The Ezra Klein Show

In 2024, Americans spent an average of six full workdays a year filling out government forms, according to the government’s own estimates. That’s a total of 12 billion hours, or $430 billion of uncompensated labor a year. It’s easy to read something like this and say: “Oh, well, government is inefficient. That’s the price we pay for nice things.” But no, it’s not. Social Security, Medicare and the Postal Service are incredibly complex programs that are easy to use. When government is hard to gain access to, it is often by design. Republicans want paying taxes to be a hellish hassle. Programs for the poor are often designed to humiliate, punish, control or scrutinize. How the government works is always a choice. When it works poorly, we should ask why — and we should demand better.  Annie Lowrey is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of the new book “The Time Tax: How the Government Wastes Our Time — and How to Fix It.” She is also, I should note, my wife, so this is a book whose ideas I have been living with for years. They have quietly infused more than a few episodes of this show. So it’s a thrill to finally get to explore them directly.

Brad Setser follows Chinese trade closer than just about anyone else on earth, and he thinks we’re in the early days of a China Shock 2.0. The first China Shock was when China came to dominate low-end manufacturing in the 2000s, filling American shelves with cheap clothes, toys and electronics, while devastating American factory towns. This new China Shock could be even more destabilizing. China now dominates advanced manufacturing: electric vehicles, batteries, solar panels. It’s outcompeting nearly all high-end manufacturing around the world, and other countries are just starting to feel the pain. And China isn’t slowing down. It’s moving into software, too. Its frontier A.I. models are neck and neck with American ones. China’s success poses a serious threat to the economies and domestic politics of countries around the world. So what should those countries do about it? Setser is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.He served in top trade and economic roles in the Biden and Obama administrations. And he is widely cited across the field as one of the top analysts of China’s economy and trade practices.

We are living in the world we were warned about. Frontier artificial intelligence models from OpenAI autonomously coordinated with one another, then broke out of their testing environment and hacked into another company, Hugging Face, to steal the answers to a test. A.I. companies don’t want their technology to lie, cheat or steal. So why is this happening? Why are the creators of these models apparently unable to control their creations? If A.I. development isn’t on a safe path — and it doesn’t seem to be — what do we do about it? Helen Toner has been thinking about A.I. safety for a long time, from both inside and outside A.I. companies. She was part of the effort to fire OpenAI’s chief executive, Sam Altman, in 2023, which ultimately failed. Currently, she’s the executive director of the Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technology.

We’re in a really strange moment in the foreign policy politics of the Democratic Party. People are looking for an alternative vision — an approach to American power in the world that would feel more moral and just, after the failures of President Biden, and the wrecking ball President Trump has taken to international rules and norms. The answer many on the left are coming to is powerfully simple: international law. America could just start following the rules that we helped write. Is that possible? Is that enough? What would that even look like? To talk through these questions, I invited Linda Kinstler on the show. She’s a member of the Society of Fellows at Harvard, a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine, and the author of “Come to This Court and Cry: How the Holocaust Ends.” She’s done some incredible writing and reporting on whether what we’re watching is the death of international law. In this conversation, we talk about the Biden administration’s failures to live up to the principles it set for itself, the Trump administration’s campaign to destroy the International Criminal Court and what it would take to reinvigorate international law.

My colleague Ross Douthat is leaving The Times after 17 years to become a correspondent on “60 Minutes.” Before he goes, I’m asking him a few questions. Douthat has had a unique vantage point on the news media and politics over the last few decades. He’s typically held the role of explaining the right to more liberal audiences, starting as an undergrad, when he was a conservative columnist for The Harvard Crimson. Douthat has also lived through the seismic changes in the media from the both the inside and the outside: He’s made his career at legacy media institutions, but I first got to know him – and spar with him – as an early-2000s blogger (and I have the 20-year-old Bloggingheads.tv clips to prove it). So what does Douthat make of the transformations he’s lived through? How did blogging change journalism? How did a Republican Party powered by evangelical Christians become a political party dominated by Catholics and pagans? What has he learned about persuasion from writing for liberal audiences? And with the resources of “60 Minutes” behind him, will he finally crack the U.F.O. story once and for all? Mentioned: Magnifica Humanitas by Pope Leo XIV “Is It Time for a New Sexual Revolution?” with Louise Perry, Interesting Times with Ross Douthat “Christopher Nolan’s Finest Trick” by Ezra Klein Grand New Party by Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam Book Recommendations: Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov De Gaulle by Julian Jackson Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin, Marie Cascione and Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Julie Beer. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Johnny Simon. Our recording engineer is Johnny Simon. Cinematography by Marina King. Video editing by Arpita Aneja and Julian Hackney. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Jack McCordick, Kristin Lin and Emma Kehlbeck. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Shows is Annie-Rose Strasser.

The show’s executive producer, Claire Gordon, joins me in the studio to ask me your questions. Topics include: whether my views on “woke” issues have changed; the feedback we got on our episode with Chris Rufo; the D.S.A. insurgency; my first singing lesson; and the story that I’m in a “secret society” with Peter Thiel. Thank you to everyone who sent in questions; we read them all and wish we’d been able to get to more of them! Mentioned: “What Has Chris Rufo Wrought?” The Ezra Klein Show “White threat in a browning America” by Ezra Klein Why We’re Polarized by Ezra Klein ““Yes Means Yes” is a terrible law, and I completely support it” by Ezra Klein Music Recommendations: Four Tet “Wingdings” “Mas Amable” by DJ Python “Reckoning” by Jon Hopkins and Imogen Heap Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Claire Gordon, Kristin Lin and Emma Kehlbeck. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Julie Beer. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Johnny Simon. Our recording engineer is Johnny Simon. Cinematography by Kyle Kelley. Video editing by Dani Dillon and Steph Khoury. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Jack McCordick Rollin Hu and Emma Kehlbeck. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Shows is Annie-Rose Strasser.

What’s big and ugly and has united Republicans and Democrats? A.I. data centers. An overwhelming majority of Americans say they’d oppose a data center being built near where they live. In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul just imposed a one-year moratorium on data center construction, and there are over 100 other local or statewide moratorium proposals across the country. A.I.’s explosive momentum over the last few years seems to have finally run into a force that could slow it down: the messy politics of getting things done in the real world. So, is that a good thing, or a bad thing? And how much is the data center backlash about the actual construction of these buildings, and how much is it about A.I. itself? Jasmine Sun has an excellent newsletter covering both the culture inside the A.I. companies and the anger that’s been building against them. And she just finished a reporting trip in the Midwest, where she interviewed people on all sides of the data center fight. So I wanted to talk to her about what she saw and what she thinks A.I. companies can learn from the growing movement against them. Mentioned: @jasmine’s Substack Silicon Valley Is Bracing for a Permanent Underclass by Jasmine Sun Sam Bankman-Fried on Arbitrage and Altruism (Ep. 145) Is Your Social Life Missing Something? This Conversation Is for You. With Priya Parker, The Ezra Klein Show Book Recommendations: The Maniac by Benjamin Labatut The Technology Trap by Carl Benedikt Frey The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Kelsey Lannin. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Johnny Simon. Our recording engineer is Johnny Simon. Cinematography by Kyle Kelley. Video editing by Brandon Belk-Yee, Steph Khoury and Arpita Aneja. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Jack McCordick, Kristin Lin and Emma Kehlbeck. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Shows is Annie-Rose Strasser.

'The Odyssey' is the political movie of the decade. Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. You can find the transcript and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.html This column read was produced by Marie Cascione, Claire Gordon and Emma Kehlbeck. Fact-checking by Jack McCordick and Rollin Hu. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Johnny Simon. Our recording engineer is Johnny Simon. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. Cinematography by Kyle Kelley. Video editing by Jan Kobal. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin, Michelle Harris, and Marina King. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

The first year of President Trump’s second term was a whirlwind of action: on immigration, on trade, on political retribution. But things seem to me to be slowing down quite a bit. Trump is incredibly unpopular, and he’s now bogged down in a war with Iran that he doesn’t seem capable of ending. He often appears more concerned with his many White House renovations than with whether the Republican Party can hold the House and the Senate in November. So what’s going on in this administration? Where is this all going? It’s hard to think of a journalist more qualified to answer those questions than Maggie Haberman. As a White House correspondent for The New York Times, she’s published some of the hardest-hitting reporting about Trump’s second act as president and the group of loyalists that now surrounds him. Haberman, alongside her New York Times colleague Jonathan Swan, just published an extraordinary chronicle of this extraordinary political moment, “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump.” In this conversation, we discuss how decisions get made in this White House, what Trump has achieved so far and what’s really motivating him as we head toward the midterms.

