Instagram's Teen Accounts, Fed Rate Cut, and Guest Justin Theroux

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Swishford. I'm in a basement. Yeah, but it's impossible to keep you there. You have been all over my feed as there is nothing in algorithm like more than someone absolutely barbecuing, putting on a spit, spinning around, eating, and then I don't know what the term is, but you anyways, we should just play the fucking clip. How many laws do you think there are restrictions on tech companies? Just love you to tell me.

Hundreds. Zero. Zero. So where are all these laws that you just, you just, you just, a lot of words. Well, listen, you literally just said a lot of words, all of which were untrue. There are no laws restricting speech online. In fact, there's one law section 230 that allows them to get away with anything. Let me ask you. But I literally, let me go to your soul. Let me go to your social media component question is in 2020, in 2020, did Twitter not

correct the Hunter Biden laptop story? Was that was that was all? Let me ask you. An answer made mistakes. They made a mistake and then they said that also is a mistake to restrict free speech is what you're saying. It's not a mistake. It's a mistake to make a mistake is what it was and it wasn't a restricted. It was a fundamental mistake. And what is you on must doing right now? He cuts things off all the time when he feels like it. It's

just, this is what media company is interesting. So I'm going to guess. I don't, I don't know what you put that on the big screen. When you in Amanda were alone, you played it and then it was sexy time. Did you guys just go out it? I haven't been home since that happened. You know, let me say this is Brian Lanzas senior advisor in the Trump campaign. He just kept coming out with you know what he was sloppy and didn't know the facts. He called read

Hoffman read Hastings. Then when someone pointed out that Vance called Trump America's Hitler, he said, he was 2020 who cares. Like literally he's just he was sloppy and ignorant and it was exhausting. Like they just and another person on the thing didn't know who Gwen shot well was at SpaceX, kept saying that Elon did it all. I was like, do you know doing shot well and they're like, no, who is that?

I'm like, so you don't know SpaceX at all. It just went on and on and on around a number of falsehoods. It was really, you know, the way they problem I have and I think they should have more numbers on these programs. I'm sorry. If you're going to say something you should at least do the research or do the facts. And so he didn't. So I just showed him the way. There's two things are in addition to your kind of awesome body slam here.

The first is that when only four of 44 secretaries and cabinet members who you worked with are endorsing you and your second one for presidency. It kind of leads to a scenario that we have now. And then the Trump campaign has just awful fucking surrogates. I mean, as much as I didn't like Kelly on Conway, I forget the really attractive blonde woman who was a surrogate forum, a spokesperson forum. She was quite good. Vice President Harris's surrogates are

Secretary Buttigieg. Governor Newsom, they are fantastic. You know, Senator Kelly. I mean, these cast are just fantastic in enemy territory with friendly or not friendly. Their surrogates are really like in addition. You said nice things about Abby Phillips. I have no reason to think she's not a good person. I think CNN is doing a terrible fucking job. And that is they are putting up programs with village idiots on the other side.

And it doesn't benefit the debate. It's fun. It tickles our sensors to see you just school somebody. But the few times I've dialed into that show. It is a couple incredibly biased people on the left and a couple of village idiots on the right who just have a food fight and talk past each other. It is not helping the discourse. Yeah, I think it's a bigger problem because it's a bigger problem in society.

The whole is that you, you know, including with this pet thing, you just can say lies over and over again. And then say you said a lie and it was okay. And that's, you know, it's just I think the reason it resonated is because I had the facts. And I was like, you are, when I said willfully inaccurate, I think people were like finally someone's saying exactly this. And what happens when people are say attacking things he says they don't correct him for one in this guy, in this particular guy.

And it was, you know, a lot of people do it. I corrected him respectfully actually. I was not like screaming at him. I think a lot of what happens with the left people to just argue a point that is inaccurate in the first place. And so it's no one ever gets any illumination, right? Or what's happening here.

And so I'm like, this is a ridiculous argument about rhetoric because it's so clear that the rhetoric levels have, don't make a difference in their nonsensical and they get away from the point. But at the end of the day, that's not your job. And these companies are now in the business of entertainment, not in the business and news. And if they were actually in the business and news, they have an obligation.

You know, who I remember I watched dear, Jibalsa on CNBC with Keith Roblois, who went on to just essentially lie about open doors financials to basically say they'd been profitable and go, and she would stop them and very plightly go, Keith, you can't say that. That's just not true. And according to gap accounting, they have because a lot of older people, you know, average age dead of CNBC viewers,

would take this guy who looks credible and as they put up course, the moniker billion or next to his name and think, oh, if he likes open door and it's doing really well, I'm going to go by stop. And she had to stop them. I think three or four times. And she had, I saw that it was, she had the presence to an enforcement, a dignified way, stop them and say that the debate moderator who we would kill for, they should pass the loss saying everybody has to run by this guy.

Did you see the guy that moderated the debate for the congressional district in Colorado that Lauren Bobert ran for? Oh, I love him. He was just amazing. And you have apologized for the theater incident. I certainly have.

And I just want to make sure. Did you apologize for the behavior that went on with you in your date or the vaping or did you or did you apologize or pardon me or did you apologize for lying to voters about what you did that night and the disrespect that you showed to service workers that night. What specifically were you apologizing? I don't believe there was disrespect. There were things that were absolutely taken out of context.

There's video of your interactions with service workers because these guys is very hard to get to have the ability to fact check real time. And also quite frankly, what you did, Abby should have done. And the guests are, I'm going to give her the thing of I happen to know a lot about this.

So you should have people on that happen to know a lot about I think they should have more reporters on I've told them this. So people are or area expertise people and I had just come off a series of interviews about Russian interference about rhetoric around you know, so I knew a lot. And so that's the issue is so you either have someone who knows a lot on the topic if you're going to take up the topic who is actually reporter or academic or someone who's an expertise.

But just like saying, you know, you know, sometimes when they do that on some of these panels, I'm on and they go, Ukraine, I don't speak. I don't know what I'm talking about, right? I don't say a word. I don't have an opinion or a take because I don't know what I'm talking about and unfortunately into the breach. Go these people who don't know what they're talking to you to say when he could he said read Hastings many met read Hoffman, I was like, all right.

You know, do this is not you're not doing this and then acting like it wasn't a big deal that he didn't know the difference, right? That just stupidity is infinite and intelligence has its limitations. And I just I think we do need to do it. And the reason it's resonating is because of that. And we are still we are still being taken advantage of by foreign interference that wants us to do this kind of, you know, pig, pig wrestling essentially.

I don't know what to call it. It's crap. It's crap as they say in Scotland. Crafts. We're back to Scotland. There's a commercial opportunity here. And that is to establish some sort of service, almost like a commercial that runs for 60 to 120 seconds at the end of every news program that is powered by AI or if we can find them three or four journalists that sort of seem moderate.

They just go for 60 to 120 seconds take every face and basically fact check them and say this person this person lied 11 times this person exaggerated three times this person. We have someone on CNN that does that, but it has to happen in real time. Don't you think?

Well, ideally, ideally you would or that would be really interesting. Ideally someone fact checking in real time that has those skills, but maybe even a chiroren, but it has to be something that sort of everybody trusts that sort of almost like, you know, FDA calorie count on food or whatever from someone or something or an organization that say these guys are pretty at least have the reputation of being neutral arbiters.

I'd love to see that kind of running during the presidential debates that just say this is not accurate. This is not accurate. Whatever it might be because the American public is to blame here because rather than the truth, they just want to feel good. And they want to see people embarrass each other and fight each other. I agree. You know, as you know, I work from the Glockening Group. It's the same thing. It's just like at least the accurate if you're going to make a point.

I don't mind having a difference of opinion, right? One time, I'm not going to say who it was, but someone there on that panel likened it to pro wrestling and I looked at them and I said, that's shameful. Right before it started, I was like, you think this is fun. Like this is, and you know, you don't want to come across like, you know, like, oh, how dare you think this is this. I think it should be interesting. And people should have great, great debates are so great to watch.

And really good ones are so they're not just they are entertaining, but they're they can be really illuminating and they should be illuminating is is what it has to happen. And unfortunately, people who are not area expertise people just mow the fuck off on things. They don't know about including this guy. I also listen to I also listen to your interview with my hero, Secretary Clinton. Yeah, I really enjoyed it. I like her a lot.

She's a spicy lady. Whenever I'm on AI and I'm thinking about I'm trying to sbone up on something around geopolitics. I ask, what would Hillary Clinton say about this? She's very clever. And she she's very clever. Anyway, thank you for saying that I wish it wasn't a viral thing in a weird way. I'd like people need. I don't think you love it.

That mommy loves it. I don't I don't I don't listen to my because I've been listening to a lot of like voters. They want real information. They say it again and again in these focus groups. They're not talking about the fighting that like enough of this.

I know I want to know things. And I think that we they deserve that anyway, we've got a lot to get to today, including Instagram rolling out major changes for teens, which you know, interesting and what the fed rate cut means for consumers investors. Scott, I'm eager to hear. What you have to say about that plus our friend of pivot finally is actor and writer Justin Thoreau. We're going to talk to him about his new movie AI in Hollywood and more. We love Justin Thoreau. He has become someone.

He's a fan of pivot and we're a fan of Justin. So excited. Are you excited for Justin? Yeah. He's a leading man. He had a character actor and also he's got one of those people and realizes he's actually a very, do you know he wrote tropics under? He did. He's a writer. He's very, he's like Renaissance man. He's talented and talented and now we're trying to guess how many times you can imagine his fantastic hair. Anyway, first the trumps have entered the crypto business.

Oh my God, the two words together, trumps and crypto in a live stream on ex former president Donald Trump, who seemed to display no knowledge of what crypto is announced world Liberty Financial, a crypto venture. There wasn't any detail actually in the announcement, but it's reported being pitched as borrowing and lending platform in the company. Social can said it aims to drive mass adoption of stable coins.

One of the people whose involved seems to be, it calls them self described, I think dirt bag and I have sounds about accurate. The people he's affiliated with are speaking of really downgraded people. Several members of Trump, Pamela had roles in new business according to them, according including 18 year old Baron Trump, who's listed as a decentralized finance visionary. Okay, sure, Baron, sorry, 18 year, we can talk about you and I think you're probably inadequate to the task to say the least.

So why is he doing this so close to the election? I mean, the grift is rather severe here. Yeah, but I don't. I mean, it's just crazy. Something like 5% of his campaign donations have gone to his own entities, whether it's fees to use his plane or his hotels or holding an event at one of his golf course.

So the clubocracy is almost unknown, I actually, as much as I hate to admit it, I think this might be smart because some of the undecideds here are libertarians in the crypto folks, the likelihood increasing his chances of winning back the presidency because there is, there is a big chunk of voters up for grabs here that are not our one issue voters around crypto and they're trying to figure out who would be better one in five Americans now on some cryptocurrency and it's skews.

It also skews a little bit younger, it skews a little bit more mail. It actually skews interesting. I mean, the stuff I've seen despite the conferences I've gone to on this, there's a lot of non-whites who have invested in crypto. So for him to kind of come out and say, not only am I your friend in crypto, I'm in the business, as I thought about it, I thought, you know, it's probably kind of a smart signal that he's the guy, if you like crypto, he's your man.

Well, you know, I kind of, that's a really smart way to put it ahead and thought about. Scott, as always, you do this. I'm like, oh, he's right about that. Listen, the people he's affiliating with here, the minute you dig deep, but really sketchy characters, right? Of course. And so it does have the possibility of being so like the next indictment, that's what I feel like, like the social media thing, a true social, which is down in the dumps.

It went up a little bit because he said he wasn't going to sell, but there's other ways of getting money to him through that. But I see your point here. I do think the way he set it up, it's another group of grifters that are involved in this thing. And people, either grifters or people who have incompetencies that are really rather pronounced. And so, you know, and of course, he does have all these fans who want them to get into this so that they can make a killing in some way.

But I also think it opens a line of attack for Kamala Harris and that if you're against the dollar, right? I think that kind of stuff. I think it does. There's a much larger swathe of people that think I would really like to have a stable economy. And crypto is not that thing. I don't think she should get near this. I agree with you. She should talk about the economy and how a strong economy is important and supporting the dollar.

But she does not want to get near this because no matter what she says, she'll come off as anti crypto. And yeah, she should say we think crypto is really important. It should be done in an honest and that's the kind of thing she should say. Something like that. Or show, I don't know. If she actually showed up and said something about mining and the limit of 21 million coins and it's established itself.

She just had two or three talking points that showed she knew about three million times more about this actual innovation than Trump. And outline two or three, just basic policy measures around supporting crypto. But she should not go after him because about this because a small business people, he's a private citizen right now. He's running for president, but he's a private citizen. And a small business in crypto, you don't want it to be in any way seen as against either those things.

But right, I think you can paint him as the grifter part of it. And I think it's great. I think really, you know, really honest crypto people are wonderful and we should push it. That kind of thing. She could do a little piece of the grifter part because people do understand that that there's a real casino gang hanging in. The grifter part, and this is the challenge she faces. Or what I would argue is her task. And that is everybody knows who wants to know or who cares that he's a grifter.

There's no new information here. Care point. And it is so easy. And we constantly as Democrats sit around just a just flumics that you, the potential Trump voter can't see what a criminal and a bad person is. And we've got to stop it because they already know and they're like, hold my beer. I'll show you. I can actually vote for him, despite how disgusted you are in me at my lack of disgust. Sit here and watch me vote for him.

They got to spend all of the remaining capital on this is my vision for the economy. This is my vision for alternative asset classes because all the people who are or are not going to vote for him based on who he is, that's done. That's done. Don't spend a moment on it. I agree. Someone I was at a very fancy dinner last night and someone correctly said to me, he's like, it doesn't matter what you say about him. It doesn't matter how many things he does.

And one of the things this person observers are that was correct is he's got a very high floor and a very low ceiling. It doesn't matter that floor is not coming down. Anyway, speaking of Trump family members, Melania Trump is doing some interesting campaigning. We've never, we've seen her for a while, allegedly, according to people. I've spoken to, she's very upset about a lot of the Laura Lumer stuff because she's

rolling out a book largely. The former first lady has a memoir coming out early next month, released a clip on social media defending her new modeling work. Let's listen. Why do I stand proudly behind my new modeling work? The more pressing question is, why has the media chosen to scrutinize my celebration of the human forum in a fashion photo shoot? Are we no longer able to appreciate the beauty of the human body? I just, Scott, I'm just, this is a layup for you.

I would not, the more pressing question, Scott, is what do you think of this? Well, let's kept my nude photos closeted for a while and I agree with her. I, like, no, no one was talking about this. No one cares. I don't, I thought this was, I thought this was the onion. I don't. I know everybody did. No one cares. No one cares. No one cares. No one cares. No one cares. Online, but go ahead.

And I, there's literally nothing, there's nothing to say about this other than mad M first lady, no one cares, no one scrutinizing it. You've decided to make it an issue in hopes of selling more books. There's no, everyone, everyone is down with it and more power to you and I encourage you to pose naked again. I don't, I mean, go for it. I get on it. I got on it. I was hoping for a little more Scott here, but I like it. I like that, I like this controlled Scott. It really is bizarre.

She's going to hard time rolling this thing out. She doesn't do regular media stuff and so she's going to have to do stunts like this is a stunt. It's a ridiculous stunt. It's just weird. She's doing it weeks before an election, but all right, well, on you knock yourself out. I don't think she's going to be in the White House if he wins. I got to give it to her. There's nothing funny about leaks celebrity nudes, which is good because it's, I have a difficult time masturbating while laughing.

So I just don't think it's anything to laugh about. Okay. You knew it was coming. I knew it was coming. I was waiting. That's why this is a layup for you. You knew it was coming. So I want to get to something. This is another, I'm giving you another layup, a third layup here. Are you ready for more wearables? Snap has unveiled fifth generation of its spectables, AR glasses. The spectators are only available for developers who have to commit to paying $99 a month for a year to build AR apps.

Before the device snap is partnering with OpenAI to give developers tools to build their AI features with the glasses. The announcement comes a week before Meta's connectiment where the company unveils its latest hardware. They are still going, they're big. They're still big. I saw them on several people's faces and they're big. What do you think? They're going to keep going. The snap or it's meta or Apple. They're going to keep going here.

Well, like I don't know if you heard, but this is, I just saw this on Reuters. The most odd have detonated all of the mixed reality headsets in Lebanon, but no one was injured. No one was injured. That was a joke online. That was you stole that. Some might call it picking lowest hanging fruit, but go ahead. Go ahead. Tell me what you think of these, of why they keep at it. The honest answer is I don't know. I think that the hardware here, first off, I think snaps a very innovative company.

I think it's sub-scale. I think it's having trouble competing. It's one of the more creative ones. I've always thought it was the perfect acquisition candidate once it's stocked up to a reasonable level, but even at this level, it's now, it's still too big for a traditional media company and all the biggest players don't want to raise any trust scrutiny. I love Evan. I like the team there. I think they do as good a job as they can being a sub-scale player in a market dominated by just giants.

In terms of the headset itself, they don't have the capital, in my opinion, to maintain the staying power here. The only wearable that works is your iPhone. People say, well, what about the Apple Watch? Apple has spent tens of billions of dollars and has the capital and the endurance or whatever the sustainability to just promote that thing for a good 20 years. Now it sells more watches than the entire Swiss watch industry.

They do not have the capital because these things will work once you get micro camera technology and microprocessors to the point where you can have it on an elegant piece of glasses. They don't have the capital to pull that off. I just think this is another interesting press release. I think the Uber Dorks will try it and like it, but it's not dead on arrival. It dies as slow. It goes in six or 12 months, we're not talking about it.

I think this area, they're not giving up on the idea of heads-up display. I think that's where it's going. I think eventually your AirPods will have cameras and you're right, micro cameras and it will speak to you and it will surround you. There's a word that I was interviewed from someone else, but there's a word that Sachin Adela did yesterday called, Agente Ick, an agent on your behalf. I interviewed Mustafa Solomon who runs their AI yesterday at Los Wins of Tech and it'll be on on.

I think this idea of an agent that surrounds you has got to have some sort of audio and he talked about audio being critical, audio and visual that surrounds you in some way where you just ask questions of it like Jarvis, Son, Marvel on the Avengers movies. These are going to, these are eventually, they're going to be just like phones were. They used to be big, giant blocks of computing and then they got smaller and smaller and this is where it's headed. That's my, as you know.

The company that's going to capture all of the shareholder value here will be the company that has the wearable, the supercomputer in your pocket and the brand. It's going to be Apple and you're right. They're going to, with with Apple AI, which they're rolling out with their new phone, which I bought today, of course, with essentially, a wearable that I have on my person all day long, specifically AirPods and with an unbelievable supercomputer that everybody has so they can program it at scale.

And when I walk by an apartment and I say, or if I just say to Apple, I say, order me an Uber or whatever and it can do it if it hears certain words and it says, you know, whether it's Siri or Apple, Apple intelligence, whatever it is, or if I walk by an apartment complex and say, are there any apartments to rent here? It'll say, please hold up your phone and give me a visual. But certain things will be fine just with audio.

Some things will require visual, but the idea of needing something that again violates your instincts and that as Fox with your peripheral vision just doesn't work. Apple will wait for snap and other players to push boundaries of innovation and then they will come in as the second mouse and scale it. They will. I agree with you. I think it'll be interesting. Anyway, okay. Let's get to our first big story.

It's finally taking action when it comes to protecting kids online with a new effort called teen accounts accounts for users under 18 will now be private by default, which they should have been all along. They will also be messaging restrictions, more parental supervision and automatic muting during overnight hours, automatic, which is critical. The changes are rolled out for teens in the US, the UK, Canada and Australia in the next two months and globally in January.

Instagram plans to use AI to identify kids lying about their age starting next year seems a little creepy, but they have to figure ways to do this. Instagram CEO Adam Asari said they're expected to lose some meaningful amount of teen growth and engagement. Jonathan Hyte shared results of the survey he did on Gen Z and social media and there are times almost half of Gen Z wishes social media platforms like X and TikTok didn't exist. There's so much here.

Scott, look, I can start, but I think you should start and I have some thoughts on this. What do you think of these teen accounts, what impact will it have on teens and do you think others will follow Instagram's lead? This is a misdirect. Anyone under the age of 16 should not be allowed to be on social media period. This is Adam Asari as a new Cheryl Sandberg and he will start lying to us and convincing us that all of a sudden Meta's DNA is now different. It's no longer gorilla.

