Pivot - Facebook gets into audio, WeWork's SPAC, and Friend of Pivot Preet Bharara

Episode Date: April 20, 2021

Kara and Scott talk about Facebook's new foray into the audio space and what it means for creators. They also discuss NASA partnering with SpaceX on its next moon landing mission. Scott's favorite disaster story is possibly making a comeback – Kara and Scott talk about the WeWork SPAC. Then, former US attorney, and host of the podcast Stay Tuned with Preet, Preet Bharara joins to talk about joining Vox and brings insights on some of the biggest legal issues in the news. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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tells you which leads are worth knowing, and makes writing blogs, creating videos, and posting on social a breeze. So now, it's easier than ever to be a marketer. Get started at HubSpot.com slash marketers. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Scott Galloway.

Scott, you're very quiet today. Speak up. Am I? Hello. All right. Come on. What's going on? What's going on?

A little quiet. What's going on? Yeah, this is one of those days where I've been like 10 minutes late and like two minutes away from losing my keys and just been a crazy morning. Well, I'll be there on Thursday. So this will all be solved. You are. You're coming in.

I'm coming in. And it's growing. More and more family are showing up. You're bringing your son. I know. I'm sorry. I do have children and I cannot leave them behind with just like a snack. Oh, I'm good at that.

I'll show you how to do that. Okay, good. All right. We have a lot to talk about and we will also be taking photos of our lovely time together. But first of all, the Biden administration is officially blamed and sanctioned Russia for its role in the SolarWinds hack that compromised computer systems in multiple government agencies as well as private companies. We had brought on Nicole Perlroth and you really liked talking to her.

What do you think about that? You know, this is so strange. I was not, as you know, I was not a supporter of President Biden during the campaign. And I don't know if you feel this way. I feel like every decision he's made, it's like, oh yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah, yeah. It's just such a weird feeling. He's doing a lot. It's such an unusual feeling over the last four years. I'm like, what the fuck? Very busy people. Yeah. And competence is sort of the new, you know, is in vogue again.

Yeah. I think the Russians understand strength. What's interesting, or I found interesting about the SolarWinds hack, is supposedly they showed restraint. Supposedly they were worried about causing too much damage for fear of poking the bear too hard. So look, I think Russia is a failed state. I think once you get out of Moscow, you see just how economically dire the situation is, how the lack of diversification in the economy. And unfortunately, when an economy or a society is backed into a corner, they become more dangerous. I think Russia is turning slowly but surely into a failed state, and their success or

ability to rally their people is around kind of foreign, creating foreign adversaries and foreign victories. Yeah, Navalny is going to be interesting. He's on a hunger strike. That is interesting. Day 20, and his wife said he's near death. His daughter says he's near death. And they're trying to afford, they fried chicken in front of him. And then they put candy in his prison garb.

The whole thing, I think they're really playing with fire with this guy. He has become something of a figure in terms of pushing back on what's going on. Now, the Biden administration didn't push back on the Russia bounty stuff because there wasn't quite enough evidence yet about that. But there's a number of issues that we have with Russia that I think they're probably behind the scenes pushing back rather significantly on this. And then this SolarWinds thing is really,

it's being run by a woman, maybe we'll get her on here, Ann Neuberger, who's really competent, like fixing of it. But it's really massive. This is a massive hack. And there should be reprisals along with these kind of things, these sanctions, backroom reprisals that we don't see. Well, there's a new proxy wars, whether it was Afghanistan or,

I mean, arguably Vietnam was a proxy war where superpowers don't want to directly confront each other because it can spin out of control into nuclear Armageddon. But the new proxy wars are these cyber attacks. And the thing we don't talk about is we're actually pretty good at that. And those don't get as much publicity. They're meant not to get publicity. Yeah, I think that's right. Do them quietly. Yeah, what's interesting is I interviewed the head of the CIA's technology division today. And some of the stuff, she's of the physical stuff they're doing.

And they're working on drone technology, all kinds of physical stuff. Because of the idea of like you pull out of Afghanistan, you still have to have some eyes on the ground. And so they're working on all kinds of different things. And I think it's going to be a really interesting next year of who's going to dominate both the physical digital space with, you know, sensors, et cetera, and then in the cybers area. And it's certainly going to be the sort of the battleground for hegemony. Of course, the real rival is China in this area, but Russia can make plenty of trouble and they have. Speaking of our government, NASA announced that it awarded a contract to Elon Musk's company, SpaceX for $2.9 billion to take astronauts to the moon for a space landing

spot. It's the space race between Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, who was working on this, a moon, a moon landed landing area. What do you, that they're going to use the moon to be sort of the base to jump off on from.

And so this is another win for, for Elon Musk over Lockheed and other companies too. Yeah, look, there's just no doubt about it. And what would be interesting is everyone credits Elon Musk, but what he clearly is also a genius at is greatness and lunar landers are in the agency of others. He must have an ability to attract incredibly talented engineers. Musk have an ability to attract incredibly talented engineers. And it's interesting, and I don't know, you know, there's all these articles on the tip of the pyramid below Bezos. You know, who are the 15 most powerful people other than Bezos?

You don't see a lot of those articles on Musk. It's all about him, and I wonder if at some point— Well, Gwynne Shotwell is the CEO of SpaceX, and she doesn't go out a lot. I think I've tried to get her to do an interview, and she's like, no, you can talk to Elon. You know what I mean? That's what they basically say to me. I would argue that, you know, Elon strikes me as the kind of person that's like, well, okay, you can go on a remote podcast for your book club. But other than that, it's all about me. I just don't.

I get the sense. I get the sense. I mean, Amazon's done a really good job of saying, hey, meet Andy Jassy. Or Dave Clark. Yeah. Yeah. I would argue that Musk has not done, at the same time, he's become a mythical character, which has resulted in incredibly cheap capital. But short term, they're the winner. But long term, I really do think the winner is NASA here because they're taking advantage of this, the mother of all midlife crises, where two guys are sword fighting with their dicks in space. And they keep trying to – NASA is going to put people on the moon for less money than it would cost taxpayers by playing these two off of each other.

And they're in the battle of egos. It results in cheap capital for the government. So I think the big winner here is NASA and taxpayers who are going to get space cargo and space hauling at a fraction of the cost it would cost to develop internally at NASA. Yeah. So Rezos' space exploration company is called Blue Origin, and it was also SpaceX beat out Blue Origin, which had been really focused on this. They have different ways of going about it, but it's kind of an interesting thing. And it should be, you know, more and more,

you know, Musk has won a bunch of defense contracts. You're going to see that his companies wander into lots of spaces, a lot of defense spaces. And it's an unusual thing. I talked to him really briefly about it separately. You know, the difficulty level of getting into the defense sort of arena and beating out not jeff bezos but it's the bigger it's the bigger sort of lockheed martin's types that he that he was sort of like you don't get in here this is this has been a you know an uphill battle to get within this uh buying area but they

certainly have made the investments we'll see where it goes. I think SpaceX is the most interesting part of his business. I know Tesla, everybody focuses on it. Well, the analogy I would use is that some of the big players in the early stages of the internet were the people who figured out a way to move data, basically transported data, broadband, right? The CISCOs of the world, the infrastructure guys, the telco guys. And I would argue that SpaceX, to a certain extent, is bandwidth, and that is the ability to transport atoms into space, which is really difficult. But their Falcon product, if you will, is hauling more stuff into space reliably and cost-effectively. And so I think of that as almost kind of the new broadband, is your ability to transport things into space, which is really difficult and really expensive. But right now, they're kind of the, call it, space band winner.

Yeah. Yeah. It's an interesting area. We should have a space person on. I've had a couple space people on Sway, but I love this idea of, I would love to get Gwen Shotwell on here, but she won't do anybody. She stays low. She stays low.

She does not come out. But let's go on to our big stories. We've got two of them today. And also a wonderful friend of Pivot, as you know, is coming on. So Facebook is pushing into the audio space. The company plans to announce a host of new audio products, including Clubhouse Competitor, apparently, who knows when, and a podcast discovery apparatus in partnership with Spotify. Now, listen, it's done stuff like this before,

which is called frictionless sharing and things like that. It's not clear what they're doing on Spotify. It'll probably just surface their podcast onto Spotify and vice versa, I guess. They're reportedly looking into an audio-only version of Rooms, which launched as a competitor. Zoom has not set the world on fire necessarily, but this is sort of a lift from Clubhouse. And obviously, Twitter is in this space. Spotify is going to be in here. Discord, you know, there's all kinds of

players in this audio social space. What think you of this? Another copy by Facebook or what? And Mark's going all out today talking to everybody but us about this. Is that because of me? Is that what you're saying? No, I think it's me. You think it's you? It's not you, it's me. It's not about me, Is that what you're saying? No, I think it's me. You think it's you? It's not you, it's me. It's not about me, it's about you for once? This one is me, I think.

But go ahead, go ahead. Offensive and more offensive. Yes, right. Look, I think there's what I call a NPS or an emotional arbitrage. And that is, if you can find categories that people become emotionally wedded to that aren't that expensive, there's an NPS arbitrage. And that is, if you can find categories that people become emotionally wedded to that aren't that expensive, there's an NPS arbitrage. So Amazon could only get so much goodwill delivering an espresso pods within 48 hours and 45 hours. But if they can hook you into a TV program, you start feeling very emotionally connected to Prime, whether it's through Transparent or

The Marvelous Mrs. Mizell. So there's kind of what I call, for lack of a better term, an NPS arbitrage. And it's just very hard to get a high NPS score around e-commerce or broadband or delivery. Where you get the high NPS is in entertainment. And even within entertainment, the NPS arbitrage, and we've been talking about this for a year, when people come up to either you or me and they're friends with us, you know they've listened to a podcast. Yes. People don't come up and start talking to me as if they're my friend when they read something they've done or they've seen me on TV. Yep, they do not.

They come up, they're like, oh my God, we know each other. We talk for an hour. You're their friend. So this NPS arbitrage around podcasting is enormous. In addition, when Andreessen Horowitz, I think of Clubhouse, it's almost like when a VC decides they're also an operator, I think they've done most of the rounds. And that $4 billion most recent valuation. $100 million, billion, $4 billion. Again, I think that number is a bit of a head fake because we want to maintain momentum. And my understanding is I've never been on Clubhouse, but some of the people I follow who are on Clubhouse are saying that it's losing some of its mojo.

But at the same time, if you look at the numbers, they're amazing. Yeah, but the numbers, the download numbers are down. I think I'm worried. For them, I'd be worried about the end of the pandemic, that people are not doing this thing. They don't have enough of a hook into people. And obviously, people like you and I don't go there because there's no monetization. There's no, like, why bring a new interest graph, build it for them there?

I feel like, why am I building a house over in, like, whatever, Kansas? People all the time call me. I'm not exaggerating. Every day, I want you to ruin my clubhouse. I'm like, why the fuck am I going to make Marc Andreessen rich? Right, yeah. I do think that way, too. I mean, I get all, you know, I get these.

Oh, I bet they want you on there. But it's just sort of, okay. And then Twitter comes in. Have you been on Spaces? I did Spaces. Yes, I've been doing them every week. I find them really interesting. And it's really good.

I think the technology. It's fine. There's some glitches, but they'll figure it out. You know, interesting. Kayvon, who runs Product Air, is on every week to watch it. Because I think I get lots of, I mean of pretty good numbers. And so it's improving. It's not perfect, but it's not bad. And my interest graph is there. My interest graph is there. But this is what I think is going on in the boardroom of Clubhouse right now, which is essentially, I think, the Monday morning

partners meeting at Andreessen. I think that they probably are getting a little bit of humility and they're probably going to say, we need to get out while this getting is good. And supposedly, Twitter made a $4 billion acquisition offer for them. I wouldn't be surprised. This would have been my prediction on Friday. I think Clubhouse is acquired in the next six months as they start to recognize. By whom though? Because look, Mark is on the board of Facebook, Mark Andreessen, and he also does Clubhouse and Substack too. What do you imagine who would buy it? Because I think Facebook would not pay $4 billion for it. Oh, I think they're going to have to come up with an elegant way to not disclose the terms.

Yeah. But look, Clubhouse has some momentum. It has a following. Clubhouse has some momentum. It has a following. And this space is heating up because of the intimacy or the NPS arbitrage of voice and audio, which is really interesting that it's kind of reinventing itself. But one of the bigger players, I don't think, I think Clubhouse has attracted, just the way Tesla has attracted a bunch of sharks because all of a sudden the automobile market has grown from a hundred billion in value to a trillion in value on the backs of a six or $700 billion increase in value of Tesla. The fact that Clubhouse supposedly gets a four and a half

billion dollar valuation, which I think is a bit of a head fake, has kind of made the audio space overnight worth twice as much as it was just six months ago. And then Twitter and Facebook, who are all looking for more hooks, as you said, or more affinity, say, okay, voice, let's take our, you know, Facebook says, let's take my 100 engineers. And Twitter says, okay, let's take my one engineer and start innovating around this. And I just wonder if Andreessen Horowitz goes, okay, some bigger sharks are showing up. We're going to find the record. I do think this is a feature.

It's a really interesting feature, but I think it's a feature. And so, you know, you wonder if it's Instagram again, or if it's something like, you know, yo. I don't think it's Instagram. And I also don't think any of these companies do media very well. As much as, you know, there's these big articles touting Andreessen Horowitz for doing their own media. I think it's just PR. It's just very dressed up PR is what they're doing. I think it's worse than that.

I think it's rich old white guys who don't like the press, so they want to control the press. I actually think there's a really uncomfortable element to it. Yeah. When people are like, I don't like our coverage, so I'm going to create our own coverage, which I guess is kind of content marketing. Yeah. Or maybe I'm just jealous that they have their own podcast. They've got more on there than that. That's the thing.

The really powerful stuff isn't that noise. It's actually some of the other spaces. But we'll see where it goes. I mean, because there's a lot of multi-level marketing. There's a lot of cleaning up. It'll be interesting. Interestingly enough, I had the CEO coming on to Sway this week, and he canceled, saying he's really busy. They pitched me.

We agreed. Everything was confirmed. And then they said they were busy. I suspect their funders were like, don't get near Kara Swisher or something. But they canceled. That is actually very telling. You know what that is? Well, it was highly unprofessional.

I can tell you that. It was really weird. More than that, this is, in my view, what's happening? Our numbers suck. She's about to find out that our numbers suck, and we don't want those questions. Yeah, I guess. It was really, like, I have to say, I was looking forward to it, and I wanted to talk about it. The sub-sec guy had the cojones to go on.

Like, you know what I mean? Like, this was, like, so unprofessional the way they did it. And, you know, whatever. They can talk to whoever they want and make their choices, but you don't pitch someone and then cancel at the last minute. You don't pitch the jungle cat

and then not show up in a tree with an antelope. No, but Friday, my staff spent time getting ready for it. Like, this is bullshit. I was pretty pissed. I think it was

completely Andreessen Horowitz generated. Anyway, we'll see what happens to them. I think it's a good product, but they have a lot of competitors. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. We'll be back to talk about WeWork SPAC

and our friend of Pivot, a new colleague, Preet. Let's practice that. Barara. You got it? Barara. Got it? Karara.

No, Barara. No, Karara. Anyway, let's talk about WeWork when we get back. Okay. Carrara. Carrara. Anyway, let's talk about WeWork when we get back. Okay.

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The leadership team founded the company with a commitment to an ethical approach that puts humanity first. To learn more, visit anthropic.com slash clawed. That's anthropic.com slash clawed. Okay, we are back. Let's talk about WeWork. Coming back, it's coming out with a SPAC. As we talked about, it could

happen. This is a company we were very nice to for a long time. And now, after disastrous IPO, which we pointed out, I think, as a public service, especially you, Scott, in 2019, WeWork was attempting a new debut with a SPAC, which gives the company, I think, as a public service, especially you, Scott. In 2019, WeWork was attempting a new debut with a SPAC, which gives the company more leeway than a traditional IPO. The shared office providers expected to merge with a SPAC called BoEx

Exquisition Corp. The SPAC values WeWork at $9 billion, including debt, which I think is the number you had talked about originally, oddly enough. What think you of this? We've talked about this. What do you think? So, look, when the facts change, I change my mind. And you have, one, you have a company whose valuation has been cut by 80%. So, I don't like Tesla at this price. If Tesla went to $70 from $600 or whatever it is, I might change my tune. And the fact that the valuation here has been cut by 80%, and also they have the wins of COVID at their back, and that is in pulse marketing, it's dangerous, but I'm very involved in two small businesses. And we, at one place, we had beautiful office space, five-year lease, 80 bucks a foot. And the pandemic came and I said, I stroked a check for about a million bucks to the landlord

to get out of it. And when we go back, I'm going back for, I want a few things. I want flexibility. I want less space, but I want that space to be more communal and quite frankly, more aspirational and just more fun because it's the young people who really want to get back and find mentors and friends. And all of that feeds into WeWork, who, by the way, a lot of their competitors, whether it's Notel or Regis or whoever, are impaired. So, like I said, and also I'm a fan of the CEO, Sandeep Matrani. So, we've said this before, I'm bullish on WeWork and bearish on Compass in terms of real estate. So, I think WeWork is sort of the rises from the ashes here. What happened to Masayoshi Son, speaking of rising, and the Vision Fund? They had a big valuation on this mother. this mother. Look, they've had big wins with Opendoor, obviously not as good with Compass. They just invested in a company I'm an investor in called Better. You got to give Masa's due. He's got cojones the size of Korea. I mean, he was not cowed by this failure. And the thing that will go down in history with WeWork is you had arguably the greatest negotiator in the history of private markets exploiting the situation, recognizing the Masayoshi On needed to save face.

They needed to get him out of there. I mean, effectively, you had one man, Adam Neum Newman, garner a $1.6 billion valuation for losing. I'm sorry. He garnered a $1.6 billion commission for losing $11 billion of other people's money. No one has ever been able to pull that off before. People get angry that, okay, you're the CEO and you've increased stakeholder value by a billion dollars and you pay yourself $50 million. Oh, my God, a 5% commission. They get outraged.

and you pay yourself $50 million. Oh my God, a 5% commission, they get outraged. This is a, what, a 20% commission on money lost? Yeah. I mean, we've just never seen anything like it. And Adam Newman is the person that comes out of here as the smartest person in the room. As far as I know, he didn't do anything illegal. Indeed, I don't think he behaved rather well.

It's a great story. You were in a recently popular Hulu documentary about the WeWork fail. Go on. Tell us about it. Go on. Tell us about it. I haven't seen it yet. I'm going to see it with you this weekend probably. You'll make me watch it, but go ahead. Over and over and over. It's my screensaver. My son will like it. Alex loves this kind of stuff. Yeah, I did it about six months ago, and it was in the midst of COVID, and I was a total prima donna. They're like, come to our New Jersey studio. And I'm like, I have one hour and you come to my place or I'm not doing this bullshit. I was total Beyonce, but she's probably nicer than that.

Anyways, so they came over and they did this thing. They just asked me a bunch of questions and I ended up in this documentary. And what's most interesting is, you know what I got the most comments on after the documentary was, oh, that was insightful comments. Everyone wanted to know about my bar cart. And everybody zeroed in on the alcohol I drink. All the comments were on my rolling bar cart and how it was like literally right next to me. But what was your takeaway if it was six months ago?

It was like, this was a disaster. You did the backward looking thing? Did you have any, what did you, what was your takeaway from the entire? I just think this is, I think it all comes down to kind of instinct. And I think he had a guy—again, I believe if you tell a 30-something-year-old guy with long hair that he's Jesus, he's inclined to believe you. And it was—I think this guy genuinely thought he was going to be president of the world and that he deserved to be a trillionaire.

Yeah, he did. You know, I think his wife was kind of awful. Yeah. And the notion that we should have voter class rights that give our kids the right to this, even if they don't own any stock, it's just a level of narcissism and weirdness. And then you have Masayoshi San, who I think the biggest virus that affects successful people

is believing that their success is their fault. And Masayoshi-san made the greatest investment in the history of the private markets, put $50 million into Alibaba and got $100 billion back. And that has created this belief that his craziness is- Not always crazy. Yeah. That is genius. The craziness is sometimes crazy. There's just no regulators there. And I don't know if you've seen his deck on The Singularity.

It's literally like when I'm on edibles, I sound rational compared to this deck. I thought this thing was from the onion. He's a character. He was planning, do you realize, leading up to the IPO, he was planning to put another 10 or 12 billion into WeWork. And his limited partners, I think it was the Mubalaba Fund or PIF, basically sat him down and said, we don't know where you're smoking over there, but we don't have access to the same hallucinogens and we need you to sober up and just do an update on the vision fund and its results some of them have been okay some of them have been less than okay some wins i think they did what they did they did not the kind of they were throwing money i remember

all the silicon valley people who competed with them were like this guy's just throwing money around like stupid stupid, stupid money. He's an interesting guy. I've spent a lot of time with him. I really enjoy it. What's he like? Crazy. Just like that.

He was talking about committing Harry Caray on the stage of All Things He Wants, which was interesting. He's just, he's really interesting and energetic and you can see why he attracts such attention and also- He seems earnest. He seems like a decent man. In a way, yeah. attention and also... He seems earnest.

He seems like a decent man. In a way, yeah. You know, he and Jack Ma are sort of similar in their... different but similar people. And we'll talk about Jack Ma on Thursday because what's happened to him is really... There was a great...

I think Jack Ma... I think if Jack Ma was 6'2 and white, he'd be the most famous business person in the world. I think Jack Ma... I think he's really something. He's hugely underrated as a thinker. Son has instincts that are hard. Anyway, it'll be interesting to see what happens.

All right, last question, and then we're going to bring on our incredible friend of Pivot, Preet Bharara. And one of the things I want to ask, where is WeWork's stock going to be? It comes out at $9 billion. What do you think? I don't know how people are going to respond to the SPAC

because it's got such an overhang on it, but I think WeWork is a good stock to own for the next couple of years if you can get it at $9 billion because you have growth, you have a differentiated offering, and they've gone from a messiah to a manager, which is an accretive move for shareholders. So I like it. Good management, growth story, differentiated product. Market that's probably open to it in a lot of ways for the next couple of years, at least. The disruption in office space, I believe, plays to their strengths. Yeah, absolutely. So I might... Anyways, I'm cautiously optimistic. What do you think, Karen?

