How Do We Face Loss With Dignity?
In his latest work, “The Last White Man,” the award-winning writer Mohsin Hamid imagines a world that is very like our own, with one major exception: On various days, white people wake up to discover that their skin is no longer white. It’s a heavy premise, but one of Hamid’s unique talents as a novelist is his ability to take on the most difficult of topics — racism, migration, loss — with a remarkably light touch.“How do you begin to have these conversations in a way that allows everybody a way in?” Hamid asks at one point in our conversation. “How do you talk about these things in a way that’s open to everyone?” What sets Hamid apart is his capacity to do just that — both in his fiction and in our conversation. We discuss:How Hamid experienced what it was like to lose his whiteness after 9/11What happens to a society when suddenly we can’t sort ourselves by raceThe origins of modern humans’ fear of death — and how to overcome itWhy Hamid thinks future humans will look back at the idea of borders with moral horrorWhy Hamid believes that pessimistic realism is a “deeply conservative” worldviewHamid’s process for imagining optimistic futuresWhy Hamid believes that the very notion of the self is a fictionWhy we turn to activities like sex, drugs and meditation when we get overwhelmedHow America’s policies toward immigrants and refugees should challenge our “heroic” sense of national identityWhat Toni Morrison taught Hamid about how to read and writeAnd more.Mentioned:"The Metamorphosis" by Franz KafkaExit West by Mohsin HamidBook Recommendations:Beloved by Toni MorrisonFicciones by Jorge Luis BorgesThe Epic of Gilgamesh, translated by Andrew GeorgeThoughts? 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.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Sonia Herrero and Isaac Jones; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
12 Aug 20221h 16min
Three Sentences That Could Change the World — and Your Life
Today’s show is built around three simple sentences: “Future people count. There could be a lot of them. And we can make their lives better.” Those sentences form the foundation of an ethical framework known as “longtermism.” They might sound obvious, but to take them seriously is a truly radical endeavor — one with the power to change the world and even your life.That second sentence is where things start to get wild. It’s possible that there could be tens of trillions of future people, that future people could outnumber current people by a ratio of something like a million to one. And if that’s the case, then suddenly most of the things we spend most of our time arguing about shrink in importance compared with the things that will affect humanity’s long-term future.William MacAskill is a professor of philosophy at Oxford University, the director of the Forethought Foundation for Global Priorities Research and the author of the forthcoming book, “What We Owe the Future,” which is the best distillation of the longtermist worldview I’ve read. So this is a conversation about what it means to take the moral weight of the future seriously and the way that everything — from our political priorities to career choices to definitions of heroism — changes when you do.We also cover the host of questions that longtermism raises: How should we weigh the concerns of future generations against those of living people? What are we doing today that future generations will view in the same way we look back on moral atrocities like slavery? Who are the “moral weirdos” of our time we should be paying more attention to? What are the areas we should focus on, the policies we should push, the careers we should choose if we want to guarantee a better future for our posterity?And much more.Mentioned:"Is A.I. the Problem? Or Are We?" by The Ezra Klein Show "How to Do The Most Good" by The Ezra Klein Show "This Conversation With Richard Powers Is a Gift" by The Ezra Klein ShowBook Recommendations:“Moral Capital” by Christopher Leslie Brown“The Precipice” by Toby Ord“The Scout Mindset” by Julia GalefThoughts? 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.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Sonia Herrero and Isaac Jones; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
9 Aug 20221h 8min
Gender Is Complicated for All of Us. Let’s Talk About It.
It’s hard to think of anything changing more quickly in our society right now than our understanding of gender. There’s an explosion of young people identifying as gender nonconforming in some way or another, and others are coming out as transgender or nonbinary throughout their lives, from childhood to old age. But this sea change has brought with it an enormous amount of confusion and resistance. As of July, lawmakers in 21 states had introduced bills that focus on restricting gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth, such as hormone blockers, and 29 states had introduced bills banning transgender youth from sports. But we also know that the degree of support a young person receives when coming out — or doesn’t — can have profound consequences for their mental health.How should we process and understand this moment in gender? Kathryn Bond Stockton is a distinguished professor of English focusing on gender studies at the University of Utah and the author of the book “Gender(s).” She is incredibly skilled at explaining the fundamentals — and complexities — of what gender means and how people, including Stockton herself, have wrestled with it. In this conversation, we discuss:Why and how Stockton has always felt out of place as a womanHow her entry to the evangelical church actually advanced her acceptance of her genderWhy gender is “queer” for all of us, regardless of how we identify or how much we think about itThe ways that we perform our genders without even knowing we’re doing itHow the choices parents make concerning things as seemingly banal as clothing and toys shape children’s gender identitiesHow an expanded sense of gender can bring pain as well as pleasure and playfulnessWhat Stockton has learned from discussions about gender roles with Mormon students in her Utah classroomsWhat we would gain — and possibly lose — if we were to loosen social categories of genderWhy Pride celebrations can be so utopianAnd much more.Mentioned:Detransition, Baby by Torrey PetersButch Queens Up in Pumps by Marlon M. BaileyBook Recommendations:Histories of the Transgender Child by Jules Gill-PetersonBrilliant Imperfection by Eli ClareAsegi Stories by Qwo-Li DriskillThoughts? 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.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Kate Sinclair; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Sonia Herrero and Isaac Jones; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin, Kristina Samulewski and Rollin Hu. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
5 Aug 20221h 15min
The Argument: Who Can Write About What?
Today we're bringing you an episode from our friends at The Argument, about cultural appropriation in creative work. In recent years, book written by white authors like “American Dirt” and “The Help" have been criticized for their portrayals of characters of color. Artists’ job is to imagine and create, but what do we do when they get it wrong?To discuss, Jane Coaston is joined by the Opinion writers Roxane Gay and Jay Caspian Kang. In their work, both have thought deeply about the thorny issues of writing across identities — including what makes work authentic, the pressure of representation for writers of color and the roles social media and the publishing industry play in literary criticism. “I don’t think it’s that complicated,” Roxane says. “It’s not that we divorce identity from the conversation. It’s that we treat it as inherent because we can’t separate out parts of ourselves.”Mentioned:“White Fever Dreams” by Roxane Gay in Gay Magazine“The Pity of the Elites” by Jay Caspian KangThoughts? 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.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Rollin Hu, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair; original music by Isaac Jones and Pat McCusker; mixing by Pat McCusker; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
2 Aug 202227min
Best Of: Ruth Ozeki’s Enchanted Relationship to Minds and Possessions
Today we're taking a short break and re-releasing one of our favorite episodes from 2022, a conversation with the novelist and Buddhist priest Ruth Ozeki. We'll be back with new episodes next week!The world has gotten louder, even when we’re alone. A day spent in isolation can still mean a day buffeted by the voices on social media and the news, on podcasts, in emails and text messages. Objects have also gotten louder: through the advertisements that follow us around the web, the endless scroll of merchandise available on internet shopping sites and in the plentiful aisles of superstores. What happens when you really start listening to all these voices? What happens when you can’t stop hearing them?Ruth Ozeki is a Zen Buddhist priest and the author of novels including “A Tale for the Time Being,” which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and “The Book of Form and Emptiness,” which I read over paternity leave and loved. “The Book of Form and Emptiness” is about Benny, a teenager who starts hearing objects speak to him right after his father’s death, and it’s about his mother, Annabelle, who can’t let go of anything she owns, and can’t seem to help her son or herself. And then it’s about so much more than that: mental illnesses and materialism and consumerism and creative inspiration and information overload and the power of stories and the role of libraries and unshared mental experiences and on and on. It’s a book thick with ideas but written with a deceptively light, gentle pen.Our conversation begins by exploring what it means to hear voices in our minds, and whether it’s really so rare. We talk about how Ozeki’s novels begin she hears a character speaking in her mind, how meditation can teach you to detach from own internal monologue, why Marie Kondo’s almost animist philosophy of tidying became so popular across the globe, whether objects want things, whether practicing Zen has helped her want less and, my personal favorite part, the dilemmas posed by an empty box with the words “empty box” written on it.Mentioned:The Great Shift by James L. KugelBook recommendations:When You Greet Me I Bow by Norman FischerThe Aleph and Other Stories by Jorge Luis BorgesVibrant Matter by Jane BennettThis episode contains a brief mention of suicidal ideation. If you are having thoughts of suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (TALK). A list of additional resources is available at SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources.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, 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 and Kristina Samulewski. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
29 Jul 202258min
The Mid-Century Media Theorists Who Saw What Was Coming
“At the very heart of democracy is a contradiction that cannot be resolved, one that has affected free societies from ancient Greece to contemporary America,” write Zac Gershberg and Sean Illing in their new book, “The Paradox of Democracy.” In order to live up to its name, democracy must be open to free communication and expression; yet that very feature opens democracies up to the forces of chaos, fragmentation and demagoguery that undermine them. Historically, this paradox becomes particularly profound during transitions between different communication technologies. “We see this time and again,” Gershberg and Illing write, “media continually evolve faster than politics, resulting in recurring patterns of democratic instability.”For that reason, Gershberg and Illing refer to media ecology — a field dedicated to studying the complex interplay between media, humans and their broader social environments — as “the master political science.” You can’t understand a society’s politics without understanding the mediums through which its people communicate. Radio and TV and Twitter and TikTok each profoundly shape the way we think, the qualities we look for in our politicians, the way we absorb news, the kind of political discourse we engage in and so much more.Illing’s career, in many ways, represents the intersection of these two worlds: He’s trained as a political theorist but eventually switched careers to become a journalist; he’s currently the interviews writer at Vox, where he hosts the podcast “Vox Conversations” and often writes about the nexus of media and politics. So I invited Illing on the show to talk about his new book alongside some of his other work. We discuss: Why mid-century media theorists like Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman are essential for understanding our current political momentHow the mediums through which we communicate — TV, social media, print news — shape us even more deeply than the content we absorb from themThe surprising dangers of “Sesame Street”Why Abraham Lincoln probably never would have won the presidency in the TV eraHow revolutions in media technology from the printing press to Facebook have destabilized political systemsHow Twitter reshapes the thinking of those who use itWhy Illing believes that democracy is fundamentally a “communicative culture” and not a set of rules and institutionsWhat Donald Trump understood about our media age that the media itself didn’tWhy Steve Bannon’s “flood the zone” media strategy has been so successfulWhether it’s possible to achieve a healthier version of political discourse given our current technologiesAnd much moreThis episode contains strong language.Mentioned:“‘Flood the zone with shit’: How misinformation overwhelmed our democracy” by Sean Illing“Quantifying partisan news diets in Web and TV audiences” by Daniel Muise, Homa Hosseinmardi, Baird Howland, Markus Mobius, David Rothschild and Duncan J. WattsBook Recommendations:Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil PostmanPublic Opinion by Walter LippmannMediated by Thomas de ZengotitaThoughts? 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.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Rollin Hu, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Sonia Herrero, Carole Sabouraud and Isaac Jones; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
26 Jul 20221h 2min
A Top Mental Health Expert on Where America Went Wrong
There’s a paradox that sits at the center of our mental health conversation in America. On the one hand, our treatments for mental illness have gotten better and better in recent decades. Psychopharmaceuticals have improved considerably; new, more effective methods of psychotherapy have been developed; and we’ve reached a better understanding of what kinds of social support are most helpful for those experiencing mental health crises.But at the same time, mental health outcomes have moved in exactly the wrong direction. In the United States, there is a death by suicide about every 11 minutes, and about half of those who die by that method have not received mental health care. Rates of anxiety, depression and eating disorders have skyrocketed among young people in recent years. From 2009 to 2015, rates of emergency room visits for self-harm more than doubled for girls ages 10 to 14.Thomas Insel understands the contours of this disconnect as well as anyone. A psychiatrist and researcher, he was the director of the National Institute of Mental Health for 13 years, and has served as a special adviser on mental health care to California’s governor, Gavin Newsom. But in his new book, “Healing: Our Path from Mental Illness to Mental Health,” he admits that even the herculean efforts made by the mental health community have fallen short. The book explores how badly we’re failing at mental health care, and how much more we could do with what we have already discovered, and what we already know. “Put simply, the mental health problem is medical,” he writes, “but the solutions are not just medical — they are social, environmental, and political.”In this conversation, we discuss why our current medical system is so inadequate at helping people with mental illnesses of all stripes, why psychiatric research and patient outcomes are so wildly out of step, the story of how the U.S. government systematically divested from mental health care in the 1980s, and the fragmented system of care that those decisions created. We also touch on why it’s so difficult to find the right therapist; which treatments we know work really well — and why we so often fail to implement them; why mental health is not just a medical problem, but also an economic and social one; what public policy can, and importantly can’t, do to solve our mental health crisis; the relationship between loneliness and mental illness; how the loosening of family and social ties is impacting our collective mental health and more.Mentions:“Wealth-Care Reform” by Ezra Klein“Together” by Vivek Murthy“Vivek Murthy on America’s Loneliness Epidemic” episode from Vox ConversationsBook Recommendations:Nobody’s Normal by Roy Richard GrinkerAmerican Psychosis by E. Fuller TorreyCrazy by Pete EarleyThoughts? 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.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair; mixing by Sonia Herrero, Carole Sabouraud and Isaac Jones; original music by Isaac Jones; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
22 Jul 20221h 11min
Why Housing Is So Expensive — Particularly in Blue States
America is experiencing a housing crisis — or, more accurately, multiple housing crises. A massive housing shortage in major cities has resulted in skyrocketing rents. Low- and middle-income individuals find themselves priced out of the places with the most opportunity. Homelessness is rampant in cities across the country. Developers often face the steepest obstacles to building in the places where new housing is needed most. And young people are increasingly viewing homeownership, once a vital part of the American dream, as hopelessly out of reach.These outcomes weren’t inevitable. Plenty of other countries supply their populations with high-quality housing at lower prices. And the solutions here are incredibly simple: Build more housing in places where it’s needed, build cheaper forms of housing, build housing alongside public transit, provide more housing vouchers. So why don’t we act on them?Jenny Schuetz is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author of the new book “Fixer Upper: How to Repair America’s Broken Housing Systems,” which is perhaps the best, clearest overview of America’s housing problems to date. We discuss why the states with the highest homelessness rates are all governed by Democrats, the roots of America’s homelessness crisis, why economists believe the U.S. gross domestic product could be over a third — a third! — higher today if American cities had built more housing, why it’s so hard to build housing where it’s needed most, the actual (and often misunderstood) causes of gentrification, why public housing has such a bad reputation in the U.S.; how progressives’ commitment to local democracy and community voice surprisingly lies at the heart of America’s housing crises, why homeownership is still the primary vehicle of wealth accumulation in America (and the toxic impact that has on our politics), what the U.S. can learn from the housing policies of countries like Germany and France, what it would take to build a better politics of housing and much more.Mentioned:“The Left-NIMBY canon” by Noah SmithThe Homevoter Hypothesis by William A. FischelThe Paradox of Democracy by Zac Gershberg and Sean IllingRecommendations:Crabgrass Frontier by Kenneth T. JacksonNeighborhood Defenders by Katherine Levine Einstein, David M. Glick and Maxwell PalmerMaid (Netflix series)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.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker, Kate Sinclair and Rollin Hu; mixing by Sonia Herrero and Isaac Jones; original music by Isaac Jones; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
19 Jul 20221h 16min
