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
April 28, 2025 • 59 mins
Ed Helms is best known for playing Andy Bernard in The Office and Stu in The Hangover trilogy. But the comedic actor is also the politically engaged, banjo-playing, podcast-hosting, TV series–producing author of a new book titled, SNAFU: The Definitive Guide to History’s Greatest Screwups.
Kara and Ed discuss domestic politics and satire's role during Trump 2.0; government overreach and history’s tendency to repeat itself; his po...
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April 24, 2025 • 59 mins
Philosopher and critical theorist Judith Butler, Distinguished Professor in the Graduate School at UC Berkeley, has been at the forefront of gender theory for 35 years. But while their work Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, which helped establish the idea of gender as a social construct in the 1990s, was lauded by the LGBTQIA+ community for opening the doors to queer theory, they’ve been vilified by those on ...
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April 21, 2025 • 61 mins
President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown has led to a series of legal skirmishes with major constitutional implications. To unpack it all, Kara speaks to three experts:
Caitlin Dickerson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning staff writer for The Atlantic who covers immigration. She is currently writing a book on the impact of deportation on American society.
Maria Hinojosa is the host and executive producer of the Peabody Award-winn...
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April 17, 2025 • 53 mins
Melinda French Gates is a businesswoman and philanthropist, as well as an advocate for women and girls both in the U.S. and abroad. And over the past few years, she’s also become a force in Democratic politics.
Kara and Melinda talk about her new memoir The Next Day, which takes readers through some of the most important transitions in her life, including her very public divorce with Bill Gates and her decision to leave the Gates...
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April 14, 2025 • 60 mins
President Trump's chaotic rollout and partial rollback of tariffs has roiled financial markets and confused many allies, both domestically and internationally. Although he temporarily calmed bond markets by announcing a 90-day pause on his misleadingly labeled "reciprocal tariffs," the uncertainty he created continues. Meanwhile, China has responded to the 145% tariffs on their imported goods by imposing retaliatory tariffs on Amer...
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April 10, 2025 • 65 mins
Emmy-nominated writer, stand-up comic and actor Josh Johnson may be the most prolific comedian on the internet right now. You might recognize him as a regular correspondent on The Daily Show, or maybe you've come across his sharp political critique on TikTok (where he has 2 million followers), or watched one of his longer, philosophical stand-up routines on YouTube (where he has 1.5 million subscribers). Josh is currently touring t...
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April 7, 2025 • 63 mins
Last year, after pressure from activist investors, Jeff Lawson stepped down from his perch as CEO from Twilio, the cloud communications company he co-founded. But he didn’t spend any time twiddling his thumbs — that same spring, he bought the satirical news organization The Onion, and by the end of the year, they’d tried to buy Alex Jones’ Infowars at a bankruptcy auction.
Jeff also stayed busy on the political front, continuing ...
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April 3, 2025 • 57 mins
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 overturn the New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. The landmark Supreme Court decision protects freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and unfortunately, Trump’s attempt to destroy it are part of a larger pattern of tearing away at our...
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March 31, 2025 • 57 mins
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 launch of “Survival of the Thickest,” a Netflix series loosely based on her 2020 memoir, and how she’s using her life stories to push the boundaries of representation. They also talked about Buteau’s 20-year stand up career, how she be...
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March 27, 2025 • 55 mins
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 good for glossy magazines and their star editors. During the golden age of magazines, Vanity Fair combined celebrity profiles with deeply reported journalism to great acclaim, and Carter, arguably, became more famous than many of his ex...
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March 24, 2025 • 57 mins
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 FTC is an independent, bipartisan agency and, as a defender of antitrust and consumer protection laws, one of the most important government watchdogs. FTC commissioners serve seven year terms and, according to a 1935 SCOTUS ruling, can...
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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 networks, ports, and electric grids, all over the country. The terrifying truth is that China has already hacked into our critical infrastructure. They’re “living off the land” and could conceivably attack whenever is most convenient. Wh...
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March 17, 2025 • 64 mins
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 wall of bureaucracy in front of growth, Democrats have created an affordability crisis, hindering their own progressive goals and leading voters to flee blue cities and states. Kara talks to Klein and Thompson about concerns around equi...
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March 13, 2025 • 50 mins
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, “I’ll Have What She’s Having” is her sixth to top the New York Times best-seller list.
Chelsea joined Kara onstage at SXSW to share her juiciest stories from the book (including the joke that made Woody Allen literally spit out his d...
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March 10, 2025 • 66 mins
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 down watchdogs like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and other DOGE antics; why a crypto reserve would be bad for Americans and the cryptocurrency industry; and what Democrats are doing to fight back against this hostile governmen...
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March 6, 2025 • 62 mins
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 Divide, when he died suddenly. He left behind two sons and his wife, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Geraldine Brooks, whose books include March and Horse.
Dealing with Tony’s death, taking time to grieve his passing and remembering their ...
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March 3, 2025 • 89 mins
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 kill an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris days before the 2024 presidential election, made it both plausible that Bezos might entertain a bid and crucial that someone step forward. Now, after watching Bezos remake the opinion ...
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February 27, 2025 • 60 mins
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 than later — and what role Trump’s policies will play — Kara talks to the Dean of Valuation, Aswath Damodaran.
Damodaran teaches corporate finance and valuation at the Stern School of Business at New York University, and he is the a...
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February 24, 2025 • 52 mins
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.
Kara talks to Ronny about creating political satire during Trump 2.0; how his law degree helps him write pithy cerebral jokes, including for his latest (third!) Netflix special, Love to Hate It; his latest acting role playing Fatty Choi...
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February 20, 2025 • 69 mins
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 2024 and what they need now to do to salvage the brand.
Kara and Rahm talk about Elon Musk’s takeover of the federal government; how Democrats should use legal challenges and procedural tactics to block President Trump’s agenda; and...
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