BURN BOOK: Kara Swisher Takes on Big Tech

The Next Big Idea

Next Big Idea Club

Self-improvement, Arts, Books, Society & Culture, Education

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 7 March 2024

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Kara Swisher has been called “pioneering” (the New York Times), “Silicon Valley’s top pundit” (Wired), and “so shrill at this point that only dogs can hear her” (Elon Musk). Thanks to the bad-cop interviews she conducts on her hit podcasts — and, before that, at the can’t-miss tech conferences she co-founded — the world’s most powerful people revere and fear her in equal measure. Now she’s out with a memoir called “Burn Book: A Tech Love Story.” It’s a smart, dishy, acerbically funny page-turner about how a young reporter with a cellphone the size of a briefcase became one of the most influential tech critics of the day. Host: Caleb Bissinger Guest: Kara Swisher *THE NEXT BIG IDEA CLUB* We all know that reading is the best investment we can make in ourselves, but figuring out what to read — well, that’s another matter. Which is why we started the Next Big Idea Club. We get the best new books — as chosen by our friends Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, Susan Cain, and Daniel Pink — into the hands of curious people … like you! Join us today at nextbigideaclub.com

Transcript

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0:00.0	LinkedIn presents.
0:05.0	I'm Rufus Griskam and I'm Caleb Bisinger and this is the next big idea.
0:10.0	Today, Kara Swisher has been Tech's best connected reporter for 30 years.
0:17.0	What has she learned and what keeps her up at night? I was out to dinner with a friend a few nights ago and he asked what I was working on and I told him I was getting ready to interview Kara Swisher.
0:42.0	He said, she's the podcaster, right? And I nodded and then he asked,
0:46.7	is she the one who does those combative interviews? That is what Kara is best known for these days.
0:54.0	Her public interrogations of Silicon Valley's most powerful people.
0:59.0	Interviews she conducts with an air of hostile impatience like a principle giving out demerits.
1:06.8	If you've listened to either of her hit podcasts on with Kara Swisher or Pivot, then you know
1:12.1	what I'm talking about. She's fair and funny, but you can't
1:17.1	get anything by her. But there's another side to Kara, and this is what I told my friend. She was and remains a trailblazing journalist.
1:27.3	She started writing about tech for the Washington Post all the way back in 1994.
1:33.0	Three years later she moved to California and became the Wall Street Journal's very first internet reporter.
1:40.0	At the time, an influential colleague sneered,
1:42.0	I guess you'll be covering CB radio. At the time, an influential colleague sneered,
1:42.8	I guess you'll be covering CB radio.
1:45.8	Not quite.
1:47.0	Kara had a front row seat to the mesmerizing, often thrilling,
1:51.5	sometimes embarrassing,
1:53.0	dawn of the internet age.
1:56.3	She also had unparalleled access to the people leading the way.
2:01.3	Kara has known today's tech Titans since they were practically in diapers.
	...

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