Electric Vehicles, Tech Giant Land Grab and Co-Host Joanna Stern

23:08They have this thing called Blue Cruise. You can take your hands off the wheel. And this is where I've heard a lot from the Tesla fans over the last couple of days. And there's no doubt Tesla is a leader in the semi-autonomous driving stuff. It's clear to me what's happening in the car and the Ford. There's a communication that's happening with me as the driver. Well, I think you're touching on something, which is that I think a Tesla looks like the inside of an egg. That's what it looks like to me. Like there's nothing going on and it sucks the romance out of cars. It sucks the design out of cars.

23:40I think it's an attractive car, but it could be, it's sort of, okay, it looks like any old thing. And I think they haven't made any innovations in the screens in front of you. They don't want to. They like the way they have it. I think that in the older cars with the giant computer screen glued to the thing, I don't get it. I don't know why there couldn't be more beautiful design. And I've seen some of the really high-end ones, the Mercedes and the BMWs that are beautiful, the way they depict screens, right? It's creative. I find nothing creative about it. I would have bought a Tesla. It was better.

24:12I just didn't want to sit in it. Like, you know what I mean? It was like, it was, it left me cold as a car. And it's funny, like in through this process of doing this piece, I had one of our producers try to dig up old footage of car commercials, right? And they never used to show the inside of the car, which is kind of crazy since that's the thing the driver's looking at the most. But they always showed the outside of the car, right? And now that's changed. And you want that inside to feel comfortable and familiar, I think is somewhat of what you're saying. It's not just familiar. It's romance of driving.

24:44Like, it literally, I feel like I'm in an Android phone. That's, you know what I mean? Like, there's something about Apple that's fun, right? When people get in my Chevy Bolt, people that are parking the car or whatever, they're like, what is this fun little car? Like, you can feel it. It has a kinetic feel of color, beauty. It's just lovely little adorable car, right? That's my car. It's adorable. And it was very inexpensive. It was in the$30 ,000 range in that area. And so that's what I, the sexlessness of it, it looks like a Ken doll of a car, I guess. I don't know what else to say. It just doesn't.

25:17No, I love that. It's a Ken doll of a car, right? There's no genitals on that car at all. And so I want cars with genitals. I'm sorry. What is the biggest issues you encounter with it? It's charging, right? Presumably you're fine. I have a charger in my house, but. Yeah, so I was going to ask you about that because that will be my next piece is installing the home charger and the easy, but there's so many options. Again, this is where I like this kind of comparativeness of the early days of smartphones and back to the idea of the iPhones. It wasn't obvious that you should buy the iPhone 10, right?

25:53There was a competitive landscape. We compared these things. Now we sort of just assume, yep, I'm going to get the iPhone. If you're an iPhone or you're Android, you say, oh, I'm going to get the Pixel. I'm going to get the next Samsung. So you went with the Ford. Do you think that Tesla's in a world, I think they're in a world of trouble with these competitors. Although there's a large inventory of unsold cars sitting on lots with EV sales. It depends on the car. Obviously, Tesla's cut the prices, which is trying to spur more demand. What do you imagine? This is going to be competitive, finally, I think, ultimately.

26:22I think it's going to be very competitive, but there's a big but here. There is so much incentive from the government and what's happening right now with the rebates and all of that, that is strengthening Tesla's position. That I think it's going to be a no-brainer for most people to get a Tesla. And I agree with you. The charging network is going to change. I hope. They're opening up their world. But it is superior right now. When you charge your bolt on the road. Easy. Where do you go? What kind of place do you go? I go to the grocery store and I park and there's always, there's charges everywhere now.

27:03And I don't know if that's going to continue. Do you know what brand it is? I don't even pay attention. I don't, you know, I think EVgo maybe sometimes. EVgo, yeah. There's a bunch of them, but there's a lot of them in the cities I'm in, right? I don't know if I'd feel the same way in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I don't know. But I have taken it on long rides up and down the East Coast, never had a problem. Not once. You know, I have to think about it for sure. It's not like, you know, I pass a gas station and see them every, you know, that's easy. That's a no brainer, right? There's always a gas station somewhere.

27:36And so that's the issue is being planning. But there's lots of apps right now to find them. I think, you know, I agree. They have an advantage in their manufacturing and battery. They have an advantage of everything else, but they've done nothing in terms of design. And if Cybertruck is their answer to that, oh my God, no. Like the Rivian is beautiful. Really beautiful. So there's the charging aspect, but there's also the tax breaks, which are super benefiting Tesla right now. In the end, look, I will say I would have saved money getting a Tesla. Right. But I think eventually it will be all of them.

28:09Like I just, I think this is just a matter of time and I wish they would innovate more with their, it's like if Apple kept not making the phones better, which they did, this is what it feels like. They're not making these cars more interesting from a design point of view. But we'll see. And then the other part is people don't want to buy Elon Musk's cars. There is an element of the people that would naturally buy electric cars being repulsed by him. And that's, I think, a bigger deal than people realize. This is the people who would buy Teslas. The people who buy Teslas are mostly progressive people, right?

28:39He's got to change the minds of people, conservatives, to buy his car. Who would want to really buy a gas guzzler? Because what do they care? And it was shocking to me, Wall Street Journal readers, how many I heard from saying, Tesla is the superior car, parentheses, I don't like Elon Musk. Sort of like making that clear, but Tesla is the superior car. And look, I'll say I did not want to factor those politics into this decision. I wanted to buy the best car for me. And I really probably should have caveated for me and my family because it's not the best one under 60. There's going to be something's best for somebody else.

29:17And it's the same thing with reviewing anything. And this turned out to be the best. Will in a few years, so leasing, will a Tesla or a Rivian hopefully come down in price? And well, Rivian or, you know, maybe something else come down in price. Tesla seems like they're going to stay in this price mark. Maybe it'll be a better option for me. So here's one that President Biden, as you notice, has been making a big push towards electric vehicles. It puts them at odds with the United Auto Workers who are concerned about what EVs mean for their jobs and wages. Last week, the UAW voted to authorize a strike if the Detroit big three car companies failed to offer competitive contract by September 14th, though EVs are not the only issue at play.

29:54We'll see where this goes. I mean, they're going to make more electric cars. It's just a question. It's a little bit like streaming. And Tesla is Netflix, I think, in a lot of ways, which gives them an advantage 100 % in these streaming discussions. And the others have to pay a lot of money to get into this business, which they should have been in from the beginning. And I think that that's around, you know, them opening up the charging network is just an indicator of that, obviously. And look, I think even thinking, you know, years down the line, these companies are all going to be adopting Tesla's port, right?

30:28The North American charging port or standard or whatever it's called. And so it's going to put them in a dominating position. In charging. It's going to be a good business for them. The charging is going to be a good business for them, I think. But until it's not, of course, they'll abuse it like every other company that has an advantage. And then there'll be lawsuits and then blah, blah, blah, blah. But you're right. It does give them an advantage. It's like the lightning port or whatever people tend to use. But eventually, I do think what's really great here is the amount of competition that you're going to see in this area.

31:00And that you had a choice now in a very short amount of years. All it indicates to me is it's not quite like phones. Car buying is a very different experience, right? You want a lot of things. And I think that if Tesla does offer more stuff than what they're offering now, I just, they leave me cold. I also didn't want to buy a Volvo. They leave me cold, right? Like it's, and I know it's a better car, a safer car, right? I was like, I hate, you know what my other car is, Kara? What, what, a Volvo. I hate them. I hate getting in them. I feel like I'm not clean enough. I don't know what to say. I just, there is an emotional element to buying cars that is not the same with buying phones necessarily, although there's an emotional element with phones too.

31:41We'll see. Overall, are you still happy with your decision to lease and also the one you picked? I mean, it's day two. So, you know, nothing's broken yet. So - You're going to drive by gas stations and say, see you, sucker. That's what you're going to do a lot of doing. Yeah. I'm liking it so far. I mean, my six-year-old was upset that I didn't get the Tesla because it doesn't fart. So I'm trying to figure out ways right now. If anyone out there knows how to make my Mustang fart. Explain why the farting happens. Oh, why the software feature? I mean, Elon Musk thought this would be funny, I assume.

32:16I guess, and you can program it to do that, but you can also in the dash say, okay, you know, press the button and have it fart. Or you can have, if you sit on the seat, a whoopee cushion, a virtual whoopee cushion that will fart. And my son thought that was the funniest thing ever. if he could just have that in a car all the time. And so there were tears. There were tears that happened. I think you'll really like the electric car experience. It's really fun to do it. And you can see where it's going as time goes on. All right, Joanna, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, the tech leaders are making a real estate grab.

32:49And we'll speak with a friend of Pivot, Peter Turchin, about his new book, End Times.

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34:42Okay, Joanna, we're back. We're going to spend a very short amount of time on this. It's been a mystery for quite some time. Who's buying$800 million worth of farmland in Northern California? Well, the mystery is solved. According to the New York Times report, Flannery Associates is a company that's backed by a number of Silicon Valley investors, including venture capitalist Michael Moritz, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, Mark Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz fame and other things, and Lorraine Powell Jobs, among others. The goal is a land grab, which is about 52 ,000 acres, more than three times the size of Manhattan.

35:12It's apparently to build a brand new city. What do you make of this? Any thoughts? I was just wondering if you think you'll be banned. No, I won't. Some of the most people like me. Some of those people don't. You're right. They'll probably just hunt me down. Or they're going to come for you and ask you to come move there. Yeah, I'm not moving there. I like San Francisco. But what do you think of this? They always think they can do everything better. That's my, it's them again, doing everything better, right? I mean, I guess there's so little information about what this actually is yet. I think the mysteriousness of it is very interesting.

35:44The fact that they've been trying to hide this for so many years at this point, and even now won't exactly talk about what this is going to be. Obviously, we have some utopian, all-green energy city of some sort. I should ask you, what do you think the motivation is? I just think they get around and say, we can do this better. Listen, utopian cities, they run in Brazil. Elon Musk has a town called Snailbrook, which he describes as a sort of Texas utopia. It's essentially a company town. And, you know, coal mining companies built towns. Look, Dearborn, speaking of cars, Dearborn, Michigan, right?

36:21Like, there's all kinds of cities that grow up around industries, I guess. And so that's nothing new. And there's this idea of seasteading, you know, building stuff under the sea or on the sea or whatever. It's not a new thing. Like, there's always been these dreams of redoing the cities. And cities are mostly organic. They grow from nothing, right? They just sort of happen to be at the, you know, I think Pittsburgh is because of where it is, at the bunch of rivers. Now, we wouldn't pick a city for that reason now because we don't depend on rivers, right? So cities just sort of happen for all kinds of reasons, economic reasons.

36:57So whatever, build your city. I think they're off to a rocky start from reading. Government officials and landowners don't seem to be too happy. There's questions about it being close to the Travis Air Force Base. There's, you know, Flannery is in a lawsuit with some landowners over price fixing because why wouldn't they price fix because they saw these rich people headed their way with a quiles of money? Because I think Flannery was overpaying for these acres. And it seems, this is another question for you, it seems like this is a reaction to just a discontent with Silicon Valley and both the real estate there and the government pushback over the years.

37:36Have you felt like you were there? I mean, did you feel like that was a huge roadblock? Yeah, they always are complaining about something. They don't like being told what to do. They don't like being like, oh, it's too much. Of course, they're the ones driving up the price of real estate by building their ridiculous homes. They're the ones sucking their campuses. And they're the ones sucking on, you know, they're the ones using the most energy. Like, they're the ones using the planes and the train, like whatever they feel like. you know, they just don't like being told what to do because they don't get told what to do anywhere else.

38:09They can go from their expensive houses to their expensive planes, to their expensive yachts, to their, you know, whatever. And then some of them actually think they can do it better and that's fine. Maybe they can innovate cities, but cities are hard, right? Cities are hard and people are weird and good luck building a town. If it's nice, I'll live there. Otherwise, I can't ever imagine. I had a house in Hollister for the kids and it was windswept. windswept and dusty. Sure, I don't know why there. I would have picked a lot of other places in California, but Vacaville it is. Good luck. And I think they'll get a lot of lawsuits and it'll be a big mess and then they'll own a lot of real estate.

38:46A place I wouldn't want to own a lot of real estate, but okay. Good luck. Good luck to them. Good luck to them. Anyway, let's bring in our friend of Pivot.

