Hostile Takeover
Kara Swisher's podcast, and this week's To-Read list
In the past week, I spoke at events in Cartagena, Colombia (Hay Literary Festival) as well as Calgary, Canada (University of Calgary Business School Speaker Series). Cartagena and Calgary have some obvious differences - hot and steamy vs cold and dry - as well as some unexpected similarities. In both places, people were upset and dismayed because their governments had been bullied with the threat of America tariffs. In both places, I met ordinary people concerned for friends and family who live and work in the U.S., as well as business people worried about the future of their companies. Canadians and Colombians have long considered themselves American allies. Now they don’t know whether that’s still true. All of it sounded much like what I heard, and wrote about, on my recent trip to Denmark.
From Cartagena (you can see the hotel room background if you watch the video) I recorded “On with Kara Swisher.” For those who don’t know her, Kara has been writing about Elon Musk and Silicon Valley for years; the other two members of a really knowledgeable, insightful panel were Eoin Higgins, author of Owned:How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left and Ryan Mac, who covers the tech industry for the New York Times. Among other things I talked about my recent article - on how Musk now presents a challenge to every democracy in Europe - but the conversation ranged widely.
Listen here, or else on whatever podcast platform you prefer:
