U.S.-China Trade Deal, Trump's Plane Grift, and the American Pope

23:38Well, yeah, you love him like a son. No, I just think he's going to be a billionaire, and we should, speaking of being scared of people, you should be scared of him. He's on our side. He's going to take care of us, you and I, when we're older. No, he's going to be my bodyguard and also figure out what technology keeps me alive to 200. I feel like he's going to build something really significant. I feel it. Yeah, he's got that kind of crazy smart gene. Yeah, he really does. Anyway, we can't say what he's doing. He's under NDA. I know. It's totally top secret. I love that about him. Anyway, Trump, you're a grifty grifter.

24:09That's all. I don't know what to say. I don't know if we can stop him, but he's like piling up the grift like you can't believe. All right, when we get back, how the new Pope is riling up the MAGA world. And we'll also discuss some of our favorite Pope memes, because I love a Pope meme.

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26:01Scott, we're back. The Pope, Leo XIV, the first American pope, laid out a vision of his papacy over the weekend, identifying AI as one of the most critical issues facing humanity. It was interesting. He was also sporting an Apple Watch at his first official mass. He also seems to be a very techie pope. Let's invite him on the show. That would be great. And while many have cheered the election of American pope, the MAGA folks are not happy. Activist Laura Loomer branded him woke Marxist pope. Steve Bannon predicted friction with Trump. As for Pope Leo's political leanings, voting records show a Chicago native has participated in Republican and Democratic primaries in various elections.

26:35An ex-account under his name has criticized Trump's policies in the past and also rebuked J.D. Vance back in February. He's got a crazy Trumpy brother who, what was he saying? He's saying a bunch of things that are really nutty. One brother's calmer. He's two brothers. The older one seems insane. He's, as you said, from Chicago. He has a background, interestingly, of Creole and from Haiti. You know, they're calling him also the Black Pope, but he's definitely got, they did some really interesting reporting on that, which is cool. He's been all over the world. He's very international. Seems fascinating.

27:10So we'll get to the memes in a bit. What do you think of this Pope Leo? And so far, he seems very vibrant and exciting and interesting. I think he's the Pope because of Donald Trump. I think that if you look at the new leaders of Australia and or the existing leaders of Australia and Canada, basically Trump got them elected. And he got them elected because the other their opponents were more closely associated with Trump. So Trump is basically anyone who's not Trump or represents a pushback on his policies is ascending to the most powerful positions in the world. I think that's what happened here.

27:45I think the papacy or the papacy takes very seriously how they can have the most impact. And if you look at when the Eastern Bloc was really going through a difficult time, they decided to pick someone from the Eastern Bloc. They picked Pope John Paul II from Poland. I think they see there's a relevance and a means of adding value by saying when a place is struggling, we pick someone from there in hopes that they serve as sort of a moral standard bearer. My father-in-law absolutely adores Pope John Paul II. He's born and raised in Poland. And I think that it's no accident that they've decided that America needs a pope, that they need somebody.

28:25I mean, the best line that identifies or marks this very dark moment in American history is what Bill Gates said. And that is that the richest man in the world is killing the world's poorest children. That was something, as we said. And I thought, Jesus Christ, that's puncturing and sad. And that kind of identifies our MAGA politics right now. And I think that the cardinals who elect, I think they decided that America is in desperate need over moral standard bearer and the world needs someone that America will take seriously. You know, I was thinking so much about, like, how did my generation fuck up so bad?

29:05And I was thinking, and for me, it all comes back to a personal parable. Oh, you're doing a parable? Well, my youngest is always built. He's got the most wonderful grandparents. And his granddad. Your wife's parents, correct? Yeah. my grandparents went down, average age expectancy. You know how everyone says I'm going to live forever? Like none of my grandparents made it past 50. Anyways, so he's just the most wonderful man. Took over the family room to build a train set for the boys. And he's always with my youngest built these Legos. And in this time he came over, my youngest is 14 and into girls and snap and fashion and football.

