From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy

Christiane Amanpour, CNN’s chief international anchor, joins Kara to unpack current and potential conflicts — from simmering tension between India and Pakistan to escalating violence in Gaza, attempts to forge a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, and rising concerns over Taiwan. They also examine how President Trump’s trade wars are reshaping global diplomacy and the rules of international engagement. Plus, Kara and Christiane discuss Amanpour's new podcast, The Ex Files, which she co-hosts with her ex-husband Jamie Rubin, and how journalism is evolving amid partisanship, social media, and endless attacks on the press. This episode was recorded on Wednesday May 7th, before India and Pakistan signed a cease-fire and The White House announced a trade deal with China. Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find us on Instagram, TikTok, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The first few months of President Trump’s second term have been chaotic, to say the least. There have been an unprecedented number of executive actions that have triggered an equally impressive number lawsuits; a new government “department,” headed by the world's richest man and launched via executive order, that ousted nearly a quarter of a million government workers; and a global trade war. Trump and his cabinet have been crowing about these achievements, but his approval ratings for the first 100 days are abysmal — tied for last place, with himself. Kara speaks to three Washington insiders about what this all means for the next 100 days, whether we'll see rollbacks or more full steam ahead, what role Congress will play, and what the potential long-term fallout could be. Our guests are: Carol Leonnig, an investigative reporter at The Washington Post. She’s written three best-selling books, including two she co-authored about the first Trump presidency: A Very Stable Genius and I Alone Can Fix It. Ashley Parker, a staff writer at The Atlantic. Previously, Ashley spent eight years at The Washington Post, where she covered Trump’s first presidency, President Biden’s first two years in office, and the 2024 presidential campaign. Ben Terris, a Washington correspondent for New York Magazine. He is the author of The Big Break: The Gamblers, Party Animals, and True Believers Trying to Win in Washington While America Loses Its Mind and a former feature reporter covering national politics for The Washington Post. Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find us on Instagram, TikTok, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Governor Wes Moore of Maryland was elected less than three years ago, but he’s already on the shortlist of potential Democratic presidential candidates for 2028. In 2022, the former combat veteran, investment banker and nonprofit CEO became just the third Black person ever elected governor in the United States.  But with a large port and one in ten workers on the federal payroll, Maryland is particularly vulnerable to DOGE cuts and President Trump’s trade war. Plus, the state just had to raise taxes and cut $2 billion in spending to close a $3 billion budget deficit. Kara and Gov. Moore and Kara discuss how this approach to Trump has evolved, whether he’ll run in 2028 (like George Clooney and many others seem to want him to), his advice to the Democratic Party, and how Maryland’s latest tax reform and budget cuts could be a “roadmap” for the rest of the country. Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find us on Instagram, TikTok, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 2014, when Lisa Su took over as CEO of Advanced Micro Devices, AMD was on the verge of bankruptcy. Su bet hard on hardware and not only pulled the semiconductor company back from the brink, but also led it to surpass its historical rival, Intel, in market cap. Since the launch of ChatGPT made high-powered chips like AMDs “sexy” again, demand for chips has intensified exponentially, but so has the public spotlight on the industry — including from the federal government.  In a live conversation, at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center, as part of their inaugural Discovery Series, Kara talks to Su about her strategy in face of the Trump administration’s tariff and export control threats, how to safeguard the US in the global AI race, and what she says when male tech leaders brag about the size of their GPUs. Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find us on Instagram, TikTok, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ed Helms is best known for playing Andy Bernard in The Office and Stu in The Hangover trilogy. But the comedic actor is also the politically engaged, banjo-playing, podcast-hosting, TV series–producing author of a new book titled, SNAFU: The Definitive Guide to History’s Greatest Screwups.  Kara and Ed discuss domestic politics and satire's role during Trump 2.0; government overreach and history’s tendency to repeat itself; his podcast SNAFU with Ed Helms and the eponymous book; and the entertainment industry’s evolving economics. Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find us on Instagram, TikTok, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Philosopher and critical theorist Judith Butler, Distinguished Professor in the Graduate School at UC Berkeley, has been at the forefront of gender theory for 35 years. But while their work Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, which helped establish the idea of gender as a social construct in the 1990s, was lauded by the LGBTQIA+ community for opening the doors to queer theory, they’ve been vilified by those on the right for whom gender theory is a threat to “tradition.”  Kara and Judith talk about their latest book, Who’s Afraid of Gender, which analyses the growing attacks on gender and gender theory around the world; how Trump’s executive order redefining sex as binary impacts everything from personal rights to medical research; and why recent attacks on the independence of universities could have a chilling effect on academic freedom in the long term.  Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find us on Instagram, TikTok, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown has led to a series of legal skirmishes with major constitutional implications. To unpack it all, Kara speaks to three experts:  Caitlin Dickerson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning staff writer for The Atlantic who covers immigration. She is currently writing a book on the impact of deportation on American society. Maria Hinojosa is the host and executive producer of the Peabody Award-winning Latino USA and the founder of Futuro Media Group, which just released the second season of their Pulitzer Prize-winning podcast, Suave. She has won over a dozen awards in journalism, including four Emmys and the Edward R. Murrow Lifetime Achievement Award Deborah Pearlstein is the director of the Princeton Program in Law and Public Policy at the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics. She is an expert in constitutional law and her book, Losing the Law, will be published next year.  This episode was recorded on Thursday, April 17th. While we were recording, the Supreme Court announced it will hear a case related to President Trump’s executive order to undo birthright citizenship. And on Saturday, April 20th, the Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to temporarily halt the removal of Venezuelan migrants from the country.    Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find us on Instagram, TikTok and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Melinda French Gates is a businesswoman and philanthropist, as well as an advocate for women and girls both in the U.S. and abroad. And over the past few years, she’s also become a force in Democratic politics. Kara and Melinda talk about her new memoir The Next Day, which takes readers through some of the most important transitions in her life, including her very public divorce with Bill Gates and her decision to leave the Gates Foundation; how she is working to offset the impact of cuts to programs like USAID on the health of women and children around the world; where political lobbying works (and it’s not in the White House); and why she thinks it’s essential to get more girls into A.I. Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find us on Instagram, TikTok, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

President Trump's chaotic rollout and partial rollback of tariffs has roiled financial markets and confused many allies, both domestically and internationally. Although he temporarily calmed bond markets by announcing a 90-day pause on his misleadingly labeled "reciprocal tariffs," the uncertainty he created continues. Meanwhile, China has responded to the 145% tariffs on their imported goods by imposing retaliatory tariffs on American products and halting exports of rare earth minerals. To help us makes sense of the mess, Kara talks to three experts:  Raj Bhala is a professor at the University of Kansas School of Law and one of the foremost scholars on international trade law. He is also the author of Trade War: Causes, Conduct, and Consequences of Sino-American Confrontation. Bill Cohan is an M&A banker-turned-financial journalist and a co-founder of Puck. He’s the author of a number of books, including Power Failure: The Rise and Fall of an American Icon. Catherine Rampell is a nationally syndicated columnist at The Washington Post who specializes in economics, politics, and public policy. She’s a special correspondent for PBS Newshour and she will soon anchor and co-host of MSNBC’s The Weekend. This episode was recorded on Wednesday April 9th. Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find us on Instagram, TikTok, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Emmy-nominated writer, stand-up comic and actor Josh Johnson may be the most prolific comedian on the internet right now. You might recognize him as a regular correspondent on The Daily Show, or maybe you've come across his sharp political critique on TikTok (where he has 2 million followers), or watched one of his longer, philosophical stand-up routines on YouTube (where he has 1.5 million subscribers). Josh is currently touring the country (catch his Flowers Tour in a city near you), but he took a break this week to sit down with Kara at the Great Hall at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City. They discussed Josh’s entrepreneurial approach to distributing and owning his work, how to make dry political topics like tariffs funny and relatable, what Elon Musk should really be doing with his money and how the ultimate antidote to fear is community. Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find us on Instagram, TikTok, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices