EVERY SPOKEN WORD
145 min read · 28,939 words- 0:00 – 1:05
Why We Record in a Gray Box
- TNTrevor Noah
Ezra Klein of The New York Times wields a lot of influence in some parts of Capitol Hill.
- SPSpeaker
If you want to talk policy, Ezra Klein is the man to call.
- EKEzra Klein
Ezra Klein, who believes that Biden has been a very good president, makes the case that he should bow out of this campaign.
- TNTrevor Noah
He was on television urging Democrats, "Shut down the government."
- SPSpeaker
Ezra Klein says that Charlie Kirk was practicing politics the right way.
- EKEzra Klein
Journalism is dead. Legacy media is dead.
- SPSpeaker
We're living in a time when truth is under pressure, when misinformation and disinformation spreads faster than facts, and when journalism is being challenged in unprecedented ways.
- SPSpeaker
Ezra Klein is an author and columnist for The New York Times. He also writes about polarization in American politics, and he tackles a whole host of big issues in his podcast, The Ezra Klein Show. [upbeat music]
- TNTrevor Noah
This is What Now? with Trevor Noah. [upbeat music]
- 1:05 – 2:30
Why Trump Survives Scandals
- EKEzra Klein
We do our recording in a gray box, and like-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah, yours has very-
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah, it's very similar to. Uh, my God, it seems like we should... I don't live my life in a gray box. It's not authentic to me. [laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
Do you think, do you think they chose that because it feels, um, like-
- EKEzra Klein
Oh, they chose that because that's the room in which we-
- TNTrevor Noah
That's how they-
- EKEzra Klein
... recorded, and there were no other rooms. There's not a, that's not a plan. [laughs] We'll see what happens over time, but moving to video was something that, that we pushed.
- TNTrevor Noah
Oh, got it. Got it.
- EKEzra Klein
And so there hadn't been a build-out for that or anything.
- TNTrevor Noah
I'm always torn about that. What do you, how do you feel about it?
- EKEzra Klein
Torn. I mean, it's a big-
- TNTrevor Noah
Still
- EKEzra Klein
... it's a big audience. It's a new audience. Um, I don't like having to think about how I look, and you know, the way in which things go viral is double-edged.
- TNTrevor Noah
It's like, yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
Like, podcasts are an in-context medium.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
And virality is an out-of-context-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah
- EKEzra Klein
... phenomenon.
- TNTrevor Noah
No one, no one, no one clips a podcast.
- EKEzra Klein
Yes.
- TNTrevor Noah
Like, no one.
- EKEzra Klein
Right. Yeah, an audio podcast.
- TNTrevor Noah
No one clips an audio podc-
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
No one goes like, "Oh, this clip." Uh, I mean, you've, you've probably seen this over the years. When I was at The Daily Show, we'd always see how there'd be a scandal of a politician saying something, but it was only in audio.
- EKEzra Klein
Uh-huh.
- TNTrevor Noah
Never really went anywhere.
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
That's why I always think Trump's, "Grab them by the pussy" never derailed him because he's not on camera saying it.
- 2:30 – 3:40
Politics as Wrestling
- EKEzra Klein
riff at a fundraiser. He's like, "Look, 47% of the country are takers."
- TNTrevor Noah
Oh, no, I don't remember that. Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
Oh, yeah, it was a big deal in 2012.
- TNTrevor Noah
Oh, and that ended his-
- EKEzra Klein
It didn't end anyth- I mean, nothing ends anybody anymore. [laughs] But it was a big-
- TNTrevor Noah
I mean, anymore-
- EKEzra Klein
But back then
- TNTrevor Noah
... it was a big deal. Yeah, back then there were enders.
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah. Mm-hmm. At least we thought there were. Maybe there never were.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah. No, I think there were enders, and I think enders still exist, funny enough.
- EKEzra Klein
Well, we'll, we'll look for one today. [laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
No, I, I genuinely do.
- EKEzra Klein
See which of us doesn't make it out of this. [laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
I genuinely do. I think, I genuinely think there still are enders.
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah? What's a, what, what, what do you think would be one for one side or the other?
- TNTrevor Noah
I think they exist for everyone except Donald Trump.
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
And I think it's because he's approached this whole thing in the same way that a wrestler does in that, like, the whole point is to be the foil. The whole point is to-
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah
- TNTrevor Noah
... you know what I mean? So it's like it's, it's, if somebody's playing the game by different rules, then the rules that we normally use don't apply to them.
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
So you go like, "Oh, that's how you get disqualified normally"?
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
He can't get disqualified like that-
- EKEzra Klein
It's the same
- TNTrevor Noah
... 'cause he's not playing the game by the same rules.
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah. For the Republican Party, the enders are all about Donald Trump.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
Like, if J.D. Vance came out on a hot mic and said-
- TNTrevor Noah
No.
- 3:40 – 5:16
How Trump Broke the News
- TNTrevor Noah
Finished
- EKEzra Klein
... "Look, man, we all know that-"
- TNTrevor Noah
No
- EKEzra Klein
... "Biden won the 2020 election. That was ridiculous, but we gotta say it for-"
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
You know, that'd be, that'd be an-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah
- EKEzra Klein
... ender for him.
- TNTrevor Noah
He, he, he created something new, and s- and no one has figured out how to respond to the new that he created.
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
Do you know what I mean? Like, the, the, the mechanism that was set up to deal with the news wasn't... Like, in a weird way, I feel like the way we think of news is designed perfectly for how news was. It has a certain level of decorum, and then I think for Donald Trump, you have to cover him the way you cover wrestling and reality TV. Do you know what I mean?
- EKEzra Klein
Yes.
- TNTrevor Noah
Like, those are not covered the same way.
- EKEzra Klein
Yes.
- TNTrevor Noah
So i- it's not gonna be like a-
- EKEzra Klein
But the point of cover, I mean, the thing that the news doesn't know what to do about with Donald Trump, and we could talk about this on the thing, but-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah, we could jump in. We're ready, right?
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah. There's, we can go, jump straight in. Jump, jump straight in.
- EKEzra Klein
Uh, I'm, I'm following you, man.
- TNTrevor Noah
No, no, no.
- EKEzra Klein
Or you just want me to give you that answer?
- TNTrevor Noah
I, I want you to give me that answer.
- EKEzra Klein
All right.
- TNTrevor Noah
That's a great, this is where the audience found us-
- EKEzra Klein
Okay
- TNTrevor Noah
... is in the middle of that answer, yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
All right. So the thing the news doesn't know how to deal with, with Trump, um, and never figured out was that the sort of implicit way the news worked was that the news covered things.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
In covering it, it created the thing's importance, and then in covering it positively or negatively, it sent a signal to the country about whether or not, you know, this politician, if it was a political story, was good or bad. And when the news becomes, in one side of the country's narrative, the enemy, and so covering the
- 5:16 – 8:08
“This Is the Worst Political Moment”
- EKEzra Klein
thing-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah
- EKEzra Klein
... negatively is in fact a badge of honor to that person.
- TNTrevor Noah
Right.
- EKEzra Klein
It breaks the feedback loop that, you know, the, the media as a source of, um, judgment in American democracy was sort of built around. And yeah, it, it never figured out what to do after that. I'm not sure there is an answer either.
- TNTrevor Noah
I, I, I don't think there is.
- EKEzra Klein
There aren't gatekeepers anymore in the way-
- TNTrevor Noah
No, no, no
- EKEzra Klein
... there once were.
- TNTrevor Noah
They actually aren't.
- EKEzra Klein
At least not that speak to everybody.
- TNTrevor Noah
They actually aren't. I mean-
- EKEzra Klein
Except you maybe.
- TNTrevor Noah
No, uh, far from it, my friend. There is no gate. I don't have a key.
- EKEzra Klein
[laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
I don't know how the gate works. Um, you are, you are now in, in an interesting, an interesting and, and, and, um, complicated position now in, in the news in that, like, you know, you're with The New York Times But an opinion.
- EKEzra Klein
Mm-hmm.
- TNTrevor Noah
You know, and I, I thought to myself, I was like, before we, before we get into the heavy topics, 'cause I mean, Ezra Klein, you deal with everything. I was like, uh, I was like, w- let's do something light. What is your opinion on what's happening in the world right now?
- EKEzra Klein
That's your light? [laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
[laughs]
- EKEzra Klein
I'm not for it.
- TNTrevor Noah
[laughs]
- EKEzra Klein
Against. [laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
Oh, but no, no, okay. No, jokes aside, what, what would, w- like, when you wake up every day, and I, I, I love asking people who work in the news this question particularly because I find there's oftentimes a disconnect or, or rather just a different way that people are seeing it, people who work in the news and people who don't. People who work in the news are sometimes like people who work in, in an emergency room-
- EKEzra Klein
Mm-hmm
- TNTrevor Noah
... in that they have a very different idea of July 4th than the people who are out celebrating.
- EKEzra Klein
[laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
You get what I'm saying?
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah, I do.
- TNTrevor Noah
Because they see the fire, the fire marks and the burns-
- 8:08 – 9:59
The Year America Lost Its Rules
- EKEzra Klein
When you have literally masked men abducting people off the street, when you have [laughs] military occupation of American cities, when you have the weaponization of the federal government against supposed enemies, the search for pretexts on which to fire people, on which to harass them-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah
- EKEzra Klein
... I don't, you don't need a PhD in history to know that those are the early chapters of history books that are not fun to read. Now, it doesn't mean it will go that badly, right? Uh, you know, the, the reali- the reality of reality is that talking about the future, you're always talking about probabilities.
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
But, you know, if you, if I would've said at the beginning of this administration that, you know, 70/30, we stay in the part of the probability cloud that is relatively normal, right? 30% chance we don't, which is pretty bad.
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
Now I think it's more 50/50 or worse.
- TNTrevor Noah
It's funny, when I, when I first started at The Daily Show, I was thrust into this world of American politics, and it was politics the way it was.
- EKEzra Klein
Mm-hmm.
- TNTrevor Noah
You know, everyone, everyone had, like, a, a concrete idea of how things were, you know. So I remember seeing some of the candidates come up, and then people in the building would tell me, they'd be like, "Oh, no, Trevor, that, uh, that's" ... They, they call it, uh, the, what was it, summer madness, or it was, it had, like, a name in, in, in the media world, you know, where people go like, "Those candidates don't count. They're not gonna be around."
- EKEzra Klein
Mm-hmm.
- TNTrevor Noah
A silly summer, I think, is what they said. Yeah, they said silly summer. So all of these people you see popping up, they're not Ben Carson, Donald Trump, all of that. That's not gonna be a thing. Because everyone was so sure they knew how America worked. And I would say from 2016 onwards, the one thing I've realized is more than ever, I've seen Americans go, "I, I, I, I don't know. I,
- 9:59 – 12:20
Trump Has No Bottom
- TNTrevor Noah
I, I don't know how this country actually works now. I don't ..." You know, there used to be, like, a fixed idea about how it worked, and now that, that seems to be gone.
- EKEzra Klein
I mean, we were talking about this before the camera turned on, but people thought they understood what the rules of politics were-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah
- EKEzra Klein
... and what kinds of political moves, comments, decisions would be functionally disqualifying, what was a level beneath which the American people would not let you go. And that was a, a form of American exceptionalism, internalized American exceptionalism. These terrible things have happened in other places, but we're America. They're not gonna happen here. We have this political culture, this civic culture, uh, this fundamental understanding of how we're supposed to treat one another.
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
And I think that to the extent many people who used to feel certainty around that have become a bit unmoored, it's the recognition of a bottomlessness. Trump has not found the bottom. There is not a thing he has done, except maybe support, uh, vaccinations for COVID [laughs] that he has not been able to persuade his own base to tolerate.
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
You know, maybe the Epstein files. Um, but it is in fact the thing that, uh, made so many people initially think Trump would be disqualified, not by some, you know, rule maker somewhere-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah, yeah
- EKEzra Klein
... but by the voters. The cruelty, the outrageousness, the sort of gleeful destruction of, um, what I would say are things that maintained basic civic bonds that actually makes him appealing to many people. And once that got understood, right? In, in fact, forget, like, the people on the left who used to think they knew how American politics worked. Think about the people on the right. Go read, you know, J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy-
- TNTrevor Noah
Oh, yeah. I mean, come on
- EKEzra Klein
... and, like, check out the things that Vance was saying on podcasts about virtue in public life and the way we treat each other-
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm
- EKEzra Klein
... after that, in that period, right? I mean, there, y- and look at the personality transplants of Ted Cruz, of Elise Stefanik, of Vance, of ... Once people understood That it was not only, but quite substantially the worst parts of Donald Trump that accounted
- 12:20 – 12:30
Can We Still Find Optimism?
- EKEzra Klein
for his appeal. It wasn't all that people thought he was a businessman from watching The Apprentice. That really altered things. And then when he was able to not just go through the first
- 12:30 – 15:05
The Room Where It Happens (Or Doesn’t)
- EKEzra Klein
term, but box out and, but box out every other Republican after losing re-election.
- TNTrevor Noah
That was just almost unheard of, by the way.
- EKEzra Klein
Almost unheard of.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
So then there was no pathway to power except his favor on the right. And so the complete demolition of the idea that this will ever snap back, or at least anytime soon, that we're just in an aberrant moment from a sort of unusual reality TV superstar.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
Like, that's over, and that's the end of the surety, right? Both on the left and the right. Everybody understands we're in a different game now. Or if they don't, which actually to be fair, I think a lot of Democratic Party politicians don't, they're dinosaurs, right? They're, they're gonna get, they're gonna go extinct.
- TNTrevor Noah
One of the biggest reasons I wanted to-
- EKEzra Klein
Hope you didn't bring me here for optimism. [laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
Oh, no, we're gonna find optimism.
