Kara Swisher's Take on Twitter

Uncanny Valley | WIRED

WIRED

Technology

4.1 • 572 Ratings

🗓️ 5 May 2022

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Hey, remember how Elon Musk bought Twitter? It's been a chaotic week since then, both on and off the controversial social media platform. There are still a lot of open questions about what's going to happen to Twitter. But the whole strange deal also raises questions that extend far beyond one platform. Like, how might this affect the spread of misinformation online? How might it affect democracy itself? Right now, there's no better person to help answer those questions than powerhouse tech journalist Kara Swisher.

This week on Gadget Lab, Kara joins us to talk all about Twitter, Elon's machinations, Web3, and cryptocurrency.

Show Notes

Listen to Kara Swisher’s Sway podcast. Read even more about Elon Musk and Twitter. Peruse the archives of Kara and Lauren’s old podcast Too Embarrassed to Ask.

Recommendations

Kara recommends the film Everything, Everywhere, All at Once. Mike recommends the book Lost in the Valley of Death by Harley Rustad. Lauren recommends you follow The Center for Reproductive Rights (@reprorights) and the Yellowhammer Fund (@Yellowfund).

Kara Swisher can be found on Twitter @karaswisher. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Mike.
0:00.7	Lauren.
0:01.4	Mike, now that you've had a little bit of time to get used to the idea that we're all just creating this free content for Elon Musk on Twitter, how are you feeling about it?
0:10.0	Apprehensive?
0:11.2	Are you going to quit Twitter?
0:13.2	I don't think so. I'm still too addicted.
0:16.3	Well, and if you quit, you also wouldn't be able to see tweets from other important people like Kara Swisher.
0:22.3	Heaven for foe. And she's kind of a big deal. Should we ask her to come on the show?
0:26.6	I think we should. Let's do it.
0:30.9	Hi, everyone. Welcome to Gadget Lab. I'm Lauren Good. I'm a senior writer at Wired. And I'm Michael Colori. I'm a senior editor at Wired. We're also joined this week by a very special guest, the one and only Kara Spisher. She's a longtime reporter, media entrepreneur, New York Times columnist, host of the popular Sway podcast and co-host of the Pivot podcast with Scott Galloway.
0:56.8	She's also my former boss and former podcast co-host and the person who I could say you never want to
1:03.4	get into a parking fight with. She joins us from Washington, D.C. Hi, Kara.
1:08.4	It wasn't a fight, but go ahead.
1:10.4	That's exactly right. Kara was always going to win that one.
1:13.9	Yeah, exactly. All right. So for those of you who might actually remember our old podcast, too embarrassed to ask, which Kara and I did for the Vox Media Podcast Network. In the second half of the show, we're going to revisit that format a little bit, and we're going to ask Kara to answer some of the burning questions that you sent to us on the internet.
1:31.1	But first, we really wanted to bring you on Kara because we wanted to talk to you about Twitter and Elon Musk.
1:36.5	You have interviewed Elon at least a few times before, right, on stage at code conference and on your sway podcast.
1:42.6	So you have a lot of insight not only into his business dealings, but like who he is as a person and what makes him tick. Well, he's changed. It feels like he's changed a little bit. He sort of moved over to the Andreessen side of the equation or that way. He's been sort of paling around with the right right now. So it's more about that. What do you mean by that? That's interesting because I find Elon to be someone who's very funny. He's sort of unexpected.
2:03.7	He tends to... So it's a little interesting. What do you mean by that? Well, it's interesting because I find Elon to be someone who's very funny.
2:01.6	He's sort of unexpected.
2:03.6	He tends to surprise you.
2:05.6	You never know where he's going to come down on anything.
	...

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