Is Your Social Life Missing Something? This Is For You.

Is Your Social Life Missing Something? This Is For You.

My motivation for this episode is personal. One of my resolutions this year is to spend more time hosting and to make those gatherings more meaningful.

I think a lot of us wish we had better social lives and a stronger feeling of community around us. But it’s hard. We’re busy, we’re tired, and social planning and hosting can feel like just more work. So I asked Priya Parker on the show to help.

Parker is the author of “The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters” and a wonderful Substack, Group Life. She’s also a conflict resolution facilitator. And she just thinks about gathering and hosting in a different way from anyone else I’ve ever met. For her, it’s about more than just throwing a great dinner party; it’s about how we build community across differences, all the way up to how gathering can help create a better politics. The way Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign thought about community and built community among its volunteers was partly based on her work and advice.

This episode is a bit of a break from politics — but also not. Because pulling the people we love closer and spending more time together rather than alone are as essential as any political or civic discipline could be right now.

This conversation contains strong language.

Mentioned:

In Defense of Politics by Bernard Crick

I And Thou by Martin Buber

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai

Adorable Little Detonators” by Allison P. Davis

The Accused” by Katie J.M. Baker

The Black Thought Project” by Alicia Walters

Zohran’s Smile” by Anand Giridharadas

Book Recommendations:

The Politics of Ritual by Molly Farneth

On Repentance and Repair by Danya Ruttenberg

BoyMom by Ruth Whippman

Talk to Your Boys by Christopher Pepper and Joanna Schroeder

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.

You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris with Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin, Emma Kehlbeck, Jack McCordick, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.


Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Episoder(481)

A Conservative on How His Party Has Changed Since 2016

A Conservative on How His Party Has Changed Since 2016

The 2024 Republican presidential primary is officially underway, and Donald Trump is dominating the field. But this is a very different contest than it was in 2016. Back then, the Republican Party was...

8 Aug 202356min

How Martin Wolf Understands This Global Economic Moment

How Martin Wolf Understands This Global Economic Moment

The world economy has experienced many shocks over the past few years: A pandemic. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Skyrocketing inflation. These are the stories that have dominated headlines — and for g...

1 Aug 20231h 29min

Biden, Psychedelics, Twitter, My New Book — and So Much More

Biden, Psychedelics, Twitter, My New Book — and So Much More

As I head into a three-month book leave, I wanted to take some time to address a wide array of listeners’ questions. My column editor, Aaron Retica, joins me for a conversation that ranges from the co...

25 Jul 20231h 15min

Barbara Kingsolver Thinks Urban Liberals Have It All Wrong on Appalachia

Barbara Kingsolver Thinks Urban Liberals Have It All Wrong on Appalachia

When Barbara Kingsolver set out to write her latest novel, “Demon Copperhead,” she was already considered one of the most accomplished writers of our time. She had won awards including the Women’s Pri...

21 Jul 20231h 1min

What We Learned From the Deepest Look at Homelessness in Decades

What We Learned From the Deepest Look at Homelessness in Decades

California has around half of the nation’s unsheltered homeless population. The state’s homelessness crisis has become a talking point for Republicans and a warning sign for Democrats in blue cities a...

18 Jul 20231h 2min

What Tom Hanks Thinks of America

What Tom Hanks Thinks of America

There are few actors as widely beloved as Tom Hanks. Hanks has acted in over 75 films in his 46-year career, winning the best actor Academy Award two years in a row, for “Philadelphia” and “Forrest Gu...

14 Jul 202351min

A.I. Could Solve Some of Humanity’s Hardest Problems. It Already Has.

A.I. Could Solve Some of Humanity’s Hardest Problems. It Already Has.

Since the release of ChatGPT, huge amounts of attention and funding have been directed toward chatbots. These A.I. systems are trained on copious amounts of human-generated data and designed to predic...

11 Jul 20231h 28min

This Taught Me a Lot About How Decarbonization Is Really Going

This Taught Me a Lot About How Decarbonization Is Really Going

The Inflation Reduction Act was the largest piece of climate legislation ever passed in the United States, setting aside hundreds of billions of dollars for decarbonizing the economy. But the money wa...

7 Jul 20231h 29min

Populært innen Politikk og nyheter

giver-og-gjengen-vg
aftenpodden
i-retten
stopp-verden
forklart
aftenpodden-usa
nokon-ma-ga
popradet
det-store-bildet
dine-penger-pengeradet
fotballpodden-2
aftenbla-bla
rss-ness
rss-gukild-johaug
hanna-de-heldige
rss-dannet-uten-piano
frokostshowet-pa-p5
e24-podden
rss-penger-polser-og-politikk
grasoner-den-nye-kalde-krigen