The Daily Beast Podcast - The First Episode of The Daily Beast Podcast! w/ Kara Swisher

Episode Date: September 26, 2024

The New Abnormal listeners, please enjoy the first episode of The Daily Beast's new podcast! The Daily Beast Podcast is as wildly exciting, energizing, and entertaining as the topics it covers. Bringing their sharp wit and insights to each episode, co-hosts Joanna Coles (Chief Creative & Content Officer of The Daily Beast) and celebrated comedian and political commentator Samantha Bee will navigate the latest in politics, pop culture, and everything in between.  Subscribe here https://episodes.fm/1767675909 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, hello. We're so excited to share the first episode of The Daily Beast podcast, hosted by the Daily Beast Chief Chief Creative and Content Officer Joanna Coles and late night legend Samantha B, brought to you by 5'9. Welcome to the Daily Beast podcast. I'm Joanna Coles, Chief Content Officer of the Daily Beast. And I am Samantha B, chief content officer of my house and home and nothing else. Every Thursday, we're inviting you to the best dinner party you've ever been to. You're going to hear all our spicy takes. on what's happening in politics and pop culture, straight from the Daily Beast Newsroom. And we'll be having amazing guests, too, those sort of guests you've always wanted to sit next to and talk to off the record. This week, we're joined by the Queen of Podcasting and our Beast of the Week.

Kara Swisher, be sure to stick around for her. I love, Carol. Let us get started. I'm excited to be here, Joanna. Thanks for asking me to do this. I am very excited to have you. And I was trying to think about when we actually first met. And the truth is I can't remember.

I can't remember it at all. And I feel like we just kind of know each other through osmosis and through being at many fabulous parties. Well, and also when you're standing awkwardly apart. Standing awkwardly apart. And when you've known someone so well from television, sometimes you begin to think that you had those conversations with them when I realize you were actually having them with John Stewart. and two million other people, but I thought they were just with me. You know what? I've seen so much of everything that you've done and I've absorbed so much of your content

that I feel exactly the same way. What a thrill. Okay. Well, there's so much to talk about. There is so much to talk about. What a perfect time to start a journey like this. Yeah. And also I'm so excited to have someone that's funny and intelligent to process things with

because you need someone to just understand. unpack it. I'm very excited to get to know you because I think that you are spicy. You are a zesty lady. You kind of, can I say that in a way, every time we get together for a conversation, you really bring out the worst in me. Oh God, what is the worst in you? I want more worst. Okay. Well, you're going to get it. Be worse. Be worse. That could actually be our mantra for this podcast. Be worse. I hope you have swag. We need swag. Oh God, we do need swag, don't we? Yeah, what kind of swag? Like hats, t-shirts? No, you need a nice t-shirt and you cannot put your own face on it. And because if you do, then you can actually never wear it.

I could put your face on it. Absolutely do not do that because nobody will wear it. What about a thong? We could have be worst thong. Just a whale tail. Just a nice whale tail with Joanna Cole's face on it. It would be great. Best seller. Do they, do you call it a whale tail? I didn't even know what a whale tail is. already gone there. Oh, I'm not going to tell you if you don't know. It is. And it peaks up above your jeans. Oh, it's so great. I never wear thongs. When I was editing Cosmo, people used to obsess about thongs. And I would think, why do we have to wear daily things that became famous in porn? At my stage of life, I have embraced a full cotton gusset. And I feel proud and happy to say that. And folks, that's it for our podcast.

The podcast, we will be selling full cotton gussets at the end of the show. The Daily Beast of what I am, the chief content officer. I know. We have lots of great sections, and one of our sections is called Obsessed. Yes. And I love that because every time I see you, I want to know what you're obsessed by. Oh, thank you. What are you obsessed by this week?

Okay, look, I know that we are in the midst of a big election season, So we're all about countdown clocks right now. And I'm no exception to that, except that my countdown clock is marking time until Melania's book is released, which I believe is next week. And oh my goodness, I'm so hopeful that it's going to bring so much new information about her life to light. I'm not hopeful. I do want the book, but I also don't want to pay for it. It's also quite expensive.

Well, the white edition, her white album, if you will, is, I think, $250. I hope that's signed, though. I think it will be signed with a feather, a quill, in her blood. Oh, in her blood. Maybe. And then you could clone. Can you clone off dried blood? Oh, my God.

Can you imagine if there were hundreds of Melania clones? Oh, my God. Yeah, I don't want to line her pockets with my guess. So I am going to check it out from my local library. That's my strategy. I'm very curious about this book because I do know at least one mainstream publisher who turned it down. It's being published by Skyhorse, which, as we wrote in The Beast, also published RFK Jr. Fantastic.

And Woody Allen. So I think they publish books that nobody else will publish. Wonderful, wonderful track record. And is that the team also do? the big PR campaign because she's been making her videos. I think I feel like the drip, drip, drip of press has been incredible. The four videos. I think there's four videos so far. There's that very weird and creepy. The intro one. Hello. Hello. There's one about the assassination attempt, which felt like, you know, a little rushed. One about the Rose Garden. And then of course,

we had to talk about the exquisite female form, her exquisite female form, which I do not deny. Is that the same team behind that strategy? She's such a mystery. Who knows? Because the lighting is very strange in those videos, which I find out because she was actually a model. So why is she doing them in black and white, sort of black and white and in shadow? A little fuzzy, too. I mean, I do have old eyes, but I was not able to properly focus on it.

