Pivot - The Excruciating Toll of Elon's Stunts

Episode Date: November 29, 2022

Guest host William D. Cohan joins Kara to discuss the latest developments in the Twitter saga: banned accounts will return! Apple could ban Twitter from the App Store! Elon drinks caffeine-free Diet Coke?! Also, protests in China could disrupt Apple. Friend of Pivot Anand Giridharadas joins to discuss his latest book, "The Persuaders," and how clear, concise messaging could help save democracy. Suggested reading: "Power Failure: The Rise and Fall of an American Icon" by @williamcohan "The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy" by Anand Giridharadas. You can follow Anand at @anandwrites. Send us your questions! Call 855-51-PIVOT or go to 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. Scott Galloway is doing customer research at a Chipotle on Knightsbridge. So today I'm joined by author, journalist, and dear friend of Pivot, Bill Cohen.

How you doing, Bill? I'm great, Cara, and I'm so glad to be here with you today. Thank you. Actually, Scott is probably on a plane reading your book right now. Actually, I know where he is. He's going to the World Cup, I think. And we're going to talk about a lot of things today. Your book, by the way, is Power Failure, The Rise and Fall of an American Icon. It's about GE, which is probably,

I don't know how to characterize it compared to today's companies, but give us a quick idea of what it meant to people, GE. I mean, Carrie, it was so iconic, a company. I mean, if you can imagine Apple, Google, Microsoft, you know, Facebook in the day, you know, rolled up into one company, Netflix in the day rolled up into one company, that was GE. And not only was it a technological leader, I mean, really a serious leader in technology, had products that we all sort of took for granted, like, you know, electricity generation and light bulbs and aircraft engines and things like that, x-ray machines, first electric cars. And we became the most, under Jack Welch, became the most

valuable company in the world, the most respected company in the world. And spawned so many executives and ways of thinking, management. Exactly. Management expertise, management factory. And then, you know, what the hell happened? You know, there's a dead body on the ground. How did it get there? So this became a forensic assignment for me. Like in a corporate autopsy, I felt compelled. Compelled. Compelled to figure out what happened. Why compelled? Because it was like, you know, if Apple disappeared, wouldn't you feel compelled to? Yes, actually, right.

That's a really good comparison. I think it really did lead everybody. And Jack Welch, for better or worse, was the iconic CEO for everybody around. And his theories, what was the theory? It was the Sigma? everybody around and his theories. What was the theory? It was the Sigma? Six Sigma, which he, of course, copied from Motorola and his friend, Larry Bossidy, who was then the CEO of Allied Signal, who had been his right-hand guy at GE.

And he decided to bring it into GE to try to, you know, you might accept some flaws in like your baggage handling when you go to travel, like the bag doesn't show up once in a while, you might be okay with that. But with an aircraft engine, you may not want a whole lot of flaws. That is something that he really drove home and rewarded people at GE for becoming experts in that. It was also a vicious culture, correct? I mean, one that was quite- you know. Well, you know, I worked there for two years out of business school, financing leveraged buyouts of all things at GE Capital, which of course I was not competent to do, but I learned. You know, I'd been a journalist, so then I learned. But actually, I kind of liked it. It was it was not, you know, it was not coddling by any means. It was it was Darwinian to some extent, but, you know, it was much more much more pleasant than, say, Wall Street culture, where I think that's another 15 years.

So, you know, you got rewarded with perks. You know, I got a car to go back and forth to the office. I got trips around the world. And I wasn't hardly a top performer. So Jack just made it an incredibly valuable, important company. You know, respected, had to be in everybody's investment fund. And that's what made its downfall so disappointing and tragic for so many people. And that's why I wanted to figure out what had happened. And that's what this book is about,

with all the great characters you can possibly imagine. Right. Who's your favorite character in the whole thing? Well, I mean, Jack is such a great and compelling character. And obviously, I spent a lot of time with him towards the end of his life. He died in March 2020, right before the pandemic. But I'd had six or seven long interviews with him by then. But also people like, you know, Dave Cody, who, you know, a kid from New Hampshire who went on to become the CEO of Honeywell, who Jack had fired and then later regretted, which he'd actually maybe selected him instead of Jeff Immelt. But it was nice to meet Jeff Immelt. It was nice to meet

Dave Calhoun, who's the new CEO of Boeing. I mean, David Zaslav, who's the CEO of Warner Brothers Discovery, has got his own problems to handle now. So the cast of characters is just fabulous. It really was. It was the crucible. And a lot of companies, there's crucible companies also in tech and stuff like that, but it certainly is important. Today, we'll talk about Twitter's plan or lack thereof to bring back banned accounts. And also, we'll look at the latest hurdle in the News Corp Fox reunion. And we'll speak with the author Anand Girgadas about the latest threats to democracy and how they can be overcome. I guess we have to mention before we move it to Twitter,

Elon had a picture of his gun on his bedside table. He was making a joke, you know, as one does with guns on bedside tables. But just so people are aware, people are very upset about it. And as you know, it's just another, it's another stunt he's playing. But there are two non-firing guns. One is a replica of George Washington's flintlock pistol. The other is a replica of a video game revolver from a game he likes to play. And so just, it's another stunt, everybody calm down. I mean, unfortunately, it's distasteful to people like Fred Guttenberg, whose child died in gunfire, and it's just tasteless. And again, you know, he's become the expert in stunts, right? Meaningless stunts, throwaway stunts. I don't know whether it's masking what is obviously going to be bigger

problems that are at that company, both financial and operational. But I mean, what about the four caffeine-free diet Coke cans that also buy buys bedside. Hello? Why bother? Why bother? Well, is that a gun on your bedside table or are you just overcompensating? Anyway, that's as much as I can say about that. But let's talk about a couple of things. Amazon believes in movie theaters. The company reportedly plans to spend $1 billion a year on theatrical movie releases. Bloomberg reported that Amazon plans to build up production in 2023 with a plan 12 to 15 releases per year after that. Cinemark, IMAX, and AMC stocks jumped after the news. What do you think this is about? I mean, the spending in streaming, which you've talked about,

a lot of people at Puck have talked about, is really off the charts, and some people are suffering for it. This is a real doubling down in the movie theater area. Well, it makes sense, Karen. I mean, they spent close to $9 billion buying MGM that closed earlier this year. You know, they have a lot of content on Prime Video that they're trying to apply to their Prime Video, Prime customers, and it's a way to sort of keep them sticky and keep them on board. You know, there's problems elsewhere in Amazon land. So this might be a nice growth area for them. And, you know, Alexa unit had largest layoffs, the company history, for example. Exactly. You know, obviously, AWS is off the charts great, but maybe they have to spin that off.

The road to Hollywood is paved with people who hope to do well there and have gotten their head handed to them. And, you know, I don't know whether that's going to happen to Amazon at all. But, you know, to spend a billion dollars to put movies through another distribution channel sort of is the revert that's coming out of the back way. You know, obviously, they started with streaming and now they're going with it. And people are going to go back to movie theaters. I can see it already happening slowly but surely. And, you know, you know, once we sort of think that this pandemic is over, hopefully we're not fooling ourselves. But I think people like,

and people have been, you know, I did my first deals. Yeah, it'll be lesser than though. Lesser than though. It's not going to come back. Of course. The numbers are pretty clear. No, because streaming,

doing this from your home is so convenient. And with TVs being, you know, like many movie screens these days, I mean, you know, why not? But there are some movies you do want to just see in the theater or are only available in the theater. I just saw Wakanda Forever, and I had to see it.

Yeah, and I just saw The Menu, you know, which was only available in the theater and sort of a rollicking good time, if you like people, you know, ending up all dead. Yes, yes, I always do like that. But it's interesting that they're spending here when other companies are thinking about cutting back. Like, you know, the issues around Bob Chapek at Disney,

for example, had to do with that and others. So, and also you mentioned David Zasloff. You know, it's a really interesting problem they have because of that, because the spending is way too high. Well, look, it depends if you're a content provider, as we both are. We kind of like a lot of spending. And I think people like the content and appreciate the content. Now, do the economics work? Well, I mean, they were working. And then, of course, Netflix lost customers earlier in the year. And so there was a revaluation of whether the economics make sense and how to value that.

But I think streaming is not going away. You know, you need to have spend on the content. You know, Hollywood is always basically spent on the content. Do you need to spend $200 million on a Wakanda forever or something like that? Or, you know, I mean, Netflix is spending, what, $17, $18 billion or more a year on content. Amazon is trying to keep pace with that. Disney is keeping pace. David Zaslav has to try to keep pace. I mean, it's a very expensive game. Obviously, they're trying to get the economics in line.

Netflix, you know, I think investors completely overreacted to losing customers. The stock has done a lot better lately. It's been the best performing stock of the year the year in fact one of them in the last six months and so you know having 220 million people paying you money every that's right month is not something to sneeze at and so they'll make it work and i have confidence in that management team and so this this move into movie theaters is a good thing that why not right it's better this has got movies coming out of movie theaters? You have to.

This is just another venue, another avenue, another distribution network that they weren't in. Right. Sure. And MGM's movies have always been in movie theaters. So this is just... The Bond movies, et cetera. And they don't have full rights over those, which is interesting. So another topic, you mentioned Apple as big as GE, and if something happened to it,

but right now workers are revolting over COVID policies of the world's largest iPhone factory in China, actually all over China, over these very stringent COVID policies the government has. China's zero COVID policy requires extreme lockdowns, but factories are allowed to stay open if employees are living on the site. Employees at Foxconn in central China, which makes a lot of the iPhones, complain about sharing rooms with COVID-positive workers, about being misled about compensation. Disruptions are significant. Protests, again, have broken out throughout China over these policies, including some that call for the removal of Xi Jinping, which is unusual. Talk a little bit about this, because Apple's trying to build capacity outside of China and Taiwan with facilities in India and

even the US. How do you look at this from a global perspective, from a business perspective? It's really dragging down the stock market and other things. You know, I'm no expert on Chinese politics, but obviously the COVID lockdowns, people are reaching their breaking point on that. People are human everywhere, right? I mean, if that were the case here, we'd be freaking out. I mean, unfortunately, we've tolerated a much higher death toll and infection toll than China did. And maybe now with things easing on those fronts, still, though, 250 people dying a day, maybe. Well, they aren't as infected. They're not as infected. Right.

They didn't have as much COVID there because they were so we're or so we're told. Right. You know, and maybe they have and we don't know. And maybe, you know, these lockdowns are trying to keep it, and people have been fed up with that. I mean, you know, we have vaccines here, and many people have used them. You know, I've had five vaccines, and, you know, and happy to have them, I might add. And so this is an increasing political problem in China, and it's going to probably increasingly affect what Apple can get out of China in terms of its products. But I suspect Tim Cook and the smart people out there... They have to diversify the supply chain. I mean, I think this is their most...

From a human rights perspective, from a supplies perspective, this has been... Except for the app store stuff here in this country, I think it's its biggest vulnerability, presumably. I agree with that. But I mean, we haven't really heard necessarily about shortages of product, right? I mean, they probably have too many Apple iPhone 14s at the moment. I see them being Black Friday, Cyber Monday discounted. So, you know, it is a potential problem. I think there are solutions that they are working on. It takes time, though, to build a new factory. Yeah, absolutely. I think it's their biggest challenge.

And I suspect Tim Cook is certainly up to that challenge. It's not a good look to have this go on and people getting beaten. I suspect Tim Cook is certainly up to that challenge. It's not a good look to have this go on and people getting beaten. And Apple gets dragged right back into those stories from before, which is the treatment of workers at those factories. But interesting, anyone looking for news of protests on Twitter will have a hard time. On Sunday, numerous Chinese language accounts flooded Twitter with links to escort services and other spam alongside names of Chinese cities. The Twitter team that have been fighting that has been radically downsized. And that gets us to our first big story.

The band shall tweet again. Elon Musk announced that nearly all previously suspended accounts will be welcomed back on Twitter, perhaps as early as this week. Musk says the accounts that broke the law or posted spam would remain banned. And I guess they're sorting those out. But Twitter hasn't announced a plan for how they'll make that distinction. One Harvard instructor called the move, quote, existentially dangerous for various marginalized communities and said that Apple and Google should consider removing Twitter from the Apple store. They have not said anything.

I certainly know they're looking at it from people I know inside the companies. They're watching it carefully. It would be a big move on their part to do something like that, but they've done it before with Parler and that was an unusual situation. What do you think about these returning accounts and what's happening there? Well, I mean, for any other person, any other company, this would be both a financial and operational existential crisis. I mean, the company would be teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and might yet, honestly.

But since it's owned privately by the richest man in the world, who is still pretty rich, even though Tesla stock is down and Twitter you know, Twitter is looking like a financial wipe out at the moment. He can probably weather a lot of this and is probably willing to weather it for reasons I do not for the life of me understand. But, you know, to bring back banned accounts is, you know, a high beta move. You know, he you know, how long has it been since Trump has been allowed back, you know, a week or two? And know, he you know, how long has it been since Trump has been allowed back, you know, a week or two? And I don't think I've seen any Trump tweets yet. That's sort of an interesting dynamic. Obviously, Trump has a contractual obligation with Truth Social or

whatever his media company is, you know, that he seems to be observing, which is quite out of character for him. So I'm wondering, you know, when the dam to be observing, which is quite out of character for him. So I'm wondering, you know, when the dam is going to break on that front. Other band accounts coming back. I, you know, just, you know, after he said he was going to set up a committee and let there be a vetting process,

he seems to, yeah, exactly. Blown through all of that. Yeah. What does this do to the advertising business? So this was, I had heard that they have gone down to 400 million from 1.5 or something like that from different people internally. It's a significant decline in advertising and that's the significant amount of their revenue. Explain to people what will happen when that happens. Twitter is not much of a business, like from a profitability point of view. EBITDA has been roughly a billion dollars on a good year. That's when advertising has been, quote,

robust at $5 billion a year. Obviously, if that's coming down substantially, then, you know, he's got $13 billion of debt that is owned by his banks, who did not sell that off. So they still own it. And they didn't sell it off, because they knew if they did sell it off, they were going to have to perfect, you know, a 50% loss, right, six and a half billion dollar loss. So they are pretending that that loss is not really there. They're going to hold on to the debt for, you know, at least into 2023. Explain why they're holding on to the debt for people. This is this $13 billion in debt that they have lent him against some of his shares in a declining asset, correct? The debt is secured by

the assets of Twitter, as opposed to maybe his stock is part of that asset base. But basically the assets of Twitter, whatever those happen to be, I mean, buildings and intellectual capital, you know, code, whatever it is, cash flow. And so 13 billion dollars on it. So it's ironic because there's never been a LBO with more equity in it. I mean, so there's, there's $31 billion of equity, 24 billion of which came from Elon, 7 billion came from friends of Elon. So there's a lot of equity here, but there's also 13 billion of debt on a billion or what was a billion dollars of EBITDA. That's 13 times EBITDA. Now that's going to be less than a billion. So it's now we're talking, you know, serious junk territory on this debt, even though it's dollars of EBITDA. That's 13 times EBITDA. Now that's going to be less than a billion. So now

we're talking serious junk territory on this debt, even though it's senior secure debt. And so given that and the fact that interest rates have increased dramatically since this deal was first cut back in April, that banks, in order to sell this debt, do in other words- Have to take a shower yield at a much higher level than it would be given the current interest rate that they're getting out of Elon and Twitter. So to do that, they have to discount the debt to sell it. And to discount the debt, people have told me something like 50% would be where it would clear the market. That's a $6.5 billion wipeout on their $13 billion of debt. Which they have to put on their books, correct?

Absolutely. And then who buys that? You've talked about this. Musk would have to buy this debt. Could he buy it and then make money on it? Well, normally who would buy it would be investors all around the world. Japanese banks or investment funds, Apollo, whoever it is. Okay?

Now, if Elon were really smart, now he doesn't listen to me, but if he were really smart, this is my theory of the case at the moment, by the way. I think he's shit coining or shit talking Twitter continuously and doing all these ridiculously stupid things. Erratic things. Erratic, operationally questionable things to bring, to spook the banks so that the value of their debt decreases even further so that they'll take anything that Elon offers them.

If like, if Elon came along and said, I'll give you 50 cents on the dollar, they'll like leap at it because the chances of it going to zero because of this bankruptcy, looming bankruptcy. If he doesn't make interest payments, which the first one is coming in April, then they can file an involuntary bankruptcy on him. Why not try to shit talk this thing down so that he can buy the bank debt from them at a severe discount and retire it and make it go away. So why would they give it to him versus an Apollo or someone else? Why would they sell it to him? He would agree to pay more for it.

I see. Okay. So he would pay more for it, but he's trying to bring it down to a price that's affordable for him. Yeah. It's sort of a balancing act he's doing here. Talk it down so that when he offers them 45 cents on the dollar, they think to themselves, oh my God. And then they'll go out and try to sell it to Apollo and Apollo will say 35 cents. So suddenly Elon's 45 cents looks pretty great, even though, you know, in a normal situation, you know, it should be trading and worth much higher. So then he owns the whole thing, right? Then he owns both the debt and the equity, and then at least nobody can file an involuntary bankruptcy on him. Right. And he does that because-

It's throwing good money after bad, potentially. Right. But that way, he's got control. It's not that much money. That's right. Then he doesn't have that much money. It's not that. I mean, it's billions, but it's not unaffordable. For anybody else, this would be a non-starter type of behavior. And then he could fix it up and sell it off or something like that. Fix it up, work his miracle, whatever it is that he does that turns out to be a miracle. And of course, he's so much smarter than everybody else that we never anticipated that anybody could possibly do this. But because he's the brilliant Elon Musk, he then turns it around.

And turns it around. Next thing you know, as I was talking to Martin Sorrell, he said that they've only got a tiny fraction of the digital advertising market. If somehow he turns this around and advertisers flock back to it, which I don't really see how that's going to happen. But if it does, because he's much smarter than we are, then he'll turn around. And next thing you know, he'll sell it or take it public again. Because I don't really know who really wants this. I mean, who's going to pay more than $44 billion for this thing?

Right, right. Except investors that like him. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. And then it goes for $100. That's the only thing I can see him doing. Otherwise, it's a total wipeout. And, you know, it's fine for him because he's worth whatever, $200 billion. But, you know, the people who ponied up the $7 billion, I mean, my favorite story is, you know, Prince Al-Waleed, who, you know, invested $300 million or so early on in Twitter. And now his Twitter stock at $54.20 was worth $1.9 billion. He could have taken that in

cash a month ago. And instead, he rolled it over and that equity may be worth zero now. Yeah. Yeah. Because they'll all eat it and and he won't, and Elon will own the thing, and they'll have no power. They still have no power, correct? They still have no power. He controls it all, and there's no board of directors. So some of this stuff, like, for example, he's sort of lurching far right in an interesting way. Researcher and self-described Antifa member Chad Loder was banned after he tweeted about an alleged hack of Twitter user data. An anarchist publication Crime Think was banned after far right troll Andy Ngo

brought it to Elon Musk's attention, obviously brought back Babylon Bee. He tweeted and deleted the defense of a police officer who killed Mike Brown in Ferguson in 2014. In the early hours of Monday morning, he tweeted this photo of the gun. So I think these are all stunts. It's a stunt after a stunt after a stunt, correct? That's my impression. Well, again, if there's any internal logic to Elon Musk at all,

it's that he's doing these things to freak out the banks even further, so they'll sell him the debt at a lower price. What is the word on Wall Street? When you talk to them, what do they say? I mean, they'll have lunch with anybody, presumably. They'll do a deal with anybody. But what do they say? They say, my God, how did we get in bed with this madman? And why did we agree to finance this deal? And, you know, I'm sure Morgan Stanley is like scratching their head saying, well, you know, why did we agree to get involved in this? But then, you know, that's on the one side. On the other side, on the Twitter

side, they're just laughing all the way to the bank. I mean, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, who did minimal work because deciding this thing was fair was like the easiest thing that ever happened in the history of Wall Street. And they got paid, you know, $50 million or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And they avoided the $13 billion debt deal. I mean, it's just... And they would suck right back up to them if you went public. All of them would. Oh, I'm sure they would be more than happy to underwrite an IPO of this thing if it actually became something that was IPO-able. Right, absolutely. Is there any world where Google and Apple remove the Twitter app? I know they're looking at it. They're watching it.

I, you know, they did this with Parler. And Musk is saying if Google and Apple ban him, he'll make his own phone, which is delusional, as far as I can tell. This would be a big decision on their part. It would have to get very dangerous in that place, I think. Personally, I would like them to do that because then that would be it. I wouldn't have Twitter on my phone anymore, which is the excuse I'm looking for. It's like, I really know I don't want Twitter on here anymore, but I just can't push that delete button on it. But if it's banned on the App Store, then it's gone and I don't want Twitter on here anymore, but I just can't, you know, push that delete button on it. But if, you know, it's banned on the app store, then it's gone and I can't get it.

All right. It's just for you, Bill. But do you imagine them doing this? It's way too big. It's a big call. This is what he's hoping for. The same thing with the banks. He's hoping for that they won't push a button that he will. Well, the banks, you know, he'll get a benefit from because he'll be able to buy the data at a discount. If Apple and Google take it off their app store, I don't see how that benefits Elon Musk in any way. It's not good for them, though. He can throw a tizzy, presumably. He's a good tizzy thrower. I mean, if a tree falls in the forest and no one's there to hear it, does it make a sound? I mean, if you can't get it on your iPhone, you can't get it on your Google

phone, where are you getting it? I don't think they're going to do it. I think they're watching it, and they'll do it if they have to. It's the last thing they want to do from my perspective. Sure. No, and I agree with that because their customers like the product. But I mean, if another, you know,

and people have started talking about other alternatives to Twitter, if they get critical mass, then I think that probably that'll be makes it a little easier will, you know, go the way of MySpace, but it's gonna take a while. Yeah. So speaking about Musk was attacking Sam Bankman Freed and the fallout, talk a little bit about your writing about this and the guy who who's taking over for what's happened here, give me a read on where this goes. And there are people who are still bullish on crypto, ARK Investments, Cathie Wood, she kind of has to be. She bought over a million dollars of Grayscale's Bitcoin trust shares. She thinks Bitcoin is going to a million dollars. Yes, she does. But she calls

her what? An income poop? She's an income poop slash delusional, yes. And has been for a while. Yes. Okay. So explain where this goes. You know, part of me thinks this is kind of a repeat of the internet bubble in 1999, March 2000, when everything melted down. Yeah. I was there. That was the end of the internet. Oh, my God. But guess what? It was actually the beginning of the internet. It was the end of the beginning and the beginning of the next viable phase and useful phase of the internet. When real companies sprung up, providing real services, making real products that they could make money from. And real profits, yeah. And massively real profits and massively real profits. Right. So I think this sort of is a

fire that burns out, you know, the underbrush from the forest floor. And then out of that, I think some green shoots are going to crop up and you're going to see, you know, look, if there's any hope for let's be clear. I mean, if there's any hope for but let's be clear i mean if there's any hope for cryptocurrency and and the technology behind it the blockchain and the rails that you know sam bankman freeing like to talk about he talked about that when i interviewed him uh you know then then you know we need to get all of this gone you know the the the FTX is gone, the tethers, the bonances, everything that's been basically, you know, no offense to anybody, a massive Ponzi scheme, or certainly seems that way, then we have to clear all of this garbage out.

Okay, all of it, all of it has to go. So you're left with this pure technology that may be, may be useful. Maybe, I don't know if it will be or not. So you're left with this pure technology that may be useful. Maybe. I don't know if it will be or not. But there's going to be any hope for this technology that the maximalists believe in and talk about all the time till you're blue in the face. Then this has to happen and is happening. And then we'll see where we go from there. And tell me why people didn't catch him.

You interviewed him. I never did a long interview with him. Why wasn't it picked up from your perspective on him? He sort of was the adult in the room, even though he looked like a 12-year-old boy. And sounded like a 12-year-old pre-adolescent child. Look, Kara, I interviewed him last December for 90 Minutes for this crypto movie I've been working on that I, you know, had the honor of also interviewing you for. And think about it, last December, I mean, crypto was, you know, Bitcoin was at like 69,000, you know, and it's all time high. He was still 29. So he's the youngest, you know, the wealthiest person in the world under 30, you know, worth 25 billion. His wealthiest person in the world, under 30, you know, worth $25 billion. His company was about to be valued at $32 billion a month later by quote-unquote smart investors. You know, MIT

physics grad, you know, carefully selected to go work at Jane Capital. Both of his parents, you know, were professors at Stanford Law School. I mean, hello, I'm just a regular human being, right? I'm not an ubermensch. There's no way I would think to criticize him or question him. So I have a lot of admiration for people who did see this coming and questioned all of this. And they're kind of far and few between because most everybody was on board the mainstream media was on board you know cover of forbes cover of fortune i mean obviously you know he shows up on a cold december night disheveled you know wearing his uniform of a short sleeve shirt and cargo pants and his hair every which way i mean who am i to question you know any of that and so of course i didn am I to question, you know, any of that? And so, of course, I didn't.

I just asked him, you know, what it was all about, and got his story for 90 minutes, which was, you know, fascinating, you know, to be able to see it all dissolve in a classic way. Like, you know, I wrote a book about the collapse of Bear Stearns. You know, it just disappeared in a week. FTX disappeared in a week. You know, the only difference was Bear Stearns. It just disappeared in a week. FTX disappeared in a week. The only difference was Bear Stearns had been around for 85 years and was highly regulated.