It's Zebra and gives a flying fuck about young people. I think Adam is a good guy. I think he's very likable. This core competence is finding very likable, charming people to convince us that they are not lying. Remember how this would have been impossible to pull off and yet they have figured out away very easily and inexpensively using the AI they have at their fingertips to go, this person is clearly under the age of 16.

And then they can detect if you're lying to them about your age, they ask you to upload a government issued ID so they can verify it. Oh my God, they've figured it out. And note you know, they figured it out on the eve of the Child Online Legislation Act. They've all of a sudden just as we've come up to the edge of actually doing something.

They're trying to say what the alcohol and the tobacco industries have both done and they've said, uh oh, the wolves are circling, the jig is up, they've figured out we're lying, they've figured out we will say anything to increase shareholder value. So let's pretend all of a sudden to give up lying fuck and convince them, oh no, you don't need to do anything. We're regulating ourselves. Folks, you're a day late and a dollar fucking short. Do not believe anything.

These people say or do this should do nothing. Fine. This is great. Well done, Adam. Thank you very much. Go on the view. Patch yourself on the back. You're the new leader. You're the new official liar. They should not do anything to get in the way of legislation. They start absolutely. I think this was, let's put this is the decision scots referring to is about to come up and they are trying to end run it essentially. It's taken up to the edge. You're right. It's interesting.

I got a really great text from someone I talk about this issue with a parent and he goes, none of the changes they announced today. I'm going to just read him. I'm not going to identify him. But none of the changes they announced today would have prevented the harms my daughter and all her friends and pretty much every kid experience. The unwanted advances from other kids, the unwanted violence, sexual self-harm content they get recommended in reals.

I did some basic testing recently when they announced changes to the sense of content. I can tell you it was trivial to get a video of a woman talking in right detail about how great it is to get gang banged recommended to an account of a 13 year old girl with all defaults and no searches. I do think getting a parent involved when switching a team count public is good, but only if they explain what that actually means to everyone involved.

But ultimately it looks like Meta is trying to pawn off teen safety on the parents when it is their job to create a safe product. The Instagram still has an added a button where a teen can say when they get an unwanted advance, how can they even talk about protecting against inappropriate content if they don't let teens let them know when it happens. Adam understood why it was important and how easily it is better to do when I spoke to him yet they refused to do its sigh.

I think that just kind of says it. I just don't know what to say. They should have buttons. They should have the available to do it and they're pawning far too much off on parents which include also Apple or I've done it with my kids. It's really hard to do it. And I agree with you. Sixteen, that should just be it. There were some kind of obvious things about TechDo with struckmate. Tumblr was a porn site. And venture capitalist and Tumblr itself tried to pretend it was something else.

In the moment they acquiesced a pressure to get rid of porn, their traffic dropped by like 30 or 40% overnight and a company that got purchased by for $1.1 billion seven years later was sold for three million. One of the core value drivers of traffic at Instagram begins from a place of perversion. And that is let me encourage, let me create algorithms such that women under the age of eighteen minors sexualize themselves.

And then I'm going to let their peers and strange men from around the world comment and potentially contact them. That is that's pedag- generously call that pedophilia light or diet pedophilia. And this is now an accepted thing. The over sexualization. Do you realize how much I remember I was working in specially retail and people used to get so outraged at like forever 21 or top. I forgot it was top basically these retailers. Remember to feel it with the pants with the jeans.

Yeah. Okay, these specially retail are just in business to dress up teenage girls like slots. And there was a mother's went crazy and Congress went crazy. What is Instagram for 15 year olds? I mean, essentially it's two things. It's wealth porn. It's all porn. It's either wealth porn or actual porn or kind of cinematics. And yet, and I wasn't allowed into see the exorcist when I was seventeen.

And we just again, we've decided there's an entirely different set of standards around these platforms that generate shareholder value and as seen as innovators. You could not get away with any of this shit. If you are holding a rave, a party and you encourage fifteen year old girls to dress provocatively and you allowed fifty five year old men from around the world to come in and talk to them and comment on their outfits.

Do you know what would happen to that, the venue, the agency hosting that event? I mean, it'd be rate of adability. They'd be in big trouble. So, here's the deal. Look, it's great that they're doing this, but it's so late and it is still so hard. It is just, let's just cut to the chase and protect kids by not letting them on it. This is not, everything should be by default. And if you're a parent, it is very hard to manipulate these things.

Let me just tell you, I have a hard time understanding the parent blocking thing. And I sit there and I'm like, what, what do I push here? And I do it at the Verizon level. I did it at the Apple and let me just tell you, Apple's not out of the woods here too. Their pools are not good enough. It's super easy and they don't want to make it easy and I'm sorry if they're going to see a lack of growth.

They shouldn't have any growth here with kids and there should be separate services that are safe where you cannot get on if you're that age. And if you fake it and are reported immediately, you get kicked off or and more, by the way, if you start to really creep out kids, it should be, this should be just so easy to do. I'm going to move on really quickly. A meta also made another big move this week, BANning Russian channel, RT from its platforms to quote, foreign interference activity.

No shit, Sherlock. The ban comes after US government announced sanctions against RT accusing of carrying out covert influence operations. They're actually not as covert. They're just they're over, I guess. YouTube also removed hundreds of channels with ties to Russian government backed media earlier this week. Why do you think there's such a flurry of action right now? RT said in a statement, it's cute how there's competition in the West who can try to spank RT the hardest.

The woman who runs RT is one crazy chick. I got to tell you and she says it outright. There was a report this week about how Elon Musk is constantly recycling and amplifying Russian talking points and propaganda. These people are just winning the propaganda war here with us and the fact that they did this so late and is fine and good and tiny little clap for that, but it's just too late, too little too late, same thing. Yeah, I don't look.

I think a lot of this comes down also to one thing that everyone gets allergic around because the incumbents have done a great job of fomenting this myth that we should have that anonymity outweighs the damage of these trolls and people who aren't being honest about who's behind this content. This is an obvious one.

If you're putting a news side, the Washington Gazette or something, it looks like an American website running out of DC talking about how there's all this momentum to end the war in Ukraine and people are fed up with funding Ukraine and you find out, oh, it's actually being funded by Russian agents. Okay, but we immediately have the saying of right, there's a discussion because it's quote unquote speech.

The second thing we got to go to is I just, I think it would be so easy to say, when I talk about identity, we've been talking for a long time, I think in a democracy where you have rights of free speech, the requirement to have identity online far outweighs the upsides and the downsides and the downsides are, well, look, there are people who need to talk about sensitive subjects or need to do it under the auspices of anonymity.

The human rights advocate in a Muslim country that is not friendly to women, whatever it might be. I mean, it would not be that difficult to figure out a way to have a certain number of anonymous accounts and quite frankly, you say, I just say, are they using their anonymity to, in fact, talk about important issues under the auspices of a threat to their safety? Or are they doing it just to wreak havoc with our society? That is not speech.

And also we are evolving to a different species where because if you think about the meteor that hit the, this is on writing about this week, a numerous amount, the impact of the meteor that is the internet has done way more, had way bigger impact in the last 30 years than that meteor has had. And I worry that we are becoming a different species where we're becoming more isolated, more coarse, and we are evolving so fast that our institutions are paleolithic instincts.

Oh, God. Deep. Paleolithic instincts, our medieval institutions, and this God-like technology are, we can't keep up with it. And this is one of the manifestations of that is that when you decide, under you fall into this bullshit of the incumbents and the criminals, that everything is free speech and you shouldn't force anyone to have identity, you know why people are generally civil and when you go outside your house, it's generally speaking a nice place because people have identity.

Yes, you're right. You're right. All right, Scott, let's go in a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about the Fed making a major move and we'll speak with a friend of Pivot, the Dreamy Justin Thoreau. Support for Pivot comes from Greenlight.

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The Federal Reserve has made a big move this week, cutting interest rates by half a percentage point, a larger cut than many had anticipated Fed Chair Jerome Powell said a recent hiring slowdown combined with a decline in inflation commenced Fed officials that a large cut was needed. This is the Fed's first rate cut since 2020, which I feel like they did before that, but let's talk about, do you think the cut is a good move? Global markets are rallying as of this recording.

The Dow popped 500 points at the opening bell. I'd love you to talk about that and also what it means for people looking to buy a home or car. Obviously, there was questions about the election. Jerome Powell dismissed claims that the rate cut was politically motivated in any way. It is press or I'm Wednesday, but people do want to pay as much for mortgages or cars or prices, essentially. Give us the very quick rundown. I would say other than Putin, and that's in a negative fashion.

I think the most consequential person in the last two years has been Chairman Powell. He redefined the term soft landing where you're able to cool the economy on not shoving it into recession. His ability to his craft or artist and ship or ninja-like command of these weapons called interest rates have just been fantastic for the economy. What do I think? Whatever Chairman Powell says, I trust. This was a bigger rate. This was a pretty big hammer.

Typically, they only do a 50-bit decrease or changing interest rates when they're trying to avoid a recession when they feel a little bit panic. This is pretty straightforward. The news is pretty accurate here. The economy is cooling a bit as evidenced by increasing unemployment and decreasing job openings. At the same time, inflation has almost come down to its target level. He's put on a masterclass so far. It's usually the market's pricing in another three or four rate cuts.

In terms of how it affects consumers, I think this is more interesting. Because nobody predicted that an acceleration of 500 Bips of interest rates, which is arguably I think maybe the fastest acceleration over that short of time period in history, would take the prices of houses skyrocketing. The unintended consequence was it created these unexploded IEDs called mortgages where no one could leave their house. It reduced supply and housing prices skyrocketed.

Now the conventional wisdom is that now that mortgage rates are coming down, that it'll see housing prices go up. It may not because what it may do is free up or unlock some constipated housing supply of people who didn't want to move because they didn't want to give up a two and a half percent mortgage for a six percent mortgage. Maybe if they're giving up a two and a half or four percent to move back and be close with their family or take a new job, it may lead to more supply.

We're in the world of unintended consequences. Typically throughout economic history, the year following the beginning of a rate cutting cycle, the markets go up 12 to 14 percent. But as we've seen the last couple of years, sort of all bets are off. But I will repeat what I've always said for these people trying to make hay by saying that the economy is awful. Just as the technologist said, the future is here. It's just not evenly distributed. This economy is not evenly distributed.

I want to be clear about that. And that goes to a lot of things around tax policy and social policy. We have the lowest inflation in the G7 and the strongest growth. He has put on a masterclass. Yeah. It's just that people have to feel that. And I think when it goes to home buying and cars, that's going to make a difference. We'll see. It's too, you know, the idea that it's going to affect the election. We've only 50 days. Come on. Stop it. There's just not going to happen.

It'll, you know, people will not feel better because of this immediately. They might feel better later in the year. But we'll see. Anyway, all right. Let's get to our friend of pivot. Justin Thoreau is an actor and a writer. And his latest role is in a little film called Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice. Justin is also a pivot fan. That's how we met him. Welcome to pivot finally. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me on the show. Yeah. Yeah. You want to. I am a huge pivot fan. Yeah. Why? Why? Why?

We're, we're, we're, we're perplexed as to why someone. I don't know. I actually was trying to think about this before I got on. I was like, it was Scott Galloway, who I think first came on my writer. We almost met in DC after the White House Correspondence Center, but you were being coy. I wanted to meet you. And then I had seen Scott go off like a firework on the Bill Mair show. And I loved seeing that.

But then, and then, but then we met in California when we were about to do the Bill Marshot through Brook. And, and I basically, you were my first date and then Scott was my second. Right. Scott was playing really hard to get. He's always like that. Anyway, he's, we're thrilled to have you here. And we're thrilled to have you with such success. I mean, one of the things people don't realize about you, you're, you're quite a renaissance man.

And Hollywood, including as a writer, Scott's in my favorite movie. But let's start with Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice has been crushing it at the box office, made over 264 million dollars worldwide as of last week in huge. In addition to the nostalgia factor, why do you think it's vintage? Because not all of these work, right? Not all, and obviously Tim Burton's doing it again. So, right. I've been a part of ones that haven't worked. And I don't know.

I mean, it's, it's one of those things he's obviously sort of in the cultural zeitgeist all at all times, whether it's Halloween or Christmas or, you know, there's just sort of, there's that he's sort of like a wallpaper that comes to life every couple months for whatever reason. And so he's always in the background, but then he becomes in the foreground. Right. It's interesting because Beetlejuice didn't, it was of my youth, I would say, like the original one.

And so it's interesting because my, both kids are highly aware of it, you know, who are not even born when the original one came out. But nostalgia, if it's done well, is a good thing. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know whether it's even nostalgia. You know, it's, I mean, many elements came together. The wonderful genite, or tega, has probably a grip on your kids somewhere in the same way the Taylor Swift has, you know, a grip on some people and not others.

I, you know, the alchemy, I think, was right. And, you know, he had the old cast coming back and some new elements like Jenna and myself. Yourself? Absolutely. Explain to people what role you play, just so people, when they go see it. I play a horrible, I don't know, Scott, maybe you could relate to this, but I played this sort of, this anxious boyfriend. And no, not for the way that Carrie, you were thinking.

He reminded me, I play a guy who's sort of like a her manager slash producer slash wants to be in her life, trying to get into her life and love interest. And he always sort of reminded me when Tim were working on it as this guy who sort of like the, the boyfriend that your mom brings back to the house, come here and both got both of that single mom's. And I've got ever had this experience. I know you did have this experience, but you had great boyfriend's come back.

My mom would occasionally bring back a guy who was, you know, always a little too like, hey, buddy, what's going on? Come over here. Let's do something rad together. You know, you'd be like, I just met you last night. And so I, that sort of, we sort of keyed off that guy and he's, he's really a deep ag. He's, he's a lot fun to play. A deep ag, yeah, a deep ag. Well done. Well done. Scott, go for it. Great to see you also just full disclosure. I consider just a good friend.

