Pivot - TikTok Gets Ready to Testify, UBS Rescues Credit Suisse, and Guest Dr. Gloria Mark

Episode Date: March 21, 2023

Kara and Scott discuss another round of Amazon layoffs, former President Trump’s call for protests, and of course, raccoon dogs. Plus, the banking drama continues as banks in the U.S. and Switzerland come together to rescue the weakest among them. Also, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew will testify before Congress this week. Friend of Pivot Dr. Gloria Mark explains how technology has impacted our attention spans. You can find Dr. Gloria Mark at @GloriaMark_PhD on Twitter, and you can buy her book “Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness, and Productivity” 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.

And I stand with raccoon dogs, Cara. Anything that cute, anything that adorable, we have to stand with. Oh, my God. We'll talk about that in a minute because this is, we're never going to, like I said, I was correct in that one is because China is recalcitrant to give any information. We'll never find out about the origins of COVID. But are you the same Scott Galloway I saw on Face the Nation this week? Are you the same 15-year-old boy that showed up with a hoodie on Face the Nation? It wasn't a hoodie. That was a sweater. That was a sweater. I mean, I got to be honest. That was a total power move to show up on Face the Nation in a hoodie. You know what? You know why? I'm here in San Francisco working on my book for two weeks without the kids,

without anybody. And I forgot to bring a jacket. And because I was like, I've cut everything except for pivot. And so I this is what I had. It was a sweater, though. It was not a hoodie. It was a sweater hoodie. So it was nicer. I thought it was pretty like I thought it was a total power. That was like, that's like when, you know, after Halloween, you don't sneak Halloween candy from your kids, you eat it in front of them slowly. It was a total power move. Can I ask you, what was your background? It was like the end times or like Caligula.

What's going on with your background? No, I'm in the Faina. And I'm in a big fancy room. And they have all this cool Argentinian art. Yeah. And so I'm down here. I love it down here. I know you do.

I know you love. You miss Florida. You miss the state that's got to decide whether to hand Donald Trump over to the government, but we'll get that in a minute. Just other things we're talking about today. The Swiss government goes to an extraordinary length to solve the Credit Suisse problem. Also, TikTok comes clean about its number, maybe. And we'll speak to Dr. Gloria Mark about paying attention. I want you to take note of that. But first, former President Trump is once again calling for protests on social media. Trump took to True Social to say he would be arrested on Tuesday and urging supporters to, quote, protest, protest, protest.

This time, it's because he expects to be arrested today or sometime this week on charges stemming from an investigation into payments to Stormy Daniels. Trump's lawyers say the former president's response is based on press reports. An interagency policy meeting on security, including the NYPD, the Secret Service, and the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force is reportedly planned on Monday as we tape in case Trump is indicted this week. What a big mess for a very little man. But should we be worried? He's sort of sounding the same that he did. It'll be wild kind of thing.

Yeah, I think you're better off. I think we're probably better off to overreact than to underreact here. And we had this discussion on Face the Nation. I just think it's hilarious that we pretend or that Meta and these platforms pretend to have a thoughtful conversation around whether to allow them back on or not. I thought that was great, the point you made about, you know, they just want to do it because he's got a billion dollars to spend on his presidential campaign.

Explain what you said. Well, just look at the timing here. Distinct of all of these ridiculous, you know, oversight boards and all this pretend hand-wringing. They let him spread misinformation and basically violate every term of service until he was booted out of office and would no longer be as interesting or create as much content or create as much engagement, which translates to money. And they decided, what do you know? Shocker. They're about to let him back on about the time he's going to raise between one and two billion dollars and spend it on media. And it's oh, that's a coincidence. And if they had any, any sense of trying to even masquerade that they have terms of service. The last time he called for a protest led to an insurrection. He has called for another protest. So if they ever wanted to pretend

that there were any actual terms of service relating to danger or, you know, health of the Commonwealth, they would have kicked him off when he called for a protest. But it's got nothing to do with that. Yeah, I think their stance is, who knows what's going to happen here? And it's sort of like, well, we kind of have a little history on that. Do you expect that to happen? I don't know if it'll peter out or it'll be a lot of sort of. I think even his diehard fans who see that they're there, you know, who knows someone who knows someone who, you know, was not a Tucker Carlson tourist and neat little lines and ended up in jail. I think that, you know, these may be irrational people, but I don't think it would be fair to call them stupid. Well, maybe it is fair to call the insurrectionist stupid, but I think they've sort of, I would imagine they see that, okay, this guy does not have

her best interests at heart. This was not a justified insurrection. A lot of people have gone to jail. I think they've stuck three or 400 people in jail. Yeah, almost 200 people have been sentenced for January 6. Over a thousand have been charged. I think they're just sort of like, okay, that didn't work out so well for us. Maybe we should organize. But at the same time, you can't take that risk. Yeah. Yeah, I know. I agree with you. It's interesting that they, you know, it'll be interesting to see what Ron DeSantis does as the speaking of Florida, the governor of Florida. If if what law enforcement does here, you know, he's not above the law. Let's just keep that in mind.

If he did, if they arrest him, they arrest him and then he can work it out in court with them. That's, you know, interestingly, that's what I interviewed Katie Porter here yesterday at Manny's. And that was her thing. She's like, well, we'll see. But he's got to be, you know, arrested and taken in. And then let's see if he can beat him, beat the rep. And I'm curious to get your response to this. But that's one side of this, right? The presidents and our elected leaders are supposed to de-escalate. They're supposed to take the

temperature down, not be a source of insurrection and violence. We're in uncharted territory here. We expect our presidents to make bad decisions and deliver violence on innocent people abroad every once in a while, but we don't expect them to incite a riot. We expect them to calm things. So we're in uncharted territory. We've just never had a guy like this. But the one thing, and I'm curious to get your take on this, is I believe that Donald Trump has committed criminal acts, and I think it should be held accountable. At the same time, I think there's a strategy to how you allocate your prosecutorial resources and what arrow you put your wood behind. I would not put the wood behind the Stormy Daniels or the inflating his assets for financial purposes in New York case.

I would be more focused. Well, they operate separately, Scott. You can't. Do they really, though, care? Don't you think they coordinate a little focused. Well, they operate separately, Scott. You can't. Do they really, though, care? Don't you think they coordinate a little bit? No, no, no, no. These are different cases. He's criminalizing all over the place, you know, allegedly criminalizing all over the place. Don't you worry, though? Do you worry that it gives his supporters cloud cover to say that these are politically motivated attacks? Yes, it does. I think his violence is a

tactic with this guy. I think he uses violence and it is what he does. And he doesn't care if it burns all down, just like a lot of people we know. And I think that he will, yes, some of these cases aren't as good as others, but they are what they are. This is what this guy does. I don't care, but if they're going to start arresting people who lie about paying off their prostitutes. They're going to have to round up a lot of people. I get that. But they didn't round up this guy. Like Martha Stewart went down for stock insider trading.

How many other people did? It's just the way it goes. You know what I mean? You know, whether he convinces people it's a witch hunt or if the Republicans fall in line, this is where we are. And, you know, he certainly brought it on himself. I think the issue is these companies really have, if this becomes something really dangerous, they're on the hook again for the second time. They look like complete idiots.

And it's confusing. It's just very confusing about what to do with someone who does, who's shameful, who doesn't care about creating violence. I don't think it's that confusing. I think you'd kick them off the platform. Yeah, I would. You know, you and I would do that. Speaking of the platforms, the debate over COVID-19 origin continues.

New evidence suggests a link to natural rather than lab-based origins. Well, it's one or the other. The World Health Organization is calling on China to re-release genetic data from 2019 that was removed from the international database by, guess who, the Chinese. The data reportedly showed a possible link between COVID-19 and animals sold at the wet market in Wuhan. The animal in question, a fox-like creature called the raccoon dog, that's your new name, whose DNA was blended with COVID-19 positive samples from the market.

The data has not been peer reviewed and WHO says it still does not have a definitive answer about the origins of the pandemic. You know, China, China is going to make it impossible for us. This will be an argument going back and forth and back and forth, whether it was a lab leak or it was this zoonotics way, which many people think it was. It did take 14 years for science to find the origins of the SARS epidemic, but it will go on and on and on. Yeah, but just a few things about the raccoon dog. Yeah, go ahead. They are monogamous. The males will guard their young when the females forage. They have curved claws for climbing, which distinguishes them from most other

dog breeds. And they're the only dog breed that hibernates. And in addition, actually in Japan, they're kind of considered, and this is true, an animal with these sort ofbernates. And in addition, actually, in Japan, they're kind of considered, and this is true, an animal with these sort of mythical powers. And in all the animation, they go to town with their abnormally large scrotums, and they turn them into, in these cartoons, into fishing nets and umbrellas. So, an animal that's monogamous, a dog that hibernates and whose scrotum can be used to protect us from rain or go fishing. I just, I want a raccoon dog. I want a raccoon dog.

Okay, okay. Except for the COVID thing. Starting the COVID thing is just a deal breaker. I refuse to believe it. I refuse to demonize the raccoon dog. That's just a bridge too far for me. Anyway, the point being, this debate continues, and we should look into all the locker room talk it's going to be a good man it's going to be 20 years before we find out what what an awesome

animal okay all right this is an awesome nonetheless let's just say we don't know as what i said was we're never going to know and i think caris fisher was right about that now breaking news as we record this amazon Amazon will lay off 9,000 workers. Boy, the drip, drip, drip from these companies, not just Amazon, but Meta. CEO Andy Jassy says the cuts will focus on cloud computing, human resources, advertising, and Twitch live streaming business. You know, what do you think of this one? You talked about these cuts continuing and said it was just the beginning, but it is unusual to do it this way because they all sort of said, this is it, and we won't upset people more.

This is the gift that keeps on giving. The market loves these layoffs. Okay, 9,000 people, just some context, since the beginning of COVID, Amazon has hired 740,000. Yeah. So, and they don't, there's no real downside. Their cultures have become, I don't want to say fat and happy,

but it's, I mean, here's the bottom line. They keep, they'll fire 10,000 people. And then a week, two weeks, a month later, it sounds terrible to say, nobody misses them. And so it's clear there's just a lot of fat in these companies. The market loves these cost cuts. They have cloud cover for the cost cuts between, you know, what is a recession that's been a week away for 18 months now. And every signal is kind of like, the thing I don't get is you said the right word, trip, trip. My advice is always when we're on a board and we go to, we do a layoff, I'm always like, go deeper. Because you don't want to do this a bunch of times.

You want to do it once and then you want to stop. But these companies are, they're like, okay, we fired 10,000 people. Anyone see any difference? No. And the market's like it. I also think, and this is not an aspirational statement, I realize, I actually think firing can sometimes be good for the culture. Well, some people think that, yeah. You need to be, every employee should be able to look left and look right. And not necessarily think I like this person, but I get why they're here. And I think it's very demotivating sometimes when there's whole groups of people or divisions that aren't doing a lot, aren't working that hard. And it's like,

well, why am I working this hard? So I think what I'll call it strategic firing can actually be culturally accretive. Yeah, that's interesting. That's interesting when I think about people, but I do agree with you. I think when they overhire, they have a problem. And they do that out of competition with others. It's interesting because the stock of Amazon is still down for the year, 40% for one year. But year to date, it's up 12%. So not a lot. It's not getting a whole lot of bounce from these things. It's down today, actually. So the stock thing is sort of a side lane. I do think efficiency, the year, I think Mark Zuckerberg's got it right, this year of efficiency thing does have its

positives for these companies. And it looks like they're running the company. And look what Mark Benioff at Salesforce, how that did for the company. So yeah, well, I think you're going to see a lot more of this, especially if this bank issue continues to bring us closer to recession. It's another thing that could do that. So in that vein, let's get to our first big story. Bankers of the world unite. In the last week, rival banks in the U.S. and Switzerland came together to rescue the weakest among them. First, large banks in America rallied to save First Republic Bank to the tune of $30 billion. That's because they were afraid of a run like the one that took down SVB, Silicon Valley Bank. Both banks had long-term investments hammered by high interest rates.

Meanwhile, in Switzerland, banking giant UBS agreed to buy Credit Suisse for around $3 billion. That was a bargain, apparently. The Swiss government supported the move and changed the law to make it happen without a vote from shareholders. UBS said it plans to shrink Credit Suisse's investment banking unit. Once a very big player. Do you remember how big Credit Suisse was? Anyway, so are we out of the woods? It seems like the banking authorities are really taking this in hand and the banks together so there isn't a bigger run or a bigger problem.

Because as you said, banking is a confidence game. Or Bill Cohen said that. It's been nostalgic, or it's nostalgic for me. When I was a senior at UCLA, I had no idea what I wanted to do. And my roommate, who was very ambitious, decided he wanted desperately to be an investment banker. And I thought, well, if he wants it, I'm going to do it because we're very competitive with each other. And the four best brands in investment banking that everyone wanted to go to work for were Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Solomon Brothers, remember them, and Credit Suisse First Boston. It was just called First Boston back then. I mean, this is, it was a juggernaut of banking and investment banking. And now it's gone. But for the last 10 years, my boss, actually, who went on to be the CEO of Morgan Stanley, John Mack,

went on to run Credit Suisse. Credit Suisse has just been kind of this clown car for the last 10 years. It's like mistake after mistake after mistake on a variety of issues. And what's happening is what Bill Cohen said needed to happen, a variety of issues. And what's happening is what Bill Cohen said needed to happen, and that is consolidation. And typically, what a lot of times what the feds do is they come in and they facilitate an acquisition. And I mean, this is a company, I think it has something like $5 trillion. It has a lot of assets, and it got sold for nothing. It got sold for $3 billion, which is kind of a rounding error. I know, it really is. I mean, they tried to backstop it. The Swiss National Bank tried to

give it $50 billion in backstopping, but it wasn't enough pride confidence. So it had to be sold. It had to be sold off, essentially. That's right. And of course, it went through without approval, so they changed the laws. I think they have to do these things. I don't think, I think, you know, once, interesting, something Katie Porter said, Representative Porter said yesterday, is like, by the time it's happening, it's avoidable. But once it's happening, you've got to do these things. You don't really have a choice because you can't set off this sort of one thing after the next. This first, in an interview today, Reid Hoffman said the same thing. If you don't deal with the first domino, you're really in trouble.

You want to overreact. You want to intervene early. The other thing we were talking about on Face the Nation is, so a bunch of banks, the four biggest banks and Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs came up with $30 billion in deposits to put into First Republic to try and shore it up and increase confidence. Whether it works or not, we'll see. But in 1907, J.P. Morgan basically—I mean, history really does repeat itself. In 1907, there was two guys who tried to corner the stock on a copper company. It failed, and the banks that backed them, the first one, Knickerbocker, went out of business. And then it started—the contagion started, and the next that backed them, the first one, Knickerbocker, went out of business. And then it started, the contagion started and the next bank started failing. And JP Morgan

returned from vacation, got the biggest bankers in a room and said, we solve this. And he pledged half of his net worth to put into banks and he got Getty to do the same thing. And they basically ended the financial crisis by personally shoring up the finances along with the Fed. They convinced the government to do the same thing. And I'm thinking, okay, now fast forward to 2021. I believe that Peter Thiel or Marc Andreessen could have stopped us with one tweet. I think if they had early on said, we're working with the Feds. We have encouraged all of our portfolio companies to stay put. We are talking to Silicon Bank about an efficient and elegant

sale. And also, if they had pointed out that of the last 73 banks that have failed, 73 had all of their deposits backstopped. If they had just said all of this in a tweet storm, I don't think we'd be here. And what I would ask is, can you imagine any Silicon Valley billionaire pledging 5% of his wealth, much less 50%, to try and stop something like this? But there were, you know, as I said, I interviewed Reid Hoffman for Today's On with Kara Swisher, and he talked about this. Very constructive. Very constructive. And he went through what he did, and he said, I'm just a little part of it, but I thought it was really important to shut the fuck up and get them information they needed, the regulators.

And so he and others like Ron Conway worked with them. And so you had sort of put the difference between one group of people and another, and he certainly cares more about the citizenry and society than anything else. And he went through it, what he did, and he felt the loudness was a real problem, was a real issue of some people. And so, yeah, no, 100%, they wouldn't have done it. They would have been like, make it burn, and then we'll start something else. There love, you know, there is an attitude here on every product, not just banking or whatever. It's like, hey, let's wreck it, and then we'll build it again. And with us in charge kind of stuff in a lot of ways. Well, there's going to be, you watch, the next car to be turned over here that's going to cause

a lot of angry. And I wouldn't be surprised if there's a congressional hearing around this. Is it when Bill Ackman uses hyperbole and says that- Yeah, he was particularly irritating. Well, but there's a difference. So when he says, I'm talking about Herbalife now, when he says arrests are coming, he says that the executives at Herbalife are going to be arrested. He has a huge short position. He wants to talk down the value of Herbalife. That's one thing, right? And you can call him out and say, okay, that's not being constructive or you're talking your own book. But when you have huge investments in Web3 and cryptocurrency and you have a vested interest in the decline or insecurity of the banking system and the U.S. dollar,

it takes on a different level of danger. And is there a difference between talking down a stock and talking down the banking system? Are you presenting sort of an existential risk to the economy and households everywhere? And at the same, because look what's happened. I would bet Andreessen Horowitz, with their massive investments in crypto, and by the way, what's Bitcoin up in the last five trading days? I bet Andreessen Horowitz said, well, burn, baby, burn. We're going to make a lot of money because every time the market says the banking system can't be trusted, Bitcoin goes up. So, there's- Scott, I don't know. I don't know if they did that because they had money in Silicon Valley

Bank and they certainly- They knew they'd get it back. Possibly, possibly. They knew they'd get it back. Let's just say allegedly. 73 of 73 failed banks have gotten, all the deposits have been covered. They do. They do.

I don't think Silicon Valley acted in the best interest in general, some of the things, but it's because the louder people. I do think, as I said- You don't think- I think many people tried to cooperate with regulators, right? Many people, many, many people. And some did not. And let's talk about what the ones who did not have in common.

Enormous investments in Web3 and crypto that is inversely correlated into consumers' confidence in the banking system. Well, this is something that should be investigated. All of this, how this went down absolutely should be the banking system. Well, this is something that should be investigated. All of this, how this went down absolutely should be the run itself just for, I mean, I think they're going to do that by May 1st and what they knew, because there was a devastating story in the New York Times yesterday about how much federal regulators knew about what was going on at Silicon Valley Bank and had been warning them and over and over again, actually. And they were to the last warning, warning them, and over and over again, actually, and they were to the last warning, essentially, before this all went down. And it's, you know, regulators were aware of this kind of stuff. So it's really, it'll be interesting to see the TikTok on this the whole way, speaking of TikTok,

the whole way through, because I do think it's one of these things that if this New York Times story is correct, the federalists saw it coming, and others did. So it's this was not a surprise to many people and how it went down so quickly, and others did. So this was not a surprise to many people, and how it went down so quickly and then was taken advantage of by all the noise makes a real problem. And what happens is these FDIC funds can be depleted with the plan to make whole depositors, and then there's more fees on banks. The money is raised. It raises the fees. Raises the fees, and the question is, will it get passed down to depositors?

Elizabeth Warren is saying the FDIC deposit cap should be raised. I don't know why it should be raised, since they save depositors anyway all the time. Elizabeth Warren, that's her thing. It does possibly encourage banks to make risky investments, but why shouldn't they only in general? Because the government always bails these things out. And I don't want to use bailout. Always finds a way to make depositors whole, even if taxpayers don't pay for it. But the thing that's not getting enough attention here is there's a danger of overregulation. And that is when Senator Warren says banking should be a boring business. Okay, you could absolutely do away with almost all systemic risk on banking. You just say,

they need 100% liquid assets for every dollar in deposits. We could also make sure that no mortgage ever fails by demanding 80% equity. We'll only loan you 20%. And this is what happens. If you want banking to be boring, okay, be careful what you wish for. Because if you tighten regulations too much, what you're going to have is a boring economy. And that is the economy is not going to grow. What people don't appreciate is the ability to turn short-term deposits into long-term loans such that companies can borrow money and hire people and build plants and consumers can buy a car when they don't have the cash on hand or buy a house. This is how we grow the economy. So a certain number of limited ring-fenced bank failures is probably an indication of an economy

that is healthy. I'm not saying that we shouldn't look at regulation here. We shouldn't say, all right, do we need to lower the limits again of these small banks showing that they, in fact, can be, even small banks can fail the economy. But the far left and the far right are all pointing at these banks and saying we need increased regulation. It's like, well, folks, you know, good luck getting a mortgage. Good luck convincing banks to loan money to companies who want to build a new factory in your hometown of Tuscaloosa or whatever. So there's a balance. This story in The Times, you should read it.

Let me just read the lead. Silicon Valley banks' risky practices were on the Federal Reserve's radar for more than a year, an awareness that proved insufficient to stop the bank's demise. The Fed repeatedly warned the bank that it had problems. According to a person familiar with the model, in 2021, a Fed review of the growing bank found serious weaknesses in how it's handling key risks. Supervisors at the Federal Reserve Bank in San Francisco, which oversaw Silicon Valley Bank, issued six citations. These warnings, known as matters requiring attention, matters requiring immediate attention, flagged the firm for doing a bad job ensuring that it would be easy, have enough easy to tap cash on hand the amount of trouble.

The banks did not fix its vulnerabilities. It was in review. So, that's, you know, and I mean, like they knew what was happening and could not, there was nothing to be done about it if the bank wasn't going to comply. So it's a really difficult, the regulation of banks is a very, very difficult thing. And we'll see, it will have an impact on the Fed's interest rate decision. It means the meeting ends on Wednesday this week. Experts expect a 25 basis point raise, but they definitely have to move quietly and carefully on this on these interest rates it's interesting we will it's like on my prof G pod we like to predict what's gonna happen and one of the predictions made what will there be an interest rate hike and someone brought up an interesting point that if he doesn't raise if he were not to not raise it it might even create more insecurity because people go oh no he's scared because so everyone's saying it'll

probably 25 bips where you can say I'm still fighting inflation. This is the number one issue. But I'm not going to knock you. But also take, you know, tap the brakes a little bit. The issue, the form of regulation or what I do think is needed here is clawbacks of executive compensation for money earned. Yes. When shit was not being operated well and resulted in future meltdowns of the stock. And what I mean by that is there are insider trading rules when you're on a board. Basically, there are windows when you can trade.

And the windows in which you can trade are when there's symmetry of information between what you know and what the market knows. So once you expel all information about how the company is doing on the earnings call, technically, the public and the directors and the management have symmetry of information. And then over the next 90 days, management gets more and more information about how the business is doing that they don't release to the public, and there's asymmetry. When there's an asymmetry of information, and you're the CEO of Silicon Valley Bank, and you know that things just, quite frankly, aren't very good, and you sell $3 million in stock. Well, he's been warned by the Fed. He's got a clawback. That should probably subject, that should probably be subject to a clawback. When you go, and some of these companies maintain this type of low rent fraud for years, and the CEO makes

tens of millions, because when they knew shit that the public and investing public didn't know, you're allowed to make stupid decisions. You're allowed to make money when the market is bigger than you and even when it fails. I don't believe you should go back. If someone ends up tanking their company, I don't think you can go back and take all their money away. But when there's an asymmetry of information, you know shit isn't good, you're selling your stock anyways, and the public doesn't know, it should be subject to a clawback. Yeah, I agree. This happened many years ago with Excited Home. They knew all these problems and were touting the bank and then were selling it.

I just, those things drive me nuts. And I agree, they're going to claw back this money from these people, especially with these reporting that they were on warning by the Fed. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, Silicon Valley's secret lobbying push against TikTok. And we'll speak with a friend of Pivot, Dr. Gloria Mark, about our attention spans. Scott and I are about the level of a raccoon dog. 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,

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Scott, we're back. Surprise, surprise. TikTok is more popular than it's let on. For the last year, TikTok has claimed to have around 100 million users in the U.S., but on Thursday, TikTok's CEO will tell Congress the number is actually closer to 150 million. Who could have predicted that? Well, let's play a clip of Scott from May of last year discussing TikTok. I think what we're going to find here, to their advantage, they don't have a public stock. They don't have to report publicly numbers.

I think they're sandbagging their metrics. I think they're actually talking them down. Oh, very good, dog. There you go. Raccoon dog to you. That's right. R-C. That's right.

I'm going to hibernate. Oh, it's raining? Just use my extended scrotum. I don't know what to say. I'm just going to take a moment for a second and pause on that lovely note. Anyway, it promises to be a rocky hearing for TikTok's chief executive. Silicon Valley insiders, including Peter Thiel, are quietly pushing lawmakers to come down on Chinese companies. It's in their interest. Of course they are. This is where they do act, right? This is where they're quiet and they do things.

On Wednesday, Thiel's expected jurors a dinner of around 200 attendees on the topic of Chinese tech competition, something where he and I do tend to agree, but nonetheless, it is absolutely to his advantage, not necessarily to mine. And the FBI and the DOJ are reportedly investigating ByteDance after allegedly spied on an American journalist, Emily Baker White. We hope to have her on the show. She published tons of revealing scoots about TikTok's parent company. So 150 million users, how much more difficult will it be to ban TikTok than three years ago? It's inviting them to a rally on Capitol Hill, not the same way Donald Trump does in support of the app. I'm sure it won't be violent. It will probably be all over TikTok.

They're popular. So will there be a clapback from America's youth or those who enjoy ASMR like Kara Swisher? Look, I think, and you've been saying the same thing, I think it's pretty clear what's going to happen here. And that is the Chinese thought, okay, there's two things here. There's the ultimate propaganda tool and there's a third of a trillion, possibly a half or a trillion dollars in shareholder value from Chinese entrepreneurs, Chinese investors, and a lot of American investors. And I think for a long time, they thought Americans can't get out of their own way. They're polarized. We're going to just wait till they tire out. Similar to when Trump thought it was a birthday cake he could divide up and give out to his friends. They will tire and move on. And on the eve of the banning, they will decide, okay, if we can't have both and we might end up with zero, we'll hold on to the third of a trillion dollars and they'll agree to a spin.

I think that's coming. If you want to see really disturbing violence on TV, though, I mean, wait till the CEO of TikTok testifies in front of Congress on Thursday. Yeah, yeah. That is going to be— Brave man, brave man. Oh my gosh. That guy's taking alpha blockers and downing it with Jack before he goes on

because he is just going to get, he's going to be a pinata. Everyone is posing for the cameras and acting tough. Yeah, yeah. And they'll have been at a dinner that Peter Thiel threw before he was at, excuse me, he didn't throw it, that he's at, where he's going to talk about it. This is a longtime Thiel thing, these anti-China conspiracies. This is a consistent thing. He doesn't own as much as Facebook as before, but obviously Facebook had a big interest in TikTok not becoming so big and pushing reels and things like that. I agree with him on this. It's just so disappointing when you look at the actual data, and that is Americans have more anger

and more fear, and see people in other parties or transgender swimmers as a bigger threat than Xi or Putin. Our priorities are that. Speaking of which, who met, I was terrified when I saw that. I was like, oh, dear. Oh, it's terrible. It's the equivalent,, dear, this is not good. Oh, it's terrible. It's the equivalent.

I mean, as is the case, we go allied axis. The axis powers are forming here. Yeah, I know. It was interesting that people, you're right, that people are so obsessed in that way. When you look at the two stories this morning that I woke up to were the Xi-Putin meeting, which was terrifying, I think, in lots of ways. And the second was this new global climate change report that is just like, we're doomed, essentially. But those two together should be what we need to focus on. And not in a, if you remember, you would remember this back in the day when people were destroying Japanese cars and car makers. I thought that was an overreaction. And it was xenophobic. That's what TikTok's American COO, Vanessa Pappas,

has said. Xenophobia is behind the ban. I'm not so sure of that. I think there's economic interests here. But that will be one of the arguments against the ban. Japan wasn't spying on us. Japan wanted a healthy America to buy their products. They were a competitor. They weren't an adversary. They weren't an enemy. If you really look at Xi's rise to power, the China of today is different than the China of 10 years ago. And it is much more aggressive. It's much more hostile. Them, you know, bear-hugging Putin is a direct, is basically, I mean, they've sort of just said, we are, the reason we would, you know, the reason we would ally with this guy is simple. We want a stronger anti-American force. This is absolutely very frightening. We should be, you know, the swing vote here and who we should be really trying to cozy up to is India. Because the world is bifurcating into a dangerous, you know, a dangerous tension between the West and its allies and China and Russia.

And India is the swing vote. They've been playing a little footsie with them over there. India is sort of sitting in the middle of it. Interesting. I want you to argue this point. TikTok CEOs have argued the ban wouldn't address the problems that Congress highlights. Kind of could just buy U.S. data from a data broker. How do you make – I don't think they have a choice.

They have to spin this thing off or this getting banned. That's really pretty much the two choices this company has at this point. They haven't been able to push up. And those stories like spying on American journalists doesn't, certainly doesn't help the matter. Is it, you know, the point I made, it's just because it may have been a bunch of rogue people doing this to these reporters. But because they can do it, they can do it. Anybody can, meaning the Chinese can. So it just shows more, you know, and pointing to Facebook and others as grabbing information

from people just doesn't really compare, I guess. It does, but it doesn't. So I don't know. Make the argument that it won't address the problems. Well, you've been calling for a long time and you've been accurate that there needs to be privacy legislation. The companies abuse people's privacy. They create sort of what I'll call a commercial espionage network. And that's all true, and we need to address it. The issues surrounding TikTok are just a different level. They involve national security. Because if I were in the NSA or the CIA,

and I had a media platform that the Chinese youth spend more time on than every other Chinese media outlet, I would strategically say, you know, we're going to just very elegantly put our thumb on the scale of pro-West and anti-Chinese content. We'd be stupid not to do that. We do that. This is a propaganda war. It's an information war. And one of the things about Americans, one of our superpowers is our optimism. But the Achilles heel of the optimism is that we are much at the data, the age of Americans is inversely correlated to how they feel about America. And that is we are raising right now a generation of Americans that, generally speaking, feel really shitty about America and capitalism. And I'm not going to put it at the feet solely of TikTok or social media even. People under the age of 40 are 24% less wealthy than they were 40

years ago. They have real reason to be upset at American politicians. But social media and TikTok that has a vested interest in disadvantaging America, wouldn't they be stupid not to slowly but surely, inch by inch, raise a generation of civic nonprofit, military, and government leaders that just feel a little bit shittier about America every day. We can't have this. There's no way we can have this. And we're going to find out that, what do you know, there were engineers under the instruction of someone who was working at ByteDance and with the party, was figuring out algorithms to kind of suppress content about the Uyghurs, suppress content about American success stories, and elevate, you and I have pro-American and

anti-American content in every episode. What would they be smarter to kind of prioritize? Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I think this is going down. So whatever this, I feel for the CEO, because it's going to be, you know, I hope they'll actually try to be intelligent, the senators and not just just a chance to bang on the anti-Chinese drum. I think that if they could make the case to people, I think most people would accept it. You know, I mean, if they do the whole, I don't know how it's done will be interesting. We'll see how the CEO performs. Good on him for coming, but good luck, I'd have to say. All right, let's bring on our friend of Pivot. Dr. Gloria Mark is a professor of informatics at the University of California at Irvine and the author of Attention Span, a groundbreakingbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness, and Productivity, which draws on her decades of research and her experience as a painter to lay out a path for a more attentive life. You are talking to the two least, most attention-deficited people you're ever going to meet.

So explain what informatics is for us. And we probably aren't paying attention while you're doing it. So thank you for having me. Informatics refers to the intersection of people and computing. And that's what I study. And so just how they interact with the technology itself, mostly computers today, correct? Yes, that's right. How people are affected by computers, how computer design could be improved to better fit with people's lives. With people's lives. So how has technology

worsened our attention spans? I don't think it's improved them or exposed us to how little attention we've been paying all along. Your search shows attention holds for an average of 47 seconds on a screen. Is constant unbroken attention the same thing as productivity? Well, it's certainly related to productivity. And so, first of all, I found that attention spans have declined over the last 20 years. So, as the digital age rose, we see our attention spans getting shorter and shorter. About 20 years ago, they averaged about two and a half minutes on any screen. And you're right, now it's down to about 47 seconds on average. A lot of things are going on to affect it. So first of all, we've seen the invention of the smartphone, we've seen the rise of social media. But it also turns out that

people are just as likely to interrupt themselves as to be interrupted by anything external to them. So there's a lot going on that explains our short attention spans. Can you say what you mean by that, interrupt yourself? Yeah. So when I was studying people, I would observe them, and for no apparent reason, there would be no external stimulus. All of a sudden, people would suddenly switch their attention and check email, or they would switch to go to social media. So there was nothing that triggered them. There was something within themselves. It could be an urge, a memory. Simply the lure of the web can cause people to shift their attention.

Itself, meaning that they think there's something else there that they need to look at. How do you then record that and why they're doing that? How do you then try to prove what's happening? Is it something that's always been with us and the computers just naturally appeal to our hummingbird-like jumping from thing to thing? Or is it something that's new in our brain? I think that it is something new. People have always been distracted.

That part isn't new. But you can think of it as being distracted on steroids now because there's so many different sources for interruptions. And it's not just computer screens. The internet itself was designed for people to be distracted with its node and link structure. And it maps on so well to the way that human memory is organized as a semantic network. So every time we go on the web, there's so many entry points into our mind's semantic network that can just set off associations. Before we know it, we're just off on this joyride. for myself, by the way. And I said, he said, I just want to look at one more thing. And I said,

it's the internet. There's always another thing. That's the whole way it's designed. And so it's, it'll never stop. It's a never ending attention sponge, essentially. The credits never roll. The credits never roll. That's right. And also, I mean, social media platforms are designed to constrain our attention because everything is designed for us to consume things in short snippets, right? So, you know, whether it's Twitter, whether it's a short TikTok video, we have constraints on how much information we can consume at one time. So we tend to snack. Professor, look at this through the lens or provide advice to a parent who recognizes they're with their 12-year-old, they're not going to have that 12-year-old for very long, and wants to be more in the moment.

We constantly hear this term, in the moment. So how does a parent, what can a parent do in terms of exercises or behavioral modification to be more in the moment? And also, are there exercises we can give to our kids such that they become a little bit more attentive? I think that, and this is Pulse Marketing, the thing that summarizes what's going on is I've been taking my kids to movies. That was kind of one of the dad things for 10 years now. And then just in that 10 years, I have registered their decreasing ability to focus on a movie for 90 minutes. And what kind of encapsulated it is always we're in a movie a couple weeks ago. And about 10 minutes into the movie, my 12-year-old took out his phone, you know, and pulled up TikTok.

What can parents do to be more in the moment? And how do we train our kids to be a little bit less twitchy? Limit screen time for kids. I mean, really limit the amount of time because kids tend to, you know, they do play dates or they do their recreation on the screen and instead they should be off screen when they do this. You know, we have a part of the brain,

it's called executive function, and it's the part that is responsible for self-regulation. And for kids, it's not fully mature. And so kids are exposed to screens and all kinds of distractions before this executive function part of their mind has really matured that can really help them self-regulate. Of course, a lot of adults have trouble with that as well. But giving kids a chance to go outside, being in nature is one of the best things, not just for kids, for anyone that can really help our minds. So you talk about that idea of natural, focus on natural rhythms, but that requires you to do something about it when you're being presented with sugar almost daily. I mean, that would be the physical thing. It's delicious and it's fantastic. How can we solve some of these attention issues with the designers themselves? I've talked to

dozens of designers. And of course, Tristan Harris is the most famous of this idea of it being a constant casino. How much of it is a fault that we just can't resist? Well, so first of all, let's understand that only about half the time are we distracted by something external to us. Things like notifications and ads. A lot of it really comes from within ourselves. If we were just completely at the mercy of ads and notifications, humans would not have any agency at all. Humans would have no free will. And I believe that humans do, right? So we do have some free will, despite the fact that we're being bombarded by all kinds of notifications. So there are things people can do to gain agency.

And one of the most important things is to recognize when we do unconscious actions, and we do these all the time, like when we grab our phone, when we go to check email or social media, make these unconscious actions more conscious, bring them to our conscious awareness. make these unconscious actions more conscious, bring them to our conscious awareness. When we do that, and when we can really probe and explore the reasons why we're so distracted, we can be intentional and change our behaviors. For example, I have discovered that one of the major reasons why I keep switching my attention is because I'm bored or because I'm procrastinating. Right. And once I understand that, then I can reflect on that and I can figure out what do I need to do to get this task done so it's not so boring.

Right. Or I can rig up rewards for myself so that if I can finish this part, get to a natural break point, then I can reward myself, say, by going outside. Well, that's easy. That is easy. But when you look at people on the street or anywhere else, they aren't consciously doing it. It requires a great deal on the behalf of the person to do it.

