On with Kara Swisher
It's on. Twice a week, award-winning journalist Kara Swisher gets to the heart of the story through no-holds-barred interviews with power players across business, tech, media, politics and beyond. So why do her guests show up? “Smart people,” says Kara, “like difficult questions.”
Mondays and Thursdays from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Episodes (51)
Trump’s Attacks on the Press and Freedom of Expression
President Donald Trump has always bashed the press. But his attacks are no longer just rhetorical — he’s using lawsuits to intimidate the news media, and he’s inspired a conservative legal movement to...
Michelle Buteau on Comedy, Community and Calling Out Dave Chappelle
Comedian Michelle Buteau is a true mutli-hyphenate — actor, standup comic, TV host, podcaster, and executive producer — and she wouldn’t have it any other way. Kara spoke to Buteau about the season 2...
Graydon Carter on Vanity Fair, Editing & a Short-Fingered Vulgarian Named Trump
Graydon Carter is the co-founder of Spy Magazine and Air Mail, and for 25 years, he was the editor of Vanity Fair. His memoir, When The Going Was Good, chronicles a time when the going was extremely...
Fired Up: FTC Commissioners Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Slaughter Say They’ll Fight Trump
President Trump fired Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Slaughter, the two Democratic commissioners at the Federal Trade Commission, last week, sending shock waves through political and business circles. The...
Is America Ready for a Full-Blown Cyberwar? with Nicole Perlroth, Michael Schmidt & Lt. Col. Vindman
Everything, everywhere, all at once — but not the movie. This is how cybersecurity experts describe a scenario where a foreign adversary shuts off critical infrastructure, like oil pipelines, water...
Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson: Less Obstruction, More Government
Scarcity is a policy choice — one liberals need to reject and replace with abundance, according to journalists Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson in their new book, Abundance. They say that by building a...
Chelsea Handler on Men, Trump & Money (+ Excellent Parenting Advice)
From spiking her childhood lemonade stand drinks with vodka to launching Netflix's first talk show, Chelsea Handler has always had an entrepreneurial instinct. Case in point: the comedian’s new book,...
How Sen. Elizabeth Warren Is “Fighting Like Hell” Against Trump, Musk & Big Tech Billionaires
How is Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) pushing back against the Trump/Musk “co-presidents” wreaking havoc in Washington?
Speaking to Kara at SXSW, Warren talks about what Musk has to gain by shutting...
Geraldine Brooks On the Art of Grieving and Spanning the Political Divide
On May 27, 2019, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, best-selling author (and Kara’s friend) Tony Horwitz was on book tour for his latest work, Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American...
Can Kara Save The Washington Post From Jeff Bezos?
For months, Kara has been assembling a group of investors to buy The Washington Post. Although it's not actually for sale, an ongoing exodus of journalistic talent, combined with Bezos's decision to...
How Trump's Policies Will Shape the Stock Market with Aswath Damodaran
For years, Wall Street veterans have been saying that a market correction is around the corner, and last week's jitters have only intensified concerns. To find out if the party is ending sooner rather...
Comedian Ronny Chieng on Political Satire, Trolling Algorithms and Cerebral Dick Jokes
Emmy Award-winning comedian and actor Ronny Chieng is a self-described grumpy Malaysian who get to tell it like it is to Americans as aco-host and correspondent on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show....
Rahm Emanuel’s Tough Love Intervention for the Democratic Party
After a three-year stint in Japan, Ambassador Rahm Emanuel is back in the States. And now that he's freed from diplomatic constraints, Rahm is bluntly telling fellow Democrats where they went wrong in...
Oren Cass, Paul Krugman & Mariana Mazzucato on Trumponomics
Last week, President Trump signed a memorandum calling for reciprocal tariffs on countries that charge fees on US exports and called his 25% tariff order on all steel and aluminum imports “the...
Unchecked and Unbalanced: Trump’s Executive Power Moves and the Rule of Law
In just a few weeks, President Trump has flooded the zone with executive orders, which have been met with dozens of lawsuits by state attorneys general, unions and non-profits and complaints by...
Wicked’s Cynthia Erivo on Defying Gravity, the Attack on Diversity and (Maybe) Getting an EGOT
Is it strange that Wicked, a film about a marginalized person discovering her magic and rising up to fight against government oppression, has been a box office success under Trump 2.0 – or does the...
Dissecting Elon Musk’s Hostile Takeover with Anne Applebaum, Eoin Higgins & Ryan Mac
Elon Musk and a band of young DOGE engineers are taking control of key government infrastructure. The scale and speed with which they’re hijacking control of the federal government is shocking, and...
Why Ben Stiller Made Severance (and Doesn’t Care about What Elon Says About Him)
Ben Stiller knew he needed to make Severance the moment he read an early version of the show in a writing sample its creator, Dan Erickson, submitted to his production company. Now, years later,...
Trump’s J6 Pardons, the Militia Movement, and the Border
President Trump’s executive action granting clemency to all of the January 6th insurrectionists – violent and non-violent alike – has been met with concern by legal experts and people who have been...
Social Media’s Original Gatekeepers On Moderation’s Rise And Fall
Since the inception of social media, content moderation has been hotly debated by CEOs, politicians, and, of course, among the gatekeepers themselves: the trust and safety officers. And it’s been a...
From Trump to TikTok: Chris Hayes on the Rise of Attention Capitalism
Attention is our world’s most endangered resource — and whoever commands it, commands power. That’s the thesis of Chris Hayes’s new book, The Sirens’ Call, which chronicles the rise of attention...
On Trump’s “Day One” Promises: Former DHS Sec. Alejandro Mayorkas Talks Immigration, Terrorism, and Cybersecurity Threats
President Donald Trump has vowed to tackle immigration on “day one,” and that includes promising to close the southern border and begin mass deportations almost immediately. So who better to discuss...
Put Your Phone Away: Yondr CEO on the Philosophy Behind Phone-Free Spaces
They’re incredible pieces of technology, they’re unbelievably useful, and we feel lost without them. Nonetheless, smartphones have become the bane of our existence. So Graham Dugoni started Yondr with...
Laverne Cox on Meta, Conservatives and The Battle For Trans Rights
Transgender kids and adults have become a political punching bag for conservatives — but Laverne Cox is stepping into the ring. Kara talks with the transgender activist, Emmy award-winning producer...
Sen. Amy Klobuchar on Regulating Tech, Antitrust, Trump’s Picks & More
Senator Amy Klobuchar has been legislating on Capitol Hill for 18 years. She recently won reelection and is now the number three Democrat in the Senate. And even though Big Tech has blocked her...
Trump Whisperer Maggie Haberman On Trump 2.0
After MAGA rioters attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, 2021, many people thought Donald Trump's days as a political force were over. A notable exception was Maggie Haberman – senior political...
AI Ethics and Safety — a Contradiction in Terms?
We’re kicking off the year with a deep-dive into AI ethics and safety with three AI experts: Dr. Rumman Chowdhury, the CEO and co-founder of Humane Intelligence and the first person to be appointed...
Samantha Bee on Being “Democrat-Celibate” (from The Assignment with Audie Cornish)
Samantha Bee is a comedian, author and former late-night host who hosts the podcast Choice Words with Samantha Bee and co-hosts The Daily Beast Podcast with Joanna Coles. Her weekly late-night comedy...
Sarah Silverman on Being Wrong – and Treating Trolls with Kindness (from ReThinking with Adam Grant)
Happy Holidays! We have a special episode from our friend Adam Grant and the folks at the TED Audio Collective.
Sarah Silverman is a comedian, actor, and writer who doesn’t shy away from saying what...
The Best (and Most Overrated) Books of 2024
Which subpar books actually warrant writing a bad review? Do best sellers usually live up to the hype? And how does our relationship with technology affect the publishing industry? Kara sits down with...
Meta's Chief AI Scientist Yann LeCun Makes the Case for Open Source
Kara sits down for a live interview with Yann LeCun, an “early AI prophet” and the brains behind the largest open-source large language model in the world. The two discuss the potential dangers that...
RFK Jr., Vaccines, Bird Flu & Health Under Trump 2.0
RFK Jr. was on the Hill, on Monday, working to persuade senators he’s capable of running the Department of Health and Human Services and its almost $2 trillion budget. Ever since the news his lawyer...
Chef Matty Matheson of ‘The Bear’ on Culinary Stardom, On and Off The Screen
Canadian chef Matty Matheson has been a force in the culinary world for over two decades, but the non-foodies of the world recognize him as Neil Fak, the goofy, handyman-come-waiter-in-training on the...
Rep. Ro Khanna on Tech, Trump & Elon
Representative Ro Khanna represents the wealthiest congressional district in the country, but he wants to show Democrats how to speak to the working class. And perhaps surprisingly, he’s pretty good...
Marc Benioff on Elon, AI Agents, and the “DOGE”
How will AI agents change the economy and the workforce — and are Americans ready? Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has some thoughts. After a stellar quarter boosted by the customer resource management...
Why Tubi CEO Anjali Sud Says Free Is the Future of Streaming
How does an ad-based streamer compete with subscription-based models like Netflix, Hulu, Max, and all the rest? By charging nothing. At least that’s what Tubi is doing. And despite being seemingly...
Did a Chatbot Cause Her Son’s Death? Megan Garcia v. Character.AI & Google
What if the worst fears around AI come true? For Megan Garcia, that’s already happened. In February, after spending months interacting with chatbots created by Character.AI, her 14-year-old son Sewell...
Nathan Myhrvold: Tech’s Renaissance Man
Nathan Myhrvold likes to challenge conventional wisdom. When the founder and CEO of Intellectual Ventures (and former Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft) isn’t running one of the world’s leading...
Wiser Than Me with Julia Louis-Dreyfus: Billie Jean King
Happy Thanksgiving, On listeners — today, we’re featuring a special episode of Wiser Than Me with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, one of our favorite podcasts! On Wiser Than Me, Julia shares funny, heartfelt...
Leaving X? Where Next? On Bluesky, Threads and the “Fediverse”
Elon Musk’s social media platform X lost more than 280,000 global users the day after the US presidential election. Meanwhile, sites like Threads from Meta and newcomer Bluesky have seen huge surges...
Charlamagne tha God on Trump, Journalism and that Anti-Trans Ad
Lenard McKelvey is a best-selling author, entrepreneur and media mogul, but you probably know him as Charlamagne Tha God: host of The Breakfast Club. It’s an insanely popular and influential radio...
Jon Chu on Wicked, Silicon Valley, and Defying Hollywood’s Gravity
Jon Chu grew up in Silicon Valley, in the shadow of Apple Park. His father, Chef Chu, still runs his eponymous restaurant there, and Jon worshiped Steve Jobs as a kid. As a teen, he used Apple...
Ta-Nehisi Coates On Trump, Palestine and Journalism as a “Contact Sport”
What role will writers play as we head into a second Trump term? Author, journalist and Howard University professor Ta-Nehisi Coates has some thoughts. The man who has been called “one of the most...
Trump’s Second Term: How He Did It & What to Expect
What does a second Trump presidency mean for America? Kara hosts a panel of experts and reporters to reflect on the results of the election and to find out what we can expect going forward. They...
Trump vs Democracy: Two Historians’ Perspectives
President-elect Donald J. Trump has won a resounding victory against Vice President Kamala Harris, and now, the man who promised political retribution and said he may use the military to go after “the...
The “Elon Election”: What It Means For America and Musk
Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, isn’t on the ballot for the 2024 U.S. election, but he might as well be. Elon has become one of the Trump campaign’s top surrogates, top donors (over $119...
Timothy Snyder and Bill Adair on the War on Truth & The Fight for Freedom
Lying has always been a part of politics, but in recent years, political lies have come to dominate our elections and their outcomes. Even the notion that facts and truths can be objective and shared...
Reid Hoffman on Trump, Elon, Peter Thiel and Lina Khan
Reid Hoffman isn’t just one of the most influential entrepreneurs and investors in Silicon Valley — he’s also one of the most important mega-donors supporting the Democratic party. A member of the...
Seth Meyers on Parenting, Podcasting & Late Night
Has late-night TV passed its peak? Ticket sales for live comedy shows are booming and there’s no shortage of streaming stand-up specials, but the same is hardly true for late-night television. Is it...
Robert Downey Jr., Ayad Akhtar and Bartlett Sher on “Truthful Lies” in AI, Art and Politics
“Digital machines are not just remaking stories, they're remaking us.” So says Oscar-winning actor Robert Downey Jr. as the titular character in his Broadway debut, MCNEAL. Kara talks with Downey Jr.,...
Signal’s Meredith Whittaker on Surveillance Capitalism, Text Privacy and AI
What do cybersecurity experts, journalists in foreign conflicts, indicted New York City Mayor Eric Adams and Drake have in common? They all use the Signal messaging app. Signal’s protocol has been the...
About this Podcast
Copyright
2022
Language
en