The Ezra Klein Show

The Ezra Klein Show Podcast

Each Tuesday and Friday, Ezra Klein invites you into a conversation on 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? Listen to this podcast in New York Times Audio, our iOS app for news subscribers. Download now at nytimes.com/audioapp

  1. 3 SEPT

    On Children, Meaning, Media and Psychedelics

    I feel that there’s something important missing in our debate over screen time and kids — and even screen time and adults. In the realm of kids and teenagers, there’s so much focus on what studies show or don’t show: How does screen time affect school grades and behavior? Does it carry an increased risk of anxiety or depression? And while the debate over those questions rages on, a feeling has kept nagging me. What if the problem with screen time isn’t something we can measure? In June, Jia Tolentino published a great piece in The New Yorker about the blockbuster children’s YouTube channel CoComelon, which seemed as if it was wrestling with the same question. So I invited her on the show, and our conversation ended up going places I never expected. Among other things, we talk about how the decision to have kids relates to doing psychedelics, what kinds of pleasure to seek if you want a good life and how much the debate over screen time and kids might just be adults projecting our own discomfort with our own screen time. We recorded this episode a few days before the Trump-Biden debate — and before Donald Trump chose JD Vance as his running mate. We then got so swept up in politics coverage we never got a chance to air it. But I am so excited to finally get this one out into the world. This episode contains strong language. Mentioned: “How CoComelon Captures Our Children’s Attention” by Jia Tolentino “Can Motherhood Be a Mode of Rebellion?” by Jia Tolentino How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell Book Recommendations: Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry In Ascension by Martin MacInnes When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. 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 episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Mixing by Isaac Jones, with Efim Shapiro and Aman Sahota. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Jeff Geld, 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.

    1h 11m
  2. 30 AUG

    Best Of: Tired? Distracted? Burned Out? Listen to This.

    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. 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 habits or physical fitness, there’s hardly any good information about how to build and replenish our capacity for paying attention. Gloria Mark is a professor at the University of California, Irvine, and the author of the book “Attention Span.” And she’s one of the few people who have deeply studied the way our attention works, how that’s been changing and what we can do to stop frittering away our attention budgets. This was our first release of 2024, a kind of New Year’s resolutions episode. And since it can sometimes help to be reminded of the intentions with which you began your year — especially in the midst of a high-intensity election season — we thought we’d share it again. Book recommendations: “The Challenger Launch Decision” by Diane Vaughan “The Undoing Project” by Michael Lewis “The God Equation” by Michio Kaku Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. 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” 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.

    57 min
  3. 27 AUG

    Best Of: The Men — and Boys — Are Not Alright

    We recently did an episode on the strange new gender politics that have emerged in the 2024 election. But we only briefly touched on the social and economic changes that underlie this new politics — the very real ways boys and men have been falling behind. In March 2023, though, we dedicated a whole episode to that subject. Our guest was Richard Reeves, the author of the 2022 book “Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It,” who recently founded the American Institute for Boys and Men to develop solutions for the gender gap he describes in his research. He argues that you can’t understand inequality in America today without understanding the specific challenges facing men and boys. And I would add that there’s no way to fully understand the politics of this election without understanding that, either. So we’re rerunning this episode, because Reeves’s insights on this feel more relevant than ever. 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, why so many young men 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 Reeves Book recommendations: "The Tenuous Attachments of Working-Class Men" by Kathryn Edin, Timothy Nelson, Andrew Cherlin and Robert Francis Career and Family by Claudia Goldin The Life of Dad by Anna Machin Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. 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” was 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.

    1h 59m

About

Each Tuesday and Friday, Ezra Klein invites you into a conversation on 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? Listen to this podcast in New York Times Audio, our iOS app for news subscribers. Download now at nytimes.com/audioapp

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