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As someone who knows tech giants like Elon Musk more deeply than most reporters, Kara Swisher doesn’t have a ton of patience for them. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have empathy. Reflecting at this pivotal moment, she’s stripping away the facades of these powerful men to reveal their true characters (typically, cringeworthy pretenders). She and I share an energetic back-and-forth about what makes these disruptive innovators tick, what worries her about that, and what, despite it all, still manages to make her feel hopeful.

Follow me on Instagram at @davidduchovny. Stay up to date with Lemonada on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at @LemonadaMedia.

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Transcript

SPEAKERS

Kara Swisher, Speaker 1, David Duchovny

David Duchovny  00:06

I’m David Duchovny, and this is Fail Better, a show where failure, not success, shapes who we are. Kara Swisher has spent the last three decades covering the tech industry and making a name for herself as one of the most influential and feared journalists. Her reporting is direct and unapologetic. She’s the author of Burn Book, a tech love story, and host of the popular podcasts pivot and on with Kara Swisher. She’s worked for top media outlets throughout her career, and she’s changed careers many times, and her resilience is something we’re interested here and fail better. She’s equally recognized for going off on her own, launching successful independent projects. We talk about that willingness to fail fast and where it comes from. Kara is regularly seen as the expert of Silicon Valley, and she’s a well known critic of tech giants like Elon Musk, like I said, she’s direct and tough, and my goal in this conversation was to get to know the person behind the reporting, behind the persona and the sunglasses, hers and my own, here’s our conversation.

 

David Duchovny  01:13

Hello.

 

Kara Swisher  01:14

Hi David. How you doing?

 

David Duchovny  01:16

Nice to meet you. I’m not wearing your sunglasses. I thought I could wear my sunglasses.

 

Kara Swisher  01:21

I can do it if you want. There’s somewhere over here. Hold on.

 

David Duchovny  01:24

I don’t need it. But I was going to tell you that I.

 

Kara Swisher  01:28

Those are different than mine.

 

David Duchovny  01:29

They’re different, but I know that you wear sunglasses because of some eye thing, and I do the same thing because.

 

Kara Swisher  01:37

I do, but I have a nice shade going on here.

 

David Duchovny  01:39

I do as well. I have, I have a ruptured sphincter of all things, what? Yeah, from a basketball injury. It’s the, it’s the, it’s the muscle of the pupil that contracts. So can’t contract all the way, so I’ll just change to the regular glasses.

 

Kara Swisher  01:57

Great, okay.

 

David Duchovny  01:59

I wanted to, I’m excited. I want to start about you’re talking about your beginnings, you know, because I think you’re in this crazy position right now. Of it is of trying to explain, Well, firstly, Musk to the world, in a way, you’re all of a sudden put in this position of being this explicator For a person which has got to be both powerful and confusing, dangerous, yeah.

 

Kara Swisher  02:28

Well, it’s a little bit unnerving, because he has is amassing such power.

 

David Duchovny  02:33

Right, but for you, as as you know, people are coming to you to find this guy, you know, and it’s like when you talk for a living, or when you have ideas for a living, or when you have dialog for a living. One of the things I read early on when I started this podcast was something by Joyce Carlo. It’s where she said, You know, when I’m interviewed, I don’t know, sometimes I get asked things that I haven’t really thought about and I give an answer, and I’m not sure if I believe that, and maybe, maybe three days later, I realize, you know what, I don’t really believe myself in that. And I wonder if you fear that kind of a phenomenon, or.

 

Kara Swisher  03:19

Just for myself or for others. I mean, no, I don’t, because I’m pretty certain about what I believe. And one of the reasons why is because, you know, before I now am an explainer. I guess a mansplainer, I guess.

 

David Duchovny  03:33

I must explain her […]

 

Kara Swisher  03:36

That’s kind of a gross word. I did reporting for a living. And so one of the reasons I know all these people is because I spend enormous of time doing just basic reporting, which is finding out what happened, telling their stories, doing narratives, figuring out who’s lying and who’s not. And so one of the things that was really important to me as a as in the development of doing that and then shifting pretty significantly into an interviewer, which I did, you know, with my conferences, and now with the podcasts for about 10 years, and before that, lots and lots of interviews, and including very public ones, especially with musk, I’ve done, I think the most interviews with him of anybody, probably publicly, although he talks endlessly now, but It’s lot of it’s lying constant, lying with him. I one of the issues I was always interested in is, you know, when you’re a reporter, you think, what are they lying to me about, right? What are they? What are they? What are they hiding? What are they lying to me about? And one of the things that was that became really interesting is trying to figure out what people were lying to themselves about, right? And or thinking they knew about themselves wasn’t actually true, and what are the tells and everything else. And so you spent a lot of time trying to parse what’s real, what’s really going on. And when I in college, I studied the four these four windows is looking at someone, if they’re interviewing someone, what people think of what. What people think of you, what you think people think of you, which is different, what you you want people to think of you, and then what you really are. And it’s very hard to figure out each of those windows. And I think the only one that’s really important is the fourth window, which is what you actually are?

 

Speaker 1  03:36

Well, I think it comes to something that I wanted to get to you eventually or continue to come back to, which is, you know, character is destiny, right? And, and one of the things is, like, if we have these kinds of, it seems like we’re all looking for like the Rosebud now, you know, like if, Musk is like Hearst, or if Trump is like, Hearst, you know, we have this pivotal, you know, epical movie in our culture, which is that this man who dominated the world, you know, on his deathbed, he’s thinking about his childhood sled, and I think we all believe that. I think we all.

 

Kara Swisher  05:57

I don’t. I think it’s sometimes, I was thinking about that movie the other day, because I’m like, it’s a little reductive. Everything was about the fucking sled. Like, come on.

 

David Duchovny  06:04

Well, it’s a movie. A movie has to movies. Movies two dimensional, you know, like, if you if you want, non reductive, I think you can go to a novel. But I think, I think the point is, or the symbolism is, that we’re all we’re all wounded in a certain way in childhood, and whatever we do as men, as women, can be not reduced, as you say. You don’t want to be entirely reductive, but can be traced back to a certain wound.

 

Kara Swisher  06:35

Yeah, and with these guys, I mean, I was talking about some yesterday, actually, about this, because, you know, a lot of people focus in on both of their childhoods, both Trump and musk, a very difficult father for Trump, a very both of them difficult fathers, difficult, abusive fathers in different ways. And in Trump’s case, a mother who is passive. I think that’s, I think, the sort of take on her allowing the abuse essentially similar. Musk has a, I’m not as big a fan of his mother. I think she’s, she cosplays a lot, a good mother, but I think there’s a lot going on there. And of course, you have to look back further to his grandparents, who are, you know, really significant anti Semites in both Canada and then later, especially his grandfather, who we did not know. So let me be fair there, but, you know, these things do tend to bleed over the Sure, over time. And so I think a lot about that. I think about, you know, what the formative his Musk’s particular story is, you know, I think is sort of a classic. And Hollywood has certainly written this beat up nerd who takes revenge, right? That’s kind of an easy one, or someone who was abused himself and therefore becomes abusive, etc, I find that only the beginning of the journey of figuring out what’s going on here. Part of me, when I was thinking about Trump and musk the other day, and someone was, I was being interviewed, and I said, I’m using this by way of explanation, not excuse, right? That’s the first thing, you know, he’s this way because, and therefore we should thus. And so one of the things I was thinking about is, maybe some of these people are just bent from the get right? I mean, I like, there are people who are just bent from the get go, like, and then things then emphasize those characteristics they innately have. And, you know, sometimes.

 

David Duchovny  08:29

And epigenetic in this kind of thing.

 

Kara Swisher  08:31

Yeah, but more in that, more in that some people are, are damaged as people, and then it becomes like they have certain like, in Trump’s case, narcissistic personality disorder. I don’t necessarily think you just make it over time, and so I often think about that, like, what part why did this guy turn into this versus someone else who had difficult? I had a difficult step father. I had a difficult I have a difficult mother. I don’t do these things like, what is the, what is the shift point where, where people change?

 

David Duchovny  09:05

Well,  that’s in the storytelling, right? And that’s in the creation of one’s character, which, which one is both responsible and not responsible for, I suppose, on some level. But I think, you know, I didn’t want to necessarily talk to you about Musk today, but.

 

Kara Swisher  09:21

Please do because that’s all I’m spending my time doing right now. Sadly for me.

 

David Duchovny  09:26

I want to talk about you, you know, and your origin story as well. But while we’re on musk, I guess what I’d like to kind of dwell on is in burn book. At the end of burn book, your book, I wouldn’t say, you there’s an apology at the end of it. For, there is, yeah, okay, well, let’s say it’s an apology at the end for, for not believing in musk, but for, you know, backing him in a certain way, or whatever it was, you know, like there was. Symbiotic relationship there at some point, which, which you would have had with with a lot of these guys that you reported on with musk, I find, that I am not surprised by what is going on with him or with Trump for that matter, and that the character was evident from the beginning, and that you seem to be telling a story in which COVID played a part in radicalizing musk in some way. But, you seem to be telling a story in which Musk has changed. And I’m my story is that, no that if you look at him, if you listen to him, if you watch him, he’s the same guy. It’s just he’s got more power, or he’s figured out a way to use propaganda, which is another thing that you are very familiar with as you studied it in college. So I’d like to jump into that for just a minute, because I do believe the character is destiny, and I do believe that his character is evident from from the get go.

 

Kara Swisher  10:57

The get go, meaning character being what, what was the character you saw, and why did you see that? From the get go.

 

David Duchovny  11:05

I don’t know why I see it. It’s just because I think I see things. It’s just my opinion really.

 

Kara Swisher  11:12

It’s just my even before, when people were feding him.

 

David Duchovny  11:15

Yes, well, first of all, here’s my first clue, not funny, never funny. You have said sometimes he’s funny or he’s been funny. I say never, once, not once, never been funny. Not funny. Same with Trump, not funny. Never. One time you might say that’s funny to see a guy who’s the president united states acting like that. Yeah, that’s no but it’s not really funny. It’s just, it’s just fucking bad, yeah, but so when I when a person is so deeply unfunny, but yet wants so deeply to be funny, that is true. That is the second part is certainly true. I am alarmed. I am alarmed by that because there’s a need there that can’t be fulfilled. It goes back to when, when you are a per when you are a young woman and you say you love tech, I never love tech. I’m afraid of tech. I’m bad at it. I give up, right? If you love tech, you had a vision of what it could lead to correct my and then you have the reality of where we’re at. My sense of tech is, and this goes in, I’m not name calling, and I don’t want to it’s a tough conversation to have when the left is so vigilant against any kind of name calling. But let’s say that somebody like Musk is on the spectrum. He will freely admit that somebody like somebody like gates now saying he’s on the spectrum. Yeah, he always has said that. So these are neurodivergent people who have created their vision of the world, which, apparently, in the, you know, the Savior vision of it was, we’re all going to get connected. But now we’re connected in a way that I believe is neurodivergent. We’re connected in the way they wanted to that they like to have human connection, right? So that’s what I saw. It’s like this guy.

 

Kara Swisher  13:11

You were troubled by that vision of connection.

 

David Duchovny  13:16

I was, I am.

 

Kara Swisher  13:17

Yeah, it is troubling. It is troubling.

 

David Duchovny  13:19

So I didn’t see a change. I never saw a change.

 

Kara Swisher  13:22

Interesting. I think if you had spent a lot of time with him, I mean, one thing is, he wasn’t that. If I had to say, Great, I wish I had spent more time on his personal life, right to understand and including his relationship with his children. And as a reporter, you tend not to do that. And I think probably you’re a better reporter if you understand family dynamics, much more so I did. I did have some sense of Mark’s childhood. Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos is but in general, reporters tend to just cover what’s happening at the moment and not try to figure out the psycho graphic of whoever they’re covering a little bit. You do? You know, you people have tendencies. And so if there’s one regret, I didn’t plum very deeply enough, deeply into his childhood and and his his problems, and including his marriages, his children, the behaviors around especially his trans daughter, you don’t this. This is no excuse. It’s just an explanation.

 

David Duchovny  14:24

You don’t know. It doesn’t sound like.

 

Kara Swisher  14:26

It, doesn’t I this is a regret I have that I didn’t do that because I think it would have given me more insight into where it was going. But when.

 

David Duchovny  14:34

When, then again, it’s not as as a journalist, as a reporter, that isn’t. It’s also not your job.

 

Kara Swisher  14:40

Yes, but it is a little bit, it’s more information so you can put together, especially with these people holding enormous power, how did they get this way? Is a really critical question you want to ask. But one of the things that’s that, you know, it’s interesting, because I I’ll get the criticism I get, I think pretty much boils down to you, didn’t you help? Facili. Facilitate this monster. And I get, I get that. I get I understand that, and I still, I push back on some of it, because me and a lot of other people sure spend a lot of time with this guy who now don’t speak to him like people change, right? And they don’t. I think the elements.

 

David Duchovny  15:17

I guess that’s the thing.

 

Kara Swisher  15:19

I think the elements were all in him. He had a, I would say about 5% of his personality was this sort of heinous, obnoxious, cruel person, and 95% was more the ridiculous dank memes, the creativity, the entrepreneurship. What does dank meme mean? Oh, dank memes are these. You know, stupid memes he likes. He used to just tweet like stupid memes. Now he tweets racist and and misogynistic and transphobic stuff. It they can have an element of of that kind of stuff. But he definitely wasn’t, at least performatively cruel before, right? Like now, he’s performing cruel and I think a lot of people, one of the things that was hard and probably a mistake was that when you’re in Silicon Valley, you meet a lot of these people that are like him. Not all of them become him, right? They are. They have the same qualities, which is, disassociation, which was, which is, which has, for in his case, has become more profound because of his use of ketamine and other psychedelics, which he taught.

 

David Duchovny  16:27

As you’ve mentioned. You know, people with more success become more isolated, they become more surrounded by minions.

 

Kara Swisher  16:35

That’s the second part. As you become richer, you’re more certain that you are right about everything, because the people around you constantly, you know, I use the expression lick you up and down all day. And you, you have a sense of that being a celebrity, right?  You get special treatment. And so, and this is writ large, in a way that you have never experienced, if you have is because it has to do with enormous amounts of money, not a little bit of money that you all have but enormous amounts of money. And with that come enormous amounts of power. And I think, and then you begin to live in a bubble where nothing touches you. You go from your car, your beautiful car, to your beautiful plane, to your beautiful house, to with all your assistance around you, who are always in violent agreement with you, and then you start to formulate a personality where anyone who is has normal critical feedback becomes the enemy, right over time. You don’t want to hear it. I’d say Jeff Bezos is a good example of that. I used to talk to him a lot, and then when I pushed back, he didn’t like it. And then he really didn’t like it at all, right? He didn’t like any kind of pushback. So what if I had a regret? It would be that I didn’t see this one coming, that one of them was probably going to break this way, and that he was so similar to the others. I think in my I would say laziness. Assumed he was going to be like the like. There’s so many like him like you didn’t expect it to break this way. Now there were signs for sure the way he would attack people who didn’t like Tesla reporters and reviewers. That was strange and overwrought, right? But again, I had the similar experience with Mark Zuckerberg. I had a very similar experience with almost every one of these entrepreneurs. If you gave them critical feedback, they’d get angry. Even Steve Jobs can get could get touchy if you didn’t agree with him on whatever he made, whatever he happened to make, or push back on whatever he happened to do. And so I think what’s hard to do is understand what you could have done to show it at the time, right? Because at the time he was, you know, especially after the death of Steve Jobs, Musk became the next visionary, right? And I think Silicon Valley sort of likes to have that, you know, it’s all again. It’s very similar to Hollywood. It’s the next big star, the next big this. And jobs occupied that space for a long time, right? And, and so, I think the problem with when you’re a reporter is, it’s not a frog boiling problem, it’s that these people are all alike, and you live in that world, and so you do not expect it to take such a cruel and evil turn. And when you don’t do that, people blame you. And I accept that. I accept that they do. In the case of Mark Zuckerberg, I was always tough on him. I saw that guy clear as a fucking Bell.

 

David Duchovny  19:27

In the book you’re unsparing about him, you’re, you’re, I think Jobs is your favorite guy.

 

Kara Swisher  19:36

Not without his philosophy.

 

David Duchovny  19:37

Sure, no, who isn’t. But, you know, I would just point out, as I was thinking about, you know, the the difficult father aspect to these guys, I would point out, Obama probably had a difficult, you know, Obama had an absent father. So it’s not like, this isn’t a recipe, correct? That’s what I exactly, exactly how a guy goes, Yeah, but I wonder, in sometimes your tone, when you. Attack these guys now and burn book, I was told. I was like, I know that phrase. It’s from Mean Girls, right?

 

Kara Swisher  20:09

It’s from a thing that’s Mean Girls, that supplies based around, which is where you tell the actual truth in the burn book, even if it’s cruel or actually, a burn book is something that’s very true, like what I really think of you, like, yeah, versus the way the niceties that you have socially, where you and I think especially reporters, they they tend to shave the edges around, although you may not want that they do.

 

David Duchovny  20:35

You want to maintain access. I mean, you can’t correct. You can’t telling people fuck you every day, and.

 

Kara Swisher  20:40

Not every day, just some days. I mean, I have monday, Wednesday interviews that are testy than anyone, and we kept getting access. Nonetheless, I don’t think you need to be obsequious. You just need to be.

 

David Duchovny  20:51

I don’t, yeah, I don’t mean obsequious. I just mean, you know, here’s, here’s what I would ask you about, because sometimes the tone of your takedowns of these guys now mocks them for being nerds, mocks them for being betas or cosplaying it being alphas. And I wonder if that doesn’t perpetuate the problem in a way it does. You know that it does to shame them further their their their grasp for power and masculinity is out of shame and insecurity, and to hit them at their weakest point is not only to make them more dangerous, but it’s also to perpetuate the idea that it’s a paragon to want to be an alpha. It’s a paragon to want to be a guy that dominates the world, because there’s, there’s real guys out there who could do that. It’s not you, right? So I wonder if that’s good question. Wonder about that kind of time.

 

Kara Swisher  21:50

Sometimes doing it on purpose, to tweak them. I’m trying to tweak them, to get them to to I think it’s hard to understand, but I am trying, in some cases, to to use their own tactics to show how ridiculous it is, and I think maybe it’s lost on some people. I don’t think this is what masculinity is. I do not think this is, honestly, I don’t even know what masculinity is. I’m not the definer of it, right, like nor am I nobody knows what it is, but I think one of the things that I’m using is the language they use to do that. And I think in in norm, in sort of basic terms, it’s, it’s basically called negging, right? That’s you neg someone and you elicit a thing. And unfortunately, with some of these people, it’s the only way to elicit the truth from them is to is to start doing what they do back at them. And one of the, one of the reasons for doing it is to point out the ridiculousness of it, the whole ridiculousness of it. I don’t, you know, I don’t do that as a normal thing with most people. And I most people think you should understand them. I have given up understanding most of them. I don’t think they’re salvageable. I don’t think they’re savable. I think, you know, it’s sort of in that style of you punch a bully in the nose. That’s just what you do. Now, there’s no other way to do it.

 

David Duchovny  23:14

You’re kicking them in the balls, you know.

 

Kara Swisher  23:15

Yeah, kick him in balls fine. There’s no other way to handle these people. And I tried, for the beginning part to understand them, and what I think I came to the conclusion with in the book is it was kind of like someone the other day was like, well, they’re they’re winning, Kara, no matter what you do, right?

 

David Duchovny  23:34

Well, what are they went, what are they winning?

 

Kara Swisher  23:36

Well, power, influence, control over the all the data of the US, government, power over people.

 

David Duchovny  23:42

Possibly, I have a different idea of what winning is, but I get.

 

Kara Swisher  23:46

You know what I mean, in the in the ability to to affect your life, in a really disturbing way. I think that’s whether, whether that’s winning or not, it’s it puts you at a disadvantage. It puts the average person at a disadvantage.

 

David Duchovny  24:01

But if they are to, if they are, to some degree, a product of the culture in which they were raised, and they are, and the and the discussion is about, what is masculinity? I’m just, I get a little queasy sometimes when I read, you know these Revenge of the nerd, beta, takedowns, cucks, whatever these guys, because it’s perpetuating, to me, it’s perpetuating both myths about negative and positive message.

 

Kara Swisher  24:33

Yeah, I take your point.

 

David Duchovny  24:35

That’s really true, as I can do with the person sex, because, I mean you, you have a very kind of forceful personality, which, I mean, I’d say you had balls. And I don’t know if that’s the right way to put it right, you know. So it’s like that kind of a thing as well. And I think as a culture, we’re very confused right now about what it means to be a man, what it means to be a woman, what it means to be something in between, you know, and you. I don’t know. I just want to have a different conversation around those guys.

 

Kara Swisher  25:03

Great that would be great. I think one of the things that has to happen, though, is another thing I’m trying to do is shave the the idolatry off of them, please. You know, that’s what that’s, that’s what I’m attempting to do is, you know, you have, uh, say, you have, there’s a lot of young men that look up to these people. And I’m like, you know, he built Tesla? I’m like, No, he didn’t. Right? No, no, he recreated Tesla. No, he didn’t or, you know, Tesla stock is soaring. Its business is dying away.

 

David Duchovny  25:32

That was the myth from Silicon Valley from the beginning, though, wasn’t it? Because these people who are now the fruits of Silicon Valley, who are, who are coming in. He’s going with these 19 year old boys to dismantle many parts.

 

Kara Swisher  25:46

He picked those boys for.

 

David Duchovny  25:47

Sure, but the myth is that the government just gets in the way. But the truth is, even going back to jobs and gates, is that the original research, because the government has more resources than the American government had more resources than any any power in the world, and they made great advances in computers and all that stuff, and then those guys basically took it and monetized it.

 

Kara Swisher  26:11

That’s right on, including the internet later. I mean, that’s what the one of the things I often like to point out is that the internet was paid for by the US taxpayer, and then they monetized it, and this tax paper didn’t get the benefit of that.

 

David Duchovny  26:25

So it’s not just these guys now who need to be demythologized. It’s even guys like jobs, it’s even guys like gates. It’s guys who said I’m or even guys like Edison, I don’t know, who apparently ripped off a lot of people.

 

Kara Swisher  26:38

People who went across the country and took all the resources. Same thing it’s not a dissimilar trope about our country.

 

David Duchovny  26:45

Right? So to me, that demythologizing can go more into the self made man, American dream, kind of vision that these guys are bullshitting about, and less like the masculinity thing that’s just my personal like, slant of attack would be like, no, just tell just say, bullshit. The same with Trump, you know? So he says he’s a self made man, bullshit. He bankrupted every business he’s been in. So that’s the kind of like, the attack that, or the unmasking that I that I.

 

Kara Swisher  27:19

At the same time you want to acknowledge real innovation, right? Real, you know, doing something nobody had done before, even if you’re using resource, resources from others, the the they saw it and you didn’t, means there was something there. And many of these are real businesses, right? They’re not. Most of them are actual, real businesses that have significant value and have been important to society. I think the issue is, how much idolatry do we have to give them for doing so we don’t do that for the person who, you know, you don’t see big statues to Marie Curie, right now, right? You don’t, you don’t go, ah, thank God for her.

 

David Duchovny  27:56

I have not seen any.

 

Kara Swisher  27:57

No, exactly. Or you don’t see, you know, there’s all kinds of history is littered with people who’ve made significant contributions that don’t get the credit. And I think what happens is now we’re in a much more like a Caesar like state, right, where we you know, I keep thinking we do all remember, when you read any Roman history, they’re always having these when they come back with things, they have big parties for them and FETs and everything else. And that’s where we are in that these and then it burnishes, in a propagandist way, their imagery that is quite empty for the most part. You know, one time, you know, someone was talking to me about, I did a whole story on words tech people. Why do tech people use these overwrought words for just making things like, you don’t see Wall Street people going, I’m really trying to build community here with through money, right, or whatever, or, you know, a pharmaceutical company saying, I just want to, you know, have people communicate across the world so their lives will be better. They’re like, I’m selling drugs. That’s what I’m doing. I’m making money. I’m stealing money, whatever, with the Wall Street guys, these people have it proclivity to make whatever they’re doing seem like it’s a bigger, more important thing. And so often what I do, where do you think that comes from? Oh, deep insecurity. I mean, obviously. And also this, these are the these are the founders of these companies and founders tend to be religious.

 

David Duchovny  29:23

Yeah, that’s a word that that I that I bumped on a lot in your book, because, of course, it rhymes with the Founding Fathers, right? So this idea of founders and finding and all the, all the manifestations that come out of that word so.

 

Kara Swisher  29:37

They’re very religious, in a lot of ways, very intense compared to people who come later, like the original founders of Hollywood, or whatever the industry happens to be. But the point I was getting to is that when they say that to me, like Mark Zuckerberg used to call me what I really want to build as a community, I’m like, why do you control the whole thing? Just question, why do you need to, if it’s a real community, why do you need to have full control over it, and you can’t? Be fired, or, you know, someone.

 

David Duchovny  30:03

But then, let me just push back in a moment. There. It’s like, I feel like, in your reporting, in the book, you will make fun of people that don’t monetize on good ideas like LinkedIn or something like that.

 

Kara Swisher  30:14

Yes, I will, yes.

 

David Duchovny  30:15

Like so there, there’s a certain kind of .

 

Kara Swisher  30:17

I want him to monetize. I just don’t want him to give himself to drape himself and all the honors for doing it. That’s all. It’s just. So the point I was getting to is like someone, another company, did this to me. It was a dating service, and there they were going on and on about what they were doing for the greatness of humanity. I was like, you make a fucking dating service, right? Is that correct? Let me just boil it down for us. And I think they tend to try to over burnish what they’re actually doing as some bigger message for society. Like right now, Musk is going on about how he’s trying to save humanity. I think he’s trying to line his pockets, and he’s a tin horn dictator. That’s, you know what I mean, and so that is what I want to point out, is their language is often very vaunted and emotional and bigger bigger, when in fact, it’s just a small little man making money.

 

David Duchovny  31:37

Well, this is a good time to come back to like, what was the original? Like, if you love tech, what was your, you know, I feel like you had a.

 

Kara Swisher  31:48

Vision, I did. I think the connectivity and commonality, I think one of the things that’s, you know, when we would put roads in roads, roads are a technology, right? Always have been a technology. You move people out of isolated pockets, and they start to see each other, and all the negatives that come with that the idea of not being isolated is really important, because terrible things can happen in isolated places because you’re ignorant, and roads join people. So I think one of the things I saw the early internet as was a connective, like an amass, like an install, like connective, a road beyond roads right that you could connect, and I saw the idea of, if we saw our commonality, we could get along a lot better. If we understood that people have common problems, and we could also spur each other through better ideas that would flow among in between people, that if someone had a good idea over here to improve, I don’t know, childhood poverty, it would easily, more easily, get there. And so I saw the Connect. I think, I guess the overall was the connectivity idea that when you always, and I think I used a quote from em Forrester, always connect. That was the heart of it. And this was the ultimate connective tissue, in a way. And what I left out was the addictive nature of it, the ability to game this stuff, the ability for negative users or bad.

 

David Duchovny  33:12

You couldn’t have seen that.

 

Kara Swisher  33:13

Oh, I could have, that’s not true. You, it always every every tool is a weapon, right?

 

David Duchovny  33:18

You, well, I know you say, if you invent the ship. You also invent the ship that wasn’t

 

Kara Swisher  33:22

That was, that was Paul Virilio, but that’s I was aware of it. I just was hoping for the ship part to stay there, and not so many shipwrecks I guess. .

 

David Duchovny  33:30

It wasn’t very long before we got to the shipwreck was.

 

Kara Swisher  33:32

It wasn’t it was pretty quick.

 

David Duchovny  33:35

And do you think that comes from these people who were monetizing the system, or do you think this is from human nature.

 

Kara Swisher  33:41

I think both. I think there’s an element of human nature that’s attracted to fear and loathing and hate very easily. There also, there’s also a part of human nature that’s very attracted to the bright, the light, the hope. You know, it works. You know, contrast Obama with Trump, both were incredibly popular. So it couldn’t be more different, right? I’m

 

David Duchovny  34:00

also, I’m also thinking just, you know, in terms of of how we evolved, you know, as animals, we didn’t evolve to be involved. That’s bad phrase. We didn’t evolve to be involved with billions of people. We evolved to be involved with our village, with our family, we involved. We evolved to be small.

 

Kara Swisher  34:22

Yeah, well, that’s the Yuval Harari school of thought. The problem we had, but he his Was that you, once you do those farms, once you stop moving, you have a lesser society.

 

David Duchovny  34:33

I’m just asking if we have the emotional, mental, empathic,  bandwidth.

 

Kara Swisher  34:39

We don’t and I was warned about that.

 

David Duchovny  34:41

To deal with the entire world every second of every day, which is where we’re at now with the internet.

 

Kara Swisher  34:47

Right, I mean, Sharon Lanier, who’s a really great thinker, he’s done a lot of he did a lot of early AI researcher. He’s about 1015, years ago. He said to me, he goes, we’ve done the greatest experiment in. Human communication, and it’s a failure at the time, he said this, and he said, and it’s going to be very dangerous, because it was, it is this experiment of linking people. You’re right. When you start to link, you start to get good ideas, bad ideas. And the bad ideas tend to push out the good ones in many ways. And because they’re more attractive, they’re more interesting.

 

David Duchovny  35:20

Well, usually bad ideas are, are simpler, you know. And this is what, you know, the discussion around, you know, why is democracy dying? Why is fascism, you know, on the rise is because Fascism is quick and you don’t need the Democratic debate. You know, there’s a lot of answers. There’s a lot to get into the weeds.

 

Kara Swisher  35:41

Right, one of the things that I was getting back to Yuval Harari. I did an interview with him recently. He wrote Sapiens, but the new one is really interesting the newest book, because I think he was sort of fetid in Silicon Valley. They became fanboys of him, and his latest book is not very complimentary to them. And they’re like, What Nexus? I think it is Nexus. Yeah, it’s quite good. It’s all it’s about. Let me just give you the whole title, A Brief History of the information networks and in the from the Stone Age to AI. And one of the things that he pointed out to me, and I thought was really important to understand, was one of the one of the great moments in technology was the good was the Gutenberg Press, right? The ability to have sure to not have monks doing everything and keeping them away. And it was a critical technology. One of the most important technologies, I think, if you could pick, you pick a few, but that could be right up there. And initially, the take on it, looking back historically is that it was good for humanity, because all the science stuff started happening. It’s democratizing, right? And the science, the illumination, started happening to more people, when, in actuality, the very first book that was science stuff didn’t happen till much later.

 

David Duchovny  36:56

Pornography, was it?

 

Kara Swisher  36:57

Yeah, a little bit, no, it was a book called The Hammer of witches. Was the most pop, was the first best seller in history. And what it was was a guy named Heinrich Kramer who was insane, probably bipolar, hateful, misogynist, etc. It was an instruction manual of how to find and kill witches. Previous to this book, there had not been witch hunts. There had not been attacks like this. When this book came out, everyone started to think there were riches. It would it was never in people’s brains. It wasn’t there. Until this guy wrote this book, and it got widespread release all over the place, and then suddenly you had witch hunts, and hundreds of 1000s of women mostly died because of this book. And in one some of some of the stuff is just, when you look at it, you’re like a maze. It’s very akin to Q anon right now, if it’s the same. Ideas persisted over the ages. This was the first book that worked out well. It wasn’t even the Bible that did well. It was this book. And so one of the things, that’s what they had in it, which it was funny was the idea that that these witches would steal men’s penises, right? So that goes to the heart of things. Men are always scared of being D, D penis, I guess. And I don’t know why, but fine.

 

David Duchovny  38:18

And she would take that really occurred to me, but.

 

Kara Swisher  38:20

Well, he was a story in this book was that.

 

David Duchovny  38:26

I can use the word deep penis later on today I’m gonna.

 

Kara Swisher  38:28

Castration or whatever. Anyway. So this witch would take the penises and put them in nests in her tree, a penis. And this one hero in the book goes and gets his penis back, and he tries to take a bigger one, which is funny in the book, but, but because there’s always humor with these things and and they hide in humor, which is, penises are funny, Bonnie they are but this is the kind of stuff that was in this book. But most of it was about how to kill people and why you should and and to create a permission structure around attacking women and different people, and so to me, you know, here we are in the age we’re in, and it’s happened before that, except this has been weaponized, amplified and made larger because we’re subject to the people that are doing it. Are the most powerful people on Earth who don’t care about safety of anyone.

 

David Duchovny  39:20

Right.

 

Kara Swisher  39:21

Whatsoever.

 

David Duchovny  39:21

Yeah, this is not new, and I think that’s important to know. And what one of the things I love about your book is that you obviously have a soft spot for the poets. And I do the poets. The poets are always there before any of us, not the fucking founders, yeah, and I think often.

 

Kara Swisher  39:39

Cut to the chase. They often cut to the chase. I like philosophers too.

 

David Duchovny  39:43

Yeah, you like Louise Gluck as a but what I’m really struck by in you is, you know, and this podcast is called fail better. But you know, I rarely ever talk about failure in a way. That is just specific, but one of, one of the inspirations for the podcast was my distaste for the kind of Silicon Valley ethos of like, we’re gonna fail, we’re gonna fail, we’re gonna fail. Shits gonna break. It’s gonna be fucking come to DC, January 6. It’s gonna be wild, you know, pivot, right? All that shit, which is failure is just another step on the way to glory.

 

Kara Swisher  40:26

That’s an Edison. That’s the famous Edison quote, right? We have not failed. We’ve found 10,000 ways that don’t work.

 

David Duchovny  40:35

10 other inventors that I can rip off, that’s the part of quote. He didn’t. He didn’t, yeah.

 

Kara Swisher  40:40

He was an asshole. People don’t understand that very as well as they should.

 

David Duchovny  40:45

But you have, you had a great quote that I’m looking for where you said something, oh yeah, when something bad happens at work, I’m like, I didn’t. I didn’t need you to like me. I have dogs, I have kids, I need them to like me, yeah, that’s it. If I fail at being a parent, I feel terrible. But if I fail at work and thing, I’m like, Oh, well, what are we going to do something else? Yeah? And so to me, that’s an amazing feat of resilience, because I see it. It’s not just a quote, it’s something that you’ve lived. And I’m, I just wanted to kind of dwell for a moment on the differences of failure. For you, personal, parental you’ve talked about, I mean, you know, I think you’re an amazing optimist. You had a you had another child in your 50s, so, two, more, two. So to me, that says.

 

Kara Swisher  41:39

Yeah, yes, I believe in the future, interestingly, my I have two older kids and two younger kids, just for people to understand, three and 519, and 22 and my oldest is just finishing at NYU, the other one’s at Michigan. The other is in preschool, and the others in pre preschool, essentially preschool, three and preschool four. And I always wanted to have kids because I thought that it’s largely because of my when I was young. My dad died when I was young. My very beloved dad died when I was young, and the loss how old, five. I was five, I was five, and the loss is forever, is a loss that never stops. You never stop losing it. And so one of the things that I thought was important, when you have a parent that dies, especially a critical parent at a young age, you tend to become, I think the phrase they use, psycho psychologists use is highly functional. And both my brothers, in a way, fine, we’re fine.

 

David Duchovny  42:41

To parents yourself.

 

Kara Swisher  42:43

Yes, exactly, and I had a very non parent mother who wasn’t a very good parent, was a very bad parent. Actually, I would say her bad parent, narcissism, selfishness, etc, married someone who was cruel to us, etc, just didn’t take care of us. That’s all. It’s pretty boils down to that spent a lot of time taking care of themselves versus.

 

David Duchovny  43:05

Do you see that and without, without getting too personal, but you know, we kind of started with musk and the lack of a father. Do you see this kind, these kinds of young events informing the person and the kind of professional you have become?

 

Kara Swisher  43:18

Yes, no, because I didn’t I’m not doing what he’s doing. I probably had as difficult a childhood as he did in many ways. You know, being gay, being you know, being scared of coming out, especially at a time when it was not good. I mean, even today it’s not good, but it really wasn’t good back then, it was it was dangerous, it was hurtful for your business, for your for your career, for your personal relationships. So, you know, lots of people have terrible things happen to them and end up being wonderful, like, you know, I don’t think it’s I don’t think it’s predestined.

 

David Duchovny  43:50

No, I wasn’t saying it was predestined. I was just, I was just asking, in terms of people who are denied access to the system for whatever reason. Let’s just say you being gay. In your mind, you can see, oh, that system is not made from me. The affinity becomes to punk music, whatever your affinity. Oh, these guys are breaking things. These guys are fucking up the system. These these guys are going to make a new system.

 

Kara Swisher  44:18

No, I because I thought this. See, I had took a different take. I thought I could take that, what they were doing, and change it in a positive way versus a negative what I didn’t have an anger at the system. I was like, I don’t like.

 

David Duchovny  44:31

I wasn’t saying anger. I’m just saying there’s, there’s another vision here.

 

Kara Swisher  44:36

Yes, not just in their case, they wanted to break in my like, when they when they had moved fast and break things. I’m like, move fast. I like that that seems you need to move fast. We have a limited time on this planet.

 

David Duchovny  44:47

But you got from losing your father.

 

Kara Swisher  44:48

Yes, exactly. That certainly gives you a sense of urgency. But you you move fast and you change things. And that’s where I was, like, you could use these to change and change the system. Or improve things, not break them. I’m not a breaker. I don’t think that’s the way to do it. I think that’s what children do, right? But getting back to children, I mean, sometimes things need to be broken, obviously, but most things don’t. Or I get why people want to. I remember during the AIDS crisis, you know, everybody was all mad at the time, at ACT UP, right? Because they were, like, getting arrested, they were being noisy and regular. Yeah, yes. You know, silence equals death, etc. I kind of like those people, all those people. I’m not one of those people, but I like them because I’m, like, looking back without their anger, it wouldn’t have changed. And the regular gays were like, oh, as long as we’re quiet, they’ll give us what we want. I’m like, they actually won’t, like, we can’t be quiet. And so the reason I had kids was because of that. I’m not gonna be quiet about not being I think me having kids is the loudest thing I could do to say I believe in the future, obviously, for having kids. If you cannot have kids and not believe in the film you can but I don’t think it’s, it’s an act of of belief in the future, and I’m not going away, nothing. You cannot erase me. And I think that’s one of the reasons I had kids. And what I’m saying, what I’m saying through that is and it’s also something that matters to me to get right that, which is what you quoted me at work. I can do something. I can always do something else. You cannot. If you damage a kid, you know what happens you, and you can see. You can see it in real time, when that happens with with your own children, for sure. And so I wanted to do that part with with a kind of care that I might not have cared about when it came to work.

 

David Duchovny  47:16

No matter how much you go about parenting with care, you know that you still fail, mistakes, daily mistakes. Yeah. And how do you, how do you deal with that and, and how do you deal with your kids involvement with the Internet? And you have, I saw a reference at some point with regards to you with the internet bill of rights. I’m very interested in.

 

Kara Swisher  47:39

About 10 years ago in the New York Times. I think it was a while ago, but that we needed to have to one of the things that people don’t realize is there’s no regulation on internet tech companies compared to any other company, and not at all. So the most powerful people on Earth have no restrictions, no guardrails, no nothing. And you can debate all you want regulation, but they have none. So let’s start with that. And that’s a dangerous thing. When people have no guardrails, there’s no nos, there’s no insistence on safety or anything else. Because then if you do what you want, you get what we got, essentially. And so because it will always be in the service of shareholders, and when it’s in the service of shareholders, you’re always going to do whatever it takes. It’s just, and I listen, I’m not angry about it. It’s just that’s the way, when you are focused on profits, you will do things, not safely. You will do things, and if you’re not able to be sued, you will do things that other people who are who have that hanging over them, won’t do. It’s, you know, it’s a way to stop people from just losing murdering, right? You’d murder if it wasn’t illegal, right? Lots of people would, that’s for sure. So, so with my kids, one of the things I do the older ones, because the little ones don’t have access to, you know, they watch frozen on the iPad when we’re on the train going to New York or on a plane.

 

David Duchovny  48:55

Different kind of brainwashing.

 

Kara Swisher  48:56

Yeah, I just TV. I don’t, I don’t see it as anything but TV and .

 

David Duchovny  49:00

Interesting because, you know, 30-40, years ago, you and I, right people up in arms about how television was ruining right?

 

Kara Swisher  49:08

And it kind of did it ruin you, really, I don’t like so I think it was fine, you know, or, like, Fruit Loops ruined you more than TV did. I’ll tell you.

 

David Duchovny  49:16

Gillian’s Island might have, might have had such a great show.

 

Kara Swisher  49:20

And by the way, there’s clips coming back of it all over the internet. And my son sent me one, and he goes, Mom, this is the coolest show. And I’m like, Yes, it was. It was the coolest show, you know, they were doing. And you always would sit there and wonder how they got all their clothes and everything else. But I, you know, I’m not the immediate parent that goes, Everything’s bad about it. I don’t think that’s the case. I think there’s a lot to there’s a lot there, and it’s a lot of interesting stuff, and it gives you access to knowledge all across when it’s used correctly. And some of it, I think.

 

David Duchovny  49:52

Or facts, knowledge, or facts.

 

Kara Swisher  49:55

Just the the ability to access a lot of things is really. Couldn’t be a very powerful thing. The problem with that is the ability to access everything is it quickly degenerates into idiocy in a way that television you could only have so many television stations now, it’s an endless panoply of stuff. And then people who are bad news tend to take advantage of it. And put all you know you can get quick, the people that used to be hidden and under the ground anti Semites, the white supremacists, now have a place where you can find them. Before it was very hard to find a white supremacist, you know, if you really wanted to go in that direction. Now they can grab you and take you down a path, you know, down the alleyway towards either Q anon or anti semitism very quickly, and it tends to proliferate like mold. And so I was very aware of the things my kids did and where it went right that I was very like, if you want to try this.

 

David Duchovny  50:50

You were checking up on their histories.

 

Kara Swisher  50:52

No, I didn’t do that. I said, Listen, you’re gonna go if you want to. One of my sons wanted to look at something that was more right wing than to my taste. And I said, the thing that disturbed me wasn’t that, because I think you should be exposed to ideas like that and then decide whether you agree or disagree with them, and then pursue it, right? And I don’t mind that. And but it immediately went very quickly, and it wasn’t the fault of this particular website, but this YouTube channel, but it went to it started to offer him up things that were increasingly bad, like and more and more incorrect and inaccurate. And so that was my worry, is that this had an endless grab on you, along with being addictive. And that was the issue I had, was the addictive nature of it, and then pretending it wasn’t. It was like cigarettes or drugs or what is what?

 

David Duchovny  51:42

What do you feel? Is the exact nature of the addiction.

 

Kara Swisher  51:46

You can’t look away, it’s there’s tons of studies. It is. I mean, Tristan Harris at the Center for Human technology. You know, it grabs your brain stem and you cannot there? Is it? There is why? When you go into a casino, once you start doing one of those things. Why can’t you stop? You have to really physically stop yourself. Just comes back to dopamine, and some dopamine, yeah, there’s some. There’s all kinds of studies around that, but it’s the problem with these devices that you have. And one adults have the same problem that kids have, sure more so in some ways, the real problems are 30 to 55 people, as far as I can tell. I’ve always said that put them down and and one of the things that’s hard is that it’s addictive, and yet you need it for work and communication. So it’s a necessary item. That’s cigarettes you can you don’t need you might get addicted to them, but you don’t need them. You need this, and it’s utilitarian at the same time that it’s addictive, and that’s where and necessary. And so therefore it’s really hard. It’s like a gun you can’t put down. And so that’s aimed at yourself, aimed at yourself. And so, and they have all manner of tricks that they use that is very similar to a casino, or the way that you know casino, you know, all the tricks, the bright lights, the darkness, the clocks, the free food, it’s designed to pull you in. Well, this is the ultimate design to pull you in. And so that was another thing I was very much aware of with my kids. And interestingly, my kids were aware of it at one point, my son bought a box, a clear box that he puts his phone in and it locks for two hours, really, because he couldn’t get his he’s a computer science person. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t think, because he was always doing this.

 

David Duchovny  53:33

That is such a powerful move on his part. I don’t see a lot of other kids doing that.

 

Kara Swisher  53:37

I don’t either. I was pretty proud of him. My other one, my older son, went off of all the social media and also dating sites. He has a girlfriend right now, but he he didn’t like them because the social media thought sites he thought were deadening him to things the way the screw, the endless scrolling kind of thing, and the dating sites I thought was really interesting. He said, I just feel bad. It makes me feel bad all of this, and particularly the dating sites that were gamified. It had no connection, and it felt like connection. Then when there wasn’t, and he put them all off, he never used them. And so he did initially, but he got he rocked right away, the feeling bad part of it. And so I was happy that he was, you know, that he had access to knowing that this is what’s making me feel bad, and I think that was a good thing.

 

David Duchovny  54:28

So are we ever going to be able to put the genie back in the bottle?

 

Kara Swisher  54:31

No, I It’s interesting because, well, I don’t know, because young kids really have a much better sense of the problems than than older people.

 

David Duchovny  54:40

Sounds good to hear.

 

Kara Swisher  54:41

It is and they’re they are going back to more community things, because they sense the lack of happiness. They sense the emptiness that, as you said, one of the things that is great about humans is they like to connect with each other, right? They like face to face. And I think a lot of people feel that. And. And maybe going, maybe I should be doing that. You know, I think they have that because as family disintegrates, and it it has as church disintegrates, whoever, if you like that it, it does as sports, as school. And I think COVID, in many ways, showed us that, like showed us that everything that was progressing in technology, whether it was buying online or take doing takeout or studying online. The one thing that didn’t work was school online for kids really declines in everything the you’re going to be buying stuff from Amazon, slash Walmart, slash whatever it is easier than a retail store that is going to get affected. Well, it’s a good business. It is because it’s better, it’s better, it’s better, it’s just, and I’ll agree, and but school was not better, and that was.

 

David Duchovny  55:53

No, it’s the same. It’s the same as having an art. You know, I think the reason why the white supremacist, the anti semitism stuff, could work on the internet is because it wasn’t face to face. It was many, many, many ways anonymous, and you can write, you will say shit that you would never say to somebody’s face, and you will be a certain way that you would never be in somebody’s face, right?

 

Kara Swisher  56:11

And the same with online porn, same thing too. It dehumanizes people in a way that’s very easy and clean, as opposed to going to like the place at the mall, in the bad mall, that you go to whatever to get your dirty.

 

David Duchovny  56:23

I don’t know what you’re talking.

 

Kara Swisher  56:26

There is something nice about that dirty mall place, right?

 

David Duchovny  56:30

Well, it showed commitment you got out of your house at least. You know, I think I’m very interested to, I think it would be an amazing thing to try to make an internet bill of rights. I don’t know if it could.

 

Kara Swisher  56:43

Well, it was an element. No, none of the ones I proposed, and they’ve all been proposed pass. Well, they tried to pass the Mamie Klo Bucha tried to do an antitrust thing. Many people have tried to do a Privacy Bill, an algorithmic transparency bill. What I was putting together was six or seven things that we should pass to protect us the rights to your data. They have tried to pass all these things in the tech companies because they’re not restricted. Have done so much lobbying and so much, you know, meddling and Elon Musk is just the, you know, the peak of what they’ve been trying to do in other ways. And so over time, especially as polarization started, which was caused by these services. No other industry has able to gotten this powerful at a time when Congress has been so polarized and incapable of agreeing. So they ran right through the middle. I’m not a sports person, but I believe that’s what it’s called. They ran right through the empty middle, and and, and they they got what they wanted. And this is where we are with Musk right now.

 

David Duchovny  57:47

They found the hole.

 

Kara Swisher  57:48

They found the hole. Is what you found. The hole. I think it was massive hole. I think everyone’s sitting on the sidelines.

 

David Duchovny  57:54

I think you know you’re again. Your resilience is remarkable, your ability to pivot from one business to another. You say you hate managing, which I totally relate to, but you like the connection that interviewing you like human.

