Each Tuesday and Friday, Ezra Klein invites you into a conversation on something that matters. How do we address climate change if the political system fails to act? Has the logic of markets infiltrated too many aspects of our lives? What is the future of the Republican Party? What do psychedelics teach us about consciousness? What does sci-fi understand about our present that we miss? Can our food system be just to humans and animals alike? Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Trump is a master at wielding attention. Heâs been owning news cycles and squatting in Americansâ minds for much of the last decade. And for his second term he has an ally in Elon Musk, a man with a similar uncanny skill set.
Trump and Musk seem to have figured out something about how attention works in our fragmented media age â and how to use it for political and cultural power â that Democrats simply havenât. So what is it? What do they understand about attention that their opponents donât?
Chris Hayes is the host of MSNBCâs âAll In,â and has written a forthcoming book, âThe Sirens' Call: How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource.â And heâs a brilliant thinker on how our modern attention economy works and what itâs doing to our politics.
We discuss what Hayes sees as a revolution happening to our attention, which he compares to the Industrial Revolution in its scale and impact; why the old rules about attention in politics no longer apply; the key insight Trump had about attention that fueled his rise; why Musk didnât really overpay for Twitter; and how Democrats can compete in this new attentional world.
Mentioned:
âYour Mind Is Being Frackedâ by The Ezra Klein Show with D. Graham Burnett
âThe Great Crypto Crashâ by Annie Lowrey
Book Recommendations:
Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman
How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell
Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of âThe Ezra Klein Showâ at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.
This episode of âThe Ezra Klein Showâ was produced by Jack McCordick. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Mixing by Isaac Jones, with Efim Shapiro and Aman Sahota. Our supervising editor is Claire Gordon. The showâs production team also includes Rollin Hu, Elias Isquith and Kristin Lin. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Joe Biden wanted to show Americans that there was a better path than Trumpism. He worked to build a âforeign policy for the middle class.â He centered industrial policy. He took a more competitive tack with China. He kept America out of wars. The hope was that if Americans saw foreign policy serving their interests, then that would dim the appeal of someone like Donald Trump.
Then Trump won again â stronger than ever.
Jake Sullivan is Bidenâs national security adviser and one of the key architects of this foreign policy for the middle class. In this conversation, I ask him to walk me through why he thinks the country is better off today than it was four years ago. We discuss the status of Americaâs relationship with China and the risk of a future war; whether the U.S. should have used its leverage to force Ukraine to the negotiating table; how the enormous arms support of Israel serves U.S. interests; what Trumpâs re-election says about Bidenism; and more.
Mentioned:
Book Recommendations:
Science, the Endless Frontier by Vannevar Bush
Nexus by Yuval Noah Harari
The Situation Room by George Stephanopoulos
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of âThe Ezra Klein Showâ at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.
This episode of âThe Ezra Klein Showâ was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Mixing by Isaac Jones, with Efim Shapiro and Aman Sahota. Our supervising editor is Claire Gordon. The showâs production team also includes Elias Isquith, Kristin Lin and Jack McCordick. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
The preview weâve had into Donald Trumpâs second administration already feels, by American standards, disturbingly abnormal: Picking a former âFox and Friendsâ host for defense secretary. Billionaire after billionaire trekking to Mar-a-Lago to curry favor with the president-elect. The Washington Post withholding an opposing endorsement. Meta ending its third-party fact-checking.
But all of this is actually pretty normal â not in the U.S. but in many other countries. Researchers call them personalist regimes, in which everything is a transaction with the leader, whether itâs party politics or policymaking or the media. Itâs a style of politics that follows different rules, but there are still rules. And understanding personalist politics, and their tried-and-true playbook, is a way to help make the next four years legible.
Todayâs guest is one of the leading scholars on personalist regimes, in both their democratic and their authoritarian forms. Erica Frantz is a political scientist at Michigan State University and a the co-author, with Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Joseph Wright, of âThe Origins of Elected Strongmen: How Personalist Parties Destroy Democracy From Within.â In this conversation, we discuss what personalist regimes are and how they operate, the personalist qualities of Trump and the signs of democratic backsliding that Frantz thinks Americans need to track in the coming weeks and years.
This episode contains strong language.
Book Recommendations:
Dictators at War and Peace by Jessica L. P. Weeks
Autocracy Rising by Javier Corrales
The Trumpiad by Cody Walker
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of âThe Ezra Klein Showâ at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.
This episode of âThe Ezra Klein Showâ was produced by Elias Isquith. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Mixing by Isaac Jones, with Efim Shapiro and Aman Sahota. Our supervising editor is Claire Gordon. The showâs production team also includes Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin and Jack McCordick. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
In a couple weeks, the archives of our show will only be available to subscribers. Hereâs why thatâs happening and what to expect.Â
To learn more, go to nytimes.com/podcasts.
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Every Tuesday and Friday, Ezra Klein invites you into a conversation about something that matters. How do we address climate change if the political system fails to act? Has the logic of markets infiltrated too many aspects of our lives? What is the future of the Republican Party? What do psychedelics teach us about consciousness? What does sci-fi understand about our present that we miss? Can our food system be just to humans and animals alike?
Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.
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.
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].
âThe Ezra Klein Showâ is produced by RogĂ© Karma and Jeff Geld; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld.
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
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