Transcript of Economic Protests, Social Media on Trial, and Big Tech Earnings

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Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available at public. Com/disclosures. I'm going to stuff your corpse and have it next to me.

I'm doing taxidermy?

I'm doing taxidermy. Hi, everyone. This is It from New York magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swischer.

And I'm Scott Galloway.

Before we do anything, I'd like to point out that as of this episode drops, it's been 42 days since the deadline passed for the DOJ to release all the Epstein files. Though we do have an update, the DOJ officials said in a court filing this week that they expect to release the files, in the near term, but they did not provide a specific date. Pam Bondi, get on it. Anyway, Scott, after Sunday's bonus episode about the violence in Minnesota, we've gotten a mountain of responses to our discussion of the economic strike that you suggested. I know you're working on something, and we'll talk about that in a minute. But first, here's what some of our listeners had to say.

I'm seeing online some suggestions of people stop paying their income tax by updating their W2.

I and many of my colleagues are watching with sadness, a lot of anxiety and anger at the escalating violence. I keep wondering what, if anything, people outside the US like me, can do that's actually useful.

Reportedly, Vanguard, BlackRock, and Fidelity hold half of the shares in two companies, GEO Group and CoreCivic, which run nearly 90% of ICE detention facilities. If investors divested from these collaborators and others. Could that put a stop to ICE's worst abuses?

Given a lot of you have been writing in wondering what you can do personally, we asked financial educator Vivian, too, host of Networth and Chill, to give some tips on how to make an impact. Let's hear what she had to say.

Hey, Scott and Cara. Heard you guys were talking about an economic blackout.

I've got a couple of personal finance tips. For our friends with a lot of financial discipline, you could consider changing your W4 withholding for your taxes. You'll pay fewer taxes throughout the year and then pay them all in one lump sum come tax time. You're not going to get to pay fewer taxes overall, but why let the government hold your money and do stuff with it for longer than they need to? Make sure you are taking advantage of time value of money. Up Next, everybody talks about shopping local versus corporate, but another thing you can do is pay in cash. These local businesses oftentimes might even give you a small discount for doing so because then they have to give less up as well. Wink, wink. And last but not least, for the economic blackout, money that you aren't spending on buying stuff, make sure you're putting towards a really smart strategic cause, things like paying down your debt so you aren't so heavily tied to financial institutions, but also causes that you care about that might support things like immigration or human rights. The main takeaway is this, economic boycott do not work if a small population stops spending cold turkey for one to two days.

What we're actually going to need is a critical mass of people to scale back their consumerism over weeks and months, and even if they can only do it to 70 or 80% of their ability, that is going to have a bigger impact. Scott, you should know Vivian's upcoming book is called Well-endowed. I thought you'd like that.

There you go. She did not interview me. She did not interview me.

Tell me, we When you think about this, that a lot of people were talking about it. Go for it.

Well, last night, I was about to make love to my sweet, sweet lady, and she put my penis in her hand, and then it was dark out, and she said, I'm sorry, don't smoke. National economic strike.

Yeah, great. You're stepping on your penis there, Scott.

My bluff has been called here, and that is, I think that America feels a lot of anxiety around its government not providing security and prosperity, but terror and anxiety. I've thought a lot about this. If you look at where Trump and the administration respond, they don't respond from citizenry, co-equal branches of government, or even the Supreme Court, where they do respond really crisply is from markets. Within 24 hours, he backed off of terrorist annex in Greenland, pressure on interest rates, tariffs. When one thing has happened, the S&P has gone down or the bond market has started to get wobbly. Then the question becomes if that's the fastest blue line path to getting ice out of cities or to putting in more protocols or just flexing that we're watching, the fastest way to do that, what you want is the most impact with the least amount of sacrifice from the citizenry. To make it easy. To make it easy. To make it easy. Yeah. Also, maximum impact. I think not buying groceries is not a lot of impact because these companies are very low margin. They're not companies' CEOs that he listens to or cares about.

I bifurcated it into two types of companies, what I call Ground Zero. Big tech controls 40% of the S&P. They are growth companies. They're very, very highly valued right now. So any slow down in growth could potentially have a disastrous effect on them. That's the soft tissue of the economy right now and where our consumer economy, which is 70% consumer spending, could have the greatest impact with the least amount of effort. I've listed a series of big tech companies and launching the site probably on Sunday. What's it called? It's called... Thank you for asking.

Well endowed.

It's called Resist and Unsubscribe. Oh, I love it. What we're saying, don't like and subscribe, resist and unsubscribe. I've also got the URL unsubscribedfebruary because to Vivian's point, it can't be one day or a week. It has to be sustained, and there has to be a viral component to it. The companies in what I call Ground Zero are Amazon, and I have instructions on how to subscribe from Amazon Prime, Audible, Amazon Music, Prime Video, Anthropic, Apple.

You could pick what you want, right?

Well, hopefully all. Not only that, I don't want to tell people what to do and what not to do. Exactly. People have different means.

That's what I was going to say.

People have different means and ideas on how they can participate. I'm not going to tell anyone to not buy groceries or not show up for work. But if you want to have the biggest impact possible, I've tried to identify those companies, Disney, Google, Microsoft, Netflix, OpenAI, Uber, and Meta.

Then you've given the argument what they've done, so you can decide what you think is acceptable or not.

The reason why I really do think this idea is so powerful is you get a couple of free gifts with purchase. Not only do you to achieve the economic slowdown, but you have an outsized impact on subscribing specifically from these companies that are driving the market right now. Two, it just so happens that the majority of the CEOs of these companies have been especially sycophantic and played a really large role in enabling all this bullshit, whether it's Tim Cooke showing up and prostrating himself for the Melania documentary, whether it's Amazon green-lighting a $30 million documentary that made no fucking sense. It was just pure grift or bribery, whether it's obviously meta, whether it's Sachin Adela sitting there and trying to communicate to people, I don't like it, but I'm going to continue to do it. I just want to remind everybody that back in the early '30s, Hitler's Rise was was largely enabled by corporate CEOs who basically said, If you destroy our trade unions, we won't speak up against this democratic slide into fascism. And once it got out of hand, it was too late for them to do anything. So we have been to this place before where people use the excuse of shareholder value to enable and basically not provide any friction to what is the type of terror and anxiety being levied.

Can I ask you a question? Because I think a lot of people want to decide. One of the things that's good is, Scott, I've seen some of it, is going to give you information to make your own decisions. For example, with me, I got rid of Arcade. I got rid of the one thing. I got rid of a bunch of stuff.

But enough buying an iPhone.

Not buying an iPhone.

Canceling Apple Music, whatever it might be.

Yeah, whatever. But if you want to do that and keep Apple Music, we don't judge you. It's just here's the tools, right? Here's the tools. Stop doing prime. Maybe if you don't want to cancel prime completely, you can stop buying on it. People should decide. Just a month. People should decide what to do. And it's not forever, by the way. It's not, I shall never use it again. Orange juice people still drink after the boycott of Anita Bryant. That's 100 years ago, kids. But that's what you're trying to get at, is giving people tools. Does it have links to where you can do these things or just instructions?

Is the name of the company, all the different services you can unsubscribe to, a link to where you unsubscribe, the unsubscribed page, and a brief prescription of why we're doing this. So the ground zero is big tech companies. And also, the truth has a nice ring to it. I'm going from two LLMs to one. I don't need Anthropic and Open AI. I'm going, and this is the one that hurts, I'm going from six streaming platforms to one. I'm not giving up on all streaming platforms, but I'm going to pair it way back. And the free gift with purchase here, when you start looking at this stuff, I found out, for example, I have three HBO Max accounts. I didn't realize I had three. It's not a bad idea to take some time to think, Where am I just spending money every month, unbeknownst to me, where, quite frankly, I probably could pair back a little bit. There's the Ground Zero, that's the big tech companies that will have an outsize impact on your absenteeism. By the way, the most radical act in a capitalist society, hands down, is non-participation. Then the second group of companies I list is called the Blast Zone.

These are companies that are directly working with ICE. At&t awarded $90 million to provide ICE with IT and network projects, Comcast, Charter Communications, Dell Technologies, Deloitte, FedEx, UPS. I list how you can leverage your economic muscle against them and how they are participating. You may decide that this is not for you or it's too big to give up, but I'm giving you a ton of options. There's ground zero, outsize impact, and then there's the blast zone. That is companies directly working on them. I want to be realistic. I am not going to give up telco, but I've switched to mobile mobile from AT&T. I'm going to go from five streaming media platforms to one. I think you can have a lot of impact here. I'm trying to make it as social as possible and hope that people join in. But I think if we're looking for the lowest tax way on citizenry to get the administration to pay attention, it's about markets. It's not about ideology, it's about math, and it's about not participating. It's the easiest thing I could come up with to have an outsize impact.

This is great. We got a lot of stuff about people not knowing what to do, and maybe they don't want to go to a protest or fly to Minneapolis. If you don't want to do that or you don't want to just sit around a doomscroll and hacktivism, this is one of the many, many, many ways. I think it's great that you're doing this, Scott. Good for you. What streaming service did you keep?

Netflix. Oh, I can't say. But I was talking, we had one of those family meetings. I don't want to play favorites because I've already heard from some of the CEOs of these companies, word is already out. And by the way, they're not thrilled about this.

No, they're not.

I've gotten some questions about the two. But that was the really aha moment. We had a family meeting, and I said to my kids, we're going to cancel all streaming media platforms. And I literally got that look like, memo to sell, smother dad in sleep. So I said, We can keep one. And It's only for February. And there's a huge argument because one kicks into Premier League football and that's Paramount Plus, and the other is like, Paramount Plus? Are you fucking high? It just caused a near riot.

I had a discussion with one of my children about Apple Music. I'm still in the middle of the discussion about it. I was like-Oh, yeah.

So they're like, Okay, I'm off Apple Music, Amazon Music, but they're keeping Spotify. It was an interesting consumer preference. It came down to Netflix or HBO Max was the two we distilled down to, and I won't tell you which one we picked. All right.

Okay.

But it's interesting to think about how you prioritize these things.

It is. I was surprised by the pushback from one of my children. They're like, Wait a minute on my list. I was like, Oh. But anyway, you have those discussions. Then it ended up being a really interesting discussion about economic boy, Tutsam what you can do. It's a great opportunity to talk to your kids and your spouse or whoever about the economic choices you make in life in general. Anyway, to be clear, the site isn't up today, but Scott will let us know over the next couple of days, and we will know activists around the country are calling for no work, no school, and no shopping today on Friday, January 30th, urging people to stop Funding Ice. There'll be lots of activities like that, but not just Scott Galloway, the great economist Scott Galloway, but Robert Rice is talking about this idea. It's really catching on the idea of it. It's well beyond just a temporary thing. It's like, take a minute and look at your life and where you're putting your money, and your money is important. Anyway, I have an announcement now onto me.

Guess what? Yes.

We have named my show on CNN that is coming in the spring. I can't say the exact date. The baby has a name. Well, it's called, Cara Swisher Wants to Live Forever. What do you think?

I think the tagline should be, Oh, fuck. Is it really, Cara Swisher Wants to Live Forever?

It is. It's called, Cara Swisher Wants to Live Forever.

But what if you have a stroke in the middle of the preview or something?

Exactly. It's brilliant, don't you think? That's what Amanda said. Amanda said that, too. She's like, Oh. Then more people would watch it, right?

I think it should be, What if we live forever? With Kara Swisher. I wouldn't make it.

Well, it's already done. Done, done, done. Oh, well, then. I love it. I love it. Anyway, well, let me just say, let me just very briefly say for far too long, the longevity space has been captive. This is the idea behind it of rich tech bros, Jack, dude, influencers, nonsense sellers of useless supplements, and some lady who sells candles that are named after her private parts. Sorry, Gwyneth, but you started it. She's She's lovely, by the way. I know. I know you talk to her, but there's a new sheriff in town. After enduring endless conversations over the years, How to Live Forever, I can't tell you how many dinner parties I've been in with tech bros telling me all manner of things, none of whom are doctors. I want in, except I'm going to show you the way for the rest of us, it will be grounded in science and facts about the best and most affordable ways to say healthy, happy, and smart. Also, I took ketamine, so you don't have to, and Scott takes a nap in it, just so you know. That's That was coming for you.

A couple of things. One, I think the market was screaming for another person without medical training to tell us how to live our lives. Excellent. I think that's what the market was telling us.

I talk to experts unlike some of these people.

I talk to experts. I talk to experts. But the second thing is an honest question. Say you're not... I'm all over this shit because I now have too much money and too little time.

I've never noticed that you like to focus on your and beauty.

I'm way too into this. The question I would have is, assume you're an average income household, 80, 90 grand, maybe living in a city, maybe doing a little bit better than that. You have insurance, but you don't have a ton of money to spend on the stuff. What are the two or three biggest learnings around changes in lifestyle that you would recommend to just the average American?

I'd be happy to. Just so you know, it's only six episodes. Maybe we'll have another season Because there's so much stuff out there, and there's so much bad stuff, by the way.

I was hoping it was five.

No. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Karis Fischer wants to live forever.

Karis Fischer wants... Everyone else wants this series to end.

Anyway, that's okay. You can make fun of it. I love it. I would say, well, obviously, the main thing about longevity is don't be poor. I hate to say that, but it matters a lot of- Well, that's good advice.

That's not going to make anyone feel bad. Okay.

Well, it's not, I'm just... Longevity is now going up. Make more money.

That's the same advice I've gotten from every girl I've met at the Four Seasons bar. Make more money.

So one of the main things, oddly enough, sleep is important, obviously, diet and exercise are important. There's lots of things that everybody understands, fermented foods, stuff like that, and eating. The protein debate has gotten out of hand. Those are around the edges of saving you minutes of your life. I think one of the things I took away was one, there's There's an amazing stuff going on around cancer research, using AI, cancer, and also mobility, like robotic stuff, where people are going to be outfitted. The addition of AI is going to change drug discovery, cancer research. It's like astonishing. That is really gene editing. All that stuff is really moving fast, and that will make a big difference in longevity or at least health span, right? That you'll live longer and not die of these terrible diseases. The second one is, this is the science part, GLP-1s, Scott. I think you had one of the early people to this, but the benefits around just obesity is what comes along.

I think it's a miracle drug.

It's a miracle drug. Every doctor we talked to talked about this, and it now has a follow on advantages. In very small amounts, too.

That to me-Talk about microdosing? I know a bunch of people do microdosing GLP-1.

Yeah, I'm going to start doing that. Related to my stroke, actually, which is interesting. Anyway, there's a lot of around GLP-1 is really important, and everyone, vaccines and mRNA vaccines, I know they're controversial, but they're not. They're going to have a vaccine for cancer. That stuff is really amazing. But I have to tell you, and there's all that other nonsense, the red lights, none of that works, really. Some of the stuff you do doesn't work, but fine, whatever.

Can I go through the stuff I do and you tell me what you think?

Okay, I didn't do everything, so I may not have an answer, but go ahead.

Testosterone therapy.

Probably good for you.

This is that thing they did with Peter Atia. Red light, you don't Yeah, there's no scientific- Vitamin supplements.

Some of them. Some of them and some not. Like a vitamin D, a vitamin K, some of the super EPA stuff. Yes, creatine, yes. Some of them ridiculous.

I do creatine every day?

Yeah, creatine is very good. What else?

What about NAD, either infusions or the pills?

Most people just think there's no scientific yet. Not to push them out, not to push them out. But peptides is a big moment here. But unfortunately, a lot of people are using them ineffectively or dangerously.

But is there evidence that peptides might-We don't know yet.

We don't know. Not yet. There's a lot of stuff we'll see. It's just how you use it and how it's deployed. At the beginning of GLP-1s, a lot of people are getting shitty compounds and getting really sick. So don't do compounded, these things, compounded. It's a matter of... Keep going. Go ahead. What else? Masturbation, great.

Good for you. Cold sauna or cold plunges or Hot sauna, yes.

Cold punches. There's a lot of new science, so it may be really problematic on people. Although I know all the bros love it, but there's all these issues around the shock and different things. Hot saunas, absolutely. One of the things, let me tell you the number one thing, both scientifically and both causally and co-relation is friends and family. A hundred.

I want to come back to that. So next one, getting plowed by six hockey players and rethinking everything. Just rethinking everything, Cara. Is that good for my health?

It is good for your health. Just be careful.

It's just free thinking. But you mentioned the one thing, the only thing I would add, the absolute key to longevity. You just referenced it. Key to good health and longevity. Relationships.

Relationships, 100, a million %. And related to that is the use of social media and synthetic relationships. The wrong way. Lack of friction for your brain, brain plasticity. Play games with people, do different things, talk to people you don't know. It has real health effects. Argue. Argue. You and I are going to live forever because of our relationship. I'm just saying it was really surprising, the number one thing. I'm not trying to be like all have Be friends. Talk to people you don't know. Do things that challenge you. Be involved in the community. The more you are in the online space with synthetic relationships, the quicker you're going to die. Yeah. Anyway, go ahead.

I interviewed Timothy Snyder yesterday. He's great. The guy he was a protest expert, and we were talking about, and I challenged him, I said, Are protests the new door knocking? And that is they're losing effectiveness. And he pushed back really solidly. He had a couple of really strong points. He said, One, when people organize, it creates an infrastructure for other activities. He said, What's happened in Minneapolis? People organize, and then they get a database of people. They figure out how to communicate with each other, and they've been turning out on a dime to observe ice raids. A lot of that is because the infrastructure that's been built through protest. He also said something very powerful, very simple. He said, You feel better when you do something with other people. It was so simple but so puncturing. You feel better when you do something with other people.

Yeah, and it's good for your health, as it turns out. It's very good for your health. It's great to bring back community. Again, neuroplasticity. Anyway, moving on. We've got a lot. Anyway, we're very excited. Scott's site. What's the name of it again?

Resistant Unsubscribed or Unsubscribed February. If you like this idea, don't like and subscribe. Resist and unsubscribe. Also, please post. I'll be posting my receipts.

Ideas.

Please post your own ideas, your own receipts. If you've unsubscribed from Amazon Prime for the month or whatever it might be, please post it to your social and try and drive people to the notion of resist and unsubscribe.

Yes, you can do something. And mine is, Cara's wish you wants to live forever. There you go. Only Megan Kelly thinks that's not a good thing. Anyway, moving on. We've got a lot to get to today, including big tech earnings and major social media trial is going on. So let's dig in. White House border are Tom Homan, he of the bag of money, just gave a presser in Minneapolis a little while ago, noting he's on the ground to, quote, regain law and order. Tom says he's made a lot of progress since he got there, like three days ago. This follows Trump saying he would de-escalate a little bit earlier in the week, but the violence hasn't stopped. Representative Elon Omar was attacked with an unknown substance at a town hall on Tuesday. It's the latest instance against a member of Congress. Representative Max Frost was physically assaulted at Sundance last week, and both are Democrats, just so you know, and quite more on the liberal end of everything. Meanwhile, the two federal agents who shot at Alex Freddie have been put on administrative leave. Border Control Commander Greg Bovino has left Minnesota, but Homeland Security Secretary Christie Noem, is hanging on to her job for now.

There's a lot of pictures of her and her head of lettuce going on. There's a lot of infighting in between and among all those people. Three quarters of House Democrats are backing her impeachment, and a couple of Republicans, the Senator calling for ouster Tom Tell us who's leaving, doesn't give a fuck anymore, has finally found his balls. What do you make of the changing of tact? And also note, Amy Klobischer has just officially announced her bid for Minnesota governor. Your thoughts?

It's interesting. I didn't know that Senator Klobischer was coming for governor. I think that's a great idea. I think I've called this before, and I've been wrong. I do think this is a turning point. When I was in high school, my mom gave me a a bunch of John Irving books. Great writer, of course. The World According to Gar. They made me feel a lot better about myself when I realized everyone else is fucked up and erotic and having weird thoughts. It had a big impact on me. One of the books that also had a big impact on me was George Orwell's 1984. I think in some ways, it might be the reason I went down the progressive path. But there's a line in there, and I'll get it wrong, but it's basically, The last act of the government was to ask us to ignore or deny what we saw and what we heard. Basically, all of a sudden, the government had gone to, no longer trust your faculties of observation.

It was the last and most important There you go.

Thank you. You always have to want to up me.

I'm just saying I read the book.

Why does Kera Spritch want to live forever?

Anyways, so- I can be with you.

Yeah, there you go.

I'm going to stuff your corpse and have it next to me. Like a pop-up.

I'm doing taxidermy.

I'm doing taxidermy. Go ahead.

But that moment, that literally, that quote just popped into my mind when Christie Noem or Secretary Noem got up. Right. They generally have these Judeo-Christian values, and I imagine there are also other religions, I don't mean to limit it, but that says, When someone dies, you don't desecrate them. When she got up and was so disrespectful of Alex Pratti, and then also claimed he was a domestic terrorist.

Yeah, that's actually inaccurate, too.

And that he was there to massacre. He was brandishing a weapon and was there to massacre federal agents.

I think that was Steven Miller.

That was a moment where I thought, Oh, my gosh. I've never seen. I've seen people spend shit. I've seen people exaggerate. I've seen them lie. But I've never seen the administration feel confident that it could just look people in the eyes and say, Ignore your faculties of observation and trust, just believe what we say because we're saying it. That for me felt very weird and chilling and like a turning point. I think if you look to America's credit, the majority of people and a lot more Republicans have said, Okay, this has just gone too far. You know how far it's gone when all of a When all of a sudden a guy who took $50,000 in a brown lunch bag feels like the adult in the room? He does. People are relieved that he's there. I know.

When he said, Regain law and order, I actually think he's probably talking about the cops themselves or these border patrol people with the masks. Let me just say I had a very interesting discussion with my mom, of course. I've turned her to CNN because she decided Kaitlyn Collins's dress as well, and she likes it and thinks she's adorable.

I think that's a good reason to watch these people.

I'm fine with it. One of the things that was interesting is she did not like those things, that. One of the things that bothered her was the meanness. I don't know, my mother could be very mean. She didn't love it. One of the things I'll tell you, she zeroed on one of the masks. Why are they wearing masks? I said, No, Police don't wear masks. That was the first time. That was the first time.

Judges that put away cartel.

Yeah. She was asking a question, and I was like, Well, because they're private police and they want to hide. And she's like, Well, they're worried about people knowing who they are. I said, Yes, because of the things they're doing. And so it was an interesting conversation.

Well, think about how ironic it is. We're now deploying and coordinating unbelievable firepower and assets in Iran or in the Gulf claiming that, okay, we to do something because the government is executing people in the street. Well, our government is executing people in the street. So that irony, granted, it's not on the same scale, but that irony is not lost.

No, no. Let me point something out. They're headed to Ohio to do this with Haitians. They're not stopping. They raided an election site to try to pretend that the election was stolen in Georgia. Very dangerous. They're going to do this thing in Ohio. These people aren't going to stop. I know we're like, Finally, we've got him. This guy, finally, we never get him. Whoever's controlling him, and I think he's not, from what I understand, he doesn't work very much during the day. Someone high up in the Trump administration told me he works five hours a day. So another 19 hours is someone else. I think that they're going to keep going. They're going to go. They have, Steven Miller has no shame, and they will go to Ohio, and JD Vance has talked about this.

When I think about this on a meta level, I think about the Trump administration of MAGA, a key philosophy or cornerstone, is that they believe if we could just turn back the clock and go back to '50s America, where white people and males were largely in charge of everything, that this would be a better place. And they're just uncomfortable with the browning of America. They're uncomfortable with more progressive values. They're uncomfortable with women's rights, and they just want to take us back. And it's almost, poetics is the wrong word, but ironic. But look at the two famous or Renee Good and Alex Pretty. Okay, what do we have here? I don't know if you've noticed this. We have, and I don't want to be reductive, but I'm going to be, really lovely gay parents and a male ICU nurse. It's almost as if they said, How do we find what represents the future and push back on it in the most heinous way possible? I mean, these two people in a lot of ways... And ICE's ability to sniff out really good people. There was a story about Renee Good and her partner the day before circling the school block two or three times because their kid struggles with social anxiety and waving at the kid to make the kid feel more comfortable.

The send-off, the video you found of Alex Prade, I mean, these are really good. They're not only really good people. But in a weird way, I look at them and I think, That's the future of America, and that's what MAGA hates.

Well, they will keep going. Let me just say, they do in particular, let's not take the focus, they have been targeting people of color, like the immigrants who are hardworking. They're going for the Haitians now. The people they're trying to weed out are very hardworking.

Well, I think this was accidental or not strategic. They didn't say, Go find a white ICU nurse. But doesn't it strike you as just very ironic and almost like out of a play?

It does. The picture that got me the most was that kid. I think his parents were-Oh, yeah, the five-year-old. The five-year-old was just like his parents are immigrants. And that got me the most. I have the hat and then the sitting. They're so inhuman that it's really... The visuals are quite something. Now, there have been visuals before, whether it was the attacks during the civil rights era, if you remember the dogs and the hoses on people of color down in the south. Then there was the Vietnam photo of the girl running.

I was just thinking of that. The corpse photo. Is this that moment?

The Corp photo. The child dead on the beach. There's a lot of very strong imagery. I remember that. Yeah, there's a lot. This is coming at you so hard. That's what I was talking about last week is that. But speaking of photos and impact, Tim Cooke is finally speaking out of Minnesota, calling for de-escalation. Thanks, Tim. It's like as bland as the quinoa you enjoy. After facing a backlash for attending the White House, Milani premier the same day as Alex Freddie shooting. Cooke noted an internal memo that he had a good conversation with the President where he shared his views. Sam Altman also waved in, telling opening eyes that ICE was going too far, you think. Though he said, President Trump is a very strong leader, and I hope he'll rise to the moment, the United country. Both of them had to compliment Trump and spent very little time talking about victims. In fact, not at all. So very, I think, weak sauce responses from... And then Altman managed to get a slap in at Zuckerberg at some point in one of his statements. Talk a little bit about this because I'll tell you, internally at Apple, it's crazy.

People are really furious, I can tell you that, from talking to lots of Apple employees and all levels of this company. I think of all the companies, it's really interesting. Apple feels the most betrayal, if you look online, at least, and I know that doesn't represent everything. But it certainly is not a good look for him to be staying next to Brett Ratner, who has his own issues, and in a tuxet no. The whole thing... By the way, no one's ever going to see this, Melania. One of the more enjoyable things is people showing pictures of theaters that sell zero tickets because Amazon. Why aren't they more mad at Amazon who paid $40 million, spent $35 million marketing this? And there were several Amazon executives at the event. But what do you think about this? I think we love Apple. That's why, right? I guess.

I don't know. I think Tim Cook is the new Bob Iger, and that is he's going to take an incredible career and put a giant shit stick at the end of it. There is an unfortunate but necessary lesson in life around the intersection between your participation in time and other people, and that is the last five minutes are the most important five minutes. When you're at a party and you're leaving, do your best to be as fucking charming as possible and go around and say hi. There's that famous study where they're giving dudes colonoscopes, and one is just 45 minutes and the other is 50 minutes, but the last five minutes, they don't move it around, so it's not as uncomfortable. The men who had the device inside of them for 50 minutes said it was much more pleasant because all they remember is the last five minutes, which was not that unpleasant. When you leave an organization, when you quit or you've been fired, you swallow everything and you could not be more fucking charming because that is how they will remember you.

Shockingly, that's how I lead places, but go ahead. You think I go, How dare you?

Or just on a more serious level, if you're getting divorced, Do everything you can to be as gracious and generous as possible on the way out. Even if it means taking some bumps, being treated unfairly. If you've been married 5, 10, 40 years, Everyone, your partner, their parents, your friends, your kids, will remember who was the bigger person. Tim Cook, unfortunately, he's been an amazing CEO. I agree. From everyone I know that knows him, including you, I don't know them, they say he's a good man. But here's the thing. This will be this small period towards the end of his tenure where he shows up to the White House for a ridiculous premiere, where he says he can't wait to spend time with Milani, and when he shows up with a with a handwritten dis drive and literally just is a sycophant to the President.

Then in this statement adding the President.

That's how he's going to be.

Unfortunately- Why did he even put that in? Why Could he just not this time? That to me, I was like, Oh, come on, leave that out, that one sentence. What did you call a relationship with Apple in that book when I met you? What was Apple? A lover?

Google is God. You pray to it, ask ask it for an answer, comes back with something. Amazon is your gut, never. Consumption, more for less. Apple is your genitals. The billion people of iOS are the most attractive potential mates in the world. It's the most subtle way of saying, You should have sex with me.

I would argue more so. People love Apple. Incredible products. No, but they have a relationship with it. The whole think different. They have marketed to you in a values way, privacy.

He's had more shareholders value than any individual in history with the exception of Jensen Wong. Unfortunately- But I'm just saying people are like, Why did you attack Apple when Metta is doing it?

I was like, Because we don't like him, we like Apple.

Well, this feels like more of a betrayal. Yes, that's what I mean. We thought if there was One person who was going to stand up and say, I have been a huge beneficiary of rule of law and the progress of rights in America, and Apple has been an enormous beneficiary of competition and rule of law. What's going on here is directly contrary to everything that's given me incredible opportunities and created $4 trillion in shareholder value. We are not down with this. But instead, he's like, Well, I'd love to hang out with Melania. Just make sure that we're exempt from those China, those pesky China terrfs.

And de-escalate the word. This statement was such weak sauce. It was de-escalate. I also thought, and as Stephanie Rule actually correctly pointed out, it was bland, and the one from the Minneapolis commerce. It was like, Let's all get along. I'm like, There is a side here, and it's not with the police at this Or not the police. The police are doing great in Minneapolis. It's these thugs. They have given Tim Cook and the rest of tech a very easy way to say, How dare you talk about people like that? Would We were just talking about Christie Noe. They have gone to a goulish place. One person who did speak out, let me just say, Vinod Khosla went, distanced himself from something Keith Raboy was saying about the shooting, because Keith was wrong, as always. He also got into a beef with Elon Musk, very public about racism, which I'm not surprised Vinod is like that, but it didn't cost Vinod anything to do that. Vinod and I don't agree on lots of stuff. Sometimes he says things, I'm like, Are you kidding me? But he was a person. These statements by Cooke and Sam Altman and the rest of them, you're not people.

Stop acting like you're not people. Having to throw in President President Trump as a very strong leader, or I had a discussion with President Trump. How rich do you have to be that you can't- What's the point of having all this money? What is the point of being this powerful and having to be just a weak person, a weak moral person. That to me, I just don't understand.

People ask me what job is safe from AI? And I say, I personally think if I were to bet on one job that's only going to increase in importance, it's things around communications, strategic communications, investor relations, PR. And the two biggest communications mistakes of the last probably quarter happened in the last week. On a corporate level, whoever the fuck didn't literally body block Tim Cook from not only going to that dinner but getting a picture with Brett Ratner. I'm not going to make a judgment on Brett Ratner's past.

But please go read about it.

But that's just not a good look to be at the Melania premiere. I mean, it's like any PR person who has any intelligence in Apple thought, okay, I'm about to get fired, and I deserve to be fired. Then the second biggest communications mistake or rookie move was for the administration to create a talking point that, Oh, you show up with a gun, you're looking for trouble at a protest. It's like, Well, let me get this. When Kyle Rittenhouse shows up with an AR-15, he gets invited to the Republican Convention. Also, the NRA came out and said, Look, and there's some data here. If you have the training Alex Pretty had, and you have a license to carry and conceal, and you've never committed so much as a misdemeanor, you're 7-10 times less likely to commit a crime. There is something to the notion of safe, well-trained registered carry laws. For them to come out and say, Anyone going to the protest is looking to get in trouble, it's like, Okay, so you're denying people's right to protest, and you're saying that- First Amendment. First Amendment. Now you decide in one fell swoop to talk about violating the Second Amendment, claiming the people that have guns are looking for trouble and more deserving.

The entire Second Amendment is meant to prevent this. We need to arm as a citizenry in case tyranny takes over from the government.

But that's not what he was even doing. He wasn't even brandishing. The word brandish, he was brandish. I think Noam said that he was brandishing a gun. He didn't brandish anything. He never touched his gun. Brandished a cell phone. Someone else took it out.

Christie. But That was just such a huge error on their part, because quite frankly, when the NRA weighs in and says, This is bullshit, it becomes a very bipartisan issue.

Well, in any case, Tim Cook, bad show. Bad show all around. I think you should do an interview with Kara Swisher and then see if you can make it through that. Anyway, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, big tech goes to court over addictive products. Support for this show comes from Indeed. If you're looking to hire top-tier talent with expertise in your field, Indeed says they can help. Indeed Sponsored Jobs gives your job the best chance at standing out and grants you access to quality candidates who can drive the results you need. Spend more time interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results now with Indeed Sponsored Jobs. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at indeed. Com/voxbusiness. Just go to indeed. Com/voxbusiness right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast.

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Scott, we're back with more news. This is a really interesting big tech trial taking place. We haven't really paid attention to. It's kicked off in LA this week where a plaintiff is suing Metta TikTok Snap and YouTube claiming personal injury through addictive products. The claims features like infinite scrolling and algorithm recommendations lead to compulsive use, resulting in problems like depression and Society. Executives, including Mark Zuckerberg, are expected to testify with nine cases likely to be heard. Tiktok and Snap settled with the first plans where the trial began. It's a little bit of a big tobacco moment. I know these trials, you never know where they're going to go, but really people have not been paying attention to this trial. It's in an area you and I talk about a lot. There's plenty of text back and forth about obsession and addiction. There's a lot of discovery here that should be really interesting. They have these executives talking about what they're doing, very similar to big tobacco. Yeah, we know when they smoke it, they love it. We know they're addicted, that stuff. I think it should be a really revelative. We know they know this, and Someone like Tristan Harris has been talking about it for years.

I've been talking about it, you've been talking about it. Now it's got to the dangers of suicide with young people, too. So any thoughts?

We're going to look back on this era and decide that letting a 16-year-old on app or on Instagram or on TikTok is probably more harmful than if we let 16-year-olds smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol. 6% of teens qualify as being addicted to drugs or alcohol. 24% qualify as addicts to social media. The heaviest users are twice as likely to have suicidal intent. They're also the group in the highest usage are more likely to express poor body image more than the lowest used group. The bottom line, this is To say this is like kids smoking is unfair to tobacco. I mean, this is going to sound... I've said this, and I got a ton of shit for it a few years ago. It was the first time I was featured on late night TV, not in a good way. No, let's go it again.

Let's say it again.

Go ahead. Well, I said, I'd rather give my 16-year-old a bottle of Jack and some weed than a TikTok.

Now, I agree with you.

But go ahead. They played that and said that was so ridiculous. I hung out with a Mormon kid all in a great athlete in high school, and neither of them drank. I actually think I could have benefited from easing into alcohol. Anyways, this social media... I've said this, the thing we're going to regret most, we're going to look back and think, How did we let this happen to our kids. Even outside of hardcore addiction, I'm not exaggerating, 60%, maybe 70% of the family anxiety my family registers, arguments arguments between me and the kids, arguments between the kids and their mother, arguments between me and their mother, revolve around the fucking phone and social media.

I feel you, Scott.

When we leave our kid alone and we go on vacation and we're checking Custodio, and he calls us, and he's not at school, and we find out he was on social media all night. People say, Well, that's bad parenting. You're in control. Yeah, that means you don't have kids. Exactly. It's not a collective movement. If you take your kid off a snap, he is then further depressed because he's ostracized because this is how these kids communicate with each other. It needs to be a collective action. There should be no synthetic relationships.

Speaking of collective actions. Can I add? I have to say one of the greatest moments of my parenting is when my son, unbeknownst to me, used Amazon to order a box to put his phone in. Alex did it and lock it away to do his homework because it was distracting him. You You know what I mean? When he was in high school, I was really proud of him. He understood the issue easily. One of the things that's really hard is, including for adults, I was at one work meeting, and I made everyone put the phone in the middle of the table. It was very uncomfortable.

I'm addicted.

Let me be clear. I'm addicted. I was like, Put them in the middle. Don't touch them. Don't touch them. Like, Oh, I have to. My kid. I'm like, it'll be fine. Nobody's going to get an emergency. If it is, I'm sorry in advance, but it probably isn't. We're going to pay attention to this trial because it's really important, but we're going to read out some of the text and emails that these people know exactly what they're doing, and they relish it. They relish the hold they have on people. They relish the hold they have on teens, and they are very aware, just like big tobacco, of what they're up to here, no matter what they say in public. That will be stuff. We'll be doing dramatic readings of that. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk big tech earnings. Support for this show comes from Odoo. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other. Introducing Odoo. It's the only business software you'll ever need.

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So no, Tucker Carlson.

It is not an excuse to go silent on Candice's targeting of TP USA.

Or to mirror her bullshit lines of questioning because you love Candice personally.

The same holds true of Megan Kelly. Kelly and Tucker hit back at Shapiro. To hear calls for deplatforming and denouncing people at a Charlie Kirk event, I'm like, What? This is hilarious. I don't think we are friends anymore. I've been a very good friend to Ben. Nobody knew who the heck Ben Shapiro was when I started putting him on my shows on the Fox News channel. Erica Kirk tried to keep it light. The enemy has thrown a lot of curveballs at us today.

My iPad won't even turn on.

Nicki Minaj was there. Why not? And those people are adult professionals. Charlie Kirk started Turning Point USA to reach college students. It was a campus organization first. So what are the students thinking? Today, Explained drops every weekday. A lot of us have spent a lot of the last week watching videos of what's happening on the streets of Minneapolis and understanding what it is that we're seeing, but also what's real and what isn't and what's AI and who is taking these videos and how we're supposed to understand the source feels harder than ever. So this week on The VergeCast, we're talking about what's happening in Minneapolis, how information moves in an AI age, and what it means to make sense of it all. All that, plus what's new with the new TikTok, why everything feels like it's falling apart on TikTok, and more on The VergeCast, wherever you get podcasts. Scott, we're back with more news. The S&P 500 crossed the 7,000 mark for the first time ever on Wednesday, ahead of major tech earnings. Tech, of course, fueled it. Let's walk quickly through the results. Metta posted a strong quarter with fourth quarter sales up 24% year over year.

That's really impressive. His AI spending spree continues with a projected CapEx of up to 135 billion in 2026. Probably a lot of that will be dedicated, hopefully, to advertising for them because that's where they'll get the most bang for their buck. Microsoft also shows no sign of pulling back on AI spending 37. 5 billion dollars on CapEx in the latest quarter. 66% increase from last year. The picture was less rosy for Tesla, which reported a a 61% drop in net income for the quarter, down 46% of the year. The stock is still soaring, inexplicably. Tesla is also scrapping the Model S and X cars using the factory space to build robots. He's coming all in on robots. One thing I say about him, when he goes for it, he goes for it. I've heard some of his robotics stuff is very impressive, but nonetheless, he's betting the farm on it again. It's investing about $2 billion in XAI. The combination of robotics and AI, to me, is really important. I've talked about this before. Also, there's layoffs at Amazon and related to AI and Pinterest, very large layoffs. They're all using AI to cut labor costs.

What jumps out the most?

Well, I think AI is going to add a lot of shareholder value, but not where we think it's going to add the most value. I think the AI native companies are overvalued right now. I think the NVIDIAs, the OpenAI, the Anthropics of the World are probably overvalued. Where I do think you'll see an increase in shareholder value as the application of it, specifically autonomous. I think Waymo is going to be a trillion dollar company on its own. Targeting of ads and making the consumer experience better and creating a better advertising stack. I got to be honest, I think Instagram and threads get better every day. I think they're fantastic. I think the consumer experience and also-So does Gemini on Google, by the way. I've done a little poking around how an advertiser... I just don't see why. I can't imagine what it's to be selling apps for MSNBC right now when the person from Metta or Google show up and show you what they can do. Oh, you're targeting kids who just got their driver's licenses in Montclair, New Jersey? No problem. We can reach them one at a time at scale.

And with perfect ads that are help AI.

At the right moment, it ends up people want to buy life insurance at 07: 00 PM right after... Anyways, Metta's earnings and Incredible. Revenue up 24% year-on-year. It's a big company. And all that, their employee base wasn't up 24%. I don't have the number, but I think it was barely up. And then the one that was down 6 or 7%, they were up 7%. The one that was down was Microsoft because Azure didn't lit up its cloud company. It had growth of 39%, which still topped analyst expectations. But unfortunately, the new expectations is that you blow away expectations applications. But still Azure cloud computing, the demand is so great. The Microsoft's backlog of commercial bookings were up 110% to 625 billion. There's some concerns about overreliance on OpenAI, where as a whopping, 45% of this backlog is attributed to their quarter of a trillion dollar agreement they made in October. And also it's gross margins because the increase in CapEx is the lowest. It's been in three years, coming around 60%, which spooks some people. Tesla, I can't even begin to understand what the fuck is going on there. I think this stock should be down 90%.

It's become a meme stock. It is.

That's all. I suspect he's just decided cars aren't the way to do it. Then he has some advantages in robotics. Several people have called me and said, actually, he's doing a lot of really innovative stuff around robotics. It's just he's bedding the farm on that everyone wants to have an Optimist robot in their house, I guess. But he's done it before. That's the only thing I would say. But he hasn't shown. The other thing he's done before is say, we're going to land on Mars. He makes promises. He never... His mouth makes promises he can't keep in reality. So the question is, the Model S and X cars were made by Rivian and Lucid and the Chinese, right? He's gotten out of this business. He's not in the car business anymore, it seems like. And so the question is, can this robotics business meet the challenge? We'll see.

Well, to be fair, they did beat expectations, but let's talk about what those expectations were. The revenues are down. Of all the companies we talk about, no one is down. Matt is up 23 %. And then overall, a horrific quarter, their operating margins, and that is the amount of money you get to hold on to, was 7. 2 % last year, in the same quarter. This year, it was down to 46 %. That's a meltdown. Their free cash flow decreased 30%, their gap net income decreased 61%. They realized they got a half a billion dollars in automotive regulatory credits that are going to be running out thanks to the big, beautiful bill.

People still believe in him. They're giving him money for XAI. I think he's going to merge it into XAI, like I keep saying.

He's now using Tesla as nutrition for XAI. They disclosed that Tesla invested 2 billion in Musk's company XAI. And He needs a new vision, a new distraction. As you said, he's gone all in on Optimus, which I think is going to compete with the Cybertruck and the Segway and the Palm as the biggest flops in history or maybe the mixed reality had said. The other thing that struck me was the layoffs in Amazon. Yeah. And then they laid off- And Pinterest, by the way. But it's for different reasons. Pinterest is doing it because Pinterest is fucked in subscale. I like Pinterest. I like the people there. It's subscale. It's going to have a very difficult time. Amazon laid off 16,000 people in their corporate workforce, which doesn't sound like a lot because I employ 1. 6 million people, but the majority of those people are in their factories. This is probably close to 10% of their corporate staff. And this really is, I've said for a long time that AI is corporate Ozempic. All these guys are going, you know? I mean, Amazon has said they're going to double their top-line retail revenue in the next 5-7 years without a single increase in the number of headcount.

That's AI. And then also, I think the place, and Amazon is my big tech stock pick for 26, the collision, and you've referenced this, of AI industrialized robots, of which Amazon has a million industrialized robots, and the total number of industrial robots in America outside of Amazon is 400,000. So they have gone just as Musk is going all in on robots, no fucking sense. Amazon, Jaffee and Bezos are going all in on AI-driven industrialized robots Outs, which is champagne and cocaine.

But they were there before. They bought a company called Kiva many years ago. But just so you know, recent Amazon layoffs plus October layoffs is 10% of the company. They had one. Oh, is it?

Thank you. But UPS got 30,000 jobs. I mean, these guys are-Industrial Robotics. I interviewed David Solomon from Goldman Sachs on Prof G, and he said, I mean, they're planning to grow their revenue substantially the next two or three years. Goldman is in a great spot right now. Great leadership. They're doing well. But he admitted, Employment will begin to flatten. No CEO is going to come out and say, I'm going to reduce 10 or 20% of my workforce. No, they can't say that because then everyone, the best people start leaving. But what he did say is it's going to flatten. So what we're looking at here is- Flat is new up. Right. But this takes their earnings and absolutely makes them go crazy. And then when these companies do well, everyone, the S&P does well because the S&P is now... It's not the S&P 500, it's the S&P 10. Anyways, these companies on the whole continue to just be extraordinary. That is until this movement called Resist and unsubscribed came along.

Anyway, one more quick break. This is absolutely two. Corporate Ozempic. Take it away. We'll be back for predictions. Megan Rapinoe here. This week on the Touchmore, Trinity Rodman is officially staying with the Washington spirit in the NWSL as the first player to benefit from the NWSL's new high-impact player rule, a. K. A. The Rodman rule. What does this mean for the rest of the league? Also, In light of the potential Kaitlyn Clarke-Page-Becker's rivalry on the horizon, we want to talk about rivalries in general, how they're formed and what they mean. Plus, Diana Flores, Flag Football's biggest advocate and Mexico star player, joins the show to tell us why the future is Flag Football. Check out the latest episode of A Touch More, wherever you get your podcast and on YouTube.

Imagine there's no football. It's not easy, right? Football is by far the dominant force in American culture. It is the only thing propping up TV. And Chuck Closterman says, One day, all of that is going to change.

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Okay, Scott, I'm going to make one quick prediction, okay, if you don't mind. The Super Bowl is just a few weeks away, and go Seahawks. But I already have a prediction for the best ad, Lady Gaga. Did you see that singing Mr. Rogers's Beautiful Day in your Neighborhood in an ad for Red Fin and Rocket Mortgage? I don't really care about the ad, but they released a teaser clip, and she sounds amazing singing. She's got incredible voice. It's going to be the best ad. We'll talk about the ads later because that's always fun.

That was not the prediction I was expecting. It's very similar to mine, and that is we're about to engage in military strikes against Iran. So very similar predictions. Yeah, okay.

Lady Gaga.

It's just so strange that the Epstein files are now a distraction for me. It's like the behavior keeps getting more and more depraved that we have to come up with even.

Someone said they're the safest thing in America are the Epstein files, but go ahead.

No, I've made this prediction before, and I'm just making it again. It feels like I follow this. I love this guy, Djeo Hussar, on TikTok. I'm sold. I'm just fascinated with military equipment. It appears that all our assets are being coordinated in the Gulf for a pretty obvious reason. I don't know if Trump is doing it for the right or the wrong reasons, maybe it's a distraction, but I think he absolutely loves the Tarzan flex of leveraging the best organization in history, and that's the military. It appears to me that they are absolutely... Even the planes that are applying to the area are like giant gas stations in the sky. I think Israel is on board because I think they think it would be good for their brand. I think you're going to see some coordinated strike in Iran in the next 7-14 days.

I think you're going to see a coordinated strike against Ohio or wherever they're going to attack the Haitians who are not eating the and dogs. That's where I think you're going to see the next strike.

So you don't think they're going to pull back at all? No. Yeah, you're probably right.

Not these people. Anyway, we want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business tech or whatever is on your mind. Go to nymag. Com/pivot to submit a question for the show or call 8555. 1 Pivot. Okay, that's the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot. Be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back next week. Scott, read us out.

Today's show is produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Indertod, engineer this Manola Moreno edited the video. Thanks also to Drew Burrows, Mia Severo, and Dan Chalan. Michal Kroas, VoxMedia's executive producer podcast. Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thank you for listening to Pivot from New York magazine, VoxMedia. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag. Com/pod. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business care. Have a great weekend.

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