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Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher, and I just had breakfast with a very sexy man. He texted me that he was very sexy when he sat at the rom-com. And you also had breakfast with me. Did you enjoy that rom-com moment when you looked up and I was sitting at another table staring at you? It was. We
We sat at two different tables. I literally instructed him where I was, and he just sat down at a separate table. And then he sent me a text that said, look up, a sexy man is looking at you. And I couldn't find one, and there was Scott also. No, you looked at me, saw me, and then kept looking for the sexy guy. Yeah.
There was a couple sexy people in there. Granger and Co. Marlboro, a wonderful restaurant. The guy, Granger, he just passed away, unfortunately. It's a great another moment for us. We don't need a lot of moments, do we? Because we see each other all the time, as you pointed out. But it was very nice. I'm here in London. How are you? You are. And why are you here, Kara?
Well, I'm here for the Truth Tellers Summit for Harry Evans in honor of Tina Brown, her husband's her Harry Evans. He was an amazing journalist. And it was all these like badass people, Navalny people, Jeff Zucker was there, all these amazing people talking about issues around investigative journalism. And I talked a little bit about my book and then I was on a panel about Trump and the media, which was cool.
But just amazing people all through the time. Christiane Amanpour. So I'm going to go out on a limb here a bit.
A conference that calls itself Truth Tellers? It's not by chance self-absorbed people from media, is it? No, it's not. It actually was really interesting because it had a global perspective, as usual. You were not invited because you don't have a global perspective. Yeah, and I've been invited to the Big Dick Conference. It was really good. Truth Tellers. What self-absorption is it? It's not. Do not insult Tina Brown to me or we're going to find you. I'm sorry I don't qualify.
I'm sorry I don't qualify. Me and my badass ladies. Anything Christiane Amanpour is at is good in my book. She was great. We had dinner last night. I don't know how you missed our invitation.
I was not invited to that. You were not. It was just the two of us. I'm like, you know, prone to exaggeration conference. That's the one I go to. Yes, that's the one you go to. Anyway, we had a lovely time. So I'm here. I come from the Webbys where I got that lifetime achievement where we're more badass ladies. I was hanging out with more badass ladies.
I forgot how... I brought Nell Scoville, who helped me work on my book. And I went, I was sitting at the table with Governor Whitmer from Michigan, who is so... She is a laugh-friggin' riot. She really is funny and really quite...
Big things for her, I foresee. And I have to tell you, the Webbys were so much fun. They had Amber Ruffin was the host. They had Laverne Cox, Ina Garten, Julia Louise Dreyfuss. None of those people I know. Okay, Julia Louise Dreyfuss, I know her.
I know Jennifer Beals. I can't let you near Jennifer Beals. That's not going to ever happen. Oh, my gosh. What a feeling. Yes. What a feeling. No, don't. Don't. You're going to get the shit beat out of you by these badass women. That's what's going to happen. There's going to be like... You say that like it's a bad thing. I pay extra for that. Anyhow. Have you enjoyed your trip to London? What do you think of it here? I have. I love London. It's very sophisticated. I asked you how you liked it. You had a good... Give me your take on London. I thought it was very smart this morning. Um...
The positives. First and foremost, it's a wonderful place for children. My kid, you know, my 13-year-old takes the tube to and from school. He loves it here. It's...
I hate to sound political, but I'll just say it. No guns. I really like that. That makes me feel less anxious about having kids here. Great educational system, tons of stuff to do. Proximity to the continents is wonderful. It's a very sophisticated cosmopolitan city. I'm meeting a ton of people from regions of the world that I just was not exposed to in the U.S., which I think is wonderful. Premier League football, I know that sounds stupid, but it's just a ton of fun if you have boys to engage in Premier League football.
Just the density of culture and interesting people is wonderful. The downside is I think there's a lack of organic value creation. My observation of the business environment here is the majority of people making money here are making money by servicing money created elsewhere. Restaurants, wealth management. Nice restaurants. Yeah.
Yeah, it's basically a Butler economy is how I would describe it. I love that idea, Butler economy. I would agree, just for a very short time. I mean, one interesting thing, I did some interviews for the book, and I was talking to Lionel Barber and Alan Rusberger, who have a podcast. And they were like, name the internet companies that are interesting in England. And I was like, oh, man.
You know, there's like a hundred in San Francisco right now. Even if they never make it, they're interesting. Like all these AI things. And I really hate to say it, but it's really, it doesn't feel innovative in the way it needs to be for the future. I don't know. It's a big issue and they recognize it. You can't go more than 10 meters at Oxford or Cambridge without telling you they invented AI. And it's like, well, okay, but they're monetizing it over in San Francisco. So who cares if you invented it? Yeah.
Yeah, very big difference. I'm going to San Francisco a lot this month, so I'm excited to see all these companies. Hands down, though, the worst thing, if you start crying, the worst thing, hands down, is the weather. Weather. And the people here are, I will say, the people are really warm and well. I can't figure out if it's because I'm more famous here than I was, but anytime I've moved somewhere, I've never had as warm a reception. The people here are very...
You know, like little things, like if you're new here, they invite you over for dinner and then they invite other people over to meet you because you're new. Oh. You know, they're just very civil here. Civil, civil society. Anyway, I would love to do something on why. Years ago, I came to, and then we'll get to our big stories, is to Oxford and we did a debate. And I think it was Cambridge or Oxford, I think it was Cambridge. And Reid Hoffman and I took the side of America will create the next 10 billion, multi-billion dollar companies here.
and the other side was Britain will do it. And obviously we were right. - Good luck with that. - This was 10, 12 years ago, and Reid and I were on. We lost the debate, but we were like,
No way. And there's no way. And it was just interesting. It's just interesting to how Europe becomes innovative. That's how you say it here, innovative. It's just we should talk a little bit more about innovation in other parts of the world. We just need to be more global, Scott. Anyway, we've got a lot to get today, including major announcements from OpenAI and Google, big deals, speaking of which, and big debates on the calendar for President Biden and former President Trump. How exciting.
First, Mark Zuckerberg had quite a 40th birthday bash. Posts on Instagram displayed scenes from the party, including recreations of his old bedrooms. Picture that's going viral, though, is one of Zuckerberg and Bill Gates in a replica of his Harvard dorm room, which was strange and odd, but I kind of like that Bill Gates was there. For people who don't know, Bill Gates has been a major mentor to Mark Zuckerberg over the many years for a long time. And he's been quite quiet about it, but they have a
I would say it's one of his more positive relationships in terms of mentorship. And I think that he's helped him a lot in a lot of ways, which is interesting. I think they've both been better for it. Not everyone likes each of them individually, but I have a feeling. Did you get an invitation, Scott? I didn't. To Mark's 40th? Yeah.
No, no, no, no. I've got invited to the after party. Yeah. Am I a soccer player? Are you kidding? You know what I do? Speaking of soccer, you know what I do in Cannes? What?
His name's Francois or Pascal. I pay him and he shows up in a Zodiac and he's a guy and he smokes all the way there. Oh, the crazy guy who left me on the dock. That guy. Oh, yeah. You met him. Anyways, I hire him on the Zodiac. He bombs me into the Palais. It's such a fucking master of the universe James Bond moment for me. And you cruise across the Cote d'Azur and I always say to him, I'm like, drop me there. He's like, no, no, it's a private party. And it's the Meta Beach.
And I purposely get off there because there's no security on the ocean side. And I walk in and I just look at everybody and I throw them a peace sign like, yeah, that's right. You did invite me to your party. I'm here anyways because I pulled up in a fucking Zodiac. Now you've signaled them this year because we're going in a couple, you and I will be there in a couple weeks. But let me just say, now you've signaled them and I'll be on the boat and we're going to be like dead. They're going to be like machine guns and everything else. Yeah.
No, no, no, no. Scott, we're going to look like an invading force. No, I go to the Spotify party, which is the hottest party I can. Oh, is it? Yeah, I don't go to the party. Oh, it's the best. I just go to sleep. No, I don't get invited. And it's so, it is literally such a caste system there. You get bands if you're like, if, you know, Alphabet likes you, you get a band to, you know, Alphabet Beach. Yeah. I do not get bands. I used to get bands to all of them. Now, I no longer get invited to Alphabet Beach.
Or Meadow Beach. Meadow Beach literally has a picture of me that says, do not let this man in. But I crashed the party by approaching. I do what the Allies did and Lawrence of Arabia did. I approach from the soft spot. I approach from the sea. Oh, God. You hired that guy again who left me on the job? Oh, it's the best.
You tried to kill me. My favorite, though, was trying to get on that thing. I was trying to get on that thing. And I jump on. And then I'm like, now, come here. I'll catch you. And you literally looked at me like, I'm not getting near that fucking boat. I know. I wouldn't crush between the, I couldn't see it. No, you look like a seal that an orca was about to launch 40 feet into the air. I'm getting on this. I'm getting on the Zodiac this year. Anyway, we're good.
We're going to get ready for us and we're staying at the party. So we didn't get invited to Mark Zuckerberg's party and we never will. But your old Mark, 40. Old Mark. He's old. We're older, but still, he's pretty old now. That's old. Yeah. No, but you know what? He's depressed more people than anyone who's lived to be 40,000 years. He's really lived a lot. Literally lived a lot of life. Happy birthday, Mark. We wish you many more years ahead.
Here's something that's interesting. The Biden administration announced a massive increase of tariffs, tariff rates to imported Chinese EVs. Like, tariffs on those cars will go from 25% to 100%. Other products, such as Chinese aluminum and solar cells, will get big increases, too. The White House said the adjustments are necessary to protect American industries from unfair competition, so to break no inflationary impact.
Interesting thing, these cars are, some of them are pretty fantastic. I've seen some people demoing them and things like that.
Speaking of innovation, they're quite innovative compared to—definitely compared to Teslas and other things. And there's some safety issues around Chinese cars, but there's some safety issues around Tesla, too. But, you know, it's interesting. This is how we fight them. They're going to take over across the world. That's my impression from how good they are and how inexpensive they are. But what do you think? I hate trade wars. I want—
I got so excited about BYD's $12,000 EV. I think young people would love a $12,000 EV. It'd be a great car. And not only that, young people are more environmentally conscious. They don't have the money to buy the kind of cars that we drive. I hate trade wars. All they are is attacks on the consumer in an attempt to placate some lobbyists in D.C. saying, oh, it's important that we have a domestic shoe supply industry in case we go to war and we need to produce boots. I hate trade wars.
This is a little bit more symbolic than anything because Trump's proposed tariffs would have been on $360 billion worth. This is only $18 billion. But in general, the world gets more prosperous when you lower tariffs and make things less expensive for people. It grows the market. It helps consumers buy, have a greater quality, better quality of life. All you have to do, though, and we haven't done a good job of this,
is ensure that some of that money gets reinvested in worker training for people who are on the wrong end of globalization. But all this does is make everything more expensive for people. And especially, the thing I really don't like about this, it's going to slow the transition to renewables. Well, it's interesting because this seagull, that's what it's called. They have a dolphin. They name it after seagoing things, I guess. This dolphin is $9,700. It's really cool, I have to say. And it's got...
It's got market dominance, obviously. And then they have some, it's just a really interesting, it's very, you know, BYD calls it agile and versatile. And it looks a little like my Chevy Bolt, actually, which was more. It wasn't that bad. I think it was $25,000, I forget. Which, as you know, I like. And this is really inexpensive, like sub, you know, sub $10,000 car.
And Tesla has abandoned this area, and some of the others have not. But, you know, the thing is they could be underpricing them and labor, et cetera. You know, this is very typical of stuff coming from China. Are there any arguments to be made about unfair competition? Well, that's the question. Is there trade asymmetry if they put onerous tariffs on our equivalent products? Tesla's not there.
Well, Tesla is there. And the onsensors, I don't know. But just to give you a sense for the first thing I thought of, the prospect of a $10,000 or a $12,000 EV. We charge kids at NYU $72,000 a year. So, I mean, it's getting to the point where, okay, you can go to NYU or we can buy you and your five siblings an EV this year.
I mean, it's just the idea of getting an electric vehicle for what it costs to do about, I don't know, what is it? There's 30 weeks, 35 weeks, and it's going to be for six weeks of school at NYU. I just, we want, and I think I told you this, I'm going to invest in Sheen, which everyone's, you know, is a controversial company. We'll be talking about that, yeah. But anyways, I think there's something to be said for we need to figure out a way to
to make things less expensive. We need to put more money in the pockets of young people and we need to make things less expensive for them. Education, housing, apparel, EVs. So at the bottom of it, I hate trade wars. I just hate them. We hate trade wars. We have to deal with unfair competition necessarily. But this is a boon to, obviously, US car companies and Tesla.
But although they have a big business in China, too, not the U.S. car. The Chinese are going to reciprocate. They're going to do the same. And then it ends up in a shooting match. This will hurt Tesla. This will hurt Tesla. The latest government effort on AI, the Senate unveiling a $32 billion roadmap to legislation. It's a roadmap to legislation, Scott. It's a roadmap.
to erode, to erode. Thank God, Charles Schumer at 140 years old is in charge of this. I'm sorry, Chuck. Let me just tell you, it's not actual legislation. The bipartisan AI Working Group, led by Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic majority leader, instead wants Senate committees to come up with legislation and recommendations about where they should focus their efforts. I was recently at an event where he touted this.
And in the back, I kept going, so no legislation, right? That's what's not happening. No actual. The areas include workforce training, copyright violations, energy costs, all of which they could do now, copyright violations for one. Schumer says, this is the quote which just kills me. It's very hard to do regulations because AI is changing too quickly.
No, Chuck, it's because you are changing and dying too slowly. That's the problem here, Chuck. Here's an idea. All algorithmically elevated content no longer subject to 230. And every company 60, 90 days before an election has to watermark content that is AI edited. There, that's not that difficult. That's not changing. Deepfakes, everything.
I know. I'm frustrated. I'm frustrated. Did I tell you how good the schools are here in Britain? I was hanging, yes, they are. I was hanging in the back. I'm taking a Zodiac to Metta. And they were literally, all these legislators were like, no.
Nothing's happening. This is another nothing's happening. Some of these things they can do copyright. They could do energy costs. These are easy. These are easy legislation, honestly. But, you know, the Republicans are up at the trial wearing the same outfits, the porn trial. Do you know how you solve the deficit? What? You put essentially, so we have pretty significant taxes on gasoline, probably not enough to match the externality. Start putting a tax on compute. Compute.
It's the new energy. And not only that, if you think about compute, what's happening? It's going to a handful of small companies, incredible wealth concentration. It's being used to power AI, which is going to have huge externalities. Bottom line is put a 30, 40, 50% tax on all compute. They lose their mind. That's never going to happen. But nonetheless, other things certainly could. You're right. I just, it's ridiculous. Chuck, get out of the way. Get out.
Move along. Doesn't his daughter work at Meta? You keep mentioning this every time. It's nothing to do with it. Let's not slag his daughter. I know her, but it doesn't. I don't think she's still there. Of course you know her. She was at Mark's 40th and at the Truth Teller Conference. Truth Teller. Jesus Christ. I'm telling you, Tina Brown is going to take you apart and put you back together in a bad way. She is a badass. I'm going to call her to do so. Anyway. Yeah.
There's even more AI news out there. So let's get to our first big story. OpenAI has released its latest model, GPT-4.0. The new model, they can't go to five, I don't know why. The new model is capable of realistic voice conversations, sort of, and can interact through text, audio, and image. It also has memory capabilities, allowing it to learn from previous conversations and can do real-time translation. That's very impressive, but it's not as hard as you think it is, that particular one.
In the blog post, Sam Alton said it feels like AI from the movies. He was referring to her. I think he didn't see it because it wasn't a happy movie, FYI, Sam. You need to see it to the end. I didn't like it, but I have to say that's not the movie I would reference in any way.
So talk a little bit about this new model, the technology. OpenAI is trying very hard to keep ahead of its competitors and not be Netscape. I think they're doing an interesting job of doing that, but they have to constantly be waving hands so that they're in the center of the attention scheme of this thing and keep rolling out products. It's smart, you know, because Netscape sort of sat on its laurels and got run over.
by Microsoft. Yeah, I love, remember they used to do those things like, what if movie titles were real, like what the movie's actually about? If they wanted to name this what it's actually about, they should call it The Syrian Alexa Killer because essentially this is the voice agent we've all wanted. And the stuff I've seen is actually pretty exceptional and I do think Her is a really decent metaphor for this. That movie really was prescient and
And the thing I see that worries me, and I might be being paranoid, but it doesn't mean I'm wrong, is this is the problem. And it's depicted in the movie Her. This guy begins to sequester from society and have a relationship with an algorithm. And this is the fear. When we separate from each other in person and we can express when we're walking around with our own TV studio,
And we can say things about people without having any direct contact with them, or we can say something about them without even revealing our identity online, much less in person. Our worst instincts come out. And when we feel as if we can have some reasonable semblance of a relationship, rather than friendship, Reddit or Discord, rather than sex, you porn or a sex doll, rather than work...
Coinbase or Robinhood, people sequester from one another. And the reason why people are so afraid of being canceled is that the worst thing that could happen to you throughout most of history is to be shamed, because that meant you were risking being expunged from the tribe or the clan, at which point you would die. And the reason why you die is you become lonely, and without the benefit or the wisdom of crowds and other people caring for you and helping you make good decisions, you slowly get depressed and crazy and violent. Sure.
And I worry that a lot of people are going to slowly but surely sequester from the guardrails and the joy and the victory of interacting with other humans. Real interactions, yes. Here's the only thing. There already are a lot of lonely people, right? And so I don't necessarily—first of all, it's not ready for prime time, even though they're going, it's magical, it's this, it's that, it's her.
You know, let me read from a story. I think this is the BBC. It goes, using a warm American female voice, it greeted its prompters by asking them how they were doing. When it paid a compliment, it responded, stop it, you're making me blush, which is weird. It wasn't perfect. At one point, it mistook a smiling man for a wooden surface, and it started to solve an equation that hadn't been shown yet. There's so many glitches in this thing, and it still is...
A lot of it is cooked, the interactions, like you're talking with a robot kind of thing. And obviously, we're going to see so many more chatbots like this, and they're going to try to put personalities in them to make it feel like it's...
that it's real. And I just think it doesn't necessarily have to have humanization, but it's definitely doing things. They did it right before the Google I.O. show with its AI developments, which is mostly helping you search better. That's what it seemed to be. And it's going for the more like we're in the middle of a movie, we are in her, we're in
You know, maybe not 2000: A Space Odyssey because that didn't end well, that relationship, that flirty relationship. I just think it's going to be quite a while before this gets to be anything significant. I don't think it won't be. I don't know. It could help a lot of lonely people because there's a lot of lonely people without that don't have interactions, period. And it had nothing to do with tech.
I don't care. I think the right analogy is that if you're listening about AI, it's gone from amoeba to Tyrannosaurus rex pretty fast. Pretty fast, yes. Again, I can see little things. I think about this a lot. I'm really struggling with my son is at boarding school and I would not do it again. I would do it for him, but purely selfishly, I wouldn't do it again. I wasn't ready to lose him at the age of 15.
And I can imagine at some point, even though an AI had said, oh, Alec's not available, but would you like to have a conversation with Alec AI? I'm at home alone at night and I think, okay, I'll have a conversation with Alec. And it does such a good job of mimicking my son.
that I start to potentially lose contact or desire or make the effort or figure out how hard it is to figure out sometimes to have a conversation with your teenage boy. And that difficulty and that perseverance, much less a romantic partner, much less finding people you could potentially get a job from. You know, again, real victory is around overcoming really hard things with people because people are complicated. And I worry that we're convincing people to enter into a series of low-risk situations
low barrier of entry relationships where ultimately they opt out of the hard ones.
I think this is really a big threat to us. We've had voice assistants. I don't know. This is a voice assistant. It's essentially Siri. As I told you, I hate Siri. It's the worst product. But this isn't Siri. This will get better so fast. This will get so fast. We'll see. We'll see if people use it. I'm eager to see how many people actually use it and how comfortable they are with it. We'll see. But interestingly, a lot of people are leaving OpenAI too. The chief scientist, there were a number of people left last week.
