peltz looks like a potse. Yeah, but the ultimate shark repellent for an activist is when the stock goes up. The stock's up 22% in the last 30 days. And so what happens is if the stock goes up, this is what happens. When you're an activist investor, which I've done, you never win at the first meeting, at the first annual meeting. But if the stock continues to go down, you win at the second. If the stock continues to go up, as the activist, you just sell your stake. You're in it for money.

You're not in it for victories or wins. I mean, these guys have big egos, but for the most part, they're in it to make money. So if this stock does what I think it's going to do, and I think it's up 50% to 100% in 12 months, Helts will declare victory and leave, never run another proxy fight, make a shit ton of money, and Bob will not have this guy on his board. I disagree. I've been in a ton of these situations. Bob has a bunch of people on the board who are not scared of Nelson Peleltz. They would have stuck the angry guy in the corner and let him punch himself out and gotten on with the board meeting. And then they wouldn't have had this detractor heckling from the cheap seats. If the stock continues to go up, Nelson Peltz will sell and go away and everyone wins. Right. Yep. He's not winning on this one. Anyway, we'll see what happens. Iger did a great

job with this. I think Epic is really interesting and really sharp move by him. And it's not that risky, but it's also not unrisky, which is just the way you want to be. All right, let's bring in our friends of Pivot. Zoe Schiffer is the managing editor of Platformer and the author of Extremely Hardcore Inside Elon Musk's Twitter. Kurt Wagner covers social media for Bloombergiffer is the managing editor of Platformer and the author of Extremely Hardcore Inside Elon Musk's Twitter. Kurt Wagner covers social media for Bloomberg and is the author of Battle for the Bird, Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk, and the $44 billion fight for Twitter's soul. Twitter books are here, everybody. Welcome. Two people I have great regard for.

Kurt used to work for me a long time ago, and Zoe works for Casey Newt, who's a very good friend of mine. Both amazing reporters. Welcome to both of you. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Thank you so much for having us. So let's start. You both have Twitter books. You're competing. We decided to bring you together. I'm sorry to do this, but it's better for you. It's better because we're going to talk about both your books, and they're different in lots of ways, and we want to distinguish them and why you should read both. Anyway, Kurt, you detail in your book how Twitter was already having problems during the Jack Dorsey years, well before Elon came onto the scene. He obviously was at the Super Bowl last night, sitting there looking forlorn, as always. Let's talk about the history. You covered this for us at Recode for many years. Some news from the weekend, a federal judge ordered Elon to testify

again in the SEC's probe of his version of Twitter. The SEC is examining whether Elon followed a law when filing the paperwork about his purchases of Twitter stock and whether his statements about the deal were accurate. But let's start with you because the Jack Dorsey years, because he kind of pushed this and thought it would be great for Twitter. So talk a little bit about that. He did. I mean, he admired Elon tremendously. He used to refer to him as his favorite tweeter. He invited him to corporate off sites. Yeah, yeah. He really had kind of an admiration for Elon.

And so when this opportunity presented itself, I think Jack was super excited about it. You know, he'd been talking and Kara, you've heard this before as well, but he'd been talking for years about how Twitter shouldn't be a public company. Jack was very much of this mindset that Twitter should be private, that it should be out of the pressures of the Wall Street investor cooker. And so when Elon showed up and had the money to do this thing that Jack had wanted to have done for a long time, he jumped at it. Obviously, I think it was a mistake, but that's one of the reasons that he was so excited for Elon to take over. Well, talk a little bit about the problems there.

We covered this for years, both of us. It was, as Mark Duckworth said, a clown car that ran into a goldmine. And it was always a clown car and a very emotional one. It was a company that had tremendous influence that outweighed its business by an order of magnitude. And so people talked about it, people used it and used it for politics and sports and other cultural things, but the business never caught up. And that was why it was always in this really tough position. And one of the things that my book gets into is actually, Jack Dorsey had orchestrated this three-year business plan right before Elon showed up.

And it was very ambitious. It was coming off the heels of COVID. They were like, hey, we're going to add more users than we've ever added. We're going to build more revenue than we've ever had. And they were not on pace to hit any of these things. No, they never were. Yeah, you look into the future and you just realize they're kind of headed for this disaster financially as a publicly traded company.

So again, I think the board also saw Elon as an escape from having to go through what they knew was going to be a bad situation. And no one else wanted to buy it. Zoe, is there a scenario where Elon could have been successful at the helm of Twitter? Let's get, so he buys it. He tries not to buy it. I guess he just, he decided to say, I'll buy it no matter what. And then of course, tried to backtrack on it. You write the the attributes that made Musk good at tweeting, a combination of recklessness and shamelessness, I think you're being kind, but you're right on those things, made him exceedingly bad at running Twitter. Talk about that transition, because I even thought he would be good. I was like, okay, let's try this, because it was such a disaster as a company.

Yeah, I think there's this narrative now that the media was very biased against Elon's acquisition from the beginning, and that's actually incorrect. There was a lot of excitement, even from a small group of employees and people in the media about the acquisition, because like Kurt said, Twitter had been in such a bad place kind of financially and growth wise for so long. There was a lot of frustration from even certain employees about this. What Elon did and what I feel like was such a big unforced error is that he came in with this posture of everyone who works here is an idiot and I don't want to listen to you. He didn't come in

with an immense amount of curiosity. When he sat down with employees from day one and they were explaining the technical backend of how Twitter worked, he would interrupt them and kind of talk about his own expertise, or he would look really bored or be scrolling on his phone. So from day one, he wasn't really interested in what the people who had worked there and had worked so hard to make Twitter successful had to say. And why was that from your perspective? I think that he felt like Twitter had been sliding in a bad direction. And he really conflated some of the attributes of Twitter's company culture with this big fear he had around the woke mind virus. The idea that employees got a day of rest off every month, that they got pretty good perks. It was, in his mind, a culture of laziness, of people who didn't want to work hard, who didn't

want to be hardcore. And he felt like, if I can put rockets into space, if I can build electric vehicles, then surely I'll be able to come in and fix Twitter, no problem. Because it's a media company, Scott. If I can only read one of your books, which should I read? Just kidding. Oh, stop. But go ahead. You won't read mine either. Don't worry, guys. He's not going to read my book either. But go ahead. Isn't Twitter the ultimate side piece? You have a guy who is making tens of billions of dollars at a payments company, kind of showing up every once in a while and just nodding.

And then you have a guy making tens of millions somewhere else, showing up every once in a while to tell them how fucking stupid they are, and they get back to other shit. And now you have a CEO who's literally in over her head, who has no business running a company like this. Isn't this arguably, I'm having a difficult time thinking of any company that's had three worst CEOs. worst CEOs? I think that the fact that there's been so much turnover at the CEO, like, I think this is one of the worst CEO jobs around because it sounds really glamorous, right? It's Twitter, you get to like show up at the Super Bowl, you get to, you know, do all these things, you're culturally relevant, which is really exciting to a lot of people. But again, the business was always a bit of a disaster. It comes with all these huge problems around content moderation that people, you know, think are going to be super easy to solve. And they're never as always a bit of a disaster. It comes with all these huge problems around content moderation that people think are going to be super easy to solve, and they're never as black and white as they seem. And there's a reason like Dick Costolo, he had a great quote. Actually, he shared this

with Kara during an interview. He said, running Twitter is like running any other company in dog years. It's like one year at Twitter is seven years somewhere else. It's because it's a really thankless, terrible job, but people think it's going to be cool because it's Twitter and there's a cultural element to it. And I think that that bothers people. Yeah. I mean, this isn't as true at the CEO level, but it was true for a lot of the board members and the management. One of the key frustrations that employees had is that so few people at the highest levels of the company even tweeted. They didn't use the product. And a lot of employees joined because they loved Twitter as a product. And then they were there and it felt like there was an immense lack of understanding of what Twitter even was and what made it special.

So many of the features that we think of as critical and crucial to how Twitter works actually came from the community. It was things that users found to organize the conversation and literally begged Twitter for years to codify into the feature set, and then Twitter would kind of begrudgingly do it. Yeah, it reminds me a little bit of that thing about a kid. When it was good, it was very, very good. And when it was bad, it was awful. But it was always an awful business. I think it just has morphed into an awful place in a lot of ways. Although last night with the Super Bowl, it was fun, right, for a second again. But both of you talked to a number of former employees for these books.

Was something you found particularly shocking or surprising? Zoe, you start and then Kurt. Yeah, I mean, I think one thing that we know, but I kind of overlooked at the beginning was just there was this, it was a small group, but there was kind of a core group of employees who were really frustrated with Twitter 1.0. They felt like it was incredibly inefficient. They wanted to hustle and get stuff done and ship new features. And they just felt like it was, there were so many roadblocks in Twitter prior to Elon Musk coming on board. And so when they saw Elon coming in, talking about efficiency, shipping product really fast, they were actually really, really excited. And yet, even those people who were so loyal, and all in on Twitter 2.0, all in on this

hardcore vision became incredibly disillusioned over the months that followed. Why? Because they felt like his product sense, the kind of core thing that they thought he was going to bring, you know, maybe culturally he won't be that great. Maybe he'll be kind of rude in person, but like his product sense will be really, really good. That just didn't feel like it was in place. He would kind of come up with ideas on a whim. It felt like his mentions were dictating what employees were working on. If a high profile person was in his mentions complaining about something, all of a sudden it would be Code Red, the top engineering project of the day. And they were being torn in a lot of directions at once. It was like, fix this content moderation problem

immediately right now. Elon's really upset about it. But also we need to ship this other thing right now. It needs to be done by the following morning or everyone's fired. And no amount of loyalty would ensure that people would keep their jobs. So Kurt, talk about that.

That's behaving like a king, right? Which he behaves everywhere else if you start to really plumb at his other companies. And one of the things that I'm sure Zoe saw and I saw as well is that a lot of his product decisions and a lot of his direction came from his own personal experience, right? He's basically running this thing in a way that fits for him, but he is not the average user. He's not even close to the average user, right? He's got 160 million followers and he's the richest man in the world. So he's kind of, you know, creating a public good or a public service as he wants to sort of think of it as, but he's doing it in a way that suits his own personality, which is not a very useful way for the rest of us.

What about the increasing radicalization of him? He's really changed as anyone who's spent any time with him. Talk a little bit about that. changed as anyone who's spent any time with him. Talk a little bit about that. I mean, there's a couple of theories around this. I think one of mine is simply that this was a really easy way to differentiate what he's doing at X versus what Twitter was, right? I mean, it was clear that Twitter wasn't working, right? Even Jack Dorsey didn't think Twitter was working. And so one thing you can do if you're the new guy is to come in and just be the exact opposite of what the old guy was doing. And so part of me wonders how much of this like shift to the right, this shift to very, you know, very kind of conservative, anti-woke mindset of Elon is really, you know, a business decision in some ways. It's a way to differentiate himself

and what X is building and bring in people who were disillusioned by the old version of Twitter. Oh, I think it's very real. Zoe? Well, I'm curious what you think about this because I agree with everything Kurt's saying. And I also feel like the Elon Musk that's building Twitter or X is a very different Elon Musk from the one that was building Tesla. And I think one difference is that he has a lot fewer people around him who will tell him the truth. It feels like his circle has gotten smaller and it's got more sycophantic. It's like the people that are close to him are total yes-men. And when he's retelling a joke for the

third time, no one's going to tell him that he's doing that. When he's making a horrible decision or going after someone and harassing them, no one really stands up. And if they do, it's a lower level employee who's instantly out the door. But you know him, you knew him much better than us in the earlier days. Yeah, I think I think I would point to the two Wall Street Journal articles recently about drug issues. And then the board, the enabling board, and Scott maybe has a question about this, but the board was highly enabling and because they made money. And I thought that was the most important thing to point out is everyone who's enabling him and licking him up and down all day either wants to be on the plane or wants to, I don't know why you would, because it sounds, you know, I'd rather be with Taylor Swift, but if I was going to suck up to someone,

but he, you know, the enablers are really quite something and they literally can't, and I've had some of them come up to me saying, we can't say anything. Keep saying it publicly because we can't. And I'm like, fuck you. That's what I, you know what I mean? I was like, yes, you can, but you have, you're in love with your hundreds of millions of dollars. I don't think, how much money do you need? I'm curious what you know about the business where it stands today. I just can't imagine any advertiser would think, oh, we should advertise on Twitter. What do the financials look like? And do you have any insight into whether these three banks that hold the debt are going to try and offload the debt?

What are the atmospherics around the current business? I can go first. Sure. I read a little bit about this and I'm interested if Zoe's heard similar or not, but that in the Q4, so the holiday quarter, which is obviously a huge one for advertisers, that their target was around 2.5 billion in advertising revenue. Now, that's a little more than half of what they did two years earlier, the last full year before Elon was there. And this was also before Elon told advertisers to, you know, go fuck yourself on stage at Dealbook. So I would be shocked if they hit that, quite frankly. And I was having conversations with advertisers, you know, about the past month, both after CES, but before the Super Bowl to just get a feel for what they were thinking. And almost all of them said the same thing, which is like, our clients don't feel comfortable coming back because Elon is so unpredictable. It's not even necessarily the stuff that's happening on the platform. It's Elon himself. And it was very telling yesterday, the Super Bowl, biggest ad

day of the year for X. Elon was tweeting about boobs. I don't know if you guys saw this. He was like literally posting the morning of the Super Bowl when all these advertisers, they've been luring them back, trying to convince them this is a safe place, and he's coming and he's posting these things that are just head scratchers.

And until he stops doing that, I don't think advertisers are gonna be super comfortable. He's not gonna stop doing that. And let me underscore he's 52, but go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah. I mean, I've heard the same thing as Kurt. It's not a surprise. He said one year after he bought the company that it was worth $19 billion, he bought it for $44 billion. He said himself he didn't buy Twitter to make money and that he would rather be able to say what he wants to say when he wants to say it. Consequences be damned. And I think he keeps doing those exact things.

He's had this tortured relationship with advertisers from day one. Because why? Advertisers are content moderators. They're going to pull ad dollars if you talk about Boobster in the Super Bowl. And yet he seems to not be able to help himself. And if that's because of, like Cara pointed to, the drug use that's been documented very well by the Wall Street Journal, or simply because he has a very childish sense of humor, we don't know.

But he has very few checks and balances on his power, and he seems to not care if it hurts the business. So where does CEO Linda Iaccarino, and I'm using CEO term loosely, fit into all of this, if at all? I guess I'll give her credit for this. I mean, the Super Bowl actually brought some real advertisers back to X. I was actually sort of surprised. And that's only going to happen if someone is there to convince them or talk to them. She's very good at it with advertisers. Yeah. She's in that world. She's from that world.

Before she took this job, I believe people really respected her and admired her in that industry. And so clearly, she is doing what she can to build on those relationships and bring people back. But she has a boss who is constantly working against her, which is not easy. And I don't think you should necessarily let her off the hook here either, right? I mean, she's choosing to be there. She's choosing to, you know, kind of support Elon and the things that he is saying sometimes. But I think they're working almost against each other often because she's out trying to sell this stuff and he's just, you know, lighting it on fire at the same time. Let me say, I know a lot of people closer. She's all in. She's blaming everybody else,

including me. That's what I was going to say. Everything we know so far is that she's completely all in on the vision still and she is doing what she was hired to do, which is clean up Elon Musk's messes. Well, she also thinks he's the greatest mind in all of history, from what I understand. Okay, sure. Why not? I'd go with Einstein, perhaps. There's been so many rumors of so many different businesses, payments, right? The X, the everything app. Do you have any sense for what is actually going to happen in terms of a product roadmap in 24? I mean, we know that they're working on a complete app redesign and revamp and payments are going to be a really big part of that. But I have such

