Episodes
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Kara takes the stage with Laurene Powell Jobs at Sixth & I in Washington D.C. to talk about Kara’s recent memoir, Burn Book: A Tech Love Story. In this bonus episode of On, Powell Jobs interviews Swisher about her life as a tech reporter, the incredible influence of tech CEOs, the need for regulation, AI and the best devices of all time.
This episode was originally taped on February 29, 2024 and has been edited for clarity and length. You can find the full version of their conversation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrSy8XJgjjE
Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find Kara on Instagram/Threads as @karaswisher
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Kara interviews Mira Murati, Chief Technology Officer at OpenAI, and one of the most powerful people in tech. Murati has helped the company skyrocket to the forefront of the generative AI boom, and Apple’s recent announcement that it will soon put ChatGPT in its iPhones, iPads and laptops will only help increase their reach.
But OpenAI's rapid ascent has included its fair share of growing pains. There was “the blip,” as company insiders refer to the brief ousting of Sam Altman as CEO. (Murati became CEO for two days.) There have also been high-profile departures, an open letter accusing the company of putting product over safety, questions about highly restrictive NDAs, and even controversy over whether the company had stolen Scarlett Johansson's voice. On top of that, many fear that generative AI tools, like ChatGPT, will be used to fuel disinformation during the upcoming presidential election. Kara and Murati talk about all this, and more.
This interview was recorded live at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center in Washington, DC as part of their new Discovery Series.
Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find Kara on Instagram/Threads as @karaswisher
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Episodes manquant?
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Abortion will be a key issue in the election this fall and it's also the focus of two Supreme Court rulings expected later this month. This week, Kara speaks with Cecile Richards, activist and former President of Planned Parenthood, about the fight for reproductive rights in the post-Roe era, where abortion fits into the electoral landscape, the potential outcomes of the two SCOTUS rulings, and how technology is enhancing access to abortion.
On a more personal note, Cecile also talks about her recent brain cancer diagnosis and how it’s impacted her work as a lifelong activist.
Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find Kara on Instagram/Threads as @karaswisher
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Kara sits down to talk with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The social media-savvy congresswoman from the Bronx is a member of the bipartisan Task Force on Artificial Intelligence, and she recently introduced a bill to combat nonconsensual deepfake pornography.
Kara and AOC discuss the bill, and her opposition to the TikTok ban, along with her take on the overall tech landscape. They also dive into her recent back-and-forth with Marjorie Taylor Greene, her relationship with the Left, Trump vs. Biden and Gaza.
Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find Kara on Instagram/Threads as @karaswisher
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Broad City co-creator Ilana Glazer’s new friendship flick Babes is a no-holds-barred comedy about pregnancy, parenthood and the losses that come with adulthood. Kara talks with Ilana about why women’s bodies are considered “raunchy,” whether YouTube is still a good launch pad for breakout comedians, and how she is rallying Gen Z and Millennial voters to “microdose democracy” through her political non-profit Generator Collective. Plus: why, as a Jewish American, she’s calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find Kara on Instagram/Threads as @karaswisher
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When it comes to political comedy, Bill Maher is practically an institution — he’s been hosting a late-night political talk show since 1993 (with a brief hiatus in 2002-03, after Politically Incorrect was canceled following a 9/11 comment). And now the host of Real Time with Bill Maher has a new book out: What This Comedian Said Will Shock You. Kara sat with Bill in his “den of iniquity” to discuss his childhood, politics, the war in Gaza, and, of course, cancel culture.
Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find Kara on Instagram/Threads as @karaswisher
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Today, we’re sharing Kara’s recent appearance on Possible, a podcast hosted by Aria Finger and Reid Hoffman from Wonder Media Network. We’ll be back with a new episode of On with Kara Swisher on Thursday, May 30th.
You can follow the Possible podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/possible/id1677184070
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Tesla is bleeding execs, and it appears to be reaching a crisis point; over at Twitter/X, new reporting shows that Elon uses the platform to cozy up to right-wing leaders around the world and then presses them to enact policies that benefit to his companies; and while SpaceX continues to dominate in space, serious questions remain about the Pentagon’s reliance on the mercurial industrialist with a seeming soft spot for Putin and Xi. So it’s time to gather three of the best reporters covering Musk and get their take on all things Elon.
