How I wake up: Kara Swisher
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Kara Swisher is everywhere. She tapes five podcasts a week (one less now that "Succession" is fin), is writing two books, and Twitter-slams Elon Musk on the regular.
- But it’s from her home base in Cathedral Heights where the mega-influential tech journalist and entrepreneur beams into your headphones and posts to your social feeds.
Even though she misses California (“the minute the humidity happens, I’m like, ‘What the f**k is going on here’”), Swisher returned fulltime to D.C. in 2020 and lives with her family and wife, Amanda Katz, a senior opinions editor at the Washington Post.
- We caught up with how she spends her Washington mornings.
⏰ Wake up time: Around 6am, whenever one of her four kids wakes her up.
😴 First words: Usually to her one-and-a-half-year-old. “Shh, shh, don’t wake up your sister.”
🥬 Breakfast: Green smoothie — there’s the California showing.
- Kale, pineapple, chia, flax, and mint from the garden, plus coconut water and almond milk.
☕️ Café love: Open City at the National Cathedral, SakuSaku Flakerie in Tenleytown, and The Coffee Bar at her old stomping grounds in Shaw.
❌ No transcendental meditation: No time!
- “Time bleeds into the next time,” with parenting two young children and two college-aged kids, firing off texts to podcast teams, and walking to her studio to tape episodes.
📲 Consumption habit: Twitter not as much anymore. “It doesn’t make me smarter,” she says.
- WaPo, NYT, WSJ — all digital. Email newsletters: Substack, Puck, Axios.
💭 Staying grounded: With her busy life, Swisher sometimes wakes up feeling behind on work already.
- Whenever she’s grumpy, she recalls something her grandmother used to tell her: “The graveyard is full of busy people, Kara. … Like, stop your bellyaching.”
Check out more morning rituals:
- Metro GM Randy Clarke
- Iced tea entrepreneur Seth Goldman
- National Children Museum's Crystal Bowyer