Every election is a choice, not a marriage proposal. We're not hiring a priest, we're hiring a senator.
Hi everyone, this is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.
With just a week to go before the Maine Senate primary, Graham Platner, the presumptive Democratic nominee, is facing his latest controversy. Multiple outlets reported over the weekend that Platner's wife told a campaign aide last year that her husband sent sexually explicit texts to several women outside the marriage. By the way, this campaign person had a falling out with Platner and has dropped a dime, which has its own ethical considerations. Platner is calling these reports gossip from a former staffer and accused the media of journalistic malpractice. As of this recording, none of the women involved in the text exchanges have come forward. Platner's wife, Amy Gertner, released a video, which I thought was fascinating over the weekend, defending her husband and their marriage. Let's listen because it was really quite something to listen to.
It makes me really angry, disappointed, and I find it really shameful that there's a group of media outlets and people who are willing to spread gossip instead of talking about real issues that Graham is running on, like health care and education and child care.
As I said, this has been a controversial campaign. He reportedly has an active account on Kik, a private messaging app sometimes used for sexting. He's faced scrutiny, of course, about his Nazi symbol tattoo. He later expressed regret and covered it up. There were posts from a deleted Reddit account, all manner of jokes about sexual assault, and he's also apologized for that. It's a really interesting issue, and lots of people disagree on this. I'll tell you what I think in a second, but Platner appears to have a real chance of unseating Republican Susan Collins, who is the zombie of all senators. He's been leading in recent polls. I personally, I'm going to just very quickly say I think voters don't care about this. I don't. And I thought his wife handled it well. I had an argument with Amanda this weekend. She doesn't like the Nazi tattoo. She doesn't like this. I feel as if if the husband and wife are working it out, it reminds me a little of when Hillary Clinton did 'I should stand by my man' when he had those Gennifer Flowers things. Reminds me a little bit of that. Turned out to be a pretty good president, and not everything — not, of course, the Lewinsky stuff. But it's a really interesting question. I don't get bothered by it as much, none of it. I think he's someone who, as Amanda Litman correctly said, had a drinking problem as a Marine, probably got that tattoo, has some mental health challenges which he's trying to overcome, marriage problems which his wife is insisting they're going to counseling for and overcoming. I'm not so sure in the era of Trump this matters at all. So, what do you think?
Look, okay, every election is a choice, not a marriage proposal. We're not hiring a priest, we're hiring a senator. Do you want to make sure that women's rights aren't continued to be rolled back? Do you want a more responsible economic policy? Do you want different approaches to labor that raise the wages of nurses and students? Do you want something regarding fiscal sanity? Do you want to have a check against the unfettered, unprecedented corruption? But we're going to talk about tattoos and sexting? I mean, the obsession with personal purity has become a luxury belief. And folks, if your house is on fire, you don't ask whether the firefighter has problematic DMs.
Now, having said that, the comms person for the Platner campaign should be fired. You don't go after media. You don't say this is gossip. You don't say these are texts. He said it was journalistic malpractice. Guess what? These texts are accurate. The reporting has been accurate.
The response should be the following: I am an imperfect man. I have demonstrated terrible judgment on several occasions in my marriage, and I have a great marriage. What about you? What about you? Are we going to continue to have one strike and you're out? I'm a Jew. I don't love a Totenkopf tattoo. Okay, if he gets drunk one night and gets a stupid tattoo, the fact that he's trying to protect our liberties the next day and might be blown up by an IED, he gets a hall pass. So, okay, folks, if you want to keep applying purity tests, we end up with an incompetent running against a 9/11 denier in Los Angeles. We're not going to have any candidates running. So, one, stop the purity tests. And two, the Platner campaign — it's not the crisis that brings people down, it's their inability to own it. I fucked up.
Did you watch his wife's thing? I thought it was — it reminded me a lot of the Hillary — remember when Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton sat down together on 60 Minutes?
It was really interesting to me. It had a lot of echoes of that. I thought, you know, someone said to me like, 'Oh, she looks like someone whose wife is in denial.' I'm like, 'No, I think she seems to not be in denial. She understands his problems.' And I think it just reminded me a great deal of that. And there's, you know, as a person, you can have comments about people on a personal thing, you have comments about people on a political thing. I'm like, I want to talk about this idea of imperfect allies that you and I have talked about. Obviously, I'd heard it first from Representative Sarah McBride, who has plenty of reasons to be angry at people and isn't — a writer named David Gait posted about it on Substack. Let me read a quote: 'Working with someone toward a shared goal does not require believing they are morally perfect. It requires believing the goal itself matters enough to justify strategic alignment.' He goes on to say, 'The planet is on fire, as you noted just now, Scott, while many people are still conducting background checks on one another's vibes.' So talk about that concept because it's a really difficult one for many people to get around. Many people supported him. Others were like, no, we have to have background checks. So what do you think about that? Can people get to that idea of, I guess, forgiving people for their imperfections?
One of the reasons we're seeing a crash in birth rates is a lack of dancing. And dancing is a key component or a key mating ritual. And when you dance, typically it helps if you drink a little bit. The anti-alcohol movement is hurting it. But more than anything, and there was a wonderful TikTok on this by some young man, and I thought, God, this was so powerful. People have a camera on them all the time.
19-year-old men don't want to dance because they're worried about — or they don't want to take risks like dancing, like approaching a potential romantic interest, because they're worried one false move and you're out everything in a digital world. So unless we move to at least some basic notion of — as our digital world increases and everything we've done is going to be recorded and potentially used against us — unless we have a little bit more grace. And okay, what's interesting here is that I just hope the same thing holds, and that is if the Republicans decide the best candidate for a Senate seat in Texas is someone whose wife divorced him on biblical grounds, if they can — and who has a history of fraud — if we can decide that this guy can have his finger on the button and be the most powerful person in the world while he's banging adult movie stars while his wife is home nursing. And to a certain extent, I'm kind of like, I don't care if the pilot is a good person. I want someone who's really good at flying the plane. So I think the same thing needs to go to our politics. I just hope that the same, what I'll call, focus on perceived effectiveness is the same for Democrats. And I am still ripe angry at Senator Gillibrand who thought a seven-minute run for president was worth kicking Senator Al Franken out. The Democrats want to walk around and say, 'Well, we'll have our dignity.' Okay, hold on to your dignity as a 15-year-old has her pelvis broken because she's forced to carry a child to term. But yeah, you kicked Platner out.
Is there something — should there be a line? Like obviously —
I think at some point, if it — I mean, let me put it this way. If Graham Platner was, you know, it ended up that he was kind of fond of wearing a white hood and was constantly engaging in anti-Semitic behavior, then that tattoo isn't an errant mistake from a youthful soldier. It's a pattern. The corruption of the Trump family is a pattern. This speaks to their character. But folks, all of us have made mistakes. I mean, okay, Barack Obama doesn't appear — we can't seem to find a mistake on President Obama.
Well, okay. But you know what I mean. Or scandal, right? Powerful men are under the illusion that they mistake kindness for sexual interest. And as they become more powerful, power corrupts, and they're more likely to believe that they're immune from standard norms and engage in stupid, reckless behavior. By the way, more women do that than they get credit for. I will argue that it infects a lot more men than women, but you know, Secretary Noem was banging her number two on government property. So —
Yeah, she did a lot of work for that. Yeah, she counts for ten, Matt, I have to say. But —
Oh man. Look, I saw this and I was like, okay, at what point — I'm hoping we've passed the purity test on the Democratic side. But more than anything, I want to call the Platner campaign and say, 'Oh, stop attacking. Stop attacking the — don't say it's gossip or it's not accurate reporting. It's been corroborated.'
I think the point they were trying to make is, shouldn't we be focusing on the important issues? And that's all they needed to say. I think the first part should have been removed, right? Just say, you know what, we get why people might stare at this. It feels like a traffic accident, and it kind of is, but let's focus on the real matters. I have a question. Do you think we're imperfect allies? I think we are a little —
Yeah. Like people you don't always agree with everything, but I think — I mean, the reality is, Kara, we're both progressives and the fact that we disagree on things. Yeah.
Where the real progress needs to be is between moderate Democrats and moderate Republicans. I mean, if the two — you know, on almost every major issue, you and I are within two basis points of each other in terms of actually what we believe. We might have differences around tech and tone or whatever. But what we really need — I mean, a couple of things. One, I think we have to from a young age start thinking, 'All right, folks, unless you want to live a life with a fake user account and VPN for fear you ever do anything wrong, we're going to have to demonstrate more grace with each other.' The Democrats applying these purity tests to themselves — it's just like that. The Republicans are just laughing that we would do this.
Like, people be naughty. Like, people be naughty.
Have at it. But the thing that really — the Platner campaign, Graham Platner, should do the following: I've demonstrated terrible judgment numerous times —
He has on other issues. Yeah.
Numerous times in my professional and personal life. I've also served my country. I think I'd be a great senator. And by the way, I have a fantastic marriage. So have at it, folks. If you want to engage in this stuff, I realize it's titillating. Have at it. All he and his campaign are doing is keeping the story alive by denying it and by attacking the media.
I don't think there's anything wrong with the media reporting this because — well, I do have to say I'd like to know a little more about this campaign person who keeps dropping dimes on this guy and what her agenda is. I have to say she's been doing it a lot. She's mad, and I'd like to know about her in specifics also. That's what I would say the media needs to do a little bit more of, because I need to understand what the source's motivations are, and she's not here to protect us, I don't think. Anyway, let's move on. Self-help podcaster Jay Shetty has signed a deal to bring a video version of his show exclusively to Spotify and Netflix. Another one of these deals, which is interesting. The deal is reportedly worth over a hundred million over multiple years. Who knows? Shetty and his previous partner iHeartMedia parted ways. They could not come to terms. This is something happening. Obviously Scott and I went through a bunch of these, not this amount of money, but it's a really interesting — that Netflix —
I hate to break it to you, but over five years we're getting more than this.
And that's why we're in Perfect Allies, as you realize on bank.
Yeah, we're pretty high on the news list this week. I was noticing we're moving up. We still haven't passed Megyn Kelly, but we will.
We're coming for you, Megyn.
We're coming for you, Megyn. And not like that way in any way physically or just —
No. In the Apple podcast ranking.
Podcasting, let's be clear, so you don't make a show out of it. But talk about these deals because they're really — because you can't go on YouTube. It's all of them, right? And he did it the normal way, which was an iHeart deal. You could do those. There's a bunch of companies like this, but now this is for Spotify and Netflix, which is interesting. And Spotify had tried, you know, the Rogan thing obviously — they signed a bunch of deals that didn't work out. And so talk a little bit about this. How do you look at this market right now, and what do these indicate to you?
Well, first off, let me just say with Jay, I'm really happy for him. I don't know him well, but I know him. I've been on his podcast a couple of times. I think he's a lovely man, and I think he does a good job. And essentially what he realized is the most valuable media asset in podcasting isn't sports like it is on cable TV. It's loneliness. He figured out how to monetize the largest market in America, and that is people who need a friend. And so, okay, I'm happy for Jay. I think he does a great job. And by the way, I cannot get over — and I think it's total bullshit — all the hate that Jay and Mel Robbins get.
And it's just like, okay, don't listen to their podcasts. They're not bad.
That's how I feel. I'm not a big fan of — I mean, I like them. I like Mel personally, but I just get why people find it annoying. It's a little bit much.
Fine, then don't listen to it. But —
I was literally in an elevator and someone says, 'Do you know Mel Robbins? I find her very annoying.' I'm like, 'Okay, then don't listen.' That's what I said.
Of nothing. I mean, the reality is any bestselling author — if you say a bestselling author is full of shit, you get elevated in the ratings. So people are posting every bestselling author to get another 70 bucks from TikTok. Have at it. But I've never understood the hate for Jay and Mel. I think they're both nice people doing their best, doing good work. And if you don't like their work, which I understand, it's not for everybody. You know, the whole kind of monk rap gets a little bit old sometimes.
I'm not a fan of the self-help stuff.
Yeah, fine. Then don't listen. That's fine.
