Transcript of SpaceX IPO: Markets, Morals, and What It Means for You

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By the way, she'd slide into my DMs faster than she'd slide into your DMs.

That is correct. That is 100% correct.

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

And I'm Scott Galloway.

Scott the Knicks, Stevie Knicks. Taylor Swift brought back balance to the universe.

What? What are you talking about? I don't understand.

What am I talking about? Were you out like late drinking? You didn't know what happened last night?

Yeah, exactly.

Were you there?

And it doesn't feel late. I'm out at 4 in the morning and it's still light here. I'm in Stockholm.

Oh, the Knicks. I'm talking about the New York Knicks.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I heard about that. Something about a comeback. Something about the greatest comeback in history.

It was like 20— I'm not even interested in sports and I watched the fuck. The fuck out of that. Largely 'cause Taylor Swift was in the front row with Mariska Hargitay, you know, the— Hargitay, yeah. Yeah, Hargitay, Elizabeth Benson, and they were hugging all the time and wearing adorable t-shirts like Stevie Nicks and Nickel— Nixleback and stuff. Let me just say, that was quite a game and it was quite a shift. What, they were down quite a bit.

Yeah.

And at the last minute, I was like, oh, they can't win. I looked away, I was folding laundry and stuff. And then they got, they came back and then they got ahead and then they got behind. And then the last like 30 seconds, this guy Tipped a ball into the thing, and it was crazy.

Tipped a ball into the thing?

Into the basket. It was crazy. And then Taylor Swift was there, the whole thing. And there were a lot of celebrities, but let me just say, SportsCenter starring Kara Swisher.

There you go. There you go.

It was so good. And then the parties, people watching on the streets.

Amazing. Just amazing.

I love New York.

I love New York. So I was, I was going to stay, go to the Knicks game, go to Tribeca Film Festival. I had the greatest— I had a bunch of meetings. I had the greatest 3 days planned in New York. And then I freaked out about not seeing my boys. Fly home. I walk in the door expecting a hero's reception. And I got— do you ever get one of these? They saw me. I walked in and they went like this. They went like just a little bit of a nod, a little bit of a head tilt, like, hey, bro.

No.

Not even a, "Hey, bro," just like a nonverbal, "Hey, bro." No. And I thought—

No.

And at that moment, I thought, "I should be at the Knicks game." I know you should be. What did I do?

Can I just say—

What did I do coming home?

I don't mean to be rude, but I never get that. My son— In fact, I interviewed Mark Maron at a film festival, and he's like, "Yeah, everyone says their kids are great." I'm like, "My kids are great!" They're fantastic. No, I get a big— I came in from a week away. I was in New York doing all manner of— nonsense.

Not me.

I came home and they ran up and we had big hugs and they lay all over me and they laughed and laughed.

Nope. Not at all.

And then Alex is like, come see me. I'm going to Australia with Louie. No, we're tight as ticks.

Yeah.

Switchcases. Yeah.

That's not happening at the Galloway household.

I even got a letter. So Clara wrote me a letter. She's starting to write.

Oh, that's nice.

About missing me. Yeah. It was great.

That's great. Did you know Sweden has not been at war for 200 years?

Oh.

I think that's why the city—

Well, who went to war with Sweden?

That's why the city is so beautiful. It really helps when you don't like have the largest wealth destruction.

Wasn't it bombed in World War II?

Wasn't it bombed? Not at all. I mean, okay, get this. In Sweden, the GDP, in World War II, the GDP of Sweden grew. Oh, wow. What were they doing?

Were they Switzerlanding it?

What was that? Yeah, they were basically trading and making money while everyone else was killing each other.

Oh, lovely. Oh, interesting. What about World War I? They weren't involved in that.

They have not been in a war for 200 years.

So what time is it there? Because it's really bright. Is it like a million o'clock?

No, it's almost midday. It's 5:10 PM. I'm not exaggerating. It's light out until—

Until late.

3 or 4 AM. Yeah, 3 AM.

And then it gets like kind of darkish, right?

Yeah, it never really gets dark. It feels like it's dusk or dawn from like 11 PM till 5 AM.

I did not like that when I was there. So how is it going? How's it going with the—

Swedes. It's good. I'm at this thing called Brilliant Minds.

Yeah, I told you I'd been there.

And yeah, I've never been.

It's my first one. Yeah.

It's my first one. For me, it's about Stockholm. I've been walking around a lot. It's really nice.

There's a lot of reindeer.

I had not known that, although I had literally the toughest meat in the world I had last night. I needed a chainsaw. Maybe it was reindeer.

Could have been reindeer.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. And Sweden, they were the first country in the world to have a negative central bank interest rate where you had to pay money for them to hold onto your money.

Well, I'm glad you're there, but let me just like get back to Taylor Swift very quickly.

Oh, here we go.

She brought balance to the universe along with these ladies. They were dancing, they were being fans, they were, and what was my favorite part of many of the parts of it, like there were so many, was that the guy, that Scooter Braun was sitting with his girlfriend Sydney Sweeney way back behind her, who stole all her songs. Well, she, he bought them and he fucked with her and she was sitting down front and having the time of her fucking life. But it was kind of an interesting, karma thing, right? That he was there, he falls asleep, he looks totally uninterested in the game, they lose. She's there courtside screaming her ass off like a normal fan. And she's gone to Knicks games for years and years. And they win, and they win in the clutch, and they come back. It just felt right.

Yeah. If karma is a real thing, it means that Scooter Braun has been the nicest person in the world up until now. I don't care about any of this except who's sleeping with Sydney Sweeney?

Well, he is. I think they're getting married. Yeah. That's what— anyway, all right, we have a lot to get to today. As we tape on Thursday, SpaceX is less than 24 hours out from its stock market debut, and we've got a special guest here to help us break it down. Let's bring in Stephanie Ruhle, anchor of the new MSNOW show Money, Power, Politics at 9 AM. She's moving from nighttime, the dark of nighttime on MSNOW, to morning. Welcome, Stephanie.

Thank you so much for having me.

Um, as we tape on Thursday, SpaceX is less than 24 hours out from its stock market debut. Uh, the company is set its price at $135 a share, valuing the company at $1.77 trillion. SpaceX IPO will likely make Elon Musk the first trillionaire in the world ever and make over 4,000 current and former SpaceX employees millionaires. Uh, but if all of the IPOing isn't enough to keep Elon Musk busy, he has taken to X to involve himself in very terrible anti-immigration riots in Northern Ireland, saying only by protesting repeatedly and loudly would there be any change. He's supporting a lot of really heinous people there. In response to criticism about his report, Musk posted murderous migrants beheading innocent people in their hometown is what's making people angry, not social media. So he's, he's making like terrible trouble, and the, the, the British government is, is, has responded quite a bit to his involvement. Uh, he's been meddling over there for quite a while now. So first, let's talk about the IPO. Scott has had really great analysis of it, and a lot of people like Aswath at NYU and others are like, this is, this price is ridiculous, and at the same time, it'll probably jump up and then jump down, essentially.

