Speaker 1: When you think of big tech Silicon Valley CEOs, you
Speaker 1: might think of a young multi millionaire in a hoodie.
Speaker 2: Super chilled and a bit nerdy.
Speaker 1: But when the biggest names in Silicon Valley, think Mark
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, sit opposite Kara Swisher for an interview,
Speaker 1: they're no doubt visually nervous, sweaty.
Speaker 2: And on their toes.
Speaker 1: That's because Cara has been covering this industry since the
Speaker 1: early nineties. She's seen it all and knew many of
Speaker 1: the titans in tech when they were just starting out.
Speaker 2: Kara is a no nonsense.
Speaker 1: Journalist with a reputation for being both the most feared
Speaker 1: and well like journalist to cover Silicon Valley, and I
Speaker 1: happen to be a huge fan of one of her podcasts, Pivot,
Speaker 1: that she hosts with Professor Scott Galloway. So how does
Speaker 1: Kara prepare for interviewing some of the biggest names in
Speaker 1: the world, And what's the best piece of advice that
Speaker 1: she's ever received in her career? And why has Kara
Speaker 1: never suffered from imposter syndrome. I'm doctor Ramantha Imba. I'm
Speaker 1: an organizational psychologist and the founder of behavioral science consultancy
Speaker 1: Inventium and this is how I work, a show that
Speaker 1: helps you do your best work. So Cara is one
Speaker 1: of those people with more jobs than seems human. She's
Speaker 1: an opinion writer for The New York Times and hosts
Speaker 1: the podcasts Recode, Decode, Sway, and Pivot, along with a
Speaker 1: stack of other things. So I wanted to start by
Speaker 1: understanding how on earth does she fit it all in.
Speaker 3: I'm very careful with my schedule. I don't owever schedule myself,
Speaker 3: and I like, I say no to a lot of things.
Speaker 3: You know, most people say yes to everything. I don't,
Speaker 3: I know, as a complete sentence in my life. And
Speaker 3: I'm okay with that. And I'm very clear about the
Speaker 3: stuff I want to accomplish. So I set out sort
Speaker 3: of goals for myself for the week, you know, the day,
Speaker 3: the week, the month, the year kind of thing. And
Speaker 3: so I'm always planning it in that way, and I
Speaker 3: move them up and down. Lit I make a lot
Speaker 3: of lists. I'm a list maker. I don't use anything
Speaker 3: fancy like trello or things like that. I just make
Speaker 3: a list essentially, and so I'm very strict about, like,
Speaker 3: here's my priorities, and then I move stack, rank them
Speaker 3: up and down and make sure I'm sort of doing them.
Speaker 3: And it's not quite like KPIs or other things that
Speaker 3: people do, but it's super efficient in terms of how
Speaker 3: I think about it.
Speaker 2: Now, you mentioned that you say no a lot.
Speaker 1: Do you have almost criteria, whether that be conscious or unconscious,
Speaker 1: around what you'll say yes to and what you're saying
Speaker 1: no to.
Speaker 3: I will say yes. I typically say yes to students,
Speaker 3: you know, stuff like that, sometimes paying things if it's
Speaker 3: a lot of money, you know, I mean sometimes I
Speaker 3: say yes to money things. I always say yes to
Speaker 3: gain lesbian stuff or if I can, I say yes
Speaker 3: to anything young people ask me to do, like if
Speaker 3: they want to talk for a few minutes, you know,
Speaker 3: that kind of thing. I don't like meetings a lot.
Speaker 3: I don't. I try to limit the number of meetings
Speaker 3: I actually I have a day like it's typically a
Speaker 3: Tuesday now, although sometimes it gets people get creeping into
Speaker 3: my Tuesday that I leave empty that I won't schedule
Speaker 3: anything on and so I can like work on writing
Speaker 3: and things like that.
Speaker 1: Is the free Tuesday being always being around or is
Speaker 1: that something that you implemented.
Speaker 3: No, I just have noticed I need a full day
Speaker 3: because people, if people could you know, a lot of
Speaker 3: people have access to my schedule, my Google skill. I
Speaker 3: used a Google schedule, but you could use anything, you know.
Speaker 3: And if people have access, they'll tend to put things
Speaker 3: on it, Like someone just put something on my schedule
Speaker 3: that I didn't ask for, and so, uh, you know
Speaker 3: I I So I spend a lot of time paying
Speaker 3: attention to who's who in water is on my schedule?
Speaker 1: And do you have a strategy for saying no well
Speaker 1: or effectively.
Speaker 3: I'm very particularly about who I let touch my schedule.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't have an assistant like most people,
Speaker 3: I ilk have assistance, but I don't. I don't want
Speaker 3: anyone to touch my schedule or anything like that or
Speaker 3: make decisions for me because they don't know everything that's
Speaker 3: in my head. Like oh, I just I want to
Speaker 3: leave early to pick up my son, or like today
Speaker 3: I have to my son is starting lacrosse and so
Speaker 3: I've got to make time for that. So I have
Speaker 3: to figure out what else I have to move because
Speaker 3: of the driving and this and that. I have to
Speaker 3: make appointments and I put them up up on my
Speaker 3: schedule to remind myself. So I'm constantly re evaluating the
Speaker 3: schedule every week. But I definitely leave a big center
Speaker 3: day without anything to do. But I do a lot
Speaker 3: in that day.
Speaker 1: So what does that center day look like that you
Speaker 1: don't have, I guess external bookings.
Speaker 3: So I give myself a morning to think, like and
Speaker 3: like read around and take notes and things like that.
Speaker 3: So just like nobody gets enough time to think because
Speaker 3: and then also if you like Twitter or you like
Speaker 3: whatever here happen, your addictive nature of the Internet is
Speaker 3: you can go from thinks that you can take up
Speaker 3: a lot at whether you like watching looking at Instagram
Speaker 3: or TikTok. You can really suck up time. And it's
Speaker 3: not bad stuff either, by the way, it's good. It's
Speaker 3: kind of interesting. It's news and stuff. So I can
Speaker 3: do endless sucking of information and I enjoy it, like
Speaker 3: reading the news quite a bit. So I have to
Speaker 3: like physically put down my phone. I also like to
Speaker 3: have to do stuff that isn't digital, like I this morning,
Speaker 3: I had some time. I didn't realize what happened, so
Speaker 3: I rearranged my shelves. I was just it makes me happy,
Speaker 3: it calms me down. Cleaning calms me down, actually, and
Speaker 3: I think while I'm doing it, or I listen to
Speaker 3: music or podcasts or things like that, and so I
Speaker 3: want it's really important to take space for yourself, even
Speaker 3: if you I take more space than most people because
Speaker 3: it's calming, it's you know what I mean, like things
Speaker 3: that I like, physical things like cooking or cleaning. I
Speaker 3: tend to like to do myself because I'm an organized
Speaker 3: person and it's like therapy for me. And it sounds weird,
Speaker 3: but it is.
Speaker 2: It doesn't sound wesid all now.
Speaker 1: Before we started recording, I mentioned that I'm a huge
Speaker 1: fan of PI and it's always it's quite surreal, I
Speaker 1: think when you listen to a podcast and then you
Speaker 1: actually speak to that voice that is in your ear
Speaker 1: all the time.
Speaker 2: And something I'm really impressed.
Speaker 1: About always with you and Scott on Pivot is just
Speaker 1: you seem to know everything.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we do, one of us does.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, definitely.
Speaker 3: You.
Speaker 1: What are your go to sources for staying on top
Speaker 1: of what's going on in the world.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm a voracious reader of news, you know, I
Speaker 3: really do. I'm always paying attention to making I spend
Speaker 3: a lot of time making connections between things, and so
Speaker 3: I save like a long reading list of different articles.
Speaker 3: I don't read by publication necessarily, but you know, I
Speaker 3: tend to look at the New York Times several times
Speaker 3: a day just for news because they just they have
Speaker 3: a breadth of news, or watch them post and then
Speaker 3: I look Twitter a lot. Is really my organizational thing
Speaker 3: for news. And then I avail myself. I ask people
Speaker 3: when I get an idea, I ask people directly about
Speaker 3: different things, or I try to reach them so I
Speaker 3: can get more information. So I spend a lot of
Speaker 3: time texting. I spend a lot of time reading and
Speaker 3: then texting or cent what do you think of this?
Speaker 3: What do you know about this? And stuff like that.
Speaker 3: So I'm always collecting information.
Speaker 2: And on Twitter, who are some of your go to
Speaker 2: people that you follow on Twitter?
Speaker 3: So when there was high political drama, I smell a
Speaker 3: lot of time with lots of political people. But I
Speaker 3: follow everybody in that and I read them very quickly.
Speaker 3: And now I'm really interested in vaccines, and so I'm
Speaker 3: following a lot of various vaccine I just interviewed Michelle
Speaker 3: doctor Michelle Williams of Harvard Today, and so I tend
Speaker 3: to follow a lot of vaccine experts this week because
Speaker 3: I'm interested in distribution or things like that. It often
Speaker 3: depends on what I'm covering. Like I did a really
Speaker 3: good interview with Kathy Park Hoong about the attacks on
Speaker 3: Asian Americans in the United States, and I besides reading
Speaker 3: her book, which was amazing, I followed lots of discussion
Speaker 3: about it on Twitter, for example, and I followed lots
Speaker 3: of I tend to use more digital things than I
Speaker 3: do television or things like that, but I do avail
Speaker 3: myself to like I'm very interested in QAnon, and I've
Speaker 3: watched all the q and and documentaries, the one on
Speaker 3: HBO and things like that, and I sort of tend
Speaker 3: to get deep into a topic and then learn all
Speaker 3: about it.
Speaker 1: I wantn't know with interviews, what's your process for preparing
Speaker 1: for an interview.
Speaker 3: My process is before I did it all myself, but
Speaker 3: the Times has given me these great producers who tend
Speaker 3: to produce a background document and I tend to read
Speaker 3: almost everything and then we then they come up with
Speaker 3: you know, I give them thing called curiosities, where I said,
Speaker 3: this is what I'm interested in. If we're interviewing like
Speaker 3: I just interviewed Don Lemon. Here's the ten things I'm
Speaker 3: interested in. And then they make suggestions and then we
Speaker 3: have a discussion about it, and then they create a
Speaker 3: question document based on the narrative I want for the interview,
Speaker 3: and they can suggest you know, actually you said start
Speaker 3: with this. What about if we start with this? Because
Speaker 3: of this, it's almost like writing a story together with
Speaker 3: a bunch of people. And then we look over the
Speaker 3: question and we have a meeting about the question document
Speaker 3: and move that around, and then during the interview, they're
Speaker 3: talking to me through the Google doc, you know, as
Speaker 3: I'm going. But I tend to do it many, like
Speaker 3: many weeks of research depend on several different interviews that
Speaker 3: are going on.
Speaker 2: That's amazing how broad it is. How do you decide
Speaker 2: on who to interview?
Speaker 3: I always have a conceptual idea of what I'm doing.
Speaker 3: So conceptually it's about power, and so what is power?
Speaker 3: And that's that's how I That could be anybody, right,
Speaker 3: It creates a rather large basket of people you can interview,
Speaker 3: and so I try to find really interesting ways into
Speaker 3: a broader topic. You know, I tend to another thing.
Speaker 3: I spend a lot of time is trying to be diverse.
Speaker 3: And I'm not doing this for virtue signaling or anything else.
Speaker 3: But there's plenty of people out there, and you just
Speaker 3: don't you don't have to have Everyone doesn't have to
Speaker 3: be a white guy, right, it just doesn't. And so
Speaker 3: I can find like epine biologists, there's dozens I could find,
Speaker 3: Like they're all qualified, every one of them. But I
Speaker 3: tended to look around so I get the most diverse,
Speaker 3: whether it's a woman, a person of color. Just try
Speaker 3: to be more diverse in my thinking age geography. It's
Speaker 3: not just gender and race, it's everything. Like we try
Speaker 3: intentionally to try to find a broader range of people
Speaker 3: for you to meet, right so that you understand the
Speaker 3: world in a much broader way, because I think that's
Speaker 3: just more knowledge is better, and so if you have
Speaker 3: more points of view, you get a lot more you know,
Speaker 3: you get a lot more perspective. And some people are
Speaker 3: just just like Nancy Pelosi, I don't really have to
Speaker 3: you know. Just this past four weeks, we had doctor
Speaker 3: Michelle Williams who's an epidemiologist at Harvard, Diana Triheo, who
Speaker 3: is the Mars Rover person, Apple CEO, Tim Cook you know,
Speaker 3: we try really hard to mix up people so people
Speaker 3: will find it interesting.
Speaker 2: That's amazing.
Speaker 1: I've read that you don't feel intimidated or nervous going
Speaker 1: into interviews.
Speaker 2: Is that true? Yes?
Speaker 3: Now, except for maybe if I ever got Dolly Parton,
Speaker 3: But I think I wouldn't it be so happy? I
Speaker 3: really would like to interview Dolly Parton. She has said yes,
Speaker 3: yet I will get Dolly Parton to yes at some point. No,
Speaker 3: I don't feel nervous. Feel nervous, why should I.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about the flow of the interview.
Speaker 1: You talked about almost thinking about it as a story.
Speaker 1: How how do you plan for it? Like what makes
Speaker 1: a good for opening part of the interview through to
Speaker 1: the rest of it.
Speaker 3: You know, one of the things interviewers they make a
Speaker 3: mistake is they reel off a list of questions and
Speaker 3: don't there. They don't shift from it if things change,
Speaker 3: If I respond to what people are telling me, it's
Speaker 3: like it's more than a story. It's a conversation. Like
Speaker 3: you'd have at dinner with someone you wouldn't go and next,
Speaker 3: let me ask you about that next. You know what
Speaker 3: I mean? You wouldn't do that, you would have a
Speaker 3: things fork off from each other, and so I spend
Speaker 3: a lot of time with a basics construct of here's
Speaker 3: the six things I really want to find out I
Speaker 3: want to ask this person. But I tend to sort
Speaker 3: of group them in things that naturally flow from one
Speaker 3: or another. And sometimes I'm like, let's hit them hard
Speaker 3: at the top. Sometimes I'm like, let's just wait, let's
Speaker 3: you know, let's introduce it this way. So you because
Speaker 3: you want to sort of you want to have people
Speaker 3: to be comfortable to talk to you. At the same time,
Speaker 3: you don't want to not show discomfort with some things
Speaker 3: you don't like about them, right And in some cases
Speaker 3: it just goes I mean, I think one of the
Speaker 3: most successful in reis was this parlor ceo who I
Speaker 3: got to say the truth, which is he doesn't care
Speaker 3: about moderating, right like, and you know, it got him fired,
Speaker 3: it got farther thrown off. But you know, the day
Speaker 3: before the interview, everything was fine. The day after they
Speaker 3: were thrown off every platform, and it was because I
Speaker 3: was very I was right near the capital. I was
Speaker 3: very emotional. You know, the capital was being attacked. I
Speaker 3: love the capital, I live near it, and I was
Speaker 3: like what the hell what are you talking about? Like
Speaker 3: and so, and he kept saying false things to me,
Speaker 3: like the New York Times, you know, promotes riots. I go,
Speaker 3: what are you talking about? That is not true? And
Speaker 3: then he said some people say and I said, no,
Speaker 3: people say, you just made that up, like you know
Speaker 3: what I mean? Like so, it was as if I
Speaker 3: was having a conversation, but I had I had a
Speaker 3: list of things I wanted to talk to about, and
Speaker 3: moderation was one of them. And that's why, you know,
Speaker 3: that's why we that's why it worked. I ultimately got
Speaker 3: answers to all the questions that people wanted to know about.
Speaker 3: It was this platform irresponsible and how it monitors its users.
Speaker 3: There's one question usually with each person. In case of
Speaker 3: Tim Cook, there's like six or seven.
Speaker 1: How do you deal with people who are evading answering questions?
Speaker 3: I say it that you didn't answer the question, like,
Speaker 3: I don't pretend I don't try a lot of interviews
Speaker 3: back into questions.
Speaker 2: Like so.
Speaker 3: There are some people who say, you know, like they
Speaker 3: back into it. I don't know why. I'm like Tim Cook,
Speaker 3: I'm like, okay. Lots of people say you're a monopoly
Speaker 3: in the app store, and they want to shut you
Speaker 3: down by antitrust? Can I have your reaction? I like
Speaker 3: I ask very direct questions. I do think people appreciate
Speaker 3: direct questions. I one hundred percent think that.
Speaker 1: How do you shake people out of the talking points?
Speaker 3: I say that's a talking point? Can we move on?
Speaker 3: When precisely I actually say that physically, I say that's
Speaker 3: a talking point? Are we done with this yet? Because
Speaker 3: just let me know? Because I'm tired of these talking points?
Speaker 3: And I don't do it rudely. I'm like, you know,
Speaker 3: that's a time you don't really want to talk like that, right?
Speaker 3: Is that how you want to present yourself?
Speaker 2: I find your directness very inspiring.
Speaker 3: I'm just clear direct. I'm direct. Yeah. I think people
Speaker 3: like it. I think I think the interviewers like it.
Speaker 3: By the interviewees like it because they don't have to
Speaker 3: like they're like, oh, okay, she's going to ask. There's
Speaker 3: no like idea that I'm not going to be clear.
Speaker 3: I think we're smart. People respect it. I think that's
Speaker 3: why they keep coming back for more. I never, like,
Speaker 3: never catch them like I don't. I'm just direct, and
Speaker 3: that's easier than people who catch them.
Speaker 1: Right, definitely, definitely, I want to know with pivot, what
Speaker 1: does the preparation process look like. I'm always so keen
Speaker 1: to know, you know, with podcasts, I listened to what
Speaker 1: happens before the show.
Speaker 3: We have this system. I'm working in a little studio
Speaker 3: and I set everything up myself. There's nobody here. We
Speaker 3: do everything virtually, so what the engineer is on the call,
Speaker 3: we use squadcast, and then we've we've the engineer has
Speaker 3: walked through the subject on how to set up their things,
Speaker 3: so there's usually not most of can you hear me?
Speaker 3: Can you hear me? There's none of that, and then
Speaker 3: we just go right in and I say this is
Speaker 3: going to take I often always say, uh, this is
Speaker 3: going to be an hour, so sit back, like this
Speaker 3: is not a cable network thing, so you're gonna have
Speaker 3: to you know, dig deep heer if you don't mind,
Speaker 3: And so I tend to do that. Sometimes there's banter
Speaker 3: because sometimes I know someone and I you know, and
Speaker 3: sometimes we use it. Sometimes we use the the the uh,
Speaker 3: the banter, and sometimes we don't. But but I tend
Speaker 3: to like try to like say something nice to them,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, like or something happened in
Speaker 3: the news, I'm like, oh, what do you think about that?
Speaker 3: Or if I hadn't seen them in a while, like
Speaker 3: sometimes like oh we haven't seen each other since this time,
Speaker 3: and talk about that. But anyway, I try to like
Speaker 3: have an ongoing relationship with people so that by the
Speaker 3: time they get to my podcast, we have a relationship.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I read that about you that you're a really big
Speaker 1: proponent of staying in touch with people that you interview,
Speaker 1: whereas a lot of reporters are very transactional. What's been
Speaker 1: your approach for I guess building those relationships in that network.
Speaker 3: My approach is I just people don't contact people. I
Speaker 3: know it sounds crazy, but they just don't.
Speaker 2: I just do.
Speaker 3: I Like, anyone I want to meet, you can usually
Speaker 3: get to them through Twitter or whatever, and I don't.
Speaker 3: I just text them or whatever, or if I if
Speaker 3: I don't have their email, I go on Twitter and
Speaker 3: DM them or sometimes publicly like hey it Scara, call me.
Speaker 2: What are your favorite podcasts to listen to?
Speaker 3: Well, I listen to my own lot. Actually I want
Speaker 3: to see how they sound and it works. Pivot I
Speaker 3: listen to every week. I don't listen to sway all
Speaker 3: the time because they're so long and I remember them
Speaker 3: so But I listen to Pivolt to see what works
Speaker 3: and what doesn't work. I have the daily. I don't
Speaker 3: listen to it every day, though, and I sometimes listen
Speaker 3: to pod save a matory, you know when when when
Speaker 3: Kevin rus haad rabbit Hole. I like series, and so
Speaker 3: I listened to that. I listen to Dolly Partons America.
Speaker 3: Of course. I like to listen to interesting podcasts by
Speaker 3: young people. I was teaching at the University of Chicago
Speaker 3: this semester, and this one student I thought was super
Speaker 3: promising podcaster has a podcast called kind Of sort Of Brown,
Speaker 3: which I really like. I think it's kind of cool.
Speaker 3: I think she does. She does really, It's just I'm
Speaker 3: always interested in what she had. She she does with
Speaker 3: a bunch of young people there Niversity Chicago, and I
Speaker 3: really like, I really like it.
Speaker 1: When you're listening to pivot your own podcast, what what
Speaker 1: are you listening for when you're you know, listening critically
Speaker 1: to it?
