Transcript: Ezra Klein Listeners' Questions About Biden, Psychedelics, His New Ebook, and More

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Every Tuesday and Friday, Ezra Klein invites you to a verbal exchange on important topics, such as today’s episode, in which you answer listeners’ questions. Listen to your podcasts anywhere.

The transcripts of our episodes are made to have them as soon as possible. Grammar and spelling are not completely changed.

transcription

[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]

According to the New York Times, it’s “The Ezra Klein Show. “

Welcome to the Ask Me Anything episode. I’m here with my respected editor, gravity bringer, Aaron Retica. We have tons of questions in between the uploads you all have sent, which I’m grateful for, and I’m about to get sprayed. Aaron, it’s smart to see you in person.

Yes, I know. We in New York.

But it’s not Saturday night. Let’s start simply. There are so many questions. Let’s not waste time. So you’re going on vacation and many of your listeners were curious to know what the ebook is about.

I don’t think anyone who listens to the show will be surprised. So I’m co-writing an e-book with Derek Thompson from The Atlantic, which, if you don’t read it, is great, and it’s an e-book about what I call supply-side progressivism or liberalism that builds what Derek calls abundance, or the abundance program.

But basically, where do we have challenges, where the basic challenge is scarcity?We don’t have enough of everything we need. And when this challenge is localized, how can we solve it?

Sometimes what we want here is for the government to believe more than we want, to make blank energy tax credits or a distortion speed for vaccines. And, infrequently, the government actually makes it very unlikely or very complicated to create what we want, say, housing in California. And those are the layers of the project. And I think the other layer is, how did it become so bad to build liberalism, and especially the positions where liberals govern?How did the coalition that imagines itself behind a strong and effective government become incapable of leading strong and effective governments?

And so the task component exposes the secondary history of post-twentieth-century liberalism, that of the new left, that of Nader’s right, etc. , movements that have created many tactics in which liberals need militant government. I need other people to stand in front of this government and say, stop. You’re not listening to my needs. You will damage the environment, etc.

And the point is not that one side is right and the other is wrong. But you have to perceive how they collided with governance to perceive a lot of problems that we have now and say, okay, the balance on this is broken, given what we’re facing. So that’s the task of the ebook. I will be away for about 3 months. I hope to finish or finish the ebook then. We’ll see. But I’m excited about it.

I’ll move on to the content there in a second. But I wanted to ask him about how to run with Derek. So, you are a user who is in the middle of the procedure, either for your screen or for your spine. Do you plan to do it, an ebook with someone? I’m very curious about it. And there are a lot of procedural questions from your listeners, so I think about asking that.

First he was on eebook leave, due to his schedule, and then he continued. One of the reasons I sought to co-write this eebook is that I found that writing my first eebook, “Why We’re Polarized,” is an incredibly lonely experience. Almost every artistic assignment I’ve done in my life that I’ve enjoyed has had someone else in the middle with me.

In my column, it’s you. In the podcast, it is the team and especially Rogé who has been a component of the series for so long: Rogé Karma, our editor-in-chief. When I started at Vox, I did it with Melissa Bell and Matthew Yglesias. he did “Why are we polarized,” just me. It’s not that I didn’t have an editor, Ben Loehnen, which is great. But for months, only I suffered with the page. And many of my most productive minds are when I speak. A lot of my most productive thinking is in relation to other people.

And I think it makes me smarter to paint with other people. And I think it helps me get things done, too. And I just wanted it to be a less solitary process. There are obvious benefits to completing projects on your own. since you have an artistic complete about them. But there are also genuine drawbacks. So it was an experiment that I sought to at least try.

Yes, we spend a lot of time on the phone. It’s like an outdated relationship between columnist and editor. Alright, let’s delve into the actual material, because you and I have done a lot of paintings about this. And there’s also a ton on the screen.

Thus, Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, faced an acute crisis very recently, where a segment of I-95 collapsed. And Joel D. wrote to us asking if the fact that they were going to get the segment of I-95 that opened 12 days after its collapse, what are the implications for a liberalism that is built on this sequence?

So I think it’s been a literally engaging style because Shapiro brags about it. Biden’s leadership likes to communicate to me the role he played in it. And I think it’s also vital to say that they did it with the union paintings. That was a big component of how they planned it and also how they told it.

It wasn’t just that they had built this part, it must have taken months. This is not at all for a government project, an infrastructure project, which is estimated to take months to take years, and instead took days. around the whole day. They had a live broadcast.

But you have to take seriously what he did. Therefore, the governor of Pennsylvania has emergency powers in the event of a disaster. And Shapiro signed a proclamation that reads, in quotation marks: “I hereby suspend the provisions of any other regulatory law prescribing procedures for the conduct of the Commonwealth. “matters or orders, regulations or regulations of any Commonwealth firm if strict compliance with the provisions of any statutory order, regulation or regulation would prevent, impede or in any way stop mandatory measures to deal with this emergency event.

So I wrote an article with you a few months ago called “All-Bagel Liberalism. “And the fact is that liberals put many secondary objectives into a single project. Also those regulations for on-site childcare, and how to break the contract down into small responsibilities so you can have a more varied set of subcontractors, and what kind of network investments you want to make, and your climate mitigation action plan, etc. on. And one of the themes of this article was that you can decide on some of them, here they chose unions, but you can’t decide on all of them.

And what they did here, what Shapiro was able to do in Pennsylvania, which functionally erased everything else. You would not be able to take legal action and prevent this assignment using, for example, environmental litigation, which occurs in many other assignments. It was just too fast and they erased a lot of things.

If you pay attention to the Jen Pahlka episode, all those other states and, of course, the federal government have very confusing procurement and contracting regulations to make sure that certain things are fair, that other people who are not selected can challenge. window.

So I think what they did is applicable. But it is also applicable that you cannot do that. What they have done is radically adjust the procedure through which the structure occurs. And I’m going to make another point about that, that think is a smart way to think conceptually.

What Shapiro, at the end of the day, said here is that I, Josh Shapiro, who won the election with the most votes of Pennsylvania voters, can be trusted to act in a way that ensures the electorate gets what it wants. In his opinion, at the time, it was the immediate reconstruction of I-95. The processes that we have are a way of saying, we believe that elected representatives cannot be trusted in this, so we’re going to paralyze them or tie them to many other processes designed to allow more voices, perfected to allow more opposition, perfected to allow more litigation.

And you’d possibly think it’s right or wrong. But what I think is vital to seeing what’s happened in Pennsylvania is that there’s nothing about government doing projects that means they can’t be done quickly. There’s nothing about unions wearing down projects that means they can’t be carried out. fast. But you have to make decisions. So, it can also simply grant more governors and give the president more emergency powers and many procurement rules. But that would worry a lot of people.

And so what Pennsylvania shows is that it’s possible. But what the invocation of those emergency powers also shows is that this cannot be done within the general policies used by governors. And the apparent excitement that everyone involved now feels makes us wonder if we are missing something in our overall processes. Emergency processes don’t make you much happier than general processes. This is not usually the case.

But okay, almost no one would say, well, we’d like to see the collapse of I-95. No one needs that, so urgency, thankfully, will supplant situations that would normally prevail. But how are you going to bring this emergency procedure into an ordinary procedure, where other people are going to have objections, some of which will be reasonable, many of which will be unreasonable?It’s simple to say, okay, great. They did it in 12 days. But it was an emergency, so they acted like it was an emergency.

I think, first of all, there is a question about what, in our mind, deserves to be an emergency. My interest in this topic is due, more than anything else, to decarbonization. If the weather is an emergency, and I am an emergency. Now, this is an emergency that unfolds over years and decades, not days.

Summer is for you.

Summer suits me. So I think you have to do it, and this is the big argument within, I think, this total dominance, then I think you have to start saying that our processes don’t work for this kind of emergency. This is a point I’ve now made in podcasts and columns. But the largest solar farm in the United States is on the order of 585 megawatts. We’re going to have to build two 400-megawatt-a-week solar plants for 30 years to succeed on a mid-floor renewables. .

We don’t have the capacity to do that. This should be understood as an emergency, not as something we can deal with business as usual. That’s a point, as you know, I’m doing a column that will probably be in position until this screen arrives. But do not opt for Reposition processes is to opt for now. It is choosing to absorb climate disorders by repositioning yourself to a higher level. Now look. It all depends on where you put the dial, and it will not completely erase all the rules of sourcing. And neither do you. You will not eliminate absolutely all environmental disputes. Nor will it.

But there is an area between here and there. And if we need to do a lot of things that I think we need to do, then we’re going to have to move in that direction. And if we don’t need to do that, then they’re having to say, okay, we agree with real estate markets hunting like superstar cities. We agree to lose our approved Paris climate agreements by much, not by little. We agree on many things we can fix, and we agree that the liberal government has a precise reputation, at least in America, for not being able to build the projects it promises to build.

You can’t do a bullet exercise in California. No you can do the Big Dig on courage and when you said it. The Second Avenue subway will be a general disaster. Maybe if you’re looking to build miles of motorcycle lanes. in San Francisco, it will take you a decade.

It is also an option to say that it is okay and we prefer the final results of those procedures because we believe there are enough voices and we believe that bad projects are worth preventing. Hopefully, you can also make things faster for smart projects and slower for bad ones. It doesn’t have to be a procedure that can’t make any difference between what you’re building.

IT IS OK. That brings us to Joel’s supplementary question. Joel is the star at the beginning of the screen here. So is there an edition of enabling reform that would be a win-win solution for the contribution of the environmental justice community and to build faster?Do you see values as an inherently 0 sum?

I think it depends a little bit on the values we’re talking about. But let’s take environmental justice and faster structure before taking network feedback into account. And here, I think it’s pretty simple. People refer to this as a green pass.

I think we know which projects are meant to be more environmentally sustainable, and I think the ones that deserve to have a streamlined path forward. So there’s a wonderful article that I discussed on the podcast with Robinson Meyer called “The Greens Dilemma. ” and the law professors who wrote this article, report a number of examples where the government, a well-known one, is base closure commissions, essentially identifying problems related to the closure of military bases. And it has a streamlined and expedited voting approach to doing it. And you can believe a safe set of procedures that would be expedited. If you’re running decarbonization, for example, it’s renewable energy, not fossil energy, you might have a quicker trail through environmental scrutiny. Now, there’s a lot of things that aren’t like an environmental review here. So it depends on what you’re communicating. But we see it starting to happen. Affordable housing in California has accelerated beyond a lot of things in the process that it has to go through while market rate housing doesn’t. So you can make decisions about what you’re looking to speed up.

Community contribution is complicated because I think a lot of things are hidden in that term: which network has what kind of contribution?There are times when the procedures we have allow communities, and particularly affected communities, to sit at the table, for example, or enter the procedure and be heard in a way that they wouldn’t otherwise. There are also many tactics where those procedures create an area for the prestige quo to take over.

Very famous, I think all over the country, wealthy landowners are very smart at manipulating the blueprint process. Therefore, you cannot build houses below the market price, and you cannot build many houses in very, very desirable and very, very vital economic areas.

So what network gets feedback, the network that lives there now, the network that would like to live there, the network that has time to attend all those meetings that most people don’t even know are happening?

There is a great deal of force being exerted in meetings on the regulatory procedure for virtually any primary bill you can think of. Most people never know that those meetings will take place. But each and every lobbyist knows when those meetings are held. , and wealthy interests spend a lot of cash to make sure their interests and concepts are heard at those meetings.

So it’s a very difficult thing to do properly. But one complaint that many make in this realm (I think Jerusalem Demsas in The Atlantic has written wonderful articles on this topic) and with which I agree, is that there is a difference between contribution and representative contribution. Processes are captured. And then we ask ourselves at what point and at what level other people are engaged.

The fact that there was an assembly and some other people showed up does not mean that what was heard in that assembly was the sentiment of the network. I sat in S. F. town hall meetings, and one thing that came up was whether or not to build a 5G tower. And user after user after user after user attacked the 5G tower. The only other people who showed up for the 5G tower portion of this plan-making meeting were other people who think 5G towers can cause cancer. Now most other people, I think, don’t care much for 5G towers. And since they had to choose, they need to have fast internet. And so, in the end, the 5G tower won. But whatever happened in that assembly was a contribution from the network, but it was not representative of the network. And it is a position in which we have a representative government. And going back to my point about Shapiro a minute ago, I often think that a smart way to have a broader net input is to empower your elected representatives. There will be checks on that, but they won’t be absolutely incapable of doing the things they just got elected by the top constituency at a much higher level of political participation.

Again, it all depends on where you hit the dial here. It can go too far in either direction. But I think the contribution of the community is complicated. Many times we don’t listen to the community. We hear about a subset of interests involved who know how to manipulate the levers of power. And we will have to be careful not to analogize them.

This goes straight to what Tony C. needs to know: How does a member of climate-conscious society think about Biden’s management in the context of climate change?Do you think a Biden is net positive or negative for our environment?And he’s thinking, of course, about allowing the extraction of fossil fuels, etc.

I just put that, and that doesn’t mean criticizing Tony. I only put that because, if you’re in a data loop, where this query actually looks imaginable that you can do it either way: it was Joe Biden. who presided over the largest package of climate investments ever made and created an entirely new design on which the meteorological infrared design will be built: ERI alone right now is valued at around $380 billion. over 10 years, though, as we talked about in the Robinson Meyer episode, maybe it’s actually going to be $500 billion, maybe $1 trillion in climate investments.

And, on the other hand, they allowed short-term drilling and made an energy crisis a little less difficult to build more. On social media, it’s sometimes hard to keep things in perspective. But Biden is the most successful pro-climate president of all time in this country. Climate is a relatively new topic, but obviously, Trump has been a disaster.

He did much more than Obama just because of the challenge scenario and the position of political coalitions, much more than Clinton, much more than George W. And he gave us the ability to build this thing. We would possibly fail, however, Biden has absolutely replaced that.

For so long, the total environmental fight against the climate has been, can we find a way to get the money to do what we want to do?Now, for all that we are talking about, the verbal exchange has replaced for there is cash. Can we literally translate all this law into the decarbonization infrastructure we want in the real world?

This is an amazing achievement. And it makes me a little sad that anybody looks at Biden’s management and what they’ve done at this point, where they’ve crossed the line. Possibly it would not be everything everyone was looking for because they had a 50/50 Senate. But they have overcome it, and now the pictures can be made.

We’ll see what happens. We’ll see if everything goes well. Implementation is difficult. All of this has to happen in the real world. It’s not just about sending government checks.

But they have had ordinary good luck on a rather complicated issue. Climate is not just a political problem. It’s not the one where you naturally have very large groups of other people who will gain advantages right away.

They prioritized it. They understood that. They passed it. They deserve to be applauded. And now they deserve to be monitored and examined the genuine paintings have to pass.

But what they have done marginally to decrease the prices of strength so as not to absolutely destroy their strength in the medium term is only political. But the essence of his law has been an ordinary climate presidency, given what is truly imaginable in American politics, unimaginable in people’s minds. They deserve credit for that.

So T. J. M. has an attractive question. There was a lot of talk about this before Biden took office. But let me ask you now: Are comparisons between Joe Biden and F. D. R. justified?Have your presidencies been very similar?

They are not justified. Yes, he’s right that before Biden arrived, and his timeline expanded, and Democrats also started 2020 thinking they could get massive majorities in Congress, he had this moment where it could be a presidency of the duration of the RDF. And that happened with Obama, too. There, maybe Obama will be the next F. D. R.

And I have the doubt that F. D. R. was only F. D. R. because of the length of the congressional majority he won in 1932, because the Great Depression and anger against Hoover destroyed the Republican Party. So F. D. R. , when it comes in, has 58 Democratic senators for 36 Republican senators in a much less polarized time. He may get more than the 36 Republicans, but still 58 to 36. Biden has a 50/50 Senate, where Vice President Kamala Harris is a swing vote.

When you first enter.

When it first arrives, it’s fine. And in the House, F. D. R. It had 311 Democrats to 117 Republicans. And for Biden, when he arrives, Democrats have a single-digit majority. You cannot have a presidency for the duration of the RDF. In a polarized political era in a narrowly divided Congress. And I think that’s what other people miss. when they seek to judge other presidents opposed to F. D. R.

The amount of legislation a president can pass depends on what Congress does. Congress drafts the law and passes it. The president can only veto it. And then, that F. D. R. had been a destroyed Republican Party, and that wasn’t true for Biden. That wasn’t true for Obama, it probably wouldn’t be true for the next Democratic president. And that only reduces the odds.

I think it’s remarkable how many policies Biden and the Democrats have passed with a 50/50 Senate. If you had told me in January 2020 that the Democrats are going to have a 50/50 Senate, what are they going to do?I would have said much less than them. A 50/50 Senate will never give him a presidency of the duration of a New Deal. It just can’t.

Michelle O. needs to know why she thinks physical health care reform in the United States is rarely a very hot political topic right now.

ah My first love.

Your first love.

My first love –

[INAUDIBLE]

– In politics. So there you have it. So I covered, for others who haven’t followed my jobs in the afterlife, health care reform for years. That’s my first big political question. And I think there are several reasons.

One is Obama and his success. So they passed the Affordable Care Act. If you take a look at the existing grades of uninsured non-elderly Americans, because seniors have Medicare, you have about 27. 5 million uninsured people. The Affordable Care Act was passed.

And if you look at who he is, he has an organization of other people in the 10 states that haven’t expanded Medicaid. enough cash so they don’t actually qualify for subsidies. So are some other people.

It has a big challenge among non-citizens who, if they are new noncitizens, are not eligible for some of the program’s grants or Medicaid. And, of course, undocumented immigrants are not eligible.

Cleaning up the end of the uninsured population is pretty tricky, and you’re dealing with a lot of random issues: the Medicaid factor and states fighting Medicaid, etc. So I think the Affordable Care Act is successful enough to drain a lot of the power of health care reform. It’s a thing

And then there’s something else, and that is that one of the reasons physical care reform has been so full of life for so long was that the expansion of physical care charges, year after year, was developing much faster than inflation, much faster than GDP expansion. There’s been a pretty big slowdown in the last 10 years. The reasons for this are debated. But the massive load expansion challenge that we’ve had that has led to this total load curve debate in the Obama administration that has made it a huge challenge for employers, is not that it has completely disappeared. But that’s not the basic challenge.

That’s not to say there’s no way to believe that physical care is much better. In the 2020 primaries, we had a lot of single-payer debates within the Democratic Party. There’s an engaging new eBook through Liran Einav and, I’d like I’m possibly wrong, and Amy Finkelstein, who are wonderful fitness economists, called “We’ve Got You Covered: Rebooting American Health Care. “, fairer, that would cover anything closer to everyone. But the formula works well enough for so many other people that it’s hard to believe it will have a precedent in the near future.

When I think about what I would like, any kind of Congress, any kind of unified Congress and presidency, to make their most sensible priority, it’s hard for me to say a new fitness reform. I would be much more interested in the health of the baby. universal linkage like the episode we did recently with Darrick Hamilton. I would be much more interested in universal pre-K. It’s not that physical care is wonderful in this country. It’s not. But political capital is very limited, and a lot of other people here are doing pretty well, and moving it in the last few miles would be so complicated that I think, when you believe in the expenses you can spend, that would lead to the biggest improvement. On wellness, it’s hard for me to say now that this is health care reform. Both because its prestige as an economic challenge has been reduced a little bit and because its prestige as such, we have this massive uninsured population, it has been reduced a little bit.

So I think it’s become more of a challenge among many than the central challenge that makes employers, budget buffs and other people in general suffer.

Although this has not solved the problem of drug addiction that causes the death of more than 100,000 people a year, therefore.

But that’s a great thing. When we communicate about physical care reform, we regularly communicate about monetary isolation from physical care costs. So when you think about what you would do the most to improve physical care now, I think it’s not physical care reform. I think things like an expansion of children’s tax credits would go a long way toward people’s health.

We know that giving cash to other people is smart for your fitness. And I think baby bonds have that quality as well. I can think of a lot of things that would be smart for the fitness of the American population and would probably have a higher dollar-consistent payout than Medicare reform, which is what we’re communicating when we communicate about health care reform.

[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]

Changing the subject a bit, Doug A. needs to know what your opinion is on the popular purpose of enforcing term limits in Congress, if you’ve given him any idea anyway. And obviously, it would probably require a constitutional amendment to do that, not necessarily but probably. So what do you think of that?

I would say, take a look at some things. For example, look at California, where it has time limits for the legislature. I don’t think in California or other states where there is this, legislatures are particularly better or more effective. Smart legislators would have been limited in their terms in a way that I don’t think we deserve anything smart.

It takes time to become a smart member of the House or Senate. I don’t think the country would have been better off if Senator Ron Wyden had to retire after two terms or if Senator Dick Durbin had had to do the same. They are comments of experience, links, skills. Joe Biden has been, in part, a smart lawmaker over time because he learned things he didn’t know in his first term or two. It has become much more effective over time.

So, I don’t think that when I look at the House, let’s say, and I look at the other people there, a lot of the legislators who I think are the worst are the most recent. They’re just looking to be booked on Fox News or social media. Many legislators who are quite strong there have been there for a long time. So even if you take the argument away from political science, term limits end up giving a lot of strength to the unelected lobbying class.

I just think if you look at it, it doesn’t look very good. I think most people would conclude that the most productive members of the House and Senate are the ones who have had time to be there the longest. It’s a challenge that the incumbent can feed on themselves and other people can be there for too long. Look at Dianne Feinstein in California as a very excessive example. I think it’s hard to know precisely what to do about it.

I will say that the one position I am very supportive of term limits is for the Supreme Court, where I think it deserves to have 12 or 18 year term limits so that vacancies that arise are reliable enough for other presidents to get the same. amount consistent with term, so you don’t have that incentive to appoint other very young people to the Supreme Court, so things get complicated when other people die or become too incapacitated Array I think lifetime appointments are a silly idea, all in all. And partly when you don’t have anything resembling an election that imposes at least some point of accountability, you have to think about term limits. When there are elections that impose a certain degree of responsibility, yes, the merit of the headline is something genuine. It is also a genuine thing that the electorate participates in. So I think it’s a little strange to say that we know in the summary that the electorate is wrong to give their representative a third term and that we sitting here deserve to tell them. that they can’t So yeah, I’ve never been a fan of term limits.

Yes, that’s precisely what you’re saying. It devalues two-way elections, lifetime appointments of Supreme Court justices, and term limits. Yes, it steals power from other people.

Tom C. has a difficult query for you. He says, I seem to be the only liberal alarmed by the real scandal involving Hunter Biden, but you feel the same way.

He appears to have amassed between $10 million and $20 million in investments from a coalition of very sketchy Chinese, Ukrainian, and Romanian sources, none of which seem to have produced paintings that anyone can point to. And it turns out that Hunter, and maybe also his uncle Jim, were trafficking on behalf of Joe Biden, as Tom C. says, implying to their brands that brands would have access to Joe Biden with their investments.

Biden himself simply says he didn’t care about his son’s business affairs. And would we be if they were Republicans?

I who, in a way, this last piece is too easy.

IT IS OK.

We did it when they were the Republicans. I’m thinking, in many ways, about what Jared Kushner did, raising billions for an investment fund with Saudi Arabia, the amount of direct influence peddling that Donald Trump did in power, how other people would try to access him through being part of Trump’s corporate investments and Trump’s hotel stays. And everything was more direct. It was much worse. It was much more serious.

I think the Hunter Biden scandal is genuine in the Hunter Biden sense, the things he did are really disgusting. People want to know if something went wrong, is that no one can point to everything that came out of Joe’s Biden administration. It does not turn out that any work has resulted from this influence peddling. influence peddling.

Now, I’m not opposed to anything that shows it differently. If it turns out that President Biden is colluding with Hunter and there is some kind of email exchange or some kind of handshake, where, if they gave Hunter this task, they would do it. To get this amendment on the bill or this thing they wanted to do, I think would be a real problem. And rightly so. That would be a real problem.

The fact that Biden has had a laissez-faire attitude toward the activities of his absolute adult child disaster, I think a kind of sympathy from other people toward Biden is emerging. What precisely did Biden have to do? I probably didn’t know much about all this. A lot of the main points that come out with Hunter Biden, the seventh granddaughter, is very sad.

It’s sad.

It’s incredibly sad. You look at someone who’s never been there to get their life back on track. He definitely trafficked influence. It hurts a lot of people. He obviously hurts himself. He obviously hurt his father.

And if you read Biden’s e-book that he wrote a few years ago when he was running for president, and I think it was in 2008, the love that he has for Beau and Hunter Array is his confidence that Hunter Biden will be part of the Beau Biden guy of kitchen cupboard and they would shield themselves, and then you see how it goes, The tragedy is immense. But it’s not a scandal that someone’s child or one of their children is an asshole. It is a scandal that this is part of the way the government exercises power.

I don’t think the fact that Trump has done much worse than that in a very apparent and direct way absolves Biden. What absolves Biden so far is that he doesn’t appear to have done so. And if it turns out that he did, if it turns out that the way Hunter was getting those gifts was that he wasn’t just some kind of wink, wink, acquiescence, acquiescence, that you have access to Joe Biden but you were having access to Joe Biden, that would be worse. It is a component of this factor that we have not addressed, to shorten it, that we have not addressed. But Tom C. evoked the old concept that genuine scandal is what is legal. And one thing I would say is that the thing that Hunter Biden is accused of doing happens all the time in a much more effective way.

So, in Congress and in administrations, other people who were high-level aides to senators and House speakers and, of course, lobbying chairmen. And then they paint on behalf of other governments and other companies. And they use their pre-existing Dated with other people in force to see to advance ideas.

Now, Biden wasn’t well registered to be a lobbyist and all that other stuff.

But what is described here happens all the time, not in silly young adults who don’t know what they’re doing and can’t deliver. with presidential practice and communicate with the leader of Taiwan by phone very temporarily after being elected. These things happen, and they’re set in a much larger world of more effective influence peddling.

The Hunter Biden affair is a kind of edit turned absurdity that looks worse because he’s Biden’s son, but it’s probably less bad because it doesn’t seem to have worked.

But again, evidence may emerge that it worked consistently. And that would somewhat replace my opinion of him.

I will say that if Republicans take credit for this, they won’t have to nominate any Donald Trump.

[LAUGHTER]

If it becomes a fight over where influence peddling is falling into the circle of family affairs in an administration, and it’s Trump who opposes Joe Biden, and the review is now at Jared Kushner’s Saudi-backed venture capital fund, it’s not going to work.

So in many tactics, and this has been kind of an issue on the screen recently, Republicans will have to decide, should they choose a strategically placed candidate to take advantage of Joe Biden’s weaknesses or not?turns out not But it’s going to be significant here too.

It is ok. There are so many smart questions ici. I’m going to jump to one. This comes from Colton L. In your opinion, what kind of paintings are grossly undervalued in the new American society on the basis of salary, social prestige and everything that accompanies the paintings that require?

Anything and everything with children. Anything and everything with the kids. Being a social worker who works with children, being a teacher, being someone who is a parent in the foster system, given the importance of this job, is underpaid. It doesn’t have terrible prestige compared to other things, but it doesn’t have the prestige it does.

It doesn’t have the rungs as high on the ladder as it should. There is no kind of elite coach name that is a bit like being a spouse in a very large law firm, where everyone knows that you have succeeded and that you are one of the most productive in one of the most vital things that take place in American or human life.

We underestimate things with children.

We communicate about how young people are our future. And we treat them, in many ways, as an afterthought. And we treat the other people who are tasked with helping them after the fact. The salary, benefits, and prestige in youth childcare paintings is simply terrible. It is the general crisis of an industry.

It’s a position where cash really matters. And I said it before on screen that I think in American life, for the most part, prestige follows cash. We give maximum prestige to things that generate the maximum cash. And there are counterexamples. The academy has a little more prestige and has cash.

But prestige regularly follows money. And by not paying well for this, we take away its prestige. We’re depriving it, to some extent, although, of course, there are other wonderful people in those industries, of talent. And it’s just not the right social design, and it’s nothing I think we’ll leave to the market.

Yes, young people can’t pay much, and young people who want maximum assistance can’t pay the maximum. I think young kids who are in very selective colleges, who tell their parents that they’re going to go on to law school, it’s much more comfortable for their parents that, I’m going on to become a social painter working with young children, or I’m going to pass paintings in early formative education, Because it is securing a higher salary in the future.

And that’s a problem. It deserves to be that, when you tell someone, I’m going to become a teacher, what they hear is that you’re going to do a smart task and you’re going to be very smart because we compensate well for that because we need the most productive to become teachers. And yes, it’s just one position where I think we’re failing.

Sí. Es amazing thing that in other countries, in fact, teachers do: I may be an engineer, a lawyer or a teacher. And you rarely hear that here, which I think is a must-have component.

Just like hearing about a U. C. Berkeley graduate, I go to dermatology, what’s called versus, I go to paintings in a kindergarten.

okay.

There is nothing with dermatologists. They do a wonderful job. But we know what you’re saying when you say I’m going to paint in kindergartens. And it is: it sounds good, but you’re not going to make a lot of money.

Otherwise. And then, the issue of social prestige is more vital than I think, really. I think prestige comes from money, but it’s still an essential component.

And married to a teacher.

I am married to a teacher. I’m going to accuse you of flattering on those grounds. . .

[LAUGHTER]

“Because I’m married to someone who works in the early formative years and has faced this, where there are other people who think, well, why are you a lawyer?Why are you a teacher?

And this time, she’s doing all these amazing paintings with second-graders in public schools.

I’m curious if you see it in the world. When you tell other people –

Definitely

– That they remain New York Times columnists who act like children, his wife says he works with children.

I was going to do another edit of this joke before. I was going to ask you if you’re on the lifetime tenure of New York Times columnists and podcasters.

Absolutely not.

[LAUGHTER]

Are you kidding, I hope? [LAUGHTER]

No, I don’t know. OK, let’s transfer here to psychedelics to bring a little bit of California to our New York studio. Job F. le asks if he has been following the clinical advances and hype around psychedelics in recent years. And I’m going to respond to that. component and say: I know you’ve written about it. But from clinical trials to microdosing to legalization processes in Colorado, Australia (not mentioning Oregon), but also Oregon’s indigenous communities, what do you think of all this?think?

I have a lot of contrasting opinions about psychedelic treatment and assistance right now. The first is the paintings I’m most interested in: I wrote an article about this some time ago and would like to return to it next year. – is in Oregon, where they are looking to create a legal system, it’s not legal at the federal level, but it’s a legal path and a design for sustained psychedelic experiences. which, in particular, are not just psychedelic treatments.

You don’t want a diagnosis to do this. You can leave. They are trying to figure out how to make the license. They are looking for how to do the support. It looks like it will be quite expensive. That’s going to be vital because it’s not just about whether you can legalize them or not, but whether or not you can create a design where they can be used well.

When I look at the studies, I think the studies on them at this point are quite extraordinary. I would expect them to underperform in the real world than studies because studies are done very carefully. But we see studies that recommend profound effects in treatment. Resistant primary depression, profound effects on other types of addictions, profound effects only on people’s lives.

Leaving aside the question of what identified diseases can help other people cure, we have those ingredients that functionally cost nothing in terms of how much it costs to grow psilocybin-containing mushrooms or synthesize LSD, and we can induce reports that other people count among the most significant of their entire lives.

And that’s quite remarkable thing to stay locked up. I find it surprising.

And it’s not that there are dangers. But you can make base jump legally. You can legally be a base jumper. But legally you can’t take a dose of acid, sit in your room, pay attention to the music and have a sublime musical experience. That really seems like a very strange way to me. Let other people take on all kinds of dangers in society.

Now, what worries me a lot is the race for monetary land here: the number of corporations seeking to patent it, the number of corporations seeking to distill them into even harder and more usable and maybe even forms. And let’s see where that leads because it hasn’t been legalized enough yet for it to do that.

There’s all this scrambling for cash and investments for legalization day, whether this legalization is medical, which probably, at least nationally, is the first step. It is very credible that he was going to get FDA approval for certain types of psilocybin remedies M. D. M. A. et in the next few years.

But eventually, if it is legalized as, for example, hashish is legalized in several states, the effects of commercialized hashish, some of which have benefited me in particular, are not, in my opinion, good without mixing.

The amount of money invested in very hardy edibles and much more resistant varieties, packaging and formats that are much more suitable for children, regardless of the type of user, is fine if you are someone who has intelligent self-control regarding those things. But other people addicted. People say that going to the bathroom is not physiologically addictive, but other people are very addicted. And the maximum money is obtained from the other people who buy the maximum.

There are safe pauses in psychedelics that make it a little less likely to follow the same path. But I worry about the amount of money that’s spent looking to locate tactics around the fact that it’s very framework and brain and you expand a Tolerance to stumble a lot. If you place yourself in a scenario where money is earned through other people who have an uncontrollable relationship, it can be very psychologically damaging to other people.

So I think there’s a lot of promise here, and I think there’s a lot of danger here. But, overall, I’m optimistic. I believe that these are strong compounds that can create effects in people’s lives that help them overcome terrible problems, but also to live a deeper life in relation to themselves, to the world and to nature.

And I think to get it right, though, it’s happening to have to be more about how to legalize psychedelic compounds. But how do we create structures for their productive use?How do you make integration possible, that kind of time after you’ve had a party and now you have to realize what it means for your life?How do you make this affordable for people?That’s, I think, where a lot of the rubber goes on to get on the road, which is, again, so I think what Orepassn is doing is interesting. But there was no upheaval there. But if in 10 years you told me it didn’t go well, I wouldn’t be surprised. I would be sad but not surprised.

We’re going to shift gears again at the center of “The Ezra Klein Show” recently, which is A. I. and Joseph C. se wonders what credit, if any, he gives to the simulation speculation first discussed some 20 years ago through Nick Bostrom?And obviously, you have to tell us what it is because many other people may not know.

I don’t know. Just for your information, I don’t know. So, simulation speculation is essentially the concept of, look. Imagine that we become a society that can serve as technologically complex enough that we can run simulations of entire societies. just use SimCity or play video games. But we can free the PC and release as many as we want, entire universes.

Obviously, in Bostrom’s view, we’d like to do that. And obviously, the simulators within those universes would be more than the other people in fundamental authenticity. So if you just assume those two things are true, then you come to the conclusion that, well, we’re probably a simulation because there will be more simulated people than other genuine people. So why do you deserve to think you’re one of the other genuine people?

Here’s what I’ll say. And I said it, I think, probably at the A. M. A. before. I think it has the quality of seeing a very crude form of monotheism reinvented through PC programmers, which is why it’s very popular in Silicon Valley. If you take the very crude form of monotheism like, God is like us, like a bigger, a great throne, a long white beard, more powers, it’s God is like us even bigger: PC programmer with tougher PCs, video player simulation games but with a more powerful video game system.

And the explanation of why I just don’t buy it, and maybe that’s not an intelligent explanation of why; I am not an accredited philosopher; I think it’s such an ordinary lack of insight about how the ultimate truth is probably weird, just the concept that the genuine response to what’s happening here is so incredibly simplistic, like not what’s falling here is precisely what we’re already doing, just with more GPUs in the system. I think it’s very unlikely to be the full effect here.

I think it’s kind of a lack of humility about what we almost don’t know. Why, in the simulation, did we create all those other planets?Why did we create physics with rules so strange that possibly the world would constantly expand?Why is there rarely more life on nearby planets?Is this how we would create a simulation, a gigantic area formula of unimaginable length in which, at least so far, we only know this planet with life?

It’s all so curious, in a way, that I just don’t buy it. I’ve had a negative reaction to this, but that’s because I think it necessarily takes our reality, helps maintain what we know about it. stable, and then does a toy query within that. We don’t know anything. We still don’t perceive how quantum physics works. The reality is going to be much stranger, much more surprising that it is like us even bigger, like us but with more power. I just don’t buy it.

So, speaking of the strength of generative models as a whole, Jordan A. he wonders, given the strength of the A. I. models, and we already know this, and of course there are also many advances, to produce convincing human text at virtually no cost. , it turns out that we will most likely see a massive proliferation of A. I. Astroturfing in the run-up to the 2024 election, which is already upon us.

In recent years, we have already noticed major problems of misinformation and disinformation, both in general and in relation to elections. So what Jordan asks A. es what do you think if there’s anything we can do to get ahead of this problem.

Personally, I pass back and forth on this subject. So there’s no doubt that, at A. I. , we’re creating rugged machines to create the raw fabrics for incorrect information: deep fakes and infinite amounts of auto-generated text content, images, videos, and sounds that seem to come from the user you’re looking for. to defame. And the other answers I hear within A. I. The overall one is very unconvincing to me.

The most important thing you hear is that they’re going to look for a form of digital watermark, so that anything that comes out of an AI or maybe anything that comes out of something real, gets a watermark of a certain kind, so it can be read digitally to check its authenticity.

I think the challenge with this solution is also the explanation of why I cared a little less about the challenge, which is that the other people who care about picking up those things, don’t care about their virtual watermark.

It’s a misunderstanding, I think, quite deeply, the challenge of fake news.

Fake news works when you give other people something they already need to believe, that they don’t need to verify. This is the main way fake news works.

It’s not that other people can’t go to the New York Times to verify something.

No need. They don’t need to be told it’s not true, or not to accept it as true with the New York Times or whatever.

The explanation for why other people believed in QAnon wasn’t because no one had told them that 4Chan wasn’t a reliable source of information. And, therefore, we already have a lot of ability to edit photographs, spread misinformation and send entire emails.

I don’t know what the delta is. I’m not sure what open area it is in terms of other people who are the market for this kind of misinformation and don’t have enough to work with. Another way of putting it is this: it’s the boundary between misinformation and misinformation, at this point in human history, too difficult to produce?I don’t think that’s the case.

And I think it’s much more likely that you’re entering a kind of cynical cave of accepting as truth than in an age of rampant misinformation. If you don’t believe, you can accept those videos as true, and you can’t There are already all those edited videos made to give the impression that Joe Biden has a much harder time talking about than he really is. This material is already there if you need it. We’re perfectly smart to create it now.

It gets easier. But I think the challenge is really the audience. And perhaps more important things that build up the audience a bit, knowing that there is more incorrect information circulating can make the audience a little more skeptical. But I think the challenge is a challenge to the audience, like a call to challenge, not a source challenge.

And I worry too much about the side I. A. de the latter considers it as a challenge of the source and not as a challenge of the convocation. So that’s my slightly more positive opinion. I believe that the call for this is already well fulfilled. And I’m a little skeptical, at least in the short term, that the change of source will radically replace the balance.

I just saw this attractive documentary about Umberto Eco. And it talks about all those false documents that have deeply marked genuine history.

On the right, Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

That’s the one who gives, yes.

I say this about fake news: fake news is no worse today than at other times in history.

[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]

So I discussed earlier that there were a lot of questions about the program, its process, and its way of thinking about things. And now we’re going to get into a series of those.

A big component of what I seem to get from listening to the podcast is understanding what it’s like to have an intelligent conversation.

For example, you are rejecting everything a guest is discussing in an elaborate and gentle manner. In response, the guest does not actually accept your point of view, but rephrases everything the guest has said before. My brain is fine, this user deserves to be given back a moment. Does not respond. But then you don’t go, which I appreciate very much because the guest is quite wise and honest. And if you haven’t responded, there will have to be a reason, maybe there just rarely is an answer.

So the query Audrey needs to ask is, while doing the show, what do they tell you about what makes a conversation smart?

I really liked this query because it responds very well. This is precisely true. There are certain types of conversations where it’s vital to pin someone down and make them feel like they’re not answering a query.

The Meet the Press approach.

When you’re looking to find out how someone thinks, if they don’t answer a question, they have a reason. Sometimes, their lack of response is the answer. That’s what they have on the subject. That’s as far as his thinking goes.

If they don’t have an intelligent answer to that, that’s where they think at the time. So I have a tendency to have, personally, and I think that’s how conversations between other people work. If I’ve asked someone twice and find the answer unsatisfactory, but I think that’s the answer I wish to give myself, I don’t ask them three, four, or five times just to show that I can embarrass them. I don’t want to say there’s never a time for that. If a. Si the president had, he would require another type of interview.

But I think there’s a challenge in a lot of interviews about politics that is performative.

I think the audience is smart. That’s why I like this question. Audrey understands exactly what’s going on here. The audience is an intellectual actor fully involved in the conversation. They don’t speak, but they evaluate.

I often get emails saying, why didn’t you give the final blow?And the answer is, that’s not what we’re doing here. I’m not looking to embarrass a user in front of you.

So I’m just saying, in terms of what a smart verbal exchange does, I think that’s a great question. And I don’t have a single answer. But I think it’s knowing what you need from a verbal exchange. And I think other people are used to expecting in politics that what makes a verbal exchange smart is some kind of persuasion.

People really need to see someone convinced of anything they don’t know or see an argument demolished. And I don’t think that’s primarily what makes conversations smart. A lot of the persuasion that happened as a result of that display happens after the end, when other people think about what they said or didn’t say or other people think about it. Certainly, this is true for me.

And I think a smart verbal exchange is other people offering themselves in the same spirit of openness and sharing. And if you don’t introduce him as a host, he may not be brought to you as a guest.

When we were talking about the midterm reviews last year, we talked a little bit about that. whatever we call them here in New York, they are so performative and real.

And I think one of the most attractive things about the screen, and not just your screen, but the total podcast revolution, is that you have these semi-private conversations that take a stand in public, which is much more engaging than conversations that take a stand in public.

And I think it’s also a big component of what’s interesting, which brings us, interestingly, to Chris M’s next question. Could you share the main points about your data digestion and retention procedure on such a wide diversity of topics?Are you an avid note taker? And if so, which did you find that works best?

This is a query that I think we get in essentially each and every WADA, and the explanation for why I’m doing it this time is because something has been replaced in my process. So we’re going to communicate about that in more detail in a minute. I now work in the New York Times office in charming Times Square.

And there are some advantages to going to the workplace and some disadvantages. The journey is a long time. I paint close to home, which is something more positive. But the unforeseen advantages are getting an industrial-grade printer.

[LAUGHTER]

And Aaron is probably laughing because now only my table is covered in paper. And I had a LaserJet at home and I printed things. But it’s useless, in a way, to print out each and every article I read for a podcast.

But I think I get 50% more, a hundred percent more of my preparation doing it on paper, especially when it comes to shorter articles and things that aren’t books, doing it on paper than on a screen. Do any preparation on my existing computer, where I have so many distractions, I can do it. And I get anything from her.

But it’s much worse. So, I don’t have an incredibly structured procedure in the sense that I take notes, or here’s my grading system, or whatever.

But at this point, my procedure is that I print everything. I have this huge pile of paper. And I at a small table with a pen, and walk through it.

And the concentration that was presented to me was a big step forward for me in preparation, starting with something very undeniable. So it’s been great and it’s been a replacement and obviously anything that connects with things like Maryanne Wolf. Conversation, if other people need to go back to that, completely about how reading in other media will replace the way you reabsorb and interact with information. But I was surprised by how true I found out.

Yes, this episode is one of my favorites, and “Proust and the Squid”, your ebook is also amazing on this topic. Okay, let’s talk about reducing concentration. Sam M. asks, well, he says, I’ve been on Twitter for a long time. I said how wonderful it was for 3 things. I like to be aware of existing events, politics and sports, the latter of which, I will only tell the Ezra Klein audience, Ezra Klein has no interest at all. So let’s concentrate. on –

is an interest It is a lack of wisdom and Array. . . of interest. [LAUGHTER]

[LAUGHS] yes, exactly. I know Ezra tuned out a long time ago, and that’s why I write. Since I left, I’ve discovered a much longer attention span for reading articles, which goes back to what you just talked about. this, I still feel like I’m missing things I got from Twitter.

I miss people’s minds about issues they don’t write articles or podcasts about. I miss that collective feeling when it turns out that everyone on Twitter is reacting to the same thing.

So Sam needs to know what you think about it and how you treated your Twitter exit. What did you do to make up for what you missed?And how do you keep up with the news?

And I’ll notice that I played around with Threads a little bit, and I need to get back to it. And one of the reasons I left Twitter, that before Musk finished buying it, but when it was in sight, I still mess up with Twitter, for me, before Elon Musk. I wrote an article about Musk’s Twitter acquisition called “Elon Musk will have Twitter because he will have Twitter” or something like that. People can look it up.

I think that turned out to be my maximum foreboding piece this year. And the fact that he’s going to take the worst of Twitter because he’s someone who likes the worst of Twitter, adds to that and compounds the contradictions of an already problematic platform. so much so that it would slowly drive away many other people. Not everyone, however, will only replace scales enough that other people leave something or need to leave something they no longer liked.

But I will die on this hill. Twitter is a bad way to stay informed about the world. It’s just the way to do it. And that’s the point I was making a minute ago about printing your articles.

It’s about what you don’t do when you’re on Twitter. And the most productive way to explain it is that I think there’s a really profound difference between feeling informed and being informed. And I think Twitter and, frankly, a lot of things on social media, specialize in making other people, especially nervous, news-hungry journalists, feel informed. But the other people, the most informed, are the ones who seem most productive by doing nothing on Twitter.

There is hardly anyone whose wisdom of things is based on Twitter or communicated basically through Twitter and I find that this is where I get my data and appreciate it. For example, Sam loses a feeling when it turns out that everyone on Twitter is reacting. to the same. And I would say that, in general, what they react to is what they react to badly.

So I have a prepaid Twitter account for when I want to read something there. And I have room to use it the day there’s a massive debate about Joe Rogan that’s not easy or challenging or gives money to this vaccine specialist to debate RFKJr. on the screen Rogan. Et everyone in my feed, like Nate Silver, everyone comments on that.

And they were all on the same page. And in a way, being there made me feel like I was informed. He knew what the zeitgeist was that day. I can see the conversation. And it’s an extremely stupid conversation.

It’s simply a bad thing to let your intellectual area in all day. You would have been better off reading a report on homelessness or whatever.

So for me, in terms of data about the world, actually, one of the really difficult disciplines is not letting the wrong psychics or the other wrong people think, not being too connected to a verbal exchange if you think the verbal exchange has become toxic, or you think the verbal exchange has become trivial. Or you think verbal exchange is driven by algorithmic dynamics that don’t serve you. That’s my opinion on Twitter.

I played with Threads, which I’m enjoying right now, and possibly wouldn’t continue; We’ll see how it develops. But I am not wrong to think that what I do there is inform myself. It would be much better to read the New York Times than to waste time with Threads. Threads is a fun way for me to waste time when I have a few minutes.

The explanation for why I respond with some hobby is that I think it has become a very bad meme in journalism, which has been bad especially for young journalists, whose colleagues are on Twitter. His current and longtime bosses are on Twitter. You’re meant to be there or Threads or whatever.

And that’s the time, when you spend a lot of time on Twitter, that maybe you don’t spend reading, reporting, seeing things that other people don’t see because they’re in the newspaper or in the magazine.

In many ways, reading an article from The Economist doesn’t give me the same feeling of being informed as being on social media because I don’t feel like I know what all the other people I should know think. But I think it leads me to be much more informed, informed. I read things I didn’t know yet. I draw concepts from things that I didn’t have concepts before.

So I don’t mean you can’t be informed of anything on Twitter. It provides you with some smart links and this and that. But, in my opinion, there are better places to find these things. the road, and the same about Bluesky and Mastodon and Facebook and everything else. Like 10 or 15 years ago and say it has definitely improved.

We are simply more informed or more focused on the right things. The public has a greater concept of what is going on. There is more agreement on the basic issues under discussion. And if things don’t improve, I think they deserve to lead. Be skeptical about claims that platforms that other people work on are making things better.

So, in addition to spending time with me, what you discussed earlier, which is a small component of your move, Laura C. he wonders why you moved to New York, where I’ll just say you’ve never lived before. And she says, “I probably would have missed it, but I didn’t hear you. “So, can you tell your listeners why you’re here?

Yes, I think that’s our maximum popular consultation of this tour.

There are a lot of them.

And there were some who were a little offended, who had that quality of, how dare you move to New York without explaining why. And the answer is largely that it’s personal, that we moved to be closer to my wife’s family. There were considerations applicable around our two offices, so New York made sense.

We have and have had more circle of family support. We have a smart grid here. And we have offices ici. Et that explains everything.

So, Nolan M. se’s asking about anything you and I talked about the last time we did this, actually. You have incorporated some kind of Sabbath into your life and what demanding situations have prevented you from doing so.

So you and I communicate about it constantly because we try to leave the holy Sabbath without being especially devout about it. But we’ve failed because his column, of course, comes out digitally on Sunday mornings, although we’re pretty smart at But you feel very deeply the concept of preventing time. So, can you communicate about that?

I put it basically to be responsible, after doing this episode of Sabbath. And the answer is that I’ve tried a lot of things that haven’t worked yet. And the challenge is that what I would like is a day of rest. A cathedral in time, an area to slow down. And that’s not what my kids would like. [LAUGHS]

And so we did Tot Shabbat and that kind of thing. And I tried hard enough, as you say, not to paint on Saturdays. But I definitely discovered that there is a tension between what I seek to feel personally, as an individual, individualized human being for my children, and what is being spent just raising a four-year-old and a 22-month-old, which are my Saturdays. I took them to Tot Shabbat and others, but they run all the time, that’s what a Tot Shabbat is. And it’s really beautiful, and I try to make Saturday more of a family day. And everything works pretty well.

And it’s still a lot to move on to playgrounds and handle naps. And all the other toddlers have birthdays on Saturdays, so you have to bring your child to birthdays. And that’s not bad. But I found that it was hard to triumph over the difficult as a young family circle to find a little more of that calmer, more enduring feeling, young people still want their routine.

And I was comforted by Judith Shulevitz, who was my guest on the Sabbath episode, saying that, until her children were about five years old, it was like catching like catching can. And they were running with it. So I hope he’s building foundations and intentions that are a smart foundation to paint on in the future.

What do you need to work? What are you looking to achieve?

It’s not the doesn’t work. I would like to have a day where I have another delight and appointments with time and productivity. And I’m not just talking about productivity in what I write for The New York Times. I only mean it through constantly doing things, the constant feeling that the sand from my hourglass helps keep crawling in Google’s calendar blocks:

[LAUGHTER]

— and that my time is almost limited.

Not bad. What am I doing today?

Yes.

Look at the calendar.

Look at the calendar. I have a real, I mean real, discomfort with the trendy culture of Google’s calendar. I think the fact that anyone can put anything on their calendar, it’s just our way of acting.

There’s a killer there. They say, I’m going to put some time on your calendar. And I keep thinking, well, actually, doing the exact opposite.

[LAUGHTER]

You’re taking me time.

It would be something like that for me, if everyone had access to your bank account, and just said, it’s happening to spend, I’d want you to spend $80 on that. And you can just walk by and say no, I’m not going to do it. But then anyone can allocate their cash, but they looked to see if they had access to it, and then they had to go in and retrieve it affirmatively.

It is precisely a problem. I understand why modern organizations want to function this way.

But I would like another period dating. I am moved by Heschel’s kind of “cathedral in time”. But this requires safe autonomy.

And I think the nature of being a parent of children is that it doesn’t involve a lot of autonomy. And weekends are for them. During the week, we have to paint. Or my spouse and I paint full time or more than that. Therefore, it should be oriented around your needs.

So, I think the basic tension between what I sought on Shabbat and what I can get with it is that I believe that what I need is what I need and what is possible, that’s what my circle of family needs. And that’s surely good. It’s a phase of life.

Something that you and I talk about a lot and that we have, is also a way to avoid our party in the time that we do not speak, actually, in the column is the music.

So far I have failed in my attempts to interest you in previous classical music and jazz. And I tried to interest Ezra in Keith Jarrett without success. But I wanted to ask you 3 music recommendations for your listeners because I know you push this. thinking this way.

Always my favorite question. [LAUGHS] So yeah, so I came here prepared. So we love it, my first recommendation, which is probably the most in-house music party I’ve had in the last six months: I’m a huge Caroline Shaw fan. she did an album with the Attica Quartet, which is also amazing, called “Orange”. She won a Grammy a year or two ago.

And a series of songs from this album called “Plan”

But one of the reasons it ties together the verbal exchange that we just had is that, in a way, it’s become a song for me that is very much related to my kids. So, Shaw talked about how part of his music is motivated by, what would it be like to be?An ant walking in the forest? And I can hear that in this series of songs.

And in this one, in particular, there’s that moment when it ends in frenzy. And then it stops. And it’s starting to come back very slowly, and almost in a playful and curious way. And for some reason, I’m very excited.

It reminds me of my children waking up in the morning. You have those days, and many times, for me, the day ends in a kind of frenzy, between dinner and bedtime, and you’re exhausted, and everyone wants a bath, and someone cries.

And then it’s like, each and every day with them, not with me, I wake up. I’m like, what’s on the calendar?What do I do today?

I have everything from the day before with me. And they wake up, and it’s like, what’s the adventure today?What do we do today? They wake up completely new in this way that for me is beautiful.

And this particular song has become very touching for me for lack of finding them there. So you’ll know, I think, what I mean or what component I’m referring to when you pay attention to it, what I expect you to do.

So, the other one, probably what I heard the most this year, and it’s advice from our engineer, Jeff Geld, but also from Fred. . . , who is known for his sample-rich dance music. He’s a protegido. de Brian Eno. Si you’ve ever attached to N. P. R. ‘s Tiny Desk series, created the most productive little workplace you’ll ever see. Tools are things you can play in this small room. Therefore, it is functionally analog.

And it’s just virtuous. It’s amazing to see it on YouTube. A friend of mine commented that he sounds, in a way, like Steve Reich, which I think is true, and I didn’t realize it until he said it. But the other people on screen know that I love Steve Reich.

And I think it’s great. I can’t believe the user is looking for it and doesn’t think it’s great. So go to Fred again. . . Tiny Desk on YouTube. Je will keep you something much more danceable and a little more difficult. His album “USB” was not attached to me at first, but in recent years it has been living a lot in my head.

And then the last one, which is a little less difficult than the other two, is Maribou State. I see that I come back to them a lot for instrumentally attractive music but also very warm and welcoming, anything, you don’t put Caroline Shaw when you’re preparing dinner with your friends, but it works for that. And I think the song I’m going through here is “Midas. “

Good, excellent. Well, on behalf of everyone here and all your listeners, we wish you a very satisfied ebook and hope you will do a lot. Let’s hope that time stands still and in the right way so that you can go deeper, which is, as we’ve talked about in a million other tactics today, literally the hardest challenge of all, how to focus, how to focus, and how to literally dig into the things that make the global what it is.

I’m aware of. Thank you, and for being here, and all the questions. I will be away for about 3 months. We’re going to have a wonderful series of guest hosts, who are going to — we’re working with them on the guests, and my team is working with them on the issues.

So we’ve done it before. I think screens are becoming great. So stay tuned. We’re moving to one per week during this time, so it’s becoming a little less difficult for everyone to manage. But I hope you enjoy it.

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This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin. Made through Michelle Harris with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our principal engineer is Jeff Geld. Our editor-in-chief is Rogé Karma.

The show’s production team also includes Emefa Agawu, Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. The original music is through Isaac Jones. Audience strategy through Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The manufacturer of The New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. thanks for this to Sonia Herrero.

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EZRA KLEIN: According to the New York Times Opinion, it’s “The Ezra Klein Show. “

Welcome to the Ask Me Anything episode. I’m here with my respected editor, the bringer of gravity, Aaron Retica. We have tons of questions among the burdens you have all sent, for which I am grateful, and I am about to be sprinkled. Aaron, it’s It’s smart to see you in person.

AARON RETICA: Yes, I know. We in New York.

EZRA KLEIN: I don’t think anybody who listens to the show will be surprised. So I’m co-writing an e-book with Derek Thompson from The Atlantic, which, if you don’t read it, is great, and it’s an e-book about what I call liberalism or supply-side progressivism that builds what Derek calls abundance, or the abundance program.

But basically, where do we have challenges, where the basic challenge is scarcity?We don’t have enough of everything we need. And when this challenge is localized, how can we solve it?

Hope I or the ebook then. We’ll see. But I’m excited about it.

AARON RETICA: I’ll dig into the content in a second. But I wanted to ask you about working with Derek. So, you’re a user who’s in the middle of the process, whether it’s for your screen or for your spine. How do you plan to do it, an ebook with someone? I’m very curious about it. And there are a lot of procedural questions from your listeners, so I think about asking that.

EZRA KLEIN: First he was on leave from eebook, because of his schedule, and then he continued. One of the reasons I sought to co-write this eebook is that I found that I was writing my first eebook, “Why We’re Polarized,” to be an incredibly lonely experience. Almost every artistic assignment I’ve done in my life that I’ve enjoyed has had someone else in the middle with me.

It’s not that I didn’t have an editor, Ben Loehnen, which is great. But for months, I only suffered with the page. And many of my most productive minds are made when I speak. Much of my most productive thinking is in relation to other people.

AARON RETICA: Yes, we spend a lot of time on the phone. It’s like an outdated relationship between columnist and editor. Alright, let’s delve into the actual material, because you and I have done a lot of paintings about this. And there’s also a ton on the screen.

EZRA KLEIN: So I think it’s been a literally engaging style because Shapiro brags about it. Biden’s management likes to communicate to me the role he played in it. And I think it’s also vital to say that they did it with the union paintings. That was a big component of how they planned it and also how they told it.

AARON RETICA: That’s right. But okay, almost no one would say, well, we’d like to see the collapse of I-95. No one needs that, so urgency, thankfully, will supplant situations that would normally prevail. But how are you going to bring this emergency procedure into an ordinary procedure, where other people are going to have objections, some of which will be reasonable, many of which will be unreasonable?

It’s simple to say, okay, great. They did it in 12 days. But it was an emergency, so they acted like it was an emergency.

EZRA KLEIN: I think, first of all, there’s a question about what, in our minds, deserves to be an emergency. My interest in this topic is due, more than anything else, to decarbonization. It’s an emergency. Now, this is an emergency that unfolds over years and decades, not days.

AARON RETICA: Summer suits you.

EZRA KLEIN: Summer suits me. So I think you have to do it, and this is the big argument within, I think, this total dominance, then I think you have to start saying that our processes don’t work for this kind of emergency. This is a point I’ve now made in podcasts and columns. But the largest solar farm in the United States is on the order of 585 megawatts. We’re going to have to build two 400-megawatt-a-week solar plants for 30 years to succeed on a mid-floor renewables. .

We don’t have the capacity to do that. This should be understood as an emergency, not as something we can deal with business as usual.

That’s a point, as you know, I’m making a column that will be in position until this screen arrives. But not choosing to reposition processes is opting for now. It is choosing to absorb the disruptions of climate replenishment. at a higher level.

Now look. It all depends on where you put the dial, and it will not completely erase all the rules of sourcing. And neither do you. You will not eliminate absolutely all environmental disputes. Nor will it.

AARON RETICA: Okay. That brings us to Joel’s supplementary question. Joel is the star at the beginning of the screen here. So is there an edition of enabling reform that would be a win-win solution for the contribution of the environmental justice community and to build faster?Do you see values as an inherently 0 sum?

EZRA KLEIN: I think it depends a little bit on the values that we’re talking about. But let’s take environmental justice and faster structure before taking network feedback into account. And here, I think it’s pretty simple. People refer to this as a green pass.

I think we know which projects are meant to be more environmentally sustainable, and I think they deserve to have a simplified way forward. So there’s a clever article I discussed on the podcast with Robinson Meyer called “The Greens’ Dilemma. “And the law The professors who wrote this article, communicate a number of examples in which the government, a well-known one is the commissions of closure of bases, necessarily identifies problems related to the closure of military bases. And it has a simplified and expedited voting approach to doing so. then. And you may believe that a secure set of processes would be accelerated. If you’re executing decarbonization, for example, it’s renewable energy, not fossil energy, you’d possibly have a faster path through an environmental review.

Now, there are a lot of things that are not like an environmental review here. So, it depends on what you’re talking about. But we see that it is starting to happen. Affordable housing in California has accelerated beyond a lot of procedural issues it had to go through while market-rate housing doesn’t. So you can make decisions about what you want. I’m looking to accelerate.

The fact that there is an assembly and that some other people show up does not mean that what was heard in that assembly is the feeling of community. I sat in S. F. S. town hall assemblies, and one thing raised whether or not a 5G tower will be built. And user after user after user attacked the 5G tower. The only other people who showed up at the 5G tower portion of this plan-making assembly were other people who think 5G towers can cause cancer.

Now, I think most people don’t care much about 5G towers. And to the extent that they had to make a decision, they need to have fast internet. And so, in the end, the 5G tower won. But whatever happens at that meeting, it’s a community contribution, but it’s not representative of the community.

And it’s a position where we have representative government. And going back to my point about Shapiro, a minute ago, often, I think a smart way to have a broader network input is to empower elected officials. Not being absolutely incapable of doing the things for which they have just been elected by the highest electorate in a much higher domain of political participation.

AARON RETICA: This goes straight to what Tony C. needs to know, namely: How does a member of climate-conscious society think about Biden’s management in the context of climate change?negative for our environment? And he’s thinking, of course, about allowing the extraction of fossil fuels, etc.

EZRA KLEIN: I just put that, and that doesn’t mean criticizing Tony. I only put it in because, if you’re in a data loop, where this query actually looks like it can be done either way, it’s Joe Biden who presided over the largest package of climate investments ever made and created an entirely new design on which the weather infrared design will be built: ERI alone right now is valued at around $380 billion. over 10 years, though, as we talked about in the Robinson Meyer episode, maybe it’s actually going to be $500 billion, maybe $1 trillion in climate investments.

We’ll see what happens. We’ll see if everything goes well. Implementation is difficult. All of this has to happen in the real world. It’s not just about sending government checks.

They prioritized it. They understood that. They passed it. They deserve to be applauded. And now they deserve to be monitored and examined the genuine paintings have to pass.

AARON RETICA: So T. J. M. has an attractive question. There was a lot of talk about this before Biden took office. But let me ask you now: Are comparisons between Joe Biden and F. D. R. justified?Have your presidencies been very similar?

EZRA KLEIN: They’re not justified. Yes, he’s right that before Biden arrived, and his timeline expanded, and Democrats also started 2020 thinking they could get massive majorities in Congress, he had this moment where it could be a presidency of the duration of the RDF. And that happened with Obama, too. There, maybe Obama will be the next F. D. R.

AARON RETICA: When he first arrived.

EZRA KLEIN: When it first arrives, it’s true. And in the House, F. D. R. It had 311 Democrats to 117 Republicans. And for Biden, when he arrives, Democrats have a single-digit majority. You cannot have a presidency for the duration of the RDF. in a polarized political era in a narrowly divided Congress. I think that’s what other people miss when they seek to judge other presidents who oppose F. D. R.

AARON RETICA: Michelle O. needs to know why she thinks fitness care reform in the U. S. is rarely a hot political issue right now.

EZRA KLEIN: Oh. My first love.

AARON RETICA: Your first love.

EZRA KLEIN: My first love. . .

AARON RETICA: [INAUDIBLE]

EZRA KLEIN: — In politics. So there you have it. So I covered, for others who haven’t followed my jobs in the afterlife, health care reform for years. That’s my first big political question. And I think there are several reasons.

It has a big challenge among non-citizens who, if they are new noncitizens, are not eligible for some of the program’s grants or Medicaid. And, of course, undocumented immigrants are not eligible.

Cleaning up the end of the uninsured population is quite complicated and faces many random challenges: the challenge of Medicaid and states fighting Medicaid, etc. So I think the Affordable Care Act has been successful enough to drain a lot of the power of health care reform. That’s one thing.

It’s not that physical care is wonderful in this country. It’s not. But political capital is very limited, and a lot of other people here are doing pretty well, and moving it in the last few miles would be so complicated that I think, when you believe in the expenses you can spend, that would lead to the biggest improvement. On wellness, it’s hard for me to say now that this is health care reform. Both because its prestige as an economic challenge has been reduced a little bit and because its prestige as such, we have this massive uninsured population, it has been reduced a little bit.

So I think it’s become more of a challenge among many than the central challenge that makes employers, budget buffs and other people in general suffer.

AARON RETICA: While it hasn’t solved the drug addiction challenge that causes more than 100,000 people to die each year, it has.

EZRA KLEIN: But it’s a wonderful thing. When we communicate about physical care reform, we regularly communicate about monetary isolation from physical care costs. So when you think about what you would do the most to improve physical care now, I think it’s not physical care reform. I think things like an expansion of children’s tax credits would go a long way toward people’s health.

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AARON RETICA: Turning the gears a little bit, Doug A. wants to know what your take is on the popular purpose of enforcing term limits in Congress, if it has given you any insight anyway. And obviously, it would probably require a constitutional amendment to do that, not necessarily but probably. So what do you think of that?

EZRA KLEIN: I would say look at a few things. For example, look at California, where it has time limits for the legislature. I don’t think in California or other states where there is this, legislatures are particularly better or more effective. Smart legislators would have been limited in their terms in a way that I don’t think we deserve anything smart.

I will say that the position where I strongly support term limits is the Supreme Court, where I think it deserves to have term limits of 12 or 18 years so that the vacancies that arise are reliable enough for other presidents to get the same. amount consistent with the term, so you don’t have that incentive to appoint other very young people to the Supreme Court, so things get complicated when other people die or when they become too incapable. I think lifetime appointments are a stupid idea, just in general.

And in part, when you don’t have anything resembling elections that impose at least some point of accountability, you should think about term limits. Where you have choices that impose a certain degree of responsibility, yes, the merit of the incumbent is something genuine. It is also a genuine thing in which the electorate participates. So I think it’s a bit of a saying that we know in the abstract that the electorate is wrong to give a third term to the user who represents them and that we, sitting here, deserve to tell them they can’t. So yes, I’ve never been a fan of term limits.

AARON RETICA: Yes, that’s precisely what you’re saying. It devalues two-way elections, lifetime appointments of Supreme Court justices, and term limits. Yes, it steals power from other people.

Tom C. has a difficult query for you. He says, I seem to be the only liberal alarmed by the real scandal involving Hunter Biden, but you feel the same way.

Biden himself simply says he didn’t care about his son’s business affairs. And would we be if they were Republicans?

EZRA KLEIN: In some tactics that last detail is too easy.

AARON RETICA: Okay.

EZRA KLEIN: We did it when they were the Republicans. I’m thinking, in many ways, of what Jared Kushner did, raising billions for an investment fund with Saudi Arabia, the amount of direct influence peddling that Donald Trump did in power, how they would look for other people to access him being part of Trump’s corporate investments and Trump’s hotel stays. And everything was more direct. It was much worse. It was much more serious.

The fact that Biden has had a laissez-faire attitude toward the activities of his absolute adult child disaster, I think a kind of sympathy is emerging from other people toward Biden. What precisely did Biden have to do? I probably didn’t know much about all this. A lot of the main points that come out with Hunter Biden, the seventh granddaughter, is very sad.

AARON RETICA: It’s sad.

EZRA KLEIN: It’s incredibly sad. You look at someone who’s never been there to get their life back on track. He definitely trafficked influence. It hurts a lot of people. He obviously hurts himself. He obviously hurt his father.

And if you read the Biden e-book that he wrote a few years ago when he ran for president, and I think it was in 2008, the love he has for Beau and Hunter, his confidence that Hunter Biden will be part of the good kind — looking at Biden’s kitchen cupboard and they’d shield, and then you see how it goes, The tragedy is immense. But it is not a scandal that someone’s child or one of their children is [EXPLETIVE]. It is a scandal that this is part of how the federal government trains power.

There’s a component of this factor that we haven’t addressed, just to shorten it, that we haven’t addressed. But Tom C. evoked the old concept that genuine scandal is what is legal. And one thing I would say is that what Hunter Biden is accused of doing here happens all the time in a much more effective way.

Now, Biden wasn’t well registered to be a lobbyist and all that other stuff.

The Hunter Biden affair is a kind of edit turned absurdity that looks worse because he’s Biden’s son, but it’s probably less bad because it doesn’t seem to have worked.

But again, evidence may emerge that it worked consistently. And that would somewhat replace my opinion of him.

I will say that if Republicans take credit for this, they won’t have to nominate any Donald Trump.

AARON RETICA: [LAUGHS]

EZRA KLEIN: If it becomes a fight over where influence peddling is happening in the circle of family affairs in an administration, and it’s Trump who opposes Joe Biden, and the review is now at Jared Kushner’s Saudi-backed venture capital fund, it’s not going to prolong.

So in many tactics, and this has been a topic on screen recently, Republicans will have to decide, do they need a strategically placed candidate to take advantage of Joe Biden’s weaknesses or not?So far, it turns out not. But it’s going to be significant here as well.

AARON RETICA: Okay. There are so many smart questions here. I’m going to move on to one. This is from Colton L. In your opinion, what kind of painting is grossly undervalued in the new American society on the basis of salary, social prestige, and everything that accompanies painting that requires painting?

EZRA KLEIN: Anything with kids. Anything and everything with the kids. Being a social worker working with children, being a teacher, being a parent in the foster system, given the importance of this work, is underpaid. It doesn’t have terrible prestige compared to other things, but it doesn’t have the prestige it should.

We underestimate things with children.

AARON RETICA: It’s an amazing thing that, in other countries, teachers actually do: I may be an engineer, a lawyer, or a teacher. And you I rarely hear that here, which I think is a must-have component.

EZRA KLEIN: Just like hearing about a U. C. graduate. Berkeley, I go to dermatology, what’s called versus, I go to paintings in a kindergarten.

AARON RETICA: That’s right.

EZRA KLEIN: There’s nothing with dermatologists. They do a wonderful job. But we know what you’re saying when you say I’m going to paint in kindergartens. And it is: it sounds good, but you’re not going to make a lot of money.

AARÓN RETICA: Yes, no. And then, social prestige is more vital than I think, really. I guess prestige comes from money, but it’s still an essential component.

EZRA KLEIN: And married to a teacher.

AARON RETICA: I’m married to a teacher. I’m going to accuse you of flattering on those grounds. . .

EZRA KLEIN: [LAUGHS]

AARON RETICA: Because I’m married to someone who works in the early formative years and has faced this, where there are other people who think, well, why are you a lawyer?Why are you a teacher?

And this time, she’s doing all these amazing paintings with second-graders in public schools.

EZRA KLEIN: I’m curious if you see it in the world. When you tell other people –

AARON RETICA: Oh, definitely.

EZRA KLEIN: That they’re still New York Times columnists who act like children, his wife says he works with children.

AARON RETICA: I was going to do another edit of this joke before. I was going to ask you if you’re on the lifetime tenure of New York Times columnists and podcasters.

EZRA KLEIN: Absolutely not.

AARON RETICA: [LAUGHS]

EZRA KLEIN: Are you kidding? [LAUGHTER]

AARON RETICA: No, I know not. Okay, let’s transfer here to psychedelics to bring a little bit of California to our New York studio. Job F. asks if he has been following clinical advances and hype around psychedelics in years.

And I’m going to respond to that component and say, I know you’ve written about that. But from clinical trials to microdosing to legalization processes in Colorado, Australia, you don’t mention Oregon, but also Oregon’s indigenous communities, what do they do?What do you think of all this?

EZRA KLEIN: I have a lot of contrasting opinions about psychedelic treatment and assistance right now. The first is that the paintings I’m most interested in: I wrote an article about this some time ago and I’d like to come back to next year, it’s in Oregon, where they’re looking to create a legal system, it’s not legal at the federal level, but it’s a legal path and a design for sustained psychedelic experiences. which, in particular, are not just psychedelic treatments.

And that’s quite remarkable thing to stay locked up. I find it surprising.

And I think to get it right, though, it’s going to have to be more about how to legalize psychedelic compounds. But how do we create structures for their productive use?How do you make integration possible, that kind of time after you’ve had a party and now you have to realize what it means for your life?How do you do this for people?

That’s, I think, where a lot of the rubber goes on to get on the road, which is, again, so I think what Orepassn is doing is interesting. But there was no upheaval there. But if in 10 years you told me it didn’t go well, I wouldn’t be surprised. I would be sad but not surprised.

AARON RETICA: We’re going to shift gears again at the center of “The Ezra Klein Show” recently, which is A. I. , and Joseph C. se wonders what credit, if any, he gives to the simulation speculation that was first discussed about 20 years ago. does through Nick Bostrom? And obviously, you have to tell us what it is because many other people may not know.

EZRA KLEIN: I don’t know. Just for your information, I don’t know. So, simulation speculation is essentially the concept of, look. Imagine that we become a society that can serve as technologically complex enough that we can run simulations of entire societies. just use SimCity or play video games. But we can free the PC and release as many as we want, entire universes.

AARON RETICA: So, speaking of the strength of generative models as a whole, Jordan A. wonders, given the strength of A. I. models, and we already know, and of course there are also many advances, to produce compelling human text at virtually no cost, it turns out that we will most likely see a massive proliferation of A. I. AstroTurfing in the run-up to the 2024 elections, which are already upon us.

EZRA KLEIN: Personally, I’m going back and forth on this topic. So there’s no doubt that, in AI, we’re creating rugged machines to create the raw fabrics for the wrong information: deep fakes and infinite amounts of automatically generated text and image content. , videos and sounds that appear to come from the user seeking to defame. And the other answers I hear within AI. The overall is very unconvincing to me.

It’s a misunderstanding, I think, quite deeply, the challenge of fake news.

Fake news works when you give other people something they already need to believe, that they don’t need to verify. This is the main way fake news works.

It’s not that other people can’t go to the New York Times to verify something.

No need. They don’t need to be told it’s not true, or not to accept it as true with the New York Times or whatever.

AARON RETICA: I just saw this engaging documentary about Umberto Eco. And it speaks of all those false documents that have profoundly marked genuine history.

EZRA KLEIN: Yes, Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

AARON RETICA: That’s what it says, yes.

EZRA KLEIN: I say this about fake news: fake news is no worse today than at other times in history.

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AARON RETICA: So I discussed earlier that there were a lot of questions about the program, its procedure, and its way of thinking about things. And now we’re going to get into a series of those.

A big component of what I seem to get from listening to the podcast is understanding what it’s like to have an intelligent conversation.

But then you don’t go, which I appreciate very much because the guest is wise and honest. And if you haven’t responded, there will have to be a reason, maybe there just rarely is an answer.

So the question Audrey needs to ask is, when doing the show, what do they tell you about what makes a conversation smart?

EZRA KLEIN: I really liked that query because it answers so well. This is precisely true. There are certain types of conversations where it’s vital to pin someone down and make them feel like they’re not answering a query.

AARON RETICA: The Meet the Press approach.

EZRA KLEIN: Yes, the Meet the Press approach. When you seek to perceive how someone thinks, if they don’t answer a question, they have a reason. Sometimes, their lack of response is the answer. That’s what they have on the subject. That’s as far as his thinking goes.

If they don’t have an intelligent answer to that, that’s where they think at the time. So I have a tendency to have, personally, and I think that’s how conversations between other people work. If I’ve asked someone twice and find the answer unsatisfactory but I think that’s the answer I want to give myself, I don’t ask them three, 4 or five times just to show that I can embarrass them.

I don’t need to ever say a time for that. There a. If I had the president, I would require another kind of interview.

But I think there’s a challenge in a lot of interviews about politics that is performative.

I often get emails saying, why didn’t you give the final blow?And the answer is, that’s not what we’re doing here. I’m not looking to embarrass a user in front of you.

AARON RETICA: When we talked about the midterm reviews last year, we talked a little bit about it. Meetings, or whatever we call them here in New York, are so performative and real.

EZRA KLEIN: That’s a query that I think we get at essentially each and every AMA, and the explanation for why I’m doing it this time is because something in my procedure has changed. So we’re going to communicate about that in more detail in One Minute, but I moved to New York. I now work in the New York Times office in charming Times Square.

AARON RETICA: [LAUGHS]

EZRA KLEIN: [translated] And Aaron is probably laughing because my workplace is now covered in paper. And I had a LaserJet at home and I printed things. But, in a way, it’s useless to print out each and every article I read for a podcast. .

But it’s much worse. So, I don’t have an incredibly structured procedure in the sense that I take notes, or here’s my grading system, or whatever.

But at this point, my procedure is that I print everything. I have this huge pile of paper. And I at a small table with a pen, and walk through it.

This episode is one of my favorites, and “Proust and the Squid,” your book is also amazing on this topic. Okay, let’s talk about reducing concentration. Sam M. asks, well, he says, I’ve been on Twitter for a long time. I said how wonderful it was for 3 things. I like to be aware of existing events, politics and sports, the latter of which, I will only tell the Ezra Klein audience, Ezra Klein has no interest at all. So let’s concentrate. on –

EZRA KLEIN: It’s an interest. It is a lack of wisdom and. . . of interest. [LAUGHS]

AARON RETICA: [LAUGHS] YES, EXACTLY. I know Ezra tuned out a long time ago and that’s why I write. Since I left, I’ve discovered a much longer attention span for reading articles, which goes back to what you just talked about.

With all this, I still feel like I’m missing things I was given from Twitter.

I miss people’s minds about issues they don’t write articles or podcasts about. I miss that collective feeling when it turns out that everyone on Twitter is reacting to the same thing.

So Sam needs to know what you think about it and how you treated your Twitter exit. What did you do to make up for what you missed?And how do you keep up with the news?

EZRA KLEIN: I went off Twitter. I’ll notice that I played around with Threads a little bit, and I need to get back to that. And one of the reasons I left Twitter, that before Musk finished buying it, even though in plain sight, however, the problems with Twitter, for me, predate Elon Musk. I wrote an article about Musk’s acquisition on Twitter called “Elon Musk will have Twitter because he will have Twitter” or something like that. People can look it up.

I think that turned out to be my maximum foreboding piece this year. And the fact that he’s going to take the worst of Twitter because he’s someone who loves the worst of Twitter, adds to that, and thus compounds the contradictions of an already problematic platform that would slowly drive away many other people there. Not everyone, however, will only replace scales enough that other people leave something or need to leave something they no longer liked.

But I will die on this hill. Twitter is a bad way to stay informed about the world. It’s just the way to do it. And that’s the point I was making a minute ago about printing your articles.

It’s simply a bad thing to let your intellectual area in all day. You would have been better off reading a report on homelessness or whatever.

So for me, in terms of data about the world, actually, one of the really difficult disciplines is not letting the wrong psychics or the other wrong people what you’re thinking, not being too connected to a verbal exchange if you think the verbal exchange has become toxic, or you think the verbal exchange has become trivial. Or you think verbal exchange is driven by algorithmic dynamics that don’t serve you. That’s my opinion on Twitter.

I played with Threads, which I’m enjoying right now, and possibly wouldn’t continue; We’ll see how it develops. But I am not wrong to think that what I do there is inform myself. It would be much better to read the New York Times than to play with Threads. Threads is a fun way for me to waste time when I have a few minutes.

AARON RETICA: Still, as you spend time with me, what you discussed earlier, which is a small component of your move, Laura C. he wonders why you moved to New York, where I’ll just say you’ve never lived before. And she says, I probably would have missed it but I didn’t hear you explain it. So, can you tell your listeners why you’re here?

EZRA KLEIN: Yes, I think that’s our greatest popular consultation of this tour.

AARON RETICA: There are a lot of them.

EZRA KLEIN: And there were some who were a little offended, who had this quality of, how dare you move to New York without explaining why?And the answer is largely that it’s personal, that we moved to be closer to me the wife’s family. There were considerations applicable around our two offices, so New York made sense.

We have and have had more circle of family support. We have a smart grid here. And we have offices ici. Et that explains everything.

AARON RETICA: So, Nolan M. se question about something that you and I talked about last time we did this, actually. He wonders if he has incorporated any kind of Sabbath into his life and what demanding situations have prevented him from doing so.

So you and I communicate about it constantly because we try to leave the Holy Sabbath without being especially devout about it. But we’ve failed because his column, of course, comes out digitally on Sunday mornings, although we’re pretty smart at that. But you feel very deeply the concept of stopping time. So, can you communicate about it?

EZRA KLEIN: Yes, I put this basically to be responsible, after doing this episode of Sabbath. And the answer is that I’ve tried a lot of things that haven’t worked yet. And the challenge is that what I would like is one day. of rest, a cathedral in time, a space to slow down. And that’s not what my children want. [LAUGHS]

I took them to Tot Shabbat and others, but they run all the time, that’s what a Tot Shabbat is. And it’s beautiful, and I try to make Saturday more of a family circle day. And everything works pretty well.

AARON RETICA: What are you waiting for to work on? What are you looking to achieve?

EZRA KLEIN: It’s not about not working. I would like to have a day where I have another fun and dates with time and productivity. And I’m not just talking about productivity in what I write for The New York Times. I only mean it through constantly doing things, the constant feeling that the sand from my hourglass helps keep crawling in Google’s calendar blocks.

AARON RETICA: [LAUGHS]

EZRA KLEIN: — and that my time is almost reserved.

AARON RETICA: That’s right. What am I doing today?

EZRA KLEIN: Yes.

AARON RETICA: Look at the calendar.

EZRA KLEIN: Look at the calendar. I have a real, I mean real, discomfort with the trendy culture of Google’s calendar. I think the fact that anyone can put anything on their calendar, it’s just our way of acting.

AARON RETICA: There’s a murderer there. They say, I’m going to put some time on your calendar. And I keep thinking, well, actually, doing the exact opposite.

EZRA KLEIN: [LAUGHS]

AARON RETICA: You’re taking time for me.

EZRA KLEIN: To me, it would be like everybody had access to their bank account and just said, for example, you’re moving on to spending. I’d like you to spend $80 on that. . . And you can just walk in and say no, I’m not going to pass to do it. But then anyone can just allocate their cash but they looked to see if they had access to it, and then they had to go in and retrieve it affirmatively.

It is precisely a problem. I understand why modern organizations want to function this way.

But I would like another period dating. I am moved by Heschel’s kind of “cathedral in time”. But this requires a secure autonomy.

And I think the nature of being a parent of children is that it doesn’t involve a lot of autonomy. And weekends are for them. During the week, we have to paint. Or my spouse and I paint full time or even longer than that. Therefore, it should be oriented around your needs.

AARON RETICA: Something that you and I communicate about a lot and that any of us are also a way to keep us from reveling in time that we don’t communicate, actually, in the column, is music.

EZRA KLEIN: Always my favorite question. [LAUGHS] So yes, so I came here prepared. So we love it, my first recommendation, which is probably the most internal musical party I’ve had in the last six months: I’m a huge Caroline Shaw fan. he made an album with the Attica Quartet, which is also amazing, called “Orange”. He won a Grammy a year or two ago.

And a series of songs from this album called “Plan”

And then it’s like, each and every day with them, not with me, I wake up. I’m like, what’s on the calendar?What do I do today?

I have everything from the day before with me. And they wake up, and it’s like, what’s the adventure today?What do we do today? They wake up completely new in this way that for me is beautiful.

So, the other one, probably what I heard the most this year, and it’s advice from our engineer, Jeff Geld, but also from Fred. . . , who is known for his sample-rich dance music. It’s a protegido. de Brian Eno. Si you’re already attached to N. P. R. ‘s Tiny Desk series, created the most productive coffee table you’ve ever seen. Tools are things you can play in this small room. Therefore, it is functionally analog.

And I think it’s great. I can’t believe the user is looking for it and doesn’t think it’s great. Then watch Fred’s Tiny Desk on YouTube again. I’ll save you something much more danceable and a little harder. His album “USB” was not attached to me at first, but in recent years it has been living a lot in my head.

AARON RETICA: All right, great. Well, on behalf of everyone here and all your listeners, we wish you a very satisfied ebook and hope you will do a lot. Let’s hope that time stands still and in the right way so that you can go deeper, which is, as we’ve talked about in a million other tactics today, literally the hardest challenge of all, how to focus, how to focus, and how to literally dig into the things that make the global what it is.

EZRA KLEIN: I appreciate that. Thank you, and for being here, and all the questions. I will be away for about 3 months. We’re going to have a wonderful series of guest hosts, who are going to do it: we’re working with them on the guests and my team is working with them on the issues.

[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]

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Transcript: Ezra Klein Listeners’ Questions About Biden, Psychedelics, His New Ebook, and More

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