How Kara Swisher has evolved even higher

Kara Swisher’s interviews made her famous among the obsessed technological decades ago. She convinced Microsoft’s Bill Gates rivals and Steve Jobs from Apple to play Nice on stage. She reduced the founder of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, then 26 years old, to a puddle of sweat. She pushed her camera against her future boss, Jim Bankoff, Managing Director of Vox Media, among others.

But it was only when she started podcasting that she has reached an audience far beyond the world of technology.

In 2018, she launched “Pivot”, a Podcast News-Chat, with Scott Galloway, a serial entrepreneur and marketing teacher who now has his own list of impetuous business podcasts under the name of “Prof G.”

They were a strange couple – she was grumpy, he was hot – but their joke was tender and intellectual when they did not torture themselves. The fans began to arrest Ms. Swisher in public, recognizing the aviator sunglasses which had become a fanfaron signature.

“I had never made a product or a news for which people thanked me,” said Ms. Swisher, 62, in a recent interview in a cafe in the shade of the Washington National Cathedral, where she lives with her wife and children. “At the end of this long career, it’s like” Oh Wow. I really do something people like. “”

She and Mr. Galloway therefore decided to assess her value, buying their portfolio of five podcasts from other companies before their contract with Vox Media, their publisher, approached its end.

Competitive offers have come with guaranteed payments of around $ 40 million on four -year contracts, said Ms. Swisher. But in the end, they agreed to re-sign with Vox Media, with an unusual turn.