Pivot - U.S.-China Trade Deal, Trump's Plane Grift, and the American Pope

Episode Date: May 13, 2025

Kara and Scott discuss the U.S. and China temporarily putting their trade war on hold, and evaluate the damage that's been done. Then, Trump is poised to accept a jet from Qatar to be the new Air Force One. Is this his griftiest grift yet? Plus, Pope Leo shares his thoughts on AI, Newark Airport chaos continues, and Elizabeth Holmes's partner starts a company that claims to be "the future of diagnostics." 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 at nymag.com/pivot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We used to have big ideals and dreams when we were still in university. We wrote these beautiful application essays about how we were going to fix tax avoidance and tax evasion, how we're going to tackle global hunger and work at the United Nations. And look at us. What has happened? What has happened? This week on The Grey Area, we're talking about our moral ambition. Where did it go and what we can do to get it back? New episodes of The Gray Area drop on Mondays,

available everywhere. What's up y'all, it's Kenny Beach and we are currently watching the best playoff basketball since I can't even remember when. This is what we've been waiting for all season long. And on my show, Small Ball, I'll be breaking down the series matchups, major performances, in-game coaching decisions, and game strategy and so much more for the most exciting time of the NBA calendar. New episodes through the playoffs available on YouTube and

wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe to Small Ball with Kenny Beacham so you don't miss a thing. Support for this show comes from ServiceNow, who are enabling people to do more fulfilling work, the work they actually want to do. You know what people don't want to do? Boring, busy work. But now with AI agents built into the ServiceNow platform, you can automate millions of repetitive tasks in every corner of the business,

IT, HR, customer service, and more. And that means your people can focus on the work they want to do. That's putting AI agents to work for people. It's your turn. Get started at servicenow.com slash AI dash agents. You can come over. We'll do edibles.

Watch Meet the Press on my computer. Sun time. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Cara Swisher. And I'm Scott Galloway. Scott, did you hear who my seatmate was? Your favorite person on my way to California to talk to Democrats. I can't say who.

Oh, Gordon Gekker. I mean, Speaker Emerit Soppellosi. Yes, she was delightful. She's a delightful seatmate, I must say. Let me just tell you one thing about her. First of all, I recognized it was her because it was a plane full of political people. Zoe Loughran was on there, Eric Swalwell was on there. But someone yelled out white smoke really loudly, an older lady, and it turned out to be her. Spent much of the beginning of the flight having me figure out who the Pope was for her.

She's quite Catholic and carrying lots of newspapers, constantly moving throughout the entire thing. I mean, she's in really good shape for someone of her age, of any age actually. So it was fun, we had a good time. She says hi. I think she's very fashionable. She is.

Well, she was wearing a very comfortable but fashionable outfit, I would say. I would say very but comfortable. And one of the things that struck me was how many people came up to her. I know you have antipathy towards her, but most people don't. It was astonishing how many people gave her notes and handed her little things, saying they loved her and this and that. It was interesting. Look, I don't. I think she's been a great representative. I think she's a powerful, smart woman.

I also think she's engages in wild corruption. Yeah, not like a Qatari airplane. We'll get to that. But the slow creep has not helped. No, I agree. The stock thing has to be dealt with throughout Congress, by the way. There was a Republican who did it, who was saying he was against it, and then he suddenly was doing a lot of trading,

Marjorie Taylor Greene. They shouldn't be trading. And again, I think your idea of paying them more is a great idea in order to get them off of that. Because another part, you're smart people. You wanna make some money, and you can't help yourself, but you do have insider information to a lot of things. Look, I've said this over and over.

I'm trying to be better about coming up with solutions. I think there should be a bill, and I think there's a decent chance it would pass. One million a year for representatives, three million a year for senators, 10 million a year for the president in exchange for a zero tolerance policy on corruption. Yeah, but then how do you – like, the Trump people have really taken it to the most. No, I agree, but that's a separate conversation. I'm trying to talk about solutions. The Singapore model works because what ends up happening is the money they get costs so much more in terms of loss of faith in the markets, in terms of people's reticence to invest in certain companies.

I'm going to agree with you. All I have to say is I love a lady who has a pile of newspapers all crumpled up. She pulled out stories, she knew where everything was. It's quite nice actually. Made me feel of a different era. I liked it. A bunch of newspapers crumpled up? She reads newspapers on paper, like instead of digitally.

And at one point when I figured out for her who the Pope was by getting online and stuff like that, she said, ah, him. And then she fished out of this pile of newspapers an article The New York Times had done on this particular man who became the Pope. And she was like, hmm, I wonder if he's too conservative. She was immediately just out of this. She was almost like the Wikipedia herself. It was really interesting.

Yeah, the guy who lived across the hall from me and the faculty housing also collected newspapers, also spoke to himself and was 108. I just haven't seen someone have a lot of newspapers. My mother. Anyway, it was fun. We had a good time. White smoke. Anyway, how was your weekend? By the way, I was in California very briefly to talk to Democrats.

What? You're out of California again? I'm back. I'm in DC. Jesus Christ. Going up to New York, I'm staying with you. Just so you know, my son's graduating. When are you coming here? I'm not getting there till Wednesday. When are you checking into the hotel?

Wednesday, Wednesday, Thursday. The hotel she prostitutes and pastries from Balthazar? Yes, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. Okay, okay. Memo to self, cleaning lady, get rid of the dildos and the condoms. Okay, okay, memo to self. You're there with someone and if you want to have drinks tonight, I'm coming in today.

Pretend I'm coming up with a really valid excuse for no. I'm going to just show up nearby. I'm in a hotel nearby. My son's going to drink. Yeah, I had a great weekend. I want to congratulate your son. I went to one of these new member clubs. I went to San Vicente Bungalows.

Oh, how was it? I love that guy who runs it, Jeff. Oh, really? Yeah. They're all beginning to look, smell, and feel the same. The difference is they're all in the same area and are a much room so you go to one and if you don't like the crowd, you go to another one.

I mean, it's going to be, so the easiest prediction in the world is there's going to be a Harvard Business Case Study on these private members clubs about how it's over investment, the shakeout, how they each try to find their own lane and their own identity. But I'm not exaggerating. I would bet 10 have opened in the last year.

It's amazing. They're the one in LA and it's lovely. The one in LA is lovely. Yeah, it's nice. A guy who's a pivot fan actually, Jeff. I'm lacking on his last name, but I love the one in LA. It's quite lovely. I've been there for lunch.

I've been a guest to people. But did you like it, this one, comparatively? Yeah, I like all of them. I'm easily impressed. So, but I think they're nice. I also, I'm at the age where I don't wanna, I don't wanna wait in line. I wanna go somewhere that they don't allow in other people,

that I shouldn't be there. You know, I need to be. In a safe space. The oldest and ugliest person in the room. Okay. And that happens at these places. Good, good. Would you care to say which one you like best or not?

