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Hi, this is Bella Freud. I'm the host of Fashion Neurosis. This week on the show, Esther Perel is on my couch. Erotic recovery is part of trauma healing. That's interesting. It's not the reward at the end. Yeah. That's the difference. And I think we both um come together around that construct. Yeah. Find fashion neurosis on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast.
Yeah, if you want to wear your frilly underwear, I think I Ooh, wait, was that a secret? I don't wear underwear. Daddy goes commando. Hi everyone, this is Pivot from New York magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Scott Galloway. Scott. We just did a great on with Kara
resist and unsubscribe, but I'd like an update. Do you have another podcast? I find that out. Do you were quite substantive? Where are we right now? Give us a quick update. Uh it lulled Tuesday and Wednesday. It appears to have come back today because Chelsea Handler who reached out to me posted something of all the things she was unsubscribing to and just to give you an example of how much impact one person can have.
Uh I went on AI, I went on to my site analytics. I think she just that one video she did on Instagram, that one post, is gonna inspire six to seven thousand unique site visits, conversion of Five percent, that's three hundred people unsubscribing, average of two platforms, six hundred unsubscribes, average two hundred, that's twelve thousand dollars. times or excuse me, 120,000 dollars times ten. So one point two million dollars in
market cap getting taken out of these companies'cause of one insta post. Right, exactly. And you know, inter I'm going to see her uh tomorrow night, I think. Um Tomorrow night she's here in DC. We should get them all to do things like that. Let's let's le reach into the celebs we know and get them to do. I'm gonna bug them all. Okay. Yeah, because they if they do that and put even just one thing up, it matters.
And it's an easy thing for a lot of them and they kinda like it. Well what people don't realise about about economic protests, the most famous one is the Montgomery bus strike. It wasn't the one cinematic moment. It was a it was um a a organization of thousands of carpools over the course of a year. So it takes it takes a while but
Any individual who subsc unsubscribes from OpenAI right now is taking ten thousand dollars out of the market valuation. Which is great. And there's a substitute, the free The free chat G B T. And also all kinds of other free services, Gemini, all the other you don't have to pay for it necessarily. By the way, you can use things for free. You're taking stuff from them, right? Without paying them. Like paying is the issue is what you pay for.
So just keep that in mind. Everyone's like, Oh now I can't use Google. I'm like, no, it's free. Well just to give an example how how these this unsubscribes to these recurring revenue tech platforms or tech companies Team Mobile just had an earnings call. They were projected to add 992,000 new subscribers. They added 962, so 30,000 fewer. their stock declined f six percent in after hours. So it costs
$12 billion because they're unsubs or because 30,000 people didn't show up for subscription. So not only do these do these actions punch above their weight class in terms of economic impact. If you take w if Sam Altman it grows his subscriptions
seven and a half percent versus eight percent month on month, he's not gonna close his eight hundred and fifty billion dollar ro round. Yep. Absolutely So this is literally this is the string. If you If if you don't have the time or the energy to do some of the very other important work, whether it's protests or
or or calling a congressman, you can have a massive impact by unsubscribing right now. Yeah, you can. Now speaking of which it and something the administration does care about, Attorney General Pam Bondi we we'll talk about more in a minute. was testifying in front of uh the the Jan, crazy Jan, was testifying in front of Congress about Epstein on Wednesday. She made it clear she'd preferred to be talking about other things. What did she zero in on? Let's listen.
The Dow is over$50,000. I don't know why you're laughing. You're a great stock trader, as I hear, Raskin. The Dow is over$50,000 right now. The SP at almost$7,000. And the NASDAQ smashing records. Americans 401ks and retirement savings are booming. That's what we should be talking about. Well she's not the Treasury Secretary, but this is what shows what they care about. They really do. The fact that
It was inappropriate to bring this up in here, um given they were talking about victims, sexual uh abuse victims, but nonetheless this is what floats their boat is is this money, right? And so let's also listen to a great idea one of our listeners sent in. Every child of an elderly person did also go through all of their parents.
subscriptions. I went through my mother's this weekend and was able to take a hundred and twenty five dollars off of some bills by unsubscribing subscriptions. She didn't even know she had
That is a great idea. I do that with my mom all the time and I'm trying very hard to take the New York Post off of her subscriptions, but I'm gonna leave it there. Two years after my mother died, I found that Geica was still taking two hundred and twenty dollars out of her bank account a month for car insurance. Crazy. If you don't and I've used this example before, when I unsubscribed from ATT and went to Noble, I'm saving about twenty or thirty bucks a month. But in addition, I found out
I had four accounts with ATT for Blackberries and iPads, which have been in landfills for years because I never went on and unsubscribed them. And even though they know they're not getting a GPS signal from these things and they could send you an email saying, Hey, you know you're paying seventy bucks a month For something you haven't used in five years. You're gonna save money.
These companies are very good at figuring out a way to get you to subscribe and get you to forget that it's coming that this money's coming out of your pocket every month. You know, there's a couple of services and I don't have the names to show where your subscriptions are and to unsubscribe, but this is a better way to do it. But then you can use those services to find them all over the place. You'd be surprised.
of what you're say I I found an ATT thing I was so s from when Apple first had the iPhone when they had unlimited, if you remember. Anyway, uh it's a great thing to do. Keep going. We're gonna do more. We're gonna every little thing we can pull on the administration cares about this issue. Uh and it's the only thing left is the Dow at this point. The fallout from the S. She's the fucking attorney general. She clearly knows nothing about economics. What is she talking about the
What is she talking about, the Dow? I know. Also, also, calling a representative Raskin. Who does f does she think she is? She's in his house. She's in his house and he calls him Raskin. I'm gonna call you Galloway when I use your house. Hey Galloway. Anyway, the fallout from the Epstein files continues, speaking of which, as I mentioned, crazy attorney general Pam Bondi, who
really needs to be medicated, testified before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday and things got heated. She soiled herself multiple times. Um Vondy sparred with Democrats, not just Democrats over DJ's handling of the Epstein files and refused to apologize So survivors, she wouldn't even look at them there. It turned out she's never talked to them.
She also clashed with uh GOP Congressman Thomas Massey. Massey criticized Bondy and the DOJ for failing to redact victims' names while blacking out the names of businessmen, uh businessman uh Les Wexner. Let's listen to the exchange. Within forty minutes. Wexner's name was added back within forty minutes of me catching you red handed. Red hand there was one redaction. I was like, And we invited you in. We in this guy has Trump derangement syndrome. He needs to get you're a failed politician.
