Recode Decode, Hosted By Kara Swisher

Brad Smith, the president of Microsoft, talks with Recode’s Kara Swisher at the 2018 Code Conference. Smith reflects on what Microsoft learned from losing the U.S. Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit in 2001, which broke the company up. He explains what tech companies that are in the crosshairs today should be thinking about their responsibility to the public. He also talks about how Microsoft has become politically active in the Trump era, particularly around immigration. He predicts a “tough summer” ahead if no compromise can be reached on the Obama-era immigration policy DACA. Plus: How Microsoft thinks about artificial intelligence, the Facebook hearings and diversity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Author and management expert Tom Peters talks with Recode’s Kara Swisher about his new book, “The Excellence Dividend: Meeting the Tech Tide with Work That Wows and Jobs That Last.” Peters says artificial intelligence may have profound effects on the workforce, but workers who commit themselves to daily reeducation will “flourish” amid the turbulence. He also argues that Silicon Valley has become a “moral cesspool,” as leaders like Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg dodge tough questions and shirk responsibility when their platforms are misused. Plus: Why companies with mixed-gender boards “wildly outperform” their competitors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Michael Barbaro, who hosts the hit podcast The Daily for the New York Times, talks with Recode's Kara Swisher in front of a live audience at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. Barbaro explains why he fell in love with newspapers at a young age, how he got into journalism and how he transitioned from being a political reporter to a self-described audio "geek." He discusses what happens behind the scenes every day at the show and why, in the edited interviews, he sometimes can be heard taking long ... pauses. Plus: How The Daily staff decides what goes on the air, why Barbaro doesn't read the ads on his show and why he's not interested in talking about Donald Trump's tweets on the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Katrina Lake, the CEO of apparel delivery company Stitch Fix, talks with Recode’s Jason Del Rey at the 2018 Code Conference. Lake explains why Stitch Fix went public in 2017 even though it was healthy and profitable and what she has learned from the experience, as well as how much the company differentiates itself from commerce behemoth Amazon. Plus: Why Stitch Fix is introducing an annual “styling pass” rather than charging a $20 fee with every box of clothes it sends to its customers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Linda McMahon, the former pro wrestling executive who now leads the Trump administration’s Small Business Administration, talks with Recode’s Kara Swisher at the 2018 Code Conference. McMahon explains how the nonpartisan SBA is reckoning with today’s charged and divisive politics, arguing that policy successes will heal those wounds. She also talks about how her administration is working to help small businesses thrive in an era of tech disruption and what responsibility the tech companies have to invest around the country. Plus: What the largely liberal Silicon Valley doesn’t understand about President Trump. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mark Warner, the senior United States Senator from Virginia, talks with Recode’s Kara Swisher and Peter Kafka at the 2018 Code Conference. Warner talks about the competing Senate and House reports on Russia’s use of tech platforms to meddle in the 2016 U.S. election. He also talks about the broader challenge of cybersecurity for policymakers, what has to be done to secure the 2018 midterms and what would prompt his fellow Democrats in Congress to impeach President Trump. Plus: Does cybersecurity need to be publicly funded like the military? And should American tech companies be regulated more? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Recode’s Kara Swisher talks with three tech leaders about actual solutions for advancing diversity in the industry. Cowboy Ventures partner Aileen Lee, theBoardlist founder Sukhinder Singh Cassidy and former U.S. Chief Technology Officer Megan Smith talk about the factors that have historically held back women, people of color and other under-represented groups in tech, and what comes next after the reckoning of the #MeToo movement. The group debates how men can best help their female peers succeed and how companies can avoid falling into the trap of thinking that the solution is just to keep men and women apart. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Writer and audio producer Jessica Weisberg talks with Recode’s Kara Swisher about her new book, “Asking for a Friend: Three Centuries of Advice on Life, Love, Money, and Other Burning Questions from a Nation Obsessed.” Starting in 1690s London, Weisberg examines how advice became a cultural force in America, and how professional advice-givers presaged the internet by creating the first platform for people to ask difficult questions anonymously. She discusses Ben Franklin’s “Poor Richard’s Almanack,” which made earnest advice more palatable through comedy; the bitter rivalry between twin sisters who both became advice columnists, using the pen names “Ann Landers” and “Dear Abby”; and how the once-strict views of parenting guru Benjamin Spock and other columnists mellowed over their long careers. Weisberg says Google and other internet forums are the new advice-givers for millions of people, and questions whether any one writer today could be as widely read and trusted as these predecessors. Learn more about yo

Dara Khosrowshahi, the CEO of ride-hailing company Uber, talks with Recode’s Kara Swisher at the 2018 Code Conference. Khosrowshahi says he didn’t expect to be offered the CEO job and turned it down, but is happy he accepted it in the end. He explains how he’s trying to rethink what Uber should be and how he works with founder and ex-CEO Travis Kalanick, who is still on the board of directors. Khosrowshahi also unpacks Uber’s plan to be the “Amazon of transportation” and what it’s doing with its self-driving car initiative in the aftermath of a fatal accident in Arizona. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Evan Spiegel, the co-founder and CEO of Snapchat maker Snap, talks with Recode’s Kara Swisher at the 2018 Code Conference. Spiegel talks about why Snapchat underwent a controversial redesign, why it partially reversed that decision and what he learned from the backlash. He also discusses how he’s evolving as a CEO since Snap’s IPO in 2017, having learned that leading a public company “requires a bit more grit.” He also addresses the departure of a female engineer who accused the company of having a toxic male-driven culture, calling her objections a “wake-up call.” Plus: How Spiegel thinks about “traditional social media,” i.e. Facebook, lifting features from the Snapchat app, and why it will be “harder” to copy those features in the future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Former U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about "The Work Ahead," a new report, sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations, on the 21st century American workforce. Pritzker co-chaired the committee that developed the report along with fellow business leader John Engler. "The Work Ahead" recommends a nationwide re-evaluation of education, training and how to think about working alongside machines. Pritzker also talks about why President Trump can't run the country like a business and why her hometown of Chicago should be the site of Amazon's second headquarters. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Retired U.S. Air Force General Michael Hayden talks with Recode’s Kara Swisher about his new book, “The Assault on Intelligence: American National Security in the Age of Lies.” Hayden, who directed the NSA under President Clinton and the CIA under President George W. Bush, says the “golden age of electronic surveillance” is ending, as both regular Americans and foreign enemies are getting smarter about digital encryption. But as the intelligence community changes its tactics, the Trump administration has embraced the “post-truth” societal trend that is emerging around the world. Hayden explains how he would attempt to give Trump the best advice, what he would recommend for America’s still-active spies, and why the president’s behavior is so befuddling. Plus: How to prevent leaks, and what Facebook can do to be part of the solution. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

U.S. Representative Ro Khanna, D-Calif., talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about his proposal for an "internet bill of rights" to protect consumers' privacy, security and ability to move or delete their data. Khanna represents California's 17th district, which includes the headquarters of tech giants Apple and Google, and he says he's lobbying leaders like Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai to publicly endorse these new regulations. He argues that Silicon Valley needs to get out in front of privacy and related issues while it still has high approval ratings, embracing changes that won’t cost it much or threaten its businesses, rather than waiting for the tide of popular opinion to turn. Khanna also talks about Congress' failure to ask the right questions of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg when he testified about the Cambridge Analytica scandal and why the E.U.'s new tech regulation GDPR is overkill and shouldn't be replicated in the U.S. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adch

Author Corey Pein talks with Recode’s Kara Swisher about his new book, “Live Work Work Work Die: A Journey Into the Savage Heart of Silicon Valley.” Pein moved to San Francisco to report the book, assuming the role of an entrepreneur looking to get rich quick; he learned the hard way that success doesn’t come easy, even for white men with Ivy League degrees. He criticizes the way consumers have become unpaid workers for the big tech platforms and explains why the government needs to step in and limit companies that have become more powerful than many countries. Pein also talks about highly-paid engineers in San Francisco who are deeply unhappy, and why U.S. lawmakers are only now starting to look at Silicon Valley through a critical lens. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Wall Street Journal investigative reporter John Carreyrou talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about his new book, "Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup." Carreyrou explains how Stanford dropout Elizabeth Holmes' company raised nearly $1 billion for blood-testing products that sounded too good to be true — and they were. Holmes idolized former Apple CEO Steve Jobs and sought to make Theranos out to be the next great Silicon Valley success story, but most of her larger investors were not experienced in either technology or medicine, and people who did raise red flags were pushed aside. Carreyrou says "Bad Blood," which will be adapted into a movie starring Jennifer Lawrence as Holmes, is a "cautionary tale" about entrepreneurship, ambition and hubris, and predicts that the company's top executives will be indicted for the cover-up. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you like Recode Decode, we think you'd also like Recode Media with Peter Kafka. Here's the latest episode of the show: New York Times reporter Dave Itzkoff talks with Recode's Peter Kafka about his new book, "Robin: The Definitive Biography of Robin Williams." Itzkoff traces the history of the manic comedian and actor, whose stardom spanned more than four decades in roles in TV shows, such as "Mork and Mindy," and movies, like "Good Will Hunting." After Williams' death by suicide in 2014, Itzkoff says fans and the media were led astray by incorrect or incomplete explanations for what happened, and that Williams' reasons for taking his own life were more complicated than many assumed. Itzkoff also talks about whether another movie star like Williams could emerge in today's Hollywood, his interactions with the comedian as a journalist and how much time he spends crafting jokes for his popular Twitter account @ditzkoff. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Journalist and author Michael Pollan talks with Recode’s Kara Swisher about his new book, “How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence.” Pollan, perhaps best known for his books about food, like “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” says the new book traces his learning process as he tried to understand why almost every human society has experimented with mind-altering substances. Silicon Valley is certainly no exception: Pollan says that tech pioneer Ampex was ground zero of the tech scene’s experimentation with LSD, starting in the 1950s; engineers discovered that dropping acid helped them design the first computer chips, and shared this finding with Doug Engelbart, who would go to invent the mouse, the graphical user interface and key components of the internet. Pollan also talks about the broader medical, political and social implications of using psychedelics, and how they might one day become legal and more socially ac

John Doerr, the chairman of the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, talks with Recode's Kara Swisher and Teddy Schleifer about his new book, "Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs." Doerr credits two mentors, Andy Grove and Bill Campbell, with turning him on to that leadership strategy, which is short for Objectives and Key Results — or, in other words, communicating what you want to accomplish and how. Setting clear objectives and making them transparent to your entire company can help tech leaders succeed, but CEOs who don't commit or who build a cult of personality around themselves can put their businesses in jeopardy. Doerr also talks about the state of diversity in Silicon Valley, what he learned from the Ellen Pao trial and whether tech companies are taking privacy more seriously in the aftermath of the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Former political strategist and pollster Mark Penn talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about his new book, "Microtrends Squared: The New Small Forces Driving the Big Disruptions Today." He describes it as a less optimistic sequel to his 2007 book "Microtrends," but it extends the idea that small changes in politics and the economy are having huge ripple effects around the world. Penn also talks about his past work, advising Microsoft during its antitrust law case and Hillary Clinton during her 2008 presidential run. And he offers some predictions for the 2018 midterm elections, explaining what Democrats could do now in order to reclaim the White House in 2020. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Patagonia CEO Rose Marcario talks with Recode’s Kara Swisher about why her company is suing President Donald Trump, and why she is publicly insulting Silicon Valley executives, calling them “weenies” and “pathetic.” Marcario suggests that it’s unpatriotic for execs like Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to remain silent on Russian meddling on its platform for so long after the 2016 U.S. election. She also calls out Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey for inaction on bots, and Google co-founder Larry Page for not putting his immense wealth toward fixing the web. Later in the podcast, Marcario explains why capitalism “needs to change and evolve”: Companies that obsess over quarterly results for Wall Street will “destroy the planet.” Plus: Should women try to change tech firms from within, or start their own companies? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices