Pivot - What’s up with the China/US trade deal, why haven’t “smart guns” popularized, and who is going to stream the NFL?

Episode Date: December 17, 2019

Kara and Scott talk about the "Phase One" trade agreement between the US and China and what it means for big tech. It's the anniversary of the tragic Sandy Hook shooting and Kara and Scott talk about how tech could mitigate gun violence and how people are buying "ghost guns" online. In listener mail, we get a question about whether Amazon will buy rights to stream NFL games when their contracts with major networks end in 2022. In predictions, Scott says we'll hear more about Apple's relationship with China in the next year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And I'm Scott Galloway, the co-star of a new commercial on the Hallmark Channel where I am making out with Kara Swisher, which is so offensive on so many levels. Kara, tell us about your tweet storm and how you made that lovely Kansas company shame. Listen to me. Listen to me. The Hallmark Channel, which is already upsetting enough to have to watch those shows that they put on there, which is fine.

Look, they're very heartwarming. Hugely successful. Tales of unlikely romance. It is. It is. I get it. I get the whole thing. But they have ads on there

and there was a Zola ad which helps you do weddings. Right. It's this app that helps you do weddings or whatever. And it showed, they had a bunch of different ads, but it shows how your wedding was better through Zola. And one of them was two brides kissing. That was not the focus of it. They were talking about the stupid Zola ad in the middle of their ceremony. And it just infuriated me because I had just had dinner with my son and explaining what was it like, you know, 20, 30 years ago when I got married last time.

I mean, I just, I mean, when I, it was crazy that it was this topic and it was just, you know, he was sort of incredulous that all the different things that went on and how discriminatory was and how terrible it was. And then literally I get up and look at my phone and there was this 1 million moms had pressured the channel to take down this ad, which is just a dopey ad, by the way. Let me just say. It wasn't like I'm like, yay, a dopey lesbian wedding ad. So I started tweeting.

I got Sleeping Giants involved. I got all my famous Twitter friends involved. But a lot of people pushed Ellen, all kinds of the gays. Pete Buttigieg went in there, complained about it. But this group had just a small amount of people, you know, 25,000 signatures. I could have gotten 250,000 and pressured them. And so they took it down. And so, you know, after the reaction, which was crazy, which was great, they shifted.

And the CEO shifted back. It was literally as if it was, I had just been talking to my kid about it. It was 20 years ago, suddenly, that they were arguing over a silly ad. And I don't know, that just was really disconcerting. So I was upset because I've spent so much money on Zola. Oh, wait, no, that's Zoloft. Never mind. I'm sorry. But first off, Hallmark is a Hallmark. I mean, I'm not, as you can imagine, I don't watch a lot of Hallmark channel.

But Hallmark is a wonderful company. If you go to Kansas, they're hugely, I think it's still family-owned. They're hugely, they're great patrons. Yeah, crowd media. Yeah, they're really good, decent people. And I feel like, I don't want to say this is my win, but they did something dumb. It was, first off, a million moms is, it's difficult when companies do dumb things like this. What's really upsetting is when they're economically stupid. So they responded to a group called A Million Moms,

and I got curious, so I went to their Twitter page or their Twitter account and there's 4,200 people following them. So they're not a million moms. They're slightly over 4,000 moms, meaning that they're not only giving into weirdos or people who are homophobic, they're giving into people that just don't matter, which is really weird that a company would be shamed by 4,200 moms. I do like the fact, I do think they owned it. I liked his press release. He said, 200 moms. I do like the fact, I do think they owned it. I liked his press release. He said, we made a mistake. We feel stupid about this. And we're, I mean, let's be honest, you, Pete Buttigieg and Ellen show up, whatever you want, someone's going to nod their head. They're going to go, we don't know what we did. We're wrong and we'll fix it. It's just like, I just want

such memories. I literally, I had just been talking to my son about this and the issues and things. And I'd be like, no, they would do this. They would do this. You couldn't do this. He was asking me why I didn't do certain things in life. And I was like, I wanted to join the military, by the way. Couldn't because I was out and I couldn't do that at the time. And so I was like, you just couldn't do these things.

They would never depict. And we had been talking about this amazing book called The Celluloid Closet, which I recommend everybody see. Yeah. Get the book or see the documentary. It's Vito Russo.

Lily Tomlin narrates this amazing documentary about depictions of gay people in media. It's such a powerful reminder. Like, basically, lesbians always committed suicide. The dark-haired lesbian

always tried to grab the blonde lady and then has to die. And then either the silly gay man or the conniving gay man. And it just goes on and on. And it just really does make you understand where these images come from and why people have feelings and how powerful media is. And what's astonishing about it, and I will stop my rant, is that this was pre-Hays Code. A lot of Hollywood was really tolerant and really interesting and all kinds of depictions.

