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I'm Scott Callaway. I'm Drinking a Tiger Beer. I'm somewhere off the Southwest Coast of India. I'm in the Maldives. Maldives? Very nice. What is it? This is like a geographic thing. You're just hot scotching across the globe, correct? That's what's happening? I'm going to be dead soon. I finally have some economic security. I want to literally devour life and do a much crazy shit. I only have my kids for a few more years. I'm yes to pretty much anything.
Is there a date that you're dying that I could be dialed in on? I think it's a sooner than I'd like. If you think about how fast I get a lot of strength and perspective from my atheism. I don't think this is a dress rehearsal. I'm still modestly healthy and have a bunch of people I enjoy spending time with. I'm blessed with resources. I don't take that for granted. I like to think that I recognize my blessings. I'm a yes.
Okay. Well, that's good. We never talk about religion. It's interesting. I'm agnostic actually. Honestly, I do feel the pull of having been raised Catholic of religion. I don't get pulled in by it, but I do definitely feel differently than you about that issue.
Yeah. You've always talked about, I mean, I joke that atheists or agnostics are just closeted atheists. I think there's more atheists out there than people think because it's somehow seen as a negative. You're seen as less, not only less spiritual, but less wholly and less righteous. If you don't believe in a superman.
I think about this a lot because my kids have had absolutely no exposure to religion and I think they've probably lost something because I was exposed to a lot of different religions. I know you were exposed to religion. I think that I do think religion gets the highlights of religion. The highlight real on religion right now is pretty negative.
It's kind of central to when you have good people do good things, bad people do bad things. When you have good people doing a lot of really hideous things usually religion is involved. It gets a lot. I think it has a bad brand right now, but my experience, I think yours, and I'll ask you if you have the same experience towards your mouth.
I was exposed to, I went to temple, I went to church, I went to pressurization, my, when your dad's married four times, you go to a lot of different religious institutions. It was a positive in my life. I never bought into the lineage, I never bought that there was an invisible friend in the room with us. On the whole, it was just a bunch of good people trying to share something and feel connected. I found they were very patriotic, wanted to help each other.
I have some people in my life religion, religion plays a really positive role. Like a lot of things, the best of it is terrific, the worst of it is absolutely the worst. If invisible friends, there's a new movie coming out, Ryan Reynolds is doing called If, which is about actual invisible friends that kids have.
But I don't think it's a super being thing that I have. It's just that it can't. I just, I do feel energy. I'm not sounding like a California person, but I've been to places where I have felt something. You know what I mean? And it may be myself, it may be, I do feel a pull to it and I don't know why that is. And I don't explore it at all. I'm not interested in exploring because the hatefulness of so many religions towards gay people or women.
You know what I mean? I just can't do it. But I certainly have hopes that there's something beyond us. I guess that's why I'm a real agnostic. I really am. I don't know. I didn't expose my kids to religion at all. They went, we went to a lot of different synagogues and unitarian stuff, but we never pressed it. And there's certainly not faithful in any way that in that regard as I was, as I was, because my grandmother and stuff.
Anyway, it's interesting. It's interesting. When you think about it, actually, it leads into what we're going to talk about in a minute, which is the Super Bowl ads. There was a Jesus one that I actually liked quite a bit. And I was talking about. So when are you going to do that segue? Well, I know, but there was it was it was actually I mean, it came on at first. My wife is Jewish. It was like, Oh, no, the Jesus one. And there was also one that was there was a bunch of controversial ones, but.
That one I thought was well done. It was about Jesus washing feet. And I thought it was very well. I love all the stories of Jesus. I really do. I really do. I think they're wonderful. Love the poor. That's a good place to start love the poor. Do on to your neighbors. You don't mean there's a lot of good lessons in there. Yeah, there are. So that's what I liked. I thought they did that really well. Anyway, we've got a lot to talk about.
They're including Super Bowl, including a debate over Biden's mental fitness after special council report, Disney's big move in the world of gaming. Big deal. Plus we'll talk to two friends of pivot platform, Zoe Schiffer and Bloomberg's Kurt Wagner who have new books out about Elon Musk and Twitter who just tweeted a boob joke, which I find. But let's talk about a Taylor Swift's game. I heard her boyfriend won the Super Bowl.
That was a Hillary Clinton joke actually put it up. A lot of people are doing tweeting and stuff like that and not just tweeting, threatening and putting Instagram and things like that. Social media is at its best fun things like this.
The Kansas City Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers 25 to 22. I felt bad because I'm from San Francisco, but I still was happy. Taylor Swift's boyfriend won. It was a very close game. Both teams played incredibly well. At the last minute, Patrick Mahomes really did push it out. Like really showed more energy and stuff. But that Brock Purdy was amazing.
I think it was the last player drafted draft. They call him Mr. Aroma. My story was great. Nobody played badly. It was a great game. Taylor created a brand value more than $330 million that she's NNFL according to data from apex marketing group. She was she was Chuggan beer. She was slamming beer. She wasn't just chuggan. She was slamming him with Lake Lively and ice spice, which was very funny to watch, but they didn't pull away to her too much. And she was quite respectful at the end.
When she came out after he gave crazy speech, he was like, he had the sort of screamy, you know, fantastic speech at the end. She was very deferential to the mother, which I kind of liked as a mother. I was like, my son won the Super Yugs me fucking first before the billionaire famous person behind me. She did that well.
But it was good game. Tech was well represented. Elon Musk was there. Tim Cook, Jack Dorsey for some reason was they kept saying Beyonce and Jay Z and some guy and he was wearing a Satoshi thing. He was there. He obviously works at title with them this year's Super World ads cost $7 million per 30 seconds with female NFL viewership increasing 11% between July and December.
I think more women centric brands like NYX cosmetics and Sera V which very funny ads appeared in the Super Bowl commercials. Michael, Sarah, just very funny and these ads. And of course, President Biden released a video on social surrounding the Super Bowl. He's gotten onto Tik Tok. He criticized food companies for shrink flation, calling it a rip up. But he also had a really funny Tik Tok ad about his choices game or half time. It was good.
It was they they're quite good on social media. The Biden, the person running Biden social media is really good and the Tik Tok stuff looks like a good start. So it was like it was all over. I think the positive. It was sort of like the Grammys quite good. What do you think? And do you have a favorite ad? I'll talk about mine a minute, but love your thoughts.
You know, I didn't see the ads. I had to wake up at 7 a.m. here to see the see the fourth quarter and I woke my boys up and we then watched the we then watch the replay where you just see the place. I mean, you can watch the whole game in like 30 minutes if you just see the place. I didn't see the ads. What I don't I think Taylor Swift showed up in a game broke out. I think Taylor Swift is the story here and whether you're sick of hearing about it or you think it's hurt the game which it is not.
She she did what diaper changing tables and bathrooms could not do she did what having Janet Jackson and female performance could not do. She increased female viewership and increased the value of every sports franchise in the NFL, probably by 10 or 20% by virtue of this this romance which by all I mean through all angles in my viewpoint feels like a very healthy loving supportive.
You know great romance and anytime you see a positive positive role models for dating. I think it's wonderful and so he dresses so well did you set out for the add on. Yes, they're both they're both lovely people and she's a phenomena and she has increased economic value of these things. So I think it's you know it was all about her that the other thing that got less reporting.
It's the downside to this is that now the sports betting is legal to get this 26% of America bet on the Super Bowl in addition of all the addictions gambling has the highest suicide rate. Because if you're addicted to alcohol or math or cocaine people notice and will try and intervene and sometimes they're successful and sometimes are not but oftentimes they are. You can mortgage your house spends your kids tuition money.
You know lose everything and nobody around you has no idea and you feel as if there's no way out except one way out. So you know I'm worried about this yeah well well we're going to bring it down Scott but yes I would agree I think we have to get our answer and gambling I would agree I think it's something that said something like the Super Bowl I guess you're not going to avoid it it was happening behind the scenes anyway.
In front of the scenes as I'd rather have it there so we're aware of it you know there's always been betting it every sporting event especially this one. Order of America I know I get but I suspect it was pretty high before when we didn't see it and I want to I don't want to totally and fatilize people I think people if you can if you can raise your hand and go in five for your country or.
Decide to drink yourself to death I think you should be able to gamble but I think we need more financial literacy in high schools that teaches people about basics of financial literacy especially my young men explain to them biology neuro biology and that they are more pre wired to be prone to risk aggressive behavior including gambling.
I mean even there's a there's a there's an adjacent story here about stock market there's three and a half trillion dollars in transactions in the markets every year in the Nasdaq in the NYSE about 300 billion of it is IPOs and secondary offerings which is what the markets are supposed to exist for the markets are basically supposed to be there to raise capital for companies so they could grow.
So about eighty ninety percent of transactions in in the stock market are really just speculation which is a fancy word for gambling gambling is a real issue and I don't kind of I'm not going to fatilize men they should be able to do what they want but they need to be made aware of these risks and my fear is that there's a lot of young men who think the trading fucking salon I was somehow investing it's not gambling.
And gambling is a lot of fun I love it I do it a lot I think it's a ton of fun but it's consumption and ninety percent of people who do it are going to lose everything and I don't think they're taught that in an early enough. Yeah I would agree okay bummer I'm going to talk about the ads because they were so good speaking of selling. I'm sorry I called I hijacked the conversation I have always I asked nothing is good in the past recently but these ads spectacular really your favorite.
Oh my god all of the Dunkin Jonas one with Ben Affleck and Matt Damon and and J.Lo and Tom Brady hysterical Dunkings go see it it's called Dunkings and it's it makes it makes bad afflicks allowed himself to be seemed feckless and J.Lo's looks were fantastic and stupid little things like she had a diamond encrusted Dunkin Donuts thing I thought it was brilliant and funny they're all brilliant and funny all of them the Beyonce ad for Verizon where she's trying to break the internet was.
She never jokes and she joked it was and they had the guy from the V who is wonderful really funny really making fun of herself about lemonade and everything it just was it made it she made fun of herself and a really fantastic funny witty way.
I thought where Jason Momoa was with the guys from scrubs and they did a flash dance thing was hysterically funny I didn't know Jason Momoa could sing and at the end my friend of mine Jennifer Beals is there I was hoping she would be and she wasn't they did it exactly perfectly. Just there was a lot they're all good they were they I didn't see one I didn't think was clever but that was T mobile that was T mobile yeah that was a T mobile that that was really really good.
I just read about the ones of the guy who's angry at the self driving technology a Tesla. Oh yeah he put that in again I like that it was a bad ad I was like can't you make it better. But it was it was a bad and he just he did that last year I think. Strange no I think it's strange I guess whatever. You got the money have fun yeah exactly and there was a controversy over the RFK ad and now he just apologized for it because a pack that was affiliated with it was using was trying to copy it.
And it was trying to copy an ad by his uncle JFK obviously and he had to apologize it was terrible. I think some some Trump supporters the one who paid for it because they're trying to fuck with Biden in that regard and boy was the reaction he he never apologizes because he's such a fatuous pop and J but he did like using the memory and they're all like get the fuck off of JFK's lawn right now.
Which was interesting but they were all created I thought they were I don't think there was a real loser there and there used to be a lot of losers I thought they were all pretty they've there's fun in that much money they had creative people doing it. I thought they were good I thought they were fun and enjoyable you should watch them all with your kids because they're funny.
The flash dance one is very funny I the only one I saw on YouTube was I saw the one with Jennifer Aniston about forgetting forgetting stuff and she said trimmer.
Yeah that's right it's fun it's fun anyway it was it was good it was a great super well very similar the Grammys highly enjoyable live television broadcast right so I think it was probably a win for CBS they they of course it was a win all around yeah I think they previewed a bunch of their shows which look they did a nice job they preview they push the NFL very nicely there was several NFL ads that were good to that were funny and it's it felt I know it sounds dumb but it felt like I'm not sure if I'm going to be a good guy.
I know it sounds dumb but it felt very Taylor Swiftie it was great entertainment great fun everyone's having fun except the right wing is losing its fucking mind and I have to say the very best Joe Biden had the best tweet it was he he tweeted right after a picture of him as dark Joe Biden with the eyes with the laser eyes and he just wrote just like we drew it up so he's playing into the conspiracy theories around that this was planned by the CIA the Taylor Swift win and this and that if they did they'd have jat they'd have Travis Kelsey have a
last carry for the touchdown FYI but there's you know all these conspiracy theories around her that she he was going to oppose to her or back Biden in the middle of it and I thought Joe Biden took advantage of it beautifully just like we drew it up like you fuckers we didn't make you know this wasn't a conspiracy theory for the CIA to hurt
John Lottron and then the person who had the worst social media I think was was Donald Trump himself taking credit for Taylor Swift's success and trying to kiss up to her yeah he did a tweet where her truth where he he said he goes I signed and was responsible for the music modernization act for Taylor Swift and other musical artists Joe Biden didn't do anything for Taylor and never will there's no way she could endorse crook a Joe Biden which she's done before by the way the worst and most corrupt president history of our country be a disloyal to a man who made her so much money
besides that I like her boyfriend Travis even though he may be liberal and probably can't stand me are you fucking he didn't do anything about the so full of lies and taking credit for her and what I wrote is taking undeserved credit for her enormous success is classic and heinous but it reads as if he's stone cold terrified of her inner power and realizes after a lifetime of terrorizing women that this is the one who can actually end him even her boyfriend frightens him.
It's incredible that he couldn't just say congratulations he has to take credit which is sick and no more had a real interesting take on Taylor Swift and he said that Taylor Swift could swing the election yeah and his his I mean it was really interesting what he said she's from Pennsylvania she's white she's dating a white guy she's a country star
and she doesn't even need to endorse Biden she just needs to encourage people to turn out the vote because who will she turn out she'll turn out young people and younger Americans tend to be browner which means the more democratic. She could literally swing the election the strategy that there would be just so genius here if she in fact would like to see I can't imagine anyone.