Really crazy, crazy, craziness, I have to say. I just don't know what to say. She's What is wrong with her? Like sir speaking of derangement syndrome, like honestly, I don't know what she was doing up there. I know it's an audience of one, but he can't even find this impressive. It's grotesque. Yeah, it really feels like
We have wheels are coming off. I mean it's it's it it's a shame'cause it's just so It's a serious issue. Weird and it's the attorney general making a mockery of the institution and just Uh, no no decorum. But uh from I'm curious what you thought about the hearings, but the moment that I found really chilling. was when I think it was the Representative Jai Paul
uh had um some of the the survivors uh stand up and asked how many of them have reached out to the DOJ to provide evidence or input. But all these survivors stood up. And it was clear they've reached out to the DOJ and the DOJ has um has i has ignored them. And you thought, well, let me get this. The Department of Justice investigating what is arguably may go down as the crime of the century to date.
And survivors and people with direct knowledge about what happened or what didn't happen, it could also quite frankly, they might exonerate some people. Right. Exactly. They don't want to talk to them. Right. Right. And she wouldn't look at them. That was another moment. She wouldn't turn around. She wouldn't do she this woman is insane. I just I don't
She a crazy one. She's like it was so strange and and I know this audience of one they always do, but in this case I was like, Wow, you people are desperate and terrified of what's coming next for you. You know, I thought Massey was effective. I thought Becca Ballant was effective, I thought Jaya Paul was effective, Raskin. Um I thought they all I y one of the things someone who works there said, How do you think it went? And I said
The only problem with this kind of thing was you lay down with pigs, the only one the only people that like wrestling with pigs are the pigs, right? If you get in the mud with them. But I thought they rel they relatively handle it. Well, it's just that the the craziness is what gets attention and not the victims, right? It becomes a ridiculous circus.
And on some level, what was interesting is Fox didn't show it, right? They they they they keep they're obsessed with the Nancy Nancy Guthrie kidnapping, which is a terrible thing too. But they're not even airing it. They don't want to see show you the crazy. Like and any normal person looking at this would be like, What, honey, you need some you need some therapy, like stat kind of thing and you're you know, and what happened to you?
So I thought that was it was a really interesting this Epstein thing isn't going away, Pam. I'm sorry. It's just not now'cause it's so Very clear that you didn't do your job and neither did people before you by the way. But guess what? It's a valid point. You're in the chair now. And her boss her boss is mentioned In the Epstein Files more times than Jesus is mentioned in the Bible or the term meth is mentioned in Breaking Bad over eight seasons. And I feel like every da every time yesterday she
She claimed that you know the president had been the most quote unquote transparent president. When she uses the term transparent, I think some somewhere there's a thesaurus filing for protective custody. Why are you laughing at me? And also it just, it's it was so weird. It's so weird. It's so culty. It's so strange.
One of the things I do think is effective is a lot of these congress people are going in and seeing the unredacted versions which are very upsetting. Um they come out and they look like they've seen a ghost. I know. Even sins the alumis who was to m I didn't know it was there now. Whoa, whoa folks. Like I'm Cynthia Alumnus, I'm so glad she's leaving politics, but
I have to say, even someone like that who literally puts in the least effort possible, um, same thing. They're looking like, oh my fucking God, you're kidding me here and I I gotta be honest. I didn't I didn't realize it was this bad. When y the more information you you read about this i in terms of the number of victims in terms of how many people were involved, uh, how many How many opportunities there were to stop it? Yeah.
Yeah. It is. And and the lies. Like Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was on Capitol this week as well. He told the Senate committee he and his family had lunch on Epstein's Island in twenty twelve, but insisted he'd not have a relationship with them. Of course this was Ha ha interview with one of these right wing outfits where he said, I never I was disgusted by him and I said we're never We'll we're gonna have no contact with him again. And here's the thing.
He took his kids. I I I took my four kids and their nannies and I got all the kids off the island. But this is the thing. It's not it's it's not it's usually not the the infraction itself. It's the cover up. If he had said Why'd he say the first thing? But if he had just said right up front, he's a neighbor, he had powerful friends, I didn't do the diligence I should have. I went with me and my kids to his island once'cause it sounded like fun.
Okay, poor judgment, but go along, get along. Instead of trying to wrap yourself in some sort of indignance that you immediately smelled a rat, and you're lying, and you decided to I mean, if he'd just come clean in the beginning, said, like, Yeah, it was bad judgment, took my kids to his island, had a lunch, I'd heard he was a big philanthropist and who knows, maybe he was yeah Okay. All right. Bad judgment. Move along.
But it again, it's the cover up. He had to take he had to take a lap. He had to take a I'm so pure lap and he that's because he's a moron. Let's let's be clear. This guy's a moron. And people are asking for resign. He really is a liar. He's a liar and a moron. And it doesn't mean he had to do anything, but he's a liar and a moron. As is their right, after Latesfile showed he exchanged emails.
Well, Julian Maxwell and seemed to have c some kind of relationship with her probably extramarital, who knows? Washington serves as chairman of the LA Olympics organized and he appears to be holding on to that role. They're backing him. There were other names floated to take his place. He let me be clear for people, uh not cutting him out, but it was two thousand three before any of this was known. He may have been able to pick it up.
that's different. Um but uh but this was well before the first conviction, the first um d sweetheart deal that uh Epstein did with in Florida. Um so he's even even he's under scrutiny and people are c cutting ties. And again, this is this artist right. They don't like the cut of his jib. That's perfectly fine. In his case, there's just the the the blast zone of this is so far, right? It's really interesting. But it's so indiscriminate. And again, I go to the following.
If we had an institution we could trust, including the Department of Justice and the institutions that actually assembled these files. If they could go through it and go, Okay, there are three circles here. There's people who either engaged in provided infrastructure or trafficked and facilitated crime. We are going to release those names in the form of grand jury indictments. And we're gonna go after these people. That's the headline news here. That's what
The Department of Justice isn't supposed to ruin people's careers. It's supposed to create an incentive system where people follow the law by prosecuting criminals and exonerating people who are not guilty. That is what they are there to do. And then the second circle, and this is a harder one, is okay, if a cabinet if a cabinet member has clearly lied under their testimony or under oath, Should they release that information? Didn't didn't commit a crime. This is Howard Ludnick.
Should the president, who has not so far been accused of a crime, if he's mentioned in this thing six thousand times, should we release that information? I think that is a really important point. The biggest circle, quite frankly, is gu I have seen on TikTok and on Instagram people talking about models, uh how they talked about going to a museum with Jeffrey Epstein and we should no longer uh have anything to do. They're trying to shame all these people and it's like, you know what?
Folks, tha that's just pure gossip. And unfortunately the ring light shaming of all these courageous, virtuous people when they're behind a a keyboard and have much higher standards for other people than they do for themselves.
that is distracting from what the Department of Justice is supposed to do and that is put pedophiles in prison. Yeah. I would urge people to read. It was a really interesting, you know, Catherine Rumler who's the s the legal head of Goldman You know, she was she had a lot of emails there, very ch chummy kind of emails with Epstein going on for a while. I thought d Bill Coleman did a great job look talking about why she was in that relationship and most of it was in fact she was
professional. She's looking for work, right? And that's a whole di different guy who knows rich guys who can send me AUM for wealth method. Yes, exactly. So I would urge people to read that and again
s one or two of them. And and one or two places she when he said, Oh, I only it was only prostitution, she goes, that's just as abusive, Jeffrey. Like she she unfortunately kept saying there are gifts, there was a business relationship. I thought it was it was actually a really Um complex situation that made me think, God, if she was a guy and she did like golf with him, she'd get off'cause she was a woman, was vaguely flirty, kind of.
She wasn't. Like any was it was a great piece'cause it made me rethink. I was like, okay, like, not great judgment, right? Should have known better. Should have stopped talking to him after the first thing. Um, but didn't business. It was just interesting. It was I it made me think a lot. I I recommend Bill Cohen's column of in Pac, and I thought This was a
This is his area of expertise in finance. And I thought, okay, I gotta. This is why should there's she was he was trying to explain why they haven't let her go, right? So I thought that was interesting. Anyway, um speaking of power, uh six Republicans joined Democrats in the House on Wednesday to vote for a resolution aimed at ending President Trump's tariffs on Canada. It's a symbolic gesture, even if it clears the Senate, uh Trump would veto it.
But that didn't stop him from making threats. Trump posted on True Social that any Republican who votes against the terrorists would seriously
uh suffer consequences come election time and that includes primaries. Uh I think he's losing the grip, as they say. What what do you think? Well there's some new data that shows that about so the initial notion was the tariffs would uh mostly be paid by either corporations, sort of a populist thing, or the uh uh importer or excuse me, the exporter themselves, the the country
would absorb it or whoever was sending the products. It ends up and there's finally analysis, ninety four percent of the costs have been borne by US consumers. And then the other six percent have been borne by companies either deciding to take a bit of a hit or the the importer themselves, or excuse me, the exporter themselves reducing their prices. You have about 15% of the economy is um import. It they thought the tariffs average around twenty percent, so that's three percent.
Some managed to get out of it, so call it a two percent to the economy, but the problem is it's an unnecessary two percent hit to the economy. To be fair, it hasn't had the catastrophic effect a lot of people thought it was gonna have. But in a weird way prices are higher. Well if yeah. But why reduce people's prosperity by two percent for no real reason? It doesn't cause g growth. It doesn't cause innovation, all it's doing is k is k is urging or reconfiguring the supply chain
around the United States, the EU is entering into an agreement with Mercosur. There all kinds of new trade zones being opened up such that people are not as reliant on the US. And a weird a weird thing though is that If his tariffs are overturned in by the Supreme Court or by the Congress, I actually think the markets will rip. So in a weird way it could end up it could end up helping him if if these things are turned back. I think the markets will scream.
If these tariffs are found to be uh illegal. Yeah. Well we'll see. And although apparently he's got all these plans to put other kinds of fees in place to take their place that are that he then he'll have to go back to court and stop him for those. He's doubling deb this is something he's talked about for years. So I don't know if he's gonna back off so quickly and take the
take the victory here. He'd like to take the L, honestly. Yeah, I don't it's interesting. Yeah, no, they you know, that lunatic Peter Navarro talks about him like the we have a whole bunch of things to happen if the Supreme Court overturns this. What's taking this room court so long, by the way?
Anyway, uh we'll see what happens. I do think on the broader sense that there's a lot more um Republicans willing to push back because of their own political survival is not linked to Donald Trump as much anymore. The other thing is it looks like they may lose control of the house. That's right. Another person's resigning it. So, you know, they're one they're one sick person away from losing com having the Democrats in control.
So it's a really interesting time. He doesn't have the the power is slipping away and that's why you're screamy Pam or this nonsense and stuff. So we'll see more of that, I think. Um okay, Scott, let's go on a quick break. We come back. Social media on trial, very important case. Support for this show comes from Quince. Style doesn't come from chasing new trends every season. Real style comes from slowly and intentionally calling
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Just go to indeed.com slash pivot right now and support our show by saying you heard about it indeed on this podcast. Indeed. Hiring do the right way with indeed. Scott, we're back with more news. A landmark social media trial got underway this week with Meta and YouTube accused of deliberately designing their platforms to addict young users. Do you think?
The lawsuit is the first of more than fifteen hundred similar cases to go to trial. This is something that's been building for a long time. The plaintiff's lawyer is arguing that his client, a twenty year old woman, got hooked on these apps as a kid because they were like digital casinos delivering dopamine heads.
Instagram had Adam Missari uh testified on Wednesday that he doesn't think users can be, quote, clinically addicted to the app. Adam Missari is not a doctor, just so you know. I d can't believe he said that. It was kind of a a a mistake on his part. And also he's wrong. Uh meanwhile, YouTube is arguing it's not social media, it's an entertainment platform like Netflix and it's not addictive. That is also not true. The jury anyone who has kids knows that. Uh it's very different from Netflix.
I mean it's become more like Netflix recently, but it's also an addictive situation. The jury trial's expected to last six to eight weeks with Mark Zuckerberg and YouTube's Neil Mohan. Expected to testify. This is a really important trial. The big names are coming out and talking about an issue you and I have talked about for years.
Um, what are what are the actual effects and who is responsible for creating a an addictive product? And I'm sorry, Adam, I'm not a doctor either, but any fool tell you it's uh anyone not fool, any person will tell you it's addictive, anyone who uses it. Um, it and you design there's so much proof that you've designed it like a casino or a cigarette or whatever it happens to be.
Thoughts. Well, imagine you're fourteen and someone you go into your room and if you were like me, your mom wasn't home until six or seven PM and you're home alone. Gilligan's Island. And yeah, that's it was Bugs Money in Gilligan's Island and I Dream of Genie for me. But what if in the corner there was a casino? What if there was an arcade? What if there was horn? What if there was unlimited music? What if there uh and then you say, No, no, no, study? What if there was the high school cafeteria
where I could say something mean about someone else or someone could say something mean about me and all I could think about the rest of the day and night was what they were saying about me. That the high school cafeteria never never left. And it ends up that about six percent of teenagers are clinically addicted or or meet the clinical definition of addicted to either drugs or alcohol.