Speaker 3: I guess, well, it's sort of like how many people
Speaker 3: who listen to shows see what jokes land, you know,
Speaker 3: with a lot of what works, what goes on too long,
Speaker 3: if I'm if Scott is interrupting me too much, or
Speaker 3: I'm interrupting him too much. Everything I listened to everything,
Speaker 3: how the opening worked, If we should change anything, ideas
Speaker 3: for the next show. I tend to think of I'm
Speaker 3: always thinking of new things we can do, length of things.
Speaker 3: We don't do a lot of editing on this thing.
Speaker 3: It's not highly produced. So it's produced. So we have
Speaker 3: a really good producer, Rebecca, but we don't. It's not
Speaker 3: highly produced. As you know, The Daily is highly produced.
Speaker 1: It is not I would say, hey, there, it's time
Speaker 1: for a little ad break, but can I ask a
Speaker 1: favor of you? If you're enjoying how I work, I'd
Speaker 1: be so grateful if you could hit pause and leave
Speaker 1: a little review. You might want to hit the star
Speaker 1: button and leave a star review, or maybe write some
Speaker 1: kind words thank you in advance. If you're one of
Speaker 1: the hundreds of people that have done this. It's a
Speaker 1: great way to help other people find out about how
Speaker 1: I work. And it also just brings me lots of warm,
Speaker 1: fuzzy feelings, so that's nice too.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: Kara will be back after this short break where she
Speaker 1: reveals the best piece of career advice she's ever received,
Speaker 1: and she also gives me feedback on my interview style.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about social media because Twitter's obviously
Speaker 1: features in your life in terms of staying on top
Speaker 1: of things. Yet you are able to, particularly on your
Speaker 1: Tuesdays you were talking about, stay really efficient and focused.
Speaker 1: So what is your relationship like with social media?
Speaker 3: I just use Twitter. I don't use Facebook at all.
Speaker 3: I don't use Facebook. I've a giant waste of data,
Speaker 3: sucking waste of my time. I don't look at Instagram.
Speaker 3: I don't find it. I don't really want to look
Speaker 3: at people's lunches all that much. If they're really good,
Speaker 3: they'll put them on Twitter. I get why people like Instagram.
Speaker 3: I get it. It's just too performative for me. I
Speaker 3: like TikTok, but I get sucked into the TikTok hole.
Speaker 3: If I go in there, I stay there for a
Speaker 3: long time.
Speaker 2: How do you not let it consume me?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: How do you switch off when you've actually got writing
Speaker 2: to do?
Speaker 3: I have to put it away. It's addictive. I love it,
Speaker 3: it's so fun. I don't I'm not addicted to anything.
Speaker 3: I don't smile. I don't drink. I don't take drugs,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, Like it's a drug, it's
Speaker 3: a drink. I like news, So it's a perfect app
Speaker 3: for me because I news. I've just been lately doing
Speaker 3: you know, I do live twitters after I do certain
Speaker 3: New York Times stuff, and that's fun to interact with
Speaker 3: the audience. But lately we've been trying Twitter spaces, which
Speaker 3: is essentially not clubhouse, and I like it a lot
Speaker 3: because my interest graph is there and we've been getting
Speaker 3: you know, five hundred more people coming in on a
Speaker 3: Friday night talking about you know, like last week it
Speaker 3: was Amazon's union stuff, and so we bring in interesting
Speaker 3: people to talk to and then we let most people
Speaker 3: on there, so it's sort of like talk radio. I
Speaker 3: really kind of like it. I'm fascinated by the audio
Speaker 3: live space.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Something I've read about you is that I'm, like quite
Speaker 1: a few guests I've had on the show, impostera syndrome
Speaker 1: is not something that you have had.
Speaker 2: Can you talk to me about that.
Speaker 3: I don't have imposter syndrome. I think I'm great. I
Speaker 3: don't know why I am. I mean, when I do
Speaker 3: things wrong, I'm like, oh, that sucked, but I tend
Speaker 3: not to think that. Most of the time. I have
Speaker 3: a good assessment of my qualities, is what I would say.
Speaker 3: I had an interesting talk with my son. I talked
Speaker 3: to my oldest son and I've been talking a lot lately,
Speaker 3: which is interesting. He's at NYU for the first year
Speaker 3: and we've talked a lot about what makes a person
Speaker 3: like and stuff. And he was, you know, he was
Speaker 3: reading me some stuff he wrote. He's a beautiful writer.
Speaker 3: Don't believe it, but he's quite a good writer. And
Speaker 3: you know, it's so funny because he goes he goes, no,
Speaker 3: I'm not, and I'm like, have I ever said you're
Speaker 3: good at something when you're not? And he goes, no,
Speaker 3: you haven't. I said, so you must be a good writer,
Speaker 3: because I wouldn't say so. I'd say nothing, or I
Speaker 3: would say it's bad. Probably, So I tend to be
Speaker 3: very clear with my feedback. And I'm good with that
Speaker 3: myself about myself too. So if I'm good at something,
Speaker 3: I say so. If I'm not, I say so. But
Speaker 3: when I'm good at I'm quite good at so I
Speaker 3: say that.
Speaker 1: Where did you get that from? I feel like that's
Speaker 1: really unusual. Like particularly when when we're younger.
Speaker 3: Well, I have eyes, I can see. I know if
Speaker 3: i'm good. I know if i'm good against other people.
Speaker 3: Like I wanted to be an architect, but I was terrible.