She's back Biden before she's not and she was anti Trump but go ahead yeah so we know she's providing but here's the thing the strategy is not to be providing she should never use president by the name she should never use Donald Trump's name she should just talk about turning on the vote exactly but I don't she's she back Biden before I don't think
there's any wrong that she could say what a heinous rapist like I don't know no no no no no no no we got to be smart here we got we got to stop we got to stop trying to shame people to not voting for Trump we got to be smart if you get young people to turn out he wins yeah yeah that's true that's true anyway I would recommend people watch Americana where she talks about about the
how dangerous it is her father was very concerned about her attacking marshal blackboard and backing backing Democrats because of her safety anyway it was interesting it was an interesting thing anyway it was a great super bowl kudos to it now let's move on to our first big story special counsel Robert her has released his report on
President Joe Biden's handling of classified documents report concludes no criminal charges against Biden or warranted and also says there was evidence that Biden will fully retain a disclosed classified materials as a private citizen there were a number of references to Bob Biden's cognitive abilities notably calling him a
sympathetic well-meaning elderly man with poor memory I have to say this was the media coverage is out of context of what I read the entire thing and if you read it which no one will nonetheless this is what happened it was damaging up bride and last out special counsel during a press conference late last week particularly at the claim that he could not remember the year's sun bow died that was the guy was talking about
strategic read around trial Biden did mix up the president of Egypt and Mexico to press conference that said Donald Trump yeah I mixed up the presidents of I think turkey and then he thought Nikki Haley was Nancy Pelosi so let me just equalize that Donald Trump also wait and saying if Biden was going to be charged with classified documents and neither should he calling his own case selective persecution it is not
so it obviously created a lot of things people were furious about the number of stories in the New York Times and columns and I would agree there was seven of them talking about Biden's age and nothing and they did not put what Trump said the day later about letting the Russians attack Europe in the same spot it was very weird media selection I never say the media is biased but boy was that something to see
I don't it's still a problem and a large amount of people believe both are too old I think over 60% more people believe Biden is too old compared to Trump let's not equalize it Trump has 91 indictments it's not comparable but it's still a problem so and you've talked about this a lot so so what do you think about this well how do you get beyond this I think you saw him moving out last night during the Super Bowl even though he didn't do the traditional interview he did a ton of social
media it was all very clever funny making fun of himself he's got to get out there I think ultimately what is what are your thoughts I thought simple as either really poor judgment or plan hit piece because he was there to talk about the legal veracity of these documents which the president president Biden turned over versus president Trump tried to hide and destroy
evidence and again it goes back to my friend up Simon says it's not what you do it's how you do it and basically the special prosecutor did his job to the extent that it was clear he said this was you know this was an error in judgment as soon as he recognizes error in judgment he fully cooperated and he's the one that disclosed he had these documents so he drew sharp relief between the two cases and did his job
he's not there though to be a neurobiologist and make comments that he anyone reviewing this thing would go you realize this is going to be blown up into something much bigger and it has no legal frame it's not appropriate now the larger issue here is that when you have a seventy seven or seventy eight year old obese man and an eighty one year old man there's about a seven percent
chance every year that they're going to die so essentially between now in the election there's a little less than a coin flip chance that one of these two slips and breaks the hip or something like that and what is just so upsetting and frustrating is in America produces more remarkable people I believe than any nation in history we have remarkable military leaders we have a remarkable
artist business people every time I go to Washington as much as we ship host Washington I meet remarkable people and we end up with two people quite frankly that just should be nowhere near the White House because of biology it has nothing about their character let's just put that aside right now people this old should not be put in positions that require this exacting a cognitive physical
emotional and mental stamina which nobody has at that age I don't care if you're fucking jack LaLaine this is just insane when he was here we are here we are but the reality is they're both they're both really old men and so it I find it very discouraging that that's those are the two people we produced but this in my view was either very poor judgment or a naked hit piece because to think that this wasn't going to go crazy in the media that we're going to zero in on this
shit was just not to be honest with the impact I that the media could have done a much better job because Trump has been saying it like literally a Pennsylvania and the North series of incoherent things I think the point I was trying to make actually on Chris Wallace the show because they were like this is a big problem like are you Trump you know he's not as Trump is in his
bad I'm like almost worse because he says incoherent things and use to a Trump he lies so much that we don't think it's cognitive decline someone wrote he Trump is incoherent occasionally is coherent and Biden is coherent and is occasionally incoherent but more than that Biden has always had
a lot of facts right he's definitely old no question he says more gas than ever he's always has gas Trump is getting increasingly insane that that's that's and that's like it reminds me and the reason I think Biden gets more attacked for it is because he's that I'm thinking of a nursing home he's the nice guy in the nursing home and occasionally can't find his apartment right that kind of like I'm going to use a metaphor Trump is the guy in the in the cafeteria who
is everyone is stealing his fork or his jello or whatever the reason he seems more vigorous is because he's louder but that doesn't make him any less cognitively disabled right he's just seems vigorous and that's true but the crazy one in the nursing home is the one I'm worried about the loud one is the one I'm worried about and not the sort of friendly old guy who's effective by the way speaking of which now the day let me just say the day after
the the his comments encouraging rush to do whatever the hell they want any NATO country doesn't need defense to guidelines this is a dangerous incoherent person who already was problematic the neck NATO secretary general said Trump's words could undermine security and put American in European forces at risk these comments
and that Nikki Hill even said this kind of comment that makes Joe Biden look clear headed Joe Biden is clear headed about this these comments are if he if he's not incoherent then he's dangerously leading us into a war it's just astonishing that there's even a comparison between the two and that equalization of this and the fact that the New York Times did not put this on the very top of the of the thing and kept referring to Joe Biden's that stupid
report was I think a dereliction of their duty that I've never say that about a media but in this case when I heard that out of his mouth I was like are you hitting me what he just said dangerous and if he meant it he's dangerous and if he's incoherent he's even worse more dangerous your thoughts
well someone called me over the weekend and said you know fewer asked the point of the democrats how would you deal with this issue miss it you're getting one thing right but you're forgetting the second you know that you got peanut butter right but you're missing the chocolate him taking it is is humor humor humor reflects intellect and it reflect it makes light of the issue and you kind of you kind of turn the situation around and they're doing a great job of having Biden joke about it
where they're failing is that it should be the following that is no one person runs the largest country in the world it's never been one person it's an entire infrastructure it's a person running a company this is the most robust youthful vigorous administration history we have for the first time a young woman as vice president we have a secretary of transportation who is just into his 40s we have secretaries of state who are young and vigorous not old men from ex on and by the way
young vigorous people who work really hard your loyal to them and you create a culture of use and loyalty and innovation and that's what they have in the white house versus this revolving door of old white men including fucking Peter Navarro who's going to I mean if you want to talk about an administration you know talk about the president you talk about the president C and this is a group of people who are the most youthful robust and innovative in history and that's how they should position it
yeah he's old there's nothing they can do about it but look at who he surrounds himself well that although Republicans use that is they're all really running it in his place that he's just we can at Bernie so I was on a panel I think it was bread season called weekend at Bernie's fuck you on that one I got to say I couldn't say that on the air but he's not we can at Bernie's yeah
right right yeah Trump just kept firing them and then they kept turning on the guy neither running against him or ending up in jail that's not youthful that's about as primitive as you can get and if you have to look at and we're not usually the same but you have to look at the people who've worked for him every person is work from who's left calls him a moron crazy and coherent possibly insane you know all the stuff I'm sorry it's just not the same
which will buy in the equalization of it cannot be allowed to happen and I and I absolutely get why people do it because most people have the kind of old guy most people know the old guide Joe Biden is they're not used to crazy like really malevolently crazy old people they there's only a few of those right comparatively and so that's what they're worried
about what they should be worried about is a highly in coherent person who's becoming increasingly in coherent is overweight is is clearly been red-pilled in a way that's really disturbing and is and you know even just attacking Nikki Haley's husband where's her husband where's her husband he's deployed is fighting her series you fucker like fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck you like that kind of thing and you know as someone
who's dad was in the military it's astonishing and he did it before he did it that the reds the gold starfinery did it with John McCain come on I don't like people who've been captured but here's the problem we we there's no such thing as shaming people and they're not voting for the guy there is a focus they've got to play offense and I think they should absolutely highlight and get some of that youth out there because the way I would position it is the president is old
there's no getting around it he still has a good man he makes great decisions you want to don't measure behaviors don't measure gaps measure results the results are the best in history jobs low unemployment for the best in history his age is an issue he has the most youthful presidency in the history of the country good I like that Scott they should hire you decide what team you want one of the things they
should also like vitamin this man up and get them out there they got to like you know there's ways to make people cognitively like sharper and just let them sleep get them out there you know everyone who has gets you and I both know it we get when we get tired we start to miss make mistakes right so and we're not that old but it happens so anyway we have to go on a quick break I think they should hire you Scott when we come back we'll discuss Disney's new
adventure with Epic games a big deal and we'll chat with friends of pivot Zoe shiffer and Kirk Wagner about Elon Musk chaotic rain at Twitter support for pivot comes from fund rise you know the adage by low sell high it's easy to say and hard to do for example high interest rates are
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Scott we're back Disney has turned the corner and entered a new year according to the CEO Bob Iger falling a blockbuster first quarter earnings report earnings per share rose 23% beating estimates the company cut streaming losses more than expected to 138 million pretty good now manageable and also says it will boost its cash dividend by 50% Disney also made a slew of other announcements including an espn streaming service in 2025 an exclusive
version of Taylor Swift's ears to our movie that will stream on Disney plus smart move and a Moana sequel also frozen is coming I got that directly from Bob Iger which of course he wants me to spend more on frozen and perhaps the biggest news of all
Disney is getting into gaming acquiring a $1.5 billion stake in epic games the makers of fortnite Scott you talked about Disney being a buy at one of your buys talk about the move into gaming you predicted this in various forms over the last few years you thought
Disney should acquire roblox or Netflix would buy epic I think he's doing you know he has Nelson tells proxy fight looming I think he's doing his dad Bob Iger thing so what do you think about this yeah I picked a picture three stocks every year my picks this year were
Alphabet I think this year's the Empire strikes back in terms of generative AI I just think the data set they have to work with your calendar your YouTube viewership are just unparalleled and I picked Disney and warm brothers discovery because I think tech tech stuff that everyone loves is so fully value to my view I wanted to go after
stuff that's distressed and Disney's trading at a 10 year low and it has on parallel IP I think Bob is a very solid executive what they lost was the narrative and it wasn't entirely sure what they were what the strategy was and I think you sort of turn it around and appears to be playing offense after the layoffs streaming's now making money the parks or just this unsung juggernaut of the business I think they did 10 billion in EBITDA this year
and so epic just to score epic is one of my biggest investments in 2021 I made a purchase in private markets you know there's all these platforms now that sell share second secondary shares are from employees and I did for a couple reasons why I wanted some exposure to what is a hundred and eighty million dollar market the gaming industry epic has fortnight which I see is just unbelievable
my 13 year old is addicted but the reason I like video games more than social media is there are actual social I just one of the nicest moments of my week is my son has a battle cry that he screams out from the room when he's playing for tonight with his buddies and they're really elegant in terms of how they monetize it they also have sort of this underlying infrastructure so I thought I want some exposure to the space now it's it adds to the flywheel Disney because you can you can imagine they're probably
going to come up with all sorts of rides maybe even you know I got to think there's going to be a fortnight movie series in the makings so this is and it's also probably watch barbie very carefully right they probably and this gives them a chance to date maybe before they acquire the company what was interesting is the valuation on it was about 21 or 22 billion which was
actually lower than the valuation was last year but the moment Disney made the investment it being and trading up in the secondary market because everybody sees you know the validation of having Disney involved I think this is good for epic I think it's good for Disney I think it's good for Bob Iger I you know win win win yeah let me put some context in here Disney has been in gaming they tried club penguin mostly for kids they bought a bunch I'm
blanking on all the I tapulous they had a lot of app stuff and that had didn't work out well for the maker studio remember that maker yeah sure that was a more video oriented wasn't gaming but they were in a couple lot of gaming stuff especially around kids my kids had club penguin I write about it a little bit in my upcoming book but they never were able to make it work because they never really they bought these
companies but they weren't committed to gaming this is a very important gaming company you know this is what it does is it puts them at odds with apple which is in a you know in a very serious legal fight over app store stuff with epic and they see you is particular I'm going to hopefully interview him soon but it puts them at odds of apple which is one of their partner right has been Iger and apple been very close but they have to get into it's sort of like you know what
whatever you think of the vision pro Apple has to get into facial compute spatial computing or facial computing really and they have to get into gaming this is a critical part netflix is kind of dabbled in it by creating a gaming thing but Disney's got to own this area in a really significant way and this is what they do now be especially because the Nelson Peltz
proxy fight is still looming Iger addressed it in an interview with CNBC last week following the earnings report let's listen the last thing that we need right now is to be distracted in terms of our time our energy by an activist or activists that frankly have a completely different agenda
and don't understand our company is assets even the essence of the disney brand now that's him to push back in the aspen for his part peltz responded to disney's latest earnings saying it's deja vu all over again we saw the movie last year didn't like the ending Nelson you got to go away stop hanging out with Elon Musk et cetera I think he's going to fend off peltz peltz looking kind of he's a kind of ruining his brand here he's doing things that are right for this company and and to
to sort of badmouth it when he's doing the streaming got better this is a really interesting deal the parks are doing well I mean this is a difficult turnaround for Bob Iger some of which is his own fault right no question but he was right about going into streaming even though it is costly so I think peltz looks like a thoughts the ultimate the ultimate shark repellent for an activist is in the stock as a the stocks up 22% in the last 30 days.
So what happens is if the stock is up this is what happens when you're an activist investor which I've done you never win at the first meeting at the first at the first annual meeting but if the stock continues to go down you win at the second if the stock continues to go up as the activists you just sell your stake you're not from money or not in a few victories or wins I mean this guy's a big egos for the most part they're in it to make money.
So if if this stock does what I think it's going to do and I think it's up 50 to 100% in 12 months helps will declare victory and leave never run another proxy fight make a shit ton of money and Bob will not have this guy on his board I disagree I I've been in a ton of these
situations Bob has a bunch of people on the board who are not scared of Nelson Peltz they would have stuck the angry guy in the corner and let him punch himself out and gotten on with the board meeting and then they wouldn't have this tractor heckling from the cheap seats. If the stock continues to go up Nelson Peltz will sell and go away and everyone wins.
Right yeah that's it he's not winning on this one anyway we'll see what happens I go did a good job with this I think Epic is really interesting and really sharp move by him and it's not that risky but it's also not risky which is just the way you want to be all right let's bring in our friends of pivot.
Zoe Schiffer is the managing editor platformer in the author of extremely hardcore inside Elon Musk Twitter Kurt Wagner covers social media for Bloomberg and is the author of battle for the bird Jack Dorsey Elon Musk and the $44 billion fight for Twitter's soul Twitter books are here everybody welcome to the world. I have great regard for Kurt used to work for me a long time ago and Zoe works for Casey new who's very good friend of mine.
Both amazing reporters welcome to both of you thank you thanks for having us thank you so much for having us.
So let's start you both have Twitter books you're competing we decided to bring you together I'm sorry to do this but it's better for you it's better because we're going to talk about both your books and and they're different in lots of ways we want to distinguish them and why you should read both anyway Kurt you detail in your book how Twitter was already having problems during the Jack Dorsey years well
before Elon came onto the scene. Obviously was at the Super Bowl last night sitting there looking for Lauren as always talk about let's talk about the history you covered this for us at at Rico for many years. Some news from the weekend of federal judge ordered Elon to testify again in the SEC's pro of his personal Twitter the SEC is examining whether Elon followed a law when filing the paperwork about his purchases of Twitter stock and
whether his statements about the deal were accurate but let's start with you because the Jack Dorsey years because he he kind of pushed this and thought it would be great for Twitter so talk a little bit about that he did I mean he admired Elon tremendously he's to refer to him as his favorite tweeter he invited him to corporate. Yeah yeah he really had kind of an admiration for Elon and so when this
president itself. I think Jack was super excited about it you know he'd been talking and Kara you've you've heard this before as well but you've been talking for years about how Twitter shouldn't be a public company like Jack was very much of this mindset that Twitter should be private that it should be out of you know the pressures of the Wall Street investor cooker and so when Elon showed up and had the money to do this thing that Jack
did to have done for a long time he jumped at it obviously I think it was a mistake but that's one of the reasons that he was so excited for Elon to take over well talk a little bit about the problems there and we covered this for years both of us the it was a it was a you
know as Mark Duckberry said a clown car that ran into a gold mine and it was always a clown car and a very emotional one it was a company that had tremendous influence that outweighed its business by you know an order of magnitude right and so people talked about it people
used it and used it for politics and sports and other cultural things but the business never caught up and that was why it was always in this really tough position and one of the things that my book gets into is actually you know Jack Dorsey had orchestrated this three
business plan right before Elon showed up and it was very ambitious was coming off the heels of covid they were like hey we're going to you know add more users than we've ever added we're going to build more revenue than we've ever had and they were not on pace to hit any of these things now you've yeah you look into the future and you just realize they're kind of headed for this disaster financially as a publicly traded company so again I think the board also sought
to get a new business and escape from having to go through what they knew was going to be a bad situation and no one else wanted to buy it so is there a scenario where Elon could have been successful at home with twitter let's get so he buys it he tries not to buy it I guess he just he decided to say I'll buy it no matter what and then of course tried to backtrack on it you write the attributes that made must good at tweeting a combination of
recklessness and shamelessness I think you're being kind but you're right on those things made him exceedingly bad at that transition because they he what I even thought he would be good I was like okay let's try this because it was such a it was such a disaster as a company yeah I think there's this narrative now that the media was very biased against Elon's acquisition from the beginning and that's actually incorrect there was a lot of
excitement even from a small group of employees and people in the media about the acquisition because like Kurt said Twitter had been in such a bad place kind of financially and growth wise for so long there was a lot of frustration from even certain employees about this what you
wanted and what I feel like was such a big unforced air is that he came in with this posture of everyone who works here is an idiot and I don't want to listen to you he didn't come in with an immense amount of curiosity when he sat down with
employees from day one and they were explaining the technical back end of how Twitter worked he would interrupt them and kind of down his own expertise or he would look really bored or be scrolling on his phone so from day one he wasn't he wasn't really interested in what the people
who had worked there and had worked so hard to make Twitter successful had to say and why was that from your perspective I think that he felt like Twitter had been sliding in a bad direction and he really conflated some of the attributes of Twitter's company culture with this big
atmosphere he had around the woke mind virus the idea that employees got a day of rest off every month that they got pretty good perks it was in his mind a culture of laziness of people who didn't want to work hard who didn't want to be hardcore and he felt like if I can put rockets into space if I can build electric vehicles then surely I'll be able to come in and fix Twitter no problem because it's a media company Scott if I can only read one of your
books which I read just kidding go stop but go ahead you won't read mine either don't worry guys he's not going to read my book either but go ahead isn't this isn't Twitter the ultimate side piece you know you have a you have a guy who is making a hundred you know tens of
billions of dollars at a payments company kind of showing up every once in a while and just nodding and then you have a guy making tens of millions somewhere else showing up every once in a while to tell them how fucking stupid they are and they get out of their shit and now you have a CEO who's literally an overhead who has no business running a company like this isn't this arguably I have a difficult time thinking of any company that's had three worse CEOs I think that the fact that
there's been so much turnover at the CEO like I think this is one of the worst CEO jobs around because it sounds really glamorous right it's Twitter you get it like show up at the Super Bowl you get a you know do all these things and relevant which is really exciting to a lot of people but again the business was always a bit of a disaster it comes with all these huge problems around content moderation that people you know think are going to be super easy to
solve and they're never as black and white as they seem and there's a reason like Dick Costello he had a great quote actually he shared this with Kara during an interview he said running Twitter is like running in the other company in dog years it's like one year at Twitter is seven years somewhere else it's because it's it's a really thankless terrible job but people think it's going to be cool because it's Twitter and there's a cultural
element to it and I think that that bothers people yeah I mean this is it as true at the CEO level but it was true for a lot of the board members and the management one of the key frustrations that employees had is that so few people at the highest levels of the company even tweeted they didn't like use the product and a lot of employees joined because they loved Twitter as a product and then they were there and it felt like there was
an immense lack of understanding of what Twitter even was and what made it special so many of the features that we think of as critical and crucial to how Twitter works actually came from the community it was things that users found to organize the conversation and literally begged Twitter for years to codify into the future set and then Twitter would kind of begrudgingly do it.
Yeah it reminds me a little bit of that thing about a kid when it was good it was very very good and when it was awful you know in terms of but it was always an awful business I think it just is more into an awful place in a lot of ways although last night with the super what was fun right for a second again but both of you talked to a number of former employees for these books was something you found particularly shocking or surprising Zoe you start and then Kurt.
Yeah I mean I think one thing that we know that I kind of overlooked at the beginning was just there was this it was a small group but there was kind of a core group of employees who were really frustrated with Twitter 1.0 they felt like it was incredibly inefficient they wanted to hustle and get
stuff done and ship new features and they just felt like it was there was so many roadblocks in Twitter prior to Elon Musk coming on board and so when they saw Elon coming in talking about efficiency shipping product really fast they were actually really really excited and yet even those people who were so loyal and all in on Twitter 2.0 all in on this hardcore vision became incredibly disillusioned over
the months followed why why because they felt like his product sense the kind of core thing that he thought that they thought he was going to bring you know maybe culturally he won't be that great maybe he'll be kind of rude in person but like his product sense will be really really good that just didn't feel like it was in place he would kind of come up with ideas on a whim it felt like his mentions were dictating what employees were
working on if a high profile person was in his mentions complaining about something all of a sudden it would be code red the top engineering project of the day and they were being torn in a lot of directions at once it was like fix this content moderation problem immediately right now
Elon's really upset about it but also we need to ship this other thing right now it needs to be done by the following morning or everyone's fired and no amount of loyalty would ensure that people would keep their jobs. So talk about that it's behaving like a king right I'm a which you behaves everywhere else if you start to really plum at his other companies and one of the things that I'm sure Zoe said I'm sure Zoe saw and I saw as well as that a lot of his product decisions and a lot of his
direction came from his own personal experience right he's basically running this thing in a way that that fits for him but he is not the average user he's not even close to the average user right he's got 160 million followers and he's a richest man in the world so he's kind of you know creating a public good or a public service as you want to sort of think of it as but he's doing it in a way that suits his own personality which is not a very useful way for the rest of us.
What about the increasing radicalization of him he's really changed as he spent any time with him talk a little bit about that. I mean there's a couple theories around this I think one of mine is simply that like this is a this was a really easy way to differentiate what he's doing at X versus what Twitter was right I mean it's clear that Twitter wasn't working right even Jack Dorsey didn't think Twitter was working and so
one thing you can do if you're the new guy is to come in and just be the exact opposite of what the old guy was doing and so part of me wonders how much of this like shift to the right this shift to very you know very kind of conservative anti woke mindset of Elon is really you know a business decision in some ways a way to differentiate himself in what X is building and bring in people who are disillusioned by the old version of Twitter.
Oh I think it's very real Zoe well I'm curious what you think about this because I also I agree with everything Kurt saying and I also feel like the Elon Musk that's building Twitter or X is a very different
Elon Musk from the one that was building to have one thing one difference is that he has a lot fewer people around him who will tell him the truth it feels like his circle has gotten smaller and it's got more psychophantics like the people are that are close to him are total yes men and when he's
retelling a joke for the third time no one's going to tell him that he's doing that when he's making a horrible decision or going after someone and harassing them no one really stands up and if they do it's a lower level employee who's instantly out the door but you know him you knew him much better than us in the earlier days.
Yeah I think I think I I would point to the two Wall Street Journal articles would be recently about drug issues and then the board the enabling board in Scott maybe has a question about this but the board was highly enabling and because they made money and I thought that was
the most important thing to point out is everyone who's enabling him and licking him up and down all day either wants to be on the plane or wants I don't know why you would sounds you know I'd rather do with Taylor Swift but if I was going to suck up to someone but but he you know he the enablers are really quite something and they literally can't and I've had some of them come up to me saying we can't say anything keep saying it publicly because we can't and I'm like fuck you.
That's what I you know what I mean I was like yes you can but you have you you're in love with your hundreds of millions of dollars I don't think how much money do you need curious would we know about the business where it stands today I just can't imagine any
advertiser would think oh we should advertise on Twitter what what are the financials look like and do you have any insight into whether these three banks that hold the debt are going to try on offload the debt what are the atmospherics around the current business I can go first
sure I read a little bit about this and I'm interested if it's always heard similar or not but that in the Q4 so the holiday quarter which is obviously a huge one for advertisers that their target was around 2.5 billion in advertising revenue now that's a little more than
half of what they did two years earlier the last full year before Elon was there and this was also before Elon told advertisers to you know go fuck yourself on stage at deal books so I would be shocked if they hit that quite frankly and I was having conversations with advertisers you know about the
past month both after CES but before the Super Bowl to just get a feel for what they were thinking and almost all of them said the same thing which is like our clients don't feel comfortable coming back because Elon is so unpredictable it's not even necessarily the stuff that's happening on the
market it's Elon himself and it was very telling yesterday the Super Bowl biggest ad day of the year for X Elon was tweeting about boobs I don't know if you guys saw this is like literally yeah posting the morning of the Super Bowl when all these advertisers they've been luring them back trying to
convince them this is a safe place and he's coming in he's posting these things that are just head scratchers and until he stops doing that I don't think advertisers are going to be super comfortable not going to stop doing and let me underscore he's 52 but go ahead go ahead so I mean I have
heard the same thing as current it's not a surprise he said one year after he bought the company that it was worth 19 billion dollars he bought it for 44 billion dollars he said himself he didn't buy Twitter to make money and I and that he would rather be able to say what he wants to say when he
wants to say it consequences be damned and I think he keeps doing those exact things he's had this tortured relationship with advertisers from day one because why advertisers are content moderators they're going to pull ad dollars if you say if you talk about boobs during the Super Bowl
and yet he seems to not be able to help help himself and if that's because of like Cara pointed to the drug use that's been documented very well by the Wall Street Journal or simply because he has a very childish sense of humor we don't know but he has very few checks and balances
on his power and he seems to not care if it hurts the business so where does CEO Linda Jacarino and I'm using CEO term loosely fit into all of this if at all I guess I'll give her credit for this I mean the Super Bowl actually brought some real advertisers back to X I was actually sort of
surprised and you know that's only going to happen if someone is there to convince them right yeah she's in that world she's from that world people before she took this job I believe people like really respected her and and you know admired her in that industry and so clearly she is doing
what she can to like build on those relationships and bring people back but she has a boss who is constantly working against her which is not which is not easy and you know we I don't think you should necessarily let her off the hook here either right I mean she's choosing to be there she's
choosing to you know kind of support Elon and the things that he is saying sometimes but I think they're working almost against each other often because she's out trying to sell the stuff and he's just you know lighted in on fire at the same time let me say I know a lot of people closer she's all
in she's blaming everybody else including me that's what I was going to say everything we know so far is that she's completely all in on the visions to all and she is doing what she was hired to do which is clean up Elon Musk's messes well she also thinks he's the greatest mind in all of history
from what I understand but okay sure yeah why not I'd go with Einstein perhaps there's been so many rumors of so many different businesses payments right the X the everything up do you have any sense for what is actually going to happen in terms of a product roadmap in 24 I mean we know that they're
working on a complete app redesign and revamp and payments are going to be a really big part of that but I have such suspicion about the everything app terminology even when we first bought the company he hosted an all hands meeting with employees and someone asked to very specifically are you going to try and make us like we chat and he scoffed he was like that's a ridiculous question I just use it as
an example everything app can mean a lot of different things since then we've heard him talk about literally making X a lot like we chat this is an a vision that feels like it comes from a serious strategy it feels like something that happens on a whim take just one example which is Elon Musk's
decision to limit API access for third party developers if you are truly building a super app you want third party developers building apps on top of your app because with 1500 a thousand engineers you're not going to be able to build all of the functionality that you need in order to create a
really robust super app and yet we see him saying things and then doing the exact opposite in practice well if I could add to that too I mean we Mark Zuckerberg tried to do this at meta or back at Facebook right with messenger they're kind of trying to do it a little bit with WhatsApp
and it didn't work and messenger is way bigger than Twitter was I'd say Mark Zuckerberg is probably a much better executor of these kind of like software consumer software ideas than Elon is and I just don't think that this idea of a super app is super relevant to you know folks in the United States
quite frankly like it has some appeal in Asia but yeah I just I'm with so he has been fixed site on for years so he has he talked about it a long time ago yeah yeah but no no it's just like I'm interested in world peace it doesn't mean it's gonna happen like kind of think it's just not
clear to me what that even means to him so what is the port is what's the thing they're gonna do what's the revenue as Scott just asked what is is there anything they could do give me an idea each of you I mean I think payments are the big push but I would be curious like what I think that that's
the the kind of x.com vision from the 90s is integrating not the company not tougher Carlson network right yeah I'm not gonna say this is gonna work but because this is where they're headed I'll I'll point it out they're they're going into this professionally produced video route that
we actually saw with the twitter one point guys yeah and you know the idea being hey if we have WWE wrestling and we have Don Lemon and we have Tucker Carlson and you know God willing we're gonna partner with the NFL that's never gonna happen but let's pretend right maybe maybe maybe
they could get some high quality video advertisers to come back because they know they're advertising against the NFL or the WWE they're not advertising against random you know people in your feed we saw this play out with twitter one point I would did not work I'm not necessarily convinced
it's gonna work here but since that's the direction they're going I'll say that that might be what we're gonna see over the next year you young people don't remember when y'all who did news everyone wore banana republic outfits it didn't work um I feel like that's kind of their vision
of what's going to happen if you were gonna ask me what I think is actually going to happen I think Xai subsumes X I think the focus becomes large language models and X becomes an input for those models a training ground for those models but the focus and the momentum shifts the what's the
consumer facing product there I mean a chat GPT rival oh I see got it I mean X could still exist right because you still want the training data for all that and like X still exists but I think what we're seeing with like Kora we're all of the new investment dollars are coming in but
they're coming into fund the AI initiatives they're not gonna revamp Kora and make Kora better like that to me is the Kora Larry here this is a prediction this is just what I think but what is the most surprising thing that you found the single most surprising in a very short order and
will Elon own this thing going forward five years I say yes I don't know about the surprising things I didn't do the book hold book on it but each of you tell me that yeah I can go first um this is this is a little tiny detail but again when I found surprising which is um uh right around
the time that Elon started buying Twitter stock which was late January of 2022 um he had complained to CEO Paragoggerwal about the at Elon jet account and basically said you need to take this off Twitter it's following my plane it's a privacy thing and Parag essentially ignored Elon
and you know within days weeks he's buying Twitter shares and two months later he owns the whole company now I'm not saying that's exactly the motivation but I think the timing is super interesting and I can also say that some people pretty deeply involved in the deal thought that that was a true
motivation for him and it's just crazy to think that this 44 billion dollar do may have started with with Elon jet account and I don't think that's crazy I would say that's a really big thing complaint about it to me actually go ahead oh and I do think Elon will hold Twitter only because I think to get rid of it would be to admit failure and defeat and I'm not sure that he'd be willing to do it and as Zoe pointed out the XAI thing gives him a very logical like pivot into the AI
wars and I think Twitter could be key to that. So I think he's going to hold on to it. Yeah, I mean, there were a lot of small surprising revelations, but one that comes to mind immediately is just the afternoon of deal close when there's been this enormous push and pull over the summer. Will he buy the company? Will he not? He's going to sue Twitter. Twitter's going to
sue him back. They're all ready to close the deal. All of the paperwork is being signed. All of the lawyers are at the office and Elon realizes that he's missing about $500 million dollars and they're short. Any asks Twitter if they can loan him the money essentially because it's about to be theirs. Twitter says absolutely not and they're able to get it anyway, but I think it just shows how slapped-dash the entire process was that even at the 11th hour they were scrambling
trying to get the funding. I agree with everything that you both said and I think too much of his ego is wrapped up in X to have someone else own and run the company. What is the culture of the vibe like at Twitter right now? It's a totally different company from the one that it used to be. In every way, the office literally looks different. It used to have this celebratory, multicultural vibe and now it's more of a spaceship, metal, the art on the walls looks
really different. But I think the people who are there, it's very, very top-down now and the people who are there are either completely bought into Elon Musk's vision or they're trapped for visa reasons, but either way they're pretty scared to talk and there's not a vibe of like open discussion at all anymore. Yeah, I was going to say just the commitment to Elon is pretty intense for the people who are still there. We're at the point where most people who didn't believe or whatever
that they've been able to jump ship, not all but most. It's much more hardcore Elon than it was before to give Zoe's book a shout out there. Excellent. Thank you, Zoe and Kurt. I recommend both books. Again, Zoe's book is called Extremely Hardcore Inside Elon Musk Twitter. Kurt's book is Battle for the Bird, Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk and the $44 billion fight for Twitter's soul. I would say the soul is lost, but I really appreciate that from both of you. Thank you, Karah. Thanks, Scott.
Thanks so much for having us and we're excited for your book as well. Yeah, snooze. Oh, stop it. You're not reading any of them, Scott, so just move along. Anyway, thank you guys so much. All right, Scott. One more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails. This episode is brought to you by Kia's first three-roll, all-electric SUV, the Kia EV9. With available all-wheel drive and seating for up to seven adults, with zero to 60 speed that
thrills you one minute and available lounge seats that unwind you the next. Visit Kia.com slash EV9 to learn more. Ask your Kia dealer for availability. No system, no matter how advanced, can compensate for all driver error and or driving conditions, always drive safely. It's been a big week for Taylor Swift and Drake, but they weren't playing on one of their biggest platforms. Not a single one of their songs was on TikTok. Instead, we've got stuff like this. And this.
And good heavens. This. And today, explain, we're looking into why the biggest record label in the world is picking a fight with the app that's constantly promoting their artists and why we're all caught in the middle. Okay, Scott, let's hear some wins and fails. Do you like to go first? No, you go first, Cara. I would say the win. I thought the Super Bowl was again, like the Grammys, a real win for entertainment and real people. It was lovely. It had a lovely
vibe to it. And I liked it a lot. And I don't love a sports event. And I would say, I got to say, a win goes to Joe Biden's social media manager did a great. I was really impressed. I thought it was very funny and tongue in cheek. And I think they're doing a fantastic job. I don't think it's going to get through to as many people, but I'm glad they're on TikTok, Tom and the Spardy and all. My fail was Donald, as I said earlier, Donald Trump with NATO. I get there's issues around NATO.
Hello, nice to meet you. So democracy is tough. But what he has said is dangerous. It's dangerous, especially the signals it's given to someone like Putin. My only non-worry about that is Putin's incompetent. And as you see, he can't even win in Ukraine. He's a world power. So that would be the only thing. But what to put so many people in a harm's way like this is he should not be present in the United States. I get why people want to vote for him. I'm not trying to shame you, but
this is to wish for the economy to go down was heinous enough. This is really, really, really dangerous. It's extraordinary. Everyone's world will be crushed economically. And if something like this happens, it's an invitation to dictatorship and it's an invitation to dictators. Well, can you imagine how Finland feels? Finland, one of the big victories of NATO, the European Union, and the brave Ukrainians and Biden and the EU's coming together around pushing back on the
Russian invasion of Ukraine. Is Finland decided to join NATO? How the fuck do they feel right now? They're taking their young men and women and putting them in a NATO uniform and you're saying that the primary funder in, let's be honest, NATO's for the most part controlled by the US. They're now saying we're now saying to Finland who shares an 800 mile border with Russia. The guy that might be president is saying that Putin should attack NATO. I mean, anyway.
And that's what he said. Don't say he suggested it. He said it. He's a transactional fuck is what he is. He thinks it's, I think everything's a real estate deal. And he isn't really that good at real estate either. So please, for it's not real estate. This is not real estate. These are condos in Queens. It's not. This guy is wholly unqualified to be the commander-in-chief,
holy and dangerous. Okay, so my win is I can't help it. I've said young people, you shouldn't buy, try and find the needle in the haystack, you should buy the haystack, buy low-cost ETFs and index funds, but I love stockfacking. I think it's fun. I think you should take a quarter or maybe a minute, 30 year capital and try and find outsize alpha and gains in individual stocks. You learn a
lot about the markets. If you're so inclined and most people aren't, but if you are, but one of my holdings that I'm talking about in book here and it's confirmation bias, but I think there's some logic here. I think Airbnb is more of a prediction than a win is going to have a monster earnings at the close of business today. We release on a Tuesday. I'm still just
in absolute awe of Metta's earnings. I'm not an other company. I think Mark Zuckerberg to have all that kind of money and not protect people means he's a boy whose masculinity never took over and his intelligence and his skills have vastly outpaces empathy and masculinity. I think he's a lost man, but the earnings were so striking to grow revenue is 25% and while reducing head count 25% I've never seen anything like that. I tried to stress out what are the
things that really drove it? It was one, I looked at, I compiled who are the biggest purchasers or who has the most Nvidia AI enabled GPUs on order. The two biggest are Microsoft and Metta. They have the most on order. I don't think there's any accident that Microsoft began the most valuable company in the world and Metta just absolutely blew away its numbers. I'm talking to the team today. I believe that these GPUs are basically that this moved AI is the equivalent of corporate
ozampak and that it is giving them such incredible efficiency. They can shed weight like they've never before. I was thinking about Airbnb. They also, what else is Metta? Metta is in a consumer space. Consumer spending is much more robust than people think. It's the biggest player in the space. We're moving to an economy. I asked what the motor and on-propt G the other day. He's like, it's not necessarily a good thing, but size matters and it keeps increasingly matter.
The biggest company in every category is garnering more and more efficiency and more and more market share. Consumer spending vastly, I'll pace any estimates. Then I think about Airbnb. They bought an AI company in Q3 of last year. It wasn't a big purchase, but it reflects that Brian is really thinking about AI. They have not been hiring like crazy. Unfortunately, there's some unfortunate winds of their back. I think young people have sort of, I don't want to say given up on buying a
house, but are taking a lot of that money. There's just a different gestalt side-guys among young people. If you're in a relationship with someone, you might think, I'm going to go to Bangkok for three months and work remotely. That just feeds right into now 20% I believe the Airbnb's bookings are for 30 days or longer. Consumer spending is way up. I think they've embraced AI. I think you're looking at a, they're the leader in their space. I don't think it's just young people. You know, we're
renovating a house. I would look at first before looking for something I went to Airbnb. And all of that, anyone who's, anyone who's actually looked at the pricing Airbnb, I hate to say this. Airbnb has monopoly power. Look at the fees that you're looking at. They're pretty good. That's VRBOT, Airbnb is what lift is to Uber. And that is, it's kind of cute. Certain areas are good, especially with older people and older. Anyway, yes, I like them both. I like them both.
Anyways, I just think, and this is a prediction and granted a disclosure on the stock, but I think you're going to see a monster earnings call tonight from Airbnb that's going to surprise everyone to the upside. And quite frankly, the market already senses it. Stocks up 7% today. My fail is, I was really moved and shocked by, I mean, I shocked. Shocked but not surprised. Someone put out this Instagram reel with Joey Roberts talking about this picture with her
niece. Did you see this? Yes, she looked adorable. And my Robert is so cute. She's other niece, cute thing, playing cards in the morning. They look adorable. Yeah. And there are literally hundreds of comments about how she's not aging well, and look how shitty she looks, talking about what's failed. Sir, just really going after her looks. And I thought to myself, okay, if one of the most beautiful women in history gets attacked like this,
what are the chances that our daughters get to their 30s on the screen? And she made this point. Yeah. And I really appreciate her saying that. Yeah, she made a very big point of it. I good for her. And she came out swinging. She said, this is just such bullshit. And I thought, and here's the thing, fairly or unfairly, the reality is women are disproportionately evaluated based on their parents and men are disproportionately evaluated based on their economic, well-being,
economic prosperity. You would never say to a man, you are so weak and such a failure and have so few skills, you will not be able to take care of your kids. You would never say that to a man. You would never go on social media and say, I have observed you and you will never be able to take care of your children. You would think that is a low blow. You would never say that. But it's open season on women's looks. I agree. I liked what she had to say. She was clear-headed
and doing it. I have to say, Dunkery has really got, I've about had it with Dunking. I don't mind if it's at big famous people and some of it's funny. I like it when it's funny and not to righteous, but the righteousness and the ability just to say nasty shit out loud is really, it's a disease of Trump. It's a disease of Trump. I'm a sexist. I make fun of men's looks. I objectify them with women, with women. You don't make fun of their looks. Yeah. Oh, I agree. I don't think you should make
fun of anyone's looks, but yeah. Our society disproportionately evaluates women and young women, especially, are told that their entire network, their self-esteem, unfortunately, should come from their looks. You would never walk into a restaurant and start and see someone famous and go, Jesus Christ, you're aging poorly. You would never say that. It's not a free speech issue. And the thing that was really unfortunate about it is a lot of these comments you can tell are from men.
Yeah. And it's just like Jesus Christ. Welcome to Gamergate. This is the I-grade. Did your mother teach you anything? So, and everyone goes to, well, it's free speech. It's great about the internet. You would never behave this way. You would never go on Twitter and say to a young man, you can't speak English. Your logic is so poor. You will never be able to take care of your children because you'll be such an economic failure. You would never say that. You wouldn't. Yeah.
Anyway, so my, my fail is, is social media has given mostly men license to really attack, yeah, just in a, and this is the, this is the opposite of masculinity. These guys think that they're being tough. You move to protection. And women are especially sensitive because our society disproportionately evaluates them based on their looks. And it's not right, but it is. No man should ever disparage a woman's looks. Ever. My when goes to Julia Roberts for speaking out and clapping back.
I thought it was, I thought it was a nice moment for her to say, you know what? Yeah. Yeah. What are you thinking? What are you thinking? I would agree. It's bad. Raising. When someone comes at me with, oh, it's my free speech. I'm like, fine, but you're an asshole. Like that's what you are. You're an asshole. That's simply what you are. Anyway, speaking of relationships and men and women together, Scott and I went on Esther Perrell's podcast,
where should we begin for some couples counseling? Because we love each other so deeply. You'll be able to hear the entire session next week. And here's a little tease. Sometimes people present themselves as tough. Yeah. But for the purpose of covering, yeah, I know. I know. And it's a very tender. Yes. Yes. Yes. And I think you're talking about me. I am actually tough, but I also can be tender. It's okay to be tough. I mean, we've met maybe three or four times that we have spoken together.
I don't think of you as tough, but I do sometimes think you can be intimidating. No. Scott who presents as tough doesn't intimidate me at all. Yeah. Where is that? God, our literally our narcissism knows no bounds. I know it's true, but that's it. It was good. Anyway, that'll drop in the pivot feed on Tuesday, February 20th. It's very enjoyable. That's all the world needs more Scott and Cara. Yeah. Anyway, we want to hear from you, by the way. Send us your questions about business
tech or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 85551 pivot. Scott, that is the show. We'll be back on Friday for more one and enjoyable show. Once again, I love our relationship. I love our relationship. Read us out. Today's show is produced by Larry Naiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin, Ernie and her Todd Entry during this episode. Thanks also to Drew Bro, it's Emile Civerio, and you shot Kuroa, it's Vox Media's executive producer audio.
Make sure you subscribe to the show where every listen and podcast. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine in 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. Hi, we're visible. Ringy in 2024 with a two-years resolution to help you save on wireless. Get one line with unlimited 5G data on Verizon's network, just $20 a month for 24 whole months
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