On with Kara Swisher

It's about the political life of Abraham Lincoln through the lens of disagreement.

It's called Differ We Must, How Lincoln Succeeded in a Divided America and it's structured around these kind of key moments and key relationships that Abraham Lincoln had on topics of disagreement, really difficult topics, topics like slavery.

It's a political strategy book in a lot of ways, because one of InSkeeps major points is that political leaders in democracies need to have majorities, which seems super obvious, but it seems also pertinent in today's climate.

Lincoln was in many ways a partisan. He was a member in his early years of what was called the Whig Party, which was one of the two major parties. And he was a very loyal party guy who did partisan things. But he realized that he needed a majority for his point of view.

He was urged by a slave owner that he'd known for years named Duff Green... urged to accept a compromise with the South. And the compromise was they would enshrine slavery in the Constitution forever, along with a number of other things. And Lincoln talked to the guy, but ultimately he and his party could not go along with that kind of compromise.

the nut graph of this book is that achievement is not based on your innate talent and he gives the example of himself being someone who could barely touch his toes to becoming someone who qualified as a junior Olympian as a diver.

It's kind of like Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours, but it's more woo-woo, I think, more scientific and more woo-woo.

I think one of the mistakes that a lot of people make is they assume that if I want to determine what my potential looks like, I've got to either be a genius or I have to be the world's hardest worker. And ideally both. And I don't think that either is actually necessary.

everything has Hidden Potential. You don't have to be a Wunderkin to accomplish great things.

I'm giving you these comments because I have very high expectations and I'm confident you can reach them.

She has published more than a dozen books, non-fiction and fiction, which span from her bestselling memoir Hunger to the Marvel comic series World of Wakanda.

Anything by Anne Lamott. I think Bird by Bird is a really great book by her. I think she's just a beautiful writer. She writes a lot about this topic and she does it in many of her books.

I'm Ruth Bengayet. I write about fascism, authoritarianism and propaganda. My big question is what do you say to the it can't happen here crowd who would read your book as history but don't believe there are any lessons in it for the present?

Barbara Quaid is a law professor at the University of Michigan, a former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, a legal analyst for NBC and MSNBC and the author of Attacks from Within which methodically dissects the domestic disinformation threat and proposes a raft of solutions.

Wilkerson's book is about invisible systems that rank humanity into arbitrary hierarchies. She connects the violent racism of the Jim Crow South to anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany and to India's Caste system, which cruelly relegates the Dalit people as untouchables.

Cast was a number one New York Times bestseller in 2020, though it languished on DuVernay's nightstand until Oprah, yes, that Oprah, finally convinced her just to get into it.

It's one of the ways in which Isabel Wilkerson actually explained it to me. Personally, and I remembered hearing the word and thinking, oh, that helps me organize it in my mind in a certain way.

One of the things that Isabel Wilkerson does so beautifully in her work, whether it's The Walk of the Mother's Sons, whether in her writing as a journalist or in Caste, is she is able to explain these large, you know, complex issues in a thousand different ways, and one of them you're going to get.

This is the metaphor that Wilkerson uses in a book. And as you say in the film, any more deterioration is on our watch.

It's quite an honor. I even for someone who has been working in this field for decades, this feels like an inflection moment.

I worry, however, the enthusiasm for AI is preventing us from reckoning with its looming effects on society.

Despite its name, there's nothing artificial about this technology. It was made by humans intended to behave like humans and affect humans. So we want to play a positive role in tomorrow's world. It must be guided by human concerns.

I still feel this is going to be a continued and uphill battle. But it's a battle worth fighting.

One of my current biggest concern is the extreme imbalance asymmetry of lack of public sector investment in this technology.

Shafali, you talked to countless people who are trying to access abortion care just before and then after the Dobbs decision for your book, "Undo Burden", which is out in May. Explain how Dobbs has upended healthcare access, not only in states with abortion restrictions, but even in states that have expanded abortion rights.

democracies die more often through the ballot box than a gunpoint

Trump is a really different situation in a sense here in 2024. And that is that, you know, he remains popular with his base. And yet if you think about the way he is approaching the election of 2024, one of the things that fascinates me is he is not trying to appeal to undecided voters. He's really not trying to expand that base at all. In fact, he's doubling down on the extremism that attracts that very small group of people who are fervently loyal to him.

He is admitting he wants to be a dictator. He is saying that he will be a dictator from day one. He is talking about rounding up, putting in camps and deporting 10 million people who are here in the United States, including citizens, citizens under birthright citizenship, which he says he's going to get rid of. He is openly talking about staying in power longer than one more term.

the reason I started the book in 1937 is that people wanted me to write a book explaining the questions that people ask me every day, you know, how did the parties switch sides? What is a southern strategy? But I realized that the question people ask me most often is how did we get here? What on earth is going on and how do we get out of it?

in all the periods that you're talking about, there was a fervent defense of the principles of the Declaration of Independence, not only among people who were in office, often they were not defending those principles, but among marginalized Americans who stood on those principles with the argument that if we're really going to be this country by God, we ought to act like we're part of this country.

So I tried to teach myself, got rejected by everybody but it ended up getting published in 1987. And because it told this amazing true story it became almost like a text.

So I've written 12 novels. Things that I find interesting in my journalism and want to unpack and tell in a rich way that they really happen I put into my fiction.

So sometimes I do make them columns in the Washington Post and then there's a dimension that is, I don't know enough to write it as fact but I know enough to make it plausible fiction.

So this book opens with a Russian who thinks that he has discovered a Russian-Chinese technique for, as he calls it, a kill switch for turning off GPS satellites which would, as all your listeners understand, would have a crippling effect. You couldn't use your cell phone, you couldn't travel, commerce wouldn't work. And so he feels he has to share this secret with the CIA.

But why is this so critical? Why was this the thing you wanted to put in? That they had put in essentially a sleeper cell, not a person, but a sleeper software that would disable.

Cal Newport has these wonderful books, Deep Work, Slow Productivity.

So I have them read Deep Work, and they love it and they discover, oh wow, when I cut my notifications from 500 down to 100 a day, I actually can think for 10 minutes in a row.

I've spoken about psychedelics at length with Michael Pollan bestselling author of How to Change Your Mind who suggested Olivia Goldhill as our expert of the week.

Well, it was, let me tell you, it was gold. I mean, that's the long and the short of it is you live for moments like that if you're doing a piece, good or bad.

It was gold.

His latest book The Lie Detectives uncovers how Democratic operatives have tried to deal with the unending barrage of disinformation.

I actually think that the weather conditions do not play as big of a role as is often said because this is not going to be a beach invasion, this is not saving private Ryan Chinese edition, I spent a lot of time walking the terrain of Taiwan.

I've had conversations with senior Japanese government officials and others who have told me that if China occupies Taiwan, that is going to change everything for them, they're going to have a new sheriff in town that they're going to have to sing in large part to their tune in many ways that you see states, their neighbor in Russia, they're not part of NATO sitting into Russia's tune because they have no choice, the United States is far away.

You can't allow that to happen and Taiwan is that anchor point that if they take Taiwan they're going to be able to push the US out of the Western Pacific push us all the way back to potentially Hawaii it will change the entire dynamic of that region.

Chips are cold in new oil, I actually say in the book that's a misguided view because there are alternatives to oil there are no alternatives to semiconductors, our entire economy the digital economy runs on semiconductors.

I believe that we need to support Ukraine I don't believe that we need to withdraw from everywhere in the world and only focus on China but I do believe that China needs to be a top priority and as we are allocating our limited resources we should be asking what is going to be the impact to deter in this or only devastating conflict if it were to occur in the Taiwanese Strait.

And what we figured out drawing on the wonderful book by Richard Reeves Of Boys and Men is that boys have been withdrawing from the real world since the 70s and 80s.