And the very first image ever recorded in a film was two men dancing, which is beautifully depicted in this movie. And they weren't gay necessarily, but it was just a beautiful image. You know what I mean? It was just lovely when you go and watch it. And so it's just sort of like you understand. When I showed my mom, who gave me a really hard time for being gay initially, and every now and then pops off with something kooky.

When she saw it, I made her see that movie, and she was a big moviegoer and everything else. And when she saw it, she was like, I really do understand how I got this way. Like, you know what I mean? Like, it wasn't, propaganda has so much power on people, especially media propaganda. Anyway, thank you. But I don't, what doesn't get enough attention, Cara, is all the things that straight white men weren't allowed to do. True story. I used to go dancing. I used to go dancing with my gay friend. You don't know this, but my best man, godfather, my children, two different guys, both gay, which makes me, of course, very sensitive to all subjects. But we used to go dancing, and they told me as a straight white male, I was not allowed to dance with my hands above my shoulders. And I think that's unfair. I think that's unfair.

I would not want to see you dancing with a bag of gay men. I got to tell you, they should keep you out of the club Icabod Crane having an epileptic seizure boom that's the big dog on the dance floor oh my god if Donna Summer came on and you started dancing I don't know what I would have to do I just you're laughing a little too hard at that image well I just

it's odd I just saw you in like a oomph oomph bar like in the Castro, and I'd be, I'm sure you'd be very popular among the young men there. But listen to me, this, you're right. This guy did the right thing. He did it very quickly. They, they responded. You know, it's just the fact that this is happening now. It's like, are you kidding?

By the way, by the way, the ad is so ridiculous, too. It's like so harmless and so, you know, I know they don't think it's harmless because these one million moms are, you know, it sounds like the Hays Code people. And the Hays Code, for those people who don't know, was a code that they imposed on the movie industry that just killed creativity whatsoever. And it was all kinds of rules around how men and women had to behave and what depictions they could have about immorality. And just these lectures of immorality. Just, that's enough of that. Anyway, let's get to the big story.

To your point, though, I don't think people of a younger generation, specifically our kids, just remember, they just don't appreciate how far we've come. The world is an entirely different place. And it was awful. It was awful. It was awful. It was awful. The way it impacted my life, I obviously didn't understand and I couldn't fully empathize with the discrimination that was going on.

But I had close friends who were closeted gays who both passed away from HIV. And it was just people don't realize, they just don't realize we were in the midst of a plague and all these, you know, not just young men, but just people were contracting this disease that had such terrible shame around it in the wealthiest country in the world. We had a president who wouldn't use the word. And this wasn't that long ago. President Reagan. It wasn't that long ago. And it was just- That was a shameful ago. President Reagan. It wasn't that long ago. And it was just-

That was a shameful period of President Reagan. It really was. It was. It was shameful. I think it's a stain on the whole country that we, I mean, the good news is we got after it and some incredible scientists let the kind of the warm hand of science catch a lot of people. A couple of my friends are literally alive because of the cocktail.

And it looks like they have found cures in a way, getting close to the cure, which is amazing. One of the things that's really, you have to keep in mind, is these things can go back. These things can go back. They can always go back. Look at what's happened with our president. So anyway, let's get to another big story, not even slightly related.

China and the U.S. agree to phase one trade deal. It's so confusing, and so business doesn't know how to react because they don't know what it is, but both China and United States pulled back on expected tariffs over the weekend. They keep threatening these tariffs. China was expected to implement a series of taxes would have affected everything. The 15% tariff on our side would have affected Apple's products that are manufactured in China, but sold in the United States. Part of the deal is that China will buy more U.S. agriculture, which apparently they were buying before, so it's not much different. So it looks like, and it's confusing to business, so the stock market doesn't know how to react. But, you know, big tech and farmers, you know, benefited even

though they had what they had before, so it's going nowhere, essentially. So, you know, I don't, it's fascinating what this is going on, but there is, this just seems to be a lot of noise back and forth. do correct conversation around the imbalance and terrible trade practices of China that was an opportunity that was entirely squandered. We are going to end up, any hard analysis by any economist, I believe, is going to show that we ended up in the same or worse place we were before we started doing this. And the reality is you don't go to war without allies. And if we had gone to war with the Chinese or against the Chinese with our brothers and sisters in Europe, we would have had the leverage to get something done. Even negotiating with a nation that thinks in 10 and 20 year increments. What all this is, is simple market manipulation by a president who

is trying to juice the markets, time them such that he can be reelected. This is, he's been threatening to solve the problem whenever he wants the markets to go up to take credit for it. It's the worst, most ham-handed form of market manipulation. And you watch, this wasn't, we didn't accomplish jack shit here. This was the worst fought war in the world. It was clumsy. It was stupid. And to do it without allies has just resulted in a total waste of time. Yeah. And then they, of course, announced this week. I mean, he's trying to show a lot of stuff ahead of the impeachment.