Oh, my favorite is Zero Mon because I like the owner and I think they do a nice job and it's just sort of my cheers. I like it there and it's sort of the original one that kind of took private members' clubs to the next level. If I had to guess, I'm fascinated by Mark. If I had to guess, I think the two that will survive sort of the HBO and the Netflix are Zero Bond

and Casa Cipriani, which just has its own kind of Euro trash crowd and all as well. Oh, yeah, that's a nice crowd. And it's downtown, and it's just got a very unique positioning and the other ones are all like, you know, Hulu and Peacock trying to battle it out. All right, okay. It'll be very interesting to see

what actually survives here. All right, so I'll meet you at Zero Bond tonight. That'll be great. ZB, you're gonna meet me at ZB? I will, I have to speak in front of CUNY. Is it Cooney? Is that how you pronounce it? Cooney, yeah. Cooney. I'm speaking in front of a Newmark group.

Craig Newmark has funded a journalism thing. But then I'm afraid. Oh, that's nice. So you can meet me. Then I'm afraid. You don't drink. I'm not. I know. I'm not interested.

I'm just going to show up. Just show up? Yeah. I'll text you. You can come over. We'll do Edibles. Yeah. Watch Meet the Press on my computer. No. Suntime. That's what I do. That's literally what I do text you. You can come over, we'll do Edibles. Watch Meet the Press on my computer. No.

It's fun time, that's what I do. That's literally what I do at night. I take Edibles and I watch Meet the Press on the computer and I get really depressed. I ain't gonna find you tonight. Do you wanna go to the theater tomorrow night? Oh my God, I can't think of anything. I'd rather less to.

I wanna go to the theater. That was you trying to up it? That was you trying to like go one more, yeah. No. Yeah. Yeah. Oh God. I have a lot in New York. I'm interviewing Barry Diller.

I'm going on Nicole Wallace's new podcast. I was on Nicole's thing. She's good. You were on her show show. She has a new podcast too now. Everybody's getting a podcast. Oh really? Yeah.

So I got, I'm gonna speak out of school here. Yeah, sure. I got, this is literally why TV is dying. You've done a lot lately. Yeah, I'm a total fucking whore lately. So anyways, so when I'm in New York, I just say us to everything. Almost everything.

Not me, I see, as you can see. Come on, I know you. Okay, go ahead. Anyways, at CBS Mornings, whatever it's called with Gail King, reached out and said, do you want to come on? And I said, yeah, I've never been on the show. My understanding is it gets a huge audience.

It does. I actually like Gail Kane for all the shit she's getting. I like her. Yeah, I do too, except for the flight thing, but go ahead. Okay, whatever. You know, I've done worse. You've done worse. Exactly. That's how I feel.

And so they're big assignment. They do a pre-call, a fricking pre-call with like eight people on the pre-call. Oh, I decline those. You did them? Decline them. No, my, okay, my team agreed to it. I don't do pre-calls for talks where them. No, my, okay, my team agreed to it. I don't do pre-calls for talks where I get paid six figures, but they decide I need to

do a pre-call for CBS Morning. Okay, hard no. Anyway, so I'm on with like eight very attractive, intelligent 30-somethings who are literally a third of the age of their viewership as they program, you know, as they figure out programming for people who are 140. And they're taking, asking me all these questions about young men and the economy and tariffs. We talked for 45 minutes and then I go,

can you tell me a little bit about the segment? And they said, it's with Gayle King. And I said, how long is it? And they said, four and a half minutes. And I said, I'm not doing it. And I'm like, what? You did it again, you've done this before. I'm not getting up at oh dark hundred hours,

putting on a suit, coming to midtown, getting in a makeup chair to speak to 800,000 seven year olds for four and a half minutes. And? And they were so shocked. Oh, good for you. And then by the way, same night and I'm bragging, I went on Nicole Wallace's show for 40 minutes.

Yeah, yeah. But I'm supposed to go on fuck and the thing is, they don't get it. And what did you do? Did you go on? I went, no, I said I'm out. Oh. Yeah. But I'm supposed to go on fucking. And the thing is they don't get it. And what did you do? Did you go on? I went no. I said I'm out. Oh, this is not. I said the juice isn't worth the squeeze. I'm pissed off at my team for agreeing. Yeah. I'm like and it's bad for my brand to show up with Gail Cain for four and a half fucking minutes. That makes me look important. And they seem so shocked. And this is the thing, broadcast news or just cable news, it's one thing that you're dying, but it's another thing you don't realize it yet.

Yeah, I've had that. They literally seem shocked that I wasn't gonna haul my ass to Midtown to be on with Gayle King for four and a half minutes. Yep, I agree with you. The call before, see, I always return down. I was like, no, you can read my threads. Four and a half minutes, yay.

We spent 40 minutes talking through these issues and they want me to answer like one question with Gayle King at 8.04 AM. Now Gayle's mad at you. No thanks. So I can sell more opioid induced constipation medicine. You're never gonna meet Oprah now. Oh well.

Oh, that's right. They're good friends. Best friends. They're good friends. BFFs, BFFs are best friends. It really truly is. Well, that's a nice story. Anyway, I'm going to go on a podcast that's an hour long,

so I am agreeing to do it. Because it's anything, as long as it's substantive. You love Nicole Wallace. She's great. Hello, moderate. We like her. We like her a lot. Hello, moderate.

I love her. I think she's really great. And then I'm doing Barry Diller. I'm very excited. In person, we're going to do it in person, you want to do it? Yeah, I got the gangster. I'm excited. The book is wonderful. Wonderful.

Do you want some more inside baseball? What else? So this firm- What other TV did you turn down? No, this activist investor, smart young guys, called me, they're thinking about taking a big position or they already have an IAC and they wanted me to join their group.

And I'm like, there's no fucking way I'm going up against Barry Diller. I'm like, one or more of us will end up in the river. And I'm like, and they're like, what, are you scared of him? I'm like, yeah, I'm really scared of him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm like, good luck with that. And by the way, you don't know me.

And I said that I love Barry Diller and I want nothing to do with an activist play against IAC. Anyway, we've got a lot to get to today, including MAGA's meltdown over the Pope, woke Pope, and the return of Elizabeth Holmes, sort of, I guess. But first, the US and China have reached a deal to roll back the sky-high tariffs

they've imposed on each other, at least for the next 90, another 90-day thing. Under the deal, the US tariffs on China will drop from 145% to 30%, while China will cut its own tariffs on American goods from 125% to 10%. These tariffs reductions will go into effect Wednesday. China also said it will suspend or cancel tariff countermeasures, including restrictions on rare earth metals that have been hitting automakers and chipmakers. The markets are thrilled by this China deal, though the Dow surged a thousand points at the opening bell. No surprise. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was just on CNBC calling this a pause and saying he expects to meet with China in the coming weeks to work out a larger agreement. I mean, what? Like, why do we do this? I guess to get them to do this? Is this better, better,

worse? I can't even tell because the specifics are not there. Besen also said, Netherside wants a decoupling, meaning we want to get along with the Chinese. That's probably, hello, we already knew that. If you're an American company right now, I don't know what your next move is. And Scott, how many dolls are you buying me? That's what I really want to know. But talk about this deal. There's this capitulation. You don't show up and levy,

say you're levy 145% and then a week later start negotiating against yourself and saying they're unsustainable. And it's like, well, why did you put that number out there to begin with? And then say there's a temporary pause slash interim tariff of 30 percent. And this is reality.

China gets, kind of gets what they want because China has made a strategic decision to divest from the US. They have taken the percentage of their exports from 24 percent to 17, which is huge. Yeah, they're doing pretty well. When you look at the size. Yeah. And as we pretend that our dick is much bigger than it is,

we're the third largest trading partner. We're not even number one. So they're fine to slowly but surely go through a measure decoupling actually, or reduction in dependence upon us. Trump has created so much ill will. I mean, do you realize, and this is the thing people don't realize in terms of brand,

for the first time in history, when you do, there was a national, a global poldone of global consumers. And for the first time in history, more people see China as a positive force in the world than the US. I cannot believe that. I saw that. So when opting for where should my kid go to graduate school, where should, who should I do business with?

Who am I inclined, what kind of business am I inclined to meet with? What widget or aircraft should I buy? Chinese or American? More people around the globe for the first time now pick China. Yes, an authoritarian communist country that follows this view.

It is, it's so ridiculous what we've done here. And then just on a more economic level, in terms of capital outflows, in the wake of this nonsense, investors have rushed to the exits on all dollar-denominated investments and the U.S. dollar index is down 6% year-to-date. More than 10 billion has been wiped out of this off of the stock market. The Magnum is in seven alone lost, you know, two trillion on April 3rd and 4th. So there's just, this is just a massive attempt to claim some sort of Pyrrhic victory in exchange for massively trading off the equity that

we have developed over the last 80 years. This is just stupid. Again, these guys don't understand business. They don't understand negotiation. They don't understand even our dollar dominance. People estimate that we get interest rates on mortgages, student loans, and credit cards of between a half a percent and a percent lower

because so many people buy our dollars to invest here. And so the real damage is incremental. It's like a virus that's eating away that you can't even identify. It's all these little, it's death by thousand cuts, and America has taken for granted just how powerful having the dollars, the reserve currency, having these inflows of capital, having people feel decent goodwill about us and he's torn those up such that we can go to 30% temporary tariffs. 90 days. All this 90 day nonsense. I mean, what if you're a business? Tell me, if you're

creating a business, how do you know, I guess you're relieved that now we're not being insane and ruining, but it's already wrecked a bunch of people's businesses, it's thrown planning out the window. And what do you do? Cause you don't know what this lunatics is gonna do next. And I don't mean China. America is meant to be a platform for rights,

to protect our shores and for stuff. Americans love their stuff. And so a 30% tariff is enough to kind of get trade unclogged again, but it'll be essentially the percent of exports to the US will go probably from 17 down to 15 or 12. And then the next time we try to do it, A, our products are going to get more expensive.

If you were to give some of the Christmas tree, every business and all the shit they order from China, it'll make the cost of doing business more expensive. It's done huge damage to our reputation. It's just we're no longer seen as a reliable trading partner. I think actually interesting enough, a big winner is Europe who's going to find a lot of, they're going to be able to negotiate,

get a lot of products on sale as China tries to keep these factories humming. I heard that they were doing that, they were keeping up sales across the globe. It's just, this is just, and then the software will probably rally because of this, because we're getting out of idiocy. It looks like Scott Besson's just a cleanup lady,

like on aisle five, essentially, correct? Yeah, that's a good way to put it. Yeah, anyway, President Trump is heading out on the first major overseas trip of his second term this week with stops in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, presumably to collect new bags of money. The trip comes as Trump administration plans to accept a $400 million luxury Boeing 747-800 from Qatar, possibly the largest foreign gift in US history. The plane will be retrofitted to be used as Air Force One, which I don't even want to

think about the security implications, and donated to Trump's presidential library when he leaves office, allowing him to still use it. Despite all the ethical questions being raised, Trump called it a very public and transparent transaction on truth social. And Press Secretary Carolyn Levitt, Tracy Flick, who was just so bad, said in a statement, any gift given by a foreign government is always accepted in full compliance with all applicable laws. It's the griftiest grift yet.

I mean, this is just, I'll note the Trump family struck a deal to build a luxury golf resort in Qatar a few weeks ago. I mean, it's all in plain sight, I guess, is the only good thing we could say about it, all the billions they're making and taking from these Arab countries. And he wants to call the Gulf, the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Arabia now, another one. I mean, why does he just go there in his plane and live there for the rest of his life? I don't know what else to say. Because was he looking for a place to go if he ever gets convicted of anything? I don't honestly know what's happening here. Well, again, I go to the brand. You know how stupid this makes us look? That we have to have

rich Qataris buy the president a plane that's manufactured here. We're the most prosperous nation in the world, but we need a government that, an authoritarian government that sponsors the Houthis and Hamas to give us a plane. And I have, so I have a group of friends from college, mostly Jews, who are pro-Trump. They kind of hold their nose around the man and his policies, but they found that Biden and Harris's wavering around Israel was really disappointing. And so they're, quite frankly, they're pro're pro Trump or they voted for Trump because they see him as more resolute on Israel. This is Qatar basically is the diplomatic mouthpiece and

funds Hamas. And so the notion that the Trump administration gave a flying fuck about anti-Semitism as they try and implement thought control across our universities. And is meanwhile saying that Middle East policy is now pay for play, that he's now the ultimate frequent. There's now a new frequent flyer category for Qatar Airlines, and the president is the only person on it. And in exchange, they're gonna have leverage over

a guy who claims to be focused on anti-Semitism. I mean, it's just, I find that Jews in America that support Trump are kind of like, okay, yeah, there's like the white Christian nationals, the evangelicals are big fond, really fond of Jews in Israel. But if you actually do a little bit of digging, the reason they're fond of Jews in Israel, but if you actually do a little bit of digging, the reason they're fond of Jews is a little bit unsettling. They think we're part of their master plan when Jesus comes back.

It's like, okay, just dig a little deep on what their plan is for us and why they're like us. End times, it's all about the end times, just so you know, I have relatives. I hear a lot about the, do you know what I did? The bumper sticker my brother made for my relatives who were very, very charismatic Christians, I guess I would call them. He made a, they're lovely people,

but they have varying degrees of religiosity. But he made my aunt a bumper sticker, said, when the rapture comes, can I have your stuff? I thought that was going gonna be funnier. How is Dr. Swisher? He's good, he's good. He's in Portland visiting his son right now, he's good. His son's in Oregon?

Yeah, one of his sons, yeah, the other lives in Australia and his daughter is in the Dominican Republic right now teaching. Wow, I can totally see that. What does his son do in Portland? He's working on electrical engineering, I think. Oh, good for him, At the University of Oregon? One of them, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. I can't say what Alex is doing because he signed an NDA, but Alex is doing an energy-related internship this summer. I'm not exaggerating. When your son took me and my son to work, and we asked him to lunch

when we were touring the University of Michigan, we asked him what he was doing over the summer, and he looked around as if there were spies about to take notes. And I'm like, Alex, you're not that important. You're not that important. He is, don't tell him. He loves you, do not say that.

He's listening right now. Okay, he's his son. What is it? He's going to the sophomore. He's literally like, okay. He's like, you can't tell anyone about this. You know what? He's a very, I love that kid.

We had a great weekend. Well, yeah, you love him like a son. No, I just think he's going to be a billionaire. And we should, speaking of being scared of people, you should. No, I'm glad he's on our side. He's going to take care of us, you and I, when we're older. No, he's going to be, he's going to be my bodyguard and also figure out what, what technology keeps me alive to 200.

I feel like he's going to build something really significant. I feel this. Yeah, he's got that kind of crazy smart gene. Yeah, he really does. Anyway, we can't say what he's going to build something really significant. I feel this. Yeah, he's got that kind of crazy smart gene. Yeah, he really does. Anyway, we can't say what he's doing. He's under India. I know, it's total like top secret. I love that about him.

Anyway, Trump, you're a grifty grifter. That's all. I don't know what to say. I don't know if we can stop him, but he's like piling up the grift. Like you can't believe. All right, when we get back, how the new pope is riling up the MAGA world. And we'll also discuss some of our favorite pope memes, because I love a pope meme. Scott, we're back. The pope, Leo XIV, the first American pope, laid out a vision of his papacy

over the weekend, identifying AI as one of the most critical issues facing humanity. It was interesting. He was also sporting an Apple Watch, his first official mess. He also seems to be a very techy pope. Let's invite him on the show. That would be great. And while many have cheered the election of American pope, the MAGA folks are not happy.

Activist Laura Loomer ran him woke Marxist pope. Steve Bannon predicted friction with Trump. As for Pope Leo's political leanings voting records show the Chicago native has participated in Republican and Democratic primaries in various elections. An ex-account under his name has criticized Trump's policies in the past and also rebuked JD Vance back in February.

He's got a crazy Trumpy brother who, what was he saying? He's saying a bunch of things that are really nutty. One brother is calmer, his two brothers, the older one seems insane. He's, as you said, from Chicago. He has a background interestingly of Creole and from Haiti. They're calling him also the Black Pope, but he's definitely got,

they did some really interesting reporting on that, which is cool. He's been all over the world, he's very international. He seems fascinating. So we'll get to the memes in a bit. What do you think of this Pope Leo? And so far, he seems very vibrant and exciting and interesting. I think he's the Pope because of Donald Trump.

I think that if you look at the new leaders of Australia and or the existing leaders of Australia and Canada, basically Trump got them elected and he got them elected because the other their opponents were more closely associated with Trump. So Trump is basically anyone who's not Trump or represents a pushback on his policies is ascending into the most powerful positions in the world. I think that's what happened here. I think the papacy or the papacy takes very seriously

how they can have the most impact. And if you look at when the Eastern Bloc was really going through a difficult time, they decided to pick someone from the Eastern Bloc. They picked Pope John Paul II from Poland. I think they see there's a relevance and a means of adding value by saying when a place is struggling, we pick someone from there

in hopes that they serve as sort of a moral standard bearer. My father-in-law absolutely adores Pope John Paul II. He's born and raised in Poland. And I think that it's no accident that they've decided that America needs a pope, that they need somebody. I mean, the best line that identifies or marks this very dark moment in American history is what Bill Gates said, and that is that the richest man in the world is killing the world's poorest children.

That was something, as we said. And I thought, Jesus Christ, that's puncturing and sad. And that kind of identifies our MAGA politics right now. And I think that the Cardinals who elected, I think they decided that America is in desperate need over moral standard bearer, and the world needs someone that America will take seriously. I was thinking so much about,

how did my generation fuck up so bad? And I was thinking, and for me, it all comes back to a personal parable. My- Oh, you're doing a parable? Well, my youngest is always built. He's got the most wonderful grandparents. And his granddad-

Your wife's parents, correct? Yeah. My grandparents have been done. Average age expectancy. You know how everyone says I'm going to live forever? Like none of my grandparents made it past 50. Wow. Anyways, so he's just the most wonderful man. Took over the family room to build a train set for the boys. And he's always with my youngest, built these Legos.

And in this time he came over, my youngest is 14, and into girls and snap and fashion and football. And they built about half of it. And then he said, you know, Z Ja, I don't wanna do this. I don't feel like it. I'm, you know, he wasn't enjoying it that much. And I could tell it was very upsetting. It's like one of those moments when you feel like

that's probably the last time I'll pick up my kid or the last time I'll build a Lego with my grandson. And I was trying to figure out a way to say to him, look, that's not cool. Even if you didn't want to build this or finish it, you should have realized this was important to your grandfather and finished it. And what I've been thinking about is that,

you know, I'm writing a lot about becoming a man. I think that my generation and our politics have become more about our feelings as opposed to our values. And that is we don't do a good enough job of identifying values and then basing those actions and those political views off those values as opposed to just what makes us feel good or feel like we're part of a tribe

or feels some sort of thrill because the other side looks stupid or feels confirmation because we're signed up for whatever narrative with the party we've chosen believes. But I do think there's a degradation or a move away from values. And as a guiding light, as opposed to just-

And this guy's feels like that. This guy's really got very, I mean, he's not afraid. He's called Russia's invasion, he said Russia's living wickedness. He's not afraid to tweet about shit. And I like to think that the church has said, all right, there needs to be some sort of rejuvenation or a move back towards values in the West

as opposed to what everyone thinks is gonna make them feel good. It depends on what your values are though, because there's a very conservative shift in many people in the US. The most devout, I'm using that term loosely, are the conservative groups that are sort of macanating behind the scenes in the Catholic Church. There's a whole groups of very conservative Catholics, and JD Vance is a convert, obviously,

and is among those. And the concepts are much more old Latin Pope, like Benedict. Let's go back to before Vatican II and everything else. And I agree, I think this guy is a choice that they make. I happen to be Catholic. I don't know what your, I don't even know what your religion is. But my grandmother went to Mass every day.

I got confirmed, I never went inside a Catholic church since, really. I did that for her. But there's a real movement. Either it goes quite left or quite right. And it's responding to growth in Latin America and Africa and different places, I think, where there's more conservative men. But there is a real conservative shift in this country.

And I think Pope Francis was smart to pick all those cardinals, shifting them a different way. And there's one cardinal that's Cardinal Dolan in New York, who's his favorite one, who's quite conservative. And I have to say, Nancy Pelosi gave me a walkthrough, all the conservative cardinals in the country. She's obviously, she's not allowed to be, to get communion in San Francisco, but I think other priests give her communion in some fashion.

But there's a real struggle going on. So this should be a really interesting pope. But more importantly, there's pope jokes, which are really good. You know, whatever, if Laura Loomer and Steve Banner don't like something, sign me up, I think. But you shared a Chicago Pope one, which looks like a new TV show coming to NBC. Very funny. The Wiener Circle, which I love in Chicago. The famous Chicago hot dog stand where they insult you, puts a Latin translation, He Has

Eaten Our Dogs, on their sign. Someone posted on X, smart play for the Vatican to go with an American Pope to avoid tariffs, that was cute. And Stephen Colbert put it, Holy Father, you had me at JD Vance's wrong. Did you have any other Pope memes you liked or did you have a joke yourself? I feel like you might have a Pope joke, maybe you don't.

Oh, Kara, you know, the churches, they're just religious institutions. They're just, there's some limits to even what I will say about the church and El Papa. And, you know, I mean, Here we go. I will say, what struck me is kind of unusual when the pope said pets should not replace children in Italy. I guess he doesn't like priests practicing bestiality. Oh, I knew that was coming.

Sorry, folks. Won't stop, can't stop. You know, Michael Che did a good one, you know, that Trump's Pope picture was juvenile. You'd think the Catholics would like it. Get it? The religions actually aren't that different. Jews don't recognize Christ. Anglicans don't recognize the Pope. And Baptists don't recognize each other at the liquor store. Ah, here you go.

Do you want me to keep going? One more, one more, one more pope joke. Staff says no, but I say yes. Staff says no. One more. Well, no, the only Catholic in my Jewish fraternity was my roommate Mike Vogt. He wasn't circumcised. We used to get high and make him show us his penis,

and we'd make anteater jokes. That's not really a pope joke. Is that strange? That is, they want to move on. They fought from that. Anyway, and chaos at Newark Airport continues. As of Monday, the airport has been hit with three outages in under two weeks.

US airlines are meeting with the FAA this week to discuss cutting Newark flights. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy was on Meet the Press this week, and let's listen to what this dingbat has to say. I'm concerned about the whole airspace, right? The equipment that we use, much of it we can't buy parts for new. We have to go on eBay and buy parts if one part goes down. You're dealing with really old equipment. We're dealing with copper wires, not fiber, not high-speed fiber. And so this is

concerning. Is it safe? Yes, we have redundancies, multiple redundancies in place to keep you safe when you fly. But we should also recognize we're seeing stress on an old network and it's time to fix it. Bottom line, is it safe to fly in the United States right now? Listen, we are the safest airspace for sure and traveling by air is way safer than any other mode of transportation, which is why I take it, my family takes it. But again, that doesn't mean you don't look over the horizon and say, hey, if there is a major outage, could that be a risk to life? Of course it could be, which is why we fix it. Yes, so Doge, of course, they asked him about

Doge and he sort of kind of squirreled around on the cuts that Elon was trying to make there. One of them was so weird that I was reading about this weekend that Doge made it so you couldn't charge anything more than a dollar to your credit card, your government credit card, because they can't buy paper and pens right now because of that stupidity. So Newark, I don't fly out of Newark. I tend not to. I try not to. I go out of JFK or LaGuardia. But when I'm in New York, any thoughts, concerns about air travel? What do you have to say? Or, look, it's pretty basic fucking logic. When Lloyd Austin was the Secretary of Defense, jets weren't falling off of aircraft carriers. And when Pete Buttigieg was the Secretary of Transportation, we didn't have near misses and shutdowns at airports

because air traffic controllers are so demoralized and there's not enough of them. And this guy figures out a way to do his interpretive dance and blame, I actually saw him blame Schumer for this. And all these tropes around, yeah, it's the safest form of trans, do your fucking job. This is a totally unacceptable people.

What do you want? People want prosperity, money is the transfer of time and work. And when you're delaying people for hours and sometimes days at a time, because if you're incompetent, it's a decision to bring in someone who knows absolutely nothing about government

and start making reckless cuts that results in not only a reduction in safety, but a massive expansion in the amount of people and the amount of time people that's taken away from their families and their work and economic productivity. Again, it's another one of these slow burning, slow burn of our prosperity. And yeah, everything he's saying is right, but they're all...

This is his... He's responsible. What is he doing right now to solve the problem at Newark? I agree. It's like, when did this suddenly happen? Oh, now it's because now we're here and we figured it out. No, now you're here and you're an incompetent administrator of a very critical part of our infrastructure. Just this guy seems as dumb as a box of hammers. Again, this is another thing that I just don't think Americans, and unfortunately, they're about to learn the hard way how incredible our FAA and our government employees and the regulations and the certification and the sea check.

As someone who's loved aviation their whole life, has been molesting the earth for 30 years and has flown probably tens of millions of miles. I'm fascinated with planes and aviation. People don't appreciate, what they realize very early on is we're not gonna make it like cars where there's an acceptable number of deaths, 10,000, what is it, 20,000 traffic deaths a year, because it's worth it.

They said, no, this is so uncomfortable to begin with. To put people in a cylindrical tube with recirculated air and then convince them it's safe to travel at eight-tenths the speed of sound across the surface of the atmosphere, quite frankly, it's just unsettling. It does not feel natural. But if we can connect the world,

if we can give people the opportunity to fly around the world safely, we're gonna have the most unbelievable unlock in terms of human capital being willing to go to its greatest return. Okay. I can, I did this for 10 years. I commuted to New York. I wanted to live in Florida because it was better for my kids, but I still needed to work in New York. So I commuted. Why? Because you can get on a plane and travel a thousand miles

and then commute a thousand miles because it's that safe and it's that comfortable and it's that inexpensive. These things are so over engineered, they are so safe. If we had anything resembling the fatality rates of automobiles, no one would get in a fucking plane. Danielle Pletka And also other countries, if you've ever flown in other countries. Well, because when planes go down, it's horrific. And it strikes a very difficult part of our instinctual fear because we're land mammals. So the idea of dying in the air seems especially upsetting to us. And so they have totally over engineered these things. I mean, I've

owned planes. The amount of safety, it would be, imagine a car and every six weeks someone had to show up, check the spark plugs, replace them. If your tires showed anywhere, they have to replace the tires. They test the thing over and over. They detonate the airbags to make sure they're working and then put them back to make sure this thing will not. Almost all airline disasters are pilot air. And then they have very talented people coordinate all of this while it's sometimes there's 12,000 planes in the air at the same time.

Yeah, the fact that it's messing up now is really the testament to the Trump administration and the demonization of our government workers, which has really gone far too far. There's one thing to be critical and want improvements in the money we're spending. But anyway, we have to move on, but this guy seems like an imbecile.

And the Trump administration is just presiding over really low quality executives everywhere, which is not a surprise. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, you'll never guess what kind of company Elizabeth Holmes' partner is starting. Scott, we're back. We're going to make quick work of this, I think.

While Elizabeth Holmes is in prison for defrauding investors, her partner and father of her children is raising money for a company that, wait for it, claims to be the future of diagnostics. Billy Evans is distributing marketing materials, claiming the company, Hamanthus, I think that's what it's called, is a radically new approach to health testing and will test blood, saliva, and urine. The company is aiming to raise over $50 million. We'll start testing pets with a goal of developing a stamp-sized wearable product for humans. Marketing materials reviewed by the New York Times say there is no regulatory oversight. Investor presentations probably did not mention Evan's relationship to Elizabeth Holmes.

Will there be free trials at the Fyre Fest too? I believe in pivoting, but this seems a little bit too much on the nose. I don't know, what do you think? Well, and I got a lot of shit for it, but I thought Elizabeth Holmes sentence was overdone. Agree, I agree with you with this. I agree with you, given what other people have done. And I found it unsettling,

only 2% of founders of unicorns are female. And I didn't think there was a lot different of founders of unicorns are female and one, I didn't think there was a lot different between what Adam Newman did and Elizabeth Holmes did. They both lied to their board, they both exaggerated. Yeah, look, a different set of circumstances, I think things could have been much different. And people say, well, it's health, it's different.

She lied about its capabilities. She basically lied to the board and exaggerated the results, which quite frankly, unicorn executives everywhere do. And I agree she was guilty. I agree she should have gone to jail. And I said publicly, I thought 10 years was overdone for a first offense for a non-violent criminal. And her husband reached out to me and asked me if I would get involved in a campaign to get her out of jail.

And I said, like, this isn't something I'm emotionally invested in. I can't help. I think he's doing him and her a disservice doing this. Because all he's doing is bringing attention to the fact that she did commit a crime and commit fraud. Because that'll be the story here. The story won't be the startup, whether it's

a good idea or a bad idea. The story will't be the startup, whether it's a good idea or a bad idea. The story will be reminding everybody that his wife who's in prison and should be in prison committed fraud. So I just don't think he's, I don't think he's being smart about this. I don't, I think this is strategically,

you know what I always wonder, young people, it's so hard to read the label from inside of the bottle. Young people, everybody needs to establish a kitchen cabinet of people. And people are willing to do it because people love to give advice because it makes them feel important.

Where you can just call them and say, hey, I'm thinking about starting a diagnostics company. And somebody would say, okay, you realize you're gonna bring attention to your wife's who is in prison for fraud fraud for lying about the financial results and the capabilities of a similar company. Have you thought this through? Anyone he reached out to who cared about him and was honest would have given him that advice. So I hear this, I just think about this across all of these people when they make these decisions. It's like, don't they have friends?

I have a friend who's literally a master of the universe, and he was talking to me about his baby mamas and what's going on within his personal life and relationships. And I said to him, I said, don't you have friends? Like who do you talk to about this stuff? Did you drop some real? Well, I said to him, I said, don't you have friends? Because this guy is literally one of the most impressive people I've ever met.

On any issue, he can give you the most reasoned, thoughtful. And then you hear about his personal life and it's like, so you just took every piece of bad judgment across your entire life and stuffed it into your relationship with women. And I mean, just a couple of phone calls to people saying, hey, I'm checking in, I could use your advice. What do you think? What do you think about this?

Yeah. Just for clarification, she's not Evans' wife, Scott. She's his partner and mother of the kids, they're together. Oh, excuse me. But they aren't actually married. That's all right. It of the kids. They're together. Oh, excuse me. But they aren't actually married. That's all right, it's married-ish, married adjacent. Married-ish.

Married-ish, like us, you and I. Anyway, Billy. Come on, Billy. Anyway, bad idea. And finally, OpenAI and Microsoft are negotiating the terms of their partnership to allow OpenAI to launch a future IPO according to the Financial Times. Microsoft has invested $13 billion in the company to date and is reportedly willing

to give up some of its equity in exchange for access to new technology developed beyond the 2030 cutoff. There's going to be an IPO here. This is interesting. It's the one with the most revenues, the most users, et cetera, et cetera. And I think they've got to run ahead of everybody else, correct? I mean, this is a race. This is like, and they, they're in the lead at this moment.

It doesn't mean they're going to stay in the lead. A lot of the open systems like llama, a lot of people feel that that's going to really dominate that, that, that meta will. So any thoughts on this? Cause you're, you're Mr. Equity. This, this'll, this'll happen. This, it makes sense. So what's happened is there's been a total,

the number of companies that are publicly traded has been cut in half in the last couple decades, because there's been mergers and acquisitions. And the private markets have captured a lot of the innovation and attributes that used to be sequestered to the public market. Specifically, you can now raise billions, or even tens of billions in the private market.

You can get liquidity for your employees because there's an active secondary market. And also you can avoid all regulation and scrutiny and make kind of harder, tougher, deeper decisions without the scrutiny of public earnings calls. What you have with OpenAI and the reason they will go public is that OpenAI is taking, and Sam is brilliant,

he'll go down as I think one of the kind of the iconic business leaders of this generation. He realizes that this is an Amazon slash Netflix play. And that is, it is very difficult for OpenAI, for any AI to establish technological differentiation. Cause AI just crawls it. When you ask DeepSeek what LLM it was for the first 10 days, it said, I'm OpenAI. So these things reverse engineer each other. So this is a capital war around getting the best talent, get it,

striking the best deals, making acquisitions and tuck-ins. And now he's in an altitude where he doesn't need to spend billions. He needs to spend tens of billions. And the way, the way he'll be able to do that is by going public and getting, you know, a $400, $500 billion valuation. So it does make sense for him. It's got huge sex appeal, global appeal. It's the fastest, I think, zero to $10 billion run rate. What is it? I think it's a $5 billion run rate right now. Five or six, something like that, yeah.

