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

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You know, I just was hanging out with goats calmly in Norway, and here I have to deal with this bullshit. Hi everyone, this is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.

And I'm Scott Galloway.

Guess where I am, Scott?

Where are you?

Norway.

Really?

I'm in Norway, yes.

Are you in Oslo?

Where are you? No, I'm in Bergen, which is beautiful.

That sounds like a speaking gig with some serious zeros on it.

I am doing actually a favor. It's not a paid speaking gig. It's for this Nordic Media Days. They've been driving me crazy to come. The Norwegians are— big on us, Scott.

And, uh, we're big in Norway.

We're big in Norway. It's only 5 million people. But anyway, it's this group of people that, like, all the different newspapers and broadcasts and podcasters and everything else, and they do this thing called Nordic Media Days. And the woman who runs it has been, like, peppering me for a long, long time. And so I, I have agreed to do it because I was in London, um, which I, I was also in London for Tina Brown's thing.

Didn't, didn't contact me, didn't stop by, didn't say hi.

I wrote you several times and you were in Hamburg.

Didn't invite me for tea.

I didn't say hello. I invited you for dinner where I got to meet you.

Excuses me to cash big checks.

No, this is such a lie. I— would you like me to show the text? I'm in Hamburg. What kind of excuse is that? I'm in Hamburg. Were you in Hamburg?

I wasn't Hamburg. It was either I was eating sausage and having beer. I loved her, by the way. Just going to Norway.

I'm gonna finish my story, but go ahead.

I'm sorry, go ahead. This leaks into your story. I don't know about you, I am much more liked or less disliked in Europe than in the US. I think it's 'cause in the US, the moment you get assigned to some sort of political party or not, 50% of America hates you. In Europe, they really don't care.

Hmm, maybe they just don't know you well enough yet to hate you. Maybe that's where we are.

That's fair. I'm like, give it time, give it time.

Anyway, so I was in, I went to London to do this, Tina Brown does this really amazing cause for around journalism. Great conference where she puts together, it's for her late husband, Harry Evans, who was an astonishing journalist. And she brings together amazing people. And so we was with Craig Newmark, Christiane Amanpour, and Don Lemon and I had a thing on stage.

Don Lemon was in London? London.

He wasn't. He didn't call me again.

Guy uses me. He doesn't call.

We did, but you weren't available.

Okay.

Anyway, so don't, don't, because we asked you, don't even start. So I'm here. So they just said, can you fly up to Bergen, which was an hour and a half flight? And so here I am. It's beautiful. I have to say it's sort of the entry to the fjord area.

Northern Europe in the summer is—

It's cold today.

Oh, but it's so—

Beautiful.

Everything, the light, the water, the sky at night. I mean, it's just incredible. It's beautiful.

I just had giant shrimp. This fish up here is astonishing. And then I walked to the top of this flugen, faven, flaggen, whatever. Everything reads like an IKEA piece of furniture here. And then in the Nordic areas, and, uh, and I, I, up the top, this is in a funicular. I love a funicular. And then there's— I get up there and there's goats up there just hanging out. Goats.

So really, yeah. As I said off mic, goats can digest anything. My Great Dane cannot. If I feed my Great Dane 30 minutes early or late, it becomes literally a shit cannon roaming around the house decorating fecal matter across the most expensive items we have. So goats are not like my Great Dane Leia, just so you know.

Well, they want goat poop up there on the goat, on the top of the mountain.

They can eat anything. If you give it a tennis shoe, no problem.

I know, it was really cool. I was like, you know when you're not expecting goats and then there are goats? It was like great. I was like, oh look, goats.

You like that?

I did. I was like, oh, this is cool.

You wanna hear my Nordic story?

Should we bring it back up? In one second. And then I'm gonna go after the London thing, which is, I had a lovely lunch with Christiane Amanpour when we heard the news about Ted Turner, but I'll get to that in a second. My little European jaunt. Which I did ask you to dinner at a fancy person's house where there were celebrities.

You know I don't like other people, Kara.

It was nice.

It was beautiful. I will spend half an hour with you and then I'm done with other people.

Okay, but you would've liked this dinner.

Anyway, so—

Don't say I don't invite you.

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

Women holding hands.

All the women holding hands. He said, oh, it's a tradition here. Mothers and daughters on Sundays I don't know if it's every Sunday, get together. And there must have been, I'm not exaggerating, in this square, there must have been 300 mother-daughter duos walking somewhere hand in hand. I thought, fuck it, I'm moving to Northern Europe.

I know, it's really lovely. I have to say.

It really is. These people get it.

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

Yeah, I agree. Same thing in Germany. The— in the— in the emotion I registered from them is that they are actually They're very worried, and they're actually, in a weird way, it's like you don't appreciate something until it's gone. They miss the old America. And I think that there's a certain kind of bereft, like, "We were fond of America, and we hope that it is still America." [Speaker:KERRY] The second thing, maybe you got it too, the second thing is, how did the tech people become villains?

It's here. That brand is here, like, completely. Like, how awful the tech people are. And before, they, like, had antipathy, that's for sure. Like, you know, with all the different rules they created, and they were sort of on to them before everybody else was. But it's a real, like, you know, it's the same trends that are happening in the US. The AI is not trustworthy, tech villains, they suck up to Trump to get their stuff. It was that— it's really a theme here, and it's linked to Trump, of course. The tech people are very linked to Trump. And so they have the same They have more than antipathy towards tech now. It's really, that is interesting to me too.

Whenever they, but I got some questions about that, about how did tech come off the rails, but I'm like, okay, but you have to couch it in the following context. I get a little bit defensive around this, and that is, and you get that a lot, how did tech and how did American tech brothers become so terrible? I'm like, okay, just to slow your roll a little bit, in 1995, GDP per capita and hourly wage was about the same and productivity was about the same between Europe and the US. The US has blown away Europe. I mean, up 20 or 30% while Europe is flat. And most of that is capital formation and tech. Anthropic, which was founded 5 years ago, if it had been founded in Europe, it would be one of the 5 most valuable companies in Europe. I'm like, for all the villainy or villainy or bad vibes that you're getting from tech, keep in mind, These companies have created unbelievable economic value that has quite frankly left you in the dust.

Yeah, no, that's been, that's been happening for a long—

that's 30 years—

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

Just the IPOs, just the IPOs of Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX, if they go through, are estimated to earn or raise about $250 billion. Just those 3 companies. Do you know how much money was raised in the capital markets in the UK last year?

Probably what, like in the billion maybe?

$2.4 billion. Yeah, couple billion. Now granted, that was an especially weak year. But the capital formation in Europe is just not there. It's there for, it's interesting, it's there for seed stage companies and also the tax policy. You get a 30% tax credit here in the UK for seed stage investments. You get 30 cents on the dollar back right away. So they're really good about seed stage. What they don't have is in the US, if you show any promise or scale, especially in AI right now, you can go out and raise $100 million for your B and C round. That just doesn't exist here in the, in Europe. Yeah.

No, it's true. But nonetheless, they're still in with us, technologically speaking, and they have to use our companies. So they're very interested in what's playing out with Trump and the tech people. Anyway, we have to get to the news. Speaking of great entrepreneurs, Ted Turner, the media mogul, CNN founder who helped create the 24-hour news cycles, died at 87. Turner was also a major philanthropist, making a record $1 billion donation to establish the United Nations Foundation. He was a different kind of billionaire, you know, although he was also the— it was called the Mouth of the South. Beyond media and philanthropy, Turner pursued countless other passions from his Montana Grill, his eco— this is an eco-conscious restaurant chain, being named Yachtsman of the Year multiple times. He was Larry Ellison before Larry Ellison. He announced he had Lewy body dementia, progressive brain disorder, in 2018. Jane Fonda, one of Turner's ex-wives who remained a close friend, remembered him saying, "Men like Ted aren't supposed to express need and vulnerability. That was Ted's greatest strength, I believe." And he was. And she— I recently interviewed her and she had told me he was quite ill. I talked to him a little bit for my books on AOL.

He was real mad about the sale and everything else, except that when he sold the company, he had that famous quote where he said, "This deal was better than sex." Do you remember that? He always had something kooky to say at any one moment. And I, you know, a lot of people are like, "Oh, he's the reason we have terrible cable." His vision of cable was not this, what has happened. So I sort of push back against that because His idea was that you can get news to sort of democratize the news a little more from the big three. And so I consider him a real important— his legacy very important, even though it sort of morphed into this scream fest that it has become. But his was, you know, it was real news. And I happened to be with Christiane Amanpour, who got there pretty early, not right away at the beginning. And she had nothing but great things to say about his tenure when he was just sort of do real entrepreneurial news, news and other things, you know, and a very, a very generous and charitable person at the same time, and also funny and weird and interesting.

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

Yeah, he did. That's right.

And there are just not very many billionaires who've reached the pinnacle of a sport. And maybe Roger Staubach, is he a billionaire now? Anyways, but he built CNN from nothing. It's really interesting how it emerged. So news, when we were growing up, was a public service. And that is ABC and CBS sold a shit ton of ads from Tang and Chevrolet running against All in the Family and M*A*S*H and The Partridge Family and The Brady Bunch. And they felt that it was a public service to have 23 minutes of news and 7 minutes of commercial in this money-losing thing called the local news. And he said he correctly figured out that there was money in a market for 24/7 news. And it was very scrappy. If you look, go back, it wasn't very well produced. And he started the whole thing. Now where it came off the tracks was quite frankly with Rupert Murdoch recognizing that the part of the news, they made an observation and that is KABC News with Jerry Dunphy back in the '70s had something called Point/Counterpoint and SNL used to mock it. You know, Jane, you ignorant slut.

Jane, you ignorant slut. That's our show pretty much, but go ahead.

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

Yeah, I know.

And that was really the key and arguably the most dangerous insight that Rupert Murdoch made.

And of course, what did he do?

And that is, no, this isn't about balance. It's enough news to keep, to give, to create a halo of legitimacy. And quite frankly, CNN was guilty of it too, Crossfire. And CNN now has a show like that where they all just start yelling at each other.

That's when Tucker Carlson started.

Yeah.

And Michael Kinsley.

Remember Tucker and Michael just going at it? And that seemed civil compared to what—

It actually, when you watch it, it actually is.

It seems patrician.

It seems intelligent. It's intelligent.

Good sir, I beg to differ. You know, anyways, it has digressed and has become something that is, I don't know, it's a longer talk show. Let's get back to Ted Turner. He gave away a billion dollars. He actually gave away a billion dollars to the UN. I would argue when the UN actually meant something. Something also, people constantly ask me for male role models for kind of a positive or aspirational form of masculinity. I think Ted Turner is a great role model. One, let's just go to the male stuff. Very aggressive. Also, Politically incorrect. When Time Warner was acquired by CNN, Gerald Levin introduced the whole thing and said, "And now I wanna introduce my best friend, Ted Turner." And Ted stood up and said, "Best friend? I've never been to your fucking house." Yeah, he was great. And then my favorite was when he did an all-hands and it was Ash Wednesday and there were a bunch of people in the audience with ashes on their forehead. He's like, "Shouldn't you be working at Fox?" Oh. I mean, the guy was—

That's funny.

I think there's a certain charm in a world now where everything is so, I don't know, especially corporations.

Yeah, but it was a different kind of—

Well, it was good natured. He wasn't mean.

He was called the mouth of the South.

Remember?

He called himself that too. I mean, and so it was a different time period. He wasn't malevolent.

But he was charitable. He was visionary. He was aggressive. 14 grandchildren, 14 or 12 grandchildren.

Married to Jane Fonda. She still loves him. She told me she was, she's still—

An environmentalist. And also took his seat and his privilege and his wealth as an obligation to serve and connect nations with each other. He funded something that didn't work called the Pan American Games, but it was meant to be a more, a less corrupt Olympics. I called it the Pan American Games. It was called the Goodwill Games.

Oh, right.

It was an effort to ease tensions between the US and USSR. Anyways, he was very serious about uniting nations and trying to promote world peace. He saw his wealth and his seat as an obligation, that he was optimizing for service, not for attention.

I would urge people, if they're blaming what cable is now on him, not to. It's not what he— That was not his vision. I was around for that. And it became that, and it was not his. He may have created the 24. And they did take advantage. Remember, the thing that really sent them over the top was that the girl down the well. Remember the girl down the well story?

Oh, yeah.

That's what Christiane was. She's like, "Oh, that's the thing that really got people watching." That and the Iraq War. Yeah, the Iraq War. And that's where Christiane showed up. You saw moments of that where, remember the Studs God, Arthur Kent? Like, it started to turn. That's when you started to sort of see the beginnings of kind of the circus acts of these cable stations. And I was thinking that as I was, You know, I went on Sky News and BBC and stuff like that. And like the constant hunt of, and I think it's a very serious, I'm worried about hantavirus, but the constant, let's go back to the cruise ship, let's go back to the, and I was like, this actually, we're in a war in Iran. I feel like perhaps we need to head over there and take a look at what's had the cruising going on in the Strait of Hormuz. But it, he is a, he has a great legacy.

And remember Bernard Shaw?

Bernard Shaw. Amazing.

Daniel Shore.

Yep.

Oh, my dad's favorite for the wrong reasons, Bobby Battista, Lois Hart. God, I grew up on CNN.

And Christiane, yeah.

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

Okay.

If you crossed her. Yeah. Anderson should be vice president. Any problems with the Pope, he just goes over there and just talks about grief. Everybody loves him, competent enough. Okay. Freed Zakaria, Secretary of State, hands down, hands down. Uh, Michael Smerkanish, he could be, uh, Secretary of Commerce or Labor.

Okay, do I get anything? I'm a contributor. Do I get like an ambassadorship to something?

Oh, you're ambassador to Guyana. We've already decided this here.

Okay, we're gonna move on because you're saving me from myself. Saving you from yourself. Because it's interesting, I don't think Ted Turner— he didn't like the AOL-Time Warner deal. That I did speak to him about. But first, he was like, "It was better than sex. The deal was the best thing I ever did, better than sex." And then afterwards, he, like, totally publicly decried it publicly. And one thing that Barry Diller, I think, told him was like, "If you sell your house and they wreck the patio, you need to shut up. You sold the house." And I didn't necessarily agree with him on that, but it was— He definitely had much regrets, and he probably wouldn't be thrilled where, from the latest numbers from Warner Bros. Discovery, the company reported a net loss of $2.9 billion. $1.2 billion in the latest quarter. That's essentially a $2.8 billion termination fee tied to the Netflix deal. Paramount agreed to cover the cost, but the expense still sits on Warner's books until the deal officially closes. For people who don't see why that was that big of a loss, but the first— nonetheless, the first quarter revenue was down 1% year over year, and ad revenue slid 7%.

Total streaming revenue did rise 9%, largely by HBO Max went international. Paramount had slightly better news to report, beating revenue and earnings expectations in the first quarter. Paramount added 700,000 subscribers during the quarter, helping streaming revenue grow by 17% year over year. The company's film studio did well with revenue up 11%. And they said they're making great progress on the Warner Brothers deal with late Q3 closing still on track. There's still some pushback to it. At the same time, I'm gonna add one more earnings. Disney's under the first new CEO, Josh D'Amaro. The numbers were strong with revenue climbing 7% to $25 billion. Operating income across Disney's Entertainment, Sports, and Experiences division beat expectations. The company says it expects earnings per share to grow 12%. That's solid in the fiscal year. And one weak spot, a dip in attendance at its US theme parks, probably due to fewer international pro— travelers. They're gonna see repercussions from gas prices, I'm guessing.

Yeah, gas.

And other prices. But it's only down 1%. Maybe the next quarter is where you're gonna see it over the summer. That will be the real indicator there. Thoughts on the Warner and everything? They're just sort of bumping along, these companies.

So Warner Brothers, $117 adjusted GAAP versus, estimates of 9 cents, which is actually pretty good. They had a 45% beat. Operating margin was down but— or mostly flat. The linear networks continue to bleed. The revenue fell 8%, uh, with domestic pay TV subscribers down 10%, and free cash flow was $476 million, and net leverage sits at 3.4x. Uh, the Paramount deal is expected to close Q3, which will form a company with $69 billion in pro forma revenue. Like, if there's a book If you wrote a book called "The Worst Acquisitions in History," you could just call the book "Time Warner." Yeah. It is, it, every, they are at the center of the, I mean, 3 of the 5 worst acquisitions in history all involve Time Warner.

Yeah. With AT&T. It's just interesting. AOL, right? And this one, right?

Yeah. And this one I think will go down as, in terms of shareholder value destruction, Paramount posted a clean beat and streaming turned its first real profit. Revenue of $7.35 billion versus $7.28 billion. EPS of $0.23 versus $0.15 expected. I mean, companies are just— it's just incredible. Companies are just blowing away their earnings. Their direct-to-consumer revenue was up 11%. Paramount Plus revenue up 17%. I wonder how much of that is Landman. They added 700,000 net subscribers to reach 79.6 million in total. Direct-to-consumer EBITDA improved to $251 million. TV media revenue fell 6% to $3.7 billion as cord cutting continues. And Paramount has nearly doubled its film slate for 2026 versus 2025 since closing the Skydance deal last August, which to their credit—

Yeah, he's been promising that. He has been promising that.

Yeah, everyone's been saying, oh, they're gonna gut Hollywood, and they're coming out swinging, and they're doubling their film slate.

The thing is, is it gonna make money, right? That's the issue. Let's see what happens with that.

What happens, yeah.

So let's just wait until they— You can spend the money. I mean, that's what rich people do, but let's see if they make it, if they have some hits, if they have some hits.

And so Josh D'Amaro's first earning call as CEO reported a really strong beat. Shares gained roughly 7% after the report. But here's the thing, 100% of this beat, the credit goes to Bob Iger. Mm-hmm. Someone doesn't impact earnings 2 weeks after they take the CEO job. This beat was really ringing the bell for Bob Iger. Revenue at $25.2 billion versus $24.8 expected, earnings of $1.57 versus $1. $1.49 billion expected. Streaming operating income jumped 88% to $582 million, and Disney's streaming margins broke into the double digits at almost 11%. Their streaming revenue hit $5.5 billion, up 13%, driven by price hikes. And Disney's— no, Disney no longer reports subscriber numbers, which is a shame, but, um, their experiences that you reference was up 7%, which must be an increase in prices, 'cause as you mentioned—

Numbers are down at the parks.

Attendance is down. And they also have raised their buyback target similar to what Apple did last week and guided for— I think Disney is a buy. And D'Amaro is, you know, he came out of the parks, which grew nearly 40% in revenue under his watch. And he called Disney+ the digital centerpiece of the company. On Wednesday's earnings, he flagged fuel and consumer spending. Dana Walden, who I know you know, named president and chief creative officer.

That was an important keep for that company, the keeping her, 'cause she was the CEO. She was the top contender.

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

Except what is their option?

Yeah, because—

It's harder now. You can't be as good a prod— You can't do those sweet, sweet deals anymore.

Yeah, but if you're a Disney, if you're a talented Disney executive, you could absolutely land, you know—

I would stay. See, now I would stay because you have power. We were one of the last pieces of, you know, pieces of wood floating. I don't know. I just thought I would say.

Oh, that's interesting. I hadn't thought of that analogy. I like that.

It was from The Devil Wears Prada 2, but go ahead.

I thought it was from the Titanic.

It is, but it was— she just said that. She goes, we just got on the last ship.

I was wondering how long it was going to be before you mentioned The Devil Wears Prada 2.

Just saying. It's killing it. Still killing it.

Yeah, no, it's great. Let's go over every movie that's actually making money.

It is making money.

Yeah, it's making a ton.

It's going to change the world.

Lawrence of Arabia meets The Sound of Music meets The Sixth Sense. Disney stock is down more than 10% year to date despite back-to-back earnings beats. I don't know if it's because everyone's giving up on traditional media or because AI is sucking all the oxygen out of every other—

Everything.

Company of the other 490 in the S&P. But I think Disney actually right now is a really good buy. And I wouldn't be surprised if it's put in play in the next 3 to 6 months to buy.

Who's saying that? By whom? To Apple? 'Cause Apple was looking at Perplexity allegedly.

An activist. Oh, an activist comes in and says you need to cut 20% of your staff, or you need to put the company in personal hell.

Right, which they did with Iger. I mean, Iger went through that, right? Several times, I think.

Yeah, but Iger had so much credibility, he was able to back—

So he gets to do it because this is a new CEO, right?

The stock, the stock. Disney has this unbelievable franchise, or it might be corporate restructuring, go good bank, bad bank, spin out the parks into its own business and—

They decided not to, as you know. They were gonna get rid of ABC at one point, and then they decided to keep ESPN.

I think that's one of DeMarre's And an activist will argue that their decisions have been really poor because this company has probably the greatest collection of IP in the world, a booming parks business, and yet the stock is trading below where it was in 2016. This is sort of— I gotta think there's a lot of activists out there.

Which activists? The same old sort of unpleasant Ike Perlmutter activists? No.

If I had to bet on any firm that shows up forcefully yet dignified, it would be Elliott And by the way, I don't know anything. I haven't talked to them about this. But I wouldn't be surprised. Unfortunately, it'll probably be someone like Peltz, but he's more consumer. Or I wouldn't put it past—

Peltz was in the last one, I think, with poor mother, remember?

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

Brendan is not— he doesn't like Disney. It's in his sights. Who doesn't like Disney? Brendan Carr. Brendan.

I call him Brendan. Yeah, but, well—

He's specifically called out Disney, like, by name, saying he doesn't like what they're up to.

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

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

The fall of traditional media for me is embodied by when I first moved to New York in 2000, and like all single people in their 30s, we would pile 8 people into a house in Bridgehampton. And every weekend was a mad scramble to see who we knew at Condé Nast, who knew what magazine was throwing the most fabulous party in the Hamptons.

That was Ron Kallof, all those people.

And whether it was Details or Vogue, And the job, the masters of the universe were these, was the creatives and the business people working at Condé Nast Magazines in the magazine group.

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

Tech was boring.

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

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Scott, we're back. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says the company planned for 10x growth this year but is now seeing growth closer to 80x, creating a massive need for more computing power. Enter SpaceX, or rather SpaceX AI. SpaceX acquired xAI back in February, but Elon Musk has just revealed xAI will be dissolved and its AI products will be part of the SpaceX AI brand. Of course, because everybody left and he didn't— it didn't have quite the traction that he had hoped. So he's, as I said, folding it right in. Everything's gonna get unfolded. Tesla's next. Under the new deal, Anthropic will get compute power with SpaceX AI data center in Memphis, the one that's polluting people, as it works to keep up with surging demand. Everybody needs power. A real turnaround for Elon, who earlier called Anthropic evil. He's now saying he was impressed after meeting with senior executives, adding, no one set off my evil detector. Again, look in the fucking mirror, dude. Um, so is this the enemy of my enemy is my friend because of ChatGPT? This is an interesting thing. I mean, obviously Elon has not had the success he had hoped.

He'd hoped to dominate, and it's all about his beef with Sam Altman. But in this case, he's— this is what he's doing. I would, I would be careful if I was Dario in general, but, um, I think he's savvy enough to deal with Elon though, um, and he seems to have enough pushback. Um, any thoughts on this?

Uh, I'd rather talk about me in the aughts and reminisce a little bit longer. Is that okay?

Just for a second.

So I started—

but I want thoughts on this.

In 2000, I had— I'm moving to New York from San Francisco. I had just been abused, rode, ridden hard, and put away wet by Sequoia Capital. Kicked off the board of the— kicked out of the band I started, kicked off of the board of the company I started, just like got divorced. Just like I, I just wanted— I wanted to never go back to San Francisco the rest of my life.

And I moved to New York. Did you deserve it just a little bit?

Did I deserve what?

What happened with Sequoia? I'm just asking. I'm just curious.

Oh, I was an obnoxious, aggressive entrepreneur that was arrogant and reckless.

Okay.

But also Mike Moritz is a small, vindictive man.

Okay, got it.

So, yeah, I think there's enough blame to go around for everyone. And also the board was a bunch of obsequious people getting— anyways.

It doesn't hurt.

I'm still not triggered. I'm clearly over it. No, all of us. I'm clearly over it. It.

All of you are still to this day.

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

Oh, wow.

The ecosystem, I couldn't even use a New York-based law firm because they didn't do venture. People don't realize New York in 2000 was about finance. It was about media.

Mm-hmm.

There was no— There were a couple.

There were a couple little ones.

Gilt. I mean, there was a guilt and there was—

Guilt. I forgot about that.

There was guilt in Kevin Ryan's company. And then there was the one ad company that got sold to—

It was a media company. Which one called it? Gawker. There was Gawker.

Well, that wasn't an internet company.

I know, I know.

That was a gossip magazine. Digital gossip. There was a digital ad company in New York. There was no technology.

There really wasn't. What's Gawker? Oh, the one that was bought by Yahoo. Tumblr. Tumblr. Tumblr.

Oh my God.

Tumblr was in New York.

Tumblr, the worst acquisition in history.

In history.

The worst acquisition in history.

I broke that story. Nice to meet you, but yeah.

Yeah, where Marissa, within the same 60 days, Mark Zuckerberg made the best acquisition in history. For a billion, he bought Instagram. It's now worth, they think, probably a half a trillion to a trillion dollars. And Marissa Mayer said, "I'm a baller." And she bought Tumblr for a billion dollars, which 7 years later got sold for how much?

A couple million to— $3 million.

It was a collection of blogs.

Dirty sites, dirty blogs.

And then when they shut down the porn, I got into an online battle with, what's the guy with the bad Caesar's haircut, the venture capitalist?

There were 2 or 3. There were a few.

Union Square Ventures. Anyways, they told Tumblr they were no longer gonna fund this bag of shit that was making no money. But he convinced Marissa Mayer to buy it for $1.1 billion. Anyways. Anyways.

I'll walk down memory lane of New York.

This has been fun. I've really enjoyed this.

Okay. All right.

And then I joined, and then my incubator collapsed within like 6 months founding it after the dot-com implosion. And I joined the faculty at NYU where my first year salary was $12,000.

Nice.

Good times.

Nice. Okay.

Good times.

Back to Exxel.

Anyways, back to Anthropic. What are we talking? I've said this, I wish I have never bet on a predictions market. I said this a week ago. Calci had Musk winning at 51 or 52%. Now it's all of a sudden fallen to 38.

Winning at what? Winning—

Winning the case.

Oh, the case, yeah.

The Musk wins the case.

Yeah, yeah. He's gotta make some moves, yeah.

Going from— There is no moves. He does not have a legal leg to stand on.

Yeah.

You can go from a nonprofit to a for-profit. You're allowed to do that.

Yeah.

And when you—

And California already approved it.

Speaking of the late '90s, I bought a home for $720,000 in Noe Valley near where you live, which was a lot of money for me at the time. And 2 years later, when I moved to New York, I sold it for $960,000 and thought I was a fucking real estate genius. It ended up that house is next to where Mark Zuckerberg moved. It's gotta be worth $10 million right now. This is the equivalent.

Yeah, $600,000.

I live right there. Okay, a lot more. This is the equivalent of me going back to the owners and suing them. This is regret. And a messiah complex cosplaying a legal argument.

I would agree.

Judges in courts aren't concerned or aren't moved by anger and indignance and seller's regret. They're moved by evidence and argument, and there's none here.

Though I will say, this trial, I was thinking, you know, you're watching the texts go back and forth, and Mira Murati doesn't like Sam really, even though she pretended she did. And the girlfriend who was on the board, I'm blanking on her name, I don't really care, because, uh, Siobhan Zillis, um, who has—

isn't that his girlfriend?

Well, it's his partner, and then they had 4 children, and she didn't manage to tell the OpenAI people that she had 2 children with him. And obviously she was—

that's not a conflict, Kara.

She's like a spy in there, like, right?

They're accusing her of being a spy.

Like, you might give that piece of information if you're in a beef with someone.

If you're a fiduciary for all shareholders making decisions around someone's compensation and you're their children. That's just like— she probably just forgot to mention it.

00:41:56

Yeah, yeah. Anyway, so the whole thing, and they're going back and forth in this trial, and I thought, "This is a soap opera, but the most boring people, most awful boring people in it." I'm like, "I could give a fuck whether Mira Murati likes Sam Altman or not. I don't care. I don't care." Like, "Oh, he was manipulative?" I don't care. Like, what does that have to do with anything? Like, you know, honestly? I force— You know, you hear that, of course, about Sam being manipulative and telling one person one thing and another. And as I'm reading it in the trial, I'm like, "So? What does this— Is this illegal? Is he just a jerk, or you didn't like him, or he was deceptive? Did he do anything illegal?" 'Cause otherwise, your internal corporate hijinks, I don't, you know, care. I do think she should have told people she had his babies, in my opinion. But the whole thing is like a bad soap opera that you want to, like, turn off. Like, and it's just bad for AI, it's bad for the companies, and therefore, he's going to do another deal like this.

That's where we— That's why we're where we are. He's trying to glom himself onto a successful—

Ron Wayne was one of the founders of Apple. He owned 10% of it. He sold his 10% for $2,300 back to, I think, Jobs and Wozniak. That is now worth $400 billion.

Yeah, he feels bad.

And guess what? It sucks to be a grownup. He signed the legal documents. Private property, key to private property is when, like Elon Musk, and my favorite defense is, "Oh, he didn't read the fine print." No, please. He's the wealthiest man in the world with the most sophisticated legal team in history. History, but oh, he didn't read the fine print. I would like to, I would just love to see someone show up who sold, the guy who sold Tesla to Musk or the rights to it, I forget his name, show up and say, oh, I didn't realize it was gonna be worth this much and I didn't read the fine print. Just to see how that goes over in court.

Yeah, instead he's like baby daddy. I'm like, come on, like stop it, you people.

And then the notion.

These are the smartest people on our planet.

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

yeah, nobody likes these people. I have to say, Brockman came off— of all these sort of loathsome people, I'm waiting for the Sam Altman testimony, but Of all the people so far, Greg Brockman comes off the best, and I'm not a particular fan of his either, like the one that keeps notes of everything. So some of the highlights of the testimony, let's see, emails from Zillow showing Musk suggested OpenAI become part of Tesla, potentially as a B Corp subsidiary. Musk tried to recruit Sam Altman to join the world-class AI lab within Tesla, even offering him a board seat. They didn't, had no interest, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman. Two days before the trial started, Musk Tested Brockman, asking if he was interested in settling the case. Musk supposedly wanted full control of OpenAI, in part to help him raise $80 billion to colonize Mars, and was using OpenAI employees to do secret work for Tesla. OpenAI president said that Musk's lack of understanding— this is Brockman— of AI was a concern for the company.

I—

that was factual. I really— when I heard that, I'm like, I get it. And OpenAI's former CTO, Mira Murati, who's a very nice person, she testified saying she couldn't trust Sam Altman's words and saying he created chaos. Mira, I like you, but I don't care.

Like, then leave. Leave. Leave.

None of this matters.

Nothing matters. Like, none of it, right?

It's not who's a better person. It's not who would be a better shepherd of AI. It's contract law.

I know.

When you sell an asset, it doesn't matter who the bigger asshole is, the seller or the buyer.

I know.

He sold, he gave up his ownership and got $100.

Baby daddy gave up his ownership.

Baby daddy did. And the media's trying to turn this into, who would be better at running it? It doesn't fuck— It doesn't fucking matter.

Don't follow along with these people.

When you sell an asset, it doesn't matter who's the better person or steward of the home you sold.

It is instructive to look how sloppy it is. And so that's why I keep saying to people, they're like, "Oh, they're masters of the universe." I'm like, "They're kind of sloppy." Like Google, like everybody in the beginning of Google, they were all like fucking each other. Like, it was like, and it was a big mess and it was chaos and they all hated each other. They liked each other. I could care less. Less, right? That's the thing. Until professional management got in. Microsoft early on was like this, like kind of a mess. But who cares? But the fact that it's coming out in court is, it just makes you realize how dumb and dumb, dumb, dumb this trial is. Like how dumb it is. It's about money. It's all it is.

This is, this is, I sold something that ended up being worth $850 billion.

You're right. You're, that's exactly right.

It's, I'm the messiah who's gonna put us on Mars, who should control autonomous in the US, should control space. And oh, by the way, the one part of the technological revolution that I don't control and I can't seem to catch up in is AI.

Yeah, he's nursing his angry wound. Yeah.

6 years after I've decided, oh, I need, I should own it, I need it back, or I need money back, or I need to get in the way of their progress so xAI can, I mean, pretty soon it's gonna be, I don't know, I had a conversation with Dario Amodei. I should own, you know, I should own Anthropic.

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

In 19—

So stupid.

I think it was 1986. Was it '86 or '96? Mike Tyson, at the peak of his career, fought Marvis Frazier and knocked him out in the first 30 seconds. I think legally Elon Musk is Marvis Frazier. I just think the guy—

I don't even know what you're talking about.

It's a boxing analogy.

All right.

I don't like boxing 'cause I don't like to see young men beating each other up like that. But if you wanna talk, oh my gosh, whenever the, The reels come on of Mike Tyson's 10 greatest knockouts. Jesus Christ. I met him at a restaurant.

Did you?

Yeah, he came up to me, he was smoking.

You didn't talk to him the nice ways, I hope.

Oh my, I was so scared of the guy. I just thought, be nice to him.

Yeah.

That guy, one of the most dominant athletes of all time. Anyways, this should, and I believe will be, a first round fucking knockout. And all this drama and all the media say, who would be better at open? What happened?

None of them.

None of them. Who's fucking who? It's like when Iran and Iraq were at war, I used to say, "I hope the bullets win." I don't, both—

We don't care.

I went on CNN and they asked me, "Who would be a better steward?" I'm like, "It doesn't matter." None of them. It doesn't matter.

The answer is none.

Private capital and private property means it sucks to be a grownup. And if you sell your house, it ends up being next to fucking Mark Zuckerberg and could be worth $8 or $10 million right now. Now. Okay, it's done. You sold it to us.

One final observation about these people: these are the richest people on Earth, and they're so manifestly unhappy. They just can't shut the fuck up. They can't stop fighting. They have so much money. None of them are qualified to run, be in charge of AGI. None of them. They're— this is what this is showing, what tiny, petty, angry, unhappy people they all are. Every single one of them. And you're like, Y'all, none of you deserve what you've got here. So none of you has the dignity or character to, to look good. And meanwhile, over to the left, Dario Modi's like sucking up all the attributes of goodness. I don't even trust him and I like him. Like, it doesn't even matter at these people anyway.

There's a problem is we shouldn't have to trust these people. We should be able to elect representatives we can trust to do the right thing and regulate these companies, and then we can fire them easily anyway.

Let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about managing a stock portfolio via ChatGPT.

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Scott, we're back with just one more quick story over the past few months. I'd love to know what you think of this. A Wall Street Journal reporter asked ChatGPT for investment advice to see if AI could really realistically manage a stock portfolio. It actually makes sense. There's, speaking of Anthropic, they just did an interesting deal where it would make decks and pitch decks and things like that working. It's called, it's a company, I can't remember the name, but it's interesting though. ChatGPT, there's a lot of interesting smaller AI companies being made that actually sound useful. And so this is what the reporter did. ChatGPT generally identified market risks, but also made simple math mistakes, suggested questionable market timing strategies, and sometimes veered into overly complex ideas like options trading. The chatbot often told the user what they seemed to want to hear, highlighting a bigger concern that AI could sound confident and persuasive even when its advice may be flawed or risky. Sounds like a lot of brokers I know. About 30% of Everyday Investors report using AI for their portfolios. So apparently not so good yet, not, and in lots of really problematic ways that you, I mean, with a person you're looking at, you sort of have a sense when they're sort of trying to sell you something you don't want.

So it's curious. It's just like with law or medical, it's not there. It's not there. And this personalized investment advice is just the latest wrinkle. I don't mind them making, you know, decks, pitch decks and things like that, but huge risk for lawsuits, I would assume, just the same with legal or medical or anything else. Any thoughts?

Well, I think it was tempting to believe in the '90s you could use Lotus, you know, 1-2-3 to beat the market by doing all sorts sorts of analysis and calculations, and you might have had an edge for a minute. But what I would argue is that the, the individual thinking they can use, uh, Claude— and I'm guilty of this, I've been asking Claude like crazy, using Cowork to come up with different options and hedging strategies and to identify stocks. I'm guilty of it. I, I love the markets. I like to gamble.

It's my— you do? That's why I'm asking this.

Yeah. And I find it interesting what it it says. But here's the bottom line, or what I think. Ken Griffin will hire 2,000 PhDs and he will weaponize them with AI and they will outperform the market. But you believing with your $20 a month cloud cowork weapon can compete against these folks, you are showing up with a very elegant squirt gun and they have a fucking howitzer. So this is what you you invest in low-cost ETFs like Vanguard and people who know and understand technology can use the, you know, understand how to use AI. But this will further, this will further diminish or create or widen the delta between individual investors and institutional because institutional investors will have the capital. The bottom line is every time you, you place a trade, you gotta keep in mind Fine. On the other side of that trade is likely someone smarter than you that has broader technology. So what you want to do in my view, unless you— I get a lot of psychic income around playing the market. So 30% of my net worth— But you like doing it. I enjoy it. You know, it's fun for me.

Occasionally I have access to a deal that other people don't have access to. So fine. But the retail investor would be better off finding low-cost ETFs where the management team there is really technically competent.

Yeah, that's what I do. That's what I do.

That's exactly the right way to do it.

I'm not interested in it. I know I could do slightly better if I, I'm a little smarter than most people and have a little more insight.

Yeah, you're smarter in an area that has nothing to do, that's Dunning-Kruger. No, what I mean is— Be careful thinking that.

Oh no, what I mean is I have some thoughts on some things that I prob— I'm talking about the average bear, but I don't think I'm smarter than the average bear.

Well, you understand technology.

Right. So I could be like, I wouldn't bet on this company, I would bet on this company, probably earlier than other people, but I still wouldn't win.

Still, the problem is people have emotions in the market, and you can't trust your emotions in the market. So when the stock gets cut in half, your emotion is to sell it because you can't take any more pain, when that's probably when you should be buying more. And so, and then you, and then you have, you literally have Ken Griffin out there looking at all the trades trades and seeing where emotion is spiking or irrationally plummeting and then moving in, in a millionth of a second and then moving out and, and absorbing millions of different data points. So you do not, you do not wanna play in traffic here and believe that just because you, you're gonna get up to the mound where a guy's pitching 105 miles an hour because you got a, a new aluminum bat that you think is gonna gonna— that you're gonna be able to hit a home run. No, you're gonna get beaned in the face. So I do think AI is gonna be a huge unlock, and also it will compress margins because what will happen is financial advisors, unless they're really good and can go upstream into tax planning, a mediocre financial planner at your local bank, no, you could probably do almost as well using AI or better and save 1% a year.

I remember when my mom passed away and I was looking at her estate, this guy was charging her 1% or 1.5% of her assets every year to put her in 8 S&P stocks. I'm like, "Okay, that's just not that hard. Why are we paying you 1.5%?" Right, yeah. It was 1.5%, remember? So what I would say is, I think, by the way, I think people should use AI to try and pick stocks. I just don't think they should buy them. I think it's fascinating to see the logic to see what it comes back with, to start asking it more questions. I've been trying to figure out option strategies and strangle strategy. I just, I'm learning a lot.

Sometimes you don't know if it's accurate, right? That's the issue. Some of it, the sycophantic-ness is still a problem because it's not gonna challenge. It's not, if you, it's, I think someone was, I think the article says it's no more than having a smart assistant, right? Like they're no smarter than anything else. And there's an assistant part, which doesn't work. I don't want to displease you. And then it's just a smart person, but you're never going to have an edge with AI the way—

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

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

And about 30%, a third of retail investors are already using AI for their portfolios.

And so— Everyone's looking for a shortcut, Scott.

But this, one of the greatest grifts, I believe, legal grifts in corporate history was the financial advisor or institutional investors. And by the way, the majority of the grift has happened amongst the richest. Yeah. Rich people like— They always get the landholders, yeah. Rich people like to believe that they deserve something better. So they wanna get into these really high-profile, well-marketed hedge funds who they believe, oh, I have access I have access to this, you know, D.E. Shaw, whatever. Okay, fine. Guess what? If you added up all alternative investments and hedge fund returns for the last 50 years, they have underperformed the S&P by the amount of their fees. It's a, and some outperform. Berkshire Hathaway has outperformed. My buddy at Anchorage Capital has outperformed. You know, I have another buddy at Mudrick Capital who's outperformed. But generally speaking, Over the long, medium and long term, they all underperform the market by their fees. By their fees, that's correct. And every piece of data analysis, if you go to the finance department at a world-class university and ask them where they invest, they're like Vanguard. Mm-hmm, me too. And they don't pick stocks.

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

It's a great point because in addition to the capital you're investing, you wanna talk about the emotion you're investing. And that is, I do get psychic income.

You like it. You like it.

I, I started buying stocks when I was 13. I worked at Morgan Stanley. I, I find it fascinating. Fascinating. I really do enjoy markets and it's served me well. Having said that, it also takes a real emotional toll staring at your fucking phone. And then when you buy a stock and you're convinced you're a genius and it gets cut by 40% in 2 weeks after you buy it, you're really gonna beat yourself up. You are.

It's just, it's better not to pay attention.

100%. It is.

And the other thing is, can I just say for people, again, if you like it and it's fun, that's one thing. And it starts to get to an obsession, it's another. The only thing I wish you wouldn't do is put so much you put so much of your medical information into these people because they don't— they're not bound by HIPAA. Same thing with legal. I'm like, please don't. I mean, unless you find one of these ones that is bound by the same laws everybody else is. I just worry about that over time. What's that? Wait, say that one more time. No, I'm just saying, whenever you put a lot of your per— you always like, oh, I loaded up. Sometimes you don't even realize you're saying this to me. I put away all my medical thing into this. And I was like, really? Not sure I trust these people to have all Scott's medical information.

I'm very promiscuous with my information. You are.

Worry. I'll be honest with you, I think, oh dear, no, don't do that.

Because you think at some point they're going to get all of it and weaponize it against us?

They're not. I, I— they could because they're not bound by HIPAA, they're not bound by legal things. I just am like— and, and who knows if they had a security breach? I just am like, oh, I, I trust my lawyer because I can, I can sue him. I trust my doctor because I can sue them, you know what I mean? Like, and they're bound by—

anyway, anyway, I wonder if I should just send I'm gonna send out a preemptive apology to Angie Dickinson and Emily Radachowski right now. Why? Well, just all the things I've asked AI about.

No, no. Okay. We're moving on. We gotta go. All right. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions. Okay, Scott, let's hear a prediction. Do you have a prediction for us?

There was a really interesting story this week I think kind of indicates or portends what might be in store for us around potential acquisitions. And I made a similar prediction a few years ago, but it didn't pan out. And that is a 32-year-old TikToker just crowdfunded $132 million in non-binding pledges to buy a bankrupt Spirit Airlines. Did you see this? No, I didn't. I didn't. He said, look, Spirit helps keep airline prices down. Let's do what we did with the Green Bay Packers and let's mutualize it, and he's very talented. And Spirit said it was going to shut down at 2 AM on Saturday, and this guy Hunter Peterson had a TikTok up the same day, a website by the next, and 6 million views within days. And more than a hun— get this, Kara— more than 133,000 people have pledged on average about $1,000 each, totaling, uh, $132 million. And essentially what he's saying is that, okay, 20% of American adults paying the average spirit fare of $30 to $40 equals enough to buy an airline. And they say it's unlikely— okay, listen, it's unlikely to close. But the idea with— in an era of AI and compliance AI where you could spin up the legal documents and have people sign them, and with PayPal, I think you're gonna see in the next 12 to 36 months someone pull this off where they say, "Hey, who wants to buy Estée Lauder?" Or who wants to buy, you know, it'll start with a small stock.

It wouldn't be Estée Lauder 'cause that's too big a company, but it'll start with a small company that goes out of business. They'll say, "Okay, Dick's Sporting Goods," whatever it is. And someone talented who's very charismatic who will weaponize social media and AI to collect legal pledges for funds and will buy something. Something. I think crowdfunding is gonna happen. And also retail participation in US equities has risen by nearly 20% of average daily trading volume, which by the way is usually a sell signal. Yeah.

Up from low single digits before COVID So it's like when everybody got in one of those accounts.

That's right. And rather than fading, retail flows hit fresh records in 2025.

Well, 'cause the stock market's up. Everyone's like, what am I missing?

That's right. Everyone thinks they're a genius now.

Everyone's like, oh, I know. All right, okay, I like that. Why don't you do it? Why don't we buy something?

Well, that's what I used to do for a living between 2000 and 2008.

We could go buy like all kinds of stunts. What could we buy?

What would we buy? All kinds of stunts.

Like Chipotle or something? Chipotle's expensive. All right. Chipotle's expensive. I don't wanna buy an airline.

Do you know they send me, I used to tell, I was in the original.

Isn't that the plot of Wall Street?

They sent me a card. This is the most impressive my sons have ever been with me. I got a card for free lifetime Chipotle and I sold it or I didn't sell it. I lost it, but I love— Oh, you want one again?

That's what this was about.

Little coffee. They sent me a card. No, if they do it again, I want, I want serious cabbage.

Yeah, yeah. I like that prediction. It's a really, really good prediction. By the way, I predict the government is going to lose that idiotic case against the New York Times about the hiring the DEI and then attacking the woman who did redistricting. These people make Ceaușescu look kind. It's ridiculous. They're going after all their enemies with the FBI, and they're attacking— here's what I predict: it's going to end in tears for those people. They attacked the New York Times for DEI in a lawsuit. Then they're going to use the Justice Department to try to get, uh, E. Jean Carroll's money that Trump owes her, the $83 million, which is insane. And then they attacked the woman, the 82-year-old woman. They raided her office to try to find corruption, who was so— this badass lady in Virginia who did all the redistricting that kicked their ass. And then And when they are investigating, the reporter for The Atlantic, who, you know, no shit Sherlock, did the story about Kash Patel being a drunk. And of course, she immediately answered it by showing off a bottle she bought on auction where Kash Patel gives out whiskey to people with his name on it, like some Woodford Reserve whiskey.

So, no one's having any of this nonsense that they're doing. It's just so, like, cloddish and thuggish. So, none of it's gonna work.

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

Let the guy sue the New York Times. I don't care.

A search warrant is not proof of guilt, but it is a serious threshold. And federal judges do not casually approve raids on senior state legislators. Come on. So, well— her? Why her? Because, well, okay, you could argue that the investigation, the fact that it was even launched, is politicized. But a federal, a sitting federal, uh, judge, they do not issue— this is a high-profile corruption probe. They often look strongest at the raid stage and weaker later once the evidence is scrutinized publicly.

Letitia James, right?

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

I understand that, but there's a reason they didn't pick 20 other Republican ones. This is what they do all the time. They just— this is— it's a weaponization of the power. And they complained about it happening to them, and then they're doing it. So stop it. Just cut it out. Anyway, we want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business, tech, or whatever's on your mind. Go to ny mag.com/pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. Elsewhere in the Karen Scott universe this week, Scott, uh, Prof G Markets is going on tour this month. Uh, tell us a little bit about it. It's kicking off May 27th. It's going to San Francisco, LA, Miami, Chicago, and New York. You go to profgmarketstour.com for tickets. Tell us a tiny bit about this and why people should go.

Uh, well, thanks, Kara. It's, it's similar to what we did with Pivot. It's a live tour. Um, we have a bunch of great guests across different cities. What's interesting, it's interesting what sells out the quickest, New York and San Francisco. We were worried that San Francisco wouldn't like us because we're constantly shitposting tech people, but New York and San Francisco are gonna sell out in the next 24 hours. And anyways, but yeah, it's just a live tour with me and Ed Elson.

We sold out San Francisco first on Pivot. Yeah. And Toronto. Was it Toronto and San Francisco?

Oh, Toronto and Boston.

Wait, did Boston? We sold out Boston fast. We sold them all out fast. I mean, LA happened to be a huge theater, so it took a little longer. Longer, but.

Yeah, but it's, and it'll be after the show, it'll be a bunch of people coming up to me and asking me if Ed Elson is single because their daughter is looking for a nice husband. But yeah, so it's my Property Markets Live Tour. Go to propertymarketstour.com. It's starting the end of May, first week of June.

Great, that's fantastic. And also we're gonna be doing Pivot in the fall, another Pivot tour in the fall. We're just, you're gonna be on the road, Scott.

By the way. We're doing another tour.

Yes, you know that. What do you— do you know that we are?

I didn't know that, but I'm excited about it.

You did know. We've literally had a call about it. What happened? What's happening?

We didn't have a call about another tour. We literally discussed it.

We're having a tour in the fall. You were on the call. You weren't listening, but you were there.

You were. I don't remember. Where am I? Well, we're having one.

Anyway, that's the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot, and be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

We'll be back next week. Today's show is produced Lara Niemann, Zoe Marcus-Taylor Griffin, and Todd Weissman. Earlier, Todd introduced this episode. Rich Shively edited the video. Thanks also to Drew Brose, Ms. Vera, and Dan Shalon. Yashar Khoras, Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Care, have a great weekend.