Kara and Scott discuss TikTok's prospects after the recent Supreme Court hearing, and Steve Bannon taking on Elon Musk. Then, firefighters are still battling California's wildfires, but misinformation on social media is making things worse. Plus, Mark Zuckerberg praises "masculine energy," and of course, Kara and Scott have thoughts. 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: What are the implications of the TikTok Supreme Court hearing?
What does a gay man bring to a second date?
I don't know.
Wait, there's a second date?
Oh, that's good. Okay. I wasn't getting that one.
All right. So back to me and my weekend. I went to Houston for a hot minute to speak and I busted into my rep. Unfortunately, the timing wasn't very good there. At the end, they asked me about young men and I got all emotional and I said that
men need to get involved in young men's life, and that Michael Jackson and the Catholic Church have fucked it up for all of us and created suspicion around men getting involved. And this is a Texas audience, so the whole audience went. And then, unfortunately, a programming note, up next was the young boys' choir. And it was just like, oh, God, that didn't go well.
Oh, no, Scott. Dredging up pedophilia.
I mean, it was just the wrong moment to talk about pedophilia.
Oh, God. No touching. No touching allowed. Oh, my God. Yeah, you're getting emotional. We're going to talk a lot about that today. By the way, I am, in fact, going to Miami this weekend to get away from the inauguration, which is coming.
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Chapter 2: What is the controversy surrounding Steve Bannon and Elon Musk?
You go right to heroin with them. You're like pot, weed, heroin.
I told you, I'm already planning out my death. I'm going to play those Apple memories. I'm going to have Tom Petty. I'm doing it in my home in Delray on the beach. I'm going to have a very curated group of people come visit me. Breath work. And I'm going to just ramp up the opium and I'm going to live my life again, except under the influence of heroin. It's going to be wonderful.
Oh, wow.
I'm really excited about it.
I'm super excited for that.
I want my exit to be glorious and I don't want to come back.
Can I just tell you, I'm going to do an interpretive dance of our relationship for you.
That's so traumatizing.
It'll be so beautiful.
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Chapter 3: How is misinformation affecting the California wildfires?
And that's how J.D. Vance must feel right now. I mean, J.D. Vance is, for all intents and purposes, not the vice president, Elon Musk is.
Right.
And he must think, fuck, I had to go debate And I had to put up with all these people, you know, and this guy's now vice president.
Talking about the couch fucking and the cat lady and everything.
Yeah. So I would imagine that.
Don't forget couch fucking, everybody. Go ahead.
I would imagine that J.D. Vance, when he sees Bannon, is high-fiving him.
Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. You know, he's calling Musk truly evil, which is incredible.
Didn't Elon Musk call you truly evil?
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Chapter 4: What role does climate change play in wildfire management?
The only thing that this fire captain would say about DEI or indicate is this woman is so infinitely qualified that the question is, why did it take so long for someone like that to ascend to a position of power?
And to immediately kind of politicize this and to force the governor to have to put up a website and take time away from actually saving property and lives, to create a site to dispel and push back on misinformation in the midst of this crisis.
And then he got attacked for that. He went on Pod Saves America and a couple of things to talk about that, to dispel things. And then like, how dare he be on podcasts? I was like, he's dispelling misinformation. You start it. Like it was it was nuts.
And the mayor deservedly or not, she's out. It just was really unfortunate timing for her to be in Ghana. And she didn't handle herself well, she's out. But the governor and the people there, I think 13,000 firefighters, something unbelievable.
And I always feel like we're outgunned because on the left, there's been some people saying, well, it's clearly climate change, but they've been a little bit more measured because they're like, we don't know. And The thing about L.A. is like, OK, so we don't know. We're more measured. And the right just goes fucking crazy and dominates the media cycle with saying DEI is die.
Right. Or all kinds of manners of conspiracy theories. There's like 90 of them. It's really crazy. And some people are really normal people who are right now emotionally bereft. are buying some of it, right? They're getting to people at their worst. And when they're in houses, they're vulnerable. And then filling them full of bile and anger does nothing to help the situation.
It's really, I've had some friends who have said this and this. I was like, no, that's not true. I mean, one thing that seems true is these power lines were not shut off quickly enough during what was terrible. And they don't have the newest power lines anymore. that don't bend and break. These are something we can now go and say, we need to fix this. We need to fix this.
But to be, you know, one of the other things is that the reason it took so long is because California is more stringent on certain plants and things. And so it takes longer. Maybe we need to fix that, right? But you can't blame it for nature, right? which these winds are, from friends of mine say it's just, they were the strongest winds they've ever seen.
However they got there, climate change, historically they've been, those winds, if you've ever been in them, are insane. There's been a lot more wind in San Francisco lately, like, by the way, disturbing amounts of winds. A tree fell on my house, never in 25 years has that happened. And it wasn't even a Santa Ana wind, which are really kind of, you know, whipsawing.
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Chapter 5: How does social media influence public perception during crises?
I would imagine in L.A. County, I don't know how many traffic deaths there are every weekend, but my point is... Incredible so many people didn't die. I mean, that's a tragedy for those families. That is remarkable. The government's job is to save people and property in a crisis like that in this order.
So the primary objective when you have a natural disaster like this is to save people's lives and they get an A fucking plus here. Not that many people lost their lives.
I have to say that the pile on is so disturbing in every way. It's like, can you please stop, you people? There's not a moment they don't, everything is DEI. When there was a plane crash, oh, it was DEI. There's not a disaster. And let me just say to people like Elon Musk, you don't have any fucking solutions. You just have a lot of frigging complaints, right?
And it's not like you immediately go to your same grab bag of hate that really doesn't matter here. And you're taking advantage of people. who have a propensity to be very upset and look for blame when what they need is help from people like Jose Andres and the governor and everybody else. So shut the fuck up, some of them. Anyway, that goes to me about sort of manliness.
But it moves to solutions, and this is an opportunity for virtue signaling, my favorite thing. Stephen Leder said something, Rabbi Stephen Leder said something that really hit hard to me. He said, "'Calling people and asking if you can help is not helpful.'" Because people who are in this state don't wanna be victims. They don't wanna think about how you can help me.
You don't call and ask how to help, you just help. And one of the things I've really struggled with, and it struck me this time, is I was really curious if UCLA was being affected. And I typed in UCLA evacuation question mark. And the first thing that came up from the fucking Google algorithm was this TikTok from some sophomore there calling UCLA the University of California that doesn't care.
And I'm like, that's my news on UCLA? Some 19-year-old in his dorm room doing an angry TikTok? So I've been using News Not Noise, Jessica Yellen, who I find is pretty measured. I've been looking at, I've been following Anderson Cooper, who I think does his best job.
He's done a great job here, I have to say.
But I gotta be honest, I'm having trouble. I'm just skeptical and distrusting of everything I see. So I'm moving to action. I like Jessica Yellen. She needs more resources. I like News Not Always. It's a hundred bucks. I went and bought 50 subscriptions. I am the biggest GoFundMe slut in the world right now.
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Chapter 6: What are the challenges faced by firefighters in California?
He's being very pragmatic around kissing the ass of Donald Trump, figuring out a way to spin moderationist censorship so he can get rid of it, take $5 billion that he was spending on moderation, put it all to the bottom line, which will increase his net worth by $15 to $20 billion, It has nothing to do with masculinity or femininity.
Masculine energy, if you want to see masculine energy, look at the aerial firefighters who are former military, former civilian pilots or civilian pilots. They get in retrofitted DC-10s. They risk their lives. They bring incredible skill, risk, aggressiveness in the service of others.
Yeah, he missed is that part?
Without the expectation of economic gain or recognition. We don't know who these guys are.
Or women. Let's just say that.
Well, it's probably a lot of women. I'm going to go out on a limb here. It's probably a lot of women handling a lot of the infrastructure and navigation.
I'm not so sure. Look at Lauren Sanchez can fly a mean helicopter, right? I mean, just... Okay, but let's just talk about reality.
I bet it's 98% plus male pilots, because here's the bottom line. The majority of men... The majority of aerial flight training in the military has been sequestered to men, unfairly or fairly. Probably true. And quite frankly, and I'll go out on a limb here, such a Twitter can get mad at me, men are more risk-aggressive.
And in military situations, that masculine energy, that big-dick energy really pays off because men are more risk-aggressive.
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Chapter 7: How do cultural factors affect living conditions in Los Angeles?
Can I get away just from shareholder? What do you think is happening to these men? They're not just shareholder. There's something else happening to them. I can't fucking figure it out. I can tell you a dozen people who were utterly normal who send me crazy shit about trans people, about vaccines, about all these people who are completely normal. And now it's beyond shareholder.
It's something else.
Should the first executive action of President Biden be around trans athletes and wait three years for any policy on immigration? No. The Democrats have invited this bullshit of being hyper-focused on niche issues that don't affect that many people instead of just saying we have laws to protect them or we're going to force the laws.
At the same time, the far right deciding to find this small group of people and demonize them and terrorize them? I mean, one is stupid. What the far left has done has been tone deaf and politically stupid. What the far right has done is just inhuman. It's just not, you don't treat people that way.
But why have all these, all tech, all, all tech, like except if they work for W, the Worldwide Wrestling Organization or something like that, something has happened to so many of them. And their love of conspiracy theories, it's like they've smoked their own dope a little too long and it's laced with fentanyl or something.
I think there's still people. There are. There's Marc Benioff. Brian Chesky is offering places for people to stay.
There's something at the top here of these, you know, this Troika, Bezos. It's the loudest ones.
I don't think it's most of them.
I think it's the loudest ones.
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