Pivot - Tesla Layoffs, Amazon Earnings, and Walmart Closes Health Centers

Episode Date: May 3, 2024

Kara and Scott discuss Tesla laying off its Supercharger team, WeWork reaching a $450 million restructuring deal, and Dave & Buster's taking a gamble on betting. Then, what do Amazon's latest earnings mean for the company's AI plans? Plus, Walmart shuts down its health centers and CVS stocks take a major tumble. Is anyone doing healthcare right? Follow us on Instagram and Threads at @pivotpodcastofficial. Follow us on TikTok at @pivotpodcast. Send us your questions by calling us at 855-51-PIVOT, or at nymag.com/pivot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Just go to Indeed.com slash podcast right now and say you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway is a bestseller. You know, Kara, again, I don't. I don't buy into the traditional trappings and benchmarks of a capitalist society.

I have no idea what you're referring to, Kara. Well, apparently you're number one on the New York Times bestseller list for advice, how-to, and miscellaneous, which is, I think, really where you fit in, miscellaneous. You are miscellaneous. What does miscellaneous mean? is, I think, really where you fit in, miscellaneous. You are miscellaneous. What does miscellaneous mean? I mean, what does it mean? It means people know who you are, but you don't really have a career. Yeah, yeah. Well, I find you to be miscellaneous, but you're number one miscellaneous with everybody

in this country. Congratulations. How do you feel? How do I feel? Yeah, it's good. I had a lack of gratitude and perspective when I was younger, and now I have too much. I get too emotional and melancholy all the time thinking about my blessings, and this is one of those weeks. Wow. I feel nice. Well, good.

How's the book tour going? It's been great. I'm just wrapping up. I'm actually in Key Largo today. I was in Miami this week. I'm in Key Largo today speaking to a large investment bank. Key Largo? Yeah.

Why Key Largo? At Ocean Reef where Stephanie Ruhl rolls around in a golf cart. Oh, she does? The 60s called and wants its community back. Wow. This place is a throwback in time. And also my friend Bill Berkeley lives down here. I'm speaking here.

Investment banks are hedge funds. They're the only people to pay my fees now. Oh, okay. And then I get on a plane for London tonight. Oh, how exciting. And then we will see each other next week in Germany. Oh, that's right. We're going to Germany.

Yeah. Ausgesichnet. Sauerbraten. Stuff like that. Oh, yeah. I love it. I know what you're trying to do. What?

You're trying to stir up a little chemistry. I get it. Yes, I'm trying to because we're going to be doing a live pivot from Germany. From Hamburg. Have you been to Hamburg before? Yes, we went last year. we're going to be doing a live pivot from Germany. From Hamburg. Have you been to Hamburg before? Yes, we went last year. Scott, you forget all our relationships.

Oh, you weren't there. Oh, no, you came in on the screen. That's right. Yes, I've been to Hamburg. Yeah, there was like tornado, snow, snow. What's it called? Snownado? Snownado? Yeah.

No, I was there. Snowmageddon? Whatever it was, and I couldn't get out. Oh, yeah, that's it. Yeah, that's it. You couldn't get out. Yeah, yeah, that's it. Yeah, that's it. You couldn't get out. Yeah, yeah. You're not very committed to our relationship.

I'm very proud of you for your book doing really well. Thank you for saying that. You've been very supportive. I gave one to my son, Alex, this week, and he's very excited to read it. And now he's rich. He's rich, and he's home for the week. Just came in before he goes back to Michigan. He's taking Calculus 3 for the

summer. Doesn't that sound like a fun summer? Calc 3? Yeah. Okay. But let me get it. He doesn't understand the concept of an auto loan. Well, that's why. That's why. Well, you know, he's taking physics calculus. That's amazing. Good for him. Calculus 3? Yeah. I thought it stopped at 2. No. And there's Calculus 4 next year, apparently, or whatever. I don't really know. I wonder what comes after that. I don't know. Like, I don't understand.

And so he's going to be there this summer with his girlfriend. Nerd 1. Never kiss a girl 1. Let me just say, he has a beautiful girlfriend who's amazing. And she's staying there, too. She's doing research. She's in pre-med. And she's living in his frat.

So he's living his best life, but he's back home for the week, which is my favorite thing. So we've had some nice times, but he has your book and he's going to read it. And I have one for Louie too. I bought one for my son, Louie.

I appreciate that. Thanks. Yeah. So he's excited to read that because- If he likes it, ask him to leave a review. If he doesn't, tell him to send one to an enemy.

Right. I'm going to put the receipt up and have you donate. That's what I'm going to do. That's right. 50 bucks. Post the receipt on social. If you post your receipt on social for buying the book, I will donate $50 to Charity Water. Yeah, I've sent you two or three of them from the Twitter over there.

Well, we need someone who's taken Calculus 9 to figure out what I owe them. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, bringing potable water to sub-Saharan Africa. Scott Harrison, wonderful charity. Well, let's keep it going on your book tour.

Yeah, let's. Let's keep it going. You're going to do some books in Germany, too. The Germans are now ready to receive. The media, a total bait and switch. Every outlet in the world is calling and saying, we want you to come on to talk about your book. I'm like, of course, I'll talk to anyone about my book. And then I come on and they're like, you said campus professors should be fired for protesting. What did you mean? Everyone wants to talk to me about the protest.

I know you're surprised that that attracts attention, but it attracts attention. Yeah. I've had, you know, oddly enough, last night I had a dinner at Library of Congress that was for this bipartisan hill and valley forum, it's called. And you wonder why we don't hang out? That could not be more boring or lame. I ran into the CEO of Palantir, and he said, he really, he said he doesn't, his name's Alex Karp, he's a very smart guy. And he said, he goes, I haven't much liked what Scott has to say about us, but I have to say his stuff on the campus is excellent. So I'm just passing that. That guy. Yeah, that guy.

That guy, it's all about his hair. He's so smart. He's probably got 108 IQ and he has the Einstein hair and everyone's like, oh, he's a genius. Yeah. Yeah. Well, he loves what you have to say about campuses. He was an academic himself. Anyway, he thought it was very smart and he likes the Galloway.

I said, this is how it starts with liking Galloway. You hated him, and now you love him. So that's how it works. That's how you fall in love. It's a rom-com. That's how rom-coms play out. It's a rom-com. I hate him.

I hate him, but I'm secretly drawn to him. Well, he is. A lot of people are drawn to you on this issue. A lot of people are drawn away from you on this issue. Anyway. Yeah, it's very polarizing. Polarizing. Anyway, we've got a lot to get to today,

including what Amazon's latest earnings reveal about their AI plans and why Walmart is getting out of the health clinic business. But first, Tesla has laid off its 500-person supercharging team. Superchargers have been a competitive advantage for Tesla. Major automakers like GM, Ford, Toyota, Rivian, and Volvo

recently made deals with Tesla to allow their EVs to charge on Tesla's chargers, which were reportedly not told of the cuts beforehand. Musk of the company was, quote, not giving up on anything that is significant and said Tesla will continue to build some new superchargers, but he seemed very not too many, like sort of maintained. As a reminder, Tesla also recently went off 10% of its worth. I think people are trying to figure out what this is about. Is it because he doesn't want to help other automakers? Because this would certainly get people to buy other than Tesla. Two, maybe he's not such a good business. It's an astonishing thing because he was one of the very early to build out these, Tesla was, was very early to build out these networks. So, and a lot of people have left Tesla in very high roles. I feel like something is a brewing over there at the Tesla, given how many executive departures there are to. I think this is Occam's razor,

and the most obvious explanation is the correct one, and that is, I just think they need to cut costs. I think demand is down, revenue projections are down for the remaining year, and they've gotten a room and said, unless we want to have three more quarters of missing earnings, there's two things we can do. We can either figure out a way to rejuvenate growth or we can cut costs. And to me, they looked at this one thing and said, this is nice. This is good for us. It's good for the industry. We're only going to invest in things that are just good for us. I just see it as, okay, we have to cut costs. We'd rather not.

We'd rather have access to cheap capital and see our sales continue to hit projections. But they're like, okay, it sucks to be a grownup. We've got to cut costs. Do you see something more here? I don't. No, I just think it's just, I think he bragged about a lot.

He brags about a lot of things and he talked and bragged about this a lot as a big business and this and that. And then said, oh no, maybe not. I think you're absolutely right. I think it's not that complicated. I do look at all these executive departures and wonder what is going on there. I do, especially given who they are. It's investment relations people. It's interesting. And I do think they have a real cost squeeze going on here. And this is

probably an okay business, but it's very high profile at the same time. And it does help other automakers with this deal because everyone's down like, oh, good, now I can buy a GM. I didn't really want to buy a Tesla. So it probably he's probably like, why should I help them in any way? I don't know. It's probably eventually these things are going to be a commodity business. That seems to me. I don't know. It's like a gas station, right? Like, I don't know. Anyway, I don't think there's more to it than Clark's code. I think you're right. But also, something you mentioned is cheap capital is over, is over, over, over. And that's, as you know, the Fed's not cutting rates. And most people think because of deficits and inflation, we're going to stay in

this high interest rate environment. So free money is over for now, at least. WeWork has reached a $450 million restructuring deal to exit bankruptcy. With the deal, property management software provider Yardi Systems would become WeWork's majority owner with about 60% stake. SoftBank would still own a stake in the company as well. WeWork co-founder and former CEO Adam Neum Newman was left out of the deal despite offering $650 million buyback. I don't know. It looks like they cleaned it up, right? Presumably there's some value there. What do you think? If someone had called me, I would have invested in this. Essentially, WeWork is retail. They sell office space or desks and you hang out for a while. And it's kind of like a Starbucks. I've always thought Starbucks, you're basically paying to hang out, or at least I used to. Now this is WeWork. The trends are

actually pretty positive for remote work. They do a really good job. And retail is tailor-made for bankruptcy, because when you exit bankruptcy, you get to cherry-p pick the locations that are working. And the worst thing about retail is when Urban Outfitters opens a store on Atlantic Avenue, which they did, they have to commit to a 10-year lease. And if the thing doesn't work, it's like, oh, great, you just signed up for a weeping store of 10 years. And they had a lot of those. So the dream of every retailer would be to be able to go through and pick the ones that aren't working and close the others. And that's what bankruptcy affords them. It's like hotels. They say with hotels that it's the third owner that makes money.

You said that recently. But I think Adam being aced out is really somewhat amusing. But good for him for trying, right? Well, isn't he making money in flow where if you can if you pay 50 100 more for rent you own it and i mean we have to find out what's going on at flow i would think he was trying to hide the flow problem i thought it was a crypto thing i don't get anything about it i think i don't know i don't know well you get equity ownership through rent or something yeah and it's an ai effort scott no i'm just kidding they just they slap on whatever. Anyway, you're right. They're probably

going to do just fine. Dave & Buster's will begin allowing customers to bet on arcade games through its app. Limits will be placed on the size of the bets, but the size of the limit is not yet public. Dave & Buster's has over 200 venues in North America and over 5 million loyalty members, which is interesting. Some people are decrying it, gambling, stuff like that. I don't know. It seems like a good way to keep people loyal to you and fun and people play these things. I don't know. What do you think? I'm going to sound like a snob here. I don't think I've ever seen, much less gone in a Dave and Buster's. For some reason, it seems like it appeals to kids or young people. Is that right? I've had wings there. You've had wings? Yeah. I mean, granted, I can draw you a map of how to get home based on Hooters as references and benchmarks.

They have good wings. Good wings. They sure do. Yeah, yeah. That's why I go. Do you know Beata worked at Hooters? What? Beata worked at Hooters when she was in college, yeah.

You know, okay, you never talk about Beata and we discuss Hooters with her. Excellent. This is really good. Well, let me just put it this way. What else does she do? Occasionally, she does pull out the outfit. Occasionally, when it's the summer solstice and the dog is allowed to howl at the moon. Beata is an incredible entrepreneur.

I'm going to, fine, she was at Hooters, but she's a great entrepreneur. She also worked at Goldman Sachs, but she did work at Hooters. God, I'm going to get shit for this. You're going to get shit. I'm not even supposed to talk about her. Anyways. Okay, all right. Oh, really?

She doesn't let you? Amanda asked me about that the other day. Why do you never mention Beata? Who we think is fantastic. It's less likely I'll get head from some cute guy. Okay. But that just reduces the likelihood of that happening. Did I say that?

Yes, you did. Let's talk about my book. Miscellaneous. Miscellaneous. Miscellaneous. Miscellaneous. All right. What do you think of the Dave and Buster's?

Give me a quick thing because we've got to get to our first big story. Look, Cara, I think everyone talks about the biggest trends in AI and the media loves to talk about tech. I think the biggest trend in business is a really unfortunate one. And that is the way you build a hundred billion plus market cap company is you attack and exploit a flaw in the species amongst young people. Because you can speedball it with technology because they're all spending 17 hours a day on this screen, and their brains are not fully developed, and they have absolutely no protection from our walking dead golden girls congress. So what do you do? Build an app, and if it attacks and leverages and exploits a girl's self-esteem as she's going through puberty, or takes advantage of the young male brain

in terms of a propensity towards wanting relationships or loneliness or gambling, that's where you go. And there's absolutely no one home to say, well, is it a good idea that on people's phones, a disproportionate amount of young men are going to start playing a fucking arcade game and spend their junior college tuition? And the hard part here is I don't know what the fuck to do because you can't infantilize these kids. If they can be drafted, they should be able to play pinball on their phone. But it's just, I find it really discouraging that we aren't. Well, you know, I had this discussion with someone because a lot of companies are going to turn to,

like Disney did that pen deal or whatever, I forget. Anyway, all these companies are looking for other revenue streams, and this is one that does very well, right? And as it becomes more legal, this gambling becomes more legal. You know, we have maintained that gambling is like cigarette smoking, I think, kind of stuff like that. But I think this is a quote from the New York Times story, which is interesting. The younger people begin doing these things, the more types of things they do, the more likely down the road they're going to experience problems. And so by allowing more and more of this to take place, we're setting up our younger generation for problems we have not put

safeguards in place to take care of. Who said that? This is Dr. Leah Knower, Center for the Center for Gambling Studies at Rutgers University, where she was concerned about children who go to Dave & Buster's being exposed to people placing bets, which she said could lead to gambling addiction. Maybe you should have her on the show. Here's someone who gives

a flying fuck about the Commonwealth and is a lot more articulate than I am. Thank you, doctor. I'm going to post that on my social. Leanne Knower.

Exactly right. Young people mimic, they mimic their parents. I mean, how on a balanced scorecard is this going to be anything but possibly bad? Well, you know, it's a place where kids do go. So, yeah. What's next? We're selling ketamine at Toys R Us. I mean, it's called the Ketadol. The Ketadol.

The Ketta doll. The Ketta doll. Play with it and then rip off its head and snort it. Stick it up your nostril and disassociate from the fact dad's a pedophile and mom's addicted to diet pills. Disassociate, young man. All right. Okay. If that was the case, you might want to disassociate.

Speaking of which, you saw Jonathan Haidt signed a deal with Oprah. Oprah was touching his back in a picture. Did you see that? He's doing something with Oprah. John is literally... He's on fire. He's number one on the main list. I am so jealous of him. By the way, on Amazon, he's number one and I'm number two.

Just a little boast there. You know what? Jonathan's rounding third. But when I see him with Oprah, I give him a hard time. I'm like, really? Really? They aren't saying what the deal is, but it's probably this sort of get phones out of schools thing. That would be my guess.

New Zealand just banned phones. Entire countries are banning phones in schools. There was a story in the Washington Post and New York Times about the experience in a school, and it worked really well. They put them in those yonder, those little things that you do at concerts. And then they got mad at first. And some parents are mad because some of them, they want to reach their kids. And they're like, we have a phone in every room so you can call on the telephone. That's a great idea.

And then some parents who had anxious kids, and they allowed the kids to touch the phones if they really needed to. Jesus Christ. I know, but you're going to have to deal with all the complaints. And so the principal just the complaints. And so this principal just did it. And the kids are thrilled. The kids are thrilled now, but first they were not thrilled anyway. Okay, let's get to our first big story. Amazon is out with its Q1 earnings. Revenue went up 13% to $143 billion and profits more than tripled to $10.4 billion, both exceeding Wall Street's expectations. AWS, Amazon Cloud's computing unit, had a particularly

strong quarter with revenue up 17% and operating income rocketing 84% to $9.4 billion. Really strong numbers. Obviously, Amazon wants to be a big player in AI, cloud computing and other areas. They have said AI over 30 times on the earnings call. They said it. Amazon recently added another $2.5 billion to its Anthropic investment. That's their company. They're backing Microsoft's backing OpenAI. Anthropic is made up of people who left OpenAI, essentially. Advertising sales were also up 24% fueled by that move to turn on ads for Prime Video.

So what do you think they're doing? I'm going to start first, actually. I think Andy Jassy is moving himself into the Satya Nadella, Tim Cook position here. I think it's very hard to run a company when you're not the founder, and especially the founder is still living. And so you tend not to get out of the shadows. He has been there since a very young age, but he's starting to figure out how to run this place, I think. I like him a lot better than Jeff Bezos,

I can tell you that as a person. But he obviously ran the AWS unit and brought it to really saved Amazon's butt, creating that unit, and he was the one doing it. So I think he's sort of finding his way in an interesting way. He still faces enormous regulatory and congressional investigations to the marketplace, etc. But in general, I think people are liking what they're doing around AI and being very crisp. But I don't know, your thoughts?

If you want to be the CEO of a company, typically what you typically the ceo is usually the person running the you know the most profitable operating unit so a big deal back goldman about 10 15 years ago for the first time hired a ceo or or crowned a ceo that was from trading lloyd blankfin not from investment banking and that had never happened before because over time they found that that sales and trading, and ultimately, I wouldn't be surprised if the next CEO comes out of wealth management, but they picked the best business because that person just looks really handsome. Oh, you keep exceeding your numbers. Wow, that must mean you're a great leader.

Oftentimes, it's more luck than anything else. But Andy ran the most profitable group with the best future, and that is AWS. And if you really look at Amazon, I would argue is now essentially a cloud company with a really strong retail platform that they sell media against. And it's not only, I mean, you want to talk about chocolate and peanut butter, cloud plus AI. Most companies are training their LLMs on one of three cloud providers. These guys are the only ones that have the money to make the sort of requisite investments where you can basically rent your AI or train your own LLMs on their AI-compatible cloud services. So you not only have cloud,

but you have AI-enabled cloud with huge moats because no one else can make these types of investments. Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have 67% share of global cloud services. This is, I mean, this is the gift. These companies, really, this quarter was about cloud. Now, the fear is that if AI, if every company doesn't start scrambling to try and build their own front-end AI applications or figure out how AI can work in their business. If there's any sort of check back, these companies will feel that. But these companies themselves don't believe that at all. They continue to make unbelievable investments to offer incredible opportunity. It's like, do you have $100 million to build out your own AI infrastructure or do you want

to rent ours? Well, that's an easy one, said 99.99% of organizations around the world. rent hours. Well, that's an easy one, said 99.99% of organizations around the world. But this is now, these companies are essentially, their growth is really all about AI-enabled cloud services. It's just, it really is interesting. There's going to be three companies. It's going to be, you know, you called into mind, how is Facebook going to monetize this? And I would agree with you. How are they going to monetize? I think they'll make their businesses more efficient, including advertising, using AI. And that's how they're going to monetize? I think they'll make their businesses more efficient, including advertising, using AI. And that's how they're going to do it well. But it's really meta.

Microsoft and Amazon, to me, are going to be the big players here. Well, not only that, but if you look at Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, and meta, in the face of growth that any S&P 500 company would kill for, I mean, they're growing like crazy, and everyone's like, God, how do we grow like those guys? And they go back to the board and said, okay, if you want me to grow anything like these guys, I need you to approve new hires, new plant, new property equipment. They're also making, I mean, this investment's an anthropic of, you know, $2.75 billion is a very large amount of money, right? Obviously.

Do you know my anthropic story? No. So, and be clear, I make a lot of bad investments. I try to be transparent about the bad ones. But I'm fascinated by anthropic. Some of my folks at Section, the online school, I'm technically the founder of. I don't know why I said technically.

Anyways, all our folks designing courses, we train a lot of people in AI and we are doing a lot of AI courses with avatars. And everyone in the company said, wow, I really like Claude. So I started looking into Anthropic because everyone's obsessed with ChatGPT. And then along the way, I got fascinated with FTX. And I actually read the bankruptcy filing. They're in there. That's right. And they had $9 billion in claims against a bankrupt company. It was going for $0.22 on the dollar, these claims. There was an open market or secondary market for bankruptcy claims against an FTX. And I calculated that just their stake in Anthropix was worth $0.30. So I bought a lot or a lot for a professor.

Do you realize everyone at FTX is going to get, all the claimants are going to get all and potentially more than their original money back because they'll claim rights to interest on it. Yeah, well, let's let them out of jail. Let's let them out of jail. Anyways, 25 years, Jesus Christ. Anyways, so I technically own Anthropix.

So I'm participating in the cloud via bankrupt coin exchange, crypto exchange. Yeah, you told me you're going to do that. But Amazon, I think Andy Jassy is sort of coming onto his own. There was always this rumor that Jeff is coming back. Someone said that to me last night. I was like, he is absolutely fucking. I was like, did you look at these earnings and stuff like that? No, did you look at that thong?

He's not coming back. He's not coming back. He's a thong. He's not coming back. That's what I said. He's a thong. He's not coming back. That's what I said. I said he is like... Look at those earnings. Give me a break.

Look at those fillers and that thong. Jesus Christ. No, but no, no. What I said is look at the earnings for... This guy has... He had a rough patch, and now I think he's getting his arms around it. The Collywood stuff is the least of his issues. I mean, I think they definitely have been rocky in that area. But, you know, they're working it with the ads and the, you know, they're very systemic, systematic, excuse me, at Amazon. And, you know, they still face enormous regulatory challenges.

what they're saying, but they're not saying. And in this latest earnings call, Andy was saying, what do you think of me now, bitch? Right, that's what he said. That's what he was saying. Because that's the kind of guy he is. He's not like that at all. What should they be doing right now? They're doing the healthcare, they're doing this and that.

I don't know, the exact same thing. I don't think, I mean, AI, like everyone is zeroing in on the same thing. All the biggest players have said, the fastest growing expenditure in history across corporations and to a lesser extent consumer is AI. They need infrastructure and it's perfect for them. The infrastructure cost so much money that there's only a few of us that can do it. We'll all have our different versions of mozzarella, but we will be the only deli in town. We'll be the only deli in town. So we're just going to go hard at this, and it'll increase our operating market.

I mean, they should do – you know what they should do? They should do absolutely nothing new. They should stay focused on this. Focused, yeah. All right. Well, congratulations, Annie Jassy. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about Walmart shutting down its healthcare centers and CVS stock taking a major tumble, speaking of which, and Amazon's in this business.

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Download Thumbtack today. As a Fizz member, you can look forward to free data, big savings on plans, and having your unused data roll over to the following month. Every month at Fizz, you always get more for your money. Terms and conditions for our different programs and policies apply. Details at Fizz.ca. Scott, we're back with our second big story. Walmart is shutting down 51 health centers spread across five states as well as its virtual care service. Company announced closures this week citing lack of profitability and saying there's not a sustainable business model for us to continue. Walmart started this health clinic initiative in 2019 just and just last year said it planned to double the number of centers and expand to more states. Not surprised, another company that's struggling

on the healthcare front, CVS, first quarter earnings were well below estimates. The company cut its guidance for the rest of 2024. CVS said medical costs were $900 million higher than expected due in part to the company's Medicare Advantage plans. Shares fell nearly 17% on Wednesday, the steepest one-day drop since 2009. So these are two interesting, similar companies. Talk first about these clinics. They're not any good. If anyone ever tried them, there's so many other good options now in terms of urgent care, essentially, that I use, not Walmart. I think they're terrible. Obviously, Amazon's in this business. There's all kinds of people in this business. But

a rehaul of healthcare delivered in these clinic things has to be underway. What would be a sustainable market, for example? So I'm boasting again, but I've spoken at Walmart a few times. And one time Doug and his senior management took me into a room and said, what would you do if you were Walmart? And this is like seven, eight years ago. They took you to a room? Did it have windows? It was a conference room. It wasn't like a super max interrogation facility. I thought it might've been. Okay. And they gave me ketamine and asked me how I knew the folks at Target. And they gave me ketamine and asked me how I knew the folks at Target. Anyways.

And I said, to be clear, I said, healthcare. Yeah. Hold on one second. For those of you sitting and listening at home, someone just came to the door. And that's why you never wear pants. That's what you call opportunity. All right. Back to Walmart.

Is that wrong? You're in the room and you told them to get into health care. I told them to get into health care. And you know what? I was wrong. It appears I was wrong. What I would say is the following is that place-based health care, or I don't know if it's this demographic. I don't know what it is. I don't know because Walmart attracts a patient that is high cost and low revenue.

But again, and I might be wrong here, but everyone says, I'm speaking about AI tonight. Everyone wants to talk about AI. And they say, what's the biggest opportunity in AI? And I think by far, the biggest opportunity of AI is to push out healthcare via people's phone, which everyone owns, such that they can take a picture of a rash. They can describe, they can upload their sleep patterns or their grocery receipts. That's the dream. And AI is going to be able to go, okay, it appears you're pre-diabetic. You need to change. You need to make the following health choices. And we're going to upload, we're going to have an app for you that basically monitors you every day. And I think

the opportunity to reach into the portions of America that are either intimidated or underinsured or think of healthcare, you know, their only interface with healthcare is the emergency room. And it's a huge opportunity. But maybe the bottom line is that that innovation, it might happen on a phone and not in a store. But I would have thought this was a great idea. I got this wrong. thought this was a great idea. I got this wrong. You know, when we were just briefly talking about sort of charging stations, I don't, it's going to be a commodity business in that regard. So you have to maintain it. They break all the time. They're always full. It's like one of these high touch businesses, right? There's so many points of failure for these things and a lot of points

of dissatisfaction for a user. These things are the same way. They're just, they're not staffed right. They don't, like, they're not responsive. It's like a shitty experience. And then you have Amazon doing theirs, which is a $99 a year one where, you know, where you go into the one medicals, which you could probably drop prices on quite a bit and get, you know, different kind of customers and stuff. But it's just these in

the store things are just terrible experiences as a product. That to me is really at the heart of it, whether it's at CVS or Walmart or anything else. And there's enough of these storefront versions of there's more than one medical. There's a whole bunch in New York with a different name. And they work just fine. I just think it's just a very expensive business and a high touch and high disappointment. I don't know. I just feel like people wouldn't, you don't go unless you absolutely have to,

and then you just go to the emergency room, which works just as well, sadly, for most people, for many people. And as to CVS, I mean, these costs are, have you been on a CVS lately? Oof, it's depressing. It's a depressing experience. I used to, this is how one of the many ways I could tell I was getting older.

I used to love late night. I'd take an edible and go to the drugstore. And I'd be like, should I have organic deodorant or a deodorant that works? And I would think about this shit for 10 minutes staring at, there's like 80 different deodorants. It really is, if you really want to understand the best and the worst of capitalism, go to a drugstore and find out there's 73 different flavors of mouthwash. You know what is really depressing to me about these drugstores is that, oh, you really need to put Advil behind a locked door and I have to press a button and have some guy or gal come unlock it? They do know. The shrinkage is massive.

The stealing is massive. But that's what's so depressing. Well, you know, all this is, Amazon is sucking up all this. Agreed. Or Mark Cuban or AI. And these experiences in these stores are, you know, terrible. Just terrible. Even the supermarket business is tough.

They have, you know, at our local Giant, which is a local business, so many more security guards. They have shrinkage problems all over the place, like stealing and things like that. And so a lot of these businesses are, you know, it's just the people, they're going to be delivery and it's going to be very specific. When you have kids, there's these emergency pediatric clinics I use now. Very good, very good experience. I would never take them to a CVS or Walmart now because it's just such a, oh, it's an ick experience.

It's an ick experience. And they don't stock the shelves. It feels, I felt like the other day, I was like, are we in like Soviet Russia right now? Or what, you know, because they don't feel full. What store? I actually think Walmart does a pretty good job. Walmart does.

It's a bigger store. I'm talking about a bigger store. But I'm talking about in the health care. It is a grim Soviet-like experience when you go to these places. I don't know. I just hope in New York there's an explosion in CVSs and banks on every corner. I just think we need more of them. We absolutely need more of them.

Well, I know that. I agree. But, agree. But these $900 million, these Medicare costs, these costs are out of control, and we have to rethink this whole system. And you're right, AI is one way to do it, let some of these tech companies take over. No, you know how we do it, Kara? What, we let people die? No, you push GLP-1 drugs to rural and poor communities. No, you push GLP-1 drugs to rural and poor communities. So much of this is related to obesity. So much of it. And guess what?

Unfortunately, again, see above Dave and Buster's preying on young people, the industrial food complex and the industrial diabetes complex, they want to addict you to shitty, fatty, sugary foods, get you obese, and then hand you over to the industrial diabetes, kidney dialysis, hip replacement, knee replacement complex. There's too many people fighting not to have America healthy. Look at our food supply. Well, it's a good business. It's a good business keeping people sick. You know what's one thing I love about the UK? My milk goes bad in about four days. You know why? It's not packed full of preservatives and hormones. There's something like 1,100 preservers and hormones

and chemicals that are banned in the UK that are not banned in the United States. I don't know if you've looked at me. I look radiant. I look literally- You look like your milk is sour. That's what you look like. Oh my God.

You should have seen the look when I just answered the door naked. They were very impressed. Yeah, were they? They were very impressed. Please don't do that to the staff of these hotels you stay at. I feel bad for them. So Key Largo, call me if you need any help. I'll call the police. Key Largo, the ocean reef. I've never appreciated it down here. I don't get it at all.

Oh, I like it. I love Key West. Really? I don't get it. I don't understand what's going on down here. Yeah, I loved Key West. I used to go all the time. I think this is where you come after you've divorced your fifth wife and really have very few options. You like the sun and you have very, you need to go somewhere where nobody knows your name. And someday the sea will take you. Where it's okay to be a bartender at 63. All right, Scott.

It could be worse. I could hate myself for being number one in miscellaneous. What the fuck does that mean? Miscellaneous. Miscellaneous. Number one, miscellaneous. What the fuck does that mean? Miscellaneous. Miscellaneous. Number one, miscellaneous. How-to advice. My publisher's like, you're number one in miscellaneous. Miscellaneous.

All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions. Okay, Scott, let's hear a prediction, but I have a short one. I hear you're going to go on The View for my sources. Oh, you got me on The View? That's all you. Yes, I did. That's all you. Yeah. Is it Alyssa Farrah?

Does she like my Meta Nantucket? I'm not telling you I have my sources. Let me just tell you something. Don't look at Joy in the eyes. Don't look Joy in the eyes? Yeah, don't look Joy in the eyes. She's going to lock eyes with me. I think Joy and I would get along. No, I don't look at Joy in the eyes. Don't look Joy in the eyes? Yeah, don't look Joy in the eyes. She's going to lock eyes with you. I think Joy and I would get along.

No, I don't think so. Oh, no, I'm like, isn't she Jewish? All the Jews love me now. Yes, yeah, okay. Because I'm like a moderate that's angry about everything. And they're like,

thank you for your support. Anyway, you're going on The View. It's Joy Behar, is that it? Yeah, Behar. I just can't wait to meet Elizabeth Hasselbeck and Cindy McCain. They're still on the show, right? Cindy McCain.

Cindy McCain? No, Meghan McCain was on it. Meghan McCain? Don't mention Meghan McCain. Let me give you that piece of advice. They run that place so well. You're going to love it. Oh, I'm sure it's a great show.

Anyway, let's hear a prediction. My prediction is that we're going to find out that there's a reason that the tents in the encampment at NYU were the same tents at Columbia and other schools. There is a... Outsiders. Oh, there's some serious coordination and funding going on here. And I don't think we're going to like who's coordinating and funding these things. I think there's a lot more that meets the eye here. I also think that we've moved into the, okay, playtime is over. I think the universities, their leadership, the community, the governors have said, okay. Vandalism is different than free speech. legacy. Kids deserve a wide berth. But anything starting to resemble intimidation, like the type of intimidation and her real physical harassment we've seen, we're done. Playtime's over. And I think you're going to see, and you're already seeing it, I think it's going to go from hundreds

to thousands of arrests, suspensions, and expulsions. And also, I've got a lot of shit for this, I think you're going to start to see faculty get fired because we have, for some reason, decided to give faculty and administrators the illusion that you do not have a responsibility to your employer to make it a healthy, productive work environment. And also, when we pay you, unlike students paying us, when we pay you, it sucks to be a grown-up. And if you are doing anything that makes the university environment so difficult that we can't have commencement, that you are making things more hostile in a community space here at school, they're often not public places. If you are making my life harder,

and I am the leadership here, then guess what? You have the rights to free speech. You have the rights to First Amendment. We cannot prosecute you, but we can fire you. You are an at-will employee unless you have tenure. And by the way, these places have become so bloated, so entitled, that I think you're going to start to see universities say, let me get this. You're cares, save the whales, and make this a less productive work environment, you have the right, I have the right to fire you. You're going to see, I think the public is really fed up with this. And I think we're going to find that some of the funding and coordination here is not innocent. It's not going to be who we, the worm is turning here. And in a weird way, in a weird way, I think this has been really good for Israel. In every movement that's been effective, you've had a great spokesperson. What spokesperson, other than the young woman demanding that they cater food in the building they're occupying, by the way, the revolution will be catered.

That was not great who who has been able to articulate anything resembling a sane reasonable position on uh for these protesters they lack it's interesting there was a professor on stephanie rules show last night and i'm blanking he runs a he's an israeli studies professor i think it's at ucla um and he he was not and she's like you're not supporting the um protesters and he says, you know what, I'm a very reasonable, moderate, more than moderate, very progressive person. And I'm horrified by what's happening in Gaza and the brutality. hard to do. And two, that you should limit academic, you should ban Israeli professors and Israeli exchanges at these universities because I'm for academic freedom, so I cannot sign on to their ridiculous demands of this kind of stuff. Now, it's interesting at other universities, they've started to have discussions, like, right, actual, which is perfectly fine. Everybody in a university setting

should have discussions and debates and things like that. And I think that's what's, it's interesting that some schools, it is working, that dialogue is working, which I think is a good thing. And other schools, it degenerates into violence. And although I do think the media is over doing the violence a little bit, you know, I like, come on, like, it's I was at one thing that was reported. And I was like, this was not a big deal. It wasn't as tense as people thought. And some of them certainly are. So I just think it's just it's like there was one point when there was one sort of crazy person from outside and they kept saying this represents the protesters. And inside,

it was different than outside. It's a very difficult reporting assignment, I think. But at the same time, I think the vandalism, the photos, the asking for catering, you're right. It was, you know, it seems like, do you want dialogue or do you want just to continue this? And I think that's where people are. People don't love chaos over an extended period of time. professor, clinical professors are not real professors. And I just typed in the email into Google and I found out it's a professor at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. So I wrote back to him and said, why are you hiding behind an anonymous email? We can have a productive dialogue. I get it right all the time. I get it wrong all the time. And so I went on the site and I wanted to find out more about the university. And there was a bunch of news about the university and there was footage of protests and the protests there were entirely civil.

Productive civil protests. And I would bet, Cara, that 90 plus percent of the protests on campuses are just that. But they're not interesting. They don't get late night TV ratings. So I think there are hundreds of protests. It's just the only one the cameras are going to show up for is the ones that feel like this could turn ugly. There's enough of them, though. Dartmouth.

I was sort of shocked. Yeah, I was shocked, too. Have you seen what's going on at UCLA? Yeah. I was sort of shocked. Yeah, I was shocked, too. Have you seen what's going on at UCLA? Yeah. I mean, two places that are so, like, I consider to be more, like, ambitious kids, like, ambitious work.

You know, I was interested. I think some of those kids are about to get a life lesson. I think parents and employers. I'm surprised where it's popping up, honestly. I was like, ooh, that's cool. I would think the brown kids would be, like, in revolt. And instead, they've had a very productive discussion with their, anyway. Look at it this way. UCLA, the way I see it, I did a play on words here, expels 90% of their students during the application process.

Nine out of 10 people that apply. If you don't have perfect SATs, you're essentially expelled from UCLA. You don't get in. Yeah, at least one of my kids didn't get in there but go ahead when i was there 40 years ago there was something called the emergency loan window and you could go up show your student id and you could get 50 bucks questions not asked didn't pay it back in seven days i was suspended i got two season of d1 semester suspended okay but you you you support but you're creating hostility on campus. I think it's time, and I think it's about to happen, and I realize I sound like a get-off-my-long-eye,

but if you're one of the students, did you see that video of that Jewish kid who was being held from the access to the library at UCLA because he didn't have a wristband on because he was Jewish? I mean, I would really like to see facial recognition, and I'd like to see these kids get a powerful life lesson. I think playtime is over. Peaceful protests, no problem. Though there were fighters. I mean, the thing at UCL was between two groups, counter-protesters and counter-protesters, which was, anyway. That's awful, too.

There's no reason for that. And quite frankly, as someone who has become an atheist, no connection to Israel, and has become a full-blown Zionist as of October the 7th, what I would tell to people who are upset by this, never, never resort to violence. You're hurting your own cause. Don't throw things at people. It's not up to you to decide when the tents should go. That's up to law enforcement and the administrators. And all you're doing is hurting our own, you're hurting us if you're pro-Israel. Never do that. Let the kids and the encampments and the professional

protesters are doing our work for us. They're they're revealing themselves and the entire public. Do you know, do you know, support for Israel has actually gone up since the protests started on campus? I don't know. The Harvard Caps Harris survey showed that 80 percent of registered voters said they support Israel more in the war now. But they have one thing they have to do is be careful as they're doing this. Like Delaney Cobb, who runs where I went, Columbia Journalism School, was reporting and they nearly pulled him off campus.

They, leaving the reporters out, I think is, and by the way, can I just make a call out? Student reporters, especially at Columbia and other schools, have been doing a great job. David Bruin Radio is where everyone's getting information. I have to say, they're doing really, I'm so, so much respect for these reporters. And they're doing a great, even-handed, strong, strong reporting job that is really quite impressive. And speaking of life lessons, they've learned, you know, it's a great thing to, they're doing a great job. So also, but I think it's important for parents and leadership who are being very critical of universities, understandably, keep in mind, just as Twitter is not the world, the protests and the students and the professional protesters you're seeing on late night TV and on news, that is not universities and the student body. It's usually less, far less, even the hotspots than 1% of the

actual students. The majority of the students there are good people who have strong views, but are focused on studying and getting through finals. And to think that, I just hear too many people who tend to, and conservatives who are using this as, all universities are bad. Right, I agree. This is America going down the tubes. No, guess what? America still does a few things really, really well. Weapons, software, we make the best media of men in tights. And also, even with this, be clear, folks, as someone who knows academia pretty well, we still have the best universities in the best

environment. What you're seeing is a very small piece of what happens every day at our great universities. Yeah. But, you know, we'll see what happens with the workers just now. Leadership of the union representing University of California academic workers voted Wednesday to approve strike authorization. So we'll see how that goes. Can't wait for the conventions, the Republican and Democratic conventions, although there's rings of security around those things. They better have a lot of security going forward for that because cities are not going to tolerate that. Anyway, we want to hear from you.

Send us your questions about business, tech, or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. Okay, Scott, that's the show. We'll be back on Tuesday with more Pivot. Can you read us out? Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe, that's the show. We'll be back on Tuesday with more Pivot. Can you read us out? Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Indretat

engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Emil Severio. Nishad Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. What's the fastest growing intellectual property in the world? Miscellaneous.