On with Kara Swisher

4.2 (2.2K)
NEWS COMMENTARY
UPDATED SEMIWEEKLY

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.

8 HR. AGO

Charlamagne tha God on Trump, Journalism and that Anti-Trans Ad

Lenard McKelvey is a best-selling author, entrepreneur and media mogul, but you probably know him as Charlamagne Tha God: host of The Breakfast Club. It’s an insanely popular and influential radio program that reaches millions of listeners daily. Charlamagne has been behind the microphone for over a decade, and he's not one for playing by the rules of traditional media. In recent years he’s gotten vocal about the state of politics in the US and interviewed a raft of powerful politicians at the helm including former President Obama, President Biden and Vice President Harris. During the 2024 Presidential race, Charlamagne was an unofficial surrogate for the Harris-Walz campaign, but was arguably more effective as an inadvertent messenger for the Trump campaign’s anti-trans advertising. Much like his approach to hosting, Charlamagne’s world views don’t stay within the lines of our polarized and partisan politics. He’s quick to remark on the faults of both parties and even quicker to call out the liberal media. In this episode, Kara and Charlamagne get into it all: the importance of meeting people where they are, both in politics and in media; why authenticity matters more than accuracy and how Democrats don’t seem to understand that; what “mainstream media” means in 2024 and the role of “good” journalists; how he felt about getting dragged into a hateful ad for President-elect Trump and how he thinks VP Harris should’ve responded; the line between funny and offensive; and, most importantly, how to seek out joy and happiness through it all. Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find us on Instagram and TikTok @onwithkaraswisher Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

1h 4m
3 DAYS AGO

Jon Chu on Wicked, Silicon Valley, and Defying Hollywood’s Gravity

Jon Chu grew up in Silicon Valley, in the shadow of Apple Park. His father, Chef Chu, still runs his eponymous restaurant there, and Jon worshiped Steve Jobs as a kid. As a teen, he used Apple products to learn how to make movies. Now he directs some of the biggest movies in Hollywood, but his relationship with the tech industry is much more complex. Kara and Jon discuss his “new view” trilogy: Crazy Rich Asians, In the Heights, and his latest film, Wicked. They unpack his memoir Viewfinder, and Chu explains how growing up in Silicon Valley shaped his understanding of technology — and how the industry’s switch towards data surveillance has changed his relationship with it as an artist. Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find us on Instagram/TikTok as @onwithkaraswisher Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

1h 5m
NOV 14

Ta-Nehisi Coates On Trump, Palestine and Journalism as a “Contact Sport”

What role will writers play as we head into a second Trump term? Author, journalist and Howard University professor Ta-Nehisi Coates has some thoughts. The man who has been called “one of the most important writers on the subject of America today” came to the fore during the Obama era as one of the preeminent writers on race, among other things, for his 2014 essay “The Case for Reparations” and his book Between the World and Me, an open letter to his son about growing up as a Black man in America. Kara and Ta-Nehisi discuss how the Democrats lost the “rainbow coalition” in the 2024 election, why America’s “special relationship” with Israel compelled him to rally against Palestinian oppression in his latest book The Message, and why he thinks journalists will need to embrace a new and not-so-safe normal during Trump 2.0. Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find us on Instagram and TikTok @onwithkaraswisher Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

1h 5m
NOV 11

Trump’s Second Term: How He Did It & What to Expect

What does a second Trump presidency mean for America? Kara hosts a panel of experts and reporters to reflect on the results of the election and to find out what we can expect going forward. They discuss the issues that mattered most to voters; what Democrats got wrong; the parts of our democracy that are broken beyond repair; the apparent shift in our country’s sense of self; and the role of social media versus traditional media in the digital age. Guests: Kristen Soltis Anderson, a pollster, founding partner of Echelon Insights, author of The Selfie Vote: Where Millennials are Leading America (And How Republicans Can Keep Up) and a CNN political contributor Isaac Arnsdorf, a national political reporter for The Washington Post and author of Finish What We Started: The MAGA Movement’s Ground War to End Democracy. Mike Madrid, co-founder of the Lincoln Project, and author of The Latino Century: How America’s Largest Minority is Transforming Democracy Abby Phillip, anchor of CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find us on Instagram and TikTok @onwithkaraswisher Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

1h 4m
NOV 7

Trump vs Democracy: Two Historians’ Perspectives

President-elect Donald J. Trump has won a resounding victory against Vice President Kamala Harris, and now, the man who promised political retribution and said he may use the military to go after “the enemy within” is headed back to the White House. Only this time, there will be no guardrails — only enablers. In order to understand the threat Trump poses to our democracy, Kara talks to two historians who know a lot about the birth of American democracy and the last time we came close to losing it: Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky and Dr. Timothy Naftali. Chervinsky is a presidential historian and the executive director of the George Washington Presidential Library. Her newest book is Making the Presidency, John Adams and the Precedents that Forged the Republic. Naftali is a senior research scholar in the Faculty of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and the former director of the federal Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find us on Instagram/TikTok as @onwithkaraswisher Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

59 min
NOV 4

The “Elon Election”: What It Means For America and Musk

Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, isn’t on the ballot for the 2024 U.S. election, but he might as well be. Elon has become one of the Trump campaign’s top surrogates, top donors (over $119 million through the America Pac), and controls a main megaphone for pro-Trump propaganda at X. Kara and three other Musk experts discuss Elon’s outsized impact on the election, why Trump has been referring to him as the “Secretary of Cost-Cutting”, and why Musk & his businesses (X, Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink) stand to gain, no matter who wins. Guests: Tim Higgins, The Wall Street Journal columnist and author of Power Play, Tesla, Elon Musk, and the Bet of the Century Zoë Schiffer, director of business and industry at Wired and author of Extremely Hardcore, Inside Elon Musk's Twitter Eva Dou, The Washington Post Tech Policy Reporter Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find Kara on Threads/Instagram @karaswisher Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

56 min
OCT 31

Timothy Snyder and Bill Adair on the War on Truth & The Fight for Freedom

Lying has always been a part of politics, but in recent years, political lies have come to dominate our elections and their outcomes. Even the notion that facts and truths can be objective and shared across the political divide has been put into question. As we head into a fraught election, Kara speaks with Bill Adair, professor of journalism & public policy at Duke and author of Beyond the Big Lie, and Timothy Snyder, Yale history professor and author of On Freedom, about which party lies more; the role that social media plays in amplifying and spreading falsehoods; why it’s hard to get believers to turn away from the “Big Lie”; and why factuality is a cornerstone of freedom. Plus: Snyder calls The Washington Post’s decision not to endorse a presidential candidate (dictated by owner Jeff Bezos) “anticipatory obedience” to tyranny. Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find Kara on Threads/Instagram @karaswisher Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

1h 5m
OCT 28

Reid Hoffman on Trump, Elon, Peter Thiel and Lina Khan

Reid Hoffman isn’t just one of the most influential entrepreneurs and investors in Silicon Valley — he’s also one of the most important mega-donors supporting the Democratic party. A member of the so-called PayPal Mafia, Hoffman is a VC partner at Greylock Ventures and Microsoft board member who co-founded LinkedIn and InflectionAI and was a founding investor in OpenAI. He is one of the leading voices in tech fighting against former President Donald Trump, and he puts his money where his mouth is — which doesn’t always sit well with progressives, and is even more upsetting to former friends, like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, who have gone full MAGA. In this live interview at the Masters of Scale Summit, hosted by Hoffman in San Francisco, Kara and Reid discuss everything from the upcoming election, and the business community’s response to Trump, to Elon, Peter Thiel, Lina Khan and artificial intelligence. Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find us on Instagram as @onwithkaraswisher Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

38 min

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TRAILER

Coming Soon: On with Kara Swisher

It’s on. Kara Swisher is back, getting to the heart of what makes powerful people tick… by asking the questions that make them squirm. New episodes drop every Monday and Thursday starting September 26. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

09/03/2022

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3 min

4.2

out of 5

2,152 Ratings

Too many ads!

Nov 7

(:)-(:)

Please cut back. I’d listen to more episodes but I have to have my finger constantly hovering over the skip button.
will not listen to the pod cast any longer

4 days ago

arthousecleaner

Your show with Ta- Nehisi Coates was fiction- He knows nothing about Israeli history- Ask your co- host Scott Galloway- I am horrified by the episode- you lost a big fan-
Shame on you

6 days ago

Rainbow Steve 107

I have listened to Kara for many years but the fact that she had Coates on is grounds for an immediate unfollow.
Ta-Nehisi Coates

6 days ago

ThegrandmaD

This interview was one every student, parent, citizen should listen to and talk about. Americans need to READ. The written word is most powerful when from the pen of such writers as Ta-Nehisi. Where can you find the books? Go to a public library…reading is FREE. Your brain was designed for learning and creating.

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.