Speaker 3: I was terrible. I loved it. I love drawing, but
Speaker 3: everything I designed looked like shit. And I was like,
Speaker 3: I'm not good at this, Like I just knew it.
Speaker 3: I just didn't. And this other girls that next to
Speaker 3: me was so good, and I was like everything she
Speaker 3: designed this is beautiful. Like I'm aware of other people
Speaker 3: being better at things, even if I wish I were
Speaker 3: better at them. I don't know. I'm just truthful about
Speaker 3: myself and the things around. And that includes being truthful,
Speaker 3: not necessarily in a negative way. It's always done in
Speaker 3: a negative way to people. I'm not good at this.
Speaker 3: I don't measure up that person's richer. I don't think
Speaker 3: like that. I'm like that was good. I make a
Speaker 3: lot of money, like you know what I mean, Like
Speaker 3: you know, and so it's I'm just I'm just pretty
Speaker 3: clear about my capabilities.
Speaker 2: Wow, it's almost like this object comparison.
Speaker 3: Well, I just think you know, the world tries to
Speaker 3: drag down women. You know what I mean, they drag
Speaker 3: down people are marginalized. I think a little bit has
Speaker 3: to do with being gay. I guess if I had
Speaker 3: to pick anything, is that. You know, all the messaging
Speaker 3: was so negative when I was coming up. When I
Speaker 3: was I'm an older person, and so it was a
Speaker 3: lot different than it is today. It's not good today either,
Speaker 3: by the way, for transport transgender kids right now. I
Speaker 3: just was very confident, so you had to be because
Speaker 3: there were so many negative images, and I kept thinking,
Speaker 3: I'm great, I'm pretty happy, I'm gay, like you know
Speaker 3: what I mean, Like I was. It was just like,
Speaker 3: that's not true, that's not true. And so I think
Speaker 3: that's how I think you get if you have a
Speaker 3: lot of incoming in your life and you're able to
Speaker 3: fend it off, you feel pretty confident about yourself.
Speaker 2: I'm fascinated by that.
Speaker 3: I don't have. My daughter is really interesting. She's super confident.
Speaker 3: She's My sons are wonderful guys. They're older, they're sixteen
Speaker 3: and almost almost sixteen, almost nineteen, and my daughter is
Speaker 3: one and a half, a little bit over one and
Speaker 3: a half, and she's so confident. It's so fascinating to watch.
Speaker 3: She just walks through the world, that's right, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean? Like, and last night she was just
Speaker 3: dancing and just she didn't care, She couldn't care less.
Speaker 3: She was like, I'm dancing, That's what I'm doing. And
Speaker 3: then I'm going to just throw myself into it. And
Speaker 3: so you always wonder what happens to girls. For example,
Speaker 3: iway keep going with is because I boys is easy.
Speaker 3: They're always confident by the way most of the time,
Speaker 3: or the world lets them be confident most of the time.
Speaker 3: And I was like, where's the point where they're going
Speaker 3: to try to pull down this enormous confidence this little
Speaker 3: girl has, right, what's the moment? And so I want
Speaker 3: to watch it really carefully because I don't want her
Speaker 3: to let go of it because it's it's magical, right,
Speaker 3: Her confidence and herself and her abilities is really quite high.
Speaker 3: And so where are the little places that, you know,
Speaker 3: shave an edge off of her? And I'm not going
Speaker 3: to let that happen. I love that because she's going
Speaker 3: to do better by staying the way she is, by
Speaker 3: having wonder confidence and everything else. And I'm not being
Speaker 3: being stupidly dangerous. I don't want to run down, run
Speaker 3: down the steps or anything like that. But but it's
Speaker 3: it's an interesting I'm watching It's going to be interesting
Speaker 3: having a daughter over two sons, because sons are alway,
Speaker 3: They're always like, I'm great, I'm great. I was like,
Speaker 3: you're not so great. Oh I'm great.
Speaker 2: Where does it come from?
Speaker 3: Where does it come from?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 1: With writing, I want to know how can people make
Speaker 1: their writing better for listeners that are are fans of
Speaker 1: your work and your writing?
Speaker 2: What can ask me immortals do to be better writers?
Speaker 3: Well, you're not. I am also immortal. To give you
Speaker 3: some infidet I know you think I'm a god from
Speaker 3: another planet, but now just be clear, just I think
Speaker 3: people tend to be performative in their writing, right, they're not.
Speaker 3: They like they imagine what a writer is supposed to sound,
Speaker 3: like you should develop your own voice and stick to it,
Speaker 3: and like there's certain things don't like write run on sentences.
Speaker 3: There's like a bunch of rules. One of my favorite
Speaker 3: books is Drunk and White's Elements of Style. Still just
Speaker 3: read that and don't do those things like that. They
Speaker 3: say not to, but I think most people don't. They
Speaker 3: tend to get very flourishy or performative instead of just
Speaker 3: writing simply into the point. And I think if you
Speaker 3: get to that, then you can later It's like learn
Speaker 3: to draw on apple, and then later you can be Picasso.
Speaker 3: Picasso drew a beautiful apple, by the way, before he
Speaker 3: was Picasso, he could draw an apple right, or he
Speaker 3: could do like the basics. So master a couple of things.
Speaker 3: The essay is, if you're a news reporter and knew
Speaker 3: a good news report, master a longer form piece, and
Speaker 3: then you know, then you can get more challenging and experimental.
Speaker 3: It's like skiing, like start on the bunny slope, then
Speaker 3: do intermedia, then go down the other one, you know,
Speaker 3: the black diamond or whatever. And so I think people
Speaker 3: don't spend enough time thinking about like a craft, right,
Speaker 3: do it over and over and over again, just like
Speaker 3: dancing or anything else. How did you I was always writing?
Speaker 3: I wasn't I wasn't a bio. I wasn't a diary
Speaker 3: person at all. I just I don't know. I just
Speaker 3: started writing. I was good at it. I just was good.
Speaker 3: I was very articulate as a child about anything. I
Speaker 3: had a very I had a very easy time talking.
Speaker 3: And then I just typed what I was saying. You know,
Speaker 3: I just don't. I just I learned. I had great teachers.
Speaker 3: I had several teachers who were just in especially sixth
Speaker 3: and seventh grade, who were very encouraging and creative and
Speaker 3: the way they taught. But I also had one ture
Speaker 3: who was just a grammar. I don't want to say
Speaker 3: grammar Nazi, because Nazis shouldn't be used for things like that,
Speaker 3: but she was a grammar. She was just a very
Speaker 3: strong on grammar and she drilled into me proper grammar.
Speaker 3: And I know it sounds dumb, but it gives you
Speaker 3: a structure. And so I'm not always perfect, but I
Speaker 3: definitely think about how important that structural stuff was to
Speaker 3: being a good writer.
Speaker 2: A couple more questions for you.
Speaker 1: I always feel, I'm not sure if nervous is the
Speaker 1: right word, but when I'm interviewing someone that interviews other
Speaker 1: people for a living, I'm always curious as to what
Speaker 1: they're thinking. Given you're so direct with feedback, give me
Speaker 1: some feedback, Kara, for how this interview is in you.
Speaker 3: You're an excellent interviewer. You ask good questions, You're flowing nicely,
Speaker 3: You're asking things are following you're actually listening to what
Speaker 3: I'm saying and then following up with questions about what
Speaker 3: we're talking about. I think you're curious. I think that's
Speaker 3: the most important part for an interviewer, is to be curious.
Speaker 3: And you're not doing rote like here's my list of questions.
Speaker 3: I'm going to get through them, so it feels like
Speaker 3: question answer, question answer, question answer. And that's where most
Speaker 3: interviewers go wrong is they're not hearing what the person
Speaker 3: is saying. You know, you keep you're doing an interesting conversation.
Speaker 3: That's how you should think of it. An interesting conversation.
Speaker 2: Okay, give give me some constructive feedback. What can I
Speaker 2: do better?
Speaker 3: I'd up the aussy accent. People love a charming Australian. Yes,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna use it next time. You probably try to
Speaker 3: please me too much, so you're not saying anything really
Speaker 3: mean or tough, not unfairly, but like, I don't think
Speaker 3: you want to be too tough on me. Probably you're
Speaker 3: nervous because because I'm probably faster than you and probably
Speaker 3: could slap you down really hard. That would be my guest. Yeah,
Speaker 3: probably you're nervous about saying anything too I didn't like
Speaker 3: that I didn't like when you did that, and so
Speaker 3: those are hard questions. Like when I was in reading
Speaker 3: Tim Cook the other day, I forgot. I didn't not forget,
Speaker 3: but I enough time to ask about China. But I
Speaker 3: was pretty tough when I'm bearing the app and I
Speaker 3: made sure that I had like, I think you're wrong,
Speaker 3: like we so we could have a point of and
Speaker 3: I thought that too. I wasn't doing it just to
Speaker 3: be pointlessly difficult. I was like, I have a problem
Speaker 3: with this, and so do a lot of people. But
Speaker 3: I don't say other people say. I usually say I
Speaker 3: have a problem with this. So you probably don't want
Speaker 3: to be mean to me. But I haven't never really
Speaker 3: done anything deserving meanness. I'm not sure you know what
Speaker 3: I mean, Like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I appreciate your feedback, and that's very true.
Speaker 1: I think I would feel nervous to disagree because I
Speaker 1: have such a high opinion of you.
Speaker 3: That's why Scott works so well, because we disagree all
Speaker 3: the time, and we both are good at pushing back.
Speaker 3: You know, people are. It's so funny. Someone said to me,
Speaker 3: he's so offensive. He said that to me. I was like,
Speaker 3: uh huh. And they're like aren't you angry all the time.
Speaker 3: I'm like, no, no, he's offensive. Yeah, I don't agree
Speaker 3: with them. And then I push back, like and they're like, well,
Speaker 3: I think you should find someone who's less offensive. I'm like,
Speaker 3: the whole friggin point of the show is that we
Speaker 3: disagree on a lot of stuff and we agree on
Speaker 3: some stuff. I said, it's a whole that's the whole formula.
Speaker 3: Is that there's people really like civil disagreement. And because
Speaker 3: there's so much partisanship down that's so mean. If people
Speaker 3: could have debate over issues that isn't political and isn't partisan,
Speaker 3: it's it's a pleasure. Also. The last thing is you
Speaker 3: can have a point of That's what I would say.
Speaker 3: I have a point of view and I get it
Speaker 3: through and so I think that's the reason I think
Speaker 3: I'm really successful is I'm very clear about my point
Speaker 3: of view, and I think some interviews pretend they don't
Speaker 3: have one, and I think it's really helpful to listeners
Speaker 3: to have one.
