Acquired - Season 3, Episode 4: Recode (with Kara Swisher)

Episode Date: September 11, 2018

In this special episode Ben & David head to Recode’s SF office and sit down in the red chair with the one & only Kara Swisher! Kara tells the story of Recode, from the beginnings of her partnership with Walt Mossberg in the late 90’s at WSJ to the launch of the D Conference and the All Things D blog, to starting Recode and ultimately being acquired by Vox Media in 2015. Kara is someone we’ve long looked up to at Acquired, and it was really special to have her join us on the show. We hope you enjoy the conversation as much as we did!Sponsors:ServiceNow: https://bit.ly/acqsnaiagentsHuntress: https://bit.ly/acqhuntressVanta: https://bit.ly/acquiredvantaMore Acquired!:Get email updates with hints on next episode and follow-ups from recent episodesJoin the SlackSubscribe to ACQ2Merch Store!Links: Kara interviewing Stewart Butterfield, CEO of… Glitch?

That's different. That's just a bunch of white guys talking. Apple, Apple, Apple. Oh, that damn Google. Facebook. Welcome to Season 3, Episode 4 of Acquired, the show about technology acquisitions and IPOs. I'm Ben Gilbert. I'm David Rosenthal. And we are your hosts. We're here today to talk about the acquisition of Recode by Vox Media. And in fact, broadcasting live from the Recode podcasting studio in the red chairs nonetheless.

We're here with one of the greatest people, actually probably the greatest person that we could imagine to help us tell this story. All right. Okay. The one and only Kara Swisher. Nice to meet you. This is not really the recodes. It's just a studio, just so you know. We're not fancy here at Vox Media. That's why I'm here.

Listeners don't know that. Yeah. Okay. It's really impressive. We're in suits. We had a really nice view of the Bay Bridge before in our other office, but it was too expensive. So here we are looking at the Transbay Terminal,

which is buses. Beautiful in its own right. This is what happens after you get acquired. And then the... No, no, that was before we had the night. Before we were acquired, we started the company in my backyard. So this is much nicer than anything else.

Well, we'll get into that. Yeah, okay. All right, listeners, Kara needs no introduction, but I'll do one anyway because it was fun to put one together. Kara is the executive editor and co-founder of Recode. She is the illustrious host of the Recode Decode podcast.

She's an absolute legend in the technology industry, previously founding the All Things Digital Conference and blog at the Wall Street Journal, which was a pioneer of legitimizing blogging and creating an actually good technology conference. Cara has been called one of the greatest interviewers of our time by Ezra Klein Thank you. Booch and famously made Mark Zuckerberg sweat through his Facebook Illuminati hoodie on stage. She's an amazing storyteller and a renowned author, and we are so, so lucky to have her with us today. Gosh, that's nice. I think we'll stop now. And scene. No, you won't get off that easy. All right.

All right. Well, if you're new to the show, you can check out our Slack at acquired.fm. It's the place where David, myself, and 1,600 of our favorite listeners discuss episodes right after we release them, along with real-time hot takes and some of the biggest tech news of the day. Okay, listeners, now is a great time to tell you about longtime friend of the show, ServiceNow. Yes, as you know, ServiceNow is the AI platform for business transformation. And they have some new news to share. ServiceNow is introducing AI platform for business transformation. And they have some new news to share. ServiceNow is introducing AI agents. So only the ServiceNow platform puts AI agents to work across every corner of your business.

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Let's do it. Okay. So, Cara, you have a super interesting personal story that we won't get into here today, but listeners, of course, should go listen to you on The Ezra Klein Show. Sure. Great interview where you talk all about that. Seriously, I think it was one of our carve-outs a while back. Yeah.

It was a great interview. It was great. The Cliff Notes version is out of school.-outs a while back. Yeah. It was a great interview. It was great. The Cliff Notes version is out of school. You work in print journalism to start. You're a reporter in D.C., first at the Washington City paper, then at the Washington Post, brief detour in TV in between. Again, go listen to the Ezra Klein show. And David's not just saying that, like, so we can save time or something.

It's one of my favorite podcast episodes I've listened to in the last year. You should go listen to it. None of that sounds like tech blogging. No. Because you basically invent tech blogging after that. Yeah. But you do meet, during that time period, your partner, Walt Mossberg. Absolutely.

How did you first meet Walt? And, of course, he was also a DC resident. Well, I was writing a book because I was working for The Washington Post and I started covering AOL when it was tiny. It was a tiny little company, which I think I talked about in Ezra's show. And so he was an integral part of the early success of AOL. He had a very powerful column in a print column in the Wall Street Journal, Personal Technology. And he wrote a very positive review of AOL. And so I interviewed him for it because he sort of got a lot of people

to use it for the first time. And he picked it over two very big efforts by Sears and IBM. Yeah, CompuServe, Prodigy. Yes, and so he said those suck and please use AOL. And this was a big, giant boost. This is the reason Steve Case owns half of Hawaii

is I think because of Walt Mossberg today. Yeah, but did AOL invent the GIF? I don't know about that. I don't know. In any case, he was the person who did it. And so he got what was going on way before other people. And I had already been very much interested in digital stuff. And so he was just in my book.

He's the beginning of a chapter of a book. And then we just hit it off. And both saw things the way print was going the same exact way. And so he then tried to convince the Wall Street Journal to hire you away from the Post. He did. He did. He got me my job at the Post, at the Journal, and they didn't have anyone covering the Internet. There wasn't the Internet.

Which is crazy. Well, no, it wasn't because it didn't exist. It just didn't exist. It's like covering cryptocurrency a couple of years ago. There wasn't anyone covering that. But it was 97 when you joined the journal, right? Yeah, but it really wasn't. It was online services.

You can't, you know, there was no Google. There was barely an Amazon. I think I joined in 96, actually, somewhere in there. But it was barely, Netscape had gone public, but it wasn't very big. You had Microsoft, really, and that was more computing, and it was not internet computing. And so very few people were using the internet. And Mark Andreessen was a teenager, I think, in creating the Mosaic browser at the University of Illinois. And so there wasn't. It wasn't that big. People think it was, but it wasn't. But it was real small. And Yahoo, when I met them, they had just

a few people working there. And Amazon, just a few people. So no, it wasn't big. Wow. So did the journal have a tech bureau already or did you start? They were covering things like Intel, like the chips, they had chip coverage, they had Microsoft coverage, obviously, because that was software. They had Apple coverage, mostly downward, the downward facing Apple, essentially. And they had stuff like that. It was all about the hardware, essentially, and also the chips and the innards and stuff like that. It was very technical. And so I was the first person hired in that bureau to cover the Internet per se,

like what it was in online services and Yahoo. And so there was no one covering these people. There was Excite. You don't remember that company. No, definitely. John Doerr. Yeah, John Doerr was in that one. And, you know, they just didn't have people.

They just didn't. That was it. That was it. And people made fun of me, as I've said many times. Well, Carol, what do you think it was about you that, you know, this is weird corner of society that's clearly not a thing yet, but you're all in on it. You're saying the internet's money.

Yeah, I got it right away. It's sort of like seeing a movie and going, oh, like, you know, I think I just saw it. And I was very interested in it before when I was at the Washington Post. I was very interested in, we had these little Trash 80 computers that we used. I used to write party stories about Washington for the style section. And I used the Trash 80 and we'd put the couplers on telephones. It was crazy that we did this at like pay phones, if you remember those. And then I started liking the phones that we had. We had a portable phone that was in a suitcase,

and I was obsessed with it. And I carried it around and nobody was interested in it. And I kept saying, this makes total sense. Why aren't we using this? Why doesn't everybody have it? Why do we have it? It just started like making connections. And I think I just made connections on just this one thing. And the minute I saw it, when I saw the browser and the World Wide Web, which you called it the World Wide Web, you have to spell it out all the time. You knew, you saw, oh, oh, whoa, just a minute. And so there was all this experimentation going on. Like there was AT&T had this thing called Interchange. There's CompuServe and Prodigy. There's all kinds of stuff. But I remember thinking this is going to be going to change

everything. And I covered retail for the Washington Post and you could see classifieds were going to get screwed. You could see, I remember being mad at deadlines at one point. I'm like, why do we have deadlines? That's stupid. People should get news anytime. And I don't, I met a lot of people that thought like I did, you know, so there weren't that many, but Walt was one of them. And so I just kept pursuing it. And even though people made fun of me and until they started to be worth something in the 90s, in the mid to late 90s. And that was a boom. That was one of the first booms. The pre-crypto boom.

No, it was a boom. It was several booms. That was one of them. The early 90s, the late 90s, I'm sorry, not the early 90s, were a time when all these companies started to be worth a lot. And there was like Mark Andreessen was on the cover. I think he was 20. The king of something. He was on a throne and he had hair at the time and was barefoot.

And like this guy's going to rule the universe. And so there was lots of attention to it. And then Bill Gates got very wealthy. And that was a big deal. When I met him, he was wealthy but not that wealthy. And Steve Jobs was making his comeback. So you mentioned deadlines. You and Walt together, I believe, went to the Wall Street Journal. Yeah. After you've been there for a while and you're like, we should do a blog.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I got pregnant. I had a baby. And when I came back, I was just fat. I read a lot of blogs when I was away. And I especially Sullivan had one. There was Suck.com, if you recall Suck.com. It was great. I forget what that guy's name is. Anyway, it was very funny. I saw some others like TechCrunch and others, and I thought, well, they suck at journalism. Why can't we do this? But they don't have deadlines.

Yeah, they don't have deadlines. Why can't we do this? We should do this. We should have an ongoing conversation. And we couldn't convince the management of the Wall Street Journal to do it. Was it the edit side? Was it the business side? They were both.

They were just ignorant. We just kept saying this is like the way of the future. And they didn't agree with us. They were interested in the Saturday Journal and things like that. But they did understand conferences. And they had a conference division that was just terrible. And we said we'll do a conference the right way. And so it was a money-making thing from the start.

And so it's a good way to get in. And we started with a conference the right way. And so it was a money-making thing from the start, and so it's a good way to get in. And we started with the conference in the early 2000s, and then we moved to the website, I think, in 2007. 2007, yeah. Yeah, so this was a question. We had five years of the conference going on. Right. Did you always intend the conference to be the way

to bring management of the journal around? Yes, yes, 100%. Like, here's some money, here's some millions for you, you know, and profits and what reporter brings millions and profits in and you know, they don't bring $10. And if you bring, you know, more than a thousand dollars. And I can confirm, I was actually a spreadsheet monkey at Dow Jones before I became a VC. Yeah. Like you guys made like millions, like 20% of the journal's profit at some point. Yeah. We were like 20, we called it myself, Mr. and. At some point. Yeah, we were like 20. We called ourselves Mr. and Mr. 20%, but they weren't making any money.

So that's a low bar. I can confirm that. It was a low bar. We did call ourselves Mr. and Mrs. 20%. But the problem the journal made is they made a deal with us where we got a percentage of the profits. So they didn't make that much money. So, which is good for me and good for Walt.

And Walt has a nice TV set and everything. But were you an employee of the journal then? I was originally, and then I became a contractor. I did. I didn't want to work for them anymore. And why is that? I don't like working for people. I'm a bad employee.

I'm doing a thing for Forbes on this, being a bad employee. I'm a bad employee. I hate bosses. I think they're stupid. I'm rude. I'm just not a good employee. And so I'm a pretty good employee. Well, Vox is great.

They never bother me, and they're smart enough not to. But they were making decisions about the internet I thought were stupid, and I knew more. And I just was tired of banging my head against a wall. And they just didn't want to do – they were not very into online stuff. They were later, and they had some early stuff. Bill Gruskin did a lot of really cool stuff. But they weren't interested in it. They saw it as an adjunct.

They saw it as something to beat. They thought it was going to go away. This was not uncommon at newspapers. When I was at the Washington Post, when they started, they had a separate division in Virginia. They kept the online people over there. And I was like, this has to be fully integrated. And I didn't want to be in Virginia. They kept the online people over there. And I was like, this has to be fully integrated. And, you know, I just didn't, I didn't, I didn't want to be management. That was the other part that was sort of anathema. So is that why, I'm curious,

I was going to save this question until later, but you sort of become a half entrepreneur with all things D. Totally. But it wasn't until much later that you fully become. No, but we were an entrepreneur. We were from the beginning. We got to do what we wanted to do. And the way we kept them at bay was we made money, right? So if you make money, they shut up. They just bring us the money. Just here's the bag of money.

Leave us alone. Like that kind of stuff. And they kind of did. And Walt had a really big reputation then and was making a lot of money for them in the print publication because his Thursdays, when his column appeared, that's where all the big ads were. That was the big ad day for the Wall Street Journal, one of them. He was important for their business from a print perspective. They would do what he wanted, essentially, and should have because he made them a lot of money. And so they indulged us in this thing. And by the way, it made money. So why? And it also brought attention. And then it brought great attention because the first year we had Gates, we had Jobs. Then we had Gates and Jobs. Then we had this person and that person and did these amazing interviews that got a lot of attention.

And then we had Gates and Jobs. And so what's to argue with? Except they did. Except they did. Did you guys consider, though, doing it fully independently to start? Yes, all the time. Or do you think the timing was wrong in the beginning? We should have.

We should have, but it wasn't, you know, we could have and we didn't. You know, Walt had a great franchise there. I think I was a contractor, so I didn't mind as much to be, a lot of reporters need to be at a big, that's their identity as being part of the blank. And I felt like it was the first time

I realized you didn't need the giant mothership to be famous. Like you could do it on your own. And I'd seen others do it. There's a lot of people on the internet who became, you know, whatever you think of Mike Larrington. And I don't think much of him still to this day. He got a, he got a brand. Andrew Sullivan, who seems to have gone a little crazy too, but they got their own thing based on their own work. And so one of the things I always say to people is if you do the work, nobody can touch you.

Like if you do good work, it has to be good work. It has to either make money or cause attention or something. It has to have some value, whatever that value happens to be. If you do the work, nobody can hurt you ever. Like a lot of people that come to me with political issues at the company, I'm like, do the work. And they're like, yeah, what about this guy who doesn't like me? I'm like, do the work. Like trust me when I tell you if you do the work, aside from various issues of sexism and ageism and things like that, which do exist at

every single company I've worked at, if you actually perform, you tend to get rewarded for it. You tend to. And again, women are constrained. Or at least you get licensed to do whatever you want. Yeah. And you also have to not care. You have to also not care. I didn't care to be in management. I didn't care to climb the ladder. I didn't care to climb the ladder. I didn't care if they liked me. And so that helped. That helped a great deal. And you had the leverage that if you go do it on your own, that's also going to be successful.

Oh, yeah. They would hate that. They would hate that we succeeded without them. But I don't, you know, okay. And by the way, also the important thing, which I hate to do, there's such a trope of Silicon Valley. I didn't care if we failed. I didn't care. And I was older at this point.

I was much older. You were in your 30s already, right? 40s. Wow. Yeah. I'm old. You had a profit sharing with them where you guys took most of it. Did they ever try and renegotiate that? Well, they originally, you know, it was interesting. The first year we made, I forget it was, it was a good sum of money. It was a million bucks or something like that. We made a lot of money, but we didn't even try, but nobody was trying at all. And we'd made money. It was a million bucks or something like that. We made a lot of money. We didn't even try, but nobody was trying at all. And we'd made money. And I remember calling Walt and I said, I think I said this on the other show, did you get the flowers? Because I didn't get the flowers. Like, I'd send you fucking flowers if you made the money. And the next year we're like, you're giving us money. And so I think they gave us $40,000 extra. They thought that was like a big

deal. And then they didn't want to give us- They're like, I'm giving you millions. Yeah. Like, I know. And we were like, oh, that's not very much. And so I think it was $40,000 sticks in my head. And then the next year they just didn't want, they were like mad about the $40,000. And we're like, well, give us part of the profits. Like I don't know why they did it. Like they just did. And so they gave us a third of the profits and it was a lot of money.

And they hated it. They hated it. But they couldn't. It was like a three or four year contract. And I remember being in a cab. Is that like, it's exactly what you guys realized is that you don't need to be part of

the X. No, exactly. No, they hated it. I remember one guy was like, we never should have done that. That was our error. And I'm like, you were so greedy for the short term. You didn't understand. What it did is it unleashed the idea that reporters could go on their own, like Jessica Lesson at The Information

or Kevin Delaney at Quartz. Yep, absolutely. Both great Wall Street Journal reporters. But they all of a sudden were like, Kara made a break for the border. Now I'm going to do it. And so that was the great part. So you started the trend.

Yes, I did. No, we did. We did. It was like you could. You could. It's worth calling out just how much talent you cultivated there too. Yes, we did.

I mean, you're just naming a couple of names now, but you look at the journal at the journal. That was Kevin and they weren't at All Things D. But we tried to get Kevin to come to All Things D, but he wouldn't take the risk at the time. He didn't want to leave the journal. That was but then he did even to come into D, which was he didn't. He knows that he knows. He knows. We talked about it the other day. But there was I mean, everybody was there at that. Yeah, we were, you know, I mean, it was like you said, Jessica Yeah, we were. I mean, it was, like you said, Jessica Lesson. She was with Jessica Vassalaro at the time. Yeah, yeah.

At the Journal, yes. That was at the Journal. Not at All Things D. We had great, we've had amazing, like Mike Isaac is amazing. Nellie Bowles is amazing. They're all the Times. Oh, Goodman's there. Yeah, everybody was there.

Everybody was there. We had a lot of people coming through. What was that? We were good at training people. Were you and Walt, like, were you out there identifying people? Were you recruiting? Yes. Yeah. Because people wanted to work for something exciting. You know what I mean? And we were doing one of the things we also were doing, which other places weren't doing, is we were running exciting journalism. We were doing like personality, be like Peter Kafka and who's still at Recode. We were doing like, hey, this

Comcast deal sucks and here's why. Like we had that kind of tone. That was a big part of why you wanted to do the blog. You wanted to have an opinion and you didn't – you had this line in another – No, we wanted to have an informed opinion based on reporting. That is very different than mouthing off about something. We knew – like when I write columns – Dave, I do checking. I called Mark Zuckerberg when I asked – when I'm about to say something terrible about Mark Zuckerberg.

But, you know, we spent a lot of time doing reporting. And so we had a tone of voice that had, whether it was great features that we did or like look at this or this is a mess over at Yahoo. We would have narratives, the whole Yahoo things. And we'd have great graphics too. John Pachkowski, who now works for BuzzFeed, did amazing graphics. Raise the Yangtanic, which was the Titanic for Yahoo. We would put a red- Did you call Jerry and tell him you were going to-

Oh, he laughed. He didn't care. Most people, some people cared, but we don't care about them. But we put a ball gag in Eric Schmidt's mouth when he kept saying stupid things. So every time he said stupid thing, we'd say, Eric Schmidt said a stupid thing again today and embarrass Google. The ball gag goes up. And so we don't do that now, but it was great. And then I had a little camera, a little flip cam that I would like shove in people's face.

That was a precursor to a lot of stuff. So I'd stick it there. I'm like, hi, hi, how you doing? How you doing? Like to whoever I was around. And you posted on the site. I just would post them full on the sites. And I think people like that. It was fun. was fun it sort of it was we were trying everything different

one time i did a whole story that just said um apple twitter apple twitter apple twitter just to see how many likes we not how many likes how many is stupid how because how nobody cares about anything and so we were and then you would just it would just be honest and i think that's what what was great about it like peter kofka is a perfect example of that. Great reporting because he always got the scoops. That's right. We always got the scoops. That was critical.

But at the same time, and we got the scoops whether we had access or not. Like they gave us access. Great. If they didn't, fuck you. Like, you know what I mean? Like, that's the kind of thing we feel like. Don't give a great. I'm good without you.

Your help. I'm good with your help. I'm good with your help. But we didn't cultivate that access-y journalism. And yet we got a lot of access, which I think having worked at the Wall Street Journal, it was all about access. Like, we're going to give it to you first as an exclusive. I kind of hated that. I don't mind it, but I'm like, ugh, what am I leaving? Well, it comes with strings attached, right?

It always does. And you also, you mentioned this on the Ezra Klein podcast, but your strategy is already know everything that's going on and then go talk to them and then they have to tell you. Yes. Or they think you do. Like there's a whole thing. Okay. I always know everything that's going on, but sometimes I don't know. I actually do these days. It's really kind of sad. I've forgotten things. Like I literally have a list of tips people have told me that I've forgotten about. Like there's a, I have a really good tip on Facebook that I literally am waiting for Kurt Wagner to get back from his honeymoon because I know no one will get it. Like I'm just, just sitting there, but I would have been in the old days, just typed it right up and shoved it out there. But you know, things have changed in that way. The stuff we pioneered, everybody else copied or, and we copied from other people,

et cetera, et cetera. but everyone iterated on a little bit of our model and you know buzzfeed has a similar tone everybody's done a lot of the stuff we did and now jessica's doing these long stories which people are now iterating on her innovations um so so i think people have caught up to a lot of our tricks who reminds you today of the pioneering you back then that was breaking all the rules? You know, Jessica a little bit. But she's doing a different thing. So, you know, she has those long stories.

And I, you know, some of what Axios is doing kind of, but I think it's formulaic and I think it'll get tired after a while. I think that one's going to exhaust you. Although certain people, like I like Mike Allen. I like some of the newsletters. Casey Newton has a newsletter called The Interface that I love recently. I thought he was, I just, I've always like tried to bug him about access journalism. But this thing is great. It's totally insightful and useful. What I'm interested in is journalists who make products that people find useful and helpful to their lives.

Or funny or insightful. And whatever format it takes, I don't care. Like same thing with podcasts. We started this four or five years ago. I forget. It's four years ago. Well, hold on.

We're going to come back. Okay. All right. All right. Okay. In any case, we just decided, we just decided,

we just decided to do things and that's the environment I want to be in. Like I just, now I'm going to do this like too bad. Same thing with the New York times. I'm going to do it. Like, did I think about that? I worked for a box.

Sure. But I don't care. Like I have a plan, like why I'm doing it that way. For folks that haven't checked it out. I think a few amazing op-eds. Yeah. I have one a week. I have one a week now. Yeah. There's about five now. I'm going to have two this week. Last week was on Trump mouthing off on, yeah, that ludicrous, you know, about, about Twitter and Silicon Valley. It's very good. So it's unfair to him. They're unfair to him. They're unfair.

By the way, well, we were going to ask you later, but the Mooch. Yeah, the Mooch was great. That's my favorite interview. That was a great interview. That was so great. Well, here's a good example of that. So everyone's like, oh, you can't interview him.

I'm like, why not? Sure I can. So what I had done, like, I think that's what I, like, I'm having a big fight today on Twitter about Bannon. They're like, you can't interview him. I'm like, yeah, I can. No, you can't. Well, I'm going to. So whatever. Like, I get your problems with him, but I'm going to big fight today on Twitter about Bannon. They're like, you can't interview him. I'm like, yeah, I can. No, you can't. Well, I'm going to.

So whatever. Like, I get your problems with him, but I'm going to still interview him. That's what people told us about you. What? You can't interview her. What? You can't. And we said we can.

Yes, you can. Like, whatever. Just swear on your show. Right, exactly. So is that the laugh? By the way, that's why we like, oh, come on. Is there a clean iTunes? No one's listening.

Tim Cook ain't listening. And by the way, he did a great interview with me recently on MSNBC. But what was I talking about? Oh, Mooch. Oh, so what happened was I trolled him on Twitter all the time. He just made me laugh. But I also thought he was appalling in many ways. And so I just kept writing, hey, Scaramucci.

And then I would make a joke about whatever stupid thing he had said. And I forget. There were a lot of them. They went on and on, like hundreds of them. They were terrible for me to do. And then I was at this event that John Battelle had in Silicon Valley at a restaurant, at this restaurant. There was a thing, and I don't wear my glasses. I don't see very well.

And this person was, like, coming over, and this tiny little man was, like was like headed my way with a lot of hair and I'm like, who is that? And he comes right in my face and Scaramucci. He's like, oh you I know you you're mean to me on the internet I'm like, oh my god Scaramucci and we ended up talking all she's Italian. I'm Italian. It was great We had a great bunch of drinks. We laughed and I said you gotta come on my podcast because you kidding me I'm like absolutely not and we did it at his office, his crazy office in New York. And it was fun. And I think he was surprised because I'm super liberal on Twitter, obviously, and anti-Trump.

And he thought, why wouldn't she talk to me? But of course I would. Why wouldn't I? He was really interesting. And actually, it was a good podcast. It was good. I mean, it's my favorite interview you've ever done. Yeah, it's one of them.

Because the narrative on him was he's the mooch. He's like caricature. He's not a human. But he is and he isn't. But he's also a caricature. Well, yes. Yeah. But you can tell in your interview that there is a method to his madness.

There is. There is. But he's still the mooch. He's still the mooch. Of course he's the mooch. Hey, you're in New York. Come to my club. I went to his club.

Like, why wouldn't I? Like, are you kidding? Here's a giant steak. All right, I'll eat it. I'm a vegetarian, but I'll go for it. I did. I ate a steak. Did you break your rule for her?

Sure. Why not? It was a good steak. He's the mooch. All right, let's pick this back up. So Dee becomes very successful. Yeah. You're Mr. and Mrs. 20%.

Yeah. You and Walt. We get to towards the end of 2013. Yeah. The contract for Dee is up. Yeah. We had signed another one with Rupert Murdoch, much to my chagrin that I did that. But when he bought the company, he loved Walt Mossberg. I'll tell you that. He didn't know my name for a long time, but we signed a first contract with them. And then the things,

just everything at Dow Jones. Was that another three years? You signed it in 2010? Yeah. Something like that. Right when they bought it, we did. Oh, that was 2007. So you signed a long time. Yeah, we signed a couple with them. Seven years. Yeah, I know. We did. We were there a long time. Total aside. Maybe two contracts. Yeah. But we're, go ahead. I was, my favorite story from my favorite Rupert story. I never actually met him when I worked there, but my desk on the eighth floor in 1211 was, I was hired, there was headcount allocated for my job.

My boss had hired me. And Wendy Dang, his then wife, she wanted her personal assistant to take my desk. Oh, and so your desk was taken. And so my boss had to go and fight with News Corp Corporate and Wendy. No, no, no. I won. I mean, I wasn't even there yet, but my boss won. Wendy's a tough lady.

Yeah. I like Wendy. It was a victory. I was one time caught between the two of them at dinner, and I just can't even go into it. It was quite a night. I'm sure. Yeah. All right.

So when did you know that the separation was coming? You know, we tried. And then after that, first of all, they didn't want to invest. We had an idea to do all things finance, all things whatever. We had a great idea. And John Miller, who was the chief digital officer at the time, loved it. Former AOL president, right? well and uh i liked him i think he's super innovative uh it's done very well since then but he wanted to do he liked the idea all things this all things like we you would have a conference we thought about newsletters podcasts were not thought of at the time but that certainly would have worked or events you know finance health we we were gonna women like we could have like owned a lot of categories and they just didn't want to invest it was such a section of the paper you could have your own exactly and then you pick out reporters out reporters who are well-known. They didn't want

to make stars of reporters. I don't know why. Maybe they just were busy with whatever they were busy with, like sports rights. Phone hacking scandals. So that happened. So we had a lot of pushback. We got a lot of hostility from the journal people themselves because we often beat them. And they didn't like that.

We weren't that nice to them. When they stole our stories, we were like, hey, you shoplifters. They hated that. Be collegial. I'm like, we're not your colleagues, so no. Here's my contract. Yeah, like I don't work for you. Like I don't have to be nice to you.

And so they just had an old school way of thinking that we didn't, and they were resentful. I think they were aware of how much money we made. I think they would say that wasn't an issue, but I'm sure it was. They didn't like us being famous also. And so it just was it was just they just wasn't ready for us. Right. You know, today they're different or maybe they are. I don't I don't care. I don't read The Wall Street Journal. So in any case, exactly. I do read The New York Times, which is why I'm there.

And then the phone hacking thing happened. And we were like, oh, God, these people. We're trying to pretend they're not satanic. And they are. So what's the phone hacking thing? What happened was the only good thing was Wendy swatting away the pie, you know, pretty much in that incident. But they hacked the phone of a dead girl. News Corp did.

News Corp Internet. And it was run by this woman. In the Times of London. In the Times of London. And they did it. They did these terrible things that were just so unethical. And they were like, oh, God, can we hang out with these people anymore? They're giving us a hard time. They're not going to invest in us. We're too small to invest in. But if we want to get big, they won't give us the money to get big. It was just like, they aren't going to do what we want. And we're too small and too big at the same time. You know what I mean? And so they just like, it wasn't going

anywhere. And so we went around and interviewed a bunch of people. We wanted to not have a venture capitalist. So we interviewed media companies and we had a list and we had, you know, A, B, and C people we'd love to invest in us. And we talked to a lot of them, Bloomberg, her, everybody. What was your hangup with taking VC? I just didn't want to listen to a VC. Like eventually they'd screw me. Eventually they'd screw me, right? Like, like I know them, I covered them. I'm like, eventually they screw you. So no, thank you. And, and so we wanted to be careful about, we wanted a media investors. We wanted media investors who understood media because we weren't going to make a ton of money.

Like there just wasn't, you know, we did, we could do okay, but it wasn't a massively scalable business. And so we wanted someone who cared about it and who we could experiment with. And so we went with NBC because we liked the television thing. And we went with Terry Semel who had worked for Yahoo but actually was originally a media investor. And he had a media company called Windsor. He did. And he was retired and he had a venture, not a venture firm, it was an investment firm that invested in media.

So you guys raised $12 million. January, 2014, you launch Recode. All Things D. Yep. Recode. You take All Things D. Well, the journal keeps All Things D. They do. They wouldn't sell it. We tried to buy it from them, but Rupert wanted $30 million for it. They were going to sell it to us. We offered them a million, which was insane at the time. Because you took every single employee who came with you to RICO. Yes, they did. And what would that have even gotten you?

Did people, like, was there RSS feeds that people would? Just as a name. We had a lot of, yeah, we had everything. Like, it would have been nice to have it. Yes, we would have kept all things C and would have kept the brand name. But they never used it is the thing. They did WSJD, whatever that is. But they never used it is the thing. They did WSJD, whatever that is. And so, but they never used it.

I was like, it's just pure peak that they did that. It was insane. It was a waste of their money. They could have had a million bucks from me, but, and that was way too much. That would have been meaningful to their operating profit. Yes, exactly. Yeah, I was like, it was so dumb. And he wanted $30 million.

And I remember thinking, you know, I could buy fuckyouRupert.com for that much money, right? Like, come on. Like, which would have been funny. And I don't know. It just was – it was not a good parting. It wasn't. They were obnoxious to us on the way. They tried to say they fired us, which was crazy.