But there's two things here. This dynamic that's colliding is the following. The fastest-growing ad-supported medium is not even YouTube in terms of revenue, or Meta. It's podcasts. I think the ad revenue is going to be up 21% this year on podcasting. In addition, about 20% of ours and 40% of Prof G pods are watched or listened to on a TV because they're streamed off of YouTube. So essentially what a podcast is, it's a television show for 10% of the production value or cost. So the means of production of TV is being arbitrated into podcasting. And now 55% of Americans have listened to a podcast recently. So in addition, the intimacy of the relationship advertisers really like, and the CPMs for Pivot are $45. The CPMs for CNN are 13. And then you combine it with the following. There's this dirty secret of podcasting called the RSS feed. And slowly but surely, you build up subscribers. And every time a show comes out, it's automatically downloaded to an iPhone and it's counted as a listen. So the people who've been in it for three, five, ten years, as you have, who have built large RSS feeds have moats. So what you have is a series of acquirers going, 'We need growth. Let's go find a podcast.' And a small number of podcasts actually have large RSS feeds because you cannot — you know, when Landman comes out, it's a hit overnight. It's hard for a podcast — if you look at the top ten podcasts in any category, they're usually the original gangsters or they're people who've been around for a while. You're absolutely right. So you have demand and you have sequestered or pretty big moats, which all adds up to large acquisition prices relative to their revenues. I bet Jay does 10 to 20 million a year. So he's getting sold at five to ten times revenues, which is a lot. But you're about to see — and we've been predicting this, and I'm talking our own book here, but I've been saying this for the last two years — there just aren't — when Spotify, iHeart, Sirius, you know, and James Murdoch go looking for podcasts, there aren't that many of scale.
You know, it's really interesting, and it is the cost structure, which people don't understand, and it is television because our YouTube ad revenues are growing pretty smartly. And it's a really interesting way to deliver news. That's, you know, it's what people want, which is why you're seeing the podification of network news. I just don't think it's going to work. I think you either just have to go this way or not. I don't think you can switch that audience over because they're older and they like the way it is. So you're going to see these declines like you see at CBS because they don't like the new stuff you're doing. It's kind of just like you need to do a hard reset with a lot of this stuff. But I agree. I think it's interesting, and they can actually usually make the money back. But the foregoing of YouTube versus Netflix is really interesting, and it'll depend on what your product is at any one time whether you want to sort of be in the safe harbor of Netflix, Spotify, or you want to be out in the open in a YouTube, Google world essentially. Which people can mix and match too, by the way, which is what's great about it, right? Presumably.
Well, the most powerful media company in the world that's on a tech — well, the most powerful —
Saying you're a giant hand there. Look at that. Keep put your big hand up there. Oh. Oh. Okay.
I'm very self-conscious of my hands. I have my mother's hands. They're not —
My hands — in the competition for my worst feature, it is the Olympics. I mean, there's a lot of competitors. Yeah.
But my hands are right up there. I'm very self-conscious of my hands. That's why I don't wear jewelry.
They're perfectly nice. Anyways, so Netflix I think is the most powerful media company in the world, or traditional media company, and they're getting into podcasting. And overnight, whoever they decide to distribute or acquire, overnight that podcast is going to be — I mean, they'll be the new king and queen makers of podcasting.
I thought it was bad news for iHeart. I'll tell you that was a good —
I think that's right. iHeart is a company that's gone through bankruptcy once or twice, and they have to be economically rational. They don't have access to cheap capital. So if iHeart shows up and Spotify and Netflix show up to a bidding war, you go with them. I don't know who wins. I just know iHeart loses.
Yeah. Yeah. iHeart can't justify the valuations these guys can justify. You know, even Sirius — basically, I think you're going to see Spotify and Netflix take the whole value of the podcast ecosystem up. And not only that, if your podcast does 10 million downloads a month, you're worth four times the podcast that does 5 million, because it is so hard in this environment to find scale. It's very similar to cable TV in the sense that there's a small number of personalities who extract the majority of the economics.
And it's the same in podcasting. But I want to finish where I started. I'm really happy for Jay. I like it when people — he's been in the business for 10 years. He's a nice man. Good for him.
He has worked at it. Yeah, he has worked at it.
