Apple’s ChatGPT Deal, Uber Earnings, and Guest Adam Moss

23:06She received an additional$12.5 billion for her charitable work. She said she'll focus on contributions in the future on groups to help women and families. She started doing that through her Pivotal and some other things she does, her investments. I wish her well. She's a very smart and savvy philanthropist and investor. So there you have it. Yeah, but it's gossipy. I guess it is. Go ahead. The moment when I realized the statement that Mackenzie and Jeff put about each other, we look forward to new opportunities. I mean, it was just so fucking ridiculous, right? I feel like Melinda and Bill are having a more honest divorce.

23:38Yeah. She is having trouble hiding her disgust with him. When she went on national TV and said, and said, I warned him about Jeffrey Epstein. Yeah. I told him I was uncomfortable with him. That is literally throwing him under the bus. I feel like she probably did. Some of these stories, I was like, hmm, I wonder where these came. Oh, no, no, no. It might be true. But typically when there's this much money on the line or people thinking about their kids, they will come and they're this high profile. They swallow their feelings and they pretend that this is like an enhancement to their that they're consciously uncoupling, even despite the fact they fucking hate each other.

24:17She is not hiding this. When she threw him under the bus and intimated that he was closer with Jeffrey Epstein than she was comfortable and warned him. What was the truth? That is ugly. And my guess is she wants nothing to do with this guy, including showing up at annual meetings at whatever this philanthropy is. But she wants to do her own thing. She wants to do her own thing. She's a very, you know, she was a very competent product executive there. I dealt with her long ago. And she's been she's been one of the driving forces at the Gates Foundation. It's not just him. He talks more than she does.

24:51But she's been critical to that foundation. And she just wants to do her own thing. Give me the money. See you later. Goodbye. Good for her. Good for her. Good for her. Good for her. Good for him. He's got a new girlfriend, right? He's dating Bobby Kennedy. No, he's going out with another tech executive who died. Wife. That's what I understand. I don't know this for sure, but I'm pretty sure. I don't think he's getting married again. That's what I believe. I hope they're both happy. I like both of them. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever. Good. Good for them. She'll do a lot. I have this dream of reuniting her, Lorraine Powell Jobs, and Mackenzie Bezos and the Wojcicki sisters into a massive political force.

25:28I have this dream. Wow. I have a dream. Anyway. That's a good idea. You should do that. I know that. I've said it publicly many times. Okay, let's get to our first big story.

25:42We've got a lot of earnings news to dig into. Let's start with Uber, whose first quarter earnings are somewhat a disappointment with an unexpected loss of$654 million. It was attributed to a legal issue, these legal bills and some key investments losing value. I think it was a one-time kind of thing. Operating profit was$172 million up from the same period of year, but less than half of what analysts expected. Uber is citing softer and expected demand. It's also dealing with mounting these legal bills and key investments losing value. So the shares fell 6 % on the earnings news. Well, its competitor Lyft reported higher than expected due on earnings.

26:19Very quick thoughts. Well, look, it's Uber over the last year is up 73%. So I just think this might be the stock got a bit over its skis. I think the most impressive thing about ride hailing is Lyft. I didn't think Lyft was going to exist. And Lyft has proven that Lyft, there's an opportunity for a second player here. Uber has performed really well over the last two or three years. And what's interesting here is a lot of this loss was a function of them marking down their investments in other companies, their corporate investments. I actually think corporate investments are about to enter a golden age because of what Microsoft has recognized by investing in AI.

26:57So I think you're going to see more and more corporate investment. Microsoft has invested more in AI than the rest of all other VCs combined. So I thought it was interesting that that's what hurt them this quarter. But this is just a blip. Uber is doing really well. The whole space is doing really well. It consolidated the market into two players. They're raising their prices. They offer great services, great use of technology. They have locked in user bases. And, you know, the companies are performing really well. I don't, I didn't read much deeper into it than that. Yeah, I think so too. He's a very competent CEO, by the way.

27:27Yeah, he's not a great job. He deserves a lot more credit. Moving on to Warner Brothers Discovery, where the latest earnings were a mixed bag. The company reported a 7 % year-over-year drop in revenue to$9.96 billion. But the streaming side of the business had good news with 2 million subscribers added since the end of 2023. That was impressive. And a 72 % jump in adjusted core profit of$86 million. I think it looks like he was saying that it's going to make some dough, like real dough. He didn't say adjusted at all. Warner Brothers is also teaming up with Disney to offer a bundle. This is no surprise.

28:00We've talked about this Disney plus Hulu and Max in the U.S. starting this summer. Smart, smart idea. I think I will probably do that. I think the streaming is moving in the right direction. Bindle plan seems good. Thoughts? Good thoughts? I thought it was strangely, well, first off, it's very similar. What Apollo has envisioned is what is going to happen here. And that is Max, their streaming company, I think it might be worth more if it was just trading on its own. Because this always has the overhang of a big business that used to be great that's in decline. And eventually when they shed their cable assets to a kind of a bad bank strategy and they can just focus on Max and maybe have the movies, Warner is part of it for vertical.

28:39Well, if they shed or consolidate, but go ahead. Right. Or both. And, you know, this is one of my stock picks. This, Disney, and Alphabet were my stock picks for 24. I think Warner is now trading at a distressed price and ultimately will probably attract an activist if it goes much lower than this. Also, strangely, Kara, I think this is somewhat correlated in an adjacent way. Did you see Reddit's earnings? Yeah, very strong. Reddit's revenue was up 48%. So if they grow their business from a half a million to a billion, that's an incremental 500 million in revenues. And what people don't realize is that the ad business is remarkably consistent.

