Pivot - Jack Dorsey steps down from Twitter, Omicron’s Impact, and Friend of Pivot, John McWhorter

Episode Date: November 30, 2021

Kara and Scott discuss the new COVID-19 variant, Omicron, Jack Dorsey's Twitter exit, and Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri's upcoming congressional testimony. Also, a bidding war for an original U.S. Constitution, and the pressure on ride-sharing giant Didi to delist from the NY Stock Exchange. Plus, Friend of Pivot, and author of the book “Woke Racism,” John McWhorter. You can find John on Twitter at @JohnHMcWhorter. Send us your Listener Mail questions, via Yappa, at nymag.com/pivot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Bose is a registered trademark of the Bose Corporation. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Cara Swisher. And I was right. I was right, Cara. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Cara Swisher. And I was right. I was right, Cara. I was so right. The dog chalks up another W. Listen, broken clock. Listen, broken clock. Broken clock. It was going to happen. You know that. And tomorrow, Tesla's below 100 bucks a share, and then I will be vindicated, and everyone will love me. Everyone will love me.

to share and then I will be vindicated and everyone will love me. Everyone will love me. I love it. You know, we talked about this last week when I said he should step down and you said he's going to step down, a broken clock is right. You said that. You said broken clock. Do you remember? Yeah. Well, broken clock, you are right. You are correct. It's the right thing. Did you see the stock go up? It was crazy. We're going to talk more about it in a little bit, but Merry Christmas. You got an early Christmas gift, as everyone on Twitter is saying. Yeah, it was so funny. Everyone on Twitter is like, oh, my God, I'm so excited for you. Like I was getting married or something.

No, it was weird. Everyone thought this. My sister is like, you must be so happy. And I'm like, I don't know if happy is the right word. Well, we're going to discuss how you feel about it. We're going to break it down. But how was your Thanksgiving, speaking of your sister? It was wonderful. We went to a place called Staniel Key in the Exumas. I saw the pictures.

You know, snorkeling. Scott zooms me from places, or he FaceTimes me from gorgeous places, and I'm sitting in my sad little studio in freezing cold DC without heat, essentially. Yeah, no, you have a rough life. Yeah. Your seven houses and clamorama on your ninth wife and 15th child. Yeah, it's rough for the Swishers. Rough for the Sultan of Swish. How was Swisher Picker Upper? Did you give the name Picker Upper?

No, no, it's still Saul. And my Thanksgiving was well, thank you for asking. It was excellent. Eat the white fish. We- That's all. My Thanksgiving was wonderful. It's my favorite holiday. was excellent. Eat the white fish. That's all. My Thanksgiving was wonderful. It's my favorite holiday. No Jesus, no consumption. What did you eat? What did you have?

What did you have? Oh, we had wonderful, what do you mean what did we have? We had turkey. Some people have different Thanksgivings. Oh, are you kidding? It's like become a game. We spend like $11 million on a turkey imported in from some Iranian town where they only feed the turkeys other turkeys. And, you know And it becomes-

That is so your wife. That is so- Literally the most stress I've had in a long time was my partner said to me, okay, I am leaving for five minutes. You need to watch the turkey. I'm like, what do you mean watch it? You have to watch it. Well, the temperature can't go above this level or down below this level.

I'm like, I know I'm going to screw this up. People are very funny about their turkeys. It's funny. Oh, my gosh. I just show up. You know what? I got a free turkey breast from my son's boss, Pam the Butcher. She gave me turkey boobs, as she called them, huge turkey boobs. And we dunked that mother in buttermilk and left it there, and it was delicious. Who was with you for Thanksgiving? Well, it was just going to be me and Amanda and the two young ones clara and saul but then the boys showed up with uh we had some oysters sent to us by friends as a gift and so the boys just showed up and then we all were together it was nice it was a very lovely time we had a good time they had to go they have to split thanksgivings between my ex and me but they

just decided to come over and we and they ate all the oysters. I think we said oysters, and that was that. So, Louie and Alex— You don't have like the modern family Thanksgiving where you all get together? No, no, no, no, no, no. No? But my sons are adept at oyster shucking, so I was pleased they were there. That is nice.

Yeah, it was great. No, we don't do that. No, lesbians, that's not a—I know people think that of lesbians, but I do not think that's necessarily a good idea. That's my feeling. Yeah, well, my family had a bit of an argument over Thanksgiving dinner, so I just clicked the end meeting button. Oh, you did? Anyway, so we're going to- Little Zoom humor. We have a lot to talk about. Suddenly, we have a lot to talk about. So, coming up on the show

today, we're talking about, obviously, the big shakeup on Twitter and how Scott feels about it and how, in fact, Scott and what Scott thinks is going to happen. A new COVID variant that's got the world on edge. And we'll also speak to friend of Pivot, John McWhorter, who I really love, and his new book, Woke Racism. I had him recently on Twitter. His space is hugely popular. He's got a lot to say. We agree on very little, but I really think he's an incredibly fantastic thinker. Anyway, first. And you're going to be hearing us talk a lot more about not only parental controls,

but safety for young people online more broadly. And I'm going to be talking about these issues with Congress relatively soon. Instagram CEO will testify for Congress next week regarding the app's toxic mental health impacts. We've kind of been waiting for this. Adam Masseri, this is his first time testifying. He's on the Twitter a lot, making little speeches and stuff, but he spoke about his upcoming appearance on Instagram. Usually these social media hearings are a wash, but what do you think? He's kind of a live wire. You know what? You should take this. You know him better than I do. I think he's really, he likes the the spotlight i think his his his instagrams and tweets are funny

they're interesting um he definitely likes attention and i think he's got to learn in front of these people perhaps to take it down a few notches i think that'll be hard for him but we'll see maybe he'll be well trained and they'll keep him in check i don't know what he can say except we're sorry and we're working on it if he he says things like, well, we may not be the real – if he argues with him, I think he's in trouble. I think he should just sit there and take it, unfortunately, for him. I think it's – you know what I think it is? I think it's his job interview or his tryout to be CEO of Facebook. Interesting.

Because if he does well, if he's combative but just combative enough, but likable and makes good points and is forceful, he'll be the CEO of Facebook, which is a new role that will be created as a heat shield for Zuckerberg. People think Andrew Bosworth is the person who's going to be that. I always mix them up. We've interviewed them together. Is that right? He's the CTL? Yeah. Yeah.

He's really close to Mark. I don't know. I feel like a tech person is going to be taken. Just like in the Twitter situation. You're probably right. Talk about it in a second. Actually, that feels right. But this guy's a really interesting character, and

he can be very touchy and stuff, but he's also very funny and obviously talented. People seem to like him that work there. But I think Congress is a whole different beast, and I don't, what would you say if you were him? What would you advise him if you were PR-ing him? We're proud of the progress we've made.

We need to do better. Okay. The three things you remember in a crisis. One, top guy or gal takes responsibility. I take responsibility for this. I take it very seriously. Two, acknowledge the problem. This is unacceptable. What's going on here is wrong.

We think a lot of it has probably been exaggerated. We think a lot of it makes for a good headline and has been exaggerated. But even if it's a fraction of what is being claimed here, which we acknowledge. Should he even say that? I think he shouldn't say that. I think they should stop with that line of PR. I'm sorry, you're saying

don't condition it. Just say- Don't condition it. Yeah, why would you condition it? That's a good point. I think it'll be impossible for them not to go to a lot of this has been

blown out of proportion, and probably some of it has, to be fair. So anyways, and then list all the things they're doing to try and address it. And to say to, you know, and he'll, you watch, he'll bring in some personal stuff. You know, I have a daughter too. Yeah, I don't know if he does.

