Pivot - The New McCarthy Era, A.I. on the Rise, and Guest Mike Allen

Episode Date: January 10, 2023

Kara and Scott are back together! They discuss the new power balance in Congress, how A.I. will and won't transform, and a potential ban on non-compete clauses. Plus, Jack Ma will give up control of Ant Group, and echoes of January 6th in Brazil. Today's Friend of Pivot is Mike Allen of Axios, who stops by to chat about his new book, “Smart Brevity: The Power of Saying More with Less,” and the changing landscape of the news business. You can find Mike Allen on Twitter at @MikeAllen and can find Smart Brevity here. 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 Cara Swisher.

Cara, it's not about me, and I think we need to bust right into the news. I just don't want to dwell on me. This isn't a big deal. Yes. Wait, what is that? Okay, it's a little bit about me. Cara, do you really know your co-host? Is he the kind of guy that, after seeing France lose to the incredible Argentinian team,

goes to a Doha library and reads to underprivileged kids. No, that's not him. Is he the kind of guy that takes an edible, gets on a camel, and then interrupts the shooting of Dune II? Getting warmer. Is he the kind of guy when he's in Bangkok is disturbed when he takes a prostitute home and finds in fact that she is a woman? Because you know what they say, prostitutes today, you don't know which one has nuts. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, from the Vox Media Podcast Network, it is most definitely not Audie Cornish. Who is it? That's right. As Elton John reminds us on his seventh farewell tour, the bitch is back.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, it's the dog. Oh, yes, you're welcome. God. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, good God. That's good.

Make it stop. That was good. Oh, my God. That was good. You are definitely not Audie Cornish. I'll tell you that. She's good. That's the only one I listened to while I was gone.

She's good. I'd like to be her neighbor. Would you? Don't you think she'd be a great neighbor? I suppose. I guess. I'd be like, hey, can you watch my kids? And she'd be like, oh gosh, Scott. And she'd watch my kids. She would watch your Scott. There'd be a lot of eye-rolling

neighbors, what she would be. By the way, Cara, that was Money for Nothing by Dire Straits. Mark Knopfler, one of the great lead guitarists and back when you didn't need to be attractive to be a rock star. Scott, how are you? We missed you so. Did you? Did you?

No. I'm great. I'm doing really well. Went to the World Cup. Where the fuck have you been? You've just disappeared off the face of the earth. I went to Dubai, then Doha, then back to Dubai. You were like there forever.

What were you doing? Were you making investment deals like Jared Kushner? I was trying to do some of that. I was watching a lot of football with my boys. I absolutely loved the World Cup. It was wonderful. And then I went to Bangkok with my boys and to Chiang Rai and then to Phuket. And I went to Chiang Rai.

What's Chiang Rai? There's two different places. Oh, okay. I'm a little bit triggered that you don't understand Thai geography. If you just invested a little bit of time in Southeast Asian culture. All right. So you went to Thailand. Yeah, we just had a wonderful time.

A ton of time with the family. I don't know about you, but I find if I'm away from my boys for longer than a couple of days, it's literally like I've lost a limb. And I found that after spending four weeks with them, you want to chew your arm off. No, I don't agree with you as usual. I've had it. I have had it. I am so long family right now. I literally couldn't wait to give it to her.

I spent my whole time with my family. I miss them all every day. Oh, my God. Yeah. We were all together. One's going through puberty. All of us were together, including one girlfriend. Although, you know what?

I did have that all-important. I have a 15-year-old boy, and we did have that all-important sex talk. and I wanted to talk to him about, and I think this is important about, about safe sex. So I brought in a banana and a condom, and I'm going to tell you how to put a condom on. And he said, what's the banana for? And I'm like, I can't get hard on an empty stomach. That's right. It's good to have me back. By the way, that's the comedy of Dan Natterman, the total comedic genius.

Oh, good God. Anyways, enough of that. You had heart surgery. I had heart surgery. Thanks for asking. You had heart surgery. I really liked the flowers you sent and the calls you made to me. Yes, I did. I had heart surgery, and I'm here to say that I am fine. But thank you for asking. You seem more loving.

No, not even slightly. I have a cyborg heart now. I have a device in my heart that closed the hole that was there. And it was a day surgery. It was amazing. It was amazing. So I didn't lose a step, I would have to say. Yeah, I was a little like, I thought it was a little bit over the top about how everybody, all the Twitter love you were getting.

I'm like, Jesus Christ, I'm more at risk when I go get Invisalign installed. I did some research on your heart surgery, and everyone's like, best of luck to you. We're thinking about you. Go, girl. You're such an inspiration. And I'm like, it's more dangerous to get your teeth cleaned than what you had. Oh, really? No, I don't think so. They went up through a vein into my heart. If they had had missed one thing, I could have been dead in an instant. You were in and out. You didn't even spend the night in the hospital, correct? I did not. I went in at seven, hung around for a couple hours, and then had the surgery, woke up, and just hung out in the hospital until three o'clock when

a friend of my brother's drove me home. It was very nice. And didn't some little boy from a poor nation have to give you his heart? Isn't that how it works? No, no. And you paid for it? They put this thing in, this umbrella something or other, and it went in and it was fine. Hard flap harvesting in some little village somewhere? No, they didn't harvest anyone's heart. It was a piece of plastic. And now I am well. I am well.

And then the rest of the vacation was the family all together in San Francisco. Oh, you were in the Bay Area for the whole time. Yes, we were there for a week. I was there for two weeks. And then we were in Palm Springs for a week, which I love. I love Palm Springs. You love Palm Springs? I stayed at the Jerry Lewis Estate.

That's where I rented it for the family. Yeah. It wasn't a big house, it was a small house. It was a smallish house. Had a pool though. Was it a Neutra? There's a lot of Neutra architecture out there. It was a lot.

We went on a, Amanda and I went on an architecture tour, a bike architecture tour, which was cool, and all the gays kept inviting us in to look at their own beautiful homes. And then we went out to a Hot Springs by ourselves. We did a few little dates. I love Palm Springs. Yeah, I love Palm Springs. It was great. We should all go there. We should do an event there. There's all this cool stuff going on there. I loved it. It was great. And then I'm back here working away, working away.

Yeah, thanks for covering me. Oh, no problem. I kept seeing in my feed, new pivot podcast. Yeah, yeah. And I listened to your podcast on, I forget his name, the guy with the car company. I thought that was just okay. Tony Fidel? Who? No, the guy with the hair transplant who's like kind of a, I don't know, like he's a man-child, supposedly worth a lot of money. He's lost a billion dollars. I forget his name. Oh, Elon, yeah. I listened to that one. That one was pretty good, but I really enjoyed Audie Cornish. I thought she was good. Audie was very good. I was trying people out as usual. I'm always waiting for you not to come back for whatever sojourn that you go to. You never know with you. You probably did a deal with like Doha TV to do a TV show.

I tried. I tried. No? It was called Doha Plus, and it's already been canceled. Me and Al Gore. Well, there's been a lot going on since you've been away. Things have not stopped just because you're away.

Kevin McCarthy is finally Speaker of the House after 15 votes, I guess. We'll talk about what that means for the tech industry. He's quite close to the tech industry and the Republicans are not. We'll chat about chat GPT,

how tech companies are capitalizing on artificial intelligence. And we'll speak briefly with Axios' Mike Allen about politics, the news business, and the soul of wit. I think that'll be very exciting. Are you glad to be back?

Are you glad to be here? Yeah, back in London. You know, I'm just kind of glad to be back in the swing of things. I was on the road for five weeks. And I find, I don't know if you're the same way, I find as I get older, travel is harder and harder for me. I don't like travel that much. I like home. You're right.

I've always been like that. A lot of photos of you in bars with, in bars and dough. A lot of eating by yourself. I was by myself a lot. So how was the World Cup? How was the World Cup itself? Was it exciting? In a word, amazing.

Was it? Did you love it? It was a pretty good match, right? The final between Argentina and France was arguably the best football match in the history of the World Cup. But the ones before it were good too, right? Yeah, Morocco was an inspiration. Saudi Arabia beat in the initial rounds the ultimate winner of the World Cup.

Croatia did an incredible job. The fans from Morocco were incredible. The stadiums. I mean, I understand there's a lot of justified concerns about Qatar and the Gulf in general, but in terms of a host nation, nothing like a quarter of a trillion dollars helps you put on an amazing World Cup, and there's just no getting around it. It was flawless.

How was the no-liquor situation? Well, it's funny, because AB InBev actually hosted me. I presented to the board a few times, and they're really nice people, and they'll say, what can we do for you? And I'm like, two words, World and Cup, and they hosted me and my family, super generous. And we had a bunch of Bud Zeros and

my boys just love rolling around the hotel lobby with a Budweiser. My 12-year-old thought that was the coolest thing in the world. Just hanging out, yelling at strange people, holding a beer. Okay, good. A non-beer, right? Yeah, but it was amazing. Yeah. Did you hang out with Elon Musk there? He was there. I saw on Instagram, someone said, I was literally, I think about 40 feet from him. But no, we didn't. I mean, we made out in the men's room. Of course. But other than that.

Well, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, are you getting ready for, are you excited to see me in Europe? Yeah, I am excited to see you. We're going to Munich, and then you're coming to London to see my home. Yeah, it'll be really nice. I'm excited to see you. Good. We're going to do some quality snuggling, okay? It'll be nice. That's where we met. We're going to where we met. Spoonie? That's right. So we're going to DLD, where I thought, who is this asshole? But I like him. Anyway, it's going to be fun. We're going to do a live pivot in both places, and we're going to hang out and talk about 2023 and where we're going next, Scott, you and I, on our long journey. We're going to renew our vows. Renew our vows again.

Oh, God. I was in Thailand at a resort. We met this really nice couple. I thought I could be friends with them. And then they told us they were renewing their vows. I'm like, that's it. We can't be friends with these people. I'm like, that's it. It's all. That's a beautiful place. I love Thailand. I love Bangkok. I love all of Thailand. So we have a lot to talk about. There's been a lot going on politically, actually. Echoes of January 6th with the insurrection in Brazil. Thousands of pro-Bolsonaro rioters stormed government buildings over the weekend. They smashed windows, climbed on roofs, ransacked government offices. 300 people have been arrested.

Brazilian President da Silva blamed Bolsonaro for encouraging the attack, called the attack derespacious. Bolsonaro denied any responsibilities, reportedly been in Florida hanging out with Steve Bannon, I guess, since December. Sounds familiar. I don't know about you, but it sounds familiar. Any thoughts on this? I think it's really upsetting. You've talked a lot about Brazil as an innovative place, Argentina and Brazil. Well, America is that shining beacon on a hill, whether it's reality TV or capitalism or equity

markets. The rest of the world has a tendency to look at what we do and take it very seriously and model it. And there's a dark side to that. And that is, you have sort of, you know, B-level fascists or domestic terrorists who are not held to account for organizing an insurrection and resulting in the death and, you know, injury to government employees. And the whole world has to see our representatives who represent us, regardless of what you think of them, cowering in fear. And a president who tells this mob to take a noose and hunt down his vice president and a speaker of the house and isn't held accountable. And I'm kind of, I'm over this both-sideism. President Trump is a stain on the American fabric. And until he is held accountable, and all his other people are complicit in this type of domestic terrorism, and that's what it is,

other nations are going to, democracies all over the world are going to register this and think it's okay. So I think this is terrible. Well, they've tried hundreds and hundreds. They're getting off with light sentences, although getting a lot of yelling at them by the judges, essentially. Yeah, I read that too. But you do feel for them. You read these things.

And they did go down rabbit holes. Social media should be held responsible. In Brazil, it certainly was off the charts there. A lot of the misinformation in the organization happened on social media. But at the end of the day, until everyone talks about coming together and moving forward, I think the key step to that is accountability. And I think until the leader of this insurrection is subpoenaed and tried for this type of domestic terrorism, I don't think we can move forward. And I think it's only going to spread. We talked about the domino theory in Southeast Asia and Vietnam. That didn't happen. This is

a real domino theory playing out, though. Oh, I lose an election, I'll coordinate on social media. And what price do I have to pay? What price did Trump pay? He hasn't paid any price. Well, we'll get into that when we talk about Kevin McCarthy. He's definitely becoming relegated to the sidelines in the Republican Party. But yes, you're right. He hasn't gone to jail and he hasn't certainly been on. There's been the January 6th committee. There's been a look at it. It's just a question of whether he's going to pay anything for his misbehavior and an insurrection. Someone who is paying is Jack Ma. He's giving up control of Ant Group, the fintech giant behind China's Alipay app.

Ma founded Ant Group eight years ago and has controlled it through a web of holding companies. Ma has rarely been seen in public since clashing with Chinese regulators in 2020 over Ant's planned and canceled IPO. He'll remain one of its major shareholders, but CNN estimates the stake will drop from more than 50% to just 6%. What's happened to Jack Ma is really so much, remains shocking to me. And even though, you know, there's all these debates of whether tech platforms should be controlled by one person, China's not putting up with it at all. And it's really quite breathtaking given how popular he was, he is, has been with Chinese entrepreneurs. Yeah, it's just, it's fascinating and chilling at the same time. And that is, the CCP has definitely taken very meticulous notes on what's playing out in America and said that these individuals who

become almost like nation states in terms of their power and through leveraging technology and the idolatry of innovators and the power of money. And they've said, that dog's just not going to hunt here. And for all of these tech billionaires here who shitpost the government and don't want to pay their taxes or move to low tax domains and say government should just get out of the way. nod your head to the fact that the equivalent here would be if Jeff Bezos started saying, I don't know, for whatever reason, insulting Biden, and all of a sudden, and this happened, he disappeared for four weeks. And then he showed up five weeks later in Tokyo and said, I'm no longer in e-commerce. I'm going to paint. Oh, and by the way, my stake in Amazon's gone from 16% to 1.6%. That is what is happening in China. Yeah, agreed, agreed. It'll be interesting to see where it goes and why.

There's got to be a bigger story here, which we'll never get to see, like how it happened and what he's doing. He was such an ebullient entrepreneur and so aggressive. I've known him for a very long time. I would love to talk to him. I don't think he's able to talk, I suspect, or he's been very cooperative. I don't think he has a choice. He's sort of been stripped of his fame, essentially. I think they basically do what every autocratic government does through intimidation.

They're like, okay, here are your cousins, your sisters, and your family, and they're going to start dying or being imprisoned unless you fall in line. It's happening across the globe in Iran, everywhere else. Interestingly here, one of the more interesting things that companies use to control people, non-compete agreements, have nowhere to go. A proposed rule from the FTC would ban non-compete clauses. I'm sure you're very familiar with these. Chairman Lina Khan said the agreements deprive workers of higher wages and businesses of talent pools that they need to build and expand. The agency estimates the rule would increase worker wages by $300 billion per year. An estimated 16 to 18 percent of U.S. workers have non-compete provisions in their contracts. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce opposes the rule, calling it blatantly unlawful.

