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Vox Media

It's on. Twice a week, award-winning journalist Kara Swisher gets to the heart of the story through no-holds-barred interviews with power players across business, tech, media, politics and beyond. So why do her guests show up? “Smart people,” says Kara, “like difficult questions.”
Mondays and Thursdays from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.

On with Kara Swisher

How does an ad-based streamer compete with subscription-based models like Netflix, Hulu, Max, and all the rest? By charging nothing. At least that’s what Tubi is doing. And despite being seemingly less prestigious than premium streamers, Tubi is used by millions of Americans and outranks Peacock, Max, Paramount Plus, and Apple TV+ in total viewing time. For those who are fatigued by subscriptions fees and monoculture viewing, Tubi offers an enormous catalog of nostalgia and “newstalgia” movies, hours of bingeable classics, over 250 live channels, plus Tubi originals – all at no cost to viewers. So why aren’t more people talking about it? Kara sits down with Tubi CEO Anjali Sud in this special episode of On presented by e.l.f. Cosmetics to talk about Tubi’s appeal to cord-cutters and cord-nevers; how niche-specific fans help inform Tubi content; why Sud thinks Tubi can democratize storytelling and create space for emerging filmmakers; and how she came to be one of few female CEOs in tech.

This interview was taped live at the Whitney Museum in partnership with e.l.f cosmetics as a part of their campaign to increase representation and diversity in boardrooms. Find out more here: https://www.elfbeauty.com/changing-the-board-game/so-many-dicks 

Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find us on Instagram and TikTok @onwithkaraswisher
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Why Tubi CEO Anjali Sud Says Free Is the Future of Streaming

How will AI agents change the economy and the workforce — and are Americans ready? Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has some thoughts. After a stellar quarter boosted by the customer resource management company’s new AI autonomous agents, Agentforce, Benioff explains to Kara how employers and employees will be impacted by a new era of digital workers; why he thinks investing tens of billions in AI capital expenditures (like his competitor Microsoft) is a “race to the bottom”; and what he hopes will come from Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency. 
Plus: Kara and Marc go another round on “DOGE Master” Elon Musk, and whether it’s still possible for business leaders to still defend their values and workers without fear of political repercussions. They also remember their mutual friend, former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, who died earlier this year.
Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find us on Instagram and TikTok @onwithkaraswisher
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Marc Benioff on Elon, AI Agents, and the “DOGE”

Representative Ro Khanna represents the wealthiest congressional district in the country, but he wants to show Democrats how to speak to the working class. And perhaps surprisingly, he’s pretty good at it. But although Khanna was one of Bernie Sanders’ co-chairs in 2020, the “progressive capitalist” from Silicon Valley (don’t call him a democratic socialist) also hobnobs with tech titans. Because according to Khanna, the way to reindustrialize and revitalize the economy is by mobilizing both union leaders and tech and industry leaders — and he thinks he can be the one to bring them together. 

Kara and Ro discuss everything from the DOGE committee, the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, and Trump’s threats to jail members of the January 6 committee, AI policy, KOSA, and tech antitrust. 

Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find us on Instagram and TikTok @onwithkaraswisher
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Rep. Ro Khanna on Tech, Trump & Elon

Canadian chef Matty Matheson has been a force in the culinary world for over two decades, but the non-foodies of the world recognize him as Neil Fak, the goofy, handyman-come-waiter-in-training on the FX/Hulu hit series The Bear. Aside from being the show’s much-needed comic relief, Matheson is an executive producer and a culinary consultant on set. Matheson first became chef de cuisine in his early 20s and now owns over a dozen restaurants. He also runs an incredibly popular YouTube channel with over 1.5 million subscribers and he’s authored three cookbooks – his latest, Soups, Salads, Sandwiches, came out in October.

Kara and Matty talk about the good, bad and ugly of the restaurant industry, why he loves both haute cuisine and homestyle cooking and how his YouTube persona changes when he puts on his chef’s hat.

Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find us on Instagram and TikTok @onwithkaraswisher 
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Chef Matty Matheson of ‘The Bear’ on Culinary Stardom, On and Off The Screen

RFK Jr. was on the Hill, on Monday, working to persuade senators he’s capable of running the Department of Health and Human Services and its almost $2 trillion budget. Ever since the news his lawyer has petitioned the federal government to revoke the approval of a polio vaccine broke, that job has gotten a little harder — but it doesn’t mean he won’t get confirmed. And so could a number of other highly unorthodox candidates that Trump plans to nominate for key positions in the HHS. Kara talks to an expert panel to make sense of it all and find these nominations could means for America’s public health policy. 

Her guests are: Dr. Zeke Emanuel, Dr. Celine Gounder, and Donald McNeil Jr. 

Dr. Emanuel has written and edited 15 books and over 300 scientific articles. He was Chief of the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health, one of the architects of the Affordable Care Act and he teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Celine Gounder is an internist, infectious disease specialist, and epidemiologist, a CBS News Medical Contributor and Editor-at-Large for Public Health at KFF Health News, and she teaches at New York University.

Donald McNeil wrote for the New York Times from 1976 to 2021, where he was a health and science reporter and the lead reporter the COVID beat. He won the prestigious John Chancellor Award in 2020 and was on the New York Times team that won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2021. You can find his latest work on Medium.

Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find us on Instagram and TikTok @onwithkaraswisher
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RFK Jr., Vaccines, Bird Flu & Health Under Trump 2.0

Kara sits down for a live interview with Yann LeCun, an “early AI prophet” and the brains behind the largest open-source large language model in the world. The two discuss the potential dangers that come with open-source models, the massive amounts of money pouring into AI research, and the pros and cons of AI regulation. They also dive into LeCun’s surprisingly spicy social media feeds — unlike a lot of tech employees who toe the HR line, Yann isn’t afraid to say what he thinks of Elon Musk or President-elect Donald Trump.

This interview was recorded live at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center in Washington, DC as part of their Discovery Series.

Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find us on Instagram and TikTok @onwithkaraswisher
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Meta's Chief AI Scientist Yann LeCun Makes the Case for Open Source

Which subpar books actually warrant writing a bad review? Do best sellers usually live up to the hype? And how does our relationship with technology affect the publishing industry? Kara sits down with two of her favorite book critics, Dwight Garner of The New York Times and Becca Rothfeld of The Washington Post, to discuss the best and worst books of 2024. 
The trio debates standout books and notable disappointments, the craft of book reviewing, and the best way to experience a great book. They also explore the importance of best-seller lists, how concerned we should be over the rising tide of book censorship, and which books from 2024 could end up becoming forever classics.
Books mentioned includes (listed alphabetically):

What Are Children For? On Ambivalence and Choice, Anastasia Berg & Rachel Wiseman

Boswell’s London Journal 1762-1763

Believe Nothing Until it is Officially Denied: Claud Cockburn and the Invention of Guerrilla Journalism, Patrick Cockburn

D'Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths

Carson McCullers: A Life, Mary V. Dearborn

You Dreamed of Empires, Álvaro Enrigue

James, Percival Everett

When the Clock Broke, John Ganz

The Upstairs Delicatessen, Dwight Garner

Small Rain, Garth Greenwell

Lesser Ruins, Mark Haber

Alphabetical Diaries, Sheila Heti

A Few Words in Defense of Our Country: The Biography of Randy Newman, Robert Hilburn

Splinters, Leslie Jamison

Howl's Moving Castle, Diana Wynne Jones

Creation Lake, Rachel Kushner

Liars, Sarah Manguso

We Who Wrestle With God, Jordan B. Peterson

Intermezzo, Sally Rooney

The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World, Christine Rosen

Things Are Too Small, Essays in Praise of Excess, Becca Rothfeld

Knife, Salman Rushdie

I Heard Her Call My Name, Lucy Sante

The Rebel’s Clinic, Adam Schatz

The Politics of Cultural Despair, Fritz Stern

Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance

Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find us on Instagram and TikTok @onwithkaraswisher 
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The Best (and Most Overrated) Books of 2024

Happy Holidays! We have a special episode from our friend Adam Grant and the folks at the TED Audio Collective.

Sarah Silverman is a comedian, actor, and writer who doesn’t shy away from saying what she thinks. In this episode of ReThinking with Adam Grant, Sarah shares stories from her bold, distinctive career that has taken her from Saturday Night Live and Seinfeld to Broadway, late-night TV, plays and Disney animated movies. Adam and Sarah also discuss defusing anger, finding courage, and forging connections when we don’t see eye-to-eye. 
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Sarah Silverman on Being Wrong – and Treating Trolls with Kindness (from ReThinking with Adam Grant)

Samantha Bee is a comedian, author and former late-night host who hosts the podcast Choice Words with Samantha Bee and co-hosts The Daily Beast Podcast with Joanna Coles. Her weekly late-night comedy series, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee was nominated for over 70 awards — and she has personally been nominated for 18 Emmy awards and won for both writing and executive producing. 

Full Frontal was explicitly, and hilariously, political and left-leaning so it’s a bit surprising that Bee has declared herself Democrat-celibate, (at least for now). Samantha explains her new approach to politics and dishes on her biggest regret in this CNN pilot titled “Off Script” with Kara, Audie Cornish, CNN correspondent and host of The Assignment, and Van Lathan, co-host of The Ringer’s Higher Learning podcast.

Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find us on Instagram and TikTok @onwithkaraswisher
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Samantha Bee on Being “Democrat-Celibate” (from The Assignment with Audie Cornish)

We’re kicking off the year with a deep-dive into AI ethics and safety with three AI experts: Dr. Rumman Chowdhury, the CEO and co-founder of Humane Intelligence and the first person to be appointed U.S. Science Envoy for Artificial Intelligence; Mark Dredze, a professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University who’s done extensive research on bias in LLMs; and Gillian Hadfield, an economist and legal scholar turned-AI researcher at Johns Hopkins University.

The panel answers questions like: is it possible to create unbiased AI? What are the worst fears and greatest hopes for AI development under Trump 2.0? What sort of legal framework will be necessary to regulate autonomous AI agents? And is the hype around AI leading to stagnation in other fields of innovation?

Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find us on Instagram and TikTok @onwithkaraswisher.
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AI Ethics and Safety — a Contradiction in Terms?

“Digital machines are not just remaking stories, they're remaking us.” So says Oscar-winning actor Robert Downey Jr. as the titular character in his Broadway debut, MCNEAL. Kara talks with Downey Jr., Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Ayad Akhtar and Tony-winning director Bartlett Sher about the play and the thorny questions it raises around truth, lies and power in the AI age. They also discuss who is responsible for creating a new “social contract” around AI. Plus: Kara and Robert get into the Marvel Cinematic Universe and whether Downey is more like Elon Musk as Tony Stark aka Iron Man or in his upcoming role as Dr. Doom.
Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find Kara on Threads @karaswisher
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Robert Downey Jr., Ayad Akhtar and Bartlett Sher on “Truthful Lies” in AI, Art and Politics

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