FTX was unregulated, been around for three years. Right. And they hadn't been keeping records. They had been spending it on Bahama real estate, Bahama's real estate, and everything like that. How could people have caught it when you think about things like that? At one point, Matt Levine said, this sounds like a Ponzi scheme. I think that's the toughest many of the interviews have gotten. And he's like, yeah, it kind of is. Which was ha-ha versus how would you have found this out? It's a really interesting question. And that's

the one, I think it's an important question to, you know, I remember when Elizabeth Holmes was on all the covers, we never had her on because I didn't understand it. And that's the one, I think it's an important question to, you know, I remember when Elizabeth Holmes was on all the covers, we never had her on because I didn't understand it. And that's how I felt about him. I was like, I don't understand this quite right. I don't get it. I don't get it. I don't know who's minding the store. I don't know these people, which was lucky on my part in a lot of ways, not prescient in any way. in a lot of ways, not prescient in any way. Well, it was a total black box, right? I mean, it was offshore in the Bahamas where they venue shopped specifically to be there to be sort of free of regulation. But then he did things that ended up pissing off his brethren in the crypto space, right? By trying to seek out regulation and try to, you know, testify in Washington, all of which, you know... Make him look better. Well, or maybe kind of manipulate it and give all this money to democratic politicians and to try to sort of get the regulation that FTX could live with or wanted, you know,

regulation that FTX could live with or wanted, you know, pissing off CZ at Binance. And of course, that became, you know, the tipping point, right? Because, you know, CZ had been a early investor in FTX, wanted his investment back. You know, that clever Sam paid him back with, you know, Clever Sam paid him back with the token, the FTT token that they had manufactured and propped up, and he had 500 million of it. Well, basically, that was the gun that he had to Sam's head, just like the Chinese are our largest creditor. If they wanted to flood the world with dollars, I mean, that would probably have an effect on the value of the dollar. So CZ decides to say he will flood the market with FTT tokens that are rendered- They couldn't support.

Right, and completely worthless. And so that brought the whole house of cards down. Well, and also Carolyn Ellison, I thought she was a good poker player, but apparently not. She set a price. And the minute she said that price, the dogs came, right? I mean, you know, it was...

The $22. As I said the other day, you know, the children all scurried away, you know, like cockroaches when the lights come on. I mean, it was really... There was no adults in the room, let alone this 30-year-old guy who seemed like a child. I mean, there were literally no adults in the room.

They all lived together at their $30 million house or apartment in NASA. I mean, unlike what we're used to where you get Google, the kids get Eric Schmidt, supposedly the adult in the room. We can talk about that all day, whether he really is or not. But I mean, there was no even attempt at that here. Yeah. So what happens next, very quickly, because we're going to talk about it. What happens next is that hopefully the bankruptcy judge appoints an examiner and who has subpoena power and can actually get to the bottom of whether this was a massive fraud or not. If it was a massive fraud or not.

If it was a massive fraud with mens rea that Sam Bank between knew what he was doing and Carolyn and all of them, then off they go to to Butner. Yeah, that's what they get. If it's just mislabeling, as Sam likes to say, and maybe we'll know more when he speaks at the conference on Wednesday. Yikes. Yikes is right. Against his lawyer's wishes, I'm sure then, you know, we'll see what happens to him. But he's probably playing something out right now. Yeah. Five years. And here's what you need to know about, you know, these other other people. Yeah, we'll see. All right, Bill,

let's go on a quick break. When we come back, there's an opposition to the Murdoch family reunion. And we'll speak with a friend of Pivot about how to save democracy. 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. That's Ian Mitchell, a banker turned fraud fighter. These days, online scams look more like crime syndicates than individual con artists. And they're making bank. Last year, scammers made off with more than $10 billion.

It's mind-blowing to see the kind of infrastructure that's been built to facilitate scamming at scale. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of scam centers all around the world. These are very savvy business people. These are organized criminal rings. And so once we understand the magnitude of this problem, we can protect people better. One challenge that fraud fighters like Ian face is that scam victims sometimes feel too ashamed to discuss what happened to them. But Ian says one of our best defenses is simple.

We need to talk to each other. We need to have those awkward conversations around what do you do if you have text messages you don't recognize? What do you do if you start getting asked to send information that's more sensitive? Even my own father fell victim to a, thank goodness, 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.

Thumbtack presents the ins and outs of caring for your home. Out. Indecision, overthinking, second-guessing every choice you make. In. Plans and guides that make it easy to get home projects done. Out. Beige on beige on beige. In. Knowing what to do, when to do it, and who to hire. Start caring for your home with confidence. Download Thumbtack today. Bill, we're back. Let's talk some media news. First, Rupert Murdoch's plan to reunite NewsCorp and Fox faces opposition from a powerful shareholder, Independent Franchise Partners, wants to explore breaking up NewsCorp. I don't know how much power it has. It's sort of like the altimeter people over at Facebook at Meta. Rather than merge it with Fox, IFP is the largest shareholder that opposes deal, but joins other shareholders who voiced opposition. What will happen here?

You know, this reminds me of CBS Viacom merger, that if it weren't for Sherry Redstone, CBS Viacom merger, that if it weren't for Sherry Redstone, it would never have re-merged. I mean, her father, Sumner, separated them for a reason, right? And the managements at both those companies were happy with that arrangement. Sherry decided, hey, we own both of these things. It's going to be easier to sell if we put them back together. There was a lot of opposition to that. But of course, once MoonViz was deposed, that was the end of that. And they were combined, but the stock is not done very well at all, even though Warren Buffett has sort of backed up the truck to what is now called Paramount Global. Same thing is going on here. Basically, I think the Murdochs think that if they combine these two things they basically control into one company,

it'll be easier to sell. But I really don't think that the Wall Street Journal people wanna be putting the same boat with the Fox News people. People again, right? Again, right? They separated them for a reason. They also have real estate. They've got Harper Collins.

They've got a lot of stuff. Yeah, they've got a lot of things that don't wanna necessarily be in the same boat as Fox. And I don't think it's necessarily going to make it easier to sell, just like it's not easier to sell Paramount Global. So this is very ill-advised, in my opinion. And the CBS Viacom, you know, that went to Delaware court, and it was going to be hashed out there until Les Moonves got deposed, overthrown, and, you know, perhaps rightly so. And, you know, this, I don't know whether it'll go to Delaware court, or I don't think they'll sue to block it, but they might, but there might

be some lawsuits to try to block this. But you don't think it's a particularly good idea, correct? No, no. I mean, it was separated for a reason, and there's no reason to put them back together. Yeah. So keeping them apart would be, they could sell the pieces off if they wanted. I assume they're anticipating Rupert Murdoch's demise at some point, if he ever dies. You know, Sumner Redstone thought he would never die either. That's true. Yeah.

I mean, I think they put it together because it's easier, they think, for tax purposes. You know, there might be less of a tax bite or something like that. They're together. Right. But there's no synergistic idea behind this, except that they want it. They want it. The Murdochs want this. The Murdochs want this.

And the question is, will they get it? But I think they have to get the majority of the minority, the non-Murdoch voters, and that might be tough here. Yeah. So one deal that News Corp doesn't seem to be part of, the streaming rights to NFL's Sunday ticket. Negotiations with the dealer said to be ongoing could stretch into 2023. Apple, Disney, and Amazon are all rumored to be contenders with a lot more money, with Apple supposedly the favorite. This is bad, correct? How important is this deal?

Well, I mean, there's a lot of, I mean mean we're talking about a lot of potential money here and it's what people watch cara yes not me to watch not cara swisher but yes yes indeed but you know other people as they would say on seinfeld uh you know they this is you know live sporting events are extremely popular and the the NFL is the most popular of live sporting events in this country, just week after week after week after week, even though the product is, you know, not quite as much fun as it used to be or as exciting. But so this is a big deal, and I'm sure it'll be a blockbuster whenever it happens. And so, you know, we wait a little while longer, but it's going to be a blockbuster. And what about Disney in here? Well, I mean, ABC, you know, they, well, sure.

I mean, Disney's got to be a player. Apple's a player. Amazon's a player. Fox is a player. High price. High price, Kara. High price. Big numbers.

Big numbers. Last very quick question. Successful second term for Bob Iger. Are you bullish or sort of worried? Well, he's only got a two-year term. His big question is, you know, who's his successor going to be? And, you know, my partner at Buck, Matt Bologna, yesterday tried to lay some of those names out. Dana Walton, Andrew Peter Rice, things like that.

It was fun to read. And it's a big, you know, choosing. He blew it once. Now he's got to get it right the second time. He'd better. But I'll tell you something, the stock price doesn't improve. Now you've got Dan Loeb and Tryon Partners, Nelson Peltz in there. Yeah.

You know, Iger may not last the two years. Oh, wow. And they're at cross, they're different opinions, correct? Those two activists. Nelson Peltz apparently didn't want Iger to come back, but that's water under the dam. He's back. Now he's just a shareholder who wants that stock price to go up. Right, same thing with Loeb. And if they don't get that, and it doesn't start happening soon and going in the right direction, now we had a few good days last week, and we'll see. Yes, the Bob one sheen, It's a very good sheen. It's a happy one.

It's a nice sheen, but if it doesn't really polish that apple to the satisfaction of Nelson Peltz and Dan Loeb, do not fool around. They're not like passive investors. They're going to, they'll find somebody who does, especially Nelson Peltz.

He didn't want Bob Iger to come back in the first place. Right, right. And by the way, he got rid of Jeff Immelt at GE and then also got rid of John Flannery at GE. So they don't fool around. They don't not fool around. They want a sock up Bob one. Just from the Disney Town Hall, it just wrapped, Iger says no M&A in the near future, which means one of the things he told me was that Disney was barely big enough, which he can't buy the Warners, etc., or make some sexy merger at all. The hiring freeze remains in

place. He's got a tough road. Bob won. This is not the same environment that he left in. No, he's got a lot to do. He's got to basically unwind what his successor Bob did, and he's got to try to satisfy now Dan Loeb and Nelson Peltz. What would you do? Give me one thing you do, and then we're going to get to our friend at Pivot. I guess you've got to get Hulu on board, and you've got to reduce 50 billion of debt. It's too much debt. You've got to do something. Spin off ESPN. Well, if you can spin off the debt, do what the ESPN, what AT&T did to Time Warner. Yeah, Warner. Yeah.

Just spin it off. Yeah, that would be a big move. That would be a big move. They weren't going to do it. Spin it off with debt, though. Spin it off with debt. All right. Let's bring in our friend of Pivot.

our friend of Pivot. Anand Gargadas is a journalist and the author of The Persuaders on the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy. Welcome, Anand. How are you doing? I'm great. How are you? Yeah, it's so interesting. Your book is coming out about persuasion at a time when there's a lot going on about culture wars and polarization, And you profile people bridging the gap. But talk about, has it changed at all since the book came out? You've got this Twitter sale. We've got a little bit more polarization. We had the midterms.

I'd love to get your sort of overview of where you are with this book in the midst of all this noise, I guess. I mean, it's just intensified. We're in this moment where I think one thing that is widely shared across this country is people want things to change, right? People have different things they want to change, but there's a widely shared sense that we're not on the right track, that big things need to change if our kids are going to have, you know, a decent shot at a future. And yet we can't change anything. It just feels stuck. It feels like we can't change people's minds. And therefore, in a democracy, it's impossible to change things. And so the book is really a journey among people who I think show a way out of, you know, the kinds of conversations that get stuck on Twitter and that are getting more stuck now that it's owned by a two-year-old. And the kinds of conversations that get stuck in our families. We just had Thanksgiving, you know, the kinds of family conversations that get stuck at work. I think there is another way forward where we can reach people and bring

people into the visions of the world we want while standing bravely for things, not diluting what we want in order to reach people, but standing bravely for things and reaching people. And I wrote the book because a lot of people out there doing this work on the ground knew things I didn't know, and I wanted to learn from them. All right, but you just called the current owner of Twitter a two-year-old, which is not persuasive. It is a joke, I believe. Oh, it's very persuasive. See, this is the thing, right?

This is actually one of the core things of the book. This is actually one of the core things of the book. Persuasion is not all about softening what you say to win over some imagined moderate or to win over the target of someone like Elon Musk. A big part of persuasion is rallying people to, you know, get more excited about the thing they may latently feel. And so, you know, I don't literally believe Elon Musk is two, I think he's about 11. But I think there's a problem that a lot of us understand latently that need to be more focused on, which is that the highly limited men of Silicon Valley, who you spent your career covering and making wake up in the middle of the night fearing your call, covering and waking up in the middle of the night fearing your call. These highly limited men are now pushing us to be a highly limited democracy, highly limited society, because their own personal limitations have kind of become the limitations of our discourse, of our ability to speak to each other. I personally do not think the national or international conversation should

be moderated by people who couldn't have a functional conversation with you at a party. All right. So what messages do work? Republicans say build a wall. Democrats say you'll get a health care voucher and taxable savings account. You make X percent, which is more wonky. What is working now? Obviously, the midterm elections, the voters said a lot by their voting. Weren't listening to the noise, weren't listening to the yelling, weren't listening to the limit necessarily. Look listening to the yelling, weren't listening to the limit, necessarily. Look, I think there's a, this book, in some ways, is about organizers, in particular, although I write about a lot of different people, what they all share in common is kind of a background in organizing and on the ground organizing, as opposed to national

limelight political work. And I think there's an organizer's playbook that does work and is working. And so a couple elements of it, you know, I think folks on the political left, I would say the pro-democracy side in general, are just not as good at commanding attention as some of the kind of bad actors in American life. And so commanding attention is really, really important. Someone like AOC is very good at it. And you kind of see the difference between her and, you know, the entire rest of her party. Attention for, you know, all the reasons you understand and have covered in your career is just an incredibly important skill in this media and kind of technological infrastructural moment. Another thing is meaning making. Organizers think a lot about how do you stand with voters, with citizens,

24-7, 365, through a process of them making sense of the world, not just transactionally ask them for votes and $5, right? And again, you see the Democratic Party, it's very much there in the big moments when it wants something from you. Go vote, go vote, go vote. But there is a longer term process that is happening in this country of real profound change, change in gender relations, change in race and demographics, change in LGBT rights, demands of all kinds of people to be seen and recognized and treated well.

And I think that has led to, and by the way, trade, economy, tech, China, like all these things that have really discombobulated a lot of people's sense of who they are and how they fit in and what the future will be for them. And I think the far right has in many ways done better at walking with people through those psychological transitions and dislocations. You don't feel you know what it means to be a man anymore in your town? Well, let's tell up, let's spin you a whole story about how your manhood's being threatened by XYZ actors. And I think the political left, the pro-democracy side at this point, has not walked with people through the deeper structure of psychological transitions that I believe are at the heart of what is roiling our politics. You know, policy issues, the issues we often talk about in the news every day are downstream of very deep things happening in the American body politic, primarily psychological, emotional things, people not feeling safe and whole in the world. And I think we need folks who believe in democracy

to get better at that. But we keep voting for gridlock. I mean, you know, we seem to like gridlock. You know, each president, whether it was Obama or Trump, love him or hate him, Biden, love him or hate him. You know, they get their first two years where you can try to get things done. And then it's either two or four more, or six years of gridlock. And we're seem very happy with that. That seems a little antithetical to this idea of persuading people to either be active or to change things. Well, I mean, our system is in some ways designed to create gridlock. And it was designed to create a kind of generative gridlock.

If you go back to the debates of the founding fathers, they thought gridlock would lead to compromise and people, you know, representing rural areas and urban areas in ways that didn't railroad one or the other. And that was a good concept. And that was sort of what I studied in college and grad school. It was a very powerful concept at the time. Unfortunately, they didn't anticipate social media, money in politics, all kinds of other things that are new that have weaponized the checks and balances of our system to basically make us ungovernable.

At this point, it's an ungovernable country, in part because of these negative forces that have grafted onto deep parts of our structure that were designed to, you know, prevent tyranny, onto deep parts of our structure that were designed to, you know, prevent tyranny, and now are being weaponized to create new forms of tyrannical threats. So it's a very big problem. And we need, you know, several deep structure reforms, like getting all money out of politics, like dealing with things like, not going to happen in any foreseeable way. I think we can make it more expensive to give money in politics. I think we can have disclosure requirements and things that make it, you know, more trouble than it's worth. You know, and then the kinds of reforms people are talking about in terms of gerrymandering, in terms of, you know, the Senate.

I mean, all would fall in the not going to happen category unless we are able to really have a pro-democracy movement that builds a big swelling case over a period of years to the public for these values. Ungovernable country, which is the words you just used, is not what anyone wants to hear. I mean, that's scary. Ungovernable country. It is scary. And this is why, you know, part of why it's ungovernable is because I think people have given up on the idea of persuasion. And so my prayer with this book is that folks will reclaim the idea of persuasion, even if we are tribally divided on different sides of different issues. On many other issues in our lifetime, most notably, I would say, the status of gay people in this society, but many other issues. There have been huge, huge shifts institutionally in terms of mores and values.

We're also living through bigger shifts than we realize, the status of women in our lifetime, the conversation around race. I mean, how many white people had their parents or grandparents grow up thinking about whiteness as a thing that anyone had ever thought about? So this is a good thing. as a thing that anyone had ever thought about. So this is a good thing. Now, listen, some writers like Ezra Klein have argued that polarization is parties sorting themselves into alignment on policies like drugs, immigration, race. And isn't it good if the Democratic Party has fewer people who support regressive and racist policies?

Yeah, isn't it good to make that stand? At the core of the book, I actually, I agree with that to the extent that I don't think polarization, which is to say people being on different sides of an issue, maybe on more is necessarily bad. I actually don't think anger and division are necessarily bad. Right. I mean, politics is about if we got 100 bucks left in the society, do we help your aging parents or my, you know, school age children first? That's those are rough issues. Right. They're going to get rough. It's supposed to be rough.

I think the problem is contempt and dismissal, right? Being angry at you may drive me more towards politics and democracy and wanting to get in the arena. Thinking you are just who you are, you are never going to be susceptible to any kind of, you think that way because you are that way. You will never move. You didn't want the vaccine last year. You're never going to get it this year. You voted for Trump once. You will never not vote for him. That kind of contempt and dismissal and fatalism is the enemy of democracy. And the book, in many ways, is an attempt to say, we can be polarized. We can be angry. This stuff's going to get real because it's intense. But we can't allow ourselves to lapse into the view that nothing can change. People can't change because people can and do change all the time. And there are amazing persuaders on the ground right now, changing people's minds, showing how it's done, and we can learn from them. And the return of Donald Trump, if it happens, is that going to be good or bad for the persuasion theory? I mean, look, it's a funny mix of the two,

right? In the sense that I think he is so, in some ways, discredited right now that you probably have some near-term successes for the pro-democracy side because he's in the arena. I think his announcement probably makes the runoff in Georgia much more favorable to Democrats, so on and so forth. However, I am not of the view that it's good to have him in the arena because he, you know, I think he's just existentially dangerous. And, you know, I think there is a part of the critique of the book, a kind of loving critique of the book to my own friends on the pro-democracy side is, I don't think we're out-competing him, fair and square. I mean, there's a whole bunch of rigged stuff, to be sure. And this election stuff they're doing, and all the ginning up of fake results and audits, it's all BS, and it's all real. However, I think in an honest war of ideas, I do not think pro-democracy people are clearly out-competing American fascism

as it might. For narrative building. You're talking about narrative building. Narrative building is at the heart of it. You know, there is, who is telling the better story about America right now? A story that is simple, clear, easy to understand. All three of us are in the business of talking to a ton of people, right? Reading a ton of documents, reading a bunch of data, and then you got to just

take it all in and tell people something, right? People don't want all the data you read to understand how to think about self-conviction. Yeah, no, I get it. They over-lecture and they get tsk-tsky. I mean, I'm just in the middle of something right now and I'm like, either go or stay, I don't care. And that was, you know what I mean? Like, pick your poison. So who is a good, we have to finish up, but who is a good persuader right now from who you think and who is not? So I think, you know, AOC is a remarkable example of the attention point. How do you actually shift the entire conversation of the country by wearing a dress or introducing a certain policy that may never happen, but that can reframe how people think. I think if you look at Gavin Newsom,

Governor of California, there's a real sense of fight that has been missing in virtually every other Democrat of his profile. It's okay to pick fights. It's okay to not go high when they go low. I think he's demonstrating that in a powerful way. I think if you look at some of the incredible local civic stuff that came out of the pandemic, mutual aid and other things, Democratic Socialists of America doing this, the sense of home building as part of movement building, not just asking people for votes, but building IRL community. The Democratic Party does not do this. The Democratic Party does not meet up in real life. It's not in your neighborhood. It's not in your building the way it used to be 100 years ago when center-left parties were dominant around the world, where if you got a weird letter from the IRS, Mildred on the third floor from the local Democratic Party

person would help you. That's gone. That infrastructure needs to be rebuilt. And there's local groups showing how that's done. And who's bad at it? You know, I think the Democratic Party as an institution, as opposed to individual candidates, is really bad at it, right? The kind of organs of the Democratic Senatorial campaign, the congressional one. You know, I think there's just a real deficit of speechmaking right now. Could any of us on this call think about the last time we heard a great line? Like just a great line. Like we all know so many lines from past eras. I was at the FDR Memorial in Washington, a lot of great lines sprinkled around there. Are there any that you

remember from the last, I don't know, 10 years? So I think the Democratic Party's institution has become very sclerotic and needs to do this. But at part, we need to tell a story about America that is thrilling and exciting and galvanizing, not just lecturing, not just talking about the problematic things, although there are problematic things, but that is offering a thrilling vision of a country that's going somewhere, that's going through some of these hardships, because it's trying to do a hard thing of building a multiracial democracy with liberty and justice for all people. This is a cool pursuit. It's an awesome pursuit. It's a pursuit actually a lot of countries in the world

are not engaged in. And we are. And I think we need to make it inviting to people and build a movement that people, you know, want to get in on. Yeah. You mean the Grievance Olympics isn't working for anybody? It may not be. I don't think that is. And it doesn't. It just, it doesn't. I'll tell you. I think a lot of people have reached their limit on that.

One of the best tweets I ever saw, I lost track of it, but it was someone who said, the secret to winning in politics is to have your side not be totally exhausting. That's a good one. Anyway, Anna, his book is called The Persuaders At the Front Lines Of the Fight For Hearts Minds And Democracy

Thank you so much And I like this Anand It's not as You know you were yelling At billionaires before But this is much more hopeful I like it I still yell at them

On nights and weekends Alright okay good That's great Thank you so much Thank you Alright Bill One more quick break We'll be back

For Wins and Fails Thank you. All right, Bill, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails. Okay, Bill, let's hear some wins and fails. The fail and the win are the flip side of the same coin. And what I mean by that is, I think that the FTX SBF disaster, you know, the crypto meltdown and, you know, today, like BlockFi filed for bankruptcy. I mean, and it's still going and, you know, something tethered still needs to be, you know, wiped out, et cetera. So the ongoing meltdown in crypto land is, I think, you know, a major fail, obviously. But I think, as we were talking about before, I think will result in some major wins for whatever this technology is that underlies all this that people still have faith in. Now, again, I'm not a technologist, so I don't frankly

understand. I hear people talking about it. I know they believe in it. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, but that doesn't mean anything. I don't know how a car works either. I don't know how the internet works, but I sure enjoy using it every day. And it's changed my life for the better. So, you know, hopefully something will come out of this. So you'll see that this is a necessary and important step in other words. Absolutely.

Just like, you know, the internet bubble exploding back in March 2000 was a very important step in what we now take for granted on the internet. Right, right. I think it's really, I think you're right. I think it does feel like that. It does, having been there during that time, and everyone thought the internet was a Ponzi scheme, and a lot of it was. At the moment, some of it was quite profound. And then they started really making money, starting with Google. Google was really the one that shifted everyone's thinking about that as they started to make a lot of money. And how essential is that today? I mean, it's incredible how valuable that is.

Incredible. Incredible also. And also the turnaround of Apple and things like that with the internet and the apps and things like that. And it happened a lot slower than people think. There were a significant number of terrible companies. Significant. And they all went out of business. They got wiped away.

That's one of the beauties of our system. And one thing to note about this is that this isn't that much money. Even though everyone's sort of focused on FTX, it's a very small part, as Scott points out, of the economy. It didn't tank anything. And yeah, very importantly,

it's not interconnected to the financial system nearly as much as people thought or feared, you know, as happened in 2008. So it's a very different dynamic. And frankly, we're blessed as a result of that, because we couldn't go through that again right now. Yeah. Although a lot of people lost money. We're sorry about that. Well, okay. Sure. But they were speculating.

That's the way it goes. Yeah. And Kathy Wood's still an income poop, correct? Still an income poop. And I can't believe anybody gives her money. That just blows my mind. But they do. So, okay, there you go. Go, there you go. Anyway, I have only one win I saw in the theater, speaking of which. Like I said, win and a fail, too. I saw Wakanda Forever, which was astonishing. I was so glad to get to the theater. We had an actual babysitter over the weekend, over Thanksgiving weekend.

It was a wonderful movie, perfect for the big screen. Just beautifully done, very soulful. Completely dominated by women of color. Like, if you saw a man, he walked through on his way out the door somewhere else. It was just a beautifully wrought movie, and I recommend it to everyone. It's a blockbuster, and it's doing really well, and it was great to see it in the theater. That said, I still am not bullish on theaters. Everything else that I want to see, I'm going to see on a plane or on a streaming, pretty much,

except I'm trying to think of a movie that's coming out that I'm going to rush to the theater for. There's a few, I suppose, but not very many. Few and far between. Well, The Banshees of Inner She, which I saw in the theater, I recommend it. And I enjoyed going to the theater to see it. And it's a small movie. You live in New York, though, right? You're a New Yorker. So that's why. It. You live in New York, though, right? You're a New Yorker.

So that's why. It's hiding out in New York. But you can find it around. Yeah. Independent theaters. I do still think the theatrical experience is declining precipitously. Absolutely. No question.

It'll be like Broadway. It'll be nice and people will go. But not the same kind of business. Again, a small business. Just another window. Yeah, just another window. 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 and submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVID. We'll be doing an end of the year mailbag. So get those questions in. Bill, that's the show. A reminder that Bill's book,

Power Failure, The Rise and Fall of an American Icon, which is about GE, is out now, and you should absolutely read it. I love your comparison to what if Apple declined, wouldn't you want to know? I think that's exactly right. People understand how important GE was to everything for a very long time. And it's quite a fascinating look at what happened there over the many years. Again, thank you so much for coming

on, Bill. Thank you, Cara, for having me. We'll be back on Friday for more. Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Anderdot engineered this episode. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.