On with Kara Swisher Vox Media Podcast Network

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 on@voxmedia.com 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 on@voxmedia.com 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 on@voxmedia.com 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 on@voxmedia.com 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 on@voxmedia.com 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 on@voxmedia.com or find Kara on Instagram/Threads as @karaswisher  
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