Unlocking Us with Brené Brown - Brené with Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway on Pivot, Reverence, and What’s Behind Big Tech

Episode Date: March 2, 2022

I’m talking with tech journalist Kara Swisher and NYU professor Scott Galloway, co-hosts of the podcast Pivot, a weekly discussion on the latest news as it relates to the worlds of business and tech. I start to do some word association with them, but we quickly go deep and take a hard, illuminating look at Big Tech. This is a great conversation for those of us who regularly engage with tech platforms but maybe who don’t understand their motivations, what they’re up to next, and the myriad ways they shape our lives and democracies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, everyone. I'm Brene Brown, and this is Unlocking Us. What a fun conversation you're getting ready to listen to and be a part of. So, Steve and I like to listen to Pivot, the Pivot podcast together sometimes, with tech journalist Kara Swisher and NYU professor Scott Galloway. And I don't even know how to describe their podcast, but I always feel smarter, more pissed off, sometimes more confused and provoked when I listen to it. And so today I'm actually talking with Kara and Scott about, you know, I had a list of things. I was going to do a word association game with them,

you'll see in the conversation, where I just wanted them to give us thoughts on all of these big tech companies and tech people who we interface with and hear about all the time, but I don't think we understand and know enough about. You know, like we say Facebook, we'll say Tesla, we'll say, you know, Spotify, we'll say all these names, but what's really going on? And how are these folks outside of our awareness, at least mine often, shaping the world I live in, the democracies I want to uphold?

How is that happening? Well, as you'll see, we didn't get past Facebook because it took us down a really, I don't know, what's the word I'm looking for? Scary, hard, illuminating look at big tech in general. I'm so glad you're here for this. I thought about, should this be a Dare to Lead podcast? And the more I thought about it, the more I thought, no, this needs a broader audience of people who are not just listening to leadership and organizational development work, but parents and people just like you and me who engage with platforms who are apparently built in a way that is causing a lot of us a lot of pain.

I'm glad you're here. It's a provocative conversation. I agree with a lot of what they say. I disagree with some stuff that they say, but I love the conversation and I appreciate both Scott and Kara. Support for this show comes from Macy's. Fall is in full swing and it's the perfect time to refresh your home

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mostly romantic. But in this special series, I focus on our relationships with our colleagues, business partners, and managers. Listen in as I talk to coworkers facing their own challenges with one another and get the real work done. Tune into Housework, a special series from Where Should

We Begin, sponsored by Klaviyo. All right, before we jump in, let me tell you a little bit about Kira and Scott. So Kira is the co-host of Pivot from New York Magazine and the host of the New York Times podcast Sway. She's also editor-at-large at New York Magazine, co-founder of Recode from Vox Media, a New York Times contributing opinion writer, and a regular contributor to NBC, CNBC, and MSNBC. She previously hosted the podcast Recode Decode and Too Embarrassed to Ask at Vox. Swisher co-founded Recode, was producer and host of the Recode Decode podcast, and before that, co-produced and co-hosted the Wall Street Journal's D, All Things Digital conference series, now called the Code Conference, with Walt Mossberg. It was and still is the country's 50 best business school professors by Poets and Quants in 2012. of Red Envelope, Profit Brand Strategy, and L2 Inc., acquired by Gartner on the New York Stock Exchange. That's IT. And the acquisition happened in 2017. You can tell I'm not used to reading like

N-Y-S-E. I started to say, not your mother's genes, but no, that's not it. Okay. Scott's books, The Four and Algebra of Happiness, debuted on the New York Times and Apple bestseller list. He has served on boards of directors, including the New York Times Company, Urban Outfitters, and UC Berkeley's high school business. He received a BA from UCLA, and his MBA is from Berkeley. I'm glad you're here for this conversation. Let's dig in. Okay, Scott and Kara, welcome to Unlocking Us. Thank you, Brene.

Thanks, Brene. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you too. I've got so many questions, but I'm going to start with this. How did y'all end up together on Pivot? I love Pivot. I'm a Pivot fan because I learned so much and then I also really enjoy hearing y'all shoot the shit sometimes, but I also learn a ton.

How did y'all meet? So I was at the DLD conference in Germany. I don't know if you've ever been there. It's run by Berta. And I've gone many years and it's, you know, after a while you go to conferences and you're sort of bored by people's speeches and you know what's coming.

And this person came up onto the stage and started giving a presentation. And it woke me up, honestly. I was sort of sleepy and in the corner kind of thing. And he started to say things that I didn't, like I listened to everybody and I hadn't heard these insights before about tech and media.

And he was obnoxious and funny and the Germans did not know what, was this Lois all around me? Like, who is this guy essentially? And I was really intrigued by someone who had some insights that I hadn't thought of actually. And so I went up to him and I said, that was really funny. I'm sure he forgets when I did that. And you should come on my show, Recode Decode in New York when

you're there next. And he did. And he came on the show. And again, it was the same kind of interesting insights. He predicted the Amazon Whole Foods merger on that show before it happened. And we had a real chemistry, like right away. And so the numbers came back for this thing, and it was high. It was as close to Elon Musk levels of engagement with listeners and numbers. And Scott, you can take it from there. I just want to say, Bernadette, I'm really enjoying your podcast so far. This is...

Yeah, look. You're just here to say, Bernadette, I'm really enjoying your podcast so far. This is, yeah, look. You're just here to observe. I had never listened to a podcast until I was on one with Kara. And then what she leaves out is they called us, they called me back and said, so you had some of the biggest numbers we've ever recorded in the history of Recode. And we think it was a mistake. So we want to bring you back to validate whether it was a mistake or not. That was directly from me, just so you know.

Look, after working my ass off for 30 years, care has made me an overnight success. So I allowed to care. Yeah, no. So anyway, so we did it again the second time and it was the same thing. And so the chemistry was there right away. We were going to rebrand the second show I had at Vox. And Scott was the only person I wanted to do it with, oddly enough. We didn't know each other very well, but I enjoyed it. Every time I did it, it was insightful, enjoyed, offended in a good way, disagreed in a good way. So I don't know. It's just a lot of fun. Here we are. Yeah. It's so good to listen to. Sometimes it's cringy in the best ways,

but it's really good. And I always learn something. Thank you. Cringy is our goal. Cringy is our motto. Yeah. Cringy is your brand. I like it. Yeah. A hundred percent. Success. Checks out. All right. Here's what I want to do today. I didn't tell y'all ahead of time. Then y'all can be like, no, we're not going to do it. Or you can comply. The folks in our Unlocking Us community, I think much like myself, interface, engage with, hear about these tech companies and these individuals kind of on a daily basis. But we have really no understanding, I think I'll speak for myself, of how they shape our lives, how they shape democracy, you know, what they're up to and what we need to know. So I want to play word association with you both.

I want to say the name of a company or the name of a person. I want you to tell us what you think we need to know or what you think. And then I want to ask you what the people who passionately disagree with you would say. All right. Does that make sense? Yeah, makes sense. Makes sense. Scott, you go first.

Ladies first. Okay. Scott, ready? Yep. Facebook. Mendacious Fox. So exciting. Okay.

Why? Have institutionalized teen depression. The weaponizations of our elections have made our discourse more coarse and leveraged our gross idolatry of innovators to overrun our government and are an enormous threat to the greatest experiment in history, which is the United States. Machiavellian? An approach or unintended consequence of the quest for power and money? I don't think they had set out to damage the world. I don't think they're inherently bad people. I don't think Mussolini woke up in the morning and thought he wanted to be evil. But I think as they recognized the externalities and very negative attributes that were obvious

as evidenced by the whistleblower, they decided to ignore them because they were more interested in maintaining power and shareholder wealth and actually addressing the very obvious negative externalities that were propping up everywhere around them. But I think very few people wake up in history and think, I'm going to be evil today. So I'll give them that. I don't think they were born evil. They weren't born evil. I don't think many people wake up and say, I'm going to be evil. Right, agreed.

But as someone who studies human experience and emotion, people do wake up and say, I'm going to discharge the pain that I'm experiencing. I need some more. I need to better understand what would they say to that? If you leveled that charge, would they say that's bullshit and we're making the world a better place? I mean, I guess I don't understand. Kara knows them better than I do and is much more qualified to answer that. Well, I think I'll take the opposite side. I think they think they have created great wealth. They think they've created a great company and employ people.

I think they would say that. I think they feel victimized. They're not victimized, but they feel that way. And therefore, everybody's being too hard. Since the beginning of time when I covered them, they were always upset when I said something critical. Instead of reflecting on it, this particular company, other companies do reflect on it,

like Brian Chesky of Airbnb and others. These people do noting on it, this particular company, other companies do reflect on it, like Brian Chesky of Airbnb and others. These people do not reflect on it and often say, you're being mean, you're overstating it. I've always thought they were the most compromised company on the face of the planet, you know, and that includes oil companies. At least they know what they're doing, right? They understand.

Cigarette companies knew what they were doing. They just did it anyway. They made the choice. And these people, they know what they're doing, right? They understand. Secret companies knew what they were doing. They just did it anyway. They made the choice. And these people, they know what they're doing and they don't believe it. They don't believe the facts right in front of their face. I don't know why. I think I'm a pretty smart person for the most part, but I don't, I still don't get it. Is it for influence? Is it for money? I mean, how much money do you need? Is it for power? Is it proving? What is the, go way, way deep.

What's driving it at the deepest level? I think it's for love. I think that when you live in a capitalist society, every incremental dollar you get garners more influence, garners more recognition, more camaraderie. People laugh harder your jokes. Elected leaders want your view. Your selection set of mates goes up.

You can provide and do wonderful things for strangers who adore you. I think to be wealthier and wealthier in a capitalist society is to be loved. So I think that they do it for the recognition that every day we afford more and more to innovators and people who are wealthy. And that is, as a nation becomes wealthier, its reliance on a super being and church attendance goes down and into that void of wanting people who can answer the unanswerable that we can adore.

The closest thing we have to magic or the godlike mysticism of magic is technology. And so we take these innovators and you collapse that with the capitalist idolatry of the dollar and you end up with Jesus Christ-like love and worship,

I think that is very intoxicating. And there's a difference between being worth a billion and being worth $100 billion and forging new ground in terms of a company that's seen as changing the world. I think it's very seductive. I think it's very intoxicating. You surround yourself with people that increasingly screen out things you don't want to hear because we avoid pain as a species. And when it's raining money outside, it blurs your vision. And to a certain extent, I don't blame them as much as I

blame us. And that is, it's our job to regulate and put in place laws that protect us from that type of idolatry, that type of addiction to power and love and regulate them. And unfortunately, we haven't provided the same sort of guardrails and adult supervision in the form of regulation that we've provided other industries. So I think it's our problem, quite frankly. It's not actually, it's their problem, Scott. It's a cult. You know what I mean? It's a soft fleecy cult with very comfortable shoes and fantastic green smoothies and kombucha and stuff like that.

But it's a cult nonetheless. And what's really interesting about when you talk to them, when they leave the company, I get a call from everyone who leaves the company who says, oh, I'm so glad I can finally talk to you. Right? Like, that's what it feels like. You know, when you see all those documentaries on these cults, that's the people are suddenly, they get awoken or something.

Deprogrammed. Yeah. And everyone around each of these leaders, we actually asked this question to Brian Teske, he said, everyone around you tells you you're right and therefore you're right. And if you keep those same people around you, no disagreeable people, no sand in the oyster, you know, no irritant, you begin to believe you're victimized, that people don't understand you. It's not that we don't think some of the stuff they're creating is amazing. And it is, it's that they don't recognize consequences. It's really astonishing when you, about any of the products. I've told the story when they showed me their live Facebook live. And I said, what if people kill each other?

And they're like, what? You're terrible, Kara. And I'm like, I'm sorry. Human history seems to, murder seems to be popular among humanity. And if they get bigger tools, they're going to abuse them. So it's a cult of people and all of whom are paid to be that way. And they form a little circle and agree violently with each other. And everyone is outside as the enemy. They won't talk to me at all. They used to, but now they won't,

obviously not. But lots of other tech people do because they're aware. Their worlds get smaller and smaller and smaller, the richer and richer and richer they get. So I don't know. More cashmere, but less space. I'll tell you what scares me about what you're saying. There's a shit ton that scares me about what you're saying, actually. But what scares me a lot about what you're saying is I've got this list of things I want to ask you about. Sure. But, you know, Scott, you said love. and I want to dig in for a second because I think this may have implications

across other people and other companies I want to ask you about. Is it love or is it adoration and reverence? I think that's an interesting point, but I would argue that to be successful in a capitalist society affords you the accoutrements that are often associated with being loved. And just to be crude about it, at least as a man, your selection set of mates expands exponentially. Your opportunities for romantic relationship and friendships and love grow exponentially with your wealth. We don't like to talk about it, but I stand by that. I have a lot of close friends in

New York who complain about their girlfriends. I'm like, if you didn't have money, your selection set of mates would be really uninteresting. You're not that interesting a person. And I think in a capitalist society where we keep figuring out ways to offer people better health care, better opportunities for your children, to have resources and to have influence and to be part of a dialogue, I get elected representatives calling me all the time and asking me for advice. And it feels really good. It makes me feel relevant. It makes me feel meaningful. And what I also have to acknowledge is that started happening when I started giving money to candidates. So a capitalist society continually

invents new influence, new ways to be loved and to be recognized and to be relevant, no matter how wealthy you get. Billionaires speak to their senators on average every 30 days, but you got to be a billionaire. Yeah. Jesus, is that true? Is that a true statistic? On average, a billionaire speaks to his or her senator every 30 days. Anyways, there's a difference. People think that something you said I would challenge, that at some point you don't need more money. One of the unique attributes and amazing thing about America and capitalist societies is their ability to segment the market and keep offering you more for more money. Think about airlines. It used to be coach or business class. Then they came up with economy comfort. Then they come up with lie flat seats. Then they came up

with fractional jets. Then they came up with full jet ownership. Then they came up with jets that could go extended range. No matter how much money you have, there's somebody who will build you a $500 million boat that is tangibly better than the $400 million boat. I think they all wake up every morning and say, hello, wealthiest person in the world. And I think they're going to die trying to get there. I don't think they want to be worth $60 billion. I think they want to be worth $211,

which is $1 billion more than Elon Musk. That's not true, Scott. A lot of them are aware of the problem, of the problem of people agreeing with them and licking them up and down all day, etc. I think sometimes when someone's articulating some of this about their victimization or people are unfair, the press is unfair. That's one of their favorites. It's the old saying, you're so poor, all you have is money to them. And some of them get it. The penny does drop for a lot of them.

And that's why a lot of people go. They keep the money, but they go. And, you know, it's interesting. I was just watching Severance, which is this new Ben Stiller thing on Apple TV, which is really interesting show. But it's the idea of that you have to bifurcate your work from your personal life.

Even if your personal life is bad, it affects your work. Or if it's good, it affects your work. But it reminded me of like people who work on, say, drones at Google or facial recognition at Amazon or whatever. Part of them has to go, oh my God, what I'm making could do this, or what I'm making could ruin elections. And I think that there's people in there that are like,

I can't do this. They would like to have two brains. And some of these very wealthy people have two brains. They have two brains. Yeah. It's a compartmentalization thing. Like when I've done work before at the CIA. Yeah. Yeah. The human mind's capacity for compartmentalizing when it threatens either earning or love is pretty astonishing, actually. I was asking about the reverence piece because one of the things that we see in the research is reverence increases for people if we buy their victimization narrative.

So when we have reverence for something, unlike admiration, admiration, actually when we have reverence for something, unlike admiration, admiration, actually, when we admire someone, we want to be better. We want to be better versions of ourselves. When we have reverence for something or someone, we want to get closer to that thing. And if that thing is in any way victimized or perceived to be victimized, or that's their narrative, our reverence for them increases. I think you can see that with the Trump administration, right?

Trump, yeah. Right. Okay. So let me just ask you this because I can't get, I had like this like whole like do-do-do-do-do list of things I wanted to talk about, but I'm stuck here for some reason. But so what's the fix? So I don't want to just piss and moan. So do I tell my Aunt Gladys,

stop checking in on Facebook to see how our bridge club's doing? That seems like a small pebble in a big pond of problems. So are antitrust laws realistic? Are we going to get there? Like, what's the solution to this? It's too far. It's too long.

The architecture is wrong. The whole architecture, the way it's architected and the way that the business plan wants this to happen, wants anger to happen, wants engagement to be enragement, the whole way it's built. There are other ways to build it. You can design it differently. You can have a group of people that take responsibility

for what they're doing and actually edit. You saw the situation at Spotify where they kept trying to pretend they weren't in charge of Joe Rogan and they kind of are. And they can decide to sell it. That's fine. You know, that's capitalism. But they never could acknowledge that they were anything but a benign platform. So acknowledgement of their responsibility and consequences. And then some legislation around privacy, around these business plans, around antitrust is very hard. It's very slow. Funding, it's just not going to work. It's

just not going to work. It may slow them down, but something else will happen. Right now, it's shocking that Apple, which is one of the most powerful companies on the planet, the most valuable, is the regulator for Facebook right now. And possibly could be the regulator for Tesla. Because they passed this, they had this thing where this opt-in advertising policy where it screwed with Facebook's business and by the, to the tune of $10 billion so far, which is letting users choose privacy over what Facebook was doing. And so it really hurt their business. Other businesses didn't hurt, but it has hurt a number of businesses. And so we shouldn't have Apple as our regulator. I mean, you know, we're relying on the goodwill of Tim Cook and also the business

that's good for his business to do that. So there's not a lot you can do when the architecture is designed to enrage and it's an easy playground for malevolent players. There's just no, we've made it so easy for shitty people to advantage themselves like Alex Jones or anti-vax people or whatever. And then they get to stand on a high horse talking about free speech, which this has nothing to do with. I'm more hopeful than Kara. I do think that we've faced, the railroads are very powerful. The aluminum company is the seven sisters. Antitrust, I think breaking up these players would not only lower rents on corporate America, but incent better behavior. Because I think there's a lot of great companies, advertisers, who would rather not advertise on Facebook or Google, but don't feel as if they have any choice.

So I think choice and competition, which is a key component. You're seeing it now with their stock. Yeah, Scott's right in that regard. Stock will take care of it. And they lost, actually they lost about $200 billion in value with Tim Cook shutting off or tracking. But also, I don't think any of this gets much better until someone does a perp walk. Do you have kids, Brene? So if you got a call, I don't know if you remember high school, but if you're on that weird hamster wheel trying to figure out how to get your kids into a good college.

If someone calls you right now and says, hi, I'm the sailing coach from Yale and all I need is a half a million bucks and I can get your kid in under the auspices of a student athlete, you're hanging up the phone because Aunt Becky did a perp walk. And I don't think any of this gets better until someone in big tech is seen in an orange jumpsuit.

Because right now the general feeling is it's a tax that depressing teens serving up extreme dieting content, suggesting two-thirds of extremist sites were suggested by the algorithm to young men. I don't think there's any incentive really for them to do what's required because right now the penalties are fines and they make so much money that there really isn't a fine. It's a parking ticket. Let's be honest, if a meter in front of our house costs $100, but the ticket was 15 cents, we'd all break the law. Every day. Every day. That's the current construct we have. And prison

or the threat of prison or the tangible threat of prison is what I call the algebra of deterrence. And right now that factor just isn't present until a big tech executive does a perp walk. And I would argue, you say, well, you don't use the law like that, Scott. I would argue there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people in prison who've done less damage to fellow Americans in these organizations. Or what happened to the opiate manufacturers, the cigarette manufacturers. We've seen these things happen. He's right about that. The only problem with this is, you know, cigarettes for sure, addictive. This is addictive. It hits, it's everything. It's not just addictive. It's also necessary. You need to use it to live,

essentially, especially like during the pandemic. It's also huge and powerful. It's also the richest people on the planet. It's also, and there's never been an industry that crawls down your brain and controls it and you have to keep using it. You know, opiates, everyone knows you didn't have to keep using, but it creates a huge societal problem, expensive societal problem that we're still trying to clean up with and jump from, you know, opiates to heroin to fentanyl, right? You know, you see it going everywhere, a huge problem. This thing crawls down your brain and you can't stop using it because you need it for your livelihood or to deliver groceries or whatever it is, especially during the pandemic. And so the pandemic essentially has us hooked on these companies. They've never been wealthier and we can't do anything about it. We need them. And so it's a very difficult situation. Now, what Scott was saying about

the stock is true. It's down 40% since the beginning of the year, something like that with Facebook. That's a number of reasons, but it has to do with Apple cutting off its oxygen, its business oxygen, which I applaud, although I don't like Apple doing it, right? I'd like the government to do privacy legislation or data protection legislation, et cetera,

and other things. They're trying to shift their business plan. People aren't using it as much. Would you agree or disagree? I'm curious. It seems to me, and this is a scary proposition, I understand, but it seems to me when I talk to people, their expectations of ethical decision-making are really, they have a stronger belief in corporate leaders than the government now. And Scott can speak to that. Yeah. Why wouldn't they?

I don't know. I mean, are we staring down the barrel of like basically a neutered government and, you know, the norms will be set by what corporations will tolerate? I think they've been doing that for a long time. But Scott, you're more upped on this one. Well, I mean, it all started with Reagan. And that is this 40-year screed against government. Hi, I'm from the government.

