Pivot - Disney's Victory Lap, Online Privacy, and Guest Ruth Ben-Ghiat

Episode Date: April 9, 2024

Kara and Scott discuss Meta's stock continuing to rise, California businesses challenging Gov. Gavin Newsom on taxes, and Elon Musk's robotaxi announcement. Then, Disney successfully fended off Nelson Peltz in a proxy battle, but where does the company go from here? Plus, could Congress be getting close to actually passing an online privacy bill? Finally, our friend of Pivot is NYU history professor and author of "Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present," Ruth Ben-Ghiat. Ruth explains what the autocrats of the past can teach us about Donald Trump. Follow Ruth at @ruthbenghiat 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. And you've been gloat. We've been both gloat-trotting, haven't we? We have been, except you keep working. You keep working. So I was in Argentina with Louie, which I did a podcast while you were away, with Lydia Polgreen and Jon Favreau and Louie. But I'm back in D.C. You know, I hate culture, but I feel like every once in a while

I need to do something cultural for the kids. Yeah. And for you. So I took the boys to Egypt and went with a – by the way, if you ever get a family you can travel with where everyone gets along, you got to hold on to those people. So we went with the Bjornsons who are this wonderful, like, lovely family. It wasn't the Galloways, but go ahead. No. So it wasn't the Galloways, but go ahead.

No, we're the dysfunctional family where when they recede to their cabins at night, they thank God that they are who they are as opposed to us. But we did one of these flat river cruises where you stop every day with an archaeologist who takes you on a tour of the Sphinx or a crypt. Oh, my God. How was it? You know, look, civilization and time and a lot of the stuff that, quite frankly, I think about is really brought home when you go through Egypt. And the thing I register is that my kids didn't enjoy it, but they're going to really enjoy it when they're older. They're going to look back on it. Oh, why didn't they? Because no video games? Well, they're so twitchy not being on their devices. And you could tell they're kind of bored like three hours into the tour of, you know, the inside of a pyramid or whatever.

You can just see them getting kind of twitchy. But I just know when they're older, they're going to, you know, don't you think it's some things that you enjoy more after they've happened? I had pretty good travelers as a kid. Louie and Alex really went across the world, especially with Megan, who worked for Google. So she took them like everywhere. Like, you know, they met the Dalai Lama at one point. So they had kind of a different. Well, you know, there's a word for it. There's a word for people who get audience with the Dalai.

Who? Rich. It means you're rich, Tara. She was with Google. Oh, okay. Yeah, see above rich. No, but it wasn't personal. It was work stuff. He just admired your spiritual aura. He needed to was with Google. Oh, okay. Yeah, see above rich. No, but it wasn't personal. It was work stuff.

He just admired your spiritual aura? He needed to meet with you? No, whatever. I don't know why she was with the Dalai Lama. I have no idea. But in any case, when she, she would go to a lot of cool places. She went to all over Africa with Google because she would run Google.org. That's why.

So they went all over Africa, all over, you know, all over the world. And so she'd often take the children, which we would, we would pull out of school and thought it was a good idea. And at one point, Alex had been to like so many countries, it was crazy. It was like an enormous, like more than I've been. And, and someone was like, he was, I don't know, eight or nine. And someone's like, little boy, have you ever traveled anywhere interesting? And he was like, he was, I don't know, eight or nine. And someone's like, little boy, have you ever traveled anywhere interesting? And he was like, I've been to 65 countries. And I bet the Dalai Lama. I've met the Dalai Lama.

Oh, that's so Alex. He liked that stuff. He liked all of it. And so did Louis. I've been pheasant hunting with Mandela. How about you, bitch? No, no, no. They didn't do that.

They did not do that. Although one time, Megan was on a plane. They were going to Fez. Google was. This was a Google trip. And it was with Larry and Sergey and a whole gang of them. And they were going to Fez to see Bono. No, my kids did not go on this trip, but Megan was going on it. And they wouldn't let me on the Google plane because Larry Page was like, well, you can look at it. I wanted to see it. And they're like, you can look at it, but you can't say anything. And I said, I can't promise that. That's literally what every woman I've gotten naked says to me.

You can look, but you can't touch or come inside. Right. Oh my God, that was good. Oh my God, it wasn't good. That is impromptu porn humor. Sorry, go ahead. So they wouldn't let me get on it.

I dropped Megan off. They wouldn't let me see it because I would talk all about it, of course, because I wish I could to this day talk about what was on the Google plan, but I never was allowed on it. And then they were saying they had bought, this is really early, carbon credits. They were into buying carbon credits. And he was explaining it to me in detail, Larry Page, about the carbon credits. And because they were going to fly around Kilimanjaro to see it from the air, like to see the problems of climate change by flying around it. And I literally was like, but we're buying carbon credits because to make it better. I was like, why don't you just not fly over Kilimanjaro to do so? But that's what they were doing. They were circling it. Yeah, they were circling it. Well, so where'd you go after that? I went to Israel.

And? Well, one, I talk a lot. One of the many things I don't like about myself is I virtue sing a lot. I sing a lot. I talk about doing shit and I don't do it. So on the six-month anniversary of the attack, anniversary is the wrong word, six-month marker, I decided to go to Israel. Well, I went to the Nova Music Festival Memorial,

and I'm sure that'll become a memorial. It already is. Then I went to, let me start with the good stuff. Tel Aviv, as anyone who's been there, it's a cross between Miami and Berlin. It's a wonderful city. It's distinctive. However you feel about the situation, it's a fantastic city. And I would have dinner and someone overheard that I was visiting from america and like 11 people got up and waited in line just to shake my hand and say thank you for coming they're just so grateful that you're visiting they're having trouble getting people there and and so i had a wonderful you know it was very meaningful i went and took it i went into the gaza envelope i took a tour of uh kibbutz faraza which was one of two kibbutzes that was attacked. That was obviously very heavy and very upsetting. They have pictures of the kids

and the people who were murdered. So that was very heavy and very upsetting. And then I went to, I mean, I did weird stuff. I went to the crossing where the convoys of the humanitarian aid trucks are crossing. There's a kind of a narrative that Israel is, for a lot of reasons or falsely in my view, there's an impression that they're not providing humanitarian aid. And there's literally, I'd stopped and took pictures of this convoy that was over a mile long. And to be fair, the Gulf nations, Qatar, UAE, and the kingdom are supplying a lot of the materials.

But the amount of food and aid that is going into Gaza right now, it's just staggering. Not enough, and obviously the Jose Andres. Okay, but not enough. But the question is, where is it going? What happens when it gets there? But anyways, that's another talk show. But I'll say this without getting too deep into the arguments around this.

It was just very rewarding. And, you know, people know where I stand on the issue, but I wanted to do more than just talk about it. I wanted to go. So, yeah, it was very rewarding, but very, obviously, as you can understand, very heavy and upsetting at the same time and also while i was there there's huge protests against netanyahu i mean huge protests well and um but also i said i said i'm going to come back when should i come back and they said you should absolutely come back i forget what they call it but uh the gay pride parade there they say is the best time in in tel aviv It's like one of the biggest gay

pride parades in the world. But it's, look, it's a very progressive, interesting, you know, place right now. Anyway, I was happy to go there. Yeah. Well, we'll see a progressive, I mean, I think, you know, it's a very complex, and obviously Netanyahu is unpopular. He'd lose the election today from what I was reading over the weekend. At the same time, he's not going to call elections. And, you know, there remains all these vexing issues. And this bombing of this aid convoy from World Central Kitchen certainly has caused a lot of rancor, in this country, at least, and across the world. So it continues to be a vexing situation politically

and obviously from the people on the ground there. But hopefully it will, even Trump has moved away from total support, which is interesting. I don't know if you noticed, he said they have a PR problem, et cetera, et cetera. Well, I mean, good or bad, democracies wag the dog here.

