Pivot - Elon's About-Face, Surgeon General's New Warning, and AI in Ads

Episode Date: June 21, 2024

Kara and Scott are live at Cannes! They discuss Elon's plan to win back advertisers, and the Surgeon General's proposal for warning labels on social media. Then, what brands are using AI most effectively right now? Plus, the EU's hard-right parties just harnessed the youth vote in recent elections. What role will the younger generation of voters play in the upcoming U.S. presidential election? Recorded on June 18th at the AdWeek House in Cannes, France DISCLAIMER/ONLY IN CANNES: Our live taping of Pivot in Cannes had some brief competition from the Olympic torch passing by. That led to some mild audio interference at the top of the show. We've minimized it as much as possible, and hope it doesn't impact your enjoyment! 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 we are in the south of France at the Adweek House at ConLion. Hi, everybody. Thank you. Just our listeners, we're forcing them to cheer for us. We think it's important. We're recording this episode in front of a live audience here at the Adweek House at ConLions International Festival of Creativity. Let's get to some topics we've been talking about here at Con. It appears Elon Musk, who's here apparently. Yeah.

I haven't seen him. He hasn't called. That he no longer wants advertisers to go fuck themselves. So are we talking about Twitter? I'd love to talk about Twitter. He told everyone where he invited everyone to go fuck themselves last fall to Andrew Ross Sorkin. Oh, to Bob Iger. Yes.

Well, no. First he told advertisers to go fuck themselves, and then he told Bob Iger to go fuck himself. But he's done an about face. He and CEO Linda Yaccarina are here in Cannes courting advertisers. He's appearing at a WPP event this week. courting advertisers. He's appearing at a WPP event this week. For those who don't know, WPP is one of the largest ad agencies. Extraportedly lost 52% of its U.S. advertising revenue in 2023. I'm surprised it isn't higher. Its strategy is probably to go to business from small to medium businesses after losing so many brands this year. Talk about the strategy, because it's a lot of small and medium businesses.

And by that, I mean Korn. Crypto and AI girlfriends. I don't think there's ever been a business. So let's go to the other side. NVIDIA at some point will own this entire city, much less this beach. But NVIDIA is the most successful company in history as registered by an increase in revenues

over such a short time. No company has ever accomplished that. Going to the other end, no company over a billion dollars in revenue has ever lost 60% of its revenues in a 12-month period in a non-war period. I don't think that's ever happened. Twitter is literally the worst performing business in history since a change in ownership. And as we all sit here today, I'll just put forward a brief quiz. Where are you, which of the following three activities are you most likely to be fired from your job in media? One, you start calling your assistant jiggles. Two, you bring your mushroom chocolates to work and put them in the refrigerator with your name on it saying, do not touch property of you. Or three, you advertise on Twitter.

What is a bigger risk to your career? I didn't know it was going to be next to Nazi porn. Right? That's not going to be a good defense. Literally, the fastest way to not get invited back to Cannes because you get fired by your media company or brand for making what is on a risk-adjusted basis literally the worst decision in branding? Some people thought it had a good ROI. Some people didn't.

But it was never an effective business in general compared to the Facebooks of the world. But it was a bidding platform. It did have a certain – there were certain types of advertisers that fit really well on Twitter. I like Twitter. I was pulling for Twitter. I thought they did a decent job. I mean, we were sort of all pulling for Twitter in the beginning. It's an incredible product.

And then this thing just went, they thought, I'll go to subscription. Everyone loves me. We're going to change the model. And it's not. It's an ad platform, except now there's a lot of incredibly toxic content that people don't want to take the risk of. I think it's a difficult sell for Linda Iaccarino here in terms of saying that all the brands are back. She's been saying that. I watched an interview she did. I just, everyone I talked to, that's technically correct. They still have their

community. Several people told me they still have their communities there, but they're not spending any actual money. And so I think the difficulty is how do you then, how do you manage the owner really pretty much? How do you manage the owner and his antics? And, and for some reason, she doesn't seem to think it has a connection and maybe it doesn't. I'd love to hear from people. But everyone I hear from, they're worried about, you know, being called out by this guy. And I can tell you, having talked to Bob Iger about it, he didn't like it. And he's a very confident executive. And he finds it.

And I don't see them rushing to do any business on it. And they have a big business. And they did. Just one last personal anecdote here. You'll like this because I'll bring in my sons here. Nolan, what did you tell me? This is my youngest son. He's 13, Nolan Galloway.

Nolan, this is 100% true. Unprompted, this is what my son did this morning. What did you do this morning, Nolan? Stand up, please. I deleted all of my social media. Oh, wow. So Nolan just said deleted all of my social media. Oh, wow. So Nolan just said he deleted all his social media. So my youngest son, 13, this was not a prompt for me.

I find, pro tip as a father, if you really want your son to do something, do not bring it up. Do not bring it up. And this morning, we're having breakfast, and he said, this morning, I deleted all my social media. And, of course, why? And he said, well, I looked at my screen time. It was too much. And I'll bring this back to a broader. I got off of Twitter one of my role models, a guy named Sam Harris.

And I had dinner with Sam. And I said, I was complaining about something. And he said, let me ask you a question. Think of all the really difficult mental health issues you've had over the last 24 months. And I'm like, okay, I think I've had like five or six. And he said, how many of them were either started or made worse on Twitter? And it was two of the five. And he's like, here's an idea to reduce 40% of your mental health episodes.

Get off of X. And I haven't been on any a year. You do take it personally in a way, I think. And so do most people. You know, no, and interesting, my son took all his social media stuff, my oldest son, including dating things, everything off his phone because it made him feel bad.

That was why he did it. It wasn't so much that it sucked the time away. He's like, it makes me sad. But Twitter especially. Well, he wasn't on Twitter. None of the youngs are on that. But it was more Instagram and things like that. He does use Reddit and YouTube is what he uses because he likes to consume videos.

And that's it. Love YouTube. And Snapchat for communication. But they don't consider that a social network. The loveliest is LinkedIn. And I think it's because people think I might get a job from this guy at some point. So I might as well not call them awful names. But LinkedIn is really lovely.

Instagram is fine for someone my age who the algorithm is never going to try and convince me to wear a thong like 15-year-olds who can then go home and self-harm. That got ugly fast. But almost all the platforms, I think, have real redeeming qualities, except for the sewage system of the sewage system, Twitter. Because the next thing is, the big headline today was, earlier this week, actually, because this is going to be on Friday, is U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy is calling for warning labels on social media apps. He specifically wants these labels to advise parents that social media might damage their adolescents' mental health. He's also talking, called on tech companies to restrict features such as push notifications, autoplay, and infinite scroll. Remember back in 2018, I did an interview with Mark Benioff, and he basically said Facebook was a cigarette, was the new cigarette company. To be clear, it's not something he,

the Surgeon General can do on his own. Congress would have to pass legislation. There's also big issues around First Amendment. There's also big issues around the studies, which are unclear if it's social media that's causing all kinds of unhappiness. And so there isn't enough data yet to understand that. And most people agree that, including him. The last part is Murthy himself said there's benefits to social media for young people. You do not say that about cigarettes. There's not. Cigarettes are good for you because it makes you so. There's no positives around cigarettes. So the idea of putting warning labels feels a little like a stunt, although what I called it was a good stunt. It's a really good stunt to get people talking. Some of the other

alternatives would be, as Scott and I talk about a lot, is age gating and also removing phones from schools so that kids can't use them during the day, which has proven rather effective in every anecdotal story I have read. We'll see if there should be studies of this, but most people feel that's the case. I think Surgeon General Murthy is one of the more consequential Surgeon Generals we've had. I think he's actually trying to make an impact. Can I just point out there's a really big French fight going on over here. But go ahead. Keep going.

Off the edge. Yeah. I don't. Sorry. I love a French fight. But go ahead. It's probably Team England. The Olympic torch.

Oh, the torch is coming. The Olympic torch. Oh. They still have the Olympics? Sorry, it wasn't. World Cup. Can you get over World Cup? When I was a kid, I asked my kids if they wanted to go to the Paris Olympics.

They're like, what's the Olympics? Literally. The Olympics have lost so much brand value. Anyways, back to children. Thank you, NBC. Go ahead. Thank you. We're not being advertised anymore.

There are some amazing things about social media. So one of them is that a lot of LGBTQ youth find each other. And it's a source of huge comfort for them. And I think that is something that we have to be thoughtful about, is that how do we provide connections, platforms, and the ability for these kids to find each other when maybe their church, their parents, their community are not that accepting, or maybe don't understand them as well. And they want a safe place where they can talk to other people going through this sort of thing. The problem with structural shift is there's always going to be losers. And the question is, and I would argue my retort is, on the whole, aren't these kids, and I'd like to see data on this, more likely to be

the ones who are severely bullied via social media. And when you make structural change at a federal level, what you're doing is you're trying to assess the net impact. If you raise taxes, okay, that's great. We're going to have more revenues. It is probably in the short term going to lower growth or rich people are going to leave the country. There's never perfect legislation.

Get to the idea. They're not going to do this. They're not going to do this because they can't pass. I we can hk i think that can happen is different i'm talking about passing a warning label the idea of a warning label on does it deserve a warning label that's cigarettes are you know it's very clear the damaged cigarettes it deserves it's still unclear and it deserves it deserves to be studied really carefully by independent bodies and not Facebook telling us that they're not problematic. So 20 years after warning labels went on cigarettes, the number of Americans smoking went from 40% to 20%. But there was a lot of other things going on.

The question, my fear is that a warning label is nothing but jazz hands where they agree to it and it creates cloud cover for doing what they should be doing. And that's what we've done with porn, what we've done with the military, what we've done with drugs, what we've done with alcohol is we have age-gated them. And this notion, anytime someone throws out- So who age-gates? Who age-gates? Is it on the app level? Is it the companies themselves?

Is it government age-gates? Who does it? If we order from Deliveroo, which we do when mom's not in town every night, if I order a beer, someone's got to come to the door with the blockchain and all this technology, they could very easily figure out you it appears you are under the age of 18. We need an uploaded federally issued ID. But again, the the notion of complexity is always cloud cover. These people can figure out if you're at a Beyonce concert based on the amount of lint on your screen, but they can't figure out if you're under 18. Bullshit.

They could figure out with almost 99% act. They know your age. They not only know your age. They know if you're like, if psychosexually you're older or younger or from a mental illness standpoint, what age you are, what products you buy. They do it. They do the age gating. They decide. It's a federal law. And if they find you are letting people buy cigarettes in your 7-Eleven, you are liable and your ass gets sued and someone is in deep shit. This would not be hard to figure

out. This would not be difficult to figure out. Age gating. There is no reason on a net level that anyone under the age of 16 would be on social media. And the thing I hate about First Amendment is it's a false flag and a whistle call for Republicans who are under the impression that 14-year-olds have free speech rights. No, they don't. They're 14. And do you really think people on the far right give a good goddamn about free speech of 14-year-olds? I think that will be one of the major things brought up is that people, this is not like cigarettes.

This is not the same thing as a health hazard. And until they have actual independent studies, they're going to be able to jazz hands their way out of this, these companies. I agree with you. But the truth is the following. If you quit smoking before the age of 30, you have the same incidence of cancer than if you never smoked. If you people who spend three times, people who spend at least four hours a day on social media, people under the age of 18 are two to three times as likely to have mental health issues.

I mean, there is so much evidence now, especially among young girls. The evidence isn't as clear, actually, among young boys. But the evidence is really clear among girls under the age of 16. The more time you spend on social media, the more likely you are to self-harm. The more likely you are to become isolated, the more likely you are to develop an eating disorder. Enough already. If we were selling sunglasses and anyone that bought them under the age of 18 was getting fucked up in the head, we wouldn't let people sell sunglasses to people under the age of 18. Certainly. But the idea of – there was a story we talked about in the last episode about this influencer young woman whose mother monitors her entire social media page that she does, and it's still 92% men, adult men on the site. This is a tale as old as time.

It just gets amplified by social media. And I don't honestly know what anyone could do about it except not use it. That's exactly right. That is the only thing. And so I think that's the argument for that. And the hard part is people will say, well, just get your kids off of social media and take their phone away, said no one who actually has kids. Unless there's a collective depression problem. And that is if you take your kid's phone away and get them off of social media, their mental health is actually worse because they're ostracized from the rest of their friends in the seventh grade

who are all communicating with each other. So unless it's a collective ban, this doesn't work. And the other issue is that parents themselves are addicted. And so I see families constantly all on the phone at a restaurant or walking in the streets. I'm addicted. My kids know I'm addicted. It's very difficult to remove that from the equation because you yourself feel the need to always check in because it's an addiction machine. Because those are the addictive qualities to me, which I think lots of people like

Tristan Harris and others talk about. It's really at play here. So it is in that way like cigarettes. We'll see what happens, but good for the Surgeon General. We like him. He has a lovely costume too, so he looks great. He's a really interesting guy. I like that he's making a stunt here. I really do. I really appreciate that. But we do need more effective means to deal with this issue around kids and ourselves also. So the biggest topic here at Khan is obviously how AI is going to change advertising. Some people are optimistic, others not so much. All of the major agencies are here talking about it.

They have to say AI every 3.5 seconds and how they plan to integrate it into their operations. Businesses, even if they don't even know if they're going to do that, businesses are looking at how they can use AI, obviously, which they'd normally pay agencies to do, such as research and copywriting. On the other hand, people are worried AI will replace them, or that campaigns will open brands to copyright litigation. There's that. Award entrants here at Khan for the first time has to disclose whether they used AI in their work. Very briefly, talk about this. I think we talked too much about AI, but talk about this, the best and worst for brands around AI, and what do you think is bullshit and what is substantive that people should think about? To the best of my knowledge, NVIDIA isn't here.

Are they officially? No, I didn't see them. I appreciate that. They're not lying to you. And that is when Google came here or Meta came here and did a book signing and told you to lean in before they shot you in the face, at least, I mean, at least NVIDIA isn't lying to you. NVIDIA is going to probably reduce employment in the media industry somewhere between 5% and 40% over the next 10 years. If you're a media planner right now, it's hard to imagine. There's two types of media planners. There's one that really understands AI and knows how to leverage it and do the work of two media planners. And then there's a person that doesn't understand AI whose

job is taken by the former. Media planning, to me, as I understand it, is kind of ground zero for AI. But at least NVIDIA isn't here pretending to be your friend, right? They're not providing you with your last meal. They've decided, let's be honest, AI is not great. We're going to probably destroy a lot of jobs in the short run. Now, over the long term, if you're smart, like every technology, you're going to figure out a bunch of different ways to leverage AI to create cool media businesses. I think like every other technology, I'm not a catastrophist. I think there's short-term job destruction. What are you using it for? Give me some tips.

I use it for brainstorming. So I write a lot. And initially I thought, oh, I'm going to write a book on masculinity and have AI do it. And I wrote the chapters, titles. I wrote the chapter titles. And then I gave it a bunch of long prompts and it came back with a book. And then I read it, and my biggest insult now is when my team drafts everything, the biggest insult I can give them, I write back,

this feels like AI wrote it. It's anodyne. It has no personality. It literally is like having sex with a sex doll. Not that I would know anything about that, but it's just not the real thing. I can't believe my kids are here. Anyways. Anyways, it's very anodyne.

You need, but what I use it for is if I'm writing a chapter on masculinity and the history of it, and I'll write, what are the different rites of passage for a boy becoming a man in different cultures? It'll list 10 or 20 interesting analogs of what happens in the Brazilian rainforest

among indigenous tribes when a boy, quote unquote, becomes a man. And two or three of them I will not have thought of. It's great for brainstorming. Make sure you then go to somewhere else to fact check it. What about for ad agencies? For agencies? If you had agencies or anyone else, what is it? Think of one quick idea, because we've got to move check it. What about for ad agencies? If you had agencies or anyone else, what is it?

Think of one quick idea because we've got to move on here. But think of one quick idea of what it would do good for them or bad for them or for brands themselves. Why do they need it? If I were a small brand and I didn't have the money to hire really thoughtful media planners, I think for small business saying, this is my budget, these are my objectives, this is my brand identity, this is the target market, this is the psychographic makeup of people I'm looking to target, come back to me with a thoughtful media plan and what the measurements should be. I mean, you could punch above your weight class with AI. I think more immediately, it really benefits small brands and small media companies that don't have the resources or talent to do really thoughtful, rigorous analytics and media

planning. I think it starts with a small business. Do you know what my new name is? Care AI. Care AI. Karen. Care AI. Care AI. You can put an I on the end of my name and then I'm AI. By the way, Can. Like Apple Intelligence. Can has its own version of Karen's. It's called American Tourist.

Where's my rosé? All right. Where's my rosé? All right. Let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we're going to talk about a bunch of other topics and also take some audience questions. Fox Creative. This is advertiser content from Zelle.

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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 and we're live at the Adweek house at Conn Lyons. Hello, everybody.

Hello. We've got a time constraint here, so I'm going to skip our fossil fuels question. Moving along, how big a role did social media play in the recent EU elections? Many young voters gave their support to far-right populist parties and countries. They seemed to tap into the concerns about the war in Ukraine, immigration, the cost of living. Analysts said that the far-right politicians did a better job of capturing the attention of these young voters on TikTok and YouTube. The voting age has been lowered to 16 in a number of countries, including, wow, really? In Germany, Austria.

Love that. Belgium. Do you see something similar happening in the U.S.? And how might a TikTok ban factor in our elections in terms of the youth vote? Some are saying they're very upset with Joe Biden for doing that. I don't believe them. What do you think about lowering the voting age? Well, first off, they're not going to lose their TikTok.

The CCP is going to figure out that if they have to lose a quarter of a trillion dollars and their propaganda tool, they'll choose to hold on to the quarter of a trillion. You're not going to I don't believe you're going to lose your TikTok. I think it's inspiring what's happening. Well, it's not inspiring. I don't like the lurch to the right.

I imagine you don't either. But what's really interesting is when you, when you poll young people, their biggest issues, by the way, the Middle East comes in like 16 out of 17.

For all the spectacle online and all the useful idiots on campus that are getting a disproportionate amount of media attention, the actual concerns of young people are a lot more pragmatic than they are of people my age. They can do math because what they see is Karen Scott in the club ordering champagne and cocaine. And the closest they get to the club is throw me your credit card. Throw me your credit card. No, you're not allowed in here. You're not allowed in here. I'm going to raise the price of education and housing and pay you less. But give me your credit card because I want to spend $7 trillion a year on services, 40% of which go to people our age. And I want you to

pay for it. And guess what? Young people are figuring it out. And part of the reason they're figuring out, quite frankly, is social media. Yeah. But these young economists, Kylie Scanlon, some really inspiring young people are saying, we're sick of this shit. We know what you're doing. And when I point up, I mean, point at people older. And they are becoming much more pragmatic.

And they are starting to look at real issues. By the way, the climate is declining. And I'm not saying that's good or bad. But economics is coming up in their eyes and climate is declining. Unfortunately, because of immigration problems, I think what you're seeing, because the left was somewhat naive about the risks of not assimilating immigrants as well as we'd hoped, you're seeing a lurch to the right. And you will see, in my opinion, a lot of Islamophobia, a lot of anti-immigrant rhetoric. But I love the young people are getting much more involved, much more pragmatic. And the best thing we could do to turn the tide around child poverty, I would love to see not only the age lowered. Let me get this. Anyone can be on social media, but you can't vote. Anyone, anyone who has dependents, if you're a single mother with two kids, you should get three votes in my eyes. I think that would be the most significant thing of transferring money back from seniors to young people. And we would see that child tax credit restored.

Well, that is actually not going to happen ever. Probably, probably not. But one of the things that I find interesting- Put a label on it. To my kids who are that age or in that vote, my one son is voting for the first time in a presidential election, Alex. I think their concerns are more that they feel like they have no impact and that the game is rigged for them. And I think I hear that a lot more is that it doesn't make a difference.

My vote doesn't make a difference. And so one of the trends you're seeing in the U.S. in particular, and I think it probably is here, is that we don't think we live in it. They don't believe they live in a democracy anymore, even if they live in a U.S. in particular, and I think it probably is here, is that we don't think we live in a, they don't believe they live in a democracy anymore, even if they live in a democracy, they don't believe it. And, you know, you now have the Republican Party in the United States calling it a republic. I don't know if you've noticed. They're saying it's not a democracy, it's a republic, which is a really interesting propaganda move on their part to try to convince people you don't live in anywhere where you have an impact. But the data, I don't think the data supports that because they think that-

The recent poll just did. Don't they think more young people are going to vote in this election than have ever voted in an election? I think the whole thing young people aren't voting is usually a canard and then they end up doing it. It's always the same number every time, but everyone worries and agonizes over it. I think they're expressing themselves. And the problem that older people have

is they don't like people expressing themselves in a way. But what you said, they're worried they're not having an impact. Perception is reality. So if that's their perception and they don't vote, that's a problem. But the reality is the D in democracy is working too well. And that is old people who vote, vote older people

into office who then vote themselves more money. Democracy is working really well. The problem is most democratic societies until my generation made a concerted effort to vote in people who would then invest in the future. And what's different now is we have a group of very old people who all vote in America, voting ridiculously old people who then vote themselves more money and have not had the same, what I'll call Western values around capitalism, that unless you reinvest in technology and education and programs that put money in middle-class households, this all doesn't work. It literally, Marx was right. It collapses on itself if you just become self-interested.

So actually, democracy is working a little too well in terms of immediate reaction. Well, I think they see where their isolation is. And I think that's the issue. One of Al's ideas when he was your kid's age was that only old men go to war and not young people. And then they'd end them pretty quickly. Oh, 100%. Anyway. 100%.

That's exactly right. We've got to get to audience questions, but one more quick break and we'll be back for predictions and audience questions. Okay, Scott, let's hear a prediction. Well, I do think European tech is going to have a pretty good year. Raspberry Pi went, and I'll come back to them.

Solonis in Germany. Mistral is probably the most interesting AI company in Europe. I do think we're going to start to hear a little bit more from, we're going to start to see a pulse in European tech this year. But my prediction is what I'm calling exchange wars. pulse in European tech this year. But my prediction is what I'm calling exchange wars. And that is the LSE has gone from about $4.5 trillion in total market cap of its companies to about $3 trillion. This is the London Stock Exchange. The London Stock Exchange. It's literally off 30%. Whereas the US exchanges have gone from something like $15 trillion to $50 trillion. They've tripled and the LSE is down 30%.

Over the next 12 months, the biggest IPOs of 2024 and 2025 are going to happen on the LSE is down 30%. Over the next 12 months, the biggest IPOs of 2024 and 2025 are going to happen on the LSE and a new exchange in America. Specifically, the biggest IPO of 2024 is going to happen on the LSE from Shein, the company that's gone up from $30 to $42 billion. Next year, it'll probably be $60 billion. It'll probably be the biggest apparel company in the world that's growing that fast and is that profitable. And similar to NVIDIA, it doesn't have any actual assets. It's just essentially AI or software figuring out a way to get you your stuff more inexpensively. And then the biggest IPO of 2025 will be SpaceX on the new Texas exchange. So we're about to see what I would loosely call exchange wars.

And Raspberry Pi, which decided to go public on the LSE last week, this is a cool little company, actually chose the LSE. So the LSE is no longer going to be seen as the exchange of last choice. It's going to be something where cool companies go public. That is going to add $5 or $10 billion in market cap to Shein, which people see as going to the LSE only because they have to. And then you can bet Elon Musk is in the background on this new Texas exchange. And the biggest IPO of 2025 will be SpaceX on the new Texas exchange. So for lack of a better term, exchange wars, two biggest IPOs of 24 and 25 are the LSE and the Texas exchange. And what's interesting is right now, I'll end on this,

the biggest 40% of the run-up of stocks is to do with NVID is right now, I'll end on this, the biggest 40% of the run-up of stocks is to do with NVIDIA right now. It's incredible. Unbelievable. One company, and this is, I apologize, but this is one other canard or another misdirect. Markets at all-time highs. We must all be doing fine. Somewhere between 1% and 10% of people own between 80% and 90% of stocks. The NASDAQ and the NYSE, these indices are really dangerous because they give us the illusion that we're doing well. It's not. They're an index on rich people. And spoiler alert, rich people are killing it. So if you're trying to sell a football team or a penthouse in Antibes, you're all set. But if you're one of the majority of Americans or you're under the age of 40

and you haven't been able to aggregate wealth to buy stocks, life is not champagne and cocaine for you. As a matter of fact, for people who are millennials, they say, well, their average wealth is really strong. It's not because the Gini coefficient is so enormous. There are some people at the age of 30 that get into the right information economy, do really well,

but on the whole, these kids are really struggling. And then 200 times a day, they get a notification telling them that they're not doing that well and that everyone around them is rich and is hot. So these indices are actually really damaging. You know what we should publish every day? How many people died from opioid overdoses? How many teen girls have been admitted? Why aren't there indexes for self-harm in the United States? Instead, we're like, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, S&P at new high. Everything must be great. No rich people are doing really well.

It's sort of the same idea. Life is not Twitter and life is not the stock exchange. And I think that is actually an effective message that the Republican Party has for people is that not everybody is on the stock exchange. And so it shouldn't give you – it shouldn't make you feel better if you're not participating. But we should, people should be aware of those. And unfortunately, I think people actually are more than you think. I think people, I think catastrophe is part, is inbuilt into all these social media systems.

And so you are constantly aware of catastrophe everywhere you go. And so- But if you own S&P stocks, if you own any of the 400, if you own any of the 400, if you own a mix of any or all of the 499 stocks in the S&P that aren't NVIDIA, you're either flat or probably down

and your investments probably aren't keeping pace with inflation. That is correct. That is absolutely correct. But because the NASDAQ and the S&P are up, you're thinking, oh, I must be doing well. Not unless you own NVIDIA. So we have income inequality within income inequality in our markets. And that is why Lina Khan and

the FTC and the DOJ need to go on a breakup lollapalooza and break these companies up. Well, on that note, Rosé, everybody. So with that, we'll open up the floor to audience questions. We just have a few minutes. Let's get some questions. We have a mic. Anybody? Right here. Hold on. We have a mic. Hi, I'm Anne Riley. And I work with VoteForMorales.org. And getting back to the election, the US election really does have global implications. And actually only there's about six and a half million Americans overseas and only 10% of them usually vote. uh six and a half million americans overseas and only ten percent of them usually vote great and it's a there's a huge amount of american university students abroad that don't know they can vote and don't know how to request their ballot and things like that um but what what do you think about the possible impact of the elections and how to actually get more americans

abroad to vote because if you talk to any non-Americans here, they probably know more about the elections and the electoral college than the average American. Yeah, I think one of the great disappointments is how little care Americans take for their privilege of voting. It's really amazing to me that, you know, I'm not going to vote. I have a lot of people saying that to me now. And I'm like, get the fuck away from me right now. Like, how dare you not take, which is the greatest privilege in the world, really, to be able to vote in a free election. You know, even with my own kids who are voting, my son is in Michigan now.

And so he's registering there because he lives there. I literally was like, if you don't vote, you're not, I'm not paying for college. Like this is, I'm sorry. I hope, sorry to solicit your vote, but you have to make a choice. I think something in that case, I would imagine it would probably benefit the Biden administration more. People are abroad, maybe more open to things. So I'm guessing it would probably be a very good thing for the Biden administration to solicit. I don't know. Well, it means they have money and a college degree. Hello, Biden. Yeah, exactly. So I don't know what to do to get them to vote. I just, I am perplexed by the low levels of voting. And then a small group of very committed people,

voting. And then a small group of very committed people, badly committed people are the ones that vote. Like literally it's, it's, it's the Yates poem all over is the two sides are full of passion and intensity and the other people don't care. And it affects the people in the middle. Although I do think this election, there's a silent majority of especially women who have had it and are, and you've seen it in election after election where they say it's going to be even and then the Democrats win, especially around women's reproductive rights. I still think it's a majorly potent potent issue with women of all sides of the political equation more than people think. This one statistics of one hundred and seventy thousand women moving around the United States to get abortion care or reproductive rights care.

And then they're piling on, the evangelicals are piling on with contraception, IVF. People don't want 170,000 people moving around the country because you may be criminalized in your state is a big frigging deal, much more than people think. I think. I think beyond anything else. But we'll see. I don't know. Any quick thoughts? One last question. We're living in London, and we'll do vote by mail. I think we should come to some sort of accommodation with Republicans. I'm not offended by requiring identification of vote.

I don't think that's unreasonable. But I think in exchange, we should say, I would like to see voting by handheld phone. I think it would just make life so much easier. That's where people are spending their time. I don't even know. I'm not even entirely sure how to mail stuff anymore. So everybody wants stuff that goes to their advantage.

I will help you with that. There you go. But yeah, we're all, I think, in violent agreement that everyone should exercise their rights to vote. But there's a lot of people talking about it, smart people. Literally, I'm shocked by it every time I hear it right there. What advice do you give your graduates who want to get into this industry? Because it's getting tougher for them. It comes down to what is the primary skill you would want to give your kids

and try and suss out your kids and surround them with resources such that they become pretty good at it. The only skill I know will survive the test of time. Do you remember when in private schools they were all offering Mandarin? Do you remember basically computer science has replaced civics?

And that's, by the way, how you get Mark Zuckerberg. We need civics and history back and computer science out. The only skill, and I think this is a skill to be in this industry or, quite frankly, any industry, is if I could give my two young men who are here today any one skill, and it's how I've made my living. And it's our species've made my living. And it's the, our species, our superpower is cooperation. And the facility or the vehicle for leveraging our superpower of cooperation is communication. The key attribute of any successful CEO, entrepreneur, media executive is one thing, it's storytelling. It's the ability to communicate across different mediums. And what I have my kids do in my class,

when I say my kids, my students, I tell them to pick a platform. And it can be PowerPoint, it can be texting, it can be LinkedIn. And I say, come back with the metrics that would make you one of the top 1% on that medium in terms of communication. And by the end of the semester,

you're gonna be, you have to be in that top 1%. Because there's so many different, say you're shy and you don you have to be in that top 1%. Because there's so many different, say you're shy and you don't like to do this, right? But you know how some people are fantastic on 140 characters or less, or they are fantastic with imagery on Instagram. You have to be an outstanding storyteller such that you can take your thoughtful ideas and bring scale and leverage to them.

Oh, I'm great at writing posts on LinkedIn. I'm really good at long form journalism on Medium. But what I would task every high schooler and college student with, and especially in your industry, is you have to be able to answer the following question, where are you a 1% storyteller? And figure out the metrics, figure out the Medium. There's so many Mediums. Well, I'm shy. Well, you don't need to be in front of people to be on Reddit or Discord or TikTok. I'm not, you know, I'm not good looking. Well, guess what?

Podcasting. Hello? Five TV shows canceled, by the way. Five TV, five, five. Everyone has their medium. Everyone can be a great storyteller. And I don't care if you're Jeff Bezos or Winston Churchill or Maya Angelou, the most influential, successful people in history all have one thing in common.

They're great storytellers. That's a very good point. And I don't know if you know this, but Scott's the top 1% in puppetry. So in any case, it's his quiet little hobby. Anyway, we really thank you a lot. I'm hearing the next group is coming here. So I'm going to read us out. Okay, Scott, that's the show.

We'll be back on Tuesday with more Pivot. Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Aaliyah Jackson engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows, Milsa Vario, Vox Media's Lauren Stark, and Adweek's Will Lee. Thank you, Will. Nishat Kirwa 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. Let's get together more often. Let's get together more often. Thank you, Adweek, again, and thank you for the audience. Thanks, again. And thank you for the audience. Thank you, Adweek. Thanks, everybody.