I didn't need to disclose that, but it brings up my credibility hugely. And I just want to give you shit. You decided to wear a tank top. What, what do you, what do you fucking Melania Trump trying to get our downloads up like? You literally were recording. We're having, I'm not wanting to wear a tank top. I didn't even know this was being recorded. I should have covered everything in the background. I, you wanted to know the honest truth.

I, I sent my alarm for nine o'clock knowing what you're doing at this at 10 30 and my alarm for whatever reason. And I just rolled out of bed. I really did. I just came out of bed and so I just threw on the truth. I'm not sure. All right. So I got, I got a compliment. I got a compliment. He's got to make him. He's got an object to find you. So I'll be the object to find him in a minute. Justin is a super thoughtful, generous guy.

We have a lot in common as he referenced both ways by single mothers. He found out where Beetlejuice was from mirroring, found out where my kids live and made sure that they got to the premiere. And by the way, my kids said it was, my kids weren't that interested. They were too young to remember the original Beetlejuice, but they said it was amazing. And quarter of a billion dollars in box office receipts and they were just so impressed that I know you. So anyways, thank you, Justin.

The question I have is you've been in, you've been in this business a while, even on all ends of it. You're a writer, your producer, creator, front of the camera. Just really curious. If you were talking to a group of analysts or investors about what's going on in Hollywood, how would you describe the industry right now? What do you see coming? What are your thoughts on scripted television, the streaming wars? What do you give us a state of play from Justin Thoreau? Well, I don't know.

I've been very fortunate. Without disclosing anything to anyone, I've gone out with a couple projects this year that I think over the last 10 years would have been easy buys. This is a thoughtful, interesting script that's engaging, that has many elements that we haven't seen on television. And a couple of those have not been accepted. And it was the first time where I thought, oh, wow, there really isn't an appetite for wonderful at the moment.

It's not to say that it's, I don't know whose fault that is, could be my scripts. Could be that these are just not good scripts and my. No, I heard that from a lot of people. It's not to scream in. It's that they don't know what's about to happen. And so they don't want to take any risks for some. Yeah, I think there's a moment of fear. I'm not a stock market guy.

But if you were a stock market guy, like you guys sort of follow, you're kind of just going, yeah, okay, look, we're going to put our chips on Coca-Cola. We're going to spread our chips across whatever it is. We're going to be in Apple and they're like, we're not going to, we're not interested in a cool little startup that might win a couple of Golden Globes anymore. We're going to just play it safe.

I'm hearing a lot of, and on the writing front, on those sort of meetings that I've taken, they're like, do you have anything? And then they basically, without describing a medical procedural drama, sent in a hospital in Chicago, they basically describe that. And you're going, well, you're just talking about, you know, the AR, Grey's Anatomy, or something, you're thinking, what, wait, what? We're making, we want to make those.

But I think, you know, I'm an optimist, so I think this will bounce back. I think, you know, the good news is, is we still have an enormous, an enormous amount of outlets and an enormous amount of channels. And frankly, I think it, you know, it gives YouTube an opportunity to play, you know, they still have a big pot of money.

I think that they could play with and do some interesting things or, you've been, you've done pretty much everything other than, I think, lighting and sounding and probably to dad. A little sound. If you were advising a person going into Hollywood, would you say, would you, how would you stack rank, acting, writing, producing behind the camera for people who look at the industry and know what's under tremendous strain? There's evidence everywhere. What, what do you personally enjoy the most?

And what would your advice be to a young person in terms of the right place to focus your efforts? I wouldn't be able to speak to, I mean, I think you're always at the craft table with acting, you're relying a little more on luck. You know, the way to really, to guarantee your chances of success are training. I honestly believe that.

Like because I'll speak just to acting for a second, you know, you know, I think everyone who can do it half decent impersonation of their uncle thinks that they can go be an actor in Hollywood. There's a separation between people that want to go to Hollywood and be famous and then people that want to go into acting. And I think there's a huge difference. And so I was lucky enough to get four years of training as an actor.

And the first probably 12 jobs were not Shakespeare and they weren't Ibsen and they weren't, you know, I didn't have to, you know, they were, they were jobs. That's right. I really had to bend myself to a part that I didn't want to do on a soap opera or something like that. And you have to be able to do those lines with confidence. So when people are like, yeah, I think I'm going to go act. And you know, I just, I think I'm, you know, usually it's some sort of a good looking girl or boy.

And, and I go, oh, okay. And then you go, what are you, what's your training? Like, did a couple hours seminar or Stella Adler off shoot or something or other? And you go, well, that's not really, you know, I'm going to be a plumber. You know, I'm going to want to get training. Yeah. As far as just sort of where you should direct your attention. I mean, I also was lucky in that I sort of went omnidirectional. And again, we had encouragement from the wonderful Ben Stiller to write.

And he gave me basically four years of education writing for him. He's an incredibly hardworking actor, director, writer, producer. And when I wrote for him, there would be times where he would kick scenes back to me, nine times, ten times, 14 times ago. This is a great scene. This is a funny scene. It's eight pages long. Can you make it four pages and then I make it four pages? And then he'd say, this is fantastic. Now it's, it's two pages. It's going to be two pages.

And so, you know, he just sort of ground me, you know, he really put me on the millstone in a great way and taught me how to create story and then just taught me any number of things that I could go on and on about about what it takes to create a script. So you're focused on training, but you are at the mercy of these studio executives, you know, in a lot of ways who are just sort of panic. That's my feeling as they feel when I talk to them, they feel panic and ignorant at the same time.

But they were poorly pushing, for example, for this movie to go straight to streaming early on instead of giving it a theatrical release, which would have been stupid. Right? But what I would talk about this idea of streaming and what do you do when you're signing onto a project now? Not just theaters versus streaming, but where to go because you, you, you have a little more agency because you do more stuff, right? Well, Scott's the big Hollywood mogul now.

He's the one selling script getting clean in the room left and right. 100% I'm glad you finally acknowledge that. I'm glad you're in touch with your feelings and not threatened by our friendship, Justin. And I'm out here in the desert just looking for a drop of water. But you have to pick now. Like, would you, would you, when you just said YouTube, like when you're making project decisions, you know, it was a while when the tech companies came in and now they're real buyers, right?

Apple is a real buyer of pretty good stuff, right? Some of it good, some of it not, but a lot of it good. Where do you, how do you make a decision of who you're going to affiliate with now? Because there's so much, you know, there's so many choices. You know, without describing what each characteristic is, I think each place has, you start to go, oh, this feels like it wants to be at X, you know, that's the decision that everyone makes you.

So a script comes in or is created and then you go, all right, where are we going to take it? And they go, you know, who would be there? And then you sort of isolate your three best buyers for it, you know, if you have a hard charging R rated comedy that's really going to be, you know, trying to find the edges of the room, cometically, you're not going to probably go to Apple with it necessarily because, you know, I think they're, you know, their business is iPhones.

They don't want to do anything to mess with that up, but North should they. You're going to probably go to Netflix because that's Ted Surandas, who's shown to have some real spine when it comes to putting edgy comedy out there. So it's, it's, it's sort of like that. I don't know. And for dramas, I don't know. You think, you know, well, this is a very peak call, you know, maybe, you know, a much harder needle to thread drama about a blah, blah, blah.

Well, we might go to FX with that because, you know, they only make a couple things a year, their output isn't as high as Netflix, but, but FX really feels like it belongs with them. You want to find your partner.

I mean, it's kind of like dating, you know, whatever, if you're wanting to swipe right or left, you know, you want to sort of find the right, you just want to find the right partnership because inevitably, if you, if, if in those situations where you make a piece of content, the word I hate, and it's not a happy marriage, it will not be a successful show, you know, you want everybody singing in the same key.

Well, would something like the leftovers, which was so brilliant being made today, I keep thinking, I mean, maybe it would, maybe it would find a different audience kind of stuff like that. It could, I think, you know, I think you would probably find HBO again, you know, because HBO, you know, they were very kind to us.

That was not a show like a house of dragons or, you know, Game of Thrones that tapped into the zeitgeist and people were dressing up for our characters as Halloween, you know, that was a show that, that took some real integrity, you know, they, it, and it was, you

know, it was one of those strengths that was getting wild, the good reviews, based largely on the writing and some of the performances, but, but they just, they stuck with us, you know, and our budget dropped a little bit, I think, in the third season, but we never really wanted that show to live for five years. Jim and Linda Lough, the wonderful writer, who always said, this is probably Max a three season show.

And again, even now they're sort of saying like they want things that have five seasons. You'll be happy to know that Emily and Paris got a fifth season, so maybe you can be on it. Right.

When, when we talk, we talk about AI all the time in the show, and there's been a lot of news and Hollywood this week, California Governor Gavin Newsom just signed a pair of bills that will give actors more protection over their digital likenesses, landscape plans to start using generative AI in the creation of its new movies and TV shows according to the Wall Street Journal. As a writer and, and, and it's particularly as a writer, but also as an actor, how do you look at these things?

It was a big contention during the, the strikes. Yeah. How do you look at AI right now and do you use it? What do you like about it? What don't you like about it? I know, you know, and again, full-skitted credit to my friend Scott. You know, when I would hear you guys talk about it like this is coming. This is a tool. It's a thing. I'm writing a script currently. I reached out to Scott and I said, okay, what do I download? How does it work? Is it private?

You know, like, what are they taking from me? What are they not? And he said probably the, the most accurate thing. He says it's, you know, AI, as far as writing goes and as far as, you know, being able to write the right prompts for it is largely pretty anodine. It took me a while to figure out, you know, what parameters I wanted to sort of put in and what prompts I needed to give it to sort of really get where and where it was going.

But it had a, it had a couple little toe holds in it where I thought, oh, this is, that's interesting. I hadn't considered that. In the few instances where I've sort of used it or, you know, had a bit of writers blocking going, oh, maybe it's kind of like a writing partner in a way.

And likewise, can be helpful in saying and just answering simple questions in a way that Google doesn't, you know, like, I'm working on this period thing and I needed to know, sort of the origins of the word fuck and, and, you know, whether this thing, whether that word works in a, in a period piece, you know, and so in this timeframe, give me examples of the time, you know, that, you know, that the word fuck was used or first, exactly, whatever.

And it so just gets to the point a little quicker than, than Google does, you know. Oh, wow. That's, I'm excited to see that now. So 25 years ago, Mollthal and Drive, Romeo and Michelle's High School reunion, deeply underrated piece of content.

I got strangers with candy, wanderloss, the girl in the train, the spy who dumbed me on the basis of sex, bumblebee, lady in the tramp and you have written Iron Man 2, Tropic Thunder, Rock of Ages, and most recently, White House plumbers, the mosquito coast, care, reference, the leftovers, you've been prospering, not surviving prospering in a creative industry for several decades. I have two questions.

One, what are your creative hacks for trying to put yourself in a moment of flow so that you can feel like, okay, I'm, I have a better chance of doing something well here versus something, quote unquote, anodine, anodine.

And then my follow question is, if you could, if you were adopted by Larry Ellison tomorrow and he said, just an Ellison, you can do anything, you can make any film, you can star in any movie, you can, what, anything you want to do creatively, you want, you can redo, make the sequel to any film ever, what would that be?

Well, the list of credits you just read out to me speaks to my first point, which is training, because every single one of those parts required a different part of my training to employ, whether that's comedy, drama, farce, surrealism, you know, I mean, doing, Mahon Drive was like doing, you know, Brecht to a certain extent. So I had a good background. I could play varied characters, you know, we have, that is like it or not the job, but we have to play multiple, multiple characters.

And, you know, if anything, I attribute whatever sort of character success I've had is to be able to play other characters and sort of go unnoticed, but, but try and be good in them, you know, because it, you know, that IMDB listing, you know, reads like a cardiograph, it's up and down, it's, it doesn't really, it doesn't make any sense, you know, it's not like, well, he, at this party, did that show for 10 years and then he went and did a couple movies.

So, and that was also, I credit my gut to just going, what is the next interesting thing? The word no is a powerful, powerful word in anyone's career and being able to say no, I'm not going to dedicate my time to that. There's a couple times where I've said yes to things because I've spent the smart thing to do or it's the right direction to do it with, and I've been miserable.

My gut was telling me no, but my, my bank account was telling me yes or something, you know, and I've just been, you know, I've just been, I think my gut has been, has been good on that. To the, to find flow, I don't know, I don't know, you know, when you, occasionally you're doing a scene and you just, you find yourself in that bliss state where you're going, I don't know what the equivalent for you guys would be either in writing or in, or even in

podcasting, where you just, I feel like I've heard it a couple times when you guys have been podcasting where you guys are just in flow and that's just sort of tuning in, listening and luck, you know, and you have a beautiful, you have a beautiful experience, you know, and you just go, wow, and you drive home at the end of the day and you go, that was special. And I don't know what accounts for that. It just happens sometimes. What would you most want to do? Unlimited funds. What would you do?

Oh, unlimited funds. There you are, Elson.

I'd like to open a production company and take the seven scripts that I have on my shelf that I've, some of which I've written and I'd like to delegate, I'd like to hire a team and I'd like to delegate and get us, and dusting them all off and working on them and, and, and start producing them, you know, I mean, it is the worst thing about being a writer, director, actor, actors in particular have it hard because it's the one profession where you need someone's permission to do it.

You have to join a basketball team every single time and you have to get, there has to be a draft pick that happens for every job that you have. And it's, you know, even if you're a violinist, you can go to Washington Square Park and play violin and put a hat out. You can't do that with acting. It's a, it's a terrible thing. Um, which is why I think so many people are sort of just putting out their iPhones and looking silly on street corners, but, you know, what they're making content. Right.