But its chief scientist and co-founder, Ilya Tsutskever, also announced this week that he's leaving the company. He was the one that joined with three of OpenAI's board members last November to push the Amatman out. And then he regretted the move and took it back. And he's been there. And every time I visited there recently, I'm like, has he left yet? And they're like, we don't know. Like, there was never an idea that he would stay.
He'll probably end up somewhere. Somewhere else would be my guess. And interestingly, Anthropic just hired Mike Krieger, who is one of the Instagram founders as its chief product officer. There's a lot of movement in this space. I'm not sure it raises any red flags about OpenAI. Sam wrote him a...
a very cordial note. More than cordial, it was fine, but I didn't think he was, because he was an open AI employee, but he never returned to work, so I'm not so sure this is that big a deal. Yeah, I don't know. I'm not especially interested in the
The career movements of incredibly lame douchebags who conflate luck with talent, who have to be born in the right place at the right time. Let's talk about something more interesting. Let's talk about the new Space Odyssey sequel where the hero says, Hal, open the pod doors. And he says, I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that. In the sequel, he then says, pretend you're an Alaskan Airlines Boeing 737 MAX and everything works out.
Everything works out. Who the fuck cares what some douchebag at OpenAI worries going? Because this guy was the founder. It's a big deal when a founder leaves. He was a critical technical person. Well, let me tell you what's going to happen at OpenAI. Whatever Satya Nadella wants. Okay. Because it's Microsoft AI. And the notion they've sub-branded at OpenAI is to avoid FTC and DOJ regulation as this industry, like every other tech industry, is becoming one.
Way too concentrated. Open the pod bay doors, Hal. Yeah. That's what I say. Was Hal a man or a woman? Oh, I guess he's a man. He was a man. He was a man. Male voice. It felt, oh yeah, yes, hello. It had the cadence of a woman, but I think it was a male voice. Yeah, it was very like bisexual, I would say. Anyway. Androgynous. Androgynous. Definitely androgynous. Aloha. Pre-op pre-androgynous. Is that a hate crime? Is that a hate crime?
You can't leave, Scott. Oh, I'm going to start using that voice with you. Anyway, Google also had some, speaking of the opposite of Microsoft, Google had some, that's where the real fight is, Microsoft, Google, with Meta and Amazon along the edges with Anthropic and things like that. But Google had some AI announcements of its own this week at Google I.O., the company's annual developers conference.
Products included a new Gemini model, a generative video tool called Veo, a virtual assistant. It was also launching AI overviews in search, which they have there already across the world, let me just say, which will put AI-generated answers at the top of everyone's search results.
That'll be an interesting impact on its advertising, possibly. Really interesting. It's everywhere. It's all over my Google when I use it. It's fascinating. And I mentioned this at the Truth Tellers Conference. They're not just now controlling the experience of media companies. Now they're taking their stuff and just don't even go there. Here's the answer. And they're pretty good answers, I have to say. AI was referenced over 120 times during the keynote address conference.
presentation. A number of news publishers are worried that the new ICE search feature will mean for traffic and advertising revenue. They have a right to be concerned. Your thoughts? First off, Google's not going to make the same mistake again. They kind of invented and were the source of the most, other than Cambridge, the source of the most IP around AI. And because they didn't want to threaten this tollbooth business called search, they didn't move as aggressively to commercialize it. I don't think they're going to make that mistake again.
And AI premium search, they're talking about making it a subscription product. I like subscription products more because the thing that has really, in my opinion, probably been the greatest externality or kind of the greatest...
a mission has been the rage caused by an ad-supported model online. So I like the idea of moving to subscription. The problem is the operational fish, it'll take their margins down because something people don't talk a lot about, every query into ChatGPT takes 10 times the energy
of a standard search. What's also just really interesting about these companies is similar to energy in the 70s and 80s, whether it was Shell, Chevron, Exxon, they're all becoming the same company. They all have different front ends, but at the end of the day, they're all becoming energy slash compute companies that other companies that the rest of the fortune
Every other company in the world will rent their energy and their compute. Instead of powering cars and factories, these companies now power smartphones and LLMs. But you know what? They're all effectively becoming the same company. 60% of Amazon's operating margin is from cloud. They're all becoming...
cloud companies that power AI. They're all turning into the same goddamn company, but there can only be four or five of them. Let me just say, though, the search engine is very bad news for media and other websites in general because it will reduce the amount of traffic significantly. Like, the whole SEO world is over. Like, I was just, as I was looking at it, I was like, oh, look at this. And everywhere I do something in Google, including everywhere,
email, every part of my Google experience, AI has been inserted. And the search one particularly is quite good, actually. But it's not good for search optimization. How are people going to find people? Now, Google search has been more dissipated. Amazon has search. You know, their searches now is becoming much more widespread on lots of places. But
But I sat there and I was like, I don't have to click in anywhere. Here is the actual answer that I would have spent a lot of time clicking into things. I don't know what you think about that, but I think it's quite good and quite accurate, actually. Yeah, you saying that literally sent chills down my spine because I just realized the obvious in what you just articulated. And that is traditional search has been, it gives you, you type in,
I don't know, you type in Biden-Trump debates and you see CNN, NYT articles on it, and you sometimes, oftentimes click through to the NY Times, to New York Times to read the article on it.
And what Google has slowly but surely tried to do is say, okay, if you type in London to Las Vegas, where I'm going on Tuesday, it used to send you to Expedia or to an article about fun things to do in Las Vegas. Now it sends you to a place they can further monetize. They're trying to become closed systems. And I think what you just articulated is frightening because it's true. You're never going to need to leave Alphabet.
Because what you're saying is there's going to be no need to click through. It gives you the answer. You don't go anywhere. Yeah, this new head of search, this is a quote that just chilled me. Her name's Liz Reid. She just became head of search. What we see with generative AI is that Google can do more of the searching for you. It can take a bunch of hard work out of searching so you can focus on the parts you want to do to get things done or the parts of exploring you found exciting, you find exciting. Of course, that's a way of saying we're going to give you the answer. And
I have to say it's good. And they still have other stuff there. And you can get to the news and whatever, Twitter, whatever you tend to ask for. But if Yelp was worried about this many years ago and has been suing Google, as you know,
They have a true advantage here over all these different companies. And I think when you think about it, I just had breakfast and I'm going to have him on stage, the head of Getty Images, very smart guy. And he, you know, there's a lot of people that are using their imagery and how they use them and how they scrape them. Now, with imagery, it's a lot easier to pull copyright stuff, right, as they're using it. But with text...
it's much more difficult to—it's much more easy to shoplift, essentially, than it is with a photograph. That's an exact right term. He had some really smart thoughts about it. But text is harder to do—the lawsuits are harder, the copyright is harder than it is with imagery or videos. But what we're all looking for every morning or when we go to media is,
It's very difficult to differentiate on actual news. I mean, occasionally a reporter risks something or has a source and is able to get news before anybody else. That is really rare. That's less than probably one basis point, one one-thousandth of the content you read is original reporting. What you're looking for is voice. You want stuff that has a view and a voice. Like, I like the voice of Reuters. I like the voice of The Economist.
And you can imagine fairly soon, will you be able to say, okay, chat GPT 4.1 or whatever they're going to call it. Give me a rundown of today's business news and the voice of Reuters. And guess what? It'll be nearly identical and you won't have to go to Reuters. And the scary thing is, is I used to think that, okay, the opportunity was for these guys to band together under like a badass big thinker, like Barry Diller and create a consortium that charges them huge licensing fees.
to be the fodder or the grist for their LLMs, and that's a future where they might get to participate. And then I read this frightening article saying that the new LLMs are creating content for the LLMs to crawl.
And I thought, they're not even going to need the original content. These LLMs are creating their own vogue and own travel and leisure and own economist content for the other LLMs to satisfy or sate their insatiable appetite. But it is definitely...
It feels like the traditional media companies are a little bit on the wrong side of this. Yeah, so how do people find things? But anyway, it's a really interesting time. And I got to tell you, they're making... Look, let me just make one more comment and move on to the next thing. Because they're a monopoly, and they are, there has been no innovation in search because they run it. No one else. They've tried all these different people. As you know, you invested in one of the attempts. Yeah.
There's all kinds of attempts to do it, but DuckDuckGo is very tiny. They've got the deal wrapped up with Apple, essentially, but paying them an enormous amount of money. There's been no innovation in search. It really hasn't. This is that, but at their pace and to their advantage. So it's even worse that they're a monopoly now. The government really needs to step in here around this monopolistic position they have.
In any case, it's really an interesting time. And media companies have to, you know, once again, guess what? They're coming for you. I said that at the Truth Tellers Conference. I said they were rapacious. You were in the Truth Tellers. I did. I told the truth. Here's my truth. They were rapacious information thieves before, and they are still rapacious information thieves, except better. They're better at it. I had a better quote. I said, it's not working as well as it used to. I said at the Big Dick Conference. Oh, my God.
You would not be invited to that conference either. That's good. Not that I've seen it, but. What a feeling. I'm sorry, go ahead. Don't do that. Just come in. They're going to rip your limb from fucking limb. You keep talking about Jennifer Beals. She's my friend. I've never met her. What? I've never met her. You were not invited to lunch. I meet all your other PBS friends that are hanging out in D.C. that aren't that cool. I never meet Jennifer Beals. You never will.
And you never fucking... You steal all my cool friends and you hide your cool friends from me. You never will from any of my friends like that. And you're never meeting Gretchen Whitmer now, obviously. She'd tear you in for men. Governor Whitmer? Yeah, Gretchen Whitmer. I'm a big fan of Governor Whitmer. She would beat the living hell out of you and she'd be wearing pink doing it. I think that's repackaged violence. Whenever you talk about women, you say how they would physically assault me.
I'm talking about mentally, but okay, fine. I won't do it. I'm so sorry you're so sensitive. I was being cynical. I'm fine with you threatening me with these. Yeah. I don't mind. I'm trying. You're so woke, Scott. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about the newly announced presidential debates. I'm weirdly excited about it. And take the listener mail question about setting kids up financially for the future, which I think Professor Gallo answered, considering he has a best-selling book on the topic. Thank you.
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Scott, we're back with our second big story. President Biden and former President Trump have agreed to face off in the debate stage at least twice before the election. CNN will host the first debate on June 27th. That's pretty soon. ABC will host the second debate on September 10th. There may be a third debate on Fox. We'll see. There'll be no audience for the CNN debate. They agreed to that, which was part of the Biden campaign's term. So no screaming and clapping and all that stuff.
Biden's team also said the president would only debate one-on-one, meaning no RFK Jr., and asked the microphones will get automatically cut off when the speaker's time is up. It's just sort of, he's trying to Donald Trump proof it, but good luck with that. Jake Tapper and Dana Bash are going to be doing the CNN debate, the first one.
Thoughts? We're not political people, but let's talk about why these are important or not important. Are they just for the media? The Trump campaign has posed, as I said, additional debates. Biden is just two, but maybe if he does well, he'll say yes. Mitt Romney likened these debates to watching two old guys on the Muppets.
I love Mitt Romney these days. Two old guys, what? On the Muppets. I just love Mitt Romney. He's like, he was making fun of the stupid senators, the stupid legislators up at the Trump porn trial wearing the same outfits, like going up there doing PR for him. He was like, they're pathetic. And Mitt Romney's over everybody at this point. But what do we think about all the things, the way it's set up, the expectations, et cetera? And this is before the conventions, by the way.
Look, I think they're important. Vice President Harris is vice president because of a debate. It gives what you hope for, and you do get them, is when it's real time and there's antagonism and there's a moderator doing a good job, you get these unscripted moments to give you insight into the candidate.
And so I think they're important. Unfortunately, I wanted a couple of things. I like the mic thing. I think it's impossible to have a reasonable debate if someone just keeps interrupting. And by the way, Al Gore did this in his debate with George W. Bush. He kept making all these disgusted chortle sounds and it ended up.
It ended up hurting him, but it just created a distraction for what is an important topic. I love the fact they're cutting the mic so they can't hear Trump go, "Wrong." I mean, all that bullshit, right?
I think they should also, what I would love to see is an overlay, and someone will do this on YouTube, where they have something resembling an impartial group of people from Reuters or the BBC or whatever it is, and Fox, whoever, bring in a bunch of people who real-time fact check and then have a temperature meter as a chyron at the bottom going, this is accurate. What he just said is sort of interpreted, you know, maybe like red, yellow, green, right? Yeah.
Because I think it's important, people, because you said something really interesting about when we were talking about Bobby Kennedy. He's impossible to interview because, one, I find he softens previous things he said. He said, well, I don't remember saying that. And if I had been allowed to finish my statement, he said this a few times, I would have said the following. Well, you didn't.
And then he will throw out a bunch of facts that you can't fact check. Not facts. He'll throw out a bunch of alternative facts that you can't fact check real time. So I would love some sort of real time fact checking. But yeah, they're important. As excited as you are about this, I am nervous, Cara. I think that I don't think Biden, I think Biden is a good man. I think he has really good judgment. I think he surrounds himself with good people. I don't.
I think for a few reasons, mostly because he's getting older. I just don't think he's very good on his feet. I don't think so. I think he's been very sharp. I've been watching a lot of his appearances. I hope you're right. They're quite good. Let me just say, Trump, I'm a little worried for Trump because he's cognitively, he keeps missing a word. He's definitely gotten a little...
Crazier. I think crazy. The problem, I think, for Biden is that he's in court, even though he does these dumb stand-ups at the end of the day, and then he has his little, you know, trumpets behind him with their same ties. I'm thinking wearing that outfit like on Chris Wallace this weekend. Even though he has all that, he seems crazier. And I think it's negative for Biden for him to be in these trials because he's not out there being crazy. Because every time he does an appearance, one of these rallies where he feels safe,
He mangles words. He says crazy things. In a debate, he could... Remember when he went off the rails in that one debate with Biden a couple of years ago?
He went off the rails on something. It wasn't a good debate for him. He has not won debates with Biden, I would say, at all. And that's an interesting thing because I think Biden just has to poke at him and make him say crazy things, like a lot of crazy things, like let's jail pregnant ladies or... And he could do it. He could go there and say these things. Biden has controlled Trump. You know, he complimented Hannibal Lecter at a New Jersey rally. I mean...
And it doesn't get out enough. And I think this is going to have a huge, it's going to be a huge audience. It will. And then it'll be, you know, chawed over on social media and everywhere else. And one of the things is, should RFK Jr. be included? I don't think so. I think these are the two guys. But CNN said the debate would be open to any candidate who gets 15% in four qualifying national polls and meets certain ballot access standards. I think they're just trying to keep them out, right? And of course, RFK Jr.'s whining away about it.
I don't think he needs to be there. That would be something I'd worry about for both of them with him there. That'd be a distraction. And unfortunately, it looks like, I looked at the data from the last election and basically, the polling right now is showing that it looks like Bobby's pulling more from Biden, which I hate to hear. But anyways, where I would add some nuance to your comments about the debate is I don't think who wins the debate is based on what they say. I think it's how they say it.
People don't really listen to the issues. They don't listen to what's actually false or not false. They look at someone and say, is he or she a leader? And I worry in this format that despite the bluster and the weirdness and how ridiculous and how it'll just be a non sequitur stream of lies,
I worry that Biden is going to come across as very feeble and very not fleet of foot and that people and that what should he do? Because he did a pretty good job at the State of the Union is very sassy and fast, I thought. And there was a lot of reacting there. There was a public place. What do you what do you suggest? If I were prepping marketing, there's there's a there's a general and I learned this finally after going on TV for about 10 years. And I finally learned and I hate to say this.
But don't answer the question asked. Answer the question you want to answer. Yeah, that's a classic, yeah. I would sequester President Biden to Camp David with some of the brightest people from Pod Save America, those guys who were prepping Obama. George Conway probably would be good. And I would have 16 canned answers and say, anything along the lines of this, this is answer four.
And the right intonation, the right inflection, the right indignation, the right set of facts. And I would set him up like a fucking robot. Press here. Oh, he's talking. Any question about Israel, if it's a question that has anything to do with Rapha, answer 11. I would just make it such that he didn't really need to think.
Because I don't think the bottom line is debates do not play well to 81 year olds, nor to a 77 year old. And he wants to come across as statesmanlike, reasonable, calm and not not flustered, not not trying to react to the unpredictable, which is what Trump is. He needs to have the debate before he has the debate.
And I would just pre-program everything with a series of talking points. And I know that sounds unromantic, but that's what I would do if I were on some stuff. The only thing from a visual point of view is that Trump is, of course, as usual, dropping the standards so low for Biden. Oh, he's dead Biden, this and that, which they did for that State of the Union.
He's stupidly low-barring it for Biden. He's never going to be good. He's not good at debates. If he's even marginally interesting, I think he wins that in that regard because the Republicans keep hammering on his age when Trump himself has these issues. And so...
I think Trump is more vulnerable if he seems out of it. He messes up words. I know words don't matter, but when someone stumbles in words, you do notice that. You don't see Biden doing that. Yeah, fine. If they want to create incredibly low expectations, you're right. That's dumb. But no matter what, no matter where Jake or Donna go, Biden has to—and he needs to be coached here—
anything resembling the economy, any chance at all, even if it's not resembling. Oh, you're talking about inflation? Did I hear you say inflation? We have the lowest inflation of any G7 country while concurrently having the strongest growth, which according to a lot of economists is
is nearly impossible. Oh, you're talking about fairy tales. He's a liar. Let me give you another fairy tale. We have the Goldilocks economy here. No one thought we could. There are a series of talking points that regardless of where this debate goes, he has to get out because there is the thing that's so frustrating about this administration is we have so much. They have so much to stand on and they're not doing it. They're not getting this message out.
Oh, you want to complain about Israel? One of us immediately, one of us didn't sit around and make blustery, stupid statements. One of us deployed two carrier strike forces and 2,400 Marines within 24 hours because I know what the fuck to do here. And I've done it before. And I was on the phone with all these people who I've had 30-year relationships with. Would you say...
Would you make little reference? They've been doing it in the social media, which is somewhat funny, little references to court. Like I think the Jimmy Kimmel thing when he said, you know, it's past your prison time and how's court going? Sleepy Trump or Don Snorleone or Teddy Dozevelt. Would you do any of those to tweak him? Because he's easily tweaked Donald Trump. Probably not. I think that the key to any brand is differentiation.
I think a lot of that happens on its own by the media. I think his position needs to be, look, I'm not going to tickle your censors.
I'm here to be the grownup in the room. I'm going to let Jimmy Kimmel and Jon Stewart do that. I'm here because I'm your president. That means because he wants to establish differentiation, Trump will take a bunch of cheap shots that tickle the sensors of Fox and conservative viewers who he wants as moderates. He wants to show that I'm an adult, I'm your president. I think Biden should look in the camera and say, do you have daughters?
Do you have daughters? And just pause. And everyone will know what he's talking about. He doesn't need to call him a rapist. He just needs to look in the camera and say, America, do you have daughters? I do. I think he should do a series of things like that. But I think he should acquit himself as the president. That's a good one.
He should say, here, I'll edit a little bit. Do you have daughters? I do. And I'm worried for her. Like with this guy. This guy scares me. Doesn't even need to go there. Do you have daughters? And then pause. Yeah. One of the most powerful things, and I didn't learn this until I was older, in teaching and communications, is the pregnant, purposeful pause. Mm-hmm.
Interesting. And let people fill the space. I'm going to steal that idea from you. I'm going to steal that idea. That's a really good idea. They should invite us to Camp David and we'll like wander around and they get arrested. There you go. Okay, Scott, let's pivot. We're truth tellers. We're truth tellers. We are. Let's pivot to a listener question.
The question comes from Vanessa via email. I'll read it. Hello, Cara and Scott. Thank you, Vanessa. All's right with the world that cares first. My question is regarding a favorite subject of Pivot, our kids. My son is starting high school next fall and my daughter is starting middle school. It is hitting me hard that I have only a few years left with them under my roof. Oh, I know that. That's why I had more kids, Vanessa.
Vanessa. Here's my question. What recommendations do you have to set your kids up financially for their futures? Anything that backfired? Anything you wished you had done but didn't? Looking forward to hearing your stories. All the best, Vanessa. I'm going to let Scott take most of this one, but I have to say I have had long conversations recently with both Louie and Alex about finances and talking about how to mortgages and credit and stuff like that. And I started it pretty early, but not early enough. So it
The regret I have was not getting them to understand how things work much quicker and early on and then teaching them, you know, having maybe giving them some money for stock or different various and different things. So I would have done it earlier that otherwise I would spend a lot of time right now talking about their financial futures. Scott, you take this one.
Well, there's a few things. Exactly what you said, financial literacy and exposure to the markets really early. I think that I got wealthy starting and selling companies. I got very wealthy investing in stocks. And when I was 13, I met a stockbroker and I bought my first stock, 14 shares of Columbia Pictures. And every day for two years, three years in junior high school, I used to go to the phone booth, put 20 cents in and call Cy Cerro at Dean Winter Banking.
Reynolds and we would talk about my stock's movements that day and he'd give me like a 10-minute lesson in the markets. I have been buying stocks since 13. Just the recognition of how powerful the markets are and developing an investing muscle,
is so powerful. So financial literacy and appreciation and a fondness and an affection for the markets. And it sounds... And the other thing is, what I've discovered in some of the research around what separates people who are really wealthy from those who are just wealthy is it's a whole person project. And it's not easy, but raising kids who...
are inclined to do small favors and try and acquire allies along the way. There's a myth that rich people are mean people stepping over others. That's not true at all. Really wealthy people tend to be ones who are put in rooms of opportunities, even when they're physically not there. So to the extent you can show your son or your daughter how powerful it is to make small gestures of kindness and generosity to people, and you may only get
assume 80 percent of them never remember you, but it's so powerful to have allies fighting for you when you're not in the room and you always want to have that. Every opportunity you have to be kind or do a solid for someone, even as a young person, you should take that opportunity. That's an investment in your own future. Then something I've been thinking a lot about is why do we send our kids to private school? We send them to private school,
Because we hope that they'll have a greater shot at success. Well, what do we mean by success? Well, such that in a capitalist world, they have more opportunities professionally, most likely. Well, why do you want them to have professional success? Such that they can have the economic security to have children, the lack of economic anxiety, maybe buy a house. So here's an idea. Scott wanted to send his kids to First Presbyterian or Grace Church when they were young.
One and four, respectively. And I did the math. It was going to cost $62,000 a year for each of them. And I bet somewhere between a half and two thirds of people who send their kids to these private schools are well off. But it is a strain. If you're going to spend $124,000 a year or $250,000 in pre-tax income to send your kids to private school in New York...
I don't care how much money you're making unless you're crazy wealthy. It is a little bit of an economic strain. It does create additional economic anxiety. So here's an idea. There are studies showing now that the best place to send your kid to school is the one that's closest to your home. And then you reinvest that additional time and commuting in sleep and
in homework and in play. And then if you have the discipline to take that $62,000 a year from the age of four to 18 and invested in a low-cost index fund, let's assume, Tara, you were wrong and you should have sent them to a private school and they don't do as well professionally. And at the age of 35, they're not as economically ahead as they should have been had you sent them to that great private school. Well, guess what? You know what solves that problem?
The $5.4 million you will have if you had put that tuition money in SPY and a low-cost index fund and then never touched it. And people are going to start to do the math here and realize that private schools and schools like NYU, well, okay, if money's no object, let's send them there. If they get scholarships, great. If not...
We're going to figure out a lower cost way. We're going to send them to junior college for two years, or we're going to send them to the public school instead of Grace Church. And we are going to be disciplined and put that money away. And in case things don't work out, they're going to have millions of dollars to ease the pain. I'm going to interject. Clara Jocast is about to go to public school in September. That was exactly, I did all the math. I did all this stuff. I'm putting away money for her.
the money I might have spent, not as much of it. It was ridiculous prices, ridiculous. And I was like, where's my value? If the school is walking distance from our house, I'm going to spend a lot of time at the school, like commit myself to helping. It's actually, they're quite good. The DC elementary schools are quite good.
And I also feel like having a public commitment to that is important because why not make it better? But away from all the public commitment of I am not just cosplaying, oh, let's go to public school.
I think it's an economic choice. Like, this is a ridiculous amount of money I spent on my boys for, I didn't, my ex-wife really wanted them to go to private school. And she had the means because she worked at Google. And I was dragged along and I didn't make as much money as she did. And it was, it was not great. I was like, I looked at it and I was like, that was a waste of my fucking money. I think you're 100% right on that. And that's exactly what I'm doing with my second two kids.
And there's also, there's something to, I wanted to go to private school. I went to Emerson Junior High School in LA and it was the year they'd started doing busing and integration. And it should be a hallmark film about, oh, it was great. It wasn't. It was a violent place. We hated each other. That's the bad news. The good news is by the time we got to high school, we were all getting along.
And my friends, all my friends went to this Tony private school called Windward. And I think they were better off in the short run. But in the long run, I think I got a lot of empathy. I developed a lot of skills. And I think there's something to be said to having to make your way in a public school and trying to stand out in a larger class. And I'm not suggesting it's for everyone. And if you have the resources, then sure, it's a great move. But what you also got to fess up to as an adult
is what are you really spending this money for and why? And when I really do an audit of my own self, the reason I wanted my kids to go to Grace Church was so I could tell other parents that my kids were going to Grace. And that's just the wrong way to select a school. That's correct. I think a lot of this is signaling for the parents. And if you do the math, guess what?
Just in case public school is the wrong decision, you're going to have millions of dollars if you're disciplined about putting that money somewhere else. I literally, I was at a parent's thing and a lot of the kids, all the kids, every single kid, she's in a private preschool because she didn't get into the pre-K. It's a lottery to get into the pre-K, but she's finally gotten in and the public one. And all these parents are saying to private school and they're like, we're the only family doing public school. And I was at an event
And they were like, oh, that's interesting. I said, yeah, she's going to have millions and millions of dollars later that I'm going to put aside for her. And your kids won't. And they're not that rich. I was like, oh, oh. And I said, yeah, that's how it's going to go. I mean, we talk about kids not being able to do the math. Parents aren't doing the math. They aren't. I just was like, I'm going to just hand her the money. She can go to medical school. She can do whatever she wants, buy a house.
I'm just going to say it's a forced savings plan as much as I can put away for her. And, you know, in different ways that are taxed, you know. My dad tried to do like a low rent version of that. He took me to Annapolis. He wanted me to join the Navy because he didn't want to pay for my college. And he said if I went to Annapolis versus UCLA, he'd buy me a Trans Am. Literally, that was the exact word. I'll buy a brand new Trans Am with a T-top. And I put my hairbrush on, you know, the dash. Anyways.
And then I walked down Hillgard, I think it's called. Was it Hillgard or Strasburg? During Sorority Rush. And I'm like, oh, my God, I am so going to UCLA. I know. I can't see you in the army. It was something out of a Cinemax film. An officer and a non-gentleman. An officer and a non- Anyway. Oh, Jesus. Yeah. Go Bruins. Oh, my God. Go Bruins. It's time for me to lose my virginity at 19. Oh, God.
Oh, God, you and the Navy. That would have been a disaster. Oh, I would have been kicked out. I wouldn't have made it. You wouldn't look good in the outfits. You wouldn't look good in the outfits. I wouldn't have made it. Yeah, you still would have looked good in the whites. I appreciate that. So anyway, Vanessa, thank you. That's a really good, yes, early, often, and give them, go to private, public school. If you've got a question of your own and you like answered, send it our way. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for Predictions.
Okay, Scott, I'm going to have you do a prediction, but I'm going to make one prediction because I'm going to take my moment. Louis Swisher turned 22 this week, and he is going to have a wonderful future. Happy birthday, Louis. That's nice. Yeah. That's your prediction? Your kid's going to have a wonderful future? He just is. I can feel it. Is he finishing up his junior year at NYU? Yes. He's coming back from Argentina this weekend. As we talk about what a ripoff it is. I know that. I get it. I agree with you.
Not for Alex. And I teach there. Not you, Mish, because that kid is going to be a billionaire. Alex is money well spent. Michigan's a great, Michigan's an outstanding institution. Louis thought about not going to school a little bit. And I think he's really, it's teaching him to think. And I think it'll help him in that regard. Like, I find it's useful right now in a lot of ways for him. I don't think it's money not well spent. But Alex says, I definitely think it's well spent. He's taking calculus this summer.
and physics and all those important things. Anyway, prediction please. He's a smart one. Well, my prediction is a story that I think is the most underreported story. My prediction is it's going to get a lot more attention. From 2001 to 2021, US higher education institutions received $13 billion in funding from foreign sources. We talked a little bit about this. Do you know where 40 percent of that foreign funding has come from?
Qatar has given $4.7 billion to U.S. organizations. Educational, like colleges, stuff like that. Colleges, Cornell, University of, you know, the Aggies. And if you look, you know, it's also Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood funding of higher education is going to get a lot more scrutiny because there is a statistically significant correlation between
between these protests and the amount of funding these universities have got from Qatar, this is going to be a much bigger story as we do forensics around what has happened at universities and as Americans' parents look at what's going on in universities and quite frankly, just don't get it, just can't understand how these kids have come to these conclusions. You're going to find that where the protests have been most heated and quite frankly, most confusing and quite frankly, most irrational,
We're going to find that for the last 20 years, this university has been cashing the checks of Qatar. And this is, in my opinion, around all of this, you know, this is the biggest story in America for the last few weeks has been campus protests. The next shoe to drop here is where does this money come from? And this is a lot more coordinated, a lot more funded. Americans, one of our real soft tissue is that we're much easier to fool than convince we've been fooled.
And I think there's going to be a lot of scrutiny and backlash. Nothing's for free. Is it Qatar or Qatar? Is it Qatar? I think it's Qatar. I call it Qatar, but Qatar, Qatar, Qataris, Qatar. By the way, I went there and I loved it. I went for World Cup. And one of the wonderful things I love about living in London is I've been exposed to a lot of wonderful people in the Gulf.
But when the whores at our U.S. universities take $5 billion, nothing's for free. Yeah. Nothing's for free. For years, many things have been secretly funded by the right, too, by the way. You know, all these, like the people who make the Ulanes and all these different people and Leonard Leo, they're all funded to get judges on things. So there's always...
There's always a, you know, Chris Ruffo, they're all coordinated campaigns. They did it with gay issues. They did it like creating false anger and things like that. So it's common for there to be these things. I think the troubling thing you're pointing out is that this is an explicitly foreign country which has interests in getting what it needs out of it, is your point.
Well, you're right. So a lot of these homophobic propositions in California, it ends up they were being funded by very extreme, extreme swings of Mormon entities in Utah. And it's important to point that out. But there's going to be my prediction is there's going to be a very robust conversation about this because 4.7 of the 40 comes from a nation of 2.3 million people. Well, you just think they're just fascinated with Wolverine football.
Yes. I mean, wake the fuck up, people. What do you think is going on here? Yeah, I would agree. Okay. That's a really interesting and a very offbeat one. I like it. I like it. We'll see. We'll see what happens. I'm sure we'll get a lot of letters. I hate letters for that one. Anyway, we'll see if we will. Anyway, but it's a very good point. What do they want for the money? What do they want for the money?
What does anyone want when they do secret money donations and all that stuff? That's right. There's an agenda there. Something. Absolutely. Okay, Scott, that's the show from Londinium, as they used to say on the old Batman show. We'll be back on Tuesday with more Pivot. I'm getting on a plane back to D.C. And then going up, you know what I'm doing this weekend? What are you doing this weekend? I didn't tell you over breakfast. I'm going to see Liberty play. It's a big Lesba fest, but they're playing Fever. So I'll see Caitlin Clark play, I believe, in New York. Oh, okay.
The women's basketball, WNBA. So you're going to a play. I'm sorry. I'm going to a play. I thought you were going to a play called Liberty. You're going to see the WNBA. Nobody knows what the WNBA is. Nobody cares. Yes, they do. Caitlin Clark. It's Caitlin fucking Clark. Everybody knows who she is. Okay. She's a phenomena. So I'm going to see her play. It's like when Pele joined the Cosmos. No one cared. Yeah, in any case. I mean, best of luck to her. I am going to the Lesbos Fest. It's inspiring. It's inspiring.
It's inspiring. Besides meeting Louis Swisher, who's coming back from Argentina after a year, this is such an exciting weekend. I'm going to see Caitlin Clark and then my friend Tim Daly, who is in a play. I'm going to see that. But I'm excited to see WNBA. Don't rain on my lesbian pride. Let me just help you out. Let me just cosplay and announce her at halftime. Well, in an exciting game, the score is now 13 to 11, and Caitlin Clark is a star, and that's why she makes $9,000 a year, folks. And I want to say...
A big shout out to the dozens and dozens of people watching the WNBA. No, it's packed.
It is packed. Is it? Is it? Yes. The lesbians were liking you, and now they're not liking you, just so you know. I could feel a movement. Yeah, but they want to chase me up a mountain and eat me. That's my plan. It's all my strategy. There's so many straight women in there. Anyway, I will see you soon. I will see you in a few weeks in Congress. You're very uncomfortable with this conversation. You're trying to thread a needle here by being kind to me. I'm glad we had breakfast this morning. It's great to be in your town. It's very lovely. It's great to have you.
And I will see you in a couple weeks where I'm going to be charging that 35 euro coffee to you at the Hotel Decap. I'm very excited. It's on me. It is absolutely on you. 100%. And we'll pull up to Meta Beach and the Zodiac. Zodiac. We're doing that. Get ready, Mark Zuckerberg. We're coming to your party. Anyway, Scott, read us out. Today's show was produced by Larry Naiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin.
Ernie Andertot engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Brose and Neil Siverio. Nishat Kirwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business care. Great to see you. Safe travels.