I'm here to help. Seven scariest words. And it's become a self-fulfilling prophecy where we cut their budgets and that makes the government neutered and less competent, which you lose faith. In Israel, we respect our military leaders. In Britain, believe it or not, they do respect their government leaders. In America, we respect

athletes and entrepreneurs. And what I think is missing also in our society is no connective tissue. In the 60s and 70s, when we passed great civil rights legislation, a lot of our elected leaders had served in a uniform of the same color. And they saw each other as Americans before they saw each other as red or blue. And it appears we've lost that connective tissue. And unfortunately, I think COVID only makes it worse as we segregate into our little cohorts where we look, smell, and feel more like each other. There's a lot of research, especially out of the UK, showing that when you don't mix with people, you don't go to the mall, when you don't go to the grocery store, when you don't see the homeless veteran on the offer or the on-ramp, you're just less empathetic.

You don't see each other as Americans. And then when you're fed a diet, an algorithmically driven diet that promotes you being angry at the other side and constantly reinforces your beliefs to the point that you live in a hermetically sealed bubble it creates a level of polarization where we now see each other as the enemy i mean people are angrier democrats are angrier republicans right now and vice versa than they are at putin who's about to potentially throw the world into chaos so i think we lack a connective tissue as americans and i think it started in the Reagan administration and it's just so it never has made any sense to me that people are so angry at the government you know I constantly say I'm a product of big government having gotten here I'm speaking to you because of the grace and generosity of the Regents of the University of California and

California taxpayers at UCLA and Berkeley but people talk about government as if it's some menace that's plotting against you. Government is us. We elect these people. They're us. And so I don't, until we get back to the point of loving our government and the country and having some connected tissue that's beyond political party, this has played out as if it was the Russians' dream to divide us, to atomize your competition. And it was, and it has been. They've certainly used that in a lot of ways. I think the problem that we face

is that we've gotten all these choices of these things, but we have no choice at all. And so when you think about the largeness and the size and the amount of money these people have, it's unprecedented in the history of the world, including these powerful companies. And it used to be we were scared of, in tech, at least of Microsoft. It was one company. Now there's six of them or five of them or four or whatever, however you want to slice it. And they all are powerful in their own way over a certain part of society, but they have

enormous societal implications. And so something simple like tossing Trump off of Twitter, right? We may agree with that. And he did break the rules over and over again. And they finally got around on January 6th when he went a step too far, which he had already done, by the way, many times, according to their rules that they never enforced. You may have thought, okay, that's good. They finally get him off.

But just think about it. Two people made that decision. The CEO of Facebook and the CEO of Twitter impacting the president of the United States. Even if you disagree with him, that's got to trouble anybody. You know, we have elected officials. We may think they're compromised. Citizens United certainly didn't help.

But the fact of the matter is they're elected and they're accountable in some way. These people are not. Even if you think they're great or they're nice people, they're not accountable. And they don't have to be. Nobody can make them. And they have unlimited funds and unlimited power. So we just rely on them not being bad.

We rely on them not being bad. And we want their dating services, their apps, their everything. It's really quite unprecedented that you love the people who control you. It is completely. As a family systems person. It's completely in systems theory. It is completely the abusive dependent family relationship. I mean, it is. Oh, okay.

Yeah. I mean, that's it. I mean, it's. It's like whatever happened to baby Jane is on or something like that. Yeah. It's interesting too. I started my research six months before 9-11, obviously coincidentally.

And just looking back, I mean, Scott, kind of riffing off what you were saying about this government thing. I remember just as a qualitative researcher thinking, wow, terrorism is time-released fear. It's a single act that over time releases, I mean, you only have to do one thing and then sit back and wait for people to start really hating each other and then they will destroy themselves. It's OxyContin, right?

It is. It's time-released fear. And I thought whatever started with Reagan, and I was in so short graduate school then, so you can only imagine that we were on top of that, but was really exacerbated by 9-11. What makes y'all hopeful? Like, what are you hopeful about? Every empire dies. Babylon was, is a book I'm working on right now. That's not hopeful. Well, no, but Babylon used to run everything. Greece used to run. What are you hopeful for in our lifetimes?

That our young people, you know, I think about my kids. I have a lot of kids and Scott does too. They're onto it. They don't need it as much. They don't, they're pulling away from it. You saw the numbers drop with Facebook that they're like, no, thank you. That it doesn't upend every single thing in their lives. And so I think that's a little hopeful.

I think kids are much savvier and I don't mean millennials, I mean below them. Gen, whatever gen they're supposed to be. Gen Zers. My kids seem to have a pretty healthy relationship with technology. They certainly use their phones and everything else. That said, there's a lot of kids

who are always on Instagram or TikTok or they live that way or they live in the influencer lifestyle, but a lot of them seem onto these people, very onto them. I don't know, Scott, what about you? Yeah, I mean, as Karen, I'm a glass half empty kind of guy,

but I think it's hard not to recognize there's huge potential. I think a lot about post-corona. We could unlock tremendous healthcare. If you think about the amount of research, 11,000 peer-reviewed academic papers on vaccines, we could be entering a great age of discovery, not only about healthcare, but it's our ability to distribute it out away from doctor's offices and hospitals and to smartphones and smart speakers such that people who have been intimidated by or couldn't afford to get preventive health care. If you think about a mother who has a child that suffers from diabetes, and let's be honest, it's always the mom. She spends 16 weeks of her year managing that child's health care, going to the doctor's office, getting the script, getting the referral to the specialist, going to the CVS, coming back. Can we give her using

new technologies eight weeks a year back for self-care or to take care of others or make more money? Commuting to the office, all that wasted time. Technology is supposed to be good. We've just been mostly in the empire strikes back period of our technology. It doesn't have to be that way. It could do climate change tech. There could be all kinds of mitigation, commuting, giving people back their lives, new ways to work. Technology is neutral, really, in a lot of ways.

It's a question of how they use it and what we use it for. It doesn't have to be negative. It just, the way they built these, you know, Facebook built itself, it's a perfect place for Alec Jones and others to thrive. It's perfect. It's like a mold. They need to get the mold out is what they have to do. And they don't

particularly want to. There's no incentive. Everybody gets to say whatever they want. I'm like, hmm, that sounds like the purge to me. Everyone gets to kill each other. Okay, sure. That's the kind of, if you take it to the extreme, but it doesn't have to be like Scott said, it can be very positive. Telehealth, obviously tele-education didn't work out so well during the pandemic, but that's okay. We looked at it.

It was a big experiment. And now we know we need to have in-person classes that is better for kids. Great strides in mental health and therapy. That's right, mental health, therapy, everyone recognizes. There's all kinds of positive things. It's sort of like, you know, when you think about flight

or like everything is a technology, like flight, like if you don't want to be the person who says flight's wrong, flight is amazing. It just has, it can also make, there's a very famous quote, I think it's Paul Coelho or something like that, where he said, you know, when you invent electricity, you invent the electric chair, but you also invent light. So it's pretty much that simple. You invent the ship, you invent the shipwreck. So you don't have to have shipwrecks all the time. Can I ask y'all an ethical question,

a conceptual ethical question? I did this interview with Ben Wisner, who is heads up free speech for the ACLU. It was a great conversation. He's a great guy. Yeah, he's a really incredible guy. I learned so much. I was looking for clarity, but of course, there was nothing but just gray. The law doesn't give us what we need all the time. the whole scaffolding for the country is built on the idea that we should not intervene, oversee in people's behaviors, that people are responsible for their own behaviors, and we're not responsible for that. And so what I'm trying to understand is when you think about, like, let's just take one kind of really scary, awful thing for me on social media is kind of this extreme dieting,

eating disorder stuff that's being driven. Where is the line between what the government or what corporations should control for and what belongs to individual parents? I mean, certainly if you're targeting kids, which they are. I'm not articulating the question well, but do you get what... Yeah, I get what you mean.

I mean, I understand what Ben says, but it doesn't exist. You know, we have stop signs. Is that a free speech? I like to speak. No, I mean, I get that argument. I know I get that argument. I get that we have stop signs and Is that a free speech? I like to speak. No, I mean, I get that argument. I know I get that argument. I get that we have stop signs and, you know, you can't drink and drive.

You can't pee in public. You can't, you know, peeing is an expression, right, Scott? Don't you think so? Peeing in public? I don't know. I express less and less as I get older. But anyways, go ahead. And I think it's, I think, think about, there's something on TikTok, for example,

which I just am fascinated by called sleeping chicken. It's NyQuil chicken. Have you heard about this? Oh God, no. You inject NyQuil or you soak chicken in NyQuil and then eat it. Like that it cooks in a, you know, sort of like ceviche, I guess, in some fashion. Very dangerous. Now people should be able to do that. Hey, whatever, they should be able to post on it. But you know what? If you're TikTok and you're letting that happen, there's something wrong with you as a business, right? And so sure, people should be able to do it,

but no, they shouldn't, right? Or at least a company can say, you can do it, but not in my store kind of thing. And that's really where it comes down to is ethical responsibility over ridiculous behavior. Or the challenge on TikTok of hitting your teacher, there was one. Wasn't that Scott? I mean, I agree with everything. I just want to think about what the other people, the other side are saying. I think they're saying,

why are we trying to control for people's stupid choices. Yeah, but Brene, we hold, if people decide to do a Tide Pod challenge and start ingesting Tide Pods, we do hold Procter & Gamble accountable. There are class action suits against Procter & Gamble. And I think that a weapon of mass distraction on behalf of big tech is to create this notion that it's a subtle, nuanced, difficult problem. I think it's actually more simple than they would have us believe. And that is, we age gate pornography. We age gate the military. We age gate alcohol. We age gate drugs. I don't understand why we're not age gating technology that forces 14-year-old girls or motivates them to put provocative pictures of

themselves online such that they can be evaluated by their full peer group and by strange men all over the world. This is a business run on perversion from day one. It is bad for them, bad for their self-esteem. And the moment social went on mobile, we saw self-harm, not reported, but actual hospital admissions of self-harm among girls go up 120%. And just as when we are able to make that sort of attribution for other industries, we sue them and they stop doing it. But unfortunately, because there are more lobbyists who work full-time for Amazon than there are sitting U.S. senators, because there are more people in the PR and comms department of Facebook than there are journalists at the Washington Post, we have been overrun. And they have been able to implement things like Section 230 and continue to serve up

extreme dieting sites to a 15-year-old girl who is 5'10", 100 pounds. They continue to serve up extremist content on white supremacists to young men who are looking for reasons to find people to hate. They always go to, and we go to this navel gazing of these are such complex, nuanced problems. Fuck that. They're not. They also hide around the First Amendment when they don't even have a conception of it. You know, they, they peel to the emotionality of the free speech and First Amendment and sort of hide behind it when, in fact, they edit all the time. They edit all the time. When Mark Zuckerberg decided one day that Holocaust deniers were fine, next day they weren't, he just decided. They go on and on about free speech until they decide to make a rule and change it. So they hide behind it and they abuse what is really a wonderful idea, right? What is a really wonderful idea and try to hide their

terrible business plans behind a very lofty idea about people being able to express themselves. But people don't get that. People are constantly edited all day long and they take a word and free speech when it's editing. They change a word like fake news when it's propaganda, right? Just go back to the original word. Gosh, Scott, we're not very funny. We're usually funny, Brene. You made us unfunny. You made us unfunny and non-dirty. We like to make dirty jokes and make fun of people.

I'll start. Comes easy. Oh, God. Oh, no, no, no. She's a clean audience, Scott, as opposed to ours. Ours is super naughty. That's probably why I love listening to y'all. But I guess the thing that I don't think I knew until I started listening to y'all is that it's just

like around race and white supremacy. The system is not broken. It was designed this way. Yeah. The intentionality behind it is almost hard for me to get my head around sometimes. Well, something I always say, I say it over and over again, I'm hoping it gets like way out there is that the reason it's unsafe is because the people who made it never felt unsafe a day in their lives. If you say that over and over and over again, and that's really easy as the people who design this don't worry about safety because they've never felt unsafe a day in their lives. They're not unsafe. They're very safe. And so the idea of people being unsafe, they think that's noise or whining or whatever. And sometimes it is.

Sometimes it is. People should have a little less being, you know, pre-offended a little less and stop being persistently aggrieved. That's a real disease of our culture right now. But at the same time, these people didn't, it's like number 12 on the list. And you know this. I was telling Scott a story, you know, with my sons, we were walking down the

street at night and I like do a little bit of looking around and I have very tall, big sons. And they're like, what are you doing, mom? I'm like, oh, you don't know. You don't know. And they're like, know what? And I'm like, I could get attacked anytime. Like, I don't know why I think that I haven't really been attacked, but I know it as a woman that it's a possibility. And my son's, you know, very lovely, tall white man in America and really don't feel under siege at all.

They just don't. I mean, maybe they will or whatever, but they don't, not at the start. What software do you use at work? The answer to that question is probably more complicated than you want it to be. The average U.S. company deploys more than 100 apps, and ideas about the work we do can be radically changed by the tools we use to do it. So what is enterprise software anyway?

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Let me ask y'all this question. It's something that a lot of people, when they found out I was going to talk to you. Can you, I don't know if I want to help understanding it. Maybe I do, only if it's in service of this other question. What do we need to know about cryptocurrency and NFTs if we know nothing? I mean, are these things that are going to come and go, or is it time to self-educate? And like, what's going on? Scott, why don't you start? I think it's important, but Scott, it's full of grifters though too. Melania Trump, for example, but go ahead. We're going to need a bigger boat.

I think a lot of things in our society, big problems, reverse engineer to one, the epicenter is that for the first time in the history of our country, a 30-year-old man or woman isn't doing as well as his or her parents. And that creates anger. And then you go specifically to economic security, going back to the desire to be able to afford a decent lifestyle, provide for your family, feel loved. And when you can no longer do that and you play by the rules and you're not doing as well, the ultimate compact in any society is that your kids are going to do better than their parents. And we've broken that compact for the first time in our nation's history. And then a crisis comes along and a

crisis is actually a means of germinating these pyrophilic plants and giving opportunity to young people. The reason I have economic security is when the economic crisis of 2008 hit, I took all my money and I bought Apple at 13 bucks a share and Amazon at 120 because we let stocks fall. We use COVID as cloud cover to bail out rich people. And that is we threw some loaves of bread in some circuses for the poor, but two thirds, at least of that six or $7 trillion went to bailing out the incumbents and that's the existing rich. And when you bail out the restaurant owner that has a failing restaurant who's a baby boomer, you're taking away opportunity from the recent 28 graduate of the Brooklyn Culinary Academy. You're taking away their shot

to come in and buy that restaurant for pennies on the dollar. You're taking away the shot for someone to come and buy their own Brooklyn real estate at $300 a square foot. So what happens when a younger generation sees their wealth as a percentage of GDP in 30 years go from 19% of GDP to 9%, we've literally cut the wealth of people under the age of 40 and a half. They're going to create their own volatility and their own asset classes. So they're like, it's too late to buy Amazon. It's too late to buy Apple. All the big gains are gone. So I'm going to create new speculative assets, crypto, meme stocks. I'm going to create my own volatility. Volatility is great for young

people because they can survive it. They can make more money. They're willing to take those risks. Because time is the variable on their side? Yeah. You and I want to be in safe stocks, Brene. We want to diversify. We want to diversify. We don't have as much time to make it back. We're not about getting rich as much as we are about not getting poor. Young people can be much more volatile. So when you take away that volatility, they're going to create it themselves. Cryptocurrency is essentially the manifestation of what has gone on the last 50 years, and that is the rich weaponizing government

so they can transfer money from the young to the old. That has been going on for the last 50 years. And these asset classes, I would argue, are mostly speculative, but so much incredible human and financial capital has gone into it that it's likely there will be some enduring innovation that comes out of it.

Can I stop you for just a second? And can I ask you to unpack the sentence, these asset classes are speculative? I think I know what it means, but for people who, you know, an asset class is this group of investments. Right. It's just something that people say it's worth it. It's just worth it. And then it goes up and down. Like Bitcoin is a good example. It's just something that people say it's worth it. It's just worth it. And then it goes up and down,

like Bitcoin is a good example. There's nothing inherent there. It's just like, well, gold is made into jewelry, I guess. But, you know, it's just, anything is speculative, but then it becomes put to use. Currency can be speculative, but it's also useful in terms of buying things, right? And so I think one of the things you have to think about it

is that there's all kinds, like real estate is speculation. Office, there's too much office space now because nobody's in the office. That's speculative. Every single thing, shoes, sneakers are speculative. Trading cards are speculative. If you want to think of NFTs, think of them as baseball trading cards or sneakers or whatever. Some things will be valuable. Some things will not. There'll be a lot of grifting. Who owns what? But it's a good way to show the chain of ownership of a digital asset.

That's all. It's just a contract. It's very easy. It's actually, people go a little nuts about it. Like, why am I paying this much? Because why do you pay much for anything? Like, why is anything worth anything? And in the case of these assets,

there's going to be a change in how we do currency worldwide. There just is. The dollar is now the fiat currency of the world, essentially. And so why does's going to be a change in how we do currency worldwide. There just is. The dollar is now the fiat currency of the world, essentially. And so why does it have to be? Like, why is it? Just because it is, because it's the most stable. But this started out in countries where the currency went up and down and people did not have, like, you know, in South America is where a lot of these entrepreneurs were from because they were seeing their inflation just eat up all their

money, all their currency. And so it makes sense. It makes sense you'd create another currency that doesn't have that volatility. And then eventually some of it will be put to buying and selling things and trading things. And then it's like, why is a quarter worth a quarter? Because we say it is. It just is, right? Is it? You have to think about it that way. Scott is more adept to talk about the idea of why it's worth something. Yeah, look, when you buy a stock, you're buying the rights to underlying cash flows. When you buy real estate, you have domain to a piece of land and you can live there so it has utility. People will say that Bitcoin has established what's called scarcity credibility. And that is the U.S. dollar has lost a lot of scarcity credibility because one in three dollars in circulation has been printed since COVID.

Whereas people do believe that Bitcoin will stop being mined at 21 million coins. So it's established itself as sort of this malleable store of value. Ethereum has some underlying technology that helps print NFTs, which will be a great way of signaling online that you're wealthy and interesting. The same way when I buy a Grayson Perry piece of art, it signals wealth, masculinity, and artisanship offline. Now, 99% of these coins, and I think a lot of people in crypto would say this, are probably going away, that they're just speculation and a chance to play Keno. And that's okay as long as you acknowledge. I love gambling. I love putting on a kilt,

taking a thousand bucks, going down, getting fucked up, and losing it all, and it was worth it. It's consumption. Why are you wearing a kilt? Why would? Because I can, Cara. Because I can. Are you Scottish? I am Scottish. He had to do that for you. I am Scottish.

The athletes that brought home gold, the women's curling team, all Scots women. They had nothing to do with you. They had nothing to do with Scott. All Scots women. We all have something to do with each other. There's like 11 of us in America. They don't even know who Scott is.

It's like, I'm the third most famous Scottish person in America. There's five of us. But let's think about a Brene, let's think about a Brene coin, for example. What would a Brene coin be?

There's some value to you in some fashion, like meeting with you or maybe you could give them special this and that and the coin is worth that and you can only buy it if you have the coin. Well, that's tokenizing scarcity.

Yeah. But look, it's... Tokenizing scarcity. That's right. Well, I'll give you an example and I think this is going to happen. There's only one Brene. Go ahead.

What if Chanel issued 10,000 coins and said anyone who owns this coin gets access to any 10 pieces of fashion or jewelry that we have at any time. You get access to the most aspirational fashion events in the world, a very high EQ person to dress you. It's the perfect gift for your fourth wife. What would that coin go for? Yeah.

What would that coin go for? Not your third wife. I think we could tokenize. Can you imagine a Stanford? $250,000? I think it would go for more than that. Yeah. It would have speculation and underlying utility and signaling value. And only owners of

the Chanel coin can have the Chanel logo in front of their house or as a logo in the metaverse. Their virtual house in the metaverse, yeah. Jesus Christ. And what, okay, let me give you another example. What if you issued a Cedars-Sinai, a Jackson Memorial, or a Langone coin and said that you want lifetime healthcare, no insurance, text message-based, cradle-to-grave healthcare for your family if you own this coin. You give them this coin, they have access to a lifetime. And we're only issuing 10,000 of them. What would that coin go for?

And then you could sell it? You're going to see all kinds of crazy interesting uses that will be stored on the blockchain. Similar to a lot of innovation, there'll be mania. A lot of it will go away. People will say that there was fraud, but there will be enduring innovation here. 100. It's like the early internet.

I don't know if you're around, Brene, but a lot of it was crazy and they were crazy people. And so one of the things that when someone, when I started covering the internet 30 years ago, someone's like, what's on it? I was like, everything. And they're like, what do you mean everything? I'm like, everything. Like, what is, look around. Was there a tree, a car, a bush?

Everything, like around in the real world. And no one understood that, right? And it's the same thing. It's the exact same thing. A lot of grift, much more utility than grift in the end, if it's done right. And the same problems we're going to face. I just interviewed Bob Iger about the metaverse. And he's like, do you think we have problems now

in web 2.0? Welcome to the horror. Like think about Disney as a brand, thinking about the things that people could do with their brands and the metaverse in a really sick way, right? And they will, they will. You have to anticipate that. Jesus, God. God, sorry, Brittany. I'm not a sheltered person, y'all. I'm just, I'm really not. Well, we're going to take your brain and put it in a new sentient body. Do you want to get to that? That's later. No, I mean, y'all are just like... I mean, lifespan and healthspan is really interesting too.

I'm going to get to my last question because I'm going to squeeze some joy out of this. That's going to be my rapid fire with y'all. But before we go to the rapid fire, you know, it's so funny because we had this conversation internally. Should this be Dare to Lead, which is a real business kind of audience for us? Or should this be Unlocking Us, which is a wider, just general audience? And I was like, this should be Unlocking Us because this is the shit everybody hears about and then stops for a minute and says, do I need to know this or not know this? And like, people need to know this. Like every time we, I split my time between Houston and Austin

and we're always in my husband's truck going back and forth and we always listen to Pivot together. And then we just, we pause it and we just look at each other and then we just keep driving, you know? And then we're like, then we look at each other and go,

oh, he's kind of being a dick. And then we'll look at, you know, that would be you. You're talking about Carol, right? No, they're never. People scream at me in the streets. God's such a dick. They do that to me.

And I'm like. You say that like it's a bad thing. Exactly. And then they will say, I'm like, Kara? Kara? Yeah. It's like we're talking to y'all. So I wanted this to go to a broader group because, man, I do not like the fact that myself included are so deeply

engaged with these forces that we choose to know nothing about. Like that is a choice because knowing about them is an inconvenience. Yeah. You know? Well, Brene, you've become the cheapest date in the world to these people. You give them everything, including the ability to monetize you and you get a map? I don't know. What do you get? Like, think about it. You're a cheap date is what you are. And Scott knows about cheap dates. No, you people, because you trade so much private information to these people by your movements, by your use of their technology, by your pushing, pushing. You're not a cheap date in general. I'm sure you're a very expensive date as a person. But when you think about the trade that you're making with technology companies and you're unprotected by your legislators and your regulators,

they get everything in this trade. If this was a trade, you'd be the sucker, right? Because you think you're getting a lot. I mean, let me tell you something. I read an article, I tried to find something on The Guardian yesterday. It's got like this thing that takes up like half of my screen. I'm in a hurry. They're like, do you want to check your privacy settings or let us have everything? I'm like, have everything. Move on. I got to read my article.

You know, it's I am a cheap date. Okay. Here's, I have a question for both of you. Y'all are big prediction makers. I love this. Y'all are bold in your predictions. No, no, no. I'll start with you, Kara.

All right. Big winner of 2022, Kara. In technology and media. Apple. Apple. Scott? Yeah, I think I almost never do this. I think I agree with Kara. I think that Apple is poised to have so much credibility. I think they're poised to go into cars. I think they could actually go into search if they wanted right now. AR? Yeah. Glasses? They'll have glasses out this year.

If we're talking about big tech, I think the big loser will be the Oculus and Facebook. Voice technology is huge. I think the metaverse is a bit overhyped. But if you wanted to distill it down to a single company on a risk-adjusted basis, it would feel like a big winner is probably Apple right now. Who's your big loser, Kara? Facebook or the American Society in terms of anti-vax.

For this past year, how we've been badly misinformed. But Facebook, I think, would be the loser. Facebook, no question. Is it just, what is the word I'm looking for that means something more subtle than stupid? Naive. Is it just naive of me to think, you know, I'm really deeply embedded in the Apple ecosystem personally, phones, laptops, everything else. Yeah.

Could they just be the good guys and just clean it all up and be? No? No. Look at what things are going on. I happen to like them, but they're better than. It's a low bar, though, Renee. I mean, they have all kinds of things in China. But they're cleaning that up, right?

Are they cleaning up the supply chain and human rights issues? They're trying, but they're still a for-profit company. Don't hug a for-profit company ever. Don't rely on them to be. The key to capitalism is that you have these for-profit companies that are primarily focused on profits, that will avoid taxes, that will license their IP

to their Irish subsidiaries so they can avoid paying U.S. taxes. They will make... They'll do deals with China, Chinese government. They'll have factories that outsource to contractors who may not have the same standards. They outsource pollution, but that's kind of their job. It's our job to regulate them. And for some reason, I believe we've been asleep at the switch. If we're waiting for the better angels of executives to show up, that is a bad strategy. It is. It is. Our government, we invented silly putty and we turned back Hitler. Our government rocks. And there's no reason we turned back Hitler. Our government rocks. And there's no reason we shouldn't continue to invest in it and be hopeful for it and hold it accountable.

Without it. And as broken as it is, we voted for them, right? We at least voted for them. And so that's the power. And we can vote them out. You can. You actually can. Things do change.

No, I believe that. And I do believe that we've lost our way when it comes to, I don't know. Where did you go to school, Brene? University of Texas. Okay, so that's the government. No, I mean, yeah, I have a bachelor's, master's, and PhD in social work. I'm a shift in the government in my lifetime from being agents of change to agents of control. That doesn't have to be. It doesn't have to be.

And I understand that. I vote, but I'm still strapped with Greg Abbott and Ken Paxton and, you know, these folks. I will never give up because I do think the measure of a country is still the government and how they take care of the most vulnerable people. You know, we used to have the Stalin witch trials. We had McCarthyism. This is not something fresh and new. It's just a question of how much commitment you have to fight for the things you believe in. When we passed last year the child tax credit, we cut childhood

poverty in half. That's an incredible feat. And we can continue to do incredible things. We can come up with incredible vaccines. We can come up with laws that protect our vulnerable. You know, we can put telescopes into space that will tell us about the beginning of time. And these are all brought to you by a group of people who come together to express their collective strength as Americans known as the government. And we need to stop this bullshit screed against us

and stop criticizing government. Guess who invented the internet? The government. The government invented the internet. And they gave it as a gift to the American people and the world. And guess who's making all the money of it? Not the US government. And by the way, one thing that we're putting out here is like, it's not just in this country.

Facebook and others have such a deleterious effect everywhere else, much stronger. Is that true? Oh my God. That was one of the things with the Frances Haugen revelations, a lot of people focused on the teen girls, but the stuff happening in other countries where Facebook is the internet is really frightening and dangerous. And if you listen to anyone, Maria Ressa from the Philippines, who was the one who alerted me to this stuff very early on

is very articulate. She just won the Nobel peace prize and you should have her on. She's amazing. She was the one that really started to point the finger saying this is having a real effect. And Duterte was using the internet and Facebook and other things to murder democracy. You know what I mean? That's what he was doing. And she called it out and she went to jail. But around the world, that's what's really most dangerous is this gift to the world by the US government, which we paid for. Now, Tim Cook or Apple is the most valuable company in the world, trillions of dollars. 10 richest people in the world

are all technology internet people. That's, we paid for that. And then we give them our stuff. So that's what I'm saying. It's like, this is yours. So you don't have to grab it, but it's yours. So you deserve to have control over it much more so than they should.

Okay, ready? Rapid fire. Who wants to go first? Same question. you deserve to have control over it much more so than they should. Okay. Ready? Rapid fire. Who wants to go first? Same question. Who needs less time? Scott. Kara.

Scott. All right. Okay. I'll mix it up. Scott, go first on this one. Fill in the blank for me. Vulnerability is? Confidence.

Kara. Vulnerability is? Scott Galloway. That's your vulnerability? I'm the soft tissue in your life. Kara. All right, I'll do another one. Death.

Death. Death, Brene, obviously. I'm not going to let you do that. Oh, God, I did. She tried to get me before, Scott, and I'm back. She's back. She's like,

she doesn't give up on her vulnerability. No, I'm not going to let you do that. I'm the vulnerabiliest. That's what I am. Vulnerability is? Is children. That's, that's true. Yeah. Okay. Kara, you're called to be really brave, but your fear is real and you can feel it in your throat. What's the very first thing you do? Keep going. Scott, very first thing you do when you're really afraid? A saying that's helped me through a lot of hard times is nothing is ever as good or as bad as it seems. Beautiful. Okay. Beautiful. Scott, what's something that people often get wrong about you? That I don't care. Kara? That I'm mean. Okay. Scott, what's something that people often get wrong about you? That I don't care.

Kara? That I'm mean. Okay, Scott, last TV show you binged and loved. I binge a lot. You do? I just watched all nine seasons again of Game of Thrones with my 14-year-old son. That was very rewarding. Do you love it?

Adore it. Love it. Think it's inspiration. Just, I think it's incredible that humans can come together and do something like that. Yeah, creativity can really be a hope instiller for me too. Kara, what's the last thing you binged and loved? Cobra Kai. Oh, wait, we both love Mare of Easton.

That was wonderful. We both, we bonded over that. Both of us watched it at the same time. Okay. This is a hard one. Kara, favorite movie? Oh, Gladiator. Gladiator. Okay.

Scott? Not a great movie, but it moved me. The Black Stallion. It was a nice story about a boy and his mother. Oh, sweet, Scott. Isn't that nice? Yeah. I'm trying to be more likable.

Kara, a concert you'll never forget. Oh, sweet, Scott. Isn't that nice? Yeah. I'm trying to be more likable. A concert you'll never forget. Oh, wow. I don't like concerts that much. Oh, a very small little concert I went to in Berkeley that I loved with Cheryl Wheeler, who's a very not well-known folk singer. It was just lovely. She was right up close and she's such a good singer and a beautiful voice and very funny. I like small concerts. I don't like big ones. Yeah. Scott?

1985 Greek theater, squeezed open for the Go-Go's and I got my first kiss that night. I'm good at this. I win. I win. You do. You do. I win. Got his first kiss. Who was it? What year was that? 85. Yeah, no, I was 38. Oh, man. I remember when Squeeze toured with the Go-Go's. Yeah, it was actually, I got the year wrong.

I'm sorry. I was thinking, I was trying to remember. It was last year of high school. It was like 1981. 83. 81 to 83. Yeah. I graduated my school in 82.

I don't like to acknowledge that. But yeah, Greek theater, probably 1982. What was the girl's name? Lena. Produced girl in school. It's like because it was funny. Ah, well, I like it. All right. This is a good one. You'll have to have answers to this, both of you. Scott first. Favorite meal? In-N-Out burger. Really? Kara?

God dang. 100%. You're talking about cheap date. Yeah. Gosh. Favorite meal. Oh, gosh. It isn't easy for me.

I like lots of things. Oysters. Raw? On the half shelf? Yes. Yes. Up in Point Reyes. I didn't know that. In the Point Reyes. I didn't know that.

In the Point Reyes grocery store there. A snapshot, Scott, of an ordinary moment in your life that really brings you joy. Oh, it's on my phone. My boy's hugging me. Kara? Kids. Whatever kid picture is on.

I have a recent one of me carrying Clara around this weekend. I just love it. It's just funny. It makes me laugh. Last question. What's one thing that you're both really deeply grateful for right now? Yeah, I'm grateful that my parents decided at the age of 19 to get on a steamship and immigrate to America.

The smartest thing I've ever done was being born here. That's a good one, Scott. Yeah. I would say my wife and all my children, I would say that. But I think more so is the ability to change, to be creative and change, and the luckiness to be able to do it and the fortitude to do it,

like to change and do exciting things and say, I'm going to try that. You know, I think we both do that. And I think you do that too, Scott. We both sort of are like, next, cool, that kind of thing. Scott is my greatest gratitude. Go on, I'm your soft tissue. I actually shockingly really have grown to really like Scott a lot. Okay. Let me get to this. This is my favorite part right here. Okay. We asked y'all for five songs you can't live without. We put a playlist together. Kara, you gave us, We Don't Talk About Bruno from Encanto. I've listened to it 400 times. Yeah. Oh, I bet. With

your kids. Light of a Clear Blue Morning by Dolly Parton. Jesus Take the Wheel by Carrie Underwood. Sunday Morning Coming Down, Johnny Cash. Oh, God. Such a good song. It's Wahine Ilikaya. Ilikaya by Dennis Kamakai? I think it's Kamahima, something like that. Yeah. One sentence. No semicolons, em dashes, or bullshit like that. One sentence. What does this mini mixtape say about you, Kara Swisher? Mm, one sentence. We don't talk about Bruno, light of a clear blue morning, Jesus take the wheel,

Sunday morning coming down, and Wahine Ilekiah. Peace though in a world of pain. That's beautiful. Thank you. Scott, staying alive by the Bee Gees, Living Thing by ELO, Even the Losers, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Gypsy, Fleetwood Mac, and More Than a Feeling by Boston. Oh, of course. But mine wasn't curated in some PBS mashup that you edited. Hey, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I will not tolerate any kind of bullshit

around her playlist. She says I'm her vulnerability, but I brought her music choice. Late at night, I get ridiculously fucked up and I dance to 80s music. Alone. I can see that.

I can see that. That checks out too. That checks out. Thank y'all so much for spending some time with us. Thank you,. That checks out too. That checks out. Thank y'all so much for spending some time with us. Thank you, Brene. Thanks for pivot. It's so good.

Thank you. I love that your husband and you sit in a car and yell at us. We love that idea. We do. And we talk right back to you. Good. You should. We'll keep being as crazy. Well, we're listening and we care.

We really care. Our message. You're heard. And so are advertisers. Please download it a million times so we can make more Benjamins. Kara's got like 45 kids. We need you to listen more.

You do have a newborn, right? I do. And yeah, I had two kids during the pandemic. Yes, I did. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank y'all very much. And thanks, Brene.

Thank you. Thanks for opening our eyes to shit we don't want to see. We Thank you. Thank y'all very much. And thanks, Brene. Thank you. Thanks for opening our eyes to shit we don't want to see. We appreciate you. All right. Look, if you're interested in more conversations like this between Scott and Kara, you need to listen to the Pivot podcast. It's interesting.

You can listen to it wherever you listen to podcasts. We'll link everything on the Unlocking Us episode page on brenebrown.com. You can find Kara online at vox.com backslash karaswisher. She's on Instagram and Twitter at atkaraswisher. And you can find Scott online at profgalloway.com. And he's on Twitter at atprofgalloway. Some fun news.

Yesterday, the paperback book of The Gifts of Imperfection came out. March 1st was the date. Thank you, thank you for the incredible response to Atlas of the Heart. I very much appreciate it. downloads and transcripts are available. They're beautifully done by our team, which I'm always grateful for, for a lot of reasons. Sometimes I'd like to read stuff, accessibility reasons. They're usually available three to five business days after the podcast hits the airwaves. This is an uncertain, hard world and we need each other. So stay awkward, brave, and kind. Take care of yourselves and the people you love. I'll see you soon. Unlocking Us is produced by Brene Brown Education and Research Group. The music is by Keri Rodriguez and Gina Chavez.

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