39:01Welcome, Professor Peter Turchin, Project Leader at Complexity Science Hub Vienna. What if you could anticipate the future and avoid the social unrest and chaos that has disrupted societies for centuries? That's exactly what our friend of Pivot, Professor Peter Turchin, a Project Leader at Complexity Science Hub Vienna, is trying to do with the help of math and data. In examining historical cycles of instability, Turchin has tried to determine the factors and causes that have led to social breakdowns. He famously predicted in 2010 that America would go through a period of major social upheaval in the 2020s.

39:33It looks like we're right in the middle of it. And in his new book, End Times, which is a really happy title for a book, he says, we cannot understand social breakdown without a deep analysis of power structures within societies. All right, Professor Turchin, thank you for coming. So explain how exactly you're making these predictions right now and sort of go over them in a wider scheme. Well, this is part of the new science that we call Cleodynamics, the science of history. And it's based on the good old scientific approach, which means that we start with many different theories trying to explain particular aspects of reality.

40:15In this case, the dynamics of societies. We translate theories into mathematical models because we want to study the dynamics, and you cannot study dynamics without such formal apparatus. And then we collect large amounts of data to test predictions from different theories to find out which of them feed the data better and which, therefore, are closer to the real drivers. So, as you mentioned, you made those predictions in 2010. What are you seeing in the data here going forward? So the United States, since 2010, it's been a very interesting experience because remember that this prediction was a scientific prediction.

41:02It was not a prophecy about what is going to happen in the future because that's really not possible to do. The idea was to derive, again, derive a prediction from a theory and then see how well it corresponds to the reality that was to unfold in the next 10 years. And over those 10 years, it was a very strange experience because essentially it was like on the train, heading for a train wreck and seeing everything unfolding pretty much as the theory has predicted. So all the trends that I noted in 2010, they continue developing in the same unfavorable directions during the next 10 years, and in fact, now.

41:51Okay, so explain what those are specifically. Well, there are several factors that drive societies to crisis. The most important ones are, first of all, what we call popular immiseration. that's declining living standards for the majority of the population. And secondly, even more importantly, elite overproduction. Essentially, when a society produces too many elite wannabes for the limited set of power positions that we have for them, the competition between such elite aspirants becomes so intense and there are so many people who are on the losing side that many of them turn to working against the system because they cannot make headway within the system.

42:43And so the elite reproduction and resulting production of counter elites, those are people who are working against the reigning regime, that's important because they are the ones who organize and channel popular discontent arising from immiseration. And that's what has been happening in the United States over the past two or three decades. Right. So now that we're in it, is it going to get worse before it gets better? Is there a solution to it? Or is it just inevitable, this idea of elite overproduction, meaning too many people want or aspirational to the very top of society? Is it going to get worse before it gets better?

43:25or how do you settle that down or you don't? Yeah, it's not inevitable because we know now we have, we've been building a large database of past societies getting into crisis and then emerging from them. And we know that in 10, 15 % of cases, the elites and the population managed to pull together and solve the problems without getting into violent revolutions or civil wars. But this doesn't happen automatically. This means that we need to have some pro-social elites who would act in the interests of the society at large rather than their own narrow selfish interests. And it requires a lot of work and a lot of time because building is harder than destroying.

44:18So, right now, in the United States, I don't see much understanding on the part of our political leaders what are the deep roots of the problem that we are in. It's all infighting between different political factions without addressing the deep causes. Let me give you an example. So, for example, one clear way that we can address popular remiseration is to increase minimum wage, real minimum wage. In fact, Joe Biden promised to do that during the election, but nothing has happened. All right. So this is an example where something obvious can work, not maybe completely solve the problem, but work towards the solution.

45:10But it gives people hope that they have an upward trajectory. Joanna? We're hearing so much right now about end of times from the tech perspective, from the AI perspective of the danger that that might cause. How do you see AI, if you've given thought to this, affecting this split between elites and non-elites? And if anything, is AI a greater threat or not as great of a threat as we are as actual humans? Well, most of the discussion about the dangers of AI focuses on AI essentially replacing humans and taking over the world, you know, something like Terminator thing. But our theory actually brings a new point of view on this angle.

45:56So in the past, better technology has replaced workers, But now AI got so good, it's replacing people who are our elites. So in particular, think about lawyers. It turns out that lawyers are the most dangerous class in producing counter-elites. You know, Lenin was a lawyer, Mao, Robespierre. Right, so in the United States, we've been overproducing lawyers. There has been three times as many new law graduates as there are positions for them. Now, what we know is that the AI is now coming for lawyers. about half of what they do, well, 46%, to be precise, has been estimated, can be automated. That means that we'll be, as soon as this is all implemented, we'll be overproducing lawyers by a factor of six to one.