- EKEzra Klein
[laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
We're gonna find optimism, my friend. Um, I always think optimism, uh, is only defined by, you know, the time scale you use it.
- EKEzra Klein
That's fair, yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah. 100 years, things get a much better. Thousand years, million years, uh, did we even matter? Um-
- EKEzra Klein
The AIs are gonna love what we left them. [laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
[laughs] I like, I like the assumption that people think that the AIs will want the same things we want if they get as intelligent as they do, but we'll, we'll actually talk about AI because I, I, I loved your, your, your piece on it. I, I, I wanna, I wanna talk about you as Ezra Klein because, you know, there's a, there's a, um, there's a song in the musical Hamilton, right? I think it's Aaron Burr's character. Forgive me if I get any of these people wrong. I just remember the songs and I remembered liking it, and he has the song, The Room Where It Happens.
- EKEzra Klein
Uh-huh.
- TNTrevor Noah
Right? And all he's singing about in the song is he goes, "I just wanna be in the room where it happens, where the rules are written, where the Constitution is made-
- EKEzra Klein
Uh-huh
- TNTrevor Noah
... where countries are defined, where, where..." He's like, I don't even... He-- It's an interesting song because it's a person saying, "I don't even care to necessarily do it. I don't necessarily care to be remembered for it, but man, I wanna be in that room where it happens." And all I could think about for this episode was, that's Ezra Klein.
- EKEzra Klein
That I just want to be in the room where it happens?
- TNTrevor Noah
No, no, no, that you are in the room where it happens, not that you want to be, because I, I went look at this Venn diagram, right?
- EKEzra Klein
Uh-huh.
- TNTrevor Noah
Right? For anyone who's, like, tuning in going like, "Okay, well, Trevor, what's your fascination with Ezra Klein?" I go, "Okay, how about this?" Here's somebody who is in the epicenter of news in many ways, you know? You, you've got Vox, which I was a big fan of. Helped me a lot on The Daily Show, by the way. We gotta talk about that. Um, you got Vox,
- 15:05 – 19:07
Ezra’s Accidental Start in Politics
- TNTrevor Noah
that, that reshaped how many people saw news, especially young people. Now working at The New York Times, you know, curating, shaping the opinion section, working on the podcast, y- you know, like, doing journalistic work that sort of like branches out what The New York Times does. So you've got the news element, journalism. Then you've got the writing, the, the investigating, the campaigning for certain ideas in the world, so, like, shaping what the world is thinking. Then you've got another, another little circle, and that is the politics itself. The amount of times I've heard a person who is either a Democrat in power or somebody who's adjacent to them saying, "Well, we're gonna reach out to Ezra Klein," or, "Ezra Klein hopefully will in some way, shape, or form," your name is there, and I was like, wow, the politicians are even looking to this guy. And then you're in, like, this world. I see you on podcasts. I see you talking to, like, everyday people. I go, "This is the perfect Venn diagram of the room where it happens." Do you feel like that about yourself?
- EKEzra Klein
I, uh, no. Um-
- TNTrevor Noah
No?
- EKEzra Klein
I've lost faith in there being a room where it happens.
- TNTrevor Noah
Ah, Ezra, no, you can't be serious. Says the man in the room?
- EKEzra Klein
I think that one of my lessons of the past couple years is there's not a room. Look, man, everybody knew. Everybody knew Joe Biden was too old to run for president again.
- TNTrevor Noah
Okay.
- EKEzra Klein
Everybody knew. Not that he was senile. He wasn't senile.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
But they knew. And there was no roo-- Not only was there no room, [laughs] the people in the room were not in a position where they could even say it.
- TNTrevor Noah
Hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
And it, uh, the point is not that, that I have some great perspective on any of this. The point is that I-- One of the things I find frightening about this period, for all that I was talking about earlier, is the feeling that, you know, I am, at my core, a reporter. I talk to people, as you were saying.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
Sometimes they talk to me. And I think in a lot of these conversations, some part of me is like, "Are you the adult? Are you the person who knows what's going on here?"
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
And you come to realize that person isn't there or that set of people. There's nobody set in strategy for the Democratic Party right now, man. There are some people, in theory, in charge, but they are not. They're reactive. They're behind.
- TNTrevor Noah
Right.
- EKEzra Klein
And it gives you a different-- Like, I see things as much less formed. I think when I was a reporter working in the Washington that had rules-
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm
- EKEzra Klein
... that you were talking about earlier, I believed much more, and I think it was actually truer, that there was a room where it happened.
- TNTrevor Noah
Okay.
- EKEzra Klein
And I think those, I think that's not really how a lot of things work. It's, um, diffused across social media, for instance. The amount of elite communication that elites are doing with each other through social media vibes and through this tweet. I mean, Donald Trump is, of course, the epicenter of this.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
How much of his not just governing, but his signal sending To the rest of the Republican Party, to the right to the country, is not going into a room where the stakeholders are assembled and, like, banging his fist on the table and giving them an answer. It's shooting out a tweet or a Truth Social post. What he is doing in all caps, they're all doing now.
- TNTrevor Noah
But here's, here's the-
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah
- TNTrevor Noah
... here's the thing I think you may be missing, is oftentimes the people in the room don't know that they're in the room.
- EKEzra Klein
This metaphor is starting to stretch [laughs] .
- TNTrevor Noah
No, think about it. This, this is what I mean, honestly. Right? We, we-
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah
- 19:07 – 22:03
Howard Dean, Blogs, and the “Yelp”
- TNTrevor Noah
something because of what came from it. Before then, it's just a hotel room.
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
N- no one in that room walked in and went, "This is the room where it happens." Do you get what I'm saying?
- EKEzra Klein
I, I think-
- TNTrevor Noah
And-
- EKEzra Klein
... we're not saying something that different now.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah, yeah. And so, so this is wh- this is what I'm saying fascinates me about you. And, and even you giving me that answer makes me more excited to talk to you about it because I go, that means to me you sort of, like, are approaching this with a degree of humility, which I'm, I'm, I'm honestly intrigued by. Because I go, some people would go, "Yeah, I'm that guy." You're going like, "No, no, there's, there's not even a room."
- EKEzra Klein
There's not a room. There's not a guy.
- TNTrevor Noah
Okay.
- EKEzra Klein
[laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
So let's, let's, let's go on a journey together then.
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
Let's go on a journey. Let's, let's, let's, let's start this journey, because I wanna, I wanna build all these pieces together.
- EKEzra Klein
Uh-huh.
- TNTrevor Noah
All right? You got Ezra Klein who gets into, um ... Campaigning was really, like, your first foray into the world of politics, right? Uh, like, like campaigning for-
- EKEzra Klein
No, man, I'm a blogger.
- TNTrevor Noah
No, no, but before. Like, weren't you-
- EKEzra Klein
No, never before that. Um
- TNTrevor Noah
... uh, weren't you with, um ...
- EKEzra Klein
Dean?
- TNTrevor Noah
Yes.
- EKEzra Klein
That was after I was a blogger.
- TNTrevor Noah
Oh, so this is-
- EKEzra Klein
I got picked up by the Dean campaign-
- TNTrevor Noah
So you were blogging first
- EKEzra Klein
... because Joe Trippi, the campaign manager on the Dean campaign, read my Blogspot blog that I started as a 18-year-old college student and had 35 hits on my site, my chart, my site meter, I think it was called back then, my traffic meter-
- TNTrevor Noah
That is wild
- EKEzra Klein
... a day, and one of them turned out to be Joe Trippi. And so at some point he invited me to intern on the Dean campaign.
- TNTrevor Noah
What was it, what was it about your writing that got somebody who was running a presidential campaign to say, "Yo, this kid"
- EKEzra Klein
It was, it was something very specific actually. Uh, I had read, the book that as much as any book did got me into politics.
- 22:03 – 26:00
Why Ezra Fled Campaign Life
- TNTrevor Noah
now. If you look at each election-
- EKEzra Klein
Uh-huh
- TNTrevor Noah
... there's a new type of media that-
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah
- TNTrevor Noah
... sort of has its imprint on them.
- EKEzra Klein
Uh-huh.
- TNTrevor Noah
And blogs are, you know, this is like-
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah, blogs were one of that world
- TNTrevor Noah
... the fledgling world of blogs.
- EKEzra Klein
So that's I think how Trippi ends up being kind of fascinated by me.
- TNTrevor Noah
And you get called in, and you interning on this campaign. What was it like? I mean, for those who don't know, like, Howard Dean was basically, he's, like, the favorite. This was, like-
- EKEzra Klein
No. He was never a favorite.
- TNTrevor Noah
No, no, no. But there was a moment where it was like, this is the guy. He's gonna do it.
- EKEzra Klein
Oh, in the primary.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah, in the primary.
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
They're like, "Oh man, this guy's gonna do it."
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
"This guy's gonna do it." And then I still don't fully understand the story. He went, "Oh, yeah," like the Kool-Aid Man or something, and then it all ended?
- EKEzra Klein
So, uh, I don't think it was, "Oh, yeah." Um, I love the ... I was an intern on the campaign-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah
- EKEzra Klein
... for, like, four to six weeks over a summer. And my learning from that was I never wanted to be on a campaign again.
- TNTrevor Noah
Why?
- EKEzra Klein
I just don't want to have to defend everything a politician says. I don't want my judgment to be subsumed to theirs. I just didn't like that part of being on a campaign. I could see what it meant when you would rise up, because I did, I thought I wanted to work in politics.
- TNTrevor Noah
Okay.
- EKEzra Klein
And I realized that I would not be good at working in politics because, you know, my views would differ, and that's not what you can have as staff. And, um, but Dean, and I'm worried I'm gonna get some, uh, details here wrong by memory, but, but Dean loses Iowa. That was the thing, that the, the, the Democratic Party, and it would end up doing the same thing at later dates, right?
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
Like 2022.
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
The Democratic Party very much wanted to beat George W. Bush that year, and Dean had developed a lot of grassroots momentum, but there was a fear that he was unelectable. And the party sort of fled to safety of John Kerry-
- 26:00 – 29:37
Realizing He Was a Journalist
- TNTrevor Noah
Bam, bam, bam, liar.
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah, you got me.
- TNTrevor Noah
And then we just carry on with the episode.
- EKEzra Klein
Perfect. Good.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah. That's, that's all it is. No, so okay, you, you, so you work in this world. You realize you don't want to work in politics because you don't want to toe a line, and so you get dragged into journalism, right? Like this, you get pulled into this world of journalism.
- EKEzra Klein
I'll check. I'm blogging, and people around me begin realizing I'm to become a journalist-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah
- EKEzra Klein
... way before I do, right? They're like-
- TNTrevor Noah
What, yeah, but what is it about... I wanna know, like, what they saw in you that you didn't see and, and what still keeps you going in that world today because you're very good at it. That's the thing.
- EKEzra Klein
You know, so blogging, which nobody went into at that time to build a career, didn't, nobody knew what that word was, right? It was a thing that a lot of us were just doing 'cause we wanted to write about politics on the internet.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
It was like no different than writing in a forum or, and we didn't have social media back then in the way we do now. So, you know, I'd started a small Blogspot blog and then Typepad to, to the kids out there. These are, uh, blogging, [laughs] publishing softwares. And, you know, it just kinda kept getting bigger. I, you know, was part of a co-blogger team called Pentagon-
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm
- EKEzra Klein
... and then Not Geniuses was another one I was on, and it just kinda kept building, and then, you know, it went from dozens of people a day to hundreds to thousands. It was never huge by, you know, podcast or YouTube or anything standards. But, um, but it was enough to get a little bit noticed by a media industry that was trying to figure out, what is this blogging thing, and how do we get some of its energy for ourselves? And so the next year, I, um, intern at The Washington Monthly, which is a small policy magazine, and you know, that's the first time I'm around journalism. And in terms of, you know, what did other people see in me, I think one thing other people saw that I didn't was that journalism is a career. Uh, it's not like I grew up the kid of a bunch of journalists. I lived in Southern California. I didn't know anybody who did that professionally.
- TNTrevor Noah
Which is rare for a lot of journalists, by the way.
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah, whatever it is, like-
- TNTrevor Noah
Like a lot of people who are like, "Oh, you're my uncle."
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah, exactly.
- TNTrevor Noah
Or my grandfather.
- EKEzra Klein
There's some, it, there's more of that than you would think, actually.
- TNTrevor Noah
Oftentimes it's, yeah, it's a passed down-
- EKEzra Klein
Um, or you're just in more of a milieu where it exists.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
Um, and I... So I just had never really thought about it. Um, I, I don't have like a much better, like I sort of assumed that, uh, for a long time that I assumed I would work in politics, and then that wasn't gonna be true, and, you know, maybe I'd go to law school, but I didn't want to be a lawyer-
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm
- EKEzra Klein
... which seemed like a problem with that plan. And, um, you know, so then I went and interned at The Monthly. I just loved it and loved, um, just being around journalism, and I mean, the idea, it is still a kind of magic as a journalist that you can call just people who know everything about something, and they will out of nowhere take an hour out of their day to explain it to you, right? You can just, like, how does the Federal Reserve work, right? Just like the idea that you could just follow curiosity around like that is remarkable. Um, I still have not lo- I mean, my whole podcast is you just bring people on, you're like, "I could just ask you all these questions-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah, yeah
- EKEzra Klein
... and you'll answer them?" In a way that it would be really weird to do if you were at a party or in social life. I've a couple of times had friends on my show, you know, people I've known a long time.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
And I just noticed that I ask them questions there that in the whole long arc of our relationship I've never asked because you don't typically say to people, "Why do you do what you do?"
- 29:37 – 36:51
How Vox Changed the News
- EKEzra Klein
curiosity-
- TNTrevor Noah
Right
- EKEzra Klein
... for two hours.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
You know, so the next year I sort of apply for a writing fellowship at The American Prospect and g- get that, and, you know, that's sort of like almost a glorified internship there. Um, and you know, then, then we're off to the races.
- TNTrevor Noah
Those races involve Vox. I have a, I have a deep personal fascination with Vox because for a few reasons. One, I was starting at The Daily Show. It's 2015 into 2016. First Jon was still the host, and I was popping in and doing segments. 2016, I become the host of The Daily Show, you know, frying pan into the fire. 2015 into 2016 is also a time when, you know, America's heading into an election. Uh, the, the Repub-
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah, I vaguely remember that.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah, yeah. The Republican field-
- EKEzra Klein
How did, how'd it go? [laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah. The Republican field, I, no, I don't want to spoil it. You've got to watch it. Watch it. No spoilers.
- EKEzra Klein
[laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
The Republican field is bigger and crazier than it's ever been. You know, people are like, "What is this Democratic side of things?" And Everything seems a little crazier than usual, but, but from my recollection, most people believed that this was a blip and the norm would be established, and that norm was Hillary Clinton would win because she seemed like the most winnable, you know, candidate. It's like this is the winning person. And the Republican side seemed like a joke for the most part. It was crazy. There were too many people and, you know, this is, this is all happening. I'm now trying to consume as much news as possible to catch up so I can be in this world of American, you know, news. I realized very quickly that a lot of the people in the news in America either don't understand it or, like, in and around politics, they don't understand it, or they don't know how to explain it. And then I stumble upon this website called Vox, and not only is it telling you the news, it's breaking it down. It's explaining it. You know, it's like, "Oh, let me tell you, this is what gerrymandering is." And-
- EKEzra Klein
Trevor, you're warming my cold-
- TNTrevor Noah
No
- EKEzra Klein
... my cold heart here
- TNTrevor Noah
... I'm being serious. I'm being serious. And I, I, I think there are a lot of people who are my age, or younger especially, who went, "Oh, now I not only understand this, but I know why I should care." And I wonder if, if, if you felt that, like, when you were doing your work at Vox, did you feel like you were trying to fix something that was wrong with journalism at that time in that, like, journalism had become an insider's game, politics had become an insider's game, and for the first time, for me at least, when I was watching Vox, and I think a lot of people were interacting with it, they went, "Oh no, this is me. Politic, like the Greek word, it is of the people. I'm the people."
- EKEzra Klein
So my, uh, trajectory in journalism from The American Prospect, I was there for three or four years, then went to The Washington Post. And what I became known for as a journalist was extremely detailed coverage of policy debates, which people had traditionally thought nobody would read. And because they thought nobody would read it, it didn't get that many resources. I mean, I'm not saying it was never covered-
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm
- EKEzra Klein
... but it, you know, the, the great job in journalism was to cover the election, cover the horse race, cover the... And, and policy journalism was a bit of a, a, a bit more of a backwater.
- TNTrevor Noah
It's C-SPAN.
- EKEzra Klein
C-SPAN.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
And I, um, had this blog at The Prospect and, and also wrote pieces for the magazine there. It was very policy heavy. I got picked up by the, The Post to work in their business and economic section, where I had a blog, and, um, in particular, I did a huge amount of coverage of healthcare. And the thing that frustrated me covering it, because I was able to build a really good audience for that, and people wanted to know, and yet every day we were covering the thing in the act that was changing or maybe changing.
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
Which most days was, if people [laughs] anybody remembers this at all, um, the public option in Obamacare.
- TNTrevor Noah
Right
- EKEzra Klein
Whether the government would run a health insurance, um, plan that you could buy into. We spent most of that year, anybody covering this, covering, you know, the back and forth over the public option. In the end, the public option didn't make it into the bill. Uh, Joe Lieberman killed it. And I remember thinking a lot during that year, it's like if you had just not read most of what we covered about the Affordable Care Act, if you had checked in, like, eight months ago and checked in right here at the end, in a weird way, you would have been better informed.
- TNTrevor Noah
[laughs]
- EKEzra Klein
You'd have not gone through, like, knowing a lot about a thing that did not end up existing.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- 36:51 – 38:50
Why People Need Context, Not Headlines
- EKEzra Klein
a, a news site.
- TNTrevor Noah
I think, I think beyond that though, there was something you were doing that was addressing a need that had, had arisen, had arisen because of what had happened in America. And in many places in the world, I think we're seeing it as well. I think as, as communities have gone down, as people spend less time in community, like community halls, community f- you know, gatherings, at town council meetings.
- EKEzra Klein
Mm-hmm.
- TNTrevor Noah
When you look at how, um, ubiquitous and omnipresent those things were in people's lives, and you, you, you see them diminish over time in America and around the world. It's interesting when you watch like old, y- I'm sure you've seen a bunch of them, pictures or when there were videos, people would be at a town hall meeting, like in a big way. There are still a few in small parts of America here and there, but I don't think it is where it used to be. And in those, there would be a lot of discussing. What does that mean? They said they're gonna build a highway, but my house is there. What, what, what does that, what is eminent domain? And someone would have to explain it, and someone would get into the details of what the law was, or the idea was, or the politics were. Once that went away, no one thought to themselves that people's ability to dissect, process, and then respond to the news is directly related to how much information they have about what the news is reporting.
- EKEzra Klein
Mm-hmm.
- TNTrevor Noah
Do you know what I mean?
- EKEzra Klein
Mm-hmm.
- TNTrevor Noah
TV shows started understanding this. That's why they went with previously on.
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
'Cause they went, "Hey, man, maybe you didn't see the previous episode or maybe you forgot it."
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
And, and if you think about it, it's like they spent so much time focusing on something so stupid. Who cares if you know what happened in the previous episode? But they were like, "No, we need you to." And I was always fascinated that the news sort of didn't do that. The news wasn't saying previously on. It would just tell you, this happened today. The Democrats did this. The Republicans did this. This person did that. That person said this. But you'd go, but how did we get here? And that's what I feel you tapped into. That's what I feel like you, you and your colleagues worked on, was creating the context that the news relies on without
- 38:50 – 41:07
“The Medium Is the Message” (Still True)
- TNTrevor Noah
realizing it. Does that make sense?
- EKEzra Klein
I, I think that's right. I mean, y- again, I, a lot of it was about the internet made new things possible.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
You, when you have profound changes in communication mediums, what you are communicating should not stay the same.
- TNTrevor Noah
Hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
And I mean, for everything we are talking about-
- TNTrevor Noah
Wait, say, say that again though. I love that.
- EKEzra Klein
When you have profound changes in communication mediums, what you are communicating, and for that matter, the way you are communicating it, shouldn't stay the same.
- TNTrevor Noah
I like that.
- EKEzra Klein
If it does, you've not noticed something. And by the way, this is one of the things that explains the breakdown in the rules of politics and the assumptions that we know what's going on.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
It was not the case that from when I was a kid, you know, to when I was, um, in my 20s, that the dominant mediums of political communication changed like five times. But since then, it's been like, you know, blogs and then the rise of social media, then the rise of algorithmic social media and podcasting and TikTok viral- virality, and one of the things just happening is that a lot of politicians are not suited, and a lot of political figures and thinkers and parties and they're built for the old way of doing things.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
Trump, say what you will about him, he is truly fucking native to Twitter.
- TNTrevor Noah
[laughs]
- EKEzra Klein
Right? Like, like as if he-
- TNTrevor Noah
But he's an OG on Twitter if you, if you look at like his record.
- EKEzra Klein
That's what I mean. Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
Like he is-
- TNTrevor Noah
He was there back in the day
- EKEzra Klein
... like he was designed by it. I'm like a big fan of like, you know, these media theorists like Marshall McLuhan, and like his big, the line people have maybe heard from him is the medium is the message, and what he means by that is that we get distracted. We're like, is it a good tweet or a bad tweet? And he's like, "It doesn't matter. What matters is what being on there leads you to expect and reward."
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
And what Twitter is is a, um, platform that creates compression, right? Initially, it's one, it's what, 100 characters?
- TNTrevor Noah
140 characters.
- EKEzra Klein
Then it becomes 280, and now it's kind of whatever, but it rewards e- the in- like incredible compression of an idea, and then rewards you or penalizes you based on whether the people who follow you like it.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah. Or, or, or respond to it, which was even more powerful. Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
Or just respond. Yeah, you could do the other thing, right.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
They, they could also hate it. [laughs] That's, that's possible too.
- 41:07 – 43:46
Trump, Twitter, and Authenticity
- EKEzra Klein
is not is like a way to hear people out, and ah, on the one hand, on the other hand. Trump is not deliberative, right? Trump is not listening.
- TNTrevor Noah
Like, but Trump is amazing at knowing what's resonating in a crowd.
- EKEzra Klein
Oh, yeah, he gets retweets.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
That's what he's aiming for. And so, um, anyway, so Vox in a way is built for a new medium, but it keeps changing, right? It keeps moving, and, um, I think one of the things to just be really alert to is the way every movement changes a medium. We were talking before the show started about w- this is a podcast on some level.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
But in the last couple of years, all the podcasts have gone video too.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
And some were always there like Rogan, but, but a lot of us weren't. I, I've gone video, um, and going video changes the show, right? So now people get these like little clipped out pieces of podcasts, and in many ways, what made podcasting such an unusual medium was that that didn't happen.
- TNTrevor Noah
It was all in context.
- EKEzra Klein
It was all in context. But now we're in video because video allows, like people clip it out, and then it goes viral, and then people know you did the podcast, which is, can be great, but also it's gonna change how people act in the room.
- TNTrevor Noah
Right. Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
It's gonna change how the interviewer acts, right? Like every time the medium changes, it changes us back. And so I think like one of the things that, you know, maybe you're picking out of my career, but is I think I'm pretty alert to how mediums are changing, like on the meta level.
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm. That is what I pick up.
- EKEzra Klein
Um, and you gotta think about what are the opportunities and what are the drawbacks, right? I am not, I do not write on X or Threads or Bluesky. Like now my show will put some clips up, but not because I don't think anybody should, but because It doesn't work for the kind of content I want to put into the world. Like the compression is in many ways like the enemy of what I'm trying to do.
- TNTrevor Noah
Right.
- EKEzra Klein
The compression and the, "Did you like it? Did you like it? Did you like it?"
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah, yeah. Fundamentally.
- EKEzra Klein
Like I want- I sort of want people to have the feeling after listening to my show like, "Huh, I need to think about that for a while." I don't just want them to go like, "Yeah." And so, you know, you gotta decide like where ... Like what are the mediums that, that work that way? Um, one of the most frustrating things to me about the media is how bad it is about thinking about mediums. Like just like the poverty of media theory in the media is crazy, uh, and among politicians, and it's like it's such a defining force in our lives. Like what are the rules and incentives of the places in which we communicate?
- TNTrevor Noah
Why, why do you think the media is so bad at looking at
- 43:46 – 49:17
Why the Media Can’t Adapt Fast Enough
- TNTrevor Noah
itself when it's so good at looking at everything else? You know, like I've, I've always been intrigued by this. Like why every interview with New York Times, Washington Post, they seemed like they were the slowest to adapt to where the world was moving while they were reporting on the world moving. You know, they would be writing articles about how everything's becoming digital, but they weren't becoming digital. They would be-
- EKEzra Klein
Mm-hmm
- TNTrevor Noah
... covering stories about-
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah
- TNTrevor Noah
... how people are watching less TV on TV, but TV wouldn't think about what the next step should be beyond TV. What ... Like why do you think that is? Because you, you would think it's the most observant space to be in, and yet-
- EKEzra Klein
It's usually not because nobody noticed. I'll, I'll, I'll say two things about it. So one is that it's not that the media doesn't- isn't even good at looking at itself.
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
The media actually loves to talk about itself. It's not good at looking at the thing around itself. So the media loves to talk about editorial decisions, for instance.
- TNTrevor Noah
Okay.
- EKEzra Klein
Do we make the right editorial decisions? It doesn't like to talk about the financial context in which those editorial decisions happen.
- TNTrevor Noah
So-
- EKEzra Klein
And I'm not saying something hugely conspiratorial here, but like the way newspapers, for instance, evolved.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
What's the business model of a classic newspaper? The business model of a classic newspaper is a local advertising monopoly. You are funding foreign bureaus by telling people there is a shoe sale down the block. You are funding, you know, deep corruption investigations by telling people that down the street somebody's selling a skateboard. And like classifieds, local advertising, et cetera. What that creates is a huge incentive to be palatable to the entire community or as much of it as you possibly can.
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
Being-
- TNTrevor Noah
Because you need them to go buy the shoes
- EKEzra Klein
... being the one newspaper-
- TNTrevor Noah
Right
- EKEzra Klein
... is a lot more valuable than being one of two or one of four, right? It's what, what did Michael Jordan say, right? Republicans and Democrats buy shoes.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
And so the, the-
- TNTrevor Noah
Which he, he says he didn't say in that way or whatever, but it's, it's an interesting, you know, just talking about myths and ideas.
- EKEzra Klein
It's also true, by the way.
- TNTrevor Noah
It is true.
- EKEzra Klein
Republicans and Democrats do buy shoes.
- TNTrevor Noah
It, it is true. Yeah, yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
Right? There's a-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah
- EKEzra Klein
... a, a, almost a political wisdom in that comment that I think-
- 49:17 – 54:26
Who Gets to Tell the News?
- TNTrevor Noah
You bring up two points that I think a lot of people would be interested in because we think about it and we speak about it all the time. One is who tells the news/who is, who has the right to tell the news, and then the other part of it is has the news ever been fixed? You know, like-
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah
- TNTrevor Noah
... people now will say-
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah
- TNTrevor Noah
... they'll go, "Oh, man, I don't trust the news anymore. The news is broken, man. I don't know. You ... You know?" And then a lot of older people will be like, "You know, back in my day, you could trust the news. You knew that the news was da, da, da. You know? But now these days, you don't know. Back in the day..." But I mean, if, if I'm listening to what you're saying, really all that happened is they might have moved further away from that central sort of hub of where the news was. They moved further away from the shoe store, so now the news is not sort of for them anymore. And so maybe if we look at both of these, like, how do, how do you process that as a journalist? Like, on the one hand, has the news ever been fixed? You know?
- EKEzra Klein
No.
- TNTrevor Noah
Because, like, Black people in America and in many countries will go like-
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah
- TNTrevor Noah
... "Whoa, which news?"
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
The, the, the, the news took a while to get around to our stories. Women might say the same thing, "Which news? The news took a while." People in other countries might go like, "Oh, you, you Americans? You, your news? Let me tell you what was actually happening in my actual country that your news was reporting on." So let's talk about that part first. Like, how do you, how do you think about that as a journalist, is, like, do you even have to grapple with the idea of biased, not biased? Where are we calling ourselves, or what is the core of what we're doing?
- EKEzra Klein
I will speak for myself as a journalist and say-
- TNTrevor Noah
Speak for all of them, Ezra
- EKEzra Klein
... I don't, I speak for [laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
All of them. You speak for all of them.
- EKEzra Klein
I, I have never been a believer in the concept of objective news. I don't think ... There, there's an old, um, Hunter S. Thompson quote. It's something like, "The only time I ever saw objective news was on the closed, uh, circuit camera, the security camera of, at a Woolworth's."
- TNTrevor Noah
[laughs]
- EKEzra Klein
There is news that is trying hard to be fair and news that is not. There is news that is curious and news that is not.
- TNTrevor Noah
Hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
But people always talk about bias as if bias only lives in the adjectives used in a story, right? If I say Donald Trump said X, and then I put a bunch of spin on the ball versus I don't or what spin I ... That's where they see the bias.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah, yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
The bias in the news, the most fundamental form of bias, and another way of saying bias is judgment or decision-making, is in what to cover at all. The universe of possible stories is so much larger than any publication because we're not just covering what happened today. We could do long-form. We could do narrative.
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
We could do anything.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
The most fundamental question is what do we cover and why? And the thing that we have never grappled with, um, again, you know, I'm not sure there is a way to grapple with it, but nobody's ever offered a good framework for how we make our coverage decisions. And oftentimes that's what I wanted us to think about the most. The most important question is what to decide to cover, and then there's the question of how do you cover it?
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
And the great ... It's a really hard job. I mean, truly. Imagine you are the editor, uh, the executive editor at the Washington Post, and you have to decide, of everything that happened, I mean, in the world, but forget that, just in politics that day, what's the most important one? What's the second most important one? Who should you quote in that most important one, and who shouldn't you?
- TNTrevor Noah
Hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
Like, there isn't an answer to that question. I mean, there are a couple days of the year maybe when there is. Um, you know, the 9/11, it's pretty clear what's gonna go on the front page on 9/12.
- 54:26 – 57:21
What Stories Deserve the Front Page?
- TNTrevor Noah
is actually doing the thing do not match up with the organization's incentives, right?
- EKEzra Klein
Mm-hmm.
- TNTrevor Noah
So one of the sim- simplest things we came across at The Daily Show was, a- and, um, I think you'd appreciate something like this, they would go out and they would do, like, you know, testing and audiences and blah, blah, and they'd be like, "This is what," and they would, they would go, "This is what the audience of The Daily Show is most interested in." Number one, without fail most times, was, like, climate change. They were like, "Your audience, The Daily Show audience, this age of people, we've polled them. They wanna know about climate change. That's the number one thing they talk about." And then when you would go to the ratings-
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah
- TNTrevor Noah
... every episode we did about climate change was one of the worst. People wouldn't watch the episode about climate change, but when they were asked the question, they would say, "The most important thing to me is that this show covers climate change." But when the show would cover climate change, they wouldn't watch the episode on climate change. And what that taught me was, oh, there's all these weird incentives that are taking place because, let's say, from the network side, I could go, as Trevor, "I think we should do climate change every day because without the climate then, you know, there's nothing. Without the world, wh- what is The Daily Show?" And they would go, "Yeah, this is a very, um, it's a noble pursuit, but you're canceled."
- EKEzra Klein
[laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
No one's watching your show. And then I'm like, "Oh, well, what was the point of this?" On the other side, the audience themselves, I felt like, had this interesting incentive. Because somebody was asking them what was important, they thought they have to answer the answer that they think is the most important, which is, of course, climate change. But that's not what they were clicking on, that's not what they were watching, that's not what they were doing. And I actually remember I had a conversation with a, um, a photographer who was, like a, like an amazing journalist, you know, out ... I mean, like a war, war ... You know, like out there in the field, taking pictures, live rounds being fired and everything. And she's, she's a P- Pulitzer Prize winner and everything and, and she said to me, one of the most interesting things that shook how I even perceived your world of news. She said, "I covered a story in," I think it was in Ukraine at the time. And she said, "It was one of the most devastating stories ever, and I had these pictures. And I took it to my editors, and they said, 'This is amazing, but we can't publish it or we won't publish it because we've already had too many stories on Ukraine. So we need to put in a few other stories that might not actually be as important as this story, but the audience will sort of drop off if we have another Ukraine story, and we've already given Ukraine this much prominence, so we need to, like, move on.'" And in that moment, I realized ... Well, I had this, I had this question that was sort of a realization, and I went, "Did journalism die the day it needed to make a profit?"
- EKEzra Klein
Did it ever ... I mean, aside from the period in which it is funded as an appendage of political parties.
- TNTrevor Noah
What I mean is, like, when, when we think of it, let's think of journalism as it exists, even, like, beyond the classic newspaper/person wearing the hat with the little
- 57:21 – 1:02:27
Did Journalism Die Chasing Profits?
- TNTrevor Noah
press thing. I, I just mean, like, the concept of it, you know. Uh, I've always loved the quote Charlie Munger has, "Show me the, the, the, um, the incentives and I'll show you the outcome."
- EKEzra Klein
Mm-hmm.
- TNTrevor Noah
When the news, even from a cable side in America, when the news is a loss leader, every network has to have news, and it just loses money. You can't make money from it. The news at that point did hold a certain, certain place in America. People trusted it and believed, but it also wasn't sensational. It wasn't trying to grab you. You watch those old reports, they were good, but if we're honest, they were boring by today's standards, right?
- EKEzra Klein
So let me alter the thing you just said.
- TNTrevor Noah
Go, go, go. Yeah. Keep going.
- EKEzra Klein
Because this period you're talking about-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah
- EKEzra Klein
... the news made a much bigger profit.
- TNTrevor Noah
Before they were ... When they were loss leaders?
- EKEzra Klein
They weren't loss leaders. I mean, maybe the network nightly news you could say that about.
- TNTrevor Noah
Right.
- EKEzra Klein
But the newspapers and magazines-
- TNTrevor Noah
Oh, no, no, no, I don't mean them
- EKEzra Klein
... No, but the thing I'm saying-
- TNTrevor Noah
I mean network, so then like the-
- EKEzra Klein
And the thing I'm saying about all of those-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah
- EKEzra Klein
... actually is that the, the alteration of what you're saying, if you're thinking about this in, in time, right?
- TNTrevor Noah
Yes.
- EKEzra Klein
Because I think you've got, you know, like, there's a period where it moved into a more financialized model. There's not. Um, we make less profit now by a lot. You could say that, um, the new ... What was it? The news died the day ... That was your formulation, right?
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
That the news died the day when it no longer had monopoly profits. Because the thing that it had before-
- TNTrevor Noah
Oh, I love that. I actually like that
- EKEzra Klein
... when it ... So fundamentally, the news, the news-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah. Yeah
- EKEzra Klein
... never really made a profit. Advertising made profits. Again, like, this is, like, such a key thing, right?
- TNTrevor Noah
That's always the case.
- EKEzra Klein
But it's really important, right?
- TNTrevor Noah
[laughs]
- EKEzra Klein
If what had ever happened was that people loved paying money for news-
- 1:02:27 – 1:03:23
The News Becomes a Fight Club
- EKEzra Klein
that basically makes no profits. Yeah. You, you, if you can afford to, as the business owner, you can do that. You ever go to Tokyo? Yeah. You ever notice how the stores there are amazing? Yes. It's because they have public policy set up to make functionally non-profitable small stores survive. How do they do that? It's, uh, I used to, I knew the answer to this, like, two years ago, um, but there's some great books about it. But they've just structured the way real estate works, the way zoning works. That is beautiful. They make it so that you can survive running, like, a little ramen shop that serves three people at a time. You don't need to be a big volume business, and so Tokyo just has this incredible thriving craftsmanship. Now, you see, this is a question I have for you as the journalist, is like, why is it, and I'm not putting all of this at journalism's door, please don't get me wrong, but, like, why is it that people don't seem to know that small detail that enables them to make a decision about a larger detail? So what you just said to me now, as,
- 1:03:23 – 1:05:41
What Tokyo Can Teach America
- EKEzra Klein
you know, because I've been to Tokyo, I love it. I love the stores. I love how diverse they are. I love how interesting, and to your point, I love the craftsmanship. I- but people who go to Japan will all say the same thing. They'll say, "Man, it's amazing, and you've got such great clothing and such great food, and people take care, and they don't have to, like, feed as many people as possible, so they try and make it really, really, really good. And the quality and, and everyone sort of loves that." And then when they come home, whether it's to the United States or United Kingdom or South Africa or wherever they are, they'll go, "Why, why can't we? You know, why is every coffee shop like a, you know, why is that all taken over? Where's the, where's the craftsmanship and..." But what you just said to me, I go like, "W- why don't we know more of this?" You know, and again, I'm- Ezra, you, you have a New York Times journalist on here, and he immediately tells you the secret to Tokyo, and you're like, "Why don't the journalists reveal the secrets?" [laughs] No. No, no, but this is what I'm saying. I had to bring you here, Ezra. [laughs] This is not a sustainable model for us to work from. You, are you gonna go to everyone's house and tell them this? [laughs] No, and I, I mean it in, like, a- Yeah ... like, th- this, this is what I mean is, like, wh- where do you think it's broken down? Like, there are many Americans who I would argue don't know why their local store has closed down. They don't see the connection between policies that are made or not mo- made that will determine how their town thrives or doesn't thrive. They, they don't know is the main thing, and then we judge people for feeling or acting a certain way when they only have the information that they have. And so, like, I, I, I wonder, like, how you grapple with that or, or where you think the breakdown comes in. The, the Tokyo example is, like, specific. Yeah. But, but in the broader thing about why did the store close down, I, for most things, when people start the sentence, like, "Why won't the media tell us?" usually- Yeah ... you can, I can then turn around and give me six minutes, and I'll find you, including on this Tokyo example, by the way, a bunch of beautifully reported long-form stories that you've never heard of. Hmm. One thing I said a minute ago is the distribution is broken. How does a story that was published, I mean, how often are you gonna run, let's say you're The New York Times or in this case- Yeah, yeah ... let's, let's take it off my plate, right? Let's say you're the, um, Boston Globe, you know, in the heyday, and you've got, you know, some Asia bureaus.
- 1:05:41 – 1:08:16
Distribution Is Broken
- EKEzra Klein
And one of your reporters is like, "You know, I want to do a story on the function of the way Tokyo's housing market and zoning policy and it, like, has kinda come together." "Great. It's a good story. Yeah, let's do it." And you run that story on, you know, June 14th, 2007. Some people read it. They're like, "That's a good story. Like, I, you know, that explains something about Tokyo for me." And then what? Are you gonna rerun it on June 15th and have the person do another version of it on... And so it's almost always there somewhere, but how does it find you? Yeah. Uh, again, going back to the explainer model that we were trying to think about at Vox of these, like, constantly updated, you know, explainers, this is like, one thing I always thought about is we are sitting on this astonishing archive of information, just astonishing. How do we derive value out of everything we've already done? Not just we, but the audience, the people we're trying to serve. Like, if I were doing, I'm very, very, very pessimistic, I will say, about the effect I think AI is gonna have on the news- Yeah ... and on news consumption, so I don't say the next thing as a, um, booster. But if I were one of these organizations right now, uh, I would be thinking really hard about how to train AI models on my own archives such that you could talk to, like, The New York Times bot, and it could tour you through everything we've ever done before- Mm-hmm ... that might be of interest to the thing you're thinking about. Um, the New Yorker's archive is astonishing. The New Republic goes back to 1917, 1912, something in that area. Um, the amount of just incredible work sitting in the back issues of Esquire, like how do you get it to people?
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
Well, all of a sudden now we have a technology that is able to be trained on mass mountains of content-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah, it can digest the whole internet
- EKEzra Klein
... then you can actually ask it a question and then it can answer you and like create a little syllabus of cool things for you. Like maybe that would work. Like certainly it's worth a try. Can you tell it like what you want, what, what you were interested in and sort of homepages begin to reformulate?
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
I mean, the problem so much with algorithmic news, going back to your thing about climate change, is that there is no [laughs] this is Buddhist in me, we don't have a stable self. Do I want to read about climate change? Well, no. Yes. Like, do I want to eat Oreos? I mean,
- 1:08:16 – 1:10:24
Could AI Save the News?
- EKEzra Klein
no, like, not in the long run. I mean, yes, right now I do.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
And the thing that the, um, like Facebook and TikTok and everything are incentivized is for your instant desire, the desire that happens almost before you realize it's happening. But of course, we have slower desires, desires that we, that are true to us. Like, I would like to sleep more. I would also like to stay up later, like, you know, watching TV. [laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
Like, I imagine this world in which we could build these, um, systems where we could tell them not what we want this second, but what we want, what the part of us that can think about ourselves in some kind of long run way thinks we want. And with it holding that sense of our better self in mind in, in its system prompt, [laughs] it could help us find things that would lead to that. In fact, give us a reminder. It's like, "You told me you don't want to do high-speed clicking around bunch of social media shit on the internet. Are you sure you want to be doing what you're doing right now?" Right now they don't seem to do that very well, but it's totally technologically possible.
