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
September 8, 2025 • 50 mins
In her latest book, We the People, the historian, New Yorker staff writer, and Harvard University professor Jill Lepore turns her attention to the history of the U.S. Constitution. Specifically, she focuses on all the ways our government’s foundational text has changed throughout its nearly 250 year history. Lepore calls Article V, which lays out the Constitution’s amendment mechanism, by far its most “radical innovation.” But she ...
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September 4, 2025 • 62 mins
While media pioneer John Malone may not be a household name, he’s had a hand in shaping how all of us watch TV. Malone built Denver-based Tele-Communications Inc. into the largest cable company in the country, and then carved out Liberty Media from TCI. Liberty, along with various spinoff companies, have owned controlling stakes in companies like Discovery, SiriusXM, the Atlanta Braves, and Formula 1. Now, at 84, Malone has a new b...
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September 1, 2025 • 68 mins
Happy Labor Day! Today, we’re bringing you a special episode from our friends at Hacks on Tap. This one is hosted by David Axelrod and John Heilemann, and they’re joined by Rahm Emanuel, the former White House chief of staff, mayor of Chicago and ambassador to Japan.
The trio discusses President Trump’s threats to deploy the National Guard to Chicago, the FBI’s investigation into former National Security Advisor John Bolton, the ...
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August 28, 2025 • 58 mins
Joy Reid was an early social media adopter — which didn’t always go over well with her former bosses at MSNBC. But after her primetime show, The ReidOut, was canceled as part of MSNBC’s shakeup, this past February, Reid quickly used social media platforms to successfully pivot to independent media.
Kara and Reid discuss the evolving landscape of cable news, how her Substack, "Joy's House", and her YouTube channel, "The Joy Reid S...
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August 25, 2025 • 59 mins
How do artists hold the powerful to account? Graphic novelist Alison Bechdel and editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes have been grappling with that question for decades, in their own very different ways.
Bechdel is the creator of the seminal comic strip, “Dykes to Watch out For,” which she self-syndicated for 25 years. She’s also the author and illustrator of four graphic novels, including “Fun Home,” which was adapted into a five-...
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August 21, 2025 • 56 mins
Tariffs are up, but inflation is still holding steady. Job numbers are down, but the stock market is booming. Meanwhile, President Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and he’s pushing Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to cut interest rates (he’s also calling for Fed governor Lisa Cook to resign, but that began after our taping).
MSNBC economic analyst Steven Rattner joins Kara to break down the contradictory...
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August 18, 2025 • 50 mins
As federal troops patrol the capital and masked men whisk away immigrants in unmarked cars, it’s reasonable to ask: is President Trump a fascist? According to Jason Stanley, the answer is a resounding yes.
Stanley is a philosopher and the author of seven books, including How Propaganda Works, How Fascism Works, and Erasing History. He’ll be teaching at the University of Toronto this fall, after leaving Yale and the United States...
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August 14, 2025 • 59 mins
Are boys and men in crisis? Kara tackles the "male malaise" head-on with Richard Reeves, founding president of the American Institute for Boys and Men and author of "Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male is Struggling, Why it Matters and What to Do About It."
Kara and Richard explore the challenges they face and their implications for society at large. Those challenges include the political vacuum allowing right-wing voices to dom...
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August 11, 2025 • 49 mins
More than 25 years after his tragic death, John F. Kennedy Jr. remains one of the most captivating figures in American public life. He was handsome, charming, and born into political royalty — and when he died in a plane crash in 1999, he was fighting to save George, his glossy political magazine, and weighing a run for New York governor.
Ryan Murphy is producing American Love Story, a new series about John and his wife Carolyn ...
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August 7, 2025 • 58 mins
According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, in 2022, more than one in three U.S. adolescents between the ages of 18 and 25 had some form of mental health disorder, including anxiety and depression. There’s also a loneliness epidemic: Teens and adults are more connected than ever, yet, somehow, more alone.
Kara and three panelists explore how much blame should be placed on technology like smartphone...
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August 4, 2025 • 54 mins
Democrats have abandoned the working class, according to former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, leading working people to fall for President Trump’s hollow and hateful cultural populism. But he argues that an economic populist message that exposes how corporations and wealthy people abuse their power could turn the tide.
Kara and Reich discuss how that would work in practice, why Democrats have repeatedly sided with Wall Street, h...
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July 31, 2025 • 60 mins
Legacy media isn’t dead, but journalists are leaving traditional outlets in swarms to launch their own newsletters, podcasts and social media ventures, and they may be forcing a reboot. As one of the early media entrepreneurs (and a trusted advisor to many of those who aspire to follow in her footsteps), Kara sits down to discuss the current landscape with Oliver Darcy, founder of the “must-read” media newsletter “Status”; Katie Dr...
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July 28, 2025 • 55 mins
Ever since Trump was re-elected in 2024, his MAGA base has been eagerly awaiting the release of the Epstein files. So it came as a shock when, in July, a Justice Department memo said they had reviewed the matter and determined that there was “no basis to revisit the disclosure of those materials,” that the rumored “client list” did not exist, and that there was no evidence Epstein “blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his a...
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July 24, 2025 • 52 mins
What happens when artificial intelligence collides with family, morality and the need for justice? Author and University of Virginia professor Bruce Holsinger joins Kara to talk about his new novel, Culpability, a family drama that examines how AI is reshaping our lives and our sense of accountability.
Who is responsible when AI technology causes harm? How do we define culpability in the age of algorithms? And how is generative A...
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July 21, 2025 • 55 mins
Social media algorithms are leading to the creation of new words, new accents, and even new identities. And while using the apps may seem like a fun, trivial way to waste time, they’re actually having a profound impact on how we communicate — and on our our democracy.
To find out more, Kara talks to Adam Aleksic, a 24-year-old Harvard-educated linguist and social media influencer, and the author of Algospeak: How Social Media Is...
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July 17, 2025 • 57 mins
“Not my type” is what President Donald Trump said about writer and former advice columnist E. Jean Carroll after she accused him of sexually assaulting her in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman. Despite his denials, in 2023, a jury found Trump liable for assault and defamation and awarded Carroll $5 million. After he continued to defame her — leading his supporters to launch an avalanche of threats against her — a second jury in 2...
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July 14, 2025 • 49 mins
How skeptical should we be about the bill of goods (often marketed as needs) sold to us by Silicon Valley? Very, says Adam Becker, an astrophysicist and author of the new book, More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity. From colonizing Mars to building god-like AIs, Becker argues that the fantasies propagated by tech billionaires like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, S...
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July 10, 2025 • 55 mins
Rep. Robert Garcia was recently elected as the ranking member of the powerful House Oversight Committee by his fellow House Democrats. He won a top job that usually goes to a senior lawmaker who has spent many years (sometimes decades) in line, dutifully waiting for a turn. And his win might be a sign that the unofficial seniority system of congress is eroding under the weight of young Democrats itching for a bigger seat at the tab...
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July 7, 2025 • 53 mins
Despite the chaos of January 6th, 34 felony convictions, and his party’s underperformance in the 2022 midterms, Donald J. Trump is once again president.
How did he defy political gravity to win again? Why did former President Joe Biden run despite overwhelming evidence that voters didn’t want him to? Was there a coverup to conceal his decline, as Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s book, “Original Sin” alleges? Why did former Vice ...
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July 3, 2025 • 58 mins
President Trump and other Republicans keep throwing around the C-word — Communist — to smear anyone slightly progressive, including Zohran Mamdani, New York City’s new Democratic mayoral candidate. But right-wing fearmongering isn’t the only reason it feels like McCarthyism is on the rise again.
So, just in time for the 4th of July, Kara speaks to New York Times reporter and author Clay Risen about his latest book, Red Scare: Bla...
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