Right. Right. Right. Right now. You know, I'm going to be disappointing. Um, I'm going to be disappointing in this answer. I love, I, I, I scoured the internet every, um, every, at the beginning of every month, going, what in the prompt I put into my Google is this like best new documentaries, um, coming out in, say, September, 2024.

And I, I really like documentaries, like almost more, I watch things that friends of mine are in and I love certain things, but, um, I, I, you know, I, I really do, it's going to sound so sort of hard school and dumb, but I really like watching people behaving real, like in a real setting.

And when you can see a good documentary, um, you know, like, fog of war is like an incredible character study, you know, you know, McNamara, you know, or, or, or, or when you can watch someone reacting in real time, that's the most nutritious. Sort of food for me. So, um, I really like watching people, you know, I mean, I guess that's sort of the job as a writer and an actor. You know, when you know how the sausage is made, oh god, don't be so fucking mature.

What big movies have you seen that you've enjoyed? What original script, what can we stream right now? Beetle just beetle just is, is, is a, what can you stream? I don't know. I mean, there's a great documentary coming out that I want to say. You're sexy enough without the whole. Well, I like the documentary. Do you want to come see my etch, Scott? He's a substitute man. Unlike you. So, I just like styrofoam. I really, I really, I really, he comes, he's surfacing to the top.

Well, sometimes I won't say which thing, but sometimes I listen to, I listen to the things that you guys are listening to. I'm like, what are they doing watching that when they could be watching this? Oh, see, you know what, Scott, he's better than us. He is. He's handsome. He's fitter. He's smarter. He's got better hair than you, for sure. What did you think of baby reindeer? Like, lighting ran. Oh, baby reindeer. Okay. All right. Lighting run, baby reindeer.

I was so excited for this sort of like light jaunt through about a stalker and I was just gut punched in almost borderline nauseous by the middle of it. Okay, now I thought I was a wonderful performer. Saltburn. Saltburn, haven't seen saltburn. Saltburn. Haven't seen. You're going to get a lot of haven't seen. Doon two. Doon two. I know it has sand worms, but sadly, haven't seen it. I love Rebecca Ferguson. Emily and Paris. I'm telling you, Emily and Paris, I think I've, I don't know.

I saw the first couple episodes of the first season. I don't know. I'm telling you, I'm a white wall is just gone up and you're just bouncing a ball of it. Anyway, Justin Theroux, you are, we are your biggest fan, actually. And you can catch him. We are. We want to see him in Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice. And he's, he's terrific in it. It's really great. Thank you so much. Thanks, Justin. Come back, Scott, I want to talk about my feelings later. Thanks again. All right. We appreciate it.

Sounds good. Anytime. All right. Bye. All right, Scott. Isn't he the best? So he is dreamy, even as care of the lesbian says. Just for a moment, my second internet friend, my first was George Han. My second is Justin. He reached out to me. And I thought it was a fake account because I said, I know who Justin Theroux. This can't be the real Justin Theroux. And I wrote back and it seemed like him. He is the nicest man. Niceest man.

He is an astonishing writer and thinker whenever I talk to him, just a really substantive man. And that's why he likes documentary, Scott. There you go. There you go. Yeah. Nice man. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions. They're not writers, but they help their clients shape their businesses, financial stories. They're not an airline. Their network connects global businesses in nearly 180 local markets.

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The manufacturer's suggested retail price excludes tax, title, license, dealer fees, and optional equipment. Dealer sets final price. The support for this podcast comes from Huntress, keeping your data safe is important. However, if you're a small business owner, then protecting the information of yourself through company and your workers is vital. Incomes Huntress. This is where fully managed cybersecurity meets human expertise.

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So we try to call balls and strikes here and as you may have, may have ascertained if you're really thoughtful or perceptive, Kara and I are not enormous fans of Elon Musk, but I do think that Starlink is just an incredible product. Starlink has 2500 airplanes now under contract after United's mega deal. Essentially now, two thirds of active lower satellites are controlled by SpaceX and their subsidiary Starlink. I don't know if you've ever used this.

It's got somewhere between two and three times the speed of your residential broadband but you're on a plane. I don't know, I've had a few of these moments where technology just absolutely blew me away. Where the first time I took a picture of a check, the first time I bought something when I was outside of my blackberry because I was headed to the theater and didn't have checks. The first time, I don't know, I got my cartooned up wirelessly.

There's certain moments where you go, Jesus Christ, that is just awe-inspiring. Kind of like the time I got that declawed frozen hamster and stuck it up my ass. Is that technology, Kara? Is that technology? I know you couldn't do it. I know you couldn't do it. But go ahead, move along. When you talk about maritime and you talk about the fact that this thing, I mean, when you're on a plane eating bad meatloaf and for the eighth time, your go-go wireless goes out of range. Yeah, it sucks.

And you have to pay for it and you have to pay for it. And then you have to sign up and you're like, did I just pay another 25 bucks for this thing? This thing is literally a 10X better product. Right now it's trading in the private markets at 210 billion, which is double Tesla's price to sales ratio. We predicted a long time ago it was going to be worth more than Tesla. And so that's not my prediction because this thing is already at a quarter of a trillion dollars.

The prediction is similar to how all of these people who aren't Netflix have gotten taken to the woodshed, the Warner Brothers and the Disney and the Paramount Global's of the world over the next year are going to be go-go, publicly traded, via SAT, MRSAT, KVH Industries, a Rhythm Communications, SES, all of these Intel, TELESTA, all of these companies have put out shitty technology from maritime and transportation, trying to give you some semblance of broadband.

This is the Netflix of that industry. It is you're going to see tremendous disruption here. Which makes it so sad because he can do things like this and that's what's sad about him. I have to say, he's lost interest in Tesla, it looks like in terms of creating new fresh cars. This is a great product. This is a period, great product, which makes his decline, his amplification of Russian propaganda, his heinous behavior, all the more tragic in so many ways. Anyway, I agree with you.

I think you're right. I'm excited about it. I was just on a united flight and I was like, what the fuck am I paying 24 dollars? It doesn't work. I can't get it on. And then the stores just like, it must be your fault. I'm like, it is absolutely not my fucking fault. You have a shitty system that you've foisted upon your consumer and people work on things. Well, and they're brilliant. They've just signed a multi-year spokesperson agreement with a naked Melania Trump. Yes. All right.

We want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com slash pivots. Submit a question for the shower called 85551 Pivot. Okay, Scott, that's the show. We'll be back on Tuesday with more Pivot. Can you read us out? Today's show is produced by Larry Neiman's doing markets and telegrapher. Ernie and Ritod engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Milster Vario. Your shot career was Vox Media's executive producer of audio.

Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine Box 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. Canva. Canva. Canva presents a work love story like no other. Meet productivity. She's all business. The Canva Duck is done. Creativity is more of a free-thinker. Oh, whiteboard brainstorm. Their world's a part.

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