
237 episodes

The Ezra Klein Show The New York Times
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- Society & Culture
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4.6 • 7.7K Ratings
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*** Named a best podcast of 2021 by Time, Vulture, Esquire and The Atlantic. ***
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 new iOS app for news subscribers. Download now at nytimes.com/audioapp
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If You’re Reading This, You’re Probably ‘WEIRD’
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 Mitterauer
Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond
The Chosen Few by Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein
Listen to this podcast in New York Times Audio, our new iOS app for news subscribers. Download now at nytimes.com/audioapp
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 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 Teen Mental Health Crisis, Part 2
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 McWilliams
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders
Listen to this podcast in New York Times Audio, our new iOS app for news subscribers. Download now at nytimes.com/audioapp
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 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. -
The Teen Mental Health Crisis, Part 1
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/audioapp
Mentioned:
“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 Advisory
Book Recommendations:
The Problem With Everything by Meghan Daum
What’s Our Problem? by Tim Urban
Nine Ladies by Heather Moll
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 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. -
A Libertarian and I Debate the Debt Ceiling
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 Sbrancia
Book Recommendations:
Range by David Epstein
Kindly Inquisitors by Jonathan Rauch
Let Them In by Jason L. Riley
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 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. -
Best Of: A Weird, Wonderful Conversation with Kim Stanley Robinson
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 Show
Book Recommendations:
A Brief History of Equality by Thomas Piketty
The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow
The Echo Maker by Richard Powers
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” 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. -
Best Of: Why Adults Lose the ‘Beginner’s Mind’
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 Sendak
Mary Poppins in the Park by P.L. Travers
The Children of Green Knowe by L.M. Boston
Thoughts? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. (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.
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Comment on the WIERD Episode
Great discussion. Made me think that the problem with getting democrats on the same page as a political movement may be the lack of a bonding experience that Christianity brings to republicans.
Teen depression
I'm afraid I have to disagree with the tech angle. You look at drug issues; back in the 80s, it was crack cocaine, and crime escalated because of it with drivebys, shootings, and robberies. Three strikes you out, 100,000 police officers were hired; the Clinton campaign promise, broken windows, basically crime was cracked down on. Gradually the last seven years, especially in blue states, crimes are not being prosecuted, and peaking to almost no crimes are being charged. You can do drugs anywhere, and police won't arrest you; in my state, they aren't doing car chases, so if you are pulled over, you can drive off from police, and they can't chase you, more drugs are being done so it creates more crime. Homelessness you gave kids living in tents, and some of those tent cities are crime gangs stealing from stores for drugs. You have gangs who've come up from South America. Then there are more murders. Driving from point A to B is more dangerous because there's shooting road rage happening each week; we just had three in one county on the highways attributed to road rage. Kids these days have less impulse control. I see them getting mad and throwing temper tantrums that you used to see in much younger kids; they want change now, too. I have to explain in the local government; job change doesn't happen fast, so they feel less appreciated, so the jump from job to job looking to be respected but learning the next job usually has the same problems.
Your generation needs to get things under control and put in laws, laws that people can follow and feel safer, because right now places like Seattle are the wild west. The experiment of people being to police themselves didn't work.