EVERY SPOKEN WORD
125 min read · 24,813 words- 0:00 – 3:40
How Ezra Became an Unlikely Thirst Trap
- CWChris Williamson
Ezra Klein, so hot right now.
- EKEzra Klein
[laughs] Oh, no.
- CWChris Williamson
Did you ever expect to be referred to as an unlikely thirst trap?
- EKEzra Klein
I did not, and, uh, I try to ignore that it's happening. [laughs]
- CWChris Williamson
[laughs]
- EKEzra Klein
The-- It also has this funny quality, some of this coverage, of how now it's like I took off my glasses and grew a beard, and it's very She's All That. It's like, oh, like maybe he's... I always look the same to me. [laughs]
- CWChris Williamson
Well, an unlikely thirst trap feels like the most backhanded insult or compliment.
- EKEzra Klein
[laughs]
- CWChris Williamson
I- it's like a Rorschach test for whether or not you feel good about yourself. But I don't know what way that's sup... Is that, is that supposed to be a nice thing? Unlikely thirst trap.
- EKEzra Klein
I don't, uh... When you are profiled, it is not supposed to be a nice thing. [laughs]
- CWChris Williamson
Okay, so you'll take unlikely thirst trap as-
- EKEzra Klein
I think, I think that's like also an important thing to know about just like the whole genre of profiling. It's never supposed to be a totally nice thing.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- EKEzra Klein
Usually not supposed to be a totally mean thing. It's trying to create energy.
- CWChris Williamson
That's interesting. There was a rumor in that, that you'd had to adjust your lighting on your podcast set-
- EKEzra Klein
Not true
- CWChris Williamson
... to make you look less attractive because it was distracting from the, the real substance of the-
- EKEzra Klein
It is a not true rumor.
- CWChris Williamson
Wow.
- EKEzra Klein
And, and it's gonna be a even weirder thing to discuss like here while you're sitting there like three times as ripped in front of me as we talk about-
- CWChris Williamson
[laughs]
- EKEzra Klein
... whether or not I'm hot. [laughs]
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, I know, it's-- I thought that that was an interesting profile, but yeah. How do you feel about having a mini celebrity moment like that?
- EKEzra Klein
You try to focus on the work. Uh, a- and I mean that really seriously. I think that, uh, if you start to see yourself in the third person, it is very, very dangerous for doing good work. It's like the, the input of good work is independence of mind. And for me particularly, it's a lot of time spent by myself reading books, thinking about things. Once the world's idea of you gets into your head, it is poison. And I think that's true, by the way, for, you know, people who get profiled or have mini, you know, moments. I think it's also just naturally true for everybody now who has social media profiles and has this kind of constant like front stage that they keep up. I, I always tell people who like come to me for advice in, in journalism or who are having some kind of pop in the press, that you really have to be intentionable, uh, [laughs] you have to be intentional about maintaining as much of a backstage as you can.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- EKEzra Klein
And when I see people who aren't having a pop, like destroying their backstage, I worry about them. The streamers worry me like in an almost paternalistic way.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
I watch the amount of their lives they're putting on, uh, on- online, they're putting in front of a camera, how little is left for them. And psychologically, I think it is gonna do a lot of people a lot of damage.
- CWChris Williamson
Everyone feels uncomfortable watching that. Like it-
- EKEzra Klein
You ever read Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart?
- 3:40 – 13:44
The Benefits of Keeping Your Private Life Boring
- CWChris Williamson
W- how do you think about protecting the backstage?
- EKEzra Klein
I keep a lot of time quiet. I don't go to very much. Did you read, uh, Lena Dunham's new book? It's great, Fame Sick. And she talks a bunch about the way everything creates more of itself. Everything you do creates more of itself. And so if you get on different circuits, it just, it eats you.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- EKEzra Klein
It eats the time. So for me, it's like the way I think about my work, most weeks I bring out three things. I bring out two podcast episodes and one column, and the week is just very much organized around that. And I just more and more and more try to cut out like everything that is not directly feeding into one of those three pieces of work-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm
- EKEzra Klein
... or is not my children, my family, and deep friendships, or like personal care and time, right? And that's already a lot. Like, even as I say those five-ish things to you-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm
- EKEzra Klein
... I feel-
- CWChris Williamson
It's a pretty full life
- EKEzra Klein
... tired. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, and the fact that, I guess w- one shortcut is to just make all of the other stuff part of the main thing, to turn all of the private life into the public life. I think, uh, Mary Harrington talks about a digital hijab that she wears where she s- covers up a lot of the parts of her that she doesn't want the world-
- EKEzra Klein
Oh, that's a great-
- CWChris Williamson
... the world to see
- EKEzra Klein
... a digital hij-- That's a great coinage.
- CWChris Williamson
She wears this, this thing. She t- told this story. She finished her first marathon, a half marathon, something, some race. She's into running. And, uh, she took a selfie at the end 'cause that, that's what you do, right? Y- I'm proud of this thing. And she went to post it, and she sort of saw this universe split, which was how much of this is for me and how much of this is for the internet. And yeah, I mean, it is very easy to be distracted from doing work.
- EKEzra Klein
I'm curious how you handle this because you have a tougher job on this than I do. So my work, I can define it much more tightly.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- EKEzra Klein
You know, it's primarily about politics, current affairs, geopolitics. I bring in some things I care about like meditation and-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm
- EKEzra Klein
... but for the most part, it is not nat-- I have to choose to let it colonize the things that are closer to my core.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- EKEzra Klein
Yours, like the topics you touch on this show, they're very personal.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- EKEzra Klein
So anything can become content for you.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. It's been a, a purposeful... I think I'm quite, by disposition, I'm quite a private person. Like, my personal life's always remained very private, and that's been something that, uh, a bunch of friends gave me advice on early on, and I'm really glad that I followed it. Once you open that door, I think it's very difficult to reverse it. People are interested in, oh, who are you dating now? And, and, and what, what does this mean? And oh, why is he-- w- w- who's he a-aligning himself with? As soon as you open that door, it continue-- the snowball continues to, to roll. Um, mercifully for me, I think almost purposely trying to be as boring as possible with your personal life is a great prophylactic. Like, it, it-- people just get very, very... They'll move on to what is more easily consumable. And for as long as Destiny exists, I am not going to be top of the list. Like, there was a period where Destiny's private life was just made the most public thing over and over and over again. And, uh, uh, Hasan will get in bother over and over and over and over again, or, like, Nick Fuentes will come through, or Huberman will come through. You know, there's a lot of people that are, like, easier access than me who I, I think my biggest defense is purposefully making my private life very boring and not really talking about it all that much, and people just move on. And that for me is, like, and I'm completely fine by that as my strategy.
- EKEzra Klein
The, the other thing that I think is important is not exposing yourself to the algorithms all that much.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- EKEzra Klein
So I don't tweet. I-- We've started putting clips up on Instagram, and even doing a little bit more of that, I feel the pull of it, the want of it. So I'm a big fan of all these mid-century media theorists like Marshall McLuhan and, and Neil Postman and Walter Ong and, and all of them basically, their main idea is that every medium changes the user.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
So we think what we're doing when we, you know, turn on the television or turn on X or turn on Instagram or read a book for that matter, is we are consuming content. We are choosing, and we can make better or worse decisions, right? We can read better or worse people, watch better or worse shows.
- 13:44 – 18:20
Are The Democrats Tweets Getting Out of Hand?
- CWChris Williamson
sandwich. Uh, did you see this tweet? It's at the very bottom. Did you see that tweet earlier on today? The very, very bottom. It's hiding down there.
- EKEzra Klein
I did, yes. I saw both of those.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. So I had to double-check that @theDemocrats is the Democrats' official proper... 'Cause I just-
- EKEzra Klein
Democratic National Committee, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Correct. Yeah. And I'm like, "Is, is this a parody account? It's got to be." So f- the Democrats tweet, "Fired up, ready to go. It's time to take back Texas." Steven Miller replies and says, "The Democrats made history in Texas by nominating their first transgender Senate candidate." And @theDemocrats reply, "Shut up you ugly fuck." And that reached at least fifty million people, it's like three hundred thousand likes. Like, I, I get it, the he did it first thing of pointing from one side to the other, but is... Maybe this is just my sort of British properness coming through. The, the thought that a, the online representative account for one of the parties saying, "Shut up you ugly fuck," is, is that not absurd? Like that feels kinda deranged to me.
- EKEzra Klein
It is deranged. But, but this is a little bit what I mean about the whole medium, right? Because one thing that does, one thing that every movement like this does, and I take Donald Trump honestly as a bit of a first mover here-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm
- EKEzra Klein
... is it is shifting people's sense of what political communication should sound like.
- CWChris Williamson
Agree.
- EKEzra Klein
So I mean, that is the outcome, I would say, of a long process of learning, that if you tweet like a normal, sober, stolid-
- CWChris Williamson
Boring
- EKEzra Klein
... institution. Boring.
- CWChris Williamson
Boring.
- EKEzra Klein
Barack Obama's... I, I'm a big Barack Obama fan.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- EKEzra Klein
That guy's Twitter account, not great.
- CWChris Williamson
Not sexy enough.
- EKEzra Klein
Not sexy enough.
- CWChris Williamson
No.
- EKEzra Klein
And, and so this is the way everything changes. Like it actually, it, it changes the expectations, it changes the people, and it changes what can succeed.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- EKEzra Klein
And so, you know, sometimes maybe they... I mean, I guess you can ask the Democrat- @theDemocrats if they went too far or not.
- CWChris Williamson
That's right. Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
Maybe they, maybe to them it's a huge success. But the, this is what I mean when you have to think about these mediums, you have to think about the attention, you have to think about the norms, you have to think about the discourse as a kind of public good. What that is doing, like that right there is a tragedy of the commons problem. It's very hard for @theDemocrats to be noticed. There's a huge cacophony of voices.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
The voices that get noticed are extreme. So here's the thing. You noticed them. We are here talking about @theDemocrats' rejoinder to Steven Miller.
- CWChris Williamson
I can't remember the last time that I talked about @theDemocrats.
- EKEzra Klein
So they probably just succeeded.
- CWChris Williamson
That's a W.
- EKEzra Klein
But, but-
- 18:20 – 25:53
Could a Liberal Joe Rogan Have Changed the Election?
- CWChris Williamson
checkout. Do you think if the left had had its own version of Joe Rogan, the, the last election would have really changed?
- EKEzra Klein
The election was close enough in the battleground states that I think you end up in a situation where you can change any variable and imagine moving, I don't remember the exact number, but something like you would have needed, I think, a hundred and fifty thousand votes to switch. I mean, those votes would have had to have been correctly, uh, like apportioned.
- CWChris Williamson
Apportioned. Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
But it was in, you know, just a handful of states. So maybe, not just Joe Rogan. Like, I always say that the way to think about this is not a liberal or illiberal Joe Rogan.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
It's candidates who are comfortable in the kinds of spaces that we mean when we talk about Rogan.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
Like, the point is not getting, like, one guy who is more on your side. The point is, you know, Harrison Walls having been everywhere and having been capable of talking more effectively-
- CWChris Williamson
Comfortable of talking
- EKEzra Klein
... a different kind of, of, of, of person.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
But, but, but let me pull back on something you said a second ago. Uh, I've been thinking a lot about virtue and politics. And virtue, I was gonna say it's not a word we use that much, but I actually think particularly like in your corners of the blog, of the blogosphere. Ah. We were talking about blogs before we started. Of the-
- CWChris Williamson
RIP
- EKEzra Klein
... podcast sphere.
- CWChris Williamson
RIP.
- EKEzra Klein
It is something we talk about. And I was just doing a show that'll come out shortly about a bunch of the kind of more masculinist philosophies on the right, people like Bronze Age Pervert and Raw Nationalists.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
And, and one of the things I was thinking about is how much those visions of masculinity have a primitivism to them, right? It's this desire to rediscover a stereotypically testosterone-soaked, much more competitive, dominance-oriented, aggressive, right? There's a view that modern man has been warped into and constrained into this soft, cooperative, like against their own instincts. Okay. The thing that I was noticing how when I actually read what these guys were writing, the thing that I was noticing was so absent was the idea of self-mastery and self-discipline-
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm
- EKEzra Klein
... as a fundamental dimension, not just of, like, manhood or masculinity, but just of humanity. In fact, a lot of these places seem to take self-discipline and self-mastery, with the exception maybe of, like, a homosocial weightlifting component [laughs] as-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah
- EKEzra Klein
... uh, a negative, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
It was evidence of the way modernity had warped us into this attenuated shape that works for, you know, modern feminist liberal democracy, right? That's the argument. And so you see, I think this is particularly true around Trump, and you see it with Stephen Miller, this gleeful rejection of norms of behavior that once sort of reflected, I think, a kind of self-discipline, right? Politicians don't talk the way Donald Trump talks, right? They are disciplined. They know not to just unleash on the people they don't like in a way that is destructive, most of them. And it was this wiping away of that as a kind of show of, that you would not be held back by the system as it existed. And, and so there's a message in what Miller is saying, and then of a, now you see, like, the Democrats trying to, to ape it. But what I do think is gonna, it's gonna create, I think what it's already creating is going to be a swing back to a desire to see political virtue, to see social virtue demonstrated in, in leaders.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
Everything creates its opposite in politics always.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
And so this kind of-
- CWChris Williamson
This sort of statesmanlike, bit more decorum.
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah. It'll have to be a version that works for today.
- 25:53 – 30:35
Is Ezra in the Middle of a Democrat Civil War?
- CWChris Williamson
I'm kind of interested, do you think that you are at the center of a Democrat civil war at the moment? Do you see it that way?
- EKEzra Klein
At the center of a civil war? Um, I don't know. Do you think I am?
- CWChris Williamson
Seems that way on the internet if you read the right pieces. There's certainly a, an orbiting, and I wonder whether it's because so few people are able to talk on many different sides. That might be it.
- EKEzra Klein
I think the Democratic Party is having a big debate over what it should be. And I think that the book that Derek Thompson and I released last year, Abundance, w- w- which it was one of these things. I mean, I've released a book before. It-- Things catch fire for their own reasons. And Abundance became, in a way that is remarkable, one of the texts that became the thing people used to have an argument they wanted to have.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- EKEzra Klein
Which was, uh, which is not necessarily the argument [chuckles] we're actually having in the book. But Abundance sort of became at the center of this war between what I would call the populist wing of the Democratic Party and the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. And what was funny about that fight to me-- So Abundance, the book we did, was about the way in which liberalism, Democrats of various stripes, left to center, have made it very hard to build where they govern. And so in places that tend to be blue, like New York or, um, uh, California, it's been hard to build homes, hard to build clean energy. Texas, where you live, they build just more homes and more clean energy, uh, than blue states do. Not because they're necessarily more pro-affordable housing, and definitely not because they're more politically pro-clean energy or worried about climate change. They just have created a structure in which it is easier to build things. I've talked to, um, climate tech entrepreneurs, not just doing sort of normal green energy, but doing things that are much more on the cusp, much bigger projects. And their politics are Californian, and they're just like, "I can get things done in Texas and Arizona, and I can't get them done here," right?
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- EKEzra Klein
And what, what was interesting about the fight that book kicked off then is the book was very much embraced by the people it was actually criticizing. So Gavin Newsom embraced that book, right? He talks all the time now about we need to be-- Democrats need to be a party of abundance. Uh, he uses another term that, that I, I, I have called a liberalism that builds. And so did a lot of people from outside of the party. Obama's talked about the book, right? The, the, the part of the party that was actually in power that we were criticizing kind of grabbed onto it.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- EKEzra Klein
And the part of the party that is insurgent sort of reacted against that. It's like, well, it, Abundance kind of became for them the face of, like, the Obamaism.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- EKEzra Klein
You know, the sort of the Obama side of the party keeping power and, and they want sort of a more populous party. Here's the thing. I just think most of this fight is fake because, you know, Zaman Mamdani just this week released a big housing plan, and it's a housing plan all about making it easier to build and all about cutting through bureaucracy and red tape and making it faster and cheaper. And in, uh, Los Angeles, Nithya Raman, Democratic Socialist, running against, um, uh, Karen Bass, who's the, the Democratic mayor, you know, is also running like, you know, taping things in, you know, overgrown fields at the LA, uh, city is, like, suing to stop from becoming affordable housing. Uh, you know, the New Democrats, the Congressional caucus, released a thing about how to build more clean energy and create clean energy abundance. So one of the hard things for me in, like, judging this debate is that there's an online discourse that because of the nature of online discourse becomes very, very factional, and it becomes very angry.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
And people who are-- People sort of create a fight in it that they're used to. But to me, like, the whole thing Abundance is doing is cross-cutting divisions that exist not just inside the Democratic or p- not just inside the Democratic Party, but also between Democrats and Republicans to sort of create new syntheses on things. And so I just don't see the fights that people are scoring on Twitter there-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm
- EKEzra Klein
... as being even the fights and the difficulties that our ideas really face. Because in practice, it's much more about how hard these things are to get done, and I also think that there's, like, a whole technology side of abundance that has proven a much, much harder climb because of AI than it was when we were writing that book. So I, I'm always, like, a, uh, happy to be a character in, in [chuckles] various people's discourse fights. But I, I tend to think that the particular one that has been, you know, present here has, at this point, been pretty belied by the reality of who is embracing these ideas.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. Well, you're one of the few liberals that sort of openly critiquing liberal governance failures,
- 30:35 – 40:41
The Risk of Criticising Your Own Side
- CWChris Williamson
do you ever feel like you need to walk on eggshells a little because there is a degree of purity spiraling and othering on the left? The right seems to be prepared to welcome anybody with whatever history they've got with open arms.
- EKEzra Klein
Well, unless you say, unless you say Joe Biden won the 2020 election, and then Donald Trump will primary your, like, whole career into oblivion.
- CWChris Williamson
That is kind of he who shall not be named for-
- EKEzra Klein
[laughs]
- CWChris Williamson
... for joining the right. That's the Voldemort of the right. That's correct. Um-
- EKEzra Klein
So, but I, I wanna say something interesting about this, 'cause this, I think, reflects the difference in the two parties right now.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- EKEzra Klein
What Donald Trump did very effectively is he collapsed purity on the Republican Party down to a single dimensional point, which is loyalty to him. So he's willing to accept a tremendous amount of views, so long as you are loyal to and say nice things about him personally.
- CWChris Williamson
There's a single ordinating principle.
- EKEzra Klein
Exactly. The left, which does not have a leader in that respect-
- CWChris Williamson
It's got a plurality of ways that you can get in trouble.
- EKEzra Klein
Exactly. And-
- CWChris Williamson
Whereas this is just a, a unity of ways that you can get in trouble on the right.
- EKEzra Klein
And so, uh-
- CWChris Williamson
That's so interesting.
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah, so the right has, uh, it, it's a little bit of like the fox and hedgehog thing.
- CWChris Williamson
[laughs]
- EKEzra Klein
So the right has this one big, um-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
- EKEzra Klein
... thing you have to accept.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
This one... I, and not just lie, right? I, the 2020 election stuff is a lie. But the, the problem they're about to have, the problem they're having right now, is that what it means to be loyal to Trump is a more complicated thing than it was in the 2024 election, because he's doing things, right, like the war in Iran.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- EKEzra Klein
And so what it means to be loyal to him is not just you're pro-Trump, but you can believe whatever on vaccines, you can believe whatever on... Now you actually have to, as a member of the Republican Party, you know, sign on to, you can't, like, break with him on the Epstein files, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Gotta be on board with this, I gotta be on board with this, I gotta be on board with that.
- EKEzra Klein
You know, like you, you, you see this happening. And so you've had, like, very MAGA people like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie, you know, who 100% were on board with all kinds of election bullshit from Trump.
- CWChris Williamson
Step down.
- EKEzra Klein
But they got pushed out over other things now because they weren't loyal on the current policy positions.
- CWChris Williamson
The single ordinating principle has fractured into-
- EKEzra Klein
The Democratic Party, the, or the, maybe I'll call it, like, the broad left, it, it's not like it was four years ago. But it, it, what it has is an agenda and a set of, um, different factions have a, like, a platform and an orientation and a set of ideas you have to be loyal to, right? Do you believe in Medicare for all? Like, how do you feel about billionaires?
- 40:41 – 46:02
Have Ezra’s Politics Evolved?
- CWChris Williamson
is forever. Do you, do you consider yourself, given the, this interesting position and especially with, with the book, where it's put you in terms of criticizing liberal governance, do you see yourself as further left or further right than previously, or are you just in exactly the same spot?
- EKEzra Klein
I don't think my politics are that different.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
I mean, I see myself as a liberal.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
And I've been a liberal for a long time. And like the American tradition, it means different things in Europe and other places. And I have fairly recognizable liberal goals. I want universal healthcare. I want, um, more, like, economic egalitarianism. I want people to have just the ability to live a flourishing life. But in the way that I think has traditionally been a big part of liberalism, and think about Obama, for instance, I believe very strongly that the work of making a fractious, complex, multi-ethnic democracy function is honorable, important work. And that requires not just policies, but certain political virtues and approaches to politics-
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm
- EKEzra Klein
... that keep conflict from spinning out of being constructive and allow it to spin into spaces that are really destructive.
- CWChris Williamson
If you were to design an incentive to do the opposite of that, it would be social media.
- EKEzra Klein
Yes. And so I-- Yeah, I, I think I'm [chuckles] in some ways I'm probably further left than my temperament makes people think-
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm
- EKEzra Klein
... in terms of what I believe about things. Uh, but I also think that policy is not really the way people code other people's ideology. Um, you know, what makes you more far left, right? Is it believing in the maximum level of universal healthcare you can get to, or is it your view on climate change, or is it your view on what level of political compromise is okay? A lot of the places where people get really angry at me is I am much more open to political compromise, and I'm very open to, uh- Democrats running very different candidates in very different places, including candidates who are much more conservative than me.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
Because I believe disagreement is very real. And one mistake I think a lot of people make when looking at politics is they don't really credit how different people are from them. And so if you're in a political bubble in New York City or Austin or Los Angeles-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm
- EKEzra Klein
... what it takes for a Democrat like Joe Manchin to win statewide in West Virginia, I don't think it's conceivable to you. Like, you don't know anybody, like, like you don't know what it means to win working class voters in West Virginia. He does.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
He was like the Democratic MVP, right? I don't have Joe Manchin's politics. I find Joe Manchin incredibly, uh, irksome, and I also understand that his job is not my job. And so one of the, the, the things I'm-- One of the things I worry about, because I worry about where this country's politics are going, and I am, like, very deeply opposed to Donald Trump and MAGA and, like, the way the politics there work, is I think it's really important Democrats win Iowa. I think it's really important they are competitive in places like Nebraska, which they used to be. Um, you know, in 2010, Democrats held, I believe, both seats in West Virginia, right, in the Senate. Like, that's unimaginable now. And so the, the question of what, what kind of big tent would allow that, where you can have a Zoran Mamdoni here, but, you know, Rob Sand, who's this more moderate Democrat running statewide for governor in Iowa, who's great, he's running on getting rid of the two-party system, right? He's not running as a, like a Democrat to appeal to liberals in Brooklyn or leftists in Brooklyn, for that matter. He starts every town hall with, he, like, has the Republicans stand up. He says, "I want everybody to clap for the Republicans in this room." The Democrats to stand up. Everybody clap for them. The independents, and then he has them all do the Pledge of Allegiance or sing the Star-Spangled Banner together. And is that my politics exactly? Like, is that how I would run a rally? Probably not. Would I win statewide in Iowa? I sure fucking wouldn't, man.
- CWChris Williamson
[laughing]
- EKEzra Klein
But Rob Sand might win statewide in Iowa, and Rob Sand is a hero for that.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
Uh, and so you gotta believe in things. But also, I, I do think the question... I mean, I think in the Trump era, I take more seriously than I used to that building the stability of our politics was an incredible achievement, and many countries don't have that, and in many countries, they had it and it was lost. And believing that in America we cannot break this thing is a mistake.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
And if you do believe we can break this thing, then you actually have to think about what kinds of politics bring it back. And that's why I'm not excited, even if it works attentionally, about seeing a doom loop of vice and venality.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
Because even if you can win that way, you are breaking the thing by doing it. And so the question of how do you win virtuously is very important to me because I think, like, it, for all the other things I wanna have, you actually need a working peaceful politics to get there.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- 46:02 – 49:02
What Makes the Ideal Democratic Candidate?
- CWChris Williamson
Who's your ideal Democratic Party candidate?
- EKEzra Klein
For 2028?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
Uh, they, they don't exist. I mean, I don't think there's a perfect Democrat for 2028, and to the extent, if there is, we don't know them yet because they've not been under those lights yet. Uh, I think I am a sort of unreconstructed admirer of Barack Obama, and if Obama were running today, he would have to run differently than he did then.
- CWChris Williamson
More aura.
- EKEzra Klein
Uh, he had a lot of aura then, man.
- CWChris Williamson
Online aura.
- EKEzra Klein
I think if he were running today, he'd have more online aura. That's the point, right? You can't transpose who he is post-presidentially to now, right? He is a human institution. He's like a, like a monument in some ways. Um, so he's not gonna be who he was, even when he was running in '08. But I think he did something that's really hard to do, which is, one, he contained many of the country's contradictions inside himself and was able to make people, even who disagreed with him quite deeply, feel seen. And he was able to combine two forms of moral imagination that I think are hard to combine, which is one was a, a sort of moral imagination of policy, of things like universal healthcare, which he basically achieved, right? It's like a, a lot of people have failed on that before him. Um, could we make the healthcare system better? Always. But Obamacare is no small thing. And the second was a moral imagination on politics itself. In a country that had the kinds of racial divides and legacy we have and had, in a country that in the Bush years felt very divided, he made people feel politics could be different. And the tragedy of Obamaism is that it got worse, that he was able actually to pass quite a lot of the policy he promised, but he was not able to make politics and this country's divisions feel better. In fact, they felt worse.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
And the thing that I think no one has an answer to is how to resuscitate that side of his moral imagination in a way that does not feel naive or hopeless or cliché.
- CWChris Williamson
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- 49:02 – 53:53
Why Authenticity Wins
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, it's an interesting one to look to what happens in 2028. You know, it, it was so fascinating to me being in the UK and starting to come online with realizing just how, how tumultuous America was politically, and then observing that unfold, and then s- being, starting to be a part of the conversation, I guess, because I started Modern Wisdom in 2018. And then to roll it forward and to think about what happens in just two years' time, just two years from now, kind of blows my mind. And, uh, I don't know, I don't know what people are looking for on either side in 2028 anymore.
- EKEzra Klein
Do you follow... Do you-- I don't know how deep you are in politics. I know we've had Bernie and people like that on the show.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
Do you look at the Democrats and you think, that one?
- CWChris Williamson
No. No. But I also don't look at the conservatives and think-
- EKEzra Klein
Mm-hmm
- CWChris Williamson
... that one either.
- EKEzra Klein
I mean, my basic read of the field, for what it's worth right now, is that the ones doing the most interesting things are Gavin Newsom or AOC, are Buttigieg, and then the big dark horse I think that people should not underestimate right now is Jon Ossoff, who is the senator from Georgia who's in a re-election this year. Um, but when I look at the Democrats, those are the four who I think have figured out attention in this era.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
And one of my views on politics is that attention is its own, uh, competency now, and that if you are not capable of earning it and wielding it and using it and breaking through on it yourself, then you actually cannot compete at the highest levels.
- CWChris Williamson
Certainly not right now with the way the, the ecosystem sits at the moment.
- EKEzra Klein
And, and I don't think it'll be different in 2028.
- CWChris Williamson
You gotta play the ball where it lies.
- EKEzra Klein
So, and there's also something about, uh, one of the great, I think, character mistakes of Democrats and, and center-left parties, actually, I think you see this with Keir Starmer, um, i- in a bunch of places, is people who are too formed by institutions, they're afraid. And it-- O- one way I often put this is I think right now one of the problems in American politics is Republicans are under-formed by institutions, and Democrats are over-formed by them.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
So Republicans sort of in the Trump era, they're too contemptuous of institutions, too contemptuous of institutional authority, too contemptuous of the norms of institutions and how you act inside a company.
- CWChris Williamson
Rip it up.
- EKEzra Klein
Just rip it all up. Doge it. Chainsaw it. It's all bullshit anyway, and that's wrong. The problem for the Democrats can be that they're, can become a party of Tracy Flecks, and they are so framed and molded by, like, from birth, having competed their way, you know, through every school, you know, through every competition, through every company, through their politics, in a party that is much more pro-institutions now than Republicans are. And people who come through institutions like that, they often reflect those institutions. They, they begin to talk like them. You can hear the institution when they open their mouth. Keir Starmer speaks like he is the government, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
Like, you can feel-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah
- EKEzra Klein
... like he's, like, got, like, he feels like a bureaucracy.
- CWChris Williamson
Correct.
- EKEzra Klein
And I'm not even saying that as a negative on him. At another time, that might have been more, you know, a doable thing. But I don't think that works in this media environment at all. Like, you have to feel honest, authentic. You have to, like-
- CWChris Williamson
Like a real person
- EKEzra Klein
... like you're talking about-
- CWChris Williamson
Like an actual human
- EKEzra Klein
... like a real person. People can, people can sense that before they can sense anything else about you. And so when I see some of the Democrats who are running, but they still talk like someone who is optimized, and to be fair to them, this used to be a thing you optimized for, and it worked, to win over, like, local editorial boards at small-town newspapers. They were optimized to be somebody that the editors of newspapers-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah
- EKEzra Klein
... thought seemed like a competent, decent person. And it might be, and it is, I think, a shame that that has become some kind of a liability, that you need to have some edge of wildness [chuckles] to you.
- 53:53 – 59:47
What Does Deregulation Actually Mean?
- CWChris Williamson
against it. I guess when we're talking about a more, like, active left, like a building left-
- EKEzra Klein
Mm-hmm
- CWChris Williamson
... right? The word deregulation gets used by Elon Musk, and it also gets used by you.
- EKEzra Klein
It does.
- CWChris Williamson
Right? And you clearly don't mean the same thing. But the same word doing two jobs is a problem in politics, right? It sort of lets one team's project ride the slipstream of the other, and you end up in this sort of semantic game back and forth. How do you tell the difference between your kind of deregulation and Elon's in a simple way that you can explain around a dinner table?
- EKEzra Klein
They have different goals. I mean, what is deregulation? You are removing rules. What is regulation? You're adding rules. Is adding rules or removing rules good or bad? Well, how the fuck would you answer [chuckles] that question?
- CWChris Williamson
Depends on the rule is.
- EKEzra Klein
Depends on the rule.
- CWChris Williamson
Yep.
- EKEzra Klein
And so, look, I consider Musk to be a tragedy. This is a guy who is clearly a genius, who is the most capable industrialist of our time. Who built those industries on public-private partnerships. Tesla is built on government subsidies, on government tax credits. There is no electric vehicle market in this country without the huge amount of money we, and California, by the way, in particular-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah
- EKEzra Klein
... pumped into making that market real. Tesla would have gone under without an Obama-era loan guarantee. SpaceX. SpaceX is NASA contracts. And Musk, at some point, and I mean, th- you can, like, basically, like, chart when it happened because he was sort of a Democrat in semi-good standing. He was, like, pro-Obama, right? He radicalizes. He's online way too much. He gets Twitter brained. Twitter has been bad for no one the way it has been specifically bad for the way that guy thinks, and his information environment is so deeply toxic. And there's a world where he joined the Trump administration and tried to increase state capacity, and yes, that might mean chainsawing through some of what the government did. But with the goal of making it possible to do more in space.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
With the goal of making it possible to do more effective, uh, research into battery technology. And instead, he cuts completely indiscriminately. I have friends who got layoff notices that the email read, "Dear first name last name, you have been terminated for cause." Which cause? Who was that email to? So, like, Musk's project, deregulation is a traditional Republican thing. He didn't make it up. But the point is that right now the government often imposes too many rules on itself, and that makes it hard for it to do things. So if you look at the Mamdani housing plan that came out this week, Block by Block is what it's called. What he is doing in that plan overall is he is removing rules. He is deregulating what is required when New York puts in money to build affordable housing. That in order to build affordable housing in, uh, most jurisdictions, certainly blue ones in this country, because you're using public money, it triggers a bunch of government rules that make it much more expensive because a lot of interests have come up and, you know, won their way into the fight. And so they've been able to, uh, you know, force higher building standards and higher wage standards and higher environmental standards, and all these things might be good on their own. They really might be. But what you've done is make it twice as expensive or three times as expensive or four times as expensive to build affordable housing as to build market rate housing. And so the taxpayer's getting a shitty deal, and you're not building enough affordable housing. Uh, there was a story in Washington, DC a couple of years ago about how they had ended up building affordable housing units that were costing one point two million dollars per unit. These are affordable housing units with, again, like public and nonprofit dollars. Uh, there was one particular build where I, I'm worried I'll get the numbers wrong, um, from memory, but I think it was something like the same developer built affordable and market rate next to each other, and the affordable cost something like eight hundred thousand per unit.
- CWChris Williamson
[laughs]
- EKEzra Klein
And the market rate was like four hundred thousand. And, like, you just can't achieve... The goal is affordable housing. And so what I care about, the point of abundance, the first sentence of it, basically, of the book, is what do we need more of, and how do we get it? And so the thing that separates different people in this debate, for me, the, the abundance debate, the, the debate about plenitude, is first you have to decide, what do you want more of?
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
I want a lot more green energy. Donald Trump does not. So the fact that he is deregulating what it means to build, like, coal or oil in this country is not a big abundance win because he's trying to achieve something that I don't support. He's actually made it harder to build wind and solar. So you can regulate government to make it harder for government to act. You can deregulate it. You can use rules well and poorly. And when you get your politics wrapped up on the axle of having emotional reaction-
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm
- EKEzra Klein
... to the means, to the tools you're using, then you got a problem. The idea that deregulation is owned by the right, or for that matter, that regulation is owned by the left, it's not true, but it's a way of shutting off your thought. The right regulates things all the time.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
The left deregulates things. Like, it's just stupid. [laughs]
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. Yeah, no, I agree. Well, it's-
- EKEzra Klein
It's a stupid way of thinking
- 59:47 – 1:09:00
How Should We Regulate AI?
- CWChris Williamson
... this proposal for abundance is a lot about rolling back red tape, but I know a lot of people are concerned about what that means for unchecked power of potential AI overlords. And if you've got a very small number of people who are controlling a massive amount of influence and a massive amount of the economy, how does the rolling back of red tape help with that solution?
- EKEzra Klein
So, uh, two things. So one, I wanna say abundance is not about rolling back red tape. There are places like building housing in dense blue cities where you probably do need to roll back what people call red tape. But that is, that is useful where that is the problem. On AI, I believe we need a lot more AI regulation. This is why I don't buy the sort of deregulation, pro-regulation like dichotomy. There are places I wanna regulate more, places I wanna regulate less. Um, I think the abundance question on AI is different. I have a lot of concern about the power concentrating on AI, and I've covered these guys forever. I've had Demis and Sam Altman and, um, Dario all on my show, right? Like, I've, like, I've been in this since GPT-2, I guess. And you do not want power concentrating with them. And at one point, and some of them will still say that they don't want power concentrating with them, although in practice they don't always act like that now.
