Editor’s Notes: Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway are unpacking the Super Bowl spectacle, from the funniest ads to the outrage over Bad Bunny’s electric halftime show. They dive into why so many spots were about AI, what that might signal for an overheated tech sector, and how prediction markets are quietly eating gambling apps’ lunch. Plus, they zoom out to the bigger picture: what all this says about culture wars, the future of media, and where the economy may be headed next. (Feb 10, 2026)
TRANSCRIPT:
KARA SWISHER: Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media podcast network. I’m Kara Swisher.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: And I’m Scott Galloway.
KARA SWISHER: Go Seahawks.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: You like the Seahawks?
KARA SWISHER: I like Jody Allen, the owner sister, Paul Allen. I know her a tiny bit. I knew Paul, her brother who died, who was one of the Microsoft founders. Just really cool lady. And I can’t stand Robert Kraft. I think he’s a terrible person. The whole Katz family was for the Patriots. It’s only because they live there. Nobody likes Robert Kraft, so I was happy about that. I like the Seahawks.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Well, I’m happy you’re happy. The thing that summarized how I feel about it was the Elmo account said, “I hope both teams have a really fun time.” That’s about how much I care about the Super Bowl. And the other one was Elmo said, “He’s not a bad bunny. He’s a good bunny.”
KARA SWISHER: He’s a good bunny. That’s how I say MAGA lost its f*ing mind. We’ll get to that, but first, let’s have a little bit of Resist and Unsubscribe. How’s it going, Scott? You’re everywhere. You’re like the village whore.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: They say, no, I’m not. I’m not a whore. I’m a horror. I’m a hoa.
KARA SWISHER: We have a montage of Scott everywhere. Let’s check it out. Resist and Unsubscribe.
The Resist and Unsubscribe Movement
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Resist and Unsubscribe. Explain to me why I should unsubscribe from Amazon. If you really want to hurt or send a message to the President, what he does listen to is the following. If you look at the times when he has really checked back, immediately responded, and pulled back, it’s been when one or two things has happened. The bond market yields have spiked or the S&P has gone down. This is when he backed off of his plans to annex Greenland. It’s when he’s backed off of tariffs.
When you go after big tech platforms with just a small decline in spending, this is what moves the market. I think the string we can pull here is to go after the subscription revenues of big tech that now represents 40% of the S&P. You’re hitting them with a $10,000 decrease in market cap with just one subscription cancellation. So this is a chance to go after the soft tissue of big tech, whose leaders the President appears to be listening to. Soft tissue.
KARA SWISHER: You make it hard. Tell me, so tell me where we are.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Came out of the gate strong. We’re getting about 100,000 uniques a day. And I asked ChatGPT if I wanted to get 100,000 uniques with no paid, what would it cost me to drive 100,000 people to the site? It was interesting. It said $100,000 to $200,000 for the site, but it would take $4 to $5 million. So we’re getting, quote unquote, $4 to $5 million in traffic to the site and I haven’t paid a dime for anything.
But it started going down earlier in the week. So I did some research on the bus strike in Alabama and then the Kimmel thing. And what it ended up was that the study from Kellogg, which I’m really into, about the protests that are effective versus those that aren’t, is the unsubscribed to Disney were actually declining dramatically. But the thing that got Disney to reverse course was a ton of media that was shaming them and creating dissent, and that the media that impacted that was traditional media.
So I decided on Tuesday I was going to get on as much traditional media as I could and I was able to do it. And then all of a sudden, the site visits are now back to about 100,000. But just to do the math, a good e-commerce site gets 2 to 4% conversion. This gets more because these are people just coming to the site. People are unsubscribing two to five platforms. So let’s call it three. So I’m thinking I’m getting about 10,000 unsubscribes a day or 300,000 unsubscribes over the course of it.
Anyways, I’ve done the math here. I think I can notionally take about a quarter of a billion dollars in market cap out of these companies. And does that change anything? It doesn’t.
KARA SWISHER: It’s irritating.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: It’s a voice in the choir. And I asked ChatGPT what it thought of the resistance movement so far. A one is you throw a party, no one shows up, it damages your reputation, makes other protests less successful. And 10 is the President and SA are forced to scale back some of this stuff. And it said right now you’re at a six. And that is people in product management teams are probably talking about it, but not the executives yet.
KARA SWISHER: Oh, they are.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: And I thought that was sort of a fairly honest appraisal of where we are. But yeah, I’ve been all over the place.
KARA SWISHER: My sons know about it. I’m just telling you, it’s got a lot more. I’m getting texts from people I haven’t heard from in a while. So it’s interesting. They all like it because here’s why: you can do something, right? That’s easy, right? It’s not easy. I just, I should do that.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Right.
KARA SWISHER: So that’s why it’s successful, I think, in that regard. I think you have to do some more podcasts maybe. Possibly. Yeah, maybe Joe Rogan. That’s where I would go. That’s where you need to go.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Yeah. Well, Rogan has invited me, but yeah, next week. This week was traditional media. Sorry, last week was traditional media. This week I’ll start doing the other ones.
KARA SWISHER: Those people.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: More pods and stuff like that. So yeah, I need to do, I was just on Piers Morgan and that digressed into a food fight with some ultra-conservative guys calling me desperate and trying to tank the U.S. economy because we lost the election. But anyways, yeah, I think you’re right. I think I have to not food fight.
KARA SWISHER: People don’t do the food fights. Don’t go on any of those. I think you should go on a Brett Baier or someone like that would be useful. Or any of the more reasonable people over there. Not Hannity because it’s a fight. You don’t need a food fight for this. You need a “just let me explain it to you.” I think Rogan would be good. Theo Von, any of those people. And they like you, right? Go on Mel’s thing.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Yeah, but Mel makes you come up to Boston. So I was invited to go on the PBD podcast. But similar to Mel, he makes you come to him and he’s in Fort Lauderdale, so I don’t know. I should probably make the effort. Is it on the way to Boston?
KARA SWISHER: Oh, not that guy. Well, he is constantly wrong.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: If you want to be part of the resistance, you have to go behind anyone.
KARA SWISHER: He’s going to do a food fight with you. Whatever. You’re going to end up doing a stupid food fight. You need to go on people that want to listen and will have a normal debate with you. But not like, “Ooh,” you don’t want to be used as a chew toy for the right on this one. I’m sorry. It just doesn’t.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Chew toy for the right.
KARA SWISHER: Yeah.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Yeah, I like that.
KARA SWISHER: So I don’t know. Well, I’ll think of more ideas. I have some more ideas. And stunts. I mean, you’d be better off on a Mr. Beast or somewhere, something where there’s more, yeah, like that kind of stuff.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Just one of the ground zero CEOs called me Saturday morning, and they’re so good. They’re so smart. They’re just like, “I just want to understand it better. How are you? What could we do better?” And I got off the phone and I’m like, maybe I should take them off the list. I’m like, oh, my God.
KARA SWISHER: It’s worth it.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: It’s what they do. It’s what they do.
KARA SWISHER: They start massaging your feet.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: That’s what they’re doing.
KARA SWISHER: They’re massaging your feet.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: They’re like, “You know, we have some disagreements, but I really respect what you’re trying to do here, Scott.” I’m like, oh, my gosh.
KARA SWISHER: I saw the Post made you one of the 50.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: You’ve got to believe I was number 49 right there. But hold on.
KARA SWISHER: Oh, they’re after you. They want to.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: I’m with Kai Trump. Kai Trump is one of the, I didn’t even know there was a Kai in the Trump family.
KARA SWISHER: Yeah, she’s a good golfer. I guess that’s fine.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: It’s a pretty random list.
KARA SWISHER: You know what I say? You could smile more. You could smile. No smiles in those pictures.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: No. The reason I have $100,000 in veneers is so I don’t have to f*ing smile.
KARA SWISHER: I understand. I was just using the lady thing anyway. Let’s get to the Super Bowl anyway. I’ll think of more ideas. I’ll think of more stunts, more stunts. Let’s figure out a stunt for South by Southwest, something like that. Keep it going. Anyway, that’s coming up.
Super Bowl Ads and Reactions
KARA SWISHER: You didn’t watch the Super Bowl, right?
SCOTT GALLOWAY: No. No. I have almost no interest in the Super Bowl, so.
KARA SWISHER: Did you watch any? You watched the ads on other places where they had them?
SCOTT GALLOWAY: I watched some of the ads people sent to me.
KARA SWISHER: Yeah. Many of them stand out. I still like the Anthropic ones, I have to say.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: I thought they won the day. I didn’t like the one on the Jewish kid being bullied. You didn’t?
KARA SWISHER: Too virtue signaling.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: I think there are better, more effective ways to talk about the risk of anti-Semitism. I actually don’t, in a weird way, I feel like it almost normalizes it or raises the prospect.
KARA SWISHER: Little after-school special kind of tone, that kind of thing.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Yeah, it’s so funny. What I noticed with, I don’t know if you’ve noticed this. I went to my kid’s school when he was a seventh grader in middle school, and there were ninth graders coming down the hall, and I was way behind him, and I thought, oh, this can be interesting. In the seventh grade, if I ran into ninth graders in an unsupervised environment, they would pants me and throw me in the trash and take my lunch money. And instead, now they’re like, “Hey, little man.” And they high five them. Yeah, things have changed a lot for some people in school.
KARA SWISHER: Yeah.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Yeah. The ads are always fun to watch. I don’t, I just could. The whole Bad Bunny thing, I’m like, he’s the most popular.
KARA SWISHER: We’ll get to Bad Bunny. But my favorite, I really liked the Anthropic ads. I like the Elf ad. I like the funny ones. The Elf ad. There’s a whole bunch of them that were super funny, and I prefer those. And of course, I have to say, the Lay’s potato chip ad got me. Got me.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Oh, God, I thought that was so f*ing ridiculous.
KARA SWISHER: I know. But it got me. I agree. I knew it was funny.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: The family farm. We fetishize manufacturing and farmers. The family farm is a corporation that’s bought out all these little farmers 30 years ago.
KARA SWISHER: And yet it got me. I was like, “Don’t, don’t.”
SCOTT GALLOWAY: How many college grad girls do you think are trying to help dad with their family?
KARA SWISHER: Taught, too.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Yeah.
KARA SWISHER: Yeah.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: She’s in PR for Prada, dating a hedge fund manager, and her father’s birthday through Hollywood, and she’s hoping to get a miniseries. But no, she’s going to go home to Iowa to farm with her dad and wear a Carhartt.
KARA SWISHER: She had a beautiful, that Carhartt didn’t have a speck of f*ing dust on it. Did you notice that she had?
SCOTT GALLOWAY: A Ralph Lauren ad?
# Super Bowl Ads and AI Market Predictions
KARA SWISHER: I know it had nothing to do with the family food, but the potato chips are delicious. Let me just say, I like a Lay’s potato chip. They’re quite good. They’re good chips. They’re a good chip. They’re a fine chip. I’m trying to think whichever one was funny. I didn’t like the, really? I didn’t like the Emma Stone one or the George Clooney one.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: They were weird.
KARA SWISHER: I don’t want the weird ones. I like the funny ones. Like the Instacart. I thought the elf one was funny. I will have to say the Jesus one was good. The Christian like Jesus knows. I thought it was.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Oh, those are always nice.
KARA SWISHER: Not always. That one was well done.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: No, I thought the really powerful one. I don’t know if it’s the same people. The “Jesus washed their feet.” That one that was, remember that from a few years ago. This is a different one. Yeah, that kind of reminds me. And it’s not totally related, but just FYI, Donald Trump is mentioned more times in the Epstein files than Jesus is mentioned in the Bible. Just saying. Or that the word meth is said in all eight seasons of Breaking Bad. Yeah, but anyways, not related.
KARA SWISHER: Not related. Anyway, they were pretty decent ads. They weren’t, I wouldn’t, I would say the Anthropic still head and friggin shoulders. OpenAI had one that was somewhat effective a little bit, I guess.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: And that was good.
KARA SWISHER: It was solid but not like the Anthropic. They got knocked out by Anthropic.
AI Dominance in Super Bowl Advertising
SCOTT GALLOWAY: But the thing I looked at or the only kind of insider, the thing I found really interesting is if you look at the ads, a quarter of them were AI. Yeah, 15 of the 66 were AI. The last time tech was as dominant in the Super Bowl in advertising, there’s been two times in the last 50 years.
One was in 2022 when it was called the crypto bowl and it was Binance and FTX. And look what happened in that year. That was the year crypto blew up and there were a ton of bankruptcies. And then the time before that, what year Super Bowl did it was 2000, January 2000. A quarter of the ads were from dot-coms, Pets.com and the like. And look what happened.
So if you look at economic history as a ratio or as the ratio of tech ads being above a certain amount, it implies this year is when AI crashes.
KARA SWISHER: Yeah, I’ll tell you when I hate. It was the Mike Tyson one. I’m sorry. Just like it was my government money, like it was my dollars paying for Mike Tyson, who has issues of his own to tell me to eat an app and that fat people are loathsome. I’m sorry, that was really grotesque.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: I’ve met Mike Tyson. He’s a chain smoker perhaps.
KARA SWISHER: Yeah, I know. I was literally like, that’s my f*ing tax dollars. You’re telling me to eat an apple. Thanks. That was really gross. And of course, these MAHA people are such, you know, it was all their friends that made the ad. And of course, Brett Ratner was the director. Sexual harassment with someone convicted of rape.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: I think that’s them waving their middle finger in our face.
KARA SWISHER: I know. Purposely trying to care. That’s my money. That’s my, like, that’s my money. Cut it out. Don’t tell me to eat an apple.
Bad Bunny’s Halftime Show
But let me just focus on the Bad Bunny halftime show. It knocked it out of the park with a projected 128 million viewers. Apple was the one that did it and Roc Nation was the producer. That’s Jay-Z’s group. They’ve been doing a lot of the really great Super Bowl ones. And so Jay-Z’s been in charge of picking Super Bowl halftime for the last seven years. They’ve been really good, actually.
Turning Point USA, of course, had a live stream of an all American show featuring Kid Rock who looked like he was lip syncing. It seemed the reaction and re-reaction to Bad Bunny show was so joyful and fun and it was so full of, if you wanted to go into it and look at the layers and you know, he’s such an artist. Like he’s not just…
SCOTT GALLOWAY: He’s the biggest artist in the world.
KARA SWISHER: But not just that it was so full of stuff, but you could also just enjoy it if you didn’t know.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: That it was hopeful, it was fun.
KARA SWISHER: Right? And there was.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: And I realized, like, people ask me what I thought of the performance, I’m like, it’s not for me. If Tom Petty or George Michael can’t be there, which they can’t, I don’t care, you know? But what I realized is it’s not for me. And it was a brilliant move on behalf of Roger Goodell because the NFL is investing in the future because more than 50% for the first time ever of people under the age of 18 are non-white.
And people identifying people saw it as anti-American at Puerto Rican or Ecuador. No, Reagan said it best. Anyone can come to America and be an American. And that’s uniquely what makes America America.
KARA SWISHER: They’re so buttered because they are not. The culture war is, they’re not winning it. Nobody wants to watch Kid Rock. And by the way, I should do a dramatic reading of Kid Rock’s lyrics. You know these people that were, they were defending, including that guy’s show, you want to go on, they’re like, oh, Kid Rock. I’m like literally he talks about putting balls in the mouth. Come put your balls.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Okay, but the retort there is now do rap stars.
KARA SWISHER: Of course. But this wasn’t Bad Bunny. Like fine, like so it was a bunch of really smart.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: It was pretty clean. I agree. You know who the other big winner was in the Super Bowl?
Prediction Market Apps
KARA SWISHER: What’s the prediction market apps.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Yeah. Kalshi downloads spike last month. The app recording 4 million downloads in January. That’s up from less than 2 million in December. And not only that, it’s going at, you know who it’s killing. It’s killing the gambling apps. The prediction market apps from DraftKings and FanDuel got to certainly the more people.
KARA SWISHER: That use it, the better. But let me just finish up on Bad Bunny. It was a great show. It was very light. You know, you had Pedro Pascal as a background person and Cardi B and a whole bunch of people. And I thought Ricky Martin was lovely looking, fantastic and Lady Gaga was great.
It was so joyful. And for them to attack it and shows just what a bunch of f*ing losers they are. I’m sorry. They just really are. It was so beautiful and so life affirming and forward thinking and it is where our country is in a lot of ways. And all I wanted to do is like I’ve been trying to take Spanish myself, learn Spanish. I’ve got to learn Spanish. So I understood, could understand what he was.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: It’s a beautiful language. I took over five years in high school.
KARA SWISHER: Me too. I took them to 7th and 12th grade. I can barely order at a Mexican restaurant.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Me too. And I’ve been trying. I’ve gotten one of those apps and I keep coming on and off of it. I have to learn. This is the year I learned Spanish. This is the year.
KARA SWISHER: But what I try to do is I try to take economic trends away from the Super Bowl, specifically the advertising. And the two trends are the following. One, it looks like this is the year that AI might crash because there’s so much cheap capital going into it vis-à-vis the Super Bowl.
And the second thing is there’s been a huge transfer in economic value or market capitalization from the gaming apps to the prediction apps. In just the last three months, the earnings per share estimates for Flutter Entertainment, which is the gaming or the gambling apps, has been cut in half. And DraftKings earnings estimates are also down 29%. The biggest apps are the gambling apps. And now the speculation markets are taking their, are eating their lunch.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Absolutely. And as you noted, the NFL made a great choice here in terms of how it handles.
KARA SWISHER: Smart, really smart.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Beautiful visual of San Francisco on the front, which was, I’m sorry to tell you, was a rainbow flag. Kids. But also good for San Francisco. Looking great. All these people are like, what were they talking about? Looking great. San Francisco’s on the upswing. And I have to say, oh, it was great for.
KARA SWISHER: It was great for your city. It was like chamber of commerce. The only time I turned it on was late at night. It was like 11:30 and it started and it was this immediately this beautiful vista of the Golden Gate Bridge around the golden hour. And you’re just like, wow. Occasionally there’s a moment you’re in California and you’re like, why did I leave.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: The gate all the time?
KARA SWISHER: Why did I leave the Gap?
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Exactly. Every f*ing day of the week and twice on Sundays when I wake up.
KARA SWISHER: The fog comes in over the Golden Gate, cleans all the shit out of the air. And then it’s crystal clear and sharp. And I mean it is.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Every morning I wake up there, I weep. Louie’s moving there. Just so you know, my son will be moving to San Francisco and working for someone who’s in politics there. But I’m so jealous of him. Anyway, he’s living in the cottage.
KARA SWISHER: Elmo says Bad Bunny’s a good bunny.
Crypto Winter Returns
Let’s move on to the, speaking of crypto, while the Dow hit a milestone high of 50,000 last week, crypto has been heading the other way into a crypto winter again. Bitcoin is just at its worst weekly decline in more than three years, down roughly 45% from its all-time high last October.
The downturn is being blamed on a few things. Volatility in other markets, tariff fears, uncertainty around Fed chair nominee Kevin Marsh. I don’t. The ongoing decline has been brutal for some of crypto’s biggest champions. Michael Saylor’s strategy and I know you earned admirer just reported a $12.4 billion quarterly loss. Wow.
But don’t expect a bitcoin bailout. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said congressional hearing last week that he has no authority to do that. Of course, Trump was crypto president. Nice job, David Sacks, by the way. They got what they wanted, the crypto people from Trump. Everything they wanted. They got rid of the Gary Gensler, they got rid of Sherrod Brown, they got rid of Crit. What do you think? What’s happening here?
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Well, first off, I should just point out that I am easily the worst crypto investor in history.
KARA SWISHER: Yes, because you just bought.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: I finally threw in the towel. And I bought some shares in a bitcoin treasury company. I bought it at $14 and within 45 days I sold it at $4.50.
KARA SWISHER: Nice done. Well done, well done.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Yeah, well done. Look. CoinMarketCap’s crypto and fear greed index is now at a 9, indicating extreme fear. This is the highest reading in the index’s nearly three years of existence. Bitcoin, Bitcoin’s basically been cut in half since its high. And investors had $2.5 billion of bitcoin liquidated in just one day alone.
KARA SWISHER: Even after Friday, bitcoin and then the others have gone down 99%. Like the Melania coin, the Tron.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Other shit coins. Yeah. Even after Friday’s rebound, bitcoin is down 43% from its peak. And then the stocks related to bitcoin per year comments have been hammered. MicroStrategy is down nearly 70% from its peak last summer and down 15% this year. Coinbase is down 60% from its summer peak, down 30% this year. And Tom Lee’s Bit Mine is down 85% from its peak in 34% this year.
Crypto volatility is currently about 8x higher than that of the S&P 500. But what I would say is the following. And I don’t get this market. I respect that bitcoin has established itself as a tangible asset because of scarcity, value because of its technology. I think the rest is pure speculation.
But what typically has happened over the last decade is when bitcoin has these drawdowns and there’s all this fear over the last 10 years, when we look back, those have been buying opportunities. So I don’t, I mean, I always like to talk about what I’m thinking of doing. If bitcoin keeps getting hammered, I actually might buy a little bit. Not because I believe in crypto, but because I like diversification.
And I do think this market is incredibly volatile. I do think bitcoin has established itself as a legitimate asset class. But there’s just, what’s unusual is typically bitcoin is meant to be, it should benefit from a weak dollar in inflation and it’s not. And it ends up that it’s not the default contraindicator of a weakening dollar.
KARA SWISHER: Silver, gold. That’s going to stay.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: We’ll see. At the end of the day, the crypto is really, it’s not investing, it is speculation. I would argue that a little bit of money, 1 to 3% of your portfolio in bitcoin may not be a bad idea. But like I said, I am and.
KARA SWISHER: Only bitcoins, not the other shitcoins.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: I would not do any of the others. The others, to me are just greater full theory come to life.
KARA SWISHER: Yeah, you sucker. I like to call them sucker coins. They’re really.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: You have to watch it every day, and all of a sudden it can take a real, well, volatility is fine. If you’re willing to endure volatility, it means you’ll get greater returns. But what you want to do is you want to diversify across multiple volatile asset classes such that your mental health is somewhat protected.
One of the reasons I like owning real estate is I don’t have a scorecard every day. And also, if you’re looking at your phone too much and you’re really good at this, if you’re looking at your phone too much because you’re checking your stocks all the time, A, that’s a hit to your human capital. And B, you don’t want to be, you never want to go all in on one thing because the markets trump individual dynamics.
And if you bought $10,000 worth of Amazon in 1999, it was worth $400 by the end of 2000. And that takes a huge emotional toll on you.
KARA SWISHER: It does.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: So what you want to do is you want to be diversified and you want to be in good ETFs, good indexes, and then put them away and not look at them and think of them as things you want to hone for five. Look at them once a quarter if you can.
KARA SWISHER: I don’t look at all.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: But, you know, yeah, I think your approach to investing is actually the right approach.
KARA SWISHER: I’m hoping when I’m, it doesn’t really matter my kids. I was thinking, I was doing again the math again that I keep forgetting to do. And I’m like, well, when Saul is going to be able to drink, he’ll be 21. Alex will be 37. I’ll be 112. So it doesn’t really matter to save for retirement. Doesn’t matter.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: You don’t even buy green bananas anymore.
KARA SWISHER: All I need is money to put me in a home and have nice nurses. That’s all. And I can swing that with what I’ve got. Even if I lost a lot.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: I’ll be pushing you around.
KARA SWISHER: No, no, wrong.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: I’ll be pushing other way. And I’ll hire really hot nurses.
KARA SWISHER: Yes.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: And I’ll manage that. I’ll manage that side of your life.
KARA SWISHER: I’ll manage them for you. What are you talking about? I’m like, yes, he’s a little handsy, but just like put up with it.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: A little handsy. Little handsy ish.
KARA SWISHER: Slap them.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Just handsy ish. I told you. Yeah, I already have my nurse picked out, a guy named Manuelo. Very big, with very well moisturized hands.
KARA SWISHER: I’ll have cement there that manhandle you. Anyway, let’s go on a quick break. We come back, Amazon spending spree and what Jeff Bezos is saying about the Washington Post future. All stupid things. Just FYI.
Amazon’s $200 Billion AI Spending Spree
KARA SWISHER: Scott, we’re back. Amazon spending plans are making waves on Wall Street after companies signal massive capex ramp up. Amazon said it expects to spend about $200 billion in 2026, nearly a 60% increase from last year. CEO Andy Jassy justified the spending by sending strong demand for AI, robotics, chips and satellite makes sense for their business in a lot of ways.
The announcement appears to spook investors, though. Sending stock down 10% and wiping $133 billion off of Amazon market cap. What a massive amount. Let’s talk about this. They are at the same time the suck upper that Jeff Bezos has been doing and Andy Jassy too for Trump is reaping benefits under Trump’s new tax.
The company’s corporate tax bill fell to about $1.2 billion last year, down from $9 billion the year before, even though profits jumped roughly 45%. So what Scott says is corporate taxes, just like this has been a boon for Trump has been a boon for these people.
So talk a little bit about these spending because they need to spend in robotics. They obviously need AI to go with the robotics and chips and of course satellites delivery. They have such an unusual business that it’s both analog and advertising and where they market things. It seems like a company that should be spending here. But your thoughts?
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Well the problem with or one of the things that makes our economy so fragile is there’s just a small number of companies can make the, can allocate this sort of capital. And this week and last Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft unveiled plans to spend a combined $660 billion on AI buildout this year. That’s a 60% increase from last year.
Apple is the only big tech company whose capex decreased from last year. And the sheer magnitude is just shocking. That’s three times the global R&D of the pharmaceutical industry. So we’re now spending more on data centers and chips. We’re spending treble what we’re spending on trying to research treatments for cancer and diabetes.
They’re spending more than it costs to build the U.S. interstate highway system. We’re spending more. Those four companies are going to spend more than we spent on the Apollo moon program and the International Space Station combined. And it’s the equivalent of spending about $2 billion a day on AI.
But what I think you’re looking for, if I look at the stocks that are responding to the market positively versus negatively, it’s okay. AI is really impressive because it separates you from the rest. Snap can’t spend billions of dollars to increase the AI targeting of its ad stack. Most companies just can’t spend that kind of money.
But the company that’s really done well here is a company that not only has the huge capex but also is right away showing that they can garner the return that justifies that investment. And that company is Meta. Meta is showing increased click through, increased advertising, increased ARPU and it’s saying this is working for us. So we’re going to outspend every other media company in the world, maybe with the exception of Alphabet.
But these types of investment, there’s just no getting around them. They’re absolutely staggering. I can’t figure out if it’s good or bad. I guess it’s, I’m hoping it results in a lot of vocation.
KARA SWISHER: Wouldn’t you imagine lots of their business does need this kind of stuff. Like you’re thinking of speaking of advertising, they do a lot of it in marketing, right? So they have to understand what’s effective to bring up for people when they search on Amazon, their logistics of their various centers where they, the fulfillment centers, the robotics.
It seems like a lot of this stuff does lend itself to AI being more efficient in that or giving them efficient instructions. I would imagine their business lends itself to this. And you’re right, they’re the only ones that can spend this much. And then once it’s spent, nobody can catch them ever, ever, ever, ever.
The Economic Impact of AI Investment
SCOTT GALLOWAY: It’s just going to have very weird second order effects because if you look at where the money’s being spent. If you look at data centers, most of them could have their lights off during the day. A huge data center that costs hundreds of millions to build employs what Achilles employs and so obviously a huge burst in vocational skills. But then what happens? There’s no really ongoing employment here.
And what I look at is, all right, if you think about, I mean, people say, is AI going to affect me? And my standard line has been AI is not going to take your job. Someone who understands AI is going to take your job. And what you need to think about is, is AI complementary to what I’m doing or is it a substitute?
And Justin Wolfers, the economist from Michigan, pointed this out. If you think about secretaries, my mother was a secretary. She would be out of work right now because AI came along and word processors at the same time. Everyone thought ATMs was going to put bank tellers out of business. There are now more bank tellers than there were pre-ATM.
Because what they said is let’s use technology to upskill you so you can give people mortgages, figure out their financial plan. So just at a ground level, it’s like, okay, how do I use AI as a weapon as opposed to being on the wrong end of the weapon. But the economic reshaping here is just staggering.
But I do think we’re at that point now with all great technologies that end up going on to be hugely important. That this is, I think, we’re overdue for a correction. And the technology I keep coming at and I’m about to buy stock is Novo Nordisk just hit a like a five year low. Novo Nordisk actually rebounded yesterday. But Novo Nordisk, the maker of, I forget which one it is. It was Ozempic or Wegovy.
And I always tell people the most important technology is not AI, it’s GLP-1. And talk to somebody who loves AI and uses it.
KARA SWISHER: There’s an ad for Serena Williams, did Super Bowl, by the way.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Well, talk to anyone who, someone who uses a lot of AI at their work, really enjoys it. It gets a lot of use out of it. But that person is also on GLP-1. Ask them what’s having a more profound impact on their life.
Corporate Tax Cuts and Their Impact
KARA SWISHER: Yeah, can you do a short rant about the corporate taxes and the benefits of being in the Trump administration for these companies by sucking up? Unless you don’t want to.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Well, look, as a percentage of GDP, corporate taxes have never been lower. And as a percentage of GDP, wages have never been lower. And as a percentage of profits, corporate profits have never been a higher percentage of GDP.
In sum, there’s always a healthy tension between capital and labor. But basically what you have with AI, shareholders love AI because what you’re seeing across all of these companies is margin expansion but no incremental increase in employment. And then lower taxes, that’s great for shareholders.
And then the lower tax argument is basically the strategy for the last 40 years. And the Republicans is just lower taxes, it’ll trickle down. All it’s doing is just pushing back debt on young people. But if you just look at the balance, if you just assume at some point we have to pay for our Navy and our parks and for food stamps, the question is, well, who pays?
KARA SWISHER: Yeah, I can’t believe they went from $9 billion to $1.2 billion. That is a savings. That is a, oh, God, I wish.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: What’s this? Repeat that, Kara.
KARA SWISHER: Amazon. Under the Trump’s new tax law, the companies. This is Amazon’s corporate tax bill fell.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: To 1.2% automatic expense. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
KARA SWISHER: It’s down 45%.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: It’s really, the tax code has gone from 400 pages to 4,000. And the 3,600 pages, one by one, kind of fed the middle class. And it wasn’t, these aren’t malicious people say, let’s f the middle class. What they are is really talented people. On behalf of lobbies like Amazon that says let’s figure out a way to expense all capital expenditure in year one.
KARA SWISHER: But it’s Trump’s new tax law. It’s even more advantageous to them. This was always the game, folks. Is them getting more more for themselves. It really was with Trump. Some of them don’t like him. Some of them do.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: This has been happening across Democratic and Republican administration.
KARA SWISHER: Agreed. But this new tax law is $1.2 billion from $9 billion. That’s quite a lovely.
The Washington Post Crisis
SCOTT GALLOWAY: I agree with you. And two things can be true at once. Biden, for all the talk about progressive policies and the need to reduce the deficit, taxes on corporations went down during the Biden administration. So here’s the bottom line. The only way you get reelected, which must include reservations and blow jobs because these people cling to power like an African dictator. So that was both offensive and a hate crime and racist.
But these people have decided that they will do anything to stay in office. And the way they stay in office is with a thoughtful lobbyist who says, oh, just implement this one little tax change called 1202, where entrepreneurs and VCs get their first 10 million out. And incrementally what we have done is lower taxes on the 0.1% in corporations. And we haven’t raised taxes on the middle or low income. That’s a myth.
What we’ve done is we’ve raised taxes on Future Generations with $7 trillion in spending on $5 trillion in receipts. So the people who’ve had their taxes increased the most are a 55 year old who is now 25. Because we have the full faith and credit to borrow that money. That full faith and credit and that borrowing power will go away. And at some point someone’s going to have to pay the piper either through massive inflation or revolution or much higher taxes.
KARA SWISHER: Yep, absolutely. Yes, kissing up works. But speaking of kissing up, Jeff Bezos is finally speaking about the future of the Washington Post following last week’s layoffs. He said in a statement the Post had an essential journalistic mission and an extraordinary opportunity. Bezos added that readers provided a roadmap to success and that data tells us what is valuable and where to focus. Well, data. They all left after he did any number of things.
The Bezos statement came shortly after Post CEO and publisher Will Lewis announced his exit from the paper. I think it was exited from the paper, allegedly Post CFO Jeff d’Onofrio. I met him when he was at one of the tech companies with CFO AT is stepping in as acting CEO. What a big. I’m going to comment on this data tells us what is valuable. You’re kidding. No shit, Sherlock.
At the same time, you have to create products that doesn’t necessarily follow data. You have to use both data and create creativity to create a journalistic product. I mean, anyone would tell you, don’t get together with Scott Galloway, Data speaking. And of course, it worked out beautifully. You have to have lots and lots of things that go into media.
Jeff Bezos has made a number of errors recently over the past two years and that’s the reason people have fled in droves from the Post as other places are doing much better. In the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, the numbers are up. Lots of really interesting independent media companies. It’s not true that he couldn’t do something. And of course he’s never blamed himself for this f up. Will Lewis. Good riddance has been terrible. Bezos didn’t, Bezos again, did not step in and deal with this guy when he was very clearly fing up. So that’s my thoughts. You don’t have to have any, but you can.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Well, what I don’t get is, and maybe you’ve done some reporting here, we had these ideas about putting together a new group. The bottom line is it’s subscale. Why wouldn’t the New York Times or even Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal take this on and starch out some of the overhead costs, but take that traffic and a great brand and try and do something with it?
KARA SWISHER: They could, they could, they could. I would think Bloomberg is always sort of the one.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Oh, Bloomberg, that’s a great one.
KARA SWISHER: Bloomberg to me would be the most. He’s, you know, he’s getting on, I mean, I hate to say it, a younger Bloomberg, certainly, that’s, that’s always, that was one of the possible buyers way back when when they were trying to keep it out of Rupert Murdoch’s hands. But you’re right, the Wall Street Journal would be interesting. The. But why, Why? I mean, I think I could, I’ll call Meredith Levin and ask her. And she’d probably just go, oh, what do I need that for?
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Yeah, why do I need that headache?
KARA SWISHER: What do I need that headache?
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Yeah, but they take, they’ve got, they’ve.
KARA SWISHER: Got a great Washington firm. What do they get? What are they getting? Nothing.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Well, I’m just going to be very, I’ll tell you how this would work. They would go in, they’d buy the brand, they buy the subscription, they pick their 40 or 60% most talented journalists.
KARA SWISHER: Most of whom they’ve hired, but go, go ahead.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: They’d clear out the admin, the sales teams. I mean, the bottom line is print journalism, or whatever you want to call this type of journalism is in structural decline. And it requires. And everyone wants to talk about reinvention. Sure, you have to miss innovation. But more than anything, it requires consolidation and cost cutting. And the Washington Post, I mean, why wouldn’t. I would just think that the Washington Post would be an outstanding Washington bureau and they’ve built a lot of credibility. They have a decent subscriber base, but they don’t have the technology.
KARA SWISHER: It’s not a decent. It was until this past year. It’s cratered because of decisions Jeff Bezos has made direct decisions by Jeff Bezos.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: I’ve heard their traffic, their website traffic is off by nearly a half in.
KARA SWISHER: The last three years anyway. But you’re buying, you’re buying a great brand. A vehicle is how I look at it.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Right. But wait, tap to is. I mean, to a certain. I hate to say this, it’s almost. It’s a perfect candidate for a prepackaged bankruptcy. And that is, you declare bankruptcy, you clear out all the obligations, including probably an overpriced headquarters, all the obligations they have, and you say, okay, 30% of you are keeping your job, and that’s it.
I mean, this is. No solution here is elegant. That’s going to paint a brave new. Everyone’s hoping if there’s some guy who comes in and thinks, you know, I got five or six billion dollars, I’ll waste a billion over the next 10 or 20 years, fine. I don’t know if that person. It’s like they say in therapy, no one’s coming to save you. Yeah, but I don’t.
KARA SWISHER: It is a great brand. It’s a great brand and there’s a lot you could do with it that’s different and that if you had some of the breathing room. But you got this meddlesome owner who every time he meddles, does something stupid, he hires.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Do you think he’s meddlesome? I, I do.
KARA SWISHER: I think he is. I think he meddled in the Kamala thing. It was him. He meddled in all manner of things here. He’s meddled in a lot of stuff. And you know what? Let me just tell you. Jeff Bezos, let me speak to you directly. You are an astonishing entrepreneur. You did amazing things with Amazon. You went left when everyone went right. Everyone didn’t believe you. You really know how to run an e-commerce company. And you’re okay at space. I think it’s a little bit more of a luxury for you, but whatever, go for it. I don’t care if you spend your money there.
But you don’t know squat about media at all. And to act like you’re an expert in this is really exhausting. And you’re not. You suck at it. You should get out of it, and you’re just not good at it. I don’t know why we listen to you for five seconds on this topic. There’s lots of smart people who know about this. You should put it in their hands or just sell it. Just sell it.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: You don’t care about it. The problem is five Vogue, Jeff.
KARA SWISHER: Go ahead. Sorry.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Yeah, go. Bye. Bye. The problem is, whoever buys this is inheriting an unsustainable cost structure.
KARA SWISHER: Yes.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: And so it’s either a prepackaged bankruptcy or you say to the current owner, look, you’re going to have to do the hard work and clear out a lot of the costs here, which he may be doing. You probably have to bolt it on to another infrastructure, whether it’s Bloomberg or the NYT or the Wall Street Journal. But if a bunch of people get jonesed up into raising money and finding people and try and reinvigorate the thing, you’re basically going to create, you know, it’s trying to bring Frankenstein back for a second time.
The Economics of Journalism
KARA SWISHER: Well, I would agree. There’s a lot of people who contact me and they get disappointed because I go, well, it’s not economic. Like, let. We need this. One of the things that the reporters do is they’re like, we need this for democracy. I agree with that. But you still have to run a business. Like, I say that, I’m like, don’t make that the argument. It’s, of course, the art. It’s the understanding. The press is very important for the future. It’s always been. And it’s part of the many things that I are that help our democracy thrive.
And that’s not the argument you have to create. I always say I said it to someone. I think they were disappointed because they wanted me to be like Joan of Arc. I was like, it’s called the news business. You got to make a business out of it and you got to figure it out and get the costs in line. And what I think has happened here is, you know, it’s been so distant and meddlesome at the same time.
Will Lewis was incompetent and meddlesome at the same time and kind of cruel not to say anything while you did it. I mean, as you say, how you leave is how you, how you begin. Like how you leave is critically important. And him showing up all ragged. Look at the NFL parties while he was laying off people. Just not a good look. It’s just not a good, it’s not respectful. And these people have worked hard, a lot of them and so most of them actually.
And that’s, I don’t know. I don’t know. You’re right. It has to something, something fresh. But to me it’s a great vehicle for somebody including I have some ideas but you know, it’s a great vehicle and it’s still not a dead brand. That’s my feeling. It’s not.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: But look, I, I, I’m more, I’m, I’m just. People will say that this is another example of how democracy dies at the Washington Post dies and this is the bottom line without there’s a ton and a lot of these people will end up at places there’s a ton of sharp critical, anti-establishment new media brands. The Intercept, Democracy Now, Jacobin, Chapo, Trap House. Citations needed. Navarro Media, the Bulwark, Truannon.
KARA SWISHER: Well, a lot of them aren’t doing original reporting but go ahead. Yes, go ahead.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Well that’s the correct point and that is there is no or little economic viability in hard hitting investigative journalism, especially at the local level. The amount of grift and corruption and like name your local state capitol because there aren’t any reporters covering any of this shit. But the notion somehow that we’re not going to have any really thoughtful, interesting, progressive media if the Washington Post goes away. No, all of those people will go to smaller are cool little media firms that are doing a great job and quite frankly have figured out a way to be more economically viable, total cash flow positive apparently. Does the Atlantic do well?
KARA SWISHER: Yes, very smart. Nick Thompson. Lorraine is a great owner. Jeff Goldberg. A great stuff. They’re making products people want. Like it’s not. This is the thing. Let’s stop talking about this. Jeff, you’re bad at this. Just at least have a talk with me. Just meet me. I don’t like you, you don’t like me. So what? What Big deal. I’d love to have a talk. I know you’re a smart person, but you really need to do something else and not sell it to a hedge fund or the wrong owners. Just do the right thing. Just for the last, for the last time, do the right thing.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: I don’t know. I can’t handle the Atlantic. Every headline feels like it was written by someone who’s disappointed in you but still wants to be invited to your wedding.
KARA SWISHER: They’ve done some amazing reporting. It’s not true. They’ve done. You don’t read it enough. You just read headlines.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: The Atlantic doesn’t do hot takes. It does foreplay for a conclusion you already disagree with.
KARA SWISHER: Does not. It’s the only one that also has concern. Sometimes I call it Bad Atlantic and Good Atlantic. Sometimes they do the most irritating things that you would like it. They’re contrarian.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: I think the Atlantic is what happens when someone at the bar who’s a woke person that’s not that attractive makes eye contact with you.
KARA SWISHER: No, no, it’s doing great. It’s doing great. Anyway, let’s go on a quick break. And we come back, the latest media merger gets Trump’s seal of approval.
Scott we’re back with more news. This is interesting. Speaking of media stuff, President Trump is now endorsing NextStar Media’s takeover, $6 billion acquisition of Tegna, saying it will help knock out the fake news because there’ll be more competition. These are two giant local firms.
Back in November, Trump seemed to be opposed to the deal writing on Truth Social, “No expansion of the fake news networks now.” I guess they sucked up because of Jimmy Kimmel. Everything else Nextar owns or part with over 200 stations with the addition of Tegna would cover roughly 80% of the country. Excuse me, I would call that a monopoly.
The FCC currently prohibits companies from owning broadcast stations that reach over 39% of U.S. households, so that’s double. So Trump obviously shifted because, I don’t know, is there a donation somewhere? Something else? I don’t know, but it’s a massive. They’re allowing this merger and then opposing the Netflix one. It’s so ridiculously hypocritical. Every time they turn around, they like one thing but not the other. Any thoughts on this Tegna Nexstar thing?
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Yeah, but the Atlantic is like the person that ruins brunch by asking about the long term implication of eggs.
KARA SWISHER: Okay, move along. They’re doing great without your insults. Tell me about this.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Every Atlantic journalist thinks that sex is a phageal outgrow.
KARA SWISHER: Okay, let’s move along. Nextar Tegna. Much more significant.
Trust Busting and Media Consolidation
SCOTT GALLOWAY: You and I are both talking to Democratic candidates for president and one of the platforms I think they should adopt is trust busting. We need to go the other way. If you want to bring prices down, you can’t have three chicken companies, you can’t have three pharmaceutical companies. You can have four streaming media platforms. You can’t have one search engine. You need to break all of these guys up. We need to go the other way.
And we need to separate the whole point. I mean, let’s, can we talk about Ted Sarandos congressional testimony? Because I think it’s related.
KARA SWISHER: Sure.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: You had some coin operated Republicans who are being funded by the Ellisons.
KARA SWISHER: Yeah. Try to say Tim Scott, particularly recently has been on the show.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Try to say, “I’m worried about Netflix claiming that 50% of Netflix children’s programming is LGBTQ content.”
KARA SWISHER: Yeah.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: And just so you know, they never cared about antitrust. Media companies are allowed to have a viewpoint.
KARA SWISHER: Yes, they are.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Fox has a viewpoint, it has a bias. CNN has a viewpoint, it has a bias. Netflix, as far as I can tell, is the most apolitical of all of them.
KARA SWISHER: Agreed. They really are.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: And the way it works in a capitalist society is the person with the biggest check shows up and then it goes under regulatory review around whether the concentration of power will ultimately be bad for consumers. It has nothing to do with how much LGBTQ content you think incorrectly has been incorporated into kids content.
And to see all of a sudden these Republican lawmakers start talking about media bias and free speech, it’s just insane. It’s like, okay, how much money are you getting from the Ellisons who don’t want to do what you do in a capitalist society? And just pay more for the prize you want.
So this politicization or weaponization, Trump should have nothing to do with any of this. He should be, oh, well, as far as I understand, highest bidder wins. And I appointed the FTC and the DOJ to do a review. Yeah, that’s it.
KARA SWISHER: Even the Ellison, he shifted. He shifts on everything depending on who gives him money. But that’s, you know.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Yeah. So I don’t, I hope that, and by the way, I’ve said, and I talked to Ted Sarandos over the weekend, I’ve said I hope neither of them get it. I think there’s too much concentration of power here. I don’t think one man should control TikTok, CBS News and CNN.
And I also don’t think Ted should control what is kind of called the Walmart of content with Netflix and the LVMH, HBO. I’m like, ultimately that’ll give you too much pricing power. It’ll be good for shareholders. If I were on your board, I would tell you to do exactly what you’re doing. But we don’t need one man owning TikTok, CBS and CNN and we don’t need one person owning HBO.
KARA SWISHER: And I mean, Ted is not the Ellisons.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: The Ellisons are only, well, one company. But they’ll all be focused on. You get my meaning here?
KARA SWISHER: I get it. Except that the Ellisons have promised to change. Of all the people that are actually trying to change it, the Ellisons have promised Trump they’ll make CNN.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Netflix is the least political.
KARA SWISHER: Correct.
The AI Threat to Hollywood Jobs
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Their bias is more subscribers and shareholder value. That’s what their bias is. The Ellisons seem to have more of a quote, unquote, political, yeah, yeah, more of a political bias. Although at some point they’re going to have to be.
What I don’t get, you know what they’ve really missed? And I told Ted this on Saturday, and he’s just not like this because he’s too much of, kind of like a gentleman farmer. If Netflix wanted to go gangster, they do the following. They’d get every single labor union in Hollywood to recognize one fact. If Netflix takes over, let’s assume one of them gets it. If Netflix takes over Time Warner, I think employment will be flat, maybe to a little bit down.
If the Ellisons get this thing at the price they’re going to have to pay for it, and they’re kind of ground zero for AI. Do you know what’s going to happen to the employees at these companies?
KARA SWISHER: Yes, I do.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Dad is going to say, all right, we’ve got to figure out a way to justify this cost. By the way, I am huge into compute and inference and I’m buddies with Sam Altman. I have no love for Bryan Cranston or these directors or these precious screenwriters or script writers at SpongeBob SquarePants. How can we use AI to take out, which they’ve talked about 80%.
KARA SWISHER: That is their big calling card.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Hey, writer’s guild. Hey, Avtra and SAG. Do you realize the literally the f* and not the good kind you are about to get if the Ellisons and AI have to justify the price that Zaslav has been able to get?
KARA SWISHER: Larry’s numbers are off rather significantly, too. He’s lost billions and billions. He’s way down. I mean, he doesn’t have the extra money to spend. So they’re really going to cut. They’re really going to. This is a ridiculous extravagance for them. This is an extravagance. This is a yacht that they’re buying. I would agree.
But on that topic, the FCC, under village idiot Brendan Carr has launched a probe into the View. The FCC is investigating whether the show broke equal time rules for interviewing political candidates. After the show interviewed Democratic Texas Senate candidate James Talarico.
I think what the View should do is invite Brendan Carr on and have them eat him, all those ladies, because they would take him apart bit by bit. Another thing that’s stupid like, just stupid like. What are you doing? This is not making the airwaves safer for anybody or better or more fair. This is just you playing politics for your next job, you dumbass. All right. That’s all I have to say about Brendan Carr, your thoughts?
SCOTT GALLOWAY: We need an FTC and a DOJ that do their job.
KARA SWISHER: This is FCC, but go ahead.
Market Consolidation and Education Costs
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Yeah, well, okay, whatever. The same thing over here. These aren’t supposed to be weapons of enriching the president and his allies. Yep. This is all the same. This is all cut from, you know, the same cloth here. These are supposed to be independent agencies that think about the consumer. Also think about shareholder value, also think about the health of U.S. markets.
But again, it’s the boring stuff nobody wants to talk about. Our markets have become way too consolidated, and the result is they have way too much. You know, we have, we have two good schools in every major city. We need five they need to be competing with.
I just went through this early admissions bullshit. They quote, unquote, take the admissions rate from 9% to 14% so we all go early admissions. Do you know what that means? What? I’m sorry, early decision. It means if you get in, you have to go. What do you think happens?
The deal is the following. And this happened with my son. You pick one school, they tempt you with a higher admissions rate. If you get in, you have to immediately withdraw all applications from every other university. What does that do? It gives you no pricing power. You can’t ask for financial aid, you can’t ask for a scholarship.
So what do they get to do? They get to increase their prices faster than inflation, which Education has done. And by the way, the agency that provides accreditation such that you can get debt from the government, low interest debt to pay for your student loans, has not admitted almost any new university. So in every major city there are two great schools. And that’s it? That’s it.
KARA SWISHER: Did the Galloways just get the bill for school? Yes, we thank you.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Jesus Christ.
KARA SWISHER: I know, I know. I’m almost.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Kara, it’s lucky I’m a rich man. I sat my son down yesterday.
KARA SWISHER: I’m on my last couple of months.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: I want to give you a lesson in tuition and what it means to pay for tuition and post tax dollars and how much this meal plan is going to cost you and just how ridiculously blessed you are. And by the way, be f* nicer to your mother after I go through these numbers with you.
It is. Do you realize the galleries got the bill? When you think about the means of getting ahead and the means of establishing a family and saving, you think about education, you think about housing, and what has my generation done? They have purposely created scarcity such that the houses and the degrees we already own skyrocket in value, which is absolutely f* young people.
How on earth does any middle class family send a good but not freakishly remarkable kid to college these days? How does that happen? And then, you know, one of the reasons, you know, one of the reasons why these gambling sites are booming and gaming is booming. Because if you’re not saving for a house, you’re more inclined to buy crypto or do stupid stuff with your money and you’re less inclined to stay in a relationship or taking a risk on a relationship because you’re not saving for a house or building anything.
KARA SWISHER: Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed. I did do a 529 many, many years ago for the boys and I was very aggressive and I was glad I was. The stock market did well and was able to pay for their college using that. But I have to say it’s not. I know, sometimes those 529s aren’t the way to go, but that’s what I did and it worked out for me. But, God, I got the tuition.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: My, this, I’m like, I said to my son, I’m like, this is a state school.
KARA SWISHER: Wait, hold on.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: What’s going on here? This is a state school.
KARA SWISHER: I know. You haven’t even gotten food and living.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Oh, my God.
KARA SWISHER: I know, I know. Welcome. You know what? I’m going to go down there with you when you go visit him.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Oh, we’re going to have so much fun.
KARA SWISHER: We’re so much fun.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: We’re going to the UVA. We’re going to go to the UVA Cal game. It’s going to be amazing.
KARA SWISHER: I’m coming down there. I love UVA.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Oh, it’s going to be a ton of fun. He’s already talking. I told him last night I’m coming down for the UVA cow game. You know what he said? No. I’m like, oh, that’s going to be funny. He’s like, I don’t know if I can get you tickets to the football game. I don’t know.
KARA SWISHER: Doesn’t matter. We just want to come down. We’re riding horses.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Something tells me I’m going to figure out a way to get my own ticket. He’s already making excuses. He’s already envisioning me embarrassing him in front of his friends. He’s already trying to discourage me from coming to a football game next semester in fall.
KARA SWISHER: Yeah.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Anyways, we’re going down.
KARA SWISHER: All right, we’re going. Scott and I are riding our horses down there. All right, one more quick break. We’ll be back for wins.
Wins and Fails
KARA SWISHER: Okay, Scott, let’s hear some wins and fails. I think I’ll go first. My fail as always. Elon seems to be abandoning his plans to go to Mars. He posted over the weekend that SpaceX has shifted its priorities to build a self-growing city on the moon in order to get to Mars so that we can save the human race.
This guy changes his tune so much, it’s just like, oh my God, when are you going to stop believing this nonsense? He’s done an amazing job with the things he’s had here on Earth, but not compared to the lies he tells about what he’s going to be doing in the future. But he’s going to the moon, folks, so that’s what he’s doing. Again. Sounds good. He should go. I think it’s a great idea. More Elon off the planet, the better. Sounds great.
My win is I got Scott Galloway to watch “Much Heated Rivalry.” How’d you like it, Scott?
SCOTT GALLOWAY: I did it on edibles when I was jet lagged and I am rethinking everything, Kara. I’m absolutely rethinking everything. I thought it was wonderful. I really, it’s just really well done and I think it’s important. I think young people need to have more sex. And I think there’s a lot of sex with accident. Oh my God. Crazy sex.
KARA SWISHER: Well, sex is their way to get to intimacy. You do see that, right? That’s how they move.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Dudes use sex or intimacy. Women use intimacy for. No, wait. Women use sex or intimacy. Men use intimacy for. I did. Some of it kind of shocked me and I immediately had to go to that lesbian series just to get my mojo back. Yeah, a little bit, a little bit.
KARA SWISHER: I’ll tell you. I interviewed the creators. You should go.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Listen, I saw that. They’re Canadian, right?
KARA SWISHER: Canadian. Yeah, yeah.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: I want to do an erotic drama about the behind the scenes going on of the world’s best badminton team.
KARA SWISHER: That’s what everyone’s saying. Like, they’re like, what about rugby? What about this? Can I make one other observation? I think one of the things about it and then you can get your winning fails is that there’s this. There was one of the things they said in the interview. And I think there was this whole incredible market of people who like this particular book series. It’s a romance novel for women. Right.
This is a women, straight women oriented romance novel that was hugely popular. And one thing they’re like, how could it miss when it had such a massive market of fans? And people ignore these markets. And that’s one of the reasons it’s already caught on with everybody else. But the initial strength of it was for this romance novel market that all these sort of guys that are like green lighting things did not understand.
And I thought that was a real win for smart creators who understood, who understand where their fan bases and markets. So I thought that was. I talk a lot about the business of “Heated Rivalry” with these guys. And so I thought that was. It’s just a real win on a business point of view too. All right. Your wins and fails.
Love as a Political Platform
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Yeah. And I go. I come back to when I was thinking about “Heated Rivalry” because everyone’s asking me, what do you think about “Heated Rivalry”? I think a decent place to start an entire political platform or guidance for a political system, an economic system. It sounds corny. It’s love.
And that is all right. If people can’t make enough money in a low employment economy such that they’re so stressed out they can’t raise their kids, well, that economic policy is getting in the way of love, and we need to revisit it. If the divorce rates are skyrocketing because of economic anxiety and because 40% of households have medical debt that’s getting in the way of love, we need to stop it.
If any sort of discrimination is stopping people from loving each other, committing to each other. And I think marriage is a good thing because it stops you from exiting relationships just because they both have outdoor plumbing that’s getting in the way of love. I think you could reduce, I think, the whole idea of a prosperous nation. We tend to think it’s the S&P. It’s not. It’s someone’s ability to find someone else and to share their life with them and notice each other’s life.
And that’s why I think the sex recession among young people is absolutely terrible. And I also think about all the men I grew up with who basically imposed society imposed on them a set of rules and standards that said you’re not supposed to be in love because your inclinations towards love are perverted according to our laws.
But I think you could literally say, start from the notion of love or connecting with someone economically, spiritually, psychologically, financially and reverse engineer into what makes good public policy.
KARA SWISHER: Yeah. Anyway, there you go. Love, sweet love. That’s what Bad Bunny said.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: That’s my platform.
KARA SWISHER: That was when he said love. Okay.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: That’s my platform. Wins and loss. Okay. Wins and fails. Okay, so my win, my win. I’m trying to bring attention to some younger creators who I just think are outstanding and I consistently find myself on this one. Creator, creators. I brought up Kyla Scanlon, this young, she’s going to be 26, female economist who I keep bringing on Propji.
But recently I find myself just absolutely obsessed with this guy on TikTok named Jio Hussar. And he talks about economics and geopolitics and he’ll go deep into the weapon systems of Ukraine versus Russia. And while the oil infrastructure for Russia is collapsing, he’ll talk about the Fed and interest rates. And this guy is just so. It’s like the eighth grade kid who was kind of introverted and good at math and he’s found TikTok and he’s just f*ing fascinating. And you can tell he just does the work.
And so much of my thought leadership or my views on economics and geopolitics are informed by this guy’s amazing work. So people are consistently asking me what are my sources of information. I get a lot, I got to be honest, I get a lot from social media. And this one guy on TikTok, the Geo Hussar for geopolitics and economics is a gift. And it’s also, to be clear, a real endorsement of these platforms. He’s not, you know, he’s not Dan Rather or he doesn’t have, you know, he’s not Brian Williams, he doesn’t have that polish. He just does the math and he’s sort of unafraid. Anyway, my win is Geo Hussar. He’s fantastic. Check out his content.
The Danger of Dehumanization
My loss is the following. I fairly get criticism for too easily comparing the Nazis to the Trump administration. And what I do think is fair though is looking at kind of late stage Weimar Republic public and what was going on then in the Trump administration. And some of the things we share were a secret police loyal to one man, not to an institution, a collapse in the cultural and economic standing of middle class men. Back then it was about industrialization and automation. Now I would say it’s about AI, this notion that the enemy wasn’t abroad, but it was the enemy within.
The fact that we started shipping people to different sites outside of the country where they had some sort of legal protection. What we also had in the 1930s was a lot of the people in power very purposely started comparing undesirables or their enemies, whether it was gypsies or socialists or trade unionists or Jews, they started comparing them purposely to animals.
And when I saw the president this week compare the Obamas, President Obama and First Lady Obama to animals, to apes. We have seen this before. When you normalize the dehumanization of people based on their ethnicity or on their beliefs or on their religion, you have to shut that s* down right away. And the notion that, oh, he didn’t see it or you can’t take him literally. Well, okay, what would you know? The 60 million people who died in World War II would like a word.
When the President of the United States is referring to past presidents and people who have been an absolute blessing to this society, when he starts comparing them to animals. We are 1930s Germany. It has never been accepted before in our society. We have never normalized it, we have never allowed it. And this individual is talking about, he’s referred to as political enemies, as vermin, as animals.
And so all of the notion that more Republicans have not stepped up and said, we just can’t have this. We cannot go back. We cannot be like Weimar Germany. We can’t have democratically elected leaders referring to their political enemies as animals. And so my fail is that so many people seem to be making excuses for it. They’re not checking back on it.
This is a different level of danger when we start convincing people. And we need Republicans here. Democrats will always find reasons for why everything Trump does is wrong. If at some point Republicans, you know John Thune, who I think is a good man, if he doesn’t stand up and say, you can’t. We can’t equate our political enemies with animals.
KARA SWISHER: Do that. Like Thom Tillis when they’re not running again, then they get. Then they.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Well, then they find their balls.
KARA SWISHER: Yep, yep.
SCOTT GALLOWAY: Anyways, my win is the Geo Hussar. My loss is the normalization of referring to people as animals. It leads to very dark places.
KARA SWISHER: Yeah, I think your comparison is just fine. But anyway, before we go, listen up. If you have a juicy situation you’d like our advice on, call us at 855-51-PIVOT. Think work drama, finance. Make it juicy, people. This is not career advice. Ask. This is I want to date my co-worker or I made a huge financial decision, I regret type Ask. We want something a little more personal. We can’t wait to hear from you on that.
And elsewhere in the Kara and Scott universe, for the last episode of On, I spoke with longtime defense attorney Abby Lowell, who is representing some of the most high profile targets of the Trump administration right now, people like New York Attorney General Letitia James, Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, and independent journalist Don Lemon. And this is very much to Scott’s last point. Let’s listen to a clip.
VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:
ABBY LOWELL: I don’t know that I thought that them going after Don Lemon was their highest priority. Right. I should have known better because what we know about this administration is they’re very good at basically saying, if this is my right hand, pay attention to it while I do something with my left. They are the administration of distraction.
VIDEO CLIP ENDS:
KARA SWISHER: 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.
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