Pivot - TikTok Ban Looms, Trump's AI and Crypto Czar, and Guest Vivian Tu

Episode Date: December 10, 2024

Kara and Scott discuss TikTok's latest legal setback, and what Donald Trump will do (if anything) if the ban goes into effect next month. Then, Trump appoints investor, podcaster, and Elon minion, David Sacks, as the new "White House AI and crypto czar." Will this position have any real power? Plus, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield backs away from a controversial plan to only pay for anesthesia for a limited amount of time. Our Friend of Pivot is Vivian Tu, host of the Vox Media podcast "Networth and Chill." Vivian goes by "Your Rich BFF" on social media, where she's become a financial guru, dispensing advice and tips to millions. Follow Vivian at @your.richbff Follow us on Instagram and Threads at @pivotpodcastofficial. Follow us on Bluesky at @pivotpod.bsky.social Follow us on TikTok at @pivotpodcast. Send us your questions by calling us at 855-51-PIVOT, or at nymag.com/pivot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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SolidIME is ready for everything the AI era demands. Learn more at storageforai.com. I am an irritating person. True that. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Scott Galloway.

Where are you, Scott? Today, where are you? I'm in San Francisco. I just got here last night. I'm in Swisher. And I'm Scott Galloway. Where are you, Scott? Today, where are you? I'm in San Francisco. I just got here last night. I'm in the UK. I'm at a hotel around the street from the place I'm supposed to be moving in that isn't ready. And I just got back from a shoot.

I was at a castle where we went. And I did not, because fortunately, I'm a terrible shot. Oh, a shoot shoot, like with guns? Shoot, yeah. Not like a TV shoot like with guns. Shoot, yeah. Oh, not like a TV shoot. I was like, you always do TV shoots. No, no, no. I was at Hackfield and then it was so much fun.

I was with these, I met so many impressive guys and couples here in London, but my one friend Tor and his wife Kristen, they love this and they love kind of old British culture and they do these shoots. And it's not my, I gotta be honest, this is not my thing. And, but they were just so happy to show us it. And it was just nice.

You know when your friends are just like, so excited to show you something and it was, so it was really enjoyable. The best part about the whole shoot was after, you know, these birds drop from the sky, that always, but I don't know if I told you this, I've substantially reduced my alcohol intake, is the dogs. These beautiful hunting dogs go and grab the birds.

And it was in the countryside, it's beautiful. But- Was it quail? My uncle, my aunt's husband, he's since died, was a big hunter with dogs and he raised those dogs and sold them to people, those pointers and everything. They were gorgeous, those dogs. He did quail hunting, that's what he did. Anyway, we got a lot to get to today,

including TikTok's latest legal setback in Trump's new AI and crypto czar. Someone, not a fave of Kara Swishers, but oh well. Plus our friend of pivot is Vivian too. She's the host of the Vox Media podcast, Net Worth and Chill. And she's built a huge following on social media where she goes by your rich BFF,

giving financial advice to millions, sort of like a female Scott. Except she's very good. Have you seen her stuff? She's great. No, but I'm excited. Do you use this as a suggestion by you, I believe. Anyway, but first'm excited. Do you use this as a suggestion by you, I believe. Anyway, but first, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

has placed Google under federal supervision. The agency specifically had concerns with Google Pay, which was largely shut down earlier this year. The move could subject Google to regular inspections and monitoring, typical in banks. Google filed an immediate lawsuit against the agency to block its oversight. Well, it's anti-regulatory time.

So I guess they're going to try to do, they're trying to get this, Elon's trying to get rid of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. We'll see if he can do that. But what do you think of this? You go first here. I don't- I think they're trying to do things before

Trump gets in here and denuders this entire thing. I mean, what's incredible is all these companies want to be banks, want to be this, want to be that, want to do money, but they don't want any regulation whatsoever that everyone else is subject to. While there might be too much regulation on banks or whatever, you know what happens when there isn't. So they'll do anything possible to push back on any possible protection of consumers in any aspect of their businesses, no matter

what it is, whether it's teens becoming depressed or killing themselves, whether it's banks that could be dangerous. They don't want any monitoring whatsoever, and that's the trend that's going forward. I don't know what else to say. I think it's the last, this group is probably worried about what's to come. We'll see what's going to happen. Thoughts? One of the things, I'm falling doge closely,

but one of the things that is sort of innovative is I do think on a regular basis, you need to dramatically reduce the amount of regulation. And their response to, okay, 80% of government spending is just not on the table. You just can't, there's no real way to cut most of it. If you take out entitlements and you take out defense spending and, and interest on our debt, you're kind of left with 20% to kind of go after this efficiency, if you

will. What they've been saying, and it is interesting, is that the Chevron Act, where you don't immediately defer to the agency, that you can strip out regulation, that if you strip out regulations, it just reduces friction and costs. And I think there's some value there. What people don't celebrate is regulation. So since 2008, we have not had a financial crisis. We had a run that was basically inspired

by a bunch of 50 plus year old venture capitalists in a panic room, looking for attention, trying to create a run on banks such that their crypto investments would go up. But the market proved incredibly resilient and SVB was ring-fenced, the FDIC did its job. But since Sarbanes-Oxley, and since we've had stress tests on banks,

we have had a remarkably robust banking sector. JP Morgan is now worth more than the top 10 European banks. That does thread the needle, I think, between one, ensuring that they don't collapse and over lever and create a financial crisis. But also you need a little bit of risk taking in the banking system,

because the modern marvel of the banking system is with a hundred dollars in deposits, as long as you don't take too many deposits from the same people, you can lend out $120 and you create growth. It's like levered growth with a decent amount of risk controls. So regulation can be a wonderful thing.

And these individuals are never going to suggest more regulation. They're just very much anti-regulation. These are risk aggressive people who see regulation as the enemy. And I think you just need a more balanced approach, recognizing that some regulation creates scale and growth. So anyways, it's a long-winded way of saying I really don't know. I think this always goes back and forth, but these people are particularly resistant

to any regulation whatsoever. I mean, these people hate regulation no matter what. It doesn't matter what you say to them. They would serve you tainted meat if they could, honestly, sometimes. I think I agree with you, it goes back and forth and things can be over-regulated. But I think what happened with the SEC and crypto,

for example, has gotten this taste in their mouth that they really don't want any. and things can be over-regulated. But I think what happened with the SEC and crypto, for example, has gotten this taste in their mouth that they really don't want any. That's what's going to happen in the new administration. They're going to just strip regulation after regulation, and then there's going to lead to a crisis of some sort because it always does. I think it'll be over by the time Trump gets in. Anyway, we'll see what happens in this board. Omnicom Group has agreed to acquire Interpublic Group in

a deal that would create the world's largest advertising company. Scott, I really wanted to hear your thoughts on this. Interpublic has a market value of $11 billion. The two combined would have a net revenue of more than $20 billion. Omnicom and Interpublic are currently the third and fourth biggest companies respectively. Well, let's go through. I mean, I know advertising groups like this are under an enormous amount of pressure,

but thoughts? Is it bad for advertising or just helping them keep up? It reminds me a little bit of Hollywood companies with tech companies coming in and just eating their lunch in so many ways, so they have to bulk up. I don't know, thoughts? It's exactly right. This is about survival and consolidation. When I was, my first company,

I started my second year in business school, was a firm called Profit Brand Strategy. And we were effectively a services company, helping companies manage their brands as assets. We didn't do any design or advertising. We were trying to take a strategy approach, just focused on brands as assets. And I was always very economically driven.

I'm like, okay, I'm gonna build this thing for five years and then sell it. And the 10-ton gorillas, the masters of the universe, of the entire communications and media world were Omnicom, IPG, and WPP. And then Publisi was kind of in the mix. And then there were some new ones that popped up. I think WPP is the biggest now, right? WPP.

WPP, I still think it's the biggest, and these two combined would surpass WPP. Basically, their model was take advantage of this algorithm that was the algorithm for creating shareholder value, and that was find a mediocre product and infuse it with amazing brand codes of masculinity, maternal love, European elegance, sex appeal,

and then use this incredibly efficient mechanism called broadcast television where we managed to get 80 percent of Americans in front of one of three outlets five hours a day and print money. Then that era came to an end, the brand era came to an end in 1995 when all of a sudden, these weapons of mass diligence called Google, TripAdvisor, your social graph, you no longer needed to defer

to the shorthand of the brand. And also people found it was much easier to find, fill the customer funnel, if you will, with people based on their behavior, specifically if they indicated, Audi Q5, best price into my Google search bar means I'm looking for a car and this person is worth a lot of money to Audi. And you have seen such a tectonic,

tsunami-like transfer of money, capital, and power. These guys, Kara, you know, you've been to Cannes with me. These guys used to be the gods of Cannes. The gods. Yeah. And now- Best parties. Yeah, and now they have a beach chair, but they don't have a beach party. They don't have, they're a shadow of themselves. Google loses the value of all three of these companies

or gains it in a trading day. And, but they're still very talented, still very creative. But the reality is, the brand era is not only over, Don Draper has been drawn and quartered. So the idea that they absolutely need to consolidate, cut jobs at headquarters just for survival mode, because these have not been good performers, these have been terrible places to work or invest.

Let me ask you this question, because whenever I went to those parties or talked to them, I'm always like, what do you do exactly? And they explain it to me. I'm like, what do we need you for? Even back then, I was like, aren't you the middle man? Aren't you between me and the sponsor? It was really interesting.

Even me, little Kara Swisher, was like, with a small little business, I was like, I feel like I don't need to pay you. More and more, I know it sounds crazy, but they seemed not useful in ways that technology would take care of. I always used to think that. You still need them. I think of this, there was this incredibly moving out last year by Norwich City or Norwich City football,

but it showed these two men who go to a soccer game together and one's effusive and super outgoing and funny, and the other looks just morbid and depressed. It shows them going to another game, and the one seat is empty, the guy who was really effusive and happy. It says something along the lines of, ask your friends how they're doing

because you may not really know how they're doing. Oh, it was a suicide. It was so incredibly moving. Ad agencies and creatives still are the domain of breakthrough emotion that moves you. Did you see the AI ad that Coke did? Just curious. That was good, but even better,

the ad that Apple just did. I mean, occasionally these folks come up with something that just really moves the needle. In addition, even Google needs help figuring out how to allocate. When Google does their beach and spends $40 million having Lenny Kravitz play and not inviting Scott Galloway, they need an ad agency or a creative agency to come up with all the branding, make sure the beach looks branded. There are agencies doing everything. When I go to all these conferences and speak,

there's an agency figuring out how to bring Dreamforce alive and represent Salesforce in the future. Yeah, I get it. When I said AI, there was an ad made by Coca-Cola, by AI. Yeah, by AI, yeah. And it wasn't bad, I have to say, wasn't bad. But they still need someone to come up with the ideas. They still need design.

They still need, even spending money. Once you get to a certain point, I'll give you an example. I think podcasts, our business, are about to go through a reshuffling. And the reshuffling, I think, is gonna be based on who does the best job using this new distribution mechanism for a podcast that is bigger than Spotify or Apple, and it's YouTube.

Joe Rogan gets 15 million downloads of his interview with Trump, he got 40 million on YouTube. I'm thinking about hiring a small agency to help me figure out how to get PropG and Pivot and other people to scale our distribution on YouTube, because there are little niche agencies that just are better at it than we are. And there's always opportunity for customer acquisition, branding, events.

It's just no longer the heyday of, hey, you're General Motors, you're going to spend a billion dollars running ads and I'm going to take 12% of it by pitching you the next big Don Draper idea. Those days are over. I thought they were so small when I saw the numbers. I'm like, whoa, these are really small businesses. It did remind me of Hollywood. It did like, oh. In the time I've been going to Cannes, Maurice Levy, Levy, the CEO of Gublesy, has gone from fucking James Bond

who ran the place and Martin Sorrell was the master of the universe to almost sort of like cute and majestic and sentimental. They're just, they are no longer, quite frankly, they're no longer players. I know that's terrible to say. And Sir Martin is one of the brightest minds in the history of media.

It is, it does feel like old Hollywood. It does, speaking of regulators. Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield has backed off a controversial plan to only pay for anesthesia for a limited amount of time. In case you wake up, the insurer initially announced the plan in mid-November, but his outrage over healthcare became front page news last week, outrage over the decision grew. Politicians, including New York Governor Kathy Hochul, got involved causing a reversal. This is a moment for, because of this Brian Thompson murder, I think you're gonna see a lot of awareness

on the behalf of healthcare companies of the heartlessness that they display towards people. We'll see if there'll be changes, how many politicians will get involved, I'm not sure. But certainly it's a moment, it's certainly a moment that some line has been crossed here, that I think the anger on one side and the relentless pursuit of profits by these companies

is sort of meeting each other rather significantly. This is, I mean, it's weird. Bashtar al-Assad fleeing to Moscow is really big news. It doesn't get enough attention. But one of the most interesting discussions catalyzed by a murder is the CEO of UnitedHealthcare. And the reaction online was just stunning to me. And it made me realize that, you know,

someone pointed out that Elon Musk said, a revolution is inevitable or civil war is inevitable. Well, 50,000 people killed themselves in America last year. And I wonder how many of those people killed themselves because of financial strain in large part created by medical debt. And also there's just no getting around it. If you look at the insurance industry, especially the healthcare insurance industry, they have figured out that a decent way to add earnings and

shareholder value is to come up with algorithms and sophisticated legal ways of denying coverage to people, which has created a lot of despair. And I mean, you've seen the tweets, like, empathy is outside my coverage zone. Listen, everyone experiences it. Someone was like, you never experienced it. I'm like, I literally spent all the last three, I have some procedures arguing with insurance companies, like a lot in a very irritating way of very important tests for me, you know, as an older lady.

So I get the, I don't get the murder, I get the rage at the same time, but go ahead. The seminal moment in my life that was both horrifying and motivating was as a young male until the age of like 25, I was sleepwalking through life. Underachiever got into UCLA because they accepted 76% of people.

Got, you know, graduated from UCLA with a 2.27 GPA, talked my way into Morgan Stanley, somehow got into Berkeley Graduate School because the standards were so much lower back then. When I got that call from my mother, in my first year in graduate school and said, you need to come home, and I walked into a house where my mother, after her second mastectomy had been discharged early by Kaiser,

we were underinsured, and I walked into a situation of the likes of which I had never seen before and I could not handle. I started calling nurses and said, I need to get someone over here immediately because this hospital wouldn't take her back. So they're like, call an ambulance. My mom's like, don't call an ambulance. And nurses were 35 bucks an hour

and our insurance didn't cover it. And I didn't have that money. I remember thinking it was, and it was literally like at that moment, I thought, no one can decide to be rich. But I thought, I'm gonna work so fucking hard from this point forward, cause I can control that.

The most frightening moment of my life, the first 25 years of my life, and something that was quite frankly exceptionally motivating was my mother being underinsured. Because I mean, you wanna talk about, you know, fucking with a young man's sense of well-being when you can't take care of your mother, your sick mother, and times that by 10 million.

That is what has happened when you insert a profit motive into something as important as healthcare. The reason why we're the only major democracy that focuses on shareholders as opposed to the well-being of consumers. That story is devastating. I can't imagine young Scott Gellar dealing with that. And I do have more means, but I have to say most of the most frustrating times of my life

are dealing with healthcare, whether it's appointments, whether it's getting information, whether it's understanding it. And let me just say, I am, I have, I am an irritating person. True that. And I am, I'm educated. I keep, every time I do this, I think, what if, what if you couldn't understand it? What it was like, it's like, I find dealing with computer fix it things easier than that. And it's really, and you're just confused and you're turned around and you get a stupid no,

and then you have to call and argue with them. It is, it is, it got me, it's like literally the most frustrating part of dealing with having lots of kids and getting them health care, whether it's dental or whatever. Nobody understands it. It's so, I'm always working over money, even though I have insurance, and always arguing over care. And I am the lucky one. There are a few industries that are more advanced,

technically make more money and are a larger source of despair and suffering. And this has come to a head and it all comes down to the same thing and that is a $10,000 reward for information leading to his arrest. Most people can't buy health insurance for their family for $10,000. for information leading to his arrest. Most people can't buy health insurance for their family for $10,000.

People pointed that out. And when you're living in a society with all this prosperity, and it is a regular occurrence that, oh, I got bad news, your wife has lung cancer, I got worse news, it probably means you're gonna go bankrupt. And we're the wealthiest society in the world.

It's like one of these things does not foot to the other. This has inspired, and all of these tech executives and quite frankly, I'm guilty of this. I was horrified by it. And it's like the people who are most horrified by this are insured wealthy people. Because since then, hundreds of people have killed themselves. Hundreds of non-white kids in terrible areas

have been murdered and a CEO gets murdered, and it's horrifying, and we're all grabbing, clutching our pearls. It has really inspired an overdue conversation. It has, it has. I think you can have two things happening at once. You can be horrified by this. And also, I think, I don't like, see, unfortunately, everything gets reduced.

You're either against this murder, and then therefore a rich person doesn't understand, see, unfortunately, everything gets reduced. You're either for, against this murder, and then therefore a rich person doesn't understand, or you understand what happens. Like, I do think it's a warning signal. The fact that this guy is becoming an unfortunate folk hero. What'll be really interesting is what the jury decides. Won't it be interesting what happens at the jury trial?

Yes, yes. It had a lot of, you know, OJ vibe to it in that regard, right? It had a kind of that you deserve this kind of thing. Anyway, we'll see. It's going to be an ongoing story and these companies are certainly on notice, that's for sure. Anyway, let's get to our first big story. A federal appeals court has upheld a law that could lead to TikTok getting banned next month if TikTok parent company ByteDance does not divest.

A panel of three judges denied TikTok's petition last week saying ByteDance's ownership represents a national security threat, rejecting the argument the law violates the First Amendment, that national security trumps the First Amendment in this case. TikTok has just asked the appeals court to temporarily block or pause the law so the Supreme Court can review the case. It'll be interesting to see they could, what do you think of the ruling? It's not clear what Trump will do or if he can do anything. It's a law. They're going to have to change the law as many in Congress pointed out, which he certainly can do with control of the House and Senate. He's been a big flip-fopper

on TikTok because one of his biggest donors was a big TikTok investor, Jeff Yas. I don't know if there's a buyer. There's several buyers. Bobby Kotick is in there. Frank McCourt seems to be in there. Steve Mnuchin has been in there. I don't see the Chinese letting this happen, but there's a lot of winners who have emerged. Let me just send in your thoughts, Scott.

Meta shares rose 2.4% and closed at a record high on Friday following the news of this ruling and snap shares are very up. Because they're obviously the original version of this. I think they're all hoping the ban happens, but will it? Thoughts? And it is unclear what Trump can do, but it's certainly onerous, the stuff he's got to do. And then there's the Supreme Court, obviously, who's going to take this up, no question. Well, I've been advocating for and predicting the following,

that it would be banned and that ultimately it'll be spun. The US interests of TikTok are worth, the US TikTok is worth $100 billion. Owners, you're saying US owners, just to be clear for listeners. Divested to US ownership. I think there's so much money involved that they'll figure it out. I generally find 95% of the time, you're right,

if you just go follow the money. I mean, there's a couple of things. One, going back to Trump, he could just not enforce it. He could say, wink, wink, to different, I'm never gonna enforce this, or I'm gonna tell my AG to never pursue anyone if they violate it. Because basically what it would,

the people who have to comply here, who have the most power, would be Apple or Alphabet to make it, the app no longer work in their app store. But he could also say, this will never be enforced. He could, there's some elegant ways around it. I don't think he's gonna do that because I think it gives him leverage against the Chinese. And also it's a goodie he'll be able,

now that we've gone full kleptocrat, it's a goodie he can hand out to a US consumer. But I've always predicted two things. One, I thought that one, it should be banned and I believe it will be. And two, we're not gonna lose our TikTok. That at some point, there's so much money here. There's so many US investors who are gonna make

so much money or lose so much money that they will figure out with the White House, maybe they give him 10 billion or his buddies 10 billion or the 100 billion, but they will figure out a way to accommodate everybody and spin it and divest it. There is too much money on the line here. And in addition, you have a China

where the economy isn't struggling. Doug Guthrie, who I think is the brightest mind on China, US-China relations, he called me and said, Scott, you don't get it. They're kind of fine to let this stuff roll. They're not doing as poorly as people think, but I still think there is so much money involved that they're going to figure out a way to divest it

to U.S. interests or do enough to satisfy the quote-unquote ban. But I mean, it's already happened technically. I mean, he would have to change the law. And I don't think he has the attention or the desire to do that. What do you think? I don't know. I think it was, I think they have to do that, right? I think the Supreme Court is the one that's going to weigh in here. But the Supreme Court might not even agree to listen to the case.

Well, I think they're going to. I talked to a bunch of lawyers this week and they all said, yes, they were going to, that they thought they were going to. So it's too good. It's too good, it won't. You know what I mean? There's a lot happening here. It's national security versus First Amendment versus ownership and capitalism. There's too much good stuff in here for them not to weigh in. That's what I, that was the thoughts of people who watch this stuff when I talk to them. If they do, it'll be interesting. I mean, I think they can change the law. That's what I understand. I think you can't do this by executive order at this point. I think they can change the law. That's what I understand. I think you can't do this by executive order at this point.

Again, enforcement is one thing. But there's too much attention on this thing and too many financial interests at stake. They have to find a sell. The question is, the Chinese are the wild card here. How are they going to react? They certainly have been hostile to this for a long time. Then is it worth anything as I told you Mark Cuban pointed out to me, is it worth anything without the algorithm? And what are they buying?

What are these people buying? I have to talk to, I don't know Steve Mnuchin, but I do know Frank and Bobby. I should probably just call them and ask them what their reasoning is. Anyway, we'll see. But watch that space. I think it's going to be a big deal and it matters to companies like Snap is really benefiting from this as it would make sense.

All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. We come back, Trump reveals his new AI and crypto czar. We'll speak with a friend of Pivot, Vivian Tu, about becoming Gen Z's financial guru. Support for Pivot comes from Miro. We all want the space and freedom to be able to do our jobs well. It's one of the key factors to unlock our creativity. But the problem is, once you and your teammates move from ideation to product development, outdated process management tools, context switching, and constant updates can massively slow the process.

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so you can see those people in the weeks to come. Another source of holiday stress, making sure your personal items are safe from those gringes out there looking to take advantage of you being away from home. That's why you might wanna check out Life360's tile trackers. You can put them on your most prized possessions.

I have actually put one on Scott Galloway. He doesn't know that yet. And if anything gets lost or stolen, just ring your tile and you can track down this location on a map. That's peace of mind all season long. The Tile Tracker is the first and only tracker with an SOS button, which means you can triple press the button in the center of the Tile device to discreetly send an SOS alert to everyone in your live 360 circle.

And unlike competitors, Tile won't alert thieves to its presence via notifications. So take the stress out of your holidays Scott, we're back. President-elect Donald Trump named investor, podcaster, and Elon Musk minion David Sachs to a newly created role of AI and crypto czar. Trump said in an announcement that Sachs will safeguard free speech online and steer us away from big tech bias and censorship. Like Elon Sachs will be a special government employee. He will reportedly still remain with his VC fund, of course, and won't have to go through Senate confirmation,

thank goodness, for him. This is not someone I like in any way, as I've reported on for many years. He ran a bunch of different companies, sold one to Microsoft, one of the lesser financial social media, I can't forget the name of it. Mesa Money has spent a lot of time following Musk around, that seems to be,

or other smarter people like Peter Thiel at PayPal. He was one of the PayPal mafia, but I wouldn't say he was Tony Soprano in any way. I don't know what he's going to do. I think he's a blowhard. I think he is unpleasant. I don't know what he's going to do. I think he's a blowhard. I think he is unpleasant. I don't know what to say. He said I had the single most vitriolic voice in the tech ecosystem so he's not a fan of mine.

I would look at some of the reporting I did on SACS. Some of it was good. He was a decent entrepreneur. I wouldn't say he was the top entrepreneur I ever dealt with. It's fine. I wrote a story about him in 2016 that he didn't like much about apologizing for parts of the book he co-wrote with Peter Thiel in 1990s where he said sometimes rape was belated regret. It was really, and he apologized for it. That wasn't great.

Whatever. He did that. I just don't like the cut of his jib, as they say. I don't know what he's going to do. I don't know if there's any real influence here, but he certainly, he spoke at the Republican National Convention, he did a big fundraiser for Trump. He likes to pontificate on Twitter. He's just a blowhard. We'll see. We'll see if he has real power to do anything. He'll certainly terrorize people on Twitter and et cetera, things like that. Any thoughts?

Look, I don't like the way these guys equip themselves around how they treat you. You know, I've had one guy tweet about me 445 times as part of that mafia, but it's mostly out of insecurity and that he just wants to fuck me. But... He does it. Oh, he does. You know, I've never had someone want me as badly as this guy wants me, clearly.

We know. He's part of the gang there. But he has no power, so it's not a threat to me. The folks with some real power, I think David is a smart guy. And David has real money. And his buddy, Elon, for whatever reason, they seem to be, you know, I think at one point, Elon called you the definition of pure evil.

Like he decided that was the tweet he was gonna put out. That is just so- I'm not sure, that was Yoel, I was something else. But yeah, in that range, Yoel Roth was the definition of pure, I can't remember. They always do it. They dunk on everybody, but go ahead. But it's, okay, that's how you reflect your blessings.

And I can't stand the general shitposting of America by the people who, if they lived in any other country, would be the, selling Subarus and wherever in Ecuador. They just wouldn't, anyway, when you join the government, you get, not in this position, I don't believe, but if you become Treasury Secretary, you get this unbelievable perk. And that is, and Hank Paulson enjoyed

this perk, you become exempt from taxes on the sales of stock. You get to- Yeah. My ex-wife did that. My ex-wife did. Right. But the reason they do that is because they need you to sell your stock, because when you have the most influential organization in the world, the US government,

making business decisions for tens, hundreds of billions of dollars, they don't want you to own stock. And the idea that someone is gonna have influence over what are the most high intensity valuation creation and destruction sectors right now, AI and crypto, but also maintain it. I don't have a problem.

Trump gets to pick his guys, and his guys who throw fundraisers for him. No, everybody does it. I've never listened to their show, but I've seen clips on TikTok, and I think David is a smart guy. The problem is, there's no fucking way he should be able to maintain his position

as a venture capitalist while dictating and advising on policy and regulation around AI and crypto. You want to talk about setting up an environment where there's absolutely no guardrails and raw retail investors. And they're not here to help everybody, right? Once you get that job, I think you do rise to the fucking occasion and treat everybody equal. But Sam Altman took to X after his sex announcement to post his congratulations. In this polite way, Elon responded with a laughing, crying emoji.

These guys are like, this is ridiculous. They're like, oh, now we're running the bar, that kind of thing. By the way, the Elon tweet was, I have rarely seen evil in as pure form as Yoel Roth, and Kara Swisher's heart is filled with seething hate. That was, I have- Seething hate. And I was vitriolic.

Your heart is filled with seething hate. Vitriolic. Seething hate. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I just think they're not in it for everyone, they're in it for themselves. And so, like, you know, if you get this fucking job, David, act like you work for the whole

United States of America. Don't take part in this juvenile. Listen, I don't like this guy. He's not at fault here because it's the administration that has decided to let people dictate massive flows of capital or lack of regulation while maintaining economic interest. They don't care. No conflict, no interest, right? No interest, no conflict, whatever. I remember that is. No conflict, no interest, right? No interest, no conflict, whatever. I would remember that as no conflict, no interest, that kind of thing. It's so cynical. It is not about the United States of America.

They will favor their friends. They will hurt their enemies. It feels like that. That's where we're headed. That's what a rinky-dink third world country does. I'm sorry, it's not the United States of America. All the minions are coming in. I call them the minions.

I literally, for a moment, I heard someone send me something saying, one of the all-in guys is going into the administration. I'm like, oh my God. And I had for a moment, I'm like, let me guess, Chamath is going to be head of the SEC. Oh, whoa. I'm like, it's going to be SPAC mania. SPAC mania. Oh, God. These people, again, they're so poor, all they have is money. Another Elon Minion and tech billionaire joining the team, Jared Isaacman, has been nominated for NASA Administrator.

Isaacman is a founder and CEO of payment processing company Shift4, which makes him, he's flown to space twice on commercial SpaceX missions. Obviously, he's qualified running NASA, whatever. Then he can send these contracts to SpaceX, which has a lot of them, but there's no facade of fairness in any of this. It's all like Elon's guys throughout the thing. I guess he spent a quarter billion dollars to help Trump win the election.

I guess to the victor goes the spoils. In a third world country, most of the money went through his America PAC, although Elon also gained $20 million. He was the only funder to the RBG PAC, a super PAC that suggested Trump and the late Justice Ginsburg were aligned on abortion rights. Her family is horrified, and he was the funder of this. It's still the single best investment of the year, possibly the century.

As you remember, he said he wasn't going to be donating to either candidate early this year in March. I called him out on that, said he was lying. Turns out I was correct, but he gets all the stuff. There we are. It used to be until very recently, that people who gave money and people that was like rolled their eyes would find, okay, you're Howard Leach, who invested in one of my companies,

nice man investor, so they let him be ambassador to France. That's payola, right? Ambassadorships unless it was China or the UK or something strategic, who gave us money? Fine, they get those jobs. But the hardcore stuff that was about American security and prosperity and running actual government was based on veracity, credibility, stature, intellect, experience.

All that, these are all now ambassadorships. It's who gave the most money. And this guy, I don't, this guy's actually a thoughtful, successful guy who's passionate about space, but he doesn't understand government. I mean, he does have, he wasn't evangelist for Hubble, but he has no real domain expertise around, you know, our space program or how it actually works

or the relationship between the private and the public sectors. So all of a sudden we've just gone, hey, who wants to be secretary? I can see them sitting in a room. Can you see them sitting in a room? Like, what do you wanna be? Why don't you run CIA?

You like James Bond movies. But when someone can give, and by the way, the numbers keep going up. I thought the number I heard that Musk gave was 119 million, now here it's a quarter of a billion. This guy gave a quarter of a billion dollars. I mean, if you think someone has a 50% chance likelihood of winning and you're a billionaire

and you either have economic interests, it's a great investment to go two, three, $400 billion into a campaign. We're gonna see someone give a billion dollars to a candidate in the next campaign. If you're worth five or $10 billion, why not give $250 million so you can run NASA or maybe who knows, be attorney general?

Yeah, I know, it's seriously, it's pay for play. It's coin up presidency. It's just like, my favorite is lying about it back in March. When I said that, I got pilloried by the Elon. I'm like, he's totally backing Trump. Give me a break. He's going to hand over money and buy influence, essentially, not allegedly. But it seemed so obvious to me that this was what he was going to do. But yeah, he's doing a play. As usual, Elon is innovative. Innovative Elon in terms of this. This has been going on for centuries. He's increased his wealth by 130 or $150 billion.

That $250 million bet was the best trade of 2024. Anyway, well, we'll see where it goes. Good luck, Dave. The only thing I'm upset about is they're going to be in Washington now, and I might run into them. I'm like, I escaped. I crossed the country to get away from these people, and there they are. There are going to be odds that I'll run into each of these chodes.

I'm just like, fuck, what the fuck, get out of my town. Your heart is seething with hate. I'm seething. I'm seething with like, oh, for fuck's sake. That's what I'm seething with. Anyway, so let's bring in our friend of pivot. Vivian too is the host of the Vox media podcast, Net Worth and Chill. She's also known as your rich BFF on social media, where she's become a financial guru of sorts dispensing advice and tips to millions of followers. Vivian, welcome. Thank you so much for having me.

There's been iterations of what you're doing for many years and lots of newspapers I used to work for, all kinds of stuff. I just love this kind of thing, but what you're doing is really particularly important for young people. So if for people not familiar with your rich BFF, can you explain what it's about? And you find a way, as many writers in this area do, to make it understandable and accessible, especially to young people. I'd love to know what you think traditional media gets wrong

when it comes to financial literacy. So explain what Rich BFF is and then how is it different from previous iterations of this. Yeah, I think for a really long time, a lot of us have just wanted to be heard or even seen. And traditional financial media has very much catered to folks who look like Scott and probably have as much money as he does.

I joke, but transparently, it really hasn't offered much to women, to people of color, to young people, people who grew up low income, immigrants, anything of that nature. And it's really hard to find good reputable information in this space because when you Google the words Roth IRA, you get three million hits.

And if you don't know what you don't know, you really don't know which of these links to even click. So it's really hard to begin that journey because jargon is so rampant in the financial news media that we're seeing in writing on TV everywhere. But what Your Rich BFF does essentially is it is a financial equity platform that's breaking down this information for the next generation so that everybody can have access to it and then implement it into their daily lives. It's actual usable actionable tips versus, oh, in theory, this could happen.

This is how you actually make your life better. Talk about who are you aiming at? What does rich BFF mean? Is it just because it's fun on social media or what's the concept behind it? Yeah, the big concept behind it is my friends had come to me for this kind of information, for these tips, for this advice, and the whole premise, everybody focuses so much on rich, but the real word that we should be focusing on is BFF. I'm not lecturing you like a college professor. I am not talking to you like

I'm a parent. I'm not talking to you like I'm better than you, smarter than you, richer than you. I'm talking to you as a friend. What advice would a rich friend give you in this arena if they wanted to see you succeed, if they wanted to see you do well? Excellent. Scott? So just full disclosure, I love Vivian too. I don't know if you've noticed this,

I'm not quite stalker level yet, but I'm constantly retweeting your stuff. I think you are a gift. Thank you. I think you are a gift to young people. I love your content. I love the optimistic tone you bring. The first person under the age of,

I don't know how old you are, 30 that talks about 1202. There's this myth that you're not supposed to talk about money, which I think is nothing but an attempt by the rich to keep poor down, to create a sort of taboo. And I love how you're breaking that taboo. I want to repurpose the question that I got from a gentleman on another show because I got insecure that I didn't answer it correctly. So I want to, I want to give you a shot at it,

but a gentleman in his 50s said him and his partner have saved some money, not a lot, but they're really risk averse. So they have it all probably in money market and they've missed out on a lot of returns. So what would you suggest someone with a little bit of money that wants to start investing, what would be your asset allocation recommendation kind of loosely?

Yeah, I think with terms of like asset allocations, what I typically recommend is you take your age and you round to the nearest tens, so tens, 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and then you actually subtract by 10 again. So this person is in their 50s. We are minusing that number by 10 again, so 40. And that is what percentage of your portfolio, should be in fixed income assets, whereas the rest of it should actually still

be in the public equity market. So stocks in particular, I recommend broader index funds through ETFs with the lowest possible expense ratios. The reason I say this is just because now that they're in their 50s, even if they are feeling a little behind, they don't have to feel like the world is ending. Yes, they wanna do some sort of preservation

of their existing wealth so that they're going to have money to draw from in their later years. But also still having more than 50% of your portfolio in the public equity markets allows you to participate in that continued growth. Odds are good. The second they turn 59 and a half, they're not going to need every single dollar in that

account. So this just gives them a chance to have a portion of their money continuing to work pretty hard while another portion of it is still set aside because they are getting closer to retirement. And the other big hot tip that I would encourage them to think about is catch up contributions. For everybody who is above 50 and starting to get a little closer to retirement, you can actually contribute more to your individual retirement accounts, whether they be of the traditional or Roth variety, or your employer sponsored accounts than the average person could, that's younger than that.

And it just gives them a chance to literally catch up. That was great. Thank you. Yeah, maximize things like that on that, especially the matching stuff. Obviously, the stock market has been on a tear. People are worried about it being on a tear right now, and most people in the stock market are people that look like Scott. Everyone's not in the stock market,

it's a small group of people, but it tends to affect us mentally. Wait, tall and handsome? What do you mean looks like me? What do you mean looks like me? What do you mean looks like me? Yes, that's it, tall and handsome. It's more diverse than you think. It's about rich people.

It's not about a specific gender or race. I understand, but oddly enough, they tend to look the same. So what do you think the biggest, I'm just teasing, I tease, I tease. What do you think the biggest change for the economy and markets when Trump takes office? Obviously, he just said he wasn't gonna try

to get rid of Jerome Powell, who knows. He could change his mind in seconds if he doesn't like something. But what are you looking at? Obviously, there could be a big stock rally. Does that matter? There could be a tax cut. Does that matter? What are you looking at? Yeah. I mean, just going off of what he has openly said, realistically, we're going to see corporate tax cuts. We're going to see rollbacks on regulation, we are already seeing one of the richest, most money cabinets ever, period. And what is problematic to me about this is this is very much going to see a further K-shaped diversion between the have and have nots. Folks that are already investing are going to be able to participate in these profits,

right? Because when corporations are given tax breaks and are rolled back on regulation, they're going to prioritize one thing and one thing only. They're going to make money. They are going to do right by their shareholders, which is excellent if you are a shareholder. But when we actually look at the distribution of wealth, of who is actually investing versus who isn't, it's much easier when you have discretionary funds to invest.

If you are more worried about buying apples than Apple, like, you're not going to be participating in that upward growth. So we're going to see... And tariffs on type debt. Exactly. Yes. Which he said on this interview yesterday, he's like, yeah, it could cost more. Oh well.

Yeah. That kind of thing. It could cost more. Oh well. That's really unfortunate because when you actually think about how rich people and broke people spend, and I say that very glib tongue in cheek, but we still all have to buy some of the same things.

Regardless of if you're super-moneyed or not, you're buying toilet paper. But the ultra-luxurious, organic, triple-ply toilet paper is probably only a couple dollars more than the crappy generic brand that's one ply. We all still have to buy it, and unfortunately, these tariffs are going to make toilet paper a much larger portion of someone

who is a lower-income individual, a larger portion of their paycheck than it is versus someone who is in the higher net worth area. So we're going to see people, you know, in the bottom 50% really struggle with their cost of living. They're realistically not always going to be able to invest because they don't have those discretionary funds. Shit's going to get tough for lack of a better phrase. But for the top 50 percent,

especially people who are high net worth, this is going to be a golden era of money-making. I would actually go, I bet it's more like top 10 or 1. Yeah. I was talking to some of my relatives who have lesser jobs than I do. They're more paycheck to paycheck people. And they were like doing their you know, they're dunking on me like, Oh, Trump won. I'm like, good for my money. Yeah, I was like, you realize I will do great and you will not just FYI.

But thanks for the vote. Like I didn't know what to say. Like I was like, are you but no, they think they're gonna do better. They do. They absolutely think that. Well, I just think that like this election, generally speaking, was both the people who are voting for both parties, we voted against our own best interests. Only one specific set though knew that we were doing that. Right? Like, so you're talking about these coastal elites voting blue, realistically having more money being closer to that, you know, and frankly, Scott's probably right, 50% is incredibly generous, the top 10, top

1% of folks, a lot of them voted for Kamala Harris, well against their own best interests, knowing that we would be taxed more. I, you know, transparently voted that way. But I have family and relatives who voted the opposite side and they're trying to tell me that they are going to benefit. And I said, no, people like me, people who a huge portion of my annual like monies comes from investments, not just my labor, I am going to benefit, not you. I think it's a hard conversation to have, especially around the Thanksgiving dinner table with family, with friends, but I think we all voted

against our best interests financially speaking. How do you make money? What's your business model and what advice would you give to people who look at you and think, I'd like that job, like is it, well, what's your business model, how do you make money, and any tips on getting started or if and when there was

some sort of like seminal strategy or moment that helped kind of elevate you to being a guest on Pivot, which is a crowning achievement for almost anyone. It is. It is. So I got very lucky. I will say luck has quite a lot to do with it because my very first video went viral. That is very strange.

That doesn't happen for most people. But my first video ended up getting three million views on TikTok. And from there, I continue to post every single day. I will say this is one of the things that I'm most proud about myself, is that I took my Wall Street work ethic, where I cut my teeth, and put it into this, into Your Rich BFF. So when people were getting tired and saying,

I don't feel like making a video today, I kept churning them out. And so now I have a very diversified business. I'm very proud of that because I think a lot of us struggle with the idea of like the I-word influencer. It's like you turn out a bunch of brand deals and then suddenly within two years people have forgotten about you. I've diversified my business so that, you know, still the lion's share of my income comes from branded partnerships. I get paid directly from platforms for creating content that gets a lot of partnerships. I get paid directly from platforms for creating content that gets a lot of eyeballs.

I get paid to speak. I got a book advance for my first book, just signed for my second one. My podcast itself has ads on it. And then in addition to that, currently working on a tech platform that is going to be direct to consumer, that's still not ready to be rolled out yet,

but I did wanna tease that here. So there's just a lot of ways that I make money. But to help people with financial tools and things like that. And which, just some follow up questions. Which of those businesses is growing the fastest? And in your mind, which platforms are on the way up, way down as it relates to your business?

Yeah, I think brand partnerships is still the lion's share of my income. It has grown very much so this year, especially as people have become, I would say, more financially aware. Even brands that normally wouldn't target a financially minded audience are like, okay, like how do we speak to people now

that everybody's worried about their wallet, what's in it and what is not in it? So brand partnerships, but also speaking, I would say, with the sale of my first book with that launch, you know, hitting the New York Times bestseller list, suddenly there were a lot of inquiries for my speaking. So that's something that's growing very quickly. And I think one thing that I have still been kind of trying to mull over is the whole, is TikTok getting banned? Is something going to happen? Is there gonna be a sale? But regardless, I think I've set myself up

in a good position because if TikTok sticks around, great. It's one more platform where I'm able to create content and share it. But if not, I have really diversified my audience to other platforms and ultimately those hours of watch time, that attention doesn't just dissipate, it's going to go somewhere else. And realistically, I'm guessing it'll probably go to places like Instagram and YouTube shorts. Yeah, so you have this big TikTok following. Are you concerned? What's the plan? Um, I'm not as concerned, I think, as some other creators who've really, really leaned into TikTok

being their main, you know, cash cow. I have tried very hard to make sure that I have a strong following across TikTok, across Instagram, across Facebook, across YouTube, across Snapchat. When everyone was making fun of me for posting on Facebook saying that nobody was watching my content on Facebook, now I feel so smart that I was able to do that and diversify my audience because I'm going to still be able to reach them, not to mention me having built my own roster of BFFs, my own newsletter, my own mailing list so I can speak to them directly. Right. Absolutely.

Don't listen to them. You don't have to be hip. So one financial tip or habit you'd recommend for people going into the U.I. I have two sons. Just understanding money. Now I spend a lot of time them learning about things like paying the rent and costs, and my one son's leaving college and I'm like, so what are you going to do to make money?

The mom train is ending soon or relatively soon. So what financial tip or habit would you recommend, besides getting a job obviously, going into the new year? Yeah. Oh man, this is a good one. I would say find find your ikigai, but in part, I really encourage people to prioritize the can I make money of this. So, ikigai is a Japanese term,

essentially saying that you are able to find your purpose once your thing fits four categories. One of which is, do I like doing this? Am I good at it? Does the world need it? And can I make money? So once you found something that fits into all four of these circles, it's like the center of the Venn diagram. And we give this advice,

especially to students going into higher education of, follow your passion, whatever you want to do, whatever your hobbies. No, I'm so sorry. But. The world doesn't need another DJ and no one's going to pay you for it. Exactly.

Like we need plumbers, we need electricians, we need people who have real skills. And I laugh because I come from a Chinese immigrant family. So that was never on the table for me. Like I was never going to be allowed to major in certain majors because there was no opportunity to make money and my parents weren't going to be able to help me after school or anything like that.

If you come from generational wealth, you have the luxury of following your passion. But if you are a regular, schmegular person with a regular, schmegular family, and not to mention lower income, pick a job that is going to create the lifestyle that you want. Prioritize your lifestyle because you are not defined by your job, but if you do not have the life that you want, you're going to be sorely unhappy. Excellent answer. Excellent answer. It depends.

It also is what it is. You know what the job happens to be. You know, something that you like to. You can't like things that you're not. Was that too practical? No, it wasn't. But you should also like what it is, you know what the job happens to be, something that you like to. You can't like things that you- Was that too practical? No, it wasn't, but you should also like what you're doing. Yeah. If you can, if you can like it.

It doesn't have to make a lot of money, but then you have to adjust with the lifestyle is. I find when you make a shit ton of money at something, you start really liking it. You start really loving it. I deal with this really difficult woman on this podcast and I don't love it, but we're making bank, I like podcasting.

So Vivian, the thing about low cost index funds is you're still stock picking, you're just stock picking at a macro level because there's different index funds. There's QQ, there's NASDAQ, which is more aggressive. There's still some quote unquote selection around which indices you invest in. Do you believe, and this is a loaded question

because obviously I'm putting forward a bias here, that the American market has gotten so expensive, relatively speaking to emerging or non-American markets based on traditional PEs, that people should be thinking about index funds outside of the US and maybe rebalancing their portfolio and putting more money. I mean, you're basically, your whole rap, and it's the most powerful rap, is around

diversification. Yeah. You don't need to find the needle by the whole haystack. But do you think given how expensive the American market is and quite frankly how cheap some of the emerging or non-American markets that people should be thinking about allocating a greater percentage of their portfolio to index funds outside of the US? Yes, absolutely. It's so funny. I feel like you teed me up for this one, but you don't want to,

again, be overexposed in any one specific arena. And I think to your point, like even with general US index funds, like what is it, like 85% of the returns came from six companies, like you are to a degree, like very, very exposed. I love looking at, I believe the ticker is VXUS. So that's like a Vanguard fund. Every single different brokerage. Everything but the US. Correct.

Yeah. So as long as you are, it makes sense, right? Like VXUS. Yeah. Every single brokerage has their own version of this. So make sure you're getting the one that's at the brokerage you are investing with so you aren't paying additional fees. But you can not only just invest in index funds, domestically

speaking, but having something like that, who is, that is going to give you broader band exposure across the globe is very, very smart. I think the tricky piece is what, because people don't want to sit there and be like, okay, well, which of these countries has like a strong economic situation right now? Like which of these. Brazil or South Korea. Yeah, exactly. Like they don't want to sit there and be like, okay, like, should I invest countries has a strong economic situation right now? Brazil or South Korea.

Yeah, exactly. They don't want to sit there and be like, okay, should I invest in a BRICS country? They want to just have it done for them. And if you want that, I think there are, again, index funds out there that are going to be able to help you do that in a very easy way where you can buy one thing and get exposure to the rest of the globe.

Great. Okay, perfect. Vivian, we'll have you back and talk to us about Bitcoin. We're not going to go into it right now, we don't have time, but we'll talk about that next. All right, because a lot of young people are waiting here. I love Vivian too. I think she's fantastic. You're coming on again.

I think she's fantastic. I love you guys. We should get a podcast for her on Vox. Oh wait. Oh she does. Speaking of which, people can find you on social media. Your rich BFF and your podcast is Net Worth and Chill. What a good name.

Thank you so much, Vivian. Congrats, Vivian. Thank you guys so much for having me. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails. Support for this show comes from Grammarly. 231. That's the staggering number of apps

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[♪ music playing and fades out. [♪ music playing and fades out. [♪ music playing and fades out. Okay, Scott, let's hear some wins and fails. You go first this week. Well, these are both good things, so I don't know how to categorize them as wins or fails, but Basher al-Assad, who's arguably one of the most murderous people in recent history, was forced to flee after rebels took control of Damascus. And there's a decent amount of insecurity around the devil you know versus the devil you don't know.

It's not like these are good people who've taken over, but. But we don't know if they've changed, but go ahead. Yeah, we don't know. And right now Israel is bombing military installations in the, to Syria, because they don't want these new folks to have access to this stuff. But this is someone who used gas on his own people,

killed somewhere between half a million and a million of his countrymen. And no one seemed to quite frankly to be that outraged about it. But anyways, another talk show. But what we people don't realize is that as much as we shitpost America and we're angry about it, our support in conjunction with our allies in Western Europe, our support of Ukraine has basically made it impossible. And also Israel's attack on the proxies of Iran have dramatically weakened the allies, Iran and Russia respectively, the Bashar al-Assad turned to to save his ass. And the reason they're weakened is because right now, Russia is losing 1,500 people a day in Ukraine as Ukrainian army with drone technology and Western aid is proving to be Proving to be the ultimate underdog that no one ever thought

Could put up this sort of fight and Russia has its own problems right now And when Bostor called Putin he said sorry boss word we got our own shit to take care of and then when they called Iran Whose proxies Hamas Houthisis, and Hezbollah, and also Syria, their hands have been cut off and their air defenses are weakened. People don't give enough credit to the West. And that is we are toppling dictators. Do you think Putin is really strong right now?

