Transcript of Starmer Resigns, Reflecting Pool Fiasco, and Amazon Dumps OpenAI Movie

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Turn on your cameras. Are the producers laughing? That's my litmus test. Or do they have their head in their hands?

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

Bonsoir, Kara.

Bonsoir, bonsoir.

How are you? Bonsoir.

Oh, that's our entire French.

That's it. We're done. That's it. Cougeot. My mom had a Cougeot.

Yeah. The French, I think, are in, for some reason, I feel like, where are they? I think they were in New York doing, getting up to all kinds of business because of the World Cup. Well, we're here.

Oh, the French team's outstanding. I hate to say that.

The French team is in the United States, I believe, where they were doing all kinds of French things, and we're here doing all kinds of American things. You are far away from me, though we're in the same general area right now. I just got here to Cannes. Cannes. Cannes.

I'm on this wonderful island called Hôtel du Cap. Yeah, no, we've been avoiding you. I mean, we can't wait to see you.

We can't wait to see you.

Yeah, I know.

You're not going to see the kids. They're here, though. They're out and about with the crêpes right now outside in the beach in Cannes and everything. So, we just got here by train. I have to tell you, The weather here is lovely. In Paris, it was so hot. Like this sweltering heat dome across Europe is not a little thing. It's crazy. It's like so hot. I've never experienced anything like it. I have to say.

No, Paris in summer isn't a city. It's a convection oven with better architecture. I mean, it just, it starts to heat up.

Yeah.

And it's, I mean, it's really, it's, there's something about, I don't know, like London when it's hot, when it's 78, In LA, you think, "Oh, it's so pleasant, light breeze." When it's 78 in London, it feels like you're in Africa and you could die.

Oh, right.

For some reason, heat in Europe takes on a different dimension. I don't know if that's because they don't have air conditioning or what it is.

No air conditioning in the apartment we rented. That was nice. That was a lovely little extra part of it. It was a beautiful apartment, but then it was so hot. It was like an oven. Anyway, now we're here at the beach with you.

Now I'm sick to €54 burgers. Poor boy's asking me, "What type of lager would you like, Mr.

Galloway?" Yeah, I know. It's expensive where you are. We're staying at a beautiful apartment Vox got for us, which is nice. And we have lots to do.

I'm sorry, Vox pays for you but not for me? What's going on here?

'Cause you have to stay at the fanciest places in the world.

Oh.

Would you like to stay in this apartment with me? There's an extra bedroom.

Uh, well, I would've liked to have been offered. No, I'm gonna send it. Where's Bangkok? Wait, I'm sending it to the Murdoch guy. I'm sending my hotel bill to the Murdoch guy.

Okay, all right. You stay at the fanciest places. I do not. I was gonna, we have a lot to do. We have a live Pivot here. I've got a live On. Are you doing Prof G here or not?

Yeah, I just did. I just did Rachel Myers. We're not doing live Prof G though. They're not interested in the markets thing here. They like Pivot and we're doing it at the Adweek house, which I think is in a brothel somewhere outside of Toulouse. Brothel.

Good, excellent.

In the 10 years I have been here, it's literally like the second invasion of Normandy. The Americans, it used to be the ad agencies, Martin Sorrell and Maurice Lévy, Levy and John Wren. No one gives a shit about the ad agencies anymore.

No, it's creators. Have you noticed? Creators.

The creator economy.

The creator economy. There's create— YouTube has a thing. Um, everyone has the creator economy thing and there's a lot of creators here. Most of them I don't know. Um, but we are considered a creator in case you're interested. We are. They finally come round to us, I guess. It's so trash.

So just some data, about 500 YouTube creators are expected at Cannes, up from 400 last year. With new UTA and Adobe Creator beaches. So they're taking over the beach. Cannes added a creative brand lion at the AI craft, for the AI craft category for 2026, signaling creators as a core strategy. And they're attracting an unprecedented amount of ad spend. Creator revenues are set to exceed $21 billion this year, more than doubling from 2022. Interesting, smaller influencers are attracting advertisers. Nano and micro influencers take 49% of US creator spend, more than double their share.

What does a Nano, micro, is that a tiny person? What is it?

No, I mean, long tail. It used to be, so podcasting is all about the top 100. A creator, the long tail in the creator economy is actually doing really well. They get about half the spend, which is unlike, um, other mediums where it all goes to the biggest players. Brand creator spend jumped 23% last year while traditional TV ad budgets fell 8%. So the creator economy is really booming.

Yeah. We will discuss that at the Adweek house and they understand, and they will throw money at us. That's our hope, correct?

Yeah, but if you look at, I mean, podcasting, it went from, it went from kind of these dramas like serials and interesting, you know, scripted podcasting. Then it went to the interview, the Rogans of the world. Then it's kind of gone to, I think, more like the commentators or analysts. And I think the next place is proprietary data sets and interpreting them.

Oh.

Um, actually I'm parroting this intelligent woman's comment on a reel. I gotta find out who she is and credit her.

All right, okay, all right. Well, you know, we're gonna do— our next act is going to be unnatural acts. That's what I think we should do. I think we should do OnlyFans.

I'm game. You had me at unnatural acts. I don't know what you're talking about, but I'm in.

Um, but we've got a lot to get to today. There's so much going on, including Greenwatergate. Get it? Greenwatergate. I told you this thing would blow up. Um, President Trump says it will be— he said it will begin fixing the seriously vandalized reflecting pool. Vandalized by him. Trump is claiming without evidence— he's lying— that vandals cut a 250-foot gash in the pool's new and poured corrosive and destructive chemicals into the water. This is nonsense. There's cameras everywhere in Washington, just so you know. He said multiple people have been arrested tied to the alleged destruction. This is just nonsense. One of them was a former Olympian who was accused by the Park Police of destroying government property. He says, "You reach down to touch a strip of peeling paint." I was down there, Scott. It was peeling. Nobody was touching it. Everyone was sort of shocked and amazed by how grotesque it was. Because, you know, you go down there, I've gone down there quite a bit, and I've never really noticed the skyminess of it. And it really is. It's green. All this paint's peeling off. So he's lying. And Trump, of course, should be accused of vandalizing a lot of Washington, whether it was the East Wing or the grass in front of the White House for his party.

You know, it's just ridiculous. But it's taking on a life of its own. It really is in terms of a metaphorical thing, or maybe you don't think that.

No, I mean, the president is caught between two straits of water. It's just— Yeah.

And—

I personally, I think this is kind of a non-story. America's turning 250 and we've managed to turn a reflecting pool into a culture war. I just, for God's sakes, just fix it and let's move on. I don't, I kind of, I, you know, they're lying and saying that it's sabotage and vandalism. It isn't. It's incompetence. It's a government project turning into another government project. And the Democrats love to talk about, I think we have bigger fish to fry.

I would agree, but I don't think it's a bad, I think people get it in a second because it's again, as I told you, I told you it's a symbol. And it's also the guy who did it is another piece of grift. And it looks incompetent. It looks incompetent. And, you know, one of the jokes online was that, you know, Washington is now Scar after he took over on The Lion King. But there is more to that because then you link it, I think, with Iran too, which continues to be, like, a problem. Like, here's, you know, they keep going back and forth. And that is the real problem. It is. But it's symbolic of just complete— idiocy. Like, like really stupid. We'll get to some other stupid things coming up, but, um, talk a little about— I know I noticed you were talking about a lot online, um, the MOU, which seems the Iranians seem to have us by the short hairs. That's what it feels like to me. I don't know about you, but they're not doing anything. They're just dragging us on, I guess, and being rude to Katie Mance, which I completely think they should.

Trump has delivered on his promise of unconditional surrender. The problem is we're the ones unconditionally surrendering. It is insane. Anyone who can do math, anyone who understands a memo of understanding, anyone who can look at their activities, in my mind, it is just so incredibly clear and tragic what is going on. The IRGC recognizes he's left. The midterms are coming up. It is a very unpopular war. He got no support from the public, from Congress, from other nations. He underestimated the resilience of, of, of the missile systems. He has handed them something more powerful than a nuclear weapon, and that is an ability to choke the carotid artery of the global economy in the Strait of Hormuz. They know we are out, right? And They all they have to do is operate in between, uh, is delay and obfuscation. It's just delay. Every day that goes back, it's less likely we're going to go back in with military action. So they just have to operate.

They really can't.

They have to operate between, uh, humor them, agree to meet in Switzerland, don't get a deal done. They have the perfect false flag. Oh, uh, Israel's bombed Lebanon. You're not leaving. You're not living up to your part of the agreement. We're out. They have no intention of giving anything back. And the only thing that's gonna come out of this besides Trump's incompetence and JD Vance, you know, having about as long a presidential run as Senator Gillibrand, is that we are gonna look back on this and recognize that one of the greatest acts of diplomacy was the JCPOA.

Right, which is—

His management of it.

And Obama's saying so. He's doing a lot of press right now around it, by the way, the comparative.

We had Russia and China sign, or they were co-signatures of the agreement. We can't get Israel to sign this agreement, much less European nations. We had limits at 3.7 enrichment. They're already at 60. There's no money. There's no constraints around nuclear enrichment in the agreement. We— he keeps saying all these bullshit threats. So we'll, we'll open the Strait of Hormuz.

We'll get you.

I know the Strait of Hormuz would take— to keep it open would take 2 carrier strike forces, paratroopers and Marines on the ground on Iranian oil. That is not going to happen. The net-net here is the following: America comes out of this much weaker, Iran much stronger, and we're going to look back and realize that the JCPOA was one of the more impressive acts of diplomacy of the last 50 years.

Yep. Except they continue to deny it. It's really like, it's the same thing with the reflecting pool. And the reason why I'm harping on it, it's the same thing. It's the same kind of like, no, this is what's happening. You know, you've seen all these communications from the White House, and we look, it looks so ridiculous when it's the pool, but it's the same exact communications. You know, they're blaming the New York Times, they're blaming, you know, for the coverage. They're blaming— He's blaming Obama, he's blaming everybody, and it's the same thing. "Oh, it's vandals, it's this, it's that." It's him. He's just a disaster. And again, I point to— Finally, someone is starting to write about it— his mental state, which seems demented. And we'll get into that a little bit more. But the way he's sort of lashing out in this crazy way when it's all his fault seems— And of course, blaming I mean, I never feel that sorry for that guy, but I gotta say, he's been dragged. He's been penced. I don't know what else to say. He's sort of stuck holding the bag here and having to defend it.

And it's worse than when Kamala Harris even lightly said, "I wouldn't change a thing," on The View, right? Sort of the same exact thing. So, I mean, it's disastrous for the Republicans in so many ways because he doesn't have an out. So my worry, because I think he lashes out, like arresting— Jeanine Pirro arresting people for this thing? This is like, let me tell you something, Imagining I was down there. I didn't touch the strip of paint, but it was stripping off by all by itself. Um, it's going to be a disaster. These people are soiling themselves in the most ridiculous of ways. And in Iran, it's staying with the reflecting pool. It's just stupid, although costly to the Fed, to us as taxpayers. The same thing with the rest of the mess he's making. But, um, in this case, it's disastrous. I mean, really, truly, I don't know what— how anyone's going to get us out of this. 'Cause we got 2 more years of this lunatic, essentially. I don't even know what would— what could happen. He gets sidelined? What? I don't know. Like, he's not going anywhere, even if he loses power.

Yeah, but I think if the Democrats take Congress, have the power of subpoena, and hopefully if they were to get back Senate, at a minimum, there'd be enough power to get in the way of a lot of this stuff.

Except that Iran will then develop a nuclear weapon. I feel like right now, you know what I mean? Like, that's where the worry— that's the only thing we we all agree on. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. But wow, we've given him a chance here. He's— this is— and then the economy itself. Anyway, um, let's go on a quick break. We come back, resignations, feuds, and more, and we'll get into all the European political drama.

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Keir Starmer just announced he's stepping down as Britain's Prime Minister, giving into mounting pressure from his own party. Uh, Starmer said he'll stay in office until the new party leader is selected, and likely to be this guy named Andy Burnham, former mayor of Greater Manchester, very popular guy. Trump got ahead of the announcement over the weekend, noting Starmer would step down and saying he had failed badly on immigration, energy policy. Also a lot of attacks from Elon Musk, by the way. Uh, Starmer Prime Minister Sunak's resignation comes almost 10 years to the day since the Brexit vote. The UK has had 6 prime ministers in that time. Talk a little bit about, you live there, what has happened here? Obviously he was gonna lose an election and he had won in a landslide in a very short time ago.

I think a lot of it comes down to economics. And that is, I mean, it's very strange. Ibiza, Mykonos, and St. Barts in Hawaii are parts of those nations, but they're not. They're islands that have an entirely different culture. I feel that way about London. I think London's essentially an island in the UK, 'cause if you look at the UK, 7 outta 10 IPOs in the last 10 years are below their offering price. GDP was supposed to take a 4 to 6% hit from Brexit. That's second greatest own goal in geopolitical history behind our entry into Iraq. You have now the UK as a whole has a lower average household income than Mississippi. And then there's London, which is essentially where the richest people in the world park capital and have a European lifestyle with actually without actually engaging in the UK economy. I mean, it's just, it's a very strange place. Since I have moved there, after we have a new UK, a new prime minister in several weeks, I've been there 4 years. This will be my 5th prime minister.

5th, right? You had a Conservative. There was a bunch of, there was a Conservative guy, there was Boris.

It's not politics, it's speed dating. It's beginning to feel like a LinkedIn jobs page. It's just so, But without growth, until they figure out a way, I thought they should do Brexit. They should reintegrate into the European economy because without growth, all of this gets harder and harder. And the weird, the quagmire here, or the, not the quagmire, the enigma is that the UK has all the underpinnings of a great democracy and economic growth engine. It has incredible universities, rule of law, culture compounds, everybody in the world wants to or wouldn't mind the idea of living in the UK for a few years.

Absolutely, it's delightful when you're there.

It's a wonderful place. And yet they, OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX are gonna raise $150 billion in fresh capital. The UK raised a total of $2 billion last year in its entire IPO market. They just can't get out of their own way. And Brexit, and just to go to politics, since World War II, no individual has done more harm to Britain in my view than Nigel Farage, who might be a prime minister at some point. So I have stayed woefully ignorant to UK politics, but it is difficult for me to understand how the foundation of success, how they continue to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory here. And I gotta think it's something, it's gotta be a big, bold move. Even the non-dom thing, we kicked out, basically they chased a lot of billionaires out of the UK. I understand the sentiment. It's let's tickle the middle-class sensors of people who are angry. But at the same time, the treasury's gone down because a lot of wealthy people are leaving and that reduces your tax base to provide for the NHS and these social services. But this is, I mean, UK politics. And then what do you have?

You have the rise of populism. They have had real problems. To a certain extent, it's a metaphor for the West. You have, or when the West goes wrong, stagnant wages, housing shortages, immigration anxiety, and institutional distrust.

You also had a lot of meddling by Elon Musk in terms of backing a bunch of very violent people against immigrants.

The American export is political divisiveness.

Right. Yeah.

It's not helping.

But it's Elon himself that's meddling quite a bit.

Yeah. But then JD Vance comes over and lectures them about free speech. Yeah. It's like we shouldn't, in my view, Americans should be here saying, "You're our greatest ally. How can we help? What can we do together? How do we open more free trade agreements?" Instead, Instead, Musk shows up and says, "Rise up, white people," or, I mean, essentially, and J.D. Vance comes over and waves his finger at him around free speech. It's just, and now they've gotta figure out a way to basically untangle the technology. Britain's nuclear arsenal runs on American technology. And all of a sudden Europe is waking up and going, "What the fuck?

We have become way—" The conservatives aren't popular either. Farage kind of is. It's like nobody's popular. It's a real—

It's a very angry nation. But when you don't have growth, people's prosperity goes down and they just get angrier and angrier. So I, again, not to talk too much about money, but they have gotta figure out a way to get growth going again. How would you do that? When your growth grows, you have more money, you have more flexibility, you have more power abroad, you have more— You can't have a powerful nation that's shrinking its GDP. And again, I was in Cannes when Brexit happened and the pound crashed. It's cost them 8% of their GDP, which is like taking hundreds of billions of pounds into the street and just lighting it on fire.

Yeah, they may return to the, I mean, it's interesting 'cause Europe is getting more and more unified. Speaking of which, Trump's latest feud is with one of his pals, basically his European Marjorie Taylor Greene, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. And a spat started after Trump, this is so strange again, I'm sorry, this guy's lost his mind. After Trump claimed Meloni begged him for a— Meloni, I was calling him Meloni— begged him for a photo of last week's G7 summit in France, Meloni responded with a video on Instagram, which was quite remarkable, calling Trump's claims totally fabricated and saying, "Italy and I never beg." She also accused Trump of being more accommodating to the enemies of the West than his own allies. Trump then doubled down, saying Meloni is doing poorly in Italy with her level of popularity, which she fired back, "My popularity is none of your concern. I suggest you focus on yours." pointing to his bad— his lowering, increasingly lowering popularity. Um, boy, this woman, even though— let me just— let's be clear, she's anti-gay marriage, she's anti-trans, she's anti-immigrant. She's not— she's Marjorie Taylor Greene essentially. This is the European version of her.

And at the same time, I, I was like, go Georgia! Like, it was kind of interesting that he continues. Again, the sign of someone who is having some cognitive problems, it seemed like to me. Not— this is usually—

he's always been like this.

He's always been an asshole. Not this much of an asshole. Like, and, and she just took it to him, which I found really interesting. I mean, obviously it helps her in Italy because he's not popular there, and he's not popular anywhere in Europe now. And they were tight as ticks, if you recall, you know.

But this is, again, greatness is in the agency of others. And European countries have been our strongest allies. We share same values, same democracies. We've worked together. We've incredible— the post-World War II world was largely shaped by America and European values. And Trump decides, again, he's figured out a way to manage to feud with and alienate— feud with and alienate allies while simultaneously praising adversaries. And we've spent 80 years developing these alliances, and Trump treats them like some sort of fantasy football league. And Meloni, to her credit, she remains, her popularity is actually greater than most Western leaders. And then he decides to pick a fight with one of the few European leaders who actually likes him.

She went at him on the Pope too. She didn't much like his comments on the Pope either.

Yeah, well, I mean, come on. Criticizing the Pope is like if someone— Not in Italy. In Italy, you just don't do, you don't do that. None of this makes any sense, Cara.

None of it makes any sense. None of it. I believe her. Believe the woman. I totally believe her. I believe her. He's such a creep. Little pieces of his brains are coming off like the paint on the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool. Um, but this is interesting because she's a really— because she's really— if you actually look at a lot of our policies, they're pretty heinous in terms of how she behaves. But she's sort of shifted. I mean, she used Trump to sort of get there, and now she's cutting him loose, like, like more than others actually. The others haven't been quite critical of him. Uh, Starmer certainly hasn't, right? Or any of them have. I don't know that the Germans have it. This— she's really taken it to the wall. Anyway, I don't know.

Yeah, I think, I think, I think most of them have decided wait him out. It's a smart move for Meloni because she comes across as a leader and not afraid.

And, uh, you know, it's not good for her. We look terrible once again. Um, by the way, it's really interesting to be in Europe because a lot of people are saying, "You don't like Trump, do you?" to me. I'm like, "No." Really? No. Yeah. A lot of the Europeans sort of test it. When we were in Paris several different times, like, "Hmm, you're not a fan of Trump?" I'm like, "Hardly." Like, "Hello, lesbian family." Like, no. And so they asked several Europeans, whether it was a tour guide at the Eiffel Tower or whatever, were sort of like poking to see if we liked him, which obviously we look like an ad for him. For not liking Trump in any way. Let's go on a quick break. We come back, new details about how Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos tried to cozy up to Trump. This is an interesting story. Support for Pivot comes from the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Quick reminder, America started a rebellion. Uh, yeah, we fired a king claiming divine authority and then wrote a constitution with no mention of God. Which is a big deal. The whole separation of church and state thing, as you know.

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Scott, we're back. President Trump probably took frequent jabs at Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos as they tried to build ties with his administration. That's according to a new book by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, who I'm gonna have on the On podcast soon. The president told guests stories about Zuckerberg and Bezos kissing his ass, which they were, saying, you would not believe the texts I got from these tech guys. I gotta show you. Among them, Zuckerberg sent Trump a photo of a letter written by one of his young children, which said they were looking forward to a golden age of America, Trump rally slogan. Bezos, meanwhile, reportedly told Trump that the Washington Post was one of his worst investments and that people there are really terrible. Oh my God. I mean, honestly. And then of course he was showing them to Elon too. They all made fun of them. You know, anyway, it was kind of— I mean, by the way, on the other side they insult him behind his back too. But what is the— what has happened here from your perspective when you were reading sort of this stuff?

I'm not surprised by one bit of it whatsoever, but I don't know if they'll get their reputations back. We always thought Trump was a jerk, but this is really kind of obsequious.

Yeah, but it represents a flip that is, that is sort sort of represents something in my view kind of dark, and that is politicians used to kiss the ass of billionaires because billionaires had money and politicians wanted to get elected, and it became kind of a pay-for-play thing because of Citizens United. But when you think about this, Bezos and Zuckerberg are worth hundreds of billions of dollars, and yet they both still feel compelled to kiss the ass of an 80-year-old real estate developer. Capital always chases power, But Silicon Valley spent 20 years telling us government didn't matter, and then everyone started flying to Washington. And what this signals around the dark part is the following. If you're worth a quarter of a trillion dollars and still kissing the ass of the president, you're not, this has moved from buying influence to renting protection. This is a transition for pay-for-play democracy to something even worse, and that is a mob protection racket. Yeah, where if I want, if I want to hold on to my wealth, I gotta start paying for protection because anybody that doesn't sign up gets in his crosshairs. And potentially, you know, all of these guys— Jamie Dimon is the only one I can tell of all these, like, this power crew that hasn't kissed his ass and is actually willing to occasionally say the obvious.

And now the government is suing JP Morgan. Right. So it doesn't matter how powerful you are, you gotta pay the mob. And this is— what do you have? You want a democracy where money can't buy influence or can't buy too much. Then you move to a democracy, a quote-unquote democracy, or a kleptocracy where money buys everything. And now we're in, in my opinion, a protection racket where Bezos and Zuckerberg gotta, like, gotta kiss the ring here. It's feeling very Russian.

But do they gotta? Do they gotta? I feel like they're more powerful. I don't even understand it. Like, I, I don't, I don't know. I mean, they could wait him out. Like, they've got so much money, they could do so much damage to him.

You're gonna— if, if they— I do think if the Democrats take Congress and we get about 18 or 24 months out, I think you're all of a sudden going to see, as I say, these guys are going to grow testicles again. I think you're going to see a switch because I know they all tell you they can't stand But the smart play, I hate to say it, the smart play is just to kiss his ass.

I guess. But it's so gross. You don't have to do it in a grotesque way with your kids. Oh my God. Like, "My child wrote this to you." Do you know how much of a loser you look like that you're pimping out your kids? And then Bezos, just sell the fucking Washington Post if it's one of your worst investments and people are generally wrong.

I don't get that. We've talked that. I still don't understand why someone wants that.

You know, it's not just me who was interested. There was a dozen people. People, wouldn't engage with any of them. I've talked to every one of them, wouldn't engage, not once. What, what does he do? What is he like? Like, I don't know what's happening. If he doesn't like it, if it's his worst investments, the people are terrible— and by the way, Jeff, they hate you— um, why not just get rid of it? It's so weird.

Yeah, I don't get that one.

I don't know, because it doesn't give him power. By the way, it's doing— it did an amazing story on Tulsi Gabbard this week. Like, it's done several amazing stories, um, around the corruption and everything else. I mean, the news parts. The, the editorial section is such weak lost now. It's really hard to read. But I agree. I don't understand it. I think— I don't know. When they're sucking up to the normal president, are we gonna forgive them or do we care? Now they've sort of soiled themselves pretty significantly.

I don't know, but it feels— it feels very Russian in the sense that it doesn't matter how rich you are, you gotta send Putin his vig, and no matter where you are, you might might, if you really piss him off, he's going to put a neurotoxin on a doorknob.

Yeah, but he's this guy, he wasn't going to do that. That's the thing. It's not like in there, I kind of see it because he like, that's kind of going out a window kind of thing. This is just something else.

Yeah, but I think, I think these guys in a capitalist society begin to equate success and ego and influence just with a number, and that is your net worth. And I think they're very smart and they connect all the dots and see the matrix around how to increase their net and they've connected the dots here and say, "Just kiss his ass." It's just, it's a really high ROI activity. They're so gross.

They're just gross. Stamping out your kids. It's just gross. Sorry. It's just gross. It's gross. In other Amazon news, this is interesting. Amazon's movie studio is dumping an upcoming film about Sam Altman, saying the project would be better served in another studio. The decision comes as Amazon plans to invest $50 billion in OpenAI this year. The move reportedly stunned the filmmakers, very good filmmakers, by the way. Andrew Garfield was in it. I am in the script. I look like I'm too nice to Sam, but I don't care. Since Amazon had already spent about $40 million on the movie, tested it in 4 markets, it was working towards a release date. They— I don't know. And they can't— this is not getting picked up. Netflix passed, apparently. A couple of different places passed. And it's, you know, it's a high-level film. I read the script, and I didn't like it. I thought it was fictional in a lot of ways. They sort of painted Jeffrey Epstein as a party guy, which I'm not in my experience. And they made that one guy who rebelled against Sam into a hero, and I don't think he was either.

I thought it was kind of broad and didn't— I thought it was not a good script. But there's of course the other ones coming out about Mark Zuckerberg, the sequel of The Social Reckoning, which we previously talked about, about Frances Haugen and that whole situation. That's coming out. That's good. That is coming out with the guy from The Bear. But would you feel— I don't know, I don't know. I, I don't know. I'm not surprised they got rid of it if they just invested in OpenAI, but it seems kind of dumb spending all that money. Well, it's not much, $40 million. Who cares?

I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but we were well into the development or even production writer's room of, uh, our series on Netflix about big tech. That got the plug pulled. Oh, this has gotten the plug pulled. Yeah, I think they've just decided They don't want to be villains. Yeah. And they don't— it's not worth the risk. You piss off either powerful people or you piss off the president. All these M&A, all these regulatory concerns. And quite frankly, the American public seems to have soured on AI. Or it could just be the following. The story of Sam Altman is not interesting. And it seemed more interesting 12 months ago than it is now. So I think they'd, you know, think, well, let's just do season 4 of Euphoria. I don't— I think they've done the math here and decided that stories about big tags— The gay hockey people seems popular. Yeah, let's do the women's hockey team this year. Toy Story 5 is doing incredibly well.

Toy Story 5 is like killing it at the box office.

Yeah, huge opening. By the way, to your credit, I meant to tell you, you've been talking about theaters and I've been shitposting them. The best performing media stocks the last 12 months hasn't been Meta or it hasn't been— it's been theaters. Alex Fisher went to the theater.

He did. He loved it. He's going again to watch the show.

Oh, IRL is a trend again. Mm-hmm. But anyways, the— back to, quote unquote, "artificial," the name of this that they've killed, I think they just do the math and go, "Okay, this story is not interesting. It's gonna piss off potentially a lot of powerful people. Is this worth it?" And look, I saw this happen up close and personal, and I still—

Tell us more about this plug pulling for you. Explain to the people what your show was. Was so people understand.

So I, I connected with, uh, Res Media, who did The Morning Show, incredibly talented guy. And then I had an— we had an amazing showrunner, Scott Burns, from The Bourne Identity, incredibly talented guy. We signed up Rosamund Pike to play the lead character based on, you know, loosely based or inspired by Sheryl Sandberg. Uh, it got— we, we, we did our pitch and it got bought in the room, which never happens. And Netflix Netflix committed to the entire first season. Wow. Finally. Oh my God. Finally, after a swing and a miss and being beaned in the face about 10 times, uh, I got something going. Everything's going fine. Everything's going fine. Netflix doesn't like the scripts. Uh, the showrunner leaves. Rosemann has some family issues. And just the wheels came off the bus. And what probably happened is Occam's razor. It probably just fell apart.

'Cause Hollywood stuff tends to— to.

And they do. Well, not when you get to this stage. No, I know.

I agree with you. I mean, we were scouting locations.

And then so I immediately went to, was there some polit— because, okay, meanwhile, Netflix is making a bid for Warner Brothers. And so I immediately go, is something else at foot here? And then I talked to that incredibly impressive woman at Netflix who runs all their content. Bella Bajur. She was very straight with me. She said, problems with the scripts, you know, family issues for the lead, and this happens. And I believe that. I believe that's what happened. But then you see this thing get the plug pulled. I think the creative community basically said, "America is tired of hearing about big tech." And there's a ton of— there's a ton of second-order risk around these stories right now.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. That could be. It could be that. What's doing well and what's not doing— It'll be interesting to see how The Social Reckoning does, right? Although some people say it's a mess of a script with Aaron Sorkin. Sorkin. I haven't seen it, um, but it's getting a big— that's getting a big push. And that's the, the second part of the Facebook story. It's a, it's a, it's an accompaniment to The Social Network, um, by— this time Sorkin and not Fincher is directing, which we'll see how he does. Um, but you're right, it's like, do we want to see more about these assholes, right? Like that kind of thing, I guess.

I still think the story of Big Tech is the biggest story that's never been told. I still think someone's going to produce it. I think I think Bezos and Musk and Sheryl Sandberg, and what I wanted, and they agreed to in the first season, was I actually think Sheryl Sandberg is one of the more interesting characters in Big Tech. I think she's actually in many ways more interesting than Musk. And, but when you hear about these people's lives, you just wouldn't believe it unless you knew it was real. I think they're incredibly complex, interesting, strange people. Petty. And the stories— Angry. Unhappy. But again, it's— it really is, and no one's told it that well. It's the biggest story that has yet to be told. People are obsessed with Succession. News Corp is a pimple on the elephant of Big Tech. Right. You're right. This story really hasn't been told yet.

You know what I think it's going to be? It's going to be theater and opera. Like that— I just have this feeling that there's going to be a theatrical show, or in that regard, right? Where it's going to be told. Because I have a couple ones going, and I don't think they'll ever get made. I just don't think they will. Both my book, my memoir, and then another one with Brad Stone and I that we wrote years ago. We wrote the treatment 4 years ago, and it's moving, but slowly. And the question is, do people want to watch? Unless you make it really— like, Succession worked because it was like fantastic cast, fantastic script, you know, rich people fucking things up royally. I think it might have to wait a step to get to these people, but they will. They'll be gotten. They're amazing characters in a terrible way. Away. Um, speaking of things that are, uh, crashing to the ground, SpaceX hype is crashing. As we tape on Monday, SpaceX shares are down to $167, down 17%, valuing the company at $2.2 trillion. Still enormous. The stock is still up 24% from the IPO price, but, oh, down over 16% from its peak.

A lot of people feel this is going to keep coming down. I don't know, but some people are buying. So will it have the effect on the upcoming IPOs? And, and let's hear a question from a listener about Elon shares. And his impact on the company, and then we can answer all these questions.

So if he tried to actually sell or borrow against, you know, even a smaller percentage of it tomorrow, what happens to the price? If he dies or is incapacitated tonight, what's the stock really worth the next morning?

Zero. Zero. Like, oh my God, that would be look out fucking below.

But your thoughts? Well, my understanding is My understanding is, there's a lot of nuance there. My understanding is he's agreed to a self-lockup of a year. So he hasn't sold, he's not selling any shares.

But he could borrow against it. That's exactly right.

And he can borrow way more than he could ever spend against it.

Explain how rich people do that, Scott, for people that don't understand. Borrow against your stock.

Okay, so the ultimate wealth accumulation and income inequality strategy is the following. If you're fortunate enough to have equity in a company that does really well, it's called the buyout. Buy, borrow, die strategy. And that is Jeff Bezos owns $120 billion in Amazon shares, and to fund his lifestyle, he borrows against it at very low interest rates, and then he puts a lot of it in trust. And when he dies, there's a step-up in valuation, so his kids don't have to pay taxes on it. Or when he actually starts selling, he decides he needs to spend more time with his dad in Florida such that he doesn't have to pay back the cost of the infrastructure of the great state of Washington that built his $120 billion in fortune. The greatest distinction between the wealthy and the not wealthy is the following. Are you an earner or are you an owner? And you wanna do everything you can, whether it's tax-free investment vehicles, getting the money outta your hands, automatic investment every month. You have to get to be an owner. 'Cause the thing about owning stock or houses or assets is they increase in value tax-deferred.

What do I mean by that? If you make $100,000 a year, you're an asset increasing your wealth by $100,000, but you lose 30% of it in taxes. Whereas if your stocks go up $100,000, as long as you don't sell, there's no taxable event. Now what should happen is that we need new laws such that when you borrow against your assets, it creates a taxable event on the capital or the asset you're borrowing against. Because what effectively has happened is the owners are just pulling away from the earners. It's never sell your stock, let it keep going up and borrow against it for your lifestyle needs. And then you can take additional capital and start investing in other things and diversifying. And we're gonna have the last 20, 30 years in America, we've been obsessed with how to create wealth. Over the next 10 years, we're gonna have a very important conversation around what do you do and what is expected of wealth.

But now what's gonna happen with this stock, you see? I mean, because let's assume he's not gonna be incapacitated or dead, or, but he will borrow against it if he needs the money. I mean, how much money does he actually need if he wants to say fund presidential election, for example?

He owns, he's worth a trillion dollars. He can go to JPMorgan and say, "Loan me $10 billion," and they're not gonna ask him what he's doing with it. And he could literally overwhelm the airwaves and social media with his chosen candidates. Is the stock gonna go down? Okay, let me just be clear. SpaceX trades at a price-to-sales ratio. Well, let's do it the other way. Apple trades at 10.5 times price-to-sales, Alphabet 11, 7, Tesla 16, NVIDIA 39. By the way, all these companies growing faster except for Tesla than SpaceX. SpaceX trades at 131. Meta, an amazing company, trades at 7.3. Amazon trades at 3.7. That's astonishing. Amazon 3.7?

3.7. Oh my God. 10 is usually the thing, right? 10 to 15, correct? 12. Yeah, those are higher margin companies.

Amazon's in a low margin business. Right, right. I think the only stock in all of these that I would buy right now right now is Amazon. Because what you get is you get a distant number 2 to SpaceX with the core business of the retail platform. And if you wanna talk about AI, the adjacent AI plays to go after industrial robots, of which Amazon has 2.5 times the total amount of America.

If you're FedEx, you have to be worried too. Same thing.

If I could go, if I could go short any category right now, it would be a basket of the secondary AI players. And if I could go long any category, It would be GLP-1s. I don't know if you've seen what's coming out of the American Clinical Oncology gathering, but they're now saying that metastatic cancers get cut in half, the growth rates, when people are on GLP-1s.

Also, these foods, as you said, 2 years ago, you know, the cuts in prices for Doritos and for all that shitty food is really quite significant. People, there's now not enough cottage cheese around and yogurt and things like, you know, it's really interesting. Like in terms of how people's tastes have shifted? Because 1 in 8 Americans is on this drug at this point.

I think it's going to be 1 in 2.

I agree, I agree.

You're gonna— I, I— my prediction is both of us are on GLP-1s, some form or micro. I'm going to start.

My cardiologist was like, we're gonna not have your stroke ever again, we're gonna give you a small amount. I'm gonna do it.

I haven't— they're talking about potential, potential delay of dementia and Alzheimer's. They're finding out—

no, my cardiologist was like, absolutely, we're doing it for you.

They're just finding out all sorts of— there's never been innovation that appears to have second-order effects that are this positive. Usually find externalities that are negative. You know, you get— you blast someone with chemo enough, they get leukemia 20 years later, right? There's big tech, all sorts of externalities. The externalities of GLP-1, uh, you know, and there, there are issues around nausea, muscle loss, but the— every time they do more research, they keep finding out better and better things.

I think it's the biggest test case. It'll be interesting to see what the neg— there are some negative effects in like that, but it's a little like a statin, you know. But one of the things is people eating whole foods and craving things that are protein, protein-related, healthy proteins, which is really interesting. Anyway, we'll see. I would agree with you. You called this one very hard 2 years ago, at least, if you recall. I remember this. I remember being struck by it. Anyway, SpaceX shares, good luck if you buy them. And let's not hope Elon dies or is incapacitated tonight 'cause it is a lookout below for that stock, correct? I mean, let's just answer his question. If something happens to him, that price, even though SpaceX is a very fine business, it's not a very fine business. It's just a telco in the sky essentially without him.

No, the meme, the co-leader of the meme. It cannot. That would be, yeah, that would be, yeah, I gotta believe that would be disastrous for Tesla and for SpaceX. Everything. Yeah. Yeah, 100%.

He's the one, he's the key man. Anyway, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails.

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That's 3 months of free payroll at gusto.com/pivot. One more time, gusto.com/pivot. 1, 2, 3. I'm stand-up comedian John Marcos Cerezi. And I'm actor Penis model Russell Daniels. The Downside is our podcast where we bring on guests to talk about how miserable their lives are, because let's face it, things are not getting better. Every episode we talk about what's wrong with our lives, our guests' lives, the world, but in a fun way. Bottom line is you're gonna walk away feeling better about your life. We've had so many cool guests. Caleb Heron, Busy Philipps, Stavros Halkias, Laverne Bern Cox, Hasan Piker, Alana Glazer. I promise you're gonna have a good time. Now on the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is The Downside. 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 it 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.

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Okay, Scott, let's hear some wins and fails.

My win is tourists in the US for the World Cup. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I think international fans are leaving the World Cup raving about America, our food. It's nice. I mean, it's just hilarious. "We love your Waffle House." I mean, it's just like—

Boston and this tartan, the tartan army, was delightful.

What the world is finding out is that America, at its core, distinctive podcasters like us and Trump— Oh, they like us. America, Americans are generous, interesting, wonderful people, and it's an amazing culture, and they're getting to see that. But we get to see just how wonderful these nations are. And like I said, I think the World Cup is doing what the UN initially envisioned it would do. I think it's bringing people together. These viral audiences, Online videos show fans excited about American food, uh, our huge portions, Chipotle, Shake Shack, and many more. Visitors to NYC were able to be part of the legendary Knicks parade. The World Cup has attracted a projected 10 million visitors. Airbnb searches in host cities jumped 80% year on year. Visitors are staying about 12 days, attending 2 matches, and spending over $400 a day on average. Uh, New York City's tourism chief Julie Kocher likened the boost to hosting as as many as 8 Super Bowls in 6 weeks. I just think the World Cup, I think FIFA is one of the most corrupt organizations in sport, but I think the World Cup is just incredible. It's the fans.

It's the fans. They were just, the fans are delightful.

But you see people in Kansas welcoming, you know, these people from Norway. You see the Japanese. I just, it really is, I think we forget that generally speaking, these cultures are wonderful. Generally speaking—

And we're not Trump.

Yeah, generally speaking, people wanna get along. Generally, we're not that divided. We just have the most profitable companies in the world trying to divide us.

And we have a president who's trying to divide us. Agreed. I mean, I think, you know what I'm struck by here is you get the feeling, and this is just being in France for a short time, is they really want to like us. Like, you know what I mean? Like, I had so many Europeans like testing to see, oh, are you one of those? People Americans, and you're not. And then they're like thrilled to have you there. One, I have to say, everyone's been really lovely everywhere we've gone. And I do think there's a backlash happening, Scott. I do. People are like, they're— I'm tired of being angry at these fuckers. I'm like, let's just get rid of them. Let's just move along. And like, and you're right, the World Cup, I, I know you don't think as much as the Knicks, but like, it's just— there's a feeling. I think you're absolutely right. I would agree with you. These— and this is— these people want to like us. They want to like us in a lot of ways.

So there you go. Uh, my fail, and this is indicative of, of social media, is that Polymarket is flooding social media with fake trading videos. Uh, there's a great— I think the Wall Street Journal is doing a great job. They did an analysis that found that Polymarket paid dozens of college-age creators to post videos of fake trades and fake wins on the platform. So one of the videos, for example, shows a young man saying he won $100,000 on a bet that Trump would say McDonald's in public, but in reality, all of the accounts that made the bet lost money. And to make these clips, Polymarket built copies of its website and then told creators to make, quote, "trades" on those sites and hide that they were being paid by Polymarket. Scammy. Yeah, by the way, I feel I should disclose that at Prop G Markets, we have a data partnership with Kalshi. You do. So, but we're not doing— well, anyways, but gambling and gaming for young men is really corrosive. And I still can't resolve what to do about it because you don't want to infantilize young people. And it's a tough one. But at a minimum, these companies shouldn't be posting fake social media posts that show someone winning when they didn't.

It's just, it's preying on their worst instincts and it's disingenuous.

Yeah, it's just, just do your business. If people want to use it, you don't have to like trick people.

And these are great businesses, but Polly Market's audience is 70% male and the most common age demographic is 25 to 34. So again, it's young men and a plural, and guess this.

Can I use a comparison? You know those two, when you were after Robinhood for a while and then the other people that you were worked with Public.

Public.com.

They seem like the Robinhood people, Polymarket people. I don't know.

Well, they're especially aggressive, and I have problems with all of it. I don't, I don't have moral clarity about all of it, quite frankly, any of it. But the deceptive marketing mostly affects young men, and, and just evidence of who they're targeting, a plurality of Polymarket's display ads are on what site? I'll give you a guess. Young men. They're trying to reach young men.

Twitter. Pornhub. Pornhub. That makes sense.

So this is— and again, I don't know if you can regulate this. They'll say it's free speech, everybody's making money, but this does feel like deceptive marketing. Anyways, that's my fail.

That's a good fail. That's— I agree with you. I think you're— I mean, it is. It's just, why do you have to trick people? They're great businesses.

People love this stuff. They love the prediction markets. The data's interesting. They're addictive.

But they're just stupid. It's just con people. My fail is the way the Republicans are continuing to attack James Tallarico over his sexuality, which is— I think it must be Trump mistook the word cisgender for six genders or something. But Stephen Miller is particularly heinous in terms— and especially because he's such a loathsome creature. It's just, it's grotesque. It's really grotesque and weird. And I hope it doesn't work. I fear it might. But this idea of accusing someone of being transgender and this, so it continues. And especially Ted Cruz. I mean, honestly, I hate to say he should know better, but I guess he doesn't. But Miller and Cruz and a lot of them are just grotesque. It's just gross. I've never seen anything like this. And it's really hateful and cruel. And, you know, and especially because these particular men are particularly loathsome men at the same time. And so I think that's just— I just can't stand it. Every time I see them do it and they keep doing it, they must be seeing some polling or something, but they're also terrible people. It's just gross. Like, I don't even under— it's so— it's a misogynist, it's transphobic, it's definitely, it's all manner of weird.

Weirdness on these people's part. And just, again, a bunch of people I cannot wait to see go away at some point relatively soon, and we never have to speak of them again. It's how I feel about a lot of these people. On the positive side, really thrilled to see Toy Story did so well. It's one of my favorite movies. Franchises. Franchises. The third one, I lost it at the end of that one. It's about toys, and it's about everything. And this one is, you know, focused in on empathy. Pathy focused in on all the good things we've been talking about in this show. And I haven't seen it yet. I want— I have my kids at my little— I saw the other ones obviously with my older kids because it's been so long. This is the fifth one. And sometimes you get to five, you're like, you got to be kidding, kids. So you just want to sell toys. But the, the reviews for this, and I have not— I want to see it in the theater, speaking of which. Um, and we're gonna— I've downloaded all of them here, and I'm hoping to watch all four movies with the little ones and then take to it.

I just feel like, what an astonishing franchise it's been. And it's just— I dare you not to cry at almost any of them. I just— I cry, and I don't cry. That last— the third one just killed me. Just killed me. And I don't know why. I just— it's just beautiful. And this one's about stuff that's starting now. It's about digital, but it doesn't demonize digital. It just talks about play with kids. And I'm very excited to see it. So, I'm really happy for the Pixar people for putting out a great film. And I'm excited to see it. Well, you know what my— Go ahead. Sorry.

You know what my ex-wife said when I came home and found her fucking Woody? Oh, no. She said, she looked at me and said, she said, "You have a friend in me." Oh my God.

How could you do this to me? Come on. That's easy. No. That's easy. That is the worst. That is the— I'm not going with you to this movie, and you're not getting near my children on this trip to Cannes. There we go. Cannes. Cannes. I'm pronouncing it right. Cannes. Anyway. Can, can. I don't— thank you for ruining my beautiful, gorgeous moment about children and play and everything else. I truly appreciate it. You are not allowed to go to this movie in any way.

You've got a friend in me.

All right, stop. Stop. Stop right now. Anyway, so Scott, I'm looking forward to seeing you. I might see you at a party tonight. Maybe I won't see you at a party, but I want to ride on that Zodiac.

You know, Toy Story 6 is about Andy's— Oh, no, don't. No, don't. It's about Andy. Don't. Don't. No, serious. Toy Story 6 is about Andy's mother's toys, which coincidentally are also called Woody and Buzz. Oh my God.

All right. You have ruined my win. Those are so bad. Those are so bad. They're so bad. And they're so sad.

Turn on your cameras. Are the producers laughing? That's my litmus test.

No, no. Where do they have their heads? Afterwards, they'll go, uh, Scott, do we really wanna do this? And we're going to. So that's the way, that's where Lara goes, uh, like that. That's the voice. Uh. Anyway, I will see you in person at LIVE. We're gonna have lots of people there. There. It'll be fun. I think it is sold out. Uh, we are— and I am also doing a live interview with Jim Bakoff and Meredith Levien, uh, from the New York Times, which— oh, staff is— I mean, that sounds really interesting.

Yeah. What is NPR hosting that?

Yeah, it's gonna be great.

You're gonna talk about DEI at the Forest Service.

Listen, dirty, dirty.

Oh my God, I'm going to see Team Scotland at the Crane Club pop-up on the Palais tomorrow at midnight. Then I'm going to the Spotify party. Yeah, who wants to roll with dog. Who wants to roll with the dog? We will—

we— I will see you in a few days, Scott. And we want to hear from you also, our listeners. Send us your questions about business, tech, or whatever's on your mind, including Scott's filthy, filthy brain this week. Go to nymag.com/pivot to submit a question for the show, or call 85551, uh, pivot. Or elsewhere in the Kara and Scott universe, this week on On with Kara Swisher, I talked to Harvey Levin, founder of the celebrity news juggernaut TMZ, who I adore, about its new Washington, DC bureau and expanded political coverage. Let's listen to to a clip.

I do want to just say one thing, that, you know, you're referring to this as, you know, politicians being a form of celebrities, right?

Yeah, I don't view it that way. Okay.

Um, I view it as pop culture. We cover pop culture, and pop culture can be a lot of things. You know, it can be sports, it can be entertainment, and pop culture is politics because a lot of the things that affect everybody emanates from Washington, DC, and, um, it emanates from the courts, it emanates from Congress, from the president, and it affects all of us. So they are an integral part of pop culture. So to me, it has never been a stretch.

It's a really good interview. They tried for years to do this. He's a great guy. And by the way, they're breaking some stories. I have to say, they really are. They're like— when they took those pictures of politicians during the shutdown, like Lindsey Graham with his bubble wand at Disneyland, I think they're doing an excellent job. Reminds me of the old Washington Post, which used to do this kind of stuff, a mix of things. Anyway, he's great. I've known him for many, many years. I like Harvey a lot. I think he's a really interesting entrepreneur in media. He's one of the OG ones. Okay, that's the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot. Be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back on Friday, live from Cannes.

Today's show was produced by Laryn Amen, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Todd Wiseman. Ernie and Jatad engineered this episode. Thanks also to Richard Breaux, Missy Varean, Dancheny Alan Ishak Kuroz, Vox Media's executive rooster podcast. Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for listening to Pivot from Vox Media. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Go team Scotland versus Brazil.