He'll bring in, he'll turn it into a personal story and talk about all the stuff they're doing. But this is an opportunity for a new face to say, there's a new sheriff in town. I'm taking a different approach. I think if he comes off as combative and in your face, I think it's going to get really ugly really fast for the guy. Yeah, I think he does. The problem is when they say, what are you doing? They'll ask him a lot of specific questions. Are you going to enforce identity?

Well, what about age gating? Yeah. Well, do you, you know, the questions will get very pointed very fast. I hope. Unless it's just about grandstanding, like we want to protect girls. You'll see a lot of that. Yeah, I know.

You'll see a lot of that. You'll see a lot of the questioning, they'll take up their entire five minutes and he'll never get a chance to speak. They'll just make speeches. It's going to be hard for him. He likes to speak. He loves to speak.

Anyway, we'll see what happens. Adam, good luck and come see me if you're in DC. We'll have coffee. Anyway, Citadel CEO Ken Griffin is the new owner of an original U.S. Constitution. I don't believe these are for private sale. After he outbid a crypto coalition that sought to buy the documents, he paid over $43 million for the rare copy. Griffin isn't known to be a collector of historical artifacts, but he is a skeptic of cryptocurrency. So he's sort of like bashing the crypto boys.

Meanwhile, the group behind the failed bid may have to pay over a million dollars in Ethereum fees to refund their backers. They had a group of them. This is really interesting. I thought this was fascinating. I don't know if we have enough billionaires to fend off all the crypto dudes, but what do you think about this? Well, if you think about valuation, the more people you can get into to bid on something and their returns or expectations are lower, and oftentimes they get psychic value out of owning a share in the Green Bay Packers. They get psychic value out of owning a share of the Glasgow Rangers, of which I'm going to own a bunch, because it's fun. They like to say I'm a shareholder in Apple. And typically speaking, the private to public leap where you go from a small group of institutional investors to a large

number of retail investors results in greater valuation and a greater tolerance to support a higher valuation. They're willing to pay higher prices. I don't know if it's because they're less disciplined or they get more emotional reward, they're not professional, whatever you want to call it. So the idea of taking an organization that has a mission and setting up that kind of smart contract, if you will, and then expanding it to say, okay, there's a small number of universe, really, of people who are going to buy the Constitution. There just aren't a lot of people who will plunk down-

Bill Gates and some other guys, yeah. Yeah, 40 million bucks for a piece of American history that may or may not be resellable. Not only that, where do you store it? What do you do with it? Yeah. So, but when you say to an organization- You give it to a museum. They often do that, but go ahead. If you give people the opportunity to buy a piece of the constitution for a hundred bucks under the auspices of an organization that has trust, a governance that is built in with technology, with a lack of human arbiters who are going to, you believe, screw you. You're going to see, I think from DAOs, I think this is just the beginning, Kara. I think you're going to see- Yeah, you've said this. You've said this over,

this has been one of your latest things. Well, what? You're going to have a DAO, like basically say, we're going to acquire the Dallas Cowboys, or we're going to bid on Allbirds. I mean, you're going to bid on Allbirds. You're going to see DAOs do some fucking crazy shit in the next 12 months. It's going to be very exciting. And the idea— It's a little like the meme stuff, people, right? I mean, it's in that genre.

100%. In that genre. Yeah. Well, it's interesting because valuations on things trade on fundamentals. Sometimes they trade on technicals. And then the third thing that's been introduced is they can trade on a movement. And what happens when an organization says, we're going to fund $100 million to go into an organization to go acquire a certain amount of Chevron, and then we're going to try and replace the board and go all non-fossil fuels? Yeah.

You could have so many. And they could pull it off. They could pull it off. So, I just think the imagination, I'm very excited. I'm very excited. Stone soup is what they call it. Stone soup. But they didn't get the, they lost to Ken Griffin. And it'll be interesting about sellers if they want to sell it to these people. That's, I mean, of course, money is money. So, but it's really exciting. I think this is an interesting new trend, Scott. I think you have put your finger on the pulse of the situation as usual.

So also, speaking very briefly, Chinese regulators have asked Didi, China's ride-sharing giant, which has seen a lot of changes, including departure of executives, et cetera, lots of control, to delist from the New York Stock Exchange. They say it's out of concern for data security. Just, I don't, it doesn't make any sense. It's just more China control of major tech areas, I think. That's pretty much that. Yeah. Somebody, Aditi, has pissed off the wrong person. I remember meeting with

a friend of mine. He just showed up in my office and we'd become friendly. And he's this wonderful Russian guy. He's an entrepreneur now and has started some really interesting companies in the US. And I said, why did you leave Russia? You know, it seems like you were doing really well there. I imagine you could have a really nice life as a wealthy person living in Moscow. And he said, you never know when the call's going to come. I'm like, what do you mean the call? And he's like, well, you don't get the call.

But he goes, your career can end, even your life can end with a call. And that is the wrong person calls and decides you're an enemy of the state or an enemy of their company or whatever it is, and he's like, and you just don't know what can happen. Yeah. And this call happened. Someone at Didi really pissed off the wrong person. Yeah, it's interesting. And they have decided to make an example of them, for lack of a better term. Yep, yep, yep, yep. I would agree. I mean, they're basically going to, my sense is going to run them out of business.

Yeah. It's an interesting thing because there's all these various people there. I met the founder many years ago in China. He had been working at Alibaba before that. I think it's Cheng Wei. But he didn't speak English, but super aggressive entrepreneur. You could just feel it. He was speaking. We had a translator between us. but he didn't speak English but super aggressive entrepreneur. You could just feel it.

He was speaking, we had a translator between us but you could feel sort of the, just like Jack Ma, I mean, a lot of people there like at all these companies and it'll be interesting to see what happens to this class of entrepreneur there in China.

But they were very eager to meet with reporters and et cetera, et cetera. And it was an interesting time and obviously Gene Liu who comes from a very prominent tech family in China also, has sort of been squashed down. We'll see what happens there. I mean, there was a class of entrepreneurial in China that I wonder where it goes. It is an interesting thought. One of my friends brought up, and you're kind of nibbling around the edges of it, it's a huge opportunity for America because our wild, you know, we constantly criticize that

the wild west of tech has gotten too wild, too, there's not enough sheriffs. But at the same time, that respect for innovation, that cutting them a lot of slack is probably going to attract a lot of Chinese entrepreneurs, I think. I mean, this is what happens. This is why entrepreneurship has quashed so much in a lot of countries, And that is you can build something great and then have it taken away from you by the government or by a nationalist or a populist movement. And America is known for kind of erring on the side of the entrepreneur. Who's coming for you, Scott? Who's coming for you? Who would you say? Don't know.

Don't know? Don't know. Anytime, anywhere. We'll see. That's why I bought a Great Dane. Don't know? Don't know. Anytime, anywhere. We'll see. That's why I bought a Great Dane. Don't get near my house. Your dog would not. I got one mean bitch. Your dog is so not.

And she is a bitch. Her name is Leah. She is not mean. This dog, you would scare just by saying boo. Oh, she's brutal and aggressive. No, no. Watch out. No, no.

Watch out. No, I'm not scared of her in any way. Big dog, though, I have to say. Bigger than me. Could be bigger. She is a big dog. Just enormous. But listen, though, I have to say, bigger than me. Could be bigger. She's a big dog. Just enormous. But listen, we're going to get on to our big stories.

We're going to talk about Twitter. We're going to make that number two because of John coming on, because I think that'll be an interesting person to get some thoughts on. But let's very quickly talk about the new coronavirus variant that has roiled markets and disrupted international travel, dubbed, I think it's Omicron. The variant was first identified in South Africa, has been found in the UK, Israel, Belgium, Hong Kong. The WHO has labeled it a variant of concern. But as we all know, when you have a virus that has already gone to multiple countries,

inevitably it will be here. The question is, will we be prepared for it? I often label you a variant of concern. The market's dipped on the news. That sounds a little sexy when you say it. It's not. It's not meant to be in any way whatsoever. The Dow has its birthday year on Friday, though Zoom and Peloton shares increased in price. Markets evened out again on Monday, but people are worried. The U.S., because people are sort of coming back. Just here in D.C., they had dropped the mask mandate, which is probably going to go right back up. Rolled out travel restrictions on Southern African nations.

President Biden has been criticized for delaying the U.S. ban until after the holiday weekend. It's a very dicey political issue. You know, everybody sort of had it with the, you know, with doing, going back and forth and back and forth. And, you know, it just adds fuel to the fire of the crazies who are like, now they're going to keep us, you know, under their thumb with these different variants, etc. Moderna and Pfizer are racing to provide an Omicron specific booster by early next year. I just got the regular booster. Meanwhile, hundreds of Google employees signed a manifesto protesting the company's vaccine mandate. People are getting, you know, they sort of, oh, someone at the party told me they were over COVID. I was like, okay, just, okay, whatever.

I didn't know what to say. I just moved on at this holiday party. So what do you think? At the start of the pandemic, we talked about contact tracing and testing as a primary means to fight this. Now the hope is for better vaccines. What are your thoughts about what's happening here? So I'm trying to be better about staying in my lane, and that is not speaking to the epidemiological ramifications here

because I have no fucking idea or training here. But what struck me about it was how fast the market snapped back. And it's now become a different input for stocks. And that is Moderna added $13.5 billion in market capitalization. So Zoom added billions. You know, airline stock, it's become,

we're such a consumer or a dollar-driven society that the kind of things we look to, we look to infection rates, but everyone kind of looks to the markets and says, well, how is this impacting business? And what struck me is this conversation over office space. I think we are getting so good and so used to not going into work and not traveling. This has had an impact on me.

I was excited. I just joined the board of Ledger, the cold storage hardware wallet out of Paris. And I was supposed to go to a board meeting in a week and a half, and it's in Paris. And I saw that Paris has instituted a mass mandate. And I started thinking, well, one kind of form of citizenship is you just don't need to be a vessel to carry anything anywhere. And the fewer places you go that aren't necessary. So I'm probably going to say to them, I'm cutting non-necessary or unnecessary business travel out of it. And I'm probably not going to go. And when you think about that, that has big impacts on the economy, right? Because if it's a business person not going, and it's not like I'm going to go back

twice. I'm just not going to go. I'm just not going. And so this has big impact. The thing that struck me was how quickly the market snapped back. And also, I tend to think this stuff now, I don't want to call it hyperbole, but it makes for a great headline, right? A variant that might get around. So I wonder how much, it'll be really interesting to see if in fact it is, I mean, the virus is, I guess, doing what it's supposed to. It's more infectious. This is what a virus does. It varies itself.

That's the whole point of a virus, really. It's its job. And this one's doing an excellent job at being a virus. But it's true. It's really interesting to think about how, you know, I've been going to several, just one holiday party for Hanukkah. And everything was outdoors. It was really interesting. It happened to be a warm night last night.

And it was so weird to be in a social setting right and then i was like i would like to go home like i know it sounds weird i know i was like i have to that's aging that's no i know but i i've sort of been like this all the time and someone invited me to an event and i was like do i have to wear pants are there pants involved and i just feel like i that this virus has beaten me to wear pants um uh it pants? Do I have to wear pants? It'll be interesting to see. You know, we, of course, have our event coming up. And code went back and forth and back and forth for a long time.

And it worked very well. And I think if we do it in the right way, I doubt we would cancel it, right? We would just try to do what we did in code. No, just try a new way of living. Yeah, yeah. It's a new way of living. And we'll do it in a very safe way, but it'll be interesting to see what kind of calculations.

And of course, it's in Florida, so it doesn't really matter what... You can do whatever you want, I guess. There's no COVID here. Have any of you heard of COVID? No, I know that. So what does the Google News say, though, that people don't want vaccine mandates, they also don't want to go back to work, et cetera, et cetera?

I know people think that Silicon Valley is liberal. It is not. I don't know why people keep saying that, just because they are nice to gay people. I think it's more libertarian than liberal. Exactly. Right, exactly. I think it's liberal when it's convenient. It's libertarian when they don't want to pay taxes or be regulated. They're just not. They're not. Centrists would be what I would say most of them are,

but they're not risk-taking politically, most of them, in either direction, actually. So, what do you imagine is going to happen to these, you know, with these increasing protests? There haven't been that many in this country compared to in Europe and et cetera. But I think people are resisting it. I think that's the way it's going to be. What's the total employee base of Google? I mean, it's tens of thousands. People take cues, isn't it?

Yeah, but my sense is people, I saw the story and I thought, well, to me, this is more validation that people are fine with the vaccine mandate. If they could only get a couple hundred people to sign this thing at Google. Yeah, that's true. It wasn't very many. To me, it's more like, well, that means, you know, 22,000 didn't. And I imagine everyone heard about it and could have signed it. Yeah, there's this quiet, as I said, this quiet group of people and then super loud people.

But there's a, I think a lot of it, I've been thinking obviously about higher ed lately. In the last 50 years ago, one in four jobs required a college education. Now it's two in three. Whereas the number of college seats has barely kept pace with population growth. But that totally misses the demand for college degrees.

And that is the number of jobs that are created that need a college degree has doubled, if not tripled. Meaning that if you have a college degree from a strong institution, much less a degree in engineering or computer science, you have tremendous leverage. And if it was 50 years ago, if you decided you didn't want a vaccine, it would be like, okay, get the fuck out of here. I mean, the amount of leverage that has transitioned to college-educated or elite school-certified employees is really incredible. And so, to me, this is all about leverage. Like, oh, this bothers me.

I'm going to have a walkout. If you did, I'm trying to imagine doing a walkout in 1970s ITT. I would have liked to have seen what happened to you. They would have been like, okay, just keep walking. So I think this reflects a society where there are people who get to protest and people who get healthcare and people who get to take the Google bus and people who can think big thoughts and talk about how important progressive values are. And then people in the middle of the state are like, well, isn't that nice that you have these big liberal thoughts after you get rich? Yeah.

Whereas a lot of- Well, these aren't liberal. These are more like, no, nobody touches my body kind of stuff. Yeah, but I saw this as validation of the vaccines. What do you think? I don't know. I'm not sure. I don't know. People in Silicon Valley confuse me politically. So, who knows why they're doing it? They just sometimes just like to do things. You're right. It's a small group of people. It is. It just is. Just like with everything else. point of laziness, as long as you give them dry cleaning and snacks, they just type away. And so I don't expect, I don't find them to be leaders from a societal perspective or a political perspective. So I don't know, whatever. They can yammer on us. And they love to yammer. They're yammers of the highest degree. You're right. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about Jack Dorsey's big move. And welcome back our friend of Pivot, John McWhorter, author of the book Woke Racism.

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Available feature. Bose is a registered trademark of the Bose Corporation. All right, Scott, I'm going to just let you have this one. Jack Dorsey is leaving Twitter, as you predicted for two and a half years or three. I don't know. How long have you been together? How long have we been together? and et cetera. The CTO since 2011, I mean, he's been CTO since 2007,

he's met the company since 2011, Parag Agrawal, takes over as CEO immediately. Brett Taylor, who is president of Salesforce, who formerly worked at Facebook, I know him pretty well, will become board chairman.

Interesting. I really like Brett Taylor quite a bit. He's a lovely guy. Twitter stock jumped on the news of Dorsey leaving. It came very suddenly. He's been delving into cryptocurrency. There were rumors running all over the place around the cryptocurrency stuff. Like, is the government interested in him?

Is this and that? And so, but he's really moved on. I think he allegedly is the person who picked the new CEO or whose preference was. So what do you think? Give me some thoughts. Well, it comes down to two things. And that is the stock is where it was in October of 2014. Wow.

Meanwhile, over at Google, et cetera, et cetera. But go ahead. Okay. Well, let's talk about that. Let's see where Google was in 2013. That's a lot. Okay. So Google has gone up sevenfold in the last eight years.

And Twitter has gone up zero. Yeah. So Twitter, for any tech company, much less a social media platform, has been a terrible performer. And it's like, well, what's wrong? And when you get to the kind of a basic question of like, well, do we have the wrong guy or gal? And it's like, well, he works there part-time. That used to be kind of like end of conversation. But this is when I double down on this prediction.

But this is when I double down on this prediction. Jack Dorsey was fired the day, not that Elliott got seats on the board, but part of the agreement that they came to with Elliott, who, by the way, Twitter knew they were all wet when a big shareholder came in, was that they de-staggered the board. Now, what does that mean? It means that the entire board can be swept out at an annual meeting. And what that means is that this company is now held accountable, that the weapon of mass delay or the weapons of mass obfuscation known as a staggered board are gone. They said, boss, it is time for you to go. And the fact that he's leaving the board, he has 93% of his wealth at Square. What's interesting, Cara, is I think there's a non-zero probability that within the next – first off, by the end of 2022, Twitter is no longer an independent company. This thing's in play now. Yes. It's an incredible asset. It is.

Undervalued asset, as we both talked about. Again, I'll be paying a lot of attention to Brett Taylor. He's connected all over the place. Salesforce, obviously. Close with Mark Benioff, who at one point tried to buy Twitter. So he's connected all over tech. Very well-liked guy. It was at Facebook. They bought a startup of his a million years ago. I think it was interesting they picked tech forward folks over the media ones. These are all tech, Brett and Parler, both tech forward people versus media, meaning they're not leaning into the media. They also didn't go with their CFO, Ned Siegel, who was sort of against making any cryptocurrency investments. They had debated that. And Vijay Gowdy, who made the big Trump decision, I think most pretend it's Jack, but Vijay was the one that was really at the forefront of a lot of their free speech stuff. It'll be interesting. I want to watch what happens to them, to those executives. Also, their head of product, Kayvon, and a number of other, Bekpour, and some others. So it'll be interesting to see what happens to them.

Well, you know who the most likely acquirer of Twitter is now? Square. You said Square. But there's others, Salesforce. I think it's going to be a crypto company. Yeah, it could be a crypto company. It could be a lot of things. So it could be Square.

Oh, I'm sorry, FinTech. I shouldn't have said crypto. FinTech. PayPal. And it'll be interesting to see what happens around these free speech decisions. Now, Jack has been, you know, pretty steadfast and forward compared. I know a lot of people

criticize him, but he's been, he's made decisions before other people, made difficult decisions around free speech, harassment, all kinds of stuff. It'll be interesting what it means for Donald Trump, which I think, you know, with a new owner. What's fascinating, they've had just a few CEOs of Twitter. Dick Costolo was one, obviously.

Ev, the founder, was. It'll be interesting to see what this guy does. You think he's just a play sitter. He could be like Satya Nadelli at Microsoft, too. Could do something with it. I don't know. What do you think? It gets old.

This thing's in play. Is that right? This kind of influence, this user base, a fintech company can come in and turn what is right now, I think, a $37 billion market cap company.

And if you're PayPal and you're worth $250 billion, if you could just get a fraction of those people to start using your platform, is that worth a 12% or 15% dilution? Yeah, that's why Mark Benioff wanted to buy it. That's why he did it. I think a lot of people, Cara, are sharpening their pencils and looking at Twitter now. And now it's a single class of, it's not a staggered board.

This thing is in play. And I think Jack, people say he doesn't have a big ego. I can't imagine he wouldn't enjoy turning around and reuniting his sister wives. I think he's gonna, he's gonna, let's all get together and have 40 more kids. You know, I like Jack Dorsey. You make fun of him all the time,

but I do think he has some ethical. He seems like a nice man. He is and is interesting and he's got ethical much more. I mean, I think he made it he took a long time to do it and argued with me and others many times about it, but I thought he, they, especially Vijay, who I have

great respect for there. They're very thoughtful around that. That said, I've talked to a lot of people recently and they're like this is the craziest friggin' place to work ever. It's like a lot of turnover, a lot of drama. It's always been like, always since its beginning, a very emotional company.

And so, you know, there's a lot of chaos internally at this company, almost since its founding. That said, the impact is so much greater than its value, than its financial value, which is interesting. It's the Modern Economy's version of the New York Times. And that is, it's arguably one of the most influential organizations in the world. Yeah. And it's shitty for shareholders.

Yeah. And it probably, it either needs to step up and start figuring out a membership model, like Twitter blue, come on, give me a fucking break. Yeah, Twitter blue. And it needs to get serious. It needs to pivot to a different business model, or it needs to be acquired by a fintech company that can better monetize the platform. But this thing, oh, my gosh, is this thing in play now. The other thing is it's an opportunity for them to really clean up the shit.

I mean, I absolutely love Twitter. And I can't tell you, 80% of the really negative comments I get are from an anonymous account who is trying to erode the credibility of their target with diversionary tactics. It is a cesspool of lies and slander and defamation, and they could clean it up. Yeah, some great things, though. Let me just say, Twitter is also one of the most amazingly fun places to be. Anyway, just so you know, just so the biggest legacy of Dorsey, besides inventing it, thanks, Jack, is tweet length from 140 to 280 characters. Twitter Spaces, obviously, Twitter Blue, Twitter Moments, its short-lived Fleets feature. Some of the mistakes, obviously, it shut down Periscope and Vine, which left an opening for TikTok. People do not know this, but Twitter was another company around podcasting, and they failed.

And Twitter came out of it, much like Slack came out of a gaming company. So this company has had quite a ride and a lot of characters around it. So let us give thanks to Jack Dorsey. At the same time, Jack, it needs to be worth a lot more, so you need to move along. Well, I have a slightly different take, it needs to be worth a lot more, so you need to move along. Well, I have a slightly different take, and that is he did a really shitty job. And that is he was bad for shareholders, bad for the Commonwealth, and bad for the planet. So, good riddance.

Okay. I would not like to run that company. Actually, we would have a fascinating time running that company. I would make the hard calls. I certainly would. So would you. Anyway, thank you, Scott,

for your thoughts. Tesla stock $100. That's all I need. That's all I need. Okay. I know. I know. That's true.

But, but it's not, that's not happening quite yet. That guy's got, that guy's got a lot more zip in his step. A little spring in his step. Anyway, we're going to,

let's bring in our friend of Pivot. John McWhorter is a professor of linguistics at Columbia University and a columnist of the New York Times. In his new book, Woke Racism, he argues that anti-racism has become a new religion on the left, and it's hurting the people it claims to serve. Welcome to Pivot, John. Hi, Cara. How are you? How you doing again? I'm so thrilled to have you here again.

There's Scott. I'm going to let Scott do many of the questions, because you and I had a really great discussion on Twitter Spaces. But I just want to say, I'd love your thoughts on the Twitter situation. Scott just trashed Jack Dorsey. I don't know if you've heard. But he was finally right, broken clock right about him leaving after years of predicting it. So I just love your thoughts about what do you think this means, if anything? You use Twitter a lot and you talk about it a lot. So I'd love that question. Then we're going to let Scott take over.

Well, to tell you the truth, Twitter always surprises me because it brings out a certain kind of person who is a very ordinary person. We often talk about the Twitter troll as if it's some bizarre, you know, physically deformed or socially deformed person. But you can tell that a lot of people who behave that way on Twitter are quite ordinary people. And there has always been a kind of person who would have been willing to spread this kind of bile if there only existed the technology to do it. who would have been willing to spread this kind of bile if there only existed the technology to do it. Definitely, there needs to be some sort of reconsidering of Twitter and how it operates in general. Nobody's been prepared for what Twitter has been. And I'm not sure that I've seen him as somebody who was in a position to really think in a larger way about how we need to limit or change

this thing that makes everybody a village and is a force for evil as much as it's a force for good. So what would that change be? Well, as far as I'm concerned, we really do have to consider the notion of freedom of communication when it comes to the sorts of things that can happen on that platform. Who's allowed to be on it, for how long, how carefully it's monitored. who's allowed to be on it, for how long, how carefully it's monitored. All of those things are ones that challenge our whole sense of how we're going to monitor things like that, because nobody expected that everybody would be able to be in each other's faces via some sort of technology until roughly 2009 when Twitter became default. It really does change the entire fabric of existence in many ways.

I think, for example, and people tell me that I'm wrong about this, but I think that the reason that the race dialogue went crazy starting in the early teens was partly because Twitter became default in 2009. I think that had an awful lot to do with the rise of the Tea Party, too. Many people seem to think that race was the main issue there. But I think that also there was a time when Facebook and Twitter became default. That was 2009. That happens to also be exactly when Obama came into office. So, I think the book has yet to be written on how significant these things are, and it's taken a lot of people by surprise. But Twitter shapes history. And we're just now beginning to get a sense of how that works.

Professor, I'm curious what any of your thoughts regarding the statements that came from out of the chancellor's offices at UC Irvine and UC Santa Cruz regarding the verdict on the Rittenhouse trial. Did you see those? No, this I did not see. You mean this morning? No. So, there was a couple of statements from chancellors of various UC campuses stating – I mean, basically, they were what I would call casting a pretty serious value judgment, saying that the jury got it wrong. And there's been a lot of conversation around whether chancellors or school leadership should be in the business of creating a platform for these types of discussions, but not actually issuing critiques themselves. And it just felt like it was kind of right in your wheelhouse. Well, no, it makes perfect sense if you understand that we are in a period where a certain kind of radical leftist position, and I don't mean radical leftist itself as any kind of slur,

but a certain radical leftist position believes that battling power differentials should be the center of all intellectual, moral, and artistic endeavor. That is the basic tenet there. And the idea that you battle power differentials in this way is held so fiercely that you can think of it as a kind of religion. And I believe that it really is what an anthropologist would call a religion. And part of it is, part of the reason that it is a religion is that there's an evangelical aspect to it. And within this religion, the things that we label as schools actually become churches of a kind.

As such, it's very natural that a chancellor would feel that he or she needed to preach or propound about something of this kind, when really they're kind of stepping outside of what we would think that person's job would be. And so, the Rittenhouse verdict is one of those things that, you know, turned on certain basic legal technicalities and did not correspond with what most people morally think of Rittenhouse himself. That's something that doesn't sit well with that particular church, and so naturally, you have a chancellor making that kind of statement. Now, the chancellor wouldn't think of themselves as serving in a religious function. They don't use those labels, they don't use those words, but I think that's what was going on.

So, talk about your book, Woke Raisin. You and I had talked about the title, because when you started writing it, you said that, because the word has gotten so weighted, just like fake news and so many others that we discussed. So, why don't you talk a little bit about the development of the book and the title and how you look at the word right now? You're a linguist, obviously, so. Yeah, it's, I really do think that it has gotten to the point that a certain kind of person feels that they have found the ultimate answer.

I think they really do believe that, you know, Kant used to believe that, now they believe that. They think that they're doing good. The idea being that if we battle power differentials and we get rid of that problem, then we can walk on into a happier future. And especially, there's an idea that we need that to happen before Black America can do better than it does. And so, what you get is not just an ordinary political program, but you have something where people who don't agree with you are to be chased out of the room,

they're to be fired, they're to be defenestrated. You're to consider it noxious to be around them even virtually. That sort of thing reminds you of the way heretics were handled not too long ago in certain kinds of religions, and some of them now, as opposed to a political program where there's the notion that white people are permanently stained by white privilege. Whether or not that's true, the parallel with the notion of original sin is rather eerie. And there are all sorts of these things, including sometimes a suspension of disbelief. For example, the idea that you want to defund the police. I understand where that comes from, and a person who belongs to this religion will say

that we need to defund the police because of terrible things that the police do. But Black people living in underserved neighborhoods tend not to agree with that. They often want more police. We're not supposed to talk about that. That hyper-woke kind of person doesn't want to hear that or they say it's complicated but don't seem terribly interested in unraveling the complication. This is what I really do believe has become a religious point of view. as in that last example, it hurts black people or insults black people rather than helping them because it's come down to what I hate to say is about virtue signaling. It's signaling that you know that racism exists. And often that's given primacy over actually thinking about things that

will help people of a race out in the real world beyond the confines of our discussion, if that makes sense. And you've said that the racial justice movement of the last couple of years has been more involved in virtue signaling versus actually helping Black America. Let's move, let's go on the offense here. What is it we could do as organizations and people in media and people that like to think of themselves as progressives to actually engage in a conversation and dialogue that results in actually helping Black America? I truly believe, and I've been arguing this for 15 years, not just in the wake of this book, I truly believe that what would really help Black communities more than just about anything else

is for there to be a sustained battle by all engaged Americans against this thing called the war on drugs. And I know that for many people that might sound like I'm oversimplifying that we need to have a larger and more abstract conversation about racist bias, about systemic racism. Well, you know, the war on drugs is part of systemic racism. I'm not denying that systemic racism exists, but the war on drugs creates a black market for hard drugs. You can make half of a living selling drugs on that black market. And if you do it, very often you wind up in jail or killed or hurt. And the time that you spend on that black market is time that you're not spending getting training in legal work.

Now, if I were an underserved black man growing up in a neighborhood like that, I can imagine selling drugs instead of going and getting a job in a shoe store. It makes perfect sense. It's not that these are bad people. But if that temptation is there, it ends up ruining black lives, which would not be ruined if, quite simply, there were no such thing as that black market. That's all. I'm not arguing against the war on drugs for libertarian or libertine reasons. If there were no way to make half of a living selling heroin or anything else on the street, the same people who drift into that choice would drift into getting legal work, in which

case we should celebrate and fund vocational education, two years of vocational education for such guys, so that they can learn how to repair air conditioners or become electricians or do any number of things, the sorts of which people like us see and we think, boy, those people sure make a lot of money. We always say that about the plumber. How about more black plumbers? The idea being that that's where they start. That would help, I believe, more than just about anything that fashionable anti-racists of the moment are talking about where you often wonder about feasibility. All right. Let me ask two things then, John, because the war on drugs was started by Nixon, the GOP, right, in terms of that. Who are now the ones sort of pushing back against this idea of cancel culture, the most probably,

the Trump people, everything like that. But one of the things that tends to happen is, is it really as powerful as it's made out to be, or is it sort of a loud group of people? Because let's go through them. Louis C.K. just got nominated for a 2022 Grammy. Mel Gibson is now directing the new Lethal Weapon. Dave Chappelle has said, if this is being canceled, I love it. And his special is still on Netflix. He literally was not canceled. And then a lot of people self-cancel and then scream about it. Glenn Greenwald, John Cleese, goes on and on and on. And then they complained about wokeness, but they're doing better than ever. So talk a little bit, because as you know, you and I have argued about

this, I think some things do need to be made accountable. And the word cancel culture and the word woke have gotten, some things happen to them, the same thing with fake news, where they don't mean a thing. So, could you do a better definition of what you think cancel culture means? Because a lot of people look like they're doing great as having been canceled, means, because a lot of people look like they're doing great as having been canceled, allegedly. Cara, that's an interesting take on it. And it's just like with the word woke, we're caught amidst an evolution. Cancel culture, and we think particularly of entertainers. Yeah, most entertainers don't get canceled, partly because the nature of technology is such that how much can you cancel somebody, even with, say, Bill Cosby. If you want to see

the Cosby show, you can. But there was a canceled career, but that was a particularly, particularly egregious example. But in general, yes, people who complain that they're being canceled often are no more being canceled than, say, Josh Hawley was. But I think cancel culture, it's just like with critical race theory, the definition has expanded beyond whether or not a comedian can get work for a year and a half. It's also just the general idea that if you're not on board with a certain extremist and usually anti-racist position, then you don't deserve to just be verbally or writtenly abused. Of course, that's going to happen. You don't deserve to be critiqued, but you should be fired, or you should be considered somebody who's not fit for a polite company.

And so we're talking about, I'm taking random things, Andrew Sullivan being all but fired from New York Magazine because of his views, which few people would consider to be extremist. But people at New York Magazine just couldn't put up with his even virtual presence. So he says. Let me just say, so he says. I work there. It's not quite that. It's a little more complex than that, but go ahead. Go ahead. You mean the Andrew Sullivan episode? Yes, yes. Okay. Or something like an example that I use in the book, there was a curator at the San Francisco

Museum of Modern Art who said that within the new regime, he was very interested in looking at art from different people, not just white people. But he wasn't going to stop looking at things from white people completely because it would be reverse discrimination. Based on that statement, and from what I've seen, it's that statement alone. He wasn't a character. He wasn't obnoxious. He was fired because of the implications of saying that there's even a such thing as reverse discrimination. That mood is also falling under the rubric of what I think people call cancel culture. The idea that you slip up or you offend just a certain kind of person, and that certain kind of person's judgment means that you

no longer can play any reindeer games. That's the mood that I think bothers people. Could you make the difference between cancel culture and accountability? Just the word accountability. Second thing is the only people I see actually canceled would be someone like Kathy Griffin, who's never recovered. And the people who scream cancel culture are the ones who kind of canceled her, right? If you think about it. Or Monica Lewinsky.

Or you know what I mean? Like it's the ones who actually get careers ruined are throughout society, not just because of, you know, they say the wrong thing about race. Well, you know, accountability is important. And a lot of this debate is about what is the difference between accountability and a culture of shaming and where the line falls. And I think the line has been shifting. With Kathy Griffin, as far as I was aware, she was coming back. I mean, I think my impression was that maybe there've been some health issues, but she did not stay where she was. She was another example of how it's hard to cancel somebody, wasn't she? Not really, but she definitely underwent

enormous. It was interesting, the people that scream about Counselor Cuntra are the ones that canceled her. But that's what I mean, is this word keeps shifting around, which means it encompasses everyone, not just a group of people. The same thing with the word woke. I mean, talk about, that was really interesting in Twitter spaces, you talked about how the word changed while you were writing the book. You went away and suddenly the word changed. Yeah, it's interesting. I thought woke meant what I'm now going to use progressive for. I'm going to go back to the boring word. But woke was somebody who was awake to certain political realities of concern to people on the left. That was what it meant in roughly 2015 when it had

jumped the rails into the mainstream. And then around while I was writing the book, I began to realize that woke is now completely a slur. You can't say woke without basically eliciting certain eyebrows raising, etc. And that's something that happened about over the past two or three years. And some people would say that it was because the right was impatient with anything suggesting progress for people who were down under. I think it was also a matter of a weariness of the excesses of what we might call cancel culture that you and I were just talking about. But the word evolved very quickly from being what politically correct meant for about 10 minutes, straddling 1980 until it became the slur PC.

And woke now being the same thing as somebody yelling at somebody for being PC circa 1991. I think it happened faster partly because of social media. But yeah, it's interesting. And that means that the title of my book, Woke Racism, I meant it as unintended racism by people who are aware of certain things that are of concern to people on the left. But now the title sounds like a slur, which is not what I was thinking, but the word has changed that quickly. It's really, it's interesting. Isn't it, when we talk about cancel culture, isn't it a question of proportions? And that is, you know, does the punishment match the offense? And when we're talking about, at Stern, there's an argument over, for whatever reason, blue water versus, I think it's called deep water economics.

And they're really emotional about it. And there's certain issues, though, if you take one side at certain topics, your livelihood could potentially be threatened. Or you could have very important people say, I'm not comfortable around this person, around certain issues that it's, when I think of council culture, it's like things that used to maybe label you as an asshole or, but they didn't, it wasn't, it didn't morph into, we should really investigate whether this person should have a career or not. And it seems like it's been a leakage. And that was a statement more than a question, but I do have a question. And that is, my sense is, if you think of yourself as a progressive, doesn't a lot of this backfire on us? And that is, we're turning

off moderates. And that is, we're a lot of people in the middle who kind of swing elections, see this behavior and say, I get your intention, but you're so, such in a bubble, it makes me want to go more conservative. Haven't we shot ourselves in the foot with this type of what we, good intentions, progressing important ideals, and it's just backfired on us? I think that that is definitely happening. And it's a shame because we're at a point where the Republicans have gone utterly out of their minds, and the alternative party really could be making a better case for itself. But here's how we know that something's wrong. There's a kind of person who hears your question and basically thinks it doesn't matter because we're just right.

We're correct. We're battling power differentials. We're showing it to the man. We are questioning. We are de-centering whiteness. We're just right. And so, the Democratic Party needs to come along with us. We need to teach voters to come along with us. We're not going to change this message because we are correct. That's the problem,

as opposed to that sort of person circa five or six years ago as one of many people at the table. I don't hate the sorts of people who I'm now calling the elect, at least not on a good day. They can be extremely irritating. Explain what the elect is so people know. The elect is a kind of woke person, although now it's at the point where woke basically means the elect, a kind of woke person who is obnoxious about it, who considers their view so sacrosanct that they would happily fire or shame somebody in social media for not agreeing with them. It's that strain that has acquired a disproportionate

kind of power, especially over the past two years. And I call them the elect because I think they genuinely believe. They believe that they have found the answer. They have fundamentally beneficent intentions. They think that they're ahead of the curve and they want to share this with the rest of the world. But their view is, if you're not with them, you should be kicked to the ground, metaphorically. That's new that that kind of person has the kind of power they have over so many of our institutions. And I know some people say, well, is that as important as what happened on the Capitol steps? Is that as important as Republicans trying to deny Black people the vote? And I say, I'm not sure how we compare these holocausts, but the idea that what is going on with these people I call the elect is not significant is, to me, an almost bizarre

question to ask. If you find this sort of thing insignificant, I'm not sure what kind of take on the world one has. It needs to be discussed. it's obviously something has to change. So, I'd love to know what you imagine is going to happen. Some of these things tend to burn themselves out, right, in some manner, and everybody sort of settles back in the center. Or do you not see that happening? You know, I wasn't sure until about three months ago, but I do see that happening. I think a pendulum is shifting, and I think I'm hoping my book can be a part of it. And the idea being just to go back to the middle, it's not to create any kind of extremism of any kind, but I think people are beginning to rub their eyes and see that a certain kind

of person wants to de-center whiteness and often doesn't have a very clear idea of what the substitute would be, and is recreationally contemptuous of anybody who says, wait a minute, let's take this more slowly, there are other ways of being anti-racist, etc. I think people are becoming weary of that, and I'd like to see people, what we're going to need is bravery. There's a certain kind of person who feels that they're doing the right thing by calling you a white supremacist if you disagree with them, even if you're black. I know from experience. That kind of person needs to be told no. And we need to understand that some people are going to call you that, but that life

can go on. That'll be easier for some people than others. It depends on your circumstances. But that sort of person needs to be given pushback, or they'll just get everything they want. What will they get? Because I get this. Whenever I interview a conservative person, I get, like, how could you do this to us? And I'm like, my job is to ask questions. I don't

know what to tell you. And they're not an evil person. And yes, they are. Yes, they're evil. You know, I'm like, hmm. I have a short list of evil. I have to tell you. Professor, you describe yourself. I love that. And by the way, I really, I'm not blowing smoke here. I'm blowing smoke, but it's true. I think we need centrist intellectual role models, and I think you're becoming one of those people. I think you're serving a really important role, and you're an important voice. Thank you for trying. Yeah. So you describe yourself as a 1960s liberal.

How do you diverge from the current liberal thinking? Well, how about this? That's a good question. It's this de-centering whiteness thing taken too far. And so, it's 1961. I'm wearing cat eyeglasses and a snappy suit and I'm drinking a martini and I'm listening to Coltrane and I'm a civil rights leader of that time. And somebody tells me that black kids don't do as well on standardized tests. My immediate answer would be, how do we make them better at it? Today, if I say that, that's considered a little bit bizarre, and everybody wonders whether I vote Republican. That is a very strange thing, that I have faith that we can teach black kids to be better at standardized tests. But instead, today's answer is the test is systemically racist. And because black kids aren't as good at it,

there must be a bias in the test, although notice that nobody specifies what it is, and people have stopped really making that argument much. The test is racist. Let's get rid of the test. Now, never mind that if you get rid of the test for black kids, because of black kids, you're leaving an implication that black kids can't be expected to be tested on abstract cognitive skill. So, why be surprised if people start thinking that black kids aren't as smart as other kids? But for me to say these things today, I'm a gadfly. I'm controversial, and I'm a conservative. No, I'm a liberal. It's just that the notion of what default black politics are moved far, far to the left in the late 60s.

And it's left a rather bizarre circumstance where everybody talks about, for example, the social conservatism in much of the black community. And, you know, it's always been that way. And so I am a liberal. I am interested in improving society. I'm interested in the dignity of the individual. I'm not trying to conserve anything. I'm interested in the dignity of the individual. I'm not trying to conserve anything.

But today, being a liberal ends up looking like you're right of center or behind the curve. Now, I can understand how a person might think, oh, no, we've gotten past this enlightenment stuff. We've got this radical perspective on battling power differentials. And until those differentials are suitably battled, then we're not going to talk about John Locke and John Stuart Mill. I get it. That's an interesting position, but it's fragile. It hasn't been defended properly. And in practice, what really happens is that kind of person just scares us by calling us names on Twitter. That doesn't work for me. And I know that I am left of center, really, not right of center. It's interesting you bring up standardized tests because initially it was meant to

be anti-racist. Standardized tests were initially introduced as a means of giving people a shot at college regardless of their income or background. It's interesting that it's been – anyways, standardized tests, it's a whole other ball of wax. I'm sorry, Carrie, I interrupted. So, that's all right. That's okay. What I want to know is when you did mention Republicans sort of going off the deep end, how do you fix that situation when you have a group of people that are taking advantage of cancel culture as a political, you know, hammer on people? The very people who don't want to help and don't want to do things are using it as a political thing. You've seen it all over the place. How do you shift that? Because I find them to be the most cynical people of all. You mentioned Josh Hawley, who continues to scream cancel when he never shuts up, et cetera, et cetera. So how do you deal with that, with the

very cynical people taking advantage of something people in the center are more worried? I know a lot of, I have issues with my mom. She says things that are problematic, I would say, you know, and not that I'm trying to like police her language, but you're like, no, no, no, sweetie, you know? And I spent a lot of time not saying racist, although I'm thinking it in my head, right? You know, it's very hard not to.

So how do you deal with the twin forces of a very cynical group of political people on the right taking advantage of this, and then sort of regular people in the middle that feel attacked constantly and are open to that argument? You know, I think that, see, here's where I suppose I am conservative in a Burkean way. You can only fix people so much, and the Republicans are caught in something that doesn't look like there's going to be an end to it anytime soon. They're going to continue with that kind of cold-eyed pragmatism. I mean, any party that would get behind trying to keep as many black people disenfranchised as possible out of an attempt to get more votes for Republicans. I don't believe that it's about the same racism as a segregationist 125 years ago, but still, what a cold, nasty, clueless, historically blinkered thing to do.

Any party that does that is a failed institution. I don't think it can be reformed, but it would certainly help if the other party, effectively, were waiting to basically scoop up, embrace, especially working people who are often on the fence, such as increasing numbers of Latinos, in terms of whether they are Republicans or Democrats. Democrats are going to have to work with the concerns of actual people and get rid of the idea. It's kind of a hangover from this radicalism tilt among black America in the late 60s. Get rid of an idea that the heart of being a Democrat is being a hard leftist with the kinds of concerns that critical race theory pointed us towards. And that's not that people are actually thinking about critical race theory in its actuality, but that sort of thing. That can't be the default.

That can't be the center of a party that's going to pick up where the Republicans can't go. So yeah, I would hope that we would have that sort of thing. Fixing the Republicans? No. They're people who can't be fixed. In the same way as I think that the police can only be so much fixed. I believe that saving Black America is about keeping as many Black people as possible away from the police. I'm not sure how much you can do. We watch these same situations happen over and over again. There's a rot there that I'm not sure can change. So, pragmatism is something that I'm interested in. – Curious to get your thoughts on the University of Austin. – You know, I think everybody thinks that I'm part of it, and I'm actually not, but I completely understand the idea behind this University of Austin, because I really am afraid that these people I call the elect are going to take over academia.

I'm not sure if they're taking over education of kids as much as one often thinks. Undergraduates tend to be more skeptical than we often think. They're not just vessels taking in the hard leftist view. Most of them assess. But still, academia, in terms of, I think, what's going to be taught at all, I do worry, based on some things that I'm seeing, for example, within my own field, that the elect are going to take over academic inquiry in the humanities and the social sciences and possibly even STEM. And so, the idea that they're going to be places that try to be what a university is supposed to be according to a certain ideal makes sense to me. I understand the impulse behind that because I really do worry

about the university and who's going to be making all the hiring decisions in them within just another generation. It's a chilling thing that I see. All of them or just the elite ones? Not just the elite ones, but these things are less of an issue, I hate to say down, but the further down the scale you go. But frankly, the best ones, I'm talking about probably a good two or 300 universities, where from what I hear, and I need to start tabulating for public consumption what I hear, because people have no reason to believe me. It's my inbox, but I hear something literally daily. What I hear from professors and administrators all over the country is clearly a bizarre transformation in how these institutions are working that few people feel can be resisted.

There's an orthodoxy based on fear, and people need their jobs. I'm really afraid of that. And I know that for some people, once again, voting rights issues is more important than that. I'm not sure what the basis of that judgment is. Both of those things are important. I teach in a university, so I think about those things. I like books, but I don't think that these are trivial matters in any society. Yep, 100%. And yet, you two still persist. Somehow, you're still going strong. By a thread. All right, this book, you should read it. It's a really important book called Woke Racism. John is a really great thinker, and he's a lovely man, and that's the best part of it. He isn't always screaming at you like many on that side do. Anyway, it's out now. Thank you for coming

on. Thank you for having me, Cara. Thanks, Professor. As usual, Scott, we make great content. I love John McWhorter, even though I don't agree with either of you on how serious this is, but nonetheless. Doesn't that reflect the definition of intelligence, so you can hold two contrary thoughts in your mind at the same time? Yes, that's why they love us, Scott. That's why we're great. I mean, it's the same thing when they talk about the media doing things for clickbait and this. I'm like, they just don't, and it's not as liberal as you think, and it's more risk averse. You know what I mean? It's more complex. That's all I'm saying. Life is more complex. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. Do you feel like your leads never lead anywhere and you're making content that no one sees

and it takes forever to build a campaign? Well, that's why we built HubSpot. It's an AI-powered customer platform that builds campaigns for you, 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. Do you feel like your leads never lead anywhere and you're making

content that no one sees and it takes forever to build a campaign? Well, that's why we built HubSpot. It's an AI-powered customer platform that builds campaigns for you, 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. marketer. Get started at HubSpot.com slash marketers. Scott, wins and fails. Wins and fails. So my fail along the lines of Professor McWhorter, I thought the statements out of the Chancellor's Office of the University of California at Irvine and University of California Santa Cruz, which essentially issued an opinion on the verdict of the Rittenhouse trial, I thought we shot ourselves

in the foot. And that is, I think the University of California is an outstanding platform for inviting critical thought and enabling remarkable and unremarkable kids to really damage the muscle known as the brain search that it grows back stronger by evaluating different sides of an issue. And I think this was a tremendous opportunity to look at how did a 17-year-old decide that the right thing to do was to pick up an AR-15 and head to a strange town.

I think it was a fantastic opportunity to talk about the legal aspect, the societal aspect. But as leadership at universities, I think that we're supposed to create a platform for criticism and debate, not to issue decisions around what happened. And again, we shoot ourselves in the foot because this is what's going to happen. The University of California needs a grand bargain with the state to dramatically expand the number of seats, to take admissions rates back up. And when the leadership of these universities makes blanket statements like that, that in my view are not very thoughtful, it only turns off our funders. And state funding has been flattered down across most of our public universities. And so,

my loss is what I would call the temptation to give into an orthodoxy to get virtue points from leadership that should be more thoughtful and, quite frankly, just more discreet and acquit themselves, in my view. Well, I would say that applies to all sides. The treatment of Liz Cheney and others, Anthony Gonzalez

and Adam Kinzinger. Come on. Well, you know, it's interesting. You were talking about the University of Austin. They shoot people in their party, by the way.

They like essentially virtually shoot people. But the University, we're talking about campuses right now. The University of Austin, by the way, and I'm a bit off script here,

where they really screwed up. The idea of having more colleges, more freshman seats, using a campus where it's what it's supposed to be and that is debate from all sides, absolutely the right objective. They rolled it out terribly because what they fell into is they started wittingly or unwittingly promoting their own orthodoxy. Again, it's like you can't insult the orthodoxy from the left and then give people the notion that you're just going to start a university that has orthodoxy from the right. You're starting from exactly the wrong point. And I don't think that's what they meant to do.

I know a lot of people involved in it. Anyways, they botched the rollout, but that's neither here nor there. My win, my win, corporate governance two years ago, the dog buys some shares, sends a letter to the Twitter board, and shocker, shocker, they did not contact me back. They did not call me back. But then who shows up? Some guys from a hedge fund. They call me on a Sunday night, and they say, we're signing your letter with a $2 billion pen tomorrow. What can we do for you?

I immediately answer, pay me, bitch, which they did. Mara, what can we do for you? I immediately answer, pay me, bitch. Yeah. Which they did. They de-staggered the board, and they realized that a company that has huge influence all over the world and has huge opportunity to return massive shareholder value should not have a part-time CEO, and corporate governance and shareholder governance works, Cara. It works.

All right. So my win, the employees, the employees, the shareholders, the consumers of Twitter, today is a better day for them because corporate governance, which is based on governments, one share, one vote, it works. They got rid of that bullshit weapon of mass entrenchment called the staggered board. And we're going to, oh my gosh, what a thrill. We're going to get a full-time CEO. We're going to get a full-time CEO. We're going to get a full-time CEO. We will see. My win is corporate governance.

Good. Well, oh, good. I'm glad you like that. I think there's more to this story. I think the speed of this change has been, I don't know, smells a little bit. I want to know what's really going on internally. I really do. I want to know how this was happening.

The report said you're out. We're fine putting up with your bullshit at $80 a share. We're not putting up with it at $43. Yeah, but why now? Why today? Why here? I want the details, Scott. I want the details from some intrepid reporter. I guess I could do it, but I'm tired of reporting. So in any case, I would like an intrepid reporter to go in here.

I'm going to do two things. One is my—well, it's a windfall. I don't know what to make of this. One is my, well, it's a win-fail. I don't know what to make of this. The Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, who's a really odd character, I think, is proposing this defamation legislation that would mandate social media companies to reveal the identities. 21 on the first one, right? Yeah. Can you win the first round?

Well, yeah, but this is the identities of anonymous trolls or face fines. It's really, this is an identity thing, and of course, I'm for that. as trolls or face fines. It's really, this is an identity thing. And of course, I'm for that. So these new legislations from around the world are really legislation being put around. I don't know what to think of it yet. I need to do more looking at it.

But I think this is the kind of thing you're going to start to see is sort of reigning. This is how you reign in these companies. You let them identify them. You don't have to violate free speech in order to get them to run their companies better. That's what I would say. So I would think this is interesting. I don't know if it's a win or fail. Here's another win and fail kind of thing. I watched-

Can we pause right there though? Can we pause right there? Yeah. That, I'm telling you, Cara, is a big story that is about to become huge because guess what? And this is a thesis. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of social media managers that work for VCs or political organizations that identify someone who is bad for the valuation of their portfolio companies or contrary to their orthodoxy. And they have their social media managers create dozens, if not hundreds, of fake accounts to disparage and slander that person anonymously. And you know what? It's bullshit. It's bullshit. I feel I need to hug you, obviously. And you know what? It's bullshit. I agree.

It's bullshit. I feel I need to hug you more than I do. All right. It's total bullshit. My last one is I saw the movie Spencer. It's streaming now. That made a quick move to stream. It's the one Kristen Stewart plays Diana. What an odd little movie that is.

But I got to say, I didn't know quite what to think of it, and I still don't, but it stayed with me, and Kristen Stewart was surprisingly and it but it stayed with me and kristen stewart was surprisingly good um so it's a movie i i don't know how it moved so quickly to streaming but it did um so i watched it this weekend paying 19 straight to video straight to streaming no it's gotten she's going to win the oscar for it supposedly um in any case yeah it's a really wonderful performance i would watch it and i'd love to know your thoughts, Scott, because it was really, it was about powerlessness of a woman within a system

and I thought that was really, but it didn't like agonize over it. It was great. I want you to think what you think. It was about lack of power in the midst of power

and I thought it was super interesting. I liked it a lot. I liked it, but I also didn't like it. So, tell me what you think of the thing, Scott. I will watch it. I still have to watch the Sex Lives of College. I liked it, but I also didn't like it. So tell me what you think of the thing, Scott. I will watch it.

I still have to watch the Sex Lives of College Girls. Oh, my God. Watch that. That's a delight. Those girls are fantastic. Anyway, so we have to go, but we'll take a listener question on Friday's show. Make it about Twitter and compliment Scott. That would be great.

Go to nymag.com slash pivot and ask away. Okay, Scott, that's the show. What a day for you. What a day for Scott Galloway. What a day. That's right. My little broken. Oh, Scott, that's the show. What a day for you. What a day for Scott Galloway. What a day. That's right. My little broken clock is right, as always. And Tesla, you better watch out, Tesla.

I doubt that's going to happen. Just became a little less insufferable. No. Hello. Still insufferable. Anyway, that's how I like you. We'll be back on Friday for more. Read us out, Scott.

Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Unichatot engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Barrows and Mia Silverio. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts. Or if you're an Android user, check us out on Spotify or Frankly, wherever you listen to podcasts.

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