Security program on spreadsheets, new regulations piling up, and audit-tread,...
Vanta. Vanta automates security and compliance, brings evidence into one place, and cuts
audit-prep by 82%. Less manual work, clear visibility, faster deals, zero chaos. Call it compliance, or call it calm clients. Get it? Join the 15,000 companies using Vanta to prove trust, go to VANTA.com/com. Support for the show comes from Odo. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with it doesn't different apps that don't talk to each other. Introducing Odo, it's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an
all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more. And the best part, Odo replaces multiple expensive platforms for
“a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why”
not you? Try Odo for free at Odo.com. That's Odo.com.
Recommendations can be great. Maybe someone recommended this podcast, and here you are.
But home projects are a little different. If the podcast isn't your thing, you might lose a few minutes from your day, but if you hire your cousin's neighbor to mount your TV, you might end up with a love-sided screen and wall damage. I know a guy isn't a good strategy for your home. That's why thumbtack works so well. It matches you with top-rated local pros, with photos, reviews, and credentials, all in one convenient place. For your
next home project, try thumbtack. Higher the right probe today. His brand is firing. His brand is getting rid of incompetence, and now he keeps them, and you're like, "Oh, my God, you're keeping the incompetence." Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine, and the box media podcast network.
“I'm Kara Swisher. Scott is off, so I brought in a brilliant co-host again, as are everyone”
who's now it's got. Kristen Salta's Anderson, Polster, and co-founder of Eshelon Insights,
and contributing a opinion writer for the New York Times and someone I really like a lot, and it's super smart. Nice to see you. Well, thanks for having me, Kara. Yeah, so welcome. What's going on? What's going on? The world of polling is insane right now. Correct?
It is as insane as it can be, considering that there is not an election that is imminent. Right. The world gets, polling world gets crazy in the immediate lead-up to an election because somebody's got a new survey coming out every day in some interesting swing state when it is election season, but right now it's a little bit of the Dol drums for that, and so what
is instead kind of crazy is all of the changes around how is AI going to change our industry and those things. We're going to get to that. We're going to talk about the predictions industry and play a little bit of Scott who loves it. I don't love it quite so much, and I know you hasn't thought, so it's really
“important to be talking about it because what we're interested in is accurate information,”
and it's very hard to get it, but anyway, there's so much going on. We're, let's get right to the news. Donald Trump issued an ultimatum to Iran, his 59th, posting on true social on Easter Sunday, quote, "Let me just read this correctly." Open the fucking straight, you crazy bastards, or you will be living in hell, which sounds like a line from, I don't even think movies would write those lines anymore.
The Iran doesn't comply. Trump is threatening to target the country's power plants and bridges Iran says it will retaliate, crushingly and extensively if civilian infrastructure targets are hit. So they're just coming back with the same dialogue. This all comes after a successful rescue of two US airmen whose jet was shot down over Iran on Friday. It's not great because the jets were shot down. We're taping this before Trump's press conference on Iran and
these military rescues. So, Chris, in most polls, show the majority Americans are opposed to this war, right? Pretty significantly. You recently did some polling with Trump's MAGA base. Talk a little bit about what's happening here in the polling and the thinking around it. Yeah, and to normally historically, when the US gets into conflict overseas, there's normally
a little bit of a rally around the flag effect. Because normally, we are getting involved in response to some kind of provocation, whether it was after 9/11, et cetera. In this case, there was not really groundwork laid to make the case to the American people for why we needed to do this. And so, you know, in my polling when you say, wouldn't be legitimate to engage in military activity against the Iranian government if they were developing a nuclear
weapon. Like two thirds of Americans say yes, to a bunch of those different kinds of things. It's clear that that case wasn't really made well to the public because then when you say now, do you support or oppose what we're doing in Iran, most don't don't support it, or they have some real serious questions. In fact, it is the MAGA base that is the most
Supportive of what we're doing, which is there's so much interesting discours...
how Donald Trump reshaped the Republican Party. And there's this view that there is the older Republican Party that like lungs for the day of Ronald Reagan and says, you know, we love when the United States projects its power overseas and that Donald Trump has, you know, refashioned the Republican Party in his own image away from that, no more forever
wars, America first and all of that. But actually when you ask voters who identify themselves
as like Trump supporters first before being Republican supporters, they are the most likely to sort of say, if Donald Trump says it's a good idea, I'm kind of willing to give him the benefit of that out on this, even though they backed him for America first and know foreign wars, not everybody. Obviously, Marjorie Taylor Green put out a pretty big long, well, a lot of things that you put on about his health and his mental state and stuff like that.
But why is that? Why is the shift? It's just whatever he says goes or they don't really care what the words are or the policies. There are some people who are part of Donald Trump's coalition who are pretty, you know, they don't want the U.S. to be involved in the military
activities. And they're really outspoken. And they're quite outspoken about it. But those
“are different from maga voters. And I think there's a, it's like very easy to kind of”
conflate like the maga movement equals everybody who voted for Donald Trump. And like that's not true. There are a lot of people who, in fact, in some of the polling that I've seen, it is the type of voter who is not a Republican and is pretty isolationist is among the most likely to have like come join the Republican coalition recently. So Donald Trump does have a potential political problem with some people who really liked him and feel betrayed by what he's doing.
But the core maga faithful and the Republican party as reconstituted by Donald Trump at the moment is preserving judgment and saying, you know what, I think he's probably on the right track. Let's see how this plays out. And how many people is that? What is the amount? Because majority of, he's lost into the numbers are pretty staggering when you look at any poll, almost every one of them, including Fox polls, all kinds of polls. Yeah. So the, I sort of estimate that the maga movement
is about a quarter to a third, depending on, I mean, it's a, it's a, it's a pretty fluid section of the Republican party, but it's not half the country. Like, it didn't have to be something where
“he was losing a majority of Americans. He could have, I think, communicated at least somewhat”
effectively about, hey, this is a government that's been declaring death to America for decades. And here are the specific things that they're doing that put us at risk. Here's why I'm going to do
this. Here's what I'm going to take out. And I don't think it had to be a situation where he was
losing half the public right from the get go. But because of that lack of clarity in communication that has not really been followed by a ton of clarity in communication, like the numbers are getting worse, not better. Okay. So what talk about that for a second, the clarity in communication, because a lot of it is marketing. You're talking about marketing. Like, we're going to market this more to you. Why, why was it not there? Because most people do give people presence the benefit
of the doubt. Something was up. Although he had previously bomb them and said he obliterated them. So why they need to obliterate them again. I mean, I even had Tom Tella saying that. Like, oh, we obliterated them. We obliterated them. We obliterated them. I guess we're obliterating. He was sort of articulating that lack of clarity. Yeah. Well, I don't know that I would just say that
“it is marketing. Because I think for something like this, I mean, it, to me, the bar does feel higher”
than trying to sell somebody soda or potato chips or sneakers. I know that's not what you're saying. But I think that the, it's not just, can you put out a snazzy video that makes it look like we're winning at a video game. And you win because that's obviously part of the strategy. And yet the numbers are, are what they are that I think it is just that the American people simply want to know, why is this in our interest? And if you can give a reasonably good answer to why something is in
our interest, we tend as a people to sort of give the commander in chief. Maybe not today with Donald Trump as such a polarizing figure. But we tend to say, okay, if you think that this is in our best interest, like I'll give you a couple of weeks to see how this plays out. And especially if the costs are not significantly high, people will give a little bit more of that way. But one, you know, me, thank goodness that they have gotten these pilots back. Because that's the kind of thing where
it is, I can't wait to hear the like thrilling story of how this was done. But a combination of if military losses begin to pile up in a very significant way, or the domestic impact of the straightaway for moves, gas prices, all of that, you know, you can run out of that goodwill much more quickly. But right now, he didn't start with the reservoir of goodwill that as a president you would want. Some of that's because he's Donald Trump, and there's just some people who aren't
like anything he does. But he also starts with people who will like anything he does, who do
Sort of give him that benefit or doubt, even if they would not give a preside...
or president, JD Vance, that same leeway. And it doesn't that seem like he has taken this moment
“and is numbers have not gone up at all. They're going down. They're going down with everybody,”
correct? So let's talk about that because the numbers really are declining, which is really usually doesn't happen, especially for the midterms president, Trump's approval rating is just a 35% for his handling of the presidency overall, and 31% for his handling of the economy, according to recent CNN polling. Over the news isn't great on either side about a quarter of the country holds the negative views of both parties. That's something not a fresh thing. Talk about when you
look at this information as it is, you know, one of the things about Donald Trump is he's on president and he's on president and the decline and he's still standing kind of stuff. He keeps cake in the punches here from a polling and and you can feel that I have a lot of magma, not magma,
I would just trump adjacent relatives and they really don't like him, like suddenly, and they never
“would express that before. There's I think two things that are that are ominous for Republicans.”
The first is with everything that's going on in foreign policy, foreign policy is not most voters number one issue, but it is the background music. It is the thing that tells you what the commander and chiefs values are. It says a lot about what his temperament is. I mean, we already, this is like what I was interested in, like not be care, not this is right. Well covered territory with Donald Trump in some ways, but it just sort of focuses behind a little on like what is it that this
person is all about? You frankly saw something like this with Biden when you saw his job approval as we withdrew from Afghanistan and as that went terribly, that was the moment when his job
approval went underwater and never recovered. It's not because most voters said what we do in
Afghanistan is my number one issue, but it just it like communicates something about the level of
“competence and priority setting and decision making within the Oval Office that like carries over and”
bleeds over and to how people think on a whole variety of issues. That's risk number one, risk number two on the economy. I don't want to take credit for this, but this was my friends at the Central AirPodcaster talking about this. The essentially Donald Trump had really good numbers in his first term on the economy, even among voters who didn't like him overall thought he was crude, that he was craft, that he was jerk, all of that. They still thought not all of them,
but a small subset thought, yeah, but at least he's got on the economy. And when COVID happened, he still got kind of a pass. Like people sort of understood not his fault. Yeah, that like he did not create this virus for all his faults. He's this is this was not on him for all the bleaching objecting for so for for this time around, there's really no one else he can blame for the state of the economy. And he is tried to say, I'm just cleaning up Biden's mess, but you kind of run
out of runway on that. Eventually, we're voters say like Biden is so irrelevant to me. I'm tired of hearing about him. Just tell me what you're doing. What are you going to do? I don't care what happened in 2023, 2024. The fact that his numbers on the economy in that CNN poll had 31% job approval. That is a trotace. That is a five alarm fire level number because one, it's way below like the norm for job approval these days. Hover is around 40%. You start getting into the 30s
and that's scary land. You get into the low 30s and that is like terminal. Right. And it for it to be on the economy, which there have been other issues where he is job approval has fluctuated
big time and people said, I don't trust him on this XYZ. The economy was always the thing. He's
the apprentice guy. Oh, he's the business guy. And so for his job approval to be that low on the economy, if that does not turn around, that suggests to me a very troubling midterm for Republicans with that is the background noise. You focused recently on how Gen Z voters are feeling about the economy. What did you find there? Give us some specifics. So Gen Z voters have the worst view of the economy. And even in just the last month, it has plummeted precipitously. So when I say,
you know, on the foreign policy stuff that Donald Trump mostly has the maga movement. There is a divide within the Republican party and it is older voters versus Gen Z. And so it is Gen Z Republicans in addition to Gen Z years who are not Republicans who are increasingly saying like this economy isn't working for me. And whether it's a combination of their approach and graduation and the job markets not what they want, whether they feel like the affordability crisis is keeping
homeownership and you know a whole variety of sort of life aspirations out of reach or just a sense that there's not as much opportunity for them to build the kind of career they want. I did some
Focus groups for the New York Times very recently where we talked to Gen Z wh...
And it was, I mean, it was heart, it was like unsurprising but also just heartbreaking to hear these young people talk about what it is like to try to get a job in a moment when they, for some of them, they went to college because they were told you need this credential. Now they've got debt and they still send out a hundred applications and they get five people to call them back of which three then proceed to ghost them and the other one make the other team. Yeah, exactly.
And so it was just, it felt, it there was a bleakness to it that was was disputing because normally when I talk to Gen Z folks, like there's very much a, yeah, everything's terrible but like our generation's going to fix it. And it almost feels like right now, do people feel like they have any
sense of control or a ability to shape the future or is it just like bigger, more powerful stuff
“it play that they won't be able to just put their heads down and they playing trunk for this, correct?”
Or so in our focus group, I, in our focus group it was actually a more dem leaning group. I don't know, chicken or the egg is that because that's more who is looking for jobs or what have you and we really didn't talk too much about Trump himself. But it's filling and he's standing at the top, right? Yeah, but my whoever is less that they say, I can't get a job and it's Donald Trump's fault and it's more, I can't get a job. It feels like society has been moving in a bad direction for a while
and I don't know like who's sending the life votes, like who's coming to rescue? I don't know that anybody in the prime position. When you think about that, his outbursts, how much do they
matter anymore? Like the one this weekend? Of course, once again, and I don't mean to say they
were pro-clutching, but everyone's like, "Oh, can you believe me?" He said it, I'm like, yes, he seems cognitive, it's able to me. I'm not a doctor, but he says crazy is ever and he's not, that's not changed. Does that matter when he does these sort of outbursts or are they just noise now with him with voters? Well, there's this weird disconnect where if you ask voters, what they think about things like that, they tell you they don't like them, and yet,
if market signals are to be believed, more politicians seem to be leaning into that kind of behavior. Sort of like if you can't beat them, join them type of approach. So like I would think, if you just take people at their word, they want candidates who compromise and candidates who behave in a manner that is befitting the office and all of those different things, and then who shows up in votes in a primary, like puts people in who have unbelievable flaws in any number
“of ways. So I think you're right, and I don't think it's Pearl Clutching, or if it is, like I'm,”
I'm Pearl Clutching, a little bit, not that I'm surprised, but that I'm disappointed that we now have this constantness where like the president of the United States is tweeting F-bombs. I don't love that. That's right. Maybe that's just me as a small-seek conservative.
I'm not interested. No, thank you. But the reality is that voters say they don't want it,
and then this is who gets elected, and whether they're voting for him in spite of it, or because of it, like I think there's some people that's because of it. They like that he doesn't sound like somebody straight out of Central Casting. But I do wonder if there'll be a backlash at some point. If Americans will start to want straight out of Central Casting at some point. It seems like it. It seems he's starting to actually sound like the old man at my mom's senior living facility
who you really need, you go around to get off the elevator for. Initially, you're like, "Huh, and then you're like shut the fuck up, daddy, grandpa." Anyway, it's a really interesting
“thing because I think just like with Iran or anything else, it's a background noise that's disconcerting,”
right, rather than a direct thing. It's not soothing. It's not, this is not. America does not feel like the spa music is on. It's on. It's on. It's on that way. It's on that way with these young voters that you're seeing it. If you had to pick one polling thing that you went, "Oh my goodness, sakes." One upside or downside. What is there something that stuck out from you recently in your polling? I think it is about Gen Z and the economy. We've been asking people, do you think the economy
is headed in the right direction or the wrong direction? We've been asking them this for years. Sure. People generally have been saying it's been headed in the wrong direction and you can break it out by generation. For the most part, this has not been something where like older voters think everything is great and younger voters think it's terrible. Like everybody's kind of been aligned about where things are at, but in just the last month in our March data, the Gen Z respondents,
I mean, it fell off a cliff in terms of their feelings about the economy and the reason why that sticks out is one. It's breaking of a big trend that we'd had for a long time of kind of everybody feels like the economy's not doing great. But just for to see them get so much more depressed
In just a month was really jarring.
put together that have enabled them to have better than expected elections. It's in part because
they tried to repair the damage that had been done with younger voters. And if you are presiding
“over an economy where Gen Z is feeling like this, like that's it. The only thing you have going for”
you is the fact that Gen Z finds Democrats to be uninspiring at the moment. That's not a great thing to hang your hat on. So to me, it is that Gen Z economic number more so than anything specific about foreign policies, it's an opportunity for Democrats presumably. Correct. It is. It is. It is an opportunity for Democrats. But I think the thing that Democrats are getting wrong is like that they they know that affordability is the thing on everybody's minds. And so they know to like mail
the words, "Yes, we care about cost of living." And that may be enough if things are bad enough. You can just say, "I'm not the other guy." And that could be adequate. But I still think that voters also in the surveys that I see harbour some skepticism about what Democrats would do if given the reins again. Like, "Okay, we don't love what Trump's doing." But we still don't love the way Biden handled this either. So what's your plan? Is your plan to open up the spigot of money and subsidize
everything to pretend like it goes away, but that drives inflation. We don't want that either. The deficit. Yeah, I don't think that's okay. Fresh ideas. Fresh ideas that actually sell
“people's problems. Incredible. That's what they're supposed to do. Okay, Kristen, let's go on a”
quick break when we come back. We'll talk about a potential cabinet shake up and who might be the next to go. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Tax days just around the corner. I don't need to tell you that. You might already feel anxious about it and about finances in general. But that is a very common feeling. A recent study showed 88% of Americans were feeling some form of financial stress at the start of 2026. Money worries go beyond our bank accounts and they affect everyone at some point in
life. It can take a serious toll on mental health. From anxiety and depression to sleep disruption and relationships stress, even if you can't immediately change your finances. One thing you can start doing today is improving your mental state around them. That's where a therapist can help. BetterHelp matches you with a licensed therapist who fits your needs and preferences. They've served over 6 million people globally with over 12 years of experience and even though they typically
“get it right the first time if you aren't happy with your match, you can switch therapists”
whenever you want. When life feels overwhelming therapy can help. Sign up and get 10% off at BetterHelp.com/pivot. That's BetterHELP.com/pivot. Support for this show comes from Vanta. If your business owner you might have noticed that risk and regulation are on the rise,
customers now want proof of security before they commit and earning that trust is critical
closing deals. But the process can be expensive, complex, and time intensive. Vanta says that's the challenge they're here to solve. Vanta automates your compliance process to bring compliance risk and customer trust together in one AI powered platform. So whether you're prepping for a SOC2 or running an enterprise GRC program, Vanta keeps you secure and keeps your deals moving. Vanta automates the process of achieving and maintaining compliance with over 35 security and
privacy frameworks. This helps companies get compliant fast and remain compliant, opening doors to major growth opportunities and freeing up valuable time. Vanta says companies like ramp and writer spend 82% less time on audits with Vanta. That's not just faster compliance, it's more time to scale. So if you're tired of sifting through old audits and spreadsheets,
you can get a system that's always working in the background keeping you compliant,
reducing risk and helping your business scale fast and with confidence. You can get started at Vanta.com/pivot. That's V-A-N-T-A.com/pivot. Vanta.com/pivot. Support for the show comes from Upwork. When you're ready to grow your team, the last thing you want is for the hiring process to become a headache. Instead of taking weeks to scale resumes and job boards, only to be disappointed by what you find, you can try Upwork instead.
Upwork can make it easier to bring on the right freelancers, right when you need them. You can browse profiles, review passwork, and get help scoping the role so you can hire with confidence and get started quickly. Seriously, you can connect with the right freelancers in just a few hours. Especially when you sign up with business plus, their AI powered shortlisting pairs you with the top 1% of talent. In under 6 hours, no endless searching required. Upwork also cuts down
operational hassle by handling things like contracts and payments in one place so you can spend more time running your business. Visit Upwork.com right now and just post your job for free. That is Upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's UPWORK.com Upwork.com. Chrissum or back, Pam Bonnie and Chrissi know may have just been the beginning of Trump cabinet
Shake-up is reportedly in the work, so the president is denying it, which mea...
The White House official told Reuters to expect a targeted turn rather than a big dramatic reset, which is feels like a corporation. Some of the names potentially on the chopping block, director of national intelligence tells a gathered FBI director, cash, retail, commerce, security, Howard Lutnik, labor secretary, Lori DeRimer. As for Bonnie's replacement, her deputy and Trump's former attorney Todd Blanch is currently serving as acting AG and he's already
trying to distance the DOJ from the Epstein file telling Fox last week that all of the files have been released. Talk a little bit about what's happening here in terms of this. Does this create more of a voter dissatisfaction? Or is it, I mean, this happens in every administration where there's a shake-up kind of thing. It's not, and the last Trump administration was was like a manic episode of the apprentice, of course, and people went in and out quite a lot. These people have
had some staying power, and there are a hundred percent less competent. So talk a little bit about that. I think a shake-up can be a very good thing, especially if like, let's take Cristino. This is a great example of an issue. Immigration was an issue where Republicans and Donald Trump had a massive
advantage that they haven't always had, but there was a real willingness to like America had
“moved to the right on these issues and said, do you have to get the border secure? And the way in”
which this was handled culminating in, I mean, embarrassment is probably too light away to frame it, but the events of the last couple of months in terms of a minister, specifically just this week with a service member's wife being grabbed off a bed. Yeah, I just feel like for Donald Trump, you can't, your political coalition can't survive if you don't have people coming to you going, well, at least he knows what to do about the border. At least he knows how to handle this issue.
It's kind of a core piece of glue that holds different pieces of his coalition together. And if you lose that, what do you have? So by being able to sort of say, okay, I'm cutting this person. This person has been an embarrassment to me and look, my numbers on this issue have fallen. It is good that he is at least not taking the position of like, I'm just going to circle the wagons and we're going to say that everything's fine and it's just the liberal media that's being
“mean. So I think to some level, these shakeups are what Donald Trump's voters expect from him,”
especially those folks who are not, die hard Republicans, but instead gravitated to him for some combination of the economy and immigration and vibes that like being able to show, yes, I want new people running the show. I have been unsatisfied with what they've been doing. This is brand. Start it with that. You're fine. Exactly. Exactly. So I don't know what that means about who would be next. I mean, I think about some of the names that were on your list. And
some of them have done more that has publicly brought strife to the White House than others. And I think that's probably the thing that is animating this more. Like, I don't know to what extent his decision to bid farewell to Kristi Nome was it about how ice was handling the issue of immigration or was it how she handled hearings and some of these embarrassing stories about like, you know, the planes and God knows
what else. Right. Yeah. But so that's sort of how I evaluate this. Honestly, her husband's the coolest
“thing about her, but go ahead through all of which is to say, I think if you want to know like where”
the change would come next, I think the most important criteria is likely who who is reflecting well
on this White House, not who has, you know, something that's like got the beltway in a stir, but it's not really reflecting rightly on him. Right. So it has to be. So who does breakthrough of these cabinet members with the voters, the ones that you're polling? So I honestly think that if you asked voters, they would remember of the cabinet is the most supportive of tariffs. I do not think very many would be able to name Howard Levinick. So that again, I am not a Trump
criminal inologist, but to me, it does not seem as though there's anything on the outside that would be driving that in quite the same way as, say, cash Patel at the FBI drinking with the hockey team or, you know, any number of cases that the FBI has been handling and questions about the
effectiveness of that. So again, don't know which way he would go first, but to me, that seems to be
the most appropriate. A variable. Yeah. That's obvious. Are you looking like an idiot publicly to a wide range of people in other words? Like a lot of people, as opposed to say, the labor secretary is just it seems naughty in a really bad way, kind of thing. Because we've had naughty cabinet members forever from what I couldn't glean and stuff, but it doesn't break through with voters. More like cash Patel drink down in the beer as a real bad visual, for example. One, you know,
How Donald Trump feels about visuals.
image, do you look the part? And if you begin to fail on those dimensions, that's often when it's it's kind of where he's looking for somebody different. So is that a good thing, as you say, to shake up isn't a bad thing, right? It shows your, you know, you know, look busy, Jesus is coming, kind of thing, like that kind of thing. Well, yeah, I think especially because of what you said about
“his brand as the apprentice guy, I think the idea that you, I mean, remember, like think about what”
he did with Doge when he first came into office. He just went through and slashed and burned. So we're going to fire a whole bunch of people. I mean, that is his brand, which, which it should not just be isolated to lower rugs. If you're really going to live through, you know, live up to it and press through with it. It, it's almost uniquely is a probably a good thing for Trump in a way that it might not even be for other administration. Right. No. His brand is firing. His brand is getting rid of
incompetence and now he has to keep some and you're like, oh my God, you're keeping the incompetence. That's, I would agree. I'm having watched all those shows. I mean, the last question is for all of this, whether it's court appointments or cabinet appointments, what do you think the United States Senate is likely to look like after November? And how likely is it that you think you will be able to get someone confirmed through a Senate that potentially has more Democrats in it
than it does today? I mean, those are things that I think are probably also waking on the minds of the physioses of the world or are keeping track of that. Yeah, the incompetence might have to stay. So one of the things that's interesting also happening is the federal government is suing multiple states over attempts to ban betting on calcium and other platforms. Now, let's be clear, Donald Trump's children are part of this are on the boards or advisors to
both polymarketing calcium. The commodity futures trading commission is arguing that it has the
“sole authority. That's how they're using to regulate these predictions markets. Meanwhile,”
polymarketing is apologizing after users were allowed to bet on the fate of the US pilots whose jet was down and Iran pretty low some, saying it did not meet their integrity standards,
incredible. Both polymarketing calcium are now rolling out campaigns through track
female users, just framing prediction markets is another way to be a hashtag girl boss, which by the way, girl bosses over kids, boys. We've been talking a lot about these markets here on pivot and you and I have talked about it. And so I want to play something Scott said a few weeks ago and get your thoughts. Let's listen. The speculative market speculation markets are prediction markets. If it's essentially put polysters into a certain extent investment banking
analysts out of work because guess what? They're much, I don't push back on that. I just met with a bunch of posters on this topic. Oh, in my opinion, they're done. If you look at the prediction markets record versus pollsters in the last election, the prediction markets kicked their ass. All right, pollster, what's your response? I was trying to defend you there. Talk about what's happening with them and your thoughts on it and what you like and don't
like about them. And just so you know, there's another impossible nail in the coffin for polling. There's now something called silicon sampling that uses AI models to simulate, simulate, survey responses, not real people. Talk a little bit what's happening here in the polling market. Sure. So I have a lot of thoughts on both of these. First two, Scott's point. I do not think
the prediction markets are going to put polling out of business one because 99 percent of
what pollsters do is not polling that tries to track who is going to win an election. Like, I know that's the most public thing that people see from our industry. But 99 percent of it is message testing, strategy, he model building, the sorts of things for which being within margin of error, meaning your result is within three points in either direction. Like, that's, that's okay. That's sort of if you can give me an example, just make it up, just like, you poll what? So I can tell you
about the polling we've done on, I've done some polling on prediction markets where, you know, I'm asking to what extent are people using them, what are they using them for? And those are the kinds of things that are valuable for somebody who might be trying to decide to invest in one of
“these companies. Like, if I'm going to regulate them, what sort of regulatory approach should I take?”
It's the sort of thing where, but I'll give you an example. In our poll, we found about one third of people either bet on prediction markets, that's not the majority of them, or like, use the data. Like, they either they tune into it just for entertainment purposes or what have you. So if my poll
shows 36 percent of people fall into that category, the real number, assuming that I've done my survey,
right, the real number could be a few points off in either direction. And that's not the end of the world. It still means my analysis is still useful. Directionally, it's telling us something interesting about things or things that are going. I think this focus so exclusively on polling as a like crystal ball to tell me if an election is going to get one, one by candidate or candidate be just sort of misunderstands our industry. But the second thing is, what is causing these prediction
Markets to give the predictions they are?
France who placed a huge bet in the last election that Donald Trump was going to win. And after words,
you know, he makes this like six figure sum off of his bet and that's all great. And they ask him, you know, how'd you do it? And he said, oh, I commissioned a poll. The polls are still an input to what these prediction markets are doing. And a world without polls, your prediction market is running on vibes and fundraising numbers, which are fine, but polls are an extremely very load-bearing pillar in what people think about what's going to happen in an election.
“So predictions will be a trailing indicator. How do you look at that? Yes. So I think that in general,”
well, I think when it comes to election results, they don't have to be a trailing indicator, but I think that polls are an input. There are, they are not the only input. So other things can change, right? My poll can say that so and so is going to win the primary in Texas, but all of a sudden some new new story could break that shows that Ken Paxton or John Corne did something, you know, that could upends the race, who knows. And then the prediction market
would be the leading indicator ahead of when the poll is going to capture that. But you still need the poll involved. And that's also what I think about this whole synthetic respondents, AI
respondents, you know, nowadays you're certainly always full like, yeah. And there were some attempts
to do this in the 2024 election that I think were actually less accurate. And what it is, use AI model, explain for people who don't understand. So if you've ever used one of these models, whether it's your chat GPT, your your clawed, and you can like train clawed or chat GPT or whoever to kind of learn a certain persona. Imagine that you've then trained a thousand different personas that kind of look like a real voter. Okay, I've trained one persona to be a 40-year-old
woman living in Orlando, Florida, and she's a moderate Republican. Now I've got another bot that is trained to be a conservative Democrat, and he lives in rural Pennsylvania. And then basically, you just ask those thousand AI personalities to tell you, are you voting for a Republican or a Democrat? And then you take those results and you say, hey, look, I did a poll. I did a poll of a thousand AI people who represent real voters. Right. And I just think presenting that as a poll
“is disingenuous. I think you can present it as a model. Estimate, like I think there's lots of”
things you can present it as. Do you use that? Do you use model that like you say, I use it in poll? So the way we use AI, you can use AI to help with programming tasks. It's enormously helpful. You can use AI to help you analyze data when it comes back. Like the old school way of analyzing polling data is you do a survey, and you get back cross tabs that is it's like 500 page PDF with a ton of numbers on each page. And you as the pollster are sifting through looking for
stuff that's meaningful. The fact that you can feed that in and have AI tell you, hey, here, the top 10 most interesting things in that poll. Eight out of ten are going to be pretty good. One out of the ten will be right, but not really that important. And then one will be like completely wrong. And so you still have to as the pollster stuff that your judge will be. Go through
“go through your own data. And no, but like there are useful applications of AI in polling,”
but ultimately, if you think about those synthetic personas, what's training that synthetic
40-year-old suburban mom who lives in Orlando on how she ought to respond? It's probably a poll. It's probably a poll that was done to virtually. So all of this, whether it's prediction markets or these synthetic AI samples, all of them at their root have real polling as an input, and it's like a game of telephone. And they're just like the next piece in the line. And you can add other useful inputs that might give them some advantages, but they're still not a replacement
for polling. They are just a different application of polling. So what when you say that when the federal government is saying the commodity future streams should be regulating them, they're not regulating them. Is it fair? Is it sort of like, her mind's me a little bit of your like commerce people, retail people who are offline having to fight with online, they had distinct advantages here. They can do whatever these people to grow large. What do you imagine? How should
be, you know, states are rushing in because they have long, long regulated gambling. Every state does, it has this different gambling laws, and that's not something the federal government ever did. So is it like gambling for your perspective, or how should they be regulated when you think about it, given presumably you're not that regulated, but you have a set of standards that you're working around? I think the big challenge is how do you balance the value that a prediction
Market can provide to society beyond its just entertainment, right?
entertainment of, I betting on who's going to win the Super Bowl? Like, and so we have to decide do we think that's an acceptable form of entertainment? But the promise of prediction markets is theoretically that you can also surface new information about things that have not yet happened that might be valuable for the public to know. The question is then like when does that cross
into insider trading? Like for me, I feel, I've never bet on a prediction market because I would
feel uncomfortable about like, I come out of the field with a survey, I then know what's happening
“in the Texas primary, and therefore I can know, I think candidate x, y, or z is probably up,”
and if I really trust my data, why don't I put a couple thousand bucks on on this bet? And I just don't feel right about that. I, it's something about it feels like insider trading. Is it inside, you're just having more insight, right? And that's kind of an interesting example. You have some, is that insider, is that was your own data? So I, I don't, I think you're right, but that's not insider trading in the way that, but it is like, it is non-public information that I would be
using to benefit. It's not the same as being an insider at a company where there are, right, and
you have very specialized tremendous around that. But I think it's that, that muddying of the waters,
right? And so you've been seeing this, too, with some of these markets that have had bets around things like will the United States do military operation x? And all of the sudden right before it happens, you see somebody bets like $300,000 on yes, yes, because they're sitting next to Trump in the White House, and they just heard it, right? And so I do think that that, that raises some real question for going to have rules around insider trading when does that start to bleed over
into what is, or is what is allowable conduct in terms of prediction market? You know, but sometimes it's not insider, like that sounds crazy, but when Warner Bros. was $7 and that all the bidding started, I'm like, oh, these rich people will pay anything. And so I bought 10 shares,
“because I was like, and it was only 10, because I was like, I think they're dumb stupid money,”
so they're going to overpay. And I just, and I took myself up for a nice dinner, because I was right,
and that was, yeah, information I had, but anyone could have figured it out, dumb stupid money, for example. And thank you for the dinner, Alison, I appreciate it. When you have these things doing this, when they're putting in this, it's sort of, they kind of, muddy the line. There's also these betting on heinous things, right, which makes it feel like gambling. And then attracting female users is a problem. They've got a bad reputation from the get-go, and including attracting
the attention of regulators, right, like in terms of their bad behaviors. Yeah, so when I look at the polling I've done on this, and again, in disclosure, I did polling for, and it's all, I saw publicly available, but sort of an, an entity that, like, I think invests in some of these prediction markets. And in general, just a lot of people don't know that much about them. Like, that doesn't necessarily mean that everybody loves them. They're
pretty split on whether it's good or bad. But everybody's got an attitude about it. Everybody has like an opinion of some sort. But when we ask about prediction markets, like half of Americans have no idea how they feel about it. Most have not heard anything in the news about a prediction market in the last 12 months. So there is a real risk and real opportunity for that industry, and it's why they're trying to get out ahead of it and say, hey, right now, like in my data,
it showed it, too. If it's, if you are male, if you are under the age of 50, if you are higher educated, higher income, like you are the most likely to know about prediction markets and be interested in them and think they're a good thing. So they're trying to say, okay, we've got a tell our story,
“or someone else is going to tell our story. And that's why you're seeing efforts to try to”
expand beyond that initial course. So they've got an opportunity to spite all the bad, the bad press, but it seems like the bad press keeps piling on. This US pilot's jet thing. I thought, oh my god, I thought this is the for, you know, for any, for a platform that has control over what markets can be made and not made, you know, having that judgment of what, where's the upside? Is the upside in Matt maximizing the sorts of things people can bet on and not restricting it too tightly,
knowing that we're going to have a couple of these that are like print cringeworthy versus more tightly regulating it, sort of playing it safer. You have higher upside in terms of your favorability, but you then as a platform are in that role that you will recall the social media companies did not want to be in when it came to like deciding where's the boundaries of political speech? Like, how do you decide what constitutes a market that is out of bounds? Like,
if you don't want to be in that business, so there's some of them that did better by looking safer, right? Like right now from the polling, do you think that doing what anything goes is a particularly good way to do it? No. And I think there is a significant difference between
People's comfort level with prediction markets as a sort of adjacent to the s...
betting and chance things that they know, but it's it's slightly better than just chance because
you can use your own judgment to say, okay, I think X Y is going to happen. You can use your own
“smarts toward it accordingly. I think that's why it could have a slightly better, it could wind up”
with people liking it more than they like something like sports betting where you're just like, well, I hope this team wins. I like them, but there are real downsides if you have people creating these horrible or unsavory markets where it feels like you've just turned something very serious into something grotesque. No, it feels like we're into cockfighting. That sort of feels like we're like in the cockfighting mode. Like, I don't mind a little bit of a boxing match, but I don't really
want to watch animals, maybe each other apart, right? Either like some people do, but it's sort of
feels that has that sort of stink to it. Let me, last question, this, you know, Scott is absolutely
saying, your, your business is finished, your out of work because of them. Give one more answer to Scott Gally, please. Slack, I'm smack him back the last Sunday. The, look, the political polling industry is going to be fine because when we are in moments of deep uncertainty, that is the moment when people companies, trade associations, you name it. People are the most hungry to know what the heck is everybody thinking. Where is this all headed? And with the understanding that polling is not the
only or perfect way to get a read on that, but is a, as I just got to like a load bearing pillar, it's, it's a really important input. I mean, when the world is in a moment of turmoil or dramatic change, that is when people want this data more than ever. And where something that is trained on polling data, but kind of off and not quite there is not going to be, as, as much as real polling is
imperfect, it's still the real thing. Yeah, I always have like, I always have Scott, I'm was like,
what's in there? Who's doing it? Who's doing the bedding? I don't know who they are, right? Like, it could be a bunch of, probably is a bunch of white, bro, millennials. That's, and I don't, that's their opinion, not everybody's opinion. That's my thing. And especially if there's not a lot of women in there, there's not a lot of different economic groups. You don't get it really particularly good sample. That's my feeling. It's like, when we get closer to the election, the safest and
healthiest way to consume polling data is just take it, throw it in the average. Don't panic about anyone individual poll. Everything's going to be all right. No, thank you. Well, I don't know about the last part. I don't know about the last part. Anyway, you, you're crazy bastards, you know, like I say, every accusation is a confession. Anyway, let's go on a quick break. We come back, open-air, gets into podcasts.
Support for the show comes from Delete Me. Delete Me makes it easy quick and safe to remove your personal data online at a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable. You don't have to be a public figure to be at risk of having your personal information stolen by bad actors. The terrifying reality is that we're all susceptible and the impact of identity theft can be devastating. Delete Me can help you protect your personal privacy
or the privacy of your business from doxing attacks before sensitive information can be exploited.
“I have used to believe me for a while. I think it's really important to be aware of what's”
out there about you is really surprising. Even someone like me who spends a lot of time protecting their privacy, how much information is out there, how much of is is bad and how much is being compiled together. You really have to fight hard to keep your privacy and Delete Me as an excellent tool. Last year, the New York Times War Academy named Delete Me their top pick for data removal services not a surprise. So what are you waiting for? Take control of your data and keep your private life
private by signing up for Delete Me now to special discount for our listeners. Get 20% off your Delete Me plan when you go to joindeleteme.com/pivot and use the promo code pivot at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to joindeleteme.com/pivot enter the code pivot at checkout. That's joindeleteme.com/pivot code pivot. Support for the show comes from Odo. Running a business is hard enough. So why make it harder
with it doesn't different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odo. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more. And the best part Odo replaces
“multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses”
have made the switch. So why not you? Try Odo for free at Odo.com. That's OdoO.com. You hear a lot of talk about AI replacing humans. Curiosity invites a better question.
How will humans shape AI?
celebrating 50 years in data and AI and long before responsible AI was trendy, they were building
“systems around transparency, governance, and trust. If you're curious about what responsible AI”
actually looks like, visit SAS.com to learn more. That's s-a-s.com. Kristen, we're back with more news. You just sort of talked about this, the idea of where you get your narrative and information from. It has to be good and wide. So OdoNae has acquired the tech news podcast, T-B-P-N. The online talk show focuses by the minute analysis of tech news and interviews with tech leaders. T-P-B-N averages 70,000 viewers per episode across everything and
let me just say there are tiny compared to pivot and other things. Tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny. That said, it's become pop. They're among a certain group of Silicon Valley power players who go on it because they want to be licked up and down all day. Oh, I'm sorry, boys. Did I say that too wrong? Okay, sometimes you're spiky and fun. But really, it's pretty much up to meet PR. Open AI says the show will stay editorial independent, which we do not believe. Talk about this idea of buying narratives.
When you're thinking about it, because a lot of people want it, you do polling so you have better narratives and craft messages. That's one of the things you do for people is tell them how to craft their messages. Talk a little bit about this effort and that's in the backdrop of many companies trying to buy into various things like paramount, etc. So what this reminds me of is there's actually a piece out in today, which I guess the
day we're taping this, New York Times, David Plough, who I think is very, like still one of this artist's minds on the theme of chronic love this piece. It was, yeah, this piece is essentially saying that everything is content creation now, that if you are running for office,
“if you are engaged in politics, the most important thing you need to be doing is creating content,”
that if you are relying on anybody else to get your message out, but you, you are foolish, and that you need to essentially have a studio within your campaign headquarters where you are just nonstop producing content, because everything now is that. I think that's really smart. You know, I think about that in terms of, look at the media properties in the political space that are really like thriving and doing exciting stuff now, the like the pucks and the punch balls
and all of that. I mean, they're very focused on like we are constantly creating content or finding a million new channels to do it. Sometimes it's in person event, sometimes it's digital,
but it is a like always on kind of approach. And I think companies realizing this is probably
smart, although there's a flip side of this, which is, you know, we've been going through a moment in the last few years where it feels like, you know, everybody, everybody's got a new podcast care. You know, everybody's like, I'm going to create content if you build it, they will come, and that's not true at all. Lots of people can build podcasts that or, you know, create content that sort of goes out into the ether to die. And especially if it doesn't feel authentic,
if it feels driven by a corporate narrative, it starts to lose some of what might make content great otherwise. So like I imagine there are a bunch of candidates who could take plough it at his word and start doing what he says and would produce terrible content. Yes, that has to be good in genuine. Yeah, you're right. 100%. Yes. So that was a really interesting piece. And I really, I like David and it was absolutely true that although it's kind of like no shit
Sherlock, it's like what you're kidding. They're content's important. You know, but see, you and I
think like, oh yeah, no kidding, but it is truly this idea that politics is now about being always on
media messaging nonstop. Like that is actually something that is not native to a lot of people.
“Which is important. I think Donald Trump has proven that for many years. Obviously, now it's getting”
the shows getting a little old in the tooth right now and kind of crazy, but that's all right. It's a little like network at the very end when Howard had some problems. But you know, UCAOC did it from the get go was very genuine to herself. And she's obviously talking around book, but it's very effective. Same thing with mom Donny, who's been very good. And he's continuing to govern that way if you notice all his really interesting. And they're good. They're good. They're fun.
And they're creative. You don't have to agree with them to not say, wow, look at that. That's really well done. Especially during snowstorm, he did a couple of good ones that were just sort of big. It wasn't political. It was just here's how we're doing it. And they were funny and quirky. His whole thing. There was one he did the smile where he has that weird smile. And they made his whole staff made fun of his smile. And I thought that was it was based on the movie smile,
which was a car movie, which was funny. He's just he's very on top of things. And so we're a lot of by the way, Republicans. Some Republicans do a good job at it. Not as many, but Trump certainly
Absolutely for many years.
people don't realize tech has tried this a dozen times. Many years ago, Yahoo tried to do a news product. And that didn't work because they weren't doing in the original reporting or anything. They were just mowding stuff. The interesting hards famously had a blog and called me and said they're going to beat me in my own game. And I'm like, good fucking luck. First of all, media is hard and it doesn't make money. You're entering a really like, like, what are you doing? And it wasn't work. They've
tried a number of times, that particular group. And you know, it's always sort of failed. They
aweld it in a little bit, like around the edges, tried to, you know, to create some, and you just
“doesn't happen. So I think one of the things is I get that you feel more comfortable in these”
settings where people are a little bit like your giant brain is so smart. Tell me how that works. And I think that has value. By the way, you know, it's startup people are always interested in how did I do that, right? How did you do that? And they don't want any pushback. They just want to hear your techniques, whatever, even if it's PR. But eventually it's not truthful, right? Of like the real struggles companies have. And when you have a little friction with a reporter, it does create
really interesting conversations. And the only person I would look to would be Apple Steve Jobs.
He kept coming back to being interviewed by me, even though I know I irritated him, right?
Because it was an interesting conversation. And it would help him, it clarified things. We were fair with him. At the same time, I don't think we ever pulled any ridiculous stupid snarky moves. But on a lot of ways, I feel responsible for this kind of nonsense, because they just don't want to talk to anyone they consider difficult and would prefer to be. And I don't think that is the best outcome at it, Torioli. I just don't think it becomes,
“I think there'll be a backlash and they'll start talking to actual reporters that are fair.”
That's my feeling, but I don't know, maybe I'm hoping I don't really want to talk to them anymore. Anyways, I'm in some level. But I don't know, we'll see. It's a small amount of money to pay for possible good PR in a new fresh way. Is it a small amount of money? I feel like the reporting was that it was not a small amount of money. Yeah, but for them, it's a small amount of money. And they've said that essentially on the show is like, that was a lot of money. We're taking it
and running. And that will be the end of it, I suspect. But it's glad they have people telling them, they're great. That's really good, because they need that, because money doesn't seem to make them happy. In any case, we'll see. Do you see a lot of, are you impressed by a lot of political out? If it's give me, give me things that you think have done it well in the political space? Or of corporate space? Well, I'll cross party lines and say that I think that AOC is somebody
who, an example that I always give of something that she did that has just like lodged in my
brain and I wish every politician would understand that this is the way the world works. Is she appeared on a skincare influencer's platform? This was like two or three years ago. This wasn't, this isn't terribly recent. But she went on to talk about sunscreen regulation. Like right now, if you try to buy sunscreen in the US, there are sunscreen that are better elsewhere in the world, which cannot get them here. They're not FDA approved. They're not dangerous. Everything's fine with them.
They just, for whatever reason you can't get them here. And so she went on the skincare influencer show to talk a little bit about that specific issue. And like isn't it crazy that you can't get these good sunscreens here? Which is not an issue that is obviously right left coded. Or if anything, it's almost more right coded. It's like, hey, the government is regulating away. You're right to have this really good sunscreen. But she went somewhere where people who are not necessarily
going to tune in and watch her on MSNBC or MSNow, whatever we're calling it, you know, that's not the audience she's going after. She's going after people who might be much more loosely attached to the political process. But she's getting herself in front of them on an issue that they care about with some credibility. And that opens the door then to say, hey, come follow me. You may not follow members of Congress because that may seem lame and horrible. But I am not as lame and horrible as
“the rest of them, so I'm kind of following me. And you build that audience. And I think most”
politicians, if you were like, go on a skincare, I mean, you wouldn't want that for most of them. But just whatever the equivalent of that is, like, you want to talk about emissions regulations, like, go on a car podcast. Like, I just, I think that most people in Washington are not like a piece of thinking in that gear. And that is where the future is going to be won't. It's not so corporations too participating. I think Wendy says a good job. I think King Arthur baking.
You can, you could name a dozen of them. Sometimes they can spin out a control. But often it's a really interesting way to sort of genuinely explain yourself to people. And as long as it's not cringe, right, and some fashion, overall. I would 100%. I mean, if you're not out there, if you're not telling your story, someone else is. So it's important to go out there. It's important to be in
Places where it's not just, it's important to be in, I think, non-obvious pla...
like, the tension is then you don't want to do stuff that's forced and feels cringe-worthy.
“But just letting the other side own the airspace or letting your opponents own the airspace”
is not really as much of a viable option. Yeah. Very quickly. Obviously, banks and advisors are working on the SpaceX IPO dealer being required to buy subscriptions to grow Musk's terrible AI chat but they're going to do it anyway because they'll do anything it takes. They'll tell you, sure, well, buy your shitty product for if you'll give us the banks. He's also asked them to advertise on X, was less insistent on that request. Obviously, they're going to all do it.
That I'm not surprised by, but I'm just sure, have you done any polling on Elon now? Post, you know, he's now going to be very wealthy again once again, more wealthy than he was before.
How was his polling? Have you done much on where he sits? Because he's about to enter the
political spectrum again, quite significantly, it looks like. I mean, I still think that he has
“residual favorability from Republicans. I think of by and large for cotton, his dough.”
Well, I was going to say the very big public falling out that he had with Trump. Oh, right, fair. Very ugly, very quickly, quickly. That all but seems to have been kind of memory-hold at this point, but there is still that lingering negativity from Democrats. It may not be as acute. I mean, I have not heard reports of protests outside Tesla dealerships in the way that you had about a year ago. So it feels like the temperature has turned down, but it is not as
though anybody has converted back to liking him, or not liking him. Wherever you were a year ago, you probably still in about the same place. So when you're a Republican getting money from him, it's worth it. Correct. Now, or is it a bad thing? Because he lost in Wisconsin. He lost a lot of his presence tends to be a problem for some people. I think he is not as much of a potent lightning rod as he was a year ago. When we were in the midst of doge being in the news, every single day,
some new agency getting shut down, or somebody getting fired, or something happening. He was causing some stir, him showing up in the White House, him in the White House was one of his kids. That's not happening anymore. I think him having less, he is less of a lightning rod today than he was a year ago. So I think that would probably lessen any downside to having him. But he shouldn't act up again. Correct. Great. As last time I was on your show, I said less chainsaw more
bars. And I stick to it. I think to the extent that he has spent the last year doing less chainsaw and more bars, I don't think that it's necessarily one back anybody from the left. But I do think that the temperature has been turned down around him to where he's a little less radio act. Right.
“Less chainsaw more bars. That's what you got to do. Build your fucking rockets. You know what?”
I've said that. And I think you're absolutely right back then. All right, Christian one more quick break will be back for wins and fails. Support for the show comes from Odo. Running a business is hard enough. So why make it harder? With it doesn't different apps that don't talk to each other. Introducing Odo, it's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform
that makes your work easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce and more. And the best part, Odo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try Odo for free at Odo.com. That's OdoOo.com. Hi, I'm Renee Brown. And I'm Adam Grant. And we're here to invite you to the Curiosity Shop.
A podcast that's a place for listening, wondering, thinking, feeling and questioning.
It's going to be fun. We rarely agree. But we almost never disagree. And we're always learning.
That's true. You can subscribe to the Curiosity Shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast app to automatically receive new episodes every Thursday. For the last 10 years, everything in American politics has basically revolved around one man. And as a political journalist who came of age during Donald Trump's rise in 2016, I've had a front row seat. I am officially running for President of the United States. It's
going to be only America first America conference thousands of supporters of President Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol building. But is it possible to talk about politics without talking about Donald Trump? That's the question I'm going to ask in our new show from box. The idea of like a post-Trump or not exactly Trump focused show can exist because he's not really driving any agenda items. It really does feel like so reactive. You know, I think this around thing
Is also going to cause a big split in the GOP.
manga voters are still with Trump. But like, for the first time, you see on a major issue, open opposition from the start of this war. I'm a stead-hunting. And welcome to America, actually. Okay, Kristen, let's hear some wins and fails. You go first. All right, well, we're going to talk space. And this is a win and a fail to mind. A win is that as you and I are recording, probably right about now, Americans are flying around the backside of the moon. That is the biggest
possible win. The fact that these that the rocket took off and it was fine and it wound up working as unbelievable. But the fail is the toilets. Do not seem to be staying in operation on this. This is a subject of great interest to my daughters. They are like really, really, really, really
“trying to keep up on the what is the status of the toilets on this Artemis. I think Orion might”
actually be the name of like the part that they are in. But so it's both a win and a fail.
I think NASA has shined itself up a little bit. It's always, it's been sucked away by Bezos and
Musk. But I think NASA feels kind of cool. I think their social media is excellent. I think Victor, Victor the pilot is such a hunk. Like all of them are and all the whole team are amazing. Had they have a great inspirational message, I mean, just every time you hear them talk, it doesn't feel like hyper media trained either. Again, to what we were talking about earlier with like, it just feels like you found genuinely incredible people and are sending them to
do an incredible thing on behalf of humanity. Yeah, I agree. I think they just are doing flawless speaking of social media, flawless social media. I haven't seen one thing that the pictures are beautiful. The enthusiasm again, it doesn't feel cooked in some fashion. The fail is the continued
“sort of, I know you, like you said, I'm not clutching my pearls, but come on. I think people are”
sick of this and I think there's going to be a significant backlash to politicians that I think there's a real opportunity for people to be funny and nice and, you know, sort of more open-minded rather than dunking, dunking, dunking. I just have this, I think Trump is doing the step too far.
And I can't even believe I'm saying like, because I, oh, I'm never that person who goes, oh,
you're kidding. Can you believe what he said? I always believe what he says because I think he's like that. But I do think people are tiring of it. And I think even though they're sloughing it off, they're not sloughing it off. They're, you know, oh, that's him. I think there's more, it's like I'm tired of hearing this now. And I think there's a real opportunity for politicians to make people feel better. Like, I know, in political life in general and not, but and also not do it in a stupid way where you
just pretend it's not happening, like, that kind of thing. So I do think that's been a real fail. And I do think it's a bigger problem than people think. That's one. My win is the Netflix documentary Dynasty, the Murdox. I have to say, I watch this. Like, I know everything about the Murdox. I can really do. I'm in this documentary by the way on Netflix. It's about the Murdox Empire. I fan out stuff about Ruben Murdox. It was fascinating. I thought it was incredibly
Liz Garbis directed it. I thought it was a terrific documentary. I learned a lot about this very, I thought it was very fair to the family at the same time. I'm sad to watch, you know, this kind of fall apart. And I'm endlessly fascinated by Ruben Murdox. But, you know, he's getting getting on in years and everything. But I do think it was a really interesting documentary.
“And not just because I'm in all though, I think I'm spectacular in it. No, I'm kidding. Now,”
the people who are mostly who've done all the reporting at the times did an amazing job. And so
I recommend it. I recommend watching it. It's he's unique political figure as you know, but I learned a lot from the documentary. Do you see it? I have not. I will say the last movie that I watched that reference to Ruben Murdox was I rewatched the Devil Wirst product from 2006. In preparation for, you know, the re birth to two Devil's come to serious. That's coming up. Yeah. And he just mentioned there's a there's a scene where
it's it's when Merrill Streep's character Miranda Priestley is sort of her her husband is divorcing her and she says like, Ruben Murdox should cut me a check for all the papers that I've sold for. Yeah, like for all this. I mean, like she fuels, you know, all these gossip, she got the bracket lines and so yeah. And yeah, I haven't seen the movie we're talking about, but I did see Devil Wirst product. Yeah, it's a series of a couple of episodes. It's really good. I shouldn't
say this, but I'm in the Devil Wirst product too. Oh, this is exciting. Yeah, it's like I'm sure it's blinking. You'll see it, but they did a lot of it was reported already and the reports were true. I don't know if they cut me, but I'm there. I like to play myself a lot, Kristen, besides in on billboards in Times Square. But I actually for some reason, I'm the go-to person now if they have AI in the plot, they bring interest. It's like Wolf Blitzer. So there is, I have one funny story about this.
Um, you know, a movie edge of tomorrow, or you used to be called like, or lik...
they rebranded. Yeah, I love. I'm obsessed with the movie and Tom Cruise. Fantastic. So at the beginning, there's a scene where it's Jake Tapper interviewing and it's a panel where it's like Olivier Knox
“from, I think he was at the post at that time. Um, Kiki McLean, Democratic strategist and then Tom”
Cruise is in the middle, but like that scene never happened. They edited him in and the edited Tom
Cruise on top of Rost outfit. Ah, perfect. I like it. I'm there for it. So because I was, I was watching the movie and I was like, was like, who is the Republican that was on set that day that got edited out to beat Tom Cruise? Was it me? I don't think so. Oh, yeah, that would be harder. Wow. Okay. Good to know. I love that movie. Anyway, we want to hear from you, send us your questions about business
tech or whatever's on your mind. Go to nmymag.com/pivots and a question for the show. We're called
eight five five five one pivot. Okay. That's the show. Again, thank you for joining me today, Kristen. Everyone should watch her bowling. She's also appears on CNN and she does wonderful stories in the pieces in the New York Times, which I learned a lot from just, just she lets the voters speak and actually it's really interesting to hear them because it's a little more complex
“and that's why it's great and that's important to understand the complexity of all this. Anyway,”
thanks for listening to Pivot. Be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back
on Friday. Thank you, Kristen. Thank you for having me. Today's show is produced by Laura Naman, Zoe Marcus and Taylor Griffin, Ernie Andrewcat, Engineer of this episode, Rich Shubley, edited the video. The shop curl is Vox Media's executive producer podcast. Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nmymag.com/pod. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of
all things tech and business. Sam Altman, Pivot's not for sale. Sorry. I'm sorry. (shrieking) Support for the show comes from Odo. Running a business is hard enough. So why make it harder with it doesn't different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odo. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work
easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce and more. And the best part, Odo replaces multiple
“expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made”
the switch. So why not you? Try Odo for free at Odo.com. That's Odo.com. Support for the show comes from Odo. Running a business is hard enough. So why make it harder with it doesn't different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odo. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce and more. And the best part, Odo
replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try Odo for free at Odo.com. That's Odo.com.
