Pivot - Struggles at Dispo, Trump's own social media network, and the 411 on NFTs

Episode Date: March 23, 2021

Kara and Scott talk about troubles at Dispo – the photosharing app – after allegations of sexual assault came out around the founder's circle. They also discuss the possibility of former President Trump starting his own social media platform. Then, we are joined by Friend of Pivot Chairman of the Department of Finance at NYU Stern, David Yermack, on how to think about the NFT craze and the cryptocurrency landscape. 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 Kara Swisher. And I'm Scott Galloway. Oh, you're very slow today. You're low.

A little slow. You weren't on Bill Maher this weekend, were you? Go on. Go on. Is he having you back? He hasn't invited me. No, I didn't even get so much as a, hey, thanks, pal. I didn't get anything.

Yeah, not a box of flowers. William. I thought he'd want to grab Mexican food the next time he's in New York. I imagine we were going to become friends. Maybe he's just holding back a bit. You needed to stick with Ando. I'm sorry. Anderson Cooper really is your true one. What we have, what Ando and I have is hard to

replicate. I would like that to come. You bring Ando onto the show. That's why I want to see what you would do. Our friendship is so precious, I don't like to lean on for these types of things. Speaking of precious, Elon Musk is sparring with Bernie Sanders. Yeah, that's really precious.

And the internet pros have never been at greater odds. In one corner, Bernie Sanders used Elon Musk's outsized wealth, along with Jeff Bezos and others, to highlight wealth inequality in the U.S., which is pretty easy to do for Mr. Senator Sanders. On the other hand, Elon Musk said he's using his fortune for good, that he's going to bring it to move us to other planets. That's what he's spending his money on. Honestly.

And the bros went, nice job, Elon. First, he's going to invest in edibles. Yeah. Anyways, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Kara. What do you think of this? I think it's ridiculous. Bernie Sanders is making a very good point.

And he is like, no, my money will be used for good. He's like, what is he, Andrew Carnegie? And he's giving everybody a library. I don't know. Okay. I mean, okay, he's right. He's right. Yeah.

Elon Musk has added the GDP of Hungary. He's going to peace out and move to Texas so he doesn't have to pay state income taxes, which he's been an enormous beneficiary of. We shouldn't. Capitalism is just not about having someone worth $170 billion and paying the lowest tax rate. But here's the problem. And I believe Senators Sanders and Senators Warren are inspiring. And I think they're right. And I think they are totally ineffective. Because here's the thing, Senator Sanders, is you jones for any camera or mic and make these

indignant speeches about income inequality. You've been senator while we Democrats controlled all three houses and you weren't able to get minimum wage up beyond $7.25. While you are right that in the 60s, billionaires paid or the top 1% paid an average of 60% of taxes and then the 80s went to 40%. Three or four years ago, of 60% of taxes, and then the 80s went to 40%. Three or four years ago, it became common knowledge that billionaires now pay the lowest tax rate. And who was in the Senate? Senators Sanders and Warren. So I'm kind of, you're right. You're right. Well, they have been going on for a while about it. They weren't empowered to be able to do anything about it before, really.

Okay. Well, I don't know. The Republicans always seem to be empowered to hold back change. Yeah. We controlled, while they were senators, we controlled all three houses. And they like these big, bold, jonesing for the camera and the lights ideas. Let's make college free.

Jonesing is your new word today, jonesing. Let's make college free. That's not going to happen. And any sophomoric analysis leads to a basic conclusion that the majority of people in college are middle or upper income, so that is nothing but a transfer of wealth from poor households that never apply to college to people in college. Let's cancel all student debt. What would be effective then for Bernie Sanders to do? Because you call attention to this, this GDP of Hungary thing you say all the time, which I do too. Eliminate capital gains tax deduction. Just eliminate it. Why is Elon Musk paying 22.8%,

but a person working on the factory floor, Tesla's paying 34%? Regular income, yeah. You know what's effective? It's Senator Michael Bennett, who is terrible at jonesing for the cameras. Jonesing again, yeah. The J word. But meanwhile, for the last five years, he has been behind the scenes pushing for earned income tax credit for children, saying for $40 billion, not $4 trillion, we can take 40% to 60% of child poverty and eliminate it.

Yeah. Effective. And all that hard work and good legislation has resulted in a bailout bill that is the least, or the bailout package, the most recent one, is the least bad of its kind because almost half of it is going to people versus just only 50, 60, or 70% going to fucking Delta or some restaurant that we make a cartoon over.

He's effective. You know who's effective? Senator Amy Klobuchar, who's doing the work around antitrust. You know who's effective? Representative Cicilline, who spends less time jonesing for the fucking camera. Of which, let me just switch to representative David Cicilline, who runs the House Judiciary Committee's antitrust panel, says he and fellow Democrats are preparing a bombard big tech with a series of small antitrust lawsuits through May.

Just so they don't have to do this big honking one. What do you think of this strategy? Perry Mason. What do you think of Perry Mason? i think it makes a lot of sense what they're trying to do is they're trying to atomize the defense and that is they're saying okay if we have one big effort yeah and we let this massive army known as the lobbyists the pr spin machine the billions of dollars the legal every every spare lawyer in america will Jones or line up, I'm sorry, I almost used Jones again, that will line up behind Facebook. Will line up behind the Facebook and Google and big tech army. They've decided

it's going to be better to try and do an assault from the air, from the sea, and from the land. And we'll go after different parts. What do you think? I think it's a great idea. Actually, I hadn't even thought about it. Yeah, because these things, like, the wheels go slowly. You know, it's like, like, they move very slowly. And this is kind of an interesting strategy. I like it. I like the strategy. I'm not a lawyer, so I'm going to have to consult with some lawyers. But I do think that it makes sense to try to get things done more quickly and more strategically, just like you were talking about with Michael Bennett. Like, there's a lot of, like, big talk that never happens. But that's exactly the point, is Representative Cicely and Senators Bennett and Klobuchar have

decided, you know what? It's more important that we have a better America than I get my name in fucking lights all the time. Yeah. I'm reading her book. I read her book this weekend, Antitrust. It's very big. It's very thick. It's a lot. She's fantastic. Senator Klobuchar is fantastic. I'm talking to her this week. I'm talking to her after the hearings for Sway. I think it'll be really good. I think she's really. That's a shocker. She's a really.

That's a shocker. Someone I admire and constantly, constantly build up and highlight her effectiveness. She wants to talk for an hour about antitrust. We're talking about her giant book that could kill a poodle. Oh, but we're bringing your brother on. I got to get. Jesus Christ. Who do you want?

Who do you want? Who do you want? Who do you want? You get such sloppy seconds in this relationship. No, you do not get sloppy. Are you kidding? This show is killing it. I will find you a good name. You were supposed to bring on Ando.

I bring on everybody. You could bring on. I will bring on. I will bring on Ando. Okay. We're spending so much time together recently that we're a little bit sick of each other. I know. It's springtime.

It's summer. You're getting ready for your summer off. We have spent no... By the way, I just feel like I need to disclose. We have absolutely no relationship outside of CNN. None. None. I'm going to get Andrew to come on.

I'm going to like pummel him on the Twitter and say, Scott says you're his friend and you're jonesing to come on to the show. I'm intimidated by him. I don't think I could handle that. I'm getting him to come on. He'll be funny. He'll do his little cute laugh. It'll be great.

It'll be fantastic. Listen, I want to talk to you about Florida, though. Florida, man. Miami. What the hell is going... What is wrong with Florida? They're facing new emergency lockdowns to help stop the spread of COVID-19 as flocks head to Miami Beach for spring. What in the living hell was going on down there? I'd never seen anything like it. And I thought last year was bad. It's just a shocker. We have it in a state where people eat each other's faces. Old people bump into each other in their overly long cars from the 60s.

We have alligators being eaten by African pythons released by pet owners that seem to only- All I want to know about is Miami Beach. I mean, Florida, let's be honest. I read Edna Buchanan's book, The Corpse Had a Familiar Face. I am aware of the situation in Florida,

but what? Where are the police? What happened? They had to gas these people. They had little pepper bombs or whatever. What is going on? You know, people, there's so much pent-up energy. Yeah.

They feel like Florida. Look, words matter and actions matter. And I do think that a lot of the horrendous things that have happened in the news recently are a function of that. When our leaders don't take more resolute stands against certain types of behavior or crime, it leads to bad places. And this is a smaller example of that. And that is when Governor DeSantis wasn't aggressive about closing the beaches last

year. Yeah, he wasn't. When we've adopted this attitude of, well, you know, we're going to let, we're going to. It's sort of over, but it's not, but go ahead. It's sort of over, but it's not. And, oh, look at us. Where's our apology? We, Florida has definitely taken sort of a Trumpian stand on COVID.

And to their credit, some of the data supports what they're, what they've been, what they've been evangelizing. But where it leads to is it leads to this notion that come to Florida where there's no COVID and behave irresponsibly. Yeah. So we kind of invited this. Our leadership invited this. And then you end up with mayors overwhelmed. They can't control the mob. DeSantis is popular, I believe.

DeSantis is popular. Yeah. He is popular in Florida. We'll see. We'll see. Governors can fall from grace really fast. Yes, I noticed that with the Cuomo. Yeah.

And the Newsom. They can. They can go up and down. But look, it's just, I find it really discouraging and upsetting because there's still a lot of people who are very vulnerable. Yeah. We're seeing 5% infection rates. Yeah, they're up again. They're up again.

I don't know. What do you think? I don't have a lot to say about this. i don't even know what to say if my child was there i'd be furious at him that's all you know i was just thinking where are the parents here like with these kids partying like i guess like when parents are like what the hell i'm so sick of this it is sort of but they did it last year if they hadn't done it last year when things were bad it's just i don't know i don't know what to say the pictures are really bad but you know we'll see what year when things were bad, it's just, I don't know. I don't know what to say. The pictures are really bad. But, you know, we'll see what happens, I guess, maybe. You know, it's YOLO.

It's YOLO. It's what's happening. Like YOLO times 50. I don't think there's anything we can do at this point. I think everyone sort of had it with COVID. Done. Next. Yeah, people are reaching. There's just no doubt about it.

People are reaching their limits, which makes it even more important that everyone get a job. Yep. 100%. Okay. On to big stories. There's so many stories Yep, 100%. Okay, on to big stories. There's so many stories around, Scott, but this is a big story. This is a big story. Dispo, the once promising photo sharing app, but still is promising, was quite high on the Apple App Store, is facing challenges after its founder, David Dobrik, faced allegations of sexual assault.

It's actually allegations in the group that he's- He wasn't accused of it. It was someone in his group, right? No, David gained popularity on Vine and then on YouTube has been facing allegations, the group around him. I forget what the name of the group is, but it's a little group around him that does like things. They do sort of stunts and things like that, facing lots of different allegations, racism. Now there's new racist stuff,

anti-Asian stuff. They're just surfacing all the sort of antics that he did, which are all juvenile and some of which are racist, a lot of which are sexist. And then, of course, behaviors by his gang around him.

I think it's called the Vlog Gang or something like that. He started a photo sharing app also called Dispo, which had gained a lot of traction, but following these investigations of these sexual assaults and other issues, the app's rating

dropped below two stars on Apple's App Store. The venture capital firm Spark Capital, which led the startup's $20 million Series A financing in February, announced it would sever all ties with Dispo, which means it's pretty bad. And then Dobrik said he'd maybe stepping back

from the company, wow, this is a fast one. This is kind of a cool app, I actually have to say. He is sort of a funny character and super popular and it's sort of in that there's a whole gang of those YouTube people that have had problems and he's the latest.

Yeah. So I've come to, my view is that media interprets things based, 49% of it is the content of what you say and 51% is who says it. So you go first. Well, okay. It's really interesting because it comes at the same time, you know, there's this controversy around Teen Vogue and some racist tweets that, and home folk tweets that Alexi mccommon i think sometimes she was made editor of team bogan then they unmade her before she started um you know sometimes you know in that case actually elizabeth spears wrote i think the best piece about it you know you immediately have to veer into this stupid cancel culture thing when in fact in this case it's out accountability

in the case of uh of day of of dobrik i mean he just decided to be an asshole. It's sort of like the other guy on YouTube that was standing in front of all those dead bodies. And once again, I'm blanking on his name. And another YouTube star. But, you know, he did a lot of these things. And then there is controversy around Dispo too, that he took the idea from someone.

There was someone alleging that. Probably Spark Capital's like, I don't know. Although it was gaining, it's a really interesting app where you take pictures and then they show up the next day in these disposable camera look. And teens really liked it. It's quite a creative photo app.

But you have to decide what's accountability and what's unfair. In the case of Alexi McCommon, it's very complicated. I think it's Anna Wintour's fault for hiring her, someone who wasn't particularly, she didn't have any experience running a magazine, but she sort of has the buzz as a political reporter covering the Trump White House and this and that. She also got pulled into another scandal over at the White House, which I won't go into. in this case, to deal with it because Conde Nast is under such pressure around diversity issues, justifiably, and has had, you know, from the Kamala Harris thing to previous people, books that have been written about it, about the company, including someone who was with him for a really long time, Anna Winter,

calling her a colonial dame, which was not very nice, but that's what he said. And so, it's, you know, it's hard to take apart what's accountability. Before, you just used to get into trouble, and then you'd leave. Now, you call cancel culture out. And at the same time, what David Dobrik was doing was pretty icky. And I can't believe people invested him in the first place, but, you know, they were looking for money. What do you think? I think the two are totally different. They both have lessons. And one's a lesson for young people, and another, I think, is a cautionary tale for all of us, and especially for parents.

With respect to Dispo, look, and there's a lesson here. There's wonderful things about being an innovator and being young and understanding technology. You get unfair or unwarranted idolatry. People think you're cooler than you are. You have the opportunity to make tens of millions of dollars by the time you're 25 or 30. Right. But boss, nothing's for free. Yeah. And one of the things you have to pay, or one of the things you have to do, is that you cannot in any way have your corporation or yourself personally, when you

reach a certain level of seniority in an organization, put yourself in a position to have credible accusations levied against you of this sort. And through due process, we'll find out hopefully what happened here and if there was a crime here, if it was just terribly poor judgment. But if you want to be a player in our capitalist society and appreciate its fruits and its incredible spoils for innovators, you can't put yourself in a stupid fucking position like this. You don't let this shit happen. You don't let three people in any way associated with your firm go into a room to have sex when they're drunk. Yeah, this is called the vlog squad, just so people don't know. You're setting yourself up to get tagged. He's 24 years old.

Yeah, but if a 24-year-old is old enough to make millions of dollars or raise 20 million, then he needs to be old enough to go. I'm not giving him the age excuse. I'm just saying, what happened is these allegations allegations happened and then everyone's sort of reassessing his previous work. And this is where it goes. And these stunts that he did. The media mob takes it. And by the way, there was another incident.

One of their posse was pranked. They dressed up a guy as a woman. They convinced him to kiss her. And then post his embarrassment, he has categorized this as a sexual assault. So now the media is saying that dispo and these individuals are associated with multiple plural sexual assaults.

Is that fair? Maybe, maybe not. But when you're the CEO of a company, when you're the principal of a company, nothing's for free. And if you want the opportunity to make tens of millions of dollars at a young age, it means, boss, you got to be clean as a fucking whistle. And you got to be the adult in the room. And I remember when I first started my company, my first-term profit, we used to go to Mexico every year. Everyone would get ridiculously fucked up. And I've decided in today's age, I wouldn't do that. I just wouldn't want to put

the firm and people's economic livelihoods at risk. So this is just capitalism. And Spark is doing the right thing. They're like, look, we just can't be associated with this. Well, should they have checked it before? How much due diligence can you do? And then talk about the Alexi McCormick thing. What do you... Well, that's the right question. Now, in terms of Condé Nast, I think this is frightening. And let's come up with a different word for cancel culture, because now cancel culture is being thrown back in our faces and say, no, it's just an excuse for people that don't want to be held accountable.

When you are 17, I mean, everyone who hasn't done something stupid or said something stupid and offensive at the age of 17, raise your hand, all right? And way to go for you. But the majority of us have, but we didn't live in an era where there was a hot mic following us around our entire lives. And the notion that we are now the woke mob, I don't know, to a certain extent, Con and Ass was put in a terrible position, because actually, I think the thing that caused it was Anna Wintour initially supported her, but then the advertisers started withdrawing from Teen Vogue. And at what point, okay, just keep in mind, folks, and there's an entire generation of people, and I've been trying to more cognizant of my behavior, that online have decided they have a certain standard

of purity, which by the way, they have no intention of upholding personally. And okay, just be clear, this mentality, this lack of forgiveness is coming for your children. And guess what? If she had committed manslaughter and gone to jail for two or three years and then been released from prison and gone on to be a reporter for Axios and gone on to become appointed for Teen Vote, the woke mob would have found that an inspiring story of renewal. The statute of limitations- This is Condé Nast.

I'm going to put it right on Condé Nast. But it was a woke mob that came after the advertisers. They didn't care about... This happens a million times with advertisers. This is the Condé... Let's put the blame where it belongs, which is on Condé Nast management and directly on Anna Winter. I'm sorry. That's where it is. She hired her and then got spooked and decided not to do it by these advertiser things. That's where it is. And advertiser pressure happens all the time.

This is not a new and fresh thing for different people. Okay, so I think Condé Nast should have said, I think they showed incredible cowardice. They should have stuck with her. But there's a bigger point here, though. And that is, we can't continue to, we shouldn't try children as adults. That is a completely fair thing. I don't think that had anything to do with it.

I thought that they decided they made a mistake in hiring someone without any actual experience. If you commit manslaughter and they can't find enough evidence against you, there's a statute of limitations for five years. But racist tweets don't have a statute of limitations. You know, of course, then people that insulted her, they found they did tweets that were problematic, too. The people that were sort of putting it on. I'm still going to place it directly on Connie Ness and Anna Wintour. Either stick with her or, you know, they could care less about the staff and what they think. They care about the advertisers and then they can't take another.

They have previously had so many racially based incidents, like problems there, that that's what, they're throwing this woman under the bus for their own problems. That's my feeling. And so, that's where I put it. Okay, but you're talking about, you're going very, I get it, you're going very tactical of the situation. This represents a more serious disease in our society. And it is out of control when we decide to take notes and go back and start fucking up people's lives and livelihoods because of stupid things they did at the age of 17. That is, I think, true, but in this case, I think there's a whole lot more going on here than that, and I think it's Conde Nast.

Conde Nast has suffered from things they deservedly have been criticized for, and they don't want to take another one, so they're going to toss this woman out the door before she got there. I think that's where it begins and ends. Anna Wintour can't make one more mistake, so instead of stepping aside herself, she pulls someone else down. We're not going to disagree. Well, come on.

She wasn't going to step aside. No, but she said so many. Look, she had the Kamala Harris cover before that. There were dozens of issues. The Kamala Harris cover? I wouldn't describe that were dozens of issues. The Kamala Harris cover? I wouldn't describe that as a groundbreaking racism. I know that, but I'm saying it just was like, that was the most recent one. There were like dozens and dozens of things that Condé Nast got.

This isn't a Condé Nast problem. It's a societal problem. I don't think so. I think Condé Nast is like just, they had misbehaved before, and this woman's paying for it. But I don't think they care anything about what their staff thinks. I really don't. I don't think they, they don't seem to have done that in general. And they throw their staff under the bus all the time. That's what their staff thinks. I really don't. I don't think they don't seem to have done that in general. And they throw their staff under the bus all the time.

That's what they did here. Let me just say, the person who had the problem before David Dobrik is Logan Paul. Remember he took the video in the Japanese suicide forest and then YouTube dealt with him. Anyway, this is not a new thing. That

behavior, you absolutely should be thrown off for. And David Dobrik, absolutely. I feel like that's perfectly fine. Anyway, Scott, we're going to go on a quick break. We'll be back to talk about Trump's new social media platform and a friend of Pivot on NFTs. Fox Creative. This is advertiser content from Zelle. When you picture an online scammer, what do you see? For the longest time, we have these images of somebody sitting crouched over their computer with a hoodie on, just kind of typing away in the middle of the night. And honestly, that's not what it is anymore.

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a smaller dollar scam, but he fell victim. And we have these conversations all the time. So we are all at risk and we all need to work together to protect each other. Learn more about how to protect yourself at vox.com slash Zelle. And when using digital payment platforms, remember to only send money to people you know and trust. Support for this show is brought to you by Nissan Kicks. It's never too late to try new things. And it's never too late to reinvent yourself. The all-new Reimagine Nissan Kicks is the city-sized crossover vehicle that's been completely revamped for urban adventure. That's been completely revamped for urban adventure.

From the design and styling to the performance, all the way to features like the Bose Personal Plus sound system. You can get closer to everything you love about city life in the all-new, reimagined Nissan Kicks. Learn more at www.nissanusa.com slash 2025 dash kicks. Available feature. Bose is a registered trademark of the Bose Corporation. Okay, we're back. And so is former President Donald Trump. Apparently, he'll be returning to social media this time with his own social network. This weekend, longtime Trump advisor Jason Miller told Fox News that Trump will be, quote, returning to social media probably in the next two to three months on his own platform that will attract, apparently, tens of millions of new users and, quote, completely redefine the game.

Reminder, Trump was permanently banned from Twitter after inciting riots at the Capitol in January. Scott, what do you, and he might be, might or might not be off of Facebook. That's going to be TBD. What do you think, Scott? to be TBD. What do you think, Scott? Look, I think greatness is in the agency of others. And Donald Trump built a brand and sort of the greatness is in the agency of PR

and self-promotion and then calling on our kind of worst instincts, I think. And the reputation that Donald Trump and the Trump organization has always had is that they're terrible operators. Yep, yep. That where they make money is by taking their brand and making it famous, whatever it's famous

for, and then licensing it. But they're not. And like building technology, unless somebody, if he were to say, I've partnered with the guys who ran, I don't know, Friendster, or I've got a team of 200 engineers lined up, then maybe. But this stuff is difficult. He's not an operator. No.

Anyways, I would not go long this. What do you think? I think it's ridiculous. I think beyond that, if they can't do it, they can't do it is my number one thing, is that he won't do it. It's like Trump steaks would be an easier lift for this guy. Right.

And that failed, and Trump water, all of them. They're just, he's like trying to put his name on the scene. And also social networks really are network effects, and that means everybody's there. And the reason he was popular on Twitter is because not just his fans were there, but all the politicians, all the media, all the detractors, all the bots. And you need all of it. They were just as important. I'm not joining the Trump network just to listen to him. I didn't join Parler, right?

I mean, I know what's on it. So he would be better off, like, helping revive Parler again or something like that. Maybe he is. Maybe that's Parler. My guess is he ends up on Clubhouse. Yeah, that's where he should go, don't you think? Just go to Clubhouse and take it over. Take over a section of it.

Take over one that he hasn't shit all over and stay there until he shits all over it. And they kick him off, really. I think that's what he should do. Why wouldn't he? Why wouldn't he? I think this is destined for failure. It just doesn't have everybody. Everyone's not at the party and these social networks need everybody at the party.

And then other thing is, you know, everyone was talking about Twitter and I love your comment on this, going down after Trump left. Well, it's up 20 bucks since he left office, 25 bucks. Down? Yeah. Remember they, everyone said, oh, he's not going to be on it. It's going to hurt Trump's, I mean, Twitter's business. Yeah. If management and the board had more of a backbone and their words foot to, you know, their actions, and they actually gave a goddamn about the Commonwealth. There's a movement to purity here. Their immunities are kicking in. There's a citizen effect purity here. Their immunities are kicking in. There's a citizen effect taking place. And that is Snap and Pinterest have been more vigilant

about trying to keep their platforms less toxic. And guess what? They have appreciated faster over the last 18 months. That's right. Twitter's moving. Twitter's moved to purity here. It has resulted in a massive accretion in shareholder value, plus some threatening subscription also.

There's some very hopeful things here. The companies are being rewarded public. And again, I'm an investor. Public is the immunity to Robinhood. And guess what? It went from $100 million in valuation to $1.2 billion. There is a citizen accretive effect here that is very healthy. And you can do well by doing good.

And Twitter's just starting to figure out that being, again, a handmade to sedition was not a good business strategy. And neither is anything Donald Trump does that requires execution. And this requires a lot of execution. It's all a lot of so much bullshit. And they won't. And by the way, you don't see them leaving Twitter either. So they stay. That's where politicians are.

Okay. Next up, Friend of Pivot. Here to clarify all things cryptocurrency and NFT, we have Scott's colleague, Chairman of the Department of Finance at NYU Stern, David Yermack. David, thank you for, Professor Yermack, thank you for coming.