So there is a lot of, there's Vaseline, there's goo on the lens. I don't blame her for that. I wish we had goo on our lens. I would love all Vaseline on lenses, please. But she is cashing. She's cashing in. She's cashing in. She's cashing in.

You know, she's got that big pre-nop. Is she afraid if they split? God forbid they split. He's not going to pay his bills. Well, it's a very curious marriage, isn't it? Because she appears to have said, and we've certainly reported this in The Beast, that she's not planning to go back to the White House. Right.

We know that Barron, actually, as we reported, six months ago, is going to NYU, and she's using that as an opportunity to spend much more time in New York. So she's not living in the same state as her husband. And she's certainly getting paid for campaign events, which is incredibly unusual during a campaign. And the money is coming from very mysterious sources, no? I mean, $237,000 to speak to the log cabin Republicans? I would charge double that to speak to the log happen. Republicans would as well.

155,000 from one of her husband's super PACs in 2021. All that money is definitely going under her bed, separate beds, separate bedrooms, separate homes, separate states. And she's also, don't let's forget, got her special Christmas ornament line, which I'm very excited about. Oh my God. I just looked at them and they are so, it's like a spiky. a lethal, very spiky star. I wondered if it was almost inspired by the COVID virus.

I was reflecting on the fact that my Jesus was not born under that spiky-looking star. Impossible. Christmas decorations inspired by Susperia is how I think of her. Well, and we know that she hates Christmas because that was in that recording that Stephanie Winston Wolkhov did of her. Stephanie writes for the beast from time to time. And it was just the most extraordinary. Who hates Christmas?

Melania hates Christmas. Melania hates Christmas. Who gives the fuck about Christmas? Can you just? I'm working my ass off at Christmas. Who gives a fuck about Christmas with the decorations and stuff? Anyway, that's my. Thank you.

Thank you so much. That was so good. I've been working on it. Maybe that should be our merch. Just me. I'll do a phone message for you. Oh, that's genius. I absolutely.

want you to do that on my outgoing message. I just do it for you fucking hate Christmas, but you can't leave a message for Joanne Nicole's. We're both going to race to get a copy of the book, but we just don't want to pay for it. That's right. Yes, we need to strategize that properly. I think libraries are a great resource. That way they only pay for the one copy and everybody just borrows it.

Do you think it will get banned in Florida because it's referring to nude pictures? Hopefully. That would be incredible. Wouldn't it? But it could happen. Anything could happen. Okay, so Sam, now let's go to the download, which is another part of our site where we focus on the biggest stories of the week. First up is Diddy.

Sean Diddy Combs is currently facing serious legal troubles, including charges of sex trafficking and racketeering. And the allegations span years and involve accusations of abuse, coercion and orchestrating large-scale events that he called freak-offs, where women were truly exploited. Federal authorities claim he ran a criminal enterprise to conceal his actions, using his business empire to control and manipulate victims. And his properties in L.A. and Miami were raided earlier this year, you might remember, revealing disturbing evidence,

including guns and drugs. Did he denies the charges, but he remains in federal custody without bail? Yes. What a story. Extraordinary story. You have someone at The Daily Beast who's really following, who's really tracking this, right? Yes. Our reporter Ebony Boykin Patterson did an extraordinary piece with another reporter, Kate Brickle,

a couple of months ago about his bullying at work. And actually, as part of the story, I spoke to one of the people who was very senior in his organization. And she said that when she had agreed to go and work for him, they had a deal. that he was not allowed to call her after 11 p.m. at night. Okay. Because he kept cat hours. Right. So he would actually go to bed at around five in the morning when she was getting up.

And so they had this rule that he never called her between 11 and 5, which was when she was sleeping. Right. But he was up and partying. Oh, my God. How many people in his orbit who worked for him do you think did not know the extent to which he was really abusing people at his parties. I mean, literally, people had to have IV infusions to recuperate. That does not sound like the kind of party you want to go to where you literally have to recover, possibly

almost hospitalized. Oh my God. Not very sexy to have an IV drip in your arm. I met him once. He did not invite me to, surprisingly, he did not invite me to one of his fun parties. Tell me everything. I met him. First of all, how tall is he? Is he actually very small? That's the only thing that I don't remember about our single encounter together was his height. He's taller. I'm kind of short, so everybody's sort of taller than me. So yes, I met him at, at the DNC. I can't remember which one it was ages and ages ago. And I was in kind of a cordoned off area with cameras and a producer. And so I was grabbing whoever I could to ask him a couple of questions about

what was going on. And he walked in the room and I went up to him and he was with his. He had an aide who was kind of, as I recall, his manservant, and I think that he would carry a little parasol around with him in the outside. Farnsworth, I think he was called. I believe it was him. And there was no indoor parasol, but he had just had like had a right-hand man. And so I went up to them. And it was an area where you would expect to be interviewed to. It wasn't like so outrageous for me to approach with a camera and a very polite question.

Well, he was probably hanging around hoping to be interviewed, right? So I went up to him and I said, would you mind if I asked you a couple of questions? And he seemed very taken aback. His voice was soft. He was like, I think that's okay. And so I said, thank you. And I reached out and I shook his hand. And then he immediately, like instantly turned to his attendant, held his hands out helplessly.

and his attendant squirted copious amounts of pure all into his hands. And then he softly rubbed his hands together to, I got to extinguish whatever microbes I had put on his hands. And I was so, it was so rude. I mean, it was actually so rude. And I do understand that, you know, you shake a lot of people's hands and you do, your hands feel dirty. But you don't typically need to sanitize while the person is standing before you. That's ridiculous. Expressing your disgust.

And it occurred to me in the light of all of these freakoffs that it's always the germophobes who want to go home and recreate Caligula every Tuesday afternoon. Do you know what I mean? Anyway.

It's so interesting that so much lube was used. I think the Fed's picked up a thousand bottles of lube and baby oil. So industrial-sized freecoffs going on. Oh my God. But what I'm fascinating by, is what is he? You're fascinated by more things than just that? Well, that's, I know,

that is pretty fascinating, isn't it? You want to come over to my house? How many tarps are we going to need? But can you imagine the Amazon delivery guys? I mean, they must have been backing up the trap with that stuff. My goodness, so much trauma. It's so awful. Well, inmate 37452-0-054, as he's now referred to in the Metropolitan Detention Center is now sharing a cell with none other than Sam Bankman-Fried. What a, what a, what a, what a, what a, wow. It's just extraordinary. I'm sort of fascinated by what's he doing all day, like, yeah, what is it like a day in the

life of Diddy in the MDC? And also, can you imagine what the crisis PR teams, how much they're in absolute overdrive, because so many of their celebrity clients were at these parties. Well, one of the pieces that did incredibly well on The Beast was the notion of Diddy hiding in plain sight, like so many of these stories do, like Harvey Weinstein, like Jeffrey Epstein, where they get air cover from celebrities. I mean, this is a man who launched his Couture collection on the steps of the Met Gala only last year, surrounded by pictures of Anna Winters.

surrounded by celebrities and celebrity enablers. And there's video of Ashton Cutscher talking about his parties. There's videos of Leo DiCaprio. And then when you hear the women's stories, it's so disturbing. It's so disturbing. It's so disturbing. It really buoyed my spirits that he was not let out on bail. I think that's well deserved.

Right. And they offered 50 million bail, I think, didn't they? And they were like, no, because he's a flight risk. And probably, I mean, I know he's on suicide watch too, as was Epstein. So that was effective. Okay. My big story that's coming down the pike. And this is looking again toward the future is the VP debate next week, which I am excited, tentative, hopeful, scared.

I don't know. I have a lot of feelings. What are your feelings? My feelings are that it may not matter that much, that traditionally V candidates don't actually move the needle. although arguably Sarah Palind did against John McCain. Although J.D. Vance has turned out to be a spectacularly bad candidate. And Tim Walts has turned out to be a surprisingly good candidate, I think. J.D. Vance, doesn't he pull just so extremely in the toilet with voters?

He should be in the toilet. He should be in the toilet. The debate is next Tuesday. It's October 1st. I have my snacks prepared. I think there's so much. What are you going to eat during it, actually? What would your snacks be for the Veep debate?

We're going with a caramel corn and we're going to have a cheese. I always have to have a, I love to have a cheese tray. So I'm assembling all of the cheeses for my. I heard from a lot of people that they were too anxious to watch the debate with Carmala and Trump. Yes. I'm thinking that people feel more secure about this one. A little more secure. The debate will be moderated by Nora O'Donnell and Margaret Brennan.

And how do you think that they are prepping for this debate? I know that Pete Buttigieg is playing J.D. Vance. Yes? Yes. And Tom Emmer is playing Tim Walz. Do we know much about Tom Emmer? Well, we know he loves hockey. He's from Minnesota.

He loves playing ice hockey. And he's very right wing. I mean, he's very, you know, he's known for his conservative views. He's very conservative on fiscal responsibility, deregulation, and doesn't really believe in much government. So he'll be a perfectly good candidate to represent JD. What I find astonishing is how J.D. Vance went from a best-selling memoirist of Hillbilly Elegy to where he is now.

And it feels like that incredible goodwill he got with that book has been utterly squandered. Yes, he's really leaned into grievance. His entire bodily expression is an expression of, grievance, he's a misanthrope, I think. His smile is Erectus. And I love it when he tries to joke, actually, it's my favorite. Well, when he tries to order a donut, he can't do basic things like whatever makes sense. And you're like, well, no donut makes sense. It's all going to give you diabetes. That's not the point. But I would ask him about Usha. I'm very interested in Usha Vance. And you would think because she was educated at Yale and Cambridge and she worked

for a liberal-leaning law company, which she had to give up her job that she'd obviously spent a lot of time investing in the moment he was chosen to be VEP Canada. I tend to give her the benefit of the doubt and think, oh, she can't believe any of this. Now I actually think that she's Lady McVance. If you were moderating the debate, would that be your question to him would it just be? What does O'SHA think of all of this? It might be. It might be, actually.

It would be like, what does Ushah think when law law? Laura Luma says that if Carmala wins, the White House will smell of curry. Oh, my, I just sweat. I just had a spontaneous sweat from each one of my pores. I can't see it, though, because you're hiding it behind that jacket. I would ask about, I would ask a follow-up question about the cats and dogs. The fact that he is spreading that disinformation about Haitian immigrants, which I just cannot get over, it's led to such dangerous conditions for the Haitian immigrant population.

I would ask why he celebrates or embraces being so popular with neo-Nazis, who are all just like high-fiving each other that he keeps sharing these memes that they've been trying to get going for years and years. One of the interesting things, I think, which I hadn't really reflected on until recently, was that with two assassination attempts against him, and actually a third one that we just wrote about actually in The Beast yesterday, I mean, the guy didn't actually turn up, but he called up and threatened. Donald Trump is that we could actually be looking at President Vance.

I find that so chilling. It's actually a place that I have not really gone in my imagination. Well, you might want to fire up your imagination because it's not impossible. Firing up the imagination machine. what do you think the viral moment will be from next week's debate? Like what is going to be the fly on Mike Pence for the 2024 VP debate? Please let there be another fly and let it go right in J.D. Vance House. What if the same fly is hanging around waiting?

The most robust fly. I think there might be soup in the beard. I'm just going to say I don't like beards. I grew up with pogophobia, which is actually a phobia. which is actually a fear of men with beards, ladies with beards too, but more commonly it's men with beards. It's a real thing. And I think often if you stare at a beard long enough, I can see bits of old soup and occasional pieces of corn. I'm sorry. I'm going to just pause for one moment on your medically diagnosed phobia of people with beards. It's my only phobia and it was out of

control during COVID. Wow. Wow. I just, I just picture little ants crawling around in a beard. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Do you think that Trump is going to live tweet this, live exit? Is he going to truth social? Of course he is, because he's not going to be able to cope with not being the center of attention. Okay. Okay. I wondered if he cared enough what J.D. Vance does, but no, of course you're right. What was I thinking? Well, actually, that's a very good point. He may be doing a rally at the same time, but I bet that he's on truth social. You're right, of course he's going to be on truth social. Yeah.

And now let's pay some bills. But after the break, we're talking to the Kara Swisher. So don't miss it. In today's world, customer experience, or CX, for short, is being completely revolutionised. And one company is leading the charge, 5'9. What they're doing is really interesting. they're integrating AI into customer experiences through phone calls, text, email, chat, any touchpoint between a customer and a brand.

It's all getting smarter and more streamlined, which is a win for brands and consumers. 5-9's intelligent AI-powered CX platform is becoming a huge competitive advantage. Massive companies like Estée Lauder and CVS are already using 59, to enable top-tier customer experiences where typically you might not expect it, and it's all happening incredibly fast. Because brands have seen how powerful great customer experiences can be, it leads to higher profits, better customer retention, all types of business outcomes. It's way more than a contact centre, it's a profit centre, which is why more brands should be looking to elevate how they engage with customers.

So if you want to know how you can elevate your CX game, check out 59.com forward slash beast. That's FIVE9.com slash beast. If you're a business owner, 59 is a technology platform, you would be crazy not to check out. So now we're going to change gears and introduce you to our Beast of the Week. Kara Swisher! Kara is a prominent American journalist. She's a technology commentator. She's an entrepreneur.

And she's really known for her sharp insights and no-nonsense approach. She's one of the most influential voices in tech journalism. And she began her career covering Silicon Valley in the early 1990s and quickly gained a reputation for her deep industry knowledge and fearless interviews with top tech leaders and founders. She's also the host of multiple successful podcasts, including Pivot with NYU Professor Scott Galloway and On with Kara Swisher, where she interviews key figures across industries. We're so excited that you're here because this is our inaugural dual interview where we road test all kinds of things. Oh, why me? I would want to know. Don't you know four famous people than me?

No, there's no one better for us to interrogate than you. All right. Okay, go for it. Podcast virtuoso. That's true. It's true. Yeah, we want all your tips. All right.

Okay, all right. So ask away. Okay, first of all, just on background, I know that you know each other very well, your text-level friends. I assume you've attended many swanky parties, highest caliber parties. How do you know each other? My favorite Kara story is that Kara and I were in a cab in Las Vegas. We were about to go on a flyover. of the Grand Canyon and onto taxi TV came Kara with her famous aviator sunglasses on and I went

oh my God Kara you're on the TV in front of me and then she turned her face around from the seat in front of me and I had double Kara and it was like a hallucination that's true a very good hallucination yeah yeah but I think of it I'm on taxi TV so it's kind of a low bar in in In Vegas, no less. Mario Lopez is better than that. Will you tell the story of how I did once silence you? Yeah, I invited Joanna when she was running her magazine, a cosmopolitan, to talk about, we often brought different, I've interviewed you, Sam and everyone else, about, and I often

do it in the intersection of tech, because magazines were undergoing enormous pressure around advertising and digitization and everything else. And she was doing rather well at Hearst. And so we thought she was lively, and she was running a lively. magazine it was doing really well. And she was on the upswing there in there, you know, they're climbing the greasy pole of magazine publishing. And I thought she just would be a great interview about that. And we'd had previous people, the woman who ran all of the Time magazine, things who had since gone away and different people. But it's always interesting

to talk to people in that area. So she gets on there. And I had read Compton when I was younger, you know, thin thighs and 30 days. I think that was often the thing, which you can do for you're a man to keep him hot in the summer night, you know, on the winter nights, stuff like that. And, um, and so we, I was, I was expecting a little bit of the sexy, the sexy, naughty stuff because she's British also. And she gets up and we start talking in a serious fashion about the business of publishing. And suddenly she asks what, she was talking about sexual positions. I don't know how she got to that spot, but of course it went right there. And this is a code conference. So this is an audience that is very awkward in general. And it was

live and she goes, I wonder, and then she suddenly goes, I wonder what the Swisher, what is the Swisher? And I go, the Swisher, she goes, you know, the sexual position. And then she starts pontificating on what she thought the Swisher would be. I think it was a modified wheelbarrow kind of thing. And so it was, I was like a bit, and no one has ever done that because I didn't want to think of a sexual position called the Swisher. Wow. Joanna, you went right there to the Swisher special. I did. And the audience liked it. The audience did. They like to see me silenced, I think. Well, we have brought you here because we do want to ask you about podcasting in general

and building a business in that way. Right. I mean, how do you decide for yourself that it is time to launch something new? All the time. All the time. I'm always looking for podcast ideas and, you know, it's just a question of time versus money versus everything. Like what do you make money?

Everything I do, I make money at. And so I think that's a powerful position to be. in, especially for a woman, if you're not making money, they get to tell you things and they get to talk to you. And I try to limit the amount of people who can talk to me or say things or tell me what to do. And so if you make money, that tends to shut everybody up. They're still irritating, but they don't bother you. So I often think in terms of how to build one, a piece of content, it starts with a content. It's probably like doing a show like you were doing or a magazine or anything else. What's really good content and what is interesting? And some of it is you look out and

see what people have done and you, you know, you, a lot of stuff is copying. We've been copied over and over again in the conference business, for example. And even the podcasting, you know, business that people are trying to do with Scott and Kara kind of thing. But we're not fresh either. We're sort of, there's always been Joe and Mika or local news or whatever. There's always been or even cheers, a man, you know, a feckless man and a sassy woman. That's kind of an old trope. So content, it starts with content, but I always think, though, everything is what is the content, what is the advertiser proposition? How do you sustain and get an audience of fans?

And I think that's the most important thing is fan base. Because if you have a fan base, it starts to build and people recommend to each other. And a lot of media people don't think in terms of fans. I think of fans all the time. And that's something that's comfortable for you, Sam, because you have fans, right? Right. Media people don't often, media, regular media people don't think like that. How do you put your fans first and, like, center in your mind?

how do you center them in the experience? We talk about them. We talk about things and we listen to them when they write us and stuff like that. We have an interaction with them quite a bit. And we talk about we want you to come up to us and they do. We want to hear their feedback. It doesn't mean we're going to follow what, you know, like I have so many people coming up to me is I don't like God's dick jokes. I'm like, okay, I'm not changing them because you don't like them, but don't listen.

I don't know what to say. It's part of our little schick is his stupid dick jokes. But, you know, I do, I like to hear what moves them. And often, which you have to do because of podcasting is different, even than television. In television, you're famous. And in magazines, the editor is away from the people, right? In podcasting, you have a close emotional relationship with your audience in a way that is very different. You're in their ear.

One of the things we do a lot is we talk about ourselves. A lot of people don't, you don't know about the inner life of, I don't know, Colbert or whatever. You sort of do, but you don't, right? It's more presentational. Presentational. So in this case, you let them into your life kind of thing and act like real people. And so I think you have a very emotional, intimate relationship with your fan base. And it differs depending on the person. And so you can't be scared not to do that. But at the same time, you can't just, you know, there's a lot of yammery away podcasts often dies. You know, I think we suit the shit. And it's like so boring. They're boring in person. Well, I can't believe how long some podcasts are like Andrew Huberman goes on for like three. three hours. I do admire the vitality of your conversations with Scott. I listen. I'm a very regular listener. And I wonder how you, I mean, this is just such a technical, such a small question,

but I wonder, you must be very intentional about who does what. Yeah, with the script. There's a script. But it's not scripted. But it's not, it's a script that's not scripted. And so I run, I run the thing. Scott doesn't even read it often. He doesn't know what's, he's always like, this is coming together so closely. We have a script where we say our topics. There's a lot of facts that we have in there because we talk about stock market or Elon or whatever, what happened that week? So we're accurate. That's critical for us. Then we link to something we'll say, this person said it.

We often put in a clip saying here's like today we did. What did we do? Someone was, oh, it was me yelling at that stupid Trump person on CNN this week. So we put that in. So instead of talking about it, listen to what I did to him. And so he knows the general topics. And then I run it like the moderator. Like I run it like the MC or something like that.

And then, you know, but then I also allow. when things go a certain way, we go there. Like, we don't, I don't stay on the script if something interesting happens. Like, he started talking about Trump and crypto. I thought he'd say one thing, and he said a different thing. And so we pursued it down that path. So we, it's like a really, I don't know if you remember my dinner

with Andre, that movie. Right. It's a great conversation. And one of the things that I think we do well is we push back on each other in a civil way, that then you can see the journey of each of us. And that's the thing, the changing of my changing of minds, the conversation. And that's what makes a good debate good, as opposed to

like some of these scream fests on cable where you learn nothing and you come away with nothing. So that's important. It's to learn to disagree civilly, but firmly, I guess, if you reach disagreements. We're going to dig into the news. We're going to pull out stories from the Daily Beast. But I'm curious, you know both me and Sam. Do you think we're going to get on? I can't tell. Scott and I never had met when we're. we started doing the podcast, which was, I saw him, as you know, it's an old story. I saw him in Germany, and he was so arrogant, but so correct. And I went up to him, and I said, listen, he gave a presentation. And it was a DLD. And he said, I said to him, listen, you said three

things, three to ten things. I didn't think of. And I think of it. I'm real smart. And I was like, so you're real, I didn't think that. And you made me think a different way. I said, but you're such an arrogant prick at the same time. So I'm offended by you. And he was like, well, thank you. He thought that was, and it was like instantly we had like kinetic energy. And I said, well, you come on the podcast. And I was looking for a new co-host. And there were obvious people that I could have picked, right? It scored higher than my, I'd just done an Elon Musk interview. And it was much higher than that one. And those usually scored super high. And so I pay attention to the numbers. And so I called him, I said, I can't believe this, but we scored higher than this. I can't believe

it. It must be a fluke. Right? So I had them back again. And it worked again. And saying, thing and you could and we started getting letters and everything else and so I don't know if if you'll get along it you just have to see but I didn't see him in person very much that first year at all that boys my spirits because I like Joanna very much she's very zesty in person she is lively I'm being very quiet yes you are being very quiet I think I'm just listening well daily beast isn't very quiet I feel Joanna all over that thing it's like you're delicious bits of things that are bad Delicious. Delicious.

Yeah, exactly. Fuckery. Fuckery is what you're doing. And so you have to put out your fuckery personality. That would be what I would be. And you're rye. Sam, you're rye. Sam is very rye.

She's like rye whiskey. I like, I have a very nerd energy, though. I like my little notes and charts. I always have a pen in my hand, just like Bob Dole. And Joanna is more of the hurricane that comes in. Right, right. Or disagreement. I think disagreement.

I'll give you my absolute, this is what I do for, every business I make, whether it's a conference or website. One thing is three things you have to be. One is useful. What is useful to people? What is useful to people? You can be one of these things and do really well. If you have all three, you're a huge hit. Are you writing that down soon? I am writing it down with my nerd chart. Nerd chart. Okay. Useful is critical. And that by mean is they can use it at work or they can use it in some way in their life. Use it to be more interesting. Somehow they can take away what you're saying to them. And it's useful. Like that's really important. The second thing is to be entertaining, like entertaining or slash interesting slash substantive. And it depends on who you are.

Like you may find Ezra Klein interesting if you're a walk. You may find like what's the entertainment or interesting aspect that people find you? And I think people find our relationship really interesting. Like I think people find our insights really interesting. They're more useful than interesting. But it has to be entertaining or funny. I think funny is important. Obviously, you're good at that, Sam. And Joanna, you're also good at that. And so I think people like that because in this world,

there's so much relentless crap. Like, people want a moment where they can hope and feel good, you know. I learned a lot from listening to Pivot during COVID. I listened to it. I listened to every single episode. I learned a lot because I felt so cut off from people. Right. And the point of our podcast is I want to.

to develop a friendship with Sam. We've known each other on and off over the years. But I love the relationship you have with Scott. And I want a relationship with Sam, and we can ask each other. Yeah, it's over time. It has to be genuine. And the last thing that's really critical,

and that's what you're just talking about, is remember must-see TV? Yes. You know, it's like people wait in line for certain sneakers, you can't get Scott. And I don't care how many people you jam together. It's never happening with another person, including for both of us. Sometimes maybe it will. But you have to, it's a must-see TV kind of thing,

which I think is really powerful. And if you have all three, yes, if you have all three, you can have one and do very well, I'll tell you that. But make money. That's another thing. Make money. Well, we definitely want to make money. We definitely want to make money. One of the things I love about you is that you talk about making money. You're an incredibly unusual woman because, A, you leave big brands. Most people wrap themselves in brands. You've left the Wall Street Journal. You've left the New York Times. Where does your confidence come from?