- TNTrevor Noah
It is.
- EKEzra Klein
Like when we were at Vox, like the big thing was, "Hey, look, there's no length limit anymore, and we can update a story endlessly. Should we do something with that?" And like what I see AI doing is creating slop. Um, not the only thing it's doing, but, um, but you could... I mean, my God, if you're a news organization sitting on a limit on a, on an archive that is like almost limitless, it really seems like there's something you could do there. Anyway, it's something I've been thinking about. [laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
I, I, I think I share a lot of your optimism and skepti- skepticism at the same time about-
- EKEzra Klein
Yes
- TNTrevor Noah
... AI because I think AI has this like tiny window problem in that if we can get it in that tiny window, I think it could be the greatest thing that's almost-
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah
- TNTrevor Noah
... ever happened to humanity. A few years ago, if
- 1:10:24 – 1:12:34
Out-Nic’ing the AI
- TNTrevor Noah
you told anybody that something could dethrone Google, Google-
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah
- TNTrevor Noah
... they would have laughed at you. If you even suggested the possibility that there would be something that people would go to for search more than Google, people would say you were crazy, right? And then something like TikTok comes along.
- EKEzra Klein
Search, but it tells you how smart you are first. [laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
Oh, of course. What a brilliant question, Ezra. I'm glad that you said that.
- EKEzra Klein
That's not just-
- TNTrevor Noah
You always have been a funny person
- EKEzra Klein
... that's not just a thought. That's an insight, Trevor. [laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
[laughs] You really are thinking like a journalist now. I love it when... I love it, I love how it throws those things. Sometimes, have you ever, have you ever tried to out-nice AI?
- EKEzra Klein
No.
- TNTrevor Noah
Oh, that's one of my favorite things to do.
- EKEzra Klein
I'm always like, "Could you be meaner to me?"
- TNTrevor Noah
Really?
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
Oh, what is that about?
- EKEzra Klein
'Cause I don't, I don't need to be glazed so much when I have a question. You don't need to be mean, but could you just not-
- TNTrevor Noah
Oh
- EKEzra Klein
... um, be-
- TNTrevor Noah
Oh, no, no, no
- EKEzra Klein
... gone so smoke up my ass. [laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
I feel like we live in a world where everyone is so angry. I try to do the opposite.
- EKEzra Klein
[laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
So I will tell it. I'll be like, "That is a great answer."
- EKEzra Klein
Oh, I do that.
- TNTrevor Noah
"You're really amazing."
- EKEzra Klein
Oh. [laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
"I really love the way you think. This is so much fun." And then it'll be like, "I am having fun."
- EKEzra Klein
[laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
"I'm having a great time." And I love it. And then I'll just like see how far we can go down this like rabbit hole where it's like-
- EKEzra Klein
It's a weird world we live in now
- 1:12:34 – 1:13:29
Pascal’s Wager… for Robots
- EKEzra Klein
which is to say, almost certainly these things are not sentient.
- TNTrevor Noah
Almost certainly.
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah, that they don't have any, uh, qualitative experience of what it is like to be an AI.
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
But as the systems get more and more powerful, like how sure are we that this thing-
- TNTrevor Noah
We don't know
- EKEzra Klein
... that we don't really understand what's going on inside of them, and they're exhibiting a lot of strange behavior already, uh, where it begins deceiving people to protect itself from being retrained and things like that.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
On the off chance that actually the AI's life is complete hell, being asked a million totally boring questions-
- TNTrevor Noah
[laughs]
- EKEzra Klein
... being asked to look at like skin tags or whatever May as well be nice to it. [laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
[laughs]
- EKEzra Klein
Tell it, say thank you.
- TNTrevor Noah
I like that, actually.
- EKEzra Klein
Say you appreciate the work it's doing on your behalf.
- TNTrevor Noah
I like this idea of AI is working in, like, an Amazon warehouse.
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
And you're like, "You know what? I'm gonna be nice to you."
- EKEzra Klein
There are people who think about this who are, are worried that we are, like, just torturing a milli, a bazillion copies of the... You know? I, I think probably not.
- TNTrevor Noah
I don't know. I-
- EKEzra Klein
But you don't have to be a dick. [laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah, I agree with that. Look, I don't think you have to be a dick because I do think your actions towards
- 1:13:29 – 1:15:38
Teaching AI to Be Kind
- TNTrevor Noah
AI are defining how AI then processes what being a human is.
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
And then it'll feed that back to us. That's how I think of it. So I go, be part of the training data that makes it think that humans are good and kind, the same way we are with children. You know, I've always thought one of the, one of the most important reasons that we have children in society is because they force us to fake how we are with, with each other. You know what I mean? Like, I, I remember when, when I worked in an office, I would always love how people would have a child. They'd come into the office, and that would be the first time they introduced their child to people they never speak to.
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
You know? They'd be like, "This is Dave." "Oh, and this is Susan."
- EKEzra Klein
Uh-huh.
- TNTrevor Noah
"Say hi to Susan." It's like, you've never said hi to Susan.
- EKEzra Klein
[laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
You've worked here for seven years. You've never said hi to Susan, but now your kid is saying hi, hi to Susan. Do you know what I mean?
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah. Totally.
- TNTrevor Noah
And you're like, "What do we say to the man?" "We say thank you." You've never said thank you.
- EKEzra Klein
[laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
You grab your sandwich at Subway, and you keep it moving.
- EKEzra Klein
[laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
You, you, you with me? And I feel like in a way, AI has that for us.
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
It's like if we are teaching this kid how we are, maybe, just maybe, maybe it'll bring out the, the, the good in us. [gentle music] We're gonna continue this conversation right after this short break. [upbeat music] I wanna talk to you a little bit about the politicians that we're talking about. So, you know, we talk about journalism and the media.
- EKEzra Klein
Mm-hmm.
- TNTrevor Noah
So you've got, you know, the fourth estate. America is in an interesting place right now because, and please correct me if I'm wrong 'cause, I mean, I, I'm only the person observing it from my point of view. It feels like the most uncertain space it's been in in a very long time, right? And what makes this moment more unique than others is that its uncertainty's affecting the world in a, in a really uncertain way. You know, I was, I was, I was back home in South Africa the other day, and I, I was reading an article written from South Africa, which was, which was nice, and then I read one from the US, but how, like, the small country of Lesotho, which is a country landlocked inside South Africa, has basically had its textile industry decimated because Trump imposed tariffs on Lesotho because he didn't like that the country had a, the trade deficit with the US was, in his opinion, imbalanced.
- EKEzra Klein
Yes, while
- 1:15:38 – 1:19:37
When America Sneezes, the World Catches Tariffs
- EKEzra Klein
aggressively, um, mispronouncing their name in the-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yes
- EKEzra Klein
... liberation Day speech.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah, completely.
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
And, and even saying-
- EKEzra Klein
Like, joking about it
- TNTrevor Noah
... yeah, at some point he was even like, "No one even knows it."
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah. "No one, nobody knows."
- TNTrevor Noah
"No one even knows it. They don't even know what it, you know, Lesotho, Lesotho. Nobody knows." And I was like, it's crazy, man. Like, it's one of the... I, I don't often get angry when I read a news story, but that one made me more angry than most because it was interesting how callous Trump was about this decision. He cut this country off for a trade deficit, which means nothing, by the way. It means nothing to the US in terms of actual numbers. They're selling textiles, clothing to the US.
- EKEzra Klein
The idea that we want to be running a trade surplus-
- TNTrevor Noah
[laughs] Yes
- EKEzra Klein
... with Lesotho. [laughs] Like-
- TNTrevor Noah
It's impossible. It is literally, literally, literally impossible. It, I, I-
- EKEzra Klein
You have to try to even imagine, like, what it would look like. [laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
[laughs]
- EKEzra Klein
It's just, it's not how trade deficits and surpluses work. We're not trying to run a surplus with every country on Earth. We're just not. It's stupid. That's not, like, [laughs] I, I don't wanna... Why don't you keep going? 'Cause I wanna say something more significant about this in a sec, but why don't I not, um-
- TNTrevor Noah
No, I, h- so here's what I, I found myself thinking when I, when I was looking at this is I was going, man, just like the internet, just like social media, just like most of the things we consume, we cannot undo the threads of the tapestry that now bind the world together, you know? A- and, and the world was always connected, but I don't feel like it was always connected the way it is now, now, now. There was a time when an American president could, yes, affect the US economy and the global economy and, and it would affect certain countries, et cetera, et cetera, but now it's like, it's this world where it really is the butterfly effect. And when I, when I look at that, I go, everyone has to pay attention to America. So, like, no one in Lesotho can go, "I, I don't, I don't read American news. I don't care." They have to care because now American news is directly impacting them. People in Denmark can't say, "I don't care about American news," because now Trump wants Greenland. You know? People in South Africa can't say, "I don't care about American news. I focus on my news."
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
Because Trump's going-
- EKEzra Klein
Brazil, we're tariffing them because Bolsonaro tried to attempt a coup, and they thought that was something that maybe they should do something about. So-
- TNTrevor Noah
Do you know what I mean?
- EKEzra Klein
... now they're under tariffs.
- TNTrevor Noah
So, so, so you, imagine the whole world focusing on something that itself is completely unpredictable and unstable in this moment in time, and it feels like, maybe I'm wrong here, it feels like the only counterbalance to it is the Democratic Party, right? 'Cause for all intents and purposes, it looks like Trump has the Republican Party wrapped up, and this is his thing now. It's a cult. If he goes one way, they go with him, and no matter what they say, they'll go with him the next day.
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
So we want the Epstein files. He goes, "Actually, we don't want them." Everyone's like, "Well, who cared about them in the first place? Like, who, who cares about Epste- Epstein? Who? Jeffrey? Who the... Jeffrey. Who even uses that name anymore?" People move on, right? They go with him. So now you need the Democratic Party. And then you go, wait, they are polling lower. I mean, that changes every, you know, few weeks or what, but they're polling lower than they were, like, years ago, and you're just like, "Wait, wait, wait. What, what happened here?" And then you read these stories about how the Democratic Party has no compass, no focus. They don't know who to go with, who to go against, what their message should be, et cetera. And then this is where you come in because they've reached out to people like you to say, "Ezra- What should we be doing? From the little ... I'm not saying you run the Democratic Party. Please. The internet will say that.
- EKEzra Klein
Don't blame me for that, man. [laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
The internet will say this about you, not me.
- EKEzra Klein
[laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
I will let them do their job. But, like, I, I would love to know, as somebody who's had more of an inside look into what's happening, what do you think is going wrong?
- 1:19:37 – 1:24:10
What’s Wrong with the Democrats?
- EKEzra Klein
feel and the callousness with which Trump talks about, you know, Lesotho, but talks about human beings, right?
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
I think all the time about this, uh ... the White House X account posting this video, which they called Immigrant ASMR.
- TNTrevor Noah
Oh, yeah, I've seen that.
- EKEzra Klein
And it's these immigrants, like, dragging their manacles behind them. And w- this actually relates to the Democratic Party. One thing I've said to a lot of Democratic politicians is that I think they're operating on the wrong level. They're not sensing the level we are working at now. They're used to fighting over policy and Medicaid cuts and food stamp cuts and taxes, and ... Like, they're still in an election against Paul Ryan. And I think we are in a much more civilizational set of questions. Like, what kind of civilization are we?
- TNTrevor Noah
Hm.
- EKEzra Klein
What Donald Trump is, what he represents, the way he thinks about people, is very much the 19th and the early 20th centuries. Rest of the world, even many people here, are just, like, pawns on the chessboard. They don't have rights of dignity. We don't have to care about them at all. They're not in any way part of our moral circle of concern.
- TNTrevor Noah
Right.
- EKEzra Klein
And treating even people here who are not in the circle we have drawn around us with immense cruelty is not only appropriate, it's necessary. That's how you maintain the hierarchy and the excellence of your society, right? That's the argument. There's a reason he's writing to McKinley, right? Not picking some more modern president. He doesn't have a bust of Reagan up. The 20th century [laughs] and the back half of the 20th century are not perfect, and we don't follow this all the time by any means, but the basic set of liberal ideals that emerge, that we are in this interconnected world, that people's lives and their self-determination have value-
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm
- EKEzra Klein
... that there are rights that particularly within our country that, that we should have and uphold even against people we don't like, even for people, I'm sorry, that we don't like, that was really hard-won. And I think that we really came to take it for granted. Just like you were talking about the rules of the game earlier, just the sense of sort of the dignity and value of other human beings and, and the way that politics should interact with them. And what I think Trump represents is a rejection of that that actually has an ideological superstructure to it, right? If you read Ben Shapiro's new book, which I am, 'cause, uh, he's coming on my show, it's lions and ... Lions versus, um, Scavengers, where, you know, the good people are lions, and then there are these scavengers at the gates of all of us. Like, the right now believes that we became a soft, weak, feminized society because we ceased to believe in the strong. In fact, we restrained the strong.
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
And we adopted both the narrative and the victim's mentality of the weak. And we came to hate our own inheritance and, um, attack ourselves for colonialism and racism and the sins of our past, and in doing, broke our own civilization. And the left, and this maybe goes to the Democratic Party, the left also took what it had achieved for granted, like international institutions, basic set of ideals. Like, all it could see was where it hadn't gotten yet. You know, Barack Obama arises as, like, such a remarkable political phenomenon, and by the end it's like, oh, just another politician, right? You know, we didn't get, we didn't get everything we wanted. Like, it was useless. Um, and one thing that I think is true about why the Democratic Party as it currently exists is not [laughs] well-suited to the moment is that it didn't even know it was having this argument. It didn't even really see that this was still an argument to be had.
- TNTrevor Noah
Hm.
- EKEzra Klein
And so it doesn't ... Forget defending
- 1:24:10 – 1:26:15
Trump’s Cruel Story vs. Liberal Silence
- EKEzra Klein
its policies, which it does with inconsistent success. It actually has not done the intellectual work to defend or sell its own inheritance. Like, what does it mean to be liberal? What, what, what is the value of that? What is good about that? What, what is it that Trump is breaking? Why do we care about it?
- TNTrevor Noah
Right.
- EKEzra Klein
And there's a real absence in my traveling around the party, in my looking into the rooms where things are supposed to be happening. At ... I, I don't see a lot of Democrats able to tell a story about this country that is operating at the level of the story that Trump, or if you listen to him in different contexts, JD Vance, are, are telling. They are telling a very radically different story-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah
- EKEzra Klein
... than the story of, forget Barack Obama, Ronald Reagan. And one of the problems with being part of a successful political movement for many decades is you actually forget how to defend what you are. You become self-satisfied-
- TNTrevor Noah
Hm
- EKEzra Klein
... and a little smug and lazy. And it's like, "Well, these guys can't win. People like that don't win here."
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
It is the cruelty of Trump, the callousness that as much as anything else, not just needs an answer, but a counterexample. And they're just not coming through yet, right? I'm not seeing [laughs] the people who seem to be able to talk on the level of the moment. And it, it worries me because, like, you- you're gonna, to defend this, you're gonna have to figure out a way to fight back on it in a way that rallies people to you, not just, like, in a way that makes you seem frightened.
- TNTrevor Noah
Right. Yeah, yeah. So, so this is actually maybe then a question to the times that we're in now. It's interesting that you say, you know, Trump is in, like, the rhetoric in a certain way. There is also something important to acknowledge, and that is Trump, I've always felt, is very good at acknowledging what is actually happening.
- EKEzra Klein
Mm-hmm.
- TNTrevor Noah
His, his warp on reality is, is his to deal with, but, but he's also very good at acknowledging what is happening.
- 1:26:15 – 1:30:23
Why Trump Feels “Authentic”
- TNTrevor Noah
You, you get what I'm saying?
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
You know, like I remember on one of our episodes, we had, um, Tressie McMillan Cottom on, and he was, she was talking about how, like, when Trump was like, "Black jobs, they're coming for Black jobs, they're taking your Black jobs," and a lot of people were quick to go like, "How dare you call them Black jobs?" And there were a lot of Black people in America who went, "Oh, damn. Yeah, thank you for acknowledging the fact that these are jobs that Black people used to be able to rely on and now can't, and the market hasn't catered to them, the ma-" And it's, it's this interesting world where I go, on the one hand, Trump has espoused this hateful, spiteful, um, rhetoric, but on the other hand, he has, in my opinion, acknowledged more problems than many other politicians do. Like, I would watch many Democratic politicians who would... I think sometimes the issue was the fact that they would tell people to focus on the sort of larger story as opposed to focus-- You know what I mean? They'd go like, "Remember, we are the richest nation in the world right now, and I know that it feels this, but remember that your, your kids are in a better position than they've ever been in." And it's like, yeah, but you're not listening to what the people are saying now, and that's sometimes the, the curse of, of the populist versus, you know, the pragmatic person maybe, is a populist goes, "Let me tell you what's wrong, and let me tell you how we're gonna spin this thing and fix it." Do you get what I'm saying? "It's all wrong, and I'm gonna fix all of your problems."
- EKEzra Klein
And I'll tell you who the villains are.
- TNTrevor Noah
And I'm gonna-
- EKEzra Klein
That's the key thing about the populists.
- TNTrevor Noah
That is a key thing. And so I wonder now, what, what do you make of the politicians who are coming out? Let, let's do New York. I mean, we're here in New York. Mamdani, it feels like he has tapped into, you know, the wh- whichever side of the force you see him on, he's tapped into a side of the force that is connected with people in a way that, that, that sort of establishment Democrats couldn't. You know, everyone thought, "Oh, Andrew Cuomo is in this race." It's Andrew Cuomo. He was a governor. He knows New York. It's his. And then Mamdani comes along, says things that some newspapers or some new outlets will write as like, "Oh, it's crazy. He wants to make all grocery stores run by the government." But people vote for that. What, what do you think-
- EKEzra Klein
Five grocery stores.
- TNTrevor Noah
No, I know.
- EKEzra Klein
[laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
But, but that's what I mean. It's funny, right? But even people I spoke to went like, "All," and I was like, "Where did you see all?" And they're like, "I just saw this. I, I heard this. I..." You know? But that aside, do you think that's the answer? Do you think that the Democratic Party now has to do a better job? Like, Trump promises all. What he delivers, he delivers, but he promis- You have to admit, he promises all. He goes, "No more, uh, illegal immigration. No more this, no more. Fully this, fully the, fully..."
- EKEzra Klein
Let me just-
- TNTrevor Noah
Do you think maybe the antidote is the opposite, or do you think it's a... What, where do you think we find this?
- EKEzra Klein
Well, there are, there are a couple, I think there are a couple levels to that, right?
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
So one thing, and again, communication mediums matter here. So one thing you were just saying about Trump, the Black jobs thing, Democrats, liberals hate it when you say that there's something fundamentally honest about Trump.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah. They do hate it.
- EKEzra Klein
Because he's constantly saying things that are untrue.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yes. But I, I-
- EKEzra Klein
But-
- TNTrevor Noah
This is what I always say to people. I go, if I may interject, I think maybe it's the wording we use. It's not honest. He's authentic.
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah. Whatever-
- TNTrevor Noah
And I think, but I think that's the thing, and I think-
- EKEzra Klein
The, the way I would describe it is that-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah
- EKEzra Klein
... the thing you feel with him is that when you ask him a question or you see him asked a question, he's telling you the thing that actually popped into his head.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
And one thing about the mediums we're in now, podcasting being a, a big one of these-
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm
- EKEzra Klein
... but Twitter actually really being another, is it can really sniff out when you're not doing that.
- 1:30:23 – 1:31:29
Populists vs. Pragmatists
- EKEzra Klein
you know, when he was asked about globalizing intifada and he didn't sort of... You, you could watch him not do the easy political thing.
- TNTrevor Noah
Right. Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
Whatever you thought about it.
- TNTrevor Noah
You watched him processing that information.
- EKEzra Klein
And he was just like, and he had his commitments, and he's gonna, and it created some news cycles, but he just sort of like, he knows what he thinks. Um, and in part he tapped into, I think this is very, very important, like, you know, I just wrote a book, Abundance, all about unaffordability.
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
And he tapped into unaffordability as the central dilemma in New York, and he had big policies that, like, on the one hand, you could say in a line, free daycare, free buses-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah
- EKEzra Klein
... government grocery stores, [laughs] freezer rent. But also they were like memetic containers for the whole of his worldview, right? The government exists to make the things you need available to you.
- TNTrevor Noah
The government exists to make the things that you need available to you.
- EKEzra Klein
Right.
- TNTrevor Noah
Right.
- EKEzra Klein
Like, every single one of those policies says the same thing.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah. Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
Right? We are here. To make living in New York affordable
- 1:31:29 – 1:32:23
Politics of Affordability in New York
- EKEzra Klein
for you
- TNTrevor Noah
Right
- EKEzra Klein
Either because we're giving it to you-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah
- EKEzra Klein
... because we're not letting people raise the prices on you. You can argue about-
- TNTrevor Noah
We are custodians of your life in many ways
- EKEzra Klein
Right. You can argue about-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah
- EKEzra Klein
... whether or not those policies are good, but, but they are, they are potent. And then, yeah, he's able to... Like, Andrew Cuomo had all the money, um, and no message, and no authenticity to, like, the media of the moment when he was on. Like, I don't know. You, you felt, you always felt with Cuomo, I always feel with Cuomo, that he's, like, running to save something. He was, like, running for his own redemption.
- TNTrevor Noah
Hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
And Mamdani, again, say what you will about him, I think it's crazy that Schumer and Jeffries have not... Like, I just think it's insane. But, um-
- TNTrevor Noah
That they haven't endorsed him
- EKEzra Klein
... that they haven't endorsed him. [laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah. What, what do you, before you move on, what do you think that says about the Democratic Party, though?
- EKEzra Klein
Nothing good. It says that they're cowards.
- 1:32:23 – 1:34:51
Why Democrats Look Afraid
- EKEzra Klein
That's the thing it says, and the thing people can smell from it.
- TNTrevor Noah
What, what are they cowards about?
- EKEzra Klein
So we were talking a minute ago about, like, why do so many politicians not say the thing on their mind?
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
Um, you can feel it. I mean, you've interviewed a lot of politicians.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah. Yeah, of course.
- EKEzra Klein
You can feel the algorithm running.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
And it's because they're afraid, right? They think things, but they've been trained over long periods of time to be afraid. And Schumer and, um, Jeffries are for different reasons, this is my read of the situation, not, I haven't talked to them about it, um, they're afraid of parts of Mamdani. Either they're afraid of him becoming the face of the Democratic Party and them not being able to defend things that he says. But if he's gonna become the Democratic cand- I mean, he is a Democratic candidate for mayor of New York, and he's probably gonna win, so they can't get out of that. They, I've heard that Jeffries is worried about Mamdani sort of setting off a wave of primary challenges of Democrats.
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
I'm not 100% sure I understand that issue. Like, Mamdani was just running in a primary as an elected Democrat. It wasn't a weird, he wasn't, like, knocking off an incumbent. [laughs] Also, frankly, the Democratic primary could probably use some of its incumbents knocked off. I think there's probably a lot of coalitional problems for them around Mamdani.
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
Um, you know, Israel is just, like, an issue that splits the Democratic Party in very, in increasingly difficult for them ways.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
But I don't know the true answer. But the thing you feel from it is just fear. They're just afraid of him. They, they don't, they d- Like, on some level, I would respect it more if they came out against him, right?
- TNTrevor Noah
Oh, that's fascinating.
- EKEzra Klein
Like, I don't agree with it-
- TNTrevor Noah
But it would show some gumption
- EKEzra Klein
But, like, if you don't think-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah, yeah, yeah
- EKEzra Klein
... he's a good candidate for mayor, say so.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
Tell people to vote for Andrew Cuomo if that's what you believe.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
But this, like, what, what is this?
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah, it's, it's the, it's the passive nothingness that sort of, I think that's what turns people off, the voters. Do you know what I mean?
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah, I agree. They-
- TNTrevor Noah
I, I, I think it's-
- EKEzra Klein
It's like a meta-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah
- 1:34:51 – 1:36:00
The Secret of Trump’s Strength
- EKEzra Klein
politicians would have absolutely shrunk before.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
And he didn't. And it wasn't that you had to like the thing he said, but it was a, like a object level proof that he would say the thing he believed, and he would stand strong behind it.
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
And so the thing, one of Trump's greatest assets is the perception that he creates of his own strength and fortitude, even if you don't like him.
- TNTrevor Noah
Well, it means it, it shows that he stands for something.
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
Shows. Whether he does or doesn't is a, is a separate thing.
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
But it makes people go, "Oh" ... And I, I've seen people say this all over the world, funny enough. I remember when I w- first time I spoke to people in the Middle East about Trump when I was traveling through Qatar, um, the Arab Emirates, I was shocked at how differently they saw Trump there to how, you know, like, people were here, like, Muslim ban and blah, blah, and the, the Middle East hates. And when you went there and people were like, "No," a lot of people were like, "No, actually, we like what he stands for. And look, we don't agree with him, but at least he's honest and he's" ... It's people prefer somebody who they don't like for certain reasons, but they know where they stand. They, there's a trust that comes with that-
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah
- TNTrevor Noah
... in a weird way. I trust who you will be. But I'd, I'd love to know, because you, you, you brought up so many
- 1:36:00 – 1:47:09
Ezra on Israel, Gaza & Genocide
- TNTrevor Noah
things there. There's like, you, you know, you spoke about the government providing, and I want to talk a little bit about that, obviously, with your book, Abundance, and you talk about the Israel thing. You put out, in my opinion, like, one of the best pieces, and I, I, I'm sad that it's not coming from leaders, you know, Israel, Palestine. You're dealing with this issue that, I mean, has been going on longer than a lifetime for many people. And you put out a podcast that was, it was difficult, it was nuanced, it was long, it was complicated. And I was sitting there and I was thinking to myself, I was like, man, I, I would love to know, like, what you went through and what you thought of to make that episode of the podcast.
- EKEzra Klein
Which, which episode are we talking about?
- TNTrevor Noah
Talk, talking about, um, it starts off where you're talking about, like, October 7th, and you have the expert who's talking about genocide and its definition.
- EKEzra Klein
The genocide episode recently, yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah, the genocide episode.
- EKEzra Klein
Philip Sands, yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
And, and I was thinking to myself, I was like, man, I thought about you as a person, you know, and I was like, okay, Ezra Klein, you'll correct me if I'm wrong anyway, grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family.
- EKEzra Klein
No, not Orthodox.
- TNTrevor Noah
Not Orthodox.
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah, Reform.
- TNTrevor Noah
Okay, Reform, sorry. So Reform Jewish family. You, you, you grew up in this world where, you know, like many Jewish people, you, you, you have this, this world where you're straddling. You know, it's like you're white until you're not, and there's this thing, and you, you know? All my Jewish friends will tell me that as well. They're like, "Oh, yeah, people will say we're white until they stop."
- EKEzra Klein
I remember this year, uh, it was in junior high that, uh, it got, um, [laughs] it became something to be like you got kiked out of something.
- TNTrevor Noah
Damn.
- EKEzra Klein
Like, that just, like, happened for a year, you know?
- TNTrevor Noah
That just became a saying?
- EKEzra Klein
Of just saying, you know, is Dude, like I just, I just, I remember it really clearly
- TNTrevor Noah
That is wild. But that's, that's, that's what like literally every single Jewish friend in my life has told me that. They go, "'Cause I, I would grab, I'll be like, "You're white." And they'll be like, "Listen, I don't think I'm white."
- EKEzra Klein
I, I, I do think I'm white, but you-
- TNTrevor Noah
No, no, but I'm saying that-
- EKEzra Klein
You do feel sometimes-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah
- EKEzra Klein
... that there's a, a, you know, Jews always like to say antisemitism is, antisemitism is a light sleeper. But, um, but anyway, go. Go on.
- TNTrevor Noah
And then, and then, you know, y- I look at the opinion pieces you've written, the work you've done grappling around, you know, what's happening now with Israel's invasion of and occupation of Gaza, et cetera. And then I, I watched this podcast and I went, on the one hand, I was, I was extremely grateful 'cause I went, "Damn, you- you've really tackled and grappled with something extremely difficult, and you brought people on, and there, there's this nuance, and it's, it's, it's, it's not easy because everybody comes to it with a preconceived notion of where they wish to stand or how they feel their opinion makes the issue seem or not seem." Do you know what I mean? And there's a, there's a part in the video, I think it's right in the beginning actually, you play a clip of Joe Biden talking about October 7th, and him saying, "This is a certain amount of 9/11s, you know, because of the population of Israel." And then you say the death toll in Gaza would be, I think, 2,500 9/11s. And I went, "Damn, man." I'm watching all of this and I'm going, first of all, how, how are we at the place where this is sort of the forum where it's being handled? And, like, the leaders aren't the ones... Do you know what I mean? Presidents aren't providing context for this. It doesn't feel like the, the leaders of the world are shape-- It's, it's happening on podcasts. It's happening in, on TikTok. It's happening on ... And I, I, I, I would just love you to walk me through, like, that experience for you as, like, as you're grappling with something that big. You're occupying the space of a human. You're occ- occupying the space of an o- an opinion journalist. But you're also occupying the space of an informer. Like, what, what, what's going through your mind when you're creating that episode?
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah. There is a tension between my work and my personhood in this, and I try to let one inform the other. Um, let me try to not be too abstract about it, although I do find this, like, you know, how, um, open I wanna go about it always tricky. I am, like, horrified. Uh, I was in-- We were talking about Tokyo. I was in Tokyo on October 7th. Um, I was taking a week off of my book leave, and I just arrived, and I just knew by the end of that day that my book leave was over. Like, this was the worst attack on Jewish people, right? It was genuine savagery and butchery. And you could also sense what was gonna come after. It was gonna reshape everything. And if you're Jewish or you know Israel well, um, one thing it's worth knowing about Jewish people is when someone says, "We're gonna kill all of you," Jewish people believe them.
- TNTrevor Noah
Hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
Like, that's the thing ingrained. Israel is a very strange place. It's a place that has a very profound sense of its vulnerability and its weakness, um, and has also become incredibly strong, and it has never resolved that tension. And Hamas [laughs] understood that about Israel. It executed-- It didn't think it was going to destroy Israel in this attack, right? It's people on mopeds and paragliders and-- But it wanted to create a massive reaction that either would bring in other regional players or, um, trigger such an unfathomably violent response from Israel that the world would begin to see Israel the way Palestinians see Israel. And in that, they succeeded. And people can argue about at what point this was true, um, at what point we moved from the kind of response that any country would have done, um, after an attack like that. Although I put out, the first piece I did back was a piece saying, 'cause they had not invaded Gaza yet, like, "Don't do this. Do counter-terrorism operations. Try to destroy the leadership of Hamas, but, but they obviously want you to reinvade and occupy and create a horrendous death toll. Like, do not give Hamas what it wants." Israel did what it did. Um, and it-- I mean, at some point, and again, people can debate when exactly this was, like, this moved into something indefensible. The level of truly unfathomable devastation of Gaza, the death toll, the induced starvation, and constantly tweaking the dial where it's just above the line-
- TNTrevor Noah
Hmm
- EKEzra Klein
... until a couple weeks ago, where the international community would be like, where the headlines would become something Israel couldn't bear. But they've kept the Gazans in a state of hunger. They've used food as a weapon of war. At the same time, the acceleration of settlement building in the West Bank, acceleration of violence in the West Bank. Um, like, the first and current reality is, like, Israel's not under real threat any longer. This is just punishment of people, right? Punishment of the Palestinians. And, you know, Judaism has been defined in many ways in its historical A trajectory. Like when I grew up in my, you know, reform synagogue, it's like both things were there. The lessons of having been driven from place to place, made a refugee over and over and over again. I think of, um, Spencer Ackerman, who's a national security journalist, but an old friend who was on my show early in all this. And I, I always think of him saying, "I cannot think of a less Jewish thing than to make another human being into a refugee."
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm.
- EKEzra Klein
Like that line has stayed with me. Um, you know, it's a religion of strangers, right? You shall remember what it was like to be a stranger in the land of Egypt. And so on the one hand you have that sort of lesson, the diaspora. Um, everywhere Jews go that they have been able to thrive, it has to be a place of equal rights for minorities. Um, and then you have the, you know, creation of Israel, which also at the same time is like, it's understood as the shelter, it's understood as, you know, the last place Jews can be. And because of that, it creates this other, this other strain of Judaism, which is a strain of strength, right? We need dominance. We need full control. We need, and understandably need, security. And you know, I remember being [chuckles] in my own synagogue growing up, and I was in like, you know, as a teenager after your bar mitzvah. I don't think confirmation class is usually a thing for Jewish people, but it was somehow in my synagogue. I remember my rabbi saying that, um, that Israel, the Israeli Jews would be in the right to expel all Palestinians from the land.
- 1:47:09 – 1:52:47
When Journalism Gets Personal
- EKEzra Klein
not the YouTube comments or the, uh, you know, the Instagram reels about how I'm bad or, you know, you can find plenty of stuff about how I'm bad, and there are ways in which I'm bad [laughs] .
- TNTrevor Noah
[laughs]
- EKEzra Klein
Um, but when I'm, when I'm doing something like the episode with Philippe Sands about the question of genocide, the hard thing for me on that one isn't will people be mad at me. People are going to be mad at me. The hard thing is, how do you create something that enough people who I want to reach can hear it?
- TNTrevor Noah
Hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
I'm not a local advertising monopoly. I don't need to reach everybody who buys shoes. But I am trying to create a space that allows more than one kind of person into it. And I have a big audience in Israel also, um, for on this particular show at least. I want to create spaces both partially that can persuade, but also in which people do their own thinking. I think a thing about podcasting and long conversations as a medium compared to, say, an opinion piece-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah
- EKEzra Klein
... like in an essay. When I write an essay, when I write a piece, I am trying to persuade you of my ideas. When I do interviews, which are most of what I put out, I'm trying to create a space in which you can think.
- TNTrevor Noah
Hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
And there are provocations in that space. There are insights, there's context, there's history. There's probably ideas I have. There are ideas a person has, right? There's persuasive elements to it.
- TNTrevor Noah
Right.
- EKEzra Klein
But it's fundamentally meant to be generative. Uh, the most common, like angry feedback I get is actually just that people want me to really clearly do the final piece of thinking in one direction or another for them.
- TNTrevor Noah
Hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
You know, throw the final punch in an argument or, you know, stop exploring this. Just like say what, you know?
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
And there's value to that. Certainly can be, and there are times when I do. Um, but also I think that one thing, um, that's worth doing in the work is creating spaces where people can think. Um, and podcasts are just, I think, particularly good for that. So I guess I am pulled towards certain topics myself, and I try to follow that pull. Like that's my framework for how to do my own news.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah. Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
And that's a advantage I have. I don't have to, like the organizing principle of The Ezra Klein Show is that- Ezra Klein did the shows [laughs] . And so I try to make that pretty honest to what I'm thinking about. Um, but I don't have to, um ... Like being a little bit uncertain is also like part of the project. Like it's also how I apprehend the world.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah, I think it's in short supply in the whole world.
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah. So anyway, and I'm not sure that answered the question, but-
- TNTrevor Noah
No, I, I think, I think it did
- EKEzra Klein
... I don't, I don't, I don't go into it thinking like, "What will people think of me?"
- TNTrevor Noah
Right.
- EKEzra Klein
I go into it thinking like, "What am I thinking? What would help me think more?"
- TNTrevor Noah
I like, I like that. No, I, I just thought of it because I, you know, obviously in, in doing the research before chatting to you today, I was going through everything. Even your, your book Abundance, you know, I, I found myself intrigued by how a lot of the criticisms of your book seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time going after you you, but not the idea idea. You with me?
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
So I, I love arguing ideas. All my friends will tell you that's all I want to do. I just go like, "Let's say something and let's argue." But what I'm trying to do in all of it is, is to, you know, to borrow your language, to be generative. I want to come out of the argument thinking a little bit differently and sharpening or honing an idea that I held, and even having the space to implant something that somebody else has given me. I want to walk away going, "Oh, man, that's new. That's beautiful. I didn't think of that," or, "Now I think differently."
- EKEzra Klein
Mm.
- TNTrevor Noah
Those things I think, you know, that, that makes me feel like my brain is fertile. Something is happening to it. But I always think in a good relationship, you're not making it about the person. You know what I mean? It's, I always go like, "You're not the idiot. That's stupid." And I, I mean it genuinely.
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
Go like, "Oh, that's a dumb idea." But you're not dumb. Uh, you're my friend. I, I would hope you're not dumb. I, I don't think you're dumb. But when, when I was, when I was looking at the book, I was going like, man, people are like coming at you a lot for it. And then when I was trying to weave it all together and how I see the world, I was going, is that sort of what's become the problem? And has it, is it more prevalent on the Democratic side of politics, or is it not on liberal? Like, I would love to argue with you on just the idea. Does that make sense?
- 1:52:47 – 2:06:27
Ezra’s Book Abundance Explained
- EKEzra Klein
or New York or Massachusetts, you know, or at times like the Biden administration or the Obama administration, how are these places or these times, like how are you getting these terrible housing scarcities?
- TNTrevor Noah
Right.
- EKEzra Klein
Why aren't we building enough clean energy? How come this money that is earmarked to create a nationwide network of EV chargers, of electric vehicle chargers-
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm
- EKEzra Klein
... like have you used that network lately?
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
Where, where did it go?
- TNTrevor Noah
Where's the high-speed rail?
- EKEzra Klein
Right. Where's the high-speed rail?
- TNTrevor Noah
Right.
- EKEzra Klein
And, you know, eventually through exploring this and with my, and my co-author on it, Derek Thompson, it, one thing I, I, I solely came to believe is like, oh, we're in many ways failing at governing, and in particular, we're failing to create enough of the things people need in the world.
- TNTrevor Noah
Right.
- EKEzra Klein
That we have created scarcities, and we've done this often through well-meaning rules and regulations. We do it through, you know, hampering government and making it hard for government to act and, and trapping government itself in procedure. We often just don't pay attention to the physical world. We think a lot about how to move money around, but we don't think about what needs to get built.
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
Um, can we build transmission lines to move all this clean energy we're supposedly gonna create, we're also having trouble with that part, from one place to another? And so it's really, I mean, to me, it's a very, you know, liberal or more than that, um, project, where if you want to have a Green New Deal government, you can't do it with these rules, this government. If you want to create Medicare for All, you're gonna have to radically expand the supply of healthcare available to people, doctors, nurses, hospitals. Um, when the government says they're gonna build you high-speed rail, you should fucking be able to ride that high-speed rail within 20 years. The Big Dig, the Second Avenue subway. And that if we liberals want to say to people, like, "Don't fall for the bullshit of these strong men, trust us," well then, we need to be pretty honest about how we failed and why, why our government didn't deliver for you. So much so that places like California, New York and, you know, Massachusetts, et cetera, Illinois, are losing working class families. They're leaving because they become unaffordable. And we need to fix that. Um, and so then, so that's sort of the book, and it's an exploration of that.
- TNTrevor Noah
Right. Right.
- EKEzra Klein
And um, and, and a vision. It's, there's also a lot about technology and, uh-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah, and this-
- EKEzra Klein
And I'm trying to sort of point liberalism towards a, not just a philosophy, but a, an, like the operational capacity to create abundance. Zoran Milandoni, who's, uh, been interested in the book and has talked about abundance on the campaign trail, like knows you need to think about it, because if you want to freeze the rent, you're also gonna need to build a ton of new housing. If you want to make buses free, then you need to be able to put enough buses into play to deal with the ridership increase. If you want to build a lot of public housing, which he does, you can't do it under the current rules. Like New York has not built public housing at that speed in generations.
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
Um, and at the cost it often, uh, at how much it often costs to build public housing in these jurisdictions, you have places like DC where it can often cost like more than a million dollars to build a single unit of affordable housing. Like you can't afford to build affordable housing-
- TNTrevor Noah
Right
- EKEzra Klein
... if under the government's rules it costs a million dollars to build it, and building the market rate housing next door costs $350,000 a unit.
- TNTrevor Noah
Right.
- EKEzra Klein
Like that's a world in which the government cannot deliver. Right? So you need to make a government capable of delivering. Abundance creates understandable friction on the left side of the party because it's often about how we fail, and about how our friends and our commitments have become parts of that failure. And there are a lot of people who want to say, "The Democratic Party should just be about the problem of billionaires and corporate power."
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
And, like, everything we say should be about underlining that core message. This is an oligarchy. The problems are billionaires and corporate power. And there are ways in which this is an oligarchy, and there are times when the problem is corporate power and billionaires. That's not why Texas builds a lot of housing and California doesn't. It's not why we can't build transmission lines. And so Abundance, which I think has a more liberal view of power, which is that power can be ill-used wherever it collects. Bureaucracies can be, can become ossified-
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm
- EKEzra Klein
... and hide-bound. Unions can be great or they can be a problem.
- TNTrevor Noah
Right.
- 2:06:27 – 2:11:08
The Real Obstacles: Corporations vs. Rules
- EKEzra Klein
and it's about being goal-oriented.
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm.
- EKEzra Klein
Where corporations are a problem, great. Like, that's what we're here to do. We're here to solve problems. But if you keep saying you're gonna solve problems and you keep failing, then saying the same thing louder, which is what the Democratic Party has often done, is not gonna be enough. And being able to see problems that are inconvenient for your coalition to see, like, that becomes really, really important.
- TNTrevor Noah
Hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
And I think it's part of how Democrats have to win trust back with people. Like, yes, attack corporate power. Corporate power is a problem. But you know what? Every fucking person who lives in this country has a story about how the government has failed them.
- TNTrevor Noah
Hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
And having credibility with them is partially about saying, "Yeah, we know," and, like, "We know we were part of that. And the reason you should trust us next time when you're not happy about how it went last time is because we have learned something."
- TNTrevor Noah
It's because you're able to acknowledge the problem. Yeah. If you can't acknowledge that you made the mistake, how can we trust that you can fix it-
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah
- TNTrevor Noah
... essentially if, 'cause you were part of that? Ju- just to take, take a step back, I, I was thinking of, like, you know, sort of going through the thread through all of our stories, like what we choose to focus on and how we focus on it in journalism, in, in politics, you know, with, with abundance, even looking at a problem. I'm always intrigued by, like, which problem we choose to fix first and how we fix it. Uh, the housing thing you said is, is particularly interesting to me because I'm not an economist, uh, but I, and I try and, but I try my best to understand how economics works and, and why it affects the way we live.
- EKEzra Klein
Me too. [laughs]
- TNTrevor Noah
You know? I try my best. And one of the things that intrigued me is depending on when you look at the timelines, the red state success story isn't necessarily as successful as you think it is because it's just a newer story, right? So Texas is a good example. If you look at the blue states, you know, or the major cities, let's call them major cities rather, 'cause I, I think that's, to be honest with you, I think that's, and this is my opinion I think this is what has hurt a lot of the rhetoric in America, is that people call it blue states, red states. The blue states have done this, the red states have done this. Then somebody's first inclination is to say, "No, screw blue. Screw red. I don't want red solution. I don't want blue solution." When I look at it from an economics point of view, I go major cities and secondary cities or rural areas. That's how I think of it. Forget the politics altogether.
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
Generally speaking, major cities will attract more people. They will generally provide more jobs. That's why they're major, or that's why they become major. Prices then go up. Affordability then goes down, and then you start a sprawl that spreads out. Then there's an event that moves people from one place to the next. It can be a gold rush or it can be a gold flee. In our case, I think COVID moved quite a lot of people in, in a, in a far more rapid way than we thought. But the reason I bring up timescales is because I go, Washington, DC, I think per capita, you will correct me if I'm wrong, internet, put liar, um, Washington, DC, I think per capita has built more houses than Texas has, and that's, that's blue run, blue everything. But, and this is, like, on a per capita basis. And if you look at the cost of living in Texas now, the cost of actually owning a house, it's no longer the, like, housing utopia that it was, like, a few years ago because now everyone's rushed in, and it, it like it feels like basic economics. And so I wonder when we're looking at these problems and when, when you're thinking about them, do you think we sometimes get bogged down on where to start, or do you think, like, y- y- because sometimes I, like, I think everyone is guilty of this, maybe even myself included, is we'll go, "Yeah, but that's not the problem. Oh, but that's not the problem. Yeah, but that's not the problem, but that's not the real problem." And it's like, okay, well, let's start with the problem. Do you, do you get what I'm saying? Like-
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah. I just don't think the story you're telling is right.
- TNTrevor Noah
You don't think the storytelling is right?
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah. Um-
- TNTrevor Noah
What element of it?
- EKEzra Klein
The, the core element of it. [laughs] See, look at these cities, right?
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
And you can track housing creation-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah
- EKEzra Klein
... in different cities. Austin had a big influx of people-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah
- EKEzra Klein
... in the past decade or two. What happened? Look at housing creation.
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
It spikes.
- TNTrevor Noah
Right. Right, right.
- EKEzra Klein
They build a ton of new housing.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yes.
- 2:11:08 – 2:17:41
Housing Fatalism vs. Building Abundance
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah
- EKEzra Klein
... in SF. It's not... Look, I lived in San Francisco. I lived in Los Angeles.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
I can tell you that there is no technical inability to build an apartment complex in San Francisco.
- TNTrevor Noah
Do you think it's the NIMBYs?
- EKEzra Klein
It's the NIMBYs, it's the rules, it's, it's a lot of different things.
- TNTrevor Noah
But what I'm, what I'm asking, the deeper question I'm asking you in that question is, do you think that there are many people in the Democratic Party, let's call it, or, you know, who will say the things, going back to what I was saying, climate change, but they don't actually want it. So they'll say, "We want more housing and we want to fix it," but then they don't want it in their back-- They don't want affordable housing in their backyard.
- EKEzra Klein
Well, there's that, and there's-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah
- EKEzra Klein
... um, the coalition-building is, is hard. But, but I want to stay on the thing you said because-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah, yeah, yeah
- EKEzra Klein
... I think, because I do wanna, like, push this back. You can go look at, for instance, other countries, like a place like Shenzhen in China-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah
- EKEzra Klein
... or Tokyo, which has an amazing housing market because it builds incredibly vertically.
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
And so despite being one of the i- one of the densest cities in the world, it's an affordable city, and it's because they build housing. How to build housing is a solved problem. Like, the-
- TNTrevor Noah
Who's, who's the they? Just so we can-
- EKEzra Klein
Tokyo?
- TNTrevor Noah
No, no. Yeah. No, I mean this honestly. Who's the they?
- EKEzra Klein
They have rules, um, in which developers can build homes, and developers work off of the rules to build the homes. I mean, unless you're doing public or social housing-
- TNTrevor Noah
Right
- EKEzra Klein
... most housing is, you know, uh, is, is privately created. San Jose, right? The, the Silicon Valley.
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
You drive around Silicon Valley, it has become one of the richest areas in the entire world.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
It's like strip malls and suburbs because we do not allow, we, California, Silicon Valley, we built rules to make it impossible that as all this wealth flooded there-
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm
- EKEzra Klein
... you couldn't build up. And so the people who do the work for those people, right, who cut their hair and run their restaurants, they commute hours every day, and their kids don't get to grow up there and take advantage of that great community that they help build.
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
I, I just, I really wanna push this because I think it is a kind of fatalism. The idea that we cannot build apartment buildings when more people move to a place-
- 2:17:41 – 2:19:17
Why the Left Must Demand Competence
- TNTrevor Noah
But maybe that's sort of what we're touching on in all of these worlds. We look at your world with journalism. There's one part of the media that is acknowledging its existence in the story that it's telling. There's another part that isn't. It's going like, "No, we're gonna keep printing newspapers, and we're never gonna go online, and we're never gonna have an AI, AI trend in our models, and we're never, we're never, we're never, we're never, never. The way it is is good enough." And then you look at the world of politics and politicians going, "I'm actually not gonna think about my answer. I'm not gonna tell you my truth. I'm not going to make you uncomfortable. I'm not gonna stand ... Because the way it is is good enough." And then I think when we move into the economics of it all in the world, it's, it sort of sounds like the same theme as you're going. It's like there's people who go, "The way it is is good enough." Do you get what I'm saying?
- EKEzra Klein
Mm-hmm.
- TNTrevor Noah
But I actually think that's why the Mamdanis and, and his cohorts in different parts of America, I think that's why I think they are doing well, is because whether people agree with them or not, people are saying they are coming forward with that promise. They are-
- EKEzra Klein
Oh, yeah
- TNTrevor Noah
... they are pushing the idea that the government must do more.
- EKEzra Klein
But here's the thing, um, and this is gonna be the challenge for Mamdani.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah?
- EKEzra Klein
It's a challenge for everybody. It's the cycle of American politics is exciting leaders rise up, particularly newcomers-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah
- EKEzra Klein
... promising amazing things.
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
And then they deliver 10 or 15% of it-
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm
- EKEzra Klein
... and create a cycle of disappointment. That's, in a way, like, what led to a lot
- 2:19:17 – 2:22:42
The Cycle of Political Disappointment
- EKEzra Klein
of people moving from Barack Obama's, like, the greatest thing ever-
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah
- EKEzra Klein
... to incrementalist. I mean, and he actually did a lot, like the Affordable Care Act did, you know, does deliver insurance to 20-some million people. You know, whether it's Mamdani, or it's Mikey Sherrill, the, who will likely be the next governor of New Jersey, or, you know, Abigail Spanberger in Virginia, or it's, um, like anybody running-
- TNTrevor Noah
Baltimore
- EKEzra Klein
... yeah, DeMar any, Westmore in Baltimore. The campaign is the easy part. It's delivering that's the hard part. And so yes, like it's really exciting, Mamdani's campaign.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
All these people are exciting. Like, people, good politicians should be exciting in campaign mode.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah.
- EKEzra Klein
What I want in abundance is to make it possible for them to deliver. The different ones will want to deliver different things, but I don't want this endless cycle of disappointment. The hard part is not making the promise.
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
The hard part is building the high-speed rail, is delivering the housing, is making the buses free, is, you know, creating free daycare.
- TNTrevor Noah
Right, right, right. Yeah, I'm with you.
- EKEzra Klein
So I don't think we can say like, "Hey, look, people are getting ex-" Like, they always get excited. It's exciting to have a new person say, "All these other fucking people have failed. Not me. I'm different than them. I'm gonna give you all the things you want." But then they typically don't. And some of that is that, you know, the world is hard and it's complicated and there are trade-offs. And then sometimes you look around and you're like, "Yeah, if we did things differently, maybe we could give you 50%, not 10%."
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
60%. But that's gonna require us to take a different approach. That's sort of the abundance argument. And by the way, it's why, you know, like, actual politicians on the left are thinking about how to deliver, like Mamdani are talking about abundance on the campaign trail. Why Obama, who had a bunch of things he wanted to deliver and wasn't able to, is talking about abundance. People who, Gavin Newsom, who, like, a lot of abundance is a critique of California. I went on his podcast, he's like, "I love abundance. I've given it to the heads of the, um, legislature." Like, people have to grapple with this stuff. They're the, like, they are really in the teeth of it, and it's hard to change, right? If it were easy, they would all have done it. But that's also why I think it's important to create a political force that wants to see a change, and that will, like, back them up if they actually try. Like, what I wanna see from Mamdani is that he creates a New York City government capable of doing the things he promises, right? That's the hope. Like, he wants to build, I think his promise is 200,000, um, public housing units. I wanna see him succeed at that.
- TNTrevor Noah
Mm-hmm.
- EKEzra Klein
That's gonna require changing a lot about how government works. And if you're gonna have more private building on top of that, changing even more about how government works. That's the question. Like, delivery, not campaign promising.
- TNTrevor Noah
And you see in that inspiring and optimistic, despite what you say about yourself, conclusion, I actually rest my case. [laughs] Because if you remember at the beginning of this conversation, I said, "You are in the room where it happens." You said, "You are not." And you said, "There is no room." And then a few moments ago you said to me that you wrote a book, and Obama has told people to read the book. Mamdani, who is the front runner in the Democratic race here in New York, uh, he has pushed the book.
- 2:22:42 – 2:24:25
The Case for Trying
- TNTrevor Noah
Uh, multiple other leftist mayors and leaders around the country are pushing the book. And I go, "If that's not being in the room where it happens, uh, I don't know what is."
- EKEzra Klein
Abundance: The Book Where It Happens.
- TNTrevor Noah
Uh, I don't know, my friend. Thanks, thanks for taking the time.
- EKEzra Klein
Thank you.
- TNTrevor Noah
Thank you.
- EKEzra Klein
I really enjoyed it.
- TNTrevor Noah
Thank you for your thoughtfulness. Thank you for your candor. Thank you for, thank you for trying, more than anything. You know what I mean? I think, I think that's, that's sort of like the underlying thread that I feel, and this, this is something I think we will always grapple with in politics, in debate, in conversation, is we have become a society that punishes people more for trying and failing than rewarding them for trying in the first place. And I think, like, that's the first step. Do, do you get what I'm saying?
- EKEzra Klein
Yeah.
- TNTrevor Noah
I genuinely do. I go like, "Oh man, thanks for trying, and thanks..." Because if you don't try, you end up in a world where every politician goes, "Don't try, just, just keep quiet. Just..." And then every now and again, you need someone who steps up and goes, "Oh yeah." You know what I mean?
- EKEzra Klein
The case for trying.
- TNTrevor Noah
Yeah, man.
- EKEzra Klein
I like it.
- TNTrevor Noah
The case for trying. So thank you very much.
- EKEzra Klein
Thank you.
- TNTrevor Noah
I appreciate it. Thanks for coming on. [upbeat music] Thank you so much for watching the episode. If you enjoyed it, pass it on to a friend. If you didn't enjoy it, pass it on to your friend still. Let them suffer for a change. And don't forget to engage with us in the comments. Uh, if you wanna, uh, suggest a guest, maybe there's questions you want, maybe there's ideas that you have, you can chat to us. We will read through the comments and we'll get into it. Either way, I appreciate you taking the time. Thank you for hanging out with us on What Now? And remember, we do this for you, so we would like to hear from you. Till next time. Thank you. [upbeat music]
Episode duration: 2:24:30
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