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

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That's this week on Unexplainable Wherever You Get Your Podcasts. You know, you could call me for free and I would probably do a better job. You're not available. And by the way, define free. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Cara Swisher. And I'm, where am I? I'm Scott Gow. I start in Shetland. How is your tour going? I've gotten reports from the Castro about you or in my neighborhood. Yes, I was. When what is one of the most beautiful new theaters? Oh, my gosh. Yeah, it's not new. It's really old and they just renovated it. Renovated. Excuse me. Yeah. Recently renovated. It's great. It was sold out. One of my a couple of my role models were there. David Acker, who is, of course, I teach now, who's 88 and changed my life. Deeds brand strategy at Haas. The chancellor of Berkeley who was there who let me in with a 2.27 GPA. My sister, my niece, my nephew. So it was a nice night as I often do and talking about the age crisis. In the 90s, I started crying. Oh, yeah. You know, the Castro Theater, a straight white man with erectile dysfunction, crying. And the chancellor of Berkeley. Oh, and the marching band. The marching band was there. My lawyer, Jesse Berg, sent me a, he loves Pivot and he said it was really fun. And it was really good. I'm sad that Louis could not go. My son lives a block, two blocks away, essentially. And he was working. He's a, he's a, he's a chef. And so he had the night, the evening dinner shift. So he said he was sad, but he wished you well. So how's it going? Where are you going next? What's your next thing? Well, I'm here. I'm back. I only went up for the show. I'm back in LA and it's my favorite place to visit in the world. I describe LA as the world's most successful failed nation state. It's kind of, I think of it as P capitalism here. There's more billionaires in LA than anywhere else, but New York, but meanwhile 75,000 homeless. Yeah. And it feels like I would say it's a town built on delusion, but delusion and creativity can sometimes create a lot of shareholder value. Yeah. Yeah. And I just, I absolutely love Los Angeles. I think it's, you know what it's turning into, Kara? What? What is it turning into? It's turning into San Francisco. And now everyone shitposts Los Angeles. They do. That's the city because San Francisco looks good and it's thriving. Yeah. San Francisco is on the remount. For sure. It doesn't hurt that about, what is it? About $150 billion is about to become liquid on 4 trillion and liquid currency. Right. Yeah. All the years. Yeah. By the way, in San Francisco, rents last month, one month, one bedroom rents up 24%. Everyone's spending their money before they have it. Pending luxury home sales nationally are up 4%. In San Francisco, they're up 48%. Oh, I know. I've had, in back in the first dot com thing, I had people knocking on my door to buy my house and I have people knocking on my board about my house again. It's that, it's that. And I'm like, no, but it's really, it's interesting because lesser priced houses, which are not lesser priced, they're in the million, two million range, aren't selling as well, but the really above three to seven, eight are really going crazy. It's a crazy market, but I'm glad Daniel's, I mean, it has been on the rebound for a while, but yeah, Los Angeles is in that same, we hate ourselves spiral, hence Spencer Pratt, but Los Angeles is a wonderful city at the same time. That's fantastic. You know, it's just, you know, it's sort of, sort of West Side white people that get all mad about whatever and some of them not even in Los Angeles. Well, I will say, and you know, it's not like a Karen, but it feels like I used to say it's a LA, it's a string of suburbs connected by freeways. Now I would say it's a string of bubbles. I mean, the right, the quote unquote, right parts of LA are you for it, they're magical and you venture outside those bubbles and you see a little too much of the real world, which is good for people, but the homeless issue really is staggering here and relative to the amount of money they spend. I can, you really feel it's really interesting here. It feels like the mayoral race here, if there were a movie, it'd be Sophie's choice personally. That's how we describe it. But you, it's a, it is pretty, a pretty decent facsimile of the presidential race in 24. You have who I would describe as someone who's perceived as incompetent and not that compelling, which has created room for rage, cosplaying, a political strategy and a reality star. I mean, this literally is Trump Harris over again right now. And you speak to people in LA, I'm not exaggerating, reasonable, reasonable people who you wouldn't think would be supporting a reality star. And they have just had it and they just want change and chaos and they don't care. Yeah, I, I understand that, but it is a type of person, by the way. First of all, I would not say everybody is like that. It's shocking how many people are just, they don't even want to have a conversation. They're just angry. Here's what San Francisco, I'm just giving the comparison. We didn't reelect the reality star, we reelected Daniel. Oh yeah. They're a technocrat. Technocrat. They should try to find like. That's the thing, not on the ballot. I know that, but it's ridiculous that this is like, it doesn't mean, you know, because something's bad, you should do something absolutely fucking ridiculous and disastrous for the city. But, you know, they'll go through it. If they don't like this guy, they get what they get. That's what, and it's probably a lot of corruption, a lot of incompetence, a lot of just a mess and abuse of people. Like they're going to hire, wait, they're going to go back because the old LA. You know, the only police department and, you know, that, that era of real brutality is really, it was real. And so it's just, it's a wonderful city and it should be doing a lot better. And the homeless problem is significant. A lot of it have to do with the weather. A lot of it has to do with a lot of things. It's not just that. It's that this is a place where people naturally are attracted to. And so all kinds of people. And so it's a really, it's a, anyway. So you're, are you appearing in Los Angeles tonight? Is that correct? Oh yeah. We have Ted Sarandas as our guest tonight. Great. Right. We've got about 30 friends from UCLA coming. Good. Are you sold out in Los Angeles or are you doing? No, we're about, I think we're about 90%. We're sold out in San Francisco. Right. In New York about 90% in LA. It's a big theater. Also, I think LA does, people do last minute and there's so many distractions here. Yeah. Yeah. Are you in the same theater, which we did sell out for pivot. What was it? Um, no, I think we're at the Wiltern. All right. Does that sound familiar? And then, and then I go to Vancouver Island for a speaking gig. And then tomorrow I take the red eye to Miami and we're on Miami Saturday night. Oh, that'll be fun. You love Miami. Yeah, I do. Anyway, well good. I do love Miami. Well, we've got a lot. I'm, congratulations on your tour and congratulations to Ed. Elson too. It's, it's a really nice, these tours are really fun. I'm excited for ours in the fall. We have one of the falls, so get ready, rest up. There we go. You'll have August off so you can rest and everything else. So, um, uh, first off, I have to ask you, by the way, in, you're doing a lot of stuff, but did you watch the Enhance Games last weekend? I didn't, although I gotta be honest, I'm sort of here for it. I think it's, I think it's kind of, I mean, I, I kind of had this idea that just take, you know, holds barred and let free shows show up. Uh, people are doing this to themselves anyways, but I did not, I did not watch it. Although, let me just say, let me, people who don't know the Enhance Games is a new sports event that allows athletes on performance enhancing drugs and encourages them to try to break world records, events included swimming track and field, weightlifting and strong men. The experiment calls itself a global movement that unites humanity, of course, as a publicly traded company. Investors include Donald Trump and Junior and Peter Thiel. There's also a German executive I've met many times who's really into it. Um, there were no things broken except by someone wearing a swimsuit that was barred, this special swimsuit. Uh, I don't know. The stock has gone down. I'm curious if, if there was a fight where both of us were enhanced, who do you think would win? You or I? Well, you know the answer there. Yeah. I've never been in a fight. Yeah, I'm not, I'm not a violent person. If someone hit me, I wouldn't know what to do. You've never been in a fight. Wow. Never been in a fight in my life. You've never been in a fight, I think. Let me think. That might not be true. No, I haven't. No, I haven't. Yeah. And I, you know, I, you know, I, I was beaten up and abused ex-wife, but, um, now I was never, never been in a, never been in a fight. I think that I talk a lot about this, that I think that one of the cores to never miss a chance to, to virtue signal and preach. But I think one of the core, the core principles of, for men as they get older is just quite frankly, it's emotional regulation. You know, are you willing to sit in discomfort and, uh, do you have control over your, your physical and, you know, well-being? Well, it's an impulse to punch, right? An impulse to punch and men have it much more. I have, well, let me think. So Saul's probably the most progressive, my son. So there's no arguing that men are more violent, but that doesn't mean women don't engage in violence. Domestic violence rates and LGBTQ couples, um, is about 25% according to the National Institute for Health. And according to the CDC, anywhere from 17 to 40% of men are victims of intimate partner violence, depending, depending on the research methodology. There's discrepancy between whether it was a phone survey or a web survey. And then furthermore, there's only about three shelters. There's only three, three shelters across the entire U.S. devoted to male domestic violence. Um, there's still a lot of shame and there's a view that might be underreported. Mostly women suffer from those problems. Yeah, but it's true. There's, there's, there's an assumption. Yes, I get it. There's no arguing that men are violent, but that doesn't mean men, women don't engage in violence either. It didn't say that, but the comparison is most violence is committed by men. In general, in general, in general, in general, it's murders, blah, blah, everything, every statistic is largely. It's not really, it's just, I, I, I do think it's a function of gender. I do think it's a function of impulse control and everything else. But I'm no scientist. It's testosterone and cultural norms. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But then there's manliness. This man, there was a really great cover of the Atlantic recently about the sort of the man hating groups. And they're, they're always back. They're always like, they're back. I'm like, they're always there in some weird way. Speaking of man, men, there's a construction cruiser building, the UFC fighting cage on the South Lawn of a White House in preparation for the night of mixed martial arts, celebrating the 250th anniversary of the U.S. independence, over 4,000 spectators plan to watch from inside the arena. Kind of looks like a roller coaster. And there's all this complaining by Joe Rogan and others about gnats and bugs and outside and a lot of some of the champions aren't coming because it's they don't usually do it outside. And it creates a if you're going for a world, you know, these these are actual competitors. If you're going for titles, it's not it's not a good thing to fight outside, apparently. Wayans will be held at the Lincoln Memorial, which is I don't know what to say about that. But OK, fine, fine, fine. I just don't know what to say. I I it looks it's a ridiculous, you know, it feels clownish. But whatever, he's the president. I don't I don't know what to say. I'm not going to get overly angry about it, but it seems ridiculous. But I don't know how you feel. I was invited. I said no, I don't I don't enjoy that stuff. And I don't need to be, you know, I think it's just ingenious for me to show up and break bread or party with someone who I'm constantly critical of. It the event itself is brilliant. You think? Oh, gosh, there there's just an entire generation of young men and and quite frankly, a lot of women, their mothers and their sisters who in America in this little trigger some people still vote for who they perceive will be most beneficial for their husbands and their sons. And young men are doing really, really poorly. And if you think about government, government in the United States, largely speaking, has been feminized. If you look at the events, the events are basically like, you know, like the queen was merchandising and throwing them for government events are very feminine for lack of a better word. Come on, Scott, today you're very anti women today. I'm not going to be a woman. I think feminine is a bad thing. I understand. But what do you mean government things are feminine? Oh, go to anything at the White House. It feels like it feels like it's been designed. Oh, 100 percent. They're very, they're very proper, gentle. They're very feminine. And by the way, that that is a wonderful thing. Well, men can be proper and gentle. I don't I don't think that men can. Yes, men can demonstrate wonderful feminine attributes. Even like metal giving is is a feminine activity or I would describe metal giving. But the the a lot of metal giving at the White House government events and ceremonies tend to be very what people would consider, I think, somewhat more. Well, they're not a UFC fight. They're not a competition. No, but the UFC fight is way down the list. Even like comedy, the White House, the White House dinner comes the closest to sort of something stepping out of what is seeing as overly planned, nurturing, appropriate. Yeah, I think the events are very kind of very feminine. And what is what are these guys doing? They're throwing a UFC fight. And it's kind of I think you're going to have they're going to have huge viewership. It says to Trump, reaffirms his view of one of the reasons he won the election. And that is like, I'm a man's man. I see men. I appreciate quote unquote, for lack of a better term, masculinity. Unfortunately, it's a fucked up, weird, yes, it is a dominant form of masculinity. But it's a brilliant marketing strategy. Smart. I'm not. I don't I think it sometimes works. Like let me give an example of this attempt to turn James Talerico, like Stephen Miller, who is literally the most weak, weak looking person you've ever seen, is calling. You know, he and others are calling because they're terrified of Talerico. So they're pulling out the anti-trans stuff immediately, saying the first trans senator, he doesn't know how to eat barbecue. Is that a Ted Cruz, another like someone I could easily beat in a fight. The tofu barbecue, the idea of soy boy. I mean, this is not manly in any way. This is like this. I don't and I don't think it works as much anymore with people. It's it's deeply insulting. It might work in Texas. I hate to say it. I think they the Talerico people should take this very seriously because Kamala Harrison didn't with the trans stuff that worked really well in the election. And it might work in Texas. But they're trying to, you know, paint him as gay. I think that's what they're where's the girlfriend trans. Is he trans? He's a soy boy. You know, this is all like and what I think about it's so grotesque because I'm like, these are all men over 50 or whatever. I don't mean I mean, Stephen Miller looks over 50 even though he's younger. But this is this like name calling bullying bullshit that is not part of being a man. Any men I know that I think are decent men. I it's fine if people want to do this. I when I was a kid, I went to fights with my grandfather and went to wrestling matches. He was a promoter and he loved it. So I see the the entertainment and everything else in it. But the the the the the soy boy trans thing that they're pushing on Talerico is so so ugly and toxic. And unfortunately, it does work at some point. I don't know if you think it'll work in Texas, but it might. It certainly could. Yeah, I think I think there's a fairly large distinction between a sanctioned sport where it's a lot of men in top physical shape. I don't like it. I don't enjoy watching it. But I think that that is a legitimate sport. It's a huge sport. It's I think arguably one of the most successful sports of the last several decades. It's a well run sport creates a lot of economic value for many of the fighters. So I you know, I think you can I think in a bipartisan way, you can say that the UFC serves a purpose and a successful. The the the ugliness around Talerico is not only that one, it's not true, but two, to assume that leving an accusation that someone is gay or trans is supposed to be negative. It trains young people or people that if you call someone that it it it's your opponent doesn't call you something unless they're trying to say to the world, that's a negative. Right. Absolutely. No, no, and 100 percent. And I hope at some point people regurgitate on things like that and say, quite frankly, it's, you know, someone we used to call in college, you used to call people fags to say this to be gay is to be bad. It's an insult. Dikes and fags. Yep. I got it. At some point, some people, someone says, yeah, and or what it's like people online call me a Zionist and I respond proud Zionist. I mean, I just, at some point people are going to realize going after people's sexual orientation just says more about you than it says about them. It does. It's, but it's, it's a tactic. They're trying to drum that in, in that race and unfortunately it might work in Texas. Well, it's an indictment on Texas that these people have done the research and decided that it works. Yeah. Yes, absolutely. So I hope he responds. I will say this that. I'm not sure what the response is. In defense, well, in defense of James Talerico, he and I follow many of the same people on Instagram and it's not the leaders, Cara. Yes, I know. Yeah, ladies. It's some scorching hot young ladies who make their living with a, with a, with a webcam. They just, they did it. They also try to do it to Andy Beshear. They obviously Beto, everything. You know, it's a, it's, to me, it's at the end misogynistic and speaking of that, the Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation. Of course, this all leads to the same thing. The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll, the formal magazine writer who won two civil lawsuits against Trump totaling, you know, close to $90 million in payments tied to sexual abuse and defamation. The DOG probe is reportedly focused on whether Carol committed perjury and testimony typical. This is what they're doing to, whether it's to Leticia James or whoever they're trying to go at. Specifically, Carol saying she hadn't received outside funding for her legal bills. Her lawyers later said Reed Hoffman had contributed. This is the latest in a series of DOG probes targeting Trump's opponents and critics like James Comey, Leticia James and others. Though none of these investigations have led to convictions. In fact, they get laughed out of court. I spoke to E. Jean Carroll for an episode of On in July 2025. She talked about the threats she's received and why she has no fear. Let's listen. It's stupid to be afraid. Why live your life that way? I've been here 81 years. I'm not going to waste the last of it worrying about that guy in marmalade colored makeup. It makes no sense. So that's what I'm going to do. So what do you think about this? This talk about misogyny and getting, you know, she's won the cases against him and he's trying not to pay them and he's doing everything possible to try not to pay them. And this is the latest Perry using the Justice Department to carry out his toxic misogynistic efforts. I think it comes down to this. So one, if she did say something that wasn't true under oath, that's real. And they're claiming that she didn't acknowledge that she was getting help with her legal bills. I don't know to the extent, though, in a case like that, that is grounds for revisiting a case when it doesn't matter, when it doesn't have anything to do with the actual crime she's accusing the president of. What is consistent here is the weaponization of the DOJ to go after his political enemies. So this is just another example of the fact that we don't have a government that's meant to protect the people. It's now there to protect the president. And I think Eugene Carroll, I mean, I thought, OK, Eugene Carroll is ending the presidency because then he was, I mean, just to keep in mind, folks, this was a jury of his peers who heard a ton of evidence and they said, well, it was in liberal New York. Well, OK, New York, if you had nine jurors, five or probably Democrats, but four Republicans and two to mature a conviction, all nine have to agree. So so this was a, you know, this was there's a reason that when someone is usually convicted of a crime, the public used to come together and say, this person is guilty and should be disqualified or, you know, we keep it every time this stuff happened, we keep we kept thinking that's it. It's over. And it wasn't. But it's just I do think it's important to have a legal scholar to say, in most cases, with this type of infraction, if in fact she and she did, she did not acknowledge that she was having her legal bills paid for. When she was paid, they're going to have to investigate that. But they're just they're just grabbing it straws here is what they're doing. That's what they're trying to do to find some way to impugn her. And so he doesn't have to pay that money. It's all the same. It's all about money. I don't even think it's about the money. I think it's about overturning a conviction of a perceived enemy and going after her. The guy's made billions of dollars illegally on crypto. I think it's he still doesn't want to pay. He's a cheap bastard. He still doesn't want to pay. I'm personally I'm surprised they did this. I would have thought they would. I think this just brings it up again. I would have thought they would want to fade into the distance. He doesn't care. He doesn't care. Anyway, E. Jane, we hope this goes away, but it's such a it's such a fucking nuisance and such a ridiculous nuisance. Anyway, let's go in a quick break. We come back Pope Leo's warning about AI. I'm very excited to talk about this. 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That's odo, odo.com. Scott, we're back and we're going to start off their next topic with a question from a listener. Hi, Kara and Scott. My name's Bridget, and I'm calling from Oakland. I'm asking as a Catholic Buddhist pivotarian, I was so delighted to hear that Pope Bob, also known as Pope Leo XIV, delivered his first encyclical, which was about AI, and he was speaking truth to power from a place of power, which is pretty rare. Have either of you read it, and if so, what do you think? Do you think it can move the needle towards putting guardrails up for this juggernaut that's really careening off the road already? Or maybe even rein in those dickheads who are mindlessly amping it up for their own self-serving profits? Thanks for all the humor and wisdom you've provided over the years, and keep it up. Yep, I just set Prof. G up for a dick joke. I love Bridget. I love our listeners and pivotarian. Let's start a religion. That would be so good. Thank you, Bridget. That was a great question. We love your sassiness. That's the kind of listeners we love. So to catch people up, Pope Leo released his first encyclical this week of a 4,200 word letter about AI titled Magnificent Humanity. The Pope acknowledged that artificial intelligence can be a valuable tool. He did not trash it, but also warned the AORIs could become a new tower of Babel. He shared some strong words about what needs to happen next. Let's listen to him himself talk about it. Artificial intelligence needs to be disarmed. The word is strong, I know. But deliberately chosen because this moment needs words capable of attracting attention, awakening consciences, and indicating paths forward for humanity. Some of the specific things the Pope is calling for, government regulation of private companies driving AI development seems normal, protecting children from violent sexual or fake information generated by AI. Excellent suggestion. Safeguards to make sure humans are responsible for all decisions tied to the use of weapons. Again, a great thing. He also didn't shy away from talking about people at the helm of AI. That was really the focus is who's running it. In the abstract technology in and of itself is not a solution to humanity's problems, just that it is not inherently evil. In practice, however, technology is never neutral because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate, and use it. Some big tech folks are on board here. Anthropic co-founder Christopher Ola joined the Pope at the Vatican as the encyclical was presented, but reactions from DC and Silicon Valley have been mixed. Vice President JD Vance called the Pope's warning profound. That was interesting. But Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told Fox News, I didn't know what tech editorializing was part of the role being a Pope. Well, it is, Doug. It's certainly not part of your role as Interior Secretary. David Sacks wrote, the Pope rightly warns that AI must serve human dignity, not become a tool of domination of exclusion. Someone who dominates and excludes, which is a nice thing to hear. But it goes on, if we hand, of course he goes on, if we hand the government's sweeping power over AI development in the name of safety, how do we prevent it from being used to censor, surveil, or control citizens? Honestly, this guy is so hypocritical. Anyway, what did you think of the take? And I think he's been listening to pivot or a lot of stuff we talked about for years. I love being on this team, but thoughts on this? Well, we talk a lot about the actions of the administration and different things that have just been really bad for brand US, whether it was the insurrection or cutting off USA. There's just been so many poor decisions that have really hurt our brand. I actually think the best thing, or one of the best things that's happened for the US brand, to a certain extent AI and just the economic boom out here, and the fact that we've been the most seminal technology in a long time in terms of share or creation and what might have an impact on the world, it's just owned and dominated by the US. That's very good for our brand. Now, I think it's been great for our brand is Pope Leo. He's just incredibly articulate. He comes across as measured, brave, connects real world issues with spiritual issues and issues of dignity. And he's American. He went to Villanova. Yeah, that voice. Yeah. He's just very good. He's got the Chicago accent. I think he could be wanting to go to Bears. Yeah, right. But just his comments, if you were just to distill his comments, that were really powerful. He believes that AI should serve humanity, not replace it. But the biggest danger is the concentration of power. He's clearly talking a lot about income inequality. And he's skeptical of a small number of companies controlling the infrastructure of intelligence. When he wants, he thinks AI could amplify inequality and create. He talked about a new oligarchy where private firms wheel enormous influence over truth, labor and governments. I would argue that the cat's already out of the bag there. One of the more controversial things, or interesting things I should say, is he said AI is not neutral, that the algorithms encode the values of the creators, not of some sort of neutral view on different views of humanity, which I'm not sure. I actually think in a weird way why social media has polarized us. I think that because I think AI is different, I think it's more, I do think from a viewpoint and ideology standpoint, it's more moderating. And sometimes it comes across as quite politically correct, I think. He also talked about job displacement being a real moral issue. Autonomous weapons terrify him. He called for it to be disarmed and worried about weapons systems operating beyond meaningful human control. And then he talked about human connection, the thing I love in all the software stuff, human connection mattering more than synthetic intimacy. And then, and this is the thing, I think, if you were gonna try and translate this into some sort of legislation, and we're not focused enough on this, is that children are the most vulnerable. And I was just thinking about, think about when you learned to write and how difficult it was. You were on your school newspaper, was that right? Yeah, Claire's doing it right. Yeah, I was. But Claire's doing it right now. It's really interesting to watch. Yeah. I got, in my senior year of high school, I got to see in English. I had a real difficult time writing. And I went through that pain, I went through that friction. And if I had just had AI, like write my papers, I never would have made those connections. I never would have gone through the friction of making those connections. And so, and I think the really trouble writing you're a very good writer, actually. I got seasoned English. Capitalist surprise on the upside with your writing. Well, because I did the work, right? And I think the question is, if you have, if kids have AI, do they ever do the work and make the connections? As a matter of fact, in my first year at UCLA, I was failing English one. And I said, what happens if you fail English one? Because it was a core class, you had to take it, it was a requisite. They say, well, you have to take English as a second language, despite the fact that I didn't speak a second language. Wow. Yeah, that was pretty big. I got my act together. Yeah, the friction. You're right. The friction is what made you a better writer to struggle with it, to figure it out yourself. And this is the problem and the threat of technology across all of our youth. And that is, why venture outside and go through the pecking order and the bullying order and figuring out your place and trying to find or join a gang, if you will, of friends when you think you can have a reasonable facsimile of friendship on Reddit or Discord? Why take risks, go through the expense, humiliation, enduring rejection, trying to find a romantic relationship when you think you can replace it with synthetic, lifelike character AIs or porn? So the defrictioning of life and AI kind of takes it to a new level, especially with academia or academics. It teaches young people to never develop the key skills they have to really be successful in life and enjoy life. Absolutely. I think most important part is this. I do think who's making it matters. And he was very clear about that in terms of, he was saying, like, for example, it's not the morality of AI, it's the morals of the people who make it. And I think he was talking about being a very small group of people who are very interested in money, really. And I thought it was very... One of the things, he was named Pope Leo because of the last pope to do something like this was over manufacturing and the mechanization of things. And it was very selected to pick this topic. He very carefully didn't insult technology, but he really clearly insulted its creators or said, we need to do better. And I think being the conscience, saying Doug Burgum is such a moron, I mean, of course he's the conscience of... That JD Vance acknowledged that, I think. He's the conscience of the world, of his world. And it stands well beyond Catholics, let me say. And I think it's really important for leaders like this to step up and suggest it. And I do think it does have an impact, because people are talking about it. And they are talking about the issues he brought up, including these safeguards around weaponry, protecting children. And this is already in the air with people. And the fact that the pope doesn't stand up without any... And then had some tech people there, I thought it was... He's such a savvy person. I'm excited to see what else he takes on. And of course, the stupid Trump people call him the woke pope. But honestly, he's just... He's the... It's called conscience. It's not woke. It's conscious. But he did say, just to wrap up, when you were talking about automation and the last time technology appeared to be sort of a threat, the Industrial Revolution mechanized labor. And what he's saying is that AI risks mechanizing judgment and creativity and intimacy and even meaning itself. And the way I would interpret his comments was less catastrophizing around AI will kill us. But AI could potentially make us less human while concentrating extraordinary wealth and power in the hands of a few firms and states. I just think... I think this guy distills right to the core of the issues. He is very smart. He is very impressive. He is unafraid. I mean, as smart as he is, he clearly had very smart people working on these... He does. The people I've met at the Vatican are a bit amazing. But I love that he called it magnificent humanity. And by the way, I love that he made cliff notes for people. He made a little chart, which is really good. It's an excellent chart. I love a chart and I love a cliff note. Anyway, there's lots more AI to get to. We have a lot of little stories, but important. Installs for DuckDuckGo jumped 30% after Google announced its first overall in 24 years. Many people are disturbed by this. Google changes include a shift to AI with bigger, more interactive search box that lets users ask longer questions and upload photographs. It's a significant change for search. I have not used Google search in a long time in a weird way. I definitely use it for some things, but I tend to use... I use all kinds of search services, but it's not only through Google, is all I'm saying. It used to be only through Google. And I like the simple box. I feel lucky box. I always thought it was fine, but I see why they're doing it. At the same time, a lot of people are like, now they're never going to link to anything but what they want to link to. But they've just sort of ended it for most people using Google to get to, say, media websites or whatever you're looking for. So that seems to be a shift. I think it's a smart bold move. I think David Minnacues, when you risk what is arguably, or do any tweaks, the temptation around what is the most profitable, largest toll booth in history, when you risk... There's just probably so much momentum to guys don't fuck with it. Like, don't... Absolutely. Don't change anything. So I think it's actually a pretty bold move. And I do find when I do Google search, those AI overused are actually quite helpful. They've gotten better. They were bad and now they're good. Yeah. You said that. You said you like them. I do. So it's... I think it's the right thing. They have to respond. They have to push back. The reason why Alphabet was such an incredible buy trading at 17 times earnings last year was the market believed that open AI and AI queries were an existential threat to search, that it was going to become the new search. And what we're saying is they're both growing on a crazy show. But I find that I do oftentimes go to Claude instead of Google. Yeah, exactly. And Google just never gives me what I want anymore. It's useless in some ways. But when I look for like, how do you boil an egg or... I don't do that. But how many minutes for jammy egg? I'll go to Google. But now actually I might go to Claude. You're right. I might do that. So they kind of have to. You're right. I know people are bothered, but they have to change. You're absolutely right. Next up, President Trump abruptly postponed signing an executive order on AI after former AIs are David Sacks, reportedly voiced concerns it could prove too onerous for the industry. He got back. He had lost power. Then he got it back, I guess. The order would have granted the government oversight on a new AI models before they released to the public. Very temporary oversight, by the way. And it was... Some of it was voluntary. AI companies also have been told that Trump was not happy that many of their chief executives could not attend the signing. That's probably more to the point. Being invited just 24 hours prior, I don't think this order was surfaced. There was a brief attempt by certain people within the Trump administration who were more interested in safety issues. And David got in there. And so did Zuckerberg and someone else. I can't remember. It was a third person who got in there and convinced him otherwise. But Elon, it was Elon. This was... I thought it was a good idea. The order would have required AI labs to share frontier models with the government 90 days before public release for security review. That seems like a very important and basic first step for any of this. I mean, something that really struck me was the founders of this technology, the people that know more about it than any in the world, are saying that this technology is potentially more liberating than nuclear fusion and potentially more dangerous. So here's a technology that the people who understand it the best are saying is potentially more dangerous than nuclear weapons. We didn't let Oppenheimer start a company and start selling bombs to China. That's a good comparison. That's actually a very good thing. Well, I think there's a really decent rational argument that if in fact you have something that is potentially more dangerous than any weapon in history, wouldn't you want the government controlling it? Yes, we want it to be part of the decision making. We're not only not controlling it. It's not only done under the auspices of the Department of Defense, cooperating with the private sector, Lawrence Livermore labs or what have you. We have people trying to go public and who have lawyers and lobbyists, many of whom stepped in here to say, we all talk about the need for regulation. We've been to this movie before. We show up and stand next to the Pope and say in Cosplay, Charles Sandberg, we need to do better. We are open to regulation. Then, oh, no, get on the phone. Tell him no. Tell him to stop. Tell him his big bet on AI. 93% of GDP growth is now from AI, CapEx. Can't do anything to get in the way. If you slow our runners down, the free games, anabolic steroid, pumped up Chinese models are going to come for us and beat us. There's no truth to that. If they did this correctly and they had standards, government review might actually make the industry better and make them less prone. Regulation at this point would be a feature, not a bug in terms of capitalism and these companies' ability to know how to develop what they can, what they can't do, what they need to check, but a 90-day review. I know. It takes a drug a decade to get through the FDA? Exactly. It's ridiculous. There's a real beef going on in the administration. Saks is on one side and some others are on the others. Eventually, this will happen for these companies. I just want to put it off as long as they can. Saks is not working for the safety of the United States or anything else. He's working for his friends in Silicon Valley. You know who's actually increasing AI legislation and regulation? China. China, they are. That's right. The Beijing State Council issued a 2026 legislative work plan in May with AI governance language appealing. And about jobs because they know what will happen if people feel adrift in China. That's not something that can happen. You're absolutely right. They're so much smarter in how they handle these things, which is really a depressing thing to say. They released, they enacted binding rules on AI emotional interaction, identity disclosure, and content accountability. They read the Pope. We've passed the AI legislation. Zero, zero, except in the States. And there's more to come. There's a real anger brewing. Something a Democratic candidate should not kill the billionaires kind of thing or pitchforks. But there's a pitchforky. I was just talking to Tim Miller on his podcast and he feels a pitchforky moment. And that's not what you want. You want something that makes sense. Unfortunately, because the tech people just can't possibly accept any kind of stricture or speed limit. They're going to unfortunately get the worst outcome for themselves eventually, but probably they'll be just fine. Just as Lincoln said, no country can lose a war when it has public support. No country can win a war when it doesn't have it. If you look at what China has done with AI, and it has released a series of legislative policies and around emotional security, concentration of power, and it's made them public, the difference is the following. The Chinese now support AI. 87% of Chinese people trust AI versus just 32% of Americans. Because why? Because the Chinese believe that their government has the ability to protect them against AI and is regulating the technology effectively. 54% of Chinese people embrace greater use of AI versus just 17% of Americans. And nine in 10 Chinese, 18 to 34, said they had faith in the technology versus four in 10 of Americans in the same age group. And young people particularly. I mean, good job, David Sacks. Everybody. So you have the populace of China is embracing AI and trusts it and trusts that they have a government to kind of soften the edges or reduce some of the externalities. Whereas in the US, you have people driving hundreds of miles to protest a fucking data center. Yeah, I agree. I agree. So that you want to talk about, we just get it so bas-acquired. We think. We do. Well, it has to do with tech people being up in Trump's grill and controlling him. That's right. And Trump believing that a lack of regulation, he doesn't understand it in the streets. He moved toward it though. Why did he move toward it? Why was he gonna? It's really interesting. Largely probably because they wouldn't show up to his party. That's my guess with him because he's so ridiculous. But in any case, we have to move on to this because this is a topic that you've talked about. Uber's CIO says it's hard to draw a connection between the company's rising use of Claude code and the expense, especially the tokens, and innovation meant to serve consumers. This comes after reports the company already burnt through its entire 2026 AI coding tools budget. This is to buy tokens in just four months. This is one of these indications you were talking about, right? This idea that what do we get in here for our money? Am I paying too much for this muffler? That kind of stuff. They're 95% of CFOs. And I'm interested in studying them. My professor out of MIT said that only one in 20 CFOs can point to a positive ROI. And it's starting to bubble up into a real expense. And there's even invidia is claiming they're spending more now on AI internally than they're spending on humans. And so it's going to be very interesting here because, for example, Claude is about nine times more expensive than some of the Chinese open-weight LLMs. And when the CFOs see these bills and aren't immediately able to connect it, Uber's blown through its AI budget in a few weeks or a few months. And someone's going to ask, how is this making the consumers experience with Uber better? And this is how the whole thing on Wines, one really credible CEO says, okay, we're going to scale back our investment here until we can figure out a way to more directly attach to some sort of consumer benefit or ROI. And I think where if you go second and third order effects, I think it goes to the following places. Supposedly 80% of startups are hacking or using some sort of Chinese open-weight LLM. One, they use less expensive chips. They have cheaper power. I also think they're pricing it below market because a lot of local provinces in China have sort of their local champions that they're subsidizing. And I think what we're going to see is the Trump administration, when they start to see companies opt for their cheaper Chinese miles. We've been to this movie before. China stills our IP, develops 80% of what we have and sells it back to us for 40% on the dollar. Yeah. I'm going to interject. One of the things Mark Cuban had, when I was interviewing Daru Amodi at a recent event, I said, send me a question. And I said, I had just written his essay, Daru's essay, Machines of Loving Grace. And Mark wrote me this, the first thing he wrote me back was explain the token economy to everyone here. Do you see a scenario where the high cost of tokens makes it cheaper to hire people for certain jobs? I thought that was a great question. I did ask, it was a really, it was that he was already clocking this issue that maybe people are more less expensive than this token, these tokens that costs. And tokens are what you spend on computing just for people who don't know. Yeah. Humans are less expensive and- Or can be. I mean, I think it's called Cloudcode Max or Cloudmax. I've already run out of tokens. I'm playing with this shit so often. I had one of those prompts that says you need to upgrade to Cloudmax, which is $200 a month. What's interesting- Do you get the benefits? Do you get the benefits of the money you spend or just you're playing with it? At this point, it's well worth it for me. I'm just fascinated by it. I have discussions around- Right. So, hobby. Yeah. And I also use it to, I use it to find data. If I'm struggling, if I have a paragraph that just sounds clunky, I say, how would you edit this or what analogies would be better? You know, you could call me for free and I would probably do a better job. You're not available. And by the way, define free. I'm just saying. In terms of economic costs, I would say it's free. In terms of non-economic costs, I would argue you're pretty expensive. Anyway, we have to move on. As Sitting Bull said, what is free, white man? Anyways, but what's interesting, what I found out about Cloudmax, the $200 a month thing that I'm about to upgrade to, is that it costs them, for you to use Cloudmax, it costs anthropic $5,000 a month to deliver that product to you. Amazing. Yeah. Just the cost on infrastructure and power. Once we sell more, it will volume, we'll make it up in volume, right? Is that the- Well, no, what they're hoping is the law is one of the first economic concepts you learn. Comes down. Is that, and it's called not Jehovah's Paradox. I forget this guy wrote a brilliant paper on it, but I just thought he just summarized the term elasticity. But the economic term elasticity is that as the price of something goes down, the demand for it goes up. Everybody thought, well, it's computing power goes down and becomes so cheap, chips will go out of business because you won't need as many from Intel. What happens is the cost of something goes down, more and more people use it. There's a viable argument, and I've sort of been making this argument about what I call apocalypse no, and that is all the catastrophizing around labor destruction is total bullshit, that as the costs of AI go way down, we're going to find more uses for it, and we're actually going to end up hiring more programmers or vibe codes. Could be. I do think the costs are going to actually go down eventually, but just not today. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about Elon possibly combining SpaceX and Tesla, just as Carol Swisher predicted. Support for the show comes from Hems. If you have weight loss goals, you already know how difficult it can be. Enter weight loss by Hems is designed to support you not only in losing weight, but keeping it off as well. And now Hems is offering access to affordable range of FDA-approved GLP-1 medications, including the Wagovie pill and the Wagovie pen. With Wagovie at Hems, you can lose up to 20% or more of your body weight when combined with diet and exercise. It can help you regulate your appetite and eat less, so success is within reach. Plus, Wagovie is the first ever GLP-1 pill for weight loss, so there are no needles needed. Plus, Hems has everything online. You'll connect with a licensed provider who will determine if treatment is right for you. Ready to reach your goals? Visit hems.com slash pivot to get personalized affordable plan that gets you. That's hims.com slash pivot. Hems.com slash pivot. Weight loss by Hems is not available in all 50 states. Wagovie is a registered trademark of Novo Nordisk AS. To get started and learn more, including important safety information, Wagovie clinical study information restrictions, visit hems.com. Support for the show comes from CoreWeave. AI is just a new tool. It encompasses so much more. It's spurring a revolution across all industries and reshaping itself to become a big part of our future together. CoreWeave is at the center, powering some of the biggest names in AI. As the essential cloud for AI, CoreWeave provides an AI platform that combines next-generation infrastructure, intelligent tools, and expert support. It's powering the world's most complex AI workloads faster and more efficiently. From medical research and diagnosis to education, from complex visual effects from movies, to breakthroughs in science and technology. If it's AI, CoreWeave is uniquely ready to power it with purpose-built tech. The big ideas, the wild visions, and what ifs and why not. CoreWeave is working to build what's never been built before. CoreWeave is the essential cloud for AI, ready for anything, ready for AI. To learn more about how CoreWeave powers the world's best AI, go to coreweave.com slash ready for anything. Hi, I'm Maria Sharapova, host of the Pretty Tough Podcast. Each episode, I sit down with high-achieving women to discuss the pursuit of excellence without apology. This week, Model Sports Illustrated CoverGirl and entrepreneur, Ashley Graham, talks about the time she almost quit. I called my mom and I said, mom, I just, I'm not going to do this anymore. And she told me, no, you are going to stick this out. Your body is going to change someone's life. Every decade, you're going to go through something different. So be really happy with who you are right now, because things change. Check out Pretty Tough, new episodes on Wednesdays. You can watch it on YouTube or listen in your favorite podcast app. Scott, we're back with more news as SpaceX prepares to go public. Rumors are again circulating that Elon Musk will eventually combine the company with Tesla. Obviously, God, I mean, we're not speaking, but I know how this guy thinks. Musk has reportedly discussed the possibility with colleagues that two companies are already share engineers and collaborate. There's all kinds of cross stuff that a lot of sketchies cross stuff, if you recall at the time when he took over Twitter and collaborate on power and compute issues. Also, by the way, SpaceX got a $2.29 billion contract to build a satellite communications network to connect military sensors and weapons platforms around the world. They have to deliver an operational prototype by the end of 2027. So he's doing well. He's doing well with his help of Trump, et cetera. It's a mutual benefit society for them. But this putting Tesla in here, it just makes complete sense is that someone said it was like two, it was mortgage-backed securities, a bunch of companies that can't pay, wrapped around Elon Musk and a company that's okay, which is Starlink. So it's like a collection. And so he's shoving this stuff all together. It makes sense on a data point of view. It makes sense to hide a bunch of stuff. He already had these weird, very questionable transactions like buying cyber trucks for SpaceX, which makes no sense except if you want to look good. So why not just mash the whole fucking thing together and then make everybody buy it who is in an index fund, which is another thing? So any of these comments, the contracts, the merger, the NASDAQ situation? Well, you did predict it, but my analogy is the following. Snow White is hot. And the prospect of getting to marry Snow White is super exciting. It's Snow White is SpaceX. But unfortunately, to buy SpaceX, you got to take on these seven fucking weirdos who are expensive and erotic. And XAI, which has been attached on to SpaceX, an incredible company, is a money furnace that's playing catch up. It's trying to be an infrastructure provider now. So is Meta, by the way. But go ahead. And I'm sorry, and Tesla, I still think Tesla is a great product. I got one the other day. I do think they have a fantastic car, but it's a struggling business with a multiple 192 times forward earnings and Apple trades at 33 times forward earnings. And then if you look at Tesla's just business in Europe, sales have fallen for 13 consecutive months. It's market share in Europe has gone from 1% to 0.8% while the EV market has expanded about 30% in 2025. And Norway sales are down 90%. Netherlands down 80%. UK down 50%. Meanwhile, BYD registrations are up 260% in Europe. And the reason why it's valuation... Can I just note, I didn't say it was a bad car. I said he didn't innovate in it. There was another new car and BYD keeps innovating. Every time you see a new one, you're like, cool. Tesla's the same, pretty much the same car for the past. And then they deliver Cybertruck as their innovation. So that's my beef. Stocks are like brands and that is their part promise and part performance. And the promise, no one articulates and gets more cheap capital on the promise part of that equation than Elon Musk. He's arguably the best salesperson and communicator in the history of the public markets. And the promise though, the performance is like so far behind the promise, for example, these things have not... The promise has not worked out. So RoboTaxi miles, they doubled sequentially in Q1, but it's... He was saying that there would be a thousand RoboTaxi's on the road about five years ago. Across all three Texas cities where RoboTaxi's operate, Tesla has just 25 unsupervised vehicles. I mean, none, right? Meanwhile, their SF RoboTaxi service still uses a safety monitor in the front seat. And there are five more cities on the way, but Musk's timeline famously cannot be trusted. And then he tries to create all of these distractions. Look over here at Robots. I'm staying in Beverly Hills in Los Angeles. If I go to my deck, I can see a Waymo. They're everywhere in LA, Kara. There's actually fewer of the Tesla taxis, RoboTaxi's in Austin. They've cut them back. And then the worst car release or the worst tech product the last year was the Cybertruck, which by the way is about to be bested by one of the great brands in history. You're about to see one of the biggest brand failures in history, and that is the equivalent. Tech has literally like infected so many things, and it's infected one of the purest brands in the world. It's infected Ferrari. The new electric Ferrari is about to be just hand. It was, yeah. Yeah, it's getting panned right now. Oh, it's gonna be. It's getting. It's Johnny Ived. The Johnny Ived design. It's gonna be one of the brand stories of the year. They said it looks like a Honda, right? It's basically they said Apple gave up on their Project Titan and they slapped a stallion on it. You're gonna see, oh my God, you're gonna see the Ferrari purest. You're gonna see so many 80-year-old old men go on to TikTok for the first time in their lives to shit post this thing. And SpaceX, get this, SpaceX accounted for nearly 20% of Cybertruck sales in Q4 2025 because he popped back a bunch of Cybertrucks. So I think it's smart for him to do. It's more jazz hands. It's more pretending, attaching something to something amazing to try and, I mean, he's very good at this and you predicted it. But to take, put Elon on top of something that's very exciting around rockets, data centers in space. Of course, rockets. Yeah, and he is a visionary. We need to be an interplanetary species. And now you have to buy it with NASDAQ. Explain to people very briefly what that is. So people understand the index fund issue is that it's, they've lowered the amount of time before big IPOs go into the index. And now people are reinforced to buy his company. Also open AI, also entropic, et cetera. So basically the rule was before you joined the S&P, you had to be profitable for certain amount of quarters and you had to be in the index for at least a year. They've waived those rules because they realized, and it makes sense, they're big, important companies. What that means is if you invest in an ETF or an index, you automatically own these companies at those prices. And at these prices, at these valuations, I would argue, I mean, to a certain extent, the IPO markets might be over. And that is, the way I see it is, the reason you went public, the reason Google went public was you couldn't raise $3 or $5 billion from venture capitals and private institutions in 1997. Now there's almost as much capital as not more in the private market. So logically, you have to ask yourself, why does a company decide to go public? And one reason it's a branding event, two, it creates more liquid currency potentially, but these companies have very liquid currency on the secondary markets. They do it because I think largely speaking, and they don't want to say this out loud, once the private investors go, look, this thing's getting pretty frothy, most of the juice has been squeezed out of it. Well, who is stupid enough to take the valuation even further up? Well, okay, the last stop on the Trump train right now is the public markets. So typically, a company like OpenAI would have gone public when it was over $30 or $50 billion, but the existing investors of OpenAI and Anthropoc, say, oh, no, no, no, no, they're still juicier. Let's keep this to ourselves and we'll find you capital. And then when they start going, wow, this valuation is rich for even us, let's go see if mom and pop retail investor and people on Robinhood and people on Reddit who love Elon and people around the world who want to participate in the economy are actually willing to invest. My prediction is these three companies, especially AI, are going to go through a pretty serious repricing, not a collapse like a 2000 collapse, but a repricing. And then when you combine that with the fact that you now have access to private companies with different secondary markets, potentially the tokenization of small companies, it's just going to make the IPO less and less relevant because of the reporting standards. And this is the indices trying to say we want to make it more attractive for companies to go public and also reflect, the S&P should reflect. I get it. It's just that people shouldn't have this unprofitable company with, held up by one guy shoved down their throat without, it's like getting the U2 album. Yeah, but you could say that, is P&G shoved down their throat? It's the same thing. It is, but it's a profitable company. It's been in business like, let's just give it a sec. Yeah, but the best returns have been in companies that are growing faster and not profitable. Yes, it is. And at the same time, let them buy it themselves then. I mean, it just seems like a risky thing to stick in there this quickly. That's all. I'm like, it's going to benefit the people. It's going to benefit Elon Musk, but maybe not the pension funds of nurses. I don't know. And I just don't think that risk is necessary. Well, in a weird way, there's so many dynamics of player. Well, my index fund, I don't want to own SpaceX. I don't want to, not right now. I mean, if you look at the valuation of these companies going public, it's going to be combined $4 trillion. It's like from 1980 to 2020, the amount of money being raised just across these three companies is just staggering. And what it probably will do in the short run is it'll probably take the S&P down because so much money is going to come from every corner of the earth to participate in these things. To raise $150 million, the rest of the market feels that. If you want to talk about, I mean, what happens, I'm fascinated by this because what happens when these three companies go public, 11,000 people in the Bay Area are overnight. Imagine everyone who walks into Madison Square Garden, places sold out. Everyone who walked in was a 31-year-old product manager making $180,000 or $240,000 a year, good living, but some student debt, can't afford a house. And they walk out on the worst $7 million to $11 million. What happens? They have more kids. They buy a new house. It's evidenced by skyrocketing prices. Upside here, you're going to see a lot of funds started. There's also tremendous new business development. The other thing you're going to see, which is a good thing, you are about to see the mother of all increases in philanthropic giving in the Bay Area. One would hope. Well, people do. These people do start foundations. Let me just say, if you look at the actual statistics, it's Mackenzie Scott, which is an enormous graph, like a big, long bar. And then all the others, including Elon Musk down here, they just mark. I'm not talking about the big ones. I'm talking about a lot of people. Americans are very generous philanthropic people. Not these people. Sorry. I'm not talking. There's two things here. When you do have this kind of liquidity event, you do see a bump up in philanthropy. Philanthropy is almost entirely correlated now, unfortunately, to big IPOs in the stock market. And a lot of people give stock to universities, tax advantage. That's true. University. That's what I've done. Every time I invest in a private company, I give a certain amount of it away to either public education or teen suicide prevention. Okay. We've got to move on, but we'll see where it goes. But it's a really interesting time. And I think Scott's right. There's going to be a decline in a lot of these. Anyway, but it's a really interesting time given all three of these are going at once. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions. Big news this week for all my Gordon Gekos, my Robin Hooters, my Claude Squad, and Thropik, which is newly the most valuable AI company in the world, announced it would be going public. That news follows reporting that open AI plans to go public as soon as September. And that that news follows reporting that SpaceX, which also considers itself an AI company, will be going public in maybe just a few weeks from now. Welcome to the era of the Omega IPO. We are about to see millionaires, billionaires, and yes, probably even the world's first trillionaire created overnight. And yes, it's that guy. This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy. Chainsaw. But all the tech bros who are going to make all the money, they need our money way more than we need their products. And we're going to remind you why on today explained from Vox. So the 2026 midterms is shaping up to be an all out brawl. But the biggest fight may not be between Democrats and Republicans, but over the congressional maps itself. Jerry Mandarin is not a good thing. We don't like it. And then all of a sudden, we're going out and telling people vote for this. So I'm in Ashland, Virginia, a small town just outside of Richmond, which calls itself the center of the universe. And that checks out because it's the center of the political universe, at least when it comes to the 2026 midterms. That's because Ashland sits in Virginia's first congressional district, which is one of only about 35 or so that are actually competitive. That makes Virginia particularly important when it comes to the question of Jerry Mandarin. The Jerry Mandarin is a major problem, but it's not like Democrats drew first blood with this one. Donald Trump doesn't think he should be held accountable by anybody. So he's trying to change the rules because it doesn't like the game. We've shown what we're capable of. Now let's keep up the push through the midterms. America actually will be in your fees and on YouTube every Saturday with an interesting interview in politics or culture. Okay, Scott, I'm going to start just very quickly. I want to call out something that happened. Two things quickly. CBS News just named tech journalist Nick Bilton as the new executive producer of 60 Minutes. Bilton is a longtime tech journalist and filmmaker who's never worked in traditional broadcast news. I know Nick, interesting. It'll be interesting to see what he's going to do there. This comes on the heels of 60 Minutes correspondent Sharon Alfonso announcing that CBS declined to renew her contract. She's an excellent reporter. She's a great stuff on character AI. She's been a wonderful reporter. The move comes six months after Alfonso's report on abuse inside Salvadoran prisons was abruptly pulled before airing a month later. The time Alfonso called the decision political and it certainly was in a statement. She said she just burnt the house down leaving. Alfonso said the exit is, quote, a deliberate choice to penalize the journalist for refusing to sanitize factually actor reporting. She had a sense of chilling message across the entire newsroom. And by the way, Sharon's not the only one. Anderson Cooper stepping out the way he is not usually leaving a few weeks ago saying, I hope 60 Minutes remain 60 Minutes. He also was sending sort of a shot across the bow there. I just want to call these two excellent journalists of 60 Minutes. And Sharon's a badass. I know we're just meta on text actually, but and Anderson, I think, has done an amazing job. So these are two really, really great journalists. And I predict that they will do just fine, but good for them for speaking on especially good. There was a student who won an award at the Emmys last night, what was named a scholarship from Mike Wallace, and he delivered a blistering attack on supporting these two journalists and supporting others like them. And I thought that person was incredibly it's very hard to speak out. And Anderson and Sharon and this young student did so. And I really, you guys will do just fine Anderson particularly, but in general, good for you for standing up. That's all I predict. I think it's a really interesting, it'll be a really interesting case study and organizational behavior and management classes in business school. And that is corporations continue to fall for the notion that if they bring in a small company, they perceive is really innovative, that that small virus is going to infect the entire corpus. And generally almost always what you find is that the corpus rejects the virus. It's like acquisitions work when the acquiring company has the scale and distribution or capital to help scale the small innovative company. But to believe that the innovation is going to infect the larger corporation or corpus almost never works out. It's an interesting study. So let's give, let's give the free press the benefit of the doubt, innovative little company, subscription based, interesting positioning. And the Ellison's thought that's the kind of mojo and juice and infection we need at this larger somewhat encephalitic corpus called CBS or Paramount. There's been an Oregon rejection. Also, what CEOs of smaller companies fail to recognize is the following. And it's the reason why I've never been able to grow a big company to small companies. And that is a small company is ready for our aim. The person at the top really does get to make swift, crisp decisions. I am the decider. This is the way we're going. One of our key things here is speed, which means this is not a democracy. There's very few things that are less democratic than a small company trying to work fast or go fast. Because it's kind of like, what do we think? Okay, get on it, ready for our aim. Let's start yesterday. In a large organization that's scaling, it's more about consensus and getting people on board and culture. And you're a speedboat ramming a tanker. And what you fail to realize is the CEO of a company like this. And what I think Barry has failed to realize is you're Phil Jackson, the coach of the Bulls. And that is your job, you're blessed with some unbelievable assets. Your job is not to coach Michael Jordan. It's to get along with him and be a resource for him. You're not in charge. They are. They're the assets. When you're McKellar Teta and you're coaching Bukaya Saka at Arsenal, which by the way, just one of the Prem League, this is very exciting. When you come into an organization like CBS, and you do have kind of these stars that are iconic, your job is to get along with them. And so I think- Well, let me say 60 minutes have been enormously successful. It's not- That's my point. I mean, no, but I'm just saying, like pretending is just because they're in several edginess, sassy, new startup is going to change things. I think a lot of these errors are errors of incompetence, not of trying to change things and these old people won't change. These are like top level journalists that are doing a great job and had 52 years of success. Like, you know, they're doing well. It's not like they're not doing well. So why- I think we're speaking past each other. I'm agreeing with you. CBS is Michael Jordan. Barry Weiss is Phil Jackson. His job isn't to show up and reorganize and tell everyone how to dribble and play again. His job, quite frankly, is to get- The only management of CBS is the following. Hi, nice to meet you. How can I help? That's it. How can I help? And if the answers go away and leave us alone, fine. If it's we could use more resources here, we have trouble here, or we don't think our advertisers are- How can I help? That's it. I love what you've- I'm sorry. I misunderstood. Let me say one of the things that happened at the Washington Post too, blaming these reporters like when Will Lewis was like trashing the reporters is like- It's such an easy thing to do for people who think they're innovative is like, you all suck. And some of the things need to change. But to say it's a problem of- It's a bigger secular problem that's the issue in terms of cost and everything else. And so just telling people just breaking things is not building things. And that's- That is really hard to do when you're- That's why I never want to be at a big company. I don't know about you, but I like us being a small speedboat. And if you make mistakes, you make mistakes. If you don't, you don't. That's how I feel. But I don't know about you. Oh yeah. And this is the reason why I've never built a billion-dollar company. I sell companies, when they- As soon as they have a CFO or someone in HR, I'm like, time to sell. But having been involved with a lot of big companies, I just shocked me. It just shocked me right away the first thing I thought, well, we should do this, this, and this. And the CEOs were always, okay, they really had to think about what would be required to get buy-in to potentially change the culture, to explain, be thoughtful, to create the right incentive mechanisms, to ensure the behavior lined up. And I mean, you really are- There's some amazing things about a tanker, right? You can carry whatever it is, 100 million barrels or 10 million barrels of a product. But you are, you're steering a tanker, and it takes a lot of effort in a big engine room and a lot of people. It is a different- There's so few people that can go from- A lot of people, I would say, where are you in the alphabet? Are you from A to D? I'm good at A to D. Yeah, me too. Some people are good at coming in. My old CEO at L2, Ken Allard, was good at kind of D to H or I. And some people can come into a company that's gone public. Dara Kastur Shahi is amazing. Yes, very good example. M8 is like great from L to S. He came into a company that was already jamming, scaling, huge infrastructure, a huge brand, and said, okay, somebody needs to be the adult here. And a lot of problems, yeah. And also, there's some people who come into companies that are distressed who take a company from whatever it is, T to Z, that come in and cut costs and repackage something, take it through bankruptcy and make a lot of money. Scott, your next book is The Alphabet of Management. The Alphabet of Business. Yeah. All right. I want to hear your prediction, though. I'm all confused and jet lagged right now. So I thought we were doing wins and fails. So, okay, I'm going to do wins and fails. Go for it, yeah. But my win isn't, it just hasn't gotten enough attention. And it's just so exciting. And it's such a victory for the West. And I would argue it's actually in many ways. While Iran is over shadowed in inflation, people really don't understand that something incredibly wonderful is going on here. And that is three years ago, Russia was supposed to take Kiev in a weekend. And today, Ukraine is striking Russian military infrastructure, oil refineries, ports, bomber bases and semiconductor plants, hundreds, sometimes more than a thousand kilometers inside of Russia. Putin is on the run. He is. I told you when I told you that a couple weeks ago that all these people said, Russia, he's in much more trouble than you realize. But go ahead. Just recently, they've hit the Ryazan refinery, one of Russia's largest fuel plants supplying the military, the Tuopsy refinery and the Black Sea. They're going after ships. They're going after the Black Sea fleet, oil infrastructure in Perm, 700 miles from the border. The Yazilov refinery, 700 kilometers inside of Russia. And even the Ingolstrate... Can you imagine in this country if that happened? Jesus. If they started bombing oil fields in Texas... Buffalo. Buffalo. Or our military ships in San Diego, can you imagine? No, no, no. Those Canadians. Or North or Virginia building our submarines. What have drones were hitting? I mean, this is just incredible. And it's a function of drones. It's a function of Delta. That's a great win. It's also, quite frankly, we don't like to say this. Musk turning off Starlink in Russia has ceded huge advantage to the Ukrainian army. No, that's always been a benefit, no question. But it is just... I mean, if you think about this, what are they doing? They're producing thousands of long-range drones per month in 2024. In 25, they're doing 3,000. They're going to be a huge technology country when this is all... Oh, yeah. They'll attract so much capital, I'd go there. If I was a young person, that's exactly... Though the corruption is really quite impossible to deal with. If I was a young person, I'd go there. But there are significant corruption problems within that government. But there's a wonderful message being sent to the world, and that is there's a brutal lesson for authoritarians. Corruption scales until it collides with reality and technology and an unmotivated populace. Russia built the Potemkin village version of a superpower, yachts, parades, hypersonic missiles, shirtless horse cosplay, and the Ukrainians meanwhile... You like that part. I like that part. The Ukrainians meanwhile built software, drones, and engineers. And just some numbers here to just talk about. Okay, because we got to... Go ahead. Go ahead. Incredible this is. You're rushing them this morning. What... I'm not rushing you. What a weirdo that you're fascinated with. Are you about to go interview? I'm not. I'm not going anywhere. I'm going to be in front of my thing. Seriously. What is it? The ghost of Walter Mondale? Who's up next on with Kara Swisher? Russia has three times the population, 10 times the economy, nuclear weapons, and one of the largest oil reserves in the world, and Ukraine is kicking its ass. I know. I love it. What does Ukraine have? Ukraine has coders and hoodies turning Home Depot into Lockheed Martin. These guys... Amazing. So look, increasingly, and this is a lesson for us unfortunately right now, the future belongs to the side that can innovate faster than the other side can lie. Like the audience with the boats and the drones. So that's my win. And it hasn't got enough attention. This is so exciting for the West, for Ukraine. Can I make one, Kevin? If Putin feels cornered and scared, he might do something terrible. Yeah, that's the fear. That to me is the biggest fear. Unless you're going to annihilate your enemy, you've got to give him a way out. That's what the Sun Zoo... But I don't think he thinks that. I think he's terrified. But this is a victory also for the EU who has been steadfast in their support on Like Americans. It's just very exciting. Trump will back him if they win. He'll go like, oh, I'm with the winners. I'm with them. I was always behind you. I was behind them. All right. What's your fail? My fail is I just, I think the best way... Timothy Snyder summarized it perfectly. I've been trying to figure out a way to describe what is effectively a $1.8 billion slush fund that Trump and his spokesperson Blanche had been trying to pitch. And even some Republicans are finally blanching. And the best way to describe it is a terrorist immunization fund. And that is commit violence on my behalf and I will not only legally protect you, I will pay you. In addition to the corruption, it sends a signal to weirdos out there who are cult members that if something gets in the way of Trump, whether it's people turning out to a poll booth, whether it's people showing up to inaugurate the other guy, which I'm claiming was not fairly elected, I want you to commit acts of violence. I want you to engage in terrorism. And you will not only get off, I'm going to pay you. So this is not a slush fund. This is not only corruption, it's a terrorist immunization fund. I love that word. And that is the way I can't take credit for it. It's Timothy Snyder who I'm just obsessed with. And I've had on the pot a couple of times, who's at the University of Toronto and talks a lot about democracy and autocracies. He's fantastic and he's very brave. He's the dude Heather Carl Richardson. But this is, that's right, but this is imagine if a nation in the Gulf found, named your terrorist organization and said, you blow yourself up, you commit acts of violence, not only will not prosecute you, we've set aside money for you. Right. Well, they kind of did that. Well, the PLO used to do that. The PLO used to say, any suicide bomber, we're going to give their family X amount of dollars. That's what this is. And it's, anyways, I hope the Democrats adopt that phrase. I don't think it's going to pass. I think the Republicans tell us the others are all very much against it. There's a lot. In all of these hearings, why do you support the terrorist immunization fund? Good. They should absolutely label it that. That's what this is. Anyways, that's my fail. Yeah, terrorist baking fund, maybe immunization. Anyway, all right, that's great. Those are both great. And you're going to have to have new ones for Monday just so you know. We want to hear from you, send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com.pivot to submit a question for the show or call 85551pivot. Before we go, I'm taping a live interview of On With Kara Swisher at the Rebecca Film Festival on Monday, June 8th. It is not the dead. Oh, someone's got their nose up, Murdoch's ass. Oh, no, I'm not. Hi, new boss. I was booked before the deal, months ago. Anyway, instead of Walter Mondale, you're invited to the special dinner with Robert De Niro, but I am. I'll be talking to comedian, actor, and podcast pioneer Mark Marin, not Mondale. The original gangster. Yes, thank you. Yeah, the originals. He's really quite a legend. And he has, there's a new doc about him and he's also a great actor and funny comedian and everything else. He loves to trash the tech. You know my favorite statement of his? My favorite. I use it all the time. He's like, you realize Democrats literally annoyed America into fascism. Anyway, he's great. He's really great. Tickets are available now at the Trebekafilm.com.com.com. What Scott's referring to is the Murdoch. I'm James Murdoch. It's Trebekah. We will see you there. Okay. That's the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot. And be sure, Pivotarian. Become a Pivotarian. Be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back next week. Today's show was produced by Larry Neiman, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Todd Wiseman. Ernie Nertout, engineered this episode. Thanks also to Jabros, Miss Verian, Dan Shalonda, Jacques Caruaz, Fox Media's executive producer podcast. Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thank you for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Fox Media. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Pivotarian. Pivotarian. Have sex with the cult leader. That's okay. Cut off all contact with your parents. Give us all your money. I'm into it. Pivotarian. Good luck in LA tonight, Scott.