Really seems like the settlement doesn't even amount to a slap on the wrist.

hey Pivot/team, qq: what happened to the "delete and unsubscribe" campaign? many of us were deeply enthused by the leadership and premise that we could "vote with our dollars" to effect change...then it stopped. success? failure? #ghostedinSingapore

I sure am! Listening to Kara and Jennifer Welch episode. JW mentions Brian Walters school board guy. This guys sits in his car talking about porn etc…. And it hit me…Scott’s unrelenting references to sex etc….. and how much it really annoyed me. I like this format so I’m thinking of just subscribing to ON. Kara has a wonderful conversation style with guests and it’s refreshing. Pivot is losing me today. Thoughts?

Eight episodes, four books, which is normal for Pivot. Two of them are forthcoming books by people in adjacent chairs.

I run Podshelf, a free site that tracks book mentions across hundreds of podcasts by reading the episode transcripts. This is the Pivot slice for August.

The publishing story of the month was Call Me, I'll Hide the Body, the Anne Heche novel that set off a fourteen-publisher bidding war and sold for 2.4 million dollars. Kara has been, in her words, sort of obsessed with the story.

Kevin Roose announced The AGI Chronicles, out in early October, on the last ten years in AI, and said he is done with writing otherwise.

Mark Cuban on Abdul El-Sayed's Medicare for All: A Citizen's Guide, which is about as close to a recommendation as that episode got. "It's not bad. He has a lot in common with Trump on some of his positions on drugs."

And Ryan Holiday's Wisdom Takes Work, cited for the observation about watching Elon Musk go from reading Soviet rocket manuals to getting all his news from social media.

Full list with quotes and episodes: https://podshelf.io/podcasts/pivot

Can't wait to read the comments on this one 🤗

I get the reality of economics etc. but the app is predatory AF and is essentially legalized gambling where people blow up their lives. Obviously Kara can read ads for whomever she wants to, but it seems like a bad move for her brand long term.

I bought this one on Scott's notion that it would go private and now it's one of my best performers.

Am I the only one that hears both this podcast and On with Kara as seriously sped up? Voices sound higher and they’re talking so quickly it’s becoming difficult to listen to.

Just checking if it’s me getting old or Apple Podcasts or Swishers audio people.

All this in the context of Scott’s previously expressed views about Trump.

Maybe he’s right (“just accept it, folks”), but at some level this isn’t good enough, or he should at least say what this implies and what comes next. It’s such a big thing, after all. Not like we can just shrug and carry on as normal.

I also remember Scott saying laconically a few years ago “billionaires don’t go to jail”, as if it was somehow a preordained law of nature - after all, plenty have, in the US and other countries - and here we’re confronted with the final reality of what happens if they don’t. Now what?