Pod Insights On with Kara Swisher Audie Cornish and Ari Shapiro on Friendship, Feeds and Their New Podcast About this episode Longtime NPR co-hosts Audie Cornish and Ari Shapiro are reuniting for a new CNN podcast, “Engagement Party.” Each week, they unpack all the culture stories they’re obsessed with and that are generating buzz, from who’s still watching “Euphoria” to viral trends like “friction-maxing.” Their conversations are grounded in their decades-long friendship, even when they disagree.
Kara, Audie and Ari talk about the stories they’re obsessed with right now, the challenges of making a culture podcast when social media is eroding our sense of shared identity, and their transition from live radio to podcasting. They also talk about how they’re navigating the news business in an era of major corporate acquisitions and mergers.
Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Threads, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher.
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Transcript 13,371 words · 6 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 My theory about Kara is Kara treats men the way men treat women. So occasionally, she has to remind him,
0:07 Kara Swisher? Yeah.
0:08 Speaker 00 I am not yo' actual work wife.
0:23 Kara 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 two people who you probably know very well if you're a news obsessive like me, Audie Cornish and Ari Shapiro. Both of them hosted NPR's flagship evening news show, All Things Considered, for a decade. Audie left in 2022 to join CNN, where she's now a senior analyst and host of CNN This Morning. Ari has now joined Audie at the network. They've teamed up again for a new culture podcast that just launched late last month called Engagement Party. They're not engaged. They're happily married to other people, but they are very close friends. Every week, they talk about the stories they're most engaged with online and the ones that manage to break through our algorithmic silos.
1:08 Kara Swisher? I think this is great. I love people entering this space. I love talking about culture issues. And of course, I love a nice work couple like Scott and I that are much nicer than Scott and I. I think it's really important to talk about culture because I think it does bleed into news now in a way. And of course, politics is downstream from culture, as the famous saying by Andrew Breitbart goes. And they're two really wonderful and interesting people. So it should work out. And it's really important for smart people to be talking about culture when so many dumb people are talking about it. All right, let's get to my interview with Audie and Ari. Our expert question comes from their former NPR colleague, Steve Inskeep. This is a fun conversation. We also touch on some serious topics, like the state of the news business right now. So don't go anywhere.
2:01 Kara Swisher? Support for this show comes from The Guardian and their new show, Stateside, where journalists Kai Wright and Carter Sherman use the entire independent reporting resources of The Guardian to slow down the news and wrestle with the questions we all have about what is actually happening in the world. Join Kai and Carter three times a week as they utilize all the reporting resources The Guardian has across news, international coverage, climate, culture, wellness, and more. And The Guardian's not owned by a billionaire, they fearlessly report the facts without interference. Go to theguardian.com/stateside to learn more. And listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube. That's theguardian.com/stateside.
2:45 Kara Swisher? Support for this show comes from Odoo. Running a business shouldn't feel like surviving a software group project. One app for accounting, another for inventory, another for sales, and somehow, none of them ever talk to each other. That's where Odoo comes in. An all-in-one business management software that brings every part of your business together. From sales and accounting to inventory and marketing, all in one powerful platform. No messy integrations, no bouncing between tabs, and best of all, no spreadsheets. Stop managing software and start managing your business with one unified system. Try it today for free at Odoo.com/kara. That's O-D-O-O dot com slash Kara.
3:27 Speaker 02 I'm a voice agent powered by Deepgram. I don't just understand words, I understand context. Like when you're at trivia night and say, "I'm on fire," it means you got the last three questions right. But when you're camping and say, "I'm on fire," it means a spark just landed on your highly flammable synthetic rain pants. Deepgram understands words in context across STT, TTS, and voice agents. That means better conversations at production scale. Learn more at deepgram.com/contextiseverything.
4:00 Kara Swisher? Audie and Ari, thanks for coming on ON and congratulations on the launch of your new podcast.
4:05 Speaker 03 Thank you. So good to be here.
4:06 Speaker 00 Thank you.
4:07 Kara Swisher? So both of you hosted All Things Considered for a decade and overlapped for seven of those years, and you've been friends for over 20 years. Talk about what brought you together to do this CNN show.
4:19 Speaker 00 Well, it's funny hearing like your story knit into a narrative, right? Which is what we do to other people all the time. And now we're finally old enough for it to happen to us.
4:26 Kara Swisher? Yes, exactly.
4:27 Speaker 00 Because it's not like we were friends. It was almost just, it's like being in a school class. It's like we were hired in the same kind of batch of reporters, I think. Were you hired the year before or the year after as a reporter?
4:39 Speaker 03 It was like the early 2000s. We were both definitely learning the ropes at the same time.
4:43 Speaker 00 There's a world of people, Frank Langfitt and David Green and David Folkenflik. Like, it was a moment where NPR like had a little bit of cash and they were hiring a lot of people. And we were like, I think, the only really radio people in our classes. Like, everyone was a newspaper person.
4:58 Speaker 03 Yeah, we'd like come up through, we met in Boston at WBUR.
5:02 Speaker 00 Yeah.
5:02 Speaker 03 And then a few years later, we were in New Orleans together in the house that NPR rented for a year after Katrina, like living in two bedrooms in the same house, making dinner together and going out and covering the story.
5:12 Speaker 00 Yeah. So it's like, we were always there in closed quarters, weirdly.
5:16 Kara Swisher? Right. Right. You were always doing things.
5:18 Speaker 00 Yeah. But then in the process of leaving NPR, I should say, all of the hosts talked to each other a lot. We were in group texts, we were in listsers, we were like during the pandemic, kind of really staying in touch.
5:29 Kara Swisher? Right.
5:30 Speaker 00 And that's probably when Ari and I really like came together on issues that maybe coworkers typically wouldn't talk about, like when it comes to salary and contracts and all that sort of stuff. So fast forward to him leaving, we were like kind of in a good position to have a frank conversation about like, hey, do you want to collaborate? Hey, do you want to work together?
5:50 Speaker 03 But I remember those conversations even way earlier, like before the pandemic, we would be sitting in the All Things Considered studio together and your mics are off for the duration of an eight minute story. And the two of us would just like cackle or we would say, are you seeing this in your social media feed? I'm seeing this. I can't make sense of this. What are you getting from this? And then we would like. Share, compare notes because we don't have the same social circle, but we have enough of an overlap to share a common language.
6:19 Kara Swisher? So you would tackle. Okay.
6:20 Speaker 03 And so we started to say, like, why can't we make a show like this? Where we talk to each other the way we talk to each other when our mics are off.
6:28 Kara Swisher? And so we- So why couldn't you there?
6:30 Speaker 00 I knew she was gonna ask this question. Ari, this is just gonna be me watching Cara Cara you.
6:35 Speaker 03 Some of it is the FCC, some of it is, I mean, like, look, you look at the first pilot that we did back in January before this show was a real thing. And in that pilot, we talk about ketamine and bottom jokes, which is not necessarily the stuff that public radio shows are made of.
6:50 Speaker 00 Yeah, yeah. Also, we doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
6:53 Kara Swisher? Right, we is doing, Ari, we is doing. I have, I know this.
6:57 Speaker 00 What we mean by-
6:58 Speaker 03 But also, when you've got a two-hour daily show, there's just not the bandwidth to make something like this.
7:02 Speaker 00 That was really it, the news.
7:04 Kara Swisher? The news. So you, listen, I have Scott Galloway, so none of you are gonna have me be, penis jokes coming out of my ears. And they're not from me.
7:12 Speaker 00 Exactly.
7:13 Kara Swisher? So how did you get the impetus to do this, though? Because you could talk about, a lot of people talk about, we should open a restaurant. Finally, we should get that boat we said we'd get.
7:21 Speaker 00 Yeah, I mean, Cara, you and I, as I've, you know, sort of wormed my way into your mentorship, you've always asked me what I want to be doing. And whenever I'm complaining, whenever I'm like, I don't, like, I don't like this, I don't like that, you're the first person to just cut through the BS and be like, okay, but what do you want to do? And I think I couldn't answer that. And I was afraid of the thing I wanted to do, which is something like this, which is to like, take the superpower or skill or lens I have on the news and apply it to this cultural stuff that people are obsessed with.
7:55 Kara Swisher? Why were you afraid, May? What?
7:56 Speaker 00 Because, you know, it feels like it's gonna undermine your career. You've been raised that you don't want to be infotainment. That's like the worst thing you could be, you know, to the NPR host that sort of raised me. And when infotainment became the news, it was like, well, wait a second. I know how to do this, but I'm sort of busy being over here, occupying this lane that is like narrowing and narrowing and narrowing. And there are ways- To have smart, interesting ideas in a conversation about culture.
8:28 Kara Swisher? Right, right. It can be interesting.
8:30 Speaker 00 It can be. Like, it's allowed to be interesting.
8:33 Kara Swisher? Ari, what about you?
8:35 Speaker 03 I relate so strongly to what you're saying, Audie, because I think about, you know, like 18 years ago, I started singing with this band called Pink Martini, and I still often go on tour with them. I'm going to be at the Montreal Jazz Festival with them next month. And when I started doing that, you know, they're like this 12-piece little orchestra, and we wear suits, ties, ball gowns, whatever. And I was afraid that it would detract from my credibility as a journalist. When I started, I was covering the White House, and I thought, are people going to think less of me as an authoritative news person because I'm now singing with a band? I got over that, over the 15 years of doing it. And I think there is a similar feeling about pivoting away from politics, war, and hard news towards talking about
9:17 Speaker 03 a show like Euphoria. But that's a part of our culture, too. And at this point in my life and in my career, I no longer worry that people are not going to think of me as a credible news person, because I've got 25 years at NPR under my belt. And at this point, I really enjoy digging into something I'm obsessed with, with my friend, who is smart and funny and thoughtful and always has things to say that I would not have thought of. And if people want to get news about Trump and war, there are lots and lots of places they can do that. And so, this is something different.
9:48 Kara Swisher? There are a lot of culture-based shows, and this is called Engagement Party. You know, you are facing, you know, there's a ton of them.
9:54 Speaker 00 Yeah. I think, you know, when I was like in the piloting process, I've always done stuff. I was always like, hey, CNN, there should be a show that does X. Hey, there should be a show that does... And I'm never trying to be in the lane with comedians. You know, I'm not going to do a bigger, better tech podcast than you and Scott. Do you know what I mean? So it was also like, really looking at yourself in the mirror and be like, well, what do I bring to the table? And I knew that I loved analyzing things and taking the politics and the economics with me. Like, I never put that down. So when I look at Summer House, I have like a bunch of other questions going on in my brain than a pop culture commentator who has... Lots of great funny quips about Summer House.
10:36 Speaker 00 Or who is an amazing Bravo, you know, archaeologist.
10:41 Kara Swisher? Right, right.
10:41 Speaker 00 It's like, I think our training to create stuff for the rest of us, air quotes, that like, everybody can listen to, that if you've never even glanced at a reality show is gonna be fun. Yeah, like, that actually is not that easy to do. And most pop culture podcasts, and most culture TV, whatever, it's very insider-y. It's like, unless you're locked into that topic, it's not really for you. Eventually, you can get caught up, but it's all like, old-fashioned radio in a way, in that it's like, little inside communities.
11:14 Kara Swisher? Yeah, yeah, which is why they thrive in a lot of ways.
11:16 Speaker 00 Exactly.
11:17 Speaker 03 There are lots of culture shows, there are lots of chat shows, there are lots of hangout shows. I'm not sure that any of them has the specific dynamic that Audie and I bring to it. A lot of them have two people who are similar to each other, which is a great opportunity to sort of get into how that fraction of the world sees everything that we're also looking at. But there's something unique about having two people like Audie and myself, who, I mean, straight black woman, queer white man, been friends forever, have the credibility in news, are obsessed with culture, and can have honest conversations with each other, coming from different perspectives. I don't see that very much, and I think there is a certain spark there that is hard to find.
11:59 Speaker 00 Or when I do, it works, right? Like, what makes you and Scott work is the same thing that makes this work, which is like, there is overlap, but that overlap is not a circle. And even the jokes about, like, when you were talking about bottoming or whatever, it's like, I'm coming at that as like, oh, the straights, and he's coming at it like, oh, here we go.
12:21 Speaker 03 Or even like, in our first episode where we were talking about AI-generated animated videos of Michael Jackson's stories, I had not encountered that at all. And so, there was a moment of Audie kind of explaining to me what this is, and me having a genuine reaction, which is different from Audie's reaction. Yeah.
12:37 Kara Swisher? Right, right. And you can also swear now on my.
12:40 Speaker 03 Fuck, yeah.
12:40 Speaker 00 Which Ari has taken way more advantage of than me.
12:43 Speaker 03 It's dangerous.
12:45 Kara Swisher? Let me tell you, Audie is never gonna unleash. She doesn't unleash in person.
12:50 Speaker 00 You know, that's not true, Kara. You've heard me go on some riffs.
12:55 Kara Swisher? No, yeah, but it's always real polite and well said.
12:58 Speaker 00 I will say that, no, no, here's where I want to talk about this, Ari, because I think when you'd mentioned earlier about like what we were doing in the past, it was always a game of comparison. You weren't just yourself, you were sitting next to the person that helped found the company's sound.
13:15 Speaker 03 Right.
13:15 Speaker 00 You know, it was like you were never just you.
13:18 Speaker 03 Yeah, you exist in the context of what Robert Siegel did or what Susan Stamberg did.
13:23 Speaker 00 Yeah, were you the next so and so, or were you not as good as so and so? And so you actually weren't really rewarded for being yourself, and that's why I think you saw so many personalities. Let's just take a really early one, Ira Glass, leave, right? Because it's like you can be the next Noah Adams, or you can go off and be yourself.
13:42 Kara Swisher? Yeah.
13:42 Speaker 00 And I think that all of a sudden, we looked around and we saw a marketplace where people were incentivized to be themselves without having to be like a shock jock. You know what I mean? Like,
13:54 Kara Swisher? Right, right.
13:54 Speaker 00 There had to be a place for us to go.
13:56 Kara Swisher? To be fair, I had a dinner with Noah Adams, and he told the best dirty jokes I've ever heard in my life.
14:01 Speaker 03 See, wouldn't you like to hear that side of it?
14:03 Kara Swisher? In Noah Adams' voice, in Noah Adams' voice. And so it's even like, what? And then he would do the voice just to bother you. So, talk about how hard is it to shake off that NPR host identity? We all know what it is, right?
14:15 Speaker 03 I personally don't find it very difficult at all.
14:17 Speaker 00 No, Ari is just like,
14:19 Kara Swisher? Goodbye!
14:20 Speaker 00 Shaking it off. He's shaking tail feathers. He's shaking, yeah, it's all over the place.
14:24 Speaker 03 I'm having a good time.
14:24 Kara Swisher? So, but how hard is it for you, Audie?
14:26 Speaker 00 It's a good question, because I thought about someone like Kamala Harris, who like could never shake off her professionalism.
14:34 Kara Swisher? No, it's that pussy bow she continues to wear.
14:36 Speaker 00 Exactly.
14:36 Kara Swisher? Situation there.
14:37 Speaker 00 Well, part of it is, the, the contract of upward mobility for Black Americans is explicitly shaving off and shaving down some of yourself.
14:46 Kara Swisher? Very true.
14:47 Speaker 00 So that everybody, meaning white people, feel safe. And I think I was raised, I went to a busing program, I was raised in Massachusetts, so, you know, I was sort of uniquely positioned to navigate some of these newsrooms, right? And then the flip side of that is then you're like, well, wait a second, is this really me? What am I really trying to accomplish here? What, like, who am I?
15:07 Kara Swisher? Or has it become?
15:08 Speaker 00 Has it become me, right? Have you calcified into this thing that you put on? And I would argue, you may not believe this, Cara, but I am more myself in these moments on camera than I ever was ironically off camera.
15:25 Kara Swisher? Yeah, yes.
15:26 Speaker 00 It's just really between meeting you, between doing the job, between really just being like, well, wait a second. Who are you hiding from? I am more myself. Now, will I ever get to F-bomb territory?
15:38 Kara Swisher? Well, that isn't really you.
15:40 Speaker 00 It's not really me. And yet, in my personal life, I curse up a storm. You know what I mean? There's still a little bit of a curtain there where I'm like, there's a version of me I still want for myself.
15:50 Kara Swisher? Right, right. But the more you get to your genuine version, the better in these things, which I think people, even if they don't like you.
15:56 Speaker 00 Do you see what she's doing here, Ari? She's like.
15:59 Kara Swisher? What is it about video that found freeing? I can see how Ari freed right away.
16:03 Speaker 03 I actually, you know, I do think that for me, writing a book was liberating because in the book, I talked about going to the Radical Fairy Gatherings for 15 years. I talked about making a show with Alan Cumming and with that experience. So like, I kind of put out in the world things that had never crossed the private to public barrier. And for me, that was a moment of kind of breakthrough of being able to be myself, talk about myself and integrate those different versions of myself in public and private spaces both.
16:32 Kara Swisher? Right, because a lot of what happens at NPR or even at CNN is airless. I always use that term.
16:36 Speaker 00 Yes, we've talked about that.
16:38 Kara Swisher? Yeah, it's airless. It's like, is there any air in here or do the people exist? And they're much more interesting in that way. But talk about, Ari, in the Substack post, you referred to Audie as your work wife. We all know that particular genre of person. And you wrote that for podcast listeners, there's something, quote, audibly different about spending time with people you've been friends with for ages. Talk a little bit about that because you're talking about chemistry. You're talking about an ability to work. And obviously, Scott always refers to me as that.
17:07 Speaker 03 Yeah.
17:08 Kara Swisher? And people are comfortable with that, that idea.
17:10 Speaker 03 I mean, it ties into your question about video, which is totally new for me. It is a sense that if I jump, I know this person will catch me. If the train is going off the tracks, I know that she will get it back on the tracks. And we have each other's back in that way. And so even as we challenge and push each other and rib each other and crack jokes about each other, we know that we have that kind of like substrate of years of looking out for and standing up for each other, which allows you to take the risks and do the new things and go out on a limb that you wouldn't otherwise feel comfortable going out on.
17:45 Kara Swisher? Right. What about conflict, Audie? Because one of the important parts of our Scotsman is conflict, like that we disagree quite a bit on a lot of things. Often he's wrong and I'm right, but that's the difference.
17:57 Speaker 00 We got, we definitely disagree on things. I think the difference is because we sort of came up together, we professionally, part of our work, was to come up and workshop conflicting ideas. So it's this odd thing where having been reporters, you're constantly looking at each other and be like, is this a thing? Is this a thing? And then someone says, no, it's not. And you're not like, oh, man, I hate you. You know what I mean? You're not like, screw you. I can't believe you said that. You're like, okay, I guess let me figure it out. So I think in a way, we're almost like workshopping the ideas in real time. And I think we feel very comfortable being like, no, that's not it. Because we've actually had to do that, like in front of a room of producers.
18:38 Kara Swisher? Although it often degenerates into anger yells on cable particularly. As you know, I have a thing about that, like the idea that conflict has to be idiotic conflict, right?
18:49 Speaker 00 And to your point, you and I have talked about this as well, that sometimes there's, um, let's just say there's some people performing in those spaces.
18:56 Kara Swisher? You have noted that.
18:57 Speaker 00 They don't exactly have real conflict with each other. They are actually friends and they perform this wrestling like thing. We're not doing any of that. This is like a pretense free situation.
19:08 Kara Swisher? So you're not going to the White House next week?
19:10 Speaker 00 I mean, the MMA fight, like I'm into it, but it's more like, you know, Ari and I, like, we just, it's not worth it. It's like we both covered bigger things. And all we want to do now is, you can even see our posture is like sort of more relaxed and we're kind of like, hey, like. We're gonna break character for a bit and just talk.
19:31 Speaker 03 And we do disagree vigorously about things, but it's not personal and it's not existential. And the things we're talking about are not make or break. You know, I'm thinking about like, in our latest episode, we were getting into protein maxing and the idea that I think MAGA is very gender coded. I think the MAGA movement emphasizes not only gender conformity, but gender extremes. And Audie was pushing back saying, okay, but the Kardashians. And I was like, wait a minute, are you claiming that politics and entertainment have bled into each other? What a shocking concept. You know, like, those are the kinds of disagreements that we're having with each other.
20:09 Speaker 00 We'll be back in a minute.
20:18 Kara Swisher? Support for this show comes from The Guardian. Trying to locate news sources that reliably separate fact from fiction can seem like looking for a needle in a haystack these days. Social media feeds, cable news, and subscription-based news outlets might be able to give you one version of the news, but not in the way that you need. You want news fast, but slow enough to actually absorb the information. Stateside with Kai Wright and Carter Sherman is here to do just that. The podcast tries to slow down the news and wrestle with the questions regarding the world at large at your own pace. Three times a week, hosts Kai Wright and Carter Sherman bring their expertise together to showcase different and engaging perspectives regarding the world today. They will use their collective knowledge to discuss the news, international affairs,
21:02 Kara Swisher? climate, culture, sports, lifestyle, fashion, and wellness. Plus, The Guardian wants to emphasize they're not billionaire-owned, meaning they're free to report the whole picture without interference. Go to theguardian.com/stateside to learn more and listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube starting May 13.
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22:59 Kara Swisher? The idea behind Engagement Party is that each week, the two of you talk about pop culture stories you're obsessed with or are generating a lot of buzz. So talk a little bit about what are some of the pop culture stories that have your attention that, say, won't make it into this week's episode. Ari, you start, and then Audie.
23:14 Speaker 03 I mean, one of the things that we've been talking about is horror movies. And like, right now, the movie obsession is huge and getting bigger, which is unusual, because horror movies tend to kind of go off a cliff after their first weekend. And this is coming after the summer of Weapons and Sinners. And when we were discussing this in our pitch meeting, Audi was like, are you a horror fan? And my answer is, I'm a fan of good movies, whether they are horror, or rom-com, or action, or superhero movies. So I'm really interested in this horror moment. That might make it onto a future episode, but that's one of the things that I'm thinking about a lot. And also, horror as allegory. If you think about all of Jordan Peele's movies, from Get Out, to Nope, to Us, like, horror is such a good way of talking about how we live now. I would even put zombie movies in that category, the 28 days, 28 years later.
23:58 Speaker 03 Anyway, this is how my brain functions when I get off on a-
24:01 Kara Swisher? Right, and you can see the trends among people.
24:03 Speaker 00 Yeah, but the difference is, I watch horror movies.
24:05 Kara Swisher? Right, right.
24:06 Speaker 03 I watch them too.
24:07 Speaker 00 Uh, you're naming the big ones.
24:09 Kara Swisher? Yeah, yeah.
24:10 Speaker 03 Okay, I watch the good ones.
24:11 Speaker 00 That's like listening to rap music and talking about Macklemore. I mean, you can, it's not the same.
24:16 Kara Swisher? Yeah, yeah. All right, so Audi, what about you? What is some of the ones that won't make it, for example?
24:21 Speaker 00 Oh, that won't make it easy. We actually, like, a great example is the, um, the time that someone got put in the Signal chat with the White House, right? The Atlantic and Jeffrey Goldberg. That's like a great story that I think in a typical newsroom is kind of already doing. And like, are there jokes to be made about, like, texting and all that stuff? Maybe. But there's no greater story there, you know what I mean? That we can say to people, and here's how this intersects with your life?
24:50 Kara Swisher? No, it's just a bunch of dumb asses.
24:51 Speaker 00 It's kind of silly season, right? And even little kids know how to text and how to add someone to the group chat. So no lessons learned. Whereas something like the horror movie story is also a story of, like, independent creation, you know? Are we gonna see a 90s-style era indie boom just because they can do it on YouTube? Okay, like, we're about to find out, and horror is the right vehicle for that.
25:11 Kara Swisher? Right.
25:12 Speaker 00 It's, over and over again, we're mostly reverse engineering. We're mostly being like, why is this a thing? Like, why? We know that it is a thing. Protein is a thing. But untangling the MAGA masculinity diet culture-
25:29 Speaker 03 GLP-1s.
25:29 Speaker 00 GLP-1s, uh, podcast health ecosystem-
25:33 Kara Swisher? Right, RFK Jr.
25:34 Speaker 00 Like, untangling that Gordian knot of things that made it viral.
25:38 Kara Swisher? Although I have to say, I did like Catching Snakes. I did.
25:41 Speaker 00 Yeah, great, you're in luck.
25:43 Kara Swisher? You're in luck. He's always providing capital C content, you know?
25:47 Speaker 03 One of the things that we ask ourselves in every pitch meeting is, is there somewhere we can go with this beyond?
25:53 Kara Swisher? Just saying.
25:53 Speaker 03 LOL.
25:54 Kara Swisher? Yeah.
25:54 Speaker 03 Look at this. What does this say about our life? What does it say about our culture? What are the levels that we can dig into? And and ways that we can explore this that'll be meaningful and value added to people beyond this is on your radar.
26:05 Kara Swisher? Right. Or is it meaningless? Is it mean like?
26:07 Speaker 03 Yeah.
26:08 Kara Swisher? This makes it meaningless. It was just entertaining. So are the main goal of the show is to transcend the cultural silos that social media algorithms put us in and our feeds? Look so different because they're tailored to us. Talk a little bit about this because one of the things, as you said, you're a white queer man. I can see that. Audie is a black straight woman. I can see that. But you're also both quote unquote media leads who are around the same age in the mid DC. There's a lot overlap too. So talk about that idea of trying to transcend cultural silos.
26:37 Speaker 03 Yeah, I really used to enjoy in the All Things Considered editorial meeting when you had like 20, 30 people of different backgrounds, sitting around the table, talking about what they thought was interesting. And going into those meetings, I would graze widely to try to find stories that weren't breaking through my algorithm. And one of the things that I really enjoyed about making this show is going back to that idea of actually going out and looking for stories and not just waiting for things to cross my path in my social media feed. But looking at local and regional newspapers and magazines and industry websites and trying to figure out what's going out there that might not be on my radar.
27:13 Speaker 03 But also, we deliberately structured the show so that there's an opportunity for people to join in and tell us what they are seeing and give us a pitch of something that they are trying to unpack and understand. Because we want it to be a dialogue and we know that we're not seeing the same things that our audience is seeing.
27:28 Kara Swisher? Now, there was a great piece in New York Magazine recently about how a lot of hype on social media is manufactured. Companies are paying people to generate clips to generate the impression that everyone is engaging with someone. This is someone I've known for a long time. So how, talk about, Audie, you're thinking about genuine enthusiasm versus astroturf hype.
27:46 Speaker 00 Yeah, I'm obsessed with this because I'm doing this kind of show to jailbreak the algorithm. I hate the for you page, my kingdom for an actual search that works. I don't like the word feed, like everything about the way they have structured social media in the last 10 to 15 years bothers me deeply.
28:04 Kara Swisher? You know, the only word that they say user, what's the other industry that uses the word user?
28:09 Speaker 00 Drugs. Drugs, exactly. Like all those, I do the same thing. I'm like, yeah, feed, user, like just everything about it, content. It's just, they hate us. Like, I really just think tech companies hate us. They think we're suckers. And I don't like that if your eyes flick towards like a parakeet puking, now you're gonna get 5,000 parakeets puking. I despise this.
28:33 Kara Swisher? You said in a recent address at Tufts that you didn't think we were benefiting from the algorithmic information distribution system.
28:40 Speaker 00 Did I say all that?
28:41 Kara Swisher? You did. It was very smart.
28:43 Speaker 00 Deeply nerdy. Um, I was, again, I was trying to be professional. I was trying not to be like, I hate these dudes. Um, but it's more just like-
28:52 Kara Swisher? Me and the Pope. That's the Pope and Kara Swisher's job. I just want to say, the Pope is lifting a lot of my lines. I'm just-
28:58 Speaker 00 I don't mind that. But it's like, we're not geese with, you know, those livers need fattening. Like, they just pump all this stuff out and it can be manipulated. Even now, the whole conversation around clips and that, to me, I'm like, okay, I've seen this movie before. And guess what? We are one dude with a shake conversation from someone being like, actually, that's not the thing anymore. You know, it's a little bit like if anyone out there is old enough to remember the whiz, when the wizard is like, the color of the day is X. This is how they treat us as consumers and as people who make the content. And part of this show was being like, let's really mine this and figure out if this is a thing, why it's a thing, and then if it's a thing.
29:41 Kara Swisher? All right, making a pop culture show, talk about the challenges when it feels like our sense of shared culture has evaporated, right? Because there was, there was a shared, well, not really. It was kind of white guys on the Upper East Side of New York telling us what was interesting, but-
29:54 Speaker 03 Look, it's a challenge, but it's also an opportunity. You know, like, if there's a show that everybody is talking about, there's a little bit less to say than if culture is fragmented and you're able to illuminate something for a person who might not be in that conversation. All Things Considered was a show that, in its name, it had to appeal to everyone and it had to cover the waterfront. And we're making something now that is, I don't want to say curated, but it's OK if it's not for everyone. And it's OK if we're talking about something that is not your culture, that is not in your viewfinder. And so, yeah, the monoculture may be dead, but maybe there's an opportunity in that that a show like ours can take advantage of.
30:38 Kara Swisher? Audie, do you think the monoculture is dead? Or was there one in the first place?
30:41 Speaker 00 I do think there was one at one point, for sure. I do think it's dead now, but I think the pursuit of it is so strong because people still have a desire to connect to each other. So there is still the sense of like, I'm not just going to watch this reality show reunion. I'm going to film myself reacting to it, upload it, and it's going to join these, you know, stream of other sort of pop culture salmon. And like, we're all gonna, we're gonna force a water cooler moment, even if that's not how this thing is built anymore.
31:12 Kara Swisher? Right.
31:12 Speaker 00 So I do feel people still wanting that. And also, I respect people's time. Like, I don't have time to be read in and all this truly random stuff. And it's really nice. I want to make something for someone like me, who's like, you're busy, you care about culture, you generally know stuff. But like, do I have to know every little thing about every little thing? I'm not, I'm not trying to be in hot take culture.
31:34 Kara Swisher? Right.
31:34 Speaker 00 And so I think we're still, we're choosing a lane for people who, like, don't want to know every single thing, but definitely don't want to be left out of the conversation.
31:45 Speaker 03 It might be a small thing, but I really like that our show is an edited 30 minutes. Because there are a lot of shows out there that are really sprawling, and there may be an amazing 30 minutes in that 90-minute episode.
31:57 Speaker 00 Yeah. Who has the time?
31:59 Speaker 03 Yeah.
31:59 Kara Swisher? Yeah.
32:00 Speaker 00 Like, who has the time?
32:01 Kara Swisher? A lot of people.
32:02 Speaker 00 I know, but it's just like every, there's a million podcasts to listen to. I only listen to Kara Swisher podcasts. There's not a lot of time.
32:09 Kara Swisher? Because we do a tight 30.
32:10 Speaker 03 There's a million Kara's podcasts.
32:11 Kara Swisher? We're doing a tight 30, never.
32:12 Speaker 00 No, just like, listen and then be like, we're good. I wash the dishes, OK, we're good. I walk the dog, amazing.
32:18 Kara Swisher? Never a tight 30 for Scott Galloway, I'm sorry. It's a it's a long 60, at least, if not 72.
32:25 Speaker 00 It's a vibe.
32:25 Kara Swisher? Yeah, yeah, I do. You know what I do? I don't know if you guys will start doing this, but I I measure how much percentage he talks versus me.
32:33 Speaker 03 Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
32:34 Kara Swisher? I send him word count.
32:35 Speaker 00 And you send it to him?
32:36 Kara Swisher? Of course I do, of course.
32:38 Speaker 03 Why? Why would you invoke that level of sort of competition comparison?
32:43 Speaker 00 No, Ari, I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why. My theory about Kara is Kara treats men the way men treat women. So occasionally, she has to remind him.
32:53 Kara Swisher? Yeah.
32:54 Speaker 00 I am not your actual work wife.
32:57 Kara Swisher? Yes, exactly.
32:58 Speaker 00 I'm a person with ideas and stop talking. Like.
33:02 Speaker 03 Audie, I am gonna make you a promise that I will never measure how much you and I talk relative to each other in our show.
33:08 Speaker 00 Well, that's how I know that you're gay.
33:11 Kara Swisher? Yeah, exactly. That's correct. Because you have a regard for women.
33:14 Speaker 00 Yeah, exactly.
33:16 Kara Swisher? And their and their voices. So every episode, we get a question from an outside expert. Yours comes from your former colleague and host at NPR, Steve Inskeep. Let's listen.
33:25 Speaker 05 Hi there, Audie. Hi there, Ari. Congratulations on Engagement Party. I have a question for you that grows out of the idea of engaging people and also relates to the work that I try to do. And it's this question. How are you going to deal with what I think of as the destruction of coherent thought? And I don't just mean short attention spans, although that's part of it. What I mean is, the device on which you'll be reaching people, the device on which I try to reach people, also has a tendency to make it impossible to think things through. It's hard to have the right perspective. It's hard to understand what's important and what's not. It's hard to have a line of logic. That is the world
34:08 Speaker 05 in which we live. That's something I struggle with all the time, the way that I try to present stories. And so that's my question for you. How do you mean to deal with that? What are your thoughts about it? Thanks.
34:19 Kara Swisher? Ari and then Audie.
34:21 Speaker 03 Steve is just such a great guy.
34:22 Speaker 00 Extremely NPR question.
34:23 Speaker 03 Extremely NPR question, but also just so nice to see Steve again.
34:27 Speaker 00 I know.
34:28 Speaker 03 Nice to see him around the building. I miss him. I think the answer is that you can't change the ecosystem that we're living in. You have to try to work within it. And so in our 30-minute show, we are going to have deep analytical conversations about important topics, even if those topics are related to pop culture. But we're also gonna have TikToks and Instagrams, and we are going to have clips, and we're gonna be in the chat, and we're gonna be in the comments, and we are going to engage with the fragmented attention economy, because that's what the attention economy is right now. And if you're not working with it, you're out of the conversation. And so I think you have to kind of straddle these two worlds. I mean, as Steve and others on NPR do every day,
35:10 Speaker 03 where you're creating a space for the kind of discourse that you want to have, the kind of deep, fact-based, analytical, thoughtful content. And also, you're recognizing that some people just won't find you there, and you need to go find them where they are as well.