 

Kara Swisher  58:09

I’m talking about big staffs. I don’t like I was joking. My next book is going to be called staff zero. I was with a billionaire who they had a lot of staff around them, and they’re like, who’s your assistant? I’m like, I don’t have one.

 

David Duchovny  58:23

Yeah, if I have, if my staff grows, it’s just more people that I have to hide from.

 

Kara Swisher  58:27

That’s right, I don’t I have nothing against it, but I just do not. That’s not the greatest use of my time and so.

 

David Duchovny  58:33

One of the things your resilience come from, though, was it losing.

 

Kara Swisher  58:36

I think my dad died. I think my dad dying. I think it was I’m on my own. I wasn’t. My brothers and I are very close, but I no one’s coming to no one’s coming to save me. Was a very early message to me that i Nobody is coming to save me, and therefore I’m going to, interestingly, I just someone pretty well known, I can’t say who it, has written a memoir and had the same experience, and is has a very similar personality to mine. And I think when he was writing this, he said, No one, it was a scene he has where his mother doesn’t show up, which I had over and over again and and he said it was then I realized no one is coming to help me. And it and instead of making him, instead of making him weak, it made him stronger, right? He took that, which was a devastating and heartbreaking thing, and he decided to make it a strength. And so I think I probably like the other day, you know, everyone right now with Trump and all this sort of flood the zone approach that he’s using, which is exhausting to everyone, everyone’s like, Oh, I’m overwhelmed. And you know, especially you all in Los Angeles, the wildfires, everything is so like coming at you all the time, and I said, You know what? This is? Their goal is to exhaust you, and so you don’t get up. So get the fuck up. Like, sorry, it’s not a choice, or they will run right over you. And do you know whatever they feel like, and you’ve seen, you’re seeing the and the other. Part they’re doing is the distraction element, like dei and the plane crash has nothing to do with Dei. It has to do with you not looking at Robert Kent, whoever you have, whatever they happen to be having trouble with.

 

David Duchovny  1:00:12

I think they’re nihilists. And it’s very it’s very and if you actually do believe in something, or if you have a moral code of any kind. It does get exhausting to have to fight that battle. They don’t, they don’t get exhausted fighting that battle because they don’t give a shit.

 

Kara Swisher  1:00:27

They don’t really, they don’t want to govern. They don’t want to go they they do not want to govern. They want to destroy government. And so, because it’s better, it suits them better for their money making, right? And ultimately, comes down to that, is the money making is, it really is. It’s what money does. It’s what money does versus what it is. Yes, I do think more it’s about the control and money making. And so I think that’s money is a way to communicate power, right? And I think that’s the idea. And some of them actually have a lot of theories on the way the world works. And, you know, even though Musk is getting a lot of the attention, I would, I would urge everyone to read Peter teal’s books. He talks about Peter Thiel, who started this thing, you know, with Trump among the tech people. He his book is all about democracy doesn’t work, you know, and let’s destroy it. And I think one of the things that.

 

David Duchovny  1:01:21

Well, he tried to destroy journalism.

 

Kara Swisher  1:01:23

He was the first innovative that way. But, yeah, he did. They made a mistake, and he he ran right through the middle. That’s what happened there. They made a stupid mistake, and he got them. And one of the things that I pay a lot of attention is someone like him, because he’s been consistent. Musk, I don’t think believes any of this right wing stuff at all. It’s just useful for him at the moment to use it. In Peter’s case, I think he does, and he does believe that democracy is no longer a viable way to run it, and believes in this unified executive, unified CEO kind of idea.

 

David Duchovny  1:02:00

Well, yeah, this is an interesting question to me, and I know, you know it’s not an aberration to have somebody elected president who has who apparently shows expertise in some other form of life, not government. I mean, historically, we’re always electing generals, right? So, yeah, that makes sense. They’re well known before television and movies, you know, that was that was a star, was a general. They obviously have some kind of delegating capacity or leadership capacity. So what from Washington on? You know, like, okay, generals. That kind of makes sense. As a as a president, I can see a successful businessman also making a case. I’m a CEO. I run a big company. You know, in Trump’s case, it’s an absolute lie. He’s Yes, it is. He lost more money than anybody in the history of the world in the 1980s I don’t know if you saw that New York Times article, but it’s stunning. Yes, it’s stunning. Yes, Craig and others, how bad he is. It’s stunning. It’s not just that he’s bad. He’s the worst. But there is an argument to be made that Curtis jarvin is making now, which is like the government is just a big company. It’s just a big business, and we need a CEO. We need a we need a a talented CEO. Enter, Enter musk. But my question is to somebody like Curtis yarvin, is, if government is to be run like a business, what’s the product, correct?

 

Kara Swisher  1:03:35

That’s very good. That’s, is the question you want to ask. And I think you know, they like to dress it up in this other terms. When I heard this for the first time from the teal gang and everything else, and this is, you know, we can, this is how it needs to be done. Needs to be hardcore. Is a word they like to use. It’s, I call it, I call it hustle porn. Like, don’t show me how hard you work if you once you’re doing that.

 

David Duchovny  1:03:59

It’s like the Tom Cruise of CEOs.

 

Kara Swisher  1:04:01

Yeah, right, he does work hard, though, that is clear, but.

 

David Duchovny  1:04:04

He doesn’t, don’t show me.

 

Kara Swisher  1:04:06

I know that. Let me run down. Let me show you how fast I run. Like, okay, sure, dude, that’s always a tell.  Yeah, but when the one there’s two things I recently one of them was, was talking when they first showed me this unified CEO theory, because they’re proud of it, because they had an idea in their fucking head, like, as if it’s a new thing, yeah, right. And, and they go, they go, you know, unified CEO, I go, so, a dictator, right? And they’re like, well, no. And I’m like, yeah, but that’s what you’re saying, like, and, of course, none of them studied it. And I was like, this is a dictator. That’s all. I was like, we’ve had those. We know what those are, and and when they, when they get things wrong, when they, when they succeed, despite it being wrong, for example, or or they somehow make it seem like they’re succeeding when they aren’t. But everybody thinks so. I often get, you know, look at care, look how well he’s doing. And I’m like, but. Still an asshole. So that’s and then they get mad. They’re like, well, and I’m like, Yeah, well, he’s successful, but he’s still an asshole. So that’s me negging them, but it’s actually the truth.

 

David Duchovny  1:05:12

I’m telling No, but you’re getting back to character, right? And if character, my character, I do think that no, not your character, their character, their character, is asshole. Like another word for narcissist is asshole because you can’t change it. You can’t narcissist, to me, is a redundant term, because it’s just like, there is no cure, right yet? Yep. So, yeah, but, but my, my, my answer to, if, if government is to be run like a business, what is the product? Yes, the stock market, you know, all these, all these numbers that we have to go by, how successful we’re doing, unemployment, whatever. But there is a human element. And this gets back to the beginning of our conversation, which is, when you break things and when you destroy things, people will suffer. Not just things will suffer, but people suffer. So one of the products of good government has to be human happiness or human togetherness or love or something. And that’s never that’s not part of the sea of the American CEO as he’s come to be seen. That’s not part of his zone of attention.

 

Kara Swisher  1:06:15

Yes, absolutely. I mean, I think, and that’s, that’s why Donald Trump is kind of a perfect person for this age, which is continuous, partial attention, exhaustion, overwhelming, being flooded with information, both physical and digital. Sometimes people, when people were like, oh, Trump isn’t really what America is. I’m like, he’s precisely what America is talking about and for its history, like, it’s a complex and up and down history, and people tend to want to excuse the negative parts and over emphasize the, you know, the positive parts, of which there are many Sure. And so, so what when calling any of these people an aberration, I’m always like, they’re not an aberration. They’re exactly what we ordered, right? And so one of the things I want to do with the rest of my career that’s left of it is keep pointing out when they that these are not aberrations, and also that we can do something about it. And I think hopelessness is really, you know, I’m kind of heartened by certain politicians, and I don’t think politicians are a savior, either, but certain politicians, like, I would have to say, someone who’s rising to the occasion here, like someone like AOC, where she keeps it’s stressing, you know, the need to keep going, despite this slow and also not agreeing, not complying, slowing things down. Because I think the proclivity of most people, and not just Democrats, Democrats is to one, cooperate, two, try to reach common ground, right? Try to figure out a place where human nature that that can come later, right now is not that moment, right? You know, there’s a time to reap and a time to sow, a time to embrace, and there’s a time to not embrace, right? And I think that’s that famous song, but that song is about not, also that it doesn’t, don’t have the Bible. The lyrics are biblical. Yeah, they are. And so one of the, one of the things I think about now is the ability with what’s happening right now, despite the overwhelming nature, is to say no over and over and over again and not feel that, that that you have to fix it right? And I think that’s hard for people of good will to do at this moment, and so I want to remind them that, and you get back to nagging them, I’m going to neg them until they fucking go, you know, go away. And there’s a story in the book where the Travis Kalanick, who was just an abhorrent CEO of Uber, the one of the original CEO of Uber, just a bad seed, just a bad guy. We did a lot of stories about the behavior, his behavior at work, and how he ran the company, which was misogynistic. There was all kinds of sexual harassment going on, et cetera. We wrote all those stories, and it led, it eventually, us and others led to his being fired from that job, which I think people were angry that we did that, that we did that like today. I’ll finish on that just a second. And one of these VCs came up to me at this very fancy bar in San Francisco, and he said, When are you going to stop? And I said when he stays down right then and but, of course, he has, and he’s still as rich as hell. But JD Vance did the same thing today about this kid. He’s not a kid, excuse me. JD Vance called him a kid. He’s 25 years old. I don’t think 25 year olds are kids, in my estimation. So this guy who’s working for Doge, they uncovered a reporter uncovered a series of texts and social media, which he insulted Indian Americans. He insulted all kinds of just really heinous, racist, vile and he he got fired, or he left the doge thing today. JD Vance is like, well, he was just a kid, and these reporters are just. Terrible, and he has Indian American children, like, talk about a bad parent, right? Like, how could you I kept thinking, there’s no bottom with you people and and that’s the real danger we’re in, is that we’re in no bottom. And if people don’t continue to resist this, and I use the term resist specifically, or say what, there’s.

 

David Duchovny  1:10:19

Okay, I’m 100% agreement with you on on getting rid of that kind of person, but I’m also I’m of two minds sometimes, because I don’t know that that kind of abhorrent thinking has anything to do with the job he’s doing, you know, and I think we on the left sometimes will attack somebody’s beliefs or moral stance and has nothing to do with their ability to do the job.

 

Kara Swisher  1:10:49

He’s in the he’s in the guts of all kinds of he’s killing things.

 

David Duchovny  1:10:53

His character is destiny. Oh, you. So you would think that he is actually targeting those.

 

Kara Swisher  1:10:58

That’s correct, but who’s he’s very explicit in his racism. And so I don’t think they have a place in in government.  I don’t. And I’m not talking about, you know, dumb things like boobs, nice boobs.

 

David Duchovny  1:11:10

This is not I just, I just think it’s dangerous when we start to have perfect people.

 

Kara Swisher  1:11:15

We don’t want to have perfect people. This is, by no means. You know, people do stupid things all the time.

 

David Duchovny  1:11:21

Yes, people say stupid things. Let people say stupid things. What are you correct? I don’t care what you’re saying. What are you doing?

 

Kara Swisher  1:11:28

Although, think about it, if you were on a movie set and someone started spewing like huge amounts of anti semi they’re not staying there. They don’t get to stay.

 

David Duchovny  1:11:36

No.

 

Kara Swisher  1:11:36

They don’t get to stay. And maybe, and you could say, oh, we should forgive them for their trespasses. You know, if you

 

David Duchovny  1:11:41

feel like you want to educate them or.

 

Kara Swisher  1:11:44

Sure, but certainly don’t want them in a position of cutting programs that might help those.

 

David Duchovny  1:11:50

You don’t want to do what Trump does, which is give somebody power and then vet them, right?

 

Kara Swisher  1:11:54

That’s correct. And so you just want, you want people that are that have better character, that have certain qualities of kindness and and to me, when you’re when you’re when you’re looking to cause people harm, when you’re saying racist things about them, I don’t think you have very good character, and I don’t. I think the left shouldn’t shy away from saying that’s not the kind of people we want governing us. You know, especially in positions that are unelected. Now, when they’re elected, if people want to hire that Mark Robinson, the people of North Carolina, they didn’t, but if they want to, that’s on them, right? Marjorie Taylor Greene’s constituents seem to want her, and as much as I think she’s a heinous piece of shed, they picked her so I would agree she should get to keep her job as long as she can keep getting elected. I’m good with that. What I’m not good with is speaking of which nameless bureaucrats whose agendas we don’t know, controlling us without our permission.

 

David Duchovny  1:12:54

I guess you could call that the deep state.

 

Kara Swisher  1:12:56

Correct, that’s what these people, you know? I always say every accusation is a confession with these people, every one of them, they do what they say, they don’t they what we’re doing. And that’s that always makes me laugh, like, once again, it’s you, isn’t it so well.

 

David Duchovny  1:13:11

Since I know you love literature, I’m going to leave you with a quote that I thought you would like. It’s a it’s a Kafka quote, and it kind of, it’s, it’s one of his aphorisms. And it, to me, it sums up the moment that we’re in right now. It’s the leopards in the temple. I don’t know if you know that parable. It’s very quick. Leopards break into the temple and drink all the sacrificial vessels dry. It keeps happening in the end. It can be calculated in advance, and it’s incorporated into the ritual. I think that’s what we’re witnessing. Yep, absolutely destruction becomes part of the ritual that is correct, part of the establishment.

 

Kara Swisher  1:13:52

And that racist kid is back that at Doge today. Yeah, I just thought, I just thought he will be brought back to air as human, to forgive divine, according to Elon Musk, well, thanks Jesus, good to know.

 

David Duchovny  1:14:06

I think it’s, was it shake of Shakespeare, but it’s whatever. Maybe I don’t know, but feels Jesus II, I just, you know, I’m just scared of, like I’m an old fogey. I’m scared of like kids that young, having that much power.

 

Kara Swisher  1:14:23

Yes, I would agree. We’re worried about the old people now we’re worried about, children, I call them children’s a corn.

 

David Duchovny  1:14:32

Well, thank you so much for for this.

 

Kara Swisher  1:14:34

All right, David, thank you. What a lovely chat. I really appreciate it.

 

David Duchovny  1:14:52

Forgive the background music. I’m outside in public. But as she said, as much that she. But at the end of the book, burn book, it’s an apology, specifically around musk, I think, and having misunderstood him or underestimated him in some vile way. And then I guess, you know, the whole tenor of the conversation becomes after that. And so that’s a response to failure. This book is, in effect, a response to a failure of perception. And how brave to say that, on her part, how honest to say that, and how it’s kind of a textbook example of how to not sink into a helplessness after a quote, unquote failure, in this case, underestimation of Musk’s lack of character, easy to just flat Self flagellate and say, my bad, I got it wrong. But she’s actively trying to address the wrong, the fail, and you don’t see that a lot in life, in art, in public, I applaud it. I admire it.

 

CREDITS  1:16:32

Thanks so much for listening to Fail Better. If you haven’t yet, now is a great time to subscribe to Lemonada Premium. You’ll get bonus content, like my thoughts on conversations with guests including Alec Baldwin and Rob Lowe, just hit the subscribe button on Apple podcasts, or for all other podcast apps, head to lemonadapremium.com to subscribe. That’s lemonadapremium.com.  Fail Better is a production of Lemonada Media in coordination with King Baby.  It is produced by Kegan Zema, Aria Bracci, and Dani Matias. Our engineer is Brian Castillo.  Our SVP of weekly is Steve Nelson. Our VP of new content is Rachel Neel.  Special thanks to Carl Ackerman, Tom Karpinski and Brad Davidson, the show’s executive produced by Stephanie Wittels Wachs, Jessica Cordova Kramer and me, David Duchovny.  The music is also by me and my band. Lovely Colin Lee. Pat McCusker, Mitch Stewart, Davis Rowan and Sebastian […].  You can find us online at @LemonadaMedia and you can find me @DavidDuchovny.  Follow Fail Better wherever you get your podcasts or listen ad free on Amazon music with your Prime membership.