# Media Merger Debt and AI Labor Promises

**Podcast:** Pivot
**Published:** 2026-10-09

## Transcript

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This week on Why Are You Like This, I am talking with shrinkings and ugly Bettys, Michael Urie.
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Hi, this is Kara Swisher.
Just a note about today's episode.
For the first time ever, I was late and really late.
But co-host of Raging Moderates, Jess Tarloff, jumped in to save the day until I arrived.
So please enjoy.
Hi, everyone.
This is Pivot from Newark Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.
I'm Kara Swisher.
And I'm Scott Galloway.
There you go.
So a little different today.
We cannot find Kara Swisher.
And we've been making jokes for the last 15 minutes.
You want to hear my favorite, Jess?
Yeah, lay it on me.
We sent bloodhounds looking for her, but she found them first.
Or we think she might be in a Patagonia store asking for something less douchey in Silicon Valley.
Anyways, we don't know where she is.
We think that she lost track of time, the time zone, and that she's with the Barksdales in Mississippi.
Isn't she?
She's here, though.
No?
I don't know.
I ran into her in the Vox studio in New York City, which was a delightful run-in.
I guess that was two days ago.
She could have hopped on a jet to the...
jungle with an ayahuasca shaman or something.
It's funny you say that because every time people run into care, the first word they think of is delightful.
You lost some credibility.
But despite that, we're going to move forward with the show.
And Anna with us, for those of you who don't know, is Jess Tarlov.
Co-host of Raging Moderates and some show on cable TV and the...
Cable's dying.
It doesn't even matter.
There you go.
I'm tied for first with Caden Collins for the pervy obsession of the president.
Anyways, and we're not even going to go to that.
First off, Donald Trump appears to be doubling down on his comments about Iran potentially striking California as he defends the war.
Let's listen to what he said at a rally on Wednesday night.
You want to see trauma?
You want to see problems?
And I said it the other day.
Let them hit a missile into San Diego or Los Angeles on the way.
Let them hit...
You want to see a horror show?
You want to see problems?
Let them hit San Diego.
Let them hit Los Angeles and you want to see some bad things happen.
You want to see a country that would be in free fall.
We're not going to let that happen.
We protect our cities.
We protect our country.
We're not letting that happen.
All right, so I'm going to pretend I'm Kara Swisher.
Can you believe this guy?
Now provide insight.
Your turn, Jess.
I can believe this guy.
And the question is whether the American people can believe this guy anymore.
If the polls are to be believed, we are in, you know, blue wave to potentially tsunami territory.
And, you know, that I like to be nauseously optimistic.
You always have to run like you're behind.
The good news is Democrats are actually doing that.
But these kinds of comments are the things that really turn off independents and moderates.
So like if his base is largely intact, and there are parts of it that are fracturing for sure, but in general, the.
You shot someone on Fifth Avenue.
Let me buy you a beer crowd is still, you know, hook, line and sinker in there.
This is the stuff for people who are on the fence or who maybe took a flyer on him in 2024 because they thought that prices would go down.
We wouldn't have wars in the Middle East and that the Democrats were too scattered and woke and crazy and weren't delivering.
They look at this and just say, like, what's wrong with you?
The question is.
How did he put it or people who are trying to decode Trump in the first term where they said, you know, don't take him literally or seriously or whatever it is like, where does nuking Los Angeles and San Diego, I guess getting the Iranians to do it, we're not going to do it ourselves.
Where does that go on the scale of how seriously you're supposed to?
take him or what signal is it sending to Iran about what's going on here?
It's interesting, though.
It was the first time when I saw it, it was the first time where I thought the crowd really just was caught flat-footed.
They did not know how to respond.
And usually they kind of like, oh, God, there goes Donald and an eye roll and a laugh and, you know, oh, you know, take him seriously, but don't take him literally.
But this was the first time it felt, oh, God.
someone, we need to take grandpa's driver's license away.
It's interesting you say this especially turns off moderates.
Is it worth it for sort of inflaming or exciting the base or it's just net, net, this is a bad move politically is what you're saying.
Oh, definitely.
I mean, this is crunch time, right?
Early voting has started.
It is going well for Democrats, you know, seeing huge surges, especially in Latino voters.
And we know that his approval rating with Latinos has plummeted to levels that they certainly didn't expect based on a very good overperformance in 2024, but putting back together the more traditional Democratic coalition.
So folks are paying attention now.
That's what happens after Labor Day.
