Barry Diller Unfiltered: on Family, Fortune, Elon, Trump & AI

Barry Diller’s fingerprints are all over pop culture. From inventing the Movie of the Week and pioneering the television mini-series to launching the FOX broadcast network, redefining home shopping channels, and popularizing dating apps — Diller has had a hand in shaping the American experience for decades. His memoir, Who Knew, takes readers from his difficult childhood through his meteoric rise in Hollywood and finally, his reinvention as a groundbreaking internet entrepreneur. And although much of the press around the book has focused on Diller’s sexuality and his relationship to his wife, Diane von Furstenburg, nothing in his personal life is anywhere near as fascinating as his singular career. Kara and Barry discuss his life, his family, his approach to business, and his take on Trump and how to beat him. Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find us on Instagram, TikTok, and Bluesky @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.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  How long does this go?

• 0:01Kara Swisher?

  An hour.

• 0:02Speaker 00

  One solid hour?

• 0:03Kara Swisher?

  That's correct, Barry. This is substantive. It's substantive.

• 0:19Kara 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, honestly, one of my favorite people, Barry Diller, a media mogul, entertainment powerhouse, and digital innovator whose fingerprints are all over American culture. If you ever watched a TV miniseries, sang along to the movie Grease, watched The Simpsons, book Trip Online, or found love on an app, you owe Barry a little bit of gratitude. His memoir, Who Knew?, has been making headlines in part because he writes about his sexuality. Barry's attraction to men was the worst-kept secret in Hollywood, mostly because he didn't really try to fool anyone. Barry simply didn't say much about his love life, one way or the other. And because he's been in a loving and romantic relationship with a woman for decades, Barry

• 1:04Kara Swisher?

  is married to fashion icon Diane von Furstenburg. People like to gossip about what they assume their relationship is like. But the truth is Barry's private life is nowhere near as interesting as his career in business. Despite never going to college and showing next to no ambition in his late teens and early 20s, Barry went from the mailroom at William Morris to an executive office at ABC. Then he became CEO of Paramount Pictures, CEO of 20th Century Fox, and eventually he became his own boss and launched IAC. The media and internet conglomerate has had a hand in Expedia, Match Group, Vimeo, Ticketmaster, HSN, Care.com, .meredith, and The Daily Beast, just to name a few. I think it's pretty astounding that this run is still going.

• 1:48Kara Swisher?

  I'm excited to talk to him because I'm always excited to talk to him. He's a very prescient person. He has lots of contrarian attitudes that are actually contrarian and not contrarian for the sake of being contrarian. He always challenges me, and I challenge him back. And it's always an honest conversation, even when we don't agree. It's been a real pleasure to know him the many decades. And as you'll find, this is this book, you really do get to know him in a way that I hadn't before. And we're going to talk about that and more. And our expert question for Barry comes from Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, who Barry has gotten to know as a friend, too. So stick around.

• 2:30Speaker 02

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• 4:12Kara Swisher?

  Barry, thank you for coming on On.

• 4:14Speaker 00

  I'm happy to be on On.

• 4:15Kara Swisher?

  How long?

• 4:16Speaker 00

  I don't know how on I'll be, but I'm happy to be here.

• 4:18Kara Swisher?

  You'll be on. You're always on. How long have we known each other?

• 4:21Speaker 00

  You know, I was wondering that.

• 4:23Kara Swisher?

  Thirty years.

• 4:23Speaker 00

  It's certainly, it's gotta be decade, certainly decades.

• 4:26Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 4:26Speaker 00

  But is it really thirty?

• 4:27Kara Swisher?

  Do you remember?

• 4:28Speaker 00

  Are we that old?

• 4:29Kara Swisher?

  Do you remember you reaching out to me?

• 4:32Speaker 00

  No, tell me.

• 4:33Kara Swisher?

  Okay, I will tell you. I was covering the internet for the Wall Street Journal. I was the first person really covering it as a big thing.

• 4:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, that I know.

• 4:39Kara Swisher?

  And I got a phone call from two people. One was from Bob Iger, who's like, can I meet you and talk to you about this internet thing? And the other was from you. And you had me come to Los Angeles. You had just bought City Search, it must have been?

• 4:50Speaker 00

  Probably.

• 4:50Kara Swisher?

  Ticketmaster, one of them. I think it was Ticketmaster.

• 4:52Speaker 00

  Oh, okay.

• 4:53Kara Swisher?

  And I walked into your office, and it, right on Sunset, right? It was just off Sunset, in that weird Chrome building that, what's his name built? Fred.

• 5:01Speaker 00

  Fred Rosen.

• 5:01Kara Swisher?

  Fred Rosen.

• 5:02Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 5:03Kara Swisher?

  And I walked in, and I said, and you wanted to talk about the internet. You were the first person utterly curious about what was happening. No other else in Hollywood was, no other media person was. And we sat down, and I said, this is a lot of Chrome. He goes, you go, this is not my office. It's Fred fucking Rosen. And that's what, and that's how it started.

• 5:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, that's a good beginning.

• 5:22Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, it was. And you were curious from the get-go, whether, and you had questions about all the internet people, you were meeting them, and other people weren't doing it.

• 5:30Speaker 00

  That's true, yes, it was.

• 5:31Kara Swisher?

  And I was very.

• 5:32Speaker 00

  I was lucky. I mean, how lucky did you get when you get to be at kind of the beginning of a revolution?

• 5:37Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 5:38Speaker 00

  And you're there, and you're curious.

• 5:39Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, and you got it, and other people were either scared of it or ignorant. And those were the two reactions I would get.

• 5:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, as I say, I think I was really lucky. Lucky to be two things. There at that time, which was total luck.

• 5:50Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 5:51Speaker 00

  And lucky that I'm curious.

• 5:52Kara Swisher?

  Right. So the reason I'm saying we've known each other for a long time, we've talked over the years about the various things you've done, all the various companies you've had, including in media and stuff like that. I have to tell you, I love this book. You sent it to me early. Thank you. And you were worried about what would people would think of it, right?

• 6:07Speaker 00

  Of course.

• 6:07Kara Swisher?

  For lots of reasons.

• 6:08Speaker 00

  How could I not be?

• 6:09Kara Swisher?

  Right, exactly.

• 6:09Speaker 00

  Anything you do.

• 6:10Kara Swisher?

  Let me just read, it was right in the beginning. I'm just gonna, well, maybe I should have you read it.

• 6:14Speaker 00

  No, you do it.

• 6:15Kara Swisher?

  Okay, I'll do it. It was about your mom, she sent you, you're tough from the minute on your parents, which I thought was really interesting. In a fair way. I don't think it was unfair. She sent me to sleepaway camp for the first time when I was four. Yes, four. I was years, a few years below the minimum age requirement, but she brought people who owned the camp and I stayed not with the campers, but with the camp owners and their house. For six wonderful weeks, I cozied up to the structure of a real family unit. Three years later, I went back to the same camp, but I was old enough to be in the general population. I was miserable. I felt isolated and alone. In my desperation, I called my mother and begged her to come and pick me up. I remember waiting at the camp's entrance, sitting on a tree stump, alone for hours. She assured me she would come straight away. As each car approached,

• 6:57Kara Swisher?

  I peered up expectantly, then resumed my vigil when it wasn't her inside. I stayed there all day. The head of the camp suggested several times I should come back inside, but I refused. Then it got dark and I knew she wasn't going to come. I gave up on my mother that night. There would be no rescue. There was no one to protect me. I knew then I was on my own. That killed me.

• 7:17Speaker 00

  Kills me too.

• 7:18Kara Swisher?

  Here's why. I had the same experience.

• 7:20Speaker 00

  Did you really?

• 7:20Kara Swisher?

  I had a very similar narcissistic mom and left me at school alone. And I remember thinking, she's not picking me up. And it was, and I, for the, when I read this book, I said, I thought to myself, it's nice to finally meet you, Barry Diller.

• 7:34Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 7:35Kara Swisher?

  Which was interesting.

• 7:36Speaker 00

  There's these things, and I'm sure we have all, there's these snapshots that are, you know, somewhere in there in that brain that are absolute, perfect replicas of a moment. And I have that snapshot.

• 7:50Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 7:51Speaker 00

  Of probably 12 total snapshots.

• 7:54Kara Swisher?

  Right, right. And I thought that was effective. And I want to start talking about this because you've been a creative producer for decades. You write in this book, "Is the first time I've been the product itself. It's an unnerving experience." We obviously ran an excerpt.

• 8:07Speaker 00

  Boy, is that true.

• 8:08Kara Swisher?

  In New York Magazine, and the book's about to get published.

• 8:11Speaker 00

  Yes, which I didn't know I was doing. How is that for being stupid?

• 8:15Kara Swisher?

  Your publisher didn't tell you?

• 8:16Speaker 00

  Truly. Well, first of all, I thought an excerpt.

• 8:19Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 8:19Speaker 00

  Was they go in and they take a piece.

• 8:22Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 8:22Speaker 00

  And they pull it out. Excerpt, right? What I didn't know. And I'm very, I mean, who gives a damn?

• 8:29Kara Swisher?

  Yes, naive is the word when I think of, when I think of Barry Diller.

• 8:32Speaker 00

  No, no, believe me, I hold on to it. But this was really stupid because what I did not know, and I never would have agreed to if I had known, is they take little pieces from here, here, here, and here. And that's an excerpt.

• 8:47Kara Swisher?

  Yes, it is.

• 8:47Speaker 00

  I didn't know they had the right to do that.

• 8:49Kara Swisher?

  Yes, they do.

• 8:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, anyway, they did.

• 8:51Kara Swisher?

  They did that with my book, too. They took pieces of it from all.

• 8:53Speaker 00

  I didn't like that.

• 8:54Kara Swisher?

  You didn't like that. I know that. You said, I'm not, you go, you told Maureen Dow that you've shortened your book tour because, quote.

• 9:00Speaker 00

  You're one of the few I haven't canceled.

• 9:01Kara Swisher?

  I know, I would have been very angry. I'd have found you and rounded you down. But you said, I'm not up for interrogation on aspects of my personal life. We'll get to that in a second because I am the least interested in that part of the story, maybe as a gay person.

• 9:13Speaker 00

  I will thank you for that.

• 9:14Kara Swisher?

  Only because, I'm going to ask you about it because it's about the family part because that's what was really important to me.

• 9:19Speaker 00

  Okay, good. You can do that.

• 9:21Kara Swisher?

  Probably because, one, I'm gay. I already knew you were gay, by the way, or bisexual, or however you want to say it. I don't really care. And the other one, who cares? That's the other part. It's like, I don't really care.

• 9:30Speaker 00

  Yes, I know.

• 9:31Kara Swisher?

  And it wasn't a big secret.

• 9:32Speaker 00

  Why would you?

• 9:33Kara Swisher?

  Exactly. It's none of my business. That said, obviously, it's entrancing media people for some reason. We're not going to go into that. I want to start.

• 9:40Speaker 00

  Isn't it interesting, though, that in the, all, people haven't read this book, the people who are, who read the excerpt of it, but nobody's read the damn thing. And the amazing thing is, the only thing that has been written is my relationship with a woman.

• 9:58Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 9:59Speaker 00

  From which, somehow they extract, he's come out of the closet.

• 10:03Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 10:04Speaker 00

  And to me, I think, if I've come out of the closet, it's the most brightly lit room with a glass door. I mean, who, who, who, this is absurd.

• 10:14Kara Swisher?

  Well, nobody talks that way anymore. I mean, I think back in the day when there was.

• 10:17Speaker 00

  Oh, no, no.

• 10:18Kara Swisher?

  Right?

• 10:19Speaker 00

  I'm not talking about forty, no, sixty years ago. Jesus, I'm old.

• 10:23Kara Swisher?

  Right, me, too.

• 10:24Speaker 00

  But I'm talking about today.

• 10:26Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 10:27Speaker 00

  Why? It's amazing to me, and that's really old media folk.

• 10:31Kara Swisher?

  Right, that's correct.

• 10:32Speaker 00

  It's, you know, anybody young, or anyone who lives in the contemporary world would say, what are you talking about?

• 10:40Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 10:41Speaker 00

  With what, out of the closet at eighty-three years old?

• 10:44Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 10:45Speaker 00

  From what, when everyone has known about my life?

• 10:48Kara Swisher?

  That's correct.

• 10:49Speaker 00

  For... A long time.

• 10:52Kara Swisher?

  Well, what I think it is, is that it's, I used to have people ask me, you know, Barry Diller's gay, I'm like, yeah, no shit, Sherlock, like, and then they go, well, he's with that woman, I'm like, he loves her, like, he has a better relationship than you do with your husband, like, for sure, and they're closer and they're in love with each other, and they're like, how could that be, I'm like,

• 11:10Speaker 00

  That's so quite amazing.

• 11:11Kara Swisher?

  I was like, what do you mean, how could it be, it's a love story.

• 11:13Speaker 00

  Isn't it amazing?

• 11:15Kara Swisher?

  Well, it's sort of like, people ask me how I had a baby, like, how did you do that? I'm like, easily, and actually, much better so I don't have to look at your husband, or something like that, and my children are gorgeous and tall, because, you know, we get to pick. I want to go into the family part of it in just a minute, but I want to start with the book and your difficult childhood. You talk about your brother, who is a violent abuse, is drug addict, who died, you talk about the lack of sense of self impart, and you do talk about your parents, sort of the lack of love in some ways, and the surprises you had.

• 11:48Speaker 00

  Well, the lack of being a parent.

• 11:49Kara Swisher?

  Being a parent, yes.

• 11:50Speaker 00

  They just didn't have a clue.

• 11:51Kara Swisher?

  So, why, you end the book by saying, quote, "Being lucky enough to let a family build me into something resembling a person has been better than your success in business." I thought that was a pretty wonderful part, and something I'd never, that I hadn't talked to you about, the idea of the family you've built with, it's Dionne, and your stepkids, Alexandria and Tatiana, and how they transferred you. I want you to talk a little bit about family, so you can explain to people when they have to fixate on...

• 12:17Speaker 00

  Fixate on what?

• 12:19Kara Swisher?

  On the coming out part, because you were building a family, that's what you were looking to do.

• 12:23Speaker 00

  Well, I don't know that I was, I don't know that I was looking to do it, it, look, for sure, there was a yearn, how could there not, if you don't have family,

• 12:31Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 12:32Speaker 00

  How could there not be a yearn for a family? I mean, I went down the street to find family,

• 12:37Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 12:38Speaker 00

  You know, and my friends' parents, and, but that was, of course, not my family, and it was faux family, and while they may have been very nice to me in all different ways, I always had, which I didn't really realize, a yearn for a family, and it took me... Probably longer than many, but I was lucky enough that I met Dionne. And that family, over decades, formed around me. But anyway, it's that I, I didn't have an active verb here, basically. It happened to me and I wanted it. And, but I didn't know how to do it or take any, I wouldn't, I didn't, I don't like goals anyway,

• 13:24Speaker 00

  but I didn't have any practical process. It just happened and it was kinda just natural dominoes.

• 13:32Kara Swisher?

  The book has a lot of insight and, because you revolutionize multiple industries, but you say you're not a visionary, you can't see around corners. You're, you're, you keep saying this, your process is one dumb step forward, two back, course correcting as I went. I, I think you're giving yourself, you're sort of downplaying what you've done, but explain your process.

• 13:50Speaker 00

  It is, it is truth.

• 13:52Kara Swisher?

  Explain that process.

• 13:53Speaker 00

  It's because, the thing is that for me, and I love process. It's the only thing I actually really know is getting into a situation you get into out of curiosity. And when you're in it, you, at best, if it's a new idea, you don't know anything, nothing knows anything, and therefore you have to go truly one step after the other. That discovery, I love that. And I think through that, so I say, I don't, I don't think it's vision. I think it is bouncing off the wall this way and that way until, you know, you find a vein.

• 14:34Speaker 00

  And the sweetest moment is when you find a vein that you actually understand and know that no one else does. And so you get to then make these steps and learn as you go. I, I've, I've thought that the- Best way to be a manager is never to come in on top of an organization, but to start building an organization from yourself. Meaning you are the first employee. And you then, in the early days, you are hiring every task around you. So you learn those tasks. And as you do that and build from the bottom up, you actually need to learn how to manage.

• 15:18Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 15:19Speaker 00

  Whereas if you come in, as most people do, at middle levels or upper levels.

• 15:25Kara Swisher?

  And top down.

• 15:26Speaker 00

  And do it that way, top down. I think, I think it's, which is why most.

• 15:32Kara Swisher?

  Because it's already baked.

• 15:33Speaker 00

  Which is why most of those kinds of situations fail.

• 15:37Kara Swisher?

  But you, you don't consider that a visionary and being prescient or, you know, you, you write about your internal motivation, you wrote, I wanted to count, which is all that's ever really driven me. I wanted to do something that mattered. Why do you, when did it start to feel like you counted? Did it? And why was that your motivation?

• 15:54Speaker 00

  Because I did not count. I mean, so obvious. I mean, all my psych stuff is just, it's almost so common that.

• 16:03Kara Swisher?

  Not being hugged enough as a child.

• 16:04Speaker 00

  All my stuff is so obvious.

• 16:07Kara Swisher?

  Classic, it's a classic.

• 16:09Speaker 00

  It's every iteration of classic. I mean, who else would have a nervous breakdown because they thought they were paralyzed?

• 16:18Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 16:18Speaker 00

  Which is such a symbolic thing to sexual whateverness.

• 16:22Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 16:23Speaker 00

  So the counting was because I didn't count. And I, and I felt that, and I definitely felt that I had no self. And so what did I want? I wanted, that's, I would say, the, the, the biggest imagery I ever had was counting. In any way, you want to slice that one. And it, it, it comes from such an obvious place.

• 16:53Kara Swisher?

  So where, where was the first thing you did? You felt like you did something that mattered that counted?

• 16:57Speaker 00

  One of the things about that.

• 16:59Kara Swisher?

  Which is different than status, by the way.

• 17:00Speaker 00

  Yes, completely. As well as like living in the moment, which I don't do. Is that I don't, even to this, look, obviously I do count. But in my little. Whatever, you know, that, that, that primitive brain.

• 17:18Kara Swisher?

  Mm hmm.

• 17:19Speaker 00

  I probably still don't think I do.

• 17:20Kara Swisher?

  Right. So you're still Barry sitting on this stump?

• 17:23Speaker 00

  Uh, in some ways, I think you never, I don't know. Some people can leave it. I don't think I can leave any of that.

• 17:29Kara Swisher?

  So was there a project you remember thinking, yes, this is what?

• 17:32Speaker 00

  There's many times that I, that I have been realistic enough to say, aha, look, I did that.

• 17:41Kara Swisher?

  Mm hmm.

• 17:42Speaker 00

  Uh, as soon as I say it, I wash it. I can't help it.

• 17:46Kara Swisher?

  Oh, wow. So give me.

• 17:47Speaker 00

  Well, the first real big time I did it was when this movie of the week thing was a complete anomaly at television at that time. So it was very discounted. And the fir-, the morning, it was when you used to get ratings at six or seven a.m. in the West Coast in the morning, uh, of the first movie of the week that went on the air. And it, it got this huge rating.

• 18:12Kara Swisher?

  Yeah. Was it Sunday, Monday, Tuesday? What was it?

• 18:14Speaker 00

  Tuesday, Tuesday movie of the week, seven thirty, E V C. And I, and I had, of course, this wow. I mean, I've had a lot of those wows. They don't last very long.

• 18:26Kara Swisher?

  Right. But that one, do you remember the movie?

• 18:28Speaker 00

  Seven in Darkness.

• 18:29Kara Swisher?

  Wow. About who's in?

• 18:31Speaker 00

  Horrible movie.

• 18:32Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, they're all horrible in a great way.

• 18:34Speaker 00

  I mean, it, it, it, think of more bromantic. This is the story. Seven in Darkness is its title. It is the story of seven blind people who crash in a plane.

• 18:50Kara Swisher?

  So good.

• 18:51Speaker 00

  Crash in a plane on a mountain.

• 18:53Kara Swisher?

  Uh huh.

• 18:54Speaker 00

  And they have to get down the mountain blind.

• 18:58Kara Swisher?

  Oh, fantastic. You need to do that again.

• 19:01Speaker 00

  Oh, it's a sort of.

• 19:02Kara Swisher?

  Who was the star? Cloris Leachman?

• 19:04Speaker 00

  Oh, no, Milton Berle, of all people, who was a comedian. None of your audience will ever know who that is. Plus a bunch of B, C, and D.

• 19:14Kara Swisher?

  Well, those are the best kind.

• 19:16Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 19:16Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 19:17Speaker 00

  Ex movie people.

• 19:18Kara Swisher?

  Yeah. So in nineteen eighty six, you created Fox, a new broadcast channel with Rupert Murdoch, who has loomed large in your life.

• 19:24Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 19:24Kara Swisher?

  Talk about breaking through the big three that dominated for decades. Cause you were sort of the maverick.

• 19:29Speaker 00

  Look, I talked about earlier, Finding a Vane. It took us a while. We didn't start out, I wanted us to be an alternative network. But dumb.

• 19:40Speaker 00

  At the moment, dumbstruck, not having a clue, other than I wanted to do this. I knew that the three networks were all alike.

• 19:49Kara Swisher?

  Yes.

• 19:49Speaker 00

  They'd become, they'd lost their personalities. They, they, they lost.

• 19:53Kara Swisher?

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:53Speaker 00

  As they got more and more successful and more and more dominant, they cove to like the center. They'd lost their personalities, or their distinct personalities, which they had, really, in the beginning of broadcasting and radio, actually carried on to television. Anyway, I thought there should be a fourth network, because I thought they were all the same. I didn't actually connect the next thing, which was, they had to be an alternative, we had to be an alternative to the three. We couldn't just be the fourth.

• 20:24Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 20:24Speaker 00

  It took us a year or so, no, a little, yeah, about a year, and putting on series like they put on series, until, all of which, by the way, didn't succeed.

• 20:36Kara Swisher?

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:36Speaker 00

  Until I read the script called Married, which was called Not the Cosby's, which was Married with Children.

• 20:42Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 20:43Speaker 00

  If ever there was an alternative show to what was on television then, it was Married with Children. As soon as that happened, as soon as I saw it, I said, that's The Vein.

• 20:53Kara Swisher?

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:54Speaker 00

  And then we started, and then The Simpsons came after that, and

• 20:57Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 20:58Speaker 00

  Cops, and all these shows

• 20:59Kara Swisher?

  In Living Color.

• 21:00Speaker 00

  That were, and then all these shows that were truly an alternative to the three networks, and that's what birthed Fox. If we hadn't have done that, we would have failed.

• 21:09Kara Swisher?

  Right, and you were looking for that, in that idea, and what would you say The Vein is called, if you had to name it? But what would, that vein you're pushing there, besides just different, what would you say it was?

• 21:19Speaker 00

  Oh, edgy, uh, contrarian, um, not antisocial, but not conformist social.

• 21:27Kara Swisher?

  Mm-hmm.

• 21:28Speaker 00

  So, no one would put on a show called In Living Color. I mean, it was just not inconceivable that anybody

• 21:35Kara Swisher?

  Which made them more creative, including The Simpsons.

• 21:37Speaker 00

  Well, of course, yeah.

• 21:39Kara Swisher?

  Which still goes on.

• 21:40Speaker 00

  Much more fertile ground.

• 21:41Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, right, absolutely. Well, but once the book focuses on your career in film and television, when you were one of the most important people in entertainment, which went after comma, Barry Diller, one of the most important people in entertainment, but you're still an employee. So, when you left Fox, one of the things, I do think you are an entrepreneur, even though sometimes you say you're not, you absolutely are, you bought a stake in a home shopping channel, QVC, and eventually became an internet entrepreneur. Along the way, you had this epiphany, and you said it to me early on in our relationship, "Screens don't have to be just for narrative, for telling stories, screens can interact with consumers." So, why do you think so many people miss that? And where did this, like, startling revelation come to you? Besides that, it's obvious, right?

• 22:19Speaker 00

  Oh, no. It came to me, and there's a screen right over there. It came to me, again, in the most serendipitous way, which is, I went to QVC because Dion, my wife, was thinking about selling on QVC, and she asked me, she said, "You should go see this thing, anyway."

• 22:43Kara Swisher?

  In Florida?

• 22:44Speaker 00

  No, no, no, in West Chester, Pennsylvania.

• 22:47Kara Swisher?

  Okay, right.

• 22:48Speaker 00

  And so, I go to this place to just check out, what is this QVC thing? And I saw this primitive convergence of telephones and television sets and computers working together. And I saw a screen like that, a little smaller, a green screen. And on it were the visualization of the calls that were coming in as products were being put up, offering products. And when a product was up, you'd see the phone lines go like this, and then it would come down, and then it'd go up and come down.

• 23:28Speaker 00

  And I, it just struck me, huh, that's a screen. I only know screens for telling stories.

• 23:38Kara Swisher?

  So passive.

• 23:40Speaker 00

  Screens, telling stories on a screen. Screens can be interactive. By the way, a new word. That wasn't an active word then. I don't even know if interactive is a word.

• 23:53Kara Swisher?

  What year was this?

• 23:53Speaker 00

  This is 92, 93. And, and I was struck by that.

• 24:00Speaker 00

  Thank God it was then, by three years later, the internet comes along and I had this primitive understanding in my fingertips of what this was about.

• 24:12Kara Swisher?

  We'll be back in a minute.

• 24:22Speaker 05

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• 24:59Kara Swisher?

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• 25:44Kara Swisher?

  and keep your private life private by signing up for DeleteMe. Now, at a special discount for our listeners, get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to joindelete.me/kara and use the promo code Kara at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to joindelete.me/kara and enter the code Kara at checkout. That's joindelete.me.com/kara, code Kara.

• 26:12Kara Swisher?

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• 26:57Kara Swisher?

  with your care team, so support is always in reach. Ready to reach your goals? Visit forhers.com/cara to access personalized, affordable care for weight loss, hair, menopause, and more. That's forhers.com/cara. Individual results may vary, and stopping treatment may result in weight regain.

• 27:18Kara Swisher?

  So one of the things you said in the book, you also have a quote from Robert Woodruff, the former president of Coca-Cola, who said, "The world belongs to the discontented." That really struck out. You write, "The greatest single explanation of those who succeed greatly." I'm not particularly discontented, but I agree with you on this. What do you, how do you talk to young people when you ask for advice? Because that's kind of a dire way to think about it. If you're unhappy, you'll be successful.

• 27:42Speaker 00

  I don't know that it's, well, is it?

• 27:44Kara Swisher?

  Because I don't find you to be unhappy.

• 27:46Speaker 00

  I don't, no, I'm not unhappy, but, but I'm definitely discontented, and I think there's a big

• 27:50Kara Swisher?

  Okay, explain the difference.

• 27:51Speaker 00

  difference between the two. Discontented means that whatever is known, or, no, sorry, can I say it any better than what the word picture that forms for me into some form that anyone can understand? Which is that if, if you go along with things and don't have willfulness, meaning you see something and you're willful about it because it needs to be corrected.

• 28:21Kara Swisher?

  Right, right.

• 28:22Speaker 00

  That discontent and willfulness is the difference, I think, between

• 28:29Speaker 00

  Mattering or not mattering.

• 28:30Kara Swisher?

  Are you discontented, would you say, constantly, still?

• 28:33Speaker 00

  No.

• 28:34Kara Swisher?

  No?

• 28:34Speaker 00

  No, no.

• 28:35Kara Swisher?

  Less so? No, I think you are. In a good way, not in a bad way.

• 28:39Speaker 00

  No, I'm definitely, I'm, listen, I no longer, in my concept of a job, I haven't had a job in a long time. And I don't mean that as an employee.

• 28:48Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 28:49Speaker 00

  I mean, I've, I've, and to my misfortune, actually, and I look for things where I can actually go back to work as I understand it.

• 28:58Kara Swisher?

  Mm-hmm.

• 28:59Speaker 00

  Which is very linear and very one dumb step, but mostly I passed.

• 29:04Kara Swisher?

  You passed, why?

• 29:06Speaker 00

  Why?

• 29:06Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, I can tell from this book.

• 29:08Speaker 00

  Because I, no, because I, I have other interests and, and I, and I, I'm still interested in, in, I'm not interested in everyday business, it really does bore me, I mean, if you, if you just give me an ordinary shepherding of a successful business, please, I'll go Venezuela. But if you give me something that's got a challenge in it, then kind of I'm up for it.

• 29:35Kara Swisher?

  Okay, let's, let's talk about your business, you've been running IAC since your former CEO left earlier this year to run a home services company, Angie, which you spun off from IAC.

• 29:45Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 29:45Kara Swisher?

  You recently added a board member after facing pressure, you've got an activist investor, as many people do, and board changes. The, the stock is down, what is your plan right now for IAC? Because you are running it, you do have a job.

• 29:58Speaker 00

  Um, blah, blah, blah, um, yeah, I guess I do.

• 30:02Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 30:02Speaker 00

  But I, but not, I'm not, I have, I have very good people that are, have good responsibilities in the company, and so I think there's enough creative process that doesn't absolutely need me. I can stir it somewhat at the top and challenge what they come up with.

• 30:25Speaker 00

  But, you know, I have such a long, I've never sold any stock.

• 30:28Kara Swisher?

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:29Speaker 00

  So I have an endless, long-term point of view with it.

• 30:33Kara Swisher?

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:34Speaker 00

  Uh, I'm, I, I'd rather the stock not be down, except that it being down from a high is healthy.

• 30:42Kara Swisher?

  Right, was it a hundred and forty?

• 30:43Speaker 00

  Because, because, what is, I don't even know what it is. Well, one hundred and forty at some point.

• 30:49Kara Swisher?

  It was during the pandemic.

• 30:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, okay, well, silly days. But I think that if properly managed, so to speak, that's a healthy environment. It's it it that's good. We're this company of ours now twenty five years or somewhat more than that has gone through several revolutions. We spun off eleven public companies. So we are at a period now, and we've been in it for probably two years, where the two companies that we had left, both post-COVID, some self-inflicted, some conditional,

• 31:32Speaker 00

  have had huge problems they had to get through. And that took like two years. And we're, Angie, we spun off. That was one of them. The one that's still there, the biggest enterprise, is DDM, which is the world's largest print and digital publisher, is doing really well now. But it had a re listen, we bought Meredith Joan People Magazine and all these other magazines. And we had to bring them over to a digital model because they hadn't been digitized. And that took us about two years. But now we're outperforming every other publisher. So that's good. So we have a really good going business and we have capital. And now, because we because the larder is bearer,

• 32:16Speaker 00

  now we got to get new stuff.

• 32:18Kara Swisher?

  So when I last interviewed you for the podcast in two thousand and twenty three, you praised, for example, Netflix's business model and said they had an evil genius for luring their competitors into overspending or streaming. Many years ago, you gave me the single best quote I've ever gotten from someone, which you said Hollywood is so inbred. It's a miracle their children have teeth. I don't know if you remember.

• 32:37Speaker 00

  Did I say that?

• 32:38Kara Swisher?

  You did say that. It's so good. It was so good. Talk a little bit about where Hollywood is, because Netflix certainly shaken them up. Disney is gaining momentum. And Warner Brothers Discovery's streaming efforts were profitable last year, not hugely profitable. Fox is going to launch a new streaming service. How do you look at that now?

• 32:56Speaker 00

  Well, it's kind of, listen, I did say, not, okay, you can give me not visionary, but some prescience, which is, I think more than five years ago, or seven years ago, I said Netflix won. Mm-hmm, you did. And, uh, they did. They won. Mm-hmm. And after they won, along came two other tech overlords, Amazon and Apple. And they, with unlimited resources and a different business model, are in streaming in a, in a parallel technology-led manner. Mm-hmm.

• 33:40Speaker 00

  That has left, quote, "Hollywood hegemony" gone forever. It is not that any of these companies that over-invest in streaming, which many did, thinking they could compete with Netflix is the great fool's game. I'm not saying they won't build over time profitable businesses. They probably will, but they will never dominate ever again. The game is gone. Gone. And it doesn't mean they won't exist, but they will not only be smaller businesses, but the more important thing is for, that word hegemony, is that in the history of entertainment,

• 34:25Speaker 00

  up until this period happened with Netflix, anything that came along in media, Hollywood bought and submerged into its core. Mm-hmm. So, they held this for 75 years. Right. And any, VCRs came, uh, cable came, all of these things were sucked up through this power of these- Sure, just the way tech companies are doing it. Big media companies, until Netflix. It's gone now. What it means is they'll no longer dominate media ever again. They can't. Will they still?

• 35:11Speaker 00

  Have businesses that do well, but will they have great growth?

• 35:16Kara Swisher?

  Mm hmm.

• 35:17Speaker 00

  I think it's impossible.

• 35:18Kara Swisher?

  It's impossible. So one of the things we also talked about at the time, and I think because there's another thing coming, you were working putting together a coalition of publishers to sue AI companies.

• 35:26Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 35:26Kara Swisher?

  And also working on effort to get Congress to narrow copyright laws so that AI companies couldn't scrape content.

• 35:32Speaker 00

  Although you can't put your, you know, putting your hand up on the train track in front of tech is like a.

• 35:37Kara Swisher?

  Like, exactly. But you said it was a delusion for publishers.

• 35:39Speaker 00

  It's gonna get run over.

• 35:40Kara Swisher?

  Yes, but you said it was a delusion. They make their own economic relationship with these big entities. But in May, you did sign a partnership agreement with Microsoft and OpenAI.

• 35:48Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 35:49Kara Swisher?

  Vox also has a deal with OpenAI.

• 35:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 35:51Kara Swisher?

  Talk about what, when you're saying that you can't put your hand up in front of them. What does that mean? And how do you look at AI now?

• 35:57Speaker 00

  Well, what you can do is, of course, you can, it is possible, you know, my brain out loud, is it might have been possible a year or two ago to have gotten a law narrowly passed that redefined fair use, in which case the economic, the tracks that the economics went on, train tracks that they went on, would have gone more to publishers. But that

• 36:34Speaker 00

  did not happen. Once that did not happen, then unless you define fair use narrowly, all content is going to be sucked up in the maw.

• 36:45Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 36:46Speaker 00

  Of AI. It's reality. Will you get paid for it as we started to get paid? And you say Vox is starting and other publishers will begin to get paid? Yes, they will. Will they take anything but the tiniest sliver share of whatever is to be actually gained?

• 37:03Kara Swisher?

  Mm hmm.

• 37:04Speaker 00

  I doubt it. But they will, I don't say they won't survive, but they won't giantly prosper because that's almost impossible.

• 37:12Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 37:12Speaker 00

  So.

• 37:14Speaker 00

  AI, and I'm not gonna do the bimbo of change everything we know here.

• 37:19Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, please don't.

• 37:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, but if you have, and I think more and more personal brands will be able to survive because their brand speaks clearly and loudly. I think Substack, for instance, or forms of Substack, or your podcast, or other podcasts, where there is no possible disintermediation for you.

• 37:50Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 37:50Speaker 00

  There just isn't.

• 37:51Kara Swisher?

  It's a nice little business.

• 37:52Speaker 00

  Now, it doesn't mean that you're gonna build some giant enterprise, but can you earn severely large amounts of money?

• 38:02Kara Swisher?

  Yes.

• 38:03Speaker 00

  Of course you can. And brands at a higher scale than an individual, for instance, I think our People Magazine brand, so long as we invest in it and build that brand, that is our best defense against AI. But that means people will come to us directly rather than indirectly through search mechanisms.

• 38:25Kara Swisher?

  Right, right.

• 38:26Speaker 00

  And that's the only salvation.

• 38:28Kara Swisher?

  Because you're making something someone wants, right? And they can only get it from you.

• 38:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:31Kara Swisher?

  That's what I was thinking.

• 38:32Speaker 00

  So long as you keep to that, rather than anything generic, anything generic, anything without brand potential.

• 38:41Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 38:41Speaker 00

  Individual or corporate brand potential is gonna be valueless.

• 38:45Kara Swisher?

  Valueless, and therefore not. So one of the things that we have every episode is an expert send us a question, it's sort of in that genre, let's hear yours.

• 38:53Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Sam Altman. I'm the CEO of OpenAI and a huge fanboy of Barry Diller. Very few people manage to succeed to such an extent in one industry, and it's almost unheard of to succeed so much in two industries. And so my question is, what have you learned and how have you done it?

• 39:07Kara Swisher?

  I'll add to that. It was a very nice question. In the book you write, instinct and grit were all we had. I think what he was asking for is how do you shift between industries? He's probably looking for his next gig, I guess.

• 39:20Speaker 00

  Well, it's relatively rare. I did it by creating a vacuum and getting lucky enough, as I said, to land at this place where I had this epiphany about something earlier than other people got it or that it developed. So that was my experience. I think it's, I think people shifting, I think it's relatively rare. I shifted because I did not want to work for anyone anymore. I wanted something of my own. I didn't want to continue this delusion that I'd always had that this company was mine. And that's how I acted. And when I realized that was a delusion, I wanted to see, can I do anything on my own? That

• 40:03Speaker 00

  was like a forcing mechanism. And then, once I forced myself out onto my own, I also thought, I don't really want to repeat myself. Those were two things. One, I wanted out, and one, I didn't want to-

• 40:18Kara Swisher?

  Dancing monkey, I call it.

• 40:19Speaker 00

  I didn't want to just run another movie company.

• 40:22Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 40:22Speaker 00

  I'd already run three by that time. And, no, two. And then I had a third with Universal for a year and a half after that. But I didn't want to do that. And I didn't want to become a producer or something like that.

• 40:38Kara Swisher?

  Right. You didn't want a big deal?

• 40:39Speaker 00

  No. So I created this vacuum into which something came. So it was more negatives than it was positives. It was two negatives. I wanted out, and I didn't want to repeat myself.

• 40:52Kara Swisher?

  Right. I was always saying I was a bad employee and I don't want to talk to you anymore. That was what I would say. I can't talk to you anymore. I'm tired of it.

• 40:59Speaker 00

  That's good.

• 40:59Kara Swisher?

  Do you think a future Barry Diller would be able to succeed when they strike out on their own? You know, a lot of corporations and creative decisions will be made using algorithms and AI and the things Sam is doing.

• 41:10Speaker 00

  Do I think it's still possible? Yeah, but I don't have a clue how. I think, I do think, as I said earlier, bimbo talk, everybody about AI. But the implications for it are so-

• 41:33Speaker 00

  Conceptually enormous that I think, and it's all gonna happen really soon. It's like, that's the thing Sam says, which is, when he used to say to me, when I first start knowing Sam, ten, eight, ten years ago, and before, I think he was still at Y or something. Y company, yeah. And he said thirty to fifty years, and then it was twenty to thirty years, and then about two or three years ago, he said, five years. Right. Which you yourself took in, because you told me you were shifting your employee base and trying to figure that out. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 42:15Speaker 00

  But, but so, it's, it's coming really fast now. And so, its consequences are gonna be, in the next five to ten years, I mean, its revolutionary consequences are gonna be in that convulsiveness in the next, I can't predict that, what, what that is, but I can make, can I make the analogy, that is this the same as agrarian going to industrialized? I, I don't know, I mean, you know, this was a nation of farmers. Right. I don't think it's as neat, but test it, which is, so around the later part, mid

• 42:53Speaker 00

  later part, railroads came and stuff, and so, there's this enormous change of, of rural agrarian to industrial. And it was a huge disruption. Is it an analogy to today, where, by the way, many things changed, but many things opened up. Right, correct. That compensated for that change. Correct. Are we at a period now, where the kind of changes that are going to happen, actually do not have positive. Opportunities. Pockets of opportunity. What do you think? And I don't have a friggin' clue. Really?

• 43:37Speaker 00

  Except, except that, and I have so much native optimism, that I. It has to. Doubt it. Oh, wow. That I doubt it. You doubt? My native optimism is, right now, is, is.

• 43:55Speaker 00

  Burden covered, sat on top of because I think the consequences of this are like nothing we've seen before.

• 44:09Speaker 07

  We'll be back in a minute.

• 44:17Speaker 07

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• 44:59Speaker 07

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• 45:28Speaker 08

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• 46:14Speaker 09

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• 46:58Kara Swisher?

  I'm going to talk about politics and I would end up talking about the book at the end. The one more question about the book. You were a prominent Democratic donor. We talked about a lot. You said before the election, President Trump was a rotten person. You've always been very clear. Gates learned from you, I guess, when he was just talking about Elon recently, saying that he's killing children across the globe. You said you hoped that he would be pushed into the dust.

• 47:18Speaker 00

  Isn't that amazing, though?

• 47:19Kara Swisher?

  I love that he did it.

• 47:21Speaker 00

  No, but isn't it amazing? Elon Musk, who did this flash thing, because I think it's really accurate. So, US Open, and I'm in this, one of those like boxes things. And Elon is with our little group of like eight people or whatever. And the, you know, there are 20,000 people in that stadium.

• 47:46Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, and these boxes are open for people who don't know. It's not like football boxes.

• 47:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, no, no, they're all exposed. And I was just amazed, it was hardly a surprise to me that Elon's celebrity. But I'm telling you, a third of the faces in that audience were looking at him and not at this champ game that was taking place. And whenever there was a break...

• 48:14Speaker 00

  I'm telling you, hundreds of people came on the row, the walkway just below us, to Snappies and to say,

• 48:24Kara Swisher?

  Say hello, yeah.

• 48:25Speaker 00

  You know, will you please sign my thing? It's the most important thing to me. It was like, and I thought, wow, I've seen a ton of celebrity in my life.

• 48:36Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 48:37Speaker 00

  I ain't never seen that one.

• 48:39Kara Swisher?

  Right, and?

• 48:40Speaker 00

  If today he was in that box, they'd throw tomatoes at him.

• 48:45Kara Swisher?

  They would.

• 48:46Speaker 00

  And it's only September to May. I've never seen anything as swift as that.

• 48:54Kara Swisher?

  Why do you explain it?

• 48:56Speaker 00

  Well, look, I, you know, I personally like him, but, but I also think, and I don't know if I said this, but, but he's like entitled to his megalomania.

• 49:08Kara Swisher?

  For his accomplishments.

• 49:11Speaker 00

  He is entitled to megalomania. Unfortunately, if you were a megalomania act, you, your tuning fork ear is lost. And he lost it.

• 49:21Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 49:21Speaker 00

  And, and so that's why he, he, he did not need doing, saying, I want to go and cut waste and out of government, but do it with a thoughtful, kind hand. To come in, he just didn't even thought of it.

• 49:38Kara Swisher?

  Chainsaw.

• 49:39Speaker 00

  With a chainsaw, as an imagery. When you're actually

• 49:43Kara Swisher?

  The richest person on earth.

• 49:45Speaker 00

  Firing people.

• 49:46Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 49:46Speaker 00

  And you are someone of vast resources, is so, forget everything else, tuneless.

• 49:53Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 49:54Speaker 00

  That this is what, that's why people would throw tomatoes at him anyway.

• 49:57Kara Swisher?

  So, do you think that Trump was the reason for it? Because you said, you have called Trump, you said he, should he push in the dust of history, you said he's evil character. He's still going to be one of the most consequential presidents. I think he's pulled down Elon Musk and he used Elon as a heat shield in a really interesting

• 50:11Speaker 00

  Oh, I think that may be true. But you know, I don't, I've, uh,

• 50:17Speaker 00

  When he got elected this time, you know, in the first four years, I said, I'll either move to Canada or join the resistance. I joined the resistance. I was not the biggest cheerleader, but I certainly was in that.

• 50:28Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, you were.

• 50:29Speaker 00

  This time, I thought, you know, all right, give it a try. See what happens, you know? I thought, I thought this about the tariff thing, which I think, I think it's going to end in tears. But you know what? It's a big gamble. I like big gambles. Maybe you can pull it off. Maybe manufacturing can come back. Maybe it can end taxes for people where you just simply get money from others. Okay, give it to him. Let him, don't, don't be in this derangement syndrome. And let's see, giving it a little good spirit rather than violent, negative spirit. And that's my attitude right now.

• 51:10Speaker 00

  And, and, you know, unfortunately, when I then, you know, I, it's hard to maintain that attitude. When you read that we are against immigrants of all kind unless they're white, South Africaners.

• 51:26Kara Swisher?

  So it's not working.

• 51:27Speaker 00

  When you, when you hear it, it's like, oh, Jesus.

• 51:31Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 51:32Speaker 00

  Oh, Jesus.

• 51:33Kara Swisher?

  See, I love the feeling that he could have been a very successful president if he just didn't, you know, one of the things I'm hearing from like, he was, I'm for deporting illegal immigrants, but not that way. I'm for reforming government, but not that way. Like, the way they're doing it is casually cruel, strange, weird characters.

• 51:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's.

• 51:53Kara Swisher?

  Were you surprised by the unhinged, I would say, unhinged nature of this? He's just going for it with everything, whether it's immigrants, whether it's the plane, whether.

• 52:00Speaker 00

  It's pushing everything imaginable. It's pushing, it's pushing so much on the table. It is either, it's, it's either someone or he or somebody said, we're going to do everything. Full force, all at once. Which is scare them all into utter submission.

• 52:23Speaker 00

  Or be able to keep changing the day's news because we've got so much that we're throwing out. Uh, I actually think it's great that he's done that. I'd rather it.

• 52:36Kara Swisher?

  You see it.

• 52:37Speaker 00

  The, well, better than the boiling frog, you know? I don't wanna be, I don't wanna slow burn. So, I'd rather get it all out there.

• 52:46Kara Swisher?

  Mm-hmm.

• 52:47Speaker 00

  Okay, let's see if any good comes of these things, or anything, you know, solid comes. And let's make a judgment when that happens, rather than in the process of it.

• 52:59Kara Swisher?

  Any prescience right now where you think it's going? I think it's not gonna go.

• 53:03Speaker 00

  I, as I said, I doubt it. But I, I, I, I, I don't know yet.

• 53:11Kara Swisher?

  So, to be clear, instead of being horrified by Trump, you think pushback is Trump derangement syndrome? Or not? I can't tell.

• 53:19Speaker 00

  No, sorry.

• 53:20Kara Swisher?

  Do you think Trump derangement syndrome does exist? Because I do think that people are getting out of the way.

• 53:24Speaker 00

  No, no, no. Yes, it, it, it.

• 53:26Kara Swisher?

  It does.

• 53:27Speaker 00

  Of course it exists.

• 53:28Kara Swisher?

  So, that's not the successful strategy right now?

• 53:30Speaker 00

  I think that's, I absolutely think it's a terrible strategy. I think the only strategy for, I think the only strategy is, there are three branches of government. Those three branches of government are not on the, forget progressive, which I hate the term progressive, although parts of it, of course, I like. Who wouldn't? But it, the, the, the, the three branches of government are all on the Republican side, on their side. I want one of them back. So, all work has to go in 26 to get Congress out of being what it is now, which is a, which is nonexistent.

• 54:12Kara Swisher?

  Right, right.

• 54:13Speaker 00

  And that's the goal. Don't do anything else. Don't yell, don't complain, don't. Go off doing really scary things, which is start doing riots that then cause reaction to riots, which cause civil war or horrible worse things. Elect a congress that can take power back from the presidency. Presidency has too much power. No one should have that kind of power.

• 54:43Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 54:44Speaker 00

  No individual can have that kind of power. I don't care who that individual is, but no one can have that power. And the only way to get it back is get congress.

• 54:52Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 54:53Speaker 00

  I mean, or wait till 28 and elect someone else.

• 54:56Kara Swisher?

  One of the things, though, that's happening in media is this bending knee thing. You've defended, for example, Sherry Redstone as she's trying to settle this lawsuit.

• 55:04Speaker 00

  It's so amazing.

• 55:05Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 55:06Speaker 00

  Even this morning, I had breakfast with whatever, an important person. He said to me, "How could you do that about Sherry Redstone?" I've had a number of people. I only did it because when someone asked me the question, I thought to myself, because I know that's her situation, which is she really was in technical bankruptcy. And if it costs you settling an insane suit, okay, settle it. But I have been more criticized for that than anything, as like, "How could you say that's a right thing to do?"

• 55:40Kara Swisher?

  I don't think you said it's a right thing to do. It's a thing you have to do. You said you bend the knee if there's a guillotine to their head.

• 55:46Speaker 00

  I said I'm sympathetic to the guillotine.

• 55:47Kara Swisher?

  Right, yes. You don't want to get your head cut off.

• 55:49Speaker 00

  Right.

• 55:50Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 55:51Speaker 00

  Anyway.

• 55:52Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 55:53Speaker 00

  All right.

• 55:54Kara Swisher?

  You also defended Jeff Bezos, but we're not getting into that today.

• 55:55Speaker 00

  Oh, yes, I will do that. But you don't need me to do it.

• 55:57Kara Swisher?

  No, I don't need you to do that. So, but is there a downstream consequence to this?

• 56:01Speaker 00

  To what?

• 56:02Kara Swisher?

  To these attacks on the press and stuff. You yourself are facing...

• 56:04Speaker 00

  Attacks on the press?

• 56:05Kara Swisher?

  The media, these lawsuits, these things.

• 56:08Speaker 00

  Oh, my God.

• 56:09Kara Swisher?

  You guys are getting a defamation lawsuit at Daily Beast, which you own by Chris Lesavita, for defamation. Is that a problem, do you think? Because they're using it nuisance lawsuits.

• 56:18Speaker 00

  Of course, it's a terrible problem. Again, we...

• 56:24Speaker 00

  First of all, one of the things I really do believe is that it's only three years and some months. I want it to be shorter by getting Congress to curtail the powers of the presidency. Right. And for all of those reasons. That's now a year and a half. Mm-hmm. Right? But in three and a half years, or three and whatever months, there'll be a new election and Trump will not be the president, no matter what. Right. I believe. So I'm kind of, have equanimity about this period. A long period. Except that I do think there are, there's another scenario, a very dark scenario.

• 57:06Speaker 00

  I don't think it's gonna happen, but it could happen. That's why I want the, that's why I feel so strongly about 26. Mm-hmm. But I think that the things that are happening in the media and the things that are happening in, in the politicizing, in the politicization that's gone so edged. So I said, and I really do, I hate the woke left and I hate the woke right. So when we have this application now, that's having this downstream effect, this can be, this could be permanent. Mm-hmm. Could be. Could be. So you're-

• 57:50Speaker 00

  So it does need to be fought. I love Harvard. And I would, if you asked me about Harvard a month ago. You'd say, "I fucking hate Harvard." I would say, "I hate Harvard." [laughing] But this new guy. Yeah. Said, "There are lots of things wrong with Harvard that I'm gonna fix, but the government isn't gonna order me to do it." Right. I love the law firms. My sympathy will go to Sherry for guillotine this, but to law firms. Who are fighting back. Who are going, no, law firms who will be maybe a 10th less successful, that they- Folded is heinous.

• 58:29Kara Swisher?

  Yes, I agree.

• 58:30Speaker 00

  I hold them totally to account.

• 58:32Kara Swisher?

  Yep, okay, two more questions. It's still a little earlier, but the jockeying for the 2028 presidential Democratic nomination start, you're still a Democrat, presumably, on the Democratic.

• 58:40Speaker 00

  I am, yes.

• 58:40Kara Swisher?

  Is there anybody who you think could win in 28? The names would be Gavin Newsom, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Gretchen Whitmer, Andy Beshear, who I just met, by the way, Pete Buttigieg, Wes Moore, who I just interviewed.

• 58:51Speaker 00

  Why do you not say Ginny?

• 58:53Kara Swisher?

  I got him too. Josh Shapiro.

• 58:55Speaker 00

  No, Ginny Ramondo.

• 58:57Kara Swisher?

  Oh, Ginny Ramondo, okay, I'll add her. Okay, then that's the one, JB Prisker, Gina Ramondo.

• 59:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, what about it?

• 59:03Kara Swisher?

  Which one of these? What do you think about the Democratic field?

• 59:05Speaker 00

  Oh, many of them. I mean, I don't have anyone at this moment. I don't want to have anyone. I want someone to resonate, I think.

• 59:10Kara Swisher?

  What do you want from that candidate?

• 59:11Speaker 00

  Oh, I want, if we do not have a centrist, sensible, I mean, obviously centrist left, but centrist candidate who understands, I blame the, I don't blame Trump, I blame the Democrats, I blame Biden, I blame 30 years of elitist, condescending, progressive, extreme politics for how we got into this position. So I want the antidote to that.

• 59:46Kara Swisher?

  The antidote to that.

• 59:47Speaker 00

  Loud and clear.

• 59:48Kara Swisher?

  All right, very last question. This is a bracingly honest memoir. I expected nothing less. And I think you're tougher on yourself and more open about your insecurities than anyone could have expected. Do you think it's worth it to have done it? Do you recommend other people examine their lives carefully and share as much about themselves?

• 1:00:05Speaker 00

  Right now, right this minute?

• 1:00:06Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:07Speaker 00

  Absolutely not.

• 1:00:08Kara Swisher?

  Why?

• 1:00:09Speaker 00

  A month or two from now, because it's, because the truth is, it's so exposing.

• 1:00:13Kara Swisher?

  Prosthetics, yes.

• 1:00:14Speaker 00

  And I didn't, you know, my ability to compartmentalize, I didn't get it. I didn't think that was going to happen. All right, it's not that I didn't, I didn't think anything was going to happen. I just, whatever. So, when I saw, saw, when I, and it's not the biggest, hardly news day, but, but when I realize, I go out into the street, and people know me now, in a totally different way, it's that, and I've always, forget my fears of exposure at that earlier time.

• 1:00:53Speaker 00

  I've always been private. I always, I like privacy. I like that for whatever reasons.

• 1:01:00Kara Swisher?

  They're very rare.

• 1:01:01Speaker 00

  But I like that, okay? It's gone. And right now, I feel it like, I feel, I feel exposed and, and I don't, I like what I wrote. But I don't like that consequence.

• 1:01:16Kara Swisher?

  Something happened on the street where someone said something you did like when they said it?

• 1:01:20Speaker 00

  That I did like?

• 1:01:20Kara Swisher?

  That you liked, that you heard from someone now that you're exposed. Is there some-

• 1:01:23Speaker 00

  I've heard only great things. I mean, I've heard so many great things that it's like-

• 1:01:27Kara Swisher?

  Isn't that great then?

• 1:01:28Speaker 00

  That it, it, it, um, it bewilders me because I have a hard time with that. But of course, I like it and people have been extraordinarily nice and in the last 10 days since the New York thing came out. Nevertheless, I also feel exposed.

• 1:01:47Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:48Speaker 00

  And that-

• 1:01:49Kara Swisher?

  You know what the problem is, Barry? We'll end on this. They like you. They really like you. All right. Thank you. You have to say bye.

• 1:01:57Speaker 00

  Oh, bye bye.

• 1:01:58Kara Swisher?

  Bye.

• 1:02:04Kara Swisher?

  On with Kara Swisher is produced by Christian Castor-Russell, Kateri Yokum, Dave Shaw, Megan Burney, Megan Cunane, and Kalen Lynch. Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Special thanks to Eric Littkey. Our engineers are Rick Kwan and Fernando Aruda, and our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, you count. And if not, you don't count at all. 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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