On with Kara Swisher

Today, after Kara and Nayeema discuss what the Dominion defamation lawsuit might mean for Rupert Murdoch and News Corp, we turn to a fictional media story of Logan Roy and HBO’s Succession. Our guests are Brian Cox, series creator Jesse Armstrong and director Mark Mylod. SPOILER ALERT: there are lots of spoilers in this episode, starting at about 10 mins in so go watch the show first.  Questions?...

WeightWatchers recently announced a $132 million deal to acquire telehealth company Sequence and enter the prescription drug space (think: GLP-1 drugs like Wegovy and Ozempic). It begs the question: why is a company built on personal accountability facilitating medical interventions? We ask our guest, WeightWatchers CEO Sima Sistani. Before and after the interview, Nayeema and Kara discuss their o...

After a brief discussion about the impact of social media on the mental health of teenage girls, Kara and Nayeema turn to today’s guest: Brooke Shields. She became a teenage superstar through her roles in “Pretty Baby” and “Blue Lagoon” as well as the famous Calvin Klein ads (“Do you want to know what comes in between me and my Calvins? Nothing.”). In her new Hulu documentary, “Pretty Baby: Brooke...

As she pens her memoir, Kara’s been thinking about legacy, but on this episode we reflect on the legacy of another powerhouse reporter: Audie Cornish. After hosting NPR’s flagship “All Things Considered” for a decade, Audie Cornish took a risk and left for the greener pastures of CNN+ — only to see that venture get unceremoniously squashed by CNN’s new CEO less than a month after it launched. Yet...

After a quick discussion of last week’s TikTok testimony, Kara and Nayeema turn to today’s guest: Congresswoman Katie Porter. The California Democrat has gone viral for her whiteboard-wielding grilling of CEOs like Jamie Dimon and Mark Zuckerberg and her subtle art of not giving a f*ck during the recent marathon that was Kevin McCarthy’s speaker vote. But today, Kara’s the one doing the grilling (...

Lawrence Wright has produced some of the most seminal pieces of journalism on scientology, terrorism and – now – the Silicon Valley invasion of his hometown: Austin, Texas. Kara and Larry taped this interview in front of a live (outdoor) audience in Austin. They talk about recent transplants – from Elon Musk to Joe Rogan and Emma Stone – and the city’s transition from a quirky capital to a growing...

We’re on the cusp of an artificial intelligence arms race that has venture capitalists drooling, regulators petrified and competitors from Google to Microsoft to Elon Musk racing to get their products out the door. Kara talks to Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI and the man who’s led the launches of ChatGPT and GPT-4. They discuss the hallucinations of ChatGPT+, why Open AI moved from an open-source nonpr...

From AI and the recent launch of GPT-4 to behind-the-scenes pressure on Washington to resolve the Silicon Valley Bank crisis, today’s guest is in the thick of it all. Kara tells Nayeema that Reid Hoffman is “one of the good ones.” Kara has known the billionaire Greylock VC Partner since the 90s, when he was fresh off the sale of PayPal and before he co-founded LinkedIn. Today they discuss Hoffman’...

After a quick rundown of Kara’s Twitter feud with SVB-enthusiast David Sacks, we turn to an interview with a former Silicon Valley Bank customer: Kevin Systrom. When you found one of the most successful social media apps at 27, it’s tough to figure out where to go with Act Two. But after leaving Facebook (now Meta) in 2018, Systrom is back with an AI-powered news-reader called Artifact which has b...

Does Kara ever get sick of talking about Elon Musk? That’s a question Nayeema asks today, and they both agree: as exhausting as he can be, Elon is a defining force in business, media and innovation. So today we turn to the titan’s biographer: Walter Isaacson. He’s written the book on everyone from Leonardo da Vinci to Steve Jobs, and is now deep in the Elon Files.  Taped in front of a live audienc...

Today, Kara sits down with Jamie Lee Curtis, who’s nominated for her first Oscar for “Everything Everywhere All at Once”, and Donna Langley, the Universal Film Studio head who greenlit “Cocaine Bear.” Taped in front of a live audience at the Upfront Summit, the trio talks about why the revival of the “Halloween” series became such a box office hit – and how it’s led to a whole new chapter in Curti...

Kara has interviewed Salesforce CEO and co-founder Marc Benioff many times but he says she'd never been as prepared to grill him as she was this time. It’s a showdown between a savvy CEO who is deft at turning the tables…and an interviewer who is unafraid to pin him down. Taped in front of a live audience at the Upfront Summit, the two tackle whether Marc will be able to keep up the victory lap of...

Is AI going to fall in love with you? Write your term papers? Or help you plan a trip to Belize? The answer to all three is: maybe. How well it does any of those things remains to be seen, but Kara tells Nayeema the fast-developing AI will be more significant than almost anything else she's covered in tech. To understand the it, we’re joined by Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice president and consumer ch...

A year after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and weeks after the presence of a Chinese spy balloon led U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to put off his Beijing visit, Kara and Nayeema talk about where the U.S. stands in the world and whether President Biden has the global coalition and momentum he claims. These are great questions for our guest today, Richard Haass. The foreign policy expert helm...

As Justice Kagan has asked, “Every other industry has to internalize the costs of its conduct. Why is it that the tech industry gets a pass?” Yet she and the other 8 Supreme Court Justices seemed wary this week as they heard oral arguments in two cases that could upend the Section 230 immunity that social media companies enjoy, Gonzalez v. Google and Twitter v. Taamneh. Today, we hear from three e...

AI isn’t just changing search. It’s changing national security, too. Today, Kara talks to Trae’ Stephens, the co-founder and Executive Chairman of Anduril, about how the growing defense tech industry is using the power of AI and the speed of Silicon Valley to challenge “beltway bandits” like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon. They discuss drones in Ukraine, the ethics of “smart walls” along the US-Mexi...

Congressman Ken Buck is a Republican from Colorado who’s decided to take on “Big Tech.” He talks about his proposed TikTok ban, the uphill battle for antitrust legislation and why he’s defending Elon’s “free speech” push. Thoughts? Questions? Email us on@voxmedia.com or find us on Twitter (if you can in this new, Elon-centric algorithm) @karaswisher and @nayeema Learn more about your ad choices. V...

After Kara and Nayeema debrief the latest Elon drama (the Congressional hearings in which conservatives failed to prove they’d been “censored” on Twitter), we dive into our interview with Representative Ruben Gallego. The Arizona congressman is the only contender so far in the 2024 race for Kyrsten Sinema’s coveted U.S. Senate seat … though he tells Kara he’d welcome the opportunity to face “Queen...

We discuss Biden's State of the Union speech — and the state of the Democratic party — with three of the party's savviest strategists: Bernie Sanders’s 2020 campaign manager Faiz Shakir, former White House Communications Director (and host of The Circus) Jennifer Palmieri, and Tom Bonier, the CEO of TargetSmart.  On the agenda: how Marjorie Taylor Greene's State of the Union heckling made Presiden...

From Donald Trump to George Floyd and Tyre Nichols, the last five years have changed our national conversation about public safety and policing. That’s particularly true in San Francisco, where progressive prosecutor Chesa Boudin lost his seat in a heated recall election last year, and today’s guest — SF District Attorney Brooke Jenkins — stepped into the powerful role. In the months since she ass...

Today, Nayeema sits down with dating industry veteran Lakshmi Rengarajan and journalist Sangeeta Singh-Kurtz before we play you an episode of the podcast they host — Land of the Giants: Dating Games. In conversation, the three explore the business of online dating, the incentive apps have to keep users swiping and the power the people who run and build these dating services have in shaping our lov...

When Meta announced Donald Trump would be allowed back on Facebook and Instagram, it wasn’t the company’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg who made the decision. He punted. So why is an executive who holds such control hiding from the power he has amassed? Kara has some ideas — she’s covered Mark from the jump, seen him sweat through interviews and gotten Mark to say things he probably wishes he hadn’t. So tod...

Rapid-fire layoffs, activist investors at the gate and tumbling stock prices — tech has had a bad year. But Kara tells Nayeema she’s seen it all before and that the industry, if not all its captains, will survive this shake-up, too. In the panel interview, Kara is joined by two other journalists: Jessica Lessin, founder and CEO of The Information, a scoop-laden tech news platform covering Silicon...

In his first extensive interview since he stepped down as the Special Assistant to the President for Technology and Competition Policy on the National Economic Council, Tim Wu shares what he learned in the West Wing. We find out who holds most sway with the President, how Lina Khan undid any perception that there is any antitrust exception for “nice guys,” and get Wu’s predictions on lawsuits agai...

Today, we're sharing an episode of the podcast Intelligence Squared, which provides a forum for balanced debate where people disagree — but talk about it.  It’s Kara Swisher vs. Anthony Scaramucci. And the question is: Is Elon Musk Killing Twitter? Shockingly, Kara argues, "yes." You can find Kara and Nayeema on Twitter at @karaswisher and @nayeema. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastc...