Kara Swisher On Big Tech And Media

We have a lot of shared history and disagreement.

Kara is a journalist who has covered the business of the Internet since 1994. She was the cofounder and editor-at-large of Recode, and she’s worked for the NYT, the WaPo, and the WSJ. She’s now the host of the podcast “On with Kara Swisher” and the co-host of the “Pivot” podcast with Scott Galloway, both distributed by New York Magazine. Her new memoir is Burn Book: A Tech Love Story. It’s a fun read, and it was good to hang out with her again after many years. We were both web pioneers and it’s good to remember those days of the blogosphere. And we get fiery at times.

You can listen right away in the audio player above (or on the right side of the player, click “Listen On” to add the Dishcast feed to your favorite podcast app). For two clips of our convo — debating how woke the MSM really is, and how readers are smarter than journalists — pop over to our YouTube page.

Other topics: Kara’s rough childhood on Long Island; losing her dad at an early age and contending with a bad stepdad; her military family and her interest in serving; how DADT made things worse for gays; being an AIDS quilt folder; lesbian tropes; our mutual dislike of Pride parades; her fearlessness as a young reporter; The McLaughlin Group; the condescension of legacy media; tycoons who buy media outlets; Jeff Bezos; Marty Peretz; Friendster, Zip2 and Suck.com; how Facebook was seen as a savior for media; how trolls are chagrined when you talk to them; how Zuckerberg is “lovely but awkward” in person; Bill Gates; Peter Thiel; how gay hookups drove the early internet; how the apps kill serendipity; the power of podcasts for community; how the right innovated direct mail and talk radio; Obama’s pioneering with web outreach; how Twitter made January 6 (and Trump himself) possible; Kara watching every single episode of The Apprentice; how Trump’s act is getting stale; how social media is not a good business model; Elon Musk; buying Twitter to “make him more interesting at parties”; the Walter Isaacson bio; Elon’s vile tweets on Paul Pelosi; his trans daughter; ketamine; Mark Cuban on DEI; abortion in the 2024 election; how social media is fracturing and losing appeal with Gen Z; the decline of cable news; the disinfo on unarmed black men killed by cops; how BLM led to more black lives lost; the grievance-industrial-complex of the right; how its reactionaries just want to “burn shit down”; why Kara is a China hawk; why she disagrees with Jon Haidt; the TikTok ban; the Twitter Files; Hunter’s penis; Tipper Gore and dirty lyrics; and how Kara counsels her four kids about social media and porn.

Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Adam Moss on the artistic process, Johann Hari on Ozempic, Nellie Bowles on the woke revolution, Noah Smith on the economy, George Will on Trump and conservatism, Bill Maher on everything, and the great Van Jones! Send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com. Here’s a rec:

Could you please consider having the anthropologist Emmanuel Todd on your podcast? Christopher Caldwell recently profiled him the NYT: “This Prophetic Academic Now Foresees the West’s Defeat.”

Also, you should consider having on the great Oren Cass.

Oren is coming on this summer. Another rec:

I’m very much looking forward to your (possible) podcast on Oakeshott. A very long time ago, I was talking to John Casey at Caius in his rooms, and he kept referring to some guy named “Oakeshott,” of whom I’d never heard (though of course I did not confess my ignorance). Back in those days, Casey was running the white-tie “Oakeshott Ball” as his own private shindig. I can’t imagine it’s still going. My fondest memory of it was meeting Claus von Bülow, then in the news for certain delicate matters unrelated to Oakeshott.

We just booked the Oakeshott scholar Elizabeth Corey to come on the pod, so stay tuned. A fan of last week’s episode with Eli Lake exclaims: “Another great pod! I am getting addicted to the Dishcast.” Another:

Despite the gruesome details and violent history you discussed, your episode with Eli was an effortless fun listen. What a great guest.

For all his obvious intellectual gifts, though, I was a little surprised that he wasn’t able to rise to your challenge to articulate a case for the anti-Zionist argument, moving almost immediately to “settler colonialism” and the most extreme examples of blood libel. These arguments are sadly mainstream, it’s true. But later in the episode, I think you did a far better job of answering your own question by acknowledging that many Arabic people lost their homes and their homeland. And that’s really the heart of it, isn’t it?

Academic debates and Twitter feuds do focus on the colonial bullshit that Eli referenced, but sifting through that Orwellian newspeak is that painful truth: many Palestinians who were non-combatants in 1948 — and had no say in partition plans — lost the places they grew up in. Places where they made memories with their grandparents. Places they worshipped, played, and learned.

Israel has a right to exist. Even if it didn’t, the world made that choice in the 1940s and we’re not going to undo it. And the resolve Jews have shown through the centuries to survive and return to their homeland after unimaginable persecution is inspiring. But to realize that longstanding dream, other people suffered in turn.

Palestinian leaders like Arafat and today’s academics may mistakenly frame the big picture in colonial terms; and Eli is right that those arguments ignore Jews’ long connection to the land. But what I think he missed is that the best argument against Zionism — or at least for a sympathetic attitude toward Palestinians — are the individual human beings who were displaced through no fault of their own.

I whole-heartedly agree. So did Ben-Gurion. This next listener brings in another episode on Israel:

I’m a subscriber and I just finished listening to your very enjoyable episode with Eli Lake. For the record, I’m very pro-Israel and do, in general, disagree with many of your positions, especially those related to the ongoing war in Gaza. That said, I often think back to your conversation with Yossi Klein Halevi in January 2022, both because I learned a lot and because it seemed to me a particularly great example of two open-minded people who disagreed on a topic talking things through.

With regards to your conversation with Eli, I’d like to talk about the portion where you discussed the +972 article, and, more specifically, your thoughts on how the volume of Palestinian children who have lost their lives so directly impacts your thoughts on the ongoing conflict. Your moral position seems to be that the death of children is uniquely horrible. I don’t disagree with that at all! Civil societies should do everything possible to avoid killing children. Full stop.

You then make the point that Israel should change its tactics to avoid the collateral damage of killing children when targeting legitimate Hamas targets. The very, very important distinction that’s missed here is that Hamas’ intention — which it demonstrated with utter clarity on October 7th — is to kill children. Israel is fighting Hamas because it deliberately kills children. Israel shouldn’t, but in fact might kill Gazan children; Hamas shouldn’t, but in fact will kill Israeli children.

So why should Israel not do everything possible to prevent a hostile party that wants to kill children from having the power to do so? What is the purpose of a government or national military if it won’t fight to protect its kids? Every Hamas member left alive and free is one more person quite happy to slaughter an Israeli child no less innocent than the poor souls of Gaza.

I guess I find it a bit inconsistent for you to use the incidental death of children during a war as a primary reason to encourage one side to stop fighting but not to understand that the fighting exists because the other side intentionally slaughters children. It’s an impossible and unfair standard to hold Israel to.

I haven’t encouraged Israel to stop fighting. In the podcast, I supported their taking Rafah, but with more care. And yes, I understand the point about Hamas’ abuse of children (and all civilians). It’s the core issue. But it is also true that thousands of children have been killed not by Hamas, but by the IDF and US-made arms. It will not suffice to pretend otherwise.

More debate over Israel:

While I appreciate the genuine open-mindedness and even-handedness you’ve displayed on the Israel-Hamas war, I do have three factual and one moral objection to your commentary.

Firstly, you endorse in pursuit of the narrative of Palestinian rejectionism the idea that the Clinton offer to the Palestinians was extremely magnanimous. But this offer was not even for a state: the Palestinian state would have been demilitarized, Israel would have had basing rights and control over the airspace, and the Palestinians would have had to get Israeli permission to conduct foreign treaties. That is not a sovereign state.

Moreover, the Clinton offer would have required the Palestinians to formally waive the right of return — a political impossibility for any Palestinian leader. (This is also a morally reprehensible idea: why should a group be compelled to endorse or deny the mass land theft and ethnic cleansing carried out against it? Should the Native Americans have had to do this to conclude a peace with white Americans?)

Secondly, you claimed in your interview with Eli Lake that the 1967 war was started by the Arabs. However, more recent scholarship (e.g. the work of Tom Segev) indicates that neither party intended war and they sort of stumbled into it through a game of chicken. This was also the assessment of contemporaneous US intelligence at the time, and not a few members of the Israeli government, including then-Israeli Foreign Minister Eban, who later wrote, “Nasser did not want war; he wanted victory without war.” Given that Israel in a literal sense started the war (a preemptive war), I think Israel takes the most blame for 1967, despite Nasser’s provocations.

Thirdly, you keep indicating that the conflict is religious at bottom. This premise doesn’t explain the overwhelming support among Arab Christians (perhaps excluding Israeli Christians) for the Palestinians. For example, 60% of Lebanese Christians and 86% of Druze supported the October 7th attacks and the large majority of both groups also support Hamas. These are morally disturbing views, but leave that aside for a moment. The point is that these Christian demographics are extremely anti-Israel. In addition to the polling, I speak from my experience as a half-Egyptian (Christian background) who lived in the region for years.

The conflict is essentially about land and territory. The Arabs believe Israel is an illegitimate colonial state founded by Europeans, akin to the French in Algeria; and that they stole the land from the Palestinians. That is the Arab grievance in a nutshell, and that is why the Arabs will never accept Israel. (Despite heavy post-1948 migration from Middle Eastern Jews, I accept the Arab framing as concerns Israel’s founding; the “returning home after 2,000 years” thing doesn’t wash.)

Don’t forget that Palestinian terrorism was overwhelmingly secular, with an over-representation of Christians among the terrorist leadership (including George Habash, founder of PFLP; and Nayef Hawatmeh, founder of DFLP) in a previous generation, before the rise of Hamas.

Fourthly, the moral objection: I am surprised and disturbed to find that you support the IDF’s invasion of Rafah. You rightly recognize that this is a Grozny-style razing of Gaza — one huge war crime, in other words. Why, then, would you trust the IDF to extend the war into Rafah?

I’m not sure I do trust them. But I hope they can do it with more care because leaving Hamas intact in Gaza would be a dreadful failure. I’m immensely grateful to my listener for presenting this side of the case so clearly and personally. One more on Israel:

I’m a big fan of the Dishcast. I admire how you effortlessly conduct thoughtful discussions on a range of topics. In the spirit of debate, I question your insistence that Israel was a utopian idea doomed to create endless violence. The Zionists should have known better, you seemed to imply when talking with Eli Lake.

In the book My Promised Land, Ari Shavit recounts Zionist history: his grandfather’s arrival in Palestine (then a neglected province of the Ottoman Empire), farmers tilling previously unproductive land, and people building communities from scratch. The stories resonated with me, a Canadian with no Jewish ancestry. My own family arrived from Europe in the early 20th century. They were all fleeing: farmers from poverty, refugees from Bolshevik violence, an asthmatic from London’s industrial smog. Canada was literally a breath of fresh air.

How were the early Zionists different from the millions of Europeans also emigrating, but in the opposite direction? The Zionists went east, and the others went west to the New World, but the motivations were similar: they sought a better life and dreamt of fulfilling personal, cultural, and religious destinies that were stifled in the Old World. All immigration — whether chosen or forced — requires courage, often fueled by hope. This is no different today, another era of mass migration. Were you not chasing your own utopia when you moved to the US?

Just as Zionist immigration was a movement of its time, so too was the creation of the Israeli state. The end of WWII heralded the end of the age of empire and the triumph of the nation-state. Israel was part of a global wave of nation-state creation, including Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia, Myanmar, Morocco, India, Pakistan, to name a few and let’s not forget Israel’s neighbours: Jordan and Syria. Nation-states provide sovereignty but they aren’t without complications: contested borders, changing demographics, and minority communities feeling under-represented. My own country has a complex history.

It’s important to recognize what makes Israel unique: it’s the homeland of the Jewish people, a small population who were scattered to the winds and subject to repeated attacks who’ve nonetheless maintained a distinct culture reaching back 3,000 years. Israel faces not just contested borders, but enemies who contest its existence. It’s also important to recognize when Israelis are just like the rest of us and are merely responding to patterns unfolding in different eras.

A listener quotes a previous one:

“I’m not seeking to persuade you of anything, just curious, but why don’t you think Jesus accomplished the miracles he said he did?” I would point that reader to the works of Bart Ehrman — in particular, his books that chronicle the history of the writing of the Bible and the evolution of Jesus from prophet to God over the course of the first 300 years of Christianity (and the ever-increasing power and significance of Jesus with each decade after his death). Ehrman also addresses the lack of any contemporary writings about Jesus performing miracles, or about Jesus at all.

I’m with Ehrman in believing that a poor wandering prophet named Jesus actually existed. But that Jesus was a failed prophet that never gained much traction in his lifetime. The combination of his resurrection story, which obviously only happened after he died, and the work of Paul, whom I consider the real creator of Christianity based on the mythology he built up around the historical failed Jesus, is what made Christianity Christianity.

We covered Ehrman’s work quite a bit in the Daily Dish days, including a book club for How Jesus Became God. Another listener on Christianity:

Now that I’ve actually started reading Wiman’s Zero at the Bone, I must thank you again for having him on. I’m only on the fourth entry, but my God. I thought of the part of the podcast where you brought up the Gospel of John and “logos.” Wiman certainly seems to live there. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

Words are real and integral to humanity and the divine. They’re more than what we say, what we write. They are who we are. What is consciousness if not language — the ability to express with precision that which we both see and feel? They are life itself, not an expressing of life and self. They connect us to each other and to God.

We hear and remember, which tells us they are not ephemera. Written or not, even not outwardly expressed, they are as much a part of life as the blood and bone and tissue of our bodies. In fact, they are more. Our bodies will eventually waste away and ultimately decompose. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” Our words keep moving, alive somehow and immortal. “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.” How could He know, unless He knew? Unless He was indeed the Word.

Thanks again for enriching my life with your words, and the words of the wonderful guests you bring onto the podcast.

On our recent atheist guest:

I just finished listening to your conversation with Richard Dawkins. I found Dawkins interesting and thought-provoking as usual, and his passionate enthusiasm when discussing Darwinian evolution is always infectious. Having said that, as a journeyman myself regarding the question of God’s existence who was easily persuaded by the self-confident sneering at religiosity by New Atheists such as Dawkins, I wish to offer counterpoints to some of his arguments. His primary critique of religion, and what he deems to be its defining characteristic, is a reliance and/or acceptance of the supernatural. Generally, supernatural is understood to mean something beyond the understanding of science, or outside scientific laws as we comprehend them.

Our present scientific understanding of the origins of the universe, the Big Bang Theory (originally formulated by Fr. Georges Lemaître — a Catholic priest) posits that all space, time, matter, and energy originally began 13.8 billion years ago in an infinitesimally small point that then exploded in all directions through to the present day. There is considerable evidence to support this theory, and I presume Dawkins accepts it as the most compelling explanation currently available to us.

This theory not only allows for, but essentially necessitates, the existence of something “supernatural” (i.e. outside the understanding of science and scientific laws as we understand them). William Lane Craig makes this argument better than I could, and I would love to see a debate between Dawkins and Craig:

Regrettably, Dawkins refuses to debate Craig on the lame cop-out that Craig supports genocide because he refuses to disavow his belief in the inerrancy of the Bible on the basis of its sensibility regarding ancient Israelite clashes with neighboring rivals.

I appreciate that Dawkins acknowledges the positive aspects of religious faith and the beauty of religious art and architecture. I think it’s possible that he may even acknowledge the intellectual debt owed by modern science to Christianity — a theme explored by Tom Holland in Dominion. After all, while we humans are all beings forged by genetics and biology (contrary to Judith Butler), we are all also forged by social and cultural contexts in which we are born and brought up, as you both discussed near the end of the podcast. We are each subjective beings capable of aspiring to, but never attaining, a full account of something as immense and transcendent and magnificent as natural reality.

Thank you as always for airing an intellectually stimulating and cordial (perhaps at times too cordial) discussion with Professor Dawkins.

Another has a guest rec:

I’ve been studying the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta for many years and think it offers much-needed insights regarding religion, philosophy, consciousness, etc. Your recent chat with Richard Dawkins got me thinking you might enjoy the very different perspectives of Swami Sarvapriyananda, the head of the Vedanta Society of New York. If you haven’t heard of him, he’s a Hindu monk, as you’d expect. He’s becoming quite popular due to his YouTube talks and interviews with such thinkers as David Chalmers, Sam Harris and Robert Lawrence Kuhn of the PBS series Closer To Truth.

One more rec:

The highlight of my Saturdays is listening to your podcast. The sheer diversity in both topics and personalities is a true pleasure. Thank you!

In recent weeks, I’ve come across Bishop Robert Barron online. He’s a relative rarity, at least in America: a successful Catholic evangelist. On the Benedict to Francis spectrum, I’d put him somewhere in the middle. He’s approachable and appears to have a strong understanding of philosophy and theology, where I foresee you’d have plenty of common ground but also plenty to argue about. The conversation would be fruitful. He has 1.1 million YouTube subscribers!

Thank you, again, for doing the Lord’s work!

Speaking of good work, Truman is crushing the report cards at his new doggy daycare:

He’s a bundle of coiled energy, pathologically sociable, always looking to play. Maybe that’s just being a puppy, but I doubt it. I really felt a pang leaving him behind yesterday.

A reader appreciated the latest Dish column on transing kids:

I have been a Dishhead for many many many years. I recall your anger at the betrayal of American values in the adoption of torture. I remember your gradual and ever more appalled realisation that the Global War on Terror had backfired. But rarely have I read you write with such cold fury as you have on holding the medical profession and the media accountable for transing gay kids. One of your best pieces ever.

Another writes:

Your piece on Big Trans finally got me to subscribe. I’ve followed you off and on through countless publications and internet ventures over the past decade or so, but your recent commentary on medical interventions on gender non-conforming children got me on board (at least for a little while). I’m very much a San Francisco gay man (f-slur to the max), with associated liberal ideals, and while I do support trans identities, especially after a person enters adulthood, I too am worried about children deciding on medical transitioning before they have time to just explore themselves and their lives. And it all sorta feels homophobic too.

I was very much a sissy gay kid and came out at 13. And I myself questioned my gender identity in my formative years. Looking back now, as a very comfortably a  queer cis-male in his 40s, I embrace my feminine aspects — and honor them — while still being very comfortable with being a male and in my masculinity too.

One of my great personal gay elders is Scott Thompson of Kids in the Hall, especially for his Buddy Cole character. His revived Cole monologues echo your sentiments, so I thought you’d appreciate this video:

Thanks so much! Money quote from Buddy Cole:

I saw this one [talk show] recently, where they had this little boy on who was being bullied ruthlessly at school because he liked to wear dresses. They kept referring to him as “transgender.” You could tell the parents were thrilled. A transexual is so much more chic than a plain old sissy.

One more email for the week:

Regarding your excellent piece on Big Trans, if the underbelly of this whole cult of disfigurement is homophobia — the fear of having a child become gay or exhibit gay characteristics — then why now? Why now, at a moment in Western history when gay rights and acceptance are ascendant? Is it a perfect storm of backlash against traditional feminism and gay freedom fueled by social media’s contagion?

Coincidentally, I’m currently spellbound by Jerrod Carmichael’s new HBO reality series. It’s made me realize that even after all this time, living in modern America, to see gay men (or women) in real relationships, dealing with real life and being physically intimate, is still a rarity. Maybe that’s the problem.

I’ve started to watch. But I’ll be honest. I don’t find exposure of intimate family conflicts an admirable thing. I found myself wincing a lot. The deepest work of art about the struggles of black gay men remains, in my view, Moonlight.

Thanks as always for the dissents and other great emails. Send yours to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

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