Speaker 1: I like that, Yeah, it's funny. I've received that feedback
Speaker 1: before from Adam Grant. Actually, more about sharing more of
Speaker 1: my own strategies, which I sometimes do, but I do
Speaker 1: kind of stay away from that because I'm like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: this is about the guest, and that's what listeners that.
Speaker 3: People are tuning into you, not the guests. It's your interview.
Speaker 3: I'll tell I'll give you one piece of ass. I
Speaker 3: got the best piece of besse I ever got my
Speaker 3: life from a professional. Thing is I was writing my
Speaker 3: first book on AOL and I was overwhelmed. I was
Speaker 3: a young reporter and I was good, but I still
Speaker 3: was very early in my career, and I was just
Speaker 3: beside myself because I interviewed all these people and there
Speaker 3: was so much information. There's just so much coming in,
Speaker 3: and I didn't know quite how to organize it. And
Speaker 3: I called a friend of mine who wrote true crime
Speaker 3: novels of all things. I love those book kind of books.
Speaker 3: You know, she'd cover a trial and then write a
Speaker 3: novel and not a novel, a nonfiction book about some
Speaker 3: crime or whatever. And I said, I don't know what
Speaker 3: to do. I'm just going crazy. The only person I
Speaker 3: know who's written a book, and she said, it's not
Speaker 3: because it's not the whole. It's not the story of AOL.
Speaker 3: It's your story of AOL. What's your story? What do
Speaker 3: you want to say about it? And I was like, Oh,
Speaker 3: it's not the story, it's a story. And I was like, oh,
Speaker 3: oh that's easy. I'll tell you what I think of this.
Speaker 3: So that was a really helpful thing. That's still to
Speaker 3: this day, it's twenty thirty years on whatever, I'm still like,
Speaker 3: what is my story?
Speaker 1: My final question for you is for listeners that want
Speaker 1: to consume more of what you're doing, what's the best
Speaker 1: way for them to do that?
Speaker 3: Oh, lots of ways. Very I make a lot of content. Well,
Speaker 3: some of it's free, some of it, all of it's free.
Speaker 3: You just have to listen to an ad. You can
Speaker 3: listen This Way podcast at the New York Times if
Speaker 3: you want, and you could listen you can dig into
Speaker 3: things you like or not whatever. They're very long and
Speaker 3: they take commitment on your on behalf. I assume you're
Speaker 3: a smart person, So if you're tuning in, you're not
Speaker 3: going to get reductive, twitchy bullshit. Secondly, pivot you'll get reductive,
Speaker 3: twitchy bullshit. No, No, it's more fun. It's news topical.
Speaker 3: It's really fast and funny, and we sometimes have interview.
Speaker 3: We have interviews every week on a Friend of pivot
Speaker 3: and different things, and it's really fun. It's easy to consume.
Speaker 3: It's super easy consume. We might column in the New
Speaker 3: York Times, I write, I have an events that I do,
Speaker 3: and I'm always I do Twitter lives and Twitter spaces
Speaker 3: a lot, and I wander around my neighborhood a lot.
Speaker 3: You can find me DC. I was coming out of
Speaker 3: a target yesterday, yesterday, Yeah, and I was wearing a
Speaker 3: mask in my sunglasses because people know me by my
Speaker 3: sunglasses right as I always do. And I was coming.
Speaker 3: Then this guy's gone, and he goes, it's you. And
Speaker 3: I was like, what. He goes, you go to stores?
Speaker 3: You said you went to stores. And I was like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, Hi, And he goes, it's great to
Speaker 3: meet you. And like he felt like he had a
Speaker 3: relationship with me, which was great, and I really thought, good,
Speaker 3: good for me, good for him. Like that he said something,
Speaker 3: and then we ended up talking about retail. Where it
Speaker 3: was going.
Speaker 2: That's awesome.
Speaker 1: I will link to old in the show notes as
Speaker 1: well as your local target.
Speaker 3: Find me in the local target. In friendship, heates, I
Speaker 3: don't live up there. I was up there doing something,
Speaker 3: but you can find me wandering around it. I'm often
Speaker 3: in hardware stores. Hey love hardware stores.
Speaker 2: Good to note.
Speaker 1: We'll link to some of your local ones in the
Speaker 1: show notes. Kara, It's been an absolute joy. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for your time.
Speaker 3: All Right, thank you so much.
Speaker 2: That is it for today's show.
Speaker 1: If you haven't already, hit subscribe or follow on this podcast,
Speaker 1: you might want to do that. Next week, I'm very
Speaker 1: excited to share an interview with a tech entrepreneur called
Speaker 1: Sam Carcos, who is the founder and CEO of a
Speaker 1: company that you probably haven't heard of called Levels, who
Speaker 1: are doing some awesome, awesome stuff in the area of
Speaker 1: health tech. And I got to say, after interviewing Sam,
Speaker 1: I can definitely conclude that he is one of the
Speaker 1: nerdiest productivity people that I've spoken to, and I mean
Speaker 1: that in a very very complimentary way. It is jam
Speaker 1: packed with practical tips to get better at your work.
Speaker 1: So hit subscribe or follow if you haven't already. How
Speaker 1: I Work is produced by Inventium with production support from
Speaker 1: Dead Said Studios.
Speaker 2: The producer for this.
Speaker 1: Episode was the marvelous Jenna Koda, and thank you to
Speaker 1: Martin Nimba, who does the audio mix for all of
Speaker 1: How I work and makes everything sound awesome.
Speaker 2: See you next week.