He's trying to show a lot of – and they did pass some things, even the paid leave for federal workers and things like that. But it is a marketing event, like really. The issue is they could pass a lot of this bipartisan stuff easily if they want to, the stuff that especially matters. And they, right, we're exactly where we were. And tech remains, you know, never under threat whatsoever and has pushed really hard and sort of kissed up to him so that he would do it. But it doesn't even matter. There wasn't any, you're right, it wasn't going to happen without all the allies. It was the impulse impulse was the correct impulse

to deal with this issue. But it now looks like we dealt with it, but we didn't. It's just papering over bullshit, really. There we have it. And speaking of that, papering over bullshit, it was the anniversary of the Sandy Hook shooting over the weekend, that horrible, terrible

shooting of all those children. And last week, there was also another anti-Semitic shooting in New Jersey. And of course, Trump, who had said he was going to do something about it, obviously didn't do anything about it. But we should talk a little bit about gun tech. There was a very good story in the New York Times this week about ghost guns, people buying ghost guns, essentially do-it-yourself guns. You buy it, you assemble it, and you don't need to get it registered. There's no serial numbers. This is an online kind of thing, but even though it's an actually analog thing,

there's also obviously the idea that you could print guns. There's gun tech, and there's all kinds of things in gun tech that you could actually use to stop people from being able to use them very well, but none of it's taken off. So do you have any thoughts? I mean, it's just a—and and then again we don't have any gun legislation which I think is as these technologies get worse and worse

we have no legislation to deal with guns as they are now in an analog form guns is one of those I don't know if it was the Stalin quote one death is a tragedy a million deaths is a statistic the way to best describe guns in the US is it's a statistic because there's just

so many, we have more gun deaths than Japan, Canada, the UK, and four other leading Western nations combined. And what's always been strange for me is I'm bad with equipment and clumsy, so I have never had any desire to have guns around me or for the appeal of protection or them as a sport. I've just never related to it. And I've always found it sort of weird that and I think one of the things that damages our public discourse and our decisions is that macho kind of always gets an advantage. And every Democrat who has the testicles to come out against guns or for gun regulation immediately starts with, well, I'm a gun owner and I love to go to the shooting range and I love to hunt. There are a lot of us out there who, quite frankly, and I think this is going to happen. You know how there are tax havens right now where people move to a state because of

low taxes? If there was a city or a municipality, and to a certain extent Manhattan is like this, that made it just exceptionally difficult for people to own guns, I would consider moving there. Because all I know as someone who follows, who has an appreciation for data, is the moment there are more guns around, my kids are more likely to kill themselves. I'm more likely to get killed by my spouse. You're more likely to be shot in a home invasion because you think you're in a Western movie and sit there and try and pull out a gun gun and then the person with the gun kills you.

I just see absolutely no benefit for a huge segment of the population. I understand Second Amendment rights, but it just always seems strange to me that there isn't more opportunities from a marketplace to say, all right, move here. Detroit wants to rejuvenate. We're going to make it a gun-free zone and move to Detroit. If you would just rather not be around guns. That is one crazy idea, but I kind of think that's fascinating.

Don't you think it would rejuvenate a city? That's essential. Well, essentially, because a lot of cities already have very strict gun control laws like San Francisco does. And so there are places like that. It's like that with, you know, if you think about it across a broad spectrum of things, live here and don't get beaten up for being gay. Live here and

don't get, you know, but nonetheless, I think there are these national laws that don't pass. And this gun tech, I really did have a lot of hope around gun tech that only one person could operate a gun. It has not taken off. It has absolutely not taken off. And it's, I'm just, I'm not really clear. And instead, as is most things with tech, is that the really crappy ways to use the tech have taken off, like these do-it-yourself guns that are available online or these online marketplaces. It's facilitated the sale, just the same that it's done with child porn or anything else. Tech has facilitated it and made it a bigger business. And that's what's disconcerting, is that in a lot of ways, tech could really help here. But it doesn't seem to. There's no startup

that's, there's a big player manufacturing these kind of things. And, you know, I think very much like opiates, someday there will be these lawsuits that will put the gun industry out of business. In the same way, the opiate, they're moving, or cigarettes were, and then opiates right now. And I think eventually, this will get to that point, but not today. And by the way, Donald Trump, not for a long time. And so this image of Americans like this is really, you're right, it's just really, especially when you see every single poll is everybody thinks something should be done about this. And it just doesn't. It just doesn't over and over again.