You don't think the Islamic regime in Iran is really worried right now? And the thing that disappoints me is that young people and Americans get angry and upset about everything America and they don't realize that democracies, our commitment to the military, our military expenditures, our allies, our intelligence apparatus are winning. We're doing, we are a formidable force

and we are not getting the credit. People are not recognizing the incredible work of our security apparatus, how strong we are when we're allied with people and the impact it is having on very, just how difficult we are making it for very bad people. And I'm disappointed that the media doesn't recognize and people don't recognize how wonderful a victory this is and what wonderful things it says about the alliance between the US, Israel, and Europe. We are making the lives of very bad people

much more difficult right now. Anyways, I don't know if that's my win or fail. And my win, and this is a weird one, is do you remember the governor of Texas that ran for president? I think his name was governor Perry, Rick Perry. Yeah, yeah. Remember he didn't come off rather well.

He seemed dumb. He lasted for a hot minute, but I liked him because he was very handsome. I also thought he was quite reasonable. And he said on a public debate stage before all this anti-vax misinformation, he said he signed into law mandatory HPV vaccines for girls in schools and there was a lot of pushback and he said on stage, he said, well, you know what, I hate cancer.

So there's this wonderful news that this vaccine for HPV has been found in a peer-reviewed study to reduce cervical cancer by 62%. So think about this, a two thirds reduction in what is a terrible cancer that does happen to young women has been eliminated. And there's even evidence that a new more advanced form of an HPV vaccine has the possibility or the potential to eradicate cervical cancer.

This is just such wonderful news on what continues to be one of the great gifts of our modern economy and that is vaccines. Those are great ones. I'm sure you're going to love this, but I have two actually positive ones and one very short negative one is Taylor Swift's Iris Tour is over a record $2 billion

in ticket sales, just crazy. The amount of and the economic impact of this woman is enormous. That's just $2 billion. It doubled the gross of its closest competitor over 21 months, and now it's the end of it. Congratulations as a business person. So much economic benefit from one person's creativity. Whether you like her or not, Scott, she makes them dope.

I never said I didn't like her. I just don't love her music. Yeah, that's great. She makes a ton of money. So let me say, what an incredible economic for everybody. Did you see her? I saw her. I did. I went. Yeah, I know, I did. I liked it. I loved it. But the economic benefits were enormous, just enormous,

really quite something and real money that was based on real things. I really appreciated that. And some of this crypto stuff going on makes me nervous, young men trading. But this was real money made by a really great entrepreneur. So congratulations, Atosius. And very briefly for another positive, very quick, Dick Van Dyke, dancing in a Coldplay video.

Oh, that's great. 99 years old, amazing dancer, every year of his life, an amazing, amazing entertainer, person. If you listen to him talk, what a decent person he is. 99 years, looks fantastic, dancing his life out. Love that Dick Van Dyke. Love him so much, I can't even say how much I love Dick Van Dyke.

And I just had my kids watch Mary Poppins, which we do, and he's fantastic. My negative thing, I think, is this, is people, what Biden is going to have to do in the next month, I guess, you know, he's just, the EPA banned two cancer-causing chemicals used in everyday products. They're trying to get into the wires, one's in dry cleaning, trying to get past all these things. He's urged to empty federal death rows before Trump takes office. Pardon, there was a back and forth with Liz Cheney, who doesn't seem to want a federal pardon,

but what he's going to do. And some of them I'm like, don't do this, because it's against the rule of law, right? In the opposite way. And the second part is then Trump says members of the January 6th committee should be jailed, he said in an interview. I mean, again, third world country antics.

And so I don't envy the decisions Joe Biden is gonna make because he wants to sort of be the rule of law guy, but at the same time, this is unprecedented for an incoming president to say he wants people doing their jobs. The January 6th committee with zero proof, by the way, zero, zero, zero. Everything he said was wrong in that interview with Kristen Welker doing this. It's threatening, it's demented, it's an escalation in threats to these members.

Said they should be prosecuted for their lies. He accused them of treason last year, especially Liz Cheney and her response, astonishing. She is a brave, I don't care what you think of her. She stands for the rule of law. I know people don't like the war stuff, etc. But just really disturbing that interview in many ways.

You should go listen to it. Okay. That's my wins and bans. It's funny, just going back to interview in many ways. You should go listen to it. Okay. That's my advance. It's funny. Just going back to your win about Taylor Swift, my car took it in because it was making a whining noise, and all they needed to do was take the Taylor Swift CD out. You will never acknowledge women killing it. A man can literally do a small thing. I'm not exaggerating.

She waved at me in the crowd. I didn't wave back, so you can expect another album and tour in the next few months. All right. Okay. Anyway, I loved you, Taylor. Good for you. By the way, she's a fantastic professional, pays her people well, puts on a great show. Not a ton of obvious surgery or profanity. I think she's a wonderful role model for young people.

Thank you. I'm going to go see Wicked again. Okay. Go ahead. Did you see it? No, I didn't see it. I didn't think so. Don't go, I don't wanna listen to your insulting of it. I'm sure it's great. I love...

Cynthia Riva? Who's the hot one that dated the SNL guy? Ariana Grande's amazing. She's incredible. She's amazing. Actually go see it. She's amazing. Oh no, I wanna see it.

I heard it's great. It's great. You should see it. It's long, so pee before because of your elderly issues. My elderly issues. Jesus Christ. My elderly issues.

Anyway, we want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. I also want to mention a powerful interview I just did for On with Kara Swisher. I spoke to Megan Garcia, whose 14-year-old son took his own life after spending several months interacting with a character AI chatbot. Megan discussed why she's suing Google and Character AI and detailed her claims against these two companies.

The question I asked was what she would say to the creators of this technology. Let's listen. It might not matter to them that there's a little boy in Orlando, Florida that is gone and a mother who is devastated, but it matters to my little family here. You know, and you should get to keep making products that are going to be hurting kids. You shouldn't get to master a dangerous product, train it to be super smart and turn around and ride your golden chariot back into Google.

You shouldn't get to hurt children the way that you are hurting children because you knew that this was dangerous when you did it. You knew that this was going to be a direct result of doing that. And you knew that you didn't have the quote unquote brand safety implications as a startup that Google had. So you felt like that was a license to do this. Like, that's unconscionable. It's immoral and it's wrong.

This was a really tough interview. She's astonishing. And you'll see it's a very complex story. So I recommend everybody listen to it, Scott, especially we talk about this issue a lot. Yeah, I appreciate her courage and I appreciate you bringing the story to light. I don't think I need the sense until someone goes to jail. I agree. You know, one thing that I'll just note very quickly before we go is she has not been approached

by any legislator to do something about this. This is just, I am on the frigging phone with these people. And every time I talk to one, I say, you need to listen to this and do something about it. I should also note, and I'm very reticent to say this because I don't want to add to her pain. This also brings up some important issues around gun control though.

Because the kid did find his stepfather's gun. And so this is a tragedy on a number of levels. It brings up a warranted conversation on a variety of topics Yeah, but let's start with this thing they made so we'll see where it goes. Okay, Scott. That's the show We'll be back on Friday for more. Please read us out today's show was produced by Lara Neiman So I Marcus and Taylor Griffin Ernie Intertide engineered this episode. Thanks also to do bros and miss of ario You're shot her while it'sox Media's Executive Producer of Audio. Make sure you subscribe to the show

wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Amazon Q Business is the generative AI assistant from AWS. Because business can be slow, like wading through the mud. But Amazon Q helps streamline work so tests like summarizing monthly results can be done

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