What do you think of these? You know, they're not very enforceable is what everyone always tells me. Outside of California, and if you're an officer of a company, they're very enforceable. Yeah. All right. Talk about this idea. So let me be clear. I take back any negative thing I've ever seen around Lena Kahn. I think this is a hugely important move.

I had a company acquired. I'm a big boy. I signed the non-compete. And basically, all I had to do was stick around in the company for three years, and I was going to make $10-plus million. After about three months, I realized that it wasn't worth the money for me. And when I told them I was leaving, they began sending me letters from their legal firm saying they were going to sue me if I did anything. And effectively, what you have is the following. You have a chilling on the economy because some of the best and brightest can no longer... Look at all these incredible companies

that Facebook acquired and all these incredible entrepreneurs. They've gone on to do absolutely nothing. Yeah, that are sitting on the sidelines, rest investing, yeah. And they can't because they'll get sued. And granted, we're big boys. We took the money and we signed these things. But what it does is the following. It lowers wages across, I mean, you shouldn't have sympathy for officers or people who make millions of dollars, but so someone who's making 150 or 200 grand and might get a good offer to a competitor

or another platform can't go. Or a startup, yeah. And they use, and companies now use acquisitions to kill companies, kill innovation. And then the employees, so what it does is it suppresses wages, it suppresses innovation. And who it does benefit is the entrepreneurs that sign these things and get huge payouts do well. And also the company that's able to establish monopoly power because

Kevin Systrom or an entrepreneur who started a business intelligence firm that might compete with its acquirer can't go off and start anything similar. It helps monopolies entrench their monopoly power. It does. I've always found them super irritating. One of the things I do to them is I edit them and I say, but this is left out. And I leave myself a giant hole. And I definitely get, that's the one place whenever I do contracts, I get pushback from employers. Well, what does this mean? You know, I got in a beef with the New York Times over my succession podcast thing I did. It was finally settled, but it was irritating. You know, I try to write as much as possible because they try to be as broad as possible when they're doing it. So you can't do anything. And I thought, why do you care if I don't want to work for, I don't mean the Times, but in general,

I have done this. I've done it at Vox. I've changed the non-competes. I don't even know why they're there at all. And then since I- It should be illegal. In California, it was like, doesn't really matter. Suppressed wages and innovations and startups. Yeah. I think what people want to do is they want to buy you to stay, right? Well, they can do that. And then you should be able to decide. You should be able to decide if you want to stay for the money and do nothing. They can buy you to stay. They can say, all right, here's golden handcuffs. We're going to pay you

millions of dollars every year you stay. And if you leave, you leave it. I left several million dollars when I left the firm. And I think that's fine. What isn't fine is they use intimidation in law firms to start sending you letters. I'm not exaggerating. Every week for a year. What did you do? I basically at one point said, okay, sue me. I'm starting another company. And look, I'm not the victim here because I was paid a lot of money and I had lawyers review the contract and I knew what I was signing. But what they do is, and this is their playbook, is they try and intimidate you and threaten to sue you and threaten to shut down your new firm and your firm won't be able to raise money. And you end up with, you decide, okay, I'm not going anywhere near this field.

Even something that could be interpreted as near the field. Right, they're very broad, very broad, yeah. And then what happens is, not for senior-level employees, but mid-level employees that are now signing these things can't go anywhere in their sector, which suppresses their wages. And so the shareholders of the monopoly get more money. their wages. And so the shareholders of the monopoly get more money. The senior level employees who sign these things, who get huge payouts, it creates income inequality, it suppresses innovation, and it suppresses wages at a mid-tier. These things are terrible. I understand how the U.S. Congress said it's blatantly unlawful. I think this is a very popular thing. You're right. Lena's done a great thing here. They'll probably try,

some people will try to sue her back. But I would agree, talent pools need to build and expand. All right, speaking of no talent, let's get to our first big story. The House of Representatives finally has a speaker, but does it have a leader? That's a harder question to answer. Kevin McCarthy signed away much of his position's autonomy in his deal with the Chaos Caucus.

Among those concessions, any one member of Congress can call for a motion to vacate, essentially a vote of no confidence. Democrats worry that McCarthy's concessions could lead to total gridlock on key bills, like raising the debt ceiling. Were you paying attention? I really was watching. This was good TV because C-SPAN was there. Best season of C-SPAN so far, right?

Yeah, I know. It is. It was so exciting. It was very exciting. What are your thoughts on this, Cara far, right? Yeah, I know it is. It was so exciting. It was very exciting. What are your thoughts on this, Cara? I was so riveted to the ridiculous drama. I hated myself for watching it. I was watching Stephanie Ruhle, actually. And I kept texting her because she interviewed Lauren Boebert. She did the whole thing. It was sort of like a weird drama. And it was interesting from watching democracy in action kind of thing, which means they're all a

bunch of idiots, essentially, but it was also interesting to watch the deal-making in real time. I think he's given, I think he desperately, he has desperate ambition and wanted this job and will have no ability to do anything. I don't think he cares about doing anything. That's what it seems like because he's certainly, already the election was difficult enough for him to do a good job here

because of how small it is and how easy it is for, you know, centrist Republicans to wander over to the Democratic side on a lot of bills. So that's a problem. I think that he puts himself at risk and has for this chaos, this right wing chaos group that just doesn't really want to govern. They just want to make a mess. I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing, you know, but the Republicans are in charge. I think they're going to pay for it at the ballot box and you're going to have two houses of Congress controlled by the Democrats in the next election. And it's just, is it embarrassing? I don't know. It's just the way things work. But I don't think they've made themselves disagreeable to big business. And what's

interesting, he's also going to have a problem with the chaos caucus, which I'm just going to keep calling it. He opposed antitrust legislation. He didn't want to empower Lena Kahn and the FTC. One of his closest confidants is a lobbyist whose clients accute Apple, SpaceX, his name's Jeff Miller, and Amazon. He adopted the Republican Party line regarding big tech, taking issue with the industry's censorship and et cetera in relationship with China and collusion with Democrats. But honestly, I've talked to lots of tech people, and he's out there looking for money and friends almost constantly and agreeing to do all kinds of deals with these people. So I don't think he's an unfriend of tech. I think he's quite close to tech.

Obviously, he's from California, but that doesn't mean he has to be. I don't know. What do you think? How did it look? When did you get back? Were you watching it? I think the Republican, and granted, there's some bias here, but if you think about how the Republican Party was in news, by the way, I just longed for the days when George Santos was Speaker of the House. I found that much easier. That guy. Oh, I forgot about that story. Look at the Republican Party.

You got George Santos, a guy who essentially just made up everything. And I think the most interesting thing about that story is that we really pay a price when we don't have local journalism. Yeah, right. We do. Although local journalists did alert people. It's just that nobody else cared. Nobody listened? Nobody listened, yeah.

And then you have Matt Gaetz all of a sudden becomes a power player. I know, right? Sitting there with his punchable face. I think that's what's happening. But look, they're winning. These people have been elected by people who just say, cause chaos. We don't want government. We literally want it to just stop.

We would like to go to zero. And they're winning. But I just wonder, I don't know how long he lasts. To me, he's always come across as a very weak leader. And that is, I'll say whatever's, it's like purely the pursuit of power and nothing else. And I don't think that sort of inspires a lot of loyalty. He's given away so much. It just seems to me that this is just the beginning of his problems.

He wanted, on his resume, I know it was so interesting because he sort of had a shit-eating grin the whole time. And I was like, why do you want to do this? I don't have a sense of why he wants to do it. I did have a sense with Nancy Pelosi and previous Republican speakers. It just feels like he just wants the job no matter what. And you're right, seeing the visuals of Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert, who barely won her election. She's going to lose the next one, I think, because that guy is very popular. The guy who was 600 votes or something in a very red, a ruby red district.

I think she's sitting there like she's really functionally, she really doesn't know what she's saying. The interview with Stephanie was, I couldn't believe Stephanie had her on, but nonetheless, she just didn't know what she was talking about. Yeah, but the interview that really hurt her was the interview on Fox. Fox, yes. So, Sean Hannity was on the side of Kevin McCarthy. I mean, when Fox turns on you, it's like, okay, you really got a problem. Yeah. And that was weird. And then it's like, why am I looking at these people and not actual?

I'm sure the real legislators are like, what the fucking hell is going on here? Like, you know, that guy with the bad rug on his head was trying to attack Matt Gaetz. Yeah, we almost became that whatever, I don't know if it's South Korea, that assembly that regularly breaks out into fistfights. And then what struck me was Kevin McCarthy said, I want to secure the southern border. I want to take wokeism out of our schools. And I don't agree with his version of either of those things, but I can see why they're at least talking points. And then the third thing, which just struck me, is he wants to defund the IRS again. He wants to do away with this.

And it's like, okay, let me get this. I mean, they're so the party of the 1% that they want to defund the IRS such that wealthy people with complicated tax returns can continue to not pay taxes. That's correct. Because what the IRS and Kevin McCarthy are saying is that on a risk-adjusted basis, don't pay your taxes when you're wealthy because there's a lesser and lesser chance you're going to get audited. Also, I think they were, it was interesting because the visuals of Biden with McConnell doing infrastructure stuff and meeting, it just was like, that's functional. Biden at the border, functional. And they're just doing this ridiculous

like pizza box delivery stuff. I think the press didn't do itself any favors by the coverage. It was so like breathless. And now this one, now this one. You know, I get why the political press does that. But I find it really like, is anyone talking about what it actually means? Or is it just sort of fun to see who wins class president? Because this is a meaningless class president. So I was a little bit disappointed with that because it was so breathless. And so I had no idea why it mattered. And I don't think it'll have any impact. I think it'll have zero impact on anything.

I don't think, you know, they'll continue not to do anything about tech. They'll continue. It'll just bump along and nothing will happen. And there was a lot of legislation that was passed, good legislation. Newt Gingrich made the speaker a partisan position. It used to be mostly an administrative position. It was just the party put up, the controlling party put up a person who kind of ran the meeting. It was like, okay, who's going to run this?

Who's going to count the votes? And who's going to run this? Who's going to count the votes? And who's going to gavel? I mean, it wasn't meant to be a person who was sort of partisan, and it was meant to be someone who made sure that everyone got time to speak. And so I was hopeful for a moment, and it didn't happen, that they were going to pick someone outside of Congress to come back and say, have Kasich do it. He seemed like a nice guy and organized. I thought that was an interesting idea for a while, but it just further, it's like, okay, you're winning on the far right. You want chaos and total intransigence and you don't want government to do anything? Okay, you're winning. Yep, I agree. I think it's not going to go anywhere. One of the things that's interesting is that there's, you know, it'll be interesting

to see how the voters, I don't think the voters were paying a lot of attention to it, although it was embarrassing. But I do think it's sort of, they're going to do all kinds of dumb, loud things and not actual governing. And that's really where they're going to lose. Because I think voters have said in the last election, we're tired of this noise. We're tired of election denialism in the case of Republicans. And we'd like you to do something. And I think that's going to you to do something. And I think that's going to be the real problem. And I don't know, it just seems, it's pretty sad when you

think about what they're capable of doing. And the other thing that's a little frightening is he's second in line for the presidency, right? This guy who's such an oaf. The Senate is very calm. It looks like the Senate is very calm, but they can't do anything without the House. So I suspect behind the scenes, they'll do a little more cooperation because they should be thinking about helping the American people and not sitting around trying to target individual government officials and do this woke mind drivers bullshit. But they will. That's what they'll do because that's what they've given into that wing of the party.

I do think a couple of the things that the side asked for was actually kind of, I agreed with, like term limits. I was like, yes, push for term. I agree. 100%. Yay. I was sort of, there were a few things I was like, yes, push the term. Yeah, I agree. 100%. Yay. There were a few things I was like, yeah, let the legislators not have to vote on giant packages they don't read, force things through, do individual pieces of legislation. I felt that was actually correct. But of course, the power mongers don't want that. It means they're not going to do anything, which is probably a good thing. Let's go on a quick break. When we come back,

tech giants adapt to the world of AI. We'll speak with a friend of Pivot, Mike Allen, about the benefits of brevity. Fox Creative. This is advertiser content from Zelle. When you picture an online scammer, what do you see? For the longest time, we have these images of somebody sitting crouched over their computer with a hoodie on, just kind of typing away in the middle of the night. And honestly, that's not what it is anymore. That's Ian Mitchell, a banker turned fraud fighter.

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It's put some tech giants on the defensive. Late last year, Research Lab OpenAI released its bot chat GPT for public testing. The bot impressed many with its lifelike answers. Now Microsoft, which is backing this, is reportedly incorporate the bot into its Bing search engine. So Bing is coming back,

according to the information. But other companies aren't opening the pod bay doors for new tech. The New York Times reports that Google management has declared a code red over the chat bot. They're also been working on their own. Meanwhile, Google and Apple have been using AI voices to read audio books. Let's listen to a clip. Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies with Uncle Henry and Aunt Em. Their house was small for the lumber to build it had to be carried by wagon many

miles. There were four walls, a floor, and a roof, which made one room, and this room contained a rusty-looking cook stove, a cupboard for the dishes, a table, three or four chairs, and the beds. Huh, that sounds good. I don't know, it works fine. What do you think about this? I mean, were you paying attention to this? Google has its own Lambda chatbot. Remember when that engineer said it was sentient, which it's not. So they wanted to, you know, they've been slower to do it. But Microsoft is back here. Maybe Bing's going to make a recovery.

Maybe this is the future of search. It certainly gives a lot of wrong answers. But what do we think of this? Or is it just another, like like silliness that will go away? Well, it is powerful. I spent a bunch of time with my youngest, my 12-year-old, asking chat GBT or whatever it's called, questions and seeing what it came back with. And first, we started with visuals, you know, give me a Great Dane drinking Zacapa in the, you know, the format or the design of the old masters or whatever.

You did this with your child. Okay, go ahead. He's really into this stuff. Is it Kappa? Okay. He's got to have role models. Anyways, and then— I'm going to do a London intervention on your children. Did I tell you I was hanging out in the lobby

yelling at people holding a Bud Zero? Yeah, you told me that. Yeah, I'm filing this all the way for the report I'm going to need to do to London officials when I take your children. But we said, okay, write a poem, write a story, summarize Harry Potter in two pages or less. And, I mean, it really is very, very powerful. And right now, I think it's great marketing for Bing because it kind of gives I mean has anyone heard of Bing in a while?

So there you go. Do you know he introduced it at one of our codes and he yelled Bing Bing over and over again Steve Ballmer. There you go. It's now I think

one of the 10 most valuable startups in the world that are doing this. 29 billion. Whether or not I mean it'll be interesting to see what I predicted in my prediction stack that AI would be the technology of 2023.

And I don't, and what I want to be clear, I don't know if it will actually have tangible impact that makes it the technology of the year. But it's going to be the next thing that everyone's going to get huge FOMO around. And you're going to see $100 billion in market capitalization leak to the company. Yes, I agree with you with that. The subscription search engine Neva that I'm an investor in is pivoted to AI-driven search. And all of a sudden, we have new life and people are calling us and want to partner with us. So, AI is about to become the new Web3, the new metaverse, the new whatever you want to call it. It does have uses. I think one of the things about Bitcoin and cryptocurrency,

you never really had a use, right? It was just speculative assets. And so you're like, what am I using this for? In this case, people are experimenting when you actually get to use it, right? And it's interesting. I just wonder if it's going to be interesting and then not interesting, like a lot of things,

like Clubhouse was, right? It was useful and then not, right? That kind of thing. And so I do think that, you know, there's all this, like, as usually there's one stupid worry, which is AI-generated text cheating in schools and writing term papers. I mean, kids already do a bad job of that enough already. So, and they're trying to figure out a way to digitally watermark the text and stuff like that. But this is, people always find ways to cheat. To me, that story has written way too many times. But it makes sense that a lot of, just like, you know, accounting is done by computers

really now, right? Anything that can be, I keep saying this, anything can be digitized will be digitized. And some of this stuff shouldn't be done by people. You know, some of this text shouldn't be done by people and it could just as easily be read by AI. Like people were going freaky about that. And I'm like, I know there's an industry of reading books, but if it's done by, it costs less with them, why not do that? That's that, you know, they don't, you don't still use horses, you use cars.

And so it makes sense. There's usefulness here. I do see there's usefulness here when you finally begin to see it. Some of it is just a parlor trick though, to me, a lot of it is right now. It strikes me that the analogy is what robotics did to manufacturing, this will do to the information age or information workers. So if you're an editor, you know, voiceover. There's edit stuff, yeah. This is just going to, just as a robot doesn't

want holidays or doesn't get payroll taxes or demand health insurance, you know, for drafting, say, drafting today's big stories. You know, there's a producer that drafts all these stories for the local radio station for the guy who comes on and reads the weather or reads— Which all they're doing is pulling other people's work. That's right. But at some point, the bot will be able to instruct it and say, okay, go find me the most interesting news stories out of Asia, put it, the bot, you'll be able to instruct it and say, okay, go find me the most interesting news stories out of Asia, put it in bullet form. And the woman who used to put that together for Tom Keene at Bloomberg is going to be out of a job. But I think at the end of the day,

this is progress. I don't think it's going to have the kind of societal, I think a lot of people are more fearful of it than they should be. I find that when I was asking a lot of questions- It is like automating a lot of stuff, but go ahead. It's elegant, but it's also wrong a lot. And I think there's going to be a huge opportunity for more referenceable AI that says, this is our summary, this is the references we drew upon, because it gets a lot of stuff wrong. But it's fascinating. You know, we used it. We used it a little bit.

We had, Casey and I did a session in San Francisco that we put on. I listened to that. It was good, yeah. And one of the things, I think Casey was really 100% correct, is that it's fine, that you can see the usefulness in it as opposed to other new technologies. And I agree with that. I think it's really, you can start to see that this makes sense just the way you wouldn't do spreadsheets anymore by hand. You wouldn't, why would you?

Why would you not have, I think your robotics thing in manufacturing is exactly the right metaphor. I think one of the things that's hard for people is that it does sound, it does still sound a little stiff, right? Some of it does. When it was answering, it sounds like someone who doesn't quite know English, for example, when it's in English. Some of the times they did ask who's the most powerful tech journalist. It was me, which was accurate. You started asking questions about yourself? No, no, no. Naima did. I had to go very narrow. I'm like, who's the most popular professor at NYU who's still active,

who has a podcast, and finally have found my name after like seven other people? I do think it's interesting. We'll see. I think what's exciting is people will make what they want to make of it, right? Some of the picture generating stuff is kind of silly and porny to me. Like, I think it's just a game. Again, it's like, okay, great. Show me a, you know, a dog dancing on a table. It's fun, but you stop doing, you're not going to do it every single day of your life. So what's going to, what's going to be the thing you're going to do every single day of your life with it? And that's what will be interesting, I think. And it'll make things easier that is very rote for people.

What's more interesting is this Apple soon will announce its augmented reality headset. It's coming. The device will run on a new operating system, X-ROS, and will likely be called Reality Pro. They're using their own chips, everything else. They're sort of taking a little thing from Tesla, doing everything on their own, not getting captive by a supply chain situation. What do you think?

It's been late. It's been years and years late, for sure. It was supposed to debut in 2019, 2020, 21. Now it's going to be pushed out to June. January was when it was coming out. Now it's coming out. Where do you see it? Is it the next iPhone, next Google Glass?

Or are you just uninterested in something that isn't very useful? We'll see when we see it, right? So far, I don't find a use for these things on a daily basis. But what do you think? Well, I couldn't have envisioned. I'm not exaggerating. I spend between $600 and $1,000 a month on AirPods. I have them everywhere.

AirPods Max? You have Max, right? I have Max. And I give them as gifts. I always keep a spare pair around. thousand dollars a month on airpods i have them everywhere airpod max you have max i have max and i give them as gifts i always keep a spare pair around they're like keys and sunglasses for me i just lose i'm always five minutes away from losing my airpods if i was in the doha airport it's almost instinct for me if i see an apple logo to just go pick a pair of airpods knowing that i'll either need them or i can give them away, and that people love them as a gift. And I find them, they're now saying that if you put, using certain modes with AirPod Max, if you put the phone in between you, and I'm trying this with my 92-year-old father, who's basically can't hear at all, but if you put the iPhone in between you and the person you're

speaking to when you go into a certain mode, it's as good or better than a $10,000 pair of hearing aids. Oh, with the AirPod Max, it's so interesting. And so I think these things are revolutionary. I think it's incredible. And I never would have guessed that. So I'll reserve what I'll call final judgment until I actually put a pair on and get to wear them and try them.

But my general gut is that I believe anthropologically we don't want anything that limits our peripheral vision or that doesn't make us look more attractive to other mates. And I think sunglasses and fashion, the tech community other than, if I had to bet, Cara, I think this is going to be the Hermes Apple Watch. I think it's going to get a ton of press. It'll be cool. And it fades away. I think they'll make the best version Apple Watch. I think it's going to get a ton of press. It'll be cool. And it fades away. I think they'll make the best version of it. It's just a question

whether you find it necessary and need to use it all the time. But I just don't see wanting to put this on and isolating myself. Maybe if I'm trying to meditate or I want to see Thailand and not with you, something like that. You want to see Thailand with me.

I know, but you know what I'm saying. Not Scott's Thailand. Scott's Thailand is different than Kara's Thailand, let's just say. I could see using it once a week. I think Apple's will be the best one, right, of something I don't really want. It's like the best bread maker. It'll be the best bread maker. I think it still ends up in the drawer with the Fitbit and the Nike Fuel Band.

I think it's going to be more Segway than AirPods. I wish they would work on the car, but maybe they'll just be making the software for a car. You haven't asked me about my Chevy Bolt, which I love. Oh, you're into the Bolt? Oh, yeah. My Bolt is fantastic. I sold all my vehicles. I now have no carbon-producing vehicles.

So you're like I was, yeah. I sold everything. The Kia is still around, of course. Now, Kia has a very successful, you should buy the Kia EV. It's hard to get. It's got really great reviews. There's a Niro, Nevo. I would buy a Kia, but I still have hopes of having sex again.

Okay, all right. No Kia for the dog. So I have no cars, no planes anymore. I'm going carbon negative for a year just to feel better about myself. Oh my God, wow. And so there's this amazing service in London called Wheelie, which is basically Uber but better. And I just got picked up in a Mercedes GS450, which is the new EV for Mercedes.

Oh my God. It's incredible. Yeah, it is. Yeah. A friend of mine has one. It's incredible. The whole, it doesn't have that stupid, like the Tesla has that computer screen right in front of you. This has the whole dashboard. It's beautiful. But it's super modern and it's got those Mercedes finishes.

It's comfy. It's plush. I was in the Lucid. I went to visit Lucid in California when I was there, and I was so impressed by their stuff. There's a lot of ex-Tesla people. The guy was great. The CEO was like, listen, they're way ahead of us in lots of things, but we're going to catch up eventually. But they are. He was good because they really did admit they were way ahead in terms of manufacturing and stuff like that. But boy, is that one impressive, beautiful. I got driven around by one of the engineers, one of the top engineers, who's this German guy. Almost was killed because he was driving like a German person on the Autobahn.

But boy, the pickup, the comfort, the luxury. Audi, Mercedes. Yeah. The Taycan. There's a ton of fantastic EVs. I predict you're going to get one of those at some point. I'm waiting for the Range Rover to come out with their EV next year. Okay.

You don't want the Chevy Bolt like me? Get up. It's not going to happen. We could be twinsies. We could be twinsies. I wouldn't fit in a Chevy Bolt. How big is that thing? I guess you would.

Alex got in it. Really? It's fine. Yeah, he's taller than you. Apple, we're very excited to see it, but we doubt we're going to use it very much. It's our bread maker of tech right now. Air fryer. No, I use my air fryer.

By the way, I bought an air fryer. Your recommendation? Yeah. I am unimpressed. Really? Why? Louis is mad I got one because he said it's the convection oven. He goes, use your stove.

It works just fine. I was like, I love my air fryer. Anyway, let's bring in our friend of Pivot. Mike Allen is the co-founder of Axios, the author of the site's daily AM and PM newsletters, and the co-author of Smart Brevity, The Power of Saying More with Less. All right, welcome, Mike. Mike and I have known each other a long time. Remember that time we had when I told you to become entrepreneurs? That worked out well for you. I would say it was good advice, and you always get good advice from Kara Swisher. Yeah, you were at Politico at the time, and you didn't have a piece of it. And I said,

you should start your own thing. I remember it was a place in Washington, a restaurant with you and Jim. Nonetheless, how's it going? You got bought by Cox. Can you explain that rather briefly? What's going on? You guys started Axios, which we'll talk about brevity in a minute. But that was sort of the premise of it is very quick, important news you need to know. Tell me why you sold.

What was the deal? What was the deal around that? Yeah, the premise behind Axios was the fire hose. Just too much. And people want to know what's new, why it matters in smart brevity. And every morning telling people what they need to know, the most important stories, like turned out to be super popular with people. We now have Axios, Axios Local in 26 cities across the country, Axios Pro, Subscriptions, Axios Events, and Cox Enterprises, which bought Axios. They loved the fact that we were doing journalism in a way that also was a good business.

So Cox has journalism in their bones. They started a century ago with the Dayton, now the Dayton Daily News. They, of course, have the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and they've gotten rid of most of their legacy media properties, now in cable, now in the lifecycle of the auto. But they loved Axios. They said, we like what you're doing. We want you to do more of it. We want you to do it faster. So Cox Enterprises turned out to be a fantastic partner. And you had almost sold to Axel Springer, correct? There were reports of conversations with Axel Springer. Yeah, you did. Yeah. And we sold to Cox Enterprises. Great. But they bought Politico, which you guys started too.

I remember when I visited you out in that newsroom in things. So why now? Because a lot of digital news media is seeing struggles. Protocol, The Recount, Future.com. I don't consider that a journalistic institution. But nonetheless, what was the theory of selling now? Is that you needed more heft or why did you do it? Yeah, and Cara, by the way, Politico, which was started by me, Jim VandeHei, the CEO of Axios, John Harris is the founding editor of Politico, which was started by me, Jim VandeHei, the CEO of Axios. John Harris is the founding

editor of Politico. We're there with Roy Schwartz, who's a founder of Axios. So, Jim, Roy, and I left Politico to start Axios. And Politico has sold for a billion dollars. So, it turned out to be a pretty good idea. Yeah, it was very good. I wish you had owned more of it. But why now? Why sell now? What's the impetus for doing it? We love Cox. We're not planning to sell. We're very picky about who we might tie up with. And what we liked about Cox Enterprises, and we found our values were very aligned, was their generational thinking. Like Jim Vande Hei, Axios CEO, has always talked about this as a forever company, like how do we build something that will way outlive us? And that's how Cox thinks. Cox

Enterprises thinks for the long run. They want us to build for the long run, and they wanted to invest in us to grow Axios National, all of our national and global coverage, including 24 newsletters, Axios Local, which will be in 30 cities very soon. We're hiring for a couple more right now. You can get Axios Local, 26 cities every morning. Something that sets Axios Local apart that will interest the two of you is that every single one of our Axios journalists is from there. So we don't hire people in Brooklyn and send them to Des Moines or to Austin. They're all from there. And they write for their neighbors.

They write for people in Denver or in Tampa. Which has been tried a lot. There's been sidewalk from Microsoft and there's over the years. First off, my congratulations. So they paid $525 million for Axios. And I'm going to go out on a limb here and speculate that

that's probably not an accretive acquisition that they saw. They paid a premium or what I'd call a strategic premium. And is that premium a function of how they think they can grow you or they're hoping to Axios other properties within the Cox enterprise? What's the strategy that resulted in the kind of multiple that paid for your company? Yeah, Scott, this is very much about growing Axios. So we are a standalone company. We're still Axios employees. Alex Taylor, the CEO of

Cox Enterprises, is the chairman of our board. And they're fantastic and supportive partners. But one of the big ideas behind this, what attracted them and what attracted us us was Axios with its culture, its theory of the case, its leadership, its colleagues that we would build from here. And so I mentioned Axios National, Axios Local, Axios Pro, which are subscriptions in both the deals space, an extension of Dan Primack's ProRata franchise now in media deals, healthcare deals, and Axios policy in healthcare and others, that all three parts of Axios would grow in the years ahead. And so Cox Enterprises said, we like both what you're doing, why you're doing it, how you're doing it. We want to be part of that forever company. So when you think about what you're doing, one of the things I – listen, we tried to do something like this at Ricoh.

We never were as ambitious as you were, but it was the same idea. And there's lots of people, whether it's Punchbowl or various people, a puck. There's many others, starting up by journalist entrepreneurs or reporterpreneurs. Jessica Lesson at the Informations does a subscription service. When is peak too much of this, or does it take from national media? Because you are hooking up with a legacy media company. What happens to all those, and how do you look at the market, especially with the fallout in advertising, subscriptions, et cetera? Yeah. Kara, what we found is there's more demand than ever from people to be smarter, faster about the topics that matter most.

