The Ezra Klein Show

I like to start the year with a few episodes on things I’m personally working on. Not resolutions, exactly. More like intentions. Or, even better, practices.One of those practices, strange as it sounds, is repeatedly asking the question: “What is this?” It’s a question I got from a book of the same name, by Stephen and Martine Batchelor. In that book, they are describing an approach to Buddhist meditation built on the cultivation of doubt and wonder. You can see that as a spiritual practice, but it’s also an intellectual and ethical one. It is, for me, a practice that has a lot of bearing on politics and journalism.Stephen Batchelor’s latest book, “Buddha, Socrates, and Us: Ethical Living in Uncertain Times,” explores those dimensions of doubt more fully. And so I wanted to have him on the show to discuss the virtues of both certainty and uncertainty, the difficulty of living both ethically and openly. You can see this as a conversation about our inner lives or our outer lives, but of course they are one. And Batchelor, as you’ll hear, is just lovely to listen to.Mentioned:Buddha, Socrates, and Us by Stephen BatchelorWhat Is This? by Martine Batchelor and Stephen BatchelorEthics of Care by Carol GilliganBook Recommendations:Children of a Modest Star by Jonathan S. Blake and Nils GilmanWork Like a Monk by Shoukei MatsumotoThe Second Body by Daisy HildyardThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] 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 Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Isaac Jones. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu, Emma Kehlbeck, Jack McCordick, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

This is the strangest economy I’ve seen in my lifetime. If you just looked at the macro data — the jobs numbers, G.D.P., the stock market — things look pretty normal. But they clearly aren’t normal. The Trump administration spent the year upending the global trade system while tech companies spent hundreds of billions of dollars on A.I., a technology that could potentially displace many of our jobs. And people don’t feel normal, either. Survey data shows that the vibecession rages on.Tracy Alloway and Joe Weisenthal are the co-hosts of the excellent economics podcast “Odd Lots” and have closely followed all the chaos this year. So I wanted to have them on the show to explain what the hell is going on.Mentioned:ChartsOdd LotsThe Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu“The Vibecession: The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy” by Kyla Scanlon“Everyone is Gambling and No One is Happy” by Kyla ScanlonBook Recommendations:Breakneck by Dan WangNorth Woods by Daniel MasonA Marriage at Sea by Sophie ElmhirstThe Digital Reversal by Andrey MirOrality and Literacy by Walter J. OngNo Sense of Place by Joshua MeyrowitzThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] 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 Annika Robbins, with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Isaac Jones. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Michelle Harris, Kristin Lin, Emma Kehlbeck, Jack McCordick, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Kimberly Clausing, Natasha Sarin and Kyla Scanlon. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

What will America’s story be after President Trump? My colleague David Leonhardt did a great series on that question this year, talking to a number of leading politicians. I thought two of those episodes, with Senator Bernie Sanders and with Senator Ruben Gallego, would be of particular interest to you.And they’re great to listen to as a pair. Sanders and Gallego have strong views about where the Democratic Party went wrong and how it can win back working-class voters in particular — views that have a lot of overlap but also some interesting shades of difference. So I wanted to share both conversations.You can learn more about our sister show “The Opinions” here — and subscribe wherever you find your podcasts. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

“This lightbulb went off that almost no one was asking these questions.”In 2006, Elie Hassenfeld and a few of his friends pooled some money they wanted to donate to charity. And they wanted to find charities where their money would go the farthest in improving lives. That information, it turned out, was incredibly hard to find.That was the seed of GiveWell. For almost a decade, GiveWell has dedicated itself to rigorously researching the impact of charities around the world and channeling donations to the ones that are the most effective at saving lives. It might sound simple, but this was a radically new approach in the world of charitable giving, and the work itself isn’t simple at all.I’ve supported GiveWell through the years. So as the year winds down and other people might be thinking about giving to a charity, I wanted to invite Hassenfeld, GiveWell’s chief executive, on the show to talk through this work. How does it measure impact? Are there limits to what you can measure? As an organization, has it made mistakes? What does it really mean to give well?If you like what you hear, I hope you’ll also consider donating to GiveWell. Learn more at givewell.org.Mentioned:GiveWell“Trust in Radical Truth and Radical Transparency” by Ray DalioHarlem Children’s ZoneAgainst Malaria FoundationHelen Keller IntlNew IncentivesNo Lean SeasonClinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI)PATHGiveDirectlyALIMABook Recommendations:Factfulness by Hans Rosling with Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling RönnlundPoor Economics by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther DufloBehind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine BooThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] 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 Jack McCordick. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Isaac Jones. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin, Emma Kehlbeck, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Aman Sahota and Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

This is one of my favorite conversations in recent memory — with the writer Zadie Smith. Smith is the author of novels, including “White Teeth,” “On Beauty” and “NW,” as well as many essays and short stories. Her ability to give language to the kinds of quiet battles that live inside of ourselves is part of why she’s been one of my favorite writers for years.“We absolutely need to gather in our identity groups sometimes for our freedoms, for our civil rights. There’s absolutely no doubt about that. But for that role to be the thing that is you existentially all the way down — that is something that I personally believe all human beings revolt from at some level,” she told me when we spoke last September, shortly before  Trump’s re-election.It’s ideas like these that I found interesting to revisit now, in a starkly different political climate. In this conversation, we discuss Smith’s novel, “The Fraud,” which Smith wrote with Trump and populism front of mind; what populism is really channeling; why Smith refuses the “bait” of wokeness; how people have been “modified” by smartphones and social media; and more.This episode contains strong language.Mentioned:Feel Free by Zadie Smith“Fascinated to Presume: In Defense of Fiction” by Zadie SmithAmusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman“Generation Why?” by Zadie SmithBook Recommendations:The Director by Daniel KehlmannThe Rebel’s Clinic by Adam ShatzThe Diaries of Virginia WoolfThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) 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.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota and Efim Shapiro. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu, Elias Isquith and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.