And I get it. I'm doing the same thing. I procrastinate. Procrastination is really 100% of my use of screens. But when people aren't that thoughtful as you are, how do you then get them to do that? Because I think people feel very comforted in that world and where they don't have a lot of agency. Yeah. So there are other things you can do as well. So of course, you can change your environment. So if you decide that you don't

want dessert and you're at a buffet, and then you walk up to the buffet table and you see all these, you know, beautiful desserts in front of you, of course, it's very hard to resist. So you can change your environment to make it much harder to get distracted. So, you know, close your tabs, use ad blockers, turn off notifications, put your phone in another screen. The idea is create friction to get to those undesirable things. So if you are someone who's prone to checking social media, bury that app deep into a folder. So it actually takes some effort to get to it. So it's not such a quick action to

simply click on it. So we can change our environment. I mean, another thing that I find very useful, and I've spoken with a number of people about it, is the idea of practicing what's called forethought. And that means imagining how your current actions are going to affect your future self. And I think later in the day is the best timeframe. So if I'm going to spend 30 minutes on social media, what's my day going to look like at 7pm or 10pm? Am I going to be feeling rewarded and fulfilled, watching my favorite show, reading my favorite book, or am I going to still be working on that deadline? So thinking ahead and the more concrete that visualization is of what your end of the day looks like, the better able you are

to be able to stay focused. We've been talking so far about sort of personal accountability and behavior modification. Do you think there's a role for regulation? Should the attention merchants or the companies that traffic in attention, should there be increased regulation, taxation? If you're controlling a kid's attention for five hours a day, should you be subject to additional regulation or taxation? Yeah, absolutely. I do think that tech companies bear responsibility as well. And there should be regulation, the kinds of information that can be

used in algorithms and the kinds of notifications and targeted ads that are sent to us because they're becoming ever more sophisticated. And of course, it becomes harder and harder for people to resist if an algorithmically designed ad is really targeted toward a basic feature of your personality. I also think I'm a great believer in right to disconnect laws. And these are laws that enable a person to not be penalized for not answering work communications after work hours. And there's already been a law in France, Ontario, policy in Ireland. And I think this is very, very important because it can protect workers from having to extend their workday. And it helps people psychologically detach from work.

Yeah, yeah, it's a really, that is a big, I think about that. I just thought about that. I didn't send something this weekend. I was like, I can't send it because they'll look at it. And then they'll think about it. And then, you know, it was an interesting thing. And I had to resist myself because it was interesting, right? You want to sort of alert them, look at this, this is cool. We just talked about this. And it's really hard not to do that as someone who's working with a group of people. But as part of your research, you convinced a company to turn off email for a week, although texting, I think, is even worse. But if you could turn off one technology for the entire world for a day, what would it be? It would be email. And why? It's because we know from research after research study that email causes stress.

There is a causality there. We also know that email puts people in a bad mood. We also know that it takes up a lot of time, and it takes up precious time that could be used for other work, and it also takes up people's very limited attentional resources, which could be devoted to other things. So most definitely, it would be... Do you think Slack is the same thing? Like those kind of things are the same thing as email or different?

Slack is in many ways worse because with Slack, you have multiple channels and you have to keep monitoring multiple channels. And because of the quickness of Slack, right? It's texting. It's a lot easier to keep messages proliferating. And so in a lot of ways, I would say Slack eats up our attention a lot more than email. Mine's off topic here. I'm a fellow graduate of the University of California System, one of the greatest examples of upward mobility in history. Tell us a little bit about the anteaters and what UCI, why you decided to go to work there and about where their domain expertise. Is that what they're called?

They're called the anteaters, yeah. Oh, wow. You thought I made that up? No, I didn't. They're changing their name to the raccoon dog. No, they're not. Nobody should be the raccoon. No, they're not. No, they're nobody should be the raccoon. UCI is a wonderful school, a wonderful school that it kind of flies under the radar. I would love to hear why you ended up at UCI.

Yeah, because they had this Department of Informatics at the time. It was still a Department of Computer Science. What I loved about it was it was interdisciplinary. You know, I was trained as a psychologist, and I had been studying people's use of computers. And I loved the fact that I could be in a department with computer scientists, with anthropologists, with other psychologists, with artists, people of all different fields, because I feel, you know, the digital world has come to such a point that it's no longer just about hardware and software, right? It's about how we can integrate computers into our lives. And we really need a very broad perspective to be able to understand that. So that's why I went to UCI.

And do you have, let me, I do have one follow-up question. When you think about that, when you're doing this research in places, do you think people really care or do they love these devices more? You know what I mean? Like the companies are benefiting, obviously, the most, the wealthiest companies in the history of the world. They obviously have got something that people like. Do you think people actually care about stopping this in and of themselves? I do. I've talked to so many people over the last 20 years since I've been studying this. And of course, there are some people who have very good self-regulation skills, but a lot of people don't. And there's so many people that really wish that they

could have, you know, better, longer attention spans, better ability to focus. And, you know, they really are concerned. You know, it gets people exhausted to keep switching your attention like that. Again, we have this limited amount of attentional resources. And every time we keep switching our attention every 47 seconds, it's like having a tank that leaks, right? And it just keeps leaking these precious resources. And then we have less to devote to what we really need them for. Yep. And time, too. You know, there's a Shakespearean quote, I waste time and now death time wastes me, which is always one of my favorites.

It takes your time. So anyway, this is really helpful. Dr. Gloria Mark, her book is called Attention Span, A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness, and Productivity is out now. Go Anteaters. Thank you for having me. And we paid attention the whole time. There you go. You know, that was really great. My son

has actually gotten into two UC schools and we're waiting to hear from Berkeley. So, he's very excited. You know, the UC system, yeah, and I say this and it bears worth repeating, the reason I'm here with you today living this wonderful life professionally is because of the generosity of California taxpayers and the vision of because of the generosity of California taxpayers and the vision of the Regency University of California. It's an incredible system. And it's just a gift that keeps on giving to your son was remarkable. I was unremarkable.

That's not true. No, I'm not being a humblebrag here. I was unremarkable. But when I applied, the acceptance rate was 76% at UCLA. You know what it is this year? 18 for in-state. I know all of them. Okay. It's 9% on the whole. Yeah, on the whole. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, it has become a dream that is increasingly inaccessible to kids. It's really a shame. This is a statistic my son says all the time, all the different rates, and they're really depressing when you hear them. Anyway. If he's into two, he's probably going to get into more. That's great. We'll see. Let's hope. Fingers crossed. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails. Okay, Scott, let's hear some wins and fails. My win is dad jokes. And specifically, Here are some wins and fails. My win is dad jokes. And specifically, there was wonderful research highlighted on Fox News of all places that dad jokes are actually really good for kids.

Yes. That it teaches them to deal with cringy humor. And it teaches them that it's okay. As much as your kids might pretend they don't like dad, but it teaches them to push the limits of humor, that it's okay to make attempts at humor that do or do not work, and also helps them deal with awkwardness. And I just absolutely love this research. All right. Did you want to read the dad joke about you, or shall I read it? Go ahead.

Tim Copeland asked ChatGPT to make jokes in each of our styles. Mine, I got to say, weren't too funny, but I liked yours, Scott. The prompt was, Scott has a somewhat profane sense of humor. Try one that is more profane. Why did Scott Galloway call his online dating profile The Four? Because it was a combination of great, quote, assets, disruptive dick-ruption, massive cojones, and a platform for screwing the competition. I just don't know what to say. That was more than a dirty dad joke.

So, okay, good. That was a good win. All right, what's your fail? But I'm not done. Oh, keep going. The people want to hear more about the dog, the raccoon dog. Anyway, so this last weekend, I got all excited. We've been indoors way too much because I don't know if you've heard, but the weather in London isn't ideal.

Yeah, I heard. And so I'm like, I got to get these kids out of the house. They start bothering everybody. And I see that our neighbors behind us, our new neighbors in London, we just moved, have a soccer net and they're playing soccer. So I go to the back. I'm like, follow me. They got a soccer net. And they're like, Dad, we don't know them.

I'm like, follow me. So I drag my 12 and 15 year old boys out there and I can't see them. So we have a trampoline. So I get in the trampoline and I start bouncing up and down and yelling at the kids. Hi, I'm your neighbor and I have kids. Can we come play with you? And as I'm bouncing up and down. And these kids kind of freeze. And then they run into Crab Dad because there's this old man screaming at them. And then the dad comes out, gets on a chair. And all he sees is me on a trampoline because my kids have literally disappeared.

They are so horrified. So all this man sees is an American jumping on the trampoline asking to play with his children and no kids anywhere. And I'm like, I have sons, I swear, I have sons. They just disappeared. But anyways, the notion, bringing this back, I love the idea that dad jokes play some sort of developmental purpose. And I can tell you, Kara, that I'm worried about the calendar because I think its days are numbered. And I used to think that it was the dryer that was shrinking my clothes. Now I realize it's the refrigerator. And I've changed my oldest son's name to math, trusting that he will grow up and solve his own problems.

Oh, my God. Boom! Oh, God. Okay, so that's my win. Okay. My fail is much more serious. My fail is secessionists. And Marjorie Taylor Greene has called for a separation of red and blue states. And what she fails to realize is that her job as a leader is to bring us together, not to come up with these stupid ideas.

I don't think she thinks that's her job, but go ahead. Well, it's the job of our leaders. Sure. And what do you do with the red states that, you know, 45 percent are for the legalization of marijuana and the rest aren't? What do you do about the majority of Republicans who are slowly but surely warming to the notion of gay marriage, but their leaders want to demonize trans? How many times are we going to divide America? We went to war over this. Our bloodiest war was over a failure of leadership for people to realize that Americans will never have better allies than other Americans.

It's dangerous. And then it's not only infected our elected leaders, it's affected our leaders in business, specifically in Silicon Valley. And there is a thick, dangerous vein of leaders in Silicon Valley that no longer see themselves as citizens, but as survivalists. And they see the government not as a unifying force that's the best of us, and it's both of those things. They see it as a stupid fucking bag of money that should pay for their charging stations or buy their analytics or bail out or backstop deposits when they cause or at least contribute to a run on the bank, and that they should just get out of the way until we need them. And the thing that these people fail to realize is the one thing they all have in common, the one reason they are all billionaires instead of millionaires comes down to one thing, America. And they need to stop being secessionists. They need to pretend they're citizens. They're the most blessed citizens in America. But my fail is secessionists in elected government and secessionists who are leaders in Silicon Valley. Just stop it. They can't stop. They cannot stop themselves, is my guess. Okay. Speaking of secessionists,

my win is going to be Succession is back. Succession, I knew you were going to win. It's back. You got me on the 26th. I have seen many of the episodes and it's wonderful. And I'm doing a podcast on Succession. It's really fun. But you'll pay attention. Let's just say, you will pay attention to it it keeps your it keeps you will not your i don't know if your son watches succession probably not but um you would you were not going to look down at the phone while you're watching the show how's that um really good it's really good it's going to be really good it's it's a really it's a final season and they're the writers are pulling out all the stops i have to say and beautiful

writing too there's a number of playwrights on the staff. And so I think that's pretty cool. So you're doing the post-show pod again? Post-show pod, yeah. Yeah, it's good. Good for you. It's good. It's fun.

You know what? It's a labor of love, honestly. I'm a fan person. I'm a fan. And I love the show. I think it's beautifully done. And so it's a pleasure. It's a pleasure.

Not as much a pleasure as Pivot is. But I only do things that I like anymore, Scott. And this is one of them. So, but mostly I love pivot. And my fail is this climate report is, you know, I know we're all focused on Trump, who is such a danger monger and the Republicans who are backing him on this thing. Speaking of secessionist saying that the prosecutors shouldn't be able to prosecute what they want to. secessionists saying that the prosecutors shouldn't be able to prosecute what they want to. But this climate report is disturbing in the extreme. It's so existential. And we're all screaming at each other and having lack of attention. We really, really need to come together to focus on this as a world. It's very, you know, you and I, Scott, may not be here for what's going to happen, but our kids certainly will. And so it makes me think really hard about what's coming, even as close as the 2030s, 2040s, when we will be here. But it's disturbing, especially for the poorest among us on this world.

It's going to be ugly for everybody. Anyway, that's my fail. And the win is, of course, raccoon dogs, because they may have caused a global pandemic, but people still want to get them as pets. And Scott Gallery can make dirty dad jokes about them. So raccoon dogs win this week. Raccoon dog. Anyway, we want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind.

Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. Okay, Scott, that's the show. Another one in the bank. Our bank is not going to fail and doesn't need any backstopping. We'll be back on Friday for more. Today's show is produced by Lara Naiman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Indertot engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Mio Silverio. Make sure you're subscribed to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media.

We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. A skeleton walks into a bar and says, hey, bartender, I'll have a beer and a mop. That's good. Oh, my God.