Transcript of Pope Leo’s AI Warning, UFC at the White House, and CBS Shakeups New

What's up, y'all? I'm Skylar Diggins, 7-time WNBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist, and mom. And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for nearly 20 years covering the biggest names and stories in sports and mom. And this is And Mom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds. Dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. You know, you could call me for free and I would probably do a better job.

You're not available. And by the way, define free.

Hi everyone, this is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.

And I'm— where am I? I'm Scott Galloway. Sorry, jello is what I have.

Scott, how is your tour going? I've gotten reports from the Castro about you. You were in my neighborhood.

Yes, I was, in what is one of the most beautiful new theaters.

Isn't it? Oh my gosh, gorgeous. Yeah, it's not new. It's really old and they just renovated it.

Renovated it, excuse me. Yeah, recently renovated. It's great. It was sold out. One of my, a couple of my role models were there. David Aaker, whose course I teach now, who's 88 and changed my life, teaches brand strategy at Haas. The chancellor of Berkeley who was there, who let me in with a 2.27 GPA. My sister, my niece, my nephew. So it was a nice night as I often do. And talking about the AIDS crisis in the '90s, I started crying.

Oh yeah.

So you know, the Castro Theater. A straight white man with erectile dysfunction crying. And the chancellor of Berkeley. Oh, and the marching band.

The marching band. My lawyer, Jesse Berg, sent me, he loves Pivot and he said it was really fun and it was really good. I'm sad that Louis could not go. My son lives a block, two blocks away essentially. And he was working. He's a chef. And so he had the night, the evening dinner shift. So he said he was sad, but he wished you well. So how's it going? Where are you going next? What's your next thing?

Well, I'm here, I'm back. I only went up for the show. I'm back in LA and it's my favorite place to visit in the world. I describe LA as the world's most successful failed nation state. It's kind of, I think of it as peak capitalism here. There's more billionaires in LA than anywhere else but New York. But meanwhile, 75,000 homeless.

Yeah.

And it feels like, I would say it's a town built on delusion, but delusion and creativity can sometimes create a lot of shareholder value.

Yeah, yeah.

And I just, I absolutely love Los Angeles. I think it's, you know what it's turning into, Kara?

What, what is it turning into?

It's turning into San Francisco in that now everyone shitposts Los Angeles.

They do. That's the city. 'Cause San Francisco looks good and it's thriving again.

Yeah, San Francisco's on the rebound.

Mm-hmm, for sure.

And it doesn't hurt that about, what is it, about $150 billion is about to become liquid on $4 trillion in liquid currency through the LBOs.

Right, yeah, all the, yeah, yep.

By the way, in San Francisco, rents last month One month, one-bedroom rents up 24%. Everyone's spending their money before they have it. Pending luxury home sales nationally are up 4%. In San Francisco, they're up 48%.

Oh, I know. I've had, in the, in back in the first dot-com thing, I had people knocking on my door to buy my house. And I have people knocking on my door to buy my house again. It's that, it's that.

Yeah.

And I'm like, no. But it's really, it's interesting 'cause lesser priced houses, which are not lesser priced, they're in the million, $2 million range, aren't selling as well. But the really above, 3 to 7, 8 are really going crazy. It's a crazy market, but I'm glad Daniel's, I mean, it has been on the rebound for a while, but yes, Los Angeles is in that same, we hate ourselves spiral, hence Spencer Pratt. But Los Angeles is a wonderful city at the same time.

Oh, it's fantastic.

You know, it's just, you know, it's sort of West Side white people that get all mad about whatever. And some of them not even in Los Angeles.

Well, I will say, and you know, it's not like a Karen, but it feels like, I used to say it's a, LA is a string of suburbs connected by freeways. Now I would say it's a string of bubbles. I mean, the quote-unquote right parts of LA are euphoric, they're magical. And you venture outside those bubbles and you see a little too much of the real world, which is good for people, but the homeless issue really is staggering here. And relative to the amount of money they spend, I can, You really feel, it's really interesting here. It feels like the mayoral race here, if it were a movie, it'd be Sophie's Choice, personally. That's how I would describe it. Oh dear.

Okay.

But you, it is pretty, a pretty decent facsimile of the presidential race in '24. You have who I would describe as someone who's perceived as incompetent and not that compelling, which has created room for rage cosplaying a political strategy and a reality star. I mean, this literally is Trump-Harris over again right now.

Yeah.

It's weird. When you speak to people in LA, I'm not exaggerating, and reasonable people who you wouldn't think would be supporting a reality star. And they have just had it and they just want change and chaos and they don't care.

Yeah, I understand that. But it is a type of person, by the way, first of all. I would not say everybody is like that.

It's shocking how many people are just, they don't even wanna have a conversation.

They're just angry.

I get it.

But here's what San Francisco, I'm just giving the comparison. We didn't reelect a reality star. We elected Daniel Larkins. Yeah, a technocrat. Technocrat. They should try to find like—

That's the thing, not on the ballot.

I know that, but it's ridiculous that this is like, it doesn't mean, you know, 'cause something's bad, you should do something absolutely fucking ridiculous and disastrous for the city. But you know, they'll go through it. If they elect this guy, they get what they get. That's what, and it's probably a lot of corruption, a lot of incompetence, a lot of just a mess and abuse of people. Like they're gonna hire, wait, they're gonna go back because the old LA, The LA Police Department and that era of real brutality is really, it was real. And so it's a wonderful city and it should be doing a lot better. And the homeless problem is significant. A lot of it have to do with the weather. A lot of it has to do with a lot of things. It's not just that, it's that this is a place where people naturally are attracted to. And so all kinds of people. And so it's a really, it's a, anyway. So are you appearing in Los Angeles tonight? Is that correct?

Oh yeah. We have Ted Sarandos as our guest tonight.

Great.

Great. I have friends from UCLA coming.

Good. Are you sold out in Los Angeles? Are you doing—

No, we're about, I think we're about 90%. We're sold out in San Francisco, in New York, about 90% in LA. It's a big theater. Also, I think LA just, people do last minute and there's so many distractions here.

Yeah, yeah. Are you in the same theater, which we did sell out for Pivot? What was it?

No, I think we're at the Wilton. Is that right? Does that sound familiar? And then I go to Vancouver Island for a speaking gig. And then tomorrow I take the red-eye to Miami and we're on Miami Saturday night.

Oh, that'll be fun. You love Miami.

Yeah, I do.

Anyway, well, good.

I do love Miami.

Well, we've got a lot. Congratulations on your tour. Congratulations to Ed Elson too. It's a really nice, these tours are really fun. I'm excited for ours in the fall. We have one in the fall, so get ready, rest up.

There we go.

You'll have August off so you can rest and everything else. So first off, I have to ask you, by the way, you're doing a lot of stuff, but did you watch the Enhanced Games last weekend?

I didn't, although I gotta be honest, I'm sort of here for it. I think it's kind of, I mean, I kind of had this idea that just take no holds barred and let freak shows show up. People are doing this to themselves anyways. But I did not watch it all.

There was some— Let me just say, let me compare for people who don't know, the Enhanced Games is a new sports event that allows athletes on performance-enhancing drugs and encourages them to try to break world records. Events included swimming, track and field, weightlifting, and strongman. The experiment calls itself a global movement that unites humanity. Of course, it's a publicly traded company. Investors include Donald Trump Jr. and Peter Thiel. There's also a German executive I've met many times He's really into it. There were no things broken except by someone wearing the swimsuit that was barred, this special swimsuit. I don't know. The stock has gone down. I'm curious, if there was a fight where both of us were enhanced, who do you think would win, you or I?

Well, you know the answer there. Me. Yeah, 100%. I've never been in a fight. Yeah, I'm not a violent person. If someone hit me, I wouldn't know what to do.

You've never been in a fight? Wow.

Never been in a fight in my life.

You've never been in a fight? I think, let me think. That might not be true. No, I haven't.

No, I haven't. Yeah. And I, you know, I was beaten up and abused, ex-wife, but no, I was never, never been in a fight. I think that I talk a lot about this, that I think that one of the cores to, I never miss a chance to virtue signal and preach. But I think one of the core principles for men as they get older is just, quite frankly, is emotional regulation. You know, are you willing to sit in discomfort and do you have control over your physical and mental wellbeing?