But, you know, whatever. Okay. So we're curious. Who's the guy who used to run it? That dumb editor. Recode. Where did the name come from? It originally was re-slash code and then it's capital R, capital C. What happened? Are we all lowercase now? Is that the – No, it it. Recode. Where did the name come from? It originally was re-slash code, and then it's capital R, capital C.

What happened? Are we all lowercase now? No, it's just Recode. I don't know. The masthead is all lowercase. It's all lowercase. Dan Frommer came in and cleaned it up. But I don't like the slash.

I don't know why. I just did. It was stupid. You should never let me design anything. But Recode came from- Are you Marissa Mayer, who's on the weekend designing the Yahoo logo? No, not at all. No, we hired a branding firm, and they came up with lots of names.

And I just found the deck the other day and this is what Recode means and this and that. And we just liked it. The minute we saw it, we're like, oh, yeah, that. There were a bunch of really crazy names. Like, oh, God, I can't remember. Some of them were wacky. What was it? I'll find it.

The parent company was Revere Digital, right? Yes, that was because we were – what was that? Is that Paul Revere? Paul Revere. Yeah, Paul Revere. Yeah, it was Walt. It was Walt was from that area. And it was – I forget.

There's an obnoxious reason. It was originally called Shut Up and Listen, LLC. That was the original. I think it was called Shut Up and Listen. That's good. Yeah, that was my – Even you couldn't go with that. No, we did.

We went with it for a while. It was Shut Up and Listen for a long time, and I forget why we changed to Revere. It was something with Paul Revere. Now I've forgotten. Is the Wall Street Journal like the Redcoats or something? Yeah, something like that. We're getting out. It was like something like that.

Something like that. I forget. Everything we do is based on obnoxious tendencies. And so we had a naming group, and they came up with that. And then the guy who owned Recode.com was a German guy who wouldn't give it to us. He wanted a lot of money. And so we decided to make NetSexy. You and John Gruber. Like the Daring Fireball

the two dot net holdouts. Nobody cares. But nobody. Everyone's like you can't do that. We're like why? Who cares about this stuff? Nobody types addresses. Right. Exactly. Hello Google. Just put Recode. And so then the guy. We're trying to get code.com

and it's owned by the kind bar guy that guy what why yeah I think so something he just had it

he just I don't know why he has it he wanted to start this is like the rover.com story yeah he has it I think he still does but anyway

I ran him to a party I'm like give me your URL and he's like if you do a site a conference about peace I'm like no fuck you I'm not doing a conference about peace you think he would have said I know I was, if you do a site, a conference about peace. I'm like, no, fuck you.

I'm not doing a conference about peace. I know. I was like, have you met me? We do, actually, by choice. And he wanted to lend it to us. It just didn't work. He was very nice. He was very sweet.

But I wasn't going to be doing a peace conference. And I did not want to rent his URL for any reason. Anyway, we didn't get that, and it was fine. It doesn't matter. It's a great name. It's a great name. It's a great name. It's a great name.

So you said something a little while back. And then it has a code conference and then recode, decode. It works perfectly. It's fine. So you said something a while back that I want to pick back up on. You said you and Walt knew, like, you'd make money. You were already making money, but you knew this wasn't going to be like a VC scale business.

However, at pretty much the same time you start Recode, all of these new media sites get started. There's of course Vox, which we're sitting in Vox headquarters right now, which has a fun story to itself. But there's BuzzFeed, there's all these companies that are raising tons of money. VCs are jumping in. Yes, all the content companies. Mike.com. What were you thinking when you saw this? Oh, Jesus.

Oh, no. Because I've seen it before. And it always ends in tears. You know what I mean? Not good tears. So I was like, oh, damn. And they were like a business insider. They raised a bunch of money.

Then they started getting my – they tried to poach my employees for redonkulous salaries. VC money. You know, at one point when I was trying to hire someone, I was offering them a lot, what I thought was a lot of money. And then they wanted a lot more. And I'm like, I didn't even want to pay the first one. I'm not going to pay you the second one if I really don't want to pay. In fact, I'm not paying you the first one anymore.

And so it was, that was that you saw that happening. And then that one Univision one, what are they? Those guys. Kevin Roos went there. A whole bunch of Alex Madrigal, Alexis Madrigal went there. Fusion, Fusion! They came in and offered like, here's $3 million reported. It was craziness. It was craziness. And it was, I just saw a little … And again, I mean, the moneymaker for Dee and … Is the events.

Is the events, right? Yeah, now the podcasts make a lot of money, yeah. It's the old Jeff Zucker quote, you know it's the old Jeff Zucker quote you know for all of Jeff's like he was right like digital dollars turn into you know or analog dollars dimes turn into digital times now he thinks it's a quarter or more it's actually doing okay for some people um it was once a good it was it was just like come on this isn't gonna work like I'm not an idiot and so I was sort of and then we would have had to turn to VC money and I just was like I can't fundraise.

I can't do my journalism. I can't do the things that make us great. And so I thought we got to sell. I was pushing hard, pushing Walt hard. And how far into the business was this? Six months. I was like, no, no, no. This could go very wrong for us with the money we have.

And so if there wasn't that fundraising, we probably would have stayed independent. But that was it was crazy money. It was the money was being thrown around and it wasn't going to stop and it could really hurt us. And so I think one of the great things I did learn from tech people was that you move like you move and you don't like stand on ceremony, you know, go, oh, this will work. And you just panic. By move, you mean, you know, make this, you don't just stand there and say, no, only the paranoid survive. Like, wait a minute. And I had seen this story before, and so I was worried. And I also didn't think it had any economic underpinnings.

And so it was just – it was a race to the bottom as far as – but there were – but in a bigger scale, even if it's hard, you have to be bigger. I just – I felt that. And so I looked around and talked to a bunch of people who were like us. There were several. And – Did you talk with any of those that had raised crazy money to sort of combine with were like us. There were several. Did you talk with any of those that had raised crazy money to sort of combine with them? One of them. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There were offers all the time. It was crazy. Like, reporters deal making. Like, you know you've got to get off the train if that's happening. Kara, I got a deal for you. I'm like, no, you don't. And I'm pretty good at deals, but I'm not that good. And you're really bad.

And so, you know, really, you know what I'm saying. I mean And you're really bad. And so, you know, really serious. Think of, you know what I'm saying? Like, no, like, no, thank you. Like even VCs are stupid, right? Like I'm not gonna have a reporter make a deal with me. So Jim Bankoff had talked to me about using their ad system and I'd known Jim forever because he was at AOL. And I loved him. Is this Chorus? Chorus. I forget which. Yeah, it was Chorus. I guess it was Chorus. No, it was Chorus is their content management systems. They had an ad system too. Yeah, it was Chorus. I guess it was Chorus. No, it was Chorus as their content management system. They had an ad system too.

In any case, he wanted concert. He wanted, it wasn't called that then, but he wanted us to be part of their ad group. Like they sell our ad, one of those deals. And I was like, well, why don't we just merge? How about that? And you don't have anything fancy. Like we're fancy.

We're another revenue stream. We got ideas. We're well known. We're like your other brands. We're another revenue stream. We've got ideas. We're well-known. We're like your other brands. We're like Vox. We're like Eater. We're in the same zone. Especially The Verge, but you guys are very different. Different. Right. Consumer.

Walt went over there. Right. Exactly. That's what I think of The Verge as Walt's part of it. We weren't dumb about it. The consumer stuff really wasn't working on Recode. That's what I think of The Verge as like Walt's part of it. Like we weren't dumb about it. We were like that's – and the consumer stuff really wasn't working on Recode. Walt's consumer stuff, it wasn't – we were a tech news site and adding the consumer stuff just didn't like – we couldn't – it just wasn't right from a journalism point of view for the product. And so we were doing all this scoop breaking news business stuff and then we had Walt there. And so he was better – to give him a bigger audience, The Verge made more sense. And by the way, we do anything again

if it makes more sense. We're not stupid. If things change, we change. Nothing is sacred. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. And so Jim wanted to do some kind of commercial deal where he said, let us take this ad sales off your hands. We've got this great technology platform. And you're like, nah, it's combined. What about this? And he thought of it too.

He understood how famous Walt and I were and how it did add to his, it adds to it. It adds to advertiser interest. It adds to buzz. It adds to all kinds of things. And he's a pretty conservative media mogul. Like, you know, if you can compare him to Shane Smith or even the guys over at BuzzFeed.

And who's Shane Smith? Shane Smith runs Vice. Got it. He runs Vice, who now is not running Vice because they have some issues because of Shane Smith, et cetera. And so Nancy Dubuque runs it. They get the lady to come in and clean it up. So anyway, it was a good match. It was a good match.

We've been thrilled. It's been four years almost now. So it was May 2015? We announced it at Code. Yeah, we announced it a year later. May 2015, you announced you're selling to Vox. Wait, so the deal was done and you announced it a year later? Yeah.

Wow. I know. Oh, wow. How'd you keep that under your hat? I just did. No, no, no. We didn't come to the conclusion until close to the deal. So you spent a year sort of figuring it out.

Because it was 18 months. Yeah, we were running it for, yeah, it was 18 months. Before you sold, but it really was six months when you started. Yes, absolutely. It was pretty soon. It was pretty soon. And, you know, I thought about the employees. I'm like, oh, I promised them this. Before you sold, but it really was six months when you started. Yes, absolutely. It was pretty soon. It was pretty soon. And, you know, I thought about the employees. I'm like, oh, I promised them this.

Now I'm doing this. And, you know, I don't – it's fine. Like, you know what I mean? Like all of them do well. You know what? They'll all do well. They'll all do well. And so they understood that this was an entrepreneurial effort.

And, again, I don't think – there's nothing wrong with saying, ah, we're going to change our tune. Like there's nothing wrong. I think, you know, journalists are super risk-verse and they're very rigid and I'm not. So I will literally change at any moment. I was going to save this for our tech team section, but I want to bring it up now. Facebook. Yeah. That was I think if I had to rewind back to that time and justify all the VC money going into the space,

it's that social distribution is eliminating the traditional media gatekeepers. You can build new timing for the digital age on the back of social distribution. New media was in every article. What is new media? What is new media? But the way that's kind of played out is it's great for Facebook. It's great for Facebook. Not great for –

It's great for racists and anti-Semites. It's great for people, Russians, the Russians it worked out well for. But not so much for the rest of us. No. They didn't come up with a business plan of how to – I'm not saying there isn't one. I just – they haven't come up with it in a way that I think anyone feels happy about. And they tried everything. We'll get to podcasts in a minute.

Well, at one point, I remember when they started Facebook, I had all these issues with Facebook Live, including the fact that I thought people would murder each other on it. I was like, oh, it seems like a perfect way to kill someone and then show it or do suicide or something like that. And I expressed my reservations to them about that issue. Like, wow, you don't have control of the rest of your platform. Now you're going to unleash a video platform. All right, you incredibly irresponsible people.

Go right ahead. But I remember them saying, you should do Facebook Lives. Remember that? All the journalists were doing Facebook Lives. Oh, yeah. And I go – and it was like from the top. They were like, Kara, you should know Cheryl or whatever. You should do Facebook – or Chris Cox or whoever.

And I was like, I'm not doing your Facebook Lives. And they're like, why? I'm like, where's my money? Where's my sack of money? Because it's a waste of my time. You'll get more users. I'm like, I don't need it. I have 700,000.

Like, they're not making me money. Those also aren't your users. I'm like, I don't need it. I have 700,000. They're not making me money. Those also aren't your users. They're Facebook users. Right. They're your users. And where's my money? I kept saying, where's the benefit for Kara Swisher? It's like a head fake, right?

Because- Yeah. You'll get more famous. I'm like, I am famous. Thank you. But really what was going on was- Yeah. Build users.

For all these new media platforms, they're all just coming from Facebook. Exactly. I just never saw- Of course, Facebook. Exactly. I just never saw – Of course, the distribution platform. I literally never saw it. I was like, I'm not wasting. I'd rather watch Law & Order because that would give me pleasure. But doing talking to people that put little –

sometimes I'll do it to get people to read an article, but it doesn't help. What's this 700,000? Is that Twitter followers? I don't even know. Fans? No, Twitter is 1.3. It actually dipped when they did their cleaning, their culling, and now it's back up. The purge.

When they did the purge. Right. And now it's up again to 1.3 or so. Something like that. But again, it's like Twitter selling ad dollars, selling ad units against your 1.3 million followers. Yeah, I guess. I'm sure half of them are bots. I'm guessing half of them are bots.

I was just there early. That's all. I was a recommended user. You didn't intentionally buy them? I didn't buy any of them. I was an early user, and I was on the of them bought. I was just there early. That's all. I was a recommended user. You didn't intentionally buy them? I didn't buy any of them. I was an early user, and I was on the early recommended list, and I think I just was put on everybody's thing. I don't think half the people know who the hell I am. All right.

So speaking of audience size, so when you got bought by Vox Media, what did your audience look like on Recode? How big it was? Yeah. Small. Small. A. Small. A couple million. Has it grown since the acquisition? You know, we're not as focused on the website.

I'm not. Again, we haven't been as focused. We have been focused on the website, but we don't see it as just the website or the podcast or the event. It's all a group of things. They all feed on each other. Some kind of flywheel or something. That's the way you think about it. It makes sense.

It's like all journalism is how we look at it, whether we break news on our on our podcast, because we broke plenty of news on the Mark Zuckerberg podcast, like, hello, that like drove a news cycle for two or three days. So is that recode? Is that the recode podcast? I don't care. Again, the same thing. And then, you know, then we had Cheryl on stage a code. And then we had it just we don't think of it like that. We don't think of it like that. And then the code interviews become news. Then they become podcasts And then the code interviews become news. Then they become podcasts. All our code interviews become podcasts. And then we break them up into pieces.

And then we make news stories. You sort of released one every like three or four episodes? Yes. Yeah, we did. Like, why not? It's all content. And however people want to consume it is really how I look at it. I think we definitely are rethinking what is the traditional web news site because it's changed really drastically.

I mean, like Bloomberg isthinking what is the traditional web news site because it's changed really drastically. I mean, like Bloomberg is doing everything in the world. They hoover up every piece of information and vomit it out. So, you know, they do, right? They have a lot of people and a lot of money to do that because they make all those money from machines. And so you have to think really hard as what is your value in each product you're making. Like I'm super interested in newsletters recently. I don't know why because I think Casey's is so good.

I'm thinking a lot about it. Like that's an interesting thing. It's 2018. We're talking about email newsletters. I I don't know why because I think Casey's is so good. I'm thinking a lot about it. Like that's an interesting thing. Now, there's tons of – It's 2018. We're talking about email newsletters. I know, but you know what? They're good. They're great.

But I still think some of them are terrible. I start my day with Primac. Right, except you don't do all of them. So what is it about his that's great? What is it about like – If you had one, I would read yours. I would have a different – I have a different idea. I have a new thing I'm cooking up that I think would be interesting.

I'm not saying that flattery. Thank you. I want your tone in my head every morning. Yeah, would have a different, I have a different idea. I have a new thing I'm cooking up that I think would be interesting. I'm not saying that flattery. Like I want your tone like in my head every morning. Yeah. But it's going to be in a different way. I'm going to, I have a different, I think newsletters are great,

but they're, they're heavy. Like I find they pile up. And so I'm, I'm like, I still like them. They pile up. They're like Sunday newspapers.

How can I get this in a way that's, there's a way to do it. That's different. You want to break news on the show? I don't. I just, I'm still thinking about it. I'm thinking hard about it because I'm reading a lot of them.

And I'm like, this is just the way when I started listening to podcasts. I was like, all right, this is what I think is good, what I think is bad. And so when we started the podcast, it was the same thing. Everyone was like, you can't do an hour. And it was two months after the acquisition, you started the podcast. Yeah, because nobody was paying attention. Did you know how big it was going to get? No.

No, yes, yes, yes. Because our bet is that people are smart. Smart people like smart interviews. People like substantive things. It had become a twitchy, twitchy little universe of content, right? And so everyone's getting little pieces of information that made no sense. And I thought conversations mattered. I always thought, think conversations matter. It's what we do at Code, but only a certain amount of people get to hear it, even though we put them in podcasts. At Code, we have the big swinging, you know, dicks, essentially, right? You know, that's what we have. And most of them are dicks. But that's pretty much it. There is the formula for Code. And then when you

go down, when you go down the stack a little bit, there's all these fascinating people, you know, who should get attention. We didn't have a lot of VCs at Code, for example. We just didn't. Andrew Mason may have been my favorite episode of Recode Decode. That was a great one. He was so blunt, honest, amazing. Right, exactly.

And so people feel more comfortable in that setting. But I can get to people like Chamath. We wouldn't have put Chamath on the Code stage, but boy, is he great in a podcast. Or April Underwood. You don't know who she is, but she's critically important. Or like I had today Nicole Wong who ran big legal teams at Google and Twitter and was very central to a lot of their early decisions talking about what's happening now. Like who – I wouldn't put Nicole. I know who she is and now you will know who she is. And so I think what's interesting is that you can do

all kinds of different things with the medium. And that's what I liked about it. But my premise was that you could do an hour and everyone says you can't. And I was like, yes, I can. No, you can't. And I was like, you know what? I'm going to just do it and I'm not going to listen. What was great about Vox is there was nobody here to say we couldn't. Like, they just didn't. They're like, oh, okay. Try it. Like, it didn't cost them anything. And I think what's cool is everybody's realized you can do an hour and a half with podcasts.

Oh, you can do more. If they're good. We did 90 minutes with Mark. Everybody listened to that 100%. Why not? It was good. Like, the only thing is it just has to be good. That is, again, do the work.

If you do the work, whatever format. Everyone tries to make all these hard and fast rules of, oh, this is going to work. That's going to work. I don't. That's just bullshit. You know that. Like, right? If it's good, if a product is, I have like a criteria.

It has to be useful, entertaining, and kind of a must-have. Like a must-have. And if it makes money, fantastic. If it hits even one of these things, it's great. So, you know, I think about the podcast. It's useful. It's entertaining. It makes money.

And you kind of can't get an interview with Mark Zuckerberg except Kara Swisher's interview. Like, I don't care how many people interview him. I did the best one. And so you can't get it anywhere else. So that's a perfect product as far as I'm concerned. You know, the conference. When you can't get people who guest on podcasts talking like they do on podcasts in any other format. Yeah, but it's also I can get them talking like that.

So it's just like so I'm so that's the whole thing. It's like Marc Maron is only Marc Maron doing it. You cannot replicate it. You can't it cannot be anything that can be replicated. You really have to not do like that kind of thing. And so Mike Allen can't be replicated, you really have to not do, like that kind of thing. And so Mike Allen can't be replicated. Lots of things can't be replicated. To Snapchat's chagrin, a lot of their things can be replicated and quite well by Kevin Systrom and Instagram.

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how important is it to the strategy? How much are you saying, like, actually, this is kind of the way forward? Are not paying attention to the website as much? I think I'm not writing for the website right now. I don't think it's not important, by the way. We have great journalists doing an amazing job. I'm not that interested in that format right now. That's all.

That's just me, Kara Swisher. It's not. We have a great editor, Dan Fromer, and we've got a great staff and things like that. And they're figuring out what they think is the way to go. And they're trying different things. Recently, they've been doing a lot of really substantive big articles. We're doing less scoops, I think. But that should be the decision of whoever the editor is, not me.

I have ideas of the way you would do a news website. I just am not interested. It's like I painted over here in paint, and now I'm interested in photography. And now that's how I look at it. And so whoever's making the website, the website the Rico website it has to integrate into everything else we're doing like our events and the podcast but it's part of the same branding idea like you have to think of that and so the reason I'm interested in podcasts is I and Peter Kafka has one and we're starting another one coming is because we're interested in creatively. Ultimately, it's creatively

interesting to us. And so therefore, we create work that I think is laudable. If it wasn't, we'd stop doing it. And it also makes a lot of money. And it makes a lot of money. Money you keep that Facebook doesn't. Exactly. It's our money and we make it fair and square, pretty much. It's a fair and square business as far as I can tell. And it has all kinds of interesting applications. We're doing a bunch of live podcasts.

We're doing a bunch of, all kinds, there's all kinds of things you can do off of it that are really interesting. We also give the opportunity for the Recode reporters to do podcasts

like Kurt Wagner did a bunch for Peter. Joanna Bouillon is doing one, she's doing the, who is she doing? The guy, the auto guy, Lawrence Burns. You know, they get the opportunity to learn how to be better interviewers and stuff like that.

So it gives us, gives that opportunity. Jason Del Rey is doing this. I can't say what it is, but he's doing a multi-part series, which will be a short version. It won't be a show. Everyone wants, like, I want a show. Like, why do you want a show? Why don't you do four episodes? Like they are doing on Netflix with certain shows?

So he's doing one that's really going to be great. He's doing two of them that are going to be great, two audio things that are just, they're going to be what they are. And we have a sponsor for them, and that'll be great. And so it gives them an opportunity, the reporters at Ricoh, to be creative. Why do they monetize so much better? Just do right now. They might not later. I think because people really listen to them

and they like them and they download them. They're very quantifiable, I think. People can measure them. People talk about them. You can see they get a lot of buzz. And I don't think, I think the idea that the audience thinks really hard about

where they're getting their content is kind of an old school thing. Like if it's not on the website, it's like, well, so what if it's in podcast form? So what if it's on the event side? So what if it's in a story? What if it's a tweet? Like I tweet a lot, like I tweet a lot of stories kind of stuff. And unbelievably in this world, it's the place where you have a direct relationship with that person instead of this, you know. Yeah. And you remember we got, we famously got rid of comments six five years ago right everyone was like how how can you do that i'm like i hate them yeah like they're i don't have my website it's my voice like get off well it was interesting because

we when we took them off first of all i was like you have to have comments i'm like do we you know and of course you do i'm like why like they i they take they're vile they don't add to the the the benefit they don't help the website. In fact, all we do is try to knock things off. I'm wasting time. My copy editor's taking off, you know, you faggot. Like, I don't need it. Like, you know, what do you, like, awful. What do I need these awful anonymous people saying terrible things on a website that I run? And so we took it off. And I remember there was one guy who was just terrible, vile, homophobic, anti-Semitic, race, everything. Like this guy was the whole package.

And he, you know, he wrote me an email. They somehow found my email and they're like, how dare you end comments. It's the First Amendment. I have a right to say whatever I want. You know, that stupid trope. And I was like, you know, get your own fucking website. It's my website. Get out of my bar.

Get out of my bar. Get out of my bar. Get out of my bar. Guess what? I'm not giving you a beer. Like, sorry. You're an awful, vile human being. And so it was really interesting. And I said Twitter was our comment section, really.

And so that's where I engage with people a lot. I've recently not done Instagram as much because I don't like it. Well, I'm so glad we ended on podcasting this. How are you liking podcasting, boys? What do you think? It's fun. Not only is it tremendously fun, I never thought it enables people who aren't in media. We're not journalists. You have things to say, right?

You're smart, interesting people. Why not? You don't know us. I'm just saying you seem so far. You haven't said anything too stupid. No, you haven't said anything stupid so far. That might be the best comment we've ever gotten. Yeah, put that on the website. You don you seem so far. You haven't said anything too stupid. No, you haven't said anything stupid so far. That might be the best comment we've ever gotten. Yeah, put that on the website.

You don't seem too stupid. No, but it's creative. It doesn't matter who you are. And I think, again, conversation is really important. And people like to hear. People love great conversation. The other thing is Dave and I do the podcast for a variety of reasons. And even though we have a wonderful sponsor in Silicon Valley Bank,

zero of it is to make any money on the show. And the number one reason that we do it is because it allows us a creative journey in self-directed education. And we get to learn stuff that we otherwise would never learn about. And it's awesome to get to share it with people, but like it lets us quench this thirst of, you know, we're not in school. We're not going to classes. We get to learn stuff. Meet people you want to meet. I often, like, I don't have your podcast. I just did an event where I interviewed Sean Hayes. Do you know the guy who was on Will and Grace? He's so great.

He's amazing. But he's also a very important producer in Hollywood. People don't realize he has tons of shows. And he was like, I love your podcast. I said, come on it. And he's like, okay. And so I'm going, we're going to do that, by the way, Sean Hayes. But I want to talk about the entertainment business.

He's doing all kinds of digital stuff. And he's a producer. And so it was just like, I by the way, Sean Hayes. But I want to talk about the entertainment business. He's doing all kinds of digital stuff. And he's a producer. And so it was just like I want to talk to Sean Hayes. And that would be wonderful on lots of levels to talk to him on lots of things. And so it gives you that opportunity to meet people and have people surprise you with thoughts. And I think that's my favorite part. Like today, the Nicole Wong one was really good. She had some thoughts that I – she said things and I was like, oh, I hadn't thought of that. Like, you know what I mean? And I think that's my favorite part. Like today, the Nicole Wong one was really good. She had some thoughts that I – she said things and I was like, oh, I hadn't thought of that.

Like, you know what I mean? And I love that. That's my favorite part is learning from other people. Well, that's the – in a lot of ways, I think podcasts – we're totally like doing tech themes now instead of later, but that's fine. We always do that. I think podcasts are – have really removed the gatekeepers. Yes. I mean, like, we're two guys. Like, we're not journalists.

You know, Tim Ferriss isn't a journalist. Yeah, he does a great podcast. He does a great podcast. Like, you know, all of the top, with the exception of really Vox podcasts, which we'll get into in a sec, it's Indies. Yeah, it is. It is in a lot of ways. And it'll be consolidated. Look, it's going to be consolidated. You get that.

One of the things, though, I wouldn't take out print all the time. That's why I did the Times thing. how they had misused their platforms and mismanaged them. And I've been talking about this for a long time. And so it was fine to do it at Recode because, but it's like the, it's the house or, you know, it's like the local newspaper. And I thought, you know what, I'm going to get on a global scale and start whacking at these people. Like, you know what I mean? Like, and they're going to pay attention because I want them to do something about it.

And fortunately, there's still a global brand to be able to do that. Exactly. And, but I, but I don't discount it because I've gotten a whole new bunch of people now paying attention to the messages that I think are important. And that's why it's important to think holistically about it. It's not just podcasts. It's not just website, like Recode website. It's not just events.

It's not just speeches. It's all of them together that gives you these tools that you can reach people in different ways, and they each require a different skill. All right. You talk about consolidation. I'm curious more on why you're sure that it's going to consolidate when right now we're sort of in this era of Indies thriving. Because it always consolidates everything. You know, it's interesting.

I don't know if you noticed. I have two tattoos, many tattoos on my hands. So it's centropy and entropy, and I could go into like all the ridiculous things about it. But it's essentially everything dissipates, everything organizes, right? So they're two opposite. They exist. Bundling and unbundling. Right, exactly.

And so everything moves towards organization. Everything moves towards consolidation. And then it moves towards destruction, like in the same way. And so I think that that's sort of a cycle you see that will happen. And I think podcasts, everyone's like, wait a minute, this makes money. And then everyone's going to pile in. Many with shitty products. We should federate these in a bunch of- I know. Well, Federated Media, remember that? That was John Battelle.

Yeah. So that didn't work out so well. The search was a good book though. It was a good idea. But these things are going to federate. They're going to federate and then they're going to unfederate and then the big companies will get into them and they will suck and then

but I think no matter what like the reason Mark Maron's popular is only one reason is a great podcast right

you cannot make that you cannot make you just can't like you can't replicate you can't change it and so that's so I think

I'm not that worried about the consolidation but I do think there's going to be a few places that are going are creative at making them and therefore like vox vox gimlet there's a bunch of them that are really good at making them and some will have a certain style you know the you know like the daily with the new york times michael barbaro is a friend of mine and i think he's they're great they're so creative there who would have thought that like talking about a media stories every day, telling you how he put together stories. Nothing could be more boring.

And I can't stand the ones they have in the newspaper, right? This is how we put together. I'm like, I don't want to hear you. I want to hear Michael Barbero do his mm-hmm. But he goes beyond the story, right? So it just works. And that team there is so talented, the team of people who put that, not just him, but there's a whole pack of people there that are just so good

and tell a story in a great way. Well, I think that's our category, consolidation. We categorize each acquisition. In a way, I was going to go business line. So the way that we do this for people new to the show, we decide what category the acquisition was. Was it people, technology, product, business line, asset, or consolidation? And I mean, I was going to go business line because for me, it's really like picking up a whole new P&L and running that P&L independently and hoping it expands and realizing synergies.

I'm saying that every episode now and it's pissing me off. It's okay. It's a good one. With Wallet going across and writing at The Verge. But effectively, it's still its own business unit that you're buying for, hopefully, the sum of future cash flows. Yeah, but it's other things. There's more things to it. There's advertiser interest. Ezra Klein started his show right around the same time you did, right?

Well, he came to me when he was starting it. We had done ours. No, he did it after. So there you go. But he came and he said, what should I do? And he wanted to interview the like the deputy secretary of agriculture. I'm like, can you do some interesting people? What about Cory Booker? Yeah.

Yeah. Like, yeah. Bring in Biden. Biden. I kept saying Biden would be good. And he's like, well, I'm like, no, Biden. He'd be like, people would love to hear from Biden. And he's a very good interviewer.

And he's a more wonky. He's definitely more wonky. He should call something wonk something. He should. but there was already wonkette if you remember and wonkblog and things like that

and that was at the I think that was at the Washington Post where they were I believe I believe it was adjacent to them so I don't think

they could take that he's like your didn't he start wonkblog he is oh I love I was like trying to make a joke there it landed flat

oh sorry anyway I love Ezra Ezra and I are of the same mind I would say. Of lots of things. We'll be doing more together in the future, I think. He's really great. That's exciting. Yeah.

He's great. Alright, well that blows my acquisition category. That's consolidation. What would have happened otherwise? You would have failed on your own. Yeah, speculate on that. I'm curious. I don't know. That's a good question. Probably. Maybe not. And what does failed mean? Sold to someone else for a different price later? We would have sold. We would have sold. I might't know. That's a good question. Probably. Maybe not. No, I would have sold.

What does failed mean? Sold to someone else for a different price later? We would have sold. I might have been smart enough to sell it to someone else. Yeah. Yeah. I think I was smart. I did.

I sold it. There we go. But you wouldn't have... I'm sorry. You would have failed to meet the return thresholds of the $12 million you raised. I don't think they cared. Yeah. Well, I think... So, I had investors who didn't care.

That's why you don't have VCs. Hey, you get the investors you ask for. When I got money from Terry, I called him to thank him for, I think they gave us $5 million due to first. And I kept not being able to reach him. He's such a lovely man. And I go, hey, I finally reached him. I figured he was in Sardinia or wherever the hell he was on his yacht. And he goes, I go, hey, Terry, thanks for the $5 million we got in the bank.

And he's like, oh, good. Who are you again? He goes, no, he knows who I was. And he goes, oh, good, good. Good for you. I hope you enjoy it. And it was literally like uncle gave me $20,000. It wasn't a gift.

No, he's like, good luck with that. And I was like, okay. And he goes, okay, bye. And I was like, all right, see ya. And it was really like, I was like, he's not gonna bother me in any way for that money ever again. And he actually got his money

he got the stock in Vox so anyway he was a lovely guy the sale to Vox more or less than the 12 more investors all made their money back

oh yeah common they all took Vox stock they all they could have gotten cash they took Vox stock they did I think

I don't know if all I don't know what everybody did but I'm pretty certain they did yeah it was more. Cool. That's good. But it's all those like content valuations. So I don't know.

I don't know. Right. Yeah. Well, speaking of, we've already covered a lot of tech themes. We'll see where it ends. We'll see where Vox ends too. That's like the least successful. Should we be grading?

Yeah. All right. Carrie, do you want to be on the hot seat? Okay, go ahead. I will. I can try. I don't know a lot. I'm a big shareholder.

This is how we grade in the show. So we decide the acquirer with all their might and resources and interesting things they could do with their shares and their capital, was it a good use to buy this company? Yes, it was. But you got to grade A to F. So A plus Instagram, one billion into hundreds of billions of value. F, you're familiar with. Yes, I got it. There must be a pony in there somewhere.

Yeah, I got that. I would say a B plus at least, if not an A. Yeah, I would. It benefited in lots of ways. Yes, yes. There's no downside. There's absolutely. Podcasts alone.

Exactly. They've made their money back. There's no – and also they get a good name. They get good journalism. They get – I think they've done pretty good on most of their acquisitions, it seems like. Although, you know, they ran into trouble with one, but it still was a great journalistic product, Racked, that they – Oh, yeah, yeah. Still a great journalistic product.

And I think they did the right thing with it. So I don't consider any of those a failure. I think they have very good taste in how they do things. Yeah, I do. I think just like any content company, they're going to run into the same issues of content companies like that. Buzz, they're in the same. They're not exactly in the same boat. Buzz, he spent more money, but they're in the same content.

Media is hard. Like, that's their problem. That's the problem. I think media. She is hard. I'm their problem. That's the problem they have. Media she is hard. I'm going to get on my high horse. Real quick, just to throw out, do either of you know what the valuation of Vox Media was at the Recode

acquisition and then what it is now? They've raised it. It's a unicorn now. I think they announced it. 1.1 billion? Yeah, it was in the several hundred millions when they acquired you. Yes. And who knows if they could ever sell it for that. All hundred millions when they acquired you and now it's much higher. And who knows

if they could ever sell it for that. Like all of them. I think BuzzFeed was $1.5. Yeah, right. Vox was $1.1 if I remember from the news stories and then

where was Mashable? Mashable was some ridiculous sum and then it sold for like a song kind of thing. So to the extent that Vice is also I believe in the billion-ish range. No, they're higher.

They're up higher. Yeah, they're up higher. They're up way higher. I'm glad to be down in low lands with the Vox is also, I believe, in the billion-ish range. No, they're higher. They're up higher. Yeah, they're up higher. They're up way higher. I'm glad to be down in low lands with the Vox people, although it still is. That's what entrepreneurs know. You know, the lower your valuation, the more upside there is for you. Well, you know, I don't know who would buy. God, any of these companies.

It's hard. Right now, it's not the greatest time for content companies. Comcast, I don't know. I guess. Yeah, they're a big NBC. Yeah, sure, but why? If I had to go write a news – companies? Comcast? I don't know. I guess. Yeah. They're a big NBC. Yeah, sure. But why? Like, you have to, like, if I had to go write a news, they see the way I think about it. Like,

I remember writing about Tumblr being bought and they were on the edge of like death essentially. And, um, I, all the tip I got was it was being acquired by a company for a billion. It's a, I didn't hear it was Tumblr, a content company, digital content companies being acquired by Yahoo for a billion dollars. That's just somebody intentionally encrypting it just enough. They just said that. That's all I got. And I was like, okay. And I call myself Sherlock Homo. And so I was like, all right, Watson.

Who's your Watson? Just me. My cat. My cat. And I was like, okay. And I made a list. And I was like, this is what they would buy. This is what they'd be interested in.

This is what I know she likes. Do you know what I mean? I know her tastes and stuff like that. And Tumblr was third on the list because she wants to be helplessly hip. You know what I mean? Twitter was on. Twitter was on there. And I started making calls as if I knew.

So I called up – I knew all the investors at Tumblr and I knew they were in trouble. And I was like, she could possibly spend this amount of money on this. She couldn't be this stupid. But I will try it. And I literally went said oh so yeah who's buying you and they're like how did you know and i'm like thank you i have my ways i know i was like i'm so smart you're so good care i'm like i'm not good you're so stupid why did you tell me can you phrase that in a direct quote please yeah but it was really fast but i all i did was i i i thought about it like i i strategized it so i think about like vox and those things all the time like vox comcast yeah but why like what

what is steve burke like why would he need this what would it add like you know same thing if you bought buzzfeed or if you bought any of these companies or anything that's how i think about everything like who would buy when twitter was the rumors were who would buy twitter this and this would they want to buy this and everyone was was like, Google's going to buy Twitter. I'm like, no, they're not. They don't want to buy that mess. But, you know, that's how you have to think. I could see, like, a Verizon, someone that has distribution,

who can marry great content with the distribution they have. That works in theory. In theory. Yeah, or it will work one day. The platonic form of that will be realized in some way. We'll see. We'll see. Maybe Clear Channel?

I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. They're all dying today. News Corp. News Corp. Back to Newt Rupert. How would –

What would that have to be for Newt Rupert? Newt Rupert isn't really running News Corp anymore. I think he's quite lively, I suspect. I've heard. We had James Murdoch on stage the other day. I don't think he's staying with that. I think it's going to be Lachlan and Rupert at the other place. Jerry said he'd become a VC. That's what he said.

I think that's what he said. Didn't he? No, no, no. He said it on stage at Recode Media. I think he did. He's doing investments. He said it. He said it publicly. I'm not telling you anything you don't know. Well, there we go. Oops, that might be one of my scoops I forgot. My little pile. It's like a bag. I'm not telling you anything you don't know. Well, there we go. Oops, that might be one of my scoops. I forgot. On your YouTube list.

My little pile. It's like a bag. I'm like Hermione Granger. What's in here? That's amazing. I think it's an A- because this is my own narrative. My head has clearly been evident in the episode. But I don't think Vox is the biggest player in podcasts right now.

No, NPR. No, N, NPR is not doing podcasts. Okay, NPR distributes radio shows on podcasts. Yeah, yeah, that's what they do. They're not making native podcasts. Not new ones. Everyone's trying to copy the Daily is really pretty much what's going on. They just announced one, I think. NPR just announced one.

Plus, I think, as we've talked about a little bit on this show, the whole podcast business model is about to go through a lot of positive disruption where people are going to pay creators directly. And Vox now has probably the biggest aggregated audience of podcast listeners in America outside of NPR, which already monetizes

through direct payments. So for whatever they paid for Recode to help jumpstart that, I think it's fantastic. Is it an Instagram? Sorry, Kara, I don't think so. No, but on a lot of levels, sometimes I think, should I have just done those on my own?

Well, right. I'm thinking of that guy who does the Ben Thompson or other. That's what I was going to bring up, yeah. Then some days it's like, oh, that would even be... Could you write that much? How does Ben Thompson write that much every day? He writes a lot. He does. He lives in Taiwan, doesn't he? He lives in Taiwan. It doesn't give him more than 24 hours. It just gives him

a jump in the morning. It gives him no distractions. I could do it. I could do it. I just have to stop doing other things. Do you pay for his trajectory? I do. I think I do, yeah. I do. I think we have one to. Yeah. I think I do. Yeah, I do. I think we have one. I think he's really interesting.

I think all those people are interesting. I think about those things like, what do you need? Anything. Like, I always am trying to go for like, I'm not trying to Maria Kondo everything. And I'm definitely like, look, when I did the Times thing, I didn't leave Fox, did I? Like, there's ways to do it. I think what these tech, all these media companies have to think about is how do you keep really creative people interested all the time? How do you keep

an Andrew Ross Sorkin interested in the New York Times? How do you keep a star... Because they're stars now. Yeah. How do you keep them? But why not keep them creative? They create more great things that make more money. How do you do that if you're Vanity Fair? Anything. How do you keep creative people interested and reward them in

the way that if they make money, how do you help reward them? I think that's an interesting thing. None of this is scalable, obviously, because it's all human. You can't AI this thing. So, that's the only issue. But if you're interested in media, I think it's going to be a lot more... I'm not a sports person. What's

it called when someone is a free agent? There's going to be a lot more free agents. Yeah. And you'll see contracts for... Kind of like you and Walt had with the Journal. Yeah, I have three contracts now. I have one with NBC because I do my MSNBC show. It's periodic. Interviews I do based, like Tim Cook, we did the Google guys. I've got a contract with the New York Times, and I'm employed by Vox Media.

There you go. Yeah. It's better than sports. You can play for three teams. I know, right? Yeah, yeah. It was interesting. I just think about it.

You wouldn't have been able to do that many years ago. Yeah. That's interesting. I find that fascinating. What's your grade? My logic isn't any different, but I can't be anywhere close to an A because we know of,

on the show, A's mean insane multiples on billions of dollars. So I have a B. You have a high curve then. You're just grading on an Instagram curve? Really? Well, none of us do. You have a high curve then. You're just grading on an Instagram curve? Really? Well, you have to.

Then we're all Fs. We're all frigging Fs. Well, you got to. It's logarithmic. My son got a D. Speaking of grades, my son got a D in math a couple of years ago.

And he's gotten A's in math too. So it's kind of a, he just didn't like this teacher at one point. And I remember him saying to me, I go, Louie, a D. I'm not that hard on my kids about

grades i was like but a d come on and he goes well at least it's not an f and i was like it is an f d is an f like a d is an f in this household a d is an f period it's just the the schools just won't go to f though d is like you got an f but i'm giving you a d you can tell him we gave aol time warner a d d oh yeah we didn't actually give an F. No, that wasn't an F. That wasn't an F. Not for some of the shareholders. I've written an entire book on it.

Yes, exactly. But I'm telling you, it was the right idea. It was absolutely the right idea. It was the wrong time and the wrong people. But it was certainly the right idea. Well, we're talking about media and the internet here. It was the right idea. It was just early and a bunch of assholes running the show.

So I wrote a book on it. They were assholes. All sides. Ben, do you want to do lightning round? Yes, lightning round. We'll finish up. All right. So we got to know, what's a day in the life of Kara Swisher like?

Hmm. I wake up. I wrote a column this morning, and then I came in here and did a whole bunch of podcasts. I'll spend some time tonight thinking about some live events we're going to do and the next MSNBC thing. I make a lot of calls. I call around. I talk to a lot of people. Now that I'm doing the column, I spend a lot more time talking to people.

I'm starting to plan. Peter and I just went to Phoenix to look at some hotels for code. We have to move the hotel. Yeah. And then we, so I'll work on that. I'll work on some hotel stuff and thinking about that. I'll work on code speakers. We have a new list of who we want for next year. I'll often, I'll fly places to meet different people. I'm going to meet some pretty well-known people. I'm going to fly to see them. I try to ask people in person to come to code a lot of times. I have a hard time saying no to me in person.

That's great. We should steal that. Yeah. Hello. Hi. Do you just show up? They know I'm coming. I'm coming for lunch.

A few people turn down lunch for you. One of the things that I think is a big clue is everyone's always like, how did you talk to him? I'm like, I called him people turn down lunch for you. One of the things that I think is a big clue is everyone's always like, how did you talk to him? I'm like, I called him. Like, people will talk to you. Like, if you get their emails and you write them, they will write you back.

Like, it's really interesting. And anyone, anyone, if you get their emails, will write you back. And if you ask the question. I mean, that's how we emailed you. Yes.

Did I write you back? You did right away. Thank you. There you have it. If you seem like not crazy, I will write you back. So I'll go visit people. I'll do a lot of lunches. I'm trying to think of the next couple of days.

It's a lot of podcasts in the next couple of days. Some events, a bunch of events. Like next week, I'm interviewing Maggie Haberman at Lesbians Who Tech. We're going to make a podcast out of that again. I'm doing Jane Lynch, who's a friend of mine, actually. We're going to make a podcast out of that. So a lot of events I do outside of Vox, we make into podcasts because that's the price of admission for me doing it.

We're doing a 92nd Street Y thing. So we do a lot of live events. I do a lot of live events. And I'll always do panels that have to do with women's issues or young people. That's it. Then I have my kids. Hang out with my kids with women's issues or young people. That's it. That's it. Then I have my kids. Hang out with my kids.

Hang out with my different people. Family. My mom. So not busy at all? Not busy at all. I'm real busy. I have a great family. All right.

You're running for mayor of San Francisco in 2023. Give us an update. I don't think I am. No? Why not? I think London Breed is good. I think she's good. I don't want to like... I think she's good.

I don't think anyone expected Ed to die. And I think I'm going to give her a chance. She seems like she deserves one. That's a good reason. And not make trouble. I was just doing that because my point I was trying to make is someone's got to fix this frigging mess here. It's a mess. And so I think I was trying, and at the time I really meant it.

It was like someone's got to, you've got to get away from all these career politicians. She seems, some of her stuff I'm really interested in. We was like someone's got to, you've got to get away from all these career politicians. She seems, some of her stuff I'm really interested in. We'll see. We'll see. I mean, it's an incredibly difficult job that she's got.

But I like some of her moves, visiting the homeless things. I like her whole PR thing. I like it. I like it. She's bringing scooters back. She's bringing scooters. She seems sensible.

She seems sensible. Just like, same thing with like Stacey Abrams in Georgia. I'm really interested in politicians like that I think she's really sensible and she comes to compromises she's not angry she's not like in partisan I don't mean angry I mean partisan like in a way that's inflexible I like I like politicians

like that so we'll see I'm hoping to have her mayor breed on the show I would hope that would happen we've asked. Best of luck. Oh, we'll get her. All right, one more. There's nobody we don't get. Across your whole career. Trump, Trump I'm going to get.

You think? You trying? I'm going to try. Why not? Heard it here first. Well, then we'll have an answer to this next question. Across your whole career, what work are you the most proud of? The Gates-Jobs interview was great. I think it's hard not to top that.

I think it was great because lots of reasons. It was historic. It was important. It was a great interview. It was revelatory. I think it was emotional. I think that was really great. I think some of our coverage of Uber was great, what we did.

Yeah. Getting him fired was, if we were just one small part in that effort, I thought that was good. That was time well spent. A lot of the interviews of Code and Recode and all things D are going to be historic. I know it. Like nobody has done those interviews. Our Elon Musk ones, although I think he did something crazy today. But you had him, he was speculating on the multiple universes. Yes, the simulation. Not multiple, simulation. We're a pawn of other creatures that was a great interview

that was a fantastic interview that was a real insight to him even my Kim Kardashian interview was great I think there's a body of work there I was thinking the other day

like someone's like you know oh you've got to keep trying I'm like I could retire right now like Walt did he had a body of work that was so substantive

and so important and these interviews were going to go down. Like if a hundred years, people are going to look at those interviews, some of them, not all of them, but some of them, and they're going to matter. They're going to matter. And so everything we do now is just gravy as far as, you know what I mean? And so that's a really good way to look at it is there's no downside to anything we're doing. And so we can continue to push upward. Your Jobs and Gates interview was so formative to me. It was, yeah. I think I said something about it earlier, but I watched it a dozen times, first in a bunch of tiny clips as it dribbled out and then eventually the whole thing. You put that free on iTunes. News Corp didn't want that. We snuck it up there. They came back later when we were using some of those clips or something else and they're like, that's our IP. I'm like, no, you gave it away.

We got you to give it away years ago. It was so great. Such a moment. We got Rupert to sign it away, and it was great. That was a great—we wanted to put that on for all of humanity. I mean, in lieu of doing carve-outs today, that, to me—I think you asked Steve about he and Bill's friendship. Yeah. And he responded with the Beatles line. The Beatles at the end.

You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead. Oh, that made everybody cry. That almost made me cry. I knew he planned it. God. He was such a manipulative person. I've been a good way. But I like the one where I said, we ask good questions.

Actually, there's two interviews. That one, we asked him, what is the thing you don't know about your relationship with Gates? And he said, oh, for a long time we've been married. Yes, I remember that. It was so good. And Gates was so disturbed by it because he could see, like, flickering. I'm not anti-gay, but I am, but I can't. Like, oh, my God, what did he do?

He totally got him. That was a great moment. And then I have to say the last interview he did, Gates did, I mean, Jobs did with Walt and I right before he died. It was pretty close before he died. And he was just skinny as can be and just emaciated and very weak. But I got to tell you, go watch that interview. Go physically watch it because you can't get it by the voice. He is so vibrant as a person.

I know there's all these controversies about his daughter by the voice. He is so vibrant as a person. I know there's all these controversies about his daughter and everything else. He was a shitty father. And you know, everyone, he's a shitty father. Like it looks to her at least. I don't know about his other kids. And obviously she has to talk about it. But that interview, I have to say, he was so vibrant and full of life about it. He really exemplified a lot of the good things I like about Silicon Valley, about keeping going. And the relentlessness of him was there. And he had more energy than anybody in the room. And he was about to die. And I thought that was kind of cool. And he answered. And I think I asked him, I think one of the best questions I

asked him ever was, what are you going to do for the rest of your life? And you could see everyone like, did she just ask that? That guy's about to die. And I did it on purpose. What are you going to do the rest of your life? And he knew what I was doing. And it was great because he couldn't believe I asked it, I think. But no, he couldn't. He didn't mind. He never minded, like that and He said he was like okay This is what I do with TV like as if he was gonna live for 20 more years And I thought that was a great answer. He didn't go like on my waning days. I shall contemplate the universe or whatever He knew he was he had to know he was dying. Maybe he didn't I don't know but it was a great

That was a that was my favorite interview I think I thought that was in terms of, but, you know, just the recent Zuckerberg interview I thought was very good. I thought it changed things. I thought I got him to say things we all knew he thought that he never said. And I think I wasn't unkind, and I don't think I snarked at him, and I thought I allowed him to speak. And he just, I thought that was a really good and revelatory interview. So that's even today. And the next one, whatever I do the next one.

We'll see. Maybe Elon next. Elon, final date. I don't know. We'll see with him. I'd like to interview him again. He needs to get some sleep first. I don't know.

Something's going on. Yeah. Something's got something, something. Who knows? I don't know. We all have our crosses to bear, right? I mean, I think that's the big thing is like— They're people.

They're people. Yeah. They're people. Do you have anything else you want to leave our listeners with? Just do the work. Please just do the work, and then you'll be just fine. Again, there's so many ways that people get in your way, whether you're a woman and it's sexism or a person of color and it's racism or anti-Semitism. You are absolutely going to face those things, and don't let anyone tell you that's not holding you back. But if you keep doing the work,

I do think you can succeed. You can succeed in a way and be very happy with your work. I know that's easy to say, but I think it's always helped me. I think that's it. Thank you, Cara. Thank you. That was a great interview.

I appreciate it. You guys are very talented. We want to thank our longtime friend of the show, Vanta, the leading trust management platform. Vanta, of course, automates your security reviews and compliance efforts. So frameworks like SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, and HIPAA compliance and monitoring, Vanta takes care of these otherwise incredibly time and resource draining efforts for your organization and makes them fast and simple. Yep. Vanta is the perfect example of the quote that we talk about all the time here on Acquired,

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capabilities to make this even more powerful, and they even integrate with over 300 external tools. Plus, they let customers build private integrations with their internal systems. And perhaps most importantly, your security reviews are now real-time instead of static, so you can monitor and share with your customers and partners to give them added confidence. So whether you're a startup or a large enterprise, and your company is ready to automate compliance and streamline security reviews like Vanta's 7,000 customers around the globe, and go back to making your beer taste better, head on over to vanta.com slash acquired and just tell them that Ben and David sent you. And thanks to friend of the show,

Christina, Vanta's CEO, all acquired listeners get $1,000 of free credit. Vanta.com slash acquired. If you aren't subscribed and you want to hear more, you can subscribe from your favorite podcast client. You can follow Kara on Twitter. Kara, where can they follow you on Twitter? They can find me at Kara Swisher. Excellent. Yep. I got one of the early ones. I have Swisher at Gmail, I think, or one of those early ones. I think my type, Kara Swisher.

Email tips to Swisher at Gmail. Whatever. I'm not going to answer that one. I never use it. But I have a lot of the early everythings, which is because I was there. Awesome. Well, if you like the show, review us on iTunes. Come join the Slack, Acquire.fm, or don't, and enjoy whatever podcast you listen to in the future. Thanks, everyone.