29:43And they built about half of it. And then he said, you know, Zsa Zsa, I don't I don't want to do this. I don't feel like it. He wasn't enjoying it that much. And I could tell it was very upsetting. It's like one of those moments when you feel like that's probably the last time I'll pick up my kid or the last time I'll build a Lego with my grandson. And I was trying to figure out a way to say to him, look, that's not cool. Even if you didn't want to build this or finish it, you should have realized this was important to your grandfather and finished it. And what I've been thinking about is that, you know, I'm writing a lot about becoming a man.

30:19I think that my generation and our politics have become more about our feelings as opposed to our values. And that is we don't do a good enough job of identifying values and then basing those actions and those political views off those values as opposed to just what makes us feel good or feel like we're part of a tribe or feels some sort of thrill because the other side looks stupid. or feels confirmation because we're signed up for whatever narrative with the party we've chosen believes. But I do think there's a degradation or a move away from values. And as a guiding light, as opposed to just...

30:57And this guy feels like values. This guy's really got very... I mean, he's not afraid. He's called Russia's invasion... You know, he said Russia's loving wickedness. He's not afraid to tweet about shit. And I like to think that the church has said, all right, there needs to be some sort of rejuvenation or a move back towards values in the West as opposed to what everyone thinks is going to make them feel good. It depends on what your values are, though, because there's a very conservative shift in many people in the U.S. The most devout, and I'm using that term loosely, are the conservative groups that are sort of machinate and behind the scenes in the Catholic Church.

31:40There's a whole groups of very conservative Catholics. And J.D. Vance is a convert, obviously, and is among those. And the concepts are much more old Latin pope, like Benedict. Benedict. Let's go back to before Vatican II and everything else. And I agree. I think this guy is a choice that they make. I happen to be Catholic. I don't even know what your religion is. But my grandmother went to Mass every day. I got confirmed. I never went inside a Catholic church since, really. I did that for her. But there's a real movement. Either it goes quite left or quite right. And it's responding to growth in Latin America and Africa and different places, I think, where there's more conservative.

32:29But there is a real conservative shift in this country. And I think Pope Francis was smart to pick all those cardinals, shifting them a different way. And there's one cardinal that's Cardinal Dolan in New York, who's his favorite one, who's quite conservative. And I have to say, Nancy Pelosi gave me a walkthrough all the conservative cardinals in the country. She's obviously, she's not allowed to be, to get communion in San Francisco, but I think other priests give her communion in some fashion. But there's a real, there's a real struggle going on. So this should be a really interesting Pope. But more importantly, there's Pope jokes, which were really good.

33:06You know, whatever, if Laura Loomer and Steve Bannon don't like something, sign me up, I think. But you shared a Chicago Pope one, which looks like a new TV show coming to NBC. Very funny. The Wiener Circle, which I love in Chicago, the famous Chicago hot dog stand where they insult you, puts a Latin translation, he has eaten our dogs on their sign. Someone posted on X, smart play for the Vatican to go with an American pope to avoid tariffs. That was cute. And Stephen Colbert put it, holy father, you had me at J.D. Vance is wrong. Did you have any other pope memes you liked? Or do you have a joke yourself?

33:37I feel like you might have a pope joke. Maybe you don't. Oh, Kara, you know, the churches, they're just religious institutions. There just are some limits to even what I will say about the church and El Papa. And, you know, I mean, I will say it was struck me as kind of unusual when the Pope said pets should not replace children in Italy. I guess he doesn't like priests practicing bestiality. Oh, I knew that was coming. Sorry, folks. Won't stop, can't stop. You know, Michael Che did a good one, you know, that Trump's Pope picture was juvenile. You'd think the Catholics would like it. Get it. The religions actually aren't that different.

34:16Jews don't recognize Christ. Anglicans don't recognize the Pope. And Baptists don't recognize each other at the liquor store. Ah. Here you go. Do you want me to keep going? One more. One more. One more Pope joke. The staff says no, but I say yes because I'm in church. The staff says no. Well, stop. One more. Well, no. The only Catholic in my Jewish fraternity was my roommate, Mike Vogt. And he wasn't circumcised. We used to get high and make him show us his penis and we'd make anteater jokes. That's not really a Pope joke. Oh, okay. Is that strange? Bunch of guys. I'm going to move on from that.

34:52Anyway. And chaos at Newark Airport continues. As of Monday, the airport has been hit with three outages in under two weeks. U.S. Airlines are meeting with the FAA this week to discuss cutting Newark flights, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy was on Meet the Press this week. And let's listen to what this dingbat has to say. I'm concerned about the whole airspace, right? The equipment that we use, much of it we can't buy parts for new. We have to go on eBay and buy parts if one part goes down. You're dealing with really old equipment. We're dealing with copper wires, not fiber, not high-speed fiber.

35:26And so this is concerning. Is it safe? Yes, we have redundancies, multiple redundancies in place to keep you safe when you fly. but we should also recognize we're seeing stress on an old network, and it's time to fix it. Bottom line, is it safe to fly in the United States right now? Listen, we are the safest airspace, for sure, and traveling by air is way safer than any other mode of transportation, which is why I take it, my family takes it. But again, that doesn't mean you don't look over the horizon and say, hey, if there is a major outage, could that be a risk to life? Of course it could be, which is why we fix it.

36:03Yes. So Doge, of course, they asked him about Doge and he sort of kind of squirreled around on the cuts that Elon was trying to make there. One of them was so weird that I was reading about this weekend that Doge made it so you couldn't charge anything more than a dollar to your credit card, your government credit card, because they can't buy paper and pens right now because of that stupidity. So Newark, I don't fly out of Newark. I tend not to. I try not to. I go out of JFK or LaGuardia. But when I'm in New York, any thoughts about concerns about air travel and what do you have to say? Well, Newark is a great airport.

36:39And this doesn't, in my opinion, this doesn't reflect on them. What it reflects on is that, or look, it's pretty basic fucking logic. When Lloyd Austin was the secretary of defense, jets weren't falling off of aircraft carriers. and when pete budaj was the secretary of transportation we didn't have near misses and shutdowns at airports because air traffic controllers are so demoralized and there's not enough of them and this guy figures out a way to do his interpretive dance and blame i actually saw him blame schumer for this and all these tropes around around yeah it's the safest form People, what do you want?

37:22People want prosperity. Money is the transfer of time and work. And when you're delaying people for hours and sometimes days at a time, because of your incompetence and decision to bring in someone who knows absolutely nothing about government and start making reckless cuts that results in not only a reduction in safety, but a massive expansion in the amount of time people that's taken away from their families and their work and economic of productivity. Again, it's another one of these slow burning, slow burn of our prosperity. And yeah, everything he's saying is right, but they're all, this is his, he's responsible.

38:03What is he doing right now to solve the problem at Newark? I agree. It's like, when did this suddenly happen? Oh, now it's because now we're here and we figured it out. No, now you're here and you're an incompetent administrator of a very critical part of our infrastructure. This guy seems as dumb as a box of hammers. Again, this is another thing that I just don't think Americans, and unfortunately, they're about to learn the hard way how incredible our FAA and our government employees and the regulations and the certification and the sea check, as someone who's loved aviation their whole life, has been molesting the earth for 30 years, and has flown probably tens of millions of miles.

38:45And I'm fascinated with planes and aviation. People don't appreciate. What they realized very early on is we're not going to make it like cars where there's an acceptable number of deaths, 10 ,000, you know, what is it, 20 ,000 traffic deaths a year, because it's worth it. But they said, no, this is so uncomfortable to begin with. To put people in a cylindrical tube with recirculated air and then convince them it's safe to travel at eight tenths the speed of sound across the surface of the atmosphere. Quite frankly, it's just unsettling. It does not feel natural. But if we can connect the world, if we can give people the opportunity to fly around the world safely, we're going to have the most unbelievable unlock in terms of human capital being willing to go to its greatest return.

39:35Okay, I did this for 10 years. I commuted to New York. I wanted to live in Florida because it was better for my kids, but I still needed to work in New York. So I commuted. Why? Because you can get on a plane and travel a thousand miles and then commute a thousand miles because it's that safe and it's that comfortable and it's that inexpensive. These things are so over-engineered. They are so safe. If we had anything resembling the fatality rates of automobiles, no one would get in a fucking plane. And also other countries. If you've ever flown in other countries. Well, because when planes go down, it's horrific.

40:12And it strikes a very difficult part of our instinctual fear because we're land mammals. So the idea of dying in the air seems especially upsetting to us. And so they have totally over-engineered these things. I mean, I've owned planes. The amount of safety, it would be, imagine a car and every six weeks someone had to show up, check the spark plugs, replace them. If your tires showed anywhere, they have to replace the tires. They test the thing over and over. They detonate the airbags to make sure they're working and then put them back to make sure this thing will not. Almost all airline disasters are pilot air.

40:57And then they have very talented people coordinate all of this while sometimes there's 12 ,000 planes in the air at the same time. Yeah, the fact that it's messing up now is really the testament to the Trump administration and the demonization of our government workers, which has really gone far too far. There's one thing to be critical and want improvements in the money we're spending. But anyway, we have to move on. But this guy seems like an imbecile. And the Trump administration is just presiding over really low-quality executives everywhere, which is not a surprise. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break.

41:33When we come back, you'll never guess what kind of company Elizabeth Holmes' partner is starting.

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43:04only at Starbucks.

43:10Scott, we're back. We're going to make quick work of this, I think. While Elizabeth Holmes is in prison for defrauding investors, her partner and father of her children is raising money for a company that, wait for it, claims to be the future of diagnostics. Billy Evans is distributing marketing materials claiming the company, Heymanthus, I think that's what it's called, is a radically new approach to health testing and will test blood, saliva, and urine. and the company is probably aiming to raise over$50 million. We'll start testing pets with a goal of developing a stamp-size wearable product for humans.

43:40Marketing materials reviewed by the New York Times say there is no regulatory oversight. Investor presentations are probably not mentioned. Evan's relationship to Elizabeth Holmes. Will there be free trials at the Fyre Fest, too? I just, you know, I believe in pivoting, but this seems a little bit too much on the nose. I don't know. What do you think? Well, and I got a lot of shit for it, but I thought Elizabeth Holmes' sentence was overdone. Agreed. I have to, I agree with you with this. I agree with you, given what other people have done. And I found it unsettling. Only 2 % of founders of unicorns are female.

44:12And one, you know, I didn't think there was a lot different between what Adam Newman did and Elizabeth Holmes did. They both lied to their board. They both exaggerated. Yeah. Look, a different set of circumstances, I think things could have been much different. And people say, well, it's health. It's different. She lied about its capabilities. She basically lied to the board and exaggerated the results, which quite frankly, unicorn executives everywhere do. And I agree she was guilty. I agree she should have gone to jail. And I said publicly, I thought 10 years was overdone for a first offense for a nonviolent criminal.

44:49And her husband reached out to me and asked me if I would get involved in a campaign to get her out of jail. I said, look, this isn't something I'm emotionally invested in. I can't help. I think he's doing him and her a disservice doing this because all he's doing is bringing attention to the fact that she did commit a crime and commit fraud because that'll be the story here. The story won't be the startup, whether it's a good idea or a bad idea. The story will be reminding everybody that his wife, who's in prison and should be in prison, committed fraud. So I just don't think he's being smart about this.

45:27I think this is strategically. You know what I always wonder? Young people, it's so hard to read the label from inside of the bottle. Young people, everybody needs to establish a kitchen cabinet of people. And people are willing to do it because people love to give advice because it makes them feel important. Or you can just call them and say, hey, I'm thinking about starting a diagnostics company. And somebody would say, okay, you realize you're going to bring attention to your wife who is in prison for fraud for lying about the financial results and the capabilities of a similar company. Have you thought this through?

46:01Anyone he reached out to who cared about him and was honest would have given him that advice. So I hear this. I just think about this across all of these people when they make these decisions. It's like, don't they have friends? I have a friend who's literally a master of the universe. And he was talking to me about his baby mamas and what's going on within his personal life and relationships. And I said to him, I said, don't you have friends? Like, who do you talk to about this stuff? Did you drop some real? Well, I said to him, I said, don't you have friends? Because this guy is literally one of the most impressive people I've ever met.

46:44On any issue, he can give you the most reasoned, thoughtful. And then you hear about his personal life and it's like, so you just took every piece of bad judgment across your entire life and stuffed it into your relationship with women. And I'm like, just a couple phone calls to people saying, hey, I'm checking in. I could use your advice. What do you think? What do you think about this? Yeah. Just for clarification, she's not Evans' wife, Scott. She's his partner and mother of the kids. They're together. Oh, excuse me. But they aren't actually married. That's all right. It's married-ish, married adjacent.

47:17Married-ish. Married-ish, like us, you and I. There you go. Anyway, Billy. Come on, Billy. Anyway, bad idea. And finally, OpenAI and Microsoft are negotiating the terms of their partners to allow OpenAI to launch a future IPO, according to the Financial Times. Microsoft has invested$13 billion in the company to date and is reportedly willing to give up some of its equity in exchange for access to new technology developed beyond the 2030 cutoff. There's going to be an IPO here. This is interesting. It's the one with the most revenues, the most users, et cetera, et cetera. And I think they've got to run ahead of everybody else, correct?

47:53I mean, this is a race. This is like, and they're in the lead at this moment. It doesn't mean they're going to stay in the lead. A lot of the open systems like Lama, a lot of people feel that that's going to really dominate that meta will. So any thoughts on this? Because you're Mr. Equity. This will happen. It makes sense. So what's happened is there's been a total, the number of companies that are publicly traded has been cut in half in the last couple of decades because there's been mergers and acquisitions. and the private markets have captured a lot of the innovation and attributes that used to be sequestered to the public market.

48:30Specifically, you can now raise billions or even tens of billions in the private market. You can get liquidity for your employees because there's an active secondary market. And also you can avoid all regulation and scrutiny and make kind of harder, tougher, deeper decisions without the scrutiny of public earnings calls. What you have with OpenAI and the reason they will go public is that OpenAI is taking, And Sam is brilliant. He'll go down as, I think, one of the kind of the iconic business leaders of this generation. He realizes that this is an Amazon slash Netflix play. And that is, it is very difficult for any AI to establish technological differentiation because AI just crawls it.

49:08When you ask DeepSeek what LLM it was, for the first 10 days, it said, I'm open AI. So these things reverse engineer each other. So this is a capital war around getting the best talent, striking the best deals, making acquisitions and tuck-ins. And now he's in an altitude where he doesn't need to spend billions. He needs to spend tens of billions. And the way he'll be able to do that is by going public and getting a$400,$500 billion valuation. So it does make sense for him. It's got huge sex appeal, global appeal. It's the fastest, I think, zero to$10 billion run rate. What is it? I think it's a$5 billion run rate right now.

49:48Five or six, something like that, yeah. But it'll get it'll useful. It'll have a 10 billion dollar run rate pretty soon. It'll go. He needs to basically this is a capital war. He's going to outspend everybody. And there are a few companies that can't find enough capital in the private markets. This is probably one of them. He needs he's going to go out and raise a shit ton of money. They have hired a very adept executive, a former CEO, former, I think, meta person or Googler, who is the former CEO of Instacart, who's going to really run. It's the Sheryl Sandberg moment here in that regard to run the companies, a lot of the business parts of it.

50:27So they really need to run fast and run hard. And I think that most people feel meta is their biggest, the open source meta is their biggest competitor. And Mark has no guardrails of anything. So we'll see what happens. Anyway, it has to happen. It has to happen. It's going to head that way. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails.

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53:41Okay, Scott, we're going to do some wins and fails. I think I shall go first. All right. I recommend, there's so many different, there's so many great, like, you know, TV's gotten great. There's a lot of great journalism going on. I have to say, I've been, there's several stories I've read recently that are just so good, interesting and fascinating to read. The one that I really was struck me this week was Nick Kristof's latest column in the New York Times. It's a long one. It sheds light on internal emails from Pornhub that were made public because of a filing error. Going back to 2020, they show employees laughing about what's on their site and reveal how the company handles child pornography.

54:17the inability of sites like Pornhub to get rid of CSAM, it's called child pornography, is horrifying. And the fact that they're so casual about it and you see these emails laughing about it with the pain it happens to these people is just astonishing. These people should be sued back into the dark ages for what they're doing here. It's gross and it's bad for young men, as you write about a lot, and I agree with you. But the fact that they think it's funny about child pornography and the extent of it is so enormous. And we can talk about the audience for this, and that's another issue. But the fact that these companies facilitate it makes them, I mean, there's a sickness at the deep heart of humanity on this issue.

55:04But this company deserves to be sued out of existence from just this. And again, I don't like porn. I think it's bad for us. I think the digitization of it has made it even worse. But the fact that they can't control this and they think it's a joke is repulsive. So that's a huge fail. For a win, there's a lot to choose from, including New York will now require schools statewide to ban smartphones during school hours. That's great. But I was thrilled to see Cecily Strong return to SNL this weekend to reprise her role as Judge Jeanine Pirro after Trump named Pirro the interim U.S. attorney in D.C.

55:41That's another incompetent hire, by the way. But she did the whole Colin Jost also came back. He came back to Pete Hegseth and she spits drinks at him. And it was so funny. And I love Cecily Strong and was just delighted to see her there. And I'm glad they got her to do that. She does the best, Janine Pirro. But from a failed point of view, Janine Pirro is an incompetent person to do this job. Never, just incompetent, beyond incompetent for this job. Although the guy she replaced was venal and evil kind of type personality where he was defending J6 people and had all these crazy schemes and everything.

56:18So I guess she's better than him, but that doesn't mean she's any good. And it's such an irresponsible appointment. Your thoughts? Here, go for it. Okay, so my field I referenced before, this Qatar luxury suite, basically the privatization of the White House at 40 ,000 feet, that's not a kickback. It's government capture. And meanwhile, Qatar has funneled over$1.8 billion to Hamas since 2012. they host Hamas's political leadership in luxury Doha compounds and serves as the terrorist group's primary diplomatic shield you know he the president positions himself as Israel's greatest defender at the same time he's accepting lavish gifts from a country that bankrolls the organization that murdered 1200 Jews it's like you're fucking twins and then trying to convince each of them that you're monogamous with them.

57:15I mean, it's just so the cognitive dissonance here is stifling. And Qatar's influence doesn't stop at the White House. They've poured, get this, 4.7 billion into American universities since 2001. That's more than any other foreign government. You know, this is such a weird relationship. While they host our largest military base in the region. They also maintain cozy relationships with Iran and Hamas. And meanwhile, America's leverage in the Middle East deteriorates as our president becomes essentially an employee of Qatar Airways with nuclear codes. And our elite universities become intellectual laundromats for authoritarian anti-Semitic propaganda.

57:58So this is not just corruption, it's the purchase of American influence from the Oval Office to our universities training our next generation of presidents. And when you think about, you know, what's the point here? We want our government, the founding fathers want to check some balances, not deposits and withdrawals from foreign powers. So this is a get again. And I'm at a point where it's pretty easy. And I think the other side loves it how outraged we are. I think a Democrat needs to sponsor and make very public legislation that says the government of Qatar is engaging in grift or corruption or foreign bribery.

58:43You're not supposed to accept gifts over$400 as a public official and say that again, in three years and nine months, we're going to reevaluate our relationship with you based on, we're going to do X, Y, and Z in exactly three years and nine months. We need to stop. There's no stopping the Trump administration. He's weaponized the DOJ. He has neutered basically all checks and balances here. My attitude is go after the foreign governments and some of the lower level people who are enabling this. You know, I told you Qatar tried to buy our all things D, CodeCon. Like, they wanted to give us$10 million each, all this stuff.

59:21I was sort of, this was more than 15 years ago where they wanted us to bring our conference there to Qatar. And Walt was like, you know, I'm a Jew and you have that come on. He was like, no, like it was just an astonishing offer. And it was so massive. We were sort of shocked. Largely, they wanted the technology. They're sort of trying to buy, was it influencer to look good, right? We were sort of clean washing them in some way by going there. And there's a lot of, by the way, there's a lot of events that go there now and do that. But I remember Walt was like, no fucking way. And it was an enormous sum of money at the time.

1:00:01$10 million sticks in my head. But we were sort of shocked by it and astonished and of course said no immediately. But I agree with you. This is just beyond. I mean, the Nazis did this during right ahead of World War II, like tried to like buy influence through their various agents, It's the same thing. You know, very much trying to influence U.S. policy. But this is, I don't even know what this is. This is even, what's the goal here precisely? That's the thing is what's their actual goal? I'm still focused on the fact you don't know what religion I am. I don't. What are you? You're Jewish. You're Jewish.

1:00:37You're partially Jewish. You're half Jewish. No, I'm whole Jewish. My mother was Jewish. And I'm an atheist, but I'm a raging Zionist. I just think it's hilarious when people in the comment section call me a Zionist as if it's an insult. I'm a proud Zionist. So wait, your mother is Jewish. What is your father? Yeah, my father's Presbyterian. My mother was a Jew, a maiden name Levine. So I identify with Judaism. I just don't believe I have an invisible friend. Oh, okay. It was a nice picture of her you put up for Mother's Day, by the way. Wasn't that nice? That was sweet. I got so many comments back.

1:01:12That was lovely, I have to say. I was touched by that. Well, I meant to ask you. Happy Mother's Day. What did you do? Oh, it was Amanda's birthday also. We do have a picnic. I took my mom out with the kids for breakfast. Does anyone get more flowers? How does this whole lesbian thing happen? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, my kids call me. I have a lot of calls. Who gets breakfast in bed first? No, buddy. How does this all work? No, buddy. It's like there's so many. I have so many questions about lesbian relationships. When there's a really difficult parking spot, who parks the car? I do. Okay. Yeah. Okay. I'm a really good parker, I would say.

1:01:47All right. What did you do for Mother's Day? Thank you. Happy Mother's Day to you, too, and to your wife, not to you at all in any way. What did you do for Mother's Day? I used to have breakfast with my mom. I took the kids, and Amanda rested at home. And then we had a lovely picnic for her birthday, and I bought her a lemon tree, a Meyer lemon tree, as a gift for Mother's Day and her birthday. Because she loves the Meyer lemons in my house in San Francisco, so we're going to try to grow one here. in our house. This is so clearly a new relationship. This is so clearly the thoughtful, well-planned out gift.

1:02:26I got her a plate that had lemons on it and then lemon things, and then a beautiful lemon colored pitcher that's beautiful. It was a lemon situation, as in when life gives you. That's a new relationship. This is where you're headed. My wife sends me a picture of a watch she wants, and I'm like, here's the Centurion card number. That's where we are. No, I got her a lemon tree to grow for our life. I love lemons. I love lemons. Oh, God. When life gives you lemons, eat mushroom chocolates. That's my saying. All right. What's your win? My win is I am really excited. I make a lot of jokes about the church, but I am excited about an American pope.

1:03:04I think that the pope is sort of a standard bearer for morality. I think this guy is up to the task, unlike our elected leaders. He seems to actually understand technology. In a strange way, I'm happy for Villanova. I can't tell you how many messages. Oh, I hate the Villanova people from being a Georgetown person. I can't like them. What? I have a guy I've become friendly with who's pretty involved in Villanova, and he can't stop sending out messages, like memes showing, all the universities in America, how many popes? Zero. Villanova, one. He's just so excited. The rest of the Villanovan. He's so excited.

1:03:42Yeah. Yeah, we played them in basketball. We're supposed to hate Villanova, as I recall. But I think America needs kind of a, I don't know, a rejuvenation, an EpiPen, a, you know, a narcon of values. And I think we're more inclined to take an American pope or listen to an American pope. Do you want to hear the weirdest thing? I thought about going back to church after I had him. I thought about it. I'm still not going probably because so much corruption and the man thing. I think we need, as a raging atheist, I also believe we need more religious institutions. I've come to believe when I was younger, I was one of those snobs who's considered myself a scientist and really was disparaging about religion.

1:04:23And as I've gotten older, other than the extreme batshit crazy part of every religion, I generally find that 90 plus percent of it gives people a lot of comfort. That's what I'm thinking. I think young people also need more place to be in the agency of something bigger than themselves and meet potential friends, mentors, and mates. I actually have come full circle. I think religious institutions are really important in America. Interesting. I'm an agnostic, not an atheist. That just means you're a closeted atheist. No, I'm not. I'm not either. That's like when dudes say they're bi. Oh, I'm going to hear it on that one.

1:04:57I'm going to hear it on that one. I've been walking by a lot of churches. I've been walking by and I want to go in. And I don't know what that is. I honestly, apparently it's religion. You just want to get away from your kids. It's called having little kids at home. Peace. I almost went to church when we had little kids. I was like, I was thinking, I want some peace. I know it sounds crazy, but I was, I don't know. Let's go to church tonight. That's you and I. Okay? No. I find peace at San Vicente Bungalows. Yeah, you like the peace in the bar. Talking to some 25-year-old ad executive whose parents are putting her through New York.

1:05:27All right. 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 on On with Kara Swisher, I spoke with CNN's chief international anchor, Christiane Amanpour. Let's listen to a clip. I've covered almost all America's major wars since 1990. And I've probably got a lot more war experience than J.D. Vance and Pete Higgseth, despite their military deployments. And I'm much older than them. And I, the way I see it is we Europeans are not pathetic freeloaders.

1:06:08We have come to America's aid time and time again in the last 35 years. So it was a good interview. She's terrific. Well, I'm curious though, how has your, I asked this to learn not to make a statement. How has Europe come to America's aid? Oh, she was, it goes on. She talks about the various, you know, when we moved into Afghanistan and about different things that they have done to be supportive of us. She wasn't saying America hasn't helped Europe. That was not what she was also saying. She thinks that Vance and putting out the idea that they don't do anything is ridiculous. Like that it's that she was saying that the alliance is so important and that the narrative they're putting about freeloaders was not true.

1:06:47And I think and she made a larger case, but she was in no way saying America's aid to Europe wasn't critical to. So just she was being more, you know, complex. I've been on Christiana's show. I also like her because she's one of those journalists that tries to set you up for success and she lets you speak. I find so many journalists are there to - Substantive is the word you're looking for. Well, actually, it's not. But thank you, lemon tree weirdo. Catholic lemon tree. What I was thinking was actually generous. And that is I find there's some times when I go on a show, they're there to try and corner you or get you to say something provocative because they want a TikTok moment.

1:07:28And I'm guilty of this, too. A lot of times I ask questions trying to show how smart I am as opposed to get to an answer. And then there's journalists who will let you just speak and want you to get your views out there, whether they personally agree with them or not. They're generous. They want to set you up for success. And I find that she's one of those people. She is. I really, really adore her. We've become good friends, and I really like her. It was a great talk. Anyway, please listen to it. Okay, that's the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot, and be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

1:07:59We'll be back on Friday. Scott, read us out. Today's show is produced by Lara Neiman, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Kevin Oliver. Ernie and her Todd engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows, Mia Saverio, and Dan Chalon. Nishat Kerouac, Vox Media's executive producer of Vodcast. Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thank you for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nmymag.com slash pod. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business care. We have a new pope.

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