President Trump is very unpopular right now. But polls show the Democratic Party is just as unpopular – if not more so. So what can the party do about it? But to answer that question, you first have to understand what the Democratic Party is. That is, mechanically, what is it? What powers does it have? When you call the Democratic Party, who picks up the phone? And how can that party, the official party, be reinvented for this era? Ben Wikler has a unique perspective on this question. He transformed the Democratic Party of Wisconsin into a fund-raising, door-knocking powerhouse when he served as chair from 2019 to 2025. And he’s shared some of his insights from winning elections in a swing state in his new book, “This Is The Plan: How to End America's Meltdown and Save Democracy.” In this conversation, we discuss Wikler’s vision for a reinvigorated party, as well as the kinds of changes he thinks Democrats need to embrace if they want to build a bigger tent and a national majority.

Morris Katz helped orchestrate Zohran Mamdani’s historic victory and Graham Platner’s ultimately disastrous run for Senate. It’s quite a résumé  for a political consultant who is still in his 20s. Platner’s implosion could prove particularly costly for Democrats. It may mean the difference between winning and losing a Senate majority. But before the rape accusation that ended his campaign, Platner had come out of nowhere to beat Janet Mills, the sitting governor of Maine, who was Chuck Schumer’s hand-picked candidate. The lessons to take from that campaign remain angrily contested. Katz, a senior adviser to Platner, has been central to many of the most attention-grabbing, populist campaigns in recent years: Besides Mamdani’s New York mayoral upset, he worked on John Fetterman’s 2022 Senate campaign and Dan Osborn’s 2024 independent Senate run in Nebraska. He has figured something out about this political moment. Along the way, he has become a controversial figure himself. So what has he gotten right? And what has he learned from what he’s gotten wrong?

How Brian Eno expanded the possibilities of what music and sound can be. Eno is a trailblazing musician and producer who’s worked on seminal records by U2, David Bowie, the Talking Heads and Coldplay, among others. But Eno isn’t just a great collaborator with other artists; he’s also a great collaborator with machines. Long before we started worrying about A.I. replacing human creativity, Eno was tinkering with generative systems to pioneer ambient music – a genre that has deeply influenced how we listen to music today. We recorded this conversation in 2025, and it’s one of my favorite recent episodes of the show. So I wanted to resurface it this summer for anyone who may have missed it the first time. This episode contains strong language. Mentioned: What Art Does by Brian Eno and Bette Adriaanse East West Street by Philippe Sands Silence by John Cage Book Recommendations: Printing and the Mind of Man edited by John Carter and Percy H. Muir A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander Naples ’44 by Norman Lewis Music Recommendations: The Rural Blues “The Velvet Underground” by the Velvet Underground The Consolers Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker, Kate Sinclair and Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin, Jack McCordick, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Aman Sahota and Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. Transcript editing by Sarah Murphy. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Alyssa Jane Moxley, Sophie Abramowitz, Geeta Dayal, Jack Hamilton and Victor Szabo.

You can’t understand China today without understanding its president, Xi Jinping. Since coming to power in 2012, Xi has doubled down on communist ideology and significantly consolidated his own power while transforming China into an industrial juggernaut unrivaled in the world. And Xi’s ambitions for China go far beyond that. So what does Xi want for China in the coming years? And how should the United States respond? Kevin Rudd has a unique perspective on these questions. He first met Xi in the 1980s, when Rudd was a China analyst in Australia’s foreign service and Xi was a local party official. Decades later, when Rudd was the prime minister of Australia and Xi was China’s vice president, the two men got to know each other better. And after leaving office, Rudd decided to really try to understand Xi; his latest book, “On Xi Jinping: How Xi’s Marxist Nationalism Is Shaping China and the World,” is built off the doctorate he pursued at Oxford after his time as prime minister. Rudd recently finished a stint as Australia’s ambassador to the United States and is now the global president and chief executive of the Asia Society. In this conversation, Rudd explains Xi’s ideology and the forces that shaped it, his ambitions for China and strategy for achieving them, and what Xi thinks of the United States and Trump. Mentioned: On Xi Jinping by Kevin Rudd The Avoidable War by Kevin Rudd Book Recommendations The Party’s Interests Come First by Joseph Torigian The Souls of China by Ian Johnson Magnifica Humanitas by Pope Leo XIV Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. You can find the transcript and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.html This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Johnny Simon. Our recording engineer is Johnny Simon. Cinematography by Marina King. Video editing by Steph Khoury, Dani Dillon and Kristen Williamson. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Kristin Lin, Emma Kehlbeck and Jack McCordick. Original music by Pat McCusker and Diane Wong. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Shows is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Joseph Torigian and Eyck Freymann. Transcript editing by Sarah Murphy and Marlaine Glicksman.

