Recode Decode, Hosted By Kara Swisher

Writer and audio producer Jessica Weisberg talks with Recode’s Kara Swisher about her new book, “Asking for a Friend: Three Centuries of Advice on Life, Love, Money, and Other Burning Questions from a Nation Obsessed.” Starting in 1690s London, Weisberg examines how advice became a cultural force in America, and how professional advice-givers presaged the internet by creating the first platform for people to ask difficult questions anonymously. She discusses Ben Franklin’s “Poor Richard’s Almanack,” which made earnest advice more palatable through comedy; the bitter rivalry between twin sisters who both became advice columnists, using the pen names “Ann Landers” and “Dear Abby”; and how the once-strict views of parenting guru Benjamin Spock and other columnists mellowed over their long careers. Weisberg says Google and other internet forums are the new advice-givers for millions of people, and questions whether any one writer today could be as widely read and trusted as these predecessors. Learn more about yo

Dara Khosrowshahi, the CEO of ride-hailing company Uber, talks with Recode’s Kara Swisher at the 2018 Code Conference. Khosrowshahi says he didn’t expect to be offered the CEO job and turned it down, but is happy he accepted it in the end. He explains how he’s trying to rethink what Uber should be and how he works with founder and ex-CEO Travis Kalanick, who is still on the board of directors. Khosrowshahi also unpacks Uber’s plan to be the “Amazon of transportation” and what it’s doing with its self-driving car initiative in the aftermath of a fatal accident in Arizona. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Evan Spiegel, the co-founder and CEO of Snapchat maker Snap, talks with Recode’s Kara Swisher at the 2018 Code Conference. Spiegel talks about why Snapchat underwent a controversial redesign, why it partially reversed that decision and what he learned from the backlash. He also discusses how he’s evolving as a CEO since Snap’s IPO in 2017, having learned that leading a public company “requires a bit more grit.” He also addresses the departure of a female engineer who accused the company of having a toxic male-driven culture, calling her objections a “wake-up call.” Plus: How Spiegel thinks about “traditional social media,” i.e. Facebook, lifting features from the Snapchat app, and why it will be “harder” to copy those features in the future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Former U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about "The Work Ahead," a new report, sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations, on the 21st century American workforce. Pritzker co-chaired the committee that developed the report along with fellow business leader John Engler. "The Work Ahead" recommends a nationwide re-evaluation of education, training and how to think about working alongside machines. Pritzker also talks about why President Trump can't run the country like a business and why her hometown of Chicago should be the site of Amazon's second headquarters. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Retired U.S. Air Force General Michael Hayden talks with Recode’s Kara Swisher about his new book, “The Assault on Intelligence: American National Security in the Age of Lies.” Hayden, who directed the NSA under President Clinton and the CIA under President George W. Bush, says the “golden age of electronic surveillance” is ending, as both regular Americans and foreign enemies are getting smarter about digital encryption. But as the intelligence community changes its tactics, the Trump administration has embraced the “post-truth” societal trend that is emerging around the world. Hayden explains how he would attempt to give Trump the best advice, what he would recommend for America’s still-active spies, and why the president’s behavior is so befuddling. Plus: How to prevent leaks, and what Facebook can do to be part of the solution. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

U.S. Representative Ro Khanna, D-Calif., talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about his proposal for an "internet bill of rights" to protect consumers' privacy, security and ability to move or delete their data. Khanna represents California's 17th district, which includes the headquarters of tech giants Apple and Google, and he says he's lobbying leaders like Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai to publicly endorse these new regulations. He argues that Silicon Valley needs to get out in front of privacy and related issues while it still has high approval ratings, embracing changes that won’t cost it much or threaten its businesses, rather than waiting for the tide of popular opinion to turn. Khanna also talks about Congress' failure to ask the right questions of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg when he testified about the Cambridge Analytica scandal and why the E.U.'s new tech regulation GDPR is overkill and shouldn't be replicated in the U.S. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adch

