Inside the Elon-Substack Drama with Chris Best & Hamish McKenzie

On with Kara Swisher

New York Magazine

News Commentary, News, Society & Culture

4.2 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 13 April 2023

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Last week, Elon kicked off a feud with both Substack and his very own former Twitter Files ingénue (and Substack star), Matt Taibbi. Kara and Nayeema break down the battle of the bros before turning to an interview with those at the center of the storm: Substack co-founders Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie. The two address questions about Substack Notes (which Elon dubbed, and they deny, is a “Twitter clone”), the challenging business model of newsletters and their stance on free expression. Somehow, they manage to avoid uttering the name “Elon.” Kara doesn’t shy away though. Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find us on Twitter @karaswisher and @nayeema Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi everyone from New York Magazine in the Vox Media Podcast Network.
0:11.2	This is Elon Musk with 100% less self-inflicted pain.
0:15.7	Just kidding, this is on with Kara Swisher and I'm Kara Swisher.
0:19.3	And I'm Neymar Raza reporting with a croaky voice in the wee hours of the LA morning,
0:23.2	but that's not the self-inflicted pain you're talking about.
0:26.3	You mean Elon Musk's recent interview with the BBC where he noted that his time at the
0:29.6	helm of Twitter has been, quote, quite painful.
0:32.3	Yeah, the world's tiniest violin for Elon Musk.
0:34.7	I mean, he's created the pain and he's created pain for other people.
0:37.9	And then he winds about it, which is very on point.
0:40.6	It's a very Trumpian kind of thing to do.
0:42.8	He's the victim here, but he's not.
0:44.5	He created all this himself.
0:45.8	So I'm sorry, I'm not feeling bad.
0:48.4	It was interesting.
0:49.2	He's changing the label to the BBC and to MPR from government-funded media to publicly-funded
0:55.4	media now.
0:56.8	Do you see that as kind of him?
0:58.6	Why do it at all?
0:59.6	No.
1:00.6	I don't think he'd mess them up at all.
1:01.6	They get very little other funding NPR from the government.
	...

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