I agree. I think they're in a good position and it's much better. It's still a lot of money, what it's worth, but we'll see how they do. Well-managed? Sure. Why not? Anyway, let's bring in our friend of Pivot and a new colleague who's here to, when you told me, class up the joints. I'm here to class up the joints.

My new close friend. He doesn't know this yet. Let him speak. I know because I have a transcript. Okay. That has been prepared by my staff of your last podcast. Oh, no. Wherein Cara learned how to pronounce my name. I did.

Very well done. Thank you. I think you mispronounced it when I was on your podcast too, but I'm so polite. I know. You should say something. And you seem so lovely and I want it to be your friend. Oh, don't. It's Barack.

By the way, Preet, don't believe that it doesn't raise your blood pressure to hear that the former head of the Southern District has a transcript of what you said. It's very relaxing. Thank you. Way to put us at ease. I'll mark it as Vox Exhibit 1. Okay, that's true. And the lawsuit. Multiple people, including on our team, friends of the family, in real time, as you were having a discussion, my phone was lighting up.

And why was it lighting up, might you ask? It's because the professor. Gentle lover? Yeah, he says, I think he, he being me, would be a very gentle lover, which I don't quarrel with that. But you went on to say, I imagine imagine him my heart is literally a 210 beats that voice after a bout of lovemaking about lovemaking that's how that's how lawyers roll saying quote honey honey let's i'll make some hot pockets and break out the Lancer's wine that's good

so that's that's where I gotta lodge some complaint I don't know if it's with the FCC you're not gonna find that at Clubhouse you're not gonna find that

at Clubhouse that's HR that's HR right HR I think that's some kind of that would be such a great case this is what we do

don't tell Bankoff we do a fake I thought you were serious people no we do a fake sexual harassment lawsuit. You thought wrong, my brother. You thought wrong. And then we get all the money, and then we split it. What do you think?

I just want to be serious for a moment, Preet, now that you're part of the family. Whether you want this or not, you are now my one call. And you know what I mean by my one call? No. Oh, no. You know when you get arrested and they say, this is your one call? So, dude, I need your cell phone. Because dad is like, well, guess who daddy's using his one call for?

You might want to call a lawyer who's practicing as opposed to a podcaster. Just so you know, listen. You're comforting. Hush, Scott Galloway. Infection. Now, listen. Preet is a former U.S. attorney for the Southern District, very famously. Host of the Stay Tuned with Preet podcast and best-selling author of Doing Justice.

So we have so many things to talk about. Tell me why you came to Vox, and then we'll talk about other things. This is going to be a long one. To be with you. No, you didn't. What were you doing? You get fired by Donald Trump.

Tell me what happened after that, how you got to where we are right now. How long? Well, so I decided to write a book. I did not want to immediately return to the practice of law. And I'm not sure that law firm life was my immediate preference. Sure. And I started teaching at NYU Law School.

And in the course of things, my brother, who had a media company at the time and a brand called Cafe. Yep. Which is kind of fledgling. He said, why don't you come and take that over and do something called a podcast, which I thought was going to be, you know, kind of a part-time on the side thing. But, you know, we were very successful. Yeah. Explain who your brother is.

Explain who your brother is. Are you taking a selfie of the screen? Yes, I am. I'm going to put it up on the internets. Go ahead. Okay. I was just noticing that your name here on Squadcast is Gentle Lover. That is so good.

And here's what's funny. You really can't see us at this point. That's just evidence. Kara says Fair-Minded Moonwalker. I didn't know that. And then I look over to Galloway thinking he's going to have some clever little appellation, and it's Scott. You know, Squadcast gives them to you.

All right, go back. So you did this thing with your brother. So my brother is also a trained lawyer, Columbia Law School, went to the same law school. And he practiced for a little while and became a business person. He started a company called diapers.com, which he sold to, I tell very famously, I would often begin speeches comparing him to me. When I became US attorney, I thought I was the big deal. And I was the sort of the winner in the competitive family sweepstakes. So a family of underachievers. Is that what you said?

My brother then, yes. He sold diapers.com, which by the way, he sold under the slogan, the diapers. We're number one and number two. So imagine how proud my parents were. That's good. Then he sells it to Amazon for $540 million, which is basically his way of saying, hey, bro, I see your whole US attorney thing. And I raise you $540 million.

So you start this company and start doing podcasts, right? Correct? Yeah, and we have a newsletter, and then we have a subscriber option also. Right. And it just grew and grew, and it became much more of my time. And then we started adding contributors

and adding podcasts about the law, about national security, about cyber, about all sorts of things. And a bunch of people came calling thinking that there was real value. And that's the most gratifying thing about this is doing the work that we recognize and we have a large listenership and they recognize. I don't know if it's the most gratifying thing, but it's interesting to see the market appreciate and validate that too.

It's an interesting time with all this. Do you want to know what really happened? Do you want to know what really happened? I mean, that's, okay, that's the press release. What happened? Bancroft decided he wanted more perceived class, and so he overpaid for whatever you were doing. Dude, you're literally, you're like a bow tie turned into a bow. Bancroft overpaid for you just to try and class out.

He's like, I don't know. But then it's not an overpayment. Isn't that worth something? That shows how much he needs. I have a real question. All right, ask a real question. Should I put all my Vox money into WeWork?

Was that what I was hearing? Yes, that's right. WeWork and Alibaba. That's where you go. Yeah. So look, a very serious question. The over-under,

I would like to get the percentage likelihood that President Trump ends up in jail. Oh, okay. Go right there. I don't do those percentages. Okay. Ratios? Where does he stand?

Where does he stand? I think- You're at Vox. This is no longer a place to be measured and responsible. I would say it's 41.9%. No. People talk about all these places where he has jeopardy. Right. And they sometimes conflate the civil cases with the criminal cases. There's not that much criminal activity. There's some people looking at stuff based on the election

interference in Georgia. I don't know that that's going to go anywhere. There's some people who are musing about whether or not the insurrection will cause them to have liability. That's a little bit interesting, given there was already impeachment on that. I don't know that that would be the Department of Justice. I don't know if they have the will to do that. But the thing that most people have been talking about for the longest period of time is the business of Cy Vance and the Manhattan DA's office. Right, the taxes. Cy Vance is a pretty cautious person when it comes to bringing cases. Some have argued too cautious. He argues otherwise. And he's done a couple of things that draw attention. He's hired somebody, Mark Pomerantz, who's a very noted lawyer in New York for a long time, to sort of have an independent flavor.

They've hired an outside forensic accounting firm. And given that he's in his last months of office, he's not seeking reelection. There's a primary in that race in just a couple of months. It seems like he's making efforts to make a final decision and a likelihood of a charge before the DA's election in November, or at least before the new DA is sworn in next year. No guarantee of that. They could have a change of heart. But the way I read the tea leaves, it looks like they have a feeling there's going to be a charge, and he wants to make sure that every T is crossed and I is dotted. Scott's question about whether or not Trump will oversee jail time, well, there's got to be a conviction and there's got to be a sentencing.

We're getting a little bit ahead of ourselves. But I think you're likely to see a charge from the Manhattan DA. Yeah. Let me pause at this because my impression is people say, well, he's had the oxygen and his platform is taken away from him and he's gone quiet. My sense is, and you advise these people, my sense as a defense attorney has said to them, dude, tone it down for a while. There's too many people trying to put you in jail. That's not your sense. You're shaking your head.

No, because I don't think that any defense attorney is capable of advising him in a way to, I mean, the most important time for him to have kept his mouth shut was during the Mueller investigation, during the first impeachment, during the second impeachment, when he was literally the president of the United States and not just defense lawyers, but also advisors probably telling him that because you get yourself in hot water. If he just kept his mouth shut in the days leading up to the inauguration, he wouldn't have been impeached again and he wouldn't be off Twitter. So I don't know that anybody can advise him. I mean, this is one of the reasons he can't get a good lawyer, because he doesn't pay them, number one. And number two, he doesn't listen to them. Yeah, but he seems to have been doing okay. He's still not in jail. So let me shift to another thing. You're known for aggressively taking down corruption on Wall Street. If you were still in practice, how would you look at the Reddit GameStop situation and what's going on on Wall Street? Because there's so much activity now with all these companies. Things are changing there, obviously. Yeah, some of that fear has quieted down.

And I understand how there are people on sort of different sides and the people who hate the hedge funds and the people who love the hedge funds. I'm sort of quizzical about why people put so much money in hedge funds, given their record. And when it was very much in the news and I was thinking about it on a more regular basis, I'm not sure what criminal activity you could charge anybody with. People are allowed to say what they want, generally speaking. People are allowed to trade as they want, generally speaking. Maybe there's some rulemaking that the new SEC chair can engage in,

but I didn't, and in talking to people sort of off the record, I didn't see any immediate, you know, criminal penalty for any side of that in GameStop. So I could be wrong. I don't think so. Let me ask you another question. Tech companies, all these lawsuits,

how do you think the Southern District is taking on tech companies? There's a Justice Department lawsuit, there's an FTC antitrust. So it's the one area think the Southern District is taking on tech companies? There's a Justice Department, there's an FTC, antitrust. It's a big area. It's the one area that the Southern District doesn't do, the local U.S. Attorney's Office doesn't do. They don't do antitrust.

It's local. You're right. That's handled by the U.S. Department of Justice that have field offices that do antitrust. It's interesting. I haven't finished reading it, but I'm interviewing Amy Klobuchar, Senator Klobuchar, her book. Giant book.

Called, called, it's very long. Antitrust. I did an interview with her. Did you? Yeah. Can you send me your notes? You can kill a poodle with it is what I told her. Say that to her. She didn't get, she didn't get the memo that the political memoir is supposed to be thin and, and hopeful, not say a whole lot.

Yeah, it's a lot. It's like, you know, I, let me just say, I had two delivered to my house. I have a lot of package to use in my neighborhood they stole both of them and then threw them back into my lawn but go ahead so i don't know how you know the interesting thing about the google lawsuit is there's there's something for conservatives and liberals there but i also think there's a little bit of a um you of an aura of politicization around things that the Trump administration did because Trump couldn't keep his mouth shut. So when Trump talks about the politics of conservatives getting their voice heard or not heard, and then something is done, an action is taken that seems to be consistent with what Trump would want you worry a little bit about what people think of that right but it seems to have been adopted and and carried forward that it didn't have to be by the biden administration so we'll we'll see

you know on the it's hard for prosecutors to do much in criminal law we talk about the ways in which you can go after companies for things. The criminal law is a big blunt instrument. And you have to show a beyond a reasonable doubt, provable violation of a particular statute. And much of what the debate is that you guys talk about a lot, and you and I have talked about, Cara, has to do with regulation. It has to do with Congress taking action, whether it's on Section 230 or something else.

I don't think there's a lot for criminal prosecutors to bash people over the heads with given the things we're talking about. But Scott talks about this. Go ahead, Scott. Yeah. I'm just curious. Have we reached a point, though, where it feels to me like there's certain individuals who feel that they're above the SEC and to a certain extent above the law, specifically some people who try to put men on Mars and they feel like they can basically announce private equity buyouts that are essentially proven false. And the SEC finds them $10 million. I guess what I'm saying, is there a different set of standards legally and in terms of enforcement for certain Jesus Christ of the internet? I don't know who you're talking about.

There shouldn't be. And there's no double standard. The way I thought about this when you're talking about really prominent, powerful people is naturally human beings want to get things right. And naturally when you're going to go after somebody who has a lot of resources, and quite frankly, as a matter of fairness and justice,

you want to be right because you can destroy someone's reputation and destroy, you know, their pocketbook because they have a certain reputation in the community and in the business world. And you want to be careful about that. You want to be careful about that when you, you know, investigate and prosecute politicians and don't undo duly elected officials uh you know time in office so i think you take a lot of care uh and you make sure that you're not being overly creative

and so i don't know the particular things that the sec might do with respect to that in that individual uh who has big problems otherwise because of the car accident that I guess happened. But I'd like to think, and certainly I think under Gary Gensler and this administration, no one's going to get a buy just because they have a lot of money. I mean, almost by definition, the kinds of people and institutions that the SEC regulates are powerful, moneyed, wealthy entities and people. And I certainly never thought that way when I was in office. So can I ask you a question about where law is going? I mean, if you were in office right now, what are the things that- Law is going.

Law is going, big law. But if you were running the Southern Districts, what are the areas of interest for agencies like yours, or with broadly speaking, what are the big important areas that- I'll name two areas. Again, I'm not as close to it. I don't get, you know, the threat matrix stuff anymore.

Like I used to. One thing is something that became a huge issue, a developing issue when I started 12 years ago. And I think we're having another wave of it. And that's all things related to cyber threats, whether it's coming from, you know, the hacktivists or it's coming from,

you know, random individuals who are trying it's coming from uh you know random individuals who are trying to make money and steal your bank accounts or i think most importantly nation states and you know a lot of this goes on behind the scenes but there is you know very deeply involved agencies not just the fbi the secret service and the intel agencies who care about and think about what a cyber war could look like. And then second, in a completely different direction, although not fully different, still harm to infrastructure here in the country, is domestic terrorism. When I took office in 09, the Southern District had a long and storied history of going after

organized international terrorism. I was a few months on the job when Faisal Shahzad tried to blow up Times Square. We tried Ahmed Ghalani, the last person who was tried who was taken to Guantanamo Bay. That case put an end to that. But now you have people in this right-wing universe, and not just in the right-wing universe, but in other places as well, who are not as organized, who you can't find evidence that they trained in Afghanistan. They don't have the same tripwires that send messages to law enforcement. There's debate about a domestic terrorism statute. So I think, and you hear people like Joe Biden and others talk about this, we really need to think about a way

to keep folks safe in the country because you're having individuals who are getting radicalized and it's harder to make a conspiracy case against them. And then, you know, most recently, the rise in hate crimes. I think there's a big worry about that. So the insurrection, I think, has awakened a lot of people to this. So those would be two of my priorities. You saw that Oathkeeper was on 60 Minutes. It was terrifying. I missed the interview, though. Yeah, you should see it. It's terrifying.

And it's sort of like, yeah, law enforcement's helping us. This is, you know, who knows what he's saying is true or not. But you suspect looking at the donations to Kyle Rittenhouse from legitimate police officers, what's going on here in terms of worry about that. So those are the areas you would look into. Yeah, and also, maybe the spirit of your question was not about this too. You know, we have a big criminal justice reform issue. We have a policing issue.

I have my television, to my left, is paused on the summation of the defense lawyer in the Derek Chauvin trial. And I think, I don't think we'll have a verdict by the time this airs, but pretty soon thereafter, probably this week. And it's going to say a lot about people's confidence in policing, in prosecution, in the nature of the laws that relate to police discretion. And I think we've seen a year of reckoning,

and now you have a moment of actual decision on the thing that caused appropriately millions of Americans to protest and make their voices heard last year. Now you're going to get literally, quite literally, a verdict on it. What do you, how do you think they did? I think the prosecution did a really, really good job.