Kirsten Grind recently joined The New York Times as a tech investigations reporter. Previously, she was at The Wall Street Journal, where she reported on Elon’s drug use and the shockingly acquiescent Tesla board. Tim Higgins is the author of Power Play, Tesla, Elon Musk, and the Bet of the Century, and he writes a weekly column at The Wall Street Journal that is mostly about Elon Musk. And Becky Peterson covers Tesla, SpaceX, and all things Elon at The Information, where she consistently publishes scoops on the inner workings of Elon’s companies.
Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find Kara on Instagram/Threads as @karaswisher
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New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has been reporting on protests, wars and conflicts for more than 40 years, and he’s used his platform to highlight human rights issues at home and abroad. But despite being a proponent of "ethical journalism", he flinches at being called an “activist”. Kara talks to Nick about the swashbuckling adventures detailed in his new memoir, Chasing Hope: A Reporter’s Life, his take on the situation in Gaza and the student protests against the war, and why he’s more hopeful than cynical about the state of the world – even with Trump back on the ballot.
This interview was taped on May 14, 2024.
Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find Kara on Threads/Instagram @karaswisher
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David Ignatius, a foreign affairs columnist for The Washington Post and the author of twelve novels, is also a noted expert on Middle East politics, one of the preeminent national security writers in the country, and perhaps, most importantly — the person who first assigned Kara Swisher to cover tech news.
Kara talks to her old boss about his new spy thriller, The Phantom Orbit, the upcoming presidential election, the war in Gaza, and the war in Ukraine.
Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find Kara on Threads/Instagram @karaswisher
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To savvy tech consumers, Walt Mossberg and Marques Brownlee, aka MKBHD, need no introduction. Before he retired in 2017, Walt was the undisputed dean of tech reviewers. As Senator Maria Cantwell, a recent guest and former tech executive put it, “all our product reviews lived or died by Walt Mossberg.”
MKBHD began reviewing tech products on YouTube, as a high schooler, and he now has more than 18 million subscribers to his channel. He has become this generation’s Walt Mossberg, and as Jimmy Donaldson/MrBeast, the king of YouTube, put it, “you’re the video producer that decides what tech everyone in America buys.”
Yet, somehow, the titans of tech reviews had never met before. Kara rights this wrong, and she, Mossberg, and Brownlee discuss the art, philosophy and ethics of reviewing tech, as well as the Tesla Cybertruck, Apple Vision Pro, AI-in-a-box and Taylor Swift.
Click here to listen to Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast.
Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find Kara on Instagram/Threads as @karaswisher
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Author Anne Lamott has penned novels, but is most famous for her confessional memoirs about sobriety, raising her son as a single mother (Operating Instructions), being a liberal Christian and writing (Bird By Bird). Kara and Anne talk about her 20th book, Somehow: Thoughts on Love, why she thinks love is like Wi-Fi, how she dealt with nearly being canceled over a tweet, how to practice radical self-acceptance, and finding forgiveness — even for Donald Trump.
Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find Kara on Threads/Instagram @karaswisher
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Thirty-one years after founding Chipotle, Steve Ells is back with what he hopes will be another fast-casual dining revolution: the highly-automated, plant-based food chain, Kernel. Ells says that streamlining and automation will allow him to pay workers well above minimum wage and give them more benefits – all while reducing labor costs. But don’t call it a robot restaurant! Kara and Ells discuss the mechanics and philosophy underpinning Kernel’s concept and the downstream effects of integrating tech into our food.
Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find Kara on Threads/Instagram @karaswisher
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In her latest play, Sally & Tom, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks tackles what is, arguably, one of the most complicated and personal chapters in American history: the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, the enslaved woman who gave birth to at least six of his children.
Kara and Parks discuss the play in the context of her past work, as well as our nation's trend of revising history to sand down its rough edges, and why wrestling with our nation’s past is a sign of love.
Sally & Tom is now playing at the Public Theater. You can buy tickets at: https://publictheater.org/productions/season/2324/sally--tom/
Correction: Suzan-Lori Parks' Plays for the Plague Year begins in March 2020. In a previous version of this episode, we said it began in March 2022.
Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find Kara on Threads/Instagram as @karaswisher
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When Kara first met Senator Maria Cantwell in the 90s, she was a tech executive at an early player in the streaming media industry called RealNetworks. Now, the Democrat from Washington is the chair of the powerful Senate Commerce Committee, and she recently released a draft of the American Privacy Rights Act. For the first time in a long time, it looks like a tech privacy bill might have a decent shot at actually becoming law.
Senator Cantwell joins the podcast to discuss her bill, her approach to tech legislation, and the biggest (and arguably most controversial) tech bill in recent history: the TikTok divestment bill.
Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find Kara on Instagram/Threads as @karaswisher
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Kara discusses the “pacing threat” that is China – from TikTok to cyberattacks to semiconductors and Taiwan – with two cybersecurity experts: Dimitri Alperovitch, co-founder and former CTO of CrowdStrike and author of the new book World on the Brink: How America Can Beat China in the Race for the 21st Century, and Chris Krebs, Chief Intelligence Officer at SentinelOne and former Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency under President Trump (until he was fired in a tweet for batting down Trump’s election lies).
The episode features an expert question from a previous On guest: former Congressman Mike Gallagher, the Republican from Wisconsin who chaired the Select Committee on the CCP. If you like this episode, make sure you go back to listen to that conversation as well.
This conversation was taped live at American University on April 19, 2024.
Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find Kara on Instagram/Threads as @karaswisher
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Despite a recent uptick, President Biden’s approval rating and his poll numbers against Donald Trump are far from stellar. And with inflation remaining stubbornly high and gas prices moving up, Biden and his party seem eager to focus voters on abortion rights — and Republicans in Arizona and Florida have given him plenty of material to work with.
To understand how the abortion issue might play out in November — and how the Dobbs decision is already affecting millions of people across the country, even in states without bans — we turn to three experts: Shefali Luthra covers abortion for The 19th, and her book, “Undue Burden, Life and Death Decisions in Post Roe America,” comes out in May; Sarah McCammon is a national political correspondent for NPR and the co-host of the NPR Politics Podcast. Her book, “Exvangelicals: Loving, Living and Leaving the White Evangelical Church,” came out in March; and Mary Jo Pitzl is a senior state government reporter for the Arizona Republic who’s been reporting in Arizona for decades. She’s also the host of The Gaggle, an Arizona politics podcast.
Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find Kara on Instagram/Threads as @karaswisher
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Is Gen Z’s mental health in decline because their “phone-based childhood” has flooded them with anxiety and ruined their sleep? Or is there a more complex mix of factors at play? Jonathan Haidt makes his case for the former explanation in his latest book, The Anxious Generation.
While many people intuitively agree with his argument that phones and social media are ruining kids, some researchers are accusing Haidt of coming up with a grand overarching theory that isn’t supported by the data. Kara brings the moral psychologist and NYU professor onto the podcast to discuss his ideas, the criticism he’s gotten, and his proposed solutions to the problem.
Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find Kara on Instagram/Threads as @karaswisher
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Yahoo, the one-time "oracle of the internet", has had many iterations in its 30 year history - and private equity is betting that Yahoo CEO and digital media veteran Jim Lanzone can bring back its relevance. Kara has been covering Yahoo since its inception and has known Lanzone - who has had leadership stints at Ask.com, CBS and Tinder - almost as long. They discuss Jim's vision for the new Yahoo, what’s going on with search, how he’s integrating AI, and whether there could be another Yahoo merger or IPO on the horizon.
Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find us on social media. We’re on Instagram/Threads as @karaswisher
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“Flood the zone with shit.” It’s a zinger and a strategic imperative, from the oh-so-eloquent Steve Bannon, being expertly executed by Donald Trump and the MAGA-fied GOP.
To help us make sense of what our information morass means for the 2024 election, we’re joined by three political disinformation experts: Nina Jankowicz, a disinformation researcher, the former executive director of the Disinformation Governance Board at the Department of Homeland Security, and the author of "How To Lose the Information War"; Sasha Issenberg, a journalist and the author of five books, most recently, “The Lie Detectives”; and Barabara McQuade, a former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan who teaches law at the University Michigan and recently authored “Attacks from Within.”
Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find us on social media. We’re on Instagram/Threads as @karaswisher and @nayeemaraza
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