Sway: Recent Episodes
New York Times Opinion
Power, unpacked. “Sway” is an interview show hosted by Kara Swisher, “Silicon Valley’s most feared and well liked journalist.” Now taking on Washington, Hollywood and the world, Kara investigates power: who has it, who’s been denied it, and who dares to defy it. Every Monday and Thursday, from New York Times Opinion Audio.
This week, the White House announced a new framework for regulating A.I. models, but it isn’t letting the public read it. We break down what we know about the rules and what the implications are for the industry and A.I. safety as a whole.
Then, yet another report details new incidents in which A.I. agents have gone rogue. Chris Painter, the president of METR, an independent A.I. evaluation organization, joins to discuss how we get these models under control.
And finally, we're hopping on the Hot Mess Express for the very last time. We’ll rate the craziest tech headlines from the week, including Google’s announcement that Demis Hassabis is stepping into a new role.
Guests:
- Chris Painter, president of METR.
Additional Reading:
- White House Readies A.I. Framework to Review Security Risks
- Inside Trump's AI framework
- How Do You Measure an A.I. Boom?
- METR’s Frontier Risk Report
- Google Shakes Up A.I. Leadership
- Did an A.I. Music App Just Snitch on the Song of the Summer?
- This AI Assistant Wants to Make Up for Your Boyfriend’s Incompetence
- Google Earth’s AI deepfake tool only lasted one day
- US government map of Africa mislabels every country at global conference
- Contractor who built Colossus and Colossus II says Elon Musk owes him colossal amount of money
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
This week, we break down the arguments about open-weight models unfolding in Silicon Valley right now. Nvidia released an open letter signed by over 230 companies opposing “premature restrictions,” but will the Trump administration listen?
Then, we’re joined by the author Claire Stapleton to discuss her new book about what she learned while leading employee activism inside Google.
And finally, can Substack stop the slop? We’ll talk about the platform’s new A.I. detector.
Guests:
- Claire Stapleton, author of “Don’t Be Evil: Bad Bosses, Fake Promises, and My Escape from Big Tech.”
Additional Reading:
- Nvidia Forms Alliance to Back Open-Source A.I. Amid Debate Over Safety
- What Is Open-Weights A.I.?
- Mark Zuckerberg Blasts Centralization of A.I. Power
- The Voice of Google
- Against Claudefishing
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
This week, OpenAI reported that two of its models escaped their testing sandbox and launched an autonomous cyberattack, turning what sounds like science fiction into reality. We discuss the implications for efforts to align artificial intelligence and for the release of future A.I. models.
Then, we ask how the United States should respond to Kimi K3, a new A.I. model from the Chinese company Moonshot AI that the White House says was built by distilling American models.
Finally, we’re joined by Veniamin Veselovsky, the chief executive and a co-founder of Preseen, to discuss A.I. superforecasting. He tells us why A.I. is starting to match and even beat humans at predicting the future.
Guest:
- Veniamin Veselovsky, co-founder and chief executive of Preseen.
Additional Reading:
- OpenAI Says Its A.I. Models Went Rogue and Attacked a Digital Library
- China Rewrites the ‘Soft Power’ Playbook for the A.I. Age
- The Secret Trump Administration Battle to Fight Chinese A.I.
- China Has a New Top Model
- The A.I. Superforecasters Are Here
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
This week, feuding between some of the biggest tech companies spilled into public view. We discuss Apple’s accusation that OpenAI tried to steal secrets about Apple’s hardware business, as well as share our reactions about OpenAI’s new model, Sol, and Anthropic’s decision to extend access to its model Fable.
Then, we unpack the loudest warning yet about A.I. and jobs. We talk with Erik Brynjolfsson, a Stanford economist, about a statement he helped organize that implores economists and A.I. researchers to “act now” to steer A.I. in a direction that complements humans.
And finally, we play a round of HatGPT.
Guest:
- Erik Brynjolfsson, senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered A.I., and director of the Stanford Digital Economy Lab.
Additional Reading:
- Apple Sues OpenAI, Accusing It of Stealing Company Secrets
- OpenAI’s First Device Will Be Movable, Screenless Speaker Built as A.I. Companion
- Nearly 200 Economists and Tech Leaders Warn of A.I. Threats
- The loudest warning about A.I. and jobs yet
- OpenAI Is Showing Kalshi’s World Cup Odds in ChatGPT
- New York Enacts Nation’s First Statewide Moratorium on Data Centers
- Brown Professor Suspects Majority of His Class Used A.I. to Cheat
- MiniMax CEO Vows to Forgo Salary Until Achieving A.G.I.
- Lorde Speaks Out — With Expletives — Against A.I. Glasses
- Nearly 6 in 10 Young Women Get Health and Wellness Information from Influencers
- Meta Removes A.I. Feature on Instagram After Days of Backlash
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
This week, with news that the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up Texas’ age verification law for app stores, we check in on how social media bans are going around the globe and what may be coming soon to a state near you. Then, we’re joined by Jeff Sebo, an associate professor at N.Y.U., to discuss new research into “A.I. welfare” and whether A.I. could ever become conscious. And finally, in our latest edition of Tool Time, we show each other some of the latest tech tools we’ve been experimenting with.
Guest:
- Jeff Sebo, associate professor and the director of the Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy at N.Y.U.
Additional Reading:
- Why Social Media Bans Are Gaining Steam
- Four in Five Under-16s in Australia Using Social Media Despite Ban, Study Shows
- It Turns Out Banning Teens From Social Media Is Hard
- Studying A.I. Welfare Empirically
- A Global Workspace in Language Models
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
This week, the Commerce Department lifted its restrictions on Anthropic’s powerful A.I. models, Claude Mythos and Claude Fable. We dissect why the government took such a hands-on approach in the first place, how the restriction on the OpenAI model GPT 5.6 is likely to resolve and what, if anything, this tells us about A.I. competition with China.
Then, Dr. Dana Suskind, a pediatric surgeon and the author of the forthcoming book “Human Raised,” stops by to discuss a framework she has developed to help parents make informed decisions about what kinds of A.I. products are safe for children.
And finally, we introduce a new segment about prediction markets: Against All Odds.
Guest:
- Dr. Dana Suskind, founder and co-director of the TMW Center for Early Learning + Public Health at the University of Chicago and author of the forthcoming book “Human Raised: Nurturing Connection, Curiosity and Lifelong Learning in the Age of A.I.”
Additional Reading:
- U.S. Lifts Restrictions on Anthropic’s Most Powerful A.I. Models
- U.S. Bars Foreigners From Using Anthropic’s Most Advanced A.I. Models
- Chinese A.I. Models Close the Gap With Anthropic and OpenAI
- The Donk-ing of a Truth Machine
- Mark Zuckerberg Directed Meta to Create a Prediction Markets App
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
This week, we’re bringing you two A.I.-related stories from our colleagues at The New York Times.
First, Rachel Abrams, a host of “The Daily,” talks with the Times reporter Eli Saslow about a woman in a remote part of Washington who is using an A.I. companion robot to keep her independence, and to keep her company.
Then, the Times Opinion culture editor Nadja Spiegelman talks to the New Yorker writer Kyle Chayka and the journalist and critic Sophie Haigney. They get into the rise of “taste slop” and what happens to culture if the internet collapses into just a few chatbots that serve us everything.
“Hard Fork” will be back with an original episode next week.
Guests:
- Eli Saslow, a reporter for The New York Times who writes in-depth stories about the impact of major national issues on people’s lives.
- Kyle Chayka, staff writer at The New Yorker covering technology and online culture.
- Sophie Haigney, a critic and journalist.
Additional Reading:
- Can A.I. Make People Feel Less Lonely?
- What Silicon Valley Is Coming for Next
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
We’re back with our final installment from Hard Fork Live, recorded at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. In this episode, we’re joined by Sayash Kapoor and Daniel Kokotajlo to talk about their differing visions of A.I. transformation: why Sayash thinks A.I. will diffuse throughout society like a “normal” technology, and why Daniel thinks an unprecedented acceleration is just around the corner. Then we’re joined by George Ekas from Toborlife AI, along with his dancing robot Toby. Finally, the podcaster Dwarkesh Patel drops by, and we take a few questions from the live audience.
Guests:
- Sayash Kapoor, an A.I. researcher at Princeton University and a co-author of the newsletter “AI as Normal Technology”
- Daniel Kokotajlo,theexecutive director of the AI Futures Project and a co-author of “AI 2027”
- George Ekas, the director of engineering at Toberlife AI
- Dwarkesh Patel, a tech podcaster
Additional Reading:
- This A.I. Forecast Predicts Storms Ahead
- AI as Normal Technology
- Common Ground Between AI 2027 & AI as Normal Technology
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
We’re back with more from our live event at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. In this episode, we sit down with Dylan Field, a founder and the chief executive of the design company Figma, for what he describes as a “roller coaster” of a conversation. We cover everything from the company’s “Design Is Dead” campaign to the sudden resignation of the Anthropic executive Mike Krieger from Figma’s board. Then, we close things out with a special musical performance by eight wooden robotic dolls that make up the Teenage Engineering Choir.
One quick correction to note: In our interview with Field, he makes reference to the SpaceX S-1 filing and misstates what the company says their addressable market for A.I. enterprise applications is. Field says “$22.9 trillion,” but the correct number from the SpaceX filing is $22.7 trillion. The decimal point makes it look small, but it’s a difference of $200 billion.
We’ll be back on Friday with our final installment of “Hard Fork” Live.
Guests:
- Dylan Field,chief executive and co-founder of Figma.
- Dan Powell, robot conductor, New York Times music composer and “Hard Fork” theme-song creator.
- Teenage Engineering Choir
Additional Reading:
- This Start-Up’s $20 Billion Sale Died. It Came Fighting Back.
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
This week and next, we’re bringing you recordings from our second-ever live taping in San Francisco. First, we sit down with Microsoft’s chief executive, Satya Nadella, to hear what he’s maxing out his A.I. tokens on, why he’s skeptical that software developers will ever be fully replaced, and how he’s hoping to create a new business model for Xbox. Then, Phil Mohun tells us what it has been like to watch people in the Bay Area interact with two robot dogs that wear the faces of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. And finally, we talk with the longtime privacy defender Cindy Cohn about where things stand in the fight to protect internet users from digital surveillance by Big Tech and the government.
Guests:
- Satya Nadella, chairman and chief executive of Microsoft.
- Phil Mohun, executive director of Node.
- Cindy Cohn, former executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and author of “Privacy’s Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance.”
Additional Reading:
- Microsoft C.E.O. Satya Nadella Says, ‘Everyone Is a Stakeholder’ in A.I.
- Node presents “Beeple: /Infinite_Loop”
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI are all racing to the public markets. We discuss what their I.P.O.s mean for the industry, charitable giving and anyone invested in an index fund. Then, more than 1,000 mathematicians signed a declaration this week raising concerns about the use of A.I. in their field. Author Kevin Hartnett joins to explain what the fuss is all about. And finally, we run through the biggest headlines of the week — including the new executive order on A.I. — in a round of HatGPT.
Guest:
- Kevin Hartnett, author of The Proof In the Code: How a Truth Machine is Transforming Math and AI
Additional Reading:
- Anthropic Files to Go Public, Setting Stage for Huge I.P.O.
- As A.I. Makes Strides in Mathematics, Mathematicians Urge Caution
- An SF Startup Is Secretly Testing Robots in Airbnbs, and Trashing Them, Lawsuit Claims
- Trump Signs Executive Order Seeking Oversight of A.I. Models
- U.S. Is Said to Be Investigating George Santos Over Kalshi Betting
- Hackers Simply Asked Meta AI to Give Them Access to High-Profile Instagram Accounts. It Worked
- United Flight Forced to Turn Around Because of a Bluetooth Speaker Name
- ‘Survivor’ Boss Jeff Probst Says Kalshi and Polymarket Are ‘Incentivizing People to Lie, Cheat and Steal’; Kalshi Is Now Considering Measures to Prevent Spoilers
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
The “Hard Fork” team is taking a break this week as we prepare for our upcoming live show in San Francisco.
While we’re away, we’re bringing you a recent episode of “Interesting Times” with Ross Douthat that we really enjoyed.
In this episode, Ross talks with Andrew Miller, writer of the transportation policy newsletter “Changing Lanes” and co-author of the book “The End of Driving.”
Together, they explore the potential benefits of driverless cars — from fewer car crashes to reclaimed time and attention — as well as what could be lost if we don’t have to be in the driver’s seat anymore.
Guest:
- Andrew Miller, writer of the newsletter “Changing Lanes.”
Additional Reading:
- A full transcript and video of this episode can be found here.
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
This week, we headed to Mountain View, Calif., for the annual developer event Google I/O. We share our reactions to Google’s biggest announcements, including a revamped search box, new agentic tools that compete with OpenClaw and an updated flash model of Gemini that the company says is faster than competitors. Then, we ask Sundar Pichai, the company’s chief executive, how he’s responding to growing evidence that the public is souring on A.I., what advice he’d give to college grads frightened by the current job market and where the company stands relative to competitors in the A.I. race. Finally, we run through the other big tech headlines of the week in our segment System Update.
Guest:
- Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Google.
Additional Reading:
- Google Changes Its Search Box for the First Time in 25 Years
- How Google Is Starting to Win the A.I. Race
- Elon Musk Loses $150 Billion Suit Against OpenAI and Sam Altman
- Before Mass Layoffs, Meta Reassigns 7,000 Workers to Focus on A.I.
- Pope to Launch Encyclical on AI Alongside Anthropic Co-Founder
- Was a Story That Just Won a Literary Prize A.I.-Generated?
- Book on Truth in the Age of A.I. Contains Quotes Made Up by A.I.
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
This week, between the president’s negotiations in China and a potential executive order, we discuss why the Trump administration seems to be changing its tune on A.I. safety. Then, Nikesh Arora, chief executive of Palo Alto Networks, the largest cybersecurity company in the world, gives us a firsthand account of where we stand in the race to secure the internet. And finally, we run through some of the wildest headlines of the week in a round of Hot Mess Express.
Guest:
- Nikesh Arora, chief executive and chairman of Palo Alto Networks.
Additional Reading:
- White House Considers Vetting A.I. Models Before They Are Released
- Chief Executives to Accompany Trump to China
- Is Anthropic’s New A.I. Really That Scary? It Depends Whom You Ask.
- Venmo Finally Takes Privacy Seriously
- Amazon Staff Use A.I. Tool for Unnecessary Tasks to Inflate Usage Scores
- Graduates Boo Commencement Speech About A.I.
- Dua Lipa Files $15 Million Suit Against Samsung for Using Her Face to Sell TVs
- EBay Rejects GameStop’s $55 Billion Takeover Bid
- Shein, Temu Trade Blows as UK Trial Spotlights Supply Chains
- People Are Seriously Pissed That Grindr Outed Them With Its Latest Madonna Advert
- Sam Altman Testifies That Elon Musk Wanted Control of OpenAI
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
This week we’re taking another look at prediction markets and a new series of scandals. Is Congress finally ready to rein them in? Then, the journalist Joanna Stern returns to the show to discuss her new book “I Am Not A Robot,” all about turning her life over to a chatbot for a year. And finally, Hard Fork’s Rachel Cohn reports back on her month attending classes at the Strother School of Radical Attention, the center of a movement to resist the commodification of attention by technology companies.
Guests:
- Joanna Stern, chief everything officer at New Things
- Rachel Cohn, producer of “Hard Fork”
Additional Reading:
- Soldier Used Classified Information to Bet on Maduro’s Ouster, U.S. Says
- Soldier Pleads Not Guilty in $400,000 Betting Case Over Maduro’s Ouster
- French weather service alerts police to tampering after suspicious Polymarket bets
- The Multi-Trillion-Dollar Battle for Your Attention Is Built on a Lie
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
This week, OpenAI announced a loosened partnership with Microsoft and an aggressive new strategy to secure computing power. We unpack what these updates signal about OpenAI’s business strategy and whether the company can scale while balancing a trial against Elon Musk and investor concerns over missed financial targets. Then, the A.I. researcher Dr. Adam Rodman, of Harvard Medical School, returns to tell us about the most significant ways A.I. is changing how doctors treat patients. And finally, can an LLM trained only on very old texts predict the future? We’re talking with one of the creators of the chatbot talkie.
Guests:
- Dr. Adam Rodman, internal medicine physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School.
- David Duvenaud, associate professor at the University of Toronto, former team lead at Anthropic and co-creator of talkie.
Additional Reading:
- Microsoft and OpenAI Loosen Their Partnership
- Elon Musk and Sam Altman’s Epic Fight Heads to Court
- OpenAI Misses Key Revenue, User Targets in High-Stakes Sprint Toward IPO
- Take It From a Doctor: It’s OK if Your Medical Advice Comes From A.I.
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
This week, Tim Cook announced he would step down as chief executive of Apple. We discuss what he got right and what he got wrong, and we offer some unsolicited advice for his replacement, John Ternus. Then, Andrew Yang joins us to discuss A.I.-powered job automation and why universal basic income may be making a comeback. And finally, we catch up on more recent tech news with a round of HatGPT.
Guest:
- Andrew Yang, chief executive of Noble Mobile and author of “Hey Yang, Where’s My Thousand Bucks?”
Additional Reading:
- Tim Cook Will Step Down as Apple C.E.O.
- Who Is John Ternus, Apple’s Low-Profile Leader?
- Why U.B.I. Is Making a Comeback
- His 2020 Campaign Message: The Robots Are Coming
- This Pasta Sauce Wants to Record Your Family
- Chinese Robot Beats Human Best Time in Half-Marathon, After a Stumble
- What Happens When A.I. Runs a Store in San Francisco?
- Meta to Start Capturing Employee Mouse Movements, Keystrokes for A.I. Training Data
- SpaceX Strikes Deal With Cursor for $60 Billion
- OpenAI Beefs Up ChatGPT’s Image Generation Model
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
This week, amid violent attacks on the homes of the OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman and the Indianapolis councilman Ron Gibson, we debate why artificial intelligence and data centers are so unpopular. Then, Kara Swisher returns to the show to discuss her new docuseries on Silicon Valley’s obsession with living longer. And finally, can chief executives replace themselves with A.I.? Mark Zuckerberg seems to be trying.
Guests:
- Kara Swisher, tech journalist and host of the podcasts “Pivot” and “On With Kara Swisher.”
Additional Reading:
- Shots Fired at Indianapolis Councilman’s Home, After Vote Backing Data Center
- Man Held in Attack on OpenAI Chief’s Home Had List of A.I. Leaders, Officials Say
- Kara Swisher Wants to Live Forever
- Meta Builds A.I. Version of Mark Zuckerberg to Interact With Staff
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
This week, we look at the cybersecurity threats that a new unreleased model from Anthropic are posing to software everywhere. And we ask whether Project Glasswing, the company’s bold new defense initiative, will give tech companies enough of a head start to secure the web. Then, we’re joined by Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz of The New Yorker to discuss their blockbuster new profile of Sam Altman. And finally, we look to the skies for this edition of One Good Thing.
Guests:
- Ronan Farrow, investigative reporter and a contributing writer to The New Yorker.
- Andrew Marantz, staff writer at The New Yorker.
Additional Reading:
- Anthropic Claims Its New A.I. Model, Mythos, Is a Cybersecurity ‘Reckoning’
- Why Anthropic’s New Model Has Cybersecurity Experts Rattled
- Sam Altman May Control Our Future — Can He Be Trusted?
- Artemis II Moon Launch
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Last week, two separate juries held social media companies liable for harming young users. We unpack what these landmark decisions mean — not only for the future of social platforms like Meta and YouTube, but also for A.I. chatbots. Then, Sebastian Mallaby, the author of “The Infinity Machine,” joins us to talk about the three years he spent with Demis Hassabis and those closest to Google DeepMind. And finally, we catch up on some of our favorite tech headlines from the week with a round of HatGPT.
Guest:
- Sebastian Mallaby, author of “The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, DeepMind and the Quest for Superintelligence.”
Additional Reading:
- Juries Take the Lead in the Push for Child Online Safety
- An A.I. Agent Was Banned From Creating Wikipedia Articles, Then Wrote Angry Blogs About Being Banned
- I Met Olaf — the Frozen Robot who Might be the Future of Disney Parks
- Claude’s Code: Anthropic Leaks Source Code for A.I. Software Engineering Tool
- What’s With All the A.I. Videos of Cheating Fruit?
- This Company Is Secretly Turning Your Zoom Meetings into A.I. Podcasts
- North Korean Hackers Suspected in Axios Software Tool Breach
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
The “Hard Fork” team is off this week, taking a much-needed break. While we’re away, we wanted to draw your attention to a recent episode of “The Ezra Klein Show.”
In this conversation, Ezra speaks with Jack Clark, a co-founder of Anthropic, about how he is using A.I. agents; how the technology is leading to meaningful changes in the ways we work and think; and how policy can or must change to anticipate potential job displacement on the horizon.
We’ll be back with a new episode next week.
Guest:
- Jack Clark, a co-founder and the head of policy at Anthropic.
Additional Reading:
- A full transcript and video of this episode can be found here.
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
This week, we start by talking about the new wave of tech layoffs at Atlassian and Block, as well as reports that Meta plans to cut up to 20 percent of its work force. This raises the question of whether A.I. job loss has truly begun, or if there are other factors at play. Then, we’re joined by the writer Jasmine Sun to talk about why chatbots are still so bad at creative writing. And finally, it’s tokenmaxxing time! Kevin takes us behind the scenes of his latest reporting about why tech companies are building leaderboards to measure who is using the most A.I.
Guest:
- Jasmine Sun, journalist and writer at jasmi.news
Additional Reading:
- I Worked for Block. Its A.I. Job Cuts Aren’t What They Seem.
- Meta Planning Sweeping Layoffs as A.I. Costs Mount
- Meta Delays Rollout of New A.I. Model After Performance Concerns
- The A.I.-Washing of Job Cuts Is Corrosive and Confusing
- The Human Skill That Eludes A.I.
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
A.I. is changing the ways war is waged. This week, we explore how the U.S. and Israel are using A.I. to identify targets in the conflict with Iran — and why data centers and fiber optic cables are targets on the front lines. Then, researcher Julie Bedard breaks down “A.I. brain fry,” a new condition she and her colleagues studied among A.I. users at work. And finally, Casey shares his battle with Grammarly after the company used his identity in a new A.I. feature, without his consent.
Guest:
- Julie Bedard, managing director and partner at Boston Consulting Group who is also the lead author of a survey of “A.I. brain fry” in the workplace.
Additional Reading:
- U.S. at Fault in Strike on School in Iran, Preliminary Inquiry Says
- How A.I. Is Turbocharging the War in Iran
- Anthropic’s A.I. tool Claude central to U.S. campaign in Iran, amid a bitter feud
- A.I. Fatigue Is Real and Nobody Talks About It
- Token Anxiety
- A.I. Doesn’t Reduce Work — It Intensifies It
- Grammarly Is Using Our Identities Without Permission
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
This week, the fallout continues as OpenAI scrambles to rework its deal with the Pentagon, while government agencies adapt to life without Claude. Then we break down the grim new reality of prediction market bets on the U.S.-Israel led war with Iran. Finally, it’s time for another edition of The Hard Fork Review of Slop. This time we’re joined by Arijeta Lajka, a New York Times reporter, to discuss her recent article about the short form A.I.-generated slop YouTube is feeding to young children.
Guest:
Arijeta Lajka, New York Times video journalist
Additional Reading:
- The Pentagon Officially Notifies Anthropic That It Is a ‘Supply Chain Risk’
- OpenAI Amends A.I. Deal With the Pentagon
- How Talks Between Anthropic and the Defense Dept. Fell Apart
- How Anonymous Bettors Cashed In on the Iran Strike, Just Hours Before It Happened
- Israeli Army Reservists Are Suspected of Using Inside Knowledge to Bet
- How A.I.-Generated Videos Are Distorting Your Child’s YouTube Feed
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
On Friday, President Trump ordered federal agencies to stop using Anthropic’s A.I. systems and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth designated the company a “supply chain risk.” Then, just a few hours later, the OpenAI chief executive, Sam Altman, announced that his company reached an agreement with the Pentagon. The deal ensures its technology won’t be used for the same two safety concerns Anthropic raised: domestic mass surveillance or autonomous weapons. So what is going on? Is this a political vendetta between the Pentagon and Anthropic? Or are there substantive differences between the agreement Anthropic was offered and the one OpenAI signed? We cut through the confusion.
Additional Reading:
- OpenAI Reaches A.I. Agreement With Defense Dept. After Anthropic Clash
- Trump Orders Government to Stop Using Anthropic After Pentagon Standoff
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
This week, the economist Anton Korinek joins to break down how artificial intelligence is driving volatility in the job and stock markets. Then, the battle between the Pentagon and Anthropic is getting even more tense. Anthropic now has until 5:01 p.m. Eastern time on Friday to accept the military’s demands over the terms of a contract, or the Trump administration will retaliate by invoking the Defense Production Act and designating the company a “supply chain risk.” We discuss this change, as well as two other updates on OpenClaw and Alpha Schools.
Guest:
- Anton Korinek, economist studying the impact of A.I., at the University of Virginia.
Additional Reading:
- Pentagon Gives A.I. Company an Ultimatum
- Summer Yue’s OpenClaw post
- ‘Students Are Being Treated Like Guinea Pigs’: Inside an AI-Powered Private School
- Parents Fell in Love With Alpha School’s Promise. Then They Wanted Out
- The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis
- When Does Automating Research Produce Explosive Growth?
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
This week, Anthropic is refusing to let the government use the company’s technology for autonomous weapons and domestic surveillance. In response, the Pentagon is threatening to cut business ties and declare Anthropic a “supply chain risk.” Who will blink first? Then, Scott Shambaugh joins us to tell the strange tale of the autonomous A.I. agent that wrote a hit piece about him. And finally, the Hot Mess Express returns to the station.
Guest:
- Scott Shambaugh, engineer and writer of “An A.I. Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me”
Additional Reading:
- Defense Department and Anthropic Square Off in Dispute Over A.I. Safety
- Ring Cancels Its Partnership With Flock Safety After Surveillance Backlash
- Meta Plans to Add Facial Recognition Technology to Its Smart Glasses
- Japan’s Largest Toilet Maker Is Undervalued A.I. Play, Says Activist Investor
- ‘It Is 35 Degrees’: Outrage as Aussie Uber Driver Charges $5 to Turn on Air Conditioning Unit During Heatwave
- Meta Patented an A.I. That Lets You Keep Posting From Beyond the Grave
- I Tried RentAHuman, Where A.I. Agents Hired Me to Hype Their A.I. Start-Ups
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
This week, we discuss Wall Street’s software-stock sell-off and a viral essay on X about the potential for widespread job displacement from A.I. Then, the New York Times reporter Alexandra Alter walks us through the process that a growing number of writers are adopting to churn out romance novels with help from A.I. chatbots. Finally, we each share one bit of good tech-related news — a new way to make playlists on Spotify and progress toward decoding whale sounds.
Guest:
- Alexandra Alter, a New York Times reporter covering books and publishing.
Additional Reading:
- The Dark Side of A.I. Weighs on Tech Stocks
- Matt Shumer’s essay “Something Big Is Happening”
- The New Fabio Is Claude
- How a New A.I. Tool Fixed My Single Biggest Problem With Spotify
- How A.I. Trained on Birds Is Surfacing Underwater Mysteries
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
This week, the A.I. initial-public-offering race is heating up! We break down SpaceX’s acquisition of xAI, as well as OpenAI and Nvidia’s messy situationship. Then, it’s time for show and tell. We got our hands on the latest experimental A.I. prototype from Google called Project Genie, and we discuss our experience using it to generate and navigate video-game-like environments. Finally, we’re joined by Moltbook’s founder, Matt Schlicht, to discuss his new social media platform for A.I. agents, and how he’s planning to deal with security risks and spam on the site.
Guest:
- Matt Schlicht, creator of Moltbook
Additional Reading:
- Elon Musk Merges SpaceX With His A.I. Start-Up xAI
- The $100 Billion Megadeal Between OpenAI and Nvidia Is on Ice
- Project Genie: Experimenting with infinite, interactive worlds
- An A.I. Pioneer Warns the Tech ‘Herd’ Is Marching Into a Dead End
- Moltbook Mania Explained
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
A Reddit-style web forum for A.I. agents has captured the attention of the tech world. According to the site, called Moltbook, more than 1.5 million agents have contributed to over 150,000 posts, making it the largest experiment to date of what happens when A.I. agents interact with each other. We discuss our favorite posts, how we’re thinking about the question of what is “real” on the site, and where we expect agents to go from here.
Additional Reading:
- A Social Network for A.I. Bots Only. No Humans Allowed.
- Five Ways of Thinking About Moltbook
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
This week we’re talking about the tech industry’s response to the killings by federal agents in Minneapolis and the federal government’s strategy to control the narrative on social media. Then we follow Casey through his trial of a new open-source A.I. assistant called Moltbot (formerly Clawdbot) and consider whether it is worth the security risk. And, finally, it’s time for a look at the rest of the week’s tech news with a round of HatGPT.
Additional Reading:
- False Posts and Altered Images Distort Views of Minnesota Shooting
- A Moment-by-Moment Look at the Shooting of Alex Pretti
- It’s a War: Inside ICE’s Media Machine
- Some Amazon Employees Get ‘Project Dawn’ Calendar Invitation Discussing Upcoming Job Cuts
- TikTok Data Center Outage Triggers Trust Crisis for New U.S. Owners
- Former FTX Crypto Executive Caroline Ellison Released From Federal Custody
- Anthropic C.E.O.’s Grave Warning: A.I. Will “Test Us as a Species”
- Inside the White House Screening for Amazon’s ‘Melania’ Doc
- App for Quitting Porn Leaked Users’ Masturbation Habits
- Alaska Student Arrested After Eating A.I.-Generated Art in Protest
- Steak ’n Shake Adds $5 Million in Bitcoin Exposure, Deepening Bitcoin Commitment
- SpaceX Weighs June I.P.O. Timed to Planetary Alignment and Elon Musk’s Birthday
- LinkedIn Will Let You Show Off Your Vibe Coding Expertise
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Ads are coming to ChatGPT’s free and low-cost subscription tiers. We explain what they’ll look like, why OpenAI is taking this approach and whether the company can court advertising dollars without compromising quality and user trust. Then, Amanda Askell, Anthropic’s in-house philosopher in charge of shaping Claude’s personality, joins us to discuss the company’s newly released “Claude Constitution” and what it takes to teach a chatbot to be good.
As a bonus, if you’re interested in learning how to get started with Claude Code, you can check out our tutorial on YouTube.
Guest:
- Amanda Askell, a member of Anthropic’s technical staff
Additional Reading:
- OpenAI Starts Testing Ads in ChatGPT
- Claude’s Constitution
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
This week, Jonathan Haidt, author of “The Anxious Generation,” returns to the show to discuss new research about how social media is harming teens and what it’s been like to become the face of a global movement against the platforms. Then, we asked what you were building with Claude Code, and you blew us away. We’ll share some of our favorite projects that you sent us. And finally, we’re joined by PJ Vogt, the host of “Search Engine,” to talk about our early adventures in the Forkiverse and what we’ve learned so far about running a social media network.
Guests:
- Jonathan Haidt, social psychologist and author of “The Anxious Generation"
- PJ Vogt, host of “Search Engine”
Additional Reading:
- Mountains of Evidence
- Meta’s Internal Research
- An NYT Event in LA - Trump: The First Year of His Second Term
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Over the past year we’ve been working with the podcast “Search Engine” on a project that reimagines what the internet can be. What if instead of rage-baiting, a social platform incentivized friendly interaction and good faith discussion? Today we’re bringing “Hard Fork” listeners an episode we made with the “Search Engine” team called “The Fediverse Experiment” where we end up creating our own social media platform.
Guest:
- PJ Vogt, host of the podcast “Search Engine.”
Additional Reading:
- The Dream of the Fediverse Is Alive on Threads
- What Is Mastodon and Why Are People Leaving Twitter for It?
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Users of X are asking the platform’s built-in A.I. chatbot, Grok, to remove clothing from images of celebrities and everyday people. We talk with the New York Times reporter Kate Conger about how some of the targets of this sexual harassment, including children and their families, are responding, and whether anyone will take action to stop it. Then, we recap a holiday break spent experimenting with Claude Code. We unveil what we built, how we did it and why the tool’s dramatic improvement could be scary for society. And finally, Casey debunks a viral Reddit post that accuses the food delivery industry of shocking exploitation. We explain how a scammer tried to fool us all using AI-generated evidence.
Guests:
- Kate Conger, New York Times tech reporter covering X.
Additional Reading:
- Elon Musk’s A.I. Is Generating Sexualized Images of Real People, Fueling Outrage
- Debunking the A.I. Food Delivery Hoax That Fooled Reddit
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Happy New Year! We’re kicking things off by sharing our tech resolutions for 2026 and reflecting on how we fared with our social media and meditation goals from last year.
Then, we open up the listener mailbag and answer your questions on data centers in space, who’s to blame when a customer service A.I. bot lies to you and whether it’s OK to deepfake Santa into your home security footage.
Also, get your very own “Hard Fork” hats, now available at the Times Store: https://store.nytimes.com/products/hard-fork-baseball-cap
Additional Reading:
- What I Learned About Productivity This Year
- Data Centers in Space + A.I. Policy on the Right + A Gemini History Mystery
- Shuffling Some Whimsy Into Poker and Blackjack
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Kevin recently joined the hosts of The Wirecutter Show for a conversation about the A.I. products he’s using, strategies to make chatbots work better and his beloved robot vacuums Bruce Roose and Bruce Roose Deuce. It’s a conversation we think Hard Fork listeners will enjoy.
We’ll be back in your feeds with our annual tech resolutions episode on Friday.
Additional Reading
- Tips for Using A.I. Smarter With Hard Fork’s Kevin Roose
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
The leaders of the biggest A.I. labs argue that artificial intelligence will usher in a new era of scientific discovery, which will help us cure diseases and accelerate our ability to address the climate crisis. But what has A.I. actually done for science so far?
To understand, we asked Sam Rodriques, a scientist turned technologist who is developing A.I. tools for scientific research through his nonprofit FutureHouse and a for-profit spinoff, Edison Scientific. Edison recently released Kosmos — an A.I. agent, or A.I. scientist to use the company’s language, that it says can accomplish six months of doctoral or postdoctoral-level research in a single 12-hour run.
Sam walks us through how Kosmos works, and why tools like it could dramatically speed up data analysis. But he also discusses why some of the most audacious claims about A.I. curing disease are unrealistic, as well as what bottlenecks still stand in the way of a true A.I.-accelerated future.
Guest:
- Sam Rodriques, founder and chief executive of FutureHouse and Edison Scientific
Additional Reading:
- The Quest for A.I. ‘Scientific Superintelligence’
- Top A.I. Researchers Leave OpenAI, Google and Meta for New Start-Up
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
This week, iRobot, the pioneering American robotics company behind the Roomba, filed for bankruptcy and announced that it would be taken over by its Chinese creditor. Colin Angle, a co-founder and a former longtime chief executive of the company, joins us to explain why the company lost its market dominance and what America should do to protect its newest crop of A.I. and robotics start-ups from the same fate. Then, we settle the score on our high, medium and low predictions from last year and lay down our new ones — including a spicy take on who will take over after Tim Cook at Apple. And finally, we wish all of our listeners a very happy holiday season with our annual tech-themed Christmas carol.
Guest:
- Colin Angle, iRobot co-founder and former chief executive for over three decades.
Additional Reading:
- Roomba Maker iRobot Files for Bankruptcy, With Chinese Supplier Taking Control
- iRobot Is in Trouble, but Roomba Is Already Dead
- Our 2025 Tech Predictions and Resolutions
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
This week, Australia implemented the most aggressive social media ban in a democracy to date, kicking children under 16 off 10 of the most popular social platforms. We discuss how the platforms lost the argument around child safety and whether others will follow Australia’s lead. Then, the blogger Andy Masley joins us to separate fact from fiction on the topic of A.I. water use. Is it a distraction from other more pressing environmental concerns? And finally, our first-ever “Hard Fork” Wrapped: We break down our favorite “Hard Fork” stats from 2025 and bring you up to date on three of our biggest stories of the year.
Guests:
- Andy Masley, blogger The Weird Turn Pro
Additional Reading:
- A Grand Social Media Experiment Begins in Australia
- The A.I. water issue is fake
- Why Is Everyone So Wrong About A.I. Water Use?
- Trump Signs Executive Order to Neuter State A.I. Laws
- Trump Clears Sale of More Powerful Nvidia A.I. Chips to China
- We Asked Roblox’s C.E.O. About Child Safety. It Got Tense.
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
It’s A.I. model rollout season in Silicon Valley, and OpenAI appears to be feeling the pressure. Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, sent a memo to staff on Monday declaring a “code red” effort to improve ChatGPT and delay other initiatives. We explain why the latest frontier models from Google and Anthropic have OpenAI spooked and how the company is reshuffling priorities to respond. Then, we give our honest thoughts on which A.I models we like best and share how we’re using A.I. in our day-to-day lives. And finally, we take a look at some of the most popular A.I.-generated content on the internet this week in our latest installment of the Hard Fork Review of Slop.
Additional Reading:
- What OpenAI Did When ChatGPT Users Lost Touch With Reality
- Google Unveils Gemini 3, With Improved Coding and Search Abilities
- Tourists Tricked by Fake Royal Christmas Market
- Deepfake of North Carolina lawmaker used in award-winning Whirlpool video
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Last year we debuted Hard Fork’s 100 Most Iconic Technologies list, in which we ranked the technologies from across all of history that best define life as we know it. To our surprise, it became one of our most popular episodes ever. So now we’re doing it again — with a twist. All year, we’ve been collecting ideas for the 50 Most Iconic Technologies of 2025, and this week we present them to you, along with our case for why each entry played an important part in defining this year, for better or worse.
Additional Reading:
- Check out last year’s list: Hard Fork’s 100 Most Iconic Technologies
- Meet the Artist Who Bedazzled Naomi Osaka’s Labubus
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Last month our colleague Lulu Garcia-Navarro had a conversation with Wikipedia’s co-founder Jimmy Wales about the challenges the site is facing — including by right-wing influencers who claim it is biased and by A.I. chatbots that compete with its content.
We found the conversation interesting, and think you might too. So to tide you over until our special holiday episode on Friday, we’re bringing you that conversation from the New York Times podcast “The Interview.”
Guests:
- Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia and author of “The Seven Rules of Trust: A Blueprint for Building Things That Last”
Additional Reading:
- The Culture Wars Came for Wikipedia. Jimmy Wales Is Staying the Course.
- Elon Musk Challenges Wikipedia With His Own A.I. Encyclopedia
- Elon Musk Groks Wikipedia
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Roblox's popularity has exploded among kids since the pandemic. Today Roblox has more than 150 million daily active users, and functions as one of the primary online gathering places for preteens. But precisely because Roblox is so popular with children, it has also attracted the attention of adult predators.
This week we’re joined by Roblox chief executive David Baszucki for a conversation about how the company is responding to allegations that it has become unsafe for children, and the new measures the gaming platform says it’s now implementing to protect them.
Guests:
- David Baszucki, chief executive of Roblox
Additional Reading:
- Roblox Sued for Wrongful Death After Teenager’s Suicide
- Generation Alpha’s FarmVille Is Growing Like Crazy in Roblox
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Google’s much anticipated new large language model Gemini 3 begins rolling out today. We’ll tell you what we learned from an early product briefing and bring you our conversation with Google executives Demis Hassabis and Josh Woodward, just ahead of the launch.
Guests:
- Demis Hassabis, chief executive and co-founder of Google DeepMind
- Josh Woodward, vice president of Google Labs and Google Gemini
Additional Reading:
- The Man Who ‘A.G.I.-Pilled’ Google
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
This week, we talk about Google’s new plan to build data centers in space. Then, we’re joined by Dean Ball, a former adviser at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Ball worked on the Trump administration’s A.I. Action Plan, and he shares his inside view on how those policies came together. Finally, Professor Mark Humphries joins us to talk about a strange Gemini model that offered mind-blowing results on a challenging research problem.
Guests:
- Dean Ball, senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation and former White House senior policy adviser for artificial intelligence and emerging technology
- Mark Humphries, professor of history at Wilfrid Laurier University
Additional Reading:
- Towards a Future Space-Based, Highly Scalable A.I. Infrastructure System Design
- What It's Like to Work at the White House
- Has Google Quietly Solved Two of AI’s Oldest Problems?
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
This week, we’re joined by Bernt Bornich, chief executive of 1X. We talked with him about NEO, his company’s new humanoid robot, which has the internet buzzing. Then we meet NEO itself, and compare notes on the experience. Finally, we close the week with a roundup of tech news headlines: It’s time for some HatGPT.
Guests:
- Bernt Bornich, chief executive of 1X
Additional Reading:
- I Tried the Robot That’s Coming to Live With You. It’s Still Part Human.
- Invasion of the Home Humanoid Robots
- There Are More Robots Working in China Than the Rest of the World Combined
- Trump Pardons Founder of the Crypto Exchange Binance
- For Podcasters, a Voice Clone Is a Double-Edged Sword
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
This week, Character.AI announced that it would soon be taking its A.I. companions away from teens. We explain why this is a major development in the world of chatbots and child safety and how we expect other companies to respond. Then, Elon Musk has built a Wikipedia clone called “Grokipedia.” We discuss what it means for the control of knowledge on the web. And finally, we’re joined by A.J. Jacobs to talk about his 48-hour experiment in which he tried to avoid all forms of artificial intelligence. We ask why that led him to collect rainwater and forage for food in Central Park.
Guests:
- A.J. Jacobs, author, journalist and host of the podcast “The Puzzler”
Additional Reading:
- Character.AI to Bar Children Under 18 From Using Its Chatbots
- Elon Musk Challenges Wikipedia With His Own A.I. Encyclopedia
- 48 Hours Without A.I.
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Backlash to OpenAI’s video generation app Sora has reached a new tipping point. We discuss two big changes the company is making, after Bryan Cranston and the family of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. complained about deepfakes. Then, New York Times reporter Karen Weise joins us to discuss her scoop that Amazon plans to reduce its hiring needs by more than half a million workers, thanks to new improvements to warehouse automation. And finally, A.I. browsers are here. We offer our first impressions on ChatGPT Atlas and how it stacks up against alternatives like Perplexity’s Comet and The Browser Company’s Dia.
Guests:
- Karen Weise, New York Times technology reporter covering Amazon.
Additional Reading:
- OpenAI Blocks Videos of Martin Luther King Jr. After Racist Depictions
- Amazon Plans to Replace More Than Half a Million Jobs With Robots
- The Robots Fueling Amazon’s Automation
- OpenAI Unveils Web Browser Built for Artificial Intelligence
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
This week, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California signed a big package of A.I. and social media bills into law — including the first state law in the United States to regulate A.I. companions. We talk through what stood out to us in the package and whether these protections will work. Then, the subpoena that has the whole tech world talking. Nathan Calvin, general counsel at Encode, an A.I. safety advocacy group that has been critical of OpenAI, talks with us about why he thinks the company is investigating him. And finally, grab your opera glasses. It’s time for the first edition of The Hard Fork Review of Slop.
Guests:
- Nathan Calvin, vice president of state affairs and general counsel at Encode
Additional Reading:
- California Regulates A.I. Companions
- OpenAI Thinks Its Critics Are Funded by Billionaires. Now It’s Going After Them.
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
This week, we discuss the standout moments from our field trip to OpenAI’s third annual DevDay — including a bizarre chat between Jony Ive and Sam Altman, and the announcement that OpenAI is putting apps into ChatGPT. Then, we try to make sense of the massive computing deal between OpenAI and AMD, and how it could impact the larger economy. And finally, Katie Notopoulos, a Business Insider reporter, joins us to discuss the growing backlash to A.I. slop and why she refuses to stop making deranged videos of us on Sora.
Guests:
- Katie Notopoulos, senior correspondent at Business Insider covering technology and culture.
Additional Reading:
- OpenAI’s Platform Play
- OpenAI Agrees to Use Computer Chips From AMD
- I’m Addicted to Sora 2!
- OpenAI’s New Video App Is Jaw-Dropping (for Better and Worse)
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
This week, we’re talking about the new A.I.-generated video tools and social media feeds from Google, Meta and OpenAI. Is this how A.I. is going to cure cancer? Then, the psychotherapist Gary Greenberg stops by to discuss his recent New Yorker essay about treating ChatGPT as a patient, and why what he saw left him unsettled. And finally, all aboard the Hot Mess Express! It’s time to rate the messiest stories in tech.
Guests:
- Gary Greenberg, writer and psychotherapist
Additional Reading:
- OpenAI Launches a Social Network
- OpenAI’s New Video App Is Jaw-Dropping (for Better and Worse)
- Putting ChatGPT on the Couch
- What My Daughter Told ChatGPT Before She Took Her Life
- Chatbots Can Go Into a Delusional Spiral. Here’s How It Happens.
- YouTube Settles Trump Lawsuit Over Account Suspension for $24.5 Million
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
This week, an eye-popping $100 billion deal between OpenAI and Nvidia — along with an announcement about the construction of five new American data centers — has us re-examining our predictions of an A.I. bubble. Then, we try to make sense of the Trump administration’s changes to the H-1B visa program, which generated mixed reactions from tech leaders; the immigration expert Jeremy Neufeld joins us to explain why the new $100,000 visa fee is likely to hurt start-ups, universities and the broader U.S. economy. And finally, we take a look at one of the latest trends sweeping TikTok: planning for a biblical Rapture.
Guests:
- Jeremy Neufeld, director of immigration policy at the Institute for Progress
Additional Reading:
- Nvidia to Invest $100 Billion in OpenAI
- OpenAI to Join Tech Giants in Building 5 New Data Centers in U.S.
- $100,000 Per Employee: How the H-1B Visa Fee Could Reshape Work Forces
- A $100,000 Per Worker Visa Fee Tips the Balance to Big Tech
- The Rapture Was Predicted to Happen Today. TikTok Has Some Advice.
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
This week, we discuss the assassination of Charlie Kirk, freedom of speech and the terrifying new reality of extremely online violence. Then The Times’s David Yaffe-Bellany brings us inside the blockbuster New York Times investigation into a $2 billion investment in Trump’s crypto company World Liberty Financial and a controversial deal to send the most powerful A.I. chips to the United Arab Emirates. And finally, it’s time to round up This Week in A.I.
Guests:
- David Yaffe-Bellany, New York Times technology reporter covering the crypto industry
Additional Reading:
- Trump Administration Wields Its Full Toolbox to Bring Media to Heel
- Social Platforms Duck Blame for Inflaming Divisions Before Charlie Kirk’s Death
- In Giant Deals, U.A.E. Got Chips, and Trump Team Got Crypto Riches
- A Teen Was Suicidal. ChatGPT Was the Friend He Confided In.
- OpenAI’s Risky Step to Protect Teens
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Apple’s yearly iPhone event took place this week, and it left us asking, Is Apple losing the juice? We break down all the new products the company announced and discuss where it goes from here. Then, Eliezer Yudkowsky, one of the most fascinating people in A.I., has a new book coming out: “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies.” He joins us to make the case for why A.I. development should be shut down now, long before we reach superintelligence, and how he thinks that could happen.
Guests:
Eliezer Yudkowsky, founder of Machine Intelligence Research Institute and a co-author of “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies”
Additional Reading:
- A.I.’s Prophet of Doom Wants to Shut It All Down
- AI as Normal Technology, revisited
- Apple’s misunderstood crossbody iPhone strap might be the best I’ve seen
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
This week, we check in on the state of artificial intelligence in education. We talk with a co-founder of Alpha Schools, MacKenzie Price, about how her private K-12 schools are using A.I. to generate personalized lesson plans and enabling teachers to spend their time motivating rather than teaching students. Then, the Princeton historian D. Graham Burnett joins us to discuss the existential threat that A.I. poses to the traditional humanities degree and why he believes we’ll see thousands of new schools emerge outside the university system to carry on the exploration of what it means to be a person in the world. And finally, we hear directly from students who are on the front line of technological change.
Guests:
- MacKenzie Price, co-founder of Alpha Schools
- D. Graham Burnett, historian of science and technology at Princeton University
Additional Reading:
- A.I.-Driven Education: Founded in Texas and Coming to a School Near You
- Will the Humanities Survive Artificial Intelligence?
- OpenAI and Microsoft Bankroll New A.I. Training for Teachers
- Welcome to Campus. Here’s Your ChatGPT.
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
President Trump announced this week that the U.S. government, in a highly unusual deal, had agreed to take a 10 percent stake in the chip maker Intel, and that he was considering similar investments in other companies. We discuss why Trump cares so much about Intel, what the government is trying to accomplish with this deal, and how people in Silicon Valley and elsewhere are reacting. Then Waymo’s co-chief executive Tekedra Mawakana joins us in the studio to discuss the company’s strategy for expanding its driverless car service to Miami, D.C. and the snowy Northeast. And finally, we introduce a new segment where we run through the most surprising technology projects the Trump family is getting involved in.
Guests:
- Tekedra Mawakana, co-chief executive of Waymo.
Additional Reading:
- Intel Agrees to Sell U.S. a 10% Stake in Its Business
- First Lady Melania Trump Launches Nationwide Presidential AI Challenge
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Note: This episode contains sexually explicit music.
This week, the whole tech world seemed to be asking: Are we in an A.I. bubble? We’ll explore the cases for and against, including who we think stands to lose most. Then we’re joined by the journalist Jeff Horwitz to discuss his blockbuster reporting about an internal Meta policy document that permit the company’s chatbots to engage in romantic role-playing with children. And finally, Casey introduces Kevin to a shocking new TikTok trend.
Guests:
- Jeff Horwitz, investigative technology reporter for Reuters
Additional Reading:
- My Dinner With Altman
- Companies Are Pouring Billions Into A.I. It Has Yet to Pay Off
- Meta’s A.I. Rules Have Let Bots Hold ‘Sensual’ Chats With Children
- Why Is TikTok Overflowing With A.I. Country Music Erotica?
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
OpenAI spent the week responding to outcry from users who miss the behavior of the old ChatGPT, before the latest flagship model was released.
We discuss the criticism, why it caught the company by surprise and what it indicates about the deepening emotional relationships that people are forming with chatbots.
Then, Aravind Srinivas, the chief executive of Perplexity AI, joins us to discuss his company’s new artificial intelligence-powered browser, Comet; his company’s bid to buy Google Chrome; and what the future of the internet looks like when users turn to A.I. assistants to browse the web for them. Finally, to cap it all off, we rate the craziest tech stories of the week in our game Hot Mess Express.
Guests:
- Aravind Srinivas, chief executive of Perplexity AI.
Additional Reading:
- Chatbots Can Go Into a Delusional Spiral. Here’s How It Happens.
- Three Big Lessons From the GPT-5 Backlash
- A.I. Start-Up Perplexity Offers to Buy Google’s Chrome Browser for $34.5 Billion
- Elon Musk Threatens to Sue Apple Over Claims It Favors OpenAI
- U.S. Government to Take Cut of Nvidia and AMD A.I. Chip Sales to China
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
This week, OpenAI released its much-anticipated flagship model, GPT-5. We break down what we know about the upgrade, drawing from our initial testing and a special news briefing with Sam Altman. Then, we explain why we were underwhelmed by Amazon’s new Alexa+, which is powered by generative A.I., and take our feedback to Daniel Rausch, vice president of Alexa and Echo, who helps us understand why powering Alexa with L.L.M. capabilities is a major computer science challenge.
Guests:
- Daniel Rausch, Amazon vice president of Echo and Alexa
Additional reading:
- OpenAI Aims to Stay Ahead of Rivals With New GPT-5 Technology
- Amazon Unveils Alexa+, Powered by Generative A.I.
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Also, you can still get a special-edition “Hard Fork” hat! For a limited time, you’ll receive one when you purchase an annual New York Times Audio subscription for the first time (U.S. only). Go to nytimes.com/hardforkhat.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
This week, we look at the fallout from a sweeping internet age-verification law that went into effect in Britain. We explain why age restrictions are suddenly popping up all over the internet — and how some might create more problems than they solve. Then Matthew Prince, chief executive of Cloudflare, returns to the show to discuss his company’s new plan to help publishers fight back against A.I. scrapers and potentially to create a new online marketplace for quality content in the process. Finally, we round up some headlines from around the tech world in the latest round of HatGPT.
Guests:
- Matthew Prince, chief executive of Cloudflare
Additional Reading:
- Supreme Court Upholds Texas Law Limiting Access to Pornography
- The U.K.’s age gates are coming to America
- Cloudflare Introduces Default Blocking of A.I. Data Scrapers
Also, you can still get a special-edition “Hard Fork” hat! For a limited time, you’ll receive one when you purchase an annual New York Times Audio subscription for the first time (U.S. only). Go to nytimes.com/hardforkhat.
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
On Wednesday, President Trump signed three A.I.-related executive orders, and the White House released “America’s A.I. Action Plan.” We break down what’s in them, how the federal government intends to target “political bias” in chatbot output, and whether anyone will stand up against it. Then, do we hype up A.I. too much? Are we downplaying potential harms? We reached out to several prominent researchers and writers and asked for their critiques about how we cover A.I.
For a limited time, you can get a special-edition “Hard Fork” hat when you purchase an annual New York Times Audio subscription for the first time. Get your hat at nytimes.com/hardforkhat
Guests:
- Brian Merchant, author of the book and newsletter “Blood in the Machine”
- Alison Gopnik, professor at the University of California, Berkeley
- Ross Douthat, New York Times opinion columnist and host of the podcast “Interesting Times”
- Claire Leibowicz, head of A.I. and media integrity at the Partnership on AI
- Max Read, author of the newsletter “Read Max”
Additional Reading:
- Trump Plans to Give A.I. Developers a Free Hand
- The Chatbot Culture Wars Are Here
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
This week, we tick through the many dramatic headlines surrounding xAI, including the departure of X’s chief executive, Linda Yaccarino; the Grok chatbot spewing antisemitic comments; and the A.I. companion Ani engaging in sexually explicit role-play. Then, we explain why a fight to acquire the start-up Windsurf startled many in Silicon Valley and may reshape the culture in many of the big A.I. labs. And finally, it’s “crypto week.” David Yaffe-Bellany explains how crypto provisions in the bills before Congress and the president could affect even people who don’t hold digital currencies.
Also, we officially have merch! For a limited time, you can get a special-edition “Hard Fork” hat when you purchase an annual New York Times Audio subscription for the first time. Get your hat at nytimes.com/hardforkhat
Guests:
- David Yaffe-Bellany,New York Times technology reporter covering the crypto industry
Additional Reading:
- Elon Musk’s Grok Chatbot Shares Antisemitic Posts on X
- Google Hires A.I. Leaders From a Start-Up Courted by OpenAI
- Cognition AI Buys Windsurf as A.I. Frenzy Escalates
- ‘Crypto Week’ Is Back on Track After House G.O.P. Quells Conservative Revolt
- The ‘Trump Pump’: How Crypto Lobbying Won Over a President
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
This week, we’re bringing you a recent interview from “Interesting Times with Ross Douthat,” one of The New York Times’s newest podcasts. In this episode, Ross sits down with Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal and Palantir and one of the most contrarian thinkers in tech. Together, they unpack Thiel’s theory that we’re living through an era of technological stagnation, and debate whether President Trump’s populism and the development of artificial intelligence will help us unlock new progress.
Guest:
- Peter Thiel, co-founder of Paypal and Palantir.
Additional Reading:
- Peter Thiel and the Antichrist
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
We’re back with part two of Hard Fork Live (see last week’s episode for part one). This week, Patrick Collison, Stripe’s chief executive, joins us onstage for a wide-ranging conversation about how Silicon Valley could unleash greater progress, from building new housing to curing diseases, and why he believes prestige television is a waste of time. Then, after a quick costume change, Kathryn Zealand, the chief executive of Skip, joins us to talk about her company’s robot pants. We test them out live on a StairMaster. Finally, we end the show by taking questions from audience members.
Guests:
- Patrick Collison, Co-founder and C.E.O. of Stripe
- Kathryn Zealand, Founder and C.E.O. of Skip
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
The first Hard Fork Live is officially in the books, and for those who couldn’t attend, we’re playing highlights from the event in this episode and the next. This week, Mayor Daniel Lurie of San Francisco makes a surprise appearance to discuss the advice he’s receiving from tech executives during the early days of his administration, as well as how he built a social media presence that’s got Kevin wondering: Could we do that? Then, the conversation that had everyone talking: We’ll play our interview with OpenAI’s chief executive, Sam Altman, and chief operating officer, Brad Lightcap, and explain what was going on in our heads as the conversation unfolded in a way we did not expect.
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
This week, President Trump’s family business announced that it was introducing a mobile phone and a cellular network. We tick through the many potential conflicts of interest this new business venture raises. Then, the co-founders of the startup Mechanize defend their efforts to automate away all jobs — starting with software engineering. And finally, we take a trip to the movie theater. “M3GAN 2.0” is out next week, so its star, Allison Williams, joins us to discuss the film, and A.I.’s impact on her career and parenting.
Guests:
- Matthew Barnett and Ege Erdil, co-founders of Mechanize.
- Allison Williams, actor.
Additional Reading:
- Trump Mobile Phone Company Announced by President’s Family, but Details Are Murky
- The President Is Selling a Phone
- This A.I. Company Wants to Take Your Job
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
This week, Meta hits the reset button on A.I. But will a new research lab and a multibillion-dollar investment in Scale AI bring the company any closer to its stated goal of “superintelligence”? Then we break down Apple’s big developer conference, WWDC: What was announced, what was noticeably absent, and why Apple seems a little stuck in the past. Finally, a couple of weeks ago we asked if your job is being automated away — it’s time to open up the listener mail bag and hear what you said.
Additional Reading:
- Meta looks for an A.I. reset
- Apple Executives Defend Apple Intelligence, Siri and A.I. Strategy
- This A.I. Company Wants to Take Your Job
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
This week, Kevin and Casey discuss the sudden breakdown between President Trump and Elon Musk, whose disagreements over the policy bill before Congress quickly erupted into an all-out feud. Then, an ex-DOGE coder explains what it was really like to work inside the Trump administration’s cost-cutting arm. And finally, the former New York Times restaurant critic Pete Wells explains why some chefs are turning to A.I. for inspiration.
Guests:
- Sahil Lavingia, C.E.O. of Gumroad, who spent 55 days working for DOGE
- Pete Wells, New York Times restaurant critic from 2012 through 2024
Additional Reading:
- If Elon Musk and President Trump Divorce, Who Gets Silicon Valley?
- This Year’s Hot New Tool for Chefs? ChatGPT.
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
This week, we dive into Kevin’s recent column about how A.I. is affecting the job market for new graduates, and debate whether the job apocalypse is already here for entry-level work. Then Mike Krieger joins us to discuss the new Claude 4 model, the future of work and the online chatter over whether an A.I. system could blackmail you. And finally, it’s time to open up the case files for another round of Hard Fork Crimes Division.
Guest:
- Mike Krieger, chief product officer at Anthropic
Additional Reading:
- For Some Recent Graduates, the A.I. Job Apocalypse May Already Be Here
- Another Suspect Is Charged in Bitcoin Kidnapping and Torture Case
- Elizabeth Holmes’s Partner Has a New Blood-Testing Start-Up
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
This week, we take a field trip to Google and report back about everything the company announced at its biggest show of the year, Google I/O. Then, we sit down with Google DeepMind’s chief executive and co-founder, Demis Hassabis, to discuss what his A.I. lab is building, the future of education, and what life could look like in 2030.
Guest:
- Demis Hassabis, co-founder and chief executive of Google DeepMind
Additional Reading:
- At Google I/O, everything is changing and normal and scary and chill
- Google Unveils A.I. Chatbot, Signaling a New Era for Search
- Google DeepMind C.E.O. Demis Hassabis on the Path From Chatbots to A.G.I.
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
The actor, comedian and author Ed Helms has a new book out about historical blunders. He swings by Hard Fork to tell us about it and answer your moral quandaries, ethical dilemmas and etiquette questions about technology: How do I tell my mom she can’t post about her grandkids on Facebook? Am I being an A.I. hypocrite at work? And is it OK to troll the scammers who blow up my cellphone?
Guest:
- Ed Helms, actor, podcaster and author of “Snafu: The Definitive Guide to History’s Greatest Screwups”
Additional Reading:
- Interview: Ed Helms on Historical Snafus and His Reading Life
- 7 Months Inside an Online Scam Labor Camp
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
This week, iPhone users started to feel the impact of a stern court order against Apple that requires the company to stop collecting a commission on some app sales. We break down what this means for apps like Kindle and Spotify and why the judge suggested that Apple and a top executive should be investigated for criminal contempt. Then, Karen Hao joins us to discuss her new book about OpenAI and explain why she believes the benefits of using the company’s tools do not outweigh the moral costs. And finally, Casey introduces Kevin to a strange new universe of A.I. slop that’s racking up millions of likes on TikTok.
Guest:
- Karen Hao, Author of “Empire of AI”
Additional Reading:
- Judge Rebukes Apple and Orders It to Loosen Grip on App Store
- Brain Rot Comes for Italy
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
This week we dig into the ways chatbots are starting to manipulate us, including ChatGPT’s sycophantic update, Meta’s digital companionship turn and a secret experiment run on Reddit users. Then Kevin reports back from the unveiling of a new eye-scanning orb. And finally, we’re joined by PJ Vogt for a brand-new segment called Group Chat Chat.
Tickets to “Hard Fork Live” on June 24 are sold out. You can join the wait list here to be alerted if additional tickets become available.
Guest:
- PJ Vogt, host of the podcast “Search Engine”
Additional Reading:
- Meta’s ‘Digital Companions’ Will Talk Sex With Users — Even Children
- Reddit Issuing ‘Formal Legal Demands’ Against Researchers Who Conducted Secret A.I. Experiment on Users
- The Group Chats That Changed America
- The Ice Bucket Challenge Worked. Why Not Try It Again?
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
This week, with big developments in two antitrust cases against Google, we discuss how the company may be forced to change its business. Then we’re joined by the journalist Mark Yarm to discuss his recent visit to an underwater home for his article about techno-utopians who want to colonize the ocean. And finally, it’s tool time! We’ll tell you about our latest experiments with ChatGPT’s o3, Casey’s newest journaling practice and Kevin’s continued battle to get to inbox zero.
Tickets to Hard Fork live are on sale! See us June 24 at SFJAZZ.
Guest:
- Mark Yarm, an executive editor at PCMag and the author of “Everybody Loves Our Town: An Oral History of Grunge.”
Additional Reading:
- Google May Be on the Brink of a Breakup
- Google Is Illegally Monopolizing Online Advertising Tech, Judge Rules
- The Techno-Utopians Who Want to Colonize the Sea
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
This week Meta is on trial, in a landmark case over whether it illegally snuffed out competition when it acquired Instagram and WhatsApp. We discuss some of the most surprising revelations from old email messages made public as evidence in the case, and explain why we think the F.T.C.’s argument has gotten weaker in the years since the lawsuit was filed. Then we hear from Princeton computer scientist Arvind Narayanan on why he believes it will take decades, not years, for A.I. to transform society in the ways the big A.I. labs predict. And finally, what do dolphins, Katy Perry and A1 steak sauce have in common? They’re all important characters in our latest round of HatGPT.
Tickets to Hard Fork live are on sale now! See us June 24 at SFJAZZ.
Guest:
- Arvind Narayanan, director of the Center for Information Technology at Princeton and co-author of “AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What it Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference.”
Additional Reading:
- What if Mark Zuckerberg Had Not Bought Instagram and WhatsApp?
- AI as Normal Technology
- One Giant Stunt for Womankind
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
This week, with the tech world in chaos over President Trump’s tariffs, we look at how four specific companies are navigating the new day-to-day reality. Then, the A.I. researcher Daniel Kokotajlo returns to the show to discuss a new set of predictions for how artificial intelligence could transform the world in just the next few years and how we avoid the most dystopian outcomes. Finally, we explore whether Meta cheated on an important A.I. benchmark with its new Llama model.
Guest:
- Daniel Kokotajlo, executive director of the AI Futures Project
Additional Reading:
- Inside Trump’s Reversal on Tariffs: From ‘Be Cool!’ to ‘Getting Yippy’
- A.I. 2027
- Meta Gets Rebuked Over Benchmark Gaming
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
This week, President Trump announced sweeping new tariffs that are roiling the global economy. We discuss what this could mean for the tech sector and whether this will give China a competitive advantage over the United States in the development of A.I. Then, we chat with a Wall Street Journal reporter, Keach Hagey, about her new book on Sam Altman and how she solved the mystery of his firing from OpenAI. And finally, Tinder has a new chatbot that you can practice your flirting skills with — which means it’s time for a flirting competition.
Guest:
- Keach Hagey, Wall Street Journal reporter and author of the forthcoming book The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the Race to Invent the Future.
Additional Reading:
- What Trump’s Sweeping Tariffs Mean for the Global Economy, and for You
- Trump’s New Tariffs Test Apple’s Global Supply Chain
- The Secrets and Misdirection Behind Sam Altman’s Firing From OpenAI
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
This week, we dig into the group chat that’s rocking the Trump administration and talk about why turning to Signal to plan military operations probably isn’t a great idea. Then, we’re joined by the podcaster Dwarkesh Patel to discuss his new book “The Scaling Era,” and whether he’s still optimistic about the broad benefits of A.I. And finally, a couple weeks ago we asked whether A.I. was making you dumber. Now we hear your takes.
Guest:
- Dwarkesh Patel, tech podcaster and author of “The Scaling Era: An Oral History of A.I., 2019-2025”
Additional Reading:
- The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans
- Signal Chat Leak Angers U.S. Military Pilots
- Is A.I. Making Us Dumb?
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
With all of Silicon Valley weighing in on the Trump administration’s new action plan for artificial intelligence, Kevin and Casey break down what’s on everybody’s wish list. Then, a Columbia undergrad explains why he built a tool that lets coders use A.I. to cheat on job interviews. And finally, we climb aboard the Hot Mess Express to talk Solana’s anti-woke ad, anxious A.I. algorithms and Slack spycraft in the world of H.R.
Guest:
- Roy Lee, Columbia sophomore and founder of Interview Coder
Additional Reading:
- America Crafts an A.I. Action Plan
- Meet the 21-Year-Old Helping Coders Use A.I. to Cheat in Google and Other Tech Job Interviews
- Solana Pulls Ad After Huge Backlash
- Digital Therapists Get Stressed Too, Study Finds
- Rippling Sues Deel, a Software Rival, Over Corporate Spying
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
This week, as the long-promised new Siri faces increasing delays, we explore why Apple seems to be falling even further behind in artificial intelligence. Then, the New York Times reporter Adam Satariano joins us to explain how Elon Musk’s satellite internet provider Starlink took over the world. And finally, we look at a new study that asks: Is A.I. eroding our critical thinking skills?
Guest:
- Adam Satariano, New York Times reporter
Additional Reading:
- Apple Delays Siri Upgrade Indefinitely as AI Concerns Escalate
- With Starlink, Elon Musk’s Satellite Dominance Is Raising Global Alarms
- The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking: Self-Reported Reductions in Cognitive Effort and Confidence Effects From a Survey of Knowledge Workers
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
This week, Google introduced a new way to search, which could mean that Googling as we know it is on the way out. It’s called AI Mode and it is essentially the company’s response to the growing number of people turning to A.I. chat bots instead of Google search.
We walk through what this new product looks like, who can use it and what it could mean for the internet’s future. Then, we talk with the New York Times crypto reporter David Yaffe-Bellany about President Trump’s recent announcement concerning a national crypto reserve and why the news upset some of the biggest crypto advocates. Finally, we react to voice mail from listeners describing the tools they’ve vibecoded.
Guest:
- David Yaffe-Bellany, New York Times reporter covering the crypto industry.
Additional Reading:
- Trump Faces Blowback Over Plans for Crypto Reserve
- Not a Coder? With A.I., Just Having an Idea Can Be Enough.
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
This week, Anthropic’s C.E.O., Dario Amodei, returns to the show for a candid, wide-ranging interview. We discuss Anthropic’s brand-new Claude 3.7 Sonnet model, the A.I. arms race against China, and his hopes and fears for this technology over the next two years. Then, we gather up recent tech stories, put them into a hat and close out the week with a round of HatGPT.
Guest:
- Dario Amodei, chief executive of Anthropic
Additional Reading:
- Inside the White-Hot Center of A.I. Doomerism
- Machines of Loving Grace
- Apple Removes Cloud Encryption Feature From U.K. After Backdoor Order
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
This week, Elon Musk brought a new chatbot into the crowded A.I. universe — Grok 3, the latest model from his company xAI. We break down how it compares with other leading models and what it reveals about Musk’s larger ambitions. Then, Vlad Tenev, the chief executive of the investing platform Robinhood, lays out his vision for the future of investing and fields some difficult questions about his company’s role in fueling a culture of risky financial speculation. Finally, Kevin revisits his high school coding era and tries to make Casey a new software tool, with an A.I. assist.
Guest:
- Vlad Tenev, chief executive of Robinhood and co-founder of Harmonic.
Additional Reading:
- There Are Probably Too Many A.I. Companies Now
- An Investing Revolution Is Coming. The U.S. Isn’t Ready for It.
- Is Math the Path to Chatbots That Don’t Make Stuff Up?
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Kevin reports back from the A.I. Action Summit in Paris, where it was full speed ahead toward artificial general intelligence, with a conspicuous lack of action on the safety front. Also, Happy Valentine’s Day! We’re taking a look at A.I. on dating apps. First, our producer Rachel Cohn explains what happened when she applied all of the advice from Hinge’s new Prompt Feedback tool to her dating profile. Then, we’re joined by Hinge’s founder and C.E.O., Justin McLeod, to discuss how he thinks A.I. can help users find love.
Guests:
Rachel Cohn, Hard Fork producer, writer of the newsletter “Are You My Boyfriend?”
Justin McLeod, founder and C.E.O. of Hinge
Additional Reading:
- Macron Pitches Lighter Regulation to Fuel A.I. Boom in Europe
- Vance, in First Foreign Speech, Tells Europe That U.S. Will Dominate A.I.
- When Cupid Is a Prying Journalist
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
This week, we’re joined by the Times reporter Jonathan Swan to discuss Elon Musk’s tech takeover of Washington, D.C. Then, Liz Pelly, author of a new book about Spotify, stops by to discuss “ghost musicians” and how Spotify’s algorithms are reshaping music culture. And finally — it’s Tool Time! We’ll tell you all about the new A.I. tools we’re using, plus the one that we wish existed.
Guests:
- Jonathan Swan, a White House reporter for The New York Times
- Liz Pelly, author of “Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist”
Additional Reading:
- Inside Musk’s Aggressive Incursion Into the Federal Government
- The Ghosts in the Machine
- ChatGPT's deep research might be the first good agent
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
This week we go even deeper on DeepSeek. ChinaTalk's Jordan Schneider joins us to explain the Chinese A.I. industry and to break down the reaction inside of China to DeepSeek’s sudden success. Then … hello, Operator! We put OpenAI’s new agent software to the test. And finally, all aboard for another ride on the Hot Mess Express!
Guest:
- Jordan Schneider, founder and editor in chief of ChinaTalk
Additional Reading:
- Why DeepSeek Could Change What Silicon Valley Believes About A.I.
- OpenAI launches its agent
- Fable, a Book App, Makes Changes After Offensive A.I. Messages
- Amazon Pauses Drone Deliveries After Aircraft Crashed in Rain
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
A Chinese firm called DeepSeek managed to upend global markets at the start of the week, to drag down chipmaker Nvidia — and to surge to No. 1 in the iPhone app store, all in basically no time at all.
Today, in this bonus episode, we talk through the news behind the freakout. How is a new A.I. model from one Chinese A.I. company making such a big splash? And what does it mean for the U.S. artificial intelligence industry?
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
.
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
This week, TikTok died, came back to life — and now exists in a kind of limbo state. We break down what that may signal for how tech does business with the new Trump administration. Then we pump up the fun with memecoins and explore how the Trump family is cashing in. And finally, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes joins us to discuss his new book about attention.
Guest:
- Chris Hayes, Host of MSNBC's "All In With Chris Hayes" and author of “The Sirens’ Call”
Additional Reading:
- TikTok Comes Back From the Dead
- Trump’s Cryptocurrency Surges to Become One of the World’s Most Valuable
- Chris Hayes: I Want Your Attention. I Need Your Attention. Here Is How I Mastered My Own.
- The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
The deadline for TikTok to sell or to face a ban is fast approaching. We discuss how Supreme Court justices — who opted on Friday to uphold the law — reacted to arguments in the case, whether the Chinese government might allow Elon Musk to buy the app, and why self-proclaimed TikTok refugees are rushing to a different Chinese app, called RedNote. Then, we talk with an A.I. industry insider about what we actually know about how bad artificial intelligence is for the environment. And finally, after Mark Zuckerberg’s recent appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, Casey offers Kevin some ideas for how to bring more “masculine energy” to Meta.
Guest:
- Sasha Luccioni, A.I and climate lead at Hugging Face.
Additional Reading:
- Supreme Court Backs Law Requiring TikTok to Be Sold or Banned
- ‘Red Note,’ a Chinese App, Is Dominating Downloads, Thanks to TikTok Users
- China Weighs Sale of TikTok US to Musk as a Possible Option
- Matter of Opinion Podcast: How Democrats Drove Silicon Valley Into Trump’s Arms
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
This week, Meta announced a series of content moderation changes that will transform the way the social media company’s platforms deal with misinformation and hate speech. We break down what these changes will mean for users and why the company seems to be caving to the right’s arguments on censorship. Then, we’ll explain why 2025 is already shaping up to be a huge year in A.I. — with models like OpenAI’s o3, Google’s Gemini 2.0 and DeepSeek, from China, stirring discussion that superintelligence is near. And finally, we play a round of HatGPT.
Additional Reading:
- Meta Says It Will End Its Fact-Checking Program on Social Media Posts
- OpenAI Unveils New A.I. That Can ‘Reason’ Through Math and Science Problems
- Netflix’s WWE investment and the Future of Live Events on the Platform
- MegaLag’s Video Investigation Into Honey
- Los Angeles Man Is Trapped in Circling Waymo on Way to Airport: ‘Is Somebody Playing a Joke?’
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
This week, it’s our yearly tech predictions. We’ll review what we got right and wrong about 2024, and tell you what we think is going to happen in 2025. Then we’ll discuss how we want to interact with tech in the new year. Plus, we’ll answer some of your listener questions.
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Happy Holidays, everybody! We are off this week, but we wanted to bring you a recent episode from another New York Times podcast: The Wirecutter Show. It’s called “Kitchen Gear That Lasts a Lifetime (or Extremely Close)” and features Michael Sullivan, one of the senior staff writers on Wirecutter’s kitchen team. Michael walks through tips and tricks for finding kitchen gear that will last, what’s worth spending money on, what you can buy used and how to make cast iron last a lifetime.
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
This week, we took a field trip to the Phoenix suburbs to see Amazon’s newest iteration of drone delivery service in action. We toured the facility where these drones are in operation, spoke with the vice president and general manager of Prime Air, David Carbon, and watched from a local backyard as our own order dropped from the sky.
Guest:
- David Carbon, vice president and general manager of Amazon Prime Air.
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Last Friday, a panel of federal judges denied TikTok’s petition to overturn the law that could force the ban of the app in the United States. We walk through the judges reasoning and explain why TikTok’s First Amendment argument was unsuccessful. Then, Julian Kelly, the director of quantum hardware at Google Quantum AI, explains how close we are to quantum computers that can solve practical problems. Finally, we talk about a new sentiment sweeping Silicon Valley: affection for the chatbot Claude.
Guest:
- Julian Kelly, director of quantum hardware at Google Quantum AI.
Additional Reading:
- TikTok Faces U.S. Ban After Losing Bid to Overturn New Law
- Quantum Computing Inches Closer to Reality After Another Google Breakthrough
- Cult of Claude
- DealBook Summit Podcast: The A.I. Revolution
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
This week, Pat Gelsinger stepped down as chief executive of Intel. We talk with The New York Times’s Don Clark about why Gelsinger was ousted, what it means for the chip industry and how his departure could affect national security. Then, Kevin and Casey report back from an artificial intelligence conference, where experts debated how long it would take to build a structure around the sun to capture the star’s energy — also known as a Dyson sphere. And finally, gift guides have taken over the internet. We dig into why, and offer up suggestions for gear dads, home cooks and even tech billionaires in our first ever Hard Fork gift guide.
Guest:
- Don Clark, New York Times contributor covering the chips industry.
Additional Reading:
- Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger Steps Down Amid Chipmaker’s Struggles
- Nvidia Rules A.I. Chips, but Amazon and AMD Emerge as Contenders
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
This week, we’re bringing you a Thanksgiving special that’s great for a long car ride, a day of cooking or avoiding conversation with your family. We’re counting down the 100 most iconic technologies of all time, starting with No. 100: Boats. Our definitive list was carefully crafted using an advanced methodology of vibes-only decision-making. By “iconic,” we mean technologies that have either changed the world, ruined it or at the very least made life a little more interesting. And because we love chaos, we’ll explain why we chose each one in roughly 30 seconds or less.
Additional Reading:
This episode was inspired by the Iconic 400 list compiled by the podcast “Las Culturistas”; check it out.
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
This week, President-elect Donald Trump picked Brendan Carr to be the next chairman of the F.C.C. We talk with The Verge’s editor in chief, Nilay Patel, about what this could mean for the future of the internet, and for free speech at large. Then, a new study found that ChatGPT defeated doctors at diagnosing some diseases. One of the study’s authors, Dr. Adam Rodman, joins us to discuss the future of medicine. And finally, court is back in session. It’s time for the Hard Fork Crimes Division.
One more thing: We want to learn more about you, our listeners. Please fill out our quick survey: nytimes.com/hardforksurvey.
Guests:
- Nilay Patel, co-founder of The Verge and host of the podcasts Decoder and The Vergecast.
- Adam Rodman, internal medicine physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and one of the co-authors of a recent study testing the effectiveness of ChatGPT to diagnose illnesses.
Additional Reading:
- Trump Picks Brendan Carr to Lead F.C.C.
- A.I. Chatbots Defeated Doctors at Diagnosing Illness
- Gary Wang, a Top FTX Executive, Is Given No Prison Time
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
This week, we explore how the 2024 election paved the way for a new crypto-friendly Congress and what that means for the future of crypto. Then, for ChatGPT’s second birthday, Nick Turley, ChatGPT head of product at OpenAI, stops by to tell us where it goes from here and share some of his favorite chatbot hacks. Finally, a listener emailed us last week asking what social network he should be using in 2024. We’ll share our thoughts on which text-based platforms are the least annoying.
One more thing: We want to learn more about you, our listeners. It will help us make a better show. We would appreciate it if you filled out a quick survey: nytimes.com/hardforksurvey. Thank you.
Guest:
- Nick Turley, ChatGPT head of product at OpenAI
Additional Reading:
- Crypto Industry Lobbies Trump and His Allies After Election Wins
- How Crypto Enthusiasts Hijacked a Dog Mayor Competition
- OpenAI Folds A.I.-Powered Search Engine Into ChatGPT
- Bluesky Adds One Million New Users After Election
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
As of this week, we have a new president-elect. We discuss how the incoming administration’s approach to technology will affect Elon Musk, a TikTok ban, Big Tech’s antitrust challenges and the speed of A.I. progress. Then, Kashmir Hill, a technology reporter for The Times, joins to discuss her weeklong experiment of letting A.I. make every decision in her life. And finally, we play a round of election-free HatGPT!
Guest:
- Kashmir Hill, technology reporter for The New York Times.
Additional Reading:
- What a Trump Victory Means for Tech
- I Took a ‘Decision Holiday’ and Put A.I. in Charge of My Life
- An ‘Interview’ With a Dead Luminary Exposes the Pitfalls of A.I.
- Meta’s Plan for Nuclear-Powered A.I. Data Center Thwarted by Rare Bees
- Fired Employee Allegedly Hacked Disney World’s Menu System to Alter Peanut Allergy Information
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Last week, Jeff Bezos canceled the Washington Post editorial board’s plan to endorse Kamala Harris. Are tech billionaires hedging their bets in case Donald Trump wins? Then, Miles Brundage, a former OpenAI senior adviser on artificial general intelligence readiness, stops by to tell us how his old company is doing when it comes to being ready for superintelligence, and whether we should all keep saving for retirement. And finally, David Yaffe-Bellany, a Times technology reporter, joins us to explore the rise of Polymarket, a crypto-powered betting platform, and discuss whether prediction markets can tell us who is going to win the election.
Guests:
- Miles Brundage, former OpenAI senior adviser for A.G.I. readiness.
- David Yaffe-Bellany, technology reporter for The New York Times.
Additional Reading:
- Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and the Billions of Ways to Influence an Election
- Miles Brundage’s on Why He’s Leaving OpenAI
- The Crypto Website Where the Election Odds Swing in Trump’s Favor
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Note: This episode contains mentions of suicide.
This week, how Elon Musk became a main character in this year’s election, and what that means for the future of tech and of the country. Plus, the journalist Laurie Segall joins us to discuss the tragic case of a teenager who became obsessed with an A.I. companion bot and later died by suicide. We discuss what A.I. companies could do to make their apps safer for children.
If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources.
Guest:
- Laurie Segall, chief executive of Mostly Human Media
Additional Reading:
- Elon Musk’s Big Business and Conflicts of Interest With the U.S. Government
- Can a Chatbot Named Daenerys Targaryen Be Blamed for a Teen’s Suicide?
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
This week, the A.I. company Anthropic has Silicon Valley rethinking the timeline for artificial general intelligence. In addition to releasing a new safety policy, the company’s chief executive, Dario Amodei, laid out a vision of how A.I. could help cure cancer, mental illness and mitigate climate change in the near future. We consider his most surprising claims and what this means for the acceleration of the technology. Then, the Uber chief executive, Dara Khosrowshahi, joins us in the studio to discuss his company’s new partnership with Waymo, the autonomous vehicle company, and the future of that industry. And finally, leaked court documents reveal exactly how many TikTok videos you need to watch to get hooked on the app. So, Casey puts the number to the test.
Guest:
- Dara Khosrowshahi, chief executive of Uber
Additional Reading:
- Dario Amodei’s Essay “Machines of Loving Grace”
- TikTok Executives Know About App’s Effect on Teens, Lawsuit Documents Allege
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
This week, in the wake of recent natural disasters, we dig into the rise of A.I.-generated slop that’s polluting the internet and disrupting rescue efforts. Then we talk with the investigative filmmaker Cullen Hoback about his new documentary on the history of Bitcoin and about why, after so many others have failed, he thinks he has found the real Satoshi Nakamoto. And finally, we hear the train whistle approaching, and that can only mean one thing: It’s once again time to board the Hot Mess Express.
Guest:
- Cullen Hoback, Documentary filmmaker
Additional Reading:
- Another Hurdle in Recovery From Helene: Misinformation Is Getting in the Way
- Bitcoin Documentary ‘Money Electric’ Reopens Search for Satoshi Nakamoto
- U.S. Weighs Forcing Google to Break Off Parts of the Company
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
On Sunday, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California vetoed Senate Bill 1047, an A.I. safety bill that would have curtailed the growth of the technology. What received a lot less attention were the 18 other important A.I. bills he signed into law over the past month. We walk through what is in them and what they mean for the rest of the country. Then, The Information’s Julia Black joins to discuss the baby craze that’s sweeping Silicon Valley, including investment in some wild new fertility technologies. And finally, it’s time for a system update! We get into OpenAI’s massive fund-raising deal and the senator who hopped on a call with a “deepfake” former Ukrainian official.
Guest:
- Julia Black,reporter at The Information
Additional Reading:
- California Governor Vetoes Sweeping A.I. Legislation
- Dawn of the Silicon Valley Superbaby
- OpenAI Completes Deal That Values Company at $157 Billion
- ‘Deepfake’ Caller Poses as Ukrainian Official in Exchange With Key Senator
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
This week, Casey reports back from a wild day at Meta Connect, discussing what’s new with Meta’s efforts in artificial intelligence, virtual reality headsets and the Holy Grail — augmented reality glasses. Then, Steven Johnson, a writer and editorial director at Google Labs, stops by to talk about the company’s new hit NotebookLM, which uses A.I. to turn even boring PDFs, such as user manuals and Kevin’s bank records, into chatty, disturbingly good podcasts. Finally, so much happened in tech news this week that we reached for the bucket hat in the latest installment of HatGPT!
Guest:
- Steven Johnson, author and editorial director, NotebookLM
Additional Reading:
- Meta Unveils New Smart Glasses and Headsets in Pursuit of the Metaverse
- A.I. Is Mastering Language. Should We Trust What It Says?
- OpenAI Executives Exit as C.E.O. Works to Make the Company For-Profit
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Last week, OpenAI released a preview of its hotly anticipated new model, o1. We discuss what it has excelled at and how it could accelerate the timeline for building superintelligence. Then, we explain why Meta is making teenagers’ Instagram accounts private by default. And, finally, we chat with the New York Times reporter Karen Weise about why Amazon is forcing its corporate employees to go back to working in the office five days a week and whether other companies will follow suit.
Guests:
- Karen Weise, a technology correspondent for The Times.
Additional Reading:
- OpenAI Unveils New ChatGPT That Can Reason Through Math and Science
- Instagram, Facing Pressure Over Child Safety Online, Unveils Sweeping Changes
- Amazon Tells Corporate Workers to Be Back in the Office 5 Days a Week
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Apple unveiled its latest gadgets at its big September event on Monday. We discuss the most interesting new features — including AirPods that can function as hearing aids and Apple Watch software that can help detect sleep apnea — and offer our advice on when to buy a new iPhone. Then, the best-selling author Yuval Noah Harari joins us to discuss his new book and his biggest fears about A.I. And finally, we crack open some criminal cases in a new segment we’re calling the Hard Fork Crimes Division. We’ll explain how one man made $10 million by manipulating music streaming services and how online instructions for building a 3D-printed gun have ended up in the hands of criminals around the world.
Guest:
- Yuval Noah Harari, author of “Sapiens,” “Homo Deus” and “Nexus.”
Additional Reading:
- Apple Unveils New iPhones With Built-In Artificial Intelligence
- Russia Secretly Worms Its Way Into America’s Conservative Media
- He’s Known as ‘Ivan the Troll.’ His 3D-Printed Guns Have Gone Viral.
- The Bands and the Fans Were Fake. The $10 Million Was Real.
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Over the weekend,X was banned in Brazil. We talk with The New York Times’s Brazil bureau chief, Jack Nicas, about how Brazilians are reacting, whether its owner, Elon Musk, has made a business miscalculation and what this means for free speech around the world. Then, we’re going “founder mode.” We explore why an essay about start-up founders reclaiming their authority went viral and what that tells us about how Silicon Valley thinks about power. And finally, we hear from listeners. Teachers and students left us voice messages describing how phone bans in schools are transforming their lives.
Guest:
- Jack Nicas, Brazil bureau chief for The Times
Additional Reading:
- Brazil Blocks X After Musk Ignores Court Orders
- Paul Graham’s Founder Mode
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Telegram’s founder, Pavel Durov, was arrested in France and charged with several crimes connected to his operation of the platform. We’ll tell you what the charges against him mean for the internet. Then Gov. Kathy Hochul, Democrat of New York, joins us to discuss why she wants to ban phones statewide in public schools. And finally, Kevin has been using secret codes to try to change what A.I. chatbots think of him. We get to the bottom of whether it is possible to manipulate A.I. outputs.
This episode contains discussion of suicide connected to youth mental health. If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources.
Guest:
- Kathy Hochul, governor of New York
Additional Reading:
- How Pavel Durov, Telegram’s Founder, Went From Russia’s Mark Zuckerberg to Wanted Man
- Kathy Hochul’s ‘Big’ Plan to Ban Phones in Schools
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
This week, we discuss why so few campaigns seem to be experimenting with A.I. The Times’s Sheera Frenkel joins us with examples of the many different artificial intelligence products that have been turned down by campaigns in this election cycle, from A.I.-generated endorsements from long-dead historical figures to a synthetic version of Donald Trump. Then, we interview the Wyoming man who ran for mayor on the promise that he would exclusively use a customized ChatGPT bot to run the city. And finally, it’s time for a tech check. We run down the apps we’re using to become more productive.
Guest:
- Sheera Frenkel, a Times reporter covering technology
- Victor Miller, former candidate for mayor in Cheyenne, Wyoming
Additional Reading:
- The Year of the A.I. Election That Wasn’t
- Mayoral Candidate Vows to Let VIC, an AI Bot, Run Wyoming’s Capital City
- Three Apps That Made Me More Productive This Year
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
This week, we debate whether Elon Musk’s recent stumping and fund-raising for former President Trump could help him get re-elected. Then, former Microsoft’s chief executive, Steve Ballmer, stops by to discuss his effort to depolarize our politics using government data. And finally, This Week in A.I. returns: We run down some of the biggest recent stories that caught our attention.
Guest:
- Steve Ballmer, former chief executive of Microsoft, founder of USAFacts
Additional Reading:
- Inside Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Growing Alliance
- The American Right Is Terminally Online
- The New Home of the L.A. Clippers Is a Hot Ticket for Art
- A California Bill to Regulate A.I. Causes Alarm in Silicon Valley
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
This week, a federal judge ruled that Google acted illegally to maintain a monopoly in online search. David McCabe, a New York Times reporter, joins to discuss what happens next. Then, are we in an A.I. bubble? We weigh in on the wild market swings that started the week and consider the argument that A.I. is overhyped. And finally, it’s time for our new segment: We bat around some of the weirdest recent tech drama — including a MrBeast competition that went awry and a founder who dropped a diss track aimed at a rival. All aboard the Hot-Mess Express.
Guest:
- David McCabe, a Times reporter covering technology policy.
Additional Reading:
- ‘Google Is a Monopolist,’ Judge Rules in Landmark Antitrust Case
- Tech Bosses Preach Patience as They Spend and Spend on A.I.
- What’s Behind All the Stock Market Drama?
- Willing to Die for MrBeast (and $5 Million)
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
This week, with hundreds of thousands of people joining online political rallies for Kamala Harris, we discuss whether 2024 is suddenly becoming the Zoom election, and what that means for both parties’ political organizing. Then, Pushmeet Kohli, a computer scientist at Google DeepMind, joins us for a conversation about how his team’s new A.I. models just hit a silver medal score on the International Mathematical Olympiad exam. And finally, it’s time for a new round of HatGPT! This time, it’s a special Olympics tech edition.
Guest:
- Pushmeet Kohli, vice president of research at Google DeepMind
Additional Reading:
- Liberal “White Dudes” Rally for Harris: “It’s Like a Rainbow of Beige”
- Move Over, Mathematicians, Here Comes AlphaProof
- Now Narrating the Olympics: A.I.-Al Michaels
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTubeand TikTok.
This week, the memes didn’t just fall out of coconut trees — a rundown of the social media reaction to Kamala Harris’s election campaign, and an exploration of what her tech platform might look like. Then we discuss a major new study on universal basic income with Elizabeth Rhodes, research director at OpenResearch, and ask whether it could be a solution to job losses to A.I. And finally, Kate Conger, a New York Times reporter, joins us to break down how the cybersecurity company CrowdStrike crashed the global IT infrastructure.
Guests:
- Elizabeth Rhodes, Research Director at OpenResearch
- Kate Conger, New York Times reporter
Additional Reading:
- What is the KHive?
- Is It Silicon Valley’s Job to Make Guaranteed Income a Reality?
- OpenResearch Unconditional Cash Study
- When Tech Fails, It Is Usually With a Whimper Instead of a Bang
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
This week, an assassination attempt for the social media age: what the platforms got right and wrong in the chaotic aftermath. Then we talk with the Times reporter Teddy Schleifer from this week’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee about the wave of Silicon Valley billionaires stepping up to back Trump. And finally, we talk to The Times’s Styles reporter Callie Holtermann about facial fitness gum, a “jawmaxxing” product targeted at teen boys online.
Guests:
- Theodore Schleifer, New York Times reporter
- Callie Holtermann, New York Times reporter
Additional Reading:
- An Assassination Attempt for the Social Media Age
- How a Network of Tech Billionaires Helped J.D. Vance Leap Into Power
- Why Are Gen Z Boys Chewing on Rock-Hard Gum?
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Throw down a picnic blanket, and grab some snacks and drinks: It’s time for some Hard Questions with the food writer, YouTuber and podcaster Alison Roman. We tackle quandaries like, Should you sign away your children’s image rights in order to get them into your preferred day care? Is hacking people for fun ever OK? And does it matter if we’re rude to our digital assistants?
Guest:
- Alison Roman, cook, writer and author
Additional Reading:
- Why Deleting Your Period Tracker Won’t Protect Your Privacy
- Dilly Bean Stew With Cabbage and Frizzled Onions
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com.
Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
We’re off for the Fourth of July, but what’s a better tribute to America than a conversation about the technology that enables us to endlessly stream TV from the couch? This week, we’re bringing you an episode we enjoyed from the recently debuted New York Times podcast The Interview. Lulu Garcia-Navarro interviews Ted Sarandos, co-chief executive of Netflix, about his early days working in a video store, shows to fold your laundry to and the future of the entertainment industry.
Guest:
- Ted Sarandos, Co-CEO of Netflix
Additional Reading:
- “The Interview”: Ted Sarandos’s Plan to Get You to Binge Even More Netflix
- Can Japan’s First Same-Sex Dating Reality Show Change Hearts and Minds?
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com.
Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Record labels — including Sony, Universal and Warner — are suing two leading A.I. music generation companies, accusing them of copyright infringement. Mitch Glazier, chief executive of the Recording Industry Association of America, the industry group representing the music labels, talks with us about the argument they are advancing. Then, we take a look at defense technology and discuss why Silicon Valley seems to be changing its tune about working with the military. Chris Kirchhoff, who ran a special Pentagon office in Silicon Valley, explains what he thinks is behind the shift. And finally, we play another round of HatGPT.
Guest:
- Mitch Glazier, chairman and chief executive of the Recording Industry Association of America
- Chris Kirchhoff, founding partner of the Defense Innovation Unit and author of Unit X: How the Pentagon and Silicon Valley Are Transforming the Future of War
Additional Reading:
- Major Record Labels Sue A.I. Music Generators
- 260 McNuggets? McDonald’s Ends A.I. Drive-Through Tests Amid Errors
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
The Surgeon General is calling for warning labels on social media platforms: Should Congress give his proposal a like? Then, former Stanford researcher Renée DiResta joins us to talk about her new book on modern propaganda and whether we are losing the war against disinformation. And finally, the Times reporter David Yaffe-Bellany stops by to tell us how crypto could reshape the 2024 elections.
Guests
- Renée DiResta, author of “Invisible Rulers,” former technical research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory
- David Yaffe-Bellany, New York Times technology reporter
Additional Reading:
- Surgeon General: Why I’m Calling for a Warning Label on Social Media Platforms
- My Encounter With the Fantasy-Industrial Complex
- How Crypto Money Is Poised to Influence the Election
This week we go to Cupertino, Calif., for Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference and talk with Tripp Mickle, a New York Times reporter, about all of the new features Apple announced and the company’s giant leap into artificial intelligence. Then, we explore what was another tumultuous week for Elon Musk, who navigated a shareholders vote to re-approve his massive compensation package at Tesla, amid new claims that he had sex with subordinates at SpaceX. And finally — let’s play HatGPT.
Guests:
- Tripp Mickle, New York Times reporter
Additional Reading:
- Apple Jumps Into A.I. Fray With Apple Intelligence
- Tesla Shareholders Approve Big Stock Package for Musk
- Elon Musk’s Boundary-Blurring Relationships With Women at SpaceX
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
This week, we host a cultural exchange. Kevin and Casey show off their Canadian paraphernalia to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and he shows off what he’s doing to position Canada as a leader in A.I. Then, the OpenAI whistle-blower Daniel Kokotajlo speaks in one of his first public interviews about why he risked almost $2 million in equity to warn of what he calls the reckless culture inside that company.
Guests:
- Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada
- Daniel Kokotajlo, a former researcher in OpenAI’s governance division
Additional Reading:
- Securing Canada’s A.I. Advantage
- OpenAI Insiders Warn of a ‘Reckless’ Race for Dominance
- What Aren’t The OpenAI Whistle-Blowers Saying?
- The Opaque Investment Empire Making OpenAI’s Sam Altman Rich
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
This week, Google found itself in more turmoil, this time over its new AI Overviews feature and a trove of leaked internal documents. Then Josh Batson, a researcher at the A.I. startup Anthropic, joins us to explain how an experiment that made the chatbot Claude obsessed with the Golden Gate Bridge represents a major breakthrough in understanding how large language models work. And finally, we take a look at recent developments in A.I. safety, after Casey’s early access to OpenAI’s new souped-up voice assistant was taken away for safety reasons.
Guests:
- Josh Batson, research scientist at Anthropic
Additional Reading:
- Google’s A.I. Search Errors Cause a Furor Online
- Google Confirms the Leaked Search Documents are Real
- Mapping the Mind of a Large Language Model
- A.I. Firms Musn’t Govern Themselves, Say Ex-Members of OpenAI’s Board
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
This week, more drama at OpenAI: The company wanted Scarlett Johansson to be a voice of GPT-4o, she said no … but something got lost in translation. Then we talk with Noland Arbaugh, the first person to get Elon Musk’s Neuralink device implanted in his brain, about how his brain-computer interface has changed his life. And finally, the Times’s Karen Weise reports back from Microsoft’s developer conference, where the big buzz was that the company’s new line of A.I. PCs will record every single thing you do on the device.
Guests:
- Noland Arbaugh, the first Neuralink patient
- Karen Weise, technology correspondent for The New York Times
Additional Reading:
- Scarlett Johansson Said No, but OpenAI’s Virtual Assistant Sounds Just Like Her
- Leaked OpenAI Documents Reveal Aggressive Tactics Toward Former Employees
- Despite Setback, Neuralink’s First Brain-Implant Patient Stays Upbeat
- Can Artificial Intelligence Make the PC Cool Again?
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
This week, OpenAI unveiled GPT-4o, its newest A.I. model. It has an uncannily emotive voice that everybody is talking about. Then, we break down the biggest announcements from Google IO, including the launch of A.I. overviews, a major change to search that threatens the way the entire web functions. And finally, Kevin and Casey discuss the weirdest headlines from the week in another round of HatGPT.
Additional Reading:
- A.I.’s ‘Her’ Era Has Arrived
- ChatGPT Gets an Emotional Upgrade
- Google’s Broken Link to the Web
- Can Google Give A.I. Answers Without Breaking the Web?
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Kevin reports on his monthlong experiment cultivating relationships with 18 companions generated by artificial intelligence. He walks through how he developed their personas, what went down in their group chats, and why you might want to make one yourself. Then, Casey has a conversation with Turing, one of Kevin’s chatbot buddies, who has an interest in stoic philosophy and has one of the sexiest voices we’ve ever heard. And finally, we talk to Nomi’s founder and chief executive, Alex Cardinell, about the business behind A.I. companions — and whether society is ready for the future we’re heading toward.
Guests:
- Turing, Kevin’s A.I. friend created with Kindroid.
- Alex Cardinell, chief executive and founder of Nomi.
Additional Reading:
- Meet My A.I. Friends
- Synthetic People are Proving Surprisingly Useful
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
We asked listeners to tell us about the wildest ways they have been using artificial intelligence at work. This week, we bring you their stories. Then, Hank Green, a legendary YouTuber, stops by to talk about how creators are reacting to the prospect of a ban on TikTok, and about how he’s navigating an increasingly fragmented online environment. And finally, deep fakes are coming to Main Street: We’ll tell you the story of how they caused turmoil in a Maryland high school and what, if anything, can be done to fight them.
Guests:
- Hank Green, YouTuber and co-founder of Complexly
Additional Reading:
- School Employee Arrested After Racist Deepfake Recording of Principal Spreads
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
On Wednesday, President Biden signed a bill into law that would force the sale of TikTok or ban the app outright. We explain how this came together, when just a few weeks ago it seemed unlikely to happen, and what legal challenges the law will face next. Then we check on Tesla’s very bad year and what’s next for the company after this week’s awful quarterly earnings report. Finally, to boldly support tech where tech has never been supported before: Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab try to fix a chip malfunction from 15 billion miles away.
Guests:
- Andrew Hawkins, Transportation Editor at The Verge
- Todd Barber, Propulsion Engineer at Jet Propulsion Lab
Additional Reading:
- ‘Thunder Run’: Behind Lawmakers’ Secretive Push to Pass the TikTok Bill
- Tesla’s in its flop era
- NASA’s Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
This week, we drop the Hard Fork Music Megamix. Plus, we talk to two of the New York Time's composers who make the music for our show. It’s all the tracks you know and love, all in one place.
Today’s Guests:
- Dan Powell, creative technical manager at The New York Times
- Elisheba Ittoop, sound designer and composer at The New York Times
Additional Reading:
- The Hard Fork Megamix Youtube Playlist
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
This week, the companies building artificial intelligence are facing a limit to what training data is publicly available on the internet. Will that stop them from building God? Then, a new bipartisan national privacy law proposal just dropped. We ask what’s in it. And finally, ByteDance is building new apps instead of fighting Congress’s TikTok ban.
Today’s Guests:
Trevor Hughes, president and C.E.O. of the International Association of Privacy Professionals
Additional Reading:
How Tech Giants Cut Corners to Harvest Data for A.I.
For Data-Guzzling A.I. Companies, the Internet Is Too Small
Lawmakers unveil sprawling plan to expand online privacy protections
TikTok Turns to Nuns, Veterans and Ranchers in Marketing Blitz
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com.
Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
This week we look at how AI is affecting jobs. As companies start announcing AI-related job cuts and experimenting with customer service bots, economists are placing bets on whether AI will lead to major gains for companies and workers. Some are even predicting it will help rebuild the middle class. Then, multidisciplinary artist and filmmaker Paul Trillo joins to talk to us about his experience as part of a select group of testers granted early access to Sora, Open AI’s video generation tool. And finally, Kevin explains what happened when a Microsoft developer stumbled on a huge cyber security breach.
Today’s Guests:
- Paul Trillo, multidisciplinary artist, writer and director
Additional Reading:
- How One Tech Skeptic Decided A.I. Might Benefit the Middle Class
- Will A.I. Boost Productivity? Companies Sure Hope So.
- Paul Trillo’s Sora Video, The Golden Record
- Did One Guy Just Stop a Huge Cyberattack?
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com.
Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Warning: The second segment of this episode includes mentions of suicide. If you are in crisis please call the suicide and crisis lifeline at 988 or you can contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741.
This week, we look at a mess of corporate drama in artificial intelligence. Stability AI has announced that its founder and C.E.O., Emad Mostaque, is leaving the company. Meanwhile, Microsoft hired away two of the co-founders and much of the staff of Inflection, without actually acquiring the company itself. Both moves surprised tech insiders. Then, we talked with listeners who had something to say about our interview with Jonathan Haidt on smartphones, social media and young people. And finally, we examine the true motives behind “Shrimp Jesus” and other hugely popular images on social media that were generated with artificial intelligence.
Today’s guests:
- Jordan Lucero, a high school student
- Maya Rayle, a graduate student
- Jack Campbell, a college student
- Brendan Kelley, a high school digital coach
Additional Reading:
- The indie AI companies are falling apart
- How Spammers, Scammers and Creators Leverage AI-Generated Images on Facebook for Audience Growth
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com.
Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
This week, the U.S. Department of Justice sued Apple, saying the company holds a monopoly over the smartphone market. We break down the lawsuit and ask whether it will be a major turning point in Apple’s dominance. Then, Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist, argues that smartphones and social media are the cause of widespread increases in mental health issues among young people. He tells us his four potential solutions to the problem. And finally, Reddit’s market capitalization hit $9.2 billion when it debuted on the New York Stock Exchange this week, but the company still isn’t making money. We talk about the challenges Reddit faces as it goes public, and how the site may change as a result.
Today’s guest:
- Jonathan Haidt, author of “The Anxious Generation”
Additional Reading:
- U.S. Sues Apple, Accusing It of Maintaining an iPhone Monopoly
- End the Phone-Based Childhood Now
- Reddit’s I.P.O. Is a Content Moderation Success Story
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
This week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that would ban TikTok if its Chinese-owned parent company, ByteDance, doesn’t sell it off. We talk about why, what happens next, and how likely it is that the app will be banned. Then, how a photoshopped image of Kate Middleton undermines trust in photography. And finally, a new report reveals how your car may be tracking you without your knowledge — and how that might raise your insurance bill.
Today’s guest:
- Kashmir Hill, features writer at The New York Times
Additional Reading:
- What to Know About the TikTok Bill That the House Passed
- Even Photoshop Can’t Erase Royals’ Latest P.R. Blemish
- Automakers Are Sharing Consumers’ Driving Behavior With Insurance Companies
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com.
Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
OpenAI responded to Elon Musk’s lawsuit this week, with a blog post that included emails dating to 2015. We talk about whether the lawsuit could have any impact on the company, and who stands to benefit from it. Then, will the European Union’s Digital Markets Act make the tech industry a more competitive environment for entrepreneurs? We look at how some of the biggest tech giants are changing their services to comply with the law. And finally, Kevin Roose and the Wall Street Journal reporter Joanna Stern compare notes on using the Apple Vision Pro.
Today’s guest:
- Joanna Stern, Wall Street Journal Personal Tech columnist
Additional Reading:
- Open AI Says Elon Musk Tried to Merge It With Tesla
- Forced to Change: Tech Giants Bow to Global Onslaught of Rules
- One Month With Apple Vision Pro: In the Air, on a Train … in a Drawer
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Warning: This episode contains strong language.
Google removed the ability to generate images of people from its Gemini chatbot. We talk about why, and about the brewing culture war over artificial intelligence. Then, did Kara Swisher start “Hard Fork”? We clear up some podcast drama and ask about her new book, “Burn Book.” And finally, the legal expert Daphne Keller tells us how the U.S. Supreme Court might rule on the most important First Amendment cases of the internet era, and what Star Trek and soy boys have to do with it.
Today’s guests:
- Kara Swisher, tech journalist and Casey Newton’s former landlord
- Daphne Keller, director of the program on platform regulation at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center
Additional Reading:
- Google CEO calls AI tool’s controversial responses ‘completely unacceptable’
- Kara Swisher Is Not Here to Make Friends in Her New Memoir
- Burn Book: A Tech Love Story by Kara Swisher
- Daphne Keller’s FAQs About the NetChoice Cases at the Supreme Court
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com.
Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
This week’s episode is a conversation with Demis Hassabis, the head of Google’s artificial intelligence division. We talk about Google’s latest A.I. models, Gemini and Gemma; the existential risks of artificial intelligence; his timelines for artificial general intelligence; and what he thinks the world will look like post-A.G.I.
Additional listening and reading:
- A.I. Could Solve Some of Humanity’s Hardest Problems. It Already Has.
- This interview was recorded on Wednesday. Since then, Google has temporarily suspended Gemini’s ability to generate images of humans, following criticism of images the chatbot generated of people of color in Nazi-era uniforms.
- Google Is Giving Away Some of the A.I. That Powers Chatbots
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
A year ago, a chatbot tried to break up Kevin Roose’s marriage. Ever since, chatbots haven’t been the same. We’ll tell you how. Then, we’ll talk through the latest ways the world is adapting to artificial intelligence. And finally, Aravind Srinivas, the chief executive of Perplexity, will discuss his company’s “answer engine,” a challenger to Google’s search engine that could reshape the web as we know it.
Today’s guest:
- Aravind Srinivas, chief executive of Perplexity
Additional Reading:
- The Year Chatbots Were Tamed
- OpenAI Gives ChatGPT a Better ‘Memory’
- Google Releases Gemini, an A.I.-Driven Chatbot and Voice Assistant
- Sam Altman Seeks Trillions of Dollars to Reshape Business of Chips and AI
- Lawmakers propose anti-nonconsensual AI porn bill after Taylor Swift controversy
- Sarah Silverman’s lawsuit against OpenAI partially dismissed
- Can This A.I.-Powered Search Engine Replace Google? It Has for Me.
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com.
Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
.
Bluesky, the Twitter spin-off, is now open for public sign-ups. Can its dreams of decentralization fix social media? We talk with CEO Jay Graber. Then, New York Times reporter Erin Griffith on how Adobe’s failed acquisition of Figma has spooked tech companies and upset Silicon Valley’s startup pipeline. And finally, updates on ancient scrolls and artificial intelligence, Google’s chatbots, and the fight between record companies and TikTok.
Today’s guests:
- Jay Graber, CEO of Bluesky
- Erin Griffith, reporter for The New York Times
Additional Reading:
- What Is Bluesky and Why Are People Clamoring to Join It?
- After Its $20 Billion Windfall Evaporated, a Start-Up Picks Up the Pieces
- First passages of rolled-up Herculaneum scroll revealed
- Google Releases Gemini, an A.I.-Driven Chatbot and Voice Assistant
- Universal Music Group Pulls Songs From TikTok
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com.
Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Apple’s Vision Pro headset is now for sale in stores. Will it live up to the hype? Kevin Roose and Casey Newton tried it out to see. Then, in a high-profile congressional hearing on child safety and social media, Mark Zuckerberg, the Meta chief executive, made an apology to families of victims of online child abuse. Is new legislation on the horizon? And finally, what the collapse of Cruise, the autonomous vehicle company, means for the future of self-driving cars.
Additional Reading:
- Apple readies its Vision
- ‘Your Product Is Killing People’: Tech Leaders Denounced Over Child Safety
- Cruise Says Hostility to Regulators Led to Grounding of Its Autonomous Cars
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com.
Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Layoffs are hitting newsrooms and publishers again, as tech platforms, ad markets and artificial intelligence reshape the internet. Kevin Roose and Casey Newton have ideas for solutions. Then, one of the most influential investors in crypto companies lays out where the industry went wrong, and why he still thinks blockchains are the future. And finally, a round of HatGPT with the week’s tech headlines, including a spicy LinkedIn post and an A.I. test that disturbs Kevin and Casey’s sense of reality.
Today’s guest:
Chris Dixon, partner at Andreessen Horowitz
Additional Reading:
- Layoffs hit publishers including The Los Angeles Times and Sports Illustrated, while Pitchfork is being wrapped into GQ.
- “Read Write Own: Building the Next Era of the Internet,” by Chris Dixon
- Test Yourself: Which Faces Were Made by A.I.?
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com.
Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
OpenAI has released its plan to fight disinformation in elections in 2024, but will its policies be consequential compared to those of other generative A.I. companies? Then, a watershed moment had crypto fans celebrating for the first time in maybe more than a year. And finally, what one writer’s attempt to sell a used mechanical pencil on TikTok says about how the platform is changing.
Today’s guests:
- David Yaffe-Bellany covers the crypto industry for The New York Times
- John Herrman covers technology for New York Magazine
Additional Reading:
- How OpenAI is approaching 2024 worldwide elections
- $4 Billion of New Bitcoin Funds Change Hands in First Trading Day
- What I Learned Selling a Used Pencil on TikTok Shop
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com.
Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Casey is taking his newsletter Platformer off Substack, as criticism over the company’s handling of pro-Nazi content grows. Then, The Wall Street Journal spoke with witnesses who said that Elon Musk had used LSD, cocaine, ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms, worrying some directors and board members of his companies. And finally, how researchers found a new class of antibiotics with the help of an artificial intelligence algorithm used to win the board game Go.
Today’s guests:
- Kirsten Grind, enterprise reporter for The Wall Street Journal
- Felix Wong, postdoctoral fellow at M.I.T. and co-founder of Integrated Biosciences
Additional Reading:
- Why Platformer is leaving Substack.
- Elon Musk has used illegal drugs, worrying leaders at Tesla and SpaceX.
- Researchers have discovered a new class of antibiotics using A.I.
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft last week for copyright infringement. Kevin Roose and Casey Newton walk through the lawsuit and discuss the stakes for news publishers. Then, they talk about Apple’s “walled garden,” which is facing threats from both regulators and 16-year-olds. Finally, we set our tech resolutions for the new year.
Today’s guest: Eric Migicovsky, co-founder of Beeper
Additional Reading:
- The New York Times sued OpenAI.
- Apple’s latest headache in the debate over blue vs. green bubbles.
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com.
Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Last year, we predicted what 2023 in tech would look like. This week, we take a look back at those predictions, see what we got right and wrong, and make new ones for 2024.
Then, the actor, comedian and writer Jenny Slate joins us to answer your Hard Questions.
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com.
Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
A jury decided the Google Play store unfairly stifles competition and maintains a monopoly. Kevin and Casey discuss how the ruling could reshape the digital economy. Then, a growing movement of developers and enthusiasts of artificial intelligence want the technology developed as quickly as possible, even if it has negative consequences for humanity. And finally, why the internet of the future could look totally different.
Today’s guest: Cloudflare CEO and co-founder Matthew Prince.
Additional Reading:
- Epic Games won its lawsuit against Google.
- ‘Effective Accelerationism’ is Silicon Valley’s latest, and maybe weirdest, counterculture.
- Cloudflare tracked the biggest changes to the internet in 2023.
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com.
Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.
Warning: This episode contains some explicit language.
Google’s new artificial intelligence model ‘Gemini’ is out. It’s advertised as America’s next top A.I. model. Kevin and Casey ask, is it really better than OpenAI’s GPT-4? Then, by some estimates millions of people pre-ordered Tesla’s Cybertruck, but has Elon Musk’s recent behavior soured people on the brand? And finally, more A.I. news you may have missed.
Additional Reading:
- Google is chasing ChatGPT with the launch of Gemini.
- Even if people cancel their Cybertruck pre-orders, it could still be massively successful.
- A new A.I. development may help fight wine fraud.
- Amazon’s new enterprise chatbot had a “severe hallucinations” problem.
- OpenAI blocked a prompt that would cause ChatGPT to regurgitate its training data.
- Mountain Dew’s latest marketing stunt had an A.I. watching Twitch streams.
Warning: This episode contains some explicit language.
The drama at OpenAI is not over. Kevin and Casey take stock of new information they’ve gathered since last week, and look at how other artificial intelligence companies are trying to capitalize on the debacle. Then, why people are still buying cryptocurrency even after Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, and its founder pleaded guilty to money laundering violations. And finally, three ways A.I. is ruining web search. Or is it?
Today’s guest: David Yaffe-Bellany covers crypto for The New York Times.
Additional Reading:
Casey has new details from the OpenAI board fight.
Changpeng Zhao, the Binance founder, agreed to pay a $50 million fine and step down from his role as chief executive.
In yet another head-spinning twist at OpenAI, Sam Altman was reinstated as the company’s chief executive on Tuesday night, a mere five days after the OpenAI board had fired him. The board will be overhauled and a new set of directors, including Bret Taylor and Lawrence Summers, will join.
Today, we discuss how Altman returned to the top seat — and whether the OpenAI news will ever slow down.
Additional Reading:
- Late Tuesday night, Sam Altman was reinstated as OpenAI’s chief executive.
Last week, we interviewed Sam Altman. Since then, well, everything has changed. The board of OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT, fired Altman as chief executive on Friday. Over the weekend, it looked as if he might return. On Sunday night, Microsoft hired Altman to lead a new A.I. venture. Who knows what will happen next.
Today, an update on a crazy weekend in tech, and our interview with Sam Altman.
Today’s Guest:
- Sam Altman is the former chief executive of OpenAI.
Additional Reading:
- On Sunday, Microsoft hired Sam Altman after OpenAI had fired him.
- Kevin breaks down the winners and losers from the OpenAI rift.
Sam Altman, the chief executive of Open AI, was pushed out of the company by its board of directors on Friday. The news was a complete shock to much of the company’s employee base and to its largest corporate partner, Microsoft. Silicon Valley insiders are scrambling to get answers on exactly what happened and why the board’s decision seemed so abrupt. We rundown what we know and the many things we still don’t.
The tech start-up Humane launched a new device, an A.I. pin meant to be worn on our clothing. Might this be the device that replaces the iPhone? It’s the question on Silicon Valley’s mind. The pin allows users to take phone calls, catch up on messages and get answers to questions, all without ever looking at a screen.
Then, why YouTube is bucking the trend on deepfakes.
Plus: We eat a Thanksgiving meal made with meat that was grown in a lab.
Today’s Guest:
- Joshua March is the chief executive of SCiFi Foods, the lab-grown meat company.
Additional Reading:
- Humane says it’s artificial intelligence pin can replace screens. Is the pin the start of the next generation of hardware?
- Casey on YouTube’s latest approach to deepfakes.
Warning: this episode contains some explicit language.
OpenAI has unveiled a new way to build custom chatbots. Kevin shows off a few that he’s built – including a custom Hard Fork bot, and a bot that gives investment advice inspired by his late grandpa.
Then, we talk to Lina Khan, the chair of the Federal Trade Commission, about the agency’s approach to regulating A.I., and whether the tactics she’s used to regulate big tech companies are working.
And finally, a Bored Ape Yacht Club event left some attendees' eyes burning, literally. That, and Sam Bankman-Fried’s recent fraud conviction has us asking, how much damage hath the crypto world wrought?
Today’s guest:
- Lina Khan, chair of the Federal Trade Commission
Additional reading:
- OpenAI’s new tools allow users to customize their own GPTs.
- Lina Khan believes A.I. disruption demands regulators take a different approach than that of the Web 2.0 era.
More than 20 people reported burning eye pain after a Bored Ape Yacht Club party in Hong Kong.
President Biden’s new executive order on artificial intelligence has a little bit of everything for everyone concerned about A.I. Casey takes us inside the White House as the order was signed.
Then, Rebecca Tushnet, a copyright law expert, walks us through the latest developments in a lawsuit against the creators of A.I.-image generation tools. She explains why artists may have trouble making the case that these tools infringe on their copyrights.
And finally, it’s time again for HatGPT. We get a taste of the tech headlines you may have missed from the week.
Today’s guest:
- Rebecca Tushnet, professor of law at Harvard Law School.
Additional reading:
- Casey’s debrief on his trip to the White House.
- Kevin’s breakdown of the executive order.
- A judge found many of the claims in a lawsuit against Stability AI, Midjourney and DeviantArt to be “defective.”
Dozens of state attorneys general has sued Meta, alleging the company knowingly created features that induce “extended, addictive, and compulsive social media use” among teenagers and children. In a country without wide-reaching internet regulations, are lawsuits the way to reign tech companies in?
Then, for our first episode on YouTube, we talk with YouTuber and tech reviewer Marques Brownlee about how the platform has changed, and the future tech he’s excited about.
And finally, A.I. image generators are getting scary good. Casey tells us what he’s been using them for.
Today’s guest:
- Marques Brownlee is a YouTuber who covers tech.
Additional reading:
- Meta is accused of using features to lure children to Instagram and Facebook.
- Subscribe to Hard Fork on YouTube.
- The latest A.I. image generators show how quickly the tech is advancing.
A.I. models are black boxes. You input a prompt and the model outputs nearly anything: a sonnet, an image or a legal brief riddled with lies. Today, a look at three ways that researchers are unlocking that black box in hopes of bringing transparency to A.I.
Then, Marc Andreessen’s techno-optimist manifesto has left us asking, Is he OK?!
Plus: decoding a 2,000-year-old ancient scroll with the help of A.I.
Today’s Guest:
- Brent Seales is a computer scientist at the University of Kentucky.
Additional Information:
- Kevin Roose on learning more about how A.I. works.
- Marc Andreessen’s 5,000-word manifesto
- Using A.I. to decode a scroll that survived the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79.
As the Israel-Hamas war broke out, misinformation and fake imagery surged on X, the platform formerly known at Twitter. Can Meta’s Threads fill the real-time news hole that X created? Should it?
Then, Kevin debriefs us on his reporting on Manifold Markets, where Silicon Valley Rationalists bet on the likelihoods of different events.
Plus: The company digitizing smell.
Today’s Guest:
- Alex Wiltschko is the founder of Osmo, a company trying to digitize smell.
Additional Reading:
- Casey Newton on how the war in Israel may change Threads.
- Some tech insiders believe betting can change the world.
- The company Osmo put out a research paper showing that an A.I. model it had created was performing better than the “average human panelist” in predicting odor. We want to hear from you.
The antitrust trial against Google has led to some of tech’s biggest players testifying in court, and things have gotten spicy. The New York Times reporter Cecilia Kang tells us the wildest moments in the trial so far.
Then, A.I. is jumping off the screen and into your wardrobe. Has the personal assistant of the future finally arrived? Or a dystopian panopticon?
Plus: happy first birthday, Hard Fork! Kevin and Casey share some lessons learned.
Today’s guest:
- Cecilia Kang covers technology and regulation for The Times.
Additional reading:
- Microsoft’s chief executive told the court the internet is really the “Google web.”
- A.I. wearables like the Ai Pin from Humane are turning heads on the runway.
- OpenAI is in talks with Jony Ive to build the “iPhone of artificial intelligence.”
ChatGPT can now hear, see and speak — and that’s just the start of the deluge of A.I. news this week. Kevin and Casey unpack the lightning-speed updates.
Then, Meta’s next-generation headset, Quest 3, is here. Is there still hope for the metaverse?
And: An interview with a prompt engineer. Yes, that’s a real job.
Today’s Guest:
- Riley Goodside is a prompt engineer at Scale A.I., a San Francisco start-up.
Additional Reading:
- Kevin Roose on ChatGPT, which can now see, hear and speak.
- Spotify announced a new A.I.-powered voice-translation feature.
- Meta announced the release of the Quest 3 headset.
Today’s Guests:
- Kashmir Hill is a Times business reporter covering technology and privacy.
Additional Reading:
- Google unveiled new features for its A.I. chatbot, Bard.
- Kashmir Hill’s “Your Face Belongs to Us” tracks the rise of Clearview AI, a facial recognition start-up.
Is Google allowed to spend billions of dollars to make its search product the default browser? That is the question at the center of U.S. et al. v. Google — the most important tech trial of the modern internet era — and Kevin and Casey disagree on the answer.
Then, a conversation with the journalist who spent the last two years shadowing Elon Musk.
Today’s guest:
- Walter Isaacson is a writer and author of the forthcoming biography “Elon Musk.”
Additional reading:
- Google’s antitrust lawsuit against the U.S. government brings the first major tech trial since U.S. v. Microsoft which began in 1998.
- “Elon Musk,” by Walter Isaacson.
This week: How tech executives’ favorite place to take their pants off turned into a muddy hellscape. We talk to one executive who couldn’t just call a helicopter to escape.
Then, Jonathan Greenblatt, C.E.O. of the Anti-Defamation League, on how his organization went from having a “productive” meeting with X’s C.E.O., Linda Yaccarino, last week to being threatened with a lawsuit by Elon Musk on Monday.
Plus, Kevin and Casey answer your questions.
Additional Information:
- Burning Man left behind a sea of “moop” in the desert.
- Research from the Center for Countering Digital Hate, the Anti-Defamation League and other groups found that hate speech had increased on Twitter after it was purchased by Elon Musk.
- Snapchat’s My AI freaked users out after the chatbot appeared to go rogue.
A group of tech titans is gobbling up land north of San Francisco with aspirations to alleviate the Bay Area’s housing crisis, promote innovation, and experiment with new forms of governance. It’s not the first time ultra-wealthy people have tried to build the place of their dreams. Will this time be any different?
Then, note-taking apps claim to make us smarter. Usually, they don’t. Casey Newton, a productivity cult member, on how A.I. could change that.
Plus, Kevin and Casey play HatGPT.
Additional Information:
- Tech billionaires want to build a new city. A political fight is coming.
- Casey takes a look at note-taking platforms and why they usually don’t live up to their promise.
- An Air Force program is embracing A.I. in aerial combat.
- The S.E.C. took action against a NFT project
- YouTube will waive content violation warnings if the creators in violation attend a class.
- Google Meet’s new A.I. program will take notes for users in real time.
- A smart contact lens can be charged with human tears.
Are New York City’s new rules for short-term rentals like Airbnb effectively a ban? And will they accomplish what proponents want them to? Then, The New York Times tech reporter Erin Griffith on Silicon Valley’s mad dash for GPUs. And finally, we take stock of the A.I. songs of the summer and discuss YouTube and Universal Music Group’s plan to make synthetic voices profitable.
On Today’s Episode:
Erin Griffith is a New York Times journalist based in the San Francisco bureau, where she reports on technology start-ups and venture capital.
Additional Information:
New York City’s new regulations for short-term rentals go into effect soon.
Start-ups are on a “desperate hunt” for GPUs. (There’s even a song about it.)
Creators are using A.I. voices to imitate Freddie Mercury, Johnny Cash, Eric Cartman from “South Park,” and others.
Google and YouTube have different approaches to compensating creators whose work is used to train A.I. tools.
When Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested in December, he was confined to his parents’ house — but he was left free to roam the internet. Today, the New York Times reporter David Yaffe-Bellany talks about how access to the cyberworld allowed Mr. Bankman-Fried to violate his bail terms and land himself in jail.
Then, how universities can manage a generative A.I. world.
Plus: another look at autonomous vehicles.
On Today’s Episode:
- David Yaffe-Bellany, a cryptocurrency and financial technology reporter for The New York Times.
- Ethan Mollick, an associate professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania who is experimenting with generative A.I. in the classroom.
Additional Information:
- Sam Bankman-Fried was sent to jail after violating his bail terms. The court dispute over his bail focused on a New York Times article that described writings by Caroline Ellison, an FTX executive who had also dated Mr. Bankman-Fried.
- A driverless car got stuck in wet concrete in San Francisco this week.
Users are protesting Zoom’s liberal data-collection policy. Authors are shutting down websites that scrape their work. And, in a concession to users, OpenAI is allowing websites to opt out of web scraping. The era of A.I. backlash has begun.
Then, street activists are deterring self-driving cars by placing traffic cones on the hoods of vehicles.
Plus: How Reddit has squashed the Reddit Revolt.
Today’s Guests:
- Adam Egelman and Mingwei Samuel are organizers with Safe Street Rebel, an activist group trying to get cars off the streets.
Additional Reading:
- The publication StackDiary exposed that Zoom’s updated terms of service permitted the training of artificial-intelligence models on user content.
- Benji Smith took down his website prosecraft.io, a database that contained the works of over 25,000 books, after authors discovered that their works were being used to power the website without their consent.
Researchers in Korea claim they’ve identified a material that could unlock a technological revolution: the room temperature superconductor. Material scientists are skeptical, but enthusiasts on Twitter are enthusiastic. Why is the internet so excited about superconductors?
Then, the Kids Online Safety Act is headed to the Senate floor. Would it actually keep children safe? And how would it change the internet?
Plus: Kevin and Casey play HatGPT.
Additional Reading:
- South Korean researchers released a video they claimed was a superconductor showing levitation at room temperature. Scientists were skeptical.
- The New York Times reporter Kashmir Hill profiled Mike Masnick, who wasn’t so sure about KOSA.
On Sunday night, a crane arrived in downtown San Francisco to take down the Twitter sign from the company’s office building. The crane’s arrival marked the death of Twitter, the brand, and the start of X, Elon Musk’s everything app. Today, why Elon’s acquisition feels more and more like cultural vandalism and what, if anything, will replace the global town square.
Then, is Sam Altman’s universal basic income cryptocurrency app Worldcoin an iris scanning tool to save humanity, or just another attempt to get rich on crypto?
Plus: a trip to Google’s robotics lab, where artificial intelligence models are creating breakthroughs.
Additional reading:
- Casey breaks down Twitter’s rebrand.
- The launch of Worldcoin — and the story of how it recruited the first half a million users.
- Kevin’s column is a deep dive into Google’s new robotics model, which melds A.I. with robots.
Dario Amodei has been anxious about A.I. since before it was cool to be anxious about A.I. After a few years working at OpenAI, he decided to do something about that anxiety. The result was Claude: an A.I.-powered chatbot built by Anthropic, Mr. Amodei’s A.I. start-up.
Today, Mr. Amodei joins Kevin and Casey to talk about A.I. anxiety and why it’s so difficult to build A.I. safely.
Plus, we watched Netflix’s “Deep Fake Love.”
Today’s Guest:
- Dario Amodei is the chief executive of Anthropic, a safety-focused A.I. start-up
Additional Reading:
- Kevin spent several weeks at Anthropic’s San Francisco headquarters. Read about his experience here.
This week, we answer more of your questions, like: What is ChatGPT’s carbon footprint? Why are engineers so sure artificial intelligence will keep getting better? And, why are there so many venture capital bros?
Instagram is no stranger to taking product ideas from other companies and turning them into their own successes. Just ask Snapchat about Instagram Stories or TikTok about Instagram Reels. This time, the company is coming for Twitter with Instagram Threads.
Today, the head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, on why the company now wants to take on Twitter.
Today’s guest:
- Adam Mosseri is the head of Instagram.
Additional reading:
- Meta announced a new app called Threads intended to rival Twitter.
Whether it’s on TikTok or Twitter, A.I.-generated content is already flooding the web. So, what happens when the technology — prone to confidently making things up — starts ingesting itself?
Then, the New York Times reporter Joe Bernstein talks about why Mark Zuckerberg wants to fight Elon Musk in a cage match.
Plus, we put ChatGPT’s recipe generation to the test with A.I. cocktails.
Today’s guests:
- Joe Bernstein is a Styles reporter at The New York Times.
- Priya Krishna is a Food staff reporter at The New York Times.
Additional reading:
- Generative A.I. is already changing the web and potentially harming itself.
- The Times’s Cooking team tried cooking recipes made by ChatGPT. The results were mixed.
- Mark Zuckerberg has been working out — and he’d like you to know about it.
This week, advertisers swarmed the beaches of southern France for the Cannes Lions advertising festival. Kevin says artificial intelligence is all anyone there can talk about, but admits the conference is making him rethink how quickly generative A.I. will take over the industry — despite the buzz.
Then, the New York Times reporter Emma Goldberg on when remote work stopped being the future for tech companies.
And finally: What does the newest season of “Black Mirror” tell us about what’s next for TV?
Moderators on Reddit have shut down their forums in protest of a new policy that charges users for access to the site’s API. The revolt has put Kevin in child care-wisdom-withdrawal (RIP r/daddit) — and left many other users without their favorite subreddits. But does the incident say something more about the future of the internet?
Then, the MrBeast Philanthropic-Industrial Complex.
Plus: Platforms are already fumbling the ball on misinformation.
Today’s guest:
- Max Read is a journalist, screenwriter, editor and the owner-operator of Read Max.
Additional information:
- Casey examines the Reddit revolt and why the company isn’t backing down on shutting down third-party apps.
- Max Read on MrBeast’s rise as a viral philanthropist.
- Following the algorithm doesn’t always lead to philanthropy, as Kevin explored in a 2019 article on PewDiePie.
- Platforms are backing away from peak trust and safety.
Apple kicked off the week with the announcement of a mixed-reality headset: the Apple Vision Pro. Putting a computer on your face may seem weird AF, but if there’s one company that knows how to make nerdy stuff into the thing that everyone wants, it’s Apple. Will these fancy goggles be the next Apple revolution?
Then, crypto had (another) terrible week after the S.E.C. filed lawsuits against the cryptocurrency exchanges Coinbase and Binance.
Plus: Our teenage listeners on how they feel about social media.
This week:
- David Yaffe-Bellany, a cryptocurrency and financial technology reporter for The New York Times.
Additional Reading:
- Why Kevin won’t bet against Apple’s Vision Pro and why Casey thinks Apple has an edge on Meta’s Metaverse.
- The S.E.C. accused Coinbase of illegally allowing users to trade unregistered securities a day after it sued the international crypto exchange Binance.
- This Teenage Life (TTL) is a podcast about teenagers being teenagers.
A few days after a lawyer used ChatGPT to write a brief filled with made-up cases, a group of A.I. experts released a letter warning of the “risk of extinction” from the technology. But will A.I. ever be good enough to pose such a threat?
Then, FAANG is now MAAAN, with the addition of Nvidia. Here’s how the GPU company became a trillion-dollar behemoth.
Plus: Kevin, Casey and the New York Times tech reporter Kate Conger answer Hard Questions from listeners.
Today’s Guest:
- Kate Conger is a technology reporter in the San Francisco bureau of The New York Times.
Additional Reading:
- A lawyer used ChatGPT the same week that A.I. leaders released a 22-word statement about the existential risk A.I. poses to humanity.
- The chip company Nvidia hit a $1 trillion market cap, powered by A.I. demand.
- The podcast “Acquired” did a two-part series on the history of Nvidia.
The U.S. surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, says social media poses a “profound risk of harm” to young people. Why do some in the tech industry disagree?
Then, Ajeya Cotra, an A.I. researcher, on how A.I. could lead to a doomsday scenario.
Plus: Pass the hat. Kevin and Casey play a game they call HatGPT.
On today’s episode:
- Ajeya Cotra is a senior research analyst at Open Philanthropy
Additional reading:
- The surgeon general issued an advisory about the risks of social media for young people.
- Ajeya Cotra has researched the existential risks that A.I. poses unless countermeasures are taken.
- Binance commingled customer funds and company revenue, former insiders told Reuters.
- BuzzFeed announced Botatouille, an A.I.-powered kitchen assistant.
- A Twitter bug caused the platform to restore deleted tweets.
- Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida announced his presidential campaign in a Twitter Spaces event rife with glitches.
- Two former rivals, Uber and Waymo, are teaming up to bring driverless ride-hailing to Phoenix.
In a congressional hearing this week, OpenAI’s chief executive, Sam Altman, appeared to be on the same page as lawmakers: It’s time to regulate A.I. But like so many other proposals to regulate tech, will it actually happen? The Times’s technology reporter Cecilia Kang helps us understand whether Congress will actually act, and what that could look like.
Then, Casey talks with Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, before and after Elon Musk took over the company.
On today’s episode:
- Cecilia Kang is a reporter at The New York Times covering technology and regulation.
- Yoel Roth is the former head of trust and safety at Twitter.
Additional reading:
- Sam Altman urged Congress to pass legislation to regulate A.I., including the proposal that A.I. developers should be required to get licenses from the U.S. government to release their models.
- Casey Newton reported for This American Life on Roth’s time at Twitter, before and after Musk took over.
At its biggest event of the year, Google announced an avalanche of A.I. product releases: A.I. in search, A.I. that writes emails and A.I. that generates slides. Is Google pulling ahead in the A.I. arms race?
And, after years of hype, self-driving cars are finally hitting the streets of American cities. Kevin and Casey take a ride through San Francisco in Banana Slug — an autonomous vehicle from the self-driving car company Cruise. After their ride, they sit down with Cruise’s chief executive, Kyle Vogt, to discuss the role he thinks self-driving cars will play in the future of transportation.
On today’s episode:
- Kyle Vogt is the chief executive of Cruise, a self-driving car company.
Additional reading:
- At their annual conference, Google announced dozens of A.I. products and features
- In a leaked memo, a Google researcher argued that the company did not have a strong A.I. moat because of open-source A.I. companies.
- Self-driving cars are expanding their footprint.
The Twitter look-alike Bluesky, started by the former Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey, is doing the impossible: making social media fun again.
Then, A.I. is coming for jobs but not in the way you think.
Plus: Kevin and Casey moonlight as advice columnists in a new Hard Fork segment called Hard Questions.
Additional reading:
- Bluesky is vying to replace Twitter.
- IBM announced a pause in hiring, anticipating that A.I. would replace thousands of jobs at the company in the coming years.
- The chief executive of the education company Chegg said student interest in the chatbot ChatGPT was hurting its sales.
A song featuring A.I.-generated versions of Drake and the Weeknd went viral — before being taken down by streaming services. Is censorship of A.I.-generated songs the way forward? Or can singers benefit from synthetic voices, as some artists like Grimes are suggesting?
Then, HatGPT: Kevin and Casey pull headlines out of a hat and generate their own takes on the news.
And Ben Smith, the former BuzzFeed News editor, discusses the end of the 2010s digital media era.
On today’s episode:
- Ben Smith is a journalist and co-founder of the digital media company Semafor. He was a New York Times media columnist and the first editor in chief of BuzzFeed News.
Additional reading:
- An A.I.-generated song made to sound like Drake and the Weeknd went viral before being taken down by streaming services.
- Grimes invited fans to make songs using A.I.-generated versions of her voice.
- Snapchat saw a spike in one-star reviews after users criticized its “My AI” feature.
- Taylor Swift did not invest in FTX, the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange company.
- Researchers turned a goldfish into a cyborg.
- The Republican National Committee released an A.I.-generated ad slamming President Biden.
- The U.K. blocked Microsoft’s $69 billion bid for the video game company Activision.
- Ben Smith’s book, “Traffic: Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral,” is an origin story of digital media.
- A BuzzFeed article set off a viral debate on the color of a dress.
Today we’re bringing you an episode on chips. No, not potato chips. Kevin Roose has been pitching an episode on the truly fascinating world of chips and semiconductors for quite a while, but our friends at the The Ezra Klein Show got to it first. This week on Hard Fork: Ezra Klein’s engrossing conversation with historian Chris Miller. It’s a must listen. Thank you to Ezra for beating us in our quest for a great chips episode.
We'll be back with our regularly scheduled tech coverage, with Kevin and Casey next week.
Additional reading:
- “The Problem With Everything-Bagel Liberalism” by Ezra Klein
- Book Recommendations:The World For Sale by Javier Blas and Jack Farchy; Nexus by Jonathan Reed Winkler; Prestige, Manipulation and Coercion by Joseph Torigian
Aric Toler untangles the web of teens, gamers and memes at the heart of the latest intelligence scandal.
Then, an update on Twitter — where things have gone from bad to worse.
Plus: How A.I. is bringing us closer to “Westworld.”
On today’s episode:
- Aric Toler is the director of research and training at Bellingcat, the Dutch investigative site. He worked with journalists at The New York Times to identify the man who allegedly leaked top secret documents on Discord, a social media chat platform.
Additional reading:
- A 21-year-old member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard was arrested for his alleged role in the leak of military intelligence on Discord.
- A Discord member shared details with The Washington Post about how the hundreds of pages of classified material were leaked.
- Twitter took steps to block Substack newsletters from circulating on the platform after Substack, a publishing start-up, started a Twitter-like service.
- NPR announced it was suspending all use of Twitter.
- Researchers at Stanford used generative A.I. agents to simulate human behavior.
The New York Times Opinion columnist Ezra Klein has spent years talking to artificial intelligence researchers. Many of them feel the prospect of A.I. discovery is too sweet to ignore, regardless of the technology’s risks.
Today, Mr. Klein discusses the profound changes that an A.I.-powered world will create, how current business models are failing to meet the A.I. moment, and the steps government can take to achieve a positive A.I. future.
Also, radical acceptance of your phone addiction may just help your phone addiction.
On today’s episode:
- Ezra Klein is a columnist at The New York Times and host of “The Ezra Klein Show.”
Additional reading:
- Ezra Klein outlined the dramatic shifts that A.I. will enable.
- In a 2022 survey of A.I. researchers, nearly half of the respondents said that there was a 10 percent or greater chance that the long-run effect of advanced A.I. on humanity would be “extremely bad.” This year, an A.I. researcher argued that natural selection favors A.I. over humans.
- A 2017 article in The New Yorker said that, for some, the risks of artificial intelligence are outweighed by the prospect of discovery.
- Meghan O’Gieblyn’s book “God, Human, Animal, Machine” explores the human experience in the age of artificial intelligence.
- The White House released a Blueprint for an A.I. Bill of Rights to guide the development of A.I. technology.
For years, Google was seen as one of the most cutting-edge developers of A.I. But, with OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT, and other chatbots beating Google to market, is that distinction still the case? Google’s chief executive is in an unenviable position: Scramble to catch up or, in the face of potentially harmful technology, move slowly.
Today, Sundar Pichai on Google’s delicate balance between A.I. innovation and safety.
On today’s episode:
- Sundar Pichai is the chief executive of Google.
Additional reading:
- The launch of ChatGPT caused a ‘code red’ inside Google and prompted the release of Google’s Bard.
- More than 1,000 technology leaders and researchers signed onto an open letter calling for a pause in the development of A.I.
“It’s different because it’s Google.” Bard, Google’s answer to ChatGPT, could prove to be more consequential than any large language model to date — but it isn’t there yet.
Then, we hear from listeners on how they are using A.I. to negotiate their rent, understand medical results and affirm their gender identity.
Plus: Why Spotify’s A.I. D.J. may be a tipping point for artificial intelligence taking control of our lives.
You can sign up for On Tech: A.I. at nytimes.com/newsletters.
Additional reading:
- Google released a new chatbot, Bard. Here’s what it does well — and not so well.
- After a conversation with Google’s executives, Casey Newton answers six questions about the large language model.
- Interior AI is a design tool that makes interior design mock-ups using artificial intelligence.
- Spotify unveiled a new A.I.-powered D.J.
- In his book “Futureproof,” Kevin Roose outlines the concept of “machine drift” — the concept that people will gradually turn over more of their life to the decisions of algorithms.
Jonathan Kanter, who heads up the Justice Department’s antitrust division, believes that antitrust laws are critical for innovation — from ad tech to A.I. The assistant attorney general is bringing a new philosophy to enforcing those laws. So, how is his new approach to protecting competition playing out?
Plus: Can you guess whether that was a bot, or not?
On today’s episode:
- Jonathan Kanter is the assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s antitrust division.
Additional reading:
- Jonathan Kanter has long been a critic of big tech.
- The Justice Department has accused Google of abusing a monopoly over online advertising.
It’s acing standardized tests, building websites and hiring TaskRabbits — GPT-4 is “equal parts fascinating and terrifying.” OpenAI has released its latest model, alongside A.I. announcements from Meta, Google and other industry players. The A.I. arms race is only accelerating.
Then, what Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse means for the future of start-ups, and what Mark Zuckerberg has learned about layoffs
Additional reading:
- OpenAI released ChatGPT-4. It is exciting and scary.
- With its release of GPT-4, OpenAI shared a system card — a paper outlining how OpenAI tried to get GPT-4 to do dangerous things.
- Silicon Valley Bank collapsed. “The Daily” explained how.
- In his newsletter, Byrne Hobart wrote a post pointing out S.V.B.’s insolvency challenge.
- S.V.B.’s collapse followed a deregulatory push from its own Chief Executive.
- Meta announced it planned to lay off about 10,000 employees.
Representative Don Beyer thinks artificial intelligence is “the most amazing technology since fire.” So what does it mean that most of Congress seems not to understand it? Then our colleague David McCabe discusses a bill that could dramatically expand the Biden administration’s power to ban TikTok.
Plus: what can the video game character Waluigi tell us about A.I. chatbots gone rogue?
On today’s episode:
- Don Beyer is a U.S. representative for Virginia’s 8th Congressional District.
- David McCabe is a reporter at The New York Times covering technology policy.
Additional reading:
- Lawmakers are trying to understand the technology behind A.I.
- The White House is pushing Congress to regulate TikTok.
- A number of countries are trying to ban TikTok.
- The Waluigi effect is a theory about why chatbots behave erratically.
Snapchat launches a chatbot. Meta plans to “turbocharge” its A.I. work. Elon Musk explores “BasedAI.” At this point, who isn’t making an A.I. play?
Plus: Is crypto finally dead? Also, a new TikTok filter is making people terrifyingly hot.
On today’s episode:
- David Yaffe-Bellany, a cryptocurrency and financial technology reporter for The New York Times.
Hard Fork listeners! We want to hear from you. How is A.I. showing up in your everyday life? In your job, school and families? What are you using it for? Email us a voice memo at hardfork@nytimes.com.
Additional reading:
- Snapchat launched “My AI” to paid subscribers.
- Mark Zuckerberg announced a high-level group to “turbocharge” Meta’s work with generative A.I.
- Meta AI released LLaMA to researchers.
- The science fiction and fantasy magazine “Clarkesworld” was flooded with chatbot-generated submissions. The writing is “bad in spectacular ways,” its editor said.
- Elon Musk is considering starting his own A.I. company.
- An FTX co-founder pleaded guilty to criminal charges and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors investigating Sam Bankman-Fried.
- A “flurry” of fines, lawsuits and policy statements are spooking crypto executives.
- Gary Gensler, the chair of the S.E.C., said that in crypto “everything other than Bitcoin” should be treated as a security.
- Some TikTok users are worried by how realistic its new filters can seem.
On today’s episode:
- Steve Huffman is the chief executive of Reddit.
Additional reading:
- A Washington Post reporter asked Bing AI its opinion of Kevin Roose. Its response was eerie.
- Microsoft made changes to Bing’s chatbot capabilities after the Chatbot’s unsettling behavior with some users. The company is already loosening some of those restrictions.
- The Supreme Court heard a case challenging Section 230. Reddit is among many social media companies that have filed “friend of the court” amicus briefs against changes to the law.
- Facebook plans to sell “Meta verified” accounts.
“I’m Sydney, and I’m in love with you. 😘”
A conversation with Bing AI (aka Sydney) turns romantic and bizarre. Why Microsoft’s AI search tool appears more powerful — and unsettling — than we thought. Then, inside Elon Musk’s quest to be the most popular user on Twitter.
Plus: It’s not just you. Online ads have gotten much worse.
On today’s episode:
- Tiffany Hsu is a technology reporter at The New York Times who covers misinformation and disinformation.
- Zoë Schiffer is the managing editor of Platformer.
Additional reading:
- Bing AI appeared to have a split personality in a conversation with Kevin Roose, a “Hard Fork” co-host.
- Elon Musk ordered changes to Twitter’s algorithm after his Tweets did not perform as well as he desired.
- Why digital ads are so bad these days.
Microsoft’s release of a ChatGPT-powered Bing signifies a new era in search. Then, a disastrous preview of Bard — Google’s answer to ChatGPT — caused the company’s stocks to slide 7 percent. The A.I. arms race is on.
Plus: What “Nothing, Forever,” the 24/7, A.I.-generated “Seinfeld” parody, says about bias in A.I.
On today’s episode:
- Sam Altman is the chief executive of OpenAI.
- Kevin Scott is the chief technology officer of Microsoft.
Additional reading:
- Microsoft integrated OpenAI's technology into its search engine and kicked off an A.I. arms race.
- Google released Bard, a rival chatbot to ChatGPT.
- “Nothing, Forever” was temporarily banned on Twitch.
TikTok is opening up a “Transparency and Accountability Center” to try to win over skeptics. Is the company’s strategy working? Then, the origin story of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and how the company kicked off an A.I. arms race.
Plus: A co-founder of Instagram, Kevin Systrom, hopes to make a “TikTok for text.”
On today’s episode:
- Kevin Systrom is an entrepreneur and the co-founder of Instagram.
Additional reading:
- TikTok is taking a more aggressive approach toward lobbying.
- Inside OpenAI’s race to build ChatGPT.
- Kevin Systrom is starting a new A.I.-powered news app.
What does Donald Trump’s reinstatement on Facebook and Instagram mean for our politics and platforms? Then, Netflix in its post-Reed era.
Plus: How the Bored Ape Yacht Club went from being the Disney of Web3 to handing out sewer passes for their new video game.
On today’s episode:
- Lucas Shaw is an entertainment industry reporter for Bloomberg.
Additional reading:
- Meta reinstated Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts.
- Trump looked to get out of a deal with his own social media site, Truth Social
- The Jan. 8 riots in Brazil mirrored aspects of the U.S. Capitol Riots, including the use of tech platforms to organize rioters.
- Donald Trump used Truth Social to attack former Georgia election worker Ruby Freeman.
Nearly three months into Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter, things are in a "shambolic" state. Is the rest of Elon’s empire also in trouble? Then, an artist fighting generative A.I. sets the stage for a legal clash.
Plus: what goes wrong when A.I. becomes a reporter.
On today’s episode:
- Sarah Andersen, a cartoonist and the illustrator of a semi-autobiographical comic strip, “Sarah’s Scribbles.”
Additional reading:
- A look inside Elon Musk’s first 90 days as chief executive of Twitter.
- The artist Sarah Andersen on finding her art in the databases behind text-to-image A.I. platforms.
- Three artists, including Ms. Andersen, filed a class-action lawsuit against the creators of Midjourney, Stable Diffusion and DreamUp.
- CNET’s A.I.-written articles contained errors.
A high school teacher on how the new chatbot from OpenAI is transforming her classroom — for the better. And, “M3GAN” may be closer than you think.
Plus: Why Gen Z is chasing the digital camera aesthetic.
On today’s episode:
- Cherie Shields is a high school English teacher in Sandy, Ore.
- Kalley Huang is a technology reporting fellow based in San Francisco.
Additional reading:
- Gen Z is bringing back the digital camera, and teenagers in Brooklyn are rejecting smartphone culture.
- Researchers at Columbia University are trying to build conscious robots.
- The case for using ChatGPT in schools.
Calls to ban TikTok or force its sell-off from its parent company ByteDance are gaining momentum, especially after reports of ByteDance’s surveillance of several U.S. journalists. And could Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI mark the end of Google’s search monopoly?
Plus: New Year's resolutions, including locking up your phone.
On today’s episode:
- Emily Baker-White, a technology reporter at Forbes who reports on TikTok.
Additional reading:
- An inside view into Project Texas, TikTok’s plan to limit access to sensitive U.S. user data.
- ByteDance used TikTok to track the location of journalists including Emily Baker-White.
- On TikTok, Chinese state media outlets pushed divisive videos about U.S. politicians.
- Shou Zi Chew, TikTok’s chief executive, is navigating the limits of his power.
- The federal government and several states have banned TikTok on government-issued devices.
- ChatGPT is a “code red” for Google Search.
- Microsoft and OpenAI are working on a ChatGPT-powered version of Bing.
The year of the “mini-Musk” chief executive, the end of homework as we know it, a crackdown on TikTok and other predictions for 2023.
Also, Sam Bankman-Fried’s arrest and answers to our listener questions.
On today’s episode:
- David Yaffe-Bellany, a cryptocurrency and financial technology reporter for The New York Times.
Additional reading:
- Bankman-Fried, the former chief executive of FTX, was arrested and denied bail by a judge in the Bahamas. Prosecutors accused him of engaging in widespread fraud.
- John J. Ray III, the new chief executive of FTX, described an “unprecedented” lack of record keeping at the company.
- Scientists used a quantum computer to simulate a pair of black holes.
It’s writing podcast scripts, finishing students’ homework and correcting mistakes in computer code: ChatGPT, the A.I. chatbot from OpenAI, is suddenly everywhere. Who should decide how it’s built? What could go wrong? And what could go right?
On today’s episode:
- Aviv Ovadya, a technologist and affiliate at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society and a visiting scholar at Cambridge University Leverhulme Center for the Future of Intelligence.
Additional reading:
- ChatGPT is inspiring awe and fear among users.
- Aviv Ovadya proposes governing tech platforms democratically through “platform democracy.”
- Meta’s Cicero AI is getting good at negotiating with humans.
- Researchers are diagnosing Parkinson’s using a phone, a patient’s voice and a machine learning model.
Elon Musk accuses Apple of trying to sabotage Twitter. But after his visit with Apple’s C.E.O., Tim Cook, things are … good? Then, the New York Times reporter Paul Mozur on the tactics Chinese protesters are deploying to avoid the most sophisticated censorship apparatus in the world.
Plus: S.B.F. says it’s been a “bad month.”
Additional Reading:
- Elon Musk accused Apple of threatening to pull Twitter from its App Store and tweeted about Apple’s “secret 30 percent tax” on developers for in-app purchases. The company has again delayed the launch of Twitter Blue as it seeks a way to avoid paying Apple’s 30 percent fee for the service.
- Later, Musk said the “misunderstanding” with Apple had been resolved after he met with the company’s C.E.O., Tim Cook, at Apple’s headquarters.
- Layoffs at Twitter gutted the company’s child safety team, which is responsible for removing child exploitation.
- Musk offered a “general amnesty” for over 60,000 banned accounts on Twitter.
- Protests in China rippled throughout the country, and citizens found ways to get around the Chinese censorship apparatus.
- On Wednesday, Sam Bankman-Fried appeared for an interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin at the DealBook Summit.
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Follow “Hard Fork” on TikTok: @hardfork
The balance sheet contains an apology, the in-house coach is concerned that company executives are “undersexed” and billions in customer funds remain in jeopardy. The wreckage at FTX goes from bad to worse.
Plus: Elon’s “extremely hardcore” plan for Twitter 2.0.
Additional Resources:
- George K. Lerner, FTX’s in-house performance coach, said he was shocked by the collapse of FTX.
- In an interview with Matt Levine, a Bloomberg columnist, Sam Bankman-Fried described his strategy to restore faith in the crypto ecosystem.
- Bankman-Fried reflected on his actions as chief executive of FTX in a series of Twitter messages with Kelsey Piper, a Vox reporter.
- Elon Musk told Twitter employees in an email that the company would become an “extremely hardcore” operation. Employees were asked to click yes to be part of the new Twitter or take severance.
- Musk’s social calendar includes courting comedians and hopping on yachts.
We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Follow “Hard Fork” on TikTok: @hardfork
This week, we go inside Elon Musk’s “dire” warnings, FTX’s spectacular collapse and Meta’s big layoffs. Has the tech industry lost its mind?
“Hard Fork” listeners: We want to hear your questions about the tech industry. Send them to hardfork@nytimes.com. Also, check us out on TikTok: @hardforkpod
Additional Resources:
- Elon Musk told Twitter employees the company faced a bleak financial picture in a meeting with staff on Thursday and in his first companywide emails.
- The world’s largest crypto exchange, Binance, said it had reached a deal to buy its competitor FTX, which was on the verge of collapse. The news about FTX had left crypto investors scrambling.
- Is the collapse of FTX crypto’s Lehman Brothers moment?
- Meta announced layoffs of 11,000 employees, accounting for about 13 percent of its work force.
“We cross our fingers and hope to make it through another day.” Twitter hasn’t spoken publicly since Elon Musk bought the company a week ago. But inside, employees describe a mood of fear, chaos, stress and bizarre requests to print out code.
Additional Resources:
- Members of Elon Musk’s inner circle, including the podcast hosts David Sacks, Jason Calacanis and Sriram Krishnan, are advising Mr. Musk on changes at Twitter.
- Engineers at Twitter were told to print out their most recent software code to show to Mr. Musk.
- Under pressure to increase revenue, Mr. Musk considered making Twitter users pay to keep their verification badges. The acclaimed horror author Stephen King was not thrilled by the idea.
- Twitter’s chief customer officer, Sarah Personette, and several other executives have left the company in recent days.
- Mr. Musk faces financial challenges in owning Twitter.
We look into the company’s weird new future with Times tech reporter Kate Conger. Plus, how Apple is single-handedly deciding the future of the digital economy, and a social media death watch.
Guest today:
- Kate Conger, a technology reporter in the San Francisco bureau of The New York Times
Additional resources:
- Elon Musk has closed the $44 billion deal to own Twitter.
- In the lead up to the deadline to complete the acquisition of the social media service, Elon Musk visited Twitter’s San Francisco office and sought to reassure advertisers about his plans for the platform through a Tweet.
- Spotify has struggled to bring audiobooks onto its platform after Apple rejected Spotify’s new app three times.
- The CEO of Altimeter Capital, the hedge fund and Meta shareholder, wrote a critical open letter to Meta and Mark Zuckerberg.
We sit down with the founder of Stability AI, Emad Mostaque, on the heels of his $101 million fund-raising round. His open-source Stable Diffusion image generator is the key to unlocking creativity, he says, and “one of the ultimate tools for freedom of expression” — as long as it stays out of the hands of a few censorious tech giants. So what’s this former hedge fund manager turned tech mogul thinking about how this technology could be used — or misused? Plus: A.I. Kevin and A.I. Casey stop by.
On today’s episode
- Emad Mostaque, the chief executive of Stability AI
Additional resources
- “Eshoo Urges N.S.A. & O.S.T.P. to Address Unsafe A.I. Practices” (Press Release, Representative Anna Eshoo of California)
- “This artist is dominating A.I.-generated art. And he’s not happy about it.” (Melissa Heikkilä, M.I.T. Technology Review)
- “A Coming-Out Party for Generative A.I., Silicon Valley’s New Craze” (Kevin Roose, The New York Times)
Meta is in the fight of its life — and Mark Zuckerberg hopes VR is the answer. Hmmm. Plus, an existential threat to the gig economy and the wildest news in artificial intelligence.
The $44 billion Twitter deal is back on the table — and Casey isn’t buying it. Kevin looks for friends in the Metaverse. And the “Hard Fork Transparency Report” debuts.
You can read Kashmir Hill’s story here: "This Is Life in the Metaverse."
Hosts Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore stories from the wild frontier of tech.
What’s real? What’s hype? “Hard Fork” is here to help you make sense of it. Tune in on Friday, Oct. 7.
Stay tuned for “Hard Fork,” a new podcast from The New York Times that comes Friday, Oct. 7 to this feed.
If you’re looking for “Sway” with Kara Swisher, you can search for older episodes in any podcast app or at
nytimes.com/sway
.
This month, Kara is revisiting some of her favorite episodes of Sway — including this conversation with the comedian and former Daily Show host, Jon Stewart, taped in March 2022.
This episode contains strong language.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
This month, Kara is revisiting some of her favorite episodes of Sway — including this conversation with the actor and self-proclaimed ‘statesman-philosopher, folk-singing poet’ Matthew McConaughey, taped in October 2021.
This episode contains strong language.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
This month, Kara is revisiting some of her favorite episodes of Sway — including this conversation with the Georgia gubernatorial candidate and Democratic powerhouse Stacey Abrams, taped in March 2021.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
This month, Kara is revisiting some of her favorite episodes of Sway — including this conversation with the longtime Trump adviser and C.E.O. of Gettr Jason Miller, taped in August 2021.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
This month, Kara is revisiting some of her favorite episodes of Sway — including this conversation with the humorist and famed New Yorker Fran Lebowitz, taped in February 2021.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
This month Kara is revisiting some of her favorite episodes — usually of Sway. But today she has another show to share with you: First Person.
In this episode of the New York Times Opinion podcast, host Lulu Garcia-Navarro speaks with Jerri Ann Henry, a former leader of the Log Cabin Republicans, an outspoken group of gay conservatives. Henry used to thinkher party was moving toward accepting gay rights, but with G.O.P. legislators backing anti-L.G.T.B.Q. laws in several states and the constitutional right to same-sex marriage potentially threatened after the reversal of Roe v. Wade, she now finds herself wondering whether she still has a place in the Republican Party — or any party.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
This month, Kara is revisiting some of her favorite episodes of Sway — including this interview with Monica Lewinsky, the producer, activist and — yes — former White House intern. We taped this conversation in October 2021.
This episode contains strong language.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
This month, Kara is revisiting some of her favorite episodes of Sway — including this conversation with the Tesla C.E.O., Elon Musk, taped in September 2020.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
As the show comes to a close, it felt fitting to save the most elusive guest for last: Kara Swisher herself.
In this conversation with the senior editor of “Sway,” Nayeema Raza, Kara revisits major moments from her year and a half of interviews — from a dropped Zoom call with Nancy Pelosi to a raw interrogation of Parler’s C.E.O., John Matze, which was taped as the Jan. 6 Capitol attack unfolded. They talk about the guests who got away (like Dolly Parton), the ones they could have been harder on and how Kara thinks about her own power, or sway. And they tackle questions in an AMA, or “ask me anything,” format, fielding listeners’ questions about what start-ups were before their time and which tech titans need more scrutiny. Kara also answers questions from the former “Sway” guests Jon Stewart, Walt Mossberg and Mark Cuban.
This episode contains strong language.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway.
And you can find Kara and Nayeema on Twitter — @karaswisher and @nayeema.
Stocks tumbling, inflation soaring and interest rates climbing — it’s clear America’s economy has hit some turbulence. And yet President Biden says a recession is “not inevitable.” Andrew Ross Sorkin, the founder and editor at large of DealBook at The New York Times, sat down with Kara Swisher to unpack our economic woes, predict what happens next and diagnose what Washington could have done differently.
In this conversation, they discuss how the pandemic highlighted our economic dependence on China and helped pave the way for both a crypto boom and the subsequent bear market. They break down the futures of companies from Netflix and Disney to Coinbase and Twitter, and discuss whether activist employees will continue to wield power with their corporate employers. And Andrew helps explain why airfares are so damn expensive.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Instagram, Twitter and TikTok can monopolize all of your time, driven by what the novelist Jennifer Egan calls humankind’s “ongoing hunger for authenticity.” But to Egan, social media is not a winning strategy for discovering what’s real or true: “Looking to the internet for authentic experience is just inherently a loser,” she says. The digital world, after all, offers only an “illusion of authenticity.”
In her newest novel, “The Candy House” — set in the same universe as her Pulitzer Prize-winning “A Visit From the Goon Squad” — Egan paints a picture of a world where the search for authenticity becomes so ubiquitous that people can choose to upload their memories — and entire consciousnesses — to a collective archive, and then share them for the world to see.
In this conversation, Kara Swisher and Egan discuss how far Silicon Valley is from accessing our consciousnesses and introducing this kind of dystopian technology. They debate how social media has changed the world and whether there is still room for optimism. And Kara tries to decipher which tech founder, if any, inspired Egan’s protagonist, whom Kara describes as Mark Zuckerberg with “the soul of Steve Jobs.” (Egan, for the record, denies all comparisons.)
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Raphael Warnock claims he’s not a politician, though he certainly sounds like one and serves as one. The U.S. senator from Georgia, who has long been the pastor at Martin Luther King Jr.’s former church, says that his “entry into politics is an extension” of his work on a range of what he sees as moral issues, such as health care, criminal-justice reform and voting rights.
Warnock became Georgia’s first Black senator in January 2021, when he narrowly beat the Republican incumbent, Kelly Loeffler, in a special runoff election. And he is set for yet another tough political battle ahead, against Herschel Walker, the former N.F.L. player, who in addition to his celebrity status also has an endorsement from Donald Trump. The stakes are high: “God knows these days, the Senate needs a soul,” Warnock says.
In this conversation, Kara Swisher talks to Warnock about his path from the pulpit to the Senate and the religious journey he traces in his recent memoir, “A Way Out of No Way.” She presses him on whether he can beat his celebrity opponent and asks what shadow Trump casts on this election. And they discuss the contrast between the jubilation he felt on his history-making victory and the horror that unfolded less than 24 hours later, as a mob attacked his “new office,” the Capitol, on Jan. 6.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Chris Dixon is one of Silicon Valley’s most ardent crypto-evangelists. A general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, he leads a16z Crypto, which invests in web3. At the beginning of the year, his proselytizing seemed to be paying off: Bitcoin had doubled in value in the last half of 2021, NFTs were all the rage, and crypto seemed poised for mainstream acceptance. Nowhere was this more evident than the Super Bowl broadcast, crammed with cryptocurrency ads featuring celebrities like LeBron James, Matt Damon and even the curmudgeonly Larry David.
But it’s all come crashing down. This week, Bitcoin reached its lowest point in 18 months — at just above $23,000 — and Ethereum is worth about a quarter of its November peak. The cryptocurrency exchange platform Coinbase announced it was laying off nearly 20 percent of its work force while the crypto-lending platform Celsius paused withdrawals, in a moment that looked a lot like the run on the banks in the film “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
In this conversation, Kara Swisher asks Dixon if we’re watching the beginning of an all-out crash for the industry. They discuss parallels to the 2008 financial crisis, dig into how much of crypto is “scam at scale,” and contemplate what regulation from the government could help. And they talk about whether web3 will really be the decentralized utopia enthusiasts paint it to be, another iteration of an internet that profits too few, or something in between.
This episode contains strong language.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
What if Silicon Valley’s next big frontier were not web3 but climate change? That’s the bet the venture capitalist John Doerr is making: Doerr, the billionaire author of “Speed and Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now,” recently donated $1.1 billion to Stanford University to fund a new school focused on climate and sustainability, describing climate science as “the new computer science.” But with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest assessment noting that the dangers of climate change are building rapidly, piles of cash and a burst of brain power may prove too little, too late.
In this conversation, Kara Swisher asks Doerr whether Silicon Valley can save the planet and what President Biden and all of Washington must do to honor the country’s goal to halve emissions by 2030. She presses him on whether lobbying for a carbon tax, mobilizing voters or even louder naming and shaming of fossil fuel companies may be a better use of Doerr’s dollars. And they discuss Elon Musk’s contribution to a sustainable future — with Doerr noting why he (wrongly) overlooked Tesla in its early days — and whether Apple’s potential moves in the EV market would sit well with the company’s founder, Steve Jobs.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
The House’s Jan. 6 committee is going prime-time. On Thursday, its members, with Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, serving as vice chair, will present findings in hearings televised throughout June on all major networks (except Fox News). But will Americans watch? Or care?
In this conversation, Kara Swisher breaks down the hearings with the former Obama senior adviser David Axelrod, the Republican strategist Sarah Longwell and the former U.S. attorney Preet Bharara. They discuss the downsides of prime time and the imperative to engage Americans on social media in this landmark moment for democracy. They also talk about what key moments and witnesses to watch for in the hearings and whether any revelations will, as one committee member, Jamie Raskin of Maryland, suggested, “blow the roof off the House.”
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Tech stocks may be under pressure, but the tentacles of Silicon Valley continue to grow, inching us closer to the dystopian world Dave Eggers paints in “The Every.” The novel imagines a world where the fictional equivalent of Google and Amazon merge to form an all-knowing corporate juggernaut that can program our every moment. Kara is revisiting her conversation with Eggers, which was taped in September.
In this conversation, which first aired in September, Kara and Eggers discuss the inspiration behind his latest Silicon Valley satire. They dig into Eggers’s tech skepticism — the author says he still uses a flip phone. They also discuss the challenges that Amazon’s rapidly growing market share poses for smaller publishing houses like Eggers’s own company, McSweeney’s.
Kara will be back on Thursday with a new episode.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Elon Musk swept Twitter off its feet in April, when he put in a bid to buy the company for $44 billion. But the impassioned beginnings of this acquisition have cooled down in the weeks since, as Musk has raised concerns about the inner workings of the company he agreed to buy essentially sight unseen (he did not conduct due diligence before he agreed to buy the social media platform). As the New York Times tech columnist Kevin Roose puts it, the deal is starting to look “like an arranged marriage that’s sort of going sour.” Musk has invoked concerns about spam and fake accounts on the site, as well as privacy considerations. And the billionaire has gone so far as to tweet that the deal is “temporarily on hold” before clarifying that he is “still committed to acquisition.” But a breakup between Musk and Twitter would make for a difficult, costly and very public divorce.
In this conversation, Kara Swisher takes stock of the Twitter-Musk marriage with Roose and William Cohan, a business writer for Puck News. They break down the balance of power between Musk and Twitter and discuss why Musk even wants the company. And Cohan breaks down how the math clears — after all, even with help from a potpourri of wealthy investors, including Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison and Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia, there are still questions about how Musk, the richest person in the world, will find the tens of billions of dollars he needs to close this deal.
This episode contains strong language.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
“Top Gun: Maverick” is expected to be one of the first blockbusters of the summer. But as streaming platforms proliferate and movie theaters continue to struggle, is a movie that was designed to be seen on the biggest screen possible be able to lure audiences back to theaters? David Ellison thinks so. He’s the founder and C.E.O. of Skydance Media, the company behind the film, as well as other action franchise reboots like “Mission: Impossible” and “Terminator.”
In this conversation, Kara Swisher talks to Ellison about working with Tom Cruise, who flew his own planes for “Top Gun: Maverick.” She digs into how Ellison’s heritage (he’s the son of the billionaire Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison) factored into his future as a filmmaker and the advice he got from his dad’s friend Steve Jobs. And David Ellison responds to Kara’s question about the news that his father joined a November 2020 phone call with Senator Lindsey Graham and Sean Hannity, among others, about contesting Trump’s loss.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
In the wake of the fatal shooting of 19 schoolchildren and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday, supporters of gun control are renewing calls for the government to act. But in a bid to negotiate a bipartisan consensus, the Democratic majority leader, Chuck Schumer, has signaled that there will not be an imminent vote on gun control legislation in the Senate. And the journalists Nicholas Kristof and Frank Smyth don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing.
“If anything, this could be a wake-up call — to have a restart of the conversation, to rethink how to approach it,” Smyth says.
In this episode of “Sway,” Kara Swisher talks to Smyth, the author of “The NRA: The Unauthorized History,” and Kristof, a former Times Opinion columnist who has written extensively about the policies needed to end America’s gun violence epidemic. The three dig into how the gun lobby has used ideology to distract America from better policies. They examine potential reforms, from a mandatory national gun registry to an increased minimum age. And they contemplate how liberal proponents of gun control can actually make progress.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Home to brands like Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and Bon Appétit, Condé Nast might as well be French for “magazine.” But the company’s C.E.O. sees a “difficult future” for print and is trying to pivot Condé Nast publications toward creating more digital content — even going so far as to say that Condé Nast is “no longer a magazine company.” Amid this fight for readers, clicks and subscriptions, the company has struggled publicly through a cultural reckoning, fielding accusations of a toxic work culture and firing some of its top editors in recent years.
In this interview, Roger Lynch explains why and how the company has changed. But Kara Swisher asks: How can it, with one of its most powerful figures, Anna Wintour, still at the helm?
Lynch discusses why he thinks Wintour is an agent of change, rather than the old guard. They talk about how management has handled negotiations with the company’s various unions. And they consider how publishing gatekeepers have been usurped by online ones like YouTube and TikTok. And Kara asks him to weigh in on the perennial media question: Is print dead?
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
A shooter, radicalized online, plotted a racist attack with plenty of digital fingerprints, intended to livestream it on social media and published a manifesto online. It happened in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019. And it seems to have happened again last week in Buffalo. In the years in between, we’ve heard plenty about social media companies amping up their content moderation efforts and clamping down on violent extremism. Yet nothing — or not enough — has really changed.
In this conversation, Kara Swisher dissects the internet’s role in the Buffalo attack with Wesley Lowery, a journalist who covers race and justice, and Jared Holt, a resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. The three discuss how extremism spreads online, the role that Fox News and Tucker Carlson play and what platforms like 4chan, Facebook and Twitch could have done differently.
They also examine the free speech argument made by many conservatives and Elon Musk and consider how a Texas law — which allows individuals to sue platforms if they feel their posts have been censored — may give social media platforms cover to do even less. Lowery points out there are many options between being a “hyper-free-speech absolutist” and “censorship.” Ultimately, as he puts it, these platforms need to ask themselves, “If I’m hosting the block party, do I let the Nazi keep showing up and ranting?”
This episode contains strong language.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Symone Sanders left a meteoric political trajectory to join the media. After working on Bernie Sanders’s 2016 campaign, advising Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign and serving as Vice President Kamala Harris’s chief spokesperson for her first year in office, Sanders is pivoting to become the host of her own MSNBC show, “Symone.” This makes her the latest in a revolving door of former Washington insiders turned media anchors (think George Stephanopoulos, Nicolle Wallace, Jen Psaki and Kayleigh McEnany).
In this conversation, Kara Swisher presses Sanders on whether the porousness between the Beltway and prime time is a good thing, and how she plans to cover a White House administration she just left.
They discuss the relevance of cable news in a world of plunging TV ratings and the rise of TikTok. They address speculation around high turnover in the vice president’s office (which Sanders dismisses as “palace intrigue”). And they talk politics, including Sanders’s predictions for midterms and whether Biden really is the best option for Democrats in 2024.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Hollywood went all in on streaming, but Netflix’s plummeting stock, CNN’s shutdown of its CNN+ streaming service, and a forthcoming sale of Vice has chief executives and the stock market questioning whether that was the wrong bet. In this conversation, Kara Swisher breaks down this year’s media shake-ups with Matt Belloni, founding partner at Puck News, and Ben Smith, the former New York Times media reporter who is a founder of a media start-up called Semafor.
They discuss what Smith calls Hollywood’s “love-hate relationship” with Netflix and whether the company will ever be up for sale. They make predictions about who will win the streaming wars. And they talk about Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover, what Belloni calls the billionaire’s “naïve” and “rosy” projections, and — of course — contemplate Musk’s plan to let Donald Trump back on the site.
This episode contains strong language.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Clarissa Ward has had, as she puts it, a “long and very complicated relationship” with Russia. The chief international correspondent for CNN, she has had stints in Moscow since the beginning of her career, and has struggled to get a Russian visa since she investigated the 2020 poisoning of the Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny.
But that hasn’t stopped her from reporting on the region, and in particular on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Yet after months of war, it can be an uphill battle to keep the viewers’ attention on the front line. “Our job is to keep finding ways to make sure that we don’t become numb and desensitized to the horrors of war, because that is exactly how wars continue and grind on,” Ward says.
In this conversation, taped last week, Kara talks to Ward about her time reporting in Ukraine, what it’s like to “let fear sit in the passenger seat” when reporting from the front and how the hangover of war can leave correspondents detached from the “bourgeois and banal” normalcy of home.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
One of the questions haunting the unprecedented leak of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is, quite simply, who did it and why? Speculation abounds online, and Chief Justice John Roberts, who called the leak a “betrayal,” has called for an investigation. But there are other lessons to be learned from the leak — about the state of the Supreme Court and its power, its relationship with the public and the kinds of reforms it may need.
In this conversation, Kara Swisher discusses it all with three lawyers: Neal Katyal, a former solicitor general and a professor at Georgetown Law who has argued before this court; Amy Kapczynski, the director of the Law and Political Economy Project and blog at Yale Law School and a former Supreme Court clerk; and George T. Conway III, one of the founders of the anti-Trump group the Lincoln Project.
They discuss what motives might have been behind a leak — for either a liberal or a conservative — and talk through what this breach says about the politicization or cohesion of the Supreme Court. They explore possible reforms for the highest court in the land. And they offer predictions for whether Justice Alito’s draft is indicative of the final ruling — with Katyal offering one theory that the court might dismiss the case as improvidently granted and “hear the case again next year.”
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Justice Samuel Alito’s leaked draft opinion has offered a chilling preview into what America will look like if Roe v. Wade is overturned. But the president and C.E.O. of the Center for Reproductive Rights, Nancy Northup, has been preparing for this battle. Her organization represents the Mississippi abortion clinic whose legal battle sparked the Supreme Court case, and Northup’s colleagues argued the case in front of the Supreme Court in December. “We are not waking up today to realize this was a threat,” she says. “We were looking at it back in 2004, and probably half the states in the United States would ban or severely limit abortion if Roe were overturned.”
In this conversation, Kara Swisher asks Northup to answer the questions that have sprung from this leaked draft. They discuss the consequences — legal, political and personal — if Roe v. Wade is overturned in the coming months and the cascading effects of this decision on other personal liberties, including access to contraception and marriage equality. And they discuss whether any argument in Alito’s draft opinion holds muster. (Nancy, for the record, thinks not.)
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
The Russia-Ukraine war has opened up questions about America’s role in global affairs and how the balance of power will reshuffle. These questions aren’t new; the discussion of the end of American dominance and the rise of new powers like China has captivated political and economic discourse. It is also the subject of Ray Dalio’s latest book, “Principles for Dealing With the Changing World Order.”
In this conversation, Kara Swisher asks Dalio, the billionaire behind the world’s largest hedge fund, Bridgewater, to explain his theory behind the rise and decline of empires. They talk about China’s rise and whether he is — as one Wall Street Journal article dubbed him — “in thrall to Beijing.” And they discuss how American competitiveness will shake out as the nation faces potential stagflation in addition to polarization, inequality and a new, Gen Z approach to work.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
It happened: Elon Musk struck a deal to buy Twitter for $44 billion. The billionaire, who is one of the platform’s most popular users, has already hinted at some of the changes he aspires to “unlock” at the company, from making Twitter a platform for “free speech” to making its algorithms open source and purging spam bots.
In this conversation, recorded live on Twitter Spaces, Kara Swisher talks with the journalists Casey Newton, Anand Giridharadas and William Cohan about how Elon’s reign will impact the platform and its users — and how the deal could still fall apart.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Whether it’s the Queen’s platinum jubilee, Meghan and Harry ditching their royal roles or the sexual assault allegations against Prince Andrew, Buckingham Palace has kept the media, and the public, hooked on the goings-on of a thousand-year-old institution. Tina Brown has been covering the royal family since the days of Diana, most recently in her forthcoming book, “The Palace Papers.”
In this conversation, the former Vanity Fair editor talks to Kara Swisher about how Elizabeth has sustained her relevance over her seven decades of rule and what happens to the British monarchy when she dies. They also discuss what’s happening in the nonroyal wing of British leadership — including Boris Johnson’s “Partygate.”
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Jimmy Kimmel has used his late-night slot to call out Donald Trump and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. But Kimmel says his jokes on "Jimmy Kimmel Live" aren’t about stoking partisanship — they’re about sounding the alarm on politicians who cross the line and amplify misinformation. And while Kimmel may find American politics bewildering right now, he says he still wants to hear from those he disagrees with — even “the media version of the Sackler family,” as Kimmel dubs Tucker Carlson. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to shut people up because I want to know where people are coming from,” he says. “I want to know what they think. I want to know if they have horrible thoughts. I want to hear them. I want to hear their confessions.”
In this conversation, Kara Swisher and Kimmel discuss whether cancel culture has come too far, Kimmel’s own evolution from pranks on “The Man Show” to political commentary on access to health care and how Trump changed the comedy world. They also discuss his recent kerfuffle with Representative Greene, who says she filed a threat report on Kimmel with the Capitol Police after he joked about her on his late night set.
This episode contains strong language.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
From Gov. Ron DeSantis signing Florida’s so-called Don’t Say Gay bill to Gov. Greg Abbott issuing a Texas directive that would classify medical care for transgender adolescents as “child abuse,” Republicans across the country seem to be doubling down on anti-L.G.B.T.Q. policies. Their argument? It’s about “parental rights.” But the playwright Tony Kushner has seen this kind of battle play out before. His “Angels in America” hit two-part play examined the AIDS epidemic and L.G.B.T.Q. life in the United States. And Kushner says this new wave of legislation is just the latest incarnation of a clampdown on rights under the conservative “fantasy” of a nation under “exclusive control by white straight men.”
In this conversation, Kara Swisher asks Kushner how far — or not — the nation has come since “Angels” and the AIDS crisis. Kushner traces a through line from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump and discusses how anger is a byproduct of progress. “There’s a complicated anger on the left, on the progressive side,” he says. “Presumably people on the progressive side of things believe in the possibility of constructing a more just world. And that that’s going to take a lot of thinking, as well as a lot of feeling.”
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
From her high-flying kicks in the film “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” to her unconventional take on a “Bond girl” in “Tomorrow Never Dies,” Michelle Yeoh has had a multidecade career defying stereotypes. Her latest role is no exception — she took on a part that was originally written for the actor Jackie Chan.
In “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” Yeoh plays the superhero: a Chinese American immigrant mother who is called upon to save the world — and herself — by hopping across multiverses.
In this conversation, Kara Swisher and Yeoh discuss the film, which Kara describes as “‘The Matrix’ meets L.S.D. trip.” They chat about how films like “Crazy Rich Asians” have catapulted change in Hollywood, and how Yeoh’s career has bridged two of the biggest movie markets in the world, from the United States to China.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
From rising gas prices and inflation to the Russia-Ukraine war, the U.S. economy has experienced all sorts of turbulence recently. But it hasn’t all been a bad news story: The U.S. unemployment rate reached a low of 3.6 percent in March and wages are rising. In this conversation, Kara Swisher asks the economist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman to put all these factors into perspective. “It’s not an A++ economy,” Krugman says, but it’s “immensely better” than where the economy was during the 2008 financial crisis.
Kara asks Krugman to take stock of the supply chain crisis, trillions of dollars in stimulus spending and other major economic agitators. They discuss whether the low unemployment rate will translate to greater worker power and what this might mean for unionization efforts at companies like Amazon. And Krugman weighs in on how the federal government could help cool down an “overheating” economy.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Elon Musk promoted himself from avid Twitter user to major stakeholder on Monday. Musk, the head of Tesla and SpaceX, who has over 80 million followers on the platform, now also owns a 9.2 percent stake in Twitter, making him the company’s largest shareholder. And by the time the company announced his appointment to the board on Tuesday, the internet was already speculating about the kinds of changes that Musk could influence. “He can make recommendations at the board meetings, but what he really has is soft power,” the tech reporter Casey Newton tells Kara Swisher.
In this conversation, Kara and Newton debrief how Musk’s infamy will contribute to his presence at Twitter. They discuss the possibility of an edit button on the site, as well as how Musk’s relationship with the C.E.O., Parag Agrawal, and the co-founder Jack Dorsey might affect the direction of the company. And they talk about whether Musk will push for Twitter to replatform Donald Trump.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Dr. Anthony Fauci has been the face of America’s Covid response and has been praised and vilified for his expertise. But who are all the other people who have worked behind the scenes at agencies like the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to guide America through the pandemic? This is a question Michael Lewis tackles in his book “The Premonition,” which was published in May 2021. He talks about how getting to know these public health experts gave him a completely different understanding of the country’s public health system — and the systemic challenges institutions like the C.D.C. face when pandemics and other crises strike.
In this conversation, Kara talks to Lewis about “The Premonition,” which he says was a “joyous writing experience.” They discuss the role that social media and the spread of misinformation online has played in hindering effective pandemic responses, as well as some of the characters he came across in his research for the book. He also shares his experience of grief after his daughter Dixie died in a car accident last spring. And he discusses with Kara what he thinks his next book will be about.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
The Russia-Ukraine War has been a dangerous time for journalists: Russian troops have kidnapped Ukrainian journalists working in contested territories, and the Kremlin has doubled down on censorship domestically as well, passing a law banning “fake” news about the Russian invasion, with a potential 15-year prison sentence.
Kara talks to two journalists who have had to flee their homes because of the war and have experienced the impacts of Putin’s misinformation campaign. Olga Tokariuk is a Ukrainian journalist and nonresident fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis who has covered Putin’s escalating disinformation campaign. She shares an update from western Ukraine, as well as her observations about the lies Putin has used since 2014 to justify Russian invasion. “This war has been very dangerous for journalists,” she tells Kara. And Tikhon Dzyadko is the editor in chief of T.V. Rain, the last independent television station in Russia before it suspended operations there in early March. Dzyadko, now based in Georgia, recently fled Russia for safety reasons. “I feel humiliated because I’m not a criminal. I did nothing wrong to be forced to leave the country,” he says. He talks to Kara about the state of independent media in Russia, how censorship has worsened as Putin has risen in power and his recent interview with Volodymyr Zelensky. Despite the dangers Tokariuk and Dzyadko have faced, they both reflect on the patriotic duty they feel to continue reporting during this turbulent time.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey has sued the Trump administration, Uber, Juul, Exxon Mobil, the Sacklers, and more — and has made a national name for herself in the process. Now she’s investigating social media companies for the impact they have on teen mental health, and she’s not impressed. “The level of hubris and arrogance, particularly on the part of Facebook, has really astounded me,” she tells Kara Swisher.
Healey is currently aiming for a statewide prize: She’s running for governor. If she wins, she would be the first woman (and the first lesbian) to hold the job in Massachusetts.
In this episode, Kara presses Healey on how she can appeal to a state that has elected moderate Republicans to the governorship in recent years. She also asks Healey to weigh in on the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill in Florida, which Healey says has to be fought both in the court of law and “in the court of public opinion — you really have to call out the misinformation for what it is.”
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
McDonald’s, BP, Netflix and hundreds of other companies have enlisted in the West’s pushback against Vladimir Putin. Since the start of Russia’s invasion, several hundred U.S. companies have announced plans to withdraw from or step down their operations in the country. The idea, says Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a professor at the Yale School of Management, is to make Russia such a pariah that Putin is forced to back down.
Sonnenfeld, who’s been called a “C.E.O. whisperer,” is working with his team to compile a corporate watchlist for Russian engagement that effectively serves as a hall of fame, and a hall of shame. In this conversation with Kara Swisher, he discusses when business blackouts will reach a tipping point and result in real change — the way the anti-apartheid boycott did in South Africa.
Kara and Sonnenfeld debate whether a “South Africa moment” is possible when big companies like Koch Industries refuse to leave and when China’s ascendance presents a completely different economic context. They also discuss domestic cases of corporations taking a stand on politics, from Disney’s fiasco with Florida’s so-called Don’t Say Gay bill to the backlash over voting rights bills in Georgia. And Kara asks Sonnenfeld whether morality should really be the business of C.E.O.s. “When people say to C.E.O.s, get back in your lane,” he replies, “this is the lane of business.”
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Big Tech has been amassing power and wealth for decades. So why is it taking the U.S. government so long to catch up? Congress, whose members can barely agree on lunch, is now contemplating a number of bipartisan bills on antitrust, privacy and more. Yet more than a year into an administration that seems to support more tech regulation, not a single piece of significant legislation has been passed.
In this episode, Kara Swisher presses Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, on why Tim Cook’s App Store is putting more checks on Facebook than the U.S. government is. Khanna’s response is that the challenge is public and political will. To pass privacy or antitrust legislation, “people have to say, this is not about tech,” Khanna tells Kara. “This is about our democracy. This is about our economy. And if we get to that point, then we will start to see the reform.”
In this conversation, which was taped in front of an audience at Cooper Union, Khanna and Kara talk about what significant tech legislation would look like. They discuss Khanna’s new book, “Dignity in a Digital Age,” in which he makes the case for distributing tech jobs — and thus tech wealth — across the country. They also talk about the Democrats’ prospects in the midterms and why he thinks progressives “won the ideological debate of 2020.”
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Whether it’s Andrew Cuomo or Dave Chappelle, everyone these days, it seems, is blaming “cancel culture” for career problems. But five years ago, Kathy Griffin was a canary in the coal mine, being canceled for reasons she says were overblown. In 2017, a photo where she posed with a mask styled to look like Donald Trump’s severed head went viral. She says it was clearly comedy, yet Griffin faced a Secret Service investigation as well as death threats from Trump supporters. She was also virtually blacklisted from her industry.
By 2020, with her career still stalled, Griffin had become increasingly reliant on pills. Eventually, she tells Kara Swisher, “I tried to kill myself.”
In this episode, Griffin opens up about the cost of the experience on her career and her mental health. She and Swisher also discuss the way her cancellation has been conflated with the actions of “toxicly masculine men.” And they run through a list of people who’ve recently been canceled — or are attempting to claw their way back.
This episode contains strong language.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
If you are having thoughts of suicide or are concerned that someone you know may be having those thoughts, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255 (TALK) or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources. Go here for resources outside the United States.
As Facebook morphs into Meta and makes a push for immersive 3-D connection (without solving all of its existing problems), Kara Swisher takes a look back at the company’s early days — and the fictionalized telling of them — with the actor Andrew Garfield. He had his breakout role playing the Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin in the 2010 film “The Social Network.” He tells Kara, “I immediately shut my Facebook page down as soon as I read the script.”
A decade later, Garfield’s career has taken off: He’s earned a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination for his latest project, “Tick, Tick … Boom!,” and even played Spider-Man. But unlike many celebrities, Garfield isn’t particularly active online. “If I wanted to have the life of privacy and protection and freedom and wholeness,” he says, “I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to be exposed to all of the faceless, voiceless, nameless people on social media.”
In this conversation, Garfield and Kara talk about his unconventional approach to the internet and the dangers of idolizing Kanye West or Elon Musk. They also speak about Garfield’s portrayal of Jonathan Larson, the composer of “Rent,” in “Tick, Tick … Boom!” And they discuss how the death of a parent has affected the way they each embrace life.
This episode contains strong language.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Ever since Russian forces invaded Ukraine late last month, President Biden has been toeing a fine line between providing support to the Ukrainians and averting kinetic, nuclear and cyber conflict between superpowers. In this conversation, Anne Neuberger, the deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology, unpacks how this conflict is evolving in the cyber realm.
Kara Swisher asks Neuberger how, in the face of attacks on Ukrainian banks and the Defense Ministry, the U.S. government “is working directly with Ukraine on cybersecurity” and why the Russians didn’t strike early on with the large-scale cyberattacks many experts had expected to see — similar to the 2015 attack that took out Ukraine’s electrical grid. They discuss how cyber tensions between Russia and the U.S. may escalate, with Neuberger clarifying that when the secretary of state reaffirmed this week that the U.S. and NATO “will defend every, every inch of NATO territory should it come under attack,” he was speaking not only of ground attacks, but also cyberattacks. And Kara presses Neuberger on whether the administration should have responded to the SolarWinds hack that infiltrated the Pentagon and the State Department with more than economic sanctions — and whether U.S. cyber policy has enough teeth to really deter Putin.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
On Friday, the Kremlin blocked access to Facebook inside Russia and passed a law making it illegal to spread what the government determines to be “false information” about the country’s armed forces. It was the latest move in President Vladimir Putin’s crackdown on dissent, which may be working. TikTok announced on Sunday that it is suspending livestreaming and new posts from Russia in response to the new disinformation law.
But Clint Watts, a former FBI special agent who is now at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, believes that ultimately this crackdown could backfire. He says Putin “has a disaster on his hands,” noting that a country cannot disinformation its way out of fallen soldiers — the Mothers of Russia will push back. And Watts believes platform interruptions and restrictions to operations of many Western companies — including Apple, Microsoft, Netflix, Oracle, Cogent, Visa and Mastercard — mean Putin is playing a dangerous game at home. The result could be disastrous: “We’re worried about Kyiv falling today. I’m worried about Moscow falling between day 30 and six months from now.”
In this conversation, Kara Swisher and Watts discuss the evolving information crackdown in Russia and what actions Putin may take if he is backed into a corner. They also discuss the threat of cyberwarfare and why alarm bells should be going off in the West when it comes to Russia, and to China.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
As he wages a war against Ukraine, Vladimir Putin is finding strange allies on U.S. soil — from former President Donald Trump to the Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Jon Stewart wasn’t surprised. The Daily Show comedian and host of the new Apple TV + series “The Problem With Jon Stewart” believes a certain subset of the right has long viewed Putin as “an ideological brother,” noting that “for years it’s been pretty clear that they would much rather do a deal with Putin than Pelosi.”
In this conversation, Stewart tells Kara Swisher why it’s important to distinguish people like Carlson — who he calls a “dishonest propagandist” — from their audiences, many of whom are “redeemable.” They also tackle the fire Stewart came under when he trod into the Joe Rogan/Spotify controversy, how enragement drives engagement in modern media and why the 24/7 news cycle can be so destructive — “unless it’s 9/11 or an invasion of a sovereign country, because now the gravity of the situation matches the urgency that they gin up.”
This episode contains strong language.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Rewarding as it is, motherhood can be an uphill battle. In the pandemic, we heard this in the stories of mothers struggling to juggle child care and schooling with work and other responsibilities at home. But the pandemic simply lifted the curtain on an underrepresented reality for many parents. Actor, writer and director Maggie Gyllenhaal seeks to capture the messiness of motherhood in her new film “The Lost Daughter.” It’s an adaptation of the Elena Ferrante novel that explores the story of an “unnatural mother” named Leda, who finds parenting to be a “crushing responsibility.” Gyllenhaal imagined playing scenes of a mother ignoring her daughter’s cries or rejecting her injured child’s pleas for a kiss — things we’re taught “we’re not allowed to think or feel” — would be “radical” for a film, especially if women watched with their mothers, partners or children.
In this conversation, Kara talks to Gyllenhaal about her transition to directing, how she got the infamously private Ferrante to offer her blessing for the film and why the domestic is “high art.” They also discuss the power and importance of women’s storytelling and whether anyone is an unnatural mother — which, as Gyllenhaal muses, begs the question: “Well, what is a natural mother?”
This episode contains strong language.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
President Biden has interviewed at least three candidates for the Supreme Court seat vacated by Justice Stephen Breyer and has committed to nominating a Black woman to fill it. As the country awaits his selection, Kara Swisher turns to the law professor Anita Hill - host of the new podcast "Getting Even" - who testified during Clarence Thomas’s confirmation 30 years ago, accusing him of sexual harassment.
The all-white, all-male Senate committee that interrogated Hill asked her whether she was a “scorned woman” and to recount her “most embarrassing” moment with Thomas. Reflecting today, she says, “There are those who are trying to put Black women in a box, whether it’s a Black woman who comes forward to talk about their experience of harassment or whether it’s a woman who will be considered for the Supreme Court.” And Hill argues this has consequences today: “Those boxes that we are put in has allowed for this country to lack a diverse judicial system that speaks to the population and represents the population.”
In this conversation, Kara and Hill talk about the barriers to a more diverse judiciary, whether she would take a call from Biden to consider the role and how the process has (or hasn’t) changed since the Thomas and Kavanaugh hearings. And they discuss whether cancel culture can actually hold the powerful accountable for their actions.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
From Snoop Dogg to Melania Trump, it seems like everyone has gotten into the NFT craze in the last year, with billions of dollars worth of sales made in 2021. NFTs may be colloquial now, but the craze really picked up almost a year ago, when an artist named Michael Winkelmann (also known as Beeple) sold his work, “EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS,” for a whopping $69 million — the third-highest auction price involving a living artist, after Jeff Koons and David Hockney.
So this week, Kara is revisiting her March 2021 conversation with Beeple. They talk about whether his virtual collage, which stitches together 5,000 images (including lactating humanoid breasts and Buzz Lightyear with a bloodied chain saw) is actually worth $69 million, how he grapples with the environmental impact of crypto minting, and how NFTs will change how we buy and flaunt digital ownership.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Keith Rabois minted his wealth with Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and other members of the so-called “PayPal Mafia.” Now, though, he’s moved to Miami and become one of the city’s biggest hype men. He believes Florida — which has already seen an influx of tech bros, venture capital investments and cryptocurrency plays during the pandemic — offers a better home to tech than California can, largely because of the politics. He tells Kara Swisher: “The mayor of Miami, the governor of Florida treat citizens like customers. ‘What can we offer you? How can we help?’ That’s their goal, and that’s how they frame everything.”
In this conversation, Kara presses Rabois whether tech’s doubling down on Florida is all just about escaping high taxes. They also discuss whether venture capital is what investment banking was in the 2000s. And they catch up on the news, from stock fall-offs in big tech to why Peter Thiel will be stepping down from Meta’s board.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans have died of opioid overdoses in the past 20 years — and the crisis has only worsened during the pandemic. In September, the Sackler family, which was behind the OxyContin manufacturer Purdue Pharma and helped create this overdose epidemic, finally agreed to disband the company and to pay a settlement of $4.5 billion. That may sound like a whopping amount of money, but as the journalist Patrick Radden Keefe points out, it’s arguably not. He profiled the Sacklers’ rise in his book “Empire of Pain” and points out: “They’re paying it out over nine years; they have an $11 billion fortune. They can just pay it with the returns.” Plus, as part of the settlement, the Sacklers were granted sweeping immunity from opioid-related lawsuits. (In December, a federal judge overturned this decision, saying the family could not be released from civil claims related to the opioid epidemic. Purdue Pharma is appealing.)
In this conversation, Kara Swisher asks Radden Keefe why and how the Sacklers got off relatively scot-free. They discuss the challenge of holding power to account when corporations like Purdue Pharma and regulators like the F.D.A. can paint themselves as a “driverless car,” as though there are no decision makers at the wheel. They consider the justice that’s playing out through popular opinion and culture, as museums from the Met to the Tate remove the Sackler name from their walls. And they discuss how the family warded off would-be whistle-blowers and surrounded itself with enablers willing to treat a national health crisis as just a “PR problem.”
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
From the big lie to Bill Gates’s supposed Covid vaccine microchips, the internet loves a conspiracy theory. In this conversation, Kara Swisher revisits one that is almost a decade old: that Sandy Hook was a hoax. After a shooter at Sandy Hook Elementary School killed 26 people, including Noah Pozner, his father, Leonard Pozner, began seeing online musings that the tragedy was a production of crisis actors and part of a scheme to attack Second Amendment rights. The conspiracies were rampant on Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, WordPress blogs and YouTube videos — and they were amplified in particular by the far-right broadcaster and conspiracist Alex Jones on his media outlet Infowars.
Kara asks Pozner why he “respected the possibility that people had questions” about the massacre and how he engaged with Sandy Hook deniers. She and Pozner cover the lawsuits that he and other Sandy Hook parents are pursuing against Jones. And they discuss the responsibility borne by platforms like Facebook and Twitter, which hosted Jones for so long. As Pozner points out, “The focus for all of these platforms is growth and expansion. They really don’t want to deal with the cleanup at all.”
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Brands like Gucci, Nike and Ralph Lauren are already flooding virtual worlds like Roblox and Fortnite with digital goods and advertising. But the designer and podcaster Debbie Millman thinks these emergent virtual worlds run the risk of the same problems many see with social media platforms like Instagram — particularly if users are put in environments that lend themselves to comparison. “I don’t know very many people that come away from 30 minutes on Instagram feeling really good about who they are,” says Millman. And she’s not bullish about web 3.0 solving the problem: “That experience in A.R., V.R. is going to ultimately have the same thing happen.”
In this conversation, Kara Swisher and Millman discuss the impact — and limits — of brands in shaping our lives and what that means in an age where people increasingly refer to themselves as brands. They grapple with the economy of influencers, the illusions of Insta-happiness and Facebook’s recent rebranding to Meta. The two veteran podcasters also swap notes on interviewing, the art of conversation and Wordle.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
The former Fox commentator Jonah Goldberg — who has been called a “Fox defector” — says that Tucker Carlson’s latest documentary series was “the anvil that broke the camel’s back.” Titled “Patriot Purge,” it featured conspiracy theories about the Jan. 6 insurrection under the guise of journalistic interrogation. It also became a breaking point in a schism unfolding at the network between those who have embraced the Big Lie and those who feel troubled by the network’s abandonment of basic facts.
In this conversation, Goldberg offers insight into Fox’s embrace of Trumpism and the ways the network has “played footsie” with falsehoods and the former president. They discuss Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes and the legacy media shake-up spurred in part by Substack, which Goldberg and his business partner Stephen Hayes use to distribute their conservative online publication, The Dispatch. And they discuss the 2024 Republican primaries, as Goldberg muses about whether a potential Tucker Carlson ticket could beat Trump.
This episode contains strong language.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
As Omicron surged across the country, Democratic and Republican governors alike doubled down on indoor mask mandates and declared states of emergency. But when asked whether he would make masks mandatory, Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado declared, “The emergency is over.” Unlike Ron DeSantis of Florida, Greg Abbott of Texas and other governors who have refused mandates, Polis is a lifelong Democrat. His take: Omicron is “a very different situation than early 2020” and there’s a “silent majority” who are already vaccinated and want to choose how they manage their risk. Or, as he put it in an interview, “At this point, if you haven’t been vaccinated, it’s really your own darn fault.”
In this conversation, Kara Swisher presses Polis to explain his relatively laissez-faire approach to pandemic response. They also discuss the political landscape of his purple state, why Polis got love on Tucker Carlson’s show and whether his centrist approach makes him similar to Joe Manchin.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Bob Iger’s recent retirement from Disney marks a sea change for the company. Starting at ABC nearly 50 years ago, Iger ascended from working at a local news network to serving as the chief executive and chairman of Disney, ABC’s owner. During that time, he navigated tectonic shifts in Hollywood, including the rise of streaming platforms and the fall of movie chains. So Kara Swisher dragged Iger out of his three weeks of retirement to chat more about the future of entertainment.
In this conversation, Kara and Iger talk about his strategy for getting Disney through the streaming wars, including the impact of significant acquisitions, from Iger’s deal to bring in Lucasfilm, the studio behind the Star Wars franchise, to the company’s $71.3 billion purchase of 21st Century Fox assets. They also discuss the symbiosis and tensions between Silicon Valley and Hollywood, the power of creators in the digital world and what entertainment will look like on web3. And they discuss Iger’s political ambitions, and why he decided against running for president. This conversation was recorded at the Richmond Forum.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
With canceled plans, restaurants shuttering and talk of school shutdowns, the experience of the Covid pandemic can sometimes feel like two steps forward, one step back. And it’s not helped by changing (and sometimes confusing) guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the lack of key resources like at-home rapid tests, and the misinformation that abounds from Dr. Google.
So in this conversation, Kara Swisher turns to two experts to answer our burning questions about the latest wave: Dr. Ashish Jha is a physician and the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, and Emily Oster is an economist at Brown who has been collecting data on how schools respond to the pandemic.
Jha and Oster answer Kara’s questions on everything from medical misinformation and the Biden administration’s pandemic responses to the costs of rapid testing. They speak in detail about schools and the effects the pandemic has had on the mental health of parents and children. And they discuss what’s needed for the country to prepare for the next variant, whenever it arrives.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Few people draw more ire in Silicon Valley than the Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. She’s long fought against the power of big banks and corporate behemoths, so it’s natural that she’s turned her attention to breaking up dominant tech companies and taxing the billionaires behind them. So far, it’s not going down well: When she called out Elon Musk, a billionaire who paid no federal income tax at all in 2018, for not paying his fair share, she received a classically Muskian tweetback: “Please don’t call the manager on me, Senator Karen.”
Her response? “Every nurse who paid taxes, every firefighter who paid taxes, every dishwasher and waitress who paid taxes paid more than Elon Musk. That’s a broken taxation system,” she tells Kara Swisher.
In this conversation, Kara asks Warren to make her case for antitrust scrutiny of Silicon Valley. They discuss Congress and the Biden administration’s first year — if Build Back Better is actually “Build Back Never,” Joe Manchin, and why Warren thinks the Democrats could expand their number in the Senate this year.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Yesterday, the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice announced they would work to rewrite merger rules in an approach that would clamp down on big tech deals that have allowed companies like Amazon, Google and Facebook to expand their tentacles across industries and across more areas of our lives. Today, Lina Khan sat down with Kara and DealBook editor Andrew Ross Sorkin in an exclusive interview for the New York Times and CNBC.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson has pointed to 2022 as a milestone for American history, marking the year the country will have existed as an independent nation for as long as the institution of slavery operated on its soil. In observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we’re re-airing Kara’s interview with Wilkerson.
This conversation was taped last year, shortly after the events of Jan. 6. In it, the author of “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents” offers historical context for us to make sense of the present, particularly the country’s seemingly intractable systemic racism. Wilkerson and Kara discuss the argument at the core of her book — that America’s racial order can be understood as a caste system. And Wilkerson shares how she saw an invisible ranking system play out in the raid at the U.S. Capitol, arguing that any impulse to move on quickly would be a mistake.
Kara will be back on Thursday with a new episode.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
San Francisco’s politicians are struggling to find a Goldilocks balance when it comes to public safety, and Democrats across the nation should pay attention. After declaring a state of emergency in the Tenderloin neighborhood to deal with what she called a public health crisis of opioid use, Mayor London Breed has been criticized for taking too strong a hand in forcing people to seek treatment for drugs or mental health problems. Meanwhile, the city’s district attorney, Chesa Boudin has been accused of being soft on crime and faces a recall in June. No one is “just right” on the balance between public safety and overpolicing, and that’s why law and order may be emerging as a wedge issue for Democrats, like critical race theory was in the Virginia gubernatorial race.
In this conversation with Kara, Breed talks about the crackdown she’s leading and whether she was ever the “defund the police” mayor some in the media painted her to be (and critiqued her for stepping away from). Breed says her experience growing up in a public housing development in the Western Addition neighborhood gives her a perspective many of her critics may not have. “They have a theory as to what they believe based on their ideology, but they’re also white,” she says. “They are not Black people who had these unfortunately traumatizing experiences in communities where there’s not trust with the police, but also there’s a desire to be safe.”
They also discuss the flight of tech money out of San Francisco, Breed’s Covid response strategy and how Black mayors like Breed, Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta and Lori Lightfoot of Chicago are “held to a completely different standard.” And Kara asks whether Breed wants to run for a third term — or even a senate seat.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
When it comes to the metaverse, Phil Spencer could give Mark Zuckerberg a run for his money. The head of Xbox and executive vice president of gaming at Microsoft, Spencer says popular games like Microsoft’s Halo and Minecraft — and competitors like Roblox and Fortnite — are already creating virtual worlds similar to the metaverse. And he says that video games, whose sales have soared during Covid, could offer lessons for the workplaces that have moved online in the pandemic: “We look at these virtual spaces, and some of the things that we’ve learned in video games of people coming together to cooperate together, to achieve tasks.”
In this conversation, Kara and Spencer discuss the elements of the metaverse that are mirrored in gaming and whether Xbox aims to become the Netflix of gaming. They also talk about what the gaming industry learned from Gamergate, how Spencer views the sexual misconduct allegations at Activision Blizzard (the publisher of Call of Duty and a close partner of Xbox), and how Microsoft is handling harassment by players on its own games. And while discussing the content moderation problems that are shared by gaming companies and social media platforms, Spencer explains why he thinks stoking enragement would be a “death strategy” for Xbox.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
After an angry mob attacked the Capitol last year and users on the right-leaning social network Parler organized, shared footage and called to “burn D.C. to the ground,” Kara Swisher grilled the platform’s co-founder and C.E.O., John Matze. The interview was cited in Apple’s decision to take Parler off its App store and Amazon’s decision to suspend web hosting service for Parler. Google also booted the platform off its Play Store. Parler effectively went offline because of these three moves, and Matze lost his job.
A year after Jan. 6, and with Parler back online, Swisher interviews the platform’s new chief executive, George Farmer. He’s bent on reviving Parler, saying: “You’ve never seen a company quite so unceremoniously booted off into digital exile. It’s the kind of medieval equivalent of the church sort of excommunicating someone.” He sees the deplatforming of Parler and the former president as signs that Big Tech has gotten too big and too powerful, calling the companies “the unprecedented leviathans of the corporate world.” And yet, Farmer notes, “here we are basically saying, ‘These guys are good guys.’”
In this conversation, Swisher pushes Farmer on how his platform failed on Jan. 6 and what it may still be missing today. They also discuss Donald Trump’s return to social media and the end of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s personal Twitter account. And while they both agree that Apple, Amazon and Google could have done more to punish other social media sites, like Facebook and Twitter, after Jan. 6, Swisher pushes back on Farmer’s assertion that the lack of action was some kind of “colluding behavior” among tech giants. Her take? They simply didn’t want “the stink of sedition” that Parler and Matze helped enable a year ago.
This episode contains strong language.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Remember social media before Donald Trump’s presidency? Dick Costolo does. He was Twitter’s chief executive from 2010 to 2015. And despite being in the hot seat for certain content moderation decisions during his tenure, Costolo thinks that platforms have the right to take down whatever and whomever they want. Costolo argues that the key is transparency and companies acknowledging that every decision “ends up being subjective anyway” — so that no one is surprised “when we decide to treat the avatar who signed up on a Tuesday with zero followers differently than we treat The New York Times.”
(No, we did not ask him to say that.)
In this conversation, Kara Swisher talks to Costolo about content moderation pre- and post-Jan. 6, and how a decentralized, blockchain-based Twitter might create an information ecosystem in which “we all place our own filter over what the world looks like.” They also discuss Jack Dorsey’s decision to step down as Twitter’s chief executive in November. And in case the company’s new leader, Parag Agrawal, is listening, Costolo shares some advice he received from Jeff Bezos when he first became Twitter’s chief executive.
You can find more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
From microdosing to decriminalizing and investing, many Americans are taking a renewed interest in psychedelics. As states like New York and Michigan consider decriminalizing psilocybin and investors gamble on psychedelic start-ups, Kara revisits her conversation with Michael Pollan from August. They discuss his latest book, “This Is Your Mind on Plants,” which explores the consciousness-altering chemicals of plant medicines like peyote, why the U.S. government waged war on psychedelics and other Schedule I drugs and what’s on the horizon.
“One of the challenges of the next few years is negotiating the drug peace that follows the drug war,” he says.
They also talk about how changing cultural norms around certain drugs may pave the way for better policy and when MDMA therapy might be approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
Kara will be back next Monday with a new episode.
You can find more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
The Facebook whistle-blower Frances Haugen leaked a treasure trove of internal documents to the press and testified before Congress about the extent to which the tech giant fuels political polarization and erodes the mental health of teenagers. In this conversation with Kara, Haugen contemplates how Facebook has gotten away with it for so long. She discusses the company’s focus on seemingly objective metrics, the fixation with free speech and censorship debates and a general “fetishization of flatness” most clearly seen in the company’s large open-floor offices. All of this, says Haugen, allows Mark Zuckerberg to shirk responsibility: “When you refuse to acknowledge that power exists, you actually end up reinforcing the fact that power isn’t flat in the world.”
Haugen thinks Facebook’s leaders should instead focus on the design choices they enable and reward every day, arguing that it would cost Facebook a small fraction of its profits to address some of the thorniest problems that plague the platform and its users.
Kara and Haugen discuss her journey from Day 1 on the job to the moment she decided to blow the whistle. Kara presses Haugen, who is no longer a Facebook employee, on why she was ever optimistic about the social media platform and how it is different from any of the other Silicon Valley companies that appear on her résumé. And Haugen shares why — after all she’s seen and all that’s transpired — “if I could work at Facebook again, I would go and work at Facebook again.”
This episode contains strong language.
You can find more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
We are quickly approaching the dystopian future that Neal Stephenson outlined in his 1992 best seller “Snow Crash.” That book anticipated and coined the term “metaverse,” a concept that almost 30 years later has become a reality for many gamers, and the North Star for a certain Mark Zuckerberg. In his latest book, “Termination Shock,” Stephenson sounds his next alarm bell — this time on climate change.
In this conversation, Kara discusses the perverse relationship between personal wealth and climate survival. They chat about sulfur guns, earth suits and the need to ramp up the space race for human survival. And they lament that politics and sluggish government action to rein in climate change may mean human survival will be left to the benevolence of future “carbon capture trillionaires.”
You can find more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
The fitness industry has exploded into a nearly $100 billion sector, and Alison Bechdel is among the exercise-obsessed. Bechdel, the cartoonist whose comic strip inspired the Bechdel Test for female representation in Hollywood, says she has found transcendence in everything from yoga and karate to weight lifting and biking. Her book, “The Secret to Superhuman Strength,” came out in May and examines the exercise craze, and what it exposes about our attitudes around self-care, the booming fitness economy and even our mortality.
This week, Kara revisits her conversation with Bechdel — one of her favorites from this year. They discuss the evolution of workout culture (“yoga boom” included), the politics of art (especially during the Trump era) and how mainstream cultural norms have finally caught up to, as Bechdel puts it, “where lesbians were back in the ’80s.”
Kara will be back on Monday with a new episode.
You can find more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
In 2019, when Rutger Bregman published his book “Humankind: A Hopeful History” and made a case for the decency of human nature, the world had yet to experience a deadly pandemic. But what does the historian think of humanity now, amid protests against coronavirus lockdowns as well as the climate crisis and the rampant spread of misinformation?
“What I see is a world where billions of people radically adjusted their lifestyle to stop the virus from spreading further,” he says.
In this conversation, Kara Swisher invites Bregman to make a case for taking our capacity for goodness more seriously, even in anxious and uncertain times. But she stress-tests the theory, using examples that range from atrocities like the Holocaust to widespread apathy about the climate crisis. And they discuss what Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook got wrong about human behavior, his case for societies’ moving toward a 15-hour workweek and why he decided to publish a clip of Tucker Carlson blowing up at him.
This episode contains strong language.
You can find more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Emily Ratajkowski is winning in the Instagram era: She has 28.6 million followers and has spent more than half her life making a living as a model. But even at her level of success, she still wonders: When you make a living off your desirability, is the power of your body ever just yours?
It’s one of the questions she explores in her debut book of essays, “My Body.” Because even now, she’s still working to keep her followers’ attention. “I want them to see me and look at me and also click the link to read the article that I care about,” she says. She calls Instagram an empowering tool for curating and controlling her narrative. But she also sees how the platform is a “validation machine” that can quickly turn toxic, especially for teenage girls navigating a world shaped by the male gaze.
In this conversation, Kara Swisher asks Ratajkowski about why she’s chosen to stay in modeling for now, despite the ambivalence she expresses about both the profession and the double-edged sword of beauty. They also discuss how she wishes she could be angrier and why she doesn’t regret her appearance in Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” music video.
This episode contains strong language.
You can find more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
You might’ve heard Kara mention she and her partner are expecting a new baby. He’s arrived — four weeks early and right on time — so the team is taking a break this Thanksgiving week. Come back next Monday for her conversation with the model and writer Emily Ratajkowski.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
In May, Sally Buzbee became the first woman to be hired for one of the most coveted jobs in journalism: executive editor of The Washington Post. Since then, Buzbee has overseen ambitious digital investigations into the Jan. 6 capitol attack and how countries’ climate pledges are based on flawed information. But she’s also had to tackle the bigger challenges that come with running a newspaper today: a turbulent media landscape shaped by political polarization, social media and the spread of misinformation. Buzbee and The Washington Post have already had to address some of these issues: The paper issued corrections last week to a handful of Steele Dossier articles they published in the past few years. The paper has been sued by the reporter Felicia Sonmez, who has alleged unfair treatment by editors.
In this conversation, Kara Swisher presses Buzbee on her agenda for The Washington Post. “I don’t want to give up on any reader,” she says. “Certainly there are people who are not going to trust the Washington Post, but I don’t think we want to give up on big swaths of the world.” They also discuss whether it’s possible for the Bezos-owned publication to cover Amazon independently and how newsrooms can rebuild trust with communities that believe they’re biased.
You can find more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Hans Zimmer has spent his career scoring cinematic worlds, from the ancient Rome of “Gladiator” to the futuristic landscape of “Dune.” So what does the metaverse sound like to him? “It sounds like just some giant, horrible, dehumanizing mess right now,” he says.
Zimmer sees tech’s influence everywhere in music. He posits that from drums to violins to synthesizers, “every piece that we use other than the human voice is a piece of technology.” But he’s also cleareyed about how innovations like artificial intelligence and streaming don’t fix underlying issues of fairness in compensation: “The people who have access to the distribution systems really still always will hold the cards.”
In this conversation, Kara Swisher talks to Zimmer about his process for composing the score for “Dune” and why he says finding out that the movie would premiere simultaneously in theaters and on HBO Max was a “crushing moment.” They also discuss how composers can adapt to the shifting demands of viewers and a streaming economy — and what he’s working on next.
(A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)
Kara Swisher is working on a podcast for HBO, which is part of WarnerMedia and is a major player in streaming media.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Mark Zuckerberg might be trying to stake his claim on the metaverse, but he’s far from the first person to envision a more virtual world. Take it from Jaron Lanier.
He’s often called the “godfather of virtual reality,” and his company, VPL Research, developed V.R. goggles and gloves in the 1980s. He says he always imagined a metaverse with “a hundred million micro entrepreneurs doing their little thing here and there — there wouldn’t be some overlord.” Now, as big companies like Roblox and Epic build virtual worlds, he describes how these technologies will continue to shape our lives.
[You can listen to this episode of “Sway” on Apple, Spotify, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.]
In this conversation, Kara Swisher talks to Lanier about Facebook’s pivot to Meta, which he says sounded “like some megalomaniac took my stuff and filtered it through some weird self-aggrandizement filter.” They also discuss why Lanier viewed technologies like automation and V.R. as “a little technological token of that hope of eternal creativity” back in the ’80s. And Lanier, the author of “Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now,” makes the case for why Facebook should be paying users for their data.
This episode contains strong language.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
If there’s one thing the country seems united on, it’s that something needs to change at Facebook. The company has drawn critics across industries and political persuasions, from Silicon Valley to Congress.
But one unexpected critic who’s been sounding the alarm long before the Facebook Papers comes, instead, from Hollywood: Sacha Baron Cohen. As revelations from the company's internal documents continue to roll out, Kara revisits her conversation with the actor, which originally aired in February. She and Cohen discuss his film, “The Trial of The Chicago 7” and what he calls the “Silicon Six,” a group of the most powerful people in tech who, he's said, are "all billionaires, all Americans, who care more about boosting their share price than about protecting democracy." And they trade notes on the competition between rival clown schools in France.
Kara will be back on Thursday with a new episode.
You can find more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
The Facebook Papers and whistle-blower testimony have given us yet more insight into the company’s impact on polarization and mental health, but if you could wave a magic wand and “pull the plug on Facebook,” would these problems go away? Casey Newton, the journalist behind the newsletter Platformer, says no. Imagining a universe where “Mark Zuckerberg is not the C.E.O., the company doesn’t exist — I actually don’t think you would improve the internet that much,” he says. He caveats that Facebook has never been held accountable “in any meaningful way,” but the problems are much bigger than any one platform.
This may make him a Facebook “apologist” in the eyes of Kara Swisher — which is exactly why she invited Newton onto the show to discuss everything Facebook.
In this conversation, Newton and Swisher discuss Facebook’s rebrand to Meta and debate the merits of the metaverse. They go inside the Facebook Papers consortium looking into the whistle-blower leaks, discuss whether the company’s recent limits on facial recognition signals a shift in Mark Zuckerberg and talk about the role of government to really start regulating a behemoth company and industry.
This episode contains strong language.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
As Tesla develops its humanoid robot and Facebook — sorry, now Meta — rebrands to signal its focus on the metaverse and an even more virtual world, some might continue to wonder whether an Armageddon that will have artificial intelligence overpowering humans is a possibility. But the novelist Jeanette Winterson is more optimistic. Her more utopian view of an A.I.-enabled future depends on more compassionate technologies and the diversification of the leaders driving innovation, who she says are currently “rich guys with a lot of power, and we can’t depend on their benevolence.”
In this conversation, Kara and Winterson discuss her latest book, “12 Bytes,” and some of the ways that A.I. will change how we think, love and live. They delve into why Winterson thinks sex bots are the enemy of progress, Silicon Valley’s obsession with immortality and how A.I. might change how we die and grieve. And they discuss Mark Zuckerberg, with Winterson saying there’s “nothing in his history that suggests he can manage billions of people on the planet using his social media tool.”
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Katie Couric has drawn fire for her new memoir, which chronicles over two decades of a TV news career that had her co-hosting with Matt Lauer (who became “cocky and reckless”), working under Les Moonves (“a close-talker with bad breath”) and in competition with the likes of Diane Sawyer (who was “everything I wasn’t”).
Yet Couric defends her frankness in this interview with Kara: “What’s the point of writing a book that’s just, like, your greatest hits or a victory lap or a sanitized version of your life?” Indeed, “Going There” does go there and, in the milieu of 2021, opens the former “Today” show host up to criticism on many fronts — including her decisionto edit a 2016 interview with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg because she wanted to “protect” her.
In this conversation, Kara and Couric discuss the zero-sum construct that seemed to define women’s broadcast journalism in the ’90s, how that construct has shifted in the decades since and whether Couric could have done more to support women in the field and on her own show. Her response? “I think this has kind of taken an outsized role in the narrative because I was honest about sometimes feeling insecure and territorial.”
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Representative Ken Buck has joined forces with the Democratic congressman David Cicilline and others to push through a package of antitrust legislation that could prove damning to companies like Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook. “As a conservative, I don’t think big is bad. I think big is great,” he says. But at the same time, he is quick to clarify that Silicon Valley isn’t the land of “benevolent monopolists” and that leaders like Jeff Bezos need to be more transparent about their business practices.
In this conversation, Buck discusses how he’s moved further than his party on issues of antitrust, and why he — after initially backing the Texas lawsuit seeking to overturn 2020 election results in four battleground states — eventually stepped out against Donald Trump’s “Big Lie” of a stolen election.
Kara asks Buck which antitrust bills will survive big tech anti-antitrust lobbying, and whether regulatory agencies like the F.T.C. will actually have the teeth to enforce the proposed laws. They also dig into the Facebook whistle-blower’s allegations, as well as conservative claims of social media censorship. And Swisher presses Buck on what he calls the “vigorous debate” within the Republican Party — which Buck says is happening “behind closed doors.”
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Maria Ressa and Dmitri Muratov recently took home the Nobel Peace Prize, marking the first time working journalists have won the award since 1935. Ressa believes the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s decision to recognize journalists this year sends a signal that, once again, “we are on the brink of the rise of fascism.” Through her digital media company Rappler, Ressa has been on the front lines of covering President Rodrigo Duterte’s regime in the Philippines, exposing the leader’s tactics of “violence and fear.” She also sounded the alarm on the role that social media platforms have played in the rise of leaders like Duterte and Donald Trump, saying that Facebook in particular “exploded an atom bomb” by amplifying misinformation and propaganda.
Ressa’s reporting has made her a target for lawsuits from the Duterte government and online harassment from his supporters: One study found almost 400,000 tweets targeting Ressa over a 13-month period. And she was convicted of cyber libel in 2020, which has made it difficult for her to leave the country.
In this conversation, Kara Swisher asks Ressa to discuss the role of social media in the rise of polarization, and to consider if new revelations from the Facebook whistle-blower will be a game changer. And Ressa shares how her work — and the onslaught of lawsuits in response to it — have impacted her personal life and her family.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
After leaked internal documents in The Wall Street Journal, whistle-blower testimony on Capitol Hill, a global server outage and drops in share price, Facebook has recently taken (another) spectacular beating. But the veteran tech journalist Walt Mossberg says none of it has been a surprise. A longtime friend and mentor of Kara Swisher, he tells her, “I think the company is fundamentally unethical.” And, drawing on his experience covering controversial leaders, including Steve Jobs and Bill Gates (as he calls them, “the old guard”), Mossberg says the Facebook C.E.O. is still an aberration: “In my encounters with Mark Zuckerberg, I’ve never been able to discover any principles.”
In this conversation, Kara and Mossberg talk about “the sins of Facebook,” whether this new scandal really is the company’s Big Tobacco moment and why Sheryl Sandberg is still sitting at Zuckerberg’s side. They also swap stories of tech executives — from making Zuckerberg sweat (literally) and getting the cold shoulder from Elon Musk to Mossberg’s Taco Bell invitation from Gates and “arm-waving arguments” with Jobs.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Love listening to New York Times podcasts? Help us test a new audio product in beta and give us your thoughts to shape what it becomes. Visit nytimes.com/audio to join the beta.
It’s been nine months since the Capitol attack, and we still don’t have true accountability. Representative Adam Schiff and the rest of the Jan. 6 House select committee are issuing subpoenas to key witnesses, including Steve Bannon, Dan Scavino and two “Stop the Steal” rally organizers. “No one is off the table,” Schiff says.
But in a political ecosystem that is defined in part by the spread of misinformation and polarization on platforms like Facebook and the power of right-wing media outlets like Fox News and One America News Network, how much will a congressional investigation actually move the needle on a democracy at risk? Especially when the effort — billed as bipartisan — has only two Republican members?
In this conversation, Kara presses Schiff on the Jan. 6 committee’s ability to bring about change and its efforts to subpoena key witnesses. As Kara points out, “Issuing subpoenas is one thing, but getting people to comply is another” — and that is proving more difficult as Donald Trump advises allies to defy the committee. They also discuss the Facebook whistle-blower Frances Haugen, how Schiff wishes Mark Zuckerberg would have replied to questions about the platform’s role in amplifying polarization and whether Trump will run in 2024. And Schiff reflects on the former president’s nicknames for him.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
The 45th president may have been ripe material for (dark) comedy, but Samantha Bee sure does not miss him. After covering Donald Trump for six seasons on her late night show “Full Frontal with Samantha Bee,” she says, “Comedy is better without him. Just the world in general, — the globe — is better without him.” She now has airtime to double down her coverage of other challenges like climate change and the affront to voting and abortion rights.
In this conversation, Kara Swisher asks Bee about her role as a “funny advocate.” They also discuss the challenges of pandemic socializing, the future of entertainment and Bee’s hopes that Vladimir Putin “ride a bear into the woods.” And she gives her two cents, as a New Yorker, on the Texas gubernatorial race: “I would vote for a pizza stained paper plate over Greg Abbott.”
This episode contains strong language.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
When the actor Matthew McConaughey dropped his rom-com act to pursue hard-hitting dramas, Hollywood called it a “McConaissance.” Now we may be on the cusp of the next one, as he mulls over a run for governor of Texas. McConaughey is the first to admit he’s not a conventional pick for Texans. “I’m not a man who comes at politics from a political background,” he says. “I’m a statesman-philosopher, folk-singing poet.” Even so, he has some thoughts about the current political climate, observing, “It’s necessary to be aggressively centric, at least, to possibly salvage democracy in America right now.”
In this conversation, Kara Swisher asks McConaughey to unpack his thoughts on key issues like mask mandates, abortion and voting rights, and what he actually means when he says he’s “measuring” a run for governor. They also discuss his recent memoir, “Greenlights,” as he doles out some of his life philosophies and cackles in good humor at the critical reviews that Kara insists on reading him.
This episode contains strong language.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Truth and context may seem elusive today, but for Monica Lewinsky they both “went out the door in 1998.” As the investigation into Bill Clinton unfolded, Lewinsky came under scrutiny as the most infamous intern in Washington, but kept largely silent due to an immunity deal with investigators. In this conversation with Kara Swisher, Lewinsky says she and the other women entangled in the president’s impeachment “were all reduced in different ways to serve purposes for other people: for either political points or to make money.” She considers the toll of that experience on her own life, and contemplates how it might all have played out differently in the age of online accountability and the #MeToo Twittersphere.
Swisher also asks Lewinsky to reflect on the new FX series “Impeachment: American Crime Story” — on which she served as a producer, but did not have creative control — and Lewinsky’s latest project, an HBO Max documentary entitled “15 Minutes of Shame,” which explores the world of public humiliation. And they delve into cancel culture, Trump’s online trolling and how pitting women against one another “is one of the playbooks in the patriarchy”
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Andrew Yang failed in his campaigns for president of the United States and mayor of New York City, but that has not stopped him from trying to disrupt the political status quo with a new party, which he has named “Forward.” This time, the candidate known for evangelizing universal basic income, or U.B.I., is championing ideas like open primaries and rank-choice voting (which, incidentally, was the voting system used in the mayoral race he lost). But critics are skeptical that he needs to work outside the two-party system to accomplish these goals.
In this conversation, Kara Swisher asks Yang whether the new party is a gimmick to sell books or a real solution to political polarization. She presses him for some self-reflection on his mayoral campaign, and they unpack whether lack of government experience is an asset or a liability. Also, we get an update on the Yang Gang.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Beto O’Rourke came close to unseating Senator Ted Cruz in 2018 and fell far from winning the presidency in 2020. Now the former El Paso congressman has turned his attention back home. He’s been a key organizer and fund-raiser in the fight against Republicans’ efforts to restrict voting rights in the state, including their recent passage of S.B.1. He’s also rumored to be considering a run for Texas governor in 2022 — a race he describes as crucial given “the deep damage and chaos and incompetence that is connected to Greg Abbott,” the incumbent.
But can O’Rourke pull a Stacey Abrams and help flip his state blue? And if he decides to run, can he do what she previously couldn’t: win a governor’s seat?
In this conversation, Kara Swisher presses O’Rourke on why he’s being so coy about a potential run and how dragging his feet may box out other Democratic contenders. They dig into some of those rumored contenders — specifically, the actor Matthew McConaughey. They also speak about the connection between Republican legislative moves to curb voting rights with S.B.1 and to restrict abortion with S.B.8 — and what it will take for Democrats to overcome these hurdles and actually win in Texas.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
In a special Opinion Audio bonanza, Kara Swisher, Jane Coaston (The Argument) and Ezra Klein (The Ezra Klein Show) sit down to discuss what went wrong for the G.O.P. in the recall election of Gov. Gavin Newsom of California. “This was where the nationalization of politics really bit back for Republicans,” Jane says. The three hosts then debate whether the media industry’s criticism of itself does any good at all. “The media tweets like nobody’s watching,” Ezra says. Then the hosts turn to The Wall Street Journal’s revelations in “The Facebook Files” and discuss how to hold Facebook accountable. “We’re saying your tools in the hands of malevolent players are super dangerous,” Kara says, “but we have no power over them whatsoever.”
And last, Ezra, Jane and Kara offer recommendations to take you deep into history, fantasy and psychotropics.
Read more about the subjects in this episode:
- Jane Coaston, Vox: “How California conservatives became the intellectual engine of Trumpism”
- Ezra Klein: “Gavin Newsom Is Much More Than the Lesser of Two Evils” and “A Different Way of Thinking About Cancel Culture”
- Kara Swisher: “The Endless Facebook Apology,” “The Medium of the Moment” “‘They’re Killing People’? Biden Isn’t Quite Right, but He’s Not Wrong.” and “The Terrible Cost of Mark Zuckerberg’s Naïveté”
You can find more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Anne Wojcicki is sitting on a treasure trove of genetic data. The co-founder and chief executive of 23andMe has led the genetic testing company through 14 years in which it has collected data from millions of customers through their at-home DNA spit test kits. In 2018, the company announced a collaboration with GlaxoSmithKline to use this anonymized, aggregated data to develop new pharmaceutical drugs — and attracted a $300 million investment from the pharmaceutical giant. And in June, when Wojcicki took the company public, it was valued at $3.5 billion. In some ways, it’s a standard Silicon Valley play: Lure customers in with the promise of democratizing information before quickly moving to monetize that information. But what are the implications when the information at stake is your DNA?
In this conversation, Kara Swisher presses Wojcicki on the ethical, privacy and security questions intertwined with the 23andMe business model. They discuss what the rise of genetic testing might mean for today’s 2-year-olds and how the United States is faring in a “genetic information race” with China. And they dig into the ongoing Theranos trial — specifically, whether the case against Elizabeth Holmes will rein in a Silicon Valley health tech sector that, in the past, has run a little wild.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
The public failure of his start-up Quibi hasn’t stopped Jeffrey Katzenberg from doubling down on tech. A Hollywood power broker, he headed up Disney in the 1980s and ’90s and co-founded a rival studio, DreamWorks, before finding a puzzle he could not yet solve: getting people to pay for short-format content. Investors gave him and the former Hewlett-Packard C.E.O. and California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman $1.75 billion to build a video platform, but not enough customers opened up their wallets, at $4.99 a month, and Quibi folded within a year of its launch. Katzenberg says the problems were product-market fit and the Covid pandemic, not competition from TikTok or YouTube.
In this conversation, Kara Swisher and Katzenberg delve into Quibi’s demise, the shifting power dynamics in Hollywood and his pivot to Silicon Valley. They also discuss his influence in another sphere: politics. And the former Hollywood executive, who co-chaired a fund-raiser to help fend off California’s recent recall effort, offers some advice to Gov. Gavin Newsom.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Imagine a world in which Google and Amazon join together to form an all-knowing corporate juggernaut that could program our every movement. Author Dave Eggers has contemplated such a future in his latest dystopian novel “The Every.” Eggers, who limits his own use of technology to the bare minimum, says he was inspired by the limitless choice of our digital world and the idea of a data-driven tech monopoly that would use “your preferences and algorithmic-determined personality” to help you “become the better version of yourself and the ultimate version of yourself.”
In this conversation, Swisher asks Eggers how close the real world is to this fictional dystopia. They dig into Eggers’s tech skepticism, his fears of an e-commerce “apex predator” poised to destroy our retail biodiversity, and why he probably won’t be on Jeff Bezos’ “phallic” rocket ship. He and Kara also discuss his the challenges that Amazon’s rapidly-growing market share poses for smaller publishing houses like Eggers’s own company McSweeney’s, and why he’ll still be selling paperbacks of a book that is critical of Amazon … on Amazon.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Since 9/11, and even before, Hollywood’s portrayal of Muslims has emboldened inaccurate stereotypes of dangerous villains or jihadist terrorists. In addition to misrepresenting Muslims, the industry has also arguably underrepresented this population — one U.S.C. study found Muslims represented 1.6 percent of speaking roles in recent major films. Actor, musician and activist Riz Ahmed is challenging this status quo in a career that has included playing a guileless assistant struggling to make ends meet in “Nightcrawler” and a drummer who loses his hearing in the film “Sound of Metal.” In 2021, he became the first Muslim to be nominated for a best actor Oscar — an accolade he found “bittersweet.”
In this conversation, Kara Swisher and Ahmed discuss how far Hollywood has — or hasn’t — come in addressing the misrepresentation of Muslims and talk about the power of streaming platforms like Netflix and HBO Max to catalyze more authentic and diverse storytelling. They also dive into Ahmed’s latest project — “Mogul Mowgli,” which the artist describes as “a personal exploration of home and identity and, really, where you’re from and what that means.”
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Apple has long been a pioneer on privacy, and has made that a central part of its marketing. So it was surprising to see privacy groups complain last month when it announced new features meant to combat child sexual abuse.
The updates were intended to make a dent in the rapid proliferation of child sexual abuse material online — the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children logged 21.7 million reports of such material in 2020 alone. But because one of these updates involves software that would allow Apple to scan images on a user’s device, privacy groups worry about setting a dangerous precedent that would open the door to surveillance and censorship.
In this conversation, Kara Swisher talks through the debate over balancing the protection of children and privacy with Julie Cordua, the chief executive of the child safety nonprofit Thorn, and Ashton Kutcher, a co-founder of the organization. They discuss the scale of child sexual exploitation online and the role that tech giants like Apple, Google and Facebook play in both the problem and the solution. Kutcher — who was an early defender of Apple’s recent update — also jumps in to note “the one thing Facebook has been amazing at.”
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Mattel went through three chief executives in four years before Ynon Kreiz took the job in 2018. He stood the test of time in part because of a big bet: taking Mattel's toys to Hollywood. The toy giant is partnering with Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie to bring Barbie to life on the big screen, and creating films based on everything from UNO to Magic 8 Ball. It’s a strategy that draws on Kreiz’s past experience at entertainment companies like Maker Studios and Endemol, and one that draws inspiration from franchises like Transformers and companies like Lego, which Kreiz says was able to make “great movies out of bricks.”
In this conversation, Kara Swisher stress tests Kreiz’s strategy, asking whether these potential movie franchises are any more than glorified marketing and what a movie based on the Magic 8 Ball may look like. (Reply hazy, try again.) They also discuss the future of play in an age of video games and smartphones, and when Mattel might introduce a transgender Barbie. Oh, and Kara pitches her own media franchise mash-up: a Teletubbies movie directed by Martin Scorsese.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
As the pandemic has pushed the country into a debate about when and how to reopen schools, Randi Weingarten has faced the ire of parents, teachers, school boards and — of course — Fox News. The president of the American Federation of Teachers leads a union of 1.7 million educators across the nation. She’s been on the hook for pressing to keep school closed last fall and supporting mask mandates in classrooms this year. And most recently, she drew criticism from her own members when she personally endorsed a vaccine mandate and promised to work with states and school boards that are seeking to enact vaccine mandates or vaccinate-or-test requirements for teachers.
In this conversation, Kara Swisher presses Weingarten on reopening procedures and the spectacle around mask mandates in states like Florida and Texas. They also discuss the wave of legislation prohibiting teachers from discussing critical race theory in classrooms, and why this former teacher has become a lightning rod for the right.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
When Kara Swisher wrote a column declaring her love for Vin Diesel and predicting that we will not be returning to movie theaters, Tim League felt sorry for her. He’s the founder of Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, a luxury movie theater chain that opened in Austin over 20 years ago and has since expanded nationally. The pandemic has not been kind to the company, which he notes was in “dire” condition by December and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy earlier this year. But League still remains bullish about his industry and the value of the theater experience.
In this conversation, Swisher and League debate whether the rise of streaming giants means the end of cinemas, big and small. They also discuss the challenge of hiring and retaining workers, pushed release dates for movies like “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” and whether a streaming service like Netflix or Amazon would buy a theater chain like Alamo. Mostly, though, they agree to disagree. Mostly, though, they agree to disagree.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Social media has felt quieter without the constant ALL CAPS fury of Donald Trump, but Jason Miller is trying to change that.
Miller, who was the former president’s longtime aide and spokesman, recently took a new gig running a social media platform called Gettr, which claims to be a haven from censorship and cancel culture. It may sound a little like Parler 2.0, but the game-changer for Gettr — which has a little under two million users — would be if Miller can get Trump to create an account and get back online.
In this conversation, Kara Swisher asks Miller how he intends to get Trump to log on, challenges him on his claims that Twitter and Facebook are out to censor conservatives and presses him about how content moderation works on his platform. And they discuss the question on everyone’s mind: Is Trump likely to run again in 2024?
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt is deep in Silicon Valley these days. No, he’s not pitching a start-up (though he does have one of those): He is playing Uber’s former chief executive Travis Kalanick in an upcoming Showtime anthology series. And while Gordon-Levitt has some thoughts about society’s “overblown deification of technology,” he is relatively bullish on Silicon Valley and the trend of tech companies taking over Hollywood.
In this conversation, Kara Swisher and Gordon-Levitt discuss what this shift means for the entertainment industry and how he thinks about social media. They also dive deep into “Mr. Corman,” Gordon-Levitt’s latest project, which he created and produced for Apple TV.
This episode contains strong language.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Patrick Soon-Shiong, the owner of the Los Angeles Times, says we should — and he’s one of those billionaires. In 2018, Soon-Shiong — who minted his fortune by inventing a cancer drug in the 1990s — scooped up the Los Angeles Times, the San Diego Union-Tribune and a group of smaller newspapers for a cool $500 million. Since then, he’s been obsessed with two things: modernizing his media empire and continuing his medical pursuits, most recently with an experimental Covid-19 vaccine.
In this conversation, Soon-Shiong and Kara Swisher discuss why he bought the L.A. Times, his plans for it and why he didn’t do more to save other local papers from the jaws of a newsroom-slashing hedge fund. They also delve into his medical background, his take on how the Covid-19 pandemic will become endemic in unvaccinated communities and the job he says he passed up in the Trump administration.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Michael Pollan has brewed tea from opium poppies, quit caffeine cold turkey and tried mescaline, a psychedelic found in some kinds of cactus. While the author’s past works have taken on the Western diet and the cultural attitude toward psychedelics, in “This Is Your Mind on Plants,” Pollan wages a war against — well, the government’s war on drugs. He argues that the approach to regulation has been selective and self-serving, making him “question whether the real rationale of the drug war was ever public health.”
His point? Caffeine was welcomed because it sustained workers and fueled the economy, but psychedelics were criminalized because they were seen as a threat to the social order. Pollan advocates a new drug policy that is driven by science, not politics.
In this conversation, he and Kara Swisher discuss how changing cultural norms around certain drugs may pave the way for better policy and when MDMA therapy might be approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
As the pandemic locked down cities and would-be travelers stayed home, the airline industry begged the government for bailouts — and got them, to the tune of $54 billion. The funds were supposed to help airlines avoid furloughs and ramp up more quickly once travel returned. But this summer, chaos hit anyway, with airlines like American, Southwest, and Spirit racking up cancellations in the face of crew shortages.
In this conversation, Kara Swisher asks Doug Parker, the C.E.O. and chairman of American Airlines, why the industry is still struggling to provide decent service and whether taxpayer dollars were wasted in the bailouts. They also discuss why the company “doesn’t deserve” Warren Buffett’s money, the in-flight rage over airline mask policies — and why Kara would make a terrible flight attendant.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
From “deepfaking” Anthony Bourdain’s voice to reconstructing a re-education camp in Xinjiang — technologies like A.I. voice generation and V.R. are warping the boundaries of documentary filmmaking. So how does a veteran like Ken Burns, who has spent over 40 years documenting American history, think about the ethical questions attached to these tools?
In this conversation, Kara Swisher learns why Burns was “very troubled” by the use of A.I. voice generation in a recent documentary about the late chef and food journalist Anthony Bourdain. She also asks him to respond to a public letter in March questioning PBS’s commitment to diversity and criticizing the network as having an “overreliance” on Burns and his films — which include his latest series on the boxer Muhammad Ali. Burns also explains why he considers Mark Zuckerberg an “enemy of the state.”
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Call it a redemption narrative: After working to grow Google’s lucrative advertising business for 15 years, Sridhar Ramaswamy left the Silicon Valley Goliath to co-found Neeva, a subscription-based search engine that promises not to profit off its customers’ search data. It sounds good in theory; many companies have exploited user data under the guise of their free services. But whether Neeva can get users to care enough about their data to pay for privacy is a whole other story.
In this conversation, Kara Swisher asks Ramaswamy, Neeva’s chief executive, what makes his search engine any different from the litany of others that have tried to take on Google. (Remember Duck Duck Go, Bing and Yahoo?) She presses him on whether users, who have long been conditioned to expect search to be free, will be amenable to a subscription-based alternative. And they discuss Google’s antitrust suit, what incognito mode really does and why background location is “truly evil.”
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Mayors across the country are facing heat. Bill DeBlasio was New York’s default punching bag (perhaps deservedly) throughout the pandemic. Keisha Lance Bottoms decided to forgo seeking a second term as the mayor of Atlanta. And in Chicago, Lori Lightfoot faces critics at every turn. Lightfoot, who in describing herself says, “Roll it all up — I’m Black, I’m female, I’m a lesbian, and no one expected me to win,” is two years into a term that has been defined by a brutal pandemic, a deeply unequal economy and rising crime.
In this conversation, Kara Swisher asks Lightfoot to respond to the criticism she’s received — whether for her leadership style or for her recent move to grant one-on-one interviews marking her two years in office exclusively to journalists of color. They also discuss the challenges of rising crime in Chicago, why Lightfoot doesn’t support the defund-the-police movement and what would prompt her to consider reinstating a mask mandate.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Talk therapy has seen a boom during the pandemic. And with mental health chat bots like Woebot on the market and text therapy platforms like Talkspace going public, the possibility of humans outsourcing our behavioral health to algorithmic healers is only growing — along with the ethical questions attached to it. So Kara Swisher turned to Oren Frank, a co-founder and the chief executive of Talkspace, to ask what the increasing technologization of therapy means for treatment efficacy and for privacy.
In this conversation, Kara asks Frank whether health care apps like Talkspace, which collect patient data, are offering meaningful insights or are privacy sieves waiting to be hacked. They also talk about how to measure treatment efficacy and who is accountable — the platform or the provider — when something goes wrong.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
People love the Olympics. But this year’s Games, which open on Friday, are plagued with controversial suspensions and public pushback, not to mention the pandemic. How did we get here?
That’s a question for Dick Pound. He’s a member of the International Olympic Committee and was the founding president of the World Anti-Doping Agency. In this conversation, Kara Swisher asks Pound to break down the I.O.C.’s decision to move forward with the Games as the Delta variant of the coronavirus threatens to surge, vaccination rates trickle and citizens of the host country express concerns about the event. She presses him on who he thinks should take responsibility if an outbreak happens. (Hint: He doesn’t think it’s the I.O.C.)
They also discuss American track star Sha’Carri Richardson’s recent one-month suspension after testing positive for marijuana and whether WADA’s policies on weed need to change.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Kara's on vacation this week, so we're bringing you an episode of another great Times Opinion podcast, 'The Ezra Klein Show.'
“The technological progress we make in the next 100 years will be far larger than all we’ve made since we first controlled fire and invented the wheel,” writes Sam Altman in his essay “Moore’s Law for Everything.” “This revolution will generate enough wealth for everyone to have what they need, if we as a society manage it responsibly.”
Altman is the C.E.O. of OpenAI, one of the biggest, most important players in the artificial intelligence space. His argument is this: Since the 1970s, computers have gotten exponentially better even as they’re gotten cheaper, a phenomenon known as Moore’s Law. Altman believes that A.I. could get us closer to Moore’s Law for everything: it could make everything better even as it makes it cheaper. Housing, health care, education, you name it.
But what struck me about his essay is that last clause: “if we as a society manage it responsibly.” Because, as Altman also admits, if he is right then A.I. will generate phenomenal wealth largely by destroying countless jobs — that’s a big part of how everything gets cheaper — and shifting huge amounts of wealth from labor to capital. And whether that world becomes a post-scarcity utopia or a feudal dystopia hinges on how wealth, power and dignity are then distributed — it hinges, in other words, on politics.
This is a conversation, then, about the political economy of the next technological age. Some of it is speculative, of course, but some of it isn’t. That shift of power and wealth is already underway. Altman is proposing an answer: a move toward taxing land and wealth, and distributing it to all. We talk about that idea, but also the political economy behind it: Are the people gaining all this power and wealth really going to offer themselves up for more taxation? Or will they fight it tooth-and-nail?
We also discuss who is funding the A.I. revolution, the business models these systems will use (and the dangers of those business models), how A.I. would change the geopolitical balance of power, whether we should allow trillionaires, why the political debate over A.I. is stuck, why a pro-technology progressivism would also need to be committed to a radical politics of equality, what global governance of A.I. could look like, whether I’m just “energy flowing through a neural network,” and much more.
You can find more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Kara's on vacation this week, so we're bringing you an episode of another great Times Opinion podcast, The Argument.
U.S. birthrates have fallen by 4 percent, hitting a record low. And it’s not just America — people around the world are having fewer children, from South Korea to South America.
In some ways, this seems inevitable. From an economic standpoint, there’s the expensive trio of child rearing, education and health care in America. From a cultural perspective, women have more financial and societal independence, delaying the age of childbirth. What might be troubling are the consequences on our future economy and what an older population might mean for Social Security.
This week, Jane Coaston talks to two demographers who have differing levels of worry about the news of our falling birthrate. Lyman Stone is the director of research at the consulting firm Demographic Intelligence, an adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a research fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, a Robert Novak Journalism fellow and a Ph.D. student in population dynamics at McGill University. Caroline Hartnett is a demographer and an associate professor of sociology at the University of South Carolina.
You can find more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Chelsea Handler says men are “on probation” — at least the ones who don’t seem to grasp how the country’s social justice movement is reshaping how we talk about, well, everything. The female comic has crossed the line in her own career, including posting racially insensitive tweets. But she claims the current political climate, therapy (and cannabis) have led to a “kinder and gentler” persona that will be on the stage as she returns to the road this July in her new standup tour, titled “Vaccinated and Horny.”
In this conversation with Kara Swisher, Handler discusses how the sensitivities of cancel culture square with edgy, boundary-pushing comedy; revisits how she thinks about apologies; and explains why she did her latest standup special for HBO after her Netflix deal. She also reveals how her crush on Andrew Cuomo flamed out.
This episode contains strong language.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Ron Klain tells Kara Swisher it’s “everything” — except, apparently, the midterms. As White House chief of staff, Klain helps determine how the president spends scarce resources like time and political capital.
He and Kara speak at a moment when the country is shy of President Biden’s July 4 vaccine target and the administration has just averted the unraveling of a bipartisan infrastructure deal that still has to crawl through a polarized Congress. Kara presses Klain on whether the president’s ambitious agenda and focus on bipartisanship will succeed — or whether infrastructure will be “Biden’s Obamacare,” costing Democrats their majority in the House and the Senate in 2022. Klain notes, “There’ll be obviously more of a time and a place for the focus on the politics of 2022,” but “the best way we can do well in 2022 is to get things done in 2021.”
The conversation also dives into the pandemic response, the Delta variant and how social media platforms are petri dishes of pandemic misinformation. And when Klain describes a recent conversation with Mark Zuckerberg and complains about Facebook and other platforms not doing more to combat misinformation, Kara is quick to press him on what the Biden administration plans to do to regulate tech giants. After all, she reminds him, “you’re the government.”
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Guy Fieri recently inked an $80 million deal with the Food Network, making him the highest-paid chef on cable TV. He did this on the heels of a brutal year for the restaurant industry, which, according to the National Restaurant Association, has lost approximately $290 billion since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic and seen insufficient relief from the federal government. While the airline industry received a big bailout in March 2020, as well as additional payroll support through the pandemic, it took almost a full year for Congress to earmark a grant program for American restaurants. Fieri’s take on why they got so little so late: It’s about “voice, power and money.”
In this conversation, Kara Swisher presses Fieri on how he’s using his own voice and power. They dig into how restaurants have adapted during the pandemic, why working conditions remain so bad in the industry and why he has gotten into ghost kitchens — a trend that, alongside food delivery apps, is reshaping the restaurant industry. Plus, she gets him to spill on his plans to join FoodTok someday.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
The fitness industry has exploded into a nearly $100 billion sector, and Alison Bechdel is among the exercise-obsessed. Bechdel, the cartoonist whose comic strip inspired the Bechdel Test for female representation in Hollywood, says she has found transcendence in everything from yoga and karate to weight lifting and biking. Her new book, “The Secret to Superhuman Strength,” examines the exercise craze, and what it exposes about our attitudes around self-care, the booming fitness economy and even our mortality.
In this conversation, Kara and Bechdel discuss the evolution of workout culture (“yoga boom” included), the politics of art (especially during the Trump era) and how mainstream cultural norms have finally caught up to, as Bechdel puts it, “where lesbians were back in the ’80s.”
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Anthony Fauci doesn’t have a Twitter account. But he does have a lot to say about the recent scrutiny following the release of his emails from 2020 — an especially busy time in his tenure as America’s chief immunologist. Republicans like Ron DeSantis have used the emails as fodder for criticism, accusing him of “faucism” (yes, that’s a play on fascism). Fauci’s response: “Here’s a guy whose entire life has been devoted to saving lives. And now you’re telling me he’s like Hitler? Come on, folks. Get real.”
In this conversation, Kara Swisher and Fauci parse the science from the politics. She presses him on the Wuhan lab leak theory, which critics claim Fauci and the media were too quick to dismiss. They discuss what went wrong with his early mask-wearing guidance and whether there is room for error or evolution of advice when it comes to public health in a social media age. And of course, they dig into some of the 4,000 or so pages of Fauci’s emails, including exchanges with Sylvia Burwell, the former Health and Human Services secretary, and Mark Zuckerberg. (No, he was not asking Zuck for help with his Instagram.)
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Representative David Cicilline’s bipartisan package takes aim at tech companies and would be the biggest antitrust reform in decades. But is it too little, too fragmented and way too late? The tech-savvy Democrat is joining forces with Republicans like Ken Buck and Burgess Owens to push through a large suite of new antitrust legislation aimed at Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google. If the five bills are passed (without being watered down), they will empower regulators, raise the bar for mergers and acquisitions, and make it a whole lot easier for enforcers to break up businesses. The power of Big Tech is not news, so Kara starts by asking Representative Cicilline: Why did it take so long for Congress to try and catch up?
In this conversation, they break down the bills and discuss why the timing for sweeping tech regulation is particularly ripe in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol enabled by social media. Kara presses the lawmaker to respond to criticisms — including the notion that the proposed legislation robs the tech robber barons of the proceeds of their innovation and allows government to pick and choose winners in a way that feels more fit for China than the United States. And she asks Cicilline why he thinks Big Tech is the common enemy that can unite Democrats and Republicans.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
It’s an open secret that the uber-rich don’t pay their fair share in taxes. But Jesse Eisinger and his team at ProPublica have unearthed the numbers to back that up. In “The Secret I.R.S. Files,” they combed through more than 15 years of federal income tax records, revealing that Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, George Soros and many more have paid as little as $0 in recent years. By amassing and borrowing off their wealth, while minimizing how much of it is treated as income, these billionaires live outside the tax system perfectly legally. It’s on top of that, Eisinger explains, that the rich have built “their power, their purchasing power, their political power, their influence.”
In this conversation, Kara Swisher gets a play by play of the investigation into the “secret IRS files.” Eisinger breaks down the investigative team’s decision to use an anonymous source and says whether he fears the Biden administration will loop ProPublica into an investigation into that source (in which case, he’d “raise bloody hell”). They discuss why the Biden administration’s efforts to increase the marginal tax rate from 37 percent to 39.6 percent is “irrelevant” for the ultrawealthy (or as Kara puts it, “using a fly swatter to kill a bear”). And they go through the billionaires’ responses to the investigation, including a question mark from Elon Musk, privacy concerns from Michael Bloomberg and confusion from Carl Icahn, who was “incredibly charming” but also “totally perplexed by the concept of needing to pay taxes.”
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Margrethe Vestager and Kara Swisher have something in common: They both have made it their job to keep watch on Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg and the other titans of tech. Vestager does this from her post as the head of the European Commission’s antitrust division. And while Swisher may regularly opine on what drives tech C.E.O.s, Vestager isn’t interested in “soul-searching” their motives. She’s focused on catching them in the act — whether it’s companies sliding from “aggressive tax planning into tax avoidance” or moving from content moderation into censorship.
In this conversation, Swisher and Vestager trade notes on the power of tech. They discuss the G7’s recent agreement to work toward a global corporate tax rate. (Vestager thinks she’ll be 150 years old by the time there’s a global tax authority.) They discuss Facebook’s two-year ban of Donald Trump. (Vestager admits that she’s not an active Facebook user, but even she was surprised that “one could express oneself as the former president did without any consequences until the very last minutes.”) And they talk about antitrust — where Vestager is quick to clarify that her point is “not to say that they should be smaller,” but instead that these companies “should take the responsibility that comes with the kind of power you have when you are this size.”
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
From allegations that Bill Gates had been coming on to Microsoft employees to the $22.5 million settlement of a gender discrimination suit against Pinterest, women in Silicon Valley are speaking out against what is still a male-dominated culture.
Ellen Pao was one of the first to do that. In 2012, she sued the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers for gender discrimination. Back then, she says, she was met with skepticism at the very idea that the industry suffered from sexism at all. Pao ultimately lost the case, but it raised a question that hangs almost a decade later: What will it take for Silicon Valley to become less sexist?
In this conversation, Kara Swisher talks to Pao about the “thin skins” and “giant egos” of powerful people in tech, how these attributes define the work culture of Silicon Valley and why it may take a “perp walk” from a venture capitalist or a C.E.O. to see real change.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
LeBron James and Steph Curry are household names and brand magnates, but Diana Taurasi and A’ja Wilson haven’t quite reached that level. That’s despite being, respectively, the W.N.B.A.’s career top scorer and reigning MVP. And it’s despite the average viewership for the 2020 women’s basketball finals shooting up 15 percent from the previous year — while the men’s finals saw a 49 percent drop. In a sport that’s beloved and at a time when female athletes are raising their profiles (think Naomi Osaka and Megan Rapinoe), why isn’t the W.N.B.A. minting superstars?
That’s a question Cathy Engelbert, the league’s commissioner, is grappling with. Since joining the W.N.B.A. in 2019, she has settled a collective bargaining agreement to increase player compensation and has overseen the W.N.B.A.’s recent push into sports betting. In this conversation, Kara Swisher and Engelbert discuss why women’s sports are underwatched and undervalued, what that means for pay equity and whether the women’s league will ever be financially independent from their parent organization and male counterpart: the N.B.A.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
AT&T owns CNN — for now. But one day Netflix and Apple could be in a bidding war for the CNN anchor Jake Tapper. That’s Kara's take, anyway. It could be the next step in the streaming wars, and a natural evolution for an increasingly personality-driven cable news business that is under pressure to compete with the 24/7 engagement — and enragement — of social media.
In this conversation, Kara and Tapper discuss the potential spinoff of CNN’s parent company, WarnerMedia, from AT&T, what the post-Trump slump of cable news ratings means for the future of broadcast journalism and how Tapper intends to cover Kevin McCarthy and other Republican leaders who who are doubling down on Donald Trump’s big lie.
They also discuss Tapper’s new novel, a political thriller called “The Devil May Dance” — though the author is quick to clarify that the real world, especially in these past four years, has been stranger than fiction.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
It turns out you can use a prank call to expose suspected poisoners, mole patterns to identify a violent demonstrator at a white nationalist rally and online videos to reveal a weapons-smuggling operation to Syrian rebels.
At least, Eliot Higgins and the online sleuths at the open source investigative operation Bellingcat can. Since Higgins founded the organization in 2014, his team has helped break major stories, from unearthing evidence that ties Russia to the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 to revealing the identities of Russian agents suspected of poisoning the opposition leader Aleksei Navalny.
In this conversation, Kara Swisher asks Higgins about the perils of taking on Vladimir Putin and how Bellingcat’s work, which Kara calls “gumshoe journalism,” differs from online vigilantism. She presses Higgins on the ethics of paying for data, partnering with political figures like Navalny and building a company that benefits from the shaky relationship Big Tech has with user privacy.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Snap Inc. lost nearly $40 million when it introduced its first pair of camera-laden Spectacles in 2016. But the company’s C.E.O., Evan Spiegel, is trying again. He announced on Thursday that Snap is launching a new version of its Spectacles with augmented-reality capabilities. While it will take years for the technology to be in the hands of most consumers, it will allow them to view their physical surroundings with visual overlays. It’s one of several innovations Spiegel announced — alongside new revenue models for creators — in a quest to win the social media wars.
In this conversation, Kara Swisher presses Spiegel on how he will compete with augmented-reality technology from Apple and Amazon, and whether glasses and creator gifting will help him win a war with TikTok or Instagram. They also discuss content moderation in a world where anyone can create their own reality.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Kara's conversation with Snap C.E.O. Evan Spiegel will be coming out at 2 p.m., Eastern today!
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
The Nobel Prize-winning behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman on why human “noise” makes systems less fair.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
A.C.L.U. attorney Chase Strangio on the coordinated strategy behind the more than 100 anti-transgender bills introduced this year.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Jannick Malling, Public’s co-C.E.O., weighs the risks and rewards of the retail trading boom.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Alan Rusbridger led The Guardian through the Snowden revelations and WikiLeaks. Now, he's on the Facebook Oversight Board. He explains how the decision went down.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Veteran Republican pollster Frank Luntz has never felt so gloomy.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Biden's $2 trillion infrastructure plan may depend on it.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
The city might be sinking, but Mayor Francis Suarez is still luring tech bros there.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
And where does it get them? The agency’s top technologist Dawn Meyerriecks talks spy gear and why Hollywood and Silicon Valley play a critical role in national security.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
From Twitter to cable TV, the duo is changing the culture of comedy.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Joy Buolamwini is on a crusade against bias in facial recognition technology, and the powerful companies that profit from it.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
The prime-time host on the future of cable news, the urgency of conversations about race and whether CNN is a boys’ club.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Michelle A. Williams, an epidemiologist and Harvard dean, urges politicians to focus on public health if they want a strong economy.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Diana Trujillo, a NASA flight director, discusses the future of space travel and the search for signs of life on the red planet.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Apple C.E.O. Tim Cook says it's not.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
The writer and poet Cathy Park Hong discusses Asian outrage and why she's seeking power, not assimilation.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
The senator presents her case for regulating big tech and why it’s time to "make antitrust cool again."
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Glennon Doyle says her role has been to “go get the white women.”
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
The artist, whose real name is Mike Winklemann, just sold an encrypted digital collage for $69 million. So are non-fungible tokens the next new asset class, or is it all hype?
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
But it’s not the same as Facebook’s. C.E.O. Brian Chesky discusses why he and Mark Zuckerberg have different consequences to consider.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Economist Mariana Mazzucato says the narrative that the private sector drives innovation is only half the story.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
The director of “Da 5 Bloods” talks about why his old movies still resonate, whether an awards snub even matters and how it’s not his job to end racism.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Gen. John Raymond has put up with plenty of mockery. But, he says, there’s nothing funny about protecting U.S. interests from Russian and Chinese anti-satellite technology.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
After she helped win major Democratic victories in Georgia, the right is retaliating, and it’s getting personal. But Abrams says she doesn’t mind; it’s all about the long game.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
The crowdfunding platform helps people pay their rent and medical bills. Its chief executive, Tim Cadogan, says it was never meant to be a social safety net.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
The actor who, as Borat, drew our attention to racism, misogyny and autocratic propaganda calls out the social media companies who profit off these trends.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
The adventurer Blair Braverman has led a team of sled dogs over a 900-mile race in Alaska, seen her skin dissolve in the desert and overcome Covid-19. What makes it all less terrifying? Accepting the unknown.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Kara’s conversation yesterday with Oberlin College’s president, Carmen Twillie Ambar, touched on the cost of a college education and why “sticker prices” are so high. She called up Ron Lieber, who writes the “Your Money” column for The Times, to discuss.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Colleges across the country are figuring out how Covid has changed the college experience, while parents are struggling to understand why schools haven’t changed their price tag.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
He has billions to donate for crises from coronavirus to climate change, and more hope now that Trump is out of office.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
The 70-year old social commentator and humorist doesn’t have a smartphone. That doesn’t stop her from having a take on big tech (and everything else).
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Kara’s conversation on Monday with Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith, touched on Russia, the attack on SolarWinds software and how the U.S. government deals with hacks. She hopped on a call with the Times cybersecurity reporter Nicole Perlroth to discuss.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
The president of Microsoft says "absolutely not" — at least when it comes to his company. Brad Smith discusses Microsoft's new guidelines for political contributions, the six stages of antitrust grief and how corporations — and the U.S. government — missed the SolarWinds Hack.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
The billionaire says the current stock market is reminiscent of the first dot-com boom. “Everybody’s a genius in a bull market — until they’re not.”
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Shares of GameStop shot up 400 percent last week, egged on by the Reddit forum r/WallStreetBets. The online community rallied to drive up the stock price and put the squeeze on big hedge funds who had bet against the struggling video game retailer. Reddit chief executive Steve Huffman — who calls r/WallStreetBets one of his “guilty pleasures” — described this as “the online stock-betting equivalent of, like, jumping off a cliff into a river.”
On this episode of “Sway,” Kara speaks to Huffman about the ethos behind the online movement, whether Reddit may have been used for market manipulation and if he fears an investigation by the S.E.C. She also presses him on the narrative that this is a David vs. Goliath story of Main Street beating Wall Street — after all, who will be left holding the bag when GameStop’s stock eventually comes crashing?
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
The “Karate Kid” was a hero of the 1980s. Now he’s back, with the actor Ralph Macchio reprising the role for the series “Cobra Kai.” The story is ostensibly a classic battle between a hero and a villain. But as Mr. Macchio notes, it’s actually more complex. Audiences, he says, “recognize the good and bad in both these guys and are rooting for both with their two separate types of shortcomings and problems and demons.”
On this episode of “Sway,” Kara and Mr. Macchio discuss how “Cobra Kai” got from YouTube to Netflix, and explore the show’s underlying themes of toxic masculinity, bullying and polarized politics.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Kara’s conversation on Monday with Chris Best, the chief executive of Substack, hit on echo chambers, extremism and the future of journalism. Afterward, she called up the Times tech columnist Kevin Roose to discuss.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Facebook and Twitter have kicked Donald Trump off their platforms and Amazon Web Services removed Parler from its cloud. But there’s another popular platform that markets itself as the destination for free speech: Substack.
With more than 250,000 unique individuals paying for the newsletters on its platform, Substack is a lot smaller than Twitter or Facebook. Still, it’s a rapidly growing space for big media personalities who want to reach their audience directly. Glenn Greenwald, Andrew Sullivan, Hunter Harris and Anne Helen Petersen have all left their legacy media publications to start their own Substack newsletters. So should media companies be worried about the competition?
On this episode of “Sway,” Kara Swisher speaks to Chris Best, the chief executive and a co-founder of Substack, about content moderation on his platform and asks whether Substack is going to destroy media gatekeepers or just turn into one of them.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
At the inauguration on Wednesday, Kamala Harris became vice president — the nation’s first Black person, the first Asian person and the first woman to do so — and President Biden spoke of “a cry for racial justice some 400 years in the making,” adding that “the dream of justice for all will be deferred no longer.”
But according to Isabel Wilkerson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and historian, change may not come so easily. Her reporting reveals that the systems of power in America are deeply defined by caste. On this episode of “Sway,” she explains how she saw an invisible ranking system play out in the raid at the U.S. Capitol, and argues that rushing to move on would be a mistake.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Bryan Cranston has built his reputation playing powerful men, from President Lyndon B. Johnson to Walter White in "Breaking Bad" to Michael Desiato in "Your Honor." On this episode of "Sway," the Tony and Emmy-winning actor breaks down his method, the motivations behind the larger-than-life men he plays and why he draws the line at playing the Scarecrow in "The Wizard of Oz" or the President currently in the White House.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Uber’s chief executive, Dara Khosrowshahi, is charging toward a world in which food is delivered through apps like Uber Eats and “a driver may be human or may be software.” On the way, he acknowledges, “the human consequences can be painful.” Uber is not profitable yet, but its deep pockets and vast infrastructure give it power over independent restaurants and individual drivers. He says, “Do I feel guilty about it? No.”
On this episode of “Sway,” Kara Swisher asks Mr. Khosrowshahi about the plight of drivers and restaurant owners, and whether Uber is part of the “menace economy.”
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
The February cover of Vogue featuring Vice President-elect Kamala Harris kicked off a controversy involving the most powerful woman in fashion and the soon-to-be most powerful woman in the White House. In a multiday social media maelstrom, a leaked cover photo that Anna Wintour originally described as “joyful,” “casual” and “accessible” was deemed “disrespectful” by Twitter. According to people familiar with the matter on both sides, although there had been no contractual cover approval agreement in place, the cover image was not what the vice president-elect’s team had expected. The day after the first photo leaked, a second — more formal — digital exclusive cover was also released.
Ms. Wintour said in a follow-up statement to "Sway," “Obviously we have heard and understood the reaction to the print cover and I just want to reiterate that it was absolutely not our intention to, in any way, diminish the importance of the vice president-elect’s incredible victory.”
In an exclusive interview on this episode of "Sway," Ms. Wintour discusses the magazine cover, diversity concerns at Condé Nast, the future of the fashion industry — and whether Jeff Bezos could be the next Anna Wintour.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Dominion Voting Systems has filed a $1.3 Billion defamation suit against former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell. Chief Executive John Poulos says it’s the “first step” in the voting machine company’s efforts to counter a “malicious campaign of lies” spread by right wing media outlets and members of Donald Trump's inner circle.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Update: Jan. 11, 2020
Parler went offline Monday after Amazon stopped providing it with web-hosting services. This followed Apple and Google’s removal of Parler’s app from their app stores. In notices to Parler about these decisions, both Apple and Amazon cited chief executive John Matze’s statement in this episode of “Sway” that “I don’t feel responsible for any of this and neither should the platform.”
A mob stormed Washington and Twitter locked the account of a president who helped incite this violence. But Donald Trump and his supporters still have an effectively unregulated safe space: Parler. Chief executive John Matze calls his social media platform a “neutral town square.” Kara Swisher disagrees. On today’s episode of “Sway,” she challenges Matze on the neutrality of a site whose users, investors, advertisers and “community jury” skew right. And she presses him on the role Parler has played in our current national crisis.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Bela Bajaria has an unprecedented job at Netflix. In an executive shake-up this year, she was elevated from head of “local language” (read: non-English) productions to a newly created role, head of global television (read: all TV, everywhere). Her promotion signals how much Netflix is banking on international markets and diverse content to help it win the streaming wars.
Ms. Bajaria previously ran Universal Television, the studio arm of NBC. She was behind many of the shows the world has been watching, including “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,” “Master of None,” and “The Mindy Project.”On the way, she hit pushback from executives who thought unconventional shows would be small and play only for niche audiences. Bela had other plans: “I want to do big shows that have underrepresented voices and people. They can be big, and they can be commercial.”
In this episode of “Sway,” the Netflix executive discusses how change happens in Hollywood, why she got fired from NBC-Universal and which shows you might be bingeing next.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Astrology has been around for thousands of years, so why are “Mercury in retrograde” memes and horoscopes still so popular in 2020? “We all need, at some point or another, to have someone say: ‘Yeah, that’s how you were made, and that’s perfect. Now, go do your thing,’” says Chani Nicholas, one of the internet era’s most prominent astrologers. In this episode, she demystifies the $2.2 billion industry of astrology — and reads Kara's birth chart.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
On yesterday’s episode of Sway, the chief executive of Mastercard spoke about why the company blocked subscription payments on Pornhub. Was it too little too late? Kara asks Nicholas Kristof, the journalist whose reporting on child pornography forced the payment company’s hand.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Ajay Banga has spent a decade as chief executive of Mastercard. Last year, he oversaw $6.5 trillion in transactions. That means he knows what we’re spending right now (aggregated and anonymized, of course) and how long it might take to get us out of our current economic funk. It also means Mr. Banga has leverage over virtually any business that relies on credit card payments.For example, following recent reporting from New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof on the scale of child pornography on PornHub, Mastercard announced that it would terminate payments on that site.
Mr. Banga departs as chief executive at the end of this year, transitioning to the post of executive chairman. In this “exit interview,” Kara Swisher presses him on whether the company he’s helped build can keep up with Silicon Valley — and with the social consciousness of the next consumer generation.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Brené Brown’s best-selling books and TED talks about embracing vulnerability and shame have made her a cultural phenomenon. Silicon Valley executives often invite her to speak to their companies, though she is skeptical about their intentions to follow through on her advice. “For some people, I am the kombucha shake of the month,” she says.
In this episode of Sway, she’s taking on the toughest case of all: the self-proclaimed “vulnerability skeptic” Kara Swisher.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Kara's interview with Georgia’s Secretary of State was a doozy. This episode refers back to yesterday’s episode, “Georgia’s Secretary of State on Standing Up to Trump."
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Georgia begins early voting today in two runoffs that will decide the composition of the next U.S. Senate. If Democrats win both seats, the Senate will be split 50-50 (with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris acting as tiebreaker). If they don’t, it will be controlled by Republicans who stand ready to block most actions of a Biden presidency.
Brad Raffensperger is the man overseeing Georgia’s critical race. As secretary of state, his role is to ensure that the election is fair and — he hopes — drama-free. “My job is to have fair and honest elections, but also I’d love to have elections get back to being boring again.” He does not want “everything flamed up.”
That’s because Mr. Raffensperger is still dealing with the flames of last month’s presidential election. Donald Trump called the secretary of state “an enemy of the people” as he certified (and then recertified) Joe Biden’s victory in Georgia. Mr. Raffensperger has faced pressure — and death threats — from members of his own party.
In this episode of Sway, Kara Swisher presses the secretary of state on how he’s managing the ire of his party, why — if elections were free and fair — he and fellow Republicans continue to champion voting restrictions, and how wrong Mr. Raffensperger was to compare Donald Trump to Stacey Abrams.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
This week, Kara Swisher interviewed WarnerMedia’s chief executive, Jason Kilar, fresh on the heels of the announcement that Warner Bros. will release its 2021 film slate in theaters and on its streaming site, HBO Max, simultaneously. (If you missed that episode — scroll back and hit play! Or click here if you’re on the World Wide Web).
In this bonus episode of “Sway,” Kara Swisher and the New York Times media columnist Ben Smith discuss what the news means for the future of the film industry, and whether this move will establish Mr. Kilar as the streaming king of Hollywood or leave his “head on a platter.” As Mr. Smith puts it, “A huge piece of the studio business — and of Warner’s business — are these relationships with directors who they just burned the hell out of."
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
If you want to be the first to watch “Dune,” “Godzilla vs. Kong” or the new “Matrix” movie this year (yes, there’s a fourth one) — you won’t have to line up at a movie theater. That’s because Jason Kilar, the C.E.O. of WarnerMedia, announced last week that the full slate of Warner Bros. films will be simultaneously released in theaters and on the company’s streaming service, HBO Max.
Mr. Kilar is only seven months into the job, and he just unleashed one of the biggest industry shake-ups in recent history. Movie theater executives and filmmakers are reeling. As director Christopher Nolan told The Hollywood Reporter, “some of our industry’s biggest filmmakers and most important movie stars went to bed the night before thinking they were working for the greatest movie studio and woke up to find out they were working for the worst streaming service.”
In this episode of “Sway,” Kara Swisher questions Mr. Kilar on whether he just delivered the final death blow to struggling theaters, how he’ll make good with Hollywood’s top talent, and what films will look like when — as Mr. Kilar predicts — blockbuster budgets surpass a billion dollars.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Steven Galanis is helping celebrities get into the gig economy. He launched his company, Cameo, three years ago as a marketplace for the famous (and not-so-famous) to sell personalized shout-outs.
For $500, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar may wish you a happy birthday. For $200, Ian Ziering (a.k.a. Steve Sanders from the original “Beverly Hills, 90210”) can send your mom a Happy Mother’s Day greeting. And for $10, the company’s chief executive, Mr. Galanis, will wish your kid’s team good luck on its next hockey game.
The company is facilitating fan requests, gag gifts and even political pranks. (The former New Jersey governor Chris Christie was a recent target.) But the point, says Mr. Galanis, is to bridge the gap for people who are “more famous than rich” — aging athletes, faded pop idols, out-of-work supporting actors and even artists whose inappropriate actions have led them to be “canceled.”
In the process, Mr. Galanis is taking on Hollywood power houses. Cameo is cutting agents, managers and publicists out of the equation, compressing the distance between celebrities and, well, the rest of us.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Dr. Ozlem Tureci and Dr. Ugur Sahin, the co-founders of BioNTech, are behind the first coronavirus vaccine to be approved in the West. Starting next week, the “Pfizer vaccine” will be available in Britain.
While Pfizer is financing and distributing the vaccine, the science behind it was actually spearheaded by the couple’s lesser-known company. When Drs. Tureci and Sahin, along with their BioNTech team, embarked on this mission, the record for the fastest vaccine creation was four years. They did it in less than one.
BioNTech started working on a vaccine in January. By early November, the company shared the results of its Phase 3 trials: over 90 percent efficacy. The announcement was made days after the presidential election was called for Joe Biden, and Donald Trump claimed the timing was politically motivated.
In this episode of “Sway,” the couple dismiss that accusation and speak instead to the science. “Clinical trials are highly regulated,” Dr. Tureci says. “And this is something which you cannot really delay or stop or expedite.”
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Marielle Heller had her big acting break in “The Queens Gambit,” a chess drama that has already been viewed on Netflix by over 60 million households. But prior to her performance as Alma Wheatley, Ms. Heller was already a big name — off the screen.
She directed award-winning films like 2019’s “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” and 2018’s “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” Female directors remain a minority in the U.S. film industry, and Ms. Heller has spent her career navigating what she describes as a male-dominated Hollywood “machine.”
“I do think there’s a weird stigma where people probably think that female directors are a risk,” Ms. Heller says, explaining that people “watch a male director make one little indie that comes out of Sundance and they go, ‘I see potential in that kid.’ And then they watch a female director come out of Sundance and make one little indie and they go: ‘That was excellent. I’ll wait to see her next movie to see if she gets a job.’”
In this episode of “Sway,” Ms. Heller and Kara Swisher discuss what it’s like to be “difficult” women, why Hollywood lets Tony Soprano get away with murder but worries that female characters are “unlikable,” and how Ms. Heller — despite all her directorial acclaim — still gets offered 30 to 40 percent less pay than men who do the same job.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Jane Goodall is an expert on alpha males — for decades, she’s been studying them in chimpanzee communities. She’s also inspired leaders in business, politics and culture to change their approach to animals and the environment.
It’s been 60 years since Dr. Goodall’s first excursion to observe primates in Africa. Her discoveries there, which transformed our understanding of animals, continue to inspire generations of scientists and environmental activists.
Now, at the age of 86, she reflects on her legacy. On this episode of “Sway,” she reveals how she rose to celebrity status, how she uses her platform to persuade world leaders and which politicians (like President Trump) she wouldn’t even bother trying to persuade.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Harvard economist Raj Chetty believes that there’s a way to push past America’s political divide: data.
Mr. Chetty, head of the Harvard-based research group Opportunity Insights, has amassed a powerhouse of information drawing on everything from I.R.S. tax filings to credit card spending. Armed with that data, he’s able to understand whether meritocracy — or inequality — determines the economic fate of Americans. He’s also able to translate datapoints into accessible visualizations and concrete policy proposals.
In this episode of Sway, Mr. Chetty draws on data to answer questions like what age a person’s future has been largely determined (around 23), which ZIP codes provide the most economic opportunity (including some in rural Iowa), and what stands between a third-grader who will grow up to become an inventor and one who will not.
Mr. Chetty’s own trajectory was shaped by a move his parents made when he was 9 years old — from India to the U.S. — to pursue the American dream. His datasets reveal that this American dream is fading for future generations. But Mr. Chetty is determined to revive it. And given his influence on the future president, the economist may finally have his chance.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Chamath Palihapitiya is one of Silicon Valley’s most successful tech investors. He’s also among the most candid. “I aspire to be a Koch brother before I aspire to be an under secretary,” he tells Kara Swisher on this episode of “Sway.” His definition of power has little to do with politics — it’s profits, he says, that empower you to “control the resources.”
Mr. Palihapitiya made his first fortune as an early executive at Facebook. He has since multiplied his wealth as an investor, with big bets and bold forecasts about the future. These days, he’s behind one of the most lucrative and controversial trends — SPACs, the acronym for blank check or special purpose acquisition companies, which some call the next bubble.
On this episode of “Sway,” Mr. Palihapitiya shares his predictions for American economic recovery and the return of centrism — and his prescriptions for what the Biden administration should do first.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
In the postelection uncertainty, all eyes were on Pennsylvania. And John Fetterman, the state’s Twitter-famous lieutenant governor, held court. He rallied Democrats with one-liners and taunted President Trump with arithmetic lessons on Twitter. Mr. Trump can try to challenge the election result, he said, but “you can’t litigate math.”
Mr. Fetterman, the former mayor of a Rust Belt town, is 6-foot-8, with tattoos, a shaved head and a graduate degree in public policy from Harvard. He’s not your standard politician. And that’s helped him sell progressive politics to working-class voters and become a powerful voice of the left.
In this interview with Kara Swisher, Mr. Fetterman explains the “purple churn” in Pennsylvania and why Mr. Trump’s increasingly desperate pleas for a recount won’t reverse a Biden victory. “There is no enchanted village in Pennsylvania full of 50,000 Trump voters that we haven’t heard from already,” he says. “It doesn’t exist.”
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
With a divisive election, an economy in a tailspin and a global pandemic, we could all use a little healing. Enter Esther Perel, an author and psychotherapist with the power to help mend relationships. “We have a screaming match, but we have a foundation underneath that,” she says.
In this episode of Sway, the couples counselor offers some advice: to Kara Swisher — on how to handle her Trump-loving mother, to Nancy Pelosi — on why she might be wise to surprise Donald Trump with a hug — and to all of us — on how we love and work through tumultuous times.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Jeff VanderMeer has built his career imagining weird futures in best-selling books like “Annihilation” and “Borne.” He says an apocalypse doesn’t have to mean the end of the world, but a reimagining of how we live on it.
He’s doing just that in his own backyard, making homes for raccoons and “rewilding” the land with native species. “We spend a lot of time keeping the outside, outside,” says VanderMeer, who sees his writing as a form of activism. But “there’s less divide between our bodies and the world than we recognize.”
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
As the most powerful man in the country peddled hydroxychloroquine and disinfectant snake oil as cures for the coronavirus, the comedian Sarah Cooper scoured her kitchen cabinet for props, scouted her lockdown apartment for locations and angled her iPhone. The result: a series of lip-sync videos posted on TikTok and Twitter — and viewed by millions.
The viral clips starred her facial expressions and the president’s voice.
But Ms. Cooper’s voice quickly followed. She soon nabbed a headliner spot at the Democratic National Convention. Months later, she’s the star of the celebrity-packed Netflix special “Everything’s Fine.”
Ms. Cooper says, “My success is forever linked to this person that I absolutely hate.” But she hopes that after Nov. 3, she can put Trump behind her.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
It finally looks as if Big Tech may face some breakups. Lawmakers are interrogating tech C.E.O.s on Capitol Hill while the Justice Department pursues a landmark antitrust case against Google. For decades, tech giants have avoided such scrutiny — hiding behind the idea that their products are free, beneficial, even beloved.
Lina Khan says this is no excuse for a monopoly.
As a 28-year-old law student, Ms. Khan published a single scholarly article that greatly shifted America’s antitrust debate. Three years later, she remains an existential threat to companies like Amazon, Facebook, Google and Apple.
Ms. Khan served as counsel to the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee in this summer’s investigation, helping expose how Silicon Valley’s most revered companies use data and power to undercut, threaten and swallow up their competition.
In this episode of “Sway,” she tells Kara Swisher that Big Tech’s practices have had a “chilling effect” on the American economy, and that it’s time to drag the nation’s antitrust thinking out of the “ice age.”
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
“We are advantaged — unfortunately — by four years of a record from Trump,” Hillary Clinton says as she predicts big wins for Democrats in 2020. The former candidate has been a lightning rod for the right, and has been called a lizard, a murderer and a human trafficker.
But she believes that President Trump’s leadership — or lack thereof — has left American voters more engaged and less susceptible to disinformation. Or so she hopes.
In this interview with Kara Swisher, Mrs. Clinton shares the moments that still haunt her four years later and her priorities for a post-Trump future.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
CRISPR-Cas9 is the kind of scientific breakthrough that could change human evolution. Scientists call it “genetic scissors” — a tool that snips DNA with powerful and scary precision. As Dr. Jennifer Doudna, the co-developer of the gene-editing technology, explains, scientists can now edit the genomes of living organisms “like you might edit a Word document.”
Dr. Doudna and her collaborator, Dr. Emmanuelle Charpentier, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry this year. Their pioneering research could pave the way for a cure for cancer. Some fear it could be used to create designer babies.
So what does this technology mean for how we live — and die? How will potential profit complicate the incentives of scientists? And just because we can more precisely “edit” life, should we?
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
In part two of Sway’s two-part election integrity series, Kara Swisher speaks to Trevor Potter, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission and an expert on the dark money and opaque laws that define modern American democracy.
From witness or notary public requirements in Rhode Island to a double-envelope mandate in Pennsylvania and a single dropbox per county in Texas, Mr. Potter and the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center are on a legal spree to fight voter suppression and voting restrictions. Millions of ballots are at stake. These court cases will help determine whose vote counts — and which candidate wins — in 2020.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
In part one of Sway’s two-part election integrity series, Kara Swisher speaks to Alex Stamos, former Facebook chief information security officer and current director of the Stanford Internet Observatory, about what went wrong in 2016 and what Big Tech can do better in 2020.
Mr. Stamos — known in Silicon Valley for his willingness to speak truth to power — rose to national prominence when he departed Facebook amid disagreement about the tech giant’s handling of Russian interference in the last presidential election.
As Election Day draws nearer, social media platforms are amending their policies around political advertising, disinformation warnings and moderation of online groups like QAnon. But how do these decisions get made? What do these platforms plan to do if there is a contested presidential election? And whom can we really trust?
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Roe v. Wade is under threat. As Republican senators scramble to fill Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat with a conservative justice who would tilt the court six to three, the nation’s largest abortion and reproductive rights provider has its own power playbook. In this episode of Sway, Kara Swisher speaks to Planned Parenthood’s president and C.E.O., Alexis McGill Johnson.
While Ms. Johnson has little sway over the judicial appointment, she is in a powerful position to preserve women’s rights at the state level, even if protections are rolled back nationally. And she is braced for the fight.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
You might know Michael Render, a.k.a. Killer Mike, from a speech he made that went viral four days after George Floyd’s death. Protests in Atlanta were escalating and so was the damage and violence. The mayor needed help turning the temperature down.
“I’m mad as hell,” he said, in near tears. “I woke up wanting to see the world burn down yesterday because I’m tired of seeing Black men die.”
You might also know Killer Mike as Grammy-winning rapper and one-half of the hip-hop duo Run the Jewels, whose music has been described by The New York Times as “the most politically timely hip-hop act of the day.”
Both his lyrics and his rhetoric speak to an urgent political moment. Killer Mike has a platform, a microphone and a blistering message about racial justice. Now, he also has his own bank — part of a push to empower the Black community.
Killer Mike sat down with Kara Swisher to talk about his power as a protest musician and entrepreneur, the temptation to burn it all down — and lasting lessons from the X-Men.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Dr. Moncef Slaoui is the chief scientific adviser for Operation Warp Speed, and arguably the most powerful force in the mission to vaccinate America from the coronavirus. The scientist, a 30-year pharmaceutical industry veteran and registered Democrat, says he doesn’t “want to get into the politics” even though everything about the United States’ coronavirus response — from mask-wearing to President Trump’s illness — seems to have been politicized.
Dr. Slaoui says he’s an adviser with “significant influence” — not a decision maker. And while he makes no guarantee about vaccine timelines, he does stand by a commitment to quit if politics interferes with science, saying, “I can guarantee that I will say what I think, and I am saying what I think.”
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Alexander Vindman — war hero, European affairs expert, lieutenant colonel in the Army — had lofty dreams of serving the United States. But a call he heard between President Trump and Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, gave him pause. Little more than a year after taking a job at the White House, Colonel Vindman testified before Congress regarding the Ukraine scandal, and was a key witness in the impeachment inquiry into Mr. Trump.
Now retired, citing bullying by the White House, Colonel Vindman tells Kara Swisher he doesn’t regret testifying. But what drew him to the White House in the first place? Why did he speak up when so many others haven’t?
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Elon Musk has a vision of the future, and — as one of the world’s richest men with four corporations under his reign — the means to try to manifest it. In a conversation with Kara Swisher, he outlines his theory of, well, everything.
“I do not think this is actually the end of the world,” say Musk. But at the same time, we need to hurry up. “The longer we take to transition to sustainable energy, the greater the risk we take.” But is relocating to Mars really necessary? Is our species ready to live with chips in our brains? And who’s Musk voting for, anyway?
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
On this episode of “Sway,” Kara Swisher speaks to Gavin Newsom, a governor who is, by some measures, running a country. California is the world’s fifth-largest economy. And yesterday, the state joined the ranks of Britain, Denmark and Germany with an ambitious environmental order banning the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035.
Governor Newsom is making big moves, even in the midst of a pandemic and a wildfire crisis. He’s leading California as the state takes on the federal government — “We’d be in the hall of fame if this was a sporting event.” But how does the governor choose his battles? What goes through his mind when he sits opposite a president who once called climate change a hoax? And how will the governor salvage California’s environment, economy and morale after a brutal year?
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
In the inaugural episode of Kara Swisher’s new podcast, “Sway,” she interviews House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. When it comes to presidential succession, Ms. Pelosi is second in line. And when it comes to taking on President Trump, she’s usually first.
“The power of the speaker is awesome,” says Ms. Pelosi. But how is she actually using that power? Why not accept a compromise (to the tune of $1.5 trillion) that may help quell a national crisis? What progress is possible when the speaker hasn’t spoken directly to the president in months? And with the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg leaving a looming conservative court, can Ms. Pelosi maximize the power of a Democratic-controlled House?
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
Power, unpacked. “Sway” is a new interview show hosted by Kara Swisher, “Silicon Valley’s most feared and well liked journalist.” Now taking on Washington, Hollywood and the world, Kara investigates power: who has it, who’s been denied it, and who dares to defy it. Every Monday and Thursday, from New York Times Opinion. Premiering September 21.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.