Author Corey Pein talks with Recode’s Kara Swisher about his new book, “Live Work Work Work Die: A Journey Into the Savage Heart of Silicon Valley.” Pein moved to San Francisco to report the book, assuming the role of an entrepreneur looking to get rich quick; he learned the hard way that success doesn’t come easy, even for white men with Ivy League degrees. He criticizes the way consumers have become unpaid workers for the big tech platforms and explains why the government needs to step in and limit companies that have become more powerful than many countries. Pein also talks about highly-paid engineers in San Francisco who are deeply unhappy, and why U.S. lawmakers are only now starting to look at Silicon Valley through a critical lens. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Wall Street Journal investigative reporter John Carreyrou talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about his new book, "Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup." Carreyrou explains how Stanford dropout Elizabeth Holmes' company raised nearly $1 billion for blood-testing products that sounded too good to be true — and they were. Holmes idolized former Apple CEO Steve Jobs and sought to make Theranos out to be the next great Silicon Valley success story, but most of her larger investors were not experienced in either technology or medicine, and people who did raise red flags were pushed aside. Carreyrou says "Bad Blood," which will be adapted into a movie starring Jennifer Lawrence as Holmes, is a "cautionary tale" about entrepreneurship, ambition and hubris, and predicts that the company's top executives will be indicted for the cover-up. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you like Recode Decode, we think you'd also like Recode Media with Peter Kafka. Here's the latest episode of the show: New York Times reporter Dave Itzkoff talks with Recode's Peter Kafka about his new book, "Robin: The Definitive Biography of Robin Williams." Itzkoff traces the history of the manic comedian and actor, whose stardom spanned more than four decades in roles in TV shows, such as "Mork and Mindy," and movies, like "Good Will Hunting." After Williams' death by suicide in 2014, Itzkoff says fans and the media were led astray by incorrect or incomplete explanations for what happened, and that Williams' reasons for taking his own life were more complicated than many assumed. Itzkoff also talks about whether another movie star like Williams could emerge in today's Hollywood, his interactions with the comedian as a journalist and how much time he spends crafting jokes for his popular Twitter account @ditzkoff. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Journalist and author Michael Pollan talks with Recode’s Kara Swisher about his new book, “How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence.” Pollan, perhaps best known for his books about food, like “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” says the new book traces his learning process as he tried to understand why almost every human society has experimented with mind-altering substances. Silicon Valley is certainly no exception: Pollan says that tech pioneer Ampex was ground zero of the tech scene’s experimentation with LSD, starting in the 1950s; engineers discovered that dropping acid helped them design the first computer chips, and shared this finding with Doug Engelbart, who would go to invent the mouse, the graphical user interface and key components of the internet. Pollan also talks about the broader medical, political and social implications of using psychedelics, and how they might one day become legal and more socially ac

John Doerr, the chairman of the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, talks with Recode's Kara Swisher and Teddy Schleifer about his new book, "Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs." Doerr credits two mentors, Andy Grove and Bill Campbell, with turning him on to that leadership strategy, which is short for Objectives and Key Results — or, in other words, communicating what you want to accomplish and how. Setting clear objectives and making them transparent to your entire company can help tech leaders succeed, but CEOs who don't commit or who build a cult of personality around themselves can put their businesses in jeopardy. Doerr also talks about the state of diversity in Silicon Valley, what he learned from the Ellen Pao trial and whether tech companies are taking privacy more seriously in the aftermath of the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Former political strategist and pollster Mark Penn talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about his new book, "Microtrends Squared: The New Small Forces Driving the Big Disruptions Today." He describes it as a less optimistic sequel to his 2007 book "Microtrends," but it extends the idea that small changes in politics and the economy are having huge ripple effects around the world. Penn also talks about his past work, advising Microsoft during its antitrust law case and Hillary Clinton during her 2008 presidential run. And he offers some predictions for the 2018 midterm elections, explaining what Democrats could do now in order to reclaim the White House in 2020. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Patagonia CEO Rose Marcario talks with Recode’s Kara Swisher about why her company is suing President Donald Trump, and why she is publicly insulting Silicon Valley executives, calling them “weenies” and “pathetic.” Marcario suggests that it’s unpatriotic for execs like Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to remain silent on Russian meddling on its platform for so long after the 2016 U.S. election. She also calls out Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey for inaction on bots, and Google co-founder Larry Page for not putting his immense wealth toward fixing the web. Later in the podcast, Marcario explains why capitalism “needs to change and evolve”: Companies that obsess over quarterly results for Wall Street will “destroy the planet.” Plus: Should women try to change tech firms from within, or start their own companies? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Writer and comedian Nell Scovell talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about her new book, "Just the Funny Parts," in front of a live audience in San Francisco. Scovell, who has written on TV shows like "The Simpsons," "Murphy Brown" and "Coach," also co-wrote the hit book "Lean In" with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and tried to adapt it into a movie. She says producers tried to rework the story to fit what they considered to be successful films about women, like "Pretty Woman" and "Bridesmaids." Scovell also offers her theory for why the MeToo movement arose when it did — after Donald Trump was elected president, women had nothing left to lose — and talks about the experience of writing jokes for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Mark Zuckerberg. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Celebrity chef José Andrés talks with Recode's Kara Swisher in front of a live audience at South By Southwest in Austin, Texas. Andrés explains how his food NGO, World Central Kitchen, deployed its chefs to disaster-struck areas like Houston and Puerto Rico after last year's hurricanes, opening dozens of kitchens and serving millions of meals. He criticizes President Trump and the members of Congress who neglected Puerto Rico, but praises one of World Central Kitchen's unlikely allies in distributing food after Hurricane Maria: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a.k.a. ICE. Andrés also talks about the failings of elected officials from both sides of the aisle to achieve immigration reform, the hypocrisy of people who believe food should only be "local and organic" and why he expects to one day be replaced by a robot chef. Plus: Why he loves artificial proteins like Impossible Foods' plant-based "beef" but hates the idea of "tofurky." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Investigative journalist Ronan Farrow talks with Recode’s Kara Swisher about his new book, “War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence.” The book explores how the Trump administration is “laying waste to the State Department,” but argues that it’s not the first administration to do so — cutting diplomats is politically safer than cutting military spending, and Trump is just doing it at an “unprecedented new extreme.” Farrow also talks about his reporting on Harvey Weinstein, and the culture of silence around powerful perpetrators of sexual abuse, for which he shared in a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. Intent on keeping the spotlight on survivors rather than predators, Farrow nevertheless hints that there is more to tell about why he published his stories at The New Yorker, rather than his former employer NBC, where he started the Weinstein reporting. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

CNN political commentator Sally Kohn talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about her new book, "The Opposite of Hate: A Field Guide to Repairing Our Humanity." Kohn's publicity tour for the book has been tangled up in allegations that she misquoted and misrepresented two of her sources, Ijeoma Oluo and Aminatou Sow, and she discusses how she's working to make things right. She also talks about how she became a TV commentator, why she chooses to engage with Fox News hosts like Sean Hannity and how her past life working as a left-wing activist overlaps with changing minds on broadcast media. Plus: Why Kohn, a gay woman, supports MSNBC anchor Joy Reid, who has been accused of writing homophobic blog posts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Farhad Manjoo, a technology columnist for the New York Times, talks with Recode's Kara Swisher in front of a live audience at the University of California, Berkeley's journalism school. Manjoo explains why he refers to five of the world's largest tech companies as the "Frightful Five": Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and Alphabet (which owns Google and YouTube). He diagnoses long-running issues at several of those companies, but argues that solving the problems they've created or at least enabled would necessitate giving them even more power. Plus: Why Twitter's toxicity problem may be beyond saving. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alphabet chairman John Hennessy and Google distinguished engineer Dave Patterson talk with Recode’s Kara Swisher about winning the 2017 Turing Award, a prestigious achievement in computer science. In the 1980s, Hennessy and Patterson developed a revolutionary new type of computer processor called RISC, which allowed computers to run faster and more efficiently — a breakthrough that became especially important in the era of mobile devices and the internet of things. They talk about the intense pushback they received from the computing industry at the time and why we're now in a "new golden age of computer architecture," filled with difficult problems that businesses have thus far been unable to crack. The upshot: Another RISC-like revolution needs to happen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Joanna Coles, the chief content officer at Hearst, talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about her new book, "Love Rules: How to Find a Real Relationship in a Digital World." Coles says dating apps can be a great tool for meeting new people, but they can encourage the wrong attitudes among their users: Seeing potential mates as interchangeable, wasting weeks to texting in the buildup to one conversation and fantasizing about whether a stranger is "the one." She also talks about the negative impact of online porn on women's satisfaction in heterosexual relationships and how to manage an ongoing relationship despite digital distractions. Plus: Why Coles joined the board of Snap, what she thinks of the future of magazines and what happens after #MeToo. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices