# AI Market Recalibration and Consumer Power

**Podcast:** Pivot
**Published:** 2026-02-13

## Transcript

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Our earliest childhood memories can feel so visceral.
I have this memory of my mother standing on the beach, you know, the wind whipping her hair and her jacket, calling into the wind with my siblings out in the lake and the dam, you know, looming in the distance.
But none of these memories were true.
This week on Explain It To Me from Vox, why can't I remember being a baby?
Tracking macros has a bad reputation.
People think restriction, obsession, and overwhelming food math.
My experience has been the exact opposite.
I'm Robin Arson, VP of Fitness Programming at Peloton, and learning my macros is what finally taught me what enough actually looks like.
This week on Project Swagger, how tracking gave me more food freedom, not less.
the mistakes it revealed, how I feel now, and how to know what's right for you.
Follow Project Swagger now for the full episode wherever you get your podcasts.
If you want to wear your frilly underwear, I think I...
Oh, wait, was that a secret?
I don't wear underwear.
Daddy goes commando.
Hi, everyone.
This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.
I'm Kara Swisher.
And I'm Scott Galloway.
Scott, we just did a great on with Kara Swisher about...
resist and unsubscribe, but I'd like an update.
You have another podcast.
I find that out.
I do.
You're quite substantive.
Where are we right now?
Give us a quick update.
It lulled Tuesday and Wednesday.
It appears to have come back today because Chelsea Handler, who reached out to me, posted something of all the things she was unsubscribing to.
And just to give you an example of how much impact one person can have.
I went on AI.
I went on to my site analytics.
I think she...
Just that one video she did on Instagram, that one post is going to inspire 6,000 to 7,000 unique site visits, conversion of 5%.
That's 300 people unsubscribing, average of two platforms, 600 unsubscribes, average 200.
That's $12,000 times, excuse me, $120,000 times 10.
So $1.2 million in...
market cap getting taken out of these companies because of one Insta post.
Right, exactly.
And, you know, I'm going to see her tomorrow night, I think.
Tomorrow night.
She's here in D.C.
We should get them all to do things like that.
Let's reach into the celebs we know and get them to do it.
I'm going to bug them all.
I like it.
Thank you.
Yeah, because if they do that and put even just one thing up, it matters.
And it's an easy thing for a lot of them.
And they kind of like it.
Well, what people don't realize about economic protests, the most famous one is the Montgomery bus strike.
It wasn't the one cinematic moment.
It was an organization of thousands of carpools over the course of a year.
So it takes a while, but...
Any individual who unsubscribes from OpenAI right now is taking $10,000 out of their market valuation.
Which is great.
And that adds up.
And there's a substitute, the free.
The free ChatGPT.
And also all kinds of other free services, Gemini, all the others.
That's right.
You don't have to pay for it necessarily.
And by the way, you can use things for free.
You're taking stuff from them, right, without paying them.
Like paying is the issue, is what you pay for.
So just keep that in mind.
Everyone's like, oh, now I can't use Google.
I'm like, no, it's free.
Well, just to give an example how this unsubscribes to these recurring revenue tech platforms or tech companies, T-Mobile just had an earnings call.
They were projected to add 992,000 new subscribers.
They added 962,000.
So 30,000 fewer.
Their stock declined 6% in after hours.
So it cost $12 billion because their unsubs or because 30,000 people didn't show up for subscriptions.
So not only do these actions punch above their weight class in terms of economic impact, if Sam Altman grows his subscriptions, seven and a half percent versus eight percent month on month, he's not going to close his $850 billion round.
Yep, absolutely.
So this is literally, this is the string.
If you don't have the time or the energy to do some of the very other important work, whether it's protests or...
or calling a congressman, you can have a massive impact by unsubscribing right now.
Yeah, you can.
Now, speaking of which, and something the administration does care about, Attorney General Pam Bondi, who we'll talk about more in a minute, was testifying in front of Jan, crazy Jan, was testifying in front of Congress about Epstein on Wednesday.
She made it clear she'd prefer to be talking about other things.
What did she zero in on?
Let's listen.
The Dow is over $50,000.
I don't know why you're laughing.
You're a great stock trader, as I hear, Raskin.
The Dow is over 50,000 right now.
The S&P at almost 7,000.
And the NASDAQ smashing records.
Americans 401ks and retirement savings are booming.
That's what we should be talking about.
Well, she's not the Treasury Secretary, but this is what shows what they care about.
They really do.
The fact that it was inappropriate to bring this up in here, given they were talking about victims, sexual abuse victims.
Nonetheless, this is what floats their boat is this money, right?
And so let's also listen to a great idea one of our listeners sent in.
Every child of an elderly person did also go through all of their parents' subscriptions.
I went through my mother's this weekend and was able to take $125 off of some bills by unsubscribing subscriptions she didn't even know she had.
That is a great idea.
I do that with my mom all the time, and I'm trying very hard to take the New York Post off of her subscriptions, but I'm going to leave it there.
Two years after my mother died, I found that Geico was still taking $220 out of her bank account a month for car insurance.
Wow.
Crazy.
If you don't, and I've used this example before, when I unsubscribed from AT&T and went to Noble, I'm saving about $20 or $30 a month, but in addition, I found out...
I had four accounts with AT&T for BlackBerrys and iPads, which had been in landfills for years because I never went on and unsubscribed them.
And even though they know they're not getting a GPS signal from these things and they could send you an email saying, hey, you know you're paying 70 bucks a month for something you haven't used in five years, you're going to save money.
These companies are very good at figuring out a way to get you to subscribe and get you to forget.
that this money's coming out of your pocket every month.
Yeah.
You know, there's a couple services, and I don't have the names to show where your subscriptions are and to unsubscribe, but this is a better way to do it.
But then you can use those services to find them all over the place.
You'd be surprised of what you're saying.
I found an AT&T thing.
I was still from when Apple first had the iPhone when they had Unlimited, if you remember.
Anyway, it's a great thing to do.
Keep going.
We're going to do more.
Every little thing we can pull on the administration cares about this issue.
And it's the only thing left is the Dow at this point.
The fallout from the Epstein.
What's that $50,000?
Yeah.
She's the fucking attorney general.
I know.
She clearly knows nothing about economics.
What is she talking about?
What is she talking about the Dow?
I know.
Also, also calling a representative Raskin.
Who the fuck does she think she is?
She's in his house.
She's in his house and he calls him Raskin.
I'm going to call you Galloway when I use your house.
Hey, Galloway.
Anyway, the fallout from the Epstein files continues, speaking of which, as I mentioned, crazy Attorney General Pam Bondi, who really needs to be medicated, testified before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, and things got...
He did.
She soiled herself multiple times.
Bondi sparred with Democrats, not just Democrats, over DOJ's handling of the Epstein files and refused to apologize to survivors.
She wouldn't even look at them there.
It turned out she's never talked to them.
She also clashed with GOP Congressman Thomas Massey.
Massey criticized Bondi and the DOJ for failing to redact victims' names while blacking out the names of businessmen, businessman Les Wexner.
Let's listen to the exchange.
Within 40 minutes.
Wexner's name was added back.
Within 40 minutes of me catching you red-handed.
Red-handed.
There was one redaction out of over 4700.
Where he's listed as a co-conspirant.
And we invited you in.
This guy has Trump derangement syndrome.
He needs to get, you're a failed politician.
Really crazy, crazy craziness, I have to say.
I just don't know what to say.
She's, what is wrong with her?
Like, speaking of derangement syndrome, like.
Honestly, I don't know what she was doing up there.
I know it's an audience of one, but he can't even find this impressive.
It's grotesque.
Yeah, it really feels like we have...
Wheels are coming off.
I mean, it's a shame because it's just so...
It's a serious issue.
...weird, and it's the attorney general making a mockery of the institution and just no decorum.
But I'm curious what you thought.
about the hearings.
But the moment that I found really chilling was when I think it was Representative Jayapal had some of the survivors stand up and asked how many of them have reached out to the DOJ to provide evidence or input.
But all these survivors stood up and it was clear they've reached out to the DOJ and the DOJ has ignored them.
And you thought, Let me get this.
The Department of Justice investigating what is arguably may go down as the crime of the century to date and survivors and people with direct knowledge about what happened or what didn't happen.
They could also, quite frankly, they might exonerate some people.
Right.
Exactly.
They don't want to talk to them.
Right.
Right.
And she wouldn't look at them.
That was another moment.
She wouldn't turn around.
She wouldn't do it.
This woman is insane.
I just I don't.
She a crazy one.
She's like.
It was so strange and I know this audience of one they always do, but in this case I was like, wow, you people are desperate and terrified of what's coming next for you.
I thought Massey was effective, I thought Becca Ballant was effective, I thought Jayapal was effective, Raskin.
I thought they all, one of the things, someone who works there said, how do you think it went?
And I said, the only problem with this kind of thing was you lay down.
With pigs, the only people that like wrestling with pigs are the pigs, right?
If you get in the mud with them.
But I thought they relatively handled it well.
It's just that the craziness is what gets attention and not the victims, right?
It becomes a ridiculous circus.
And on some level, what was interesting is Fox didn't show it, right?
They're obsessed with the Nancy Guthrie kidnapping, which is a terrible thing too.
But they're not even...
airing it they don't want to show you the crazy like and any normal person looking at this would be like what honey you need some you need some therapy stat kind of thing and you're, you know, and what happened to you?
So I thought that was, it was a really interesting, this Epstein thing isn't going away, Pam.
I'm sorry.
It's just not now because it's so very clear that you didn't do your job and neither did people before you, by the way, but guess what?
It's a valid point.
You're in the chair now.
I don't really give a fuck.
It's her DOJ.
It's her DOJ.
And her boss, her boss is mentioned.
In the Epstein files, more times than Jesus is mentioned in the Bible or the term meth is mentioned in Breaking Bad over eight seasons.
And I feel like every time yesterday she claimed that the president had been the most, quote unquote, transparent president.
When she uses the term transparent, I think somewhere there's a thesaurus filing for protective custody.
Also, why are you laughing at me?
It's just, oh.
And also, it was so weird.
It's so weird.
It's so culty.
It's so strange.
One of the things I do think is effective is a lot of these Congress people are going in and seeing unredacted versions, which are very upsetting.
When they come out and they look like they've seen a ghost.
I know.
Even Cynthia Lummis, who was, I didn't know it was there now.
Whoa.
Whoa, folks.
Like, Cynthia Lummis, I'm so glad she's leaving politics.
I have to say, even someone like that who literally puts in the least effort possible, same thing.
They're looking like, oh, my fucking God, you're kidding me here.
I got to be honest.
I didn't realize it was this bad.
The more information you read about this, in terms of the number of victims, in terms of how many people were involved, how many opportunities there were to stop it.
Yeah.
And it just gets, the web keeps getting deeper and uglier.
It is.
And the lies.
Like, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was on Capitol Hill this week as well.
He told the Senate committee he and his family had lunch on Epstein's Island in 2012, but insisted he not have a relationship with him.
Of course, this was, he had given this sort of ha-ha interview with one of these right-wing outfits where he said, I never.
I was disgusted by him.
I was disgusted by my wife.
We're going to have no contact with him again.
And here's the thing.
He took his kids.
I took my four kids and their nannies, and I got all the kids off the island.
But this is the thing.
It's not.
It's usually not the infraction itself.
It's the cover-up.
If he had said— Why did he say the first thing?
But if he had just said right up front, he's a neighbor, he had powerful friends, I didn't do the diligence I should have, I went with me and my kids to his island once because it sounded like fun, okay, poor judgment, but go along, get along.
Instead of trying to wrap yourself in some sort of indignance that you immediately smelled a rat, and you're lying, and you decided to— I mean, if he'd just come clean in the beginning, said like, yeah, it was a bad judgment, took my kids to his island, had a lunch.
I'd heard he was a big philanthropist and who knows, maybe he was, okay, all right, bad judgment, move along.
But again, it's the cover up.
He had to take a laugh.
He had to take a, I'm so pure laugh.
And that's because he's a moron.
Let's be clear, this guy's a moron.
And people are asking for him to resign.
He really is a liar.
He's a liar and a moron.
And it doesn't mean he had to do anything, but he's a liar and a moron.
One that's interesting under scrutiny is entertainment executive Casey Wasserman, Chappell Rowan, and other artists have cut ties with Wasserman, as is their right after the latest files showed he exchanged emails with Julene Maxwell and seemed to have some kind of relationship.
with our probably extramarital, who knows, Washington, who serves as chairman of the LA Olympics, organized, and he appears to be holding onto that role.
They're backing him.
There were other names floated to take his place.
Let me be clear for people, I'm not letting him out, but it was 2003 before any of this was known.
He may have been able to pick it up.
That's different.
But this was well before the first conviction, the first sweetheart deal that Epstein did in Florida.
So even he's under scrutiny and people are cutting ties.
And again, this is this artist's right.
They don't like the cut of his jib.
That's perfectly fine.
In his case, there's just the blast zone of this is so far, right?
It's really interesting.
But it's so indiscriminate.
And again, I go to the following.
If we had an institution we could trust, including the Department of Justice and the institutions that actually assembled these files, if they could go through it and go, okay, there are three circles here.
There's people who either engaged in, provided infrastructure, or trafficked and facilitated crimes.
We are going to release those names in the form of grand jury indictments.
And we're going to go after these people.
That's the headline news here.
The Department of Justice isn't supposed to ruin people's careers.
It's supposed to create an incentive system where people follow the law by prosecuting criminals and exonerating people who are not guilty.
That is what they are there to do.
And then the second circle, and this is a harder one, is, okay, if a cabinet member has clearly lied under their testimony or under oath, should they release that information?
Didn't commit a crime.
This is Howard Ludnick.
Should the president, who has not so far been accused of a crime, if he's mentioned in this thing 6,000 times, should we release that information?
I think that is a really important point.
The biggest circle, quite frankly, is...
I have seen on TikTok and on Instagram people talking about models and how they talked about going to a museum with Jeffrey Epstein and we should no longer have anything to do.
They're trying to shame all these people.
And it's like, you know what, folks, that's just pure gossip.
And unfortunately, the ring light shaming.
of all these courageous, virtuous people when they're behind a keyboard and have much higher standards for other people than they do for themselves.
That is distracting from what the Department of Justice is supposed to do.
And that has put pedophiles in prison.
Yeah.
I would urge people to read it.
It was really interesting.
You know, Catherine Rumler, who's the legal head of Goldman, you know, she had a lot of emails there, very chummy kind of emails with Epstein going on for a while.
I thought Bill Cohen did a great job talking about why.
she was in that relationship.
And most of it was, in fact, she was professional.
She's looking for work, right?
And that's a whole different.
Guy who knows rich guys who can send me AOM for wealth management.
Yes, exactly.
So I would urge people to read that.
And again, one or two of them, and one or two places she, when he said, oh, it was only prostitution, she goes, that's just as abusive, Jeffrey.
Like, she unfortunately kept sending her gifts.
There was a business relationship.
I thought it was actually really...
complex situation that made me think, God, if she was a guy and she did like golf with him, she'd get off because she was a woman who was vaguely flirty, kind of.
She wasn't.
Like, it was a great piece because it made me rethink.
I was like, okay, like, not great judgment, right?
Should have known better.
Should have stopped talking to him after the first thing.
but didn't business.
It was just interesting.
It made me think a lot.
I recommend Bill Cohen's column in POC and I thought this is his area of expertise in finance and I thought, okay, this is why he was trying to explain why they haven't let her go.
So I thought that was interesting.
Anyway, speaking of power, six Republicans joined Democrats in the House on Wednesday to vote for a resolution aimed at ending President Trump's tariffs on Canada.
It's a symbolic gesture, even if it clears the Senate, Trump would veto it.
But that didn't stop him from making threats.
Trump posted on True Social that any Republican who votes against the tariffs would seriously suffer consequences come election time, and that includes primaries.
I think he's losing.
the grip, as they say.
What do you think?
Well, there's some new data that shows that about, so the initial notion was the tariffs would mostly be paid by either corporations, sort of a populist thing, or the importer, or excuse me, the exporter themselves, the country would absorb it or whoever was sending the products.
It ends up, and there's finally analysis, 94%.
of the costs have been borne by U.S.
consumers.
And then the other 6% have been borne by companies either deciding to take a bit of a hit or the importer themselves, or excuse me, the exporter themselves reducing their prices.
You have about 15% of the economy is imports.
They thought the tariffs average around 20%, so that's 3%.
Some managed to get out of it.
So call it a 2% of the economy.
But the problem is it's an unnecessary.
2% hit to the economy.
To be fair, it hasn't had the catastrophic effect a lot of people thought it was going to have.
But in a weird way...
Prices are higher.
Well, yeah, it's just...
I feel it myself.
And the shelves are emptier.
It's weird.
I never have noticed that before.
Well, not that, but why reduce people's prosperity by 2% for no real reason?
It doesn't cause growth.
It doesn't cause innovation.
All it's doing is urging or reconfiguring the supply chain.
around the United States, the EU is entering into an agreement with Mercosur.
There are all kinds of new trade zones being opened up such that people are not as reliant on the US.
And a weird thing, though, is that if his tariffs are overturned by the Supreme Court or by the Congress, I actually think the markets will rip.
So in a weird way, it could end up helping him if these things are turned back.
I think the markets will scream.
If these tariffs are found to be illegal.
Yeah, well, we'll see.
Although apparently he's got all these plans to put other kinds of fees in place to take their place that he'll have to go back to court and stop him for those.
He's doubling down.
This is something he's talked about for years.
So I don't know if he's going to back off so quickly and take the victory here.
He'd like to take the L, honestly.
Yeah, I don't know.
It's interesting.
I don't know.
Yeah, no, that lunatic Peter Navarro talks about him like that.
We have a whole bunch of things to happen if the Supreme Court overturns this.
What's taking the Supreme Court so long, by the way?
Anyway, we'll see what happens.
I do think on the broader sense that there's lots more Republicans willing to push back because of their own political survival is not linked to Donald Trump as much anymore.
The other thing is it looks like they may lose control of the House.
That's right.
Another person's resigning it.
Yeah.
So, you know, they're one sick person away from losing, having the Democrats in control.
So it's a really interesting time.
He doesn't have, the power is slipping away and that's why you're screaming Pam or this nonsense and stuff.
So we'll see more of that, I think.
Okay, Scott, let's go on a quick break.
When we come back, social media on trial, very important case.
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Scott, we're back with more news.
A landmark social media trial got underway this week with Meta and YouTube accused of deliberately designing their platforms to addict young users.
You think?
The lawsuit is the first of more than 1,500 similar cases to go to trial.
This is something that's been building for a long time.
The plaintiff's lawyer is arguing that his client, a 20-year-old woman, got hooked on these apps as a kid because they were like digital casinos delivering dopamine hits.
Instagram head Adam Massari testified on Wednesday that he doesn't think users can be, quote, clinically addicted to the app.
Adam Massari is not a doctor, just so you know.
I can't believe he said that.
It was kind of a...
a mistake on his part.
And also he's wrong.
Meanwhile, YouTube is arguing it's not social media.
It's an entertainment platform like Netflix, and it's not addictive.
That is also not true.
The jury, anyone who has kids knows that.
It's very different from Netflix.
I mean, it's become more like Netflix recently, but it's also an addictive situation.
The jury trial is expected to last six to eight weeks with Mark Zuckerberg and YouTube's Neil Mullen expected to testify.
This is a really important trial.
The big names are coming out and talking about an issue you and I have talked about for years.
What are the actual effects and who is responsible for creating an addictive product?
And I'm sorry, Adam, I'm not a doctor either, but any.
Fool will tell you it's, anyone, not fool, any person will tell you it's addictive.
Anyone who uses it.
And there's so much proof that you've designed it like a casino or a cigarette or whatever it happens to be.
Thoughts?
Well, imagine you're 14 and someone, you go into your room and if you were like me, your mom wasn't home until 6 or 7 p.m.
and you're home alone.
Gilligan's Island.
And yeah, it was Bugs Bunny and Gilligan's Island and I Dream of Jeannie for me.
But what if in the corner there was a casino?
What if there was an arcade?
What if there was porn?
What if there was unlimited music?
And then you say, no, no, no, study.
What if there was the high school cafeteria where I could say something mean about someone else or someone could say something mean about me and all I could think about the rest of the day and night was what they were saying about me?
The high school cafeteria never...
never left.
And it ends up that about 6% of teenagers are clinically addicted or meet the clinical definition of addicted to either drugs or alcohol.
But under those same standards, 24% are addicted to social media.
And just some data, the average American teen spends 4.8 hours a day using social media.
16% of teens, or one in six, use TikTok almost.
constantly, 15% for YouTube, 13% for Snap, 12% for Instagram, and roughly half of all teens report feeling addicted to social media.
And you say, well, okay, fine, what's the impact?
Teens who are in the highest use group express two times more suicidal intent or self-harm than those in the lowest use group.
And the highest use group also express poor body image at three times more.
than the lowest use group.
And it typically takes a society or it takes America 20 to 30 years to respond to really negative externalities.
Took us 30 years with tobacco, took us 20 years with opiates.
And if you think about social going on mobile in 2012, 20 years is probably the right number.
I think when I'm, I mean, parents always ask me, what should I do with my kids?
And I say, how old are your kids?
And if they say three or five, I'm like, we'll have it figured out by then.
Because the data here is so overwhelming and we're up against intransigence and people trying to delay and obfuscate similar to those tobacco executives and they have more money and they're more skilled this time.
But eventually the tide, the tsunami of parental concern here, understandable parental concern is washing over all this bullshit where.
So I think in, I would say, I mean, you have entire countries now age gating.
Look what Australia is doing.
I think another two to three years, I'm hopeful the landscape is going to be much different for children.
And the remedies would be warning.
There's lots of remedies, like with cigarettes.
Age gating.
Age gating.
Warning signals, the checking of ages, legal liability.
The age checking is harder.
What every other substance company and manufacturers, a media company is subject to.
Yeah, they've got to be kidding.
You know, there's so much.
They have so many emails of them talking about this.
That's the problem.
For Adam, sorry to say this, he doesn't think it's critically addictive.
Come on, Adam.
Come on.
We all think it is.
The problem is every adult knows this in their bones, right?
Because we're addicted.
We're addicted.
Like we are.
It's a problem.
You cannot put it down.
And it is different from television.
It is very different.
And television, listen, Gilligan's Island is addictive enough.
I can't believe I watched all that shit.
But you can walk away from it in a way.
You cannot walk away from this.
I find myself, I have to throw the phone across the room, right?
sometimes.
I'm like, put it down.
You know, every, Amanda, same thing.
We just, it's really interesting.
And sometimes I think about it, I'm like, I like news and I'm reading, I'm mostly reading news, but I don't stop.
That's the difference.
I put down magazines, I put down newspapers, and I love news.
So this is, all this stuff as it gets out, as you see the emails inside the company talking about it.
And especially early on, they knew just what they were doing.
And perhaps they weren't meaning to be malevolent at the beginning, but it's malevolent for many young people.
And the impact is huge.
And then they just keep doubling down with AI relationships and synthetic relationships and everything else.
This is the time has come round at last for these companies.
We'll see how well how this trial does.
But it's going to it's going to just uncover more and more about what they knew very much like the cigarette companies.
When you have.
hundreds of billions of dollars in shareholder value, trillions of dollars in shareholder value, hundred billions in revenue, millions of some of the brightest people in the world, and trillions of data points, all trying, all aiming towards one thing.
How do we get people to spend one more second every day on social and less time somewhere else, whether it's sports, friends, studying, sleep, and they're winning.
And young people, especially young men who have this tremendous fall on their brains where they're constantly dope-ahungry, They're up against an indomitable foe.
And then the other...
Like sugar.
It's like sugar.
It's the same thing.
And then there's two or three, but your kid can take, you know, a 10-pound bag of sugar into his bedroom with him.
The other two things...
Well, that's your kid.
My kid could, but go ahead.
The other two things, it is a cumulative effect that I think have really hurt our youth or one.
I do think parents have some culpability here, and that is...
We have decided that our job is to clear out all borders and obstacles for our kids.
We engage in concierge and bulldozer parenting.
And by the time the kid gets to college, he or she has never had a C or a disappointment.
And we've created this princess and pea generation with good intentions.
We thought we were doing our kids a good thing.
And then something that doesn't get talked a lot about, but I absolutely think is adding up to a generation that is at a disadvantage.
And that is if you are 21.
Since the age of 10, the person you are supposed to look up to most in the world is Donald Trump.
So performative virality, coarseness and cruelty, online scams, crypto, doubling down on lies.
This has been the role model as kids' brains are being wired during puberty.
And no matter who is president or what you think of the office, president is the person.
that millions of young Americans look to as the ultimate of success in American values.
So what have we done?
We've raised a generation of kids who are dopa-hungry, and their primary role model, maybe with a close second, the richest man in the world, are exhibiting values that are very, I mean, and what do you know?
These 21-year-olds are not...
It's shocking what good people they are, given what they have to deal with.
I would agree.
I think they do resist more than you think.
And actually, there are a lot of parents.
One of the things I spend a lot of time doing with my kids, whenever, like, can you go get this?
Can you talk to that person if they wanted something?
I'm like, you need to do it.
Like, you figure it out has became one of my lines with my kids, my older kids.
You figure it out.
I do it with my younger kids now.
With Saul, I'm like, you figure it out.
I don't know.
I know, but you can do it yourself.
And so that's the best piece of advice you can give to a kid.
I've started giving my kid pounds when he gets good grades.
Is that wrong?
I slip him a 20 pound.
I slip him a note when he gets an A on a test.
No, do not do that.
No, totally.
No, no.
Anyway.
That's called capitalism.
Okay.
You get A's, you get a bunch of money.
Okay.
All right, whatever.
Whatever you want to do there, Scott.
We should write competing parenting books.
In the same genre about surveillance, as you know, that's another thing I go crazy about.
Investors in the Nancy Guthrie abduction case have recovered footage from the Nest doorbell.
Nest is owned by Google.
It was initially thought to have no video because there was no active subscription.
When you sign up, for people who don't know, for Nest or any of these things, you can buy a subscription.
If you don't, they say they don't keep the video.
As it turns out, they do.
The incident shows that Nest uploads video to Google Cloud before you decide to keep it with a paid plan so it can linger after it says it's been deleted, is supposed to be deleted.
I'm glad they got these pictures of this guy at the same time.
This is an edge case.
They're keeping your video, which everyone thought they were doing, and they said they weren't.
The FBI working with Google engineers took 10 days to recover the footage from Guthrie's camera.
The companies need to spell out in plain English how long deleted footage actually remains on their servers.
And by the way, they're also getting incredible pushback from the ring ad for the Super Bowl, which is like, we're watching everybody, but only for your dogs.
And there's been a million memes about only for people we need to take away.
Like the surveillance of these kind of things.
and the ease of which they are hacked, by the way, not just taken off the door like this terrible person did, but hacked into or quite something.
A lot of people are getting them hardwired into their house so that they can't do that.
And also so that they can't be.
taken via wireless.
There's a lot of wireless activity here, but there are ways to, a lot of these things are open season on your home.
I don't, when I was speaking of my son, my kids, Alex took, I had one of them up at one of our houses.
When we bought it, it was there.
One of these Amazon or Echoes or whatever.
He took them all out.
He took that one day I came back and everything was gone.
And I was like, why?
And he goes, because they can watch us.
And I was like, don't be paranoid.
He goes, I'm not.
And he was right.
So.
Anyway.
I think we have a bit of a different view on this in the sense that I think technology, I think we gave up our privacy a long time ago.
Yes, Scott McNeely, we did.
What I want to see, oh, remember Scott?
Yeah, he said that.
Privacy doesn't get used to it.
If you are in London or New York, you can't go more than, I think it's 30 feet outside without a camera.
And the reason they did that was they implemented massive, they have like a security headquarters because of 9-11.
And I actually, what I think you need, though, is really, really well thought out laws and institutions that say, we're not going to go fishing unless it's a felony crime.
We don't investigate it.
In other words, people have the right.
You said something I've thought about a lot, and that is people have the right to have secrets.
And if you want to go into a store, if you're.
I don't know, you should be able to do what you want.
If you murder somebody, then quite frankly, and there are enough, there's enough evidence to say that you are a reasonable person of interest, then we are going to utilize cameras, data, video footage.
I agree with you.
I just think you buy this product and it says it isn't keeping it if you don't pay for it, then it's not keeping it.
Like, I'm sorry, that's just the deal.
That's just the deal when you buy.
I have several of these and I've taken most of them off my house, but they say, and I pay a lot of attention, if you don't pay, this stuff is deleted.
This is deleted.
If it says it's deleted, it should be deleted.
That's all.
It's just the deal you make with them.
And so I don't think they should keep it if it's supposed to be deleted.
Same thing with Echo.
It shouldn't be listening if it says it's not listening, right?
That's what...
If you want it to listen, you can tell it.
That's in your home.
I'm talking about this.
Outside, I think we've lost that battle.
Cameras are everywhere.
Talk about London.
Monte Carlo is really wired.
So is the United States of America.
And that's a good thing when it comes to crime.
But it's a very bad thing when it comes to inside of your house.
Because, Scott, I know if you want to wear your frilly underwear, I think I – oh, wait, was that a secret?
I back people's privacy in their homes.
Daddy goes commando.
Big Ed and the twins want to be free.
But I think it's, in this case, it was good to be able to get the picture of this guy.
At the same time, she didn't, the intent wasn't to.
So plain English of what you're doing and how long it remains, and then it should tell you when it's deleted and permanently deleted.
If they say permanently deleted, it needs to be deleted.
That's, I feel like that's the deal.
At some point you should be able to have, you know, I have cameras around my house.
You can see almost everything.
I know, I try to sneak in all the time.
If someone were to break in.
But I think what you want is, like, this is the hack that I think is coming.
Somebody hacks into Uber.
With your Uber, if you use Uber a lot, I think you can find out when someone is with a thin layer of AI on top of your Uber trips.
They'll figure out where they go.
They'll be able to know if you just terminated a pregnancy.
Or if you're a Russian spy, why is this person continually going to the Russian embassy?
Why is this person, are you having affairs with same sex?
A thin layer of AI on top of your ride history, when and where you are going places, it would be very easy to say, okay, this person is clearly suffering from diabetes.
This is why they keep going to this type of clinic.
This person is clearly engaged in a love affair with this dude at this address.
This person is clearly- This Kara Swisher is constantly going to Amtrak.
But go ahead.
This person is clearly cooperating with the CIA, as evidenced by the fact they keep going to this one address that is a- They could find out- That hack?
Folks, this is the trade we all make, and we all talk a big game.
Anyone who talks about privacy is typically over the age of 50 and in Brussels or D.C.
We consistently trade our privacy for utility.
Yep, we do.
And what I want is massively, okay, unless it's a felony, maybe even more than that, it's a felony that has a threat of violence.
and there's really strong evidence against one person, all that shit is off limits.
No one can use it.
All I'm saying is if they say it's off, it needs to be off.
Or at least give you the power to delete it.
It's like if you buy, like, I don't know, organic apple.
It's not organic.
You can't do that.
Yeah, that's fair.
It's the same thing.
You're selling a product.
You say what it is.
Stay with what you say.
But at the same time, I love the fact, OK, when there's a crime, crime is hitting, despite all the scariness and everyone saying whether it's whether they say it's Eric Adams or Mayor Mom Donnie or it's Bedlam in the streets.
Crime.
The number of shootings in New York last year, I think, hit it like an all time low.
Violence.
And crime, violent crime, has consistently gone down the last several decades.
Is it because we're a better people?
I don't think so.
It's because if you commit crimes now, everyone has seen those law and order SUVs that if you go into a 7-Eleven in the middle of fucking nowhere and shoot the clerk, ATMs have cameras.
So was there any ATMs outside?
Then they check the footage on the ATM.
I don't like a surveillance state.
I like a state, I like a place where if a really strong lawyers, where they consistently say, I get you think a crime is committed here, there's not enough evidence, you do not have access to this video.
Right.
Full stop.
Oh, there's evidence that you're planning a terrorist attack?
sorry, boss, we're violating your privacy rights in every ring light, every Uber ride.
Well, they're also, but we have due process.
We still, I still think we have a due process.
We can't have the wrong people getting a hold of stuff.
Anyway, I hope they find Nancy Guthrie and I hope it helps that they have these, but we have to be, it brings up a big issue about surveillance and we should pay attention to it.
Anyway, let's go on a quick break.
When we come back, we'll talk about the latest in AI news.
There's a lot of it.
Kara here.
The other day, I saw a picture of Minnesota Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve courtside.
She was wearing a T-shirt that read, Trans Kids Belong.
I think this was an epic move, and I have so much respect for that.
Go Cheryl.
This week, Cheryl is on Megan Rapinoe's new podcast, Why Are You Like This?
Megan asked Cheryl why her T-shirts are more than just a fashion statement.
There's just so many things that we could really champion for women.
more other marginalized groups.
And I just heard from so many people what it meant to them.
And so we've continued that.
The conversation with Megan gets into why Cheryl is the WNBA goat from being one of the first openly gay coaches in the WNBA to standing with her players during Black Lives Matter.
She also recently became the winningest coach in WNBA history.
You should check it out.
Why Are You Like This?
Wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube.
People are big mad about data centers in the United States this summer, but don't sleep on how mad people are about Flock.
Flock cameras, if you haven't noticed them, don't worry, they've noticed you.
You may have heard about them in your reels or on Flock Talk.
I have never in my life been as pissed at the government as I am now that Flock cameras exist.
Americans are going to war against Flock AI surveillance cameras and people are going around and literally sawing them down, absolutely destroying them.
An AI surveillance apparatus goes against the very essence of freedom and the core values of our country.
It's not right, it's not conservative, and it sure as hell ain't American.
Flock surveillance cameras have popped up all over the nation, every state but Alaska.
But this year, dozens of cities and counties across the country have cut ties with Flock.
And on Today Explained from Vox, we're going to tell you why.
Megan Rapinoe here.
This week on Why Are You Like This?
I got to sit down with legendary Minnesota Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve in Chicago during All-Star Weekend.
We get into her personal style of activism, how she supports her players as people, and why she proudly considers herself a dyke.
Then we learn if she's more of a mommy, daddy, or baby.
Check out the latest episode of Why Are You Like This wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube.
Scott, we're back with more news.
Time for rapid fire of AI news.
First up, Anthropic is in the final stages of raising $20 billion in new capital at a valuation of $350 billion.
Also at Anthropica, a researcher submitted a resignation letter saying the world is in peril, saying employees constantly face pressures to set aside what matters most.
That researcher is going off to write poetry, by the way, which should trouble you.
Over at XAI, Elon Musk has lost two co-founders, Jimmy Ba and Tony Wu.
Both announced their departure as a big restructuring over there, too, as he's brought it into.
SpaceX, the company at OpenAI, the company's fired and executive opposed plans for an AI erotica feature in chat GPT, citing sexual discrimination.
We don't actually know what happened here.
Anthropic raised the funding, raised twice the funding initially sought based on investor demand.
So thoughts on any of these stories?
Lots of different, lots of stuff happening around AI again.
Yeah, the...
Why people get fired or why they say they were fired, I don't know.
I haven't sorted through that.
What I think has already happened, whether it's reflected in the valuations or not, I think Anthropic is now worth more than OpenAI.
I think OpenAI- What was their valuation?
$800 billion?
Well, I think they're trying to close around at $850 billion.
Yeah, $850 billion.
But that one VC who kind of, if there was a moment where the- the balloon was burst, if you will, the bubble was burst.
It was when that VC had Sam Altman on his podcast and said, you've made a trillion dollars in spending commitments on a company with 20 billion in revenue.
How are you going to do that?
And he got very defensive about it.
And they've gone consumer, Anthropics gone, Enterprise.
They haven't made the kind of crazy commitments.
I think there's been kind of the mother of all industrial pivots.
I think now, if you will, Avis is now Hertz.
I think Anthropic is now worth more or will be soon than OpenAI.
They are not making money.
Yeah.
But they're stronger in the enterprise.
Anyways, none of this makes any sense in terms of a multiple on revenues.
But I think OpenAI is in real, I don't know.
Crisis is the wrong word.
And XAI?
There's a lot of arguments over on X about that they have now do not have.
His big thing was I have the best AI researchers.
Now he does not, right, from what most people, intelligent people are saying about it.
But, you know, he always does this.
He always goes in and shakes the tree and then shakes the tree again.
That's his MO, I guess.
They're a distant lesser or fourth or something like that.
Well, these guys are all...
Here's a symbol of how easy it is and how difficult, how vulnerable they are.
It says here are some, Dario and Daniela Amodi were at OpenAI, now at Anthropic.
Ilya Sitskiver, OpenAI, now at Safe Superintelligence.
Eravind Srinivas, OpenAI, now at Perplexity.
Mira Mirati, OpenAI, now at Thinking Machines.
Arthur Mensch.
Was it Google?
Now it's Mistral AI.
You got all the names.
It's the brightest minds here are, supposedly, I used to work with a lot of luxury brands, and they said the biggest problem they were having in China is that at the biggest malls, if Prada was how to store across the street from Bottega Veneta, if the manager of that Prada...
didn't have people show up.
He could go across the street during the lunch hour to the lunch court and offer someone 11 bucks an hour from the Bottega store who was making 10 and they wouldn't even go back after their lunch break.
They would go over and work at, it was just so easy to pick off people by offering them a dollar more per hour.
And it feels so many of these people who have, you know, fairly or unfairly have established themselves as some of the few minds that really understand this stuff.
The amount of money and temptation to go do their own thing or join another firm is, I mean, supposedly, wasn't there reports that Zuckerberg was paying some people $100 or $300 million and then he wasn't?
I mean, it just feels like it's total, I don't know, bedlam right now.
Right.
They all think they're going to be the one, right?
I'm going to be the final one standing and I'm going to own the world, essentially, which is my bet.
It's a bet, right?
I think one of the things that continues to plague these companies are these researchers who are like, or fucked everybody.
Like, they come out and almost, you know, like, they're sort of like, shh, it's going to kill us.
And so I think a lot of people are much more concerned about this than you know.
I think, but quite frankly, Kara, I think a lot of it is people backfilling.
the reason why they're leaving with morality sometimes or some sort of victimhood.
If you look at, just to go back to musical chairs here, if you look at XAI, the company lost its second co-founder in just two days.
And that means that half of XAI's founding team, six of the 12, have left the company in less than three years of existence.
And Musk said, you know, we've reorganized XAI to improve the speed of execution, which required parting some ways with some people.
And I think for some of these founders, there's legal risk to staying at XAI.
The EU is currently investigating the company for its creation of non-consensual sexual deepfakes based on real people, including children.
So this really is the Wild West.
This is, you know, I don't know.
It's just, it's so difficult to even keep track of, you know, who ends up where and why.
It's like as if it's...
science people went crazy, right?
I do think the warnings are getting really interesting.
They're like, I wish someone would just explain, but we're in peril.
How?
How are we in peril?
Yeah, how does that manifest?
What does that mean?
It's like the people who knew that we were about, you know, in those movies where a bunch of people know we're about to get hit by a comet or something and they're not telling us.
They're like, I wouldn't hug your family.
Why?
What?
Is it Arnold Schwarzenegger showing up at your door wearing Oakleys and a lot of leather?
Like, what is it?
What is happening?
What does it look like here?
What does it mean?
Because the employment destruction that was supposed to be already well underway, I would argue is not happening yet.
I don't know.
But why would someone say they're in peril?
We're in peril.
and set aside what matters most, which is safety, presumably, and then they go off and write poetry.
I would like some more information, if you don't mind.
If you're going to do that, you need to tell me.
Yeah, exactly.
Why are we in peril?
Why are we in peril?
Save us from what?
Tell me.
Tell us.
I know there's these legal things, but if it's so terrifying, you need to step out and tell us.
Tell us what it is.
And bring proof, too, by the way.
We'd love to know when the comet's going to hit us.
In any case.
But the VP of Product Policy at OpenAI was fired after she voiced opposition to OpenAI's upcoming erotica features for adult users.
Yeah.
They were claiming something else.
She did flag that enabling erotica would likely strengthen feelings that users already have for the chatbot.
Yeah.
Based on a recent report released by OpenAI out of ChatGPT's 800 million weekly users.
1.2 million users are prioritizing talking to ChatGPT over their family, friends, school, or work.
That's less than what I thought.
Roughly 560K are experiencing psychosis or mania.
This is shitty research.
As a ratio by 800 million people, is that normal or not normal?
And about 1.2 million people discuss suicide with ChatGPT.
Again, what I want to see is someone to say, All right.
Is that just a function of people who are depressed thinking they can talk to chat GPT just as they would talk to a friend or a therapist?
Or is it something about talking to chat GPT?
Right.
You get the psychosis.
Insights, suicidal ideation or psychosis.
I think the last latter.
You know, interesting.
I just did an interview with Sherry Charpel for my doc series, and she's been saying it for years.
And she's like.
I've never seen anything like it now.
It was before on the sidelines and in the darker places.
It was a small group of people.
She goes, it's really on mainstream in a way.
I would like the information from these people.
Would you come out and bring a bag and bring it to me or Scott or something like that?
Anyway, don't bring it to you.
Bring it to Kara Swisher.
On a separate note, speaking of sort of normal journalism and getting information out, one of the most depressing things is Hong Kong media mogul and pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai was sentenced this week to 20 years in prison after he found guilty in a sedition and collusion with foreign forces.
It's the longest sentence ever handed down under Beijing.
It's a death sentence.
death sentence.
Lai's children are saying a potential visit by President Trump to China April could be crucial in securing the release of their 78-year-old father.
This is something Trump should do.
Back in December, Trump said he asked President Xi to consider releasing Lai.
But on the campaign trail in 2024, he was a lot more confident, saying 100%, I'll get him out.
He'll be easy to get out.
He's not so easy to get out.
Let's not forget.
The real surveillance economy, the real control economy, we've talked about these issues around control and the uses of AI for badness.
China wins the boats everywhere and they go after this guy who's a really important figure in this area.
And so if President Trump can do anything, please do it.
If anyone can do anything, but Jimmy Lai is a hero and what's happened to him is, as you say, a death sentence.
Look, I go to the economics.
When you start imprisoning journalists, whether it was Turkey in 2012, Soviet Union at the turn of the century, or China taking a very hard-fisted approach to Hong Kong in 2021 as kind of best epitomized by Timmy Lai being imprisoned, distinctive the morality of it, distinctive the importance it plays in a society.
The nation gets poorer and angrier.
It is literally a canary in the coal mine saying, we are about to send a chill across some of the most talented people and scrutiny about what can be said about companies that hurts the economy.
The nations get poorer and angrier.
And it's literally a symbol of when an economy is about to move to an authoritarian state, which is really bad for innovation, for attracting outside capital.
When you're thinking about investing, in Turkey and all of a sudden they started locking up journalists.
Does that thing, does that, does that, if you're Google, you think, yeah, I'm going to start, I'm going to open an office in, I'm going to open an office in Istanbul.
Or you think, you know, I'm going to wait and see if they sort that out.
If you're one of the brightest PhDs in the world and you're doing research on authoritarian governments, you're doing research on innovation and you're worried that your research might, might.
might contradict something that the leadership is espousing to.
Do you go teach at those universities?
No, you go somewhere else.
So this is like China is not, you know, is not a model for.
But having said that, I was just supposed to be on with Don Lemon who got arrested.
Yeah, exactly.
Why are they arresting Don Lemon?
Like, give me a break.
They shouldn't be arresting any journalists like this.
It's just ridiculous.
I would agree.
Anyway, Jimmy Lai, let's get him out.
Let's get him out.
He's a hero.
I'm going to finish up with something that just happened.
Gail Slater, who a hugely respected lawyer, antitrust lawyer, who's running antitrust at DOJ, just announced she's stepping down.
It follows the resignation of a guy named Mark Hammer, who was one of her top deputies.
She's had clashes with Pam Bondi over the handling antitrust investigations.
I have heard she was in a real bind over the Paramount thing.
They're trying to like shove through things that are friendly to the Trump administration.
just can't do it.
She can't do it.
During 11 months on the job, she found herself in this bind caught between the Trump administration's.
She was close to J.D.
Vance.
This is a very respected and well-regarded antitrust version.
This should be an enormous signal that Gail Slater is stepping down.
I had hoped to talk to her, but everyone had told me they didn't know what she was going to do about the Netflix Paramount thing.
You cannot be against the Netflix thing if you're not against the Paramount thing.
I'm sorry.
And of course, she's been putting a bind all over the place, a talented and well-regarded person has put into a bind, and so she's stepping down.
I just don't know who they'll put in some idiot, like a Brandon Carr type of person who will just do what they say, but it really brings it down rather significantly.
making Delrahim who works for Paramount actually now very well regarded.
Like they're going to have to put in a village fucking idiot in the Pam Bondi mode.
So not a good sign.
Not a good sign.
Anyway, one more quick break.
We'll be back for predictions.
Elon Musk and a lot of other very smart people think we're all going to have robots at our house any day now.
But when you look at where the tech is today and how far it has to go, you might reach a different conclusion.
This idea that humanoid robots are coming to live in our house and I went and explored that is just not true.
That's Joanna Stern, the tech journalist who spent a year outsourcing her life to AI and robots.
That's on Channels, the show about tech and media and what happens when they collide, wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.
Retailers want you to believe September is a fresh start that comes with a brand new shopping list, but the only thing back-to-school season really refreshes is their profits.
I'm Vivian Tu, your rich BFF, and on this episode of Net Worth & Chill, we're breaking down how to save big this fall.
Scoring tech for a fraction of the price with trade-ins and refurbished deals, the college money hacks that keep you from ever paying full price for a textbook again, and the parent-tested strategies to outsmart every retailer trying to cash in on your kids.
Everything from 529 accounts to student discounts you can maybe milk a little longer than you should.
We've got you covered.
Ready to hit this school year with a fuller bank account and zero buyer's remorse?
Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube.com slash yourrichbff.
Okay, Scott, let's hear a prediction.
I think that what was supposed to be the most anticipated IPO, maybe with the exception of kind of SpaceX, AI, Tesla, the...
Whatever.
probably the most anticipated was the IPO of open AI in 2026 sometime this year early 27 I don't think that's going to happen oh I think yeah I think this company is is now is gone into full I don't call it panic mode but it feels as if the momentum has a habit of creating more momentum and I think the momentum is really negative around this company what happens where does it go what does it do Well, I think they'll substantially scale back there.
I mean, have you already seen the war?
Have you ever seen Jensen Huang and Sam Altman, who were, you know, bud buddies, are already shitposting each other, claiming that the $100 billion agreement was a framework and they're actually not going to—the $100 billion investment?
May I just say, you said that.
Well, that was ridiculous.
These circular deals.
I'll give you 100 billion, I'll invest 100 billion if you invest 100 billion in our chips.
And now, quote unquote, Jensen's backtracking and saying, well, it was just a framework.
They couldn't justify it.
NVIDIA stock has gone down because people are worried about exposure to open AI.
So what does open AI do?
They start shitposting NVIDIA and saying, no, it's because their chips didn't live up to our expectations.
When the biggest player in the space, Jensen Huang, and kind of the young gun, open AI, start shitposting each other.
And they back out of this $100 billion investment framework.
That is a really bad sign.
Yeah.
He kept using, what was the word?
We're honored to be invited.
What was he saying?
It was so funny.
Yeah, but they're both going on background now and blaming each other.
Oh, totally, utterly.
Like, can I just give people a lesson?
When you hear sources close to the situation, if they were any closer to either of them, they'd be on the other side of them.
That's them, right?
So I think the momentum, the worm has turned.
And it's not that OpenAI isn't an unbelievable company that could go public at like a $50 billion market capitalization.
But the problem is when you sell some investors in at $250, $450, and then if he's able to close this round at $850, They're not willing to go public or let you have a liquidity event that cuts there.
What happens in an IPO, say he went public at $300 billion next year and said, okay, the market isn't what we thought.
Unless there's a couple of years where the latest round of investors get so fatigued they're willing to take a 60% haircut, all of your shares, the last round of investment has a preference, meaning they're the first money out.
So the $50 or $100 billion going in at $850 doesn't want to give up.
their liquidity preference and let them go public if they're going public at less than $850, which I think they would.
So your last round of investors become a veto block for going public unless you're going to go public at a valuation greater than $850.
So what do they do?
You haven't answered my question.
They'll dramatically, in my opinion, they'll dramatically scale back their capital, their CapEx, and they'll end up with a much smaller, much less ambitious, amazing company that's only worth $100 or $200 billion.
It's only one of the...
30 most valuable companies in America, not the- Get bought?
Well, that means everyone else will get collapsed, right?
Or not?
I think the whole, my opinion, if you look at, and I look at weird signals, the percentage of ads at the Super Bowl, right?
Yeah, I know.
Yeah, you said that.
If you look at all this, I think there's a ton of anecdotal evidence showing that while AI may live up to its potential- The market cap of the biggest players this year is about to throw up, which isn't to say that similar in 2000, when the market cap of Amazon went down 95%, it's still not going to be an unbelievable company.
But I think we're about to see a dramatic recalibration in the markets, which includes OpenAI's IPO plans getting queered.
Now, who's going to take their place?
And this is the prediction.
The most impressive numbers, hands down, that no one I wasn't expecting, Calci.
Calci's year on year.
Calci and not Polymarket, right?
Well, Calci's actually of the two, the clean, well-lit space of this marketplace, right?
It's a little, Calci is CFTC regulated.
It's also in the U.S.
It's peer-to-peer trading.
It's federally regulated.
I have some, I don't have moral clarity around these issues because I do think they tap into the DOPA.
of a young, more risk-aggressive male brain.
But just let me go straight to the numbers here.
In 2026, or in this Super Bowl, right, over a billion dollars in trading volume on Cal sheet.
That's up 2,700%.
It was up 28-fold this year.
And you know who's getting absolutely the shit kicked out of them?
Is Flutter, is the gambling sites.
They're killing these guys.
The sports market accounted for about 90% of Calci's activity this month.
And it's having an incredible impact on traditional gambling and sportsbook.
Analysts have noted that Calci's rise coincides with the underperformance in major sportsbook stock prices, DraftKings, Flutter, as traders shift some activity towards prediction markets.
And with a venue that's easy to access nationwide, which Calci is, even in states without legal sports betting, The firm is attracting betters who might otherwise have used traditional sports books.
So this is this company.
And my prediction is the following.
OpenAI, way to the downside, doesn't get public.
CalShe is about is going to be, in my opinion, the kind of IPO we're all trying to get into in Q2 of Q3 of this year.
CalShe it is.
All right.
Well.
That's interesting.
You've been sounding this alarm for these companies.
Interesting.
Fascinating.
That's a big one.
Scott, that's a big one.
We'll see, right?
That's a big one.
Yeah.
Anyway, we want to hear from you.
Send us your questions about business, tech, or whatever's on your mind.
Go to nymag.com slash pivot to send a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT.
Elsewhere in the Kara and Scott universe, this week on Prof G.
Markets, Scott spoke with Eswar Prasad, professor of trade policy and economics at Cornell University to discuss why he thinks economics, domestic politics, and geopolitics are stuck in a doom loop.
Doom loop.
Let's listen to a clip.
Globalization used to be seen as a positive sum game where countries could benefit mutually from trade and that would be an offset to what is intrinsically the zero-sum game of geopolitics where one country can gain influence only at the expense of another.
But now even globalization has become seen as a zero-sum game so it isn't offsetting the zero-sum game of geopolitics.
And worse, some of the negative dynamics of globalization have started infecting domestic politics, not just in the U.S., but in many other countries.
God, I feel smarter already.
Professor Prasad, one of the things that struck me, and I said this, we graduated the same year from undergraduate, me from UCLA, him from the University of Madras.
I graduated with a 2.27 GPA with an incredible ability to make bongs out of any household item.
He won a scholarship in India that identified like one of the 50 smartest kids of a billion kids.
And so what does a guy who's one of the 50, like, this guy could walk into...
the Rose Bowl, and take the average IQ of those 80,000 people up a couple points.
That's how smart and hardworking this man is.
So what are we doing?
What are we saying to these people now?
Can you imagine a kid coming out of the University of Magos right now in 2026?
Is he going to go to Brown?
No, he's going to go to McGill, or he's going to go to Instituto Mbrasa, or he's going to go to INSEAD, or who knows, maybe the University of Cordoba in Argentina.
I mean...
Speaking of doom loops, academic doom loops.
We're the sports team that used to have access to the number one draft of any college in the world.
And we've said, no, we don't want to.
And now we just have Prof G coming back to the United States.
Talk about a bad trade.
He is repatriating himself in the summer.
He's coming back.
Anyway, it sounds like a great interview.
I'll be listening to it.
Anyway, that is the show.
Thanks for listening to Pivot.
And be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel.
We'll be back next week.
Today's show is produced by Lara Neiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin.
Ernie Intertot engineered this episode.
Manolo Moreno edited the video.
Thanks to Officer Gibros, Miss Severo, and Dan Chalon.
Nishat Kourou as Vox Media's executive producer podcast.
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We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.