I am so in awe of your confidence. Well, I can do math, right? And I don't make as much money there. I make 10 times as much as the New York Times. Like, they may think paying you a certain amount of money is fine. I think if I make something and create it, I should benefit from it, right? If I make them $5 million, why are they getting, you know, 4.8 million of it or 4.8 million more than that, 4.9 million of it. Why? Why? I made it. Same thing with the journal when we made,

Walt and I made the Code Conference. It was making $6,7 million in profit a year. Why did they, we didn't, we split that one. We split that one in a much more advantageous way. And then it got me to, first of, if I made it, I thought of it, we used to do polls of code where I was, where we listed what was important. Wall Street Journal was always 10. If it was on the list, it was always Walt and Kara's relationship, the guests they book, which the Wall Street Journal didn't help us. the food, whatever. But Wall Street Journal brand, that was a big lesson for me.

It didn't matter that it was the Wall Street Journal to them. That was a big insight. And then with the Times, I had a purpose there in that. I wanted to get out the idea that tech was very dangerous. And that was a platform. I was saying that over at my other platform, but at the New York Times, it came on like a brick shit house, right? And then when I was done with it, I was done being underpaid.

I don't mean to be rude. But I mean, they had a pretty good salary, but not what I could make on my own. And then so that's not confidence. It's just math. And then the last thing is I really, I didn't want to have people tell me what to do. And you have to decide which of the stuff you like and which you do. I mean, Sam, you know about the network. And that's harder because it's a TV show.

It is harder. But I have found myself as I, you know, as I've achieved success. And now I'm very unwilling to really listen to what anyone thinks of me. Or if they have good things, you will. Of course. I'm absolutely always here to take great notes, but very generally uninterested in hearing someone tell me to change my whole self to fit into their thing. I've walked away from a lot of stuff that was that exact thing because I'm too old and I've done

too much. Right. You know, I've had too much success to listen to people tell me to change myself. Yeah. And also often people want you to do the thing that you've done before or something that's correct. that's worked before because they're nervous about leaning into the future. Yeah, but I see, like, I had a great luck to meet Jim Bankoff of Vox. Like, I had sold them a company for quite a lot of money, right, or in shares and cash.

And I came to my city, I don't want to do this anymore. I want to do podcasting. This is 10 years ago. I think it's going to be huge. I think we'll make a lot of money doing it and give me an intern and I'll do it. I've been entranced by the idea of podcasting since Steve Jobs talked about it in an interview. Pod. He said it on stage of code.

And I never lost, it stuck in my head like crazy. And I was watching all these single entrepreneurs make these things. And I was like, I can do that. I did it with the site. I did it with a conference. Similar thing with the conference when I left. I was like, it's over. It's done.

People are now copying me. I think the business is tired. Right. And maybe I'll reinvent it at some point, but not today. And not, I can't keep doing the Broadway. I was making a Broadway hit every year. And it was a hit. And I was like, at some point, I'm not going to have a Broadway hit.

And I, 20 is enough of them, I feel like. And it has to be driven by a genuine interest. You have to wake up every day and want to do the thing that you're doing. Yeah, I was, I was bored myself. Yeah, I was bored myself. You've been shouting from the mountaintops for several years now about the inherent dangers in tech. Talk to us about the impact you think Elon Musk and X is having on the run up to the election. Well, as a business, it's a nothing burger.

It's less than a nothing, but it's a shitty little business. You know, it just is. I'd have to look at their numbers, but I suspect even my podcast makes more money, more profitable. Like, it just is not profitable. And so it's a rich man's yacht is what it is. It's his version of that. Like he's going to do it. But as a thing, as him as a character and using X to do so, it's very powerful because

he's got money and means and he's demented, right? And so he has a point of view, however more. and curdled it is. And so one P person who said something to me, and I can say it now because he's letting me, Mark Cuban, when it happened, I was trying to figure out why Elon was buying it. It wasn't out of love, although he loved the site, right? He said, Kerry's using it for his other businesses,

because when he walks in a room, he's the Tesla guy, which is cool, and the SpaceX guy, which is cool, but it's not that cool, right? But when he has Twitter added to it, especially when he goes see autocrats or in other countries, he goes, this isn't about the United States. It's about everywhere. in the globe. So he became a global celebrity in owning Twitter, even if it's a bad business. And I thought that was very canny. I thought that was a really smart way to think about it.

That is a smart way, and I hadn't thought about it that way. There's also the thing that it may be a rich man's yacht, but when he's raming it into democracy, yes. Right, the wake that he's having on every other boat on the same sea is intense. And the thing I find puzzling about him, too, is that he's clearly so brilliant. I've spent. certainly some time not talking to him intimately, but certainly listening to him and have met him a couple of times. And the things that I find odd is that he's so brilliant, Starlink exceptional, you know, SpaceX exceptional, neuralink, potentially exceptional. And I had a tester and I ended up giving it back because it didn't work and because I couldn't stand to him just ranting on X. I just had enough of him.

But I don't understand how he manages to be a brilliant end. engineer and then an apparent lunatic when he's tweeting. I would stop you with brilliant engineer. There's much better engineers. There's much more. I would say he's a brilliant businessman and I'd compare him to Henry Ford, who was a great operational businessman. As I pointed out on CNN the other night, he didn't found Tesla.

He has another CEO at SpaceX, right? He's one of these people who's sort of a PT Barnum character. I mean, he's more talented than people, but Henry Ford or Edison would be the comparables, right? Or Howard Hughes, any of these people. And so he's very good at taking other people's ideas and running with them. And he's very good operationally because he's willing, as other people aren't, to blow things up. That's an asset, but it really isn't, is it?

It's, you know, other people, NASA people, everyone's like, oh, he bested NASA. Well, NASA people couldn't blow up those rockets. So they had to be careful. Right. Because if they blew up the rockets, they were out of a job. He's not out of a job when he blows. So if you blow up enough of them, you get it right. So he gets to be risky and they don't.

So that gives him an inherent advantage. He's also willing to be risky, like he's willing to go up against Brazil, he's willing. And sometimes it pays off, and other times it really doesn't. And in this case, his bet is Trump will win, right? And because, by the way, if he doesn't, he's in a world of hurt. Right. He isn't. Because real people with real subpoenas will show up at Tesla and say, huh, you may, you know,

there's a lot, it's going to be a lot of ha with subpoenas attached to it. And it's not because he's persecuted. It's because there are problems. I feel like what we really need is just a bunch of pods of, menopausal orcas to just chew on the rudder of that rich man's yacht. I guess. I just, you know, he's very smart, but he's not, he also manages to take up mind space the way Trump does, right? Right. He's not as good as all that. There's so many better and more interesting entrepreneurs around. It's just they're not egomaniacs that say, look, he's, he is an incessant need for attention.

Right. Right. And no matter every time he puts himself in it, the Taylor Swift thing, what did he have to do, say he was going to impregnate her in a creepy, rapy way? And what did he have to? have to do, you know, everything he has to comment on so he can get in on it. And there's other lesser versions like Bill Ackman. It's kind of pathetic that he's, oh, me too. Let me tell you the crazy off crazy thing I have to say, you know, whatever. There's a new book that's just come out about him, right? Yes. And about X. Character limit. Right. Character limit. And one of the things they're talking about is that sense that when you go back to his early tweets, they're very normal and then they get increasingly more peculiar.

And obviously his wealth has grown. So while I agree with you that there are probably better engineers around, it's hard to think of anybody that has got the number of successful businesses. There are new businesses. Henry Ford did one thing and he did it brilliantly. Yeah, I guess. I think they're related to each other. Like there's also businesses that Hyperloop isn't working.

Like there's solar is okay. Like, you know, Neurlink, we'll see. And by the way, in case you're interested, there are six other businesses that do the same thing. They're just not hand-waved jazz hands like he is. Interesting. And there's a lot of car stuff coming. And if I had to give him one thing, two things is SpaceX, but he's allowed to blow up rockets. So that's an advantage.

But I would say Tesla, he did push forward. But Google was there early. They just didn't push hard enough. The planes are covered with the bodies of pioneers. And he's a very fast follower, just like Walmart or stuff like that. I would say what happened to him was drug use, which has been written. about in the Wall Street Journal. COVID, a need for therapy, a very unhappy childhood, which you know, lots of people have. And generally, dark personality, I mean, the stuff with his kids

that has become a parent is. It's so ugly. It's ugly. Yeah. I do want to know if you have a sense of how to put the horses back in the barn. I do think there is a, there will be, you know, we have encountered the Henry Ford's. I mean, there were, I would recommend, I always recommend Rachel Maddow's ultra. There were several really rich people. people that were pulling this stuff. There was a Texas oilman like this who was an Elon Musk character, very innovative oil person. I forget his name, was really meddling in politics like you cannot believe and was trying to essentially kill off Franklin Roosevelt. You know, there have been people like this in our history that are crazy, like really and malevolent. And then there's a quiet ones.

There's tons of quiet ones around that aren't Elon that are doing this too. And what I would recommend is that they that we we really understand part of it is foreign powers attacking us Elon is a is a is there was just a story he's retweeting Putin talking points almost daily now it's really you know and I don't know what that's about but I'd like to know why that's happening and I think ultimately powerful people that overreach it's sort of like a bond villain something not good is going to happen here you can't you can only anger so many people for so long before let me call it carmala happens You know, there is Carmelah coming. Oh, boy.

We'll see. Do you think there is Carmelah coming? If you're looking at it now, would you say that you think she's going to win? As long as, you know, he's trying his best not to. He's got a lot of money putting his shoulder into it with the thing. I do. I think there's, I know there's this, oh, he always polls differently. I think we all know Donald Trump.

But I think as long as she gets out there more and we get to know her, I use a phrase at Audie Cornish used a lot. Kamala Curias, I think people are very much. And I do think there's a quiet, just like in all these elections in Kansas and Iowa and all these places around abortion, there's a quiet group of people that are like, I'm sick of this shit. He's got a lot of the new phrase right now, just so you know, you can pass along is high floor, low ceiling. That's Donald Trump, high floor, low ceiling. High floor, low ceiling and lifts. Yeah, lifts.

Well, I don't know. I don't know him. He's a, I think he's cognitively disabled at this point. I think so too. This was wonderful. Thank you so much. All right, well, good luck you too. Yeah, thank you very much, Cara.

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