The Ezra Klein Show

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? Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher.

  1. 3 days ago

    The America That’s Still Possible

    What does it mean to celebrate America on its 250th anniversary? The Trump administration’s festivities — from the U.F.C. fight on the White House lawn to the Great American State Fair — have centered American glory and greatness. What has been missing are the Americans who fought to move America closer to its promises. They had to love a country — or at least believe in a country — that often failed them. How did they do it? Beneath that is a deep question for anyone who loves a country, or even loves another person: How do you love something in its wholeness, amid its imperfections and failures? One person who is thinking deeply about how to do this is Bryan Stevenson. He’s a civil rights lawyer and the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, which is based in Montgomery, Ala. E.J.I. has created a series of museums and sites in Montgomery that aim to examine America’s history of enslavement, racial violence and segregation, while also uplifting and honoring the people who endured these systems and fought to upend them. The sites are remarkable to witness, as I found out when I visited Montgomery, and they hold America’s manifold truths in tension with one another — all its horror and beauty, tragedy and triumph, inhumanity and humanity. I asked Stevenson how he’s thinking about America’s 250th birthday — and what work the country has left to fulfill its vision of liberty and equality for all. Mentioned: The Legacy Sites, Equal Justice Initiative Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson The 1619 Project The 1776 Report The Apartheid Museum Book Recommendations: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston Les Misérables by Victor Hugo The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky 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 Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Kelsey Lannin. Audio by Jeff Geld and Johnny Simon Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Michelle Harris, Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin, Emma Kehlbeck, Jack McCordick, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Marion Lozano and Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Shows is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special Thanks to Sonia Kapadia, Tania Cordes, Danielle Carrasquero and the Equal Justice Initiative. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

    1hr 46min
  2. 6 days ago

    Chris Rufo Thinks the Right Can Control This. I Don’t.

    Christopher Rufo is arguably the most successful activist of the MAGA era. He rose to prominence fighting D.E.I. initiatives and critical race theory. In President Trump’s second term, he’s had a huge influence on policy, from Trump’s executive orders against D.E.I. and the attacks on the Department of Education to the ICE and C.B.P. deployments to Minneapolis. Rufo, helpfully, calls his shots. He has published a guide, “The New Right Activism: A Manifesto for the Counterrevolution,” in which he argued for the value of “agitprop” and counseled that “political life moves on narrative, emotion, scandal, anger, hope, and faith — on irrational, or at least subrational, feelings.” But more recently, in his writing and on the podcast he co-hosts, “Rufo & Lomez,” he seems worried about the new right he has helped build: its attraction to conspiracy theories, its racialist thinking, its internal fissures. So I wanted to have him on the show to talk about the problems he sees on his side, but also to interrogate whether he may have scored short-term victories while seeding profound long-term problems. Rufo is a senior fellow and director of the initiative on critical race theory at the Manhattan Institute. He’s a contributing editor of City Journal and the author of “America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything.” This episode contains strong language. Mentioned: “The New Right Activism” by Christopher Rufo “The Number” by David D. Kirkpatrick “The unraveling of a cat tale” by Jacqueline Sweet Book recommendations Unmasking the Administrative State by John Marini The Revolutionary by Stacy Schiff The Managerial Revolution by James Burnham 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 Jack McCordick. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Julie Beer. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Mixing by Pat McCusker, Efim Shapiro, and Johnny Simon. Our recording engineer is Johnny Simon. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin, Emma Kehlbeck, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Shows is Annie-Rose Strasser. Transcript editing by Kate Wilkinson and Marlaine Glicksman. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

    2h 5m
  3. 19 Jun

    I Keep Telling People We’re Living in This Dystopian Novel

    A hypervisual, looks-obsessed, wellness-crazed, postliterate society where we’re constantly staring at screens and evaluating one another based on metrics, as the country around us feels like it’s falling apart: That sounds like the world we live in. It’s also the world Gary Shteyngart created in his 2010 novel, “Super Sad True Love Story.” I’ve been thinking about the book a lot recently, especially with the rise of the “looksmaxxing” influencer Clavicular and the longevity guru Bryan Johnson, and this feeling that people are upset and agitated but grabbing at the wrong things to fix it. It feels uncannily like the experience of living inside Shteyngart’s novel. But Shteyngart isn’t just a dystopian prophet, he’s also an expert at living well amid the world’s darkness. His forthcoming book, “The Sensualist: Adventures in Pure Pleasure,” is an essay collection about his efforts to do exactly that. So I wanted to have Shteyngart on the show to understand how he predicted so many of the grimmer aspects of our present, but also how we might delight in the world’s “endless buffet of pleasure” in spite of them. This episode contains strong language. Note: We’re recording an "Ask Me Anything" episode soon. If you have a question, please email ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com using the subject like "AMA." We'd love to hear from you. Mentioned: “The End Point Of Viral Content” by Ryan Broderick “How Jokes Won the Election” by Emily Nussbaum “A Visit to Seoul Brings Our Writer Face-to-Face With the Future of Robots” by Gary Shteyngart The Intimate City by Michael Kimmelman “Don’t Just Take the Slow Road; Design It,” Commencement address at Wesleyan’s 194th Commencement Ceremony, Chris Murphy Book Recommendations: Men Like Ours by Bindu Bansinath A Tender Age by Chang-rae Lee Motherland by Julia Ioffe 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 Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris with Mary-Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Johnny Simon. Our recording engineer is Johnny Simon. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin, Emma Kehlbeck, Jack McCordick, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Shows is Annie-Rose Strasser. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

    1hr 18min

Ratings & Reviews

4.2
out of 5
6 Ratings

About

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? Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher.

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