And it's a month.
within a month, the election.
So folks are perking up and they're saying, oh, what's going on here?
And he's talking about being cool with losing, you know, big, important American cities.
And I should add also, there are a lot of Republicans in San Diego.
Like he didn't pick.
I get California is right.
You know, purple to conservative.
So.
You know, go after L.A.
We've kind of been there before.
He's told generals, you know, storm, storm blue cities.
I don't really care what you do here.
But adding San Diego to the mix, I assume, you know, it's a Gavin Newsom.
problem and he's talking about the 25th Amendment.
We're not going to get there.
But I do think it is a major turnoff because people just want to hear about real stuff.
Like, what's the economic plan?
What's the plan for getting out of the war in Iran?
You know, what does immigration enforcement look like?
Because we don't like Stephen Miller riding around on a pickup truck, you know.
taking our neighbors out of our communities.
Trump made similar comments on Monday night, leading California Governor Gavin Newsom to call for the 25th Amendment to be invoked.
Newsom said the president's comments were deranged and dangerous.
White House communications director Stephen Chung pushed back on X, saying Trump was describing the threat U.S.
cities would have faced if a nuclear on...
hadn't been stopped.
He's the hero.
Yeah, there you go.
Donald Trump is the hero.
This is how bad it could have been.
But right now, everyone's just having to pay.
How much does it cost now to get an oil tanker through the Strait of Hormuz?
Yeah, it's what is to be fair, though, my understanding is the passage of I'll put forward a thesis here, Jess.
I don't want to call it an October surprise.
So essentially.
We've seen this before.
There's nothing new for presidents to try and come up with a military-involved October surprise, whether it's Carter.
It goes all the way back to Vietnam to try and juice them in the polls because America has a tendency to rally around the flag and the current administration during military action.
I don't want to say I worry, but I see a non-zero probability that something could go very right in Iran right now.
It looks like the oil embargo is beginning to really have...
serious impact on Iran and oil flowing through the Strait of Hormuz is actually almost a pre-war levels.
If oil starts to dive and also I believe, you know, if you take off your partisan lens here and ask yourself what could go right, we didn't see Assad falling until he did.
I actually think there's a not...
not a likelihood, but a chance that the IRGC could have a major disruption or fall.
You just don't know.
I wonder if something could go very right in the next 30 days in Iran.
All right, everybody, we found Kara.
Fucking ring cameras.
Sorry, I don't know time differences.
I don't know what to tell you.
When did you become a, it's time to take mommy's driver's license away?
Let me tell you, I'm in Mississippi.
I'm with the most wonderful person I know from tech, Jim Barksdale, who has raised money for literacy.
And Mississippi Today, which is local journalism, this astonishing thing, and with Donna and Jim, and I'm at their house.
We were having a delightful breakfast all together, and I didn't realize the time difference.
And I apologize.
Central time is an hour.
Behind or ahead?
See, I don't even know.
I don't even know.
We thought we were going to find you under a pile of Patagonia vests at the local Patagonia store.
We were making ayahuasca jokes that you were like in the jungle somewhere with a shaman.
I could have been.
So anyway, so I'm here in Mississippi, and that's where I am.
I'm going to play Kara.
All right, Scott, we've got a lot to get to.
Okay, we've got a lot to get to.
So, Kara, I was just speaking to Jess Tarlov about the fact that Atlantic is saying there might be sort of an October surprise, that there might be something kind of big going down, and that he's sort of...
I don't know, teasing some military action or something in Iran.
Any thoughts?
Well, that's what he would do.
He's got to do something dramatic, right?
There's something that has to happen that will take people's focus away.
And I guess approximate a victory of some sort or approximate something that's sort of shock and awe.
Probably it'll backfire on him because he's an incompetent leader.
But, you know, the idea that most presidents do things like this when things are bad.
They take it for an action, right?
And they think this is what people want, but actually they don't, right?
They actually don't.
Most people are very against the war.
Well, that was the blinding insight people come to pivot for.
Now we're going to switch identities.
And Cara, you're going to take the show from here.
Thank God, said everyone listening to this dog's breakfast called Pivot.
Thank you so much.
All yours, sweetheart.
We're glad you're back.
We're glad you're safe.
Thank you.
Are you okay?
I'm going to wheel you into the hospital.
And it's going to be one of those cheap county hospitals.
You were worried.
He's going to be in a mood all day because of this.
Oh, well, thanks a lot.
Okay.
I need someone to hold my hand, not vice versa.
Why don't you just say you miss me and you're worried if anything would happen to me?
You could see.
We started to get worried.
Like I said, we started to get worried.
We almost called Brooke, and then I thought we're not that worried.
I'm just telling you.
Anyway, and now for the grift of the week, Trump wants to turn part of his West Palm Beach golf club into a presidential retreat a la Camp David.
Though when asked if he would call it Camp Donald, oh my God, Trump said his name is already Trump International.
The plan would designate part of the property as a permanent official retreat for U.S.
presidents and foreign leaders used for summits and presidential vacations.
It would also be offered Compton memberships to Trump's club.
Lucky them.
The club's lawyer says construction paid by Trump, maybe, would be finished until after President Trump leaves office.
So really, it's just a gift to Trump's successors.
What do you all think of this thoughtful gift?
That man has not paid for anything himself.
No.
For all of time.
I love now, you know, with the ads that they're putting during the NFL and like college game day and things like that, that apparently they're going to start paying for it, but it won't be retroactive.
So I almost I've gotten to the point now where I'm like, just bring it on because it is so clearly expressing to the rest of us that he doesn't give a shit.
about the actual business of governing.
And I would rather go into election day with everyone being clear-eyed about that, right?
Like, this is a man that cares about having Camp Donald or Trump International, whatever, Redux version.
Well, the externalities, right?
All the externalities, like Camp David or the columns, the Corinthian columns versus iconic, that kind of thing.
Yeah.
I mean, yes, it's a stylistic nightmare.
But this is also a way...
for him to stay in power?
Because I'm sure he is having a meltdown about the fact that Steve Bannon is working very hard for the third term plan, but it's probably not going to come to fruition.
And how does he keep a stranglehold on American politics for longer?
This is a way to do that.
However, he's going to be informing what goes on in the ballroom.
Maybe he'll be in the bunker underneath.
Maybe we'll get him out.
I'm not really sure.
But I do welcome it from.
a political strategist point of view on the other side, because you can't just say he cares more about this stuff than he cares about the fact that, you know, your gas is over $4 and you can't afford school supplies this year for your kids.
And this is what he's concerned with, like bread and circuses, essentially.
The bread and the circus.
Yeah, yeah.
Scott?
So members clubs in New York, I was having a conversation last night.
I'm not exaggerating.
They've opened probably 12 or 15 in the last...
two years, two to three years.
It's a great concept.
Soho House kind of came out with the Toyota membership clubs in London, and then it came to New York.
And then this visionary, a guy named Scott Sartiano said, there's room at the high end because of people are making so much money.
And he came in with sort of the Mercedes version, zero bond.
And then I think about 14 different, very wealthy people were at different tables at zero bond and said, I can do this.
And none of them were talking to each other and they've just opened everywhere.
And there's one on the Upper West, I think, which I love to go to once every 10 or 12 years, the Upper West Side.
I don't see why anyone lives up there.
Museums.
You don't go.
The museums are incredible.
Move to Greenwich, Connecticut.
I mean, why live in Manhattan?
Barney Greengrass.
Barney Greengrass.
It's like, well, OK, there's a Panera there.
Anyways, so if you have a dog, I get it because of the park.
But anyways, there's something called I think it's a friend of mine who's a.
player in private equity took me there.
It's Maxine's or Oswald's.
Oh, I've been there.
Maxine's.
Maxine's.
It's on the East side.
It's on the East side.
It's on the East side.
Yeah.
I went with Plepler.
The average age of the people there is dead.
I have never seen so many old people who have descendants about to fight over their estate.
Okay.
Literally, it was the hall of fame of private equity.
By the way, that's going to be Jess and I someday about yours, but go ahead.
Anyway, this place, I was with a guy who's, I don't know if he's a billionaire, but he's very wealthy.
He was the least wealthy person in the room.
If you named a private equity person, they were in there.
And the lights were so bright so people could read.
And there was fabric everywhere, so the acoustics were really good.
Yes, there's a lot of fabric, yeah.
And the font on the menus was like $7 million.
Okay.
was a guy walked by, like a famous private equity guy.
We'll just call him David.
And my friend was like, hi, David.
And the guy just kept kind of shuffling along and he's literally like, David!
David, he started screaming.
And the guy still couldn't hear him.
And nobody flinched.
Nobody there can hear a thing.
How does this get to Trump?
This is going to be worse than that.
This is going to be less cool than that.
Oh, I see.
I see where it's going.
Yeah.
So it's like the elderly camp, David.
We could put...
Chuck Grassley there.
We could put Mitch McConnell.
We could wheel him in.
Those people, right?
Correct?
Yeah, it's not.
Schumer can shuffle on in.
You're going to be able to order a Ruth Bader Ginsburg club sandwich.
Okay.
All right.
Okay.
On that note, it's another grift.
Okay, Scott and Jess, let's go on a quick break.
When we come back, the Paramount Warner Brothers merger is complete.
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We're back with more news.
Paramount has officially completed its $81 billion acquisition of Warner Brothers Discovery, creating a new media giant, Skydance.
The combined company now controls Paramount+.
HBO Max, CBS, CNN, and two major movie studios, Skydance is taking on.
$82 billion in debt and plans to cut $6 billion in costs over three years.
And the company has added some notable names to its board, Lorraine Powell Jobs, former Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick, and former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, and he will serve as an advisor.
The other two are on the board.
At the time of this taping, shares are now up 4% for the day, even though it was a decline yesterday.
A year from now, what would you say makes this merger a success?
Someone else buys it.
I've said this over and over.
If there's a book called The Worst Acquisitions in History, it's going to be called Time Warner.
Yeah.
I mean, there's something about this company where the assets are so sexy that people, a billionaire keeps wandering in.
It's like, who's the woman?
I think it's, who's the woman who keeps marrying billionaires?
Like, there's something about her that people.
This company is the Lauren Sanchez of media.
There is something about Lauren Sanchez that is clearly magnetic.
I've met all of her husbands, and they are really impressive guys.
And I have met Lauren Sanchez.
She is magnetic indeed.
Yeah, there's something about Lauren Sanchez that she's clearly everybody who meets Lauren Sanchez wants to marry her.
And I say that as a compliment.
She clearly has some extraordinary magnetism.
I'm not sure you're saying it's a compliment, but let's...
I think he is.
Is he?
Okay.
Deep down.
Deep down.
Well, but it's not the pervy side of it, but she is so fun.
She has married the most impressive men in America, in my view.
Anyways, everyone can't help but marry Time Warner, AT&T.
I mean, that didn't work, right?
AOL, Steve Case said, I'm sitting on a bag of shit supposedly worth $150 billion.
I know.
I'll talk Time Warner shareholders and employees into giving me half of their company.
And then Randall Stephenson said, oh, wait, telco run by phone guys in Dallas.
It makes sense to own HBO.
And then they managed to offload it.
to the world's highest compensated banker, a brilliant investment banker, a guy named David Zasloff, who figured out a way to have a show that talked about sharks for a week.
And that merged and that stock went way down because the business made no sense.
And now they've talked other billionaires into buying this thing.
The key number here is the following, $82 billion in new debt on a combined entity.
That means massive cost cutting.
It's a company betting that its balance sheet that they'll be able to pull off what no one's pulled off so far, and that is streaming consolidation that works better than streaming competition math.
It's very difficult.
It's the same bet WarnerMedia made with AT&T and Lost.
The other interesting thing that you mentioned was the board members.
But when you put people on your board, it's as much as a signal as it is an attempt to get domain expertise.
Putting Lorraine Powell Jobs on the board is like, look, we're not the crazy politicos we think you are.
She's a very credible person who has a lot of respect and has done a great job with the Atlantic.
And it's them saying, see.
We might be red, but we're light red.
We're more purple than red.
I spoke with her about it this week, and I think that's the case.
I do.
And she's done an incredible job at the Atlantic.
It's been the right kind of media owner.
Very supportive.
And yet, because they've been through a lot with Trump, and I think it is a signal to Democrats and people who are more anti-Trump to do so.
And I hope it's not at her expense.
told her.
But it is.
And Bobby Kotick's a very savvy operator also at the same time.
These are sort of reasonable people.
These are great board picks.
Great board picks.
I thought the most interesting one was Tony Blair.
Sort of.
Ellison backs, Ellison gives him all the money for his fund.
He's Ellison in the Ellison universe.
Yeah, but what it signals, it's actually, it's a savvy move because it signals Skydance wants geopolitical regulatory Sherpa through Europe.
I mean, he's the guy that's on speed dial to every regulator and power player in Europe.
And that's, what it says is that's where, it tells you where they expect the next fight to be and that it's likely to be regulatory and from abroad.