Thank you for the invitation. No problem. So can you just give us an explanation? I've written about it recently, and I had Beeple on today on my podcast. But give us a blanket explanation of how these NFTs work. An NFT is a collectible, and they reside on a blockchain, which means that they can't be replicated. And if you own one, you own the only one. And so the market for NFTs resembles the market for comic books, baseball cards, rare coins and stamps, all sorts of other things where the intrinsic value of the object is really not so

high. But the fact that you have the only one or one of a very small set is what confers the bragging rights and the prestige. And in this case, the scarcity is assured by cryptography, which arguably is something that would defeat counterfeiting and other ways of forging and replicating these assets. There's markets for art where sometimes you see forgeries of Rembrandts and so forth. With NFTs, those kinds of concerns go by the board because you don't have to worry about people replicating. The blockchain gives a degree of uniqueness and security that no other registry system ever has in history. Right. So why are we suddenly hearing about them? And are they a fad? Because I think everybody's

super... I was like, don't worry, it'll sort itself out. It's just a way to do transactions, essentially. But talk about why you're suddenly hearing about them and if you think they will go away. I don't, but go ahead. No, I don't think they'll go away either. And we have had booms and busts in the collectibles markets. You may remember the big bubble in comic books around the year 2000 and so forth. But there have been markets in fine art for hundreds and hundreds of years. And there's a whole network of auction houses and galleries and appraisers that feed that market. And one of the enduring questions about why is a Rembrandt so valuable?

Is it because it's so exquisite to look at that people get so much pleasure? Or is it simply the bragging rights, the prestige of being rich enough to be able to afford one? And I think NFTs answer that question very much on the side of the second argument that you can brag that you have the only copy of Jack Dorsey's first tweet and if it's authenticated by a blockchain even though other people could replicate and look at the exact copy so anyone could copy people's file and have perfect rendering of it but there's only one first edition and And collecting is partly about pleasure and partly about money laundering and wealth storage and so forth, but it's really about showing off and bragging. And I think that's what's driving the NFT market. And these are rather timeless human emotions that I think will always be with us.

Scott? David, does the person who owns the asset or owns the IP, does that ownership transfer or have power in this new medium? Or does it make sense to just raise $100 million and start creating NFTs of every valuable piece of IP ever and claim that you own it? We don't know the answer to that yet. And you're seeing people rushing supply onto the market. Just today, Time magazine created three new covers that they were going to auction off in NFT form. And they did this simultaneously with the publication of a series of articles about NFTs. Now, will anyone bid for these? I'm not sure. I think in any kind of fad where asset pricings are rising quickly, whether

it's on Wall Street or a market like this, you will see more supply emerge to the point that the market becomes flooded and probably drops. That's right. But my question is, I'm sorry to interrupt you. My question is, what if Tom put out NFTs for covers of National Geographic? Could National Geographic say? I think National Geographic could sue them because they have a copyright. So you do have property rights for people who could be held accountable in court who infringe on them. You have interesting questions of jurisdiction, like in what court would you bring such a case and under exactly what statute? But I think many of the laws that have been around for a long time that apply to ownership rights of intellectual property would transfer

very easily to NFTs. Right. Would they make them more ironclad, these copyright laws? I would think so if you could transparently see who owns it and it's a very clear ownership path. Yeah, certainly the proof that you can offer in court may be a lot simpler on a blockchain because you can show an uninterrupted chain of custody and so forth. There have been real disputes about who owns a certain painting or who owns the royalties to a piece of music that has been sold and resold through many hands. Often it's very difficult to tell, but the promise of a blockchain is to fix those rights very unambiguously that clarifies the ownership and the property rights for sharing of royalties and profits in a much better way. And then artists can continue to hold them,

right? Because in some of these contracts, for example, with Beeple, he's going to be, if it sells again, he gets a portion of that. You can write anything into these smart contracts. Yeah. In fact, it's a very popular proposal. And I think it's even mandatory in Europe that an artist holds a residual royalty to resale. So it's a little bit like having a call option on the value of your work that is perpetual. If the thing gets sold and resold at auction, there are 10% of the profits filtering back to you. I think this is an interesting contract, but on the other hand, if the artist is retaining that residual right, the work should sell for a lower price in the first instance that you know you're only getting 90% of the upside and Beeple is keeping

10%, so you should only pay 90 cents on the dollar. And to the extent that Beeple may think the market's overheated, people would be better off selling the whole 100% instead of holding that residual option. Right. But who knows? This is what makes a market. And if artists want to retain 10% or even 50% residual, it's something that technology very easily admits. Look at Jeff Koons. He should have held on. You know what I mean? Like a lot of people, they go up. It's very easy to look backward and identify people who should have hung on to their work.

You know, Caravaggio should never have sold his supply until 400 years later. But if you look at all of the art that's being produced at a moment in time, most of it turns out to be worthless and has very little value in the future. at a moment in time, most of it turns out to be worthless and has very little value in the future. And the studies that tend to encourage these kinds of things don't take account of the very high failure rate. It can be very hard to tell in the moment that a canvas or a digital piece that you just produced really will be popular in 50 or 100 years. But certainly for the ones where that turns out, yeah, you wish you had retained more of the value for yourself. Yeah, a hundred percent. So let's try and project what might happen here. When you think of traditional IP film media, they don't pay to star in the movie, they pay to market it, right? And I've always felt art is

the most successful artists are not only the best artists, artisans, they're the best marketers. And this feels like it's literally 99.9% your marketing acumen versus 0.0001 intrinsic value, right? Other than the scarcity component you talked about. Aren't the natural players here, the ones that could really make bank, the social media platforms that could create their own marketplace and then promote and market the NFTs that they own and just kind of just make crazy bank? I think that this is an interesting point. I'm not sure that they have the advantages in security that you get from the

decentralized platforms. One of the things about the work of people and many of the other popular nfts is that they are on the ethereum platform where there's really no gatekeeper and nobody who can censor or take down or change the rules because it's a decentralized essentially a self-enforcing set of of algorithms that govern this. If you put it on Google, you're working for Larry and Sergey or Amazon, you're working for Jeff Bezos. And so I'm not sure that people in the end will trust the social media platforms to protect the integrity of the property rights the same way that you see on the decentralized blockchains. So the lack of a so-called trusted third party or a gatekeeper

is part of the value proposition of the NFT. So what else could be made into NFTs? Like, it's not just someone, I think someone was talking to you saying you can put a house on it, you can put other things. Does it have to be a collectible? Well, I think you're making a more general point about fractional ownership. Yeah, which is what happened to the Beatles. The guy bought them, and now he's fractionalized the entire collection, and he's selling coins. I think these B20 coins. No, people have been talking for many years about applications like a young athlete who maybe is still in college selling shares to their future contracts. selling shares to their future contracts.

If you're an all-American football player about to enter the NFL draft, you could syndicate 15 years of future salaries and then share them out and get the money up front in a lump sum. You could invest in all kinds of types of human capital of new MBA students, maybe a portfolio of 100 MBAs coming out of the top business schools and get a stream of their royalties. There's really no limit to this, but there are also interesting incentive effects that the athlete who pre-sells their contract right obviously has less incentive to train and perform. They don't bear the risk. And it's the same with a musician who pre-sells the royalties. If Taylor Swift could sell forward future albums, you know, maybe they're not going to be as of high quality. The songs won't be as well written and so forth. So there's very interesting incentive effects that I think we'll figure in this market

in the future. And some of them are probably good. Some are probably bad. We were in a very early stage and don't fully understand these yet. Yeah. It's funny you say that because I don't think I would have ever written a book had someone not given me an advance and I felt like I had to. The other question, and you kind of leaned into this a bit, if these are gold mines, who's selling the picks and the denim tents? What technologies? You mentioned Ethereum, but who makes money here? What's the technology or the companies that benefit if there's a craze in NFTs?

You know, the people making money right now are the ones selling the mining hardware. We have a very clear analog that in the old days, it was picks and shovels and pans. Today, it's essentially specially designed computer chips and circuits that are programmed to mine cryptocurrency. Yep. And some of these videos are going public. So there are now crypto mining companies that are being listed on the stock exchange because it's a a-growing revenue, very traditional business really,

just catering to the crypto markets. And there's all kinds of things like podcasts that are attracting viewers to listen to people talk about crypto and so forth. A whole industry is circling the technology, if you will. And I think first and foremost, the hardware providers, but I'm teaching a university course and students are applying to go to NYU so that they can take this course. We're all benefiting from second order effects of people who are interested in this.

And that, of course, you have to locate. And it's a lot of the activities in China where they locate them next to energy grids and things like that, which is somewhat really interesting how this is all playing out. But what advice would you give for someone who's just looking on? Because when they see this NFTs, I think it's sort of a consumer gateway into cryptocurrency, what these NFTs are in a lot of ways. But what advice would you give for someone looking to invest in cryptocurrencies or NFTs,

which I think NFTs is probably an easier way for them to do so. The timeless advice is to diversify unless you find some special skill that you can recognize digital art better than the next person if you really feel that this needs to be in your portfolio i would spread your money around and look for an overall rate of return and let the risks cancel themselves out rather than putting all your eggs in one basket. Is there one area like art versus the tweets of Jack Dorsey versus the videos of sports stars and things like that? Very hard to say. Again, diversifying some of these things like the Super Bowl highlights, it's hard for me to see that anyone can really fix a claim on that. But we've had baseball cards. I remember

trading them in my youth and I have a son now who is trading the NFT equivalent of sports cards. You know, I think I never put all of my allowance into baseball cards. I wouldn't recommend that he puts all of his weekly meal money at college into the NFTs, but maybe 1% or 2% and also own real estate and equities and bonds and everything else. But I think the market is small. It's a very volatile, speculative market. And I think most of the returns that people get are likely to be by chance as opposed to by skill. Yeah. But it does give cryptocurrency a little workout and something in the ways that it hasn't beyond a speculative instrument, essentially. I don't know. The cryptos are growing very quickly and many of them are specially designed to solve certain problems.

The main value of Ethereum seems to be connections to decentralized finance or DeFi, which essentially takes the insurance and risk management industries and makes it run by robots without many of the moral hazard problems. This is actually something very socially useful, but it's a rather subtle contribution that people don't really think too much about when they buy Ether. I think the blockchain is a platform that can host many of the markets that up until now have resided on very primitive types of ledgers, the double-entry bookkeeping. We have a lecture by a colleague at NYU, Amy Whitaker, who comes in every term and looks at art gallery ledgers, which are literally recipe boxes filled with index cards,

where forgeries and missing cards and so forth have been huge problems that have led to litigation. And so the contribution here is better record keeping. And this can add value to all kinds of markets and human endeavors in medicine, in the arts, and all kinds of things. And so I don't think it's really about speculation in the long run. It's about a very novel technology that has a lot of social utility. Yep. Scott, last question.

Do you think that, David, when you look at it, it feels as if, okay, Bitcoin at $60,000, NFTs going for millions, it feels a lot of this is foam off the froth or froth off the foam of an economy that is just a wash in cash. But there's also a notion that these technologies are decentralization, in protecting us from, or a way to kind of escape from the traditional norms, dangers of our central bank driven economy, whatever you want to call it. Do you think these assets are correlated in if and when we see a correction in the market,

you'll just see a lot of the air come out of the balloon here, or do you think that they're actually inversely correlated? Do you mean the crypto assets, the Bitcoins, the Ether, the NFTs? Well, you tell me, but it feels like this whole genre or asset class somewhat trades together. And so far it seems somewhat correlated to the larger economy. Bitcoin hit 5,000 bucks when the market crashed last year. We all like to think it's not correlated, but it feels like everything's correlated right now. Do you think this larger space of crypto, NFTs, the hardware, do you think

it becomes, is it inversely correlated or correlated to the general? I think it's probably positively correlated, but I can tell you there's a lot of high-level research among asset pricing experts beginning to look at this, and we'll be able to answer that better in maybe a year or two. But it's obviously important that the person who paid $69 million for the Beeple, they paid in Ether. They didn't pay in real money. And this was a person with a lot of Ether tokens that they had come into possession of by whatever means.

of Ether tokens that they had come into possession of by whatever means. A lot of the ownership of art through history has been done because it's a store of value and it's a way to take a monetary instrument issued by a government and to transform it into something that is probably more permanent and enduring. I think the person who bought the Beeple probably viewed it as less risky than a pile of Ether tokens. Yep. But on the other hand, if Ethereum collapses, I think the auction prices for NFT are probably going to go south too because a lot of the clientele for this are people with crypto profits that are looking to park it somewhere a little bit safer. And then do interesting financial instruments with them, which is what they're trying to do,

at least in the case of Beeple. I have a last question. If Pivot were to make an episode into an NFT, what would be your advice? Have me as the guest. Just sell for billions, I'm sure. No, if you could get someone like Jack Dorsey or Satoshi Nakamoto to be the guest and then turn it into an NFT. Oh, nice. This guy's probably the one. Get Vitalik, the creator of Ethereum. There's all kind of crypto celebrities who might lend their name on an experimental basis to a little test if you give them a 10% kickback of the royalty.

Scott was just going to say how important you are, correct? Scott, go right ahead. Well, I was going to say this off mic, Professor, but David is chair of the finance department at NYU, which makes him the most powerful person at Stern, because basically Stern, let's be honest, David, is the finance department and the seven dwarves. You guys roll your eyes every time the marketing department has anything to say. David's the most powerful person at NYU. No comment, Scott.

He's rolling his eyes. Our dean would object to that, except he's also a finance professor. He's a finance, yeah, where did he come from? The finance department. So let me just, people are getting very emotional about NFTs for some reason. I'm like, just don't do them then.

What would you say to the average person with NFTs? Just, it's fine. Just, it's just another financial instrument. Just relax or, or beware. It would really depend on what else they own. You know, the, the, the advice about what to do with an asset is always contingent on other NFTs they should probably sell. But if they have $100 million in equity and they just came into this, you know, see what happens. I have a 17-year-old daughter who's sitting downstairs right now, and she actually does digital art. She's been taking high school courses and so forth. And I told her to drop all the other classes, calculus and all the other, you know, chemistry,

just do the digital art for the time being. That's good parenting. Good parenting. That's good parenting. Good parenting. She's skeptical. And I said, I want you to Google Beeple and figure out what this Beeple is doing. Yeah.

Do the same thing. He's still making them. They're still. So far, she's still working on her other courses. And this makes her great. I'm sorry, Professor. Diversify your financial, but not your human capital. Come on.

I've got four kids and only one is a digital artist. I say, I like how he thinks. Anyway, David Yermack is the chairman of the Department of Finance at NYU Stern. Thank you so much for coming on.

Thanks, Sarah. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye. Okay, Scott, that was fascinating. So, Kara, let me tell you something about Professor David Yermack. Okay. I do know his name. He's very famous. And he's one of the reasons I continue to want to be affiliated with Stern and why it's so rewarding. That guy could make tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars a year working for a credit fund. And what he chooses to do is to try and figure out,

do research and discover if there's a Michelle effect. And he tried to figure out the correlation between Michelle Obama's apparel and stock price movement. He then found the tail numbers of every jet of every CEO and determined that when they left for holiday, they planned to leave for holiday after the earnings call. That means that there was about to be an earnings beat. This guy is such a genius. Oh, that's right. That about to be an earnings beat. This guy is such a genius. Oh, that's right. That was famous. I remember that.

This guy is such a genius and so creative, and he's decided my role is to- I think he's a character on Billions. There's probably, there's a character like that. My role is to communicate that genius and that creativity to a new generation of finance people. Yeah. He is, every time I speak to David,

I learn something and I think, okay, that's why I'm like he continues to be important. I like it. But don't insult marketing people. They're fine too. Don't hurt them. We get literally no respect at all. I know. I mean, literally.

Just so you know, speaking of NFTs, we need to take a quick break. But first, Jonathan Mann tweeted at us that he used my catchphrase, fatuous popin J, which I use liberally among the people, mostly in the Trump administration, but many people are fatuous poppin' Js. Recently, it was Tucker Carlson. He turned it into a song with the intention to sell it and is an NFT. He's been writing a song a day for 13 years. He sold the first 365 songs as NFTs. They sold out in 30 minutes.

Let's play it. Fatuous poppin' J's. These are the fatuous poppin' J's. They squawk and squawk. It hurts my ears. Last name Morgan. First name Pierce. Be creative. Find a way to insult somebody like fatuous poppin' J's. So my question is, can I bid on an NFT that'll make that shit go away? No, I think it's going to be brilliant. And I am the muse. I am like Mona friggin' Lisa. That's who I am.

Okay, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails. Yep. I just don't get it. Just wish someone could do the research on it. Can we figure this out? Hey, y'all. I'm John Blenhill, and I'm hosting a new podcast at Vox called Explain It To Me.

Here's how it works. You call our hotline with questions you can't quite answer on your own. We'll investigate and call you back to tell you what we found. We'll bring you the answers you need every Wednesday starting September 18th. So follow Explain It To Me, presented by Klaviyo. Support for this show comes from Constant Contact. You know what's not easy? Marketing. comes from Constant Contact. You know what's not easy? Marketing. And when you're starting your small business, while you're so focused on the day-to-day, the personnel, and the finances,

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Constant Contact's expert live customer support. Ready, set, grow. Go to constantcontact.ca and start your free trial today. Go to constantcontact.ca for your free trial. Constantcontact.ca. Okay, Scott, wins and fails. We are our own fail, apparently. We've got a lot of feedback from listeners and how we missed the mark on our interview with Andrew Duddams. We did miss it there. We really did miss it there. We should have been tougher on his company, HIMS. I still think it's an interesting company, what it's been doing,

and it could pivot into something else. But here is our resident doctor, Jeff Swisher, my brother, and your biggest fan, Scott Galloway. You have a brother that's a doctor? Who knew? Who knew? He likes attention himself. To tell us where we got it wrong.

I wonder where he got that. Where he got it wrong. Unlike his wilting flower sister. Listen, professor of marketing, look at me. All right, let's listen to Jeff Swisher. You know what? That's not fair. I've become much more self-actualized.

Just this morning, Cara, a bee landed on me and I thought, I'm not scared. I take it as a compliment that it mistook me for a flower. That's what you are, a delicate flower. All right, let's listen to Dr. Jeff Swisher rip us a new one and then sew it back up because he's an excellent doctor. Go ahead, Jeff. That's an image. Hey, Kara and Scott, you guys know I love you both and I'm your biggest fan. But listen to me, as Kara says, as your actual big brother and Scott, as guys know I love you both and I'm your biggest fan. But listen to me, as Kara says, as your actual big brother and Scott, as your virtual one, you guys needed to do better with

such a huge, complex and promising topic as telehealth. This is such an important paradigm shifting field that it's really important to get it right. Rather than a master of the universe, founder, CEO, personally, I would have invited somebody with a more global analytic view. Like, for instance, the extremely knowledgeable beat journalist Chrissy Farr or the CIO of Kaiser Permanente, who's been at this game for a really long time. And they have been able to integrate virtual with in-person visits really quite well. Telemedicine has so much promise. It'll be awesome for pre-op screening and evaluation, some routine medical care, follow-up care, health promotion and wellness, but it's got to be done safely and intelligently as well as ethically. And it's got to work with

doctors and other health professionals and not commodify us. It should ideally be an adjunct to physician-patient in-person interaction and not a replacement for it. Mine are easily remedied problems with quick resolutions or the need for quick prescriptions, etc. It's such a small part of medicine. A lot of it is the experience and skill that a physician brings to the literal examining room table in an in-person interview and exam. There's so much more to say on this topic and so little time, but in general, you guys do great, and I love listening to you. Thanks. Be well. And maybe you guys can have me back as a guest on Pivot again, and we can have a more substantive conversation on the subject of telehealth, because there's a lot to be said about it. There's my brother. He's right. I feel bad.

I think we've been correctly shamed i think he's right i think he nailed it and by the way since we did that interview a week ago hims is off 20 percent the stock yeah i think that's because of jeff swisher because of jeff swisher or dr swisher but because amazon's announced they're getting in but yes he's absolutely right direct to consumer ed drugs it's not the same as offering no but i think a lot i think one thing he fails and i think doctors fail in general is the experience with your doctor is broken. Everybody who has, I'm talking about general stuff. I think he gets that.

I do think he gets that. And I don't think, but I don't think doctors do in general. They think the system is fine the way it is for patients. And I have to say, so much more innovation could go into this in health. It just doesn't. In much more complex stuff, too. Not just, you know, erectile dysfunction. I was thinking about your brother last night. Were you? innovation could go into this in health. It just doesn't in much more complex stuff too, not just- Agreed. I was thinking about your brother last night.

Were you? I was thinking about, I think anesthesiology is the brightest pulse of our species, for example. You got to know everything. You got to keep people alive. Well, if you think about it, our superpower as a species is cooperation that results in trust. We trust that people will pull over to the side of the road when they hear a siren. We trust when we drop our kids off at school, they're not going to eat them. Our species, our superpower is cooperation

that results in trust. And when you think about the ultimate example of our species superpower, it's deciding to let a skilled professional take care of you while you are unconscious. And they will manage the nether netherland between consciousness and unconsciousness while people take pieces of you out of you.

And you trust that this person has your best interests at heart. You may not even know their name, but they're so skilled. They're so worried about your welfare. And we've created a system of capitalism and empathy and attracting nice, smart people. It really is kind of like, it's the helm of the bobsled of what our species is. I would agree with you 100%. It's the most difficult job. And I really,

when it's done well, it's so great. I had a procedure, Jeff's not allowed to practice upon me because I'm his sister, but man, the people he picks, they put me right out. And then I woke right up. It was fantastic, I have to say. And I didn't fear at all. And it's true. And you definitely can't do that online. You cannot give someone pro-viral. What are your wins and fails, Kara?

I think that was enough. That was enough? That was enough. There's plenty to talk about this week. We will see. Well, I'm not a win and fail. I think Florida's failing in terms of that. And winning is the vaccinations continue apace. I think that is a win. My fail is there needs to be a statute of limitations.

We need to let kids screw up in a safe place and learn from it. And there are errors as children. We can't try them as adults. And what happened at Condé Nast, whether it's your point that Condé Nast screwed up here, we just need to be mindful that there's a difference between actions at 17 and actions at 27. This is true, but I'm going to preface that. Here we go. No, my fails are unedited, Kara. I don't know if you got the memo from our producer. All right, then my fail, here's my fail. I'm going to have my fail then. My fail is that we do not take into account consequences of our actions and then try to act like we're a victim. When we do bad things, we should pay for them.

Is she acting like she's a victim? Thank you. No. No, no, not her. What are you talking about? I'm not talking about this particular instance, but a lot of this cancel culture bullshit, like Andrew Cuomo pulling it. Stop pawing women, sir. You're conflating totally different issues.

I am conflating, but people dump it in the same thing, like fake news. People dump it into the same pot. The two are totally different i am conflating but they people like dump it in the same thing like fake news people dump it into the same two are totally different they are but people don't do that cancel culture has become a thing like fake news has become a thing and it's very there is some fake news it's just not all of it and they tend to use it as a as a okay holding people to a standard you do not want to hold your own children to let me just put it put it that way no i got that okay so a win rather than the grand standing rather than the grand standing of senators sanders and warren there are senators and elected leaders just doing the hard work and so my wins are representative cicilline senators bennett who's been pushing the earned

income tax credit for children for years and didn't get any credit for it when it got into the bill in a huge size. Do you realize that people under the age of people, the households with income less than $50,000 are going to see their income increase 20% this year? That is a huge win for us and it's overdue. It is a form of UBI, which I'm not entirely sure I agree with, but I think it's a worthwhile experiment. We needed to level up this group. And also Senator Klobuchar, who again, rather than posing for the cameras,

is doing the hard work around antitrust. So those are my wins. Good government. Nice. You know who my win is? Go ahead. Dr. Jeffrey Swisher. I knew you were going to say that.

I knew you were going to say that. All the Swishers. Swishers in general. There you go. There you go. Okay, Scott. That's the show. It was a little testy today. There you go. There you go. Okay, Scott. That's the show. It was a little testy today.

I like it. I like a little testy. Spicy. A little spicy. A little testy. A little spicy. A little salt around the rim of that. Pivot Margarita.

We'll be back Friday for more as soon as we sign up for Trump's social network. And we'll be back. And it's like a shot of tequila. You don't really feel it until you walk away from the table. That is true. So in about 30 minutes, you're going to think, I wish I'd been nicer to the dog. That's true. I do. Someone just sent me a new bottle of tequila. So I about 30 minutes, you're going to think, I wish I'd been nicer to the dog. That's true. I do.

Someone just sent me a new bottle of tequila, so I will do that. I will drink before every show. Anyway. That's what I do. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit your question for a Pivot podcast. The link is also in our show notes.

Scott, read us out. Today's show was produced by Rebecca Sinanis. Ernie Andretat engineered this episode. Thanks also to Hannah Rosen and Drew Burrows. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or if you're an Android user, check us out on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot

from New York Magazine and Box Media. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. The wonderful thing about our society and our species is that incredibly impressive people opt for teaching, not money. Thank you, Professor David Yerimak. And can be trusted, can be trusted when we are totally helpless.

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