Speaker 1: Pushkin. This is Talk Easy. I'm Sam Fergo, so welcome
Speaker 1: to the show today. I am joined by New York
Speaker 1: Times journalist As Reclined. He's the author of the New
Speaker 1: York Times bestseller Why We're Polarized. He's also the host
Speaker 1: of his own podcast, The As Reclined Show, which you
Speaker 1: can find on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify, or wherever you
Speaker 1: are listen listening to this right now. Before we get
Speaker 1: into that conversation, I want to mention a few things here.
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Speaker 1: way of saying that Talk Easy, which is now somehow
Speaker 1: in year seven, has been made possible by you at home, supporting,
Speaker 1: sharing and showing up. And speaking of showing up, we
Speaker 1: want to try putting together a mail bag atode. Basically,
Speaker 1: we want to hear from you. I spend most of
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Speaker 1: you may have some for me and the team that
Speaker 1: make Talk Easy. So if you have any questions or
Speaker 1: even just a comment or reflection on a certain episode,
Speaker 1: maybe something one of our talks inspired in you, or
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Speaker 1: mail at talk easypod dot com. That's mail at talk
Speaker 1: easypod dot com. You can also find that email address
Speaker 1: on your phone in the description of this episode. I
Speaker 1: don't know when or how often we will do these
Speaker 1: mailback episodes, but I'm really looking forward to hearing from
Speaker 1: you now. For this week's episode, I wanted to sit
Speaker 1: with somebody who could help us unpack what's happening in
Speaker 1: American politics. Before joining The New York Times, as Were
Speaker 1: worked a policy reporter for fifteen years on the Hill.
Speaker 1: He created the very popular Wonk blog at the Washington Post.
Speaker 1: He was also a founding member of VOS, a publication
Speaker 1: that popularized explainer journalism. Ezra, as you'll hear, is pretty
Speaker 1: good at explaining the news. He has a way of
Speaker 1: making complex issues comprehensible, which this week includes school closures,
Speaker 1: voting rights, the twenty twenty two midterms, inflation, and a
Speaker 1: whole lot more. If you'd like to read some of
Speaker 1: the articles referenced in this conversation, be sure to visit
Speaker 1: our show notes at talk easypod dot com. Our team
Speaker 1: does a great job of providing supplemental resources for you
Speaker 1: to read, listen to, and look at away from this conversation,
Speaker 1: so be sure to do that at talk easypod dot com.
Speaker 1: We have lots ahead in twenty twenty two to share
Speaker 1: with you. And by the way, if this conversation feels
Speaker 1: a little bleak on the first half, just trust me
Speaker 1: on this and stick around to the end. As it's
Speaker 1: usually true in trying times, it does get better, or
Speaker 1: in this case with Ezra, it does get a little sunnier.
Speaker 1: Thanks for being here, as recline, Thank you for being here,
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me. I know you recently welcomed
Speaker 1: a second child into your household, so if at any
Speaker 1: point during this conversation, you have to change a diaper
Speaker 1: or something happens. Just give me the signal that we
Speaker 1: agreed upon before starting here that I'll just run out
Speaker 1: of the room. Yeah, that's the signal. Just go Is
Speaker 1: that the signal? Yeah, and I'll just fill time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you'll You'll either get me running out of the room
Speaker 1: or I'll just collapse. It a non sequitur as forty
Speaker 1: five percent of my brain immediately goes to is that
Speaker 1: just making noises or is that crying? I look forward
Speaker 1: to it either way. I actually wanted to start with
Speaker 1: children here and this ongoing debate around school closures in
Speaker 1: the wake of Omicron. We've seen closures in Detroit, Milwaukee, Chicago, Baltimore.
Speaker 1: By the time this airs, most kids will be returning
Speaker 1: to in person learning. But being a father of two,
Speaker 1: I wonder how you've been processing this contentious exchange between
Speaker 1: school districts, teacher unions, and parents and what this maybe
Speaker 1: says about us. I think this is a really, very
Speaker 1: very hard set of issues. I think you should begin
Speaker 1: by breaking it down to what are the sub questions
Speaker 1: people are really arguing about. When you say, you know,
Speaker 1: I think school should should stay open or I think
Speaker 1: they should close, and I think there are a couple.
Speaker 1: One sub question is how dangerous is at this point
Speaker 1: probably omicron to young kids. There's vaccinated children, right there
Speaker 1: are unvaccinated children, and they're unvaccinated babies and infants, and
Speaker 1: I have both in my household, so I have a
Speaker 1: three year old and a three month old. My read
Speaker 1: of the data at this point is that you should
Speaker 1: not see catching O macron as a very unusual level
Speaker 1: of threat to young kids, not a level that is
Speaker 1: very different from the flu. Maybe it is not even
Speaker 1: as bad as a flu, not a level very different
Speaker 1: from some other things that we more or less live
Speaker 1: with without shutting down schools when they come by. But
Speaker 1: that said, there are a lot of things that we
Speaker 1: are very worried about with our kids, and we don't
Speaker 1: do I think, completely normal standardized risk benefit calculations, And
Speaker 1: so I'm very sympathetic to those who just say, you know,
Speaker 1: we don't know what the thing is, we don't know
Speaker 1: what's long term consequences. Are just anything I can do
Speaker 1: to not have my kid get it. But so that's
Speaker 1: one set of the issues. Right then, of course, there's
Speaker 1: the issue of you have a lot of teachers who
Speaker 1: live in homes who are themselves immunocompromised or have some
Speaker 1: other set of comorbidities that make them more vulnerable to
Speaker 1: the disease if they live in homes with people, you know,
Speaker 1: multigenerational homes, they have a spouse who is not well
Speaker 1: or can't get the full protection to vaccination for whatever reason.
Speaker 1: So they are afraid, as anybody would be in any profession,
Speaker 1: of going back out into a place where it would
Speaker 1: be pretty easy to get it right. You can certainly
Speaker 1: catch omicron from a bunch of kids. You can catch
Speaker 1: anything and everything from a bunch of kids. And then
Speaker 1: there's the third issue, which is how bad our school
Speaker 1: closures for children. It's this set of intertwined risk calculations
Speaker 1: with somewhat uncertain answers. It gets to the heart of
Speaker 1: this if you're asking me, I think at this point
Speaker 1: we're dealing with a situation where the harms of closing
Speaker 1: schools for children are really great. O macron is getting
Speaker 1: to a level of risk that I think we don't
Speaker 1: wish we're there, but I don't think it is a
Speaker 1: completely unacceptable level of risk for kids. And then the
Speaker 1: question of what do you do with particually vulnerable teachers,
Speaker 1: just as is the question with what do you do
Speaker 1: with partically vulnerable members of society in all kinds of
Speaker 1: professions is a really, really hard one. To maybe step
Speaker 1: back on this for a second. One of my observations
Speaker 1: about a lot of these conversations right now is they
Speaker 1: are sort of delta conversations in an omicron world. It
Speaker 1: isn't like the other institutions in life that include a
Speaker 1: lot of testing are staying open. If you travel, it's
Speaker 1: hellish right now. And so if you're in a situation
Speaker 1: where you're testing and you haven't decided to say, well
Speaker 1: fuck it, we are not going to treat omicron cases
Speaker 1: as anything different than cold cases or flu cases, which
Speaker 1: is to say, we are not going to shut institutions down.
Speaker 1: When there is an ongoing active spread. Then you're going
Speaker 1: to have a lot of shutdowns. And you're having a
Speaker 1: lot of shutdowns to my knowledge, in everything that does
Speaker 1: active testing. You're having shutdowns in college campuses, you're having
Speaker 1: shutdowns as I mentioned, in travel, you're having shut downs
Speaker 1: in sports leagues. Like everything is getting shut down because
Speaker 1: we do not have anything like the mechanisms or strictures
Speaker 1: in place to stop the spread of something as infectious zomicron,
Speaker 1: and so one suspicion I have about this is we're
Speaker 1: all arguing over things that are like two weeks behind reality,
Speaker 1: and just the answer is it's just going to be
Speaker 1: a huge amount of societal disruption for about two months
Speaker 1: as omicron rips through the population. I am somewhat more
Speaker 1: interested in the question of what should we do in
Speaker 1: terms of our pandemic policy from March to July of
Speaker 1: twenty two, then what should we do from January to
Speaker 1: February of twenty twenty two, because my view is January
Speaker 1: to February is more or less baked, and our capacity
Speaker 1: to make a lot of public policy moves that are
Speaker 1: going to change it dramatically it's pretty low. Nobody seems
Speaker 1: to be willing to contemplate big lockdowns. These school things
Speaker 1: are on the margin. But we're just gonna have a
Speaker 1: lot of disruption, I think, for two months, and then
Speaker 1: there's going to be this question of how do you
Speaker 1: build in more resiliency so when the next variant comes
Speaker 1: you can face these questions with better supplies, materials, infrastructure
Speaker 1: to make them a little bit more easy to manage. Well,
Speaker 1: let's talk about something that's happening not two weeks from now,
Speaker 1: but right now, which is President Biden is putting pressure
Speaker 1: on Congress to pass voter protection laws by calling for
Speaker 1: an exception in the Senate filibuster rule. He said earlier today,
Speaker 1: this is one of those defining moments. People are going
Speaker 1: to be judged where they were before and where they
Speaker 1: were after the vote. History is going to judge this.
Speaker 1: Do you feel this fight for voting rights in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two is a defining moment? It depends who wins.
Speaker 1: There's a good New York Times piece in the Sunday
Speaker 1: Review a week or so ago that was by I
Speaker 1: believe it's by some curators at the Smithsonian, and I
Speaker 1: think the title, if you want to go look it up,
Speaker 1: is what will America look Like in twenty eighty four?
Speaker 1: And their point was it, we like, this formulation of
Speaker 1: history is going to judge us, but history doesn't judge
Speaker 1: people do, and how they judge depends on who is
Speaker 1: winning and at what time. It's like the refuge of
Speaker 1: when you're sort of failing in the present, you moved
Speaker 1: to history will judge you when you can't get to well,
Speaker 1: I'm going to beat you. It is true because when
Speaker 1: I quoted mine and you did start laughing a little bit.
Speaker 1: I'm not laughing at Joe Biden. He is putting himself
Speaker 1: on the right side of the issue. He is trying
Speaker 1: to bring pressure to bear, but he doesn't really have
Speaker 1: pressure he can bring to bear. Is a big problem.
Speaker 1: He does not have leverage in any serious way over
Speaker 1: Joe Mansion. It isn't clear that he has leveraged over
Speaker 1: Kristen's Cinema either. I think that the Biden administration both
Speaker 1: leaves deeply in this as a matter of principle, and
Speaker 1: I think they also don't want the perception to be
Speaker 1: that they let democracy rights languish if it dies. They
Speaker 1: don't want the view to be, well, they never tried, right.
Speaker 1: They do need to get caught trying here. But the
Speaker 1: question is can you get Joe Mansion and Cinema to
Speaker 1: make a filibuster exception. You definitely cannot get either of them,
Speaker 1: to my knowledge, to just say we're going to exempt
Speaker 1: HR one and the John Wis Voting Rights Act from
Speaker 1: the filibuster. That is something they've both opposed many times.
Speaker 1: Cinema to the extent she's now built her career on
Speaker 1: any public position, she's built it on not doing that.
Speaker 1: There has always been a possibility. I've written about this.
Speaker 1: Mansion has continued to make statements that imply an openness
Speaker 1: to this. There's always been a possibility that you could
Speaker 1: persuade him, at least maybe them to do something that
Speaker 1: makes a filibuster more physically costly. Minority party, So, for instance,
Speaker 1: right now, the way filibuster works is you really only
Speaker 1: need one member of the minority on the floor, but
Speaker 1: you need every member of the majority to try and
Speaker 1: break it. So if you created a situation where you
Speaker 1: flipped that and the filibustering coalition had to fully occupy
Speaker 1: the floor for every second of the filibuster, or else
Speaker 1: any member of the majority could call the closure vote
Speaker 1: and say, hey, you guys actually don't have three fifths
Speaker 1: of the Senate here. That might create a situation where
Speaker 1: the majority, on a issue as important as democracy reform,
Speaker 1: might just say, you know what, we're going to burn
Speaker 1: two and a half months of Senate time and wait
Speaker 1: until one if you goes to the bathroom, and then
Speaker 1: we're going to call the vote. That may or may
Speaker 1: not work as a strategy. But that kind of thing
Speaker 1: is maybe somewhere where there's like the door is ever
Speaker 1: so slightly a jar. Then to the question you're asking,
Speaker 1: which is I think another way of asking that question
Speaker 1: is are we on the precipice of some kind of
Speaker 1: democratic crisis or collapse? Because I think if you think
Speaker 1: about the counter factual vision of a future you're proposing there,
Speaker 1: it's something like, in the next couple of years, America
Speaker 1: falls into complete democratic crisis or collapse. But at some
Speaker 1: point in the future people are looking back and saying
Speaker 1: what happened in twenty twenty five was terrible, somebody should
Speaker 1: have done something, and is then writing about how Kristen
Speaker 1: Cinema is a monster. Maybe if you've all into a
Speaker 1: complete crisis and collapse, it may also be that in
Speaker 1: the future the people writing the history are the ones
Speaker 1: who think that was great. It may also be that
Speaker 1: what happens in the next couple of years of democracy
Speaker 1: is it In twenty twenty two, Republicans just completely destroyed
Speaker 1: Democrats Farren Square to the extent we have Farren Square,
Speaker 1: But but they do get more votes, which I think
Speaker 1: is a very very high possibility. In twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: and then in twenty twenty four, Ron de Santas just
Speaker 1: beats Joe Biden, and we're not really having this conversation
Speaker 1: because democratsic be lost. Do I think we're at a
Speaker 1: pretty dangerous moment. I do do. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people will be judged harshly if history holds together
Speaker 1: in the way head like it to. I do. But
Speaker 1: history is no substitute for winning fights now. There's a
Speaker 1: Tamasi Coats line. I love that we know the unjust
Speaker 1: backstroke through the pleasures of this life, and I always
Speaker 1: think about that. I like that. I also like what
Speaker 1: you said. History is no substitute for winning fights now.
Speaker 1: And one of those upcoming fights is, of course, the midterms.
Speaker 1: If it goes the way you just predicted for the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party, one of the reasons for that defeat will
Speaker 1: be what Steve Bannon and the GOP have already begun
Speaker 1: to make headway on local elections. In The New York Times,
Speaker 1: you recently wrote, I'll say this for the right, they
Speaker 1: pay attention to where the power lies in the American
Speaker 1: system and weighs the left sometimes doesn't. Bannon calls this
Speaker 1: precinct strategy and it's working. Can you explain what this
Speaker 1: precinct strategy entails, and then perhaps the two mismatches that
Speaker 1: sometimes paralyzed Democrats. So we don't have a national election
Speaker 1: in this country. We have elections in every state. The
Speaker 1: authority for those elections is devolved to counties, of which
Speaker 1: they're about three thousand, So every one of those counties
Speaker 1: to some degree runs not entirely their own election, but
Speaker 1: a little bit their own election. Then they have to
Speaker 1: certify election results. That ladders up to states that have
Speaker 1: to certify election results. Then electoral college for a presidential
Speaker 1: as to meet and the state electoral college voters either
Speaker 1: do or don't. In general they do, but there's always
Speaker 1: a possibility they simply won't. So the way elections are
Speaker 1: actually administered is a local affair. And to have power
Speaker 1: over them, the power to administer them fairly or the
Speaker 1: power to administer them unfairly, you need to win a
Speaker 1: bunch of local elections. One of the framing devices for
Speaker 1: this column I wrote about winning local elections was to
Speaker 1: point to Steve Bannon, who has been making an effort
Speaker 1: to rile trumpy folks up about volunteering his municipal poll
Speaker 1: workers etc. Through his podcast The War Room and Another means,
Speaker 1: and there is evidence that is meaningful, right that, not
Speaker 1: just from Bannon, but in the aftermath of Trump's pre
Speaker 1: election and post election lying. You have a bunch of
Speaker 1: I think it is twenty two Republican candidates who back
Speaker 1: the idea that Trump was maybe the winner in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty running for Secretary of State in fifteen different states,
Speaker 1: in some cases primarying people like Brad Ravensberger. In Georgia.
Speaker 1: He's facing two separate primary opponents who who backed Trump's allies,
Speaker 1: and Trump has endorsed one of his opponents at least
Speaker 1: not at least he's endorsed one of his opponents exactly.
Speaker 1: In general, I would say that Republicans are more attentive
Speaker 1: to state level power and often into local level power.
Speaker 1: Part of this is because they have a geographic advantage.
Speaker 1: At those levels. Republicans are more dispersed, you know, so
Speaker 1: that matters for how many localities or how many states
Speaker 1: you can control. Steve Vannon, of course enjoyed my column
Speaker 1: on that measure because it makes him sound very powerful.
Speaker 1: He called you a big thinker. Oh really, I would
Speaker 1: say that I was sort of using Steve Vannon there
Speaker 1: as a prod. Isn't clear to me how many people
Speaker 1: he's actually recruited, but but maybe some. What I do
Speaker 1: think is happening though, at a structural level, is because
Speaker 1: Trumpists entirely lost national power in twenty twenty. They have
Speaker 1: been forced to organize at the state and local level.
Speaker 1: They cannot say to themselves, well, we're going to pass
Speaker 1: a big law nationally that we'll solve all these problems
Speaker 1: for us. That isn't an ideating option they have. In
Speaker 1: some weird way, the absence of federal power has forced
Speaker 1: Trumpists into a much more plausible strategy for taking control
Speaker 1: of local elections than the Democrats, for whom having just
Speaker 1: enough national power to maybe be able to pass these
Speaker 1: bills but not enough to actually pass them, has left
Speaker 1: them stuck potentially in a tough strategy. So the point
Speaker 1: I make about mismatches in the column is it two
Speaker 1: particular mismatches in the way American elections work end up
Speaker 1: making it hard for people to think strategically and clearly,
Speaker 1: and here I mean people who want to defend democracy.
Speaker 1: One is a geographic mismatch. Democrats are concentrated in places
Speaker 1: with a lot of people, but relatively less political power.
Speaker 1: So I live in California, Wyoming has something like seventy
Speaker 1: times the per person power in the Senate that we do,
Speaker 1: but also the electoral College, you know, underweights these places.
Speaker 1: You just have a generalized preference in our system for
Speaker 1: rural areas. So that can create a feeling when you're
Speaker 1: you know, you're in a California or in a New York,
Speaker 1: you're wherever. You're in a city, and you know that
Speaker 1: a lot of the question is what happens in you know,
Speaker 1: how the elections are administered in these random towns in Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: It just feels completely out of your control. Right, this
Speaker 1: will decide the leadership of the country you live in,
Speaker 1: but you have no actual control over it. And then
Speaker 1: the secondary mismatch is and this is more emotional, what
Speaker 1: it feels like you should be doing a fight for
Speaker 1: democracy and what might be effective to do when fighting
Speaker 1: for democracy. So I would say I see online by
Speaker 1: people I really respect and who I agree with on
Speaker 1: these issues, like an endlessly escalatory competition for condemnation of
Speaker 1: how antidemocratic the Republican parties become, and a real desire
Speaker 1: to fight rhetorically. Maybe in other ways too, to passing
Speaker 1: sa HR one. And if you say, well, it sounds
Speaker 1: like what you're saying, because you want to make all
Speaker 1: these structural reforms, is it you somehow need to win
Speaker 1: three more Senate seats and keep control of the House.
Speaker 1: And so the question is, on a very literal level,
Speaker 1: how do you do that? And then maybe have a
Speaker 1: sation of well, Ron Johnson in Wisconsin his vulnerability is corruption,
Speaker 1: and so you need to make a big deal of
Speaker 1: how corrupt Ron Johnson is. And then in order to
Speaker 1: win the North Carolina's seat, will in North Carolina, they're
Speaker 1: worried about this, and you know, on and on online,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden you're in a bunch of
Speaker 1: conversations about winning these seats. You know, these are national
Speaker 1: ones I'm talking about, but also you need to win
Speaker 1: these mayoralships if you want power over appointing the clerks
Speaker 1: who are run the elections, and those are going to
Speaker 1: be about roads and flooding and all these little things.
Speaker 1: And so all of a sudden, you know you want
Speaker 1: to have this big national showdown over democracy. And what
Speaker 1: you actually need to do is build the infrastructure, get involved,
Speaker 1: run for win all these individual seats that are not
Speaker 1: taking place on the grounds of do you believe in
Speaker 1: democracy and do you like Donald Trump or not? And
Speaker 1: that's very tough, and so you really do need to
Speaker 1: think about the logistics of winning power in America, not
Speaker 1: just power to do things, but even just the power
Speaker 1: to administer elections fairly. And that might not mean focusing
Speaker 1: on the questions I feel emotionally satisfying to focus on
Speaker 1: when we do land in these midterms come November. In
Speaker 1: your book Why We're Polarized, you write about the decline
Speaker 1: of ticket splitting from nineteen sixty to nineteen ninety about
Speaker 1: half of senators representative state that voted for the other
Speaker 1: party's nominee for president. Today there are six which speaks
Speaker 1: to your argument of polarization. People are where they are
Speaker 1: when it comes to the Democratic Party. We talked about
Speaker 1: how to maintain integrity and elections, but once we get
Speaker 1: to the election itself, like you said, they're at a
Speaker 1: great risk of losing its Senate majority this fall. What
Speaker 1: do you see as a realistic, pragmatic path forward here.
Speaker 1: I don't know how Democrats can hold the Senate. They're
Speaker 1: in a tough spot. They have a fifty fifty Senate.
Speaker 1: The map is not terrible for them in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1: I mean it is the in cycle map sixteen right,
Speaker 1: which just is not a terrible cycle map for them.
Speaker 1: But the difficulty they're going to face is very governing
Speaker 1: party in a midterm and so if you want to
Speaker 1: know what I expect, I expect them to lose between
Speaker 1: three and six seats. For them to hold even would
Speaker 1: be a remarkable performance. And then in twenty twenty four
Speaker 1: the map is like hell for them. So it's going
Speaker 1: to be a rough couple of years for Democrats in
Speaker 1: the Senate. It's probably gonna be rough a couple of
Speaker 1: years for them in the House. Obviously, they need to
Speaker 1: try to figure out some way to fix that. So
Speaker 1: one set is that they just literally need people to
Speaker 1: feel better about how things are going in ten to
Speaker 1: eleven months, and they do right now. I was thinking
Speaker 1: about this this morning. But you can look at these
Speaker 1: consumer sentiment indices and if you ask people how they
Speaker 1: feel about their personal finances, they'll say pretty good. They
Speaker 1: give it a sixty seven out of a hundred, which
Speaker 1: is a high historical rating. If you ask them how
Speaker 1: they feel about the national economy, they feel pretty bad.
Speaker 1: They rate in the thirties. You know, you could say, well, inflation, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, inflation is a real player here. You know,
Speaker 1: you have very low unemployment, you have high wage gains.
Speaker 1: You've had a lot of transfer payments to people through
Speaker 1: the stimulus in the child tax credit. So why is
Speaker 1: the negative so heavy in their sentiments? And I do
Speaker 1: think a big part of it is simply the experience
Speaker 1: of the economy is bad right now. Even if you're
Speaker 1: lucky enough to have money, can't really go to a
Speaker 1: restaurant safely. Everybody's masked or not enough people wherever you
Speaker 1: are masked. Travel is horrible and you can't travel, and
Speaker 1: you can't safely do a bunch of different things you
Speaker 1: might want to do. Gas is really expensive, so you
Speaker 1: feel a stick or shock, and not just with that,
Speaker 1: but with other things. There is in certain places of
Speaker 1: labor supply shortage. People are constantly like out of work
Speaker 1: right now for homocrons, so things aren't open. The experience
Speaker 1: I have of the economy sucks. I'm doing fine. I
Speaker 1: could buy some stuff, but I actually can't do anything.
Speaker 1: I am desperate to have some fun. I am desperate.
Speaker 1: I'm so tired of just like everybody is, well, Ezra,
Speaker 1: That's why I invited you on this show. Nothing like
Speaker 1: talking about how Democrats are fucking in twenty twenty two
Speaker 1: to have a good time. So Democrats are going to
Speaker 1: need people to feel differently. They're going to need people
Speaker 1: to feel truly like it's morning in America. Whether they
Speaker 1: get that is not entirely in their control. That's partially
Speaker 1: a question of legislation, but it's also I mean, is
Speaker 1: there a big variant happening in November of next year?
Speaker 1: You know, has inflation come down? Are the supply chains
Speaker 1: have they reacted to the changes in demand? Sort of
Speaker 1: just literally where are we? But you know, I think
Speaker 1: you also need to ask the question of, well, what
Speaker 1: happens if in twenty twenty two the House and Senate
Speaker 1: falls to Republicans, which is the likeliest case, and then
Speaker 1: there is going to be two more years of Joe
Speaker 1: Biden positioning himself vs. A Republican congressional majority, which, if
Speaker 1: you're being cynical about it, may not be the worst
Speaker 1: dynamic for him to win re election in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: but is obviously, I think a bad dynamic if you
Speaker 1: want to see the country covered well. I've been decided
Speaker 1: without through this predictions column. And one of the things
Speaker 1: I just really noted was that I'm writing down my
Speaker 1: predictions for the year. They're just very grim. If you
Speaker 1: want to see progressive governance, like it's just it's a
Speaker 1: grim set of predictions I have. I think it's just
Speaker 1: going to be a kind of tough time. A lot
Speaker 1: of people I don't want to see empower going to
Speaker 1: get into power, and that's sort of the condition of
Speaker 1: the country right now. The really bad outcomes on the
Speaker 1: bell curve of you know, Trump runs and wins in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four and you know nullifies democracy somehow or
Speaker 1: another through some set of mechanism. City you know, he
Speaker 1: was not able to control last time. It's not clear
Speaker 1: to me he has a capacity to control him in
Speaker 1: the future either. But you could have some real democratic
Speaker 1: crises if there's a contested election outcome in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: But you can also just have normal bad outcomes, which
Speaker 1: is that the House, Senate, White House, and Supreme Court
Speaker 1: are controlled by people who I think have a bad
Speaker 1: and cruel vision for America. And you haven't lost democracy,
Speaker 1: just governance is terrible for you. Well, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know what. I don't know what to say exactly.
Speaker 1: Don't listen to me if you want a sunny outlook
Speaker 1: right now. Putting a pause on the conversation with Ezra Kleine,
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after this quick break. Before the break,
Speaker 1: let's go to a time where maybe you were a
Speaker 1: little bit sunnier in the early two thousands, when you're
Speaker 1: first writing on your blog at UC Santa Cruz, you said,
Speaker 1: during this period of the Iraq War, there was a
Speaker 1: broad feeling that the media hadn't done its job, that
Speaker 1: I had been hampered by this requirement to pretend the
Speaker 1: truth always was in the middle. And I was part
Speaker 1: of that critique. Later, when you interned at the Washington Monthly,
Speaker 1: you attend the two thousand and four Democratic National Convention.
Speaker 1: As you attended the DNC, you said to the Philadela
Speaker 1: inquirer that you considered yourself an activist walking the halls
Speaker 1: of power. An activist walking the halls of power. I
Speaker 1: wonder when you hear that version of a more optimistic self,
Speaker 1: does it feel foreign? Oh? I don't think I was
Speaker 1: more optimistic then. I don't want to say it was
Speaker 1: so much worse of a moment because of COVID. But
Speaker 1: that was such a terrible moment. I really think people
Speaker 1: have forgotten how bad two thousand and four was. This
Speaker 1: is one of my deep political views. It's amazing to
Speaker 1: now be the old guy with like gray hair here
Speaker 1: saying like, you kids don't fucking remember, But you kids
Speaker 1: don't remember. To be fair, I was ten exactly. That's
Speaker 1: what I mean. You kids don't remember. God, it's so
Speaker 1: horrible becoming old. It's so terrible. Everything hurts all the time.
Speaker 1: Two thousand and four, you are years into a war that,
Speaker 1: it is now clear, was sold on a foundation of lies,
Speaker 1: into a frightening and unnerving national surveillance state, and this
Speaker 1: bizarre blackmail e patriotic politics of flag pins and you're
Speaker 1: with us, so you're against us? And what about the
Speaker 1: fifth column? In America? Huge numbers of Iraqis have died.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of Americans who have come home
Speaker 1: in bodybags. We are wasting blood and treasurer on a
Speaker 1: failing war, and again we were lied into it, or
Speaker 1: at least the intelligence we were brought into it on
Speaker 1: was bullshit. And George W. Bush wins again. Before COVID,
Speaker 1: he had done much more damage as a governing forest,
Speaker 1: and Donald Trump did and COVID was blessed. Donald Trump's fault.
Speaker 1: Then the Iraq War was George W. Bush's fault. I mean,
Speaker 1: Donald Trump did a terrible job on COVID, but he
Speaker 1: didn't he didn't create it. And so two thousand and
Speaker 1: four feels very similar to me. Two thousand and four
Speaker 1: is a moment when you really realize the country could
Speaker 1: go an incredibly dark directions. On the eve of November second,
Speaker 1: two thousand and four, you do an interview with the
Speaker 1: LAist and which you said, it's time to drink and heavily.
Speaker 1: The battle lines aren't just drawn, they're engraved, and with
Speaker 1: no one left to convince, there's little left to say. Wait,
Speaker 1: I said that, or somebody said that about me? You
Speaker 1: said that so dire. That was after the election. That's
Speaker 1: some blog post or something. It's the night of It
Speaker 1: doesn't really sound like me, but fair enough. If you
Speaker 1: say I said it, I said it. I can send
Speaker 1: you the link. Two thousand and four is really bad.
Speaker 1: That's the only point I want to make about this,
Speaker 1: and I make it in almost a spirit of optimism,
Speaker 1: which is you really can't predict politics very far in
Speaker 1: the future. And again I think it's really easy to
Speaker 1: forget this. So in two thousand and four Kerry loses
Speaker 1: George Goby Bush wins by a significantly larger margin than
Speaker 1: in two thousand when he lost a popular vote, and
Speaker 1: the immediate reaction across the media is Democrats have lost
Speaker 1: touch with what was then called the heartland. There was
Speaker 1: also a belief which I think didn't really hold true
Speaker 1: when you looked at the numbers, but that Karl Rove
Speaker 1: had as a genius measure, put all these same sex
Speaker 1: marriage initiatives on ballots in key states, and that had
Speaker 1: brought out a big evangelical turnout. So now there was
Speaker 1: also this burgeoning view among some center left pundits that well,
Speaker 1: Democrats had become too liberal, too cosmopolitan. John Kerry spoke French,
Speaker 1: too gay, even though John Kerry did not support gay marriage.
Speaker 1: At that time. It was a gruesome political moment, and
Speaker 1: you know, the kinds of things Democrats, you know, talked
Speaker 1: about doing to win back power and the kinds of
Speaker 1: people they talked about running. It didn't look great. And
Speaker 1: then so what ends up happening there's obviously, I mean
Speaker 1: horribly a financial crisis. But the Iraq, the level of
Speaker 1: failure of the Iraq War becomes clear to people. They
Speaker 1: turn on the Republican Party, Democrats take back the House
Speaker 1: and oh six then comes to financial crisis. But you
Speaker 1: know this black constitutional law professor, coolheaded intellectual, you know,
Speaker 1: very liberal for American politics at that time at the
Speaker 1: national level, named Barack Hussain Obama. I mean, it seemed
Speaker 1: ridiculous if that's what you would do as a response
Speaker 1: to it for but then he wins, and so you know,
Speaker 1: the worst of America politically and at least much brighter
Speaker 1: moments co exists pretty close to each other. But twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two is going to be probably like a reaping
Speaker 1: for Democrats. I think because we are in such dire times.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of people reconsidering what they want
Speaker 1: to do with their lives. There's been more new businesses
Speaker 1: created in the last few months than ever before, people uprooting,
Speaker 1: making changes, And I want to talk about this, perhaps
Speaker 1: both in that larger context, but in a personal context
Speaker 1: for you, which is that you create Vox and in
Speaker 1: November of twenty twenty you leave Vox for the Times.
Speaker 1: I know you also leave DC for the Bay Area
Speaker 1: two years before that, and I've been thinking about this
Speaker 1: move of yours, which comes after fifteen years of rigorous
Speaker 1: day to day policy reporting, creating long blog at the
Speaker 1: Washington Post, appearing on MSNBC as an analyst, creating and
Speaker 1: managing box. I wonder how you think about that move
Speaker 1: to the West coast and then and turn your pivot
Speaker 1: to the New York Times. I see what you're getting
Speaker 1: at with the DCD California movement, and there is truth
Speaker 1: to it. I love Washington, DC. I'm not a hater
Speaker 1: of the place. It was not a place where I
Speaker 1: was growing in ways that I liked. For me, I
Speaker 1: could feel that if I didn't leave, I would never leave.
Speaker 1: I expect I will move back at some point. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think my life will different phases in different places.
Speaker 1: But I didn't want to be a person who never
Speaker 1: tried other places or did other things. I've been lucky
Speaker 1: to be successful, but success can be a kind of
Speaker 1: trap too, and you can just burrow deeper and deeper
Speaker 1: into the same thing you know and have a certain
Speaker 1: amount of autonomy over or within. I also just needed
Speaker 1: a place I was a little bit more anonymous for
Speaker 1: a while, But at that point I didn't have a
Speaker 1: new question I was answering covering politics for myself in DC.
Speaker 1: Which is not to say I understand everything about politics
Speaker 1: or there's nothing left to do. It's just that I
Speaker 1: felt a need to try to play with different questions
Speaker 1: for a while. One of the areas of questioning had
Speaker 1: become more technological. I'd come to believe in DC that
Speaker 1: a lot of what I was covering at politics was
Speaker 1: downstream from technological changes. I think Trump was a creation
Speaker 1: of a different communication in media environment to a very
Speaker 1: very large degree. I think that a lot of policy
Speaker 1: is built on a technological substrate that either makes things
Speaker 1: possible or makes them impossible. And it seemed for some
Speaker 1: of the things I wanted to understand that I had
Speaker 1: to spend time trying to understand. You know what we
Speaker 1: call like the technology sector, though I don't really love
Speaker 1: the name, because what's here is a subset of I
Speaker 1: think what should probably be understood is technology. I've not
Speaker 1: been able to do that fully to the degree I
Speaker 1: want to do because of the pandemic, but I have
Speaker 1: been able to do it much more, and my California
Speaker 1: period won't be forever either. I think it has instilled
Speaker 1: in me a desire to move more often. I think
Speaker 1: you grow in different ways in different places. One of
Speaker 1: my great regrets at this point in my life is
Speaker 1: I've never lived internationally. I would like to do that.
Speaker 1: The people I really end up respecting the sort of
Speaker 1: more august journalists. They tend to be people who have
Speaker 1: lived a number of journalistic lives such at the accretion
Speaker 1: of different experience and knowledge coheres into a kind of
Speaker 1: wisdom for them. But I don't want to get stuck
Speaker 1: in a place. In some ways, for me, the best
Speaker 1: thing about moving to see Where when we did, was
Speaker 1: establishing a principle in our own lives that we could
Speaker 1: move and like that was a possible thing to do,
Speaker 1: even under a sort of weird circumstances. I still worked
Speaker 1: at Vox, this place I had founded, but it was
Speaker 1: an assertion of that capability. I think what you're talking
Speaker 1: about is living a life that is a more varied
Speaker 1: and be perhaps more intentional in terms of asking yourself,
Speaker 1: you and your partner and now you're two kids, what
Speaker 1: do we want and where exactly do we want it?
Speaker 1: That seems to be happening for a lot of people
Speaker 1: across America right now. What have you made of this
Speaker 1: sort of self evaluation that's almost existential in nature. I
Speaker 1: don't yet know what to make of it. I am
Speaker 1: a little skeptical of some of the narratives that are
Speaker 1: being placed on all these decisions like the one I
Speaker 1: just did. Yeah, exactly, this is a specific criticism of you,
Speaker 1: Sam without better qualitative or quantitative data. That's a very
Speaker 1: cold way of saying that. But look, one way of
Speaker 1: saying speaking about the Great Resignation right as people call it,
Speaker 1: is that a lot of people have said, God, what
Speaker 1: even is this life? And what am I doing in it?
Speaker 1: Another way of saying it might be that for a
Speaker 1: number of these people who are quitting, they're in a
Speaker 1: job that no longer feels safe, and they are not
Speaker 1: hazza like I'm going to go indulge my interest in woodworking,
Speaker 1: but they're frightened for themselves or their families, and they're
Speaker 1: quitting a job that was a paycheck and they're not
Speaker 1: really sure what to do next. I am not seeing
Speaker 1: in survey data a huge explosion in life fulfillment, and
Speaker 1: so it just makes me wonder a little bit what
Speaker 1: this really is. I don't want to deny that a
Speaker 1: lot of people are changing jobs or changing locations and
Speaker 1: trying something different out because the nature of how we
Speaker 1: live right and how is changing and where you can
Speaker 1: be is changing. But I think these stories are very varied.
Speaker 1: You know. I hope this is all going to end
Speaker 1: in an explosion of human flourishing and fulfillment. But right
Speaker 1: now I worry that we've somehow pasted a very hopeful
Speaker 1: narrative on people making decisions. Into many cases, the way
Speaker 1: I hear them, they are desperate or exhausted, right. I know,
Speaker 1: for instance, a lot of people, like a significant number
Speaker 1: of people who during this period have decided to move
Speaker 1: closer to family because childcare has become such a complete nightmare.
Speaker 1: They absolutely need grandparents around, and they are in that
Speaker 1: great resignation data and maybe it's better to live near
Speaker 1: your parents. I'm completely open to that idea, and I
Speaker 1: think for many people it is, and maybe for me
Speaker 1: it would be. But I don't think what is happening
Speaker 1: there is that they said, ah, you know, I've just
Speaker 1: never been able to build boats. No, Like their life
Speaker 1: has been hellish, and they move somewhere where it might
Speaker 1: be a little bit easier, and so we'll see. I'm
Speaker 1: just a little I'm a little worried about what feels
Speaker 1: like a pat narrative. It's a little bit like what
Speaker 1: people want to believe of this, but I'm not sure
Speaker 1: what the evidence for really is. Basically, you're saying to
Speaker 1: use your boat metaphor people are drowning and they're just
Speaker 1: trying to get back to land. Yeah, I mean some people.
Speaker 1: I don't think we know. I think there's a lot
Speaker 1: from this period that we don't know. I think people
Speaker 1: snap back to equilibrium, and I think the equilibriums often
Speaker 1: aren't that good. Look, there are real pressures on the
Speaker 1: economy right now, and I'm very worried that we're going
Speaker 1: to handle them by screwing over low wage workers as
Speaker 1: opposed to figuring out how to produce things or bring
Speaker 1: down gas prices or whatever it might be. You know,
Speaker 1: in terms of the great resignation parts that I care about,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of low wage labor is awful
Speaker 1: and exploitative, and over the course of the pandemic, at
Speaker 1: certain moments, particularly around the six hundred dollar unemployment insurance
Speaker 1: boost and the stimulus checks. We gave people at the
Speaker 1: lower rungs of the economy a little bit more economic
Speaker 1: power to make decisions on their own behalf. But they
Speaker 1: don't have that anymore. We didn't keep giving them that money.
Speaker 1: The stimulus checks are not getting renewed, the child tax
Speaker 1: credit is likely to expire this at the moment we
Speaker 1: are talking anyway. And so the question like, those people
Speaker 1: will need jobs, we didn't create any st still change
Speaker 1: in their power now. A hotter labor market does give
Speaker 1: them somewhat more power, and so tighter hiring is good.
Speaker 1: And I mean, there are things that are pushing in
Speaker 1: the other direction here, but it's not a tremendous phase shift.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not a tremendously better economy than it
Speaker 1: wasn't twenty nineteen at this point, and so I have
Speaker 1: some real questions about what we're seeing and how much
Speaker 1: of a change it's going to ultimately end up looking
Speaker 1: like a decade ago, you participated in a Reddit ama,
Speaker 1: you probably never thought it was going to be brought
Speaker 1: back up. It is One commenter named add to the Law.
Speaker 1: They wrote, can you give a simple prognostication of what
Speaker 1: the twenty somethings coming through the political ranks right now
Speaker 1: should be concerned slash excited about over the next two decades.
Speaker 1: I have here your answer, which I can't imagine you
Speaker 1: would remember. I definitely don't. What did I say? Could
Speaker 1: you just read the last paragraph of what you said
Speaker 1: here so this would have been twenty twelve. Yes, I
Speaker 1: worry a lot about a broken political system heavily biased
Speaker 1: towards inaction, and under that model, what scares me our
Speaker 1: issues where you need lots of congressional action and energy
Speaker 1: to do anything. Global warming is the obvious one, and
Speaker 1: even more difficult due to its international component. But pandemic flus,
Speaker 1: loose snookes, et cetera all keep me up, if only
Speaker 1: because are the sort of questions it don't have much
Speaker 1: of a constituency and thus can easily be ignored until
Speaker 1: something goes terribly catastrophically wrong. I should play the stock
Speaker 1: market more. It's sort of ominous reading that from a
Speaker 1: decade ago. Yeah, but that wasn't a hard call. The
Speaker 1: idea that we weren't prepared for pandemic flu was cliche basically.
Speaker 1: I mean, I wasn't pulling that out of some genius
Speaker 1: analysis of flu genomes like. We were not prepared and
Speaker 1: that was clear, and congressional paralysis had been you know,
Speaker 1: it was I think I was a little bit early
Speaker 1: in seeing an understanding how polarization is breaking Congress. But again,
Speaker 1: if you were coming of age in the political and
Speaker 1: I was, it wasn't our call. And all that stuff
Speaker 1: is more or less gotten worse. I think what is
Speaker 1: in certain ways shocking is how few reforms the pandemic
Speaker 1: has even forced on pandemic policy. Is a CDC going
Speaker 1: to be any different at the end of twenty twenty
Speaker 1: two as it was at the end of twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: I don't think so. The FDA, I don't think so.
Speaker 1: We stripped out the pandemic preparedness money from build back better.
Speaker 1: If that even passes, we're not legislating in any kind
Speaker 1: of far sighted way. We did. I will say, actually,
Speaker 1: once the pandemic hit there was a significant flurry of
Speaker 1: particularly fiscal legislating that exceeded my expectations. But in first
Speaker 1: being prepared for anything anywhere, at any time, the failures
Speaker 1: of our system are are clear and have been for
Speaker 1: a very long time. And I do think one nice
Speaker 1: thing about bringing that up from twenty eleven. I guess
Speaker 1: twenty twelve is to know that a lot of the
Speaker 1: structural fairies predate Trump. You know, I was not writing
Speaker 1: there about a Trump Republican Party. I was writing there
Speaker 1: about you know, Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan's Publican Party
Speaker 1: and the way all that was cohering in Congress. So yeah,
Speaker 1: we have a tremendous failure of institutions right now. I
Speaker 1: keep trying to tell people about it, but they keep
Speaker 1: not not doing anything. Well, you've told us about it
Speaker 1: throughout this podcast. But I'm going to reframe the question
Speaker 1: the Reddit commenter. I asked you to give a simple
Speaker 1: prognostication of what twenty some things coming through the political
Speaker 1: ranks right now should be concerned excited about over the
Speaker 1: next two decades. I'm going to fix it now that
Speaker 1: we're in twenty twenty two. What are you concerned but
Speaker 1: also excited about over the next two decades. I'm just
Speaker 1: going to pass on concerned. I think you've heard enough
Speaker 1: of my concerns. Honestly, thank you so much. In terms
Speaker 1: of excited about, I actually have partially similar answer to
Speaker 1: something that was in that question. Right if we didn't
Speaker 1: read the top of that question, but I did say
Speaker 1: that I thought technological change and the rising numbers of
Speaker 1: people who could contribute to technological change was probably the
Speaker 1: thing could be most excited about, and I think that's
Speaker 1: more or less been born out now. A lot of
Speaker 1: technological change has not always been for the better. A
Speaker 1: lot of things I don't like in the attentional economy,
Speaker 1: But my god, I mean, the vaccines remain one of
Speaker 1: the truly remarkable human achievements. To be doing vaccinations in
Speaker 1: real time against the pandemic flu. There's never been anything
Speaker 1: in our history, to my knowledge, like this at this speed. Right,
Speaker 1: we didn't catch polio a couple of months after it
Speaker 1: came out with a vaccine, So I think that potential
Speaker 1: advances in biotech remarkable. If you look at the pace
Speaker 1: at which renewable energy has been dropping in price, it
Speaker 1: is remarkable. I would not call myself an optimistic on
Speaker 1: climate change, but I am optimistic on renewable energy in
Speaker 1: the speed with which that can go, and I would
Speaker 1: just pump, pump, pump money into it and make sure
Speaker 1: the regulatory structures we have are actually oriented towards feeding
Speaker 1: it along the risks of inaction, there are much worse than,
Speaker 1: in my view, the risks of action. I think that
Speaker 1: if you guy various forms of artificial intelligence and just
Speaker 1: generalize computing power right, you can do really remarkable things
Speaker 1: across a range of industries. So I have a fair
Speaker 1: amount of excitement that around technological change. This will be
Speaker 1: a weird answer, but maybe it's a good one to
Speaker 1: end on, which is I think, even believing everything I
Speaker 1: do about how much we are likely to fail on
Speaker 1: a bunch of our most profound problems. People still underestimate,
Speaker 1: particularly the people listening to this podcast, how good of
Speaker 1: a time it is to be alive, and what the
Speaker 1: possibilities are in being alive in this era and those
Speaker 1: to come. I mean, I get a lot of the
Speaker 1: emails of you, should I have kids with climate change?
Speaker 1: Your kids, if you're emailing me, they're going to be
Speaker 1: some of the most privileged kids in the entirety of
Speaker 1: human history, like the entirety of human history. To a
Speaker 1: first approximation, there's a lovely line, I have my issues,
Speaker 1: but don't look up as an allegory for climate change,
Speaker 1: where I think it gets a tremendous amount wrong, but
Speaker 1: it's taken us a movie on its own merits. The
Speaker 1: final line, which I don't think actually spoils too much
Speaker 1: of the movie, where DiCaprio says we really did have everything,
Speaker 1: didn't we. You know, if you can close down Twitter,
Speaker 1: which I often can't, and you know, rest your own
Speaker 1: attention back and just pay attention, I mean, you can
Speaker 1: listen to all of the greatest music ever composed, You
Speaker 1: can be more engaged in the scientific process and any
Speaker 1: amateur ever could have at any other time. You can
Speaker 1: really take the fruits of modernity. And it is a
Speaker 1: hard reality of being a human being amidst surveillance, capitalism,
Speaker 1: and with very strange minds that often make it very
Speaker 1: hard to do what we know is good for us.
Speaker 1: I don't think it is an easy time to be
Speaker 1: a human, because I don't think being a human is easy.
Speaker 1: I don't think we are wired for it to be easy.
Speaker 1: But I think there's just tremendous possibilities and that most
Speaker 1: of us again, you know, I'm speaking of the kind
Speaker 1: of people who might listen to this podcast. The level
Speaker 1: of freedom available to us is so far beyond what
Speaker 1: our ancestors had. The level of like time, we can
Speaker 1: rest things we can do, places we can live, people
Speaker 1: we can talk to and learn from. It's also new
Speaker 1: to have that kind of freedom, that to only look
Speaker 1: at the future, no matter the scope of the challenges
Speaker 1: with depression and pessimism. To imagine that your future is
Speaker 1: unusually constrained is to wall yourself off from flourishing, possible
Speaker 1: and open to you. So that is my optimistic take
Speaker 1: before we go. My last question, having that second kid
Speaker 1: a couple of months ago, having the first one, has
Speaker 1: that door opened up because of them? No, I adore
Speaker 1: my children, and having two kids, is it's that that
Speaker 1: one's a journey. There's a line that one kid is
Speaker 1: won and two as many, and they're both great. They're wonderful, wonderful,
Speaker 1: wonderful little kids. But I that's just true what I
Speaker 1: just said. I didn't only see it because I had
Speaker 1: a kid, Like it's just true. You know, read history
Speaker 1: like everybody's dying left. I mean, I was just reading
Speaker 1: a biography of Pisoa, who's this Portuguese multi voiced poet. Boy.
Speaker 1: It makes me sound very cultured, but just like everything
Speaker 1: everybody around him at all times dying of tuberculosis. It's
Speaker 1: just constant everybody he knows, family, siblings, children, everybody's constantly
Speaker 1: dying of tuberculosis. I am grateful that my children are
Speaker 1: growing up in a world of antibiotics and vaccines, but
Speaker 1: I don't think you need to have children to recognize it. Antibiotics, vaccines,
Speaker 1: the ability to listen to the greatest me I mean
Speaker 1: you're a music an acting guy. I mean the capacity
Speaker 1: to only imbibe the greatest culture in human history at
Speaker 1: all times. It's cool. Now do we do it? No?
Speaker 1: I sit around absorbing garbage a lot, But that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean it's not possible. And the effort it takes the
Speaker 1: kind of application of discipline to live a sort of
Speaker 1: remarkable life. I wish it took less discipline and fewer
Speaker 1: gigantic companies. We're trying to destroy your ability to apply it,
Speaker 1: But for most of human history it was not possible
Speaker 1: to apply that discipline in that way, to have very
Speaker 1: different options than your parents had. If you like, look
Speaker 1: at all family trees and people. It's like everybody's doing
Speaker 1: the same thing for generation after generation in the same place.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of folks with a lot of
Speaker 1: freedom have talked themselves out of the freedom they actually
Speaker 1: have and have made for the world. Everything is systemic,
Speaker 1: but for individuals it is not all systemic, and that's
Speaker 1: not a I think people are going to interpret that
Speaker 1: a systemic racism, but I don't mean it that way.
Speaker 1: I actually mean it more in terms of your role
Speaker 1: in human history, and I wish sometimes that people had
Speaker 1: a little bit more optimism about the lives they could
Speaker 1: individually lead when that is warranted, which again, if you're
Speaker 1: listening to Talk Easy with San Fragoso, it's probably warranted. Well, Ezra,
Speaker 1: I am happy, grateful to be alive, especially after these
Speaker 1: last two years. And I know you said earlier Sam,
Speaker 1: I just want to have a little bit of fun,
Speaker 1: and I hope you've had some of that here with me.
Speaker 1: It's been a blast. I feel more optimistic than when
Speaker 1: I came on. I talked myself into a stirring speech
Speaker 1: on human freedom. So that's always a good afternoon. Happy
Speaker 1: to help as recline. Thank you very much, thank you,
Speaker 1: and that's our show. I want to give a special
Speaker 1: thanks this week to Ezra Kline. You can learn more
Speaker 1: about his work and his podcast on our website at
Speaker 1: talk easypod dot com. If you enjoyed today's conversation and
Speaker 1: want to hear more like it. I'd recommend our talks
Speaker 1: with Michael Lewis, Roxanne Gay, Dave Eggers, Jake Tapper, Gilanni
Speaker 1: Cobb and as Sale, Nathaniel Rich, Elizabeth Gilbert, Gnam Chomsky
Speaker 1: and Representative il Han Omar. To hear those and other
Speaker 1: Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
Speaker 1: or wherever you do your podcasting. You can also follow
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Speaker 1: program would not be possible without our team. Talk Easy
Speaker 1: is produced by Caroline Reebok. Our executive producer is Janick
Speaker 1: se Bravo. Our associate producer and the editor of today's
Speaker 1: episode is Caitlin Dryden. Our mixer is Andrew Bastola. Music
Speaker 1: by Dylan Peck, Illustrations by Christia Schanoy, Video and graphics
Speaker 1: by Ian Chang, Derek gaberzach Ian Jones, Ethan Seneca and
Speaker 1: Leila Register. Special thanks to Patrice Lee, Kaylin Ung, Shilo Fagan,
Speaker 1: Niki Spina, and Callie Syringis. I'd also like to thank
Speaker 1: the team at Pushkin Industries, Justin Richmond, Heather Fey and Milabelle,
Speaker 1: Maggie Taylor, Nicole Morano, Mayakanig, Carly Migliori, Jason Gambrel, Jacob Weisberg,
Speaker 1: and Malcolm Gladwell. I'm San Fragoso. Thank you for listening
Speaker 1: to Talk Easy. Next week we sit with actress and
Speaker 1: producer Tessa Thompson. Until then, stay safe and so on.