35:27 Kara Swisher? Right. So it is the oxygen, essentially, what you're saying. Audie?
35:30 Speaker 00 I'm in a different place because I've spent the last couple of years, instead of fighting this trend, just simply, literally going with the flow. So like, I've done hits on TV, I now have a morning show, I've done social stuff, I've done YouTube-only stuff. I mean, Carrie, you and I have piloted stuff. It's like, I'm constantly just going to where the audience is and just being like, "Hi, have you thought of this? Hi, have you thought of that?" Instead of being like, "How can I figure out, like, them coming to me and taking the time?" Like, I'm just done trying that. I'm just trying to be in as many places at once.
36:07 Kara Swisher? Promiscuous is the word I use.
36:09 Speaker 00 And I always make sure everything on the plate is edible. So even in the jerky thing... There's, we've smuggled in an idea, you know what I mean? Even under the joke.
36:18 Kara Swisher? Yeah.
36:18 Speaker 00 And I think that's how I'm approaching it. Whereas what Steve's describing is, of course, far more relevant to my life as a morning show anchor, doing political news. Like, literally this morning, I had one of those conversations where I said to the guest after, "I don't want people to hate you for your worst take. I want them to hate you for your best take."
36:40 Kara Swisher? Right.
36:40 Speaker 00 So when I present the question to you this way, it's not a gotcha. I'm trying to figure out, like, what's the through line? What's the logic? And so all that work I'm doing, it's like I'm kind of doing it elsewhere. This is not the show for that, you know? And I don't feel the pressure to do that here.
36:55 Speaker 03 Can I follow up on something Audie said? Which is, everything on the plate has to be edible. I think on All Things Considered, the enjoyment of the experience was almost an afterthought. And on Engagement Party, it is the point. If we're not having fun, if we're not enjoying ourselves, the audience won't be there. We shouldn't be there. We're missing the boat. And that is so essential to what we're doing now.
37:17 Kara Swisher? So what you're saying is you're putting spices on the vegetables?
37:19 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
37:20 Speaker 00 No, that's the thing. I don't think that's right. I mean, there's no vegetables here, you know what I mean? Like, this is protein.
37:27 Speaker 03 I enjoy a vegetable. I don't like the metaphor.
37:29 Speaker 00 Well, I mean, let's think about it this way. Kara, you and I did do a pilot of something.
37:33 Kara Swisher? Yeah.
37:33 Speaker 00 Where we, we and someone else, who is also very smart, hashed out a bunch of fun ideas and made jokes. And I never once looked at Kara and thought, wow, she's really given us vegetables here.
37:43 Kara Swisher? Right, right.
37:44 Speaker 00 Even though you completely brought all of your knowledge of the tech industry.
37:47 Kara Swisher? Yes.
37:47 Speaker 00 Every, yeah.
37:49 Kara Swisher? I think one of the things I used to tell people that used to work for me when I ran All Things D and Recode was, "Look, we're, there's a lot of hot dogs out there." And hot dogs are delicious. I like a hot dog. But you're not going to win by having a better hot dog. You're just not, you have to have something else. Because it's just not, it's just a fucking hot dog. Stop making fucking hot dogs, essentially. And at the same time, you have to also be very promiscuous, is I think something I've told you many times.
38:17 Speaker 00 Yeah.
38:17 Kara Swisher? Going where the people are and stop being so fancy about it. But there is a line between going with the flow. And playing the lowest common denominator or playing into what social media platforms want, which is, I don't know if you'd agree with me, but this is hard to resist.
38:31 Speaker 00 I do, I do. I'm just not sure I'll get there since, as we talked about, I don't even know how to swear in public yet.
38:36 Kara Swisher? Right.
38:36 Speaker 00 It's just sort of like.
38:38 Speaker 03 I got your back.
38:39 Speaker 00 I'm sure, yeah, exactly. I'm sure I'll get there, but it's taking a minute. If anything, just, yeah, being like, is it okay to make a hot dog? Or is it okay to make something else? Is it okay to make something other than vegetables? It's like, I'm still giving myself permission to do that.
38:53 Kara Swisher? Right. But I mean, Ari, you're talking about this idea of lowest common denominator is not what you're going for, right?
38:59 Speaker 03 It's not who we are. Like, if we're talking about being our most authentic selves, if Audie wants to talk about Love is Blind, it's because she actually has really meaningful insights into what Love is Blind says about the moment we're living in. And I want to hear those insights. It's not because we know that Love is Blind is trending and that's going to get us hits.
39:16 Kara Swisher? Right, get you hits.
39:17 Speaker 00 We would not be good at that, actually.
39:20 Kara Swisher? We'll be back in a minute.
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40:39 Kara Swisher? I'm Kara Swisher, and I like people who say the quiet part out loud. In fact, I love it. That's Tiger Sisters, a new podcast that recently joined the Vox Media Podcast Network. Cherie Brooke Lu and Jean Lu are real sisters who built their careers at LinkedIn and Goldman Sachs. On their weekly podcast, they're giving the next generation practical tips on how to get ahead, how to write emails people actually answer, how to make your LinkedIn profile stand out, and how to keep learning as an adult. It's straight talk about money, career, and relationships every Monday. Follow Tiger Sisters wherever you get your podcasts.
41:16 Kara Swisher? Let's talk about podcasting and what sets it apart from traditional media. At NPR, Ari, and also you, Audie, most stories and interviews are cut down to about three to four minutes. Maybe you get a little more time for a big-name interview. Podcasting is very different. It's a very different medium. It kind of rolls out. You can talk for hours, and people tend to stick with it. Talk about how you look at the difference between podcasting and what you both were doing. You know, obviously, social media is degrading our attention spans, but podcasts are bucking that trend. People do tune in. They like the narrative. And I'm firmly of the belief the reason they tune into our show is because it's about a relationship. It's not about what we talk about. It's our relationship, and it's the constant narrative of that relationship with using news as the vehicle.
42:00 Speaker 00 Kara, you basically could run a pledge drive. I mean, it's pretty much the same conversation.
42:05 Kara Swisher? Right.
42:05 Speaker 00 You know, and I think that in radio, that is literally how we approach things. I know people are talking about, you know, NPR like it's dry or something, but like, it was a cultural phenomenon for a reason. It spoke to people's cultural interests. But it almost, that conversation, what you're saying, doesn't feel relative to the where we are now. You know what I mean? We've been in this so long that we've now seen the thing we grew up with become the new thing. You know, like, all of a sudden, you do want things long again? Great, you know what I mean? Like, but now we can make the choice. Instead of something being imposed on us because this is just what it is, we can decide what we're offering people. And to your point, yeah, maybe people will be like, I don't want 30 minutes. I want three hours. And it's like, great, but for now...
42:48 Speaker 00 I think it's OK in a world where you can do anything to actually make a decision about what it is you want to do and what it is you can do well.
42:56 Kara Swisher? Right. So Ari, how do you look at sort of why people are attracted to podcasting? Is it everything, as Audie's noting, everything old is new again?
43:03 Speaker 03 I think there's just something so intimate about listening. And I realize that most podcasts are now viewed rather than listened to.
43:09 Kara Swisher? Are they?
43:10 Speaker 03 Including this one.
43:10 Kara Swisher? I still have the mix.
43:11 Speaker 00 I still have questions about this.
43:12 Speaker 03 Everyone tells me YouTube is the biggest podcasting platform.
43:14 Kara Swisher? Yeah.
43:15 Speaker 03 But I know from my years at NPR that people feel like they have a relationship with the voices that are in their car or their kitchen every day. That was something that I didn't take lightly at NPR. And if our podcast engagement party has a future and an audience, I think it will be because people want to spend time with us.
43:32 Kara Swisher? That's correct.
43:32 Speaker 03 And as you said about your show with Scott, like, the ideas are important, but the ideas are almost secondary to people just wanting to spend time with you and hang out.
43:42 Speaker 00 And what was more parasocial than NPR nerd-dom? You know what I mean?
43:46 Speaker 03 Totally, totally.
43:47 Speaker 00 Like, it's not like being a fan of The New York Times or, you know, Time Magazine or something. People knew the person on a beat. People would come up to you and be like, have you met Sylvia Pajoli? It's like, how do you know that?
44:00 Kara Swisher? Sylvia Pajoli, from Nicosia, Cyprus.
44:03 Speaker 03 Susan Stamberg used to say that if she sounded sick on the air, people wouldn't just send her a get well soon note. They would actually deliver chicken soup to NPR headquarters. Like, that was the kind of relationship that they had with her voice, this person they had never met.
44:16 Kara Swisher? And Susan Stamberg and her cranberries, there's all.
44:19 Speaker 03 Her famous cranberry.
44:19 Speaker 00 The fact that you even know that.
44:21 Speaker 03 Exactly.
44:22 Speaker 00 Pretty much says it all. We're not, we are not foreign to the idea of the relationship. In fact, we're here because we want the relationship to be closer.
44:31 Kara Swisher? Right.
44:31 Speaker 00 And there were things that we did in recent years that didn't put us closer. And now that we have the choice, we're doing that.
44:37 Kara Swisher? Right, absolutely. The parasocial nature of it.
44:39 Speaker 03 But I collect my hate mail. I save it. I think it's a sign that you are paying attention.
44:43 Speaker 00 You've always been so weird about this hate mail.
44:45 Speaker 03 I love that. I love the hate mail.
44:46 Kara Swisher? I call them. I call people who hate me. I'm like, hi, Kara.
44:49 Speaker 03 Wow, that's a prize. That is a gift.
44:50 Speaker 00 I'm not really trying to do it.
44:52 Kara Swisher? I call them. Hi. And then they're really nice. They're always.
44:54 Speaker 00 I don't know. Maybe you guys have less racialized hate mail. You know, there's some people I don't want to call.
44:59 Kara Swisher? I got some, you're a giant kind of thing.
45:02 Speaker 00 I mean, I'm not, I'm not trying to be special. There's no oppression.
45:05 Kara Swisher? I get some anti-gay stuff.
45:06 Speaker 00 I'm just saying, I don't want to know them.
45:07 Speaker 03 There's some antisemitic stuff, too.
45:09 Speaker 00 Right now, if you want to write me and say something mean.
45:11 Kara Swisher? Oh, I love when someone makes a lesbian insult.
45:14 Speaker 00 I will not be reading. Well, again, you're the person who's like, ready to fight.
45:20 Kara Swisher? Ready to fight.
45:21 Speaker 00 Which I learned from reading your book.
45:23 Kara Swisher? Yeah, that's true. One of the things that someone did come up to me that was very sweet, it's usually nice, by the way, it's never hostile, which is interesting, is when someone, an old lady, you know, crunched up to me and is like, I just want you to know, you're my friend, but I'm not yours. And I was like, that is correct. Thank you. And then that was the whole encounter.
45:44 Speaker 00 No, that's amazing.
45:45 Kara Swisher? And I was like, I'm good with that. So last, Audie, last time-
45:48 Speaker 00 Wait, can we just, can we have a moment of silence for this amazing person who said this to you?
45:52 Kara Swisher? Yeah.
45:52 Speaker 00 And let's just spread that message throughout the land. Like, with your keyboard, warrior-ing, just know.
46:00 Kara Swisher? Right, just know.
46:01 Speaker 00 Chill out, okay? It's fine. Let's listen to the elders on this one.
46:04 Kara Swisher? Right, exactly. So when you had a podcast three years ago, Audie, when you launched The Assignment, you said you worried whether anyone would listen because, quote, and this is what you said to me, "The world does not need another person with an interview podcast." How do you stand out? Is it the relationship? Is it, what do you think are the key factors?
46:21 Speaker 00 I am very proud of what I accomplished on The Assignment because we ended up being nominated for Webby's, like, literally with you, you know what I mean? And like, you had an audience and do have an audience that was orders of magnitude larger. But we had a, to me, a hard-won audience of like, real people, you know what I mean? Like, it's not like we could go out and buy a bunch of bots or something like that. It was like, these people really listened and they listened all the way to the end. But in that case, it's because it was service-oriented. They liked spending time with me, they liked the way I delivered news stories, but I also was bringing them someone that they never had heard from before. They had never heard from the doctors who provide gender-affirming care.
47:02 Speaker 00 They had not heard from people who had actually survived a police brutality stop. They hadn't heard from the paparazzi out of, like, reporters out of LA who understood why Harry and Meghan were a thing. Like, it was a service. I'm very nervous, right? Like now I'm suddenly just being judged on like whether or not I'm a good hang, right? Like, that is a different schematic.
47:25 Kara Swisher? Most perfectly named podcast of all time.
47:27 Speaker 00 Yeah, and I get, I'm certainly nervous about it, but I'm nervous about everything, you know? And I think that at a certain point, you have to take a leap. But we're not two celebrities interviewing each other, which is a job. Sometimes I'm like, it's a club, we're not in it. And yes, there are people who want to be a fly on the wall for that. But I don't want to listen to a celebrity interview where the celebrity has final cut. That's for someone, not me.
47:51 Kara Swisher? Yeah.
47:52 Speaker 00 I don't want to be trying to catch every joke and reference between two people who genuinely don't know we're there, like are conducting the conversation as though nobody else can hear it.
48:05 Kara Swisher? Mm-hmm.
48:06 Speaker 00 Um, and we're not there to just randomly bring people on. It's, there's not going to be interviewing for interviewing sake.
48:14 Kara Swisher? You're not having guests.
48:14 Speaker 03 We will occasionally have guests, but.
48:16 Speaker 00 We will, but we won't be on the guest treadmill, you know?
48:19 Kara Swisher? I know, but let me just say, we got rid of guests on Pivot. We talked to listeners and they're like, we don't want your guests.
48:24 Speaker 03 This show is also going to evolve. Like, we're figuring out what it is as we go. And I like where we're starting from, but it may not be where we are six months from now.
48:31 Kara Swisher? Yeah, you might have a ritual sacrifice, maybe a ritual sacrifice, bringing Scott Jennings.
48:35 Speaker 03 That was gonna be a surprise. Oh, now Audie knows.
48:38 Kara Swisher? Everybody, the week, the monthly slap Scott Jennings, I mean figuratively, not literally.
48:43 Speaker 00 Do you see how this woman tries to get me into trouble?
48:46 Kara Swisher? Okay.
48:46 Speaker 00 Bringing in people I've never even heard of, like what is she even saying right now?
48:49 Kara Swisher? You slapped him so hard.
48:51 Speaker 00 I did not take that back.
48:52 Kara Swisher? On that joke, not really, no hand in his face, but that, that encounter was so fantastic.
48:58 Speaker 00 Well, here's the thing, Kara, think about that. That was catrillion clips ago. Like, there's no.
49:03 Kara Swisher? I remember it like it was yesterday. I felt that was the finest. You, Audie has a, just, Ari, just so you know, she has an ability to slap. The dickens out of white guys.
49:15 Speaker 03 All I request is that if I'm on the receiving end, take off your rings first.
49:20 Kara Swisher? No, no, she won't slap you. No, it's a certain kind of guy. And I've seen her do it in private. I've seen her do it in public and it is so beautiful.
49:27 Speaker 00 Every person has their limits.
49:29 Kara Swisher? You are so good at it.
49:31 Speaker 00 I'm very polite.
49:33 Kara Swisher? We were in a meeting and she did it in this thing and I was like, yes. Like, it was so enjoyable and so perfect and they didn't know what to do. I won't say who it was, but it was exactly who you want her to slap. Anyway, let's end by talking about the state of media and the news business. This is where we, this is the hard question part.
49:50 Speaker 00 Kara, this is the stuff you know. Why are you asking us?
49:52 Kara Swisher? No, no, no, no, no. You can answer these questions about, it's about where the state of media, you all work for media and you also have worked in public radio.
50:00 Speaker 00 Yeah.
50:00 Kara Swisher? Two big areas, right? We all work for CNN. I'm a contributor. I don't know if.
50:05 Speaker 03 I'm a contributor too, yeah.
50:06 Speaker 00 As of now, yeah.
50:08 Kara Swisher? And Ari is. So right now, you don't have to talk about the middle of the Paramount and David Ellison's takeover. And James Murdoch is also buying parts of Vox Media, including the podcast network Vox.com and New York Magazine. I was very, I was in the middle of that, which is, I know a lot about that. And I have said I'll leave CNN if the merger with Paramount goes through because I don't want to work for certain people. I am not going to put you on the spot in that regard. But how do you navigate this major media acquisition and consolidation time? How do you look at it as a bigger topic? Because it is part of culture at this moment.
50:41 Speaker 00 Very much so.
50:42 Kara Swisher? Very much so. So Ari, why don't you start and then Audie?
50:44 Speaker 03 Well, to me, it's, it's part of the larger story about the decline of news and journalism in this country. I think having more journalists and more news outlets is better. Full stop. I think every major and minor city in the country should have a newspaper. It's even better if there are two newspapers. In too many places in the country, that is not the case. I think competition is good for democracy and good for media. And so, you know, whether you're talking about a corporation owning most of the local TV stations across the country, or whether you're talking about a newspaper laying off hundreds of journalists, I think the trend lines are moving in the same direction and it's, it's not great for journalism and it's not great for democracy.
51:22 Kara Swisher? Mm-hmm. Go ahead, Audie.
51:25 Speaker 00 I come at this having survived a merger. Like, my introduction to corporate media.
51:31 Kara Swisher? From believing NPR, right?
51:32 Speaker 00 Yeah, it was quite literally, you know, the sale and the purchase of CNN by Discovery.
51:40 Kara Swisher? Oh, so you missed the AT&T one.
51:42 Speaker 00 I missed the AT&T one.
51:44 Kara Swisher? And before that AOL.
51:45 Speaker 00 Exactly. There's so many. So I hopped on the train with a lot of warriors who have been through it.
51:50 Kara Swisher? Right.
51:50 Speaker 00 And it has made, I took that one really hard.
51:55 Speaker 00 Because I just was like, what am I doing? Why did I come here? Is this industry dying? Like, what a mistake I made. But like, NPR is struggling. This is struggling. Like, MSNBC went through a transition. Like, everybody is struggling. And what gives me hope is that the audience sees it, recognizes it, is pissed, and is willing to talk about it publicly. Whereas it's not some, like, back page business thing where people are kind of like, who cares who owns what? It's like, oh, wow, actually, a lot of people seem to care who owns what, and they're talking about it.
52:29 Kara Swisher? So that's actually a good thing. It is actually, people are quite aware. And they seem willing, even people who wouldn't talk before are willing to say something publicly.
52:37 Speaker 00 Yes. I mean, I saw this go around in circles around Oscar time in the Hollywood press, where it was complaining about how, you know, who owned all of the trades? And how did that affect the campaigning? That's like TikTokers were talking about that, you know, just being like, oh, don't believe this campaign because the papers are owned by this and blah, blah, blah in this studio. And so I'm not here, like, weeping and wailing, basically. It's like, full speed ahead, doing the work and connecting with the people who you want.
53:05 Kara Swisher? Right. And you feel like you'll be able to do that within that?
53:08 Speaker 00 I don't even know, Kara, but I do know you've given me some hope about that.
53:11 Kara Swisher? You can.
53:11 Speaker 00 Like, I'm not the person I was three years ago where I was literally like, how can I do anything? How am I going to pay a mortgage? The landscape has changed. The world is littered with little cable news hosts who have created other lives for themselves.
53:27 Kara Swisher? They're actually doing rather well, a lot of them, you know?
53:29 Speaker 00 Yeah, exactly. So I'm not Chicken Little, you know? It's pretty much like, okay, well, let's do this. Whatever's coming next. Great.
53:35 Kara Swisher? That said, Chicken Little, yeah, you're right. Chicken Little didn't end well for Chicken Little. Anyway.
53:42 Speaker 00 Were you trying to remember? You were like, actually, Chicken Little was Cassandra. Like, no, it was still bad.
53:47 Kara Swisher? Right, it was so bad. So, both of you, I'd like you to comment on public media, because NPR just announced buyouts. I've talked to a lot of people there after President Trump and Republicans rolled back more than $1 billion in federal funding. They are getting some funding from very wealthy people, like the bombers and etc. But even before that, listener numbers and sponsorships were dipping. What's it need to do to become self-sustaining? Because part of me is like, well, good, now they'll have to figure it out, right? And then not rely on the fucking government or whoever. Like, it's long past time, because this is a war that's been going on since I started covering media, like dozens of decades ago, essentially, it feels like. So, talk a little bit about how you look at the public media system.
54:28 Speaker 00 Yeah. Ari, you have to take this, because for me, it's been a couple of years now, and I wasn't there for the real rock of the boat.
54:34 Speaker 03 Yeah, I was there when the government funding was cut. That had nothing, I should reiterate, to do with my decision to leave NPR. That had been a long time coming. But I think it's going to be a rough couple of years. And after that, I think the future could be really bright for NPR, because it's one of the few news organizations in the country that is only answerable to journalists. The challenge, listenership to the radio is going down, sponsorships, as you mentioned, going down. I think NPR has to evolve in ways that have nothing to do with government funding and everything to do with where and how you reach your audiences. I really think Catherine Marr, the CEO, is incredible. I'm very impressed by her, and I think she's the right leader for this moment. But I think NPR is going to have to evolve a lot in the next couple of years, not only
55:17 Speaker 03 to envision a financial future without government money, but also to envision a future where they're able to reach people in ways that are not turning the dial to 88.5, as much as I love listening to the radio dial. That, I think, is the big existential challenge.
55:30 Speaker 00 I'll only add to that, like, if there's one thing where a public media people are well-positioned to do, it's ask you to subscribe.
55:37 Kara Swisher? Yes.
55:37 Speaker 00 Which is pretty much the environment right now. So, it's really more, everyone else has moved to our model. And I think, yeah, NPR is like, it's working it out like everyone else.
55:47 Kara Swisher? Right. Is there one thing you would do, each of you, if you could, if you were running it, if you were Catherine?
55:52 Speaker 00 I will just say that the seeds of what to do are already there. We saw something like the Tiny Desk Concert. That that hit at the right time, in the right medium, in the right way.
56:01 Kara Swisher? Right.
56:02 Speaker 00 They have the the building blocks for doing things.
56:04 Kara Swisher? That's a really good point.
56:05 Speaker 03 I I think the secret, and this is not a secret, everybody at NPR knows it, is that we have this network, I'm still saying we, of hundreds of local stations. And there is a bureaucratic bottleneck between the thousands of talented local reporters all across the country and the national network that takes some of their really outstanding work and shares it with the nation. Figuring out how to get rid of that bottleneck, I think, would be a huge liberating public service opportunity that someone should figure out how to take advantage of.
56:36 Kara Swisher? I like it. I like it. I just think you're gonna have to find a billionaire. That's what I think.
56:39 Speaker 03 Well, that too.
56:40 Kara Swisher? That's that's unfortunately, a nice billionaire. And then if he goes crazy, you gotta cut him loose. Anyway, as they are want to do, I'm always on the lookout for good billionaires. And then they always go crazy in the end.
56:52 Speaker 00 Except for Mackenzie. Kara, please tell me Mackenzie's nice.
56:55 Speaker 03 The wives of the bad billionaires tend to be great.
56:57 Kara Swisher? They are. I love I love Lorraine Jobs.
57:00 Speaker 03 Or the ex-wives.
57:01 Kara Swisher? I love or widows. I love Lorraine Jobs. I think she's amazing. I recently was talking to her. I love Gates, Melinda Gates. Pat French.
57:10 Speaker 00 I'll be on Team Billionaires X.
57:12 Kara Swisher? I love Anne Wojcicki.
57:13 Speaker 03 Let's make a First Wives Club follow up. That is the first wives of the tech billionaires.
57:19 Kara Swisher? There are a lot of them.
57:20 Speaker 03 I would really watch that movie.
57:21 Kara Swisher? And Mackenzie, when I knew her, she's very shy, is was wonderful, always wonderful.
57:26 Speaker 03 Yeah, there we go.
57:27 Kara Swisher? His changes have to do a lot with a lot of things, a lot of things. He was never nice, though, let's be clear. It's no it's no lady's fault that he's such a jerk, Jeff Bezos. Anyway, let me, two more questions. Audie, during your dress at Tufts, you also talked about AI and journalism, the inevitable AI question.
57:44 Speaker 00 How do you find this article?
57:45 Kara Swisher? I find everything. We're stalking you, Audie. We all, my producers stalk people.
57:49 Speaker 00 No, there's a student newspaper very happy right now.
57:51 Kara Swisher? I know. Okay, you said, as journalist quote, "Our job at this point is not to be the voice of God, but to listen and analyze and interpret and share." AI is not going to be good at that. How do you see the role? Journalist reporter evolving as newsrooms start to rely on it. I mean, you can't talk about culture without talking about AI, obviously, especially AI-generated content.
58:11 Speaker 00 Yeah, of course. But I watched your show and I watched you talking to an AI version of yourself.
58:16 Kara Swisher? Yes, I did.
58:17 Speaker 00 Didn't do it well.
58:18 Kara Swisher? Not yet.
58:18 Speaker 00 And I don't even think in two or three years it's going to do it well, because you are fundamentally an unpredictable person.
58:24 Kara Swisher? Yes.
58:25 Speaker 00 And I think human beings do have the capacity still to be unpredictable. And I feel like AI is unpredictable in predictable ways. Again, maybe that'll change, it'll be so amazing. But I just don't think it's an accident that no matter how many new media come along, we all find a way to talk to each other directly.
58:46 Kara Swisher? Right, I think you're absolutely right. Ari?
58:49 Speaker 03 I have stopped trying to predict what AI is going to do for the future, because I think it's a bigger transformation than any of us have ever lived through in our lives. And we were both alive before the internet came along. And so, anything that AI can't do today, I assume that it's going to do tomorrow. And I think we have to pay attention and evolve with it. And I'm every day finding new ways that AI is changing my life and opening doors that were not open before. And that's going to touch everything, including newsrooms. I can't say how, but I'm not naive, I'm not Pollyanna-ish, I'm also not Chicken Little about it. I just think, as journalists, we're uniquely suited to track and report and narrate and question and convey what we learn.
59:31 Kara Swisher? Yep, that's a fair point.
59:32 Speaker 00 I was also speaking to students, in fairness. So these were people who were their freshmen, their sophomore, and they are still going into journalism. And so they're really like, looking at me being, not like, why? You know what I mean? Because they still want to do it.
59:43 Kara Swisher? Right.
59:44 Speaker 00 But they're kind of like, will there be a place for me?
59:46 Kara Swisher? Right, you wanted to be the speaker who didn't celebrate AI, and they went, yay, Audie!
59:50 Speaker 00 Oh yeah, I didn't know that was a thing!
59:51 Kara Swisher? That was a thing.
59:52 Speaker 00 And you know, I was like, no, this is coming for you. And there are bosses that are going to have you training it to take your job. Like, yeah, it's grim right now.
1:00:00 Kara Swisher? That's why they liked you, you were on the right side of that.
1:00:03 Speaker 00 Yeah, like, but it's-
1:00:04 Kara Swisher? Students of having none of it.
1:00:05 Speaker 00 Yeah, but you're not stupid for wanting to do this work. That's how I was approaching it, you know?
1:00:09 Kara Swisher? So, I have a last question. You- End the show with what you call touch grass segment, where you talk about something important in your life happening offline. Let's end on that. I will start. I just bought a paint by numbers set.
1:00:24 Speaker 03 Oh, wow. Okay.
1:00:25 Kara Swisher? Well then. I was, we were in Manhattan. We were in, we were weekend in New York this weekend and we went to a Blix to get some, my daughter draws and she loves to draw. And so we got her some really good paper because she's actually getting quite good. And my youngest son and I were looking at all the toys because that's where we got to bring him to. Something he can hit something with or throw or a car, some, some sort of thing, which is not in Blix, by the way. And I saw a paint by numbers thing that was beautiful and I used to do it as a kid. And I bought it. I was like, I'm going to paint. I used to like it.
1:00:57 Speaker 03 Have you started doing it?
1:00:58 Kara Swisher? No, I just, I have it as a little paintbrush inside and on, instead of the old days where you have the, the paints, they're on the paper itself. They've put the, they've embedded the paint on the picture and then you send it as a postcard. And each of you are now going to get a postcard, obviously, from me, paint by numbers. And then the second thing I did is I was in the rest stop on the way home. And do you remember where they would have pictures where there were hidden things like a spoon?
1:01:23 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah.
1:01:23 Speaker 00 Oh, yeah.
1:01:24 Kara Swisher? Hidden pictures. There's a whole box of hidden pictures. I bought a book of hidden pictures because I used to love that. And so.
1:01:30 Speaker 03 I'm curious how the paint by number experience rewires your brain.
1:01:34 Kara Swisher? Right. Very much so. I think very much so. So I bought those two things and I, I don't know why. I just had this moment.
1:01:39 Speaker 00 I'm trying to picture you having the patience.
1:01:42 Kara Swisher? I know.
1:01:43 Speaker 03 Well, I think that's why you do it is to build the patience, right?
1:01:46 Kara Swisher? I know. I used to do it all the time. I used to do all those things.
1:01:49 Speaker 00 So I'm like actually trying to picture.
1:01:51 Kara Swisher? I'm trying to come back to a time when I was patient enough. I used to love paint by numbers.
1:01:55 Speaker 03 Well, it's like I'm not in shape enough to exercise. No, the reason you exercise is to get in shape. I'm not patient enough to paint by numbers. That's the reason you do it.
1:02:02 Kara Swisher? Getting the first postcard that I'm going to make. It's going to be beautiful because, you know, because I'm not artistic, but I enjoy it. All right. What is each of yours now? You start, Audie.
1:02:12 Speaker 00 Um, for me, it's funny you guys brought up paint by numbers because I often make these little kits, activity kits for my kids, so that if we go to a restaurant or if we're in the car, that's what they get handed. They don't get handed an iPad. We also, I never pay for the cellular or anyway, so it wouldn't work. Um, but one of the recent things I found for the kit was a little game called Tango's, which is a little geometry game that has a bunch of like squares and triangles.
1:02:39 Speaker 03 Oh, I remember this from when I was a kid.
1:02:41 Speaker 00 Exactly. You're supposed to form them into various shapes to solve the puzzle. And it's a kind of thing where you're like, you put it in front of a kid and they're like, oh, what is this? And the next thing you know, you turn around.
1:02:52 Kara Swisher? It's not magnet tiles.
1:02:53 Speaker 00 Yeah, mag- oh, magnet tiles are huge in our house.
1:02:55 Kara Swisher? Yes.
1:02:56 Speaker 00 But all of a sudden, there's silence, right? And you look over and they're there like trying to figure this thing out. And it is like travel size. So shout out to Tango's. I don't know who still even makes it.
1:03:06 Speaker 03 That's great.
1:03:07 Speaker 00 But that was my touch grass moment.
1:03:09 Kara Swisher? All right, all right.
1:03:10 Speaker 03 Yeah, for me, it's the garden. You know, I started gardening in the pandemic. I have a vegetable garden and especially when, you know, it was rainy all Memorial Day weekend and it's nice to be able to say like, well, this is good for the garden. And you actually see the garden respond to it. And we're in this moment of transition now from kind of the spring crops to the summer crops. So we're taking out the like hawkerite turnips and the carrots and the beets and the peas and putting in the cucumbers and the tomatoes and the zucchini and the peppers. And so for me, just like getting outside, hands in the dirt, touching and feeling and smelling and tasting, like it's a very sensory experience. That's very grounding for me.
1:03:48 Kara Swisher? So you do watch all those Instagram videos on gardeners, hot gardeners?
1:03:51 Speaker 03 Of course.
1:03:52 Kara Swisher? Yes, hello.
1:03:53 Speaker 00 You have a literal touch grass. I like it.
1:03:54 Speaker 03 But that's on screen. We're talking about off screen.
1:03:56 Kara Swisher? That is the finest thing to come out of, uh, online is all these hot gardeners that do hot gardening. Even I like it. Like I'm just saying, I'm like, you're a hot gardener and I appreciate that.
1:04:07 Speaker 03 If engagement party doesn't work out, I'll start a hot gardening TikTok.
1:04:10 Speaker 00 I know.
1:04:11 Kara Swisher? Anyway, I appreciate it. You guys, I hope everyone listens to engagement party. It seems like a happier version of Scott and I, which I appreciate all.
1:04:20 Kara Swisher? It is a happy marriage.
1:04:22 Speaker 03 Give us time, we'll get jaded.
1:04:23 Speaker 00 Listen, but the model works.
1:04:24 Kara Swisher? The model works.
1:04:25 Speaker 00 So you give me your review. You always tell me the truth.
1:04:28 Kara Swisher? Well, you know what I say? You've got to be useful, interesting, and you can't replace it. And it's hopeful. That's one of the great things, I think, that I've found out. And I think that would be my advice, is be a little more hopeful than you think. Because I think people are tired of people not getting along, even when they disagree.
1:04:45 Speaker 03 I think that's true.
1:04:45 Kara Swisher? So, anyway, good luck. I'm so excited.
1:04:48 Speaker 03 Thanks, Kara.
1:04:48 Kara Swisher? I'm excited for you to be us at the Webby's next year. You won't, but I appreciate your efforts to do stuff.
1:04:54 Speaker 03 I'm excited for Audie to slap someone down. I'm looking forward to that.
1:04:57 Speaker 00 What is this?
1:04:58 Kara Swisher? This is the finest thing in the land. Oh, it's so good. It's so good.
1:05:07 Kara Swisher? Today's show was produced by Christian Castor-Russell, Michelle Lloy, Catherine Millsop, Madeleine LaPlante-Duby, and Kalen Lynch. Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Special thanks to Catherine Barner and Ruelo Roof. Our engineers are Fernando Aruda and Rick Kwan. And our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, you're touching grass, or maybe painting grass. If not, your feed is clogged with puking parakeets. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher, and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from Podium Media, New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Thursday with more.
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