- CWChris Williamson
[laughs] Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
Sam, Sam Altman, I think, and OpenAI seemed to be more pro-regulation a couple years ago than in practice, like the-- Greg Brockman, as president, has helped fund this super PAC that is dumping money against candidates who wanna regulate AI. And so it's like on the one hand they'll come to a hearing and say, "We wanna be regulated." Then somebody will run for office saying, "We should do some light regulation." And it's like, "Not you. Not by you, we don't." Um, so you have, like, real money in politics problems. And, uh, I, by the way, just as a broad thing, this is not something we wrote about in Abundance, but, like, I just believe in much, much, much stronger money in politics regulations. You should amend the U.S. Constitution to say money is not speech. Money should not be as protected speech when spent on politics, and make it possible to regulate it. There's an effort to do that through state houses happening right now. Um, but I think the abundance question on AI is at two levels. One is we think of AI models, right? People argue about are they using Gemini or ChatGPT or Claude? But AI is, you know, Jensen Huang of NVIDIA always makes this point. It's like a five-layer cake, and there's an energy level, there's a chips level-
- CWChris Williamson
Yep
- EKEzra Klein
... there's all this infrastructure you actually need. If we want the U.S. to be, continue to be kind of AI competitive or even AI dominant, you're gonna need to get that infrastructure right. And, uh, in order to then not make that a energetic disaster, you're gonna need to use the data center build-out to create a modern grid and create much more of electro state, not a petro state, right? Like, there's, like, a whole set of questions that are raised by the physical AI build-out. But then the second thing, I'm actually writing about this right now, is we are having so many conversations about what we don't want from AI. What do we want from it? What is the public agenda for AI? What does the public wa-- what are the public goods? Because they're not just gonna come on their own. Right now, if you talk to any corporation that is really tooling itself for AI, they are spending huge amounts of money on compute, just buying enough tokens, but they are often restructuring themselves as an organization in order to become legible and make their problems legible to the systems. So for AI to be able to solve a problem for you, you need a couple of things. One is there needs to be money behind the problem, because if you need a lot of compute to do it, it is costly even now. The second thing is the problem needs to be legible to the system. So what I mean by that, for instance, is AlphaFold, which I think is the most impressive thing AI has done yet, which is the, the protein folding, um, is solving the protein folding problem. The reason it was possible to do that was there was this thing called the Protein Database, which had been-- it was arguably the cleanest scientific database in existence, certainly one of them, where people had been keeping really high-quality data on every single protein that we had mapped its structure. And that meant there was one place where the data was structured in a way we could set the machine learning loose on it, and it could learn the data, begin to predict based on the data, and then also begin to create synthetic versions of that data to extend its predictions and then be able to test them backwards and so on and so forth. Okay. There are a lot of problems that might have that shape, but you will have to create the data-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- EKEzra Klein
... that the machine learning can work on for them. Uh, like, and in government, that's often not been done. So, like, here's a very simple use case I keep talking to people about. There's no reason that the IRS can't have-- I mean, build it on Claude, build it on ChatGPT, build your own. They could have an LLM that does your taxes with you. The IRS knows how much money you make, so they have ground truth there. They know the f- tax code. They write it a lot of the time [laughs] , uh, or at least certainly help in the regulatory, uh, system to, to define it. There's no reason most people have to pay an accountant. More broadly, you could have an AI that act as a concierge to anything the government might be able to do for you because it knows you, it knows your situation, and it knows what the government is capable of doing. It's very, very hard to navigate the government right now. But you have to make the underlying data and system legible so the AI can learn what it needs to learn. Um, drug discovery, energy, there's a lot of questions like this where, for instance, on drug discovery, I don't know how good AIs will be on drug discovery. I've talked to different people who disagree on it. But if you look at what AIs are good at... Like, did you follow the, um, the solving of this Erdos theorem?
- CWChris Williamson
Yes. Yes, I did.
- EKEzra Klein
Okay. So I talked to some mathematicians about this. My dad's actually a mathematician. I haven't talked to him about it yet. I should. Uh, but this particular theorem, what it was able to do was sort of two things. What it was able to do was come-- it, it knew kinda everything about mathematics, so it was able to combine approaches from fields that were not primarily thought to be useful in this particular theorem. But there was one mathematician who was like, "Oh, I thought about doing this, but it was super labor-intensive, so I just didn't bother." So it also was able to be tireless in doing that. It's, it did not do, I think, what you would call, like, truly new, groundbreaking mathematics. It didn't, like, invent a whole new field here. It did something very clever and very labor-intensive, and that is how a lot of advances happen.
- CWChris Williamson
Synthesis plus hard work.
- EKEzra Klein
Mm-hmm. So think about what's called orphan diseases. These are diseases, my wife actually has one of them, that are quite rare, so there isn't a huge amount of money in solving them. And that means, unlike, say, something like diabetes, where there is just a functionally endless number of drug researchers working on diabetes drugs and a huge amount of money behind it and, like, the best people in the field, on these things, you don't have that. So that's a great place where being able to have a lot of compute, and then the federal government saying, "If you invent this thing..." This is basically what we did with Operation Warp Speed, right? We said, "If you invent this thing, we will buy it, and then we will hand it out at low cost." Right? That's how we made the COVID vaccines. You could do that across a huge number of diseases and say, "If you're able to solve any of these, here's what we will give you." Like, it is worth it to us, the public, to have cures here, and we will make those cures cheap.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
Um, and we will put work into making the regulatory system amenable to this. They also did that in Warp Speed. We will c- put in work to try and to, like, create better databases. Like, we'll clean things up for you. But we will create a prize system, an advanced market commitment system. What do we want AI to solve? Because right now, the private market is putting a lot of money into that question. But the public sector is only thinking about what it wants to prevent AI from doing, which is important. I'm a big believer in AI harms. I've been talking about existential risk for years.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
But you also need a theory of AI goods, and right now we don't have one.
- CWChris Williamson
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- 1:09:00 – 1:16:34
The Urgent Problem of AI Safety
- CWChris Williamson
It's interesting. I had Nick Bostrom on the show, and Superintelligence 10... More, more than 10 years ago now, twenty, twenty fourteen, fifteen, something like that-
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah
- CWChris Williamson
... when that came out, was kind of my introduction to, holy shit, like, there are a lot of ways that this could go very, very wrong.
- EKEzra Klein
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
The X risk of X risks. And then his new book was basically, "Okay, what happens if this goes right?" And even on the path to it going right, there were tons of different ways that it could go wrong.
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
It is, it is kind of mind-blowing to me that there is any time being spent on anything that isn't AI safety at the moment. Uh, you know, I'm aware, climate change, something that we need to keep an eye on. It's not gonna happen within the next decade. Uh, birth rate decline, something that I've talked a lot about on the show too, I think. You know, that's gonna happen more quickly than climate change is, but still, not on the timelines that we're talking about here. Right. Did you see, uh, Tristan Harris's new thing, the AI doc?
- EKEzra Klein
I haven't seen the doc, but I know Tristan.
- CWChris Williamson
Ah, dude, you've... It's really, really good. It's really, really interesting.
- EKEzra Klein
I have come... As a person who was in that world for a long time, I've come to a probably slightly different view on the right way to approach AI safety.
- CWChris Williamson
Are you gonna give me a white pill? I really need one.
- EKEzra Klein
[laughs] What would a white pill be?
- CWChris Williamson
Uh-
- EKEzra Klein
I never know the pills anymore. There are too many of them.
- CWChris Williamson
Hope.
- EKEzra Klein
Feel better?
- CWChris Williamson
Hope. No, look, I, I...
- EKEzra Klein
You, you, the... You cannot solve a problem whose shape you do not know. You can't. So it's very... It's good to talk about AI safety. We should be pumping money into, say, mechanistic interpretability.
- CWChris Williamson
Yep.
- EKEzra Klein
We have made big strides on interpretability. Shout out to Chris Olah at Anthropic, who's been a hero in this and is now hanging out with the Pope, I guess, so, uh-
- CWChris Williamson
Apparently. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah
- EKEzra Klein
... you know, g- good, good thing to see good things happen to good people. Um, we should be trying to understand these systems. But so much of the AI conversation, the mind is attracted to these speculative scenarios, mass automation where there are no more jobs.
- CWChris Williamson
Yep.
- EKEzra Klein
Um, re- recursive superintelligence-
- CWChris Williamson
Yep
- EKEzra Klein
... self-improving superintelligence that slips out of our control, like, overnight.
- CWChris Williamson
Yep.
- EKEzra Klein
Here's the deal. If we create recursive superintelligence that slips out of our control overnight, which is sort of how, like, the AI-
- CWChris Williamson
Fast takeoff
- EKEzra Klein
... twenty twenty-seven-
- 1:16:34 – 1:25:00
How Ezra Would Approach AI Safety
- CWChris Williamson
What would you do? Let's say that you had-
- EKEzra Klein
So I would start-
- CWChris Williamson
... God's eye coordination power.
- EKEzra Klein
I, I would have, like, probably three or four buckets. So, one, I would put a lot more money into evaluation than we're currently putting in publicly. Actually, Trump and Musk gutted a bunch of that. Um, but I would make our public evaluation capabilities incredibly strong. So that's one thing. They were trying to do that sort of in Biden. I would start doing a lot of regulating AI around kids 'cause I think there's actually a fair amount of consensus on that, and so you could move on that. I think we should be quite careful about running this experiment on children. I think that the idea of kids growing up with a bunch of AI buddies and lovers, I don't think we know how it will warp people's sense of how relationships should work when they have those before they have real relationships.
- CWChris Williamson
I think I've heard you say that the kind of childhood that you had could have fallen prey to this kind of-
- EKEzra Klein
Yes. I was a very lonely kid. I was bullied a lot. Like, I... If there... And I was also a smart, nerdy kid. And so what would it have meant if instead of having to sort of fight through that and find my, you know, best friends and figure it out-
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm
- EKEzra Klein
... as I did, like, work with the friction the world gave me, which made me who I am, I could have disappeared into frictionless digital relationships, friends, tutors, lovers. Like, I think that's actually quite scary. So-
- CWChris Williamson
I was, I was the same except for being a lot less smart and nerdy.
- EKEzra Klein
[laughs] Oh, I, I don't know. I, I think you're probably underrating yourself. But so I would do a lot on kids. I would do a lot on actual, um, goods, as I was just saying. Like, I really wanna see a public goods agenda for AI. And I think there are harms we can begin looking at now in the way AI is used, in what it is given autonomy and power over on when human beings need to be in the loop. I think that there's a pretty good thinking on safety.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
Um, you know, something that isn't in the AI 2027, uh, thing that I think is smart is AI should always have to keep a legible chain of reasoning notepad in English, that the, the moment we start letting them come up with their own languages and we really have no capacity-
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm
- EKEzra Klein
... to see how they're reasoning-
- CWChris Williamson
The black box has a black box.
- EKEzra Klein
I don't wanna make the black box too black boxy.
- CWChris Williamson
Yep.
- EKEzra Klein
And so-
- CWChris Williamson
Yep, that's smart
- EKEzra Klein
... so you, you wanna start working with what you have now. Uh, and you know, I'm not saying I have, like, all the ideas in my head, but there's enough on the table that I think we could begin. And I also... By the way, I thought whether you want Anthropic doing it is, like, we, we can argue. I think having a fair number of restrictions on how AI can be used for surveillance For, um, kill chain questions-
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm
- EKEzra Klein
... is wise. And I particularly worry about surveillance. I am both in a, a kind of macro way against using AI to create the panopticon, but in a micro way, a lot of the machine learning tools being used to make the lives of workers measured and miserable right now-
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm
- EKEzra Klein
... are inimical-
- CWChris Williamson
When's that being used?
- EKEzra Klein
You read a lot about this on, you know, with Amazon and delivery drivers. I've read things about, uh, like eye-tracking software. There's all kinds of software being used in different places. I don't wanna do it by memory 'cause it's been minutes since I looked at the report. But to just track how productive workers are.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
It's like having somebody always watching you to make sure you're never slacking off. And what I would say is that turning... using machines to turn people into machines-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm
- EKEzra Klein
... is inimical to human flourishing. And I do think we need to think harder in politics, and AI is gonna push this, on what actually human flourishing means. What does it mean to be a human being in the a- in the age of AI? What does it mean to learn like a human being?
- 1:25:00 – 1:30:47
Distinguishing What’s Productive From Unproductive
- CWChris Williamson
I noticed with myself that one of the best questions that I asked myself on an annual review a couple of years ago was, um What do I think is productive that isn't?
- EKEzra Klein
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
And what do I not think is productive but is? And going for a walk without AirPods in.
- EKEzra Klein
Wait, what did you come up with? What, on your second list there? I wanna hear it.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, driving without consuming anything.
- EKEzra Klein
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
So no music, no podcasts, no nothing else. The same with going for a walk. Uh, at dinner with friends, massively productive, hugely productive. Come home, and I've got five new ideas, or I feel a little bit more peaceful, or I've just got to listen to someone else entertain me or got a new perspective on something, or I've not thought about my shit. Even simply the, the space that you create, the void that you create between thinking about your shit and thinking about your shit, by hearing somebody else extemporaneously think about their shit to you. You're like, "Oh, brilliant. Now I thought about someone else's shit for a bit." Um, that stuff that isn't productive, but I thought was, sitting at my desk when I'm not working. I've just got the laptop open. I'm like, "Oh, maybe s- I'll pick up some productivity pennies here." Uh, Slack, almost ever.
- EKEzra Klein
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, being on calls when I don't need to, like just, just checking in calls. Her-- And they, they have all of the trappings of something that looks like progress and productivity, but when you think about what's actually happened at the end of it, it's almost never anything productive. Uh, uh, lying in a hammock.
- EKEzra Klein
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Lying in a hammock, unusually productive. Uh, so what comes to mind for you?
- EKEzra Klein
A bunch of those I'd agree with. Um, travel.
- CWChris Williamson
Huge.
- EKEzra Klein
Uh, and, and I always, like, wanna be careful about the language of productivity here, because the point is not to, like-
- CWChris Williamson
Do it in service
- EKEzra Klein
... only do travel and surf. But-
- CWChris Williamson
Yes, yes, yes, yes
- EKEzra Klein
... it, the, for me, the absolute best thing I can do for my productivity is go to a coffee shop or some beautiful space. The, the, um, aesthetic richness of the space is meaningful for me. And read paper books-
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm
- EKEzra Klein
... for a long enough time to get into a state where my mind has settled on that being what it's doing. So that's very, very, very-- Like, that is, I think, the most important thing I do-
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm
- EKEzra Klein
... for my work. Walking. I don't listen to or read things for the most part on the subway anymore. I just sit there. [laughs]
- CWChris Williamson
Like a psychopath.
- EKEzra Klein
Like a psychopath.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
Um, uh, [laughs] it is amazing how much just, like, sitting there staring forward, you feel weird now on the subway. [laughs]
- CWChris Williamson
Do you know the Rory Sutherland line about this-
- EKEzra Klein
No
- CWChris Williamson
... to do with smoking? He says, um, "Sometimes you just want to stand in the corner of a room and stare out of the window. The problem is, if you do this without a cigarette, you look like a friendless idiot."
- EKEzra Klein
[laughs]
- 1:30:47 – 1:47:46
Are the Left Losing Young Men?
- EKEzra Klein
[laughs]
- CWChris Williamson
Um, you mentioned earlier on about this challenge, this positioning that we've got at the moment around, um, encouraging people, both sides encouraging people to better themselves. Perhaps a little bit of an aversion of this, uh, self-determination, uh, personal development, uh, at least traditionally coming from the left, but maybe also coming from the right now. The left Talks a lot about structural barriers for women. Do you think it's got a, an equally serious account of what's going wrong for men at the moment?
- EKEzra Klein
I don't. I think it knows it doesn't, and it's beginning to try to think about what to do about that. People like Gavin Newsom are taking that a lot more seriously. I wanna get at the thing you said underneath that 'cause I think it's important though. I think a very damaging thing that happened on the left, I'll call it liberalism to be more in my own stream here, is that it began to see individualistic explanations as excuses for structural dysfunction. And so it became hostile to any politics or moral structure that was also about self-improvement.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
And one, that's a betrayal of the long history of liberalism, which has always been about self-cultivation, like go read your Kant or your John Mills. But-- Or for that matter, your, you know, great liberal politicians like Frederick Douglass or MLK or, um, FDR, Lincoln. But when you give up on that, you're giving up on one of the fundamental drives. So you want a society that is taking seriously all the ways in which structures oppress and coerce and impede people's flourishing. And also what you're trying to create space for is for them to use their agency and their energy and their will to flourish. And so you need both sides of that. You need the vision of the just society, and you need the vision of the flourishing, self-cultivating person. And, and I do think the left became hostile to this, and particularly became hostile to it when it was male-coded.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- EKEzra Klein
So when it was coded in the way that self-help is for women, right, more therapeutically, uh, more relationally, it was, you know, much easier. Uh, Esther Perel, Brené Brown, other people like that who, who have more of a vision in that, um, that, that went down easily. But in the male space where it's a little more testosterone-y, when it got associated with, uh, the Joe Rogans and modernwisdoms and some... I shouldn't say that, but the Jordan Petersons is maybe the better way to put it. I think there was, like, a pushback because also some of those people did have very aggressive right-wing politics. And so these things got, like, linked together in their minds. And instead of saying, "Okay, how can we take the impulse in here that is clearly making Jordan Peterson into some kind of international phenom, and also try to answer it and have something constructive to say about it?"
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- EKEzra Klein
It-- There was sort of a rejection of it.
- CWChris Williamson
Discard it entirely because it's rejecting the structural inequalities that people are facing by saying that there are things that you can do and to pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
- EKEzra Klein
What, what is surprising to me, and I'd be very curious for what you think happened here, because you know this world a lot better than I do. Not the right politically, but, but somewhere this went. Is I don't really... The way that Peterson and maybe Doug Murray and people like that, it seemed to... Like, what came after that was Andrew Tate and Nick Fuentes-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm
- EKEzra Klein
... and people who have, I think, no real concept of virtue, right? I got my disagreements with Jordan Peterson on lots of things, but that guy thought a lot about virtue, thought about myth, thought about, you know. And-
- CWChris Williamson
Overthought about it.
- EKEzra Klein
Overthought about it. Somehow the right, like Bronze Age Pervert, it pushed towards vice. So the left gave up on virtue, and the right rejected it. Now, I, I shouldn't say the left and the right because lots of people on both, just like normal-ass people-
- CWChris Williamson
Right
- EKEzra Klein
... raising kids and loving their partners and doing their job and volunteering in their community and going to church. But maybe it's like an algorithmic dimension of things. But-
- CWChris Williamson
The quiet middle three quintiles.
