An open convention or a coronation aren’t the only two options.  Mentioned:“Democrats Have a Better Option Than Biden” by The Ezra Klein Show“What Is the Democratic Party For?” by The Ezra Klein ShowThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. This audio essay for “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Claire Gordon. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Kristin Lin. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu, Elias Isquith and Aman Sahota. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

This year’s Republican National Convention was Donald Trump’s third as the party’s nominee, but it was the first that felt like a full expression of a G.O.P. that has fully fallen in line with Trumpism. And the mood was jubilant. Speakers even made efforts to reach out to unions, Black voters and immigrants — imagining a big-tent Republican Party that could be far more formidable at the ballot box.But if the Democrats were running a strong candidate right now, no Democrat would look at that convention with fear.In this conversation, moderated by the show’s senior editor, Claire Gordon, we dissect the themes and undercurrents of the convention and what they might signal about a Republican Party in the midst of change. We discuss how the party is messaging about race, immigration and populism; what JD Vance believes and represents for the party; what all this means for a Democratic Party that is divided about President Biden’s candidacy; and more.Mentioned:“Bernie Sanders Wants Joe Biden to Stay in the Race” by Isaac ChotinerThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Elias Isquith. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Mary Marge Locker, Jack McCordick and Kristin Lin. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin and Rollin Hu. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

The Trump campaign isn’t just expecting to win this election; it’s expecting to win it in a landslide. And top Trump campaign officials were feeling that confident even before Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance. So what’s their strategy to achieve the blowout they’re imagining? And is their confidence justified?Tim Alberta is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of “American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump.” He recently spent months profiling Trump’s campaign managers, Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita. In this conversation, Alberta offers an inside look at the Trump campaign and their theory of victory. We discuss how the campaign has tailored its messaging to capitalize on Joe Biden’s weaknesses; LaCivita’s and Wiles’s personal backgrounds and approaches to the campaign; what Trump’s vice-presidential pick, Senator J.D. Vance, signals about Trump’s vision for his presidency; and more.Mentioned:“Trump Is Planning for a Landslide Win” by Tim Alberta“How J.D. Vance Won Over Donald Trump” by Jonathan Swan and Maggie HabermanBook Recommendations:Tired of Winning by Jonathan KarlKingdom of Rage by Elizabeth NeumannRomney by McKay CoppinsThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin, Elias Isquith and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

When Donald Trump on Monday chose Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio as his running mate it excited populists — and unnerved some business elites. Later that evening, the president of the Teamsters, Sean O’Brien, gave a prime-time speech at the Republican National Convention. “Over the last 40 years, the Republican Party has rarely pursued strong relationships with organized labor,” O’Brien said. “There are some in the party who stand in active opposition to labor unions — this too must change,” he added, to huge applause.There’s something happening here — a real shift in the Republican Party. But at the same time, its official platform, and the conservative policy document Project 2025, is littered with the usual proposals for tax cuts, deregulation and corporate giveaways. So is this ideological battle substantive or superficial?Oren Cass served as Mitt Romney’s domestic policy director in the 2012 presidential race. But since then, Cass has had an evolution; he founded the conservative economic think tank American Compass, which has been associated with J.D. Vance and other populist-leaning Republicans, like Josh Hawley, Marco Rubio and Tom Cotton. In this conversation, we discuss what economic populism means to him, what it looks like in policy, and how powerful this faction really is in the Republican Party.Mentioned:“The Electric Slide” by Oren Cass“This Is What Elite Failure Looks Like” by Oren Cass“Budget Model: First Edition” by American CompassBook Recommendations:The Path to Power by Robert CaroProject Hail Mary by Andy WeirThe Green Ember by S.D. SmithThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld with additional mixing by Aman Sahota and Isaac Jones. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu, Elias Isquith and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

It was once a fringe opinion to say President Biden should drop his re-election bid and Democrats should embrace an open convention. That position is fringe no more. But when the conventional wisdom shifts this rapidly, there’s always the danger of overlooking its potential flaws.My colleague, the Times Opinion columnist Jamelle Bouie, has been making some of the strongest arguments against Biden dropping out and throwing the nomination contest to a brokered convention. So I invited him on the show to talk through where he and I diverge and how our thinking is changing.Book Recommendations:Into the Bright Sunshine by Samuel G. FreedmanWide Awake by Jon GrinspanIlliberal America by Steven HahnThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Elias Isquith. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Efim Shapiro and Aman Sahota. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

If Joe Biden steps aside for the Democratic presidential nomination — still a very big if — the favorite to replace him is Vice President Kamala Harris. In recently leaked post-debate polling from Open Labs, Harris polled better than Biden in matchups against Trump.In 2019, Dana Goodyear wrote in The New Yorker, “As a Black, female law-and-order Democrat, Harris creates a kind of cognitive dissonance.” The profile Harris inhabited then would be welcome in an election year where disorder is on voters’ minds and the Republicans are nominating a convicted felon. But Harris hasn’t inhabited that political profile for years. And since becoming Biden’s vice president the conventional wisdom on her has shifted: She’s gone from rising star — many thought her “the next Obama” — to political underachiever.So I’ve had a few questions about Harris. What accounted for the fast fall from grace after she took the vice presidency? What happened to the smart-on-crime prosecutor we once saw? What has the White House done — or not done — to build her profile? And are critics of Harris fair, or is she underrated now?I’m joined by Elaina Plott Calabro, a staff writer at The Atlantic who traveled with Harris extensively for a major profile last year. I left this conversation with a very different theory of who Harris is, what her politics are and what led to the confusions of her vice presidency.Mentioned:“The Kamala Harris Problem” by Elaina Plott Calabro“Biden Plunges in Swing States in Leaked Post-Debate Poll” by Peter HambySmart on Crime by Kamala D. Harris, with Joan O'C. Hamilton ·Book Recommendations:Southerners by Marshall FradyThe Sheltering Sky by Paul BowlesThe Company She Keeps by Mary McCarthyThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Elias Isquith. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Isaac Jones and Aman Sahota. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Carole Sabouraud.

After President Biden’s rough performance at the first presidential debate, the question of an open convention has roared to the front of Democratic politics. But how would an open convention work? What would be its risks? What would be its rewards? In February, after I first made the case for an open Democratic convention, I interviewed Elaine Kamarck to better understand what an open convention would look like. She literally wrote the book on how we choose presidential candidates, “Primary Politics: Everything You Need to Know About How America Nominates Its Presidential Candidates.” But her background here isn’t just theory. She’s worked on four presidential campaigns and on 10 nominating conventions — for both Democrats and Republicans. She’s a member of the Democratic National Committee’s Rules Committee. And her explanation of the mechanics and dynamics of open conventions was, for me, extremely helpful. It’s even more relevant now than it was then. Mentioned:The Lincoln Miracle by Ed AchornBook Recommendations:All the King’s Men by Robert Penn WarrenThe Making of the President 1960 by Theodore H. WhiteQuiet Revolution by Byron E. ShaferThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Kristin Lin. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero.This conversation was recorded in February 2024.

Top Democrats have closed ranks around Joe Biden since the debate. Should they? Mentioned:“This Isn’t All Joe Biden’s Fault” by Ezra Klein“Democrats Have a Better Option Than Biden” by The Ezra Klein Show“Here’s How an Open Democratic Convention Would Work” with Elaine Kamarck on The Ezra Klein ShowThe Hollow Parties by Daniel Schlozman and Sam RosenfeldThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This audio essay was produced by Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Fact-Checking by Jack McCordick and Michelle Harris. Mixing by Efim Shapiro. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Elias Isquith and Aman Sahota. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

I joined my Times Opinion colleagues Ross Douthat and Michelle Cottle to discuss the debate — and what Democrats might do next.Mentioned:“The Biden and Trump Weaknesses That Don’t Get Enough Attention” by Ross Douthat“Trump’s Bold Vision for America: Higher Prices!” with Matthew Yglesias on The Ezra Klein Show“Democrats Have a Better Option Than Biden” on The Ezra Klein Show“Here’s How an Open Democratic Convention Would Work” with Elaine Kamarck on The Ezra Klein ShowGretchen Whitmer on The Interview“The Republican Party’s Decay Began Long Before Trump” with Sam Rosenfeld and Daniel Schlozman on The Ezra Klein ShowThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.

Donald Trump has made inflation a central part of his campaign message. At his rallies, he rails against “the Biden inflation tax” and “crooked Joe’s inflation nightmare,” and promises that in a second Trump term, “inflation will be in full retreat.”But if you look at Trump’s actual policies, that wouldn’t be the case at all. Trump has a bold, ambitious agenda to make prices much, much higher. He’s proposing a 10 percent tariff on imported goods, and a 60 percent tariff on products from China. He wants to deport huge numbers of immigrants. And he’s made it clear that he’d like to replace the Federal Reserve chair with someone more willing to take orders from him. It’s almost unimaginable to me that you would run on this agenda at a time when Americans are so mad about high prices. But I don’t think people really know that’s what Trump is vowing to do.So to drill into the weeds of Trump’s plans, I decided to call up an old friend. Matt Yglesias is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and the author of the Slow Boring newsletter, where he’s been writing a lot about Trump’s proposals. We also used to host a policy podcast together, “The Weeds.”In this conversation, we discuss what would happen to the economy, especially in terms of inflation, if Trump actually did what he says he wants to do; what we can learn from how Trump managed the economy in his first term; and why more people aren’t sounding the alarm.Mentioned:“Trump’s new economic plan is terrible” by Matthew Yglesias“Never mind: Wall Street titans shake off qualms and embrace Trump” by Sam Sutton“How Far Trump Would Go” by Eric CortellessaBook Recommendations:Take Back the Game by Linda Flanagan1177 B.C. by Eric H. ClineThe Rise of the G.I. Army, 1940-1941 by Paul DicksonThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Mixing by Isaac Jones, with Aman Sahota. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin, Elias Isquith and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero, Adam Posen and Michael Strain.

The biggest divide in our politics isn’t between Democrats and Republicans, or even left and right. It’s between people who follow politics closely, and those who pay almost no attention to it. If you’re in the former camp — and if you’re reading this, you probably are — the latter camp can seem inscrutable. These people hardly ever look at political news. They hate discussing politics. But they do care about issues and candidates, and they often vote.As the 2024 election takes shape, this bloc appears crucial to determining who wins the presidency. An NBC News poll from April found that 15 percent of voters don’t follow political news, and Donald Trump was winning them by 26 points.Yanna Krupnikov studies exactly this kind of voter. She’s a professor of communication and media at the University of Michigan and an author, with John Barry Ryan, of “The Other Divide: Polarization and Disengagement in American Politics.” The book examines how the chasm between the deeply involved and the less involved shapes politics in America. I’ve found it to be a helpful guide for understanding one of the most crucial dynamics emerging in this year’s election: the swing to Trump from President Biden among disengaged voters.In this conversation, we discuss how politically disengaged voters relate to politics; where they get their information about politics and how they form opinions; and whether major news events, like Trump’s recent conviction, might sway them.Mentioned:“The ‘Need for Chaos’ and Motivations to Share Hostile Political Rumors” by Michael Bang Petersen, Mathias Osmundsen and Kevin ArceneauxHooked by Markus Prior“The Political Influence of Lifestyle Influencers? Examining the Relationship Between Aspirational Social Media Use and Anti-Expert Attitudes and Beliefs” by Ariel Hasell and Sedona Chinn“One explanation for the 2024 election’s biggest mystery” by Eric LevitzBook Recommendations:What Goes Without Saying by Taylor N. Carlson and Jaime E. SettleThrough the Grapevine by Taylor N. CarlsonSorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want to Come by Jessica PanThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Efim Shapiro and Aman Sahota. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu, Elias Isquith and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

On Tuesday I got back from an eight-day trip to Israel and the West Bank. I happened to be there on the day that Benny Gantz resigned from the war cabinet and called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to schedule new elections, breaking the unity government that Israel had had since shortly after Oct. 7.There is no viable left wing in Israel right now. There is a coalition that Netanyahu leads stretching from right to far right and a coalition that Gantz leads stretching from center to right. In the early months of the war, Gantz appeared ascendant as support for Netanyahu cratered. But now Netanyahu’s poll numbers are ticking back up.So one thing I did in Israel was deepen my reporting on Israel’s right. And there, Amit Segal’s name kept coming up. He’s one of Israel’s most influential political analysts and the author of “The Story of Israeli Politics” is coming out in English.Segal and I talked about the political differences between Gantz and Netanyahu, the theory of security that’s emerging on the Israeli right, what happened to the Israeli left, the threat from Iran and Hezbollah and how Netanyahu is trying to use President Biden’s criticism to his political advantage.Mentioned:“Biden May Spur Another Netanyahu Comeback” by Amit SegalBook Recommendations:The Years of Lyndon Johnson Series by Robert A. CaroThe World of Yesterday by Stefan ZweigThe Object of Zionism by Zvi EfratThe News from Waterloo by Brian CathcartThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Claire Gordon. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris with Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu, Elias Isquith and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

There’s something weird happening with the economy. On a personal level, most Americans say they’re doing pretty well right now. And according to the data, that’s true. Wages have gone up faster than inflation. Unemployment is low, the stock market is generally up so far this year, and people are buying more stuff.And yet in surveys, people keep saying the economy is bad. A recent Harris poll for The Guardian found that around half of Americans think the S. & P. 500 is down this year, and that unemployment is at a 50-year high. Fifty-six percent think we’re in a recession.There are many theories about why this gap exists. Maybe political polarization is warping how people see the economy or it’s a failure of President Biden’s messaging, or there’s just something uniquely painful about inflation. And while there’s truth in all of these, it felt like a piece of the story was missing.And for me, that missing piece was an article I read right before the pandemic. An Atlantic story from February 2020 called “The Great Affordability Crisis Breaking America.” It described how some of Americans’ biggest-ticket expenses — housing, health care, higher education and child care — which were already pricey, had been getting steadily pricier for decades.At the time, prices weren’t the big topic in the economy; the focus was more on jobs and wages. So it was easier for this trend to slip notice, like a frog boiling in water, quietly, putting more and more strain on American budgets. But today, after years of high inflation, prices are the biggest topic in the economy. And I think that explains the anger people feel: They’re noticing the price of things all the time, and getting hammered with the reality of how expensive these things have become.The author of that Atlantic piece is Annie Lowrey. She’s an economics reporter, the author of Give People Money, and also my wife. In this conversation, we discuss how the affordability crisis has collided with our post-pandemic inflationary world, the forces that shape our economic perceptions, why people keep spending as if prices aren’t a strain and what this might mean for the presidential election.Mentioned:“It Will Never Be a Good Time to Buy a House” by Annie LowreyBook Recommendations:Franchise by Marcia ChatelainA Place of Greater Safety by Hilary MantelNickel and Dimed by Barbara EhrenreichThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Efim Shapiro and Aman Sahota. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin, Elias Isquith and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones and Aman Sahota. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

After Donald Trump was convicted last week in his hush-money trial, Republican leaders wasted no time in rallying behind him. There was no chance the Republican Party was going to replace Trump as their nominee at this point. Trump has essentially taken over the G.O.P.; his daughter-in-law is even co-chair of the Republican National Committee.How did the Republican Party get so weak that it could fall victim to a hostile takeover?Daniel Schlozman and Sam Rosenfeld are the authors of “The Hollow Parties: The Many Pasts and Disordered Present of American Party Politics,” which traces how both major political parties have been “hollowed out” over the decades, transforming once-powerful gatekeeping institutions into mere vessels for the ideologies of specific candidates. And they argue that this change has been perilous for our democracy.In this conversation, we discuss how the power of the parties has been gradually chipped away; why the Republican Party became less ideological and more geared around conflict; the merits of a stronger party system; and more.Mentioned:“Democrats Have a Better Option Than Biden” by The Ezra Klein Show“Here’s How an Open Democratic Convention Would Work” by The Ezra Klein Show with Elaine KamarckBook Recommendations:The Two Faces of American Freedom by Aziz RanaRainbow’s End by Steven P. ErieAn American Melodrama by Lewis Chester, Godfrey Hodgson, Bruce PageThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show’‘ was produced by Elias Isquith. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Mary Marge Locker, Kate Sinclair and Rollin Hu. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota and Efim Shapiro. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

The steady dings of notifications. The 40 tabs that greet you when you open your computer in the morning. The hundreds of unread emails, most of them spam, with subject lines pleading or screaming for you to click. Our attention is under assault these days, and most of us are familiar with the feeling that gives us — fractured, irritated, overwhelmed.D. Graham Burnett calls the attention economy an example of “human fracking”: With our attention in shorter and shorter supply, companies are going to even greater lengths to extract this precious resource from us. And he argues that it’s now reached a point that calls for a kind of revolution. “This is creating conditions that are at odds with human flourishing. We know this,” he tells me. “And we need to mount new forms of resistance.”Burnett is a professor of the history of science at Princeton University and is working on a book about the laboratory study of attention. He’s also a co-founder of the Strother School of Radical Attention, which is a kind of grass roots, artistic effort to create a curriculum for studying attention.In this conversation, we talk about how the 20th-century study of attention laid the groundwork for today’s attention economy, the connection between changing ideas of attention and changing ideas of the self, how we even define attention (this episode is worth listening to for Burnett’s collection of beautiful metaphors alone), whether the concern over our shrinking attention spans is simply a moral panic, what it means to teach attention and more.Mentioned:Friends of Attention“The Battle for Attention” by Nathan Heller“Powerful Forces Are Fracking Our Attention. We Can Fight Back.” by D. Graham Burnett, Alyssa Loh and Peter SchmidtScenes of Attention edited by D. Graham Burnett and Justin E. H. SmithBook Recommendations:Addiction by Design by Natasha Dow SchüllObjectivity by Lorraine Daston and Peter L. GalisonThe Confidence-Man by Herman MelvilleThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Isaac Jones and Aman Sahota. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin and Elias Isquith. Original music by Isaac Jones and Aman Sahota. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

A.I.-generated art has flooded the internet, and a lot of it is derivative, even boring or offensive. But what could it look like for artists to collaborate with A.I. systems in making art that is actually generative, challenging, transcendent?Holly Herndon offered one answer with her 2019 album “PROTO.” Along with Mathew Dryhurst and the programmer Jules LaPlace, she built an A.I. called “Spawn” trained on human voices that adds an uncanny yet oddly personal layer to the music. Beyond her music and visual art, Herndon is trying to solve a problem that many creative people are encountering as A.I. becomes more prominent: How do you encourage experimentation without stealing others’ work to train A.I. models? Along with Dryhurst, Jordan Meyer and Patrick Hoepner, she co-founded Spawning, a company figuring out how to allow artists — and all of us creating content on the internet — to “consent” to our work being used as training data.In this conversation, we discuss how Herndon collaborated with a human chorus and her “A.I. baby,” Spawn, on “PROTO”; how A.I. voice imitators grew out of electronic music and other musical genres; why Herndon prefers the term “collective intelligence” to “artificial intelligence”; why an “opt-in” model could help us retain more control of our work as A.I. trawls the internet for data; and much more.Mentioned:“Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt” by Holly Herndon“xhairymutantx” by Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst, for the Whitney Museum of Art“Fade” by Holly Herndon“Swim” by Holly Herndon“Jolene” by Holly Herndon and Holly+“Movement” by Holly Herndon“Chorus” by Holly Herndon“Godmother” by Holly Herndon“The Precision of Infinity” by Jlin and Philip GlassHolly+Book Recommendations:Intelligence and Spirit by Reza NegarestaniChildren of Time by Adrian TchaikovskyPlurality by E. Glen Weyl, Audrey Tang and ⿻ CommunityThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu, Elias Isquith and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero and Jack Hamilton.

“The Jetsons” premiered in 1962. And based on the internal math of the show, George Jetson, the dad, was born in 2022. He’d be a toddler right now. And we are so far away from the world that show imagined. There were a lot of future-trippers in the 1960s, and most of them would be pretty disappointed by how that future turned out.So what happened? Why didn’t we build that future?The answer, I think, lies in the 1970s. I’ve been spending a lot of time studying that decade in my work, trying to understand why America is so bad at building today. And James Pethokoukis has also spent a lot of time looking at the 1970s, in his work trying to understand why America is less innovative today than it was in the postwar decades. So Pethokoukis and I are asking similar questions, and circling the same time period, but from very different ideological vantages.Pethokoukis is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and author of the book “The Conservative Futurist: How to Create the Sci-Fi World We Were Promised.” He also writes a newsletter called Faster, Please! “The two screamingly obvious things that we stopped doing is we stopped spending on science, research and development the way we did in the 1960s,” he tells me, “and we began to regulate our economy as if regulation would have no impact on innovation.”In this conversation, we debate why the ’70s were such an inflection point; whether this slowdown phenomenon is just something that happens as countries get wealthier; and what the government’s role should be in supporting and regulating emerging technologies like A.I.Mentioned:“U.S. Infrastructure: 1929-2017” by Ray C. FairBook RecommendationsWhy Information Grows by Cesar HidalgoThe Expanse series by James S.A. CoreyThe American Dream Is Not Dead by Michael R. StrainThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin, Elias Isquith and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

The international legal system was created to prevent the atrocities of World War II from happening again. The United Nations partitioned historic Palestine to create the states of Israel and Palestine, but also left Palestinians with decades of false promises. The war in Gaza — and countless other conflicts, including those in Syria, Yemen and Ethiopia — shows how little power the U.N. and international law have to protect civilians in wartime. So what is international law actually for?Aslı Ü. Bâli is a professor at Yale Law School who specializes in international and comparative law. “The fact that people break the law and sometimes get away with it doesn’t mean the law doesn’t exist and doesn’t have force,” she argues.In this conversation, Bâli traces the gap between how international law is written on paper and the realpolitik of how countries decide to follow it, the U.N.’s unique role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from its very beginning, how the laws of war have failed Gazans but may be starting to change the conflict’s course, and more.Mentioned:“With Schools in Ruins, Education in Gaza Will Be Hobbled for Years” by Liam Stack and Bilal ShbairBook Recommendations:Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law by Antony AnghieJustice for Some by Noura ErakatWorldmaking After Empire by Adom GetachewThe Constitutional Bind by Aziz RanaThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota and Isaac Jones. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu, Elias Isquith and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Carole Sabouraud.

Drug policy feels very unsettled right now. The war on drugs was a failure. But so far, the war on the war on drugs hasn’t entirely been a success, either.Take Oregon. In 2020, it became the first state in the nation to decriminalize hard drugs. It was a paradigm shift — treating drug-users as patients rather than criminals — and advocates hoped it would be a model for the nation. But then there was a surge in overdoses and public backlash over open-air drug use. And last month, Oregon’s governor signed a law restoring criminal penalties for drug possession, ending that short-lived experiment.Other states and cities have also tipped toward backlash. And there are a lot of concerns about how cannabis legalization and commercialization is working out around the country. So what did the supporters of these measures fail to foresee? And where do we go from here?Keith Humphreys is a professor of psychiatry at Stanford University who specializes in addiction and its treatment. He also served as a senior policy adviser in the Obama administration. I asked him to walk me through why Oregon’s policy didn’t work out; what policymakers sometimes misunderstand about addiction; the gap between “elite” drug cultures and how drugs are actually consumed by most people; and what better drug policies might look like.Mentioned:Oregon Health Authority data“Why are there so many illegal weed stores in New York City? (Part 1)” by Search Engine“Why are there so many illegal weed stores in New York City? (Part 2)” by Search EngineBook Recommendations:Drugs and Drug Policy by Mark A.R. Kleiman, Jonathan P. Caulkins and Angela HawkenDopamine Nation by Anna LembkeConfessions of an English Opium Eater by Thomas De QuinceyThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota and Efim Shapiro. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

Ultimately, the Gaza war protests sweeping campuses are about influencing Israeli politics. The protesters want to use economic divestment, American pressure and policy, and a broad sense of international outrage to change the decisions being made by Israeli leaders.So I wanted to know what it’s like to watch these protests from Israel. What are Israelis seeing? What do they make of them?Ari Shavit is an Israeli journalist and the author of “My Promised Land,” the best book I’ve read about Israeli identity and history. “Israelis are seeing a different war than the one that Americans see,” he tells me. “You see one war film, horror film, and we see at home another war film.”This is a conversation about trying to push divergent perspectives into relationship with each other: On the protests, on Israel, on Gaza, on Benjamin Netanyahu, on what it means to take societal trauma and fear seriously, on Jewish values, and more.Mentioned:“Building the Palestinian State with Salam Fayyad” by The Ezra Klein Show“To Save the Jewish Homeland” by Hannah ArendtBook Recommendations:Truman by David McCulloughParting the Waters by Taylor BranchRosalind Franklin by Brenda MaddoxThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Claire Gordon and Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Kristin Lin. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Efim Shapiro and Aman Sahota. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin and Michelle Harris. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Lydia Polgreen, Dalit Shalom and Sonia Herrero.

A decade ago, I was feeling pretty pessimistic about climate change. The politics of mitigating global warming just seemed impossible: asking people to make sacrifices, or countries to slow their development, and delay dreams of better, more prosperous lives.But the world today looks different. The costs of solar and wind power have plummeted. Same for electric batteries. And a new politics is starting to take hold: that maybe we can invest and invent and build our way out of this crisis, without needing people to make sacrifices at all.Hannah Ritchie is the deputy editor and lead researcher at Our World in Data and the author of “Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet.” She’s pored over the data on this question and has come away more optimistic than many. “It’s just not true that we’ve had these solutions just sitting there ready to build for decades and decades, and we just haven’t done anything,” she told me. “We’re in a fundamentally different position going forward.”In this conversation, we discuss whether sustainability without sacrifice is truly possible. How much progress have we made so far? What gives her the most hope? And what are the biggest obstacles?Mentioned:“What was the death toll from Chernobyl and Fukushima?” by Hannah Ritchie“Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers” by Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek“Future demand for electricity generation materials under different climate mitigation scenarios” by Seaver Wang, Zeke Hausfather et al.Book Recommendations:Factfulness by Hans RoslingPossible by Chris GoodallRange by David EpsteinThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Isaac Jones. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin, Kristin Lin and Aman Sahota. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

Salman Rushdie’s 1988 novel, “The Satanic Verses,” made him the target of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who denounced the book as blasphemous and issued a fatwa calling for his assassination. Rushdie spent years trying to escape the shadow the fatwa cast on him, and for some time, he thought he succeeded. But in 2022, an assailant attacked him onstage at a speaking engagement in western New York and nearly killed him.“I think now I’ll never be able to escape it. No matter what I’ve already written or may now write, I’ll always be the guy who got knifed,” he writes in his new memoir, “Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder.”In this conversation, I asked Rushdie to reflect on his desire to escape the fatwa; the gap between the reputation of his novels and their actual merits; how his “shadow selves” became more real to millions than he was; how many of us in the internet age also have to contend with our many shadow selves; what Rushdie lives for now; and more.Mentioned:Midnight’s Children by Salman RushdieBook Recommendations:Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, translated by Edith GrossmanOne Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García MárquezThe Trial by Franz KafkaThe Castle by Franz KafkaThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Isaac Jones. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin and Aman Sahota. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero and Mrinalini Chakravorty.

In our recent series on artificial intelligence, I kept returning to a thought: This technology might be able to churn out content faster than we can, but we still need a human mind to sift through the dross and figure out what’s good. In other words, A.I. is going to turn more of us into editors.But editing is a peculiar skill. It’s hard to test for, or teach, or even describe. But it’s the crucial step in the creative process that takes work that’s decent and can turn it into something great.Adam Moss is widely known as one of the great magazine editors of his generation: He remade The New York Times Magazine in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and during his 15 years as editor in chief of New York magazine, shaped that outlet into one of the greatest print and digital publications we have. And he’s now out with a new book, “The Work of Art: How Something Comes From Nothing.” It’s a curation of 43 conversations with artists about the marginalia, doodles, drafts and revisions that lead to great art. It’s a celebration of the hard, human work that goes into the creative act. It’s a book, really, about editing.In this conversation, we discuss what musicians, writers, visual artists, sandcastle-builders and others have in common as they create; how editing is an underappreciated and often misunderstood step in the creative process; how creativity morphs in different stages of our lives; and trusting your own “sensibility.”Mentioned:“A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby” by Kara Walker“Miss Gleason” by Amy SillmanEzra Klein Show episode with George Saunders“Mother and Child on Blue Mat” by Cheryl PopeEzra Klein Show episode with Maryanne Wolf“Fidenza” by Tyler Hobbs“In a River” by RostamBook Recommendations:Interviews with Francis Bacon by David SylvesterFaux Pas by Amy SillmanThe Sketchbooks Revealed by Richard DiebenkornThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Isaac Jones. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin and Aman Sahota. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero, Rachel Baker and James Burnett.

There is so much we need to build right now. The housing crunch has spread across the country; by one estimate, we’re a few million units short. And we also need a huge build-out of renewable energy infrastructure — at a scale some experts compare to the construction of the Interstate highway system.And yet, we’re not seeing anything close to the level of building that we need — even in the blue states and cities where housing tends to be more expensive and where politicians and voters purport to care about climate change and affordable housing.Jerusalem Demsas is a staff writer at The Atlantic who obsesses over these questions as much as I do. In this conversation, she takes me through some of her reporting on local disputes that block or hinder projects, and what they say about the issues plaguing development in the country at large. We discuss how well-intentioned policies evolved into a Kafka-esque system of legal and bureaucratic hoops and delays; how clashes over development reveal a generational split in the environmental movement; and what it would take to cut decades of red tape.Mentioned:“Colorado’s Ingenious Idea for Solving the Housing Crisis” by Jerusalem Demsas“The Culture War Tearing American Environmentalism Apart” by Jerusalem Demsas“Why America Doesn’t Build” by Jerusalem DemsasBook Recommendations:Don’t Blame Us by Lily GeismerThe Bulldozer in the Countryside by Adam RomeA Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George SaundersThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris with Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu and Aman Sahota. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

Back in 2018, Dario Amodei worked at OpenAI. And looking at one of its first A.I. models, he wondered: What would happen as you fed an artificial intelligence more and more data?He and his colleagues decided to study it, and they found that the A.I. didn’t just get better with more data; it got better exponentially. The curve of the A.I.’s capabilities rose slowly at first and then shot up like a hockey stick.Amodei is now the chief executive of his own A.I. company, Anthropic, which recently released Claude 3 — considered by many to be the strongest A.I. model available. And he still believes A.I. is on an exponential growth curve, following principles known as scaling laws. And he thinks we’re on the steep part of the climb right now.When I’ve talked to people who are building A.I., scenarios that feel like far-off science fiction end up on the horizon of about the next two years. So I asked Amodei on the show to share what he sees in the near future. What breakthroughs are around the corner? What worries him the most? And how are societies that struggle to adapt to change and governments that are slow to react to them supposed to prepare for the pace of change he predicts? What does that line on his graph mean for the rest of us?Mentioned:Sam Altman on The Ezra Klein ShowDemis Hassabis on The Ezra Klein ShowOn Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt“Measuring the Persuasiveness of Language Models” by AnthropicBook Recommendations:The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard RhodesThe Expanse (series) by James S.A. CoreyThe Guns of August by Barbara W. TuchmanThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin, Kristin Lin and Aman Sahota. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

The internet is in decay. Do a Google search, and there are so many websites now filled with slapdash content contorted just to rank highly in the algorithm. Facebook, YouTube, X and TikTok all used to feel more fun and surprising. And all these once-great media companies have been folding or shedding staff members, unable to find a business model that works.And into this weakened internet came the flood of A.I.-generated junk. There’s been a surge of spammy news sites filled with A.I.-generated articles. TikTok videos of A.I.-generated voices reading text pulled from Reddit can be churned out in seconds. And self-published A.I.-authored books are polluting Amazon listings.According to my guest today, Nilay Patel, this isn’t just a blip, as the big platforms figure out how to manage this. He believes that A.I. content will break the internet as we know it.“When you increase the supply of stuff onto those platforms to infinity, that system breaks down completely,” Patel told me “Recommendation algorithms break down completely. Our ability to discern what is real and what is false breaks down completely. And I think, importantly, the business models of the internet break down completely.”Patel is one of the sharpest observers of the internet, and the ways technology has shaped and reshaped it. He’s a co-founder and the editor in chief of The Verge, and the host of the “Decoder” podcast. In this conversation, we talk about why platforms seem so unprepared for the storm of A.I. content; whether an internet filled with cursory A.I. content is better or worse than an internet filled with good A.I. content; and if A.I. might be a kind of cleansing fire for the internet that enables something new and better to emerge.Mentioned:Help us win a Webby Award“Scenes from a dying web” by Casey Newton“The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” by Walter Benjamin“257 CES gadgets in 3 minutes — CES 2015” by The VergeBook Recommendations:The Conquest of Cool by Thomas FrankLiar in a Crowded Theater by Jeff KosseffSubstance by Peter HookEverything I Need I Get From You by Kaitlyn TiffanyExtremely Hardcore by Zoe SchifferBeyond Measure by James VincentThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Claire Gordon. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing from Isaac Jones and Efim Shapiro. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

There’s something of a paradox that has defined my experience with artificial intelligence in this particular moment. It’s clear we’re witnessing the advent of a wildly powerful technology, one that could transform the economy and the way we think about art and creativity and the value of human work itself. At the same time, I can’t for the life of me figure out how to use it in my own day-to-day job.So I wanted to understand what I’m missing and get some tips for how I could incorporate A.I. better into my life right now. And Ethan Mollick is the perfect guide: He’s a professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania who’s spent countless hours experimenting with different chatbots, noting his insights in his newsletter One Useful Thing and in a new book, “Co-Intelligence: Living and Working With A.I.”This conversation covers the basics, including which chatbot to choose and techniques for how to get the most useful results. But the conversation goes far beyond that, too — to some of the strange, delightful and slightly unnerving ways that A.I. responds to us, and how you’ll get more out of any chatbot if you think of it as a relationship rather than a tool.Mollick says it’s helpful to understand this moment as one of co-creation, in which we all should be trying to make sense of what this technology is going to mean for us. Because it’s not as if you can call up the big A.I. companies and get the answers. “When I talk to OpenAI or Anthropic, they don’t have a hidden instruction manual,” he told me. “There is no list of how you should use this as a writer or as a marketer or as an educator. They don’t even know what the capabilities of these systems are.”Book Recommendations:The Rise and Fall of American Growth by Robert J. GordonThe Knowledge by Lewis DartnellBlindsight by Peter WattsThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing from Efim Shapiro. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin and Rollin Hu. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

Donald Trump can seem like a political anomaly. You sometimes hear people describe his connection with his base in quasi-mystical terms. But really, Trump is an example of an archetype — the right-wing populist showman — that recurs across time and place. There’s Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Boris Johnson in Britain, Javier Milei in Argentina. And there’s a long lineage of this type in the United States too.So why is there this consistent demand for this kind of political figure? And why does this set of qualities — ethnonationalist politics and an entertaining style — repeatedly appear at all?John Ganz is the writer of the newsletter Unpopular Front and the author of the forthcoming book “When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s.” In this conversation, we discuss how figures like David Duke and Pat Buchanan were able to galvanize the fringes of the Republican Party; Trump’s specific brand of TV-ready charisma; and what liberals tend to overlook about the appeal of this populist political aesthetic.This episode contains strong language.Mentioned:“Right-Wing Populism” by Murray N. Rothbard“The ‘wave’ of right-wing populist sentiment is a myth” by Larry Bartels“How we got here” by Matthew YglesiasBook Recommendations:What Hath God Wrought? by Daniel Walker HoweAfter Nationalism by Samuel GoldmanThe Politics of Cultural Despair by Fritz R. SternThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing from Efim Shapiro. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

We’ll be back on Friday with a new episode. In the meantime, we wanted to share one of our favorite recent episodes from our sister podcast, “Matter of Opinion.”Why does the economy look so good to economists but feel so bad to voters?The Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman joins the hosts on “Matter of Opinion” to discuss why inflation, interest rates and wages aren’t in line with voters’ perception of the economy. Then, they debate with Paul how big of an influence the economy will be on the 2024 presidential election, and which of the two presumed candidates, Joe Biden and Donald Trump, it could benefit. Plus, Ross Douthat’s lessons on aging, through Michael Caine impressions.Mentioned:“Believing Is Seeing,” from Paul Krugman’s newsletter“The Age of Diminished Expectations,” by Paul Krugman“The Trip” scene: “This Is How Michael Caine Speaks”

American policy is uniquely hostile to families. Other wealthy countries guarantee paid parental leave and sick days and heavily subsidize early childhood care — to the tune of about $14,000 per year per child, on average. (The United States, by contrast, spends around $500 per child per year.) So it’s no wonder our birthrate has been in decline, with many people saying they’re having fewer children than they would like.Yet if you look closer at those other wealthy countries, that story doesn’t entirely hold. Sweden, for example, has some of the most generous work-family policies in the world, and according to the most recent numbers from Our World in Data, from 2021, their fertility rate is 1.67 children per woman — virtually identical to ours.Caitlyn Collins is a sociology professor at Washington University in St. Louis and the author of “Making Motherhood Work: How Women Manage Careers and Caregiving.” To understand how family policies affect the experience of child-rearing, she interviewed over a hundred middle-class mothers across four countries with different parenting cultures and levels of social support for families: the United States, Sweden, Italy and Germany. And what she finds is that policies can greatly relieve parents’ stress, but cultural norms like “intensive parenting” remain consistent.In this conversation, we discuss how work-family policies in Sweden frame spending time with children as a right rather than a privilege, how these policies have transformed the gender norms around parenting, why family-friendly policies across the globe don’t increase birthrates, how cultural pressures in America to be both an ideal worker and an ideal parent often clash, why many American parents feel it’s impossible to have more than one or two children, how cultural discourse has led younger women to “dread” motherhood and more.Mentioned:“Parenthood and Happiness: Effects of Work-Family Reconciliation Policies in 22 OECD Countries” by Jennifer Glass, Robin W. Simon and Matthew A. Andersson“Is Maternal Guilt a Cross-National Experience?” by Caitlyn CollinsIf you're interested in this topic, we also recommend checking out this series from the New York Times Opinion:“Would You Have Four Kids if It Meant Never Paying Taxes Again?” by Jessica Grose“Are Men the Overlooked Reason for the Fertility Decline?” by Jessica Grose“If We Want More Babies, Our ‘Profoundly Anti-Family’ System Needs an Overhaul” by Jessica GroseBook Recommendations:Competing Devotions by Mary Blair-LoyMothering While Black by Dawn Marie DowHope in the Dark by Rebecca SolnitThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing from Efim Shapiro. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Jessica Grose and Sonia Herrero.

For a long time, the story about the world’s population was that it was growing too quickly. There were going to be too many humans, not enough resources, and that spelled disaster. But now the script has flipped. Fertility rates have declined dramatically, from about five children per woman 60 years ago to just over two today. About two-thirds of us now live in a country or area where fertility rates are below replacement level. And that has set off a new round of alarm, especially in certain quarters on the right and in Silicon Valley, that we’re headed toward demographic catastrophe.But when I look at these numbers, I just find it strange. Why, as societies get richer, do their fertility rates plummet?Money makes life easier. We can give our kids better lives than our ancestors could have imagined. We don’t expect to bear the grief of burying a child. For a long time, a big, boisterous family has been associated with a joyful, fulfilled life. So why are most of us now choosing to have small ones?I invited Jennifer D. Sciubba on the show to help me puzzle this out. She’s a demographer, a political scientist and the author of “8 Billion and Counting: How Sex, Death and Migration Shape Our World.” She walks me through the population trends we’re seeing around the world, the different forces that seem to be driving them and why government policy, despite all kinds of efforts, seems incapable of getting people to have more kids.Book Recommendations:Extra Life by Steven JohnsonThe Bet by Paul SabinReproductive States edited by Rickie Solinger and Mie NakachiThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Mixing by Isaac Jones. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

President Biden gave a raucous State of the Union speech last Thursday, offering his pitch for why he should be president for a second term. It’s the clearest picture we have yet of Biden’s campaign message for 2024. But while he listed off all kinds of proposals, it’s not as easy to parse what a second Biden term might actually look like. So I sat down with my editor Aaron Retica, who had a lot of questions for me about the speech itself and what Biden would be likely to accomplish if he got another four years in the job.We discuss how my argument for Biden to step aside holds up after he gave such a deft, high-energy performance; what a second Biden administration would likely do when it comes to abortion rights and foreign policy; the issues that didn’t receive much attention in the speech but would likely play a huge role in a second Biden term; the strongest 2024 campaign message that I’ve heard so far; and whether this is a Locke election or a Hobbes election — and what that means.Book Recommendations:Tip O'Neill and the Democratic Century by John A. FarrellA Nation Without Borders by Steven HahnThe Field of Blood by Joanne B. FreemanThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing from Efim Shapiro. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, it scrambled the landscape of abortion access in America, including in ways that one might not entirely expect. Many conservative states made the procedure essentially illegal — that part was predictable. But there’s also been this striking backlash in blue states, with many of them making historic efforts to expand abortion access, for both their residents and for women living in abortion-restricted states.And this has created all kinds of new battle lines — between states, and states and the federal government — involving travel, speech, privacy and executive power. It’s an explosion of conflicts and constitutional questions that the legal historian Mary Ziegler says has no parallel in modern times. She’s the author of six books on reproductive rights in America, including “Roe: The History of a National Obsession,” and the Martin Luther King Jr. professor of law at the University of California, Davis. “We’re seeing, from conservative and progressive states, moves to project power outside of their borders in ways we really haven’t seen in a really long time,” she told me.In this conversation, Ziegler explains the bifurcated abortion landscape that has emerged since the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned Roe. We discuss the different political and legal strategies conservative and progressive states are using to pursue their opposing goals; why the abortion rate has gone up, even as 14 states have implemented near-total bans on abortion; and how a second Trump administration could try to restrict access to abortion for all Americans, no matter what states they live in.Mentioned:“Harsh Anti-abortion Laws Are Not Empty Threats” by Mary ZieglerBook Recommendations:The Family Roe by Joshua PragerTiny You by Jennifer L. HollandDefenders of the Unborn by Daniel K. Williams“Before Roe v. Wade” by Linda Greenhouse and Reva B. SiegelThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Claire Gordon and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing from Efim Shapiro. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin and Rollin Hu. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

Marilynne Robinson is one of the great living novelists. She has won a Pulitzer Prize and a National Humanities Medal, and Barack Obama took time out of his presidency to interview her at length. Her fiction is suffused with a sense of holiness: Mundane images like laundry drying on a line seem to be illuminated by a divine force. Whether she’s telling the story of a pastor confronting his mortality in “Gilead” or two sisters coming of age in small-town Idaho in “Housekeeping,” her novels wrestle with theological questions of what it means to be human, to see the world more deeply, to seek meaning in life.In recent years, Robinson has tightened the links between her literary pursuits and her Christianity, writing essays about Calvinism and other theological traditions. Her forthcoming work of nonfiction is “Reading Genesis,” a close reading of the first book of the Old Testament (or the Torah, as I grew up knowing it). It’s a countercultural reading in many respects — one that understands the God in Genesis as merciful rather than vengeful and humans as flawed but capable of astounding acts of grace. No matter one’s faith, Robinson unearths wisdom in this core text that applies to many questions we wrestle with today.We discuss the virtues evoked in Genesis — beauty, forgiveness and hospitality — and how to cultivate what Robinson calls “a mind that’s schooled toward good attention.” And we end on her reading of the story of Israel, which I found to be challenging, moving and evocative at a time when that nation has been front and center in the news.Book Recommendations:Foxe’s Book of Martyrs by John FoxeThe Vision of Piers Plowman by William LanglandTheologia GermanicaThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing from Efim Shapiro. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero and Alex Engebretson.

Joe Biden’s presidency has been dominated by two foreign policy crises: the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. The funding the United States has provided in those wars — billions to both Ukraine and Israel — has drawn backlash from both the right and the left. And now, as the conflicts move into new stages with no clear end game, Biden’s policies are increasingly drawing dissent from the center.Richard Haass is an icon of the U.S. foreign policy establishment. He served as the president of the Council on Foreign Relations for 20 years and currently writes the newsletter Home & Away. He’s recently been making the case that our foreign policy is insufficiently independent — that we’ve become captured by allies that have interests that diverge from our own. His view of this moment is a signal of larger shifts that could be coming in the U.S. foreign policy consensus.In this conversation, we discuss why he thinks America’s current strategy on both Ukraine and Israel is untenable, what he thinks the north star for our strategy in both cases should be, the Republican Party’s 180-degree turn from internationalism to isolationism, what America’s biggest national security threat really is and more.Mentioned:“The Two-State Mirage” by Marc Lynch and Shibley TelhamiBook Recommendations:The World That Wasn’t by Benn SteilSparks by Ian JohnsonDiplomats at War by Charles TrueheartThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris with Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing from Efim Shapiro. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

We received thousands of questions in response to last week’s audio essay arguing that Democrats should consider choosing a candidate at August’s D.N.C. convention. Among them: Is there any chance Joe Biden would actually step down? Would an open convention be undemocratic? Is there another candidate who can bridge the progressive and moderate divide in the party? Doesn’t polling show other candidates losing to Donald Trump by even larger margins? Would a convention process leave Democrats enough time to mount a real general election campaign?In this conversation, I’m joined by our senior editor Claire Gordon to answer these questions and many more.Mentioned:“Democrats Have a Better Option Than Biden” by Ezra Klein“Here’s How an Open Democratic Convention Would Work” with Elaine Kamarck on The Ezra Klein ShowThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing from Efim Shapiro. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

Last week on the show, I argued that the Democrats should pick their nominee at the Democratic National Convention in August.It’s an idea that sounds novel but is really old-fashioned. This is how most presidential nominees have been picked in American history. All the machinery to do it is still there; we just stopped using it. But Democrats may need a Plan B this year. And the first step is recognizing they have one.Elaine Kamarck literally wrote the book on how we choose presidential candidates. It’s called “Primary Politics: Everything You Need to Know About How America Nominates Its Presidential Candidates.” She’s a senior fellow in governance studies and the founding director of the Center for Effective Public Management at the Brookings Institution. But her background here isn’t just theory. It’s practice. She has worked on four presidential campaigns and 10 nominating conventions for both Democrats and Republicans. She’s also on the convention’s rules committee and has been a superdelegate at five Democratic conventions.It’s a fascinating conversation, even if you don’t think Democrats should attempt to select their nominee at the convention. The history here is rich, and it is, if nothing else, a reminder that the way we choose candidates now is not the way we have always done it and not the way we must always do it.Book Recommendations:All the King’s Men by Robert Penn WarrenThe Making of the President 1960 by Theodore H. WhiteQuiet Revolution by Byron E. ShaferThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Kristin Lin. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

Biden is faltering and Democrats have no plan B. There is another path to winning in 2024 — and I think they should take it. But it would require them to embrace an old-fashioned approach to winning a campaign.Mentioned:The Lincoln Miracle by Edward AchornIf you have a question for the AMA, you can call 212-556-7300 and leave a voice message or email [email protected] with the subject line, “2024 AMA."You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This audio essay for “The Ezra Klein Show” was fact-checked by Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

For years, Agnes Callard has been on a mission to take ethical philosophy out of the ivory tower. She examines everyday human experiences — jockeying for status, navigating jealousy, marriage — with dazzling detail, publishing regularly in mainstream publications. And she tries to live by her philosophy, too, even if it violates social conventions, as many discovered when The New Yorker published a provocative profile of Callard last year. We recorded this conversation in May 2021, before the New Yorker article drew attention to the details of her home life. (She lives with both her husband and her ex-husband.) But after our episode with Rhaina Cohen about imagining relationships more expansively, we thought it would be interesting to revisit Callard, who has spent so much time dissecting the dynamics and ethics of different relationships and their possibilities.Mentioned:“Who Wants to Play the Status Game?” by Agnes Callard, The Point“Against Advice,” by Agnes Callard, The Point“The Other Woman,” by Agnes Callard, The Point“Parenting and Panic,” by Agnes Callard, The Point"Aspiration" by Agnes CallardBook Recommendations:"Tolstoy: A Russian Life" by Rosamund Bartlett"Pessoa: A Biography" by Richard Zenith"Augustine of Hippo" by Peter Brown“Real Death” by Mount EerieThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

“If only we had a partner for peace.”That’s been the refrain in the Israel-Palestinian conflict for as long as I’ve followed it. But the truth is you don’t need just a partner — you need two partners able to deliver at the same time.So you could see it as a tragedy of history that Salam Fayyad joined the Palestinian Authority in 2002, at the height of the second intifada, just as Israeli society shifted hard to the right.A Western-educated economist, Fayyad is a technocrat at heart. And as the Palestinian Authority’s finance minister, and then as prime minister, he dedicated himself to the spadework of state-building. His theory was that instead of waiting around for the peace process to deliver Palestinian statehood, he would just build a state — institutions, infrastructure, security, sewers and all — and then statehood would follow.And by many measures, he was remarkably successful. The economy boomed, crime plummeted, and in 2011 the United Nations declared the authority ready to run an independent state. But in April 2013, Fayyad resigned. And today, the Palestinian Authority in tatters, widely seen by Palestinians as corrupt and a failure.Fayyad is now a visiting senior scholar at Princeton. And I wanted to have him on the show to talk about his time building a Palestinian state. What did he learn working with the various factions — including Hamas — in Palestinian politics? What did he learn working with Israel? How did we still end up here? And what, given all he’s seen and done, does he think should happen now?Mentioned:Into the Breach: Salam Fayyad and Palestine“A Plan for Peace in Gaza” by Salam FayyadBook Recommendations:Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James A. RobinsonThe Arabs by Eugene RoganOn The Trails of Mariam by Nadia HarhashThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld with additional mixing from Efim Shapiro. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

Around 40 percent of people who marry eventually get a divorce. Almost half of children are born to unmarried women. The number of close friends Americans report having has been on a steep decline since the 1990s, especially among men. Millions of us are growing old alone. We are living out a radical experiment in how we live, love, parent and age — and for many, it’s failing.That’s partial context, I think, for the recent burst of interest and media coverage of polyamory. People want more love in their lives, and opening their relationships is one way to find it. A poll from last year found that one-third of Americans believe their ideal relationship would involve something other than strict monogamy.But polyamory, for all its possibilities, isn’t right for many, and it doesn’t have that much to say about parenting or aging or friendship. As radical as it may sound, it’s not nearly radical enough. It’s not just romance that could be imagined more expansively. It’s everything.“If this is such a significant relationship in my life, why is there no term for it?” wonders NPR’s Rhaina Cohen about a relationship that transcends the language we have available for friendship. Her forthcoming book, “The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life With Friendship at the Center,” is a window into a world of relational possibilities most of us never even imagined existed. It’s a call to open up what we can conceive of as possible. Some of these models might appeal to you. Others might not. But they all pose a question worth asking: What kinds of relationships would you want in your life, if you felt you could ask for them?Mentioned:“Men’s Social Circles are Shrinking” by Daniel A. CoxThe Two-Parent Privilege by Melissa S. KearneyHow Should a Person Be? by Sheila HetiBook Recommendations:Far From the Tree by Andrew SolomonWe All Want Impossible Things by Catherine NewmanThy Neighbor’s Wife by Gay TaleseThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on X @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld with additional mixing from Efim Shapiro. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Michelle Harris, Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

Political analysts used to say that the Democratic Party was riding a demographic wave that would lead to an era of dominance. But that “coalition of the ascendant” never quite jelled. The party did benefit from a rise in nonwhite voters and college-educated professionals, but it has also shed voters without a college degree. All this has made the Democrats’ political math a lot more precarious. And it also poses a kind of spiritual problem for Democrats who see themselves as the party of the working class.Ruy Teixeira is one of the loudest voices calling on the Democratic Party to focus on winning these voters back. He’s a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the politics editor of the newsletter The Liberal Patriot. His 2002 book, “The Emerging Democratic Majority,” written with John B. Judis, was seen as prophetic after Barack Obama won in 2008 with the coalition he’d predicted. But he also warned in that book that Democrats needed to stop hemorrhaging white working-class voters for this majority to hold. And now Teixeira and Judis have a new book, “Where Have All the Democrats Gone?: The Soul of the Party in the Age of Extremes.”In this conversation, I talk to Teixeira about how he defines the working class; the economic, social and cultural forces that he thinks have driven these voters from the Democratic Party; whether Joe Biden’s industrial and pro-worker policies could win some of these voters back, or if economic policies could reverse this trend at all; and how to think through the trade-offs of pursuing bold progressive policies that could push working-class voters even further away.Mentioned:“‘Compensate the Losers?’ Economic Policy and Partisan Realignment in the U.S.”Book Recommendations:Political Cleavages and Social Inequalities, edited by Amory Gethin, Clara Martínez-Toledano, and Thomas PikettyVisions of Inequality by Branko MilanovicThe House of Government by Yuri SlezkineThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

If you’re a Democrat, how worried should you be right now? It’s strangely hard to answer that question. On the one hand, polls suggest Democrats should be very worried. President Biden looks weaker than he did as a candidate in 2020, and in matchups with Donald Trump, the election looks like a coin flip. On the other hand, Democrats staved off an expected red wave in the 2022 midterm elections. Biden has a strong record to run on, and Trump has a lot more baggage than he did in 2020.So, in an effort to put all those pieces together, I had two conversations with two people who have polar opposite perspectives — starting with a more optimistic take for Democrats.Simon Rosenberg is a longtime Democratic political strategist, the author of the newsletter Hopium Chronicles and one of the few people who correctly predicted the Democrats’ strong performance in 2022. He argues that the Democratic Party is in a better position now than it has been for generations. In this conversation, we talk about why he isn’t worried about Biden’s polling numbers, how anti-MAGA sentiments have become a motivating force for many voters, what he thinks about the shifts in working-class support of the Democratic Party, why there’s such a huge gap between Biden’s economic track record and how voters perceive the economy right now, how Biden’s age is affecting the campaign, whether his foreign policy might alienate young voters and more.Mentioned:Columnist Assistant applicationBook Recommendations:A New Deal for the World by Elizabeth BorgwardtOn Tyranny by Timothy SnyderThe Collector by Daniel SilvaThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

It’s been just over 100 days since Hamas’s attack on Israel, and the costs of the war are staggering. In polling from late fall, 64 percent of Gazans reported that a family member had been killed or injured. Nearly two million Gazans — almost the entire population — have been displaced from their homes, and analysis of satellite imagery reveals that about half the buildings in the Gaza Strip have probably been destroyed or damaged.Israel believes that more than 100 hostages are being held captive in Gaza, and polling reveals that Hamas has gained popularity among Palestinians while support for Israel has plummeted around the world. When this war ends, will Israel really be safer? Who will govern Gaza? What will be left of Gaza?Thomas L. Friedman is a New York Times Opinion columnist and the author of “From Beirut to Jerusalem,” among other books. He has covered the Middle East for decades and won a Pulitzer for his reporting from Israel. And so I wanted to ask him: What does he think of where Israel is now, and what does he imagine comes next?Mentioned:Columnist Assistant applicationThomas L. Friedman’s recent columns“‘Joe Biden May Be the Last Pro-Israel Democratic’” by Thomas L. FriedmanBook Recommendations:The Little Drummer Girl by John Le CarréThe Splendid and the Vile by Erik LarsonI’m Your Man by Sylvie SimmonsThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Efim Shapiro. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

The fact that Donald Trump is the front-runner for the G.O.P. nomination in 2024 has created a chasm in our politics. In the past, Democrats and Republicans at least understood why members of the other party liked their chosen candidates. Most conservatives weren’t confused why liberals liked Barack Obama, and vice versa for George W. Bush. But for a lot of Democrats, it feels impossible to imagine why anyone would cast a vote for Trump. And as a result, the two parties don’t just feel hostile toward each other; they feel increasingly unknowable.Kristen Soltis Anderson is a veteran Republican pollster, a founding partner of the opinion research firm Echelon Insights and a CNN contributor. She spends her days trying to understand the thinking of Republican voters, including hosting focus groups for New York Times Opinion. So I wanted to get her insights on why Republicans like Trump so much — even after his 2020 electoral loss, the Jan. 6 insurrection and over 90 criminal charges. What really explains Trump’s enduring appeal?Mentioned:Researcher applicationAssociate engineer applicationGallup's Presidential Job Approval CenterBook Recommendations:Subtract by Leidy KlotzParty of the People by Patrick RuffiniWelcome to the O.C. by Josh Schwartz, Stephanie Savage and Alan SepinwallThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin and Rollin Hu. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

There’s this incredible dissonance at the center of our politics right now. On the one hand, all the polling suggests that Donald Trump is about to win Iowa Republican caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. He seems overwhelmingly likely to be his party’s nominee, and so possibly our next president. On the other hand, he could be constitutionally disqualified from taking office.Colorado and Maine concluded as much, and tossed him off their ballots. And now the Supreme Court is poised to take on this unprecedented question of whether a little-known provision of the Constitution, written in the aftermath of the Civil War, can bar Trump from running and scramble the election in 2024.The Times Opinion columnist David French has been on the show before, as both a guest and a guest host, to break down the criminal cases against Trump. This time, I’ve asked David back to make his case for why Trump is constitutionally disqualified. We discuss some of the biggest objections, what the Supreme Court is likely to do, and how the possible options risk destabilizing the country in different ways.Mentioned:Researcher applicationAssociate engineer application“The Sweep and Force of Section Three” by William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen“The Case for Disqualifying Trump Is Strong” by David French“Snakebit” by Nick CatoggioBook Recommendations:Operation Pedestal by Max HastingsInto the Heart of Romans by N. T. WrightManhunt by James L. SwansonThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Efim Shapiro. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

Being on the internet just doesn’t feel as fun anymore. As more of our digital life is driven by algorithms, it’s become a lot easier to find movies or TV shows or music that fits our preferences pretty well. But it feels harder to find things that are strange and surprising — the kinds of culture that help you, as an individual, develop your own sense of taste.This can be a fuzzy thing to talk about. But Kyle Chayka, a staff writer at The New Yorker, has written a whole book on it, the forthcoming “Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture.” We talk about how today’s internet encourages everything to look more the same and is even dulling our ability to know what we like. And we discuss what we can do to strengthen our sense of personal taste in order to live a richer, more beautiful life.Mentioned:“Quartets: Two: II. Warmth” by Peter GregsonAmbient 1: Music for Airports by Brian EnoBook Recommendations:“In Praise of Shadows” by Junichiro Tanizaki (essay)Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees by Lawrence WeschlerThe Mushroom at the End of the World by Anna Lowenhaupt TsingThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Carole Sabouraud.

I’m convinced that attention is the most important human faculty. Your life, after all, is just the sum total of the things you’ve paid attention to. And we lament our attention issues all the time: how distracted we are, how drained we feel, how hard it is to stay focused or present. And yet, while there’s no shortage of advice on how to improve our sleep hygiene, or spending, or physical fitness, there’s hardly any good information about how to build and replenish our capacity for paying attention.So for the start of the new year, I wanted to have a conversation with Gloria Mark, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, author of the book “Attention Span,” and one of the few people who’s deeply studied the way our attention works, how that’s been changing, and what we can do to stop frittering our attention budgets away.Mentioned:We’re looking for a researcher to join our team. Learn more and apply here.And we’re looking for an associate engineer. Learn more and apply here.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Claire Gordon. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

“We rarely think about chips, yet they’ve created the modern world,” writes the historian Chris Miller.He’s not exaggerating. Semiconductors power everything from our phones and computers to cars, planes, advanced military equipment, and A.I. systems. Chips are the foundation of modern economic prosperity, military strength and geopolitical power.This conversation with Chris Miller, author of “Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology,” was recorded back in April. But we wanted to re-air it, because what Miller lays out in that book, and in this conversation, is essential to understanding where we are in 2023, and the faultlines that will shape the world ahead. Because semiconductors have  one of the most concentrated supply chains of any technology today. One Taiwanese company, TSMC, produces around 90 percent of the most advanced chips. A single Dutch firm, ASML, produces all of the world’s EUV lithography machines, which are essential to produce leading-edge chips. The entire industry is built like this.That doesn’t just make the chip supply chain vulnerable to external shocks; it also makes it easily weaponizable by the powers that control it. In 2022, the Biden administration banned exports of advanced chips — and the equipment needed to produce those chips — to China, and then further tightened those rules this October. In August 2022, President Biden signed into law the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act, which includes a $52 billion investment to on-shore U.S. chip manufacturing. China has invested tens of billions of dollars over the past decade to build a domestic semiconductor industry of its own. Chips have become to the geopolitics of the 21st century what oil was to the geopolitics of the 20th.In this conversation, Miller talks me through what semiconductors are, why they matter and how they are shaping everything from U.S.-China relations and the Russia-Ukraine war to the Biden policy agenda and the future of A.I.Mentioned:“The Problem With Everything-Bagel Liberalism” by Ezra KleinBook Recommendations:The World For Sale by Javier Blas and Jack FarchyNexus by Jonathan Reed WinklerPrestige, Manipulation and Coercion by Joseph TorigianThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Emefa Agawu, Jeff Geld, Rogé Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Mixing by Jeff Geld. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Pat McCusker and Kristina Samulewski.

The holidays are one of the most social times of the year, filled with parties and family get-togethers. Many of us see friends and loved ones who we barely — or never — saw all year. Maybe we resolve to stay in better touch in the new year. But then somehow, once again, life gets in the way. This is not an accident. More and more people are living lives that feel lonelier and more socially isolated than they want them to be. And that’s largely because of social structures we’ve chosen — wittingly or unwittingly — to build for ourselves.Sheila Liming is an associate professor of communications and creative media at Champlain College and the author of “Hanging Out: The Radical Power of Killing Time.” In the book, Liming investigates what she calls the “quiet catastrophe” brewing in our social lives: the devastating fact that we’ve grown much less likely to simply spend time together outside our partnerships, workplaces and family units. What would it look like to reconfigure our world to make social connection easier for all of us?This conversation was recorded in April 2023. But we wanted to re-air it now, at a moment when many of us are spending more time in the company of people we like and love, and remembering how good that feels (at least some of the time). If you feel motivated to have a more social life next year, hopefully this episode provides a clearer sense of the structures that might be standing in the way, what it would look like to knock a couple down, and what you could build instead.Mentioned:“You’d Be Happier Living Closer to Friends. Why Don’t You?” by Anne Helen Petersen“The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake” by David BrooksFull Surrogacy Now by Sophie LewisRegarding the Pain of Others by Susan SontagLetters from Tove by Tove JanssonBook Recommendations:Black Paper by Teju ColeOn the Inconvenience of Other People by Lauren BerlantThe Hare by Melanie FinnThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, with Jeff Geld, Rogé Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Jeff Geld. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero and Kristina Samulewski. 

It’s become something of a tradition on “The Ezra Klein Show” to end the year with an “Ask Me Anything” episode. So as 2023 comes to a close, I sat down with our new senior editor, Claire Gordon, to answer listeners’ questions about everything from the Israel-Hamas war to my thoughts on parenting.We discuss whether the war in Gaza has affected my relationships with family members and friends; what I think about the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement; whether the Democrats should have voted to keep Kevin McCarthy as House speaker; how worried I am about a Trump victory in 2024; whether A.I. can really replace human friendships; how struggling in school as a kid shaped my politics as an adult; and much more.Mentioned:We’re looking for a researcher to join our team. Learn more and apply here.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Emefa Agawu and Rollin Hu. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

India is known as a country of paradoxes, and a new one has recently emerged. At the same time that the country is poised to become a major global player — with a booming economy and a population that recently surpassed China’s — its democracy is showing signs of decay.Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his administration have silenced critics and independent institutions. India’s social media discourse has turned increasingly right wing and hostile to Muslims. And Canada and the United States have accused Indian government officials of involvement in assassination plots against Sikh activists.Pratap Bhanu Mehta is an honorary senior fellow at the Center for Policy Research, New Delhi; a professor at Princeton University; and an editor of “The Oxford Handbook to the Indian Constitution.” In this conversation, he walks our guest host Lydia Polgreen through India’s rising illiberalism. “The signs for Indian democracy are looking very ominous,” he says.They discuss the paradox between India’s flourishing economy and culture and signs of weakening democracy, especially at a moment when many Western countries are cheering a rising India as a democratic counterweight to China. They also talk about what makes Modi such a remarkable and effective political leader and what the United States and other countries could or should do in response to a more assertive India that is shattering norms at home.Mentioned:The Discovery of India by Jawaharlal NehruBook Recommendations:The India Trilogy by V.S. NaipaulIndia in Asian Geopolitics by Shivshankar MenonDreamers by Snigdha PoonamThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Mixing by Efim Shapiro. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Emefa Agawu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

Before Oct. 7, Israel appeared to many to be sliding into a “one-state reality,” where it had functional control over Gaza and the West Bank, but the Palestinians who lived there were denied full rights. In 2021, a group of hundreds of former senior defense and diplomatic officials in Israel published a report warning that this was a catastrophe — for Israel’s security, its democratic values, its international standing, and its very soul. And they argued that there was another way, that even without a Palestinian “partner for peace,” there was a huge amount Israel could do on its own to create the conditions for a two-state solution to emerge in the future.Nimrod Novik is a fellow at the Israel Policy Forum and a member of the executive committee of Commanders for Israel’s Security, the group behind the report. He was a senior policy adviser to Shimon Peres when he was prime minister, and was involved in all forms of negotiations with Palestinians and the Arab world.I wanted to talk to Novik about the plan proposed in the Commanders for Israel’s Security report, and how they might have changed in light of Oct. 7 and the war. We also talk through what the “day after” might look like in Gaza, the immense anger of the Israeli public over the intelligence failure that led up to the attacks, the alternative coalitions building against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and much more.Mentioned:“Initiative 2025” by Commanders for Israel’s SecurityBook Recommendations:The Back Channel by William J. BurnsMaster of the Game by Martin IndykThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Emefa Agawu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Efim Shapiro.

Here are two thoughts I believe need to be held at once: Hamas’s attack on Oct. 7 was heinous, murderous and unforgivable, and that makes it more, not less, important to try to understand what Hamas is, how it sees itself and how it presents itself to Palestinians.Tareq Baconi is the author of “Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance,” one of the best books on Hamas’s rise and recent history. He’s done extensive work interviewing members of Hamas and mapping the organization’s beliefs and structure.In this conversation, we discuss the foundational disagreement between Hamas and the Palestine Liberation Organization, why Hamas fought the Oslo peace process, the “violent equilibrium” between Hamas and the Israeli right wing, what Hamas’s 2017 charter reveals about its political goals, why the right of return is sacred for many Palestinians (and what it means in practice), how the leadership vacuum is a “core question” for Palestinians, why democratic elections for Palestinians are the first step toward continuing negotiations in the future and more.Book Recommendations:The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine by Rashid KhalidiReturning to Haifa by Ghassan KanafaniLight in Gaza edited by Jehad Abusalim, Jennifer Bing and Mike Merryman-LotzeThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Emefa Agawu and Rollin Hu. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

Thursday marked the one-year anniversary of the release of ChatGPT. A lot has happened since. OpenAI, the makers of ChatGPT, recently dominated headlines again after the nonprofit board of directors fired C.E.O. Sam Altman, only for him to return several days later.But that drama isn’t actually the most important thing going on in the A.I. world, which hasn’t slowed down over the past year, even as people are still discovering ChatGPT for the first time and reckoning with all of its implications.Tech journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton are hosts of the weekly podcast “Hard Fork.” Roose is my colleague at The Times, where he writes a tech column called “The Shift.” Newton is the founder and editor of Platformer, a newsletter about the intersection of technology and democracy. They’ve been closely tracking developments in the field since well before ChatGPT launched. I invited them on the show to catch up on the state of A.I.We discuss: who is — and isn’t — integrating ChatGPT into their daily lives, the ripe market for A.I. social companions, why so many companies are hesitant to dive in, progress in the field of A.I. “interpretability” research, and America’s “fecklessness” that cedes major A.I. benefits to the private sector, and much more.Recommendations:Electrifying America by David E. NyeYour Face Belongs to Us by Kashmir Hill“Intro to Large Language Models” by Andrej Karpathy (video)Import AI by Jack Clark.AI Snake Oil by Arvind Narayanan and Sayash KapoorPragmatic Engineer by Gergely OroszThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Emefa Agawu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

Every day, we consume a mind-boggling amount of information. We scan online news articles, sift through text messages and emails, scroll through our social-media feeds — and that’s usually before we even get out of bed in the morning. In 2009, a team of researchers found that the average American consumed about 34 gigabytes of information a day. Undoubtedly, that number would be even higher today.But what are we actually getting from this huge influx of information? How is it affecting our memories, our attention spans, our ability to think? What might this mean for today’s children, and future generations? And what does it take to read — and think — deeply in a world so flooded with constant input?Maryanne Wolf is a researcher and scholar at U.C.L.A.’s School of Education and Information Studies. Her books “Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain” and “Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World” explore the relationship between the process of reading and the neuroscience of the brain. And, in Wolf’s view, our era of information overload represents a historical inflection point where our ability to read — truly, deeply read, not just scan or scroll — hangs in the balance.In this conversation, recorded in November 2022, we discuss why reading is a fundamentally “unnatural” act, how scanning and scrolling differ from “deep reading,” why it’s not accurate to say that “reading” is just one thing, how our brains process information differently when we’re reading on a Kindle or a laptop as opposed to a physical book, how exposure to such an abundance of information is rewiring our brains and reshaping our society, how to rediscover the lost art of reading books deeply, what Wolf recommends to those of us who struggle against digital distractions, what parents can do to to protect their children’s attention, how Wolf’s theory of a “biliterate brain” may save our species’ ability to deeply process language and information and more.We’ll be back on Friday, Dec. 1, with a new episode.Mentioned:The Glass Bead Game (Magister Ludi) by Hermann HesseHow We Read Now by Naomi S. BaronThe Shallows by Nicholas CarrYirumaBook Recommendations:The Gilead Novels by Marilynne RobinsonWorld and Town by Gish JenStanding by Words by Wendell BerryLove’s Mind by John S. DunneMiddlemarch by George EliotThoughts? Email us at [email protected]. (And if you’re reaching out to recommend a guest, please write  “Guest Suggestion” in the subject line.)You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Kate Sinclair; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

It is too early to talk about a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. With the trauma of Oct. 7 still fresh for the Israeli public and with the ongoing devastation in Gaza, any talk of conflict-ending solutions is cruel fantasy.But it wasn’t always. Peace efforts in the Middle East have been tried over and over again. It is not a history without breakthroughs. There was a time when a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt would have been unthinkable. But that agreement lives alongside a long list of collapsed negotiations. Why?I wanted to have someone on the show who could help me read this checkered history. Aaron David Miller is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the author of “The Much Too Promised Land: America’s Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace.” Few people have been as intimately involved in the many Middle East peace processes as Miller. He’s a decades-long veteran of the State Department who has touched peace negotiations under the Reagan, the Clinton and both Bush administrations. His book is the best I’ve read on the peace processes and what went wrong.In this conversation, we explore the frustrating, uneven history of Arab-Israeli peace efforts, Miller’s hard-won insights about the reality of peace negotiations and the idiosyncratic personalities who have most influenced the prospects for peace in the Middle East.Book Recommendations:The Peace Puzzle by Daniel C. Kurtzer, Scott B. Lasensky, William B. Quandt, Steven L. Spiegel and Shibley TelhamiArabs and Israelis by Abdel Monem Said Aly, Shai Feldman and Khalil ShikakiThe Missing Peace by Dennis RossThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Emefa Agawu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Rollin Hu. Mixing by Jeff Geld, with Efim Shapiro. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero. Archival clips from A.P. Archive, CBS, C-SPAN and NBC.

This is a conversation about the relationship between Jewishness and the Jewish State. About believing some aspects of Israel have become indefensible and also believing that Israel itself must be defended. About what it means when a religion built on the lessons of exile creates a state that inflicts exile on others. About the ugly, recurrent reality of antisemitism.You know, the easy stuff.In these past few months, I’ve been moved by the sermons of Rabbi Sharon Brous, which have managed to hold these paradoxes with more grace and prophetic wisdom than most. Brous is the founding and senior rabbi of IKAR, a Jewish community based in Los Angeles, and the author of the forthcoming book “The Amen Effect: Ancient Wisdom to Mend Our Broken Hearts and World.” And so I asked her to be on the show to talk about things that are deeply uncomfortable to talk about.We discuss the “great dream” that Israel represents for generations of Jews; Brous’s Yom Kippur sermon reckoning with the moral cost of Israel’s decades-long occupation and its increasingly right-wing government; the “existential loneliness” she and many in her community felt on Oct. 7; the antisemitism she witnessed in the wake of Oct. 7; how experiences of exile throughout history have shaped the Jewish psyche and speak to us now; stories from her visit with residents of the Kfar Aza kibbutz as they mourned their dead; why “bearing sacred witness” is a core spiritual commitment; and more.Mentioned:“This Is the Moral Earthquake” by Rabbi Sharon Brous (sermon delieverd on Sep. 25, 2023)“We’ve Lost So Much. Let’s Not Lose Our Damn Minds” by Rabbi Sharon Brous (sermon delieverd on Oct. 14, 2023)“We Are Hebrews. We Must Act Like It.” by Rabbi Sharon Brous (sermon delivered on Oct. 28, 2023)Book Recommendations:The Prophets by Abraham J. HeschelTo Bless the Space Between Us by John O’DonohueHomegoing by Yaa GyasiThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Emefa Agawu and Rollin Hu. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

A New York Times and Siena College poll released Nov. 5 showed Donald Trump leading Joe Biden in five of the six key swing states, with a notable jump in support among nonwhite and young voters. In response, Democrats freaked out.But then two days later, voters across the country actually went to the polls, and Democrats and Democratic-associated policy did pretty well. In Kentucky, Andy Beshear held the governorship. Democrats took back the House of Delegates in Virginia. And Ohio voted for an amendment protecting abortion rights.I asked Mike Podhorzer, a longtime poll skeptic, to help to help me understand the apparent gap between the polls and the ballot box. Podhorzer was the longtime political director of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. And as the founder of the Analyst Institute, he was the godfather of the data-driven turn in Democratic campaign strategy. He also writes a newsletter on these topics called “Weekend Reading.”We discuss the underlying assumptions behind polling methodologies and what that says about their results; how to square Biden’s unpopularity with the Democrats’ recent wins; why he thinks an anti-MAGA majority is Biden’s best bet to the White House and how that coalition doesn’t always map cleanly onto demographic data; what a newly energized labor movement might means for Biden; and much more.Mentioned:“We Gave Four Good Pollsters the Same Raw Data. They Had Four Different Results.” by Nate CohnBook Recommendations:“Politics and the English Language” by George OrwellTyranny, Inc. by Sohrab AhmariCrashed by Adam ToozeThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact checking by Michelle Harris and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Jeff Geld and Efim Shapiro. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Emefa Agawu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Carole Sabouraud.

Earlier this week, we heard a Palestinian perspective on the conflict. Today, I wanted to have on an Israeli perspective.Yossi Klein Halevi is a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem and the author, most recently, of “Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor.”In this episode, we discuss Halevi’s unusual education as an Israeli Defense Forces soldier in Gaza during the first intifada, the “seminal disconnect” between how Israel is viewed from the inside versus from the outside, Halevi’s view that a Palestinian state is both an “existential need” and an “existential threat” for Israel, the failures of the Oslo peace process and how the second intifada hardened Israeli attitudes toward peace, what Oct. 7 meant for the contract between the Israeli people and the state, the lessons and limitations of Sept. 11 analogies and much more.Book Recommendations:A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos OzWho By Fire by Matti FriedmanThe War of Return by Adi Schwartz and Einat WilfThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Emefa Agawu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Kristin Lin. Engineering by Isaac Jones. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Jeff Geld and Rollin Hu. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

Before there can be any kind of stable coexistence of people in Israel and Palestine, there will have to be a stable coexistence of narratives. And that’s what we’ll be attempting this week on the show: to look at both the present and the past through Israeli and Palestinian perspectives. The point is not to choose between them. The point is to really listen to them. Even — especially — when what’s being said is hard for us to hear.Our first episode is with Amjad Iraqi, a senior editor at +972 magazine and a policy analyst at the Al-Shabaka think tank. We discuss the history of Gaza and its role within broader Palestinian politics, the way Hamas and the Israeli government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reached a “violent equilibrium,” why Palestinians feel “duped” by the international community, what Hamas thought it could achieve with its attack, whether Israeli security and Palestinian liberty can coexist, Iraqi’s skepticism over peace resolutions that rely on statehood and nationalism, how his own identity as a Palestinian citizen of Israel offers a glimpse at where coexistence can begin and much more.Mentioned:Hamas Contained by Tareq BaconiThe Only Language They Understand by Nathan ThrallBook RecommendationsEast West Street by Philippe SandsOrientalism by Edward SaidThe Fire Next Time by James BaldwinThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Emefa Agawu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones and Carole Sabouraud. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

The day before Hamas’s horrific attacks in Israel, the Arab Barometer, one of the leading polling operations in the Arab world, was finishing up a survey of public opinion in Gaza.The result is a remarkable snapshot of how Gazans felt about Hamas and hoped the conflict with Israel would end. And what Gazans were thinking on Oct. 6 matters, now that they’re all living with the brutal consequences of what Hamas did on Oct. 7.So I invited on the show Amaney Jamal, the dean of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, and a co-founder and co-principal investigator of Arab Barometer, so she could walk me through the results.And, it’s a complicated picture. The people of Gaza, like any other population, have diverse beliefs. But one thing is clear: Hamas was not very popular.As Jamal and her co-author write: “The Hamas-led government may be uninterested in peace, but it is empirically wrong for Israeli political leaders to accuse all Gazans of the same.”Mentioned:Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research Public Opinion PollWashington Institute PollBook Recommendations:The One State Reality edited by Michael Barnett, Nathan J. Brown, Marc Lynch and ShibleyArabs and Israelis by Abdel Monem Said Aly, Shai Feldman and Khalil ShikakiA History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict by Mark TesslerThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Emefa Agawu. Fact checking by Michelle Harris, with Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

“Two things are true: Israel must do something, and what it’s doing now is indefensible.” So writes Zack Beauchamp, a senior correspondent at Vox.Almost a month has passed since Hamas fighters slaughtered over 1,400 people in Israel and the state mounted its furious response. For weeks, Israel has laid siege to Gaza, cutting off water and electricity to the tiny strip of land and carrying out airstrikes that have reportedly killed over 8,000 Palestinians. On Friday a ground invasion began, and the response across much of the globe has been horror. If Israel continues down this road, the cost in Palestinian lives, and in support for Israel, will be immense.The question that hangs over the criticism is this: What, then, should Israel do? What would be a moral response to Hamas’s savagery and to the very real need Israelis have for security?Beauchamp, who has covered Israel extensively in recent years, set out to answer that question. He spoke with counterterrorism experts, military historians, experts on Hamas, ethicists and more. I found his piece “What Israel Should Do Now” one of the best I’ve read since Oct. 7. So I asked him to join me on the show.Book Recommendations:A High Price by Daniel BymanThe Selected Works of Edward Said, 1966 – 2006 by Edward W. SaidThe Accidental Empire by Gershom GorenbergThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Emefa Agawu. Fact checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Efim Shapiro.

After factional infighting dominated the G.O.P.’s struggle to elect a House speaker, it feels weirdly quaint to revisit Mitt Romney’s career. He’s served as governor, U.S. senator and presidential nominee for a Republican Party now nearly unrecognizable from what it was when he started out. At the end of his time in public office, Romney has found a new clarity in his identity as the consummate institutionalist in an increasingly anti-constitutionalist party. But as a newly published biography of him shows, that wasn’t always the case.McKay Coppins, a staff writer at The Atlantic, interviewed Romney dozens of times over the past several years and had access to his private journals, emails, and text messages. In this resulting biography “Romney: A Reckoning,” Coppins pushes Romney to wrestle with his own role — even complicity — in what his party has become.In this conversation, guest host Carlos Lozada and Coppins examine Romney’s legacy at a time when it may seem increasingly out of place with the mainstream G.O.P. They dive deep into the key decisions and events in Romney’s life; discuss the looming influence Mitt Romney’s father, George, also a Republican presidential candidate, had over his life; how Romney rationalized appeasing figures on the campaign trail he found disdainful, including Tea Party populists and an early 2010s Donald Trump; how he failed to articulate just why he wanted to be president; the many grudges he has against members of his own party who acquiesced or embraced Trump; how Romney will be remembered by history; and much more.This episode was hosted by Carlos Lozada, a columnist for The New York Times Opinion, and the author of “What Were We Thinking: A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era.” Lozada is also a host on “Matter of Opinion,” a weekly podcast from New York Times Opinion.Book Recommendations:The Last Politician by Franklin FoerNumber the Stars by Lois LowryThe Plot by Jean Hanff KorelitzHell of a Book by Jason MottLess by Andrew Sean GreerThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Emefa Agawu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

Grief moves slowly and war moves quickly. After Hamas assailants killed at least 1,400 Israelis and took hundreds more hostage, Israel dropped more than 6,000 bombs on Gaza in the first week of a conflict that is still ongoing. So far, more than 5,000 Palestinians are reported dead and many more injured. There’s no one way to cover this that reconciles all that is happening and all that needs to be felt.My approach is going to be to try to cover it from many different perspectives, but I wanted to start with the one I’m closest to, which has felt particularly tricky in recent weeks: that of the Jewish left. So I invited Spencer Ackerman and Peter Beinart on to the show.Ackerman is an award-winning columnist for The Nation and the author of “Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump” and the newsletter Forever Wars. Peter Beinart is an editor-at-large of Jewish Currents, the author of the Beinart Notebook newsletter and a professor of journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. And they’ve each taken up angles I think are particularly important right now: the way that Sept. 11 should inform both Israel’s response and the need to empower different kinds of actors and tactics if we want to see a different future for Israelis and Palestinians alike.Together we discuss the goals behind Hamas’s initial attack on Israeli Jewish civilians, how the attack changed the psychology of Jews living in and out of Israel and what Israel is trying to achieve in its military response.Mentioned:“There Is a Jewish Hope for Palestinian Liberation. It Must Survive.” by Peter Beinart“A Deal Signed in Blood” by Spencer AckermanBook Recommendations:The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine by Rashid KhalidiAn Oral History of the Palestinian Nakba edited by Nahla Abdo and Nur MasalhaIsrael’s Secret Wars by Ian BlackThe Question of Palestine by Edward W. SaidStrangers in the House by Raja ShehadehHamas Contained by Tareq BaconiThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Emefa Agawu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

Oct. 7 was Israel’s Sept. 11. That’s been the refrain. I fear that analogy carries so much more truth than the people making it intend.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This audio essay for “The Ezra Klein Show” was fact-checked by Michelle Harris, with Mary-Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. The show’s production team also includes Emefa Agawu, Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Carole Sabouraud. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

It’s a time of contrast and contradiction for gender queerness in America: At the same time that about 5 percent of Americans under 30 identify as transgender or nonbinary, over 20 states have passed some sort of restriction on gender-affirming care for children. In 2023 alone, over 550 anti-trans bills have been introduced across the country.The political push and pull can overshadow a broad spectrum of rich questions and possibilities that queer culture opens up — about how we think about identity and social categories, how we structure our communities and support networks, our anxieties about having children who are different from ourselves, how gender norms shape all bodies and how difficult it can be to make big life decisions.Masha Gessen is a staff writer at The New Yorker who has thought deeply about many of these questions. “Gender is something that happens between me and other people,” they say. In this conversation, the guest host Lydia Polgreen asks Gessen, who identifies as trans and nonbinary, what the social and political shift around gender has looked like to them in the past few decades.They discuss why gender has captured the conservative imagination, how L.G.B.T.Q. activists have fallen into the “regret trap,” what it means to understand gender expression as a choice rather than something biologically determined, why Gessen prefers a liberatory framework focused on protecting freedoms-to rather than freedoms-from when thinking about L.G.B.T.Q. issues, how gender-affirming care is not just for trans people, how the making of the 1999 movie “The Matrix” reflects the rapid social change around trans visibility in the United States, the anti-L.G.B.T.Q. sentiments that made Gessen decide to leave their home in Russia,how gender conformity is social contagion and more.This episode was hosted by Lydia Polgreen, a New York Times Opinion columnist and a co-host on the weekly Opinion podcast “Matter of Opinion.” She previously served as the managing director of Gimlet, a podcast studio at Spotify, and as the editor in chief of HuffPost.Mentioned:The Argonauts by Maggie NelsonBook Recommendations:The Myth of the Wrong Body by Miquel MisseConundrum by Jan MorrisWho’s Afraid of Gender by Judith ButlerThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Efim Shapiro. Our senior editor is Annie-Rose Strasser. The show’s production team also includes Emefa Agawu, Jeff Geld and Rollin Hu. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Isaac Jones.

The New Right has been associated with everyone from Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri to right-wing influencers and Catholic integralists. The breadth of the term can make it hard to define: Is the New Right a budding ideological movement or a toxic online subculture? What does it mean if it’s both?Stephanie Slade is a senior editor at the magazine Reason, and has covered the New Right extensively. She argues that the New Right subverts the conventional left/right political binary and is better understood as the illiberal backlash to classical liberalism.This conversation is a tour of the New Right. The guest host, David French, talks to Slade about the politicians who have been attached to the ideological movement; why the New Right is critical of Reaganism; her problems with its self-branding as “common good conservatism”; how the Ron DeSantis “Stop Woke Act” signals a diversion from conservative free speech values; why the New Right is so angry; how online factions of the New Right are often in a delicate dance between flirting with bigotry and actually aligning with the provocative beliefs they post; why Catholic integralism matters, even if the average Catholic might have never heard of the ideology; and much more.This episode was hosted by David French, an Opinion columnist at The New York Times. Previously, he was a senior editor and co-founder of The Dispatch and a contributing writer at The Atlantic.Mentioned:More information about Ezra’s lecture at UC Berkeley“The Lost Boys of the American Right” by David French“Both Left and Right Are Converging on Authoritarianism” by Stephanie SladeBook Recommendations:Radicals for Capitalism by Brian DohertyThe Ethics of Authenticity by Charles TaylorWar and Peace by Leo TolstoyThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Kristin Lin. Fact checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Annie-Rose Strasser. The show’s production team also includes Emefa Agawu and Rollin Hu. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

With four ongoing criminal investigations, Donald Trump is the most indicted president in U.S. history. After years of defying unwritten norms, he will now be subject to a criminal justice system defined by norms and precedents. What does due process look like for a former president?Ken White is a former federal prosecutor, a practicing criminal defense lawyer and a co-host of the podcast “Serious Trouble.” He writes the popular newsletter The Popehat Report, extensively covering the ins and outs of criminal trials. Among the many commentators on Trump’s unprecedented legal troubles, White stands out for his “lawsplainers,” which analyze the gap between what the law says and what it actually does.This conversation walks through each of the four major criminal cases against Trump. Our guest host David French asks White why he loathes the overuse of the RICO statute and whether it was appropriately used in the Georgia election interference indictment. They also discuss the Florida judge whose “functionally lawless” decision halted parts of the Mar-a-Lago investigation, White’s view that prosecutors can get away with much more in state court than in federal court, how the district attorney in the Georgia case is approaching this “circuslike” indictment, why Trump’s legal intent is both more and less complicated than the public discourse suggests and much more.This episode was hosted by David French, a columnist at The New York Times. Previously, he was a senior editor and co-founder of The Dispatch and a contributing writer at The Atlantic.This episode contains strong language.Book Recommendations:Pax by Tom HollandThe Shadow Docket by Stephen VladeckThe Enchanters by James EllroyThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Annie-Rose Strasser. The show’s production team also includes Emefa Agawu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero and Isaac Jones.

Love it or hate it, self-care has transformed from a radical feminist concept into a multibillion-dollar industry. But the wellness boom doesn’t seem to be making a dent in Americans’ stress levels. In 2021, 34 percent of women reported feeling burned out at work, along with 26 percent of men.Dr. Pooja Lakshmin, a psychiatrist, has observed how wellness culture fails her patients, who she says are often burned out because of systemic failures, from the stresses that come with financial precariousness to the lack of paid family leave. In her book “Real Self-Care: A Transformative Program for Redefining Wellness (Crystals, Cleanses, and Bubble Baths Not Included),” she encourages people to look beyond superficial fixes — the latest juice cleanses, yoga workshops, luxury bamboo sheets — to feel better. Instead, she argues that real self-care requires embracing internal work, which she outlines as four practices: setting boundaries, practicing self-compassion, aligning your values and exercising power. Lakshmin argues that when you practice real self-care, you not only take care of yourself, but you can also plant the seeds for change in your community.In this conversation, the guest host, Tressie McMillan Cottom, and Lakshmin discuss how the pandemic opened up a larger conversation about parental burnout; how countries with more robust social safety nets frame care as a right, not a benefit; why it’s fair to understand burnout as a type of societal “betrayal”; how to practice boundary-setting and why it can feel uncomfortable to do so; the convenient allure of “faux self-care”; and more.This episode was hosted by Tressie McMillan Cottom, a columnist for Times Opinion, a professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and the author of “Thick: And Other Essays.” Cottom also writes a newsletter for Times Opinion that offers a sociologist’s perspective on culture, politics and the economics of our everyday lives.Mentioned:More information about Ezra’s Jefferson Memorial Lecture“We Don’t Need Self-Care; We Need Boundaries” by Pooja Lakshmin“How Society Has Turned Its Back on Mothers” by Pooja Lakshmin“Our Obsession With Wellness Is Hurting Teens — and Adults” by The Ezra Klein Show with Lisa Damour“A Legendary World Builder on Multiverses, Revolution and the ‘Souls’ of Cities” by The Ezra Klein Show with N.K. JemisinBook Recommendations:Living Resistance by Kaitlin B. CurticeThe Emotional Lives of Teenagers by Lisa DamourThe Fifth Season by N.K. JemisinThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. The senior engineer is Jeff Geld. The senior editor is Annie-Rose Strasser. The show’s production team includes Emefa Agawu and Rollin Hu. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

Public libraries around the country have become major battlegrounds for today’s culture wars. In 2022, the American Library Association noted a record 1,269 attempts at censorship — almost double the number recorded in 2021. Library events like drag story times and other children’s programming have also attracted protest. How should we understand these efforts to control what stories children can freely access?Emily Drabinski is the president of the American Library Association and an associate professor at the Queens College Graduate School of Library and Information Studies. She is steering an embattled organization at a moment when libraries — and librarians themselves — are increasingly under fire.[You can listen to this episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” on the NYT Audio App, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.]This conversation unpacks the political and cultural anxieties fueling the attacks on libraries. The guest host Tressie McMillan Cottom discusses with Drabinski how libraries are a bulwark against the increasing class divides of American life, how the “small infrastructure” of the public library differs from big infrastructure like highways and bridges, how library classification systems can entrench the status quo, the parallels between political attacks on the library and the U.S. Postal Service, how censorship attempts fit in the broader landscape of anti-queer and anti-trans legislation and much more.This episode was hosted by Tressie McMillan Cottom, a columnist for Times Opinion, a professor at U.N.C. Chapel Hill and the author of “Thick: And Other Essays.” Cottom also writes a newsletter for Times Opinion that offers a sociologist’s perspective on culture, politics and the economics of our everyday lives.Mentioned:More information about Ezra’s lecture at UC BerkeleyBook Recommendations:The Promise of Access by Daniel GreeneFlamer by Mike CuratoHow Beautiful We Were by Imbolo MbueThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Emefa Agawu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Annie-Rose Strasser. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

This summer has been a parade of broken climate records. June was the hottest June and July was not just the hottest July but the hottest month ever on record. At the same time, it looks like we are at the start of a green revolution: Decarbonization efforts have gone far better than what many had hoped for just a few years ago, and renewable energy is getting cheaper.How should we make sense of these seemingly mixed signals? What does it mean to hold the pessimism of climate disaster and the optimism of climate action together?There are few individuals better suited to navigate these questions than Kate Marvel, a senior climate scientist at Project Drawdown. In a conversation with guest host David Wallace-Wells, Marvel explores whether climate change is “accelerating,” why reducing air pollution will lead to more warming before it leads to less; how the human response to a changing climate can be more unpredictable than the climate itself; how witch burnings increased during the last major change in climate; what the relationship is between hotter weather and social unrest; how decarbonization sets us on track to avoiding the worst-case climate models; why, despite all the challenges ahead, there are still immeasurable benefits to fighting for a cleaner planet and much more.This episode was hosted by David Wallace-Wells, a writer at The New York Times Magazine and the author of “The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming.” He also writes a newsletter for New York Times Opinion that explores climate change, technology and the future of the planet and how we live on it.Mentioned:Beyond Catastrophe by David Wallace-WellsBook Recommendations:“On Exactitude in Science” by Jorge Luis BorgesMacbeth by William ShakespeareTroubled Waters by Mary Annaïse HeglarThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Rogé Karma. The show’s production team also includes Emefa Agawu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

Should schools have been closed down? Were lockdowns a mistake? Was masking even effective? Was the economic stimulus too big?These are the questions that have defined the national conversation about Covid in recent months. They have been the subject of congressional hearings led by Republicans, of G.O.P. candidate stump speeches and of too many Twitter debates to count.Katelyn Jetelina is an epidemiologist and the author of the popular newsletter Your Local Epidemiologist. She argues that we’ve entered a new phase of the Covid-19 pandemic: “pandemic revisionism.” In her telling, the revisionist impulse seduces us into swapping cheap talking points for the thorny, difficult decisions we actually faced — and may face again with the next novel virus.So this conversation centers on the myths — and realities — associated with how we remember the pandemic. It explores what the evidence on the effectiveness of masking says, the fact that the United States was locked down for less than two months, the surprising consensus over social-distancing policy among Democratic and Republican governors early in the pandemic, why the tale of Sweden’s controversial approach to the pandemic is misleading, why the American media paid so much more attention to the first 100,000 U.S. Covid deaths than to the next 900,000, why school closures weren’t as wrongheaded a policy as often portrayed in hindsight, whether Donald Trump gets enough credit for Operation Warp Speed and more.This episode was hosted by David Wallace-Wells, a writer at The New York Times Magazine and the author of “The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming.” He also writes a newsletter for New York Times Opinion that explores climate change, technology, the future of the planet and how we live on it.Book Recommendations:Lessons from the Covid War by Covid Crisis GroupOpen by Andre AgassiLessons in Chemistry by Bonnie GarmusThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Emefa Agawu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Rogé Karma. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

The global decarbonization effort is colliding headfirst with the realities of great power politics. China currently controls more than 75 percent of the world’s electric vehicle battery and solar photovoltaic manufacturing supply chains. It also processes the bulk of the so-called critical minerals, like lithium, cobalt and graphite, that are essential to building out clean energy technologies. There is no clean energy revolution without China.What would happen if China decided to weaponize its clean energy resources in the same way Russia recently weaponized its oil and gas? Is it possible for the U.S. to end its energy dependency on China by investing in clean energy at home? What does this geopolitical reality mean for the prospect of meeting the world’s climate goals?Over the past few years, Jason Bordoff and Meghan O’Sullivan have been at the forefront of mapping out the ways decarbonization will upend the world’s economic and geopolitical order. Bordoff is the founding director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University and a former senior director for energy and climate change for the National Security Council under Barack Obama. O’Sullivan is the director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School and a former deputy national security adviser in the George W. Bush administration.In Bordoff and O’Sullivan’s view, decarbonization won’t just affect what kinds of cars we drive or how we power our homes. It will transform everything from the nature of international markets and trade relations to the global balance of military and diplomatic power. And it will create new economic superpowers, new alliances and new sources of geopolitical conflict in the process.This conversation explores the contours of this transformation and what it will mean for the future of the climate and world politics.Mentioned:“The Age of Energy Insecurity” by Jason Bordoff and Meghan L. O’Sullivan“A Critical Minerals Policy for the United States” by Meghan L. O’Sullivan and Jason Bordoff“Biden’s Historic Climate Bill Needs Smart Foreign Policy” by Jason Bordoff“The Nuances of Energy Transition Investments” by Columbia Energy Exchange, with Larry FinkBook Recommendations:The Prize by Daniel YerginSilent Spring Revolution by Douglas BrinkleyThe Avoidable War by Kevin RuddHow to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill GatesThis episode is guest-hosted by Rogé Karma, the senior editor for “The Ezra Klein Show.” Rogé has been with the show since July 2019, when it was based at Vox. At Vox, he also wrote and conducted interviews on topics ranging from policing and racial justice to democracy reform and the coronavirus pandemic.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rogé Karma. Fact checking by Michelle Harris, with Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Rogé Karma. The show’s production team also includes Emefa Agawu, Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

You can’t understand the modern Republican Party without understanding the complete collapse of trust in mainstream institutions that has taken place among its voters over the last half-century.In 1964, 73 percent of Republicans said they trusted the federal government to do the right thing always or most of the time. Today, that number is down to 9 percent. And it’s not just government. Pew found that only 35 percent of Republicans trust national news and 61 percent think public schools are having a negative effect on the country. Many of the issues animating the modern right — from fights over school curriculums and learning loss to media bias and Covid vaccines — are connected to this deep distrust.Mary Katharine Ham is a journalist and conservative commentator who has appeared on CNN, Fox News and ABC News. In Katharine Ham’s view, America’s institutions have “earned” her party’s rampant distrust. Across her writings, she has leveled scathing critiques of numerous mainstream institutions, from the media to the C.D.C. and universities, arguing that these institutions have consistently failed to serve ordinary Americans. So this is a conversation that explores Katharine Ham’s critique in order to understand the distrust at the heart of the Republican Party.Mentioned:“Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the Coalition of the Distrustful” by Michelle GoldbergEnd of Discussion by Mary Katharine Ham and Guy BensonBook Recommendations:Wise Blood by Flannery O’ConnorRules of Civility by Amor TowlesThe Right by Matthew ContinettiThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Kristin Lin. Fact checking by Michelle Harris, with Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Rogé Karma. The show’s production team also includes Emefa Agawu and Rollin Hu. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

The 2024 Republican presidential primary is officially underway, and Donald Trump is dominating the field. But this is a very different contest than it was in 2016. Back then, the Republican Party was the party of foreign policy interventionism, free trade and cutting entitlements, and Trump was the insurgent outsider unafraid to buck the consensus. Today, Trump and his views have become the consensus.The primary, then, raises some important questions: How has Donald Trump changed the Republican Party over the past eight years? Is Trumpism an actual set of policy views or just a political aesthetic? And if Trump does become the nominee again, where does the party go from here?Ben Domenech is a longtime conservative writer who served as a speechwriter in George W. Bush’s administration and co-founded several right-leaning outlets, including RedState and The Federalist. He’s currently a Fox News contributor, an editor at large at The Spectator and the author of the newsletter The Transom. From these different perches, he has closely traced the various ways the Republican Party has and, crucially, has not changed over the past decade.This conversation explores whether Donald Trump really did break open a G.O.P. policy consensus in 2016, the legacy of what Domenech calls “boomer Republicanism,” how to reconcile Trump’s continued dominance with his surprisingly poor electoral record, the rise of “Barstool conservatism” and other new cultural strands on the right, whether conservatives actually want “National Review conservatism policy” with a “Breitbart conservatism attitude,” what Domenech thinks a G.O.P. candidate would need to do to outperform Trump and more.This episode contains strong language.This episode was hosted by Jane Coaston, a staff writer for Times Opinion. Previously, she hosted “The Argument,” a New York Times Opinion podcast. Before that she was the senior politics reporter at Vox, with a focus on conservatism and the G.O.P.Mentioned:The Revolution with Steve KornackiBook Recommendations:The War on the West by Douglas MurrayThe Mandibles by Lionel ShriverRunning the Light by Sam TallentThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Emefa Agawu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Rogé Karma. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

The world economy has experienced many shocks over the past few years: A pandemic. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Skyrocketing inflation. These are the stories that have dominated headlines — and for good reason.But they’ve also overshadowed a set of deeper, more fundamental shifts — the rise of China as an economic superpower, the fracturing of trade relations, the realities of the climate crisis — that are transforming the global economic order and prompting ambitious policy responses from leaders across the world.Martin Wolf is the chief economics commentator at The Financial Times, a former senior economist at the World Bank and the author, most recently, of “The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism. Across his writings, Wolf has developed some of the clearest frameworks for thinking about how the global economy is changing and some of the sharpest critiques of how policymakers are responding to those changes.We discuss how China’s meteoric economic rise has shaken the foundations of the global economy, why globalization has remained far more resilient than so many predicted, why Wolf is skeptical that President Biden’s industrial policy agenda will succeed, the debate between “onshoring” and “friendshoring” that is dividing the Democratic Party, why a recession in the United States is looking far less likely than it did six months ago, the virtues and vices of Biden’s “foreign policy for the middle class,” why China’s recent economic troubles could signal a more foundational decline, why the U.S. economy has remained so much more stronger than most economists anticipated, and more.Mentioned:National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan’s speech“The I.R.A. Passed a Year Ago. Here’s a Progress Check” by The Ezra Klein Show, with Robinson Meyer“The China Shock: Learning from Labor Market Adjustment to Large Changes in Trade” by David H. Autor, David Dorn and Gordon H. Hanson“Is the Global Economy Deglobalizing?” by Pinelopi Goldberg and Tristan Reed“Climate Progress and the 117th Congress: The Impacts of the Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act” by REPEAT ProjectBook Recommendations:The Narrow Corridor by Daron Acemoglu and James A. RobinsonPower and Progress by Daron Acemoglu and Simon JohnsonThe Rise and Fall of American Growth by Robert J. GordonThis episode is guest-hosted by Rogé Karma, the senior editor for “The Ezra Klein Show.” Rogé has been with the show since July 2019, when it was based at Vox. He works closely with Ezra on everything related to the show, from editing to interview prep to guest selection. At Vox, he also wrote and conducted interviews on topics ranging from policing and racial justice to democracy reform and the coronavirus pandemic.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rogé Karma. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Kristin Lin. Mixing by Isaac Jones. Our senior editor is Rogé Karma. The show’s production team also includes Emefa Agawu, Jeff Geld and Rollin Hu. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Efim Shapiro.

As I head into a three-month book leave, I wanted to take some time to address a wide array of listeners’ questions. My column editor, Aaron Retica, joins me for a conversation that ranges from the content of my forthcoming book and President Biden’s climate record to the simulation hypothesis and legalized psychedelic therapy.We also discuss what the I-95 collapse — and remarkably quick repairs — tell us about government’s ability to build quickly, the problems with everything-bagel liberalism, what it would mean to treat climate change like the emergency that it is, why I dislike analogies between Biden and Franklin Roosevelt, why health care reform has receded from the center of American political debate, whether liberals are being too soft on Hunter Biden, why I am staunchly against term limits for Congress, what kinds of work are most undervalued in American society, why I’ve become less pessimistic about artificial intelligence disinformation, why I left Twitter but have been enjoying Threads, the challenges of keeping a Sabbath practice and more.This episode contains strong language.Note: Starting next week, “The Ezra Klein Show” will be releasing episodes only once per week, every Tuesday, until Ezra returns from his book leave in early November. These episodes will be hosted by a range of guest hosts.Mentioned:“The Problem With Everything-Bagel Liberalism” by Ezra Klein“The Book I Wish Every Policymaker Would Read” by The Ezra Klein Show, with Jennifer Pahlka“Two Theories of What I’m Getting Wrong” by Ezra Klein“The Greens’ Dilemma” by J. B. Ruhl and James E. Salzman“Not Everyone Should Have a Say” by Jerusalem DemsasWe’ve Got You Covered by Liran Einav and Amy Finkelstein“This Is Your Brain on ‘Deep Reading.’ It’s Pretty Magnificent.” by The Ezra Klein Show, with Maryanne Wolf“Elon Musk Got Twitter Because He Gets Twitter” by Ezra Klein“Sabbath and the Art of Rest” by The Ezra Klein Show, with Judith ShulevitzMusic Recommendations:“Orange” by Caroline Shaw and Attacca QuartetFred again..: Tiny Desk Concert on NPR Music“USB” by Fred again..“Midas” by Maribou StateThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact checking by Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Rogé Karma. The show’s production team also includes Emefa Agawu, Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

When Barbara Kingsolver set out to write her latest novel, “Demon Copperhead,” she was already considered one of the most accomplished writers of our time. She had won awards including the Women’s Prize for Fiction and a National Humanities Medal, and had a track record of best-selling books, including “The Poisonwood Bible” and “Unsheltered.” But she felt there was one giant stone left unturned: to write “the great Appalachian novel.”Kingsolver grew up in rural Kentucky and lives in southwestern Virginia. Appalachia is her home. So when national coverage of her region started increasing in the years since 2016, with a focus on the region’s problems — like deep rural poverty and the opioid epidemic — she felt something was missing. She wanted to write a novel about Appalachia from the inside, as someone who is a part of it and who grew up in it. “The story I wanted to tell was not about the big guys, but about the little people,” she told me.And if major awards are any indication, Kingsolver succeeded. “Demon Copperhead” won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and has been widely acclaimed for the nuanced portrait it paints of life in rural America. So I asked Kingsolver to talk about her background and the book, and to explore the often chasmic dissonance between how many of us city-dwellers think about Appalachia and the reality of living there.Mentioned:Shiloh and Other Stories by Bobbie Ann MasonBook Recommendations:Landings by Arwen DonahueRaising Lazarus by Beth MacyPod by Laline PaullThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact checking by Michelle Harris. Mixing by Sonia Herrero. Our senior editor is Rogé Karma. The show’s production team also includes Emefa Agawu, Jeff Geld, Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

California has around half of the nation’s unsheltered homeless population. The state’s homelessness crisis has become a talking point for Republicans and a warning sign for Democrats in blue cities and states across the country.Last month, the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative at the University of California, San Francisco, released a landmark report about homelessness in the state, drawing from nearly 3,200 questionnaires and 365 in-depth interviews. It is the single deepest study on homelessness in America in decades. And the report is packed with findings that shed new light not only on California’s homelessness problem but also on housing affordability nationwide.Jerusalem Demsas is a staff writer at The Atlantic who has written extensively about the interlocking problems of housing affordability and homelessness in America. So I asked her on the show to walk me through the core findings of the study, what we know about the causes of homelessness, and what solutions exist to address it. We discuss the surprising process by which people end up homeless in the first place, the “scarring” effect that homelessness can have on their future prospects, the importance of thinking of homelessness as a “flow,” not a “stock,” the benefits and limitations of “housing first” approaches to end homelessness, why Republican proposals for being tougher on the homeless can make the problem worse, why neither generous social safety nets nor private equity firms are to blame for homelessness, and more.Mentioned:We're looking for a senior editor for the show. Learn more and apply here.Book Recommendations:Homelessness Is a Housing Problem by Gregg Colburn and Clayton Page AldernChildren of Time by Adrian TchaikovskyStrangers to Ourselves by Rachel AvivListen to this podcast in New York Times Audio, our new iOS app for news subscribers. Download now at nytimes.com/audioappThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Mary Marge Locker. The senior engineer is Jeff Geld. The senior editor is Rogé Karma. The show’s production team also includes Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

There are few actors as widely beloved as Tom Hanks. Hanks has acted in over 75 films in his 46-year career, winning the best actor Academy Award two years in a row, for “Philadelphia” and “Forrest Gump.” And more recently, he’s the author of the short story collection “Uncommon Type” and the novel “The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece.”What is the source of Hanks’s near-universal admiration? In playing roles including Chesley Sullenberger, Mister Rogers and World War II heroes, Hanks reflects back to audiences what we could be at our very best. He’s an uncannily wise interpreter of America: what our country has been, and what it could be if we activated our potential to be kind, compassionate, even heroic toward one another.That’s just one of many topics we traverse in this truly delightful conversation. We also discuss how working on typewriters helps fuel Hanks’s creativity, why there’s such a huge global appetite for superhero stories, why America has become so cynical and how Hanks endeavors to defy that cynicism, how Hanks’s complicated family upbringing influences how he approaches his film roles, what America learned about itself — and didn’t — through Vietnam, Watergate and other historical events, how Hanks understands the complexity of heroic figures he’s played, why he views kindness as an active practice and more.Book Recommendations:Beartown by Fredrik BackmanThe Swerve by Stephen GreenblattTrust by Hernan DiazListen to this podcast in New York Times Audio, our new iOS app for news subscribers. Download now at nytimes.com/audioappThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris with Mary Marge Locker. Our senior audio engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Rogé Karma. The show’s production team also includes Emefa Agawu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Pat McCusker.

Since the release of ChatGPT, huge amounts of attention and funding have been directed toward chatbots. These A.I. systems are trained on copious amounts of human-generated data and designed to predict the next word in a given sentence. They are hilarious and eerie and at times dangerous.But what if, instead of building A.I. systems that mimic humans, we built those systems to solve some of the most vexing problems facing humanity?In 2020, Google DeepMind unveiled AlphaFold, an A.I. system that uses deep learning to solve one of the most important challenges in all of biology: the so-called protein-folding problem. The ability to predict the shape of proteins is essential for addressing numerous scientific challenges, from vaccine and drug development to curing genetic diseases. But in the 50-plus years since the protein-folding problem had been discovered, scientists had made frustratingly little progress.Enter AlphaFold. By 2022, the system had identified 200 million protein shapes, nearly all the proteins known to humans. And DeepMind is also building similar systems to accelerate efforts at nuclear fusion and has spun off Isomorphic Labs, a company developing A.I. tools for drug discovery.Demis Hassabis is the chief executive of Google DeepMind and the leading architect behind AlphaFold. So I asked him on the show to talk me through how AlphaFold actually works, the kinds of problems similar systems could solve and what an alternative pathway for A.I. development could look like.Mentioned:“The Curse of Recursion” by Ilia Shumailov, Zakhar Shumaylov, Yiren Zhao, Yarin Gal, Nicolas Papernot, Ross Anderson“DeepMind’s CEO Helped Take AI Mainstream. Now He’s Urging Caution” by Billy PerrigoBook Recommendations:The Fabric of Reality by David DeutschPermutation City by Greg EganConsider Phlebas by Iain M. BanksListen to this podcast in New York Times Audio, our new iOS app for news subscribers. Download now at nytimes.com/audioappThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rogé Karma. Fact checking by Michelle Harris. Fact checking by Michelle Harris with Rollin Hu. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. The show’s production team also includes Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

The Inflation Reduction Act was the largest piece of climate legislation ever passed in the United States, setting aside hundreds of billions of dollars for decarbonizing the economy. But the money was always just a first step. The fate of the act’s goals hinges on whether those investments can build the energy system of the future — everything from transmission lines and wind farms to electric vehicle factories and green hydrogen hubs.It’s now been almost a year since the I.R.A.’s passage. So, how’s it going? Are we on track for a decarbonized economy?Robinson Meyer is a contributing writer to Times Opinion and the founding executive editor of Heatmap, a new publication covering the ins-and-outs of decarbonization in America. We discuss why estimates of the I.R.A.’s investments vary so drastically, whether the Biden administration is being too timid in how it gives out the money, the collision between the investments we need to decarbonize and the laws intended to protect the environment, why permitting has proved to be such a debilitating obstacle, why red states are projected to attract almost double the I.R.A. investments compared to blue states (and how that could pose a thorny political problem for the Biden administration), whether the country can decarbonize while competing with China and much more.Mentioned:“Pathways to Commercial Liftoff: Clean Hydrogen” by U.S. Department of Energy“The Greens’ Dilemma: Building Tomorrow’s Climate Infrastructure Today” by J. B. Ruhl and James E. SalzmanBook Recommendations:The Ends of the World by Peter BrannenClimate Shock by Gernot Wagner and Martin L. WeitzmanShorting the Grid by Meredith AngwinListen to this podcast in New York Times Audio, our new iOS app for news subscribers. Download now at nytimes.com/audioappThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Mixing by Sonia Herrero. The show’s production team includes Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Rogé Karma and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

It’s hard to think of a more celebrated figure of the 20th century than Martin Luther King Jr.He has a national memorial in Washington, D.C. His birthday is one of just 11 federal holidays. His words and legacy are routinely evoked by politicians of both major parties. I would go as far as to say he should be considered one of America’s founding fathers, which is one reason why I wanted to revisit this episode on Independence Day.But the paradox of King’s legacy is that while many revere him, very few actually read him. Most of us can cite a handful of his most famous quotes, but King’s actual teachings span five books, countless speeches and sermons, and years of detailed correspondence.There’s perhaps no scholar working today who studies Dr. King’s political philosophy as deeply as Brandon Terry. Terry is the John L. Loeb associate professor of social sciences at Harvard, where he specializes in Black political thought. He is the co-editor of “To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr.,” the editor of “Fifty Years Since MLK,” and the author of numerous popular and academic articles on King’s political thought. His work is committed to rescuing the nuances of Dr. King’s philosophies and forcing a confrontation with what King actually said and believed, rather than what he’s come to represent.In this conversation, taped in January, we follow the commitment that animates much of Terry’s work: to take King seriously as a philosopher, rather than as purely a political actor. And it turns out that King understood a lot about politics that we’ve lost sight of today.We’re taping an “Ask Me Anything” episode soon. If you have a question for Ezra, send it to [email protected] with the subject line, “AMA.”Mentioned:“Imagining the nonviolent state” by Ezra Klein“Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence” by Martin Luther King Jr.From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime by Elizabeth Hinton“Rethinking the Problem of Alliance: Organized Labor and Black Political Life” by Brandon M. Terry and Jason LeeThe Truly Disadvantaged by William Julius WilsonBook recommendations:Where Do We Go From Here by Martin Luther King Jr.The Trumpet of Conscience by Martin Luther King Jr.The Sword and the Shield by Peniel E. JosephA More Beautiful and Terrible History by Jeanne TheoharisDark Ghettos by Tommie ShelbyThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Rogé Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Rollin Hu. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Jeff Geld. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

Last weekend, in the course of about 36 hours, Vladimir Putin faced — and then survived — one of the most serious challenges to his rule in over 20 years. An armed rebellion led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of a Russian mercenary group, took control of a southern military town, and then advanced toward Moscow, coming within about 125 miles of the city. Then, as suddenly as the rebellion began, it was over: Prigozhin was quickly exiled to Belarus without facing criminal charges — an outcome that shocked many Russia watchers.Why did Prigozhin stage this rebellion in the first palace? Why did Putin respond the way he did? What are the implications for the future of Putin’s rule — and the broader war in Ukraine?There are few people who understand the Putin regime as deeply as Stephen Kotkin, a pre-eminent scholar of Russian history at Stanford. We discuss Prigozhin’s complex motivations, why Putin didn’t shut down Prigozhin’s critiques before they escalated to the point of armed rebellion, how to interpret reports that members of Putin’s inner circle were aware of the rebellion plot, how Prigozhin’s march created an “unwitting referendum” that could threaten the stability of Putin’s regime, the bizarre cease-fire arranged by Belarusian president Aleksandr Lukashenko, why Putin didn’t kill or jail Prigozhin, how this series of events could impact the outcome of the war in Ukraine and more.(Note: This episode was recorded on Wednesday, June 28. It does not reflect any news developments that have emerged since.)Book Recommendations:Chagall by Jackie WullschlagerInvisible China by Scott Rozelle and Natalie HellClassified by David BernsteinListen to this podcast in New York Times Audio, our new iOS app for news subscribers. Download now at nytimes.com/audioappThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Emefa Agawu and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Rollin Hu, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Engineering by Jeff Geld and Efim Shapiro. Our senior editor is Rogé Karma. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

One of the oldest human ideas is that we are somehow different from animals, somehow superior to them. That’s a mistake, argues the environmental philosopher Melanie Challenger. “Many of the things we most value — our relationships, the romantic sensations of attraction and love, pregnancy and childbirth, the pleasures of springtime, of eating a meal — are physical, largely unconscious and demonstrably animal,” she writes in her book “How to Be Animal: A New History of What It Means to Be Human.” The consequences of resisting our fellowship with other species, she argues, have been devastating to them and to the planet.Challenger’s arguments are fascinating in their own right, but they also have a particular resonance at this moment of tremendous technological advancement. Humans have long defined ourselves by our cognitive intelligence, yet the machines we’re building are rapidly surpassing our minds. What does it mean to be human in a world where we are no longer superior by the standards we’ve created? Have we set ourselves up for a specieswide existential crisis? And how can embracing our status as animals help us navigate this bizarre future?Book Recommendations:Love’s Work by Gillian RoseSummertime by Danielle CelermajerLighthead by Terrance HayesListen to this podcast in New York Times Audio, our new iOS app for news subscribers. Download now at nytimes.com/audioappThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Mixing by Jeff Geld. The show’s production team also includes Emefa Agawu, Rogé Karma and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero and Kristina Samulewski.

“Wealth is the paramount indicator of economic prosperity and well-being,” says the economist Darrick Hamilton. He’s right. Policy analysis tends to focus on income, but it is wealth that often determines whether we can send our kids to college, pay for an illness, quit a job, start a business or make a down payment on a home. Wealth is also the source of some of our deepest social inequalities: The top 10 percent of households in the U.S. own about 70 percent of the nation’s wealth, and the typical Black family has about one-tenth the wealth of the typical white family.Hamilton is an economist at the New School who has spent decades studying the origins of the United States’ wealth disparities and how to close them. His “baby bonds” proposal — which would give poor children up to $50,000 in wealth by the time they become adults — has been put forward as national legislation by politicians like Senator Cory Booker and Representative Ayanna Pressley, and a state-level version of it is about to be established in Connecticut. So I asked him on the show to walk me through the structure of wealth in America today, the policy decisions undergirding that structure and the kinds of policies we could pass to dismantle it.Mentioned:“Can ‘Baby Bonds’ Eliminate the Racial Wealth Gap in Putative Post-Racial America?” by Darrick Hamilton and William Darity, Jr.“A Birthright to Capital” by Darrick Hamilton. Emanuel Nieves, Shira Markoff and David Newville“Hidden in Plain Sight” by The Corporation for Enterprise Development“Umbrellas Don’t Make it Rain” by Darrick Hamilton, William Darity, Jr., Anne E. Price, Vishnu Sridharan and Rebecca TippettBook Recommendations:When Affirmative Action Was White by Ira KatznelsonRacial Conflict and Economic Development by W. Arthur LewisPostcolonial Love Poem by Natalie DiazListen to this podcast in New York Times Audio, our new iOS app for news subscribers. Download now at nytimes.com/audioappThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Mixing by Jeff Geld. The show’s production team also includes Emefa Agawu, Rogé Karma and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Nate Golden, Sonia Herrero and Kristina Samulewski.

Earlier this month, a news outlet called The Debrief published a story that included, to put it mildly, some explosive material.The story, reported by Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal, centered on David Grusch, a decorated former combat veteran who has worked in multiple government intelligence agencies and served on the Pentagon’s Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force. In the story, Grusch said he had decided to come forward as a whistle-blower, testifying under oath to Congress that there are longstanding covert programs within the U.S. government that possess crash materials of “nonhuman origin.” His claims are backed by multiple on-the-record sources from the intelligence community.The main reactions to this story have been to either embrace it as definitive truth or dismiss it out of hand. I wanted to approach it differently. What is actually being claimed here? Which claims have evidence, and which don’t? How does this story fit into the broader context of U.F.O. revelations over the past few years? There is a lot to be curious about here. There is also a lot to be skeptical about.Leslie Kean is an independent investigative journalist who has contributed reporting to many of the major U.F.O. stories in recent years, including this most recent one, and she is the author of the 2010 book “UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record.” I asked her on the show so I could get some of my questions answered, and hopefully yours as well.Mentioned:"Intelligence Officials Say U.S. Has Retrieved Craft of Non-Human Origin" by Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal“Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program” by Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal and Leslie Kean"‘Wow, What Is That?’ Navy Pilots Report Unexplained Flying Objects" by Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal and Leslie Kean"No Longer in Shadows, Pentagon’s U.F.O. Unit Will Make Some Findings Public" by Ralph Blumenthal and Leslie KeanBook Recommendations:The UFO Experience by J. Allen HynekThe UFO Evidence by Richard H. HallAmerican Cosmic by D.W. PasulkaListen to this podcast in New York Times Audio, our new iOS app for news subscribers. Download now at nytimes.com/audioappThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode was produced by Rogé Karma. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Mixing by Jeff Geld and Isaac Jones. The show’s production team also includes Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Garrett Graff and Kristina Samulewski.

A recent AP-NORC poll found that just a quarter of voters, including only around half of Democrats, want to see Joe Biden run for president again. Many voters are concerned about his age in particular.That’s a problem for Biden, but it’s not as unusual as it might seem. In 1982, only 37 percent of voters wanted Ronald Reagan, another older president, to run again; he then won the 1984 election in a landslide. And Biden also has a lot going for him: a better-than-expected midterm performance, an impressive record of legislative achievement and a track record of defeating Donald Trump.What are Biden’s chances in 2024? How does he stack up against Republicans like Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis? What has his campaign focused on so far, and what should they focus on over the next few years?Jon Favreau served as Barack Obama’s head speechwriter from 2005 to 2013, played a key role in both of Obama’s presidential campaigns and currently co-hosts the podcast “Pod Save America.” So I asked him on the show to talk through the cases for and against Biden in 2024.We cover the concerns over Biden’s age, the strength of Vice President Kamala Harris, the key takeaways from the 2022 midterms, the surprising effectiveness of Biden’s lay-low media strategy, why voters tend to trust Donald Trump’s management of the economy more than Biden’s, how Biden’s bipartisan credentials could help him in 2024 and much more.This episode contains explicit language.Mentioned:“Inside the Complicated Reality of Being America’s Oldest President” by Peter Baker, Michael D. Shear, Katie Rogers and Zolan Kanno-Youngs“These Political Scientists Surveyed 500,000 Voters. Here Are Their Unnerving Conclusions,” with John Sides and Lynn Vavreck on The Ezra Klein ShowBook Recommendations:How to Break Up with Your Phone by Catherine PriceA Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer EganNo One Is Talking About This by Patricia LockwoodListen to this podcast in New York Times Audio, our new iOS app for news subscribers. Download now at nytimes.com/audioappThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Jeff Geld and Isaac Jones. The show’s production team is Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Rogé Karma and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero and Kristina Samulewski.

Although 12 candidates have entered the Republican presidential race so far, only Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is polling anywhere close to Donald Trump. What does DeSantis actually believe? How has he governed? And what case will he make to Republicans to vote for him over Trump?To answer those questions, I wanted to spend some time reading DeSantis in his own words. So I invited Carlos Lozada — the Pulitzer Prize-winning former book critic for The Washington Post, current Times Opinion columnist and the author of “What Were We Thinking: A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era” — to join me. Lozada has read many, many books by and about Republican politicians, including DeSantis’s two books, “Dreams From Our Founding Fathers: First Principles in the Age of Obama” from 2011 and “The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival,” released this year.We discuss DeSantis’s striking definition of — and rhetorical assault on — “elites,” why his campaign book makes no effort to showcase bipartisan credentials, DeSantis’s awkward transition from a Tea Party figure to MAGA crusader, what DeSantis has actually done as governor of Florida, why Florida’s Covid record is such a cornerstone of his political appeal, what DeSantis means by “wokeness” and why he’s waging a “war” on it, the surprising absence of major economic ideas from his book, how he is trying to differentiate himself from Trump without alienating Trump voters, whether his aggressive actions toward Disney will backfire and more.Mentioned:"America's Ruling Class" by Angelo CodevillaDreams from Our Founding Fathers by Ron DeSantisThe Courage to Be Free by Ron DeSantisHow To by Randall MunroeBook Recommendations:Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant by Ulysses GrantAn Hour Before Daylight by Jimmy CarterAll the Best, George Bush by George H.W. BushListen to this podcast in New York Times Audio, our new iOS app for news subscribers. Download now at nytimes.com/audioappThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Efim Shapiro. The show’s production team is Emefa Agawu, Jeff Geld, Rogé Karma and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero, Edwin Benton, Peter Bergerson, David Wallace-Wells and Kristina Samulewski.

“Today’s future-positive writers critique our economies while largely seeming to ignore that anything might be amiss in our private lives,” writes Kristen Ghodsee. Even our most ambitious visions of utopia tend to focus on outcomes that can be achieved through public policy — things like abundant clean energy or liberation from employment — while ignoring many of the aspects of our lives that matter to us the most: how we live, raise our children, and tend to our most meaningful relationships.Ghodsee’s new book, “Everyday Utopia: What 2,000 Years of Wild Experiments Can Teach Us About the Good Life,” is an attempt to change that. The book is a tour of radical social experiments from communes and ecovillages to “platonic parenting” and intentional communities. But, on a deeper level, it’s a critique of the way existing structures of family and community life have left so many of us devoid of care and connection, and a vision of what it could mean to organize our lives differently.Mentioned:“The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake” by David BrooksSaving Time by Jenny OdellBook Recommendations:Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia by David GraeberThe Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuinGender and the Politics of History by Joan Wallach ScottListen to this podcast in New York Times Audio, our new iOS app for news subscribers. Download now at nytimes.com/audioappThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode was produced by Emefa Agawu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Jeff Geld. The show’s production team is Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Rogé Karma and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero and Kristina Samulewski.

My pitch for this episode is simple: Jennifer Pahlka has written one of the best policy books I’ve ever read.Pahlka served as deputy chief technology officer in the Obama White House, and she’s the founder and a former executive director of Code for America, a nonprofit that works to enhance government digital services. Over the course of her career, Pahlka has become obsessed with an area of policy that is too often ignored by policymakers: implementation. She was part of the effort to rescue HealthCare.gov in 2013 and was tapped by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2020 to help fix California’s unemployment insurance system as it buckled under the weight of the Covid response.It has become a common refrain that the U.S. government is often terrible at delivering even basic services. But Pahlka’s new book — “Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better” — puts forward a deeper theory of why government services are so awful, how policy implementation so often goes awry and what it would take to fix those systems so that government could better live up to its promises. It’s an argument that anyone who cares about government in the 21st century needs to take seriously.Book Recommendations:Implementation by Jeffrey L. Pressman and Aaron WildavskyRadical Help by Hilary Cottam“Mandate for Leadership” (chapter 3), edited by Paul Dans and Steven GrovesListen to this podcast in New York Times Audio, our new iOS app for news subscribers. Download now at nytimes.com/audioappThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Emefa Agawu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Jeff Geld. Our production team is Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Roge Karma and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Isaac Jones and Kristina Samulewski.

Some thoughts on how humans think, how economies grow and why the technologies we think will help so often hurt.Column:“Beyond the ‘Matrix’ Theory of the Mind” by Ezra KleinEpisode Recommendations:Maryanne Wolf on how reading shapes our brainsCal Newport on the problems with the way we workMy A.M.A. on A.I.Gary Marcus on the limits of A.I.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Roge Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Rollin Hu. Mixing by Sonia Herrero. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

A lot about the world has changed since February 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine. The war itself has brought a number of surprises, from the tenacity of Ukraine’s resistance to the limits of Western sanctions. Meanwhile, competition between the United States and China has escalated into something resembling a new Cold War, India just surpassed China as the most populous country in the world and countries representing about two-thirds of the world’s population have chosen not to align themselves with the U.S. position on the Russia-Ukraine conflict.Those shifts raise a number of important questions: Where does the Russia-Ukraine war stand today? Are U.S.-China relations headed in the right direction? How will the rise of “nonaligned” countries like India alter the global balance of power? Is America’s longtime global dominance waning?Fareed Zakaria is host of the CNN show “Fareed Zakaria GPS,” a columnist for The Washington Post, and one of the sharpest foreign policy thinkers of our time. We discuss what possible outcomes of the Russia-Ukraine conflict seem likeliest at this moment, why the U.S.-led sanctions on Russia haven’t been nearly as effective as expected, how the Republican Party’s stance on Ukraine could influence the outcome of the war, why tensions between the United States and China have intensified over the last year, the dangerous implications of the Chinese spy balloon debacle, whether the United States should ban TikTok, how America’s hypocrisy about foreign invasions looks to the rest of the world, why so many Global South countries don’t support the West’s sanctions regime on Russia, what India’s rise means for the future global balance of power, what President Biden’s foreign policy should look like moving forward and more.Mentioned:Foreign Affairs’ May/June 2023 issue“The Upside of Rivalry” by Nirupama RaoThe Internationalists by Oona A. Hathaway and Scott J. ShapiroBook Recommendations:Imagined Communities by Benedict AndersonWealth and Power by Orville Schell and John DeluryThe Idea of India by Sunil KhilnaniListen to this podcast in New York Times Audio, our new iOS app for news subscribers. Download now at nytimes.com/audioappThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact checking by Michelle Harris, Rollin Hu, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Jeff Geld. The show’s production team is Emefa Agawu, Jeff Geld, Roge Karma and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero and Kristina Samulewski.

Today we’re bringing you an episode from the latest New York Times Opinion podcast, “Matter of Opinion.” It’s a chat show, hosted by my colleagues Michelle Cottle, Ross Douthat, Carlos Lozada and Lydia Polgreen. Each week, they discuss an issue in the news, the culture or their own work and try to make sense of what is a weird and fascinating time to be alive.In this episode, the hosts take a tour of the 2024 Republican primary field to understand what it takes to survive in the present-day Republican ecosystem — and maybe even beat the Trump in the room. (Note: This episode was recorded on May 18, the week before Ron DeSantis announced his candidacy.)Listen to this podcast in New York Times Audio, our new iOS app for news subscribers. Download now at nytimes.com/audioapp“Matter of Opinion” was produced this week by Phoebe Lett, Sophia Alvarez Boyd and Derek Arthur. It was edited by Stephanie Joyce and Annie-Rose Strasser. Mixing by Pat McCusker. Original music by Pat McCusker, Sonia Herrero, Isaac Jones and Carole Sabouraud. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker. Special thanks to Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski.

Here’s a little experiment. Take a second to think about how you would fill in the blank in this sentence: “I am _____.”If you’re anything like me, the first descriptors that come to mind are personal attributes (like “curious” or “kind”) or identities (like “a journalist” or “a runner”). And if you answered that way, then I have some news for you: You are weird.I mean that in a very specific way. In social science, WEIRD is an acronym that stands for Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic. Most societies in the world today — and throughout human history — don’t fit that description. And when people from non-WEIRD cultures answer the “I am” statement, they tend to give very different answers, defining themselves with relation-based descriptors like “Moe’s father” or “David’s brother.”That difference is only the tip of the iceberg. Much of what we take for granted as basic elements of human psychology and ethics are actually a peculiar WEIRD way of viewing the world.Joseph Henrich, an anthropologist at Harvard University, believes that this distinction between WEIRD and non-WEIRD psychologies is absolutely central to understanding our modern world. His 2020 book, “The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous,” explores the origins of these differences and argues that the emergence of a distinctly WEIRD psychology was central to the development of everything from the Industrial Revolution and market economies to representative government and human rights.We discuss Henrich’s theory of how “cultural evolution” leads to psychological — even genetic — changes in humans, the difference between societies that experience “shame” as a dominant emotion as opposed to “guilt,” the unique power of religion in driving cultural change, how cultural inventions like reading have literally reshaped human biology, why religious communes tend to outlast secular ones, why Henrich believes there is no static “human nature” aside from our cultural learning abilities, how differences in moral psychology across the United States can predict Donald Trump’s 2016 and 2020 vote share, why higher levels of immigration tend to lead to far more innovation and more.Book recommendations:Why Europe? by Michael MitterauerGuns, Germs, and Steel by Jared DiamondThe Chosen Few by Maristella Botticini and Zvi EcksteinListen to this podcast in New York Times Audio, our new iOS app for news subscribers. Download now at nytimes.com/audioappThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Roge Karma. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Sonia Herrero. Our production team is Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Kristina Samulewski.

The data is clear: Levels of anxiety, depression, self-harm and suicide have spiked for American teenagers over the last decade. Last Friday’s episode with the psychologist Jean Twenge sifted through that data to uncover both the scale of the crisis and its possible causes. Today’s episode focuses on the experiences behind that data: the individuals who are struggling, and what we can do as friends, parents and a broader society to help them.Lisa Damour is a clinical psychologist, the co-host of the podcast “Ask Lisa” and the author of books including “The Emotional Lives of Teenagers: Raising Connected, Capable and Compassionate Adolescents” and “Under Pressure: Confronting the Epidemic of Stress and Anxiety in Girls.” Statistics about teenage mental health are illuminating, but Damour has spent decades working closely with teens, allowing her to fill in some of the gaps in that data and give a nuanced picture of what may be going on. She has emerged from her clinical experience more hopeful about the prospects for helping teens through a life stage — and a moment in history — that poses serious challenges to their well-being.We discuss the neuroscience behind why being a teenager is so emotionally difficult, why Damour doesn’t believe smartphones are primarily to blame for the teen mental health crisis, how overscheduling teens can hurt their social development, why girls experience more anxiety than boys even as they outperform boys in school, which types of smartphone use can be good and bad for young people, the problems with the cultural belief that stress and anxiety should be eliminated at all costs, how to tell the difference between harmful and healthy anxiety, how parents should approach social media use with their children, how all of us can help one another cope with negative emotions and more.Book Recommendations:Psychoanalytic Diagnosis by Nancy McWilliamsTranscendent Kingdom by Yaa GyasiA Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George SaundersListen to this podcast in New York Times Audio, our new iOS app for news subscribers. Download now at nytimes.com/audioappThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact checking by Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Jeff Geld. Our production team is Emefa Agawu, Jeff Geld, Roge Karma and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero and Kristina Samulewski.

We’re in the midst of a serious teen mental health crisis. The number of teenagers and young adults with clinical depression more than doubled between 2011 and 2021. The suicide rate for teenagers nearly doubled from 2007 to 2019, and tripled for 10- to 14-year- olds in particular. According to the C.D.C., nearly 25 percent of teenage girls made a suicide plan in 2021. What’s going on in the lives of teenagers that has produced such a startling uptick?Jean Twenge, a research psychologist and author of the books “iGen” and “Generations,” has spent years poring over mental health statistics and survey data trying to answer this question. In her view, the story in the data is clear: Our teenage mental health crisis is the direct product of the rise of smartphones and social media.So I wanted to have Twenge on the show to elicit and interrogate her argument. What is the actual evidence for the smartphone thesis? How do we account for the fact that teenage girls and liberals are having far worse outcomes than boys and conservatives? What about alternate explanations for this crisis, like meritocratic pressure, the economy, school shootings and climate change? And if Twenge is right that the culprit is smartphones, then what can we do to address that problem?If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources.Listen to this podcast in New York Times Audio, our new iOS app for news subscribers. Download now at nytimes.com/audioappMentioned:“We’re Missing a Key Driver of Teen Anxiety” by Derek Thompson“The Paradox of Wealthy Nations’ Low Adolescent Life Satisfaction” by Robert Rudolf and Dirk Bethmann“Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation” by the U.S. Surgeon General’s AdvisoryBook Recommendations:The Problem With Everything by Meghan DaumWhat’s Our Problem? by Tim UrbanNine Ladies by Heather MollThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact checking by Michelle Harris and Mary Marge Locker. Mixing by Jeff Geld. Our production team is Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Roge Karma and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Efim Shapiro and Kristina Samulewski.

On Jan. 19, the United States officially hit its debt limit. In response, the Treasury Department began using accounting maneuvers known as “extraordinary measures” to continue paying the government’s obligations temporarily. But according to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, that money could run out as soon as June 1. If the United States hasn’t raised or suspended its borrowing cap, known as the debt ceiling, by then, America will default on its debt.But Republicans are currently refusing to raise the debt ceiling until their policy demands are met. Negotiations between House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and the Biden administration are ongoing, but it is very difficult to see a deal that McCarthy’s hard-line members would vote for and Biden would sign. Meanwhile, default — and the accompanying economic calamity — draws ever closer.Veronique de Rugy is an economist at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and a nationally syndicated columnist. For years, she’s argued that the United States’ debt levels are far too high and has defended the debt ceiling as a way to rein them in. I disagree. In my view, the debt ceiling is one of the most absurd and dangerous laws on the books. So I invited her on the show to make her case.But I also wanted to talk about the broader fiscal picture on which this entire fight is predicated. America’s debt is currently about 100 percent of the U.S. G.D.P., up from just 35 percent in 2007, and is projected to reach 185 percent by 2052. Meanwhile, Social Security is projected to run out of its cash reserves by 2033, and the trust fund funding Medicare hospital coverage (Medicare Part A) is projected to run out by 2028.What do those numbers actually mean? How worried should we be about them? And what could be done to address our growing debt?Mentioned:“The Debt-Ceiling Fight Is a Symptom of Congress’s Disease” by Veronique de Rugy“The Liquidation of Government Debt” by Carmen M. Reinhart and M. Belen SbranciaBook Recommendations:Range by David EpsteinKindly Inquisitors by Jonathan RauchLet Them In by Jason L. RileyThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Roge Karma. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker, and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Jeff Geld. Our production team is Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Roge Karma and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Carole Sabouraud and Kristina Samulewski.

Kim Stanley Robinson is one of the great living science fiction writers and one of the most astute observers of how planets look, feel and work. His Mars Trilogy imagined what it might be like for humans to settle on the red planet. His best-selling novel “The Ministry for the Future” is a masterful effort at envisioning what might happen to Earth in a future of unchecked climate change. Robinson has a rare command of both science and human nature, and his writing crystallizes how the two must work together if we are to rescue our collective planetary future from possible ruin.In his 2022 book, a rare turn to nonfiction called “The High Sierra: A Love Story,” Robinson trains his attention on the planet we inhabit in the here and now, particularly on one of his favorite places on Earth: the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California and Nevada. The new book is part memoir, part guidebook, part meditation on how time, space and even politics take shape in a wondrous geological landscape.In this conversation, recorded in July 2022, we discuss why Robinson decided to start writing outdoors, what it was like to experience the Sierras on psychedelics in his youth, what “actor-network theory” is and how it helps us understand our relationship to the planet and to our own bodies, why we should think of climate change more like we do plane crashes, what hiking backpacks say about American consumerism, how we should change our relationship to technology in order to be happier, why the politics of wanting are so confusing yet important, why Robinson is so excited about ideas like a wage ratio and rewilding schemes, how the “structure of feeling” around climate has changed, why Robinson is feeling more hopeful about Earth’s future these days and more.We’ll be back with new episodes next week.Mentioned:“The Most Important Book I’ve Read This Year” by Vox Conversations“Your Kids Are Not Doomed” by Ezra Klein“Design for the Real World” by Victor Papanek“Thomas Piketty’s Case for ‘Participatory Socialism’” by The Ezra Klein ShowBook Recommendations:A Brief History of Equality by Thomas PikettyThe Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David WengrowThe Echo Maker by Richard PowersThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Isaac Jones and Sonia Herrero; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Executive produced by Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

Here’s a sobering thought: The older we get, the harder it is for us to learn, to question, to reimagine. This isn’t just habit hardening into dogma. It’s encoded into the way our brains change as we age. And it’s worsened by an intellectual and economic culture that prizes efficiency and dismisses play.Alison Gopnik is a professor of psychology and philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, where she runs the Cognitive Development and Learning Lab; she’s also the author of over 100 papers and half a dozen books, including “The Gardener and the Carpenter” and “The Philosophical Baby.” What I love about her work is she takes the minds of children seriously. The child’s mind is tuned to learn. They are, she writes, the R. & D. departments of the human race. But a mind tuned to learn works differently from a mind trying to exploit what it already knows.So instead of asking what children can learn from us, perhaps we need to reverse the question: What can we learn from them?In this conversation, recorded in April 2021, Gopnik and I discuss the way children think, the cognitive reasons social change so often starts with the young, and the power of play. We talk about why Gopnik thinks children should be considered an entirely different form of Homo sapiens, the crucial difference between “spotlight” consciousness and “lantern” consciousness, why “going for a walk with a 2-year-old is like going for a walk with William Blake,” what A.I. researchers are borrowing from human children, the effects of different types of meditation on the brain and more.Book recommendations:Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice SendakMary Poppins in the Park by P.L. TraversThe Children of Green Knowe by L.M. BostonThoughts? Email us at [email protected]. (And if you're reaching out to recommend a guest, please write  “Guest Suggestion" in the subject line.)You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Roge Karma. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Jeff Geld. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristina Samulewski.

On Monday, First Republic Bank folded before being sold by regulators to JPMorgan Chase. At the time, it was the 14th largest bank in the U.S. and it is the second-largest American bank by assets to ever collapse. The story of First Republic’s fall is similar to that of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature before it – the value of the bank’s assets began to plummet as the Fed raised interest rates to fight inflation, causing a crisis of confidence among investors and depositors. This is exactly the kind of situation that the economic historian Adam Tooze warned of when he came on the show in October of 2022. In that conversation, Tooze argued that the Fed’s interest rate hikes were “shaking the entire system” – putting pressure on every level of the global financial system, from regional banks to countries that borrow on the U.S. dollar. It would only be a matter of time, he predicted, before things started breaking. Well, things are certainly breaking now, and it’s very possible there’s more to come. The Fed decided to raise interest rates once again on Wednesday, bringing them above 5 percent for the first time in more than 15 years. So it felt like the right time to revisit our conversation about the fragile, uncertain future of the global economy at this history-making moment and the Fed’s role in it. We also discuss what the British financial market meltdown means for the rest of the world, how the interest rate hikes in rich countries export inflation to other countries, the looming possibility of a global recession, why Tooze believes the confluence of high inflation, rising interest rates and high levels of debt points to an economic “polycrisis” unlike any the world has seen, why countries in South Asia are experiencing a particularly severe form of polycrisis, how the Fed should weigh its mandate to bring down inflation against the global consequences of its actions, why he believes analogies to the American inflationary period of the 1970s are misguided and more.Editor’s note: Due to a technical error, a previous version of this episode featured the wrong audio file. The episode is now updated with the correct audio.Mentioned:“Slouching Towards Utopia by J Bradford DeLong — fuelling America’s global dream” by Adam ToozeBook recommendations:The Neapolitan Novels by Elena FerranteYouthquake by Edward PaiceSlouching Towards Utopia by J. Bradford DeLongThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Rollin Hu, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Jeff Geld. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin, Kristina Samulewski, Jason Furman, Mike Konczal and Maurice Obstfeld.

In recent months, we’ve witnessed the rise of chatbots that can pass law and business school exams, artificial companions who’ve become best friends and lovers and music generators that produce remarkably humanlike songs. It’s hard to know how to process it all. But if there’s one thing that’s certain, it’s this: The future — shaped by technologies like artificial intelligence — is going to be profoundly weird. It’s going to look, feel and function differently from the world we have grown to recognize.How do we learn to navigate — even embrace — the weirdness of the world we’re entering into?Erik Davis is the author of the books “High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica and Visionary Experience in the Seventies” and “TechGnosis: Myth, Magic and Mysticism in the Age of Information” and writes the newsletter “Burning Shore.” For Davis, “weirdness” isn’t just a quality of things that don’t make sense to us, it’s an interpretive framework that helps us better understand the cultures and technologies that will shape our wondrous, wild future.We discuss how Silicon Valley’s particularly weird culture has altered the trajectory of A.I. development, why programs like ChatGPT can profoundly unsettle our sense of reality and our own humanity, how the behaviors of A.I. systems reveal far more about humanity than we like to admit, why we might be in a “sorcerer’s apprentice moment” for artificial intelligence, why we often turn to myth and science fiction to explain technologies whose implications we don’t yet grasp, why A.I. developers are willing to keep designing technologies that they think may destroy humanity and more.This episode contains strong language.Mentioned:Pharmako-AI by K Allado-McDowell“AI EEEEEEE!!!” by Erik Davis“The Merge” by Sam Altman“The Weird and the Banal” by Erik Davis“There Is No A.I.” by Jaron LanierBook Recommendations:God, Human, Animal, Machine by Meghan O’GieblynPsychonauts by Mike JayWeird Studies (podcast)Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Mixing by Efim Shapiro. The show’s production team is Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Roge Karma and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero and Kristina Samulewski.

California is a land of contrasts. The state is home to staggering wealth, world-remaking tech companies, and some of the world’s boldest climate policy. It also has immense income inequality, arguably the worst housing crisis in the country, and the highest poverty rate in the nation when you factor in housing costs.The dysfunction of our national politics is often attributed to division and gridlock. But in California, Democrats are at the wheel. No Republican has held statewide office in over a decade. And in many major cities — Los Angeles and San Francisco, for example — Republicans have little or no political power. For that reason, the tensions and difficulties facing the Golden State are often a signal of what is to come for the Democratic Party nationally.If California has long been a bellwether for national liberal politics, Senator Scott Wiener has been something of a bellwether for California politics. Senator Wiener has represented San Francisco in the California Senate since 2016 and, before that, served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. He was introducing bill after bill to address the state’s housing affordability crisis long before the term “YIMBY” was a widespread political label. And in recent years, he’s introduced legislation that would decriminalize certain psychedelics, provide access to therapy to all incarcerated Californians, and pilot supervised injection sites.So I wanted to talk to Senator Wiener about the political workings of his weird city and state — a place where traditional labels break down, where abundant resources meet equally abundant problems and where change is actually happening.This episode contains strong language.Mentioned:“Yes in Our Backyards” by Bill McKibbenBook Recommendations:And the Band Played On by Randy ShiltsThe House on Mango Street by Sandra CisnerosLast Call by Daniel OkrentWheel of Time seriesThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Mixing by Jeff Geld. The show’s production team is Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Rogé Karma and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Erik Mebust, Misha Chellam, Sonia Herrero and Kristina Samulewski.

On Monday, Fox News abruptly announced that the network and its star primetime host, Tucker Carlson, “have agreed to part ways” after more than a decade. The announcement came less than a week after Fox agreed to pay $787.5 million in a defamation lawsuit that prominently featured Carlson’s show and its role in spreading misinformation about the 2020 election. The news is just the latest instantiation of a broader story: In recent years, the Republican Party has morphed from a coherent institution into a fractured movement at war with itself. Conservative media, and Fox News in particular, played a central role in that shift. And now those same dynamics are tearing the conservative media ecosystem apart as well. How did we get here? How did the Tucker Carlsons of the world take over the G.O.P? And what comes next as these dynamics continue to play out? There are few scholars who have studied these kinds of questions as closely as Nicole Hemmer. Hemmer is an associate professor of history at Vanderbilt University and the author of two books about the conservative movement and media ecosystem, “Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics” and “Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s”. We released this conversation a few months ago, in January of this year, but it remains as relevant as ever.We discuss why the Cold War bonded Republicans as a party, how the 1994 Republican congressional victory inaugurated a new era of intraparty fighting, how Rush Limbaugh’s rise created a new market for far-out ideas and new pressures on conservative politicians, why conservative media has had so much more sway than liberal media over grass-roots voters, how the business model of Fox News differs from that of MSNBC and what kinds of political ideas those businesses produce, how the G.O.P. is now caught between the pincers of the donor class and the grass roots, when the chief Republican enemy became the Democratic Party, why more moderate conservatives have become so weak and more.Book Recommendations:Fit Nation by Natalia Mehlman PetrzelaDreamland by Carly GoodmanFreedom’s Dominion by Jefferson CowieThoughts? Email us at [email protected]. (And if you're reaching out to recommend a guest, please write  “Guest Suggestion" in the subject line.)You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Jeff Geld. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristina Samulewski.

According to the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University, 14.3 percent of Americans — nearly 50 million people — were living in poverty in December. The scale of poverty in the U.S. dwarfs that of most of our peer countries. And it raises the question: Why does so much poverty persist in one of the richest countries in the world?For the Princeton sociologist Matthew Desmond, the answer is simple: Poverty is a policy choice. It persists because we allow it to. And we allow it to persist because so many of us — whether we realize it or not — benefit from the exploitation of the poor.Desmond’s 2016 book, the Pulitzer Prize winner “Evicted,” was a powerful ethnographic account of what it means to experience the depths of poverty. But his new book, “Poverty, by America,” is less about the poor than it is about the rest of us. It is about the people who are more comfortable with the perpetuation of poverty than with the changes that would be demanded for its abolition.So this conversation is about why poverty in America persists, the choices we could make to end it and why we as a country are so stubbornly resistant to making those choices. We also discuss the heated debate over how to measure poverty in the first place, why Desmond thinks poverty is primarily a product of “exploitation,” why over $140 billion of government aid ends up never making it into the hands of the people it’s intended to help, Desmond’s view that the U. S. does “more to subsidize affluence than to alleviate poverty,” why the daily cognitive cost of poverty is as severe as losing a night of sleep, how the U. S. passed its most successful anti-poverty policy in decades and then let it expire, why Americans seem more willing to tolerate high poverty than high prices, why Desmond thinks sectoral bargaining and public housing are key pillars of any anti-poverty agenda, what it means to become a “poverty abolitionist” and more.Mentioned:Evicted by Matthew DesmondHomelessness Is a Housing Problem by Gregg Colburn and Clayton Page Aldern“The Time Tax” by Annie LowreyScarcity by Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir“What the Rich Don’t Want to Admit About the Poor” by Ezra KleinBook Recommendations:What Then Must We Do? by Leo TolstoyRace for Profit by Keeanga-Yamahtta TaylorRandom Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlancThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Roge Karma, with Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Jeff Geld. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Pat McCusker and Kristina Samulewski.

It’s impossible to deny that the U.S. has a serious loneliness problem. One 2018 report by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 22 percent of all adults — almost 60 million Americans — said they often or always felt lonely or socially isolated. That was a full two years before the Covid pandemic. And Americans appear to be getting lonelier over time: From 1990 to 2021, there was a 25 percentage point decrease in the number of Americans who reported having five or more close friends. Young people now report feeling lonelier than the elderly.This widespread loneliness is often analogized to a disease, an epidemic. But that label obscures something important: Loneliness in America isn’t merely the result of inevitable or abstract forces, like technological progress; it’s the product of social structures we’ve chosen — wittingly or unwittingly — to build for ourselves.Sheila Liming is an associate professor of communications and creative media at Champlain College and the author of the new book “Hanging Out: The Radical Power of Killing Time.” In the book, Liming investigates what she calls the “quiet catastrophe” brewing in our social lives: the devastating fact that we’ve grown much less likely to simply spend time together outside our partnerships, workplaces and family units. What would it look like to reconfigure our world to make social connection easier for all of us?We discuss how the structures of our lives and physical spaces have made atomization rather than community our society’s default setting, the surprising class differences in how far we live from our families, the social costs of wearing headphones and earbuds in public, how technology has enabled us to avoid the social awkwardness and rejection inherent in building community, the fact that the nuclear family is a historical aberration — and maybe a mistake, how texting and “ghosting” affect the resilience of our core relationships, why shows like “The Office” and “Parks and Recreation” are entirely built around socializing at the office and what we are losing in an era of increased remote work, why some parents are revolting against their kids having sleepovers and more.Mentioned:“You’d Be Happier Living Closer to Friends. Why Don’t You?” by Anne Helen Petersen“The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake” by David BrooksFull Surrogacy Now by Sophie LewisRegarding the Pain of Others by Susan SontagLetters from Tove by Tove JanssonBook Recommendations:Black Paper by Teju ColeOn the Inconvenience of Other People by Lauren BerlantThe Hare by Melanie FinnThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, with Jeff Geld, Rogé Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Jeff Geld. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero and Kristina Samulewski.

America today faces a crisis of governance. In the face of numerous challenges — from climate change, to housing shortages, to pandemics — our institutions struggle to act quickly and decisively. Democratic processes often get captured by special interests or paralyzed by polarization. And, in response, public faith in government has reached a new low.For the political philosopher Danielle Allen, this crisis requires a complete transformation of our democratic institutions. “Representation as designed cannot work under current conditions,” she writes. “We have no choice but to undertake a significant project of democracy renovation.” Allen’s most recent book — “Justice By Means of Democracy” — puts forth a sweeping vision of what she calls “power-sharing liberalism,” which aims to place political equality, power and participation at the center of liberal thinking.But Allen isn’t just a theorist of liberal governance; she’s actively applying her insights in the real world. As the director of Harvard’s Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Ethics, she’s convened interdisciplinary groups to tackle a range of challenges from building Covid-19 testing infrastructure to innovating in A.I. governance. She was co-chair of the “Our Common Purpose” commission, which put forward over 30 specific policy recommendations for reinventing American democracy. She even ran for governor of Massachusetts.So this is a conversation about what it would mean to build a better, more responsive and inclusive government — and the numerous challenges standing in the way of doing that. Along the way, we discuss liberals’ failure to take power seriously, Colorado’s experiments with “plural voting,” Seattle’s efforts to publicly finance elections through “democracy bucks,” Taiwan’s groundbreaking innovations in deliberative democracy, whether most citizens actually want deeper participation in government — or just better results from it, what it would mean to democratically govern AI development and much more.Mentioned:“Introducing Power-Sharing Liberalism” by Danielle Allen“Movement vs. Abundance Progressives” by Misha David ChellamHow Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt“Our Common Purpose” Report“How A.I. Fails Us”Book Recommendations:The Darkened Light of Faith by Melvin L. RogersLife 3.0 by Max TegmarkOpen Democracy by Héléne LandemoreThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Jeff Geld, Kristin Lin, and Roge Karma. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Mixing by Jeff Geld. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero and Kristina Samulewski.

In October, the White House released a 70-plus-page document called the “Blueprint for an A.I. Bill of Rights.” The document’s ambition was sweeping. It called for the right for individuals to “opt out” from automated systems in favor of human ones, the right to a clear explanation as to why a given A.I. system made the decision it did, and the right for the public to give input on how A.I. systems are developed and deployed.For the most part, the blueprint isn’t enforceable by law. But if it did become law, it would transform how A.I. systems would need to be devised. And, for that reason, it raises an important set of questions: What does a public vision for A.I. actually look like? What do we as a society want from this technology, and how can we design policy to orient it in that direction?There are few people who have thought as deeply about those questions as Alondra Nelson. As deputy director and acting director of the Biden White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, she spearheaded the effort to create the A.I. Bill of Rights blueprint. She is now a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study and a distinguished senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. So I invited her on the show to discuss how the government is thinking about the A.I. policy challenge, what a regulatory framework for A.I. could look like, the possibility of a “public option” for A.I. development and much more.Mentioned:Artificial Intelligence Risk Management FrameworkBlueprint for an A.I. Bill of RightsBook Recommendations:Data Driven by Karen LevyThe Master Switch by Tim WuKindred by Octavia ButlerThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Roge Karma, Kristin Lin and Jeff Geld. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Mixing by Jeff Geld and Efim Shapiro. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero and Kristina Samulewski.

Typically when we put out a call for audience questions, there’s no single topic that dominates. This time was different. The questions we received were overwhelmingly focused on artificial intelligence: Do A.I. systems pose an existential threat to humanity? Will robots take our jobs? How could these machines potentially make our lives — and the lives of our children — better?So I asked the show’s senior editor, Roge Karma, to join me to talk through them. We also discuss my mixed feelings about the calls to “pause” A.I. development, why I’m less worried about rogue A.I. systems than the incentives of the companies and countries developing A.I., the need for a “public vision” for A.I. development, whether A.I. companions can help address widespread loneliness, why I’m skeptical that A.I. advances will lead to skyrocketing economic productivity, the possibility that A.I. advances will lead to a post-work utopia, why I think of A.I. less as a normal technology and more as a “hyper object,” what A.I. systems are unveiling about what it means to be human and more.Mentioned:“Natural Selection Favors AIs over Humans” by Dan Hendrycks“2022 Expert Survey on Progress in AI”God, Human, Animal, Machine by Meghan O’Gieblyn“Resisting dehumanization in the age of A.I.” with Emily Bender“The Moral Economy of High-Tech Modernism” by Henry Farrell and Marion FourcadeRecommendations:“Some of Us Are Brave” by Danielle Ponder“In Memory of a Honeybee” by Felix Rösch“Clouds” by Felix Rösch and Laura Masotto“Driven” by Felix RöschMabe FrattiTrance Frendz by Ólafur Arnalds and Nils FrahmThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Roge Karma, Kristin Lin and Jeff Geld. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Jeff Geld. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero and Kristina Samulewski.

“We rarely think about chips, yet they’ve created the modern world,” writes the historian Chris Miller.He’s not exaggerating. Semiconductors don’t just power our phones and computers; they also enable our cars, planes and home appliances to function. They are essential to everything from developing advanced military equipment to training artificial intelligence systems. Chips are the foundation of modern economic prosperity, military strength and geopolitical power.But semiconductors are also part of one of the most concentrated supply chains of any technology today. One Taiwanese company, TSMC, produces 90 percent of the most advanced chips. A single Dutch firm, ASML, produces all of the world’s EUV lithography machines, which are essential to produce leading-edge chips. The entire industry is built like this.That doesn’t just make the chip supply chain vulnerable to external shocks; it also makes it easily weaponizable by the powers that control it. In October, the Biden administration banned exports of advanced chips — and the equipment needed to produce those chips — to China. In August, President Biden signed into law the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act, which includes a $52 billion investment to on-shore U.S. chip manufacturing. China has invested tens of billions of dollars over the past decade to build a domestic semiconductor industry of its own. Chips have become to the geopolitics of the 21st century what oil was to the geopolitics of the 20th.There is no better or more timely explanation of the semiconductor industry — and the geopolitics that have formed around them — than Miller’s new book, “Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology.” So I asked him on the show to talk me through what semiconductors are, why they matter and how they are shaping everything from U.S.-China relations and the Russia-Ukraine war to the Biden policy agenda and the future of A.I.Mentioned:“The Problem With Everything-Bagel Liberalism” by Ezra KleinBook Recommendations:The World For Sale by Javier Blas and Jack FarchyNexus by Jonathan Reed WinklerPrestige, Manipulation and Coercion by Joseph TorigianThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Emefa Agawu, Jeff Geld, Rogé Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Mixing by Jeff Geld. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Pat McCusker and Kristina Samulewski.

In last November's midterm elections, voters placed the Republican Party in charge of the House of Representatives. In 2024, it’s very possible that Republicans will take over the Senate as well and voters will elect Donald Trump — or someone like him — as president. But the United States isn’t alone in this regard. Over the course of 2022, Italy elected a far-right prime minister from a party with Fascist roots; a party founded by neo-Nazis and skinheads won the second-highest number of seats in Sweden’s Parliament; Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party in Hungary won its fourth consecutive election by a landslide; Marine Le Pen won 41 percent of the vote in the final round of France’s presidential elections; and Jair Bolsonaro came dangerously close to winning re-election in Brazil.Why are these populist uprisings happening simultaneously, in countries with such diverse cultures, economies and political systems?Pippa Norris is a political scientist at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, where she has taught for three decades. In that time, she’s written dozens of books on topics ranging from comparative political institutions to right-wing parties and the decline of religion. And in 2019 she and Ronald Inglehart published “Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit and Authoritarian Populism,” which gives the best explanation of the far right’s rise that I’ve read.In this conversation, taped in November 2022, we discuss what Norris calls the “silent revolution in cultural values” that has occurred across advanced democracies in recent decades, why the best predictor of support for populist parties is the generation people were born into, why the “transgressive aesthetic” of leaders like Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro is so central to their appeal, how demographic and cultural “tipping points” have produced conservative backlashes across the globe, the difference between “demand-side” and “supply-side” theories of populist uprising, the role that economic anxiety and insecurity play in fueling right-wing backlashes, why delivering economic benefits might not be enough for mainstream leaders to stave off populist challenges and more.Mentioned:Sacred and Secular by Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart“Exploring drivers of vote choice and policy positions among the American electorate”Book Recommendations:Popular Dictatorships by Aleksandar MatovskiSpin Dictators by Sergei Guriev and Daniel TreismanThe Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah ArendtThoughts? Email us at [email protected]. (And if you're reaching out to recommend a guest, please write  “Guest Suggestion" in the subject line.)You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Roge Karma. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Jeff Geld. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

Donald Trump’s legal troubles are mounting. A Manhattan grand jury investigation into the hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels could soon make Trump the first former American president ever to be criminally indicted.But the Manhattan case isn’t the only source of legal risk for Trump. In Georgia, the Fulton County district attorney is considering criminal charges for Trump’s efforts to influence the 2020 election, and the Department of Justice is investigating his role in the Jan. 6 riots and the removal of classified documents from the White House.This level of legal vulnerability surrounding a former president is unprecedented. It’s also unsurprising — Trump routinely flouts protocols and norms. But even more than his disregard for convention, Trump has a knack for forcing our legal and political systems into predicaments that don’t really have good solutions. How should a political system handle criminal charges against a current political candidate? Is it appropriate for prosecutors to consider the risk of mob violence in weighing charges? And what’s the risk of damage to our institutions of holding Trump accountable — and for failing to do so?[You can listen to this episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.]David French, my colleague at The New York Times, is a lawyer and conservative commentator who has been trying to parse the legal merits of the Trump inquiries and the thorny political questions they raise. In this episode, we explore the investigations into Trump’s misconduct and the interconnected risks that he, his supporters and the Republican Party pose to our political system.We discuss the details of the Stormy Daniels case and why it may not be a slam dunk; the inquiry into Trump’s efforts to overturn election results in Georgia; the appropriateness of weighing the “national interest” when prosecuting a political figure; whether Gerald Ford’s 1974 pardon of Richard Nixon created a precedent that presidents are above the law; why French worries about giving a mob “veto power” over the rule of law; the Department of Justice’s Jan. 6 investigation and why the legal definition of incitement might be hard to clear; French’s belief that moral courage among Republican elites could stopped Trump’s rise to power; why he thinks the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit against Fox News was a “tremendous public service”; whether Fox News is really showing “respect” for its viewers, and more.Mentioned:“MAGA, Not Trump, Controls the Movement Now” by David French“The Potential Trump Indictment Is Unwise” by David FrenchBook Recommendations:We the Fallen People by Robert Tracy McKenzieThe Napoleonic Wars by Alexander MikaberidzeRing of Steel by Alexander WatsonThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Emefa Agawu, Jeff Geld, Roge Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin, Kristina Samulewski and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Jeff Geld and Sonia Herrero. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Pat McCusker and Kristina Samulewski.

It’s been two weeks since the Silicon Valley Bank run, and we’re still feeling the ripple effects — not just at banks like Signature, First Republic and Credit Suisse, which are definitely taking a beating. Across the industry, too, banks are on edge, and regulators are rushing to keep the system together.Every financial crisis is different. And every financial crisis is the same. Assets that a lot of people thought were safe — mortgage-backed securities in the 2008 crisis and long-term Treasury bonds in this latest bank run — end up not being so secure. When assets start failing, people panic. Usually, regulators pick up the pieces with some kind of bailout, and there are calls for more oversight. The theory goes that regulations should focus on keeping a couple of wayward institutions in line, and we’ve gone through this playbook over and over again. We’re going through it now, and it’s time we take a different approach to banking regulation.Morgan Ricks is a law professor at Vanderbilt University who thinks those measures often miss the mark in addressing the problems baked into our banking system. He’s worked both on Wall Street and in the Treasury Department. He wrote the book “The Money Problem,” which reflects on the 2008 financial crisis. But the theory he presents in the book ends up being explanatory today.We discuss what lessons banking regulators missed from the Great Recession; the need to panic-proof the entire financial system, as opposed to developing regulations around a systemic risk that he finds hard to define; why it’s important now to revisit the basics of banking, its relationship to creating money and the tendencies that get banks in trouble; the government’s role in insuring or backstopping deposits; what it would mean for the government to start treating money as a public good for us all; and more.Mentioned:“Scrap the Bank Deposit Insurance Limit” by Lev Menand and Morgan Ricks“FedAccounts: Digital Dollars” by Morgan Ricks, J. Crawford and L. MenandBook Recommendations:Flash Boys by Michael LewisThe Idea Factory by Jon GertnerThe Fed Unbound by Lev MenandThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin, Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin and Jeff Geld. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Jeff Geld. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Carole Sabouraud and Kristina Samulewski.

OpenAI last week released its most powerful language model yet: GPT-4, which vastly outperforms its predecessor, GPT-3.5, on a variety of tasks.GPT-4 can pass the bar exam in the 90th percentile, while the previous model struggled around in the 10th percentile. GPT-4 scored in the 88th percentile on the LSAT, up from GPT-3.5’s 40th percentile. And on the advanced sommelier theory test, GPT-4 performed better than 77 percent of test-takers. (It’s predecessor hovered around 46 percent.) These are stunning results — not just what the model can do, but the rapid pace of progress. And Open AI’s ChatGPT and other chat bots are just one example of what recent A.I. systems can achieve.Kelsey Piper is a senior writer at Vox, where she’s been ahead of the curve covering advanced A.I., its world-changing possibilities, and the people creating it. Her work is informed by her deep knowledge of the handful of companies that arguably have the most influence over the future of A.I.We discuss whether artificial intelligence has coherent “goals” — and whether that matters; whether the disasters ahead in A.I. will be small enough to learn from or “truly catastrophic”; the challenge of building “social technology” fast enough to withstand malicious uses of A.I.; whether we should focus on slowing down A.I. progress — and the specific oversight and regulation that could help us do it; why Piper is more optimistic this year that regulators can be “on the ball’ with A.I.; how competition between the U.S. and China shapes A.I. policy; and more.This episode contains strong language.Mentioned:“The Man of Your Dreams” by Sangeeta Singh-Kurtz“The Case for Taking A.I. Seriously as a Threat to Humanity” by Kelsey Piper“The Return of the Magicians” by Ross Douthat“Let’s Think About Slowing Down A.I.” by Katja GraceBook Recommendations:The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard RhodesAsterisk MagazineThe Silmarillion by J. R. R. TolkienThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Roge Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Jeff Geld. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Carole Sabouraud and Kristina Samulewski.

This is something a bit different: Not an interview, but a commentary of my own. We’ve done a lot of shows on A.I. of late, and there are more to come. On Tuesday, GPT-4 was released, and its capabilities are stunning, and in some cases, chilling. More on that in Tuesday’s episode. But I wanted to take a moment to talk through my own views on A.I. and how I’ve arrived at them. I’ve come to believe that we’re in a potentially brief interregnum before the pace of change accelerates to a rate that is far faster than is safe for society. Here’s why.Column:“This Changes Everything” by Ezra KleinEpisode Recommendations:Sam Altman on the A.I. revolutionBrian Christian on the alignment problemGary Marcus on the case for A.I. skepticismTed Chiang on what humans really fear about A.I.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Roge Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Rollin Hu. Mixing by Isaac Jones. Original music by Isaac Jones and Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

Last Friday, in the largest bank failure since 2008, Silicon Valley Bank failed.Banks fail all the time. But unless it’s a big or highly-connected bank, most of us don’t pay much attention. That’s because at the average bank, about half of all accounts are F.D.I.C.-insured. That means, if a typical bank fails, the F.D.I.C. will step in and pay every depositor back up to $250,000.But Silicon Valley Bank was not a typical bank. It seems that only around a single digit percentage of accounts were under $250,000. And the people who banked at Silicon Valley Bank are among the most powerful in the world. Nearly half of venture finance-backed tech and life-science companies had money in there. When these people start shouting, those in power listen.And so the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department and the F.D.I.C. stepped in forcefully. They retroactively insured all the accounts, and created an emergency system to backstop other struggling banks, too. But that doesn’t mean this is over. Bank runs are narrative phenomena. Rising interest rates are revealing a financial system that had only planned for low interest rates — in perpetuity. And if, in practice, we’re going to make whole any depositor at any bank no matter how much money is in the account, shouldn’t we make that into actual policy, and charge banks for the privilege of full social insurance?Noah Smith is an economist, a former columnist at Bloomberg, and the author of the fantastic Substack Noahpinion, and he’s done some of the clearest writing and coverage of this mess. We talk about the above, as well as what the crypto boosters — many of whom were begging for a bailout here — got wrong about trust and finance, the problem the Fed now faces raising rates to fight inflation, whether this was a “bailout,” how a bank can be “narratively important” no matter its size, and much more.Mentioned:“How the Fed is ‘Shaking the Entire System’” by The Ezra Klein Show“Why the US Backstop After SVB’s Failure Is a Bailout” by Joe WeisenthalNoahpinionBook Recommendations:Chip War by Chris MillerHow Asia Works by Joe StudwellThe Invisible Bridge by Rick PerlsteinThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Rogé Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Sonia Herrero and Efim Shapiro. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Pat McCusker and Kristina Samulewski.

In just a few years, the narrative on China has almost completely flipped. The dominant sentiments in America had been awe, envy and a kind of fear. China’s growth seemed relentless. Its manufacturing prowess was lapping ours. It weathered the pandemic without the mass death seen in the West. It could build housing and transit and infrastructure at a speed we could no longer even imagine.And then, as 2022 ticked over to 2023, things changed. China’s real estate bubble popped. Its Zero Covid policies turned pathological. Its leader, Xi Jinping, turned what many saw as a technocracy with autocratic characteristics into something closer to a plain old autocracy. Foreign investors began looking to diversify. Companies that had long relied on China, like Apple, began trying in earnest to build manufacturing chains elsewhere. And under President Biden, American policy toward China began to match Trumpian rhetoric toward China: Slowing China’s rise, and building America’s ability to manufacture crucial goods, became central goals.So what’s true about China right now? Which of these narratives, if any, hold water? Dan Wang is the technology analyst at Gavekal Dragonomics and a visiting scholar at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center. He focuses particularly on the core vector of U.S.-China competition: technological innovation and manufacturing prowess. Each year, his annual letter about what China can do, and how it does it, is eagerly awaited by many in the United States who are trying to understand that nation’s rise. In 2020 and 2021, those letters were profoundly bullish on China. In 2022, his sentiments turned. And so I wanted to explore the various sides of the China story with him.Mentioned:“China’s Hidden Tech Revolution” by Dan Wang2020 Letter by Dan Wang2021 Letter by Dan Wang2022 Letter by Dan WangBook Recommendations:The Jesuits by Markus FriedrichLast and First Men by Olaf StapledonDisturbing the Universe by Freeman DysonThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Roge Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Efim Shapiro. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Pat McCusker and Kristina Samulewski.

In 1972, when Congress passed Title IX to tackle gender equity in education, men were 13 percentage points more likely to hold bachelor’s degrees than women; today women are 15 points more likely to do so than men. The median real hourly wage for working men is lower today than it was in the 1970s. And men account for almost three out of four “deaths of despair,” from overdose or suicide.These are just a sample of the array of dizzying statistics that suffuse Richard Reeves’s book “Of Boys and Men.” We’re used to thinking about gender inequality as a story of insufficient progress for women and girls. There’s a good reason for that: Men have dominated human societies for centuries, and myriad inequalities — from the gender pay gap to the dearth of female politicians and chief executives — persist to this day.But Reeves’s core argument is that there’s no way to fully understand inequality in America today without understanding the ways that men and boys — particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds — are falling behind.So I wanted to have Reeves on the show to take a closer look at the data on how men and boys are struggling and explore what can be done about it. We discuss how the current education system places boys at a disadvantage; why boys raised in poverty are less likely than girls to escape it; the fact that female students are twice as likely to study abroad and serve in the Peace Corps as their male peers; Reeves’s policy proposal to have boys start school a year later than girls; why so few men are entering professions like teaching, nursing and therapy — and what we can do about it; why so many boys look to figures like Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate for inspiration; what a better social “script” for masculinity might look like and more.Mentioned:"Gender Achievement Gaps in U.S. School Districts" by Sean F. Reardon, Erin M. Fahle, Demetra Kalogrides, Anne Podolsky and Rosalia C. Zarate"Redshirt the Boys" by Richard ReevesBook recommendations:"The Tenuous Attachments of Working-Class Men" by Kathryn Edin, Timothy Nelson, Andrew Cherlin and Robert FrancisCareer and Family by Claudia GoldinThe Life of Dad by Anna MachinThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Rogé Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Sonia Herrero. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Carol Sabouraud and Kristina Samulewski.

In the 2023 legislative session alone, Republican state legislators have introduced more than a hundred bills seeking to restrict transgender people’s freedoms, rights and health care access. To put that in perspective, in the 2018 legislative session, fewer than 20 such bills restricting transgender rights were proposed.Over the weekend, at the Conservative Political Action Conference, the commentator Michael Knowles said that “transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely.” These bills have many different aims and often conflicting rationales, but taken together, they reveal the Republican Party’s ambitions to do nothing less than what Knowles suggested.So what are these policies intended to do to the people they target? And why are there so many of them now?Gillian Branstetter is a communications strategist at the American Civil Liberties Union’s Women’s Rights Project and L.G.B.T.Q. and H.I.V. Project. She’s been tracking and studying this wave of legislation, and she guides me through it here. We discuss the attempt by Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas to classify some forms of gender-affirming care as child abuse, why the Republican Party has united around anti-trans policy, how North Carolina’s unsuccessful “bathroom bill” in 2016 transformed the modern right, what gender-affirming care actually is, how Ron DeSantis is trying to build his brand atop this fight, where one might find grounds for hope in trans politics today and much more.Mentioned:“Texas’ Attempt to Tear Parents and Trans Youth Apart, One Year Later” by Brian Klosterboer“What’s so scary about a transgender child?” by Emily St. James“They Paused Puberty, but Is There a Cost?” by Megan Twohey and Christina Jewett“G.O.P. State Lawmakers Push a Growing Wave of Anti-Transgender Bills” by Maggie AstorBook recommendations:Homintern by Gregory WoodsCaliban and the Witch by Silvia FedericiCan the Monster Speak? by Paul B. PreciadoThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Rogé Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Efim Shapiro. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Dr. Jason Rafferty, Lisa Black, Carole Sabouraud and Kristina Samulewski.

“Poetry is the attempt to understand fully what is real, what is present, what is imaginable, what is feelable, and how can I loosen the grip of what I already know to find some new, changed relationship,” the poet Jane Hirshfield tells me. Through poetry, she says, “I know something new and I have been changed.”Hirshfield is the award-winning author of many books of poetry and two illuminating essay collections about what poetry does to us and in the world: “Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry” and “Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World.” Her book “Ledger” is one I gift to people most often. Hirshfield’s true talent as a poet is her singular ability to imbue the ordinary, the invisible, the forgotten with a sense of majesty and wonder. Her work is littered with lines that force you to stop, to slow down, to notice what you might have missed or overlooked.Hirshfield’s work also raises some profound questions: What does it mean to grapple with our complicity in the climate crisis? Where does the self end and the rest of the world begin? How do we learn to desire what we previously dreaded or despised?This is one of those conversations that is hard to describe in words. But it was truly a delight for me to be a part of. And I think you’ll enjoy it too.Mentioned:The Iliad by HomerThe Odyssey by HomerGilgameshThe Beauty by Jane HirshfieldHow Emotions Are Made by Lisa Feldman BarrettFlow by Mihaly CsikszentmihalyiLiving with a Wild God by Barbara EhrenreichThe Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution by C.P. SnowBook recommendations:Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff and Mark JohnsonLess Than One by Joseph BrodskyThe Fire Next Time by James BaldwinThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Rogé Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Sonia Herrero. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Carol Sabouraud and Kristina Samulewski.

Our society’s dominant narrative is that body size is a product of individual willpower. We are skinny or fat because of the choices we make: the kinds of food we buy, the amounts we eat, the exercise regimens we follow.Research has never been kind to this thesis. It’s a folk narrative we use to punish people, not an empirical account of why residents of most rich countries are getting heavier over time. But, then, what account does fit the data?In his 2017 book, “The Hungry Brain,” Stephan Guyenet, a neurobiologist, argues that weight gain is less about willpower than it is the product of an evolutionary mismatch between our brains, our genetics and our environments. Now a new class of weight loss drugs is raising the possibility that we can change our brains to fit this new environment.Paired with diet and exercise, Ozempic and Wegovy caused anywhere from about a 15 percent to 18 percent loss of body weight over the course of just over a year in people classified as obese or overweight. And they do this in a way that aligns exactly with Guyenet’s research: They don’t make our bodies burn more calories, they make our brains crave less food.So I asked Guyenet on the show to talk me through his model of weight gain, the research on these new drugs and the strange implications of living with old brains in a new world.Mentioned:“Relationship between food habituation and reinforcing efficacy of food” by Katelyn A. Carr and Leonard H. Epstein“Dietary obesity in adult rats: Similarities to hypothalamic and human obesity syndromes” by Anthony Sclafani and Deleri Springer“Why Have Americans Become More Obese?” by David M. Cutler, Edward L. Glaeser andJesse M. Shapiro“Persistent metabolic adaptation 6 years after “The Biggest Loser” competition” by Erin Fothergill, Juen Guo, Lilian Howard et al.“The future of weight loss” by Stephan GuyenetUnder a White Sky by Elizabeth KolbertBook recommendations:Burn by Herman PontzerSalt Sugar Fat by Michael MossThe Secret of Our Success by Joseph HenrichThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Rogé Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Sonia Herrero. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Pat McCusker and Kristina Samulewski.

Adrian Tchaikovsky’s “Children of Time” is about an advanced civilization built by sentient spiders. A sequel, “Children of Ruin,” is about a society run by superintelligent octopuses. I love these books. They’re remarkably serious about their premises, and by the end, it’s human civilization and our limited sensorium that come to seem strange.But Tchaikovsky’s latest book, “Children of Memory,” ostensibly about crows, read as something very different to me: the best fictional representation I’ve read of what it is like to interact with, and perhaps even be, an artificial intelligence system like ChatGPT. It was a very strange read at this moment. And it made possible an episode I’ve been wanting to do for months.Long before we have to face the question of whether A.I. is sentient, we will have to face the question of whether it is creative, and that will turn into the question of whether we, truly, are creative. And so Tchaikovsky and I talk about whether there’s a meaningful difference between human creativity and A.I. problem solving, why he believes this is a “profoundly scary time” to be a writer or a designer, what an explosion of A.I.-produced content would mean for human society and the human spirit, whether the advancement of A.I. could exhaust avenues for human originality and much more.Mentioned:"Melancholy Elephants" by Spider RobinsonArrival, directed by Denis VilleneuveBook Recommendations:Soldier of the Mist by Gene WolfAfter Atlas by Emma NewmanBabel by R. F. KuangThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Rogé Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Mixing by Sonia Herrero. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Carol Sabouraud and Kristina Samulewski.

Physical pain is a universal human experience. And for many of us, it’s a constant one. Roughly 20 percent of American adults — some 50 million people — suffer from a form of chronic pain. For some, that means having terrible days from time to time. For others, it means a life of constant suffering. Either way, the depth and scale of pain in our society is a massive problem.But what if much of how we understand pain — and how to treat it — is wrong?Rachel Zoffness is a pain psychologist at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine and the author of “The Pain Management Workbook.” We tend to think of pain as a purely biomechanical phenomenon, a physical sensation rooted solely in the body. But her core argument is that pain is also produced by the mind and deeply influenced by social context. It’s a simple-sounding argument with vast implications not only for how we experience pain but also for how we treat it. She points to numerous underused tools — aside from pills and surgeries — that can help lessen our pain.We discuss how pain serves as “the body’s warning signal”; how our mood, stress levels and social environment can amplify or dial down our pain levels; what phantom limb syndrome says about how the brain “makes pain”; how our emotions and trauma influence our pain levels; the crucial difference between “hurt” and “harm”; why studies on back pain have yielded such bewildering results; how to figure out and improve your personal “pain recipe”; the roots of our chronic pain crisis; how our health care system could be better set up to treat chronic pain; why Zoffness says, “If the brain can change, pain can change”; and more.Mentioned:“Sham Surgery in Orthopedics” by Adriaan Louw, Ina Diener, César Fernández-de-las-Peñas and Emilio J. PuenteduraBook Recommendations:Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers by Robert M. SapolskyThe Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der KolkPain by Patrick WallThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Roge Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Sonia Herrero and Isaac Jones. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Carole Sabouraud and Kristina Samulewski.

In recent months, the story of the U.S. economy has changed significantly. The January Consumer Price Index showed that annual inflation slowed for the seventh straight month. That month, the economy also added over half a million jobs, and unemployment reached 3.4 percent, its lowest level since 1969. In light of these trends, comparisons to the 1970s stagflation crisis have weakened, and the possibility of a “soft landing” looks increasingly likely.But that doesn’t mean we’ve achieved victory. While the headline inflation numbers have looked promising, the devil is in the details. Answers to questions like how fast inflation has actually slowed, whether that slowdown will continue, how likely a future recession is, and how the Fed should act all next come down to which statistics and indicators you are looking at.So I decided to bring on the Times Opinion columnist and Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman to break down the data and what it says about inflation moving forward. We also discuss the debt ceiling crisis, why the Republican Party has failed to embrace a coherent economic agenda, whether the Biden administration’s industrial policy efforts could undermine its climate objectives, the 20th-century economics book that best explains why the United States has gotten so bad at building things, why Krugman — a longtime advocate of free trade — has come around to embrace greater protectionism, why he believes China’s economic ascendence is no longer inevitable, whether A.I. will replace huge numbers of white collar workers and more.Mentioned:“Recession, Inflation or Soft Landing in 2023?”by Free Expression“We’re Going to Miss Greed and Cynicism” by Paul KrugmanThe Rise and Decline of Nations by Mancur OlsonBook Recommendations:Slouching Towards Utopia by J. Bradford DeLongHow the War Was Won by Phillips Payson O’BrienNinth House by Leigh BardugoThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Rogé Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Rollin Hu, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Sonia Herrero. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Pat McCusker and Kristina Samulewski.

For most of us, seeing an advertisement pop up while we’re scrolling on Instagram or reading an article or watching a video is the most banal experience possible. But in the background of those experiences is a $500 billion marketplace where our attention is being bought, packaged and sold at split-second speeds virtually every minute of every day. Online advertising is the economic engine of the internet, and that engine is fueled by our attention.Tim Hwang is the former global public policy lead for A.I. and machine learning at Google and the author of the book “Subprime Attention Crisis: Advertising and the Time Bomb at the Heart of the Internet.” Hwang’s central argument is that everything about the internet — from the emphasis data collection to the use of the “like” button to the fact that services like Google Search and Facebook are free — flows from its core business model. But that business model is also in crisis. The internet is degrading the very resource — our collective attention — on which its financial survival depends. The resulting “subprime attention crisis” threatens upend the internet as we know it.So this conversation is about the economic logic that undergirds our entire experience of the internet, and how that logic is constantly warping, manipulating and shaping the most important resource we have — our attention. But it’s also about whether a very different kind of internet — build on a very different economic logic — is possible.Mentioned:“Does Quora Really Have All the Answers?” by Gary RivlinGoogle report: “5 Factors of Viewability”“Almost Impossible”Book Recommendations:Here Comes Everybody by Clay ShirkyThe Profiteers by Sally DentonJim Ravel’s Theatrical PickpocketingThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Roge Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Sonia Herrero. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Pat McCusker and Kristina Samulewski.

Reading Rick Rubin’s production discography is like taking a tour through the commanding heights of American music over the past few decades. Jay-Z. Run-DMC. Beastie Boys. Slayer. The Red Hot Chili Peppers. Johnny Cash. Kanye West. Neil Diamond. Brandi Carlile. Eminem. Adele. And it’s not just his production credits: Rubin co-founded Def Jam Recordings and was a co-chairman of Columbia Records. What’s allowed him to work with so many different kinds of artists, across such a stunning range of genres, so successfully?In his new book, “The Creative Act: A Way of Being,” Rubin turns his philosophy of creativity into a manual for living. It is not, to be honest, the book I was expecting. It is less about music than mind states: awareness, openness, discernment, attunement to nature, nonjudgmental listening, trust in your own taste. It is at once mystical and practical, alive to the tensions of creation but intent on holding them gently. I found it unexpectedly moving.We discuss how Rubin listens to new music, the importance of staying open to the natural world, the difficulty of appreciating art that’s different from what you already like, the rituals that artists like Carlos Santana have when recording, why minimalist composers like Steve Reich are just as “extreme” as heavy metal bands, how Rubin helped Johnny Cash strip down his sound and revive his career, what it takes to level up your taste, the difficulty and gifts of awareness, the relationship between speed and art, how streaming culture is changing our taste, the kind of music that makes Rubin stop and pay attention and oh so much more. This one’s a delight.Mentioned:The Tao Te-Ching by Lao Tzu, translated by Stephen MitchellAmerican Recordings by Johnny Cash"Pulses" by Steve Reich and Erik HallMusic for Wobbling. Music Versus Gravity. by F.S. Blumm and Nils FrahmAlbum Recommendations:Forever Changes by LoveThe Beatles by The BeatlesRamones by RamonesThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Rogé Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Mixing by Sonia Herrero. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Jon Caramanica, Dan Charnas, Jack Hamilton, Felix Grimm, Carole Sabouraud and Kristina Samulewski.

In my columns and on this show over the past few years, I’ve argued that to achieve the goals liberals hold most dear, we need a liberalism that builds. A liberalism that builds everything from multifamily housing and mass transit systems to transmission lines and solar farms. And we need a liberalism that can build it all quickly, cheaply and effectively. But even in the places where liberals have governing power, they are often failing to do exactly that. Why?Nicholas Bagley is a law professor at the University of Michigan, the former chief legal counsel to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and the author of a fascinating paper called “The Procedure Fetish.” In it, Bagley argues that liberals — liberal lawyers in particular — have helped hobble the very government they now need to act swiftly and decisively. It’s easy to see how conservatives have strategically used a thicket of procedures and paperwork to slow down government, but what Bagley shows is that liberals too have been complicit in that project — to the detriment of many of the very causes they hope to advance.So this is a conversation about what I’ve come to think of as the divided soul of American liberalism — one that simultaneously demands big government action while also constantly acting to restrain it. We also discuss the importance of the administrative state, what liberals often fail to understand about government legitimacy, how corporate interests end up “capturing” government agencies, why Bagley thinks that American politics broadly and the Democratic Party in particular have a “lawyer problem,” how government paralysis helps fuel the rise of right-wing populists like Donald Trump, what it will take to restore Americans’ trust in government, the problems with the public interest legal movement, how progressives are getting in the way of their own decarbonization agenda and more.Mentioned:“The Procedure Fetish” by Nicholas BagleyPresidents, Populism, and the Crisis of Democracy by William G. Howell and Terry M. Moe"There Has to Be a Better Way to Run the Government" by Ezra KleinBook Recommendations:Public Citizens by Paul SabinThe Fifth Risk by Michael LewisBabel by R.F. KuangThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Rogé Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Sonia Herrero. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Pat McCusker and Kristina Samulewski.

Ezra is out sick, so today, we’re sharing one of our favorite conversations — with Jenny Schuetz, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution whose 2022 book “Fixer Upper: How to Repair America’s Broken Housing Systems,”  is perhaps the best, clearest overview of America’s housing problems to date.In this conversation, recorded in July 2022, Schuetz breaks down the politics and policies that have contributed to America’s multiple housing crises — from housing shortages and high homelessness rates in major cities to the increasing elusiveness of homeownership for many young Americans. We discuss why the states with the highest homelessness rates are all governed by Democrats, the roots of America’s homelessness crisis, why economists believe the U.S. gross domestic product could be over a third — a third! — higher today if American cities had built more housing, why it’s so hard to build housing where it’s needed most, the actual (and often misunderstood) causes of gentrification, why public housing has such a bad reputation in the U.S.; how progressives’ commitment to local democracy and community voice surprisingly lies at the heart of America’s housing crises, why homeownership is still the primary vehicle of wealth accumulation in America (and the toxic impact that has on our politics), what the U.S. can learn from the housing policies of countries like Germany and France, what it would take to build a better politics of housing and much more.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker, Kate Sinclair and Rollin Hu; mixing by Sonia Herrero and Isaac Jones; original music by Isaac Jones; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

Ezra is out sick, so today, we're sharing an episode from the New York Times Opinion podcast, “First Person.” Each week, the host Lulu Garcia-Navarro sits down with people living through the headlines for intimate and surprising conversations that help us make sense of our complicated world. This episode features Maurice Mitchell, the head of the Working Families Party.Mitchell has been an organizer for two decades, working in progressive politics and the Movement for Black Lives. In recent years, he’s watched progressive organizations torn apart by internal battles in the wake of #MeToo and B.L.M. Now he is speaking out about how he sees purity politics and a misplaced focus on identity derailing the left.You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/column/first-person.The episode was produced by Wyatt Orme, with help from Derek Arthur. It was edited by Stephanie Joyce and Kaari Pitkin. Mixing by Sonia Herrero and Isaac Jones. Original music by Isaac Jones, Sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker and Carole Sabouraud. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. The rest of the “First Person” team includes Anabel Bacon, Olivia Natt, Rhiannon Corby, Sophia Alvarez Boyd, Derek Arthur and Jillian Weinberger. Special thanks to Kristina Samulewski, Shannon Busta, Allison Benedikt, Annie-Rose Strasser and Katie Kingsbury.

There are few issues on which the dominant consensus in Washington has changed as rapidly in recent years as it has on China. Donald Trump made taking on China a core pillar of his campaign and presidency. And while Joe Biden has toned down the harsh anti-China rhetoric of his predecessor, many of his administration’s policies have gone even further than Trump’s did.In October the Biden administration unveiled sweeping controls on advanced chip exports to China — a move that former Trump officials have described as a sharp break from where their administration’s policies were. And the Biden administration doesn’t intend on stopping there: It plans to roll out further controls that target China’s biotech and clean energy sectors.Meanwhile, Biden has repeatedly voiced such strong declarations of American military support for Taiwan that his own administration has had to walk them back. And, in Congress, China policy is one of the few areas Democrats and Republicans seem willing to work together — almost always in the direction of getting tougher on Beijing.Jessica Chen Weiss is a political scientist and China scholar at Cornell. From August 2021 to last July, she was a senior adviser in the Biden State Department. And she emerged from that experience as one of the most outspoken critics of Washington’s more hawkish turn regarding China. “The more combative approach, on both sides, has produced a mirroring dynamic,” Weiss wrote in a 2022 essay called “The China Trap.” She worries that Beijing and Washington are misreading each other’s ambitions, resulting in a “downward spiral” of mutual aggression that will leave both sides — and the world more broadly — less prosperous and secure.So I asked Weiss to come on the show to help me understand the state of U.S.-China relations and why she thinks it’s headed in the wrong direction.Mentioned:“The China Trap” by Jessica Chen Weiss“A World Safe for Autocracy?” by Jessica Chen WeissBook Recommendations:Seeking Truth and Hiding Facts by Jeremy L. WallaceOur Missing Hearts by Celeste NgSee No Stranger by Valarie KaurThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Rogé Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Pat McCusker and Kristina Samulewski.

There are few stories that are more crucial to the world’s future than what’s happening in China. Take any of the most important issues of our time — climate change, geopolitics, the global economy, advanced technologies — and China is at the center of them. American politics itself has increasingly come to revolve around competition with China.In other words, what happens in China doesn’t stay in China — it reverberates through the global economy, the American political system and the international order. And a lot is happening in China right now. In November, China experienced what many have called its most significant protests since Tiananmen Square in 1989. In response, Beijing loosened its “zero Covid” policy, demonstrating a level of public responsiveness that shocked many observers of the increasingly authoritarian regime. However, that policy shift also unleashed a huge wave of infections and hospitalizations that puts the country’s immediate future in question.Yuen Yuen Ang is a professor of political economy, a China scholar at Johns Hopkins University and the author of “China’s Gilded Age: The Paradox of Economic Boom and Vast Corruption.” Her basic argument is this: In order to understand what’s happening in China today (and what all of it could mean for its future) you need to first understand China’s unique, often misunderstood political system — one that Ang calls “autocracy with democratic characteristics.” Because we in the West are so fixated on how China selects its leaders, she argues, we’ve overlooked a more subtle but far more consequential revolution in how China is governed. That transformation of the Chinese political system is the deeper story behind both the country’s economic success — as well as its current troubles. And it provides an illuminating lens through which to view American politics as well.Mentioned:“An Era Just Ended in China” by Yuen Yuen Ang“The Problem With Zero” by Yuen Yuen Ang“The Procedure Fetish” by Nicholas BagleyBook Recommendations:From The Soil by Fei XiaotongFei Xiaotong and Sociology in Revolutionary China by R. David ArkushThe Fractalist by Benoit MandelbrotThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Rogé Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Kate Sinclair. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Jeff Geld. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Carole Sabouraud and Kristina Samulewski.

In recent weeks, America got a preview of how the new Republican House majority would wield its power. In attempting to perform a basic function of government — electing a speaker — a coalition of 20 House members caused Kevin McCarthy to lose 14 rounds of votes, decreasing his power with each compromise and successive vote.This is not normal. Party unity ebbs and flows, but the G.O.P. in recent decades has come apart at the seams. Nicole Hemmer is the director of the Carolyn T. and Robert M. Rogers Center for the American Presidency at Vanderbilt University, an associate professor of history and the author of two books about the conservative movement and media ecosystem, “Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics” and “Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s.” And she says we can’t understand the current G.O.P. without understanding when, where and how these dynamics began.We discuss why the Cold War bonded Republicans as a party, how the 1994 Republican congressional victory inaugurated a new era of intraparty fighting, how Rush Limbaugh’s rise created a new market for far-out ideas and new pressures on conservative politicians, why conservative media has had so much more sway than liberal media over grass-roots voters, how the business model of Fox News differs from that of MSNBC and what kinds of political ideas those businesses produce, how the G.O.P. is now caught between the pincers of the donor class and the grass roots, when the chief Republican enemy became the Democratic Party, why more moderate conservatives have become so weak and more.Mentioned:The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism by Theda Skocpol and Vanessa WilliamsonThe Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order by Gary GerstleAsymmetric Politics by Matt Grossman and David A. HopkinsRealigners by Timothy ShenkBook Recommendations:Fit Nation by Natalia Mehlman PetrzelaDreamland by Carly GoodmanFreedom’s Dominion by Jefferson CowieThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Rogé Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Kate Sinclair. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Jeff Geld. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Pat McCusker and Kristina Samulewski.

It’s hard to think of a more celebrated figure of the 20th century than Martin Luther King Jr.He has a national memorial in Washington, D.C. His birthday is one of just 11 federal holidays. And his words and legacy are routinely evoked by politicians of both major parties.But the paradox of King’s legacy is that while many revere him, very few actually read him. Most of us can cite a handful of his most famous quotes, but King’s actual teachings span five books, countless speeches and sermons, and years of detailed correspondence.There’s perhaps no scholar working today who studies Dr. King’s political philosophy as deeply as Brandon Terry. Terry is the John L. Loeb associate professor of social sciences at Harvard, where he specializes in Black political thought. He is the co-editor of “To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr.,” the editor of “Fifty Years Since MLK,” and the author of numerous popular and academic articles on King’s political thought. His work is committed to rescuing the nuances of Dr. King’s philosophies and forcing a confrontation with what King actually said and believed, rather than what he’s come to represent.In this conversation, we follow the commitment that animates much of Terry’s work: to take King seriously as a philosopher, rather than as purely a political actor. And it turns out that King understood a lot about politics that we’ve lost sight of today. We discuss why a “romantic narrative” of the civil rights era stops us from taking King seriously as a philosopher; the true radicalism of King’s nonviolent philosophy; King’s complex views on the relationship between race and class; how King wrestled with the demands of “respectability politics”; King’s wide-ranging economic views, including the idea that the economy should be subservient to the community (and not the other way around); King’s enthusiasm for tenant unions and welfare rights unions as critical democratic inventions; whether the state should embrace the same nonviolence it often demands of protesters; the roots of King’s opposition to the war in Vietnam; whether we’ve lost the ability to grapple with “virtue” in politics today; and more.Mentioned:“Imagining the nonviolent state” by Ezra Klein“Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence” by Martin Luther King Jr.From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime by Elizabeth Hinton“Rethinking the Problem of Alliance: Organized Labor and Black Political Life” by Brandon M. Terry and Jason LeeThe Truly Disadvantaged by William Julius WilsonBook recommendations:Where Do We Go From Here by Martin Luther King Jr.The Trumpet of Conscience by Martin Luther King Jr.The Sword and the Shield by Peniel E. JosephA More Beautiful and Terrible History by Jeanne TheoharisDark Ghettos by Tommie ShelbyThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Rogé Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Rollin Hu. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Jeff Geld. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

“Capitalism, it turns out, is more than just the exchange of goods in a market economy,” Katharina Pistor writes. “It is a market economy in which some assets are placed on legal steroids.”Pistor is a professor of comparative law at Columbia Law School, the director of the Center on Global Legal Transformation at Columbia University and the author of “The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality.” In the book, Pistor argues that economic value isn’t just captured by markets; it is created by the legal system. An asset like a piece of land or a machine has some intrinsic value. But it is only when you graft legal attributes onto those assets — backed by the coercive power of the state — that they are transformed into wealth-generating capital.Pistor’s theory has sweeping implications for some of the most fundamental economic questions of our time: How is wealth actually created? Why does our current economic system produce such huge inequalities? What causes financial crises? In Pistor’s telling, you can’t begin to answer such questions without understanding the legal foundation that our economy is built on.This is a conversation that delves into the deepest layer of our economic system — one that shapes all of our lives even as it remains largely invisible. We discuss the four legal attributes that transform an ordinary asset into a wealth-generating device, how the law creates corporations and financial instruments out of thin air, the “feudal calculus” that underpins our modern economy, why focusing solely on wealth redistribution will never be sufficient to solve economic inequality, how private lawyers — operating outside democratic institutions — end up shaping the rules of our economic system, the “law and finance paradox” that explains why financial crises happen, how legal manipulation has eroded the “social contract” of capitalism, whether the law can work as a tool to help fight climate change and more.Mentioned:“A Legal Theory of Finance” by Katharina PistorBook Recommendations:Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas PikettyCrashed by Adam ToozeAges of American Capitalism by Jonathan LevyThis episode is guest-hosted by Rogé Karma, the senior editor for “The Ezra Klein Show.” Rogé has been with the show since July 2019, when it was based at Vox. He works closely with Ezra on everything related to the show, from editing to interview prep to guest selection. At Vox, he also wrote and conducted interviews on topics ranging from policing and racial justice to democracy reform and the coronavirus.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Kristin Lin and Rogé Karma. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Mary Marge Locker. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Jeff Geld and Sonia Herrero. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

Even if you don’t recognize the advice columnist Dan Savage by name, it’s possible that his ideas have influenced how you think about sex and relationships. For decades now, Savage has been arguing that our expectations for long-term partnerships are way too high; that healthy relationships are about acknowledging our vast spectrum of desires, not repressing them; and that monogamy is not the ideal setup for every partnership. Through over 30 years of writing “Savage Love,” one of the most widely read sex advice columns in the country, and more than 17 years of hosting the podcast “Savage Lovecast,” he has been one of America’s most subtly influential public intellectuals on the topic of how humans conduct our most intimate — and important — relationships.In the past half-century or so, America’s culture around sex, dating and relationships has undergone a profound transformation. Women are no longer confined to roles as wives and mothers, same-sex marriage is legal, hookup culture has changed the way young people enter the dating world, and there has been a growing interest in less traditional approaches to relationships, like polyamory and ethical nonmonogamy. These transformations have ushered in a lot of new freedoms but also a lot of new anxieties and frustrations. So I wanted to bring Savage on the show to talk through how we navigate this complicated, messy moment in our relational and sexual lives.We discuss how America’s relationship culture has changed in the past 30 years, why the myth of finding “the one” can be so damaging, what dating apps are (and aren’t) good for, how to give more grace to our partners when they do not meet our expectations, why so many feminist writers are re-evaluating the legacy of the sexual revolution, how gay sexual cultures have influenced straight dating life, why we’ve had a “sexual revolution” but not a concomitant “relationship revolution,” what Savage makes of the statistic that 18 percent of people have had sexual experiences outside their primary relationships without their partners’ consent, the advantages and risks of experimenting with nonmonogamy, what better sex education for young people should look like, why marriages between two men seem to end less frequently than heterosexual marriages do and more.This episode contains strong language.Mentioned:YouGov poll on Monogamy and Polyamory“Can We Change Our Sexual Desires? Should We?” with Amia Srinivasan on The Ezra Klein Show“Let’s Talk About the Anxiety Freedom Can Cause” with Maggie Nelson on The Ezra Klein Show“Sex, Abortion and Feminism, as Seen From the Right” with Erika Bachiochi on The Ezra Klein ShowDan Savage and Esther Perel on “Love, Marriage & Monogamy”Screaming on the Inside by Jessica Grose“What Does the ‘Post-Liberal Right’ Actually Want?” with Patrick Deneen on The Ezra Klein ShowBook Recommendations:The Ethical Slut by Janet W. Hardy and Dossie EastonBerlin Diary by William L. ShirerA Royal Affair by Stella TillyardThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Rogé Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Jeff Geld and Sonia Herrero. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Pat McCusker.

The year 2022 was jam-packed with advances in artificial intelligence, from the release of image generators like DALL-E 2 and text generators like Cicero to a flurry of developments in the self-driving car industry. And then, on November 30, OpenAI released ChatGPT, arguably the smartest, funniest, most humanlike chatbot to date.In the weeks since, ChatGPT has become an internet sensation. If you’ve spent any time on social media recently, you’ve probably seen screenshots of it describing Karl Marx’s theory of surplus value in the style of a Taylor Swift song or explaining how to remove a sandwich from a VCR in the style of the King James Bible. There are hundreds of examples like that.But amid all the hype, I wanted to give voice to skepticism: What is ChatGPT actually doing? Is this system really as “intelligent” as it can sometimes appear? And what are the implications of unleashing this kind of technology at scale?Gary Marcus is an emeritus professor of psychology and neural science at N.Y.U. who has become one of the leading voices of A.I. skepticism. He’s not “anti-A.I.”; in fact, he’s founded multiple A.I. companies himself. But Marcus is deeply worried about the direction current A.I. research is headed, and even calls the release of ChatGPT A.I.’s “Jurassic Park moment.” “Because such systems contain literally no mechanisms for checking the truth of what they say,” Marcus writes, “they can easily be automated to generate misinformation at unprecedented scale.”However, Marcus also believes that there’s a better way forward. In the 2019 book “Rebooting A.I.: Building Artificial Intelligence We Can Trust” Marcus and his co-author Ernest Davis outline a path to A.I. development built on a very different understanding of what intelligence is and the kinds of systems required to develop that intelligence. And so I asked Marcus on the show to unpack his critique of current A.I. systems and what it would look like to develop better ones.This episode contains strong language.Mentioned:“On Bullshit” by Harry Frankfurt“AI’s Jurassic Park moment” by Gary Marcus“Deep Learning Is Hitting a Wall” by Gary MarcusBook Recommendations:The Language Instinct by Steven PinkerHow the World Really Works by Vaclav SmilThe Martian by Andy WeirThoughts? Email us at [email protected]. Guest suggestions? Fill out this form.You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Rogé Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Jeff Geld and Sonia Herrero. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

Do we know how to truly rest? Who would we be if we did?I’ve been wrestling with these questions since I read Abraham Joshua Heschel’s stunning book “The Sabbath” in college. The ancient Jewish ritual of the Sabbath reserves a full day per week for rest. As it’s commonly practiced, that means about 25 hours every week of no work, very little technology and plenty of in-person gathering.But the Sabbath is a much more radical approach to rest than a simple respite from work and technology. Implicit in the practice of the Sabbath is a stinging critique of the speed at which we live our lives, the ways we choose to spend our time and how we think about the idea of rest itself. That, at least, is a central argument of Judith Shulevitz’s wonderful book, “The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time.”Shulevitz is a longtime culture critic and currently a contributing writer for The Atlantic. Her book isn’t just about the Sabbath itself, it’s about the world the Sabbath tries to create: one with an entirely different conception of time, morality, rest and community. It’s the kind of world that is wholly different from our own, and one whose wisdom is urgently needed.So, to kick off the new year, I invited Shulevitz on the show to explore what the Sabbath is, the value system embedded within it and what lessons it holds for our lives. I left the conversation feeling awed by how such an ancient practice can feel simultaneously so radical and yet so incredibly urgent.Mentioned:The Sabbath by Abraham Joshua HeschelI and Thou by Martin BuberBook Recommendations:Adam Bede by George EliotThe Seven Day Circle by Eviatar ZerubavelOn the Clock by Emily GuendelsbergerThoughts? Email us at [email protected]. Guest suggestions? Fill out this form.You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Rogé Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Jeff Geld. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Pat McCusker.

​​“One of the biggest things about poetry is that it holds all of humanity,” the poet Ada Limón tells me. “It holds the huge and enormous and tumbling sphere of human emotions.”At the end of a turbulent year, we thought revisiting this May 2022 conversation with Limón would be fitting. Just months after our conversation, Limón was named U.S. poet laureate.Limón’s work is a salve for all that the world faces: her books of poetry are filled with meditations on grief and infertility, as well as striking moments of insight about friendship, lust and our fellowship with animals. Her most recent book, “The Hurting Kind,” explores what it means to share the planet with nonhuman beings like birds and trees. Limón describes the marvels of Kentucky’s rural landscape and the dusky beauty of a New York City bar with equal care. Her writing is highly acclaimed by fellow poets and also delightfully accessible to those who have never before picked up a book of poetry.Limón is a lively reader of her own poetry, so to structure this conversation, I asked her to read a varied selection of her work. We use those readings to discuss what poetry gives us that the news doesn’t, the importance of slowing down in a world that demands speed, how the grief of infertility differs from that of losing a loved one, how to be “in community” with ancestors and animals in lonely times, why Limón loves “chatty” and humorous poems as much as serious ones, why we often have our best thoughts in cars and on planes, how Instagram and Twitter affect our relationship to the world, why Limón meditates every day, how our relationship to excitement changes as we age and more.Book Recommendations:Stones by Kevin YoungFrank: Sonnets by Diane SeussPostcolonial Love Poem by Natalie DiazThoughts? Email us at [email protected]. Guest suggestions? Fill out this form.You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Haylee Millikan; original music by Isaac Jones and Jeff Geld; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin, Kristina Samulewski, Rebecca Elise Foote and Jahan Ramazani.

This week, we’re revisiting some of our favorite episodes from the year. For those who make New Year’s resolutions, today’s conversation might plant the seed for a bold one: Running for office.Amanda Litman is a co-founder of Run for Something, which recruits and supports young, progressive candidates who want to run for office. We spoke in February 2022, but our conversation remains relevant as ever. It’s about the mechanics of American democracy, the confusions and myths that keep so many of us from participating in them and the practical question of what it means to step off the sidelines and, well, run for something. We also talk about why Democrats tend to chase “shiny objects” over real political power, what right-leaning organizations have been up to that liberals should envy, how you probably have more control over issues like abortion and climate change than you think, what it actually takes to run a local campaign, the three questions prospective candidates should be able to answer, and more.This is the rare conversation about democracy that left me feeling better, rather than worse, about what’s possible. I think it’ll do the same for you.This episode contains strong language.Mentioned:“Heeding Steve Bannon’s Call, Election Deniers Organize to Seize Control of the GOP — and Reshape America’s Elections” by Isaac Arnsdorf, Doug Bock Clark, Alexandra Berzon and Anjeanette DamonWhat It Takes by Richard Ben CramerFind out what elected offices you can run forBook recommendations:The Heart Principle by Helen HoangOlga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl GonzalezLet’s Get Physical by Danielle FriedmanThoughts? Email us at [email protected]. Guest suggestions? Fill out this form.You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

This past year, we’ve witnessed considerable progress in the development of artificial intelligence, from the release of the image generators like DALL-E 2 to chat bots like ChatGPT and Cicero to a flurry of self-driving cars. So this week, we’re revisiting some of our favorite conversations about the rise of A.I. and what it means for the world. Today’s conversation is with Sam Altman. He’s the C.E.O. of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. When I talked to him in June 2021, ChatGPT was still over a year away from being available to the public for testing. But the A.I. developments since then have only increased the salience of the questions Altman raised in his 2021 essay “Moore’s Law for Everything.” Altman’ argument is this: Since the 1970s, computers have gotten exponentially better even as they’re gotten cheaper, a phenomenon known as Moore’s Law. Altman believes that A.I. could get us closer to Moore’s Law for everything: it could make everything better even as it makes it cheaper. Housing, health care, education, you name it. But what struck me about his essay is that last clause: “if we as a society manage it responsibly.” Because, as Altman also admits, if he is right then A.I. will generate phenomenal wealth largely by destroying countless jobs — that’s a big part of how everything gets cheaper — and shifting huge amounts of wealth from labor to capital. And whether that world becomes a post-scarcity utopia or a feudal dystopia hinges on how wealth, power and dignity are then distributed — it hinges, in other words, on politics.Mentioned: “Moore’s Law for Everything” by Sam AltmanRecommendations: Crystal Nights by Greg EganThe Last Question by Isaac AsimovThe Gentle Seduction by Marc Stiegler“Meditations on Moloch” by Scott Alexander Thoughts? Email us at [email protected]. Guest suggestions? Fill out this form.You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

This past year, we’ve witnessed considerable progress in the development of artificial intelligence, from the release of the image generators like DALL-E 2 to chat bots like ChatGPT and Cicero to a flurry of self-driving cars. So this week, we’re revisiting some of our favorite conversations about the rise of A.I. and what it means for the world. Brian Christian’s “The Alignment Problem” is the best book on the key technical and moral questions of A.I. that I’ve read. At its center is the term from which the book gets its name. “Alignment problem” originated in economics as a way to describe the fact that the systems and incentives we create often fail to align with our goals. And that’s a central worry with A.I., too: that we will create something to help us that will instead harm us, in part because we didn’t understand how it really worked or what we had actually asked it to do.So this conversation, originally recorded in June 2021 is about the various alignment problems associated with A.I. We discuss what machine learning is and how it works, how governments and corporations are using it right now, what it has taught us about human learning, the ethics of how humans should treat sentient robots, the all-important question of how A.I. developers plan to make profits, what kinds of regulatory structures are possible when we’re dealing with algorithms we don’t really understand, the way A.I. reflects and then supercharges the inequities that exist in our society, the saddest Super Mario Bros. game I’ve ever heard of, why the problem of automation isn’t so much job loss as dignity loss and much more.Mentioned: “Human-level control through deep reinforcement learning”“Some Moral and Technical Consequences of Automation” by Norbert WienerRecommendations: "What to Expect When You're Expecting Robots"  by Julie Shah and Laura Major"Finite and Infinite Games" by James P. Carse "How to Do Nothing" by Jenny OdellThoughts? Email us at [email protected]. Guest suggestions? Fill out this form.You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

As 2022 comes to a close, we decided to invite listeners to send in questions for an ask-me-anything episode. And boy, did you all deliver. We received hundreds of fantastic questions, and my column editor, Aaron Retica, joined me to ask some of them. Is equality of opportunity preferable to equality of outcomes? What would a better version of Twitter look like? Are Republicans more politically savvy than Democrats? What do recent advances in artificial intelligence mean for the future of our society?We also discuss why I think ChatGPT is simultaneously overhyped and deeply unnerving, whether Joe Manchin’s policy obstructionism helped Democrats at the midterms, the death of the expanded child tax credit, why I’m more bullish than ever on eliminating the filibuster, whether Mitch McConnell is actually the strategic mastermind that liberals portray him as, why I’m skeptical of Twitter as a tool for social justice, whether the advent of social media has actually made our lives better in any measurable way and more. And we end with my New Year’s resolution practices and a whole bunch of music and children’s books recommendations.Note: “The Ezra Klein Show” will be taking a break during the holidays, but we will be back with new episodes starting on Jan. 3, 2023.Mentioned:Share your guest suggestions here“The case against equality of opportunity” by Dylan Matthews“The Senate Has Become a Dadaist Nightmare” by Ezra Klein“The Time Tax” by Annie LowreyThe Sabbath by Abraham Joshua HeschelThe Sabbath World by Judith ShulevitzMusic Recommendations:PlaylistChildren’s Book Recommendations:Happy Birthday to You! by Dr. SeussThe Rabbit Listened by Cori DoerrfeldHere We Are by Oliver JeffersThe Pout-Pout Fish by Deborah DiesenThoughts? Email us at [email protected]. Guest suggestions? Fill out this form.You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Rogé Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Jeff Geld. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that “clock time” runs our lives. From the moment our alarms go off in the morning, the clock reigns supreme: our meetings, our appointments, even our social plans are often timed down to the minute. We even measure the quality of our lives with reference to time, often lamenting that time seems to “fly by” when we’re having fun and “drags on” when we’re bored or stagnant. We rarely stop to think about time, but that’s precisely because there are few forces more omnipresent in our lives.“You are the best time machine that has ever been built,” Dean Buonomano writes in his book “Your Brain Is a Time Machine: The Neuroscience and Physics of Time.” Buonomano is a professor of neurobiology and psychology at U.C.L.A. who studies the relationship between time and the human brain. His book tackles the most profound questions about time that affect all of our lives: Why do we feel it so differently at different points in our lives? What do we miss if we live so rigidly bound to the demands of our clocks and appointments? Why during strange periods like pandemic lockdowns do we feel “lost in time”? And what if — as some physicists believe — the future may already exist, with grave implications for our ability to act meaningfully in the present?We discuss what time would be in an empty universe without humans, why humans have not evolved to understand time the way we understand space, how our ability to predict the future differs from animals’, why time during the Covid lockdowns felt so bizarre, why scientists think time “flies” when we’re having fun but slows down when people experience near-death accidents, what humans lost when we invented very precise clocks, why some physicists believe the future is already determined for us and what that would mean for our ethical behavior, why we’re so bad at saving money, what steps we could take to feel as if we’re living longer in time, why it’s so hard — but ultimately possible — to live in the present moment and more.Mentioned:Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes by Daniel L. EverettBook Recommendations:Noise by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony and Cass R. SunsteinWhen We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin LabatutThe Age of A.I. by Henry A. Kissinger, Eric Schmidt and Daniel HuttenlocherThoughts? Email us at [email protected]. (And if you’re reaching out to recommend a guest, please write  “Guest Suggestion” in the subject line.)You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Rogé Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Kate Sinclair. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Jeff Geld and Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta.

“From the U.S. Federal Reserve’s initial misjudgment that inflation would be ‘transitory’ to the current consensus that a probable U.S. recession will be ‘short and shallow,’ there has been a strong tendency to see economic challenges as both temporary and quickly reversible,” writes the economist Mohamed El-Erian. “But rather than one more turn of the economic wheel, the world may be experiencing major structural and secular changes that will outlast the current business cycle.”There are few people who understand financial markets or central banking as deeply as El-Erian. He is the chief economic adviser at Allianz, the president of Queens’ College, Cambridge, and the author of multiple books, including, most recently, “The Only Game in Town: Central Banks, Instability and Recovering From Another Collapse.” Until 2014, he was the C.E.O. of PIMCO — which under his leadership was the largest bond manager in the world.In recent years, markets have been roiled by significant shocks — from a global pandemic that snarled supply chains and disrupted labor markets to a Russian invasion of Ukraine that sent global commodities markets into a tailspin. But El-Erian believes we’re also witnessing a deeper structural shift in the very nature of the global economy. Economic policymakers today are trying to bring the economy back to that of 2019, but in El-Erian’s view, there is no going back. We’ve entered a new era that demands a different kind of response.So I invited El-Erian on the show to help me understand the economic era he thinks we’re entering and how policymakers can respond. We discuss whether the United States is experiencing a permanent decline in labor force participation, why modern supply chains could continue to experience difficulties well beyond the pandemic, how changing U.S.-China relations could unleash inflationary pressures throughout the world, how the Fed’s efforts to stabilize financial markets may have ironically opened the door to the financial collapse, why El-Erian believes a decade-plus of easy money was a colossal mistake, what lessons developing countries learned from the 2008 financial crisis, the parts of the global financial system most at risk of melting down today, El-Erian’s scathing critique of the Fed’s communication strategy and more.Mentioned:“Not Just Another Recession” by Mohamed El-ErianThe Only Game in Town by Mohamed El-ErianBook Recommendations:Invisible Women by Caroline Criado PerezBad Blood by John CarreyrouThe World For Sale by Javier Blas and Jack FarchyThoughts? Email us at [email protected]. (And if you’re reaching out to recommend a guest, please write  “Guest Suggestion” in the subject line.)You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Rogé Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Mary Marge Locker. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Jeff Geld. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta.

Since 2021, Democrats have controlled the House, the Senate and the presidency, and they’ve used that power to pass consequential legislation, from the American Rescue Plan to the Inflation Reduction Act. That state of affairs was exceptional: In the 50 years between 1970 and 2020, the U.S. House, Senate and presidency were only under unified party control for 14 years. Divided government has become the norm in American politics. And since Republicans won back the House in November, it is about to become the reality once again.But that doesn’t mean policymaking is going to stop — far from it. As America’s national politics have become more and more gridlocked in recent decades, many consequential policy decisions have been increasingly pushed down to the state level. The ability to receive a legal abortion or use recreational marijuana; how easy it is to join a union, purchase a firearm or vote in elections; the tax rates we pay and the kind of health insurance we have access to: These decisions are being determined at the state level to an extent not seen since before the civil rights revolution of the mid-twentieth century.Jake Grumbach is a political scientist at the University of Washington and the author of the book “Laboratories Against Democracy: How National Parties Transformed State Politics.” In it, Grumbach tracks this shift in policymaking to the states and explores its implications for American politics. Our national mythologies present state government as less polarizing, more accountable to voters and a hedge against anti-democratic forces amassing too much power. But, as Grumbach shows, in an era of national political media, parties and identities, the truth is a lot more complicated.So this conversation is a guide to the level of government that we tend to pay the least attention to, even as it shapes our lives more than any other.Mentioned:Dynamic Democracy by Devin Caughey and Christopher Warshaw“Does money have a conservative bias? Estimating the causal impact of Citizens United on state legislative preferences” by Anna Harvey and Taylor MattiaState Capture by Alex Hertel-Fernandez“From the Bargaining Table to the Ballot Box” by James Feigenbaum, Alexander Hertel-Fernandez and Vanessa WilliamsonPaths Out of Dixie by Robert Mickey“Old Money: Campaign Finance and Gerontocracy in the United States” by Adam Bonica and Jake GrumbachBook Recommendations:Fragmented Democracy by Jamila MichenerPrivate Government by Elizabeth AndersonDilla Time by Dan CharnasThoughts? Email us at [email protected]. (And if you’re reaching out to recommend a guest, please write  “Guest Suggestion” in the subject line.)You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Rogé Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Kate Sinclair. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Jeff Geld. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta.

Republicans already hold tremendous power in America. They have appointed six of the nine current Supreme Court justices. They have more state trifectas (control of both legislative houses, as well as the governor’s seat) than Democrats. And come 2023, they will also control the House of Representatives.But there’s a hollowness at the core of the modern G.O.P. It’s hard to identify any clear party leader, coherent policy agenda or concerted electoral strategy. The party didn’t bother putting forward a policy platform before the 2020 election or articulating an alternative policy vision in 2022. It has hardly reckoned with its under-performances in the 2018, 2020, and 2022 elections. At this point, it’s unclear whether there’s any real party structure — or substrate of ideas — left at all.All of which raises the question: What exactly is the Republican Party at this point? What does it believe? What does it want to achieve? Whose lead does it follow? Those questions will need to be answered somehow over the next two years, as Republican politicians compete for their party’s nomination for the 2024 presidential election and Republican House members wield the power of their new majority.Michael Brendan Dougherty is a senior writer at National Review and a nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. We disagree on plenty, but I find him to be one of the sharpest observers of the contemporary Republican Party. So I invited him on the show for an inside-the-tent conversation on the chaotic state of the current G.O.P. and the choices it will have to make over the next two years.We discuss how the party is processing the 2022 midterms, why Dougherty thinks Donald Trump has a very good chance of winning the Republican nomination again in 2024, whether the G.O.P. leadership actually understands its own voters, how Ron DeSantis rose to become one of the party’s leading 2024 contenders, whether DeSantis — and the G.O.P. more broadly — actually have an economic agenda at this point, why Trump’s greatest strength in 2024 could be the economy he presided over in 2018 and 2019, why Dougherty doesn’t think Trump’s political appeal is transferable to anyone else in the Republican Party, what kind of House speaker Kevin McCarthy might be, which Republicans — other than Trump and DeSantis — to watch out for, and more.Mentioned:“The Question for DeSantis” by Michael Brendan DoughertyBook Recommendations:The German War by Nicholas StargardtThe Demon in Democracy by Ryszard LegutkoThe Face of God by Roger ScrutonThoughts? Email us at [email protected]. (And if you’re reaching out to recommend a guest, please write  “Guest Suggestion” in the subject line.)You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Rogé Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker, and Kate Sinclair. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Jeff Geld. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta.

About 50 years ago, beef cost more than $7 a pound in today’s dollars. Today, despite high inflation, beef is down to about $4.80 a pound, and chicken is just around $1.80 a pound. But those low prices hide the true costs of the meat we consume — costs that the meat and poultry industries have quietly offloaded onto not only the animals we consume but us humans, too.Animal agriculture is responsible for at least 14.5 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions, with some estimates as high as 28 percent. It uses half the earth’s habitable land. Factory farms pose huge threats as potential sources of antibiotic resistance and future pandemics. And the current meat production system loads farmers with often insurmountable levels of debt. Our meat may look cheap at the grocery store, but we are all picking up the tab in ways we’re often starkly unaware of.Leah Garcés is the chief executive and president of Mercy for Animals and the author of “Grilled: Turning Adversaries Into Allies to Change the Chicken Industry.” Few animal rights activists have her breadth of experience: For years, she’s been steeped in the experiences of farmers who raise animals, communities that live alongside industrial animal operations and, of course, the farmed animals that live shorter and more miserable lives. So I invited her on the show for a conversation about what meat really costs and how that perspective could help us build a healthier relationship to the animals we eat and the world we inhabit.We discuss what it’s like to live next to a hog farm, factory farming’s role in growing antibiotic resistance, how the current system of contract farming saddles individual farmers with debt, the lengths the U.S. government — and taxpayers — goes to to subsidize industrial animal farming, the possibility that the next pandemic will emerge from a crowded factory farm, how high costs — like deforestation in the Amazon — are hidden from consumers at the grocery store, the challenge of helping children make sense of routinized cruelty, whether regenerative agriculture can help undo the damage done by industrial animal farming, the historic animal welfare case currently in front of the Supreme Court and more.Mentioned:Mercy for Animals“Sen. Cory Booker has a plan to stop taxpayer bailouts of Big Meat” by Marina Bolotnikova and Kenny TorrellaBook Recommendations:Wastelands by Corban AddisonMeatonomics by David Robinson SimonAnimal Machines by Ruth HarrisonThoughts? Email us at [email protected]. (And if you’re reaching out to recommend a guest, please write  “Guest Suggestion” in the subject line.)You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Jeff Geld, Sonia Herrero, and Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin, Kristina Samulewski, Leah Douglas and Evi Steyer.

Every day, we consume a mind-boggling amount of information. We scan online news articles, sift through text messages and emails, scroll through our social-media feeds — and that’s usually before we even get out of bed in the morning. In 2009, a team of researchers found that the average American consumed about 34 gigabytes of information a day. Undoubtedly, that number would be even higher today.But what are we actually getting from this huge influx of information? How is it affecting our memories, our attention spans, our ability to think? What might this mean for today’s children, and future generations? And what does it take to read — and think — deeply in a world so flooded with constant input?Maryanne Wolf is a researcher and scholar at U.C.L.A.’s School of Education and Information Studies. Her books “Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain” and “Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World” explore the relationship between the process of reading and the neuroscience of the brain. And, in Wolfe’s view, our era of information overload represents a historical inflection point where our ability to read — truly, deeply read, not just scan or scroll — hangs in the balance.We discuss why reading is a fundamentally “unnatural” act, how scanning and scrolling differ from “deep reading,” why it’s not accurate to say that “reading” is just one thing, how our brains process information differently when we’re reading on a Kindle or a laptop as opposed to a physical book, how exposure to such an abundance of information is rewiring our brains and reshaping our society, how to rediscover the lost art of reading books deeply, what Wolf recommends to those of us who struggle against digital distractions, what parents can do to to protect their children’s attention, how Wolf’s theory of a “biliterate brain” may save our species’ ability to deeply process language and information and more.Mentioned:The Glass Bead Game (Magister Ludi) by Hermann HesseHow We Read Now by Naomi S. BaronThe Shallows by Nicholas CarrYirumaBook Recommendations:The Gilead Novels by Marilynne RobinsonWorld and Town by Gish JenStanding by Words by Wendell BerryLove’s Mind by John S. DunneMiddlemarch by George EliotThoughts? Email us at [email protected]. (And if you’re reaching out to recommend a guest, please write  “Guest Suggestion” in the subject line.)You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.

The fight against climate change is at a crossroads.This past year, the climate movement in the United States achieved significant success. The recently passed Inflation Reduction Act represents the single largest investment in emissions reduction in U.S. history. More than a dozen states have taken some form of climate action in 2022 alone. Earlier this year, California — which, if it were a country, would have the fifth largest economy in the world — approved a record $54 billion in climate spending alongside sweeping new restrictions on fossil fuel development. These investments coincide with a wave of technological transformation: Over the past decade, the cost of solar energy has declined around 90 percent and that of onshore wind around 70 percent, making these energy sources economically competitive with fossil fuels for the first time.“The new numbers turn the economic logic we’re used to upside down,” writes the climate activist and journalist Bill McKibben. To him, the import of this moment is clear: For the first time, McKibben argues, humanity has at our fingertips the tools needed to end humanity’s millenniums-long dependence on burning things for energy — and to save our climate in the process.To those familiar with the climate movement, McKibben is a familiar name. His book “The End of Nature” has been compared to Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” in terms of its impact on the climate movement. He’s founded organizations like Third Act and 350.org, the latter of which is among the largest climate activist organizations in the world today. He was a key leader in the fight to block the Keystone XL pipeline. And he currently writes the influential newsletter “The Crucial Years.” Ask anyone in the climate movement today about their inspirations and McKibben will almost certainly top the list.But in McKibben’s telling, the climate movement’s successes in getting us to this point actually require it to change. A movement founded on blocking bad things from happening now needs to turn to building at intensified speed; a movement that has long fought to preserve the natural world now has to help usher in a wholesale transformation of the global landscape; a movement that has long been critical of capitalism and economic growth now has to align itself with those forces in order to achieve its ends.Those shifts will require new tactics, new animating ideas, new motivations and new priorities — with the future of the climate hanging in the balance. So I wanted to have McKibben on the show to talk about this dawning era of the climate fight we’re entering, and what changes the movement will have to make to meet this moment.Mentioned:“The Single Best Guide to Decarbonization I’ve Heard” by The Ezra Klein ShowBook Recommendations:New York 2140 by Kim Stanley RobinsonOrwell’s Roses by Rebecca SolnitHow It Went by Wendell BerryThoughts? Email us at [email protected]. (And if you’re reaching out to recommend a guest, please write  “Guest Suggestion” in the subject line.)You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.

The results of Tuesday’s midterm elections are still trickling in, but the broader story is clear: The red wave that many anticipated never materialized. Republicans gained 54 House seats against Bill Clinton in 1994 and 63 seats against Barack Obama in 2010. It doesn’t look as though the G.O.P. will secure anything close to that in 2022, and Democrats could retain their narrow control of the Senate — all against the backdrop of raging inflation and low approval ratings for President Biden.Why didn’t Democrats get wiped out? Why did so many Republicans underperform while others, like Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, won decisively? And what does it all imply for 2024?To talk through the midterm results and their implications, I am joined by my column’s editor, Aaron Retica. We discuss why this election ended up being so shockingly close; how Democrats’ performance could, paradoxically, make it harder for Biden to win in 2024; why the significance of DeSantis’s victory is probably being overhyped; why inflation didn’t seem to matter nearly as much to the elections’ outcomes as most analysts believed it would; how a possible DeSantis-Donald Trump fight in the 2024 Republican primaries could create electoral space for more traditional Republicans to break through; John Fetterman’s distinct working-class appeal in Pennsylvania, the moral calculus of Democrats’ decision to bolster extreme Republican candidates in the primaries; the uncertain future of American democracy and more.(Note: This episode was recorded on the afternoon of Wednesday, Nov. 9.)Mentioned:The Bitter End by John Sides, Chris Tausanovitch and Lynn Vavreck“Hillary Clinton Accepted Her Loss, but a Lot Has Changed Since 2016” by Lynn Vavreck“Republicans Have Made It Very Clear What They Want to Do if They Win Congress” by Ezra Klein"What It Means to Be Kind in a Cruel World" by The Ezra Klein ShowPodcast Recommendations:The Prince: Searching for Xi Jinping (The Economist)Odd Lots (Bloomberg)Volts (David Roberts)EKS Episode Recommendations:“These Political Scientists Surveyed 500,000 Voters. Here Are Their Unnerving Conclusions.” by The Ezra Klein Show“A Powerful Theory of Why The Far Right is Thriving Across the Globe” by The Ezra Klein Show“Donald Trump Didn’t Hijack the G.O.P. He Understood It.” by The Ezra Klein ShowAaron's essay recommendation:"The Paranoid Style in American Politics" by Richard HofstadterThoughts? Email us at [email protected]. (And if you’re reaching out to recommend a guest, please write  “Guest Suggestion” in the subject line.)You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin and Kate Sinclair. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Jeff Geld and Sonia Herrero. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

George Saunders is regarded as one of our greatest living fiction writers. He won the Booker Prize in 2017 for his novel “Lincoln in the Bardo” and has published numerous short-story collections to wide acclaim, including his most recent book, “Liberation Day.” He also happens to be one of my favorite people to read and to talk to.Saunders is an incredibly prescient and sharp observer of American political culture. Way back in 2007, he argued that our media environment was transforming politics into a competition within which the loudest voices would command the most attention and set the agenda for everyone else. With the rise of social media — and the advent of the Trump era — that observation has been more than vindicated. So as we approach the midterm elections, I wanted to have Saunders back on the show to talk about how politics and media have changed, and how those changes are shaping the way we interact, communicate and even think.We discuss how Twitter takes advantage of — even warps — our “malleable” selves, how politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene strategically manipulate our attentional environments, how Barack Obama leveraged our human desire to be seen as our best selves, whether discipline or gentleness is more effective in helping others grow, what options we have to resist anti-democratic tendencies in our politics, whether a post-scarcity future — with jobs for everyone — would leave us more or less satisfied, how the greatest evils can be committed by those trying to care for their loved ones, what attending Trump rallies taught Saunders about political violence and more.Mentioned:The Braindead Megaphone by George Saunders“Host” by David Foster Wallace“The Semplica-Girl Diaries” by George SaundersBullshit Jobs by David Graeber“What It Means to Be Kind in a Cruel World” by The Ezra Klein Show“I Didn’t Want It to Be True, but the Medium Really Is the Message” by Ezra KleinBook Recommendations:The Storm Is Here by Luke MogelsonSugar Street by Jonathan DeeMarlena by Julie BuntinThoughts? Email us at [email protected]. (And if you’re reaching out to recommend a guest, please write  “Guest Suggestion” in the subject line.)You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Mary Marge Locker. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Jeff Geld. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

“One can usually pretend that there is a logic to the distribution of wealth — that behind a person’s prosperity lies some rational basis, whether it is that person’s hard work, skill and farsightedness or some ancestor’s,” writes J. Bradford DeLong. “Inflation — even moderate inflation — strips the mask.”DeLong is an economic historian at the University of California, Berkeley, a former deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury and the author of “Slouching Towards Utopia” — a new book about the wave of economic growth that transformed the world in the 20th century. In it, he argues, among other things, that inflation isn’t just economically damaging; it’s one of the most destabilizing, destructive forces in all of politics. Left unchecked, it has the power to swing elections, erode the foundations of core social institutions and usher in wholesale changes in political and economic regimes.That’s exactly what happened the last time inflation was this high. In DeLong’s telling, the inflation crisis of the 1970s was weaponized to discredit the reigning New Deal economic order and helped give rise to the small government, pro-market political turn of the 1980s — the consequences of which we are living with today. So I wanted to have DeLong on the show to walk me through that story and some of the questions it raises: Why is inflation is so uniquely politically destructive? What are the right — and wrong — lessons to take from the experience of the 1970s? What kinds of political transformations could today’s inflation could bring about?We also discuss why inflation spiraled out of control in the 1970s (and whether it could have been stopped sooner), the efficacy of price controls as a way of taming inflation, why DeLong believes it’s a mistake to take the 1970s comparisons too literally, how unchecked inflation can decimate social trust, how economic thinking became obsessed with “moochers” and “slackers” in the 1980s and ’90s, whether the 2007-08 financial crisis brought an end to the neoliberal era, what DeLong would say to his younger self serving in the early Clinton administration and more.Book Recommendations:The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order by Gary GestleFree Market by Jacob SollAdam Smith’s America by Glory M. LiuThoughts? Email us at [email protected]. (And if you're reaching out to recommend a guest, please write  “Guest Suggestion" in the subject line.)You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Rollin Hu, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Jeff Geld and Sonia Hererro. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

As we approach the 2022 midterms, the outlook for American democracy doesn’t appear promising. An increasingly Trumpist, anti-democratic Republican Party is poised to take over at least one chamber of Congress. And the Democratic Party, facing an inflationary economy and with an unpopular president in office, looks helpless to stop them.But the United States isn’t alone in this regard. Over the course of 2022, Italy elected a far-right prime minister from a party with Fascist roots, a party founded by neo-Nazis and skinheads won the second-highest number of seats in Sweden’s Parliament, Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party in Hungary won its fourth consecutive election by a landslide, Marine Le Pen won 41 percent of the vote in the final round of France’s presidential elections and — just this past weekend — Jair Bolsonaro came dangerously close to winning re-election in Brazil.Why are these populist uprisings happening simultaneously, in countries with such diverse cultures, economies and political systems?Pippa Norris is a political scientist at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, where she has taught for three decades. In that time, she’s written dozens of books on topics ranging from comparative political institutions to right-wing parties and the decline of religion. And in 2019 she and Ronald Inglehart published “Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit and Authoritarian Populism,” which gives the best explanation of the far right’s rise that I’ve read.We discuss what Norris calls the “silent revolution in cultural values” that has occurred across advanced democracies in recent decades, why the best predictor of support for populist parties is the generation people were born into, why the “transgressive aesthetic” of leaders like Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro is so central to their appeal, how demographic and cultural “tipping points” have produced conservative backlashes across the globe, the difference between “demand-side” and “supply-side” theories of populist uprising, the role that economic anxiety and insecurity play in fueling right-wing backlashes, why delivering economic benefits might not be enough for mainstream leaders to stave off populist challenges and more.Mentioned:Sacred and Secular by Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart“Exploring drivers of vote choice and policy positions among the American electorate”Book Recommendations:Popular Dictatorships by Aleksandar MatovskiSpin Dictators by Sergei Guriev and Daniel TreismanThe Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah ArendtThoughts? Email us at [email protected]. (And if you're reaching out to recommend a guest, please write  “Guest Suggestion" in the subject line.)You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Jeff Geld. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

How does the popularity of a president’s policies impact his or her party’s electoral chances? Why have Latinos — and other voters of color — swung toward the Republican Party in recent years? How does the state of the economy influence how people vote, and which economic metrics in particular matter most?We can’t answer those questions yet for 2022. But we can look at previous elections for insights into how things could play out.John Sides and Lynn Vavreck — political scientists at Vanderbilt and U.C.L.A., respectively — have routinely written some of the most comprehensive analyses of American presidential contests. Their new book, “The Bitter End: The 2020 Presidential Campaign and the Challenge to American Democracy” — written with Chris Tausanovitch — is no exception. The book’s findings are built on top of numerous layers of data and analysis, including a massive survey project that involved interviewing around 500,000 Americans between July 2019 and January 2021.We discuss the core questions of 2020: How did Donald Trump come so close to winning? Why did Latinos swing toward Republicans? What role did Black Lives Matter protests have on the outcome? How did the strange Covid economy of 2020 affect the election results? And of course, what does all of this portend for the midterm elections in November?Mentioned:“Polarization and State Legislative Elections” by Cassandra Handan-Nader, Andrew C. W. Myers and Andrew B. HallIdentity Crisis by John Sides, Michael Tesler and Lynn Vavreck“Losers’ Consent” by Christopher J. Anderson, André Blais, Shaun Bowler, Todd Donovan and Ola ListhaugBook Recommendations:The Increasingly United States by Daniel J. HopkinsGroundbreakers by Elizabeth McKenna and Hahrie HanThe Loud Minority by Daniel Q. GillionRock Me on the Water by Ronald BrownsteinState of Terror by Hillary Rodham Clinton and Louise Penny“Bono Is Still Trying to Figure Out U2 and Himself” by David MarcheseThoughts? Email us at [email protected]. (And if you're reaching out to recommend a guest, please write  “Guest Suggestion" in the subject line.)You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Kate Sinclair. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Jeff Geld. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

​​“What would you do for your relevance?” the political journalist Mark Leibovich asks in his new book, “Thank You for Your Servitude: Donald Trump’s Washington and the Price of Submission.” “How badly did you want into the clubhouse, no matter how wretched it became inside?” For Leibovich, you can’t truly understand the current Republican Party without taking stock of the almost Shakespearean drama that unfolded during the Trump presidency — in which Republican after Republican bowed to the will of their ascendant party leader.Through his extensive — and often quite colorful — reporting with Trump’s inner circle of enablers, Leibovich tries to understand the motivations that fueled Trump’s takeover of the G.O.P. But this conversation isn’t only important in retrospect. With the Republican Party poised to possibly recapture at least one house of Congress in November, many of Trump’s core enablers could soon hold considerable political power. Who are they? What do they believe? How will they act if given power?We discuss why the stakes in 2022 midterms feel higher than ever, why the Republican Party has changed so profoundly since the days of Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor, how the governing structure of the G.O.P. fell apart as Trump rose in influence, the many reasons politicians from Lindsey Graham to Elise Stefanik converted from Trump skeptics to staunch Trump defenders, the political motivations of Kevin McCarthy — who may become the next speaker of the House — and how he might wield power, how the persistence of Trumpism could profoundly alter American democracy, why Leibovich believes figures like J.D. Vance prostrated themselves to a man who insulted them, what options Democrats have for countering election denialism and more.Mentioned:“Donald Trump Is Not Going Anywhere” by Mark LeibovichBook recommendations:Why We Did It by Tim MillerConfidence Man by Maggie HabermanNSFW by Isabel KaplanThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Jeff Geld, Sonia Herrero and Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

According to the conventional rules of politics, Democrats should be on track for electoral disaster this November. Joe Biden’s approval rating is stuck around 42 percent, inflation is still sky-high and midterms usually swing against the incumbent president’s party — a recipe for the kind of political wipeouts we saw in 2018, 2010 and 1994.But that’s not what the polls show. Currently, Democrats are on track to hold the Senate and lose narrowly in the House, which raises all kinds of questions: Why are Republicans failing to capitalize on such a favorable set of circumstances? How did Democrats get themselves into this situation — and can they get out of it? And should we even trust the polls giving us this information in the first place?Matt Yglesias is a veteran journalist who writes the newsletter “Slow Boring” and co-hosts the podcast “Bad Takes.” And in recent years he’s become an outspoken critic of the Democratic Party’s political strategy: how Democrats communicate with the public, what they choose as their governing priorities and whom they ultimately listen to. In Yglesias’s view, Democrats have lost touch with the very voters they need to win close elections like this one, and should embrace a very different approach to politics if they want to defeat an increasingly anti-democratic G.O.P.We discuss why Yglesias thinks the 2022 polls are likely biased toward Democrats, how Republicans’ bizarre nominee choices are giving Democrats a fighting chance of winning the Senate, why Biden’s popular legislative agenda hasn’t translated into greater public support, the Biden administration’s “grab bag” approach to policymaking, why Yglesias thinks there’s been a “regime change” in how Democrats think about elections, how social media has transformed both parties’ political incentives, what the Democratic agenda should look like if the party retains both houses of Congress and more.Book recommendations:Famine: A Short History by Cormac Ó GrádaSlouching Towards Utopia by J. Bradford DeLongStrangers to Ourselves by Rachel AvivThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Jeff Geld, Sonia Herrero and Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

N.K. Jemisin is a fantasy and science-fiction writer who won three consecutive Hugo Awards — considered the highest honor in science-fiction writing — for her “Broken Earth” trilogy; she has since won two more Hugos, as well as other awards. But in imagining wild fictional narratives, the beloved sci-fi and fantasy writer has also cultivated a remarkable view of our all-too-real world. In her fiction, Jemisin crafts worlds that resemble ours but get disrupted by major shocks: ecological disasters, invasions by strange, tentacled creatures and more — all of which operate as thought experiments that can help us think through how human beings could and should respond to similar calamities.Jemisin’s latest series, which includes “The City We Became” and “The World We Make,” takes place in a recognizable version of New York City — the texture of its streets, the distinct character of its five boroughs — that’s also gripped by strange, magical forces. The series, in addition to being a rollicking read, is essentially a meditation on cities: how they come into being, how their very souls get threatened by forces like systemic racism and astronomical inequality and how their energies and cultures have the power to rescue and save those souls.I invited Jemisin on the show to help me take stock of the political and cultural ferment behind these distressing conditions — and also to remember the magical qualities of cities, systems and human nature. We discuss why multiverse fictions like “Everything Everywhere All at Once” are so popular now, how the culture and politics of New York and San Francisco have homogenized drastically in recent decades, Jemisin’s views on why a coalition of Black and Latinx voters elected a former cop as New York’s mayor, how gentrification causes change that we may not at first recognize, where to draw the line between imposing order and celebrating the disorder of cities, how Donald Trump kept stealing Jemisin’s ideas but is at the root a “badly written character,” whether we should hold people accountable for their choices or acknowledge the way the status quo shapes our decision-making, what excites Jemisin about recent discoveries about outer space, why she thinks we are all “made of exploding stars” and more.Mentioned:N.K. Jemisin interview on Vox’s "The Gray Area with Sean Illing"Book recommendations:Fullmetal Alchemist by Hiromu ArakawaMechanique by Genevieve ValentineWitch King by Martha WellsThe Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane JacobsThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma. Our researcher is Emefa Agawu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Mary Marge Locker. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Jeff Geld and Sonia Herrero. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin, Kristina Samulewski and Jesse Bordwin.

“The Rachel Maddow Show” debuted in the interregnum between political eras. Before it lay the 9/11 era and the George W. Bush presidency. Days after the show launched in 2008, Lehman Brothers collapsed, and a few weeks later Barack Obama was elected president.And then history just kept speeding up. The Tea Party. The debt ceiling debacles. Donald Trump. The coronavirus pandemic. January 6th. The big lie. Maddow covered and tried to make sense of it all. Now, after 14 years, she has taken her show down to one episode a week and is beginning other projects — like “Ultra,” the history podcast we discuss in this episode.But I wanted to talk to Maddow about how American politics and media has changed over the course of her show. We discuss the legacies of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the cycle of economic crises we appear to keep having, Maddow’s relationships with Pat Buchanan and Tucker Carlson, where the current G.O.P.’s anti-democracy efforts really started, how Obama’s presidency changed politics, how Maddow finds and chooses her stories, the statehouse Republicans who tilled the soil for Trump’s big lie and more.Book Recommendations:Hitler in Los Angeles by Steven J. RossNazis of Copley Square by Charles R. GallagherHitler’s American Friends by Bradley W. HartThe Oppermanns by Lion Feuchtwanger1940 by Susan DunnDown in New Orleans Billy SothernThoughts? Email us at [email protected]. (And if you're reaching out to recommend a guest, please write  “Guest Suggestion" in the subject line.)You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma. Our researcher is Emefa Agawu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Jeff Geld. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

Today we’re bringing you an episode from the recently launched New York Times podcast, Hard Fork. Hosted by veteran tech journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton, Hard Fork is a rigorous and fun exploration of Silicon Valley’s already-emerging future — and its evolving imprint on the rest of the world.In this episode, Kevin and Casey discuss Elon Musk’s on-again-off-again – and recently on-again – interest in Twitter, as the billionaire signals once again that he’s buying the social media platform. What might be behind the change of heart? And what will the deal mean for employees and users? Casey and Kevin swap theories and predictions — and also step into the metaverse with the New York Times reporter Kashmir Hill.Hard Fork is produced by Davis Land. Edited by Paula Szuchman and Hanna Ingber. Fact-checking by Caitlin Love. Original music by Dan Powell, Elisheba Ittoop and Marion Lozano. Engineered by Corey Schreppel. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Shannon Busta, Julia Simon, Larissa Anderson, Pui-Wing Tam, Kate LoPresti, Nell Gallogly, Mahima Chablani and Jeffrey Miranda.You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.

“There are moments when history making creeps up on you,” writes the economic historian Adam Tooze. “This is one of those moments.”Countries across the world are raising interest rates at unprecedented speeds. That global monetary tightening is colliding with spiking food and energy prices, financial market instability, high levels of emerging market debt and economies still struggling to recover from the Covid pandemic. Alone, each of these factors would warrant concern; combined, they could be catastrophic.We’re already beginning to see what happens as these dynamics intersect: Britain just experienced a bond market meltdown that threatened one of the most advanced financial systems in the world. Developing countries like Sri Lanka, Argentina and Pakistan are experiencing political and economic crises. The World Bank believes we could be headed for a severe global recession.Tooze is the director of the European Institute at Columbia University and the author of multiple histories of financial crises and near crises and of the excellent Chartbook newsletter. He believes this particular confluence of high inflation, rising interest rates and high levels of debt points to an economic “polycrisis” unlike any the world has seen. And he and others have argued that the U.S. Fed’s decision to raise interest rates is a core driver of that crisis.So this is a conversation about the fragile, uncertain future of the global economy at this history-making moment and the Fed’s role in it. We discuss what the British financial market meltdown means for the rest of the world, how the interest rate hikes in rich countries export inflation to other countries, the looming possibility of a global recession, why Tooze believes something could break in the global financial system, why countries in South Asia are experiencing a particularly severe form of “polycrisis,” how the Fed should weigh its mandate to bring down inflation against the global consequences of its actions, why he believes analogies to the American inflationary period of the 1970s are misguided and more.Mentioned:“Slouching Towards Utopia by J Bradford DeLong — fuelling America’s global dream” by Adam ToozeBook recommendations:The Neapolitan Novels by Elena FerranteYouthquake by Edward PaiceSlouching Towards Utopia by J. Bradford DeLongThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Rollin Hu, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Jeff Geld. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin, Kristina Samulewski, Jason Furman, Mike Konczal and Maurice Obstfeld.

The National Institute of Mental Health estimates that nearly one in five adults in America lives with a mental illness. And we have plenty of evidence — from suicide rates to the percentage of Americans on psychopharmaceuticals — that our collective mental health is getting worse. But beyond mental health diagnoses lies a whole, complicated landscape of difficult, often painful, mental states that all of us experience at some point in our lives.Rachel Aviv is a longtime staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of the new book “Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us.” Aviv has done some of the best reporting toward answering questions like: How do people cope with their changing — and sometimes truly disturbing — mental states? What can diagnosis capture, and what does it leave out? Why do treatments succeed or fail for different people? And how do all of us tell stories about ourselves — and our minds — that can either trap us in excruciating thought patterns or liberate us?We discuss why children seeking asylum in Sweden suddenly dropped out mentally and physically from their lives, how mental states like depression and anxiety can be socially contagious, how mental illnesses differ from physical ailments like diabetes and high blood pressure, what Aviv’s own experience with childhood anorexia taught her about psychology and diagnosis, how having too much “insight” into our mental states can sometimes hurt us, how social forces like racism and classism can activate psychological distress, the complicated decisions people make around taking medication or refusing it, how hallucinations can be confused with — or might even count as — a form of spiritual connection, what “depressive realism” says about the state of our society, how we can care for one another both within and beyond the medical establishment, and more.This episode contains a brief mention of suicidal ideation. If you are having thoughts of suicide, text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. A list of additional resources is available at SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources.Mentioned:“It’s Not Just You,” a series on mental health in America from New York Times Opinion“The Trauma of Facing Deportation” by Rachel AvivRuth Ozeki on The Ezra Klein Show: “What We Gain by Enchanting the Objects in Our Lives”Thomas Insel on The Ezra Klein Show: “A Top Mental Health Expert on Where America Went Wrong”Judson Brewer on The Ezra Klein Show: “That Anxiety You’re Feeling? It’s a Habit You Can Unlearn.”Book Recommendations:Madness and Modernism by Louis SassOf Two Minds T.M. Luhrmann“Wants” by Grace PaleyThoughts? Email us at [email protected]. (And if you're reaching out to recommend a guest, please write  “Guest Suggestion" in the subject line.)You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin and Rogé Karma. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Sonia Herrero, Isaac Jones and Carole Sabouraud. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

When most people hear “crypto,” the first thing they think of is “currencies.” Cryptocurrencies have skyrocketed in popularity over the past few years. And they’ve given rise to an entire ecosystem of financial speculation, get rich quick schemes, and in some cases outright fraud.But there’s another side of crypto that gets less attention: the segment of the community that is interested in the way the technology that powers crypto can decentralize decision making, make institutions more transparent and transform the way organizations are governed. That’s the side I find far more interesting.There are few individuals as central to that latter segment of crypto as Vitalik Buterin. When he was still just a teenager, Buterin co-founded Ethereum, a decentralized platform whose token Ether is the second most valuable cryptocurrency today, surpassed only by Bitcoin. But the vision behind Ethereum was that the blockchain technology could be used for more than digital money; it could create a sort of digital infrastructure on top of which organizations and companies and applications could be built — ostensibly free of centralizing structures like banks and governments.Over the last decade, Buterin has become arguably the core public intellectual on the nonfinancial side of crypto. His new book, “Proof of Stake,” is a collection of long, thoughtful essays that taken together lay out a vision of crypto as a truly transformative technology — one with the potential to revolutionize everything from city governance to voting systems to online identity.I myself have dueling impulses about Buterin’s vision. On the one hand, I believe many of our governing systems and institutions are badly in need of the kind of reimagining he is engaged in. On the other hand, I’m deeply skeptical of whether the issues Buterin and his ilk are focused on are actually technological problems that blockchains can solve. So this is a conversation that sits squarely within that tension.Mentioned:Seeing Like a State by James C. ScottBook recommendations:The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. ShirerHarry Potter and The Methods of Rationality by Eliezer YudkowskyAlgorithmic Game Theory by Noam Nisan, Tim Roughgarden, Eva Tardos and Vijay V. VaziraniThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin and Rogé Karma. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Sonia Herrero, Isaac Jones and Carole Sabouraud. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin, Kristina Samulewski, Will Wilkinson, Alex Tabarrok, Glen Weyl and Nathan Schneider.

Why do some countries produce far more science Nobel laureates than others? Why did Silicon Valley happen in California rather than Japan or Boston? Why did the Industrial Revolution happen when it did and where it did?These are just some of the questions that have inspired the formation of a new intellectual movement called “progress studies.” The basic idea is this: For hundreds of thousands of years, human history played out without any rapid, marked advance in material living standards. And then, suddenly, in just the past few hundred years, everything changed: Humanity achieved a truly mind-boggling amount of progress in the evolutionary blink of an eye. In the early 21st century, we are all living in the world that progress bequeathed. And yet we understand shockingly little about what drives that progress in the first place.That’s important because, at least according to some metrics, progress seems to be slowing down. We spend far more on scientific research but that research results in fewer breakthrough discoveries. Key economic indicators such as productivity growth have slowed. Many have argued that the technologies we’ve invented in recent decades, while highly impressive, aren’t as transformative as the technologies from the last century. All of which means that the questions animating progress studies aren’t mere academic exercises; they are central to understanding how we can bring about a better future for all.Patrick Collison is the co-founder and chief executive of the multibillion-dollar payments company Stripe. But for years now, Collison has also been developing and advocating a worldview that has become the intellectual backbone of this new discipline. In 2019, Collison, alongside the economist Tyler Cowen,  called for “a new science of progress.” And since then, an intellectual ecosystem has sprung up around it, full of its own magazines and thinkers and syllabuses and podcasts. And Collison himself is putting its theories into practice through organizations  (like Fast Grants and Arc Institute) that he’s founded and funded.This conversation is an attempt to better understand Collison’s worldview, and more broadly the worldview of progress studies. The ideas that animate progress studies are worth taking seriously on their own terms. But they are also important because they are becoming increasingly influential among a wealthy elite with the power and resources to shape all of our futures.Mentioned:“Science Is Getting Less Bang for Its Buck” by Patrick Collison and Michael NielsenA Culture of Growth by Joel Mokyr"Kludgeocracy in America" by Steve Teles Book Recommendations:Empire and Revolution by Richard BourkeScene of Change by Warren WeaverA Widening Sphere by Philip N. AlexanderThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin and Rogé Karma. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Sonia Herrero, Isaac Jones and Carole Sabouraud. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February, the question most analysts were asking was not whether Russia would win. It was how fast. On almost every quantifiable metric from military strength to economic size Russia has decisive advantages over Ukraine. A swift Russian victory appeared inevitable.Of course, that swift victory didn’t happen. And in recent weeks, the direction of the war has begun to tilt in Ukraine’s direction. On Sept. 6, the Ukrainian military launched a counteroffensive near Kharkiv in northern Ukraine and regained 3,400 square miles of territory in a week — more territory than Russia had captured in the last five months. Analysts are now saying it’s unlikely that Vladimir Putin can accomplish one of his chief aims: annexing the Donbas by force.Andrea Kendall-Taylor is the director of the trans-Atlantic security program at the Center for a New American Security. She’s a former intelligence officer who, from 2015 to 2018, led strategic analysis on Russia at the National Intelligence Council. When we spoke, she was recently back from a trip to Ukraine. And she believes that the long-term trends favor a Ukrainian victory.In this conversation, Kendall-Taylor helps me understand this watershed moment in the war. We discuss why Ukraine’s recent counteroffensive was so significant; how it and other recent developments have hampered Russian morale, manpower and weapons supply; whether sanctions are really influencing Russia’s strategy, and how sanctions might get worse; how this conflict is profoundly changing Europe; whether this recent turn of events signals a possible Ukrainian victory; why “personalist dictators” like Putin can be so dangerous when backed into a corner; how likely it is that we’ll see stalemate or settlement negotiations in the near future; how Kendall-Taylor rates the likelihood of various outcomes; what we should expect in the next phase of the war and more.Mentioned:“Ukraine Holds the Future” by Timothy Snyder“The Russia-Ukraine War at Six Months” by Adam ToozeRecommendations:Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928 by Stephen KotkinTwitter Accounts to Follow for Russia-Ukraine War Analysis:Michael KofmanRob LeeMick RyanThe Institute for the Study of WarThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin and Rogé Karma. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Sonia Herrero, Isaac Jones and Carole Sabouraud. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin, Kristina Samulewski and Emma Ashford.

In August, Joe Biden signed into law the Inflation Reduction Act, which included $392 billion towards a new climate budget — the single largest investment in emissions reduction in U.S. history. The CHIPS and Science Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act bring that number up to around $450 billion. All of that spending is designed with one major objective in mind: to put the United States on a path to a decarbonized economy, with the goal of reaching net zero emissions by 2050.Achieving that goal is perhaps the single most important challenge of our age. And so I wanted to dedicate a full episode to it. How big is the task of decarbonizing the U.S. economy? What do we actually need to do to get there? How does the I.R.A. help do that? And what are the biggest obstacles still standing in our way?Jesse Jenkins is an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton University and leads the Princeton ZERO Lab. He was a lead author of the Net Zero America report, the most comprehensive attempt to map out the different pathways to decarbonization I’ve seen. He also leads the REPEAT Project, which has done some of the most in-depth modeling of how the Inflation Reduction Act and other climate policies could affect emissions.As a result, this conversation ended up being the single clearest explanation I’ve heard of both the path to decarbonizing America and the impact the Biden administration’s climate bills could have on that effort. I learned a ton from this one, and I think you will too.Book recommendations:Making Climate Policy Work by Danny Cullenward and David G. Victor“Sequencing to Ratchet Up Climate Policy Stringency” (academic paper) by Michael Pahle, Dallas Burtraw, Christian Flachsland, Nina Kelsey, Eric Biber, Jonas Meckling, Ottmar Edenhofer and John ZysmanHow Solar Energy Became Cheap by Gregory F. NemetThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin and Rogé Karma. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Rollin Hu. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Carole Sabouraud and Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

In the past few months, Joe Biden’s agenda has gone from a failed promise to real legislation.Taken together, the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act (along with the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act) have the potential to put America on a path to decarbonization, develop some of the most advanced and crucial supply chains in the world, and build all kinds of next-generation technologies. It’s hard to overstate just how transformative these plans could be if they are carried out in the right way.But that’s a big “if.” Because Biden’s legacy will not be written just in tax code and regulatory law. All of this legislation is about building things in the real world — from wind farms to semiconductor manufacturing plants to electric vehicle charging stations and so much more. Which means the hard work isn’t over. It’s just beginning.Felicia Wong is the president and chief executive of the Roosevelt Institute and someone who has had an unusually clear read of the Biden administration from the beginning. Wong has been arguing that Biden wants to fundamentally reshape the productive capacity of the economy. And now he’s gotten approval of bills that have the potential to do just that. But Wong is also realistic about the obstacles in the way of realizing that project. And so the question at the center of this conversation is: What will it take to turn the Biden agenda from written legislation into lived reality?We also discuss the death of the “care infrastructure” for helping families that was at the heart of the Build Back Better proposal, the challenges of building up the American semiconductor industry, why some progressives view these bills as “corporate welfare,” the conservative argument that government shouldn’t be “picking winners and losers,” how these bills could respond to America’s deep regional inequalities, how to address the problem of NIMBYism, what participatory budgeting and worker cooperatives can teach us about better ways to represent community voices, why we should want the government to take bigger risks even if that means more government failure, and much moreMentioned:“All Biden Has to Do Now Is Change the Way We Live” by Ezra KleinBook recommendations:The Middle Out by Michael Tomasky (accompanied by new podcast, "How to Save a Country")Elite Capture by Olúfẹ́mi O. TáíwòChords of Change (forthcoming 2023) by Deepak Bhargava and Stephanie LuceThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.​​ “The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin and Rogé Karma. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Carole Sabouraud and Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

“We see status virtually everywhere in social life, if we think to look for it,” writes Cecilia Ridgeway. “It suffuses everyday possessions, the cars we drive, the clothes we wear, the food brands we prefer, and the music we listen to.” And that’s only a partial list. Status influences the neighborhood we live in, the occupation we pursue, the friends we choose. It attaches itself to our race, gender, class and age. It shapes our interpersonal interactions. And, most of the time, it does all of this without us even realizing what’s happening.Ridgeway is a sociologist and professor emerita at Stanford who has spent her career studying what she calls the “deep story” of status. Her 2019 book “Status: Why Is It Everywhere? Why Does It Matter?” is the culmination of decades of research into what status is, how it actually works, and the myriad ways it shapes our world.We typically think of status as social vanity limited to elite institutions or the top percentages of the income ladder. But Ridgeway argues that the truth is closer to the opposite: Status is everywhere. It’s the water we all swim in. And the reason it’s everywhere is that it’s one of humanity’s oldest and most powerful social technologies — a technology that has built civilizations, inspired revolutions and spurred countless innovations while also reinforcing some of our world’s deepest inequalities and injustices.So this conversation is about making visible an often overlooked force that shapes so much of our world, our lives and even our sense of self. It also explores how status hierarchies emerge from “a fundamental tension in the human condition”; why sports, religion, fashion and meritocracy can all be considered forms of status “games”; how status games simultaneously help explain the advent of modern science and the pervasiveness of racial and gender stereotypes; why scholars increasingly view status as a “fundamental human motive”; why our society allocates higher status to investment bankers than teachers; how public policy can change our status beliefs; how elite-status signaling has shifted from wearing fancy clothes and driving expensive cars to reading The New Yorker and listening to NPR; how the internet has completely transformed our relationships with status; and much more.Mentioned:The Sum of Small Things by Elizabeth Currid-HalkettThe Knowledge Machine by Michael StrevensThe Status Game by Will StorrBook Recommendations:Envy Up, Scorn Down by Susan T. FiskeThe Psychology of Social Status by Joey T. Cheng, Jessica L. Tracy, Cameron AndersonThe Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein VeblenThis episode is guest-hosted by Rogé Karma, the senior editor for “The Ezra Klein Show.” Rogé has been with the show since July 2019, when it was based at Vox. He works closely with Ezra on everything related to the show, from editing to interview prep to guest selection. At Vox, he also wrote articles and conducted interviews on topics ranging from policing and racial justice to democracy reform and the coronavirus.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.​​“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin and Rogé Karma. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Kate Sinclair. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Carole Sabouraud and Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

Today we’re bringing you a special episode from New York Times Opinion: a roundtable, hosted by Lulu Garcia-Navarro, about how parents view the role of school. America’s schools have emerged as a battleground for the country’s most fervent cultural disagreements, and in many places, parents are finding themselves on the front lines. Three parents of public school students joined Lulu Garcia-Navarro to discuss the big questions underlying the new era of parental activism.Letha Muhammad is a mother of three in Raleigh, N.C., and serves as the executive director of the nonprofit Education Justice Alliance, which works to dismantle the school-to-prison and school-to-deportation pipelines. Tom Chavez of Elmhurst, Ill., is a father of three who co-founded the group Elmhurst Parents for Integrity in Curriculum, which seeks to remove ideological agendas from the classroom. Siva Raj lives in San Francisco with his two sons and co-founded the group SF Guardians, which led the drive to recall three of the city’s school board members this year.This episode was produced as part of a special series from New York Times Opinion exploring the purpose of K-12 education. This Times Opinion roundtable was produced by Lulu Garcia-Navarro, Phoebe Lett, Kristin Lin, Derek Arthur and Cassady Rosenblum, with help from Shannon Busta, Olivia Natt, Aaron Retica, Eleanor Barkhorn, Alison Bruzek and Anabel Bacon. Original music and mixing by Isaac Jones. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Michelle Harris.You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.

When is the last time you paused — truly paused the flow of life — to appreciate something beautiful? For as long as we know, humans have sought out beauty, believing deeply that beautiful things and experiences can enhance our lives. But what does beauty really do to us? How can it fundamentally alter our experience of the world?Beauty is always “teaching me something about my own mind,” says the writer and philosopher Chloé Cooper Jones. In her book, “Easy Beauty,” Jones takes readers on a journey across the globe and into her intimate family life to explore what beauty has done for her and what it can potentially do for all of us.At the core of Jones’s book — and of this conversation — is a distinction between two radically different kinds of beauty. On the one hand, there’s “easy beauty”: a Renaissance painting, a sunset, a deliciously prepared meal. Easy beauty includes the kinds of things we are taught to consider beautiful. But Jones argues there’s also a deeper form of beauty — a “difficult beauty,” which can be found in places that may initially strike us as mundane, messy, even ugly. That is, if we clear the space within our own minds long enough to look for it.This conversation also explores how Jones’s relationship to her disabled body has changed over time, what it means to appreciate the physical world more fully, how all of us are affected by our society’s crushing physical beauty standards, how Jones has created a “neutral room” in her mind to cope with those difficult standards, what attending a Beyoncé concert taught her about “radical presence,” what a celebrity party Peter Dinklage attended revealed about how far we need to go in respecting different bodies, why it is worth it to “make friends” with the idea that we may all become disabled or incapacitated at some point, how children reflect and reveal parts of ourselves we didn’t even know existed, what advice she has for those of us who spend very little time considering beauty but could benefit from it as Jones has, and more.Book Recommendations:Staring by Rosemarie Garland-ThomsonH is for Hawk by Helen MacdonaldRomance in Marseille by Claude McKayThis episode is guest-hosted by Tressie McMillan Cottom (@tressiemcphd), a sociologist and writer whose work focuses on higher education policy, race, beauty and more. She is a Times Opinion columnist and the author of “Thick: And Other Essays,” which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and “Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy.”Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Sonia Herrero and Isaac Jones; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

Today we're revisiting one of our favorite conversations from 2021 with the novelist Richard Powers. Enjoy!There are certain conversations I fear trying to fit into a description. There’s just more to them than I’m going to be able to convey. This is one of them.Richard Powers is the author of 13 novels, including the 2019 Pulitzer Prize-winning “The Overstory.” If you haven’t read it, you should. It’ll change you. It changed me. I haven’t walked through a forest the same way again. And I’m not alone in that. When I interviewed Barack Obama this year, he recommended “The Overstory,” saying, “It changed how I thought about the earth and our place in it.”Powers’s new book is “Bewilderment.” You could think of it as 'The Innerstory': It is about how and whether we see the world we inhabit. It’s about the nature and limits of our empathy. It’s about refusing to die before we’re dead and taking seriously the gifts and responsibilities of being alive. It is about how we change our minds and how we change our societies. It is about how we treat delusion as normal and clarity as lunacy. It is enchanting, and it is devastating.It is not just books through which Powers has been exploring these ideas. It is also through radical changes he’s made to how he lives his life. That’s where we start but far from where we end: This conversation touches on mortality, animism, politics, old-growth forests, extraterrestrial life, Buddhism and beyond.Mentioned:Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne SimardBook recommendations:How to Be Animal by Melanie ChallengerRooted by Lyanda Lynn HauptEver Green by John W. Reid and Thomas E. LovejoyYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

In times of deep sorrow or joy, humans have always turned to music. Archaeologists have found evidence of instruments among very early civilizations. Spiritual communities have centered on music for centuries. We teach our children their ABCs and how to brush their teeth with songs. We dance out our feelings and cry along with sad tunes. What is it about music that enables it to work so powerfully on our bodies, minds and emotions?That is one of the core animating questions of this conversation with Allison Russell. Russell is a Grammy-nominated singer and songwriter whose debut album, “Outside Child,” was named one of the best albums of 2021 by critics at NPR and The Times.Russell has played in bands including Birds of Chicago and Our Native Daughters, traversing folk, rock ’n’ roll, Celtic music, the blues and other genres. But alongside her powerhouse vocals and gorgeous melodies, Russell infuses a deep scholarly curiosity into her songs — not just about the nature and power of music, but also what it can teach listeners about our world.Digging into archives and family history, she explores themes like generational trauma, our relationships to diaspora and migration and how music can build empathic bridges between us in times of deep division. But above all, her songs testify to the sheer human capacity for resilience: our capacity to transcend our darkest times if we hold on, reach out to one another and seek out art that helps console.In this episode, Russell performs four songs with a full band, so listeners can enjoy her infectious art. And then we use those songs as jumping-off points to explore the deeper ideas embedded in her music: why we fall into melodies so soon after our births; how music moves us differently from how books or speeches do; how sound can help regulate our emotions, slow our breathing and rewire our neural networks; how Russell’s melodies and vocal performances come together in her mind; why songs can at times be more persuasive than nonfiction; why our unwillingness to divulge painful secrets goes back to the Victorian era; how generational trauma like the Middle Passage connects to personal trauma in the present; how Russell structures her songs to help people transcend profound pain; what message Russell would send to people who are struggling and much more.This episode contains references to sexual abuse.Mentioned:“The Transmogrification of Trauma into Art” by Allison Russell“Barley” by Birds of Chicago“Real Midnight” by Birds of Chicago“Songs of Our Native Daughters” by Our Native Daughters“The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” by Gordon Lightfoot“Take Em Away” by Old Crow Medicine Show“The Art of Disappearance” by Hanif AbdurraqibMusic and Book Recommendations:The Bone People by Keri HulmeA Fortune for Your Disaster by Hanif AbdurraqibBreaking the Thermometer by Leyla McCallaCarry Me Home by Mavis Staples and Levon HelmThis episode was guest hosted by Annie Galvin, the associate producer of “The Ezra Klein Show.” Galvin has covered books and music for almost a decade and hosted a season of “Public Books 101,” a public-scholarship podcast she co-created.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Carole Sabouraud and Isaac Jones; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin, Kristina Samulewski and Erika Duffee. Russell’s band is Monique Ross, Chauntee Ross and Mandy Fer. Additional thanks to Jeff Gruber of Blue House Productions and Allison’s touring engineer, Ross Collier. The songs Russell performs in this episode were written by Allison Russell and Jeremy Thomas Lindsay.

Today we're revisiting one of our favorite episodes from this year, with the prolific writer Margaret Atwood.A good rule of thumb is that whatever Margaret Atwood is worried about now is likely what the rest of us will be worried about a decade from now. The rise of authoritarianism. A backlash against women’s social progress. The seductions and dangers of genetic engineering. Climate change leading to social unrest. Advertising culture permeating more and more of our lives. Atwood — the author of the Booker Prize-winning novels “The Blind Assassin” and “The Testaments,” as well as “The Handmaid’s Tale,” “Oryx and Crake” and, most recently, the essay collection “Burning Questions” — was writing about these topics decades ago, forecasting the unsettling world that we inhabit now. Pick up any one of her 17 published novels, and you will likely come across a theme or a quality of the setting that rings eerily true in the present day.This is especially true of Atwood’s magnum opus, “The Handmaid’s Tale,” which takes place in a future America where climate change, droughts, a decaying economy and falling birthrates lead to the rise of a theocracy in which women called Handmaids are conscripted into childbirth. The repressive regime she created in that novel, Gilead, has been endlessly referred to and reinterpreted over the years because of the wisdom it contains about why people cooperate with — and resist — political movements that destroy the freedom of others. And as recent weeks have shown, we’re far from the day when that wisdom becomes irrelevant to present circumstances.We discuss the deep human craving for stories, why Atwood believes we are engaged in “an arm wrestle for the soul of America,” what makes the stories of the Bible so compelling, the dangerous allure of totalitarian movements, how the shift from coal to oil helped to fuel the rise of modern consumerism, why she thinks climate change will cause even more harm by increasing the likelihood of war than it will by increasing the likelihood of extreme weather, how our society lost its capacity to imagine new utopias, why progressives need to incorporate more fun into their politics, why we should “keep our eye on the mushroom,” Atwood’s take on recent U.F.O. sightings and more. She even sings a bit of a song from the 1950s about the Iron Curtain.Mentioned:Art & Energy by Barry LordBook recommendations:War by Margaret MacMillanBiased by Jennifer L. EberhardtSecrets of the Sprakkar by Eliza ReidCharlotte’s Web by E. B. WhiteLord of the Rings by J. R. R. TolkienThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin, Kristina Samulewski, Coral Ann Howells and Brooks Bouson.

With Roe now overturned, the evangelical movement has achieved one of its decades-old political priorities. But for many evangelicals, this isn’t the moment of celebration and unity it may have first appeared to be. In the wake of the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Russell Moore — a former president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, the policy wing of the Southern Baptist Convention — described the state of evangelicalism as one of “disarray.” He argues that surface-level political allegiances paint over much deeper divisions within what has become an increasingly polarized movement. Understanding those divisions and what they portend for evangelicalism is deeply important, in large part because of the movement’s immense power in American politics.Moore is the editor in chief of Christianity Today; the author of numerous books, including “Onward: Engaging the Culture Without Losing the Gospel”; and one of the most visible leaders in the evangelical movement right now. But he has also voiced some of the most stinging criticism of the movement’s current direction. He believes that evangelicals’ embrace of Donald Trump was a mistake and that the way many evangelicals are approaching the culture wars — with what Moore calls a “siege mentality” — is toxic for the faith. He encourages his fellow evangelicals to embrace their role as a “moral minority” in America instead of desperately clinging to political and cultural power. “The shaking of American culture is no sign that God has given up on American Christianity,” he writes in “Onward.” “In fact, it may be a sign that God is rescuing American Christianity from itself.”So this is a conversation about how evangelicalism morphed into the political identity we know it as today, why so many evangelicals have come to embrace apocalyptic thinking about politics and where the movement goes next now that Roe has been overturned.Mentioned“The Supreme Court Needs to Be Less Central to American Public Life” by Russell MooreBook RecommendationsThe Weight of Glory by C.S. LewisMere Christianity by C.S. LewisThe Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. LewisThe Resurrection of the Son of God by N.T. WrightThe Gilead Novels by Marilynne RobinsonThis episode was hosted by Jane Coaston, the host of “The Argument.” Previously, she was the senior politics reporter at Vox, with a focus on conservatism and the G.O.P. Her work has appeared on MSNBC, CNN and NPR and in National Review, The Washington Post, The Ringer and ESPN Magazine, among others.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.​​“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Sonia Herrero and Isaac Jones; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

Today, we’re re-airing one of my favorite episodes of all time. It was originally recorded in February of 2022, but I've been unable to stop thinking about it ever since.When we play Monopoly or basketball, we know we are playing a game. The stakes are low. The rules are silly. The point system is arbitrary. But what if life is full of games — ones with much higher stakes — that we don’t even realize we’re playing?According to the philosopher C. Thi Nguyen, games and gamified systems are everywhere in modern life. Social media applies the lure of a points-based scoring system to the complex act of communication. Fitness apps convert the joy and beauty of physical motion into a set of statistics you can monitor. The grades you received in school flatten the qualitative richness of education into a numerical competition. If you’ve ever consulted the U.S. News & World Report college rankings database, you’ve witnessed the leaderboard approach to university admissions.In Nguyen’s book, “Games: Agency as Art,” a core insight is that we’re not simply playing these games — they are playing us, too. Our desires, motivations and behaviors are constantly being shaped and reshaped by incentives and systems that we aren’t even aware of. Whether on the internet or in the vast bureaucracies that structure our lives, we find ourselves stuck playing games over and over again that we may not even want to win — and that we aren’t able to easily walk away from.This is one of those conversations that offers a new and surprising lens for understanding the world. We discuss the unique magic of activities like rock climbing and playing board games, how Twitter’s system of likes and retweets is polluting modern politics, why governments and bureaucracies love tidy packets of information, how echo chambers like QAnon bring comfort to their “players,” how to make sure we don’t get stuck in a game without realizing it, why we should be a little suspicious of things that give us pleasure and how to safeguard our own values in a world that wants us to care about winning the most points.Mentioned:How Twitter Gamifies Communication by C. Thi NguyenTrust in Numbers by Theodore M. PorterSeeing Like a State by James C. Scott“Against Rotten Tomatoes” by Matt Strohl“A Game Designer’s Analysis Of QAnon” by Reed BerkowitzThe Great Endarkenment by Elijah MillgramGame recommendations:Modern ArtRootThe Quiet YearThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta.  Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

Over the past year, many places have returned to something approximating a prepandemic normal. Restaurants are filling up again. Airports and hotels are packed. Even movie theaters have made a comeback. But that hasn’t been the case for the office. Only about a third of office workers are back in the office full time. And that isn’t likely to change dramatically any time soon: Recent surveys asked executives about the share of their workers who would be back in the office five days a week in the future. In 2021 the response was 50 percent; now it’s down to 20 percent.But the alternatives — remote and hybrid work — come with their own problems. In many cases, remote work has become synonymous with meeting fatigue, the collapse of work-life balance, overwhelming amounts of email and Slack messages and awkward attempts at social connection. And hybrid work setups often represent what some have called the worst of both work worlds: long commutes to half-empty offices, just to sit on Zoom calls all day.That leaves office workers in what feels like a work purgatory: The office is dying, but a new, viable model of work has yet to be born. And that liminal space raises all sorts of new questions: What is the office actually for? What will the postoffice future of work look like? And if the future of work means working from home in some capacity, how do we make that future better for everyone involved?Those questions are at the center of Anne Helen Petersen and Charlie Warzel’s book, “Out of Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working From Home.” Petersen is a longtime culture writer who writes the newsletter Culture Study; Warzel is a veteran technology reporter who writes the newsletter Galaxy Brain for The Atlantic. In “Out of Office” they argue that the core problem with current remote and hybrid work setups is this: Workers have left the physical office, but they have taken the broken culture of the office with them. The result is widespread dysfunction but also immense opportunity: If we take this moment to rethink not only where we work but also how we work, then the possibilities are endless. Mentioned:“The Case Against Loving Your Job” by The Ezra Klein Show“Stop. Breathe. We Can’t Keep Working Like This” by The Ezra Klein Show“Think Bigger About Remote Work” by Adam Ozimek“I’m Worried About Chicago” by Matthew Yglesias"The Nowhere Office" by Julia HobsbawmBook Recommendations:In the Age of the Smart Machine by Shoshana ZuboffThe Myth of the Paperless Office by Abigail J. Sellen and Richard H. R. HarperLiquidated by Karen HoEssential Labor by Angela GarbesThis episode is guest hosted by Rogé Karma, the senior editor for “The Ezra Klein Show.” Rogé has been with the show since July 2019, when it was based at Vox. He works closely with Ezra on everything related to the show, from editing to interview prep to guest selection. At Vox, he also wrote articles and conducted interviews on topics ranging from policing and racial justice to democracy reform and the coronavirus.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.​​“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Sonia Herrero and Isaac Jones; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin, Kristina Samulewski, Nicholas Bloom, Adam Ozimek, Julia Hobsbawm and Sheela Subramanian.

In his latest work, “The Last White Man,” the award-winning writer Mohsin Hamid imagines a world that is very like our own, with one major exception: On various days, white people wake up to discover that their skin is no longer white. It’s a heavy premise, but one of Hamid’s unique talents as a novelist is his ability to take on the most difficult of topics — racism, migration, loss — with a remarkably light touch.“How do you begin to have these conversations in a way that allows everybody a way in?” Hamid asks at one point in our conversation. “How do you talk about these things in a way that’s open to everyone?” What sets Hamid apart is his capacity to do just that — both in his fiction and in our conversation. We discuss:How Hamid experienced what it was like to lose his whiteness after 9/11What happens to a society when suddenly we can’t sort ourselves by raceThe origins of modern humans’ fear of death — and how to overcome itWhy Hamid thinks future humans will look back at the idea of borders with moral horrorWhy Hamid believes that pessimistic realism is a “deeply conservative” worldviewHamid’s process for imagining optimistic futuresWhy Hamid believes that the very notion of the self is a fictionWhy we turn to activities like sex, drugs and meditation when we get overwhelmedHow America’s policies toward immigrants and refugees should challenge our “heroic” sense of national identityWhat Toni Morrison taught Hamid about how to read and writeAnd more.Mentioned:"The Metamorphosis" by Franz KafkaExit West by Mohsin HamidBook Recommendations:Beloved by Toni MorrisonFicciones by Jorge Luis BorgesThe Epic of Gilgamesh, translated by Andrew GeorgeThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Sonia Herrero and Isaac Jones; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

Today’s show is built around three simple sentences: “Future people count. There could be a lot of them. And we can make their lives better.” Those sentences form the foundation of an ethical framework known as “longtermism.” They might sound obvious, but to take them seriously is a truly radical endeavor — one with the power to change the world and even your life.That second sentence is where things start to get wild. It’s possible that there could be tens of trillions of future people, that future people could outnumber current people by a ratio of something like a million to one. And if that’s the case, then suddenly most of the things we spend most of our time arguing about shrink in importance compared with the things that will affect humanity’s long-term future.William MacAskill is a professor of philosophy at Oxford University, the director of the Forethought Foundation for Global Priorities Research and the author of the forthcoming book, “What We Owe the Future,” which is the best distillation of the longtermist worldview I’ve read. So this is a conversation about what it means to take the moral weight of the future seriously and the way that everything — from our political priorities to career choices to definitions of heroism — changes when you do.We also cover the host of questions that longtermism raises: How should we weigh the concerns of future generations against those of living people? What are we doing today that future generations will view in the same way we look back on moral atrocities like slavery? Who are the “moral weirdos” of our time we should be paying more attention to? What are the areas we should focus on, the policies we should push, the careers we should choose if we want to guarantee a better future for our posterity?And much more.Mentioned:"Is A.I. the Problem? Or Are We?" by The Ezra Klein Show "How to Do The Most Good" by The Ezra Klein Show "This Conversation With Richard Powers Is a Gift" by The Ezra Klein ShowBook Recommendations:“Moral Capital” by Christopher Leslie Brown“The Precipice” by Toby Ord“The Scout Mindset” by Julia GalefThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.​​“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Sonia Herrero and Isaac Jones; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

It’s hard to think of anything changing more quickly in our society right now than our understanding of gender. There’s an explosion of young people identifying as gender nonconforming in some way or another, and others are coming out as transgender or nonbinary throughout their lives, from childhood to old age. But this sea change has brought with it an enormous amount of confusion and resistance. As of July, lawmakers in 21 states had introduced bills that focus on restricting gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth, such as hormone blockers, and 29 states had introduced bills banning transgender youth from sports. But we also know that the degree of support a young person receives when coming out — or doesn’t — can have profound consequences for their mental health.How should we process and understand this moment in gender? Kathryn Bond Stockton is a distinguished professor of English focusing on gender studies at the University of Utah and the author of the book “Gender(s).” She is incredibly skilled at explaining the fundamentals — and complexities — of what gender means and how people, including Stockton herself, have wrestled with it. In this conversation, we discuss:Why and how Stockton has always felt out of place as a womanHow her entry to the evangelical church actually advanced her acceptance of her genderWhy gender is “queer” for all of us, regardless of how we identify or how much we think about itThe ways that we perform our genders without even knowing we’re doing itHow the choices parents make concerning things as seemingly banal as clothing and toys shape children’s gender identitiesHow an expanded sense of gender can bring pain as well as pleasure and playfulnessWhat Stockton has learned from discussions about gender roles with Mormon students in her Utah classroomsWhat we would gain — and possibly lose — if we were to loosen social categories of genderWhy Pride celebrations can be so utopianAnd much more.Mentioned:Detransition, Baby by Torrey PetersButch Queens Up in Pumps by Marlon M. BaileyBook Recommendations:Histories of the Transgender Child by Jules Gill-PetersonBrilliant Imperfection by Eli ClareAsegi Stories by Qwo-Li DriskillThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Kate Sinclair; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Sonia Herrero and Isaac Jones; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin, Kristina Samulewski and Rollin Hu.

Today we're bringing you an episode from our friends at The Argument, about cultural appropriation in creative work. In recent years, book written by white authors like “American Dirt” and “The Help" have been criticized for their portrayals of characters of color. Artists’ job is to imagine and create, but what do we do when they get it wrong?To discuss, Jane Coaston is joined by the Opinion writers Roxane Gay and Jay Caspian Kang. In their work, both have thought deeply about the thorny issues of writing across identities — including what makes work authentic, the pressure of representation for writers of color and the roles social media and the publishing industry play in literary criticism. “I don’t think it’s that complicated,” Roxane says. “It’s not that we divorce identity from the conversation. It’s that we treat it as inherent because we can’t separate out parts of ourselves.”Mentioned:“White Fever Dreams” by Roxane Gay in Gay Magazine“The Pity of the Elites” by Jay Caspian KangThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Rollin Hu, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair; original music by Isaac Jones and Pat McCusker; mixing by Pat McCusker; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski. 

Today we're taking a short break and re-releasing one of our favorite episodes from 2022, a conversation with the novelist and Buddhist priest Ruth Ozeki. We'll be back with new episodes next week!The world has gotten louder, even when we’re alone. A day spent in isolation can still mean a day buffeted by the voices on social media and the news, on podcasts, in emails and text messages. Objects have also gotten louder: through the advertisements that follow us around the web, the endless scroll of merchandise available on internet shopping sites and in the plentiful aisles of superstores. What happens when you really start listening to all these voices? What happens when you can’t stop hearing them?Ruth Ozeki is a Zen Buddhist priest and the author of novels including “A Tale for the Time Being,” which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and “The Book of Form and Emptiness,” which I read over paternity leave and loved. “The Book of Form and Emptiness” is about Benny, a teenager who starts hearing objects speak to him right after his father’s death, and it’s about his mother, Annabelle, who can’t let go of anything she owns, and can’t seem to help her son or herself. And then it’s about so much more than that: mental illnesses and materialism and consumerism and creative inspiration and information overload and the power of stories and the role of libraries and unshared mental experiences and on and on. It’s a book thick with ideas but written with a deceptively light, gentle pen.Our conversation begins by exploring what it means to hear voices in our minds, and whether it’s really so rare. We talk about how Ozeki’s novels begin she hears a character speaking in her mind, how meditation can teach you to detach from own internal monologue, why Marie Kondo’s almost animist philosophy of tidying became so popular across the globe, whether objects want things, whether practicing Zen has helped her want less and, my personal favorite part, the dilemmas posed by an empty box with the words “empty box” written on it.Mentioned:The Great Shift by James L. KugelBook recommendations:When You Greet Me I Bow by Norman FischerThe Aleph and Other Stories by Jorge Luis BorgesVibrant Matter by Jane BennettThis episode contains a brief mention of suicidal ideation. If you are having thoughts of suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (TALK). A list of additional resources is available at SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

“At the very heart of democracy is a contradiction that cannot be resolved, one that has affected free societies from ancient Greece to contemporary America,” write Zac Gershberg and Sean Illing in their new book, “The Paradox of Democracy.” In order to live up to its name, democracy must be open to free communication and expression; yet that very feature opens democracies up to the forces of chaos, fragmentation and demagoguery that undermine them. Historically, this paradox becomes particularly profound during transitions between different communication technologies. “We see this time and again,” Gershberg and Illing write, “media continually evolve faster than politics, resulting in recurring patterns of democratic instability.”For that reason, Gershberg and Illing refer to media ecology — a field dedicated to studying the complex interplay between media, humans and their broader social environments — as “the master political science.” You can’t understand a society’s politics without understanding the mediums through which its people communicate. Radio and TV and Twitter and TikTok each profoundly shape the way we think, the qualities we look for in our politicians, the way we absorb news, the kind of political discourse we engage in and so much more.Illing’s career, in many ways, represents the intersection of these two worlds: He’s trained as a political theorist but eventually switched careers to become a journalist; he’s currently the interviews writer at Vox, where he hosts the podcast “Vox Conversations” and often writes about the nexus of media and politics. So I invited Illing on the show to talk about his new book alongside some of his other work. We discuss: Why mid-century media theorists like Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman are essential for understanding our current political momentHow the mediums through which we communicate — TV, social media, print news — shape us even more deeply than the content we absorb from themThe surprising dangers of “Sesame Street”Why Abraham Lincoln probably never would have won the presidency in the TV eraHow revolutions in media technology from the printing press to Facebook have destabilized political systemsHow Twitter reshapes the thinking of those who use itWhy Illing believes that democracy is fundamentally a “communicative culture” and not a set of rules and institutionsWhat Donald Trump understood about our media age that the media itself didn’tWhy Steve Bannon’s “flood the zone” media strategy has been so successfulWhether it’s possible to achieve a healthier version of political discourse given our current technologiesAnd much moreThis episode contains strong language.Mentioned:“‘Flood the zone with shit’: How misinformation overwhelmed our democracy” by Sean Illing“Quantifying partisan news diets in Web and TV audiences” by Daniel Muise, Homa Hosseinmardi, Baird Howland, Markus Mobius, David Rothschild and Duncan J. WattsBook Recommendations:Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil PostmanPublic Opinion by Walter LippmannMediated by Thomas de ZengotitaThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Rollin Hu, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Sonia Herrero, Carole Sabouraud and Isaac Jones; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

There’s a paradox that sits at the center of our mental health conversation in America. On the one hand, our treatments for mental illness have gotten better and better in recent decades. Psychopharmaceuticals have improved considerably; new, more effective methods of psychotherapy have been developed; and we’ve reached a better understanding of what kinds of social support are most helpful for those experiencing mental health crises.But at the same time, mental health outcomes have moved in exactly the wrong direction. In the United States, there is a death by suicide about every 11 minutes, and about half of those who die by that method have not received mental health care. Rates of anxiety, depression and eating disorders have skyrocketed among young people in recent years. From 2009 to 2015, rates of emergency room visits for self-harm more than doubled for girls ages 10 to 14.Thomas Insel understands the contours of this disconnect as well as anyone. A psychiatrist and researcher, he was the director of the National Institute of Mental Health for 13 years, and has served as a special adviser on mental health care to California’s governor, Gavin Newsom. But in his new book, “Healing: Our Path from Mental Illness to Mental Health,” he admits that even the herculean efforts made by the mental health community have fallen short. The book explores how badly we’re failing at mental health care, and how much more we could do with what we have already discovered, and what we already know. “Put simply, the mental health problem is medical,” he writes, “but the solutions are not just medical — they are social, environmental, and political.”In this conversation, we discuss why our current medical system is so inadequate at helping people with mental illnesses of all stripes, why psychiatric research and patient outcomes are so wildly out of step, the story of how the U.S. government systematically divested from mental health care in the 1980s, and the fragmented system of care that those decisions created. We also touch on why it’s so difficult to find the right therapist; which treatments we know work really well — and why we so often fail to implement them; why mental health is not just a medical problem, but also an economic and social one; what public policy can, and importantly can’t, do to solve our mental health crisis; the relationship between loneliness and mental illness; how the loosening of family and social ties is impacting our collective mental health and more.Mentions:“Wealth-Care Reform” by Ezra Klein“Together” by Vivek Murthy“Vivek Murthy on America’s Loneliness Epidemic” episode from Vox ConversationsBook Recommendations:Nobody’s Normal by Roy Richard GrinkerAmerican Psychosis by E. Fuller TorreyCrazy by Pete EarleyThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair; mixing by Sonia Herrero, Carole Sabouraud and Isaac Jones; original music by Isaac Jones; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

America is experiencing a housing crisis — or, more accurately, multiple housing crises. A massive housing shortage in major cities has resulted in skyrocketing rents. Low- and middle-income individuals find themselves priced out of the places with the most opportunity. Homelessness is rampant in cities across the country. Developers often face the steepest obstacles to building in the places where new housing is needed most. And young people are increasingly viewing homeownership, once a vital part of the American dream, as hopelessly out of reach.These outcomes weren’t inevitable. Plenty of other countries supply their populations with high-quality housing at lower prices. And the solutions here are incredibly simple: Build more housing in places where it’s needed, build cheaper forms of housing, build housing alongside public transit, provide more housing vouchers. So why don’t we act on them?Jenny Schuetz is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author of the new book “Fixer Upper: How to Repair America’s Broken Housing Systems,” which is perhaps the best, clearest overview of America’s housing problems to date. We discuss why the states with the highest homelessness rates are all governed by Democrats, the roots of America’s homelessness crisis, why economists believe the U.S. gross domestic product could be over a third — a third! — higher today if American cities had built more housing, why it’s so hard to build housing where it’s needed most, the actual (and often misunderstood) causes of gentrification, why public housing has such a bad reputation in the U.S.; how progressives’ commitment to local democracy and community voice surprisingly lies at the heart of America’s housing crises, why homeownership is still the primary vehicle of wealth accumulation in America (and the toxic impact that has on our politics), what the U.S. can learn from the housing policies of countries like Germany and France, what it would take to build a better politics of housing and much more.Mentioned:“The Left-NIMBY canon” by Noah SmithThe Homevoter Hypothesis by William A. FischelThe Paradox of Democracy by Zac Gershberg and Sean IllingRecommendations:Crabgrass Frontier by Kenneth T. JacksonNeighborhood Defenders by Katherine Levine Einstein, David M. Glick and Maxwell PalmerMaid (Netflix series)Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker, Kate Sinclair and Rollin Hu; mixing by Sonia Herrero and Isaac Jones; original music by Isaac Jones; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

Kim Stanley Robinson is one of the great living science fiction writers and one of the most astute observers of how planets look, feel and work. His Mars Trilogy imagined what it might be like for humans to settle on the red planet. His best-selling novel “The Ministry for the Future” is a masterful effort at envisioning what might happen to Earth in a future of unchecked climate change. Robinson has a rare command of both science and human nature, and his writing crystallizes how the two must work together if we are to rescue our collective planetary future from possible ruin.In his most recent book, a rare turn to nonfiction called “The High Sierra: A Love Story,” Robinson trains his attention on the planet we inhabit in the here and now, particularly on one of his favorite places on Earth: the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California and Nevada. The new book is part memoir, part guidebook, part meditation on how time, space and even politics take shape in a wondrous geological landscape.We discuss why Robinson decided to start writing outdoors, what it was like to experience the Sierras on psychedelics in his youth, what “actor-network theory” is and how it helps us understand our relationship to the planet and to our own bodies, why we should think of climate change more like we do plane crashes, what hiking backpacks say about American consumerism, how we should change our relationship to technology in order to be happier, why the politics of wanting are so confusing yet important, why Robinson is so excited about ideas like a wage ratio and rewilding schemes, how the “structure of feeling” around climate has changed, why Robinson is feeling more hopeful about Earth’s future these days and more.Mentioned:“The Most Important Book I’ve Read This Year” by Vox Conversations“Your Kids Are Not Doomed” by Ezra Klein“Design for the Real World” by Victor Papanek“Thomas Piketty’s Case for ‘Participatory Socialism’” by The Ezra Klein ShowBook Recommendations:A Brief History of Equality by Thomas PikettyThe Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David WengrowThe Echo Maker by Richard PowersThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Isaac Jones and Sonia Herrero; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

Today, we're bringing you an episode from the recently launched New York Times Opinion podcast, “First Person,” hosted by Lulu Garcia-Navarro. In each episode, Lulu sits down with people living through the headlines for intimate and surprising conversations that help us make sense of our complicated world. This particular episode is about one gay Ukranian soldier’s experience fighting against Russia. Since the beginning of the war, Ukrainians of all backgrounds have come together to fight their common enemy, Russia. But for some Ukrainians, that enemy holds particular terror. In Russia, gay people are routinely targeted for their identity — arrested without cause and even tortured. That’s what motivated Oleksandr Zhuhan to join the volunteer Territorial Defense Forces, despite experiencing homophobia in Ukraine. In the months since, Zhuhan has been fighting two battles: one for his country and one for his identity.You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/column/first-person. “First Person” is produced by Derek Arthur, Christina Djossa, Jason Pagano, Cristal Duhaime, Olivia Natt and Courtney Stein. The show is edited by Kaari Pitkin, Stephanie Joyce and Lisa Tobin. Scoring by Isaac Jones, Pat McCusker and Carole Sabouraud. Mixing by Isaac Jones. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta, with editorial support from Kristina Samulewski. The executive producer of Opinion audio is Irene Noguchi, and the director of New York Times audio is Paula Szuchman. Special thanks to Jeffrey Miranda, Kate Sinclair, Patrick Healy and Katie Kingsbury.

“It’s true: We’re in trouble,” writes Michelle Goldberg of the modern feminist movement. “One thing backlashes do is transform a culture’s common sense and horizons of possibility. A backlash isn’t just a political formation. It’s also a new structure of feeling that makes utopian social projects seem ridiculous.”It wouldn’t be fair to blame the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and the ensuing wave of draconian abortion laws sweeping the nation on a failure of persuasion, or on a failure of the women’s movement. But signs of anti-feminist backlash are permeating American culture: Girlbosses have become figures of ridicule, Amber Heard’s testimony drew a fire hose of misogyny, and recent polling finds that younger generations — both men and women — are feeling ambivalent about whether feminism has helped or hurt women. A movement that has won so many victories in law, politics and public opinion is now defending its very existence.Goldberg is a columnist for Times Opinion who focuses on gender and politics. In recent weeks, she has written a series of columns grappling with the overturning of Roe v. Wade, but also considering the broader atmosphere that created so much despair on the left. What can feminists — and Democrats more broadly — learn from anti-abortion organizers? How has the women’s movement changed in the half-century since Roe, and where can the movement go after this loss? Has feminism moved too far away from its early focus on organizing and into the turbulent waters of online discourse? Has it become a victim of its own success?We discuss a “flabbergasting” poll about the way young people — both men and women — feel about feminism, why so many young people have become pessimistic about heterosexual relationships, how the widespread embrace of feminism defanged its politics, why the anti-abortion movement is so good at recruiting and retaining activists — and what the left can learn from them, how today’s backlash against women compares to that of the Reagan years, why nonprofits on the left are in such extreme turmoil, why a social movement’s obsession with “cringe” can be its downfall, how “safe spaces” on the left started to feel unsafe, why feminism doesn’t always serve poor women, whether the #MeToo movement was overly dismissive of “due process” and how progressives could improve the way they talk about the family and more.Mentioned:“The Future Isn’t Female Anymore” by Michelle Goldberg“Amber Heard and the Death of #MeToo” by Michelle GoldbergRethinking Sex by Christine EmbaThe Case Against the Sexual Revolution by Louise PerryBad Sex by Nona Willis Aronowitz“Elephant in the Zoom” by Ryan Grim“The Tyranny of Structurelessness” by Jo Freeman“Lessons From the Terrible Triumph of the Anti-Abortion Movement” by Michelle GoldbergThe Making of Pro-Life Activists by Ziad W. MunsonSteered by the Reactionary: What To Do About Feminism by The DriftBook Recommendations:Backlash by Susan FaludiNo More Nice Girls by Ellen WillisStatus and Culture by W. David MarxThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Kate Sinclair; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Sonia Herrero and Isaac Jones; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

For decades now, the conservative legal movement has been on a mission to remake this nation’s laws from the bench. And it’s working. On Friday we released an episode with the legal scholar Kate Shaw that walked through case after case showing how conservative Supreme Court majorities have lurched this country’s laws to the right on guns, voting, gerrymandering, regulatory authority, unions, campaign finance and more in the past 20 years. And if the Dobbs majority is any indication, this rightward shift is just getting started.But this conservative legal revolution is only half of the story. The other half is just as important: the collapse of liberal constitutional thinking. Liberals have “lost anything that would animate a positive theory of what the Constitution should be,” says the legal scholar Larry Kramer. “And so they’ve been left with a kind of potpourri of leftover things from the periods when liberals were ascendant in the ’60s and ’70s.”Kramer is a former dean of Stanford Law School, the current president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the author of“The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review.” And according to him, it hasn’t always been this way. For most of American history, politicians, from Jefferson to Lincoln to Franklin Roosevelt, believed that constitutional interpretation was inextricable from politics. And they put forward distinct visions of what the Constitution meant and the kind of country it was written to build. But then, in response to the progressive victories of the Warren court, liberals began to embrace the doctrine of judicial supremacy: the view that the final authority on the Constitution rests with the courts. This has resulted in both the conservative legal victories of the past few decades and liberals’ muddled, weak response.So this is a conversation about the collapse of liberal constitutional politics: why it happened, what we can learn from it and what a renewed, progressive vision of the Constitution could look like. We also discuss why the founders weren’t actually originalists at all, whether liberal constitutional thinking has been captured by the legal profession, what a liberal alternative to originalism could consist of, why changing the size of the court (despite its controversies) has been an important tool for staving off constitutional crisis, the case for an “anti-oligarchy Constitution,” the merits of imposing supermajority requirements on court decisions and nominations, why Kramer views Roosevelt’s infamous court-packing effort as a major success and more.Mentioned:Larry Kramer’s testimony at the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States“Judicial Supremacy and the End of Judicial Restraint” by Larry D. Kramer“Marbury and the Retreat from Judicial Supremacy” by Larry D. Kramer“The Judicial Tug of War” by Adam Bonica and Maya SenBook recommendations:The Anti-Oligarchy Constitution by Joseph Fishkin and William E. ForbathThe Second Creation by Jonathan GienappWhen We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín LabatutWe’re hiring a researcher! You can apply here or by visiting nytimes.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/NewsThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker, Kate Sinclair and Irene Noguchi; original music and mixing by Isaac Jones; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

In the past few weeks alone, the Supreme Court has delivered a firestorm of conservative legal victories. States now have far less leeway to restrict gun permits. The right to abortion is no longer constitutionally protected. The Environmental Protection Agency has been kneecapped in its ability to regulate carbon emissions, and by extension, all executive branch agencies will see their power significantly diminished.But to focus only on this particular Supreme Court term is to miss the bigger picture: In the past few decades, conservative court majorities have dragged this country’s laws to the right on almost every issue imaginable. Shelby County v. Holder gutted the Voting Rights Act and opened the door for states to pass restrictive voting laws. Rucho v. Common Cause limited the court’s ability to curb partisan gerrymandering. Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission unleashed a torrent of campaign spending. Janus v. AFSCME Council 31 weakened unions. A whole slew of cases, including some decided on the shadow docket during the Covid-19 pandemic, undercut federal agencies’ power to help govern in an era of congressional gridlock. And that’s only a partial list.Kate Shaw is a law professor at Cardozo School of Law, a co-host of the legal podcast Strict Scrutiny and a former clerk for Justice John Paul Stevens. In this episode, she walks me through the most significant Supreme Court cases over the past 20 years, from the court’s decision to hand George W. Bush the presidency in 2000, to the dismantling of the Voting Rights Act, to the assertion of an individual’s right to bear arms.Along the way, we discuss the right’s decades-long effort to transform American law from the bench, how Republican-appointed judges have consistently entrenched Republican political power, the interpretive bankruptcy of constitutional originalism, how the Warren Court radicalized the conservative legal movement, what might happen to decisions like Obergefell v. Hodges now that the court majority seems to be so comfortable throwing out precedent, what cases to watch in the Roberts Court’s next term, and more.Mentioned:“After Citizens United: How Outside Spending Shapes American Democracy” by Nour Abdul-Razzak, Carlo Prato and Stephane Wolton“The Most Important Study in the Abortion Debate” by Annie LowreyBook recommendations:The Turnaway Study by Diana Greene FosterTorn Apart by Dorothy RobertsWho Decides? by Jeffrey S. Sutton51 Imperfect Solutions by Jeffrey S. SuttonThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Rollin Hu, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Isaac Jones; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin, Kristina Samulewski, David A. Kaplan, Ian Millhiser, Aziz Rana and Kate Redburn.

On Friday, a Supreme Court majority voted to overturn Roe v. Wade. On Sunday, we released an episode with Dahlia Lithwick that goes through the court’s decision in detail, and we will continue to come out with new episodes on the ruling — and its vast implications — in the days and weeks to come. Today, we’re re-airing an episode that we originally released in February of this year with Columbia Law professor Jamal Greene — a conversation that is even more relevant now than it was when we originally released it. The Dobbs ruling may be the most poignant example of how extreme the U.S. Supreme Court has become in recent years, but it’s certainly not the only one. “Getting race wrong early has led courts to get everything else wrong since,” writes Greene in his book “How Rights Went Wrong.” But he probably doesn’t mean what you think he means.“How Rights Went Wrong” is filled with examples of just how bizarre American Supreme Court outcomes have become. An information processing company claims the right to sell its patients’ data to drug companies — it wins. A group of San Antonio parents whose children attend a school with no air-conditioning, uncertified teachers and a falling apart school building sue for the right to an equal education — they lose. A man from Long Island claims the right to use his homemade nunchucks to teach the “Shafan Ha Lavan” karate style, which he made up, to his children — he wins.Greene’s argument is that in America, for specific reasons rooted in our ugly past, the way we think about rights has gone terribly awry. We don’t do constitutional law the way other countries do it. Rather, we recognize too few rights, and we protect them too strongly. That’s created a race to get everything ruled as a right, because once it’s a right, it’s unassailable. And that’s made the stakes of our constitutional conflicts too high. “If only one side can win, it might as well be mine,” Greene writes. “Conflict over rights can encourage us to take aim at our political opponents instead of speaking to them. And we shoot to kill.”It’s a grim diagnosis. But, for Greene, it’s a hopeful one, too. Because it doesn’t have to be this way. Supreme Court decisions don’t have to feel so existential. Rights like food and shelter and education need not be wholly ignored by the courts. Other countries do things differently, and so can we. We also discuss the reason we have courts in the first place, why Greene thinks Germany’s approach to abortion rights could be a model for America, Greene’s case for appointing nearly 200 justices to the U.S. Supreme Court and much more. Mentioned: “The Dobbs Decision Isn’t Just About Abortion. It’s About Power.” by “The Ezra Klein Show”Book Recommendations:Rights Talk by Mary Ann GlendonLaw and Disagreement by Jeremy WaldronCult of the Constitution by Mary Anne Franks We’re hiring a researcher! You can apply here or by visiting nytimes.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/NewsThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Kristina Samulewski; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld and Isaac Jones; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

On Friday, a Supreme Court majority voted to overturn Roe v. Wade. Nearly all abortions are already banned in at least nine states, home to 7.2 million women of reproductive age. And it is likely that other bans and restrictions will follow. As the court’s three liberal justices put it in their dissenting opinion, “One result of today’s decision is certain: the curtailment of women’s rights, and of their status as free and equal citizens.”But this decision doesn’t just represent the end of abortion as a constitutional right; what we’re also witnessing, before our eyes, is a legal regime change — one with striking implications for the future of the court and the country. In their majority opinion on the case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the justices cast aside precedent, the court’s historical norms and evidence-based concerns about how this ruling will disrupt people’s lives. Even Chief Justice John Roberts, a fellow conservative, argued in a concurring opinion that the decision went too far, writing, “The court’s opinion is thoughtful and thorough, but those virtues cannot compensate for the fact that its dramatic and consequential ruling is unnecessary to decide the case before us.”The Dobbs ruling, in other words, isn’t just about abortion; it’s a conservative court majority flexing its newly unrestrained power.Dahlia Lithwick is a reporter covering the Supreme Court for Slate, the host of the podcast “Amicus” and someone I turn to whenever I need to understand the court. We discuss what Roe did and what Dobbs changes; why the rights to abortion, contraception and same-sex marriage have a much firmer constitutional basis than conservatives argue; how the majority opinion implicitly threatens those latter two rights, even while claiming to uphold them; why the most revealing opinion in the case is Roberts’s scathing concurrence; why the majority’s absolute disregard for precedent is so terrifying for defenders of the court; the way Justice Samuel Alito’s constitutional originalism freezes past injustices into present law; what the current composition of the court means for the future of liberal governance in America; and more.Mentioned: “Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization”“There’s a Way to Outmaneuver the Supreme Court, and Maine Has Found It” by Aaron TangBook recommendations:Hope in the Dark by Rebecca SolnitMan’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. FranklYou Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train by Howard ZinnWe’re hiring a researcher! You can apply here or by visiting nytimes.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/NewsThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Rollin Hu, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair; mixing and original music by Isaac Jones; additional engineering by Pat McCusker; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

The Jan. 6 hearings have made it clear that Donald Trump led a concerted, monthslong effort to overturn a democratic election. The extensive interviews — over 1,000 — that the House select committee conducted prove that Trump was told there was no evidence of election fraud, but he pressed his anti-democratic case regardless. And it appears that the hearings may be making an impact on public opinion: An ABC News/Ipsos survey released Sunday found that 58 percent of respondents believe Trump should be charged with a crime for his role in the Jan. 6 attack, up from 52 percent in April.But after all the evidence comes to light, will he actually face legal consequences? If the answer is no, then what might future presidents — including, perhaps, Trump himself — be emboldened to do? And what would that mean for the future of the American political system?Jamelle Bouie is a Times Opinion columnist and co-host of the podcast “Unclear and Present Danger.” Bouie brings a remarkable historical depth to his writing about American politics. His columns about Jan. 6 — and the troubling idiosyncrasies of Trump’s presidency before it — have shown how the former president’s illiberal actions have threatened the constitutional foundation of American government. So I asked him on the show to help me process the Jan. 6 hearings with an eye to America’s past, and also to its uncertain future.We discuss why Jan. 6 may be not just an insurrection but “a kind of revolution or, at least, the very beginning of one”; how the anti-democratic nature of the American Constitution makes our system vulnerable to demagogues like Trump; the most important takeaways from the hearings so far; what could happen in 2024 if Trump is allowed to walk free; what Trump allies are already doing to gain power over elections; why refusing to prosecute Trump would itself be a “radical act”; why Republicans have grown increasingly suspicious of — and hostile to — representative democracy; why Bouie thinks prosecuting Trump would be worth the political fallout it would cause; and more.Mentioned:“Trump Had a Mob. He Also Had a Plan.” by Jamelle Bouie“America Punishes Only a Certain Kind of Rebel” by Jamelle Bouie“Prosecute Trump? Put Yourself in Merrick Garland’s Shoes.” by Jack GoldsmithBook recommendations:Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men by Eric FonerSalmon P. Chase by Walter StahrWhat It Took to Win by Michael KazinWe're hiring a researcher! You can apply here or by visiting nytimes.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/NewsThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Rollin Hu, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair; mixing and original music by Isaac Jones; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

Depending on the data you look at, between 10 and 40 percent of people who get Covid will still have symptoms months later. For some, those symptoms will be modest. A cough, some fatigue. For others, they’ll be life-altering: Debilitating brain fog. Exhaustion. Cardiovascular problems. Blood clotting.This is what we call long Covid. It’s one term for a vast range of experiences, symptoms, outcomes. It’s one term that may be hiding a vast range of maladies and causes. So what do we actually know about long Covid? What don’t we know? And why don’t we know more than we do?Dr. Lekshmi Santhosh is an assistant professor at UCSF Medical Center, and the founder and medical director of UCSF’s long Covid and post-ICU clinic. Her clinic opened in May 2020 and was one of the first to focus on treating long Covid patients specifically. We discuss the wildly broad range of symptoms that can qualify as long Covid; the confusing overlaps between Covid symptoms and other diseases; whether age, race, sex and pre-existing conditions affect a person’s chances of contracting long Covid; why it’s so difficult to answer a seemingly simple question like, “How many people have gotten long Covid?”; what to make of a recent study that seemingly undermines the biological existence of long Covid; how worried we should be about correlations between Covid and medical disasters like heart attacks, strokes and abnormal blood clotting; and more.Mentioned:“Post–COVID Conditions Among Adult COVID-19 Survivors Aged 18–64 and ≥65 Years — United States, March 2020–November 2021” by Lara Bull-Otterson, Sarah Baca1, Sharon Saydah, Tegan K. Boehmer, Stacey Adjei, Simone Gray and Aaron M. Harris“Long COVID after breakthrough SARS-CoV-2 infection” by Ziyad Al-Aly, Benjamin Bowe and Yan Xie“A Longitudinal Study of COVID-19 Sequelae and Immunity: Baseline Findings” by Michael C. Sneller, C. Jason Liang, Adriana R. Marques, et al.“Positive Epstein–Barr virus detection in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients” by Ting Chen, Jiayi Song, Hongli Liu, Hongmei Zheng and Changzheng Chen“Risk factors and disease profile of post-vaccination SARS-CoV-2 infection in UK users of the COVID Symptom Study app” by Michela Antonelli, Rose S. Penfold, Jordi Merino, Carole H. Sudre, Erika Molteni, Sarah Berry, et al.“Understanding and Improving Recovery From COVID-19” by Aluko A. Hope“Markers of Immune Activation and Inflammation in Individuals With Postacute Sequelae of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 Infection” by Michael J. Peluso, Scott Lu, Alex F. Tang, Matthew S. Durstenfeld, et al.Book Recommendations:In Shock by Dr. Rana AwdishEvery Deep-Drawn Breath by Wes ElyMountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy KidderWe're hiring a researcher! You can apply here or by visiting nytimes.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/NewsThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Haylee Millikan and Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin, Kristina Samulewski, Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly and Lauren Nichols.

This week, the S&P 500 entered what analysts refer to as a bear market. The index has plunged around 22 percent from its most recent peak in January. Many growth stocks and crypto assets have crashed double or triple that amount.New home sales declined 17 percent in April, causing some analysts to argue that the housing market has peaked. And, in response to rising inflation, the Federal Reserve just approved its largest interest rate increase since 1994, meaning asset prices could dip even lower.To understand what’s happening in the stock market right now, you have to understand the era that preceded it. Rana Foroohar is a columnist at The Financial Times, and the author of several books on the economy including “Makers and Takers” and “Don’t Be Evil.” Her view is that a decade-plus of loose monetary policy has been the economic equivalent of a “sugar high,” which kept the prices of stocks, housing and other assets going up and up and up, even as the fundamentals of the economy have been eroding. This “everything bubble,” as she calls it, was bound to burst — and that’s exactly what she thinks is happening right now.So I wanted to have her on the show to discuss the economic choices — and lack thereof — that led to this point. We also discuss why the increasing power of the financial sector hasn’t resulted a stronger economy, whether the housing market has indeed hit its peak, the massive missed opportunity for public investment while interest rates were low, why policymakers treat asset price inflation so differently from other types of inflation, the true costs of the meat we eat and clothes we wear, why crypto represents the apotheosis of hyper-financialized capitalism, why I’m skeptical of the argument that we’re moving rapidly toward a less globalized world and more.Book recommendations:All That She Carried by Tiya MilesBeautiful Country by Qian Julie WangThe Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order by Gary GerstleWe're hiring a researcher! You can apply here or by visiting nytimes.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/NewsThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Andrea López Cruzado; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

It’s that time of year, when we invite listeners to send in questions, and I answer them on the air. And as usual, you delivered. I’m joined by my producer Annie Galvin, who asks me some of the most intriguing questions of the many we received: Is climate change a reason to forgo having kids? What would happen if Trump were allowed to return to Twitter, in the event of an Elon Musk acquisition? Should Biden run again in 2024? Is wokeness killing the Democratic Party?We also discuss the recent congressional hearing about U.F.O. sightings; whether it’s a good thing that so many talented young people are going to work in consulting, finance and corporate law; the worrisome anti-institutional direction of the Republican Party; why government is failing to deliver on liberals’ policies and promises — and how to start fixing that problem; whether Americans’ distrust in institutions is warranted; why I could use some recommendations for a good reading chair; and more.Mentioned:We're hiring a researcher! You can apply here or by visiting nytimes.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/News“Your Kids Are Not Doomed” by Ezra Klein“Empirically Grounded Technology Forecasts and the Energy Transition” by Rupert Way, Matthew Ives, Penny Mealy and J. Doyne Farmer“Ibram X. Kendi on What Conservatives — and Liberals — Get Wrong About Antiracism” by The Ezra Klein Show“A Different Way of Thinking About Cancel Culture” by Ezra KleinPublic Citizens by Paul Sabin“This Is Why Your Holiday Travel Is Awful” by Marc J. Dunkelman“Are We More Polarized? Or Just Weirder?” by The Ezra Klein Show“Donald Trump Didn’t Hijack the G.O.P. He Understood It.” by The Ezra Klein Show“Robert Sapolsky on the Toxic Intersection of Poverty and Stress” by Vox ConversationsBook Recommendations:Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil PostmanThe Invention of Nature by Andrea WulfBeautiful World, Where Are You by Sally RooneyMusic Recommendations:“Spring 1” by Max RichterChristian LöfflerThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

American socialists today find themselves in a tenuous position. Over the past decade, the left has become a powerful force in American politics. Bernie Sanders seriously contested two presidential primaries. Democratic socialists have won local, state and congressional races. Organizations like Democratic Socialists of America and socialist publications like Jacobin have become part of the political conversation.But the progressive left’s successes have been largely concentrated in well-educated, heavily blue districts, and the movement that claims to represent the interests of workers consistently fails to make meaningful inroads with working-class voters. As a result, socialists have struggled to build broad, lasting political power at any level of government.“We might feel more confident about the prospects for the left if, rather than a momentary shift leftward in liberal economic priorities or the rhetoric of certain parts of the mainstream media, there had been deeper inroads made among workers,” writes Bhaskar Sunkara. “There have been rare exceptions, but on the whole, it would be delusional to say that our ideological left has made a decade of progress merging with a wider social base.”Sunkara is the founding editor of Jacobin and the president of The Nation, two of the leading publications on the American left. He recently published an issue of Jacobin titled “The Left in Purgatory,” which attempts to grapple with the left’s failures, interrogate its political strategies and chart a path for American socialists to win over more working-class voters. So I invited him on the show to lay out where the left is now, and where he thinks it needs to go next.We discuss whether the left learned the wrong lessons from the Sanders 2016 campaign, why working-class voters across the world have increasingly abandoned left-wing parties, the fundamental error in Sanders’s theory of the 2020 electorate, why winning over working-class voters is just as much about a candidate’s aesthetic as it is about policy, why Sunkara is pessimistic that the socialists who came after Bernie will be able to match his widespread appeal, the “end of the A.O.C. honeymoon” on the left, what a “supply-side socialism” could look like, the tension between the left’s desire for government to do big things and its skepticism of concentrated power, why it costs so much to build in America, why Sunkara is worried about America’s “thin associative democracy” and more.Mentioned:“Brahmin Left versus Merchant Right: Changing Political Cleavages in 21 Western Democracies, 1948-2020” by Amory Gethin, Clara Martínez-Toledano and Thomas PikettyInfrastructure issue from Jacobin"The End of the A.O.C. Honeymoon" by Natalie ShureBook recommendations:Socialism: Past and Future by Michael HarringtonThe Age of Extremes by Eric HobsbawmThe South by Adolph L. Reed, Jr.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Rollin Hu and Kate Sinclair; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

The French economist Thomas Piketty is arguably the world’s greatest chronicler of economic inequality. For decades now, he has collected huge data sets documenting the share of income and wealth that has flowed to the top 1 percent. And the culmination of much of that work, his 2013 book “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” quickly became one of the most widely read and cited economic texts in recent history.Piketty’s new book, “A Brief History of Equality,” is perhaps his most optimistic work. In it, he chronicles the immense social progress that the U.S. and Europe have achieved over the past few centuries in the form of rising educational attainment, life expectancy and incomes. Of course, those societies still contain huge inequalities of wealth. But in Piketty’s view, this outcome isn’t an inevitability; it’s the product of policy choices that we collectively make — and could choose to make differently. And to that end, Piketty proposes a truly radical policy agenda — a universal minimum inheritance of around $150,000 per person, worker control over the boards of corporations and “confiscatory” levels of wealth and income taxation — that he calls “participatory socialism.”So this conversation isn’t just about the current state of inequality; it’s about the kind of policies — and politics — it would take to solve that inequality. We discuss why wealth is a far more accurate indicator of social power than income, the quality of the historical data that Piketty’s work relies on, why Piketty believes the welfare state — not capitalism itself — is the most important driver of human progress, why representative democracy hasn’t led to more economic redistribution, whether equality is really the best metric to measure human progress in the first place, how Piketty would pay for his universal inheritance proposal, whether the levels of taxation he is proposing would stifle innovation and wreck the economy, why he believes it would be better for societies — and economic productivity — for workers to have a much larger say in how companies are governed, how Piketty thinks about the prospect of inflation and more.Mentioned:The Great Leveler by Walter Scheidel“Anne Applebaum on What Liberals Misunderstand About Authoritarianism” by The Ezra Klein ShowBook Recommendations:The Great Demarcation by Rafe BlaufarbThe Emergence of Globalism by Or RosenboimThe Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah ArendtWe're hiring a researcher! You can apply here or by visiting nytimes.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/NewsThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

“There is definitely a contest for the future of the center right,” says Reihan Salam, the president of the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. In his telling, one side in this contest is “deeply pessimistic about the prospect of a diversifying America, explicitly anti-urban and increasingly willing to embrace redistribution and centralized power,” more so than conservatism before Donald Trump. This populist right has received a lot of attention since Trump’s election, and we’ve done other shows to try to understand it.But Salam is advancing a very different set of ideas with a very different theory of the electorate. He’s identified what he sees as a core fissure between the progressive elites who run the Democratic Party and the working-class voters of color who make up a large part of its base — particularly on issues of race and gender. And he believes that by putting forward an “urban conservative” agenda centered on education, housing and public safety, Republicans can exploit those internal cleavages and begin to win over demographics that have been central to the Democratic coalition.So for the final episode in our “The Rising Right” series, I wanted to use Salam’s thoughts to explore this alternate path for the American right. We discuss why the Republican Party has turned against major cities, whether antiracism is the right framework for addressing racial inequality, why he believes that children of Latino and Asian immigrants could become a core G.O.P. constituency, the difference between antiracism and “antiracialism,” the tactics of the anti-critical-race-theory movement, why he thinks there’s been an “overcorrection” on the right in favor of state power and redistribution, what a supply-side conservatism beyond just tax cuts could look like, why he believes we could be entering an era of “fiscal constraints” that could radically reshape policymaking on both the left and right and more.Mentioned:“The Anti-C.R.T. Movement and a Vision For a New Right Wing” by Jay Caspian Kang“America Needs Anti-Racialism” by Reihan Salam“Ibram X. Kendi on What Conservatives — and Liberals — Get Wrong About Antiracism” by The Ezra Klein Show“Prison-Gang Politics” by Christopher F. RufoBook recommendations:Classified by David E. BernsteinCriminal (In)Justice by Rafael A. MangualSir Vidia’s Shadow by Paul TherouxThe Strategy of Denial by Elbridge A. ColbyThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Rollin Hu and Mary Marge Locker; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing and engineering by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

For decades, the conservative position on abortion has been simple: Appoint justices who will overturn Roe V. Wade. That aspiration is now likely to become reality. The question of abortion rights will re-enter the realm of electoral politics in a way it hasn’t for 50 years. And that means Republicans will need to develop a new politics of abortion — a politics that may appeal not only to their anti-abortion base but to some of the many Americans who believe Roe should stand.One place those Republicans may look for inspiration is to the work of the legal scholar Erika Bachiochi. She is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, director of the Wollstonecraft Project at the Abigail Adams Institute and the author of “The Rights of Women: Reclaiming a Lost Vision,” where she argues for a “dignitarian feminism.” Bachiochi embraces women’s gains in professional and civic life but holds that techno-pharmacological birth control, the sexual revolution and the legalization of abortion have created a sexual and family culture that has ultimately been devastating to women’s well-being.In hopes of improving that status quo, Bachiochi puts forward a policy agenda that could very well become the post-Roe playbook for some Republicans: tighter abortion restrictions combined with a robust slate of family policies — some of which would be even bolder than the Biden administration’s proposals to date. Hers is not an argument I agree with, but it’s one that I imagine will become increasingly salient in a post-Roe America.In the third episode of our series “The Rising Right,” we discuss Bachiochi’s views on why the “gender revolution” has stalled; her belief that market logic has come to dominate our understandings of family, parenting, sex and feminism; her critique of modern “hookup” culture; and her pro-family economic agenda. And we debate whether it’s realistic to encourage the use of natural fertility regulation over hormonal contraception, how abortion relates to single motherhood and poverty, whether stricter abortion laws might benefit or hurt poor women, what role the law should play in teaching moral behavior, whether progressives have become too “Lockean” in their understanding of bodily autonomy, whether the sexual revolution gave people too much choice and more.Mentioned:Defenders of the Unborn by Daniel K. WilliamsGeneration Unbound by Isabel V. Sawhill“Equal Rights, Equal Wrongs” by Christopher KaczorBook recommendations:Rights Talk by Mary Ann GlendonFeminism Without Illusions by Elizabeth Fox-GenovesePublic Man, Private Woman by Jean Bethke ElshtainThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing and engineering by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

What does it mean to reckon with the violence, the tragedy, and the numerous contradictions of America? That is the focus of this conversation – originally aired in July of 2021 – with Nikole Hannah-Jones and Ta- Nehisi Coates. On one level, the conversation is a reflection on the fights over teaching critical race theory and the 1619 Project. But it is really focused on the deeper meaning behind those skirmishes: The ongoing fight over the story we tell about America and why that fight has so gripped our national discourse. What changes when a country’s sense of its own history changes? What changes when who gets to tell that story changes? What are the stakes here, and why now?My guests for this conversation need little introduction. Nikole Hannah-Jones is an investigative journalist for the New York Times Magazine where she led the 1619 Project, and, before that, did incredible work on racial inequality in the American education system. Ta-Nehisi Coates is the author of books including “Between the World and Me” and “The Water Dancer,” essays including “The Case for Reparations,” and, for Marvel Comics, “Captain America” and “Black Panther.” Each of them has won more prestigious awards for their work than I could possibly list here, and both will be taking faculty positions at Howard University.We discuss the 1619 Project, whether patriotism can coexist with shame and regret, the political power of American exceptionalism, the cracked foundations of American democracy, how journalism is and should be taught, our relationships to Twitter, what journalists can learn from children and much more. It's a conversation that feels just as relevant today as when it first aired. Nikole Hannah-Jones book recommendations:Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880 by W.E.B Du BoisThe Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel WilkersonTa-Nehisi Coates book recommendations:Postwar by Tony JudtAvengers of the New World by Laurent DuboisYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

​​“One of the biggest things about poetry is that it holds all of humanity,” the poet Ada Limón tells me. “It holds the huge and enormous and tumbling sphere of human emotions.”When the news feels sodden with violence and division, it can be hard to know where to put the difficult emotions it provokes. Poetry may seem an unlikely destination for those emotions, especially to those who don’t read it regularly. But Limón’s poems are unique for the deep attention they pay to both the world’s wounds and its redemptive beauty. In otherwise dark times, they have the power to open us up to the wonder and awe that the world still inspires.Limón’s books of poetry — like her 2018 collection, “The Carrying,” which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, and her 2015 collection, “Bright Dead Things” — are filled with meditations on grief and infertility, as well as striking moments of insight about friendship, lust and our fellowship with animals. Her most recent book, “The Hurting Kind,” explores what it means to share the planet with nonhuman beings like birds and trees. Limón describes the marvels of Kentucky’s rural landscape and the dusky beauty of a New York City bar with equal care. Her writing is highly acclaimed by fellow poets and also delightfully accessible to those who have never before picked up a book of poetry.Limón is a lively reader of her own poetry, so to structure this conversation, I asked her to read a varied selection of her work. We use those readings to discuss what poetry gives us that the news doesn’t, the importance of slowing down in a world that demands speed, how the grief of infertility differs from that of losing a loved one, how to be “in community” with ancestors and animals in lonely times, why Limón loves “chatty” and humorous poems as much as serious ones, why we often have our best thoughts in cars and on planes, how Instagram and Twitter affect our relationship to the world, why Limón meditates every day, how our relationship to excitement changes as we age and more.Book Recommendations:Stones by Kevin YoungFrank: Sonnets by Diane SeussPostcolonial Love Poem by Natalie DiazThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Haylee Millikan; original music by Isaac Jones and Jeff Geld; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin, Kristina Samulewski, Rebecca Elise Foote and Jahan Ramazani.

When Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization leaked a few weeks ago, it signaled that Roe v. Wade appears likely to be overturned in a matter of weeks. If Roe falls, questions about the right to abortion will re-enter the realm of electoral politics in a way they haven’t for 50 years. States will be solely in charge of determining whether abortion is permitted, under what conditions it should be permitted, and what the appropriate thresholds are for making those decisions.That means ordinary voters and their representatives will be forced to grapple with the moral — even metaphysical — quandaries at the heart of the abortion debate. What does it mean to belong to the human species, and when does that belonging begin? Is there a bright line at which an egg, a blastula, or a fetus attains the status of “person”? And how do we weigh the competing interests of mothers, families, and fetuses against one another? Those questions are the foundation on top of which abortion law and policy is built.Kate Greasley is a law professor at the University of Oxford in the U.K., where she studies, among other things, the legal and moral philosophy of abortion. She’s the author of “Arguments About Abortion: Personhood, Morality, and Law,” and co-author of “Abortion Rights: For and Against” alongside Christopher Kaczor, a philosopher who opposes abortion. While Greasley ultimately believes in the right to choose, she does a remarkably comprehensive job of carefully and fairly considering all the arguments, contradictions and nuances of this issue.We discuss why both progressives and conservatives should be open to questioning their preconceptions about abortion, what the Bible does — and doesn’t — suggest about abortion, why the status of fetal life is the central question at the heart of abortion ethics, whether life begins at conception or emerges later in fetal development, how the complex, messy moral intuitions that most of us have around questions of life and death don’t lend themselves neatly to either an abortion rights or anti-abortion camp, why late-term abortions pose particularly challenging moral questions, how the pregnant person’s bodily autonomy weighs against the fetus’s and more.Mentioned:“Can Fetuses Feel Pain?” by Stuart DerbyshireBook recommendations:Beyond Roe by David BooninAbortion: Three Perspectives by Michael Tooley, Celia Wolf-Devine, Philip E. Devine and Alison M. JaggarAbout Abortion by Carol SangerThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Rollin Hu and Kate Sinclair; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing and engineering by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

The experience of reading Hannah Arendt’s 1951 classic “The Origins of Totalitarianism” in the year 2022 is a disorienting one. Although Arendt is writing primarily about Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, her descriptions often capture aspects of our present moment more clearly than those of us living through it can ever hope to.Arendt writes of entire populations who “had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true.” She describes “the masses’ escape from reality” as “a verdict against the world in which they are forced to live and in which they cannot exist.” She points out that in societies riddled with elite hypocrisy, “it seemed revolutionary to admit cruelty, disregard of human values, and general amorality, because this at least destroyed the duplicity upon which the existing society seemed to rest.”It’s hard to read statements like these without immediately conjuring up images of Vladimir Putin’s Russia or Donald Trump’s presidency or the QAnon faithful. But that’s exactly the point: The reason Arendt is so relevant today is that her diagnosis doesn’t apply just to the Nazi or Soviet regimes she was writing about. It is more fundamentally about the characteristics of liberal societies that make them vulnerable to distinctly illiberal and authoritarian forces — weaknesses that, in many ways, have only become more pronounced in the 70 years since “The Origins of Totalitarianism” was first released.Anne Applebaum is a staff writer for The Atlantic and a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian. Her writing — including her most recent book, “Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism” — is focused on the resurgence of autocratic movements and governments around the world, and why members of Western societies have abandoned liberal democratic ideals in favor of strongman leaders, conspiratorial movements and authoritarian regimes. And in the introduction she wrote to a new edition of “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” Applebaum argues that Arendt’s insights are more relevant now than ever.So this is a conversation that uses Arendt’s analysis as a window into our present. Applebaum and I discuss how “radical loneliness” lays the groundwork for authoritarianism, what Putin and Trump understand about human nature that most liberals miss, the seductive allure of groups like QAnon, the way that modern propaganda feeds off a combination of gullibility and cynicism, whether liberalism’s own logic is making societies vulnerable to totalitarian impulses, why efforts by populist politicians to upend conventional morality have held such appeal in Western liberal democracies, how the ideology of “economism” blinds Western liberals to their own societies’ deepest vulnerabilities, what liberals need to do differently to counteract the rise of global autocracy and more.Mentioned:“Review of Adolph Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’” by George OrwellBook Recommendations:Cuba by Ada FerrerThe Lincoln Highway by Amor TowlesThe Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah ArendtThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Rollin Hu, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

“It begun to dawn on many conservatives that in spite of apparent electoral victories that have occurred regularly since the Reagan years, they have consistently lost, and lost overwhelmingly to progressive forces,” Patrick Deneen writes in a recent essay titled “Abandoning Defensive Crouch Conservatism.” He goes on to argue that conservatives need to reject liberal values like free speech, religious liberty and pluralism, abandon their defensive posturing and use the power of the state to actively fight back against what he calls “liberal totalitarianism.”To progressive ears, these kinds of statements can be baffling; after all, Republicans currently control a majority of state legislatures, governorships and the Supreme Court, and they are poised to make gains in the midterm elections this fall. But even so, there’s a pervasive feeling among conservatives that progressives are using their unprecedented institutional power — in universities, in Hollywood, in the mainstream media, in the C-suites of tech companies — to wage war on traditional ways of life. And many of them have come to believe that the only viable response is to fight back against these advances at all costs. It’s impossible to understand the policies, leaders, rhetoric and tactics of the populist right without first trying to inhabit this worldview.That is why, for this second conversation in our series “The Rising Right,” I wanted to speak with Deneen. He is a professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame, and his 2018 book, “Why Liberalism Failed,” has become a touchstone within the conservative intelligentsia and was even fairly well received by liberals. But since then, Deneen’s writing has come to express something closer to total political war. And with three other professors, he recently started a Substack newsletter, “The Postliberal Order,” to build the kind of intellectual and political project needed to fight that war.This is a conversation about what Deneen’s “postliberal” political project looks like — and the tensions and contradictions it reveals about the modern populist right. We discuss (and debate) Deneen’s view that conservatives keep losing, why he believes the left is hostile to the family, whether America needs stricter divorce laws, what the post-liberal right would actually do with power, the virtues and vices of policy analysis, whether post-liberals have built their core arguments around an invented straw man liberalism, Joe Biden’s agenda for families and much more.Mentioned:“A Good That Is Common” by Patrick Deneen“Replace the Elite” by Patrick Deneen“Abandoning Defensive Crouch Conservatism” by Patrick DeneenBook recommendations:The New Class War by Michael LindDominion by Tom HollandThe Art of Loading Brush by Wendell BerryThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Rollin Hu; original music by Isaac Jones and Jeff Geld; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

Today we're bringing you an episode from our friends at Sway about the war in Ukraine and the challenges of conflict-zone reporting. Clarissa Ward has had, as she puts it, a “long and very complicated relationship” with Russia. The chief international correspondent for CNN, she has had stints in Moscow since the beginning of her career, and has struggled to get a Russian visa since she investigated the 2020 poisoning of the Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny.But that hasn’t stopped her from reporting on the region, and in particular on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Yet after months of war, it can be an uphill battle to keep the viewers’ attention on the front line. “Our job is to keep finding ways to make sure that we don’t become numb and desensitized to the horrors of war, because that is exactly how wars continue and grind on,” Ward says.In this conversation, taped last week, Kara talks to Ward about her time reporting in Ukraine, what it’s like to “let fear sit in the passenger seat” when reporting from the front and how the hangover of war can leave correspondents detached from the “bourgeois and banal” normalcy of home.You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

Right now, Republicans of all stripes — Ron DeSantis, J.D. Vance, Mike Pence, Glenn Youngkin — are trying to figure out how to channel the populist energies of Donald Trump into a winning political message. The struggle to achieve such a synthesis is the defining project on the American right today. Its outcome will determine the future of the Republican Party — and American politics.To understand what the post-Trump future of the G.O.P. will look like, it helps to have a clearer understanding of the party’s past — particularly the chapters that many conservatives prefer to forget. Traditional histories of American conservatism view Donald Trump’s election as an aberration in the lineage of the American right — an unprecedented populist rejection of the conservatism of Ronald Reagan and William F. Buckley Jr.But Matthew Continetti’s new book “The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism” flips that conventional history on its head. In Continetti’s view, the “populist” energies that Trump harnessed in 2016 aren’t anything new for the American right — they have always been central to it. The American right has always been defined by a back-and-forth struggle — and at times a synthesis — between its populist grass roots and its elites.I wanted to bring Continetti on the show because this history is crucial to understanding where the Republican Party could go next. And also because this is the first episode in a new series we are producing called “The Rising Right.” Over the next few weeks, “The Ezra Klein Show” will feature conversations with conservative writers, scholars and thinkers who are trying to harness the forces that Trump unleashed and build a superstructure of ideas, institutions and policy around them. But to see where that movement is going, you have to take seriously where it came from.Mentioned:“Can Reaganism Rise Again?” by Ross DouthatBook Recommendations:Let Us Talk of Many Things by William F. Buckley Jr.Making It by Norman PodhoretzThe Prince of Darkness by Robert D. NovakThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Jenny Casas; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

Today we're bringing you an episode from our friends at The Argument about Florida's “Don't Say Gay” bill and the broader wave of anti-L.G.B.T.Q. legislation, spurred by the political right, that is spreading across the country. According to the Human Rights Campaign, this year alone, more than 300 anti-L.G.B.T.Q. bills have been introduced in state legislatures. Why has this issue become a major focus of the Republican Party? And how is the way society treats individuals who identify as L.G.B.T.Q. changing? Jane Coaston speaks to her Times Opinion colleagues Ross Douthat and Michelle Goldberg about these questions and brings a deeply personal perspective to the table.Mentioned:“How to Make Sense of the New L.G.B.T.Q. Culture War” by Ross Douthat in The New York Times“Gender Unicorn” from Trans Student Educational ResourcesThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

If Elon Musk’s bid to purchase Twitter comes to fruition, the world’s richest person will own one of its most important communications platforms. Twitter might have a smaller user base than Facebook, Instagram and even Snapchat, but it shapes the dominant narratives in key industries like politics, media, finance and technology more than any other platform. Attention — particularly that of elite leaders in these industries — is a valuable resource, one that Twitter manages and trades in.Musk understands Twitter’s attention economy better than anyone. On numerous occasions, his tweets have sent a company’s stock or a cryptocurrency’s value skyrocketing (or plummeting). So what would it mean for Musk to own Twitter? How would that change the platform? How might he use Twitter to change, well, everything else?Felix Salmon is the chief economics correspondent at Axios, a co-host of the Slate Money podcast and someone who has spent a lot of time thinking about the economics of attention, the way modern financial markets work and how money impacts the technologies we use. We discuss Musk’s possible motivations for owning Twitter, how Musk’s distinct brand of tweeting has reaped financial windfalls, what Musk understands about finance and attention that many others don’t, why Twitter is so powerful as a storytelling machine, why journalists are turning away from it, what a decentralized Twitter might look like, how Web3 resembles the 1960s “back to the land” movement, how Musk could break Twitter — but why that might end up saving Twitter — and more.Mentioned:“Elon Musk Got Twitter Because He Gets Twitter” by Ezra Klein"A Crypto Optimist Meets a Crypto Skeptic” on The Ezra Klein Show“A Viral Case Against Crypto, Explored” on The Ezra Klein Show“The Way the Senate Melted Down Over Crypto Is Very Revealing” by Ezra KleinBook Recommendations:The Bond King by Mary ChildsTypeset in the Future by Dave AddeyThe Surprise of Cremona by Edith TempletonThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Jenny Casas, Michelle Harris, Rollin Hu and Kate Sinclair; original music by Isaac Jones and Carole Sabouraud; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has transformed Europe within a matter of weeks. A continent once fractured by the refugee crisis is now taking in millions of refugees. Countries such as Germany have made considerable pledges to increase military spending. The European Union said it would cut off Russian oil and gas “well before 2030” — a once unthinkable prospect. The European project seems more confident in itself than at any other time in recent history.But some European countries are also seeing trends in the opposite direction. This month in Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s nationalist government won re-election easily. The far-right leader Marine Le Pen lost this past weekend’s French presidential election to the incumbent, Emmanuel Macron, but secured a significant 41.5 percent of the vote, up from 33.9 percent in 2017. And nationalist movements — Brexit in Britain, the Five Star Movement in Italy and others — have become potent political forces in recent years.So what’s next for Europe? Will Putin’s invasion reinvigorate the collective European project? Or will the continent revert to its preinvasion path of fracture, division and nationalism?Ivan Krastev is the chairman of the Center for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, Bulgaria and the author of numerous books, including “After Europe” and, with Stephen Holmes, “The Light That Failed: Why the West Is Losing the Fight for Democracy.” He’s also one of my favorite people to talk to on the subject of Europe, liberalism, democracy and the tensions therein.We discuss how European identity went from revolving around war to being centered on economic trade, why Europe has treated the Ukrainian refugee crisis so differently from previous refugee crises, how the West’s overly economic understanding of human motivation blinded it to Putin’s plans, what the relative success of politicians like Le Pen and Orban means for the future of Europe, how fears of demographic change can help explain phenomena as different as Putin’s invasion and Donald Trump’s election, whether Putin’s invasion can reawaken an exhausted European liberalism and much more.Mentioned:“The End of History?” by Francis FukuyamaThe End of History and the Last Man by Francis Fukuyama“We Are All Living in Vladimir Putin’s World Now” by Ivan Krastev“The Crisis of American Power: How Europeans See Biden’s America” by Ivan Krastev“The Power of the Past: How Nostalgia Shapes European Public Opinion” by Catherine E. de Vries and Isabell Hoffmann from Bertelsmann StiftungBook Recommendations:Free by Lea YpiThe Age of Unpeace by Mark LeonardTime Shelter by Georgi GospodinovThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

“Station Eleven” by Emily St. John Mandel was published in 2014. That book imagined the world after a pandemic had wiped out, well, almost everyone. It’s a gorgeous novel with a particular emotional power: it helps you grieve a life you still have. But then came a real pandemic, not as lethal as the one Mandel imagined, but a shock nonetheless. And “Station Eleven” — already a beloved international best seller — found a second life. Mandel became known as a pandemic prophet. “Station Eleven” became an acclaimed HBO Max series.“Sea of Tranquility” by Mandel is written from within the hothouse of that strange kind of celebrity. The author put a version of herself in there, struggling with fame and parenthood and quarantine and too much travel. But there are also moon colonies, and time travel, and hints that we live in a computer simulation. If “Station Eleven” explores how calamity could change the world, “Sea of Tranquility” wonders what happens if it doesn’t.This conversation begins in the weirdness of the simulation hypothesis, but winds its way to much more fundamental questions of being human right now. There is so much we could lose, so much we already have lost; why is it so hard to live with the gratitude our lives should inspire, or the seriousness the moment demands?Mentioned:“The Power of Patience” by Jennifer L. RobertsThis Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub“Are We Living in a Computer Simulation?” by Nick BostromBook recommendations:Scary Monsters by Michelle de KretserIll Will by Dan ChaonSuite Française by Irène NémirovskyThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

With the midterms just over six months away, the electoral prospects for Democrats are looking bleak. President Biden’s approval rating is at 42 percent, around where Donald Trump’s was at this point in his presidency. Recent polls asking whether Americans want Republicans or Democrats in Congress found that Republicans are leading by about 2 percentage points. And with inflation spiking to its highest point in decades, Covid cases rising and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continuing to send economic and humanitarian shock waves across the globe, things don’t look as if they are going to get better anytime soon.What will it take for Democrats to turn things around? What fights should they be picking with Republicans, and how should they be making the case that they deserve another chance at leading the country?Sean McElwee is a co-founder and the executive director of Data for Progress, a research organization that gathers polling data to strategize on behalf of progressive causes and policies. Anat Shenker-Osorio is a principal at ASO Communications, a political communications firm that conducts analytic and empirical research to help progressive political campaigns. She also hosts the “Words to Win By” podcast. McElwee and Shenker-Osorio have deeply influenced my thinking on how words work in American politics: how campaigns can meaningfully address what voters want and how they can persuade swing voters and motivate the party’s base.In this conversation, McElwee and Shenker-Osorio help me understand where Democrats stand with the electorate and what, if anything, they can do to improve their chances in 2022. We discuss why Biden’s approval rating is so low, given the popularity of his policies, why governing parties so often lose midterm elections, whether Democrats should focus more on persuading swing voters or on mobilizing their base, why it’s important for Democrats to get their base to sing from the same songbook, what Democrats can learn from Trump about winning voters’ attention, how Republicans are running politics on easy mode, whether it was wise politically for Biden to double down on the message to fund the police, what political fights Democrats should pick in the lead-up to the midterms, how the party should handle spiking inflation and more.Mentioned:"Democrats, Here's How to Lose in 2022. And Deserve It." by Ezra KleinBook recommendations:Anat Shenker-OsorioA Theory of System Justification by John T. JostMemorial by Bryan WashingtonThese Precious Days by Ann PatchettSean McElweeThe Course by Ed MillerThe Precipice by Toby OrdThe Climate War by Eric PooleyThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Kate Sinclair; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

“Trauma is much more than a story about something that happened long ago,” writes Dr. Bessel van der Kolk. “The emotions and physical sensations that were imprinted during the trauma are experienced not as memories but as disruptive physical reactions in the present.”Van der Kolk, a psychiatrist by training, has been a pioneer in trauma research for decades now and leads the Trauma Research Foundation. His 2014 book “The Body Keeps the Score,” quickly became a touchstone on the topic. And although the book was first released over seven years ago, it now sits at No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list, a testament to the state of our national psyche.The core argument of the book is that traumatic experiences — everything from sexual assault and incest to emotional and physical abuse — become embedded in the older, more primal parts of our brain that don’t have access to conscious awareness. And that means two things simultaneously. First, that trauma lodges in the body. We carry a physical imprint of our psychic wounds. The body keeps the score. But — and I found this more revelatory — the mind hides the score. It obscures the memories, or convinces us our victimization was our fault, or covers the event in shame so we don’t discuss it.There’s a lot in this conversation. We discuss the lived experience of trauma, the relationship between the mind and the body, the differences between our “experiencing” and “autobiographical” selves, why van der Kolk believes human language is both a “miracle” and a “tyranny,” unconventional treatments for trauma from E.M.D.R. and yoga to psychedelics and theater, how societies can manage collective trauma like 9/11 and Covid-19, the shortcomings of America’s “post-alcoholic” approach to dealing with psychic suffering, how to navigate the often complex relationships with the traumatized people we know and love, and much more.Mentioned: “The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study” by Vince Felitti et al.Study on efficacy of EMDR“REBUS and the Anarchic Brain: Toward a Unified Model of the Brain Action of Psychedelics” by Robin Carhart-Harris et al. Book Recommendations:The Apology by V Love in Goon Park by Deborah BlumThe Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing and engineering by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is only getting more brutal: We’ve seen the bodies of civilians strewn in the streets in Bucha, the city of Mariupol almost leveled and, just a few days ago, a Russian missile attack on a crowded train station in Kramatorsk killing at least 50 people. The United Nations has confirmed 1,793 civilian deaths in Ukraine, though the actual number is thought to be far higher.Russia’s viciousness in this campaign makes Ukraine’s resilience all the more remarkable. Ukrainians have defied expectations in staving off Russia’s far larger army and holding cities like Kyiv that some believed might fall within days of an invasion. Much of the commentary in recent weeks has revolved around what this war has revealed about Russia: its myths, its military, its leadership, its threat. What’s no less important, though, is what this war has revealed about Ukraine.Ukrainians have modeled a deep commitment to self-determination and shown how far they would go to protect it. The Ukrainian philosopher and editor Volodymyr Yermolenko has written that “freedom is the key trait of Ukraine’s identity as a political nation,” and Ukraine’s resistance testifies to how deep that trait runs.Yermolenko is a philosopher, the editor in chief of UkraineWorld and the editor of the essay collection “Ukraine in Histories and Stories.” I invited Yermolenko onto the show to help me understand how Ukraine has defined itself in relation to the political behemoths to its east and west: Russia and Europe. Our conversation also explores what it has felt like to be in Kyiv as Russian troops have shelled the city, how definitions of time and home change during war, what has — and hasn’t — surprised Yermolenko about the Ukrainian resistance, what people in the West may not understand about the cultural differences between Ukraine and Russia, why Ukraine’s political structure makes it so difficult to conquer, how Ukraine is reminding the West why its republican and humanistic values matter, what Yermolenko would say to President Biden if he could and more.Mentioned:“Volodymyr Yermolenko, a Ukrainian philosopher, considers his national identity” by Volodymyr Yermolenko“Dreams of Europe” by Volodymyr YermolenkoBook Recommendations:“Ukraine in Histories and Stories” by Volodymyr Yermolenko“The Gates of Europe” by Serhii Plokhy“Lost Kingdom” by Serhii Plokhy“Chernobyl” by Serhii Plokhy“Blood of Others” by Rory FinninThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

The Russia-Ukraine war has changed considerably in recent weeks. Vladimir Putin is no longer talking explicitly about regime change in Ukraine. The Russian military has shifted its focus away from taking Kyiv and toward making territorial gains in Ukraine’s east. The prospect of an outright Ukrainian victory is no longer out of the question. And negotiations between the parties over a possible settlement appear to be making some progress.There’s been a darker turn as well: Over the weekend, images surfaced of atrocities committed by the Russian military against Ukrainian civilians. And Western leaders are considering expanding military aid to Ukraine, initiating war crimes investigations and placing harsher sanctions on Russia in response.Fiona Hill served as deputy assistant to the president and senior director for European and Russian affairs on the National Security Council under Donald Trump and as a national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia under Barack Obama and George W. Bush. I had her on the show a few weeks ago to help me make sense of the Russia-Ukraine conflict as it was developing at the time, and it was one of the most illuminating perspectives I’d heard on the topic. So I invited her back to discuss how the situation has changed, where we are now and what the conflict could look like.We discuss why Hill has become pessimistic about the possibility of a peace deal, how the carnage in Bucha could alter the course of the conflict, why Russia has been so much weaker on the battlefield than expected, whether Ukraine can achieve an outright victory, why this war is making Putin more popular in Russia (not less), what else the West could be doing to support Ukraine, why Hill thinks we’re entering a “much darker” phase of the conflict, what role China could play in bringing about a negotiated settlement, what a renewed framework for European security could look like and more.Book Recommendations:The Art of War by Sun TzuThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

The hype around cryptocurrencies has reached a fever pitch. There are Super Bowl ads for crypto companies featuring celebrities like Matt Damon and Larry David. The Staples Center in Los Angeles is now the Crypto.com Arena. And behind that hype is a distinct vision: a more decentralized economy where individuals have more autonomy over their finances, a grass-roots internet free of the not-so-invisible hand of Big Tech, and a cultural ecosystem where artists and musicians can fairly monetize their work.But what if that vision is deeply flawed? What if the technology undergirding cryptocurrencies isn’t what it’s cracked up to be? Or what if the technology does work, yet the world it creates isn’t a decentralized utopia but a hyper-financialized dystopia?Dan Olson is the creator of a two-hour-YouTube video, “Line Goes Up,” that has now been viewed nearly seven million times. “Line Goes Up” is the single most comprehensive critique of crypto that I’ve ever heard. And that’s because Olson isn’t just focused on cryptocurrencies as a technology or an asset class, but on the crypto universe as a distinct culture underpinned by a powerful ideology. It’s easy to think about the lingo, the acronyms and the myths associated with the crypto world as incidental to the value of cryptocurrencies and NFTs as assets. But for Olson, the culture and the currency are inextricably linked. And once you’ve made that connection, suddenly a lot of the problems, warning signs and potential dangers of crypto become visible in a new way.Mentioned:“A Crypto Optimist Meets a Crypto Skeptic” from “The Ezra Klein Show”“How NFTs Create Value” by Steve Kaczynski and Scott Duke KominersYou Are Not a Gadget by Jaron Lanier“Web3 Is Going Just Great” by Molly WhiteThe Gift by Lewis HydeBook recommendations:The Power Broker by Robert A. CaroThe Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le GuinPersuasive Games by Ian BogostThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld and Isaac Jones; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

The Russian political scientist Ilya Matveev recently described the impact of the West’s sanctions on his country as “30 years of economic development thrown into the bin.” He’s not exaggerating. Economists expect the Russian economy to contract by at least 15 percent of G.D.P. this year. Inflation is spiking. An exodus of Russian professionals is underway. Stories of shortages and long lines for basic consumer goods abound.The U.S. and its allies have turned to sanctions as a way of taking action against Russia’s atrocities without direct military intervention. But to describe these sanctions as anything short of all-out economic warfare is euphemistic. Measures like these might be cloaked in the technocratic language of finance and economics, but the immiseration they cause is anything but abstract.Nicholas Mulder is a historian at Cornell University and the author of the terrifyingly relevant new book “The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War.” In it, Mulder focuses on the last time economic warfare was waged at the scale we’re witnessing today, the period between World War I and World War II. And the book’s central lesson is this: We ultimately don’t know what’s going to happen when sanctions of this magnitude collide with the ideologies, myths and political dynamics of a given country. They could persuade the targeted country to back down. But they could also make it so desperate that it becomes more aggressive or lashes out — as Germany and Japan did on the eve of World War II.So this is a discussion about what kind of weapon sanctions are, whether they actually achieve their goals and how they might shape the future of the Russia-Ukraine conflict — and the world. We also explore how sanctions “weaponize inflation,” whether they could lead to Vladimir Putin’s downfall in Russia, the toll they have taken on the Russian economy, how the West can leverage its sanctions to help bring about an end to the war in Ukraine, whether a European energy embargo could backfire, how this economic war is destabilizing countries around the world, the humanitarian crisis U.S. sanctions are helping create in Afghanistan, and what a foreign policy that didn’t rely so heavily on sanctions could look like.This episode is guest hosted by Rogé Karma, the staff editor for “The Ezra Klein Show.” Rogé has been with the show since July 2019, when it was based at Vox. He works closely with Ezra on everything related to the show, from editing to interview prep to guest selection. At Vox, he also wrote articles and conducted interviews on topics ranging from policing and racial justice to democracy reform and the coronavirus.Mentioned:“The Inflation Weapon: How American Sanctions Harm Iranian Households” by Esfandyar Batmanghelidj “Iran, Sanctions and Inflation as a Weapon of Mass Destruction” by Spencer Ackerman Oligarchy by Jeffrey A. Winters“If Joe Biden Doesn’t Change Course, This Will Be His Worst Failure” by Ezra Klein Book recommendations:Collapse by Vladislav M. ZubokThe Perfect Fascist by Victoria de GraziaMy Century by Aleksander WatThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

“There is a chance that macroeconomic stimulus on a scale closer to World War II levels than normal recession levels will set off inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation,” wrote Larry Summers in February 2021. A year later, the debate still rages over the first part of that sentence — the extent to which the American Rescue Plan is responsible for rising prices. But the rest of it is no longer in question: We’re currently experiencing the worst inflationary crisis in decades.Annual inflation was already at its highest rate in decades in January of this year. But there was still a hopeful story you could tell about 2022: As the Covid pandemic eased, spending patterns would normalize, supply chains would strengthen, the labor market would stabilize, and inflation would ease. Then the Russian invasion of Ukraine sent global commodity markets into a tailspin and energy prices to record highs. An Omicron wave hit China, leading to huge lockdowns affecting global supply chains. And while the Fed has responded with the first of many planned interest rate hikes, it looks as though the inflation picture is only going to get worse in the immediate future.For over a year now, Summers — a former U.S. Treasury secretary and current Harvard economist — has been warning about the economy that we appear to be entering. So I invited him to the show to make his case and paint a picture of what he thinks comes next. We discuss why he thinks we’re almost certainly headed toward a recession, why he believes the Fed is engaged in “wishful and delusional thinking,” whether corporations are using this inflationary period as an excuse to goose profit margins, how to avoid a 1970s-style stagflation crisis, whether interest rates are the right tool to be addressing inflation in the first place, why he thinks much more immigration is one of the best tools we have to bring down prices in the long term and much more.Mentioned:Larry Summers’s Mar. 17 Op-Ed in The Washington PostBook Recommendations:The Best and The Brightest by David HalberstamThe Price of Peace by Zachary D. CarterSlouching Towards Utopia by J. Bradford DeLongThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Andrea López-Cruzado; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

A good rule of thumb is that whatever Margaret Atwood is worried about now is likely what the rest of us will be worried about a decade from now. The rise of authoritarianism. A backlash against women’s social progress. The seductions and dangers of genetic engineering. Climate change leading to social unrest. Advertising culture permeating more and more of our lives. Atwood — the author of the Booker Prize-winning novels “The Blind Assassin” and “The Testaments,” as well as “The Handmaid’s Tale,” “Oryx and Crake” and, most recently, the essay collection “Burning Questions” — was writing about these topics decades ago, forecasting the unsettling world that we inhabit now. Pick up any one of her 17 published novels, and you will likely come across a theme or a quality of the setting that rings eerily true in the present day.This is especially true of Atwood’s magnum opus, “The Handmaid’s Tale,” which takes place in a future America where climate change, droughts, a decaying economy and falling birthrates lead to the rise of a theocracy in which women called Handmaids are conscripted into childbirth. The repressive regime she created in that novel, Gilead, has been endlessly referred to and reinterpreted over the years because of the wisdom it contains about why people cooperate with — and resist — political movements that destroy the freedom of others. And as recent weeks have shown, we’re far from the day when that wisdom becomes irrelevant to present circumstances.We discuss the deep human craving for stories, why Atwood believes we are engaged in “an arm wrestle for the soul of America,” what makes the stories of the Bible so compelling, the dangerous allure of totalitarian movements, how the shift from coal to oil helped to fuel the rise of modern consumerism, why she thinks climate change will cause even more harm by increasing the likelihood of war than it will by increasing the likelihood of extreme weather, how our society lost its capacity to imagine new utopias, why progressives need to incorporate more fun into their politics, why we should “keep our eye on the mushroom,” Atwood’s take on recent U.F.O. sightings and more. She even sings a bit of a song from the 1950s about the Iron Curtain.Mentioned:Art & Energy by Barry LordBook recommendations:War by Margaret MacMillanBiased by Jennifer L. EberhardtSecrets of the Sprakkar by Eliza ReidCharlotte’s Web by E. B. WhiteLord of the Rings by J. R. R. TolkienThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin, Kristina Samulewski, Coral Ann Howells and Brooks Bouson.

Nearly every dimension of the Ukraine-Russia conflict has been shaped by energy markets.Russia’s oil and gas exports have long been the foundation of its economy and geopolitical strength. Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine — like his annexation of Crimea in 2014 — coincided with high energy prices. While Western sanctions have dealt a major blow to Russia’s financial system, European carve-outs for Russian oil and gas have kept hundreds of millions of dollars flowing to Moscow every day.As a result, energy policy has become foreign policy. European countries are doubling down on their commitments to decarbonize in order to reduce their dependence on Russian energy as quickly as possible. The United States has banned Russian oil and gas imports, and in the wake of spiking gasoline prices, the Biden administration is looking for any opportunity to increase the world’s oil supply, including the possibility of normalizing trade relations with previously blacklisted countries like Venezuela and Iran.But the intersection of energy and geopolitics extends far beyond this conflict. Energy is the bedrock of nations’ economic prosperity, military strength and geopolitical power. Which means energy markets are constantly shaping and reshaping global dynamics. You can’t understand the way the world operates today if you don’t understand the global flow of energy.There are few people who have studied energy markets as closely as Daniel Yergin has. He is an economic historian and writer who has been called “America’s most influential energy pundit” in The New York Times. And he’s the author of numerous books on the intersection of energy and geopolitics, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning “The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power” and, most recently, the best-selling “The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations.”We discuss how Putin’s invasion halfway across the world caused gasoline prices to rise in California; what would happen to European economies if they decided to cut off Russian gas; how the U.S. shale revolution has transformed the global political landscape; why, when it comes to China and Russia, Yergin believes that “a relationship that was once based on Marx and Lenin is now grounded in oil and gas”; whether Donald Trump was right to be skeptical of Nord Stream 2; why decarbonization is not only beneficial for the climate but also crucial for national security; whether the Biden administration’s response to spiking energy prices is putting its climate agenda in jeopardy; why Yergin thinks hydrogen power could become central to combating climate change; and much more.Book recommendations:Putin’s World by Angela StentThe Power of Law by Sebastian MallabyThe Cloud Revolution by Mark P. MillsThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Andrea López-Cruzado; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

As we enter the fourth week of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, many of the possible pathways this conflict could take are terrifying. A military quagmire that leads to protracted death and suffering. A Russian takeover of Kyiv and installation of a puppet government. An accidental strike on Polish or Romanian territory that draws America and the rest of NATO into war. Or, perhaps worst of all, a series of escalations that culminates in nuclear exchange.But one possibility carries a glimmer of hope. This week, Ukrainian and Russian negotiators began talks on a tentative peace plan — one that would involve Ukraine abandoning its attempts to join NATO and promising not to host foreign military bases or weaponry, in exchange for Western security guarantees and a Russian troop withdrawal. We’re still far from any kind of definitive settlement — and there are legitimate concerns over whether Putin would accept any kind of deal at this point — but it’s a start.Emma Ashford is a senior fellow with the New American Engagement Initiative at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, and a member of the school of foreign policy thinking known as “realism.” Realists view international relations as a contest between states for power and security; they tend to focus less on the psychologies and ideologies of individual leaders and more on the strategic self-interest of the parties involved. It’s an imperfect framework but a useful one — especially when it comes to analyzing what it would take to achieve a successful negotiation or settlement.So I invited Ashford on the show to help me think through the different trajectories the conflict could take — and what the West can do to make de-escalation more likely. We also discuss John Mearsheimer’s argument that the West’s effort to expand NATO bears responsibility for Putin’s invasion, why Ashford isn’t particularly worried about the possibility of Russian cyberattacks on the West, how Western sanctions blur the line between war and peace, whether NATO’s efforts to supply Ukraine with weapons might backfire, why sanctions might not hurt Russian elites as much as Western leaders hope and how this conflict is changing the geopolitical calculus of countries like Germany, China and India.Book recommendations:The Economic Weapon by Nicholas MulderNot One Inch by M.E. SarotteThe Sleepwalkers by Christopher ClarkThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

“Americans and Europeans were guided through the new century by a tale about ‘the end of history,’ by what I will call the politics of inevitability, a sense that the future is just more of the present, that the laws of progress are known, that there are no alternatives, and therefore nothing really to be done,” writes the Yale historian Timothy Snyder in his 2018 book, “The Road to Unfreedom.”The central thesis of “The Road to Unfreedom” is that different understandings of the past, its myths, histories and memories create radically different politics. Snyder wrote the book as a way of understanding Vladimir Putin’s 2014 invasion of Crimea and the West’s response, but its argument has become only more salient in recent weeks. You can’t understand Putin’s recent invasion of Ukraine without understanding his metaphysical attachment to the era of empire, his mythological telling of Russian-Ukrainian history, and his semi-mystical construction of what constitutes the Russian nation.But Snyder’s more radical argument is that the West is also operating under its own mythological understanding of time — one that is so deeply ingrained in our collective psyche that it masquerades as common sense. And that understanding the influence of the “politics of inevitability” is essential to make sense of everything from the West’s misreading of Putin’s motivations to the internal fracturing of the European Union to the decline of liberal democracy across the globe.So that’s where we start: with the central myths at the heart of the modern Western project — and the blind spots they have created. But Snyder is also a renowned historian of European great-power conflict who has written six books entirely or partly about Ukraine. So we also discuss the chasm between the radicalness of European integration and the tedium of European governance, why Snyder thinks Putin’s invasion is fundamentally the product of a Russian identity crisis, Ukraine’s unique history as a battleground for a great-power war, how Ukrainian identity transcends ethnicity and language, why Western leaders and analysts consistently fail to decipher Putin’s intentions, the huge difference between a Russian nation premised on myth and a Ukrainian nation forged by collective action, how Ukrainian resistance could inspire a Western vision for the future and more.Mentioned:Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder"On the History Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” by Vladimir PutinBook recommendations:Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible by Peter PomerantsevThe Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah ArendtThe Gates of Europe by Serhii PlokhyThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

For Western audiences, the past few weeks have been a torrent of information about what’s happening in Russia and Ukraine. Daily updates of Russian military advances. Horrifying videos of buildings exploding and innocent civilians being killed. Announcements of increasingly severe economic sanctions and major corporate pullouts. Charts showing the collapse of the ruble. Story after story about the hardships facing the Russian economy.Most Russians, however, are living in an alternate reality. This week, the Russian government made it a crime for journalists to spread what it considers false information about the “special military operation” in Ukraine — information that would include calling the war a war. As a result, many Western news organizations, including The Times, have pulled their employees out of Russia. The Kremlin has made it nearly impossible for people in Russia to access independent or international news sources. Russian state media coverage of the conflict has been, in the words of my guest today, “bland and bloodless.”That raises some important questions: What do ordinary Russians know about the war being waged by their government? How are they interpreting the collapse of their currency and impending financial crisis? What are they being told to believe? And is the propaganda machine working?Masha Gessen is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of many books on Russian history, politics and culture, including “The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin” and the National Book Award-winning “The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia.” And, perhaps most important, Gessen has been on the ground in Russia in recent weeks trying to understand how ordinary Russians are seeing and interpreting the world around them.This is a conversation that starts in Moscow, as Gessen describes what it was like to be there during the first days of the invasion. We talk about the eerie sense of normalcy in the city as the ruble crashed and the odd sense of calm in Pushkin Square as policemen in combat gear dragged protesters into a police bus. We then take a wider view on how Russians responded to economic sanctions in the past, how totalitarian societies make it impossible for people to form opinions, where Putin sees himself in a lineage of “brutal, expansionist dictators” like Ivan the Terrible and Joseph Stalin, why Putin governs Russia as if it were a 19th-century empire, what we learn when we listen closely to Putin’s speeches and how this latest act of aggression is likely to play out.Disclaimer: This episode contains explicit language.Mentioned:The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt“How Putin Wants Russians to See the War in Ukraine” by Masha Gessen in The New YorkerThe Future Is History by Masha GessenFirst Person by Vladimir Putin, Nataliya Gevorkyan, Natalya Timakova, and Andrei KolesnikovBook recommendations:The Last Empire by Serhii PlokhyManual for Survival by Kate BrownBabi Yar by Anatoly KuznetsovThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair; original music and mixing by Isaac Jones; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin, Kristina Samulewski and Joanna Szostek.

Vladimir Putin was looking for a swift invasion that would halt Ukraine’s drift toward the West, reveal NATO’s fractures and weaknesses and solidify Russia as a global power. In response, the West threatened moderate sanctions, but ultimately showed little interest in stepping between Russia and Ukraine.Then came the war, and everything changed. Russia’s invasion met with valiant Ukrainian resistance. President Volodymyr Zelensky became an international hero. NATO countries unified behind a truly punishing sanctions regime and significant military support. Russia’s attack strengthened Ukraine’s national identity — and its desire to join the European Union. A conflict that the U.S. and Europe were treating as purely strategic is now a conflict about the West’s most fundamental values.Much of this has felt hopeful, even inspiring, to those watching from the comfort of home. But it has the potential to unleash a truly terrifying spiral of escalation. Putin, feeling backed into a corner, has raised the stakes. Last week, he called the West’s sanctions akin to an act of war and has put Russia’s nuclear arsenal on alert. And the global wave of support for Ukraine has made it increasingly difficult for Western leaders to de-escalate. In the fog of war, it isn’t hard to imagine an accident or miscommunication that triggers a World War III-like scenario.So what does a settlement here look like? What does Putin want? What would Zelensky accept? What will Europe and the U.S. sign onto? Is there any deal that could work for all the players?There are few people better positioned to answer those questions than Fiona Hill. Hill is a senior fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution. She served as deputy assistant to the president and senior director for European and Russian affairs on the National Security Council under Donald Trump and as a national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasian affairs under Barack Obama and George W. Bush. And she is the co-author of the influential Putin biography “Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin.”We discuss how Putin’s motivations and ambitions have changed dramatically in the last decade, why Ukrainian identity is absolutely central to understanding this conflict, whether NATO expansionism is responsible for the current conflict, the different pathways the war could take, how political incentives have created a spiral of escalation for Russia, Ukraine and the West, whether the economic pain of the sanctions can incentivize regime change in Moscow, the possibility of China playing a mediating role in resolving the conflict, the dangers of backing Putin into a corner, whether Putin is willing to use nuclear weapons, what de-escalation could look like at this point, and much more.Book recommendations: Bloodlands by Timothy SnyderNot One Inch by M.E. SarotteThe Limits of Partnership by Angela StentPutin’s World by Angela StentRussia Under the Old Regime by Richard PipesThe Formation of the Soviet Union by Richard PipesThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

“Russia’s utterly unprovoked, unjustifiable, immoral invasion of Ukraine would seem to mark the end of an era,” writes Fareed Zakaria, “one that began with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.”Many of us, myself included, grew up in that era. We came of age in a unipolar world, dominated by a single country whose military, economic, even cultural, hegemony remained largely uncontested. That world was by no means free of violence. But the great power conflict that had defined the lived experiences of previous generations seemed like an ancient relic.Recently, it’s the post-Cold War era of the last 30 years that has begun to feel outdated. China has become an economic and military powerhouse — its economy is now larger than the third, fourth, fifth and sixth biggest world economies combined. Russia has become geopolitically assertive, annexing Crimea in 2014, undermining U.S. elections , and now invading Ukraine.Over the past few weeks, questions that once came off as alarmist have become urgent: Are we witnessing the return of great power conflict? And if so, what does that mean for America — and the rest of the world?Fareed Zakaria is the host of CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS,” a columnist for The Washington Post and one of the most brilliant analysts of this emerging era. His 2003 book “The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad” and his 2008 book “The Post American World” were well ahead of their times. And his more recent work on Russia’s aggression, China’s rise and the crucial distinctions between those nations is crucial for understanding this moment.We discuss the decline of the so-called “Pax-Americana,” why Zakaria believes Russia poses a much more existential threat to the liberal world order than China, what the West would be doing if it wanted to seriously punish Russia for its actions, whether Putin’s attempt to break the liberal world order has actually reinvigorated it, why Zakaria thinks it’s a mistake to think of the world as divided into “democratic” and “neo-authoritarian” blocs, how America’s expansionism and hypocrisy undermines its reputation abroad, whether Donald Trump was ultimately right about the need for greater European defense spending, what a diplomatic solution to the current Russia-Ukraine war could look like, how America’s thinking about the world needs to radically change in a global great power competition and more. Disclaimer: this episode contains explicit language. Mentioned:“The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World” by Oona A. Hathaway and Scott J. ShapiroFareed Zakaria GPS episode, “Fareed’s take: Putin’s War on Liberal Democracy.” (CNN)“The Return to Great-Power Rivalry Was Inevitable” by Thomas Wright (The Atlantic)“Why Ukrainians Believe They Can Win” by Michelle Goldberg in The New York Times.Book recommendations:Man, the State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis by Kenneth N. WaltzA World Safe for Democracy by G. John IkenberryMemoirs 1925-1950 by George F. KennanThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

There’s the Russia-Ukraine war that’s easy to follow in the news right now. We can watch Russian bombs falling on Ukraine, see Russian tanks smoking on the side of the road, hear from Ukrainian resistance fighters livestreaming their desperate defense.But there’s another theater to this war that’s harder to see, but may well decide the outcome: the economic war that West is waging on Russia. Europe and the United States initially responded with a limited set of sanctions but then expanded them into a counterattack capable of crushing the Russian economy. Vladimir Putin, for one, understands the danger: As the force of the West’s measures multiplied, he readied his nuclear forces in a bid to warn Europe and the United States off. This is terrifying territory.So I asked Adam Tooze — a brilliant economic historian, the director of the European Institute at Columbia, and the author of the indispensable “Chartbook” newsletter — to explain how the war in the financial markets is shaping the war in streets of Ukraine. What he gave me was a whole new way to see how Putin had readied his country for conflict, the leverage that Russia’s energy exports gave it, how the dreams of the globalizers had cracked, and what the West both was and wasn’t doing in response.But this is two conversations, not one. On Friday, Tooze and I recorded just as the war began. That was a conversation about the economics of the war as both Russia and the West understood it when the bombing began. But on Monday, we spoke again, because so much had changed. Rather than splice the two discussions into an artificial omniscience, I’ve linked them, because I think they reveal more in sequence: They show how fast this war is reshaping the politics around it, how quickly the escalation is coming, how rapidly the plans are crumbling.So we discuss the sanctions that the West has deployed against Russia, how Europe’s dependence on Russian energy exports undermined the West’s response, what Putin understood about the dark side of economic interdependence, how Ukraine’s remarkable resistance — and the remarkable leadership of its president, Volodymyr Zelensky — reshaped the politics and policies in the West, how this war could alter the geopolitical calculus of China and Taiwan, the new economic order that is emerging, and more.Mentioned:“Putin’s Challenge to Western hegemony - the 2022 edition” by Adam Tooze (Chartbook)“The economic consequences of the war in Ukraine” (The Economist)Book Recommendations:The Economic Weapon by Nicholas MulderThe End of the End of History by Alex Hochuli, George Hoare and Philip CunliffeThe Future of Money by Eswar S. PrasadThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

When we play Monopoly or basketball, we know we are playing a game. The stakes are low. The rules are silly. The point system is arbitrary. But what if life is full of games — ones with much higher stakes — that we don’t even realize we’re playing?According to the philosopher C. Thi Nguyen, games and gamified systems are everywhere in modern life. Social media applies the lure of a points-based scoring system to the complex act of communication. Fitness apps convert the joy and beauty of physical motion into a set of statistics you can monitor. The grades you received in school flatten the qualitative richness of education into a numerical competition. If you’ve ever consulted the U.S. News & World Report college rankings database, you’ve witnessed the leaderboard approach to university admissions.In Nguyen’s book, “Games: Agency as Art,” a core insight is that we’re not simply playing these games — they are playing us, too. Our desires, motivations and behaviors are constantly being shaped and reshaped by incentives and systems that we aren’t even aware of. Whether on the internet or in the vast bureaucracies that structure our lives, we find ourselves stuck playing games over and over again that we may not even want to win — and that we aren’t able to easily walk away from.This is one of those conversations that offers a new and surprising lens for understanding the world. We discuss the unique magic of activities like rock climbing and playing board games, how Twitter’s system of likes and retweets is polluting modern politics, why governments and bureaucracies love tidy packets of information, how echo chambers like QAnon bring comfort to their “players,” how to make sure we don’t get stuck in a game without realizing it, why we should be a little suspicious of things that give us pleasure and how to safeguard our own values in a world that wants us to care about winning the most points.Mentioned:How Twitter Gamifies Communication by C. Thi NguyenTrust in Numbers by Theodore M. PorterSeeing Like a State by James C. Scott“Against Rotten Tomatoes” by Matt Strohl“A Game Designer’s Analysis Of QAnon” by Reed BerkowitzThe Great Endarkenment by Elijah MillgramGame recommendations:Modern ArtRootThe Quiet YearThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

We were promised, with the internet, a productivity revolution. We were told that we’d get more done, in less time, with less stress. Instead, we got always-on communication, the dissolution of the boundaries between work and home, the feeling of constantly being behind, lackluster productivity numbers, and, to be fair, reaction GIFs. What went wrong?Cal Newport is a computer scientist at Georgetown and the author of books trying to figure that out. At the center of his work is the idea that the technologies billed as offering us more productive, happier, socially rich lives have left us more exhausted, empty and stressed out than ever. He’s doing something not enough people do: questioning whether this was all worth it.My critique of Newport’s work has always been that it focuses too much on the individual: Telling someone whose workplace communicates exclusively via Slack and email to be a “digital minimalist” is like telling someone who lives in a candy store to diet. But his 2021 book, “A World Without Email,” is all about systems — specifically, the systems that govern how we work. In it, Newport makes a radical argument: We are living through a massive, rolling failure of markets and firms to rethink work for the digital age. But that can change. We can change it.This conversation with Newport was originally recorded in March of 2021, but it's just as relevant today as ever.Recommendations: "Technics and Civilization" by Lewis Mumford"Five Things We Need to Know About Technological Change" by Neil Postman“A Continuous Shape” (video)"Andrew Henry's Meadow" by Doris BurnThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

Government is a bureaucratic, slow-moving institution. It’s too easily captured by special interests. It’s often incapable of acting at the speed and scale our problems demand. And when it does act, it can make things worse. Look no further than the Food and Drug Administration’s slowness to approve rapid coronavirus tests or major cities’ inability to build new housing and public transit or Congress’s failure to pass basic voting rights legislation.This criticism is typically weaponized as an argument for shrinking government and outsourcing its responsibilities to the market. But the past two years have revealed the hollowness of that approach. A pandemic is a problem the private sector simply cannot solve. The same is true for other major challenges of the 21st century, such as climate change and technology-driven inequality. Ours is an age in which government needs to be able to do big things, solve big problems and deliver where the market cannot or will not.Alex Tabarrok is an economist at George Mason University, a blogger at Marginal Revolution and for years has been one of the sharpest libertarian critics of big government. But the experience of the pandemic has changed his thinking in key ways. “Ninety-nine years out of 100, I’m a libertarian,” he told me last year. “But then there’s that one year out of 100.”So this conversation is about the central tension that Tabarrok and I are grappling with right now: Government failure has never been more apparent — and yet we need government more than ever.We discuss (and debate) the public choice theory of government failure, why it’s so damn hard to build things in America, how reforms intended to weaken special interests often empower them, why the American right is responsible for much of the government dysfunction it criticizes, the case for state capacity libertarianism, the appropriate size of the welfare state, the political importance of massive economic inequality and how the crypto world’s pursuit of decentralization could backfire.Mentioned:The Rise and Decline of Nations by Mancur Olson“It’s Time to Build” by Marc Andreessen“The bulldozer vs. vetocracy political axis” by Vitalik ButerinBook recommendations:The Anarchy by William DalrympleIndia: A Story Through 100 Objects by Vidya DehejiaThe Splendid and the Vile by Erik LarsonThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

This is one of those episodes I feel I need to sell. Because on one level, it’s about an unusual theory of parenting known by the acronym RIE — for the nonprofit group Resources for Infant Educarers, which promotes its principles — that I’ve become interested in. But this isn’t a parenting podcast, and I know many of you don’t have young kids. The reason I’m doing this episode is that I think there’s something bigger here.RIE is centered on the idea that infants and toddlers are whole people worthy of respect. It gets attention for some weird recommendations, like how we should ask babies’ permission before changing a diaper or picking them up and how we should avoid distracting toddlers from a tantrum or seating them in a high chair. But underneath all that is something profound. A theory of how to build a relationship based on respect when words fail or are absent. A view of what it means to treat others with respect when we can’t count on respect being returned. And a recognition that in any interaction with another person, all we can really control is ourselves — the boundaries we draw, the energy we carry and the values we express.This is a profound way to think about adult relationships. And it’s a profound way to think about political relationships, too, if you extend the teachings outward.Janet Lansbury is a RIE educator and the author of the books “No Bad Kids” and “Elevating Child Care.” She also hosts a popular parenting podcast, “Janet Lansbury Unruffled.” It was through her work that I learned about RIE, so she was the perfect person to invite on for this discussion.Mentioned:Ezra’s conversation with Alison GopnikBook Recommendations:Dear Parent: Caring for Infants with Respect by Magda GerberSiblings Without Rivalry by Adele Faber and Elaine MazlishThe Hurried Child by David ElkindBiased by Jennifer L. EberhardtThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

“The sensation of being alive in the early 21st century consisted of the sense that our ability to pay attention — to focus — was cracking and breaking,” writes Johann Hari in his new book, “Stolen Focus.” Later he says, “It felt like our civilization had been covered with itching powder and we spent our time twitching and twerking our minds, unable to simply give attention to things that matter.”Same.Attention is the most precious resource we have — it’s the window through which we experience our lives. And for many of us, that window is fogging.The knee-jerk response is to blame ourselves. If our attention is waning, it’s because we’re too distractible. But if there’s a single thesis of “Stolen Focus,” it’s that we have a lot less control over our attention than we like to believe — and not just because the apps on our smartphones are cunningly designed.The book explores 12 factors that Hari believes are harming our ability to pay attention. And in it, there’s a clear distinction between what I’ve come to think of as the “demand side” and the “supply side” of attention. The demand side is the story we’re more familiar with: Entire economies and technologies are built around capturing, manipulating and directing our attention. But the supply side is just as important: A whole host of social conditions, from the food we eat to the amount we sleep to the chemicals in our air and the money in our bank accounts, determine the reservoirs of attention we have to draw on in the first place.For Hari, that means that the state of our attention isn’t merely the product of individual failing or corporate manipulation — it’s an outgrowth of some of the most fundamental aspects of our society, our culture and our economy. And as a result it can’t be fixed by a few tweaks at the margins. To do that requires a sustained, rather radical, political project.As you’ll hear in the conversation, I don’t agree wholly with Hari’s argument. But I think it’s a much needed push to look at the most fundamental of human facilities through a new lens. Life is the sum total of what we pay attention to. What forces are in control of our attention — and how we get it back — is a defining question of our age.Mentioned:The Ezra Klein Show is hiring a managing producer. Learn more here.Ezra’s conversation with Nadine Burke HarrisBook Recommendations;The Anatomy of a Moment by Javier CercasVisitors by Anita BrooknerThe Apology by V (formerly Eve Ensler)Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

Should we be celebrating a Biden boom? Lamenting inflation and its consequences? Both?We know how to talk about booms, like the ’90s. We know how to talk about busts, like after the financial crisis. We know how to talk about stagnation. What we don’t know how to talk about is contradictory extremes coexisting together. But that’s the economy we have right now. And a lot rides on figuring out how to balance those extremes. Because if we solve inflation while killing the labor market, we’ll have blown a hole in our foot to save our hand.And so I wanted to talk today to Jason Furman, an economist at Harvard and the chair of Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers from 2013 to 2017. What I appreciate about Jason is he doesn’t pretend the economy is only one thing or there’s only one lens for looking at it. He’s an unusually multimodeled thinker.We discuss whether families and workers are making it out ahead given the dual realities of rising wages and rising prices, why so many economists and forecasters got this economy wrong, to what extent the Biden stimulus is responsible for both the booming economy and spiking inflation, whether the economic lessons of the financial crisis were overlearned, why Furman thinks supply-chain issues are “overrated” as a cause of inflation, what the Great Resignation misses, how the Biden administration should restructure its Build Back Better bill, and more.Book Recommendations:The Myth of the Rational Voter by Bryan CaplanThe Weirdest People in the World by Joseph HenrichWho We Are and How We Got Here by David ReichThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

“Getting race wrong early has led courts to get everything else wrong since,” writes Jamal Greene. But he probably doesn’t mean what you think he means.Greene is a professor at Columbia Law School, and his book “How Rights Went Wrong” is filled with examples of just how bizarre American Supreme Court outcomes have become. An information processing company claims the right to sell its patients’ data to drug companies — it wins. A group of San Antonio parents whose children attend a school with no air-conditioning, uncertified teachers and a falling apart school building sue for the right to an equal education — they lose. A man from Long Island claims the right to use his homemade nunchucks to teach the “Shafan Ha Lavan” karate style, which he made up, to his children — he wins.Greene’s argument is that in America, for specific reasons rooted in our ugly past, the way we think about rights has gone terribly awry. We don’t do constitutional law the way other countries do it. Rather, we recognize too few rights, and we protect them too strongly. That’s created a race to get everything ruled as a right, because once it’s a right, it’s unassailable. And that’s made the stakes of our constitutional conflicts too high. “If only one side can win, it might as well be mine,” Greene writes. “Conflict over rights can encourage us to take aim at our political opponents instead of speaking to them. And we shoot to kill.”It’s a grim diagnosis. But, for Greene, it’s a hopeful one, too. Because it doesn’t have to be this way. Supreme Court decisions don’t have to feel so existential. Rights like food and shelter and education need not be wholly ignored by the courts. Other countries do things differently, and so can we.This is a crucial moment for the court. Stephen Breyer is retiring. And in this term alone, the 6-3 conservative court is expected to hand down crucial decisions on some of the most divisive issues in American life: abortion, affirmative action, guns. So this is, in part, a conversation about the court we have and the decisions it is likely to make. But it’s also about what a radically different court system could look like.We discuss the Supreme Court’s recent decisions on vaccine mandates, why Greene thinks judicial decision-making is closer to punditry than constitutional interpretation, the stark differences in how the German and American Supreme Courts handled the issue of abortion, Greene’s case for appointing nearly 200 justices to the U.S. Supreme Court, why we even have courts in the first place and much more.Mentioned:The Ezra Klein Show is hiring a managing producer. Learn more here.Book Recommendations:Rights Talk by Mary Ann GlendonLaw and Disagreement by Jeremy WaldronCult of the Constitution by Mary Anne Franks Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Kristina Samulewski; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

There’s good reason to worry about the future of democracy, and little reason to believe Democrats have a viable plan for protecting it. They built their strategy around passing a major suite of voting reforms and protections through Congress, and a few weeks back, their whole agenda collapsed in the face of the filibuster. So what now? Is there a Plan B for protecting democracy?Yes. But it begins with realizing that there is no national solution in a country that administers elections at the state and local levels. Which means it begins with realizing that many Democrats have made a mistake: They’ve focused so much on national conflicts that they’ve ceded state and local power to the right, with dangerous results. Trumpists can’t pass some big national bill putting Trump back in office, so they are organizing to win the state and local offices that will hold power over the process next time. Democracy’s defenders need to do the same. And that means you.Amanda Litman is a co-founder of Run for Something, which recruits and supports young, progressive candidates who want to run for office. And so this is a conversation about the mechanics of American democracy, the confusions and myths that keep so many of us from participating in them and the practical question of what it means to step off the sidelines and, well, run for something. We talk about why Democrats tend to chase “shiny objects” over real political power, what right-leaning organizations have been up to that liberals should envy, how you probably have more control over issues like abortion and climate change than you think, what it actually takes to run a local campaign, the three questions prospective candidates should be able to answer, and more.This isn’t a conversation raging against the decaying of American democracy. This is a conversation about saving that democracy by participating at its most fundamental level: the local level. The one where you can have the most impact. And so it’s the rare conversation about democracy that left me feeling better, rather than worse, about what’s possible. I think it’ll do the same for you.This episode contains strong language.Mentioned:The Ezra Klein Show is hiring a managing producer. Learn more here.From ProPublica: “Heeding Steve Bannon’s Call, Election Deniers Organize to Seize Control of the GOP — and Reshape America’s Elections” by Isaac Arnsdorf, Doug Bock Clark, Alexandra Berzon and Anjeanette DamonWhat It Takes by Richard Ben CramerFind out what elected offices you can run forBook recommendations:The Heart Principle by Helen HoangOlga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl GonzalezLet’s Get Physical by Danielle FriedmanThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

The world has gotten louder, even when we’re alone. A day spent in isolation can still mean a day buffeted by the voices on social media and the news, on podcasts, in emails and text messages. Objects have also gotten louder: through the advertisements that follow us around the web, the endless scroll of merchandise available on internet shopping sites and in the plentiful aisles of superstores. What happens when you really start listening to all these voices? What happens when you can’t stop hearing them?Ruth Ozeki is a Zen Buddhist priest and the author of novels including “A Tale for the Time Being,” which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and “The Book of Form and Emptiness,” which I read over paternity leave and loved. “The Book of Form and Emptiness” is about Benny, a teenager who starts hearing objects speak to him right after his father’s death, and it’s about his mother, Annabelle, who can’t let go of anything she owns, and can’t seem to help her son or herself. And then it’s about so much more than that: mental illnesses and materialism and consumerism and creative inspiration and information overload and the power of stories and the role of libraries and unshared mental experiences and on and on. It’s a book thick with ideas but written with a deceptively light, gentle pen.Our conversation begins by exploring what it means to hear voices in our minds, and whether it’s really so rare. We talk about how Ozeki’s novels begin she hears a character speaking in her mind, how meditation can teach you to detach from own internal monologue, why Marie Kondo’s almost animist philosophy of tidying became so popular across the globe, whether objects want things, whether practicing Zen has helped her want less and, my personal favorite part, the dilemmas posed by an empty box with the words “empty box” written on it.Mentioned:The Ezra Klein Show is hiring a managing producer. Learn more here.The Great Shift by James L. KugelBook recommendations:When You Greet Me I Bow by Norman FischerThe Aleph and Other Stories by Jorge Luis BorgesVibrant Matter by Jane BennettThis episode contains a brief mention of suicidal ideation. If you are having thoughts of suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (TALK). A list of additional resources is available at SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

It’s been a year since Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th president of the United States. And what a roller coaster of a year it’s been.The Biden administration blew past its Covid vaccination goal of 100 million shots in 100 days, only to run into the realities of vaccine skepticism, the Delta wave and now Omicron. The president oversaw an unprecedented economic recovery — including the sharpest one-year drop in unemployment in American history — but now faces the highest inflation in decades, supply chain crises and souring approval ratings. Congress passed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan and the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law, but negotiations collapsed over the administration’s signature Build Back Better bill, and on Thursday the Senate failed to pass any voting rights legislation.Ron Klain is President Biden’s chief of staff and one of the most influential members of the current administration. We discuss what the United States can learn from Asian countries’ pandemic strategies, what went wrong with America’s testing regime, the administration’s plan for tackling inflation, what it will take to be prepared for the next variant, what Klain has learned about what private sector can — and can’t — accomplish on its own, the fate of Build Back Better, what can excite Democrats for the 2022 midterms, the status of relations between the White House and Joe Manchin, how the administration is thinking about the 6-to-3 conservative Supreme Court majority and more.Mentioned:The Ezra Klein Show is looking for a managing producer. Learn more.Book Recommendation:The Gatekeepers by Chris WhippleThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

I remember thinking, as Covid ravaged the country in December 2020, that at least the holidays the next year would be better. There would be more vaccines, more treatments, more immunity. Instead, we got Omicron and a confusing new phase of the pandemic. What do you do with a variant that is both monstrously more infectious and somewhat milder? What do you say about another year when we didn’t have enough tests, enough ventilation or the best guidance on masks? And how do you handle the fracturing politics of a changing pandemic in an exhausted country?Zeynep Tufekci is a sociologist and New York Times Opinion columnist who does a better job than almost anyone at assessing the pandemic at a systems level. To solve a public-health crisis, it’s not enough to get the science right. There are also challenges with supply chains, infrastructure, research production, mass communication, political trust and institutional inertia. I’ve found Tufekci’s ability to balance the epidemiological data and the sociological realities uniquely helpful across the pandemic, and you can hear why in this conversation.We discuss how the Covid crisis has changed, as well as Tufekci’s sobering conclusion: that the virus, at this point, is feeding on our dysfunction. We look at what Omicron is and isn’t, where the Biden administration has succeeded and failed, the debate over closing schools, why so many Asian countries have so powerfully outperformed the West, how the role of vaccines has changed, what a pandemic-prepared society would actually look like, and what should be true of our pandemic policy in a year that isn’t now.Book recommendations:The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy by Irvin D. Yalom and Molyn LeszczChaos by James GleickThe Dead Hand by David HoffmanThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

Nothing like a newborn and paternity leave to leave you feeling a bit out of the loop. So for my first podcast back since October, I wanted to wander through the thickets of where we are politically and how we got here.Because where we are is strange: the Omicron wave and the breakdown of the liberal Covid consensus that preceded it; a hot economy with low unemployment, rising wages and high inflation; a Build Back Better bill for which the eventual compromise seems obvious even as the legislation is stalled; the anniversary of Jan. 6, which comes as both of the Democrats’ major democracy bills are languishing; and a Biden administration that has passed big, popular policies, only to watch its poll numbers fall.Chris Hayes is the host of MSNBC’s “All In” and the podcast “Why Is This Happening?” He’s also one of my favorite people to process politics with, so I asked him to help me track back through the past few months of the news and look into how 2022 could be better.Mentioned:“The Ronald Reagan Guide to Joe Biden’s Political Future” by Jamelle Bouie“How Michel Foucault Lost the Left and Won the Right” by Ross Douthat“Ten Million a Year” by David Wallace-Wells“On the Internet, We’re Always Famous” by Chris HayesBook recommendations:The Braindead Megaphone by George SaundersThe Three-Body Problem Series by Cixin LiuThe Racial Contract by Charles W. MillsThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

For decades, our society’s dominant metaphor for the mind has been a computer. A machine that operates the exact same way whether it’s in a dark room or next to a sunny window, whether it’s been working for 30 seconds or three hours, whether it’s near other computers or completely alone.But that’s wrong. Annie Murphy Paul’s “The Extended Mind” argues, convincingly, that the human mind is contextual. It works differently in different environments, with different tools, amid different bodily states, among other minds.Here’s the problem: Our schools, our workplaces, our society are built atop that bad metaphor. Activities and habits that we’ve been taught to associate with creativity and efficiency often stunt our thinking, and so much that we’ve been taught to dismiss — activities that look like leisure, play or rest — are crucial to thinking (and living!) well.Paul’s book, read correctly, is a radical critique of not just how we think about thinking, but how we’ve constructed much of our society. In this conversation, originally released in July 2021, we discuss how the body can pick up on patterns before the conscious mind knows what it’s seen, why forcing kids (and adults) to “sit still” makes it harder for them to think clearly, the connection between physical movement and creativity, why efficiency is often the enemy of productivity, the restorative power of exposure to the natural world, the dystopian implications of massive cognitive inequality, why open-plan offices were a terrible idea and much more.Mentioned: "The extended mind" by Andy Clark and David J. ChalmersBook recommendations: Supersizing the Mind by Andy ClarkMind in Motion by Barbara TverskyThoughts Without a Thinker by Mark EpsteinYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Alison Bruzek.

For years, I’ve kept a list of dream guests for this show. And as long as that list has existed, Ted Chiang has been atop it.Chiang is a science fiction writer. But that undersells him. He has released two short story collections over 20 years — 2002’s “Stories of Your Life and Others” and 2019’s “Exhalation.” Those stories have won more awards than I can list, and one of them was turned into the film “Arrival.” They are remarkable pieces of work: Each is built around a profound scientific, philosophical or religious idea, and then the story or the story structure is shaped to represent that idea. They are wonders of precision and craft. But unlike a lot of science fiction, they are never cold. Chiang’s work is deeply, irrepressibly humane.I’ve always wondered about the mind that would create Chiang’s stories. And in this conversation, originally released in March 2021, I got to watch it in action. Chiang doesn’t like to talk about himself. But he does like to talk about ideas. And so we do: We discuss the difference between magic and technology, why superheroes fight crime but ignore injustice, what it would do to the human psyche if we knew the future is fixed, whether free will exists, whether we’d want to know the exact date of our deaths, why Chiang fears what humans will do to artificial intelligence more than what A.I. will do to humans, the way capitalism turns people against technology, and much more.The ideas Chiang offered in this conversation are still ringing in my head months later, and changing the way I see the world. It’s worth taking your time with this one.Recommendations: "Creation" by Steve Grand"On the Measure of Intelligence" by Francois Chollet"CivilWarLand in Bad Decline" by George Saunders"A Visit from the Goon Squad" by Jennifer Egan"Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise" (movie)"On Fragile Waves" by Lily Yu"Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" by Annie DillardControl (video game)Return of the Obra Dinn (video game)You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Alison Bruzek.

How do you introduce Noam Chomsky? Perhaps you start here: In 1979, The New York Times called him “arguably the most important intellectual alive today.” More than 40 years later, Chomsky, at 92, is still putting his dent in the world — writing books, giving interviews, changing minds.There are different sides to Chomsky. He’s a world-renowned linguist who revolutionized his field. He’s a political theorist who’s been a sharp critic of American foreign policy for decades. He’s an anarchist who believes in a radically different way of ordering society. He’s a pragmatist who pushed leftists to vote for Joe Biden in 2020 and has described himself as having a “rather conservative attitude towards social change.” He is, very much, himself.The problem in planning a conversation with Chomsky is how to get at all these different sides. So this one, from April 2021, covers a lot of ground. We discuss:— Why Chomsky is an anarchist, and how he defines anarchism— How his work on language informs his idea of what human beings want— The role of advertising in capitalism— Whether we should understand job contracts as the free market at work or a form of constant coercion— How Chomsky’s ideal vision of society differs from Nordic social democracy— How Chomsky’s class-based theory of politics holds up in an era where college-educated suburbanites are moving left on economics— Chomsky’s view of the climate crisis and why he thinks the “degrowth” movement is misguided— Whether job automation could actually be a good thing for human flourishing— Chomsky’s views on US-China policy, and why he doesn’t think China is a major geopolitical threat— The likelihood of nuclear war in the next decadeAnd much more. Mentioned in this episode: On Anarchism by Noam Chomsky Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal by Noam Chomsky and Robert Pollin “Why the Amazon Workers Never Stood a Chance” by Erik Loomis “Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018” by Carter C. Price and Kathryn A. Edwards “This is What Minimum Wage Would Be If It Kept Pace with Productivity” by Dean Baker“There is no Plan B for dealing with the climate crisis” by Raymond PierrehumbertRecommendations: "The Last of the Just" by Andre Schwarz-Bart"All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw" by Theodore RosengartenSelected essays by Ahad Ha'amYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. 

“Today, we are supercompetent when it comes to efficiency, utility, speed, convenience, and getting ahead in the world; but we are at a loss concerning what it’s all for,” Leon Kass writes in his 2017 book “Leading a Worthy Life.” “This lack of cultural and moral confidence about what makes a life worth living is perhaps the deepest curse of living in our interesting time.”Kass spent more than 30 years as an award-winning teacher at the University of Chicago, where he gained a reputation among students for his commitment to the big questions of human existence and the study of classic texts. And he’s written books and essays on marriage, sports, ethics, friendship, romance, the philosophy of food, biblical wisdom and more. In many ways, Kass’s career represents a lifelong effort to grapple with the biggest question of all: What does it mean to live a meaningful life?This conversation, between Kass and the New York Times Opinion columnist David Brooks, is an attempt to answer that question. Along the way, they discuss the difference between choosing a career and discovering a vocation; the key ingredients of a successful romantic relationship; how to distinguish between superficial friendships and life-altering ones; why finding the right job is less about searching within ourselves and more about committing to something beyond ourselves; Kass’s view that the most distinctive thing about individuals isn’t their race, gender or class but “the ruling passions of their souls”; and what the biblical Exodus story can teach Americans about how to live together more harmoniously.Mentioned:Founding God’s Nation by Leon KassThe Second Mountain by David BrooksBook Recommendations:Nicomachean Ethics by AristotleThe Hebrew Bible, especially Genesis and ExodusDemocracy in America by Alexis de TocquevilleDaniel Deronda by George EliotThis episode is guest-hosted by David Brooks, a New York Times columnist, whose work focuses on politics, culture and moral formation. He currently serves as chair of Weave: The Social Fabric Project at the Aspen Institute in Washington, D.C. and is the author of several books, including “The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life.” You can follow him on Twitter @nytdavidbrooks. (Learn more about the other guest hosts during Ezra’s parental leave here.)Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Alison Bruzek.

Every day in the United States, more than 10,000 babies are born and 10,000 people turn 65. But America doesn’t have anything close to a comprehensive family policy. That means no guaranteed paid family leave, no universal child care or preschool and a patchwork system of elder and disability care that leaves millions without support.American families are drowning as a result. In some states, the average cost of a full-time child-care program is nearing $20,000 a year; the median yearly cost of a private room in a nursing home is over $100,000 — a figure that well exceeds the median household income in the United States. And workers in the child care and eldercare industries routinely make poverty wages.Ai-jen Poo is a co-founder and the executive director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, a MacArthur “genius” grant winner and the author of “The Age of Dignity: Preparing for the Elder Boom in a Changing America.”Fixing America’s systems of care has been Poo’s life’s work. But for her, the current state of America’s care infrastructure is more than a looming crisis; it’s a huge opportunity — one that, if solved, could supercharge the American economy, ensure dignified care across our life spans and revolutionize the future of work. And Poo’s movement may be on the brink of a major victory: If signed into law, the Build Back Better Act would be the most transformative investment in children and caregiving in generations.This conversation is about how caring for the people we love became so atrociously unaffordable and unmanageable — and what it would take to change that. It also explores why Poo thinks we should view child care and eldercare as essential infrastructure for running our economy and society, the racialized history of why the United States lags behind most of its peers in developing comprehensive family policy, the cultural narratives that have caused America to undervalue care work for so long, how solving the care crisis would be a policy “win-win-win” for everyone, Poo’s view that “care is a problem the market cannot solve” and why Poo believes that the future of work is inextricably linked to the future of care.Mentioned:“Prep School for Poor Kids: The Long-Run Impacts of Head Start on Human Capital and Economic Self-Sufficiency” by Martha J. Bailey et al.Book recommendations:The Sum of Us by Heather McGheeCaste by Isabel WilkersonBeing Mortal by Atul GawandeThis episode is guest-hosted by Heather McGhee, a public policy expert whose work focuses on the intersection of race, inequality, and social policy. She is the chairman of the board of directors of the racial justice organization Color of Change, the former president of the think tank Demos and author of “The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together” and. You can follow her on Twitter @HMcGhee. (Learn more about the other guest hosts during Ezra’s parental leave here.)Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Alison Bruzek.

Can we predict the future more accurately?It’s a question we humans have grappled with since the dawn of civilization — one that has massive implications for how we run our organizations, how we make policy decisions, and how we live our everyday lives.It’s also the question that Philip Tetlock, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania and a co-author of “Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction,” has dedicated his career to answering. In 2011, he recruited and trained a team of ordinary citizens to compete in a forecasting tournament sponsored by the U.S. intelligence community. Participants were asked to place numerical probabilities from 0 to 100 percent on questions like “Will North Korea launch a new multistage missile in the next year” and “Is Greece going to leave the eurozone in the next six months?” Tetlock’s group of amateur forecasters would go head-to-head against teams of academics as well as career intelligence analysts, including those from the C.I.A., who had access to classified information that Tetlock’s team didn’t have.The results were shocking, even to Tetlock. His team won the competition by such a large margin that the government agency funding the competition decided to kick everyone else out, and just study Tetlock’s forecasters — the best of whom were dubbed “superforecasters” — to see what intelligence experts might learn from them.So this conversation is about why some people, like Tetlock’s “superforecasters,” are so much better at predicting the future than everyone else — and about the intellectual virtues, habits of mind, and ways of thinking that the rest of us can learn to become better forecasters ourselves. It also explores Tetlock’s famous finding that the average expert is roughly as accurate as “a dart-throwing chimpanzee” at predicting future events, the inverse correlation between a person’s fame and their ability to make accurate predictions, how superforecasters approach real-life questions like whether robots will replace white-collar workers, why government bureaucracies are often resistant to adopt the tools of superforecasting and more.Mentioned:Expert Political Judgment by Philip E. Tetlock“What do forecasting rationales reveal about thinking patterns of top geopolitical forecasters?” by Christopher W. Karvetski et al.Book recommendations:Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel KahnemanEnlightenment Now by Steven PinkerPerception and Misperception in International Politics by Robert JervisThis episode is guest-hosted by Julia Galef, a co-founder of the Center for Applied Rationality, host of the “Rationally Speaking” podcast and author of “The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don’t.” You can follow her on Twitter @JuliaGalef. (Learn more about the other guest hosts during Ezra’s parental leave here.)Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Alison Bruzek.

Joe Biden’s economic agenda is centered on a basic premise: The United States needs to build. To build roads and bridges. To build child care facilities and car-charging stations. To build public transit and affordable housing. And in doing so, to build a better future for everyone.But there’s a twist of irony in that vision. Because right now, even in places where Democrats hold control over government, they are consistently failing to build cheaply, quickly and equitably. In recent decades, blue states and cities from Los Angeles to Boston to New York have become known for their outrageously expensive housing, massive homeless populations and infrastructure projects marred by major delays and cost overruns — all stemming from this fundamental inability to actually build.Jerusalem Demsas is a policy reporter at Vox who covers a range of issues from housing to transportation. And the central question her work asks is this: Why is the party that ostensibly supports big government doing ambitious things constantly failing to do just that, even in the places where it holds the most power?So this is a conversation about the policy areas where blue city and state governance is failing the most: housing, homelessness, infrastructure. But it is also about the larger problems that those failures reveal: The tension between big-government liberalism and anti-corporatist progressivism; the cognitive dissonance between what city-dwelling, college-educated liberals say they believe and their inequality-amplifying actions; how reforms intended to make government more accountable to the people have been wielded by special interests to stall or kill popular projects; and much more. This conversation originally took place in July 2021, but it has become even more relevant with the passage of the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the ongoing negotiations over the Build Back Better Act.Mentioned: “Why does it cost so much to build things in America?” by Jerusalem Demsas“Los Angeles’s quixotic quest to end homelessness” by Jerusalem Demsas “Housing Constraints and Spatial Misallocation” by Chang-Tai Hsieh and Enrico MorettiPublic Citizens by Paul Sabin“Zoom Does Not Reduce Unequal Participation” by Katherine Levine Einstein, David Glick, Luisa Godinez Puig, and Maxwell Palmer“The Gavin Newsom Recall Is a Farce” by Ezra Klein“California Is Making Liberals Squirm” by Ezra KleinBook recommendations: Golden Gates by Conor DoughertyThe Dispossessed by Ursula Le GuinStories of Your Life and Others by Ted ChiangThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find a transcript of this episode here and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Alison Bruzek.

In 2020 the United States experienced a nearly 30 percent rise in homicides from 2019. That’s the single biggest one-year increase since we started keeping national records in 1960. And violence has continued to rise well into 2021.To deny or downplay the seriousness of this spike is neither morally justified nor politically wise. Violence takes lives, traumatizes children, instills fear, destroys community life and entrenches racial and economic inequality. Public opinion responds in kind: Polling indicates that Americans are increasingly worried about violent crime. And if November’s state and local campaigns were any indication, public safety will be a defining issue in upcoming election cycles.Liberals and progressives need an answer to the question of how to handle rising violence. But that answer doesn’t need to involve a return to the punitive, tough-on-crime approach that has devastated Black and brown communities for decades and led millions of people to take to the streets in protest last summer.Patrick Sharkey is a sociologist at Princeton University and the author of “Uneasy Peace: The Great Crime Decline, the Renewal of City Life, and the Next War on Violence.” The central claim of his work is this: Police are effective at reducing violence, but they aren’t the only actors capable of doing so. Sharkey has studied community-based models for addressing violence in places as varied as rural Australia and New York City. As a result, he has developed a compelling, evidence-backed vision of how cities and communities can tackle violent crime without relying heavily on police.So this conversation is about what an alternative approach to addressing the current homicide spike could look like and all the messy, difficult questions it raises. It also explores the causes of the homicide spike, why Sharkey thinks policing is ultimately an “unsustainable” solution to crime, how New York City managed to reduce gun violence by 50 percent while reducing arrests and prison populations, whether it’s possible to overcome the punitive politics of rising crime, why America has such abnormally high levels of violent crime in the first place and more. Mentioned:“Community and the Crime Decline: The Causal Effect of Local Nonprofits on Violent Crime” by Patrick Sharkey, Gerard Torrats-Espinosa and Delaram Takyar “Reducing Violence Without Police: A Review of Research Evidence”“Social Fabric: A New Model For Public Safety and Vital Neighborhoods” by Elizabeth Glazer and Patrick Sharkey“Can Precision Policing Reduce Gun Violence? Evidence from “Gang Takedowns in New York City” by Aaron Chalfin, Michael LaForest and Jacob KaplanBook Recommendations:The Stickup Kids by Randol ContrerasThe Truly Disadvantaged by William Julius WilsonSiddhartha by Hermann HesseThis episode is guest hosted by Rogé Karma, the staff editor for “The Ezra Klein Show.” Rogé has been with the show since July 2019, when it was based at Vox. He works closely with Ezra on everything related to the show, from editing to interview prep to guest selection. At Vox, he also wrote stories and conducted interviews on topics ranging from policing and racial justice to democracy reform and the coronavirus.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Andrea López Cruzado; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Alison Bruzek.

The compulsion to be happy at work “is always a demand for emotional work from the worker,” writes Sarah Jaffe. “Work, after all, has no feelings. Capitalism cannot love. This new work ethic, in which work is expected to give us something like self-actualization, cannot help but fail.”Jaffe is a Type Media Center reporting fellow, a co-host of the podcast “Belabored” and the author of “Work Won’t Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted and Alone.” Many of us, especially Gen Zers and millennials, have grown up with the idea that work should be more than just a way to make a living; it’s a vocation, a calling, a source of meaning and fulfillment. But for Jaffe, that idea is a scam, a con, a false promise. It prevents us from seeing work for what it really is: a power struggle over our time, our labor and our livelihoods.So this is a conversation about the dissonance between our expectations of what work can offer our lives and the reality of what our jobs and careers are capable of delivering; about whether work can ever really love us back. But there’s a bigger picture here, too. Workers are quitting their jobs in record numbers. Strikes are taking place across the country. In her role as a labor reporter, Jaffe has spent much of the past year interviewing workers across the country — spanning industries from retail to health care to tech — giving her insight into the shift in attitudes behind this uproar in the labor market. So that’s where we begin: Why are so many Americans radically rethinking work?We also discuss the rise of corporate virtue signaling, the threat that American consumerism poses for worker power, how the decline of religion could be contributing to the veneration of careers, why the term “burnout” doesn’t go far enough in describing the problems of modern work and how the logic of capitalism has shaped our notions of human value and self-worth.Mentioned:“Physicians aren’t ‘burning out.’ They’re suffering from moral injury” by Wendy Dean and Simon Talbot “Workism Is Making Americans Miserable” by Derek Thompson"Optimal Experience in Work and Leisure" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Judith LeFevreUndoing The Demos by Wendy BrownDirty Work by Eyal PressBook Recommendations:Lost in Work by Amelia HorganFarewell to the Factory by Ruth MilkmanConfessions of the Fox by Jordy RosenbergThis episode is guest hosted by Rogé Karma, the staff editor for “The Ezra Klein Show.” Rogé has been with the show since July 2019, when it was based at Vox. He works closely with Ezra on everything related to the show, from editing to interview prep to guest selection. At Vox, he also wrote stories and conducted interviews on topics ranging from policing and racial justice to democracy reform and the coronavirus.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

Over the course of Donald Trump’s presidency, the far-right fringe became a surprisingly visible and influential force in American politics. Eruptions of extremist violence — including the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 and the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection — have made militant groups like the Proud Boys and conspiracy theories like QAnon into household names. On his popular cable news show, Tucker Carlson recently name-checked the “great replacement” conspiracy theory. And in a recent survey, nearly a third of Republicans agreed with the statement that “true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.”The historian Kathleen Belew has spent her career studying political violence and the once-fringe ideas that now animate even right-of-center politics and news media. She is a co-editor of “A Field Guide to White Supremacy” and the author of “Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America,” which tells the story of how groups — including the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis and Aryan Nations — coalesced into a radical white-power movement after the Vietnam War. These groups were united by a core set of beliefs about the threats of demographic change and governmental overreach, perceived hostility toward white Americans and the necessity of extra-political, often violent, action to achieve their aims.This is a conversation about how some of those ideas have seeped into mainstream Republican politics and what that could mean for the future of the party — and the country. It explores the radicalizing effects of Jan. 6, how irony and meme culture import far-right ideas into popular media, how warfare abroad can produce violence at home, why politics has started to feel apocalyptic across the spectrum, whether left-wing violence is as serious a threat as right-wing violence and more.Mentioned:Radical American Partisanship by Lilliana Mason and Nathan P. KalmoeMessengers of the Right by Nicole HemmerThe Hispanic Republican by Geraldo CadavaMothers of Massive Resistance by Elizabeth Gillespie McRaeBook Recommendations:Fortress America by Elaine Tyler MayFuture Home of the Living God by Louise ErdrichTiny You by Jennifer HollandThis episode is guest-hosted by Nicole Hemmer, a historian whose work focuses on right-wing media and American politics. She is an associate research scholar with the Obama Presidency Oral History Project at Columbia University and author of “Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics.” You can follow her on Twitter @PastPunditry. (Learn more about the other guest hosts during Ezra’s parental leave here.)You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

“Making it harder to vote, and harder to understand what the party is really about — these are two parts of the same project” for the Republican Party, Jay Rosen writes. “The conflict with honest journalism is structural. To be its dwindling self, the G.O.P. has to also be at war with the press, unless of course the press folds under pressure.”Rosen is a professor of journalism at N.Y.U., author of the blog “PressThink,” and one of America’s sharpest contemporary media critics. And his argument is a simple one: The media’s implicit model of American politics — of two coequal parties with competing governing philosophies — is fundamentally broken. Today, the most important axis of political conflict is not between left and right, but between pro- and anti-democracy forces.The way Rosen sees it, the American mainstream press must make a choice: Will it double down on its commitment to detached, nonpartisan neutrality? Or will it choose instead to boldly and aggressively defend truth and democracy?These days, Rosen’s view seems almost common-sensical. But he’s been critiquing “both sides” journalism — and the model of politics underlying it — for years now, long before such arguments came into vogue. As a result, he’s done some of the most original thinking about what an alternative model of journalism would look like, and wrestled with the inevitable political, social and economic tensions that come with it.So this conversation is about what pro-democracy journalism could look like in practice and the thorny questions that this approach to coverage raises. But it also touches on the drawbacks of the press’s focus on Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema; how journalists should cover Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson; why Rosen believes “moderate” and “centrist” are “two of the most ideology-soaked terms” in political journalism; the consequences of an economy where political news has to compete for attention with Netflix, Xbox and TikTok; and why Substack and podcasting may hold one of the keys to restoring trust in the media.Mentioned:“Americans’ Trust in Media Dips to Second Lowest on Record” by Megan Brenan“The Coming Confrontation Between the American Press and the Republican Party” by Jay Rosen on PressThink“Battleship Newspaper” by Jay Rosen on PressThink“Election Coverage: The Road Not Taken” by Jay Rosen on PressThinkCBS News poll on Build Back BetterBook Recommendations:The Boys on the Bus by Timothy CrouseMaking News by Gaye TuchmanDeciding What’s News by Herbert GansThis episode is guest-hosted by Nicole Hemmer, a historian whose work focuses on the right-wing media and American politics. She is an associate research scholar with the Obama Presidency Oral History Project at Columbia and author of “Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics.” You can follow her on Twitter @PastPunditry. (There’s more about the other guest hosts during Ezra’s parental leave here.)You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

Many of the most contentious debates right now center on whether we, as individuals — and as a country — are willing to revise. To revise our understanding of history. To revise the kind of language we use. To revise the nature of our personal, and national, identities. To revise how we act in our everyday relationships.Revision like this is often necessary, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Making fundamental changes to the way we think, speak and act requires the kind of self-scrutiny, discomfort and sacrifice that many of us would rather avoid.There are few public figures who model revision — of one’s work and one’s life — as openly and honestly as Kiese Laymon. Laymon has written the prizewinning memoir “Heavy” as well as essays for The New York Times, ESPN and the Oxford American. His nonfiction tackles sports, popular culture, the politics of literary publishing and, above all, his home state of Mississippi. On every page, you’ll find wit, but also heart-stopping vulnerability and a reckoning with tough love: for himself, his kin, his community and the complicated places where he has spent his life.Laymon has mastered the art of revising his own words. But for him, revision is also a moral, even a spiritual, act — a crucial part of becoming a loving and responsible human being. He is the first to admit that he is a work in progress, that each period of his life is a draft that can be improved. In a way, Laymon thinks of his entire life as an act of revision. And he nurtures a radical hope that America can change for the better, too.This conversation focuses on how Laymon thinks about revision. But it also considers how he navigates a publishing world that often puts pressure on minority-group artists to suppress their full identities to appeal to white audiences, the way his writing pushes the boundaries of conventional genre and canon, why Americans have such a hard time reassessing ourselves and what we can gain from trying to change.Mentioned:"A Southern Gothic" by Adia VictoriaBook Recommendations:South to America by Imani PerryShoutin' in the Fire by Danté StewartAbolition for the People by Colin KaepernickThis episode is guest-hosted by Tressie McMillan Cottom, a sociologist and writer whose work focuses on higher education policy, popular culture, race, beauty and more. She writes a weekly New York Times newsletter and is the author of “Thick and Other Essays,” which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and “Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy.” You can follow her on Twitter @TressieMcPhD. (Learn more about the other guest hosts during Ezra’s parental leave here.)You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Julie Beer and Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

I’ve been on an octopus kick for a little while now. In that, I don’t seem to be alone. Octopuses (it’s incorrect to say “octopi,” to my despair) are having a moment: There are award-winning books, documentaries and even science fiction about them. I suspect it’s the same hunger that leaves many of us yearning to know aliens: How do radically different minds work? What is it like to be a truly different being living in a similar world? The flying objects above remain unidentified. But the incomprehensible objects below do not. We are starting to be smart enough to ask the question: How smart are octopuses? And what are their lives like?Sy Montgomery is a naturalist and the author of dozens of books on animals. In 2015 she published the dazzling book “The Soul of an Octopus,” which became a finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction. It’s an investigation not only into the lives and minds of octopuses but also into the relationships they can and do have with human beings.This was one of those conversations that are hard to describe, but it was a joy to have. Montgomery writes and speaks with an appropriate sense of wonder about the world around us and the other animals that inhabit it. This is a conversation about octopuses, of course, but it’s also about us: our minds, our relationship with the natural world, what we see and what we’ve learned to stop seeing. It will leave you looking at the water — and maybe at yourself — differently.Book recommendations: The Outermost House by Henry BestonThe Old Way by Elizabeth Marshall ThomasKing Solomon's Ring by Konrad LorenzYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker and Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

Public policy in the United States often overlooks wealth. We tend to design, debate and measure our economic policies with regard to income alone, which blinds us to the ways prosperity and precarity tangibly function in people’s lives. And that blind spot can ultimately prevent us from addressing social inequality at its roots.Take the debate over student loan cancellation. Cancellation is often framed as an economically regressive policy — an elite giveaway of sorts — with the majority of benefits going to individuals toward the top end of the income distribution. But that distributive picture flips when you look at wealth instead of income. One recent paper found that if the federal government decided to forgive up to $50,000 in student loan debt, the average person in the 20th to 40th percentiles for household assets would receive more than four times as much debt cancellation as the average person in the top 10 percent.Louise Seamster is a sociologist at the University of Iowa whose work focuses on the intersection of wealth, race, education and inequality. She’s one of the sharpest minds studying the way systems of wealth creation and depletion shape everything from the benefits of higher education to the barriers to racial equality to the nature of democratic citizenship. And her cutting-edge research on the student debt crisis and the racial wealth gap served as a major source of inspiration for Senator Elizabeth Warren’s $50,000 loan forgiveness plan.This conversation begins with a discussion of the student debt crisis in particular: what it’s like to live with crushing levels of debt, the debate over whether cancellation is fair to those who have paid off their loans, why you can’t truly understand the student debt crisis without understanding the wealth dynamics that undergird it, how loan forgiveness would alter the racial wealth gap, what an entirely different model for funding higher education would look like and more.But this discussion is also more broadly about what it means to think in terms of wealth — and its inverse, debt — and what a radically different picture that reveals about the American economy and society.Mentioned:“Racialized Debts: Racial Exclusion From Credit Tools and Information Networks” by Raphaël Charron-Chénier and Louise Seamster“An Administrative Path to Student Debt Cancellation” by Luke Herrine“Black Debt, White Debt” by Louise Seamster“Student Debt Cancellation IS Progressive: Correcting Empirical and Conceptual Errors” by Charlie Eaton, Adam Goldstein, Laura Hamilton and Frederick Wherry“Student Debt Forgiveness Options: Implications for Policy and Racial Equity” by Raphaël Charron-Chenier, Louise Seamster, Tom Shapiro and Laura Sullivan“Predatory Inclusion and Education Debt: Rethinking the Racial Wealth Gap” by Louise Seamster and Raphaël Charron-Chénier“Racial Disparities in Student Debt and the Reproduction of the Fragile Black Middle Class” by Jason N. Houle and Fenaba R. AddoBook Recommendations:The Color of Money by Mehrsa BaradaranA Pound of Flesh by Alexes HarrisThe Sum of Us by Heather McGheeThis episode is guest-hosted by Tressie McMillan Cottom, a sociologist and writer whose work focuses on higher education policy, popular culture, race, beauty and more. She writes a weekly New York Times newsletter and is the author of “Thick and Other Essays,” which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and “Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy.” You can follow her on Twitter @TressieMcPhD. (Learn more about the other guest hosts during Ezra’s parental leave here.)You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker and Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

“Progressives understand that culture war means discrediting their opponents and weakening or destroying their institutions. Conservatives should approach the culture war with a similar realism,” Sohrab Ahmari writes. “To recognize that enmity is real is its own kind of moral duty.”Five years ago, Ahmari was a self-described “secular mainstream conservative” working for The Wall Street Journal. Now a contributing editor at The American Conservative and the recently departed op-ed editor at The New York Post, Ahmari has become a fierce critic of the Republican Party as it existed before the rise of Donald Trump, a champion of right-wing populist leaders like Hungary’s Viktor Orban and a devout Catholic who believes social conservatives need to take a far more aggressive posture in the culture war.Ahmari may be singular, but he is not alone. His political evolution is a microcosm for the ways the American right as a whole has been radicalized in recent decades. Many conservatives today are animated by a profound sense of anxiety about the direction of the country: A feeling that something about the American project has gone deeply, terribly wrong. A visceral fear of a “woke” progressivism with seemingly unmatched cultural power and influence. And a willingness to endorse ideas and leaders once considered fringe.But Ahmari isn’t just a critic. He’s also one of the leading conservative intellectuals trying to chart a post-Trump future for the Republican Party. One that fuses Bernie Sanders-style economic populism with an aggressive social conservatism that isn’t afraid to use the power of the state to enforce its vision of the common good.So this conversation begins with Ahmari’s religious and political journey but also explores his heterodox political vision for the Republican Party, the surprising similarities in how radical feminists and religious traditionalists understand the legacy of the sexual revolution, his view that cultural and economic deregulation has decimated the American working class, the possibility of a left-right alliance around banning pornography, and why he views the cultural left and its corporate allies as a greater threat to American democracy than anything Donald Trump can offer.Mentioned:From Fire, by Water by Sohrab AhmariThe Unbroken Thread by Sohrab AhmariBook Recommendations:The Adventures of Tintin by HergéThe Charterhouse of Parma by StendhalThe Gnostic Religion by Hans JonasThis episode is guest-hosted by Ross Douthat, a New York Times columnist whose work focuses on politics, conservatism, religion and, more recently, chronic illness. He is the author of “The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery” and “The Decadent Society.” You can read his work here and follow him on Twitter @DouthatNYT. (Learn more about the other guest hosts during Ezra’s parental leave here.)You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker and Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

One of the most frightening, least understood aspects of the coronavirus pandemic is what’s come to be known as “long Covid.” Stories abound of young, healthy adults who experienced mild or asymptomatic coronavirus infections and recovered fairly quickly, only to experience an onset of debilitating symptoms weeks or even months later. One major study of almost two million Covid patients in the United States found that nearly a quarter sought medical treatment for new conditions one month or more after their initial infection.Scientists still don’t fully understand what’s causing long Covid or how to best treat it. But in that sense, long Covid isn’t all that novel. Today, millions of Americans suffer from chronic illnesses set off by the body’s response to infections. Many of these conditions routinely go undiagnosed or are misdiagnosed. And even those who find their conditions identified correctly often struggle to find treatments that work for them.“To have a poorly understood disease,” writes Meghan O’Rourke, “is to be brought up against every flaw in the U.S. health care system; to collide with the structural problems of a late-capitalist society that values productivity more than health; and to confront the philosophical problem of conveying an experience that lacks an accepted framework.”O’Rourke, an award-winning journalist and poet and the editor of The Yale Review, has spent more than a decade of her life struggling with chronic illness, a journey she documents in her forthcoming book, “The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness.” In it, O’Rourke uses her experience to illuminate the facets of American society that often remain invisible to the rest of us: the blind spots in our scientific and medical paradigms, the shortcomings of our individualistic ethos, the way economic inequalities show up in our bodies, our culture’s tendency to pathologize suffering.So this conversation begins with long Covid and the debates surrounding it, which O’Rourke has done excellent reporting and writing on. But it is also about what it’s like to experience America’s hidden chronic illness epidemic firsthand, and what that epidemic reveals about the society that too often pretends it doesn’t exist.Mentioned:“Long-Haulers Are Fighting for Their Future” by Ed Yong“Lyme Disease Is Baffling, Even to Experts” by Meghan O’Rourke“Unlocking the Mysteries of Long Covid” by Meghan O’RourkeThe Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery by Ross DouthatBook Recommendations:The Journal of a Disappointed Man by W.N.P. BarbellionOn Immunity by Eula BissThe Cancer Journals by Audre LordeThis episode is guest-hosted by Ross Douthat, a New York Times columnist whose work focuses on politics, conservatism, religion and, more recently, chronic illness. He is also the author of numerous books, including “The Deep Places” and “The Decadent Society.” You can read his work here and follow him on Twitter @DouthatNYT (Learn more about the other guest hosts during Ezra’s parental leave here.)You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker and Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

In the wake of the “Stop the Steal” campaign, the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and the wave of voter suppression bills making their way through Republican legislatures across the country, the struggle for American democracy feels, for many, visceral and even existential. But for Martha S. Jones, a legal and cultural historian at Johns Hopkins University, the moment we find ourselves in is anything but an aberration.“I’m not someone who tells stories about a Whiggish arc in which we are always getting better, doing better, improving upon,” Jones says. “Much of American history is a story about contest, about conflict, about disagreement over fundamental ideas and fundamental precepts, fundamental principles, like citizenship and voting rights.”Jones has spent her career documenting the contestation over American democracy. Her 2018 book, “Birthright Citizens,” tells the story of how Black Americans in the 19th century fought to address the Constitution’s silence on the question of who counts as a citizen, ultimately securing the establishment of birthright citizenship through the 14th Amendment. And her 2020 book “Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All” is a sweeping account of Black women’s 200-year fight for equal suffrage.This conversation is about how the political struggles waged by marginalized groups have forged American democracy as we know it — and the virtues, habits and practices of democratic citizenship we can glean from those struggles. But it also explores the need to reimagine America’s true “founders,” how 19th- and 20th-century Black women were modeling intersectionality long before it became a buzzword, what current discussion around “Black women voters” gets wrong, how worried we should be about current threats to American democracy and much more.Mentioned:A Voice from the South by Anna J. CooperBook recommendations:All That She Carried by Tiya MilesThe Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois by Honorée Fanonne JeffersThick by Tressie McMillan CottomThis episode is guest-hosted by Jamelle Bouie, a New York Times columnist whose work focuses on the intersection of politics and history. Before joining The Times in 2019, he was the chief political correspondent for Slate magazine. You can read his work here and follow him on Twitter @jbouie. (Learn more about the other guest hosts during Ezra’s parental leave here.)You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker and Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

There are few periods of U.S. history that are as vigorously debated, as emotionally and civically charged as the American Revolution. And for good reason: How Americans interpret that period — its heroes, its villains, its legacy — shapes how we understand our social foundations, our national identity, our shared political project.Woody Holton is a historian at the University of South Carolina, a leading scholar of America’s founding and the author of numerous books on the period, including, most recently, “Liberty Is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution.”Holton’s work presents a fundamental challenge to the version of the American Revolution that most of us were taught in grade school. In his telling, America’s “founding fathers” were far less central to the country’s founding than we imagine. Class conflict was just as important a cause of the Revolution as aspirational ideals, if not more. And the way Holton sees things, the American Constitution was a fundamentally capitalist document designed to rein in democracy, not expand it.But Holton’s work shouldn’t be understood solely as a revisionist account of a particular era in history. It also provides a unique lens for rethinking some of the defining features of our present — the disconnect between the kinds of policies that democratic majorities support and what our systems of government enable, the fervor to which we cling to national heroes like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, the enduring challenges of governing a fractious, deeply divided society, the complex relationship between material interests and ideology and much more.Mentioned“Rhetoric and Reality in the American Revolution” by Gordon S. WoodThe Framers’ Coup by Michael J. KlarmanUnruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution by Woody HoltonBook recommendationsA Midwife’s Tale by Laurel Thatcher UlrichThe Negro in the American Revolution by Benjamin QuarlesRebecca’s Revival by Jon F. SensbachThis episode is guest-hosted by Jamelle Bouie, a New York Times columnist whose work focuses on the intersection of politics and history. Before joining The Times in 2019, he was the chief political correspondent for Slate magazine. You can read his work here and follow him on Twitter @jbouie. (Learn more about the other guest hosts during Ezra’s parental leave here.)You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker and Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

I’ve been wanting to explore the world crypto and blockchain technologies could build on the show for a while. In certain ways, I’m an optimist: I think these technologies matter, and many of them will work. In other ways, I’m a skeptic: I’m unconvinced that their wide adoption will lead to the glittering, decentralized digital world that many crypto proponents imagine.So this is a crypto conversation that goes way beyond Bitcoin. It’s about what will happen when we build the foundation for truly digital economies, with digital money, digital goods, and digital ownership. It’s about technologies that could unlock a renaissance of creativity or an orgy of commercialization. Or both. And it’s about whether we are mistaking problems of power for problems of technology, and what might happen if we fix the technologies without changing the power structures. As everyone in this debate agrees, we made a lot of mistakes with the internet we have. How do we avoid them on the internet we’re building?My guest today is Katie Haun. Haun is a general partner at the venture firm A16Z, also known as Andreesen-Horowitz. She’s a former Supreme Court clerk and federal prosecutor who has focused on cybercrime and prosecuted corrupt agents involved in Silk Road, the first big darknet market. So she saw the dark side of crypto first, and now, at A16Z, she’s a leader of one of the biggest crypto venture funds there is. So this is a conversation about the world crypto might create, conducted with as little technical jargon as we could manage. Enjoy!I also want to note that this will be the last episode I host until January. I’m going on paternity leave for the next few months, and we’re going to have an absolutely all-star lineup of guest hosts while I’m gone. That lineup will include Jamelle Bouie, Ross Douthat, Tressie McMillan Cottom, Nicole Hemmer, Heather McGhee, David Brooks, Julia Galef, and the one, the only, Rogé Karma. I’m excited to be a listener and trust me, you should be too. One last bit of housekeeping: The Times’s Opinion section is looking for an editorial assistant to work with Michelle Goldberg and me on fact-checking our columns and doing some editorial research and clerical work. This is a great, entry-level role at The Times. It needs a year of journalism experience, and on my end, I’m particularly looking for candidates with a demonstrable obsession with policy analysis and social science research. You can find more information at http://nytco.com/careers.Mentioned:“NFTs and a Thousand True Fans” by Chris DixonBook recommendations:The Company by John Micklethwait and Adrian WooldridgeMy Life in Full by Indra NooyiPalace Walk by Naguib MahfouzYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

Nick Offerman is best known for his role as Ron Swanson, the mustachioed, libertarian outdoorsman who led the Pawnee, Ind., Parks and Recreation Department on the beloved show “Parks and Recreation.” But there’s more to Offerman than Swanson: His new book, “Where the Deer and the Antelope Play,” was inspired in part by his conversation with the agrarian poet-philosopher Wendell Berry, and a hiking trip he took with the writer George Saunders and the musician Jeff Tweedy (both of whom you may remember from past episodes of this show).Offerman is fascinating. He plays, inhabits and ultimately subverts a kind of camp masculinity. Some of it is real. He really does own a woodworking shop. He really did release a whiskey with Lagavulin. But some of it is a container Offerman is using to try to get people to think about different ways to live. Like his famed character, Offerman loves the outdoors and thinks we’ve lost touch with the role it should play in our lives and the role it has played in our past. That’s the subject of his book, and to some degree, of this conversation. But Offerman is also just a wonderful storyteller and possessed of a generous, earthy wisdom. So this one is a delight.Mentioned:The Unsettling of America by Wendell BerryBook Recommendations:Fidelity by Wendell BerryWanderlust by Rebecca SolnitGirls and Sex by Peggy OrensteinBoys and Sex by Peggy OrensteinYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Andrea López Cruzado and Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.Love listening to New York Times podcasts? Help us test a new audio product in beta and give us your thoughts to shape what it becomes. Visit nytimes.com/audio to join the beta.

Maggie Nelson is a poet, critic and cultural theorist whose work includes the award-winning 2016 book “The Argonauts.” Her newest work, “On Freedom,” pierces right into the heart of America’s founding idea: What if there’s no such thing as freedom, at least not freedom as a state of enduring liberation?And more than that: What if we don’t want to be free? Perhaps that’s the great lie in the American dream: We’re taught to want freedom, but many of us recoil from its touch.Nelson describes herself as a “disobedient thinker,” someone who enjoys looking at “the difficulty of difficult things,” and this conversation bears that out. We talk about when and whether freedom is hard to bear, the difference between a state of liberation and the daily practice of freedom, the hard conversations sexual liberation demands, what it means to live in koans, my problems with the “The Giving Tree,” Nelson’s disagreements with the left, the difficulty of maintaining your own experience of art in an age when the entire internet wants to tell you how to feel about everything, and more.Book Recommendations:Possibilities by David GraeberWayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments by Saidiya HartmanThe Force of Nonviolence by Judith ButlerYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker and Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

Do we actually know how much good our charitable donations do?This is the question that jump-started Holden Karnofsky’s current career. He was working at a hedge fund and wanted to figure out how to give his money away with the certainty that it would save as many lives as possible. But he couldn’t find a service that would help him do that, so he and his co-worker Elie Hassenfeld decided to quit their jobs to build one. The result was GiveWell, a nonprofit that measures the effectiveness of different charities and recommends the ones it is most confident can save lives with the least cost. Things like providing bed nets to prevent malaria and treatments to deworm schoolchildren in low-income countries.But in recent years, Karnofsky has taken a different approach. He is currently the co-C.E.O. of Open Philanthropy, which operates under the same basic principle — how can we do the most good possible? — but with a very different theory of how to do so. Open Phil’s areas of funding range from farm animal welfare campaigns and criminal justice reform to pandemic preparedness and A.I. safety. And Karnofsky has recently written a series of blog posts centered around the idea that, ethically speaking, we’re living through the most important century in human history: The decisions we make in the coming decades about transformational technologies will determine the fate of trillions of future humans.In all of this, Karnofsky represents the twin poles of a movement that’s come to deeply influence my thinking: effective altruism. The hallmark of that approach is following fundamental questions about how to do good through to their conclusions, no matter how simple or fantastical the answers. And so this is a conversation, at a meta-level, about how to think like an effective altruist. Along the way, we discuss everything from climate change to animal welfare to evaluating charities to artificial intelligence to the hard limits of economic growth to trying to view the world as if you were a billion years old.You probably won’t agree with every prediction in here, but that is, in a way, the point: We live in a weird world that’s only getting weirder, and we need to be able to entertain both the obvious and the outlandish implications. What Karnofksy’s career reveals is how hard that is to actually do.Mentioned:The "Most Important Century" Blog Post Series on Holden Karnofsky’s blog, Cold TakesGiveWellMore on Open Philanthropy’s approach to worldview diversification“What Charity Navigator Gets Wrong About Effective Altruism” by William MacAskill“The Past and Future of Economic Growth: A Semi-Endogenous Perspective” by Charles I. JonesBook recommendations:Due Diligence by David RoodmanThe Lifeways of Hunter-Gatherers by Robert L. KellyThe Precipice by Toby OrdYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

In July, Eric Adams narrowly won the Democratic nomination for mayor of New York, making him the odds-on favorite to win in November. And he won the nomination by running directly against the verities of today’s progressives: asserting that the police are the answer, not the problem; that “defund the police” misjudged what communities of color actually want; that Democrats had lost touch with the multiracial working-class voters they claim to represent.Adams won on that message. He won in deep-blue New York City. It’s made him a national figure, and he’s been emphatic on what that means. “I am the face of the new Democratic Party,” he said. And “if the Democratic Party fails to recognize what we did here in New York, they’re going to have a problem in the midterm elections and they’re going to have a problem in the presidential election.”When politicians become national stories, they often release, or rerelease, a book. Adams is no exception. But instead of a campaign manifesto or an autobiography, “Healthy at Last” is a book about the health benefits of plant-based eating. “Outspoken vegan” isn’t a political identity I tend to associate with ambitious politicians at odds with the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, but that’s Adams for you. He doesn’t shy away from a fight.In this conversation, Adams and I talk about the fights he is picking, or will have to pick, in the coming years: with progressives who he thinks have lost their way, with police unions he wants to reform, with wealthy communities where he wants to build more housing, with critics who think plant-based eating is a hobby for foodie elites and with voters who may not be willing to wait for Adams’s “upstream” approach to social problems to pay off.Book Recommendations:Healthy At Last by Eric AdamsBreaking The Habit of Being Yourself by Joe DispenzaYou Are The Placebo by Joe DispenzaUpstream by Dan HeathAtomic Habits by James ClearYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

There are certain conversations I fear trying to fit into a description. There’s just more to them than I’m going to be able to convey. This is one of them.Richard Powers is the author of 13 novels, including the 2019 Pulitzer Prize-winning “The Overstory.” If you haven’t read it, you should. It’ll change you. It changed me. I haven’t walked through a forest the same way again. And I’m not alone in that. When I interviewed Barack Obama this year, he recommended “The Overstory,” saying, “It changed how I thought about the earth and our place in it.”Powers’s new book is “Bewilderment.” You could think of it as 'The Innerstory': It is about how and whether we see the world we inhabit. It’s about the nature and limits of our empathy. It’s about refusing to die before we’re dead and taking seriously the gifts and responsibilities of being alive. It is about how we change our minds and how we change our societies. It is about how we treat delusion as normal and clarity as lunacy. It is enchanting, and it is devastating.It is not just books through which Powers has been exploring these ideas. It is also through radical changes he’s made to how he lives his life. That’s where we start but far from where we end: This conversation touches on mortality, animism, politics, old-growth forests, extraterrestrial life, Buddhism and beyond.Mentioned:Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne SimardBook recommendations:How to Be Animal by Melanie ChallengerRooted by Lyanda Lynn HauptEver Green by John W. Reid and Thomas E. LovejoyYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

Today, we’re doing something a little different. Instead of a normal interview, we wanted to let you in on a special round table discussion I recently had with my fellow Opinion Audio hosts: Jane Coaston of “The Argument” and Kara Swisher of “Sway.” We discuss California’s recall election, the future of the Republican Party, the recent “Facebook Files” revelations, the case for and against breaking up Big Tech, why so many Americans distrust the media and much more. So enjoy! And remember to subscribe to “Sway” and “The Argument” wherever you get your podcasts.Mentioned: “Gavin Newsom Is Much More Than the Lesser of Two Evils” by Ezra Klein“How California conservatives became the intellectual engine of Trumpism” by Jane Coaston “The Facebook Files” Book recommendations: The Fall of Berlin 1945 by Anthony BeevorFuzz by Mary RoachThis is Your Mind On Plants by Michael PollanThe Grace of Kings by Ken LiuYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

A few weeks ago, the Supreme Court let stand a Texas law creating a system of vigilante legal enforcement against anyone who participates in an abortion after the point of fetal cardiac activity. In effect, Texas’ law bans abortions after about six weeks, which is long before many women even know they’re pregnant. And soon the court will hear arguments on a Mississippi abortion ban that will give the justices the chance to overturn Roe v. Wade directly.We may be on the precipice of a post-Roe world.But what does that actually mean? Leslie Reagan is the author of “When Abortion Was a Crime” and “Dangerous Pregnancies.” Reagan has done groundbreaking historical work to reveal what happened when U.S. states began criminalizing abortion in the early 19th century. There are lessons in our past that should inform our future, if we’ll listen.This is also a particularly personal episode for me.My partner is 33 weeks pregnant. This is our second pregnancy. Both have been unusually dangerous and physically damaging. For the state to say that it will force any people to undergo that against their will is a remarkable assumption of power over individuals. Reagan and I talk about what that means, what the state is saying about the personhood, or lack thereof, of those who become pregnant.Mentioned: "Behind the Texas Abortion Law, a Persevering Conservative Lawyer" by  Michael S. SchmidtBook recommendations: How All Politics Became Reproductive Politics by Laura BiggsKilling for Life by Carol MasonRadical Reproductive Justice, edited by Loretta J. Ross, Lynn Roberts, Erika Derkas, Whitney Peoples, and Pamela BridgewaterYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

“The world discovered that John Maynard Keynes was right when he declared during World War II that ‘anything we can actually do, we can afford,’” writes Adam Tooze. “Budget constraints don’t seem to exist; money is a mere technicality. The hard limits of financial sustainability, policed, we used to think, by ferocious bond markets, were blurred by the 2008 financial crisis. In 2020, they were erased.”Tooze is an economic historian at Columbia University, co-hosts the podcast “Ones and Tooze,” writes the brilliant Chartbook blog and is the author of “Crashed,” the single best history of the 2008 financial crisis. He’s now out with a new book, “Shutdown: How Covid Shook the World’s Economy,” which tells the story of the unprecedented global economic response to the pandemic.The central thread of Tooze’s work is how the past decade of crises has upended many of the core assumptions that have guided economic policymaking for the past 50 years — including ones that many contemporary economists and policymakers continue to cling to. So that’s what we mainly talk about here. But we also discuss how the boundaries of acceptable thought in the economics profession are policed, the actual risk of runaway inflation, the limits of green monetary policy, the fight over Jerome Powell’s reappointment as Fed chair, what the Covid crisis reveals about our ability to respond to the climate crisis, the need for a supply-side progressivism and more.Mentioned: “Declining worker power and American economic performance” by Anna Stansbury and Larry Summers “The green swan: Central banking and financial stability in the age of climate change”Book recommendations: The Deficit Myth by Stephanie KeltonStalingrad by Vasily GrossmanEssays in Persuasion by John Maynard KeynesYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

“If he got a thrill out of transforming these ill-gotten goods into legit merchandise, a zap-charge in his blood like he’d plugged into a socket, he was in control of it and not the other way around,” writes Colson Whitehead in his new novel, “Harlem Shuffle.” “Dizzying and powerful as it was. Everyone had secret corners and alleys that no one else saw — what mattered were your major streets and boulevards, the stuff that showed up on other people’s maps of you.”Whitehead is the author of “The Underground Railroad,” which won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and “The Nickel Boys,” which also won a Pulitzer, the first time two consecutive books by an author won. But he actually started “Harlem Shuffle” in between those two books. And now that he’s finished it, he can’t quite put it down. He’s working on a sequel, he told me. The first time he’s tried one.“Harlem Shuffle” is both a joyous and a troubled book. It’s built around Ray Carney, a furniture salesman and fence for stolen goods, and a series of capers around 1960s-era Harlem. But at its core it’s about patrimony, capitalism, ambition, race and the moral costs of striving in an unjust system.We talk about all that, and more: how Marvel Comics made Whitehead want to be a writer, how parenthood changed him, why he hopes to distill it all down to a haiku, whether the writing world is a just or unjust system, the nature of zombies, the nonfiction of the late-Aughts internet, the legacy of 9/11, his favorite heist movies, what his wife thinks his characters know that he doesn’t — and I could keep going.This one’s a fun one.Mentioned: "Wow, Fiction Works!" by Colson WhiteheadHarlem Shuffle by Colson WhiteheadThe Underground Railroad by Colson WhiteheadThe Nickel Boys by Colson WhiteheadZone One by Colson WhiteheadSag Harbor by Colson WhiteheadThe Noble Hustle by Colson WhiteheadBook recommendations: Love Goes to Buildings on Fire by Will HermesThe Buddha in the Attic by Julie OtsukaWhen the Emperor Was Divine by Julie OtsukaMad As Hell by Dave ItzkoffYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

Tyler Cowen is an economist at George Mason University, the co-founder of the blog Marginal Revolution, and host of the podcast “Conversations With Tyler.” But more than that, he’s a genuine polymath who reads about everything, goes everywhere and talks to everyone. I’ve known him for years, and while I disagree with him on quite a bit, there are few people I learn more from in a single conversation.In this conversation, I wanted to get at the connective thread in Cowen’s work: the moral imperative of economic growth. Growth doesn’t have the best reputation in left-wing circles these days, and often for good reason. It’s hard to look at a world where rising G.D.P. has driven rising temperatures and shocking inequality, and then to continue venerating growth as an all-encompassing good.Cowen admits those criticisms — particularly the climate one — but still argues that growth, properly measured, is central to a moral economy. The East Asian economic miracles are, he’s written, “the highest manifestation of the ethical good in human history to date.” Time, he argues, is a “moral illusion,” and the most important thing we can do for the future is set the power of compounding growth to work now. We do that by generating new ideas, new technologies, new ways of living and cooperating. And that, in turn, requires us to find and nurture human talent, which is where his recent work has focused.So we begin this conversation by discussing the case for and against economic growth, but we also get into lots of other things: why Cowen thinks the great stagnation in technology is coming to an end; the future of technologies like A.I., crypto, fourth-generation nuclear and the Chinese system of government; the problems in how we fund scientific research; what the right has done to make government both ineffective and larger; why Cowen is skeptical of universal pre-K (and why I’m not); whether I overestimate the dangers of polarization; the ways in which we’re getting weirder; the long-term future of human civilization; why reading is overrated and travel is underrated; how to appreciate classical music and much more.Mentioned: The Great Stagnation by Tyler Cowen Stubborn Attachments by Tyler Cowen “Beyond GDP? Welfare across Countries and Time” by Charles I. Jones and Peter J. Klenow (No book recommendations on this one, but tune in for some classical music and travel recommendations) You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

“Feminists have long dreamed of sexual freedom,” writes Amia Srinivasan. “What they refuse to accept is its simulacrum: sex that is said to be free, not because it is equal, but because it is ubiquitous.”Srinivasan is an Oxford philosopher who, in 2018, wrote the viral essay “Does Anyone Have the Right to Sex?” Her piece was inspired by Elliot Rodger’s murderous rampage and the misogynist manifesto he published to justify it. But Srinivasan’s inquiry opened out to larger questions about the relationship between sex and status, what happens when we’re undesired for unjust reasons and whether we can change our own preferences and passions. The task, as she frames it, is “not imagining a desire regulated by the demands of justice, but a desire set free from the binds of injustice.” I love that line.Srinivasan’s new book of essays, “The Right to Sex,” includes that essay alongside other challenging pieces considering consent, pornography, student-professor relationships, sex work and the role of law in regulating all of those activities. This is a conversation about topics we don’t always cover on this show, but that shape the world we all live in: Monogamy and polyamory, the nature and malleability of desire, the interplay between sex and status-seeking, what it would mean to be sexually free, the relationship between inequality and modern dating, incels, the feminist critique of porn, how the internet has transformed the sexual culture for today’s young people and much more.(One note: This conversation was recorded before the Supreme Court permitted a Texas law prohibiting abortions after six weeks, arguably ushering in the post-Roe era. We’re working on an episode that will discuss that directly.)Mentioned: The Right to Sex by Amia Srinivasan"Sex Worker Syllabus and Toolkit for Academics" by Heather Berg, Angela Jones and PJ Patella-ReyBook recommendations: Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around by Alethia Jones and Virginia Eubanks, with Barbara Smith Revolting Prostitutes by Juno Mac and Molly SmithFeminist International by Verónica Gago, translated by Liz Mason-DeeseYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

President Biden’s economic policy isn’t what you would have expected from his long career. That’s true in the legislation he’s backing, which is bigger and bolder than anything we’ve seen from him before, but it’s even truer in the appointments he’s making and the theories he’s embracing. On everything from antitrust to inflation to employment to power, Biden is reflecting a new strain of progressive economics thoughts — one that wants to direct markets, not just correct them.Felicia Wong is the chief executive of the Roosevelt Institute, one of the think tanks that’s been central to building the new progressive economics that Biden has picked up. She joined me for a conversation on Biden’s theory of the economy, how antitrust thinking has changed, whether Jerome Powell should be reappointed chair of the Federal Reserve, whether progressives need to reckon with Amazon’s wild popularity, what kind of inflation problem we have and much more.Mentioned: “Socialists Will Never Understand Elizabeth Warren” by Henry FarrellBook recommendations: Undoing the Demos by Wendy BrownThe End of the Myth by Greg GrandinDifference without Domination by Danielle Allen and Rohini SomanathanYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

We asked for your questions, and you answered. Hundreds and hundreds of fantastic questions poured in, and our producer Annie Galvin joined me to ask some of the best of them. Does the infrastructure bill mean there’s more hope for bipartisanship than we thought? What’s my view on the degrowth movement? What do I think my book, “Why We’re Polarized,” got right, and what did it get wrong? Will plant- and cell-based meats ever be cheaper than eating animals, given the subsidies the meat industry gets? Why hasn’t any blue state created a single-payer health care system? Can you really build more housing without creating a biodiversity crisis?We also get into reading habits, comic books, meditation, children’s books, why I spend a lot of time thinking about death and much more. So here it is: the “Ask Me Anything” episode.Mentioned:"What Does Degrowth mean? A Few Points of Clarification" by Jason Hickel"The Ugly Secrets Behind the Costco Chicken" by Nicholas Kristof"The Number of Parties" by Maurice DuvergerBreaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America  by Lee Drutman"Forget Obamacare: Vermont Wants to Bring Single-Payer to America" by Sarah Kliff"What the Rich Don't Want to Admit About the Poor" by Ezra KleinBuddhism Without Beliefs by Stephen BatchelorSeeing That Frees by Rob BurbeaThe Sandman: Overture by Neil GaimanSupergods by Grant MorrisonBook Recommendations:Here We Are by Oliver JeffersCars and Trucks and Things That Go by Richard ScarryHappy Birthday to You! by Dr. SeussYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

Everything about the Afghanistan withdrawal is tragic. But that tragedy is the result not of the withdrawal, but the occupation, and America’s profound misjudgment of its own power and limits.This is the foreign policy conversation much of Washington is trying desperately to avoid. The answer for the horrors of war is always more war. The bomb attack at the Kabul airport on Thursday reflects this dynamic perfectly: It’s being wielded as a cudgel by those who support a permanent American occupation of Afghanistan, guaranteeing more U.S., and Afghan, casualties in a bloody, open-ended struggle with the Taliban. We are ever alert to the costs of our inaction, or absence, but not to the harms of our presence or policies.Robert Wright is a journalist and author of, among other things, the excellent newsletter Nonzero, where he examines the assumptions that drive America’s foreign policy. We discuss the deeper history of American involvement in Afghanistan, the limits of America’s knowledge of other nations, why the foreign policy establishment retains its authority and influence, the hollowness of humanitarian justifications for remaining in Afghanistan, the dangers of too much bipartisanship, how the withdrawal could have gone both better or much worse, the emerging consensus around a possible cold war with China and much more.Book recommendations: The Best and the Brightest by David HalberstamThe Hell of Good Intentions by Stephen WaltFrankenstein by Mary Shelley If you enjoyed this episode, check out Ezra’s recent column: “Let’s Not Pretend That the Way We Withdrew From Afghanistan Was the Problem” You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

“Trauma is much more than a story about something that happened long ago,” writes Dr. Bessel van der Kolk. “The emotions and physical sensations that were imprinted during the trauma are experienced not as memories but as disruptive physical reactions in the present.”Van der Kolk, a psychiatrist by training, has been a pioneer in trauma research for decades now and leads the Trauma Research Foundation. His 2014 book “The Body Keeps the Score,” quickly became a touchstone on the topic. And although the book was first released seven years ago, it now sits at No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list, a testament to the state of our national psyche.The core argument of the book is that traumatic experiences — everything from sexual assault and incest to emotional and physical abuse — become embedded in the older, more primal parts of our brain that don’t have access to conscious awareness. And that means two things simultaneously. First, that trauma lodges in the body. We carry a physical imprint of our psychic wounds. The body keeps the score. But — and I found this more revelatory — the mind hides the score. It obscures the memories, or convinces us our victimization was our fault, or covers the event in shame so we don’t discuss it.There’s a lot in this conversation. We discuss the lived experience of trauma, the relationship between the mind and the body, the differences between our “experiencing” and “autobiographical” selves, why van der Kolk believes human language is both a “miracle” and a “tyranny,” unconventional treatments for trauma from E.M.D.R. and yoga to psychedelics and theater, how societies can manage collective trauma like 9/11 and Covid-19, the shortcomings of America’s “post-alcoholic” approach to dealing with psychic suffering, how to navigate the often complex relationships with the traumatized people we know and love, and much more.Mentioned: “The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study” by Vince Felitti et al.Study on efficacy of EMDR“REBUS and the Anarchic Brain: Toward a Unified Model of the Brain Action of Psychedelics” by Robin Carhart-Harris et al. Book Recommendations:The Apology by V Love in Goon Park by Deborah BlumThe Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

We're taking this week off from publishing new episodes, so today we're bringing you an episode from "The Argument" about one of my favorite topics: aliens. We'll be back with new episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" on Tuesday.With the U.S. government puzzling over U.F.O.s, and potentially habitable exoplanets in our telescopes, earthlings are closer than ever to finding other intelligent life in the universe. So the existential question is: Should we try to communicate with whatever we think might be out there?That’s the argument this week between Douglas Vakoch and Michio Kaku. Vakoch, the president of the research and educational nonprofit METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence) International, has dedicated his life’s work to intentionally broadcasting messages beyond our solar system.Kaku, a professor of theoretical physics at the City College of New York and a co-founder of string field theory, thinks reaching out to unknown aliens is a catastrophically bad idea and “would be the biggest mistake in human history.”Together, they join Jane  to debate the question of making first contact and our place in the cosmos.Mentioned in this episode:Adam Mann, The New Yorker: “Intelligent Ways to Search for Extraterrestrials”Gideon Lewis-Kraus, The New Yorker: “How the Pentagon Started Taking U.F.O.s Seriously”Arik Kershenbaum, The Wall Street Journal, “Alien Languages May Not Be Entirely Alien to Us”“Star Trek: The Next Generation,” Season 4, Episode 15: “First Contact” (Netflix)The Ezra Klein Show: “Obama Explains How America Went From ‘Yes We Can’ to ‘MAGA’”You can find more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

We’re taking a week off from releasing new episodes, so today I wanted to re-up one of my favorite episodes of the show, a conversation with fiction writer George Saunders that covers much more than just his writing.Saunders is one of America’s greatest living writers. He’s the author of dozens of critically acclaimed short stories, including his 2013 collection, “Tenth of December”; his debut novel, “Lincoln in the Bardo,” won the 2017 Booker Prize; and his nonfiction work has empathy and insight that leave pieces from more than a decade ago ringing in my head today. His most recent book, “A Swim in A Pond in the Rain,” is a literary master class built around seven Russian short stories, analyzing how they work, and what they reveal about how we work.I’ve wanted to interview Saunders for more than 15 years. I first saw him talk when I was in college, and there was a quality of compassion and consideration in every response that was, well, strange. His voice doesn’t sound like his fiction. His fiction is bitingly satirical, manic, often unsettling. His voice is calm, kind, gracious. The dissonance stuck with me.Saunders’s central topic, literalized in his famous 2013 commencement speech, is about what it means to be kind in an unkind world. And that’s the organizing question of this conversation, too. We discuss the collisions between capitalism and human relations, the relationship between writing and meditation, Saunders’s personal editing process, the tension between empathizing with others and holding them to account, the promise of re-localizing our politics, the way our minds deceive us, Tolstoy’s unusual theory of personal transformation and much more.What a pleasure this conversation was. So worth the wait.Recommendations: "Red Cavalry" by Isaac Babel"Stamped from the Beginning" by Ibram X. Kendi"Dispatches" by Michael Herr"Patriotic Gore" by Edmund Wilson"In Love with the World" by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche"Loving; Living; Party Going" by Henry Green"Scrambled Eggs & Whiskey" by Hayden Carruth"Tropic of Squalor" by Mary Carr"They Lift Their Wings to Cry" by Brooks Haxton"The Hundred Dresses" by Eleanor Estes and Louis Slobodkin"Caps for Sale" by Esphyr SlobodkinaYou can find a transcript of this episode here and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Rogé Karma, Jeff Geld and Annie Galvin; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld.

One problem with the conversation around political polarization is that it can imply that polarization is a static, singular thing. That our divisions are fixed and unchanging. But that’s not how it is at all. The dimensions of conflict change, and they change quickly. In the Obama era, Republicans mobilized against government spending and deficits but didn’t think much about election administration. Now, a trillion-dollar infrastructure package has passed the Senate with bipartisan support, but the divisions over democracy and voting access are deep.Lilliana Mason is one of the political scientists I’ve learned the most from in recent years. Her 2018 book, “Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity,” is, in my view, one of the most important political books of the last decade. But it’s been a tumultuous three and a half years since it was published. And Mason has continued to pump out important new work on political identity, how support for Donald Trump differs from that of other Republicans, when Democrats and Republicans believe political violence is justifiable and even necessary, and much more. And so I wanted to have Mason on the show to discuss how her thinking has changed in recent years and, in particular, which identities and interests she thinks are at the center of our political collisions today.Mentioned:Uncivil Agreement by Lilliana Mason"Who's At the Party? Group Sentiments, Knowledge and Partisan Identity" by John Victor Kane, Lilliana Mason and Julie Wronski"Activating Animus: The Uniquely Social Roots of Trump Support" by Lilliana Mason, Julie Wronski and John Victor Kane"Fear and Loathing Across Party Lines: New Evidence on Group Polarization" by Shanto Iyengar and Sean J. WestwoodThe Sum of Us by Heather McGheeBook Recommendations:Reconstruction by Eric FonerBlack Reconstruction in America 1860-1880 by W. E. B. Du BoisChildren of Blood and Bone by Tomi AdeyemiThe City We Became by N. K. JemisinYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Julie Beer and Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

The Sept, 11 attacks might have taken place almost 20 years ago, but we’re still living in the America that the war on terror built. Its legacy is not just mass surveillance and drone strikes but birtherism, nativism and Donald Trump. And much of it has been — and continues to be — a bipartisan effort.That’s the argument of Spencer Ackerman’s new book, “Reign of Terror.” Ackerman is the author of the newsletter Forever Wars, a contributing editor at The Daily Beast, and a member of the Pulitzer Prize-winning team at The Guardian that reported on Edward Snowden’s surveillance revelations. In “Reign of Terror,” Ackerman takes all he’s reported on and wraps it into one sweeping argument: We are still in the 9/11 era, and that’s all the more true because we’ve come to take so much of it for granted.We discuss the connection between Sept. 11 and birtherism, the scope of mass surveillance, the ethics of drone strikes, how Trump understood the war on terror’s moral core better than its architects did, the messy choices of national security, the ways America’s belief in its own innocence makes it less safe, Barack Obama’s complicated relationship with the fight against terrorism, the emergence of a genuinely left-wing foreign policy movement, the coalescing bipartisan consensus around a cold war with China, and much more.Book recommendations: American War by Omar El AkkadThe Jakarta Method by Vincent BevinsOverheated by Kate AronoffThe New Gods by Jack Kirby Lazarus by Greg Rucka and Michael LarkRise of the Black Panther by Evan Narcisse and Ta-Nehisi CoatesYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

“The war has changed.” That’s what the leaked C.D.C. document says about the way the Delta variant has upended our coronavirus policies. Delta is astonishingly contagious. It can generate 1,000 times the viral load of the original coronavirus strain, and it spreads with the ease of chickenpox. The vaccinated can no longer assume immunity. The unvaccinated are at more risk than ever. Masks are back. New York City is essentially imposing a vaccine mandate.I have so many questions about the war we’re now in. What do we actually know about Delta? If you’re vaccinated, is it more or less likely to kill you than the flu? Is it more serious for children? Are we re-masking to protect the unvaccinated, or is this also for the vaccinated? What are the risks of long Covid for the vaccinated? I could go on.Luckily, Dr. Céline Gounder has answers. Gounder is an epidemiologist at N.Y.U. medical school, a CNN medical analyst and host of the Covid podcast “Epidemic.” I’m not sure if this conversation will make you feel better about the war we’re now in. But it will, if nothing else, make it much, much clearer. Mentioned:"Improving Communications Around Vaccine Breakthrough and Vaccine Effectiveness" by Centers for Disease Control and PreventionBook recommendations:Wired for Culture by Mark PagelRule Makers, Rule Breakers by Michele GelfandStuck by Heidi J. LarsonYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

We all know by now that Zoom causes fatigue, social media spreads misinformation and Google Maps is wiping out our sense of direction. We also know, of course, that Zoom allows us to cooperate across continents, that social media connects us to our families and Google Maps keeps us from being lost. A lot of technological criticism today is about weighing whether a technology is good or bad, or judging its various uses. But there’s an older tradition of criticism that asks a more fundamental and nuanced question: How do these technologies change the people who use them, both for good and for bad? And what do the people who use them — all of us, in other words — actually want? Do we even know?L.M. Sacasas explores these questions in his great newsletter, “The Convivial Society.” His work is marrying the theorists of the 20th century — Hannah Arendt, C.S. Lewis, Ivan Illich, Marshall McLuhan, Neil Postman and more — to the technologies of the present day. I’ve found this merging of past thinkers and contemporary concerns revelatory in an era when we tend to take the shape of our world for granted and forget how it would look to those who stood outside it, or how it looked to those who were there at the inception of these tools and mediums.Sacasas recently published a list of 41 questions we should ask of the technologies and tools that shape our lives. What I loved about these questions is how they invite us to think not just about technologies, but about ourselves, and how we act and what we want and what, in the end, we truly value. So I asked him on the show to talk through some of them, and to see what light they shed on the lives we live.Mentioned: "The Questions Concerning Technology" by L. M. Sacasas"A Theory of Zoom Fatigue" by L. M. Sacasas"Do Artifacts Have Ethics?" by L. M. SacasasTechnics and Civilization by Lewis Mumford"Before We Make Out, Wanna Dismantle Capitalism?" by Emilia Petrarca"The Analog City and the Digital City" by L. M. Sacasas"The Materiality of Digital Culture" by L. M. Sacasas"When Silence Is Power" by L. M. SacasasBook recommendations: Tools for Conviviality by Ivan IllichThe Human Condition by Hannah ArendtTechnology and the Character of Contemporary Life by Albert BorgmannYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

You’ve heard plenty by now about the fights over teaching critical race theory and the 1619 Project. But behind those skirmishes is something deeper: A fight over the story we tell about America. Why that fight has so gripped our national discourse is the question of this podcast: What changes when a country’s sense of its own history changes? What changes when who gets to tell that story changes? What are the stakes here, and why now?My guests for this conversation need little introduction. Nikole Hannah-Jones is an investigative journalist for the New York Times Magazine where she led the 1619 Project, and, before that, did incredible work on racial inequality in the American education system. Ta- Nehisi Coates is the author of books including “Between the World and Me” and “The Water Dancer,” essays including “The Case for Reparations,” and, for Marvel Comics, “Captain America” and “Black Panther.” Each of them has won more prestigious awards for their work than I could possibly list here, and both will be taking faculty positions at Howard University.We discuss the 1619 Project, whether patriotism can coexist with shame and regret, the political power of American exceptionalism, the cracked foundations of American democracy, how journalism is and should be taught, our relationships to Twitter, what journalists can learn from children and much more.Nikole Hannah-Jones book recommendations: Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880 by W.E.B Du BoisThe Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel WilkersonTa-Nehisi Coates book recommendations: Postwar by Tony Judt Avengers of the New World by Laurent DuboisYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

Am I too panicked about the future of American democracy?My colleague Ross Douthat thinks so. He points to research suggesting that voter ID laws and absentee voting have modest effects on elections and the reality that Republican state officials already have tremendous power to alter election outcomes — powers they did not use in the aftermath of 2020 and show few signs of preparing to use now.So I invited Ross on the show to hash it out: Am I too alarmed, or is he too chill? We also talk about his trio of recent columns trying to find a middle ground in the fight over how America understands, and teaches, it’s own history; as well as how his own medical struggles with treatment-resistant Lyme disease have shaped how he’s understood and covered the coronavirus. Mentioned: "Can Anything End the Voting Wars?" by Ross DouthatInsecure Majorities: Congress and the Perpetual Campaign by Frances Lee"What Progressives Want, and What Conservatives Are Fighting" by Ross Douthat"The Excesses of Antiracist Education" by Ross Douthat"Why a Patriotic Education Can Be Valuable" by Ross Douthat"Why the Lab Leak Theory Matters" by Ross Douthat"Use of Alternative Medicine for Cancer and Its Impact on Survival" by Skyler B. Johnson, Henry S. Park, Cary P. Gross and James B. YuThe Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Recovery by Ross Douthat"The War That Made Our World" by Ross DouthatBook recommendations: Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766 by Fred AndersonChamplain's Dream by David Hackett FischerMom Genes: Inside the New Science of Our Ancient Maternal Instinct by Abigail TuckerYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

Joe Biden’s economic agenda is centered on a basic premise: The United States needs to build. To build roads and bridges. To build child care facilities and car-charging stations. To build public transit and affordable housing. And in doing so, to build a better future for everyone.But there’s a twist of irony in that vision. Because right now, even in places where Democrats hold control over government, they are consistently failing to build cheaply, quickly and equitably. In recent decades, blue states and cities from Los Angeles to Boston to New York have become known for their outrageously expensive housing, massive homeless populations and infrastructure projects marred by major delays and cost overruns — all stemming from this fundamental inability to actually build.Jerusalem Demsas is a policy reporter at Vox who covers a range of issues from housing to transportation. And the central question her work asks is this: Why is the party that ostensibly supports big government doing ambitious things constantly failing to do just that, even in the places where it holds the most power?So this is a conversation about the policy areas where blue city and state governance is failing the most: housing, homelessness, infrastructure. But it is also about the larger problems that those failures reveal: The tension between big-government liberalism and anti-corporatist progressivism; the cognitive dissonance between what city-dwelling, college-educated liberals say they believe and their inequality-amplifying actions; how reforms intended to make government more accountable to the people have been wielded by special interests to stall or kill popular projects; and much more.Mentioned: “Why does it cost so much to build things in America?” by Jerusalem Demsas“Los Angeles’s quixotic quest to end homelessness” by Jerusalem Demsas “Housing Constraints and Spatial Misallocation” by Chang-Tai Hsieh and Enrico MorettiPublic Citizens by Paul Sabin“Zoom Does Not Reduce Unequal Participation” by Katherine Levine Einstein, David Glick, Luisa Godinez Puig, and Maxwell Palmer“The Gavin Newsom Recall Is a Farce” by Ezra Klein“California Is Making Liberals Squirm” by Ezra KleinBook recommendations: Golden Gates by Conor DoughertyThe Dispossessed by Ursula Le GuinStories of Your Life and Others by Ted ChiangYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

For decades, our society’s dominant metaphor for the mind has been a computer. A machine that operates the exact same way whether it’s in a dark room or next to a sunny window, whether it’s been working for 30 seconds or three hours, whether it’s near other computers or completely alone.But that’s wrong. Annie Murphy Paul’s “The Extended Mind” argues, convincingly, that the human mind is contextual. It works differently in different environments, with different tools, amid different bodily states, among other minds.Here’s the problem: Our schools, our workplaces, our society are built atop that bad metaphor. Activities and habits that we’ve been taught to associate with creativity and efficiency often stunt our thinking, and so much that we’ve been taught to dismiss — activities that look like leisure, play or rest — are crucial to thinking (and living!) well.Paul’s book, read correctly, is a radical critique of not just how we think about thinking, but how we’ve constructed much of our society. In this conversation, we discuss how the body can pick up on patterns before the conscious mind knows what it’s seen, why forcing kids (and adults) to “sit still” makes it harder for them to think clearly, the connection between physical movement and creativity, why efficiency is often the enemy of productivity, the restorative power of exposure to the natural world, the dystopian implications of massive cognitive inequality, why open-plan offices were a terrible idea and much more.Mentioned: "The extended mind" by Andy Clark and David J. ChalmersBook recommendations: Supersizing the Mind by Andy ClarkMind in Motion by Barbara TverskyThoughts Without a Thinker by Mark EpsteinYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

“What if instead of a feelings advocacy we had an outcome advocacy that put equitable outcomes before our guilt and anguish?” wrote Ibram X. Kendi in his 2019 book “How to Be an Antiracist.” “What if we focused our human and fiscal resources on changing power and policy to actually make society, not just our feelings, better?”When I first read “How to Be an Antiracist” in the fall of 2019, I was struck by Kendi’s relentless focus on outcomes. For him, racism wasn’t about what you intended, or what you felt. If a given policy or action reduced racial inequality, it was antiracist; if it increased racial inequality, it was racist. If you support policies that reduce racial inequality you are being antiracist; if you aren’t, you’re being racist. That’s it.These days, Kendi needs little introduction. “How to Be an Antiracist” has become one of the signature texts of the post-George Floyd moment. And Kendi himself has become a central figure of the antiracist movement, having launched a vast array of projects, from his new podcast, “Be Antiracist,” to his children’s book “Antiracist Baby” to his Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University.But I’ve often wondered about the genuine radicalism of Kendi’s work as it has phased from book to phenomenon. There are certainly some people who are doing the real, hard analytical and empirical work that Kendi actually calls for. But a lot of what occurs under the banner of “antiracism” is putting up yard signs, publicly acknowledging privilege and issuing statements of solidarity without the consequentialist analysis he demands.So I wanted to have a conversation that really took Kendi’s approach to antiracism seriously. Spoiler alert: It’s hard. We discuss policy issues ranging from police defunding to open borders and interest rates, the research on corporate diversity and inclusion trainings, the political tradeoffs of Barack Obama’s presidency, the cases where a policy might reduce racial inequality but the backlash to it might increase it, the right-wing assault on critical race theory, visions of a positive-sum racial future and much more.References:Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. KendiBook recommendations: Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland by Jonathan M. MetzlThe Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together by Heather McGheeRace for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership by Keeanga-Yamahtta TaylorYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin. 

I’ve spent the past few months on an octopus kick. In that, I don’t seem to be alone. Octopuses (it’s incorrect to say “octopi,” to my despair) are having a moment: There are award-winning books, documentaries and even science fiction about them. I suspect it’s the same hunger that leaves many of us yearning to know aliens: How do radically different minds work? What is it like to be a truly different being living in a similar world? The flying objects above remain unidentified. But the incomprehensible objects below do not. We are starting to be smart enough to ask the question: How smart are octopuses? And what are their lives like?Sy Montgomery is a naturalist and the author of dozens of books on animals. In 2015 she published the dazzling book “The Soul of an Octopus,” which became a finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction. It’s an investigation not only into the lives and minds of octopuses but also into the relationships they can and do have with human beings.This was one of those conversations that are hard to describe, but it was a joy to have. Montgomery writes and speaks with an appropriate sense of wonder about the world around us and the other animals that inhabit it. This is a conversation about octopuses, of course, but it’s also about us: our minds, our relationship with the natural world, what we see and what we’ve learned to stop seeing. It will leave you looking at the water — and maybe at yourself — differently.Book recommendations: The Outermost House by Henry BestonThe Old Way by Elizabeth Marshall ThomasKing Solomon's Ring by Konrad LorenzYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

Eve Ewing’s work as a sociologist, poet, visual artist, podcaster and comic book writer manages to do two things that are often in tension: it gives us a clear picture of how race, power and education work in America right now, and envisions a world that could work radically differently.“Dreaming and imagination and possibility are very much key words for the kind of work I want to do,” Ewing says. She’s a sociologist at the University of Chicago who focuses on race and public education, and her book “Ghosts in the Schoolyard” brilliantly examines the closing of several Chicago public schools around 2013 and what they meant to the communities they served. But she has also written Marvel comics and a book for young readers, “Maya and the Robot,” which comes out next week. She hosted the podcast “Bughouse Square,” a collaboration with the Studs Terkel Radio Archive, makes visual art and works on TV productions. She is a public educator in the broadest sense of the term.I wanted to see how one person’s mind keeps all of these projects straight, and how Ewing’s sociology connects to her poetry and comic books. One thread that unites Ewing’s work is that she is often seeking out knowledge in unexpected places and challenging her audience to think about whose experiences and insights we treat as valid when debating policy. Our conversation touched on the role of public schools in low-income communities, quantitative versus “emotional” data, the limits of objectivity in debates, critical race theory and how it can inform politics, her Afrofuturist poetry that looks forward and backward in time, the cultural significance of comics, her feelings about Tony Stark and more.Mentioned: “We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn BrooksGhosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago's South Side by Eve EwingChoosing Homes, Choosing Schools, edited by Annette Lareau and Kimberly GoyetteIronheart #1 by Eve EwingBughouse Square with Eve EwingBook recommendations:  Chlorine Sky by Mahogany L. BrowneHalfway Home: Race, Punishment and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration by Reuben Jonathan MillerSeverance by Ling MaYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

In February, I spoke with Heather McGhee. I’ve been thinking about the conversation ever since. “The American landscape was once graced with resplendent public swimming pools, some big enough to hold thousands of swimmers at a time,” writes McGhee in her recent book, “The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together.” These pools were the pride of their communities, monuments to what public investment could do. But they were, in many places, whites-only. Then came the desegregation orders. The pools would need to be open to everyone. But these communities found a loophole. They could close them for everyone. Drain them. Fill them with concrete. Shutter their parks departments entirely. And so they did.Drained-pool politics — if “they” can also have it, then no one can — are still with us today. They help explain why America still doesn’t have a truly universal health care system, a child care system, or a decent social safety net. Why policy changes that seem incredibly modest by international standards are so often met with backlash. And there are plenty of recent examples: A few weeks ago, Sen. Tom Cotton proposed that rather than abolishing the racist sentencing guidelines for crack cocaine possession, we extend them to powder cocaine, too. This conversation is just as relevant today as it was at the time we recorded it. The lens it offers into American policy and politics is truly invaluable for making sense of so much of what’s going on around us. And it’s message is ultimately a hopeful one: There is a $20 bill lying on the street of American public policy. It’s the vast “solidarity dividends” waiting for us, if we are willing to stand with, rather than against, each other.Recommendations: "Parable of the Sower" by Octavia E. Butler"The Color of Law" by Richard Rothstein“Good Times” (TV series)"The Word Collector" by Peter H. ReynoldsYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

Recently, I picked up Jeff Tweedy’s “How to Write One Song.” It was a bit of a lark. Tweedy is the frontman for Wilco, one of my favorite bands, but I’m not a songwriter, and I don’t plan to become one. But, unexpectedly, I loved the book. It’s the most generous and approachable guide to the creative process I’ve read.It’s also relentlessly practical: To Tweedy, this really is a process, replete with practices that you can enjoy doing daily. As a writer of a very different sort, I’ve had a blast with them.So I asked Tweedy to come on the show to talk about creativity, ands his approach to it. He debunks the idea that suffering is necessary (or even useful) for the creative process, talks through his relentless search for inspiration, sings and analyzes a few of my favorite songs, analyzes his relationship with his mother, shares some of his tricks for finding fresh language for old ideas and even convinces me to write some poetry.This is a fun one.Book recommendations: Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes A Temple of Texts by William H. GassThe MacGuffin by Stanley ElkinYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin. 

Historically speaking, we live in an age of extraordinary abundance. We have long since passed the income thresholds when past economists believed our needs would be more than met and we’d be working 15-hour weeks, puzzling over how to spend our free time. And yet, few of us feel able to exult in leisure, and even many of today’s rich toil as if the truest reward for work is more work. Our culture of work would be profoundly puzzling to those who came before us.James Suzman is an anthropologist who has spent the last 30 years living with and studying the Ju/’hoansi people of southern Africa, one of the world’s enduring hunter-gatherer societies. And that project has given him a unique lens on our modern obsession with work.As Suzman documents in his new book, “Work: A Deep History From the Stone Age to the Age of Robots,” hunter-gatherer societies like the Ju/’hoansi spent only about 15 hours a week meeting their material needs despite being deeply impoverished by modern standards. But as we’ve gotten richer and invented more technology, we’ve developed a machine for generating new needs, new desires, new forms of status competition.So this is a conversation about the past, present and future of humanity’s relationship to work and to want. We discuss what economists get wrong about scarcity, the lessons hunter-gatherer societies can teach us about desire, how the advent of farming radically altered people’s conceptions of work and time, whether there’s such a thing as human nature, the dangers of social and economic inequality, the role of advertising in shaping human desires, whether we should have a wealth tax and universal basic income, and much more.Mentioned: “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren” by John Maynard Keynes“‘Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren’ 75 Years after: A Global Perspective” by Fabrizio Zilibotti“Extreme Jobs: The Dangerous Allure of the 70-Hour Workweek” by Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Carolyn Buck LuceBook recommendations:  King Leopold's Ghost by Adam HochschildEntangled Life by Merlin SheldrakeOther Minds by Peter Godfrey-Smith You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Kate Sinclair; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

The insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6 failed. Donald Trump is not the president. But at the state level, the Republican war on elections is posting startling wins. They are trying to do what Trump failed to do: neuter elections as a check on Republican power.A new report by three voting rights groups found that 24 laws have been passed in 14 states this year that will allow state legislatures to “politicize, criminalize and interfere in election administration.” And a May analysis from the Brennan Center found that Republican-controlled legislatures in 14 states have passed 22 laws that made voting harder, with dozens of others currently moving through the legislative process.This is an example of what I’ve sometimes referred to as the “doom loop of democracy”: highly gerrymandered Republican state legislatures in key swing states passing legislation that gives them more power to discourage Democratic-leaning groups from voting, throw out legitimate votes and overturn election results — all of it backed up by Republican-dominated courts.Ari Berman is a senior reporter at Mother Jones and the author of “Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America.” He’s done excellent coverage of these state bills. So I wanted to bring him on, in part, to understand these bills on a more detailed level: What do they actually do? What kind of impact will they have?But we also discuss the Republican Party’s minoritarian path to power, potential nightmare 2024 election scenarios, how voting rights became a culture war issue, whether the United States is becoming a “competitive authoritarianism” political system, why the biggest scandal in American democracy is what’s legal and even expected, what HR1 — even if it had passed — would and wouldn’t have fixed and much more.Mentioned in this episode: “What Georgia’s Voting Law Really Does” by Nick Corasaniti and Reid J. Epstein“The Insurrection Was Put Down. The GOP Plan for Minority Rule Marches On.” by Ari Berman “Call it authoritarianism” by Zack Beauchamp“Statement of Concern: The Threats to American Democracy and the Need for National Voting and Election Administration Standards” by multiple“Advantage, GOP” by By Laura Bronner and Nathaniel Rakich“2020 Census: What the Reapportionment Numbers Mean” by Dave WassermanRecommendations: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le CarréRace and Reunion by David BlightDirty Work by Eyal PressYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Kate Sinclair; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

Sarah Schulman’s work — as a nonfiction writer, novelist, activist, playwright and filmmaker — confronts the very thing most people try to avoid: conflict. Schulman, far from running from it, believes we need more of it.This was true in Schulman’s 2016 book, “Conflict Is Not Abuse,” which argues that people often mislabel conflict as abuse without recognizing the power that they have to potentially abuse others. Viewing oneself as a victim can be one way to earn compassion. But powerful groups often use their perceived victimhood as an excuse to harm those who are more vulnerable. And more individually, people often don’t see when they have power, and they often fear or dodge the work of repair. It’s a challenging and prescient book, with a deep faith in the healing power of not just communication, but of collision.Schulman’s latest book, “Let the Record Show,” is a history of ACT UP New York, the direct-action group that reshaped AIDS activism in the late ’80s and early ’90s. It’s a book about necessary conflicts: between the AIDS community and the U.S. government, and between queer people and a widely homophobic society. But it’s also about conflict among people who generally agree with one another and are working toward a common goal. Schulman calls the book “a political history,” but it’s also a work of political theory: a proposal for how social movements can become more effective by embracing dissensus rather than striving for consensus.We began this conversation discussing ACT UP, conflict and Schulman’s theory of political change. But we also ended up discussing Israel and Palestine, a topic she has written widely about. And Schulman shares her thoughts on contemporary L.G.B.T.Q. politics and what she thinks has been lost as queer culture has become more mainstream.Mentioned in this episode: Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993 by Sarah Schulman Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair by Sarah SchulmanRecommendations: Poor Queer Studies: Confronting Elitism in the University by Matt BrimVanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All by Martha S. JonesMemorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir by Natasha TretheweyYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

This is a strange moment in the economy. Wages are up, but so is inflation. Jobs are growing, but maybe not fast enough. Quit rates are at a 21st-century high. It isn’t clear what’s a trend, what’s a blip, what’s a transition and what’s now normal. And all this as the virus continues to stalk us and we process the trauma of the last 18 months.“We all will have various times in our life where we’ll stop and say, ‘Whoa — am I going in the right direction? Is this the right occupation for me? Should I do something differently?’” says Betsey Stevenson. “But I can’t think of any other time when it’s been a correlated shock across the entire country, where we’ve all been faced — no, forced — to ask questions.”Stevenson is an economist, and a highly accomplished one at that. She served as the chief economist of Barack Obama’s Department of Labor and later a member of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers. Now she’s a professor of public policy and economics at the University of Michigan, as well as co-host of the podcast “Think Like an Economist.” She has a rare talent to blend a rigorous approach to labor market economics with a recognition that people — our psychologies and fears and dreams — matter, and they shape our economic decisions. Particularly now.So I invited Stevenson on the show to discuss the big picture of what’s happening right now in the U.S. economy — wages, employment, inflation and the animal spirits driving much of it. She didn’t disappoint. I came away from this conversation far less confused than when I walked into it.Mentioned in this episode: “The Jobs Report Takeaway: A Huge Reallocation of People and Work Is Underway” by Betsey Stevenson “Examining the uneven and hard-to-predict labor market recovery” by Lauren Bauer, Arindrajit Dube, Wendy Edelberg, and Aaron Sojourner“Why we got more inflation than I expected” by Matt Yglesias“Do Hiring Headaches Imply a Labor Shortage?” by Paul KrugmanRecommendations: Klara and the Sun by Kazuo IshiguroThe Undercover Economist Strikes Back by Tim Hartford Career and Family by Claudia GoldinIf you enjoyed this episode, check out our previous podcast “Employers Are Begging for Workers. Maybe That’s a Good Thing” with Cornell political scientist Jamila Michener You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

Free minds. Freedom fries. Free speech. The Freedom Caucus. Freedom from. Freedom to. What do Americans really mean when they talk about freedom?Louis Menand’s “The Free World” is a 700-plus-page intellectual history of the Cold War period that traces the opening of the American mind to new ideas in art, literature, politics, music, foreign policy, criticism, higher education and campus activism. John Cage was making silent music, Jackson Pollock was throwing paint on canvases, Pauline Kael was giving us permission to actually enjoy movies. Thinkers like James Baldwin, Isaiah Berlin and Hannah Arendt were arguing over what it meant to be free. Liberatory movements were trying to actually make Americans free. But what did it all get us? Out of all this ferment and conflict, what forms of freedom did Americans secure, and which did we lose?It’s hard to think of a writer better suited to explain the art and intellectual culture of the Cold War than Louis Menand. In his writing for The New Yorker and his Pulitzer Prize-winning book “The Metaphysical Club,” Menand has shown how ideas are born out of interactions between individuals and larger historical forces, and how philosophical traditions like pragmatism, Transcendentalism and abolitionism continue to profoundly shape our world.In this conversation, we talk about the opening of the American mind, the rise of the American market and the narrowing of American politics. We discuss the avant-garde artists of the age and why Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision for equity has been lost. Oh, and how today’s elite universities are built atop the legacy of 1960s campus radicalism, whether the Beat writers were actually the rebels they’re remembered as, why John Cena is apologizing to China for calling Taiwan a country and more.Mentioned in this episode:“The Free World” by Louis MenandRecommendations:“Tristes Tropiques” by Claude Lévi-Strauss“Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945” by Tony Judt“Chance and Circumstance: Twenty Years With Cage and Cunningham” by Carolyn BrownYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

“The technological progress we make in the next 100 years will be far larger than all we’ve made since we first controlled fire and invented the wheel,” writes Sam Altman in his essay “Moore’s Law for Everything.” “This revolution will generate enough wealth for everyone to have what they need, if we as a society manage it responsibly.”Altman is the C.E.O. of OpenAI, one of the biggest, most important players in the artificial intelligence space. His argument is this: Since the 1970s, computers have gotten exponentially better even as they’re gotten cheaper, a phenomenon known as Moore’s Law. Altman believes that A.I. could get us closer to Moore’s Law for everything: it could make everything better even as it makes it cheaper. Housing, health care, education, you name it.But what struck me about his essay is that last clause: “if we as a society manage it responsibly.” Because, as Altman also admits, if he is right then A.I. will generate phenomenal wealth largely by destroying countless jobs — that’s a big part of how everything gets cheaper — and shifting huge amounts of wealth from labor to capital. And whether that world becomes a post-scarcity utopia or a feudal dystopia hinges on how wealth, power and dignity are then distributed — it hinges, in other words, on politics.This is a conversation, then, about the political economy of the next technological age. Some of it is speculative, of course, but some of it isn’t. That shift of power and wealth is already underway. Altman is proposing an answer: a move toward taxing land and wealth, and distributing it to all. We talk about that idea, but also the political economy behind it: Are the people gaining all this power and wealth really going to offer themselves up for more taxation? Or will they fight it tooth-and-nail?We also discuss who is funding the A.I. revolution, the business models these systems will use (and the dangers of those business models), how A.I. would change the geopolitical balance of power, whether we should allow trillionaires, why the political debate over A.I. is stuck, why a pro-technology progressivism would also need to be committed to a radical politics of equality, what global governance of A.I. could look like, whether I’m just “energy flowing through a neural network,” and much more.Mentioned: “Moore’s Law for Everything” by Sam AltmanRecommendations: Crystal Nights by Greg EganThe Last Question by Isaac AsimovThe Gentle Seduction by Marc Stiegler“Meditations on Moloch” by Scott Alexander If you enjoyed this episode, check out our previous conversation “Is A.I. the Problem? Or Are We?”  You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

There has been a bit of panic lately over employers who say not enough people want to apply for open jobs. Are we facing a labor shortage? Have stimulus checks and expanded unemployment insurance payments created an economy full of people who don’t want to work — and who are holding back the economic recovery? That’s one theory, anyway. But it’s leading to real policy change: 25 Republican governors have cut off expanded unemployment benefits early.You can also tell a different story: The continuing threat of the coronavirus and the ongoing traumas and child care disruptions mean lots of workers don’t feel safe taking jobs in poorly ventilated spaces. Others may be using their stimulus checks and unemployment benefits to let them find a better job than they had before the pandemic, insisting on better pay and conditions. And if so — isn’t that a policy success?This is a moment when an implicit but ugly fact of our economy has been thrown into unusual relief: Our economy relies on poverty — or at least the threat of it — to force people to take bad jobs at low wages. This gets couched in paeans to the virtues of work, but the truth is more instrumental. The country likes cheap goods and plentiful services, and it can’t get them without a lot of people taking jobs that higher-income Americans would never, ever consider. When we begin to see glimmers of worker power in the economy, a lot of powerful people freak out, all at once.Jamila Michener is an associate professor of government at Cornell University and a co-director of Cornell’s Center for Health Equity. She does remarkable research on the intersection of race, poverty and public policy and speaks about all of it with uncommon humanity. We discuss the role of poverty in the economy, cultural narratives around work and deservingness, why the less-well-off masses don’t band together politically, how social programs disempower and humiliate the very people they’re ostensibly supposed to help, why it would be so hard to sell a universal basic income, whether the Biden administration’s economic agenda represents a sharp break from those of past administrations and much more.Mentioned: “Fragmented Democracy: Medicaid, Federalism, and Unequal Politics” by Jamila Michener Book recommendations: Halfway Home by Reuben MillerRoot Shock by Mindy FullilovePoorly Understood by Mark Rank, Lawrence Eppard, and Heather BullockYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

If you talk to many of the people working on the cutting edge of artificial intelligence research, you’ll hear that we are on the cusp of a technology that will be far more transformative than simply computers and the internet, one that could bring about a new industrial revolution and usher in a utopia — or perhaps pose the greatest threat in our species’s history.Others, of course, will tell you those folks are nuts.One of my projects this year is to get a better handle on this debate. A.I., after all, isn’t some force only future human beings will face. It’s here now, deciding what advertisements are served to us online, how bail is set after we commit crimes and whether our jobs will exist in a couple of years. It is both shaped by and reshaping politics, economics and society. It’s worth understanding.Brian Christian’s recent book “The Alignment Problem” is the best book on the key technical and moral questions of A.I. that I’ve read. At its center is the term from which the book gets its name. “Alignment problem” originated in economics as a way to describe the fact that the systems and incentives we create often fail to align with our goals. And that’s a central worry with A.I., too: that we will create something to help us that will instead harm us, in part because we didn’t understand how it really worked or what we had actually asked it to do.So this conversation is about the various alignment problems associated with A.I. We discuss what machine learning is and how it works, how governments and corporations are using it right now, what it has taught us about human learning, the ethics of how humans should treat sentient robots, the all-important question of how A.I. developers plan to make profits, what kinds of regulatory structures are possible when we’re dealing with algorithms we don’t really understand, the way A.I. reflects and then supercharges the inequities that exist in our society, the saddest Super Mario Bros. game I’ve ever heard of, why the problem of automation isn’t so much job loss as dignity loss and much more.Mentioned: “Human-level control through deep reinforcement learning”“Some Moral and Technical Consequences of Automation” by Norbert WienerRecommendations: "What to Expect When You're Expecting Robots"  by Julie Shah and Laura Major"Finite and Infinite Games" by James P. Carse "How to Do Nothing" by Jenny OdellIf you enjoyed this episode, check out my conversation with Alison Gopnik on what we can all learn from studying the minds of children.You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

“My entire politics is premised on the fact that we are these tiny organisms on this little speck floating in the middle of space,” Barack Obama told me, sitting in his office in Washington, D.C.To be fair, I was the one who had introduced the cosmic scale, asking how proof of alien life would change his politics. But Obama, in a philosophical mood, used the question to trace his view of humanity. “The differences we have on this planet are real,” he said. “They’re profound. And they cause enormous tragedy as well as joy. But we’re just a bunch of humans with doubts and confusion. We do the best we can. And the best thing we can do is treat each other better, because we’re all we got.”Before our interview, I’d read “A Promised Land,” the first volume of Obama’s presidential memoirs. It had left me thinking about the central paradox of Obama’s political career. He accomplished one of the most remarkable acts of political persuasion in American history, convincing the country to vote, twice, for a liberal Black man named Barack Hussein Obama during the era of the war on terror. But he left behind a country that is less persuadable, more polarized, and more divided. The Republican Party, of course, became a vessel for the Tea Party, for Sarah Palin, for Donald Trump — a direct challenge to the pluralistic, democratic politics Obama practiced. But the left, too, has struggled with the limits of Obama’s presidency, coming to embrace a more confrontational and unsparing approach to politics.So this is a conversation with Obama about both the successes and failures of his presidency. We talk about his unusual approach to persuasion, when it’s best to leave some truths unsaid, the media dynamics that helped fuel both his and Trump’s campaigns, how to reduce educational polarization, why he believes Americans have become less politically persuadable, the mistakes he believes were made in the design of the 2009 stimulus and the Affordable Care Act, the ways in which Biden is completing the policy changes begun in the Obama administration, what humans are doing now that we will be judged for most harshly in 100 years, and more.Mentioned in this episode “Why Obamacare enrollees voted for Trump” by Sarah Kliff, Vox“By 2040, two-thirds of Americans will be represented by 30 percent of the Senate” by Philip Bump, The Washington Post “Advantage, GOP” by Laura Bronner and Nathaniel Rakich, FiveThirtyEightRecommendations: "The Overstory" by Richard Powers"Memorial Drive" by Natasha TrethewayYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

Today, while I'm on vacation, we're sharing an episode from Sway, a fellow New York Times Opinion podcast. Host Kara Swisher talks to Eliot Higgins, CEO of the open source investigative operation Bellingcat. Kara presses Higgins about the perils of taking on Vladimir Putin and how Bellingcat’s work, which Kara calls “gumshoe journalism,” differs from online vigilantism.We'll be back to our regular programming on Tuesday.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] Ezra Klein Show is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld. Special thanks to Shannon Busta and Kristin Lin.

This week, while I'm on vacation, we'll be sharing work from two other New York Times Opinion podcasts. First up, an episode from our friends at The Argument about how to cancel student-loan debt. Host Jane Coaston is joined by activist Astra Taylor and economist Sandy Baum, who agree that addressing the crisis requires dramatic measures but disagree on how to get there.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] Ezra Klein Show is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld. Special thanks to Shannon Busta and Kristin Lin.

Early estimates find that in 2020, homicides in the United States increased somewhere between 25 percent and nearly 40 percent, the largest spike since 1960, when formal crime statistics began to be collected. And early estimates indicate that the increase has carried over to 2021.Violent crime is a crisis on two levels. The first, and most direct, is the toll it takes on people and communities. The lost lives, the grieving families, the traumatized children, the families and businesses that flee, leaving inequality and joblessness for those who remain.It’s also a political crisis: Violent crime can lead to more punitive, authoritarian and often racist policies, with consequences that shape communities decades later. In the 1970s and ’80s, the politics of crime drove the rise of mass incarceration and warrior policing, the political careers of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, the abandonment of inner cities. If these numbers keep rising, they could end any chance we have of building a new approach to safety, and possibly carry Donald Trump — or someone like him — back to the presidency in 2024.There’s still time. Just this week, Philadelphia’s progressive district attorney, Larry Krasner, handily fended off a primary challenge. But the politics are changing, and fast: Democratic primary voters in New York City say crime and violence is the second most important problem facing the city, behind the coronavirus but ahead of affordable housing and racial injustice. And just a few weeks ago, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta, who was facing political challengers attacking her for being soft on crime, announced she would not seek re-election in the fall.So do liberals have an answer to violent crime? And if so, what is it?James Forman Jr. is a professor of law at Yale Law School and the author “Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America,” for which he received a Pulitzer Prize. In the book, Forman uses Washington, D.C., of the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s as a case study to explore the political and psychological dynamics that rising crime produces. We discuss the toll of living amid both street and state violence; what the crime wave of the ’70s and ’80s did to Black politics; the causes of the “Great Crime Decline”; the extent to which policing and prisons actually reduce crime; why we should think of violence the way we think of pandemics; the Black community’s complex views of policing; the three-pronged approach liberals should take to safety; and much more.Mentioned in this episode:“The Long Reach of Violence” by Patrick Sharkey “The U.S. public’s support for being tough on crime has been a main determinant of changes to the incarceration rate” by Peter Enns“Modeling Contagion Through Social Networks to Explain and Predict Gunshot Violence in Chicago, 2006 to 2014” by Ben Green, Thibaut Horel, and Andrew V. PapachristosVox/Data for Progress poll April 2-5, 2021“State Reforms Reverse Decades of Incarceration Growth” Recommendations: "Ghettoside" by Jill Leovy "Becoming Ms. Burton" by Susan Burton and Cari Lynn"The Condemnation of Blackness" by Khalil Gibran Muhammad You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

On May 12, House Republicans voted to remove Representative Liz Cheney, the third-ranking Republican in the House, from her leadership post. Her transgression? Vocally rebuking the claim that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump.But Cheney’s ouster is just the latest plot development in a story about the contemporary G.O.P. that goes back farther than Nov. 3, 2020, and even Nov. 8, 2016. Over the past decade, the party has decimated its former leadership class. John Boehner and Paul Ryan were pushed out. Eric Cantor lost in the primaries. George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush and John McCain were viciously attacked by Donald Trump and his supporters. Cheney is just the latest victim of this ongoing party purge, and she certainly won’t be the last.So how did the Republican Party get here? And what does that tell us about its future — and the future of American democracy?Nicole Hemmer is the author of “Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics,” an associate research scholar with the Obama Presidency Oral History Project and a host of the podcasts “Past/Present” and “This Day in Esoteric Political History.” A political historian by training, she has followed the development of the contemporary Republican Party as closely as anyone, with specific attention to the role right-wing media has played in the party’s development.We discuss how Republican Party loyalty has morphed into unwavering fealty to Donald Trump; whether the G.O.P. is a postpolicy party; the vicious feedback loop between the G.O.P. base, right-wing media and Republican politicians; how the party of Lincoln became a party committed to minority rule; Hemmer’s grim outlook on what the current G.O.P.’s behavior will mean for the future of American democracy; and much more.Mentioned in the episode:"Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics" by Nicole Hemmer“Living in the World of Pants-on-Fire Lies,” by Nicole Hemmer, CNN“George W. Bush Is a Flawed Messenger for Republicans,” by Nicole Hemmer, CNNRecommendations:"Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America" by Kathleen Belew"Gods of the Upper Air: How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex and Gender in the Twentieth Century" by Charles King"The Fire Is Upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr. and the Debate Over Race in America" by Nicholas BuccolaYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

Agnes Callard is an ethical philosopher who dissects, in dazzlingly precise detail, familiar human experiences that we think we understand. Whether her topic is expressing anger, fighting with others, jockeying for status, giving advice, or navigating jealousy, Callard provokes us to rethink the emotions and habits that govern how we live. She also happens to be one of my favorite columnists.In this conversation, I wanted to hear what Callard had to say about a tangle of topics we’ve explored before on the show: how we measure and trade status, and how that feeds into the amorphous thing we call “the meritocracy.” Callard’s argument is that we can have a “non-punitive” meritocracy, one that rewards us for our (virtuous) successes but doesn’t blame us for our failures. I’m not so sure, but it’s a fantastic conversation I’m still thinking about.But as they say on the infomercials — that’s not all! We also talk about why advice is useless, the benefits of jealousy, whether polyamory and monogamy suffer from the same problem, sad music, why Callard’s office is such a riot of color, and the secret to a good divorce. And, at the end, I’ve got some music recommendations for you. Enjoy!Mentioned in this episode:“Who Wants to Play the Status Game?” by Agnes Callard, The Point“Against Advice,” by Agnes Callard, The Point“The Other Woman,” by Agnes Callard, The Point“Parenting and Panic,” by Agnes Callard, The Point"Aspiration" by Agnes CallardRecommendations:"Tolstoy: A Russian Life" by Rosamund Bartlett"Pessoa: A Biography" by Richard Zenith"Augustine of Hippo" by Peter Brown“Real Death” by Mount EerieYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

Michael Lewis’s new book, “The Premonition,” is about one of the most important questions of this moment: Why, despite having the most money, the brightest minds and the some of the most robust public health infrastructure in the world, did the United States fail so miserably at handling the Covid-19 pandemic? And what could we have done differently?The villain of Lewis’s story is not Donald Trump; it’s the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The argument laced through the book is that the C.D.C. was too passive, too unwilling to act on uncertain information, too afraid of making mistakes, too interested in its public image. What we needed was earlier shutdowns, frank public messaging, a more decentralized testing regime, a public health bureaucracy more willing to stand up to the president.Lewis is asking the right question, and I agree with much of his critique. But I’m skeptical of whether the kind of pandemic response he lionizes in the book was ever possible for America. Put another way: How much of a constraint is the public on public health?Lewis and I discuss the trade-offs in pandemic prevention, why bureaucracies have such a difficult time managing catastrophic risk, the messy politics of pandemics, the lessons of the masking debate, and ultimately, what the United States needs to learn from this crisis to prepare for the next one. I’m not sure Lewis and I came to agreement, but I’m still thinking about the conversation weeks later.Mentioned in this episode: “Public policy and health in the Trump era,” The Lancet Recommendations: "Klara and the Sun" by Kazuo Ishiguro"Young Men and Fire" by Norman McLean "Furious Hours" by Casey CepYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

One lesson of covering policy over the past 20 years is that whatever Elizabeth Warren is thinking about now is what Washington is going to be talking about next.So when I read Senator Warren’s new book, “Persist,” I read it with an eye toward that question: Where is Warren trying to drive the policy debate next? And two answers emerged. First, toward a truly pro-family progressivism, one that puts children’s well-being and care at the center of the agenda. And second, toward a view of inequality that puts wealth, not income, first, and builds a whole different set of economic priorities atop that analysis.Warren was a policy wonk before she was a politician, and that’s the kind of conversation we had here. We discuss the drivers of the rising costs of child care, the stagnation in women’s labor force participation, whether universal day care discriminates against stay-at-home parents, Warren’s plan for fixing America’s housing crisis, whether billionaires are a policy failure, the distributional effects of canceling $50,000 in student debt, the social philosophy behind Warren’s tax proposals, how markets can be channeled toward progressive ends, the coming technologies that excite Warren, and much more.Recommendations: "Heart of Fire" by Mazie Hirono"Before the Coffee Gets Cold" by Toshikazu Kawaguchi"John Rain" Book Series by Barry EislerYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

Anna Sale is one of my favorite interviewers. As the host of WNYC Studios’ “Death, Sex and Money,” she has an uncanny ability to get her guests to open up about the most personal, tragic, beautiful and embarrassing parts of their lives, whether it’s childhood trauma, the death of a partner or losing control of one’s limbs.The kinds of conversations Sale has on her show are hard to have in real life. So we rarely have them, even though our relationships and our society and even our politics desperately need them. Thankfully, Sale has written a new book, “Let’s Talk About Hard Things,” which distills the lessons she has learned over the years for the rest of us and offers wisdom for navigating the topics we too often shy away from: death, sex, money, family, identity.We discuss how society has increasingly pushed the responsibility for having these hard conversations onto individuals, what it takes to be a good listener, the common mistakes people make when supporting grieving friends and family members, why it’s especially hard to communicate with our family members, whether it’s necessary to give up our righteousness to preserve our relationships, the social stigma against talking about money, how to navigate tricky discussions about race and gender, and the art of asking open questions.Recommendations: "Death in Mud Lick" by Eric Eyre"Crying in H Mart" by Michelle Zauner"The Secret to Superhuman Strength" by Alison BechdelYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Rogé Karma and Jeff Geld; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld.

In his 100 days address this week, Joe Biden outlined his plans for a big, bold legislative agenda to come. He previewed a two-pronged economic package: the $2.25 trillion American Jobs Plan and the $1.8 trillion American Families Plan. He spoke about the need to pass universal background checks for firearms, comprehensive immigration reform, and the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.The success of that agenda hinges on whether 50 Senate Democrats — ranging from Bernie Sanders to Joe Manchin — can come together and pass legislation. They don’t have a single vote to spare. And the person responsible for making that happens is the New York senator and Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer.Schumer has a theory of politics that he believes can hold or even win Democrats seats in 2022. It’s not a complicated theory: For Democrats to win over middle-of-the-road voters — including those who voted for Donald Trump — they need to prove that government is actually helping them. But to do that, the government needs to actually help those voters, in clear and visible ways. That means passing big, bold legislation. And the institution Schumer leads — the Senate — is the primary obstacle to that happening.So I invited Schumer on the show to talk about how exactly he plans on doing that. How do you win over Trump voters? What kinds of economic policies can help deliver Democrats victory in 2022? How should the party approach topics like race and gender? How will he pass bills, like the For The People Act, that can’t go through budget reconciliation? And, of course, what do you do about the filibuster?Book recommendations: "Grant" by Ron Chernow "Freedom" by William Safire"The Power Broker" by Robert Caro You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Rogé Karma and Jeff Geld; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld.

I’ve been thinking lately about how to move beyond the binary debate over cancel culture. And a good place to start is with the deeper question we’re all trying to ask: What is the kind of politics — the kind of society — we’re trying to achieve in our fights over acceptable speech?To talk through this question, I wanted to bring on two guests, both of whom have been canceled — one by the left and one by the right — and have since dedicated parts of their work to grappling with both the good and the bad of the phenomenon. When is cancellation merited or useful? When is it insufficient or harmful? And what other tools are available in those cases?Natalie Wynn runs the YouTube channel ContraPoints. Her videos, on topics ranging from cancel culture to J.K. Rowling, are not only intellectually stimulating and aesthetically rich but also deeply humanizing. What sets Wynn apart is a unique capacity to live inside the heads of those she disagrees with vehemently and bring them into a dialogue with her.Will Wilkinson was the vice president for research at the Niskanen Center. He was fired after a right-wing online mob attacked a clearly satirical tweet he’d sent. Since being canceled, Wilkinson has, surprisingly, become one of the most outspoken critics of the anti-cancel-culture discourse. He now writes the great newsletter Model Citizen, hosts a podcast of the same name and contributes to Times Opinion.The result is a very different kind of cancel culture conversation. We discuss the universal yearning for safe spaces, the psychology of the social media pile-on, the political limits of social shame, the pathways to persuasion and humanization, theories of social change, the virtues of an effective political communicator, how social media shapes the way we act and think online and much, much more.Mentioned in this episode: "A Different Way of Thinking About Cancel Culture" by Ezra Klein“Canceling” by ContraPoints “J.K. Rowling” by ContraPoints“Undefined Cancel Game” by Will Wilkinson “The Boring Truth vs ‘Cancel Culture’ Panic” by Will Wilkinson Recommendations: "Conflict is Not Abuse" by Sarah Schulman"The Tao is Silent" by Raymond SmullyanIf you enjoyed this show, you should check out The Argument's recent episode: "Is It Time to Cancel Cancel Culture?" You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Rogé Karma and Jeff Geld; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld.

How do you introduce Noam Chomsky? Perhaps you start here: In 1979, The New York Times called him “arguably the most important intellectual alive today.” More than 40 years later, Chomsky, at 92, is still putting his dent in the world — writing books, giving interviews, changing minds.There are different sides to Chomsky. He’s a world-renowned linguist who revolutionized his field. He’s a political theorist who’s been a sharp critic of American foreign policy for decades. He’s an anarchist who believes in a radically different way of ordering society. He’s a pragmatist who pushed leftists to vote for Joe Biden in 2020 and has described himself as having a “rather conservative attitude towards social change.” He is, very much, himself.The problem in planning a conversation with Chomsky is how to get at all these different sides. So this one covers a lot of ground. We discuss:— Why Chomsky is an anarchist, and how he defines anarchism— How his work on language informs his idea of what human beings want— The role of advertising in capitalism— Whether we should understand job contracts as the free market at work or a form of constant coercion— How Chomsky’s ideal vision of society differs from Nordic social democracy— How Chomsky’s class-based theory of politics holds up in an era where college-educated suburbanites are moving left on economics— Chomsky’s view of the climate crisis and why he thinks the “degrowth” movement is misguided— Whether job automation could actually be a good thing for human flourishing— Chomsky’s views on US-China policy, and why he doesn’t think China is a major geopolitical threat— The likelihood of nuclear war in the next decadeAnd much more.Mentioned in this episode: On Anarchism by Noam Chomsky Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal by Noam Chomsky and Robert Pollin “Why the Amazon Workers Never Stood a Chance” by Erik Loomis “Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018” by Carter C. Price and Kathryn A. Edwards “This is What Minimum Wage Would Be If It Kept Pace with Productivity” by Dean Baker“There is no Plan B for dealing with the climate crisis” by Raymond PierrehumbertRecommendations: "The Last of the Just" by Andre Schwarz-Bart"All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw" by Theodore RosengartenSelected essays by Ahad Ha'amYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Rogé Karma and Jeff Geld; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld.

This has been a bad year for the anxious among us — myself very much included. The pandemic was objectively terrifying. And many of us were trapped inside, with nothing we could do about it, severed from social connection and routine, with plenty of time to fret.But that almost gives anxiety, at least as I experience it, too much credit. This year, anyway, being anxious made sense. It so often doesn’t. Your mind has so much power and capacity, and there are so many real problems to solve or wonders to contemplate, and instead you’re obsessively ruminating over something that happened three years ago or might happen three years from now.So, what is anxiety? How do we learn it as a behavior? And more to the point, how do we unlearn it?Jud Brewer is an associate professor of psychiatry at Brown University, where he is the director of research and innovation at the Mindfulness Center. I’ve followed his work on meditation and addiction for years, and his new book, “Unwinding Anxiety: New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal Your Mind” applies that research to anxiety, which he understands as a kind of addiction. And just like with any addiction, you have to understand its rewards in order to begin addressing it.It’s a powerful framework, and one I’ve found useful in my own life. I’m not saying his book, or this conversation, cured me of anxiety. But it helped me understand it better. I hope it’ll do the same for youRecommendations: "The Art of Racing in the Rain" by Garth Stein"Barbarian Days" by William Finnegan"The Underground Railroad" by Colson WhiteheadYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Rogé Karma and Jeff Geld; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld.

Here’s a sobering thought: The older we get, the harder it is for us to learn, to question, to reimagine. This isn’t just habit hardening into dogma. It’s encoded into the way our brains change as we age. And it’s worsened by an intellectual and economic culture that prizes efficiency and dismisses play.Alison Gopnik is a professor of psychology and philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, where she runs the Cognitive Development and Learning Lab; she’s also the author of over 100 papers and half a dozen books, including “The Gardener and the Carpenter” and “The Philosophical Baby.” What I love about her work is she takes the minds of children seriously. The child’s mind is tuned to learn. They are, she writes, the R. & D. departments of the human race. But a mind tuned to learn works differently from a mind trying to exploit what it already knows.So instead of asking what children can learn from us, perhaps we need to reverse the question: What can we learn from them?In this conversation, Gopnik and I discuss the way children think, the cognitive reasons social change so often starts with the young, and the power of play. We talk about why Gopnik thinks children should be considered an entirely different form of Homo sapiens, the crucial difference between “spotlight” consciousness and “lantern” consciousness, why “going for a walk with a 2-year-old is like going for a walk with William Blake,” what A.I. researchers are borrowing from human children, the effects of different types of meditation on the brain and more.Recommendations: "Where the Wild Things Are" by Maurice Sendak"Mary Poppins in the Park" by P.L. Travers"The Children of Green Knowe" by L. M. BostonYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Rogé Karma and Jeff Geld; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld.

Prepping for a conversation with Tressie McMillan Cottom is intimidating. McMillan Cottom is a sociologist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, a 2020 MacArthur fellow, co-host of the podcast “Hear to Slay,” and the author of the essay collection “Thick,” which was a National Book Award finalist. And she’s one of those people who can seemingly write on anything: The way for-profit colleges generate inequality, the cultural meaning of Dolly Parton, the way the U.S. medical profession treats Black women, how beauty operates in contemporary America, the role of hustle in the economy — the list just keeps going.And so did this conversation, in the end. I barely made it through a third of my planned questions because so many interesting topics came up in each answer. We discuss the dangers of nostalgia, the social construction of smartness, the moral panics gripping America, why journalists are racing to platforms like Substack, how different mediums of communication shape our conversations, the central role status plays in American life, her research on the root causes of the uptick in “deaths of despair,” how beauty is constructed and wielded and much, much more. This is one of those conversations that could’ve gone on for four more hours.I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.Recommendations:"Minor Feelings" by Cathy Park Hong"Fearing the Black Body" by Sabrina Strings"The Chosen" by Jerome Karabel"Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry" by Mildred TaylorYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Rogé Karma and Jeff Geld; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld.

With the $2 trillion American Jobs Plan, the economic theory that is Bidenomics is taking shape. It’s big. It puts climate at the center of everything. It is more worried about political risks — losing the House, giving Donald Trump a path back to power — than some traditional economic risks, like wasting money and bumping up inflation. It prefers to err on the side of spending more and making sure people know they got a bridge or a job than doing less and having people question whether government is working for them. But I still have a lot of questions about Bidenomics, in terms of both its economic theories and its political ones.Brian Deese is the director of the National Economic Council, the nerve center that coordinates economic policy across the executive branch. He led the auto bailout in the Obama administration and then turned to climate, first in the Obama White House and then at BlackRock. When President Biden brought him on to run the N.E.C., it was a message: In the Biden administration, all economics was going to be climate economics.I asked Deese to join me on the podcast to talk about how his economic policymaking and thinking have changed since 2009, what the Biden administration learned from the successes and failures of the Obama era, why so much of the White House’s economic policy is framed in terms of competition with China, why he doesn’t think a carbon tax is the right answer for climate, how the Biden administration will invest in the care economy and more.You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Rogé Karma and Jeff Geld; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld.

Donald Trump was the fourth member of the baby boomer generation to be elected president, after Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, is a boomer. Chief Justice John Roberts is a boomer. The Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, is a boomer. President Joe Biden and Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, were born a few years too early to officially qualify as boomers, but they’re close. We’re living in the world the boomers and nearly boomers built, and are still building.This is not, to younger Americans, a comfort. One 2018 poll found that just over half of millennials said that boomers made things worse for their generation; only 13 percent said they made things better. Then there was the rise of the “OK Boomer” meme in 2019, an all-purpose dismissal of boomer politics and rhetoric. But the boomers are a vast group, as are all generations. So is this a useful category for political argument? And even if it is, what, precisely, is it that the boomers did wrong?Jill Filipovic is a journalist, former lawyer and the author of “OK Boomer, Let’s Talk: How My Generation Got Left Behind,” a primarily economic critique of the boomer generation from the left. Helen Andrews is a senior editor at The American Conservative and author of “Boomers: The Men and Women Who Promised Freedom and Delivered Disaster,” a searing cultural critique of the boomers from the right.Filipovic and Andrews, both of whom are millennials (as am I), agree that the boomers left our generation worse off; but they disagree on just about everything else, which makes this conversation all the more interesting. We discuss the value of generational analysis, the legacy of the sexual revolution, the impact of boomer economic policies, the decline of the nuclear family, the so-called millennial sex recession, the millennial affordability crisis, the impact of pornography, how much the critique of the boomers is really a critique of technological change and much more.Mentioned in this episode: American Compass survey on family preferences "The share of Americans not having sex has reached a record high"  by Christopher Ingraham"The Rise of Childless America"  by Lyman StoneJill’s recommendations: "The Culture of Narcissism" by Christopher Lasch"Can't Even" by Anne Helen Petersen"Goodnight Moon" by Margaret Wise BrownHelen’s recommendations: "A Tale of Two Utopias" by Paul Berman"Coming of Age on Zoloft" by Katherine Sharpe"A Book of Americans" by Stepehen Vincent BenétYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Rogé Karma and Jeff Geld; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld.

For years now, I’ve had the same recurring worry: Am I focusing on the trivial? When future generations look back on this moment in history, will they remember the daily political fights — or will everything just look like a sideshow compared to humans being able to edit genetic code? The technology I’m referring to, known as CRISPR, could cure genetic diseases like sickle-cell anemia and Huntington’s. It could let us regulate height, hair color, and vulnerabilities in our children. And, one day, it has the potential to imbue human beings with superhuman characteristics — making us stronger, faster, smarter. Nor is it just us. CRISPR lets us edit other animals and plants, with all kinds of beckoning possibilities, some wonderful, some terrible. We cannot do all this yet. But it’s coming, and soon. Walter Isaacson is the former editor of Time magazine, the former head of CNN, and author of biographies of everyone from Albert Einstein to Benjamin Franklin to Steve Jobs. However, his newest book, “The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race” is much more than a biography of Jennifer Doudna, a Nobel Prize winning scientist who was essential to developing CRISPR. It’s a biography of the scientific process that led to CRISPR, and the people trying to understand its moral, political and human implications.In this conversation, I get to ask Isaacson the questions I’ve wanted to focus on myself: Is it wrong to edit your kid’s genes? Is it cruel not to? What happens when CRISPR and capitalism collide? Will we witness the rise of a superhuman genetic elite? And what kind of political and economic systems do we need to start building  to ensure this technology is used in just ways?Recommendations: "The Bully Pulpit" by Doris Kearns Goodwin"The Moviegoer" by Walker Percy"The Eighth Day of Creation" by Horace Freeland Judson"Winnie the Pooh" by A.A. MilneYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Rogé Karma and Jeff Geld; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld.

For years, I’ve kept a list of dream guests for this show. And as long as that list has existed, Ted Chiang has been atop it.Chiang is a science fiction writer. But that undersells him. He has released two short story collections over 20 years — 2002’s “Stories of Your Life and Others” and 2019’s “Exhalation.” Those stories have won more awards than I can list, and one of them was turned into the film “Arrival.” They are remarkable pieces of work: Each is built around a profound scientific, philosophical or religious idea, and then the story or the story structure is shaped to represent that idea. They are wonders of precision and craft. But unlike a lot of science fiction, they are never cold. Chiang’s work is deeply, irrepressibly humane.I’ve always wondered about the mind that would create Chiang’s stories. And in this conversation I got to watch it in action. Chiang doesn’t like to talk about himself. But he does like to talk about ideas. And so we do: We discuss the difference between magic and technology, why superheroes fight crime but ignore injustice, what it would do to the human psyche if we knew the future is fixed, whether free will exists, whether we’d want to know the exact date of our deaths, why Chiang fears what humans will do to artificial intelligence more than what A.I. will do to humans, the way capitalism turns people against technology, and much more.The ideas Chiang offered in this conversation are still ringing in my head, and changing the way I see the world. It’s worth taking your time with this one.Recommendations: "Creation" by Steve Grand"On the Measure of Intelligence" by Francois Chollet"CivilWarLand in Bad Decline" by George Saunders"A Visit from the Goon Squad" by Jennifer Egan"Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise" (movie)"On Fragile Waves" by Lily Yu"Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" by Annie DillardControl (video game)Return of the Obra Dinn (video game)You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Rogé Karma and Jeff Geld; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld.

In the aftermath of the Capitol attack, the polling firm Echelon Insights decided to ask voters a simple question: Do they think the goal of politics is more about “enacting good public policy” or “ensuring the country’s survival as we know it?”Only 25 percent of Republicans said politics is about policy; nearly half said it’s about survival. That’s today’s Republican Party in a nutshell.I’ve had some recent conversations with Republicans who are trying to reform their party, to push it back toward policy and, in some cases, reality. But, for now, we’re governing with the Republican Party we have, not the Republican Party many want. So what does that Republican Party, the real Republican Party, believe?Kristen Soltis Anderson is a Republican pollster, host of Sirius XM’s “The Trendline,” and co-founder of Echelon Insights. She has done some of the most in-depth surveys of Republican voters to date: the issues that animate them, the traits they look for in presidential candidates, how they consume information, their faith in Donald Trump and much more. So I asked her about what today’s Republicans believe, and what that reveals about where the party is going next.Recommendations: "Grand New Party" by Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam"Resonate" by Nancy Duarte“Generations Status and Party Identification, A Theory of Operant Conditioning” by Keith Billingsley and Clyde Tucker"Dragons Love Tacos" by Adam RubinYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Rogé Karma and Jeff Geld; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld.

Bernie Sanders didn’t win the 2020 election. But he may have won its aftermath.If you look back at Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders’s careers, the $1.9 trillion stimulus package, the American Rescue Plan, looks a lot like the proposals Sanders has fought for forever, without much of the compromise or concerns that you used to see from Senator Joe Biden. That’s not to take anything away from Biden. He’s the president. This is his plan. And it is to his credit that he saw what the country needed, what the politics of the moment would support and where his party had moved, and met it with full force.But Sanders’s two presidential campaigns are part of the reason that the Democratic Party had moved, and the politics of the moment had changed. And so I’ve wondered what Sanders makes of this moment. Is it a triumph? A disappointment? A beginning?And I’ve wondered about his take on some of the other questions swirling around the Democratic Party: Are liberals alienating people who agree with them on economics by being too censorious on culture? Is there room to work with populist Republicans who might be open to new economic ideas even as they turn against liberal democracy itself?You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Rogé Karma and Jeff Geld; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld.

Six months ago, Andrew Cuomo was on top of the world. He was touted as the anti-Donald Trump — the calm, fact-driven coronavirus leader the country needed. Now, amid allegations of hiding the true number of Covid-19 deaths in New York nursing homes and of workplace sexual harassment and abusive behavior, most of the state’s major Democratic politicians are calling for Cuomo’s resignation.Rebecca Traister is a writer at large at New York magazine and the author of “Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger.” Last week, Traister published an extraordinary piece on the allegations against Cuomo. For her, the Andrew Cuomo story is a lot bigger than just Andrew Cuomo; it’s about the nature of toxic workplaces and the desire — even among Democrats — for strongmen leaders. And more than that, it’s about what we’ve been taught leadership looks like, and how the aesthetic of the tough, domineering male leader covers up, or contributes to, poor leadership.So I wanted to bring Traister on the show to discuss the details of the Cuomo story and its broader implications. We discuss what Cuomo has actually been accused of (including Traister’s own in-depth reporting), why we often mistake bullying for leadership, what blind spots the Cuomo story reveals among liberals, the trade-offs between projecting an aesthetic of power and actually governing, why white male rage is so accepted and even admired, the parallels between Cuomo and Trump, how this story recasts reporting on Hillary Clinton and Amy Klobuchar, the double bind faced by female politicians, and much more.Mentioned in this episode: "Abuse and Power" by Rebecca Traister, New York magazineRecommendations: "The House of Mirth" by Edith Wharton"A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" by Betty Smith"Another Brooklyn" by Jacqueline Woodson"My Ántonia" by Willa Cather"Then We Came to the End" by Joshua Ferris"All the King’s Men" by Robert Penn Warren"Unbought and Unbossed" by Shirley Chisholm"The Elephant and the Bad Baby" by Elfrida Vipont"The Church Mouse" by Graham Oakley"Tar Beach" by Faith Ringgold"The Highway Rat" by Julia Donaldson"The Complete 8-Book Ramona Collection" by Beverly Cleary"When You Reach Me" by Rebecca Stead"The Watsons Go to Birmingham--1963" by Christopher Paul CurtisYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Rogé Karma and Jeff Geld; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld.

Mark Bittman taught me to cook. I read his New York Times cooking column, “The Minimalist,” religiously. I bought “How to Cook Everything,” that red brick of a cookbook, and then, when I gave up meat, I bought its green companion, “How to Cook Everything Vegetarian.” He was like my cranky, no-B.S. food uncle.But now Bittman wants to do more than teach me, or you, how to cook. He wants to convince us that the whole food system has fallen into calamity. His new book, "Animal, Vegetable, Junk" is a stunning reinterpretation of humanity’s relationship to the food it forages, grows and, nowadays, concocts. It’s about the marvel of the modern food system, which feeds more than seven billion people and offers more food, with more variety, at less cost, than ever before. But even more so, it’s about the malignancy of that food system, which is sickening us, poisoning the planet and inflicting so much suffering on other creatures that the mind breaks contemplating it.Even as someone who is fairly critical of our modern food system, I wasn’t prepared for the scale or sweep of Bittman’s indictment. And I’m not sure I’ve bought into every piece of it. But it is bracing. And it raises profound questions about the relationship among humans, animals, plants, capitalism, technology and morality. So I asked him on the show to discuss it.Recommendations: "Classic Indian Cooking" by Julie Sahni"How to Cook Everything Vegetarian" by Mark Bittman"Lord Emsworth" by P.G. Wodehouse"The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" by Claudia Roden"The Old World Kitchen: The Rich Tradition of European Peasant Cooking" by Elisabeth Luard"The Optimist's Telescope" by Bina Venkataraman"The Wuggie Norple Story" by Daniel Manus Pinkwater and Tomie dePaolaYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Rogé Karma and Jeff Geld; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld.

On Jan. 28, I published a column that began like this: “I hope, in the end, that this article reads as alarmism. I hope that a year from now it’s a piece people point to as an overreaction.”Today, that column, thankfully, does look like alarmism. Cases fell, and kept falling, even in places beset by new variants. The U.S. vaccination effort accelerated. And there’s going to be vastly more vaccine supply in the coming months.Few emotions are as unnerving right now as hope. No one wants to permit themselves optimism, only to be crushed when death tolls rise. But the case for hope is strengthening. And there are important policy reasons to take that case seriously.Dr. Ashish Jha is a physician, leading health policy researcher and dean of the Brown University School of Public Health. He’s been one of the clearest and most thoughtful voices through this crisis. And he’s feeling hopeful, too. So I asked Jha on the show to guide us through these next months, to help us see what he’s seeing. Don’t get him, or me, wrong: This isn’t over. But in America, things are going to feel very, very different in 45 days, for reasons he explains. And then comes another question: How do we make sure the global end to this crisis comes soon after?A note: This episode was recorded before President Biden’s March 11 address directing states to make all adult Americans eligible to receive Covid vaccines by no later than May 1; however, the timeline Jha and I discuss here is just as ambitious and its implications are just as promising.This is one Covid discussion, finally, that is not going to leave you feeling in despair.Recommendations: "LikeWar" by P. W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking"The Autobiography of Malcolm X" by Malcolm X and Alex Haley"The Very Hungry Caterpillar" by Eric CarleYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Rogé Karma and Jeff Geld; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld.

Dr. Nadine Burke Harris’s pioneering work on how childhood trauma shapes adult outcomes led to her being named the first surgeon general of California. That was in 2019. And then, of course, the novel coronavirus hit. The job of California’s surgeon general in 2020 was not what it was in 2019. But in some ways, Burke Harris’s expertise was more necessary than ever.This conversation is about the growing evidence that difficult experiences we face as children reverberate in our lives decades later. It’s profound research that should reshape how we think about social insurance, public morality and criminal justice. But it’s also a conversation about what the coronavirus has done to children — whether this year will be a trauma that marks a generation, and remakes their lives. How has it changed socialization for toddlers — like my 2-year-old son? What has it meant for children who can’t go to school, who watched their parents lose work or who had family members die alone in a hospital? How do we help them? How do we even understand what they’ve gone through, particularly when they can’t tell us?We also discuss the lessons California learned from the early difficulties in its vaccine rollout (“simplicity saves lives,” Burke Harris says), why we need to be investing a lot more in mental health therapeutics, the debate over universal child allowances, how to address racial and income disparities in vaccine distribution, the drivers of vaccine hesitancy in Black and brown communities, what a safe path to post-pandemic reopening would look like, why Covid-19 cases have been declining across the country, and much more.This is one of those conversations that will leave you looking at vast swaths of public policy differently. Don’t miss it.Mentioned in this episode:The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity by Nadine Burke Harris“Roadmap for Resilience: The California Surgeon General’s Report on Adverse Childhood Experiences, Toxic Stress, and Health”“Relationship of childhood abuse and household dysfunction to many of the leading causes of death in adults. The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study”“The prevalence of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) in the lives of juvenile offenders”“Adverse childhood experiences and the risk of premature mortality” Recommendations: "Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers" by Robert Sapolsky"The Emotional Life of the Toddler" by Alicia Lieberman"The Woman Behind the New Deal" by Kirstin Downey"The Runaway Bunny" by Margaret Wise BrownYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Rogé Karma and Jeff Geld; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld.

We were promised, with the internet, a productivity revolution. We were told that we’d get more done, in less time, with less stress. Instead, we got always-on communication, the dissolution of the boundaries between work and home, the feeling of constantly being behind, lackluster productivity numbers, and, to be fair, reaction GIFs. What went wrong?Cal Newport is a computer scientist at Georgetown and the author of books trying to figure that out. At the center of his work is the idea that the technologies billed as offering us more productive, happier, socially rich lives have left us more exhausted, empty and stressed out than ever. He’s doing something not enough people do: questioning whether this was all worth it.My critique of Newport’s work has always been that it focuses too much on the individual: Telling someone whose workplace communicates exclusively via Slack and email to be a “digital minimalist” is like telling someone who lives in a candy store to diet. But his new book, “A World Without Email,” is all about systems — specifically, the systems that govern how we work. In it, Newport makes a radical argument: We are living through a massive, rolling failure of markets and firms to rethink work for the digital age. But that can change. We can change it.Recommendations: "Technics and Civilization" by Lewis Mumford"Five Things We Need to Know About Technological Change" by Neil Postman“A Continuous Shape” (video)"Andrew Henry's Meadow" by Doris BurnYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Rogé Karma and Jeff Geld; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld.

If you watched this past weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference, you heard a lot of debunked election conspiracies, dire warnings about “cancel culture” and unwavering fealty to Donald Trump. What you didn’t hear was much in the way of policy ideas to raise wages, improve health care or support families. This is the modern G.O.P.: a post-policy party obsessed with symbolic fights and curiously uninterested in the actual work of governing. But does it have to be that way?Ramesh Ponnuru is a senior editor at National Review, a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a Republican wonk who is pushing his party in a more responsible, policy-centric direction. We discuss:— Why Republicans have lost interest in policy.— Whether Trump would have won the presidency if Senate Republicans had passed a big stimulus bill before the 2020 election.— Why Ponnuru thinks the Republican Party’s 2024 hopefuls have learned the wrong lesson from Trump’s 2016 victory.— The conservative case for a universal child allowance.— Why so few Republican politicians have openly endorsed the Romney child allowance plan — and what that says about the tensions within the party’s coalition.— What it would take for Republicans to move away from being a “business owners’” party and toward being a “parents’” party.— Why Ponnuru thinks Republicans should support limiting, or outright banning, just-in-time scheduling practices.— Whether there was ever a mass constituency for Paul Ryan’s version of conservatism.— Who are the most important emerging voices on the political right today.And much more.Recommendations: "The Great Debate" by Yuval Levin"The Upside-Down Constitution" by Michael S. Greve"Popular Crime" by Bill James"The Chronicles of Narnia" by C.S. LewisYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Rogé Karma and Jeff Geld; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld.

Last week, freezing temperatures overwhelmed the Texas power grid, setting off rolling blackouts that left millions without power during an intense winter storm. But this story is a lot bigger than Texas: Our world is built around a model of the climate from the 19th and 20th centuries. Global warming is going to crack that model apart, and with it, much of the physical and political infrastructure civilization relies on.At the same time, there’s good news on the climate front, too. The Biden administration has rejoined the Paris climate accords, pushed through a blitz of executive orders on the environment, and is planning a multitrillion-dollar climate bill. China has also set newly ambitious targets for decarbonization. Renewable energy is getting cheaper, faster, than almost anyone dared hope. And if you follow climate models, you know the most catastrophic outcomes have become less likely in recent years.I wanted to have a conversation about both the emergency in Texas, and the broader picture on climate. Leah Stokes is a political scientist at University of California, Santa Barbara, and author of the excellent book “Short Circuiting Policy,” which, among other things, explores Texas’ surprising history with renewables. David Wallace-Wells is an editor at large at New York magazine and author of "The Uninhabitable Earth," one of the most sobering, disquieting portraits of our future — though he is, as you’ll hear in this discussion, getting a bit more optimistic.We discuss whether the Texas crisis is going to be the new normal worldwide, the harrowing implications of how Texas Republicans have responded, why liberals should be cheering on Elon Musk, the difficulties liberal states are having on climate policy, the obstacles to decarbonization, the horrifying truth of what “adapting” to climate change will actually entail, why air pollution alone is a public health crisis worth solving, whether nuclear energy is the answer, and much more. I learned so much getting to sit in on this conversation. You will, too.Mentioned in this episode:“Migration towards Bangladesh coastlines projected to increase with sea level rise through 2100” by AR Bell, et al.“Inequity in consumption of goods and services adds to racial–ethnic disparities in air pollution exposure” by Christopher W. Tessum, et al.“Wildfire Exposure Increases Pro-Environment Voting within Democratic but Not Republican Areas” by Chad Hazlett and Matto Mildenberger“Prisoners of the Wrong Dilemma: Why Distributive Conflict, Not Collective Action, Characterizes the Politics of Climate Change” by Michaël Aklin and Matto MildenbergerRecommendations: "Short Circuiting Policy" by Leah Stokes"The Lorax" by Dr. Seuss"Under a White Sky" by Elizabeth Kolbert"The Ministry for the Future" by Kim Stanley RobinsonYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Rogé Karma and Jeff Geld; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld.

One thing I want to do on this show is give space to truly radical ideas, to expand the boundaries of our political and moral imaginations. And Hélène Landemore, a political scientist at Yale, has one of those ideas. She calls it “open democracy,” and the premise is simple: What we call democracy is not very democratic.The role of the people is confined to elections, to choosing the elites who will represent us. Landemore argues that our political thinking is stuck in “18th-century epistemologies and technologies.” It is not enough.We’ve learned much in the last few hundred years about random sampling, about the benefits of cognitively diverse groups, about the ways elections are captured by those with the most social and financial capital. Landemore wants to take what we’ve learned and build a new vision of democracy atop it — one in which we let groups of randomly selected citizens actually deliberate and govern. One in which we trust deliberation and diversity, not elections and political parties, to shape our ideas and to restrain our worst impulses.This is a challenging idea. I don’t know that it would work. But it’s a provocation worth wrestling with, particularly at this moment, when our ideas about democracy have so far outpaced the thin, corrupted ways in which we practice it.You’ve heard people say, “We’re a republic, not a democracy.” Landemore’s challenge is this: What if we were a democracy? We honor those who came before us for radically reimagining who could govern, and how politics could work. But did they really discover the terminal state of democracy? Or are there bold steps left for us to take?Recommendations:"Liquid Reign" by Tim Reutemann"The Three Musketeers" by Alexandre Dumas"The Principles of Representative Government" by Bernard ManinMortelle Adèle Book SeriesYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Rogé Karma and Jeff Geld; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld.

George Saunders is one of America’s greatest living writers. He’s the author of dozens of critically acclaimed short stories, including his 2013 collection, “Tenth of December”; his debut novel, “Lincoln in the Bardo,” won the 2017 Booker Prize; and his nonfiction work has empathy and insight that leave pieces from more than a decade ago ringing in my head today. His most recent book, “A Swim in A Pond in the Rain,” is a literary master class built around seven Russian short stories, analyzing how they work, and what they reveal about how we work.I’ve wanted to interview Saunders for more than 15 years. I first saw him talk when I was in college, and there was a quality of compassion and consideration in every response that was, well, strange. His voice doesn’t sound like his fiction. His fiction is bitingly satirical, manic, often unsettling. His voice is calm, kind, gracious. The dissonance stuck with me.Saunders’s central topic, literalized in his famous 2013 commencement speech, is about what it means to be kind in an unkind world. And that’s the organizing question of this conversation, too. We discuss the collisions between capitalism and human relations, the relationship between writing and meditation, Saunders’s personal editing process, the tension between empathizing with others and holding them to account, the promise of re-localizing our politics, the way our minds deceive us, Tolstoy’s unusual theory of personal transformation, and much more.What a pleasure this conversation was. So worth the wait.Recommendations: "Red Cavalry" by Isaac Babel"Stamped from the Beginning" by Ibram X. Kendi"Dispatches" by Michael Herr"Patriotic Gore" by Edmund Wilson"In Love with the World" by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche"Loving; Living; Party Going" by Henry Green"Scrambled Eggs & Whiskey" by Hayden Carruth"Tropic of Squalor" by Mary Carr"They Lift Their Wings to Cry" by Brooks Haxton"The Hundred Dresses" by Eleanor Estes and Louis Slobodkin"Caps for Sale" by Esphyr SlobodkinaYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Rogé Karma and Jeff Geld; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld.

“The American landscape was once graced with resplendent public swimming pools, some big enough to hold thousands of swimmers at a time,” writes Heather McGhee in her new book, “The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together.” These pools were the pride of their communities, monuments to what public investment could do. But they were, in many places, whites-only. Then came the desegregation orders. The pools would need to be open to everyone. But these communities found a loophole. They could close them for everyone. Drain them. Fill them with concrete. Shutter their parks departments entirely. And so they did.It’s a shocking tale. But it’s too easily dismissed as yet one more story of America’s racist past. McGhee shows otherwise. Drained-pool politics are still with us today and shaping issues of far more consequence than pool access. Drained-pool politics — if “they” can also have it, then no one can — helps explain why America still doesn’t have a truly universal health care system, a child care system, a decent social safety net. McGhee, the former president of the think tank Demos, offers a devastating tour of American public policy, and she shows how drained-pool politics have led to less for everyone, not just their intended targets.I asked McGhee to join me for a discussion about drained-pool politics, the zero-sum stories at the heart of American policymaking, how people define and understand their political interests, and the path forward. This is, in my view, a hopeful book, and a hopeful conversation. There are so many issues where the trade-offs are real, and binding. But in this space, there are vast “solidarity dividends” just waiting for us, if we are willing to stand with, rather than against, each other.Recommendations: "Parable of the Sower" by Octavia E. Butler"The Color of Law" by Richard Rothstein“Good Times” (TV series)"The Word Collector" by Peter H. ReynoldsYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Rogé Karma and Jeff Geld; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld.

The Senate is where Joe Biden’s agenda will live or die. More specifically, the intricacies of archaic Senate rules — the budget reconciliation process, the filibuster, the majority leader’s ability to control the floor — combined with the fealty today’s senators have to yesterday’s structures will decide the agenda’s fate. It would be the gravest mistake for progressives, or anyone else, to consider the fight over how the Senate works to be a sideshow compared with debates over a $15 minimum wage, a Green New Deal or democracy reform. The fight over how the Senate works is what will decide all those other debates.Adam Jentleson served as deputy chief of staff to Senator Harry Reid when he was the majority leader. Jentleson was high enough to see how the institution really worked, and young enough to be free of gauzy nostalgia from the days of yore. And his book, "Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy," is both blistering and persuasive. “This is not a particularly uplifting history,” Jentleson writes. But nor is it without hope. “Unlike many of the structural features that determine the politics of our era, the Senate is relatively easy to reform.”So I invited Jentleson on my podcast, “The Ezra Klein Show,” to explain how the modern Senate really works, why it works that way, and how to fix it. Along the way, we discuss what can — and crucially can’t — be passed through budget reconciliation, why senators like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema continue to defend the filibuster (and why Jentleson thinks they will change their minds), the foundational myths of the Senate, like the idea that the modern filibuster encourages compromise, how Mitch McConnell understands the American political system better than his opponents and much more.Recommendations:"Double Indemnity" by James Cain"Master of the Senate" by Robert Caro"The Sum of Us" by Heather McGhee"Where the Wild Things Are" by Maurice SendakYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Rogé Karma and Jeff Geld; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld.

“We are as gods and might as well get good at it,” Stewart Brand famously wrote in “The Whole Earth Catalogue.” Human beings act upon nature at fantastic scale, altering whole ecosystems, terraforming the world to our purposes, breeding new species into existence and driving countless more into extinction. The power we wield is awesome. But Brand was overly optimistic. We did not get good at it. We are terrible at it, and the consequences surround us.That’s the central theme of the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist Elizabeth Kolbert’s new book, “Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future.” And yet, there is no going back. We will not return to a prelapsarian period where humans let nature alone. Indeed, as Kolbert shows, there is no natural nature left — we live in the world (and in particular, a climate) we altered, and are altering. The awful knowledge that our interventions have gone awry again and again must be paired with the awful reality that we have no choice save to try to manage the mess we have made.Examples abound in Kolbert’s book, but in my conversation with her  I wanted to focus on one that obsesses me: solar geoengineering. To even contemplate it feels like the height of hubris. Are we really going to dim the sun? And yet, any reasonable analysis of the mismatch between our glacial politics and our rapidly warming planet demands that we deny ourselves the luxury of only contemplating the solutions we would prefer. With every subsequent day that our politics fails, the choices that we will need to make in the future become worse.This is a conversation about some of the difficult trade-offs and suboptimal options that we are left with in what Kolbert describes as a “no-analog moment.” We discuss the prospect of intentionally sending sulfurous particles into the atmosphere to dim the sun, whether “carbon capture” technology could scale up to the levels needed to make a dent in emissions levels, the ethics of using gene editing technologies to make endangered species more resistant to climate change, the governance mechanisms needed to prevent these technologies from getting out of hand, what a healthier narrative about humanity’s relationship with nature would sound like, how the pandemic altered carbon emissions, and more.At the end, we discuss another fascinating question that Kolbert wrote about recently in The New Yorker: Why is a Harvard astrophysicist arguing Earth has already been visited by aliens, and should we believe him?Mentioned in this episode: Whole Earth CatalogueField Notes from a Catastrophe by Elizabeth KolbertThe Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth KolbertThe Ministry of the Future by Kim Stanley RobinsonExtraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth by Avi LoebRecommendations: "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald"The Complete Stories of Franz Kafka""The Song of the Dodo" by David Quammen"Global Warming (The Complete Briefing)" by John Houghton"Cosmicomics" by Italo Calvino"The Phantom Tollbooth" by Norton Juster"Charlotte’s Web" by E.B. WhiteYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Rogé Karma and Jeff Geld; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld.

"I don’t think conservatism can do its job in a free society in opposition to the institutions of that society,” Yuval Levin told me. “I think it can only function in defense of them.”Levin is the director of social, cultural and constitutional studies at the American Enterprise Institute, as well as the author of a number of great books, most recently, “A Time to Build.” I wanted to talk to him about a very specific question, though: What will the Republican Party become? Levin is one of its most thoughtful and sober analysts — a temperament that may, I realize, make him unsuited to interpreting its current incarnation, in which a majority of House Republicans voted to reject the results of the 2020 presidential election and one of them is, well, Marjorie Taylor Greene.But Levin’s diagnosis is interesting. Histories of the modern Republican Party often place Ronald Reagan at their center. That is, in Levin’s view, a mistake. “I think Reagan is better understood as a detour from a history that is otherwise a story of a constant struggle between populism and conservatism,” he said. Donald Trump was an inheritor of a tradition that stretches long before him — Pat Buchanan’s tradition, and Strom Thurmond’s tradition. He didn’t form a new Republican Party; he allowed a long-existing part to express itself.Behind that lie institutional changes both in the Republican Party and in the broader structure of American politics. That’s why I wanted to talk to Levin for this episode of “The Ezra Klein Show”: He, like me, thinks in terms of institutions. “The question for us in the coming years is whether we can move a little more in the direction of a politics of ‘what does government do,’ and less of a politics of ‘who rules,’” he says.That’s exactly the right question, in my view. But we have very different views of what kinds of institutional changes would get us there. I’d like to see a more democratized, majoritarian system. Levin would, among other things, add a filibuster to the House.So this is more than just a conversation about how to fix the Republican Party. It’s a conversation about how to fix American politics — how to recenter it on policy that changes people’s lives, rather than symbolic clashes that merely harden our hearts.Mentioned in this episode:“Big Tech, Big Government: The Challenges of Regulating Internet Platforms,” National Affairs, Winter 2021The Working Class Republican: Ronald Reagan and the Return of Blue-Collar Conservatism by Henry Olsen"Democrats, Here’s How to Lose in 2022. And Deserve It." by Ezra KleinRecommendations: "On Empire, Liberty, and Reform: Speeches and Letters" by Edmund Burke"Reflections On The Revolution In France" by Edmund Burke"The American Crisis" by Thomas Paine"The Rights of Man" by Thomas Paine"Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition" by Roger Scruton"Freedom From the Market: America’s Fight to Liberate Itself from the Grip of the Invisible Hand" by Mike Konczal"Social Democratic Capitalism" by Lane Kenworthy"The Upswing" by Robert Putnam with Shaylyn Romney GarrettYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Rogé Karma and Jeff Geld; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld.

As my colleague Ben Smith wrote in an August profile, sociologist Zeynep Tufekci has “made a habit of being right on the big things.” She saw the threat of the coronavirus early and clearly. She saw that the public health community was ignoring the evidence on masking, and raised the alarm persuasively enough that she tipped the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention toward new, lifesaving guidance. Before Tufekci was being prescient about the coronavirus, she was being prescient about disinformation online, about the way social media was changing political organizing, about what election forecasting models could actually tell us, about the rising threat of authoritarianism in America.Tufekci attributes this track record to “systems thinking,” which she believes holds the key to forming a more accurate understanding of everything from pandemics to social media to the Republican Party. So I asked Tufekci to come on a podcast for a conversation about how she thinks, and what the rest of us can learn from it. In answering those questions, we discuss why public health experts were slow to change guidance on disruptive measures like masking and travel bans, the logic of authoritarian regimes, why Asian countries so decisively outperformed Western Europe and America in containing coronavirus, why Tufekci thinks media coverage of the vaccines is too pessimistic, the crisis of American democracy, whether a more competent demagogue will succeed Donald Trump, and much more.Mentioned in this episode:  “How Zeynep Tufekci Keeps Getting the Big Things Right” by Ben Smith“Why Telling People They Don’t Need Masks Backfired” by Zeynep Tufekci“Can We Do Twice as Many Vaccinations as We Thought?” by Zeynep Tufekci and Michael Mina“America’s Next Authoritarian Will Be Much More Competent” by Zeynep TufekciRecommendations: "Groundhog Day" (movie)"Normal Accidents" by Charles Perrow"The Dispossessed" by Ursula K. Le GuinYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Rogé Karma and Jeff Geld; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld.

The Biden administration’s first legislative priority is a $1.9 trillion economic rescue package. It’s the kind of mega-package where the individual policies contained inside it — a $15 minimum wage, $1,400 checks, a huge child tax credit expansion, a $50 billion virus testing infrastructure — would be big deals on their own. But together, this would be one of the most consequential packages ever passed.So there’s a lot to talk about here. And who better to talk about it with than my now-colleague Paul Krugman? We dig into the details of the plan and then spiral off into some other topics I wanted to run by the nearest Nobel laureate: the major rethinking of debt and deficits among left-of-center economists, the differences between Keynesians and Modern Monetary Theorists, how Krugman made a bunch of money off Bitcoin (it’s not how you’d think!), why progressives need a better theory of technological change, Krugman’s favorite indie bands of the mid-2000s, and more.Mentioned in this episode: “Notes on the Coronacoma (Wonkish)” by Paul Krugman“Why Markets Boomed in a Year of Human Misery” by Neil Irwin and Weiyi Cai“Who’s Afraid of Budget Deficits?” By Jason Furman and Lawrence Summers“Public Debt: Fiscal and Welfare Costs in a Time of Low Interest Rates” by Olivier Blanchard“America’s anti-democratic Senate, in one number” by Ian MillhiserBook Recommendations: “Laundry Files” series by Charlie Stross“Merchant Princes” series by Charlie Stross“The Price of Peace” by Zachary CarterBand Recommendations: The Be Good TanyasLarkin PoeReina del CidYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Rogé Karma and Jeff Geld; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld.

I’ve never covered a moment that simultaneously merits so much despair and so much hope. It’s dizzying. The Biden administration takes office with over 25 million Covid-19 cases nationwide, over 420,000 Americans dead, and new, highly contagious variants of the virus stalking our future. It’s as grim a situation as I’ve seen.But for the first time, we can do more than hide. We can immunize. Getting a population of 330 million to herd immunity is a hellishly difficult undertaking in the best of circumstances, and these are not the best of circumstances. Still, speed matters: Getting to herd immunity a few months faster could save hundreds of thousands of lives.Dr. Vivek Murthy was surgeon general under Barack Obama, and is Joe Biden’s nominee for the same position. He’s also co-chair of Biden’s coronavirus task force.In this episode, Murthy walks me through the Biden administration’s plan to beat the coronavirus. We discuss America’s botched vaccine rollout efforts, what the choke points are now, whether the Oxford-AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines will be approved, why the U.S. government should be shipping out free masks, what’s blocking 24/7 vaccination sites, the F.D.A.’s overly conservative approach to at-home testing kits, what we can and can’t do after getting the vaccine, the vaccine failures in blue states, how to change the minds of the nearly third of Americans who are vaccine-skeptical, why persuasion is as much about listening as talking, the new coronavirus variants, and much more.You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Rogé Karma and Jeff Geld; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld.

Every Tuesday and Friday, Ezra Klein invites you into a conversation about something that matters. How do we address climate change if the political system fails to act? Has the logic of markets infiltrated too many aspects of our lives? What is the future of the Republican Party? What do psychedelics teach us about consciousness? What does sci-fi understand about our present that we miss? Can our food system be just to humans and animals alike?Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Rogé Karma and Jeff Geld; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld.