Pivot · New York Magazine

Jane Fonda on How to Turn Rage Into Hope: On with Kara Swisher

February 17, 2026·50 min·4 clips

Jane Fonda on the LA wildfire morning that snapped her out of depression and into Fire Drill Fridays.

Jane Fonda describes being depressed, then deciding to make a difference. Kara Swisher introduces her as an actor and activist with decades in fights over peace, civil rights, Indigenous rights, women's rights, and the environment. Despair is where the interview starts. Fonda talks about moving from depression into action, which gives the conversation its hard-edged optimism. The fight is electoral and cultural. She points to her PAC strategy, especially down-ballot races, as one place where democracy still has muscle. Greg Kesar becomes the example. Fonda names him as one of the PAC's first-year candidates in Texas and treats him as proof that serious people can still break through. The presidency is not the whole map for her. She says it is too soon to know what happens in 2028, then turns the focus back to the midterms. Her warning is plain. She sees attempts to weaken mail-in ballots and voting access as part of a broader attack on fair elections. Registration is more than paperwork here. For Fonda, getting people to vote is organizing, not a campaign errand. Use it or lose it, basically. Swisher keeps pushing on the media angle, from mainstream media to new media and entertainment consolidation. Netflix and Warner Brothers Discovery end up in the blast zone. Fonda casts the proposed purchase as an industry threat and a First Amendment problem. She has no patience for soft language. The result is interview-driven, Pivot-adjacent politics: brisk, sometimes personal, and convinced that action is the only decent answer to dread.

As heard by us

Kara Swisher gets Jane Fonda on voting, media consolidation, and turning political dread into useful pressure.

Jane Fonda's conversation with Kara Swisher is about political stamina: how anger over democracy, climate, and media power can become organizing instead of despair.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Jane Fonda's answer to despair is action: build electoral power, defend democracy, and keep going anyway.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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