Kara Swisher (2:13)

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Beth Macy (4:24)

It is over.

Christian Castro (4:25)

Beth and Jacob, thanks for coming on on.

Jacob Silverman (4:27)

Thanks for having me.

Beth Macy (4:28)

Pleasure.

Kara Swisher (4:29)

I love both your books. I think they're both amazing and I know this seems like an unlikely pairing, but it's actually not in many ways.

Christian Castro (4:36)

So, Beth, in Paper Girl, you show.

Kara Swisher (4:38)

How divisive politics have fractured your poor rural hometown. Jacob and Gilderay, you reveal how political division has been fueled and funded by tech billionaires in Silicon Valley. So I want to start by crossing that class divide because I think it's a lot closer than people realize. And those billionaires themselves have been radicalized in many ways. So Beth, how do you think Trump's supporters in Urbana, Ohio see the impact of tech on their lives? Because a lot of what you talk about is radicalization from online sources.

Beth Macy (5:13)

Yeah, I think.

Beth Macy (5:16)

What I noticed was.

Beth Macy (5:20)

Just almost no local news. And we know now that Trump won 90% of the counties that were living in news deserts, basically. And they mostly get their news from Facebook and national sites. Members of my family are not going to buy the New York Times or the Washington Post because it costs a lot, but they're happy to watch Newsmax and Fox, which comes with their cable package. And so what I saw as I started going home to see my mom more as she was diagnosed with dementia in 2015, is just politics, national politics, intruding in our family gatherings in a way I had never seen before. And, you know, my brother unfriended me on Facebook because of, quote, all the liberal shit you post. And I'm like, I post fact check articles from the New York Times and Washington Post, some of which I wrote. And it really put a damper on our family relationships. And then I started also noticing in my hometown that was once heralded as an important stop on the Underground Railroad, that there were Confederate flags flying. This is a Union stronghold in Ohio. And so the idea was just to go back home. I spent two years, I spent about a week each month to try to figure out what had happened. And a lot of it really was the media environment, as well as.

Beth Macy (6:43)

Sort of the decline of public education.

Christian Castro (6:47)

So, Jacob, how did tech billionaires think.

Kara Swisher (6:49)

About best former classmates and family in middle America? Do they think of themselves as news purveyors? How do you think they think of their role there?

Jacob Silverman (6:58)

I don't know if they necessarily recognize their own power and influence in terms of setting the news agenda. I mean, maybe they do by now. Certainly someone like Musk is pretty much unrivaled, except by Trump and being able to set the news cycle. But I think there is something interesting in how they are mingling in these same spaces that we're talking about, especially on X, of course. And they are sharing in the same sometimes conspiracy theories or false narratives or just wrong information as the kind of people in Ohio that Beth is talking about and in dialogue with them. And sometimes these people are overt Nazis or right wingers that we see Musk or others talking to on X, or sometimes they're people who are just gladly receiving that kind of information. But I think that that's a strange kind of flattening that's occurred actually, is that the paranoid billionaires and, you know, your paranoid cousin are now kind of operating in the same epistemological and media space.

Kara Swisher (7:58)

Right? Absolutely. It's interesting. Oxford University Press named Rage Bait the word of the year, which of course is really apt. One of the things I've written about this for decades, this problem that they were sort of moving in and trying abrogate their responsibility for media and at the same time, you know, saying they're just platforms. That was always their excuse.

Christian Castro (8:17)

When you think about this, Beth, with.

Kara Swisher (8:18)

Your brother unfriending you and things like that happening could you stop it in any way? Was there any, you know, way to get through when you were in person? I know I have the same experience with my mother. I was, she's more of a Fox News person. Cause she's elderly. But one of the issues I had is I've told this story, an interview with Hillary Clinton. And she called me and said, hillary's at us again. And she was talking about her whatever tribe she happens to be part of, right wing tribe. And I said, what did she say? And she started to repeat things that were actually my interview actually badly mangled in the right wing media space. And I said, no, no, that's not what she said. And then one of the things that was really astonishing is she listened to it and she called me back. She goes, okay, that's not what she said. But you know, the emails and like it moved on to the next media engagement. But what I was trying to get.

Christian Castro (9:09)

Is do they think, do they understand.

Kara Swisher (9:11)

That they're being manipulated or not at all?

Beth Macy (9:14)

I don't think so. I really don't. With my brother, I mean, he's not a huge consumer of news, but he lives in this rural, very red district. And when this happened with us, he had missed an invitation. I had sent him on Facebook to come see our kid in their senior musical. They were the lead Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls. And their girlfriend was Adelaide. I was, how can you miss this? Cause he always came. And then he said that thing about all the liberal crap I post. And then we kind of didn't talk for a while. We never made a decision, we just didn't do it. And then.

Beth Macy (9:51)

As I started going home to work on this book a couple years ago, we just started spending time together and we very carefully, because I interviewed a lot of experts about how to have these interviews and how to try to reconnect. And they all said, you have to go to who you are as people. What are the things in your family that you're proud and spend time without politics. And so I didn't tell him. Like I had done all this research I just tried to do. I invited him to teach me how to fish again. Cause that was something we used to do together as kids. And we had just an incredible visit. And then at one point he said, well, what about Sasha? That's my non binary child who's a musician and an activist. Does he still date girls? And I said, and I'm thinking, and he said it in such a kind tone. And I'm thinking, well, I didn't really think I just reflexively mirrored back his tone and I said, yes, they are dating a young woman now. And I mess up the pronouns too. And he was. Hmm. And he didn't know anybody, that there was no one in his world other than Sasha, who lives five states away. And then he started showing up for Sasha's performances. They're in a band now and, you know, driving eight hours. And by the end of this two year homegoing project, I mean, he was supposed to come today because they have a concert here tomorrow and the weather canceled it. But, you know, they're a Palmyra superfan now. And when he brings politics up, I just, I just don't go there. You don't go there anymore. I don't even try.

Kara Swisher (11:26)

And Chick, when you think about the responsibility of being a media person, there is a certain responsibility that each of us understands having been in the media, in terms of getting it right, in terms of correcting mistakes when you talk to these. Because especially Musk, who I think does understand it. I always thought he was trying to be the next Rupert Murdoch, which I said to him, do you feel they have any sense of responsibility when as you were doing this or just as they're moving especially into the media space so aggressively now? Of course it's the Ellisons trying to get control of CBS and cnn, et cetera.

