Episodes
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Steve Bannon famously talked about using “muzzle velocity” as a strategy: doing so much so quickly that you overwhelm the ability of the media to cover it. I think what the Trump family is doing with crypto is muzzle velocity for corruption.
What they’re doing isn’t necessarily illegal. It would be if these were official campaign donations; the sums involved are so large, and the buyers include foreign nationals. But the Trump family is making this money personally. And they’re doing it across so many different crypto ventures, it’s almost impossible to keep track.
So that’s what I wanted to do with this episode: try to track at least some of it.
The person I’ve enlisted to help me out is Zeke Faux. He’s the author of the fantastic book “Number Go Up: Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Staggering Fall” and an investigative reporter at Bloomberg, where he’s been covering many of these strange Trump family crypto schemes.
This episode contains strong language.
Mentioned:
“Trump Crypto Venture Has Talked to Binance About Doing Business” by Zeke Faux
Book Recommendations:
A Distant Mirror by Barbara W. Tuchman
Nixonland by Rick Perlstein
Gretel and the Great War by Adam Sachs
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].
You can find the transcript 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.html
This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. 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, Elias Isquith, Marina King, Jan Kobal, Kristin Lin and Jack McCordick. 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. And special thanks to Richard Painter.
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.
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Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” is the cruelest and most irresponsible piece of domestic legislation to be seriously proposed in my lifetime.
When you think about this bill, you should think about risk. It would increase our risk of a fiscal crisis by adding a hefty sum to our nation’s debt, at a time when we’re alienating the countries that typically buy our debt. It would slash food stamps and strip health insurance from millions of people, increasing the risk that the safety net won’t be able to catch any of us, at a time when President Trump’s tariffs have increased the risk of a recession.
It’s what I’m calling the Big Budget Bomb. And if it passes, we’ll all be in the blast radius.
My guest today is Catherine Rampell. She’s an opinion columnist at The Washington Post and an anchor on MSNBC. She’s been covering this closely, so I asked her to come on the show to help talk through all the different risks this bill brings.
Editor’s note: This episode was recorded before the House passed Trump’s domestic policy package.
Mentioned:
“Arkansas’s Medicaid experiment has proved disastrous” by Catherine Rampell
“The Time Tax” by Annie Lowrey
“Barbara Kingsolver Thinks Urban Liberals Have It All Wrong on Appalachia” by The Ezra Klein Show
Book Recommendations:
Our Dollar, Your Problem by Ken Rogoff
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
Shy by Mary Rodgers and Jesse Green
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].
You can find the transcript 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.html
This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Mixing by Isaac Jones and Aman Sahota. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Elias Isquith, Marina King, Jan Kobal, Kristin Lin and Jack McCordick. 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. Special thanks to Tyson Brody.
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.
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Missing episodes?
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This episode is about a seemingly simple question: Was there a Joe Biden cover-up?
Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s new book argues there was. “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again” details how Biden’s top advisers closed the circle around him and tried to conceal the extent of his decline.
But I think the story here is more complicated. If Biden’s top advisers were misleading the public, I think they were also lying to themselves. And if there was a cover-up, it had a lot of holes; voters had been telling pollsters they were worried about Biden’s age for years.
So I wanted to have Tapper on the show to talk about the discoveries in his book, but also about some of the bigger questions raised by the Democratic Party’s decision to almost renominate Biden: How do you see what is right in front of your eyes? How do you avoid letting loyalty to a person or a party blind you?
This episode contains strong language.
Mentioned:
“Democrats Have a Better Option Than Biden” by Ezra Klein
“Behind Closed Doors, Biden Shows Signs of Slipping” by Annie Linskey and Siobhan Hughes
Book Recommendations:
Lorne by Susan Morrison
Hitler’s People by Richard Evans
The Holy Roller by Andy Samberg, Joe Trohman and Rick Remender
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].
You can find the transcript 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.html
This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Elias Isquith. Fact-checking by Kelsey Kudak. 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, Annie Galvin, Michelle Harris, Rollin Hu, Marina King, Jan Kobal, Kristin Lin and Jack McCordick. 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.
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.
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Is Donald Trump eroding American democracy and consolidating power for himself? Or is he trying to do that and failing? Is this what sliding toward authoritarianism looks like? Or is this what a functioning democracy looks like? And how can you tell the difference?
Two articles came out recently that offer very different perspectives on these questions. In Vox, Zack Beauchamp wrote a piece called “Trump Is Losing,” which argues that Trump’s efforts to cow his enemies and consolidate power are not organized or strategic enough to make a serious dent in our democratic system. In The New Yorker, Andrew Marantz published a piece that he reported in Hungary, about how life in a modern authoritarian regime doesn’t look and feel like you might expect: “You can live through the big one, it turns out, and still go on acting as if — still go on feeling as if — the big one is not yet here,” he writes.
So I invited both Beauchamp and Marantz on the show to debate these big questions: What timeline are we on? What signs are they looking at? If we’ve crossed the line into authoritarianism, how would we know? Is Trump losing? Or is it possible he’s already won?
This episode contains strong language.
Mentioned:
How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt
“The Path to American Authoritarianism” by Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way
“How Will We Know When We Have Lost Our Democracy?” by Steven LevitskyLucan Way and Daniel Ziblatt
“Don’t Believe Him” by Ezra Klein
“The Emergency Is Here” by Ezra Klein
Democracy May Not Exist But We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone by Astra Taylor
Recommendations
Political Liberalism by John Rawls
Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt
A World After Liberalism by Matthew Rose
Melting Point by Rachel Cockerell
I’m Still Here (film)
The Constitutional Bind by Aziz Rana
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].
You can find the transcript 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.html
This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu and Jack McCordick. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. 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, Annie Galvin, Elias Isquith, Marina King, Jan Kobal and Kristin Lin. 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.
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.
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I honestly don’t know how I should be educating my kids. A.I. has raised a lot of questions for schools. Teachers have had to adapt to the most ingenious cheating technology ever devised. But for me, the deeper question is: What should schools be teaching at all? A.I. is going to make the future look very different. How do you prepare kids for a world you can’t predict?
And if we can offload more and more tasks to generative A.I., what’s left for the human mind to do?
Rebecca Winthrop is the director of the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution. She is also an author, with Jenny Anderson, of “The Disengaged Teen: Helping Kids Learn Better, Feel Better, and Live Better.” We discuss how A.I. is transforming what it means to work and be educated, and how our use of A.I. could revive — or undermine — American schools.
Mentioned:
Brookings Global Task Force on AI Education
Winthrop’s World of Education
Book Recommendations:
Democracy and Education by John Dewey
Unwired by Gaia Bernstein
Blueprint for Revolution by Srdja Popovic
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].
You can find the transcript 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.html
This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. 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, Elias Isquith, Marina King, Jan Kobal, Kristin Lin and Jack McCordick. 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. Special thanks to Alexander Gil Fuentes and Switch and Board Podcast Studio.
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.
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A good rule of thumb is that whatever Margaret Atwood is worried about now, the rest of us will likely be worried about a decade from now. The rise of authoritarianism. A backlash against women’s social progress. Climate change leading to social unrest. Advertising permeating more and more of our lives.
We originally released this episode back in March 2022. But just like Atwood’s work, it somehow only got more relevant with time.
Atwood is the author of at least 17 novels, including the classic “The Handmaid’s Tale,” as well as 20 books of poetry and nine collections of short fiction. When we spoke, she’d just published an essay collection, “Burning Questions.” And she has a new book coming out this fall, “Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts.”
Mentioned:
Art & Energy by Barry Lord
Book recommendations:
War by Margaret MacMillan
Biased by Jennifer L. Eberhardt
Secrets of the Sprakkar by Eliza Reid
Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White
Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find the transcript 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.html
This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Special thanks to Kristina Samulewski, Coral Ann Howells and Brooks Bouson. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Rollin Hu, Elias Isquith, Marina King, Jan Kobal, Kristin Lin, Jack McCordick and Aman Sahota. 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.
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.
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Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez is one of just 13 Democrats to represent a district that Donald Trump won. Her distinctive economic message, and a willingness to buck her own party, helped her win re-election. But now the reality of the Trump era is coming home.
Gluesenkamp Perez faced raucous crowds at town halls in Washington State recently, with some of her more liberal constituents furious that she isn’t opposing the administration more forcefully. At the same time, the White House has started making economic arguments that sound very similar to ones that she’s made – that we should consume less, produce more and import less stuff from abroad.
So I wanted to talk to her about how she’s navigating this moment. What does she think of Trump’s economic agenda? What reactions is she seeing across her district? How does a Democrat now represent both terrified liberals and loyal Trump voters?
This episode contains strong language.
Book Recommendations:
The Wheelwright’s Shop by George Sturt
Experiences in Visual Thinking by Robert H. McKim
Children’s poetry anthologies from Jack Prelutsky
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].
You can find the transcript 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.html
This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Jack McCordick. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with 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, Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu, Elias Isquith, Marina King, Jan Kobal and Kristin Lin. 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. Special thanks to Switch and Board Podcast Studio.
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.
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The U.S. dollar is the lingua franca of the global financial system. The fact that so much of the world relies on our currency has long been understood as our exorbitant privilege — the reason we have so much leverage in the global economy and are able to borrow at lower interest rates.
But the Trump administration has a much more complicated relationship with the dollar. It has come to see dollar dominance as a burden we bear on behalf of the rest of the world. But in its attempts to move away from dollar dominance, is the Trump administration on the verge of creating a financial crisis?
Kenneth Rogoff is a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund and a professor of economics at Harvard University. He has a book coming out called “Our Dollar, Your Problem.” In this conversation he walks through the history of dollar dominance, why it’s been waning in recent years and what ripple effects the Trump administration’s policies might have.
This episode contains strong language.
Book Recommendations:
Muppets in Moscow by Natasha Lance Rogoff
The Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis
Benjamin Franklin by Walter Isaacson
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].
You can find the transcript 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.html
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 Aman Sahota. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Elias Isquith, Marina King, Jan Kobal, Kristin Lin and Jack McCordick. 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.
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.
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“Abundance,” the book I co-wrote with Derek Thompson, hit bookstore shelves a little over a month ago, and the response has been beyond anything I could have imagined. And it’s generated a lot of interesting critiques, too, especially from the left. So I wanted to dedicate an episode to talking through some of them.
My guests today are both on the left but have very different perspectives. Zephyr Teachout is a law professor at Fordham University and one of the most prominent voices in the antimonopoly movement. Saikat Chakrabarti is the president and co-founder of New Consensus, a think tank that has been trying to think through what it would take to build at Green New Deal scale and pace. And he is currently running to unseat Nancy Pelosi in Congress.
I found this conversation wonderfully clarifying — both in the places it revealed agreement, and perhaps even more in the places it revealed difference.
Mentioned:
“How the Gentry Won: Property Law’s Embrace of Stasis” by David Schleicher and Roderick M. Hills, Jr.
“The High Cost of Producing Multifamily Housing in California” by Jason M. Ward and Luke Schlake
Zephyr’s Book Recommendations:
The Promise of Politics by Hannah Arendt
The Populist Moment by Lawrence Goodwyn
Listen, Liberal by Thomas Frank
Saikat’s Book Recommendations:
Destructive Creation by Mark R. Wilson
Bad Samaritans by Ha-Joon Chang
The Defining Moment by Jonathan Alter
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].
You can find the transcript 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.html
This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu and Jack McCordick. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota and Isaac Jones. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Elias Isquith, Marina King, Jan Kobal and Kristin Lin. 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.
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.
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I have no earthly idea how to describe this conversation. It’s about religion and belief – at this moment in our politics, and in our lives more generally.
My guest and I come from very different perspectives. Ross Douthat is a Catholic conservative, who wrote a book called “Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious.” I’m a … Californian. But I think everyone would enjoy this conversation — believers, skeptics and seekers alike.
Some questions touched on: Is the Trump administration Christian or pagan? How do Christian Trump supporters reconcile the cruelties of this administration with their faith? Can religious experiences be explained by misfiring neurons? Should organized religions embrace psychedelics? Can mystery provide more comfort than certainty?
And if you do enjoy this episode, be sure to check out Douthat’s new New York Times Opinion Audio show “Interesting Times,” available wherever you get your podcasts, and on YouTube.
Mentioned:
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
“Donald Trump, Man of Destiny” by Ross Douthat
Living with a Wild God by Barbara Ehrenreich
Book Recommendations:
Modern Physics and Ancient Faith by Stephen Barr
After by Bruce Greyson
Mind and Cosmos by Thomas Nagel
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].
You can find the transcript 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.html
This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Elias Isquith. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Mixing by Isaac Jones, with Aman Sahota and Efim Shapiro. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu, Marina King, Jan Kobal, Kristin Lin and Jack McCordick. 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.
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.
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After last week’s episode, “The Emergency Is Here,” we got a lot of emails. And the most common reply was: You really think we’ll have midterm elections in 2026? Isn’t that naïve?
I think we will have midterms. But one reason I think so many people are skeptical of that is they’re working with comparisons to other places: Mussolini’s Italy, Putin’s Russia, Pinochet’s Chile.
But we don’t need to look abroad for parallels; it has happened here.
Steven Hahn is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian at New York University and the author of “Illiberal America: A History.” In this conversation, he walks me through some of the most illiberal periods in American history: Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act of 1830, Jim Crow, the Red Scare, Japanese American internment, Operation Wetback. And we discuss how this legacy can help us better understand what’s happening right now.
This episode contains strong language.
Book Recommendations:
Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville
From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime by Elizabeth Hinton
Troubled Memory by Lawrence N. Powell
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].
You can find the transcript 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.html
This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Jack McCordick, Annie Galvin and Elias Isquith. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota and Isaac Jones. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Rollin Hu, Marina King, Jan Kobal and Kristin Lin. 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.
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.
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The president of the United States is disappearing people to a Salvadoran prison for terrorists: a prison built for disappearance, a prison where there is no education or remediation or recreation, a prison where the only way out, according to El Salvador’s justice minister, is in a coffin.
The president says he wants to send “homegrown” Americans there next.
This is the emergency. Like it or not, it’s here.
Asha Rangappa is a former F.B.I. special agent and now an assistant dean and senior lecturer at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs, as well as a member of the board of editors for Just Security and the author of The Freedom Academy on Substack.
Mentioned:
“Abrego Garcia and MS-13: What Do We Know?” by Roger Parloff
Book Recommendations:
The Burning by Tim Madigan
Breaking Twitter by Ben Mezrich
Erasing History by Jason Stanley
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].
You can find the transcript 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.html
This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Elias Isquith. Fact-checking by Rollin Hu, Jack McCordick, Kristin Lin and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Isaac Jones and Aman Sahota. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, 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. And special thanks to Aaron Reichlin-Melnick.
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.
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My colleague Tom Friedman thinks we’re screwed.
That’s the first thing he told me when recounting his recent trip to China. It’s not just because of the trade war that President Trump is escalating right now. Friedman believes the whole Washington consensus on China — that the country is a hostile adversary — is dangerous and based on an outdated understanding of what China now is. He saw how China’s manufacturing and technology have advanced so far that in many ways it now surpasses the United States’.
In this conversation, Friedman walks me through the advancements he saw in some of the most critical fields of the coming decades — including A.I., E.V.s and clean energy. We discuss why he sees the current consensus as dangerous, what a different path might look like and what the United States should do to develop its domestic manufacturing so that we don’t “get steamrolled.”
This episode contains strong language.
Mentioned:
“I Just Saw the Future. It Was Not in America.” by Thomas L. Friedman
“China's overlapping tech-industrial ecosystems” by Kyle Chan
Genesis by Henry A. Kissinger, Eric Schmidt and Craig Mundie
Book Recommendations:
The works of Yuval Noah Harari
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].
You can find the transcript 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” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Isaac Jones, with Aman Sahota and Efim Shapiro. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Elias Isquith, Marina King, Jan Kobal, Kristin Lin and Jack McCordick. 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. And special thanks to Zoe Zongyuan Liu, Kyle Chan and Matt Sheehan.
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.
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After a week of market chaos, President Trump pulled back from the brink. But he didn’t pull that far back. He left a 10 percent tariff on most of the world and launched a trade war with China. It’s unclear what he will do after this 90-day pause or what countries need to do to satisfy him. But one thing that is very clear now is that our economy is subject to one man’s whims.
How are businesses supposed to adapt to this new reality? What is this new reality?
Peter R. Orszag is the chief executive and chairman of Lazard, one of the world’s largest asset management and global financial advisory firms. He also served as the director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Barack Obama, so was a policymaker during a financial crisis. And over the past few months, he’s been talking to lots of C.E.O.s and corporate board members as they try to process these changing policies. I wanted to ask him what he’s been hearing and how he sees the volatility of this moment.
Mentioned:
“A User’s Guide to Restructuring the Global Trading System” by Stephen Miran
“Paul Krugman on the ‘Biggest Trade Shock in History’” by The Ezra Klein Show
Trade Wars Are Class Wars by Matthew C. Klein and Michael Pettis
Book Recommendations:
Underground Empire by Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman
Chokepoints by Edward Fishman
Smart Money by Brunello Rosa and Casey Larsen
The Catalyst by Thomas R. Cech
Kaput by Wolfgang Münchau
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].
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” was produced by Jack McCordick. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Isaac Jones, with Aman Sahota and Efim Shapiro. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Rollin Hu, Elias Isquith, Marina King, Jan Kobal and Kristin Lin. 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. Special thanks to Matt Klein.
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.
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The tariffs President Trump unveiled this week were both bigger than most people expected and a lot more confusing. These aren’t the flat tariffs he proposed during the campaign. And they aren’t reciprocal tariffs, as he claimed in his Rose Garden speech. So what is Trump actually doing here?
I knew my former colleague Paul Krugman would have some thoughts. Krugman is a Nobel laureate trade economist who was a New York Times Opinion columnist for 25 years. He now writes an excellent newsletter on Substack, where he’s been trying to make sense of the theories behind Trump’s tariff policies and, now, their strange reality.
Mentioned:
“Stop Looking for Methods in the Madness” by Paul Krugman
Book Recommendations:
The Price of Peace by Zachary D. Carter
How Not to Invest by Barry Ritholtz
War and Power by Phillips Payson O’Brien
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].
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” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Mixing by Efim Shapiro and Aman Sahota. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Elias Isquith, Kristin Lin and Jack McCordick. 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.
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.
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There’s something of a policy revolution afoot: As of March, more than a dozen states — including California, Florida and Ohio — have passed bills or adopted policies that aim to limit cellphone usage at school. More are expected to follow.
Jonathan Haidt is the leader of this particular insurgency. “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness,” his book exploring the decline of the “play-based childhood” and the rise of the “phone-based childhood,” has been on the New York Times best-seller list for a year. It feels, to me, like we’re finally figuring out a reasonable approach to smartphones and social media and kids … just in time for that approach to be deranged by the question of A.I. and kids, which no one is really prepared for.
So I wanted to have Haidt on the show to talk through both of those topics, and the questions we often ignore beneath them: What is childhood for? What are parents for? What do human beings need in order to flourish? You know, the small stuff.
Haidt is a professor at New York University Stern School of Business and the author of “The Righteous Mind” and “The Coddling of the American Mind” (with Greg Lukianoff). His newsletter is called After Babel.
This episode contains strong language.
Mentioned:
“She Fell in Love With ChatGPT. Like, Actual Love. With Sex.” by The Daily
The Age of Addiction by David T. Courtwright
“Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?” By Jean Twenge
Stolen Focus by Johann Hari
Book Recommendations:
The Stoic Challenge by William B. Irvine
Deep Work by Cal Newport
How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].
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” was produced by Jack McCordick. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Isaac Jones, with Efim Shapiro and Aman Sahota. Our executive editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Michelle Harris, Rollin Hu, Elias Isquith and Kristin Lin. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.
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.
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It’s our first subscriber-only “Ask Me Anything” of the year. The show’s executive producer, Claire Gordon, joins me to discuss your questions about the risk of a constitutional crisis and how Democrats, businesses and universities are responding to President Trump.
Thank you to everyone who sent in questions. And if you aren’t a New York Times subscriber but would like to be, just go to https://www.nytimes.com/subscription.
This episode contains strong language.
Mentioned:
“A Democrat Who Is Thinking Differently” by The Ezra Klein Show with Jake Auchincloss
“Don't Believe Him” by Ezra Klein
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].
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” was produced by Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Mixing by Isaac Jones, with Efim Shapiro and Aman Sahota. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu, Elias Isquith and Jack McCordick. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.
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.
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The so-called Department of Government Efficiency is great branding. Who could be against a more efficient government? But “efficiency” obfuscates what’s really happening here.
Efficiency to what end? Elon Musk, President Trump and DOGE’s boosters have offered various objectives — cutting the deficit, eliminating fraud and abuse, creating a leaner and more responsive government. But DOGE’s actions in the past two months don’t seem to align with any of those goals.
Santi Ruiz is the senior editor at the Institute for Progress and the author and host of the “Statecraft” podcast and newsletter. He’s to my right politically and had higher hopes, at first, about DOGE’s efforts, but he’s now grappling with the reality of what it’s actually doing.
This episode contains strong language.
Mentioned:
“50 Thoughts on DOGE” by Santí Ruiz
“How to Defend Presidential Authority” by Santí Ruiz
“The Anti-D.E.I. Crusader Who Wants to Dismantle the Department of Education” by Ross Douthat
Book Recommendations:
Stalin’s War by Sean McMeekin
Back from the Brink by Peter Moskos
Power And Responsibility by Romano Guardini
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].
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” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris with Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Isaac Jones, with Efim Shapiro and Aman Sahota. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Elias Isquith, Kristin Lin and Jack McCordick. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Switch and Board Podcast Studio, Ryan Bourne, Rohan Grey, Don Moynihan, Quinn Slobodian and Jennifer Pahlka.
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.
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To mark the release of our new book “Abundance,” my co-author Derek Thompson had me on his podcast, “Plain English,” to talk about it. We’re on book tour right now, so we’re doing a lot of talking about this book. But this conversation is different. It’s just Derek and me, and we get into the story of how the book came together, and all the people and ideas that influenced us – a kind of intellectual history of the abundance agenda. And I thought the audience of this show might find this interesting too.
This episode of “Plain English” was recorded on March 11.
Mentioned:
“Abundance” by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson
“Abundance” book tour
“The Political Fight of the Century” by Derek Thompson
“The Economic Mistake the Left Is Finally Confronting” by Ezra Klein
This episode contains strong language.
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.
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After the last election, there were all kinds of theories about where Democrats went wrong. But now, four months later, we have a lot more data – and it tells a few clear stories.
David Shor is the head of data science at Blue Rose Research, a Democratic polling firm, which does an enormous amount of surveying of the electorate. A few weeks ago, Shor was walking me through a deck he made of key charts and numbers that explain the election results. And I thought this would be good to do in public. Because this is information that doesn’t just help explain what went wrong for Democrats in 2024. It’s a set of hard truths they need to keep in mind to mount a comeback in 2026 and 2028.
This episode is also a bit of an experiment. It works great in audio. But on YouTube, you can actually see the slides. So if you’re up for a video podcast, this is a good one to start with: https://www.youtube.com/@EzraKleinShow
This episode contains strong language.
Mentioned:
Blue Rose Research slide deck
"Donald Trump is the perfect 'moderate'" by Ezra Klein
Book Recommendations:
The Hollow Parties by Daniel Schlozman and Sam Rosenfeld
The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion by John R. Zaller
The Victory Lab by Sasha Issenberg
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].
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” was produced by Jack McCordick. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Mixing by Isaac Jones, with Efim Shapiro and Aman Sahota. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu, Elias Isquith and Kristin Lin. Original music by Pat McCusker and Aman Sahota. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.
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.
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