Audie Cornish and Ari Shapiro on Friendship, Feeds and Their New Podcast
6/1/20261 hr 4 min
Longtime NPR co-hosts Audie Cornish and Ari Shapiro are reuniting for a new CNN podcast, “Engagement Party.” Each week, they unpack all the culture stories they’re obsessed with and that are generating buzz, from who’s still watching “Euphoria” to viral trends like “friction-maxing.” Their conversations are grounded in their decades-long friendship, even when they disagree. Kara, Audie and Ari talk about the stories they’re obsessed with right now, the challenges of making a culture podcast when social media is eroding our sense of shared identity, and their transition from live radio to podcasting. They also talk about how they’re navigating the news business in an era of major corporate acquisitions and mergers. Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Threads, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsAudie Cornish· Guest0:00
My theory about Kara is Kara treats men the way men treat women.
Kara Swisher· Host0:03
Mm.
Audie Cornish· Guest0:04
So occasionally- [laughs] ... she has to remind him- Yeah. [laughs] [laughs] I am not your actual work wife.
Skylar Diggins0:12
It's on.
Kara Swisher· Host0:13
[upbeat music] Hi, everyone. From New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. Today, I'm talking to two people who you probably know very well if you're a news obsessive like me, Audie Cornish and Ari Shapiro. Both of them hosted NPR's flagship evening news show, All Things Considered, for a decade. Audie left in 2022 to join CNN, where she's now a senior analyst and host of CNN This Morning. Ari has now joined Audie at the network. They've teamed up again for a new culture podcast that just launched late last month, called Engagement Party. They're not engaged. They're happily married to other people, but they are very close friends. Every week, they talk about the stories they're most engaged with online, and the ones that manage to break through our algorithmic silos. I think this is great. I love people entering this space. I love talking about culture issues, and of course, I love a nice work couple like Scott and I, that are much nicer than Scott and I. I think it's really important to talk about culture, 'cause I think it does bleed into news now in a way, and of course, politics is downstream from culture, as the famous saying by Andrew Breitbart goes,