Pivot - Instagram Goes PG-13, ChatGPT Allows Erotica, and Netflix Grabs Podcasts

Episode Date: October 17, 2025

Kara and Scott discuss the fallout from the Young Republicans' Telegram chat leak, Instagram’s new protections for teens, and OpenAI allowing "erotica" for adults.  Plus, Kara has thoughts about Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff’s call for National Guard troops in San Francisco, and Scott has a prediction about the future of the podcasting business. We're going on tour! Get tickets at pivottour.com Watch this episode on the ⁠⁠Pivot YouTube channel⁠⁠. Follow us on Instagram and Threads at ⁠⁠@pivotpodcastofficial⁠⁠. Follow us on Bluesky at ⁠⁠@pivotpod.bsky.social⁠⁠ Follow us on TikTok at ⁠⁠@pivotpodcast⁠⁠. Send us your questions by calling us at 855-51-PIVOT, or email [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Is peace finally within reach in the Middle East? No one had approached it this way, and I think that was a major, a major contributor. I'm Preet Bharara, and this week, political advisor and podcast host, Dan Cynor, joins me on my podcast, stay tuned with Preet, to discuss the new ceasefire in Gaza and what comes next for the war-torn region. The episode is out now. Search and follow, stay tuned with Preet, wherever you get your podcasts. Sam Altman's saying,

we shouldn't be the morality police. No, no, actually, you should. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Scott Calloway. Scott, guess where I am?

Who are you? Los Angeles, your favorite place. You love Los Angeles. Yes. And what are you doing there? I am working on one of the last interviews for this secret documentary with the hacking guy.

Worst kept secret, the hacking guy. I met him at the Aspen gathering. Oh? Yeah. Thoughts? Did you discuss all your body? All my stuff? Hacking, yeah.

Well, of course, you wanted to know my secret. And I said, well, actually, you know, I'm like, other than, you know, the lower facelift, the chin plant, my eyes done, the picol laser, the vitamin A, vitamin D, NAD, and testosterone shots. It's all just genetics. I guess I'm lucky. I guess I'm lucky. Oh, and I forgot to mention I've worked out four times a week for the last 40 years.

I think that's called epigenetics, the things that you do to affect yourself. I think it's called narcissism in a middle-life crisis that started at the age of eight and it's still going on. We're going to talk about that topic because I do think a lot of this

is born of narcissists. I feel like if I insult him, I'm insulting you, but here we are. You know what, though? It's not easy. It's not easy being a four. Like, when I was young, Well, anyways, when I was younger, I was handsome.

That was really good. I'm getting to the point now. I think being really ugly is pretty easy because you just sort of lean into it and give up. Like, I'm almost there. I'm ready to lean into the ugly. It's unattractive, you know. Ugly can be unattractive.

It can be attractive, excuse me. That's eliminated. It sounds like you won journalism awards in college. I did. I know he did. That's why I brought it up. The fun award. Let's bring that back for people. You brought it up several thousand times.

When I find that metal in my basement with my Bitcoin, I'm going to wear it every episode. So, wear it as a belt. Anyways, the, but it's not easy being like, the most difficult place is being mediocre looking. It's like when I had great hair, that was awesome. I actually like having a shaved head. It was when I was losing my hair for 10 years that it was a pain. I'm in the transition phase. I'm transitioning from modestly good looking to very definitely not good looking, and it's the transition that's painful.

I hate to pay you a compliment, but I think you're very good looking. Go on. I'm sorry, my mic was off. Well, I think you do. You're very classic, do it. You're very classic looks, I think. Classic? No one's ever described my look as classic. Yeah, but I think Larry David's good looking, too, I guess. Oh, my God, you just blew it. You literally just blew it. I did that on purpose. Let me think. Patrick, Patrick, the guy who is Stuart. You have a very Patrick Stewart look.

Patrick Stewart. I've heard that before. If you had a British accent, it wouldn't work for you. I get Ivan Lendell, Bruce Dern, and Ryan Reynolds. drunk uncle. Oh, no, I would say, oh, I like Bruce Stern. Yeah, you have that sort of face. Let me hear your British accent. No, I can't do accents anymore.

It sounds like a dead language, twins speak to each other. You do your dad one, your Scottish one. I do not. I have any of few drinks for that one. You could do French. You could move to France. You could do the French accent. Yes.

Because the cheese eating surrender monkeys. Was that too much? Too much. No, it's so attractive. I don't know if I was, you know, I'd be made. out with you right now. Oh, yeah. That will never happen. That's what happens when I start speaking French. We'll never be arrested in a park. We're never going to, we're never going to find either, we'll never find you topless in a car. We might find me topless in a car. Yeah, it's true. We'll

find you topless on stage. Oh, God, we got so much feedback. We got so much feedback. Why did people love that so much? I felt they went together nicely because the gold coin story, I did not think was going to land, honestly, and it did, like, terrifically. And then the arrest one, people loved both of them. No, but the thing is, when you're arrested twice, it's a pattern. Like, you're definitely, everyone's like, what a gangster, because if you're arrested once, who knows you're in college, you never know, right? Or you get pulled. Who knows? But arrested twice definitely means, you know, you fought the law and the law won. I almost got arrested one other time where this, you know, when these sort of local police officers can be like. Does it involve lesbian sex? Because I'm here for it.

No, this guy was yelling at a lady and I intervened. He was like being really abusive. He has one of those, like cops. I love, I like most cops, actually. I've always had relatively good. Well, most people, some people don't. It's my favorite stripper is the cop. It's true. Oh, I went to a stripper once. They had a cop strip. Yeah. The Hanger Club. Like, how are you getting me to tell these? I don't know that one. I don't know that one. I just a place called the I went, actually, I just heard from all my college friends. They're all coming to D.C. and we're going out, and they were kind of wild. They were a wild gang, and, like, always drunk and everything.

And I was, like, the good one. And, like, I'd study and come, like, you'd come back, and there'd be nine guys. They made out with on the floor of our place. But we all went to a place for one of my roommates' birthdays's birthdays called the Hanger Club. And you get it? Hanger, hangar. And they would let the strippers in. I went to one of those.

It was something else. Were you out in college? No. No. But it was terrible. So you were dating men or just had crashes on your house? Vaguely. You know, I had sort of stopped.

I had a four-year high school boyfriend, essentially. And then I had boyfriends all the way through. But I had the same boyfriend for four years? Yeah, yeah. Wow. Are you guys still in contact? A little bit, a little bit. I haven't talked to him in a while.

I haven't talked to him in a while. He's great. He's a great guy. His name was Chris Price, I'll say it. He's really nice. He was really nice. Chris Price. Yeah, we went in 10th grade until his freshman year of college.

I broke up once in the middle of it. I knew I was gay. I should have not done that. I shouldn't have gone out at the time. By that time. I should have not. I should have said something. But one didn't do that then, Scott.

He was lovely. I was a really good girlfriend because I put out because I didn't care. No, you're probably pretty easy going. Yeah, why not? Like, what do I care? Anyway, we do have a lot to get to today, including Instagram going PG-13 and open-A-I going in the opposite direction with erotica. But first, leaked texts from messaging platform telegram reveal leaders of the young Republican groups exchange racist, sexist, and anti-Semitic texts over the span of seven months. The chats included jokes about enslavement, negative comments about minorities.

They're really gross. I'm not going to repeat them. But they're like, think of the worst thing and then make it worse, is what they were. And discussions about raping enemies and driving them to suicide. And if you see the pictures of these people, each one looks like an insult, honestly. The Young Republican National Federation said it is appalled by the language and suggested those involved must resign. But as usual, J.D. Vance, Couch Potato took the opportunity to criticize a Democratic Virginia's AG candidate who was a texting scandal of his own regarding political violence. That guy is terrible, but of course, J.G. Vance can't possibly just say sorry.

Vance called the response to the Republican group text pearl clutching in comparison. Let's listen to a clip of him on the the Charlie Kirk show. He's going to have a great job as a podcaster when he leaves office. But the reality is that kids do stupid things, especially young boys. They tell edgy, offensive jokes. Like, that's what kids do. And I really don't want us to grow up in a country where a kid telling a stupid joke, telling a very offensive stupid joke, is caused to ruin their lives. And at some point, we're all going to have to say, enough of this BS. I'll tell you who's enough of this BS. is J.D. Vance. Some individuals exposed and the message have been fired, at least one young republicans groups have been disbanded.

I wouldn't think of this, because it really was over the top. And, you know, we do, it's not cancel cultures back, but it was pretty horrible. Like, it was shock. I was even surprised. Maybe I shouldn't have been. What did you think? Initially, all else being equal, I sort of agree with J.D. Vance in the sense that, oh, no. Well, give me some time here, and then you can pose for the woe. Bring light. I'm not going to put, don't always pull. Don't bring that up.

Don't always bring woke. That's your excuse. When you're losing an argument, you say woke. But go ahead. Move on. You do. Anyways, so I empathize with the notion that we had the luxury of not having a digital world where every ridiculously offensive stupid thing we did.

I mean, the shit we did in college, I look back on. I get it. And I thank God, I was. involved. Now, having said that. Can I just interject for people for a factually? No, because you're going to steal my thunder and then everyone's going to come on and say, okay, go care. All right.

I know all your tricks. These aren't children. Some of these people, specifically, some of these men are not even young men. They're 31 and 35. Two, he's the wrong messenger for this because he's totally inconsistent. If this was the young Democratic chat, he would have ordered a gunship and fucking the army rangers to their homes. And this is the same group of people that says that a joke about Donald Trump talking about a ballroom when asked about Charlie Kirk is so offensive that it should be removed from the air. So it's incredibly hypocritical and inconsistent for Vice President Vance to say. say anything about, come on, guys, it's just speed, it's just, you know, bros, frat kids going

to be frat kids. And also, these are not children. And when you look at what they said, I don't like, there is a certain gotcha culture where the media goes crazy around calling people out, but the reality is when you read these texts, these young men or adults, these adult men are about to learn a valuable life lesson in that there is no context for which these types of conversations or statements are acceptable and distinctive whether they're racist, bigoted, whatever, homophobic, it should, it should logically, practically, from a common sense standpoint, hurt their careers because

these people just lack so much common sense and they have such poor judgment to not only think these things, but to put them down in a text chat? So look, but again, for me, this all comes back to the same thing. Go with it because it's one more day we're not talking about Epstein. I think in the big picture, this really isn't, this is a pimple on the pimple of what's going on in this country. It's a bunch of fucking idiots who shouldn't, who should have trouble getting a job because this will come up in their Google searches. And it's a good life lesson for young people, especially young men who are more risk-aggressive and more prone to say really stupid shit.

And I do believe, and I've said this about the campus protests, I'm less bothered by what a 19-year-old says at Cornell than by what some of the faculty have said, tweeting and some of the statements they've issued. I think that they've had time to develop some critical thinking skills. I agree. What the kids say, I do give a wide birth to teenagers And also, that said, it was, these weren't just little jokes.

It went on and on and on and it's weird because I'm really upsetting. It was really upsetting. That's what I was, two things came to me at once is, I see your explanation here. But is that it was, first of all, they were stupid. That's what that really struck me and done like this is what they think is funny. Two is the hypocrisy, as you noted about making, Jimmy Kimmel making what was a funny joke because Trump said it versus this

like this ha ha but I do think it's a pervasive feeling among these people they really like it's so I was that

the return of this and maybe it never went away was something I would like it to go away again but I guess they're thinking it so maybe just to see it we'll just be clear of who these people are

I don't think they'll be punished at all but shady van should step out of it That's my feeling, like, especially because he's the one that's always like, you should be able to say what you want. Look, I won't even say kids, although they feel like kids when you're getting this old. The reality is, and folks, this is a lesson to young people out there. I hate to say this, but a lot of times people will send an email saying, I appreciate how provocative and how profane you are. I want to be more bold.

And I break back, don't. Or I'll write back and say, are you already rich? Because if you're economically secure and have people who love you unconditionally, fine. and you can take more license with the things you say and occasionally say something stupid and have people push back and it doesn't threaten your economic livelihood. But in this era, the reality is

if you go to work for J.P. Morgan or Goldman Sachs, they run a credit check on you now. You know what they also do? They check your social media. What's going to happen when these kids go on to leave government and want to go work at Lazare Frere or whatever for a law firm or a lobbying firm,

the first thing the HR director does is they do a Google search on you and what's going to come up with these kids and this is what's going to happen. They're never even going to know why they didn't get an interview. Because the HR person's going to see, oh, this is a person making light

of gas chambers and using the N-word. Well, you know what? Maybe we should look at the other 99 applicants we have. Yeah, it's true. It's too much bother and someone will come up with it and someone will know who it was and everything else. And for them, if they'd show showed up with an AR-15 to the No King's Rally,

they would have found some Republican weirdos that want to hire them. Everyone's going to run from this. There's nothing cool about this. There's nothing provocative. There's nothing right-wing. I think even most Republicans are horrified. I just don't understand why J.D. Vance went on a limb,

I guess, to create havoc, I suppose, with the abstain thing. And speaking of which, I urge everyone to read the excerpts from, I think it's Virginia Giffray. She's posthumously published a book about her experiences at Jeffrey Epstein and it's beautifully written FYI.

It's very upsetting. But it's so plainly said and I think it links to the way some men think about women, right? Like it was sort of, she was making the bigger point that it wasn't just the sickness of Jeffrey Epstein,

but that there were more people who act like this or feel like it's their privilege to talk about people and to, but everything rang true in that first exchange when she was a kid with her and Gillane, Gilein, Maxwell, and him.

And after reading that, if Trump lets her out, he really is culpable. I just don't know how else you could read anything close to that and not think that. And there's been story after story. The two things that struck me were reading that article, because I'd heard most of it from other sources before, the two things that struck me were one,

there is, supposedly there is research showing that pedophiles target kids who have an absent or what they perceive as a weak male role model, that they sum up the level of male involvement in that person's life and prey on people. And you can imagine children of single parents from long-income homes are just more likely to be victims, which is obviously very upsetting. The other thing that really struck me here, Kara, that I didn't know about, her dad introduced her at Mara Lago. Yeah, to Trump. I mean, folks, at what point, at one point is there's just so much evidence around Epstein and Mara Lago and Trump,

it's like, wait, they met, this whole thing started at Mara Lago? Yeah, yeah, you didn't know that. I didn't know that. Because that's why Trump said he kicked Epstein out because he poached. He was stealing employees, not because he was a convicted pedophile, but because he was stealing his employees. And remember he had that sentence where it looked like he owned her, like he took one of my things. Like, anyway, the whole thing, you must read it because it's very so plainly written and everything rings true, I have to say, especially about that encounter, the way he talked to her, the way they tried to play. And Jelaine Maxwell, I mean, Epstein is dead and don't rest in.

piece, but boy, she's a monster in the same manner, like, grotesque and should never be let out of prison and should be thrown into a deeper prison, as far as I'm concerned. That's already happened. The fix is already in. Yeah. He sent his personal lawyer down to interviewer. That never happens. And then what do you know?

She's transferred to a lower, a more pleasant prison. He cannot give her a pardon. He cannot give her a pardon. He can't. Kara, every time we've said that, we have found out that, in fact, he can. It's like the third rail. It's already been, the wheels are, the wheels are already in motion. All of a sudden, she's at a more amenable, more comfortable prison,

total violation of all decorum around justice where a lawyer went down to interviewer, and now this is, the fix is in. I think it's already, I think it's already happened. Well, I'll tell you, I'll tell you one thing. If she does get out, people should, like OJ, she should lead a restless life where she never gets a moment's peace, I have to say, what she did to these. young girls repulsive. She's a monster. I never think, say the word evil about people, but she's evil, and so was he. Anyway, I recommend you reading it, and it's sad. Virginia

committed suicide, by the way, before this book came out. She was in a terrible car accident, wasn't she? Yeah, it's kind of unclear what happened, but ultimately her life sounds. She was a vulnerable young woman who had history of sexual abuse, and she was a perfect mark for these two terrible predators. Anyway, speaking of which, California, Governor and Gavin used some veto to bill this week would have banned minors from using AI chatbops. His reason the bill's restrictions were too broad, I would agree. He did sign another AI safety bill requiring chatbox to tell users their AI and reminding

minors every three hours to take breaks. OpenAID called the bill a meaningful move forward for AI safety standards. Those CEO Sam Alton also just revealed that OpenAI will allow verified adults to access erotica on chat GPT in December. I'm not sure these are related, but they feel like they are. The first bill, I know it was pushed by a lot of different groups, but it was broad because it seemed like it was attacking older people too, and it felt like we have to really specifically carve out minors here in a way.

I think it's harder to try to ban older people from having relationships with shopups as weird as they may be in how, even if they lead to bad outcomes that many of them have. But I don't know what to say about the erotica. What do you think about what is and isn't getting regulated and the erotica thing? Sam Altman later said, Open A, was not the elected moral police of the world. I didn't think they were, but okay. What do you think? I'm writing this book on masculinity.

And I think one of the things that kills masculinity is an overindulgence in porn. Because I think key to success and one of the important things, and one of the wonderful things about being a man, is that we're more risk-aggressive. Now, sometimes that results in reckless behavior, but sometimes it also results in valor, and wonderful things can happen. When you apply for a job, you're not qualified for, when you start a business that makes no sense

and ends up being crazy genius, when you approach a woman and take the risk of rejection, it can lead to wonderful places. The problem with porn I find among young men is that an overconsumption of porn reduces their mojo to take risks established relationships that might lead to romantic relationships. And that is we have demonized and pathologized sexual desire among young men. And the reality is it's like fire. It can lead to

bad places. It can lead to objectifying women. It can lead to inappropriate behavior. But for the most part, it's the fire that goes into an engine that creates a better you or desire for better you. I want to look better. I want to work out. I want to smell nice. I want to groom. I want to have a plan. I want to dress well. I want to take risks. I want to demonstrate kindness. So, the idea of a combination of erotic content with the character, AI, and synthetic relationship capabilities of these companies, I think is a fucking disaster because the first time a 14-year-old male gets shunned by a 14-year-old girl, which is part of growing up because women have a much finer filter for mating opportunities because the downside of sex is so much greater.

I mean, if you're a dude and you want to have women in your life and you want romantic opportunities, that involves one thing. Rejection and hopefully resilience. And what I worry about is the first signs of rejection, a 14-year-old, a 15-year-old, 16-year-old boy starts turning to this awesome synthetic AI that looks like the hottest girl you've ever met, who will tease you just enough, and then start showing you private parts, and then, let you engage in a series of erotic, synthetic experiences that are low friction, low risk, and quite frankly, just reduce the fire. Can I just say, you use a word there, which, again, the people are still going to use all the time, which is seamless, frictionless, they don't like frictionless. And the problem is, I've done a bunch of interviews about this lately,

and what's interesting is the friction part, and it goes the other way, women would like men more attentive, more, they could make their own characters, right? right? It's not going to be just, you know, and then you have, you know, a frictionless relationship, which I think is useless on something. I mean, it can be entertaining for a second. But once you get used to that, anyone in real life is incredibly problematic, right, for you, because you're used to this sort of seamless, frictionless life. Sex is friction, of course, you know, physically. But it really does, you can't, the thing is, you can't really stop them from doing.

doing it, right? He's right. He's not the moral police. No, by the way, that's kind of a straw man. No one thought Open AI was the world's police, moral police. Fine, he can say that. But more to the point, it just makes this ease of easing us into these relationships, of course, will help his bottom line, because this is a kind of thing you stay on there. Even early chat, if you remember early chat groups, were incredibly addictive, just between and among different people, especially I had a chapter in my AOL book called The House, the House that Online Porn built, because that's where it really got going is online porn early in the early Internet phase. This is just a quantum leap, I think.

Well, there's basically three ways to make money on the Internet. There's ads, there's e-commerce, and there's porn. And the problem, or one of the issues with porn is that there's very little peer review research because the majority of academics don't want to be known as the porn professor. Right, yeah. And so, but just some basic. There's an opening for you, Scott. Go ahead.

There you go. I'm not going to touch that one. Don't touch anything. Look, 68 million search queries related to pornography. Now, get this. A quarter of all searches are related to pornography. Every day. A quarter of the searches, which gives you a sense

about how big this business is. One analyst found that porn generates roughly 10% of the comments on Reddit, 13% of X is not safe for work content. Tumblr, which was a porn site, and they, they, and I said it was a porn site. They spent $1.1.1 billion. Marissa Mayer spent $1.1 billion for a porn site. And then the, I forgot to say, adventure capitalist with a weird haircut from Union Square Ventures got angry at me and said, Tumblr's amazing, da-da, after he had sold all a stock. And then they announced under pressure they were doing away with porn. And in 60 days, their traffic dropped by 30%. And then that $1.1

billion dollar acquisition. It was sold for, I think, three million dollars seven years later. Porn is enormous online. And when you have young men being pathologized, getting mixed signals around what's usually, what used to be considered romantic is now creepy. And they have access to 20. I mean, just to personalize this, I barely graduated from UCLA. Barely. I had graduated with a 2.27 GPA. And one of the reasons I went to 60, 70 percent of in my class is not 10% and didn't fail out, is I wanted to go on to UCLA and see my buddies and see friends and, quite frankly, be around a disproportionate amount of ridiculously hot women who I might get to know and at some point might have a relationship with. It was very

motivating. And if I had had on demand, synthetic, life-like porn, I mean, how many men, what percentage of men are just not going to engage? Yeah, you know what? I'm, This is not an insult, but I could see you falling way down that rabbit hole. You're a lot shyer also than people realize. And you, you know, I think having difficult things happen to you is hard for someone like you, but then you do it and it makes you a better, you know what I mean? That's the whole shooting match. The best things in our life, the best things in our life,

whether it's getting a great job, whether it's finding a romantic partner who you're just crazy about, whether it's getting the opportunity to have your own sex, whether it's having the opportunity to give birth to a child, whether it's having the opportunity to create a loving household that's economically secure. All of those things involve one thing. They're really fucking hard with a ton of rejection, a ton of friction, a ton of dealing with the messiest,

most difficult thing in history, other people. And these synthetic relationships are just constantly reinforcing, constantly making it easier. And if you're going to have, I used to sneak into my father's garage and look at his old playboys, if all of a sudden that thing comes to, that woman comes to life and starts understanding me and talking about me and teasing me and doing sexual acts on demand,

this is just headed nowhere good. No, you know, interestingly, I had a synthetic version of me for this thing made, and it disturbed me in every way because it got better by the second. That was what was disturbing. to me. It's not quite there yet, and I'm going to leave it to you in my will, but the, it is a hard time. I know. It's really, let me go to the bottom. Text me late at night. You should apologize. It's going to, it's a 3D, my friend. It's not going to text. You're going to see

the moving body of Kara Swisher. You and people like you would move into this so quickly, and the key is that open the eye, let me say, besides all the other statements, Sam makes, This is for money. They've got to find revenue streams, and this is the mother load of them all. This is what it is. That's why they're not elected. They were not elected the moral police, but they were elected to have to make money on this stuff. And this is a killer app, and it will bleed to our children.

It will bleed. They will not be able to keep children safe. Anyway, let me just add one other things. Newsom has also signed a bill mandating health label warnings, speaking of which, like the R thing or something on a cigarette. This comes as Instagram just announced new protections for teens limiting what they can see. The platform says it will hide content with strong language, risky stunts, and marijuana use from teen users. Oh, no, not the demon weed.

Restrictions will also apply to AI bots. The updates follow recent reports questioning whether Instagram's existing teen accounts safeguards actually work. So they decried the people who said they don't, these reports, but then they, of course, do something. The point I want to make here is they don't think of it first. They should think of it first before these reports come out, and nothing's going to be perfect, by the way. I don't expect perfection, but they really are so sloppy in how they do this. And then they're going to act like a PG-13 rating is the same thing, because this is immersive. This isn't a movie theater down the street.

This is something much different that's very hard to keep your teens out of, right? I mean, Scott, this is what your book's about, right? This is one of these way stations that young men are going to go through young teenagers. And they're not coming out good on the other side of this because we slap a label on it. But I don't mind there being a label. When I was, I think I was 13, I was with my best buddy Adam Markman. And we lived in walking distance from Westwood Village, which, by the way, is a shadow of itself right now. But we used to have friends who were ushers at all the theaters, the National, the Bruin, the Westwood Village Theater.

and we'd go, and we'd try and get eye contact with one of our friends who was an usher, and you'd, like, leave a door open, and we'd sneak in and watch movies. And one day we took a wrong turn, and at the age of 13, we stumbled into, fell into William Bladdy's The Exorcist. I could not, in the morning, I would have to put on my socks in the corner to make sure that the devil wasn't coming for. I couldn't, I slept on the floor at the foot of my mother's bed for two weeks. God, I'm coming for you. No 13-year-old, Max von Seida, Linda Blair, cinematic peak, obviously, Ellen Burstyn, a hugely underrated actress. I love her.

Anyways, a 13-year-old should not see The Exorcist. The movies had a right. There's certain content, and I believe technologies, that young people should not be exposed to as their brain is wired. And one of those things we've decided is pornography. And Sam Altman's saying, we shouldn't be the morality police. No, no, actually, you should. You should have standards.

And that is no one under the age of 18 should in any way be allowed to engage with a synthetic relationship. And two, you need to age gate pornography. Everybody else does this. Why are you different? Because you can do it better or because there's more money involved. They don't do it better. And it's harder because it's so pernicious. It's not like a movie thing.

Like you said, you physically went to Westwood, went into the movie. And listen, every parent has an example of this. Like my movie that I shouldn't have seen was Tales from the Crypt, right? I shouldn't have snuck into that movie. And I did. And for Alex, he snuck around the corner while Louie and I were watching Ted. And that wasn't quite that, but it was just dirty. and I wish he had been older

and I wish I'd been a better parent in that regard. And with Louis, going to sausage party with him, mistake, right? But this, oh man, I didn't think the food was going to have sex. But anyway, it was, he's literally in the middle, right, as I started to do that,

I have to say, Louis turned to me and said, good parenting. And I go, I want to kill my mother. And then we were like, should we leave? And he goes, no, let's just sit here going with that look. Anyway, it's terrible.

You know that there actually, there's a sequel coming out to The Exorcist, but it's a different twist. This time it's the devil trying to get the priest out of the child. That's good. That isn't good. So tell me what you think, what's going to very, really sweet. I know what's going to happen. Governor Newsom is trying to thread the needle between being responsible and responding to parents' concerns, but at the same time, he's running for president.

And the last fucking thing he wants right now is for the most successful companies that have, have been responsible for California surpassing Japan in terms of the size of its economy that has been 70 percent of the gains in the S&P, which will be a fantastic talking point for him at a debate. The last thing he can do is pissed off these guys enough such that they start moving to Texas. So he's caught between what a leader is supposed to do, and that is protect people from a tragedy to the commons. But at the same time, acknowledging that the thing that the thing that Governor Newsom has going for him right now is the most, the people with the most options in the world, the companies with the most options in the world creating the most value,

all choose to hang out and headquarter in one place, and that's California. So it is very difficult for him. He can't have Sam Altman go, because of onerous regulation at the hands of our governor, we're considering relocating to, you know, Nashville or Austin. So he has to walk a very fine line here. But the, again, it's a lot of blah, blah, a lot of hand movement. It's the illusion of complexity is being weaponized again. No one under the age of 18, there should be age-gating. No one under the age of 16 should be on a social media platform. No one under the age of 18 should be able to engage in a synthetic relationship. They could figure out all this shit. I think he's on safe ground with that. I think there's so much bipartisan. I think the company's going to have to give up on having everything. You think they could do that. They should do that. They should, could, and will eventually have to. Like, I don't think, it will go. I think they will not, on this one, they don't get what they went. And I think a nuisance. That bill he vetted was far too broad. I, when I saw it, I was like, no, this is going to, they just, I was like, can't you just stop at what we actually need? Like, we don't need to

protect everybody. We need to protect kids. Like, that's what driving me crazy about that bill. I thought he would veto it. And he did. One more footnote, just on the exorcist, I actually, still with you. After I saw the exorcist, you could hear it coming. You could feel it coming. Okay. But what happened was, I was, we couldn't, you know, my mom and I didn't have much money, and we couldn't pay for our exorcist, so I got repossessed. That's good, bad credit humor. You know, on our tour, we should watch The Actors together.

Oh, God. I can't, I don't watch scary movies. I can't handle scary movies. I don't either. Though I watched The Accountant, too, recently I liked a lot. I don't know what that would do to me. You know, now, after watching Wizard of OzGron, up. Whenever I climax, I scream. Surrender, Dorothy. Oh, my gosh. Surrender. I feel so bad for your wife. I just want to say

that as many times as I can. Okay, Scott, let's go on a quick break when we come back. Meta Caves to Pam Bondi and the DOJ. Another hypocrisy. Support for Pivot comes from Quince. Now that you've entered the sweatpants season, here's something you need to know. Quince's warm, durable, and comfy clothes are here to carry you through the season. Quince has the kind of fall staples that I actually want to wear on repeat. Think $50 Mongolian cashmere premier denim that fits like a dream and Lux outerwear can wear year after year. These are the pieces that will turn into your fall uniform. And because Quince partners directly with top tier factories and cuts out the middleman,

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Hey, pivot listeners. I want to tell you about a new podcast from the box media podcast network called Access with Alex Heath and Ellis Hamburger. It's a show about the inside conversation happening across the tech industry. You may know Alex Heath from shows like Decoder and The Vergecast, and he's a founder of sources, a new publication about the tech industry and a contributing writer for The Verge. And you'll probably only know Ellis if you worked in Silicon Valley yourself. He's the former tech reporter turned tech industry insider working closely with today's hottest startups. Their first episode features an interview with Mark Zuckerberg about meta's latest smart glasses, the AI race, and what's next for the social media giant. You can find the Access podcast with Alex Heath and Ellis Hamburger on YouTube or wherever

you listen to podcasts. Support for the show comes from Framer. If you run a business, you probably need a website. And if you need a website, you probably want a good one. Now most design tools are paywalled, not Framer. With Framer, you get a full-featured professional design experience completely free. Famer already built the fastest way to publish beautiful production-ready websites, and it's now redefining how we design for the web. With the recent launch of design pages, a free canvas-based design tool, Framer is more than a site builder. It's a true all-in-one design platform. From social assets to campaign visuals to vectors and icons all the way to a live site.

Framer is where ideas go live start to finish. Framer even helps you design more. than websites, create social access, campaign visuals, icons, and even site resources, all in one place. Ready to design, iterate, and publish all-in-one tool, start creating for free at framer.com slash design and use the code pivot for a free month of Framer pro. That's framer.com slash design and use promo code pivot. Framer.com slash design promo code pivot rules and restrictions may apply. Scott, we're back. Meta has taken down a Facebook page

that was sharing information about ICE agents in Chicago after, quote, outreach from the Justice Department, as Attorney General Pam Bondi put it, meta said the page was, quote, removed for violating our policies against coordinated harm. This follows Apple and Google

removing ice tracking apps, as we discussed last week. Remember, Republicans were slamming tech companies for bound to government pressure during the last administration, even taking the case of Supreme Court. he also, you know, and complained about, and Mark Zuckerberg has been vocal in the last year

about social media censorship going far under, going too far under Biden. Let's listen to what he told Joe Rogan back in January. That's like the whole point, right, is the government is not allowed to censor this stuff. So at some level, I do think that, you know, having people in the administration calling up the guys on our team

and yelling at them and cursing and threatening repercussions if we don't take down things that are true is like, it's pretty bad. It sounds illegal. Oh, my God. He's such a hypocrite. Like, literally.

No one cursed and threatened him. And also, it's impossible to threaten him. And secondly, what is Pam nicer about it? It's the same thing. And it's the same thing Republicans complained about. And then it's the same thing they're doing. Every accusation is a confession with these people at every moment of the time. I mean, and they cave to these Republicans.

and, of course, you know, possibly cage to the Democrats because they're not yelling quite enough or not nice enough to them. I don't know. What did you think? This was just, of course. I'm sensitive or empathetic to the notion that if the government,

I think our tech platform should cooperate with the government. Yes, me too. But at the same time, I find, of all the ugliness, I think the thing that used to bother me, most was just the out of control corruption around this crypto stuff, I think that has been vested by the fact that we have a secret police essentially terrorizing Americans. Because it's not only the terror and the trauma these people have to go through, what it says is that America is devoting its energy to fascism, which is believing that the enemy is within. And it's just a false

flag. It's just, we're not that divided, but we have the most powerful companies at the behest of the president dividing us. Well, talk about the IRS thing, because you mentioned that the Scott Bessent that are going to investigate, use it to investigate people. You made a joke at the top, but it's in this wheelhouse, correct? It's, this is an autocracy. Reward your, Putin has nothing on Trump. Reward your allies, carve up TikTok, give it to your Republican donors, give somebody a tip that you're about to announce ridiculous tariffs again last Friday on China, and this person goes out, buys several hundred million dollars notionally in puts against the crypto market. And by the way, closes out the trade at a $120 million gain later that day.

Again, unless somebody knew what was coming here, this was the luckiest trade in history, reward your allies and punish your enemies. And at some point, you and me are going to end up on some list, and the IRS is going to come for us. And when the IRS comes for you, even if you've done nothing wrong, if they're aggressive enough, you're just going to have to pay a lot of money. It's going to send a chill. And you're going to decide, oh, maybe on our podcast, we shouldn't speak. We shouldn't be so negative on Trump or whatever.

This is, you don't weaponize. Americans pay for these institutions. The IRS is there to make sure that people pay their taxes. by the way, if you want to solve or go a long way to solving the deficit, you would increase funding to the IRS because supposedly about $780 billion a year is called the tax gap, which means taxes that are owed that go unpaid, because the Republicans, and this is very deft, they have said rather than the biggest tax cut in history is the defunding of the IRS, because wealthy people have exceptionally complicated tax returns, and to audit a wealthy person takes

professionals and time and resources, which the IRS no longer has. So the tax rates are just symbolic because very, very wealthy people with complicated tax returns can be so aggressive now on their taxes because they are, in fact, confident that the IRS doesn't have the resources to comfort them. And now he's saying, I'll weaponize it against my enemies. And the IRS will It's such a waste. I mean, it happened to the DOJ. Why wouldn't it happen at the IRS? It's happened to the DOJ. I feel like the FBI should be investigating. Like, there's been a lot of stories

about how the FBI is like, we're not doing real crimes. We're just doing what Trump thinks are crimes or immigration or all the resources are going. Same thing here with the IRS. Instead of collecting taxes, we are lawfully owed, this is what they're going to spend their time doing because they're going to know where their bread is buttered.

The other part is that these laws against officials, executive officials, including the president, were passed after Nixon tried to do. this. So he's trying to break those up. And they're very explicit, very a lot of, I'm just going to say Scott Bessent, you better lawyer up if Democrat. Because what you're doing here is suggesting using the IRS as a tool of retribution. There are very clear laws that they're going to, they may run over them right now, but they're not going to outrun these things. And so I don't believe they will. And so not just Trump is also liable here for this.

If Democrats, the problem is if Democrats get in power, they're going to spend all their time rounding up the criminals, right? And how does that help our country in any way? And at some point, they'll have to let some of these terrible people go. I don't know. I do think there needs to be something along the lines of like a Nuremberg trial. There needs to be, I think the only way we move past this is with some sort of reckoning. And I actually believe the Democrats should be outlining the specific laws,

the specific hearings, the specific subpoenas that they are going to pursue because to just sort of say, well, it's time to move on and come together. There needs to be moral clarity around what's going on here because just the DOJ being weaponized is the most serious of all of it. But in terms of IRS, what that means is a tax increase for lower middle income homes in all Democrats because if you're a famous Republican donor, you're telling your tax people right now just go so far so aggressive don't pay this claim claim a 200 million to dollar deduction on your plane even though it costs 60 million yeah well that's not true doesn't just go for it and by the way i don't think i'll be audited now what does that mean the government has to collect at least

five trillion dollars a year to just fund their current commitments they're going to have to get that money from somewhere so if really wealthy people or people in the president's stead which happen to be billionaire Republicans who are paying a disproportionate. I mean, they're a key part of the tax code. There's this notion that the rich don't pay taxes. No, the rich, the top, probably the top 10% pay about 80% of federal taxes. Are they as a percentage of their wealth paying their fair share? I think that's up for real debate. But in terms of a gross dollar amount, because they make so much more money than anyone, they're a huge part of the tax base. And if you decide to start letting them off the hook, you're going to have to get other people to pay disproportionately more.

So him weaponizing the IRS is not only unjust. It's effectively a tax increase for non-democratic billionaires, and it's a tax decrease for Republican billionaires. And people just don't connect the dots here. Yeah, no. You know what dot you connected, the ideas around he wouldn't be able to do what he's doing without the AI boom. I thought that was really smart. I was like, Amanda even said, like, she goes, I hadn't thought of that. Sometimes Scott comes out with the most obvious connections. That's the same. Your probability and luck at some point.

No, it's not. I'm just saying it's a similar connection. It's like that's what's happening here. But let me tell you, you know, it's going to come back to bite you. I really feel it well and probably should. Speaking of something that needs to be bitten, Salesforce CEO, Mark Benioff appears to be sort of walking back. His recent comments in New York Times were he called for President Trump to send National Guard troops to San Francisco. Bennoff tried to clarify his remarks in a post on X, saying safety is, quote, first and foremost, the responsibility of our city and state leaders.

He also pointed out correctly that crime in San Francisco is down 30%. Still, he told the times that the city needs to refund the police, even though San Francisco never actually defunded his police force. And it has been doing that. I got to say, you know, Eve, I have a lot to say about this. There was a thing I sent you from Gary Tan, who irritates me on the regular. But he said the same thing. This is, it's all moving in the right direction. there's all kinds of great statistics

of what's happening in San Francisco and for Mark to weigh in like this and then saying we have to be nice to him because he gives a lot of money away. Like you give the money away and shut up, Mark. I'm sorry. If you want to be charitable, like Mackenzie Bezos,

keep your mouth shut about it. You don't need to be thanked and you don't get a pass over saying something like this to bring in the National Guard to San Francisco. He never is there. And I know a little bit about what happened in here is he probably

He was in downtown San Francisco for two seconds, was in a bad part of it, saw some homeless, and then compared it to Washington. He was in a very nice part of Washington, and it's like, see what happens when the National Guard comes in? But what he doesn't know is Washington was like that before he got there, and he was in a bad part of San Francisco. There's no question San Francisco had a real downturn,

but it is on the upturn from the work for people like London Breed and now Daniel Lurie, who's the mayor, They're trying really hard and for San Francisco's biggest booster to do a heel turn like this because he wants to be part of the Trump crime family. I just, and by the way, all of those tech bros who are with Trump make fun of him relentlessly, which is he should know this. And I know he needs to make money and he wants to get in on the gimmies and he wants to be at those dinners. But Mark, this is, I couldn't, it's not really shocking, but it's not really shocking. It's also gross, is what it is. I don't know what else to say.

You may have a different opinion, but I don't think this person who's been one of San Francisco's biggest boarded, this should be the thing he said. And the last thing from what I understand is he did a more problematic interview with another group. And he also tagged Mike Moritz, the San Francisco Standard, which I think is doing a great job in San Francisco reporting. And Mike Moritz is another venture capitalist who owns, who has created that publication, which is an act. as I said, an excellent publication. But, you know, I think that he had a difficult interview with them, and then he turned to the New York Times. And even apparently his PR person was like jaw dropping that he did this.

I like Mark. I wasn't surprised by it, but it's really incredibly unhelpful. And for you to act like a victim and then demand fealty because you give money away, I'd rather you not give the money away and keep your mouth shut. I don't know what else to say. What do you think? I think you have more, I mean, you know Mark better than me, and you know San Francisco better than me.

But the way I see it is, simply put, I think Mark's a good guy who's very civic-minded. I think he gives money away because he's generally a philanthropic person and recognizes his blessings. And he said something really fucking stupid. I mean, and if I were advising him and I'm not, and actually, you know what, I may text him, just say, I said something stupid, I apologize,

and maybe add a little context. Because I don't think it's, I think it's, it's a shame because I do think Mark has made a real effort to acknowledge his blessings and be really civic-minded. I've heard a lot of people say that when they can't find resources anywhere, they call Mark, and Mark is an automatic yes. And he goes out of his way. I just, I just think he's a good man. He said something stupid here that is not accurate. it. And when you get that rich, you can get into a bubble and maybe had a bad experience in San Francisco. There are a lot of areas. My understanding is in San Francisco that feel like a war zone. Well, the tenderloin has been bad for decades. But go ahead. Go ahead. You know this. You're going to forget more about the city than I'm ever going to go. In 1999,

I left the board of my company, got divorced and said to my wife, ex-wife, you can have our friends. I never want to come back here again. Probably more information than people wanted. And I can't stand San Francisco is my least favorite city. I just, I've just never, I've never really enjoyed it. Anyway, but, but he probably had a bad experience. He's probably trying to pose a little bit for the Trump lights and get in on some of that AI, you know, whatever it might be. But the first thing I thought when I saw it was I thought it was sad because I do think Mark has spent a lot of time trying to be the good billionaire. And I think a lot of it is genuine. I don't think it's, I I don't think it's doing it to try and get business or deflect or be righteous or tell non-profits how to behave.

I generally believe he is one of the good guys. And I hated to see this because the reality is when you get, it's very easy to enter in your own bubble and say stupid things. And he could fix this. Very simple. This was stupid. I apologize. It's interesting that he won't because he has changed a little bit. I have to say one of the things, I did a really famous interview where he said he compared.

Facebook to cigarette companies, right? And he was, you know, and he was one of the few when they had that Trump Tower thing, he was like, can you believe this shit when all the tech billionaires went? And now I think he's seen, you know, they're all sort of pigs at the trough and he's decided to oink. I just don't know what else it is. Like, and that's so, and maybe he's had a change of heart and he's become more conservative. I don't know. But you can't do Ohana and then say, let's bring in the troops, when San Francisco is trying really hard to fix itself and is on the upswing. It's such a...

And it's getting better, right? You said it's so ill time. It's noticeably better. And if Gary Tan is saying this is the biggest complainer about San Francisco, there's a whole sort of right-ish group, and I wouldn't say right because it's San Francisco, but they are pretty conservative, you know, is applauding the efforts. And by the way, everyone's moving back, Mark, just so you know, Elon's back in California. You know, the whole gang of them that complained is all locating in San Francisco or California.

I just, it's like, I thought he went on on a real limb when he could compare, and he was the earliest person, and almost like a class trader, right, saying Facebook was like cigarette companies. He was right. And he took the shit for that. Yeah, he was early. And it wasn't, he wasn't virtue signaling because it wasn't a good thing to say. It didn't work out well for him to do that. But this was, I just think he wanted attention.

The other thing that drove me crazy from that interview, and I was shocked by it. He owns Time magazine for people who don't know. And by the way, that photo, Trump looks like he has a vagina on his neck. But that's neither here nor there. Is that he said, I haven't really been reading the news lately about the ICE stuff. And like, he owns a major, I don't think it's as big as it used to be, but he owns a major news publication,

pretending like, well, I don't really know about the other thing. That stuff, give me a fucking break. You're a brilliant guy. Stop it. Like, you know what, you've decided it's okay or you're going to ignore it. But to say, I really wasn't paying it. Is there other things happening here? Like the IRS or the ICE stuff or anything else.

And I don't, it's sort of like. I think he's done a great job with time. It's better. It's better. Yeah. Or let me say, it survived. It wouldn't have survived. It's economically unviable unless you have a, I mean, like most unfortunate media

companies, unless it's owned by a benign billionaire, goes away, or it becomes all about cost-cutting or sensationalism to try and get clicks. I don't mind go away. I have to tell you on some things. Let him go. Yeah, let him die. I think he's done a perfectly good job, but I have to say at various points, he said, you should come work for me. Honestly, Mark, I'm glad I didn't at this point. This isn't, please say, what Scott said, say you're sorry, and, you know, stop acting like a victim. And I know you want that sweet AI money, but honestly, oh, Hana, man. Oh, Hannah, you know,

he says that all the time, of this ohananess. Well, this isn't ohana, just so you know. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about news outlets pushing back on the Defense Department's idiotic new regulations. Support for the show comes from Built Rewards. Nobody wants to pay rent, but if you have to, Bill makes it worth it. Built is revolutionizing how millions think about paying rent by rewarding their members with points and exclusive benefits around their neighborhood every single month. By paying rent through Bilt, they say you can earn flexible points that can be redeemed towards hundreds of hotels and airlines, a future rent payment, your next lift ride, and more. But your home isn't just where you sleep. It's your community,

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Scott, we're back with more news. News organizations, including Fox News, have declined to sign the Defense Department's new press policy denouncing the regulations in a joint statement. The policy prohibits journalists from gaining information the Defense Department doesn't make available for them. It also revokes Pentagon Press credentials for those who don't agree by the signing deadline only OAN, one America News had agreed to the policy.

They're kind of an organ of the Trump administration, so that makes sense. You know, Pete Hegseth was trying to say, well, it's like the way the White House is. But I don't think this is the worst thing for these reporters. They walked out. They can find these other people. They don't have to wander around. It's easier if you're wandering around the Pentagon, I guess. But I think these outlets did the right thing by just saying, no, we're not signing this thing.

And I think this is really, Pete Heggseth is usually as mangled and bungled this entire thing. What are your thoughts? I thought it was a nice moment for the press. They all came together and they said, we're not going to put up with this. And I think that Secretary Hexeth does not have the confidence or management skills or ability to read the room or the judgment to oversee the most lethal, successful organization in history. And this is just another example of this. This didn't need to happen. He's created more drama.

He's handled this poorly. In an effort to control the press, he's created a bunch of bad press for the Pentagon and the administration. This is, you know, this is, it's blown up in his face. His inability to, his belief that he could muscle around journalists

backfired. And again, the whole point of this was to create a sanitized stream of information out of the Pentagon that would only be complementary or frame it in a certain way. And if it wasn't for journalists, I mean, we'd probably still be in Vietnam. I mean, it's just typically the Secretary of Defense comes from a civilian background because they've decided that generals have a habit, and not all generals, but generals have a habit of looking for military solutions. And what you need is a Secretary of Defense that understands

the private sector and also is, quite frankly, just more rooted in a civilian mindset or a geopolitical mindset. And instead, we hired a major, who was a TV host to head the secretary, you know, to become the new secretary of war. And this individual just doesn't have good judgment. So in an attempt to sanitize, politicize, and create a stream of pre-approved press, they've made it worse. They've created a stream of really negative press saying, this is yet another example of an authoritarian government trying to control the narrative here. And it, kudos to everyone, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, and Fox

all issued a joint statement declining to agree to the new policy. Weird. Why this? I mean, he's also lie testing all the employees, too. He's such a parent, like, guy, get off your whatever substances you're using because it's making you freaky. I mean, fortunately, this authoritarian move was handled so, So like Trump issuing a crypto coin that increases his net worth by $5 billion the Friday night before inauguration was kind of genius. The timing here was so elegant. You know, I've always said this.

It's like this is a mafia family, but unfortunately, unfortunately, you have Michael running the corruption and you have Freedo running the government. Hexeth is Fredo. The person running his crypto scams, the person running his tour around the Middle East to get buildings and golf courses and 747s. Who is sunny? Oh, that's a really interesting statement. Just whatever. No one's been shot yet. That one guy from the texting thing was shot, but he wasn't really sunny.

