r/ezraklein

One of the things I've noticed about Ezra Klein is that he'll interview people many of his audience strongly disagrees with. He also doesn't spend the entire conversation trying to dunk on them or fact check every sentence in real time. He mostly lets them explain how they see the world and trusts his audience to think critically about what they're hearing. Some of these guests have been called Nazis or accused of holding extremist views, but Klein still seems to believe there's value in understanding how they think.

It got me wondering who the equivalent is on the right.

I honestly can't think of a major conservative- leaning figure who would sit down for a long, serious conversation with someone like Zohran Mamdani or Darializa Avila Chevalier. Instead, it feels like the dominant approach from Trump and much of right wing media is to call them communists, traitors, or some other label and move on.

It does feel like there's a real difference here. Ezra's whole project seems to be built around the idea that if you want to understand politics, you first have to understand how other people arrived at their beliefs. Even if you think they're completely wrong, it's still worth hearing them out.

If there really isn't a conservative equivalent with similar influence, what does that say about where we are politically? Is there something about today's conservative media ecosystem that doesn't reward curiosity about ideological opponents? Doesn't that mean that any left leaning policies are inherently at a disadvantage in the free market of ideas?

Happy 4th! The Chris Rufo episode kicked off another round of the endless debate about whether or not interviewing people like him is acceptable. I’m curious to hear some of the other things people think he’s got the wrong idea on.

Number one with a bullet for me would be amount of time he spends trying to fit Trump into some kind of coherent ideological framework that can predict/explain his actions. Ezra seems to never be able to resist overintellectualizing a guy who has taken multiple positions on almost every issue I can think of, will say anything that pops into his brain, and is constantly persuaded by the last person that he talked to.

It's pretty clear to me after Destiny watching Ezra's convo with Chris Rufo that they have a very different perspective about what makes a good conversation with these conservative intellectuals, and given Ezra has one of the biggest liberal platforms on the Internet, it'd be very productive for them to hash out their views and disagreements on how these conversations ought to be had

I think Destiny believes these conversations should be much more adversarial and debate-like in nature. It seems like his main gripe is with how Ezra is happy to let these conservative intellectuals describe how they see things with little or no pushback, except on factual matters and to say "we can agree to disagree". I think Destiny would argue Ezra isn't trying to get them to concede hardly anything, which let's them spin whatever narrative of lies while coming off as knowledgeable, genuine, and good faith.

I imagine Ezra's goal with a lot of these conversations is to keep them more cordial and to understand where his guest's are coming from. Rather than debate, I believe Ezra sees his conversations with conservatives as a good-faith effort to understand their perspectives and offer a critique of their views in a kind and gentle manner. Ezra isn't trying to win, he's trying to understand.

Whatever you think the "right" strategy is to talking with these conservative intellectuals, I think it'd be extremely productive for Ezra and Destiny to have a meta conversation about these podcasts Ezra does with these conservatives. I think both of their strategies have pros and cons, and I'd really like to see the hash out their own views on the matter and grapple with the critiques the other is making.

Regardless of what you think about Destiny or Ezra, I believe they are both committed to liberalism, democracy, and ultimately the success of the Democratic party, even though they may disagree on the best way to achieve that.

From the comedy podcast Middlebrow.

Not sure if YouTube “start at” links work when posted on Reddit, so here is the link to the correct timestamp

I also don’t know if this sub can handle a bit of humour, but: Ezra is now officially in his Hot Daddy era ;).

Beyond that, I actually think this part of the episode puts its finger on what we discuss here and a lot of what Ezra and his guests have been discussing on his show this year:

– The male loneliness epidemic and how it’s exploited by grifters
– Ezra’s sexy tattoos and burner vibes
– Scott Galloway being hailed as the left’s version of JBP, despite the irony of him being unashamedly obsessed with wealth and fame
– The backlash against the left’s heteropessimism / men-bashing
– How Zohran attracts men while being an left-wing politician

I find it refreshing to hear two comedians talk about these issues, because they can do it in a way left-leaning commentators rarely can, with self-deprecating humour, playfulness, and actual curiosity. I enjoy how their podcast can switch quickly from joking around to surprisingly sharp analysis of culture, art, and politics.

I also think it’s telling that these guys put together a more cohesive — and, to me, truer — view of the current political milieu than almost anything I’ve heard from the New York Times in the last couple of years. I genuinely think the fact that they’re comedians helps.

What does it mean to celebrate America on its 250th anniversary?

The Trump administration’s festivities — from the U.F.C. fight on the White House lawn to the Great American State Fair — have centered American glory and greatness. What has been missing are the Americans who fought to move America closer to its promises. They had to love a country — or at least believe in a country — that often failed them. How did they do it?

Beneath that is a deep question for anyone who loves a country, or even loves another person: How do you love something in its wholeness, amid its imperfections and failures?

One person who is thinking deeply about how to do this is Bryan Stevenson. He’s a civil rights lawyer and the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, which is based in Montgomery, Ala. E.J.I. has created a series of museums and sites in Montgomery that aim to examine America’s history of enslavement, racial violence and segregation, while also uplifting and honoring the people who endured these systems and fought to upend them.

The sites are remarkable to witness, as I found out when I visited Montgomery, and they hold America’s manifold truths in tension with one another — all its horror and beauty, tragedy and triumph, inhumanity and humanity.
I asked Stevenson how he’s thinking about America’s 250th birthday — and what work the country has left to fulfill its vision of liberty and equality for all.

Can be from Ezra or others, wanting to know more about this.

It's fallen out of fashion now, but there used to be a belief that as voters became more educated, they would settle into more pragmatic, broadly palatable views. We've since learned that this is backwards and it's actually the most informed voters who tend to be the most ideologically extreme. So the next claim you'll often hear is that this is a product of media echo chambers and institutional indoctrination. 'It's those dogmatic professors and pastors are brainwashing impressionable college students and church attendees!' I'm also skeptical of this claim. For one, why would less informed voters be immune to this effect? Tuned out? Maybe. But why would smart, civically minded choose to deliberately brainwash themselves? Moreover, how did these learning institutions get to be so ideological in the first place?

Here's my thesis: Informed and engaged voters are more logical and diligent when it comes to applying their principles to real world circumstances and that often leads to them embracing more radical views. Polarization is a consequence of voters with conflicting value systems behaving rationally.

Many evangelical conservatives are so extremely pro-life that not only do they believe all abortions be outlawed, including instances of rape and incest, but they also believe that IVF and stem cell research should be banned as well. This is absurdly unpopular and would scare off even many conservative voters. But if one earnestly believes that every human is imbued with a soul at conception, that becomes the inevitable conclusion. Or consider degrowthers. If someone truly believes humans have no more right to the planet than any other living creature, then it makes total logical sense for them to be hostile toward any form of infrastructure and development. The point is these fringist beliefs do not stem from impaired or irrational thinking, but rather logically consistent application of their stated values. Engaged voters more readily prioritize values over materialism.

In addition to being more value-oriented, engaged voters are also more diligent and long termist. They're willing to pay a higher upfront cost now to extract a greater reward in the future. Why take the first compromise that's offered? Obstruct and play the long game. Deepening the crisis will create more support for your agenda in the long run.

If you're a smart donor or activist, the most important thing you look for in a Congressional candidate is predictability. You need to know that the candidate you vote for will vote exactly the way you think they will. You can't plan a policy agenda around a super majority if you have no idea how it'll vote on any given bill. The biggest catastrophe for your cause is spending a lot of political capital on a big, aggressive bill that gets voted down by a few surprise defections from your own party (actually the worst thing is spending all that political capital just to get it overturned by SCOTUS). You need to know exactly how far you can push without risking a loss. That's why all the purity tests. Are you loyal to Trump? Who won the 2020 election? Do you support Palestine? You're not electing the candidate, you're electing their voting record.

So there you have it. The most engaged voters are the most intelligent and informed on policy which means they more cogently apply their cultural beliefs to their political orientation. This manifests as base radicalism. The base enforces purity testing to ensure they get the "correct" vote out of the candidates they elect.

For anyone who needs a refresher: https://www.reddit.com/r/ezraklein/s/rZVLy3Jbn8

Ezra keeps alluding to having changed his mind about or at least shifted away from the politics of speech policing and safetyism. (Not to mention the specific political issues that caused the letter to be controversial.) But not so long ago Ezra was a staunch defender of the very political tendencies that he now derides and blames for the left’s defeats. I’m sure he has changed his mind about some things. But until he tells us exactly what and how, his positions are a little unclear. Ezra, tell us what you really think! I think revisiting the Harper’s letter would be interesting and revealing.

For the record, I always thought the controversy around the letter was stupid and thought Ezra’s defense of the letter’s opponents was one of the low points of his (quite distinguished) career.

Kind of cool that one interview causes such a spike for someone's book.

Listening to the discussion with Christopher Rufo today, they had a lot of engagement around the right wing media environment and the Tucker Carlson show on Fox.

This led to discussions about white nationalist messaging that the TC show may have amplified - that got a lot of pushback from Chris.

Did I miss it or was Blake Neff (TC writer, quit after racist, sexist and homophobic online presence) not mentioned as a strong indicator of this theory?

Interesting how many statements and posits required him to reframe or ask Ezra to before he would engage.

New Ezra Klein Rufo show

People on this sub often talk about the lack of quality of many guests, especially a lot of the right-wing ones.

It seems each podcast episode is a significant production in pre-interview research. It is also clear that Klein has a vision of the conversation he is hoping to have with his guests, that his interviewee's sometimes completely ignore.

I wonder if the high cost in terms of time and resources leads to guests that don't make any sense end up still getting published just to meet the monthly quotas/out of a sense of sunk costs.

Have they ever talked about what percentage (if any) of their interviews end up on the cutting room floor?

Related to discussion from EK and here about whether the economy is doing well and how we tell: the authors claim to measure the economy by tracking a budget for a family of four with a household income of $130k.

They say, "According to our calculations, the math has stopped adding up for this family over the past 18 months. They had a small cushion in 2024. Now they are in the red after covering just the basics, such as housing, an Affordable Care Act marketplace health care plan and day care. The family has over $1,000 less than it did a year and a half ago. Rising costs have more than wiped out any gains from higher wages and recent tax cuts."

I wonder if this is a better way to measure the economy as felt by regular people. I know that grocery, gas, healthcare, and rent are top of mind for basically everyone I know.

Link to the website for the Kitchen Table Project: https://www.thekitchentableproject.org/