29:16It's been about 1.5 % of global GDP. It never goes much less than that, but it never grows much more than that. So when Google, Meta, Alphabet, I'm sorry, when Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, and now new players, Snap, Snap, Pinterest, and now Reddit, if Reddit adds an incremental$500 million in online advertising, it's not the economy growing. It's$500 million either coming out of Alphabet and Meta. Nope. Who's it coming out of? It's coming out of CNN. It's coming out of ABC. It's coming out of Conde Nast and Hearst. Yeah, because that's where you get the results. People just look at Warner Brothers.

29:52I think if Warner Brothers sheds its ad-supported business, it's never going to trade at the multiple it deserves. Oh, interesting. And then you have the overhang of the debt. The debt's gone down a lot. They've taken a lot out of that debt. It's actually getting to - Yes, Asloff has been a disciplined operator. But every time you see these companies add more than the growth of the economy, it's coming out of traditional media players, including cable. And the thing is, these companies are actually decent assets. But when you mix them with growth assets, you have to decide, are you a teenager or are you a baby boomer?

30:22And if you just have assets that spend huge cash flow at supported cable but are in decline, that's actually a business that can be a very good business because you can focus on the business, cut costs faster than the decline of the business and print cash and actually do okay. But that money, but the other business, the streaming business is growing faster, but it needs capital. And the mix of the two business models, the market hates it. Yeah, they do. I like it. So it values the whole thing at the shittiest business. But when you see these digital platforms continue to grow their revenues by tens of billions, that's just coming out of traditional - That said, their studio business is very strong.

30:59They've had a good year, but that's always up and down. And I think Max is going to continue to - Yes, I agree. To do really well. It's a good business and it is now trading. You are going to see, I think the stock is at eight bucks or something. This stock gets a seven, definitely a six handle. not an Apollo. Would Apollo go hostile? I don't know. But like an Elliott's going to show up and say, we have an idea. Sell these assets, keep these. Yeah. Interesting. Are you part of that? I think you're signaling some calls you've been having recently. Well, the best way to predict a future care is to make it.

31:31Oh, I see. You're involved with something. You're involved with something. I feel it. I know when you're dissembling. I'm marrying Nicole Shanahan. You are just, you're going to marry Nicole Shanahan and buy CNN and fire me. That's your whole time because she'll be mad at me for pointing reporters in the correct direction. I love I thought it was you that dropped a dime on her. I thought I love it. I love it when like information age women have a pillow fight. It's like a prison film for the modern ages. I've really enjoyed it. I got me kind of hot. Let me just say this is all I did. Reporters call me.

32:02I said there's a story there. Why don't you do your fucking job? That's what I said. When I said you really signal this about when he announced her as his pick about four or six weeks ago, you're like, what do you think of her, Scott? And I go on and I do my thing. And she's like, yeah, someone should really look into her background. You knew this all along. You said someone should do some work here and look into her background. Not me, because I'm lazy now. If I had been a beat reporter, I've had it out weeks ago, weeks ago. Now I'm contacted by all the reporters. I'm like, do your fucking job.

32:35It's not even that hard, by the way. This is not heavy lifting reporting here. This is right out and like on the floor kind of stuff. So just do your job. Find the facts and report them. That's all. Don't do like I try to do a hit job. It's all there and you can find it. And every single person who has the audacity and arrogance to run for something should expect scrutiny. Sorry, that's the way it goes. That's my fear. Or become a CEO. Expect the scrutiny. It is ridiculous. She even accepted that position. It is ridiculous. Let's not go back. I can't figure out who's... Let's focus on the next thing.

33:08Someone... Who's dumber? Him for picking her or her for accepting it? I don't know. He needed the money. Whatever she has. I didn't know if she got 800 million. I had heard numbers like that and I wouldn't believe it. But I think I do believe it now from what I've checked. That's a lot of fucking money. Man. Again, both of us would do it for half, Sergey. We would have totally diddled you for half. Anyway, or less than half, even 100. What's our lowest price? What's our lowest price, Scott? Oh, let's not even go there, Kara. Let's not even go there. Right? I don't know. I mean, take me to a play and if they're good seats, you got me.

33:40I mean, I'm just so much cheaper than that. A hundred were drunk, Sergey. Come on, we'll marry you, both of us. All right, let's discuss the New York Times fight. The Times gained 210 ,000 digital subscribers last quarter, largely. Users should sign up for the bundle of news games and sports. They love that wordle. Adjusted operating profit was$76.1 million, an increase of nearly 41 % from last year. Go Meredith Levy. And let me say, Joe Kahn gave the stupidest interview ever with Ben Smith from Semaphore. But Meredith Levy, you're killing it. Like, Wordle all day the fuck long, cooking, sports, whatever.

34:16It shared that it spent a million dollars in its first quarter on the lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI. That's an investment, I suppose, and seeing where that goes. So what do you think? Let's give Meredith some kudos. So not only is it about revenue, but it's about revenue mix. So not all revenues are created equally. And the market values different revenues differently. The revenue increased 6%, which is better than inflation. Ad revenue declined 2%, but digital subscription revenues increased 13%. And that's what the market was focused on. So if you can not only supplant or cauterize the declines with other parts of the ad decline, with other parts of the business that are going faster, then your margins go up.

34:54So this is exactly the kind of revenue mix change that the market wanted. She's talked about it. Daily use is the word she always uses. Yeah. And she keeps under-promising and over-delivering. So she's developing a good reputation on the street. operating margins were up 300 basis points. That's fantastic. Warner Brothers is down 28%. Jesus Christ, I didn't know that. Year-to-date, NYT is flat and the S &P is up. But even, I mean, I hate to say it, they're like the best of a sorry lot. I mean, New York Times, as well as its performance, is up 1%. The S &P is up 11 % because there's seven companies that are up 30%.

35:31Just crazy. Software is really hitting the world. It's true. They're not getting the credit. It's because it's small. I keep saying that. And it's like the New York Times, the juggernaut. I'm like, it's a small business and it's a good one. It's a good small business. Should it continue its current strategy? I wouldn't say do anything differently. What else can they do? What could they add? In my sense is they're doing exactly what they should be doing. Give me one thing they could add, like a wordle. What could they add? The New York Times? Yeah. I would take Dealbook and I would try and turn it in.

35:59I would spin Dealbook and try and turn it into a subscription competitor to Bloomberg. I have said that for a decade to the Canadian. I've said that for a time. That'd be my idea. That was my idea when I was on the board. I'm like, let's spend a deal built and charge$3 ,000 a year for it. And hand him a pile of fucking money. That's what I said. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, Apple and OpenAI's latest moves. We'll speak with a friend of Pivot, Adam Moss. I'm looking forward to it, about creating art.

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37:55Scott, we're back and we're learning more about Apple's AI plans. The company is closed in on an agreement with OpenAI to use chat GPT features in the next iPhone operating system. Makes sense, according to Bloomberg. Apple is also reporting still ongoing talks with Google about licensing the Gemini chatbot. No deal has been reached. We're expected to hear more about Apple's future at the annual developer conference in June. They got to do stuff on their own, too, although they're stymied by their privacy, love of privacy. I think they've got to integrate all this stuff into the phone to make it a better assistant for you, getting rid of the series.

38:28stuff, which sucks. Is it better to do the outside companies? They have relied on Google for maps over the years and search and things like that. Remember, they tried their own map thing, although I hear their maps have gotten a ton better. What do they have to do here? I think it's smart. I think they look at how much capital is going into this. I mean, what do they have? Apple has distribution. Apple is the premier distributor of zeros and ones in the world. And if you distribute your zeros and ones through their device, your zeros and ones get greater monetization because it's a wealthier consumer.

39:04The billion wealthiest people come through the iOS door. So they're going to leverage that by saying, you know what, we could spend 10, 20,$80 billion to develop a competent search, but instead, we'll just cash Alphabet's$28 billion a year check. There's going to be certain categories where they're better off buying Levi's instead of going private label, right? Because in this instance, to go to make their own denim would cost tens of billions of dollars. And they're going to be able, what the chief economist at Apple and consultants have all said is that there is so much capital going into the development of AI and you are going to be the great white rhino.

39:43Everyone is going to want to have exclusive or semi-exclusive deals to be powered by open AI. that the amount of money they're going to be willing to pay you and the margins you're going to get on that money are so extraordinary that we should really, it probably doesn't make sense for you to develop it in-house. It makes sense for you to do what you did with search. I mean, to me, one of the things I've been talking to a lot of people about is where's the monetization around these companies? And some of them don't have any, right? And some of them are thieving things. And where are the clients and where do they do well?

40:15And you can see all of the monetary benefits accrue to the big players. Like in terms of Facebook and Google, they'll be able to really make advertising really easy and interesting. Like they're going to use AI to improve their existing businesses and make them more efficient and make them more targeted, everything. They'll be giving masses of tools to deploy. Same thing with Microsoft, deploying masses of tools around just things like email or automate different things. And Apple is in the perfect pole position to do this for its users, to draw them further into the ecosystem. And living in the, if you had an Apple with Siri that fucking worked, Siri sucks.

40:55Like, I can't tell you, but if you had an AI assistant, you would trust it from Apple in a way that was better, that you had a relationship with. You could see that developing. And then you would stay in the Apple ecosystem. And they'll do it well, right? They'll deploy it really well. So it'll be interesting because they really can't use all the data they collect that they've collected over the years because it's supposed to stay inside the phone. But it could be used to make the phone better. That, you know, they cannot be cute with privacy. They can't, even if it's just a marketing employee, they cannot be.

41:27They'll be caught every time they do something compared to other people. Because we all know Google's a rapacious information thief. We don't think Apple is. In any case, and that's the promise of using them. Anyway, we'll see. You brought up something really interesting, though, and you just inspired a thought, and that is... I inspired you. Apple is arguably the strongest consumer brand in the world. I don't think it's the strongest brand in the world. I think MIT, Stanford, the United States are probably the strongest brands in the world. Nobody gives Apple$300 million to put their name on the side of a building.

41:55I was thinking Lucky Charms, but go ahead. There we go. They're magically delicious. You know what is probably one of the most disappointing brands in tech over the last decade? What? Siri. When I hear Siri, when I accidentally say the wrong thing on my iPhone and Siri comes up, I have a rush of disappointment. I don't want anything to do with Siri. I just think it's a total. I say fuck you, Siri, all the time. All the time. It's this open AI or whatever. It's kind of a chance to rebrand their. It's time to turf Siri. It really is. It's time to bury Siri. It just hasn't worked. No, it sucks. All the assistants do.

42:26I like Hello Google and they just suck. They don't help. Even Alexa. Alexa's lost a lot of brand equity over the last two years. They just don't work. They're just like, everything else works pretty well. And it doesn't, I have quibbles here and there with mapping and this and that, but they're quibbles. I hate Siri. I hate Siri. Yeah. It's just, it's like, it's like that U2 song that's been embedded in my iPhone for 20 years that I can't, I can't unload. I can get that off for you. It's Siri. It's Siri just pops up when I don't need it. Siri's going to be, quote, hurt by our feelings about Siri.

42:57Get on the porch, Siri. Get on the porch with all the people who complain. OpenAI has a big event, by the way, happening just a few hours after record. There's some reports the company will be announcing Google search competitor or a new voice assistant. Sam Altman posted not a search engine, but I think he's calling it something else. I think it is. The other day, he did say there would be new stuff that, quote, feels like magic. He's trying to channel Steve Jobs, I guess. What do you think they're going to announce, Jim? Any thoughts? I don't know. This stuff is super impressive. But they're all, my sense is they're all converging on the same company.

43:33They're all becoming, my view is that all of these companies, essentially seven of the 10 most valuable companies in 1980 were energy firms. And then seven of the 10 most valuable companies in 2024 are big tech firms. And I started thinking about this and this is what I wrote in last week's No Mercy, No Malice. But at the end of the day, I think these companies are all becoming energy companies. And that is what's driving value is their compute, their cloud services, and effectively just as the most valuable companies in the world refined fossil fuels into petroleum to power factories and trucks.

44:06Now the most valuable companies in the world create the petroleum, essentially compute, to power our iPhones and our LLMs. And they're all becoming the same company. Yeah, I would agree. We'll see what he posts. He's got a lot of good jazz hands from Sam Altman. I got to say, I think the driving force of him is not becoming Netscape. That's really what he's doing. He's like, I'm not becoming Netscape. We'll see where it goes. But we're looking forward to talking about it on Thursday. Let's bring in our friend of Pivot.

44:37Adam Moss is the former editor-in-chief of New York Magazine and author of the new book, The Work of Art, How Something Comes from Nothing. Welcome, Adam. Thank you very much. Really happy to be here. I am a quiet super fan of yours. I've always admired everything you've done in magazines and everywhere you've been. So just let me acknowledge that. That's nice. Thank you. Likewise, I should say. Well, I'm a louder person, but you're quieter in what the contributions you've made. And I see it, but many people don't. But let's do it after you left the magazine. This is a different kind of book. And I like the idea of making something from nothing.

45:10That's how I think of things as a maker. After you left the magazine world several years ago, you started painting. I'd love to, you write about painting. It was like a bad affair. I loved it even as it tortured me. I'd love to ask you why you did that because I'm always trying to do different things. Talk to me a little bit about that. It's going to dovetail in a second around where this goes, but talk a little bit about that. Sure. Yeah, well, in magazines, you know, I've always been a sort of unusually visual editor. Very interested in the way that images and text kind of play with each other.

45:46And, you know, very involved with photography and graphics of all kinds. So that's just been a consuming interest of mine forever as part of my old career. And then I have a house in Provincetown that used to be an art school. So in the art school, you can see kind of ghosts of the, you know, painters who've been painting there for 100 years. And eventually it just got into me. And I just decided, well, you know, I'm here. I'm interested in images so let me just throw a canvas on an easel and see what happens and one summer I painted a painting a day for about 20 days and I made some paintings all of them awful but really loved it and yeah that's what got me hooked into painting but I was still doing it kind of you know not even really a hobby until I left the magazine And then I got serious about it.

46:49Wow, that's amazing. You know, for people who don't know Provincetown, I have many works of art from Provincetown on my walls in my home. It's a wonderful artist colony. And the artists, the visual artists are really astonishing. I have so many things I just stare at all the time in my home that I love so much from there. And the light is so beautiful there, obviously. But the book is actually a combination of your conversations with painters, musicians, filmmakers, even sandcastle builders, who I love, creating art. Talk about how you decided who you wanted to talk to. You call some of these people your art crushes.

47:22And I'd love to say, how did you come up with this idea of writing about this? Because everyone expected you to write a magazine. Here's how I made a magazine. Because you worked for the New York Times Magazine, New York Magazine. They're artistic in their own way. They're creations. Who would read that? Well, basically, I was, you know, so I left the magazine. and I started to paint, felt extremely frustrated by my own failures as a painter and felt that there was something I didn't understand about the way that artists talk to themselves. And so I decided to eventually decided to talk to a bunch of them and try to understand how they think.

48:06So I started with friends who are artists who I've always kind of revered and I've been mystified by how the hell did they do that? And, and then built from there, you know, with a little bit of a magazine head, I, you know, I wanted, I, I, I make portraits as a painter. So I want to talk to a portrait painter, but then I was sort of interested in how an abstract painter works. So I did that. I, I, you know, I have this huge fan crush on Stephen Sondheim or Moses Sumney, various musicians or Louise Glick, the poet, and I just tried them out and see if they were interested in the project. And you had to be a particular kind of person to be interested in the project because you had to be essentially ready to kind of sit on a shrink's couch.

49:01Because what I was trying to do was not just trace the practical steps. The book is a series, I should say, a series of narrative case studies in the evolution of a single poem or a single song or a single play. I wasn't just interested in the I did this, then I did this, then I did this, although I was interested in that. But I was also interested in their state of mind as they were going through it. And for them to kind of ask a question that they don't often ask themselves, which is, how did I do this? Most people are scared to ask that question. because they think they'll break some covenant with wherever their juju is coming from.

49:44And these people were actually interested. Yeah, and many of them, Stephen Stonheim died soon after, right? And so did Louise, right? Yeah. So far only two. No, I mean, I have to tell you, you may or may not know this, but she is my inspirational poet, period. I didn't know that. That's fantastic. Yes, 100%. And actually the quote that starts the book is from Circe's Power, which is, I never turn anyone into a pig. Some people are pigs. I make them look like pigs. I was like, that is my motto for my career. You know, that was the book and everything I do, which is really, and then I just love her.

50:20Yeah, she was sort of terrifying. And then, you know, and then I just fell madly in love with her. Yeah, she's an astonishing poet. but people don't really understand how astonishing he is. So, I mean, it's got a question, but were there certain traits or behaviors these people have in common? Because terrifying is possibly one of them. I suspect Sondheim is sweeter than he seems. That was not a universal trait. That was true, certainly, for some of them. I would say that the, you know, obsession was probably the most important one. There's a great James Baldwin quote that making art isn't about talent.

51:01It's really, it's about a whole lot of different things, but it's mainly about endurance. And that endurance proved to be, I think, very important, particularly for the kind of artists I was talking to who were very accomplished. Art is really hard. Things fly in your face to subvert you all the time, constantly, and you need a certain kind of stamina to get through it. So that stamina is born of a kind of obsession. So I would say that that was the most important. They're disciplined, they have focus. They can live somewhere in this very difficult equilibrium space between child and adult, where they can play and they also have the rigor, the discipline to bring an adult's control to whatever they're doing.

51:53trying to make. Or their own adulthood. Very not unsimilar to tech people, but who have failed miserably mostly. Yeah, I think that's true. Scott, go ahead. Nice to meet you, Adam. Congratulations on the book. Nice to meet you too, Scott. Thanks a lot. Have you noticed any patterns of how the evolution or the makeup of artists is changing? Is it the same DNA, the same characteristics, the same attributes are steadfast and enduring? Or do you see younger artists are finding present a different set of a different mix of characteristics and skills. I wouldn't say characteristics and skills are changing.

52:29I think they endure. They're the same skills you make when you're having conversation or you're cracking a joke. They're just basic to what storytelling is. I heard you, Scott, in an episode not too long ago, talk about storytelling as the most pivotal skill that you wish people understood. And I agree with you. And that storytelling skill is universal and I think applies whatever. Obviously, the tools and the mediums of storytelling have changed. I mean, creating a meme is a creative act that didn't exist X number of years ago. All of these so-called content creators are actually making something.

53:18That's a creative act as well. So, I mean, I think that tools morph all the time, mediums morph all the time, but the basic structure of the way you make something is, I think, is true, has been true forever. it's just very to me it's very basic it's you have that kind of imagining stage then you have a judging stage something that kind of nobody talks about where you bring a an intellect to bear and what it is you've created your imagination is created and then there is the you know sometimes very tedious and very difficult shaping stage which is you know essentially where technique comes in.

54:02All of those are important in the making of anything. And they're true whether they take 10 years or whether it happens in an instant. So when you think about this, one of the things that you use a lot is you've been using a lot in this conversation is maker. And I think about maker a lot. And for a while, the tech industry grabbed the idea, we're makers, remember the whole thing. But I actually think it's a great word. And often when people ask me if they want to change their career, a lot of people in journalism come to me and say, how did you do this? And all I say to them is, what do you want to make?

54:33Like, it's like a cook. What do you want to make kind of thing? Can you talk a little bit about that? Because a lot of what you're talking about is not just, it's not unlike chefs, tech people use it a lot, but it really does sort of encompass a lot of different acts of creativity is what, how, and then how do you want to make it? Right? Yeah. I mean, I fact, in fact, I have two chefs in the book. One, Samin Nosrat, who did the salt, fat, acid, heat. I think I got them in the right order. And the two chefs who make a whole bunch of restaurants near my house, Jody Williams and Rita Soti. And so, I wanted to explore that.

55:18As you mentioned before, they're sandcastle makers. I wanted to see what would happen with making something that was meant to perish at the end of the day. There's a chapter that's about the making of jokes, the writers of Veep making two jokes through a progression of alts. I could have done the book. I thought at one point of doing a picture creating a pitch. I thought of bringing engineers into it. I actually thought of bringing tech into it. But at some certain, at certain point, the book became too unwieldy if I was going to do that and I had to draw a line somewhere. But I was not, in general, my own definition of art was pretty elastic.

55:59And so I'm with you in that the making is really what interested me. And, you know, I wasn't too kind of rigid about what it was that they were making. Scott? If somebody showed some talent for what you thought, this person could be a great storyteller, potentially a great artist, what are the skills you would want that person to learn? I know a lot of artists who, I don't know, never reach their potential because they lack certain skills to bring their art to the world and never get the recognition I think that their talent deserves. If you spotted that type of talent in a young person and you thought, having spent a ton of time with artists, what are the skills that round out that core DNA that can help them bring their art and their, quote unquote, their talent to the world?

56:51Well, I mean, I think the first thing I would say is that if they have interest in anything in particular, if you're a parent who hopes that your child will be able to do something like this at some point, it's a good idea to get them skills trained early. Training is like, It's a little bit like an athlete. You have to achieve a certain amount of body memory in order to make something later. But in general, it kind of doesn't matter what you're doing as long as you learn. I would say mostly, Scott, it would be learn how to fail and then persevere through failure. Failure is just a giant part of all this.

