Laurene Powell Jobs and Kara Talk Tech, AI & Journalism
52:46 Share

On September 28th, the Global Citizen Festival will gather thousands of people who took action to end extreme poverty. Join Post Malone, Doja Cat, Lisa, Jelly Roll, and Raul Alejandro as they take the stage with world leaders and activists to defeat poverty, defend the planet, and demand equity. Download the Global Citizen app today and earn your spot at the festival. Learn more at globalcitizen.org.com.

On September 28th, the Global Citizen Festival will gather thousands of people who took action to end extreme poverty. Join Post Malone, Doja Cat, Lisa, Jelly Roll, and Raul Alejandro as they take the stage with world leaders and activists to defeat poverty, defend the planet, and demand equity. Download the Global Citizen app today and earn your spot at the festival. Learn more at globalcitizen.org slash bots. It's on!

Hi, everyone. From New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. Today, we're bringing you a bonus episode from my Burn Book book tour. It's a conversation with businesswoman and entrepreneur Lorene Powell Jobs that we taped in February at 6 and I, along with Politics and Prose.

Powell Jobs is the founder and president of the Emerson Collective, an investing, philanthropy, and advocacy firm that focuses on environmental justice, health, immigration, and education. I've really loved Lorene's work at the Emerson Collective. I've known her a long time. She was married to the late Steve Jobs, which is how I met her, and I covered him for many years, obviously. He was one of the co-founders of Apple Computer and probably the most famous tech company.

visionary in history, probably. Through the Elmerson Collectives, she's also purchased and become majority owner of The Atlantic. She's also invested in other media outlets and nonprofit newsrooms, including Axios, ProPublica, among others. I've interviewed her plenty of times, but in this interview, you'll hear Lorene interview me about my book and my life reporting on an industry she's very familiar with, to say the least. I hope you enjoy the conversation, and we'll be back on Monday with a new fresh episode with Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

Well, it's a pleasure to be here tonight and to talk with the great Kara Swisher about her new book, Burn Book.

So Kara, welcome. I'm very excited for this conversation. So I want to begin with the title of this book. As far as I know, Burn Book came into Lexicon because of the film Mean Girls. Is that correct? Yes, thank you. Just so we're clear on her cultural touchstones,

And so it essentially means a book where you burn or dish on others. But she modified the title with a subtitle, which is A Tech Love Story. So, Kara, which one is it? Which tone did you want to set? Well, it's...

it's both of them because I just want to say last time Lorraine and I were on stage we were at Lesbians Who Tech and she was a huge hit. I interviewed her there. And I got a great sweatshirt. That was fun. That was fun. That was a good time. Lesbians Who Tech are fun lesbians. Anyway, Burn Book. It's because Burn Books are actually true. I mean, the thing about Burn Books and if you watched, it's in the theaters now, the latest Mean Girls with Renee Rapp who really is fantastic. And

And they're often true. It's what you really think of people and that outside in social life, you do niceties. You're like, oh, hello. But then you go, oh, that jerk, and they did this. And so it's actually true even if it's mean or catty or gossipy. So that's one of the things. The other part, the part about the love story is because I really, the reason I'm, I'm not angry, I wouldn't say, although Elon said I had a heart seething with hate, but

We'll get to him. Yeah. Look in the mirror, fella. That's what I say. And I love tech. You know that. I've always loved tech. The minute I started using it, I was deeply in love with it. You know, I talk about it in the book, about grabbing the giant suitcase phone of the Washington Post and running around with it. And people made fun of me. Someone here in the room always used to make fun of me, Lisa Dickey.

And I had... I loved tech from the minute I had it. And that's why when Walt is the one that really got me to move to San Francisco, I was thrilled to do it because it was so...

It was so up and to the right and so exciting, the stuff that was happening. Of course, you lived it too. And there was so much possibility. And one of the quotes I use, in fact, is from... I had this idea that you were either a Star Wars or a Star Trek person, right? Yes, yes. And Star Wars is a very dark tale. It's really...

It's a very dark tale of humanity. It's evil wins. It's good versus evil. I mean, you're always rooting for the resistance. But evil wins quite a bit. You're on your back foot. Right. And in Star Trek, like I said, it's a Benetton commercial of space. Like, they're all there running around and it's really great. Yeah.

Everybody gets along, villains turn. And I hadn't remembered the interview I had done with Steve where he said, he was talking about things that were starting to turn. I think it was about social media, which he didn't love.

He didn't love the business plan of it. And he said, I want Star Trek. That's what I want. And when I saw that, and I thought, that's right. I want Star Trek. I love Star Trek. And we're living in a Star Wars universe with a bunch of men, adult men who act like toddlers, hosts playing Darth Vader. And, you know, that pisses me off. It pisses me off, I guess. And so it's a love story gone wrong. Yeah.