- EKEzra Klein
Yes. But at, like, the apex of the attention economy, like, I do feel... I, I watched this happen. Like, you're not gonna convince me it didn't. Like, the left became quite hostile to sort of ideas of individual cultivation. Like, "Oh, that's just a you using your privilege." And the right became-- The, the right moved in a way where it became like vice maxing, to use a term that-
- CWChris Williamson
You like caric-
- EKEzra Klein
... Jordan Peterson uses
- CWChris Williamson
... kind of caricatured it to a degree, that [clears throat] the most extreme version of this. I mean, certainly, I think if Jordan hadn't had his time away, uh, if he hadn't done the God pivot in the same way, if he'd continued to do the clean your room, get your bootstraps and, and pick yourself up by them, I do think that that would have probably curtailed a lot of the vacuum that other voices got sucked into. Now, who knows how that would have actually played out? But I, I definitely get the sense that, wow, there is this big cohort of largely men, largely young men, who have increasingly grown up in fatherless homes, which is a problem that the left should be very concerned about, right? Uh, they're looking for a patriarch figure. They're looking for someone to tell them how-- like, "How do I become a..." Uh, it's the equivalent of, "Dad, how do I shave?" Or, "I fancy this girl in school. How do I talk to her?" It's the equivalent for that, but life-wide. And if you open up that market but then remove yourself from it, it's just going to suck in anybody that can service it, but perhaps not quite at the level that that first mover had been able to do. And I think that that was, that was definitely a big part of it. It's been kind of fascinating to see this conversation unfold because everybody is talking out of both sides of their mouth, which, for instance, one of the big criticisms that I can certainly have of most of the pro-male advocates and most of the people that are on the right are, um, men's mental health isn't taken seriously until it affects women or other people. Um, lip service is paid to that, but no one really cares, and there aren't very many therapeutic models that sort of speak to men in the way that they want to be spoken to with regards to understanding their desire for progress and conquer and mastery, and also providing them with solutions that they can move forward on, as opposed to just, "Hey, come in here, talk about your feelings. Your, your issue is that you're a defective woman, as opposed to a man who needs-" Assistance moving forward linearly. Uh, but also that same group of people that say that that's a big deal and claim to be advocates for men will happily mock a guy who opens up about his emotions on the internet. If you see a video of a guy who's crying or is really struggling or is down on his luck, there is not this sort of camaraderie that you're claiming that is supposed to be there. That's like, there's just a huge hypocrisy. This, uh, uh, uh, uh, men are good. Tom Golden's got a Substack, and, uh, he identifies this. It's like guys won't help other guys that are struggling emotionally in that sort of a way, whilst saying that men's mental health needs to be taken more seriously. It's like, it's the equivalent of not putting your money where your mouth is with regards to this. But on the left, the kind of complete denial of self-agency, of sovereignty, of, uh, modern men being made to pay for the sins that their grandfathers benefited from, a patriarchy that they no longer feel a part of, as Christine Emba says. And you go, okay, well, on both of those sides, it doesn't feel like much progress is being... At least much productive progress is being made. And then if you do begin to try and have this conversation, I'm aware, like looking the way that I do, maybe it's the British accent, maybe it's the whatever. Like as soon as you start talking about the problems of men and boys, unless you have this painful throat-clearing land acknowledgment before you fucking do it, every single time, the same boring accusations get thrown at you. You don't care about women, that this is misogyny rebranded, that this is the thin end of the wedge, that it's a gateway drug to something that's much more pernicious down the line, that talking about birth rates or coupling or... It, it's, it's you trying to pull women out of the boardroom and put, put them back into the kitchen. And it's ju- it's, it's boring and fatiguing when you're trying to make genuine progress and you say, okay, well, at what point can we have this conversation without having to prostrate ourselves for all of these issues that have come before?
- EKEzra Klein
Let me ask you something, though, because I, I think you're right about the world of a couple of years ago.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
But I go on podcasts like this one sometimes. I was just on with, uh, Dax in Armchair Expert and, and have done others. Do you ever... Who, who are you sha- who are we shadow boxing with here?
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
Because is this still true? I actually do think there was a period where you would get a lot of... I mean, a lot maybe is even a strong word. But in both directions, there was like pretty toxic and weird social media dynamics. It got very, very gendered-
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm
- EKEzra Klein
... and were very identitarian. And now I think there's a lot of hangover of that. But it-- And I'm not saying you can't find it somewhere on the internet. You can find anything somewhere on the internet.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- 1:47:46 – 1:50:30
Why We Need to Unify the Sexes
- EKEzra Klein
I will say, I think the other thing, though, is that I have often thought, like, the division of the problems into male problems and problems and female problems, I agree that there are different questions for men and women. I also think that there's a broader set of questions that are part of the AI thing and are a little bit more unifying about we actually need to find ways for human beings just to, like, continue to be human beings and to become more so. I, like, I... This is one of my obsessions, and it's not to change the subject. We can talk, keep talking about men. But I think there are more things that everybody is going to need and ways in which we have turned modernity as a try to keep people useful in the ways the economy needed them to be useful. They're gonna need to be rethought in more fundamental fashions, b- starting with education.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
And that actually has some specific male questions throughout it. I think Richard Reeves is right when he says that modern education is not well built for boys.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
But in a funny way, like, the competitio- Like, we've been so used to framing this as a competition between men and women that the possibility of framing at least some things correctly as competition between humans and machines-
- CWChris Williamson
Yep
- EKEzra Klein
... opens up some avenues and pathways, I think, to talk about things that are more innate to humans of both sexes and also separately innate in both sexes that maybe would've been harder to do five years ago.
- CWChris Williamson
It's certainly going to be easier to unify if you have a common enemy, because that happened previously. It was just between each other as opposed to together against something else.
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. I-- Look, it's, it's interesting. It, it definitely feels to me like I hope that it's not just lip service that's being paid to something, because evidently in 2024 that was a blank space that because left untouched Resulted in a lot of people going to the other side, right? From the left, like that young men really, really seemed to depart from-
- EKEzra Klein
Mm-hmm
- CWChris Williamson
... they didn't feel like they were part of the demo. What was that line? There was a, a group for, uh, underprivileged or underserved, uh, communities, and there was 13 of them, and the only one that was missing was men. That there was every different version of this. This is Richard Reeves big-
- EKEzra Klein
Oh, really?
- CWChris Williamson
... big post about this before.
- EKEzra Klein
In 2024 that wasn't true. There was a me- well, there's a Men for Harris thing that like, there's a whole-
- CWChris Williamson
The White Guys for Harris movement?
- EKEzra Klein
I think that, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Uh, I have mixed, mixed feelings about that.
- EKEzra Klein
I'm sure. But-
- CWChris Williamson
Uh
- EKEzra Klein
... you, you, you, you live by the affinity group, you die by the affinity group. [laughs]
- CWChris Williamson
That's true. That's, that is.
- EKEzra Klein
Can't be like there's no affinity groups for me, and then they do one and-
- CWChris Williamson
Well, it's interesting on the, uh, what are the groups that are falling behind-
- EKEzra Klein
Mm-hmm
- CWChris Williamson
... uh, that was the issue that Richard took with it. I don't know what he thought about the White Guys for Harris group. Um, there was definitely some sort of prostrating of the self there-
- EKEzra Klein
Sure
- CWChris Williamson
... that, that felt a little strange. Uh,
- 1:50:30 – 1:56:24
How to Not Let Criticism Get to You
- CWChris Williamson
I, I'm interested, you know, as you sort of think about being somebody who have p- has public opinions, who is putting these sorts of things out on the internet, having the changing landscape and having this sort of very long career of saying things that might have felt true at the time, but can be pointed to in future, how do you avoid being too deranged by the criticisms?
- EKEzra Klein
By the criticisms?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
Uh, that's not where I thought you were gonna go with that. Um, I don't know. I, I think it's the same thing we were talking about earlier. You have a backstage.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- EKEzra Klein
I have people whose reactions to things are a bellwether for me, and if there's a huge amount of critique of me at a certain moment, and the, that happens every so often-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm
- EKEzra Klein
... I try to take it seriously and think about it. Doesn't mean I always change my opinion on it. Um, but I think you need your own internal compass. Again, I will say I have pretty aggressive algorithmic media hygiene.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
And so I'm not out there looking for reaction.
- CWChris Williamson
The reason I ask is, you know, we're talking about a need for a degree of resilience.
- EKEzra Klein
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Degree of resilience, uh, in terms of individual agency now up against what's going to be happening with AI, already up against what's been happening with social media and screens and distraction, and there's a great article by Ethan Strauss which is called Criticism Capture Is More Warping Than Audience Capture.
- EKEzra Klein
Oh, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And-
- EKEzra Klein
I've not read that article, but I think there's something really to that
- CWChris Williamson
... it's one of the most canonical things that I've read for the modern age. It's so good, and it basically says that, um, people begin to change their positions more to either in advance defend against or as a reaction to the existing or potential criticisms that their work is going to receive.
- EKEzra Klein
I think that it is a very tricky thing. I will say this for me. It is a very tricky thing to know the difference between absorbing critique and synthesizing good points from it and absorbing critique and not wanting to touch the stove.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
And because they kind of feel the same inside, and I, there's not like one way to do it. But I do think it is important, and I try to think about this a lot, that critique is often a form of in-group disciplining. One thing I've found over the years is that nobody is hated like an apostate. So the right, you know, to start there, and I know this from my friends there, it's like if you are on the right and you turn anti-Trump, the hell you get is nothing like what I get as a like forever anti-Trumper.
- CWChris Williamson
Openly anti-Trump.
- EKEzra Klein
Um, nobody cares. In fact, I have perfectly good relations with people I have to report on for the Trump administration because they don't, they never saw me on their side. It's like, it's a stable relationship in a way. Uh, similarly on, you know, the left like nobody's hated like an apostate. And so-
- CWChris Williamson
The small differences make the most noise.
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah, but, but also it's a possibly effective action.
- CWChris Williamson
Get in line.
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah, get in line, and maybe you will. And so you have to be very careful about that inside yourself. On the one hand, you wanna be able to hear critique, and on the other hand, you don't wanna be scared of it. One of my practices is when there's a lot of critique of me, I will often invite one of the critics on the show-
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm
- EKEzra Klein
... and just kind of talk it out and see where I agree and disagree, and if I can sort of pull it into the spaces where I can deliberate about it. But if all I'm doing is exposing myself to the roar of anger at a moment when it's getting algorithmically boosted-
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm
- EKEzra Klein
... I don't, that's not constructive. I will say the other thing that I'll sometimes do is I find it's quite important for me in terms of how thoughtfully I can integrate feedback, when and in what context I absorb it. So being at dinner and getting pinged on my phone where somebody sends me a mean article about me-
- 1:56:24 – 1:59:09
Does Better Information Create Better Politics?
- CWChris Williamson
I think in the past I've heard you describe, uh, journalism as organized curiosity. Given how the last few years have gone, and I, I remember as well you talking about Vox on the idea that, um, better information leads to, um, better politics. Do you still believe that? Do you still believe that now?
- EKEzra Klein
I'd probably alter it a little bit to say that, um, it's not just the information, it's the information environment. Because [sighs] it's hard to say did we get better or worse information. What we got was more information.
- CWChris Williamson
[laughs]
- EKEzra Klein
Uh, and then the way the information was sorted algorithmically and other things, you can have better information than in any time in history, and worse. [laughs] And we did.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- EKEzra Klein
And so the way I would say it is I do think better and worse information environments, attention environments, I really do take that layer, as we've been talking about, pretty seriously. But is it a, like, a direct thing? I don't know. I, I will say, one of the things that has weirdly made me very hopeful about how politics still can work is the experience I've had on abundance. And the point is not that just, like, me and Derek did this. Abundance is synthesizing things like the YIMBY movement, the Yes In My Backyard housing movement. It's synthesizing where I think some of the smartest green groups went on decarbonization and recognizing we need to do that by accelerating green technology and then figuring out how to deploy it at scale. There were a lot of people and ideas and so forth that we were kind of putting into that, and I have watched, I have watched in a matter of a couple of years, ideas that were quite marginal. I mean, the first piece on this I did before we called it abundance, I called it supply-side progressivism. Then I got to a liberalism that builds-
- CWChris Williamson
Way less sexy.
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah, right. Then liberalism that builds, which is pretty good, and then Derek got abundance. But the point was that the Left didn't talk about supply. We only talked about demand. We talked about how to redistribute. We talked about how to subsidize, which are important things. But we didn't talk about how to create more of the goods we needed. Now we do all the time. So, like, there was a big intellectual argument, again, not just mine, and it worked. And now everybody from Newsom to Maura Healey to Wes Moore to Mamdani to everybody, right? Like, it's e- I just did a California governor's forum where the top five Democrats in the governor's race did a housing forum with me. And they were all just talking about how to make it easier to build-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- EKEzra Klein
And how to cut construction costs. So, like, I have watched good information, good argumentation. There's a Rand study about how much it costs to construct per square foot in California, Texas, Colorado. They were all familiar with it. This one study-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- EKEzra Klein
Had been incredibly influential on all of us. So it can
- 1:59:09 – 2:08:22
What is Ezra Focusing On Next?
- EKEzra Klein
happen.
- CWChris Williamson
What are you paying the most attention to over the next couple of years?
- EKEzra Klein
I mean, AI. I'm trying to help create a better liberalism more capable of competing with illiberalism. Eh. I'm trying to create a better liberalism more capable of competing with illiberalism. I obviously pay a lot of attention to politics. I cover Israel-Palestine a lot, which is, uh, just a tough-ass issue. Um, there's a bit of a mix of I'm paying attention to everything you would think I'm trying to pay attention to, and also the constant curves in the road, right? Did I expect us to be spending the year talking about war in Iran? I didn't really. Uh, but now we are-
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm
- EKEzra Klein
... and, like, that's part of what I'm paying attention to. And so more things will happen that I'm not expecting and seeing. My work is a mix of being connected to the news, connected to longer range intellectual efforts in politics, and then connected to, uh, shows that are more about w- the point of all this, which is a more, like, beautiful and humane world with novelists and meditators and people like that. And so it's all... Like, for me, it's this constant, uh, calibrating of am I too far in this direction, too much news, not enough ideas, too many ideas, not enough news.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
Too much politics and not enough humanism. And, you know, there's on- no way to do it but by feel and by attending to the moment.
- CWChris Williamson
Sounds terrifyingly human.
- EKEzra Klein
[laughs]
- CWChris Williamson
So it, it does. It does. It sou- it sounds like, it sounds unusually in touch, I think, with what people's experiences of life are. And certainly being on the outside and watching sort of what goes on with politics, so much of it seems to be this very sterile detachment from what people's normal day-to-day lives are like. And reporting on it t- too also doesn't take that far. As if people wake up on a morning and all that they're doing is mainlining politics and political governance into their veins.
- EKEzra Klein
You really don't want to let the algorithms replace your intuition.
- CWChris Williamson
What's that mean?
- EKEzra Klein
That I think a lot of people, because they give their attention over to the algorithms, and then the algorithms decide what they want to see.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
That that process I just talked about, where you're constantly calibrating and recalibrating and really trying to think about what am I attending to. Well, if you, if the way you get information is you open up X in the morning or Instagram or TikTok or whatever, the algorithms have decided what you're attending to. Um, there was much more room for intuition when you were reading a print newspaper. You looked around and looked at what you were interested in and turned the page and maybe saw something you didn't think you were interested in but you were, and I-- You were saying it, it sounds very human. It's all human in a way. We're all humans doing it, though, you know, f- m- I think different spaces make us feel less that way. But I try to create a lot of space for my own judgment to exist and to, like, feel what different things feel like. Uh, uh, y- one thing that I have-- One way I believe my own mind works differently than I did ten years ago is I just am much more in touch with how embodied it is, and the signals come from the body, not just the mind, including in a... I don't know how much you feel this way, but I was thinking about this in podcasts. I have a questions document. I don't follow it. How do I know where I'm going? It's like my skin prickles. What the fuck is that? And yet what makes me a good podcaster is not the questions document. It's the skin prickling.
- CWChris Williamson
Correct.
- EKEzra Klein
And trying to become more and more and more in touch with that over time. Again, these are the kinds of things that I wish school would do more of. It's like I wanna teach my sons how to listen to their bodies.
- CWChris Williamson
It's very difficult to teach instinct, to teach taste.
- EKEzra Klein
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
It's not scalable. It's gonna be different and idiosyncratic for every person. Uh, and yet is the-- one of the most, if not the single most important thing that you can continue to develop.
- EKEzra Klein
But I think you can teach, and I think you can help people cultivate the connection those things need to come through.
- CWChris Williamson
Even just explaining the primacy of it.
- EKEzra Klein
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Like, this is something that's important that you should pay attention to.
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Do not outsource your taste to the AI.
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah, but you have to feel, right? Uh, this is one of the worries I have about a lot of things is they disembody us.
- CWChris Williamson
Correct.
- EKEzra Klein
And you, y- I, I never know less about my body than when I'm really scrolling. [laughs] Do you ever, do you ever do that where you, like, move from a paper book to the s- to your phone, which I will sometimes have both out, and you can really feel the difference, like how much I am in touch with the body on the physical, like, print slow versus here. You really do become a brain in a vat. And I'm not saying it's all bad. I don't wanna be overly, uh, a Luddite here. I have a phone. I have a computer. I work on the internet. Uh, but, but I do think, yeah, developing intuition, developing taste, that's a very personal, very mysterious thing. But developing the ability to listen to what's happening inside of yourself, that through meditation and movement practice and other things, it's like I just would like to give people, kids, a lot more meta training in their attention and mind. And, you know, I think we do-- we are over-torqued on information and, um, need to push, particularly in this era, harder, or I would like to see us push harder on, I don't even know what to call it, um, like the art of thinking, the art of feeling just as much.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- 2:08:22 – 2:08:55
What’s Next For Ezra?
- CWChris Williamson
Heck yeah. Ezra Klein, ladies and gentlemen. Ezra-
- EKEzra Klein
Thank you, man.
- CWChris Williamson
You're great.
- EKEzra Klein
That was a pleasure.
- CWChris Williamson
What's coming up next?
- EKEzra Klein
Uh, who did I just tape with? Just taped with Ian Bremmer. Had a great conversation about, uh, the crazed state of the world.
- CWChris Williamson
That could be a title for pretty much everything that you're doing at the moment.
- EKEzra Klein
[laughs]
- CWChris Williamson
I appreciate you, man.
- EKEzra Klein
Thanks very much.
- CWChris Williamson
Thank you very much.
- EKEzra Klein
Appreciate being here.
- CWChris Williamson
All right. See you next time, everyone. Peace. Congratulations. You made it to the end of a full podcast episode. You are not so TikTok brained that you've completely dissolved into nothingness. Why not watch another one? Right here. Go on, press it.
Episode duration: 2:08:56
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