Why Ben Stiller Made 'Severance' (and Doesn’t Care About What Elon Says About Him)

Ben Stiller knew he needed to make Severance the moment he read an early version of the show in a writing sample its creator, Dan Erickson, submitted to his production company. Now, years later, Severance is a hit, reportedly generating $200 million for Apple TV, and Stiller is the series’ executive producer and go-to director responsible for some of its most pivotal episodes. Kara talks to Stiller about the most poignant themes of the show, from its commentary on surveillance and technology to its meditations on trauma and identity. Plus, they chat politics — including Stiller’s reaction to an angry post about him by Elon Musk and his view on making political art now. Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find us on Instagram and TikTok @onwithkaraswisher Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Kara Swisher?

  The M7 is a little, it picks up noise. It's a much better mic, so.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  Okay, how's that?

• 0:05Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, that's good. You're very manly. It's great.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  Okay, good. Good.

• 0:22Kara Swisher?

  Hi, everyone. From New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. Today, I'm talking to actor, director, and producer Ben Stiller, someone I've gotten to know over the past few years and really enjoy talking to. I really enjoy the second season of his hit series Severance, and it's finally arrived after almost three years. I liked the first season, but the second season has really taken it to a new level. This is Apple TV's dystopian workplace comedy thriller about a company that's taken work-life balance to the extreme. In the world of Severance, employees at the company called Lumen can choose to sever their brains into two selves, one for work and one for living. When they clock in at 9:00 a.m., their brain is wiped clean of the outside world, and when they clock out at 5:00 p.m., it's wiped clean

• 1:06Kara Swisher?

  of work. I just love this show. I can't explain why. You have to watch it. It's about a lot of things that are going on today, but it's a lot of things that have gone on for a while, and it's about who you are and the unconscious. And it's also very, very funny, which is the best part of it. Ben is the show's executive producer, and he's directed many of the episodes, so we're going to get into the themes, big ideas, and creative choices that have gone into the series, which is written by a man named Dan Erickson. It's his first outing, and what an impressive outing it is. Severance is also a success for Apple TV. It's reportedly generated $200 million for the streamer. We'll talk about his experience working with the tech giant, get his views on how tech money is impacting Hollywood, and how Trump's return could affect the ability of artists to get their stories made. On that note,

• 1:51Kara Swisher?

  our expert question this week comes from Bloomberg reporter Lucas Shaw, who writes a weekly newsletter called Screen Time about the collision of Hollywood and Silicon Valley, so stick around.

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• 3:39Kara Swisher?

  Ben S., welcome and thanks for being on On.

• 3:42Speaker 01

  Hi Kara S.

• 3:44Kara Swisher?

  Hi Kara S, that's right. That's obviously a Severance reference for people who don't know. This show is about a world in which you can become a different person during working hours. The person is called your innie. And it is you, but your brain wiped of all the details of your outie life. So the innie is you, but not really you. It's without a lot of information or background. I'm just curious, have you ever thought about what your innie would be like?

• 4:07Speaker 01

  You know, recently I've been thinking about it actually, but I think, you know, the innies are more innocent. They're less corrupted by life experience. And so I guess my innie would be like a little bit more... You know, fun-loving, innocent, playful. Though I think I am still playful in certain situations. But I do feel like I'd probably be maybe like a little less sort of like hunched and like stressed.

• 4:36Kara Swisher?

  Well, you know, it's interesting because some people's innies are not like on the show. Like Helly's is quite angry, right? She's instantly angry and her Audi is also angry in a different way.

• 4:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think Helly is, you know, she's rebellious and curious and not a rule follower. And yeah, she's got a lot of, you know, it's like, I don't know if it's necessarily anger as much as, you know, sort of like this questioning of authority and not taking things, you know, at face value and accepting them just because they tell us we should accept them.

• 5:13Kara Swisher?

  Right, so you wonder where that comes from, right? Because a lot of them do, and then they suddenly get rebellious pretty quickly, all of them by reading books or going down the hall to see a potential boyfriend or whatever. They lose their, they become outies pretty quickly, I would say.

• 5:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, we looked at it sort of like the first season was these, these outies were sort of, you know, kids, you know, they're pretty young, they're only like two, Mark's only probably like two years old and Irving's maybe was there, you know, a few more years. But they're kind of innocent and childlike to a certain extent, but also have developed personalities. And then as the season evolved and as the second season is starting to evolve, I think they're kind of becoming more adolescents and more, you know, kind of, yeah, self-empowered and questioning authority. And so I think there's like a maturation that's happening with them slowly.

• 6:09Kara Swisher?

  Right, and a cynicism that goes with it because they're beginning to see things. So would you ever do get severed? I'm just curious. I was thinking, I was talking about with my wife, Amanda, like, would you let it happen? She said it would be impossible to sever me because I'd be the same irritating person.

• 6:25Speaker 01

  I don't know if I'd want to be totally cut off from part of my life experience. I think in retrospect, when I look back at painful situations I've been in or things that have happened in life that didn't feel good, I could imagine not wanting to go through that pain. But I also think that one of the ideas of the show is this questioning of what can you actually cut off, right? Because we all have to deal with everything on some level. And I think it's also what I was really attracted to when I first read the script, too, is there's so many different ideas of what severance could be a metaphor for. And I think we all do sever to a certain extent when we check out, if you have a drink

• 7:09Speaker 01

  or you take a gummy or you watch a TV show or if you go on your phone. I mean, we all find ways to cope with the everyday torrent of stuff that's coming at us in life.

• 7:22Kara Swisher?

  Right. It's also, I go to hardware stores in Brown's. I do. I love them. So to be clear, you're not the writer of Severance, but you're executive producer and directed quite a lot of the episodes. But you have been the driver of it, it feels like. You were supposed to star in it and you said you prefer to either direct or act, but not both. So what attracted you to it and the writer, Dan Erickson?

• 7:47Speaker 01

  Well, honestly, the script came into our production company and it was a spec script, a script sent to see a writing sample. And Jackie Kona, who worked at her company at the time, read it and she gave it to me and I read it and I was like, this is great. It's a great writing sample. And also, is anybody doing this show? It was so unique, the tone, the dialogue. It reminded me of shows that I'd seen before, but it felt like its own thing. I was one of the ideas bandied about to be in it, but really, the second I read it, I was like, this is Adam Scott. And I felt just... A desire to make it and sometimes it's hard to actually analyze what it is that draws

• 8:31Speaker 01

  you to something because sometimes I think it's something subconscious you don't necessarily know, but you have a feeling for it. And I've tried to listen to that over the years in terms of just, you know, kind of going with my gut feeling about something and not even knowing what it is. I just thought it was good. I thought I wanted to see it. I thought I could see it in my head and wanted to, you know, wanted to make it happen. So that was it.

• 8:54Kara Swisher?

  What was the thing about it? Because if it reminded, by the way, you are the voice of Keir Egan, right?

• 8:59Speaker 01

  I'm the voice of Keir Egan in the, I guess it's episode

• 9:05Kara Swisher?

  The weird video game.

• 9:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, when you hit a hundred percent and you got like the little video of Keir on the mountaintop. So it's not actually, it's an actor playing Keir because we actually have the voice of the real Keir Egan that Mark Geller portrays when you see, and he's who Keir Egan is when you see him. I mean, I think it was the mix of humor and weirdness and the basic, and the tone of the humor which related to me to a lot of comedies that I loved. The office banter, this feeling of sort of like, this weird sort of like the movie Office Space or Parks and Rec or The Office, you know, that sort of genre of office workplace comedy.

• 9:41Kara Swisher?

  Workplace comedy.

• 9:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. Where it's like a lot of the humor is based in sort of everyday stuff, but then there was this other layer to it, which is these people don't know who they are, where they are, what they're doing, why they're doing it. Yeah.

• 9:53Kara Swisher?

  Right. I mean, it's sort of like you put Mary Tyler Moore in a, in a, an absurdist Sartre play or something. A little bit of No Exit, I guess. Because it's also, a lot of friends of mine, they're like, I don't want to watch it. It's too scary. It's a thriller. I'm like, no, it's a comedy. But it's also sci-fi. It's romantic. It's dystopian. It's absurd. You've called it a workplace comedy. Is there?

• 10:16Speaker 01

  I feel like it's, yeah, I feel like it's rooted in the workplace comedy genre. And then it also has these aspects of, you know, thriller, but also like seventies sort of, you know, style thrillers. And then also the weird kind of Twilight Zone vibe to it also. And I, I mean, to me, that was what was exciting was it's a combination of all these different things. And when you see something like that where you haven't seen it before, but in some way it triggers, you know, these ideas for you, it makes you want to lean into it. And so Dan had never had anything produced before, ever before. And so I had obviously worked for a long time, so I, you know, he and I sort of partnered up

• 10:57Speaker 01

  and it's always been his vision, but I think we really collaborated a lot in terms of the, you know, just the feeling and the vibe of it and the, the direction of the story as we looked at, you know, building it out from this pilot that he'd written.

• 11:10Kara Swisher?

  It also has a, I know it's, I don't know how old this guy is, but do you remember the, one of the last Planet of the Apes, like beyond the, not beyond, when they're sort of in Century City, a Planet of the Apes?

• 11:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, that might be Battle or Conquest.

• 11:22Kara Swisher?

  Battle, Conquest, I don't know. It had that really cheap feel, but also, you know what I mean, in those weird places?

• 11:28Speaker 01

  Well, these are formative movies for me, the Planet of the Apes movies. I went to the Lowe's 84th Street Cinema and watched the Battle, the Planet of the Apes, you know, marathon where they go from Planet of the Apes all the way through Conquest or whatever. So, yeah, that's deeply rooted in my, you know, my DNA of like just things that I love to watch.

• 11:45Kara Swisher?

  Or Omega Man, it had a little Omega Man.

• 11:47Speaker 01

  Omega Man, for sure.

• 11:48Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, with Earl Traven Heston.

• 11:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, a little bit of Logan's run-ish.

• 11:52Kara Swisher?

  Logan's run-ish. So, but there's also a sense in the moment, right now, that big tech controls us, but this is about big corporations controlling, which is not an uncommon trope, there's been a million movies of that. In this case, it's with cooperation, though not full disclosure, which is what tech is like right now in a lot of ways.

• 12:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, technically Lumen is sort of a med tech company, you know, and they, and they go back to the 1860s and 70s when Keir Egan founded it and, you know, it kind of is really, you know, one of those companies that does a lot of things and you shouldn't quite know everything that they do. And obviously the severed workers have no idea what they do there. And I, I always think that's interesting when you see the characters having to talk, especially for Mark in the first season when he just talks about, you know, supposedly I'm a corporate archivist or something like, he doesn't have any idea what he's up to. And I think that idea. Of people who are working for giant corporations with a tech or whatever,

• 12:54Speaker 01

  you know, who actually, you know, knows what they're really working towards.

• 12:59Kara Swisher?

  Sure.

• 12:59Speaker 01

  I don't know, you know, I don't know about that world that much, but it seems to me.

• 13:02Kara Swisher?

  Well, it's a maximalization of what is work even for, right? Like, what's the idea of what works even for when you're just a cog in a larger picture of it?

• 13:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think that goes just back to human nature. It's like, we all want to work, we all want to have something to do with our lives. And then there are certain people who, you know, have ideas of doing things that are, you know, who knows what they want to do. I mean, you could pick any tech billionaire, you know, what are their, you know, what are their goals and their aims? And, but ultimately, we're all just people who want to work and be happy and, and,

• 13:35Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  fill our time with something that we think is meaningful. And it can be really distressing when you're doing that in something you think is, you know, good or meaningful to you, but then the overall goal of this corporation you're working for might be totally nefarious.

• 13:50Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, the goal of the billionaires, tech billionaires, is fascism, as it turned out.

• 13:54Speaker 01

  And greed, right? It's all about greed.

• 13:56Kara Swisher?

  Well, power.

• 13:57Speaker 01

  No?

• 13:58Kara Swisher?

  Power, power is where it is. But, or they know better, and they will tell us what to do. And that's what this corp, Lumen, is like that, too. We know, we care, but then they don't actually care in any way. So there's a lot about the unconscious as a model of knowing, separating you from doing severed but not entirely severed, since a lot of it creeps into the consciousness, like, the happiness he has in one world and deep unhappiness the others, and the idea that it would seep into it. What does that mean to have two senses of knowing? And how does it impact directing the actors? Because the actors, obviously, have to be two different people.

• 14:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:34Kara Swisher?

  When you're doing it.

• 14:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, to me, again, it's one of the really interesting aspects of the premise of the show, is how much of a person can be cut off from, I guess, you know, this, if it's your brain, if it's your mind, you know, there are technologies that are approaching, trying to do something like this. But what is it that can cross over if you don't remember anything about your life? What are the innate human desires or characteristics that make you a person? And so, that's, you know, that's constantly what we're looking at and asking in the show. And for the actors, it's great, because that's a question they can ask in literally every scene. They can, you know, wonder about, well, how much of this is coming through, you know,

• 15:17Speaker 01

  my feeling for, you know, Dylan and Irving, if they're having a conversation, how much of Dylan's Audi life is coming through for Dylan, even if it's not what the scene is about, or, you know, for Adam Scott playing Mark, he's constantly going back and forth between that. And I think, you know, that's, to me, what's really interesting about the show, too, is finding those places where something transcends the severance barrier, an emotion or a feeling. There's a time in an episode, I think it's like, I forget which episode, it's season one, where Dylan says, basically, you know, do you think this love transcends the severance barrier? And, you know, that's the question, you know,

• 16:00Speaker 01

  what transcends? And what, when we, when we suppress feelings, how much can you, you know, really keep out of, you know, what your experience? I mean, it's, you know, it goes to the questions of post-traumatic stress disorder, you know, suppressed memories, repressed memories, all those things.

• 16:19Kara Swisher?

  You know, years ago, I had a friend who was in one of those psychiatric things, where they did therapy every day for hours and hours, and was trying to find out, you know, all about themselves, and figuring out where suppressed memories was. And they said, have you ever been to therapy? I said, never, I just, I don't want to know that much about myself. Like, something like that, I'd send something offhand, which is probably rude to someone who's in intense therapy. And they said to me, they were a pretty unhappy person, I would say. And they said to me, you're blocking. And I said, it's working, because I'm happy and you're not, like, which was kind of an interesting moment. And I thought about it, watching this. I thought it'd be really interesting to watch this if you're a therapist of some sort, too. Like, what, how do you look at this? Because everything's about the conscious and unconscious, and what bleeds into each other.

• 17:03Speaker 01

  I mean, as a person, I've been in therapy.

• 17:06Kara Swisher?

  Oh, good.

• 17:07Speaker 01

  And I've talked a lot. And, you know, that question of how much talking about your past or talking about memories and issues, you know, there's questions about that, how much that really can help, right? And alternate therapies that are much more, you know, in the body and actually, you know, not really just about analyzing. And I think that, to me, resonates because I feel like a lot of this stuff is internal and there's even, you know, questions about generational trauma, you know, that people talk about now. And really, it's really interesting because, you know, you think about like, what is cellularly in our bodies that we carry with us?

• 17:48Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, well, except in this case, they use an advanced piece of technology to create this ever, right? To create the suppressing of the unconscious or the conscious. But even though it's an advanced technology that's happening here, it seems like everyone in the show is living in the 70s, as you talked about. It's a retro set, the costumes feel older on certain, on all of them, really. Talk a little bit about that, why you wanted the look and feel. There's also a lot of doubling and duality, which was, there's people walking together in twos or in, it's a theme of two characters playing two different people. Talk a little bit about that, the look and feel of why you had the retro set and also the duality that's happening visually.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, in terms of the Audi world and the Andy world too, what I thought that Dan had written in the pilot was a very sort of generic kind of world. And I think he was commenting on that, I think, in a way, in terms of like what working for a big corporation could kind of turn you into. And that sort of blandness, that corporate blandness, I felt we should mirror in the outside world. And I didn't want to have any actual reference points like, you know, like CNN or, you know, brand names or things, you know, when you saw the news, just, you know, and that was sort of the idea was like, we don't quite know where or when this is.

• 19:15Speaker 01

  It's kind of now, but we don't want to have any sort of touchstones or, and even in the technology, and look, I, you know, grew up in the seventies and I do feel like ever since cell phones and smartphones were invented, it's really changed our lives, obviously, but also storytelling, because so many things that you'd have to do before that you tell a story, you'd have to go and do research or whatever, and you just get on your phone. It's not very cinematic.

• 19:42Kara Swisher?

  No, no.

• 19:43Speaker 01

  You know, and that's why I like a prison story too. Inside of a prison, you don't have access to that technology. Prisoners aren't allowed. So, and in a way Severance is a little bit of a, has a prison aspect to it.

• 19:55Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, it's got the Stanford Prison Experiment vibe to it.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I, and I think, you know, that, that world should be as kind of interesting and off and generic in its own way as the inny world, the outty world. And so that's kind of why we sort of gravitated towards that. And so the duality aspect though is just inherent in the theme. So just, that's a natural sort of, you know, tendency for us then to look for in the imagery that, because it just, it's just telling the story in a way and it lends itself to that. So, you know, I think that's part of just the sort of visual world of the show. And I think when you have a clear theme and you have an idea that's really specific,

• 20:42Speaker 01

  you know, you want to stick with that theme and let that, everything build off of that so it feels organic and not forced, hopefully, you know? And that's, I think the great thing about this idea is that it allows for that.

• 20:52Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, I went back and looked at the movements and it's all duality. It's really interesting, but it also has a level of suspense since there is what the viewer knows and what two different people know, and then the pervasive sense of withholding information in a total surveillance environment, right? There's a lot of misinformation happening here in this, in this environment, largely by, by the Lumen. Executives who are not severed, by the way, who know both sides.

• 21:17Speaker 01

  Right, and we are constantly, you know, dealing with that question all the time. The question of how much Lumen knows, how much they're listening to, how much they're seeing, you know, within the severed world. I think there's always a question of how much they're letting happen, how much they know is happening, how sometimes the technology isn't quite great there.

• 21:39Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 21:40Speaker 01

  You know, there are places they can find, like, you know, like a closet or something like that. And, you know, that's like a specific aspect of the reality of the show that, you know, maybe if we were doing this as a modern day show, everybody would be like, oh, wait, well, there's no way you could do that because they would have microphones everywhere. But I think there's something to the sort of clunky nature of this corporation, too, that is kind of fun. And, you know, we don't have any, there's one security person in the first season, Grainer. But early on, we had experimented and thought about having security guards on the floor. And anytime we ever brought security guards in, it always felt to me like it turned into like a Star Trek episode or something. It just, there was something about it.

• 22:25Speaker 01

  And, and we realized, oh, well, like, the more we don't tell, the more we don't show, the more the audience has a chance to fill it in themselves. And that's always been for me, a little bit of the question as I put the show out into the world. When we were making it, in the first season, we'd made all, you know, nine episodes and nobody had seen it. It's like, oh, I hope people will buy this conceit because, you know, it's, you have to buy into it. But it's there because I feel like those aren't the questions as much that I'm as interested in as opposed to the sort of greater themes of the show.

• 22:56Kara Swisher?

  Right, absolutely. I mean, it's also a return to work story, which is kind of in the news right now, this idea of return to work. Did you, did you understand that at the time? That you had a COVID period in here when you were making it?

• 23:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, not at all. I mean, yeah, the first season we made, starting right when COVID started, and we were delayed actually six months in production because of it. And So when the show was finished and people were starting to go back to work and some a writer wrote about it as like, oh, this is like one of the first return to work shows. It was purely, you know, that's just happenstance. So it was just, I think, the timing of how, you know, the show came out and it seemed like the both the aspect of being sort of severed from everybody else in the world, you know, as we were. And that weirdness even making the show where the actors were, you know, we were first season, everybody was in full PPE and, you know, face masks.

• 23:54Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, I don't remember any of that. I don't remember. Blocking is working. Someone's like, do you remember that? I'm like, I don't.

• 24:01Speaker 01

  You know that Trump was president before? You knew that?

• 24:03Kara Swisher?

  I don't remember that. It's not going very well right now. We'll get to that in a minute. But no, blocking, it's working. I want to get into the business of this in a second, but do you have a character you particularly vibe with on the show?

• 24:17Speaker 01

  I mean, I really enjoy all the characters equally. I like them. Adam is the key, I think, because, you know, he's the protagonist, but.

• 24:27Kara Swisher?

  Milchick.

• 24:29Speaker 01

  Milchick, yeah.

• 24:31Kara Swisher?

  Milchick, excuse me, Milchick.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  Well, Milchick is, yeah, I mean, I'm excited for, for this season with Milchick too, just because I feel like, you know, he's an enigma and he can be scary and, but there's so many different aspects to who he is that, you know, make him, you know, a really fascinating character. And, you know, everybody works for this corporation. So at the end of the day, there's a chain of command. And I think that's something that's interesting to us in the show is sort of like how even if it's this weird kind of world or these maybe possibly, you know, scary characters that work at the company, they're also working. And so they have to deal with all of the office politics, too.

• 25:13Kara Swisher?

  The defiant jazz scene was my favorite in the entire, when they were dancing. So awkward. I've been at that party. I've been at that office party where. They have like cake in the office. They do pineapples here.

• 25:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, they the pineapple fruit plate as a way of luring people back. You know, it's like sort of like, you know, the shitty little, you know, perks that you get.

• 25:35Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 25:36Speaker 01

  That, you know, in contrast to what these people have experienced, that that's huge for them. I mean, though they are trying it in season two on the Audis, but the the it's funny to me that when they have an office party, it's still just them. There's nobody else there. So it's just like the lights change, but it's still the same four people who are like mingling with each other.

• 25:55Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 25:55Speaker 01

  So that was one of my favorite sort of setups that we had with, you know, the idea of like, well, okay, where is this going to go? And all of a sudden, you know, when you get this next level perk, it's they're gonna like change the color of the lights in the room and you're gonna dance. And the combination of, you know, Milchick is like, he's kind of like, you know, obviously the best dancer there.

• 26:18Kara Swisher?

  Such a good dancer.

• 26:19Speaker 01

  An amazing dancer, Tramell Tillman. And Adam, the best like white guy dancing, I think I've ever seen.

• 26:26Kara Swisher?

  Quite good. He didn't. He didn't do his, you know, biting his lip enough.

• 26:31Speaker 01

  The white man overbite, yeah.

• 26:33Kara Swisher?

  Little bit.

• 26:33Speaker 01

  Save that Billy Crystal, right?

• 26:35Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 26:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, to me, the weirdness of that moment is kind of like, well, that's what's in the show. It's motivated because it's, you know, it's a party, it's a perk. It's you understand why they're doing it, but it's also just so weird and really fun to be able to like explore that.

• 26:55Kara Swisher?

  We'll be back in a minute.

• 27:04Speaker 02

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• 27:35Kara Swisher?

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• 28:18Kara Swisher?

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• 28:48Kara Swisher?

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• 29:54Kara Swisher?

  So I want to talk a little bit about the business. Have you been surprised how popular it's gotten? I know Succession got more popular in the second season, right? And Severance was Apple's first new series order after the company launched its streaming service. And it was trying to do an HBO thing. That was very clear. A place for big talent to come and make what they want with big budgets. Now Severance is reportedly costing a lot of money and there have been cuts at Apple pulling the budget as the second season is being produced all across the way. But at the same time, Parrot Analytics was noting that you might be generating $200 million for Apple in terms of subscriptions and everything else. And at the same time, you're about to maybe announce your third season. Talk a little bit about the calculations here of how you look at it, because it used to be so much easier.

• 30:39Kara Swisher?

  Now, you made mostly movies over TV shows. But talk a little bit about the calculations, because it's a weird economic environment at the same time.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  Honestly, I, yeah, I know very little about it. It's a weird world to be in. From the beginning, it was a new, strange experience, because when we started developing the show, Apple wasn't even up yet. And someone called up and said, yeah, Apple's doing, gonna do a streaming service too. And I remember like laughing, going like, who's, okay, everybody's doing streaming services, this is crazy. And we went out and pitched the show to different HBO, all these places, and Apple was the only one that bought it. And they weren't even up yet, so.

• 31:21Kara Swisher?

  What did the others say about it?

• 31:22Speaker 01

  Well, you know, no one ever really tells you. It's Hollywood.

• 31:26Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, we'll get to that, yeah.

• 31:27Speaker 01

  They say, we loved it, it just wasn't for us. Yeah. But that's just the way it is. And that's par for the course. But they said yes to it, and then it was like, okay, we're gonna develop this thing for Apple, you know, Apple TV, that's weird to think of. And then a couple of years go by, and then all of a sudden, they're up and running, and we're a show that's in production for them. And so, honestly, I had no sense of what success would be, other than, I hope people watch it. And, you know, they don't really tell you the analytics.

• 31:57Kara Swisher?

  Oh, they don't? No, they don't ever tell you the analytics.

• 31:59Speaker 01

  No, they show, they show us graphs and charts, but without numbers attached to them. And it's weird. I think that's weird for any creative person, especially when you're used to, you make a movie, you know exactly how many people went to see it on opening night, how much money it made, the show, you get Nielsen ratings. So. In a way, it took the pressure off of us because there wasn't some number we were waiting to hear. All we wanted to hear was like, yeah, we're happy. A lot of people are watching it and you want people to watch the show. But the first season, you know, we were lucky enough to get very positive, you know, critical response, which hardly ever happens in my life. And it was, I was so happy about that. And it seemed like people were watching it,

• 32:41Speaker 01

  but I didn't know how many people. And then we went into our process of making the second season, which got hit by the strike and, you know, it took a long, much longer than we wanted. So coming back after three years in this culture is, you know, it's like 100 years in terms of just any guarantee that people are still going to be there. But in the meantime, Apple had grown. They'd built out their subscriber base. And I think they also really get the show, have always gotten the show. I thought they did a great job of marketing at the first season in terms of just like the aesthetic of it with the show and Apple. And it always felt like-

• 33:18Kara Swisher?

  It looks like Apple headquarters, but go ahead.

• 33:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, it does. And it wasn't, that wasn't intentional. I've never been to Apple headquarters, you know, I've seen like aerial shots, but like really, we designed it. But it always felt like it's, you know, yeah, this fits on Apple. And then the second season, they really put a lot behind it. I think they believed in it and they, you know, had money invested in it, too. And luckily, our fan base, our core fan base really was still there for it. And I felt like it could go either way. It could go, you know, it's three years and we waited for this, you know, no thanks, or like, nobody cares, it's back. Or it could be, you know, hey, it was worth the wait. And that's totally out of your control when you're making something. So you just put your head down and do it.

• 34:03Kara Swisher?

  So you don't know, I mean, I'm just, this parrot analytics is pretty accurate, $200 million for Apple in terms of, you don't know.

• 34:10Speaker 01

  Yes, I saw that article, but that's all, yeah.

• 34:12Kara Swisher?

  Yeah. Does that change your, you know, going to Apple saying, I want more money, I want?

• 34:17Speaker 01

  No, I know, because honestly, I feel like they've been great. I have no complaints. It's like, they've gotten behind the show. They, you know, and they, these things are so complicated. I think, I was really happy to see that article because I didn't know, but I also feel like they've always been like, yeah, we love the show, we're behind it. And, you know, it's, yeah, it's never been like a thing.

• 34:41Kara Swisher?

  Did you, did you have any problems working for a tech company?

• 34:46Speaker 01

  You mean like in terms of just my own sort of moral?

• 34:49Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, versus a Hollywood, yeah. And you know, well, I just, this is a whole new change with these tech companies, sort of Amazon and Apple.

• 34:56Speaker 01

  For me, just the concern that not knowing what Apple TV Plus would be, like whether or not they were, how serious they were about it, whether or not we would be looked at as, you know, a real show early on, you know, in that way. I think like, and, you know, that's also the, not knowing what they had really planned for and what they were trying to do, other than them saying they wanted to make really good shows.

• 35:22Kara Swisher?

  Right, which they have.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  But, you know, you do hear, of course, there is like, well, you know, ultimately, it's a phone company, you know, they're making phones.

• 35:28Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, yeah, like Amazon, the creator of Transparent called me once and I said, you're selling toilet paper, that's what you're doing.

• 35:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it, look, for a creative person who grew up in my generation, it's weird to see, you know, it's weird to see that Amazon Prime is on there, like when you're shopping for Amazon stuff and you could just click on that and watch movies and shows. It takes away something of, you know, of the specialness of movies, you know, when you look at it that way. And then there's the other aspect of what's informing their decisions based on, you know, their analytics and the level of information that they're getting that will create for them, you know, ideas of what they think they want to produce for their platform.

• 36:07Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, so what are the chances of a third season? You did get Tim Cook in an ad, that was a good sign.

• 36:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think there's-

• 36:14Kara Swisher?

  He's a big ham, by the way, he pretends he's not a ham, he's a ham.

• 36:17Speaker 01

  He seemed to like it.

• 36:18Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 36:19Speaker 01

  No, I, yeah, I think their chances are really good and, you know, that, yeah, I mean, for us, we just want to be able to tell the story in the number of seasons that it should be to finish the story. And that's what's great, I mean, that's the upside of working in this era, is that, you know, we're not a show that has to keep going because the network, it's a network hit show, they're saying we need 22 episodes-

• 36:44Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 36:44Speaker 01

  And you gotta keep doing it until the ratings drop. There's not, that pressure is not there. And that, I think, is something that gets lost a little bit in all the sort of weird negatives of this world too, is that you have that creative freedom.

• 36:56Kara Swisher?

  So at the same time, there's the Netflix phenomenon, right? They regularly beat all the other streamers, more top 10 shows combined than all of them, despite the quality and reviews that Apple gets. They'll pop up anything Netflix, like really, pretty much. Now, you guys have been doing a bunch of marketing. You had the season two pop up in Grand Central Station that was hysterical, where you put them in a, in a glass box and had people, had them do their work in the glass box.

• 37:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, for three hours.

• 37:23Kara Swisher?

  For three hours. And you were outside, people were shooting pictures of you at the same time. How do you, is, is everything now go around Netflix in that regard? Or is there, streaming is sort of starting to settle, I guess, but maybe not?

• 37:37Speaker 01

  I don't know, in terms of how it's all settling out. It's just, I know it's a, it's a crazy new world. I know Netflix is, has changed everything. You know, so amount of, of shows that they produce, movies that they make, the level of, you know, of what, what they're putting in and spending, it's just changed everything. So, everybody who makes stuff, you want your stuff to be seen. And so, it's that sort of push-pull where if you have something on Netflix, you know that you have a chance for more people in the world to see it than probably ever. But it also could be, just go down the queue very quickly and never even, you know, get any attention. And so, that, and that's a real thing too, you know?

• 38:22Kara Swisher?

  You're scared of the queue?

• 38:24Speaker 01

  The queue, yeah, sure. But I mean, like, who, who wouldn't be, you know, feeling like, oh, I don't want to just go down, you know? But it's just such a crazy world now that the cultural moment that you have for something, I actually like being on Apple because they don't drop everything at once. We get to have an episode every week. And I think for our show, that benefits our show.

• 38:44Kara Swisher?

  It does.

• 38:45Speaker 01

  Because we get a chance for people to chew on it and to think about it and to talk about it and to go online and go back and forth.

• 38:51Kara Swisher?

  And to want it.

• 38:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, and to want it. And, and I like that. And maybe that's just a generational thing, just I'm an old guy who's like, oh, I remember when shows would come on and, you know, every week. But it's, it is, Succession was like that, right? And you'd look forward to that. And I think, you know, it's just the new world we're in. But yeah, Netflix has turned, has turned the, the movie business upside down and is still trying to find its way, I think, in terms of what defines a movie. You know, I'm hoping and I really do believe we're going to get back to what people went to the movies for besides spectacle and, you know, giant IP and, you know, and all that stuff. And, you know, I feel like that will come back around.

• 39:37Kara Swisher?

  Well, you've made both types of movies, right?

• 39:39Speaker 01

  Sure. Yeah. But, you know, back in the day a little bit and I haven't done it for a while and, you know, in movies and it's hard too. You know, the thing is like the movies had that version of it where you have an opening weekend and if your movie didn't do well on the opening weekend of a wide release, then it would go away pretty quickly. So it's kind of the same version of like being in the queue at Netflix. It's just a kind of, you know, on steroids or something.

• 40:03Kara Swisher?

  Even more existential. In that vein, there's a question, not from me. Every episode, we ask an outside person to record a question. Here's yours.

• 40:10Speaker 08

  Hi, Ben. My name is Lucas Shaw and I'm the managing editor for media and entertainment at Bloomberg News. My big question is, following strikes and the broader pullback on spending in Hollywood, many executives, producers and creative people say this is the worst time to work in Hollywood in their lives. What's another moment in your career where your peers had so much existential dread? Thanks.

• 40:32Kara Swisher?

  That's presuming you have existential dread.

• 40:35Speaker 01

  I mean, existential dread is sort of something that creative people have all the time. And that I think could be like generational trauma that I have too. I mean, I grew up around that too. It's, you know, it's not a very secure, you know, business being an actor or a creative person. I mean, I can't remember a time when people were as off balance as they are now. I mean, it's, it's, everything has changed in such a big way. I'm trying to think of, you know, like when. VHS happened or something like that, or you know, things like that.

• 41:17Speaker 01

  But it's it's just all been sort of thrown out there in a way that we don't know. I don't think the people who are making things know where it's going to land either. So they're trying to figure it out and then there and there's a lot of fear. Because those people want to keep their jobs, which I understand, but they, you know, have to make these choices based on what they think the audiences are doing. And so, yeah, I don't I can't remember a time like this.

• 41:43Kara Swisher?

  I didn't feel so. You had noted it in the New York Times interview, though, that when a decision is made, it's never explained to the creative person, or usually if it is, it's not usually the truth, etc.

• 41:53Speaker 01

  Well, that's yeah, that's just sort of, you know.

• 41:55Kara Swisher?

  That's old school.

• 41:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is. It's and, you know, it really is, you know, people don't ever say, I don't know about any business, because I've only done this, but like, what people tell you when they reject an idea or something, if they always tell you the actual, their honest, you know, reason why they're doing it. But I think, you know, in this business, people want to keep their relationships with each other and they want to stay connected because they don't know what the next thing is going to be. And that's just always been a part of a part of Hollywood.

• 42:24Kara Swisher?

  But I do think you're right. The bosses don't know what's going to happen, right? That's the problem is they really don't know. And and going back to existential Judd, coming up with the guardrails for use of AI in filmmaking are important points of negotiation, the actors and writers' strikes, we've talked about this. There was some recent controversy with the Oscar nominated film, The Brutalist, they use AI to correct the Hungarian accents of its lead actors. Do you think about AI's potential impact on the industry? Are you thrilled by it? Is there a line in your head that shouldn't be crossed when applying? I suspect you might lean into it. I don't know why I think that, maybe.

• 42:57Speaker 01

  I I think it's so unknown, it's scary to think about like, what people could do with it, the potential, what was actually possible to do. I do believe that. Creative human beings are always going to be what people want to, you know, connect with and see their stuff. There are little places where AI, I mean, I feel like almost what's going on with CGI, it really is, in terms of visual effects, is basically into that world anyway at this point, you know, using those tools. I mean, there are little ways that if, I feel like, oh, you know, to be honest, I'd say like, oh, you're doing ADR, which is when you're like doing looping extra lines

• 43:41Speaker 01

  or something, and an actor's not available. If the actor said, hey, it's okay, you know, you can use my voice and we can get the, you know, those words that you need to put in because I'm not available to do because I'm doing another movie, something like that. Those are like, kind of like mundane, practical things that I think would be really helpful. And I don't know, I mean, I think, I love The Brutalist, I, you know, I don't in any way look at that as that making that movie lesser in any way at all, honestly. I also am very impressed with that movie, as a lot of people are, because the price it was made for. But the unfortunate thing is that a movie like that has to be made for such a low price. You know, it's just, it's hard because I know how much creative people will, you know,

• 44:26Speaker 01

  will really stretch themselves to do what they want to do creatively because they, you know, and it's really hard to get the opportunity to make a movie that's not something that everybody in the world is going to want to see, but yet those are the movies that we celebrate with awards and, and move us. So, you know, that's, that's what I feel for are the, the creative people who are forced to have to really sacrifice a lot so that they can get something made. And now whether, you know, if AI could in some way help that, I don't think that's a bad thing, but, you know, what, where the rules are around it, I mean, the idea of like somebody taking your image and then being able to do whatever they want with it, it's very concerning to me when I see what it could be done.

• 45:07Kara Swisher?

  Well, they take your image a lot, Zoolander, all your different parts, they, I've often seen.

• 45:12Speaker 01

  That also happened, that's always happening, that kind of thing, right? I think ever since the internet, you know? But I, I do think it's concerning when you see in the political world how, you know, political ads can be created and, and people doing things that they didn't do, it's, that's, that's really scary.

• 45:30Kara Swisher?

  We'll be back in a minute.

• 45:38Speaker 09

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• 47:50Kara Swisher?

  So you recently joined me in a not-so-exclusive club. We've both been called names by Elon Musk. I am seething with hate and an asshole, in case you're interested.

• 47:59Speaker 01

  One of my...

• 47:59Kara Swisher?

  I'm not gonna repeat what he said about you. You know what he said about you. We're not repeating that word, because I'm a good girl, okay? I don't say that word anymore. I used to when I was a kid. We don't do it anymore. But he was, he seemed upset that you endorsed Kamala Harris, and then, after you wondered in an interview whether Tropic Thunder could be made today, and I wish there was, as you know, I'm desperate for Tropic Thunder 2. He wanted you to be more upset about how woke this supposedly ruined comedy. Talk a little bit about this moment.

• 48:25Speaker 01

  That makes no sense to me. I have no idea what that means.

• 48:27Kara Swisher?

  Well, you think he's on the up and up now, these days? Because he makes so much sense about everything he does, but, but, you know...

• 48:34Speaker 01

  I have very little interest in his whole thing, and like, what he's doing.

• 48:38Kara Swisher?

  So tell me why, because he, he was retweeting a Daily Mail headline that read, "Ben Stiller Says Woke America Killed Edgier Comedy." That's not what you said, at all, from what I could read.

• 48:48Speaker 01

  No, not, not... Yeah, that was to- a to- yeah, that was not at all. It's the opposite of what I was saying.

• 48:53Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 48:54Speaker 01

  I don't know why he has so much time on his hands that he's retweeting something that was written about me. I know he really likes Tropic Thunder. Great, good for him. But I, I think he's, you know, after that, that, you know, the Nazi salute, the double Nazi salute.

• 49:10Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 49:10Speaker 01

  I, I'm just, I'm not, yeah, I'm not into it, never was into it. And I think, you know, what's happening, honestly, not, not that anybody needs my opinion, but what's happening in terms of him being so close to the president and, you know, all the questions that that brings up in terms of conflicts of interest, all of that stuff is really, really concerning.

• 49:31Kara Swisher?

  It is, absolutely. The two of them together is very tough.

• 49:33Speaker 01

  And what he cares about pop culture and all that stuff, it's like, you know, who, who gives a shit, you know?

• 49:39Kara Swisher?

  He wanted you to agree with him, that Tropic Thunder couldn't be made. Isn't that awful? It goes with the narrative of, isn't everybody trying to stop us because we're the greatest victims on earth? Us rich people are the greatest victims. I think that's, that's down that lane, something like that.

• 49:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I don't think it makes anybody a victim. I mean, what the temperature is in terms of what movies are getting, you know, made or not. The reality is, uh, yeah, sure, the environment is different, and it would be tougher to get it made. I don't know if it could get made or not. I think it would be harder to get it made. But that doesn't... I mean, I'm commenting on, you know, the state of our, like, of our culture.

• 50:15Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 50:15Speaker 01

  I think it's just-

• 50:16Kara Swisher?

  He wanted you to agree with him, I think.

• 50:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, well, I don't.

• 50:19Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, but you don't, okay. But one of the things that people are worried about is a Trump chill in Hollywood. Now, obviously, that's happening in tech. Everybody showed up at the inauguration, all the tech, richest people in the world. New York Magazine recently quoted an anonymous producer who said, "There's more fear in the executive suites now than there's ever been." There seems to be a pulling back. Disney pulled a trans character, for example. Is there any indication for you that Hollywood executives would be more hesitant to fund projects with political messages? Quite a few of yours have them. Now, you, besides sports that you endlessly blue-sky about, which I don't understand any of your references, you're also very political. You don't shy away from it. I believe they're a basketball team, in any case.

• 51:04Kara Swisher?

  You are a political, but do you, do you think about that at all?

• 51:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure, I think about it. I mean, yeah, I don't know, like, after, you know, when October 7th happened and, you know-

• 51:17Kara Swisher?

  This is gonna be real.

• 51:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I was trying to think of like, well, what should I say? And, and it was really, I, I realized, like, I'm not gonna be able to express myself in a tweet or a blue-sky post or, you know, it's just, I don't want to go into that arena of like, having to sort of like, distill some idea down into a thought that then people are gonna debate and, and you know what's gonna happen with that. But, so, to me, it's more a question of like, where do I express myself and what do I do? And I don't think having to legislate all this stuff on the, you know, on your phone all the time, or, as much as sometimes there's an instinct to, to me, that's not something that I, I'm gonna really do well with, or it's just not gonna make me happy to do that.

• 52:02Speaker 01

  But I feel like, that's why I, I wrote a little something about October 7th and just put it out there, because I wanted to express myself. I just think it's the social media debate and what it turns into is not, never really goes well.

• 52:17Kara Swisher?

  What about the art itself? Do you think, how will it be impacted by the time we're in, if you could look forward? I know, I interviewed Rachel Maddow recently and we talked a bit about her podcast about Nixon's corrupt first Vice President, Spiro Agnew, called Bag Man. It's being adapted into a feature film you're reportedly set to direct. Do you think about doing, are you directing that? Is that correct?

• 52:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm trying to get that movie made. We almost got it made a couple of years ago. I think it's more, more important now. Look, I think artists are incredibly inspired now to speak out in creative ways about what's going on in our country. And my daughter's an actor. She just graduated from drama school. She's a writer and she wants to make movies. And she said, you know, all I want to do right now is make stories about women and what they're going through because of what's going on in our country right now. So I think people are really inspired and you're going to see a lot of amazing art come out of it.

• 53:12Kara Swisher?

  Does it make you want to do more? Because I mean, Angels in America came out of Reagan, right? It came out of that anger. A lot of that art came out of.

• 53:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think you have to be true to who you are and, you know, in terms of what you create. But yes, for sure. And I think we all have to like, kind of look at ourselves and say, okay, you know, what, what message are we putting out there with whatever it is we make? But even if a comedy or drama, whatever it is, it doesn't all have to be political. It has to be true to who you are. And, you know, we're all affected by the world that we're in. So it's hopefully going to be a reflection of, of the experience that you're having in some way. I, I don't put that pressure on people to have to go out and do something. I think you have to be, you know, do what feels right for you.

• 53:53Kara Swisher?

  Is there something that inspires you now at this moment? Because I mean, do you get, feel more, I don't feel like you're going to be making Night at the Museum 7 at this point, or whatever we're on, whatever we're on.

• 54:01Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, honestly though, I, I still think it's, it's good to have, you know, stuff that you can watch that can make you laugh and give you a reprieve.

• 54:10Kara Swisher?

  Your heist movie, what's it called, Heist?

• 54:11Speaker 01

  Oh, Tower Heist.

• 54:12Kara Swisher?

  Tower Heist is so good.

• 54:13Speaker 01

  Do you want to know? You know what? We shot that in the Trump Tower.

• 54:16Kara Swisher?

  You did? I know you did, yeah.

• 54:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, and the movie was originally called Trump Tower Heist, but Trump wanted them to pay him for the use of his name. So they changed it to Tower Heist.

• 54:26Kara Swisher?

  Oh, wow.

• 54:27Speaker 01

  I don't think anybody ever heard that.

• 54:28Kara Swisher?

  Oh, wow. Good to know. Sorry.

• 54:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, but no, look, I, like many people after the election who, you know, Didn't vote for Trump, kind of, you wanted to just sort of hide for a moment and just not have to deal with the reality.

• 54:42Kara Swisher?

  Mm-hmm.

• 54:43Speaker 01

  And I think, you know, now it's sort of this moment in time where it's like, okay, this is the reality we're in. It's not the first term. We have to look at it, look at ourselves, and do what we feel is right to, you know, to be who we want to be in this moment. And so I think it's, that should all be, you know, what you're expressing, and it should all be part of, you know, what you want to say. So, yeah, that movie Bagman, I'd love to get that movie made right now because I feel like it sort of tells the story of what happens when people do the right thing in the face of somebody who's trying to, you know, go past the bounds of what their power is.

• 55:15Kara Swisher?

  Right, and Spear Agnew is quite a character, he's such a fantastic character.

• 55:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:18Kara Swisher?

  It's a great, that is, that was a great podcast. I like all of Rachel's podcasts a lot.

• 55:21Speaker 01

  Me too.

• 55:21Kara Swisher?

  But, so my last question where we go is this idea of influences you now, or perhaps before. I know your mother and father, the great Jerry Stiller and Anne Mira, she died in 2015, I think that's right, and he died in 2020. You're working on a documentary about them right now. Can you talk a little bit about this? And I imagine they gave you a lot of advice about entertainment, business, and storytelling over the years. Is there anything about their careers, from your perspective, that endures and what influences you today?

• 55:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, they worked together as a comedy team, they got married and, in 1953, and they weren't making any money as actors, both separately, trying to, you know, get work. And then my dad came up with this idea of them doing a comedy act together about who they were. And then we were born, my sister and I, and so grew up around it all. And for me, it was exploring in the movie this life of, of living in a household that was constantly part of their creative process, because they would work at home and they would write together and they would perform and come home and, you know, be parents and actors, and it was all sort of intermingled.

• 56:31Kara Swisher?

  Mm-hmm.

• 56:32Speaker 01

  And then, of course, you know, you grow up and... I had got married and had kids and became an actor and my kids want to be actors. And I was sort of looking at, you know, what is it inside of us that the creative process is? And how that connects with relationships that we have in our life when you do this kind of thing? You know, when you go to an office job, you know, you go to the office, then you want to maybe sever and not think about it, right? You know, but in a life where you're a creative person, it it it melds through and it's always part of of who you are. So I it affected my parents' marriage. They stayed married for 60 plus years, but there was a lot of stress and tension in there. And I was able to, my dad recorded a lot of stuff, audio recordings, super eight film.

• 57:17Speaker 01

  And he recorded them rehearsing and then sometimes the tape recorder would keep going and they'd get into an argument or they'd talk about what was going on in their life. So I was able to take those tapes and kind of see something that I hadn't seen in, you know, their private life together and how they navigated this relationship and their careers together.

• 57:37Kara Swisher?

  And when does that, where is that coming out?

• 57:39Speaker 01

  Uh, it's going to be Apple, Apple Movies. Yeah, and it's going to come out later this year, I think.

• 57:45Kara Swisher?

  So last question, what then influences you today about doing this from them? What did you, what did you come away with?

• 57:52Speaker 01

  I think, I think I came away with a better understanding of my parents in terms of my dad's creative process in particular, because he was very focused on that. And sometimes I've, it it sort of took him away from the family in a way, just kind of in his head a little bit. And I think I inherited that from him. And I think it's kind of made me look at my own relationship with my kids and my wife and have a little more perspective on that and maybe kind of, you know, I don't know, like less angst about that because, you know, an appreciation of like, okay,

• 58:35Speaker 01

  we've gotten to this place, things have not always been perfect, but you know, you keep evolving. And both my parents, I think, were were constantly evolving and questioning themselves and looking inward. And I think that's, that's something I got out of it.

• 58:49Kara Swisher?

  All right, Ben, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

• 58:52Speaker 01

  Great talking to you. All right. Bye, Karen.

• 58:58Kara Swisher?

  On with Kara Swisher is produced by Christian Castor-Russell, Kateri Yokum, Jolie Myers, Megan Burney, Megan Cunane, and Kalen Lynch. Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Special thanks to Kate Furby. Our engineers are Rick Kwan and Fernando Aruda, and our theme music is by Trackademics. If you already found the show, you get a pineapple. If not, you get the dance experience, and you do not want that experience. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher, and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Thursday with more.

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