Transcript of Epstein Files Fallout, Trump's Fed Chair Pick, and Musk Merger

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Some people hate you and love me. And some people love you and hate me. It's perfect. Hi everyone, this is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.

And I'm Scott Galloway.

Resist an unsubscribe February has begun. How's it going? You've been putting up a lot. You've been really getting rid of shit. I've been getting rid of a lot, but not like you. I still have Uber. I was just Gonna pause it and use Lyft instead.

Yeah, it sucks when you gotta walk the walk.

I know, I know.

So, I mean, I'm Insight. You'd be a better judge of how it's gone than me. I'm. I've literally. I've gotten hundreds, and I'm about to cross a thousand emails of people with screenshots of them unsubscribing. Obviously, you need hundreds of thousands, maybe millions. I'm going on cnn, msnbc, pbs. I'm doing the rounds there.

I think it's taken off. I have to tell you, I'm hearing it from lots of people.

Oh, thanks. I think. Well, I hope you're right. You're probably being generous because you like me, but I've heard from about a third of the companies, either. They're CEOs, and they've been very polite, but they're like, you realize that I supported this and I'm against ice. And I'm like, yeah, to me you are. But I haven't heard you say D publicly.

Not Dick.

And what's interesting is through the process, for example, I unsubscribed from Uber, or I canceled my Uber account.

That was a big one. I thought that was a big deal.

Oh, my God. Before you go, it tells you, all right, I've ordered 37 times from Uber Eats. How many Ubers have I taken in the last 10 years? Guess.

I don't know. Thousands?

3,747.

Yeah, yeah.

And I did some. I did some math here.

Everyone thought you had a private driver. I'm like, he doesn't have a private driver.

It's called Uber. It's called Dara Kasper Shah.

Yeah, that's right.

Anyways, I absolutely love Uber Lux. And this is a story of privilege. Let me do my land. Acknowledgments. Most people don't have the money I have anyways, but I've taken 350 Ubers a year for the last 10 years. On average, the average price of Uber Lux has gone from 40 to $60 to $80 to $120. And this is what these companies do. They do predatory pricing. They price it below market. Incredible value proposition. They wait till they consolidate the market, then they start raising prices, which Uber has done 7 to 10% a year for the last decade. So this year, in 2025, do you know how much I' a year on Uber?

No. What?

I'm spending $34,000 a year on Uber. What?

Where are you going?

I figured it out. Everywhere I go Everywhere.

You could have hired a driver.

Yeah, okay. No, better yet, I figured it out. I'm now taking the tube here. I'm taking the subway. By the way, the subway in New York is amazing. And I'm, I'm, I'm filling in the gaps with Uber X, whatever it's called. The cheap one where you get an air freshener and you know, a guy who can't figure out ways. That was probably a hate crime. Anyways. And then. But I figured out the money I'm going to save, I could buy, including insurance and parking. I could lease a Mercedes G Wagon, a Range Rover, or the new BMW I Series 7. People do not realize how much money they are spending on these platforms because they get you in, they automatically renew. Time goes faster than you think, right? I found out I have three ChatGPT subscriptions. I'm not sure why, but I have three Drunken Night. I have four Apple TV plus subscriptions. I'm like, how do I log on here? And I just log on again or I just create a new account. I have been. I switched from AT&T, which has been a supporter of ice. I'm saving approximately $70 a month on AT&T, switching over to Noble, which I did before.

Anyways, I'm, I'm doing, I'm trying to unsubscribe from some, from something every day and do some analysis around what I've spent and what it's cost.

But may I ask a question? Because someone didn't bring this up. Would you get rid of your stocks in these companies?

Oh, that's a tough one.

I know. That's what I thought. I thought it was a good question.

Okay, this is the bottom line. I think I'm going to have to. I'm also thinking about transferring all of my stocks and bonds and assets from, from Goldman and going either to a regional bank or even a Canadian bank.

Canadian bank, rbc, whatever.

I just don't want to hate Amer. I don't want to hurt Americans. But I think I might go to a regional bank. But I am, I am going to, I am going to try and walk the walk here. And every day I'm unsubscribing or canceling from. From something.

But yeah, it gets easy to harder. That's. That was a good question from a listener, I thought. All right, let's listen to some of what our listeners have called in to tell us they've done.

I unsubscribe from Apple tv.

I have personally unsubscribed from Every streaming.

Service that is currently out there.

Personally, I had given up Amazon 3 egregious Jeff Bezos acts ago. I had been guiltily keeping the Kindle Unlimited that is gone as of today, as is Apple Fitness.

This is Michael in Cameroon and I have canceled my ChatGPT Pro and Amazon Prime. Amazon acquired IMDb 25 years ago. I've been paying for the Pro membership subscription for the last 20 years. It's a pain but I can find this information elsewhere. So click.

This is all different. You don't realize how much stuff we pay these people everywhere. And also what's really helpful is you gave examples of what you can go to. Like I think you said go to oh, music service. You got rid of a music and you went to a different one. Yeah, you know, helping people go to other things. Now can I just make one point? Not everything is perfect. No company, all companies have been involved in all kinds of nefarious activities that you don't like. But you've got to meet the moment for now. And you could always go back to them. Right at some point. That's the thing. You're sending a message right now like I have to give up the Amazon stuff. I gotta work on that today. Like I, I use Amazon a lot. My wife's ships shifted to local retailers which one of the problems is you can't find products cause of the tariffs like and that's diff stuff you use every day. But I'm really, I think this is a great effort.

Scott Galloway Thanks. And I mean a few things. One, I'm not telling people not to go to work or not to buy groceries. I don't think someone who has the blessings I have is in a position to tell people to take risks with their employment or really sacrifice around things like food. What I'm suggesting is this is a signal and a framework for how you inflict the maximum damage with a minimum amount of sacrifice. And that is if you were to say stop shopping at Kroger's and reduce your grocery spend, I think you have X impact. When you go after big tech, who has the presidents and the markets a year and subscription revenue where these companies are trading at 30, 50, 100 times revenues, you have 40x the impact on the administration with what is in my view a fairly minimal sacrifice. When you look at how many substitutes there are and when you actually uncover how much money you're spending and what is really required to not participate, it's not as much as you'd think. There's the tube there's UberX. There are a ton of streaming media platforms. There are free 30 day Spotify accounts.

If you cancel and then resubscribe, it's there's a lot of ways here to have a big impact without a huge you don't have to take your entire Saturday and go to a protest. And I'm not discouraging people from doing that. But if you want to look at maximum impact relative to the investment or the sacrifice, I think this is it.

Yep, I like the three, three egregious Jeff Bezos acts ago. We're in like 10 at this point anyway. Keep going, keep going and keep putting those things up. I'll keep people you can find hundreds of dollars that you can take away from them and they will know. And it does add up. A little tiny drop becomes a great stream and then an ocean. So anyway, we've got a lot to get to today, so let's dig in. The Justice Department released this was something over the weekend, 3.5 million new pages of Epstein related files late last week. They're not even the worst ones. There's 3 million more. That must be the worst, including 2,000 videos and 180,000 images a mere 42 days after the federally mandated deadline. By the way, they are following the law. There are millions more they need to release. They said they weren't going to, but they are going to have to, I think. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said the release brings the DOJ into compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act. It doesn't. The lawmakers and survivors are calling the document dump inadequate and filled with redaction errors. At least 5,300 documents mention Donald Trump.

A lot of these are unverified tips. But Trump said he's been told in the latest release absolves him. It does not. The files show how Epstein's network stretched across Hollywood, Wall Street, Washington, Silicon Val. That's what's really quite fascinating here with people like Brett Ratner, who was just at the White House. He did the Melania document. Howard Lutnick, who lied about being in touch with Epstein. He made a big show of not thinking he was awful and then was hanging out with him in his place in the Caribbean. Bill Gates, Elon Musk, all appearing in the documents. Elon Musk looked like he's losing, having a stroke in real time over these things and trying to pretend he doesn't mean anything. So talk about this and obviously another person has been caught up some we've talked about Peter Attio, a number of really distasteful texts, thousands of them, actually. So lots of people involved. They really strut the gamut and they're all very social with each other. Casey Wasserman, who's running the Olympic effort, for example, apologized. I'll take no. Just so you know, a lot of fake Elon Musk emails floating out there. But it's clear his relationship with Elon is not how he's framed it in the past, which is he wasn't interested.

He's been posting on X all weekend saying there's where his emails to Epstein could be misinterpreted. He's also back and forth with Reid Hoffman, who Reid really got him saying if he really cared about the victims, he wouldn't have spent $210 million on Donald Trump. And also have all that non consensual stuff on Grok, which I think is absolutely right. So, thoughts, Scott? I mean, it's been pretty riveting in a lot of way.

I mean, there's just so much here. One, I think you have to put on your critical thinking cap and discern between different acts, criminal acts, poor judgment, and people who are just unlucky. Any other administration would be taking advantage of the moment to say we have appointed a special counsel here and we are going to prosecute people based on this information and the criminal. If you, if you had sex with an underage girl, you should be subject to criminal prosecution. And these files seem to indicate that that absolutely happened here. And all this bullshit about concern over the victims. Well, okay. The way you bring closure and create incentives such that other people don't do this is you criminally prosecute. There's another group of people that I think is even bigger, and that is the people who have demonstrated really poor judgment by cohorting, collaborating, commiserating with a convicted pedophile.

Let me add, Steve Bannon was right up in his groove. He was, they were like fricking frack, right?

And those people should be shamed. Maybe those people, maybe we should not be comfortable with those people in leadership positions. I'd like to think the bar for, you know, president is that that would not clear that bar. So people get to decide if they're comfortable with those errors in judgment. And then I think an even bigger concentric circle is a lot of people who are just in the wrong place at the wrong time. And I don't, I, you know, I don't want to, I'm not saying I absolve them of all or I, I don't think they're guiltless But I do think a lot of people got invited to some conference about philanthropy or whatever and ended up in the Epstein files.

Yeah, no, I know.

I.

Listen, oddly enough, I will say full disclosure, we sent Epstein a note to go to Dive into Media because we bought a TED list and he was a big. A lot of those people in these files are all ex or TED people. They were. And so we bought mailing lists and there's an email that. Which is a mailing list email. It wasn't from me. He was on it. And then for some reason, some of the people around him sent him articles I wrote. And that's, you know, so I searched myself immediately. And that's the pretty. That's the extent of what I can find. I have been at parties, as I said, where big, huge dinner events at like ted. Ted was where he showed up a lot, where he apparently was. I never met him. But I mean, you're. That's what you're talking about, correct?

Look, Elon Musk, who appears to have been, you know, had a lot. Decent amount of interaction with Jeffrey Epstein, immediately goes on the offensive and tries to start pulling Reid Hoffman into it. And Reid looks like he was squarely on the outer circle here.

Yeah, I would agree. I know a lot about his.

That's how gross this is getting. The other observation is that there's pedophilia and what's going on here in some ways is worse. What do I mean by that? I do think there are pedophiles who have a psychiatric ailment where they are unnaturally attracted sexually to children. And I think a lot of them, not a lot of them, some of them recognize this ailment and seek treatment. Some do not. And some end up becoming pedophiles and should end up in prison. I think in some ways this is worse in the sense that I think the people guilty of having sex with underage girls here, while the term is pedophilia, what it is is a group of people who feel they are not subject to laws and the standards that everyone else is subject to. I think they think, oh, this is fun, it's a party. And if I have sex with an underage girl, that's fun and it's a thrill and I can do it because I am not subject to the same standards and laws as everyone else. So while I think a lot of these people, if in fact there was and it appears there was criminal rape, I'm not sure they're pedophiles.

What they are is people who've decided that because of their money, power and proximity to power that they're not subject to any standards whatsoever. In my opinion. In some ways that's, that's the sickness that infects our powerful.

Well, what's interesting is how it cuts across party lines. Right? You have all these Democrat leaning people kibitzing with like a Steve Bannon kibitzing with a this and that.

All unified around parting and having sex with Saint Barts.

Yeah, yeah, girls and stuff like that. That's what was gross. I do think I wanna zero in on the judgment thing here because there is judgment of what you should and shouldn't do. Like, you know, everyone knew what this guy was back then. Trust me, they did. And they went anyway. And so bad judgment on Bill Gates part. And I think Melinda Gates has talked about this. Howard Lutnick like literally went out of his way to say what a good judgment he had by never. He had a massage table in his living room and went bragged how he rejected him and then was at his place, stayed at his house, was like super friendly. Fuck that guy. Like judgment. But I'm sorry, there's more there than that. The same thing with Peter Attia. I feel like everyone knew what was happening here. And so there should be a. You can decide what you want to do with these people. But there should be a price for this level of. It's in the same genre of we can do whatever we want, who cares? You know, Ha ha ha. You know, pussy is low carb. Like, are you kidding me?

Like, I mean it would be. It's stupid joke if the guy you weren't talking to was a sexual predator. Right. And so that's why I find it a little more.

See I'm. I'm less. And it's safer just to say this is awful and these people should be canceled. I do think that people when they send private emails should be granted a lot of license and if they aren't guilty of a crime, you can decide not to listen to their podcast.

Yep, that's what I mean.

But I think we have a tendency to mix criminal activity with poor judgment. And I think you have to draw bright lines between them. And I don't. To me it just is. Like someone is accidentally mentioned in the Epstein files because they flew on a plane with other people to some nonprofit event talking about technology and people who might have been in the files. There is report of an individual who impregnated an 11 year old.

Yeah. Yep.

I mean one is spend the rest of your Life in prison. The other was, okay, maybe you should do more diligence on the planes you're on. And it feels like it's all been wrapped up into one amorphous blog.

I get it. I agree, I agree. But there are some very clear lines when I'm talking about Lutnick. He went out of his way to say how much he hated the guy. And then right in the emails, he did just.

I'm trying to rewrite history.

Yes, he's a liar. Listen, that, that we know. Same thing with Musk. He was just fine. Just. You made. Can't you just say I'm mean, you know who did that? Katie Couric went to a dinner at this, at Epstein's house. One of these dinners. He used to have these like influencer dinners. She went, she said, I should have done more research. I apologize. I abhor him. Like, she just took. She just took responsibility for her stupid judgment there. Right. And I think that's fine. I don't think we should like.

But it brings up a point. Should Katie Couric do research on every dinner invitation?

No, not necessarily. But when it was came to pass, what it was very clear.

She apologized.

She apologized and said, oh, how dumb. You're not hearing from Howard Lett, you're not hearing from Peter Attia. Like, I'm sure he's engaged a very expensive crisis manager here, but. And then Elon, he is spinning so hard.

He's gone on the attack. He's trying to pretend that he somehow was protected or like was a just so offended by Jeffrey Epstein. And can you believe what Reid Hoffman did meanwhile.

Yes, look over here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm glad Reed slapped him back to last Sunday, because he's right, Elon. If you actually cared about women, you'd have helped the victims financially instead of giving money to Donald Trump. You'd have gotten your non consensual sex off of Grok. But you don't care. You don't care. You don't care. Like, you don't have an interest in.

But again, the really shocking thing to me is, and I know very powerful and wealthy people, just the belief that they can just do anything and they're going to be immune.

They do. They're like that. It was a weird scene.

I have friends who are fairly famous actors and if they walk into a scenario with a lot of women or a party scene, they're like, I can't be here. I can't be here. I'm not gonna do anything. I'm not even Gonna flirt with anybody. But I can't be here because if it hits the press, it'll upset my wife. It will create talking points that aren't good, that will insinuate. I mean, I know people who are so careful and shape their lives realizing that unfair.

Unfair or not, picture a photo of.

You and then these guys, Jeffrey Epstein. These guys go to an island and start having sex with underage women and aren't worried. Like, believe that this isn't going to come back to haunt them.

There's also a lot of people that enabled them and one person that, by the way, I searched you immediately.

In what? In the Epstein boss, of course. Yeah. No, that's one party. I wasn't invited.

Yeah, you weren't. But did you really search for me? I searched everybody.

Did you really search for me?

I did. I had to. I work with you. I have to make certain.

Okay. All right.

Thank God.

Yeah.

Come on. I search. I searched like 20 names of people I know.

Season 2 Gay Hockey with the dog Frotchy. That's what you got to worry about. I'm going to be an extra. I'm going to be an extra.

I don't worry about that. I would welcome any sexual expression consensual.

My next career fluffer for Gay For Gay Badminton, the new original series on hbo.

I welcome any joyful consensual sexual expression you want to have Scott Galloway's longest age.

At this point, when I orgasm, it's just mists coming out. There's just literally, it's got to be a Pam Grier film, a cattle prod up my ass and literally like a Cialis shake. And I got to snort Viagra and watch Jackie Brown and then it's go time. It's go time.

I'm moving young. I would say the people that are worse are not even worse. They're just as bad. Are some of these enablers. And I will name them. John Brockman is throughout it. And I urge you to look up. He was a guy who was involved with all these intellectuals who are. Who Epstein was funding. He ran a billionaire's dinner at ted. I have attended that. He obviously the facilitators. These kind of people have to be looked at too. The way they sort of facilitated what you're talking about, which is this very easy peasy, let's get together and talk intellectual stuff, which they loved. Let me tell you. The reason you're seeing a lot of tech people in this group, and you are, is because they desperately sought out validation through intellectual discourse. They Used to love having these events, whether whatever they happen to be. And thank God. You know one thing, I did have our staff for our code conference look him up. He was on the wait list of D5, the one with gates and jobs, and we didn't let him in. I remember not particularly not letting him in, but he did somehow show up and talk to Tim Cook on the sidelines of one of my conferences, which I wasn't aware of.

It was in the files too.

But yeah, my view is you go. My view is you go much harder on the people who are criminals.

Yes.

And quite frankly, you go much lighter on the people who, like you, get invited by a billionaire to go party on an island. If you see crime, you leave. But I don't, I think a lot of people for a lot of different reasons. This guy had a big sphere around technology.

Really, he was, he was like an octopus in terms of trying to meet people and a lot of people facilitated that for him.

So. But there needs to be more prison and more judgment around who is in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Yes, I agree, but there's a lot of people who knew exactly what they were doing. So I think it's a stack ranking of what people were doing in some cases. And people like Peter Atti and others really deserve some. You can censure him or not, but I think he's grotesque. Anyway, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, Trump's new Fed chair.

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Scott, we're back. President Trump has made his pick for Fed chair. I predicted the most handsome of the white guys, and I was right. The best hair. Trump nominated former Governor Kevin Warsh on Friday, calling him central cash and says he'll go down as one of the great Fed chairmen, maybe the best. Of course, he did say that about Jerome Powell, although when he picked him, Trump also joked during a speech this weekend that he would sue Warsh if interest rates didn't get lowered. Marsh is set to take the reins from Jerome Powell in May, but he needs to get through the Senate confirmation process, which might be hard because Republican Senator Thom Tillis, who suddenly found his balls, is already saying he's a no.

Until the DOJ probe into Powell is resolved.

Good for him. Tillis is really on fire. He's going to use up all his troublemaking before he leaves. He was sort of shoved to the side by Trump, by threats from Trump, but he's still in power, so he can do something about it. So talk about this pic. Warsh very briefly popped up in the Epstein files that we were missing out, saying he was on a guest list. St. Barth's Christmas 2010. Again, what you were talking about. I get it. I get it. In that case, that's it. So I don't think that should necessarily be, it shouldn't be a factor unless more stuff is found out. But talk about this, this pick. What do you think about war?

I think it's, to be blunt, I think it's a great pick given the context of who he could have selected.

Right? That's true. Could have been Don Jr. Yeah, I.

Wouldn'T be surprised if he picked, you know, Lara Trump. He does my to give credit where it's due. I think around these, these big financial appointments, I think he shows greater judgment around these appointments than he does around others. But essentially, this guy, he's very qualified. He's been described as a hawk. The fear around this appointment was that it was someone who would be subject to the political pressures of the presidency, would immediately start cutting interest rates and begin an upward spiral of inflation. And that fear was sending metals to record highs. Silver and gold have exploded. And the best indication that the market likes this pick is that when the pick was announced, metals crashed where they pulled back. This guy's known as a hawk. He served as liaison between Bernanke and the Wall street community during the 08 crisis, which most people think was handled really well. I like the fact he has a reputation as a hawk. I love the fact that these appointments.

I believe explain what a hawk is.

Well, someone who's more worried about inflation than lower growth, someone who will keep interest rates high longer than maybe they should. They err on the side of lower growth but less risk of inflation. And everyone is really worried that Trump is putting pressure and would rather err on the side of inflation.

Do you think he can resist the pressure? He saw what's happened to Powell.

That's what's great about these appointments is that they're 14 year tenure, I get that.

But he could undergo what Powell's been undergoing, fake criminal probes, et cetera.

As far as I know, Powell serving out his term and hasn't bent an inch.

Right.

I mean, and that's why it speaks to the importance the independence of the Fed. But.

Well, you wonder what this guy said to Trump, right? And why did he say he's going to sue him? You know, that's all weird. I find it weird.

There's something about the power and we've seen this on the Supreme Court. A lot of people show up with a history or say one thing to the Senate and then they get on the Supreme Court and they take advantage of their lifetime appointment and they behave differently.

Not in a good way.

Well, actually some of the older appointees became, from our viewpoint, much more progressive.

Well, look at Earl Warren.

Remember, I mean they really did over time think about what an incredible luxury it is to just focus on to be granted the tenure and this is the basis of tenure in colleges, to just try and pursue the truth and to screen out as many external forces as possible. That is a luxury and it's reserved for what people think is the most important positions in the world, including what may be the most important position in the world and that is the chairman of the Federal Reserve. So I was actually quite relieved when I saw this. I have a bias. I like Morgan Stanley, anyone who ran M and A. And Morgan Stanley has a pretty serious.

Well, he's a serious candidate, right?

He's a serious guy.

Had been like genuflecting. He had knee pads on it. One point, although he was very considered a very prominent.

I was worried it was going to be the mypillow guy. I just wouldn't put anything past this president right now. This is I think a good pick. The markets like it. He's an adult, he has a command of the markets, has a really good relationship with Wall street and I just hope that he shows.

They'll drop the Powell. The Powell. Powell probe to get him through.

Well, here's the thing. Powell's going to still be on the board of governors.

Yeah, well, they're, they're trying to do.

I don't, I don't care who the chairman is. Yeah, I don't care who the chairman is. The biggest voice in the room is still going to be Powell's.

Yep, yep, yep. We'll see. Anyway, good hair. Kevin and I picked. I knew the handsome man would win. Also, besides the handsome man, I was right about Elon planning to merge SpaceX and Xai. That is precisely what happened. The acquisition will give the combined company a valuation of 1.25 trillion. Flimflammery works for Elon Musk. Investors have also been pushing the idea of bringing Tesla into this. Obviously he had already merged Twitter or X the service into xai, sort of to hide it away in there, all their losses. So now it's Twitter, SpaceX and Xai. And you can just imagine Tesla being next in this scenario, XAI shares would be swapped for SpaceX shares. Just for people that don't know SpaceX is weighing a June IPO listing could seek to raise as much as $50 billion, making it the biggest IPO of all. Again, if that sounds a little familiar, guess what? Kara Swisher predicted it last April. Because I know how this guy thinks. And again, let's listen to what I predicted last April. Let's hear it again.

By the way, I just want to acknowledge I've been doing research. You blew my mind with the notion of a combined Tesla XAI and SpaceX. And I'm just like. That has totally blown my mind about.

As long as you attribute it to me, just attribute it, don't you?

I do, but that the idea of him merging all of those companies, like I can't wrap my head around what that would mean.

He's got to. He's got. It's the only move and he would do it. So let's talk about that. The reason I thought about that was because he's an internal flim flam man and he needed a new narrative and this works out for hiding. When he did the first Twitter XAI merger, he just got rid of the problem of everyone talking about what a shitty business it was. Tesla's obviously troubled Xai is being upheld by the valuations of AI companies and SpaceX is a real winner. So what do you. And you could make an argument that they all fit together, right?

Sure, why not?

Like data, things moving, blah. And he'll do it. So what do you think?

After the disaster at Chernobyl where radiation leaked for I guess hundreds or thousands of square miles, there's a lot of farmland and a lot of, a lot of livestock. And what they found was, okay, a lot of the beef and lamb and chicken had traces of radiation from the radiation leak at Chernobyl. And the Russian officials decided, okay, we're not going to throw away this meat. We're just going to parse it out and send small amounts mixed in with non radiated meat to different grocery stores. Because a little bit of radiation, as long as we mix it with non radioactive meat is okay. This is musk, basically taking his radioactive meat and that is Tesla, which isn't 10x the value of what it should be trading at Xai, which is sort of working, isn't. And then wrapping it in the non radioactive meat, which is SpaceX, which in my opinion is one of the most impressive companies with the greatest differentiation in history right now, 90% of launch capability, 2/3 of low earth satellites. And he's basically going to take all of it and say, okay, autonomous AI space launch capability and take it all into one giant Musk AI innovation.

Space. Don't leave robots that will get robots that will say, this is. You have to own this company. Because when you look at the. That's right. When you look at Tesla, it's like, okay, it's an automobile company that should be trading at 30 bucks a share, not 400 or whatever it's at. When you look at Xai, all right, it's a distant 7th LLM. When you look at robots, those make no fucking sense. But if you wrap all of that AI economists do. Oh, and Twitter, you know, a platform that's probably worth 10 billion, not what he paid. Wrap it all into a communications satellites, space launch, AI automated driving, and it's the kind of stock that everyone has to own. So this is an attempt to create, you know, individual ingredients which, some of which are amazing and some of which have real problems and put it all into one stew. I think it's a smart move, quite frankly.

Turducken. That's why I thought, I think like a really a fucked up fling plan, man. That's how I think, right? That's. I was like, what? I sit there and I go, what will he do? That's how I thought of it. That's exactly.

Let's go brainstorm about it on an island. I got this guy's really smart.

I was not on the island. I did not.

And he puts together these amazing parties with, like, thought leaders. And by the way, I am so shocked I am not on that list. Because the only reason I get invited to Davos, I get invited a place like that we're called. I refer to us. I say to. I saw Jonathan Haidt and I saw Adam Grant at Davos. I'm like, you realize what we are? And they're like, what? I'm like, we're intellectual support animals. We're here to make people feel.

Dancing fucking dogs.

Yeah. We're poodles. We're Dan. We're Fifi. The dead. We're like, dance for you to dinner. We have CEO BlackRock and Chairman of Finland. Now tell us something about young men.

Can I tell you? So many powerful people texting me, like, scott's so amusing.

Amusing, that's the word I get.

You know what I mean? Like, he's so interesting. I was like, oh, my God, he's totally dancing monkey is what's happening.

Yeah. That was my moment at Davos. I sit next to a woman I have never met before.

Yeah.

And all of a sudden, she starts going, kara's texting me and says, I'm next to you. I'm like, how the fuck does she know I'm here?

Rich people were writing me.

You're like the East German Stasi. You know every move.

I see why you like him. Well, because they called a text.

What's her name? She was lovely.

Dina Powell.

That's probably sexist. I wouldn't say that about a man.

She is lovely.

She is.

She's lovely.

She's new president of Meta. Just so you know.

No. So she started telling me what she was doing, and she was very measured. I'm like, why are you choosing your words so carefully? And then about five minutes later, I'm like, oh, you're a shill for Meta.

Oh, she's not a shell. We'll see.

She's trying to organize the bailout.

She's going to organize the bailout like anybody. Anybody who can get him away from.

She's married to a senator. Talk about a power couple.

David. Yeah. David. Yeah. Thank God.

Yeah.

He's McCormick. He was with Ray Dalio. Right? He was with Ray Dalio. That's his.

Really?

Yeah.

I can't believe you searched for me in the files.

Why wouldn't I? Are you kidding?

That was numero uno in the files.

Uno. You. Oh, come on. Whatever.

In any case, I pay for my stuff.

We know why he's doing it. All right, we're going to take I had to, you know, trust but verify. Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, tons of AI news.

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Scott, we're back now on some rapid fire news AI news because there's so much, let me go through them. Amazon is reportedly discussing an investment up to $50 billion in OpenAI. Meanwhile, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is pushing back on reports that his company is looking to scale back on its investment in OpenAI and that was in the Wall Street Journal. I thought it was an excellent article. This all comes as OpenAI is seeking to raise over $100 billion. It prepares for a public listing in the fourth quarter. It's trying to beat Anthropic to that punch. And Anthropic is clashing with the Pentagon over whether its AI would be used for surveillance and autonomous lethal operations, putting $200 million contract at risk. Your choice, Scott? Any of the above.

I think the most fragile company with respect to its valuation right now, maybe the exception of palantir, is probably OpenAI. I think OpenAI is racing to establish a leadership position. But if you look at the fact that doesn't have the fire hose of billions of people built in that Alphabet has, I don't think. And you look at. They're getting, I think they're getting attacked from the top, and that is Alphabet and Gemini, which has doubled its share, I think, in the last 18 months.

Which was inevitable, right? Inevitable.

But if you have a billion people or 2 billion people a day coming to your interface and you start introducing AI, that's just very powerful, it has.

A Netscape feel to it, but go ahead.

And then you have Microsoft, which has a recurring revenue relationship with 99.9% of the corporations above $1 million in revenue. They can introduce really seamlessly different things. And then you have an adjacent competitor, and that is Anthropic, which has gone after the enterprise market. I think I've told you this. And it's the weakest flex in the world. I was on the board of Gateway computer and about 25 years ago, if you asked analysts who had better prospects, Gateway or Dell, it was split and gateway was at 70 bucks a share anyways. 15 years later it was at 70 cents a share because they went consumer and Dell went small and medium sized business. And we know how the story ends. The story may be unfolding the same way, and that is OpenAI has a consumer offering, but less than 5% of the people actually go to the paid offering. And Anthropic has gone after the enterprise market and quite frankly looks to be beating Anthropic in the enterprise market.

But it is fighting with the panic. It's interesting because he's becoming the most interesting character, Dario Amodi, in terms of talking about safety. He's sort of, everyone sort of attacked him for that, especially that dope David Sacks. But I think actually he's opening a lane as the safe AI company. Right.

Well, that used to be Altman's lane.

Right, exactly. But now he's got it right. He's opening a lane where everyone's like, all right, agreed.

They're the clean, well lit corner of the AI bookstore right now is anthropic. And also going after enterprise looks to be the smartest thing because enterprise wants that enterprise.

You know, why be in the surveillance and autonomous legal operations business if you can do just as fine selling things to Costco?

Yeah. And just get your media buyers at l' Oreal to be more productive. So my friend Greg Shob is the CEO of Section, which helps enterprises upskill for AI. He said something that just struck me. He said OpenAI has basically 12 months to get massive consumer adoption because. Or enter or start, which he doesn't think it's going to do because people like there's Too many free LLMs or they're going to have to come up with incredible enterprise adoption or there's absolutely no way they can justify this consensual hallucination that they're going to go public at one under one and a half trillion dollars.

Isn't there a desperation for such stocks? Do you think you'll have a situation, you know, with Elon merges, all these things, everyone's going to buy it. Will everyone not buy this? I mean, would you, you, Scott Galloway, want. Of course. You just got rid of chatgpt, so you're not allowed to because it went to Virtue Signal the right way.

Yeah, but you forget I'm a whore.

I know.

Exactly. Once March 1st comes along, it's back to Big Daddy Warbucks. No, but this is what this is the existential risk to OpenAI. Right now they want to be the leader. I think Sam Altman maybe correctly said there can only be one in the world of AI, but he's getting attack from above and that is big, big industrial strength conglomerates and tech that have a built in multibillion dollar consumer base that they can point that fire hose of people at their AI offering. They're getting attack from below and that is Chinese open weight models which are free, which by the way are technically pretty close. So the fear is the following or the bull case is that this company is an incredible product. It's growing like crazy. It's doing all these big visionary deals. It is an amazing product. I was using it every day and everybody feels like they've got to go in on the market leader in AI, which Altman has done a good job of associating brand leadership with OpenAI and ChatGPT. The risk is that before they go public in the disclosure documents that the SEC mandates, it's going to be clear that everybody else is starting to eat their lunch.

Right. The Gemini continues. Gemini continues to gain market share. That there's an entire market of people that go for the open weight free models. And people say, okay, this is a great little company, but it should be acquired by somebody not worth a trillion and a half dollars as a standalone company.

Yeah.

Who would be there acquire from your perspective?

No one at this point. It's too expensive.

Yeah. Right.

But unfortunately, unfortunately, it'd have to be written down a lot and then there'd be all sorts of antitrust arguments. But he has, and he knows it too. He's doing big deals. He's spending a ton of money. He's trying to get the best talent because there's a general belief here that there's the gold medal. This literally is. When we call this Hunger Games economy. The Hunger Games is the right analogy. And that is whoever wins here gets all sorts of parades and gets to live a wonderful life. And whoever doesn't win is gonna die a slow death.

Yeah.

And that's the approach he's taking.

You're right. I think you're right here. Absolutely. We'll see what happens. They are headed for the ipo, though. Trump and his family. This story, we cannot stress this story of corruption and the Trump family enough. He has now pulled in $4 billion linked to his presidency. Much of that comes from crypto and foreign deals that leverage his presidential status. Last year, an investment firm with ties to the UAE Boug, nearly half of the Trump family's crypto company, making the two business partners. Eric Trump signed the agreement with the firm for $500 million investment days before Trump's January 2025 inauguration. We did a chip deal with them. He recently said he found out nobody cared about his international business activity while in office. You know what? We do care. You know, this is a guy, as I say, accusation is a confession. Who went on and on about Hunter. Hunter Biden didn't have enough imagination as doing corrupt things and didn't have much pull. This is a full scale corrupt regime that is using their status to feather their nest. It's also bad for national security. All manner of things is hurtful to the United States.

He does it all the time, whether he's suing the IRS for 10 billion or closing the Kennedy center because he ran that into the ground. But this is really, you know, he does. That's all, you know, jazz hands compared to what's happening here.

Yeah. The Republicans thought it was an impeachable offense or required a special counsel because President Biden implicitly or explicitly used his influence such that his son Hunter Biden could get on the board of a Ukrainian energy company and made about four or six hundred grand. There is no reason why Hunter Biden should be on the board of any company other than his proximity to the president, even if he leverage that contact or didn't and there's no evidence he did. But everyone's hair was on fire. And now we have an individual who is raking in billions. And it's not only him, Witkoff's kids. And Witkoff was investing, getting people the UAE to invest in a crypto company that is kids control. And then what do you know, a few weeks later, the sale of our most sensitive chips that are security concern for fear that the uae, who has a strong relationship with China, begins to leak that sensitive information that powers nuclear guidance systems, powers submarines. I mean the level I gotta give it to em. They're like, here's the problem in America, if you run a stop sign, you get shamed. If you start killing hundreds of people.

There's some sort of weird leadership quality around it. It's, it's like don't commit it, for God's sakes. Don't commit a misdemeanor, commit, you know, commit mass murder and be unashamed about it. And then the next day commit another crime where it all gets lost in the noise.

Oh, that's what he said. Found out nobody cared, especially internationally. But you know, and then killing all those people through usaid, the millions of people who will die, I mean the kind of damage and feathering, nest feathering is really quite astonishing. And that leaves out all the pardons he gives to people who are, who, who knows?

I mean I sat next to one of those guys, gives him 3 million bucks. I've said this before. If Louis or Alex or Alec or Nolan are four sons, I'll go with the older ones. If one of them fucked up and ended up in prison, I'm 100% confident that with a million to 3 million bucks we could get him out of prison. Find an indirect route into a meeting with one of Trump and his acolytes and say I'm about to buy 1 to 3 million dollars in Trump coin or I'm about to give you a $2 million gift for the new East West Wing. And I think within three to six months they're out. That's where we are. And here's the thing it creates. You're going to have more Epstein Islands. You're going to have fewer small businesses that start because they're worried about the rule of law. You know, the rich are protected by the law but not bound by it. All the rest of us are bound by the law but not protected by it. And in addition, foreign companies aren't going to want to invest in American companies for fear that the rule of law is not going to apply to American investments.

That is exactly right. It's all going to be for the Trump's benefit, but not for the United States of America. That's really. You have to understand this, everybody. This is the actual game. Besides all the everything else, this is the actual game. Anyway, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails.

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 Verge cast, 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, It may not feel like it, but Trump's approval rating is some of the lowest in recorded history and it's fallen to new lows in recent weeks as the nation reels from recent killings of two anti ICE protesters in Minnesota. But not everyone thinks he's failing. This week we're hearing from Trump voters.

It is very unfortunate that it happened, but it's also unfortunate that the ICE is being blamed for like just murdering somebody who is just so innocent, which isn't the case whatsoever. A they were provoked. B he got ran over. And you know, it just, it's hard to tell what's real and what's not anymore.

He's delivered on virtually every promise he's made. The economy is booming right now. He closed the border. We're not getting any more legals in. That has been done. That was a major promise that's been done today. Explained. Listen, wherever you get your podcasts, 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 Klosterman says one day all of that is going to change.

It's too big, Its tentacles are too far.

It's so wide.

And when it collapses, something that size collapses hard.

I'm Peter Kafka, the host of Channels, the show about what happens when media and tech collide. And you can hear my conversation with Chuck Klosterman right now, wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Okay, Scott wins and fails. You want me to go first?

You go first.

Well, I was going to do the Kennedy center, but I don't really like the Kennedy Center. I never did. But he's going to close it and fix it. After he ran into the ground with his stupid minion Rick and Ralph, nobody wanted to go there. Whatever. He's failed the business and so he's closing it down. It's like Trump's stake or something. I don't know if he can close it down. We'll see. But just gross. That's just a gross sidelight. The many things he's done. And we'll see, we'll see what happens there. But actually, I wouldn't get more serious. Congresswoman Kelly Morrison of Minnesota posted the following on Blue Sky. My office has been flooded with reports of cruel, unsafe, unlawful conditions inside the Whipple Detention facility in Minneapolis this weekend. I was finally granted access to perform oversight. And when she went in, I mean, it's absolutely grotesque of how they're not just abusing these populations and they're about to go do that in Ohio, but they're abusing them once they get in there in order to get them to self deport the cruelty. Let me just tell you, all you people, you will be judged someday, maybe not today, but someday this will all come out.

And what you've done here is so heinous to young people. The young kid with that adorable hat did get out finally, but it was only under pressure to get him out, who was taken in Minnesota and brought, I think, to Texas. But there's, he's just one kid. And the only reason he got out is so much of the attention because of that photograph. But there's other kids sitting there, thousands and thousands of children. And what you have done is so shameful and so horrible. And I just hope there's more photographs and more for people to understand the level of depravity in what they're doing to those people who are here, most of whom are here, worked hard, have contributed to our country. And it's just, it Makes me sick to my stomach for a positive thing. I really enjoyed the Grammys. I did. I watched them last night. I thought they were.

Oh, did you enjoy it?

Yeah, I did. It was fun. There was a little, you know, I love Bad Bunny and Billie Eilish, but it wasn't too much. None of it was too much. Although President Trump was threatening to sue Trevor Noah over his Epstein joke at the Grammys. I thought he was great. Trevor Noah was great. I found it very entertaining. I thought the performances were terrific. I thought Justin Bieber was. Did it great. I mean, he was sort of naked. He looks good. He was wearing silk boxers only. And I thought that was quite beautiful. I thought Lady Gaga was amazing. Reba McEntire performed and I love Reba McEntire. So I liked it. It felt really good. And it wasn't virtue signally the way the Oscars can be. I found the speeches very heartfelt and simple. They kept it simple. A lot of God loving too, by the way. But I liked it. I really enjoyed it.

I stopped caring about the Grammys when Michael Stipe stopped singing and opened a health food store in Athens, Georgia. Rick Ocasig died and George Michael died, I have no interest in. And Tom Petty died from an opioid overdose. Music is dead to me. Music is dead to me.

They're so great.

Dead to me.

Sabrina Carpenter didn't get anything and I thought she was delightful also, by the way. Anyway, go.

Well, I'll start with my loss or fail. I interviewed Neil Ferguson, who I really like and is a friend, but he has a narrative which I disagree with, and it's a narrative that's been adopted by the Trump administration. And also, and I would argue it's just parroting a Russian talking point, and that is this notion that this war is unsustainable for Ukraine. It's unwinnable and they should strike the best deal they can right now. And that is the same narrative that was expectorated and vomited all over the media three years ago. And guess what? Since then, in the last two years, Russia has only increased their. Their occupancy or their acquisition of land by 1%. A snail could literally, and this is true, move faster than the Russian army. And if you want to talk about unsustainable for somebody, this is unsustainable for Russia, and there are days where they are losing a thousand men a day. Their wartime economy is running out of money. So this war is unsustainable, but it's unsustainable for Russia. And this Narrative that somehow that Ukraine has been backed into a corner, it needs to come up or swallow hard and accept a peace deal that is just scheduling the next war, not preventing it is bullshit.

This war is unsustainable. But it's unsustainable for Russia as long as the west continues to support pushback on a murderous autocrat. And it really bothers me this narrative of, well, Ukraine should just take the deal they can right now because this war is unsustainable. Bullshit. They have been kicking Russia in the nuts, literally and figuratively, and they are, in my view, they are winning this war. And so this narrative from straight out of Sergey Lavrov, that it's unsustainable, it's unsustainable for Ukraine, they can't manage this. Well, guess what, folks? They seem to have put all that to rest, all those doubts for the last three and a half years. This is unsustainable for Russia, and we should start speaking as if the Ukrainian army is speaking from a position of strength, which they are.

I love it. I know you like Neil Ferguson. I find him to be a contrarian for contrarian sake. And I like your contrariness better.

Yeah, but Neil brings history and it's important to have this type of dialog. And he and I again agree on almost nothing geopolitically. But I learned from him. And quite frankly, it strengthens and creates texture around my beliefs, and I think that's important.

I prefer.

And plus, he's a huge. He's a huge. We both are really upset about the. The World cup draw for Scotland. We're in the same group as Morocco and Brazil. Anyways, both he and I love team Scotland. Anyway, my win because I'm canceling Paramount. Plus, today I watched all episodes of Landmen. Oh, my God. I think I'm Republican now. It's literally. Whoever that guy is, he's Rupert Murdoch of entertainment. He's like. Like all this fucking liberal crazy bullshit with all this redistribution of virtue on primetime streaming programs. I am the Fox News of scripted entertainment.

You know what? He's much more complex than that, but go ahead. He's not actually.

I don't think so.

I think basically he's not actually.

Oh, come on. This is.

I'm telling you, this is many a person.

I'm sure you've interviewed him.

No, I haven't.

This is basically succession. If nobody went to college or HR was a rumor.

It's a great job.

And I love the fact that every female character exists solely to roll their eyes, sleep with the wrong Man. Or remind us that feelings are inconvenient.

He's really bad on women.

And that every woman is in a state of perimenopause.

Did you watch Yellowstone with the daughter? She's a hot mess.

I can't do Kevin Costner. I just never loved him.

I'm telling you, he loves hot mess ladies. I do like. I love it. I like. But he's a little more complex than that.

But. And it makes me feel better about myself because it's like every crisis can be solved by a phone call, a threat, or Billy Bob leaning back and explaining why women.

Are you liking Demi Moore? I like her character.

I don't buy that Jon Hamm would be in a relationship with her. I don't buy it. He's so good looking. Well, he's so. God, he's a. That guy's a tall, drunken man.

He was one with Jennifer Aniston on the morning Show. He played an Elon Musk like character and he. I like.

His career's really taken.

I met him at the morning show party. He's a lovely guy, I have to say. We had a lovely chat.

Mad Men is still, for me, my second, probably my second favorite scripted drama after.

He is a handsome man. I will say he's a handsome fucking man.

After Breaking Bad, he's all. He's a God. He's so good looking.

He's hugely tall too. Just so you know. Very tall.

Yeah. He was also great in the most recent series of or season of Fargo. That was really good.

Yeah, he's a very verse. He does a lot better work than he should because he's so good looking. He could do a lot. That's a good word.

Yeah. No, I learned that an oil patch is everything about an oil patch. It's brutally honest there. Also, oil is unfairly maligned. And it's also run by a bunch of people who've been divorced exactly once.

Okay. All right.

Anyways.

That'S your word.

I love it because it gives me hope. Because it's a story. It's a story about men who are never wrong but always get laid. Yeah, it's just the perfect. It's the perfect series for a man. And this guy is the Rupert Murdoch of scripted television. He came in, he recognized the biggest opportunity was just, you know, he left Paramount.

He's at Universal now with all the virtuous signalers. He likes them better.

It's really.

He's left, he's gone. That was one fuck up by David Ellison. I have to say. He's left to go over to dot into the, into the more elegant relationship with Donald Langley over there. There she.

It's Billy Bob Thornton telling us while the oil business is the last honest thing in the world.

Yeah, I know, I know. But I, it's just the story.

Anyway, anyway, I, my win. I did, I did basically 18 hours of landman this weekend.

Now, he did rivalry.

I am Republican.

Now, now, now, we need you back watch Heated Rivalry.

And I immediately made a campaign donation to Senator Ted Cruz as soon as I was done. But it's entertaining.

Yeah, it is entertaining. It's Billy Bob Sordin's. Fantastic. Anyway, that was good. That was really good. We want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business, tech or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com pivot submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. Elsewhere in the Kara and Scott universe this week and on with Kara Swisher. I spoke with Ben Collins, the CEO of the Onion. We talked about the importance of not being afraid to stand up against the Trump administration. Right now. Let's listen to a clip.

The people who have caved since the.

Start of this universities, news organizations, everybody who, who is like, okay, sir, what do you need? They just kept stepping on them afterwards. They just kept going.

They did, they did.

I'm not gonna, I'm not going to.

Tell this staff to change what they're doing at all. Like they are doing. They're going as hard as they want. And if they come to me with.

A 50, 50 ball, I say go for it. Like, yeah.

And if they come to me with a big idea, I'm like, let's find funding. Let's find a sponsor. Let's find a thing to that to make sure that this thing can happen.

And Scott, before we go, we want to hear one more thing. Let's listen to a voicemail we got.

Hey there, Kara. I heard you talk about the message the woman left on your voicemail. What a cunt. Really. I mean, you are fantastic. I'm in love. And if you weren't already married, I would be courting you. So smart, so ruthless, so truthful, so refreshing. Love you, love you, love you. Scott, you are a smart ass. I can listen to some of the stuff you say and I agree with some of the stuff you say, but honestly, dude, some of it is just.

Like.

Anyway, Kara, love you, Scott. You're lucky you're working with this woman. That's just for me.

Yeah. So let me guess who Picked that clip. No, I love that.

That was so.

Look at how happy you are.

Well, because the other woman said, I'm a bag of shit or whatever.

She goes, it's like when my ex wife and I decided to get therapy and my therapist within 10 seconds is like, you're selfish and have unreasonable expectations of what marriage is about. And I'm like, well, I'm enjoying this. I'm enjoying this.

That's because Michelle Obama liked you. I just said it was very funny. It was a reaction. Anyway, thank you for that.

So what if I want to have sex with other women?

I love our listeners anyway.

Come on. You love that one.

Some people hate you and love me. And some people love you and hate me. It's perfect. It's great. Some people love us both.

Something for everybody.

Yeah, something for everybody.

Sweet or savory?

I enjoy our listeners. Anyway, that's the show. Thanks for listening.

Look how happy you are. Look at you. Look at. Look. I've never seen. You're giddy. You're giddy, you're giddy.

You know what? I was so happy.

I can't believe you're actually worried about that.

Why not?

It's like, not that interesting.

So many people are in those files. You had to look.

I stay home and I watch Euphoria. That's the most sexual experience I have.

I think it was. It was a good call on my part. Anyway, you weren't. I'm very. Of course you aren't. Of course you aren't. Anyway, you have much better judgment than people think.

Okay, thanks. Thanks for that. Good addition. Good asterisk there. All is forgiven. Kara.

That's the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot and be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back on Friday. Scott, read us out.

Today's show is produced by Lara Naim and Soy Marcus and Taylor Griffin. Ernie and her Todd engineered this episode. Rich Shibley edited the video. Thanks also to Gibros Mia Sivera and Dan Shalon. Nishat Caro is Vox Media's executive producer of podcast. Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for listening to Pivot Premier magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine nymag.com pod we'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Action absorbs anxiety. Resist and unsubscribe.com.

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