Ezra Klein

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.

And it makes me wonder, are we doing the right thing in our more excavatory culture? Or was there wisdom we have lost in the, not that people should live in denial, but the balance of how much we go in and how much we simply move forward?

And it makes me wonder, are we doing the right thing in our more excavatory culture? Or was there wisdom we have lost in the, not that people should live in denial, but the balance of how much we go in and how much we simply move forward?

I guess I'm also driving at something else. What moved me quite deeply in your book is its attention to suffering and loss. And there's something about that I think is pretty subtle about being open to it versus pushing it away. It feels very deep. Neither of those are denial. And... You spend a lot of time in the book on the time you spent with your father in the hospital as he was passing away.

I guess I'm also driving at something else. What moved me quite deeply in your book is its attention to suffering and loss. And there's something about that I think is pretty subtle about being open to it versus pushing it away. It feels very deep. Neither of those are denial. And... You spend a lot of time in the book on the time you spent with your father in the hospital as he was passing away.

You have this line about hospitals where you say, and I'm truncating your quote a bit, but I like this part. In an ICU, you are as aware of the brevity of life and the great looming precipice of eternity. Yet at the same time, you're basically stuck in an airport. And there's this sort of coexistence of the banal and the profound. What were those days like for you?

You have this line about hospitals where you say, and I'm truncating your quote a bit, but I like this part. In an ICU, you are as aware of the brevity of life and the great looming precipice of eternity. Yet at the same time, you're basically stuck in an airport. And there's this sort of coexistence of the banal and the profound. What were those days like for you?