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 and founding partner at Puck. 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.