Kara and Scott are opening up the Pivot listener mailbag and answering your questions! They discuss whether Trump will try to seek a third term, what U.S. TikTok employees should do right now, and the art of quitting. Then, Kara and Scott reveal how they quickly pull those facts and stats on every episode, and share tips for battling jet lag. Plus, would Scott ever consider a run for the presidency?! Follow us on Instagram and Threads at @pivotpodcastofficial. Follow us on Bluesky at @pivotpod.bsky.social Follow us on TikTok at @pivotpodcast. Send us your questions by calling us at 855-51-PIVOT, or at nymag.com/pivot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: How do Kara and Scott prepare for the podcast?
And today we have a listener mailbag for you because we love our listeners. We love our fans. By the way, everyone's come up to me in the past couple of weeks. Thank you. I appreciate it. And they all say hello to Scott. But now we're going to listen to them. So let's listen to the first one. Hey, Scott and Kara.
I'm always amazed when I'm listening to you all on 2xFeed how quickly you're able to pull up facts and stats to back up your point and give more texture to them. As somebody who's less up to speed on how podcasts are run, how are you able to get your information so quickly? Are you on ChatGDT looking these things up? Do you have it prepared ahead of time?
Or do you have a whole team of people who are looking these things up for you? I would love a better idea of how the sausage is made. And yes, I just handed you a dick show too. Thank you so much. Bye.
Well, well, well, well. Let me just tell you something. We have producers, and we have great producers and writers and researchers. Scott has a bunch. And they give us a whole script of information, some of which we use, some of which we don't, but it's at our fingertips. We also know a lot of stuff. We also ourselves know a lot of stuff and have been covering things or talking about them.
But Scott, you can talk about what you use. I know you use ChatGPT and other things much more than I do. But we have lots of amazing people. For this show, I'll call them out. Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin, for example, and Scott.
Yeah, so first is, and I'm not a humble person, I have an aptitude for numbers and I like data, but more than anything, greatness is in the agency of others. And I have people think that it's us producing this content. We obviously have our producers here. My small media company has 18 people and I have three people who do nothing but try and find interesting data.
And also my trick is when I find an interesting piece of data myself, I text it to my data team and I ask them to incorporate it in my presentations. And then I will write it down on my Apple Notes to try and cement it in my memory. So for example, yesterday I saw a piece of data that just blew me away and I wrote it down and it'll show up in my next deck when I do a speaking engagement.
And that piece of data was the following. Over 50% of 18 to 24 year old males have never asked a woman out in person. And I thought that was so illuminating and horrifying that I wrote it down and you can bet you're going to hear it again across all my different media channels. So
Greatness is in the agency of others, but also when you find an interesting piece of data, it's not like I'm some Svengali that can just recall shit. I write it down and I use it over and over such that it becomes a static part of my web matter.
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Chapter 2: What should current TikTok employees do amid uncertainties?
Humans will do almost anything to avoid pain, and a subset of pain is the unknown, not knowing what's gonna happen. And so I get a lot of calls like this when companies are in play, being acquired, not doing well, should I leave? Is it gonna be shut down? So this is that type of question.
And my general advice is the following, is that change and disruption, you need to ask yourself what could go right. And that is, one, you don't know what's gonna happen, but also, If a lot of people get, say, it gets closed down and a lot of people get laid off, but the U.S.
operation becomes the headquarters for North America sans the U.S., and a lot of people leave, that creates a lot of opportunity for promotions. So my general advice in situations where there's a lot of change and disruption is to ignore the psychological damage to the extent you can or the insecurity of the unknown. Because disruption brings a lot of opportunity.
And you might find yourself in six months, in 12 months, after a big event or non-event in a much better place than you'd anticipated. So especially with a company like TikTok that's got so much consumer power, you stick around and play it out. See what the next card when they turn it over, see what it is.
Okay. All right. A good one. Okay. Well, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, more listener questions.
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Chapter 3: Why are companies restructuring and what does it mean for employees?
Scott, we're back with more listener mail. Let's listen to another one.
Hi, Sarah and Scott. Love the pod. My name is Whitney, and I'm from Dallas, Texas. I feel like nobody's talking about the fact that every corporation is completely gutting their organization, restructuring, reordering, renaming, C-suite executives, and cutting tons and tons and tons of workers. What's going on?
What is going to happen in the future for all of these workers looking for jobs, but also the fact that the companies are kind of wiping middle management and there's not going to be anyone to mentor this younger talent? I'd love your thoughts. Thank you.
Wow. You know, we talk a lot about the Department of Government Efficiency. Companies have been doing this really recently. They've seen that they can really cut people and don't need them as much as they did. And so they're taking the opportunity to do so. Every company's got to be looking at the costs. Scott and I were with someone recently who said he's going from 6,000 software engineers.
It's not just affecting middle management to 2,000 next year. I mean, I think everyone's looking for what they can make do with and not to just ruin it. They don't need as many people with AI. They don't need as many people. for what they're doing, and they're trying to put efficiency in. And you're going to see this happen everywhere.
And if you're a company, that is your job is to, of course, they'll pay themselves more. That's what Meta just did. It just gave top executives more money. And meanwhile, they're doing layoffs. So even the very successful companies are doing this, not just the ones in distress.
Yeah, I think I have a little bit of a different take. And I think the underlying assumption is there's a lot of unemployment. And the reality is unemployment is still at pretty much historical lows, hovering around 4, 4.1%. Jobless claims are up a bit. There's a lot of headline news. I think the media loves, the media is like a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
It likes movement and violence and any indication of Things bad in the jobless market or unemployment gets a lot of noise, but the reality is employment in the US is still very, very strong. And distinct to that, there's a lot of change, tumult, insecurity, catastrophizing around AI.
And then a lot of people argue that that unemployment number is a bit illusory because you're considered a discouraged worker or if you're no longer seeking employment after two years. But having say that, in general, it would be really difficult to make the argument that unemployment is bad right now. It just isn't. And I would argue that it's not about unemployment.
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Chapter 4: What are the potential impacts of Trump's presidency on term limits?
So, curious what you think that will look like four years from now. Thank you very much. I love your show. Bye.
Steve, thank you. That's very sweet. I'm four-term limits on Supreme Court justice. There's a number, I think it's 16 years, something like that, that I think works, or a certain age. I think probably age gating would be what I would do on the top end. I guess 75, I suppose, would be, I think, fair. Maybe even 72, maybe 70. I don't know, somewhere in there.
Number two, I think he will try, but I think he's going to be old. I think he's already, even though he seems vigorous, he's been nodding off. I don't think he really wants to govern. He just likes to make pronouncements. So in four years, I don't know if he'll be capable. I think that doesn't mean they won't try to prop him up, like Weekend at Bernie's, kind of do a pull of Joe Biden, essentially.
And I think he likes to talk about it to bother us quite a bit and to show he has power over picking the successor. He may try to pick one of his kids. That's something I can see happening easily. Not Eric, obviously, not Tiffany, but Ivanka or Junior. So I don't know. I think that's what he'll try to do more than anything. Scott?
100%. I'm an ageist, and so is biology. We age-gate the Senate. You have to be 30. We age-gate Congress at 25. We age-gate CEOs of companies in the UK. They say at 65. In India, I think you have to retire at 65. In the UK, the mandatory retirement age for UK Supreme Court justices is 75. Your prefrontal cortex, when you're a male, does not catch up to a woman's until the age of 25.
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Chapter 5: Should there be age limits for Supreme Court Justices and politicians?
Chapter 6: How can employees leverage their value in the job market?
And they should. That's their job. And the people who figure out how to be part of that efficiency are going to make more money. So that's just capitalism. But unemployment is actually at historic lows right now. So I think there's a lot of insecurity. I think there's more job changes. Let me move to what is actionable. A lot of people call me and say, I hate my job. What do I do? And I'm like,
I think every three to five years, you should quit your job, even if you don't quit. And what I mean by that, well, you're different. You actually could. What I mean by that is I have been at NYU for 23 years, but I quit every three to five years. What do I mean by that? I go get an offer from a Columbia or Wharton or somewhere else.
And then I walk up to the dean's office and I say, this is the offer I have. And I'm totally transparent. I don't want to leave. I want to stay. But I need you to match the offer because this is market. And they hum and they ha and they make a bunch of excuses and then they match it. So the way, no one's going to manage your career for you. What you need to do is constantly quit.
As a matter of fact, the surveys show the people who make the most money are job switchers. Not every year, but every three to five years. But here's what you do if you don't want to leave your job. You quit without quitting. You do a market check. You don't be an asshole. You go into your boss and you say, I got approached. This is what they're offering me. I'd like to stay. Be transparent.
The truth has a nice ring to it and get a higher salary. But unemployment, no, unemployment isn't bad right now.
Also, you have to know what your leverage and value is. You should always, even the negative parts.
And the way you do that is with a market check. And you might find out that you're being overpaid. That's correct. And you should shut the fuck up. Don't tell anybody.
Shut the fuck up. That's correct. Scott, say nothing. All right. Next, this one comes from Steve. Let's listen.
Hello, my name is Steve. I have two questions that I would love to hear your thoughts on. Number one is your thoughts on term limits for Supreme Court justices. And number two is, what are your thoughts about Trump's end of his four-year term when he probably will find a way not to not to leave. You know, he won't respect the two-term limit for U.S. president.
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