Best Of: Ruth Ozeki’s Enchanted Relationship to Minds and Possessions

For years, Agnes Callard has been on a mission to take ethical philosophy out of the ivory tower. She examines everyday human experiences — jockeying for status, navigating jealousy, marriage — with dazzling detail, publishing regularly in mainstream publications. And she tries to live by her philosophy, too, even if it violates social conventions, as many discovered when The New Yorker published a provocative profile of Callard last year. We recorded this conversation in May 2021, before the New Yorker article drew attention to the details of her home life. (She lives with both her husband and her ex-husband.) But after our episode with Rhaina Cohen about imagining relationships more expansively, we thought it would be interesting to revisit Callard, who has spent so much time dissecting the dynamics and ethics of different relationships and their possibilities.Mentioned:“Who Wants to Play the Status Game?” by Agnes Callard, The Point“Against Advice,” by Agnes Callard, The Point“The Other Woman,” by Agnes Callard, The Point“Parenting and Panic,” by Agnes Callard, The Point"Aspiration" by Agnes CallardBook Recommendations:"Tolstoy: A Russian Life" by Rosamund Bartlett"Pessoa: A Biography" by Richard Zenith"Augustine of Hippo" by Peter Brown“Real Death” by Mount EerieThoughts? 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. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin. 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.

13 Feb 20241h 22min

“If only we had a partner for peace.”That’s been the refrain in the Israel-Palestinian conflict for as long as I’ve followed it. But the truth is you don’t need just a partner — you need two partners able to deliver at the same time.So you could see it as a tragedy of history that Salam Fayyad joined the Palestinian Authority in 2002, at the height of the second intifada, just as Israeli society shifted hard to the right.A Western-educated economist, Fayyad is a technocrat at heart. And as the Palestinian Authority’s finance minister, and then as prime minister, he dedicated himself to the spadework of state-building. His theory was that instead of waiting around for the peace process to deliver Palestinian statehood, he would just build a state — institutions, infrastructure, security, sewers and all — and then statehood would follow.And by many measures, he was remarkably successful. The economy boomed, crime plummeted, and in 2011 the United Nations declared the authority ready to run an independent state. But in April 2013, Fayyad resigned. And today, the Palestinian Authority in tatters, widely seen by Palestinians as corrupt and a failure.Fayyad is now a visiting senior scholar at Princeton. And I wanted to have him on the show to talk about his time building a Palestinian state. What did he learn working with the various factions — including Hamas — in Palestinian politics? What did he learn working with Israel? How did we still end up here? And what, given all he’s seen and done, does he think should happen now?Mentioned:Into the Breach: Salam Fayyad and Palestine“A Plan for Peace in Gaza” by Salam FayyadBook Recommendations:Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James A. RobinsonThe Arabs by Eugene RoganOn The Trails of Mariam by Nadia HarhashThoughts? 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 Rollin Hu. Fact checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld with additional mixing from Efim Shapiro. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero. 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.

9 Feb 20241h 5min

Around 40 percent of people who marry eventually get a divorce. Almost half of children are born to unmarried women. The number of close friends Americans report having has been on a steep decline since the 1990s, especially among men. Millions of us are growing old alone. We are living out a radical experiment in how we live, love, parent and age — and for many, it’s failing.That’s partial context, I think, for the recent burst of interest and media coverage of polyamory. People want more love in their lives, and opening their relationships is one way to find it. A poll from last year found that one-third of Americans believe their ideal relationship would involve something other than strict monogamy.But polyamory, for all its possibilities, isn’t right for many, and it doesn’t have that much to say about parenting or aging or friendship. As radical as it may sound, it’s not nearly radical enough. It’s not just romance that could be imagined more expansively. It’s everything.“If this is such a significant relationship in my life, why is there no term for it?” wonders NPR’s Rhaina Cohen about a relationship that transcends the language we have available for friendship. Her forthcoming book, “The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life With Friendship at the Center,” is a window into a world of relational possibilities most of us never even imagined existed. It’s a call to open up what we can conceive of as possible. Some of these models might appeal to you. Others might not. But they all pose a question worth asking: What kinds of relationships would you want in your life, if you felt you could ask for them?Mentioned:“Men’s Social Circles are Shrinking” by Daniel A. CoxThe Two-Parent Privilege by Melissa S. KearneyHow Should a Person Be? by Sheila HetiBook Recommendations:Far From the Tree by Andrew SolomonWe All Want Impossible Things by Catherine NewmanThy Neighbor’s Wife by Gay TaleseThoughts? 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 X @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 Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld with additional mixing from Efim Shapiro. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Michelle Harris, Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero. 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.

6 Feb 202459min

Political analysts used to say that the Democratic Party was riding a demographic wave that would lead to an era of dominance. But that “coalition of the ascendant” never quite jelled. The party did benefit from a rise in nonwhite voters and college-educated professionals, but it has also shed voters without a college degree. All this has made the Democrats’ political math a lot more precarious. And it also poses a kind of spiritual problem for Democrats who see themselves as the party of the working class.Ruy Teixeira is one of the loudest voices calling on the Democratic Party to focus on winning these voters back. He’s a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the politics editor of the newsletter The Liberal Patriot. His 2002 book, “The Emerging Democratic Majority,” written with John B. Judis, was seen as prophetic after Barack Obama won in 2008 with the coalition he’d predicted. But he also warned in that book that Democrats needed to stop hemorrhaging white working-class voters for this majority to hold. And now Teixeira and Judis have a new book, “Where Have All the Democrats Gone?: The Soul of the Party in the Age of Extremes.”In this conversation, I talk to Teixeira about how he defines the working class; the economic, social and cultural forces that he thinks have driven these voters from the Democratic Party; whether Joe Biden’s industrial and pro-worker policies could win some of these voters back, or if economic policies could reverse this trend at all; and how to think through the trade-offs of pursuing bold progressive policies that could push working-class voters even further away.Mentioned:“‘Compensate the Losers?’ Economic Policy and Partisan Realignment in the U.S.”Book Recommendations:Political Cleavages and Social Inequalities, edited by Amory Gethin, Clara Martínez-Toledano, and Thomas PikettyVisions of Inequality by Branko MilanovicThe House of Government by Yuri SlezkineThoughts? 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 Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero. 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.

1 Feb 20241h 9min

If you’re a Democrat, how worried should you be right now? It’s strangely hard to answer that question. On the one hand, polls suggest Democrats should be very worried. President Biden looks weaker than he did as a candidate in 2020, and in matchups with Donald Trump, the election looks like a coin flip. On the other hand, Democrats staved off an expected red wave in the 2022 midterm elections. Biden has a strong record to run on, and Trump has a lot more baggage than he did in 2020.So, in an effort to put all those pieces together, I had two conversations with two people who have polar opposite perspectives — starting with a more optimistic take for Democrats.Simon Rosenberg is a longtime Democratic political strategist, the author of the newsletter Hopium Chronicles and one of the few people who correctly predicted the Democrats’ strong performance in 2022. He argues that the Democratic Party is in a better position now than it has been for generations. In this conversation, we talk about why he isn’t worried about Biden’s polling numbers, how anti-MAGA sentiments have become a motivating force for many voters, what he thinks about the shifts in working-class support of the Democratic Party, why there’s such a huge gap between Biden’s economic track record and how voters perceive the economy right now, how Biden’s age is affecting the campaign, whether his foreign policy might alienate young voters and more.Mentioned:Columnist Assistant applicationBook Recommendations:A New Deal for the World by Elizabeth BorgwardtOn Tyranny by Timothy SnyderThe Collector by Daniel SilvaThoughts? 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 Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero. 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.

25 Jan 20241h 8min

It’s been just over 100 days since Hamas’s attack on Israel, and the costs of the war are staggering. In polling from late fall, 64 percent of Gazans reported that a family member had been killed or injured. Nearly two million Gazans — almost the entire population — have been displaced from their homes, and analysis of satellite imagery reveals that about half the buildings in the Gaza Strip have probably been destroyed or damaged.Israel believes that more than 100 hostages are being held captive in Gaza, and polling reveals that Hamas has gained popularity among Palestinians while support for Israel has plummeted around the world. When this war ends, will Israel really be safer? Who will govern Gaza? What will be left of Gaza?Thomas L. Friedman is a New York Times Opinion columnist and the author of “From Beirut to Jerusalem,” among other books. He has covered the Middle East for decades and won a Pulitzer for his reporting from Israel. And so I wanted to ask him: What does he think of where Israel is now, and what does he imagine comes next?Mentioned:Columnist Assistant applicationThomas L. Friedman’s recent columns“‘Joe Biden May Be the Last Pro-Israel Democratic’” by Thomas L. FriedmanBook Recommendations:The Little Drummer Girl by John Le CarréThe Splendid and the Vile by Erik LarsonI’m Your Man by Sylvie SimmonsThoughts? 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 Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Efim Shapiro. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero. 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.

19 Jan 20241h 8min

The fact that Donald Trump is the front-runner for the G.O.P. nomination in 2024 has created a chasm in our politics. In the past, Democrats and Republicans at least understood why members of the other party liked their chosen candidates. Most conservatives weren’t confused why liberals liked Barack Obama, and vice versa for George W. Bush. But for a lot of Democrats, it feels impossible to imagine why anyone would cast a vote for Trump. And as a result, the two parties don’t just feel hostile toward each other; they feel increasingly unknowable.Kristen Soltis Anderson is a veteran Republican pollster, a founding partner of the opinion research firm Echelon Insights and a CNN contributor. She spends her days trying to understand the thinking of Republican voters, including hosting focus groups for New York Times Opinion. So I wanted to get her insights on why Republicans like Trump so much — even after his 2020 electoral loss, the Jan. 6 insurrection and over 90 criminal charges. What really explains Trump’s enduring appeal?Mentioned:Researcher applicationAssociate engineer applicationGallup's Presidential Job Approval CenterBook Recommendations:Subtract by Leidy KlotzParty of the People by Patrick RuffiniWelcome to the O.C. by Josh Schwartz, Stephanie Savage and Alan SepinwallThoughts? 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 Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin and Rollin Hu. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer 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.

16 Jan 202448min

There’s this incredible dissonance at the center of our politics right now. On the one hand, all the polling suggests that Donald Trump is about to win Iowa Republican caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. He seems overwhelmingly likely to be his party’s nominee, and so possibly our next president. On the other hand, he could be constitutionally disqualified from taking office.Colorado and Maine concluded as much, and tossed him off their ballots. And now the Supreme Court is poised to take on this unprecedented question of whether a little-known provision of the Constitution, written in the aftermath of the Civil War, can bar Trump from running and scramble the election in 2024.The Times Opinion columnist David French has been on the show before, as both a guest and a guest host, to break down the criminal cases against Trump. This time, I’ve asked David back to make his case for why Trump is constitutionally disqualified. We discuss some of the biggest objections, what the Supreme Court is likely to do, and how the possible options risk destabilizing the country in different ways.Mentioned:Researcher applicationAssociate engineer application“The Sweep and Force of Section Three” by William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen“The Case for Disqualifying Trump Is Strong” by David French“Snakebit” by Nick CatoggioBook Recommendations:Operation Pedestal by Max HastingsInto the Heart of Romans by N. T. WrightManhunt by James L. SwansonThoughts? 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 Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Efim Shapiro. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer 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.

12 Jan 20241h 2min