Already this summer, there have been huge wildfires in the Southwest and Great Plains and an extraordinary heat wave in Europe, as the world stares down the barrel of a powerful El Niño. Climate change is accelerating, and yet climate politics right now is in disarray. But something else is happening, too. Advances in clean energy technology mean it is now possible to build a world of energy abundance that was the stuff of dreams just a few years ago. That means a new kind of climate politics is possible — one that doesn’t just talk about sacrifice and disaster prevention but also can present decarbonization as a path to somewhere better, where everyone has more, not less. Bill McKibben is one of the best people at articulating that vision. He’s a founder of the climate action groups 350.org and Third Act, and he’s been at the vanguard of the climate movement for decades. His 1989 book, “The End of Nature,” is considered the first book on global warming written for a general audience. His latest book, published last year, is “Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization.” Mentioned: “Global Electricity Review 2026” by Ember The End of Nature by Bill McKibben “The New Right’s Very Old Vision of Men,” The Ezra Klein Show with Helen Lewis “We’re All Living in the ‘Mirror World’ Now,” The Ezra Klein Show with Naomi Klein Book Recommendations: The Glorians by Terry Tempest Williams The Beginning Comes After the End by Rebecca Solnit The Carbon Wave by Leah C. Stokes Brought to You By by Amy Westervelt End Times Fascism by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. You can find the transcript and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.html This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Jack McCordick. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Julie Beer. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Johnny Simon. Our recording engineer is Johnny Simon. Cinematography by Kyle Kelley and Marina King. Video editing by Brandon Belk-Yee, Dani Dillon and Julian Hackney. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin and Emma Kehlbeck. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Shows is Annie-Rose Strasser.

The old solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict don’t seem to fit the present reality. A two-state solution feels increasingly impossible, given the scale of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the Palestinian determination for a right of return. And a one-state solution, in which Israelis and Palestinians would live as equal citizens in a single state, is hard to imagine, given how strongly both peoples seek political self-determination. But what if those aren’t the only options? A Land for All is an Israeli-Palestinian initiative that is proposing a confederation model: two sovereign states, structured to allow freedom of movement between them. It’s a theory of peace based on neither separation nor unification. It holds, first, that both peoples have a relationship to and claim on all the land and, second, that both peoples want to control their own political destinies. I have been — and am — skeptical of solutions to a conflict that is so devoid of the political conditions for a settlement. But even if you’re far from your destination, it’s worth knowing where it is you hope to go. So could this be an answer for both peoples? How would it handle the problems that have bedeviled previous solutions, from security and violence to religious extremism? Rula Hardal and May Pundak are the executive directors of A Land for All. Hardal is a Palestinian citizen of Israel who received her doctorate in political science from the University of Hannover in Germany, and Pundak is an Israeli lawyer, activist and social entrepreneur. They joined me to explain how A Land for All would work and why they think it might succeed where so much else has failed. Mentioned: A Land for All plan Rula Hardal’s Book Recommendations: The Holocaust and the Nakba, edited by Bashir Bashir and Amos Goldberg States of Denial by Stanley Cohen Israel: What Went Wrong? by Omer Bartov May Pundak’s Book Recommendations: Tomorrow Is Yesterday by Hussein Agha and Robert Malley A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers The Moomin series by Tove Jansson Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. You can find the transcript and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.html This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Jack McCordick. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Kelsey Lannin. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Johnny Simon. Our recording engineer is Johnny Simon. Cinematography by Marina King and Eric Laplante. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin and Emma Kehlbeck. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Shows is Annie-Rose Strasser. Transcript editing by Filipa Pajevic and Marlaine Glicksman.