But under that same those same standards, twenty four percent are addicted to social media. And just some data. The average American teams teen spends four point eight hours a day using social media. Sixteen percent of teens are one in six. use TikTok almost constantly, fifteen percent for YouTube, thirteen percent for Snap, twelve percent for Instagram. And roughly half of all teens report feeling addicted to social media. And w you say, well, okay, fine. What's the impact?
Teens who were in the highest use group expressed two times more suicidal intent or self-harm than those in the lowest use group. And the highest use group also expressed poor uh body image at three times more. than the lowest use group. And it typically takes a society, or it takes America, 20 to 30 years to respond to really negative externalities. It took us 30 years with tobacco, took us 20 years with opiates.
And if you think about social going on mobile in twenty twelve, it pro twenty years is probably the right number. I think when I'm I mean p parents always ask me, What should I do with my kids? And I say, How old are your kids? And if they say three or five, I'm like, We'll have it figured out by then. Because the data here is so overwhelming.
And we're up against uh uh uh intransigence and people trying to delay and obfuscate, similar to those tobacco executives, and they have more money and they're more skilled this time. But eventually the tide, the tsunami of parental concern here, you know, understandable parental concern is washing over all this bullshit where So I think in I would say I mean you have entire countries now age gating. Look at what Australia's doing.
I think another two to three years, I'm hopeful the landscape's gonna be much different for children. And the the remedies would be warning sign there's lots of remedies, like with cigarettes. Warning signals, um the checking of ages, legal liability, the age checking is harder. Whatever
Substance company and manufacturers, a media company is subject to. Yeah. They've gotta be kidding. You know, there's so much you they have so many emails of them talking about this. That's the problem. For Adam is sorry to say this. He doesn't think it's critically addictive. Come on, Adam. Come on. We all think it is. We the problem is every adult knows this in their bones, right? It's like'cause we're addicted. We're addicted.
Like we are. It's a problem. You cannot put it down. And it is different from television. It is very different. And television listen, Gilgan's Island's addictive enough. I can't believe I watched all that shit. But you can walk away from it in a way. You cannot walk away from this. It's almost I find myself I'm I have to throw the phone across the room, right? So sometimes. I'm like, put it down.
Um, you know, every Amanda, same thing. We just it's really interesting. And sometimes I think about it, I'm like, I like news and I'm reading I'm mostly reading news. But I don't stop. That's the difference. I put down magazines. I put down newspapers. And I love news. So this is the all this stuff as it gets out, as you see the emails in inside the company talking about it. And especially early on, they knew just what they were doing and
Um, perhaps they weren't meaning to be malevolent at the beginning, but it's malevolent for many young people and the impact is huge. And then they just keep doubling down with AI relationships and synthetic relationships and everything else. This is The time has come round at last for these companies. We'll see how well how how this trial does, but it's gonna it it's gonna just uncover more and more about what they knew, very much like the cigarette companies. When you have
Hundreds of billions of dollars in shareholder value, trillions of dollars in shareholder value, hundreds of billions in revenue, millions of some of the brightest people in the world and trillions of data points, all trying, all aiming towards one thing. How do we get people to spend one more second every day On social.
and less time somewhere else, whether it's sports, friends, studying, sleep, and they're winning. And young people, especially young men, who have this tremendous flaw in their brains where they're constantly dopa hungry, they're up against an indomitable foe. And then the other i in sugar. It's like sugar. It's the same thing. It's the same thing. And then there's two or three
But your kid your kid can't take a you know, a ten pound bag of sugar into his bedroom with him. The the the other thing Well that's your kid. My kid could, but go ahead. The other two things it is a cumulative effect that I think have really hurt our youth youth are one I do think parents have some
Culpability here and that is we have decided that our job is to clear out all borders and obstacles for our kids. We engage in concierge and bulldozer parenting and by the time the kid gets to college, he or she has never had a C or a disappointment.
And we've created this princess and pee um generation with good intentions. We thought we were doing our kids a good thing. And then something that doesn't get talked about a lot about, but I absolutely think is adding up to a generation that is at a disadvantage, and that is if you are twenty one, since the age of ten, the person you are supposed to look up to most in the world Is Donald Trump?
So performative virality, coarseness and cruelty, online scams, crypto, doubling down on lies, this has been the role model. As kids' brains are being wired during puberty. And no matter who is president or what you think of the office, President is the person that millions of young Americans look to as the as the ultimate of success in American values.
So what have we done? We've raised a generation of kids who are dopa hungry and their primary role model, maybe with the close second the richest man in the world, is the greatest control of all time. Are exhibiting values that are very I mean n and what do you know these twenty one zero twenty one year olds are not
It's shocking well it's shocking what good people they are, given what they have to deal with. I would agree. I think they do resist more than you think. And actually there are a lot of parents. One of the things I spent a lot of time doing with my kids
whenever like, can you go get this from can you talk to that person if they wanted something? I'm like, you need to do it. Like you f I uh you figure it out is became one of my lines with my kids, my older kids. You figure it out. I do it with my younger kids now. With Saul, I'm like, You figure it out. I don't know. I I know, but you can do it yourself. And so that's it's the best piece of it.
Advice you can give to a like to a kid. I've started giving my kid pounds when he gets good grades. Is that wrong? I slip him I slip him a twenty pound. I slip him a note when he gets an A on a test. Do not do that. Well totally. No. No. Anyway, um That's called the that's called capitalism. Okay. You gotta use to get a bunch of money. Okay. All right. Whatever. Whatever you want to do there, Scott. We should write competing parenting books.
Uh in the same genre about surveillance, as you know, that's another thing I go crazy about. Um Investors in the Nancy Guthrie abduction case have recovered footage from the Nest doorbell. Nest is owned by Google. It was initially thought to have no video because there was no active subscription. When you sign up, you ha for people who don't know for Nest or any of these things, you can buy a subscription. If you don't, they say they don't keep the video. As it turns out they do.
The incident shows that NAS uploads video to Google Cloud before you decide to keep it with a paid plan so it can linger after it says it's been deleted, it is supposed to be deleted. I'm glad they got these pictures of this guy at the same time. This is a an edge case. They're they're keeping your video. That is which I which everyone thought they were doing and they said they weren't. The FBI working with Google Engineers took ten days to recover the footage from Guthrie's camera.
I the companies need to spell out in plain English how long deleted footage actually remains on their servers.
And by the way, they're also getting incredible pushback from the ring ad for the Super Bowl, which is like, We're watching everybody, but only for your dogs and there's been a million memes about only for people we need to take away. Like the surveillance of these kind of things and the ease of which they are hacked, by the way, not just taken off the door like this terrible person did.
Um, but hacked into or quite something. A lot of people are getting them hardwired into their house so that they can't do that. And also so that they can't be um taken via wireless. There's a lot of wireless activity here, but there are ways to d a lot of these things are open season on your home. I don't when I was speaking of my son uh my kids, Alex
took I had one of them up at one of our houses. When we bought it it was there, one of these Amazon or Echoes or whatever. He took them all out. He took one day I came back and everything was gone. And I was like Why? And he goes, Because they can watch us and I was like, Don't be paranoid He goes, I'm not And he was right. So anyway I think we're I think we have a bit of a different view on this in the sense that
I think technology I think we gave up our privacy a long time ago. Yes, Scott, immediately we did. What I wanna see oh, remember Scott? Yeah, he said that. Privacy doesn't ex get used to it, remember? If you are in London or New York, you can't go more than I think it's thirty feet outside without a camera. And the reason they did that was they implemented massive they have like a uh a security headquarters because of nine eleven.
And I actually w what I think you need though is really, really well thought out laws and institutions that say We're not going to go fishing unless it's a felony crime. We don't investigate it. In other words, people have the right. You said something I've thought about a lot, and that is people have the right to have secrets.
And if you wanna if you wanna go into a store, if you're I don't know, you you should be able to do what you want. If you murder somebody, then quite frankly, and there are enough There's enough evidence to say that you are a reasonable person of interest. then we are going to utilize uh cameras, data video footage. I agree with you. I just think you buy this product and it says it isn't keeping it if you don't pay for it.
then it's not keeping it. Like I'm sorry, it's just that's just the deal. That's just the deal when you buy. It's I have several of these and I've taken most of them off my house, but They say expla and I pay a lot of attention. We if you don't pay, this stuff is deleted. This is deleted. If it says it's deleted, it should be deleted. That's all.
It's just the deal you make with them. And so I don't think they should keep it if it's supposed to be deleted. Same thing with echo. It shouldn't be listening if it says it's not listening, right? That's what you're saying. That's if you want it to listen, you can tell it. That's in your home. I'm talking about this. Outside, I think we've lost that battle. They're gonna their cameras are everywhere and l top talk about London. Monte Carlo is really wired. So is the United States of America.
And that's a good thing when it comes to crime, but it's a very bad thing when it comes to inside of your house.'Cause Scott, I know uh if you want to wear your frilly underwear, I think I ooh, wait, was that a secret? I back people's privacy in their homes. I'm tired. Daddy goes commando. Big Ed and the twins wanna be free. But I I think it's it's i in this case, it was good to be able to get the picture of this guy.
At the same time, she didn't it it i i i the intent wasn't to. So if plain English of what you're doing and how long it remains, and then it should tell you when it's deleted and permanently deleted.
If they say permanently deleted, it needs to be deleted. That's j I I feel like that's some point you should be able to have you know, I have cameras around my house. You can see almost everything. If No, I try to sneak in all the time. If someone were to break in but I think what you want is Like i uh this is the hack that I think is coming.
Somebody hacks into Uber with your Uber if you use Uber a lot, I think you can find out when someone is with a thin layer of AI on top of your Uber trips. Where they go. They'll be able to know if you just terminated a pregnancy. Or if you're a Russian spy, why is this person continually going to the Russian embassy? Why is this person are you having affairs with same sex y y a thin layer of AI on top of your ride history, when and where you are going places?
It would be um they would it would be very easy to say, okay This person is clearly suffering from diabetes. This is why they keep going to this type of clinic. You could th this person is clearly engaged. in a love affair with this dude at this address. This person is a very good question. But go ahead. This person is clearly cooperating with the CIA, as evidenced by the fact they keep going to this one address that is a cov they could find out So w uh that hack, folks.
This is this is the trade we all make and we all talk a big game. Anyone who talks about privacy is typically over the age of fifty and in Brussels or DC. we consistently trade our privacy for utility. Yep, we do. And and uh what I want is massively Okay. Unless it's a felony, maybe even more than that, it's a felony that w th with that has a threat of violence and there's really strong evidence against one person. All that shit is off limits.
No one can use it. All I'm saying is if they say it's off, it needs to be off. Like Or at least give you the power to delete it. It's like if you buy like I don't know, organic apple. It's not organic. You can't do that. It's the same thing. You're selling a product, you say what it is.
Stay with what you say. But at the same time, I love the fact okay, when when there's a crime crime is hitting despite all the scariness and everyone saying whether it's whether they say saying it's you know Eric Adams or Miriam Donnie or it's it's bedlam in the streets. Crime. The number of shootings in New York last year I think hit at like an all-time low. Violence.
Is going and crime, violent crime has consistently gone down the last several decades. It was is it because we're a better people? I don't think so. It's because if you commit crimes now, everyone has seen those law and order SUVs. that if you if you go into a 7 Eleven in the middle of fucking nowhere and shoot the clerk. ATMs have cameras.
So was there any ATMs outside? Then they checked the footage on the ATM. I like I don't like a surveillance state. I like a state I like a place where if a really strong lawyer's That where they consistently say, I get you think a crime is committed here. There's not enough evidence. You do not have access to this video. Right. Full stop. Oh there's evidence that you're planning a terrorist attack.
Sorry boss, we're violating your privacy rights in every ring light, every Uber ride. Well, they're they're also but we have due process. We still I still think we have a due process. We we can't have it. The wrong people getting a hold of stuff anyway. I I hope they find Nancy Guthrie and I hope it helps that they had these, but
We have to be it's it brings up a big issue about surveillance and we should pay attention to it. Anyway, let's go in a quick break. We come back, uh we'll talk about the latest in AI news. There's a lot of it. Support for the show comes from CoreWave. AI isn't just a new tool, it encompasses so much more. It's spurring a revolution across all industries and reshaping itself to become a big part of our future together. CoreWave is at the center, powering some of the biggest names in AI.
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Hi everyone, this week on On with Keris Fisher, I'm joined by the Actor and activist Jane Fonda. You've heard of her. Jane and I talked about her roots as an activist dating back to the nineteen seven, to her ongoing fight for climate, free speech, and ultimately our democracy. Of what she had to say. Hope is very different than optimism. You know, optimism is everything's gonna be fine. And you don't do anything about it. Hope is a must. Hope is when you fight. Hope can be rage.
Breaking down the door with a battering ring. This is a wonderful conversation. I am privileged to be able to talk to you. this Jane Fonda is the bomb. She just is. She's always been that way. She remains that way. She will go down in history as that. You can listen to wherever you get your podcasts and search for us too on YouTube at Follow on with Kara Swisher.
Scott, we're back with more news. Time for rapid fire of AI News. First up, Anthropic is in the final stages of raising twenty billion dollars in new capital at a valuation of three hundred and fifty billion dollar. uh evaluation. Also at Anthropic a researcher submitted a resignation letter saying the world is in peril, saying employees constantly face pressures to set aside what matters most. That researcher is going off to write poetry, by the way, which should
trouble you. Over at X AI, Elon Musk has lost two co founders, Jimmy Ba and Tony Wu, both announced their departure as a big restructuring over there too, when he as he's brought it into Uh SpaceX, the company at OpenAI, the company's fired and executive actually opposed plans for an AI erotica feature in Chat GPT citing sexual discrimination. We don't actually know what happened here. Uh Enthropic raised the funding, uh raised twice the funding initially sought, uh based on investor demand. Uh
So thoughts on any of these stories? Lots of different uh lots of stuff happening around AI, again. Yeah, the why people get fired or why they say they were fired, I don't know. I I haven't sorted through that. What I I think has already happened. Whether it's reflected in the valuations or not. I think Anthropic is now worth more than open AI. I think open AI
What was their valuation? Eight hundred billion? Well they're cl so I think they're trying to close around at eight hundred and fifty. Yeah, eight fifty. But with that one V C who kind of if there was a moment where the the the balloon was burst, if you will, or the bubble was burst, it was when that V C had Sam Altman on his podcast and said
You've made a trillion dollars in spending commitments on a company with twenty billion in revenue. How are you going to do that? And he got very defensive about it. And they've gone consumer, anthropic's gone, enterprise, uh they haven't made the kind of crazy commitments. I I think there's been the kind of the mother of all industrial pivots. I I think now, if you will, Avis is now Hertz. I think Anthropic is now worth more or will be soon than Open AI. They are not making
Money. Yeah, that's but they're they're stronger in the enterprise. Anyways, I i none of this makes any sense in terms of a multiple on revenues, but uh I think I think open AI is in real Um I don't know. Crisis is the wrong word. And X AI? There's a lot of arguments over on X about that they have now do not have he he his big thing was I have the best AI researchers. Now he does not.
Right, from what most people, intelligent people are saying, uh, about it. But, you know, he always does this. He always goes in and shakes the tree and then shakes the tree again. That's his that's his MO, I guess. They're a distant what third or fourth or something like that. Well, these guys are all H here's an a a a symbol of how easy it is and how difficult uh or how vulnerable they are. It says here are some Dario and Daniela Emoti.
Uh we're at open AI now at Anthropic. Ilya Siskover, OpenAI, now at Safe Superintelligence. Arevan Srinivas, Open AI now at Perplexity. Mira Marathi, Open AI now at Thinking Machines. Arthur Mensch Was it Google? Now it's Mistral AI. You got all the names. It's the brightest minds here are supposedly in w I used to work with a lot of luxury brands and they said the biggest problem they were having in China.
Is that at the biggest malls, if Prada was had a store across the street from Bottega Veneta, If if the manager of that Prada didn't have people show up, he could go across the street during the lunch hour into the lunch court and offer someone eleven bucks an hour from the botanga store who was making 10, and they wouldn't even go back after their lunch break. they would go over and work at. It was just so easy to pick off people by offering them a dollar more per hour.
And it feels so many of these deep these people who have, you know, fairly or unfairly have established themselves as some of the few minds that really understand this stuff. the amount of money and temptation to go do their own thing or join another firm It is I mean, supposedly, wasn't there reports that Zuckerberg was s paying some people a hundred to three hundred million dollars and then he wasn't? I mean, it just feels like it's total
I don't know, bedlam right now. Right. It's it's it's it's I mean they all think they're gonna be the one, right? I'm gonna be the final one standing and I'm gonna own the world essentially, which is I bet. It's a bet, right? I think one of the things that continues to plague these companies are these researchers who are like, or fucked everybody. Like they come out and d almost, you know, like there's sort of like
It's gonna kill us. And so I think a lot of people are much more concerned about this than you know. I think uh but quite frankly, Kara, I think a lot of it is people backfilling
uh the reason why they're living with they're leaving with morality sometimes or some sort of victimhood. If you look at j just to go back to musical chairs here, if you look at XAI, the company lost its second co founder in just two days. And that means that half of XAI's founding team, six of the twelve, have left the company in less than three years of existence.
Ann Must said, you know, w we've reorganized XAI to improve the speed of execution, which required parting some ways with some people. And I think for some of these founders, there's legal risk to staying at XAI. The EU is currently investigating the company for its creation of non consensual sexual deepfakes based on real people, including children. So this really is the Wild West. This is um I you know, I don't know. I I it's just it's so difficult to e even keep track of.
Aaron Powell It's like as if a s science people went crazy, right? But th I I do think the warnings are getting really interesting. They're like, I wish someone would just explain what we're in peril. How? How are we in peril? Yeah, how does that manifest? What does that mean? Like, uh it's like the people who knew that we were about you know, in those movies where a bunch of people know we're about to get hit by a like a comet or something and they're not telling us. They like I would
Yeah, is it is it? How your family why? Why is it Arnold Schwarzenegger showing up at your door wearing oak leaves and a lot of leather? Like what is it? What is happening? What does it look like here? What is it what does it mean?'Cause the employment destruction that was supposed to be already well underway. I would argue it's not happening yet. I don't know, but why would someone say they're in peril we're in peril?
And set aside what matters most, which is safety, presumably. And then they go off and write poetry. I would like some more information, if you don't mind. If you're gonna do that, you need to tell me. Yeah, why exactly? Why are we in peril? Why are we in peril? What
Save us from what Tell me, tell us. I'm known I know there's these legal things, but if it's so terrifying, you need to like step out and like tell us, tell us what it is and have bring bring proof too, by the way. Would love to know when the comet's gonna hit us. Um in any case. Uh but the VP of product policy at OpenAI was fired after she voiced opposition to OpenAI's upcoming erotica features for adult users. Yeah. She she were claiming something else.
That enabling erotica would likely strengthen feelings that users already have for the chat bot based on a recent report released by OpenAI out of chat GPD's eight hundred million weekly users. One point two million users are prioritizing talking to Chat GPT over their family, friends, school, or work. That's less than what I thought.
Roughly five hundred and sixty K are experiencing psychosis or mania. This is shitty research as a as a d as a ratio by eight hundred million people. Is that normal or not normal? And about one point two million people discuss suicide with Chat GPT. Again, what I want to see is someone to say All right. Is that just a function of people who are depressed thinking they can talk to ChatGPT just as they would talk to a friend or a therapist?
Or is it something about talking to ChatGPT? Right. You get the psychosis. Suicidal ideation or psychosis. I just did an interview with Sherry Therpel from my doc series. And she's been saying it for years and she's like, I've never seen anything like it now. It was before on the sidelines and in the darker places or people had you know, it was a small group of people. She goes, It's really gone mainstream.
in a way. I I would like the information from these people. Would you come out and bring a bag and bring it to me or Scott or something like that? Anyway, don't bring it to you. Bring it to Kara Swisher. Uh on a on a r on a separate note, m speaking of sort of normal journalism and getting information out, one of the most depressing thing is Hong Kong media mogul and pro democracy activist Jimmy Lai.
was sentenced this week to twenty years in prison after we found guilty in a s to sedition and collusion with foreign forces. It's the longest sentence ever handed down under Beijing. Death sentence. Uh Eli's children are saying a potential visit by President Trump China April could be crucial in securing the release of their seventy eight year old father.
This is something Trump should do. Back in December, Trump said he asked uh President G to consider releasing Lai. But on the campaign trail in twenty twenty four, he was a lot more confident saying, a hundred percent I'll get him out. It'll be easy to get out. He's not so easy to get out. The the real surveillance economy, the real control economy. We've talked about these issues around control and the uses of AI for badness. Um China wins the boats everywhere and they they go after
this guy who's a really important um figure in this area. And so Uh if President Trump can do anything, please do it. If anyone can do anything, but Jimmy Lai is a hero and and what's happened to him is a is as you say a death sense. Look, I go to the economics. W when you start imprisoning journalists, whether it was Turkey in twenty twelve, Soviet Union at the turn of the century.
Or China, uh, putting the you know, taking a very hard fisted approach to Hong Kong in twenty twenty one as kind of best epitomized by Timulai being imprisoned. Distinct of the morality of it, distinct of the importance it plays in a society. the nation gets poorer and angrier. It's a it is literally a cunner to canary in the coal mine saying, we are about to send a chill across some of the most talented people and scrutiny about what can be said about companies that hurt
The economy. The nations get poorer and angrier. And it's literally a symbol of when an economy is about to move to an authoritarian state, which is really bad for innovation, for attracting outside capital. When you're thinking about investing. in Turkey and all of a sudden they start locking up journalists. Does that think does that does that if you're Google, you think, yeah, I'm gonna start I'm gonna open an office.
In I'm going to open an office in Istanbul. Are you thinking, you know, I'm going to wait and see if they sort that out? If you're one of the brightest PhDs in the world. and you're doing research on authoritarian governments, you're doing research on innovation, and you're worried that your research might might co might contradict something that the leadership is espousing to.
Do you go teach at those universities? No. You go somewhere else. So i i uh this is look, uh China is not, you know, is not a model for But having said that, I was just supposed to be on with Don Lemon who got arrested. Yes, exactly. Why are they arresting Don Lemon? Like give me a break. They shouldn't be arresting any journalist like this. It's just ridiculous. Uh I would agree. Um anyway, Jimmy Ly, let's get him out. Let it let's get him out. He's a hero.
Um I'm gonna finish up with something that just happened. Um Gail Slater, who a hugely respected lawyer, antitrust lawyer who was running antitrust if DOJ just announced she's stepping down. It follows uh the the resignation of a guy named Mark Hammer who was a one of her his uh her top deputies. She's had clashes with Pam Bondy over the handling antitrust investigations. I've heard she was in a real bind over the Paramount thing. They're trying to like shove through things.
that are friendly to the Trump administration and she just can't do it. She can't do it during eleven months on the job. She found herself in this bind caught between the Trump administrations. She was close to JD Vance. This is a very respected and well regarded antitrust version. This should be an enormous signal that Gail Slater is stepping down. Um, I had hoped to talk to her, but uh everyone had told me sh they didn't know what she was gonna do about the the Netflix Paramount thing.
Um, you cannot be against the Netflix thing if you're not against the Paramount thing. I'm sorry. Like and of course she's being, you know, she she she had a she's been putting a bind all over the place, a a talented and and well re regarded person has put into a blind and so she's stepping down. Um
I just don't know who they'll put in some idiot like a Brandon Carr type of person who will just do what they say. Um but it really brings it down rather significantly. Even uh even um making Delrahim for works for Paramount actually now. Very well regarded. Like th they're gonna have to put in it in a village fucking idiot in the Pam Bondi mode. So not a good sign. Not a good sign. Anyway, uh one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions.
Och världens godaste började, med keddar, piclad rödlök och en legendarisk skoshovangshos. Brooklyn Tribute i maxappen. Kanske med saftigt svensk nötkött, leverera direkt i B. Last month, Nora Maby, a reporter in Montana, was looking around on Facebook for story ideas. In Montana, particularly in rural areas, Facebook is where a lot of news is shared. And a post from the local sheriff caught her eye.
He said that Border Patrol agents had rocked up outside a business in the very small town of Freud, Montana to take someone in, and that he, the sheriff, was trying to assist them. But then at the end of his post, he added this.
It's important to note that this man was not a threat, not a danger to his community, has no criminal history, um, and has been a a great member of this community. Which I just haven't seen a statement like that from law enforcement, particularly in a really, you know, conservative area that typically has a lot of support for all types of law enforcement, Border Patrol included.
Coming up on Today Explained the story of Freud Montana, a town where most people voted for President Trump, and how residents reacted when reality hit home. Today Explained drops every weekday. Megan Rapino here. This week on a touch more the one and Flager Johnson joins us to talk about leveling up for the WMBA, managing NIL money, and how she's nurturing her music career. We're also taking a closer look at why participation in girls' sports is declining. Surprising, we know.
And we're giving some love to Valentine's Day and what it's like dating a pro athlete and whose Athlete couple of all time. Check out the latest episode of A Touch More wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube. Okay, Scott, let's hear a prediction. Space X AI Tesla, the Whatever Tesla's not in there yet. Probably the most anticipated was the IPO of open AI in twenty twenty six, sometime this year or early twenty seven. I don't think that's gonna happen.
Oh. Um I think that yeah, I think this company is is now is gone into full Um I don't call it panic mode. But
It feels as if the mo momentum has a habit of creating more momentum, and I think the momentum is really negative around this company. What happens then? Where does it go? What does it do? Well, uh I think they'll substantially um scale back their I mean, have you already seen the war have you already seen Jensen Huang and Sam Altman who were, you know, bud buddies are already shit posting each other?
Right. Claiming that the hundred billion dollar agreement with was a framework and they're actually not gonna the hundred billion dollar investment. May I just say you said that. Well, that was ridiculous. These circular deals. I'll give you a hundred billion I'll invest a hundred billion if you invest a hundred billion in our chips and now s and now quote unquote Jensen's backtracking and saying, Well, it's just a framework.
They couldn't justify it. Nvidia stock has gone down because people are worried about exposure to open AI. So what does open AI do? They start shipposting NVIDIA and saying no is because their chips didn't live up to our expectations. When when the biggest player in the space, Jensen Huang and kind of the young gun OpenAI, start shitposting each other and and they back out of this hundred billion dollar investment framework.
That is a really bad sign. Yeah. She kept using what was the word? We're honored to be invited. What was he saying? was so funny. Yeah, but they're both going on background now and blaming each other. Oh, totally. Utterly. Like, can I just give people a lesson? When you hear sources close to the situation, if they were any closer to either of them, they'd be on the other side of them. That's them, right? So I think I think the momentum
The the worm is turned. And it's not that OpenAI isn't an unbelievable company that could go public at like a fifty billion dollar market capitalization, but the problem is when you sell some investors in at 250, 450, and then if he's able to close this round at 850, They're not willing to go public or let you have a liquidity event that cuts their what happens in an IPO, say he went public at$300 billion next year and said, okay, the market isn't what we thought.
Unless there's a couple of years where the latest round of investors get so fatigued they're willing to take a 60% haircut, all of your shares, the last round of investment has a preference. Meaning they they're the first money out. So the fifty or hundred billion going in at eight fifty doesn't want to give up their liquidity preference and let them go public if they're going public at less than eight fifty, which I think they would.
So your last round of investors become a veto block for going public unless you're gonna go public at a valuation greater than eight fifty. So what do they do? You haven't answered my question. They'll dramatic in my opinion, they'll dramatically scale back their capital, their capex. And they'll end up with a much smaller, much less ambitious, amazing company that's only worth a hundred or two hundred bill. That's only one of the
Thirty most valuable companies in America, not the get bought. What happened well, that means everyone else will get collapsed, right? Or not? I think the whole my opinion, if you look at and I look at weird signals, the percentage of ads at the Super Bowl. Right. I know. Yeah, you said if you look at all this I think there's a ton of anecdotal evidence showing that while AI may live up to its potential, the market cap of the biggest players this year is about to throw up.
Which isn't to say that similar in 2000, when the market cap of Amazon went down ninety-five percent, it's still not gonna be an unbelievable company. But I think we're about to see a dramatic recalibration in the markets, which includes open AI's IPO plans. getting queered. Now who's gonna take their place? And this is the prediction. The most impressive numbers, hands down, that no one I wasn't expecting, Calci. Cal she's not polymarket, right? Well cal
Calci is actually of the two, the clean, well lit space of this I see. Okay. Of this marketplace, right? It's a little Calci is CFTC regulated. It's also in the US, it's peer-to-peer trading. It's federally regulated. Um, I have some I don't have moral clarity around these issues because I do think they tap into the dopa of a young, more risk aggressive male brain. But just let me go straight to the numbers here. In twenty twenty six, or in this Super Bowl, right?
Over a billion dollars in trading volume on Cal sheet. That's up. 2700%. It was up twenty-eightfold this year. And you know who's getting absolutely the shit kicked out of them? Is Flutter as the gambling site. Th they're killing these guys. The sports market accounted for about ninety percent of Calch's activity this month.
And it's it's having incredible impact on traditional gambling and sports book. Um uh analysts have noted that Cal Shoe's rise coincides with the underperformance in major sportsbook stock prices, DraftKings, Flutter as traders shift some activity towards prediction markets. And with a venue that's easy to access nationwide, which Calchi is, even in states without legal sports betting.
the firm is attracting betters who might otherwise uh have used traditional sports books. So this is this company and my my prediction is the following. Open AI, way to the downside, doesn't get public. Calci is about is gonna be, in my opinion,
The kind of IPO we're all trying to get into in Q two of Q three of this year. Calci it is. All right. Well, that's interesting. You've been sounding this alarm for these companies. Interesting. Fascinating. That's a big one. Scott, that's a big one. We'll see, right? That's a big one. Yeah. Anyway, we want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to sort of question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT.
Uh elsewhere in the Kara and Scott universe, this week on Prof G Markets, Scott spoke with Eswar Prasad, Professor of Trade Policy and Economics at Cornell University to discuss why he thinks economics, domestic politics, and geopolitics are stuck in a doom loop.
to what is intrinsically the zero sum game of geopolitics where one country can gain influence only at the expense of another. But now even globalization has become seen as a zero sum game, so it isn't offsetting the zero sum game of geopolitics. And worse, some of the negative dynamics of globalization have started infecting domestic politics, not just in the US but in many other countries.
God, I feel smarter already. Professor um Prasad, th th one of the things that struck me and I said this, we graduated the same year from undergraduate, me from UCLA, him from the University of Madras. I graduated with a two point two seven GPA with an incredible ability to make bongs out of any household item. Uhhuh. He won a scholarship in India that identified like one of the fifty smartest Kids of a billion kids. And so what what do what does a guy who's one of the fifty like
He this guy could walk into the Rose Bowl and take the average IQ of those eighty thousand people up a couple of points. That's how smart and hard working this man is. So what are we doing to th what are we saying to these people now? Can you imagine a kid coming out of the University of Mongoods right now in twenty twenty six? Is he gonna go to brown?
No, he's gonna go to Miguel or he's gonna go to Instituto Empresa or he's gonna go to ICOD. Or who knows, maybe maybe the University of Cordoba in Argentina. I mean Speaking of Doom Loops, academic Doom Loops. Yeah. We're the sports team that used to have access to the number one draft at any college in the world and we've said no we don't And now we just have Prof.
That's talk about a bad trade. He is repatriating himself in the summer. He's coming back. Anyway, it's it sounds like a great interview. I'll be listening to it. Anyway. That is the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot and be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. Uh we'll be back next week. Today's show is produced by Larry Namenzoi Marcus and Taylor Griffin. Ernie enter Todd engineered this episode. Manola Moreno edited the video. Thanks to also Jebros, Miss Severo and Dan Shallon.
Nashak Curra as Vox Media's executive producer of podcast. Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York magazine of Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com/slash pod. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of And doesn't it?