Ezra Klein

It's a question about attention that brought me to this book because my experience of the last couple of years for me, it's been particularly acute the last couple of months, and this has been both a personal and at times a very political experience, is this feeling that to try to hold the extremes, to give everything its attention at the same time,

It's a question about attention that brought me to this book because my experience of the last couple of years for me, it's been particularly acute the last couple of months, and this has been both a personal and at times a very political experience, is this feeling that to try to hold the extremes, to give everything its attention at the same time,

the loss and the horror, like the beauty and the elation, also just the normalcy. You know, I'll sit here for a day and I'll cover deportations to El Salvador and torture prisons, and then I'll go home and just have to make dinner and read books. And feeling that, I'm sure somebody has the attentional capacity to hold it, but I don't feel like I do.

the loss and the horror, like the beauty and the elation, also just the normalcy. You know, I'll sit here for a day and I'll cover deportations to El Salvador and torture prisons, and then I'll go home and just have to make dinner and read books. And feeling that, I'm sure somebody has the attentional capacity to hold it, but I don't feel like I do.

I have never quite felt this sort of overwhelm of, the system. And it felt to me like something you were exploring in this book, because you also meet your partner in a similar time. It feels like you should be able to settle on an emotional interpretation of a moment, that the affect of the story should be more or less one thing, which of course is not ever true.

I have never quite felt this sort of overwhelm of, the system. And it felt to me like something you were exploring in this book, because you also meet your partner in a similar time. It feels like you should be able to settle on an emotional interpretation of a moment, that the affect of the story should be more or less one thing, which of course is not ever true.

We're just sort of more or less alert to it.

We're just sort of more or less alert to it.

I read this book and I wondered about the quality of your actual attention. Yeah. You write, and not just here in your journalism too, as if you're able to tune your attention to very deep levels of experiences, but also somehow to the cosmic and geological context in which those experiences are taking place. You sort of zoom between time scales very smoothly.

I read this book and I wondered about the quality of your actual attention. Yeah. You write, and not just here in your journalism too, as if you're able to tune your attention to very deep levels of experiences, but also somehow to the cosmic and geological context in which those experiences are taking place. You sort of zoom between time scales very smoothly.

There's a passage you have on finding and the various forms it takes that I think is quite beautiful. Do you mind reading it?

There's a passage you have on finding and the various forms it takes that I think is quite beautiful. Do you mind reading it?

Do you really experience the world this way, or is that a thing that happens as a matter of craft and writing and reflection?

Do you really experience the world this way, or is that a thing that happens as a matter of craft and writing and reflection?

Is there an experience that comes to mind for you recently where you were looking at something small and you saw something big in it or big and you saw something small in it?

Is there an experience that comes to mind for you recently where you were looking at something small and you saw something big in it or big and you saw something small in it?

There's this way of thinking about these questions where it really feels like the goal is to live in full awareness of the fragility of life, the horrors, the happiness. And then it also feels that if you really did that, how would you ever get anything done? If you were really fully present in

There's this way of thinking about these questions where it really feels like the goal is to live in full awareness of the fragility of life, the horrors, the happiness. And then it also feels that if you really did that, how would you ever get anything done? If you were really fully present in

in the beauty of each moment, the ephemerality of, you know, I go and I play soccer with my six-year-old most nights right now. And on the one hand, I know I am not enjoying it the way I want to be. I know this moment is more beautiful than the way my tired self is experiencing it, who's also thinking about bedtime and are we going to be late for dinner.

in the beauty of each moment, the ephemerality of, you know, I go and I play soccer with my six-year-old most nights right now. And on the one hand, I know I am not enjoying it the way I want to be. I know this moment is more beautiful than the way my tired self is experiencing it, who's also thinking about bedtime and are we going to be late for dinner.