Yeah. Well, just don't listen to him if you don't like him. That's my feeling on a lot of things.
He and I have been sexting in related news.
On Kik. Kik is a dreamy — let me just tell you — screamy. He has the most beautiful eyes.
Platner definitely picked the dirty one. I'll just say he picked the dirty one. Kik is dirty.
I don't know anything about — how would you even know that? I don't know any of these —
Because I know all these sites. I don't use any of them.
Really? Do you go on talk about — do you offer other to powerwash other lesbians' backyards? You little saucy mink. You —
Scott, I fixed my power washer this weekend. I was very excited. Anyway, uh —
So just on that note before we go, I think the new thing — a guy asked me for dating advice, and he's like, 'I'm never going to graduate from college. Will I ever be able to find a woman?' And I'm like, I think the new sexy is blue-collar romance, and that is no poetry. Don't send a car for her. Fix her refrigerator. I think that gets women really hot. Look at a woman's stressors and treat them like they're your enemy. Fill up her car with gas.
Amanda is not impressed with my power washing. She makes fun of me, but that's fine. I think if you want to get a woman, I think humor is the ultimate aphrodisiac with women, behind maybe money, but I think a decent runner-up is to look at a woman's acts of service. And if you know how to fix — you know, move your girlfriend, show up and fix the air conditioner, like attack her problems like they're your enemies.
I like it. Self-help from Scott Galloway. Okay, Scott, let's go. In a quick break, when we come back, big IPO news from Anthropic. Support for this podcast and the following message is brought to you by E*TRADE from Morgan Stanley. Now that E*TRADE is part of Morgan Stanley, there's even more to love. Get the freedom to invest on your own with zero commissions on stocks, options, ETFs, and mutual funds, plus account types for every investor. And when you're ready, speak with a pro to help guide you on your financial journey. Discover more ways to make the most of your money and get up to $1,000 when you open a brokerage account with a qualifying deposit today. Learn more at etrade.com/offer. Terms and fees apply. Investing involves risks. Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC, member SIPC. E*TRADE is a business of Morgan Stanley.
Scott, we're back with breaking news. Anthropic just confidentially filed its IPO with the SEC. It has not disclosed the size or terms of the offering. I'm excited for you to read it for me and tell me what's in there. But before that, Anthropic hit a major milestone last week, passing OpenAI to become the most valuable AI startup in the world. The company announced a $65 billion funding round — I can't believe I'm saying billion — that values it at $965 billion, very close to the top. To put things in perspective, OpenAI announced a $730 billion valuation back in February, but it took the company around a decade to reach that number. It just keeps escalating. Anthropic, which was founded five years ago, has beaten that valuation in half the time. Did anyone see this coming? Scott Galloway did. Let's listen to Scott's prediction from February.
As we sit here today, I actually think that Anthropic, in the next 12 months, this one of our predictions is going to be worth more than OpenAI.
Very well done. What does this valuation mean for Anthropic's IPO as well as OpenAI and SpaceX? By the way, SpaceX is now targeting an IPO valuation of $1.8 trillion after feedback from advisers and investors, according to Bloomberg. That's a step down from the initially reported $2 trillion. It's still too much. Anyway, thoughts? What do you think? You got that one right, and we'll be looking at the filing when we get to be able to see it, but we don't know a lot yet. I don't think any company in the world has the momentum right now of Anthropic. And it was built — a genius move. They went after the enterprise market. And I mean, the pivot — you have never seen a number two this viciously become the number one this fast.
You know, you've never seen Avis overtake Hertz this fast. You've never seen Pepsi overtake Coke this fast. And the thing that's so impressive about this isn't the valuation. It's the speed. Google took 20 years to reach a trillion dollars. Anthropic got there in five. It was founded in 2021, and if it had been founded in Amsterdam, it would be one of the five most valuable companies in Europe. And it did it in five years.
I mean, it's not capital formation. It's financial teleportation. Five years. Zero to a trillion dollars.
We keep talking about how AI might transform the world. Maybe, maybe not. But it's definitely transforming capital formation. And I mean, the one advantage America has is that we will do these $60 billion rounds after two or three years. And in Europe, they just don't have that type of capital formation. They just —
I want you to give me the downside because you definitely called this, but what would be the worry for you of maybe all three IPOs or this one? What would be the warning signs or something you would pay attention to, because you're not always fully up and to the right as a person?
Oh, these stocks and the collective hallucination around the valuations here. One or more of these stocks is going to be off 40 to 70%, and it's going to send the US and the global economy into a recession. The US has become a giant bet on AI, and these companies are overvalued. The technology will survive. These valuations won't. There's just — I'm sorry, SpaceX at 100 times revenues, you know, OpenAI at what's it going on at, 20? Every big company we follow has in the last 10 years been off between 40 and 70% in a 12-month period. That's fine, that's part of the cycle of high-growth companies, up and down. The difference here is that we've bet the entire economy on these Magnificent 10. 93% of our GDP growth is coming from AI high capex. So when these companies — you know, they always say, if the American economy sneezes, the world catches a cold. We're going to catch pneumonia, right? When the expectations — an MIT professor just came out with a study saying 95% of CFOs aren't seeing the ROI on their investments in AI. As we noted last week with the Uber COO, right, talking about —
Money spent. The danger here is the following. Folks, I don't think — I think Anthropic is the only one of these three that has a reasonable shot at trading above its IPO price 12 months out. There's just gravity. No basketball player has ever been in the air for more than 1 second. For some reason, 1 second is the limit. None of these companies can justify their valuation unless they are able to literally destroy the labor market. I just got off a podcast with the CEO of Lilly and I said, AI as it relates to drug discovery, underhyped or overhyped? This is a measured guy and he's like, overhyped. The incentives from Amazon — that the more tokens you use, the more they'll compensate you — that shit's about to go away. And the first big company that announces we're cutting back our AI spending, you know, you're going to see the GDP of Germany come out of the market. And unfortunately the US market is frothy because of that. Because of that, we're now concentrated — the entire US economy is a bet on 10 companies.
You know, I have to say, months ago Mark Cuban said there's going to be a point where tokens are being more expensive than people. Like, and he wanted me to ask Dario that question. Yeah, it's a great question. He was like — I was interviewing him at an off-site thing and he's like, that's the question: when do people cost less than tokens? And tokens are getting too expensive, which is interesting. Anyway, we'll see what happens. But I'm excited for you to read it for me. Um, all right, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, some updates on America's 250th celebration.
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Scott, we're back with more news. America's 250th birthday will now be a mega rally. Apparently, President Trump called for canceling the concert series at the planned event after several musicians dropped out because they were told it was nonpartisan. It's obviously not nonpartisan. Instead, Trump suggested he should headline the event, calling himself the number one attraction anywhere in the world. But there's a lot, you know, and now his name's going to be yanked off the Kennedy Center. A judge has ordered his name to be taken down. Again, a lot of performative stuff, but still irritating. Any predictions for the 250th celebration? It feels like no one's any closer to that. He is not backing down on celebrating himself, including a $250 bill. Scott Bessent has soiled himself once again. So thoughts?
Yeah, you know, it's obnoxious and we'd like to think that it's bad for him, but you know, I hate to admit it as someone who thinks about brands a lot — you could make an argument that the most successful consumer brand of the last decade isn't Tesla, Apple, or Nike. It's Trump. And you know, he's put it out. He's used the presidency to — that's the right analogy. It used to be a public office and now it's increasingly an entertainment franchise. And I think he has — I just think Democrats, like Robert McNamara said, if you want to defeat an enemy, you have to empathize with them. There's just no getting around it. The guy has an incredible feel for branding and marketing. And the product is awful. It is like the greatest brand — what he's been able to do with this shitty product, an inconsistent product. The stakes, the water. It really is incredible. I think this is quite frankly — I think this comes and goes. I don't think it's a big story. What do you think?
I don't — I think it makes us all feel bad about America on the 250th anniversary. I mean, I'm going to be somewhere far away from Washington. Um, and I just think him — I think all these artists pulling out was interesting, that you know, they were like, 'Yeah, no' — I think they see what's going on. Vermont, isn't that where all —
That's where I'm going. That's exactly where I'm going. It's with Amanda's family.
