Nvidia Earnings, Tech Regulation, and the Capital One-Discover Merger

25:33I think it's just, you could drive a truck through some of this. And a lot of people, like the EFF is against it. They wrote a piece, don't fall for the latest changes in the dangerous kids online safety bill. It's amended. It's going to go through a lot. Once it's passed, if it's ever passed, EFF says it's still an unconstitutional censorship bill that continues to empower state officials to target services and online content they do not like. That's the issue, right? That is the issue. And having the government decide what types of information people can read, questionable. There's got to be a way to protect children.

26:11and I think some of your ideas, age gating, like that kind of stuff is going to be, what does it mean to ensure reasonable care? It's so, again, problematic. I think the age gating, if you don't take down pornography, child pornography immediately, you get fined. Like there's some very clear things if you really were interested in doing other things. And I do think the right, and especially the religious right, really wants to shut down LGBTQ youth discussions. That is their goal. And that's what they want. They're doing it in the trans area. They're doing it everywhere. They want everybody to be a straight white Christian.

26:51And that is not happening in any time soon or ever. So, you know, we'll see. We'll see. And as AI, just stop having bipartisan commissions and pass some laws. We know what we need to do. You know, everyone knows what they need to do. They cannot pass legislation. And that's really the dysfunction. So I had a call yesterday with a woman named Sarah Gardner from the Heat Initiative. Have you heard of this? It's essentially an effort to protect kids, especially around from pedophiles and the distribution of child pornography. And you know who she felt or gave me the impression was the biggest, I don't know, the term is the biggest culprit of all the platforms and all the big tech companies?

27:33LinkedIn. No, I'm sorry. Apple. Apple. She said that Apple, because they're so likable, has escaped a lot of scrutiny. And if you look at iCloud and storage, they have really embraced this sort of heat shield of privacy as a fundamental human right and aren't cooperating with hashing initiatives. Yeah, no, they're very strong on encryption. They are. They never have backed away from that. Again, this is what happens if you let me, it's good to be for encryption. And then at the same time, every terrible person, And especially pedophiles will find a way, you know, whether they store things at the local cube, you know, they put their porn there.

28:08It's like, is cube on the line for that, for not letting you in? I just, look, there's some things they can do that mitigate this. Shouldn't there be a different set of standards, though, for people under the age of 18? I mean, shouldn't there? Yes. It feels like. Yes, we do it everywhere else. Yeah, that's right. We just have a different set of laws. You sell drugs. You go to prison for three years. You sell drugs within 100 feet of a school. You go to prison for nine years. You know, it's just age gating, removal of 230 as it relates to children, child safety. They could do a lot of this stuff.

28:41They could do a lot. I think one of the issues is this is a feint by the right to suppress LGBT. And I think they're 100 percent right. I hear them. I pay a lot of attention to what they're talking about and what they like. And they would love states attorney generals and conservative states to shut down every discussion of gay issues. They've tried. They've tried to try and try it again. It won't work, people, in any case. You can do whatever you want. It's not going to work. Anyway, let's go on a quick break. And when we come back, we'll talk about the NVIDIA numbers that sent stocks soaring and answer a listener-mear question about the business impact of the latest Trump ruling.

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30:45Scott, we're back with our second big story. NVIDIA, this is your favorite. NVIDIA exceeded all expectations with its latest earnings report. People were worried. Quarterly sales tripled from a year ago, with the chipmaker reporting$22.1 billion in revenue in the last fiscal quarter. Net profit increased to$12.3 billion from$1.4 billion in the same period last year. It's been an upward march under Jensen Huang. NVIDIA shares jumped as much as 11 % in extended trading following the earnings announcement. Ahead of these earnings, Goldman Sachs is already calling NVIDIA the most important stock on planet Earth.

31:19Huang said in a statement that the earnings are evidence of accelerated computing and generative AI have hit the tipping point. They aren't growing in China, where revenue has declined following U.S. export regulations from post-October. Not a surprise. I mean, Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft are trying to work on AI chips of their own. Again, Altman of OpenAI is working on his own chip venture. He's been doing it for a while, trying to raise the$7 trillion. It's a big, fat market. Scott, go for it. Well, you know how we said, I think it was last week, that the most singular impressive quarter or earnings announcement in history was Meta, their last quarter, where they added the value of Shell in one day?

32:02They're now number two. This was the most impressive earnings call in history. This company added the value in 10 minutes after the earnings announcement. It added the value of Ford, General Motors, and Ferrari since the beginning of the year, in the last six weeks, it's added the value, and you'll love this, it's added the value of Tesla to its market cap. We have, I wonder... Talk about it if it might be frothy too, but go ahead. I'd like to know. I just don't, I mean, any company that's trading at like 30 times revenues, it would hard to be say it's not frothy. But when people look at their dominance of a market, I mean, I think a few things are going on here.

32:38I've been thinking a lot about, I wonder if we're evolving to a new species where a key component of our species becomes asocial and asexual, and I don't think it's a good thing. But I also think we're evolving, businesses are evolving to this weird mix of AI and technology where essentially what is being masked here is people are excited about AI, but I don't think they're being honest about how AI is being used. I think AI is essentially corporate ozempic. And that is companies, if you look at what really drove Facebook's historic earnings, was that they were able to grow their revenues by 25 % while we're reducing their employee base 25%, which took their earnings up 400%.

33:18No one's ever been... Reflexively, our craving as a CEO is to grow. We have a little bit of us of every star in the world. The universe wants to prosper. The cosmos want to prosper. And the way you prosper is you extend and you grow. So everyone's reflex reaction when you're growing is to hire more people. We want to eat more ice cream. We want to hire more people. And what essentially AI is, in my view, is it's Ozympic. And it's not replacing people one for one. It's not firing. It's not replacing Mary the Copywriter. But it's meaning that you only need two Marys instead of three because it can draft proposals.

33:50It can edit stuff on its own. And I think essentially, if you think about it, a lot of corporations are losing weight on the Ozympic of AI. But essentially, NVIDIA is Nova Nordisk. And the... I like this. whole fat shaming thing, but go ahead. Sorry, I'm kidding. I'm teasing you. $1.7 trillion. By the way, the far left has totally politicized obesity. You're not finding your truth. You're finding a fucking ventilator. Anyways - Okay. That's another day. There we go. But what you have here is a company that is asset-wide, seems to have an incredible lead in what is the ability to report. If you'll pay$1 ,000 a month, right?

34:38A large population of the world or America, rich people right now, will pay$1 ,000 a month to lose that last 15. What will corporate America pay to be able to reverse gravity and continue to grow while cutting expenses? And what is the Ozempic that lets them do that? AI. And who is at the center of AI? Hands down, NVIDIA. So talk about, and he's a really, you know, I haven't talked to him in a long time, but I did an interview with him. He wasn't, it was doing game chips. Remember they were, that was what they were focused in on a lot of game stuff and some mobile stuff. I think it was mobile stuff, as I recall.

35:16And he was such an impressive guy. This was in 2010. I feel like, I forget when I interviewed him for one of the codes, but I was so struck by him. I brought him in. I didn't really have many chip people at my events. It was so technical. And he is an impressive person and has worked his way. The numbers, when you watch the march of the revenues over time, and it's not just now, it's over time. and the march of the revenue and the march of profits. It's an impressive, he is an undersung CEO in terms of his ability to push things through. He's compelling, you know, chip CEOs are dull, but they're not.

35:56Lisa Su is the same way, really interesting. He is just someone that deserves a lot more attention in terms of how he's run this company. And he's run circles around these others, right? He's in the right place at the right time. Amazon, Google Meta, they're trying to do this. Now, they'll catch up, by the way. They will. But it's expensive what they have to do. And this money that Sam Altman's raising, I think, you know, that was a lot of that controversy. He was working on a chip venture. He was entirely right to do so. This is a big, huge market going forward. Now, that said, for all of this, and it's going to be real competitive, by the way.

36:33So NVIDIA is going to have some issues once everybody gets up to speed, and they will get up to speed. But there's sort of like the Netflix of streaming, right? You know what I mean? Of streaming and before the Hollywood companies got in. And they will have their issues catching up to this guy because he's real good and he's had years doing it. There is some issues around AI that I'm beginning to see crop up that are really disturbing, which is generated news that happens, especially after tragedies now, is dominating Google. If you search on a news thing, all of a sudden there's all these clearly AGI-generated news stories that pop up that are really full of not just errors, but some of them aren't totally wrong, but they are dominating and overwhelming the information ecosystem.

37:18The ability to be more efficient is also problematic. So I would say we really do need to look at both the positives, as you say, saving costs and the negatives, which is a whole overturning of situations by mere flooding of information. I want to bring this back to politics. I think Biden and Newsom are missing a huge opportunity and a huge narrative. They should, for all the shitposting about California and the homeless problems and the border problems, Gavin Newsom should say, okay, Jensen Huang could have started his company anywhere. But by the way, where did he go to school? He went to Stanford.

37:57He went to another amazing state school called Oregon State. He immigrated from Taiwan. And where does he decide to live? Where did he decide to start a company? Guess what Gavin Newsom oversaw in the first six weeks of this year? He has created in California through a mix of innovation, amazing culture, very wealthy people, despite the crime, decide they still want to live there. They make a concerted decision to live, to continue to live in California. And what has he been able to do or oversee? He has recreated the entire auto industry in six weeks in terms of shareholder value. And then Biden needs to get out there and say, because of our focus on AI, our AI mandate, because Jensen Huang can shitpost me, as can Elon Musk, and they have absolutely no fear that I will send a bunch of fucking thugs and throw them out a window.

38:48These people choose to move here. They move to the US. What's the last AI company that was started in your hero country, Russia. We have a series of laws here that protect people, that offer them opportunity, that offer them rights, protections, family planning, and incredible prosperity, the likes of which no one has ever seen. Biden should be up there saying, we are creating more wealth than any nation in any period in history. And it's because we are a democracy. And if we go back on being a democracy, despite how you feel or what you think is fucking macho, guess what? We're all going to make a lot less money.

39:32Jensen Huang isn't going to move as are the most impressive people in the world. Nope, neither is Google. And let me just say, can I just take a little lap? The story in the Wall Street Journal? Tech leaders fled San Francisco during the pandemic. Now they're coming back. Founders and investors who moved to Miami and elsewhere and didn't shut the fuck up about it are returning to the boom in artificial intelligence and the abundance of tech talent. This is what I said would happen, right? It was overblown, this idea. And there are big issues in California. By the way, it's raining like hell there and office vacancy.

40:03It is such an opportunity for, this is a San Francisco and the Bay Area as a whole, as I'm going to put it as a bulk goal, because you can like wander around and look for poop in San Francisco, you'll find it. You find it in every city, by the way. But what has happened in California in terms of pure talent remains so, besides being the most beautiful place, like from a physical point of view, it is the most astonishing creation of tech talent, tech money, tech innovation that you've ever seen. And the fact that these people who made all their fortunes here in, I'm not in California, in California, and then they shitpost it and they blame like other people's deaths on the homeless when it didn't happen that way.

40:53And they just can't stop fucking talking. This, what happened here and what is going to happen here is remarkable. Again, once again, there's never been a business area that's generated so much wealth and will do it again and again and again. And they will fix the problems. They will never be fully fixed. But boy, is this, you know, you're right. NVIDIA is in California. Google's in California. The AI boom is in California. I'm not doing an ad for California. Well, and it's also an ad for America. I'm so pleased to see this. It's an ad for America. Yeah, an ad for America. The whole state, the whole Bay Area, the whole ideas behind California should be replicated across the country.

41:34You shouldn't, your attraction as a tech center should not be that you don't have to pay taxes. It should be that you are a place of innovation. That is just, you're just greedy then. You know, you're just greedy. And it should be because you believe in innovation and tolerance and ideas and forward thinking. And that's who's going to win the next era. Thank you. That is my speech for governor of California. All right. We need to move on. This is congratulations to NVIDIA. This is a really interesting. Just very briefly, there was another big merger, which is astonishingly big one. Capital One said it's going to acquire Discover.

42:05If the deal goes through it, a$35 billion all stock deal. If the deal goes through, the two companies would form the largest U.S. credit card company by loan volume. Big trouble getting past the antitrust regulators. Well, there's a lot of big players in this area. Senator Elizabeth Warren, no surprise, posted on the deal on X calling for regulators to block it immediately. I'm not so sure it's going to get blocked. I think it might get blocked because it's – I mean, one, people are spending a lot of money again. And credit card debt's going up. It's an amazing business. They're basically trying to go vertical to boot both the processing and the front-end card issuance such that they claim they could compete with Visa and MasterCard.

42:44It's an amazing business. But this strikes me as a fairly easy target for a populist argument. And there is some evidence showing that as these companies get bigger, their fees go up. So I see a lot of what I'll call posturing on the left around the big keep getting bigger. And I wouldn't be surprised if, I mean, some of this might be a bet that they can wait till a new administration. Trump would let this go through. But I wonder if they're going to just try and slow ball it. Because I think Cantor and Lena Kahn and some powerful Democratic senators might say, these brands are so well-known to consumers that I think they might see this as an easy way to get in front of cameras and say we're protecting consumers if the bigger are getting too big.

43:28Yeah, fees, fees. Yeah, you're right. You're right. That's a fair point. We'll see where it goes. But it's a big deal. It's a huge deal. In the old days, this would have occupied everybody's attention. But the money is so big and these numbers are so big now. Well, I think it should get blocked because I think the fewer Discover cards out there, the more people will propagate. Because the fastest way to ensure you're not having sex is to throw Discover down at dinner. That's basically like showing up in a Kia or talking about your magic. It really is a prophylactic. It's basically... Oh, I got to do that for a present.

43:57It's basically saying, I don't want to have sex. Just throw down Discover. Just throw down Discover. What's in your wallet? That's Capital One, right? That is Capital One. I can't believe I know that off the top of my head. How could you not know it? It's everywhere. I know it is. It's a very good ad. OK, Scott, let's pivot to a listener question.

44:19This question comes from a listener in New York. Let's play it. Hi, Karen. As a New Yorker, I'm curious what you think. After Trump was fined$355 million in his civil fraud trial, Kevin O 'Leary was on Kristen Welker show and said that this ruling is horrible for New York businesses and that all real estate developers do the kinds of things Trump did but don't get prosecuted for it and that New York is going to become a flyover state because of how unfavorable it is becoming for businesses. Thanks for taking my question. Okay, this is a great question actually. I just read a column in the Wall Street Journal by Joe Lonsdale and Jeb Bush, what a strange pairing, talking about this.

45:03And at first it was like, oh, what's the Jill Law I'm still going to say? But actually, it was, Joe, it was pretty good. It was an interesting argument. You stayed away from, you know, pumping Trump and this and that and saying it was a victimization. I think the argument you're making was very similar to Martha Stewart and many others is why are you targeting him for things other people do? Well, that happens. I'm sorry to tell you, unfortunately. And just because people don't get prosecuted for these things and this is how it's done doesn't mean they shouldn't or wouldn't. But they were making a case that this is going to hurt New York.

45:37I'm not so sure. I think this is just what happens. Some people get prosecuted for things and others that, you know, some people jaywalk and get a ticket, some people don't. I'm not so sure. I mean, Kevin O 'Leary, of course, he would say this, right? But it was, they made, I would point you to the Wall Street Journal column by the two of them. I I can't believe I'm recommending it, but it was actually a good – it was pretty good. It was a pretty good argument against rulings like this, right? And the same thing, it was also including, of course, because Joe's an Elon stan, saying that the argument against taking away Elon's money compensation package in Delaware, it's going to hurt Delaware.

46:20I think that's ridiculous. It won't hurt Delaware at all. But Scott? So I think London and New York compete for the number one spot, best city in the world. If you like cities, I think that everything else is a distant number three. But they're different in the sense that London, in my view or my observation, doesn't have a lot of organic value creation. What they have is very strong private property laws implemented by Tony Blair, such that if you're a war criminal or if you made your money stealing, whatever it is, you're an oligarch, a war criminal, bring your money to London and it's safe here and you can be totally opaque.

46:54We're not going to take your shit away. It was very unusual what they did with sanctions on Russia. They traditionally haven't done that. But in New York, we passed transparency laws around real estate ownership. New York is so singular, in my view, in terms of actual wealth creation. People come up with business ideas in finance, publishing, media. It creates so much value and it's so singular that I think that it will survive this quote-unquote chill. I don't think it's really going to have much of a dent. I think wealthy people still decide to move to New York, build their fortunes here, ambitious people, and it's worth it.

47:32However, however, I don't like this case, Kara. I mean, I like it in the sense that I like the idea of Donald Trump scrambling to try and find half a billion dollars and him going broke. I love that because I don't like the man. I think this was a misallocation of prosecutorial resources, and I think it's politically charged. I think they do. It is politically charged. Go ahead. Okay. When a guy is charged like this and has to pay half a billion dollars because he is a Republican president that Democrats don't like, it is politically motivated. And that's what this is. I think this guy's been doing fraud for years and years.

48:09And you know what I mean? I think you're right. Even the Martha Stewart thing happened. I kept saying, why her and not the 20 other people who do just what they say she's doing? Martha lied. She lied to FBI investigators. That's what she went in. But I'm talking about the original allegation of insider trading. I mean, I've been at dinner parties where I've seen insider trading. Like, you know what I mean? Like, it's just, I don't know. I don't know. I just feel like I don't, it has the perception of political payback. It does. This guy has a history of fraud and lying about and inflating wealth and things like that.

48:43And eventually they were going to get round to him. If we're going to haul in front of court every millionaire and billionaire that has inflated the value of their assets to get better terms on loans, you better hire more judges. But we're not going to do that. That's the whole point. It's just sometimes they'll do something. Then that makes it select a prosecution. I just – No. Stop. Let me be clear. Sorry. Grow up. You hide nuclear secrets in a golf cart charging station. You try and overturn an election. You catalyze an insurrection. I think those are offenses that you should potentially be prosecuted.

49:15And if a judge decides, go to jail. This, in my view, was a very politically motivated prosecution. And not yet, it reduces the veracity of the other ones, because everyone's going to say all of this is politically motivated. Yeah, I get it. I get it. And the best argument Trump has is, Joe and Jeb Bush say here, is judges have ordered massive punitive judgments on behalf of dubious or non-existent, quote, victims. And they wrote, every American has the right to be critical of Mr. Trump's politics. One of us ran against him in 2016, or Mr. Musk's public persona. But equality before the law is precious, and these rulings represent a crisis not only for the soundness of our courts, but for a business environment that has allowed the U.S.

49:57to prosper. If these rulings stand, the damage could cascade through the economy. It's a little dramatic, boys. creating a fear of arbitrary enforcement against entrepreneurs who just seek public office or raise their voices as citizens in a way that politicians dislike. And I don't like them linking the Elon thing here because this board looks so badly formulated that it's always doing, it's a bad board. And this was not an arm's length of negotiation. So I wouldn't include Elon Musk thing. And I think that ruling makes perfect sense. This guy makes a joke of boards and makes a joke. His own employees ignored him in order to follow the law of what would have been illegal orders.

50:35So I wouldn't link Musk in here. I felt that ruling made perfect sense. In this case, we'll see where it goes. You're right. We'll absolutely see where it goes. I do think it's, you know, down in Florida, they have a judge that's pro-Trump, who is obviously making rulings and may get disqualified for that. I don't know. I think these things shake out, Scott. I guess I'm cynical. I don't think it's going to affect business across the country. As I said, I don't think anyone who was planning to move here or business that was planning to come there sees this and says no. Because I think they recognize, and this is what's wrong with it, is that it was politically motivated.

51:12I just don't think if it was a popular Democrat who would engage in the exact same behavior, you would have Letitia James go after them. They went after that guy who ran the Democratic machine in Albany. They went after, Oh, I see it all the time. I'm sorry. You do. You do. You do. You do. I just, I don't, maybe, I mean, it's the entire plot of billions, but yeah, I don't know. You see it on both sides. And look right now with the Hunter Biden thing. Hello. Hello. It was a Russian agent who he got your information from. I don't know. I'm cynical, Scott. I'm a cynical person. Anyway, we'll see.

51:45It'll be interesting to see where this one goes. But he's got a lot more criminal indictments on the docket. So I don't know if this one matters as much. And I don't think it's going to destroy New York. It's just not. Sorry. Sorry, Kevin. Not gonna. If you've got a question on your own, you'd like it answered, send it our way. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails.

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54:13Scott wins and fails. All right, I will go first. I think a fail was, besides the Alabama embryo baby thing, this story, the Oklahoma non-binary team died after school fight amid reported bullying. What's happening in Oklahoma is disturbing. The governor and then the guy who's running the education department are like, he's a, the superintendent Ryan Walters appointed Chaya Rychik, the conservative activist one lives of TikTok, which targeted LGBTQ friendly teachers at these schools to state library advisors. And Kevin Stitt, who is just, he signed an executive order to finding individual sex as biological sex at birth.

54:56laws have been taking effect, requiring students to use bathrooms that match their sex assigned birth and restricting gender-affirming care for trans use. There are more than 50 anti-LGBTQ plus laws in states, according to the ACLU. This is in the Post article. This is a story about a person named Next Benedict, collapsed the day after an altercation in the girls' bathroom at a public high school. They attended a school where relatives say the 10th grader who used they, them pronouns has been bullied for being non-binary. This is the fucking repercussions of what these people are doing. This will happen again and again.

55:35And Kevin Stitt made a statement, the death of any child in Oklahoma is a tragedy and bullies must be held accountable. Fuck you. Fuck you. Please call me because I'll say that to you if you call me. What he is doing and what they are doing in this state to these kids who are struggling, struggling, and have always been struggling, is they have blood on their hands with this. This poor family, this story is heartbreaking. It is heartbreaking. And this is the direct fear. And there was one quote by someone, Lance Preston, said that the Rainbow Youth Project received 237 calls from Oklahoma over the weekend.

56:14Two-thirds of the callers mentioned next is death. So more than 80 % they were victims of bullying at school or on social media. We already have kids who are reporting they don't want to go back to school, even though it's not a lot of information available still. There's a fear. Oh, my goodness. They killed a student because they were non-binary. What's going to happen when I go to use the bathrooms? If you spew violent rhetoric like another person, Ryan Walters, who runs the education theater, this is what happens. This is directly what happens. It's a direct line, and it is on you. And again, you know, this topic is important to me, but he can burn in hell for doing what he will burn in hell for what he's doing.

56:54I don't really believe in hell, but there you have it. Thank you. That is my negative. And my positive is my book's coming out and I'm very excited to go. Scott's throwing me a party in New York next week, which he's not coming to. So thank you, Scott. They're in spirit. They're in spirit. You are. I want you to send the video. I'm excited about the book. I'm finally that it's done. And I'm excited that it's selling with Scott's book on Amazon, which I pointed out this week. And everybody should go buy Scott's upcoming book and all his books, but he has one coming out soon too. So I'm excited about our little book world, Karen Scott's book world.

57:31We're multi-hyphenate in case you're interested. Or multi-hyphenate. So my fail is Ukraine's military is retreating from the southeastern city of Avdika, I believe it said, amid a Russian barrage. And supposedly during the retreat, there's reports that a thousand Ukrainian soldiers were either killed or taken hostage. And these were hard fought, you know, gains for us in the West and for democracy that the EU came together around, we came together around, and we've literally just lost it for no other reason than the American government can't get its shit together. It literally can't get out of its own way.

58:10Most people believe that, yeah, we've made unbelievable gains there with the incredibly brave Ukrainian army and a ton of technology and the West binding together to provide resources. They didn't lose the town because they lack soldiers. They lose it because they lack strategic positioning. They didn't do it because they lack weapons. They did it because they lack artillery. They lack munitions. They're firing now 10 % of the missions they used to. And Putin is winning. He correctly diagnosed the US as dysfunctional. And he said, all I've got to do is wait these guys out. And because our system has great checks and balances on a lot of levels, but because when we have a group of people that want to tie this to a variety of other initiatives, whether it's the border, whether it's Israel, and they create so many, so many yeah, buts and stuff it with so much shit that we can't have just a vote on whether or not we should continue sending arms to Ukraine.

59:11And it has resulted in a retreat. We are now in retreat. And the media will try and spin it. There was talk about how they are now kind of bunkered in another city, and they took down three Soviet jets. But this is a battlefield defeat that started in Congress, or specifically started because we can't get our act together in Congress. This is having real impact on the battlefield. They're good. That's such a myth that they're not successful. They've been extraordinarily successful. And it's because we're not sending them what they need to do the job. So that's my fail. And we've become so numb to a dysfunctional Congress that we don't really think about, okay, and there's so much news and good and bad that we don't realize, okay, this has got to be, just think of the frustration here.

1:00:05These hard fought wins and these very brave men on the front lines, and they're ready, they're ready to risk their lives. And they don't have the ammunition. They're ready. They could hold the town. Because all of a sudden the West who claimed over and over, don't worry, we have your back. And now for reasons they can barely understand, aren't getting the ammunition and have been told, no, we'll figure it out, but we haven't. Anyways, that's my fail. My win, my win is the first book review on Burn Book. So let me just, I'm going to, there's a lot here. I'll read it. Yeah, it's long. All good. Okay.

1:00:48Can I read just the last two sentences? They're pretty good. Yeah, please do. She is particularly wary of the ramifications of social media as it continues to eat the news. And while Swisher's story of her own rise sometimes feels like background, there are important lessons here for women looking for guideposts as they make their own way. Body, body brash and compulsively thought provoking, just like its author. Burn book. Here's the last thing. Burn book sizzles. Sizzle. I'm going to get a lot of fire things, aren't I? I'm going to get a lot of fire. And that was by, that was the advanced review.

1:01:31It's book, it's book list. There's four, there's three, four things, Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Kirkus, and Library Journal. They do the advanced reviews. They're very important and they do set the tone for what's coming up next. Okay. But they're not as important, just as a quick surprise, as my first review from. Oh God. Yes. I got my first review and it's from. Your aunt? What? No, it's from another. Oh, Kirkus. I got my first review from Kirkus, who is very important. Very important. And okay, so why - Yeah, they are. They are. It's important. And while your sizzles, I'll read the last sentence of mine.

1:02:09An agreeably told but unoriginal entry in the field of financial self-improvement. Well, thank you. So you're an inspiration and I'm unoriginal. And you're brash body and an inspiration to all women. And I tell unoriginal stories. You know, Kirkus is known for being cranky. They're the cranky one. They are cranky. I'm sure they'll take a slap at me. They always do a slap. That one's not very nice. Yeah. Breathtakingly unoriginal. Oh, my God. And I mean, I literally, I would have read your whole one, but I was worried I was going to throw up in your mouth. It is literally, as you said, they licked you up and down.

1:02:52No, it's a good book. Oh, you haven't read it. It doesn't matter. You'll see. Well, yeah, I don't doubt it. People who don't like me have written me, I don't like you, but I like this book. That is where we are with this thing. I want you to read it. What? As I've written several more books in the last few years, interestingly enough, the reviews are inversely correlated to the sales. My best-reviewed book was my least-selling book, The Algebra of Happiness, and my worst-reviewed book, The Four, was The Biggest Seller. Strange. Oh, interesting. Yeah, I think they matter a little bit. Sometimes, a little bit.

1:03:25I think you really do have to market the shit out of these things and get people's attention. Well, they don't pay to write it. They pay to market it, as we are doing now. Yeah, I'm doing a really good word. And you are, too. But I really do think I'm very excited. It was so funny. What I was referring to was when I went to Amazon. They said, people who buy, would you like to buy this package? And it is all, all Scott Galloway books. There's nobody else mentioned. It's just, if you want to buy Kara, you should also buy this package of$70. You can't quit me. I know. I can't quit you. Tawdry and brash.

1:03:55Burn book. Kara Swisher sizzles. What they essentially are saying is this seems like a lot of fun, but it's deep. Yeah, that's what they're saying. I'm deep and fun. That's what they're saying. I think we're scared of this bitch. I think that's what they're saying. Yeah, I know. Anyway, all right. An unoriginal story told by... Well, thanks for that. Thanks for that. Anyway. Okay, Scott, that's the show. We'll be back on Tuesday with more Pivot. Tuesday, I'm going on The View. I'm so excited. I can't stand myself. You're on The View. I've been invited on public radio on Bend, Oregon at the midnight drive hour.

1:04:31So I got - Yeah, that's because you're breathtakingly unoriginal. I got some big media appearances coming on, Kira. And also the Washington Square Muse is interviewing me, the NYU student newspaper. So, you know, we've both got a little - Yeah, it should be good. A little media coming our way. Maybe three or four books. It'll be really good. Tens of dozens. Watch your shoulders, ladies. Tens of dozens of sales. That's right. Tens of dozens of sales. That's right. Anyway, Scott, read us out. Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Nurtot engineered this episode.

1:05:01Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Mille Silverio. Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Sizzle. Thank you.