Pivot - The Future of Threads, Biotech, and Education

Episode Date: August 22, 2023

A minor break in Scott-Free August (because Scott misses you all): Kara and Scott open the listener mail bag to answer your questions about Instagram Threads, biotech, and education. Stick around to hear a listener call in from a cornfield, and about the origins of the Kara and Scott relationship. 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 I'm Scott Galloway. I know I promised you an entirely scot-free August, but he and I just can't quit each other. From New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network, I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Scott Galloway. I know I promised you an entirely Scott-free August, but he and I just can't quit each other. So we're bringing him in. He's really right now in Aspen or Spain or wherever the fuck he goes on his vacations. But we are going to go through a listener mailbag. So you have just a little bit more Scott because I know you miss him so desperately. There you go. If you can't fix it, you got to stand it. You got to stand the dog. You got to stand it. You got to. You got to have a little

Scott in August, even though we do like Scott for August because Scott enjoys himself and we have some fun guest hosts, but it's always good to bring Scott back. And I know you guys miss him because people talk to me about Scott all the time, wherever I go. All right, let's get to these questions. You've got, you've got, I can't believe I'm going to be a mailman. You've got mail. I'll read the first one. Hi, Kara and Scott. With the introduction of threads in the meta-owned universe,

do you think this might be a stepping stone to a single verified identity-based social media app? The seamless connection between Instagram and threads made me wonder if meta has all this data. The only difference is format, features, and functionality. So why wouldn't these experiences ultimately be combined? Thank you for your insights. I love the pod.

Thank you, Isaac from Minneapolis, by the way. That's who it's from. I'm going to start. Adam Aseri has said they thought about it to a lot of interviewers. They thought about Brigham. They thought it was stupid. It was like a turducken, as I talk about, which is a turkey, duck, and chicken together. And they didn't think they worked together.

These are all different use cases. Americans tend to, even though in other countries, they, and chicken together. And they didn't think they worked together. These are all different use cases. Americans tend to, even though in other countries, they mash the stuff together. Like in China, it's not something Americans want, especially, and a lot of people don't want it. And so he thought they were different use cases and you can't make Instagram text-based and you can't make this.

There'll be video on it and things like that, but it's a very different experience and a different product. Scott? Well, okay, so a seamless connection between Instagram and threads, a unified sort of single verified identity-based social media. The reality is that exists. It just doesn't exist for the consumer. And that is on the back end, they have a profile of every individual, and they treat you from an advertising and a business standpoint as a single app.

But what they've done is they've created different offerings with different brand equity and different business models. And they're not going to give that up because the diversification they have with a large juggernaut cash cow called Facebook and then a growth vehicle called Instagram and then a new emerging nascent company called Threads, and then a global telco company called WhatsApp, the last thing they want to do is meld all that and create reverse diversification and less clarity around the value proposition of all of them. So I think it would be a bad move from a risk standpoint, but effectively what Meta has done is what you're saying just from a business backend standpoint. Yep, 100%. I think they have to interoperate. You have to be able to post easily or sign up easily. I think the one thing everybody is saying that worked really well was the signup was fast if you had an Instagram account. And that was good. That was the ability to do that. I think there's a lot of backend stuff

they can do together and cross-posting. You should be able to cross-post to all these social media sites, by the way. And that's something that's coming for threads, I think. You can't, you used to be able to put your Instagrams on Twitter and you could see them on Twitter. And then they stopped that because of competition

and that was stupid. It took away a great functionality for consumers for their own corporate interests. One second, Williamson, Omaha, Pottery Barn, West Elm. So why not just put them all in one store? And the reality is it dilutes the brand equity, but they have the same database on the back end with your address and your lifetime value and the same warehouses and the same management team. The consumer value proposition is stronger when they have distinct offerings and distinct brands. And they're very different brands, by the way.

Even though they're similar, they're different. And they need a different kind of marketing and everything and pricing and everything else. Anyway, here's one about biotech that came in via email. I'll read it. Dear Cara and Scott, I'm finishing my PhD in biomedical science in the SF Bay Area.

Not a week goes by without hearing someone speak to the next decade as the biotech era. Do you see biotech as just another life cycle in the history of Silicon Valley, or will it need to be something fundamentally different? We've seen horrendous outcomes from the tech business model being applied to biotech, for example, Theranos, uBiome. We've also seen big tech companies sporting massive biotech efforts, verily, at Alphabet. There's so many of them I've written about I've forgotten, by the way. Anyway, I love the podcast. It's gotten me through many light nights at the lab bench. I've even noticed myself embracing some kind of inner prof G in my teaching style and

emulating Kara in my writing. At least one of those is a good thing. Which one? Thanks, Alex. Alex, thank you. Scott, why don't you go first on biotech? You're more of an investor than me. Biotech. What's interesting about biotech is you're really swinging for the fence.

If you look at the most volatile stocks on any given day, seven of the 10 will be biotech stocks because you really are, you know, we talk about venture capital. The most, the riskiest sector in the world is biotech because you can invest 50, 100, 200, $300 million and find out that your drug or the breakthrough you're working on has zero viability. At the same time, you can stumble

upon, or not stumble upon, but you can find something that's going to create 500 million a year in gross margin revenues for 20 or 30 years. But where I would just end this is, congratulations to you. If you're getting a PhD in biomedical science, it means one, I don't want to make assumptions, but it probably means you grew up in a really supportive household. Two, you had access to incredible education and certification. You're genetically blessed. You're probably very smart and have a certain predisposition towards discipline. So it's just, you know, it's just good to be you. And so you're well done.

And even though these organizations you work for are going to incur significant risk and some will thrive and some will just go away. Your skills are incredibly portable and you'll just go on to the next thing. I just, I can't imagine kind of a better place. If you're going to start at the age of 30 with any certification in any field for the next 50 years, that certification in that region, something tells me you're going to have a financial security, you're going to have interesting conversations, an interesting group of friends, and you're going to have purpose and meaning in your professional life. I just, yeah, it's good to be you. Yeah. Funny you say that because Alex Swisher, this is also Alex who's writing us, he's going to Michigan in the fall. And thank you, Scott Galloway,

for helping him decide. Second greatest public university in the nation. Yeah, he's very excited. He's bought a lot of t-shirts and sweatshirts and things like that. But nonetheless, he is going to specialize in, he's obviously very strong in technology in general. He's one of these minds. Obviously, he's really strong in technology, but he's going to do a combined neuroscience and engineering degree. So I found that fascinating. I think there's going to be more and more. I know Silicon Valley's had a rough history around some of this stuff, and there already are huge biotech companies, by the way. But this is an area with CRISPR, all these innovations going on, and a lot of it is in the Bay Area, by the way.

with CRISPR, all these innovations going on. And a lot of it is in the Bay Area, by the way. A lot of the companies were there to start with, and the VCs. Even though crypto got a lot of the heat and now AI is, biotech is so, and has been helped by AI and machine learning. This is going to finally come together in a really positive way, I think, for society, even though there's lots of dangers as there would be, you'd have to anticipate them. But to me, they're going to fuel each other in a really significant way. The stuff around cancer, I hear, I talk to a lot of these people, and it's not my area of expertise, but most of them feel like they're going to solve cancer. I've never heard people say that. You know, some of this understanding and creating medications, I think, is going to move so quickly. Drug discovery, drug interactions,

which kills a lot of people, much more so using AI and various tools. So I feel like this is a great area to be in, but there will be a much smoother situation and there is money, money, money, money to be had. The early tech efforts by Google, there was one from Microsoft. There was so many of them were so laughable and some of them ignoring the FDA, some of this stuff and Theranos thing. It's not going to be defined by Theranos. What would be ironic if someday they did make a machine like that, which someday they will, probably. Not today and not that one. But I'm very bullish the same way Scott is. Well, you know what? Two guys from Michigan die and wake up in hell, and they find out they're still in Michigan, Kara. They're still in Michigan.

That's good. Ann Arbor's actually very nice. You're coming there with me. I'll go to a Wolverines game. Michigan football's amazing. You know what? We're coming there with me. It's just a little too cold. I'll go to a Wolverines game. Michigan football's amazing. You know what? We're coming there with me. They've asked me to speak there because I've been affiliated with them through the Livingston Awards, which are done out of the University of Michigan. But Alex won't let me come in the fall.

He's like, no way. But maybe if I bring you, he'll let me come because he likes you better than me, I think. But he doesn't want me to go early in his career there. Tom Brady. Okay, hold on. Tom Brady, Iggy Pop, Terry Crews, James Earl Jones, Tim Allen, and Larry Page. What do they all have in common? University of Michigan.

That's right. All right. And Sanjay Gupta. And also one of the most underrated presidents, Gerald Ford. Oh, yeah. Go blue. Go blue. What can you say? Magic Johnson.

All right. Okay, wow. Are you on Wikipedia right now? Ann Coulter. Bit of a right now? Ann Coulter. Bit of a foul ball. Ann Coulter. Bit of a foul ball. I can't wait to go to a game with her.

Mike Wallace. He went in like the 1700s. All right. Okay, get off of Wikipedia. One of the things that's funny is when I run into Michigan people, literally, to a person, and there's lots of them, by the way. They all say the same thing to me. First of all, they're lovely, unlike people that I meet from Harvard who are so

usually arrogant and have to tell me they went to a college in Boston. That's how they say it. Michigan people always go, no matter what age they are, go, that was the best experience of my entire life. Someone who's like 103 says that. And they go back like six and seven times a year. And I don't know. It's really, they're very enthusiastic about their school. So I have a Drop the Mic alum here. And it's not Gilda Radner who also went there.

Drop the Mic alum, material girl. Madonna went to Michigan. What? I can't wait to tell Alex. That'll be really good. Go Blue. Anyway. There you go.

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second-guessing every choice you make. In. Plans and guides that make it easy to get home projects Okay, let's listen to another one. Karen, Professor, this is Greg. I'm sitting in a cornfield working my summer job in Hastings, Nebraska, but I'm a school teacher by vocation. And so I know well what you're talking about with those third places in society. And we've known in schools for a long time that the kids who are involved in the extra things do better. But boy, things are starting to catch up with us here in Nebraska even. And, you know, my school has really made a push in the last five years to get more kids involved. We've tried to create more activities, more things. And I'll tell you what we're learning

is that we have about 70% we can get involved and we have about 30% that we don't. So every time we add new activities, we're just making the 70% busier. And I wondered if you guys had any idea, how do we engage the ones who seem unengageable and honestly in their defense that they're out working. Uh, some of them are, are, are, are families are struggling. Um, you know, we're looking for ideas. Thanks guys. Greg, how's the cornfield, Greg? What are you doing in that cornfield? Why didn't you explain this to us? I think he found a bag of cocaine on one of the students and went into the cornfield. He seems to be having a really good time.

Oh, I love Greg in the cornfield. Thank you, Greg. It's so great. It's so, so great. Teachers of the corn. Can I just say, yesterday when I was having lunch with Jeff at this great place called the Alpine Inn, it's near Sanford University, someone came up to you, a fan. He's like, of course, a fan of Karen Scott's.

And that's who it was. And I think her name was Lisa, I believe. And she was a school psychologist. It was his teacher. And she was talking about that, too, like what's happening with mental health in schools. So tell me, Scott, this is your area. You're a teacher, sort of. Yeah, but this, OK.

Well, you are. I'm a professor and a narcissist. And standing up in front of 300 people and talking about something I enjoy is barely a teacher. What this guy's doing is real work. Because if you spend any time, I've spent some time in my old high school, you just me that he's, it sounds like the school system he's in is doing a great job because the bigger problem as he referenced nationally is there isn't enough. They did a drum. I mean, this was so nice when I went back to my high school, the superintendent came and met me of LAUSD and they had a drum line and I immediately got pitched on funding the

afterschool program for half a million bucks a year. They can have these afterschool. And it's the shortage of the programs. So the 30% of the kids who aren't engaged, maybe they shouldn't be. Maybe they're just into their own thing or they're working. I had jobs my senior year to try and save money for college, so I couldn't engage in a lot of afterschool activity. But I think he's thinking the right, he's even using the right language, right? Third space is in the sense that we have to have more parks, we have to have more leagues,

even if it's religious institutions or nonprofits. We need, and I'm a big fan of national service at a young age, I think like things like ROTC, because we need more opportunities for young men and women to get together and establish empathy for people from different backgrounds, different sexual orientations, to meet each other, to make friendships, to fall in love. And there's not enough of that. There's not enough interaction between hybrid school and homeschooling and remote work and the fact that we don't like each other

and our parents aren't talking to their neighbors because they support Trump or don't support Trump, we're sequestering from each other. So I love the idea of something wonderful. Commonality. Of commonality. Something common. Bump off each other. One of the best things I loved about a big high school was we had the varsity basketball team, the JV, then the Bs and the Cs. So if you were just interested in basketball, you could play.

And then there was not only the cheer squad, there was the drill team. And then there was drumline. And then so it strikes me that that stuff is so powerful. And the only thing I would say to a teacher is teachers are really powerful in the sense that I've been reading a lot about why young men are struggling academically. about why young men are struggling academically. And a big part of it is that about 70% to 80% of primary school teachers are female and about two-thirds of high school teachers are female. And naturally, if you're a woman, who do you empathize with and champion? You find yourself. And the lack of-

Is that true from- If you do surveys of who a teacher champions or take an interest in, unnaturally, it's people who remind them of themselves at that age. Interesting. And you empathize. You're like, that's me. I get this little girl or this little boy. And an absence of male role models across a child's life is one of the biggest reasons why young men fall off the rails. And then bad role models fill the space.

That's exactly right. If they don't have a male role model at home, and also if they don't have a male role model at school, which they are less likely to have because there's just fewer men at schools, what I would say to this individual is, this guy just sounds like a good guy. You can just hear it in his voice, right? And so what I would say is he has an opportunity to maybe find, I think the ultimate demonstration I just keep coming to, of masculinity is to take an irrational interest in the well-being of a child that isn't yours. I think that is the ultimate expression of masculinity. Yeah, interesting.

And so if he finds people who aren't engaged, my guess is he just sounds like the kind of guy, and I'm projecting all sorts of shit here, that everybody likes this guy. And if he says, and if he's involved and just himself tries to get some kids who he thinks might be a little bit detached or a little bit struggling. Mrs. Banta was our teacher who did the leadership class at university high school. I ran for every office, and I lost every time. university high school. I ran for every office and I lost every time. And Mrs. Banta would create positions for me so I could be in leadership, the class for student government, because she liked me. Oh, my God. Really? What were you, captain of the hallway? Whatever president? She invented literally like, I ran for sophomore, junior, and senior class

president. Of course, little Scott. Oh, my God. I'm dying, Scott. I'm dying. You didn't win. Well, this is a true story. I ran for sophomore, junior, and senior class president, lost all three times. Based on my track record, I decided to run for student body president, where I wait for it, lost. Don't talk about prom next, because I know about your prom situation, but go ahead. Mrs. Banta would track me down and say, you know, we're thinking about starting something called the 10th grade Senate. And I'm like, great. Banta would track me down and say, you know, we're thinking about starting something called the 10th grade Senate. And I'm like, great, do I have to run? She's like, no, it's appointed.

And I'm like, who makes the appointment? And she's like, I do when you're our first appointment. And I used to get to come to the leadership class. Oh my God, Mrs. Banta. Oh, you're killing me. Scott, don't kill me. Don't kill, this is terrible. Oh, now I have a vision of Scott, young Scott.

I, oh gosh. Six feet, 130 pounds of bad acne. It was a really good look. And wildly insecure. And wildly insecure. But my point is teachers can have a big impact. And not only that, I'm not saying that girls don't need help, but I think young boys right now need especially a lot of help. It's interesting. And also, especially people who have to work and have to make money, they need, unless you're incredibly motivated. Working is actually a good way to have community too, by the way. I think most people, you know, my kids are very lucky that they get two parents who are like, what are we going to do with you that's going to be community-based? Like Alex worked down at a really cool water conservation and animal conservation thing in D.C. for part of his senior year. They have to give back and stuff like that.

And we all figured it out together, and it was great for him. He built all these hawk because he's tall. He was able to put nets up for them and stuff. So he's lucky that way, but you could get it through. And I think it really helped him to do that as a person. But he has the help to do it, right? He has people encouraging him to be 70%, the 70% that are busier, you know. And those people tend to do better.

You're absolutely right. And for the 30%, you know, working is a good way. People have to work. A lot of people do have to support their families. One of the really great charities in San Francisco that Lorraine Powell Jobs is actually in the Amherst School, it's called College Track or something. It helps people because they have, with a lot of things,

because their own families they have to help support. You know, it helps pay, like, internships so that they don't have to, because a lot of rich kids can take free internships, for example. But there's all kinds of ways to do it, including community groups, sports, what Scott was saying, Mrs. Banta's fake sonnet for Scott Calloway. Oh my God, it's killing me. It's really important to do this. And you're not going to get to everybody, unfortunately, because of circumstances, wealth or family issues. And just some kids don't engage, but we have to try to reach as many because we get these sad kids who feel isolated. And especially with social media, they'll be more isolated. So critically important. We love you, Greg. Stay in the cornfield. Don't go changing. Don't go changing. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, a listener wants to know where Pivot came from. Okay. 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 more listener mail. This one is about search.

It came via email. I'm going to read it. Dear Cara and Scott, the search engine Neva recently closed up shop. I had hopes for it after hearing your interview with CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy. Even so, ambitious startup led by smart, experienced people fail in time. What can we learn from the failure? By the way, love the show. Thanks, Mark Kohut. I know Sridhar very well. He was at Google from Google and he really tried really hard. It's just hard to be in search. And I thought it was very

innovative. There's all kinds of startups that unfortunately fall prey to something like this. And they were trying something different and people had been used to search the way it's done by Google. Very hard to get them off of it. I think, Scott, were you an investor? I don't know if you were, but why don't you talk about it? Yeah, I invested. And I decided a few years ago, I thought, all right, I have some capital. How do I do good in the world? And one is to give money away, but the other was to invest in companies that I thought would provide an option to move away from an ad based model, which creates an incentive around attention and the incentive around attention results in content that makes our discourse more coarse. Privacy, data thievery, all that shit. So I meet Sridhar, who's like, the moment you meet him, he reeks of competence and integrity. And I just thought, okay,

subscription search, this solves a lot of problems. than I invested, you know, for me, a lot of money. I invested several million dollars. And I was a fan of it. And quite frankly, I found myself a lot of times going back to Google. You know, the billions of dollars and decades of IP have made Google a pretty powerful search engine. And the honest truth is we never got the kind of traction we needed to support a subscription-based search firm. People don't want to pull out their credit card for a slightly better version of search. And the business lesson here is that when you invest in great people, you have a shot at hitting a home run and getting huge multiples on your money. But when that doesn't happen and it didn't here, the amazing thing about investing in good people is the downside's limited and the company essentially got acquired. And if I'm honest, I think the primary reason that Snowflake, an amazing company, acquired the company was for the team. And I wrote an email to Street R saying, this is like the best venture

investment you can hope for because I had a lottery ticket that might pay off enormously if this thing had worked. But when it didn't, I got to turn the lottery ticket back in and get my money back. So the lesson here for me was I like the idea of investing in companies that you think are addressing some of the problems. And two, when you invest in like amazing people, it's not only do you maximize the upside, but more so you minimize the downside. Yeah, I would agree. Street art is a real winner in terms of that. I would agree. I think it was hard. It is hard to shift people's, and that was my worry when I interviewed him, that changing people's habits when Google is so efficient and good and you're used to it, and it's the one you used, it's sort of like changing ketchups. It's just Heinz is the only one, right, for ketchup. And so I think that's hard. And getting people to change their behavior

towards subscription, even though it's worked with television, interestingly, although not, they're spending too much, but it's still people like it, is super hard. People's behavior, moving patterns on something that still continues to deliver is difficult. And you're right. It's, you know, it's interesting. It's kind of, you made that in, I don't say an emotional investing, but you wanted something like this to work more than it would work, I guess. I've invested in a company called OpenWeb that is cleaning up, it's a SaaS-based platform that cleans up the comments section

on the New York Times, Fox, the Wall Street Journal, because the really vile shit is in the comments. But OpenWeb comes in and using AI, it cleans up the comments section and stack ranks them based on veracity data and then makes the comments section monetizable

because advertisers are comfortable advertising against comments that are less toxic. And by the way, this company is killing it. Yeah, because there's a lot of terrible comments. That's a necessity for people who want to keep comments. Yeah, I don't want to be clear. I don't want to virtue signal too much. I'm in it because I think I'm going to make money here. But I like the idea of a company that is coming into this gigantic void wide space of trying to address the externalities

of these big tech companies. Yeah, that's a great thing. I literally, just very quick story, I got rid of them on our site. It was around the death, even Steve Jobs was sick. There were these vile rumors that he had AIDS and all kinds of, just very anti-gay. And they just kept piling on each other.

And it was always a problem. And we had a small staff, we couldn't monitor it properly. piling on each other. And it was always a problem. And we had a small staff, we couldn't monitor it properly. And I, you know, I kept kicking this one asshole off, and he was so vile. And, you know, he kept going, I have my right to speak. And I said, it's my fucking website, you go start your own fucking website, if you want to be a pig, you know, kind of thing. And we went back and forth. And one day, I just said, you know what? No, Twitter will be our comment section. That's what's going to happen here. And of course, at the time, it was a very good one. And I directed people there. And I said, I'll comment on our stories. I'll put all our stories up there. And you can comment. And for a while, it was fantastic. For a long time, it was fantastic. And I have to tell you, it was so hard. The comments sections can be just terrible, just terrible. Anyway, good luck, Sridhar. I'm glad Snowflake bought them.

That's a good outcome. Okay, last one. I'll read it. Hi, Cara and Scott, long-time listener and fellow podcaster. I'm the music director at Wait What, which produces Masters of Scale and Meditative Story. Both very good podcasts, by the way. I'm always curious, how did the idea of Pivot come about? Were you two friends before

and decide to turn your private conversations into a show? Did an inspired producer think to bring you two together? Your chemistry is something truly special. Would love to know the official Pivot origin story, Ryan Holiday. We have told this story many times.

Scott, I want to hear it from your perspective. And then I'll correct his inaccuracies. You birded this. Yeah, I did. My first book, The Four, this is how I see it from my perspective. My publicist called around to try and get me on big podcasts. She landed this great podcast called Recode. And I went on your show.

And then a week or two weeks later, you sent me an email that said something like the following. It said, your podcast downloads were like number one or number two in the history of Recode. And I think it's a mistake. So I want you to come on again. I did. And then I'm like, well, thanks for that. But sure, I'll come on again. Then I came on again. And then you called me and said, we should do a show together. I did. That's how I remember it.

You were my only choice. It's so funny. Several people are like, including somebody you don't like, Jason Calacanis, Kara wanted to do it with me. I'm like, I did not want to do it with anyone else but Scott, actually, which was interesting. I had a lot of choices. I could have picked a lot of people. But I never, there was never anybody else I wanted to do the part.

What happened actually before that was I get a lot of people, but I never, there was never anybody else I want to do the part. What happened actually before that was I get a lot of book pitches and I don't love doing things from book pitches necessarily. Although sometimes I do, Jake Tapper's book. And if I like the book or I'm interested in a topic and I did like your book itself, I thought it was interesting way to put it. I thought it was very smart. And you had presented on it at DLD in Germany. That's right. That's where I saw you for the first time. And he did a presentation and did one of his crazy presentations where he was insulting everybody. And he had a wonderful deck, I have to say. I don't love decks, but his is terrific. And I was attracted to your deck, Scott.

Go on. Go on. I was attracted to his deck. And he was also really obnoxious. And he said several things I hadn't thought of, which I feel like I'm very smart. And I know a lot of stuff. And I've been covering a lot of stuff. And I was sort of like, how did he? That was smart. And I hate that. I hated it. I was like, oh, why didn't I think of that, Kara, for goodness sake. And you made some predictions that I thought were kind of sketchy. But then I thought, oh, that does make sense.

And so it attracted my attention. Like, really, it was sort of meet cute or love at first sight. I don't know. It was just like, ha, this guy's fucking smart and what an asshole too. And so, and I did. You were obnoxious. I'm one of those things. The Germans didn't know what to make of him.

I'll tell you that. They were like, was ist das? Was ist das? And so I went up to you and of him. I'll tell you that. They were like, was ist das? Was ist das? And so I went up to you and I said, I really think you're obnoxious, but boy, are you smart or something like that. And you were like, well, thank you for the compliment. And the second we started talking, it was like that. It was really funny.

And then I did invite you. I did write you that email after our thing. And you had made that very strong prediction about Amazon buying Whole Foods, which came true like a week later, which was a sensation at the time, because no one had even thought of that, which was interesting. And no one talked about that ever. And so, and then we tried it again. And the minute, the second one, it was so clear we had chemistry, and I don't know why. I think, again, as I've said many times, I think people, we disagree quite a bit. We agree quite a bit. But agree quite a bit.

But people like to see civil disagreement and smart disagreement and people changing each other's minds about things. And both of us have done that. And that's what's special about it, is we are open to changing our minds about things we didn't think we could change our minds about. And I think that's happened a dozen, two dozen, three dozen times. And I do think people just like a lady and a man. You know, it's a classic trope from comedy shows and everything else, you know, working it out. I don't know. Anything else, Scott? No, just thanks. This whole thing was your vision.

You continue to kind of be the driving force behind it. And I feel like after working my ass off for 30 years, I'm an overnight success because of you. Well, I just shone a light. I shone a light on someone who really had a lot of wisdom in a way that I thought was helpful to people and funny. And again, I do think people like your journey, Scott. You know what I mean? And especially when I'm sort of the white ball in billiards and Scott's the other balls. And I knock him and he comes out and he lands it kind of thing.

And I think that happens a lot. I think, I mean, this is our favorite thing talking about us, but I think that what works is, A, I think we're fond of each other and that comes through. And two, we come from different, a little bit different political backgrounds. I would describe myself as a moderate. You're a little bit left of me. If you say Wokistan one more time, I'm going to slap, I'm going to come in there and slap you because I can do that. Ladies and gentlemen, this is your pilot. On your left, we have Wokistan. We have a series of refusals to face adult realities. Off the right side of your plane.

How about I have a tolerance for people's differences and I celebrate them? Off to the right of the plane, we have a series of petty grievances. That's the right wing, my friend. series of petty grievances. That's the right wing, my friend. But we like each other and we disagree in a civil way. But I actually think the secret sauce is I am profane and inappropriate and there will be a pause and you will laugh and it gives everyone permission to laugh. Yeah, we've talked about this. I think that's true. And I think that people want a pressure valve. They want a release where they can feel good about being a little bit irreverent or profane or vulgar. And people don't realize it's strategic on our part. I think the left needs to take back vulgarity and profanity.

I think it's funny. The comedians who were really profane, Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, were progressives. And it bothers me that the irreverent has been weaponized by the right. I agree. I think the left should take back patriotism, democracy, freedom, and irreverence. You're right. I agree. I'm going to add masculinity. speaking of left people, someone, Fox is mixed actually, but someone who was more on the left side of the equation came up to me when it was starting and they were sort of perplexed as why I picked you. You know what I mean? Like you could pick anybody. And I was like, well, this is who I want. You know, it was someone, it wasn't Jim Bakoff who loved you from the beginning, but

someone who I didn't love and never have said, Scott is really offensive, Kara. And I was like, uh-huh. Like, I literally said, uh-huh. And they're like, well, he's very offensive. And I go, okay. And they're like, well, I think you need to fix that on the show. Like, they were giving me feedback or notes, like I want any notes from people. And I said, you don't understand. That's the show. That's the entire show is he's offensive. I hit him. He says something amazing. He says something offensive or irreverent or vulgar again. I hit him again. I disagree with him. I agree with him. He changes my mind. I'm like, that's the entire fucking show, you idiot. And then I walked away. I was like, I try to do, and I think you do this, and quite frankly, I think you have more cloud cover to do it because of your background. But if you're wealthy or you're economically secure and you have people in your life that love you, you have an obligation to say exactly what you think. Because what happens across the entire spectrum is you start, there's a narrative that emerges. And in this era of constant feedback, the pressure to sign up to a specific narrative once you have an audience.

Yeah, team, tribe, yeah. And just reinforce the narrative becomes so great that we all start barking up the same tree. We become stupid and we become polarized. And, you know, we try and do that. One of the things I like about, you're very progressive on social issues, but there's a real economic pragmatism to your viewpoints. And also, you know, and also, I was even, we had a question about Lena Kahn. I want to like Lena Kahn. I think people are rooting for her. I think she's doing a bad job. think people are rooting for her, I think she's doing a bad job. And when I say that, I believe it. And I don't want to say it because it's going to offend a lot of my friends. I think that you do it. But I think that's something I would, you know, a goal for the show is to say occasionally, you know, I get all the time, the biggest compliment I get, people come up to me in the street and they say, I don't always agree with you, but you make me think. And I'm like,

that's the whole fucking point is that if you're just surrounding yourself with people you agree with, you're never going to get smarter. You're just going to reinforce your views, some of which are right, some of which are wrong. And I mean, that's the whole point is to find people and media that you disagree with. And they learn a lot. They learn a lot, too. We also provide, I think, very good insights and ideas that they can use at work, too. I think that's one thing. And that's disagree with. And they learn a lot. They learn a lot too. We also provide, I think, very good insights and ideas that they can use at work too. I think that's one thing.

And that's workable, that they can, and people listen together. We have a lot of husbands and wives listening. I had like four people come up to me, and they listen together and they like it. They mix it. And there's two more things I would say is, I have literally people come up to me all the time

and go, what you just said. They go, God, Scott drives me crazy. I love him. You know what I mean? That's the thing is like, they love disagreeing and they feel good about it. And I think that's really helpful. Some people come up and say, I don't agree with you at all. I think Scott really hands you it. I love it. You know what I mean? Like that kind of thing. But one of the last things I would say is I think we're funny. And there's an expression, a little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants. I think people are not, don't have a sense of humor anymore about anything.

And I think people like laughing and they enjoy and enjoying and getting a little joy out of things rather than feeling relentlessly, you know, the earth is falling, chicken little, it sucks. I think we are very clear about things that suck, but we also have hope. That's one of the things, and funny. I think that's the key one. Nothing makes my deck grow like talking about ourselves. Anyway, we love that question. That is the official history.

It will change over time when we have a spectacular breakup, which is, we're going to have such a spectacular breakup. It's going to be so good. Behind the music. And then he became addicted to heroin and married Pam Anderson. Then there'll be the murder. No, I'm moving in with Pam Anderson in Alaska, wherever she is. I will get off on the murder and become a celebrated author. Anyway, we love your questions. We love them and we love our listeners, as we always say. And again, come up to us. People

always say that. And you say, come up to us. We mean it. We love them and we love our listeners, as we always say. And again, come up to us. People always say that. And you say come up to us. We mean it. We love it and we think it's great. Please send us more. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. Okay, Scott, that's the show. Thanks for coming in.

And Scott, for you, August, I hope you're right now enjoying yourself in some lovely Colorado vista. I hope you're having a good time and we miss you. We can't wait to get back in September. So when September comes, we'll be so excited to have you live again. Please read us out. Today's show is produced by Lara Naiman, Travis Larchuk and Taylor Griffin.

Ernie and Jatat engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows, Mia Silverio and Gaddy McBain. Make sure you're subscribed to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. We'll be back soon for another breakdown of all things tech and business. It's August. That's right, you missed it, Doug. Nikita brands a scarcity. Where is he? Where is he?