And that is the elections. You know, Biden's softening his stance because, quite frankly, I think he's worried about Michigan. And I think Trump sees an opportunity. I think he might just be. Trump also, you mean, is also softening his stance. Well, Biden's rhetoric has changed a little bit. It sure has. I'm of the view that the best way to end a war is to win it.

I don't think they should be calling for a ceasefire. I think they should be calling for unconditional surrender and release of the hostages. And I, you know, we just, I just have a different view than a lot of people, especially young people on this. And we can have a civil conversation as you and I do and discuss it. But I don't see how, and I'll be honest with you, Kara, I think a lot of it is optics. I think the U.S. is, who has its own history with terrorists, and even the Gulf nations who have been eerily quiet on this, understand Israel's right to exist. And I'm, when Secretary of Defense Austin is meeting with the Israeli Defense Forces about

them going into Rafah, I think that the people, I think a lot of this is optics. I think the U.S. recognizes that this current situation is unsustainable. If Israel took over the U.S., it'd be business as usual. If Hamas and- Yes, I understand. I get that. I get that. I'm just saying it's just, things are changing in terms of our relationship with Israel. Whether, you and I,

for all intents and purposes, don't matter. It's the next generation which has changed rather drastically. And that's just true. It's just the way it is. And I don't think they're doing themselves any favors by,

the same thing we didn't do ourselves any favors by going into Iraq. You know, it just changes. Because it was a disproportionate response. That's the argument by going into Iraq, you know, just because it changes. Because it was a disproportionate response. That's the argument, right? I think so. I think so.

Yeah. But well, there's a lot to get today. Let's not have that. We'll have, we should have a longer debate about this and bring actual experts in. But I definitely think just talking to young people, I spent a lot of time with young people,

even just in Argentina, they have a point of view that has changed drastically, I think. Anyway, we've got a lot to get to today, including what's next for Disney after triumphing in that proxy battle and Congress unveiling a new legislation to protect online privacy, finally. Plus, our friend of Pivot is NYU history professor and writer Ruth Ben-Ghiat, who will explain why Trump's dictator talk should not be taken lightly. But first, at the time of this taping, Meta stock is up 8% in the last five days. The jump comes after analysts raised targets for the stock, saying it has competitive advantage to gain in the digital ad market as it integrates AI.

Also in Meta's favor, a motion filed to dismiss the FTC's monopoly claims better revealed Instagram's ad revenue for 2021, $32 billion, which is more than YouTube. Oh my God, that was such a great purchase. The pop also caused Mark Zuckerberg to pass Elon Musk in wealth, taking over the top spot as the third richest person in the world. Oh, Scott, I mean, there's obviously not, he's won the wrestling match, whether he likes it or not. I don't really care about Elon here, but what a performance. This is something, again, you had stressed, about Elon here, but what a performance. This is something, again, you had stressed, had not bought, but had stressed. Yeah, each year I make a stock pick. In November of 22,

my stock pick for 23 was Meta, and it's up 353% since then. This company, I mean, first off, at some point, we're going to have to have an actual wake and some closure and a funeral for this ridiculous consensual hallucination around headsets. I mean, granted, they continue to send weight loss tips to 5'10", 95 pounds, 17-year-old girls. And I really appreciate a business model where I get to vomit up all my inventory of all my experiences and pretend that it's poetry. I mean, I don't like the company. I don't like the people who run it. It's arguably the best-run business in the world right now. And my colleague, my former colleague at NYU, a guy named Peter Golder, a strategy guy, really brilliant, who ended up going to the tech school at Dartmouth, he had this fascinating insight that I wrote about in my first book. And then he said, the true innovators are terrible for shareholder value because they have to be so far out in front

that they get mud on their face, arrows in their back. It's the number two. Apple's the perfect example of the second mouse coming in. So you could argue around the key issue here. Elon Musk is the innovator. He came in and he laid off 80% of Twitter staff. the fact that he can run this company on one-fifth the number of people, granted, it's not doing well, but the operations that continue to go, he's sort of with the innovator there. Now, what Mark Zuckerberg said is, I got an idea. Let's lay off 20% of our staff and not

be assholes. And we can hold onto the revenue. And that has created what is arguably the biggest business trend of the last 18 months. And that is these companies thinking, you know what? We can have all of the great taste of reduced expenses without the calories of reduced revenues. Yeah, and they did it right. They did it efficiently. And Meta has also leveraged AI to get around the kneecapping that failed from Tim Cook. Their targeting is more efficient now. Instagram, which continues probably to be the best acquisition in the history of tech, is an absolute juggernaut, growing, still growing 20 plus percent a year while they cut costs. Yeah.

You know, let me just note something. Scott, when you recommended, you said 2022? I recommend, Meta was my stock pick of the year in November of 2022. Okay. October 28, 2022 is at its lowest in the past five years, $98. $99. So essentially $100. And now it's at $527.

Amazing. If we'd only bought, we'd be on my G650 going back to BA. I doubt it. To hang out with Lily. With the Luster. So where is it going to go here? When's it going to go from here? This isn't a stock I would get near right now because it feels expensive.

But at the same time, there's so many green flags here. The scrutiny around TikTok is good for meta. The growth of reels, the leveraging of AI. I mean, everything. But you still wouldn't buy it right now. I just, I feel like after a stock, I have trouble buying a stock after it's gone up four and a half fold in the last 15 months. But I wouldn't want to short this thing. And he's finally waking up and starting to reduce the expense and he'll start laying out people making excuses around the mixed reality ayahuasca trip that he had or the whatever you call it, the meta. What do they call these things?

The Oculus. They still haven't. It's 34 times its P.E. ratio is 34. It's still not. I mean, that's not ridiculously expensive given its growth. There's probably there's probably some still some upside there, but I don't, I mean, the juice has been squeezed pretty hard here, up four and a half fold. A company this big, its stock is up four and a half fold in the last 15 months. That's just, it's doing more revenue.

I mean, Instagram's doing more revenue than YouTube right now. I know. Isn't that amazing? Which is also a great business, by the way. Yeah. Anyways, meta's killing it. It's staggering. I hope it gets broken up. And I think parents continue to pay a huge cost for their dominance and their monopoly power here. Yeah. Trump media's down, just so you know. But of course, people took millions out, just so you know. Lots of people took millions. I was just pointing out Trump media value declined again, continues to decline through socials shares. But people are taking money out of the company, just so you know. That's crazy town. increases and rollbacks in recent ones. Real estate businesses are some of the biggest funders, partially in response to additional charge placed on luxury home sales that passed Los Angeles in 2022. Newsom and other local officials took out a full-page ad in the LA Times and San Francisco Chronicle calling out businesses like Chevron and UPS saying the move would kill funding for basic services. You know, California doesn't actually have the highest,

I saw a chart, doesn't have the actual highest taxes. And actually, there's a big boom in San Francisco real estate now because of AI and a lot of companies coming back. And it's on an upswing. You know, I don't know what to think of this. I think they want to just, it's actually not the highest taxes, which is surprising. Well, okay. The market is really an incredible beast. And New York, Hawaii, and California are three of the five highest taxes.

Now, if you could just live anywhere in the US, where would three decent... I mean, the reason why these places have the highest taxes in the world is because they can. And you know why? For the most part, it's worth it. And for all the people shitposting California, all these wealthy people and VCs, they could live anywhere. And yet they decide to stay put and just continue to bitch about California. And the thing I don't like, I mean, I don't know if you remember Howard Jarvis in Proposition 13, but he basically made it impossible to raise taxes without a two-thirds vote. And you ended up with incredibly budget-constrained school systems.

These things end up being suicide pacts that constrict local government. What I am a fan of is states competing. And you have seen a lot of people move out of California to Texas. And at some point, the lawmakers have to, in an agile way, face the issues and either increase social services or decrease taxes. But I've been thinking a lot about taxes, Kara. I've been thinking a lot about taxes. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Well, you know, Daniel Kahneman, the behavioral economist, passed away two weeks ago. Yeah, two weeks ago. Amazing.

I'm a big fan of his books, Thinking Slow and Fast, kind of like, it was one of those books I don't read a lot, but if I like a book, I'll read it twice and try and cement it into my memory so I can sound smarter than I am. And that was one of those books. But he did great research looking at the effects on money and happiness. And the reality is money is correlated to happiness. That's the bad news. The good news is that it tops out. the bad news. The good news is that it tops out. And if your objective is to be happy,

then at some certain point, shouldn't we go back to the 50s and 60s, where above a certain point of extreme wealth, you get taxed at 90%? So it's just a real argument for returning to a much more progressive tax structure at the very high level. And to be fair, I think Governor Newsom's taxes of late are mostly about what a lot of people consider onerous, but taxes on the very, very wealthy. And this is my view. Okay, so say taxes become ridiculously high above a crazy amount of money. Here's the thing. Getting to hold on to that money, it's not going to make any happier. Yeah. Well, here's what the highest tax burden, just people know, New York, Hawaii, Maine, Vermont, Connecticut, New Jersey, Maryland, Minnesota, Illinois. It's not California necessarily. And it has high taxes. The lowest one is Oklahoma, 7.12%. Well, doesn't that make sense? I mean, again, C above high tax. It's like, okay,

a Porsche costs a lot of money and guess what? It's worth it. There's also higher sales tax burdens, so it unduly hits the poor in some of these states that have no taxes. Regressive taxes, yeah, sales tax and things like that. Yeah, anyway, we'll see. We'll see where it goes. I think he's going to have a good year in California. Lastly, Tesla reverts RoboTaxi in early August, Elon Musk announced. I have one word for this. I'll see it when I see it. Fine. It's not going to be a product. He's just hand-waving because there was a very long Wall Street Journal article about the real problems at Tesla, which we've been talking about. We're coming for a while. Eh, product, competition, crazy toxic owner. Here's where we are. Tesla should have

jumped a little bit when he talked about RoboTaxi, but this is just, just make good cars, Elon, and focus on them and stop virtue signaling all over Twitter. That's really pretty much what I would say. I don't know. Any thoughts? I agree with you. It's a press release. We have autonomous cars. What's the innovation here? I was using Waymo in San Francisco, yes, you know. Is he claiming it's going to be a better car? Right now, this is about regulatory approval. I'm not getting in a robo-taxi for them. I'm already nervous enough in one that has much more sensors. He needs to create a series of distractions because over the last decade, people have noticed that the EV umbrella creates

disproportionate unearned market capitalization. And so the biggest manufacturers in the world, specifically automobile companies, have said, okay, we're going to go hard into EVs. And there was a lag. And similar to Netflix through the aughts he had in the teens, he had basically open field because to his credit, he started early. But now you have BYD saying they can come up with a decent EV for $10,000. In addition, you have seen an absolute crash in the value, the residual value of used Teslas. And so people are scared to buy a new one. They massively missed here. They essentially, they massively missed here they they essentially they they reported 387 000 in global deliveries and they estimated 449 000 that's a big hit so this company it's not an ai company it's not an energy all the jazz hands from all the bullshit analysts trying to pump the stock up trying to

pretend it's something it's not it's an automobile company it'll start trading like an automobile company which means its shares still have a long way to go down. Well, the high was in November 2021. That's his high point before he bought Twitter, I guess, a 407. Now it's in the hundreds, 164. And he keeps doing tiny little jazz hands. He's going up and down, but he's got... Just make better products, Elon. That's it. Like, really, seriously. People have caught up.

Just stop. Stop with the press releases and make things that people want to buy. And by the way, your car isn't that interesting anymore, considering how many great cars there are, which we talked about. You don't have to buy a Bolt like I do, but you certainly have choices. You just lost all credibility. I know, but still. But I have a lot of friends who are buying them, and they're all... but you certainly have choices. You just lost all credibility. I know, but still.

But I have a lot of friends who are buying them, and they're all like, I was taking a look at some of the, I was looking at the Bronco, and I'm looking at the Rivian, the newer, the smaller. Don't say a lesbian joke. Don't say, oh, wait, am I thinking out loud? I'm sorry, Bronco.

No, but I was looking at the Rivian, the smaller one, and I have to say, there's no way I'm going to buy a Tesla because he's such a jerk, but not mostly because there's more choice. Yeah. I have lots of choices there's no way I'm going to buy a Tesla because he's such a jerk. But not mostly because there's more choice. I have lots of choices. That's the thing.

Anyway, who cares? Wave your hands all you want. Just build better cars. That's what I would say. I would argue. I actually, and I hate to, I think Tesla's a great car. I just think the gap, the marginal difference has been closed. A lot of people don't like the inside.

I don't like the, I never like getting in a Tesla. I got in a lot of Teslas, I'll tell you, in Buenos Aires, where I was taking a car, Uber. Uber works really well there. A lot of people- On your way to Tango and beef? Tango, just more beef than Tango. Argentina is literally a case study in how bad governance can fuck up an incredible nation. A lot of beef. Anyway, it was delicious. Let's get to our first big story. Disney is looking ahead to its future

after successfully fending off activist investor Nelson Peltz, an all-around jerk-off guy. I know you like him, but he said a series of idiotic things recently. Hold on, hold on, hold on. Have I ever said I like Nelson Peltz?

Have I ever met him? Yeah, kind of. No, I like governance. Good investor. I like companies not wasting time on shareholder battles. All right, in any case, he's said a lot of stupid things recently. For the second time in two years, Disney announced last week that shareholders had voted to elect its entire slate of board nominees by a substantial margin following an expensive proxy battle.

What a waste of money. Peltz's company, Tryon Partners, said it was disappointed with the outcome, but proud of the impact we had in refocusing this company on value creation and good governance. Fine, you get that. And they made some money too, I think a couple hundred million dollars. You've been talking about this prospect for months. Does he come back for another fight? As I said, he made $300 million, a 40% return, so good for him. So he wins when he loses. This is a win for Bob Iger, but I'm not sure he comes out unscathed. And of course, there's the succession plan. He said, is the board's number one priority, and that's being

treated with a sense of urgency. They have brought some people on the board who are good at that, but his contract ends in 2026. So what should happen here? What should prioritize? He could have another attack by an activist. At some point, he announced an expansion of its Magic Kingdom Park in Florida last week, part of a 10-year, $60 billion investments in parks, cruises, and experience. He settled with Ron DeSantis. He seems to have cleaned up some of the messes. So, thoughts? Well, so again, around predictions. In November of 23, one of my three stock picks was Disney. It's just undervalued. And I like Bob. He's a good manager. On the Prop G pod two weeks ago, I predicted that Nelson would not get a board seat, and it was obvious. And the reason why

is that the CEO and his proxy solicitor have more insight into what shareholders are thinking. And very rarely does a CEO let a shareholder vote go to a vote if they're not going to win. So just some personal experience here as a chance for me to flex and talk about me, which I know you're missing. Okay, I can't wait. So when I raised 600 million bucks,

bought 17% of the New York Times and said, we're filing a 13D and we want four board seats. Companies under managed needs to divest things, including the 17% of the Boston Red Sox, which made no fucking sense. Anyways, Janet Robinson, the CEO at the time, they showed up to negotiate and they offered us one board seat.

And I took my capital partner, we kept running back and forth in the meeting. And I said, ask for all four, they're dead. They wouldn't be negotiating unless they knew they were fucked because they know their shareholders better than we do. And the only reason they're here is because they know they're going to lose at the annual meeting. And so they offered, you'll love this, Garrett, they offered two board seats as long as I was not one of them. Of course. They did not want me on the board. And my capital partner said, we'll do two, but Scott has to be one of them.

