On with Kara Swisher

Sarah, you recently published a memoir slash reportage I guess a book called Xvangelicals I think I pronounced that right which looks at the post evangelical movement adults that were raised evangelical and then left the fold it's a best seller so congrats.

For example, in the 1920s when the novel The Well of Loneliness was put on trial and censored for fears it would lead to lesbian contagion, which I'm sorry to give you that information.

Nina Jankowicz is a disinformation researcher and author, the former vice president of the UK based Center for Information Resilience and famously was the head of President Biden's short lived disinformation governance board which quickly came under attack from Jim Jordan and others. To be fair it was a terrible name. She also recently wrote a joint review of Attacks from Within and The Lie Detectives for The Washington Post and she's a perfect expert to round out this trio.

Hi Cara this is nicole pearl roth author of This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends a long time cyber security journalist my question for your panelists today is the following one do you feel our system for tracking misinformation and disinformation has been neutered to the point that we'll even know if or when the upcoming election has been interfered with and secondly is there a way to track these threats in such a way that we can effectively protect the trackers themselves from the kinds of spurious political challenges and coordinated online campaigns that we've seen silence them over the past two years thanks so much

My latest book, My Life in Recipes, is also a memoir.

And you start with your parents and grandparents.

There are stories and recipes from Germany, Hungary, Poland.

It occurred to me when I was working on my memoir that nobody is just where we are.

I decided to go back to Germany because I have a lot of relatives who are Catholic now because there's a lot of intermarriage in my family.

You got the idea for your first cookbook, The Flavor of Jerusalem, when you were working as a foreign press out of Shea for the mayor of Jerusalem in the early 1970s.

And I sat down with Jews, Christians, Muslims, people that were proud of their food.

The book was rejected by more than it doesn't publishers because you were highlighting the fact that Jerusalem was a mosaic of Jews, Christians and Muslims.

These were American publishers they thought it was Jerusalem and we didn't want to make it kosher because we felt that there were Jews, Christians and Muslims in Jerusalem.

And we should show everybody and actually one of the recipes in The Flavor of Jerusalem was a shrimp or a sukiyaki.

Back in the 1980s you wrote American Folklife cookbook and then in 2005 the new American cookbook which won the James Beard award among others.

My American Folklife cookbook I tried getting traditional foods and people that were making traditional foods all over the country.

And then just so many different people I went to the last live in logging camp taking my daughter Marissa who I was nursing with me because they said we're going to close this and I wanted to see how they made breakfasts, big pancakes and things like that.

Back in the 1980s you wrote American Folklife cookbook and then in 2005 the new American cookbook which won the James Beard award among others.

And then when I did the new American cooking what I was interested in is how American food had changed over the last 40 years and it had changed tremendously.

I mean there were very few people like those early people that I interviewed and as I was saying before master cards and travel, cheap travel, change the way that Americans looked at food

I'm a dog slutter and author of the novel, Small Game.

I just wrote a book called Burn Book and you just wrote one called If You Can't Take the Heat.

So talk about how you decided to call this obviously it's a kitchen reference but talk a little bit more about that.

I think that besides just the kind of obvious metaphor there, I think that there is all of this pressure and frankly bullshit that we deal with as women and when I started looking at the culinary industry and our relationship with food, that seemed to heighten all of it.

I think it's tech is the metaphor in a very not only about feminist issues but other things, power about power and how we use power and the world, obviously food is power.

I like that user of fury. What does that mean? Of course people like to say women have rage or you're angry and you've been subject to that. How do you look at that, the idea of what fury is to you?

I call him Uncle Satan in the book so yeah so

Well you know I call him Uncle Satan in the book so yeah so

I'm not so sure him voted for Hillary I don't know I don't believe that when he says that now but I know he was a sport of Obama I know he thought Trump was an idiot and but he still wanted to participate in those councils so he could have a a dulcet effect presumably and instead of him it's like when someone goes into a cult and they they're to go get someone and they get in they stay in that kind of thing that's what it felt like

I think the trans stuff was weird he suddenly got obsessed with pedophiles which is of course down Q and on avenue um and everyone was a pito he got in trouble for that and so I don't know I think I covid and and I now that the journals written this story which I I was aware of his use of he was he likes a party um and the journal did a good job depicting what was I'd heard from people um and and the boards culpability and Tesla's board and partying with him and then getting tons of money so then he had these enablers around him that were laughing at every one of his jokes

I remember walking into a room where we didn't interview and he had two or three guys they were all guys around him and he said something that wasn't particularly funny and everyone went oh good one he lied and it goes carrot anything was funny I said did you make a joke was that supposed to be funny and he he was irritated by me because it wasn't funny but these guys were sort of saying well they were making money from him and I wasn't so do you see that phenomenon a lot I mean I've spent a lot of time there working with leaders where it's almost like at some point the CEO looks out of the window and sees this mystical land that they've built but it's like a Hollywood studio yeah that a lot of people have built to be right outside the window and their money is dependent on them the CEO like that's right yeah

And there's a great book called The Celluloid Closet and there's also a movie and it's depictions of gay people.

It was narrated by Willie Tomlin.

By Vito Rousseau.

They made this doc of it.

And it's better as a doc because you see the scenes.

The heart of the book is this everything that can be digitized will be digitized.

It was because I was on a fellowship. I downloaded Calvin and Hobbs into my... I must have been a compact computer. I don't know, maybe a Dallas and sort. But it was... I was amazed that I could download the book.

I remember looking at everything around me. I was thinking the news. And then I saw Craigslist. It sort of was... A lot of those moments were... Netflix too. When you guys started digit- putting things digital, I was like, Oh! This is what people are going to do once the piece is coming to place.

And so I downloaded this Calvin and Hobbs book. And it was so clear to me that everything would go on this worldwide network. It was a light bulb moment. It was a light bulb moment.

And I always loved the time machine.

You wrote this book, this memoir that was not, it was called On Your Own, but it wasn't On Your Own, it wasn't anything about you.

No, and they screwed me over from day one.

Yeah, yeah, I like the leg warmer part, that was my favorite. Oh, but I mean, it was so insulting to me. And I've been desperately trying to find that first chapter that I actually penned myself. But that was just, that was such a moment where, it's so interesting, that was so much more insulting to me than any of the other shit people wrote about me.

As a big fuck you to the book industry, he writes an over-the-top ghetto novel called My Pathology, yes, that's right, My Pathology, full of black stereotypes under a pseudonym and the editors eat it up, especially after the writer claims that he is a wanted fugitive.