On with Kara Swisher

Latest Episodes:

When AI F*s Up, Who’s to Blame? With Bruce Holsinger Jul 24, 2025

Show notes

What happens when artificial intelligence collides with family, morality and the need for justice? Author and University of Virginia professor Bruce Holsinger joins Kara to talk about his new novel, Culpability, a family drama that examines how AI is reshaping our lives and our sense of accountability.

Who is responsible when AI technology causes harm? How do we define culpability in the age of algorithms? And how is generative AI impacting academia, students and creative literature?

Our expert question comes from Dr. Kurt Gray, a professor of psychology and the director of the Collaborative on the Science of Polarization and Misinformation at The Ohio State University.

Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher.

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TikTok Is Changing How We Talk & How We Vote Jul 21, 2025

Show notes

Social media algorithms are leading to the creation of new words, new accents, and even new identities. And while using the apps may seem like a fun, trivial way to waste time, they’re actually having a profound impact on how we communicate — and on our our democracy.

To find out more, Kara talks to Adam Aleksic, a 24-year-old Harvard-educated linguist and social media influencer, and the author of Algospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language. They discuss the way new words, communities, and identities develop on social media apps; the financial motives and incentive structures underlying the algorithms; the mechanisms through which they shape user behavior; and how they ends up impacting our culture and politics.

Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher.

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Making Trump Pay with E. Jean Carroll and Roberta Kaplan Jul 17, 2025

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“Not my type” is what President Donald Trump said about writer and former advice columnist E. Jean Carroll after she accused him of sexually assaulting her in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman. Despite his denials, in 2023, a jury found Trump liable for assault and defamation and awarded Carroll $5 million. After he continued to defame her — leading his supporters to launch an avalanche of threats against her — a second jury in 2024 awarded Carroll $83.3 million in damages.

Kara talks to Carroll and her lead attorney, civil rights lawyer Roberta Kaplan, about the two civil lawsuits Carroll details in her new memoir, “Not My Type: One Woman vs. a President.” They discuss potential evidence left out of the trial, including connections to Jeffrey Epstein, where Trump’s appeals stand, what chance he might have of bringing the cases to the Supreme Court and what impact his attempts to silence lawyers could have on our legal system.

Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher.

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Science vs. Silicon Valley with Adam Becker Jul 14, 2025

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How skeptical should we be about the bill of goods (often marketed as needs) sold to us by Silicon Valley? Very, says Adam Becker, an astrophysicist and author of the new book, More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity. From colonizing Mars to building god-like AIs, Becker argues that the fantasies propagated by tech billionaires like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Sam Altman, Jeff Bezos and Marc Andreessen aren’t just far-fetched – they’re a convenient cover for a racist, authoritarian power grab.

In this conversation, Kara sits down with her “soulmate” to dissect and debunk the narratives that undergird the less-than-benevolent Big Tech agenda and uphold the status quo. They also discuss why some ideas, like Musk’s dream of colonizing Mars, are scientifically impossible; the fallacy of effective altruism; the probability of existential threats against humanity; and how all of these factors add up to more power and more control for the techno-oligarchy.

Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find us on Instagram, TikTok, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher.

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Taking on Trump Family Corruption with Rep. Robert Garcia Jul 10, 2025

Show notes

Rep. Robert Garcia was recently elected as the ranking member of the powerful House Oversight Committee by his fellow House Democrats. He won a top job that usually goes to a senior lawmaker who has spent many years (sometimes decades) in line, dutifully waiting for a turn. And his win might be a sign that the unofficial seniority system of congress is eroding under the weight of young Democrats itching for a bigger seat at the table.

This is only his second term in Congress, but Rep. Garcia, who came to the U.S. from Peru as an undocumented immigrant when he was a child, has already shown that he’s a skilled communicator who can find an audience online. He and Kara discuss the power of the Oversight Committee, the future of the Democratic Party, the strategy behind investigating Trump family scandals, the Big Beautiful Bill’s impact on ICE, and more.

Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher.

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The 2024 Election Post-Mortem: How Trump Beat the Odds Jul 07, 2025

Show notes

Despite the chaos of January 6th, 34 felony convictions, and his party’s underperformance in the 2022 midterms, Donald J. Trump is once again president.

How did he defy political gravity to win again? Why did former President Joe Biden run despite overwhelming evidence that voters didn’t want him to? Was there a coverup to conceal his decline, as Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s book, “Original Sin” alleges? Why did former Vice President Harris run such a cautious campaign and refuse to distance herself from Biden? And was she doomed by Biden’s late withdrawal, or did her own mistakes cost her the election?

As America enters its 250th year and a new political era, Kara speaks with the authors of 2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost Americato answer these questions and understand how we got here. The trio breaks down how Trump beat back his Republican primary opponents, the Biden campaign’s fatal missteps, the Harris campaign’s stifling paralysis, and why Trump is now governing more like a king than a president.

Isaac Arnsdorf is a senior White House reporter for The Washington Post. His reporting on the first Trump assasination attempt was essential to the Posts’s 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News, and he’s the author of "Finish What We Started," about the MAGA movement post January 6th.

Josh Dawsey is a political investigations and enterprise reporter for The Wall Street Journal. Josh was part of teams at The Washington Post that won the Pulitzer Prize in 2022 for coverage of Jan. 6 and in 2024 for coverage of the role of the AR-15 in American life.

And Tyler Pager is a White House correspondent for The New York Times. In 2022, he won the Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prize for Distinguished Reporting on the Presidency.

Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher.

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The Red Scare Returns? Lessons from McCarthyism in the Age of Trump 2.0 Jul 03, 2025

Show notes

President Trump and other Republicans keep throwing around the C-word — Communist — to smear anyone slightly progressive, including Zohran Mamdani, New York City’s new Democratic mayoral candidate. But right-wing fearmongering isn’t the only reason it feels like McCarthyism is on the rise again.

So, just in time for the 4th of July, Kara speaks to New York Times reporter and author Clay Risen about his latest book, Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism and the Making of Modern America. They unpack Joseph McCarthy’s insane antics, parallels between the Republican party of the 1940s/50s and today — and what lessons, if any, we can learn from McCarthy’s ultimate downfall.

Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher.

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Jerrod Carmichael on Truth in Comedy, Coming Out Late & Religion Jun 30, 2025

Show notes

Kara Swisher sits down with Emmy-winning comedian Jerrod Carmichael for a raw and revealing conversation about truth, family, faith — and the art of standup. They dig into Carmichael’s work, including his deeply personal special “Rothaniel,” his genre-bending documentary “The Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show” (which he describes as a sitcom), and his latest special, “Don’t Be Gay.”

The two of them talk about class in America, the fears that kept him closeted, the role of religion and spirituality in his life, and why standup must evolve or die. Plus, why he’s the son his mother deserves, what he’s learned from artists like Jay-Z and Spalding Gray, and why he wants to “remove hyphens” from his name and focus on stand-up comedy. Happy Pride — and happy listening.

Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher.

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Trump's Iran Strikes: Triumph, Stalemate or Setback? Jun 26, 2025

Show notes

President Trump’s decision to bomb Iran shocked much of the world — but America’s involvement was over almost as soon as it began, and so far, it hasn’t sparked a broader war, like so many feared.

So how did we get here? Was the bombing a success? Will the ceasefire between Israel and Iran hold? Is the regime in Iran any closer to collapsing — and if it did, would that be good? Finally, what’s the long term solution to the nuclear issue? Kara gathers a trio of experts to grapple with these questions, and more.

Jason Rezaian is the Director of Press Freedom Initiatives and a writer for The Washington Post’s Global Opinions. He was the Post's correspondent in Tehran before he was unjustly imprisoned by the Iranian regime, and he’s the author of Prisoner: My 544 Days in an Iranian Prison.

Jim Sciutto is CNN’s chief national security analyst and the anchor of The Brief with Jim Sciutto. He’s also the author of The Return of Great Powers: Russia, China and the Next World War.

Robin Wright is a contributing writer and columnist for The New Yorker and a distinguished fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. She’s the author of several books, including The Last Great Revolution: Turmoil and Transformation in Iran, and Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion Across the Islamic World.

Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher.

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Molly Jong-Fast on How to Survive Anything Jun 23, 2025

Show notes

Molly Jong-Fast is best known as a writer and political commentator. But before she became the host of Fast Politics with Molly Jong-Fast, a regular on MSNBC, and a novelist and memoirist, she was the daughter of Erica Jong.

Jong catapulted to literary stardom with her 1973 novel Fear of Flying. The bold — and, at the time — shocking story of a married woman looking for casual sex made her a literary icon of second-wave feminism. And although Jong-Fast was an only child, she grew up sharing her life with the fictional alter-egos Jong created and longing for a deeper connection with her alcoholic and mostly-absent mother.

But now, Jong-Fast has turned the tables. She’s written an unsparing memoir about her relationship with her mother and Jong’s struggle with dementia titled, How to Lose Your Mother.

Kara talks to Molly about difficult mothers, the perils of writing a memoir, her pivot to journalism, and what gives her hope for America.

Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find us on Instagram, TikTok, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher.

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