AI Antitrust Investigations, Nvidia Stock Split, and OpenAI Whistleblowers
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so you can sell more, raise more, and fast-track your business growth. So get going and start growing your business today with a free trial at ConstantContact.com. Constant Contact, helping the small stand tall. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Scott Galloway.

I'm back in California, Scott. Wait, wait. So you were there. You came back to D.C. and then when you went back to California? This is the third time in three weeks I've been here. I don't understand what's going on. Why do you do this to yourself? I don't know because I need a private plane, but that would be wrong. Why would it be wrong? Oh, it's so right, Kara. It's right as rain. Yeah, it's not for me. I was doing this thing called Godmothers of AI at Stanford. It was Fei-Fei Li and a number of really prominent early women in AI. AI used to be a backwater. Godmothers of AI.

Guy. Guy mothers. AI used to be a backwater of computing. Well, we called it machine learning back when it was for dorks. Oh, machine learning, yes. Anyway, it wasn't the area everyone was, it was hot, hot, hot, and now it is, of course. And so we were celebrating some of the early women, including Ada Lovelace, who wasn't living. She was not there. But it was really cool. Fei-Fei Li, Barbara Gross, and...

Karina Cortes, all these people who were super early and made big changes in AI at the beginning and still today. So it was cool. It was at one of the big Stanford institutes on human-centered AI. It was cool. Stanford is way ahead in terms of ethics and they're trying very hard. So it was neat. 40% of all venture capitalists either graduated from Harvard and Stanford, and I bet 70% to 80% of all capital allocated

I would speculate. I know the 40% number. I'm speculating that 70% to 80% of gross dollar volume allocated by venture capitalists comes from graduates of Stanford and Harvard. So what do you know? A concierge healthcare system in Palo Alto gets funding.

But anything around femcare does not get funding. Anyway. Well, these women pointed out quite a number of the problems in AI, too. So it was great. It was great. It was a real privilege for me to do it. So speaking of women, I have, let's bring this back to me. Oh, no. Oh, no. I love that. Oh, no. Oh, no.

So, you know those memories that Apple does where they spin up a video from your past? Oh, yeah. I hate them. Oh, no. I'm playing them on my deathbed. They typically involve my children, and it's like waterworks for me. But I love them. I think they're amazing. I think that is probably the portion of AI that's affected me the most, other than Netflix figuring out what movie I want to watch next. But anyways, I had this memory come up, and it was...

Well, let me back up. I was on Piers Morgan last week, and he asked me, who would you want to be president? And he asked me if I was running for president. I said, no. And then I said, I had this word salad of Senators Klobuchar or Bennett or Governor Newsom. I was totally unprepared to answer the question. And I started thinking about it after, who would be president?

who would be the best president of anyone I've ever met, ever, who would be, who do I wish could be president? And I thought about it. And literally that day, this Apple memory came up. They got me so fucking angry. And it was from eight years ago.

And the answer is, the person I canvassed for in 2016, Hillary Clinton would have been an outstanding president. I saw you put that up. I didn't know you did that. She would have been. I didn't even do stuff like that. That's amazing. But go ahead. Oh, my God. Canvassing for Hillary Clinton in what I'll call the great inland empire of Florida was not fun. We're talking pit bulls.

and angry white people. And I know that's identity politics, but I always thought to myself, when my son gets older, I gotta bring him on this so he can get used to rejection and get some thick skin. Because when you're banging on a door in a lower middle income neighborhood to talk about Hillary, and at that moment,

I realized she was going to lose because I would knock on the door. This is 2008, right? Correct? Yeah. No, 2016. Okay. 2016 when she was running against Trump. And I would knock on the door of a black household and they'd open the door and they would say, thank you, really nice. And I'm like, are you voting for Madam Secretary Clinton? And they're like, yeah. And I'm like, do you know where your polling booth is? And they'd say, no. And I'm like, oh, fuck, she's going to lose.

They aren't going to turn out. They're just humoring me. They feel good about her, but they're not going to show up to the polling station. This video came up, and you want to talk about how important elections are? If she had been elected president, we wouldn't have, in my opinion, the runaway deficit spending we have on a very boring but important topic because she is actually fiscally more moderate and has more discipline than the vast majority of Democrats.

She is outstanding if you've seen her talk about Ukraine and Israel. She's incredibly pragmatic. And you know what else? One in five women, and this is probably in my opinion, and there's a lot of things to be outraged about, but in terms of what really impacts people on a ground level in America right now, slowly but surely, or I would say crisply but surely, one in five women who need to terminate a pregnancy now have to leave their state. Mm-hmm.

That's right. And that just would not have happened if President Hillary Clinton were in office. Not just that. Scott, yesterday, the Senate rejected, the Senate Republicans rejected contraception as a federal right. But go ahead. She was the most qualified person. I mean, let's be clear. She triggers people. She's not likable. She's a lot more likable today because you go back and... She was the most competent, experienced, intelligent person

thoughtful, pragmatic person to have ever run for president. It is, you know, it got me so fucking angry. Two things. Two things. One, if you go back and look at her predictions of Trump, they're spot on. Like, if you go back, not just a little spot on, like, as if she knew exactly what was going to happen and she describes it perfectly. Secondly, she, he threatened to jail her yesterday in an interview. He,

He threatened to jail her again. And then pretended he didn't say, lock her up. He said, I never said that. But of course, then they bring out the videos of him saying, lock her up. He's such a liar. And then he actually said, maybe I should, maybe that's what we should do is jail my enemy. So anyway, and thirdly, the take on her, I agree, I think she would have made a great president. The take on her, of course, is,

among those people is always that she is among the group that likes forever wars. And that is the one thing that I think I disagree with her on a little bit more than maybe you did. But she would have been an excellent, I'm just saying that's the, well, the negative take, obviously, the Bill Clinton stuff and everything else. But that was more

That was not, that was not, it pales in comparison to Trump. Count me among the group of war hawks who believe that if it was a President Clinton, that Putin would have thought twice before pouring over the border in Ukraine. Well, he hated her. Boy, did he hate her. But yeah, but Secretary Clinton was absolutely not afraid to use American force. And there's a reason why we have decided to spend more money on our military than Ukraine.

all other nations combined are the top 10 biggest spenders combined. And I think it's because unfortunately there are some very angry, mean people out there who if and when they can, will take our Netflix and our Nespresso by force the moment they feel they can. I don't, I absolutely do not think Putin would have come over the border in Ukraine had a secretary, had the president been President Clinton. Anyways, beyond all of this, I'm going to reverse engineer.

I think, I literally think if we look back in history around the biggest errors in our society, I think we'll look at our entry into Southeast Asia in the 60s of the escalation there. I think the entry into Iraq was a fucking disaster. And I think a real pivotal moment that has set us back dramatically

was not, was Madam Secretary Clinton not being elected president. I think she would have been fantastic. Well, that's interesting. Just so you're aware, speaking of the jailing thing, I have an interview today, I believe it posted with Representative Ocasio-Cortez, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She talks about that she thinks he would jail her too.

Anyway, it's a really, it's full of news, the interview, but that's, you know, just keep that in mind. I gotta be honest, AOC Behind Bars make a very good film for Cinemax. Oh, stop, stop, stop. Is that wrong? That is wrong. No, that is wrong. That's wrong. In all seriousness, Scott, he's talking about jailing people like,

Clinton, which is something he would do. Anyway, it won't be funny when he actually does it. New York could become the latest state to legally restrict social media for kids. Speaking of restrictions, a tentative agreement would force social media companies to do away with algorithms for children's content. Instead, they have

only to show posts by accounts kids follow in order that they were posted. The legislation also prohibit platforms from sending notifications to minors during overnight hours. New York Governor Kathy Hochul said she believes this regulation makes social media less addictive for kids. This is something right up your alley, Scott. What do you think about the government coming in here? There might be, I wonder if there'll be first, of course, there won't be First Amendment challenges here. But what is your thoughts on this?

The way I express affection is with money. And I immediately sent Governor Hochul a contribution. I think that she's showing real leadership here. I don't think anyone under the age of 16 should be on social media. What has done more damage to youth? Pornography? Alcohol? Like what's done more? Or social media? And these mendacious fucks are claiming that they're worried about their First Amendment rights.

Anyone, I'm dealing with this right now. There's cigarette companies, as Mark Benioff said to me so famously in that interview. There's cigarette companies and we regulate cigarettes. It's not your first, it's not your right to have cigarettes this July. Right, but not nearly as many 13-year-olds are accessing cigarettes as they are accessing social media. So it's cigarettes, but worse. Yes. A parent who is dealing with this

You think, well, okay, just take the phone away and don't let your kid on Snap or on Instagram. Said no one who has kids. Unless we collectively pass legislation that bans phones in schools and age gates, I mean, really age gates, not this bullshit put in a date.

We're going to continue. This is the thing we're going to regret most is what we let happen to our kids. So anyway. Yeah, I think it's interesting because, you know, I think this should be a national law, too. I think it's this is nothing to do with the First Amendment. We regulate kids on lots of things. Driving, drinking. This is very similar. And and they will that that's what they're going to employ. This will probably go to the Supreme Court would be my guess.

I don't know why these companies would resist this particular thing, but there will be elements that want to resist it. And it's costly for them to do what they're doing. But this is this... It's the algorithms that's a problem. Showing posts by the accounts kids follow is just... It's what they pick. And then...

It removes the algorithmic intensity around these kids that they get, "Oh, you like this? You might like this." I do tell that story of my son. He wanted to listen to Ben Shapiro to hear what he was saying. I said, "Great. You should listen to him. I think he's an idiot, but you should listen to him just so you can make your own decision." He was older, maybe 14, 15 at this point. I said, "I think you'll find him an idiotic, but go ahead."

And he did, and then he found him idiotic, which is what happened. Ben stopped saying, I prevented my son from seeing him. I did not. I wanted him to. And then what was problematic to me is how it then degenerated into

And this is not Ben Shapiro's fault, into really disturbing and more disturbing things down. And then Andrew Tate comes up. Yes, exactly. I don't know if it was Andrew Tate or whoever it was. But when I saw what it degenerated into, and I had a discussion with Susan Wojcicki about this, we were on YouTube, it was shocking, the algorithmic degeneration and down the rabbit hole. And that was what I was disturbed about. And I didn't quite know what to do because I wanted him to be able to sample this algorithm.

person and decide on his own. But where it went was really disturbing as a parent. It was quite an eye-opening moment for me, for sure. Just a couple of things. I find a lot of Ben's views disagreeable. I don't think idiot is the right word. He is an incredibly intelligent young man. He's also a very good business operator. I think anyone in high school who

who is on the debate team should absolutely tune in to Ben Shapiro to understand how he makes his arguments and how incredibly crisp and agile he is on his feet. I don't agree with Mehdi Hassan's views on certain issues, but I think young people who are interested in understanding critical thinking and arguing and debating should watch him because I think he's very intelligent and makes very forceful arguments.

And the same is true of Ben. The thing about the algorithms is the following, is that the algorithms are there solely to create shareholder value. And these indifferent amoral algorithms have figured out that rage and things that make you feel bad that you can't turn away from, oh, you like Ben Shapiro? Well, you'll like Andrew Tate saying that women are property. Or you'll hate it so much that you won't be able to turn away from it.

And it gets you to, oh, you're feeling bad about yourself? Well, I'll tell you what. We're going to have a video of a woman who is 5'9", 95 pounds, talking about suicide because you're not going to be able to turn away from it. And before you know it, you're normalizing extremist, radical self-harm ideas. These algorithms...

And not only that, we blame the algorithms. It's the mendacious fucks who know what the algorithms are doing that should be held accountable. Or they should show transparency of how they make them, the transparency and out the black box so we know what they're doing. Anyway, we have to move on, but we are for this, Governor Hochul.

So here we are. Speaking of problematic content, speaking on the other side, ex-users can now post, view, and share adult nudity and sexual content thanks to a new formalized policies. This is a road that Jack Dorsey thought about going down and pulled back from and thought about going down. But under the policies, ex will allow consensually produced and distributed adult pornographic content.

content. Good luck controlling that, X, because you're not good at anything else, as long as it's properly labeled and not prominently displayed. I don't know what that means, because again, they don't have the staff to control it. The platform will still prohibit content that's exploitative, non-consensual, and promotes sexualization of minors.

on the last one, they better because they will be in a world of hurt if they don't. Adult material is also allowed under pre-Elon Twitter, although no official policy in place. They're just, you know, they're saying come one, come all. It was there, but I got to tell you, I've never seen so much pornography on Twitter since he took over. It's really, it's all my feed, all my ads. Um,

constantly when I go on there, which I don't very much at all anymore, but there's not a day that I don't get 10 or 12 pornographic content that is unwelcome, and I can't figure out a way to stop it and make it go away. I'm of two minds on this. I think pornography, I think adults should be allowed to consume pornography. And I think as long as they understand, caveat emptor, that there might be porn on the site and they're given the ability to opt out,

I don't think there's anything wrong with it. I think adult content, there's even some data showing that pornography is not as harmful for teens as a lot of people believe. But anyways, what is the most frightening thing here?

Let me back up. Tumblr was a porn site. People got so sick of them pretending it wasn't a porn site that they said, "Okay," and they were forced to take the porn down. It immediately went from a company that was acquired for 1.1 billion to a company that was eventually reacquired for $3 million. Porn works online. Some of the biggest sites in the world are porn companies. The top three global pornography sites each have more traffic than Amazon, Netflix, TikTok, and OpenAI.

So I think pornography is something that I think that's fine as long as people know what they're in for. What is really problematic about Twitter as it relates to porn is that it's a slow incremental step to what Twitter is responsible for 49% of child sexual abuse content found across social media search engines and cloud services.

from 2017 to 2019. So if you believe this could be, this free-for-all could be a dangerous step

and then you layer in 230 protection. Twitter has a bigger problem here, and that is this content, which is not only wrong, but it's dangerous and puts kids in harm's way. Half of it, I mean, Twitter has single-digit market share across social, but it owns half of child sexual abuse content. That's not a good number for market share.

So I'm a mixed mind here. It's bad for the product. It makes their product shittier and shittier. That's really it. I agree. You should be able to do it. But it's just, I can't even tell you. It's a Nazi bar with pornography now. I just don't know what to say. It's like, whatever. Good luck with your pornography business, Elon. I would urge, I've asked you to do it, and I'll ask everyone else to do it. And that is what I do. People send me links to stories on X.com.

That I can click on. I haven't posted on X in a year. And I write back, I'm sorry, I'm not on X. Can you please send me the article directly? Yeah. Yep. You do. And I constantly parrot the statement that you made that kind of brought it home for me. Why are we painting this guy's fence? And I thought, she's absolutely right.

Why am I getting more clicks and more Nissan ads? I have to see what they're up to because I talk about it a lot more, but I would agree with you completely. Last thing, someone's back. Speaking of, guess who's back again? Shane Smith, co-founder of Vice Media, a character, is returning to the forefront of Vice News. He's kind of, he's a little bit like the Adam Newman of content. He's much funnier, though. As a correspondent, Smith was previously executive chairman of Vice, which

Last year, his file for bankruptcy protection laid off most of its staff. Many people blame Shane and his incredible spending. I was there to see a lot of it. Vice says that Smith will host a podcast for Bill Maher's

Club Random Studios. It'll run on Vice's TV channel. Smith will also report to PR and other news networks with commentary on the 2024 election. Oh, Shane is a character. A lot of people do blame him for creating the mess that became Vice Media and the Spending. I always thought it was an artisanal advertising business and not content business, but it was sort of in-your-face, hipster-like

I don't know, armchair more commentating and stuff like that. I don't know. What do you think? They have to come back. You know, he got a lot of money out of that company. I don't know what to think. I mean, good luck, Shane, I guess. I don't know him well, but I like Shane Smith. I had, I think he's a character. I think he's

For lack of a better term, I do think he's a bit of a visionary and a salesperson. And I think this was a story of convincing people that a company was something it wasn't. And it was just a media company addressing a valuable niche that should have never raised or received money at the valuation they did.

Then I think probably some management miscues and the whole thing turned into a shit show. I tell entrepreneurs sometimes, even if you can raise money at some crazy valuation, you do have an obligation to take it, but be thoughtful, there's no free lunch. When you raise money, I think at one point you raised money at like a $5 billion market capitalization. Then all of a sudden your investors are going to realize they made a mistake and they're going to get angry and it creates dysfunction. Then your employees think I'm not getting any money because my options were struck so high.

Anyways, but I didn't even know, I wasn't even sure Vice was still around, but it's got a nice brand. That is a back-in-the-day company with Shane Smith running it. And they had a really cool headquarters, which I always was like, okay, this is where the money's going, right? It was these beautiful headquarters in Williamsburg in Brooklyn, hipster out the yin-yang. Some great shows, Fuck That's Delicious, everything else. They did a lot of really, some really cool shows. Oh, they did some outstanding shows. Yeah.

Outstanding shows. You had one there, too. That's right. I quit that show. I thought it was so awful. I remember. In any case, they had some good ones. Back to Scott. Let me finish my story. You were just talking. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. Talk about your show. No, no, no. I feel bad. I feel bad. All right. Let's go back to me. So I remember being there one time. And when you entered the headquarters, there was a bar. Do you remember the bar that was there? Right in the lobby? I never went to HQ.

All right. HQ had a bar in the lobby and the employees were looking, were like, we're always drinking. They're day drinking there in this bar. And I literally looked at it and I think it was to Shane I said it or one of them. I go, oh, look, an HR violation waiting to happen. And they had a lot of HR violation problems there, a lot of problems.

lot of stuff. And they spent enormous amounts of money. I remember Josh Tarantino was doing that show, the Vice News show, and they had like a hundred zillion editing booths that looked like the top. It's just the money that he spent, like especially Rupert Murdoch's money was insane. And I was running my little media company. I was like, how do you afford this? Because I can't like, you know, anyway, but I was responsible. Go ahead. Tell your story of your show. They decided they wanted to get into thought leadership and they launched a

a show with me and Anand Giridharadas. It was COVID, I had a full studio. Anand had a show, I had a show, and basically they said, "Do whatever you want."

And then they cut it up and edited it to appeal to youth, fast cuts, tons of colors everywhere. It was filmed literally in my garage by my head of technology, Drew Burrows, and my partner who runs PropG Media, Catherine Dillon, everyone in masks or remotely. Usually there wasn't even anyone in the studio with me.

and I screened it at my house with some friends and we watched 21 minutes of it. Then I looked over and my wife was crying. I'm like, that's not a good sign.

She's like, "What's this going to mean for us? This is so bad." Wow, good for your wife. I love your wife. She's the best. I remember my youngest son looking at her like, "Oh my God, this is really bad." All I could think of was like, "Oh, fuck." I had signed up for six shows and I had five more. All I could think of was how do I get through this in an accident? Then after three weeks, the person who ran Vice Television called me and said, "I have great news. They love the show. It's doing really well.

and we want to sign you up for another 12 shows. And I'm like, there's no fucking way I'm doing another show. I'm going to see it through the six. I'm out. And they called me back. And this is, I thought, provided some insight into television. They must have called me back six times, and they were genuinely flummoxed that I would leave TV.

It is so clear that when people get on TV, they literally cling to it like an African dictator clings to power. Nobody ever wants to leave television once they're on. I'm like, "I'm out. I hate this show. I look like an old man having an epileptic seizure."

This is just not the vibe I want in media. Anyways, that's my bye story. Anyway, they did do some great journalism, too. At the same time, some of the reports were quite good. In any case, Shane, welcome back. As usual, no one gets to go down in the Internet economies. Anyway, let's get to our first big story. ♪

Federal regulators have reached a deal to move forward with antitrust investigations into the AI industry. You knew this was coming. The Justice Department is going to investigate NVIDIA while the FTC will look at OpenAI and Microsoft. They split it up, as usual, Lena Kahn and John Cantor. John Cantor, the assistant AG for antitrust, told the Financial Times that he was looking into the AI sector with urgency and specifically monopoly choke points. I think it's good that he's getting here early. It took them decades to get to Google. And he's going to look at OpenAI and Microsoft.

So it's probably smart that they put everybody on notice. It's interesting about NVIDIA and other companies can be in trouble. I'm not sure if they'll be in trouble, but it's good that the government is looking at all these different weird deals, including that one where Microsoft essentially bought a company and pretended they didn't.

NVIDIA currently has an estimated 80% of the market in AI chips. Now, while that won't last, they're sort of in the Cisco position that Cisco used to be on in the early internet. Microsoft reportedly structured its minority stake in OpenAI in part to avoid antitrust scrutiny. They've been very good on deals like this. In spite of this antitrust news, it's been another big week for NVIDIA. The company hit the $3 trillion mark on Wednesday, passing Apple, who's now the world's second most valuable company. Microsoft still is the top slot.

NVIDIA's 10-for-1 stock split goes into effect for the close of trading on Friday, which will probably take it even higher, a move likely to attract more investors, and the price goes up.

There's also a picture of Jensen Wang signing someone's breast, which was sort of like, he wears his leather jacket, so it looked very rock star-y. A couple of things. First about the antitrust thing, and then we'll talk about the NVIDIA bubble, which hasn't burst at all. Talk about the antitrust stuff first. The two biggest tax cuts that would lower prices for corporations and consumers globally would be, first and foremost, if China and the U.S. kissed and made up.

Their supply chain, our IP consumer culture, their problems around youth unemployment, our problems around inflation. I mean, it's just a marriage made in heaven. We need to kiss and make up. She and Biden need to realize that the two largest economies, when they come together, creates peace and prosperity. So I hope that happens.

The second biggest tax cut, and it might be the biggest, is if we tripled the budget of the DOJ and the FTC and we fertilize the entire corporate world with a bunch of amazing companies. How we would do that is the following, is we look at home renovations, agriculture, chicken, beef, media, farm. There are so many industries where three companies control between 50 and 80 percent of the industry.

Everybody thinks the free market results in prosperity. No. The free market results in a series of companies that perform really well, have outstanding leadership, get cheap capital, use that capital to create regulatory capture, and then get to a scale where they run away with it and small and medium-sized companies end up dying a slow death.

The fertilizer here would be to go in and take the 50 biggest companies dominating their industry and turn them into 300 great companies. Employers or employees would be able to charge higher rents for their labor. There'd be more tax revenue. This would be the biggest tax cut in history. And it needs to start, or one of the places it should start, is in big tech. And there has never been, as far as I can tell, a breakup where we look back and thought that was

that was a bad idea. Now, as it relates, let me play the other side here. As it relates to Nvidia, I don't think Nvidia is where you start because what you want to be careful of is saying that because someone is so successful and so big, that's not a catalyst for breaking up a company. I mean, I would argue my old company, the company that bought mine, Gartner, I think antitrust officials should look at that company because it is hard for anyone to emerge in syndicated research because Gartner shows up

and acquires little companies, including mine, and such that no one has any choice. What you have is corporations all hate this company, but they all use it, and they have what I would call unfair pricing.

So being big and being worth $3 trillion doesn't necessarily mean you should be broken up. Sure, sure. That's the argument. That's the argument. But the point being, besides the financial elements, which you've talked about quite a bit here, I think it's that they need to be seen on the job, the cops on the job, and looking, even if NVIDIA may be not the first one, it's the obvious company to at least mention that.

that we're looking at you, NVIDIA. We're watching you and we're looking for competition. We're looking for you not to try to goose prices and restrict the ability of people to get these chips and things like that. So that's important. The real company here to look at is Microsoft and everything it's doing. Or Alphabet or Meta. Yeah, right. Absolutely. But I'm saying these minority stakes that they're doing, including buying Inflection AI, you know, that was a purchase of a company versus a...

you know, taking the guy who ran it, Mustafa Suleiman. I just, I think it's very good that Kantor, and very canny that he is looking at them. Whether he can do anything about it is another story, but they never have, and they're doing it early. So that, to me, is a good sign. So to your point, it's typically not the action itself that creates better behavior, but scrutiny.

The decision to break up Microsoft, which was overturned in an appeal court, was not what had an impact on the ecosystem. It was that Microsoft said, "Okay, we're going to stop bundling Internet Explorer and as a result, or we're going to stop forcing Bing on people," and Google emerged. My joke is without the DOJ or the FTC, we'd all be saying, "I don't know Bing it." Antitrust,

Antitrust action works, you know, again, it's the scrutiny. It works really well. And they have framed it incorrectly. Right now, the Republicans and the incumbents will frame it as you're holding back winners. Being bad and being rich isn't bad. I'm going to push back on that. You know, in this interview with AOC, and she said it's really interesting because I have found common ground with a lot of Republicans. There's a lot of Republicans. They all hate big tech. Yeah, agreed. Yeah.

They are with, there's all these groups that love Lena Kahn that are very right wing. You know what I mean? Josh Hawley wants to break up. They call it Kahnistas or they have a name for their Kahn fans or Lena Kahn fans. And I asked AOC about this. She's also. Yes, she's also. Well, she hangs out with Matt Gaetz on these issues. And so I said, this is interesting. You're doing a lot of these, some of these things with Matt Gaetz. He's a little old for her, but anyways. Yeah.

Sorry, couldn't read it.

That is not who's in power in the Republican Party now. Anyway, let's move very quickly to the number. The shares crossed the trillion dollar mark last summer. It moved to $2 trillion this past February. Shares have risen 24%.

since the first quarter earnings reported in May, 24%, with the stock surging 147% so far this year. Apple, of course, is now three. I don't know if Apple should be concerned about this. I do think this is a Cisco situation, which happened during... Remember, Cisco was the top of the top, and then it wasn't, because it was making routers and things like that for the internet. They were selling the picks and shovels of the internet.

at that time. The stock split is good for investors. It always is. All these stock splits always are. Google did it many years ago, as I recall, and it surged. So is this number, you talked about it maybe right when the earnings were around, and you said, I wouldn't bet against this because this is where investors are going to put their money.

What do you do now? I ran into someone whose husband works for Nvidia and she was like, we don't know what to do. All of a sudden we're really rich. And at the same time, selling it is, and they were there for like six years or however many years. And, and, and she, they don't know what to do. They don't know, like they're thrilled, but at the same time, nervous as all fuck about where this is going. Yeah.

So can I advise your friends first and then talk about NVIDIA? Please. Yeah. When you wake up and you find yourself blessed with a large concentrated position because you're working at NVIDIA and all of a sudden you have $3, $5, $10, $20 million worth of stock, there will be a lot of soft pressure to stay in the company and show that you're in it to win it. Abso-fucking-lutely exercise those options, sell as much as you can and start diversifying. Once you get

Sometimes you have to be concentrated in the beginning and go all in on buying a house or starting a business. But the moment more than 80 percent of your net worth is in any one thing, you need to start diversifying. Your friends don't want to get rich, they're already rich, they don't want to get poor.

So they need to start diversifying and they may think Nvidia is amazing just as people thought Cisco is amazing. Let me draw the distinction because I've made the comparison and people including Josh Brown, who I really respect, called me or texted me and say, "You got one thing wrong." As Nvidia stock has gone up, exploded, unlike Cisco, its actual PE ratio has gone down because their earnings have exploded even faster than the stock price. So there's a fair distinction. However, at $3 trillion,

The moment a company, the moment Meta or more likely Microsoft announces a new AI GPU that's fairly good, the moment a big company says we're cutting back by 60 or 80 percent our spend on AI, all of these companies get recalibrated because it has become insane time. But you want to talk about Nvidia. Nvidia is the most successful company in history.

as measured by value creation in such a short amount of time. In May, it added $750 billion in market cap. So NVIDIA added the value of any company in the world, except for maybe the top seven or eight most valuable in one month. And here's the problem with the S&P and these indices. The S&P 500 is up, I think, 13% or 14% year-to-date. You think, oh, the market's doing well. The economy's doing well. It's probably all NVIDIA.

That's right. Oh, young people should be happy. Well, guess what? Unless you were smart enough to figure out to own NVIDIA, your returns have barely paced with inflation. So what we have is income inequality squared. And that is a small amount of companies, even the tech companies that I can't say were AI, are losing market cap to NVIDIA. But this thing, it is absolutely...

mind-blowing what this company has been able to pull off and what this company represents from a larger business strategy standpoint, and what is so unique about this company,

is that the only way you can get to a trillion dollars market cap now is to be an asset light and IP heavy company. Supposedly, the thing that was always going to be the moat for AMD and Intel was this 10, 15, $20 billion CapEx they had to make in these chip factories. And then NVIDIA comes along and says, no, no, no, no. The secret sauce is in the IP. It's in the design. And we will contract out the Slack supply.

of infrastructure and chip plants, which would have just been unheard. And now they're worth more than the entire industry.

This is the go-to move. This is the change in the economy. Asset-like companies that are totally focused on IP versus hard assets. So let me point out today, right now, NVIDIA at the beginning of the year started $481 a share, almost $482. Now it's $1,220 through triple. It's just an astonishing situation. In its max, which is crazy, it bumped along the bottom four.

ever until there was a little bump in 2022. It was a gaming, it was a gaming gym and stuff like that. And I, again, I interviewed Jensen. I did not let him sign my boo, but he was unexciting, I would say, you know what I mean? He was, it was an unexciting company, although very, he's very competent and everything else.

But it was, it's an astonishing, if you go look at the charts, it's crazy. And it just, this is what I told these people, same thing. I was like, look, I know you're going to leave stuff on the table here because people are crazy and they are the only alternate and they're doing very well. But, but,

Boy, boy, boy, oh boy, does that make me nervous. Right now, the PE ratio is 104. It was 75 yesterday. It's certainly rising as people buy this. And as they split it up, it will be even more as it will. It just will. That's what happens when it happens. And this is what regular people think of as the internet. Let's get into NVIDIA. So it's just...

It could be real bad for some people. That's all. It could be real good for some people. I love this game. In just the last five months, Nvidia has added the market cap of Amazon or the GDP of Australia, or in the last five months, Nvidia has added the market cap of JP Morgan, Walmart, and Tesla combined. In an unrelated story,

I was at a fundraiser with Emily Ratajkowski last night, two nights ago. I didn't say hi, though. I was too intimidated. I was so intimidated. You know who did come up and say hi? That was Natalie Portman. She is beautiful, and she still looks 25. Why did she say hi to you? It was a small thing, and she just came up and, you know. Was Emily really there?

I wouldn't lie about something like that. Yeah, she was there. You didn't say hello to her after all of this? You know what I was thinking about? When I was a younger man, I would have gone up and said hi. That's what I thought. I thought I'll go up and say, hi, I'm Sky Cowboy, Kara Fisher's co-host on Pivot. But what I was thinking about, and I hate this about myself, I've gotten so used to people coming up to me. I no longer have the mojo and I'm too arrogant to go up to other people. And I got to stop that. I got to get my mojo back here. I do it all the time. I wait for people to come up to me.

No? All right. Okay, well, she didn't. So, anyway, we'll move on. We'll see. NVIDIA people, good luck. Good Godspeed. And in related news, do you think AOC would sign my boob? That's good. No. That's good.

Oh, goodness. That's good. She would eat you for lunch, let me just say. It's a great interview. Smart, powerful, strong woman who also happens to be scorching hot. She is as sharp as a friggin'. She thinks so quickly. I have never interviewed someone that I found hard to keep up with. Anyway, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about an open letter from OpenAI employees and take a listen to a mail question about a recent ruling on grants.

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Scott, we're back with our second big story. Again, more drama at OpenAI as safety people fight non-safety people, I guess. It was actually a topic we talked about last night, and a lot of these women were like, everybody's a little bit much on the dreamy part and a little bit much on the dramatic dystopian part. So I trust these women, what they were saying. A group of OpenAI insiders is demanding AI companies increase transparency and whistleblower protections. I would agree with

An open letter, a group of current and former employees expressed concern that the company hasn't done enough to prevent AI from becoming dangerous. The letter says that AI companies overall, including OpenAI, have strong financial incentives to avoid effective oversight, you think? OpenAI has recently made news for agreements departing employees are asked to sign, which threaten to revoke stock option grants for non-cooperators. Of course, they've said they are going to take those off.

In a statement, OpenEye said the company has an integrity hotline and a safety and security committee, which is, of course, Sam Altman's on it, you know, kind of thing. It's a board committee.

I don't know. These open letters, I think this is their moment, the safety people, and they all got laid off essentially and pushed to the side in this run for the money kind of thing. Not just money, but power and money. I am not sure lawmakers will get involved. The letter voiced concern that regular whistleblower protections aren't enough because they focus on legal activity and the industry is not yet regulated, although whistleblower has worked for Francis Haugen and others.

Should the company be worried about all this bad news, open AI, but it was targeting all the AI companies, but it's certainly open AI is at the center of this, the way NVIDIA is at the center of the AI chips.

At the same time, Apple is expected to announce a partnership with OpenAI to integrate ChatGP2. It keeps going, OpenAI, with its news agreements, but this is an agreement with Apple to integrate ChatGPT into the iPhone operating system at next week's Worldwide Developers Conference. The companies have reportedly discussed using ChatGPT to power Siri, which would be great. Anybody can power Siri. I could power Siri better than Siri does. Or as a standalone app, Apple is reportedly still in talks with Google about using Gemini on phones, but has yet to reach a deal.

Yeah, Apple's a customer of all these companies. Talk a little bit about the first part. I mean, the drama piles on with this safety group because I'm going to just, before you comment, this is a company started as one thing and it's become another. And you're going to have disappointed people who thought it was one. They thought it was...

It reminds me of Google a little bit. A lot of people who started Google were very innocent and thought it was to help the world, and it wasn't. It just wasn't. And so you're going to get this kind of disagreement. And the people who believe that AI is going to kill us are very intense and believe very much this is a dangerous situation. And those who are on the dreamy side is going to cure cancer and everything else are

are like, what are you talking about? Then right in the middle is the money and that's where I look at. That's what I look at. First off, I think from this point forward, we should call it Microsoft AI. Let's just call it what it is. It's not OpenAI, it's Microsoft AI. As it relates to this notion that OpenAI employees warned of, "Reckless race for dominance." That's the type of people I invest in when I'm trying to make money.

I find it just cute and stupid and ineffective for former employees after they've been paid or got their severance to now say they're worried. Granted, some current employees are saying this, but enough already. This is a Microsoft division and it should come under FTC and DOJ scrutiny. Two, that safety team and those individuals need to figure out a way to get to Washington. If they really are serious about non-profit and saving the world from AI,

go to work for a regulatory firm or Senator Schumer's office or something. But all of this is a fucking soap opera and a misdirect. That is DC needs to get their arms around this technology, breakup companies have become too powerful, like a Microsoft, like an Alphabet, like an Apple, like a Meta.

And we need people in Washington who have the power of the courts, the power of finding, the power of regulation to regulate these companies instead of listening to people who invented Frankenstein and then get worried that Frankenstein's going to start throwing your friend's kids into the river. That's not helpful. That's what I say. I say, go work.

go work for government. Go, I've said it to several people who are worried. I was like, well, I have an idea. Like, go, go work for government because one of the things that's interesting, they do see me as like a fellow traveler. Like, I'm very worried about their power. Let me just say, I couldn't be, I'm someone who's, who,

who's always saying these companies have too much power, will do something about it, not just by these open letters. Go work for government and help regulate these companies. Help create laws that are smart. You're technical people. You can talk, tell us about the problems. At the same time, being overly dramatic when there are obvious benefits, be honest about what's going on here, right? It's not just they're making the money. When you talk to them,

And it's literally, again, last night with these women, they exactly laid it out. They're like, here's the problems, here's the benefits. Let's figure out how to have guardrails. They were so sensible because they were just older women who've been through it all. And they were being so reasonable about how to deal with it. There is a ground here where we can have the government involved and the government.

And these companies throttled back from what they're doing. But if you think they're not going to be in the money game here, I don't know where you grew up. You know what I mean? Like, it's not America, I guess, because everything is about the money and dominance in corporate America. And I agree with you. There's going to be dangers is the problem. So I sit in pitches from companies to VCs or small business competitions all the time.

If a CEO stood up and said, "Hi, we're so-and-so and we're in a reckless race for dominance," I'd like that. They say it as if it's a bad thing. That's what for-profit companies like this one are supposed to do. It's the whole move fast and break things. The people in this company were under the illusion that they were there to be a think tank and think about controlling AI and being thoughtful about it. Then someone smelled hundreds of billions and said, "Just kidding.

And we did call this the most ridiculous structure. If you read it, I printed it out. It was like we're a non-profit, but the non-profit only gets money after we've delivered 100 billion in profits to our initial investors. And I'm like, let me get this. You have to make more profits than any firm in history, maybe with the exception of Saudi Aramco before you're actually a quote-unquote non-profit.

It was just such jazz hands gone crazy. These people, like you said, it sucks to be a grown-up. My guess is they cashed their checks, they got severance in exchange for signing those non-disparagement agreements. It sucks to be a grown-up.

Go to work for government. Help us out. Yeah, I would agree. Get in here. We're happy to. I really would like really smart people doing this because it's not to limit these companies because you and I are both capitalists. It's to make them better. Honestly, I would put all these women on the board of OpenAI because I think they'd be great. That's what they should put, all these amazing technologists who were there for the early days. There was one that was so fucking funny.

about her early days of doing stuff. And one of the women is 90 years old. She was doing machine learning back in the 50s, an incredible woman. And just really, those are the kind of people, I kept sitting there, I was like, these are the kind of people we want to talk about these issues. And it was really hard. You should run for president. Yeah. Anyway, let's pivot to a listener question. ♪

This question comes from Tamara. Let's listen.

Hi, Karen Scott. This is Tamara from Brooklyn, New York. And I wanted to get your thoughts on the recent federal appeals court ruling that blocks fearless fund from issuing grants to black women. It just seems really ridiculous to me, honestly, that this group that is serving such an underfunded population would get blowback when billions of dollars continues to flow to white men and oftentimes from other white men.

So would love to hear your take on this. Love the show. Thanks. Tamara, what a great question. I have been thinking about this since this happened. This Fearless Fund is giving, it's a venture fund giving grants to Black women who are completely underserved in the money that goes into investments. And the guy who did the affirmative action lawsuit that won in the Supreme Court is going after a lot of companies. And this is one of them, of course, that it's unfair that

these women of color get more advantage over white men that desperately need this money, this venture money, when I think 90 bazillion percent of the money goes to white men in venture. It is a really thorny politicization

I mean, not political issue. It's a thorny legal issue because of the way the laws are structured and the way the Supreme Court ruled on affirmative action. This guy is going around stripping any kind of ability to focus in on any group that's underserved or has been underinvested in by saying they've got to compete with the white guy's

Because it's fair. Scott, I don't know what you think about this, but this is where it's going with those affirmative action rulings that the Supreme Court had. I think he's right. Like...

I mean, I'm torn here because the statistics are just overwhelming. When I was raising money in the 90s, it was only white dudes raising money. I never stopped to even think, well, why is it only white guys who look like me and went to elite colleges are raising money from venture capital? That's a problem.

A third of 1% of total venture capital going to Black women? Okay, that's a problem. The issue is how do we come together to solve it? And I was fascinated by this because I believe capital is free speech. There's an issue here. How do you advance the rights of people or advance communities that have not entered a very lucrative sector? I totally get it. My first reaction was a gag reflex.

And then I went, I looked at two of the most recent companies that the Fearless Fund gave grants to. One is called Slutty Vegan, first off, great name. And the other is Live Tinted. And I looked at the founders. And one of the founders was raised by immigrants and her father spent time in prison.

and this is where I'm heading with this. I think any affirmative action, and I think this is a form of affirmative action that is based on visible characteristics, is a bad idea. Now, having said that before my inbox gets filled up,

I do think it is entirely appropriate and we should promote what the University of California did in 1997, and that is not have race-based affirmative action, and this is a form of affirmative action, but have an adversity index. Now, the founder of Slutty Vegan, and I won't use their names because I don't want people contacting them, I think she faced tremendous adversity, and I like the idea of pools of capital being allocated to

unfairly fairly a bias towards people who have faced headwinds. I'd like to think that the majority of Republicans feel that way and I know all Democrats feel that way. The other person, the other woman who founded Live Tinted was raised by, in Houston, she went to the University of Texas, Austin. Her parents are married. I don't want to say she hasn't faced issues, but actually a greater percentage of black women

now attend college than white men. What I would say is if we want to come together and figure out a way to move forward that doesn't create these problems, I think we need to move to an adversity-based score or recognizing people's background because I think this creates a lot of hostility

Except, Scott, okay, hostility. Let me just say, what about women who don't necessarily come from adversity? If you have ever tried to raise money as a woman, it is a... Only white men are smart. It really is an astonishing... Ugh.

Is it discrimination? I don't know what to call it, but it's just like, how can it be? Same thing with boards. How can it be that only white men are good at boards? How can that... That's changed dramatically, Karen. I agree with you, but for a long, long time. And when you look at the numbers, something really...

is happening that is just really out of whack with talent across the country. They will not look at women. They will definitely not look at women of color. You know, in AI right now, and actually this was discussed on the stage, someone asked a question, where are the people of color in AI? And the women are like, they weren't there and they aren't there. And what is happening here is men funding each other again, again and again and again.

And so white men funding each other. And so what do you do about this group of people who have a stranglehold on the venture money and refuse to look up and not invest in people that look like them, that they think it's a meritocracy, as I've said dozens of times?

And it's a it's a meritocracy and they're doing it themselves. So I agree this is this is going to probably lose because this guy has has a point of view about affirmative action that many I you can absolutely see this argument. The problem is it doesn't address what is a massive issue is these groups will always fail because they're not getting they're not giving the chance to.

to show what they can do. And then when they fail because they don't get enough funding or backing, see, we told you, now let's give more money to the guy who looks like Mark Zuckerberg. And then let's support him and coddle him and lift him up and put him on third base and then clap when he gets to home. You know, I just...

It's such a fixed game for white men here, as much as many of them are very talented, by the way. But they are so coddled and so supported and they

think it's because they're so smart and it's just simply not the case. So I don't know what to do here because you're never going to get these people the kind of support and funding they need. And I don't know how to do it. Adversity can't be the only thing because what about people who went to college and they're from middle class and they did have some support, but they just can't get the kind of funding and support they need. Yeah.

Just listening to you now, you are changing my view. I want to draw a distinction and I want to use two different environments. Let's talk about college, which has traditionally been the certification and the experience that is the widest on-ramp into the middle and the upper class.

And in 1960, there were 12 black people at Princeton, Harvard, and Yale combined. That was a problem. The academic achievement gap between blacks and whites was double what it was between rich and poor. It made sense to have affirmative action based on race. It made sense. I believe it no longer does. 51% of Harvard's freshman class is nonwhite. What I think your argument is, we're not there yet in venture capital.

We're not at the point. The numbers are still so skewed in favor of the patriarchy that we still do need race-based affirmative action. So I think my go-to is around what I know best, which is higher ed. But I think the point you're making is that we're still not there yet and we need race-based affirmative action. The way you would probably get there, I think, is

The only way to jumpstart this stuff is when a Black woman-led business goes public and creates billions of dollars of shareholder value and people get over it. Now, until then, I think what you could do is have state or federal-sponsored legislation that provides what I'll call credits for investing in...

I mean, here's the problem though. When I was at Morgan Stanley, the syndicates would be picked for an IPO and there'd be minority. The state of California would demand minority and women-owned business investment banks in the syndicate. So we'd pick one or two, they did nothing. And the people who ran the firm went to Harvard and they happened to be women or people of color. And it was like, okay, all we're doing is reshuffling the elites here. This money isn't getting to...

I want to acknowledge your point. I'm, I have this reflex, gag reflex or this reflex memory around what's happened in education. And I think your point is we still have a long way to go before we can get. I don't even know if this is the answer, Scott. I don't honestly know. I just know that these white guys get to fail all the fricking time and the women do not get to fail. There's no failure for them. And these men come up with like, look at Shane Smith. Look, he's back. Give me a fricking break. He lost so much money for everyone but himself, but he gets,

to come back. Like, are you kidding me? Like, that's what it looks like. If you are a Black woman and you fail at a company, that's the end of your entire process. That's it. That's all you get. And I think that's what it is. But, you know, Shane Smith, oh, he's so good at what he does. Come on. Adam Newman. Come on, Adam. How many baddies can you foist upon the world and benefit from them? I just...

I just, I don't know the answer, Scott. I don't know the answer. I want to acknowledge your point and agree with you that I don't know the answer. We don't know the answer. Tamara, so sorry. I think this is going to, I think this group is going to lose. I think they are. I think this guy is very canny. What about Melinda Gates focusing all this money on women businesses? Do you think they'll go after her? She can do what she wants, right? Or can't she?

Right? It's an interesting thing. That's a really interesting question. But what she also did, she also gave $20 million to the American Institute for Boys and Men. Yeah. And it strikes me it's going to be difficult to tell people what they can do or not do with philanthropy. I don't know. Some of it's investment money.

That's a really fair point. But I think she inoculates herself by saying it's not a condition, that she's going to focus on a community, but it's not a condition of her philanthropy. Maybe it's how you talk about it. It's the language. I don't know. But I mean, the argument here, the logic is really sound that he's making. And that is we need to move to a post-racial society where

At some point, we need to acknowledge that when you're advantaging, here's where we are with universities. This is why I think DEI should be disassembled in universities.

People of color have endured- It is getting disassembled, Scott. Go ahead. I know. And I think it should. And by the way, it's a huge apparatus with a lot of overpaid people that, in my opinion, hold onto their jobs and have absolutely no accountability to anybody anyways, and are protected because you're called names if you ever question their departments. Because there's no old white men doing that. But go ahead. Keep going. How big do you think the Harvard- How much money do you think Harvard spends on DEI? I understand, but come on. My question would be, what if they expanded their freshman seats to let in more black kids?

Wouldn't that be more DEI? There's so many shitty old white man professors where I went to school, but go ahead. Go ahead. Okay, but that was back in the Middle Ages. All right, sure. Anyways, what you're saying, and I agree with you, is we don't have that issue yet in venture capital. I do think we have that issue on campus. I did that podcast with those two very impressive women from Harvard, and they were talking about how wonderful the DEI department is. I'm like, take all of that money, expand your freshman class, and let in more trans kids. Yes.

Let in more Black kids. That's DEI, not reshuffling the elites. Well, that's a good point. We have to get out of this. A very interesting question. Thank you so much. It'll be interesting to see where this goes, but we both probably think they'll lose. If you've got a question of your own you'd like answered, send it our way. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for this show or call 855-51-PIVOT. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions. You better have a good one.

Hey, Sue Bird here. I'm Megan Rapinoe. Women's sports are reaching new heights these days, and there's so much to talk about. So Megan and I are launching a podcast where we're going to deep dive into all things sports, and then some. We're calling it A Touch More.

Because women's sports is everything. Pop culture, economics, politics, you name it. And there's no better folks than us to talk about what happens on the court or on the field and everywhere else too. And we'll have a whole bunch of friends on the show to help us break things down. We're talking athletes, actors, comedians, maybe even our moms. That'll be a fun episode.

Whether it's breaking down the biggest games or discussing the latest headlines, we'll be bringing a touch more insight into the world of sports and beyond. Follow A Touch More wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes drop every Wednesday.

Hi, everyone. This is Kara Swisher, host of On with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine and Vox Media. We've had some great guests on the pod this summer, and we are not slowing down. Last month, we had MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on, then two separate expert panels to talk about everything going on in the presidential race, and there's a lot going on, and Ron Klain, President Biden's former chief of staff. And it keeps on getting better. This week, we have the one and only former Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. And

After the drama of the last two weeks and President Biden's decision to step out of the race, a lot of people think the speaker has some explaining to do. And I definitely went there with her, although she's a tough nut, as you'll find. The full episode is out now, and you can listen wherever you get your podcasts.

The Walt Disney Company is a sprawling business. It's got movies, studios, theme parks, cable networks, a streaming service. It's a lot. So it can be hard to find just the right person to lead it all. When you have a leader with the singularly creative mind and leadership that Walt Disney had, it like goes away and disappears. I mean, you can expect what will happen. The problem is Disney CEOs have trouble letting go.

After 15 years, Bob Iger finally handed off the reins in 2020. His retirement did not last long. He now has a big black mark on his legacy because after pushing back his retirement over and over again, when he finally did choose a successor, it didn't go well for anybody involved.

And of course, now there's a sort of a bake-off going on. Everybody watching, who could it be? I don't think there's anyone where it's like the obvious no-brainer. That's not the case. I'm Joe Adalian. Vulture and the Vox Media Podcast Network present Land of the Giants, The Disney Dilemma. Follow wherever you listen to hear new episodes every Wednesday. Okay, Scott, let's hear your fantastic prediction. It's been a lot of pressure. I mean, I don't like this. Um...

Okay. So my prediction in one word is Chicago exclamation point. The Democratic Convention in Chicago, I think is going to make a lot of news. I think one of several things might happen. One, I think the GRU and the CCP both want to sow incredible division in our society and have the ultimate propaganda tool, at least the CCP does with TikTok. I think Russia has become exceptionally good, especially the GRU at weaponizing troll farms in an amoral, porous social media environment.

I think there's going to be all kinds of misinformation and noise around the Chicago Convention. In addition, some of the protests we've seen, some of them have legitimate concerns. Some of it is being funded, in my opinion, by outside entities. In addition, if President Biden, let me just say the quiet part out loud, gets a cold and for whatever reason can't be on stage one night, there's going to be all sorts of speculation.

I just think we are setting ourselves up in Chicago in terms of scenario planning. Scenario planning is you look at what are a reasonable number of outcomes and then what prediction or what scenario likely foots across all of them. My prediction is the following. The Chicago Democratic Convention makes a lot of news. Okay. I'm going to take the opposite side. I think it's going to be one of these things we're going to like be, oh, no, oh, no, oh, no, and then nothing's going to happen. Right.

That might, fair enough. That's where I feel like it because they're, they're all knowing it quite a bit. Everyone's worried. You know, I think it's going to be one of these things where everyone's going to be like, it's sort of like the debate. Everyone's going to be like, hold on to your seat. Like, right. You're waiting for one of them to do something crazy on that debate stage. I don't think anyone feels comfortable because,

Who knows what Trump's going to do, right? Can he be disciplined? Probably not. He'll probably say something nutty like, I'm going to jail you with Joe Biden. And Joe Biden's like going to go, come on, man. Like, that's probably where it's going. So nobody knows where this debate's going. So everyone's going to be. That's not the fear. I may not. I may not watch it because I don't know which one is going to have a problem. That's not that's not the fear of Trump does something really stupid or irrational, right?

Oh, nobody cares. That will hurt him as much as I... The fear, Cara, is that Biden has a McConnell moment. And that's the fear. But if he doesn't and Trump doesn't, they'll be like, yeah, well, whatever. The bar is so low right now for Biden. So in that way, Trump, seeing Trump like unfettered is...

going to be people are going to be like, oh God, look at that guy. So we'll see how that goes. But nonetheless, I'm going to take the opposite. I think nothing's going to happen at this thing. I think they will have the security. I think there'll be rings of security around the entire thing. No tents?

And the governor, who is a Democrat, will keep it tight. He's a keep-it-tight kind of governor. There's a 2% or 3% chance he comes out of the convention as the nominee, Cara. That's true. A lot could potentially go down here. So, look, what you're talking about... Life is so boring compared to what you think. What you're talking about is a distinct phenomenon, and that is anxiety. A lot of us have...

But the first 40 years of my life, I didn't have enough anxiety. I was literally sleepwalking through life. I almost got kicked out of UCLA three times. Didn't care. Almost got fired from Morgan Stanley. Didn't care. I just didn't, you know, took to Sunset Boulevard, fucked up in high school. Didn't care. And then from 40 to 50, I had the perfect amount of anxiety. And now from 50 on, I fucking worry about everything. And anxiety...

Anxiety is a survival mechanism because you are supposed to be worried that when you see the reeds flowing in the wind, that it's not the wind, it's a lion that could eat you behind because occasionally it is a lion and that when you go to a watering hole, you are supposed to be anxious because it might be one of those TikTok crocodiles about to jump out. But here's the thing, anxiety is a form of survival because the shit you are most worried about, if you're worried about every computer and every elevator and every air traffic control guidance system shutting down,

at midnight on January 1st, 2000, you start to prepare for it. And by preparing for it and being anxious about it, you reduce the likelihood it's gonna happen. The things, and this is a lesson, the things you are most anxious about are the things that are least likely to hurt or kill you. It's the shit you're not expecting.

I am exactly opposite to you. I used to be a lot more anxious and now I'm like, eh, whatever. Who cares? I literally have shifted. That means you're maturing. I'm getting immature. And actually, you know, I had someone who I would say is on their way to not being my friend anymore. Um,

And they're always like, "Ah, da, da, da, da, da," and all the political stuff. And I used to rise to the occasion, and now I'm like, "Eh, okay." Like, I don't even listen. I don't even respond. It's just literally I've become the opposite of you. I'm like, "All right, whatever." Sure. - Yeah, I'm worried about everything. I think it's kids. I worry about my kids all the time. - I'm not worried about everything except my kids. Like, my safety, my kids, that's it. Anyway, we're very different. I have shifted. I was much more anxious earlier.

And Scott, that's the show. Just a reminder, I will be at the Tribeca Film Festival next week, June 11th at 5.30. I'm taping a Slate podcast, Death, Sex, and Money, which are Scott's main focuses in his life, with Anna Sale. You can get tickets at tribecafilm.com slash deathsexmoney. And also, listen to my AOC interview. It is quite a thing. She said quite a lot of things in it, among which she thinks Donald Trump will probably try to have her arrested. She talked a lot about progressives and the need to calm the fuck

down, essentially. She talked a lot about that whole fight with Marjorie Taylor Greene. In any case, she's a very talented politician. Very talented. Definitely a really, really great interview. Anyway, we'll be back on Tuesday with more Pivot. Scott, we'll be right back.

Read us out. Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie and her Todd engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Yusuf Eriyo. Nishat Karoua is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at edwinemag.com slash pod. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things Pivot.