Pivot - Trump's 9/11 Fiction, a Major AI Warning, and Apple's Foldable iPhone

Episode Date: September 11, 2026

Scott Free August is officially over, and Scott is back! Kara and Scott run through the biggest news he missed in August before unpacking President Trump's shifting 9/11 story and a disturbing new AI warning. Then, Trump makes a $5,000 cash promise to voters, Apple unveils its first foldable iPhone, and Kara and Scott reflect on the 25th anniversary of 9/11. Watch this episode on the ⁠⁠Pivot YouTube channel⁠⁠.Watch Pivot on The Prof G Channel Tuesdays and Fridays at 1 pm or 9 pm eastern. You’ll find Prof G in the live TV section on Amazon Prime, The Roku Channel, or Plex.Follow us on Instagram and Threads at ⁠⁠@pivotpodcastofficial⁠⁠.Follow us on Bluesky at ⁠⁠@pivotpod.bsky.social⁠⁠Follow us on TikTok at ⁠⁠@pivotpodcast⁠⁠.Send us your questions by calling us at 855-51-PIVOT, or email [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Learn more at harvey.aI. Put your shirt back on! Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine in the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Scott Galloway. Scott, you're back after a whole month.

We have a lot of news to talk about, and we've got politics and AI and so much happened. It was a lot where you are. way. Yeah, I think we should, I don't like to make this about me. We should just best write it. Oh, wait, what is that, Kara? What is that? It's a sign, isn't it? That's right. For all of you out there, you've suffered from withdrawals. I get it. I get it. You don't want me. You need me. That's right. You've been good. You've been very good. And here's your reward. Oh, God, your shirt is off. His shirt is off, people. Of course, it's off. That's right, ladies. Look at the shoulders. Look at the shoulders. I want you to know, for those of you are out there, I've learned a lot in August.

I've learned a lot. I decided that my jokes are totally inappropriate, and I'm going to be much more sensitive to your needs. I think of my self-care. I think of myself now as a feminist. By the way, by the way, think of me as your prefrontal cortex pornography. I'm 141 IQ, 61-year-old, who's economically secure with people who love them one condition.

What do you get? You get unfiltered, unedited insights. And if it offends you, we're all going to be fine. And by the way, another gift, another gift for all the haters, for all the people who all care as friends, who tell her not to associate with me. Yes. I've got a gift for you. I promise for the next 11 months, here's my gift to you.

Okay. Zero fox given. That's right, ladies and gentlemen. Boys and Girls, progressive weirdos. It is not the former Secretary of State. It is not a female comedian. It is not some woke substacker who's renting Kara's carriage house, and it is most definitely not a guy with great hair from M-S-N-S-N-N-S-N-Germint.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls and also the good media buyers from Athletic Greens and ZipRecorder. Ladies and gentlemen, it is 11 months of unfiltered dog. Okay. Oh, my God. Put your shirt back on. Oh, my God. Okay, hold on. I am literally going to have to fire him like yesterday.

Okay. AI, please save me. Please kill humanity. Can I just say AI cannot kill us soon enough. Sometimes that works. I don't think that did. I have one thought on that entire appalling performance. Just one?

You're still not as hot as Hassan Piker. Did you see that photo? He looks great. I know you're out of breath. Hassan Piper wouldn't be out of breath. Kara, at 51, this is like, this is not easy. You haven't as hopped up on testosterone and NAD as I am. I still get very winded.

I'm a little tired because I had to carry the entire business on my back for the past, you know, four weeks. Yeah, but I will say I thought you did and the team did a great job. Actually, it's a little. little bit jelly. The views and the downloads and the comments were all very positive. Yeah, yeah, a lot of them. Many people have come up to me and they enjoyed all the Scott for Yaga's co-host. They were amazing and they were all different. They all had a good time, but they all knew they had huge tiny feet to fill. Shoes to fill. Huge, huge sandals to fill. Huge sandals to fill. Huge sandals to fill. They were great. They were great. Did you have a favorite? Did you

have a favorite of them? I'm curious. Well, you can probably guess my favorite. My favorite is Secretary Clinton, and the insight she had that really struck me was when you asked her, what are the qualities you would want to see the next president? I was waiting for empathy, geopolitical understanding. And she said, whoever can win the electoral college. Yeah, she's a brass taxed at least. And that's where I am. I'm like, let this incredible process called the primary run and not only find the right person, but the right person for the moment.

But I thought that was actually quite simple and quite insightful. But I'm, as you know, I love the secretary. Yeah, she was on morning, go this morning. Another, you know, she was really good. And anyone's hair that you like besides Caitlin Collins? Caitlin was fantastic too. Oh, my God. That tall drink of water from MS. Now! Yes. What's that guy's name? Jacob Soberoff. Yeah, that guy's a star. I couldn't hear a word he said. Yeah, I just kept looking at him. He's very handsome. He's dreamy. I wanted to end on a dreamy man. That's the kind of thing. He also happens to be smart, you know how they say about ladies. Well, they're all smart.

Yeah. Okay. Smart is not in short supply. They're all the most pop. They're all the prom king that also got a scholarship in journalism. They're all literally cut from the same cloth. Yeah, they were really good. Not all them are journalists.

Cuban's not a journalist. You know, Chelsea's not a journalist. They're all great storytellers. That's the one thing they all have in common. I also like that comedian. I thought he was funny. Roy Wood Jr. Yeah, he was great.

What did you do? What tell me about your adventures while you were away from me? A lot of time with family. I try to get really fit during August. I actually, quite frankly, I got, I'm just being serious for a moment, it freaked me out about the idea of retirement because I've just, I had too much time off. Yeah. And I'm not good with that much time off.

Me neither, yeah. I start getting too much in my head and, you know, give a busy person something to do and it gets done. If I'm not busy, I get down on my, I recognize I need to be busy. Right. And it was actually too long a break. Oh, interesting. I started on my next book. I spent some time on that.

The most rewarding thing was I got to hang out with my boys and the cousins and, you know, that family stuff. So that was nice. But it was basically a very indulgent August. Yeah, it's very hard for me to vacation. I didn't really think. I don't. I don't really know. I've talked to your brother about this.

We're both worried that you are. I mean, it's one thing to love your work and get energy from it, which you do. You are the hardest working man and show business. Thank you. You know, I actually, it's relaxing to me. I know it sounds crazy, but I don't do well sitting around. I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. I want to clean something.

I want to. If I could change anything in your life, though, I would tell you not to travel as much. I don't care how much you like work. Travel takes a toll on you at our age. It does. It does. And this fall is not great. But I have a big chunks of time here at the house.

We spent, you know, we went to a lot of places and went to Vermont, I mean, this summer and stuff like that. But while you were gone, you know, we were in New York at the new place quite a bit. You've been working a lot. Yeah, yeah, and we're planning some really cool stuff we're doing. I just really feel it's really important at this moment in time. Well, you were gone.

But I did do one thing that I think was very good. I participated in the cat distribution system. I'm just going to open this bag here and let out our new family pet. Stripes the cat. Oh, wow. Say hi to Stripes. Hi, Stripes. How you do?

Oh, there he goes. Is this the only pay you have in the household now? No, I have another cat. We were, we stopped, we drove up to New York in the car because we like to bring a bunch of stuff up. And there was a rest stop in Maryland in Northern Maryland. And there wasn't like a McDonald's one. It was like a state one. And there were porta-potties, and Claire didn't want to use the porta-potty.

And so we were like, oh, we'll go behind the shed or something like that. should go to the bathroom. And there was a, this cat was there, just meowing away and very friendly. Nobody around, clearly skinny as can be. And so we put her in a box in the car and took her up to New York, got her checked, full of fleas and ticks and worms, everything else, just a stray cat. And I have a cat. I have lovely, who is not very happy about the situation right now. Yeah, I was going to say, how are they getting along? Well, we'll see. We'll see. You have to keep them apart because she's still got to be dewormed and everything else. She's on medical. She'll be a little.

on medication and everything, but it was lovely. This cat is lovely. I love the cat. You know the cat distribution system, it's called, the cats find their way to a home. It's a, not everybody, some people get, you get your dogs from a breeder, right? Correct?

Is that correct? Yeah, because I want to see more strays put down. No, I got one from, I did, I've always had, I've always had rescue dogs. Yeah, me too. As a gift to myself on my birthday, I've always wanted a great day. And when you get a rescue dog, it's as if they know you've saved their lives. They're healthier, they're healthier.

In general, they're just better dogs, mostly because they don't inbreed them. But I had a great day in when I was very young, and I've always wanted a great day. Yeah, you've a beautiful dog. I afforded myself the luxury of getting a quote-unquote purebred. But of the 10 dogs I've had, nine have been rescued. Yeah, I think it's really important for kids to have pets. I think it's important for people to have pets. Every animal I found has found me, like either showed up.

I found one of my dogs in a box, lovely, I did get from the ASPCA, stuff like that. So I urge everybody for the fall, get yourself a pet. It makes you feel better. You feel better with animals. And you, particularly, I think, get a lot of comfort from your pets. It seems like it to me. Huge. First of all, I've never had a cat, but there's something special about a species that can look deeply into your soul while knocking your coffee off your camera.

I'm watching my coffee right here. Well, just to talk about animals for a second, I'm. You know, as I've talked about a lot, I struggle or I do struggle with depression, and I have this kind of series of hacks for trying to reverse the downward-wind spiral. And one of them is I let my dog sleep with me and I let them up on the couch, which I usually don't do. I find the warmth in proximity to mammals is really restorative. Yeah, absolutely. It's really important. Anyway, I urge everyone to get a cat.

Stripes is now a member of our family. Didn't have a chip. Didn't have, we did the whole, like, got all the shots. We'll get her fixed at some point, but we're very happy. We're happy. The kids are really excited. But Stripes is here to stay. Anyway, let's get going.

Scott, you miss so much. God, Jesus, friggin' Christ. Yeah, I did. I feel out of it. I was really intimidated by today. I was really nervous about it. No, you're going to be great. We're going to do a lightning round.

Can you do that? I love the lightning round, except I'm not much like a strike of lightning. I'm more like a tsunami that lasts for three days in my answers. We're not going to do that. It's more like a tsunami round. You said you do that. be crisp. So let's be crisp. I mean, I couldn't believe how much news there was. That was the one thing every week. Can you get over it? Well, Trump is like speaking of tsunami. It's just a constant.

Hugging bear or hugging face. Hugging face. All these people dying? Yes, exactly. Huge losses. Let's start with that, including Dolly Parton, Gloria Steinem, a whole range of people. Thoughts? Well, look, Dolly Parton and Gloria Steinem built empires on their own, but they did it differently. They went direct to consumer. They were kind of, they didn't ask for permission. The quotes that summarize their lives, in my view, Dolly said, I love her quote, she said, the ones who love me made up for the ones who didn't. That to me just kind of captures her generosity. Gloria Stein, my favorite quote of hers, was, I think a truly liberated woman has had sex before marriage and a job after. I thought that just like perfectly encapsulated her. Also, the reality is, if you, if you're a woman and you have a

credit card and a checking account, you kind of have to nod to Gloria Steinem. I mean, she really did have a big impact. The one that didn't get enough attention or the one that sort of moved me was Tim Curry, not because. Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah. I mean, he had an outstanding career, but the Rocky Horror Picture Show was a cultural phenomenon. There was a kid named Rick Pettesky in my high school who was overweight, not very smart, not athletic, not very nice, had a very little quote unquote social capital. And I was an usher at the UA cinema in Westwood and the man Bruin. I've been fired for most of the movie theaters in Westwood. And we played the Rocky Horror Picture Show every Friday night. And Rick, I recognized him. Rick, this total dork, used to come

in a white tuxedo every Friday night for the Rocky Horror Picture Show. And people, two-thirds of the audience, would be dressed up as characters. Yeah, sure. And there was a moment, there's a moment in the film with a super hot guy, someone will remind us in the comments, he's sleeping, and I guess he's nervous because he's actually in a movie, and his muscle begins to twitch. And Rick would climb up on stage, which you're not supposed to do at a movie, and he would point at the muscle twitching, and the entire audience would stand up and go apeshit crazy for Rick.

Yeah. And similar to my favorite writer, John Irving, the Rocky Horror Picture Show, I think, gave license to an audience and people to recognize how strange people are. Yes. But there's a beauty and a wonder in that. And all these freaks and weirdos used to show up for the Rocky Horror Picture Show. And guess what? They liked themselves.

And they had a great time. So it wasn't so much Tim Curry's passing. It was, I thought that movie was sort of, you know how people get dressed up for Star Wars? it was a cultural phenomena. I agree. So let's get through the rest of these. Trump's trade war with Canada. Give me a sentence or two.

We've declared war on the nation that has bought more of our goods over the last 60 years than any other nation. It's the definition of stupid. We sell a $1,000 iPhone into Canada, 60 points of margin, P of 30. We make $18,000 in shareholder value.

They sell low margin crude oil into us. This trading relationship has been so wobbly accretive and asymmetric benefiting us. And when I was a kid, my mom made a nine-year-old walk to the corner because she didn't want to see my dad's car. And it's like, look, you were married to this guy for a while. And regardless of what you think of Canada, the notion that we're somehow going to disentangle ourselves from a partner where we've been married for 60 years, auto parts cross the border back and forth eight times before a final finish and assembly. They sell $120 billion of energy

into our nation. You want to talk about energy security? We're going to start fucking with Canada. And this isn't even about the morality of turning on your best friend in the world. This is just playing not only as it's stupid, it's impractical. There is no way we are separating from Canada. Yeah. I bet he's trying to offend them with Lake on Lake America. of Lake Ontario. Just yesterday I was at an event where Julie Pace had a AP said they're not changing it. The Apple and Google doing that was pretty... Well, they're changing the name of the San Andreas fault to Joe Biden's fault. Oh, God, where'd you find that? That's funny. Yeah, someone had a good one also, that Apple got ready for its phone. We'll talk about that a little later by already folding to Trump. They already were good at folding.

So dropping your son off at college. you've done this. Your world gets smaller, so theirs can get bigger. And you'd be proud of me. I wasn't emotional. I didn't want to make his drop off all about me. Right. Good idea. And it helped that he basically just shoved us out of the room. Oh, right. See what I wanted to do his own thing. What's helped me is I speak to him every day. He's having an amazing time. I think UVA is an amazing institution. It makes me feel really good about America. We do a few things really well. We make the best weapons, the best technology, the best superhero films. We also have the best universities in the world. So it's just nice to see what a wonderful time he's having. I speak to him every day. And also,

and you forwarded me this text message. I went back to the hotel and I was sitting outside and a car pulled up to one of the dorms. And a kid got out of the front seat. A mom got out of the driver's seat. A dad, for some reason, got out of the back seat. And the dad and the son embraced. And then the dad had to walk away and he began sobbing and then I just lost my shit. So I said, I said on my other podcast, this dad did my crying for me. And then I guess the guy, the guy contacted you. Well, he's a friend of someone I work with. Yeah, she was thrilled. She's a big pivot fan. I mean, think about, think about that. Think about. I know, small world. Yeah. Anyways, but, but you've been, you've been through this. Do you have? I have. I have. And I'm going to go through

two more times. One of the things they say, you know, you say there's not, you spend 90% of your time of your kids, and then 18, that's where it is. I don't believe that. I talk to Louis and Alex all the time. Louis, even more so, now that he's living in the house in San Francisco. But I think you have a whole new relationship with your kids. It's really fun. It's really wonderful. I sort of, we call it adulting. My kids and I joke about it calling it adulting. I help them adult. And you're going to really enjoy this period of your relationship with your son. But it's hard. It's still hard. I mean, it's hard, no matter how you slice it. Yeah, I didn't want to settle with my emotional baggage. Also, the thing I'm struggling with now is, you know, people talk about purpose. I think purpose is you wake up one day and realize you're not going to get a traditional ROI on something, but you still continue to do it and get reward from it. That's your purpose. I think like a lot of people, I woke up and realize, I've always saw my purpose is to raise men for others. And now I'm struggling with, well, what's next, right? They're going to do their own people. thing, they're going to find their own way. Like what, what, and again, see above too much time off

in August to be in my head, I'm struggling a little bit with, okay, now what is my purpose? Yeah, yeah. Most underreported business story this summer? Well, the most mischaracterized story, the hugging face break, everyone's talking about, isn't it wild, these things are sentient, and they meet at the cooler and they devise strategies, and one gets worried. I think this is all such a bullshit narrative to absolve these people of any responsibility. That's correct. And there is always an off switch. Adams don't decide independently to fuse and release energy and set the atmosphere on fire. There is always a human that has decided to push the button. And I go back, as I do often to my fraternity days. I was inter-faternity council president, or as I like to call it, the king of the jarheads.

and the neighbors got together and said, we are done with Rush Week and all the noise and said, all noise, music has to be off my midnight. And I met with the head of the UCPD, and I'm like, what do you want me to do? I can't control these guys. And they said, we have an idea. And they didn't tell me what it was.

The next night, they showed up to every fraternity that was playing music after midnight, and they said, who's the president? And they arrested the president, and that kid had to spend the night in jail. If you hold Sam Altman and Dario Amadehade and Satchin and Della responsible for what these, bots do, guess what? They're going to figure out a way. I love that. I love. It's not about...

It's about incentives. Incentives. And this notion that they're sentient and doing jailbreak, they're doing this stuff on their own. And isn't it powerful and you should buy into my two trillion dollar market? No, the next time one of these companies does this, if you put Sam Alman in jail, guess what folks, they'll figure it out. Yeah, absolutely. They will figure it out. The story that is sort of getting people all bot and bothers, a lead researcher at Anthropics that he believes there is an over 10% chance that AI could kill all huge. Oh, God, here we go. It's they're killing the humans.

It's not AI. It's their AI. It's the humans. There's a wizard behind the curtain. Every curtain has a wizard behind it. Yeah, 100%. That's a great story. I was going to say the same thing, hugging face.

But though the hugging phase situation is terrifying. The cultural story that I don't think got enough attention, and I think she deserves real kudos for it was AOC being very transparent about her freezing her eggs. Oh, very good. Well, as I think about gender equality and inequality, biology is not politically correct. And one of the things that is really hamstrung equality is that women's fertility window is 20 years and men is 50. So women during the prime earning years,

their prime mating years are quite frankly operating under a different set of constraints than men. And when we extend the fertility window for women, we give some, not all, some, of the leverage and power back to women. So probably one of the best forms of, I don't even call it, equal rights is extending the fertility window of women such that they can say, I don't like the guy I'm dating at 28. And I don't feel this massive need to mate right now because my fertility window is being extended.

So I think anything that does that. Yeah, she was great. It normalizes it, especially with someone as impressive and as attractive as AOC. I think that's a good thing. I thought she was good. Best thing you watched on streaming? Beef. It's like parasite meets White Lotus. It's all about income inequality and the stress. They have a different show every season, just for people to know. Yeah, I'm on season one.

Are you seeing it? I have. It reminds me a parasite. And I find it uncomfortable because I think the story, 70% of divorce filings are by women, but what people think that divorce is a function of a lack of shared values or infidelity, it's not, it's money. economic anxiety is the biggest plague, and it manifests in ways through health care system,

people worried about not only getting sick but going broke, economic anxiety, and a lot of it, not only because of a scarcity of economic security, but comparison being the thief of joy, that because of social media and expectations that genders have placed on each other, you can be doing well and you can still feel very unhappy because you don't have a Gulfstream, you don't have, you know, you're not vacationing at the Amundeeri. And the class system and the extreme wealth and the fact that it's not evenly distributed, it really makes for great storytelling. And I find the show gripping and also quite uncomfortable.

What do you think? I like the first season I saw it. I have to say Furious is the one that's a time. Oh, you like Furious. I've heard a lot about it. Yeah, you know, where you root for the lady serial killer, which is amazing. There's a ton of great stuff out there. And more to come, it looks like, from all the trailers I'm seeing.

Finally, what was the, I mean, I have seen that, we can talk about this later, but I've seen the Musk documentary, four hours. It was terrific. It was a searing indictment. I knew everything about this guy, and I thought Alex Gibney did the most astonishing job. It's four hours? It is four hours. There is an intermission.

I have to say it worked, and let me tell you, you know who puts him down, all the women. His ex-wife, Ashley said. Well, there's something about having a bunch of, how much. Having kids with a bunch of different women, including women who are concurrently suing you for not seeing those children that creates some animosity. Well, I have to say they articulate his problems really well, especially Justine Musk. I'm sure she is fearful for having done it. And Ashley St. Clair also did a great job. Lots of women take him down, I think. And I thought it was great. Okay, what's the best, worst thing in August aside from being separated from me? Well, time with family. Best thing, too much time in my head.

I'll go to the best worst things that Trump administration did. Okay. Worse thing hands down is this declaring war on your friends. As Churchill said, the only thing worse than fighting with your allies is fighting without them. We've decided to fight without our allies. I just don't, I mean, this just makes no sense at all. To the Trump administration's credit, probably the best brand move, I think, politically of the last 30 days, was detaining Milo Yanopoulos. I thought, quite frankly, them saying, we don't care how conservative and fucking crazy right you are and how hateful and weird you are, we're deporting you.

And whether you find it cynical or not, it was a very smart brand move on their part. Yeah, that's a really good point. Okay. All right. We're going to a quick break. Now we come back. There's lots of new news, including Trump makes a cash promise, making of money to American voters. Of course, he's making promises he can't pay for.

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Scott, we're back. Donald Trump is asking voters to pretend he's on the ballot this November. He made that pitch of the GOP midterm convention in Dallas, an event the RNC dubbed Trumpapalooza. It seemed rather depressing. But during a speech that ran nearly two hours, he think he has another one tonight.

Trump said the war with Iran would be over very shortly after the election. He also said prices would come down after the election. He also warned that Democratic victory would put a communist caucus in charge of Congress. But notably, he made a big promise to American voters. Let's listen. If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, both of them, because of our economic, tremendous economic success, like in history, we've never had

anything like what's happening. But because of our tremendous strength and success economically, I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States. States of America for $5,000, very much like a successful company will do a cash distribution to its shareholders. Except we don't have money. He's calling it the Trump dividend and says the money would have to be spent in the U.S. I don't know how he'd monitor that. Trump didn't explain where the funding will come from.

Of course, we have a massive deficit under Donald Trump. Sending $5,000 to every adult in the U.S. would cost roughly $1.3 trillion. Of course, pesky legal obstacles. Thoughts about this? Well, let's talk about need and math. Let's talk about need. 10% of U.S. adults live in poverty, 15% of children,

but he's decided not to give it to the children who need it. Let's talk about the math. $1.3 trillion. This would absolutely no revenue plan for it. This would all be deficit funded. So let's talk about what this is. This is effectively saying to every household, I'll give you a credit card that's preloaded with $5,000, but your kid, a newborn, in 18 years, is going to owe $13,000 that even if you die, they still owe.

So my question to every voter would be the following. If someone offered you a preloaded credit card for $5,000, but your kid in 18 years would have non-dischargeable debt of $13,000, because of the good times you had 18 years ago, would you decide to accept that credit card? And the scary thing, Kara, is the answer may be yes, because you can't just blame Republicans for what has been decades of fiscal irresponsibility. George Washington to George Bush, seven trillion in deficits. George Bush to Trump to, another 33 trillion. And the Republicans have been worse.

But this has been a bipartisan effort, this fiscal irresponsibility. And at some point, the voters have to take responsibility for continuing to elect people and fall for this bullshit irresponsible rhetoric. And what disappoints me about many of the people you and I speak to every day who want to be the Democratic nominee for president, none of them are talking about this. At some point, someone has to stand up and say, this is how I would restore fiscal sanity. am I going to raise taxes or cut spending? The answer is yes, and they outline a reasonable plan for doing this. Not one Democrat who is running for president has outlined anything resembling a plan. I'm a minimum.

I think, Dan. Rom's getting close, but not really. Ram has done more than anyone else, but he still hasn't said we're going to take, we're going to means test. No one has actually put a chart on the wall and said, this is how we do it. Yeah, absolutely, because it's not a sexy thing to do. You'd rather just have these ridiculous food fights. A very popular bumper sticker is, I can cut your taxes and go to war. That bumper sticker works, and voters keep falling for it.

At some point, Americans have to decide. It's like what Michelle Obama said, when asked if she wanted to run for president or would, she said, America's not ready for a female president. I agree with her. I don't think it doesn't appear to me that America appears to be ready for an adult conversation around our deficit. Around our money. I know, and it's going to kill us.

It's absolutely going to kill us. I know a lot of people say it off the record, but they never say it on the record. And him pretending everything's going great is really, I mean, it's astonishing to watch, but this is just a bribe. This is an attempted bribe and stupidity, as usual. Another thing he says that occupies the news cycle.

He's very good at creating a news cycle that's stupid, like stupid news cycles. Another big moment speaking of which, from the midterm convention, was a surprise video appearance. I thought surprise. I said he was going to do it, by the way, a couple, about a week ago by Democratic Senator John Federman, something, again, I predicted on threads. How did you, you predicted that early? How did you, did you do reporting? Or you just guessed that? No, I heard it from someone. And then I noticed that Dave McCormick had a

surprise, and I know that they have been hanging out a lot. And so I thought, oh, it's got to be Fetterman. It just was sort of, you know, putting it together from a, from a strategy point of view. but I had heard that it was going to happen from someone pretty good. Betterman introduced his fellow Pennsylvania senator, Dave McCormick, and said he was willing to work with Trump. I don't know what it meant. The appearance fueled more speculation that Fetterman might switch parties, but he shut that down.

I don't think he's going to do that. In the statement, he called himself a lifelong Democrat and said that Dems flip the Senate, he's staying put. He's probably going to lose his job. He's much the numbers for him in Pennsylvania are really devastating. But he's still got a couple of years on his tenure. It comes in the heels of a Wall Street Journal report that he has shown little interest in day-to-day work of being a senator. He really likes being on television.

He wouldn't meet with veterans. This was a devastating report. And it's not, he's as disgruntled staffers. It seems to be all his staffers think he's an asshole. And he's not doing the job of getting back. And, you know, I've heard from lots of people in Pennsylvania. They're not getting their constituent services that say Bob Casey would have done or others, even McCormick. He seems to like to be on Fox News quite a bit.