We better make sure it's in the right section of the bookstore. Yeah, right. But speaking of love, you dedicate the book to Walt Mossberg, the great tech journalist. And...

So this is an opportunity to give a little love to Walt. So tell us... But tell us a little bit about your partnership because you had such a special, long-standing partnership with Walt. Indeed. He was...

I met Walt writing my book on AOL because he and I have the same mindset because he had written a column I really thought was great. He talked about seeing around corners. Walt really did. And he also was a great reporter, which is very different. There's so many pontificators. Walt did the reporting and then came to a conclusion. And you either agreed...

People didn't agree with him. He used to get in big fights with Gates. All of them would call him, but he said what he thought, which I thought was a great thing, but he did it after doing reporting, and it was his point of view. And so he wrote this column on AOL. At the time, there were better-funded businesses, Prodigy being one of them, which was run... It was Sears and IBM...

was an online service and I had written it was everything Sears knows about computing and everything IBM knows about retail. And so... That was a good line. That's a good line. And so he noticed that and when I went to talk, work on my AOL book, I called him. I said, "This was exactly what I think." We met at a place that had, it was down in the basement on Connecticut Avenue and they had, we had French dips, I'll never forget.

And we had, it was like kismet when I met him. Like it was just, we were just like this immediately. And he's the one that got me the job at the Wall Street. In fact, he insisted. He's like, I need you to go to San Francisco and deal with these people because they're going to be, they're going to run the world and you need to be there to make sure they do it right. And he said, he said, go in, parachute in with your cleats on.

Which I thought was painful, but okay. Which I did. And he said, go and get the truth out of these people because they're going to run the world. And I did. He got me the job. He changed my life. I moved to San Francisco from here. I was working at the Washington Post. And then we started business together because we also saw everything that happened. And we knew that newspapers were troubled.

to say the least. And so we started All Things D within the Wall Street Journal together and the reason we were allowed to start it was because he was so powerful there, because he wrote that tech column that made millions and millions of dollars every week for them.

And so he just was, he's just, he's still here. He lives up, he lives here in Potomac. And he's just a really special person, a mentor. He's kind, generous, talented. And he really, if I'm even slightly the amount that he is,

was as a journalist, I would be happy. And we did the conference together and we did all those iconic interviews, including the very last one, which I did with you and Johnny Ive and Tim Cook. But we did all these iconic interviews over the years. Yeah, you did. And the most one being the Gates and Jobs interview, which I think was... Yeah, that was great. And the Mark Sweating interview, but that was good too. Oh, yeah.

That was good. Yeah. You write about it really beautifully. Yeah. Well, as you talk about San Francisco a little bit, you start your stories here when you moved to San Francisco in 1997. But of course...

There was a lot of tech underway in the Valley for the 50 years prior to that. And I'm just going to walk through a couple of them. In 1939, HP was founded. In the 60s, we got Intel and other microchip companies. In the 70s, we had the flourishing of Xerox PARC, Atari, Apple, Oracle, Genentech, Adobe, the rise of venture capitalists.

Microsoft in Seattle. In the 80s and 90s, we had Sun, Cisco, NVIDIA, Netscape, eBay, to say a few. So all of that predates even these stories here. But several of the people that

you admire in the book, including Steve, came up during the 60s and 70s, steeped in that earlier world, particularly in the idealism that they saw at the intersection of technology and counterculture, or technology and humanities.

And something that Steve said that I loved was you can't understand what's happening today without understanding what came before. And that certainly is the case with tech. So when you think about the 1960s through 90s, the growth of technology companies that really formed the foundation upon which everything else was built.

when you think about those companies and those leaders, what stands out for you? And what of the values and the underpinnings of that era do you see are still existing today in the DNA of tech companies and the ethos of technology? And what do you think has been lost? Well, a lot's been lost. I mean, I think one of the things that

The deleterious effects of wealth is one of the things, I think, that I talk about a lot. You know, that you have this happening. But before that, there were... You know, as you recall, they were computer companies and they were chips companies. And there was sort of this...

It was dramatic. The fight between Apple and Microsoft was dramatic. There were dramatic stories there between them with Bill Gates slowly amassing a fortune and control of that. But before that, it was all these companies that were built on each other, like the graphical user interface, which was from Xerox PARC, and it moved to that, and everybody started adding things into it.

And it was sort of things grew from each other. But when the internet was introduced and both Apple and especially Microsoft was particularly flat-footed getting what was happening. When it became a communications network and not just a device network, it changed everything. It changed the whole thing because you could then start to imagine things

it being more like electricity than anything else. Before it was, you know, sometimes I think, before the internet times, computers were much more of themselves kind of thing. Afterwards, they are everywhere. It doesn't really matter what they are.

And so, like, tonight, I always joke, like, did you go, ah, I'm on the electrical grid today? You don't. You don't. Now the internet is like that. You're online. You're always online. It's like water. It's like water. And so I think...

What happened was there were all these very hardworking people with a lot of values that were important, including counterculture values, changing things. You know, and that was at Apple, that was certainly think different. I don't think it was just a marketing term. It was a marketing term, but it was more than that. And there was that ethos in the valley. And then when the money started to come in, and I think it really did in that bubble, it

It was like a gold rush and all the negativity that that brings with it. And so you had all these people starting things that were, you know, I'd often go to meetings and they'd be like, and, and,

And when I heard from some people, I believed it. Most people, I didn't. And I actually found some old articles I wrote in the Wall Street Journal. We're going to change the world, Cara. We're making a community, Cara. You know, they spoke those words, but they didn't mean those words. And that was what I found increasingly irritating to listen to. And in fact, one of my first articles in the journal was things they say that aren't true.

And I'll tell you what they actually are saying. And so one of them was, we have no titles here, Kara. You know, if they're the Communist Party here. And they all had different names. They never had them at the older... They didn't have it at Microsoft or Apple, but all these tech companies that I started covering when they were startups, Chief Yahoo. Yes, that's true. Or Chief Fun Officer. There was one of those. And you're like...

And the only person that ever, and I talked about this recently, that had a title I liked was Mark Zuckerberg had a car that said, I'm the CEO bitch. Oh, yeah, he did. Oh, yeah.

And everyone gave him a hard time and I was like, I get it. I like that. That's good. You are this. But what he would do almost continually was talk. He would call me and he'd say, you know, we're here to change things and we want a community. We want to all decide together. And I said, great. Sounds good to me. And do you think he was actually sincere? No, not in any way. No.

Because I said, well, you have... You own all the stock and you have all the controlling stock and nobody can fire you, so it's not all of us, it's you. And that's what I was worried about, is the...

is the complete control these people had over very important issues increasingly and their lack of experience to deal with what became societal issues, right? But they inserted themselves in everything and now you're seeing it in kind of a comical way when venture capitalists talk about Ukraine.

Like, I don't care what venture capitalists care. You know, this is what we should do in Ukraine. And I'm like, listen, person who invested in a digital dry cleaning service, sit down. Right? Can you imagine Tim Cook? Tim Cook. Wing in a world. Ukraine, Kara. He'd rather like do almost anything else, honestly. Yeah, there's this strange confidence that then bleeds over outside of the area of expertise. It's called frequently wrong, but never in doubt.

Thank you. Yeah, more words. I'm really good with the words. I'm good with the words. Do you think that, though, there are any core values that still persist from 50 years ago? Yeah, I do. I mean, in certain companies, which is quality,

Quality of design. I think Apple does still exemplifies that. But look, they're old guys, right? They're kind of old guys there. Quality. There's certain companies, you know, I very much like Satya Nadella at Microsoft. There's a couple of people. Quality. Actually talking about problems. You know, Sam Altman, who you are, I think,

good friends with, you know, he's talking about the problems at the same time he's talking about the positives. Now that never happens with a lot of them. Everything's always great and up and to the right and they never talk about the dangers. So there is a thing of worrying about society, thinking about the implications, thinking about the consequences. And I do think that was a previous era and then it got...

easily supplanted by people who had no interest in consequences or anticipating them. Like privacy. You know, privacy is a big issue and you would have, you know, when you say anything to them about it,

They'd be like, oh, you're old. You don't understand. And I'm like, I understand surveillance. I understand. You know what I mean? But they would say, no, everybody wants this. And just the preying on people and giving them things that were theirs anyway, and then having to thank them, that was a really strange shift for me.

Yeah, there's also a level of deceitfulness when you're harvesting people's personal data, monetizing it, and people don't really know what you're collecting on them. No, they don't want you to know them. You know, Walt called them one time with the Google guys. We were talking to them.

And you know, they're kind of goofy and that kind of thing during that period. So it sort of covers up a lot of sins, right? And Walt, at one point in the interview, said, "Well, I think you're rapacious information thieves." With a smile. At first I thought, "I bet they don't know what the word 'rapacious' means." And I agree. They had a sense of them. That's a very good example, again.

Very goofy and silly. And one of the things, and when you started to tell them what they were doing was wrong, it wasn't just Facebook. It was before that. It was before that.

you know, the sucking up of information. There were two moments at Google that are in the book where I was walking around Google with Larry Page and there was a, there was always something weird at Google. Something would pop out of the door. You know what I mean? Suddenly a guy in like a gorilla outfit. You're like, okay, that sounds good. You know, or someone would be doing a pogo stick. That's another issue about juvenileization of these men. But, but one of the things, there was a room, a dark room full of televisions and, and he, he,

I was like, "What are they doing? What's the Circuit City doing here?" You know, essentially. For those who don't remember, it was a store. And they had a wall of televisions and I said, "What are you doing?" And he goes, "Taping television." And I was like, "All of it?" And he goes, "A lot of it." And I'm like, "Do you have the rights to do that? Because it's copyright, right?"

"I don't need the rights." I was like, "You do need the rights." He goes, "I don't need the rights." I go, "You do need the rights. It's not yours." What he was doing is he was taking the closed captioning and using it for search.

he did the same thing with books you know and then and then years later he tried to buy yahoo they tried to buy yahoo and then try to control yahoo and so i that was enough i was like no no no you can't do that because they would have had 96 of the market which seems to be a lot yeah yeah yeah um and so he um i wrote a story i've talked about this quite a bit because i think it was an important story

And I used the Dr. Seuss rhyme, would not, could not, have it all, or something like that. But at the end, I said, what's really irritating about these Google people is with the colorful balls and the pogo sticks...

At least Microsoft knew they were thugs. Because it was thuggish what they were doing. In this way, they were disarming. Disarming, right. And so one of them called me, and I honestly don't remember, because at some point they became one person to me. And... You know what I'm... She knows. She knows. Which one are you? They called me and they said...

You know us, Kara. We're really nice people, right? We're really nice people, Kara. We're not thugs. You know us. We're not evil. We said it in our saying, you know, don't be evil.

And I said... And they weren't. They weren't evil. They weren't. Of course not. And I said, I'm not... I think you're nice. I'm not scared of you. It's the next one. I'm not scared of you. I'm scared of the next person coming. And the next person is bad. And I mistakenly quoted Yeats where I said, there is a rough beast slouching towards Bethlehem waiting to be born. And they're coming. And of course...

It must have been Larry. He was like, beast, what beast? I'm like, the one slouching towards Bethlehem. They're baiting to be born. And then I'm like, forget it. A bad person is coming. And that was I worried about. And in a lot of ways, it was in the form of all this misinformation now, whether it's Russia, China, Trump, whatever, all the election lies. Exactly. We'll be back in a minute. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Shopify.

It is over.

A lot of this great book is filled with stories about individuals and companies, but also a quiet hum in the background of the book is the presence of government and politicians. And Cara makes a strong point that social media companies have thus far been spared any meaningful legislation or regulatory oversight in the United States. And I wonder if you can explore a little bit here

what you think is the right role of government today to encourage the best and slow...

the worst tendencies that are emerging and existing in tech systems. Well, you exemplify now the food of tech. I mean, most of the attitudes of tech from the early days of tech, we had Bill Gates here to the Washington Post many years ago for one of those lunches that we had. And he went on and on about government shouldn't touch anything, there shouldn't be any government intervention, which was a very typical attitude, right, among techies. And I think also early on, when you have...

When you have a new technology, you don't know how the platform is going to evolve. Right.

What's supposed to happen is that there's supposed to be a dynamic range of guardrails that are instituted. But that has never developed. It's never happened at all. And so one of the things whenever I go into crowds, I'm like, how many laws do you think react specifically to the internet? You know, just the way airlines have them or insurance companies or the bankers.

the banks, you know, zero. There's zero. It's astonishing. And the one that exists helps them. It gives, which I wrote about for the Washington Post, which is the Communications Decency Act, had a part in it called Section 230, that

they can't be sued. They can't be sued. They're not regulated and they're the richest people in the world. Like, how do you think that's going to turn out? Right? And so with, and it also creates a situation that there's no privacy laws. There's no algorithmic transparency laws. There's no antitrust laws. I mean, poor, I,

Amy Klobuchar and I talk all the time and she's like, this year, Cara, I'm going to do it. I'm like, you're not. She promises me on stage. She's a tremendous legislator, right? She really is. She keeps trying. She works it. She doesn't, just the very basics of things. And in that case, if you really care about innovation, as I do, and I think you do, you

how can there be innovation right now for the next group of computing when AGI is controlled by the most powerful company? Where are the small companies that are going to unseat them? You know, like...

the whole ethos of Silicon Valley is the young eating its old, like that there's unseating and there's change and there's constant. You can't create anything when it's controlled by as much as I like Satya Nadella, Microsoft or, or Facebook or wherever. You can't create innovation without any guidelines. And in this particular technology that's coming is dangerous. Yeah. It's more dangerous than ever. Well, let's,

Let's talk a little bit about that. I mean, I'm curious about your thoughts around reforming Section 230. So please feel free to weigh in about how social media should be at least have some oversight and some regulation and accountability. But then I also want us to talk a little bit about whether we're having the right conversations about AI. You know, it's interesting because we...

all they do with Congress is pass, have high barges and commissions to talk about it. Or they have hearings or whatever. That's great. I think learning is great and it's really nice. But at this point, we kind of know, right? This is like nuclear...

