Ezra Klein Returns (on political polarization)
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What is discussed at the start of this section?
Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert. I'm Dan Shepard. I'm joined by Lily Padman.
Hi.
And today we have a returning guest. Yes. He was last year, weeks before shutdown.
Yeah, lots changed.
Six years ago. Ezra Klein, he is a political commentator and a journalist. He co-founded Vox and is currently a New York Times podcast host and op-ed columnist. Ding, ding, ding. That's why he's here. I read... an op eddie wrote that i really really liked that we're going to discuss at length his books include abundance which is gaining a lot of political traction also been on so many big lists phil gates's list obama's list just man oh man and then why we're polarized which was how we met him the first time uh and of course listen to his podcast it is extremely well informed and beautifully executed the ezra klein show please enjoy ezra klein he's in our church world
Okay, I do believe you're stronger than you were six years ago. Have you been exercising? Are you doing a weight training program?
So this has been coming up a lot. I'm probably stronger than six years ago when I had a one-year-old.
Okay.
Okay. Then 10 years ago, I mean, I've not gone through a Dax-like Hulk out here. Well, I'm much older than you. This phase could still be in your future. Yeah, fair enough. I was in pretty good shape in my early 30s. You're 42 right now? Yeah, I'm 42. And then I had kids. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It brought the curve down for a while. And then I turned 40. I read Peter Atiyah's Outlive. Yep, yep. Very persuasive. And he really persuaded me that having muscle mass in the long term is important for health. And so I started trying to turn things around. Okay, good. Thank you for noticing. Yeah. I've... consumed a psychotic amount of protein powder, as far as I can tell. So I'm glad people feel like it's doing something. I know SF culture.
I don't live there anymore, but I know that world. Is the peptide thing here? Are you all on peptides? I'm on peptides, yeah. Which peptides are you on? We're having the most podcast conversation ever here. Yeah.
I'm just fascinated by people doing that. By the way, this is going to dovetail beautifully into the piece you wrote that I loved. Yeah, why can't a centrist liberal talk about peptides and lifting weights? Listen, if you can't talk about peptides as a liberal, we're not going to win anymore.
We're not going forward. I'll make a real political point here. I feel like a couple years ago, eight-ish, ten-ish years ago, there was a big move on the kind of, I never know how to describe this, the left, progressive something, against what I would call like male self-improvement. Brene Brown and worlds like that were fine. But the way you see this operating in terms of young men, both bodily and emotionally, That became a little bit of a no-go zone. And I was saying to people then, I was like, aspiration, like self-improvement is such a fundamental human drive. If you make your politics hostile to that, you will lose. You cannot make aspiration something that you code as right-wing.
You think they're against self-improvement physically. Is that what you mean?
I think there are two things that happened here. One was that there's a tendency to associate the idea that you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps and everything is personal responsibility and how hard you're working at it with the right. Yeah. And the sense that that is a way of avoiding a confrontation with... societal conditions that need to be changed in order for people to thrive. And I am sympathetic to that as far as it goes. We do have a lot of societal conditions that need to be changed in order for people to thrive.
And it'd be great if someone pulls them up by their bootstraps.
How has self-improvement become politically coded?
And it does happen. And yes, not on the level that we've been sold, but also it doesn't make it bad.
Yes. I always think that as a society, you want society to be skeptical of how much falls on the individual and individuals to be optimistic about how much they can do for themselves. So I'm actually largely a believer that things are pretty socially determined for us in terms of who we're born to and where we're born and the luck we come into contact with in life.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is discussed at the start of this section?
0:00–3:38
2
How has self-improvement become politically coded?
3:38–9:03
3
What role does attention play in modern politics?
9:03–22:40
4
How do political figures navigate complex conversations?
22:40–1:18:57
5
What challenges does Ezra Klein identify within the Democratic coalition?
1:18:57–1:19:20
6
How do corporate influences affect political decisions?
1:19:20–1:21:35
7
What are the implications of a wealth tax in California?
1:21:35–1:24:35
8
How does Ezra Klein view the future of political discourse?
1:24:35–2:07:36