Audie Cornish is back in the media spotlight, pulling double duty as a CNN analyst dissecting the recent Blue Origin New Glenn rocket explosion while launching her new culture podcast, Engagement Party, alongside longtime public radio partner Ari Shapiro. The reunion of the former NPR flagship hosts has captured the attention of the tech and media elite, who are watching to see if the duo can translate their public radio chemistry into the crowded podcast landscape.
On Pivot, co-host Kara Swisher celebrated the reunion, calling it a "really interesting pairing" and joking that "They're trying to do Pivot but less dick jokes, I think." She later added that the goal of the new show is "to help people get out of the cultural silos."
The conversation went deeper on On with Kara Swisher, where Swisher highlighted how Cornish left NPR in 2022 to join CNN as a senior analyst before teaming up with Shapiro again for "a new culture podcast that just launched late last month called Engagement Party." Swisher also pointed to Cornish's recent academic critiques of modern media feeds, recalling: "You said in a recent a- address at Tufts that you didn't think we were benefiting from the algorithmic information distribution system." While the industry widely celebrates Cornish's return to the mic, the looming question is whether an anti-algorithmic, high-minded culture show can actually break through the very feeds she critiques.