So give us your headline of the SpaceX IPO.

People who are in, who are buying, who are investing, people who are participating in the IPO, they're not buying SpaceX. You're betting on Elon Musk. You are buying Elon Musk. The amount of control he has over this company is unprecedented. And I'm not saying people should or they shouldn't, but that's who they're betting on. And it's extraordinary to me because even think about what you just mentioned with where he's taken to X and with regard to the protests in Ireland. We haven't heard one word from the underwriters of like, "Are we okay with this?" Do you remember, it was 5 or 6 years ago, when it's sort of like at the height of MeToo, when Goldman had the big proclamation of like, "We're only gonna be doing deals with companies that have a commitment to diversity, and that's the most—" And I'm like, "Where—? Do we not have one shred of a moral compass here?" And the answer is that we don't. No one is mentioning this. And when you think about— how wealthy he's about to become. And I'm not insulting it or complimenting it. I'm just saying, I just want people to realize this is a person who directly impacts what's happening in a war by pulling Starlink.

This is a person who wants to control information, so he buys a social media platform. This is a person who realized through Donald Trump he can invest in candidates, and by investing in candidates, get whatever he wants. Like, the reason I think we're now going— we are seeing an unprecedented amount of money, uh, going into these elections is because Elon Musk and Donald Trump prove that it works, right? You're not just getting a little bit of influence. One-fifth of SpaceX's revenue— it says it right in the prospectus— comes from government contracts. And so you— we could all say this is hanky, this isn't how capitalism works, this isn't how democracy should work, or free markets. But for the investment community is saying In my opinion, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. I'm here for the money.

Here for the dough, Scott.

I like Stephanie's take that it's the boring stuff that moves the needle.

Sorry, what'd you say? I couldn't hear you.

I like my good friend Stephanie's take. By the way, slip into my DMs if you ever decide that, you know, you've had it. Oh my God. You've just had it. You know how to reach me. You know how to reach me. Grumps. Grumps. Anyway, sorry. Grumps, exactly. Where are we?

Gross.

Slide into my DMs. Slide into my DMs.

By the way, she'd slide into my DMs faster than she'd slide into yours.

That is correct. That is 100% correct. There is a choice.

I think that's true of most of our guests.

Yes. Yes. Anyway. Move along and take her seriously, her thoughts, her deep thoughts on the situation with Musk.

The thing that's not getting enough reporting is that essentially Musk's ability to lean on Trump, who then called Paul Atkins and said, make the wave all previous rules and include this company in the NASDAQ, um, 100 is going to create $30 to $50 billion in additional demand for a company with a float of $100 billion. So to use an analogy, imagine on any given week there's 100,000 people looking for homes in San Francisco, and that creates a certain price discovery and certain pricing for housing. Imagine if all of a sudden, same number of houses for sale, there's 150,000 buyers. So when you look at the incremental demand of $30 to $50 billion is what I've calculated from things like QQQ and MSCI, in these indices that are now forced to buy a company that might be 4 to 6% of the index, meaning that 4 to 6% of their capital under management has to be used to buy SpaceX stock despite the fact, again, in a violation of preexisting rules that has been waived, only has 5% of its float out. You have what is, in my opinion, the greatest degree of manufactured scarcity ever in an IPO.

And this is about to be the greatest transfer of wealth from retail investors since crypto.

100%. And Kara, just add into that what you originally said about who Elon Musk is. Like, go back to Ireland. Like, we're not just making the— like, we're not just making a person, a company this extraordinarily powerful. It's this person. It's this person. Who he is, what he's done, what he stands for. That's sort of the thing that I want to sort of underline and highlight.

Doge. He just skated, skated around Doge. He skated around. And this will give him an ability ability to skate around everything, right? Unless it goes up and down, right? Because he's not always been— he wasn't successful in Wisconsin, for example. His brand has gone to hell. You know, nobody's buying Teslas. There are implications, but this gives him another life, sort of a Lex Luthor just got another— the cat got another life, essentially.

Yes, there's implications. But when you think about the stronghold that they have over the government, think about the amount of government contracts. When you say even if things go down, like, Once you are embedded in the government with these government contracts, it's like a tick biting you, right? Like you don't just get a tick bite and pull it out. The tick bites, all the tentacles pop out and it doesn't come back out. So when people even say, listen, when we have a different administration and they see things differently, a lot of these things are going to pull back out. Once you're this entangled in the government, it doesn't work that way. He's in.

Well, what if the Democrats get in? Is he in? There's certainly, you know, Elizabeth Warren is, of course, is always speaking up. She's like, look, this is not a good thing. To— she's gonna— he's gonna hurt retirees. That's one of her things. She has a number of them. You have Bernie Sanders wanting a chunk of companies like his, another like an OpenAI or whatever.

Do I think things are going to change? How many years have we talked about closing the carried interest loophole? How many years have we talked about banning or limiting or adjusting congressional stock trading? For a zillion years. How many years have we talked about social media regulation? Uh, and when Democrats had control, sure. But I just think once you're embedded in the government— look at, look at the case of Michael Dell. Okay, Michael Dell, glad he did donate $6 billion to the Trump baby accounts. Super duper. Trump then says everybody should go out there and buy a Dell. The stock goes up, Trump buys the stock, and then Michael Dell gets a $9.5 billion government contract. I'll bet my bottom dollar that come December, if, if, if Democrats take control, I don't think that government contract's getting canceled.

Do you? No, no, no. But is there any price to pay for this kind of stuff?

Well, there should be a price to pay because Democrats should be focused on two things as it relates midterms: affordability and accountability. If those are the two things that they can nail a message and a plan for, then they actually have a chance to take control here.

So what, what is going to happen with this IPO? How does it go? You've been— you've worked in this sector. Scott's talked— he thinks it's going to be a pop, then down, and then a trough. You've seen all these charts. Then a trough for a while, and then it'll start to go up so that people say buy at the trough.

Listen, there's so much excitement. There's so much enthusiasm. I mean, I just saw something the other day with Jamie Dimon talking this up. And they're not even the lead underwriter on this. Like, there's just so— and listen, there's just so many people who are like, "Elon Musk, the guy who controls the world? I don't know. Let's bet on him." Like, people just want in. And especially as you can take— remember when at the height of COVID when Trump— the control Elon Musk had at the time, like how he basically created meme stocks, right? Elon Musk, we're taking it to the moon, and people were all in. And I think nerds like us are reading all 22,000 2,000 words of a prospectus, but there's scores of people out there who are just like, I just want in, even if it's for a minute.

Now, Scott, you know, you had noticed a vibe shift though, right? It feels— and then another friend of mine said they got a call from their broker to get into it now, which is a— that they thought was a bad sign. It's like a call, it wasn't an email, and they were way down on the list. Scott was talking. Scott, explain your feeling that the vibe is off.

I think there's just been a tangible shift in vibe against AI. AI's gone from 75% approval to 25%, and I do think that there's some wobbliness in the markets about maybe this, the economics that the technology will survive, but it, the valuations may not. Having said that, SpaceX is, I mean, Stephanie's right. There's just a lot of people. This is a cult, not a company that will invest in anything that Musk puts forward. And to be fair, even companies that made no sense from a bottoms-up valuation standpoint, he still figured out a way to show return to those investors who were willing to hold on to a, mediocre automobile company that was trading like a software stock. So a lot of people, you know, the cult— a lot of people think that the decline in Bitcoin price is because people, that same kind of person, is selling their Bitcoin to be in, uh, be in, be in this company. But basically what you have, just to remind everybody, you have a great company with great moats that's a rocket company. The company that makes all the money is basically Comcast in space. It's Starlink., and then you have this ridiculous money furnace attached to it called, you know, XAI, and it's going out at 100 times revenues.

But right now, just back to the prediction, Kara, I'm now convinced it's not only gonna pop out of the gates, it'll close first day up because I think some of the brightest minds in the history of finance with government control and the SEC on board have created a way to just pull off so much manufactured scarcity. You're not allowed to go public unless you issue at least 10% of the firm shares. They got a waiver to say, oh, only 5%. So, so just look at it this way. Demand, demand is the, the velocity of the water coming out of the hose. Supply, if you can constrict supply, you constrict the circumference of the nozzle. They are constricting the nozzle such that the, the, the velocity of the price here is going to be extreme to the upside because they're creating, they're creating false market.

And Kara professional investors know this. So while Scott can be telling all of this as a warning or a problem, and we should be concerned about it, even if professional investors fundamentally agree with Scott, and I'm sure they do, they're also saying, yeah, but guess what? It means the stock is going to go up, right? Yeah, buying a stock doesn't mean you're buying a house and you're locked into it for the next 4 years. And remember when Trump won, and Doge was created, all three of us and scores of other people called Elon Musk a shadow president. And while he might not be sleeping on Stephen Miller's couch anymore and going into government agencies with a chainsaw, he still has an enormous, maybe even more influence over the government. We just don't see him walking into the Oval Office with his son on his shoulders. And people know that. And when he's got that much influence over the government— or I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna go as far as to say Trump in his pocket, but Trump at least, you know, on his shoulder— that for many people, while it might not be the right thing, uh, morally, is going to be the right thing financially.

And that's what the markets are about. Okay, let's listen to one more SpaceX question we got from a listener, Holly. What do you think about collective divestment of funds that automatically include SpaceX stock? Would that sufficiently communicate that a lot of people are not okay with the changes that allowed this to happen? First you, Stephanie, and then you, Scott.

Yes. It would make a diff— Listen, any sort of economic boycott, and we've all talked about that for— The only place you hit 'em where it hurts is an economic boycott. Like, you can have the worst stories, you can have the worst headlines, you can drag all these guys to DC and have a hearing where Katie Porter pulls out a whiteboard and says, "You're naughty, naughty, naughty." They don't care. They get on their plane and they go home. But if there— When and if there are significant economic boycotts, then they have no choice but to respond. I just don't know if we're ever gonna see something like that. Like that, right? When we talk so much about, you know, Bezos and Amazon, and as people are saying like, I hate it, or I hate those social media companies, they're saying it while they're scrolling through Instagram and then ordering Amazon packages.

Scott, people will opt for their economic security. And if they think they can get 10 or 20%, you know, a 2 or 1 or 2-hour trade, they know this is overvalued. They know that the game is being rigged here, and they will take the allocation to get their 10 or 20%. No one says at a funeral, you know, this guy didn't participate in the SpaceX IPO because he had real integrity, right? That's true.

That's Well, they'll say that at mine. OpenAI has filed for an IPO. The company has not yet decided on timing, saying in a statement, it may be a while because there are things we want to do that are likely easier for a private company. I don't know what that is, like what, orgies? I don't know. OpenAI has last— No, no.

But in their defense, there's a lot you have to do, explain, account for when you go public. It's not easy.

OpenAI was last valued at $852 billion. The filing comes shortly after rival Anthropic. Which of the three are you betting on and how worried are you about the concentration of so much market value in just a few companies? Does it make the entire— Scott has been talking about how the entire market is fragile.

The entire market is fragile. And I think the name of the game for all of them, honestly, is to be— you don't wanna be the last one to IPO, right? There is this huge appetite for AI. Everybody's so excited, but there's so much and there's potentially so much overdevelopment. I think you just don't want to, of all of them, you just don't wanna be the last one when you've exhausted market, man.

It's already exhausted.

No one is rooting for this IPO more than, uh, Elon Musk, other than Sam Altman. This sets the tone for the next couple IPOs. If this comes out really strong, these guys are going to be able to come out and say, look at our numbers versus SpaceX, and you were willing to buy in at 100 times. OpenAI and Anthropic are going to look like value stocks compared to SpaceX if SpaceX holds up Yeah, yeah, if it holds up, if there's enough money.

And in the case of OpenAI and Anthropic, especially as it relates to a retail investor, those are companies that people actually could say they know and they see more than they do SpaceX.

That's a good point. All right, one last thing. Inflation was up 4.2% annually in May, the highest in 3 years. Much of the surge came from the increase in oil prices, obviously, which have risen 35% in the months since US and Israel attacked Iran. But fear not, President Trump is feeling optimistic about the situation. He likes it. Let's listen to a clip.

Are you concerned, Mr. President, about the latest inflation number which came out this morning? Could that be a— No, I love it. The numbers were great. You know what I really love?

I love the inflation. Okay. How, how much does he love inflation? Both of you. First, first you, Stephanie. How much would it rise before he started to not love it so much?

Well, two things. Like, as somebody who spent his life deeply in debt, I guess he could say, yes, inflation works for me. If you put it in full context, or when he tried to do a cleanup later, he's basically saying inflation's not bad. Think about where it could have been, right? People thought oil was going to be $200 a barrel. Oh, okay. But the fact of the matter is— and he said just this week, like, listen, uh, gas prices were really high when Biden was in office, which was the case when Russia first invaded Ukraine. But guess what? Those high prices and inflation, I would say, were the fundamental reasons why Joe Biden and subsequently Kamala Harris didn't win the election. Donald Trump promised to lower prices day one. He obviously hasn't done that. I think when he talks about affordability being nonsense or an old-fashioned term, I think he's telling the truth because he is in a gilded cage surrounded by people who have made, who are already super wealthy, and they've made more money in the last 2 years than is even conceivable. But where it's politically devastating, and not necessarily for him because he doesn't need to be president again, but for every Republican running, that soundbite of the president saying, and that's what they're inflation's great, that hurts.

You and I both have mothers that voted for Donald Trump, and I assure you, she— my mother does not think inflation is great. And she could tell you the price of London broil and the price of gas today. This will hurt Republicans. I say London broil because, like, that's— that's— that's an old-fashioned bias.

Would you like some London broil, Scott? Well, people don't—

4.2% doesn't sound like a lot. What you need to do is quick math for people. In terms of compounding. And that is at 4.2%, if that holds, that means the tuition to go to NYU at $62,000, if you have a baby today, when the baby's, when the kid is ready for college, tuition is now $125,000. Or bring it back just 5 years. It's easier for people to wrap their heads around. That means a car that costs $50,000, it's gonna cost $61,000. It's not 4.2, it's 4.2 compounding. And the other thing about this inflation print that's so bad had is for the first time in several years, uh, inflation is now greater than wages, meaning the quality of everyone's life, their prosperity is diminished.

But not for Trump and the people who are around Trump, and he's happy as a clam in that bubble. I think if it wasn't for the war in Iran, he would be on cloud nine.

And also, it just bears mentioning that for the three of us, it really doesn't matter because we own stocks, we own assets, We're hedged against inflation 'cause our house goes up 4.2%, our stocks go up 4.2% 'cause Apple will raise its prices. Who this hurts are earners that don't have assets yet. So, and let's be clear, revolutions don't start because people are unemployed. They start because people are working 2 jobs and are still hungry. And this is yet again, it's another, it's another, there are still, Argentina's had 120% of inflation. There's a class of people there that have always stayed wealthy 'cause they own land. So the landowners and the stock owners, traditionally older people in the United States, are just fine. Inflation is yet again another transfer of wealth from non-asset owners who are earners to the asset owners. Kara, when—

let me just say, when people say— when wealthy people say they're panic-stricken over Zohra Mamdani, uh, coming for capitalism and, and, and the— and, and leading the eat the rich sentiment, he's not leading the eat the rich sentiment. Donald Trump saying saying, "I like inflation," is fueling the eat the rich sentiment, not the mayor of New York.

That is correct. And the tech bros saying all manner of nonsense every day of the week and twice on Sunday is the same thing. It's anger, it's anger-inducing. And that's where you feel it, I think. Prediction on which of the IPOs coming, or is the stock market about to take a deep fall as many people think? So which of all the IPOs, which one would you buy into? To? And are you worried about the stock market?

Listen, I've been saying I've been worried about the stock market for quite some time. And if you talk to CEOs that are not the Magnificent Seven or that run companies that are impacted by tariffs or mass deportation, those companies are not booming. They are struggling. They can't walk into the White House and offer Donald Trump a plane or God only knows what. It's not so easy for them. So I think under the hood, things aren't great for lots of companies. But honestly, I'm not betting against the stock market because the only way it's been going is up. And the current appetite type for AI, to me it might be fragile, but it's big. It's big.

All right, which one would you buy? It's on a plate in front of you.

If I was hanging my morals out the window, I'd buy all of them.

No. Okay. All right then, there you go. All right, thank you, Stephanie. And everyone be sure to watch her new MSNOW show— I'm gonna yell it— Money, Power, Politics, weekdays at 9 AM. She's going to be getting up early to give us the lowdown on everything. Tell us what, what this move is about. What is the situation with MPP?

Uh, I think we need a great big, uh, uh, morning show. I think that especially— obviously we cover politics, we cover current events, but the economy is the number one thing that people vote on. Tomorrow, as we talk about the SpaceX IPO, we're gonna have a newly minted trillionaire. We are 16 years out from Citizens United and have more money going into politics than ever. And not just politics because, hey, I like this candidate— politics because it's directly impacting policy. Not to mention the gargantuan grift and corruption under our nose right now. I couldn't cover all that in one hour. I thought it was important that we covered it in— and we covered it in the morning, uh, for 2 hours, and in a way that we're sort of setting the tone for what we cover here. Because it's not just about following Trump and the crazy thing he's saying today. We're fundamentally changing potentially the way our economy works, the way capitalism works. And I think we need to cover it in a comprehensive way. And you guys know this as well as I do, the way that business news has traditionally been covered, it's business news covered for an audience that, that invests in the markets.

And when CEOs go on TV, they're not necessarily giving their worldview. They're talking about specific information about their companies that's gonna impact their earnings report and their stock performance that day. We need to have much bigger and broader conversations than that.

And that's what we're hoping to do. At 9 in the morning too. So you're on after Morning Joe. So Morning Joe sort of yammers on for a long time about politics mostly. So you're gonna come in with a real hard, hard-nosed show in the morning essentially.

Yes, but also, I mean, yes, at 9 in the morning, but I also think, and you guys know this, I actually just talked about this in an interview the other day. I think that when people watch TV, yes, people watch live TV, but it's more, you watch the show that you wanna watch. And if you make an important show that matters, it doesn't actually— If Landman is your favorite show, or Friends and Neighbors, and I said to you, "What time is it on? What day?" You might say like, "Oh, I think it comes out on Fridays." I think for me, the most important thing isn't who's necessarily watching me at 9:00. It's how do we make the best show that can be made? 'Cause that's what people are gonna want and need to see. Think about the way Pivot— Think about the way people consume Pivot.

Yeah. Yeah, usually when they're drunk. But no, no, no. Morning. Running. Not just Scott. Not just Scott.

By the way, Stephanie, you— I don't know if you— This is very much related to what you're talking about. We were talking about Taylor Swift. And I don't know if you guys heard, but all of her exes are getting together and collaborating on an album, and it's gonna be called Maybe She's the Problem.

Oh my God, she saved the Knicks! Don't, don't, don't listen to him.

Stephanie appreciates that. Don't answer the question. Stephanie appreciates that. By the way, just let's divert from the news. When Stephanie calls me, I'm both excited and scared because every time, typically her calls start with— typically, not exaggerating, her calls start with, "I think you're really fucking up." Oh, hell yes. Or, "I'm worried about you." I get it. It's like whenever she calls, I'm like, "Uh-oh, this is either gonna be very good or very bad." You know what?

That's called a person who doesn't waste time, who's an actual friend.

That's called a friend. No, you're a friend.

I called Scott on a personal issue the other day, and when I started the call, I said, let me get to somewhere private. And he immediately said, oh no, are you getting a divorce?

