Pivot

He says, read this, I've read this. This is how I deal with Donald Trump.

He says, read this, I've read this. This is how I deal with Donald Trump.

Okay, Snakes in Suits.

For more than 70 years, people from all political backgrounds have been using the word Orwellian to mean whatever they wanted to mean. But what did George Orwell actually stand for?

Orwell was not just an advocate for free speech, even though he was that, but he was an advocate for truth in speech.

He's someone who argues that you should be able to say that two plus two equals four.

Orwell was not just an advocate for free speech even though he was that, but he was an advocate for truth in speech. You know, he's someone who argues that you should be able to say that two plus two equals four.

he is a genius about human emotions and a certain darkness in what animates people

I think he's backed himself into a corner where he has to

He misses the power of the office, but he likes not being accountable, presumably.

His entire life has been about finding ways to avoid blame. But getting credit is very important.

I think that there are anecdotes that fit for a book that don't necessarily make a whole news story.

I had a really good podcast with Stephen Greenhouse from the New York- former New York Times reporters written a book about American labor.

I think that she tried to also bring a more human and nuanced side to the archetype, I guess, if you will, of a woman in business.

If you look at Emily Chang's book, sort of the nerd to bro transformation to me. Also, kind of mirrors the growth and impact of tech and care obviously.

I love this new book, Character Limit, How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter. It's getting a lot of attention.

I love this new book, Character Limit, How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter. It's getting a lot of attention.

Billionaire, Nerd, Savior, King, Bill Gates and His Quest, Shape Our World.

So the Bill Gates persona has changed so much over the years and trust me, I've been there for all of it, from boy genius to tech entrepreneur to philanthropist and such.

The Gates Foundation is so enormous that it has a lot of influence around the globe. And we don't really see that in the US because they've played mostly in charter schools, but they are one of the biggest donors to the WHO. They have billions to spend on vaccines, on polio, on malaria.

If you think about in 2000, he was very much the villain, the guy who was Rockefeller equivalent, this alleged monopolist, Darth Vader, every kind of popular culture villain, he was that.

So there's these fights that all ties into what your policy preferences are. And the same thing with campaign finance, right? You look at the Koch network and so they're buying influence in many ways, but they also have cultural influence.

And our friend at Pivot is New York Times journalist, Anupreetha Das. She's got a new book, *Billionaire, Nerds, Savior, King, Bill Gates and His Quest to Shape Our World*.

So the Bill Gates persona has changed so much over the years and trust me, I've been there for all of it, from boy genius to tech entrepreneur to philanthropist and such. And you say in the book that he switched between an entitled hero and somewhat a villain and every shade in between.

But talk a little bit about this because he definitely has shifted. He was very unlikeable for much of the time I covered him and difficult, but always interesting. Someone who was a problem to cover, I would say over the many years.

You have a whole chapter titled Why We Hate Billionaires, where you note America appears to be growing increasingly uneasy about them.

David Sedaris always classic it's always so funny his diaries are hilarious

David Sedaris always classic, it's always so funny.

The big idea behind Smart Brevity the book is that anyone whether you're a student whether you are boss whether you want to be the boss that you can communicate more powerfully by being sharper and thinking through what you want to say and thinking about the audience

What is the one thing that I want people to remember like what's a memorable punchy muscular way to say my big idea and then just say it tell people why it matters give them some evidence give them the power to go deeper.

That's a formula for being heard in a way that you never will be with those masses of text.

Smart Brevity says think about how I would say it to you if we were having chips and salsa think about how we would say it to a human being right like a human not like a robot

Tell me something new tell me something that matters in a kind of interesting way in the sea of content out there words that are always coming at us that sharp smart new important what's new why it matters make me smarter about the things that matter.

I just got Jim Vanderhey's book about brevity

So the book is what I call a love letter to a country that doesn't love us back. And perhaps an elegy for the rest of us who aren't running for Congress through a sham narrative of the Hillbilly Elegy where we exploit the trauma of the Appalachians.

Go Back to Where You Came From. Go fuck a goat or a camel.

why only goats and camels? Why limit my options?

Two legs good, four legs good.

the book is what I call a love letter to a country that doesn't love us back.

Go Back to Where You Came From. Go fuck a goat or a camel.

why only goats and camels? Why limit my options?

ignoring is a response

mocking the bully, disrupts them and shows them how impotent they really are to a public

Your book, by the way, is Power Failure, the Rise and Fall of an American Icon. It's about GE, which is probably, I don't know how to characterize it compared to today's companies, but give us a quick idea of what it meant to people, GE.

I mean, Cara, it was so iconic a company. I mean, if you can imagine Apple, Google, Microsoft, you know, Facebook in the day, you know, rolled up into one company. Netflix in the day rolled up into one company. That was GE.

Because it was like, you know, if Apple disappeared, wouldn't you feel compelled to?

And that's what this book is about with all the great characters you can possibly imagine.

A reminder that Bill's book, Power Failure, The Rise and Fall of an American Icon, which is about GE, is out now and you should absolutely read it.

And, you know, the big news is my new book coming out November 15th, three years in the making, called Power Failure, the Rise and Fall of an American Icon.

It's about GE.

It's really the thinking of, whoa, there's like a dead body on the floor. How did it get here?

And so if the most valuable company in the world, the most highly respected company in the world, a technology leader with, quote unquote, the best management in the world can pretty much dissolve and lose 80 plus percent of its market value in a short period of time.

Yeah, I think, Kara, the most important thing I learned through this process, which I sort of knew anyway, but it's just reinforced was that the CEO really matters.

I thought that having two books on the bestseller list would have been a fulfilling experience, but I didn't understand what fulfilling was. I get it. Until I sat down and got to host a podcast alongside you, sir.

I read this on the plane here and I did not expect it.

It's about my dad, who is, speaking of trans issues, is a woman now, correct?

It's about my childhood, the way I was raised, news family and how it just informs everything I do now and how it informs the business in general because they did some pretty revolutionary things.

It's called Rough Draft, a memoir. I think you will really enjoy it. It's beautifully written. It's out now.

It was so surprising. And the stories about the helicopter stuff was astonishing and the abuse and it was real, it was a real eye-opener.

And I have my books, The Four and The Altar of Happiness have been crawled by generative AI.

I had a big thing on fitness in my Altar of Happiness book which you clearly did not read.

I think you should do a book. I think you should do the Scott Galloway workout book.

I have my book, Adrift, America in 100 Charts, and it's my attempt to highlight some of the things that ail us, but also to talk about how much achievement has gotten us here and that there's absolutely nothing wrong with America that can't be fixed with what's right with it.

This is a beautiful coffee table book.

Why do you call it Adrift if it's anything that can fix with America? Adrift feels not good.

I thought a lot about the title, mostly on edibles.

Goal! Adrift by Scott Galloway.

So Tony, what a heartbreaking story. He was truly this legitimate entrepreneur. I feel like we cover a lot of entrepreneurs here who aren't so earnest and good as Tony was.

He tried very hard to revolutionize the workplace, right? But all along, he had these sort of hidden mental health issues that kind of popped up along the way, but were very easy to sort of ignore, gloss over.

And that's what was going on with Tony. It's kind of the reverse story in a way of like, if you think of like Adam Newman at WeWork or something, right? So these are people that truly did something wrong at their startup, but it's the same trend we're seeing across Silicon Valley all the time, which is this notion of turning these people into gods, right?

In the shed, there was a fire. There were whippets in there, nitrous oxide. There was flammables like candles. He was pulled out of the shed and then died nine days later from smoke inhalation.

One thing for Tony specifically going back to these mental health issues is this took a while to uncover which you wouldn't think it would be that hard to uncover but he had this severe social anxiety. Imagine this person who's partying, who's in this candy store drinking, seeing people all the time living in an air stream. Yeah, poker living in an air stream trailer park with this debilitating social anxiety.

So Tony, what a heartbreaking story. He was truly this legitimate entrepreneur.

He tried very hard to revolutionize the workplace, but all along he had these hidden mental health issues that popped up along the way, but were very easy to ignore, gloss over.

It's the reverse story in a way of if you think of Adam Newman at WeWork or something. These are people that truly did something wrong at their startup, but it's the same trend we're seeing across Silicon Valley all the time, which is this notion of turning these people into gods.

And I actually think it really was for a lot of years, which is quite an accomplishment.

He had this severe social anxiety. Imagine this person who's partying, who's in this candy store drinking, seeing people all the time living in an air stream. Yeah, poker, living in an air stream trailer park with this debilitating social anxiety.

I just interviewed Farrah Stockman about her book about work you know American Made and people have talked about it people at Apple have talked about it more on certain things not everything like the gorilla glass etc

I interviewed Ferris Stockman last night she has a new book called American Made What Happens to People When Work Disappears

It's called American Made.

The guy who wrote the book on Search, a guy named Dan Russell, had been let go and stuff like that.