Tech Stock Troubles, Epstein Fallout, and SF Mayor Daniel Lurie

23:48And Cisco and Amazon lost 90 % of their value from 1999 to 2001. But the people who called it in 1997, the NASDAQ doubled from that point. But what you have is so frightening because, quite frankly, the string that might get pulled by some of the companies that are headquartered here. I mean, I'd like to give the mayor some talking points. In the last five years, as much as people ship post California, there's been more wealth created in a seven mile radius of SFO International Airport than in all of Europe in the last 20 years. I mean, it's striking how much value has been created here. But the string that might get pulled here is just so extraordinary.

24:28And I think it goes something like this. A large company announces that they're scaling back their investments in LLM. A large non-tech company. A large PepsiCo. PepsiCo. Or Toyota says, look, on the earnings call, we made this enormous investment in site licenses from OpenAI or Anthropic. And it's just not showing any ROI, or it's not showing the ROI we had anticipated, we're scaling back. And it's not OpenAI that could take, in my opinion, the market down. It's OpenAI, which is the front, the helm of the bobsled. And then the company that could take the global economy down right now is one that is worth more than the entire German stock market, and that is NVIDIA.

25:05And that is, this company is worth$5 trillion. Take every company, publicly listed company in Germany, and half the companies publicly listed in France. That's what NVIDIA is worth. And so there is no soft landing. And if NVIDIA got cut by 60 to 80 percent, it still might not look cheap. And if you lose$2 trillion in market cap from the S &P, there's just nowhere to hide. Right, because the other companies are the ones that are suffering from this magnificent 7 or 10. They didn't get affected by tariffs. They didn't get affected by all kinds of things. But the president, so this is the dark side of the run-up here.

25:48And that is, I believe that AI has this, without these 10 companies, the market, the S &P would be flat, possibly down, and we'd already be in a recession and GDP would be negative. And quite frankly, and you never know where externalities are going to come from, I don't think the president would have cloud cover to be sending mass secret service or secret police into cities if the market was down 2%. Because of the idolatry of the dollar and our obsession with wealth and innovators in this country, as long as the markets are up. Most damaging metrics in history are the S &P and the Nasdaq because they give the illusion of prosperity.

26:22They are not the mainstream economy. And also, when the markets are up 16 % and as of this morning, 14%, it gives cloud cover for the administration to kind of do whatever they want because everyone's like, well, as long as the market's up, they must be doing something right, and I'll forgive them. So what you're going to see, I believe, is a series of nonsensical, crony, autocratic financings where they back debt to buy more chips and create these circular deals. Was it the government? Because we've been talking about the—Scott and I lived through the first internet part, which was this—there's a company called Purchase Pro, and it was like—that was one of them.

26:58But there was all this round-tripping where the same$5 would go from AOL would invest, and then they would spend on AOL and et cetera. NVIDIA invests, you know. $300 billion, wasn't it? No, well, right now. $100 billion. Right now, NVIDIA, so NVIDIA invests billions of dollars in OpenAI in exchange for them buying NVIDIA chips. That's a related party transaction. There were a ton of them going on in the late 90s. We were all buying each other's crappy software. And then when we realized that consumers weren't showing up at the level we'd anticipated for the great world of e-commerce, the whole thing, the downward spiral.

27:32I mean, these deals just feel very late stage 90s. It is different this time because these are real companies with real earnings growth. But when you're open AI committing to$1.2 trillion in spend on$12 billion in revenues, and by the way, I'd love to see the actual legal language behind these commitments to buy$300 billion and compute from Oracle because there's no way they're not going to have an out. I think a lot of this is marketing. I think saying, I need 40 nuclear power plants and I'm going to buy$300 billion and compute is saying, Jesus, you should see the size of my dick. You haven't seen it.

28:09But just wait. I am so confident in my business that I'm going to commit to a$300 billion deal. I bet this deal, similar to a tariff deal, is a quote-unquote framework. And it's marketing saying, I know more than you. And these huge deals, they're trying to scare away competitors. So one of the things when you have these kind of deals, it does create this froth. And even, as you said, these are companies with actual customers. Certainly OpenAI has many others. But it creates this, it so reminds you of the dot-com thing, except in the dot-com time period, to start a company was inexpensive. And there were lots of them, right?

28:47It was relatively inexpensive to start something up and gin it up comparatively. Right now you need data centers, you need energy, you need water. The amount of money spent on real things that they're spending on or committing to. They just announced something in Wisconsin, in Louisiana, Meta did, et cetera. Now, Meta has plenty of cash because they make a lot of money through advertising right now. At some point, it's going to be good for maybe one, possibly two players. And everyone else assumes it's going to be shit out of luck in this scenario. It's not going to be lots of companies. So I have a different view on this.

29:21And that is because the majority of the people running these companies are under the age of 45, they don't remember airlines, vaccines or PCs. And that is, I think the greatest innovation in history other than the American middle class is vaccines. It saves millions of people's lives every year. And by the way, if you don't believe that, your head is so far up your ass, I can't save you. But I would imagine almost everybody here believes that. But we have come to believe that any huge tectonic innovation from technology can be sequestered by a small number of companies who create IP moats, create distribution moats, brand moats, such that they can accrete trillions of dollars in value or hundreds of billions to shareholders.

30:05There is no technology that changed my life more than the ability to get in a plane and skirt the surface out of the atmosphere at eight tenths the speed of sound. That is just such an unbelievable unlock. It took my parents seven days crawling across the Atlantic and six-month salary to get to America. People to get to San Francisco 150 years ago used to have to stop and eat their nephews and nieces on the way. I mean, but guess what? As of today, as of today, if you added up all the profits and losses of the airline manufacturing industry and airlines, it's a break even. Vaccines, no one's made a lot of money from vaccines.

30:39Moderna stock is now 90%. I was on the board of Gateway Computer, which I realized is almost as weak a flex as you saying, I've been taking Waymos forever.

30:52Smell you. Scott, last night, look, Waymos as we were driving in. I'm like, check that shit out. Check it out. Oh, my God. So I could masturbate in the back and no one would care. Anyway, that was even awkward for me. Did you do that today? Is that what you did today when you were away from me? Don't rag on my hobbies. Okay. Anyway, so vaccines, PCs, we put a supercomputer on everyone's desk that cost$30 million as 15 years prior. The entire PC industry has been a shit show. What I was saying with Gateway Computer, we were the second largest computer manufacturer in the world. We sold the company for$700 million, which is what Google loses or makes in about three minutes into trading day.

31:34My thesis is the following, that the ability to reverse engineer other LLMs because of AI the second factor. The CCP is so sick of this idiot fucking with them that they have said the easiest way to go for the jugular in America is to do in the 80s what they did with steel when they started dumping steel in America. I believe China right now is planning to dump massive AI LLMs at a fraction of the cost, a fraction of the energy consumption. It's going to take these companies down and really fuck with our economy. That's what I would do if I were Xi. So one, I think we're going to be the winners here, just as we were the winners from airlines, PCs, and vaccines.

32:12And the internet. But I don't think a small number of companies are going to be able to sequester the kind of value we are anticipating. So in sum, I think we're going to win as a society, but the markets, I think, are about to get an absolute shit kicking as the string gets pulled by on these small number of companies, which we have become way too dependent upon. Because if I'm in China, I'm like, I really would like to fuck with this guy. I'm going to dump so many cheap LLMs and AI into the ecosystem that these guys won't be able to support, have any sort of pricing power. Yeah, Barry, I agree with you on this.

32:45This is, it's a really problematic. You start to see it, including just this today, they used AI to do a hack for the first time, a fully AI powered hack, which was, there's all kinds of things the CCP can do to hurt us. And meanwhile, they spent a lot of time kissing up to Trump in order to get things, you know, doing the G.R.M.E. argument that we talked about. But let's move on to the latest Epstein news. The lawyer that got Ghislaine Maxwell transferred to a minimum security prison has egg on his face today and much more. In a Twitter spat with George Conway, Deputy AG Todd Blanche seemed to admit that Wednesday's Epstein document dump undermined the interview he had with Maxwell pre-transfer.

33:26And interview is doing a lot of work in that sentence right there. The transfer looked even worse after Wednesday's document dumps showed that Trump and Epstein were tighter than people thought. Scott, do you think she'll have to go back to the old prison? I'd say a hole down at the bottom of the ocean would work for me. Thoughts? He did. He admitted he didn't know the things, although the Justice Department has all these—has 10 times more documents. So, what I don't like about Democrats is that, and I consider myself a proud progressive, but I think oftentimes we get caught grasping for a virtue pen or pin as opposed to really focusing on what impacts the material and psychological well-being of more Americans.

34:12I hope Ghislaine Maxwell dies in prison, but I don't really care. I think the more important thing that impacts people is we have bastardized, perverted, and ruined a very important process of our justice system, which is clemency and pardons. And there are really talented people who are, there are people because of things like three strikes, because of incompetent representation, because of mental illness. There are just, there are a lot of people who are imprisoned and then there's great work done to uncover DNA testing that finds out that they're in fact innocent of the crimes or that they're spending life in prison because they stole a car antenna out of a Kmart.

34:58And this whole process is an incredibly important process. And it has been totally perverted by this notion that essentially in America, we've monetized healthcare. In Europe, healthcare is about trying to keep people healthy. Here, it's about trying to figure out a way to make the pharmaceutical and the obesity industrial complex profitable. We have monetized health care in this country. It's the best place in the world to be sick if you're in the top 10%. It's one of the worst places to be in the bottom 90. We pay double per capita for health care to be more anxious, depressed, obese, and die sooner.

35:32And now, who would have thunk it? We're monetizing the pardon and clemency process. Well, this is not a surprise. This is a coin-operated presidency. Well, that's my point. You know, I agree. I mean, it's one of the problems that we have here, though, is the relentless lying. And obviously, you at the time, when Epstein first, when Elon first tweeted the Epstein thing, remember you were like, oh, and I said, uh-oh, because I saw that. I get the sense I was wrong and you were right. Yes, that's correct. I didn't know where this was going. That is correct. Whenever we revisit history, it ends with, and I was right.

36:07Well, I was. The new biography from Kara Swisher. No, no, no, no, no. Dot, dot, dot. I was right. But the thing is, I was right. So, but he did. He sloughed it off. And you said, it's not. I said, this Epstein thing is going to blow up like a Roman fucking candle. I said it wasn't? Yes, you did. But he threatened, Elon, when he threatened to ruin Trump, he put a tweet out when he was on his way out of Doge. When Doge, you know, he saw the files is what I thought. And he made veiled threats. But then he took it down when he realized he went too far. But when he put that up, I went, oh, Elon, I know what you're up to, because he knew.

36:47And so it's become this phenomenon I think is a problem for Trump. It looks like much of the House and the Senate are going to let this thing go through, this release, the Epstein files. It looks like it right now. So let me finish. The release of the documents right now, though, is such an online phenomenon. It's crazy. It already was with the QAnon gang, but now everyone's participating in it at this point. Um, so, um, talk, talk about what's happening here because the, the, the, the, the, the, just what's been released now is crazy and problematic for the president, obviously. And I think he hasn't, uh, he hasn't had a, had an eruption in all day.

37:28You haven't, J.D. Vance is gone. I don't know where he went. He usually gets on and gets all mad about things and, you know, sits on a couch, et cetera. Um, and he has not been, I have to. I don't think he fucked a couch, everyone. I think I don't. I don't think he fucked a couch. But the fact of the matter is, I think he could. See, that's where I feel about him, right? Like, yeah, sure, he'd fuck a couch, right? But I don't think he necessarily did. I don't care if San Francisco... Well, I'm glad we cleared that up. You know what? It's San Francisco. It's just great alternative media. Okay, all right.

38:04What do you imagine the repercussions? Because if there is, if this starts to really slide, And it has that feeling of slide, especially because it's now we don't have to believe everything Jeffrey Epstein, that heinous monster said, but it had the it has the feel of something sort of late stage Trump for some reason to me. And I think a lot like you saw Louisiana senators, John Kennedy, who pretends he's like foghorn leghorn. But he said he's like, well, I think I should, you know, I'm going to vote for this thing and I don't care if I get a sombrero. like I was like which is I thought at first oh he's so racist but then I realized Trump put a tombrero on Hakeem Jeffries' head so anyway my point being what do you think the couch fucking Epstein files what do you think what do you think is happening here do you think we're gonna reheat your soup for you you're fine what do you think is gonna I feel like a QAnon person but do you what do you think is gonna happen here and the Like, strategery it out for us.

39:10So the reality is, and you've pointed this out, I think I'm better than your average bear at predicting business outcomes. I'm worse than your average person. I would have thought that we crossed about eight. I would have thought launching a meme coin the Friday before your inauguration where people could billions of dollars into essentially a Swiss banking account that you then monetize. There's been so many red—the orgy of corruption here has been so extraordinary. Taking a plane from a Gulf state—I always thought, oh, this is it. This is the red line. And so I don't know if this is the red line.

39:47The thing I can't figure out, though, or—so supposedly every morning on his calendar, he has, quote-unquote, executive time, where he just watches Fox News and hangs out, right? And what I imagine is he meets with his decorator for the East Wing, and then he meets with his comms consultant talking about the Epstein files. And I think it goes something like this. Decorator comes in, mood board, and like, I want it to look like the best whorehouse in Iraq. I think that's... And two, he says to his comms person around Epstein, I just want to look so fucking guilty. Just, I want to look like, I want everything I do, my body language, everything I say, I just want to convince people I'm guilty.

40:27Because there's been a lot of people who've gone to the island, and they've come out and they've said, huge error in judgment. I shouldn't have been down there. I shouldn't have cohorted with this guy. It was really stupid. And people have forgiven Trump for so much more than that. For him to be this panicked, it just looks and smells and feels like there's something really ugly here. And typically with a crime, it's not the crime itself that you get in trouble for. It's the cover-up, right? Martha Stewart wouldn't have gone to prison if she said, yeah, I traded on insider information. I didn't know what I was doing.

41:05I'm really sorry. It was her lying and trying to cover up. Americans actually, although I don't think they'd forgive him for this, but in general, Americans like to forgive. What they hate is people who won't come clean. So I don't, and his body language is so extraordinary. I wonder if this is the event, the kind of singularity or the apex kind of predator, and that is people start fleeing from him. But I have a bad sense of this stuff. Well, you're saying it in the polling numbers, including, especially with Republicans, actually. The Republican numbers are down. And then all of a sudden, all his defenders are now trashing him, which is interesting to watch.

41:41But who is that? I mean, other than Mason. I don't, cat turd, et cetera, those people. They are, they're starting to really, the thing they're most mad about is him insulting American workers over Chinese workers. It's just so, I mean. They're not mad about pedophiles. They're mad about American workers, whatever. They're mad people. I'll put it back to you because I've been just so wrong on this for so long. I do think this is it. This is it. Because I do believe— When you say it, what happens? Well, I think more will be—I think he can—it may not get—I think if it's going to pass the House, I have a feeling it might pass the Senate because you don't want to be on record as trying to quash this kind of stuff.

42:24He'll get to his desk. he's going to have to veto it, right? He's going to veto it. If he vetoes it, it might not get out, but it will then get out. Yeah, but it, okay, first off, I think. More stuff. To me, what has to happen. Right. These emails, and by the way, I spent all day reading them. These emails are problematic enough. There's a photo, and Epstein has referred to it. There's a video. There is definitely a photo of him in some fashion, and that will get out. And then it'll, because as you said, visual stuff is what people respond to. People are very upset about the East Wing because visually it's repulsive to look at.

43:02And so if there's a photo, I think, you know, the pussy grabbing thing was voice, which was problematic enough. But there's a photo like what happened to Andrew. I think it's game over. And then we have President Buck and J.D. Van. But it forced to speculate. But if forced to speculate, the thing that I think I would guess happens, when you have a sycophant, unusual gentleman running your FBI that is claiming the files have been released to the extent that is legally possible, which is a lie, and you have your own personal attorney running the DOJ, I just wouldn't put him past them to do what I would call a soft release.

43:43and that is they release stuff and claim it's a full release and it just says the names of all these Democrats. But quite frankly, I just, why would we think it's not above them to engage in the corruption of bastardizing, lying, and altering the it here when they have implanted or embedded up and down the supply chain a group of corrupt people? You know, I'm a big believer, as people know, when I covered Silicon Valley and the leak. and I think there's going to be people leaking this stuff. And it's going to be drip, drip, drip. And this is something I think, you know, it would be super ironic that this guy gets taken down by emails.

44:25Right. You love that.

44:31Hillary Clinton must be like... You know, they were on her. It was a big joke on the internet. The thing that was on her server was she was trying to help a young girl get out of Afghanistan was what got leaked for her. And for him, it's, you know, all this terrible stuff. Yeah, I would say this is worse. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, we'll see what happens. I think this, I just, I don't know. I feel like we're going to have President J.D. Vance by the end of 2026. I get it, but he is the vice president. So wait, hold on. You think this ends his presidency prematurely? Yes. He'll be sick. He'll be da-da-da-da-da-da.

45:08Yeah. I do. I think he's not going to make it to the end. Be careful what you wish for. I think J.D. Vance is scary. I agree. Hello, I just called him a couch fucker to San Francisco. J.D. Vance is all of the calories with none of the great taste of stupidity that doesn't get things done. Yes. This guy is, you want Peter Thiel to be president? Because that's who's going to be president. Yep. And by the way, who is also in the Epstein emails, FYI. A lot of people are in there. He was just, they're just joshing away. To be honest, I love the stuff about Larry Summers getting dating advice. Larry Summers.

45:41To me, the worst thing today was Megyn Kelly sort of parsing. Age. Age. It's not as bad as we thought because it's 15-year-olds, not 5-year-olds. Yeah. 10-year-olds. 10-year-olds? Yeah. 5-year-olds are worse for her, I guess. I don't, the whole thing was demented. Like, it was demented. I listened to the whole thing because I was trying, I'm like, oh, she can't have said that. And I'm like, she said that and more. Like, it was really, to me. And in a different age, that would have been career ending. And it's not. She'll just rage her way through it with her fan base. Yeah, I don't, well, I don't, I like the fact, I think we need less career ending stuff when people fuck up.

46:19Because if we're going to have 24 by 7 media, I think you have to have a little. Why does anyone want to run for anything? Have you noticed in this guy, the mayor, he's unique because he doesn't want to, I generally believe he doesn't want to do anything after this because he wouldn't come on my podcast. I can get anyone on my podcast right now because they're all running for president. And he said no, which means he has no desire to move on beyond being mayor. Maybe he doesn't like you because he's coming on mine.

46:48Actually, he already went on yours. And you know our deal in this relationship. When you bring in a third person, I at least get to watch. Anyways. Oh, God. Where were we? so profoundly uninterested am I in you. What I was saying, essentially, unfortunately, the reason politicians are so boring and so starched is they're worried about saying something indelegant. I'm not talking about Megyn Kelly. And I think the Democrats, quite frankly, need to be more forgiving and have fewer purity tests and be more focused on the programs. Yeah, I agree, right? You know I agree with it, but I don't agree.

47:24I don't agree when you say, hey, it's a 15-year-old, we can all understand that. Yeah, but you hate Megyn Kelly and she hates you. No, no, no. That is not right. You don't hate her? No, of course not. I advise her to go into podcasting, a thing I regret to this very day. She's very good. I get it, but this—you have to—I'm sorry. There's certain things you're right. You shouldn't be careful about saying— It's a giant fucking distraction. No, it's not. It's a heinous thing to say. Okay, but why are we spending— I just think it was particularly heinous on a heinous day of things. Yeah, she's a fucking podcaster.

47:59What we say is not that relevant. The emails and what's going on with him are the news. Yes, absolutely. I agree. I still think she's heinous. Anyway, all right. We need to take another quick break, and we come back. We'll get to a little more news and then listener questions, so get ready.

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49:25Scott, we're back. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has directed visa officers to deny entry to people with chronic health conditions like obesity, diabetes, and cancer, citing potential health care costs. They'd get right in. Yeah, I know, exactly. The guidance also flags retirement age and having dependents with disabilities as a reason for denial. The White House claims it's just enforcing an old policy, not letting in people who'd be a drain on taxpayers. but immigration lawyers say it's a massive expansion of who can be turned away. About 16 % of adults worldwide are obese, probably largely here.

49:58What does this sound like? It's not give me your tired, your poor kind of attitude. What historical government does this remind you of, Scott? Look, I don't think anyone has, this is a tough one because, I mean, it's sort of the one thing we share in America, except in wealthy cities where you all go to Equinox. By the way, I went to the Equinox in my hotel today. The hottest men. Okay. My God. Did you hook up? Whew. Wow. Yeah, in the back of a Weemo. Yeah. Now, so 70 % of America is either overweight or obese. That's the one thing we share. 70 % of Americans aren't anything except we're obese and overweight.

50:38So that seems very strange to me that we wouldn't say, oh, you're uniquely American if you're obese. But at the same time, I do think that, and it can go up and down. If you're an outstanding roofer and you don't have a criminal record, we need roofers. We need people to take care of our elderly. We need people to keep our prices. I'm a big fan of going up and down the supply chain in terms of who we let in. But I do think there should be criteria around who will or who won't be a drain on the system. I just don't know if it's on Sigmund. Right, but why now? Because they're taking snap. And this is all about cruelty, just cruelty to various people.

51:20It's not—and again, the real obesity problem is here in this country. They don't want to address that. But on a meta level, this is what happened. When progressives wouldn't enforce the border, fascists will. We stuck our chin out. We let a quarter of a million people come across the border in one month under Biden by going, asylum, that's all they had to do. And so the general cadence and rhythm of politics in America the last 10 years is the following. We are well-intentioned progressives. We do really fucking stupid things. We let a transgender woman show up at an NCAA meet and compete, right?

51:56And I'm not suggesting that a transgender athlete in junior high school leave it up to the school. If it gives her confidence, fantastic. But when we let transgender athletes compete for medals and money and we all just ignore it, fine. When we let a quarter of a million people come in, and then what happens? We have this severe reaction of fascism from the right where they start pulling the names off of people who have served honorably, and we decide in a little nod to the gay community's contribution to the military that we're gonna name a secondary frigate after Harvey Milk, and they decide to take the fucking name off.

52:33I mean, that's just, that is just so, or they're now kicking all transgender service people out of the service who have served honorably, which is not only mean and cruel, but it makes us less safe. But let's be clear, folks, we stick our chin out in my view. And I know that's not popular among this audience, but when we go fucking insane and do things that are well-intentioned, but we built an infrastructure and an apparatus where people like me can pay themselves well and have no accountability or measurable outcomes, then sweep in this ridiculous fascist argument that we should cut funding to universities under the auspices of anti-Semitism.

53:08We take good intentions way too far, focused on virtue, not on actual on-the-ground material or economic or psychological well-being. And they overcorrect with what feels like fucking 1933 Germany. But see, Scott, that's the thing. I might agree with you on some of that, but it's the level of cruelty and how far they go. Agreed. You know, the left can be censorious and then the right bans books. Like it's a very different level. We're saying the same thing. But when you have something like this, what should be the criteria who comes in? People who are useful that we need here in this country? And to kick people out, not people who are hardworking, paying their taxes, etc.

53:49You know how I feel about this stuff. I don't, I think it's, I think it's, we need people to, look, the reality is this. People say immigration is the secret sauce of America. Okay, I don't know what that means. The most profitable part of immigration is illegal immigration because these people pay so—they call them undocumented workers. They have all sorts of documents. They have taxpayers because we want to collect Social Security payments for them. They have phone contracts. They have driver's licenses. They have insurance contracts. They have cable bills. We paper them up all over the place so we can collect money, right?

54:28And we've been turning a blind eye to this for 40 years because the reality is they come in, they don't tax our services, they commit less crimes, they go to the emergency room less, and they pay Social Security taxes, and generally they return home before they collect Social Security. They're the most profitable, flexible workforce in history. Having said that, you do need borders. You do need some sort of system for evaluating. And I personally believe that being born on planet Earth does not give you a birthright to live in America. Otherwise, we're going to have a billion people on our shores.

55:03So there needs to be criteria. Some of it needs to be based on true political asylum and where we can help people. But I do believe at the end of the day, we should let in people that are most accretive to our economy and our society. I think there should be a criteria, and I think we should say no to a lot of people. Yeah, well, I still think this is cruel. So I'm just thinking it's just, they're just doing it for performative ways. Okay, last question. Then we're going to get to audience questions. Now, do you see why I'm so positive about San Francisco? Why I love it? He always gives me a hard time, but I love it.

55:35I lived here for 10 years. I was married. We were doing things like going sailing and going biking in Mount Tam. And I thought another 10 years of this, and I was in tech. I'm going to go into the garage, turn the car on and leave the door down. that there's nowhere to get a cook get a cocktail after 10 p.m here everyone everyone wants to go to Sonoma and go wine till fuck oh my god oh and the technology industry we're saving the planet I have never bet a more rapacious bunch of douchebags who would fuck their sister for a nickel.

56:13But we're saving the whales. We're saving humanity. So fucking unattractive. Okay. Oh my God. Come to New York. Oh, hello. Hello. They drink. They love to make money. Anyways. So true story. I said to my wife, I said, we decided to get divorced. And I said, I want the dog. You can have all of our friends. I'm never coming back. Well, I love San Francisco. Yeah. I had, I had, I literally had the best day. I walked around Noe Valley and I walked, it was pouring rain, but it was lovely. I love San Francisco in the rain. I, I had oysters. And by the way, my son, Louie is moving back here. So I'm very excited.

57:00He was born and raised here. So thanks, Scott, for that terrific ad for San Francisco. We'll take one more quick break. We'll be back for some audience questions. We're very excited.

57:32what matters, growing your business. This is where Odoo comes in. It's the only business software you'll ever need. Odoo is an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that handles everything. That means CRM accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, and more. No more app overload, no more juggling logins, just one seamless system that makes work easier. And the best part is that Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. It's built to grow with your business, whether you're just starting out or you're already scaling up. Plus, it's easy to use, customizable, and designed to streamline every process.

58:04It's time to put the clutter aside and focus on what really matters, running your business. Thousands of businesses have made the switch, so why not you? Try Odoo for free at odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com.

58:25Scott, we're back recording live from San Francisco here.

58:34in the city by the bay and my favorite place on earth. We're ready to take some questions to the audience and we love hearing from you. We might not get to everyone tonight. We're going to try. We've been trying in every city. We're getting biggie long lines. That said, keep questions short so we can get to as many people as possible. But let's just look. I have a special person starting. Let's show this clipping photo here. So you might want to look at it. Okay. This is a picture of Scott Galloway as a kid doing taekwondo. Where did you get this? Exactly. So let's bring the lights up please so I can see where people are.

59:12This is in. So hi. Hi. What's your name? Debbie Brubaker. Jesus Christ really? Hi Scott. This is apparently or Scott thinks so his fourth grade girlfriend? I'm thinking so.

59:40That's her up there. He's right there. Just real quick, Debbie and I were the smartest kids in the third grade, and they used to send us to fifth grade for math and English, and we used to hang out. We did, and I am thinking maybe you had a crush on me, and maybe I had a crush on you, but I am now on Kara's team. I'm back for the other side.

1:00:06But I haven't seen you in 50 years.

1:00:19Thank you.

1:00:25She didn't know who I was when they asked her to come in. Yeah, she's not online. Is that right, Debbie? Get on the thing. Get back up here, Scott Galloway. Stop making out with your third-grade girlfriend, who is, of course, Scott's always like, everyone I went out with became a lesbian. I'm like, let me find one. Let me find one for you. It was so easy. I should have known. We spent the night in your dad's camper, and you wouldn't even kiss me. We were playing Truth or Dare, and you're like, nope. Debbie, it's so good to see you. So do you have a really quick question for us, Debbie, by the way?

1:00:53You're not on social media. Do you have any questions for us? I am not on social media at all. Good for you. I'll just tell a quick story, but my stepsister who's here is a huge fan of both of you. She listens to Pivot every podcast. And she, I guess, heard you say something about me and being the smartest girl in third grade. And she texted me, I guess she almost got in an accident. She was driving. And she texted me immediately and said, do you know Scott Galloway from fourth grade? And I said, yes, I do. And that led to other things that got me here. And I've never seen you bald or bald. It's not a good look.

1:01:37Is there, is it, are you going to change back for him? Don't. Maybe I'd like to get to know you.

1:01:46Anyway, Debbie, thank you so much. We really appreciate it. It's so good to see you. It's Debbie. That was so nice. Thank you. What a thrill. Yeah, come to our party. Thank you. All right, next up, my butler, Casey Newton. Hi, everybody. Hi, Casey. Great to see you guys. My sons call him Gacy, but go ahead. That's right, yeah. I'm a huge fan of the pod. I actually had a crush on you, Kara, when I was in fourth grade, so it's nice to see you tonight. You know, I thought in the San Francisco fashion, I might ask another AI question. Okay. I noticed in your analysis of the potential crash, you did not seem to take into account the possibility that one or more of these companies creates a pretty effective digital worker, something that you could swap in for many, many thousands of employees.

1:02:32And so I wondered, is that because you don't think it will happen? And if you did think it might happen, how might it change your analysis? I'm sorry, an effective digital workplace? What we might call AGI around here, a worker, like something that you could, you know, use software instead of hiring a person. automation? So I think these companies are incredible companies. And I do think AI is going to, so every year I pick a technology of the year, I do a predictions deck at the end of the year, and I picked AI two years in a row. And actually this year I picked, I actually think GLP-1 is bigger than GPT-5 in terms of on the ground impact on Americans' lives.

1:03:12I think these things are going to be incredible. I just doubt they're going to be able to live up to the expectations built into, if you look, Casey, at the market cap they're at, built into any sort of reasonable forward price earnings, they're built into the valuations of these companies is the assumption that they're going to either create three to five trillion dollars in incremental revenue for their clients or save three to five trillion dollars. And so far, I don't see a lot of AI moisturizer or cars that are designed or driven by AI, autonomous, you could argue. What I see so far is efficiencies, which is Latin for layoffs.

1:03:53And if you do, so what you see is you hear about firms saying, we're going to save 10 or 20 or 30 or$50 million on legal costs or compliance, which again is Latin for layoffs. And if you do the math, only 160 million Americans work. assuming you need to find a trillion dollars a year in efficiencies to justify these valuations. An average salary of 70 or 80 grand, including load, office load, 100 grand, let's just assume. To save a trillion dollars in efficiencies to justify the valuations, that means you need to find 10 million fewer jobs or there needs to be a labor destruction of 10 million jobs.

1:04:33If I'm 160 million total employment, stick with me, I know this is boring. If half the industries are immune to AI, plumbers, chiropractors, nurses, whatever, that means 80 million people are quote unquote vulnerable. And the only way you could justify these valuations is one of three things needs to happen. They come up, all of a sudden we start using all these AI driven products that convince us to spend more money. or we have a 12.5 % destruction in the labor force across the industry susceptible to AI, which is chaos. That may not sound like a lot, but at the height of the automobile collapse, it wasn't that much labor.

1:05:10So we're either gonna have an unemployment chaos across several industries or these companies are gonna get cut in half. Either way, I see tumult, but Casey has this amazing subset called Platformer. That's right. And I'll put it back to you. Where do I have this wrong, and what do you think about that assertion? You may very well not have it wrong. I just know that all of the folks I talk to here who work in the industry, who run these companies, say, 12.5%. Like, yes, I can take that number of jobs out of the economy. So, you know, I don't know if they're right, but that is certainly the assumption that it's holding here right now.

1:05:46Or perhaps they don't know. Well, yes. That's my assumption. That's always my assumption. and you know I see some of the clues to that is when OpenA announced an erotica service that mean they'd run out of ideas right and they went right to porn I was like ah we're porn now oof that's a problem alright well thanks very much y 'all thank you for the question you guys we really do recommend Platformer Casey has been a long time he did live in my house where Louie's going to be living in case you're interested but he's a great great writer and a great analyst so you should read him. Next question.

1:06:24I'm Joyce, 25-year resident of San Francisco. Worked in music first, and then tech. Music got destroyed by streaming. Tech kind of has had its bubble too, and now I work in legal weed. Oh, great. Legal weed. Hello. Yes. Consumer here, yes. Did you bring some for the dog? I brought you a present. I did. I did. Oh, my God. I just shoot my shot, right? Yeah. It's called Sonoma Hills Farm. We're the first OCAL certified organic cannabis farm in the state. Yesterday was a big day in Congress. Well, hemp was banned yesterday. I think it was 76 to 24. Yeah, that makes sense, right? Right. You know, regulated parties are like, well, you know, hemp just kind of has this loophole and we've spent all this money.

1:07:20But at the end of the day, it was like the biggest step towards backtracking prohibition that we've seen in a long time. We have 24 legal states, 39 with, you know, medical cannabis helps with reducing anxiety. That was Mitch McConnell in the alcohol lobby that did that. Correct. Yeah. You know, they have these amazing off-brand pharmacies here where you can get generic drugs. And I got some generic erectile dysfunction drugs. The generic term is mycoxaflopin. Okay. What is your question? That's good. No, that's bad. That's good. Doesn't that word just make you happy? My cocks are flopping. No, it doesn't.

1:07:58It makes me sad. Besides giving Scott drugs, what is your question? My question is, you know, 70 % of Americans approve of legalization. And yet 24 people said yes yesterday and 76 said no. And here we are with 70 % of the population able to buy legal cannabis. Meta will not let us advertise. None of the fintech companies let us use their software. So these business owners who probably ideated high now have these big companies and they're saying, no, cannabis, you can't play in this field. I'm interested in like why big business and government keep saying no to something that a massive swath of the population cares to.

1:08:41I mean, it's a really, I agree with you. It's ridiculous, which is why so much of the action has been on the state level, right? Right. I find it's the same thing with gun control, when it's like 80 percent, there's a bunch of topics that are 80-20, and our Congress does the very opposite for all various and sundry reasons, depending on the topic. But something like this, this is, you know, it's a difficult industry. I know it's been through its ups and downs, especially the legal marijuana industry. It's been a tough road in so many ways. I think it's the alcohol lobby just had more power than the marijuana lobby and somehow you have to gain more power and I suspect when Congress is in 103 fucking years old and you know puts back the liquor and Mitch McConnell's long gone which is next week hopefully but some of these people it will change as younger people come up and don't because I certainly know among I have four kids but my older kids, well, Alex just does protein shakes, but they're not drinkers.

1:09:49They're weed people, right? Or that's the preference. And so it seems like all their friends are like that. So I think it's just a demographic trend that's just going to take a while. Scott, do you have any thoughts? So this goes back to dating advice. I think substances play a really important role in a young person's life, and they're not for everybody. You may decide that It's not for you. I'm trying to drink less alcohol as I get older because I realize my 51-year-old liver cannot handle. 51. He's not 51. Just go with it. No, I'm not. Just go with it. He's Zsa Zsa Gabor of like podcasters.

1:10:26Anyways. Darling, I am very. I love being high. I'm a better version of myself, a little bit fucked up. And as I get older, I'm trying to reduce my alcohol content and I replace it with THC and edibles. But I'm very serious and I've said this and I've had Andrew Huberman and Peter Atzi on my podcast. I think one of the worst things, the second worst thing to happen to young people, the worst is remote work. One third of relationships begin at work. You need to touch people, you need to, with their consent, you need to, you need guardrails. If I hadn't had a job at Morgan Stanley that demanded I got into the office, I didn't have the discipline not to walk my dog and watch Netflix and smoke a lot of pot every day.

1:11:08I needed the office, I made friends, I found mentors. So anyways, but the second worst thing is this anti-alcohol movement. Look at the most important things in your life, the relationships. Look at your best friends, look at your romantic relationships. Did alcohol play some role in that? Seriously. What about weed? She's asking about weed. For some of us it was weed. Weed, I would say the same thing. But my advice, generally speaking, to young people, is drink and do some edibles and then go out and make a series of bad decisions that might pay off. Nice. And for the marijuana industry, you'll get, you'll beat them at some point.

1:11:51You absolutely will. Because the old people will die. As Scott says, biology is undefeated. Anyway, we really appreciate this. And I'm so glad to see so many friends. I have so many friends. My amazing brother is here, Jeff Swisher. Dr. Swish. His lovely wife, Dana. I don't know where they are. My good friend Robert May is here. We have lots. Robert, I don't know where you are. Tons. We have tons of friends here. Gave me my first office space. Yeah. In any case, we really appreciate it. We love San Francisco. We will be back. You can catch selected shows from this tour on YouTube in your podcast feeds.

1:12:24So that's all we've got time for today. Scott, read us out. Today's show was produced by Lara Neyman, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Kate Gallagher. Amazing support provided by Trish, Kelly Schwanter, and Caitlin Litch. And a big shout out to the Vox Media Experiential team, Riley Courtney Given, Abby Aronofsky, and Caitlin Berla. Make sure to follow Bivit on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for listening to Bivit from New York Magazine, Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at anyone.com. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Thank you, Kara Swisher, and thank you, San Francisco.

1:13:01Thank you, San Francisco. We love you. Thank you so much.

1:13:24This is where Odoo comes in. It's the only business software you'll ever need. Odoo is an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that handles everything. That means CRM accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, and more. No more app overload. No more juggling logins. Just one seamless system that makes work easier. And the best part is that Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. It's built to grow with your business, whether you're just starting out or you're already scaling up. Plus, it's easy to use, customizable, and designed to streamline every process. It's time to put the clutter aside and focus on what really matters, running your business.

1:14:04Thousands of businesses have made the switch, so why not you? Try Odoo for free at odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com.