Scott Galloway · 20:09
To say, sorry. We're taking this down. Or Sure. Is it man... Is it the man in the mirror? Have I crossed from being provocative to incendiary? Am I walking into a room that's knee deep in gasoline and passing out lighters?
Kara Swisher · 20:20
Ah, well, that's a big question, Scott. I think it's all your fault, actually. No. I don't. Here's the deal. I think I think Fox News has done more to bring this culture and country down than any media organization. I think in history, we will look at this as, you know, Rupert Murdoch has really, done damage to this... The soul of this country by by by showing... By by by inflaming people and and bringing out our worst tendencies. I I do... I believe that. It's one of the reasons I don't work for him. I never will work for him. And so I think that's that's that's that's sort of table stakes as far as I'm concerned. In this case, they put it up on YouTube, which is they should do. They have a network. That's what networks do. So I don't think there's anything wrong with them doing that, nor should... Do I think they should take it down. I think that's not... Like, you didn't do anything crazy. You just you just had a segment. Right?
Scott Galloway · 21:04
Mhmm.
Kara Swisher · 21:04
So so I don't think there's anything wrong with putting it I think YouTube's... What happened to you on YouTube, it's so common on YouTube. It's crazy. It's every every... They have not been able to get their hands around these comments. Part of me, Susan Wujitski, who runs YouTube, I know very well. I bugged her about this like crazy. When I used to search... At one point, I searched ADL, which is anti defamation league, and the first 20 videos were anti Semitic. Like... And over at Google, when you search, it's a clean search. Google searches cleanly. Like, you you you view ADL and you get ADL stuff. You know? And so I think it's... And I'm... And I always joke with her. I'm like, you know, you're owned by this this search company that was started in your garage. You might wanna get your search better. And she... She's trying very hard, but it's... I think they they have to do something about the comments because they are vile. And in... If you put up, like, a, I don't know, just a squirrel video, you get horrible comments. It's it's a real it's a real problem there. It's the the inability to to monitor that. So I I blame YouTube the most. From your point of view, no. I think I think you're saying things that are very strong and having opinions. And in the in the old days, which was, like, two weeks ago, you you could say things like that and have a civil discussion about it.
Scott Galloway · 22:12
Because I
Kara Swisher · 22:13
don't think you were saying anything that wasn't unusual. Like, people... I wrote that in the Times this week. You saw my piece. I was angry Kara. You know? We're talking about the blame that we need to put on these companies, or it's the shame, really, in in... Because they do not... They've weaponized everything. They've amplified everything, and they're not doing anything to fix it. And they created... They designed these systems so that the hate is is easily facilitated while the good gets zoned out. And so, you know, it's a bigger bigger issue, but it's a combination, I think, of of of of plat... Cable platforms, especially Fox. And, you know, I don't wanna leave the others out of it, but Fox is really way down that road. And then, and then what... How they handle comments and everything else on these social platforms like YouTube, like Twitter, and everything else. And, you know, I... Do you watch Fox regularly? Do you watch it, Riley?
Scott Galloway · 23:05
No. I I don't. I mean, only when I'm on it because I'm a narcissist, but I don't Right. Of course. You know, I don't watch a whole lot of business television, to be honest.
Kara Swisher · 23:12
Alright. Well, one year... One time last year, I... It was a snowstorm in New York, and I was at my mom's apartment. So I stuck in the apartment for, like, twenty four hours, essentially. And my mom watches Fox News on fast repeat all all day long. It goes on. Yep. And literally, by hour twelve, I was homicidal, like, listening to it. It was just... And I wasn't even listening. I was like, who do I hate? Like, you know what I mean? Like, it was really... You know? And I think the say... The same things that happen within... People should... Of course, should look in the mirror and blame themselves, but this stuff is designed to addict you, to inflame you. The the way it is designed is is to facilitate virality and engagement.
Scott Galloway · 23:48
And Are we talking about Facebook, Twitter, or Fox?
Kara Swisher · 23:51
All of them. All of them. I think they all have the similar things. I think they they go in lock step with each other, and I think that's the problem is that we've got cable news. We've got a president who who uses both of these things. If you think about it, he's great on Fox, and he's great on Twitter. Right? You know what I mean? Mhmm. And then we have these platforms that have not done anything responsible that a responsible media company should do. So therefore, that's my rant.
Scott Galloway · 24:12
There's no there's no doubt that we like to think we like to think that connecting the world is a good thing. But the reality is the species is pretty tribal. The problem is when you connect them and let them enter into these hermetically sealed cohorts where the underlying engine of the fuel tries to figure out if you lean left or right and then push you further and further left or further and further right such that you can begin hating each other. And the reality is rage is incredibly powerful to increase engagement clicks in Nissan apps. Sure.
Kara Swisher · 24:41
If the pillars, as Nicole Wong talked about, are engagement, virality, and speed, that's what you're gonna get. If you change it to accuracy, context, and other things, it changes. You can you can help people be better people. You can always help people be... You know, don't act like beasts, essentially. And so, you know, I don't know. Like, the the fork helped us do that. Like, there's all kinds of tools that allow people to be better people. And so, you know, this stuff is hard to resist. And and there's been a lot of, like, really good articles about how hard this is to resist, how hard it is not to have to pull away from it. Yeah. And when you're... When you have your leaders, like, pushing it out all the time, and it just is... It's super hard not to feel sick to your stomach almost consistently. And that's what they want. They want us to be fearful, hateful, and hungry so that we eat sugar. You know what I mean? Like, literally is like... I hate to sound
Scott Galloway · 25:31
like Michael Mueller here. Business model.
Kara Swisher · 25:33
It's a great business model.
Scott Galloway · 25:34
Fox tapped into it. Now I would argue MSNBC, which I watch, but they're they're they're envious of Fox's business model, and they say pretty... I don't wanna call them incendiary, but provocative things.
Kara Swisher · 25:45
They are. They are. They were doing the Hillary thing over and over. And I was... I kept tweeting, hey. That's not what she said. And I I work for MSNBC. Some... I mean, I have a conduct with them to do longer specials. But I was like... A lot of their... Some of their common... Their people, their correspondents, I was like, that's not what happened, people. And it was still... You know, again, it's just just in order to create, I don't know, create constant engagement in a way that's not
Scott Galloway · 26:08
So you know how I think you solved the YouTube problem? I think it's super easy. I think you shut it down for a week. I think the Senate Intelligence Committee and a senator says a bill that this platform is a national security risk. Well, okay. Hold on. It's national security risk. Close it down for five days. They'll figure it out. They'll figure it out.
Kara Swisher · 26:25
I don't know. I always thought Facebook... That would have been a great grand... I love grand gestures, and I thought it would have been a grand gesture on Facebook's part to shut it down for a week after Cambridge Analytica. That would've been something else.
Scott Galloway · 26:34
We need to figure this out.
Kara Swisher · 26:36
Any wins this week, Scott? And then we gotta get to predictions. We gotta get out of here.
Scott Galloway · 26:39
So you're gonna you're gonna make fun of me, but my win of the week is love as expressed by Sandra Day O'Connor. And she's catalyzed a really interesting conversation around the difference between old and young love. Young love is mostly you love someone else to get something in return, and Sandra Day O'Connor was very open about her husband who's suffering from dementia, and one day she showed up, and he was with another woman holding her hand and in And love with she talked very openly about old love is your capacity to just care for someone else and be concerned with their happiness. And for a female Supreme Court justice later in stage of her life talking about just an incredibly moving and important discussion about what it means to really love someone. It was an inspiring article and
Kara Swisher · 27:29
Oh, gosh.
Scott Galloway · 27:29
Isn't that nice?
Kara Swisher · 27:30
What are doing?
Scott Galloway · 27:31
You're crazy. I'm a delicate little flower, but it's a wonderful it's a wonderful
Kara Swisher · 27:36
They always like Sandy Day.
Scott Galloway · 27:38
And you know, you have kids. I've decided. I'm segmenting love. I'm in market. There's young love or there's the love you get when you're a kid when you're just get unconditional love from your caregivers and grandparents. There's transactional love when you're adult where you want other love back or sex or intimacy or companionship. And then there's kind of this complete eternal love where you just decide to give in to caring for someone else. My god. And I just... I've okay. Just I've just decided that this win, this woman bringing up eternal love and showing
Kara Swisher · 28:07
her worthless...... Lunch in a minute. That's my next lunch.
Scott Galloway · 28:10
Yeah. I'm not even I'm not even... I... You know, I'm not even high today, Kara. I didn't even drink today. So Alright. Love it. New York Times article. I'm not gonna talk about anything. Old
Kara Swisher · 28:19
Alright. Old love. Also, there was really good New York Times.
Scott Galloway · 28:22
Top that, Kara.
Kara Swisher · 28:23
Maggie Haberman.
Scott Galloway · 28:24
Top
Kara Swisher · 28:24
that. Maggie Haberman's piece with Dan... With Barbara Streisand talking about pancakes and Trump. I just... I love Maggie Haberman. She's a friend of mine, and she wrote a fantastic piece about Barbara Streisand and her new album, which is an anti Trump album, essentially. And it was just literally... There's this whole thing about healthy pancakes at the end that I just wanted to, like... It was chef's kiss of a piece. That's what I would say.
Scott Galloway · 28:45
Do you know Barbara Streisand? She
Kara Swisher · 28:47
called me once years ago to talk about Internet stocks out of the blue. I thought it was my mother playing a joke on me, but it was, in fact, Barbara Streisand.
Scott Galloway · 28:53
Probably the best words of the twentieth century.
— Predictions segment begins —
Kara Swisher · 28:57
Ugh. Like butter. Anyway I mean, just Butter is delicious on pancakes, by the way. Anyway, so, predictions. Let's do predictions, then we gotta go. Scott, I got things to do. I gotta take my staff out to lunch and etcetera, etcetera. What what predictions? Give me your predictions. The elections are coming. Then we will... When we come back, we will know the the end of the story.
Scott Galloway · 29:16
So I just couldn't have been more wrong around anything political for... So I'm saying away from that. 2020, I've decided... I'm sorry. 2019, maybe by the end of twenty twenty, Amazon is gonna prophylactically spin AWS, which will be one of the 10 most valuable companies on the IPO on
Kara Swisher · 29:31
this one. Get the guy who runs it. It's really Andy Jassy. He's really interesting. I like him a lot. That's interesting. That's probably exactly what's gonna happen. I like that idea. Because then they're gonna they're gonna do it so they don't get it done to them. Right? That will cause
Scott Galloway · 29:43
a ahead. He's smarter than us. And now I've if look at the spin... By the way, think about what genius move this is, Carrot, because how do you play the cloud right now? Now that RedHot's taken off the table, the only way to play is the to climb But through a software hold on. That do you is play hot. You're diverted by
Kara Swisher · 30:01
It's called it RedHot. Back
Scott Galloway · 30:02
to my original question. If you're an investor, how do you Mhmm. Play the cloud? What's a pure play cloud company right now to invest in? That's true. There is no.
Kara Swisher · 30:08
Amazon, that's that's actually... Scott, that's brilliant. It's another brilliant
Scott Galloway · 30:12
Amazon the insight. Fastest, most profitable, interesting part of technology right now, and there's no way to play it. A pure play cloud company? Much less the market leader? Oh my gosh. You want to talk about a multiple of revenues crazy valuation?
Kara Swisher · 30:26
Yeah. They're... Wow. Now circles around Google.
Scott Galloway · 30:29
Now they have Amazon Media Group to shuffle profits to subsidize their retail platform so they can put all 11,000,000 retail employees out of business. So they... It used to be AWS subsidizing the retail platform so they could dump retail the same way the Chinese dump steel into America, but, you know, we call it innovation, not dumping. Now they have
Kara Swisher · 30:45
AMG 1% of retail according to Amazon. Go ahead. That's their thing. Well, that's that's number of emails.
Scott Galloway · 30:50
They're 50% of ecommerce. But anyways, a third of cloud, 80% of wealth households, prime, you know, that could go on. I think I think I think Bezos is gonna spin AWS. Genius movie.
Kara Swisher · 31:00
I like this. Opinion. I thought... I think that's brilliant, and I think you're right. I think that's a 100% right. I think I will leave you with that prediction. I do not know what's gonna happen in the midterm elections. I'm not gonna even say because I don't wanna all be wrong. We will see.
Scott Galloway · 31:13
You're What's your prediction? I don't I don't get to be wrong in isolation.
Kara Swisher · 31:17
Amazon. I think you are correct about this Amazon thing. I don't have predict... You're the prediction guy. I don't make predictions. I just I just do crazy screens
Scott Galloway · 31:24
and rants. Coming up in a week. I don't know if we're gonna Yeah. What do you think is gonna happen? House senate... What do think gonna happen?
Kara Swisher · 31:30
No idea. But I would like Stacey Abrams to be the first African American woman to be the governor of Georgia.
Scott Galloway · 31:35
Impressive person.
Kara Swisher · 31:35
Done... Had her on the podcast. Ugh. I love her. She's amazing. Person. She's amazing and deserves it, and that guy who's running against her is just awful. So I... We'll see. We'll see what happens. It's gonna... It's a critical... As as Hillary said, it's the most critical election, the most consequential election happening in our history... In in our recent history. And I would agree with you. Well, it'll matter. If if he... If they don't win the house, it'll it'll be Trump crazy for a long time, and I think we'll all regret, especially as the stuff around that he's now saying about birthright and... Oh, it's just, like, goes on. You It just goes on.
Scott Galloway · 32:10
By the way,
Kara Swisher · 32:11
you know
Scott Galloway · 32:11
I have crush on him? I'm curious to see what you think is this Beto guy. My gosh.
Kara Swisher · 32:15
Beto. Yeah. Everyone has a crush on Beto.
Scott Galloway · 32:17
Oh my goodness. Supposedly even Ted Cruz has a crush on him and keeps pulling a bump on his tablet and staring at him. This guy, I think... By the way, you wanna talk about answer for me? I think he could be president even if he loses this election.
Kara Swisher · 32:29
And I just... I think we should just just vote him coolest dude, dude in chief kind
Scott Galloway · 32:34
of thing. That hair and even the cool. Even the way he sweats is kinda dreamy. He doesn't like have a his dreamy. Just literally just sweats like crazy.
Kara Swisher · 32:43
Scott. Scott, you have to
Scott Galloway · 32:44
This is getting weird, isn't it? Is this getting weird?
Kara Swisher · 32:46
So we're gonna pull out. Pull out, Scott. Okay. Beto Scott. I'm gonna get you a Beto t shirt.
Scott Galloway · 32:51
Where's the rip cord? Am so into this guy. I'm seriously thinking of
Kara Swisher · 32:55
finding taxes. Unseen. Okay.
Scott Galloway · 32:58
Oh my gosh.
Kara Swisher · 32:58
It's a great it's a great gay and gay love story that we're gonna move on from.
Scott Galloway · 33:03
Oh, that guy in the fiesta. Imagine it. Imagine it.
Kara Swisher · 33:07
Yes. He he has a Fiesta. He drives around... He drives in a similar... Like, it's like a Corolla. It's in that genre of cars. So you know what I mean? You don't like mine, but you like Beidos just because he's Beidos. Also his name, Beidos.
Scott Galloway · 33:19
I mean, them on the debate stage, it's like, I look at him, like, I'm so hot. And then I look at Cruz, and I'm like, no. I'm not. I mean, this... It's like... It's literally like the
Kara Swisher · 33:27
x and y of something. Of all sides to... I was in... I told you I was in Washington, and I was at a dinner party. And everyone's like, the only thing people can agree on is we all hate Ted Cruz. It was really... It was
Scott Galloway · 33:38
very funny. Win. That's what they say. That's what the polls are...
Kara Swisher · 33:41
They're saying. More Ted Cruz. What can we what can we do? Oh, well. This is our cross to bear. Anyway, Scott, did we miss anything? Think we're fine.
Scott Galloway · 33:50
We're done. You, me, Elon, Zach Braff, and South Beach, think about it. Think about it.
— Predictions segment ends —
Kara Swisher · 33:55
Fado has to be there. Sounds... It literally sounds like a bad, bad gay sitcom. Alright, Scott. Thanks. I'm looking forward to talking next week. By the way, if you have questions for us or stuff you'd like to hear us cover on the podcast, shoot us an email at pivot@voxmedia.com.
Scott Galloway · 34:11
Our show is produced by Rebecca Sinanis. Nishat Curwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Thanks also to Eric Johnson. And thanks for listening to Pivot from Vox Media. Join us next week for more breakdown on all things tech and business. And if you like what you heard, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening. This is Scott Galloway. I founded nine businesses. And eight of those nine businesses, a key partner has been QuickBooks, which enables the management team to focus on the levers of really driving value and also provides a dashboard to gain insight into the key operations and finances of company. QuickBooks has been a pillar of my entrepreneurial efforts. Check out quickbooks.com.
