OpenAI Trial "Soap Opera," ChatGPT's Stock Picks, and Remembering Ted Turner

5:46Scott Galloway:You like that?

5:46Kara Swisher:I did. I was like, oh, this is cool.

5:49Scott Galloway:You want to hear my Nordic story? Should we bring this back to me? In one second.

5:51Kara Swisher:And then I'm going to go after the London thing, which is, I had a lovely lunch with Christiane Amonboer when we heard the news about Ted Turner, but I'll get to that in a second. My little European jaunt, which I did ask you, to dinner at a fancy person's house where there are celebrities.

6:06Scott Galloway:You know, I don't like other people, Cara.

6:08Kara Swisher:It was nice. I will spend a half an hour with you and then I'm done with other people. Okay, but you would have liked this dinner. Anyway, I don't say I don't invite you.

6:16Scott Galloway:I'm going to Stockholm for Brilliant Minds, or at least I've RSVP'ds. So my story about Stockholm was I went there a couple summers ago on a guy's trip. And I was walking around on a Sunday and it was the most beautiful day. Fountains, public squares everywhere. And I noticed so many people out. And I noticed it was all 80 % of the people out where like a 55 or 65-year-old woman and a teenage girl or a woman in her female in her 20s all holding hands, walking around. And I didn't know what was going on. And I literally asked someone next to me. I'm like, what's with all the women holding hands?

6:53Scott Galloway:All the women holding hands. Is that, oh, it's a tradition here. Mothers and daughters on Sundays. I don't know if it's every Sunday. Get together. And there must have been, I'm not exaggerating, in this square, there must have been 300 mother-daughter duos walking somewhere hand in hand. And I thought, fuck it, I'm moving to Northern Europe. I know, it's really lovely, I have to say. It really is. These people get it.

7:16Kara Swisher:One thing that's interesting, though, I have to say is, and I was talking to a bunch of media types here, they're beside themselves about Trump. They just, he has really spun them up. They're all like, and I said, well, you know, we've had it for 10 years, so we'll have to, you know, I'm sure he's on his way out, but it's, they're just, I was like, it's time to just, you're going to have to take control of your own destiny at this point. You can't rely on us in that regard.

7:41Scott Galloway:Yeah, I agree. Same thing in Germany. In the emotion I registered from them is that they're actually, they're very worried and they're actually, in a weird way, it's like you don't appreciate something until it's gone. They miss the old America.

8:02Kara Swisher:And I think there's a certain kind of bereft, like, we're fond of America and we hope that it is still America. The second thing, maybe you got it too. The second thing is how did the tech people become villains? It's here. That brand is here, like completely. Like how awful the tech people are. And before they like had antipathy, that's for sure. Like, you know, with all the different rules they created. And they were sort of onto them before everybody else was. But it's a real like, you know, it's the same trends that are happening in the U.S. The AI is not trustworthy. Tech villains, they suck up to Trump to get their stuff.

8:39Kara Swisher:It's really a theme here. And it's linked to Trump, of course. The tech people are very linked to Trump. And so they have more than antipathy towards tech now. It's really interesting to me, too.

8:52Scott Galloway:Whenever they – but I got some questions about that, about how did tech come off the rails? But I'm like, okay, but you have to couch it in the following context. I get a little bit defensive around this. And that is – and you get that a lot. How did tech and how did American tech brothers become so terrible? I'm like, okay, just to slow your roll a little bit, in 1995, GDP per capita and hourly wage was about the same and productivity was about the same between Europe and the U.S. The U.S. has blown away Europe. I mean, up 20 or 30 % while Europe is flat. And most of that is capital formation in tech.

9:29Scott Galloway:Anthropic, which was founded five years ago, if it had been founded in Europe, it would be one of the five most valuable companies in Europe. I'm like, for all the villainy or villainy or bad vibes that you're getting from tech, keep in mind, these companies have created unbelievable economic value that has, quite frankly, left you in the dust.

9:49Kara Swisher:Yeah. No, that's been happening for a long, lots of first cycle. The second cycle, the third cycle. No, it's absolutely true. But one of the things that was interesting is they're debating whether to use Palantir and some of their defense systems. So, it's top of mind for these people of who these people are. So, it was just interesting. And I'll be interested to see what happens at Cambridge, like what the questions there are. But it's nice to check in with other people.

10:10Scott Galloway:Just the IPOs, just the IPOs of Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX that they go through are estimated to earn or raise about$250 billion. Just those three companies. Do you know how much money was raised in the capital markets in the UK last year?

10:30Kara Swisher:Probably what? In the billion, maybe.

10:33Scott Galloway:2.4 billion. Yeah.

10:34Kara Swisher:Now, granted, that was an especially weak year, but the capital formation in Europe is just not there.

10:42Scott Galloway:It's interesting. It's there for seed stage companies and also the tax policy. You get a 30 % tax credit here in the UK for seed stage investments. You get 30 cents on the dollar back right away. So they're really good about seed stage. What they don't have is in the U.S., if you show any promise or scale, especially in AI right now, you can go out and raise$100 million for your BNC round. That just doesn't exist here in Europe. Yeah.

11:07Kara Swisher:No, it's true. But nonetheless, they're still in with us, technologically speaking, and they have to use our companies. So they're very interested in what's playing out with Trump and the tech people. Anyway, we have to get to the news. Speaking of great entrepreneurs, Ted Turner, the media mogul CNN founder who helped create the 24-hour news cycles, died at 87. Turner was also a major philanthropist, making a record$1 billion donation to establish the United Nations Foundation. He was a different kind of billionaire, although he was also, it was called the mouth of the South. Beyond media and philanthropy, Turner pursued countless other passions from his Montana Grill, his eco-conscious, this is an eco-conscious restaurant chain, being named Yachtsman of the Year multiple times.

11:47Kara Swisher:He was Larry Ellison before Larry Ellison. He announced he had Lewy body dementia, progressive brain disorder in 2018. Jane Fonda, one of Turner's ex-wives who remained a close friend, remembered him saying men like Ted aren't supposed to express need and vulnerability. That was Ted's greatest strength, I believe. And he was. And I recently interviewed her, and she had told me he was quite ill. I talked to him a little bit for my books on AOL. He was real mad about the sale and everything else. Except that when he sold the company, he had that famous quote where he said, and this deal was better than sex.

12:24Kara Swisher:Do you remember that? He always had something kooky to say at any one moment. And, you know, a lot of people are like, oh, he's the reason we have terrible cable. His vision of cable was not this, what has happened. So I sort of pushed back against that because his idea was that you can get news to sort of democratize the news a little more from the big three. And so I consider him a real important, his legacy very important, even though it sort of, you know, morphed into this scream fest that it has become. But his was, you know, it was real news. And I happened to be with Christiane Amanpour, who got there pretty early, not right away at the beginning.

13:03Kara Swisher:And she had nothing but great things to say about his tenure when he was sort of doing real entrepreneurial news, news and other things, you know, and a very generous and charitable person at the same time, and also funny and weird and interesting.

13:18Scott Galloway:Yeah, this guy is, you know, he kind of defined the term that you don't hear anymore, a captain of industry. And the term captain, he was, something people don't know about him is I think he may be the only billionaire who was also an elite world-class athlete. He won the America's Cup.

13:35Kara Swisher:Yeah, he did.

