Ezra Klein

I don't know how to hold all the feelings, even all the thoughts I should have in a day right now. The emergency is here and the kids need help with their homework. I have friends who have fallen terribly ill and others who have just seen their test results come back clear. I spend days covering efforts to rip healthcare from people and torch the global economy.

I don't know how to hold all the feelings, even all the thoughts I should have in a day right now. The emergency is here and the kids need help with their homework. I have friends who have fallen terribly ill and others who have just seen their test results come back clear. I spend days covering efforts to rip healthcare from people and torch the global economy.

And then I'm supposed to go to a birthday party. I look down at my phone at smoldering ruins in Ukraine and Gaza and Sudan, and then I look up into a spring day. I know on some level this is always true, that we are just more or less alive to it at different times.

And then I'm supposed to go to a birthday party. I look down at my phone at smoldering ruins in Ukraine and Gaza and Sudan, and then I look up into a spring day. I know on some level this is always true, that we are just more or less alive to it at different times.

But I guess I'm feeling more alive to it right now, more overwhelmed by it right now, more curious about how to keep myself open to it right now. And then I ran into this unusually beautiful book that's all about this experience. It's called Lost and Found. It's by Katherine Schultz, a writer at The New Yorker. And it's structured around a loss, that of her father.

But I guess I'm feeling more alive to it right now, more overwhelmed by it right now, more curious about how to keep myself open to it right now. And then I ran into this unusually beautiful book that's all about this experience. It's called Lost and Found. It's by Katherine Schultz, a writer at The New Yorker. And it's structured around a loss, that of her father.

around a finding, that of finding and falling in love with her partner. And then it's this really moving meditation on the way it's all connected. The way that we, quote, live with both at once, with many things at once, everything connected to its opposite, everything connected to everything. It seemed worth a conversation. Katherine Schultz, welcome to the show.

around a finding, that of finding and falling in love with her partner. And then it's this really moving meditation on the way it's all connected. The way that we, quote, live with both at once, with many things at once, everything connected to its opposite, everything connected to everything. It seemed worth a conversation. Katherine Schultz, welcome to the show.

I want to start by having you tell me a bit about your father. Where did he come from?

I want to start by having you tell me a bit about your father. Where did he come from?

You have a beautiful passage about your father being on the boat, coming to America, and trying to conceive of how much turmoil and loss he had already experienced. Tell me a bit about how much dislocation he'd seen before the age of 12.

You have a beautiful passage about your father being on the boat, coming to America, and trying to conceive of how much turmoil and loss he had already experienced. Tell me a bit about how much dislocation he'd seen before the age of 12.

I read stories like this, and I've been reading Melting Point, which is a different sort of very interesting kaleidoscopic history of this era for Jewish people. But I was also reading Wolf Hall, where everybody's endlessly dying of tuberculosis. I think of the modesty of the things I try to protect my children from now, the things that upset me if it happens to them.

I read stories like this, and I've been reading Melting Point, which is a different sort of very interesting kaleidoscopic history of this era for Jewish people. But I was also reading Wolf Hall, where everybody's endlessly dying of tuberculosis. I think of the modesty of the things I try to protect my children from now, the things that upset me if it happens to them.

And then what, you know, every generation of humanity, including many people alive today, the extremism of the experience. And it's hard to imagine how you go through that and just keep going. And yet people did and do. So this is a person who's, I mean, he's watched his uncle get murdered in the car next to him. What kind of person does he become?

And then what, you know, every generation of humanity, including many people alive today, the extremism of the experience. And it's hard to imagine how you go through that and just keep going. And yet people did and do. So this is a person who's, I mean, he's watched his uncle get murdered in the car next to him. What kind of person does he become?

Do you understand his temperament as an act of denial or an act of acceptance?

Do you understand his temperament as an act of denial or an act of acceptance?

I always wonder when I think about what my grandparents did not complain much about and what I do complain about and what the generations younger than me seem to complain about and our cultural attitude towards trauma and self-revelation and self-work. And I'm more of that culture than of the opposite, but I don't look around and think we're happier. Yeah.

I always wonder when I think about what my grandparents did not complain much about and what I do complain about and what the generations younger than me seem to complain about and our cultural attitude towards trauma and self-revelation and self-work. And I'm more of that culture than of the opposite, but I don't look around and think we're happier. Yeah.