Jacob Silverman (12:02)

Yeah, I don't think there's a strong sense of responsibility because partly because among most tech elites there's such an intolerance for critique or for admitting any mistake. I mean, someone like Marc Andreessen, who blocks me and probably and most other journalists at the drop of a hat, does not think that journalists or anyone who's kind of a non technical expert has any authority at all. And they're also coming in, I think, with such contempt for existing institutions, especially existing media institutions and the broad bulk of us journalists, that their conception of what's getting it right is a little bit different than ours. I think whenever you might point out some of these things, I think to some of these people or people in tech in general, it's sort of like the conversation you're having with your mom. There's always another talking point to jump to rather than take responsibility for one's own actions or saying, oh, I was wrong there. It always becomes a what about something else? I even had a similar conversation with. I was at a book event in Wyoming, in Jackson Hole. So it was a bit of like a mixed crowd politically. And I was on this panel where we were talking about the need to have sort of a shared set of facts that we at least all agree on, like what is true. You know, we can disagree politically, but as long as we acknowledge some basis of reality. And then afterwards, someone comes up to me and she says, well, you're talking about so much Trump corruption, but, you know, Obama has been just as bad, or Biden. I said, well, they didn't accept billions of dollars worth of crypto when they were president. Like, it's not the same. And we had. And it just was clear this person was coming at me with a different set of facts. They didn't believe the things that I was saying. And I don't know. As long as people can kind of retreat into that different set of facts, it's a huge problem.

Kara Swisher (13:51)

Yeah, it is. Absolutely. Just so you're aware, Marc Andreessen was the most thirsty journalist hanging out person in the very beginning of the Internet. I couldn't. I would be like, I can't have lunch with you today. Stop calling me. Stop texting me. And they're all like that. You saw the example of when there was just a mild criticism of David Sacks, the New York Times. They all jumped on, like, as if you had just told them they were all pedophiles or something like that.

Jacob Silverman (14:15)

Yeah, it's an incredible sensitivity there.

Kara Swisher (14:17)

Yeah, it's an odd thing. So, Beth, your book is a memoir and reported, which I think works really well.

Christian Castro (14:23)

You grew up in relative poverty.

Kara Swisher (14:25)

You were a paper girl. Then you got the Pell Grant, which allowed you to go to college and eventually become a journalist and writer. My partner on my other podcast, Scott Galloway, got a similar kind of thing out of poverty. The trajectory is not an for as many in Urbana, and it definitely doesn't pay the same amount you were pointing out. It paid for your entire college, and now it's 30% or some smaller amount. Talk about how the path to escaping poverty has changed since you were a kid.

Beth Macy (14:51)

Urbana. When I was growing up, it wasn't idyllic, but it had a thriving working and middle class and then a professional class. The schools were very good. I had great teachers. I was, you know, president of the band, and I got a lot of experience, but I also had people because my family often didn't have a reliable car or couldn't come and get me from practice. I relied on the kindness of my friend's parents a lot. I was like the original Eddie Haskell, you know, Like, I had one friend who would make me lunch every single day in high school. Her mom would and that's what's missing today with the hollowing out of the middle class. There are no people.

Beth Macy (15:37)

For a poor kid like me to sort of look up to. So one of the things I did when I started researching the book was I cast about for a young me, a promising poor kid, to write about, you know, the decline in upward mobility. And so I profiled this young man named Silas James, who was every bit as smart as me. He was also the leader of the band and I loved that because that was such an important role for him. But he was homeless for his junior and senior year. His dad had died of an overdose. His mom had been in and out of prison on drug charges. You gotta remember we're in the second and third generations of the opioid crisis now. Something I've been writing about for 10 years. And he just had so many more strikes against him than I did. And so he gets, not a Pell Grant, but he gets a full scholarship to a community college to become a welder.

Beth Macy (16:28)

But he doesn't have a way to get there and it ends up being an hour away from where he's then living at the time. And so he, during the course of this 10 month welding program, you watch him go through five clunker cars, four full time jobs. He has to work full time. I didn't, you know, I had work study jobs and so much family drama and trauma bringing him down that he just barely makes it, but he does and he's now raising his younger siblings who got removed from his mother's care. And I just, I don't think that's a situation I could have handled. I think you have to be really, really special to make it in this day and age.

Kara Swisher (17:09)

Right. It's a downward social mobility rather than an up one or one that's pulling you back Right. Where there's no aid to do. So J, in your book you write about the trajectory of tech. Let's talk about them, the tech billionaires. Peter Thiel, David Sachs, Elon Musk, for example, three members of the so called PayPal mafia, they all are from South Africa. Talk about their backgrounds and what influen them influence, especially the authoritarian vision that Thiel, I think has been promoting since he was in college and he founded the Stanford Review and he and Sachs, you know, were so mobbed up there during that time period. So it was a really, it's an unusual developmental pair, for example. But talk about their background and how that formed them.

Jacob Silverman (17:56)

Sure. I mean, well, all three of these people, Musk, Sachs, And Thiel came, of course, from either apartheid South Africa or Thiel spent time in southwestern Africa, which became Namibia, dominated by apartheid South Africa at the time, but patriarchal, officially racist, hierarchical societies where white men were the designated elites. And I think Thiel and Sachs's activities at Stanford show that they were dyed in the wool political animals from early on. I mean, to this day, I think Thiel still hires people who come up through the Stanford Review, which he founded, of course. And. And for someone who complains a lot about universities as sort of places of corruption, he spends a lot of time there and sort of engaging with them and still hiring people, like I said, from Stanford. So I think the kind of place that we see them occupying now is certainly one of immense power and influence, but it's one in some sense that they've been preparing for since they were in college. Musk feels in some ways more like an instrument or if not quite someone they've been able to direct a little bit, or with his more recent radicalization and discovery of electoral politics. But he is certainly not someone. I mean, I think he's someone who felt like an elite, like they did, but who didn't feel as interested in getting involved in the muck of politics until maybe politics started affecting him, especially during the pandemic.