Oh my God. All right. No, I didn't.

That's a lie. I said, wait till the kids are gone. Yes, that's it. Okay, wait till the kids are out of the house.

It was a divorce. It was all right. I was calling Scott for some I was calling for actual parenting advice from Scott, which he is fantastic at when it comes to boys. And his immediate response before, I just said, "Let me get to somewhere where no one else in the family could hear me. Wait till the kids are out of the house," was his response. Thanks, Scott. Oh, okay. And then he proceeded to give me incredible advice.

May I just say, I have two fine sons. You might be interested.

Yes. Yeah, we've heard over and over and over.

They're amazing. Yes. And one of them is quite good at cooking, if you didn't know.

Yes, he's working for a restaurant now.

Oh, here we go. In San Francisco. He's very excited.

Excited.

He has a little outfit too. The other is at Michigan. He's wonderful. He's got a fantastic girlfriend.

You know all about him. No, he's got— he loves his job. He's, he's manufacturing things in an advanced way. All right, thank you, Stephanie.

Thanks, Stephanie. Good to see you.

Thank you all so, so much. I love you both. Scott, I'll slide into your DMs later.

Anyway, uh, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, uh, the Trump administration's freakout over Jeffrey Epstein.

This is advertiser content from Harvey AI. We have a choice over who we work with and who we don't, specifically who we allow to advertise and who we don't. And for those of you who watch my content, I am not an AI catastrophist. I'm an AI optimist. I think it's going to create more jobs than it destroys. And I think our job as professionals is to figure out how to leverage these tools. AI, more than almost anything I do in terms of what I could point to for real economic leverage and savings is 100% in the legal fields. Harvey is the AI designed specifically for legal work, trusted by leading law firms and enterprise legal teams. All right, so now I'm looking at their demo. It plugs into tools that lawyers already work with— LexisNexis, Microsoft. And this is the key, and I do this internally with my LLMs. With permissions, it lets you look look at the firm's own files and databases. So here it's answering a question, reads the complaint, pulls the relevant terms, checks the web, weighs the evidence, and drafts a response. But it also can do this in a shared workspace between the firm and the client, so they both have visibility into the work being done and can both add value to it.

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Ein perfekter Frühlingstag. Sonne, Park, Picknick. Viele Pollen. Shop-Apotheke sagt Tschüss Allergie und Hallo Frühling. Hier findest du alles, um unbeschwert durch die Allergiezeit zu kommen. Als Neukunde sparst du sogar 10% ab 35 € Bestellwert mit dem Code NEU10. Du hast ein E-Rezept? Einfach Shop-Apotheke-App runterladen und direkt einlösen. Gutscheinbedingungen auf shop-apotheke.com/gutscheine.

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, model, Sports Illustrated cover girl, and entrepreneur Ashley Graham talks about the time she almost quit. I called my mom and I said, Mom, I just—

I'm not going to do this anymore.

And she told me, no, you are going to stick this out.

Your body is going to change someone's life. Every decade you're going to go through something different. So be really happy with who you are right now because things change. Check out Pretty Tough, new episodes on Wednesdays. You can watch it on YouTube YouTube or listen in your favorite podcast app. Scott, we're back. The Trump administration cannot escape the Epstein files, nor should they be able to, no matter how hard they try. And we're now getting more details about the internal panic about Epstein over the last year. Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan shared an excerpt from their upcoming book Regime Change with The New York Times. Both are New York Times writers, by the way. So here are some highlights. The situation will it became an Epstein war room where strategy meetings took place. JD Vance suggested having Tucker Carlson interview Ghislaine Maxwell in prison. There was talk of then Deputy AG Todd Blanch going on Joe Rogan, but Vance wanted to go on instead of Blanch. Dan Bongino warned there would be a president— this would be President Trump's Iran-Contra. There was talk of nipples and President Trump's disrespect for nipples in the room. And as funny as that sounds, it was pretty grotesque of his abuse of a young woman woman.

Um, but this is what they're— this is what the— this entire leadership is talking about, is whether— and, and whether he'll be able to handle the nipple stuff getting out. Um, it's not just the White House, and has nothing to do with nipples here. Bill Gates was on Capitol Hill this week testifying behind closed doors about his connection to Epstein. Gates said Epstein tried to use information about his extramarital affairs as leverage after the two had cut ties. Well, obviously he did, he's an evil villain. He also acknowledged that meeting with Epstein was a grave error in judgment, which he said before, and put his philanthropy work at risk. And it certainly did, including his own reputation. Um, talk a little bit about— did anything surprise you about how the White House dealt with the Epstein stuff? They sound like fucking amateurs. Every time I was reading it, I was like, what a bunch of amateurs. Big fights between Bongino and Patel and Bondi and Suzy Wiles just sitting over it like a demented mother who doesn't know how to control idiot children. Um, will this be a major issue in terms— and I will say, as you know, I was very much in early on saying this is a real problem.

Reuters is out with a new poll: 75% of people think the government is hiding it on Epstein's clients, and a lot of it is falling, as much as Trump has tried to push it off onto other people, on the president himself.

So I think we agree that it should be an issue. I don't think it will be. Um, there's recent data showing— there's these March focus groups ranked Epstein 6th amongst voter concerns ahead, you know. So it's well in the back of the bus here. Um, I think it is— it, again, I, I unfortunately, I just don't think it's that big an issue. I think, I think the American public is so numb to this kind of especially in the Trump administration. What I actually found more interesting was the whole Gaetz testimony. And so when you call someone to come testify in front of a special committee or whoever he testified, you have some say in it. They made— they got it behind closed doors, and they got it during the NBA Finals, during Iran, during the SpaceX IPO. This is the bit— this is what you do. You know this business better than I do. When you have shitty news, You bury it on a big news day, right? During a very, very heavy business news week. This story is gonna come and go.

Well, I still think it's a— I'm gonna disagree with you because I think I was actually completely accurate at the beginning of the Epstein thing that it's a big deal. I think among the base of people, it remains an illuminating and a thing that gets them going. I don't think it goes away. And what was interesting was Dan Bongino during this whole thing kept saying that to the Trump people, that this is not a— They kept minimizing it, saying it's not a big deal, it's not a big deal. It was a big fucking deal. And this is something I knew from reading all these QAnon boards. This is at the center. I think it's still at the center. I think it creates an atmosphere among people like Rogan and others of, "These fucking liars." And I think Iran's a bigger deal for them than Epstein. It is now. But I'm saying, this is like one more, you know, another brick in the wall, like that kind of thing. And so I think Epstein remains a bearing wall of this presidency, and he cannot get away from it. And I get the nipple thing and everything else, and as much as I hate think he's kind of like an oaf.

Dambagino had it right. And so, by the way, did Vance, although Wiles was sort of accusing of being a conspiracy theorist. But I think Vance had his finger on the pulse of bringing it out like as much as possible, even if it hurt the president slightly, because the transparency was more important than what's in it. Unless, of course, there's very clear and incontrovertible evidence that he slept with an underage girl, which made It's still not proven. There's been a lot of allegations of it, certainly. So I think it's still there. I think it sits there like mold. It just sits there, and it sits in the minds of a lot of people like Massey. And even though he's zeroed them, he has not zeroed them, I don't think by any means. And I think Vance knows it, and Bongino certainly knows it. With Gaetz, look, you're right. This was a good time to do his— And he kept going, "I'm here voluntarily." Did you see that? Which was kind of interesting. I think this has hurt his reputation. Oh yeah, no doubt. For a long, long, long time. No doubt. I think he is— this is— he is gonna suffer.

This is gonna— he has done some amazing works. I think his wife is looking fan— his ex-wife is looking fantastic with all this different financial things she's putting out and handling her image quite well throughout this whole thing. But I think he is permanently tarnished. And I'm not sure how any conversation he has going forward does not include this topic. So I think I think he has done enormous damage to himself by affiliating himself with Epstein, and, um, it was a grave error in judgment, and it did put his philanthropy at work. So that's— I think it's there. I think it's still there. All right, uh, let's go on a quick break. We come back, Paramount lashes out against Netflix.

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Paramount is accusing Netflix of waging a scorched Earth campaign to kill its $110 billion deal with Warner Brothers. In a letter to the DOJ, Paramount's chief legal officer Megan Delrahim says Netflix is trying to, quote, poison regulators and other stakeholders against the merger. Oh, come on, Megan. I know Megan. Of course they are. Netflix is calling their claims absurd. It's not the only thing Paramount is doing to get the deal across the finish line. The company reportedly submitted a list of concessions to head off antitrust lawsuit by California and several other states. That'll include New York and and possibly Massachusetts, I'm hearing. Recently, actually, I've gotten notes from people in Hollywood saying this thing's a little shakier than it looks. I'm not so sure about that, but I'm surprised I'm getting them. The EU is also currently reviewing the merger in light of the backing of those Middle Eastern wealth funds. Thoughts anywhere?

Of all the media CEOs, the one I know best, which isn't very well, is Ted Sarandos. And any campaign to try and undermine to undermine this would have to have Ted's blessing. And this just isn't Ted's style. No. He's not—

He's just gonna wait and buy it when they fuck it up. They're $80 billion.

And I don't see any exterior lobbying of people who are clearly in, you know, Netflix's back pocket. I don't see a bunch of Democratic senators getting all jonesed up about this. So I just, it doesn't ring true for me. What does ring true is that some blue state AGs are starting to look into it and may file. Oh, they are.

I've met with them. Yeah. They absolutely are.

And may file suit. But I don't see, it just, when I read that, it doesn't, what I do, what I know about Ted, he's, Ted is kind of, you know, when Ted retires, he'll probably be like a diplomat 'cause he's just not the kind of person to shitpost or go on the offensive against people.

I think they're trash talking it behind the scenes. Like, because of the obvious situation, this has enormous amounts debt on it.

It's a lot. But I interviewed him on stage in LA and I gave him, you know, an opening. I said, isn't the creative community going to scream out in horror when this, when this acquisition closes? And because of the AI and, you know, trying to find efficiencies for overpaying, I gave him, I set him up to, and he just, he immediately pivoted to something else and said he hopes they do well. I just don't. He's just not that— he's not of that ilk.

No, I think they're shooting themselves in their own feet and they want to blame other people. They're— they— this has been— that sounds more accurate. Cloddish. Every step of the way, this, this acquisition feels cloddish. And, and the debt is the debt. That's what it is. And one of the things I want people to focus on is there's a huge amount of debt. They're gonna— the ugliness is not now, even though there's a lot of ugly right now. It's gonna happen once the deal is, is struck because these people not keep the promises they've made. They're not very good promise keepers. Some might call them mendacious at times, but they will not be able to keep up their— what they are saying they're going to do. And that's when the ugliness will truly start, when they have to make these cuts, which have to be significant. No matter what they say, unless Larry Elson decides to just take his money and bankroll the whole thing, which I don't think he will, this is going to be tough for Hollywood, and they know it. And I think they're going to have real troubles. And then that's when Netflix comes in.

And sucks up all the pretty parts, would be my guess.

I do, I actually think it probably closes though, 'cause I talked to an economist this weekend and he said it doesn't really fit the hurdle rate for a monopoly. In terms of streaming, if you factor in linear content from their flagship channels, CBS, HBO, and HGTV, the hypothetical combined platform gets roughly 20% of total US hours streamed and Netflix is at 60. In terms of total TV viewing time, time, a combined Warner Brothers, Paramount, um, streaming and TV all in would represent about 12.2% of total US viewing TV watch time. And that's less than YouTube currently has at about 13%. In terms of box office sales, Paramount and Warner Brothers represent roughly 25% of the domestic box office. So, and they're just so well connected with Trump, they'll end up selling off like SpongeBob SquarePants so some regulator can feel like they've got a win or something, or divesting of some stupid children's program. But I think this goes through. Kaushik has it at 75%. I think it's actually higher than that.

Yeah, I think so. I've just noticed a lot of Hollywood people, and the smart ones, I'm not talking about the dumb ones, have been like, "Hmm, this feels bad. Something feels bad." But I think it's largely all the noise around CBS and the disaster they're perpetrating there. But I think it's more, I just think the pain is gonna come once the deal is done. That is where it's gonna happen. And you're gonna see, really like, how are they going to get out of this box? And they're— none of them are Houdini in that gang. So, um, that's, that's the problem. Um, we'll see, we'll see where it's going. But definitely the state attorney generals are involved. They're going to try to— they will get them to sell something up there. I am still very concerned about the backing of these Middle Eastern wealth funds owning this much of our media. But, you know, no one else seems to care. But I find that really— and I— and EU will, will— they'll have to, they'll have to do a lot of favors for people going forward. And Later, Ted Sarandos and YouTube will take it all over.

That's my feeling. Like, it's really— these people are like, not— don't count compared to those two. And the— where you should watch is YouTube and Netflix. That's pretty much how I feel. And Disney, to a lesser extent. Anyway, last thing: Canada is the latest country to crack down on social media for teens. The government proposed a bill this week to ban kids under 16 from using social media, though most companies can get exemptions if they prove their platforms adequately protect young users. It's not just Canada, as we said, across the pond. UK Prime Prime Minister, uh, Starmer is weighing a similar ban. It's company— it's, it's across the world, but don't expect this to happen in the U.S. Our embassy in London posted about the potential UK ban, writing, the United States favors parental empowerment over government mandates, whatever. Also worth noting, uh, though, Australia's social media ban is struggling. 70% of teens are still using social media apps according to a recent report because they can get around this stuff. So I, I think it's more— teens continue to smoke after after we put stuff on packs and made it harder to buy them.

I don't really think that should be the goal there, but I think a society has to say this stuff sucks and is dangerous. So I don't mind just the saying of it. So how do you, how do you think about UK and, and then Canada doing this?

I think it's great and I think it's overdue. I don't, I don't think there's any reason why anyone under the age of 16 should be on a social media platform. I think one of the greatest threats to our society is that we're evolving a new species of asocial, asexual, Males. And that 40% of the S&P is now tied to trying to convince these people to sequester from their relationships and be online. And part of the problem is just as their brain is getting wired through puberty, you're teaching them to have constant visual stimulation and be staring at a screen. I mean, there's even evidence now that their posture is changing. Oh, leaning over?

Yeah, unless you have a— They're back to Neanderthal, right?

Unless you have collective action. And I do think these Bands, you know, schools aren't going to allow you to have a phone. If you're, if you're preschool or middle school, you're not allowed to have a phone. Or I mean, anyways, I think this is, it took us 30 years to figure out tobacco or regulate it. It took us 20 years with opiates. It looks like social went on mobile in 2013. It looks like it's going to take us exactly about 20 years. But I think this is a great thing. Europe is leading on this. It's weird to describe Europe as an innovator on regulation. But as somebody who has grown up with kids in the kill zone, exactly the wrong age at exactly the wrong time, you know, a lot of people will say to me, "I'm really worried. I have a 5 and 8-year-old." I'm like, "No, no, no, you're fine. We'll have this figured out by the time they're 13 and 14." But if you went through COVID as a teenager and grew up with social media, I really think you faced some significant headwinds in terms in terms of emotional regulation?

I do. Can I make another observation? First of all, as I said, it's a sign that society thinks it's important, just like we did with cigarettes or seat belts. Not everyone wears seat belts. Lots of teens smoke. Guess what? Lots of teens drink, even though we have rules. It's the society saying to its citizens, we think this is bad. You can cheat, and they will, no question. I think that argument is so false. Like, oh, teens will get it anyway. I'm like, oh, Okay, they'll get liquor anyway. They'll get everything. So I think that's number one. It says something about your society that you care enough, and it isn't mandating. It's just saying, like, as with cigarettes, as with drinking, we shall— our teens shall not do this. And I think that's perfectly fine. And, you know, the people that say it's not, they're, they're not paying attention to everything else. The second thing is I do think social media is on the decline among young people, not among our people who are addicted, fatally addicted to these these things. But I do think, I watch a lot of young people and I know a lot of them are on there, but I think the age is a little higher.

I would put an asterisk on that. I think it's declining among wealthy, informed young people who have strong parental influences and the money and the resources to get engaged in other things. Fair point. I think if you're the child of a single mother, home alone a lot, I don't know. I mean, even among young men, do you know supposedly men ages 20 to 30 are spending more time and less time outdoors and prison inmates. They're on a fucking screen. And just to go to some— Gaming.

No, I think I'm talking about social media.

Some of it's gaming. I agree. But just the big tech's excuse has always been, "We can't find— It would be impossible for us to detect underage users." Guess what? When Australia passed an act, the platforms deactivated nearly 5 million teen accounts in just one month. They were able to figure it out. And meanwhile, that very same detection is being withheld from Americans because our federal government has no interest interest in protecting children from the harms of social media. The Kids Online Safety Act passed the Senate 91 to 3 and then died when House GOP leadership refused a floor vote. So the bill's been reintroduced and is stalled again. A March House markup was pulled amid partisan fights over preemption. And 40 bipartisan state attorney generals are begging Congress to act, warning the House version would gut state child safety laws. So this is— I like you bringing in the data, Scott. Well, the last federal law protecting kids online was COPPA, and it was in 1998. So wait, let me— you don't think the world has changed in 28 years regarding technology and the potential harm for children? Come on.

I would not ask you— I don't— I think Australia's not working is not the question. It is teens will find a way. But I do think a society stepping out and saying it— and let me just note, I don't know if you saw this, um, the trailer just came out for The Social Reckoning, which is the follow-up to The Social Network, Jeremy Strong from Succession is playing Mark Zuckerberg. He's got the voice down pat, although he looks too old, I have to say. He's oddly looking old. But it's all about this. It's all about— And it's, you know, it's the story of Frances Haugen, really, pretty much. And these Facebook Files and how this— They had all— They knew what they were doing, and they did it anyway. And this was the first— To me, this was the moment that Zuckerberg went villainous, right? That he started understanding the— something that I'd written about in the Times in 2018. This came out in 2019, 2021 period. But this was the moment. And I think this movie, it'll be really interesting by Aaron Sorkin, once again revisiting this issue, is that this guy is living large on the backs of teens, on the backs of kids, on the backs of everybody.

And I don't think it's going to be great for the image. And I think it's to say it again and again, it has to happen, including these rules, these laws, movies and everything else. And Jeremy Strong literally sounds so much like him, it's disturbing.

Well, the, the ability of big tech to wash over Washington and separate them from the best interests of our children with money— you know what's gotten in the way of the Kids Online Safety Act, better known as COSA? It forces platforms to exercise open quote reasonable care in designing features so they prevent and mitigate specific harm to minors. Things including content promoting suicide, eating disorders, sexual exploitation, and compulsive use patterns. Big Tech is fighting those things.

Yeah, that's 'cause they go, oh, it could be used for this. It could be, they go behind their First Amendment nonsense that they tend to try to push out there. But yeah, you can't anticipate every, I just want the society to say no to this. Just like kids with phones in schools, No, no, no. And that's what is— that's what a civil society does to these companies, whether they're cigarette companies, liquor companies. By the way, liquor's on the decline. This— I think social media is going to decline more than you think. I think that's my— that's my prediction anyway. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions.

So the 2026 midterms is shaping up to be an all-out brawl, but the biggest fight may not be between Democrats and Republicans, but over the congressional congressional maps itself.

Gerrymandering's not a good thing. We don't like it.

And then all of a sudden, we're going out and telling people, "Vote for this." So I'm in Ashland, Virginia, a small town just outside of Richmond, which calls itself the center of the universe. And that checks out, because it's the center of the political universe, at least when it comes to the 2026 midterms. That's because Ashland sits in Virginia's 1st Congressional District, which is one of only only about 35 or so that are actually competitive. That makes Virginia particularly important when it comes to the question of gerrymandering. The gerrymandering is a major problem, but it's not like Democrats drew first blood with this one. Donald Trump doesn't think he should be held accountable by anybody, so he's trying to change the rules because he doesn't like the game.

We've shown what we're capable of. Now let's keep up the push through the midterms.

America Actually will be in your feeds and on YouTube every Saturday with an interesting interview in politics or culture. Big news this week for all my Gordon Gekkos, my Robinhooders, my Claude Squad. Anthropic, which is newly the most valuable AI company in ze vorld, announced it would be going public. That news follows reporting that OpenAI plans to go public as soon as September, and that that news follows reporting that SpaceX, which also considers itself an AI company will be going public in maybe just a few weeks from now. Welcome to the era of the Omega IPO. We are about to see millionaires, billionaires, and yes, probably even the world's first trillionaire created overnight. And yes, it's that guy. This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy. Chainsaw. But all the tech bros who are gonna make all the money, they need our money way more than we need their products. And we're gonna remind you why on today's Explain from Vox. I'm Seth Matlins. My new show, Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing, explores how every decision a company makes—not just the marketing ones, but the HR, IR, pricing, org design, and planning ones, the ones most don't consider marketing at all—contribute to either creating value or destroying it.

Each week I sit down with CMOs, CEOs, founders, cultural thinkers, the people building, breaking, and reimagining how businesses grow or don't for conversations about what creates value and what destroys it. It's a business show. It's a marketing show. Creator Destroys, the show that argues they've always been the same thing. From the Vox Media Podcast Network and the Wisdomist Company. New episodes drop weekly on YouTube and your favorite podcast app. Okay, Scott, let's hear a prediction. Well, one is a, a simple funny one and the other one is more serious, but the simple one is you're about to see revenues at the 100 biggest podcasts go up 20 to 30%. Oh, yay! That's additional just from Like everybody, everybody make their wagers. Pivot is about to get a great deal of money. And so is every other big podcast to be the quote unquote, to be the, to have the exact, the exclusive.

They've already come knocking.

I don't care if it's Yahoo, Scout, or Gemini. These guys are all gonna, we're about to, some of that cheap, remember all that cheap, cheap money that was being thrown around in '99?

That was Matt. Mattresses.

That was mattresses. I mean, you're about to see the podcast universe have this tsunami of money just to say, "Hey, Joe, we'll give you $10 million if you decide that you only use OpenAI." Right. Anyways, that's my stupid simple one. But the more specific one is that, I mean, look, the fix is in, and I just think it's so fucking obvious. Musk called Trump after doing a lot of analysis with his bankers and said, said, you know, I spent $250 million to get you elected. And he probably said, no, you didn't get me elected. And he said, well, can you acknowledge that I helped? And he said, yeah. And he's like, I'm considering putting $2.5 billion into the midterms. How would you like that, President Trump? Well, I'd like it a lot. Well, if you can get Paul Atkins over at the SEC to waive that stupid rule that doesn't allow retail investors from participating in great companies like SpaceX, I just have this hankering to put in $2, $3, maybe $5 billion into the midterms. Yankering, hankering, yes. And again, what does that do? It sends $30 to $50 billion in incremental dollars hunting for $100 billion in available shares of SpaceX.

This is all of a sudden, there's 50% more people looking for homes in San Francisco than there was with any other previous IPO. And let's just do the math. Say that takes the price of SpaceX ASX up just, let's be conservative, 10%. At $2 trillion, that's $200 billion. He owns 40%, so he gets $80 billion. Why wouldn't he promise the president $10 billion in the midterms? Citizens United, he can do whatever the fuck he wants. So if he called the president and said, hey, call Paul and tell them to do away with this stupid rule such that retail good Americans can't invest in the best companies, and I got a hankering to put $10 billion to work in the in good terms. I mean, quite frankly, wouldn't you be stupid not to do that? Yes, absolutely.

That's how it works. That's how it works.

Anyways, my prediction is the fix is in. What people aren't focused on is this, the waving of the NASDAQ 100 rules that you gotta wait a year and let price settle is gonna create the ultimate false flag signal of pricing on the day of this IPO.

Right. That's what they're doing. Oh, they're all talking it up and you're like, oh, you people. And Stephanie's right, morality has nothing to do with it. I could never be an investment banker. I couldn't be a lawyer either. I wouldn't. I'd be like, you're guilty. You should go to jail. I'm going to turn you in. I just couldn't do it. I just couldn't do it. Same thing. You suck. I'm not going to take you public. I just couldn't do it. I just couldn't do it. I don't know. Well, whatever. Someone has to. Anyway, that was a great prediction. I think you're absolutely right. And about the podcast thing, yay, yay.

Yay, yay for us. But we'll cash those checks though. But you investment bankers are evil people.

You know what I mean? Let me say, how fucked am I that it's is going to be a trillionaire. I'm kind of fucked, aren't I?

Well, I'm all on board now. I love this kind of populist economist out of the UK, Gary Stevenson, and he totally changed my frame of mind, and that is taxes are our Kevlar against corruption. Because when people aggregate too much money, they become corrupt. You know, power corrupts and absolute power absolutely corrupts. And our taxes are what stands between us and having one person who can decide when to turn off and on battlefield technology in the invasion of Europe.

Europe. Yeah, yeah. Do you think you'll like hire an army just for me? I don't know. Or I just, I feel like, oh no, he was irritating before, but now I'm fucked. Anyway, elsewhere in the Karen Scott universe, this week on Prof G Conversations, Scott spoke with Anne Applebaum, one of my favorites too, and Fiona Hill. Wow, what a pair. About how Ukraine is rewriting the rules of warfare, the hidden weaknesses of authoritarian regimes, and the future of global power. Let's listen to a clip. I think actually what Ukraine could show is that the beneficiaries of all of this ought to be society, uh, the private sector, the innovators, and that we need to find some kind of model after this, a refresh, uh, after, uh, all of the dust is settled here, while the dust is settling, to basically get ourselves back into gear again. So a trillion-plus, uh, defense budget that's going to be top-down is not the way to go at all. You're absolutely right, that is not to the model.

A lesson from this is that soft power is underrated and hard power is overrated. Correct. And we've just gotten it all wrong.

Scott, I'm glad you did those two ladies. They're, they're badasses.

Yeah, it was our 400th episode and they asked me who I would want on the show and I said either Anne Applebaum or Fiona Hill and they said, "We'll get both." So I was really excited to have them on. Good job.

The women shall save us. Yeah, impressive women. Anyway, we wanna hear from you. Send us your questions about business, tech, or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com/pickuplines. Pivot. Submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. Okay, that's the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot. Be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back next week.

Today's show was produced by Lara Nam and Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin and Todd Wiseman. Aaliyah Jackson engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Brose, Miss Severa, and Dan Shalon. Nishat Kurwarz, Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for listening to Pivot from Vox Media. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.