On with Kara Swisher

A Jewish comedian walks into an apartment in Queens to meet a group of white supremacists ... This isn’t the setup to a bad joke — it’s the inciting incident in Alex Edelman’s hit one-man show, “Just For Us,” which recently wrapped a nine-week run on Broadway.

We talk to Edelman about the value of entering rooms with people you vehemently disagree with, Elon Musk’s threat to sue the ADL, and whether there should be any uncrossable lines in comedy.

Questions or comments? Email us at [email protected] or find us on social media. We’re on Instagram/Threads as @karaswisher and @nayeemaraza

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Rapid-fire layoffs, activist investors at the gate and tumbling stock prices — tech has had a bad year. But Kara tells Nayeema she’s seen it all before and that the industry, if not all its captains, will survive this shake-up, too. In the panel interview, Kara is joined by two other journalists: Jessica Lessin, founder and CEO of The Information, a scoop-laden tech news platform covering Silicon Valley, and William Cohan, a former M&A banker and a founding partner at Puck, another excellent source for scoops.

They tackle what’s behind the long decline, and recent rally, of tech stocks, and when and how the Valley will bounce back. Then they zoom in on what Meta, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple and Netflix will need to zoom in on to survive the storm. And Jessica offers a theory: the time is ripe for a changing of the old tech guard. Sorry, Elon — it may be time to step aside.

You can find Kara and Nayeema on Twitter @karaswisher and @nayeema.

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Chris Licht faces an uphill battle at CNN. He got the CEO gig in the midst of a prickly merger between Warner Bros. and Discovery and right after the shocking exit of beloved long-time boss, Jeff Zucker. In his first six months, he’s shut down CNN+, ousted Brian Stelter, and shuffled anchors around, including Don Lemon and Jake Tapper. This week, the network chief held an internal town hall meeting where he faced a staff of thousands and discussed upcoming layoffs. Shortly afterwards, he sat down with Kara — who grilled him, of course.

She asks Licht whether he has any real actual power or if he’s simply executing orders from Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav — who is in search of cuts, as the company stares down the barrel at $50 billion in debt — and billionaire board member, John Malone, who has said he’d like to see more “centrist” programming from CNN. They discuss Licht’s vision for the newsroom, his plan to build trust with journalists who fear losing jobs, and how CNN will cover Donald Trump during the 2024 election.

Before the interview, Kara and Nayeema discuss the challenges facing journalism in an era of disinformation. Stay tuned for Kara’s closing rant on “citizen journalism” and Elon’s latest broadside against the press.

You can find Kara and Nayeema on Twitter @karaswisher and @nayeema.

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Tesla is bleeding execs, and it appears to be reaching a crisis point; over at Twitter/X, new reporting shows that Elon uses the platform to cozy up to right-wing leaders around the world and then presses them to enact policies that benefit to his companies; and while SpaceX continues to dominate in space, serious questions remain about the Pentagon’s reliance on the mercurial industrialist with a seeming soft spot for Putin and Xi. So it’s time to gather three of the best reporters covering Musk and get their take on all things Elon.

Kirsten Grind recently joined The New York Times as a tech investigations reporter. Previously, she was at The Wall Street Journal, where she reported on Elon’s drug use and the shockingly acquiescent Tesla board. Tim Higgins is the author of Power Play, Tesla, Elon Musk, and the Bet of the Century, and he writes a weekly column at The Wall Street Journal that is mostly about Elon Musk. And Becky Peterson covers Tesla, SpaceX, and all things Elon at The Information, where she consistently publishes scoops on the inner workings of Elon’s companies.

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

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When Meta announced Donald Trump would be allowed back on Facebook and Instagram, it wasn’t the company’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg who made the decision. He punted. So why is an executive who holds such control hiding from the power he has amassed? Kara has some ideas — she’s covered Mark from the jump, seen him sweat through interviews and gotten Mark to say things he probably wishes he hadn’t. So today, we then turn the tables and Kara Swisher is On with Nayeema Raza.

Together, Nayeema and Kara unpack an oral history of a company that, for far too long, hid behind the idea of being a small start-up and used that excuse to shamelessly make — and shamelessly repeat — costly mistakes. They journey through the first days of Facebook, examine how the company has navigated controversies from Cambridge Analytica to the Trump decision... and get a sense of why Kara will probably never get to interview Mark again.

You can find Kara and Nayeema on Twitter @karaswisher and @nayeema.

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