On with Kara Swisher

Lenard McKelvey is a best-selling author, entrepreneur and media mogul, but you probably know him as Charlamagne Tha God: host of The Breakfast Club. It’s an insanely popular and influential radio program that reaches millions of listeners daily. Charlamagne has been behind the microphone for over a decade, and he's not one for playing by the rules of traditional media. In recent years he’s gotten vocal about the state of politics in the US and interviewed a raft of powerful politicians at the helm including former President Obama, President Biden and Vice President Harris. During the 2024 Presidential race, Charlamagne was an unofficial surrogate for the Harris-Walz campaign, but was arguably more effective as an inadvertent messenger for the Trump campaign’s anti-trans advertising. 

Much like his approach to hosting, Charlamagne’s world views don’t stay within the lines of our polarized and partisan politics. He’s quick to remark on the faults of both parties and even quicker to call out the liberal media. In this episode, Kara and Charlamagne get into it all: 

the importance of meeting people where they are, both in politics and in media; why authenticity matters more than accuracy and how Democrats don’t seem to understand that; what “mainstream media” means in 2024 and the role of “good” journalists; how he felt about getting dragged into a hateful ad for President-elect Trump and how he thinks VP Harris should’ve responded; the line between funny and offensive; and, most importantly, how to seek out joy and happiness through it all. 

Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find us on Instagram and TikTok @onwithkaraswisher

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Jon Chu grew up in Silicon Valley, in the shadow of Apple Park. His father, Chef Chu, still runs his eponymous restaurant there, and Jon worshiped Steve Jobs as a kid. As a teen, he used Apple products to learn how to make movies. Now he directs some of the biggest movies in Hollywood, but his relationship with the tech industry is much more complex. 

Kara and Jon discuss his “new view” trilogy: Crazy Rich Asians, In the Heights, and his latest film, Wicked. They unpack his memoir Viewfinder, and Chu explains how growing up in Silicon Valley shaped his understanding of technology — and how the industry’s switch towards data surveillance has changed his relationship with it as an artist. 

Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find us on Instagram/TikTok as @onwithkaraswisher

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What role will writers play as we head into a second Trump term? Author, journalist and Howard University professor Ta-Nehisi Coates has some thoughts. The man who has been called “one of the most important writers on the subject of America today” came to the fore during the Obama era as one of the preeminent writers on race, among other things, for his 2014 essay “The Case for Reparations” and his book Between the World and Me, an open letter to his son about growing up as a Black man in America. Kara and Ta-Nehisi discuss how the Democrats lost the “rainbow coalition” in the 2024 election, why America’s “special relationship” with Israel compelled him to rally against Palestinian oppression in his latest book The Message, and why he thinks journalists will need to embrace a new and not-so-safe normal during Trump 2.0.

Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find us on Instagram and TikTok @onwithkaraswisher

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What does a second Trump presidency mean for America? Kara hosts a panel of experts and reporters to reflect on the results of the election and to find out what we can expect going forward. They discuss the issues that mattered most to voters; what Democrats got wrong; the parts of our democracy that are broken beyond repair; the apparent shift in our country’s sense of self; and the role of social media versus traditional media in the digital age.

Guests:

Kristen Soltis Anderson, a pollster, founding partner of Echelon Insights, author of The Selfie Vote: Where Millennials are Leading America (And How Republicans Can Keep Up) and a CNN political contributor

Isaac Arnsdorf, a national political reporter for The Washington Post and author of Finish What We Started: The MAGA Movement’s Ground War to End Democracy. 

Mike Madrid, co-founder of the Lincoln Project, and author of The Latino Century: How America’s Largest Minority is Transforming Democracy

Abby Phillip, anchor of CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip 

Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find us on Instagram and TikTok @onwithkaraswisher

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President-elect Donald J. Trump has won a resounding victory against Vice President Kamala Harris, and now, the man who promised political retribution and said he may use the military to go after “the enemy within” is headed back to the White House. Only this time, there will be no guardrails — only enablers. In order to understand the threat Trump poses to our democracy, Kara talks to two historians who know a lot about the birth of American democracy and the last time we came close to losing it: Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky and Dr. Timothy Naftali. 

Chervinsky is a presidential historian and the executive director of the George Washington Presidential Library. Her newest book is Making the Presidency, John Adams and the Precedents that Forged the Republic. Naftali is a senior research scholar in the Faculty of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and the former director of the federal Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum.

Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find us on Instagram/TikTok as @onwithkaraswisher

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Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, isn’t on the ballot for the 2024 U.S. election, but he might as well be. Elon has become one of the Trump campaign’s top surrogates, top donors (over $119 million through the America Pac), and controls a main megaphone for pro-Trump propaganda at X. Kara and three other Musk experts discuss Elon’s outsized impact on the election, why Trump has been referring to him as the “Secretary of Cost-Cutting”, and why Musk & his businesses (X, Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink) stand to gain, no matter who wins.

Guests:

Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find Kara on Threads/Instagram @karaswisher

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Lying has always been a part of politics, but in recent years, political lies have come to dominate our elections and their outcomes. Even the notion that facts and truths can be objective and shared across the political divide has been put into question. As we head into a fraught election, Kara speaks with Bill Adair, professor of journalism & public policy at Duke and author of Beyond the Big Lie, and Timothy Snyder, Yale history professor and author of On Freedom, about which party lies more; the role that social media plays in amplifying and spreading falsehoods; why it’s hard to get believers to turn away from the “Big Lie”; and why factuality is a cornerstone of freedom. Plus: Snyder calls The Washington Post’s decision not to endorse a presidential candidate (dictated by owner Jeff Bezos) “anticipatory obedience” to tyranny. 

Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find Kara on Threads/Instagram @karaswisher

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Reid Hoffman isn’t just one of the most influential entrepreneurs and investors in Silicon Valley — he’s also one of the most important mega-donors supporting the Democratic party. A member of the so-called PayPal Mafia, Hoffman is a VC partner at Greylock Ventures and Microsoft board member who co-founded LinkedIn and InflectionAI and was a founding investor in OpenAI. He is one of the leading voices in tech fighting against former President Donald Trump, and he puts his money where his mouth is — which doesn’t always sit well with progressives, and is even more upsetting to former friends, like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, who have gone full MAGA.

In this live interview at the Masters of Scale Summit, hosted by Hoffman in San Francisco, Kara and Reid discuss everything from the upcoming election, and the business community’s response to Trump, to Elon, Peter Thiel, Lina Khan and artificial intelligence.  

Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find us on Instagram as @onwithkaraswisher

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Has late-night TV passed its peak? Ticket sales for live comedy shows are booming and there’s no shortage of streaming stand-up specials, but the same is hardly true for late-night television. Is it the business model or the divisive nature of political comedy that’s driving viewership down? Either way, hosting a late-night show remains one of the most coveted jobs in comedy, and in this interview, Kara talks to one of the best. Seth Meyers, SNL veteran, host of Late Night with Seth Meyers on NBC, and the host of too many podcasts to name, joins the show to talk about the future of late-night; what he’s learned in 10 years of hosting; the utter lack of diversity in the industry; and what a second Trump presidency could mean for comedians. 

Kara and Seth also talk about his new stand-up special “Dad Man Walking,” which premieres on HBO and Max this weekend; how the comic folds his personal life and parenting stories into his acts and what his family thinks of it; why there are so many stand-up specials today; and which streaming platform does it best. Plus, Kara asks Seths about his “manic” content creation and his endeavors into podcasting.

“Dad Man Walking” is available on HBO and Max this Saturday October 26, 2024.

Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find Kara on Threads/Instagram @karaswisher

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“Digital machines are not just remaking stories, they're remaking us.” So says Oscar-winning actor Robert Downey Jr. as the titular character in his Broadway debut, MCNEAL. Kara talks with Downey Jr., Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Ayad Akhtar and Tony-winning director Bartlett Sher about the play and the thorny questions it raises around truth, lies and power in the AI age. They also discuss who is responsible for creating a new “social contract” around AI. Plus: Kara and Robert get into the Marvel Cinematic Universe and whether Downey is more like Elon Musk as Tony Stark aka Iron Man or in his upcoming role as Dr. Doom.

Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find Kara on Threads @karaswisher

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