The Ezra Klein Show

The Ezra Klein Show

New York Times Opinion

The Ezra Klein Show

Government Society & Culture News English

Ezra Klein invites you into a conversation on something that matters. How do we address climate change if the political system fails to act? Has the logic of markets infiltrated too many aspects of our lives? What is the future of the Republican Party? What do psychedelics teach us about consciousness? What does sci-fi understand about our present that we miss? Can our food system be just to humans and animals alike?

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Best Of: Margaret Atwood on American Myths and Authoritarianism

Best Of: Margaret Atwood on American Myths and Authoritarianism

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...

How a Red-District Democrat Is Navigating Trump

How a Red-District Democrat Is Navigating Trump

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...

Trump vs. the Dollar

Trump vs. the Dollar

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...

Abundance and the Left

Abundance and the Left

“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...

Ross Douthat on Trump, Mysticism and Psychedelics

Ross Douthat on Trump, Mysticism and Psychedelics

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 —...

The Very American Roots of Trumpism

The Very American Roots of Trumpism

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...

The Emergency Is Here

The Emergency Is Here

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,...

Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong

Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong

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...

Trump’s Tariffs, Market Panic and What Comes Next

Trump’s Tariffs, Market Panic and What Comes Next

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...

Paul Krugman on the ‘Biggest Trade Shock in History’

Paul Krugman on the ‘Biggest Trade Shock in History’

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...