So it's quite a – it's an astonishingly depressing thing. We're talking about so many big social issues, say guns and gays and all kinds of things. Scott? No, it's the only industry that's more protected legislatively than big tech is the gun lobby. And the scary thing about these ghost guns is about a third of guns recovered by law enforcement are these ghost guns. And basically, a ghost gun cannot be traced. And so one of the ways we solve crimes and we solve murders is that we can trace a bullet, we can trace a crime to a specific gun and then hopefully to its most recent owner. And ghost guns obviously are cleaner.

And you can imagine that organized crime loves ghost guns. So this is a dangerous technology. Not only is it disappointing that we don't have some sort of biometric advances such that only one person can be locked into that gun and that's the only person that can fire that. That would be obvious in terms of innovation. But we're also taking a giant step backwards by not being able to track a gun. You're going to see, I mean, this has got to be organized crime's favorite 3D printing, right? This is just absolutely the way to make a gun that can't be traced. Anyways, it's disappointing and it continues to be disappointing. And so far there there's really—one of the reasons I do love Mayor Bloomberg, I think he's taken a pretty aggressive stance on this. He's not afraid of the gun lobby.

He's put a lot of money behind gun control initiatives. And, you know, at some point, it'll be time. Anyways. You know, what's interesting is if he gets some traction. I don't know where he is on the traction meter right now, but which you can, we can go into. But it seems like that this is an area he could really shine in. I think once someone breaks through on this, I think everyone will go, oh, yes, I feel, you know what I mean? Despite the gun lobby. And I don't, I really don't think there is vocal. I think there's a lot of people who, especially after all these shootings, are just tired of what's happening here and want just the most, not even the most

minimal, like really serious gun regulation in terms of background checks and things that are normally, here we are like screaming and yelling about Uber background checks on drivers or this and that. And this basic thing like background checks is so controversial, it boggles the mind that that's the case when we demand safety everywhere else, which is an interesting question of where it goes. Anyway, very serious topics. We'll see. Scott, we're very serious today. You're in St. Barth. We should be talking about that yacht.

The dog is eating foie gras and having champagne sprayed on him. Did you see that yacht? Speaking of technology, we're going to take a break in a minute, but there was a video that's viral right now on the internet. Some rich guy's yacht. It used to be owned by that Russian billionaire, but then it's owned by another billionaire. It went jamming right near you, St. Martin's, into like a Harvard, one of these mega yachts. I didn't see that. It wrecked this, whatever, these houses that like watch, let these yachts, mega yachts come in and just wrecked it and everyone's watching.

It's a great video. It's a great viral video. It's really bad. It must be hard there with all the mega yachts and stuff. Do you have a mega yacht, Scott? No, no. Would you ever own one of those? No, I don't.

No? I get wildly seasick. I don't like boats. Have you been on them? Have you been on one of those? No, I don't. No? I get wildly seasick. I don't like boats. Have you been on them? Have you been on one? I have been on. I have ended up on some mega yachts. I'm not a boat person.

I'm not a yacht guy. But no, I don't. That's not how the dog rolls. The dog likes to be on terra firma. I don't, or whatever you call it. I don't. I'm not a boat guy. I was on one of those.

You like it? You enjoy it? I don't get them. No, I did not. I don't get it. I don't get it. I don't get it either. I was on a very wealthy person's boat, and it was enormous.

And I just, it was like a little city. And I found it sad. I don't know how else to put it. It was very sad. I'm not sure they're sad. I'm not sure the word people would use on mega yachts is sad. I found it lonely and sad. Yeah.

I understand it's for safety and this and that, but I thought, oh, this could be easily taken over. It just was not how I would want to live my life on my mega yacht going from this place. Yeah, the ointment for the sadness is a bunch of hot Russian models and people serving them foie gras all day. So don't cry for me, Argentina. I think they're doing just fine. We're going to take a quick break now, and you're from St. Bars. Just take a moment to have some foie gras and we'll be back after this. Fox Creative.

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Let's take a listener question. Today's question comes from a listener, Andrew Hines. Here's what he wants to know. Rebecca, can you read the question? Currently, the NFL brings in around $3 billion a year from Fox, NBC, and CBS for the TV rights for games. Those contracts expire at the end of 2022. It seems so clear to me that Amazon will swoop in and buy the rights to host every one of those games. Thoughts?

Well, this is a big topic. This has been debated before with Google and Facebook and others. Where are we on this? It went back and forth and back and forth. Back in 2017 at the Code Conference, Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix, said Netflix hadn't entered into sports because he doesn't think streaming had much to add to the medium because games are not something you can go back and rewatch on demand. So, you know, will he change his mind or will someone else like Amazon, Google, Google slash YouTube, Facebook even get in here? Oh, yeah. So every year I make a series of predictions.

And in 2017, I predicted that Amazon would buy the rights to the Super Bowl. And I got it wrong. It hasn't happened yet. But effectively, it's interesting what Reed Hastings said, because he saw an opportunity around original scripted television as at HBO, that without commercials, we can add a lot of value. But to a certain extent, the commercials are almost accretive with sports, because they're Nike ads. And sports attracts such a broad range of demographics that they get reach. They're one of the few mediums that still gets massive reach that people still endure the ads. So they can make a lot of money. So essentially, sports are not as monetizable or not as accretive to shareholders and the consumer experience. Let's explain that for people who don't know the word accretive. It's like your gestalt word. Explain what that means.

It's what insecure professors throw out to mean value add. It's basically my way of trying to pretend I'm smarter than I am. So there's no value add. In other words, a scripted television series on Netflix without commercials adds a lot of value to the consumer because the consumer doesn't want to be interrupted by ads for opioid-induced constipation. Whereas if you're watching the Super Bowl, it's a three-hour long journey. You don't mind ads as much. The ads generally have hot people with no shirts drinking beer and have Nike ads, which are fun to watch. And they can get so much money for those ads because those products have a difficult time finding any medium with that type of reach that they pay so much.

So it's difficult. that type of reach that they pay so much. So it's difficult. In other words, TV is kind of the last place where it really leverages commercials around sports. And so it's hard for them to justify the kind of payments, the kind of investment they would need to capture sports. And to a certain extent, broadcast television has said, like the Americans have said to the Japanese and the Germans, you come after our pickup trucks, it's going to be war. Broadcast television has basically said sports is our last stand. That is our last stand. We are going big on Final Four. We're going to make ridiculously expensive investments. We're going to take a blank check approach because sports are our pickup truck to Detroit. Or what is pickup trucks to Detroit? Sports is to broadcast

television. However, at the end of the day, it's the deepest pocket. And Bezos has got the deepest pocket in the world. So look, it's just a matter of time. It's going to be huge. It's going to be another nail in the coffin. I think it'll happen around something like World Cup. It's already happening around the Premier League. Yeah, he's doing soccer matches. Amazon Prime are doing soccer matches in Britain, taking on British-based broadcasters, which will be Rupert Murdoch. The company says so far the matches have set records

for the most signups since Amazon launched its Prime subscription service in the UK in 2007. So people do watch these things on these media. Sports, yeah, they do. Yeah, maybe there's going to be a shift in the way, just the way people shifted. No one thought broadcast television like, you know,

Perfect Thursday or whatever it was called, must-see TV would change at all, but it has completely. So what would it take for sports watching to shift not in front of the cow, you know, in a different way? Because it works in Britain, it's, you know, in a different way, because it works with in Britain, it's working with Britain. But it has, but none of these big companies have bellied up and paid

these months, this money that Fox, NBC and CBS has done for TV rights to games. Well, and I think the leagues also recognize that they want to keep broadcast television alive, because it's been a huge source of income for them. My kids, my boys don't really watch sports, but one's Man City, one's Man U. They love the Premier League. They watch FC Barcelona. They're fascinated by Premier League soccer. And what is interesting about their TV viewing patterns is the change hasn't been around

distribution. The change has been around format. They watch these kind of 30-minute, I don't even know what they're called, where they basically take a two-hour game and collapse it to 30 minutes. But it's coming. We're going to see all sorts of, I think, innovation around that. I think it's largely going to be fueled, though, by betting.

I think betting is where we're going to see the next wave of value creation in sports is these little micro bets where is there going to be a goal in the next, you know, will this be a pass or a running play? You can see how that could just start to take off and create a new level of addiction, a new level of engagement and massive revenues. It will be curious if one of the big tech guys gets into that. Which one?

Okay, if you had to pick, and then we're going to get to wins and fails, but which one would you pick? I don't think Netflix is going to enter here. They haven't entered news very much. They've talked about it, but haven't entered anything that's not something that you go back and redo. So which one? Is it Amazon? Which one needs it? Apple? Amazon, Apple, Google slash YouTube, Facebook. Which of those four? If you could look at each of them, why they might need it, go through them really quickly. Well, Facebook, I mean, the obvious one is YouTube because it's basically the largest TV network in the world. Facebook could do really interesting things around micro-targeting, and they also want to jumpstart video.

You could see, I don't think, for some reason, I don't think it fits the Apple brand as well. I guess they could sell a lot of iPhones if they were the only one that brought you the NHL or whatever it is. Who it will be, in my view, is Amazon. Because one, they have the deep pockets. Two, they have Prime, which they're trying to juice. And they can monetize that investment several different ways, as you say, through people buying paper towels and prime. And also it's got the key asset. And the reason why they will bid on the Super Bowl is it's run by a man who's in the midst of a full-blown midlife crisis who wants to take his new girlfriend to the Super Bowl and be the man. He can go to the Super Bowl. He can like. Yeah, but not the, this will be the Bezos Bowl. If he, if Amazon starts broadcast, that takes it to a new level. He's not only the big dog, he's the biggest dog. If it's, if it's the Amazon Bowl, that'll be a lot of fun. It'll be Amazon because of a midlife crisis. These companies are run by 50-something-year-old men. So what happens to the networks then? Look, Disney just bought the Fox, so they got all those sports, right? What do they do? What does a Disney or an NBC or CBS do? Well, slowly but surely, I mean,

as we've said, anything with advertising, it means you're poor. They have become that, you know, ad-driven programming has become the tax that the technologically poor are littered in the poor pay. But here's the good news for these guys. There's a lot of income inequality and a lot of people who don't have the money for, you know, to buy $40 worth of, you know, Apple downloadable programs for their kids. So there's broadcasts or free television. Unfortunately, the population for that is not going anywhere. Things always take longer to go out of business than you'll think. I think these businesses from an investment standpoint, and they broadcast networks will actually be a good investment because everyone, including us, is talking about their imminent demise. In 1999, you could buy a

blockbuster franchise for two times cash flow. And everyone knew they were going out of business, but they were around for another 13 years. So they were actually a great investment. I think Macy's right now, and I get so much shit every time I bring up the word Macy's, Macy's might be a decent stock. Because yeah, Macy's is going out of business, but it's not going out of business as quickly as everyone thinks. So I think broadcast networks will absolutely go out of business, but it's not going out of business as quickly as everyone thinks. So, I think broadcast networks will absolutely go out of business, but the death is less imminent than people think. Oh, speaking of messages, that was a lot. This is very substantive. You're absolutely right. You've changed my thinking on this.

I thought the tech companies would swoop in, too, and they have not. And that's a very interesting thing. So, let's go very quickly, wins and fails because, again, speaking of wins, I thought that SNL was very funny. This weekend one of them was a Macy's ad with kids. I don't know if you saw it. It was a very funny takeoff on those Macy's ads where families are all like wandering around smiling and laughing. And they did a great thing about how difficult it is to put clothing on children. And so it was very funny. They did a great job. And then the best one they did was obviously the Conway marriage.

They had Scarlett Johansson on the show, and they did a version of a marriage story with the Conways, and it was very funny. Like, they are really very funny from week to week in a way that I think I can't imagine having that much lasting power. That is my win this week. And my feel, obviously, was Hallmark, but they have redeemed themselves. So that's mine this week. What is yours, Sir Galloway? Well, so my win is Hallmark. They screwed up. They owned it.

It's a great company. And I liked it, the CEO said. Why is it a great company? Explain the great companyness of it for me, please. Well, this is a company that sells greeting cards that, by all standards, should be out of business. I mean, if you were to look at a company 30 or 40 years ago or even 20 years ago and say, okay, what do you do? Well, we print cards and we charge two bucks for something that costs seven cents to make.

And you think, well, is that company sustainable? And they've made huge investments in different mediums. The Hallmark Channel is arguably one of the most successful media companies of the last hundred years. By putting Aunt Becky, who's about to go to prison for 10 years on a bunch of shows talking about her husband cheating on her and then a story of her finding more strength from these tragedies, they have sold so much cereal, so many pampers, and they have created so much shareholder value. And the shareholders or the owners of that company have been really wonderful,

generous people in a state that needs business and needs wonderful, generous people. Kansas, the University of Kansas is a fantastic school. I just like the company. I think they're smart. I think they're innovative. I think they could have gone away. They took big risks and it's a great company. So I'm more talking about the company than this instance, but they owned it. They made a mistake. They owned up to it. I thought everyone that went after them showed grace and said, thank you for apologizing. People weren't like trying to rub it in their face or anything. So I felt like the whole thing, and it brought some awareness that we still face this bullshit in corporate America.

That people, just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, a great company like this one makes just what seems like such an obvious foul or penalty. It was just a stupid thing to do. So this is still out there, people's mentality that they will do these kinds of stupid things. On the whole, I just thought it played out well. So my win is Hallmark. I don't think they're still going to be making a Hallmark movie about lesbians anytime soon. They've talked about it. The CEO has talked about that idea, but I don't see like a romance. Like if Buttigieg becomes president,

I don't see the Hallmark show about him and Chase meeting each other. That one. I don't see it. You don't see that. Yeah. I don't see it. Who's your loss?

I think they'll go so far. That was your loss. My loss is the climate summit in Madrid. Oh, yeah. Literally nothing happened. Nothing. Everyone, and these are the nicest people in the world, and they were angry.

These are the nicest, most politically correct people in the world, and they were angry about the whole thing. So it was really, anyways, that's my loss. It's really amazing how no progress, the U.S. isn't involved. I mean, we just pulled out, and that was the end of that. You know what I mean? If us and the Chinese are not involved, speaking of which, it's not going to go anywhere. Not going to happen. Nothing's going to.

Agreed. We're going to be like, well, none of this that we discuss will matter. You realize that, of course. You think it's going to happen that fast? You think, what, 20, 30 years? Yeah, I do. I think it's like that movie, my favorite movie of all time, which is the movie with Jake Gyllenhaal and Dennis Quaid. Oh, the one where it just gets crazy cold? Yes. I love that movie and Jake Gyllenhaal and Dennis Quaid. Oh, the one where it just gets crazy cold?

Yes. I love that movie and Jake Gyllenhaal. Crazy cold. I like the one with the train. I like exactly. Oh, God, there's this amazing movie with Tilda Swinton about this, what was it called?

The train that has to roam the earth and we tried to fix global warming and we fixed it too much and the world gets too cold. That's a wonderful movie. I gotta find the name of that film. I like all those apocalypse movies. I'm in an apocalyptic tone right now.

But I like them all. Anyway, all right, predictions. Scott, do you have any predictions from the Caribbean except that you're going to be lounging around on yachts and eating foie gras? Why are you in St. Barth? Why are you there? I'm here. I stay in the same place. Do you know why the dog goes to St. Bart's?

Why? Yes, I'd like to know. Because he can, Kara. Because he can. The question is, why isn't everybody here? It's wonderful here. I'm literally staring out my window looking at— There's a snow day here.

There's, like, snow days in parts. I think there's a snow day in New York. I'm here for a friend's 40th birthday. It's just cold here. But you're just there. You're just hanging out. You're going to—there's no other reason. What? I'm not allowed to vacation?

Don't you live in Florida? Isn't it cold? You're always on vacation. You're always in some Caribbean place with flip-flops wandering around or something. I'm sick of being stereotyped as a professor. Everyone thinks I'm at home in my cardigan, petting my Labrador, watching PBS with a pipe in my mouth. Occasionally, the dog gets out. No one thinks that. Nobody thinks that, Scott. Occasionally, they let him out of his crate. Occasionally the dog gets out. No one thinks that. Nobody thinks that, Scott. Occasionally they let him out of his crate. Occasionally he goes out. Everyone thinks you're in a bar,

in a bar like pontificating to people in your NYU. But listen to me, what's your prediction speaking of pontification? So just as I said last week, and I've got a lot of emails when I said that porn is the greatest experiment with unknown outcomes is being levied on our populace. I think we're going to hear about Apple in China. As soon as the headline news and the

noise around the tariffs, if at some point it goes away, the only big tech company that's been able to make any real or sustain inroads in China has been Apple because of its luxury status. But also, I wonder what, I think Apple in China is going to come up a lot because I wonder what has gone on in terms of their supply chain, in terms of privacy. And Tim toes a pretty like, I don't want to call it indignant, but a pretty righteous tone around his activities and his use of it to his advantage. And I wonder what kind of deal with China he has struck. And I think we're going to start hearing more uncomfortable things about what China has had to do to stay as relevant and sell as many iPhones. I think there's no free lunch over there.

I think a company that big is probably – we're going to hear Apple and China in the news more in 2020, and it's not going to be good for Apple. Okay, meaning that they are doing... I just don't think anyone, I don't think anyone is over there and doesn't have to kind of comply with what the Chinese government wants. And when you have a phone and you have data, I find it hard to believe that Apple has been able to hold their phones and their data and their privacy to the same standards in China as they at least claim to in other parts of the world. I have no evidence of this. It's a thesis. But I think in 2020, we're going to start hearing uncomfortable stories about what Apple has had to do to maintain, because they're over a barrel. If they, China is now, I mean, it's just such an important market for them.

And the Chinese government, they are very smart, and they're going to get their pound of flesh. Now, how that pound of went sideways for Bloomberg about chips being, you know, problematic chips and then spying and this and that. And it wasn't true. It ended up being not true, right? Yeah, yeah. But this is just more like you do this

if you want to do business here or make things here, et cetera. Yeah. So, look, we'll see. I have no evidence of it. A quid pro quo, for example. You're talking about quid pro quos. And speaking of which, my prediction is this impeachment thing is just like another news

story. Just like, oh, it just keeps going. It doesn't like, it hasn't like changed anything in people's minds, it seems like, in the polls. You don't think there's any chance that 17 Republican senators flip? No, I do not think that. That is my prediction. 17, the only thing that's slightly interesting is that there was a push to have Justin Amash be the impeachment manager, which I would love to see. Yeah, that would be interesting.

But no, I'm amazed by how little people are like next, next, next on really appalling things. So that's what I think. I have no prediction that this will just bleed into the new year pretty much. And you'll be down there in St. Parthes doing whatever you're doing. Anyway. What's Kara Swisher got going on this week? Last week was a very big week for you. I'm hoping this is a very boring Monday week.

It's a calm week this week. I have a lot of meetings. I'm meeting with some publishers. I'm having some meetings. I have an It's a calm week this week. I have a lot of meetings. I'm meeting with some publishers. I'm having some meetings. I have an idea for a new idea. Publisher? You're writing a book? Maybe. A lot of them call me and I say no to most of them because I don't have

time. Oh my God. They all call me and I say no, says Kara Swisher. Literally, did you just say that? It's factual. I don't have time to do a book. I'm busy with you. I'm trying to put time into this relationship, and I cannot take time out to write a book.

You'd never see me. But I'm going to talk to them. So I have an idea. I have an idea that is just germinating, and I think you will like it when I decide. It's not the algebra of happiness, I mean, you know, but it's, you know, or the calculus of happiness. Is that the next – is that your sequel, The Calculus of Happiness? You have so not read my book. It's just –

My son has. Oh, that's good. My son has. Really? Both sons have read my book and your book, and they haven't read my books. And they love your book. They love your book. They both have it.

They've read it. Thank you for saying that. It makes me feel good. Yeah, they have. I'm your book. They both have it. They've read it. Thank you for saying that. It makes me feel good. Yeah, they have. I'm just telling you, they have. I don't have time to read books, Scott. I'm sorry. It's just not happening for Kara Swisher.

I listen to books. That's what I do. I get it. In any case, lots of things. And then I'm going to San Francisco. Then I'm going to San Francisco. What are you doing in San Francisco? Taking the kids there.

I take them there every year. Nice. And spending a couple weeks doing a lot of podcasts from there, all kinds of things. Going to go bother Mark Benioff. Going to go look at

Salesforce, the top of Salesforce Tower for the wedding. I'm not. Can you imagine? I would love that. He would do that, too. He would so do that.

He would. Honestly, he would. I was joking with him about it and he's like, sure, I can make it happen. I'm like, no! I'm totally kidding. I just want to see him.

I want him to give you away just so we can see the two of you standing next to each other again. You look like a different species when you guys stand next to each other. He's a tall, big man. He's a big, tall man, just like yourself. But he's sort of, he's bigger than you.

He's kind of a hulky kind of kid. On a lot of dimensions, he's much bigger than me. No, he's not fat. He's like, he's just big. He's a big guy. He's like a linebacker. kind of kid. On a lot of dimensions, he's much bigger than me. No, he's not fat. He's just big. He's a big guy. He's like a linebacker. I meant important and wealthy and smart and all that stuff. Oh, yeah.

Well, obviously, everybody who's listening understands that part of the character. I was trying to leave that unsaid. That was the silent, he's a mogul kind of thing. Anyway, Scott, it's time for us to go. Enjoy your weekend. Thank you. We'll be back on Friday. We just never leave each other.

I just can't quit you. It's too much. With more tech. There's a lot going on this week with the impeachment and stuff like that. We'll be talking about that, I think. But meanwhile, you can reach us by using hashtag pivot podcast. We're desperate for your affirmation. Let us know what you think about two times a week. Is it one plus one equals three or is it one plus one? Get the fuck out of my ears already. What is it? Feedback. Email us at pivot at voxmedia.com. Today's show was produced by Rebecca Sinanis.

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