I love James Kahn. Yeah. Who's sunny? I love Brian Piccolo. Who is sunny? Let's think. Who's like the big, who he says idiot? Who got killed?

Who got shot? Beston thinks he's sunny, but he's not. Remember, I'm going to beat everyone else. Can I just say, he seems like, and I'm going to bring back a word from our youth, he's such a dork, like he's such a dork. The other thing is, let me just say a word very quickly, and then we do it about access journalism. I was asked by, I was on Katie Drummond's podcast from Wired.

I think she's doing an astonishing job at Wired, really reinvigorating that brand. And she asked about access and do I regret. And I have to say, I really think that you get better stories not having access, actually, if you do really good reporting. And, you know, being at the Wall Street Journal and a little bit of the Times and the Washington Post, they always bring it to you first, right? And then you sort of agree to release it as if you got a scoop, but it isn't because they hand delivered it to you. I have to say, I got a lot better after I just said, fuck access. Like, I don't care if they talk to me or not. and I would say I did too much of that trading

and every reporter does too much of that access stuff like I'll give you this, if you give me this, and I'm so happy that they don't want to talk to me now because I can do whatever I want. And I still find out more stuff because one of the things that Hegset doesn't understand is reporting has moved on and there are so many sources and in the old days you'd have to either meet someone

or get a phone call, which is real traceable, right? And so it was really, now there's so many ways to get to sources and so many ways for them to get to you. and to publish on their own. It's a whole different game. So as usual, Hegthe, who is living in the 80s with the way he dresses and does the party on Garth

is really way behind and understanding how now they will double down on finding shit about him and reporting because it's all there. It's not they're not going to make it up. But even people who work for him are like this one spokesperson who had a falling out with him is like, what a fucking idiot.

he doesn't understand the modern media age. That's my access thing. I empathize the journalists who are trying to, I mean, you guys have to walk a fine line, and that is you want to get good interviews, and people aren't going to come on your show if they think they're just going to be ambushed. So I understand the temptation for access journalism.

You're at a point where, quite frankly, you no longer need to engage in access journalism. So you have the luxury of, I think people listen to you when you speak, You have a big platform. People are a little bit scared of you. People see you as tough but fair. But I can understand playing into the notion of access.

Yeah, I do a little. I mean, I get it. You're an up-and-coming journalist. You don't want to be, you don't want everyone to go, no, I'm not going on her show. She's not, you know, not nice or trying to make me look bad. Especially TV ones, by the way. They have a harder time because they need the physical person, right?

So it's hard. It's hard. Access journalism is incredibly hard. And it probably should go away. Anyway, one more quick break, Scott, and we'll be back for predictions. Okay, Scott, we're here from predictions, but can I just make a brief one? Kim Kardashian just launched an interesting new product for skims, a thong adorned with fake pubic hair. It's already selling out.

I predict Scott Galloway probably bought 10 or 12 of them this song. What? What is this fake pubic hair? This Skim's business is huge. FYI, Kim Kardashian is a great entrepreneur. She works with great entrepreneurs. Skims is this underwear, because it's underwear, I guess, and a bunch of other stuff. But the thong is adorned with fake pubic hair. I just feel like I wish I could get one for you.

That's all I have to say. Yeah, I predict you will love it when I get it for you for Christmas. Yeah, I thought it was an opening for you there, Scott, a pubic hair thong. Okay, I'm laying it up for you, and you're not taking a swing. Yeah, no, I'm not grabbing that one. All right. Your prediction, please. So my prediction is that you're about to see the greatest. So reality TV was huge, kind of probably the biggest trend in TV through the odds.

I don't know what was bigger than that, original scripted comedies. I don't know. The biggest trend in television over the next... streaming media and broadcast television over the next two years is going to be podcast repurposed as TV shows. Oh, I know where you go. And if you look at recently, Netflix's deal with Spotify and podcasts, they've basically said, okay, I mean, how did Netflix win the war?

When you explain the deal for people who don't know, so? Yeah, Spotify and Netflix are partnering to bring podcasts to Netflix. The partnership will bring video versions of 16 different Spotify exclusive podcast to Netflix. And this is essentially a shift following Spotify's large investment in the podcast space. They spent billions for purchasing studios like Parkast, The Ringer, and Gimlet Media and signing exclusive deals with people ranging from Joe Rogan to Alex Cooper. And many of these didn't pan out to be profitable. And Spotify learned that the real value of podcast isn't just an audio, it's in video, and they're not strong in video and YouTube is. What this really, I mean, so YouTube

revealed that over a billion people every month watch and listen to podcasts on YouTube. I think about 18% of our listens and 25% of Prop G listens are on a TV, and it's people streaming it off of YouTube. YouTube is the biggest distribution platform for podcasts. Netflix has correctly identified that their competition is not Disney Plus or Hulu, they've beaten them or Paramount Plus. That just doesn't matter. Their competition is YouTube, it commands about 11 or 12% of video listenership, and Netflix is at 8. And YouTube, YouTube is big, really big, and podcasting. It's kind of the biggest, it's the biggest distribution platform for what we're doing now.

In addition, Netflix, their strategy in how they won is through an arbitrage. And in this instance, it was a geographic arbitrage where they said, we're not going to produce stuff. We're going to spend more money than anyone else. But for spending X, we're going to get 1.2X because we're going to produce squid games in Seoul Korea. And we're going to present, you know, produce money heist in Madrid. The next arbitrage that you're going to see is effectively podcasts are television with a lower cost means of production. And that is... Because I think this is amazing special effects going on here.

But go ahead. Well, if you look at what's happened, and the guy that sort of pioneered this for me, the first thing I did when I arrived in London, literally when I moved here three and a half years ago, is I got off a plane and I went to Shortich, and I was on this podcast that was supposed to be this up-and-coming kid named Stephen Bartlett, who I think is the next Joe Rogan. And he's this super attractive, really great interviewer, 31, 32. And I walked into his podcast studio, and there were 12 people in, like, a six-camera shoot. He said, this is TV, this is, and he gets millions of views on. And Chris Williams has a good TV game. Basically, the people churning in and out a podcast is primarily the fulcrum of that churn right now is your video game. And now, what is the problem with streaming media, and what is the problem with K.

news. Their audiences on cable news are declining in streaming media. It's a capital war. So all roads lead to the same place, and that is they need a way to create content for a lower cost. And effectively what you have with podcasts, the best podcast can create 22, you know, 21 minutes or 42 minutes of content for a 30 or 60 minutes slot on TV. But they can produce it for 10 to 15 percent of the cost of the hair, the makeup, the unions, the theater. I mean, it's just, I did the analysis here. Comcast gets somewhere between $300,000 and $300,000 in revenue per employee. Pivot right now this year will get easily over a million dollars per employee because our means of production are so much less expensive that things are so much more

profitable. So you're saying, applying our own makeup and having a shitty background is really good business. Now, you have a good one. You always have a good background. Can I ask a specific question? What I thought was interesting was all these ideas of Netflix moving in, and I know you talked to them first, second, moving into podcasting. This isn't really moving into it. It's taking two things. It's taking advantage of the current environment and playing into your strength, which is division, one. And two, they're requiring people not to be on YouTube, which is a big shift. So obviously they're declaring that YouTube their enemy, their only enemy.

That's exactly right. Because I bet if we did that something like that. that they wouldn't require us not to go on CNN or not, they don't care, right? So talk about if that's a good trade for people not to go on YouTube. Because to me, YouTube is television, and this is sort of early territory. And then the idea that they're just dipping, they're not really going to produce podcasts the way they produce, I don't know, K-pop demon hunters or whatever it happens to be. They will soon. They're going to learn.

They have 100. They control, other than the Google query box, it's probably the most valuable real estate in the world, is that home screen on Netflix. 150 million people will watch what they put on that home screen. So within 24 months, they're dipping their toe, they're going to learn about it. I bet within 24 to 36 months,

Netflix has three of the 10 biggest podcasts in the world, and they'll be owned and operated by Netflix. And you're exactly right. Netflix has said, our competitor here is YouTube, so we'll partner with Spotify, but you can't be on YouTube. But this is what's going to happen. On with Kara Swisher, some really talented person at CNN will take the two or three hours of content you have every week, take the best 41 minutes and run it on an hour on CNN where, quite frankly, they don't know what to do at that hour.

And by the way, it's negligible incremental cost to you, negligible incremental cost to them, and you split the revenue. Yeah, that's a great idea. You're going to see that of the 50 biggest podcast within 12 months, 12 to 20 of them will be playing on TV. Because what is the problem with cable news? It doesn't have good stuff. It is a revenue problem, but the bigger problem is the expense side. And the content, right? It's the same con. It's not different. It's like the same airless studio. It's not that interesting. And it's really fucking expensive. When I haul my ass up to be on Stephanie Rules show, and we love her. You look at the, she does a great job. But the cost of that show, the unions, the makeup, the sound guy, the security staff, the build, I mean, it's just, the means

of production are so goddamn expensive, whereas if they say, okay, we're going to take 41 minutes of on and we're going to run it after Fareed on Sunday or whatever, and by the way, even if we only make half as much revenue, it's going to be a lot more profitable because they're already producing it. You know what? I haven't gotten that call. Oh, you will. You watch.

All right. Okay. By the way, I'm not working for the Ellison's, but that's. It's another issue, but go ahead. But podcasts are effectively becoming TV shows with a strong audio overlay, and more importantly, a lower means of cost of production. Netflix is dipping their toe in. They're going to realize that the next arbitrage is to take content, repurpose it at a very

low incremental cost, and put it on their distribution platform. And everyone else is going to start doing this. You're going to see MSNBC take the best political podcasts, carve them up, more graphics, a little bit better hair and makeup, a little bit better production. quality and the thing. Okay, for an hour of reasonably good content, it costs us another 10 or 20 grand, not another 150 grand. We don't need to sell to make as much money here. So anyways, the prediction is, of the top 100 podcasts, 12 to 15 of them are going to be playing on cable news and on streaming media within the next 12 to 24 months. It's a great idea.

Hey, guys, of cable media. Let's do it. I went to the MSNBC Live event. I thought it was quite good. It was well-known. I heard it was great. It was great, and it was funny. I gave, the person who runs it, Rebecca Cutler, who I have a lot of respect for, she's great, and is a big listener, Pivot, I sent her some thoughts of it.

I went to support Stephanie and Rachel and Saki, Chen Saki, and I thought it was good. It had really, it was a good directional move for them, and it was fun, and it probably didn't cost them that much, and they did a super fan dinner. I thought it was really smart. It was a marketing event, but, you know, and we, let me tell,

There's a lot of crossover fans of MSMEC and Pivot. I took a lot of selfies. But I went with George Hahn, and we had a good time. It was really, it was well done. You could see how it could go in even better directions at a much lower cost. Anyway, we want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind.

Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 85551 Pivot. Elsewhere in the Karen Scott Unorce, as you know, Scott Andrew McAarris for on with Karras Swisher. Let's listen to a clip. Have you yourself felt with Letitia James being targeted? There's many others. Have you felt that you could be targeted, worried about being indicted?

Sure, of course. For the people that are watching this on radio. See what I just did there? Yes, of course. I just raised my hand. Okay, can we just talk about that for a moment? All right, go ahead. And this is, I think Vice President Harris will make an outstanding Supreme Court justice.

I thought her debate performance was one of the great performances in political history. I voted for. I give money to her campaign. That answer embodies why she should not run for president and why she is not president. She had an opportunity there that was a layup to talk about a move towards a authoritarianism, how dangerous the chill is, how she is committed to being a leader and speaking up despite the risk to her professional career, Instead, she just said, of course, that perfectly embodied why she does not capture the imagination of the passion required to be the President of the United States. Let me be fair. She did talk about it a lot during the interview, right? So maybe. Yeah, she did. And the second part is she really did predict. She did say all this stuff that was going to happen step by step. And she was astonishingly accurate and prescient. Because she understood it as a prosecutor what these people do, which these, you know, mobster turn autocrats do.

I would, you know, it was interesting. I got a lot of feedback from Republican-leaning people, like, who liked it. Like, I really liked it because there was a positive negligence, and at most, all of them agreed that her campaign was excellent for most of it, not all of it. But, but I, she was a little salty, I have to say, and I did think it really compared to Buttigieg, who had a very different vibe, right? So it'll be, I'm going to be interesting all of these people, as you have done a number of them. And so I'm going to be interested to see compare and contrast all of them.

But you're right. That was an opportunity. But I think she didn't want to get to be righteous lady. I think she didn't want to go full, righteous lady there and wanted to seem brave, I guess. Do you get the sense? I mean, you know her and she likes you and you like, well, I don't know if you like her. I think you're, I think you're supportive and kind to her. Do you think she's, do you think she wants to run? I couldn't tell from The thing I thought I would know, she probably will. She has the highest name recognition, let's be clear. Everyone knows who she is, and the others they don't know as well, right?

That's just the way things are. So she and Newsom are the best known people. But watching Newsom trot right by her in the numbers, because he's trotten and so is Buttigieg. Part of me feels like, I don't know her well enough to say, but I felt like, I don't know if she really wants it, right? Does that make sense? Like, she certainly, I don't know. I think she ran a great campaign, and she was hindered a lot by the Biden stuff, and what she couldn't do. And I know you said she should have said something, but boy, would have that had been a move by someone who's already cautious.

But I don't know. I couldn't, I don't, afterwards, I didn't, I couldn't say, I couldn't say. But you're right, she'd be a great Supreme Court justice also. But we'll see if we get the chance to put her in, of course. I think maybe she isn't going to run. I'm going to make a prediction. I don't know. She'll be mad if I said.

But I got the sense that maybe she's still on the fence about it. And that's it. Anyway, we'll see. I don't know. Speaking of people who are running, I had Rahm in my annual on Arranging Moderates. He's actually very good. He is. He's very good.

He's very smart. Very enthusiastic. He's doing the work. He's writing op-eds. He's going on all the podcasts. No, he's very smart, very practical. Yeah, he has a lot of. of non-fans in Chicago, though, and even he knows this.

But speaking of which, we're going on tour, we're going to be going to Toronto, sold out. New York, almost sold out, D.C. I think it's very close to being sold out. Chicago is lagging a little bit, although we've sold a lot of tickets and we're in a very big theater compared to the others.

But Chicago, let's fucking keep up. Come on, Chicago. It's an extra large venue for you guys because you're the city of big shoulders. Anyway, come see us there, and please stay away from scalpers and third-party sellers. We don't want people that take advantage of you just to come and see us.

I'm getting a lot of inquiries from people who want to go to the sold-out cities. I'm unable to help. We're not getting very many cons. They're like, no, you can have two or something like that. Anyway, we're very excited. Are you excited for our tour? Yeah, I am, seven cities and seven nights. And your book is, let me just say, let me give a plug.

Your book is coming out that week, too. So let's get it on the top of the New York Times bestseller lists, okay, the number one. Let's give it number one. I appreciate that. We want to make that. It's a big important topic, and everyone is interested in it, Republicans, Democrats, TBA, whatever you happen to be. I'm going to get a copy each for both of my sons,

and Saul would have one, but he doesn't read. Just real quick, speaking of Chicago, my wife likes to talk on the phone during sex, and last night she called me from Chicago. I don't even think that. Does that work? See, now I'm thinking about the mechanics of that. That's about a lot of levels.

Put me in the Republican, young Republican chat. I'm ready. Anyway, that's the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot and be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back next week. Scott, read us out.

Today's show was produced by Lara Neiman, Zilley-Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Bertie Andrew Tutt engineered this episode. Jim Mackle, edited the video. Thanks also to Drew Burroughs, Minnesota on Dan Shalon. Ashokuro is Vox Media's executive producer

podcast. Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thank you for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine Nymag.com. We'll be back later in the week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.