Anthropic's IPO, Platner's Campaign Controversies, and Blue Origin's Setback

2 Jun 2026 · 59 min · 21 chapters

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In short

Pivot (Kara Swisher, Scott Galloway) covers: (1) Maine Senate Democratic nominee Graham Plattner’s campaign controversies; (2) Jay Shetty’s podcast video deal; (3) Anthropic’s IPO filing and AI startup valuations; (4) U.S. 250th birthday event politics; (5) Blue Origin’s New Glenn launch setback.

Guests

none. The episode is hosted by Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway.

Topic and key claims

  • Plattner: Reports say Plattner sent sexually explicit texts to women outside his marriage, allegedly via a former staffer. Plattner calls it gossip/journalistic malpractice; no women have come forward publicly. Hosts debate “purity tests,” arguing voters should focus on effectiveness and that campaigns shouldn’t attack accurate reporting. Notable examples: comparisons to Hillary Clinton/Jennifer Flowers and Monica Lewinsky; mention of Plattner’s Nazi symbol tattoo and past remarks.
  • Jay Shetty: Signs a video deal for his show exclusively to Spotify and Netflix worth $100M+; hosts argue podcasting monetizes “loneliness,” and that RSS moats and streaming TV economics drive consolidation.
  • Anthropic IPO: Confidential SEC filing; Anthropic reportedly raised a $65B round valuing it at $965B, surpassing OpenAI. Hosts predict valuations may still correct 40–70% and warn AI CapEx ROI is unclear (MIT study: 95% of CFOs not seeing ROI).
  • 250th birthday: Trump calls for canceling the concert series and suggests he headline; judge orders his name removed from the Kennedy Center.
  • Blue Origin: New Glenn exploded on the launch pad; Bezos says “anomaly.” Hosts call it a major launch-pad risk and capital loss.

Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.

Chapters

Tap a time to open that second in VO

Exploring Cheating and Trust

0:00 to 0:30

An introduction to the emotional impact of infidelity and its societal implications.

“Cheating on your partner is a huge breach of trust.”

Weekend Activities and Parenting

2:57 to 4:26

Scott shares his weekend experiences involving children's activities and yard work.

“Like, Saul has left his preschool, so we had all his friends from preschool over for a giant run around the yard and scream party with tiny bagels.”

Guest Hosting The View

4:45 to 5:45

Scott discusses his upcoming guest role on The View and the dynamics of the show.

“You've had great times when you're there.”

Platner's Campaign Controversies

6:04 to 8:57

A deep dive into Graham Platner's campaign issues, personal controversies, and public response.

“I'm going to try not to make a penis joke.”

The Nature of Political Imperfection

9:00 to 14:01

A discussion on political candidates' flaws and societal expectations regarding personal purity.

“Every election is a choice, not a marriage proposal.”

Political Integrity and Accountability

14:01 to 28:00

Exploring the complexities of political accountability and the standards expected of politicians.

“can have his finger on the button and be the most powerful person in the world while he's banging adult movie stars while his wife is home nursing.”

Self-Help Insights from Scott Galloway

28:00 to 28:40

Explore unconventional advice on engaging with women through acts of service.

“Look at a woman's stressors and treat them like they're your enemy.”

Self-Help Insights from Scott Galloway

29:43 to 30:17

Explore unconventional advice on engaging with women through acts of service.

“get up to$1 ,000 when you open a brokerage account with a qualifying deposit today.”

Anthropic's IPO and Market Impact

31:43 to 37:38

Analysis of Anthropic's recent IPO filing and its implications for the AI market.

“That's joindeleteme.com slash pivot, code pivot.”

Anthropic's IPO and Market Impact

37:41 to 39:36

Analysis of Anthropic's recent IPO filing and its implications for the AI market.

“The quality of your sleep affects everything, energy, mood, focus, and overall health.”
Show all 21 chapters

Anthropic's IPO and Market Impact

39:42 to 40:57

Analysis of Anthropic's recent IPO filing and its implications for the AI market.

“That's the kind of thing Gusto was built to solve.”

Updates on America's 250th Celebration

40:57 to 42:07

Discussion on the political implications and Trump’s involvement in the upcoming celebrations.

“America's 250th birthday will now be a mega rally, apparently.”

Branding and the State of America

42:07 to 45:18

Exploring the impact of Trump’s branding on American culture and sentiments.

“And now it's increasingly an entertainment franchise.”

Blue Origin's Major Setback

45:19 to 46:34

Discussion on the explosion of Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket and its implications.

“It's a new Glenn rocket exploded during a test on the launch pad last week.”

Risk and Innovation in Space Exploration

46:35 to 48:28

Analyzing the differences in risk-taking between private companies and NASA.

“As soon as I saw the explosion, I immediately posted it on threads and said, Bezos back on CNBC again, which I thought was really good.”

Cultural Moments and Events

48:29 to 51:24

A light-hearted conversation about personal invitations and upcoming events.

“This is a function of— No, no, no, but he has 10 ,000 satellites up there.”

Wins and Fails

53:53 to 56:01

Sharing personal wins and fails, including a young journalist's achievements.

“Okay, Scott, let's hear some wins and fails.”

The Judgments We Make

56:01 to 57:32

Exploring the impact of personal judgments on public figures and their mistakes.

“We were exhausted from all the children's parties and my power washing.”

Eli Lilly's Market Revolution

57:32 to 59:38

Analyzing Eli Lilly's success with GLP-1 drugs and its implications for healthcare.

“They made a huge bet on GLP-1 drugs as, you know, I think a revolutionary.”

Lessons in Crisis Communication

59:38 to 1:01:51

Discussing effective strategies for handling personal and public crises.

“I think they've made a huge bet, and it's paying off in spades.”

Cultural Silos and Media

1:02:00 to 1:02:58

Highlighting a new podcast aimed at breaking cultural silos created by social media.

“who have reunited for a new CNN cultural podcast called Engagement Party.”
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Transcript

Automatic transcript. May contain errors.

0:02Kara Swisher:Cheating on your partner is a huge breach of trust. All of the pain and the guilt and the reality of what was happening hit me just like a tidal wave all at once. Why do people cheat? And why does it make us so mad even when we're not the ones it's happening to? That's this week on Explain It To Me. New episodes Sundays wherever you get your podcasts.

0:30Scott Galloway:This episode is brought to you by The Build Podcast, a new podcast from the guys behind Sincera, Michael Sullivan and Ian Myers. Mike and Ian built their company by figuring out clever solutions to a few important ad tech problems in their industry. And that philosophy is exactly what this show is all about. In it, they interview some of the smartest tech minds in the biz to hear about how they identified opportunities, solved their hardest challenges and grew their businesses in the process. Listen to The Build with Michael Sullivan wherever you get your podcasts. Support for the show comes from CoreWeave.

1:03Scott Galloway:Everywhere you look, AI is expanding what we thought was possible. And at the center of it all is CoreWeave. Medical research and diagnosis, education, complex visual effects for movies, science and technology breakthroughs. CoreWeave powers AI pioneers around the world with purpose-built tech, building what's never been built before. CoreWeave is the essential cloud for AI. Ready for anything, ready for AI. To learn more about how CoreWeave powers the world's best AI, go to coreweave.com slash ready for anything.

1:33Scott Galloway:You definitely have a distinct style. Now, it's awful, but it's distinct.

1:42Kara Swisher:Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.

1:47Scott Galloway:And I'm Scott Galloway.

1:48Kara Swisher:Scott, you're still on the road. How's it going?

1:50Scott Galloway:Good. San Francisco was good. L.A. was great with Ted Sarandos. Miami was good. Love Miami.

1:57Kara Swisher:You're in Chi-town.

1:58Scott Galloway:And now, yeah, what do you call it? The city of big shoulders?

2:01Kara Swisher:Yes.

2:01Scott Galloway:We always love being here. Chicago, it's the most grateful little big city in the world. It is. Like, I just know it's going to go well tonight because they're like, thank you for coming here. I know.

2:10Kara Swisher:It's like Minneapolis, right? It's Minneapolis. Yeah, they're just so happy.

2:13Scott Galloway:And I went to a steakhouse last night with my closest friend, Adam, since the fourth grade.

2:18Kara Swisher:Chicago is one of my favorite cities. It's really a lovely place. I like all cities. What am I talking about? I like all cities. But I love Chicago. I always am happy to be there. And then you'll be in New York. How exciting. Is that the last stop on your parade? Tomorrow night, New York. At Ellison Parade? Yeah.

2:33Scott Galloway:And we've got a couple. We have by far our most impressive guests who shall go nameless. But I'm super excited about that. Good. We sold out a big theater. Right. Yeah. Is that the final one?

2:45Kara Swisher:Is that the final one?

2:46Scott Galloway:That's the last one.

2:47Kara Swisher:Yay. Well, how exciting. How good. Get ready to do it in the fall with me. Aren't you excited? But it's not for a while. It's not for a while. You'll have some resting time. Anyway, I had a nice weekend of children's activities. What did you do? Children's activities. Like, Saul has left his preschool, so we had all his friends from preschool over for a giant run around the yard and scream party with tiny bagels. I had another one last night, another barbecue. I clean the outdoors, Scott. I'm like one of these. And then I ended up having, I'm one of these people that does the yard, essentially.

3:20Kara Swisher:I had to, like, get it ready for the summer. and I end up having discussions with other dads about yard things, like different landscaping, different construction things. So I really am the dad I recognize this weekend.

3:33Scott Galloway:So just so you know, yard work is basically, it has nothing to do with the yard work. It's about escaping your family. Oh, is it? You got to figure this shit out. You're not, first off, you're not, it's not that you're into yard work. You just want to wait from the house.

3:47Kara Swisher:No, it's actually, it's not because my kids help me. I have my kids do it with me. And so we fill the bird feeders. I have it different. We fill the kiddie pool. We do the sprinklers together. You know, I have Saul. I have him carry bags of bird seed. So I employ my children into this, and they do a good job. They do a great job. I have to.

4:06Scott Galloway:My friend Chris Nelson down in Florida was saying how he taught his son over the weekend how to use. What are those? Like they look like a chainsaw, but you use them to mow a hedge or shear. I don't even know what they're called.

4:17Kara Swisher:Shears. Electric shears.

4:18Scott Galloway:Not scissors, but like electric.

4:19Kara Swisher:No, they're called shears. Electric shears. Okay.

4:21Scott Galloway:So he said he taught his eight-year-old son how to do it. Oh. I thought, I'm such a bad dad. Like, I'm so incompetent. I don't know how to teach. My kids aren't going to know how to do anything.

4:29Kara Swisher:I teach my kids how to do. We did the hoses. We replaced all the hoses. I do everything with the kids.

4:34Scott Galloway:So I got an electric shear and I took my son out back and one of us almost lost a hand. And I'm like, there's a reason I don't teach this stuff.

4:40Kara Swisher:You know, if you want to come to my yard, I will teach you. Yeah, that sounds really appealing. The other thing I'm doing this week, besides some Trebekah stuff and this and that, is I'm going to be guest host of The View.

4:51Scott Galloway:I love that. On two days, yeah. I think that's perfect for you.

4:53Kara Swisher:Yeah.

4:54Scott Galloway:I like it too.

4:55Kara Swisher:I love the Whoopi Goldberg. I like the whole team. Yeah.

4:58Scott Galloway:By the way, they give great TV. They do. That is an outstanding. You've been great on it.

5:05Kara Swisher:You've had great times when you're there.

5:07Scott Galloway:They're so nice to me, and I like the mix. And they used to bring in like a dumb Republican that they could all scream at, kind of what CNN does. Let's bring on a racist and have a bunch of B-league progressives scream at them. Right. That's the formula there. They now have smart conservatives. Alyssa Farah.

5:25Kara Swisher:Yeah. She's great. She's great. I love her.

5:27Scott Galloway:So I think they've done a great job.

5:29Kara Swisher:What should I wear?

Read the full transcript

5:29Scott Galloway:You definitely have a distinct style. I do. Now, it's awful, but it's distinct.

5:34Kara Swisher:Well, I am a guest host of The View. I think I'll be good. I'd be interesting. No, I'd be really great. I really enjoy them. I always have a good time there. Everyone's like, oh, the declining broadcast. I'm like, that's a good show. That's a solidly fucking good show.

5:46Scott Galloway:Nothing just as an author. Nothing moves books. Like in general podcasts, but if you're looking for quick hits. View and Bill Maher. The View, Bill Maher, and actually a close third would be Morning Joe. A lot of people still watch Morning Joe. Anyway.

6:04Kara Swisher:Well, anyway, let's get to the news. Yeah, I'm excited. I'm going to try not to make a penis joke. With just a week to go before Maine's, speaking of penises, Maine's Senate primary, Graham Platner, the presumptive Democratic candidate, is facing his latest controversy. Multiple outlets reported over the weekend that Platner's wife told a campaign aide last year that her husband sent sexually explicit texts to several women outside the marriage. By the way, this campaign person had a falling out with Platner and has dropped a dime, which has its own ethical considerations. Plattner is calling these reports gossip from a former staffer and accused the media of journalistic malpractice.

6:39Kara Swisher:As of this recording, none of the women involved in the text exchanges have come forward. Plattner's wife, Amy Gertner, released a video, which I thought was fascinating, over the weekend defending her husband and their marriage. Let's listen, because it was really quite something to listen to. It makes me really angry, disappointed, and I find it really shameful that there's a group of media outlets and people who are willing to spread gossip instead of talking about real issues that Graham is running on, like healthcare and education. and child care. As I said, it's the, you know, this has been a controversial campaign.

7:28Kara Swisher:You know, he reportedly has an active account on Kix, a private message up sometimes used for sexing. He's faced scrutiny, of course, about his Nazi symbol tattoo. He later expressed regret and covered it up. There were posts from a deleted Reddit account where he said all manner of jokes about sexual assault. And he's also apologized for that. It's a really interesting issue. And lots of people disagree on this. I'll tell you what I think in a second, but there's, Plattner appears to be the real chance of unseating Republican Susan Collins, who is the zombie of all senators. He's been leading in recent polls.

8:02Kara Swisher:I personally, I'm going to just very quickly say, I think voters don't care about this. I don't, and I thought his wife handled it well. I have others. I had an argument with Amanda this weekend. She doesn't like the Nazi tattoo. She doesn't like this. I feel as if the husband and wife are working it out. It reminded me a little when Hillary Clinton did, should I stand by my man when he had those Jennifer Flowers things? Reminds me a little bit of that. Turned out to be a pretty good president. Not everything. Not, of course, the Monica Lewinsky stuff. But it's a really interesting question. I don't get bothered by it as much.

8:38Kara Swisher:None of it. I think he's, as Amanda Littman correctly said, he's someone who had a drinking problem as a Marine. Probably got that tattoo. Has some mental health challenges, which he's trying to overcome. marriage problems, which his wife is insisting they're going to counselors and overcoming. I'm not so sure in the era of Trump, this matters at all. So what do you think?

9:01Scott Galloway:Look, okay. Every election is a choice, not a marriage proposal. We're not hiring a priest. We're hiring a senator. Do you think that, do you want to to make sure that women's rights aren't continued to be rolled back? Do you want a more responsible economic policy? Do you want different approaches to labor that raise the wages of nurses and students? Do you want something regarding fiscal sanity? Do you want to have a check against the unfettered, unprecedented corruption? But we're going to talk about fucking tattoos and sexting. I mean, the obsession with personal purity has become a luxury belief.

9:43Scott Galloway:And folks, if your house is on fire, you don't ask whether the firefighter has problematic DMs. Now, having said that, the comms person for the Platner campaign should be fired. You don't go after media. You don't say this is gossip. You don't say these are texts. He said it was journalistic malpractice. Guess what? These texts are accurate.

10:11Kara Swisher:Right.

10:12Scott Galloway:The reporting has been accurate. Good for you, Scott. The response should be the following. I am an imperfect man. I have demonstrated terrible judgment on several occasions in my marriage, and I have a great marriage. What about you? What about you? that are we going to continue to have one strike and you're out i'm a jew i don't love a totten comp tattoo okay if he gets drunk one night and gets a stupid fucking tattoo the fact that he's trying to protect our liberties the next day it might be blown up by an ied he gets a hall pass so okay folks if you want to keep applying purity tests we end up with an incompetent running against a 9-11 denier in Los Angeles.

10:58Scott Galloway:We're not going to have any candidates running. So one, stop the purity tests. And two, the Plattner campaign, it's not the crisis that brings people down. It's their inability to own it. I fucked up.

11:17Kara Swisher:Did you watch his wife's thing? I thought it was, it reminded me a lot of the Hillary, remember when Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton sat down? When they sat down together. Yeah, on 60 Minutes. Yeah, it was really interesting to me. It had a lot of echoes of that. I thought, you know, someone said to me, like, oh, she looks like someone whose wife's in denial. I'm like, no, I think she seems to not be in denial. She understands his problems. And I think it just reminded me a great deal of that. And there's, you know, as a person, you can have comments, as a personal thing, you can have comments about people.

11:49Kara Swisher:On a political thing, I'm like, I want to talk about this idea of imperfect allies that you and I have talked about. Obviously, I'd heard it first from Sarah McBride, but Representative Sarah McBride, who has plenty of reasons to be angry to people and isn't. She's a writer named David Gate posted about it on Substack. Let me read a quote. Working with someone toward a shared goal does not require believing they are morally perfect. It requires believing the goal itself matters enough to justify strategic alignment. He goes on to say the planet is on fire, as you noted just now, Scott, while many people are still conducting background checks on one another's vibes.

12:24Kara Swisher:So talk about that concept because it's a really difficult one for many people to get around. This guy, many people supported him. Others were like, no, we have to have background checks. So what do you think about that? Can people get to that idea of, I guess, forgiving people for their imperfections?

12:46Scott Galloway:One of the reasons we're seeing a crash in birth rates is a lack of dancing. And that is, dancing is a key component or a key mating ritual. And when you dance, typically it helps if you drink a little bit. The anti-alcohol movement is hurting it, but more than anything, and there was a wonderful TikTok on this by some young man, and I thought, God, this is so powerful. people have a camera on them all the time 19 year old men don't want to dance because they're worried about or they don't they don't want to take risks like dancing like approaching a romantic a potential expressing romantic interest because they're worried one false move and you're out everything in a digital world so unless we move to at least some basic notion of as our digital world increases and everything we've done is going to be recorded and potentially used against us unless we have a little bit more grace.

13:41Scott Galloway:And okay, what's interesting here is that I just hope the same thing holds. And that is, if the Republicans decide the best candidate for a Senate seat in Texas is someone whose wife divorced him on biblical grounds, if they can -

13:57Kara Swisher:And who has a history of fraud.

13:58Scott Galloway:And if we can decide that this guy can have his finger on the button and be the most powerful person in the world while he's banging adult movie stars while his wife is home nursing. And to a certain extent, I'm kind of like, I don't care if the pilot is a good person. I want someone who's really good at flying the fucking plane. So I think the same thing needs to go to our politics. I just hope that the same, what I'll call, focus on perceived effectiveness is the same for Democrats. And I am still ripshit angry at Senator Gillibrand who thought a seven-minute run for president was worth kicking Senator Al Franken out.

14:39Scott Galloway:The Democrats want to walk around and say, well, we'll have our dignity. Okay, hold on to your dignity. As a 15-year-old has her pelvis broken because she's forced to carry a child to term. But yeah, you kicked Plattner out.

14:53Kara Swisher:Is there something that there should be a line? Like, obviously.

14:57Scott Galloway:I think at some point.

14:58Kara Swisher:Yeah, yeah.

14:59Scott Galloway:I mean, let me put it this way. If Graham Plattner was, you know, It ended up that he was kind of fond of wearing a white hood and was constantly engaging in anti-Semitic behavior. Then that tattoo isn't an errant mistake from a youthful soldier. It's a pattern. The corruption of the Trump family is a pattern. This is not – this speaks to their character. But, folks, all of us have made mistakes. I mean, okay, Barack Obama doesn't appear. We can't seem to find a mistake on President Obama.

15:36Kara Swisher:I can't.

15:36Scott Galloway:Well, okay. But you know what I mean. Yeah. It's a scandal. Powerful men are under the illusion that they mistake kindness for sexual interest. And as they become more powerful, power corrupts and they're more likely to believe that they're immune from standard norms and engage in stupid, reckless behavior. By the way, more women do that than they get credit for. I will argue that it infects a lot more men than women. But, you know, Secretary Noem was banging her number two on government property.

16:06Kara Swisher:Yeah, she did a lot of work for that. She counts for 10 men, I have to say.

16:13Scott Galloway:Oh, man. Look, I saw this and I was like, okay, at what point? I'm hoping we've passed the purity test on the Democratic side. But more than anything, I want to call the Plattner campaign and say, own it.

16:28Kara Swisher:Stop attacking. Yeah, stop attacking the president.

16:30Scott Galloway:Don't say it's gossip or it's not accurate reporting. Just don't do that. It's been corroborated.

16:34Kara Swisher:I think the point they were trying to make is, shouldn't we be focusing on the important issues? And that's all they needed to say. I think the first part should have been removed, right? Just say, you know what? We get why people might stare at this. It feels like a traffic accident, and it kind of is. But let's focus on the real matters. I have a question. Do you think we're imperfect allies?

16:53Scott Galloway:Imperfect allies.

16:54Kara Swisher:Yeah, like people you don't always agree with everything, but yet they're allies.

16:57Scott Galloway:I think you, I think that, I mean, the reality is, Cara, is we're both progressives. And the fact that.

17:05Kara Swisher:Right, but we do disagree on things, yeah.

17:07Scott Galloway:Yeah. Where the real progress needs to be is between moderate Democrats and moderate Republicans.

17:12Kara Swisher:Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

17:13Scott Galloway:I mean, if the two, you know, on almost every major issue, you and I are within two basis points of each other. Sometimes, yeah. In terms of actually what we believe. We might believe in tech, you know, we might have differences around text and tone or whatever. But what we really need, I mean, a couple of things. One, I think this is, we have to, from a young age, start thinking, all right, folks, unless you want to live a life with a fake user account and VPN for fear you ever do anything wrong, we're going to have to demonstrate more grace with each other. The Democrats applying these purity tests to themselves, it's just like the Republicans are just laughing that we would do this.

17:53Kara Swisher:I'm kind of like, people be naughty. Like, people be naughty.

17:56Scott Galloway:Have at it. But the thing that really, the Plattner campaign, Graham Plattner should do the following. I've demonstrated terrible judgment numerous times.

18:07Kara Swisher:Which he has on other issues, yeah.

18:09Scott Galloway:Numerous times in my professional and personal life. I've also served my country. I think I'd be a great senator. And by the way, I have a fantastic marriage.

18:19Kara Swisher:Yeah.

18:19Scott Galloway:So have at it, folks. If you want to engage in this stuff, I realize it's titillating, have at it. All he's doing and his campaigner doing is keeping the story alive by denying it and by attacking the media.

18:33Kara Swisher:I don't think there's anything wrong with the media reporting this. Because, well, I do have a, I have to say, I'd like to know a little more about this campaign person who keeps dropping dimes on this guy and what her agenda is. I have to say, she's been doing it a lot. She's angry. She's mad. And I want to know, I'd like to know about her in specifics also. That's what I would say the media needs to do a little bit more because I need to understand what the source's motivations are. And she's not here to protect us, I don't think. Anyway, let's move on. Self-help podcaster Jay Shetty has signed a deal to bring a video version of his show exclusively to Spotify and Netflix.

19:10Kara Swisher:Another one of these deals, which is interesting. The deal is reportedly worth over$100 million over multiple years. Who knows? Shetty and his previous partner, iHeartMedia, parted ways. They could not come to terms. This is something happening. Obviously, Scott and I went through a bunch of this, not this amount of money, but it's a really interesting Netflix and spark. Tara, I hate to break it to you, but over five years, we're getting more than this.

19:32Scott Galloway:Oh, okay. And that's why we're imperfect allies, if you realize. I'm bank.

19:36Kara Swisher:Yeah, we're pretty high on the news list this week, I was noticing. We're moving up. We still haven't passed Megyn Kelly, but we will. We're coming for you, Megyn. We're coming for you, Megyn. And not like that way, in any way, physically or just.

19:49Scott Galloway:No, in the Apple podcast ranking charts. In the Apple podcast ranking charts. Let's be definitive.

19:52Kara Swisher:Let's be clear so you don't make a show out of it. So, but talk about these deals because they're really, because you can't go on YouTube. It's all of them, right? Is that, and he was, he did it the normal way, which is an iHeart deal. You could do those. There's a bunch of companies like this. But now this was a, this is for Spotify and Netflix, which is interesting. And Spotify had tried, you know, the Rogan thing, obviously. They signed a bunch of deals that didn't work out, you know. And so talk a little bit about this. How do you look at this market right now? And what do these indicate to you?

20:23Scott Galloway:Well, first off, let me just say with Jay, I'm really happy for him. I don't know him well, but I know him. I've been on his podcast a couple times. I think he's a lovely man, and I think he does a good job. And essentially what he realized is the most valuable media asset in podcasting isn't sports like it is on cable TV. it's loneliness. He figured how to monetize the largest market in America and that is people who need a friend. And so okay so I'm happy for Jay. I think he does a great job and by the way I cannot get over and I think it's total bullshit all the hate that Jay and Mel Robbins get.

21:01Kara Swisher:They get a lot.

21:02Scott Galloway:And it's just like okay don't listen to their podcasts. They're not bad people. Yeah that's how I feel.

21:07Kara Swisher:I'm not a big fan of I mean I like Mel personally but I get why people find it annoying. It's a little bit much.

21:14Scott Galloway:Fine, then don't listen to it.

21:15Kara Swisher:I was literally in an elevator and someone says, do you know Mel Robbins? I find her very annoying. I'm like, okay. Then don't listen. That's what I said.

21:22Scott Galloway:It was literally apropos of nothing. If you go on TikTok, I mean, the reality is any bestselling author, if you say bestselling author is full of shit, you get elevated in the rating. So people are shitposting every bestselling author to get another 70 bucks from fucking TikTok. Have at it. But I've never understood the hate for Jay and Mel. I think they're both nice people doing their best, doing good work. And if you don't like their work, which I understand it's not for everybody, you know, the whole kind of monk rap gets a little bit old sometimes.

21:52Kara Swisher:Yeah, no, I'm not a fan of the self-help stuff.

21:54Scott Galloway:Yeah, fine. Then don't listen. I don't. That's fine.

21:56Kara Swisher:Yeah.

21:56Scott Galloway:But there's two things here. This dynamic that's colliding is the following. The fastest growing ad-supported medium is not even YouTube in terms of revenue or meta. it's podcasts. I think the ad revenue is going to be up 21 % this year on podcasting. In addition, 40 % of, I think about 20 % of ours and 40 % of Profit G Markets pods are watched or listened to on a TV because they're streamed off of YouTube. So essentially what a podcast is, it's a television show for 10 % of the production value or cost. So the means of production of TV is being arbed into podcasting. And now 55 % of Americans have listened to a podcast recently.

22:42Scott Galloway:So in addition, the intimacy of the relationship advertisers really like, and the CPMs for Pivot are$45. The CPMs for CNN are$13. And then you combine it with the following. There's this dirty secret of podcasting called the RSS feed. And slowly but surely, you build up subscribers. And every time a show comes out, it's automatically downloaded to an iPhone and it's counted as a listen. So the people who've been in it for three, five, 10 years as you have, who have built large RSS feeds have moats. So what you have is a series of acquirers going, we need growth. Let's go find a podcast and a small number of podcasts that actually have large RSS feeds because you cannot, you know, when Landman comes out, it's a hit overnight.

23:35Scott Galloway:It's hard for a podcast. If you look at the top 10 podcasts, even in any category, they're usually the original gangsters or the people who've been around for a while. You're absolutely right. So you have demand and you have sequestered or pretty big moats, which all adds up to large acquisition prices relative to their revenues. I bet Jay does 10 to 20 million a year. So he's getting sold at 10 to 5 times revenues, which is a lot. But you're about to see, and we've been predicting this, and I'm talking our own book here, but I've been saying this for the last two years. There just aren't – when Spotify, iHeart, Sirius, you know, and James Murdoch go looking for podcasts, there aren't that many of scale.

24:19Kara Swisher:It is the cost structure, which people don't understand, and it is television because our YouTube audience revenues are growing pretty smartly. And it's a really interesting way to deliver news. That's, you know, it's what people want, which is why you're seeing the podification of network news. I just don't think it's going to work. I think you either just have to go this way or not. I don't think you can switch that audience over because they're older and they like the way it is. So you're going to see these declines like you see at CBS because they don't like the new stuff you're doing. It's kind of just like you need to do a hard reset with a lot of this stuff.

24:56Kara Swisher:But I agree. I think it's interesting, and they can actually usually make the money back. But the foregoing of YouTube versus Netflix is really interesting, and it'll depend on what your product is at any one time, whether you want to sort of be in the safe harbor of Netflix, Spotify, or you want to be out in the open in a YouTube, Google world, essentially. People can mix and match, too, by the way, which is what's great about it, right, presumably?

25:23Scott Galloway:Or the most powerful.

25:23Kara Swisher:Oh, I'm seeing your giant hand there. Look at that. Put your big hand up there. Oh, oh.

25:27Scott Galloway:I'm very self-conscious of my hands. They're nice. I have my mother's hands. They're not, they're, my hands, I, in the competition for my worst feature, it is the Olympics. I mean, it is, there's a lot of competitors. Yeah. But my hands are right up there. I'm very self-conscious of my hands. That's why I don't wear jewelry. They're perfectly nice. Anyways, so Netflix, I think, is the most powerful media company in the world, or traditional media company. And they're getting into podcasting. and overnight, they're going to be able to, whoever they decide to distribute or acquire, overnight, that podcast is going to be, I mean, they'll be the new king and queen makers of podcasting.

26:02Kara Swisher:Yeah, I thought it was bad news for iHeart. I'll tell you that.

26:05Scott Galloway:I think that's right. I don't think iHeart, iHeart is a company that's gone, I think through bankruptcy once or twice and they have to be economically rational. They don't have access to cheap capital. So if iHeart shows up and Spotify and Netflix show up to a bidding war.

26:21Kara Swisher:You go with that.

26:22Scott Galloway:I don't know who wins. I just know iHeart loses. iHeart can't justify the valuations these guys can justify, you know, even a serious. Basically, I think you're going to see Spotify and Netflix take the whole value of the podcast ecosystem up. And not only that, if your podcast does 10 million downloads a month, you're worth four times the podcast that does 5 million because it is so hard in this environment to find scale. It's very similar to cable TV in the sense that there's a small number of personalities who extract the majority of the economics. And it's the same in podcasting. Absolutely.

27:04Scott Galloway:But I want to finish where I started. I'm really happy for Jay. I like it when people, he's been in the business for 10 years. He's a nice man. He has worked at it.

27:11Kara Swisher:Yeah, he has worked at it. Good for him. Yeah. Well, just don't listen to him if you don't like him. That's my feeling on a lot of things. That's right.

27:17Scott Galloway:He and I have been sexting in related news.

27:20Kara Swisher:On Kix. Kix is a dirty. He's dreamy. Let me just tell you. He's dreamy.

27:23Scott Galloway:He has the most beautiful eyes.

27:25Kara Swisher:Platinum definitely picked the dirty one. I'll just say. Oh, my God. He picked the dirty one. Kix is dirty. Is there? I don't know anything about it.

27:32Scott Galloway:How would you even know that? I don't know any of these platforms. Because I know all these sites.

27:34Kara Swisher:I don't use any of them.

27:35Scott Galloway:Really? Do you go on and talk about it? I feel. Do you offer to power wash other lesbians' backyard, you little saucy minx you?

27:43Kara Swisher:Scott, I fixed my power washer this weekend. I was very excited. Anyway.

27:46Scott Galloway:So just on that note, before we go, I think the new thing, a guy asked me for dating advice and he's like, I'm never going to graduate from college. What, will I ever be able to find a woman? And I'm like, I think the new sexy is blue collar romance. And that is no poetry. Don't send a car for her. Fix her fucking refrigerator. I think that gets women really hot. Look at a woman's stressors and treat them like they're your enemy. Fill up her car with gas.

28:13Kara Swisher:All right. Okay.

28:14Scott Galloway:I think if you want to get a woman, I think humor is the ultimate aphrodisiac with women behind maybe money. But I think a decent runner up is to look at a woman's acts of service. And if you know how to fix shit, you know, move your girlfriend. Show up and fix the air conditioner. Like attack her problems like they're your enemies.

28:36Kara Swisher:I like it. Self-help from Scott Galloway. Okay, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, big IPO news from Anthropic.

28:47Scott Galloway:Support for the show comes from BetterHelp. For some, summer is the best season. Travel picks up, kids are out of school, and adventure fills our days. For others, juggling it all can be tough, long, busy days that can lead to an overwhelming feeling of exhaustion and counting down the minutes until the kids are back in school. It's not uncommon for people to worry they're wasting the days of sunshine. That's why it's important to take a step back and take care of yourself during the busy summer season. Therapy can help you slow down and understand your needs. and you can start with BetterHelp.

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31:44Kara Swisher:That's joindeleteme.com slash pivot, code pivot.

31:55Kara Swisher:Scott, we're back with breaking news. Anthropic just confidentially filed its IPO with the SEC. It has not disclosed the size or terms of the offering. I'm excited for you to read it for me and tell me what's in there. But before that, Anthropic hit a major milestone last week, passing OpenAI to become the most valuable AI startup in the world. The company announced a$65 billion funding round. I can't believe I'm saying billion, round that values$965 billion, very close to the top. To put things in perspective, OpenAI announced a$730 billion valuation back in February, but it took the company to around a decade to reach that number.

32:32Kara Swisher:It just keeps escalating. Anthropic, which was founded five years ago, has beaten the valuation in half the time. Did anyone see this coming? Scott Galloway did. Let's listen to Scott's prediction from February.

32:43Scott Galloway:As we sit here today, I actually think that Anthropic, or in the next 12 months from this one of our predictions, is going to be worth more than OpenAI.

32:51Kara Swisher:Very well done. What does this valuation mean for Anthropic's IPO as well as OpenAI and SpaceX? By the way, SpaceX is now targeting an IPO valuation of$1.8 trillion after feedback from advisors and investors, according to Bloomberg. That's a step down from the initially reported$2 trillion. It's still too much. Anyway, thoughts, what do you think? You got that one right, and we'll be looking at the filing when we get to be able to see it, but we don't know a lot yet.

33:16Scott Galloway:I don't think any company in the world has the momentum right now of Anthropic. And it was built, a genius move. They went after the enterprise market. And, I mean, the pivot, you have never seen a number two this viciously become the number one this fast.

33:31Kara Swisher:Yeah.

33:32Scott Galloway:You've never seen Hertz overtake, you know, you've never seen Avis overtake Hertz this fast. You've never seen Pepsi overtake Coke like this, this fast. And the thing that's so impressive about this isn't the valuation, it's the speed. Google took 20 years to reach a trillion dollars. Anthropik got there in five. It was founded in 2021. And if it had been founded in Amsterdam, it would be one of the five most valuable companies in Europe. And it did it in five years. I mean, it's not capital formation. It's financial teleportation. Five years, zero to a trillion dollars. So we keep talking about how AI might transform the world.

34:15Scott Galloway:Maybe, maybe not. But it's definitely transforming capital formation. And I mean, the one advantage America has is that we will do these$60 billion rounds after two or three years. And in Europe, they just don't have that type of capital formation.

34:32Kara Swisher:I want you to give me the downside, because you definitely called this, but what would be the worry for you of maybe all three IPOs or this one? What would be the warning signs or something you would pay attention to? Because you're not always fully like up and to the right as a person.

34:48Scott Galloway:These stocks and the collective hallucination around the valuations here, one or more of these stocks is going to be off 40 % to 70%, and it's going to send the U.S. and the global economy into a recession. The U.S. has become a giant bet on AI, and these companies are overvalued. The technology will survive. These valuations won't. There's just, I'm sorry, SpaceX at 100 times revenues? You know, open AI at, what's going on at 20? Every big company we follow has, in the last 10 years, been off between 40 % and 70 % in a 12-month period. That's fine. That's part of the cycle of high growth companies up and down.

35:26Scott Galloway:The difference here is that we've imbed the entire economy on these magnificent 10. 93 % of our GDP growth is coming from AI CapEx. So when these companies, you know, they always say company, if the American economy sneezes, the world catches a cold. We're going to catch fucking pneumonia when the expectations. An MIT professor just came out with a study saying 95 % of CFOs aren't seeing the ROI on their investments in AI.

35:53Kara Swisher:As we noted last week with the Uber COO, right, talking about it.

35:58Scott Galloway:So the danger here is the following. Folks, I think Anthropic is the only one of these three that has a reasonable shot at trading above its IPO price 12 months out. There's just gravity. No basketball player has ever been in the air for more than one second. For some reason, one second is the limit. none of these companies can justify their valuation unless they are able to literally destroy the labor market i just got off the i just got off a podcast with the ceo of lily and i said ai as it relates to drug discovery underhyped or overhyped this is a measure guy and he's like overhyped the incentives from amazon that the more more tokens you use the more will compensate you that shit's about to go away and the first big company that announces we're cutting back our ai Buy spending, you know, you're going to see the GDP of Germany come out of the market.

36:57Scott Galloway:And unfortunately, the U.S. market, you know, we used to say.

37:00Kara Swisher:Is frothy because of that, because of that.

37:02Scott Galloway:We're now concentrated, the entire U.S. economy is a bet on 10 companies.

37:06Kara Swisher:You know, I have to say, months ago, Mark Cuban said there's going to be a point where tokens would be more expensive than people. I think it's already happened. And he wanted me to ask Dario that question. Yeah, yeah. It's a great question. He was like, I was interviewing him at an off-site thing. And he's like, that's the question. When do people cost less than tokens? And tokens are getting too expensive, which is interesting. Anyway, we'll see what happens. But I'm excited for you to read it for me. All right, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, some updates on America's 250th celebration.

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41:07Kara Swisher:Scott, we're back with more news. America's 250th birthday will now be a mega rally, apparently. President Trump called for canceling the concert series at the planned event after several musicians dropped out. Instead, because they were told it was nonpartisan, it's obviously not nonpartisan. Instead, Trump suggested he should headline the event, calling himself the number one attraction anywhere in the world. But there's a lot, you know, and now his name is going to be yanked off the Kennedy Center. A judge has ordered his name to be taken down. Again, a lot of performative stuff, but still irritating.

41:39Kara Swisher:Any predictions for the 250th celebration? It feels like no one's any closer. He is not backing down on celebrating himself, including a$250 bill. Scott Besson has soiled himself once again. So, thoughts?

41:52Scott Galloway:Yeah, you know, it's obnoxious, and we'd like to think that it's bad for him. But, you know, I hate to admit it as someone who thinks about brands a lot. You could make an argument that the most successful consumer brand of the last decade isn't Tesla, Apple, or Nike. It's Trump. And, you know, he's put it out.

42:11Kara Swisher:He's used the presidency to.

42:13Scott Galloway:That's the right analogy. It used to be a public office. And now it's increasingly an entertainment franchise. Yeah. And I think he has. I just think Democrats like Robert McNamara said, if you want to defeat an enemy, you have to empathize with them. There's just no getting around it. The guy has an incredible feel for branding and marketing. And the product is awful. It is. It is like the greatest. What he's been able to do with this shittier product, an inconsistent product.

42:42Kara Swisher:Yeah, the Bible, the steaks, the water. It really is incredible.

42:48Scott Galloway:I think this is, quite frankly, I think this comes and goes. I don't think it's a big story. What do you think?

42:52Kara Swisher:I think it makes us all feel bad about America on the 250th anniversary. I mean, I'm going to be somewhere far away from Washington. And I just think all these artists pulling out was interesting. You know, they were like, yeah, no. I think they see what's coming. Are you going to Vermont?

43:09Scott Galloway:Is that where all those things go? Yes, that's where I'm going. That's where I'm going. Exactly where I'm going.

43:13Kara Swisher:It's Amanda's family.

43:14Scott Galloway:Did I get that right? You did. Oh, my God. Stereotypes are for a reason. It's not me.

43:19Kara Swisher:Amanda's family has rebuilt their barn. They had a barn house, and it was going to fall down, and they rebuilt it, and it's very lovely. And so we're going up there. That's where we're going.

43:28Scott Galloway:I can't believe I got that right.

43:29Kara Swisher:You totally got that right. Oh, my God. Anyway, I'll tromp around and hide your boots.

43:35Scott Galloway:And you got the dog guard for the German Shepherd in the back of the Subaru?

43:38Kara Swisher:No, I don't have a dog. I would like to have a dog maybe. But they'd mess up my beautiful yard work. So cats don't mess up yard work. They just bring in chipmunks into the house. No, I think it's just, you know, I remember, do you remember the 200th? I do. I do. I thought it was nice. I was at camp.

43:56Scott Galloway:I got a special commemorative coin from the Franklin Mint.

43:59Kara Swisher:Yeah, I really liked the 200th. And I felt very proud of this country at the time. And I feel like, ugh, why do you have to make everything so cheesy and grifty and gross? Like, I'm excited for the 300th. I'll be dead, but that's okay. But, I mean, it's just, it feels like grifty and gross. Although I did recently run into—

44:20Scott Galloway:You might be around, actually. I'm going to call challenge on that. You'll be 113.

44:24Kara Swisher:No, I will not be around for that. Anyway, I just ran into Ken Burns at something, and he always makes me feel better. I just always, I want to hang out with Ken Burns in Vermont and go hiking. That's what I want to do. Because I like listening to him tell tales of our founding fathers and I feel better.

44:40Scott Galloway:Well, but just to that point, if you want to feel better about America and the space we're in, and we're incredible narcissists. We like to think that we're in uniquely good or uniquely bad times. Folks, as bad as things are, things have been much worse in America and we've always been able to come back stronger. Yeah. And it's not to say you don't need to vote, you don't need to be alarmed, you don't need to take action. But at one point, 1 % of America, American population, controlled the government, and it happened to be the slave owners. 80 years ago, we were interning people in makeshift concentration camps because their parents were – or because they immigrated from Japan.

45:12Scott Galloway:We have been in pretty dark places before.

45:14Kara Swisher:Yeah, yeah, we have.

45:15Scott Galloway:Anyways, history makes me feel better.

45:17Kara Swisher:Hang out with Ken Burns in Vermont. That's my goal. Anyway, last story. Blue Origin is facing a major setback. It's a new Glenn rocket exploded during a test on the launch pad last week. The company said all personnel were safe and described the incident as an anomaly. Jeff Bezos posted on X, very rough day, but we'll rebuild whatever needs rebuilding, get it back to flying. It's worth it. The explosion, which damaged Blue Origin's launch pad, which is a critical problem. It's a significant blow. They've spent about a billion dollars on it. I think it's at Cape Canaveral. To challenge SpaceX and the commercial space race.

45:47Kara Swisher:And one of the things about the New Glenn is they can put up, they're trying with their LEO system to put up lots of satellites. They have a couple hundred. And Starlink has, I don't know, 10 ,000 or close to 10 ,000. And so they've been trying to do this, and these new Glenn rockets would put up, I think, 48 or 50, as opposed to a couple that they put up in their smaller rockets. You know, it's a real problem for the launch pad. They only had one for the big one. And for it to blow up on the launch pad, from what I understand, I've been talking to a lot of rocket people, is bad. It should have blown up in the air, of all things, because then they would have been able to preserve the launch pad.

46:23Kara Swisher:It's not great. It's not a great thing. And thank God Elon didn't go on and on about it because he knows he blows up his own rockets frequently. But it would be nice to have more than one in this area, although it's two of the same people, but still competition. Thoughts?

46:43Scott Galloway:I just couldn't wait. As soon as I saw the explosion, I immediately posted it on threads and said, Bezos back on CNBC again, which I thought was really good. It didn't get that many likes, but I thought that was funny. Like my favorite, I always like to hear the live broadcast because the individual, and they're trained to do this, they always call an explosion an anomaly.

47:05Kara Swisher:An anomaly, yeah.

47:06Scott Galloway:Which is like calling my divorce a scheduling conflict. It's like.

47:12Kara Swisher:We can make jokes because nobody was killed.

47:14Scott Galloway:A disagreement, a mild disagreement.

47:17Kara Swisher:A little metal mangled, yeah.

47:17Scott Galloway:You know, and my favorite, it's like, I don't fully understand. And this happens all the time. But when a rocket blows up on the launch pad, isn't that like failing a sobriety test in the parking lot? Yeah.

47:31Kara Swisher:I mean, I need to understand the physics, but just to be clear. Not good.

47:37Scott Galloway:One of the reasons private companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin have succeeded or have caught in some way surpassed NASA is that they're allowed to move further out the risk curve and explode rockets on the launch pad. If NASA did this, there's a feeling of government failure. They can't take these kinds of risks. And to a certain extent, just as I feel like you need a certain number of bank failures every once in a while to show that you are allocating capital at close to or near the efficient frontier of growth, you do – I hate to say this. I think you do need a certain number of explosions on the launch pad because what that says is – and by the way, my understanding is not a single person was injured or killed here.

48:20Kara Swisher:That's right.

48:21Scott Galloway:This is a loss of capital from a company that has access to a lot of capital.

48:26Kara Swisher:It's not good. It's not because they were trying to get, like, think about it, a couple hundred versus 10 ,000 satellites. Yeah, but Elon's had them explode.

48:34Scott Galloway:This is a function of—

48:35Kara Swisher:No, no, no, but he has 10 ,000 satellites up there. This is—everyone talks about Mars and everything else. This is a race for satellite dominance. Agreed. Agreed. But only one company dominates at this point. And so it's a setback in that they can't get dozens of these things up. They can get a couple on these smaller rockets. And, you know, they're trying very hard. It's just, it's still, someone, when they saw the explosion, said to me, oh, look, it's the Washington Post budget for a year, like, or something. I was sort of laughed. It's true. He doesn't mind losing money here. And he's losing money.

49:03Kara Swisher:Let's be clear. He's hoping for a payoff later. Although, looking at the rocket business, SpaceX is not the greatest business in the world right now yet either. But Starlink is.

49:15Scott Galloway:It's got to drive him crazy that he's behind. he looks like he's behind a guy who's running six companies at the same time yeah yeah and and right now you know blue origin is looking less like nasa and more like i don't know neiman

49:29Kara Swisher:marcus with propulsion i mean just like but you know there's summer yachting to do you know i don't know if you know that but that's bezos's job during the summer i'm i've told you i'm here for his midlife crisis yeah yeah i know you like that i think i've gotten invited back to the event he

49:44Scott Galloway:goes to that i thought i was disinvited from because i thought elon was going i'm not going to tell you because I don't want to get disinvited.

49:49Kara Swisher:God, I never get invited. Why do you get invited? What do they think? You're like a patsy?

49:54Scott Galloway:They think they can turn me, I think. Yes. And by the way, I am a patsy. You've listened to my interviews.

49:58Kara Swisher:I think you can be turned, actually. Part of me thinks that you can be.

50:01Scott Galloway:Oh, no. If I turn, it's going to be towards way the left.

50:05Kara Swisher:Yeah, okay. Every day I get a little bit more burny. Oh, wow. Okay. All right.

50:09Scott Galloway:No, but... People are always

50:11Kara Swisher:coming for you. It really irritates me, especially because they're irritating people that come for you. Anyway.

50:17Scott Galloway:Coming from you, you mean hating on me or inviting me to shit?

50:19Kara Swisher:I'm wanting you to do stuff.

50:20Scott Galloway:I'm very irritated. That bothers you. I like that.

50:22Kara Swisher:That bothers me. I'm like, get your mitts off my imperfect ally. You know, dick jokes are always welcome at conferences. Get your mitts off my imperfect ally.

50:31Scott Galloway:No, no. I told a dick joke while Anthony Blinken was on stage. That was a moment.

50:35Kara Swisher:Oh, okay.

50:36Scott Galloway:I like him. He's very handsome, by the way. He's a nice, he's a handsome man. I think people are scared of you. I think they're less scared of me.

50:41Kara Swisher:I don't know.

50:42Scott Galloway:And they know I like to drink. I bring a good vibe.

50:44Kara Swisher:All right. Okay, fine. unfun. I'm going on The View! Anyway. Oh, that is true.

50:49Scott Galloway:That's a big... You know what? That's a... You would rather be invited to be on The View than go to this thing.

50:55Kara Swisher:I know. You're right. But I like to just, though, because I like to see their discomfort when I'm there. Because I never really do anything. I'm quite cordial.

51:01Scott Galloway:Oh, speaking of invitations and bringing this back to me, I'm going to Brilliant Minds next week. Oh, you are? That's fun.

51:06Kara Swisher:I went to it many years ago, the first one. What's that like? It's in Sweden, right? Stockholm.

51:11Scott Galloway:That's where I'm going. Yeah, it was lovely.

51:13Kara Swisher:It's lovely. And it's actually well done. But there's not a lot of edge to it. But maybe there is now. The sun never sets, which fucked with me.

51:20Scott Galloway:No, that's where I'm going. I can't wait to go to Stockholm.

51:23Kara Swisher:Anyway, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails.

51:31Kara Swisher:Hi, I'm Maria Sharapova, host of the Pretty Tough podcast. Each episode, I sit down with high-achieving women to discuss the pursuit of excellence without apology. This week on the show, clinical psychologist and founder Dr. Becky Kennedy and I unpack what it really means to raise kids today. I think parenting is the most important job in the world and the one that has the most impact on your world and the world. It is non-stop. Check out Pretty Tough, new episodes on Wednesdays. You can watch it on YouTube or listen in your favorite podcast app.

52:08Kara Swisher:In the span of a decade, Ben Shapiro built The Daily Wire into a conservative media empire. He produced hit podcasts that bit at liberal excesses and documentaries and lectures about the founders, the genders, the gospels.

52:21Scott Galloway:He peddled polos, hats, candles, provided a home for deplatformed conservative stars like Matt Walsh and minted stars like Candace Owens. Let's put a pin in that.

52:30Kara Swisher:The Daily Wire even has kids programming a judgmental puppet named Zoodles, who shares Shapiro's load-bearing eyebrows. This year, though, the empire showed signs of collapse. The Daily Wire's YouTube videos are down from millions of views to the lo-fi figures. Web traffic is plummeting. And recently, Shapiro laid off 13 percent of his employees. Asked by The Washington Post what had happened, Shapiro accused other conservatives of click-whoring by embracing radical Islam, theorizing about the evils of Winston Churchill and mocking the widow of Charlie Kirk. The kids still got it on Today Explained, the fall of Ben Shapiro.

53:05Kara Swisher:Today Explained drops every weekday afternoon.

53:09Scott Galloway:Buy Now, Pay Later is everywhere. And honestly, we need to talk about it. 60 % of Coachella goers put their tickets on Buy Now, Pay Later this year. You can even pay off your DoorDash order and installments now, like your sushi. So this week on Net Worth and Chill, I'm breaking down exactly how these companies are making money off of you, why missing one payment can flip your interest rate from zero to nearly 36 % overnight, and the uncomfortable truth about what it really means when you need to split a$200 purchase into four payments. Plus, I'm answering your questions, including what to do if you're already in over your head.

53:44Scott Galloway:Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on youtube.com slash yourrichbff.

53:53Kara Swisher:Okay, Scott, let's hear some wins and fails. Should you go first? No, you go first.

53:59Scott Galloway:I've been doing all the talks.

53:59Kara Swisher:I just interviewed this young man, Theo Baker. It's right here. This is his book. How to Rule the World. And it's about education and power at Stanford University. This is the kid who did all those stories as a 17-year-old on the head of Stanford being part of a... He didn't falsify the information but several papers he had his name on did and he never moved to correct them. He's the son of two well-known Washington reporters. I'm not going to say their names because he's his own person. Wonderful book about power. He's a technologist who loves technology. He's also an astonishing reporter. Just a great, really great.

54:37Kara Swisher:I felt so good for journalism. He started off as a, and just really, it's doing, it got amazing reviews, How to Rule the World. Theo Baker, he's very young. He's just graduating Stanford in two weeks, although he's just run write over them with his amazing reporting. And this is a really interesting book, including about this one group called How to Rule the World, the course, the secret course that you have to get tapped for at Stanford and how they made so many misshapen entrepreneurs, mentally misshapen entrepreneurs. And I just, it's nice to hear from a young person in this regard. And I just think he's a really, he has a big career ahead of him.

55:12Scott Galloway:That's nice. Yeah.

55:14Kara Swisher:And Amy Pascal has bought the book for a movie and he's the kids are all right i always when i did this interview i felt the kids are fucking all right uh and it extends also to my kids like alex is killing it at his job i can't say where it is but it's a it's a big car company and he's loving it and he's the enthusiasm is enormous and louis is working in a restaurant in san francisco and he loves it in a political campaign so the kids are fucking all right that's what i feel good about so um can't name the car

55:40Scott Galloway:company. Let me get this. He went to Michigan.

55:43Kara Swisher:There's a lot of them. I don't know. He's having a great time. He's having a great time. He's learning so much and it's really wonderful for him. He asked me not to, so I'm not going to. Okay. Okay. My fail is, I do think it's around this Graham Plattner thing. And Amanda and I did have a disagreement about it. She's quite irritated by him.

56:00Scott Galloway:Did you have hot sex after?

56:02Kara Swisher:No, no, we did not. We were exhausted from all the children's parties and my power washing. Let me say, I know people don't like it, but at some point, we just have to, and I know people are going to say, we have to have purity tests, and coming from white lady Kara, old white lady Kara who has money, et cetera, I don't care. I never have cared for zeroing in on people's personal issues. I can have personal feelings about it, like friends who have shitty boyfriends or whatever. But Graham Plattener's wife is not my friend. I might have a different piece of advice for her if that was the case. But I just feel like it's their business.

56:43Kara Swisher:Even with Ken Paxton, I think he's more the fraudulent stuff with his wife. It sounds like he's a liar and a cheat in that way he handled it and treated her, which says a lot about his judgment. And I think that's pertinent. But I almost don't care even about that. And although there are some things to learn. And so I think the judginess of people has really got to stop. And not only because the Republicans do it. That's not the reason to do it. It's not kind. And it's not, and it's not, there is a goal here. And we cannot make people feel like shit all the time for mistakes. I've made mistakes.

57:19Kara Swisher:Scott's made mistakes. We're all imperfect. And that's, that's what I think about. So it's a failure of our country to continue on down that road. We have to leave some things behind.

57:31Scott Galloway:My win, I just interviewed the CEO of Eli Lilly, a guy named David Ricks. And I'm just fascinated with Lilly. They made a huge bet on GLP-1 drugs as, you know, I think a revolutionary. I think GLP-1 is going to be a more important technology than AI. And this company has quintupled its market cap in the last five years. And one of the things I absolutely, because they made a big bet on GLP-1. GLP-1s just 12 months ago were averaging$1 ,000 a month. They've already been cut to$250 to$500. It's a definition of elasticity. I think at some point these drugs are going to be less than$100 a month and maybe even lower than that.

58:09Scott Galloway:And I think the demand will absolutely explode. So I think the market is doing a really good job here of trying to get these drugs to the people who need them the most. And I think these drugs are just absolutely revolutionary in terms of everything from obviously from obesity, but reduction in alcoholism, biting your nails or giving it to kids with social media addictions. You know, I think it's not about eating less. It's about wanting less. I'm fascinated by these things. And this company, Eli Lilly, is the first trillion dollar, or is the first pharmaceutical company to breach a trillion dollars.

58:40Scott Galloway:And it's the 13th most valuable company in the world. And the thing I love about this place, it's not in San Francisco. It's not in New York. It's not in London. Do you know where their headquarters are? I know.

58:50Kara Swisher:I don't. Where are they?

58:51Scott Galloway:Indianapolis. Oh, cool. And this guy kind of reeks of, he went to Purdue, followed love of his life to Indiana where he went to the Kelly School. They employed 50 ,000 people. It's easily the most important company in Indiana, if not the Midwest. But we spend so much time talking about the Bay Area or New York, and I just love a trillion-dollar company.

59:11Kara Swisher:That's a great interview for you. That's a great interview. You have been a very early person on GLP-1.

59:17Scott Galloway:I find them absolutely fascinating. Talk to someone who uses AI for their work and just loves it. And if that person is also on GLP-1, ask them what's had a bigger impact on their life. If I could go short AI and long GLP-1, that would be my investment thesis for the next decade. Anyway, great company. CEO just reeks of kind of Midwestern values, and I'm glad they're just doing so well. I think they've made a huge bet, and it's paying off in spades. My fail was going to be what you said. I personally don't trust anyone who hasn't said something stupid or drank too much at some point or, I don't know, had failings in their marriage.

59:59Scott Galloway:I always wonder, okay, should we stab this person with a fork to see if they're actually human when they present this pure image of themselves? And I'm sure those people are out there. But you're, you know, they're by the grace of God go I. And if you want better candidates, folks, focus on whether they'd be a good fucking senator. They don't need to be your rabbi. Like, do you think they're smart around policy? Do you think they demonstrate good leadership skills? And if you look at the best leaders in terms of actually moving America forward, sometimes they're not exactly priests. I mean, anyway, but where my fail is, you summarized that more articulately than I did.

1:00:40Scott Galloway:But where I go is the real fail. Jesus Christ.

1:00:44Kara Swisher:Yep.

1:00:45Scott Galloway:Plattner, just own it.

1:00:46Kara Swisher:Own it.

1:00:47Scott Galloway:Own it. Own it. I've made a mistake. I've demonstrated terrible judgment in my marriage.

1:00:52Kara Swisher:Boy, yes, me too.

1:00:54Scott Galloway:And I have a great marriage. Yeah. And guess what? The majority of people in America who have demonstrated terrible judgment in relationships can still have great marriages. And it says something about her. It says something about me. Or you get better.

1:01:10Kara Swisher:I have to say I'm better at this measure, although not perfect either, by the way. I have a lot of failings. But you get better.

1:01:15Scott Galloway:Yeah, as you get older, you do get better. I agree. You get better. Yeah, said my. Anyways. But anyway, I just, we always, these candidates fail and crisis communications is so easy, yet everyone gets it wrong. Own the issue. Acknowledge the problem. Own. Own it. But all they've done is they've kept it alive in the cycle by denying it and attacking the media. They couldn't have, in my opinion.

1:01:41Kara Swisher:They couldn't help themselves.

1:01:41Scott Galloway:Again, it's not about the scandal, folks. It's how you handle it. That's it. Anyways, that's my fail.

1:01:47Kara Swisher:They're mad. They're mad. What do you want? Anyway, that was a great one. 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 submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. And elsewhere in the Karen Scott universe this week and on with Kara Swisher, I talked to former NPR host Audie Cornish and Ari Shapiro, who have reunited for a new CNN cultural podcast called Engagement Party. Audie says the goal is to help people get out of the cultural silos, speaking of that, that social media puts us in. Let's listen to a clip.

1:02:18Kara Swisher:I'm doing this kind of show to jailbreak the algorithm. I hate the For You page. My kingdom for an actual search that works. I don't like the word feed. Like everything about the way they have structured social media in the last 10 to 15 years bothers me deeply. You know, the only word that they say user, what's the other industry that uses the word user? Drugs. Drugs. Exactly. Like all those, I do the same thing. I'm like, yeah, feed, user, like just everything about it. Content. It's just, they hate us. It was really fun. It was actually a really fun interview with the two of them. She's very talented.

1:02:57Kara Swisher:She is, and so is Ari. Ari is terrific too. Really interesting pairing. They're trying to do pivot, but less dick jokes.

1:03:03Scott Galloway:Well, then fuck them.

1:03:04Kara Swisher:Fuck them. Fuck them. They can't get there. Fuck you, Arian, Audien. Good luck. Okay, that's the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot. Be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back on Friday.

1:03:16Scott Galloway:Today's show was produced by Lara Neiman, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Todd Wiseman. Aaliyah Jackson engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrowsman, to Savera and Dan Shalon, to Shaq Kauras, Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business care. Have a great rest of the week.

1:03:42Kara Swisher:Support for this show comes from Harvey AI. The future of law is agentic, not just tools that assist, but AI agents that navigate complex matters. That's why Harvey created agents that can do the work from end to end. They build a plan, pull from the secure data sources, run subagents in parallel, and draft work product ready for your review. so you can delegate work and own the judgment. Trusted by more than 60 % of the AM, Law 100, and leading Fortune 500 legal teams, Harvey is an AI operating system designed specifically for legal work. Harvey, AI tailored for law. Learn more at harvey.ai.

From the publisher

Kara and Scott discuss Anthropic's IPO filing, and how the company surpassed OpenAI's valuation in record time. Then, Maine's Graham Platner deals with yet another campaign controversy, but do voters care? Plus, Blue Origin suffers a major setback, Trump faces a Freedom 250 concert fiasco, and Jay Shetty lands a blockbuster deal with Netflix and Spotify.

Watch this episode on the ⁠⁠Pivot YouTube channel⁠⁠.Follow us on Instagram and Threads at ⁠⁠@pivotpodcastofficial⁠⁠.Follow us on Bluesky at ⁠⁠@pivotpod.bsky.social⁠⁠Follow us on TikTok at ⁠⁠@pivotpodcast⁠⁠.Send us your questions by calling us at 855-51-PIVOT, or email Pivot@voxmedia.com
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