Anthropic's IPO, Platner's Campaign Controversies, and Blue Origin's Setback

I'm Aina Garten, and each week on Happy Hour, I invite new and old friends for a drink and a fun conversation at my kitchen table in New York City. On this week's episode, I'm joined by Nathan Lane. We talk about his critically claimed run in death of a salesman, taking his dog to therapy and winning an Emmy for only murders in the building. New episodes of Happy Hour are available every Wednesday. You can watch on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts. Cheers! How much have you spent on your pet's medical care this year? Maybe more than your own? 25 years ago, it was very rare to hear of a pet having an MRI. Now it's kind of standard if a pet presents with an issue. Big corporations and private equity have seen all of this and have rushed into the sector. Why your vet bill is so high, that's this week on Explain It To Me. Listen to new episodes, Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, Cassidy Hubbard here. This week on Ann Mom, beloved reporter and beauty queen, Allie LaFourse, opens up about IVF and an incurable genetic disorder, the stress and shame of miscarriage, and the one thing that would have helped her with her transition into motherhood. Check out the latest episode of Ann Mom wherever you get your podcasts. You definitely have a distinct style. Now it's awful, but it's distinct. Hi everyone, this is Pivot from New York Magazine in the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Scott Galloway. Scott, you're still on the road. How's it going? Good San Francisco was good. L.A. was great, with Ted Sarandas. My Emmy was good, love my Emmy. You're in Shytown. And now, yeah, what do you call it, the city of big shoulders? Yes. We always love being there. Chicago, so it's the most grateful little big city in the world. It is. I just know it's going to go well tonight, because they're like, thank you for coming here. I know, it's like Minneapolis, right? It's Minneapolis. Yeah, they're just so happy. And I went to a steakhouse last night with my closest friend Adam since the fourth grade. Chicago is one of my favorite cities. It's really a lovely place. Oh, like all cities. When we talk about it, I like all city. I love Chicago. I was always I'm happy to be there. And then you, then you'll be in New York. How exciting. This is, is that the last stop on your parade? Tomorrow night in New York. Yeah. And we've got a couple. We have by far our most impressive gasous shall go nameless. But I'm super excited about that. I sold out a big theater. Right. Yeah, is that the final one? Is that the final one? That's the last one. Yay. Well, how exciting. How good. Get ready to do it in the fall with me. Aren't you excited? But that's not for a while. It's not for a while. You know, it's a resting time. Anyway, I had a nice weekend of children's activities. Children's activities. Like it's all has left his preschool. So we had all his friends from preschool over for a giant run around the yard and scream party with tiny bagels. I had another one last night. Another barbecue. I cleaned the outdoor Scott. I'm like one of these. And then I ended up having. I'm one of these people that does the yard. Essentially, I had to like get it ready for the summer. And I end up having discussions with other dads about yard things like different landscaping, different construction things. So I really am the dad. I recognize this week. So just so you know, yard work is basically, it has nothing to do with the yard work. It's about escaping your family. Always. You got to, you got to figure this shit out. You're not first off. You're not, it's not that you're in a yard work. You just want to wait from the house. No, it's actually, it's not. Because my kids help me. I have my kids do it with me. And so we fill the bird feeders. I have it differently. We fill the kitty pool. We do the sprinklers together. You know, I have Saul. I have them carry bags of bird seed. So I play my children into this. And they do a good job. They do a great job I had. And my friend, Chris Nelson down in Florida was saying how he taught his son over the weekend, how to use. What are those? Like they look like a chainsaw, but you use them to mow a head. Just sheer, I don't even know what they're called. Shears. Shears. I like the shoes. Not scissors, but I like a leopard. They're called shears, electric shoes. Okay. So he said he taught his eight-year-old son how to do that. Oh. I'm such a bad dad. Like I'm so incompetent. I don't know how to, my kids aren't going to know how to do anything. I teach my kids how to do. We did the hoses. We replaced all the hoses. I do everything with the kids. I got an electric shear and I took my son out back. And one of us almost lost. I have them. And I'm like, there's a reason I don't teach this stuff. You know, if you want to come to my yard, I will teach you. Yeah, that sounds really appealing. The other thing I'm doing this week, besides some Tribeca stuff and this and that, is I'm going to be guest host of the few. I love that. I think that's perfect for you. Yeah. I like it too. I love the Woopie Goldberg. I like the whole team. Yeah. By the way, they give great TV. They give great TV. That is an outstanding. Uh-huh. You've been great on it. You've had great times when you're there. You see? They're so nice to me. And I like the mix. And they used to bring in like a dumb Republican that they could all scream at. Kind of what CNN does. Let's bring on a racist and have a much be league progressive scream at them. Right. That's the formula there. They now have smart conservatives. Alyssa. Alyssa Farah. Yeah, she's great. She's great. I love her. I think they've done a great job. Which I wear. I do. Now that's awful, but it's distinct. Well, I am a guest host of the view. I think I'll be good. I'd be interesting. I really enjoy them. I always have a good time there. I remember I was like, oh, the declining broadcast. I'm like, that's a good show. That's a good show. Solidly fucking. Nothing just as an author. Nothing moves books like in general podcasts. But if you're looking for quick hits. View and Bill Mar. The view, Bill Mar. And actually a close third would be morning jail. A lot of people start watching morning jail. Yeah. Anyway, anyway, let's get to the news. Yeah, I'm excited. I'm going to try not to make a penis joke. With just a week to go before mains speaking penises, the main senate primary, Graham Platner, the presumptive Democratic candidate is facing his latest controversy. Multiple outlets reported over the weekend that Platner's wife told a campaign aid last year that her husband sent sexually explicit text to several women outside the marriage. By the way, this campaign person had a falling out with Platner and has dropped a dime, which is his own ethical considerations. Platner is calling these reports gossip from a former staffer and accused the media of journalistic malpractice as of this recording. None of the women involved in the text exchanges have come forward. Platner's wife, Amy Gertner, released a video, which I thought was fascinating, over the weekend defending her husband and their marriage. Let's listen, because it was really quite something to listen to. It makes me really angry, disappointed. And I find it really shameful that there's a group of media outlets and people who are willing to spread gossip. Instead of talking about real issues that Graham is running on like health care and education and child care. As I said, this has been a controversial campaign. He reportedly has an active hand on kicks, a private messing job, sometimes used for sexing. He's faced scrutiny, of course, about his Nazi symbol tattoo. He later expressed regret and covered it up. They were posts from a deleted Reddit account, reset all manner of jokes about sexual assault. And he's also apologized for that. It's a really interesting issue. And lots of people disagree on this. I'll tell you what I think in a second, but there's-- Platner appears to be the real chance of unseating Republican Susan Collins and the zombie of all senators. He's been leading in recent polls. I personally-- I'm going to just very quickly say, I think voters don't care about this. I don't, and I thought his wife handled it well. I have others. I had an argument with Amanda this weekend. She doesn't like the Nazi tattoo. She doesn't like this. I feel as if the husband and wife are working it out. It reminds me a little when Hillary Clinton did-- should I stand by my man when he had those Jennifer flowers things. Reminds me a little bit of that. Turned out to be a pretty good president. And not everything. Not, of course, the monoclew and ski stuff. But it's a really interesting question. I don't get bothered by it as much. None of it. I think he's-- as Amanda Littman correctly said, he's someone who had a drinking problem as a Marine. Probably got that tattoo. Has mental health challenges, which he's trying to overcome. Marriage problems, which his wife is insisting. They're going to counselors and overcoming. I'm not so sure in the era of Trump this matters at all. So what do you think? Look, OK. Every election is a choice. Not a marriage proposal. We're not hiring a priest. We're hiring a senator. Do you think that do you want to make sure that women's rights aren't continued to be rolled back? Do you want a more responsible economic policy? Do you want different approaches to labor that raise the wages of nurses and students? Do you want something regarding fiscal sanity? Do you want to stop-- have a check against the unfettered unprecedented corruption? But we're going to talk about fucking tattoos and sexting. I mean, the obsession with personal purity has become a luxury belief. And it, folks, if your house is on fire, you don't ask whether the firefighter has problematic DMs. Now, having said that, the comms person for the Platonor campaign should be fired. you don't. go after media. You don't say this is gossip. You don't say these are texts. He said it was, it was journalistic malpractice. Guess what? These texts are accurate. Right. The reporting has been accurate. Good for you, Scott. The response should be the following. I am an imperfect man. I have demonstrated terrible judgment on several occasions in my marriage. And I have a great marriage. What about you? What about you? Are we going to continue to have one strike in your out? I'm a Jew. I don't love a TottenConf tattoo. Okay. If he gets drunk one night and gets a stupid fucking tattoo, the fact that he's trying to protect our liberties the next day, it might be blown up by an ID. He gets a hall pass. So, okay, folks, if you want to keep applying purity tests, we end up with an incompetent running against a 9/11 denier in Los Angeles. We're not going to have any candidates running. So, one, stopped a purity test, and two, the, the Platinum campaign, it's not the crisis that brings people down. It's their inability to own it. I fucked up. Did you, what do you do? Watch his wife's thing? I thought it was, it reminded me a lot of the Hillary. Remember, when Hillary Clinton and Hillary sat down, when they sat down together? Yeah, about 60 minutes. Yeah, it was really interesting to me. It had a lot of echoes of that. I thought, you know, someone said to me, like, oh, she looks like someone who's a wife's syndrome, like, no, I think she seems to not be in denial. She understands his problems. And I think it just remind of me a great deal of that. And there's, you know, as a person, you can have calm, as a personal thing, you know, comments about people on a political thing. I'm like, I want to talk about this idea of imperfect allies at you. And I've talked about, obviously, I'd heard it first from Sarah McBride, but it's representative Sarah McBride who has plenty of reasons to be angry up to people and isn't. She's a writer named David Gate posted about it on sub-stack. Let me read a quote. "Working with someone toward a shared goal does not require believing they're morally perfect. Conquerors believe in the goal itself matters enough to justify strategic alignment." He goes on to say, "The planet is on fire." Well, as you noted just now, Scott, well, many people are still conducting background checks on one another's vibes. So talk about that concept, because it's a really, it's a really difficult one for many people to get around. This guy, many people supported him, others were like, no, we have to, we have to like have background checks. So what do you think about that can people get to that idea of, I guess, forgiving people for their imperfections? One of the reasons we're seeing a crash in birth rates is a lack of dancing. And that is, a dancing is a key component or a key mating ritual. And when you dance, typically it helps, if you drink a little bit, the anti-alcohol movement is hurting it, but more than anything, and there was a wonderful tick-tock on this by some young man, and I thought, God, this was so powerful, people have a camera on them all the time. 19-year-old men don't want to dance because they're worried about, or they don't, they don't want to take risks like dancing, like approaching a romantic, a potential expressing romantic interest, because they're worried, one false moving your out, everything in a digital world. So unless we move to at least some basic notion of, as our digital world increases, and everything we've done is going to be recorded and potentially used against us, unless we have a little bit more grace. And okay, what's interesting here is that I just hope the same thing holds. And that is, if the Republicans decide the best candidate for a Senate seat in Texas is someone whose wife divorced him on biblical grounds, if they can-- - And who has a history? - And if we can decide that this guy can have his finger on the button and be the most powerful person in the world while he's banging adult movie stars while his wife is home nursing. And to a certain extent, I'm kind of like, I don't care if the pilot is a good person. I want someone who's really good at flying the fucking plane. So I think the same thing needs to go to our politics. I just hope that the same, what I'll call, focus on perceived effectiveness is the same for Democrats. I am still, Rip should angry, Senator Gillibrand, who thought a seven-minute run for president was worth kicking Senator Al Franken out. The Democrats want to walk around and say, "Well, we have our dignity." Okay, hold on to your dignity. As a 15-year-old has her pelvis broken because she's forced to carry a child to term. But yeah, you kicked Platner out. - Is there something that there should be a line? - Obviously. - I think at some point. Let me put it this way. If Graham Platner it ended up that he was fond of wearing a white hood and was constantly engaging in anti-Semitic behavior, then that tattoo isn't an errant mistake from a youthful soldier. It's a pattern. The corruption of the Trump family is a pattern. This speaks to their character. But folks, all of us have made mistakes. Okay, Barack Obama doesn't appear. We can't see define a mistake on President Obama. - I can. I can. - Okay. But you know what I mean? - Yeah. - Scandal. Powerful men are under the illusion that they mistake kindness for sexual interest. And as they become more powerful, power corrupts, and they're more likely to believe that they're immune from standard norms and engage in stupid reckless behavior. By the way, more women do that than they get credit for. I will argue that it infects a lot more men than women. But you know, Secretary Known was banging her number two on government property. - Yeah, she did a lot of work for that. - She counts her 10 men. I have to say. - Oh, man. - Look, I saw this and I was like, okay, at what point? I'm hoping we've passed the purity test on the Democratic side. But more than anything, I want to call the Platinum campaign and say, "Oh, no." - Stop attacking. Stop attacking them. - Don't say it's gossip or it's not accurate reporting. It's been corroborated. - I think the point they were trying to make is, shouldn't we be focusing on the important issues? And that's all they need to say. I think that sect first part should have been removed, right? Just say, you know what? We get why people might stare at this. It feels like a traffic accident and it kind of is. But let's focus on the real matters. I have a question. Do you think we're in perfect allies? - In perfect allies. - Yeah, like people you don't always agree with everything. - I think you, I think that. I mean, the reality is, Kara, is I'm both progressives. And the fact that. - Right. We do disagree on things, yeah. - Yeah. Where the real progress needs to be is between moderate Democrats and moderate Republicans. I mean, if the two, you know, on almost every major issue, you and I are within two basis points of each other in terms of actually what we believe. We might believe in tech, you know, we might have differences around text and tone or whatever. But what really, what we really need, I mean, a couple things. One, I think this is, we have to, from a young age, start thinking, all right, folks, unless you want to live a life with a fake user account and VPN for fear you ever do anything wrong. We're going to have to demonstrate more grace with each other. The Democrats applying these purity tests to themselves is just like that the Republicans are just laughing that we would do. - I'm kind of like, people be naughty. People be naughty. - Have at it. But the thing that really the planner campaign, grand planner should do the following. I've had, I've demonstrated terrible judgment numerous times. - But he has on other issues, yeah. - Numerous times in my professional and personal life. I've also served my country. I think I'd be a great senator. And by the way, I have a fantastic marriage. So have out of folks. If you want to engage in this stuff, I realize it's titillating, have out it. All he's doing in his campaign or doing is keeping this story alive by denying it and by attacking the media. - I don't think there's anything wrong with the media reporting this. - I have to say, I'd like to know a little more about this campaign person who keeps dropping dimes on this guy. And what her agenda is, I have to say, she's been doing it a lot. She wants to celebrate. - She's angry. - She's mad. And I want to know, I'd like to know about her in specifics. That's what I would say the media needs to do a little bit more. Because I need to understand what the sources motivations are. And she's not here to protect us. I don't think. Anyway, let's move on. Self-help podcaster Jay Shetty has signed a deal to bring a video version of his show, exclusively to Spotify and Netflix. Another one of these deals, which is interesting. The deals were totally over worth over $100 million over multiple years. Who knows? Shetty and his previous partner, IHART media, parted ways they could not come to terms. This is something happening. Obviously Scott and I went through a bunch of this, not this amount of money. But it's a really interesting network. I hate to bring it to you, but over five years we're getting more than this. And that's why we're in perfect allies. - We're pretty high on the news list this week. I was noticing we're moving up. We still haven't passed Megan Kelly, but we will. - We're coming for you, Megan. And not like that way. In any way, physically, or. - No, in the Apple podcast. - In the Apple podcast, right? Be definitive. - Let's be clear. So you don't make a show out of it. But talk about these deals because they're really because you can't go on YouTube is all of them, right? is that. He did it the normal way, which is an eye heart deal. You could do those. There's a bunch of companies like this. But now, this is for Spotify and Netflix, which is interesting. And Spotify had tried the Rogan thing, obviously, and they did sign a bunch of deals that didn't work out. Talk a little bit about this. How do you look at this market right now? What are these indicate to you? Well, first off, let me just say with Jay, I'm really happy for him. I don't know him well, but I know him. I've been on his podcast a couple times. I think he's a lovely man, and I think he does a good job. And essentially, what he realized is the most valuable media set in podcasting isn't sports like it is on cable TV. It's loneliness. He figured how to monetize the largest market in America, and that is people who need a friend. And so, in, okay, so I'm happy for Jay. I think he does a great job. And by the way, I cannot get over. And I think it's total bullshit. All the hate that Jay and Mel Robbins get. They get a lot. And it's just like, okay, don't listen to their podcasts. They're not bad. Yeah, that's how I feel. I don't, I'm not a big fan. I mean, I like them. I like Mel personally, but I just, I get why people find it annoying. It's a little bit fine. Then don't listen to a bit. I was literally an elevator. And someone says, do you know Mel Robbins? I find her very annoying. I'm like, okay, then don't listen. That's what I said. But if you learn TikTok, if you go on TikTok, I mean, the reality is any best-selling author, if you say best-selling author is full of shit, you get elevated in the rating. So people are ship-posting every best-selling author to get another 70 bucks from from fucking TikTok. Have at it. But I've never understood the hate for Jay and Mel. I think they're both nice people doing their best, doing good work. And if you don't like their work, which I understand, it's not for everybody, you know, the whole kind of monk rap gets a little bit. Yeah, no, I'm not a fan of the self-help stuff. Yeah, fine. Then don't listen. That's fine. But there's two things here. This dynamic that's colliding is the following. The fastest growing ad-supported medium is not even YouTube in terms of revenue or meta. It's podcasts. They think that I think the ad revenue is going to be up 21% this year on podcasting. In addition, 40% of, I think about 20% of ours and 40% of property markets pods are watched or listened to on a TV because they're streamed off a YouTube. So essentially what a podcast is, it's a television show for 10% of the production value or costs. So the means of production of TV is being armed into podcasting. And now 55% of Americans have listened to a podcast recently. So in addition, the intimacy of the relationship, advertisers really like, and the CPMs for pivot are $45 the CPMs for CNN are 13. And then you combine it with the following. There's this dirty secret of podcasting called the RSS feed and slowly but surely you build up subscribers and every time a show comes out, it's automatically downloaded to an iPhone and it's counted as a listen. So the people who've been in it for three, five, ten years as you have who have built large RSS feeds have moats. So what you have is a series of acquirers going, we need growth. Let's go find a podcast and a small number of podcasts that actually have large RSS feeds because you cannot, you know, when landmen comes out, it's a hit overnight. It's hard for a podcast. If you look at the top 10 podcasts, even in any category, they're usually the original gangsters or the people who have been around for a while. You're absolutely right. So you have demand and you have sequestered or pretty big moats which all adds up to large acquisition prices relative to the revenues. I bet Jay does 10 to 20 million a year. So he's getting sold at 10 to five times revenues, which is a lot. But you're about to see, and we've been predicting this and I'm talking our own book here, but I've been saying this for the last two years. They're just when Spotify, Ihard, Sirius, you know, and James Murdoch go looking for podcasts, there aren't that many of scale. It is the cost structure and which people don't understand. And it is television because our YouTube audience, revenues are growing pretty smartly. And it's a really interesting way to deliver news. That's, you know, it's what people want, which is why you're saying the potification of network news. I just don't think it's going to work. I think you either just have to go this way or not. I don't think you can switch that audience over because they're older and they like the way it is. So you're going to see these declines, like you see at CBS because they don't like the new stuff you're doing. It's kind of just like a you need to do a hard reset with a lot of this stuff. But I agree. I think it's interesting and they can actually usually make the money back. But the foregoing of YouTube versus Netflix is a really interesting and it'll depend on what your product is at any one time, whether you want to sort of be in the safe harbor of Netflix, Spotify, or you want to be out in the open in a YouTube Google world, essentially, which I, people can mix and match, too, by the way, which is what's great about it, right? Presumably. All the most powerful. Oh, I'm seeing you're a giant hand there. Look at that. Put your big hand up there. Oh, I'm very self-conscious of my hands. I have my mother's hands. In the competition for my worst feature, it is the Olympics. I mean, there's a lot of competitors, but my hands are right up there. I'm very self-conscious of my hands. I don't wear jewelry. They're perfectly nice. Anyways, so Netflix, I think, is the most powerful media company in the world, or traditional media company. And they're getting into podcasting. And overnight, they're going to be able to, whoever they decide to distribute or acquire overnight, that podcast is going to be, I mean, they'll be king. They'll be the new king and queen makers of podcasting. I thought it was bad news for I Heart. I'll tell you that. I think that's right. I don't think I Heart. I Heart is a company that's gone, I think, through bankruptcy once or twice. And they have to be economically rational. They don't have access to cheap capital. So they, if I Heart shows up and Spotify and Netflix show up to a bidding war, I don't know who wins. I just know I Heart loses. I Heart can't, can't justify the valuations. These guys can justify, you know, if, you know, even as serious. Basically, I think you're going to see Spotify and Netflix take the whole value of the podcast ecosystem up. And not only that, if your podcast does a 10 million downloads a month, you're worth four times the podcast that does 5 million because it is so hard in this environment to find scale. It's very similar to cable TV in the sense that there's a small number of personalities to extract the majority of the economics. And it's the same, it's the same in podcast. Absolutely. But I want to finish where I started. I'm really happy for Jay. I like it when people, he's been in the business for 10 years. He's a nice man. Yeah. He has worked there. Good for him. Yeah. Well, just don't listen to him. He don't like him. That's my feeling on a lot of things. That's right. He and I have been sexting in related news on kicks. Kicks is a journey. Let me just frame me. He has the most beautiful eyes. I definitely pick the dirty one. I'll just say pick the dirty one. Kicks is dirty. I don't know anything about. How would you even know that? I don't know any these. I know all these sites. I don't use any of them. Really? Do you go on and talk about you? Yeah. If you offer other to power wash other lesbians back yard, you little saucing minks you. Scott, I fixed my power washer this weekend. I was very excited. Anyway. So just on that note before we go, I think the new thing a guy asked me for dating advice and he's like, I'm never going to graduate from college. What? Will I ever be able to find a woman? And I'm like, I think the new sexy is blue collar romance. And that is no poetry. Don't send a car for her. Fix her fucking refrigerator. I think that gets women really hot. I could look at a woman's stressors and treat them like they're your enemy. Phillip her car with gas. All right. Okay. I think if you want to get a woman, I think humor is the ultimate effort. DC I could women behind maybe money. But I think a decent runner up is to look at a woman's acts of service. And if you know how to fix it, you know, move your girlfriend, show up and fix fix the air conditioner. Like attack her problems like they're your enemies. I like it. Self help from Scott Galloway. Okay. Scott, let's go in a quick break. We come back big IPO news from Anthropic. What if we told you there was one thing you could eat to reduce your risk of death by about a quarter? Interested? And what if we added that this magical substance can dramatically lower your cholesterol, improve your mood and keep your weight stable? No, it's not protein. It's actually fiber. The least sexy, most overlooked nutrient of all. But what is fiber? How could one nutrient do all those amazing things? And how can you get enough? Is a powder you start into some water? I'm gonna do it for you. All that plus the strange tail of the gorilla poop obsessed father of corn likes in the latest episode of Gastropod. Find Gastropod and subscribe wherever you get your podcast. Everyone's talking about the prospect of a democratic wave in the midterm elections. But here's something that matters just as much. The battle to control state legislatures. That's the most important thing we should be focusing on right now. The GOP has a trifecta in 23 states, which means they control the governor seat plus the state house and the state senate. For Democrats, it's 16 states. Meaning that the opportunity to pass the policies that the majority of of our state supports things like increasing minimum wage, legalizing marijuana, codifying abortion. - If Democrats flip just a handful of state legislatures, the majority of Americans will now live in the state under full democratic control, which could have big policy implications. - That's all on the table with the Democratic trifecta. - This week on America actually, we're in Wisconsin, and we talked to Francesca Hong. - We have an opportunity through Wisconsin to actually start improving the brand for Democrats. - Catch us every Saturday on YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. - Scott, we're back with breaking news. Anthropic just confidentially filed its IPO with the SEC. It has not disclosed the size or terms the offering. I'm excited for you to read it for me and tell me what's in there. But before that, Anthropic hit a major milestone last week, passing open AI to become the most valuable AI start up in the world. The company announced the $65 billion funding run. I keep saying billion, around that value is $965 billion, very close to the top. To put things in perspective, open AI announced a $730 billion value should back in February, but it took the company to around a decade to reach that number. It just keeps escalating. Anthropic, which was found five years ago, has beaten the valuation in half the time. Did anyone see this coming? Scott Galloway did. Let's listen to Scott's prediction from February. - As we sit here today, I actually think that Anthropic, or in the next 12 months from this one of our predictions, it's gonna be worth more than open AI. - Very well done. What does this valuation mean for Anthropics IPO, as well as open AI and SpaceX? By the way, SpaceX is now targeting an IPO valuation of $1.8 trillion after feedback from advisors and investors according to Bloomberg. That's a step down from the initially reported $2 trillion. It's still too much. Anyway, so what do you think? We got that one right, and we'll be looking at the filing when we get to be able to see it, but we don't know a lot yet. - I don't think any company in the world has some momentum right now of Anthropic. And it was built, a genius move, they went after the enterprise market. And, I mean, the pivot, you have never seen a number two this viciously become the number one this fast. - Yeah. - You've never seen Hertz overtake, you've never seen Avis overtake Hertz this fast. You've never seen Pepsi overtake Coke like this, this fast. And the thing that's so impressive about this isn't the valuation, it's the speed. Google took 20 years to reach a trillion dollars and Anthropic got there in five. It was founded in 2021, and if it had been founded in Amsterdam, it would be one of the five most valuable companies in Europe and it did it in five years. I mean, it's not capital formation, it's financial teleportation, five years zero to a trillion dollars. So we keep talking about how AI might transform the world, maybe, maybe not, but it's definitely transforming capital formation. And, I mean, the one advantage America has is that we will do these $60 billion rounds after two or three years. And in Europe, they just don't have that type of capital formation. - I want you to give me the downside, 'cause you did definitely call this, but what would be the worry for you of, maybe all three IPOs are this one? What would be the warning signs or something you would pay attention to? 'Cause you're not always fully like up and to the right as a person. - These stocks and the collective hallucination around the valuations here, one or more of these stocks is gonna be out 40 to 70%, and it's gonna send the US and the global economy into a recession. The US has become a giant bet on AI, and these companies are overvalued. The technology will survive, these valuations won't. There's just, I'm sorry, SpaceX at 100 times revenues, you know, open AI at, what's it going on at 20? Every big company we follow has, in the last 10 years, been off between 40 and 70% in a 12-month period. That's fine, that's part of the cycle of high growth companies up and down. The difference here is that we've in bet the entire economy on these magnives in 10. 93% of our GDP growth is coming from AI CapEx. So when these companies, you know, they would say company, if the American economy sneezes, the world catches a cold, we're gonna catch fucking pneumonia when the expectations, an MIT professor just came out with a study saying 95% of CFOs aren't seeing the ROI on their investments in AI. - As we noted last week with the Uber COO, right, talking about it, the best investment. - The danger here is the following, folks. I don't think, I think anthropic is the only one of these three that has a reasonable shot at trading above its IPO price 12 months out. There's just gravity. No basketball player has ever been in the air for more than one second. For some reason, one second is the limit. None of these companies can justify their valuation unless they are able to literally destroy the labor market. I just got off the podcast with the CEO of Lilly and I said, AI as it relates to drug discovery, underhyped or overhyped, this is a measure guy and he's like, overhyped. The incentives from Amazon that the more token to use, the more we'll compensate you, that shit's about to go away. And the first big company that announces we're cutting back our AI spending, you're gonna see the GDP of Germany come out of the market and unfortunately the U.S. market, you know we used to say. - It's frothy because of that, because of that. - We're now concentrated the entire U.S. economy as a bet on 10 companies. - You know, I have to say, months ago, Mark, you and said, there's gonna be a point where tokens would be more expensive than people. - I mean, it's already happened. - And he wanted me to ask Dario that question. - Yeah, it's a great question. - He was like, I was interviewing him at an offsite thing and he's like, that's the question, when do people cost less than tokens and tokens are getting too expensive, which is interesting. Anyway, we'll see what happens, but I'm excited for you to read it for me. All right, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, some updates on America's 250th celebration. Scott, we're back with more news. America's 250th birthday will now be a mega rally, apparently, President Trump called for canceling the concert series at the planned event after several musicians dropped out. Instead, 'cause they, they were told it was nonpartisan, it's obviously not nonpartisan. Instead, Trump suggested he should headline the event calling himself the number one attraction anywhere in the world. But there's a lot, you know, and now his name's gonna be yanked off the Kennedy Center. The judge has ordered his name to be taken down. Again, a lot of performance up, but still irritating. Any predictions for the 250th celebration, it feels like no one's any closer to, he is not backing down on celebrating himself, including a $250 bill Scott Besson has soiled himself once again. So thoughts? - Yeah, you know, it's obnoxious. And we'd like to think that it's bad for him, but, you know, I hate to admit it as somebody thinks about brands a lot. You could make an argument that the most successful consumer brand of the last decade isn't Tesla, Apple, or Nike, it's Trump. And, you know, the-- - He's put it out, he's used the presidency to-- - That's the right analogy. It used to be a public office. And now it's increasingly an entertainment franchise. - Yeah. - And I think he has, I just think Democrats, like Robert McNamara said, if you wanted to feed an enemy, you have to empathize with them. There's just no getting around it. The guy has an incredible feel for branding and marketing. And the product is awful. It is, it is like the greatest brand, what he's been able to do with this shitty of product, and it consists of product. - Yeah, the Bible stakes the water. It really is incredible. I think this is quite frankly, I think this comes and goes. I don't think it's a big story. What do you think? - Yeah, I think it makes us all feel bad about America on the 25th anniversary. I mean, I'm gonna be somewhere far away from Washington. And I just think him, I think all these artists pulling out was interesting. That, you know, they were like, yeah, no. They, I think they see what's going on. - Are you going to Vermont? It's not where all this is going. - Yes, that's where I'm going. That's where I'm going. - You are going. It's a fantasy. - Did I get that right? - You did. - Oh my God. Stereotypes are for a reason. - It's not for a reason. - And his family has rebuilt their, they had a barn house and it was going to fall down and they rebuilt it. And it's very lovely. And so we're going up there. And that's where we're going. - I can't believe I got that right. - You totally got that right. Oh my God. Anyway, I'll tromp around and hide this stuff. - You got the dog guard for the German Shepherd in the back of the Subaru. - No, I don't have a dog. I would like to have a dog maybe. They mess up my beautiful yard work. So cats don't mess up yard work. They just bring in chipmunks into the house. No, I think it's just, you know, I remember the 200. I do. I do. - I do, I thought it was nice. - I was at camp. I remember. - I got a special commemorative coin from Franklin Mint. - Yeah, I really liked the 200th. And I felt very proud of this country at the time. And I feel like, why do you have to make everything so cheesy and griffty and gross? I'm excited for the 300th, I'll be dead, but that's okay. But I mean, it feels like griffty and gross, although I did recently run into-- - You might be around, actually. I'm gonna call challenge on that. You'll be 113? - No, I will not be around for that. Anyway, I just ran into Ken Burns at something. And he always makes me feel better. I just always, I want to hang out with Ken Burns in Vermont and go hiking. That's what I want to do. Because I like listening to him tell tales of our founding fathers and I feel better. Well, but just to that point, if you want to feel better about America and the space we're in and we're incredible narcissists. We like to think that we're in uniquely good or uniquely bad times. Folks, as bad as things are, things have been much worse in America and we've always been able to come back stronger. And it's not to say you don't need to vote, you don't need to be alarmed, you don't need to take action, but at 1.1% of America, American population control the government and it happened to be the slave owners. 80 years ago, we were interning people and makeshift concentration camps because their parents were because they immigrated from Japan. We have been in pretty dark places before. Yeah, yeah. Anyways, history makes me feel better. Hang out with Ken Burns and Vermont. That's my goal. Anyway, last story, Blue Origin is facing a major setback over to New Glenn rocket exploded during a test on the launch pile last week. The company said all personnel were safe and described the incident as anomaly. Jeff Bezos posted on X very rough day, but we'll rebuild whatever needs were building, get it back to flying. It's worth at the explosion, which damaged Blue Origin's launch bat, which is a critical problem. It's a significant blow. They've spent about a billion dollars on it. I think it's a cannabrol to challenge SpaceX and the commercial space race. And one of the things about the New Glenn is they can put up, they're trying with their Leo system to put up lots of satellites. They have a couple hundred and Space Starlink has, I don't know, 10,000 or close to 10,000. And so they've been trying to do this and these New Glenn rockets would put up, I think, 48 or 50 as opposed to a couple that they put up in their smaller rockets. You know, it's a real problem for the launch pad. They only had one for the big one and for it to blow up on the launch pad. Everyone I understand, I've been talking to a lot of rocket people is bad. It should have blown up in the air of all things because then they've been able to preserve the launch pad. It's not great. It's not a great thing. And thank God Elon didn't go on and on about it because he knows he blows up his own rockets frequently. But it would be nice to have more than one in this area, although it's two of the same people that still have competition thoughts. I just couldn't wait to, as soon as I saw the explosion, I immediately posted it on Threads and said, Bezos back on CMBC again, which I thought was really good. I didn't get them any likes, but I thought that was funny. Like my favorite, I always like to hear the live broadcast because the individual and they're trained to do this. They always call an explosion and anomaly. And anomaly, yeah. Which is like calling my divorce a scheduling conflict. It's like we can make jokes to nobody was a disagreement, a mild disagreement, you know, and my favorite, it's like, I don't fully understand. And this happens all the time. But when a rocket blows up in the launch pad, isn't that like failing a sobriety test in the parking lot? Yeah. I mean, yeah. I need to understand the physics, but I just to be clear, not good. One of the reasons private companies like SpaceX and Lourigen have succeeded or have caught in some way surpassed NASA is that they're allowed to move further out the risk curve and explode rockets on the launch pad. If NASA did this, there's a feeling of government failure, they can't take these kinds of risks. And to a certain extent, just as I feel like you need a certain number of bank failures every once in a while to show that you are allocating capital at close to or near the efficient frontier of growth, you do, I hate to say this. I think you do need a certain number of explosions on the launch pad because what that says is, and by the way, my understanding is not a single person was injured or killed here. That's right. It is a loss of capital from a company that has access to a lot of capital. It's not good. It's not because they were trying to get like think about a couple hundred versus 10,000 satellites. Like, yeah, but he wants had them explode. This is a function. No, no, no, but he has 10,000 satellites up here. This is, this is, everyone talks about Mars and everything else. This is a race for satellite dominance. Agreed. Agreed. But only one company dominates at this point. And so it's a setback and then they can't get dozens of these things up. They can get a couple on these smaller rockets. And you know, they're trying very hard. It's just, it's still someone when they saw the explosion said to me, oh, look, it's the Washington Post budget for here. Like or something. I was sort of laughed. It's true. He doesn't mind losing money here. And he's losing money. Let's be clear. He's hoping for a payoff later, although looking at the rocket business and SpaceX is not the greatest business in the world right now yet either. Well, it is. It is. It's got to drive him crazy that he's behind. He looks like he's behind a guy who's running six companies at the same time. Yeah. Yeah. And and right now, you know, Blue Origin is looking less like NASA and more like, I don't know, Neiman Marcus with propulsion. Yeah. But you know, there's summer yachting to do. You know, I don't know if you know that, but that's business is job during the summer. I'm here for his midlife crisis. Yeah. Yeah. I know you like that. I think I've got invited back to the event. He goes to that. I thought I was disinvited from because I thought Elon was going. I'm not going to tell you because I don't want to get disinvited. Good. I never get invited. I'm glad you get invited. What do they think you're like like a Patsy? They think they can turn me. Yes. And by the way, I am a Patsy. You've listened to my interviews. I think you can be turned actually part of me thinks that you can be. Oh, no. If I if I turn, it's going to be towards way the left. Yeah. Okay. Every day I get a little bit more Bernie. Oh, wow. Okay. All right. No, but, but, uh, people are always coming for you. It irritates me, especially because they're irritating people. Coming for you. I mean, hating on me or inviting you to do stuff. That bothers you. I like that. It bothers me. I'm like, get your mids off my dick joke. Oh, it's welcome to conferences. Get your mids off my imperfect ally. No, I told a dick joke, right? Well, Anthony Blinken was on stage. That was a that was a moment. No. I like him. He's very nice. He's a nice. He's a handsome man. I think people are scared of you. I think they're less scared of me. I don't know. And they know I like to drink. I bring a good vibe. All right. Okay. I'm fun. I'm fun. I'm going on the view. Anyway, that's true. That's a big, you know what? That's a, that's a, that's a, yeah, you would rather be invited to be on the view. I know. I'm like, you're right. You're right. But I like to just so, because I like to see their discomfort when I'm there. Because I never really do anything. I'm quite cordial. Oh, speaking of invitations and bringing this back to me, I'm going to brilliant minds next week. Oh, you are. That's fun. I went to it a many years ago. What's I like? It's in Sweden, right? Stockholm. That's why I'm going. Yeah. Yeah. It was lovely. It's lovely. And it's, it's actually well done. There's not a lot of ads to it. But maybe there is now the sun never sets, which fucked with it. No, it's fine. I can't wait to go to Stockholm. Anyway, one more quick break we'll be back for wins and fails. Okay, Scott, let's hear some wins and fails. I should you go first or should I go first? I've been doing all the talk. Okay, I mean, I just interviewed this young man, Theo Baker. It's right here. This is his book, How to Rule the World. And it's about it's education and power at Stanford University. This is the kid who did all those stories as a 17-year-old on the head of Stanford, being part of a, he didn't falsify the information, but several papers he had his name on dead and he never moved to correct them. Just a great, he's the son of two well-known Washington reporters. I'm not going to say the names because he's his own person. Wonderful book about power technology. He's a technologist who loves technology. He's also an astonishing reporter. Just a great, really great, I felt so good for journalism. He started off as a, and just really, it's doing, it got amazing reviews. How to rule the world. Theo Baker, he's very young. He's just graduating Stanford in two weeks, although he's just run right over them with his amazing reporting. And this isn't really interesting book, including about this one group called How to Rule the World, the course, the secret course that you have to get tapped for at Stanford. And how they made so many misshapen entrepreneurs, mentally misshapen entrepreneurs. And I just, it's nice to hear from a young person in this regard. And I just think he's a really, he has a big career ahead of him. That's nice. Yeah. And Amy Pascal is bought the book for a movie and he's, the kids are all right. I always, when I did this interview, I felt the kids are fucking all right. And it extends also to my kids that like, Alex is killing it at his job. I can't say where it is, but it's a, it's a big car committee. And he's loving it. And he's, the enthusiasm is enormous. And Louis is working in a restaurant in San Francisco. And he loves it in a political campaign. So the kids are fucking all right. That's what I feel good about. So can't name the car company. Let me get this. He went to Michigan. There's a lot of them. I don't know. He's having a great time. He's learning so much. And it's really wonderful for him. He asked me not to. So I'm not going to. Okay. Okay. My fail is, I do think it's around this, where I'm platinum thing. And I, a man, I did have a disagreement about it. She's quite irritated by him. Did you have hot sex after? No, no, we did not. We were exhaustive from all the children's parties and my power washing. Let me say, I know this people don't like it. But at some point, we just have to, this, I know people are going to say, we have to have purity does. And you come in from white lady Cara, old white lady Cara, who has money, et cetera. I don't care. I just, I never have cared for zeroing in on people's personal issues. I can have personal feelings about it, like friends who have shitty boyfriends or whatever. But grandplatinous wife is not my friend. I might have a different piece of advice for her if that was the case. And, but I just feel like it's their business. Like it's even, even with Ken Paxton, as much of, I think he's more the fraudulent stuff with his wife. I don't, it sounds like he's a liar and a cheat in that way. He handled it and treated her, which says a lot about his judgment. And I think that's pertinent. But I almost don't care. even about that. And, and although there are some things to learn. And so I think the judgements of people has really got to stop. It's good. And not only because the Republicans do it. That's not the reason to do it. It's not kind. And it's not, and it's not, there is a goal here. And we cannot make people feel like shit all the time for mistakes. I've made mistakes, Scott's made mistakes. We're all imperfect. And that's, that's what I think about. So it's a failure of our country to continue on, in that, down that road. We have to leave some things behind. My, when I just interviewed the CEO of Eli Lilly, a guy named David Ricks, and I've just fascinated with Lilly. They made a huge bet on GOP1 drugs as, you know, I'm a, I think a revolutionary. I think GOP1 is going to be a more important technology than AI. And this company has quintupled its market cap in the last five years. And one of the things I absolutely, because they made a big bet on GOP1, GOP1's just 12 months ago, we're averaging $1,000 a month. They've already been cut to $250 to $500. It's a definition of elasticity. I think at some point, these drugs are going to be less than $100 a month. And maybe even lower than that. And I think the demand will absolutely explode. So I think the market is doing a really good job here of trying to get these drugs to the people who need them most. And I think these drugs are just absolutely revolutionary in terms of everything from obviously from obesity, but reduction in alcoholism, biting your nails or giving it to kids with social media addictions. I, you know, I think it's, it's not about eating less. It's about wanting less. I just, I'm fascinated by these things. And this company, Eli Lilly, is the first trillion dollar, or is the first pharmaceutical company to breach a trillion dollars. And it's a 13th most valuable company in the world. And the thing I love about this place, it's not in San Francisco. It's not in New York. It's not in London. Do you know where their headquarters are now? I don't. Where are they? Indianapolis. Oh, cool. And this guy kind of wreaks of, he went to Purdue, followed love of his life in Indiana, where he went to the Kelly School to employ 50,000 people. It's easily the most important company in Indiana, if not the Midwest. But we spent so much time talking about the Bay Area or New York. And I just love a trillion dollar company. That's a great interview for you. That's a great interview. You have been, you have been a very early person on GLP one. I find them absolutely fascinating. Mm-hmm. Much talk to someone who uses AI for the work and just loves it. And, and if that person is also on GLP one, ask them what's had a bigger impact on their life. I think, if I could go short AI and long GLP one, that would be my investment thesis for the next decade. Anyway, great company. A CEO is just wreaks of kind of Midwestern values. And I'm glad they're just doing so well. I think that they've made a huge bet. And it's paying off in spades. My fail was going to be what you said. I personally don't trust anyone who hasn't said something stupid or drank too much at some point. Or, I don't know, had failings in their may. I, I always wonder, okay, so we stabbed this person with a fork to see if they're actually human when they present this pure image of themselves. And I'm sure those people are out there. But you're, you know, thereby the grace of God go eye. And if you want, if you want better candidates, folks, focus on whether they'd be a good fucking senator. They're not, they don't need to be your rabbi. Like, do you think they're smarter on policy? Do you think they demonstrate good leadership skills? And if you look at the best leaders in terms of actually moving America forward, sometimes they're not exactly priests. Anyway, but where my fail is that you, you summarize that more particularly than I did. But where I go as a real fail, Jesus Christ, yeah, platinum, just own it. Own it. Own it. Own it. I've made mistake. I've demonstrated terrible judgment of my marriage. And, and I have a great marriage. Yeah. And guess what? The majority of people in America who have demonstrated terrible judgment and relationships can still have great marriages. And it says something about her. It says something about me. It's better. I have to say I'm better at this measure, though not perfect either. By the way, I have a lot of failings, but, um, you get better. Yeah, as you get older, you do get better. I agree. Get better. Yeah. Said my anyways. Um, but anyway, I, I, I just, we always, these candidates fail. And Christ's communications is so easy. Yet everyone gets it wrong. Own the issue, acknowledge the problem. Own it. But all they've done is they've kept it alive in the cycle by denying it and attacking the media. They couldn't have in my opinion. Again, it's not about the scandal, folks. It's how you handle it. That's it. Anyway, that's my fill. They're mad. They're mad. What do you want? Anyway, that was a great one. Uh, we want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business, check it. Whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com/pivot. It's a question for the shore call 85551 Pivot. And elsewhere in the Karen Scott universe this weekend on with carousel. I talked to former NPR host, Audie Cornish and Ari Shapiro, who have reunited for a new CNN cultural podcast called engagement party. Audie says the goal is to help people get out of the cultural silos, speaking of that, um, that put social media puts us in. Let's listen to a clip. I'm doing this kind of show to jailbreak the algorithm. I hate the for you page. My kingdom for an actual search that works. I don't like the word feed. Like everything about the way they have structured social media in the last 10 to 15 years, bothers me deeply. You know, the only word that they say user. What's the other industry that uses the word user? Drugs. Exactly. Like all those, I do the same thing. I'm like, yeah, feed user, like just everything about it. Content. It's just they hate us. It was really fun. It was actually really fun interview with the two of them. Uh, they're very talented. She isn't so sorry. Ari is terrific too. Really interesting pairing. They're trying to do pivot, but less dick jokes. Well, then fuck them. Fuck them. Fuck them. They can't get there. Fuck you. Oh, Ari, an audience. Good luck. Okay. That's the show. Thanks for listening to pivot. Be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back on Friday. Today's show was produced by Larin Amin, so I marked Sailor Griffin and Todd Wiseman. Aliyah Jackson engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows, me as a very potential on the shot. Karaz Vox Media's executive producer podcast. Make sure to follow fit on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business care. Have a great rest of the week.