13:36Scott Galloway:And there are just not very many billionaires who've reached the pinnacle of a sport. And maybe Roger Staubach, is he a billionaire now? Anyways, but he built CNN from nothing. It's really interesting how it emerged. So news, when we were growing up, was a public service. And that is ABC and CBS sold a shit ton of ads from Tang and Chevrolet running against All in the Family and MASH and the Partridge Family and the Brady Bunch. And they felt that it was a public service to have 23 minutes of news and seven minutes of commercial in this money losing thing called the local news. And he said he correctly figured out that there was money in a market for 24 by 7 news.

14:21Scott Galloway:And it was very scrappy. If you go back, it wasn't very well produced. And he started the whole thing. Now, where it came off the tracks was, quite frankly, with Rupert Murdoch recognizing that the part of the news, they made an observation. And that is KABC News with Jerry Dunphy back in the 70s had something called Point Counterpoint. And SNL used to mock it. You know, Jane, you ignorant slut.

14:45Kara Swisher:Jane, you ignorant slut. That's our show pretty much, but go ahead.

14:48Scott Galloway:So they recognized something called Point Counterpoint. And it was Bruce Hershenson and Jim Tunney. And they would start yelling at each other. And someone did the analysis and found out that's what people were tuning in for.

15:03Kara Swisher:Yeah, I know.

15:03Scott Galloway:And that was really the key and arguably the most dangerous insight that Rupert Murdoch made.

15:11Kara Swisher:And of course, what did he do?

15:12Scott Galloway:And that is, no, this isn't about balance. It's enough news to create a halo of legitimacy. And quite frankly, CNN was guilty of it too, Crossfire. And CNN now has a show like that where they all just start yelling at each other. That's where Tucker Carlson started. Yeah. Michael Kinsley. Remember Tucker and Michael just going at it? And that seemed civil compared to Whit. Yeah, it is.

15:38Kara Swisher:It actually, when you watch it, it actually is. It seems patrician.

15:41Scott Galloway:It's intelligent.

15:42Kara Swisher:It's intelligent.

15:43Scott Galloway:Good sir, I beg to differ. You know, anyways, it has digressed and has become something that is, I don't know, it's a longer talk show. So let's get back to Ted Turner. He gave away a billion dollars. He actually gave away a billion dollars to the UN. I would argue in the UN actually meant something. Something also, people constantly ask me for male role models for kind of a positive or aspirational form of masculinity. I think Ted Turner is a great role model. One, let's just go to the male stuff. Very aggressive. Also, politically incorrect. perfect. When Time Warner was acquired by CNN, Gerald Levin introduced the whole thing and said, and now I want to introduce my best friend, Ted Turner.

16:26Scott Galloway:And Ted stood up and said, best friend, I've never been to your fucking house. And then my favorite was when he did an All Hands and it was Ash Wednesday and there were a bunch of people in the audience with ashes on their forehead. He's like, shouldn't you be working at Fox? I mean, the guy was - It was funny. I think there's a certain charm in a world now where everything is so, I don't know, especially in corporations.

16:48Kara Swisher:Yeah, but it was a different kind of - Well, it's good natured. He wasn't mean. He was called the mouth of the South. Remember? He called himself that too. I mean, and so it was a different time period. He wasn't malevolent.

16:59Scott Galloway:But he was charitable. He was visionary. He was aggressive. 14 grandchildren, 14 or 12 grandchildren.

17:06Kara Swisher:Married to Jane Fonda. She's still awesome. She told me she was, she's still -

17:10Scott Galloway:An environmentalist. and also took his seat and his privilege and his wealth as an obligation to serve and connect nations with each other. He funded something that didn't work called the Pan American Games, but it was meant to be a more, a less corrupt Olympics. I called it the Pan American Games. It's called the Goodwill Games. It was an effort to ease tensions between the US and USSR. Anyways, he was very serious about uniting nations and trying to promote world peace. He saw his wealth and his seat as an obligation, that he was optimizing for service, not for attention.

17:48Kara Swisher:I would urge people, if they're blaming what cable is now on him, not to. That was not his vision. I was around for that. And it became that, and it was not his. He may have created the 24th. And they did take advantage. Remember the thing that really sent them over the top was that the girl down the well? Remember the girl down the well story? Oh, yeah. That's what Christiane was. He's just like, oh, that's the thing that really got people watching. That and the Iraq War. Yeah, the Iraq War. And that's where Christiane showed up. You saw moments of that. Remember the stud scud, Arthur Kent? Like, it started to turn.

18:26Kara Swisher:That's when you started to sort of see the beginnings of kind of the circus acts of these cable stations. And I was thinking that as I was, you know, I went on Sky News and BBC and stuff like that. and like the constant Hantavirus, and I think it's a very serious, I'm worried about Hantavirus, but the constant, let's go back to the cruise ship, let's go back to the, and I was like, this, actually we're in a war in Iran, I feel like perhaps we need to head over there and take a look at what's had, the cruising going on in the Strait of Hormuz, but he has a great legacy. Remember Bernard

18:59Scott Galloway:Shaw?

18:59Kara Swisher:Bernard Shaw, amazing.

19:01Scott Galloway:Daniel Shore. Oh, my dad's favorite, for the wrong reasons, Bobby Batista, Lois Hart, God, I grew up on CNN.

19:08Kara Swisher:Yeah, and Christian.

19:09Scott Galloway:And also, I genuinely believe a decent administration would be CNN anchors. Dana Bash should be president. She is smart, she is elegant, and she could smother you in your sleep. She's got that edge to her, which every president needs. If you crossed her.

19:24Kara Swisher:Yeah.

19:25Scott Galloway:Anderson should be vice president. Any problems with the Pope, he just goes over there, just talks about grief. Everybody loves him, confident enough. Okay. Freed Zakaria, secretary of state, hands down. Hands down. All right. Michael Smirconish. He could be Secretary of Commerce or Labor. Okay.

19:43Kara Swisher:Do I get anything? I'm a contributor. Do I get like an ambassadorship to something?

19:47Scott Galloway:Oh, you're ambassador to Guyana. Oh, thank you. We've already decided this. Okay.

19:51Kara Swisher:We're going to move on because—

19:52Scott Galloway:You're saving me from myself there? I'm saving you from yourself.

19:54Kara Swisher:Because it's interesting. I don't think Ted Turner—he didn't like the AOL Time Warner deal. That I did speak to him about. But first he was like, it was better than sex. The deal was the best thing I ever did, better than sex. And then afterwards, he like totally publicly decried it publicly. And one thing that Barry Diller, I think, told him was like, if you sell your house and they wreck the patio, you need to shut up, you sold the house. And I didn't necessarily agree with him on that, but it was, he definitely had much regrets. And he probably wouldn't be thrilled where, from the latest numbers from Warner Brothers Discovery, the company reported a net loss of$2.9 billion in the latest quarter.

20:32Kara Swisher:That's essentially a$2.8 billion termination fee tied to the Netflix deal. Paramount agreed to cover the cost, but the expense still sits on Warner's books until the deal officially closes. For people who don't see why that was that big of a loss, but nonetheless, the first quarter revenue was down 1 % year over year, and ad revenue slid 7%. Total streaming revenue did rise 9%, largely by HBO Max when international. Paramount had slightly better news to report, beating revenue and earnings expectations in the first quarter. Paramount added 700 ,000 subscribers during the quarter, helping streaming revenue grow by 17 % year over year.

21:09Kara Swisher:The company's film studio did well with revenue up 11%. And they said they're making great progress on the Warner Brothers deal with late Q3 closing still on track. There's still some pushback to it. At the same time, I'm going to add one more earnings. Disney's under the first new CEO, Josh DeMauro. The numbers were strong with revenue climbing. 7 % to$25 billion operating income across Disney's entertainment sports and experience division beat expectations. The company says it expects earnings per share to grow 12%. That's solid in the fiscal year. In one week spot, a dip in attendance at its U.S.

21:42Kara Swisher:theme parks probably due to fewer international dollars. They're going to see repercussions from gas prices, I'm guessing, and other prices. But it's only down 1%. Maybe the next quarter is where you're going to see it over the summer. That will be the real indicator there. Thoughts on the Warner and everything? They're just sort of bumping along, these companies.

22:02Scott Galloway:So Warner Brothers,$1.17 adjusted gap versus estimates of$0.09, which is actually pretty good. They had a 45 % beat. Operating margin was down, but mostly flat. The linear networks continue to bleed. The revenue fell 8%, with domestic pay TV subscribers down 10%. And free cash flow was$476 million in net leverage. sits at 3.4x. The Paramount deal is expected to close Q3, which will form a company with$69 billion in pro forma revenue. If there's a book, if you wrote a book called The Worst Acquisitions in History, you could just call the book Time Warner. Yeah. They are at the center of the, I mean, three of the five worst acquisitions in history all involve Time Warner.

22:48Scott Galloway:Yeah, with AT &T, AOL, right? Yeah, and this one I think will go down as, In terms of shareholder value destruction, Paramount posted a clean beat and streaming turned its first real profit. Revenue of 7.35 billion versus 7.28. EPS of 23 cents versus 15 cents expected. I mean, companies are just, it's just incredible. Companies are just blowing away their earnings. Their direct-to-consumer revenue was up 11%. Paramount Plus revenue up 17%. I wonder how much of that is land, man. They added 700 ,000 net subscribers to reach 79.6 million in total. Direct-to-consumer EBITDA improved to 251 million.

23:32Scott Galloway:TV media revenue fell 6 % to 3.7 billion as cord cutting continues. And Paramount has nearly doubled its film slate for 2026 versus 2025 since closing the Skydance deal last August, which to their credit -

23:45Kara Swisher:Yeah, he's been promising that.

23:46Scott Galloway:Yeah, everyone's been saying, oh, they're going to gut Hollywood and they're coming out swinging and they're doubling their film slate.

23:51Kara Swisher:The thing is, is it going to make money, right? That's the issue. Let's see what happens. What happens, yeah. So let's just wait until they – you can spend the money. I mean, that's what rich people do, but let's see if they make it. If they have some hits, if they have some hits.

24:04Scott Galloway:And so Josh DeMauro's first earning Coliseo reported a really strong beat. Shares gained roughly 7 % after the report. But here's the thing. 100 % of this beat, the credit goes to Bob Iger. Someone doesn't impact earnings two weeks after they take the CEO job. This beat was really ringing the bell for Bob Iger. Revenue at$25.2 billion versus$24.8 expected. Earnings at$1.57 versus$1.49 expected. Streaming operating income jumped 88 % to$582 million. And Disney's streaming margins broke into the double digits at almost 11%. Their streaming revenue hit$5.5 billion, up 13%, driven by price hikes. And Disney no longer reports subscriber numbers, which is a shame.

24:54Scott Galloway:But their experiences that you reference was up 7%, which must be an increase in prices. because as you mentioned, the attendance is down. And they also have raised their buyback target similar to what Apple did last week and guided for 12. I think Disney is a buy. And DeMauro is, you know, he came out of the parks in which grew nearly 40 % in revenue under his watch. And he called Disney Plus the digital centerpiece of the company. On Wednesday's earnings, he flagged fuel and consumer spending. Dana Walden, who I know you know, named president and chief creative officer.

25:36Kara Swisher:That was an important keep for that company, the keeping her, because she was the CEO. She was the top contender.

25:42Scott Galloway:Well, not only that, they're all, I mean, quite frankly, a lot of these people are probably, I mean, this is the challenge when your stock is below where it was 10 years ago. You have to get the most talented people in a room and say, I'm going to issue new options and please stick around. because you got to think a lot of these people are looking at...

26:00Kara Swisher:Except what is their option?

26:04Scott Galloway:Yeah, because...

26:04Kara Swisher:That's the harder now. You can't be as good at... You can't do those sweet, sweet deals anymore.

26:09Scott Galloway:Yeah, but if you're a talented Disney executive, you could absolutely land... I would stay.

26:16Kara Swisher:See, now I would stay because you have power. You're one of the last pieces of wood floating. I don't know. I just thought I would stay.

26:24Scott Galloway:Oh, that's interesting. I hadn't thought of that analogy. I like that.

26:27Kara Swisher:It was from The Devil Wears Prada, too, but go ahead.

26:29Scott Galloway:I thought it was from the Titanic.

26:30Kara Swisher:It is, but she just said that. She goes, we just got on the last.

26:33Scott Galloway:I was wondering how long it was going to be before you mentioned The Devil Wears Prada, too. Just saying.

26:37Kara Swisher:It's killing it. Still killing it.

26:39Scott Galloway:Yeah, no, it's great. Let's go over every movie that's actually making money.

26:42Kara Swisher:It is making money.

26:43Scott Galloway:Yeah, it's making a ton. It's going to change the world. You get to see it. Lawrence of Arabia meets The Sound of Music meets The Sixth Sense. Disney stock is down more than 10 % year to date, despite back-to-back earning speeds. I don't know if it's because everyone's giving up on traditional media or because AI is sucking all the oxygen out of every other company of the other 490 in the S &P. But I think Disney actually right now is a really good buy. And I wouldn't be surprised if it's put in play in the next three to six months. You keep saying that.

27:16Kara Swisher:By whom? To Apple? Because Apple was looking at perplexity, allegedly.

27:21Scott Galloway:An activist.

27:22Kara Swisher:Oh.

27:23Scott Galloway:An activist comes in and says, you need to cut 20 % of your staff or you need to put the company up for sale. Right, which they did with Iger.

27:29Kara Swisher:I mean, Iger went through that, right? Several times, I think.

27:32Scott Galloway:Yeah, but Iger had so much credibility. He was able to back.

27:34Kara Swisher:So it's weak because this is a new CEO, right?

27:37Scott Galloway:The stock. Disney has this unbelievable franchise. Or it might be corporate restructuring. Go good bank, bad bank. Spin out the parks into its own business.

27:47Kara Swisher:They decided not to, as you know. They were going to get rid of ABC at one point. and then they decided to keep ESPN. I think that's one of tomorrow's first decisions.

27:54Scott Galloway:And an activist will argue that their decisions have been really poor because this company has probably the greatest collection of IP in the world, a booming parks business, and yet the stock is trading below where it was in 2016. This is sort of, I got to think there's a lot of activists. Which activists?

28:12Kara Swisher:The same old sort of unpleasant Ike Perlmutter activists?

28:15Scott Galloway:No, if I had to bet on any firm that shows up forcefully at Dignified, it would be Elliott.

28:20Kara Swisher:Elliott, yeah.

28:20Scott Galloway:And by the way, I don't know anything. I haven't talked to them about this. But I wouldn't be surprised. Unfortunately, it'll probably be someone like Peltz, but he's more consumer. Or I wouldn't put it past -

28:32Kara Swisher:Peltz was in the last one, I think, with Parmutter. Remember? I don't know.

28:35Scott Galloway:I think if Netflix stock was, I don't know, I think Netflix and Disney, this merger, the merger between Netflix and Disney could never happen under an administration that didn't have a FTC or a DOJ that was in a slumber. So if there was any desire to do that, then now would be the time.

28:54Kara Swisher:No, except Brenda is not, doesn't like Disney. It's in his sights. Who doesn't like Disney? Brendan Carr. Brenda. I call him Brenda.

29:04Scott Galloway:Yeah, but, well.

29:05Kara Swisher:He specifically called out Disney, like by name, saying he doesn't like what they have to do.

29:10Scott Galloway:Yeah, but he doesn't get to decide antitrust. Right, yeah. Because it's, I mean, I guess, could he lead it? The bottom line is, Disney and Netflix right now, Disney is cheap right now. So Netflix and Disney in a windup would be game over. If you took Netflix's IP, including Wednesday, Stranger Things, Bridgerton, and used it to go vertical and create experiences in parks, I just think it'd be incredible. By the way, it shouldn't happen. It would be too much concentration of media. But from it, I would buy shares in that company.

29:43Kara Swisher:Yeah, absolutely.

29:44Scott Galloway:I don't think it'll happen.

29:45Kara Swisher:Although, I don't know why it shouldn't, because they have a lot of companies to go up against these tech companies. But I don't know. Anyway, well, interesting to see. It was fine. It was perfectly fine. It was like, okay. It's so funny. You know, when Ted Turner, when that deal happened, I mean, media, that was the top for media, wasn't it? Like when AOL Time Warner happened, I think. It was like they were running the fucking show. They were the kings of the road and then they weren't. Like it's been a downward, downward, downward slide for traditional media.

30:14Scott Galloway:The fall of traditional media for me is embodied by when I first moved to New York in 2000, and like all single people in their 30s, we would pile eight people into a house in Bridgehampton. And every weekend was a mad scramble to see who we knew at Condé Nast who knew what magazine was throwing the most fabulous party in the Hamptons.

30:42Kara Swisher:I was Ron Gallo and all those people.

30:44Scott Galloway:And whether it was Details or Vogue, and the job, the masters of the universe were the creatives and the business people working at Conde Nast magazines in the magazine group.

30:57Kara Swisher:And in the journalism business, I have to tell you, I was like the internet person, and they treated me like shit. Like they were like, oh, you're part of the internet.

31:05Scott Galloway:Tech was boring.

31:06Kara Swisher:You know, and no, it was Ponzi scheme. It was Ponzi scheme. Oh, it's nothing. It's going to, it's all a bunch of, it's going to go away. And the media reporters were such snotbags. I have to tell you, they just were. And I was like, I don't, I think you're in trouble. I was, and they're like, you don't know. They're going to run the show and media, media, media. And I was like, well, I think there's got some vulnerabilities there. But they, I'll never, it was the same thing. It was sort of, it was, well, too bad. That's what happened. Anyway, let's go on a quick break. We come back, Anthropic gets into bed with Elon and SpaceX.

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34:35Kara Swisher:Scott, we're back. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodi says the company planned for 10x growth this year, but is now seeing growth closer to 80x, creating a massive need for more computing power. Enter SpaceX, or rather SpaceX AI. SpaceX acquired XAI back in February, but Elon Musk has just revealed XAI will be dissolved, and its AI products will be part of the SpaceX AI brand, of course, because everybody left. It didn't have quite the traction that he had hoped, so he's, as I said, folding it right in. Everything's going to get folded. Tesla's next. Under the New Deal, Anthropic will get compute power with SpaceX AI data center in Memphis, the one that's polluting people.

35:14Kara Swisher:As it works to keep up with surging demand, everybody needs power. A real turnaround for Elon, who earlier called Anthropic evil. Well, he's now saying he was impressed after meeting with senior executive, adding no one set off my evil detector. Again, look in the fucking mirror, dude. So is this the enemy of my enemy is my friend because of Chad GPT? This is an interesting thing. I mean, obviously, Lentz has not had the success he'd hoped to dominate, and it's all about his beef with Sam Altman. But in this case, this is what he's doing. I would be careful if I was Dario in general. But I think he's savvy enough to deal with Elon, though, and he seems to have enough pushback.

35:56Kara Swisher:Any thoughts on this?

35:58Scott Galloway:I'd rather talk about me and the aughts and reminisce a little bit longer. Is that okay?

36:02Kara Swisher:Just for a second.

36:04Scott Galloway:So I started—

36:05Kara Swisher:Okay, but I want thoughts on this.

36:06Scott Galloway:In 2000, I had – moving to New York from San Francisco, I had just been abused, ridden hard and put away wet by Sequoia Capital, kicked off the board of the – kicked out of the band I started, kicked off of the board of the company I started, just like got divorced. Just like – I just wanted – I wanted to never go back to San Francisco the rest of my life. And I moved to New York. Can I ask you a question?

36:29Kara Swisher:Did you deserve just a little bit? Did I deserve what? What happened with Sequoia? I'm just asking. I'm just curious.

36:35Scott Galloway:Oh, I was an obnoxious, aggressive entrepreneur that was arrogant and reckless.

36:40Kara Swisher:Okay.

36:40Scott Galloway:But also Mike Moritz is a small, vindictive man.

36:43Kara Swisher:Okay, got it.

36:44Scott Galloway:Thank you. So, yeah, I think there's enough blame to go around for everyone. And also the board was a bunch of obsequious people getting – anyways.

36:55Kara Swisher:It doesn't hurt.

36:56Scott Galloway:I'm still not triggered. I'm clearly over it. I'm clearly over it.

37:00Kara Swisher:I swear, all of you are still to this day.

37:02Scott Galloway:I'm clearly over it. But anyways, I moved back to New York and I started an e-commerce incubator backed by Goldman, J.P. Morgan, Maveron, Howard Schultz's company. And it was near impossible to recruit people to come to work for a technology incubator. And I would take people out who were working at traditional media who were making$500 ,000 or$600 ,000 a year. And I'd say, I can only pay you$200 ,000, but I'm going to give you options on$2 ,000 ,000 shares. And I would have to walk them through what options were.

37:35Kara Swisher:Oh, wow.

37:36Scott Galloway:The ecosystem, I couldn't even use a New York-based law firm because they didn't do venture. People don't realize New York in 2000 was about finance. It was about media. There was no - There were a couple. There were a couple little ones. Guilt. Yeah. I mean, there was a guilt and there was -

37:53Kara Swisher:Guilt. I forgot about that. There was guilt in Kevin Ryan's company, and then there was the one ad company that got sold to - It was a media company, which we called it Gawker. There was Gawker.

38:04Scott Galloway:Well, that wasn't an internet company. I know, I know. That was a gossip magazine, a digital gossip. There was a digital ad company in New York. There was no technology. There really wasn't. Whatsoever.

38:17Kara Swisher:Oh, the one that was bought by Yahoo. Tumblr. Tumblr. Oh, my God. Tumblr was in New York. Tumblr.

38:23Scott Galloway:The worst acquisition in history. In history. The worst acquisition in history.

38:27Kara Swisher:I broke that story. Nice to meet you. But yeah, I agree.

38:30Scott Galloway:Yeah, Marissa, within the same 60 days, Mark Zuckerberg made the best acquisition in history. For a billion, he bought Instagram. It's now worth, I think, probably a half a trillion to a trillion dollars. And Marissa Mayer said, I'm a baller. And she bought Tumblr for a billion dollars, which seven years later got sold for how much? A couple million to WordPress. Three million dollars. It was a collection of blogs. Dirty sites. Dirty blogs. They were dirty. And then when they shut down the porn, I got into an online battle with, what's the guy with the bad Caesar's haircut, the venture capitalist?

39:03Scott Galloway:There were two or three. Unisquare Ventures. Anyways, they told Tumblr they were no longer going to fund this bag of shit that was making no money. But he convinced Marissa Mayer to buy it for$1.1 billion. Anyways. Anyways.

39:18Kara Swisher:I'll walk down memory lane of New York.

39:20Scott Galloway:This has been fun. I've really enjoyed this.

39:22Kara Swisher:Okay. All right.

39:22Scott Galloway:And then I joined. And then my incubator collapsed within like six months founding it after the dot-com implosion. And I joined the faculty at NYU where my first year salary was$12 ,000. Nice. Good times. Nice. Okay. Good times. Back to XA. Anyways, back to Anthropic. What are we talking? I've said this. I wish I have never bet on a predictions market. I said this a week ago. So, Calci had Musk winning at 51 or 52%. Now it's all of a sudden fallen to 38. Winning at what? Winning? Winning the case. Oh, the case, yeah. The Musk wins the case. Yeah. Yeah, he's got to make some moves, yeah. Going from, there is no moves.

40:03Scott Galloway:He does not have a legal leg to stand on.

40:05Kara Swisher:Yeah.

40:05Scott Galloway:You can go from a nonprofit to a for-profit. You're allowed to do that.

40:09Kara Swisher:Yeah.

40:10Scott Galloway:And when you - And California already approved it. Speaking of the late 90s, I bought a home for$720 ,000 in Noe Valley near where you live, which was a lot of money for me at the time. And two years later, when I moved to New York, I sold it for$960 ,000 and thought I was a fucking real estate genius. It ended up that house is next to where Mark Zuckerberg moved. It's got to be worth$10 million right now. This is the equivalent. Six.

40:33Kara Swisher:I live right near there.

40:34Scott Galloway:Okay, a lot more. This is the equivalent of me going back to the owners and suing them. Mm-hmm. This is regret and a messiah complex cosplaying a legal argument. I would agree. Judges and courts aren't concerned or aren't moved by anger and indignance and seller's regret. They're moved by evidence and argument, and there's none here.

40:56Kara Swisher:Though I will say, this trial, I was thinking, you know, you're watching the text go back and forth, and Mira Mirati doesn't like Sam, really, even though she pretended she did. and the girlfriend who was on the board, I'm blanking on her name, I don't really care, because Siobhan Zillis, who has had - Isn't that his girlfriend? Well, it's his partner, and then they had four children, and she didn't manage to tell the open-eye people that she had two children with him, and obviously she was - That's not a conflict, Kara. She's like a spy in there, like, right? That's not a conflict. Like, you might give that piece of information if you're in a beef with someone.

41:32Scott Galloway:If you're a fiduciary for all shareholders making decisions around someone's compensation and you're having their children. That's just like, she probably just forgot to mention it.

41:40Kara Swisher:Anyway, so the whole thing, and they're like going back and forth in this trial. And I thought, this is a soap opera, but the most boring people, most awful boring people in it. I'm like, I could give a fuck that whether Miramirati likes Sam Altman or not. I don't care. I don't care. Like, oh, he was manipulative? I don't care. Like, what does that have to do with anything? Like, you know, honestly, I force, You hear that, of course, about Sam being manipulative and telling one person one thing and another. And as I'm reading it in the trial, I'm like, so? Is this illegal? Is he just a jerk? Or you didn't like him?

42:16Kara Swisher:Or he was deceptive? Did he do anything illegal? Because otherwise, your internal corporate hijinks, I don't care. I do think she should have told people she had his babies, in my opinion. But the whole thing is like a bad soap opera that you want to turn off. And it's just bad for AI. It's bad for the companies. And therefore, he's going to do another deal like this. That's why we're where we are. He's trying to glom himself onto a successful.

42:41Scott Galloway:Ron Wayne was one of the founders of Apple. He owned 10 % of it. He sold his 10 % for$2 ,300 back to, I think, Jobs and Wozniak. That is now worth$400 billion. Yeah, he feels bad. And guess what? It sucks to be a grownup. He signed the legal documents. Private property, key to private property is when like Elon Musk, and my favorite defense is, oh, he didn't read the fine print. No, please. He's the wealthiest man in the world with the most sophisticated legal team in history. But, oh, he didn't read the fine. I would like to, I would just love to see someone show up who sold, the guy who sold Tesla to Musk or the rights to it, I forget his name, show up and say, oh, I didn't realize it was going to be worth this much and I didn't read the fine print.

43:24Scott Galloway:Just to see how that goes over and forth.

43:25Kara Swisher:Instead, he's like baby daddy. I'm like, come on. Like, stop it, you people.

43:30Scott Galloway:You fucking people. And then the notion.

43:32Kara Swisher:These are the smartest people on our planet. They sound like rich idiots.

43:35Scott Galloway:They're trying to make an emotional argument that I wanted it to be a nonprofit. And what did I do? Go on to found a for-profit AI company that arguably has less guardrails than any other AI company. A jury of actual people. I think this is a great buy at 38%. I'll take the other side of this. I don't.

43:57Kara Swisher:Yeah. Nobody likes these people. I have to say, Brockman came out of all these sort of loathsome people. I'm waiting for the Sam Altman testimony, but of all the people so far, Greg Brockman comes off the best, and I'm not a particular fan of his either, like the one that keeps notes of everything. So some of the highlights of the testimony, let's say emails from Zillis showing Musk suggested opening AI become part of Tesla, potentially as a B Corp subsidiary. Musk tried to recruit Sam Altman to join the world-class AI lab within Tesla, even offering a board seat. They had no interest, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman.

44:32Kara Swisher:Two days before the trial started, Musk tested Brockman, asking if he was interested in settling the case. Musk supposedly wanted full control of OpenAI, in part to help him raise$80 billion to colonize Mars and was using OpenAI employees to do secret work for Tesla. OpenAI president said the mask lack of understanding, this is Brockman of AI, was a concern for the company. That was factual. When I heard that, I'm like, I get it. And OpenAI's former CTO, Mira Maradi, who's a very nice person, she testified, saying she couldn't trust Sam Altman's words and saying he created chaos. Mira, I like you, but I don't care.

45:08Kara Swisher:Like, then leave. Leave. Leave. None of this matters. Nothing matters. Like, none of it, right?

45:14Scott Galloway:It's not who's a better person. It's not who would be a better shepherd of AI. It's contract law.

45:21Kara Swisher:I know.

45:21Scott Galloway:When you sell an asset, it doesn't matter who the bigger asshole is, the seller or the buyer. I know. He sold. He gave up his ownership and government rights.

45:31Kara Swisher:Baby daddy gave up his ownership.

45:32Scott Galloway:Baby daddy did. And the media is trying to turn this into who would be better at running it. It doesn't fucking matter. Don't follow along with what these people are saying. If you sell an asset, it doesn't matter who's the better person or steward of the home you sold.

45:46Kara Swisher:It is instructive to look how sloppy it is. I keep saying to people, they're like, oh, they're Masters of the Universe. I'm like, they're kind of sloppy. Like Google, everybody in the beginning of Google, they were all like fucking each other. And it was a big mess, and it was chaos, and they all hated each other. They liked each other. I could care less, right? That's the thing until professional management. Microsoft early on was like this, like kind of a mess. But who cares? But the fact that it's coming out in court just makes you realize how dumb and dumb, dumb, dumb this trial is, like how dumb it is.

46:22Kara Swisher:It's about money. It's all it is.

46:24Scott Galloway:This is, I sold something that ended up being worth$850 billion.

46:30Kara Swisher:You're right.

46:31Scott Galloway:And it's, I'm the messiah who's going to put us on Mars, who should control autonomous in the U.S., should control space. And oh, by the way, the one part of the technological revolution that I don't control and I can't seem to catch up in is AI.

46:46Kara Swisher:Just nursing his angry wound.

46:48Scott Galloway:Six years after, I've decided, oh, I should own it. I need it back or I need money back or I need to get in the way of their progress so XAI can. I mean, pretty soon it's going to be, I don't know. I had a conversation with Dario Amadei. I should own, you know, I should own Anthropic.

47:08Kara Swisher:It's ridiculous, these people. $80 billion to colonize Mars. Guess what, Elon? You have it. Spend it and have a good time. Have at it. Good luck. Bye. Take your children. Go. We're thrilled for you. We're excited. We'll write a poem for you, like when on your way out.

47:26Scott Galloway:It's so stupid. I think it was 1986. Was it 86 or 96? Mike Tyson at the peak of his career fought Marvis Frazier and knocked him out in the first 30 seconds. I think legally, Elon Musk is Marvis Frazier. I just think the guy - I don't even know what you're talking about. It's a boxing analogy. I don't like boxing because I don't like to see young men beating each other up like that. But if you want to talk, oh my gosh, whenever the reels come on of Mike Tyson's 10 greatest knockouts, Jesus Christ. I met him at a restaurant.

48:02Kara Swisher:Did you?

48:03Scott Galloway:Yeah. He came up to me. He was smoking. He didn't talk to him crossways, I hope. Oh, my. I was so scared of the guy. I just thought, be nice to him.

48:08Kara Swisher:Yeah.

48:09Scott Galloway:That guy, one of the most dominant athletes of all time. Anyways, this should and I believe will be a first-round fucking knockout. And all this drama and all the media say, who would be better at opening? What happened? None of them. None of them. Who's fucking who? It's like when Iran and Iraq were at war, I used to say, I hope the bullets win. I don't, both. We don't care. I went on CNN and they asked me, who would be a better steward? I'm like, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. The answer is none. Private capital and private property means it sucks to be a grownup. And if you sell your house, it ends up being next to fucking Mark Zuckerberg and could be worth eight or 10 million right now.

48:51Scott Galloway:Okay, it's done. You sold it, boss.

48:53Kara Swisher:Let me make one final observation about these people. these are the richest people on earth, and they're so manifestly unhappy. They just can't shut the fuck up. They can't stop fighting. They have so much money. None of them are qualified to run, be in charge of AGI. None of them. This is what this is showing. What tiny, petty, angry, unhappy people they all are. Every single one of them. And you're like, y 'all, none of you deserve what you've got here. So none of you has the dignity or character to look good. And meanwhile, over to the left, Dario Modi's like sucking up all the attributes of goodness.

49:31Kara Swisher:I don't even trust him and I like him. Like it doesn't even matter at least people. Anyway, there's more.

49:36Scott Galloway:The problem is we shouldn't have to trust these people. We should be able to elect representatives we can trust to do the right thing and regulate these companies.

49:41Kara Swisher:And then we can fire them easily. Anyway, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about managing a stock portfolio via ChatGPT.

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51:49Kara Swisher:to expand those principles to include more people.

51:52Scott Galloway:What's going to determine the next 250 years of America? And how do we write a new social contract that can give us the democracy we deserve?

52:01Kara Swisher:Okay, so I'm just going to be a jerk here because I'm a historian. So we have to have a prologue explaining, you know, we the people. Okay.

52:10Scott Galloway:You know, I do still remember it from Schoolhouse Rock. We the people, anointed the former War of Perfect Union, established justice. What is it? Ensure domestic tranquility?

52:19Kara Swisher:So you're talking about a foundational document. So I'm building a document that will protect American democracy.

52:26Scott Galloway:That's this week on America Actually.

52:34Kara Swisher:Scott, we're back with just one more quick story over the past few months. I'd love to know what you think of this. A Wall Street Journal reporter asked ChatGPT for investment advice to see if AI could really realistically manage a stock portfolio. It actually makes sense. Speaking of Anthropic, they just did an interesting deal where it would make decks and pitch decks and things like that. It's a company, I can't remember the name, but it's interesting though. There's a lot of interesting smaller AI companies being made that actually sound useful, so this is what the reporter did. ChatGPT generally identified market risks, but also made simple math mistakes, suggested questionable market timing strategies, and sometimes veered into overly complex ideas like options trading.

53:16Kara Swisher:The chatbot often told the user what they seemed to want to hear, highlighting a bigger concern that AI could sound confident and persuasive, even when its advice may be flawed or risky. Sounds like a lot of brokers, I know. About 30 % of everyday investors report using AI for their portfolios. So apparently not so good yet, and in lots of really problematic ways. I mean, with a person you're looking at, You sort of have a sense when they're sort of trying to sell you something you don't want. So it's curious. It's just like with law or medical. It's not there. It's not there. And this personalized investment advice is just the latest wrinkle.

53:53Kara Swisher:I don't mind them making decks, pitch decks and things like that. But huge risk for lawsuits, I would assume, just the same with legal or medical or anything else. Any thoughts?

54:03Scott Galloway:Well, I think it was tempting to believe in the 90s you could use Lotus, you know, one, two, three to beat the market by doing all sorts of analysis and calculations. And you might have had an edge for a minute. But what I would argue is that the individual thinking they can use Claude, and I'm guilty of this. I've been asking Claude like crazy using co-work to come up with different options and hedging strategies and to identify stocks. I'm guilty of it. I love the markets. I like to gamble. It's my means of gambling. That's why I'm asking you this. And I find it interesting what it says. But here's the bottom line or what I think.

54:45Scott Galloway:Ken Griffin will hire 2 ,000 PhDs and he will weaponize them with AI and they will outperform the market. But you believing with your$20 a month, Claude Cowork weapon can compete against these folks. You are showing up with a very elegant square gun and they have a fucking howitzer. So this is what you do. You invest in low cost ETFs like Vanguard and people who know and understand technology can use, you know, understand how to use AI. but this will further diminish or create or widen the delta between individual investors and institutional because institutional investors will have the capital.

55:28Scott Galloway:The bottom line is every time you place a trade, you got to keep in mind on the other side of that trade is likely someone smarter than you that has broader technology. So what you want to do in my view, unless you, I get a lot of psychic income around playing the market. So 30 % of my net worth. You like doing it. I enjoy it. You know, it's fun for me. Occasionally I have access to a deal that other people don't have access to. So fine. But the retail investor would be better off finding low-cost ETFs where the management team there is really technically competent.

56:04Kara Swisher:That's what I do. That's what I do. I just put it in there. Exactly the right way to do it. I'm not interested in it. I know I could do slightly better. if I'm a little smarter than most people and have a little more insight.

56:14Scott Galloway:No, you're smarter in an area that has nothing to do. That's Dunning-Kruger. Be careful thinking that.

56:19Kara Swisher:No, what I mean is I have some thoughts on some things that I probably, I'm talking about the average bear, but I don't think I'm smarter than the market. Well, you understand technology. That's right. So I could be like, I wouldn't bet on this company. I would bet on this company probably earlier than other people, but I still wouldn't win, still.

56:36Scott Galloway:The problem is people have emotions in the market and you can't trust your emotions in the market. So when the stock gets cut in half, your emotion is to sell it because you can't take any more pain. And that's probably when you should be buying more. And so, and then you have, you literally have Ken Griffin out there looking at all the trades and seeing where emotion is spiking or irrationally plummeting and then moving in in a millionth of a second and then moving out and absorbing millions of different data points. So you do not want to play in traffic here and believe that just because you're going to get up to the mound where a guy is pitching 105 miles an hour because you've got a new aluminum bat that you think is going to – that you're going to be able to hit a home run.

57:24Scott Galloway:No, you're going to get beamed in the face. So I do think AI is going to be a huge unlock. And also, it will compress margins because what will happen is financial advisors, unless they're really good and can go upstream into tax planning, a mediocre financial planner at your local bank, no, you could probably do almost as well using AI or better and save 1 % a year. I remember when my mom passed away and I was looking at her estate, this guy was charging her one or one and a half percent of her assets every year to put her in eight S &P stocks. I'm like, okay, that's just not that hard. Why are we paying you one and a half percent?

58:04Scott Galloway:Right, yeah.

58:05Kara Swisher:It was one and a half percent.

58:07Scott Galloway:So what I would say is, I think, by the way, I think people should use AI to try and pick stocks. I just don't think they should buy them. I think it's fascinating to see the logic, to see what it comes back with, to start asking more questions. I've been trying to figure out option strategies and a strangle strategy. I just I'm learning a lot.

58:25Kara Swisher:Although sometimes you don't know if it's accurate, right? That's the issue. Some of it, the sycophanticness is still a problem because it's not going to challenge. I think the article says it's no more than having a smart assistant, right? Like they're no smarter than anything else. And there's an assistant part, which doesn't want to displease you. And then it's just a smart person, but you're never going to have an edge with AI.

58:51Scott Galloway:You can normalize for that. There's a co-work feature in Anthropic where you ask this council of people. One's a cynic. One's an optimist. One is grounded in historical context. The other is like an analytical, unemotional person. and all of these quote unquote agents look at your question and then they distill their answers up to a quote unquote chairman who distills it and gives you an answer back. You can also, I lead a lot of prompts with give me the brutal truth because I don't like, you know, I don't like it. I hate it when it says to me, great question. The other thing you should do is, and I can't do this because I unsubscribe from ChatGPT, you can beta test the same, do the exact same prompt somewhere else.

59:37Kara Swisher:I did that before I quit, and I was on other things, like show me a book title, show me a book cover. I got to say, Claude was hands down the best. It just was. It was so clearly better. You know, when you taste test things, you're like, oh, that tastes like shit, and that's good, right? Or the coffee or something like that. But yeah, you're right. But anyway, it's very interesting. I mean, you should all try it out to see what happens and do one of those tests. But this was a great article in the journal, and I think it showed that it just doesn't, It's not as ready for prime time as they say.

1:00:07Scott Galloway:And about 30%, a third of retail investors are already using AI for their portfolios.

1:00:12Kara Swisher:Everyone's looking for a shortcut, Scott.

1:00:14Scott Galloway:But one of the greatest grips, I believe, legal grips in corporate history, was the financial advisor or institutional investors. And by the way, the majority of the grift has happened amongst the richest.

1:00:28Kara Swisher:Yeah, they always have hand holders, yeah.

1:00:30Scott Galloway:Rich people like to believe that they deserve something better. So they want to get into these really high profile, well-marketed hedge funds who they believe, oh, I have access to Alson or I have access to this, you know, D, Char, whatever. Okay, fine. Guess what? If you added up all alternative investments and hedge fund returns for the last 50 years, they have underperformed the S &P by the amount of their fees. it's a and some outperform berkshire hathaway has outperformed my buddy at anchorage capital has outperformed you know i have another buddy at mudra capital has outperformed but generally speaking over the long medium and long term they all underperform the market by their fees by their fee and every piece of data analysis if you go to the finance department at a world-class university and ask them where they invest they're like vanguard me too and they don't pick Big stocks.

1:01:25Kara Swisher:Do you know what I do? They don't pick stocks. I don't know. Someone's like, how are your stocks doing? I'm like, I have no idea. And I'm not going to look until I need, and I don't really need the money. So I just, I'm like, I just put it there and then it goes away. It's like a bank at Gringotts. I don't care. Like, the more I think about it, the more upset I get, right? Like, what am I missing? What did I get wrong? Did I buy gold? Should I do this? And then I'm like, why am I that fucking person?

1:01:49Scott Galloway:It's a great point because in addition to the capital you're investing, you want to talk about the emotion you're investing. And that is, I do get psychic income. You like it. You like it. I started buying stocks when I was 13. I worked at Morgan Stanley. I find it fascinating. I really do enjoy markets and it served me well. Having said that, it also takes a real emotional toll staring at your fucking phone. And then when you buy a stock and you're convinced you're a genius and it gets cut by 40 % in two weeks after you buy it, you're really going to beat yourself up. You are.

1:02:20Kara Swisher:It's just, it's better not to pay attention.

1:02:23Scott Galloway:100%. It is.

1:02:24Kara Swisher:And the other thing is, can I just say for people, again, if you like it and it's fun, that's one thing. And it starts to get too an obsession, it's another. The only thing I wish you wouldn't do is put so much of your medical information into these people because they're not bound by HIPAA. Same thing with legal. I'm like, please don't. I mean, unless you find one of these ones that is bound by the same laws everybody else's, I just worry about that over time. What's that? No, I'm just saying, you put a lot of your, you always like, oh, I love it. Sometimes you don't even realize you're saying this to me.

1:02:54Kara Swisher:I put away all my medical thing into this. And I was like, really? I'm not sure I trust these people to have all Scott's medical.

1:03:01Scott Galloway:I'm very promiscuous with my information. You are.

1:03:03Kara Swisher:It makes me worried. I'll be honest with you. I think, oh, dear. No, don't do that.

1:03:07Scott Galloway:Because you think at some point they're going to get all of it and weaponize it against us.

1:03:10Kara Swisher:They're not. They could because they're not bound by HIPAA. They're not bound by legal things. I just am like, and who knows if they had a security breach. I just am like, oh, I trust my lawyer because I can sue him. I trust my doctor because I can sue him. You know what I mean? Like, and they're bound by certain names. Anyway.

1:03:27Scott Galloway:I wonder if I should just send out a preemptive apology to Angie Dickinson and Emily Ratajkowski right now.

1:03:34Kara Swisher:Why?

1:03:35Scott Galloway:Well, just all the things I've asked, Ailey, about.

1:03:38Kara Swisher:No, no. Okay. We're moving on. We got to go. All right. All right, Scott. One more quick break. We'll be back for predictions.

1:04:08Scott Galloway:Thank you.

1:04:14Scott Galloway:at shopify.com slash special offer. This week on Net Worth and Chill, I'm joined by Tank Sinatra, the meme king with over 15 million followers across Tank's good news, influencers in the wild, and his personal account. Tank is breaking down what the meme economy really is, how much a single sponsored post pays, why major brands are throwing serious money at jokes, and how meme culture, think Preparation H, starter packs, and a perfectly timed screenshot is actually reshaping how we think about money and value. Get ready for a conversation that'll change the way you scroll, make you rethink what going viral is really worth, and prove that sometimes the most serious money moves are wrapped in the silliest of jokes.

1:04:55Scott Galloway:Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on youtube.com slash yourrichbff.

1:05:03Kara Swisher:Okay, Scott, let's hear a prediction. Do you have a prediction for us?

1:05:07Scott Galloway:There was a really interesting story this week that I think kind of indicates or portends what might be in store for us around potential acquisitions. And I made a similar prediction a few years ago, but it didn't pan out. And that is a 32-year-old TikToker just crowdfunded$132 million in non-binding pledges to buy a bankrupt Spirit Airlines. Did you see this? No, I didn't. He said, look, Spirit helps keep airline prices down. Let's do what we did with the Green Bay Packers and let's mutualize it. And he's very talented. And Spirit said it was going to shut down at 2 a.m. on Saturday. And this guy, Hunter Peterson, had a TikTok up the same day, a website by the next, and 6 million views within days.

1:05:53Scott Galloway:And more than, get this, Kara, more than 133 ,000 people have pledged on average about 1 ,000 bucks each, totaling$132 million. And essentially what is saying is that, okay, 20 % of American adults paying the average spirit fare of$30 to$40 equals enough to buy an airline. And they say, okay, it's unlikely to close, but the idea within an era of AI and compliance AI, where you could spin up the legal documents and have people sign them, and with PayPal, I think you're going to see in the next 12 to 36 six months, someone pulled us off where they say, hey, who wants to buy Estee Lauder? Or who wants to buy, you know, it'll start with a small stock.

1:06:43Scott Galloway:It wouldn't be Estee Lauder because that's too big a company, but it'll start with a small company that goes out of business. They'll say, okay, Dick's Sporting, whatever it is. And someone talented, who's very charismatic, who will weaponize social media and AI to collect legal pledges for funds and will buy something. I think I think crowdfunding is going to happen. And also retail participation in U.S. equities has risen by nearly 20 % of average daily trading volume, which by the way is usually a sell signal, up from low single digits before COVID.

1:07:16Kara Swisher:So it's like when everybody got in one of those accounts.

1:07:19Scott Galloway:That's right. And rather than fading, retail flows hit fresh records in 2025. Well, it's because the stock market's up.

1:07:25Kara Swisher:Everyone's like, what am I missing? That's right.

1:07:26Scott Galloway:Everyone thinks they're a genius now. Everyone's like, oh, I'm -

1:07:28Kara Swisher:Okay, I like that. Why don't you do it? Why don't we buy something?

1:07:31Scott Galloway:Well, that's what I used to do for a living between 2000 and 2008.

1:07:34Kara Swisher:Why don't we try all kinds of stunts? What could we buy? What would we buy?

1:07:37Scott Galloway:All kinds of stunts.

1:07:38Kara Swisher:Like Chipotle or something?

1:07:41Scott Galloway:Chipotle's expensive. Right. Chipotle's expensive.

1:07:43Kara Swisher:I don't want to buy an airline.

1:07:45Scott Galloway:Do you know they send me, I used to tell you, I was in the original.

1:07:47Kara Swisher:Isn't that the plot of Wall Street?

1:07:48Scott Galloway:They send me a card. This is the most impressive my sons have ever been with me. I got a card for free lifetime Chipotle and I sold it or I didn't sell it. I've lost it. But I love Chipotle. Oh, you want one again?

1:07:59Kara Swisher:And that's what this was about, a little call for help. I didn't get paid.

1:08:02Scott Galloway:They sent me a card. No, if they do it again, I want serious cabbage.

1:08:05Kara Swisher:Yeah, yeah. I like that prediction. It's a really, really good prediction. By the way, I predict the government is going to lose that idiotic case against the New York Times about the hiring, the DEI, and then attacking the woman who did redistricting. These people make Ceausescu look kind. It's ridiculous. They're going after all their enemies with the FBI, and they're attacking. Here's what I predict. It's going to end in tears for those people. They attacked the New York Times for DEI in a lawsuit. Then they're going to use the Justice Department to try to get E. Jean Carroll's money that Trump owes her, the$83 million, which is insane.

1:08:41Kara Swisher:And then they attacked the woman, the 82-year-old woman. They raided her office to try to find corruption, who was this badass lady in Virginia who did all the redistricting that kicked their ass. and then they are investigating the reporter for the Atlantic who, you know, no shit Sherlock, did the story about Kash Patel being a drunk. And, of course, she immediately answered it by showing off a bottle she bought on auction where Kash Patel gives out whiskey to people with his name on it, like Woodford Reserve Whiskey. So no one's having any of this nonsense that they're doing. It's just so, like, clottish and thuggish.

1:09:21Kara Swisher:So none of it's going to work. That's my prediction.

1:09:23Scott Galloway:Can I just – I can't help it. I agree with you. Private companies get to do what they want. That's none of the government's business, in my view, unless it's – they're claiming reverse racism. I think that – I will say –

1:09:38Kara Swisher:Let the guy sue the New York Times. I don't care.

1:09:41Scott Galloway:A search warrant is not proof of guilt, but it is a serious threshold. And federal judges do not casually approve raids on senior state legislators. Come on. So, well – Why her?

1:09:52Kara Swisher:Why her?

1:09:53Scott Galloway:Because, well, okay, you could argue that the investigation, the fact that it was even launched is politicized. But a federal, a sitting federal judge, they do not issue. No, I don't. This is a high-profile corruption probe. They often look strongest at the raid stage and weaker later once the evidence is scrutinized publicly.

1:10:12Kara Swisher:Yes, like with Letitia James, right?

1:10:13Scott Galloway:But to be fair to the other side, a search warrant is a, you know, it has to pass a serious threshold that a federal judge does not casually approve on senior state legislators.

1:10:24Kara Swisher:I understand that, but there's a reason. They didn't pick 20 other Republican ones. This is what they do all the time. It's a weaponization of the power. And they complained about it happening to them, and then they're doing it. So stop it. Just cut it out. 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. Elsewhere in the Karen Scott universe this week, Scott, Prof G Markets is going on tour this month. Tell us a little bit about it. It's kicking off May 27th.

1:10:57Kara Swisher:It's going to San Francisco, L.A., Miami, Chicago, and New York. You go to profgmarketstour.com for tickets. Tell us a tiny bit about this and why people should go.

1:11:06Scott Galloway:Well, thanks, Kara. It's similar to what we did with Pivot. It's a live tour. we have a bunch of great guests across different cities it's interesting what sells out the quickest New York and San Francisco we were worried that San Francisco wouldn't like us because we're constantly ship hosting tech people but New York and San Francisco are going to sell out in the next 24 hours and anyways but yeah it's just a live tour with me and Ed Elson

1:11:34Kara Swisher:we sold out San Francisco first on Pivot

1:11:37Scott Galloway:was it Toronto and San Francisco?

1:11:40Kara Swisher:Oh, Toronto.

1:11:41Scott Galloway:And Boston. Wait, did Boston?

1:11:42Kara Swisher:We sold them all up fast. LA happened to be a huge theater, so it took a little longer.

1:11:48Scott Galloway:Yeah, but it's, and it'll be after the show, it'll be a bunch of people coming up to me and asking me if Ed Elson is single because their daughter is looking for a nice husband. But yeah, so it's my Prof G Markets live tour. Go to Prof G Markets tour, profgmarketstour.com. It's starting the end of May, first week of June.

1:12:09Kara Swisher:Great. That's fantastic. And also, we're going to be doing Pivot in the fall, another Pivot tour in the fall. You're going to be on the road, Scott Galloway.

1:12:16Scott Galloway:We're doing another tour?

1:12:17Kara Swisher:Yes, you know that. Do you know that? We are.

1:12:21Scott Galloway:I didn't know that, but I'm excited about it.

1:12:23Kara Swisher:You did know it. We literally had a call about it. What's happening?

1:12:26Scott Galloway:We didn't have a call about another tour.

1:12:28Kara Swisher:We literally discussed it. We're having a tour in the fall. You were on the call.

1:12:32Scott Galloway:You weren't listening, but you were there. You were. I don't remember. Where am I?

1:12:38Kara Swisher:Well, we're having one. Anyway, that's the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot. And be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back next week.

1:13:09Thank you.