And people talked about peak newsletters and like what Jim has said is that it's peak shitty newsletters. Yeah, like peak shitty podcasts, but go ahead. If you have quality journalists, quality coverage, if you're not wasting people's time, if you're not insulting their intelligence, like that is a very sweet spot. And people need, want, demand, consume that coverage more than ever. If it's brief. Now, Axios has said, pioneered and mastered smart brevity, which is the name of this book that you have written, which is called Smart Brevity, The Power of Saying More with Less. Talk about that idea, because a lot of people think students are struggling with news literacy

and critical thinking seems to be in short supply. Should news reporting be getting snackable or how do you look at that? I think your stuff is very intelligent and short, but a lot of it is, I was watching, we're going to talk about the Kevin McCarthy thing in a minute, but a lot of it was just breathless, like silly, you know, kind of who cares? It didn't have any meaning. Yes. No, that's the mistake of quantity for quality. And that's what we do in the book Smart Brevity, which I wrote with Jim VandeHei and Roy Schwartz, the other two co-founders of Axios. whether you want to be the boss, that you can communicate more powerfully by being sharper and thinking through what you want to say and thinking about the audience. Like, Cara, you and I used to work at the Washington Post, and that's where those bad habits came in. It even goes back to school where you're never assigned to come up with one great idea or to make one important

thought. No, like instead we're told to write a thousand words or eight pages that we triple space. And then at the post, quality was a proxy for quantity, that the longer you were, the more likely you were to be on the section front, even longer on the Sunday front. Do you remember opening up the—I remember one time I opened up—you know, you always opened up, you went from the pun page, and then the entire two pages were full of text. Yeah, the notebook dump. Yeah, and I opened it up once, and I went, oh, for fuck's sake. And someone like Ben Bradley was there, and he was, what's wrong with that?

I said, everything. Everything is wrong with this. You were right. I don't know what to say. I'm not going to read it. No, we discovered. And the secret for your listeners is like gravity, just something that is true, whether we care to accept it or not. Gravity is that most people are not reading most of what we write.

And so what Smart Gravity, the book, does is show you how to think on the front end. What is the one thing that I want people to remember? Like, what's a memorable, punchy, muscular way to say my big idea? And then just say it. Tell people why it matters. Give them some evidence. Give them the power to go deeper. That's a formula for being heard in a way that you never will be with those masses of text. I was talking about Smart Brevity, the book with one of the leading communications firms in the world. with a report, they would go to write a headline or get a pull quote, like one exciting part to

put in bold type, and they would realize there was no pull quote, there was no big idea. And that's what smart brevity does, is say, think about what that is on the front end. Stress test that, think before you type, and it also works for you in other forms of communication, including we have smart brevity for presentations and smart brevity for Zooms. And the magic of it is it gives you time for a podcast like Pivot that's worth your time. It gives you time to read books, articles that are worth your time. But most of our communication is catch-up, transactional. Most of our communication is catch-up, transactional. And the way that it's presented now, we waste time hunting for the key point, hunting for what we're supposed to remember.

And, like, all three of us were taught when we were coming up basically to hide it, right? If you have three or four good things, like, scatter them out through your text and make the reader find them. Smart brevity says, no, you do that work, put it up front, and you'll be a much more powerful communicator. Isn't brevity synonymous with economy? And you can have brevity in a long-form article, you just have to pack more punch. Isn't it a function of the intensity of the information, not necessarily the length? Yeah, no, that's a great way to put it.

And what smart brevity says is that nine times out of 10, the best way to communicate is efficiently, right? I have one awesome stat. I have one great insight. I have one big idea. I want to sell you something. Like I watch people trying to make a sale and there may be a good salesperson

and they maybe have a good product. And I watch the body language of the person they're talking to and they've got the order. They're ready to do it. But what happens? We instinctively keep talking. And so very often,

like they'll raise so many issues that finally the person says, oh, think about it. When if they would have just stopped, they would have walked away with a signed order. Same thing when you're asking for a raise, right? Like our tendency is to say, well, I know these are tough times. I know you have a lot

on your plate. I know we're cutting. No. Like if you want a raise, like tell them what you've done for them, tell them what you're going to do for them, and then just stop. Yeah, that's true. Give me the fucking money. Let me say, let me, one of the things that with these brevity things, though, we just were talking about ChatGPT and the role of AI playing in writing news stories. We asked ChatGPT to write a fictional Axios story about Trump coming back to Twitter. Here's an excerpt of what it wrote as read by another AI. Donald Trump, the former president of the United States, returned to Twitter on Friday after being banned from the platform following the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump's return to Twitter was met with mixed reactions, with some users expressing support for his return while others criticized the decision to allow him back on the platform.

In his first tweet since returning, Trump addressed his supporters and vowed to continue fighting for what he believes in. I may be gone from Twitter, but I will never be gone from your hearts and minds, he wrote. Well, that was riveting. And also very lame. So look at how flabby that was. Like, we definitely need ChatGPT to ingest smart brevity, the book, because it has a lot. There are a lot of bad habits of writers. the book, because there are a lot of bad habits of writers. If I were telling you that,

I would be able to do it in like very snappily, muscular. I'd tell you that Trump came back and that people revolted online. But then we sit at a keyboard and we start using long words. We start using like boring phrases like the chatbot did there when Smart Brevity says, think about how I would say it to you if we were having chips and salsa. Think about how we would say it to a human being, right? Like a human, not like a robot. Beyond brevity, one of your things at Axios has been newsbreaking, right? That's what, to me, is at the heart of like- Tell me something I don't know.

Always the gold standard. Here's the problem that you may also face, is a lot of your reporters, two have just left, to go to big publications, John Swan being the most famous one, right, who broke a ton of stories and was very cheeky about it, was a very cheeky writer, too. How does that, if you're not going to rely on AI, how do you keep that going? That was a big issue with me at Recode. Every one of our reporters went to the New York Times or the Washington Post or Bloomberg.

Well, you've moved around a little bit yourself and people do. There's that smart brevity. But the great thing about Axios is that we have tons of great reporters. We're bringing in new talent now. And there's no question that that is vital. And it's something that the chatbot can't do. Like human relationships who have an instinct for a story, the connections for a story, who can see the story when it's in front of their face, which is the two of you

well know is not necessarily a common trait for a reporter, and then can tell in a way that makes me realize why I should care about it, why it matters. Tell me something new. Tell me something that matters. In a kind of interesting way. In the sea of content out there, words that are always coming at us that sharp, smart, new, important, what's new, why it matters, make me smarter about the things that matter. There's more demand for that than ever. And Axios has a fantastic newsroom of people to bring you that. Just, I just wanted to follow up on Kara's question because it touches on our first story. As the principal and founder of a company and someone whose company was acquired,

what's your view on non-competes? We just talked about that FTC decision. So I am not the chief of our people team. And so I'm going to leave that to people who are experts in it. Oh, come on, man. Do you- We'd like some brief thoughts on it.

You're the principal of an organization that sold your company. Do you – We'd like some brief thoughts on it. You're the principal of an organization that sold your company. Do you think that organizations that acquire firms like Axios should have non-competes? And what's your view on them? We have people who are experts on that, and that person is not me. I think that's no comment. Oh, Mike, come on. We don't like them.

Scott and I hate them. And I've signed them. Mike, you missed our conversation. This is a big topic right now because of Lena Kahn. And I would imagine you're very thoughtful and knowledgeable on the topic. And anyways, you're allegedly accident. All right, we're going to ask. I have one last question.

I'm going to let you out of it, Mike, but you should answer. You shouldn't like them, just FYI, because you're an entrepreneur and you want to create when you want to create. And fuck those people, even if they gave me millions of dollars. That's how we look at things. But you may not agree. You're more polite. That's very Kara. That's very Kara.

It's very Scott. It's much more Scott than Kara. Anyway, can we, I'd love your brief thoughts on what happened this week on the Hill. We got to go. This is my last question. What was that? I hate to tell you. It's a preview of coming attractions,

that it was a very visceral distillation manifestation of the dysfunction that we have in our politics. And the fact that Republicans won barely, but they won the House, and then they couldn't even seal the deal, couldn't take advantage of it. And then they couldn't even seal the deal, couldn't take advantage of it. Now that Kevin McCarthy is in speaker, Axios has reporting today about the fast start that they plan. He's going to go with red meat, try and reward the hardliners that he brought in. So right away, they're going to go after big tech. One of the first things they're going to do is going to the White House, trying to get any communications they've had with the five biggest tech firms, whether it's emails, memos. And then it's off to the races with Hunter Biden and Anthony Fauci and you name it. They're going to go after it fast, both to

make up for the lost time of the last week, but also it shows who has power in the Republican Party at this moment. Wow. Scott, last question. What other media startups do you admire? Who do you think is doing a really good job? Punchbowl is killing it. So Punchbowl started by Anna Palmer and Jake Sherman, which covers the Hill. They're awesome at what they do. They have the formula of like, know what your one thing is, be awesome at it, do better, do it better than anyone else.

Like they're fantastic journalists. They have great business minds. The two of you are rare in that that's not a super common convergence and they have it and Punchbowl is great at what they do and is a very smart, successful media company. That's something, yeah, you probably wish you had done a little more of that. They definitely focused. And they're punchy, punchy, punchy. And they were from Politico, too. It's really interesting how these things evolve over time. There's going to be a lot more of them, I suspect. Anyway, the book is called Smart Brevity, The Power of Saying More with Less. Mike, thank you so much. You're such a gentleman. Anyway, the book is called Smart Brevity, The Power of Saying More with Less.

Mike, thank you so much. You're such a gentleman. Thanks for the conversation and congrats on what the two of you have built. Thank you. Congratulations to you, Mike. All right, Scott, one more quick break and we'll be back for Wins and Fails. Okay, Scott, let's hear some wins and fails. Mine is obviously not doing to recode what all these other people are doing. I was too early to the game. We sold to Vox for a good sum of money, but we were very early in the idea of entrepreneurial journalists before everybody else piled in. Yeah, 525 is a big number. I would bet that's like 12 or 13 times revenues. Good for him.

My fail is I just found it so disheartening what took place in Brasilia. It's just so obvious. The world looks to America for what's best and what's worse about it. And until we have some sort of accountability and send a strong signal that democracies are worth protecting and that there should be ramifications and people at every level should be held accountable, we're going to start to see this across all of the West and all of these traditional pillars of democracy that we took for granted. Those walls, I don't think they're going to fall down, but they're going to start getting chipped pretty hard. What happens, you don't think this, for God's sakes, what happens when it starts happening in Germany and people start, you know, people start... They won't do it in Germany.

Well, shit, I hope not. They get mad when you cross the street funny. So, okay, sure. Anyways, my point is, I just think that's enormously disappointing. And I think that we, as voters in America, bear a lot of the responsibility. And I don't think people, I think we know, but we don't really understand just how much impact we have on the rest of the world. And anyway, so that's my fail. My win is, and we've talked about this, I think Lena Kahn, I think these anti-competes or non-competes suppress innovation, end up hurting middle class and upper middle income information age workers' ability to take their human capital elsewhere. You end up in shitty

situations where you don't want to work somewhere, but your options are limited because the company that's hired you, do you realize there are non-competes now for hairdressers and hair salons? So, you can't leave. And competition is just one of the pillars of why our economy continues to grow and continues to best other economies and offer prosperity and freedoms and without competition. And they'll, you know, it begins, it begins to atrophy. So these non-competes are a menace and they should be done away with full stop. You want to give someone, it's pretty simple. You want someone to stick at your firm. You provided them economic and non-economic benefits. And if they choose to leave, they choose to leave. And if someone can offer them a better life, good for them. Good for them. I would agree with you. I think it's really,

for the Brazil thing, there's a good piece I'd point you to in the Washington Post by Elizabeth Tawaskin, how Telegram, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter were used to boost election fraud claims in Brazil before riots hit Congress and government buildings. These companies just still continue to, it's just, they're just vehicles of fomenting problems. And it's not their fault. Look, it's the political leaders who are the fault, but it's still being used in that regard. I would agree with you. It's still, I don't know if there's anything to be done about it, by the way. So that's one of the problems. I think my win has been, is that we're focusing on kind of really interesting things like AI and this emerging AI arena is really interesting to me. Like you said, this is, these are really interesting and there's lots of fascinating companies. Again, I'd point to another story that's great. Ben Thompson of Strategy Road exploring the impact of emerging AI epoch on led by Dali, mid-journey, stable diffusion,

and chat GPT on Apple, Amazon, Meta, and Google. I think it's a really interesting time. I really do. It's really the same thing with EVs. There's all this stuff that I find more interesting than some of the nonsense that's been going on before. So I'm sort of super, I'm just super interested in it. And for thoughtfulness, I'm going to give a win.

I think you need to watch. It's called A Trip to Infinity on Netflix. It's a documentary. Alex made me watch it and Louis. And it's this wonder, we watched it all together. I'm not that smart after watching it, but it really, it's a little bit of popular science, but it's a lot of mathematicians, philosophers

talking about infinity and what it means and what it is. And it was so, just take some time and do something in this world of reductiveness in smart brevity, whatever brevity, take time not to be brief and really think hard about big questions. This is all about stuff, science and infinity and numbers and space. And I just think you should try a little harder to be a little less brief and think really harder in the new year. Because a lot of this stuff, the CHAP-EG, EVs, healthcare, climate change tech, these are big fucking ideas. Start to think big instead of this small little bullshit that went on in Congress. There's small people fighting for small things and we should be fighting for big things.

That's what I would say, 2023. I like that. Thank you. And watch that show. You'll like it a lot. It'll make your head hurt a little bit. Anyway, Scott, I'm so glad you're back. Thanks, Cara.

It's great to be back. No chat GPT can replace you. Maybe. It's not now. Not right this second. They can't replace us. They just can't. We're not digitizable.

We're going to Munich. We're going to Munich. We'll have a gluten-free kite. I'll drink beer for both of us. And then in London, you will drink for both of us. We're going to have a great time. I have my new heart to be able to outrun you if I need to at any point. We're going to have a great time.

We're very excited to see our European fans. There's nobody like us. And in advance, we're sorry. And mostly for Scott. Okay? That's what I'm just going to tell Europe. Okay? That's all.

They need to know that. And also, we want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business, tech, or whatever is on your mind. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. Anyway, that's the show. We're so glad you're back here with your dirty mouth, your potty mouth, and et cetera. Isn't that what they called us? Or called you or called me?

Lascivious. You're Lascivious. I am a long-suffering spouse. Anyway, we'll be back on Friday for more, and that'll be from Germany. We're very excited. Scott, I'm so glad to ask you to read us out. Today's show is produced by Lara Naiman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Dutat engineered this episode.

Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Neil Silverio. 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 2023. It is going fast. Live your life. Tell people you care about them. Decide what it is you want to do, who you want to be. It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. We're all going to be dead and so are they very soon. The years are clicking by. You don't have time for this bullshit. Live your life.