57:31And failing is what made me want to give about painting and why I kind of wanted to do this book, I did not have the push. I did not have it in me to keep going. And I think eventually I got that back, but I think that learning to, you know, it's like walking, learning to fall down is important, and learning to get up is important. It's very much like, I mean, it's like all of these functions. It's also like acquiring language. You experiment, you get validation for what you're doing when you experiment, you get faith and confidence to move forward. All of these things are the same no matter what you were doing, it seems to me.

58:26Let me ask you one question. Is there one person who surprised you with their process or their outlook? Some people are very matter of fact. I think I'm a matter of fact maker. I don't sit around and remember uh the woman who wrote you pray love she was like the wind go through me and i was like this is bullshit yeah elizabeth gilbert yeah yeah she did i was like i remember listening i was there and i was like oh give me a break like but whatever that's that's her like the wind rushes through her brain and then something sticks i'm like i'm just gonna set out to make it i'm much more practical is there anyone that surprised you that you were like you thought they'd be well i mean surprises come in all sorts of ways so like shila hetty came to my house.

59:04Sheila Hetty is the writer of a, considered one of the pioneering books of autofiction called How Should a Person Be? She's a novelist and a writer of all sorts of things. She's got an amazing mind. It's kind of an amazing book. And she came to my house with this pile of, I should say also that the book is full of artifacts, process artifacts of the making of things. It's kind of like a book of archaeology. You can trace the beginnings of things through these documents. And she brought over, I explained what I was after, and she brought over this pile of papers, which she had invented an entire cosmology, almost like a tarot-like code, which the reader never saw.

59:56She just did it in order to understand for herself what is the world that she wanted to create for the book. So that's one kind of surprise. Andrew Jarecki, who's a documentary filmmaker, did this amazing movie called Capturing the Friedman. Started as a clown movie. He wanted to teach him. He was a tech guy. He invented a movie phone. And then he wanted to be a movie maker. So he decided he would teach himself how to be a movie maker by making a movie about party clowns. And then he learned that one of the party clowns' father was in jail for allegedly abusing a whole bunch of kids. And his brother, the clown's brother, was in jail with him for aiding and abetting.

1:00:45And Andrew just threw away his party clown movie and made a child abuse movie instead. That's, you know, a masterpiece. And he had no, you know, he had no experience really as a movie maker. A little bit of experience, but not much. So that's a surprise. Then, you know, just to your friend, Louise Glick. She's not my friend, but I love her. You know, she, we talked about this poem called Song.

1:01:11And, you know, Song started as a dream. And she just got this, you know, rather prosaic line in her head that when she woke up from the dream, there it was. It was, Leo Cruz makes the most beautiful white balls. And as she was describing it to me, she said, it's really, it's a nothing sentence, don't you think? I said, yeah. She said, well, to me, it was the most beautiful sentence I had ever written in my life. and the most beautiful phrase I'd ever written in my life. And she constructed this entire poem around it. So in some ways, the mundanity of that or the different ways we each experience that set of words was as much of a surprise as anything else.

1:01:48So a surprise is coming all this. Although the next line is critical. The next line, which is, I think I must get some to you, but how is the question in these times? What a great poem that is. That's the great, that is the great line after. Yes, it is. But it's all a step in one step. It's a stepping stone situation. So you do one, then the other, then the other. Yeah. And this last line of the poem, the fire is alive, the fire is still alive. Yes. Yes. It's a great, everybody must read Louise. She's amazing. The last line is, and he says, you're dreaming again. And I say, I'm glad I dreamed the fire is still alive.

1:02:19What a great line. Yes. A line she just workshops and workshops and workshops. And you can see it in the papers. It's the fire was still alive. The fire is alive. The fire, you know, which, I mean, to me, that's, I get so excited by that. to see the entrails of a mind in action, a creative mind in action. It's kind of what the book's about. So having spent a lot of time with some of the great artists of our age, would you validate or nullify the thesis that artists are tortured and more prone to depression than the general populace? I think I would nullify it. But I do think that, but I would sort of, I do think the process of making art is full of torture.

1:03:05But I don't think they're temperamentally more tortured. I didn't see evidence of that. I mean, it was a kind of data set of 43. It's an interesting take. To be successful at anything just requires a lot of frustration and torture. Yeah, absolutely. And putting up with despair. Despair just comes with the process. It's tedious. I mean, just getting back to what I said before about the, you need endurance. You need to have something that obsesses you, otherwise it's not going to work. I mean, good ideas are kind of cheap, but you need the idea that attaches itself to you and won't let go. But aren't you sort of identifying the key attributes of success in any field?

1:03:48And I say that as liberating an insight. To be truly great at anything requires a certain amount of endurance and resilience. I would share. I mean, I agree with that. Yeah, I mean, I think that's true. Do you consider tech people creative in the same way, or are they just rapacious information thieves, as I often think of them? Just today, web publishers brace for carnage. It's Google Ads, AI answers. Big tech giant is rolling out AI-generated answers to displace links to human-written websites. Just sucking in everyone else's creativity and spitting it back out at us. Thoughts? Well, I mean, I think that they are thieves of creativity, and I think they're also creative themselves.

1:04:31It's a, you know, it's a dynamic. Also, a lot of their creativity works. They're creative. It's stealing. Yeah, they steal. But all artists steal. Picasso said that. And it's universally true. Not quite the same. So your next book will be on a work of tact now. Yeah, absolutely. Something comes from nothing. All right. Anyway, Adam Moss, I am a huge, and I know I remain even more so. It's a terrific book. It's really good for anybody who's thinking of making anything. And it's worth reading all these things. And you have been working on more newspaper stuff, right? Yeah. Post or different places.

1:05:04Yeah, you know, I kick around. You can do it. Yeah. Are you going to go back to that at all ever for full time? You know, I never want to be a manager or boss again, so I'm not going to go back to a job job. But, you know, the questions of journalism and also just per the book, the questions of the way journalism is morphing interest me an enormous amount. Anyway, we appreciate it. Really worth the read again. The book is The Work of Art, How Something Comes from Nothing by Adam Moss. Thank you very much. Thank you, guys. Nice to meet you, Adam. Nice to meet you too, Scott. All right, Scott, one more quick break.

1:05:33We'll be back for Wins and Fails.

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1:06:22Today's topic, he's round with soft pillowy bread. Hey. Filled with delicious PB &J. Are you talking about yourself? And you can take him anywhere. Why'd you invite him? And we are out of time. Are you really cutting me off? Uncrustables are the best part of the sandwich. Sorry, Crust. There is a lot to talk about when we talk about Donald Trump and Jimmy Kimmel. One big question I've got is why in 2025 are late night TV shows like Jimmy Kimmel's show still on TV? Even in our diminished times, Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, they're just some of the biggest faces of their networks. If you start taking the biggest faces off your networks, you might save some nickels and dimes.

1:07:10But what are you even anymore? What even is your brand anymore? I'm Peter Kafka, the host of Channels, and that was James Ponowozik, the TV critic for The New York Times. This week, we're talking about Trump and Kimmel, free speech, and a TV format that's remained surprisingly durable for now. That's This Week on Channels, wherever you get your favorite podcasts.

1:07:39Okay, Scott, let's hear some wins and fails. Would you like to go first or would you like me to? You go first, Cara. I mean, the wind is this Aurora Borealis. I thought the world was ending, and I thought, how beautiful. I know it sounds crazy. I love the ones that say, this is it outside my 7-Eleven. I know, but I like them all. I like some of them. I just thought San Francisco ones were particularly beautiful with the Golden Gate Bridge. But people in planes, I think it was Teddy Schliefer had one from a Barrett Airlines. It was beautiful. Just the universe is beautiful. It just was so beautiful.

1:08:14It made you feel like you were a speck in a good way, right? Like you understood that there are greater things out there. And even though it's just a storm, it was beautiful. I don't know why it was just what I needed was looking at all those pictures. And then again, one of the great things about social media and the internet is it delivers those pictures that you never would have seen by just regular people. And I thought that was a beautiful, creative, and gorgeous thing to watch. That made me feel better all week long, given all the bad news. And it's hard to pick between bad news. One is Louisiana is moving to make abortion pills control dangerous substances.

1:08:55And book banning and all this stuff is just continuing in the South, especially. It's heinous. That's just resistance because all of these solar storms were nothing but wokeness as people trying to turn the sky gay. I mean, it went fairy pink. Yeah, gay. It was a gay sky. Good. Gays are going to take over from you, you people. But this stuff they're doing in the South with banning, I've just been reading a book we're going to interview the author about book banning and teachers scared to teach, having to teach the other side to the Holocaust. Just like it's repulsive what they're doing in these states to take away people's ability.

1:09:33You know, the free speech people are becoming anti-speech and anti-knowledge, and it's really repulsive. And at the same time, which I just referenced with Adam, these Google answers, AI-generated answers that are now at the top of search, I don't know if you've used search lately, but they're right there, and I have to say they're really good. And this is the beginning. obviously Google has not innovated in search because they're the only one over many years and that's what happens when you're a monopoly you don't innovate but these are really good and it makes me worry for human written websites very much so is that we're going to get all our knowledge through the Google strain of whatever they decide to do in AI which is a depressing situation so that's my fail your turn so my fail is the Biden administration the whole one?

1:10:21all of it? well not all of it But it's been a really, I think, a terrible couple of weeks. And I want to be clear, I'm on I'm on Team Biden. I'm going to take my sons to some swing states and try and register help with voter turnout. But they're playing defense, not offense. And now Trump is leading in almost every swing state. And oftentimes the polls underrepresent Trump. I think he was late on what's happening on college campuses. I think it is incredible that they have not been or disappointing. They have not had really powerful surrogates, including Secretary Buttigieg or Newsom out there talking about the economy more forcefully.

1:10:57I also think that they probably the communications blunder of the year geopolitically was threatening to cut off weapons two days before the Israelis went into Rafah. We look feckless. We look impotent to try and shore up his support on the far left. I thought it was strategically just made him look so weak. They are on their heels, not on their toes. They need to get on their toes. And the last couple of weeks have been a terrible couple of weeks. You know, I just interviewed David Ignatius and he said the exact same thing. Not exactly because he's been there a lot. It's a very complex situation with Netanyahu and trying to get him to heal a little bit, but he's not going to, obviously.

1:11:42And the behavior is there. But he was saying surrogate. He goes, I don't understand why there's not more strong surrogates. It'll make it feel like Biden is vibrant, even if Trump has cognitive issues, he seems vibrant, and that you need more surrogates because Trump is a good surrogate for Trump for his base. Biden needs all the surrogates he can get, young, vibrant, forceful. There's a bunch of them, too. And they should be out every night with talking points on every program. You know who's literally the strongest surrogate for Biden right now is Jessica Tarloff. Yeah. She was at the party last night also where you weren't.

1:12:20I love Jessica. But they've got they need 100 of those out every day countering everything. Wait, excuse me. Who sent two carrier strike forces over to Israel? No, we're standing down against the far. He could be so forceful on these issues. Yeah. And he feels like he's apologizing all the time. He's had someone said, stop talking about fucking bridges because bridges can't eat a bridge. And then he draws a red line for Netanyahu that Netanyahu crosses 48 hours later, which, by the way, I'm sure they knew about and they knew it was going to happen. The comms here is terrible. It's terrible. Anyways, that's my stop playing defense.

1:12:58Get off your heels, onto your toes. We need Saki back. Jen Saki. Saki Bob. There you go. So my win is, in my opinion, my best piece of media to date was one day, and it's been bested by Baby Reindeer. Have you seen this? Yeah, I'm not going to, but I'll tell you why. But go ahead. Oh, my gosh. It's powerful. Is it? I don't want to. It seems disturbing. You know something? It's the first program in a long time I had to turn off because I couldn't handle it. And I went back to it. It is powerful. It's about a comedian. It's starring the guy who was a comedian, a guy named Richard Gabb, and it's adapted from his autobiographical one-man show.

1:13:41And it stars Jessica Gunning. It's about stalking. Stalker. And first off, she is amazing. He plays a bartender who has some empathy for someone. This woman ends up stalking him. It brings up issues of stalking, male rape, all kinds of abuse, insecurity, the things you'll do to try and get ahead professionally. Oh, Scott, why are you watching this? Oh, it is really powerful. And here's the thing. This piece of media. It's a big hit. This piece of media is going to do a lot of good because all the things it brings up, subjecting your own morals for professional advancement, letting people take advantage of you sexually under the auspices of professional advancement, rape, all of these things are usually talked about openly and honestly through the lens of the woman as a victim.

1:14:36Men still aren't comfortable talking about it as them as the victims. Oh, okay. And this guy, this piece of work is going to make it much easier for men who have been subjects of sexual violence. It's a huge hit. People love it. People are talking about it. It is so well done. And the thing I love about it, there's no fucking CGI. There's no dragons. There's no men in tights with capes. It is a very raw and authentic story about a young man. and even the, it's also about love. This has impacted you. This guy's ex-girlfriend, he lives with his ex-girlfriend's mother who gets a lot of comfort from him and a woman is played by Nina Sanyana.

1:15:19I think I'm saying her right, Sazanya. Yeah, it's not well-known people. It's all these not well-known people. And then this woman, Shalom Broom Franklin, who must be the most beautiful woman in the world, plays his ex-girlfriend and they both rally around. This is such a powerful piece of media. I think it's going to be very meaningful for a lot of young men. I may try to. I don't know, Scott. I don't know. And not only that. I'll tell you. Hold on, hold on. Go ahead. The healthiest relationship in the whole thing and the most impressive person in it is a trans woman played by this actress, Neva Mao.

1:15:51And I love the fact that the focus wasn't on the fact that she was trans. The focus was on just how impressive she is. It's a very important piece of media. I think you should watch it. I really. I will. I've been watching Hacks, which I love. And third season is getting kudos all over the place, and it's worth it with Gene Smart. And I think it's one of my favorite shows about recovering your career and controlling yourself. And I just love that. And third season is getting like crazy kudos. It's really into its own. But the one I watched is The Idea of You with Anne Hathaway having sex with a younger man.

1:16:23I'll watch it. The 24-year-old boy band. You had me at Anne Hathaway having sex. I didn't hear the last part. Yeah. She plays a 40-year-old woman who has an affair with a boy band, famous boy band person. And it is entirely satisfying on every level. Good for her. And it's not cringey satisfying. It's actually, you're like, I am happy I watch that. It's like Lucky Charms in many ways. I don't care if it's bad for you. It's good. What's it called? I haven't even heard of it. The Idea of You, Anne Hathaway. Anyway, watch it. Anne Hathaway, and her clothes are spectacular. And she's really adorable.

1:16:55And it's great. And there's a lot of sex happening. So there you have it. I like it. I like all those things. Okay, good. And he's a beautiful, This guy, Nicholas Gazeltine or whatever, he's adorable. He's just adorable again. I bet. Yeah. So anyway, well. Maybe he'll be a VP candidate someday. That's true. Baby Reindeer really is a huge hit. Everyone's. Netflix, once again, shows what creativity those people are. They talk about creative. They're not just using tech to figure it out. They've got a good instinct. Anyway, good recommendations. Also filmed in Edinburgh. Finally, the Scottish media industry is alive and well.

1:17:32We 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. Just FYI, coming up on our other podcast this week on On With Kara Swisher, I've got Walt Mossberg and Marquez Brownlee. Yes, together. Also known as MKBHD, the two most influential tech reviewers of the past 30 plus years. Brownlee is like Walt. It's great. And they never met each other. So I made them meet and talk about products and reviewing and things like that. And Scott's Prof G's Market Pod has expanded to its own feed.

1:18:10Starting next Monday on May 20th, you'll get two new episodes a week, all focused on what's moving the financial markets, which is great. Any thoughts on that you want to add? No, very excited. My co-host, Ed Elson, is this 25-year-old nice kid, and we just talk about the markets. It's meant to educate. It's great. It's a great show. So we're very excited about that. Okay, we'll be back on Friday with more. Scott, read us out.

1:19:00Thank you.