Elon's OpenAI Lawsuit, EU's Big Tech Regulation, and Guest Tom Scocca

24:37I had coffee with Ted Sarandos a few weeks ago. By the way, a lovely guy. And about 12 years ago, I bought what was for me a lot of stock of Netflix that I think 12 bucks a share. And it fell to 10 in December. So I sold it to take the tax loss and I never bought back in. And now what is it at 500? And I remember sitting there as I was talking to Ted thinking, as lovely as he is, if I owned a shit ton of shares right now, I would like him so much more. And but here's the thing. I'm not going to sue the company because I fucked up and made a bad decision and lost a lot of money and power. And that's all this is.

25:19There is no agreement stating between them and Elon Musk stating how they would operate the company. He left the company. These were his decisions. He tried to take over and then was rebuffed and left. This is literally a child stamping his or her feet because they quit the team and then the team goes on to the national finals. And so they get daddy. They sue the team. I mean, this is legally laughable except for the part when you have a billionaire. When you have a billionaire with armies of lawyers, he will harass them and he will make their lives more difficult. This makes this make this slows down commerce.

25:58It slows down innovation. and it is literally harassment by litigation. There is no legal merit here. There is no business principle here. It is a guy going, wait, I control space. I sort of control EVs. I can't believe I fucked up and I don't control AI. I know I'll sue them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is there anything bad about it? It's interesting. I've talked to people there and this is the, I mean, they wanted that memo out there, obviously. The node's been very aggressive and they're really like, fuck this guy, essentially. and you know I think they're basically he's just he's just feels like a loser and he's not the cool kid he's not the cool kid in AI and he was there early that's for sure for 100 I was he talked about it extensively 10 years ago but he definitely got made a power play as he is want to do this is one of his moves at every company he's been at he always makes a power play and either gets rebuffed or he wins often gets rebuffed as early companies he certainly did and this is what he did here and he didn't win.

26:58And he's trying to, you know, put light onto, he's backing the people who were against Sam Altman, the decelerationists. Yeah. He's been backing them. A lot of people feel he was involved in the attacks on Sam for sure. I wouldn't put it past him. And that he's just mad about it. You know, he just wants to be in it and his grok is not doing as well, although he has tons of chance with Twitter, I guess. But regrets is a nice way of saying you're a loser, I think, in the thing. Is it bad if it doesn't go to trial? I mean, he's being pushed back in his other trials. There could be some inner workings revealed in the discovery, whereas Microsoft partnership, you know, there's proprietary technology here.

27:45Is there any risk at all? Sure. I mean, you have a company that's trying to move a million miles an hour that has a ton of different considerations while they think about effects on humanity, managing a high growth company. I mean, Sam Allman has a difficult job. And all this does is it says, okay, I have no justification. I'm just going to distract you and make things harder for you. So it absolutely damages open AI. And judges, if they do their job, will dismiss this type of lawsuit quickly to say you are getting in the way of commerce and there's no legal basis here. I don't, you know, generally what I find, generally what I find is that very wealthy people recognize their power.

28:31And if they have character, and I've never bought the trope, the Senator Warren or the populist trope that rich people are inherently evil. I've actually found in general, very wealthy people get there because they have high character and they establish allies along the way. And they're measured around litigation or somewhat measured. They don't go out of their way to sue people because they realize they have more money. This guy sees litigation as a means of trying to true up the world to his standard. And his standard is, I should control the world. And let's just ask a global question here.

29:06Are we better off? We're better off for Elon Musk. I still believe that. He's been a pioneer around EVs, what he's doing in space. I don't think you'd want to press a button and have him disappear or have him move to another country. But might it be a better idea to have him doing his thing and a guy like Sam Altman, who thus far strikes me as very thoughtful, controlling the most important company in AR? Or would we want Elon Musk to control it? Yeah, he's trying to fuck with them. And it'll work. They already are. We're already talking about it. Some embarrassing things might come out. And not only that, Sam Altman and key principles to this company and key funders are probably, A, going to have to spend time in court or give depositions.

29:49And also, they're going to have to be very careful about anything they do or say. It'll pull back their risk aggressiveness, which is part of being an entrepreneur and growing a business. This is just, it's bad for the economy. It's bad for business. It sets the wrong precedent for other people. This is what Trump does, too. The lawsuits, the grieved lawsuits. It's a thing. He's moving. There was a good article in the Times by David French about how close Elon and Trump are to MAGA, like this idea of aggrievement and lawsuits and anger and this and that. It was interesting. It's just such a loser.

30:24Interestingly enough, you mentioned both Ted and Sam. Ted is going to do my interview tonight at LA Live, which is sold out here in Los Angeles, where I am. And Sam is doing one on Thursday in San Francisco. So is Reid Hoffman and Gavin Newsom. So it'll be interesting to see if it comes up with any of them. It'll be interesting to see if, I mean, if they're interviewing me. Unfortunately, I think this type of aggressive litigation is effective in the sense that it just places a chill over society. business. Yeah, he likes to do it. I mean, it's just everybody, right? And when billionaires, it started with Peter Thiel deciding to put a media company out of business because he had a ton of money.

31:07This kind of stuff puts a chill on journalists. It puts a chill on investors. It puts a chill on CEOs. I mean, it's just not, it's not the way - Although I have noticed more people pushing back. OpenA have pushed back really hard. Alex Stamos is doing one of my interviews in Seattle, and he wasn't talking publicly before. You know what I mean? Because they have the lawsuit by Elon. Elon goes around suing everybody to try to shut them up. And I think people are like, fuck you, essentially. But still, it causes money. It's expensive. It creates all kinds of issues. Two-thirds of jobs are created by small and medium-sized businesses.

31:50If you're, say he just starts, and I think he's already done this, say he just, any competitor, first off, he called for an AI pause publicly because supposedly he's concerned about the fate of the world. And it comes out he was trying to catch up, that he was going full force with his own AI efforts and had no interest in pausing. But if big companies just start suing, and to be clear, big tech is guilty of this. They just start suing small companies left and right. They can put them out of business. The small company can't. It's difficult for the small company to wait around for the judgment.

32:26It's difficult for them to recruit employees. Do you know what it's like to raise money under the auspice of a lawsuit filed by Elon Musk? Or, quite frankly, a lot of these companies, including some of our favorites, Apple, Amazon, are very quick to send cease and desist letters. When I left my last company, I wanted to start another company. They immediately started sending me letters. And I'm like, okay, I want to work. I'm not going to compete with you, but I'd like to work. And in their view, it was, unless you sit around and do nothing for the rest of your life, in our view, you're competing with us.

33:06That's how it came across to me. And we're going to hire this really angry, mean law firm. And the only reason they back down is because I'm rich and they know I can defend myself. But what if it was 10 years ago or 20 years ago when I didn't have the money and I was trying to start companies? I wouldn't have been able to raise money. I would have just backed down from this big, bad corporation who had absolutely no legal merit, none whatsoever. Every lawyer I talked to said, yeah, you're going to win this, but it's going to cost you a bunch of money. What if I didn't have a bunch of money? It's a nuisance.

33:41It's a nuisance lawsuit. Anyway, Elon, get some therapy. Anyway, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, big tech faces new regulation in the EU, a big deal. We'll speak with a friend of Pivot, Tom Skoka, about his powerful medical mystery essay.

34:00There 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. But 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.

34:49That's This Week on Channels, wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Scott, we're back. Apple started the week off on a rough note. The company was fined$1.95 billion by EU antitrust regulators for limiting competition among music streaming rivals with his app store. This is focused on Spotify. Apple plans to appeal the fine and called out Spotify as the biggest beneficiary of the decision. Meanwhile, Apple and other companies are also facing a deadline to comply with the EU law known as the Digital Markets Act this week. There's two laws that are going in place, but this is a big one. The law requires the big tech companies to overhaul how some of their products work so smaller rivals can gain access to users.

35:30The era of self-regulation appears to be over for these companies, at least in the EU. Some examples, Google will change how it displays certain search results. Apple will give iPhone and iPad users access to rival app stores and payment systems. What effect do you see coming? Because there's nothing happening here in the U.S., even close to this level. What do you think about this? I've always loved Margaret Vestier. I think she's just a gangster and smart. Once again. And I think there are different forms of innovation. I mean, essentially, there aren't a lot of universities or hospitals with the names of founders of Google or Facebook on them in Europe.

36:10And they get all of the downside, the weaponization of their elections, the coarseness of their discourse, the income inequality, the monopoly abuse, but they don't get as much upside as the U.S. and as a result, they're much more inclined to take action. And I also think generally speaking, and I've been thinking and hoping and predicting this for five years and I've been wrong if not late, I think the worm is turning. And big tech has done such a great job of putting really attractive people out there to say we're proud of our progress or it's still early or this is a tragedy and we need to do more here or really gorgeous commercials showing their new baby and the searches they're doing for a crib.

36:49They have become so likable. They have wallpapered over what incredibly mendacious fucks they've been. And I think people are fed up. And now specific to this case, if you look at Apple, Apple's market capitalization, or their ascent over the last 10 years to become the most valuable company in the world, hasn't been a function of earnings growth. It's been a function of multiple expansion. It's gone from about a P multiple of 15 to where it sits now at 28. So even without, excuse me, 27. So even without, even without, I have 27.8, but anyways, I only say that because I know what a fanatic you are about accuracy.

37:27But anyways, they have effectively that multiple expansion has happened because they have transitioned pretty well, where they have dramatically increased the part of their business that is recurring, specifically the services part. And the services part of their revenue is music, iTunes, it's Apple TV Plus, but more importantly, what's considered recurring revenue is the revenue they get from the app store. And this is what the app store is. You use the analogy of a credit card. They provide infrastructure, technology, acceptance, security that the merchant and the consumer will both get security and payment.

38:01But imagine Visa took a 30 % fee and then said overnight, Visa said, you know what? We're going to go into the apparel business and we're going to acquire Lululemon. And if you shop at Lululemon, you don't have to pay that 30 % credit card charge. Then overnight, no other apparel company can compete with the apparel companies that Visa owns. And that is exactly what has happened here when Apple went into Apple Music relative to Spotify. Spotify can't compete. So in sum, I love this and it's overdue. Yeah, I think we'll see if they appeal to find it. I think they're gonna have to end up paying it.

38:40Just for a few, the only reason I said 27 is 27.1. And actually Apple's not the most valuable. It's Microsoft right now. Apple market cap is 2.69 trillion. Microsoft is 3.09 trillion. And its PE ratio is 37, 38 almost. It's higher margin. It's not hardware. Yeah. And NVIDIA, 72 PE ratio. Market cap close to Apple of$2.5 trillion. I mean, it's really amazing. But I agree with you. These companies have been playing fast and loose with the rules. And Europe doesn't care. Marguerite Vestager, you know, big hair don't care kind of thing of what they're doing. And I think that they have at least someone is regulating.

39:21Now, people can complain about whether it's overregulation by the EU. But in the era of no regulation or self-regulation, which has happened forever, especially in this country, it says something to our own regulators here that they have to do something about it. And, you know, these companies have played far too long as our national heroes, and they are in many ways. They're great companies. But honestly, they shouldn't be able to be advantaged this significantly. And going into the next era, they are very advantaged. If you think you ain't seen nothing yet going on. And speaking of which, Apple's slow progress in artificial intelligence space is making investors impatient.

39:59According to a new Wall Street Journal report, CEO Tim Cook did tease an upcoming AI announcement last week's annual shareholder meeting saying, later this year, I look forward to sharing you with the ways we'll break new ground in generative AI. He had to say the words. You know, they killed the CARP plans and putting renewed focus on AI. We talked about that last week. And what do you imagine they will say? I guess within the Apple universe, the uses of AI and making your products all work together, a lot of assistance, things like that would be my guess. But what do you think? I don't know.

40:34I would imagine they'll do stuff around saying that we're going to leverage other people's investment in AI to make it more consumer friendly. We have a history of taking existing technologies and making them more utile and more user friendly. I would imagine they'd do stuff around healthcare would be a place I would guess they might start. But I don't know. You know more. My guess is you know more about this than I do. They don't collect as much information, right? They don't have these big caches of things they can use. They don't have a social network. They don't have, I mean, they don't use, you know, they don't use your information in quite the same way.

41:09These other companies, their business plans were based on advertising, right? And they're based on attention. And Apple's products are based on utility of the product. Now, they're not perfect in the privacy space, that's for sure. But they certainly, that's their value to people, presumably. One of their values, not all of it. It's also beautiful products and things like that. So I think it'll be used to make their products more intuitive, to recommend things, and I think they'll probably ask you if you want it, I would guess. They'll ask you again and again, would you like your music to be generated in a way, not just beyond recommendations, just to make the products more intuitive.

41:52I think that's where they'll move. and healthcare probably, but I don't know. It just depends on what, because you've got the watch on your hand. You know, you've got a lot of stuff that they have, but they are definitely hindered by their privacy personality. You know what I mean? But they have to really stick pretty, because people will be right ready to find them sneaking on you, right? That's where they'll be. People assume Google's sneaking around behind the scenes and people assume Facebook and Meta are doing this. And Amazon, that they are using all the data you give them willingly. And I think with Apple, they're going to be, it'll be interesting to see what they get.

42:29But I suspect it's to make the products more seamless than ever, I would imagine. It's just amazing that amongst the impact, many impacts that AI has had, AI literally overnight made Sundar Pichai look like a bad manager. Yeah, it did. I'm not exactly. This is over. Explain, explain what happened briefly. Well, 12 months ago, if you'd listed five of the greatest CEOs in history, much less right now, Sunar Pichai would probably be on every list. But then overnight, what feels like overnight, and it's been 12 to 24 months, the greatest increase in market capitalization registered in history over 12 months has been AI inspired.

43:10And a lot of that inspiration and original IP started at Alphabet, and yet they've missed out on it. And so overnight, he's gone from hero to goat. All of a sudden, Alphabet, looks flat-footed and is trading at a price earnings multiple less than the average on the S &P. It's the only big tech. It's the only one of the Magnificent Seven that trades below the average P of the S &P. And the same thing, and now that why aren't we hanging out with the cool kids? Or why did, you know, mom, why don't we have the new, you know, we game, whatever it is, that like anger that like everybody else has this cool thing, how come we missed out is now starting to infect, starting to infect Apple.

43:53If Apple wasn't, this feels to me like it's the perfect opportunity, other than they don't do this, for Apple to find the number three or four LLM, generative AI, that doesn't quite get the same uptrick and do an acquisition. Because Apple could take a different, this stuff, Apple has so much trust. They're in dicey privacy areas. This has been their brand. I think it's much harder. I think it's much harder. That's an interesting point. But, you know, Google should be dominating this right now. It's really quite amazing. He seems, you know, Amazon's in anthropic, Microsoft's in open AI. It has not, it definitely has to tread, speaking of hindrances, with Apple, it's privacy, with Google, it's scrutiny, it's federal scrutiny, right?

44:37That there's still the overhang from search. And so they have to be very careful about what they do in that regard because they're already subject to Justice Department investigation and case. So it'll be, I think, and he's a by nature cautious person, Sundar is. He just is. And, you know, the Gemini thing, they'll fix it. They'll fix it fine. It's just that they don't, they should have every advantage here and they certainly haven't advantaged as much. But anyway, we'll see. It'll be interesting what will happen in the space. Obviously, it's nice to see giants fighting with each other and feeling insecure.

45:13All of them are insecure. It's crazy how insecure they are. Anyway, let's bring in our friend of Pivot.

45:24Tom Skoka is the editor of the Substack Indignity, my favorite name for a Substack, who recently wrote an essay for New York Magazine titled My Unraveling. In the essay, he opens about a mysterious and confusing medical condition that sidelined him for months as doctors struggled to diagnose him. I brought you here to scare Professor Galloway health-wise, but it was a wonderful essay. You're a wonderful writer. So talk about the piece. Explain what happened because it really resonated with a lot of people. You wrote in the essay, was my bad luck the attending doctor set at my bedside to be an interesting case?

45:57You also say the able and the disabled aren't two different kinds of people, but the same people at different times. I had my health scare with a stroke and they diagnosed that pretty easily. That was an easy one. But I've had other ones around blood and stuff like they've never figured out. Talk a little about what happened to you and why you write that to be an interesting case. I guess an interesting case is one where they can't really exactly decide what's going on or figure out what all the symptoms add up to. And even from inside, like, or especially from inside, like, I couldn't tell what was going on.

46:32So, you know, it started with just sort of, like, weird things happening, you know, like pain in my shoulder, like flare-ups, like carpal tunnel, my ankles swelled up really big, and it was hard to put my shoes on, you know, and, you know, so that was enough to sort of start going around and seeing doctors, especially, like, your lower extremities swell up. They're like, well, they want to make sure you're not having congestive heart failure, you know. So I went to the cardiologist, and she was like, your heart's great. You're, you know, there's nothing wrong with your heart. Um, I went to, uh, you know, a rheumatologist and he was sort of checking for various things.

47:10And, you know, I mean, he was pretty sure there was some kind of like autoimmune, um, inflammation going on, but as to what kind it was, it was not clear. You know, a dose of steroids back then didn't really change anything. Um, and then that just sort of kept going. New things would change, things would change and new symptoms would come up and like my ankles stopped swelling, but I started getting shortness of breath and like having some real like problems with fatigue. And so I started, you know, going along, getting like kind of worse and worse at, um, you know, catching my breath. I started like checking my oxygen and like I was having trouble maintaining oxygenation, you know, but it was this sort of like chronic annoying thing that was limiting my activities.

47:56And they couldn't figure it out. And they couldn't figure it out. They couldn't pin down what it was or come up with a treatment that would do it. When the breathing issues became the most salient part of it, I went to the pulmonologist, passed the test at the pulmonologist. My breathing was officially fine, even though I wasn't managing to get myself enough oxygen all the time. Yeah, so it's this weird diffuse thing. At some point when you're dealing with specialists It's, you know, getting, when you're passing all the tests, eventually passing the test becomes a problem. Yeah, because they don't know what it is.

48:29Yeah, you got it. I have noticed that. It's not a particularly ringing endorsement of the healthcare business in the United States. You wrote, the medical mystery column doesn't usually dwell on how slowly the inquiry goes in our fractured healthcare system. Talk a little bit about that. Yeah, so I mean, right, the way that our system works is you get referrals, and the doctor giving a referral may or may not know if the doctor that they're referring you to is covered by your insurance. You know, you're always, you have to call them up and see if they're in a network. You have to call them up and see if they have an appointment within the next, you know, four months.

49:05I think I just got a notification today for some medical appointment that I'm pretty sure I tried to make like last summer. Yeah. So you're constantly chasing these things. You're getting build across multiple different portals, just figuring out how to pay your bill, where to go to pay it is its own hassle. And all the while, of course, you're trying to get to the bottom of this thing and trying to make sure that your records are being shared from one provider to another. And so, yeah. And so, at some point in all this, as I was talking to the specialist and the cardiologist was sort of like taking it upon herself to help shepherd me through this, maybe because she knew that it wasn't a heart problem.

49:47You know, she was like, really, like, the best thing for you to do would be to check into the hospital and just get everybody to look at you. But of course, this is America. You can't just, like, present yourself at the hospital and say, I'd like to lie down for a few days and get looked at. How are you feeling today, health-wise? Pretty decent. I mean, the medication works. So, you know, like, large doses of steroids got me back on my feet. And we're, like, trying to bring the steroids down and substitute other immunosuppressive drugs. Um, but so I could basically go around like normal as long as I don't try to do too many things in a single day.

50:22Uh, nice to meet you, Tom. And let me just say you look healthy and obviously not a doctor, but you look healthy. Uh, that's good to know. I mean, this, this is sort of like, yeah. Um, so give us the biggest kind of surprises about, uh, dealing with our healthcare system to the downside. And I think people know those or hear a lot about those. But also, any surprises to the upside about what happens when you get sick like this about our healthcare system? And maybe there were none, but surprises to the downside and upside. I mean, the downside is, again, that sort of feeling that you're really just sort of trying to solve this on your own.

51:01You're like wandering through a maze, and there's nobody to sort of like step up and take control and look out for your interests. that you are, when you have a mystery like this to unravel, it's really sort of your job to solve it. And, you know, how much persistence you have and how much organizational skill you have, how much time you can bring to this problem is sort of what helps determine how well you navigate the system. And of course, like the, you know, the sicker and less able to do stuff you are, like the harder it is to stay on top of your own needs and care in the system. As far as the surprises, as far as the positive surprises go, I mean, once I got myself into the hospital, it was, you know, sort of a very responsive setting and people were really engaged with trying to figure out how to help.

51:59But you had to get yourself at the hospital. I think one of the interesting things that's happening now is, especially around COVID, I have a lot of friends with long COVID, and they have not been able to be figured out. Like, doctors get very frustrated by having to figure out things that aren't easy, like, ah, you have a cardiac blockage, you know, things that are obvious that they've done over and over again that they can diagnose relatively easily. And many years ago, I had, when I was pregnant, had a low white blood cells. and I had dozens of tests of leukemia, AIDS, everything else, and they were never able to figure it out.

52:34Never, never, never, never. And ultimately I was diagnosed with neutropenia, which means low white blood cells. And I said, I said, that's not a diagnosis. That's a description. And they were arguing with me. They're like, that's the diagnosis. I go, you don't know why it is. And it's to this day, I don't, I don't even know what my, I gave up on it. I gave up on it after a while. It was crazy. But a lot of people with long COVID and a lot of these persistent health, whether it's Lyme disease or chronic fatigue syndrome, get sucked up in a system if it can't be solved in seconds that is very, you know, and a different, the reason I'm going to bring here is because of different tech companies have been trying to solve this problem, whether it's One Medical with Amazon or things like that, which still don't solve the problem at all.

53:19There's no like, when we've had people on talking about how to do that, and none of them been able to come up with it. Yeah, it's a great, it's always a great moment when they just like read your symptoms back to you in medical language, like benign positional vertigo, like, yes, those are the words for what I just, that's right, I told you I was dizzy. You're bringing back benign positional vertigo to me. Thank you. How would you solve it, I guess? How would you, because so many people suffer from chronic conditions that are confusing to doctors, and they refuse to say, at one point I had a doctor, He wouldn't tell me that he couldn't diagnose it.

53:53I said, can you just say, I don't know? I would prefer that. Like, I would prefer that. But how do you see, is there any way to solve it? We talk about AGI a lot. We talk about all kinds of things that could bring a lot of information up there. Do you see any way to do that? I'm not sure. I mean, it is to the extent that all my records eventually got folded into kind of a unified charge system after I'd been to the hospital. that I think helps make a difference. Like it helps that everybody can stay on the same page, um, looking at the information. Um, but yeah, it's really hard. I mean, it's, I was the, I think it's sort of, you know, the magic answer to everything, but obviously like if everybody's healthcare was being paid for under a single system and you, and sort of, you weren't trying to coordinate across, you know, different coverage realms, I think that that would help, you know, just to help bring the focus back to the patient and not, you know, on how billing is getting managed.

54:59Yeah, it's hard. I didn't know that there is a clear answer just because we, you know, we invest medical science with this, you know, idea that it's going to, like, have certainty and give you clear answers. and some of the things that happen to your body are like really diffuse and weird and you know it's not like you know some sprocket inside you broke and they just need to replace the sprocket like especially when your body is attacking itself um it's really you know not necessarily amenable to to being figured out and dealt with quickly uh tom distinct of the your interaction with the healthcare system, just having a healthcare like this, how, if and how has it changed your approach to life or the way you approach relationships?

55:48I mean, it very much, you know, like I said in the piece, it was sort of the first time, I mean, I'm aware of mortality as like a fact and that we only have so many years in this world. but sort of when I got COVID in the middle of this which was sort of I think that tipped me over into being sick enough that I had to go to the hospital you know that was when I started really feeling like like my body really could stop working you know I've been before that I've been very lucky in my health overall in life and like I've had sort of robust health without putting much effort into it and you know this like really Yeah, it made me think about the limited amount of time that I get and how to apportion my energy and effort on things.

56:45I mean, how much time I have with my kids as they're growing up. You sort of think about how to get more out of the life you got to the extent you can. But of course, you're also, you know, remembering to take your cup of six pills in the morning and you're trying to make sure that the steroids don't make you too crabby. And, you know, you could try to readjust your sort of existential outlook, but you're still trying to get through each day as you were before. So remembering to broaden your perspective can take some extra effort. Absolutely. Let me ask you about your work thing. I have one last question.

57:28You were a very active and outspoken writer, wonderful writer against a lot of things. When the, you know, you've, I'm looking at some of the stuff you've been writing lately. You're writing about the New York Times' trans issues. You're written about Joe Rogan being an idiot. And you're a very sharp media critic, I would say. How does that affect your work? Does it change your, the way you think about work or doing things? Because you were always sort of a really, always, you always weighed in with the, just the right rejoinder to a lot of lunacy that was going on. I don't know. I think that the actual work that I do has been sort of less affected by it than anything.

58:06And again, you just sort of, to whatever extent that sort of work can make a difference, you want to keep making a difference. So I don't feel like I've, I don't think it's mellowed me any. In terms of how you're working, but how do you look at work now? Because everyone's, there's just an article in the Atlantic saying it's the extinction event for media. Now, you've been involved in all kinds of different media over the years. I mean, a laundry list, a place. And all kinds of different extinctions. So I'd love to get your thoughts on that. That's my last question. Do you think it's an extension?

58:38Because you've worked for just about everybody. I'm trying to think. You've been around the block. Yeah. I mean, yeah. It certainly seems like we're in a spectacularly bad time for media. There's something alarming about the way that the media employment market has come uncoupled from the rest of the employment market. Your feed is like a mixture of great unemployment numbers federally and news of 300 more people getting laid off in your own industry. So yeah, it's a little scary to just contemplate that there may not be jobs out there. And, you know, it's fun to have your own publication and be, you know, pushing along on that, but, like, it's very hard to get the money together.

59:29Um, you know, I just was, I'm part of this Flaming Hydra thing that just launched, which is, I think, an interesting and so far promising experiment in doing, like, a little bit of something with scale, where instead of, like, trying to take a small number of people and bootstrap, you know, and bootstrap the operations until you get, like, enough readers, it started with a very large number of writers, like 60 writers, each of whom sort of have their own following. an audience, and bring them together, and just, you're asking each one for, like, one piece a month, right? But if you do that, then you have two pieces a day from writers people like, and you have a sort of pretty large audience built in to start growing from, as each person sort of tells the people who follow their work about this.

1:00:20Right. It's 60 writers, Flaming Hydra's 60 writers. I find it fascinating. And you've been raising money various ways. So through Kickstarter to get it going and through the subscriptions. Yeah. And there was enough, you know, so far it's been paying out, you know, a little bit better than a dollar a word if you don't go over the assigned word count, which is, you know, if you can stack up enough dollar word pieces, you can get along. So is that the future? I mean, this is, it's a writer's co-op, essentially is what it is, right? Yeah. I don't know. I hope it's the future. You know, I hope that it can grow and keep reaching people.

1:00:59And, you know, the guys at Defector are doing, you know, doing their thing that people are sort of having some success with these, with these kinds of co-op models. Again, I think that, that what it depends on in part is that you've got to have an audience. You know, one of the things that made Defector success was that because GeoMedia just sort of like ruined Deadspin and drove them all away, they could pick up a giant audience that had been built up over the years when they launched. And, you know, again, it's like Flaming Hydra, you're collecting all these people, they all have built up their own readerships that could be sort of combined and drawn on.

1:01:37But yeah, I mean, the problem is that what do you do if you're not starting from a position of already having something in the bank? If you're just sort of a writer starting out and you want to get some traction and get your stuff out there. I don't know. It's really, really an unfavorable time for doing it. It's very difficult. I would recommend people trying flying hydrants. Really cool. I think it's a really cool thing. Scott, last question. I don't have one. I just want to say I'm really glad that you're doing better. And like I said, you look good. Thank you. And I really appreciate the piece.

1:02:07I think when people read something like this, it gives them comfort in a very difficult time. And they become scared too. They also become scared. I bet you got a lot of, oh, there but for the grace of God go I kind of thing. Right. You get both. You get the people who are incredibly relieved because they've been going through something like this where, again, it's something where you feel very alone and very trapped inside your own experience. And then the chance to read about somebody else who's been there means a lot to people. But yeah, I think it also scared people. Because again, I came into this from the position of somebody who was pretty stably healthy and doing well in middle age and And all of a sudden I'm like falling down because I can't walk.

1:02:49So somebody else who's like middle-aged and walking along fine. Have you thought about running for president? I'm sorry. Oh, stop, stop. I'm sorry. Go, go, go. Scott can't stop talking about Donald Trump. Anyway, anyhow, Tom, thank you so much. You can read the really good essay by Tom Skoka. He's a wonderful writer. He's one of my favorite writers. and people can go to nymag.com to read your essay and also go to Flaming Hydra. It's really cool. It's really nice. I'm not sure if I like the design of it, but I like the site itself. It's got some really great writers. Thank you so much. Sure. Thanks for bringing me on to talk.

1:03:26Nice to meet you, Tom. Good to meet you. One more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails.

1:03:39When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans, send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom's 60th, and never miss a meme or milestone, all protected with end-to-end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp. message privately with everyone learn more at whatsapp.com running a business comes with a lot of what-ifs but luckily there's a simple answer to them shopify it's the commerce platform behind millions of businesses including thrive cosmetics and momofuku and it'll help you with everything you need from website design and marketing to boosting sales and expanding operations shopify can get the job done and make your dream a reality turn those what-ifs into Sign up for your$1 per month trial at shopify.com slash special offer.

1:04:59with flavors. 8 % alcohol by volume. White Claw Seltzer Works, Chicago, Illinois.

1:05:06Okay, Scott, wins and fails. Okay, just before we get to wins and fails, Kara, I want to apologize. I didn't mean to be dismissive of your book. I try to be funny, and sometimes it lands, and sometimes it doesn't. But I know how hard it is to write a book. And the last thing I want to do after you, you know, you put in the effort is to be dismissive of anything you're doing. So I apologize. I did not mean to be dismissive. Thank you. You're very sweet. I know you didn't mean it. I did get a lot of people saying something though for the first time. I'm apologizing to you, not to them. Thank you.

1:05:40I know you are. I know you are. I know you. Thank you. I appreciate it. And I'm excited for your book too. We're very excited to celebrate. Oh, I appreciate that. Yours comes out at the end of April, just for people if they want to pre-order. Anyways, my win is, I don't know if you've seen this. Have you seen One Day on Netflix? no it's a british romantic uh drama television series based on the 20 the 2009 novel by the same name by david uh nichols um it follows the 20-year relationship of emma morley and dexter mayhew who met at graduation but after graduation from the university of edinburgh yes yeah yeah yeah but it's now they're doing a new one right uh well i've just been i don't know if they're doing a knew it, but yeah, it's one day, it's on Netflix.

1:06:25And it's just about, it's just a very simple love story. The guy was actually in The White Lotus. He played the British kid. Well, anyways, it is wonderful. And it has a lot, first off, it's so wonderful that something that doesn't have zombies or dragons, it's just purely about a love story. And just back to what Tom was saying about your life, I'm trying to be much more deliberate and purposeful with my kids because I'm running out of time. And I'm watching this with my 16-year-old boy because I read something that just broke my heart. Do you know that 50 % of Gen Z men have given up on dating?

1:07:02They're not dating. They feel like just for a variety of societal reasons, they don't want to risk the rejection. And they find it difficult. They find it humiliating. And they're confused about it. and I'm watching it with my 16 year old and he's really enjoying it because I want, if there's anything I could give to young men and I think this is true of young women too, but I relate more obviously to young men and I'm raising boys. It's that there's a reason that romantic comedies are two hours, not 15 minutes. They're really hard. There's a lot of rejection, but they're wonderful. Yeah, it's a TV series.

1:07:42Do you know it was a movie with Anne Hathaway a while ago back? Yeah, and now it's a series that's so popular. Yeah, it's such a popular series. I think they're making more of it for some reason. I understood they were going to keep going with it because it was so popular. No, it's got great reviews. It's really wonderful. And then my fail is this ridiculous— So Democrats in Missouri are attempting to overturn a decades-old law that bans women from getting divorced while they are pregnant. So you are not allowed, as a woman, to get divorced if you're pregnant. And let's walk through this. So what is the number one source of death, of fatality for pregnant women?

1:08:29It's homicide. What are the incentives here if you're a violent psychopath who's in a relationship with a woman who wants to leave this abusive relationship? What are your incentives? I know I'll get her pregnant because it's illegal for her to divorce me. And in addition, as far as I know, pregnancy is primarily entirely sequestered to people born as women. And there are just very few laws that diminish the rights. I can't think of any that are sequestered to people born as men. I mean, this is just... They want us back in the Stone Ages. Baseline misogyny that results in psychopathic partners knocking up their wives so they can't divorce them, which puts a pregnant woman in harm's way.

1:09:37I mean, it's just so, we have this weird obsession with birth, but this hostility towards the person who's responsible for the birth. Anyways, similar laws are actually in Texas, Arkansas, and California, But this needs some sort of federal legislation that restores, that let's just pretend, I mean, one of the basic instincts that you should have as a man is to protect women. And it's basic because if you don't protect women, we go out of business. You can have a village of 50 men and 50 women, and if 25 of the men die going to war or they're violent, the village can still survive. If 25 of the women get killed, that village goes out of business.

1:10:35So to not err on the side of protecting women while they're pregnant, it's literally the definition of misanthropic. That's their way. That's their way. You know, France just became the first country to explicitly enshrine abortion rights in the Constitution. This is a breaking news from The Washington Post right now. Other countries understand this, understand women's rights. They really do. It's like this country is moving in a direction that is so dangerous after dawn. Mexico has cemented a very Catholic nation. They've just cemented. If you look at the nations we're headed towards, it's literally Iran, Turkey, North Korea.

1:11:14It's not a good list. It's not a room we want to hang out in. No, I agree. I agree. I'm thinking I'm going to France now, although I don't speak French. Anyway, my win, besides your lovely apology, Scott, thank you, was the two shows that I love. The Regime with Kate Winslet, which is speaking of strange Eastern European countries. She's the head of it, and she's hysterical. She's eating up every piece of scenery. She plays the head, a crazy head of a sort of like a Ceausescu character. And she's so funny. The costumes are funny. Everything's about it. And she's doing an amazing job. And the other I'm excited for, and I haven't seen yet, is Shogun.

1:11:55They redid it. I loved the original one, which was kind of, if you look back on it, it's problematic. But the book was James Clavel. They've remade it. It's getting astonishing reviews. It's focused a lot more on the Japanese experience in it rather than the white guy. But the white guy is important in it. It's also but it's it's supposed to be fantastic. And I am so looking forward to it. I have not seen it. I will report back once I have a minute to watch it. And the fail, I think, is the same thing with you. The rampant misogyny that's just stemming from Dobbs, which is really and it's not just misogyny, it's homophobia, etc.

1:12:35that we are tracking. I think you're absolutely right. We are tracking on other countries that are not countries we should be tracking on while other countries go in an opposite direction, which is more kindness and attention to women and their issues. And with Trump poised to dominate Super Tuesday, it's kind of, you got to give it to Nikki Haley making this final effort and now saying she may not back him, which I think, and again, two women in the Senate who backed her, Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins. It's really up to women to figure out this, what's going to happen in this race, in this presidential race.

1:13:18It's either a very anti-woman president, and that's what he is. I know we joke, he's a rapist. He's a rapist. The man's a rapist, and he's an insurrectionist. And women have got to make this stand if men aren't going to do it for them, but I hope men will do the same. So that is my fail, I guess. It's not just, it's the whole thing that goes with it. It isn't just pro-choice. It's everything else that goes with it. Our nation has a lot of things to be proud of. We have more women going, being elected to leadership positions than ever before. There's something about, for some reason, the far right has taken aim at pregnant women.

1:13:55It just doesn't make any sense. I don't get it. Because you don't exist as a thing. You're a vessel. That's why. They don't see you as a person. They see you as a vessel. Just read their stuff. That's what they think. Anyway. Yeah. Yeah. On that note. They're good luck. Let me just say, they're coming for my family, too. And good luck trying. Let me just say, I've built some very strong men. They will fight for me. Including you, Scott Galloway. That's right. 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.

1:14:33Scott, that's the show. We'll be back on Friday with more. I think I'll be in San Francisco then or maybe see a... I don't know. Nice. I'm going to Austin. I don't know. We're going to Austin. Yes. Oh, we're going to Austin this weekend. Oh, my God. We're doing a live pivot and we're having a nice dinner, everything. It'll be cool. Why don't you read us out? That's the show. We'll be back on Friday for more. Today's show was produced by Lara Neyman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Andretot, engineering this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Miel Severio. Nishat Kirwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio.

1:15:05Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Kara, have a great rest of the week.

1:15:28Thank you.