#152 — Apple’s New Siri, SpaceX’s $300B IPO & the AI Company Killing Its Own Brand
June 12, 2026 · Listen · All episodes · Chat with the show's AI
Jessica Lessin, Dave Morin, Brit Morin and Sam Lessin debate the tech of the week.
Full transcript (AI-generated — may contain transcription errors):
Sam Lessin: OpenAI saying that their IPO is expected within the next year is very big to me.
Jessica: This might potentially be bad for the Apple ecosystem if the coding apps aren't supporting it.
Sam Lessin: The stock's down 7% since Monday, so I don't think people were super psyched.
Dave Morin: Well, I think that if you're anyone other than OpenAI and Anthropic, you are now an arms dealer.
Jessica: BaseX and OpenAI were embroiled in a fierce legal battle two months ago.
Sam Lessin: It's four X oversubscribed. There's, like, almost 300 billion in demand, including a lot of the Middle East.
Dave Morin: I mean, I guess this is good. YouTube, basically everyone subscribes to it except for 100-year-olds.
Sam Lessin: Disney spent $200 million on this movie. They've probably gotten, like, half a billion dollars of earned media through Taylor Swift.
Brit Morin: More or less. Is it no or is it yes? We'll debate the test that's best. Will we get more or less? Dave and Brit plus Sam and Jess. Put it all right to the test. More or less.
Jessica: Why hello, friends. Welcome to More or Less. How is it going, More-ans?
Sam Lessin: We've got the full quad here. Uh, we are, uh, two days out from WWDC and three days out from a hospital with our son breaking his arm, so you know-
Jessica: Oh, no
Sam Lessin: ... things are going well this week.
Dave Morin: And somehow I find myself in Y Combinator's Mountain View office.
Jessica: Y Co- Now, that is the most interesting thing someone has said to me today. Why would one visit Y Combinator these days, Dave? What's-
Dave Morin: There is a Bitrig hackathon going on here, uh, today, and WWDC is going on this week, so we are big investors in Bitrig, which is the best agentic coding app for the Apple ecosystem. And so we've got a massive hackathon going on here at the original Y Combinator office in honor of WWDC.
Jessica: Was Bitrig's latest update approved by the App Store?
Dave Morin: No, actually. They are no longer focused on the iPhone because Apple will not allow you to create an iPhone app that modifies itself after being downloaded, which, you know, in, makes sense actually, but, um, it's shifted the entire strategy of not just this company, but every company that works in Apple's ecosystem.
Jessica: It makes sense to the point that obviously Apple is security-minded, and you don't want apps that would maliciously switch up what they're doing. But it seems like this might potentially be bad for the Apple ecosystem if the coding apps aren't supporting it.
Dave Morin: Yeah, I mean, I do think that the iPhone is 20 years old now, and you still can't create an iPhone app with the iPhone, which is kind of strange when you think about it. I do hope that they get there, but, you know, as of now, you still have to use a Mac to create iPhone apps, and, uh, Bitrig's one of the better ways to do it. Uh, there's a lot of other ways to do it too, but, you know, we'll see where that goes. Uh, obviously nothing changed for WWDC or anything like that this week on this front, but, you know, we'll see, we'll see where this, this week goes.
Jessica: Assuming you were in the pole position for Apple's annual developer conference, what were your takeaways? And more importantly, do I have to give Siri another try because I've been burned so many times? I'm kind of wounded.
Dave Morin: I think you and everybody have been pretty wounded. You know, I think that, you know, our, our good friend Josh Elman has been down there working on this new version of Siri, and it looks pretty good. You know, I think that you look at this version, and you kind of have to nod your head and say, "Yep, that's exactly what Siri should've been doing all along." They've created, you know, what in inside baseball we would call a harness.
Jessica: Ooh, I learned about those, like, three weeks ago on this pod, so I'm, I'm fully briefed.
Dave Morin: You know, they've, uh, they've created a, a nice interface where you can push the Siri button on your phone and ask Siri about anything that is going on, uh, on the screen. So if you're looking at a, you know, Instagram post or something, um, you can ask, "Where is this place?" You can ask, you know, all kinds of questions about anything that's going on inside of your phone in any app. Uh, they've also got the ability to go out and query the internet. These are all things that we expect in the inside baseball universe of the AI ecosystem. But Apple's kind of now made it a, you know, a primary interface by which you can interact with your phone, uh, and your computer. And so I think most of the reactions are, are pretty dead on, that this is what they should've been doing all along, and this is also classic Apple to kind of sit back and wait and watch what the best use cases are and then deliver one of the better, if not the best consumer experience. And I would expect that actually a lot of people switch to using this, or actually that it's their first experience with advanced AI in their everyday life because, uh, you know, a lot of people, I think, use Siri for small tasks, but not complex ones. And I would say that the, the actual big question is can Apple transition people from turning on and off their lights to much more complex, uh, advanced queries? I think the jury's still out on that. We'll see.
Jessica: So it's also classic Apple to be doing this with Google technology. So the partnership that under... This isn't necessarily bad. This could be smart, right? But the partnership that now undergirds this is the distillation of Gemini. Is that, how strategic is, is that in the AI? Does it matter? Is it just like Google's an arms dealer here and, or is this somehow good for Gemini? I guess what data they get back kind of matters, right?
Dave Morin: Well, I think that if you're anyone other than OpenAI and Anthropic, you are now an arms dealer in the AI race, right? Um, you're either selling access or you're renting access to your giant H100, H200 clusters, right? Or You are giving people access to the models that you've trained and allowing them to distill them, do things with them. And so, you know, if you're Apple and you're looking around wondering who you should do this with, Google's as good a choice as any. You know, Google's a extremely trusted brand. You know, Apple's got a deep collaboration history with them. And what it looks like they've done here is just taken, you know, state-of-the-art Gemini models, both the on-device local flavor as well as the cloud flavors, and, uh, distilled them for their own purposes into these, you know, quote, "Apple foundation models," um, which they're now running locally and, uh, on-prem in their cloud to deliver their private compute idea. So, I think it's, you know, it's as good as option as any, but yeah, I mean, arms dealer they are.
Jessica: Sam, what's your cynical take? Oh, Bret, yours too, but I feel like Sam has some, some combining his cynicism for AI and Apple has gotta come together in a clever way. I'll give you a second to think about this, Sam. You look like you're online shopping, so I'll go to Bret.
Guest: Yeah, I'm shopping. Go to Bret.
Sam Lessin: Okay. Well, I was gonna ask you, Dave, like, w- what were the developer announcements at this developer conference that Apple had? 'Cause I heard about Siri and I heard about some screen time optimizations, which felt good, but personally weren't as well optimized as I would want them to be. And, and then I don't know, like, much else that they were announcing there that developers could leave with and go, like, build something on top of. I guess, like, there's some new iOS UI stuff happening. It... I don't know.
Jessica: Liquid Glass had a moment.
Dave Morin: Yeah, it's interesting. I would say I had two really distinct thoughts that happened while I was sitting there in the audience, and the first was that the keynote had almost no mention of anything developer related, which I found kind of shocking and strange. Now, I get it. Apple is an enormous consumer company. Every time that they do a keynote, all eyes are on Apple. People wanna know what's happening with their iPhone, et cetera. But this is also a developer conference that is supposed to be about the, you know, kind of nerding out on the next set of technologies that developers can build their apps on top of. And so, that there were almost no mention of the actual developer technologies until the very, very end, and we're talking, like, minutes of a very long keynote, um, I found to be, like... I don't know. It was, like, a, a strange experience, and so that was number one. The second thing that I found interesting was as I was sitting there and participating in the rest of the ecosystem and the conversations that we've all been having about what's going on with AI and the, you know, uh, agentic engineering world, uh, and the ability... You know, Sam's talked about this ad nauseam that, you know, w- if you have your OpenClaw or your Claude code set up properly, you can just generate any app that you want for your phone these days. And I found that to be a really interesting thing to be thinking about while I was watching Apple talk about the new features for screen time or the new features, you know, that they're adding to their various apps. Because it used to be that when you saw these things, you were kind of excited. You know, "Oh, I'm looking forward to trying that." Um, now I found myself thinking, "Well, if I don't like it, I can just generate my own version of something," and that that's, like, I think to your earlier question, Jess, there's, like, this massive inbound wave of new applications and new apps being generated by people, and almost none of that aspect of what's going on in that developer ecosystem was addressed, and I found that to be, like, kind of a strange out-of-body experience, as if it was sort of being ignored.
Jessica: Isn't every conference a developer conference? Like, Bret, I think your point's even more salient because, like, it either is or it isn't. Like, I don't know. It's like, to, to Dave's point, like, GTC, like, Nvidia was all very developer.
Dave Morin: I mean, this is literally the Worldwide Developer Conference-
Jessica: Yeah
Dave Morin: ... Jess. So I mean, this is...
Jessica: Yeah. I also think it had a baton passing. This was Cook passing the baton to Turness, even though we're still in a transition period. How much was that front and center?
Dave Morin: Sort of, but Turness didn't speak.
Jessica: Well, that's weird.
Dave Morin: Yeah. I mean, he, he was very present. You know, I was, I was backstage beforehand. He was there. I said hello. You know, he was around, but, uh, kinda omnipresent, but he didn't speak. He wasn't part of the videos, et cetera. So, there wasn't really a baton pass happening here. It was almost a, "We're not gonna talk about it," kind of a thing, which-
Sam Lessin: That's weird
Dave Morin: ... you know, I don't know.
Sam Lessin: That's a missed opportunity. Missed opportunity.
Guest: I think so, too. I feel like Tim needs to, like, have him on stage.
Jessica: He spoke at the last WWDCs. Like, he's been on stage at WWDC.
Guest: But there was no hardware announcement, and he's the hardware guy, so is that why?
Jessica: Well, now he's the everything guy.
Dave Morin: Yeah. I don't know, Jess. I'd have to go back and look at last year's WWDC, but it's not... I'm not actually sure if he spoke. It's usually Craig Federighi that's the star of the show at WWDC, so.
Jessica: And his hair. Those two things, yep.
Dave Morin: Yeah. The hair, the dad jokes, you know.
Sam Lessin: The F1 videos.
Jessica: Okay. I'm glad we didn't have a ton of that.
Dave Morin: Yeah. I'm not sure. You know, the, there was no John.
Jessica: Okay. Sam, you've... Given you time to think of your take. What is it?
Guest: There are about so many things. I don't know. I was only half listening, but I like the, the Dave thing of we've argued before about is everyone a developer or is no one a developer? So, that probably has some relevance to your conversation about WWDC and who it's for.
Guest: I've been in no one's a developer. Dave's in everyone's a developer.
Sam Lessin: Yeah.
Guest: It's kind of the same thing either way.
Sam Lessin: That's kind of what I said. It, it's either all a full developer conference or it's not for every new tech conference that exists.
Dave Morin: Yeah, but none of this was focused on, "Hey, everyone, you can now develop using these powerful new engineering tools," right? Like, that, that was not the message.
Jessica: Which is, like, the top theme in the technology industry, right? Like, Apple, you gotta hand it to them, that in a world of narrative building, they're gonna stick to theirs and not jump onto the narrative of the moment. Again, may, may prove prescient, but also, like, is definitely not gonna win the hearts and minds of the technical early adopters who are enthralled with these technologies right now.
Dave Morin: Yeah, and I guess that's what I want from WWDC, right? Like, I want a super inside baseball. Like, we're talking about actual technology that I can use as a developer to make my business, my app, my whatever, right? And debate l- whether or not consumers are developers or developers are developers anymore, debate that all you want. This is still supposed to be a developer conference, where you're talking about the cool, new, nerdy technologies that you can go build things on top of, right? And so I found it strange that there was almost no mention, uh, of this.
Guest: It's been a long time since that's what it was, though, right? It's just a big marketing event. I'm not... That's not critical. I'm just saying it's like-
Jessica: There used to be at least some modicum API announcements, but yes. Okay. So that, that's a good vibe check on WWDC. I like that. When can I try this new Siri? 'Cause I... If I get another, like, "I'm sorry, Taylor Swift is not available," when I ask, like, for directions to McDonald's, I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna give up.
Dave Morin: It's always the fall, Jess. So WWDC is, you know, kind of usually where Apple gives everybody access to the new, the new tools, and then they have a quarter or so, or until September generally, to ship them. And then that's when they launch the new, uh, iOS, along with the new iPhones every year. So September.
Jessica: And the, the new thing there is the folding phone, right? Isn't that gonna be the big-
Sam Lessin: That's the, that's the hype. But also, guys, the stock's down 7% sin- month- since Monday, so I don't think people were super psyched about.
Dave Morin: Yeah, but stock number only goes up if you say thing about AI. So, you know, that's, that's how it goes.
Jessica: Or iPhone sales. I feel like Apple's stock goes up when you're like, "We sold more phones in China," which maybe is also the problem. Switching gears, we are, by the time people listen to this, SpaceX will be a public company. How are we feeling? What are, what's our vibe check? Sam?
Guest: I think we've beaten the dead horse on this one. I think number will go, initially go up, and then we'll see.
Sam Lessin: It's Forex oversubscribed. There's, like, almost 300 billion in demand, including a lot of the Middle East.
Jessica: This is so typical.
Guest: I mean, it's the same thing as VCs being like, "The round's oversubscribed." It's like, yeah, everything's always oversubscribed. It's like-
Sam Lessin: But then, and then OpenAI filing, saying it's expect- the, "Our IPO is expected within the next year," is very vague to me. Do you have any more intel on that?
Jessica: I'm gonna hand it to OpenAI, right? So they file their, both Anthropic and OpenAI announce themselves, that they had filed confidentially. Smart, 'cause, you know, all those pesky reporters are all over them all the time. And then OpenAI then proceeds to explain all the reasons it might not go public. Like... Well, actually, I don't know what's in the press release, what, versus my sources say. But, but the combination of my sources and the press release is like, "Well, you know, we might, like, the development of the models might change the trajectory, or we might want flexibility to change our token economics to gain market share, or we might wanna do another unusual deal," like the one The Information just reported this week of where they're doing a data center, but NVIDIA's involved in potentially leasing the chips. We don't know. I think all of that is smoke and mirrors, and I think they're probably on a very conventional IPO timeframe, putting them at October-ish, alongside Anthropic. But I guess there's no harm in, like, buying yourself some flexibility. It's just very funny. I mean, companies don't usually announce that they filed confidentially. You do that, and then you tell us all the reasons why you sort of might not do it. But the objections on the timing do, are all kind of interesting about some of the loss of flexibility they might have as a public company. But at the end of the day, I'll need, they'll need it. I don't know. Have you guys been following that SoftBank is struggling to raise the money it promised OpenAI?
Sam Lessin: Oh, God. No.
Dave Morin: Is anyone surprised at all?
Jessica: Bloomberg's done a great series of stories on this.
Sam Lessin: How much money was it again? It was, like, a qua- quadrillion dollars that they were going to put into this.
Jessica: I wanna say it's around 30 billion.
Sam Lessin: Oh, I thought it was more. I thought it was 50.
Jessica: But it, well, there was multiple things. It's a significant amount of money, and SoftBank, which has already exited a lot of its positions. So I don't know. Masa kind of eventually finds a way, maybe busts in the middle, but I sure hope OpenAI has its other investors.
Dave Morin: Isn't that kind of actually the story here, Jess? Which is that all three of these companies are jockeying with whatever configuration that they are configuring their IPO into in order to get people to allocate and find the way to raise the capital to get involved in these things, right? Like, that's what's going on behind the scenes.
Jessica: You mean privately or publicly?
Dave Morin: Both. It's like people are having to move around their capital allocations to try to figure out how to participate in these things.
Jessica: Well, I think there's a little bit of, like-
Guest: Josh Altman's calling me.
Dave Morin: Telling me to talk to him.
Sam Lessin: Wait, does he wanna weigh in on the developer conference? Is it a developer conference still?
Guest: No, I don't, I don't wanna do that to him right now, 'cause I actually have business with the man.
Jessica: That's the last thing he wants to do.
Guest: It's funny.
Jessica: But this is how Silicon Valley works, people. You think of someone, and then they call your business partner, or your po- podcast co-host is more like it. I think these companies are so competitive, and, and remember, SpaceX and OpenAI were embroiled in a fierce legal battle two months ago. And so if you can take a headline or two away from them or... But look, I don't think any investor is gonna see that the S1 for OpenAI has been filed and, and then be less aggressive in their near term SpaceX position, so.
Dave Morin: Well, you know what? I think it's interesting to observe the extremely high-level narratives at play here.
Jessica: I love a high-level narrative.
Dave Morin: Which is that, you know, SpaceX is out there being like, "Look at how inspiring we are." They put out all this unbelievable media, right? Like, media thing after media thing, all these, like, amazing, like, technology, Mars, Moon, you know, just, like, painting this, like, extraordinary technology narrative, trying to inspire people, right? That's, like, the SpaceX narrative. And then Anthropic, on the other hand, is, like, every week putting out further doom, right? Like, this week it was like, "This thing is so dangerous that we're gonna publish an essay, and we're gonna release it to the public, like, so kneecapped that it can't do anything for you of any meaningful, uh, level of intelligence, and it's that dangerous," right? So it's like this super fear-based message. And then OpenAI kind of has this, to your point, Jess, it's like, "We're not sure. Like, we think we're gonna do this. We might do that." Like-
Jessica: Oh, they're sure. They just wanna mess with us, I think. I think they're sure.
Dave Morin: But I'm saying, like, what's their message?
Guest: Well, Anthropic stole the fear message from them. Like, they out- Anthropic out-feared them, which was originally OpenAI's strategy.
Jessica: Their message is just build, speaking of developers. I actually like the new ads.
Dave Morin: Is it?
Jessica: I've been watching the sports, you know, the basketball, and they have some good ads.
Guest: I do think, too, that OpenAI has been narratively cornered.
Dave Morin: I think it's interesting to talk about, Sam. Like, that's what I'm saying is, like, I don't actually know what it is.
Guest: No, I agree with you. I think SpaceX, I mean, like, literally their S1 is just full of pictures, right? Like, it's the most-
Dave Morin: Yeah
Guest: ... ridiculous, like-
Jessica: Rockets
Guest: ... it's the most might work.
Dave Morin: I think it's so interesting to, like, look at this through the lens of, like, tiny attention. Like, there's so little attention. Like, what do I know of these things? It's like SpaceX inspiring, Anthropic scary, OpenAI-
Guest: Well, and, you know, Anthropic did a good job of taking the, the scare meme, which again, uh, you know, I think it was a huge mistake, but it was how Sam Altman raised the original money, was scare money, right?
Jessica: Mm-hmm.
Guest: In several generations. But then I, I think the problem that OpenAI created for themselves is they went so broad and have so many partners that they lost their ability to be pure scare narrative, because they have all these other, including consumer relationships, where the fear thing is to their neg- So you can't sell-
Dave Morin: Yeah
Guest: ... scare and then also get consumers to use ChatGPT. You can't sell scare... Like, it was, Anthropic was like, "Fuck it. We're all in scare," right? And so I think that this is the problem with, like, c- like, effectively conglomerates, right? Or when you go too broad is, like, you lose narrative purity.
Dave Morin: Yeah, I guess that's what my feeling is, is OpenAI is portfolio.
Jessica: Hmm.
Dave Morin: You know? It's like-
Jessica: Well, they used to be AI
Dave Morin: ... portfolio of good AI stuff, I guess.
Jessica: They were the Kleenex of AI, and then-
Guest: But they lost that immediately.
Jessica: Well, they lost it.
Guest: They are not-
Jessica: And then that also became unpopular in some forms, maybe because of-
Sam Lessin: With many forms
Jessica: ... uh, Anthropic's fear-mongering. I mean, there are people OpenAI adjacent who believe Dario has been fear-mongering to wound the category leader being them. I don't know.
Guest: Gosh.
Dave Morin: Oh.
Jessica: I think fear-mongering is-
Dave Morin: Interesting
Jessica: ... sort of more in his blood, but, like, I think he believes it. Like, I don't think-
Guest: I think he believes it.
Dave Morin: Interesting.
Guest: I also think people, like, love to think that other people are thinking about them.
Jessica: It turns out that's the case. Dave, I'm fixated on something you said, tiny attention. Is this, like, a new, uh, term, like the tiny attention economy? Or what, what... You referred to it as, like, an entity.
Dave Morin: It's something that I've been thinking about. Even though we're all talking about how amazing this technology is, how wonderful, you know, depends on who you are. Some people, AI wonderful, some people, AI very scary. Doesn't matter. Like, a lot of people are using this stuff. People keep talking about this question of, are, are we gonna work more, work less? Like, I don't really know, but here's the one thing that I do know. The amount of human attention that is available in a given day is fixed, and the amount of tools that are trying to get that attention now are, like, massively increasing at an exponential rate. And so the amount of attention that people have anymore to pay attention to your new product or service or whatever-
Jessica: Yeah
Dave Morin: ... is, like, increasingly more tiny. And so I just keep thinking of it that way, that it's, like, tiny attention now, and you're, like, lucky if you can get, I don't know, one thought from people in a given day. Everyone I know is like, "I'm so exhausted. I-
Jessica: Hmm
Dave Morin: ... can't keep up with everything. Every day I wake up, and I have to, like, think about another this, another that," and I... You know, it's just, like, crazy. AI has made it even worse, right? It's like the AI plus social media thing is, like, insane because it's just not like the atten- the amount of attention expanded.
Sam Lessin: But guys, guess what's happening according to The New York Times.
Jessica: Is there a bot to save our attention?
Sam Lessin: Well, there is a strategy, and the strategy that all the kids are starting to use, Dave, get ready for it, the two-phone lifestyle. You've got- ... your, this is a thing now, you guys.
Jessica: This is a deep cut, guys.
Sam Lessin: The New York Times reported it.
Jessica: Deep cut.
Sam Lessin: Okay, so you have your, your, like, work and, like, productivity phone, and then you have your chill, relaxed phone for, like, not being stressed out.
Dave Morin: You're saying your day phone and your night phone.
Sam Lessin: And I'm bringing this up, for those who don't know, Dave, what year was it? I don't know, 2014 or something.
Jessica: More than a decade ago. More than a decade ago.
Dave Morin: It just proves I continue to live in the future.
Sam Lessin: Dave, ahead of his time, as the seed investor that he is, being interviewed by Vanity Fair in, like, 2013, 2014.
Dave Morin: No. Guys, this is traumatic.
Jessica: Dave, we're gonna help exorcize this.
Sam Lessin: We're licking the cookie, Dave, 'cause you were right. You were just early. Was, uh, being interviewed about, like, his leadership style and blah, blah, blah, and then he mentioned that he has two phones, like a work phone and a personal phone, which by the way is not that abnormal. A lot of people do this. Remember when people had BlackBerrys and then their other phone? Anyway, it blew up the internet. Everyone freaked out, "Oh my God, Dave Morin has two phones," and, like, slammed him, and, like, still didn't live it down. Like, for years this was a thing. So this is the ultimate redemption. I'm very happy for you, Dave, that The New York Times has now made this, like, pop culture mainstream.
Dave Morin: But I don't have two phones anymore. Does this mean, uh, mean I have to go back to having two phones?
Sam Lessin: I think you should.
Dave Morin: No, you need three phones.
Sam Lessin: And life phone.
Dave Morin: I actually have three phones.
Jessica: Also, guys, to give Dave credit, this came out of a question about his remaining battery percent, which at the time was 18. And he said, "I have two phones, one for day and one for night. When the day phone runs out, the night phone takes over." So you also just needed a battery pack.
Dave Morin: I didn't even write that, the PR-
Jessica: Yeah, I can-
Dave Morin: ... firm did.
Jessica: Well, that's... Dave, why did you let... You all... No, you wrote this. You said the background on your phone was the Tetons because the mountains are my soul. You wrote that.
Dave Morin: Yep. They are.
Jessica: That was not a PR firm.
Dave Morin: You guys are sitting next to the Tetons right now.
Jessica: They are our soul. They are amazing. So, oh my God. Let, let, let's in a later episode take, go back and look at all our bad press of collectively and
Sam Lessin: No, I think-
Jessica: We'll do it
Sam Lessin: ... again, we were just, like, ahead of our time, Jess. I think that's the reframe here.
Dave Morin: That was particularly bad.
Jessica: Mm-hmm. Always ahead. Okay. I like... Sam, I think you bring up an excellent point about OpenAI's narrative. Do you have advice on what narrative they should seek to occupy?
Guest: Just give up.
Dave Morin: Yep.
Guest: You know?
Jessica: Just give up. Oh my God, Sam's probably encountered a new fitness toy optimized for altitude, and he's deep in buying it.
Dave Morin: Is their na- narrative big computer, like biggest computer? Like, that seems to be the emergent narrative.
Jessica: Yeah, pretty much. All the infra in the world.
Dave Morin: We have biggest computer, right?
Guest: But they do that?
Dave Morin: Yeah, they do.
Jessica: They kinda do, yeah. They have-
Dave Morin: Yeah
Jessica: ... the biggest computer. Uh, if their investors can pay their bills.
Guest: All the, um... So it's, it's very simple. It's the oldest brand in the book. It's just, their branding is just size matters. Look at my huge cock.
Sam Lessin: That's what she said.
Guest: That's-
Dave Morin: We solved it.
Guest: Look at-
Dave Morin: This is great
Guest: ... the an- They should just go, "Look at my huge cock." That's gonna be their branding.
Sam Lessin: What? Oh my God.
Guest: 'Cause, 'cause it's a pissing match.
Sam Lessin: And that's why you-
Jessica: You know
Sam Lessin: ... subscribe to More or Less, by the way.
Guest: That would work, by the way. That would work.
Jessica: I think you're right. I think-
Guest: If Sam Altman just was like, "Look at my huge cock," like, that would be probably the best branding they could go for, and Elon would respect that.
Jessica: Okay, this is what I get for calling on Sam when he's a quarter paying attention. This is on me, folks. I take, I take responsibility. Do you guys wanna talk about 60 Minutes?
Dave Morin: What? I don't, I... Sure, but I, you're gonna have to give context.
Jessica: I gotta give a little bit of context. Media corner. Quick media corner.
Dave Morin: Is it even a show anymore? Like, do people watch it?
Guest: No, Dave. Like, five people watch it by accident that are 80.
Sam Lessin: Like, 80-year-old grandmothers watch it.
Jessica: Okay.
Sam Lessin: Yeah.
Jessica: Okay.
Guest: But they're really self-important.
Sam Lessin: And just a lesson.
Guest: That's the important to know. Really self-important.
Dave Morin: That's what... Sam, boomers are all self-important.
Jessica: To my colleagues in the news business, any words that come out of my co-host's mouth, I do not take responsibility for it, are not my point of view on the news business.
Dave Morin: Jess, this is a fair question. Like, how many people watch 60 Minutes?
Jessica: 9% more than last year.
Guest: Dave just said no one has any attention. No one has 60 minutes for old people TV.
Sam Lessin: It's now, like, yeah, .6 minutes.
Guest: They should rebrand it 60 Seconds.
Sam Lessin: 60 Seconds. I like it. I like it.
Guest: 60 Seconds. Maybe I watch 60 Seconds.
Sam Lessin: Hosted by Barbara Walters.
Dave Morin: I have something to say on this, which I think is really interesting. I love this guy that does subway takes in New York. I saw him talking about, like, why he did it the way that he did it, and his whole thing was that nobody should do long form content, they should just make the shorts and make everything about the shorts. So they-
Guest: Well-
Dave Morin: ... think, Sam, you were kind of ahead on this. And so people need to make one minute, not 60 minutes for-
Sam Lessin: That's what everyone's doing, though. I actually think I'm long 60 Minutes.
Guest: This dovetails with OpenAI's new branding. Look at the size of my cock, six seconds.
Sam Lessin: By the way, I just looked it up, 9.1 million viewers. There are 9.1 million people-
Dave Morin: All right
Sam Lessin: ... spending 60 minutes with 60 Minutes, so I think you're redeemed, Jess.
Dave Morin: All right, Jess, give us the rundown on what's going on.
Sam Lessin: I think they're, like, half asleep 'cause they're 80, but that's fine.
Jessica: Are we done? Do you guys wanna hear-
Dave Morin: I think we're done
Jessica: ... what's going on?
Guest: Hon-
Sam Lessin: Yeah
Guest: ... honestly, probably not, but go for it.
Jessica: We can skip it. We'll move on. We'll move on. There's no interest.
Dave Morin: No, I'm curious. Like, what's the drama?
Jessica: The drama is that 60 Minutes is under new leadership under CBS with Barry Weiss, who hired Nick Bilton, you guys all know him, as a one-time tech columnist for The New York Times, who then went into documentary films.
Guest: I'm pretty sure that guy wrote mean stuff about me at one point. Let's, uh-
Sam Lessin: Wasn't he a Valleywag?
Guest: Yeah, then probably he did.
Jessica: No, that was a different Nick, but same generation, same generation. So anyway, um, the-
Dave Morin: Didn't he also write for Vanity Fair?
Jessica: Yeah, and he had a podcast. We're talking about the same guy. Same guy.
Dave Morin: Okay.
Jessica: Okay.
Dave Morin: I know who Nick Bilton is.
Jessica: You all, you know him. That's why I thought you guys might wanna care.
Dave Morin: Yeah, I didn't know... So wait, is Nick, Nick Bilton is involved in 60 Minutes?
Jessica: He's running 60 Minutes, and-
Dave Morin: Oh, wow, that's cool
Jessica: ... the anchors of 60 Minutes are not thrilled about it. There was a big-
Dave Morin: Why?
Jessica: ... insur- insurrection because he is not really qualified to run 60 Minutes.
Dave Morin: Why? He's been in the business forever. Is it just because he doesn't have video? Like-
Sam Lessin: He's not a TV guy, Dave.
Jessica: Dave, he has no television experience. He has no investigative news production experience.
Dave Morin: But he's always had a strong editorial point of view.
Jessica: I think this is a miscast. Always saying, "I'm not... I am pro young people taking on big jobs."
Guest: I'm just, he's not that young. He's older than us. He's older than us.
Jessica: Fair enough.
Guest: He's not young.
Jessica: Okay.
Guest: He's just not 100 years old.
Jessica: Okay, no one cares what I think about this.
Dave Morin: Yeah, he's, he's in his 50s, right?
Jessica: Okay. Now, think of the b- he's not in his 50... I don't know. How old are we? Okay, maybe he's in his 50s.
Dave Morin: He's 49.
Jessica: But think of, like, the worst insurrection you've witnessed or read about at a technology company, say maybe, like, Travis Kalanick or something like that. This was, like, 100 times worse. Scott Pelley, who you would not know, but you would know, a very esteemed 60 Minutes correspondent for, like, decades.
Guest: He's done hours.
Jessica: In an all hands, just confronted him, saying he was not qualified for this job, that his boss had... Like, total insubordination.
Dave Morin: Is that the message of the times?
Guest: Guys, we're talking about 60 Minutes. This Scott Pelley guy turns out to have better media savvy for the brand-
Jessica: Scott Pelley
Guest: ... whatever the fuck his name is, than, like, anyone. Like, uh, when would we even normally talk about 60 Minutes? So I actually think this is a huge win to have some old dude who's paid way too much money yelling about it, right? Huge win.
Jessica: The old dude no longer has a job, so the old dude-
Guest: Even better, they don't have to pay him.
Jessica: ... was fired for insubordination, which honestly, you could agree with every word out of his mouth. I think it's very hard to keep someone who is so clearly hostile to the leadership, like, at the network.
Guest: That's good for you to establish that publicly, Jessica.
Jessica: Yeah, just one sec.
Dave Morin: I mean, this is straight out of The Morning Show.
Jessica: This is straight out of The Morning Show. Like, you have to read the things he said. It was like he was reading the Jerry Maguire speech. Okay, so they don't know what to do with him, so they fire him, probably not very effectively. Then, like, it goes on and on and on, and now my entire newsfeed is either pictures of Serena Williams hitting the ball, because yes, she is back at tennis, or hot takes on Barry's leadership of CBS, and is she gonna run CNN? Is she not gonna run CNN?
Dave Morin: Mm.
Jessica: I realize that only media people care about this, but 60 Minutes is a brand that it matters in news that people care about, and I think it's sad what's happening, so.
Guest: So I just went to his Instagram account and it's terrible.
Jessica: Whose? Scott Pelley's?
Guest: Yeah. You'd expect him to get a lot of followers out of this at least, but I guess those people don't have Instagram accounts.
Dave Morin: I mean, isn't that the whole thing, Sam? Like, that's what we're talking about. It's like a sorta cross-cultural battleground, right?
Jessica: Well, so what Scott Pelley did-
Dave Morin: TV microphone versus social media.
Guest: Scott Pelley 1. This is very confusing. I literally can't even find the Scott Pelley.
Jessica: Scott, you, you did some things right, but you did not update your Instagram account prior to your scorched earth removal.
Guest: Do you think he's Scott Pelley 1 or just Scott Pelley? It's very confusing.
Sam Lessin: I feel like he'd be verified.
Dave Morin: It's gotta be Scott Pelley 1.
Guest: I think it might be. He, he has 30,000 followers.
Jessica: I think he's verified. Let's look.
Sam Lessin: So maybe someone stole his Instagram account, like Slow.
Guest: He's still linking to CBS Evening News instead of OnlyFans, where he should be, and then- ... like, Scott Pelley 1 is Scott Pelley, author. Very confusing.
Jessica: Okay. Well, what Scott did is he went old school. He went to The New York Times and gave, like, this huge interview to try and throw Barry under the bus even more. Not a lot of flattering detail in his interview. Again, it's his point of view. And yeah, what he should've been doing is, like, started a Patreon, you know, Instagram, up to s-
Guest: OnlyFans.
Jessica: The, yeah, I was gonna, like, I just teed that up for you.
Dave Morin: So it's the Conan O'Brien, right? Pull a Conan O'Brien.
Jessica: So I don't know. Scott Pelley YouTube.
Guest: Yeah, he doesn't, but the problem is that I don't think any of those people... I mean, I guess this is good. YouTube, basically everyone subscribes to it except for 100-year-olds, so this is a big growth area for YouTube- ... to get him to do something for them. He could bring them dozens of new accounts.
Jessica: I think Netflix is gonna play. Anyway, the other three correspondents, have you guys heard of Lesley Stahl? This is, like, a pop quiz.
Dave Morin: Yeah, of course.
Jessica: This is so fun.
Sam Lessin: No. What do you mean, of course?
Jessica: Okay, she's still there.
Dave Morin: I know Lesley Stahl.
Sam Lessin: What? Okay.
Dave Morin: How do you not know Lesley Stahl? She's, like, one of the most famous 60 Minutes interviewers of all time.
Guest: She's 84.
Sam Lessin: Because she's 84, Dave.
Jessica: That's old.
Dave Morin: Guys, she's been doing this our entire lives, like-
Jessica: Look, it's obvious why this program needs to change. Like, no one is sitting here being like, "It doesn't need to change."
Guest: Lesley Stahl Official is validated on Instagram and has 1,900 followers.
Jessica: Oh, no, Lesley. Okay, Barry, you're, and Nick, we've t- we've outlined your next week plan. Get your correspondents Instagram, Instagram followerships.
Dave Morin: Yeah, I mean, isn't that the... But Jess, for, for real though, isn't that the only route to growth for 60 Minutes? Like, 60 Minutes is not gonna grow beyond its 9 million.
Guest: No, those people are dying real fast.
Sam Lessin: Right, yeah.
Dave Morin: The only route to growth is through new media channels, right?
Jessica: I don't think there's strong growth ahead for 60 Minutes. I don't, I don't think that would be your, like, core strategy.
Dave Morin: It is a big brand out there in people's minds. You can turn it into a lot of different things, right?
Sam Lessin: That's what Nick Bilton's doing.
Guest: I think the answer is 60 Seconds or even Six- Six Seconds. If they did Six Seconds by 60 Minutes, I might watch that.
Jessica: I think 60 Seconds.
Dave Morin: You know, I didn't know this until today, but I'm optimistic on Nick Bilton with the 60 Minutes brand.
Sam Lessin: Okay, I'm pessimistic. I'm a less on 60 Minutes.
Guest: Guys, what's amazing is these guys are paid so much money for what they do. Like, what does Nick Bilton make? It was all public. It's insane.
Jessica: I gave you guys the abridged version, you're welcome, but Nick's hiring followed the firing of an executive producer and people on her team, and Nick was paid roughly 80% more at 2.5 million a year than the prior EP. And this is also, and, you know, news is going through cost cutting and all this kinda stuff.
Dave Morin: That's, like, more, higher than venture capital salaries.
Guest: Yeah, there's no carry.
Sam Lessin: Yeah. Depends if you're good at your job.
Jessica: I don't know. I'm wish- To be clear, I'm wishing everyone well, but I think there have been so many just sort of fouls and missteps, and I, it just sounds like a very messy situation. And I, and then bigger, it's harder to change a legacy brand.
Guest: But you're some old dude. You don't like the new thing. You've made your money. You're probably retiring soon anyway. You have 20,000 Instagram followers. You need to find s- Like, who cares? Like, of course you're gonna do this. This is just, no one's ever heard of this guy until this moment.
Jessica: Okay, a lot of people have heard of him, but I think you're right. I, I understand why he did what he did. I think it also, though, puts the show in turmoil, which probably doesn't help his colleagues and everything. Another fact, so obviously things have to change. Like, the status quo is not gonna grow the show. But the sort of legacy folks like to say, "Well, it's growing 9%, so it's doing okay," but its lead in is the NFL which is growing 11%, so just some facts.
Guest: Guys, look, I can just tell you for a fact that nothing is doing well, that when you go to their website it redirects to cbsnews.com/60minutes-
Dave Morin: Yeah
Guest: ... and there is a fly out popover ad for a grocery store pinned to the bottom of the page. Like, we're not talking about a primo-
Sam Lessin: 'Cause it's an a- a media company, Sam.
Guest: Look at the ad at the bottom. It's ridiculous.
Jessica: So Sam, you're just gonna get a jo- Barry's gonna call you as a digital strategist. You know, what's the NPCs-
Dave Morin: Barry, I'm available. I'm a big fan of Barry's. I'm happy to come. Barry, you need some help, I don't even require $2.2 million a year, but I will- ... and I'll work for you full time.
Jessica: 2.5.
Dave Morin: But I'll, like, you know.
Sam Lessin: He'll be your intern.
Dave Morin: I'll Zoom in for a few things. It'll be worth your time and money. Give me a ring.
Jessica: 60 Minutes on Paramount Plus. Ooh, you can send news tips. Okay. Well, yeah, it's a, it- Give 60 Minutes a website. I think that should be our
Dave Morin: I mean, they literally don't have any domain. Like, they literally redirect their website to CBS News. It's like, clearly they're idiots. So good luck to Nick Bilton.
Jessica: And just to remind people, Paramount, which owns CBS, is in the process of buying CNN, so a greater portion of television news is gonna fall under this team very shortly. So that is another reason.
Dave Morin: CNN at least has its own website.
Jessica: For now. It's gonna be Paramount Plus/CNN.
Sam Lessin: No. Ugh, the worst.
Dave Morin: Didn't they try to launch a premium thing at one point that was a total disaster 'cause they thought people wanted premium news?
Jessica: I think it's Paramount Plus. I think...
Dave Morin: No, there was CNN Plus.
Jessica: Oh, yeah. That was, that, that never even launched. That was canceled before it launched.
Sam Lessin: Are letters over for brands? CNN, NBC. I feel like, I feel like we're e- exiting that era 'cause now it's Peacock, it's Disney Plus, it's Paramount Plus.
Dave Morin: Nah, it'll come back around.
Jessica: TI, gonna make TI a thing. WSJ is still a thing. It's still a thing.
Dave Morin: Nah, TVPN. Like, it, it's very human to just-
Jessica: TVPN/openai./tvpn, yes.
Sam Lessin: No, we've already declared TVBN is not a real thing anymore, ever since the acquisition.
Jessica: So you guys, it turned out to be more interesting to talk about the media than you realize. You've got some business ideas. You got some consulting offers. And before we wrap, we, we've got, um, the World Cup is starting. How's everyone feeling?
Sam Lessin: Uh, meh.
Jessica: I heard-
Dave Morin: I have to pull a Sam today and say goodbye early.
Jessica: Oh.
Sam Lessin: It's been awesome.
Jessica: Before I even got to Toy Story finally.
Sam Lessin: But wait, I'm gonna talk about Toy Story, so, and Taylor-
Jessica: Okay
Sam Lessin: ... so we can talk about that.
Dave Morin: All right.
Sam Lessin: Yeah.
Dave Morin: See you guys.
Jessica: Bye, Dave.
Dave Morin: I gotta go judge-
Guest: Business, Business Insider-
Dave Morin: I gotta go judge a hackathon.
Guest: Business Insider has a story about this Scott Pelley character.
Jessica: Pelley.
Guest: Breaking loyalty of Scott Pelley.
Sam Lessin: Pelley, Sam. Pelley. Okay.
Jessica: Sam, every news outlet except The Information has a story about Scott Pelley 'cause right now that interest-
Dave Morin: Actually, I'm just realizing that if I leave, it's gonna shut it all down, so I don't, I don't think I can leave.
Jessica: Oh.
Guest: Just start the hackathon with us.
Jessica: Okay. Well, well wrap. So Brit, w- uh, turn, Toy Story, then we're done.
Sam Lessin: The first thing I need to talk about is that Disney spent $200 million on this movie. They've probably gotten, like, f- half a billion dollars of earned media through Taylor Swift. And-
Jessica: Yeah, easily, easily
Sam Lessin: ... and she was at the l- the premiere last night. She sang a song. She sang You've Got a Friend in Me. She's has billboards. Like, there's so much happening, and she's getting married in three weeks. I was quite surprised to see her go out so far.
Guest: At Madison Square Garden? Disgusting.
Sam Lessin: TBD. It might be, like, a hoax.
Dave Morin: Nah, Brit's got a good theory on this.
Jessica: Hey, I mean, she could get married in the woods somewhere, but she's still inviting 1,100 people to Madison Square Garden to celebrate her wedding.
Sam Lessin: She needed security, but also I think she's gonna ask people to put on a show for her.
Dave Morin: She's not getting married there. There's no way.
Sam Lessin: Like, she's gonna attend the concert she always wanted.
Dave Morin: I think Brit's right on this.
Jessica: That's what I would do. It's brilliant. I also thought about that.
Guest: I think what she should do, if she invited 1,100 people but it was all of her enemies, if she got them in one place and then did the wedding elsewhere. Like, that would be great. That would give me a lot of respect for her.
Sam Lessin: Well, if you're smart, if you're a smart wedding planner, you're actually telling everyone what the venue is, and then you're gonna call them the day before or the morning of and be like, "Gotcha, it's actually this place." And, and so-
Jessica: Okay, it's clearly some twist. I'm with you.
Sam Lessin: Yeah.
Jessica: There'll be some twist.
Guest: It's a way to have a destination wedding. Like, "Oh, I'm so sorry. I told you it was Madison Garden. It's actually in Kauai. You can't make it, so sorry."
Sam Lessin: No. There, it'll be, like, within, like, an hour or two of New York City, but maybe not the Garden. That's my second theory.
Dave Morin: I think it's multi-day and that...
Guest: But this isn't, like, the Thomas Crown Affair. Like
Sam Lessin: It might be. She is a m- suspicious woman, this mysterious Taylor Swift. She likes Easter eggs. She likes all kinds of things, so.
Dave Morin: Yeah, it's true.
Jessica: But Brit, I will say on the Toy Story, they're getting so... She is also carrying this out to a T. Her narrative is that this has been her favorite movie of all time. She brought the VHS, like, her childhood VHS copy for, like, everyone to sign. So Disney's getting what it paid for because-
Sam Lessin: For sure
Jessica: ... she is promoting the living bejesus out of this. Also, she's going to the Knicks game tonight. Go Knicks.
Sam Lessin: And I like-
Jessica: No, go Spurs.
Sam Lessin: Okay, keep going.
Dave Morin: Go Knicks.
Jessica: Very much go Knicks, but I'm, like, totally-
Sam Lessin: Dave
Jessica: ... one might have thought she would've, like, she's basically doing a press tour for her wedding. Like, you know, she's just doing, like...
Sam Lessin: I know. I thought she would be in hiding right now getting spray tans and, like-
Dave Morin: She has to.
Jessica: Why does she have to? She should be getting spray tans.
Sam Lessin: Yeah, she needs to be mas- getting massages and spray tans. That's what girls do before their weddings.
Dave Morin: It's like that's her life. She's gotta, it's, like, got a whole, gotta be a whole thing.
Jessica: I don't know. I hope, uh, anyway.
Sam Lessin: We'll do another update before the big event. Don't worry, everyone.
Jessica: Okay. From WWDC to Scott Pelley, I hope you dear listeners enjoyed.
Dave Morin: And you guys didn't even have to listen to us talk about Mythos.
Sam Lessin: I know. We did talk about SpaceX, so.
Jessica: The people who work with Anthropic call it Mythos. What do we call it? Mythos? Mythos?
Dave Morin: Whatever. Fable. It's all for me, not for thee, right? Like, that's the story over there.
Guest: Ooh.
Jessica: Oh, my.
Sam Lessin: Deep cut, Dave. Deep cut.
Guest: I keep, I kept asking Claude to update itself to Mythos, and it's like, "I'm unaware of this." I'm like, "Fuck you," and moved on.
Jessica: I love the meme Sam sent me one which is, like, normal situation translated to how Claude speaks. Like, husband and wife talking about dishes through Claude. Like, "You're right, I did make that mistake. I'll try harder." It's so good.
Sam Lessin: Oh, I love that. I sent that to Dave. By the way, last theory. I think people are gonna start talking like AI.
Dave Morin: They already are.
Sam Lessin: I'm gonna, like, lead us out to the outro. Hey, listeners. I'm genuinely really excited you listened to this real talk amongst the four of us today, and what else could I say that's very AI?
Dave Morin: No, you'd say...
Jessica: Any feedback? W- want me to suggest five more podcasts to listen to?
Sam Lessin: Quietly in the background, I know that you were laughing while we were being ridiculous at the end of this show.
Jessica: Okay, I don't think we nailed that, but you get the point.
Sam Lessin: My honest take is that maybe next week we should not end like this.
Guest: How are we ending?
Jessica: You know, the, uh... We're ending by saying farewell.
Dave Morin: That's just her honest take.
Jessica: Enjoy your weekend. Go Knicks, and we'll see you back here next week for another episode of More or Less. Bye.
Sam Lessin: Go Spurs go. Bye. If you enjoyed this show, please leave us a virtual high five by rating it and reviewing it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Find more information about each episode in the show notes, and follow us on social media by searching for @moreorless, @davemorin, @lesson, @jlesson, and as for me, I'm @brit. See you guys next time.