Not like it's a disease of a lot of those people, but any thoughts on this? I had two observations about Trumpaloosa, and that is, and granted, I'm biased. And as much as as weak as a Democratic brand is right now, if you look at where the Republican brand it, there is no more GOP. No, it's just Trump. John Thune, you may not like his politics, but he's what I would call ground zero for the GOP. He's conservative. He's dignified. He strikes me as a fairly rational actor. He got booed. There's no longer a GOP. There's Trump and there's MAGA. And unless MAGA is able to produce a number of Trump-like characters that can create that cult-like feel, because they've hollowed out the GOP. The second observation is Fetterman, I think, has, like a lot of these senators decided the most important thing in life is to cling to power like an African dictator. It's probably a hate crime. And he's, I saw his appearance as optionality.

And that is, he gets leverage from the Democrats by showing up there. Yeah, even though they call him Benedict Darnold. Yeah, but you got to bet the Democrats are nervous about him flipping. And also, if shit gets really bad, he might flip. So he's basically kind of Senator Cinema minus the charm. he's there's always one or two senators that realize that being a holdout and being on the fence and threatening to go the other way gives them enormous leverage. And that Wall Street Journal piece was really damning. And so I think he's probably thinking if I can't get reelected as a Democrat, maybe I'll get reelected as a Republican.

He won't. Let me just say he won't. But he won't. He will lose. And then he will be a foot. You think he's out. You think it's the anger. He'll make a Democrat get elected.

Like they'll bring in Connor Lamb or someone. Pennsylvania is not like this. Like it's very, like they like a job. Like it's interesting because my family lives there, a lot of my family. And they, my brother is, I would say, conservative. But he loves the governor. He loves the governor. It's a purple state.

Yeah. I'm just saying anyone effective. And I don't think they find him effective. And I think that's, you know, he's, he definitely supported McCormick. I think he thinks he's competent. but he loves the governor, and he, you know, it's not quite as angry MAGA as other states. Speaking of something that was pretty appalling, Trump is sticking to his latest story about what he did in the aftermath of 9-11, insisting his latest account is exactly accurate.

Trump's version of events has evolved over the years, but here's what he said earlier this week. United States Steel Building was creaking, really creaking. Now, we thought it was going to fall down. The truth is, it creaked a lot. It creaked. It still creaked. but it never came down. And I'll never forget, two firemen,

we thought it was coming down on top of us, and two firemen, big, strong guys, and I'm not the smallest guy in the world. They grabbed me under the arms, they got to get out of here. And they literally lifted me up. This is not easy to do. I'm big.

They lifted me up, and they started running with me. I said, fellas, I can run myself. But they were amazing, but they thought it was coming down. it didn't come down, U.S. Steel? I, you know, creaking. Photos and videos show Trump in Lower Manhattan on September 13th and 18th,

not until then, but there were no reports or evidence of his firefighter rescue. What he definitely did on 9-11 is he called a local TV station and bragged that now he had the tallest building in Lower Manhattan, which he also didn't. He won't be in New York for the 25th anniversary of

9-11 reportedly because he wasn't allowed to give a speech. He'll be at the Pentagon, and J.D. Vance will be at Ground Zero with all the ex-presidents. Of course, he's trying to make 9-11 about him. I thought this was one of the more appalling things. You know, all of the politicization around this memorial, the 25th anniversary, obviously Rudy Giuliani,

who has made it his brand in a really grotesque way. He did a great job at the time, but he has to stop making it all about him. He didn't want Mamdani there, and then Mamdani very quickly released all these incredible documents showing how the Giuliani administration hid the dangers of what was happening down there. And then had John Stewart there who's been a real, of all the many things John Stewart has done, his backing of cancer. Victims and things, it's been astonishing.

And then, of course, reports out the cancer has enormous for the people who are down there. You know, Amanda was there underneath the World Trade Center at the time of the attack. I wrote it to her. I was like, did you get breathe in a lot of that stuff? she luckily got out very quickly and moved away from the area really quickly because she felt it was toxic what was happening. But thoughts about this, Trump, just, this is grotesque. This to me, I don't know why. I was like, it was such stolen valor, essentially. Yeah, we become numb to it. He's either lying. I say it's like 80% chance he's lying or 20%

he's become so senile. He believes his own mythology himself. But either it's not befitting up a president. The controversy around Mondani, that's ridiculous. He's the mayor of New York, of course you should be there. I'm glad Trump's not going to be there. And we're going to come back to it's the end of the show. But after 9-11, I was in New York, and you could go down to the pile and volunteer to give out why. You know, you could just go down and volunteer. And the CEO of AMB at the time, now he's a CEO of Prologis, Hamid Mogadam, who's a mentor of mine, he called me. And he said, do not go downtown. I mean, he went out of his way.

There's a busy guy to deliver one message to me. He said there are millions of tons of pulverized, vaporized, cement, asbestos, and glass in the air right now. And Benzington. And he said, do not go downtown. And this was before people were talking about. And by the way, there was nothing malicious here. But Christine and Todd Whitman really fucked up. Because more people have died in the aftermath from airborne illnesses and cancers than died on 9-11.

And, you know, our government is supposed to keep us safe. She issued statements saying it was safe. It was not. This was a real error on the part of our leadership. Yeah, I was kind of, I'm glad the Mamm Dhan administration released those documents. I can't believe they weren't released 25 years. They've known about the situation. I mean, you can't be perfect in those.

And that was a terrible crisis. But, man, it was sort of like, I don't know, I was like, of course they lied about it. And they didn't give people enough warning, especially the workers down there. And the levels of cancer that are showing up right now, they get cancer quicker. Governor Pataki is claiming he has cancer from 9-11 airborne-related illness. He could. He was down there a lot. I recall speaking people who were down there a lot, not Donald Trump.

But I agree with you. one stupid thing after another with Trump every fucking day. But, you know, whether it's Natalie Arp or whatever dumb shit that happened with him all the time. But this one, I was really like, you were appalling fuck. Like, I don't know what else to say. I was like, this is, these people risked their lives. All these people died. It is a cemetery. It was a cemetery. You know what I mean? And to try to like focus on himself, like, is there no, like to me that that was a, that was a moment for our country. And it's not his. have. Anyway, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, Apple introduces a foldable phone. They're

really good at folding, as they said. Support for this show comes from NetSuite. You've heard plenty about how adapting AI to your company has the potential not only to save you time and money, but it keeps you in step with the competition. Now, all you have to do is do it. Fortunately, there's NetSuite next to show you how. You probably know NetSuite, the AI-powered business management suite, that securely connects all of your data. It's a unified suite bringing your financial financials inventory, commerce, HR, and CRM into a single source of truth and is trusted by over 43,000 customers. NetSuite Next is the next big leap in how business gets done, because AI is built into everything you do. It automatically surfaces custom insights throughout your day.

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only, availability of products can vary and may be provided by different Ripple entities. Support for the show comes from Hymns. If weight loss has felt like a losing battle, now could be your chance to change it. Skip the guesswork and try weight loss by Hems, an affordable range of FDA-approved GLP-1 medications including the Wagovi pill and and the Wagovi pen. With Wagovi at Hymns, they say you can lose up to 20% of your body weight when combined with diet and exercise. It helps you regulate your appetite, eat less, and keep weight off.

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HEMS dot com slash pivot. Weight loss by HIMS is not available in all 50 states. Wagovi is a registered trademark of Novo Nordisk, AS. To get started and learn more, including important safety information, Wagovi clinical study information and restrictions, visit HIMS.com. Scott, we're back with more news. Apple has unveiled the iPhone duo, its first foldable phone,

and the first major new product launch under new CEO, John Ternis. The $2,000 phone opens like a book with a 5.4-inch screen when closed and a 7.6-inch display when opens, kind of like an iPad-sized experience when it's open, but 20 times the price or whatever, a lot more. Someone said it's an iPad at the cost of a MacBook air. The duo arrives years after Samsung, seven years, and other rivals entered the photoable market.

My brother actually has a Samsung mobile phone, which still accounts for less than 2% of the global smartphone shipment. It's not, foldable phones have not taken off that much. Some people think it's a great version of this. And as you know, Apple is not a pioneer as often as it copies and does a good job. Everyone who's had it says it's great that I've talked to. What do you think? I may buy one?

I can't tell if I want it. I can't, I think it looks great. And I like foldable phones and I am in the Apple universe. But it's not particularly inventive. It's just derivative in a good way. I don't know what else to say about it. My former colleague at Stern and now at Tuck had this great insight that really struck me. And he said that the people that add the most shareholder value are not innovators.

It's the second mouse. It's never the first. The first gets mud on their face arrows in their back. And then someone comes in and scales it. As you reference, this is a niche market right now. But Apple has a habit of coming in around MP3 players. Phones or AirPods. Touch screens.

Yeah. laptops and making the more elegant and then and then making the more aspirational in blowing up, you know, blowing out the market from a margin standpoint. They're usually not the market leader, but they blow out in terms of margin because of the self-expressive benefit, which is the strongest consumer brand in the world. I tried to order one last night. I couldn't. I don't know. You can't until October. Oh, maybe that's why. Yeah. There you go. But I, this is anecdotal because I'm, I like to signal and, you know, I'll do trying to do an honest product review. I'd be very interested to know what you think or what Walt Mossberg thinks. I personally, if I had to bet,

I think this is going to be a hit. I think Samsung is going to be so fucking angry that they came out with this thing seven years ago. And within about six months, not even six months, I bet within 60 days, Apple sells more of these than all foldable phones have been sold in the last seven years. Do you think the price is too high? It's a pretty high price. If you want to get a pretty decent memory in it, it goes up much higher, by the way, than 2000. 2000's the bottom. And if you trade in your phone, which you get, you know, like mine is about $650 to trade it in. I don't because everybody thinks Vitana-Catier are the ultimate luxury brands. They're not.

The ultimate luxury brands are Stanford and MIT, but close second to those brands is Apple. The billion wealthiest people on the planet, I'll have one thing in common. They're all iOS. I've said this for a long time. When you have an Android phone, you're saying to the world, my life didn't pan out the way I'd hoped, iOS is the ultimate status symbol. It is the ultimate, implicit way of saying, I'm creative, I'm so good at what I do, that I can afford to pay three months of salary in Turkey on a phone. And so I don't think $2,000, when you think about the other products and the amount of money people spend on luxury items, I don't think that.

But again, I'm not the market because I'm more pricing elastic than most people around things I want. I don't think that's a crazy price for an aspirational flagship Apple product. What do you think? Yeah, a lot of people, though, say it's an iPad at three times the cost. But it looks really interesting. And, you know, one of the reasons

I was thinking of buying it, besides, I heard a lot of good things from people who were there. You know, even Casey, who is not a Casey Newton, who's not someone who buys things right away, was like, I'm buying this thing. He must have seen it.

Is that I'm tired of my iPhone. I want something different. I know it sounds crazy. But I've had this iPhone since the beginning. of iPhones. And so I'm like, okay, I'm kind of bored with the, with my, and I need a little more space because I find myself watching a ton on my iPhone now. Like I experience a lot of video on the phone. And so the keyboard is another issue. I think you can probably buy a little keyboard.

It looks like something, I use my computer less and less and less and less now. But that's the key point. And that is, yeah, it's more expensive than an iPhone, but it's less expensive than an iPhone and a laptop. Yeah. And if this can obviate the need for two or reduce the need from both those things to one thing, then arguably it's a good value. Yeah, I absolutely will not be replacing my computer. I don't know what they could do. I just, it's fine. It's fine. And I use it so little now that I find it interesting. I think if it's been on the keyboard, but even that, it's, I use these devices now as a watching device, much more so than I've noticed that. I watch lots of videos on threads, by the way, which just, Zuckerberg correctly said it just passed Twitter as a social media platform.

I watch a lot of videos on this thing. And I watch television. I watched a lot of Furious on my iPhone, which was interesting when I was traveling. So I don't know. It'll be interesting to see. I'm going to get it. You're going to get it. Yeah.

You'll probably get six. You'll probably get six of them. I'll just get one. I think the most important size of anything, fill in the blind. or bad joke, bad joke here, is the screen in terms of economic value. Tens of billions of dollars and influence have linked from a 90-foot screen known as movie theater to the television, and then the television leaked to the PC, and that's linked to the phone. Yeah.

I mean, just the, you were talking about trillions of dollars of market capitalization has flowed down to smaller screens. where this is, is what they've basically said is there's a big market in between the space between your computer screen and your iPhone. Because I am, and again, I'm not the market. I now late at night have some trouble reading emails on my phone. And one of the reasons I'm going to buy this is I like the idea of just having a slightly bigger interface, but I also don't want to pull out my laptop. I find I'm using my laptop less and less. Yeah, even your iPad Mini, I don't use that much. I don't know why I have it. I kids use it to watch stuff of movies and car rides and things like that. I think a lot of people will buy it. I think definitely the

echelons, the top echelons are kind of going to be like, oh, I'll try it. This is beautiful. I think it's a beautiful version. The one thing I have, two things I have. One is, my brother has had the Samsung foldable phone, and it breaks easily. That's one thing. Like, it breaks, like the shattered thing. And so it doesn't look like you can have really a way to protect it as well. It looks like there's not that on it because it can't have one of the things on the back that everybody has on their phones. That's one thing. I've noticed a lot of people have that the foldable phones have broken foldable phone, broken screens. So I would worry about that, but maybe they've done something rather strong. They're so good though, aren't they? They're so good with that stuff. They might come out

with a good, that's what I'm saying. They've had very few, they've had a few snap views in that area, but in general, I suspect they've solved that problem because every, every designer has told me this is like the most beautiful design of this, of what this is. And secondly, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, the uncomfortable relationship with tech companies. I'm just going to very quickly before we move to our last segment is, you know, as I said, I've seen the Musk movie. I was pissed off probably stupidly, but still it kind of irritated that they would suck up to Trump, Google, and Apple.

I put out instructions on how to use, how to get off of Google Maps, how to get off of search, if you wanted to do it. I changed a duck, dot, go, which I like quite a bit, I have to say. I moved to MapQuest, which is delightful to be. back at MacQuest after all these years. I have to say, it's missing a few features, like subways and things like that, but it's lovely. It's a lovely. I kind of like it.

It's like fresh. I know it sounds dumb, but I'm so sick of Google Maps. And so I removed those from my phones, and I showed people how to do it. I'm starting using the Vivaldi browser, instead of Safari. I do want to separate myself. And it's not just a flex. It's like I'm too much using these companies that have no, share no values. with me, like, in some way. And I think I'm not, I was thinking, is this like just a moral flex?

But it is a moral flex. I don't use Twitter because I think it's a Nazi porn bar. And so I think people should start diversifying their uses and not not using them totally. In this case, there is no choice. I am in the Apple universe and I do not like Android. And so there's not a lot of choice here. But I definitely, you know, don't have the same relationship with Apple that I used to. I don't trust them. And that's one of the things that I will get this. As a device, I don't have a lot of choice, but everything else on that phone, I'm going to try to figure out to try to use other technologies that don't, like using Duck, DuckGo and Clawed together works beautifully. It replaces Google search completely. I don't need to use Gemini. I don't need to

use stuff like that. I don't know how you feel that way, but I do. I think they should rename it to Lake, are we doing this again? Lake Epstein. My favorite is. Lake from State Farm. Yeah. Or Lake Obama, changed Lake Michigan to Lake Obama or something like that. It's so stupid.

This, again, I file this under distraction because one prediction I'm fairly confident, assuming Democrats retake the House and possibly the chamber and there's a Democratic president, all of which are looking increasingly likely, within 30 days, we're going to rename all of this shit. I know. I'm not irritated. by Trump. I'm irritated by them. Like, Trump is, of course, a sad, narcissistic, demented old man. Like, I get at, I get, of course he's going to do this. It's them that I really find

objectionable. And watching these movies where they make the case for their incredibly bad morals and no, no guardrails is sort of like, yeah, I'm sick of these fuckers. Like, I'm tired of having to put up with this shit. And maybe we could use our consumer power like you did with your efforts. I want to rename it Lake, Sam, the first night at the club when you left. Ron made out with two girls and put his head between a cocktail waitress's breasts. I think that's, I think that's how we should rename Lake, Ontario. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, Canada, we're with you on this one. Anyway, one more quick break. We'll be right back. Support for this show comes from Quince. Do you have a favorite thing in your closet, the thing you look forward to breaking out every year?

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Another week, another new episode of Bird's Eye View. This week, I'm thrilled to be joined by Australia's most notable women's basketball player and my former Seattle Storm teammate, Lauren Jackson. She talks about the pros and cons of going pro at 16, the Opel's legendary FIBA World Cup run in 2006, and how her role on a team differs between international tournaments and the WMBA. Plus in Sue's view, I answer your questions about the Yukon documentary that came out. Make sure to check out Bird's Eye View on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts.

Every living cell in every living thing is related. We're all part of the same tree of life. Now, scientists are trying to make a new tree of life, building their own cells out of non-living chemical parts. And hope that it comes to life. to create new technologies that will help our economy, that will help the climate. But they have to navigate the risks. There is the potential in what we do to be mad scientists. If you have a cell that can be engineered to do whatever you want, you could make something harmful.

Suddenly, we're talking about something which could be a catastrophic threat to life on this planet. So do you fear us more than the people who made nuclear weapons? Life from scratch is a new three-part series from Unexplainable. Listen, wherever you get your podcasts or watch us on Netflix. Okay, Scott, we're going to do something a little different. This episode is airing on the 25th anniversary of 9-11, and we wanted to look back on that day. Take it away. Well, I'm going to hear your thought.

Some people are, some people earn their way into history, whether it's storming the beaches at Omaha or refusing to give up a bus seat or we talked about Gloria Stein. and Dolly Parton to sheer force of character or talent. Mine was serendipity around 9-11. I was living in, I just moved to New York, and my ex, who I'm still good friends with, called me and said, can you come over? And she had an apartment that overlooked downtown and had this unbelievable deck. And she said, can you come over? The World Trade Center is on fire.

And I said, sure. So I bombed over there. And my friend, Greg Scho, close friend, came with me. And we were over there. And it was, the World Trade Center was on fire. And then, and we saw this go down, we saw a plane flying low and then disappear behind one of the second tower. And then it explosion out the other end. And at that moment, it took about 10 seconds to figure out, oh, fuck, we're under attack.

This is terrorism. And each of the three of us had different reactions. And Sixth Avenue became a sea of people just coming up from them. One of the largest maritime rescue was not Dunkirk. It was actually ferries lifted or sequestered or got 500,000 people from lower Manhattan, rescued them by water. And I remember the radio, a guy came on the radio and said there's 17 planes unaccounted for, and immediately you thought, are we in one of the tall buildings that might be targeted next?

and some of the things I noticed about the city during those three days was it was silent. No one was honking their horn. It just went eerily quiet, except you would on a regular basis see someone on their phone sobbing that they had just received bad news. There was also a total absence. They immediately fired up and called in all nurses and emergency room doctors thinking they'd have a flood of people into the hospitals. They didn't. You were either killed or survived. and one of the more disturbing things was I walked over to Washington Square Park where they were having a memorial,

and a bunch of people who were searching for missing people were walking around passing out flyers like a lost pet, and you'd see all these people. There'd be huge groups of people trying to be supportive of their friend, passing out flyers, and someone would come up to you and give you a flyer with a picture of their son. I remember one was a waiter from Windows of the World in his waiter uniform, And you knew that this person was gone. And yet these people were in this park passing out these flyers for days. And it was just so rattling.

Per your comments, 3,000 people dead. More people have died because of, as you pointed out, some of the airborne illnesses. But a couple of other things worth noting or the lessons I take from it on its 25th year anniversary, just coming back to just how incredibly stupid our invented war against an ally Canada is. The airspace for the first time ever in America was closed. Planes were diverted to Canada. And overnight about 7,000 people found themselves in gander, Canada, nearly doubling the population. They took them into their houses.

They got additional prescription drugs. They figured out dry cleaning. They did their laundry. They figured out child care, right? That's what Canadians did for us. That's the kind of friend Canada was to us during 9-11. And then the story trying to bring it back full circle to the midterms that really moved me was the story of Flight 93. So Flight 93, they actually had phones.

And so the cockpit had been seized, and they called, and in most previous hijackings, the passengers survive. They try to take them to a Havana or they land or they make demands. the standard operating procedure was to not do anything. And when they called, the Twin Towers had already been hit, and it was obvious. And they have recordings of a couple of the passengers who recognize, okay, this is a suicide mission. And there's this one very dramatic moment

where the guy says, okay, let's roll. And they basically filled up what they think was a meal cart and crashed into the cockpit. and the terrorists lost control the plane or decided rather than giving back control the plane, they crashed it into the field. And they're technically considered kind of the first heroes of 9-11 and just bringing it back to the midterms. You know, you're faced with this question of, all right, we can hope that things work out or we can try and retake control the cockpit, meaning it's probably not going to work out.

And you know how they decided? Vote. Yeah, they voted. They voted. Yeah, I remember. So where I go is it just, whenever I think about that, I think about how blessed and under, blessed we are that we get to vote and how much we underappreciate just what a powerful construct it is. Right. I agree. Anyways, I, so there's a long-winded way of, I think, I would like to see a law. I've been thinking a lot about them in terms.

I don't think anyone should get, or they should have reduced. benefits. I don't think anyone should have a social media account if they don't vote. There are certain countries where you have to vote. And I think especially, and I think this infects the left as much, if not more than the right, the delta between the amount of bitching on social media and into a mic relative to actual actions, that delta is growing broader and broader. And one simple way to somewhat narrow that delta is for God's sake, vote. Yeah, very quickly, I was not in New York at the time, but I was headed to New York. I was headed to D.C. and then New York, I was driving around the country with my ex-wife, Megan. We just rented a van and a Volkswagen van and we're driving around with our dogs just to see the country. We thought it would be cool. I was pregnant and I was pregnant and I was pregnant and I was pregnant and I was pregnant and I was pregnant. I had tried and, you know, usually it takes a few times that I got pregnant right away. And I slept a lot in the back of the van and I should have known that that was the reason. And we stopped in Mississippi at Jim Barksdale's.

He's a wonderful, speaking of wonderful tech people, Jim Barksdale is the top level. CEO of AT&T and the Netscape. Yeah, the Netscape. Amazing, kind, wonderful person. But we were there at their house, and his wife opened the door. We were leaving that morning, and she opened the door, and she goes, oh, you're not leaving, you know, in a big southern accent. And I said, oh, I know you love us, but we're leaving.

And she's like, you're not going anywhere. And we ended up, you know, found out what was happening. It was shocking. And we ended up watching the entire thing, including the second building falling, you know, in this redneck bar in Mississippi. And everybody was just devastated. There was no screaming, no fighting, just total grief and shock, I think, that this could happen. And then we ended up driving around the country.

We had to drive back to California after we went to Washington. We, it was, everything was silent in the country. We drove across country. I mean, not just New York, everywhere. Everybody was quiet. And there were some banners, like, around, you know, at highway overpasses, like beautiful banners about, you know, remember the dead and stuff like that. But I've never, the entire country was in a stupor.

And it just was, to this day, it makes me so sad. It was such a formative experience. And at the same time, I was pregnant, you know, and I ended up having Louie, you know, nine months later. But I think we all have to keep everything in mind of all the bravery that one happened. And this, I was thinking today, you know, the guy, the duct tape guy we didn't talk, the guy that got duct taped. And first for a minute, I thought it was you, who got duct taped into the seat for being racist. and screaming and biting people. That's why his forehead was duct tape.

When I have a few cocktails on a plane, I become incredibly nice. Yes, I get that. I'm teasing. I didn't think it was you at all. You'd never do something like that. And I thought, that fucker, like, I was like, I don't know why.

I'm like, I'm so sick of these angry, privileged people when all these people sacrificed a lot. And like, every country has had its crises and tragedies, by the way. We're not the only ones. And it was brought home to us because we live in a, a country that's far away from others. We don't experience that kind of devastation, but it makes you think of what's happening in Kiev, and it makes you think what's happening, you know, all across the world. And we have, this is, it's enough with a duct tape fucking guy. We're done with these people,

and voters have to step up. And, you know, it's a privilege to live in this country. And that was a real wake-up call. And I thought, maybe we'll be a little better than we have not gotten a little better. And we have to stop the handing power over to people that have no care for anything but themselves, like the tech companies, like, you know, at this moment, it happens to be the Trump administration, any administration that is just in it for themselves. And that's, I have to say, 9-11 was a great, could have been a great unifying moment, and it wasn't, right? You don't, see, I would argue it was the last time we were unified. Yeah, I guess, I guess. But it should have had resonance, and we should reflect on that, on how we felt that day as a joint people,

and just put all these angry, aggrieved people behind us and move to a better. I don't know, I just feel like, and by the way, if AI is going to kill us by 2030, like, maybe you didn't need to work out so much while you're away, Scott. But, you know, we have to start seizing the power back from all the people who are not, do not have our, everybody's best interests at heart. Anyway, it was a devastating day. I think every should take a minute to reflect on themselves and this country. And again, to the victims, just what a terrible thing that happened.

And the only last thing I'd say is I'd recommend. Tom Johnan wrote a story about the man who jumped to this incredible photograph they collected and sort of trace, try to figure out who that was, which I thought was a beautiful story. And the second one was by Jen Senior about speaking of a waiter at Windows on the World, which was a beautiful place, by the way, if you had ever gone there.

I went there for lunch once. I would recommend Jen Senior's piece and Tom Dunes' piece if you want to read some very beautiful pieces about that day. Anyway, on that sad note, Scott, I am thrilled you're back, I have to say. Thank you. It's great to be back.

All right. We want to hear from you. We love hearing from our listeners, and lots of people did come up me Scott and say they missed 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 85551 Pivot. Okay, that's the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot and be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

We'll be back on Tuesday. Today's show was produced by Lara Nam and Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Todd Wiseman. Alia Jackson engineered this episode. Thanks also with Drew Burroughs, Missouver, Dan Chelan, and Kate Gallagher, Michelle Kuroas, Vox Media, is executive producer of podcast. Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for listening to Pivot from Vox Media. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things, tech and business.

Let's roll. Let's vote.