46:45So that is obviously a very dangerous situation. Yes, angry lawyers. Angry lawyers, great. Yeah, they're good. They're good at organizing. They're good at making connections. So they are very dangerous types of counter-elites. I just wanted to throw in China and how you sort of view our production or overproduction of elites versus China's. This is where I feel so much of our competitiveness right now, and that's where our focus is. So how do you view China in this whole scheme of your argument? Well, first of all, let me say again that I have a colleague who is working on China, but that's taking time.

47:27So what I'll tell you is now essentially my, you know, my informal opinion. Well, China, remember, China has went into its own time of troubles from, roughly speaking, 1850 and emerged from it in 1950s. So it's well behind the cycle, so to speak, compared, let's say, to the West. All right. So they probably have two or three more decades before they will get into their own end times. Now, specifically, there are some both positive things coming out of China and negative things. The positive thing is that, surprisingly enough, that their population is declining. So they are producing fewer young people.

48:14And young people are the ones who make revolutions. And therefore, that will diminish the potential for social dysfunction and conflict. On the other hand, right now, we have to see the data. Unfortunately, the data is very hard to get. But many of these young people, even though the cohort is diminishing, but we get reports that many of them cannot find jobs. And that's obviously a very dangerous sign. So exactly how those two different forces will balance out, it's not clear to me to tell the truth. We need to get better data. Also, these trends develop over the period of many years. So you have to wait and see whether the Chinese authorities are capable of resolving this crisis of joblessness amongst the young Chinese people.

49:15Young people. So when you look at, let me shift back to the United States, when you look at someone like Donald Trump, who you examine a bit in the book, what's his role in this as sort of an accelerator, from what I can understand? Yeah, well, as I explained in the book, in the United States and, in fact, Western democracies, there are two channels towards the elites. One of them is the wealth route, and the other one is the credential route. So when we're talking about lawyers, I was talking about the credential route. Paul Jayapurus, on the other hand, exemplifies the wealth route. So these are people, there has been 10 times as many decamillionaires, people with 10 million dollars worth of wealth or more over the past 40 years.

49:56And many of them turned to politics. So Trump is a typical counter-elite, even though he is very wealthy, and you can think of him as part of the elites, but he is not because he has been, well, the ruling elites are working against him. We see it very clearly now. He has been hit, slammed with four different lawsuits and he is likely to end up in prison. So by all the indicators, he is actually a very good example of counter-elites. Remember that in previous, think about brothers Greg in the late Roman Republic. They were also members of the ruling class, but they turned against it by organizing the populations.

50:43And so Trump is playing a very similar role today. So what does that mean? I mean, when you say end times, what does an end time look like from your perspective? This doesn't sound good. Is there a silver lining? Is that the pressure valve that brings everybody back to normal or not? GARY GENSLER - Well, first of all, end times are always the times of new beginnings. Unless we destroy this planet in a nuclear Armageddon or something like that, there are going to be new beginnings. Now, that's the good side. But the problem is that, as I said, in 80 % to 85 % cases or maybe 90 % of cases, the new times are born in violence, in some kind of a social revolution, a civil war, and maybe even state collapse and things like that.

51:33So, I'm afraid that judging by these types of statistics, we have a lot of turbulence to work through before we get to the new beginnings. And what does that mean? You're not a… I get you're not prophecy, but you're using data. What is that? Exactly. So, we can only address this stochastically. So, the road into crisis is fairly generalized. It's like a ball rolling down the narrow valley with steep slopes. But once you get to crisis, you're on the cusp and there are all kinds of avenues open to you. And in fact, this is actually a hopeful thing. This is where you can nudge our trajectory towards better outcomes.

52:14So the typical outcomes are, as I said, about 60 % or 70 % of the time there is a bloody civil war or a social revolution. About 10-15 % of the time, the societies managed to pull together and solve the problems by reforms and the right policies. And then there are situations where you have sort of… it just keeps dragging on for many decades. So these are the three possible outcomes that we have to face. But again, let me repeat it. If the ideas that I've been trying to inject into the public discourse begin to make a difference, that means that we will be able to actually nudge our trajectory to a better outcome.

53:09But 60 % feels like violence, correct? Yeah. Yeah. But, okay, here's another hopeful thing. It turns out that everybody talks about collapse. What's collapse? Right now, if you talk about collapse like serious, you know, like half of the population gone or more, this severity of such outcomes has been declining over the past 10 ,000 years. So it seems that we actually have a new analysis that suggests that as societies accumulate better institutions, including democratic institutions, but also productive economies and things like that, we actually face lesser probability of outright collapse. So that's another hopeful sign.

53:57So just total misery. I read this Vice article back in 2012. You said, we've seen nothing yet in terms of violence. and you predicted that 2020 was going to be, as you predicted accurately, was going to be a lot worse. We're not asking, I guess, for total prediction of the future, but is there a year, is there a moment where you think there's going to be, quote-unquote, as you say, end of times for us here in the U.S.? Again, well, first of all, remember that end of time, I didn't come up with that title. That was the publisher. I'm much more optimistic. Good work. Good work from you. Yes, yes.

54:31But again, judging from our analysis of historical data, these periods of social disruption that tend to go for many years, maybe 10-15 years, is the average. So that's why I think that the 2020s are going to be times of turbulence and hopefully not outright collapse, although that's possible. But turbulence will continue. So 2024, the elections, 2024 are clearly another really dangerous time. But even whoever gets elected in 2024, they'll have the job cut out for them because there are so many problems, structural, deep-rooted problems, that 2028 is going to be probably another period of stress and possible serious disruption.

55:23So, what I'm saying is that people think that we are past the worst. Judging from history, that's not the case. Yeah, it's funny you mentioned. I'm just reading the history of the Roman Republic, and I was thinking of the Cracky Brothers at the end of the Republic. It was really… Late Republic. They were from the top. That's where they always come from. The populists come from the very top. They can't come. Yeah, but they were channeling the populist party, right? Just like Trump channels the popular immiseration, they were channeling popular immiseration in late Republican Rome. They were 100%.

56:01I hadn't thought of the connection, but you're completely right. One last question, though. You're talking about wage increases, for example, the minimum wage to$25 or whatever it should be. Is there anything else? Is there one or two other things that could ameliorate this outcome? Yes, there's some things you'll please the left, some people please the right. So, we can clearly increase the rate of taxes on the top incomes and wealth. But on the other hand, we need to deal with illegal immigration because that is undermining the wages for poor, especially unskilled workers.

56:48And we need to shut down the wealth pump, which is called the educational loans, because that just takes the money from the poor and gives it to the bankers. But Biden administration was unable to shut down that wealth pump. So basically, there are a huge number of possible things we can do. We need a general discussion of how we use those things in the best way to solve the problems that we have, which I don't see happening right now. It's all focusing on partisan infighting. Conflict. Yes, 100%. Anyway, it's a really important book to read. I think you're right. There are solutions, and those three you mentioned are quite difficult, but certainly within the realm of possibility.

57:41Anyway, thank you, Professor Peter Turchin. His book, again, is so happily named End Times, and you should read it. End Times are a little different than when we think of it from a biblical sense of view. Anyway, thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Thank you, Peter. One more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails.

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59:10Support for the show comes from Odoo. Running a business is hard enough, and you don't need to make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other. One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting. Before you know it, you find yourself drowning in software and processes instead of focusing on what matters, growing your business. This is where Odoo comes in. It's the only business software you'll ever need. Odoo is an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that handles everything. That means CRM accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, and more. No more app overload.

59:38No more juggling logins. Just one seamless system that makes work easier. And the best part is that Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. It's built to grow with your business, whether you're just starting out or you're already scaling up. Plus, it's easy to use, customizable, and designed to streamline every process. It's time to put the clutter aside and focus on what really matters, running your business. Thousands of businesses have made the switch, so why not you? Try Odoo for free at odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com.

1:00:16Okay, Joanna, let's hear some wins and fails. I will go first. Wins? My sons, the Swisher boys. What a wonderful pair of my older boys. I have four kids. But sending Alex off to college this week was really a great moment. And I think he's going to do great. And the results of Louis' education so far, you listened to last week, he's headed to Argentina. I put him on a plane yesterday. The only fail there is I miss them terribly. Someone was saying, I was with my ex-wife and she's like, I was like, empty nest. We were joking. And I was like, not for me because I have two more kids. But that's a fail on my part, but a win at the same time.

1:00:56And for just a regular weird win, I urge everyone to watch Painkiller. I don't advise you take them, but you will not take them after watching this show, which is out right now. And it's worth watching. It's about the Sacklers and OxyContin. I think it's worthwhile to see. And the fact that we were not able to bring these people to justice was really, is in a real way, besides taking some of their money, they still have a ton of it was really a depressing situation. They did a great job. Peter Berg is the director. Anyway, Joanna, go ahead. You know what? I'm going to go off of you. I had three options for wins, but I'm going to pick your sons as well because I'm going to pick my sons.

1:01:37I was so inspired listening to your episode last week with Louis. He's just such a smart, caring, clearly just a great kid. And I have two sons, as you know, Cara. I'm doing everything in your footsteps. I literally copy everything you do, except for your Chevy Bolt. That's too far. You're going to go for a ride in it when I see you next and you'll see what I'm doing. Sure. Yeah. I will go on a ride, but I won't get it. But I have two sons. One is two, one is six. I'm in the deep exhaustion of it every weekend and every night. And me and my wife just are like, Like, you know, we love it, but we're also like, because maybe just they were a little bit older.

1:02:17Could they be a little bit older? And listening to him just gave me, you know, like, I'm sure you probably thought, oh, you know, you miss when they're younger. And I'm just. I don't miss younger kids. I have younger kids. Oh, that's true. That's so true. But I just, I, it was inspirational to me to hear him and to hear him talking with you. And, you know, and to even to, you know, Scott, who's said many times, you know, live in the moment. And I was listening to one of his episodes where he said I was going to do that in August. And I just thought I need to do that more as I'm raising my kids.

1:02:46So that's my win or your win. I think your win is my win. So we're there. On the fail, I'm going to mention WSJ reporter who has been in jail now or in prison in Russia for too many months. And last week, it was reported that the Moscow court is extending his time in the detention for three more months. So that is obviously a big fail, though it was expected. He will remain behind bars awaiting trial until November 30th. That was according to a court spokeswoman. So hopefully this does not go any longer, but this I know was expected, but still nevertheless, just a giant fail. Depressing. He's become a pawn in a political battle between the United States and Russia in a really heinous way on behalf of Russia.

1:03:35People forget people that are incarcerated unfairly like this, and you should not. Remember Evan, I think. Remember Evan. And I was thinking about it also just in terms of having sons as I've watched his parents talk now a couple of times and how hard this has been on them. But also they just don't give up faith and they continue to be open and honest and tell their side of the story, which is as inspiring as a parent. It is indeed. Again, please keep paying attention to that. It's a really important thing. Anyway, Joanna, thank you so much. One quick programming note, we have a correction to make on something from last week's mailbag episode.

1:04:15As several of you have noted, Scott mistakenly said that Magic Dawson attended University of Michigan, where my son attends. In fact, he went to Michigan State. Our apologies to the Spartans, and yet, go blue. I have to say that now as a parent of a University of Michigan student. Anyway, we want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business, tech, or whatever's on your mind. go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. Joanna, enjoy your drive in your Mustang Mach, well, whatever they call it, the Mustang Mach-E or whatever. Enjoy it. I'm excited to go for a ride with you when I see you next.

1:04:51Maybe we'll do a race. Maybe we'll do Fast and Furious. If you watch the video, you watch the video on YouTube, you'll see that we took these cars upstate. I have a racetrack. We can go to Connecticut. The racetrack is waiting for us. My little bolt will kick your ass. We'll see how that works. Anyway, we'll be back on Friday for more. We really appreciate it. Joanna, thank you for being the last co-host in Scott Free August. I really appreciate it. And again, for those who want to read Joanna, she does wonderful videos and reviews for the Wall Street Journal. They're really terrific. They're really the best out there.

1:05:26You know, a real inheritor of Walt Mossberg's mantle there at the Wall Street Journal. And we love her. We think she's great. Thanks, Cara. Anyway, I'm going to read us out. Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Enderdot engineered this episode. Make sure you subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. 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.

1:05:58Thank you.