The “Woke” Smithsonian, South Park’s Latest Dig at Trump, and Co-Host Wesley Morris

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Kara Swisher: Wait, there's a Claude? Claude, yes, Anthropic. Who's Claude?

Kara Swisher: Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher, and August rolls on. Welcome back to Scott Brie August. You like that? You like our sting? Okay. Scott is still, before I introduce you, yes, Scott is still away, and I know he misses me terribly. He's been posting a lot, pretending he's still on the show, but pretty much he's gone, and he's sitting on the beach wishing because there's so much news. But in his place, once again, I have yet another amazing co-host. He's a critic at large for the New York Times and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, which Scott will never win, and the host of The Times' brand new podcast, Cannonball. It's Wesley Morris. I can believe this is happening to Scott again. I mean, day after day, another fantastic person who is so much more well-suited to be my partner than other people. So I'm thrilled that you are here.

Kara Swisher: Let me just explain what your podcast is all about. You had a very popular podcast. Obviously, the New York Times is glowing up the whole podcast division with videos and this and that. So talk about what, where the name Cannonball came from and talk a little bit about your podcasting history. Because it's been terrific.

Wesley Morris: Thank you. Well, Jay Wortham and I had this show called Still Processing. It was one of the happiest things I've ever been involved with. And now I'm doing this other culture show. Mostly it's me sort of thinking through art, TV shows, movies, books, sports – anything that I'm kind of curious about – and trying to make these connections between one thing and another thing. So far it's been me talking to other people about what's coming up for them as I'm trying to work out my own stuff with the other person.

Wesley Morris: And the name – I wanted to call this show some other things.

Kara Swisher: Tell me the name you wanted. I know how the New York Times is about names. I shoved mine through so hard. Did you have to fight to get Sway called Sway?

Wesley Morris: Oh, yeah.

Kara Swisher: You know what? I didn't care. I refused to do it without the name. But what was the name you wanted?

Wesley Morris: I wanted to call it Parlando.

Kara Swisher: Parlando? I love that.

Wesley Morris: Which, for our musicologist friends – it's essentially an opera term. It means to sing in a manner that is recognizable as speech. But there's also a great tradition of parlando in pop music. We just don't really call it that. Some of your favorite singers are parlando. I don't know, Kara. I don't want to accuse you of being a Leonard Cohen fan.

Kara Swisher: They talk. Oh, yeah. No, no. They talk. Yeah.

Wesley Morris: Or a Grace Jones fan.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Wesley Morris: But I wanted to call the show that because I can't sing, but I can talk.

Kara Swisher: You can parlando. It could have been a verb.

Wesley Morris: But what's great about Cannonball is that I have discovered that I have been using it at people when they come on – both as a verb, like "we cannonballed" – or the back and forth to get them to come on the show. Like, "I can't wait to cannonball with you."

Kara Swisher: Oh, good. So you're going to make it into something. I mean, it already is a verb, right? That is how we're using it. You're going to make cannonball happen.

Wesley Morris: Yeah. I mean, like, you're in a pool and you do a cannonball. Dingity ding ding ding. There's a song, Cannonball.

Kara Swisher: Do you play that on the show?

Wesley Morris: That's a terrible song, I believe.

Kara Swisher: No, I think that probably costs $500,000. I would love to give Kim Deal that money, but I don't think the near... I mean, we have a great theme song. I love our theme song. A guy named Justin Ellington did it. It's wonderful. It is so not Cannonball by The Breeders, but it's something as good as far as I'm concerned.

Wesley Morris: You don't like Cannonball the song? I didn't want to let that slip by.

Kara Swisher: I don't love the Cannonball. I don't know. It reminds me of my youth, I guess. I don't know. I got to listen to it again. Whenever I hear it, I'm like, ugh. It's not the song. It's something that happened during the song. I don't know. Maybe teenage.

Wesley Morris: We've got to recover this memory. This is 1993, I want to say. Last Splash is like '93, '94.

Kara Swisher: '94, yeah.

Wesley Morris: Yeah, I'm going to lean on my arm for this one. I want to recover the memory, though, because there are these cultural artifacts where you know exactly why you feel the way you feel about it. But then there are these other things that are not Proustian. I can't say in your case if this is or is not a Proustian experience.

Kara Swisher: Well, one of the high ones – I mean, Landslide. Forget it. That's the Landslide. That one I listen to and weep. But do you know why? I had a crush on a friend of mine, and I was gay, and I listened to it a lot. I just – I can't believe I'm telling you this. That's what happened. I think that's an important one, but you can identify why Landslide is a song you love. Cannonball being a song you don't like. Let's see, '94, what was I doing in 1994? God, it was so long ago.

Wesley Morris: If you can't remember what was going on then, that's another thing.

Kara Swisher: Washington, D.C.

Wesley Morris: I thought I was going to ask if you were in D.C. That's important.

Kara Swisher: I was at the Washington Post. I just became a reporter. I was in the business section. I don't know. Maybe it was a relationship. I mean, relationships.

Wesley Morris: Were you going to bars? Were you going out?

Kara Swisher: No, I'm not a bar person. I'm not. That whole thing. You know my wife Amanda – she loves a bar.

Wesley Morris: Yeah. I mean, Amanda's one of my favorite human beings. She loves to dance.

Kara Swisher: I don't like to dance.

Wesley Morris: I know. Wait, you're not a dancer?

Kara Swisher: I'm not. It's just like my son and Amanda always joke – one of my sons and Amanda always joke that I don't like swimming, I don't like dancing, I don't like bars.

Wesley Morris: Well, were you missing out in D.C.? Because D.C. strikes me as having some great gay bars – having had them anyway.

Kara Swisher: Yes, it did. It did. It did. There still are a couple there, except now it's populated by the government.

Wesley Morris: Yeah, I was going to say – can we talk about that? Why are they hanging out at the gay bars?

Kara Swisher: I mean, because they're – listen, Tara. That's always been an issue.

Wesley Morris: Anyway, all right, we're going to get to a lot of things.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, Cannonball. So you talked to – who's the last person you talked to on Cannonball?

Wesley Morris: That the public can hear – it's probably Vincent Cunningham. He and I talked about the new Spike Lee movie, Highest to Lowest. That happened this week. And then next week is going to be a conversation with me and Sam Anderson talking about old summer movies.

Wesley Morris: I had this feeling that this summer was going to be really dry, and it was in fact dry. It was the usual thing that happens now with our summers – you get a lot of sequels, a lot of 8th editions of something. But my favorite movie from this summer is Weapons. I don't know if you've seen this movie yet.

Kara Swisher: I can't see it. It's scary. I don't care. You gotta just – that's another thing I can't do really. I can't.

Wesley Morris: I know. I know. It's like Sinners. I finally went to Sinners. I did. I thought it was scary and then it was fantastic.

Kara Swisher: This is scarier than Sinners to me.

Wesley Morris: I know. Exactly. And the kid – this guy is a very gifted filmmaker. It's very clear. It's incredible. But the arms with the kids.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. I mean, I just don't like that. I don't know why that upset me. And I don't want to see it. And I don't want it. I've seen it in these posters and I don't want to see it in my head. Like I was just in my town. I was driving through. It was on Long Island doing something, which the New York Post has reported about.

Wesley Morris: Really?

Kara Swisher: They were filming The Devil Wears Prada 2 out there. I won't say more.

Wesley Morris: Oh, shit! A ticket has just been sold!

Kara Swisher: All right. So, very minor situation. So, I grew up there, and there was a movie theater that used to be there in Roslyn Harbor and Roslyn Village. And I saw Tales from the Crypt there when I was a kid with my brother. He dragged me on a rainy day. I had a turkey sandwich in my pocket, which, by the way, stayed there for too long later. But it was from the Clock Tower Restaurant. And that – I did not like seeing that movie. That upset me. There was a Santa that was evil in it, et cetera. I remember that movie. And I was with my brother in an old movie theater, and I'll never forgive him for taking me to that movie. So I don't see horror movies very much.

Wesley Morris: Since then?

Kara Swisher: Since then. I saw Halloween once, and I did not appreciate it, even though I very much like Jamie Lee Curtis.

Wesley Morris: Yeah, I mean, Halloween – that's a no-brainer. In terms of just a really visceral movie-going experience, you had a bad what?

Kara Swisher: Well, a guy grabbed my legs during the scary scene from behind because he had seen it before. And I have a bad experience with horror. So this one looks like a beautifully done horror movie. That's why I imagine it would stick with me.

Wesley Morris: It's very good. Anyway, the point of bringing that up is Weapons is the only thing – it's one of the few things this summer based on an original screenplay. And I went – Sinners sort of bled into summer, right?

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Wesley Morris: The conversation around it did. And I think part of the reason Sam and I wanted to talk about old movies is because we didn't think we were going to get any good new ones this summer. Turns out that is basically true. I mean, we got Weapons and some residual Sinners conversation because it arrived onto one of these streaming platforms – probably HBO, HBO Max, which I just – I'm just saying HBO. I don't know what we're doing here.

Kara Swisher: Do whatever you want, because they'll change it next week.

Wesley Morris: What was your favorite old movie?

Kara Swisher: Old movie?

Wesley Morris: I mean, the thing that Sam Anderson and I talk about is Ghost, but also Total Recall. Those are our two movies.

Kara Swisher: I love that movie. That's a great – that's the summer of 1990.

Wesley Morris: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: You know what the Swishers watch every year here on the summer vacation? I'm on a funerary – it's Patrick Swayze in Roadhouse.

Wesley Morris: Oh, wow.

Kara Swisher: It was so good.

Wesley Morris: Well, why that movie?

Kara Swisher: Because we love it, because there's so many great lines in it. Go watch it, Wesley. Your life will be changed.

Wesley Morris: My life has already been changed. By Patrick Swayze. I mean, many times. I mean...

Kara Swisher: Well, Ghost was amazing. I just love Patrick Swayze. I really do. I don't know – like the dancing movie. Dirty Dancing.

Wesley Morris: Dirty Dancing, yeah.

Kara Swisher: He's a strange movie star that we never get again because he's not really good at anything.

Wesley Morris: No, but he's a good dancer.

Kara Swisher: That's not true. He's a beautiful dancer. That's true.

Wesley Morris: Well, I mean, he's good enough for the movies. He's a good dancer. But what I would say is the thing that's great about Patrick Swayze as a person on camera is he's got all the intangible things.

Kara Swisher: Right. I mean, handsomeness, but also a little swagger, but a real vulnerability or an access. He's feminine. He's got a femininity to him. And I think that conflation of several different – his gender spectrum is bright and functioning simultaneously with every performance.

Wesley Morris: He's just a sweetheart. And he seems like a kind person.

Kara Swisher: Yes, yes. He does. And he's always great. "We're going to be nice until it's time not to be nice."

Wesley Morris: Yeah, Point Break.

Kara Swisher: No, that was Roadhouse. Point Break was another one. Yeah. He was amazing. I mean, I forgot. I can't quote Roadhouse the way you can quote it.

Wesley Morris: I can quote Roadhouse. That's correct.

Kara Swisher: And we sit around and we insult the Jake Gyllenhaal version. I feel bad for the remade Roadhouse. I don't know why they did it. I'm a big Jake Gyllenhaal person. I don't like him doing movie star karaoke. The idea of him doing Patrick Swayze and Harrison Ford in the same year, essentially. It's not good. I didn't like it.

Wesley Morris: But I mean, because he's his own thing, right? I don't think that he needs to... I love that he was doing that movie this summer that Taylor Swift had her enormous tour. Because it was like, here he was with sad little Roadhouse, and she was a billionaire selling out stadiums everywhere.

Kara Swisher: Well, I mean, I don't want to skip ahead or anything, but I did find that part of that podcast conversation that she had with the Kelce brothers to be really fascinating. When she's like, "My favorite part of that entire re-recording odyssey was getting to do her 10-minute version of All Too Well," which allegedly is about the person we were just discussing.

Wesley Morris: Allegedly. Of course it is.

Kara Swisher: We're going to get to her, too.

Wesley Morris: All right, look, look. We got to Cannonball. I'm not trying to rush us.

Kara Swisher: Okay, you're rushing us.

Wesley Morris: You're not rushing us. We got lots of things to talk about. We've been talking.

Kara Swisher: Talk just a little bit. This week you're talking about Spike Lee's latest movie. Last week, you were talking about the series finale of And Just Like That. Listen, did you watch that show? Hello. I love Sarah Jessica Parker. I'm not of the haters. I mean, I can see why people hate watching, but I love it. It was so fuck you. I love a fuck you. Yeah. Like to everybody. Yeah. I love it. The poop – like, oh my god, they really did that. And then her last thing was like, "Fuck you, I'm gonna dance away in my thing." Yeah. Did you like it or not? You probably hate-watched it.

Wesley Morris: No, I love the show. I really think it's one of the great projects about friendship that we've ever had. I don't care if we're talking about books, movies, TV – it's one of the great works of friendship and all the vicissitudes of being close to people for a long time.

Kara Swisher: Well, we have to forgive them for Che. Che was a bad character.

Wesley Morris: Of course, of course, of course. But that's okay. It's okay.

Kara Swisher: Can I give you a premise? You remember when they got in trouble for not being diverse enough? There's lots of shows of dudes – white dudes, black dudes, all kinds of dudes – where there's never diversity among them, right? This show got slapped for it in a way that other shows don't. And I thought it was really interesting as I watched it. I was trying to think of a popular show that didn't really try very hard. The thing is it was on forever, I guess, because it was so long – '98 to now, more or less, right? As much as I hate to say it, this is probably what a lot of the people they're depicting – their lives would have been like this.

Wesley Morris: Yes.

Kara Swisher: So they were kind of depicting the lives. They wouldn't have had a lot of diverse friends necessarily unless they sort of Venn diagrammed into fashion, I guess.

Wesley Morris: Right. Right. But no, I agree with you. I don't want – if this is the – if I live in New York City, I go to restaurants all the time. And you know what I see a lot of the time when I go out? It's four white ladies just yucking it up. Yucking it up. And I think I didn't need that to be the case if that wasn't the case from the beginning.

Wesley Morris: But I think one of the cool things about the And Just Like That project was it was going to take a different risk. It was going to absorb the criticism of the show not being "diverse enough" – which nobody – I mean, did anybody say Tony Soprano needs a black friend? That's what I was thinking of. I was like, there were no black people in town.

Kara Swisher: Well, no, no. Never. I mean, it's just – I mean, there were some, but they weren't major characters. They were ancillary. You get an episode where Christopher was hanging out with some negroes, right?

Wesley Morris: Yeah, that's what would happen. But I think that the idea that these women would come back, minus Samantha, and be put into a post-George Floyd United States – what would it then mean for them to be able to stay on HBO for one thing during this period? But also, what would be realistic? What would be a realistic experience for them as women who were realizing that the world had changed and that they were part of the problem in some way without actually saying, "Hey, we're part of the problem," right? Like Charlotte goes on it – Carrie and Miranda go on these respective crusades to find some non-white people. So the ones that you had would have made sense, would have maybe happened, right?

Kara Swisher: Yes. It didn't feel forced to me. What was her name? Yes. When they got past Che, it didn't feel forced because I thought the woman who played the real estate agent was amazing.

Wesley Morris: Oh, Sarita Choudhury?

Kara Swisher: Amazing. Amazing. That is one of the best performances on a show that I can think of. I mean, with all due respect to Kim Cattrall, but this is just a deeper version of the same character to me. And I believe I've met that person. I've met that person. I met a real estate lady who's a killer. Yes. And the same thing with – I'm totally blanking on it – Nicole Ari Parker, yeah, yeah. Amazing. I've met that woman. Yes. I've met that woman. I know her. And she would have hung out with them.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, I love that show. And let me just say, I love Sarah Jessica Parker. I know her a little bit.

Wesley Morris: Mm-hmm.

Kara Swisher: And she's actually a fan of Pivot, but she may be listening to this. I think she has delivered more entertainment. I always think of who delivers more entertainment in their lifetime. And she certainly has in lots of roles.

Wesley Morris: But I actually think that what you're identifying is something interesting about her. We haven't really experienced a useful or enlightening appreciation of what it is that she did both as Carrie and what kind of entertainer she's been all this time. I think that one of the things I loved – and sometimes cringed at, but loved the nerve of – in her work as Carrie is that Carrie Bradshaw was somebody who was very present to the moment in the late '90s and early 2000s.

Wesley Morris: She kind of had a really great beige white girl energy. And there was a little hip-hop dimension to her glamour and the way that she would both incorporate black slang and borscht belt comedy into her throwaway line deliveries. I always thought that was great. The way she could screw her face up was like 1930s, 1940s screwball. I just think that performance is very, very good. To the end. And it got better. It got even better. The last four episodes were amazing.

Kara Swisher: Yes, I agree. I agree. I think she's great. I would give her kudos. She was also in a movie that was about a family where she was sort of the girlfriend that nobody liked.

Wesley Morris: Oh, was that Home for the Holidays?

Kara Swisher: No, it was like that. Oh, Family Stone – the knockoff Home for the Holidays. Yeah. Yes. But I love that movie because I loved her performance in it. She was sort of this difficult woman and she didn't hide it and her difficulty. And then she falls in love with the other brother, etc. But I loved her in that movie.

Wesley Morris: I appreciated her as part of that great stretch that she had in the movies because of the show. If you can remember this, Kara – her early '90s version of herself. I don't know if you remember this, but there was this movie with Bruce Willis as some kind of river cop, coastal guard cop called Striking Distance. And Sarah Jessica Parker is his partner in that movie. His cop partner – I believe she wore a uniform and everything.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. That's like when Meryl Streep drove a boat in The River Wild. Who could forget? May I say she's the classiest dame I've ever met? I won't say how.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, President Trump is – we're moving on. President Trump is a cute thing. We can't go from Meryl Streep to President Trump.

Wesley Morris: We are.

Kara Swisher: Because listen.

Wesley Morris: Because historically speaking, she's been in many history movies. That's why.

Kara Swisher: President Trump is accusing Smithsonian of focusing too much – unquote – "how bad slavery was" and not enough on the brightness of America. Trump sent a post on Truth Social. He's directed his attorneys to go through the museums and start the same process done with universities across the country. He also noted the country cannot be woke because woke is broke. The comments come a week after the White House announced a sweeping review of the Smithsonian, and museums are given 120 days to change content that the Trump administration finds problematic in tone, historical framing, and alignment with American ideals. I mean, please just go on. Please just pontificate on what is happening here. How bad slavery was.

Wesley Morris: Can I start here? I want to take you back to February 24th – sorry, February 21st, 2017. This is like a month after the inauguration. Because this is what I've been thinking about. This man, a month after the inauguration, gets a tour of the relatively still new Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture, which we at my house call the Blacksonian. The president gets a tour of this museum from Lonnie Bunch, the man who is now in charge of the whole Smithsonian system and is under fire to gladden it up. President Trump gives this speech. I have the entire speech. I'm not going to read all of it, but Kara, I'm going to just read some of it because I don't recognize this person. This person is a different person.

Wesley Morris: "I am very proud of Lonnie Bunch. The work and the love that he has done in his heart and for what he's done is – I always need to talk to you, I always need to talk about you. You need enthusiasm. You need really, you need really love for anything you do it successfully. And Lonnie, where are you? Come on, Lonnie." I skip ahead. Then he thanks David Rubenstein, who he just fired from the Kennedy Center. "It's a privilege to be here today. This museum is a beautiful tribute to so many American heroes. Heroes like Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Rosa Parks, the Greensboro students, the students who had a sit-in at a Woolworth in Greensboro, North Carolina. The African-American Medal of Honor recipients, among so many other really incredible heroes. It's amazing to see. I went to – we did a pretty comprehensive tour, but not comprehensive enough, Kara. Not comprehensive enough. So Lonnie, I'll be back. I told you that. Because I could stay here for a lot longer. Believe me, it's really incredible. I am deeply proud. I am deeply proud that we now have a museum that honors the millions of African-American men and women who built our national heritage, especially when it comes to faith, culture, and the unbreakable American spirit. My wife was here last week and took a tour, and it was something that she still is talking about. Ivanka is here right now. Hi, Ivanka. And it is really very special. It's something that, frankly, if you want to know the truth, it's doing so well that everybody's talking about it. Incredible."

Wesley Morris: Well, he was told what to say. You tell me what's happening. Because he had people around him who were like, "This is a good thing." And look, I'm sorry. Donald Trump's been a racist since forever.

Kara Swisher: Oh, come on. I mean, who are we talking about? Forever. Like, never not been a racist.

Wesley Morris: And so this is what's happened between age, power, and not being stopped by someone.

Kara Swisher: I like where you're going with this. Yes, yes.

Wesley Morris: He now is showing you exactly who he is. Like, slavery is like – "Why is it too much on how bad slavery was?" There is not a number of how bad it was, right? There is not a number high enough to do it. But I think he just was told what to do there. And I hate to say it, he had a vodka there.

Kara Swisher: You mean on February 21st, 2017?

Wesley Morris: He had people who were like, "Yes, slavery was bad. Let's stick with slavery was bad on this one. A terrible, the worst thing ever. The original sin." Whatever. There were several original sins.

Kara Swisher: Well, he wants them all gone. So all gone. So what do you think about these attempts? And do you think he just will not give up on this "woke" thing, which is nuts?

Wesley Morris: And they had a bunch of interviews in front of the museum and they showed people what he said. All kinds of people, not just what you'd imagine would be angry about it, but they were like, "What? What?" Like, talk about this and what they're trying to do here from a cultural point of view. They're trying to purify. They're trying to create some idea of a thing that has been being attempted for 400 years, right?

Kara Swisher: It's true. It's not a new thing.

Wesley Morris: A racially purified – it's just never been achieved, right? There's never been – I mean, not even Woodrow Wilson has gone as far as Trump is trying to go. And Woodrow Wilson was all but a KKK member.

Kara Swisher: I think this is propaganda at its most blatant, right? This is the beginning of something, right? I mean, if you look at the prongs that are laid out on this table – essentially, holding it up – you've got the National Guard down the street, probably around the museums right now, right?

Wesley Morris: Yeah, exactly.

Kara Swisher: There's black people acting up a lot – like that's where they would put the National Guard, like idiots, where no crime is taking place. But we'll get into that. But where in a city where if you ask the average D.C. resident, "Could things be a little better from the standpoint of public safety?" they would say yes. But do I think the solution to that is the National Guard? No, it's housing. Let people go to sleep. I mean, this is my number one thing about what we call crime and mental health situations. I think a lot of this stuff is just stress and not having a place to actually reset your brain every night. That contributes to what we probably wouldn't even qualify certain aspects of urban crime as mental illness because we've been culturally conditioned to think of it as gang warfare. As bad people. And the people suck. But no, it's the systemic conditions that have led people to behave this way. Now, I'm not trying – whatever. This is a whole other aspect of this conversation.

Wesley Morris: Yes, including C, slavery.

Kara Swisher: Right, right.

Wesley Morris: But I think that the point here is that something is being gotten underway, essentially, right? And I think purifying the story of American history is part of it. I think creating an environment in which they can use Washington, D.C. as a test case for how this might go once you start rolling it out in Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia. I mean, he's describing cities as blood-soaked and cesspools.

Kara Swisher: No, they're not. I have raised children in D.C. and San Francisco and everywhere.

Wesley Morris: You know, Kara, I'm actually curious about this because—

Kara Swisher: I think it only takes one upset white woman to have an experience that she didn't like and for that to reach somebody on the staff of this administration or to reach him, right?

Wesley Morris: Well, in this case, it was big balls, right?

Kara Swisher: Big balls got beat up on 14th Street, which is not as, you know, it's crazy on Saturday night. And as I lived over there, I lived a block away. And it's a city. Like, I don't know what to say. It's a city. All cities have their issues. And you don't want to minimize crime. But the idea of maximizing it and creating it, it's almost pornographic in the way they're maximizing it. Like, bloodbath, ongoing this. It's like, just not true.

Wesley Morris: Yeah, it does not correspond with the reality that most people are living.

Kara Swisher: But I will say that I mean, I can't speak to its effectiveness. I think what you're telling me about when people are like man on the street in responses to the news that he wants to like remove slavery from a museum that, you know, is telling the story from slavery to like the glorious things that African Americans have contributed to this country. And how you can't, if you remove slavery, we're not America anymore. Right. Like, who are we? They will be removing the glorious things, just so you know. It's not just slavery was bad, but white people did the most things. I mean, I think that's what's really happening here.

Wesley Morris: I mean, although, talk a little bit about the Kennedy Center Honors, because it goes there, too, speaking of cultural impacts. It includes Kiss, Sylvester Stallone, Gloria Gaynor, and the country music star they picked George Strait. Good country music star. I'm sorry. No, I mean. Also Stallone. I'm not against Stallone, even though I think he's kind of heinous in many ways. I think he's culturally relevant in some fashion. Talk a little bit about these honors. What do they say?

Kara Swisher: Well, it's funny. I'm going to do an episode about these five people and this particular situation. Kiss, Sylvester Stallone, Gloria Gaynor, George Strait. Michael Crawford. Again, important Broadway star. No question. He's not getting, like, under ordinary circumstances, is Michael Crawford. Like, can I give you a list of people who have not been Kennedy-centered? Yes, I get it. You start with, has Audra McDonald gotten one yet? I mean, no, she has not. Has Madonna? I mean, you know, I mean, I just, there's so many people. The Democrats aren't giving it to Madonna either. But somebody on the board at some point would just be like, listen, I think it's kind of cool that Madonna hasn't gotten it because it's kind of a badge of honor. But the idea that Julia Roberts is inducting George Clooney X number of years ago and she hasn't been Kennedy Center. You know, I mean, Glenn Close. I mean, there's like a long list of people who have not gotten it. But here we are.

Wesley Morris: Right. But I actually think that Sylvester Stallone and George Strait, those are no brainers to me.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I agree. That's like, that's easy. That's not hard. Gloria Gaynor, I don't know what that is. I mean, listen, there's a part of me that's like, I don't know, still a little DEI left in this administration. They needed to find some person of color who would say yes. But even they still feel a kind of pressure to acknowledge that even though they're letting all these Afrikaners in the country under victimization statutes of some kind. We got to find one.

Wesley Morris: Are you going to go?

Kara Swisher: I used to cover the Kennedy Center Honors for the Washington Post, just so you know, when I was a young group. Speaking of my time, that was my job, one of the jobs in the style section. I have to say it was a ball because it was amazing. It's fun. I've been. Trump's hosting, which could be hysterical. I mean, he's hosting for now. I don't know how that's going to go. Can you imagine? What are the rehearsals? Who are they going to get?

Wesley Morris: Wait, stop. For one second. What? I'm sorry. This man is going to have to go to rehearsals.

Kara Swisher: I know. But he loves that. He doesn't want to rehearse. He's just going to extemporaneously talk about how slavery wasn't that bad. I mean, and broadcast it live on CBS, which is also what they want to do?

Wesley Morris: Yeah, I know. I mean, typically, for anybody who doesn't know, this is a ceremony that happens a month before anybody in the public gets to see it. That's right. They have a month to make a television show out of this live event.

Kara Swisher: Right, right. That's right. You can't broadcast, I mean, you could broadcast it live if everybody's on their P's and Q's.

Wesley Morris: It will be broadcast live. Stop it. You know, I mean, in today's whatever CBS does in their behaviors. It doesn't matter. Are you going to go?

Kara Swisher: You need to go. Oh, my God. Are you assigning me?

Wesley Morris: I'm assigning you to go and do a show about it. You need to go.

Kara Swisher: I am going to do an episode about the nominees and the rightness and wrongness of having the president choose them. But I guess, I don't know. I could try. I could. That's like, I'm going to think about that because you're right. Maybe it would be worth going. But he's trying to culturally take over this old, old-age man. He's going to rename it after him. He's going to rename the center after him. He's already on his way to naming the opera house after Melania. The Trump Center. No, that's not going to work.

Wesley Morris: I've been listening to you talk about this man for years. You are one of the smartest people on this person. I think that you understand what—I think you understand him. You're one of the people who understands him.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's because my mother is Trump. But go ahead.

Wesley Morris: I know. I mean, I think that the people who have the biggest insights into him understand him as a family member.

Kara Swisher: Right. Yeah, for sure. But I also feel like, you know, it's funny because I feel lucky because I felt like, in my house, it was pictures of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King. That was who my grandmother and her sisters had around the house. My mother liked Jackie's outfits. But I think that there is, I just am curious about, he's like a stopped clock in some ways so that when he says things like the candidate, like there aren't good shows at the Kennedy Center, it's not true.

Wesley Morris: But they would, I mean, some of the things didn't work right. Not everything was great that went on there. In terms of the quality of the thing, not morally bad. There had been years ago. I saw when Audra McDonald, her first show, Master Class was done.

Kara Swisher: Oh, you saw the original Master Class?

Wesley Morris: I saw it six times. She was amazing. I saw Spalding Gray there doing his show. It was amazing, one of his shows. And so there used to be a lot more interesting things there. And then it just became like. But the fact of the matter is the point is the great people who made that place an exciting place to go do anything. I've gone like Ben Folds, one of my favorite performers, Ben Folds. I love him. He's out. Rene Fleming hit the road, and now he's taken over the board. I don't know. I truly...

Kara Swisher: Kick out David Rubenstein. Well, you know, the telling thing about this whole Kennedy Center thing is I don't know if you caught this, but when he gave that press conference talking about how bad it was and talking about how he was going to take over, like he was going to host the show, he said, "I want one of these. I wanted one of these." He wanted an honor. He does. He wants everything. He wants a Nobel Prize. I waited and waited and waited. And I said, the hell with it. I'll become chairman. I'll give myself an honor. Maybe next year we'll honor Trump. Yep. That's what he said. We probably will have to. Although I would enjoy that.

Wesley Morris: What the fuck?

Kara Swisher: I say yes. Because I just want to see the whole horrible thing. All right. We have to go on a quick break. When we come back, the White House joins TikTok.

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Kara Swisher: Wesley, we're back. TikTok just got a new user, the White House. The Trump administration launched an official account this week, despite the fact that a federal law requires TikTok to be sold or banned. Though Trump keeps extending the deadline illegally, by the way. The new White House account posted several videos, including one in which Trump says, "I am your voice." Posts were quickly flooded with spam and negative comments, many referencing the Epstein files. Trump is reportedly still working on a deal for U.S. investors to buy TikTok from its parent company, ByteDance. Probably Larry Ellison will be involved in that. The latest deadline for the ban expires in mid-September. Talk about him using TikTok. And years ago, just so people don't know, he called TikTok a national security threat in 2020 and tried to ban it back then. And then he shifted when he realized one of his biggest donors was one of the biggest investors. Jeff Yoss. So any thoughts on them doing this?

Wesley Morris: You know, I got to be honest. Well, first of all, I would have just assumed that the White House had already had a TikTok account before this guy got back into office. Not that Biden would have been all over it or anything, but there would have been some young person in the Biden administration who's like, "Hey, Uncle Joe."

Kara Swisher: Yeah, yeah. They had a pretty good social media.

Wesley Morris: Yeah, I mean, so I'm surprised by that. But I also, I mean, I this as a story, I know that I'm supposed to be disturbed and upset by the idea of simultaneously the national security threat being addressed. Like, you know, legitimately, you got to find somebody else to do this. Can't let the Chinese government be involved in our private business. I think the ship has sailed. I don't know about you. If you were on it, they got it. I think it's a wrap.

Kara Swisher: It's how many, like every American, like are there new TikTok users besides the White House?

Wesley Morris: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: No, I agree. TikTok, that's what I always thought would happen. They got everything. They don't need anything else. I just think like most of these media things, they'll go up and down and TikTok's not on the ascension necessarily. I don't know what the new thing will be. Probably YouTube in many ways. When you look at the growth, I think they've been fine. They're sort of baked in. Threads is actually growing bigger than X right now, which is really interesting. They're reaching the same daily users. I think Blue Sky is doing fine, well. I think what's happened is everything's gotten dissipated in terms of social media. And then certain things break through. So there's just more options.

Wesley Morris: Right, yeah, depending on what, or people not using it as much.

Kara Swisher: My kids use Reddit. That's it. YouTube and Reddit, that's the whole thing.

Wesley Morris: Interesting. That's their entire, they don't participate.

Kara Swisher: I've noticed I don't use social media as much. I am having a love affair with Reddit. Reddit is great, actually.

Wesley Morris: I, you know, I now, I'd sort of been led to the, well, you know, what's interesting is that Google sort of is giving me more Reddit threads in my searches than I'd ever been getting before.

Kara Swisher: Are you still using Google for search?

Wesley Morris: Yeah, I'm not a, I'm in a relationship with a, I'm not even going to take that as shade, Kara. You're in chat.

Kara Swisher: I don't. I bet you do.

Wesley Morris: No, I'm not. No, you don't. But, you know, I'm probably going to get there because I'm in a relationship with a man who is, you know, I love a man who loves ChatGPT.

Kara Swisher: Oh, well, certain people do.

Wesley Morris: But he is really good at it. And I'm learning that you can't treat ChatGPT like some any old Google search. You can't. It's not. You can't get cheap with ChatGPT. You've got to whine and dine ChatGPT. You've got to prompt. The prompt.

Kara Swisher: Yes.

Wesley Morris: You've got to talk to it. You've got to make love to ChatGPT.

Kara Swisher: Oh my God.

Wesley Morris: You know, you've got to really give it what it wants. It's like, you know, ain't nothing going on but the rent. You know, use what you got to get what you want.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, you do. You got to give ChatGPT what ChatGPT needs.

Wesley Morris: Does he step out with any other LLM?

Kara Swisher: I mean, he tried everything. Over to Claude.

Wesley Morris: Over to Claude.

Kara Swisher: Wait, there's a Claude?

Wesley Morris: Claude, yes. There's Claude. Anthropic's.

Kara Swisher: Oh, no.

Wesley Morris: Kara, my man is secretly out with Claude, pretending to love ChatGPT with me.

Kara Swisher: That's right, Claude. There's a lot. Claude is pretty good, actually. Everyone is a different one. And then there's Google, Gemini. I just think my point is when I'm using boring-ass, basic-ass Google.

Wesley Morris: Well, Google is now Gemini, really. The answers come in AI, by the way. You've noticed.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have noticed that. And I don't like it.

Wesley Morris: You know, a lot of the time it's wrong.

Kara Swisher: You'll learn to like it.

Wesley Morris: Even though it's not right?

Kara Swisher: It's like right-ish. It'll get right.

Wesley Morris: Okay.

Kara Swisher: It'll get right. It'll get right. But Reddit is the thing that Google is now pushing me. Like it's near the top of a lot of my searches when I'm looking for information. So I've become a Reddit person. Like I'll just go to Reddit now. There used to be a lot of heinous stuff on there, but the people who are running.

Wesley Morris: That's what kept me away.

Kara Swisher: Something changed. I think Reddit is like YouTube. It's consumptive where you don't have to necessarily participate, but it brings you all kinds of interesting information if you curate it properly. And I know people have talked about it this way, which is like it does remind me of the past. It seems somehow innocent and at the same time, a lot of the people there take it, it is like the information is good. I have traveled, I made travel decisions based on Reddit threads and I've gotten good results.

Wesley Morris: Yeah, I've gotten good results.

Kara Swisher: My sons use it completely. Let me ask you about another cultural thing because this is all over Reddit and all over social media. South Park has done it again. I have to say whatever is in these people's drinks is working for them. The third episode of the show, current season, continued to mock the Trump administration. An episode focused on federal takeover in D.C. In the episode, the president is mocked for accepting bribes from big tech CEOs. Sort of real to life. Once again, is in bed with Satan and, yes, still has a micropenis. Let's listen to a clip of Trump receiving gifts from a line of suck-ups, including Tim Cook.

[Clip plays: "Mr. President, you have so many great ideas. Your leadership is truly beyond anything we have ever had in this country. And you do not have a small penis." "Ah, thanks kid. On behalf of the state of Florida, I'd like to give you this gift, a silver space shuttle." "Next, Mr. President, your ideas for the tech industry are so innovative and you definitely do not have a small penis." "Ah, thanks, girl. Please accept this gift on behalf of Apple."]

Kara Swisher: So tell me what you think of, it also did take, this latest episode also took some shots at ChatGPT, by the way. But talk about the show right now. Something is in there, Wheaties or whatever.

Wesley Morris: I think that the timing is really good. I think there's something about the brute force of the South Park comedy ideology. I think the show didn't have to change for us to come back to it.

Kara Swisher: What do you mean the brute force of the comedy ideology? Explain that.

Wesley Morris: Their approach is really to just name the thing, right? To just say the thing that... To make the subtextual textual. There's no line to... You don't need to be literate to watch the show, if you know what I mean. You don't need to be visually literate, and you don't need to really have a great sense of cultural literacy. You just have to basically know, like have a gist of what's happening. Especially now. But I mean, these guys, their genius is for, I think that's part of their genius, to sort of be declarative as comedians, to not need to have, it's like the easter egg is an omelet on that show. You just see it and you just say it. It's just the thing that they've cracked it open. You don't have to look for it. You might not agree. Like the trans stuff, people complain about that.

Kara Swisher: I just think they go after everybody, right?

Wesley Morris: I think that, well, that's the thing that always sort of scared me about those guys. I mean, I'm doing an episode with somebody about my relationship with this show. And a lot of where we're starting in this conversation is me sort of thinking through how much the show scared me because it was forcing me to think differently about things that, you know, as a young person, I thought I understood. And here were people who were basically my age, 20, who were making fun of things that I didn't think you could make fun of.

Kara Swisher: Give me an example.

Wesley Morris: Jesus. Yeah, they do make fun of Jesus. I mean, I'm not an extremely religious person, but I didn't have time. I wasn't thinking, I mean, you know, and I had lived, this was, I mean, I would consider South Park part of the culture war era of the country, right? The beginning of the show was happening at the end of the so-called culture wars. And, you know, I'm familiar with Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ" and Chris Ofili's work and Madonna. And yet there was something about the subversiveness of doing that dismantling and undermining in the form of crude children's animation, right? It was actually, the animation is so crude that it isn't for children because all the lines are sharp, right? All the lines on those drawings are sharp.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, one of the things that's interesting about it is that they can, not that they continue to push against Trump, they will push against anybody, I think. And obviously the tech leaders are perfect for that. I mean, they don't even have to mock them. That's exactly what Tim Cook said when he was handing him the golden statue, essentially or whatever the gold and whatever the fuck he handed him. It's just, I think one of the things they do is as you said, they are brutal. They're just, they don't even have to make satire here because everything is so ridiculous.

Wesley Morris: Yes, on some level. Well, I mean, I think that the one thing that they have changed is the calibration because when South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, the great truly great movie musical they made 26 years ago came out, there was a degree of subtlety happening there because they were taking the satire of the sitcom and essentially overlaying it. They were stretching it to fit a musical movie musical format. And so the movie is a legitimate musical while also functioning as social and political satire. It's just that in 1999, the culture was different. And so the thing that people were upset about was the way in which it depicted Satan and homosexuals and was having a good time with these conflations.

Kara Swisher: And I found that naughtiness to be really liberating in a way.

Wesley Morris: I did too. I was not offended, interestingly enough.

Kara Swisher: No.

Wesley Morris: I was. I mean, I should have been an offended party as a gay Negro, but I wasn't because I kind of understood the place that the comedy was coming from. And I think that in the lifespan of this show, we've seen our relationship to comedy change like 10 times.

Kara Swisher: Yes. Well, you think about The Book of Mormon too, though, right?

Wesley Morris: Yeah. I mean, I loved that show so much. And oddly enough, I was there, I saw it several times. And there's a lot of offensive gay things in that, and it's fun, but it's funny. It's really funny.

Kara Swisher: And I know it's like, don't pick on the gays, I'm like, it's okay, a little bit to pick on.

Wesley Morris: I mean, the gays pick on the gays, let's be clear.

Kara Swisher: And other people. In our meetings, in our meetings when you're not there. But The Book of Mormon, to me, I was recommending someone see it even now because it's so, I actually may go back and see it again.

Wesley Morris: I'm going to go back, actually, because I think, for the purposes of this thing that I'm doing, I'm going to go back and see it. But one of the things is, I was there once. Still on Broadway. Still on Broadway, where a bunch of Mormons went, because they thought it was funny. Certain Mormons think it's funny, too, and it's so insulting to Mormons.

Kara Swisher: But it's interesting that I don't think the Trump administration thinks this is funny, because they have no sense of humor, right? This group of people are not going to, if they continue at it, they may, especially the micropenis part, which is really funny, which is what everybody thinks of Donald Trump. He has a micropenis. That's what, you know.

Wesley Morris: I mean, Kara, I can see the tie.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. That's correct. And, you know, the thing that I find scary, I found scary about Trey Parker and Matt Stone as a kid was that they didn't seem to have any allegiance to anything other than their comedic version of the truth and the joke. Is the joke funny? And after that, we don't care.

Wesley Morris: This is why I like them.

Kara Swisher: You know, sometimes I had a real issue with Dave Chappelle because he would—I didn't mind his making jokes. I was like, do you need to make an hour of them? And some aren't funny. Like, make it funny. Like the other Easter in San Francisco near my house they have Hot Jesus. Have you ever been to the Hot Jesus contest?

Wesley Morris: Oh, I mean, hello. Fantastic. Hello.

Kara Swisher: But it like someone like, oh, it's sacrosanct. I like, no, it's funny. It like if it's not funny, then why do it? And that's what I like about it. The Hot Jesus, come on!

Wesley Morris: I mean, but again, I think that the return of this show has been really useful to remind us. I mean, because we've had more fights about whether comedy can be comedy in the last... I mean, this has been going on since 9/11, honestly. Like, what can be funny? What are we allowed to laugh at? When can we laugh? What now is comedy is really about who the comedian is. And the thing about having South Park back is nobody's changed. It's not like in just like that where Carrie, Miranda, and Charlotte are now no longer 28 to 34. They're in their mid-50s. They're figuring out how the world works. The world has changed, but the people in South Park have not.

Kara Swisher: Have not. That's exactly right.

Wesley Morris: And it's still funny.

Kara Swisher: And it's still funny. It's still funny. All right, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about the latest to join the podcast game, Taylor Swift.

[Ad break]

Kara Swisher: Wesley, we're back with more news. Last week, Taylor Swift went on her boyfriend Travis Kelce's podcast to announce her newest album. As usual, she broke the Internet. The episode had 1.3 million live viewers, which is almost double the audience that tuned in to see Donald Trump on Joe Rogan. At the time of the taping, the episode has 20 million YouTube views in total. Meanwhile, Spotify reported the episode has become one of the past year's highest performing within just one day of release. Increased female viewership of the shows by 600 percent. Not a surprise. 600 percent?

Wesley Morris: 600 percent.

Kara Swisher: God damn.

Wesley Morris: I know, I know. I guess dudes are watching that.

Kara Swisher: Talk about that. She can do whatever she wants. I mean, of course, Donald Trump is saying she's not hot anymore. She's still hot. She still remains hot.

Wesley Morris: I'm sorry, can we pause for a minute? What do you mean she's not hot anymore?

Kara Swisher: I don't know, because she is hot. She looked beautiful on that show.

Wesley Morris: Like, does he mean, did he mean it like that? Or she's not like...

Kara Swisher: No, she's no longer the thing. She's not, I mean, she's still the thing. What is he talking about?

Wesley Morris: Exactly. This man, I mean, I can't talk about big tie energy. I just can't do it. I just won't do it.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, exactly. Big, like, long tie energy, is that what it is? I, first of all, I found it interesting that she basically was using it to, she was using this appearance to announce an album, essentially, right?

Kara Swisher: Yes, exactly. It wasn't as though this show needed, you know, there are shows that would love to have Taylor Swift come on for the numbers. This didn't feel like a numbers play to me. It felt like she was trying something out. I mean, she kind of said it herself on the episode. But I think that this is a show that has Adam Sandler come on, Brad Pitt's been on it. It's not like it's a desert for celebrity guests. So having her come on, it felt kind of sweet. And to the extent that a thing that turns into an album release announcement can be sweet, pure, and innocent, this felt a lot like that.

Wesley Morris: But the thing that I sort of noticed listening to the show, the two of them, the brothers, Travis and Jason Kelce, who have very different off-the-show lives, and to bring their different personalities and energies into the show is often fun. It really does feel like two brothers. I think they have a nice relationship. They have a good relationship. But it was interesting watching Jason try to drive this particular episode.

Kara Swisher: Oh, because he's all Taylor. Right. Yes. Right. Oh, my brother's famous girlfriend.

Wesley Morris: Well, but also the way that Travis Kelce is just hype manning her pretty much the entire conversation. It was just interesting seeing the show dynamics change around the arrival of this person.

Kara Swisher: Right. That must be like that outside, right? She's got to suck up all the energy. I've heard that that happens. I've heard that that happens. Even if she doesn't try, she can't help it, right? Because one of the things I thought about the show is, again, like Sarah Jessica Parker, different. But pound for pound, she's really entertaining. Like, she's really, you can't stop watching her. And I don't know why that is. And so wherever she appears, and she even sings about it. My daughter was dancing to Anti-Hero the other day. I don't know why she's so attractive to people, which is especially women, that it was a completely pleasurable experience watching it in a way that was very satisfying, I thought. I don't know. Maybe not.

Wesley Morris: No, I listened to it. I didn't watch it. I watched it a tiny little bit, but I listened to most of it.

Kara Swisher: You gotta watch it because she leans into it. Anyway, go ahead.

Wesley Morris: Oh no, I mean I was allowed to imagine it. I find her an interesting physical presence, and I kind of like her better in my imagination if that makes sense. It was interesting listening to her talk, listening to the three of them talk about the Eras Tour in their different ways. I had forgotten the entire story of the relationship. I mean, he was at the show and was like, "I gotta know who this person is." I mean, he's the luckiest fan in the world, we all know this. He gets to go home with the thing that he went to the show to see, and she seems happy with that. The way she talked about that show was interesting to me in that I have a lot of wonder about what these tours are like for the artists. And unlike the Beyoncé concert documentary of her Renaissance tour, the Eras Tour film didn't have a lot of backstage stuff.

Kara Swisher: It didn't. You're right.

Wesley Morris: She wanted to sort of preserve the magic of the live experience, whereas the Beyoncé film, to me, was fascinating because she wanted to kind of enhance the mythology of the achievement of the live experience by humanizing the person who becomes someone else on stage.

Kara Swisher: Yes.

Wesley Morris: And so it was great listening to her talk. I mean, it was enlightening hearing Taylor Swift talk about toe spacers.

Kara Swisher: But she does that. I would encourage you to go back and watch Miss Americana again.

Wesley Morris: That's true.

Kara Swisher: Because that gives you an enormous insight into her. Watch it now when she's famous because at the time she was on a downswing.

Wesley Morris: Yeah, it was when Reputation was being rebuffed and Lover was about to come out. Or there's another show where she's in someone's house where they're singing all country songs. She's with two of her friends and they're just talking about the songs. I mean, I think she's quite accessible and yet unknowable in a lot of ways. I felt like this was... but she's very, you do know a lot about her in a weird way. And I think she may be just like this, right?

Kara Swisher: I always think, does the drunk agree with the sober? You know when people are drunk they're different than when they're sober.

Wesley Morris: Yes, yes, yes.

Kara Swisher: I think sometimes you meet certain people who are exactly the way they are in private and public. And then there are some that are quite different. Like a Johnny Carson would be a perfect example. Shy and kind of an asshole.

Wesley Morris: Oh, yeah, you would be disappointed to meet him in person because you're not getting Tonight Show Johnny Carson.

Kara Swisher: Yes, exactly. I think she's pretty much like this. I think she's lived in fame for so long. This is what she is.

Wesley Morris: I would agree with that. I also think that the thing that I loved about this conversation was how seriously she was taking it in some way. Like, she wasn't there to do all the joshing that the brothers were trying to do.

Kara Swisher: Right, right.

Wesley Morris: And so, Jason would ask a question and she'd be in the middle of answering it. Travis would kind of interrupt and then they would start doing their brother thing. And she would not even acknowledge that that was happening. And she would continue giving her answer. And that was, to me, I just felt like she was happy to have this opportunity to just think through herself. In a safe space, right? In a place where she wasn't going to be asked a follow-up question, basically.

Kara Swisher: Right, right, exactly. Listen, the results are the results. People are still thrilled with her, which is really interesting. We'll see how this album does, but people still...

Wesley Morris: We'll see how this album does? What do you think is going to happen to this album, Kara?

Kara Swisher: It's going to be huge. Like, nobody's going to care?

Wesley Morris: No, everyone's going to care.

Kara Swisher: But I'm saying, like, yeah, but how can you top yourself if you're this woman? That's the difficulty of being Taylor Swift. I will never forget my night at the Eras tour. I truly will never forget it.

Wesley Morris: Me neither. It was one of the most special communal experiences I've had. I've had a lot of special communal experiences. This is definitely in my top 50. And I think one of the things that was special about it was one of the things that she kind of wanted to unpack a little bit, which is like the toll that it took on her body. And you can really, you know, after two and a half hours, Kara, I watched this show.

Kara Swisher: Well, I was fine, but I was watching it with a friend in front of three, I don't know, 13 to 15-year-old girls. And for the first hour of this show, which really annoyed me because Lover is the opening album and I'm mostly a Lover person. It's not my favorite Taylor Swift album but I do really like it. There are some great songs on that album. And these girls were screaming for like an hour. Just screaming, just screaming. It didn't matter what, they just screamed the entire first hour of that show. And I just, I couldn't. And also like the part of me that is like, wanted to turn around and give them the dirtiest look I possibly could. I was like, don't do that. You're not supposed to be here, Wesley. These people, this show is for them. It's not for you. Don't you old man them. Just stand there and take it. But Kara, at like hour 107, I'm sorry, hour 107, at minute 107, when Taylor's still going strong, guess who is passed out on the seats behind me? The kids are out. They don't have the stamina of this 35-year-old woman.

Kara Swisher: No, no, she is the bomb. It's crazy. She wiped these girls out.

Wesley Morris: Yep. And she did it night after night. And now she's doing the same thing with podcasting. She did the same thing. But she made that look easy. But I think what I'm saying about the limitations are, the only limitation to me is that I think it keeps her from doing something that I think is really critical for artistic growth in some way, which is to be reinterpreting yourself.

Kara Swisher: Yes.

Wesley Morris: But she doesn't want to.

Kara Swisher: I mean, just the act of re-recording those songs, she basically does it. I mean, I think the original recordings are the important artistic document. The important historical and political document are the re-recordings, right?

Wesley Morris: The re-recordings, 100%. Like, one of the greatest things a pop star has ever done is re-record the old material.

Kara Swisher: That's correct.

Wesley Morris: It's not artistically good to me. She thinks it's better in some ways. Her singing is better, but I didn't... That's not what I'm showing up for.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I agree. But let me just tell you, Taylor Swift does as she damn well pleases. That's all I understand. Newsflash. Newsflash. And she's going to continue to do so. All right, Wesley, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions.

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Kara Swisher: Okay, Wesley, let's hear a prediction. Anything you want.

Wesley Morris: Another thing, I'm going to do an Adam Sandler episode.

Kara Swisher: Okay. I love Adam Sandler. I'm sorry. I'm not against this.

Wesley Morris: And I am just obsessed with these directors trying to win this man an Oscar.

Kara Swisher: Oh, because they're trying to, the serious ones?

Wesley Morris: Just everybody wants to try to win this man an Academy Award. The murderers row of people who have tried to win this man an Academy Award is just... you need to stop it. Just stop. Because when you stop trying, it will happen. I mean, I don't know. There's this Noah Baumbach movie coming out toward the end of the year that he is in. And I really enjoy Noah Baumbach. I enjoy Adam Sandler. This isn't even my favorite Adam Sandler mode. I can't, I won't even get into it here. But I think I believe for a lot of reasons the stars will align for Adam Sandler to at least go to the Academy Awards with his name on a list. That's a prediction I'm going to make.

Kara Swisher: That's what you predict? Remember Spanglish in 2004? I just watched the sandwich scene from that movie. It's such a good movie. It was amazing. I loved it.

Wesley Morris: The lighting in that movie, the reason I can't really go back and keep watching it, is it's some of the worst lighting I've ever seen in a movie. Just truly bizarre. Like, it's all lit from above with fluorescents. Nobody looks good in the indoor scenes.

Kara Swisher: Tea Leoni always looks good. And Paz Vega.

Wesley Morris: Yeah, but she's mostly outside. You'll notice Tea Leoni is mostly outside in this movie. She's got, like, three indoor scenes. Everybody else is inside.

Kara Swisher: Okay. Anyway, I think he's probably... he's not a bad thing because he is actually, every now and then you see very good acting, even though he does say, "Oh, loo, loo, loo, loo." He's like, you know, a little like Jerry Lewis.

Wesley Morris: Can you do that again? "A loo, loo, loo, loo, loo." There's a really good SNL skit where he visits his relatives and they're like, "I think you're taking my character." And they're all his cousins.

Kara Swisher: Oh, yeah.

Wesley Morris: It's really great, actually. But he's, I think he's like Jerry Lewis to me. And Jerry Lewis, I think, was a fascinating actor.

Kara Swisher: Yes. Yes. He's more interesting to me than... well, no, that's not true. I mean, Jerry Lewis at his peak, they're comparable. Jerry Lewis has more cocaine in him. And Adam Sandler is more weed.

Wesley Morris: Oh yeah, that's a fair point.

Kara Swisher: Or beer. I don't know. I mean, if there's a drug that personifies them... Jerry Lewis is hands down cocaine.

Wesley Morris: What's a speedball?

Kara Swisher: Speedball. Cannonball.

Wesley Morris: Well, I mean, maybe it's a speedball that's Jerry Lewis.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, speedball. That's true.

Wesley Morris: Who knows? Or a drink or a martini.

Kara Swisher: No, that would be Dean Martin. That's Dean. That's Dean. You're right.

Wesley Morris: Rodeo dodo. Anyway, so you predict he's going to get an Oscar.

Kara Swisher: Nomination. Let's not go crazy, Kara.

Wesley Morris: Okay.

Kara Swisher: All right. Because who's going to hip check him? What does he have to do? Because he's been in some serious movies.

Wesley Morris: Yeah, but that's not enough. You really... I mean, truly. I can't do it. Do I think he should have been? I mean, it just hasn't happened because it doesn't need it to happen yet.

Kara Swisher: You know why? Because he does Happy Gilmore 2. That's why. Even if it's highly successful.

Wesley Morris: But I think the thing that makes him great is that he doesn't want it. Like, the thing that makes him great is that he's doing Happy Gilmore 2.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, he is. It's very successful. This is a person who really enjoys himself. I miss weird Adam Sandler. And that's... I won't get into it. Like, that's the thing I really was going to try to get in, but I'm not going to do it.

Wesley Morris: You will have to come back for the Adam Sandler episode that will mostly be about none of the things we are talking about, but this other mode of Adam Sandler that I really love.

Kara Swisher: All right, I can't wait to listen to it. Well, this has been great. We want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business and tech or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. Okay, that's the show. Wesley, you're wonderful. I think you're wonderful. I can't believe I got to spend 75 minutes talking to you.

Wesley Morris: Yeah, oh come on. You can hang out with me in real life.

Kara Swisher: I know, I know. People can listen to Cannonball or Parlando, whatever you want to call it.

Wesley Morris: Cannonball. It's not called Parlando. You got to be real clear about that.

Kara Swisher: Parlando. In my head, I'm going to think Parlando.

Wesley Morris: Well, fine. But it's Cannonball. And you're on YouTube as well, even though you don't like it. You got a nice shine up. You look great.

Kara Swisher: Thank you. You look really good. All the times when some of them less... I'm not going to say anything about Ross Douthat at all.

Wesley Morris: I think you just said it.

Kara Swisher: I just did say it. There's no shining possible for that man. He's got other attributes. I don't know.

Wesley Morris: Okay. Sure.

Kara Swisher: I know. Okay. Don't make me insult him. I have a name for him and everything else.

Wesley Morris: You do?

Kara Swisher: I do. I'm not going to tell it to you on the show. I'm not going to do it. But ask Amanda. She knows. She knows. She's named him.

Wesley Morris: Okay.

Kara Swisher: Thanks for listening to Pivot. And be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel. Also, we'll be back next week. And please listen to Cannonball. It's a great show. Thank you, Kara. Wesley is a very prescient person on all things culture. You always make me think, and I really appreciate that in lots of ways and ways I didn't think I would think about.

Wesley Morris: Back at you. Thank you.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, I will read us out. Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Kevin Oliver. Ernie Enderdot engineered this episode. Jim Mackle edited this video. Nishat Kuro is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. The days to Scott are ticking away, but Wes, I really appreciate you being here.