Yeah, me too. I don't really good job. Yeah, me too. I don't always think that. Yeah, me neither. And I can be critical. Yeah, I was just saying that to someone. I think the opening was particularly great. The summation this morning I thought was very, very good. I don't think it was perfect.

I think it could have been tighter and more focused. But the prosecution has a lot to work with. And I sometimes say to students and to people who ask me the question, sometimes prosecutors win because they just have the evidence and you can be the best defense lawyer in the world. But if you have a video of a guy shooting a guy and your client wants to go to trial, there's not a lot you're going to be able to do about it. And here you don't have a guy shooting a guy, but you have a guy, Derek Chauvin, with his

knee in the back of the neck of George Floyd for nine and a half minutes. Every bit of that is incredibly powerful. And you have the medical testimony and the experts going back and forth. But as the prosecutors, I think, and the prosecutors done a great job of that. But as they say, the bottom line is, even before you get to any of that, you can decide this case basically on the video. And that's what they have on their side. So I expect a conviction on at least the manslaughter and the murder three. Maybe the murder two. I mean, one of the reasons, you know, the prosecutors are a little bit worried about murder two is that the murder three, I don't want to get too technical, the murder three had been eliminated from the trial. And the prosecutors fought really hard to get this lesser count put back in.

Right. Because you want to give the jury a menu of things they can convict on. Yeah. But I think they've done a great job. Scott? Yeah. So first, I just want to acknowledge, I thought your answer around what individuals you decide to devote prosecutorial resources to, I thought that was one of the more thoughtful answers. what individuals you decide to devote prosecutorial resources to.

I thought that was one of the more thoughtful answers. And it's heartening that people in your position weigh the potential downside and damage and don't take lightly going after someone. I thought, anyways, I heard that and I thought, what the fuck are you doing at Vox? You should be running for Senate. But anyways. He's not the guy on Billions, Scott. Anyways. Well, sort of. Anyways, I would love to hear your voiceover on whether you believe there's criminal activity or if it'll ever come to trial on Representative Gates. Oh, it's a very frustrating thing to be on this side of the fence.

I don't have any access to FBI 302s or interviews. What's a 302? Calling all cars. It's the name of the force. Throw legal terms at us's it's the name of the form it's the name of the force i'm trying to i'm trying to show that i used to actually have that kind of job yeah so 302 what is that that's just the form that fbi agents fill out when they do an interview or there's a development in a case um uh so that they keep track of the investigation so so on matt gates there's a lot going on there you know there are a lot of leaks. There are a lot of people talking smack about Matt Gaetz.

Including himself. Including himself. And that's a sign because all those people are potential witnesses and maybe they kept quiet before and maybe they're not going to keep quiet now, not just with the press, but with the FBI and with prosecutors. But most importantly, you have an actual guy in the form of Mr. Greenberg who has pled guilty to, I'm sorry, is not sorry is not pled guilty been charged and looks like he's going to plead guilty and one of the reasons you think it's gonna be very bad for Matt

Gates is his lawyer Greenberg's lawyer basically taunted from behind microphones after proceeding last week taunted Matt Gates is that he's not very something like he's not shouldn't be very comfortable right now right yeah basically saying my guy is flipping and is going to help himself and is going to testify against you and there's a lot of particularity to the charges against Greenberg and there's a lot of particularity in some of the reporting particularly out of the New York Times about the kinds of things that Greenberg was doing with Matt Gates yeah so ordinarily I'm more circumspect in predicting things here Here, it seems a charge,

I'm not gonna give a number, a charge seems quite likely, also in combination with just my general observation to Mr. Gates, which is that he's not a careful man. And there's a lot of track record. I mean, if you believe the reporting, there are Venmo records, there are probably texting records, there are videos. Yeah, he's sloppy. And I think he talks to a lot of people he has no business being in congress and the other thing he has going against him is the fact and i think this is not insignificant if the reporting is to be believed the investigation was begun when bill barr who i have no love for or affection for was the attorney general and he didn't see anything there that caused him to want to quash the investigation, apparently, even though on other occasions, there's things that Bill Barr seems to have done

that favored supporters of the president. Yeah. So that combination of things, Greenberg, he's not careful, the leaking. So his move is to attack Greenberg, right? That's what he'll do. That's what they'll do. Yeah. I mean, the way I've described this before.

It's like Michael Cohen, right? Yeah, I mean, in some ways, I've suggested before that Trump is kind of brilliant because the kind of people he surrounded himself with are liars and scoundrels. And then one day when the liars and scoundrels decide they're going to flip on Donald Trump, as some of them maybe have contemplated. The defense is, what are you talking about? Those are liars and scoundrels. You can't believe anything that they say. So you always attack the cooperator because it is true. One challenge is going to be, well, how slimy a guy is Greenberg? Very.

And how is he going to appear? Look, that's one of the problems with Michael Cohen. Michael Cohen never got a cooperation agreement from my old office. And is it because he wasn't fully truthful? Maybe. Is it because he was being selective in who he wanted to cooperate against? Maybe. Is it because they thought jurors wouldn't really like him and believe him because he's lying?

It's not great when one of your witnesses actually has lied and that's one of the charges he pled guilty to is lying you know the cross is very formidable yeah one of the things you pled guilty to was lying right in a in a formal situation right well just like this one right right that's tough yeah resignation from congress be considered currency would a prosecutor see if if if representative gate said okay i'm in trouble here is current is resigning or the offer to resign currency that potentially cauterizes or staves off more aggressive prosecution?

Or do prosecutors just not care? Like, this is the law. We don't care if you resign or not. That is really a profoundly excellent question. And I don't know that there's a solid answer the way I thought about it we you know investigated and prosecuted a lot of state representatives when I was in office and we didn't really link the two mm-hmm if you're guilty of a crime you're guilty of a crime and you don't get a get a jail-free card if you resign it may be something that I think appropriately, depending on the circumstances, is something

that affects a plea deal and what the recommendation of sentencing would be. Because part of sentencing is contrition and acceptance of responsibility and leaving office, arguably as a sign of that. I teach law at NYU Law School and I've been reading people's papers this week, and one of the proposed topics that I gave students that they wrote about was whether the Southern District should have prosecuted Eliot Spitzer after he was technically guilty of a violation of, you know, the Mann Act, which relates to prostitution. And my predecessor made the decision not to prosecute him because the general policy was in the office that we didn't prosecute johns and we didn't prosecute the sex workers only the people who engage in

the traffic and if there was coercion and a number of students addressed this very issue of of what was the relevance of spitzer's uh decision to resign and i don't know what it was because it wasn't my decision to make but you know i think it can factor in at the margins and on sentencing. But otherwise, you shouldn't be able to. If you're a teacher and you commit a crime and you quit, depending on the seriousness of the crime, I don't think you get a bye. Oh, Scott, you're in trouble then. Oh, sorry.

Not anymore. My one call. Have you seen who my one call is? He's not going to answer that call. He's not going to. He's too classy. Who talks on the phone? I'm your one text.

One text. Don't text. Don't Venmo. Don't Venmo anyone, Scott. I have another question. I'm going to steal your thunder, Tara. All right, last question, and then we're going to find out what's next for Preet at Vox Media.

But go ahead, Scott. I want to ask the same question, but I want to go more meta. Let's be honest. You're a pretty impressive cat, right? You've had this crazy career where it's sort of, you're, let's be honest, you're a pretty impressive cat, right? You've had this crazy career where it's sort of, you know, the question is what you're going to do. The question is what you're not going to do. I would love sort of, if you can, a non-bullshit answer here. Where do you want to be in five years?

Do you want to be in office? I've got to consult my contract. Do you want to be? Yeah, we're stuck in two. You strike me as a guy, as a man with a plan. Like five years, where do you want to be? Four. So this is a non-bullshit answer that will surprise you.

I don't really have a plan. You know, the funny thing is, so the only thing I ever planned that I definitely absolutely wanted to do was become a line prosecutor at SDNY. You know, I knew that in law school. I knew that when I was in private practice. I changed firms to work with alumni of the Southern District so that I could impress them and they would write me good letters of recommend.

That was very intentional. And that's what I did. And five years into that job, that's the best job I'll ever have, there's this weird opportunity to go work in the Senate. And I hadn't fully, I think, made my bones as a prosecutor. I would have tried more cases. I went to do different kinds of things. And this opportunity came along. And I took it because I got to work on the Senate Judiciary Committee, being chief counsel to Chuck Schumer at the beginning of 05, when everyone predicted there were going to be

at least one, if not more, Supreme Court vacancies. There hadn't been one in 11 years, stable court from 1994 to 2005. And Senator O'Connor stepped down and this idea, and it was not a plan. I thought, what could be more fascinating than to go work on the hill on Supreme Court confirmations? And so I did that. So people try to reverse engineer my career. It turns out that going to the Senate, working for senator schumer staying there until the democrats won back the senate and then um this unknown individual barack obama becomes president i'm now in the right place at the right time senator schumer based on his you know trust in me and experience with me recommended me to become the u.s attorney i never would have predicted there was no there's no people think I had a plan like that's what he was doing. He was trying to become the U.S. attorney.

I wasn't. I had no plan. I mean, I have a plan. My plan is always to do a thing that is interesting and that uses your brain

and then crush it. And then my plan is success. And maybe that sounds. So bigger podcasts, newsletters, focus on legal. Well, yeah,

no, I don't know because we just entered this marriage with Vox. But I think over the next few years, there's a lot of opportunity to educate people, to inform people, to entertain folks, maybe in ways that haven't been done before, not just in sound. One of the reasons we came to Vox, there's a lot of audiovisual or documentary possibilities. It's only been four days, but you know, all of those things are on the table and all of those

things I think can happen. And then in the future, yeah, if there are leadership opportunities, of course I'm open to them. But what I've been focusing on for the last few years, you know, once we saw the impact you can have, even from just podcasting and, you know, you know, our followers are very loyal. Yeah. And I think they, you know, appreciate calls to action to make the country better.

That, you know, we grew a business and I want to make it successful. And Jim Bancroft thought it was worth, you know, and Marty Moe thought it was worth doing. Yeah. And so for right now,

my focus on this. Would you go back to prosecuting? I mean, look, right now they're considering making the Supreme Court bigger, which I think is never going to happen. No, I don't think so. Would you ever consider going back into politics or something like that? Look, I was 17 years in public service, 17 and a half years. And I was so into being in public service that even when an odious man was elected president, when he asked me to stay on and remain in public service, I said, yes, it's Donald Trump. He changed his mind.

He fired me. So I always have a love for public service. And in fact, you know, a number of our podcast hosts have been called back to public service because it's important work. I don't see that for some time because I got this and I want to build this and I want to do right by, you know, our listeners and our followers.

Yeah, but I'm not that old. So someday in the future, I'm open to it. When you're president, Cara, you can appoint me to something. I'm not going to be president. That's a thought. I'm sorry.

I just got us one more question. I got us one more question. All right, go for it. Look at this. This is now the Preet and Scott show from NYU. But go ahead. Do we plug Stay Tuned? Stay Tuned with Preet.

Yes. Stay Tuned with Preet. It's part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. We're going to do that, of course. We're going to let you do the whole show meal. Snoozerama. You're like, the bosses are going to listen to this. It's like, oh my God, he's running for office tomorrow.

Plenty. We give them plenty. Go ahead, Scott. Preet. Yes. Preet, advice to your 25-year-old self. Oh. Advice to younger men and women, just out of school or not out of school.

Like, where would you, give me one or two things that changed your life for the better. What advice do you have for young people? Yeah. So, it's a little bit what I just said. Don't plan so much. You know, once when I was in the senate there there was this young group i can't remember if they were like harvard or yale law students they all want to be you know masters of the universe and and i one of those young people asked me the question because they

saw where i was they thought i had a big deal job i was chief counsel to a you know significant senator and they said um so how do we do that yeah uh how do i become powerful and i gave them a whole speech about how you know i didn't come to the hill i was old for the hill like in my mid to late 30s but one of the reasons i got to be successful at the hills i learned some craft like i learned how to practice law i learned how to try cases and then it just fell in my lap when the justice department under bush was misbehaving and there was a whole investigation into the politicization of the Justice Department back in 2007. Yeah. I was the only-

Quaint times. I was one of the only people in the entire committee, and it's very impressive lawyers, but one of the very few people who could take a deposition, right? Yeah. And who could do an investigation because I had learned some craft. So you have a lot of, so this is advice, you know, generally, but specific to highly ambitious people and there's nothing wrong

with being ambitious. But learn a trade, learn how to do something. We have too many people in power who have never done anything except be sort of on the path to power without learning how to paint or to code

or to try a case or to build something, right? And I think the more leaders we have who actually have done something, have learned a craft or a trade, the better off we will be and the better off those people will be. I think it opens up opportunities.

That's one thing. Classy answer, Scott. Learn to craft. Classing up the joint. Classing up the joint. You already did. It's like by 150%. This is so good for us, Scott.

Come on. That's how we think of everything, Preet, just so you know. Is it good for Scott and Kara? And this is good for Scott and Kara. I think so. Should we pivot? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, you made a little joke about our name. I couldn't believe it when I read it. Oh, my gosh.

You'll be doing tequila shots with us soon enough. Don't worry. Don't worry about it. Anyway, Preet, we're very excited you're here. I'm going to plug your things. Thank you so much. Yes. Stay tuned with Preet Podcast. And what other podcast? We have the Cafe Insider. Okay.

So, cafe.com slash insider to sign up. It's great stuff. We're announcing a new co-host today or tomorrow. I think I can't say yet. Oh, good heavens. This doesn't come out until tomorrow. Tomorrow, yeah. Tell us.

I think I can tell you. Go ahead. So, Ann Milgram has been nominated to be the next DEA administrator. Oh, wow. And the new co-host will be lawyer extraordinaire, classing up my joint, Joyce Vance. Oh, wow. You may know Joyce from commentating and other things. Sure do.

She's brilliant and great, and she's going to make me look good. Okay. This is going to be fantastic. This is going to be great. We're very going to make me look good. Okay. This is going to be fantastic. This is going to be great. We're very excited for you to be here. Besides Cause of the Joy, this theory of legal and sort of the intersection. Oh, and Third Degree with Ellie Honig. That's another podcast we have.

We have a whole bunch. And Doing Justice based on. We got a whole bunch. Yeah. Yeah. All right. All right. That's why we're here.

Thank you, Preet. You're the best. Thanks, folks. We really appreciate it. And we'll be getting you better internets. Welcome to the family. Welcome to the family. And you always return the family's phone calls from prison. All right, folks. We really appreciate it. And we'll be getting you better internets. Welcome to the family. Welcome to the family. And you always return the family's phone calls from prison.

All right, Scott. He may be a gentle lover. I don't know. But he's certainly a gentle colleague, don't you think? I noticed you changed your name to Preet's close friend. Oh, he's a colleague. Colleague. He's a colleague.

He's a colleague. You saw what I changed my screen name to? Yes, Preet's close friend. Good luck with that. We are close. Okay, we'll see how that works out. We are close. All right, Scott, one more quick break.

We'll be back for wins and fails. Yeah. day-to-day, the personnel, and the finances, marketing is the last thing on your mind. But if customers don't know about you, the rest of it doesn't really matter. Luckily, there's Constant Contact. Constant Contact's award-winning marketing platform can help your businesses stand out, stay top of mind, and see big results. Sell more, raise more, and build more genuine relationships with your audience through a suite of digital marketing tools made to fast track your growth. With Constant Contact, you can get email marketing that helps you create and send the perfect email to every customer,

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Published by Capital Client Group, Inc. Okay, Scott, wins and fails. That was a win with Preet. I think Preet's a win, don't you think? Yeah, if you listen to your interview with Senator Klobuchar, if you listen to our interview with Andy Slavitt, and you listen to that interview, you think, wow. Distinct to the cartoon that's been made.

Quality. Of public servants. Government continues to attract the best and brightest. That guy is, I mean, he just reeks of credibility and thoughtfulness. Yeah, I always, when people say government's good, I'm like, that's not true. There's some bad people in government, just like at every workplace, but there's a lot of highly competent people. That guy's crazy impressive. Crazy impressive.

I hope, and I really do hope he, I mean, as much as I'm excited about the, you know, Vox Media Podcast Network and the impact we're going to have on the world, I would really like to see him re-engage in public service at some point. Me too. Me too. It would be interesting. It's interesting he didn't go into the Biden administration. Yeah. He strikes me as someone who sooner rather than later gets the call, right?

Yep. Yep, probably. Anyway, wins and fails. My wins and fail are about the same thing. The vaccine now, I think it's one in two American adults have had their first shot. I think it's fantastic. We're making real progress against vaccine hesitancy. But my fail is all the attention and noise and what I would call really damaging exploitation of the news around the clots. You know, we can lose 140 people in three months to mass shootings, but if we lose one person to a blood clot, that's unacceptable.

It just strikes me that no one wants to look at the data and that when you stop, when J&J seizes distribution because of the blood clots, it's really a testament to the safety of these things and the protocols and just the standards are so high around vaccines that if we had a fraction of that same safety standards around the rest of parts of our lives, it'd be a much better place. And I see it as a strong signal that vaccines are incredibly safe. And when they aren't- Yep, I agree. My lovely wife, Amanda, got the J&J vaccine and actually has a blood clotting disorder. And so she was more of an essay saying she'd take it again. She'd take it again. You know what the word is? My sister just

summarized it perfectly for me. She's in San Francisco and she got her first. And she said, I said, how do you feel? And she said, it's freeing. Yeah. And my message to everybody is, I can't tell you how good, how strong, how empathetic, how patriotic you'll feel if you haven't already gotten this thing. I think it's one of the most, and I don't know how you felt, but I felt, I haven't felt that good about everything. Yeah, hopefully. Then after that, yeah, hope, hope, freeing. My son's got it. I find my son's got it this weekend, got it this weekend. Oh, hopefully. Then after that, yeah, hope, hope freeing. My son's got it. I find my son's got it this weekend. Got it this weekend.

Oh, they did? And so, yeah, because it's now eligible to everyone over 16. So it was great. They got the Pfizer because the younger kids are getting the Pfizer vaccine and I feel great. The only one that doesn't have it is my baby

because you're not giving it to babies yet. So that's the only, but they don't tend to get it. In any case, it does feel freeing. That is a good win. What is your fail? My fail is and I'm totally, got something stuck in my craw about this, is I'm just

irate over the notion that Coinbase pretends it's not a broken IPO. I can't, it's literally arguably one of the worst performing IPOs year to date. That's getting slapped around on the financial Twitters. Well, it's just, I just, this whole idea of let's pretend there's an illusory thing called

a reference price so we can claim that our IPO was a success. And someone also, I want to point out, someone on Twitter pointed out that I talked about how institutional clients who get the pop in a traditional IPO are getting – one of the pauses there is that retail investors benefit the same people, and they're absolutely right. But the transfer, it's just a transfer of what I'll call that pop from the institutional clients of investment bankers to the institutional clients of VCs who want to capture, which is, you could make an argument that's neither here nor there, it just is. But it really, it bothers me that the media has taken the bait here and is not calling this what it is, and that is a broken IPO. All right. That's a good call. That's a good call.

And I think a lot of people are noticing that, too. Just my win is there's yet another. You know, I love Fast and Furious, as you know. Oh, here we go. I'm going to go see F9. But now there's another one, which is Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is coming out in September. That's my first theater going, I think. I'm very excited about it.

It's going to have Awkwafina in it. There's this guy named Simu. I think it's Liu. He's in it. It's just, go look at the trailer. It's fantastic. I'm so excited. It's all big, noisy movies in a theater.

And you know I've been hard on theaters, but nonetheless, I want to see these things in a big theater. You know, what's more exciting, I believe, is the Amazon $450 million on, is it, it's not the Tolkien series, it's the,

what are they doing? They're spending, they're spending half a billion dollars. Whatever, that's great. I'm glad they're taking Jeff Bezos' money and doing that.

Yeah, yeah. And, and, you know, I just feel like, even though I do think theaters are really troubled and we talked about your experience at the Cinerama dome. I think,

I don't know what to think about this. This might fail, but I don't think it's a fail. I can't decide. Which is Apple is letting Parler back into the app store following moderation improvements. A lot of people do not feel good about this because they think Parler shouldn't be allowed back at all. But I can't decide whether it's a win or fail.

I think it's both. I think it makes me worry that these platforms get to exist at the same time. I feel okay about it. I don't know. What do you think? You know, I think that— Tim Cook told this to me in the interview we did. But what do you think about that

by the way it's another one Knives Out is supposedly on contracts to do two sequels the I think if you really have a thoughtful measured conversation

and put your politics aside it's hard to not end up in an uncomfortable place where you're banning stuff. Yeah. So I probably a positive. Yeah.

I think it is probably a positive. Yeah. I didn't react badly about it. And, you know, of course, as usual, the things are being mad at Apple for taking them off in the first place. Glenn Greenwald has a stupid tweet once and again. But the fact is they're coming back on and we'll see what happens there. Interestingly while we're talking, Reddit is

previewing Reddit Talk, a Clubhouse-like audio feature for subreddits. So coming to iOS and Android. So everyone's in the space, Scott. It's time for us to jump in. We already talk every week. But anyway, there's a lot going on. Okay, Scott,

that's the show. That was an exciting show. That was a lot. That was a lot. We'll be back for more on Friday, though. At the same time, there'll be plenty to talk about

because there's so much news. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit your question for the Pivot podcast. The link is also in our show notes. Read us out.

Today's show is produced by Rebecca Sinanis. Ernie Andertat engineered this episode. Thanks also to Hannah Rosen and Drew Burrows. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or if you're an Android user, Read us out. we blessed to live in a country that continues to attract the best and brightest to be thoughtful and measured around the connective tissue of the greatest nation and the greatest tensile strength and muscle in history, and that is the U.S. government. He's still not going to call you back when you're in jail. He's my call. He's my call.

He's not going to call you? He's just, he's literally, he's going to be with me having drinks. You could hear it in his voice. And we're going to say, let it go. You could hear it in his voice. Let it go going to say, let it go. You can hear it in his voice. Let it go. Let's not get involved. Let's move along.

This show is now called Pivot with Kara Swisher and Preet's close friend, Scott Galloway. That is absolutely true. That's correct, Rebecca. See you on Friday. Support for this podcast comes from Anthropic. It's not always easy to harness the power and potential of AI. Thank you. AI for everyone. The latest model, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, offers groundbreaking intelligence at an everyday price. Claude Sonnet can generate code, help with writing,

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