Well, it's an impulse to punch, right? It's an impulse to punch. And men have it much more. I have, well, let me think. Saul's probably the most aggressive, my sense.

There's no arguing that men are more violent, but that doesn't mean women don't engage in violence. Domestic violence rates in LGBTQ couples is about 25% according to the National Institutes of Health, and according to the CDC, anywhere from 17% to 40% of men are victims of intimate partner violence, depending, depending on the research methodology. There's discrepancy between whether it was a phone survey or a web survey. And then furthermore, there's only about 3 shelters. There's only 3 shelters across the entire US devoted to male domestic violence. There's still a lot of shame and there's a view that it might be underreported.

Mostly women suffer from this problem, Scott.

Yeah, but it's true. There's an assumption.

Yes, I get it.

There's no arguing that men are violent, but that doesn't mean women don't engage in violence either.

I didn't say that, but the comparison is most violence is committed by men in general. In general, in general, murders, blah, blah, everything. Every statistic is largely— it's not really, it's just, I do think it's a function of gender. I do think it's a function of impulse control and everything else, but I'm no scientist.

It's testosterone and cultural norms.

Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. And this manliness, this man— there was a really great cover of The Atlantic recently about the sort of the man-hating groups. And they're always back. They're always like, they're back. I'm like, they're always there in some weird way. Speaking of man, men, there's construction crews building the UFC fighting cage on the South Lawn of the White House in preparation for the night of mixed martial arts celebrating the 250th anniversary of the US independence. Over 4,000 spectators plan to watch from inside the arena. Kind of looks like a roller coaster. And there's all this complaining by Joe Rogan and others about gnats and bugs and outside. And a lot of, some of the champions aren't coming because it's, they don't usually do it outside. And it creates a, if you're going for a world, You know, these are actual competitors. If you're going for titles, it's not a good thing to fight outside apparently. Weigh-ins will be held at the Lincoln Memorial, which is, I don't know what to say about that, but okay, fine, fine, fine. I just don't know what to say. It looks, it's ridiculous. You know, it feels clownish, but whatever, he's the president.

I don't know what to say. I'm not gonna get overly angry about it, But it seems ridiculous, but I don't know how you feel.

I was invited. I said, no, I don't, I don't enjoy that stuff. And I don't need to be, you know, I think it's disingenuous for me to show up and break bread or party with someone who I'm constantly critical of. Uh, it, the event itself is brilliant.

You think?

Oh gosh. There, there's just an entire generation of, of young men and, and quite frankly, a lot of women, their mothers and their sisters who in America, and this will trigger some people, still vote for who they perceive will be most beneficial for their husbands and their sons. And young men are doing really, really poorly. And if you think about government, government in the United States, largely speaking, has been feminized. If you look at the events, the events are basically like, you know, like the Queen was merchandising and throwing them for government events are very feminine, for lack of a better word.

Wait a minute. Come on, Scott. Today you're very anti-women today. I'm not sure why I'm getting this feminine.

I don't think anti-women. I don't think feminine is a bad thing. I'm just calling it as it is.

But what do you mean government things are feminine?

Oh, go to anything at the White House. It feels like it's been designed.

Feminine?

Oh, 100%. They're very proper, gentle. They're very feminine. And by the way, that is a wonderful thing.

Well, men can be proper and gentle. I don't think that men can't be proper and gentle.

Yes, men can demonstrate wonderful feminine attributes.

You mean like medal giving is a feminine activity?

I wouldn't describe medal giving, but the events—

There's a lot of medal giving at the White House.

Government events and ceremonies tend to be very what people would consider, I think, somewhat more Well, they're not a UFC fight. They're not a competition.

No, but the UFC fight is way down the list.

Even like comedy, the White House dinner comes the closest to sort of something stepping out of what is seen as overly planned, nurturing, appropriate. Yeah, I think the events are very kind of very feminine. And what are these guys doing? They're throwing a UFC fight. And it's kind of, you're gonna have, they're gonna have huge viewership. It says to Trump, reaffirms his view of one of the reasons he won the election, and that is like, "I'm a man's man. I see men. I appreciate," quote, for lack of a better term, "masculinity." Unfortunately, it's a fucked up, weird, performative, dominant form of masculinity, but it's a brilliant marketing strategy.

It's smart. I'm not, I don't, I think it sometimes works. Like, let me give an example of this attempt to turn James Talarico, like Stephen Miller, who was literally the most weak-looking person you've ever seen, is calling, you know, he and others are calling because they're terrified of Tallarico. So they're pulling out the anti-trans stuff immediately, saying the first trans senator, he doesn't know how to eat barbecue. Is that a Ted Cruz? Another, like, someone I could easily beat in a fight. The tofu barbecue, the idea of soy boy. I mean, this is not manly in any way. This is like this And I don't think it works as much anymore with people. It's deeply insulting. It might work in Texas. I hate to say it. I think the Tallarico people should take this very seriously because Kamala Harris didn't with the trans stuff that worked really well in the election. And it might work in Texas, but they're trying to paint him as gay. I think that's what they're— Where's the girlfriend?

That's what they're insinuating.

Trans. Is he trans? He's a soy boy. You know, this is all like— What I think about, it's so grotesque because I'm like, these are all men over 50 or whatever. I mean, Stephen Miller looks over 50 even though he's younger. But this is this name-calling, bullying bullshit that is not part of being a man. Many men I know that I think are decent men. It's fine if people want to do this. When I was a kid, I went to fights with my grandfather and went to wrestling matches. He was a promoter and he loved it. So I see the entertainment and everything else in it. But the, the, the, the, the soy boy trans thing that they're pushing on Tallarico is so, so ugly and toxic. And unfortunately, it does work at some point. I don't know if you think it'll work in Texas, but it might. It certainly could.

Yeah, I think, I think there's a fairly large distinction between a sanctioned sport where it's a lot of men in top physical shape. Um, I don't like it. I don't enjoy watching it. But I, I, I think that that is a legitimate sport. It's a huge sport. It's, I think, arguably one most successful sports of the last several decades. It's a well-run sport, um, creates a lot of economic value for many of the fighters. So I, you know, I, I think you can— I think in a bipartisan way you can say that the UFC serves a purpose and is successful. The, the, the ugliness around Talarico is not only that, one, it's not true, but two, to assume that levying an accusation that someone is gay or trans is supposed to be negative. It trains young people or people that if you call someone that, it's— your opponent doesn't call you something unless they're trying to say to the world, "That's a negative." Right.

Absolutely. No, no. 100%.

And I hope at some point people regurgitate on things like that and say, quite frankly, it's, you know, someone we used to call in college, you used to call people fags.

Yeah.

To say this, to be gay is to be bad.

It's an insult. I got it.

At some point, some people, someone says, yeah, and, or what? It's like people online call me a Zionist and I respond, proud Zionist. I mean, I just, at some point people are going to realize going after people's sexual orientations just says more about you than it says about them.

It does. It's, but it's, that's a tactic. They're trying to drum that in, in that race. And unfortunately it might work in Texas.

Well, it's an indictment on Texas that these people have done the research and decided that it works.

Yeah. Yes, absolutely.

So I hope he responds. I will say this, that—

I'm not sure what the response is.

In defense, well, in defense of James Talarico, he and I follow many of the same people on Instagram, and it's not thought leaders, Cara.

Yes, I know.

It's some scorching hot young ladies who make their living with a webcam.

They did it, they also trying to do it to Andy Beshear. They obviously veto everything. You know, to me, it's, you know, at the end misogynistic. And speaking of that, the Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation. Of course, this all leads to the same thing. The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll, the former magazine writer who won two civil lawsuits against Trump totaling, you know, close to $90 million in payments tied to sexual abuse and defamation. The DOJ probe is reportedly focused on whether Carroll committed perjury in testimony. Typical. This is what they're doing to— whether it's to Letitia James or whoever they're trying to go at. Um, specifically, Carroll saying she hadn't received outside funding for her legal bills. Her lawyers later said Reed Hoffman had contributed. This is the latest in a series of DOJ probes targeting Trump's opponents and critics like James Comey, Letitia James, and others, though none of these investigations have led to convictions. In fact, they get laughed out of court. I spoke to Jean Carroll for an episode of On in July 2025. She talked about the threats she's received and why she has no fear.

Let's listen.

It's stupid to be afraid.

Why live your life that way? I've been here 81 years. I'm not going to waste the last of it worrying about that guy in marmalade-colored makeup.

It makes no sense.

So that's what I'm gonna do. So what do you think about this? Talk about misogyny and getting— You know, she's won the cases against him, and he's trying not to pay them, and he's doing everything possible to try not to pay them. And this is the latest Perry using the Justice Department to carry out his toxic, misogynistic efforts.

I think it comes down to this. So one, if she did say something that wasn't true under oath, that's real. Um, and they're claiming that she didn't acknowledge that she was getting help with her legal bills. I don't know to the extent, though, in a case like that, that is grounds for revisiting a case when it doesn't matter, when it doesn't have anything to do with the actual, uh, crime she's accusing the president of. What is consistent here is the weaponization of the DOJ to go after his political enemies. So this is just another example of the fact that we don't have a government that's meant to protect the people. It's now there to protect the president. And I think Eugene Carroll, I mean, I thought, okay, Eugene Carroll is ending the presidency because, and he was, I mean, just to keep in mind, folks, this was a jury of his peers who heard a ton of evidence. And they said, well, it was in liberal New York. Well, okay, New York, if you had 9 jurors, 5 are probably Democrats, but 4 Republicans, and to mature a conviction, all 9 have to agree. So this was a, You know, this was— there's a reason that when someone is usually convicted of a crime, the public used to come together and say, this person is guilty and, you know, should be disqualified.

Or, you know, we keep it— every time this stuff happened, we keep— we kept thinking, that's it, it's over. And it wasn't. But it's just, uh, I do think it's important to have a, a legal scholar to say, in most cases with this type of infraction, if in fact she— and she did, she did not acknowledge that she was having legal bills paid.

Well, it depends on when she was paid. They're going to have to investigate that. But still, they're just grabbing at straws here is what they're doing. That's what they're trying to do to find some way to impugn her. And so he doesn't have to pay that money. It's all the same. It's all about money.

I don't even think it's about the money. I think it's about overturning a conviction of a perceived enemy and going after her. Because the guy's made billions of dollars illegally on crypto. I think it's—

He still doesn't want to pay. He's a cheap bastard. He still doesn't want to pay.

I'm personally, I'm surprised they did this. I would have thought they would. I think this just brings it up again. I would have thought they would want it to fade into the distance.

He doesn't care. He doesn't care. Anyway, E. Jean, we hope this goes away, but it's such a fucking nuisance and such a ridiculous nuisance. Anyway, let's go on a quick break. We come back, Pope Leo's warning about AI. I'm very excited to talk about this.

Hey, I'm Matt Bouchelle, comedian, writer, and floating head you may or may not have seen on your For You page. And I'm starting a brand new podcast. Wait, wait, don't swipe away. It's called That Sounds Like a Lot, as in that feeling when you check your phone in the morning, you read 3 headlines, and you immediately think, oh, that sounds like a lot, I can't deal with all this. But guess what? I can deal with it, and I'm going to get into it every Friday. I'll break down whatever chaos is happening in the world, then I'll sit down with a comedian. You can be progressive and not be like fucking annoying. Maybe an actor.

They go, feminism has gone too far. You go, why?

Because the Sadie Hawkins dance happened?

Maybe a filmmaker. Since leaving that show, I'm challenged sparingly. I just kind of hang out and try to do stuff.

You're the one with the charmed life.

Could be a politician. Basically anyone who responds to my cold DMs. We're recording the whole thing in a beautiful studio, so yes, you can watch it on YouTube, or you can listen wherever you get your podcasts. This is not the place to get the news, but but it is the place to feel a little better about it. That Sounds Like a Lot, part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

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Scott, we're back, and we're going to start off with our next topic with a question from a listener.

Hi, Karen, Scott. My name's Bridget, and I'm calling from Oakland. I'm asking as a Catholic Buddhist pivotarian. I was so delighted to hear that Pope Bob, also known as Pope Leo XIV, delivered his first encyclical, which was about AI, and he was speaking truth to power from a place of power. Which is pretty rare. Have either of you read it? And if so, what do you think? Do you think it can move the needle towards putting guardrails up for this juggernaut that's really careening off the road already? Or maybe even rein in those dickheads who are mindlessly amping it up for their own self-serving profits? Thanks for all the humor and wisdom you've provided over the years, and keep it up.

Haha.

Yep. I just set Prof G up for a dick joke.

I love Bridget. I love our listeners and pivotarians. Let's start a religion. That would be so good. Thank you, Bridget. That was a great question. We love your sassiness. That's the kind of listeners we love. So to catch people up, Pope Leo released his first encyclical this week, a 4,200-word letter to all about AI titled Magnificent Humanity. Magnificus. I can't say it in Latin, but it's Magnificent Humanity. The Pope acknowledged that artificial intelligence can be a valuable tool. He did not trash it, but also warned the AIs could become a new Tower of Babel. He shared some strong words about what needs to happen next. Let's listen to him himself talk about it.

Artificial intelligence needs to be disarmed. The word is strong, I know, but deliberately chosen because this moment needs words capable of attracting attention awakening consciences and indicating paths forward for humanity.

Some of the specific things the Pope is calling for: government regulation of private companies driving AI development— seems normal— protecting children from violent, sexual, or fake information generated by AI— excellent suggestion— safeguards to make sure humans are responsible for all decisions tied to the use of weapons— again, a great thing. He also didn't shy away from talking about people at the helm of AI. That was really the focus, is who's running it. In the abstract, technology Technology in and of itself is not a solution to humanity's problems, just that it is not inherently evil. In practice, however, technology is never neutral because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate, and use it. Some big tech folks are on board here. Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah joined the Pope at the Vatican as the encyclical was presented, but reactions from DC and Silicon Valley have been mixed. Vice President JD Vance called the Pope's warning profound. That was interesting. But Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told Fox News, I didn't know what tech editorializing was part of the role being a Pope. Well, it is, Doug. It's certainly not part of your role as Interior Secretary.

David Sacks wrote, "The Pope rightly warns that AI must serve human dignity, not become a tool of domination and exclusion." Well, someone who dominates and excludes, it's a nice thing to hear. But it goes on, "If we hand," of course he goes on, "If we hand the government sweeping power over AI development in the name of safety, how do we prevent it from being used to censor, surveil, or control citizens?" Honestly, this It's so hypocritical. Anyway, what did you think of the take? And I think he's been listening to Pivot or a lot of stuff we talked about for years. I love Pope being on team, on this team, but thoughts on this?

Well, we talk a lot about the actions of the administration and different things that have just been really bad for brand US, whether it was the insurrection or, you know, cutting off USAID. There's just been so many poor decisions that have really hurt our brand. I actually think the best thing or one of the best things that's happened for the US brand, you know, to a certain extent, AI and just the economic boom out here and the fact that we, the most seminal technology in a long time in terms of shareable creation and what might have an impact on the world is just owned and dominated by the US. That's very good for our brand. And I think it's been great for our brand is Pope Leo. He's just incredibly articulate. He comes across as measured, brave, connects real-world issues with spiritual issues and issues of dignity. And he's American. He went to Villanova.

Yeah, that voice.

Yeah.

He's got such a Chicago accent. Like he'd be wanting to go, "Da bear." Yeah, right?

Yeah. But just his comments, if you were just to distill his comments, they were really powerful. He believes that AI should serve humanity, not replace it. The biggest danger is the concentration of power. He's clearly, he's talking a lot about income inequality and he's skeptical of a small number of companies controlling the infrastructure of intelligence. And he wants, he thinks, AI can amplify inequality and create— you talked about a new oligarchy where private firms wield enormous influence over truth, labor, and governments. I would argue that the cat's already out of the bag there. One of the more controversial things, or interesting things I should say, is you said AI is not neutral, that the algorithms encode the values of the creators, not some sort of neutral view on different views of humanity, which I'm not sure I actually think in a weird way why social media has polarized us. I think that because I think AI is different. I think it's more, I do think from a viewpoint and ideology standpoint, it's more moderating. And sometimes it comes across as quite politically correct, I think. He also talked about job displacement being a real moral issue.

Autonomous weapons terrify him. He called for it to be disarmed and worried about weapon systems operating beyond meaningful human control. And then he talked about human connection, the thing I love, you know, I like the softer stuff, human connection mattering more than synthetic intimacy. And then, and this is the thing I think if you were gonna try and translate this into some sort of legislation, and we're not focused enough on this, is that children are the most vulnerable. And I was just thinking about, you know, think about when you learned to write and how difficult it was. Like I know you were on your school newspaper.

Claire's doing it right. Yeah, I was, but Claire's doing it right now. I think it's really interesting to watch, yeah.

I got, in my senior year of high school, I got a C in English. I had a real difficult time writing.

Yeah.

And I went through that pain, I went through that friction. And if I had just had AI like write my papers, I never would've made those connections. I never would've gone through the friction of making those connections. And so, and I think the really—

Trouble writing? You're a very good writer actually.

I got Cs in English as a matter of fact.

Happily surprised on the upside with your writing.

Well, because I did the work, right? And I think the question is, if you have, if kids have AI, do they ever do the work and make the connections? As a matter of fact, in my first year at UCLA, I was failing English 1, and I said, what happens if you fail English 1? Because it was a core class, you had to take it. It was a requisite. They say, well, you have to take English as a second language, despite the fact I didn't speak a second language.

Wow.

Yeah, that was pretty big. I got my act together.

Yeah, the friction. You're right. The friction is what made you a better writer. To struggle with it, to figure it out yourself.

And this is the problem and the threat of technology across all of our youth. And that is, why venture outside and go through the pecking order and the bullying order and figuring out your place and trying to find or join a gang, if you will, of friends, when you think you can have a reasonable facsimile of friendship on Reddit or Discord? Why take risks, go through the expense, humiliation, enduring rejection of trying to find a romantic relationship when you think you can replace it with synthetic, lifelike character AI or porn. So the defrictioning of life and AI kind of takes it to a new level, especially with academia or academics. It teaches young people to never develop the key skills they have to really be successful in life and enjoy life.

Yeah, absolutely. I think most important part is this. I do think who's making it matters. And he was very clear about that in terms of, he was saying, like, for example, it's not the morality of AI, it's the morals of the people who make it. And I think he was talking about being a very smart small group of people who are very interested in money, really. And I thought it was very, one of the things, he was named Pope Leo because of the last Pope to do something like this was over manufacturing and the mechanization of things. And it was very selected to pick this topic. He very carefully didn't insult technology, but he really clearly insulted its creators or said we need to do better. And I think being the conscience saying Doug Burgum is such a moron. I mean, of And of course he's the conscience of, you know, that J.D. Vance acknowledged that, I think. He's the conscience of the world, of his world, and it extends well beyond Catholics, let me say. And I think it's really important for leaders like this to step up and suggest it. And I do think it does have an impact 'cause people are talking about it and they are talking about the issues he brought up, including these safeguards around weaponry, protecting children.

And this is already in the air with people. And the fact that the Pope doesn't stand up any, and then had some tech people there. I thought it was— he's such a savvy person. I'm excited to see what else he takes on. And you know, of course, the stupid Trump people call him the woke pope, but honestly, he's just— he's the— it's called conscience. It's not woke, it's conscience.

But he did say, just to wrap up, when you were talking about automation and the last time technology appeared to be sort of a threat, you know, the Industrial Revolution mechanized labor. And what he's saying is that AI risks mechanizing judgment and creativity and intimacy and even meaning itself. And his, his, the way I would interpret his comments was less catastrophizing around AI will kill us, but AI could potentially make us less human while concentrating extraordinary wealth and power in the hands of a few firms and states. I just think, I think this guy distills right to the core of the issues. He is very smart. He is very impressive. He is not afraid. I mean, as smart as he is, he clearly had very smart people working on these. He does.

The people I've met at the Vatican have been amazing. But I love that he called it magnificent humanity. And by the way, I love that he made Cliff Notes for people. He made a little chart, which is really good. It's an excellent chart. I love a chart and I love a Cliff Note. Anyway, there's lots more AI to get to, a lot of little stories, but important. Installs for DuckDuckGo have jumped 30% after Google announced its first overhaul in 24 years. Many people are disturbed by this. Google changes include a shift to AI with bigger, more interactive search box that lets users ask longer questions and upload photographs. It's a significant change for search. I have not used Google Search in a long time in a weird way. I definitely use it for some things, but I tend to use, I use all kinds of search services, but it's not only through Google is all I'm saying. It used to be only through Google. And I like the simple box, I feel lucky box. I have always thought it was fine, but I see why they're doing it. At the same time, a lot of people are like, now they're never gonna link to anything but what they wanna link to.

But they've just sort of ended it for most people using Google to get to say media websites or whatever, whatever you're looking for. So that seems to be a shift.

I think it's a smart, bold move. I think they've been accused, when you risk what is arguably, or do any tweaks, the temptation around what is the most profitable largest toll booth in history, when you risk, you know, there's just probably so much momentum to like guys who don't fuck with it. Like, don't—

Absolutely.

Don't change anything. So I think it's actually a pretty bold move. And I do find when I do Google search, those AI overviews are actually quite helpful.

They've gotten better. They were bad. Yeah. And now they're good.

You've said that. You said you like them.

Yeah, I do.

So it's, I think it's the right thing. They have to respond. They have to push back. The reason why Alphabet was such an incredible buy trading at 17 times earnings last year was the market believed that OpenAI and AI queries were an existential threat to search, that it was is it gonna become the new search? And what we're saying is they're both growing like crazy. So, but I find that I do oftentimes go to Claude instead of Google.

Yeah, exactly. And Google just never gives me what I want anymore. It's not, it's useless in some ways. And, but when I like look for like, how do you boil an egg? Or I don't do that, but you know, how many minutes for a jammy egg? I'll go to Google, right? That's, but now actually I might go to Claude. You're right. I might do that. So they kind of have to, you're right. I know people are bothered, but it's change. They have to change. You're absolutely right. Next up, President Trump abruptly postponed signing an executive order on AI after former AISR David Sachs reportedly voiced concerns it could prove too onerous for the industry. He got back, he was, had lost power, then he got it back, I guess. The order would've granted the government oversight on new AI models before they're released to the public. Very temporary oversight, by the way. And it was, some of it was voluntary. AI companies also been told that Trump was not happy that many of their chief executives could not attend the signing. That's probably more to the point, being invited just 24 hours prior. I don't think this order will resurface.

There was a brief attempt by certain people within the Trump administration who were more interested in safety issues, and David, you know, got in there and so did Zuckerberg and someone else. I can't remember who it was, a third person who got in there and convinced him otherwise. Otherwise. Elon, it was Elon.

This was, uh, I thought it was a good idea. Um, the order would have required AI labs to share frontier models with the government 90 days before public release for security review. That seems like a very important and basic first step for any of this. I mean, something that really struck me was the founders of this technology, the people that know more about it than any in the world, are saying that this technology is potentially more liberating than nuclear fusion and potentially more dangerous. So here's a technology that the people who understand it the best are saying is potentially more dangerous than nuclear weapons. We didn't let Oppenheimer start a company and start selling bombs to China.

That's a good comparison. That's actually a very good thing.

Well, I think there's a really decent rational argument that if in fact you have something that is potentially more dangerous than any weapon in history, wouldn't you want the government controlling it?

Yes, we want it to be part of the decision-making.

We're not only not controlling it, it's not only done under the auspices of the Department of Defense cooperating with the private sector or Lawrence Livermore Labs or what have you, we have people trying to go public and who have lawyers and lobbyists, many of whom stepped in here to say, you know, we all talk about the need for regulation. We've been to this movie before. We talk about, show up and stand next to the Pope and say, and cosplay Sheryl Sandberg, we need to do better. We need to regu— we are open to regulation. And then, oh no, get on the phone, tell him no, tell him, tell him to stop, tell him his, his big bet on AI, 93% of GDP growth is now from AI, CapEx, can't do anything to get in the way. And if you slow our runners down, the free games, anabolic steroid pumped up Chinese models are gonna, are gonna come for us and beat us. And there's no truth to that. And if they did this correctly and they had standards, government review might actually make the industry better and make them less prone. You know, regulation at this point would be a feature, not a bug in terms of capitalism and these companies' ability to know how to develop, what they can, what they can't do, what they need to check.

But a 90-day review?

I know, I know.

What does it take? It takes a drug a decade to get through the FDA.

Exactly. It's ridiculous. I just, there's a real beef going on in the administration. Sachs is on one side and some others are on the other. Than the others. And we'll see, you know, eventually this will happen for these companies. They just want to put it off as long as they can. And Sachs is not working for the safety of the United States or anything else. He's working for his friends in Silicon Valley.

You know who's actually increasing AI legislation and regulation? China.

China. They are. That's right.

The Beijing State Council issued a 2026 legislative work plan in May with AI governance language appealing—

and about jobs, because they know what will happen if people feel adrift in China. That's not something that can happen. You're absolutely right. They're so much smarter in how they handle these things, which is really a depressing thing to say.

They released, they enacted binding rules on AI emotional interaction, identity disclosure, and content accountability.

They read the Pope. You know, anyway.

We've passed zero AI legislation.

Zero, zero, except in the States. And there's more to come. There's a real anger brewing and it is not, It's something a Democratic candidate should, not like kill the billionaires kind of thing or pitchforks, but there's a pitchforky, I was just talking to Tim Miller on his podcast and he feels a pitchforky moment and that's not what you want. You want something that makes sense. And unfortunately, 'cause the tech people just can't possibly accept any kind of a stricture or a speed limit, they're gonna unfortunately, get the worst, the worst outcome for themselves eventually, but probably they'll be just fine.

Just as Lincoln said, no country can lose a war when it has public support. No country can win a war when it doesn't have it. If you look at what China has done with AI, and it has released a series of legislative policies and around emotional security, uh, concentration of power, and it's made them public. The difference is the The Chinese now support AI. 87% of Chinese people trust AI versus just 32% of Americans. Because why? Because the Chinese believe that their government has the ability to protect them against AI and is regulating the technology effectively. 54% of Chinese people embrace greater use of AI versus just 17% of Americans. And 9 in 10 Chinese Americans age 18 to 34 said they had faith in the technology versus 4 in 10 of Americans in the same age group.

And young people particularly. I mean, good job, David Sachs. Everybody needs you.

So you have the populace of China is embracing AI and trusts it and trusts that they have a government to kind of soften the edges or reduce some of the externalities. Whereas in the US you have people driving hundreds of miles to protest a fucking data center.

Yeah, I agree.

Agree with you. So that, you wanna talk about, we just get it so bass-ackward. We think—

We do. Well, it has to do with tech people being up in Trump's grill and controlling him. That's right.

And Trump believing that a lack of regulation— he doesn't understand the difference between—

He moved toward it though. Why did he move toward it? Why was he going to— it's really interesting. There's just— largely probably because they wouldn't show up to his party. That's my guess with him because he's so ridiculous. But in any case, we have to move on to this because this is a topic that you've talked about. Uber's CEO says it's hard to draw a connection between the company's rising use of cloud code and spends, especially the tokens, and innovation meant to serve consumers. This comes after reports the company already burnt through its entire 2026 AI coding tools budget, this is to buy tokens, in just 4 months. This is one of these indications you were talking about, right? This idea that what are we getting here for our money? Am I paying too much for this muffler? That kind of stuff.

There are 95% of CFOs in an interesting study done a professor out of MIT, said that only 1 in 20 CFOs can point to a positive ROI. And it's starting to bubble up into a real expense. And there's even, NVIDIA is claiming they're spending more now on AI internally than they're spending on humans. And so this is, it's going to be very interesting, Kara, because for example, Claude is about 9 times more expensive than some of the Chinese Open Weight LLMs. LAMMs. And when the CFOs see these bills and aren't immediately able to connect it— like, Uber's blown through its AI budget, you know, in a few weeks or a few months, and someone's going to ask, how is this making the consumer's experience with Uber better? And this is how the whole thing unwinds. One, a really credible CEO says, okay, we're going to scale back our investment here until we can figure out a way to more directly attach to some sort of consumer benefit or ROI. And I think where, if you go second and third order effects, I think it goes to the following places. Supposedly 80% of startups are hacking or using some sort of Chinese Open Weight LLM.

One, they use less expensive chips, they have cheaper power. I also think they're pricing it below market because a lot of local provinces in China have sort of their local champions that they're subsidizing. And I think what we're going to see is the Trump administration, when they start to see companies companies opt for the cheaper Chinese models. We've been to this movie before. China steals our IP, develops 80% of what we have, and sells it back to us for 40% on the dollar.

Yeah. Can I— I'm gonna interject. One of the things Mark Cuban had— when I was interviewing Dario Amodei at a recent event, I said, "Send me a question." And I said I had just written his essay, Dario's essay, "Machines of Loving Grace." And he— Mark wrote me this. The first thing he wrote me back was, "Explain the token economy to everyone here. Do you see a scenario where the high cost of tokens tokens makes it cheaper to hire people for certain jobs? I thought that was a great— I did ask that. It was a really— it was a— he was already clocking this, this issue that maybe people are more less expensive than this token, these tokens that, that costs. And tokens are what you spend on computing, just for people who don't know.

Yeah, humans are less expensive, and—

or can be.

I mean, Claude, I think it's Claude, Claude Code Max, or Claude Max. I've already run out of tokens. I'm playing with this shit so often. I had one of those prompts that says you need to upgrade to Submax, which is $200 a month. What's interesting—

Do you get the benefits? Do you get the benefits of the money you spend or just you're playing with it?

At this point, it's well worth it for me. I'm just fascinated by it. I have discussions around. Right.

So it's a hobby.

Yeah. And I also use it to, I use it to find data. If I'm struggling, if I have a paragraph that just sounds clunky, I say, "How would you edit this?" Or, "What analogies would be better?" You know, you could call me for free and I would probably do a better job. You're not available. And by the way, Define free.

I actually think that—

I'm just saying. In terms of economic costs, I would say it's free. In terms of non-economic costs, I would argue you're pretty expensive.

Yeah, anyway, we have to move on.

As Sitting Bull said, "What is free, white man?" Oh, you're just saying that. Anyways, but what's interesting of what I found out about CloudMax, the $200 a month thing that I'm about to upgrade to, is that it costs them, for you to use CloudMax, it costs Anthropic $5,000 a month to deliver that product to you.

Amazing.

Yeah, just the cost on infrastructure and power.

Once we sell more, volume, we'll make it up in volume, right? Is that the—

Well, no, what they're hoping is the law is one of the first economic concepts you learn.

Comes down.

Is that, and it's called, it's not Jehovah's paradox, I forget, this guy wrote a brilliant paper on it, but I just thought he just summarized the term elasticity. But the economic term elasticity is that as the price of something goes down, the demand for it goes up. And everybody thought, well, as computing power goes down and becomes so cheap, chips will go out of business 'cause you won't need as many from Intel. And what happens is, is the cost of something goes down, more and more people use it. And there's a viable argument, and I've sort of been making this argument about what I call Apocalypse No, and that is all the catastrophizing around labor destruction is total bullshit, that as the costs of AI go way down, we're gonna find more uses for it and we're actually gonna end up hiring more programmers or vibe code.

Could be. I do think the costs are going to actually go down eventually, but just not today. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about Elon possibly combining SpaceX and Tesla, just as Kara Swisher predicted.

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Hi, I'm Maria Sharapova, host of the Pretty Tough Podcast. Each episode, I sit down with high-achieving women to discuss the pursuit of excellence without apology. This week on the show, clinical psychologist and founder Dr. Becky Kennedy and I unpack what it really means to raise kids today. I think parenting is the most important job in the world and the one that has the most impact on your world and the world. It is non-stop. Check out Pretty Tough, new episodes on Wednesdays. You can watch it on YouTube or listen in your favorite podcast app. Scott, we're back with more news. As SpaceX prepares to go public, rumors are again circulating that Elon Musk will eventually combine the company with Tesla. Obviously. God, I mean, we're not speaking, but I know how this guy thinks. Musk has reportedly discussed the possibility with colleagues at The two companies already share engineers and collaborate. There's all kinds of cross stuff that, a lot of sketchy cross stuff, if you recall at the time when he took over Twitter and collaborated on power and compute issues. Also, by the way, SpaceX got a $2.29 billion contract to build a satellite communications network to connect military sensors and weapons platforms around the world.

They have to deliver an operational prototype by the end of 2027. So he's doing well, he's doing well. With his help of Trump, et cetera. It's a mutual benefit society for them. But this putting Tesla in here, it just makes complete sense is that he's, someone said it was like two, it was mortgage-backed securities, a bunch of companies that can't pay wrapped around Elon Musk and a company that's okay, which is Starlink. So it's like a sort of a collection. And so he's shoving this stuff all together. It makes sense on a data point of view. Makes sense to hide a bunch of stuff. He already had these weird, very questionable transactions like buying Cybertrucks for SpaceX, which makes no sense except if you wanna look good. So why not just mash the whole fucking thing together and then make everybody buy it who is in an index fund, which is another thing. So any of these comments, the contract, the merger, the NASDAQ situation, Well, you did predict it, but my analogy is the following.

Snow White is hot, and the prospect of getting to marry Snow White is super exciting. And Snow White is SpaceX. But unfortunately, to buy SpaceX, you gotta take on these 7 fucking weirdos who are expensive and neurotic. And I mean, XAI, which has been attached onto SpaceX, an incredible company, is a money furnace that's playing catch-up.

And trying to be the infrastructure provider now. So is Meta, by the way. But go ahead.

And SpaceX, I'm sorry, and Tesla, I still think Tesla's a great product. I got 'em both. Someone the other day, and I do think they have a fantastic car, but it's a struggling business with a multiple of 192 times forward earnings. And Apple trades at 33 times forward earnings. And then if you look at Tesla's just business in Europe, they've— sales have fallen for 13 consecutive months. Its market share in Europe has gone from 1% to 0.8%, while the EV market has expanded about 30% in 2025. In Norway, sales are down 90%. Down 80%, UK down 50%. Meanwhile, BYD registrations are up 260% in Europe. And the reason why its valuation—

I just note, I didn't say it was a bad car. I said he didn't innovate in it. There was another new cars and BYD keeps innovating. Every time you see a new one, you're like, cool. Tesla's the same, pretty much the same car for the past. And then they deliver Cybertruck as their innovation. So that's my beef.

Stocks are like brands, and that is they're part promise and part performance. And the promise— no one articulates and gets more cheap capital on the promise part of that equation than Elon Musk. He's arguably the best salesperson and communicator in the history of the public markets. And the promise, though, the performance is, is like so far behind the promise. For example, These things have not, the promise has not worked out. So Robotaxi miles, they doubled sequentially in Q1, but it's, he was saying that there would be 1,000 Robotaxis on the road about 5 years ago. Across all 3 Texas cities where Robotaxis operate, Tesla has just 25 unsupervised vehicles. I mean, none, right? Meanwhile, their SF Robotaxi service still uses a safety monitor in the front seat. And there are 5 more cities on the way, but Musk timelines famously cannot be trusted. Trusted. And then he tries to create all of these distractions. Look over here at robots. I'm staying in Beverly Hills in Los Angeles. If I go to my deck, I can see a Waymo. They're everywhere in LA, Kara.

There's actually fewer of the Tesla taxis, robotaxis in Austin. They've cut them back.

And then the worst car release or, you know, the worst tech product the last year was the Cybertruck, which by the way is about to be bested by one of the great brands in history. You're about to see one of the biggest brand failures in history and that is the equivalent. Tech has literally like infected so many things, and it's infected one of the purest brands in the world. It's infected Ferrari. The new electric Ferrari is about to be just panned.

It was, yeah, yeah, it's getting panned right now.

Oh, it's going to be, it's going to be one of the brand stories of the year.

It looks like a Honda, right?

It's, it's a, it's basically, they said Apple gave up on their Project Titan and they slapped a, they slapped a, a stallion on it. You're going to see, oh my God, you're going to see the Ferrari purist, you're going to see 80-year-old old men going on TikTok for the first time in their lives to shitpost this thing. And SpaceX, get this, SpaceX accounted for nearly 20% of Cybertruck sales in Q4 2025 'cause he bought back a bunch of Cybertrucks. So I think it's smart for him to do. It's more jazz hands, it's more pretending, attaching something to something amazing to try and, I mean, he's very good at this and you predicted it. But to take, put Elon on top of something that's very exciting around rockets, data centers in space.

Rockets.

Yeah. And he is a visionary. We need to be an interplanetary species.

And now you have to buy it with NASDAQ. Explain to people very briefly what that is so people understand. The index fund issue is that they've lowered the amount of time before big IPOs go into the index and now people are gonna be forced to buy his company. Also OpenAI, also Anthropic, et cetera. Sure.

So basically the rule was before you joined the S&P, you had to be profitable for a certain amount of quarters and you had to be in the index for at least a year. They've waived those rules. Because they realize, and it makes sense, they're big important companies. What that means is if you invest in an ETF or an index, you automatically own these companies at those prices. And at these prices, at these valuations, I would argue, I mean, to a certain extent, the IPO markets might be over. And that is the way I see it is the, the reason we went public, the reason Google went public was you couldn't raise $3 or $5 billion from venture capitals and private institutions in 1997. '97. Now there's almost as much capital, if not more, in the private market. So logically you have to ask yourself, why does a company decide to go public? And one reason, it's a branding event. Two, it creates more liquid currency potentially. But these companies have very liquid currency on the secondary markets. They do it because I, I think largely speaking, and they don't wanna say this out loud, once the private investors go, look, this thing's getting pretty frothy, most of the juice has been squeezed out of it.

Well, who is stupid enough to take the valuation even further Well, okay, the last stop on the Trump, on the chump train right now is the public markets. So typically a company like OpenAI would've gone public when it was worth $30 or $50 billion. But the existing investors of OpenAI and Anthropic say, oh no, no, no, no, they're still juicier. Let's keep this to ourselves and we'll find you capital. And then when they start going, wow, this valuation is rich for even us, let's go see if mom and pop retail investor and people on Robinhood and people on Reddit who love Elon and people around the world who want to participate in the economy are actually willing to invest. I, my prediction is these 3 companies, especially AI, are going to go through a pretty serious repricing. Not a collapse like a 2000 collapse, but a repricing. And then when you combine that with the fact that you now have access to private companies with different secondary markets, potentially the tokenization of small companies, it's just going to make the IPO less and less relevant because of the reporting standards. And this is the indices trying to to say we wanna make it more attractive for companies to go public and also reflect, the S&P should reflect.

I get it. It's just that people shouldn't have this shoved, unprofitable company held up by one guy shoved down their throat without, it's like getting the U2 album.

Yeah, but you could say that is P&G shoved down their throat? It's the same thing.

It is, but it's a profitable company. It's been in business like, let's just give it a shot.

Yeah, but the best returns have been in companies that are growing faster and not profitable.

Yes, it is. And at the same time, let them buy it themselves then. I mean, it just seems like a risky thing to stick in there this quickly. That's all. I just, I'm like, it's gonna benefit the people, it's gonna benefit Elon Musk, but maybe not the pension funds of nurses. Like, I don't know. And I just don't think that risk is necessary.

Well, in a weird way, there's so many dynamics at play here.

Well, my index fund, I don't wanna own SpaceX. I don't want, not right now.

I mean, if you look, if you look at the valuation of these companies going public, it's gonna be combined $4 trillion $150 million. It's like from 1980 to 2020, the amount of money being raised just across these 3 companies—

Yeah, it's huge.

Is just staggering. And what it probably will do in the short run is it'll probably take the S&P down 'cause so much money is gonna come from every corner of the earth to participate in these things. To raise $150 million, the rest of the market feels that. If you wanna talk about, I mean, what happens? I'm fascinated by this 'cause what happens What happens when these 3 companies go public? 11,000 people in the Bay Area, Bay Area are overnight. Imagine everyone who goes walks into Madison Square Garden, place is sold out. Everyone who walked in was a 31-year-old product manager making $180,000 or $240,000 a year. Good living, but some student debt, can't afford a house. And they walk out and they're worth $7 to $11 million. What happens? Kids. They buy a new house as evidenced by skyrocketing prices. Upside here, you're gonna see a lot of funds started. There's also tremendous new business development. The other thing you're gonna see, which is a good thing, you are about to see the mother of all increases in philanthropic giving in the Bay Area.

One would hope.

Well, I do, people do. These people do start foundations and—

Let me just say, if you look at the actual statistics, it's McKenzie Scott, and then, which is an enormous graph, like a big long bar, And then all the others, including Elon Musk down here. I think it's—

I'm not talking about the big ones. I'm talking about a lot of people. Americans are very generous philanthropic people. And when all of us—

Not just people. Sorry. I just—

I'm not talking, there's two things here. When you do have this kind of liquidity event, you do see a bump up in philanthropy.

Sure.

Philanthropy is almost entirely correlated now, unfortunately, to big IPOs in the stock market. Stock market. And a lot of people give stock to universities, tax-advantaged universities. That's what I've done. Every time I invest in a private company, I give a certain amount of it away to one of my, you know, to either public education or teen suicide prevention.

Okay. Anyway, we gotta move on, but we'll see where it goes. But it's a really interesting time. And I think Scott's right. It's gonna, there's gonna be a decline in some, in a lot of these anyway. But it's a really interesting time given all three of these are going at once. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions. Pregnant athletes are not fragile. Yeah, that's right, I said pregnant athletes. I'm Rabinath Son, VPN head instructor at Peloton, and I PR'd my deadlift the week before my son was born. I was also a, quote, geriatric Type 1 diabetes pregnancy, and so I know there can be a lot of fear and uncertainty about what is healthy movement when you're pregnant. That is why I got trained in pre- and postnatal fitness, and this week on my podcast Project Swagger, I am sharing some key guidelines and the story of how I stayed active during my pregnancies. Listen now at Project Swagger. Hey girl, it's Teffy. This week on Teffy Talks, we're talking Kendall and Jacob, reality TV villain Spencer Pratt running for Mayor and a look inside the Cannes Film Festival. Mind you, I bought the majority of my crystals from Pratt Daddy Crystals.

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In the span of a decade, Ben Shapiro built The Daily Wire into a conservative media empire. He produced hit podcasts that bit at liberal excesses, and documentaries and lectures about the founders, the genders, the gospels. He peddled polos, hats, candles, provided a home for deplatformed conservative stars like Matt Walsh, and minted stars like Candace Owens. Let's put a pin in that. The Daily Wire even has kids programming, a judgmental puppet named Zoodles.

Zoodles.

Zoodles.

Who shares Shapiro's load-bearing eyebrows. This year, though, the empire showed signs of collapse. The Daily Wire's YouTube videos are down from millions of views to the low 5 figures. Web traffic is plummeting. And recently, Shapiro laid off 13% of his employees. Asked by The Washington Post what had happened, Shapiro accused other conservatives of click-whoring by embracing radical Islam, theorizing about the evils of of Winston Churchill and mocking the widow of Charlie Kirk. The kids still got it. On Today Explained, the fall of Ben Shapiro. Today Explained drops every weekday afternoon.

Okay, Scott, I'm going to start just very quickly. I want to call out, um, something that happened, um, two, two things quickly. CBS News just named tech journalist Nick Bilton as the new executive producer of 60 Minutes. Bilton is a longtime tech journalist and filmmaker who's never worked in traditional broadcast news. Uh, I Munich. Interesting. It'll be interesting to see what he's gonna do there. This comes on the heels of 60 Minutes correspondent Sharon Alfonsi announcing that CBS declined to renew her contract. She's an excellent reporter. She did great stuff on character AI. She's been a wonderful reporter. The move comes 6 months after Alfonsi's report on abuse inside Salvadoran prisons was abruptly pulled before airing a month later. At the time, Alfonsi called the decision political, and it certainly was. In a statement, she said— she did a really, like, she just burnt the house down leaving. Alfonsi She said the exit is, quote, "A deliberate choice to penalize a journalist for refusing to sanitize factually accurate reporting." She added, "It sends a chilling message across the entire newsroom." And by the way, Sharon's not the only one. Anderson Cooper stepping out the way he is not usually, leaving a few weeks ago saying, "I hope 60 Minutes remains 60 Minutes." He also was sending sort of a shot across the bow there.

I just want to call it these two excellent journalists of 60 Minutes. And Sharon's a badass. I know or just met her on text actually. But, and Anderson, I think has done an amazing job. So these are two really, really great journalists. And I predict that they will do just fine, but good for them for speaking out. And especially good, there was a student who won an award at the Emmys last night, what was named a scholarship for Mike Wallace. And he delivered a blistering attack on supporting these two journalists and supporting others like them. And I thought that person was incredible. Incredibly. It's very hard to speak out. And Anderson and Sharon and this young student did so. And I really, you guys will do just fine. Anderson particularly, but in general, good for you for standing up. That's all I have to say. Prediction.

I think it's a really interesting, it'll be a really interesting case study in organizational behavior and management classes in business school. And that is corporations continue to fall for the notion that if they bring in a small company they perceive as really innovative, that that small virus is gonna infect the entire corpus. And generally, almost always what you find is that the corpus rejects the virus. It's like acquisitions work when the acquiring company has the scale and distribution or capital to help scale the small innovative company. But to believe that the innovation is going to infect the larger corporation or corpus almost never works out.

It's an interesting story. That's an interesting point.

So let's give, let's give the free press the benefit of the doubt. Benefit of the doubt, innovative little company, subscription-based, interesting positioning. And the Ellisons thought that's the kind of mojo and juice and infection we need at this larger, somewhat encephalitic corpus called CBS or Paramount. There's been organ rejection. Also, what CEOs of smaller companies fail to recognize is the following, and it's the reason why I've never been able to grow a big company to small companies. And that is a small company is ready Ready, fire, aim. The person at the top really does get to make swift, crisp decisions. I am the decider. This is the way we're going. One of our key things here is speed, which means this is not a democracy. There's very few things that are less democratic than a small company trying to work fast or go fast, 'cause it's kind of like, what do we think? Okay, get on it. Ready, fire, aim. Let's start yesterday. In a large organization that's scaling, it's more about consensus. And getting people on board and culture, and you're a speedboat ramming a tanker. And what you fail to realize as the CEO of a company like this, and what I think Barry has failed to realize, is you're Phil Jackson, the coach of the Bulls.

And that is your job— you're blessed with some unbelievable assets. Your job is not to coach Michael Jordan, it's to get along with him and be a resource for him. You're not in charge, they are. They're the assets. When you're McKenna, Mikel Arteta, and you're coaching Bukayo Saka at Arsenal, which by the way, just won the Premier League. This is very exciting. When you come into an organization like CBS and you do have kind of these stars that are iconic, your job is to get along with them. And so I think—

Well, let me say, 60 Minutes have been enormously successful. It's not—

That's my point.

I mean, no, but I'm just saying, like, pretending it's just 'cause they're encephalitic and this sassy new startup is gonna change things. I think a lot of these errors are errors of incompetence. Not of trying to change things and these old people won't change. These are like top-level journalists that were doing a great job and has had 52 years of success. Like, you know, they're doing well. It's not like they're not doing well. So why—

I think we're speaking past each other. I'm agreeing with you. CBS is Michael Jordan. Barry Weiss is Phil Jackson. His job isn't to show up and reorganize and tell everyone how to dribble and play again. His job, quite frankly, is to get— the only management of CBS is the following, "Hi, nice to meet you. How can I help?" That's it. "How can I help?" And if the answer is go away and leave us alone, fine. If it's we could use more resources here, we have trouble here, or we don't think our advertisers are, how can I help? That's it.

I love what you've, I'm sorry, I misunderstood. Let me say one of the things that happened at the Washington Post too, blaming these reporters, like when Will Lewis was like trashing the reporters, is like, it's such an easy thing to do for people who think they're innovative is like, you all suck. And some of the things need to change. But to say it's a problem of, it's a bigger secular problem, that's the issue in terms of costs and everything else. And so just telling people, just breaking things is not building things. And that is really hard to do when you're, that's why I never wanna be at a big company. I don't know about you, but I like us being a small speedboat. And if you make mistakes, you make mistakes. If you don't, you don't. That's how I feel. But I don't know about you.

Oh yeah. And this is the reason why I've never built a billion-dollar company. I sell companies, you know, when they, as soon as they have a CFO or someone in HR, I'm like, time to sell.

Yeah.

But having been on involved with a lot of big companies, it just shocked me. It just shocked me right away. The first thing I thought, well, we should do this, this, and this. And the CEOs were always okay. They really had to think about what would be required to get buy-in to potentially change the culture, to explain, be thoughtful, to create the right incentive mechanisms to ensure the behavior lined up. And I mean, you really are— there's some amazing things about a tanker, right? It can carry whatever it is, 100 million barrels or 10 million barrels of a product. But you are, you know, you're steering a tanker and it takes a lot of effort and a big engine room and a lot of people. It is a different— there's so few people people that can go from— a lot of people, I would say, where are you in the alphabet? Are you from A to D? I'm good at A to D. Yeah, some people are good at coming in. Uh, my old CEO at L2, Ken Allard, was good at kind of D to D to H or I. And some people are— can come into a company that's, you know, gone public.

Dara Khosrowshahi is, is amazing.

Very good example.

M8 is like great from L to S. He came into a came into a company that was already jamming, scaling, huge infrastructure, huge brand, and said, okay, somebody needs to be an adult here. And also there's some people who come into companies that are distressed who take a company from, you know, whatever it is, T to Z, they come in and cut costs and repackage something, take it through bankruptcy and make a lot of money.

Scott, your next book is "The Alphabet of Management." "The Alphabet of Business." Yeah. All right. I wanna hear your prediction though.

I'm all confused and jet lagged right now. So I thought we were doing wins and fails. So if it's okay, I'm gonna do wins and fails. But my win is, and it just hasn't gotten enough attention, and it's just so exciting, and it's such a victory for the West. And I would argue it's actually in many ways, while Iran has overshadowed it and inflation, people really don't understand that something incredibly wonderful is going on here. And that is 3 years ago, Russia was supposed to take Kyiv in a weekend. And today Ukraine is striking Russian military infrastructure, oil refineries, ports, bomber bases, and semiconductor plants, hundreds, sometimes, sometimes more than 1,000 kilometers inside of Russia. Putin is on the run.

He is. I told you when I told you that a couple weeks ago that all these people said Russia— he's in much more trouble than you realize. But go ahead.

Just recently they've hit the Ryazan refinery, one of Russia's largest fuel plants supplying the military, the Tuapse refinery in the Black They're going after ships. They're going after the Black Sea Fleet, oil infrastructure in Perm, 700 miles from the border, the Yezelavrov refinery, 700 kilometers inside of Russia. And even the English—

Can you imagine in this country if that happened? Jesus.

If they started bombing oil fields in Texas.

Buffalo. Buffalo.

Like who would have? Or our military ships in San Diego. Can you imagine?

No, no, no, those Canadians or Norfolk, Virginia building our submarines.

What if drones were hitting? I mean, this is just incredible. And it's a function of drones, it's a function of the Delta. It's also, quite frankly, uh, you know, we don't like to say this, Musk turning off Starlink in Russia has ceded huge advantage to the Ukrainian army.

That's always been a benefit, no question.

But it is just— I mean, if you think about this, what are they doing? They're producing thousands of long-range drones per month in 2024. In '25, they're doing 3,000.

They're going to be a huge technology country when this is all over.

Oh yeah. They'll attract so much capital assuming—

Yeah. I'd go there. If I was a young person, that's exactly— though the corruption is really quite impossible to deal with. But if I was a young person, I'd go there. But there are significant corruption problems within that government.

But there's a —wonderful message being sent to the world, and that is there's a brutal lesson for authoritarians. Corruption scales until it collides with reality and technology and a motivated populace. Russia built the Potemkin village version of a superpower: yachts, parades, always hypersonic missiles, shirtless horse cosplay. And the Ukrainians— you like that part? I like that part. The Ukrainians meanwhile built software, drones, and engineers. And just some numbers here to just talk about how incredible this is. You're rushing them this morning. What weirdo that you're fascinated with are you about to go interview?

I'm not. I'm not going anywhere. I'm gonna be in my front of my thing. Seriously?

What is it, the ghost of Walter Mondale? Who's up next on On with Kara Swisher? Russia has 3 times the population, 10 times the economy, nuclear weapons, and one of the largest oil reserves in the world.

And Ukraine is kicking its ass. I know.

I love it.

And Ukraine, what is Ukraine?

Ukraine has coders in hoodies turning Home Depot into Lockheed Martin. I mean, these guys— Amazing. So look, increasingly, and this is a lesson for us unfortunately right now, the future belongs to the side that can innovate faster than the other side can lock up.

And the Iranians with the boats and the drones and the missiles.

So that's my win. And it hasn't got enough attention. This is so exciting for the West, for Ukraine.

But can I make one caveat? Yeah. If Putin feels cornered, and scared he might do something terrible.

Yeah, that's the fear.

You know, that to me is the biggest fear.

Unless you're gonna annihilate your enemy, you gotta give 'em a way out.

That's Sun Tzu. Yeah, but I don't think he thinks that. I think he's terrified.

But this is a victory for also for the EU who has been steadfast in their support, unlike Americans. I just, it's just very exciting.

Trump will back 'em if they win. He'll go like, "Oh, I'm with the winners." I'm with them.

I was always behind you.

I was behind them. All right, what's your fail?

Fail is I just, I think the best way— Timothy Snyder summarized it perfectly. I've been trying to figure out a way to describe what is effectively a $1.8 billion slush fund that, uh, Trump and his, his spokesperson Blanche have been trying to pitch. And even, even, um, some Republicans are finally blanching. And the best way to describe it is a terrorist immunization fund. Oh, and that is commit violence on my behalf and I will not only legally protect you, I will pay you. In addition to the corruption, it sends a signal to weirdos out there who are cult members that if something gets in the way of Trump, whether it's people turning out to a poll booth, whether it's people showing up to inaugurate the other guy, which I'm claiming was not fairly elected, I want you to commit acts of violence. I want you to engage in terrorism. Get off. And you will not only get off, you get paid. I'm going to pay you. So this is not a slush fund. This is not only corruption, it's a terrorist immunization fund.

I love that word.

And that is the way, I can't take credit for it, it's Timothy Snyder, who's one I'm just obsessed with, and I've had on the pod a couple times, who's at the University of Toronto and talks a lot about democracy and autocracies. He's fantastic and he's very brave.

He's the dude, Heather Cox Richardson. But this is, that's right.

But this is, imagine, If a nation in the Gulf found— name your terrorist organization— and said, you blow yourself up, you commit acts of violence, not only will we not prosecute you, we've set aside money for you, right?

Well, they kind of did that.

Well, the PLO used to do that. Yeah, the PLO used to say any, any suicide bomber, we're going to give their family X amount of dollars. That's what this is. Yeah. And it's, uh, anyways, I hope the Democrats adopt that Do you think it's gonna pass?

I don't, I think the Republicans, Tillis, the others are all very much against it. There's a lot.

In all of these hearings, why do you support the terrorist immunization fund? Good. They should absolutely label it that. Yeah, that's what this is. Anyways, that's my fail.

Terrorist baking fund, maybe immunization. Anyway, all right, that's great. Those are both great. And you're gonna have to have new ones for Monday, just so you know. We wanna hear from you. Send us your questions about business, tech, or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com/pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. I'm taping a live interview of On with Kara Swisher at the Tribeca Film Festival on Monday, June 8th. It is not the deal.

Well, someone's got their nose up Murdoch's ass.

Uh, no, I'm not. Hi, new boss. I was booked before the deal, months ago. Anyway, instead of Walter Mondale— Hi, daddy. You're not invited to the special dinner with Robert De Niro, but I am. I'll be talking to comedian, actor, and podcast pioneer Marc Maron, not Mondale. Wow, the original gangster. You! Yes, thank you. Yeah, the originals. He's really quite a legend. And he has the best show. There's a new doc about him, and he's also a great actor and funny comedian, everything else. He loves to just like distract us.

You know my favorite statement of his? My favorite, and I use it all the time. He's like, "You realize Democrats literally annoyed America into fascism?" I love that.

Anyway, he's great. He's really great. Tickets are available now at thetrebekafilm.com/audio. What Scott's referring to is the Murdochs. James Murdoch owns Trebekka. We will see you there. Okay, that's the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot, and be sure, pivotarian, become a pivotarian. Be sure to like and subscribe. To our YouTube channel. We'll be back next week.

Today's show was produced by Lauren Neiman, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Todd Wiseman. Ernie Enertaut engineered this episode. Thanks also to Jabros Misferean, Danchelanda Stock Kouras, Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thank you 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. Pivotarian, pivotarian, have sex, have sex, have sex with the cult leader, that's okay. No, cut off, cut off all contact with your parents, uh, give us all your money. And yeah, no, I'm into it. Pivotarian.

Good luck in LA tonight, Scott.