But it'll get- It's so useful. Five or six, something like that, yeah. But it'll get- It's so useful. It'll have a $10 billion run rate pretty soon. It'll go, he needs to basically, this is a capital war. He's gonna outspend everybody. And there are a few companies that can't find enough capital

in the private markets. This is probably one of them. He needs, he's gonna go out and raise a shit ton of money. They have hired a very adept executive, a former CEO, former, I think, meta person or Googler, who is the former CEO of Instacart, who's going to really run. It's the Sheryl Sandberg moment here in that regard to run the companies, a lot of the business parts of it.

So they really need to run fast and run hard. And I think that most people feel meta is their biggest, the open source meta is their biggest competitor. And Mark has no guardrails of anything. So we'll see what happens. Anyway, it has to happen. It has to happen. This is gonna head that way.

All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails. Okay, Scott, we're going to do some wins and fails. I think I shall go first. All right. I recommend there's so many great. TV has gotten great. There's a lot of great journalism going on.

I have to say, there's several stories I've read recently that are just so good, interesting and fascinating to read. The one that really struck me this week was Nick Kristof's latest column in the New York Times. It's a long one. It sheds light on internal emails from Pornhub that were made public because of a filing error. Going back to 2020, they show employees laughing

about what's on their site and reveal how the company handles child pornography. The inability of sites like PornHub to get rid of CSAM, it's called, child pornography, is horrifying. And the fact that they're so casual about it and you see these emails laughing about it, is with the pain it happens to these people is just astonishing. These people should be sued back into the dark ages for what they're doing here. It's gross and it's bad for young men as you write about a lot, and I agree with you. But the fact that they think it's funny about child pornography

and the extent of it is so enormous and we can talk about the audience for this and that's another issue but the fact that these companies facilitate it makes them, I mean there's a sickness at the deep part of humanity on this issue but this company deserves to be sued out of existence from just this and again not, I don't like porn. I think it's bad for us. I think the digitization of it has made it even worse. But the fact that they can't control this and they think it's a joke is repulsive. So that's a huge fail.

For a win, there's a lot to choose from, including New York will now require schools statewide to ban smartphones during school hours. That's great. But I was thrilled to see Cecily Strong return to SNL this weekend to reprise her role as Judge Ginny Pirro after Trump named Pirro the interim U.S. attorney in D.C. That's another incompetent hire, by the way. But she did the whole, Colin Jost also came back,

he came back to Pete Hegseth and she spits drinks at him and it was so funny. And I love Cecily Strong and was just delighted to see her there, and I'm glad they got her to do that. She does the best, Jeanine Pirro. But from a fail point of view, Jeanine Pirro is an incompetent person to do this job. Never, just incompetent,

beyond incompetent for this job. Although the guy she replaced was venal and evil type personality where he was defending J6 people and had all these crazy schemes and everything. I guess she's better than him, but that doesn't mean she's any good, and it's such an irresponsible appointment. Your thoughts, go for it.

Okay. My feel I've referenced before, this Qatar luxury suite, basically the privatization of the White House at 40,000 feet, that's not a kickback. It's government capture. And meanwhile, Qatar has funneled over $1.8 billion to Hamas since 2012. They host Hamas's political leadership in luxury Doha compounds and serves as the terrorist group's primary diplomatic shield. You know, he, the president positions himself

as Israel's greatest defender. At the same time, he's accepting lavish gifts from a country that bankrolls the organization that murdered 1,200 Jews. It's like you're fucking twins and then trying to convince each of them that you're monogamous with them. I mean, it's just so,

the cognitive dissonance here is stifling. And Qatar's influence doesn't stop at the White House. They've poured, get this, 4.7 billion into American universities since 2001. That's more than any other foreign government. You know, this is such a weird relationship. While they host our largest military base in the region, they also maintain cozy relationships

with Iran and Hamas. And meanwhile, America's leverage in the Middle East deteriorates as our president becomes essentially an employee of Qatar Airways with nuclear codes. And our elite universities become intellectual laundromats for authoritarian antisemitic propaganda. So this is not just corruption, it's the purchase of American influence

from the Oval Office to our universities training our next generation of presidents. And when you think about, you know, what's the point here? We want our government, the founding fathers want to check some balances, not deposit some withdrawals from foreign powers. So this is a get again. And I'm at a point where it's pretty easy.

And I think the other side loves it, outraged we are. I think a Democrat needs to sponsor and make very public legislation that says, the government of Qatar is engaging in grift or corruption or foreign bribery. You're not supposed to accept gifts over $400 as a public official and say that again, in three years and nine months,

we're going to reevaluate our relationship with you based on, we're going to do X, Y, and Z in exactly three years and nine months. We need to stop. There's no stopping the Trump administration. He's weaponized the DOJ. He has neutered, he has neutered basically all checks and balances here. My attitude is go after the foreign governments and some of the lower

level people who are, who are enabling this. You know, I told you Qatar tried to buy our all things D, like they wanted to give us $10 million each, all this stuff. I was sort of astounded. This was more than 15 years ago where they wanted us to bring our conference there to Qatar. And Walt was like, you know I'm a Jew and you're back, come on. So, he was like, no, like it was just an astonishing offer and it was so massive, we were sort of shocked. Largely they wanted the technology, they're sort of trying to buy, was the influencer to look good, right? We were sort of clean washing them in some way by going there and there's a lot of, by the way, there's a lot of events that go there now and do that.

But I remember Walt was like, no fucking way. Like, and it was an enormous sum of money, you know, at the time, 10 million dollar sticks in my head. But we were sort of shocked by it and astonished. And of course said no immediately. But I agree with you, this is just beyond, I mean, the Nazis did this during, right, ahead of World War II, like tried to like buy influence through their various agents,

the same thing, you know, very much trying to influence US policy. But this is, I don't even know what this is. This is even, what's the goal here? Precisely. That's the thing is what's their actual goal. I'm still focused on the fact you don't know what religion I am. I don't. What are you? You're Jewish. You're Jewish. You're partially Jewish. You're half Jewish.

No, I'm whole Jewish. My mother was Jewish. And I'm an atheist, but I'm a raging Zionist. I just think it's hilarious when people in the comments section call me a Zionist as if it's an insult. I'm a proud Zionist. So wait, your mother is Jewish. What is your father? Yeah, my father's Presbyterian. My mother was a Jew, made name Levine. So I identify with Judaism.

I just don't believe I have an invisible friend. Oh, okay. It was a nice picture of her you put up for Mother's Day, by the way. Wasn't that nice? I got so many comments back. That was lovely, I have to say. I was touched by that. Well, I meant to ask you, for Mother's Day, by the way. That was sweet. I got so many comments back. That was lovely, I have to say. I was touched by that.

Well, I meant to ask you, happy Mother's Day. What did you do? Oh, it was Amanda's birthday also. We did a picnic. I took my mom out with the kids for breakfast. Does anyone get more flowers? How does this whole lesbian thing happen? Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, my kids call me. I have a lot of calls. Who gets breakfast in bed first? No, how does this all work? Yeah, my kids call me. Who gets breakfast in bed first? No. How does this all work? No. It's like, I have so many questions about lesbian relationships. When there's a really difficult parking spot, who parks the car?

I do. Okay. Yeah. Okay. I'm a really good parker, I would say. What did you do for Mother's Day? Thank you. Happy Mother's Day to you too and to your wife, not to you at all in any way. What did you do for Mother's Day? That's what I was asking. Thank you. Happy Mother's Day to you too and to your wife, not to you at all in any way.

What did you do for Mother's Day? I said I had breakfast with my mom. I took the kids and I and Amanda rested at home and then we had a lovely picnic for her birthday and I bought her a lemon tree, a Meyer lemon tree as a gift for Mother's Day and her birthday. Because she loves the Meyer lemons in my house in San Francisco, so we're going to try to grow one here in our house. This is so clearly a new relationship.

This is so clearly the thoughtful, well-planned out gift. I got her a plate that had lemons on it and then lemon things, and then a beautiful lemon colored, a pitcher that's beautiful. It was a lemon situation as in when life gives you. That's a new relationship. This is where you're headed. My wife sends me a picture of a watch she wants

and I'm like, here's the Centurion card number. That's where we are. No, I got her a lemon tree to grow for our life. I love lemons. I love lemons anyway. When life gives you lemons, eat mushroom chocolates, that's my saying. All right, what's your win?

My win is I'm really, I am really excited. I make a lot of jokes about the church, but I am excited about an American Pope. I think that the Pope is sort of a standard bearer for morality. I think this guy is up to the task. Unlike our elected leaders, he seems to actually understand technology.

In a strange way, I'm happy for Villanova. I can't tell you how many messages. Oh, I hate the Villanova people from being a Georgetown person. I can't like them. But I have a guy I've become friendly with who's pretty involved in Villanova, and he can't stop sending out message,

like memes showing all the universities in America, how many popes? Zero. Villanova. And he can't stop sending out message, like memes showing all the universities in America, how many popes? Zero. Villanova, one. He's just so excited. They're so aggressive, the Villanovens. He's so excited. Yeah, we played them in basketball.

We were supposed to hate Villanova, as I recall. But I think America needs kind of a, I don't know, a rejuvenation, a Epipen, a narcon of values. I think we're more inclined to take an American pope or listen to an American pope. Want to hear the weirdest thing? I thought about going back to church after I had him. I thought about it. I'm still not going probably because

so much corruption and the man thing. I think we need, as a raging atheist, I also believe we need more religious institutions. I've come to believe when I was younger, I was one of those snobs who considered myself a scientist and really was disparaging about religion. And as I've gotten older, other than the extreme, batshit crazy part of every religion, I generally find that 90 plus percent of it gives people a lot of comfort. Comfort. That's what I was thinking. And especially, I think young people also need more place to be in the agency of something

bigger than themselves and meet potential friends, mentors, and mates. I'm actually have come full circle. I think religious institutions are really important in America. Interesting. I'm an agnostic, not an atheist. I don't know. That just means you're a closeted atheist. No, I'm not. I'm not either. I have, I literally. That's like when dudes say they're bi. Ooh, I'm gonna hear it on that one.

I'm gonna hear it on that one. Lately I've been walking by a lot of churches. I've been walking by and I wanna go in and I don't know what that is. I honestly, apparently it's religion. You just wanna get away from your kids. It's called having little kids at home. Peace.

I almost went to church and we had little kids. I was like, I was thinking I want some peace. I know it sounds crazy, but I was, I don't know. Let's go to church tonight. Let's you and I, okay? No, I find peace at San Vicente bungalows. Yeah, you like the peace in the block. Talking to some 25 year old ad executive

whose parents are putting her through New York. All right, we wanna 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. Elsewhere in the Karen Scott universe, this week on On with Kara Spisher,

I spoke with CNN's chief international anchor, Christiane Amanpour. Let's listen to a clip. I've covered almost all America's major wars since 1990. And I probably got a lot more war experience I've covered almost all America's major wars since 1990. And I've probably got a lot more war experience than JD Vance and Pete Hefze, despite their military deployments. And I'm much older than them.

And the way I see it is we Europeans are not pathetic freeloaders. We have come to America's aid time and time again in the last 35 years. So it was a good interview. She's terrific. Well, I'm curious though, how has your, I asked this to learn not to make a statement. How has Europe come to America's aid? Oh, she was, it goes on. She talks about the various, you know, when we moved into Afghanistan and about different things that they have done to be supportive of us. She wasn't saying America hasn't helped Europe. That was not what she was also saying. She thinks that Vance and putting out the idea that they

don't do anything is ridiculous. She was saying that the alliance is so important and that the narrative they're putting about freeloaders was not true. And I think, and she made a larger case, but she was in no way saying America's aid to Europe wasn't critical too. So just she was being more complex. I've been on Christiana's show. I think she's, I also like her because she's one of those journalists that tries to set you up for success

and she lets you speak. I find so many journalists are there today. Substantive is the word you're looking for. Well, actually it's not, but thank you, lemon tree weirdo. Catholic lemon tree. What I was thinking was actually generous, and that is, I find there's some times when I go on a show,

they're there to try and corner you or get you to say something provocative because they want a TikTok moment or, and I do, I'm guilty of this too. A lot of times I ask questions trying to show how smart I am as opposed to get to an answer. And then there's journalists who will let you just speak and want you to get your views out there, whether they personally agree with them or not.

They're generous. They want to set you up for success. And I find that she's one of those people. She is. I really, really adore her. We've become good friends and I really liked her. She's just, it was a great talk. Anyway, please listen to it.

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 Friday. Scott, read us out. Today's show is produced by Lara Neyman, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Kevin Oliver. Ernie and her Todd engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burroughs,

Mia Severio, and Dan Chalon. Nishant Kaurwa, Vox Media's Executive Producer of Chalon. You're shocked Kuruoz, Box Media's executive producer of Vodcast. Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thank you for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Box Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod.

We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Kara, we have a new pope.