Kara Swisher (19:21)

That's right. When he got radicalized, actually. I would say one of the things they talk about, as you reference education, it's one of those areas where Urbana and Silicon Valley seem to agree, maybe for different reasons. Beth, you wrote about homeschooling and no schooling trend in Urbana, which. Which I think was really critical. I was sort of struck by what was happening there. Speaking of different realities. Right. You're talking about. And Jacob, you talked about the tech billionaire's disdain for public schools and right. About their lobbying for charter schools. It's not just K through 12. Both Maga and Tech Bros are also pushing the idea that college isn't worth it. Talk a little bit about the public in higher education has become one of the scapegoats of the movement. And who is benefiting versus being hurt by this? Because schooling is what brought you to where you are. Obviously it's not well regarded now. Correct.

Beth Macy (20:08)

In these areas, absolutely. One of the most disturbing trends I found was absenteeism, both in the workplace and in schools, particularly after Covid. So one of the people I checked in with, every time I went in, I'd spend a day shadowing the school truancy officer who put like 115,000 miles on her car. Driving kids from all ends of the county to the schools. And as the public schools have deteriorated in Urbana.

Beth Macy (20:37)

The state legislature became increasingly red and they deregulated homeschooling. So as of a year and a half ago, a parent who wants to homeschool no longer has to have their curriculum signed off by a retired teacher or an education expert. So people started homeschooling at a bigger rate. And of course, the public schools left suffer because the money doesn't go to the school. The parents who are maybe a little more switched on educationally, started open enrolling their kids elsewhere to even more rural schools which had higher test scores. But the unintended consequence of the deregulation of homeschooling was this shocking thing that always came up when I was with the truancy officer, and that was the number of people who weren't sending their kids to school because they weren't mentally well enough to get up in the morning, go to work, send their kids to school. And when the truancy officer began to knock at their door and threaten charges, they would then pull them out and say they were homeschooling.

Kara Swisher (21:44)

So no school.

Beth Macy (21:45)

No school. And one woman even handed her a slip. It had gone from this big portfolio you had to show of how well you were teaching your kid to a simple one pager. One person even handed her a note on a post it note saying, I'm homeschooling now. There was a girl that showed up dead in West Virginia because of that. And that's, of course, the fear that with no eyes on what's happening with these children, what's gonna happen to them?

Christian Castro (22:11)

And where does that come from?

Kara Swisher (22:12)

The idea that school is not Both K through 12 and college, that has happened rather quickly. Cause college was the reach.

Beth Macy (22:21)

Right, right, right. And there's this idea that if you do send your kid to college, they're just gonna get liberal and they're not gonna come home and live in Urbana anymore, and you're not gonna be able to do. Thanks. And all that kind of stuff. And I think one of the places for genuine reform would be to start underscoring the need for trades and community college certifications. I think that's a really important thing that we should be focusing on now, because it was just so hard for Silas to get there. And he needed those social supports, he needed transportation. Yeah, he needed everything, and he did it by the skin of his teeth. But, you know, he could have done that welding program in high school, but there weren't enough slots at the trade Technical school that was in the county for him to do that. So I think we sort of made trades, a stepchild at the same time. We told people that, you know, college education is absolutely necessary with technology happening, but we made it so unaffordable for everybody.

Kara Swisher (23:29)

So, Jacob, where does the disdain for college come from? You know, they were all. They're all incredibly well colleged. I would say they. Each of them operate in those systems, but are astonishingly disdainful.

Jacob Silverman (23:43)

Yeah, they don't. They use the line perhaps that college is too expensive, but the money doesn't really matter to them or the fact that a lot of people are being put into debt. I think it's more that they. A lot of them see them as these kind of left wing woke institutions. You've heard people like Bill Ackman or Elon Musk talk about how basically I think schools are turning their kids into left wingers who hate them or, you know, communists, in the case I think of Bill Ackman's daughter. Or trans. Yeah. And the idea that gender fluidity and sort of what they would call trans ideology somehow emanates from these kinds of institutions. I think that's what also makes them partners with MAGA politically, is that they share a lot of the same reactionary and culture warrior impulses, and that can be manifested in colleges and institutions. And of course, we're seeing things like not only just the Thiel Fellowship, which has been around for a while, but now Palantir advertising at colleges and encouraging kids to basically drop out and sign up with Palantir.

Kara Swisher (24:43)

Many of the people who've gotten most radicalized have trans kids, which is really, you know, that is interesting. I'm like one of them. I was so surprised by. And then I saw him posting about his trans kid and I wrote him, I said, you're a terrible parent. Like, you're a terrible.

Christian Castro (25:00)

Horrible.

Kara Swisher (25:00)

To do this publicly. You know, he's just mimicking Musk. Yes, well, he, He's. Well, it's not even. I mean, he's just the worst. So one of the things, Jacob, you called Dems a feckless opponent. Right. That Trump had an easy time presenting himself as a, quote, populist savior for a benighted working class abandoned by the Democratic elites. And that was partially because he was backed by allies in tech and media that he had. Beth writes, quote, the consummate showman connected most voters into thinking he cared. I blame Trump and his billionaire enablers, not them playing devil's advocate here. You both seem to portray the working Class as having little agency, perhaps as being morally ignorant. Is there some way to call out the tech influence in mag without falling into that trap? Beth, you start and then Jacob.

Kara Swisher (25:49)

Or you might disagree with me.

Beth Macy (25:50)

Well.

Beth Macy (25:54)

I think they owe the nation something for what they've done, and I would love to hear Jacob's points on what he thinks the PayPal mafia, et cetera, actually owes us.

Beth Macy (26:12)

My editor doesn't like me to use the word brainwashing, but I think that's exactly what's happened to a lot of people in this. When I see people turn from.

Beth Macy (26:24)

Normal, educated people who maybe were on the left to spending four to seven hours a day watching Russian propaganda and being so eat up with anger. I spent time with an ex boyfriend I hadn't seen in 38 years. It was kind of a reporting stunt at the beginning. The idea, like, who does that? Who interviews their ex boyfriend? But to watch him go into somebody I didn't even recognize was stunning. And that at the end of the book, because of his beliefs, he didn't have health insurance. He was okay with that. He said, oh, if I die at 76, okay, whatever. Something's gonna get me. But he gets pneumonia and waits too long to go to the hospital, and then he dies. And when I interviewed his daughter several weeks. It's not in the book, but I interviewed her several weeks after his death. She said the Internet killed my dad, and she's heartbroken. She's now lost both of her parents. She's 30 years old, has a child, and, like.

Beth Macy (27:24)

What do the PayPal mafia? And I'd love to ask Jacob this question. What do they owe people like. Like Bill's daughter Jacob, radicalizing him?

Kara Swisher (27:35)

Yeah.

Jacob Silverman (27:35)

Yeah. I think, you know, individuals are responsible for their own behavior, whether we're talking about, you know, everyday people in Ohio or MAGA voters. But that also means that, you know, class differences are real and that the people I'm talking about, like the billionaire platform owners, exert massive influence and often massive unacknowledged influence. So when Musk tweets something like that, Covid will be gone by the end of April of 2020, or basically, a lot of these people repeatedly engage in some form of COVID denialism that has a huge effect and that one that they refuse to recognize. And I see it also a lot with Musk and his. Basically his taking up of the great replacement theory and essentially promoting or potentially inciting violence against migrants. I mean, he's now doing this internationally. He gave a speech at a Tommy Robinson rally via video in September where he said, violence is coming to your door whether you like it or not, and said it was coming from migrants and told people to get ready. And this is stuff that I think if it were on the front page of papers decades ago, or I think we were talking about Musk as sort of a William Randolph Hearst type, perhaps it would be considered incitement to violence if a media mogul were portraying this on TV or on a newspaper headline many years ago. But now it's just part of their everyday behavior. And I think it is very disturbing that there isn't even a conversation about some kind of accountability there or the fact that they are repeatedly and daily engaging in this kind of behavior with massive unacknowledged effects.

Kara Swisher (29:10)

Right now I'm obsessed with chatbots and the effect on young people. I was talking to one of them, and I've been interviewing all the parents whose kids have committed suicide. And they said, when are you going to stop? And I said, how about never? I said, I'm gonna show people what you're doing because. And the point I was making to one of them was Tylenol killed six people and they pulled all the drugs off the shelf. And you're up to seven now, just like a month into this kind of thing. And so I feel like I'm not gonna stop. But one of the things that' sthat's to me is where is where the agency is. I think that's what I was trying to get at, Beth. And when you think about that and the agency that people have, it is propaganda. And you do see people's minds warped in that regard. Again, getting back to it, when you were interviewing all these people, did they feel manipulated or did they understand what propaganda was doing? Given there was such a shift, say, of your boyfriend, for example, did he. Here's someone who you write about is educated, by the way, I have you beat. One of my ex boyfriends became a neo Nazi, but go ahead, go ahead.

Beth Macy (30:15)

Well, Bill was on his way there. The last thing he posted on X before he died was about the great replacement theory. But I'm thinking more along the lines of my friend Joy, who is my first friend in kindergarten. She's black. She and our friend Betty, we were like the great trio. We still hang out. She's a Christian radio host, and I interviewed her several times. I took notes, I recorded with her permission. And, you know, she believes children are identifying as cats and taking litter boxes to school. She doesn't think, even though she's black, she doesn't think George Floyd was killed by Derek Chauvin. And when I roll my eyes in conversation with my dear friend who I've just made dinner for and you know, she presided over my mom's funeral, that's how close we are, she says, I know, but how do we love each other beyond what we can't understand or agree with? And I thought that was a really profound question that I'm still grasping with. But she was very disappointed when the book came out and she said, I didn't. I feel like you threw me under the bus. I didn't expect it to be in a national book, a national platform. I said, well, Joy, you know, that's why. And I know I hurt her feelings and I feel bad about that. But at some point you have to be responsible for the things you have consumed and what you're putting out there. I mean, she's a media figure herself in her world, and that was news to her. Like, it's almost like we need to go back and deprogram some of these folks.

Christian Castro (31:51)

We'll be back in a minute.

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Can invite them to apply and keep things moving.

Christian Castro (35:24)

Hire right the first time, post your job for free@LinkedIn.com Carol then promote it to use LinkedIn Jobs new AI assistant, making it easier and faster to find top candidates. That's LinkedIn.com Kara to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.

Christian Castro (35:47)

Now.

Kara Swisher (35:47)

Jacob the tech oligarchy seems to be fully in charge now. They bought their way into this particular coin operated president and recognized the need for involvement in politics. They had been politics averse for a long time. The tech industry in general figured it out pretty quickly, largely through Thiel And Musk, I would say, and Sachs. There was Doge, of course, but one of the starfishers example recently was a Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's visit. Jacob, you wrote in the Nation after the dinner with the tech bros. The authoritarian rulers of both the United States and Saudi Arabia were clearly relishing the media friendly spectacle, distracting their home constituencies from the parlous conditions they're facing. Conservative pundit Scott Jennings told me that Trump was just trying to get the Saudis to sign sign a Middle east peace deal. I'm guessing you don't buy that. Neither do Dai. What do you think is really at stake in what's happening here? Obviously the Trump family has benefited enormously from the Saudis and the Silicon Valley people also went there looking for money. Talk a little bit about this sort of iron triangle of investment repression and an access situation.

Jacob Silverman (36:57)

Well, it is certainly an iron triangle with Saudi at the head of it, but also involves the UAE and Qatar and basically all of these authoritarian countries from the Middle east, these dictatorships and their sovereign wealth funds funding Silicon Valley for years and being this essential source of cash now, especially in the AI bubble and for people like Musk, whenever he needs a new round for Xai to raise billions and billions of dollars. And that is something that I think changed during the sort of zero interest rate era when, when you started having companies like Uber raise multibillion dollar rounds from Saudi Arabia. It really changed the financing of tech in a way that perhaps hadn't existed before. And there's a quote in my book that I mention from Ben Horowitz, the venture capitalist, where he was at one of these Saudi business summits a few years ago. And he said Saudi Arabia also has a founder, but you call him your highness. And it was just sort of acknowledging this kinship, founder being the most hallowed word probably in Silicon Valley culture. But I think it also reflects that increasingly these are authoritarians on both sides. People who aren't very fond of democracy, CEOs or founders or venture capitalists who kind of rule by fiat, just like their funders in Saudi Arabia do. And I think it reflects a style of doing business. I also think it reflects the fact that tech companies are increasingly important geopolitical and even national security actors in ways that aren't always regulated or recognized.

Kara Swisher (38:26)

So Beth, I was looking at some old drawings, Thomas Nash and others, like the fat cat idea, which I think was very popular among working class. Right. This idea that there's these fat cats taking things.

Christian Castro (38:38)

Do they see it that way or not?

Kara Swisher (38:40)

Making the links at all.

Beth Macy (38:42)

Among the people I talked to in Urbana, some did. I mean, there is a small stable of Democrats there that really work hard to search out fact based news. There's States Newsroom, has a really great operation called Ohio Capitol Journal and things of that nature. But for the most part, the people I saw who were deeply down the rabbit holes were looking for community where their community no longer existed.

Kara Swisher (39:13)

Correct? Yeah.

Beth Macy (39:14)

And so like for instance, our high school reunion planner, sweet woman, you know, she was just dying to convince me that, you know, the vaccine was bad. Bad move that you got one. Then President Biden was dead and that was an actor playing him with a mask. And she would send me proof and she said, you' red pilled now I've educated you. And like she was just breathless and I couldn't get a word in and that just blew me away. And some weeks I would rent an Airbnb for a week. And some weeks, by day four, I would be so exhausted because it was so different than the blue bubble I live in here in Virginia that I would go home a couple days early because it was also just painful, like what has happened. The community is crumbling. The kids aren't being taken care of. There was a smear campaign for the director of the youth center who was helping the kids that dropped out because he was gay. And, you know, his funding got taken away and he was standing up to the power structure. And.

Beth Macy (40:22)

It was just a really painful thing to see.

Kara Swisher (40:24)

They don't see that linkage when you were interviewing anybody, that the power structure is in it for themselves and not. Which is a sort of an old American trope. Right. The idea of fat cats.

Beth Macy (40:34)

And you know, exactly when the mayor said, I don't, I don't think everybody needs to go to college, I was showing him how Urbana's college going rate is only 16%, whereas in the nation it's 37 and among more rural towns is 21. And he said, well, I went to college and got a religion degree, but I didn't need it. Did I need it? And I said, well, no, you inherited your dad's insurance business. And I just. The idea of a factory town that was sort of, you know, bad and good, run by a single old man, Grimes, who owned the dominant airplane light factory. But he would give like the best students that were graduating scholarships to Ohio State University and employees got free haircuts. I just didn't see any of that. Looking out for the people who had been left behind and among the professional class, that's There. And the leadership class, they weren't even willing to look at it. And none of it was ever in the news, in the newspaper. And at the end, as somebody says in the book, what you have left is the country club set and the ghetto set. Those were his words. And neither knows what's going on with the other. But that was really true.

Kara Swisher (41:51)

But the bottom set doesn't seems to be liking the ruling class. Correct. Which is a shift.

Beth Macy (41:58)

Or just not paying attention to it because they're struggling so hard to just survive.

Kara Swisher (42:03)

Right, right. And it's clear that real estates are facing a brain drain that creates more anger and more class resentment.

Beth Macy (42:09)

The thing that really shocked me was the number of people who weren't showing up for work. And so I went to one job fair and I interviewed every. I just went around. It was at the fairgrounds building and I went around talking to every manager and I finally. I asked because they were all hard up for employees. And I said because Urbana is rare and that is. Has retained. It's a lot. A good stable of manufacturing. It's not all Grimes now. It's. It's pretty diversified, which is cool. But not one sing employer can get people to show up for work. And I asked one, I said, well, if you were to hire 10 people today, how many would still be there in six months? And he said one. And we'd still probably have an attendance issue with that person. And that, that's just a story that's not being told. Right.

Kara Swisher (42:55)

Of people not showing up. So the political divide is not just internally fracturing communities as you're talking about. People are self segregating.

Beth Macy (43:02)

Right.

Kara Swisher (43:02)

Moving to places that match their politics. And tech bros are proposing self cont. Alternative communities. Jacob, you wrote about this. I'm thinking of Balaji Srinivasan's network state idea. The Project California Forever is trying to launch in Solano County, California. And speaking of factory towns, Elon's company town outside of Austin, he's not quite as kind as Mr. Grimes. There's also attempts to offshore some less than legal stuff in places like Honduras. There's also that happening and of course the ultimate. I'm going to Moss, you know, and I'm always like, please leave soon. That would be great. Fantastic.

Beth Macy (43:37)

Pay for the gas.

Kara Swisher (43:38)

We'll pay for the gas. Whatever you need. But talk about these exit efforts to try to then create their own towns.

Jacob Silverman (43:45)

Yeah. What's so astonishing about some of this stuff is that they are so coddled and do live in their own, you know, gated off worlds. But that has become not enough for some of them. And people like Peter Thiel or some of the other folks were talking about in recent years seem to pursue two avenues, which is one is electoral politics are pouring their money behind Trump and Republicans, but also simultaneously pursuing exit, which is a specific word that Thiel has used. And it's about exiting society. It's about exiting your money to places where it can't be governed, whether it's Switzerland or some Caribbean destination or now new countries, charter cities especially. Thiel famously funded the seasteading project that never really got off the ground to create these floating cities. And he wrote an essay saying he wanted to fund the technology that enables freedom. And so for them, they think that somehow true freedom, which they have not yet acquired, can only be found by exiting the normal strictures of society. And that might be in a little corporate charter city state in Honduras on the island of Roatan as they have now in Prospera, or it might be in Solano county or in Greenland if Trump succeeds in acquiring that, or indeed off planet. But this is something that a lot of money, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars in some cases is being devoted to these kinds of projects. And I think it also reflects the kind of politics we see at home. And what we see, for example, in San Francisco, which I've written about a bit too, is just that they no longer are interested in improving or rescuing urban spaces. They see them as just gone. And they have real contempt for average people and especially down and out people who are living rough on San Francisco's streets. And that only contributes to this idea that, you know, they want to flee, they want to exit and have total kind of corporate control over where they live.

Christian Castro (45:38)

Right.

Kara Swisher (45:39)

So when you think about that, Beth, the idea of escape and getting out, how do you create a town where if you can't, like the people of your town can't exit? There is no exit.

Beth Macy (45:50)

No. And the people left behind have been brainwashed. And so I mean, I want to flip this back to you guys. Like what do the Zuckerbans and Andreessens, oh, the nation, what could we do that might ameliorate their power and this never before seen ability to stifle if not shut down our democracy entirely. I mean, I write a bit about the Communications Decency act in the book. And you know, people like Ro Khanna have tried to had a federal policy to tax digital corporations, but that didn't go anywhere. And you know, I write about this fifth generation newspaper owner in Iowa who actually gets a meeting with a Facebook executive and he's trying to start this nonprofit in Iowa that would help keep the papers alive to help keep democracy, you know.

Beth Macy (46:46)

Which was once newspapers were once the democracy's immune system. And so he's begging them for a grant and they say no initially. And he says, look, when the revolution starts and we have a civil war in this country and someone's dragging you and your family out of your Silicon Valley homes before the knife goes into you, you're going to think, maybe I could have stopped this. Which is such a trenchant quote, right? So eventually Facebook gives him $150,000, but it's not enough. His 90 year old mother remortgages the home and they still have to sell the business at a huge loss. So what are some things like Khana is trying to do that you think could actually work to help us build back these healthier information ecosystems?

Jacob Silverman (47:30)

One phrase I keep thinking about, especially when you're talking about people being brainwashed, essentially, is false populism. I mean, I think that is kind of one of the scourges of our age. And it's what brought us Trump and it's what brings us Elon Musk is somehow a savior of the people or someone who's maybe not motivated by money and wants to help people via Doge or whatever else. It's all nonsense, it's bs. But part of the problem is we don't have a genuine populism. And this is where I do critique the Democratic Party, that there isn't a genuine populist alternative. Alternative to. I mean, there are individual figures who might be part of such a movement, but there's not a populist alternative that seeks to put a check on billionaire power, that seeks to really tax them, break up companies and actually, like, you know, say that this is about class and this is about the billionaires eating our lunch and not wanting to give people health care or not wanting people like the folks who were talking about in Ohio to be able to get to work because they just don't care about them. And in the absence of that alternative, which could be articulated through a better media ecosystem, among other means, in the absence of that, that's where, you know, Trump and the right wing billionaires really flourish, is because while they're not necessarily offering a better solution, they are giving voice to that anger, to that rage, to that rage and that confusion that I think a lot of people feel and that draws them to the right. So there needs to be some liberty Liberal left challenge to that. That really gives people a positive program, I think.

Kara Swisher (48:57)

Well, one of the issues, I'm just gonna say briefly, is you imagine they care, Beth. They don't. Like, I've tried to get this message through. You imagine, like, Andreessen's possibly the worst person I know in Silicon Valley as a person. A broken, angry.

Kara Swisher (49:15)

Troubled person in desperate need of mental health help. Same thing with Elon. Broken.

Beth Macy (49:21)

Using drugs.

Kara Swisher (49:22)

Using drugs. Drugs. If they were poor, they'd be on the streets. Let's just. You know what I mean? This kind of thing. And so I think one of the problems is that we imagine they care. Right? Like, and you have to get that out of your head. You know who was delivering a gold statue to Trump? Tim Cook. The last person I thought would do that. Not the last, but, you know, when they were standing there at the inauguration, one after the next, in front of the elected officials, in front of the cabinet officials. Officials. That was. It was game over. And Trump knew it.

Beth Macy (49:51)

Right? That's.

Kara Swisher (49:51)

To me, they were standing there because they wanted things and were at a Kamala Harris administration. They would pretend to be Democrat. You know what I mean? They don't have any values whatsoever, and they really don't like people. I think that's ultimately at the heart of it.

Christian Castro (50:08)

We'll be back in a minute.

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Beth Macy (52:13)

Support.

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Kara Swisher (52:57)

Let me talk about the overlap between your two books. Is Ohio itself. Jacob, your former boss Vivek Ramaswamy is running for governor there. And of course there's an Ohio native and Silicon Valley INSIDER Vice President J.D.

Christian Castro (53:10)

Vance.

Kara Swisher (53:10)

I actually, I like to use Rachel Maddow's term. He's Peter Thiel's failed intern. He was terrible at tech. Let me just tell you, a squirrel could have made money during the period he was in tech and he lost money. That's all I'm gonna say. I spent time with him during that period when he hated Trump. But do you think either one of them can bridge the gap between the two world's poor and middle class American tech billionaires the way Donald Trump has been able to? And is there an alternative on the Democratic side? Beth, you go first and then talk a little bit about Vance and then Jacob, talk a little bit about Vivek.

Beth Macy (53:44)

Yeah, Vance grew up an hour south of me. You know, he's 20 years younger than me and had it really rough and wrote this book that upon first read I thought was a decent story of a first generation college student. I related to some of it and you know, he was helped by the GI Bill and all this kind of stuff and at one point calls Trump cultural heroine. And we've seen him flip now in Hillbilly Elegy. I was reading that as I was starting to report on Appalachian, what had happened with the opioid crisis and going down there and interviewing activists and they just completely called him out on the fact that there is no systemic analysis of what happened with centuries of out of state coal companies going in and taking advantage and then the jobs going away and the pills coming in, the pill mills coming into the exact same places that the jobs went away. He's blaming the poor for their poverty and saying, well I got out, everybody should be able to get out. And then to see him emerge in Springfield, Ohio.

Beth Macy (54:54)

Calling out the cats and the dogs with the Haitians, to then see people like my ex boyfriend emerge as the leader of this anti Haitian influx and just to be totally under the spell of this guy Vance, who was. It wasn't one of his jobs when he went back to Ohio. He was gonna fix the opioid crisis. He was, he didn't do anything. He did zip and is still doing zip and still trying to pull the ladder that helped him climb out of P.O. the rest of us.

Kara Swisher (55:25)

What about Vivek Jacob?

Jacob Silverman (55:28)

I worked for what ended up being a pretty short stint at Vivek's company called Royvint as a ghostwriter essentially. And.

Jacob Silverman (55:40)

This is someone who at the time was not very overtly political necessarily. I mean he did not strike me as a liberal or a leftist. But he hadn't started going on Fox News or Tucker Carlson's show when it was on Fox News still, or writing op EDS for the Wall Street. What he clearly was, was massively ambitious. I mean it just radiated from him. And this was sort of interesting for me as a writer and journalist and someone interested in this world of tech and finance elites to kind of observe that up close. So when he eventually came out as this basically frothing right winger, I think it was actually a surprise to some people around him. I talked a little bit, I never ended up publishing anything about this, but I talked to someone who worked at one of his companies who was trans and, and she transitioned and received gender affirming care via health insurance from Vivek's company. And at the same time he's talking about how there are only two genders. And I think one thing that showed to me was incredible opportunism, that maybe he does actually believe that. But this is someone who is very power hungry and very determined to get it. And like a lot of successful politicians of our age, which I think he will be in one form or another, he's gonna be around for time. He'll kind of say anything to get there.

Kara Swisher (56:57)

Yeah, he's trending left again to be noticed.

Jacob Silverman (57:00)

Yeah, I don't know if he'll win in Ohio, but he is malleable. He is very smart. We'll be dealing with him for decades.

Kara Swisher (57:07)

Really?

Beth Macy (57:07)

I don't know.

Kara Swisher (57:07)

I think he's repellent to voters as I think Vance is.

Jacob Silverman (57:10)

Actually, he does have the sort of annoying debate kid affect, as I say.

Kara Swisher (57:14)

Yeah, I've had a lot of rounds with him. But, Beth, speaking of power, you recently announced you're running for Congress in Virginia. A local reporter from the Cardinal News described your campaign launch as the most direct assault on an incumbent he'd heard in a long time. So talk about why you're doing this. I think, you know, I had thought about running for office at one point because I was like, I'm tired of just saying they suck. I'm on.

Beth Macy (57:35)

Let's do it.

Kara Swisher (57:37)

No, they have a good mayor in San Francisco, and I was for mayor of San Francisco, but I was tired of the tech pros beating up on a city I love. Right. And having no solutions. That was one of the impetuses. So talk about why you've done this and what your goal is as a politician.

Beth Macy (57:53)

Yeah, I'm running for Congress in the 6th District, which is an R +15 Cook Report. It's a very red district. There is a strong chance that we will be redistricted. The Virginia legislature is taking that up now in response to what's happened in Texas and elsewhere. And so that might change. It might become a more Dem leaning district. But the decision to run really grew out of the end of my book. Now, I swear to God, when I finished this book, I had no intention ever of running for office. Not on my bingo card. I thought I would write maybe one or two more books. I was gonna become a master gardener with my buddy Lon and be very happy. And at the end of the book, Geraldine Brooks called it, it's more than a memoir. It's a manifesto. And I guess I sort of, like, take a tonal change at the end because it's right after the election. I just watched, you know, the ex boyfriend die. All these things happening, all these people I love, their services are being cut. I mean, my own child is on Medicare. My professional musician kid. And I say in the book that we should run better people for office. And I start participating in these rallies outside of our incumbent Republican congressman's office every Monday, and people start asking me to run. It's very flattering, of course, but they're pointing out that you have to do this for your kids. And, you know, I took the bait. And I'm doing it. I'm not a politician. I'm not a politician. I'm not a politic. And what I said in my launch was that I'm not going to be, like, automatically for any party or any people. I want to go out and I want to listen to people. I want to find out what their concerns are. This. What's happening to Medicaid and what's happening to health care is just so wrong. I mean, I've spent over a decade reporting on the opioid crisis. We are going to go back 20 years. If these Medicaid cuts really take place, 350,000 Virginians alone are going to lose their Medicaid. And that has been the main way that men who are disproportionately dying of deaths of despair have been able to finally get treatment just in recent years. So I'm really stressing that I'm out listening in these rural communities, not in Ohio, but in Virginia. I'm going up and down the Shenandoah and Roanoke valleys talking to people, and they're really upset. There's a lot of rage on both sides and a lot of concerns about affordability. You know, my husband and I, we were a schoolteacher and a newspaper reporter, and we managed to buy our first house at the age of 30. Kids today can't buy their first house until they're 40. They're not even kids. The price of groceries.

Kara Swisher (60:37)

Wow, you do sound like a politician.

Beth Macy (60:39)

Well, I'm worked up about it. And, you know, and it's a lot harder than being somebody out talking about a book. I will tell you that I'm not getting, like, rave reviews. And please sign your book. For me, it's like a combat experience, but I'm willing to meet with people online, like our congressman, to really learn what's happening. And, you know, I think Bernie and the economic populism way is, you know, that's what worked. I mean, Abigail Spanberger was more centrist than Bernie, but focusing on affordability and then getting these kleptocrats, these billionaires, to pay their fair share, we've got to figure out a way to do that. I mean, it's just. It's just criminal. And we just accept it like it's just business as usual.

Kara Swisher (61:30)

Well, not everyone does.

Beth Macy (61:31)

And we have no guardrails. Congress has no guardrails, no checks on the president. Now we've got to take back the House.

Kara Swisher (61:38)

Okay, so, Jacob, at the end of your book, I like your. I like your spiel. It's excellent. It's excellent.

Beth Macy (61:43)

I'm working on it.

Kara Swisher (61:44)

Okay. At the end of your book, you say we're living in Elon's world though this speaking of kleptocrats, but his influence seems to have declined, although he seems to be back again in some fashion. Who do you think will step into that role and the likelihood to undo damage? If you had to go out five years, what would the landscape look for these billionaires? And I say this because I think they're in quite a bit of trouble. I think there's a lot of anger towards them. It's building. Years ago when I was worried about income inequality, I said, you're either going to have to do something about income inequality, you're going to have to armor plate your Tesla. Those are your two choices. And I got the distinct impression they wanted to armor plate their Tesla. That was kind of of cool. They could go to Mars or go to Mars. They could shoot poor people. Right. What could change here? Or nothing at all. They'll continue their pay to play for the next couple of years and get the shit they want and then solidify themselves by being trillionaires.

Jacob Silverman (62:37)

I, I think they've chosen the latter of those choices as you described. I mean, in a sense, even if you want kind of unfettered capitalism, you have to make society safe for it. And they've chosen kind of repression of the masses in one form or another other, rather than providing for their basic needs. And I don't see this improving in any way. I mean, I think we're on the road to kleptocracy, if not already there. I don't see the Democrats as really united enough to. I mean, I think a lot of them understand that some populist economic response is what's necessary and actually restricting these guys power. I don't think there are any virtuous billionaires out there, really. I mean, I think there are some who sponsor sort of democracy building programs that sound nice, but I don't think that's where our savior is coming from. From. I think the Democrats have to realign themselves really around labor and working people and understanding that Silicon Valley and especially parts of the industry like crypto are their adversary and not someone who's worth befriending or trying to get some money from because ultimately they're going to undermine you and your constituents.

Kara Swisher (63:42)

Yeah, I think it's difficult because I think we have a, you know, we have an idolatry of innovators and money, you know, in this country. And I think it's gone to the extreme at this point. I do think there are several that are better people than others. But even relying on them is a problem, right? Because it doesn't really matter who it is. One of the problems that you have is that the money in politics is so massive it's hard to battle. But you look at something like Elon in Wisconsin losing despite spending the money. Or you look at Zahra Mandami, which all the billionaires sort of put themselves against him, and he still won. But I have a last question. I want to read you a quote, both of you, from James Baldwin. The world changes according to the way people see it. And if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way a person looks or people look at reality, then you can change it, each of you. Do you think we can alter how people look at reality right now, given the forces from above that Jacob writes about and the forces from below that Beth writes about? First Jacob and then Beth?

Jacob Silverman (64:44)

I do, actually, and I'm thinking of something you said in a question just a couple minutes ago, which is that these people that I write about, the tech elites and their allies in politics, in some sense aren't that popular. Especially when people discover who they are and what they're about and they're not our friends. They don't have the mass of people's best interests and hearts. A lot of them are kind of sociopathic or xenophobic. And I think that's something that a lot of people are capable of understanding. It's just sort of a message and a reality that needs to be spread. And if that's a direction we can nudge people in, I think that can make a huge difference. Because, you know, as the sort of hokey old phrase goes, you know, there's ultimately more of us than them. And when people understand what they're about, it's not what they want.

Kara Swisher (65:27)

Right?

Beth Macy (65:27)

Yeah. That's why your book is so important, because you're shining a light on that. You know who's really ticked off about this is moms. And when I go out on these listening tours, they are just so fed up. They've seen that these guys have made us more divided, less educated, and their kids addicted to porn and gambling and things like chatbots. I mean, that's where my groundswell of support has come for this idea to run. I think if we can somehow galvanize the moms to get more active and really make this a grassroots campaign to point out how self dealing these folks are and how they're not paying their fair share. They are not paying their fair share.

Kara Swisher (66:08)

Right? That's exactly right. So give me each of you, what, one last hopeful idea. These are very dire books. They really are. But if you don't mind, indulge me on that. Beth and then Jacob.

Beth Macy (66:21)

Yeah, I mean, I think the fact that if we can reach out, start with our families. I know sometimes it's easier to deal with somebody else's crazy cousin than your own, but I think that's a. I show a couple of examples in my own family where we spend time and we talk about politics and we point things out and we do it gently and with respect, and we try to mirror back the best version of what they just said without going 0 to 60 or rolling my eyes like I did. Sometimes I think that's a technique that works. And I do think we have to have hope. We have to have these hard conversations because people are really suffering out there and they're starting to get the message. We saw that in Virginia a couple weeks ago, and you saw every county move a little bit to the left, and people are starting to see. And that's why I think, like, shows like yours and books like Jacob's and mine are helping people understand how they got there. One of the best things I heard about the book was from my very centrist friend Betty, who I've known since we were 4, who read the book and, you know, she's on the bank board, she runs a very successful business. And she said, well, people aren't going to like it here, but I think I need to change my media diet. And I thought that's a perfect answer.

Kara Swisher (67:37)

Millimeter. Millimeter. Jacob, you get the last word.

Jacob Silverman (67:40)

Well, I think one sort of silver lining perhaps, is that the people we're talking about are not really able to follow through on their rhetoric and provide that better utopian world that they once talked about or improve people's lives. I mean, I think that's what's created some of the reactionary sentiment. But. But we've had 10 or 15 years where a lot of supposed tech innovations haven't really taken off. And I think the AI bubble that's inevitably going to collapse, I think will hurt people, but at least perhaps produce some positive kind of political anger and sentiment where people realize, like, hey, these guys poured unbelievable resources into something that's not really helping people. That's just gouging labor. And look what we could have done with this money. Like, why are these people in charge? That's sort of a kind of realization that I hope plays out for a lot of people I think can.

Kara Swisher (68:27)

All right, great. Thank you so much. I really appreciate two wonderful books and really important and I really enjoyed reading them together, actually, oddly.

Beth Macy (68:34)

Thank you, Cara.

Kara Swisher (68:35)

Anyway, thank you so much, both of you.

Jacob Silverman (68:37)

Thank you.

Christian Castro (68:44)

Today's show was produced by Christian Castro.

Kara Swisher (68:46)

Russell, Kateri Yocum, Michelle Aloy, Megan Burney and Kalyn Lynch.

Christian Castro (68:51)

Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media as executive producer of podcasts. Special thanks to Bradley Sylvester.

Kara Swisher (68:57)

Our engineers are Fernando Arruda and Rick.

Christian Castro (68:59)

Kwan, and our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, you're.

Kara Swisher (69:04)

Willing to move a millimeter.

Christian Castro (69:07)

If not, stop rolling your eyes.

Kara Swisher (69:09)

Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for on with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to on with Kara Swisher from Podium Media, New York Magazine.

Christian Castro (69:17)

The Vox Media podcast podcast network, and us. We'll be back on Monday with more.

Train Dreams Sponsor (69:31)

Support for the show comes from Train Dreams, the new film from Netflix based on Dennis Johnson's novella Train Dreams is the moving portrait of a man who leads a life of unexpected depth and beauty during a rapidly changing time in America. Set in the early 20th century, it's an ode to a vanishing way of life and to the extraordinary possibilities that exist within even the simplest of existences. In a time when we are all searching for purpose, Train Dreams feels timeless because the frontier isn't just a place, it's a state of being. Train Dreams, now playing only on Netflix.