But the moment if Bob, it doesn't go to the annual meeting unless the incumbents know they're going to win. And the moment it was clear there wasn't going to be a settlement, it was clear that he wasn't going to get the seat. And it was an overwhelming victory for the incumbents. And it's very straightforward what happens here. If the stock goes up, he's fine. It's gone up. It's been going up. It's about 20 or 30% year to date. So, so far. But it's still, if the stock goes down, if the stock goes down, Bob is going to announce a succession plan sooner rather than later, and he's going to go give Nelson, if Nelson still wants it, a seat. If the stock goes up, Nelson wins, Bob's fine, rides off into the sunset. It's all about what the stock does

the next nine months. Right, nine months. So your thoughts, where is it going to go? Look, I think Disney is going to be one of the consolidators as opposed to the consolidates in the streaming market, which sets the multiple. That's the growth business. That's the future. In addition, they're sitting on top of this amazing business that doesn't get the credit it deserves called the parks. They really are singular.

True, you have Universal for the teens. You pointed that out to me. I like that analogy. And here's the thing. Netflix and Google can't build these parks, so they're not interested in it. These are decades-long investments, unbelievable experience. You have to be part of it. If you have kids with Moana and live-action Moana, Frozen 4, 5, whatever the hell they're making.

And there's a great flywheel. You can bet there's going to be all sorts of Frozen rides, right? So the IP here is unprecedented. They're going to have a nice niche and family around streaming. They have the cash cow with the parks, and it's trading at a 10-year low. They've had some misses. I mean, Wish didn't do very well. They still got the frozen juggernaut. They've got Moana. They've got a lot of stuff. But some of the stuff doesn't do well. Like, I know they've had a series of movies that haven't done that well, but he's got

to get back to entertaining. The thing that irritated me about Pelts was he didn't like Black Panther. He said it was too woke. What an amazing movie. And it was enormous hit. What an idiot. That's a distraction. What a frigging idiot.

I know, but he's an idiot. Just when he comes out of his mouth, I want to like, hush it up. Well, I don't know if I told you this, but my prostate, my prostatitis has been flaring up and it's clearly DEI. I mean, it's clearly like, it's clearly DEI's fault. What did someone blame DEI on?

It was something funny. Something happened in there. Oh, the earthquake in New York. They're like, it must have been DEI. No, it's clearly DEI. I love that. Anyway, but what is his biggest challenge? I'd like to know what you think his biggest challenge is. Look, Bob's... Succession. Yeah. Okay. So a lot of these guys

get... Okay. So you don't make... They call him the leader. And here's the thing. He's not the leader. You can't run a company of this size and complexity when one person is in charge with leading it. His job is to create an environment where there's great leadership across all the divisions and an atmosphere of success and innovation. So he's about creating an environment. And it's not easy to create an environment when, quite frankly, as nice as he is, you're seen as someone who keeps executing the people who get near the Iron Throne. Really good CEOs in board meetings. I love the succession strategy we do once a year with the CEO.

And you can always tell who's a good CEO. Or one of the ways is they come in and they're really thoughtful about giving the bench play time in the board meeting. And then you have other CEOs who want to make it clear that there's me and everybody else. And without me, this thing doesn't work. That's when you know, you got to start thinking about finding another CEO. And unfortunately, some of the most famous CEOs in the world, they don't even realize it, have a habit of executing anyone who gets near the Iron Throne. He has not done a great job instilling confidence in fostering and cultivating leadership. So on a cultural level, that's number one.

But most importantly, he's going to make the right moves about the parks. They know how to run that business in their sleep, I think. And the key here will be moving the streaming platform Disney Plus and Hulu to profitability while maintaining growth. Which he talks about, which he's been talking about rather confidently, I've noticed in his utterances. He's been talking about making it quite profitable, doing a lot of things they wouldn't have done before. The reason why it'll be profitable is that for the first time in the history of this company, in two years, they haven't raised their content budget, and that is Netflix,

while they have also raised prices. So Netflix has given cloud cover for a rationalization in the sector such that Disney Plus and HBO can raise their fees without raising their content budgets. This whole market is rationalizing, which is good for Disney. Although they've got to sort of get a little bit heftier. I know they have all the kids stuff, but Netflix is just killing it with their shows. I have to say all the Netflix shows right now. It's brute force. They just have so much.

Well, they're also kind of good. There's a real mix. I'm going to watch this. I was noticing what I was watching when I downloaded. And there's another one called Scoop. It's about Prince Andrew. It's like it hits the gentleman was kind of good. You know,

although I didn't keep watching it. Interesting. They have One Day, which is doing great. They've got all kinds of, I know, they've got all kinds of things that are doing really well. I'm just saying, I watch all Disney because my kids do, but I don't find a lot there that I want to watch myself and I would. But Netflix really is, they've got sort of have something for me, Kara Swisher, and Netflix always does. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. And when we come back, Congress makes a big move toward regulating online privacy. And we'll speak with friend of Pivot, Ruth Ben-Ghiat about Donald Trump and dictators. They go together. Thanks for watching. hoodie on, just kind of typing away in the middle of the night. And honestly, that's not what it is anymore. That's Ian Mitchell, a banker turned fraud fighter. These days, online scams look more like crime syndicates than individual con artists. And they're making bank. Last year, scammers made off with more than $10 billion. It's mind-blowing to see the kind of infrastructure that's been built to facilitate scamming at scale. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of scam centers all around the world.

These are very savvy business people. These are organized criminal rings. And so once we understand the magnitude of this problem, we can protect people better. One challenge that fraud fighters like Ian face is that scam victims sometimes feel too ashamed to discuss what happened to them. But Ian says one of our best defenses is simple. We need to talk to each other. We need to have those awkward conversations around what do you do if you have text messages you don't recognize? What do you do if you start getting asked to send information that's more sensitive?

recognize? What do you do if you start getting asked to send information that's more sensitive? Even my own father fell victim to a, thank goodness, a smaller dollar scam, but he fell victim. And we have these conversations all the time. So we are all at risk and we all need to work together to protect each other. Learn more about how to protect yourself at vox.com slash Zelle. And when using digital payment platforms, remember to only send money to people you know and trust. Thumbtack presents the ins and outs of caring for your home. Out. Procrastination, putting it off, kicking the can down the road. In. Plans and guides that make it easy to get home projects done. Out. Carpet in the bathroom. Like, why? In. Knowing what to do, when to do it, and who to hire.

Start caring for your home with confidence. Download Thumbtack today. 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. Scott, we're back. Congress appears to be closer than ever to passing national online privacy protections. House and Senate subcommittee leaders from both sides of the aisle

unveiled a proposal on Sunday, meaning they're cooperating for legislation that gives consumers the rights to control how tech companies use their personal data. The American Privacy Rights Act would limit the types of data companies can gather, allowing users to opt out of targeted ads and permit people to sue bad actors

for violating their privacy. This would be a big thing. One thing the bill doesn't do, prohibit companies from targeting minors with ads. I wish that did that. A lot of states have their own online privacy laws. We'll see what happens to the national standard. Of course, the tech companies will push back. It's unclear whether it's going to get passed, because they've got a limited amount of time. What do you think? What do you think? It's with Maria Cantwell as one of the pushers of it on the Senate side. I mean, it feels better. I think you know more about this, although I want to come back. I do have a story about Senator Cantwell. Oh, okay. Well, you know, this is, look, here's the problem with a lot of the stuff they're doing is they met,

I've seen a lot of criticisms of this. I've seen a lot of positives. You can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good, right? That we have to put a stake in the sand to add privacy laws. It does a lot of things it doesn't do. I would definitely add prohibiting companies from targeting minors with ads. We do it on television in certain ways. And they can see ads, but like remember when there were cartoons with cigarette companies, they should be much more attuned to what's happening, especially because there's such a movement going on right now about that. So I think it's a good time to do that. You know, the companies will scream about innovation and hindering them.

But this is sort of the baseline, it seems to me, this privacy bill is the baseline of anything else. And they should pass it as an act of symbolism to do so. And I don't think it damages anything. You know, that's, again, that's always the complaint of tech companies. I don't think tech companies should resist this happening. And probably it's sprawling. There's a lot through. There's a lot here on it. And so we'll see what people think and the reaction it has. But it's big. It's a big bill. But opting out of data practices and targeted advertising and also being able to sue them seems to me table stakes. What do you think? More importantly, back to me, when I first moved to New York, I literally left tech, sold my house, got divorced, moved to New York without a single friend. I even said to my ex, who I'm still close with, I said, you can have all our friends. I just want to change my life.

And I moved to New York, and I fell into this group of really interesting people. to New York and I fell into this group of really interesting people. And one of my friends, a woman named Anne Maffei and this other guy, Boykin Curry, all these sort of like super smart culture, like interesting people. And because I was, I think 34 or 36 at the time and single, but had been married, which meant I could actually commit to something. I was the ultimate setup. Everyone was trying to set me up. And I had dinner with a woman. Dating. I had dinner with a woman I think you know or knew. Yeah.

Rob Glazer's wife, ex-wife, just like plucky, young. Oh, you did. Wow. Yes. Really nice, attractive, like spark plug. And she said, I have the perfect woman for you. She's smart. She's good looking, dah, dah, dah. And I said, great. And she said, she's going to be in town. Are you comfortable dating high profile women? I'm like, well, what does that mean? She goes, well, her name is, she's running for Senate and her name's Maria Cantwell. And first off, I think Senator, it never happened. She was an executive in a tech executive. At his company, Real Networks. And I asked some questions about her. And it ends up, and I said, there was one feature, of course, me being a thoughtful person.

She said, I said, I'm not interested. And she said, why not? And I said, I didn't get divorced to date women who are older than me. Oh, no. I want younger. How much older? Like six months? She's like six years older than me.

But I said, I want to date much younger women who have terrible relationships with their father. Those are my two criteria, Kira. Oh, my God. Those are my two criteria. Jesus. Jesus. Anyways, so I could have been a senator's husband, but I told her I also couldn't date her because I didn't want that relationship to come in between my relationship with, or my relationships with Patty Stonecipher and Emily Ratajkowski. I thought they just would have been too hurt.

It just would have put a strain on those budding relationships. Oh God, these fake relationships are so creepy, but funny on the answer. In any case. I could have been a senator's husband. I could have been the biggest problem her staff had to deal with.

Oh God, you would have been. Right? She's terrific. I would have been like, who is the secretary of Homeland? The woman from New Jersey whose husband was a left job. Yeah, you would have said,

oh, you should have had to be apologizing. I could have been Billy Carter. Yeah, or Mnuchin's wife. Remember, she was like posing with dollar bills and stuff like that. She's crazy, he is crazy. That matches. Yeah.

I would have been, I would have really stood, I would have been the bad peanut butter to her chocolate. Right, yeah. She's sane and attractive and nice and I would have been, I would have really stood, I would have done the bad peanut butter to her chocolate. Right. Because she's sane and attractive and nice. And I would have been, the staff would have, there would have been people just to manage me. Okay, moving away from your dating life.

Here's why it's important. It would make privacy a consumer right and put people in control of their data. That is really at the heart of it. And, you know, we have not had a comprehensive national law on this, and we have to. It is a signal that we care about this. It also preserves a lot of the stuff that's been happening in states, especially California, which has been out front of this. There's such a patchwork of state laws. That's one of the issues. And to be able to sue these companies for violations is really important. It stays away from the free speech part. And it reigns in, you can sue them for this.

This is the kind of stuff I've been talking about. Go to their pocketbook. If Facebook is going to dominate digital advertising, you should have the same rights that you have to sue people. And so that's one of the things. And this just a comprehensive privacy bill says we care about this issue. Now, again, the people who don't like it and think it's too thin, people who are against it saying, how dare you? This is a baked industry right now, digital advertising. It deserves a piece of legislation. So we'll see where it goes. I don't know.

We'll see. I don't know. They're really busy with other important issues. I'm going to get a call from Maria Cantwell now and say I'm going to have a restraining order. Do you think she's still thinking about me? No, I'm going to see her soon. What could have happened? What could have happened?

I used to talk to her all the time when she was at Real. It was interesting. I love her. I think she's so good on the issues. She tried to insert $15 minimum wage into the Recovery Act. And of course, you know, we can give seniors a $90 billion increase in Social Security. Yeah, she probably doesn't get her due of the amount of stuff she does. She's a very serious. She's one of our few elected representatives who just shows up and does the fucking work. Yeah, she's a business person too. My favorite recent, like, posing for the TikTok cameras and trying to, you know, in the mad dash for an appointment to the Trump cabinet that will never happen is Representative Jim Jordan has sent letters to all the biggest advertisers demanding that they answer why they aren't advertising on true social.

I mean, that's what our representatives are doing. Why are you advertising on platforms where there's no people? They fit my political values. Anyways, a shout what our representatives are doing. Why are you advertising on platforms where there's no people? They fit my political values. Anyways, a shout out to Senator Cantwell. I think she's served the country really well. Yeah, she is. She is. She's a serious-minded senator, and she was a really lovely person to talk to back in the day, in the early internet days.

I really enjoyed her. Anyway, we got to get to our friend of Pivot. We got to get to our friend of Pivot. Ruth Bengiat is a professor of history at NYU and author of Strong Men, Mussolini to the Present. She also writes the sub stack Lucid, which focuses on abuses of power and threats democracy. Ruth, welcome. Thank you. I'm so glad to be here.

So we want to talk dictators. I want to start with something you posted on X last week after Donald Trump shared violent imagery of Joe Biden on True Social. You wrote, wake up people, this is an emergency. A lot of people have concerns about that imagery. But what was it specifically that made you sound the alarm here? You've been doing it for a while, so I'm not so sure that's the newest thing in the world for you. But talk about why that bothered you in particular, of the many things that could bother you about Donald Trump. Yeah. So it's about, you know, because I feel like Donald Trump has been waging and his GOP enablers

have been waging a whole campaign to delegitimize all of our democratic institutions. And in particular, attacking Joe Biden. This was an image which showed Joe Biden, it was a sticker on the back of a pickup, as though he were a hostage, kidnapped. And if you study coups, a third of my book, Strongman, is about coups and authoritarian takeovers. What is this showing? It's showing an outcome of a political situation where Biden has met a bad end, where he's somehow been overthrown and ended up tied up. And this is being depicted as something positive. And so it's continuing the coup. And it's just it's it's extremely dangerous for obvious reasons. And I feel like this is normalizing this is allowing people.

Which is the point, right? I mean, you called it you said Trump's repeated elevation of dictators as models of leadership should be understood as part of a reeducation strategy. Now, one thing he does is this is not new. He did that with CNN, if you remember him punching CNN. This was years ago. He did one that I wrote a column about when he was not just, you know, stand by and stand whatever the heck he said.

He does it a lot. It's not a new, fresh thing, but you're calling it a re-education strategy that's been ongoing, right? That it hasn't stopped the coup, and he continues to do that. Explain why, because he says he's joking, he says he's kidding, this is just him, this is his brand of humor, such that it's not funny, but still. Talk about the re-education part of it. Yeah, it's interesting. What he's been doing, and this is since the fascists,

Mussolini and Hitler, you've got to re-educate people to see violence in a positive way and even make it into something patriotic and even morally righteous. And Trump has been using his rallies since 2015. And this was part of my report for the January 6th committee. He's been just over and over saying like, oh, in the good old days, we used to be able to punch, you know, protesters. So there's that vector. And then he's been also elevating dictators, like doesn't matter, you know, North Korea, China, whatever they are, communist, fascist, as positive models of leadership. Mm-hmm. Orban, he recently met with Viktor Orban from Hungary. Go ahead. Yeah. And so Orban, what does he say? I take seriously what he says. And he says that,

you know, Orban's so great, he's so strong, because he says this is how it's going to be, and everybody just accepts it. So he's telling Americans, his followers, that this is a positive model. So if you take the violence as a way of moving history forward, which was January 6th, and you take the positive praise for these murderous dictators, you get a re-education strategy because he saturated the media environment for now many years over and over and over again. It's nice to meet you, Professor. I don't think we've met before. So we spent a lot of time talking about what a danger Trump is and how wrong and really anti-American a lot of his activities, much less his rhetoric are. But he was elected by the U.S. and he continues to poll really well, despite all of these things that are horrific to everyone on this podcast. What is it about the atmospherics in the U.S.

about the atmospherics in the U.S. that has led the populace to support this individual who we all agree does not acquit himself as we would want someone who wants to be the president. What's happened in America? What's changed here? That's a great question. And there are patterns to these things. And in the research for my book, when there's been a perception that there's been too much social progress and certain people are losing out, it could be conservative elites who are worried about losing their privileges. It could be people thinking there's too much gender emancipation, too much racial emancipation. You get a kind of counter-revolution. That's a big word. Or you get a backlash. And that's when somebody like a Donald Trump is appealing. But a Donald Trump also models himself for that environment. And the thing about these strongmen is that they're

highly sensitive. They read the marketplace marketplace and they understand what is wanted. And they model themselves. They will be whatever they need to be to get to power because they have no morals. They're just about getting control. So Donald Trump comes up and he was the perfect person as the anti-Obama. And he was the perfect person as the anti-Obama. And he was the male brute. So he addressed the people who felt that women had too much power, same-sex marriages were taking over, all of the racial stuff. And so that's what he did. And he also told these people that he loved them,

that they were the forgotten. And so there's a sense that he's not just going to represent them, he's going to protect them and take care of them. A daddy, a big daddy. And Mussolini was the victim. Erdogan's the victim. They all do this. And it's highly effective, this manipulation of emotions. Scott, you write about masculinity and emotions. And Trump is the latest example of somebody who's extremely skilled at using this. I think that's such an important point because I've been thinking a lot about Roe recently, and I don't think people zero in on some of the things you're last 30 years is unprecedented. They've doubled their elected positions in parliaments. There are now more women globally enrolled in tertiary education than men. And I think the extreme of any religion is really uncomfortable and wants these uppity women to sit down. And I think that's what Roe is. I don't think it's about birth. It's about taking power back. Isn't it specifically about telling very conservative sects of religious extremists who have disproportionate power and, unfortunately, young men who feel shunned by women that I'm

going to take power back from women? Oh, totally. And who better than a repeated, you know, Oh, totally. And who better than a repeated abuser? Somebody who boasts about putting women in their place. And this was part of his marketing strategy from the very beginning. And that's why when the Access Hollywood stuff came out, I knew that it would actually help him. Because these are the people I study. It was horrible to write the book and be in their heads. You know, Mussolini was a serial rapist and many others, Gaddafi as well. So this is part of their glamour. And until we wean ourselves from this kind of toxic, brute, you know, idea that this brute force, this ideal of masculinity is glamorous and desirable, we're going to be susceptible to these Donald Trumps.

So can you ask the similarities? Can I pick up on that between Trump and some of these classic dictators? I did not know that about Mussolini for your book. And also how they shape themselves, because I just interviewed Tim Ryback about his book Takeover, which is the six months, you know, it was touch and go for Hitler there, whether he was going to make it. And he adapted himself. He removed himself from crazy for enough time to convince them all the different constituencies that he needed to convince on the left and the right to finally appoint him chancellor, which gave him the opportunity to become more. So talk a little bit of the similarities when you're talking about these

various dictators and the differences. Are there differences also? Yeah, the outcomes are different. So whatever happens, it's not going to be a Hitlerian one-party state or a North Korean one-party state. But the similarities are that these people are highly sophisticated at communication. And whatever the era they're in, they use the latest tools of communication to forge a direct and unmediated bond with their followers. So Mussolini, you know, he was gesticulating, and he started in the age of silent cinema, used newsreels. Now Hitler, of course, he had the radio, and he ranted. And the Nazis invested in, like, state-of-the-art audio technology

so that when he had rallies, his voice would reverberate in ways that made him feel, seem more godly, because that's part of the personality cult. So they all do personality cults, which it's so interesting, the rules have not changed for 100 years, you have to be a man of the people. So you're relatable, and certainly Trump is, but you have to be the man above all other men, the man who gets away with it. you have to be the man above all other men, the man who gets away with it. And that's the rogue glamour. So they all use this. And so Modi used holograms when he ran initially for office, so he could be everywhere and nowhere like a god. Berlusconi, who owned TV networks, used satellite TV to be everywhere. And Trump used Twitter. So that's one thing they do. They have these bonds with that people feel they're speaking directly and only to them, which is which hasn't changed for 100 years. If you're advising the White House, how would you match this? Because Biden's certainly not that. Yeah, I think, in general, that we can learn from autocrats to make more use of emotion in politics.

One of the things that autocrats do really well is create these tribes and these communities, and they make people feel cared for. Now, it's bogus. Of course, they're just really trying to manipulate them. Trump doesn't care. At the beginning of the pandemic, I did an interview, and manipulate them. Trump doesn't care. You know, at the beginning of the pandemic, I did an interview and I told, I said that Trump doesn't care if you live or die and people got upset, but that's just how it is. But they seem to care about people.

So, so Democrats in general around the world can make more use of emotion, of joy, of hope, of love. emotion of joy, of hope, of love. And Biden does this in his own quiet way, but it'd be ideal if it's somebody who is a more charismatic, energetic vehicle for that kind of emotion. Is there someone like that? Is there someone like that? I'm not sure. I mean, I'm a big fan of Pete Buttigieg as a communicator. Um, and he's, he's been, he's got a restrained personality, but he's able to talk, he goes on Fox and he's liked on Fox. He's a very, very, he's a great asset as a communicator. Um, and he has everything I think, um, as a communicator and he could develop in this direction if given the space.

So what worries you the most about a Trump second term? What worries me the most about Trump's second term is that he has been very clear about his intent to have an American version of fascism. his intent to have an American version of fascism. Now, again, that's not going to be a one-party state, but he wants to turn the U.S., you know, the military if he could, but certainly law enforcement to repress large numbers of Americans, to deport, you know, millions, to deport, you know, millions, and he would stop at nothing to try and gain total control of the United States. And that's what authoritarianism is. At its very essence, it's the executive trying to, you know, overwhelm the other branches of government so that they can be safe and be never prosecuted again. Can't he actually do it? We're such a big and diverse country with so many, like,

you can't imagine California going along. There's elements in every state like this, but how do you manage to do that? I mean, Germany was a very particular, smaller country, so was Italy, so is Turkey in a way, you know, although it's much more diverse, Turkey's more diverse with Erdogan. How do you, and certainly Modi has done that, but has limits, has had limits in terms of what he can do. So how do you look at that? Is that a possibility? I mean, we've all seen the science fiction about it. We've all seen those apocalyptic movies where that happens. Yeah. I mean, Hitler, you know, Mussolini is actually a better example or somebody like an Orban versus Hitler, because today things often happen gradually.

But Trump is, you know, and Project 2025 is about, you know, having an accelerated transformation of government using executive orders, perhaps the Insurrection Act. And we know there are many things that he can do. The main thing that definitely would happen, because it happened during the first Trump administration, is that Trump is not interested in governance. He's interested in using public office for private benefit. in governance. He's interested in using public office for private benefit. And, you know, in his first administration, he spent one out of every three days not governing at the White House, but visiting Trump branded properties. And so this kind of enrichment for you and your family and cronies, that definitely would go on. He's already said, you know, he's boasting that he accepted money during his first presidency from the Chinese for, quote, services. And I'm still trying to get somebody to ask him what those services were. So the White House would be for sale. Our intelligence would be for sale. Perhaps it already has been, you know, keeping documents in his bathroom.

It already has been, you know, keeping documents in his bathroom. All of this lack of accountability and erasure of public versus private. That's the strongman thing. They don't they don't accept any erasure, any divide between public and private. It's all difficult time trying to figure out the approach to covering Trump. Do you have any thoughts around where the media has succeeded or not succeeded and the role the media plays in trying to figure out how to cover this guy? It's a little like Frederick Burchall in the New York Times reporter who sort of normalized Hitler for a long time. Oh, yeah. And Mussolini actually had a column, a syndicated column, because the anti-communist baron Hearst was his backer that reached a thousand newspapers for eight years in the United States. So talk about normalizing. I think, you know, we know that the press has been, it was working with an outdated playbook, a playbook that worked in terms of two,

if you had two candidates and two parties that were, that still bought into democracy. The problem is they've been slow to understand how to cover our situation where we're a bipartisan republic, but one of our parties no longer is in democracy. I see the GOP as an autocratic party. And if it were a sovereign entity, its foreign policy would be pro-autocratic, pro-Putin, pro-Orban. That's a reality. And they've struggled. So that's where they still do the both sides-ism. But it's a little more

subtle because, for example, Meet the Press, which has a bipartisan viewership, Kristen Welker has done very well actually bringing Republican guests on and probing them. And the audience there are Republicans who don't want to see perhaps a Republican aggressively bashed, but will listen to a careful probing of their hypocrisies of their inconsistencies. So you can think that this more gentle approach is perhaps not appropriate for our emergency, but it depends what your aim is. So what should they be doing? I think that the headline writers, there's a lot of headlines that are unhelpful, for example, even in the Washington Post and certainly in The New York Times.

Also, the placement of important stories about Trump's corruption. Often The New York Times will put it on page, you know, A13. I think that if we want to prioritize our saving our democracy, we have to have a different kind of placement of these big stories. Also to show the American public that people are being held accountable when January 6th insurgents are sentenced, when the DOJ is doing things to restore faith in institutions. because bashing the press is a popular habit, but it's a symptom also of this success of the right of making people lose faith in all institutions. Bannon flood the zone with crazy all the time. And so you get exhausted, including January 6. And so you're like, oh, I'm tired of listening to it kind of thing. Anyway, it's a really important book. There's a lot of really important books out these days in this area. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, her subtext is called Lucid, and her book is Strong Men, Mussolini to the Present.

Little light reading for you. Ruth, thank you so much. Thank you. I enjoyed the conversation. Thank you, Professor. All right, Scott, one more quick break. That was a happy topic. And we'll be back for wins and fails. Okay, Scott, let's hear some wins and fails. Why don't you go first? Mine are long and you cut me off. So do you want to go first? Cut you off?

How do I cut you off? You constantly cut me off. You don't invest in this relationship. Oh my God. Literally. No, nobody thinks that. Do you want to do a word count again? Just because you go to Argentina.

We can do a word count so I can prove to you again. A little asado. A little asado. Audience, just so you know, we do a secret word count, and Scott always comes out on top, just so you know. Daddy's on top. He likes to be in charge. He's Alan Alda publicly.

He's a caveman in the sack. Hello, ladies. Oh, my God. Hello. And as you see, I totally outspeak him. I could have been Mr. Senator Cantwell. All right. My win is Three-Body Problem. It's on Netflix. We were just talking about Netflix. Whoa, it is so cool. It's based on, I think it's a Chinese sci-fi thing.

And there's a really weird backstory. It's the guys who did Game of Thrones, so they know how to make a show. And they're really talented. And I've interviewed them before when they did Game of Thrones, and this show is really compelling. It's also weird. And the guy who funded it was a Chinese billionaire who got murdered by one of his employees. This is separately by being poisoned.

It's like this whole story is really... But the story itself is amazing, and it's hard. It's not easy. You really have to pay attention. And I'm compelled to watch it. And a lot of these shows, I have to say, like I did watch The Gentleman, but I'm not compelled to watch the next one. This one, I can't, like, same thing with Shogun.

What I think about with streaming is do I want to keep going? And there's a lot of stuff I leave off and I see my history of these things. And Shogun and this are the kind of things that move me forward. They're beautifully made, really interesting. The cast, I've never seen most of the cast. There are some Jonathan Prices in it, who's always fantastic. But this is a cast I don't know. And I love that. That's one of the things that's super compelling to me. My fail is, you know, this continued situation around abortion, and Trump is trying to thread the needle saying, right now he's saying abortion should be left to the states, declines to endorse a national limit. He was pretending. But I do think we have

to, this is one of the more compelling reasons that I've been talking to a lot of women, particularly, there are bans on all or almost most abortions in so many states, almost the entire South. And then there's bans after 12 to 15 weeks, and then a ban blocked by the court. There's several, but much of the South will be without abortion rights. So the entire South, really, unless, say, Florida wins in this election where they put it into the Constitution. But this is no way to run a country on a big issue. We have to come to some sort of agreement. And then I think the best chance of that is Joe Biden, obviously, not Donald Trump. And then I think the best chance of that is Joe Biden, obviously, not Donald Trump. He's made a mess of it, as we are. So that, to me, continues to be a vexing issue, bodily autonomy. So we'll see. It should be a much bigger issue. I understand why immigration is. I understand why crime is. But to me, abortion, I think, will be the biggest issue, one of the bigger issues in the election and should be. Go ahead, Scott. So my win, a huge win for women's sports.

Viewership estimates for the NCAA women's tournament final between Kaitlyn Clark's Iowa team and unbeaten South Carolina are between 18 and 24 million. To put that in context, the upper figure would be five times what the women's final drew just two years ago. It would also be, get this, Kara, every game from last year's World Series, all five games of the NBA finals, all but two college football games, and even outdo one of the NFL's postseason matchups. This is, I mean, the reality is there's been a lot of complaints about equal pay. And I quite frankly always said, well, as soon as they start making as much money as men's sports,

they will get as much money. And now it's happening. And this is a seminal moment for women's sports. Basketball, pulling more than- She's a star. She's a, wow. Unbelievable. So this is a really nice moment for women's sports.

Anyways, big win, Caitlin Clark and the South Carolina team and just women's sports in general. My fail, I had a different fail, but what you just said and what Professor Guillot said inspired me. In Florida, as the Supreme Court has said, actually, no, right to abortion is not codified. The governor can do this and limit it at six weeks. So someone has put on the ballot a resolution that would, in fact, give every woman in Florida the constitutional right to have an abortion, and they need 60%. It's polling pretty closely. So my newsletter, No Mercy, No Malice, I decided to do a big deep dive into Roe. Bodily autonomy has played a big

role in my life. And so what I came to sort of, I think, understand is that I was trying to figure out what's going on here. What are the drivers when you have the majority of even Republicans, much less the nation, are for some level of bodily autonomy, what's going on? And it's like, okay, it's about life. It's not. The people who are most vehemently and effective around the pro-life movement are the first to want to advocate for capital punishment or force a woman to carry essentially what becomes a cancerous tumor around or put a woman's health in jeopardy. It's not about life. And they think, well, then Democrats go, they're not obsessed with life, they're obsessed with birth. That misses the mark too, because again, it's the same group who wants to cut funding for the child tax credit. They don't want to make it easier for young people to have children.

As a matter of fact, able-bodied people, young people between the ages of 30 and 34, in 1990, 60% of them had at least one child. It's dropped to 27%. So if we wanted more kids, we could absolutely do it. We've just decided we're not obsessed with birth. What I determined or what all the data shows is the following, and this is both Professor Guillard and Fareed Zakaria's new book, The Age of Revolutions, I think it's called, Reflect.

And that is, there are certain conservative wings of almost every religion that are really uncomfortable with the assent of women. And the fastest way to, quote unquote, put them back in their place is to do what we do to the IRS or the antitrust committee, and that is to defund them. And when you force a woman to carry a baby to term against her will, you're basically impoverishing her and diminishing her power. And the fact that more and more women are less reliant on the government or on men is

really upsetting to some of these groups, and they want to go back. Now, that's not the most disturbing feature, and this is my fail. There's two stats. The first is that the greatest source of mortality by a factor of two for women who are either pregnant or have recently given birth is homicide. And abortion gives women the opportunity to break ties with a violent partner. But the really, really disturbing fact here is the following. The segment of America that provides the least support around bodily autonomy, it's not old white people. It's Gen Z men. old white people. It's Gen Z men. Men 27 and younger are the least supportive of a woman's right to terminate a pregnancy. And I believe it's because young men feel shunned by women and believe that if they take women back to the 50s and 60s, they're going to need them more.

I don't know what it is. I don't know if it's anger. I don't know if it's conspiracy theory. I don't know if it's just naked misogyny. But I was absolutely shocked and rattled by the fact that young men are the least supportive of a woman's rights to terminate a pregnancy. And it's also the definition of stupid, because it not only hurts society, hurts the economy, it hurts them. Because to be quite crass and blunt, society, hurts the economy. It hurts them. Because to be quite crass and blunt, when you deny a woman a woman's ability to plan out pregnancies and have kids when she wants to, fellas, let me tell you, this isn't going to increase but decrease the likelihood you ever get laid. What do you think is going to happen to sex when women may be forced to carry a baby to term against her will? So this is literally the definition of stupid. Young men feel shunned

by women. Young men want more sex. It's not that they're more religious. It's not all of a sudden they have a new undying love for the unborn. It's that they're angry at women. And let me tell you, the unborn. It's that they're angry at women. And let me tell you, that is not a good rap. That is not a good rap. Anyways, my fail here is young men who just do not understand that bodily autonomy is key to their ability to someday have kids. They're key to someday find a woman who wants to have a relationship and wants to have sex with them that might result in a partnership. And the fact that we are mistaking this pro-life movement for anything but the following, and that is trying to put this group of people who have ascended faster globally than any other group, and that is women. And we never win taking groups back. So anyways, my fail is Gen Z men. What the fuck are you thinking?

What the fuck are you thinking? And it doesn't that shock you? No, it doesn't. No, it shocked the shit out of me. No, I think there's a, I think what Ruth was talking about, sort of Uber Daddy, the man, the manly man.

It's such a toxic, it's literally, I have spent my whole life trying to raise sons who are not the opposite of that, but not that, right? Because I want them to feel good about being men. I want them to feel strong. I want them to feel, you know, their gender. I do. really wanted to learn how to shoot a gun and he did. And I wasn't going to deny him. I put him with someone who knew how to shoot guns. He wanted to go hunting. He did. And I, you know, I was like, I, he goes, do you want to go with me? I'm like, I don't have any interest. I think it's grotesque in many ways, but you should

do what you want. And he got his gun, he got his gun license in California. He took all the tests. He went with a friend of mine who was also a great fisherman and hunter who also took him fishing up in California on those boats for you. And I just feel like people are like, how can you do that? I was like, he wants to try it. He doesn't like it now, but he did it. And so I wanted them to feel whatever they want to feel, but definitely spent a lot of time thinking about how they treat women and how they think about women. And I have to say, both of them are very good boyfriends. They're very good. You know what I

mean? They care about their partner's health and their wellbeing, I think, from what I can see. I think Alex has a new girlfriend who's wonderful and who knows her own stuff. She's a strong woman, and he's attracted to that in a good way. And so I agree with you. I don't know what's in their fucking heads, these men. I honestly don't. I think a lot of it is, I mean, one-third, two-thirds of women under the age of 30 have a boyfriend, only one third of men. Women are dating older because they want someone more economically and emotionally viable. I also do think, I don't want to be too Alan Alda here, I do think that media has taught

women to exit a relationship, that you don't need this, you deserve better, and the Carly Simon song in the background. I don't think enough women, if you go to these sites, women all want the same guy who's over six feet tall and makes over $100,000. And I think that online dating speedballs this unreasonable filter. But then they lose that advantage pretty soon, right? They lose- And they all end up alone. Yeah, they lose that advantage. And they all end up alone. But young men, but here's the thing, young women who are more

attracted because men will always be more attracted to younger women, not always, but most. And then what you have is a group of 20-somethings, especially men, who resent women because they feel like they've been shunned by them on dating apps. And I think they become very resentful. And I don't, it's very, it's a real shame. And then unfortunately, men without the prospect of a romantic relationship go down to a much darker place than a woman without a prospect for a romantic relationship. And that is women have much stronger social networks than the consequent guardrails and consequent care and love.

Whereas guys without the prospect of a romantic relationship get angry and they like, you know, stop looking for a job, stop showering. That can happen. That's one thing we should be pressing for men is friendships. One thing I'm really happy about the boys is they all have really good male friendships and female friendships. I think that's something we don't push enough with men. I spent a lot of time. I'm thrilled Alice is in a frat. I couldn't be more thrilled. Well, I was just in Israel and they have mandatory national service. And I was at with men. I spent a lot of time. I'm thrilled Alice is in a frat. I couldn't be more thrilled. Well, I was just in Israel and they have mandatory national service. And I was at this memorial at the Nova Music Festival and I met all of these, I call them kids. I mean, they literally look like

they're in high school, Kara. And it's women compulsory for two years, men for three years. And all of these young men and women in uniform who carry an automatic rifle, so they have to learn about moral ambiguity, technology, making snap decisions. They serve in the agency of something bigger than themselves, and they're all together, and they're all outside, and they're all working their asses off. They meet business partners, friends. They meet boyfriends, girlfriends, mates. To your point, we need a big investment in trying Livingston Awards, and there's all these amazing stories. One of them was about Afghan women, their suicide rate is going up since the Taliban took over because they live in these domestic violent relationships and they don't get choices anymore. So it was a fascinating story.

But those kind of things degrade so quickly. So if you combine what Ruth was talking about with this trend, it's really, it creates a bad society for everybody. Anyway, very good topic, Scott. What a really interesting point you're making. I really appreciate all your words on that. All your many words. My many, my two to one never ending words.

Never ending. It's not two to one, but it's not not two to one. Anyway, we want to hear from you. 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-PIVOT. Okay, Scott, that is the show. Are you traveling anywhere? Are you sitting, stay and put? I'm here for a couple of weeks and I go, I'm speaking at TED in late April, and then I'm going down to LA for Mar, and then I'm going to Miami, then I'm going to New York. Oh, craziness. I'm here for the-

You know, I'll be in London in mid-May. I don't think you're going to be there. Mid-May. Yeah, all right. Maybe. We'll go out for dinner. Anyway, I'm also going to Austin this week to do at the LBJ Library. Yeah, I'm doing a little thing with Larry Wilmer there at the thing.

Larry Wilmer? Yes, yes. I love that guy. I know, I do too. I love Larry Wilmer. He's funny and he's smart. Yeah, he asked me to come do this thing or they asked me to come do it with him. We have a nice rapport. It was on his show once. And then I'm not even going to tell you, I'm going to tell you Thursday what I'm doing Friday. You're going to die. So good.

Is it involve Senator Cantwell, Patty Stuntz, or Emily Ratajkowski? No, no. I'm going to LA to do some stuff, but I'll tell you that later. I'll tell you that later. Yeah. Anyway. Is it someone I like who you're going to start making? Are you going to steal another one of my male friends? No, these are female friends that you probably want to have friendships with.

Anyway, we'll be back on Friday with more. And I'll tell you about that right before that happens. Scott, read us out. Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Intertide engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Mille Saverio. Nishat Krua 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 later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. The great people of Washington State meet the first dude. Ta-da!