This is like nuclear weapons. And we're not treating it or cloning or any one thing. Or, you know, you know Jennifer Dow, know CRISPR. Like, what are we going to do about that as a group? What decisions are we going to make together? And unfortunately, all the decisions are being made by private companies. And as much as I love it, the first line of the book is, so it was capitalism after all. Yeah.

But that's because it was. This is what it was. It is. And one of the things that, I don't mind private companies, but they should not be determining, should we have killer robots? I feel like that shouldn't be decided by Mark Zuckerberg. I feel that it shouldn't, you know?

Nice guy, and he likes MMA fighting, but no, you cannot decide this. And I think our public officials have to, as broken as our system is, we elect them, right? That's the thing. And so we should have an idea of what we want. I think the Biden executive order is pretty good around safety, around preserving innovation, around making sure that there's not... One of the issues is...

what the data is and what it social, you know, what it could do for discrimination and bias. Those are big issues. I'm real concerned with lots of things. You could, we don't know what it's going to be, what's going to happen. Like,

Here's a silly example. You say to the AI, which is going to take over everything, by the way, your AI and my AI are going to talk to each other at some point, and it's going to run a lot of things. So what if we say to the AI, hunger, we have to get rid of hunger. What if it says, well, if we kill a billion people, that'll work.

and then goes off and kills a billion people. Like that, for them, it's logical. So what are the strictures? And that's just a crude example. Like that's not going to happen, but it is a

a concept of like, where does humanity stick into this thing? Yes, that is the question. So if it's made by a small group of homogeneous people, it is not going to be good. It's not going to be good for women. It's not going to be good for people of color. It's not going to be good for marginalized communities. And I'm not being all woke here. It's just not. It's simply not. And you cannot have a diverse...

interesting development of this stuff without... If you don't have a diverse, interesting group of people who are actually writing the code. Correct. So what do you think should be done now and in the next several years?

Well, you know, Sam has talked a little about this. It is up to the regulators to do something about it. Rather than having meetings, you could have safety issues, require safety around the data sets, the provenance of where the data is coming from, copyright enforcement. Right now, the New York Times is suing OpenAI. I think someone else sued them today. I forget.

But all kinds of things can be taken from you without your permission. Like, and that's what happened the first time, by the way. But this is real stuff. This is talk about real information thievery.

One of the things just happened to me with this book is you go to look up Kara Swisher and there's 20 AI biographies written by me that aren't me, that are pictures of me and very femmy pictures of me. You go look for them. There's a story about it. And so AI generated books because my book was for sale and it was doing well and it knew that it was doing well initially. Where are these fake books? Amazon. Oh.

No. Yes. Yes, Lorraine. They're on Amazon and I really am disturbed by them. So one of the things they did, they're AI generated books that are $16.99. I was just with Savannah Guthrie. She's written a hit book on faith and God. Someone created a workbook from AI and Amazon is selling them together. Savannah had nothing to do with it. Oh my goodness. And it looks like it's her book. Sure. Right? Instantly. They just flood. News. They flood the zone right now with news. Yes.

Like when things happen sites like hello news.com just come up and an AI generated news happens now The real news does surface eventually by real outlets But the flooding of the zone is a classic technique of fascists to flood the zone with confusion So on this AI thing I did I wrote the CEO of Amazon. I'm like what up dude, like I

And they're like, oh, we're going to take them down for you. And I'm like, I'm not talking about me. What about everybody else? Like, great. My boat, I got pulled out of the ocean here. But this may be happening to every single... But think about what you could do for everything and take information and make it totally confusing. That's just a small little taste of what could come. That's one example. And so...

Clearly, the right conversations are not happening. They aren't. They aren't because a lot of these tech companies have a lot of money and a lot of lobbying, and the ones that are for privacy...

are like one, Apple is. Apple's the only one who talks about pride because that's not their business, right? That's right, it's not part of their business model. It's not part of their business plan. So these business models are oriented towards taking your information and not asking permission for it and then selling it back to you and asking for your welcome. Yeah. Okay, so now something fun for all of us.

Tell us one story that you were tempted to put in the book, but you didn't. Oh. Well, so many. You know, one of the things I tried to respect was when people did tell me things were off the record, I did not want to put them in. And some of them...

I wish I could have, right? You know, but I feel like I should stick with it. And a lot of it is personal stuff, and that's another thing I tend to shy away from, you know, a little bit, like what they were personally like. I was going to write more about Elon's drug use. I knew quite a bit about it. The Wall Street Journal did a series of very good articles because I think it...

When people ask me what happened to him, I think it's one of the elements. And you should read the journal's article. It's quite good. It links money and influence to it in a way that's very responsible, I think. I was going to write a little bit more about how some of these people have lost the narrative and gone quite conspiracy theory. That is interesting. It is. And I wrote a little bit about it. I'm trying to think of...

I knew a lot of their dating habits I didn't put in here, I guess. You know, I'm trying to think. I wrote less about, you know, personal... You know, I knew a couple of them had drinking problems and things like that. I just left those out. And they were important, but I thought, I don't need to do that. So...

If you're not going to divulge. Yeah, we don't want to know personal stuff. But I am curious about... Actually, I do. That's not true. A little bit. We'll be back in a minute. In the book,

You quote Nobel laureate Maria Ressa when she talks about the marriage of technology and journalism and creating communities of action. And I think also in the book, you weren't quite convinced that marriage should happen, but then you write, "As the dangers of the tech world and its endless power have only grown larger, you now agree with her.

So how do you think about the responsibilities as a journalist and threading that line between advocacy and journalism? Well, you know, it's interesting because I'd already made that journey when I left the Wall Street Journal. I was a beat reporter. And, you know, you just do the news. Like, this happened yesterday, this happened yesterday. When we started All Things D and then later Recode, we had a point of view. We started to have a point of view towards things like...

This is too much. This is not happening. We had a very heavy point of view, for example, on Ellen Pau and the trial, Kleiner-Perkins trial. We took a point of view that this was wrong, you know what I mean? And we said so, and we oriented our coverage towards it.

And so one of the things that Walt and I decided is like reported analysis of what we were doing. I don't know if it's advocacy precisely, but I think probably that there were all these little lines, the privacy violations started to get really troubling and dangerous. When I had that interview with Mark about Holocaust deniers, which I thought was the most important interview I did, which was he said Holocaust deniers are

We started, I'll just tell them very briefly. Yeah, tell that story. We were doing an interview and it was after the sweating one. He decided to do another one with me. Mistake on his part.

And then he said, "We'll do it at my office." And I'm like, "Sure, you're still in trouble, I don't really..." Okay. They feel safe in their office, but that's sort of like, "Come in, cheetah." Like, you know? "Sure, I'll come in too." And so we went there, I went there with just a single producer, and we started talking, and it was about misinformation, which I think is just propaganda under a different name.

And he started... I wanted to know about Alex Jones. I'd had it with Alex Jones on that platform. This heinous piece of shit was talking about...

was breaking the rules of Facebook over and over again. Like, over and over again. They never kicked him off. And they didn't kick him off. And I was like, hey, you have rules. Why don't you kick him off? Well, it's very complicated. I go, you have rules. Why do you have rules? Don't have rules. Like, I don't understand it. So he was sort of getting into trouble with me because he could see I was furious as a parent, especially. It's like, what do you do?

are you doing? You're platform, not just platforming someone. He broke your rules. That's it. And, you know, I think I was like, this guy is coming into a city and taking his shit in the park every day. And I'm, as a concerned citizen, I'd like him to stop. Like, can you please get rid of him? And he, he, he was like, unfortunately for him, he, cause again, he's, he,

I hate to say this, he's a nice person. Like, you know, you've met him. He's a nice person. He's not gone down conspiracy highway. He's just, you know, doing his MMA fighting, whatever. Yeah, but they have two billion users. Yes, exactly. He's very powerful, let me just say. So he starts to go, he goes, let's switch to Holocaust denial. And I was like...

First of all, that was my minor in college, so I was like, excellent. You know, the uses of propaganda in Nazi Germany. It was perfect preparation. I know, exactly. And I was like, oh, okay, we're going to go there. Ooh, this isn't going to be good for you. And this is me in my head. And he goes, you know, you should go listen to this because it's quite something.

And he goes, you know, a lot of people feel that I should kick them off. But I don't feel like maybe they don't mean to lie. He said this. Holocaust deniers mean to lie. And so I was like... So there was a moment. This was the greatest moment in my career, I have to say. Because I wanted to say...

you fucking idiot. Like they mean to lie. It's their job description. Like is they lie about the most, one of the absolute serious things. And this happened and they're trying to make people believe it didn't happen. This is the most awful thing you could do. And, and so I said to him, I go, I think they mean to lie, but why don't you tell me what you think? And I, I didn't say anything else. And I let him spool it out for, for,

I don't know, five minutes. And it was so nonsensical and stupid and not thought out. And this was a guy in charge of the population. That was what it was. And I was like, why are you running this place if you don't understand it?

And my producer and I, this young guy, looked at each other and he didn't realize what he was saying, like how badly he came off. And I wasn't trying to catch him. I just wanted people to see that he didn't know what he was doing and he was in charge of something so important that all this toxic waste was flowing through the system and he thought it should just go right through and poison our world. And...

I was like, okay. And I published it. And of course, he had gotten huge trouble and he had to apologize and everything else. Never done an interview since. They did a lot of apology tours. They do. They do. That's their favorite thing. Two years later, he took them off.

Now, two years... If you want to understand why anti-Semitism is on the rise... Yeah. Two years. That it took him the penny to drop in the head of Mark Zuckerberg. Two years. That's two years of more and more... And it's not just...

you know, garden variety antisemitism, it moves deeply into the brainstem. It's a different kind of ability to scale and make it the worst, even worse, and harden it among certain populations. And, you know, I just, I find that unforgivable that he didn't,

If you make rules, you kick them off. So that was a moment. And the Trump thing was a moment for me when they all went... And this is an area that you have been doing a lot of great work on on immigration issues, which now are just... I'm thinking of the meetings we had talking about this. Now it's just become...

It's worse. It's absolutely worse. It's a lot worse. Including, especially how people feel about immigration. And I felt they went to these executives, went to Trump Tower, and they, it was a scoop I had, but they didn't tell anybody they were going. And they slid in the back, and I wrote the news story that they were going. And they did not publicly say anything about him talking about Muslim ban, immigrants are rapists, all his terrible, terrible comments about it.

And they went in there and were part of the richest and most powerful people were part of a photo app that organized by Peter Thiel. And that was it for me. I think that was the, I was like, that's enough with these people. They're not here to save us. They're here to take for themselves. Yeah.

That's friendly. I really like the Vision Pro, did I tell you that? I love technology. I do. I know you do. It's either subtitle. I do. I don't like what they've done with the place. I have a couple of rapid fire questions. You don't have to think about this at all. And then I know we have a couple of questions from the audience too. Okay. Who's the most underestimated living person in tech?

Lorraine Powell jobs. That's funny. No, you are doing, I must point, I don't know, she's doing a lot of amazing stuff, quietly, I think. Thank you. I have to say, some of your projects are really astonishing. This is really not a fishing question. All right, okay, all right, okay. Who's the most doing amazing things? No, the most underestimated living person in tech. Underestimated. Hmm, that's a good question. Um,

I gotta say Tim Cook. Here's why. And Satya Nadella, I put them together in a lot of ways.

You know, when Steve died, everyone was like, "It was curtains." I never think it's curtains. He built a team. And one of the things Steve said to me, which he... It was really interesting because everyone was like, "Larger than life. He's the center of attention." But one time, he said to me... I said something and he said, "What do you think? I'm Willy Wonka and everybody else is like the Oompa Loompas? It's a whole team here doing this whole thing." Like it was... Which was interesting when he said that.

And I think Tim Cook has 10x the value of that company. He's created a lot of really great products. And to keep acting like he's a logistics manager is kind of weird. Do you know what I mean? He's good at logistics. I'm like, well, he's really good at logistics because that fucking...

I know, yes. I mean, you must be happy about that. He's been CEO. Yes, he's been CEO for almost 13 years. 13 years, and I think it's really, he's done a nice job. Okay, here's the next one. The other one is Satya Nadella, who's done the same thing at Microsoft, really transformed that company into a much better company, a more ethical company. Yeah.

And then the investments they're making in OpenAI, very sharp. And for two older guys, that's who I would pick, two older guys. Okay. Who's the most overestimated living person in tech? Elon. Yeah, I figured. Okay. Who's first on your interview wish list? Well, I really want to interview Dolly Parton and Taylor Swift together. Oh.

And here's why. That's a winner. Let me explain. Here's why. Because, and I've written to Tree Payne, all of them. I've written to Dolly's people. That's a winner. I do not, I want to enter them together because besides being songwriters, great songwriters, these are kick-ass business ladies, right? Yeah. Dolly Parton particularly, by the way, tell us if we know, we can see what she's doing from a business point of view. She's amazing. Dolly Parton is the really,

She owns IP. She's doing all kinds of AI stuff, I understand. So I really want to talk to them. And I literally written a note that goes, listen, I could care less about your boyfriends or your sweet Kentucky home. I want to talk about your incredibly killer business sense. And I want to know business. I don't think they could turn you down. Yes, they have. Okay.

Several times. You know, like the person who's a PR person, which is really nice, treat pain. And she's like, ha ha. No. I probably want to interview Trump. I probably, but it's kind of a, I don't know. Oh, I do it at Mar-a-Lago. Listen, this is my idea. You do it at Mar-a-Lago. You get the velvet ropes, you get the audience. So he feels safe.

A comfy velvet couch. No, seriously, has he turned you down? Not yet. No, I don't think he would. No, he hasn't. I think I'm irresistible to him. Yeah. He likes to try to... He doesn't like a tough woman. He doesn't. He's going to try to turn you to his side. Yeah, he's going to turn me. I'm sure that's how it's going to end up. I would ask him... The first question I'd ask him is about what happened to you as a kid? And did your parents hug you much? I'm guessing no. No.

I'd start to really bug him about that. But Esther Perel, who's a therapist, said you can't therapize a narcissist. So I don't know. Hmm. I don't know. I think you have skills. Yes, skills. You got skills. Favorite Star Trek episode?

Well, triples. Obviously. Obviously. Triples. Okay. No, I like the one... I've got to think. That's a good question. I like the one when Spock loses his mind and has to do the fight on that thing with Kirk, and then he cuts his chest. He always takes his shirt off, William Shatner. Yeah. And I like that one. There's a fight, and he loses his mind...

in order to marry someone or whatever. I liked it. It was good. It was really good. I just got invited on a trip with William Shatner. I may go. What? I don't know, to the Arctic. He's going to the Arctic. William Shatner wants you to come to the Arctic with him. How long would it take? I don't know. No, don't do it. Okay. Okay.

I'm going to call you if it goes south. All right, scramble the jets. There's got to be trapped up here. Be careful when you meet your heroes. Okay. Okay. A device you can't live without.

Oh, my, this. I mean, really, I mean, honestly, this is the most important consequential device right now. When it came out in 2007, it changed everything. It was, you know, there were things before it at General Magic and lots of different places, but this was the most, this has been the most, it's not going to be the most consequential device, but one of the things is when my son was born, I actually had a Blackberry in my hand.

Which is one of those little ones. And I was texting with Walt, of course. And I was like, six centimeters, whatever I was doing. And then I had an emergency C-section and they rushed me in. And my brother is a doctor at this hospital. And the doctor goes, oh, we heard about you.

Because it was sitting... Because I had a... You know, I had a... You've had children. You know, I had a thing in the back. Epidural. Thank you. And so I didn't know it was there because I couldn't feel... Because they did... Wait, so you didn't let it go? No, they wrapped it in plastic. Oh. So it was actually in my hand during the cesarean and it kept buzzing because Walt was buzzing it. Oh.

And I shouldn't tell this story. I'm going to tell this story. I should not tell this story, but I did. Same thing happened with Walt when I was actually artificially inseminated. Walt called me and he goes, what you doing? And I'm like, and I told him, he goes, I'm hanging up. So I love my phone. I love my phone. I love that phone. I do. I do.

Oh my gosh. What's your favorite device? What is it? What is it really, seriously? What's your favorite device? I like the watch a lot. You do, yeah. I do. It's a handsome thing. If I could only have one, it would definitely be the phone. All right, let me ask you this question that people ask. It's sort of like that game you play. If you had to give up the phone...

Okay, let me think. Child. Let me think. Child? No. Well, I got a lot of them, but no. The phone, a TV, or let's see, what's the third thing? Name something else, something you wouldn't want to give up. What? Internet. Internet, phone. Or TV? TV. Give up one? No, give up, keep only one. Oh, keep one.

Wait, so you'd have the phone with no internet? Yeah. Or you'd have the internet and no device. You'd have a computer. Lorraine's not having it. All right, let's move on. All right. That's the perfect note to end on. Or that is. Thank you. Thank you. Amazing. So good. You're the best. Thank you. That was great.

On with Kara Swisher is produced by Christian Castro Rossell, Kateri Yochum, Jolie Myers, and Megan Burney. Special thanks to Kate Gallagher, Andrea Lopez Cruzado, and Kate Furby. Our engineers are Rick Kwan and Fernando Arruda. And our theme music is by Crackademics. Special thanks to Sixth and I and Politics and Prose.

If you're already following the show, you get a free burn book. Not really. You have to buy it. If not, go buy a book because I need the money. Go wherever you listen to podcasts. Search for On with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Monday with more.