suspicion about the everything app terminology. Even when he first bought the company, he hosted an all hands meeting with employees and someone asked very specifically, are you going to try and make us like WeChat? And he scoffed. He was like, that's a ridiculous question. I just used it as an example. Everything app can mean a lot of different things. Since then, we've heard him talk about literally making X a lot like WeChat. This isn't a vision that feels like it comes from a serious strategy. It feels like something that happens on a whim. Take just one example, which is Elon Musk's decision to limit API access for third-party developers. If you are truly building a super app, you want third-party developers building apps on top of your app,

because with 1,500, 1,000 engineers, you're not going to be able to build all of the functionality that you need in order to create a really robust super app. And yet we see him saying things and then doing the exact opposite in practice. Well, if I could add to that, too, I mean, Mark Zuckerberg tried to do this at Meta or back at Facebook, right, with Messenger. They're kind of trying to do it a little bit with WhatsApp. And it didn't work. And Messenger is way bigger than Twitter was. I'd say Mark Zuckerberg is probably a much better executor of these kind of like software, consumer software ideas than Elon is. And I just don't think that this idea of a super app is super relevant to, you know, folks in the United States, quite frankly.

Like it has some appeal in Asia. But yeah, I just, I'm with Zoe. He has been fixated on it for years, though. He has. He talked about it a long time ago. But it's just like, I'm interested in world peace. It doesn't mean it's going to happen, like kind of thing. It's just not clear to me what that even means to him.

So what's the thing they're going to do? What's the revenue, as Scott just asked? Is there anything they could do? Give me an idea, each of you. I mean, I think payments are the big push, but I would be curious, like what, Kurt, I think that that's the kind of X.com vision from the 90s is integrating a payment platform with social media. Not Tucker Carlson Network, right? Yeah, I'm not going to say this is going to work, but because this is where they're headed, I'll point it out. They're going into this professionally produced video route that we actually saw with the Twitter 1.0 guys.

Yeah. And, you know, the idea being, hey, if we have WWE wrestling and we have Don Lemon and we have Tucker Carlson and, you know, God willing, we're going to partner with the NFL. That's never going to happen. But let's pretend. Right. Maybe, maybe, maybe they could get some high quality video advertisers to come back because they know they're advertising against the NFL or the WWE. They're not advertising against random people in your feed. We saw this play out with Twitter 1.0. It did not work. I'm not necessarily convinced it's going to work here. But since that's the direction they're going, I'll say that that might be what we're going

to see over the next year. You young people don't remember when Yahoo did news. Everyone wore Banana Republic outfits. It didn't work. I feel like that's kind of their vision of what's going to happen. If you were going to ask me what I think is actually going to happen, I think XAI subsumes X. I think the focus becomes large language models and X becomes an input for those models, a training ground for those models. But the focus and the momentum shifts. But what's the consumer facing product there? I mean, a chat GPT rival. Oh, I see. Got it. I mean, X could still exist, right? Because you still want the training data

for all that. And like X still exists. But I think what we're seeing with like Cora, where all of the new investment dollars are coming in, but they're coming in to fund the AI initiatives. They're not going to revamp Cora and make Cora better. Like that me, is the corollary here. This is a prediction. This is just what I think. What is the most surprising thing that you found, the single most surprising, in a very short order? And will Elon own this thing going forward five years? I say yes. I don't know about the surprising things. I didn't do the whole book on it, but each of you tell me that. Yeah, I can go first. This is a little tiny detail, but again, one I found surprising, which is right around

the time that Elon started buying Twitter stock, which was late January of 2022, he had complained to CEO Parag Agarwal about the at ElonJet account and basically said, you need to take this off Twitter. It's following my plane. It's a privacy thing. And Parag essentially ignored Elon. And within days, weeks, he's buying Twitter shares. And two months later, he owns the whole company. Now, I'm not saying that's exactly the motivation, but I think the timing is super interesting. And I can also say that some people pretty deeply involved in the deal thought that that was a true motivation for him. And it's just crazy to think that this $44 billion deal may have started with Elon Jet account. And I don't

think it's that crazy. I would say Babylon B really bugged him. He complained about it to me, actually. Go ahead. Oh, and I do think Elon will hold Twitter only because I think to get rid of it would be to admit failure and defeat. And I'm not sure that he'd be willing to do it. And as Zoe pointed out, the XAI thing gives him a very logical pivot into the AI wars, and I think Twitter could be key to that. So I think he's going to hold on to it. Yeah, I mean, there were a lot of small, surprising revelations, but one that comes to mind immediately is just the afternoon of deal close when there's been this enormous push and pull over the summer. Will he buy the company? Will he not? He's going to sue Twitter. Twitter's going to sue him back. They're all ready to close

the deal. All of the paperwork is being signed. All of the lawyers are at the office. And Elon realizes that he's missing about $500 million, and they're short. And he asks Twitter if they can loan him the money, essentially, because it's about to be theirs. Twitter says, absolutely not. And they're able to get it anyway. But I think it just shows how slapdash the entire process was that even at the 11th hour, they were scrambling trying to get the funding. I agree with everything that you both said. And I think too much of his ego is wrapped up in X to have someone else own and run the company. What is the culture of the vibe like at Twitter right now? It's a totally different company from the one that it used to be in every way. Like the office literally looks different. It used to have this kind of like celebratory multicultural vibe. And now it's like more of a spaceship metal kind of the art on the walls looks really different.

But I think the people who are there, it's very, very top down now. And the people who are there are either completely bought into Elon Musk's vision or they're trapped for visa reasons. But either way, they're pretty scared to talk. And there's not a vibe of like open discussion at all anymore. and there's not a vibe of like open discussion at all anymore. Yeah, I was going to say just the commitment to Elon is pretty intense for the people who are still there. And like we're at the point where most people who didn't believe or whatever that they've been able to jump ship, not all, but most.

And so it's just, yeah, it's much more hardcore Elon than it was before, to give Zoe's book a shout out there. Yeah, excellent. All right. Thank you, Zoe and Kurt. I recommend both books, Scott. Again, Zoe's book is called Extremely Hardcore Inside Elon Musk's Twitter. And Kurt's book is Battle for the Bird, Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk, and the $44 billion fight for Twitter's soul. I would say the soul is lost, but I really appreciate that from both of you. Thank you, Cara. Thanks, Scott. Thanks so much for having us. And we're excited for your book as well. Yeah. Snooze. Oh, stop it. You're not reading any of them, Scott. So just move along. Anyway, thank you guys so much. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails.

Okay, Scott, let's hear some wins and fails. Did you like to go first? No, you go first, Cara. I would say the win, I thought the Super Bowl was, again, like the Grammys, a real win for entertainment and real people. It was lovely. It had a lovely vibe to it. And I liked it a lot. And I don't love a sports event. And I would say, I got to say, a win goes to Joe Biden's social media manager did a great, I was really impressed. I thought it was very funny and tongue in cheek. And I think they're doing a fantastic job. I don't think it's going to get through to as many people, but I'm glad they're on TikTok,

Communist Party and all. My fail was was, as I said earlier, Donald Trump with NATO. I get there's issues around NATO. Hello. Nice to meet you. So democracy is tough. But what he has said is dangerous. It's dangerous, especially the signals it's given to someone like Putin. My only non-worry about that is Putin's incompetent. And as you see, he can't even win in Ukraine. He's a world power. So that would be the only thing. But to put so many people in harm's way like this is, he should not be president of the United States.

I get why people want to vote for him. I'm not trying to shame you, but to wish for the economy to go down was heinous enough. This is really, really, really dangerous. Everyone's world will be crushed economically and if something like this happens. It's an invitation to dictatorship and it's an invitation to dictators. Well, can you imagine how Finland feels? Finland, one of the big victories of NATO, the European Union, and the brave Ukrainians and Biden and the EU's coming together around pushing back on the Russian invasion of Ukraine is Finland decided to join NATO. How the fuck do they feel right now? They're taking their young men and women

and putting them in a NATO uniform. And you're saying that the primary funder in, let's be honest, NATO's for the most part controlled by the US. We're now saying to Finland who shares an 800 mile border with Russia, the guy that might be president is saying that Putin should attack NATO. I mean, anyway- And that's what he said. Don't say he suggested it. He said it. He's a transactional fuck is what he is. He thinks everything's a real estate deal, and he isn't really that good at real estate either. So please, it's not real estate. This is not real estate. These aren't condos in Queens. It's not. This guy's wholly unqualified to be the commander in chief, wholly, and dangerous.

Okay. So my win is I can't help it. I've said, young people, you shouldn't buy, try and find the needle in the haystack. You should buy the haystack, buy low-cost ETFs and index funds. But I love stock picking. I think it's fun. I think you should take a quarter or maybe even a 30-year capital and try and find outsized alpha and gains in individual stocks. You learn a lot about the markets if you're so inclined and most people aren't, but if you are. But one of my holdings, and I'm talking about my own book here and it's confirmation bias, but I think there's some logic here. I think Airbnb is more of a prediction than a win, is going to have a monster earnings at the close of business today. We release on a Tuesday. I'm still just in absolute awe of Meta's earnings. And I'm not in awe of the company. I think Mark Zuckerberg, to have all that kind of money and not protect people means he's a boy

whose masculinity never took over and his intelligence and his skills have vastly outpaced his empathy and masculinity. I think he's a lost man. But the earnings were so striking to grow revenues 25% and while reducing headcount 25%. I've never seen anything like that. And I tried to suss out what are the things that really drove it. And it was one, I looked at, I compiled who are the biggest purchasers or who has the most NVIDIA AI-enabled GPUs on order. And the two biggest are Microsoft and Meta. They have the most on order. And I don't think there's any accident that Microsoft became the most valuable company in the world and Meta just absolutely blew away its numbers.

And I was talking to the team today. numbers. And I was talking to the team today. I believe that these GPUs are basically that this moved AI is the equivalent of corporate Ozempic, and that it's giving them such incredible efficiency, they can shed weight like they've never before. And I was thinking about Airbnb. They also, what else is meta? Meta is in a consumer space. Consumer spending is much more robust than people think. It's the biggest player in the space. We're moving to an economy, I asked Swatamotor and on Prop G the other day, and he's like, it's not necessarily a good thing, but size matters, and it keeps increasingly matter. And the biggest company in every category is garnering more and more efficiency and more and more market share. Consumer spending vastly

outpaced any estimates. And then I think about Airbnb. They bought an AI company in Q3 of last year. It wasn't a big purchase, but it reflects that Brian is really thinking about AI. They have not been hiring like crazy. Unfortunately, there's some unfortunate winds to their back. And that is, I think young people have sort of, I don't want to say given up on buying a house, but are taking a lot of that money. And there's just a different gestalt, zeitgeist among young people.

If you're in a relationship with someone, you might think, I'm going to go to Bangkok for three months and work remotely. And that just feeds right into now 20%, I believe, of Airbnb's bookings are for 30 days or longer. Consumer spending is way up. I think they've embraced AI. I think you're looking at, they're the leader in their space. I don't think it's just young people. You know, we're renovating a house. I would look,

first, before looking for something, I went to Airbnb. And all of that, anyone who's actually looked at the pricing of Airbnb, I hate to say this, Airbnb has monopoly power. And look at the fees they charge. Oh, there's VRBO. Yeah, there's VRBO. They're pretty good. VRBO to Airbnb is what Lyft is to Uber. And that is, it's kind of cute. In certain areas, they're good, especially with older people and older. Anyway, yeah. Yes. I like them both. I like them both. Anyways, I just think, and this is a prediction, and granted, I can disclose around the stock, but I think you're going to see a monster earnings call tonight from Airbnb that's

going to surprise everyone to the upside. And quite frankly, the market already senses it. Stock's up 7% today. My fail is, I was really moved and shocked by, I mean, not shocked, shocked, but not surprised. Someone put out this Instagram reel with Julia Roberts talking about this picture with her niece. Did you see this? Yeah, she looked adorable. Emma Roberts. It was just so cute. She's with her niece, cute thing, playing cards in the morning. They look adorable. Yeah. And there are literally hundreds of comments

about how she's not aging well and look how shitty she looks, talking about what's failed surgery, just really going after her looks. And I thought to myself, okay, if one of the most beautiful women in history gets attacked like this, what are the chances that our daughters get to their 30s unscathed? And she made this point. beautiful women in history gets attacked like this,

what are the chances that our daughters get to their 30s unscathed? And she made this point. Yeah, and I really appreciate her saying that. Yeah, she made a very big point of it. Good for her. She came out swinging. She said, this is just such bullshit. And I thought, and here's the thing, fairly or unfairly, the reality is women are disproportionately evaluated based on their appearance, and men are disproportionately evaluated based on their economic well-being, economic prosperity.

You would never say to a man, you are so weak and such a failure and have so few skills, you will not be able to take care of your kids. You would never say that to a man. you will not be able to take care of your kids. You would never say that to a man. You would never go on social media and say, I've observed you, and you will never be able to take care of your children. You would think that is a low blow.

You would never say that. But it's open season on women's looks. I agree. I liked what she had to say. She was clear-headed in doing it. I have to say, dunkery has really got, I've about had it with dunking. Like, I don't mind if it's at, like, big famous people. And some of it's funny. I like it when it's funny and not so righteous.

But the righteousness and the ability just to say nasty shit out loud is really, it's a disease of Trump. It's a disease of Trump. I'm a sexist. I make fun of men's looks. I objectify them. With women, with women, you don't make fun of their Trump. It's a disease of Trump. I'm a sexist. I make fun of men's looks. I objectify them. With women, with women, you don't make fun of their looks. Yeah, oh, I agree. I don't think you should make fun of anyone's looks, but yeah.

Our society disproportionately evaluates women, and young women especially are told that their entire net worth, their self-esteem, unfortunately, should come from their looks. You would never walk into a restaurant and start and see someone famous and go, Jesus Christ, you're aging poorly. You would never say that. It and start and see someone famous and go, Jesus Christ, you're aging poorly. You would never say that.

It's not a free speech issue. And the thing that was really unfortunate about it is a lot of these comments you can tell are from men. Yeah. And it's just like, Jesus Christ. Welcome to Gamergate. This is, I agree. Did your mother teach you anything? So, and everyone goes to, well, it's free speech.

It's great about the internet. You would never behave this way. You would never go on Twitter and say to a young man, you can't speak English. Your logic is so poor, you will never be able to take care of your children because you'll be such an economic failure. You would never say that. You wouldn't. Anyway, so my fail is social media has given mostly men license to really attack.

This is the opposite of masculinity. These guys think that they're being tough. You move to protection. And women are especially sensitive because our society disproportionately evaluates them based on their looks. And it's not right, but it is. No man should ever disparage a woman's looks, ever. My win goes to Julia Roberts for speaking out and clapping back. I thought it was a nice moment for her to say, you know what?

Yeah, what are you thinking? What are you thinking? It's bad raising. When someone comes at me with, oh, it's my free speech, I'm like, fine, but you're an asshole. Like, that's what you are. You're an asshole. That's simply what you are. Anyway, speaking of relationships and men and women together, Scott and I went on Esther Perel's podcast, Where Should We Begin, for some couples counseling, because we love each other so deeply. You'll be able to hear the entire session next week.

And here's a little tease. Sometimes people present themselves as tough. Yeah. But for the purpose of covering, which often is a very tender, gentle. I think you're talking about me. I am actually tough, but I also can be tender. It's okay to be tough. I mean, we've met maybe three or four times that we have spoken together.

I don't think of you as tough, but I do sometimes think you can be intimidating. Which Scott, who presents as tough, doesn't intimidate me at all. God, literally our narcissism knows no bounds. I know's true but that's it was good anyway uh that'll drop in the pivot feed on tuesday february 20th uh it's very enjoyable that's what the world needs more scott and kara yeah anyway we want to hear from you by the way send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-pivotOT. Scott, that is the show. We'll be back on Friday for more. What an enjoyable show. Once again, I love our relationship. I love our

relationship. Read us out. Today's show is produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Intertot engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Neil Saverio. Nishat Kuruva is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.