This, But just backing up, this merger is less creating a media giant and more two swimmers who are struggling grabbing onto each other.
The combined scale in this business, it's not going to fix the underlying problem.
And that is linear decline, streaming's thin margins.
It just changes what shareholders are going to be accountable for it.
And news takes up all the attention, of course.
Can I ask you, Jess, when putting people like this, is this a signal?
What does Trump do?
Because these are not Trumpy people.
Well, Bobby's been conservative, but...
What are they doing here?
They're obviously, one thing David Ellison said, which I thought was striking, when someone asked him, John Pasatino at this press conference said, you know, you've been very political, let's be clear, you've been sort of a suck up and what are you doing now?
And he said that was merger.
That was a merger moment that we had to do at that time.
Now we want to turn a page.
I was sort of it was both cynical and also accurate, I would say.
And he wants to turn the page.
Is that going to be effective or is he does he need to stick with Trump?
Well, for a certain amount of time.
But all of these tech titans are cozying up to Democrats as much as they can, save for Elon Musk, because they see at least some degree of divided government.
on the wall.
And they don't want every single article that's published and every influencer, creator, reporter, journalist, whatever we're supposed to be called, to just be maligning them every time they get in front of a mic.
I think, you know, it's selective leaking of who's going to be power players or board members and all of this.
They want people, you don't want Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway to say these are good picks for the board, right?
And, you know, Tony Blair is this incredible.
Right.
But There is more to come.
And I'm not saying it's all going to be bad, but I don't think the Ellisons, you know, wake up the day after the merger and they suddenly revert back to a different place, you know, politically.
And I think the issues that really animate them politically are still very salient.
You know, looking at tax codes and regulatory frameworks, thinking about Israel.
Absolutely.
And that was going to be my question for you.
What do you think is going through Barry Weiss's mind right now as, you know, she continues to helm CBS and it will be a new age to some degree there?
And how are you, CNN, feeling at this particular moment?
Oh, you know, it's interesting.
It's good because we really haven't talked about how Kara feels about this.
All right.
Well, I don't usually live here, so I'm asking her.
I had a really long talk with Laureen about it.
And I'm not going to move into it, but I also and I talked to Bobby about it.
I think I just don't fundamentally trust them as media owners.
And I did trust, I would trust the Lorraine Jobs.
I trust the Grams.
I trust the Salzburgers.
Like there is an element, and I really like Mark Thompson.
Mark Thompson's not the owner.
So I'm paying attention to the owners.
Now, I'm...
I think so far the record, when you inherit money or you are very wealthy and you buy something, I expect more of you, like the way Mrs.
Graham sort of stepped up against her own interests to take on power, which is not easy, I have to say.
And that was always my North Star.
And I think what's really interesting here is...
I think it's whether Larry's going to be running the show or David's going to be running the show.
And that's the question.
And I think they have a really complex father-son relationship.
And I think that we'll see what happens here.
I mean, the only thing to do is create a product people want to buy.
That's, I mean, in terms of news or movies or streaming.
And I think one of the problems is.
I am a bit player.
Scott's right.
It doesn't really matter.
But I do.
I mean, I was joking.
I'm the Lorax and I speak for the trees.
I think I was talking.
I'm speaking for journalism.
But the real game is streaming and cutting costs.
And that's this story is about that.
And it's going to and CNN and the, you know, the insane amount of attention that CBS gets because of Barry Weiss and is meaningless because those numbers are going down.
Like it doesn't matter.
Nobody's like show of hands who watch CBS News is going down and down and down.
So I think it's about how do you create a modern media company?
And Scott is 100 percent right.
There's not enough scale here, especially with the headwinds of technology.
with this debt on top of it to really be, it's a real problematic situation from, I keep saying math, math, math is really problematic here.
And so as much as hand waving around her or anybody else, it's hardly matters.
It's irritating and upsetting as a journalist.
So the only thing I would add to that is, A father-son relationship that's complex is when your dad starts banging a flight attendant on Continental Airlines and then leaves and then moves to Ohio and you don't see him for a year.
And then he shows up and he takes you and your best friend Adam to see Greece.
And at the end of the movie, he collects two bucks from your friend Adam.
Speaking of stories that never end like my CNN one.
Then gets back in his Gran Torino and you don't see him for another 18 months.
That's complex.
That's a complex relationship.
Giving your son $120 billion to go play media, that's not that complex.
Okay.
Jess, welcome to Pivot.
Oh, my God.
Welcome to Pivot.
There are certain thematic things.
I like to defend journalists.
He likes to talk about his father's feelings and how they still play out.
It is amazing.
I am as functional as I am.
That's why people come back.
I know it's true.
As functional as I am.
As functional as you are.
But don't worry, Jess and I will not be fighting over your estate.
We'll just be enjoying ourselves on a yacht somewhere with David Ellison.
Anyway.
I'm leaving it all to destiny at Club 11 north of Miami.
She loves me, Kara.
She loves me.
Oh, my God.
All right.
Let's go on a quick break.
When we come back, Jeff Bezos speaks out on AI.
Hi, everyone.
I'm Kara Swisher.
And I'm Sky Galloway.
Twice a week, we get together on Pivot to sort through the biggest stories in tech business and politics.
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So we'll bring hot takes.
I'll bring the insight and the dick jokes.
And Kara will try.
Keyword is try to keep me in check.
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I'll do it.
If someone has to do it.
We'll cover AI, whatever chaos Washington has cooked up that week, and every billionaire misbehaving.
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We're back with more news.
Jeff Bezos says that AI could transform the American work week, allowing people to support their families by working just three days a week or live comfortably on one income.
In an interview with Fox News, Bezos predicted AI would boost productivity so much so that companies would actually struggle to find workers rather than replace them.
Bezos also commented on regulation in the interview.
Let's listen to a clip.
Where sometimes regulation goes wrong, especially when people are...
scared, reacting emotionally and so on, is they want to try to regulate the underlying thing instead of the applications of the thing.
And so the simple example I could give you would be, you don't want to regulate knives, you want to regulate murder.
So you can use a knife to murder somebody, but you don't want to say the solution to that is to eliminate knives.
You want to say, let's make murder illegal.
Oh my God.
It already is.
It already is.
Like, I just can't.
This interview was ridiculous.
First of all, he's like, I love the idea of super intelligence versus AI.
And he's just become such a ridiculous suck up.
And in terms of what Bezos is saying here is, duh.
Like, I don't know what else to say.
Yeah, let's regulate murder, including you make a product that's dangerous, you go to jail.
Love it.
Love the idea of that.
But they're all trying to pretend that this is all going to be great because it's gone very wrong for them from a marketing point of view.
And I think regular people get it.
And so here he is calling regular people emotional.
We're emotional about things that might affect us.
You're damn right we're emotional.
At least it wasn't only the women.
Right.
Because usually it's usually the ladies.
Those of us with the estrogen.
Yeah, exactly.
And I just feel like these people continue to dismiss regular people's normal and legitimate concerns.
And I think it's going to be.
bounce back on them.
And they look like they all look like the Monopoly man on, you know, they look like the Gilded Age.
And they're so out of touch with regular people that it's it's become almost ridiculous.
Yeah, I would just say that you can see as Bezos is talking to Brett Baer that he is running through all of the criticisms of Amazon and, you know.
how he treats his employees, because the contrast between, you know, you'll be able to have a three-day work week and you spend more time with your family versus the fact that there are people not getting paid enough who are having to pee in bottles because they can't miss, you know, the next delivery because we've now been trained to think we can get something between 4 and 8 a.m.
when we push, you know, purchase by midnight is the sheen that he wants to.
Give himself and doing it at Blue Origin.
You know, it's very cool, obviously, what's going on.
And it's the focus he wants on the spectacular, oh, my God, I can't believe we're doing this kinds of things.
But to your point about the regular people, they're not thinking about Blue Origin as much as they're thinking about, will my job be here tomorrow?
Or is a data center popping up in my backyard?
And is our government?
actually refusing to participate in any sort of regulatory framework that might protect society.
Not that they want to be backwards and poor, as Trump would put it, but that they want to know that folks in positions of leadership are hearing them and understanding their anxieties and would actually put people over profits for once.
Every major technology that has increased productivity, and I agree with him, AI will make us more productive, but it's...
But everyone has been sold with the same promise, the internet, the PC, the washing machine, and that is this will free up your time.
That's the promise.
And in every case, instead of working less, we've absorbed the productivity gains into doing more, not resting more, and shareholders have benefited from those productivity gains.
Keynes predicted a 15-hour work week back at the...
beginning of the 20th century, and we're nowhere close.
And the obvious follow-up question of Mr.
