Sure.

When you're a media buyer, and I was a media buyer for the world's largest winery, for American Express, and the world's second-largest bank, Bank of America, and you are somewhat defined by the budget that you bring to the marketplace, and the leverage, and the clout, and frankly, the respect that that brings with it.

And when you give that up, you question how much of the success you had was due to your own skill and intuition and tenacity, and how much was due to the fact that you commanded a large budget and a large set of agency resources whose basic job was to take whatever you said and actually make it a thing.

So I was very blessed in, in those years, and when I gave that up, uh, and you saw me at my very worst, um, I wasn't sure If I would still be relevant.

I wasn't sure if people would be interested in my opinion.

I wasn't certain that, um, I could frankly make a living.

And I remember that dinner, my favorite Mexican restaurant in the city, and I was pathetic.

Right.

So thoughts?

I think at, uh, you know, if I had to summarize Cannes this year, I would say the humans strike back, if you're a Star Wars fan.

Um, you know, last year agents are gonna take my job, agents are gonna take your job, agents are gonna take everybody's job.

It was like declining a Latin verb.

And this year, you know what? I, I think the analogy that I like the best, and I got this from Jay Elton at MasterCard, AI isn't a tool, it's an instrument.

A hammer is a tool.

You pick up a hammer, you know how to use it.

[laughs]

How do you think journalism's changed, and what do you think-

Well, first I wanna make a comment because my favorite news platform is DW News, which is the German public broadcasting system.

It is in perfect English, and they go 10 minutes on a story instead of two minutes and 22 seconds, which you get here.

So broadcast journalism internationally tends to go deeper.

Their segments are more like a 60 Minutes piece than something you might see on CNN.

The real challenge right now are the economics, right? Um, I was talking to the CEO of a major news platform here in the United States, and he told me that right now they can afford to keep three news crews in a war zone.

Uh, at the time, one was in Tehran, one was in Erbil, which is 60 miles inside-

Yeah.