Bezos, who is spending either the most or the second most of any enterprise in the world on AI, is, okay, bitch, when and where exactly is your workforce going to reduce their hours from a man who has created a system where, as Jeff referenced, his drivers can't take bathroom breaks.
So, Jeff, Memo from Jeff, memo to Amazon employees.
According to Jeff Bezos, who spends more on AI than anyone in the world, your work week is about to go to what, four days, three days?
Jeff, when's it going to happen?
But he says people are going to be rewarded, and this is not the case.
He has, you're right, he has taken advantage of people's work more than anyone in terms of efficiency.
Years ago, one of these congressmen, they were putting an Amazon warehouse in a town, and he said, they tell me it's good for jobs.
I said, they're going to automate the thing as soon as they can.
No, like, they're not telling you that part.
And I think this promise that Elon has made that we'll all be in abundance and we won't have to work.
is just nonsense at this point.
I don't know how we're going to pay for it with our deficit, speaking of deficits, how we're going to do it.
But it's also not what people want.
That's the thing.
It's reminiscent.
to me of conversations that we were having, you know, 10 years ago about coal miners, right?
And, you know, putting people out of it and you'll learn to code or we're moving to all renewables.
And I'm not saying that we don't have to innovate and we don't have to progress, especially if it means taking care of our planet.
But sometimes I feel like these tech guys are just speaking like Klingon to regular people who are not.
mad about the fact that they need to work a full day.
They want to do it.
They're proud people.
And politicians and tech folks sometimes really misunderstand the character of American people, which is strong and...
Work, the dignity of work underpins all of this.
Yeah, don't you want to sit on a yacht like we do?
Yeah.
Right.
Like, wouldn't you love to be able to, like, put on some, you know, Google glasses and, like, beam into your job for three out of five days?
And they say, I'm not mad at a nine to five, a nine to six.
I don't mind working with my hands.
I don't mind getting dirty.
I want to put in the work so my kid can have a better life.
That's what the American dream is.
And they're rewriting it.
in their own crazy brains in a way that does not fit with average people.
You know, one of the quotes I read this week from Neil deGrasse Tyson I thought was perfect.
He goes, I've come to conclude that AI knows everything yet understands nothing.
And I feel that way about these tech people.
I'm like, they know everything.
They understand nothing.
And they're so out of touch.
Someone like Bezos is so out of touch with people's real lives.
People want dignity of work.
They want to be paid well.
They want health care.
And that's why, you know, whatever you think of a lot of the DSA stuff, this stuff is resonating with young people.
Universal health care, decent wage, that I have something meaningful to do.
And I think just the way they talk about it as they suck up to the most grifty president in history so explicitly is amazing.
And they all look, you know, they're all sort of, they all look like freak shows in a way that we don't want to be you, right?
Like your longevity show.
Yeah, exactly.
I feel like that was on display.
And it reminds me of that last moment of The Devil Wears Prada where they're in the car, the first movie, where she goes, everyone wants to be us.
Andy, everyone wants to be us kind of thing.
And she gets out of the car.
And that's what I feel like.
We want to get out of your car, you people.
We don't want to be like you.
Anyway, we have to move on.
One more quick break and we'll be back for predictions.
Music can give us goosebumps.
It makes me feel as if I have my hand on the electric line.
It can make us cry.
It's like a magical spell.
It can even make us move.
The part of the brain that you'd use to...
Planned movement is also active when you're listening to music with a beat.
This week on Unexplainable, how does music do this to us?
I talked to Sylvan Esso's Amelia Meath and a scientist who studies music cognition to find out.
Follow Unexplainable wherever you listen.
We're just about one month out from the midterm elections in these United States.
And despite all the gerrymandering and voting restrictions, legal challenges and personnel shakeups, it looks like the Democrats are going to flip the House of Representatives.
The vibes of U.S.
Democrats are incredibly strong.
It's mostly Democrats trying to tell each other, like, don't oversell how amazing of a night we're going to have.
So on today's Explain from Vox, how are the Democrats going to mess this up?
Nah, JK, JK, JK.
The question isn't any more like, will Democrats flip the House majority?
It's how big is that majority going to be?
So on today's Explained from Vox, we're going to talk about the new sheriff in town, if all of this goes as Democrats think it's going to go.
Hakeem's House on Today Explained Monday through Friday afternoons in your feeds.
Here's the thing.
It's hard to even find Republicans on the campaign trail right now.
And it's even harder to get them to talk about Donald Trump.
Ladies and gentlemen, bring up the next governor of the state of Ohio, the great Brahmashwamy.
But there's at least one Republican right now who seems to be trying a different strategy.
Good to be in Parma.
Thank you.
I love the energy in this room.
If you take this out at 44 days from day, we're going to win this thing in a decisive victory.
Who's ready for that?
All summer long, Ramaswamy has kept up an unusually ambitious calendar full of fairs, rallies, and town halls.
Let's get this done.
This week on America Actually, what is the GOP message for the midterms?
And how are Republicans dealing with the elephant in the room?
Trump's second term has flopped.
I think the Republican Party is not looked highly upon right now, and I think everyone knows it.
Catch us every Saturday on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.
Let's hear a prediction.
We have time for one short prediction because of my lack of knowledge about central time.
This one's easy.
Within five years, bankers will make more money.
Time Warner.
Every CEO who buys Time Warner gives the exact same speech.
They use the term synergies, every other line.
And then in five years, the same CEO will be saying, we need to focus on our core business and start splitting this thing apart or selling it.
Basically, Time Warner has destroyed more shareholder value than a Peloton at a WeWork.
This thing is a hot potato.
with the debt of Greece.
Everyone buys it.
Everyone thinks they have a vision for it.
They can't sustain the debt.
It starts fucking with their core business and they decide five years on that they're going to sell it.
Dad has paid $120 billion so his son could play media.
It's not going to be worth it after three or four years of declining revenues.
Somebody like a Zaslav is going to make a bunch of money selling it yet again within five years.
whatever we're calling this, Time Warner, Skydance, HBO Max, Joey Bag of Donuts, this thing will be sold again or split up for parts.
Okay.
The Nobel Peace Prize for 2026 will be announced on the day this episode airs.
We're taping on Thursday.
So let's make some predictions.
It's probably going to be either Doctors Without Borders or Sudan's emergency response rooms.
Well, it's not Donald Trump.
It's not Donald Trump.
That's my prediction.
Who would you like it to be?
Mark Carney.
I feel Mark Carney.
Mark Carney's going to have a big year for sure.
He'll be man of the year.
I don't think he'll get this.
He'll be man of the year.
It's too early also in the cycle.
I feel like once Canada's really like a EU satellite and maybe, you know, he and Zelensky do some more together.
I like that.
The Pope?
Oh, and his AI thing was the most interesting.
That's right.
Magnificent humanity.
The Pope.
I'm going to go with the Pope.
I'm going Pope.
Pope.
We're going Pope.
I changed my mind on Time Warner.
It'll be successful if they can convince McCraw, Zelensky, and Carney to do like a Cinemax-style soft porn drama.
Skinamax.
Skinamax.
Skinamax.
Skinamax.
And I think it works.
That's my porn.
As always, Scott comes in with the erudite part of it.
Anyway, I'm really sorry for being late.
We want to hear from you.
Send us your questions on business, tech, or whatever's on your mind.
We were so worried.
Oh, my God.
We were so worried.
Go to nymag.com.
Your father's so worried.
To submit a question for the show, we'll call 855-51-PIVOT elsewhere in the Karen Scott universe this week on On with Kara Swisher.
I spoke with writer Justine Musk and filmmaker Alex Gibney ahead of the release of Musk, the four-hour Elon documentary.
Let's listen to a clip.
There's that joke that he used to make, like Safety Third.
And, you know, when we're going into the era of AI, you have to wonder about that because of his sense that, you know, it has to be now now now um no matter the cost right and yeah those 70 people don't matter it's just the cost or the you know the animals in neural link don't matter and um the pain and the trauma that that uh that other people go through because of of you know the way reality gets wrenched around or the way that that uh value gets determined um who has it and who doesn't like that Doesn't matter.
That's just, you know, feelings.
So we'll just, you know, brush that aside.
Ruin Western civilization.
Yeah.
And the entire interview will be in the Pivot podcast feed on Sunday, so check it out here.
Reminder, Scott and I are hitting the road next month for a Pivot tour.
Get tickets at pivottour.com.
Toronto is sold out.
We're getting close in a lot of cities.
Okay, that's the show.
Thanks for listening to Pivot.
And Jess, thank you for filling in and calming the waters for me.
And be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel.
We'll be back next week.
Today's show was produced by Lara Neiman, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Todd Wiseman.
Ernie and her Todd engineered this episode.
Thanks also to Gibros.
It could happen.
It could happen.
It could never happen.