Ezra Klein, so hot right now.

>> [laughter]

>> Oh, no. Did you ever expect to be

referred to as an unlikely thirst trap?

>> I did not and I try to ignore that it's

happening.

>> [laughter]

>> It also has this funny quality some of

this coverage of how now

it's like I took off my glasses and grew

a beard and it's very she's all that.

It's like oh, like maybe he's

I always look the same to me.

>> Well,

an unlikely thirst trap feels like the

most backhanded insult or [laughter]

compliment. I It's like a Rorschach test

for whether or not you feel good about

yourself. I don't know what way that's

Is that Is that supposed to be a nice

thing? Unlikely thirst trap. I don't uh

>> When you are profiled, it is not

supposed to be a nice thing.

>> Okay, so you'll take an unlikely thirst

trap.

>> that's like also an important thing to

know about just like the whole genre of

profiling. It's never supposed to be a

totally nice thing and you're not

supposed to be a totally mean thing.

It's trying to create energy.

>> That's interesting. There was a rumor in

that that you had to adjust your

lighting on your podcast set to make you

look less attractive because it was

distracting from the the real substance

of the

>> It is a not true rumor.

>> Wow.

>> And and it's going to be a even weirder

thing to discuss like here while you're

sitting there like three times is ripped

in front of me as we talk about whether

or not I'm hot.

>> [laughter]

[gasps]

>> Uh I know it's

I thought that that was an interesting

profile but yeah,

how do you feel about having a mini

celebrity moment like that?

>> You try to focus on the work.

I I and I mean that really seriously. I

think that

if you start to see yourself in the

third person,

it is very very dangerous for doing good

work. It's like the the input of good

work is independence of mind and for me

particularly, it's a lot of time spent

by myself reading books, thinking about

things.

Once the world's idea of you gets into

your head, it is poison and I think

that's true, by the way, for, you know,

people get profiled or have many, you

know, moments. I think it's also just

naturally true for everybody now who has

social media profiles and has this kind

of constant like front stage that they

keep up. I always tell people who like

come to me for advice in in journalism

or who are having some kind of

pop in the press that you really have to

be intentional.

You have to be intentional about

maintaining as much of a backstage as

you can.

>> Mhm.

>> And when I see people who aren't having

a pop, like destroying their backstage,

I worry about them. The streamers worry

me like in an almost paternalistic way.

>> Mhm.

>> I watch the amount of their lives

they're putting on on online, they're

putting in front of a camera, how little

is left for them.

And psychologically, I think it is going

to do a lot of people a lot of damage.

>> Everyone feels uncomfortable watching

that.

>> You ever read Super Sad True Love Story

by Gary Shteyngart?

>> No.

>> It's an amazing, amazing book. It is as

prophetic a book on this moment as

anybody has ever done. It was probably

done 10, 20, 10, 15 years ago.

Uh and everything in it, it's like it

it's all about a world of streamers and

sort of America coming apart and people

having

everything around them like raided in

public and everybody in it is looks

maxing. There's a whole thing about how

books smell bad, like it's sort of like

dick casa to have physical books. So, at

least we haven't done that yet. But you

you can really

have these moments right now where you

realize we have built

the dystopia.

We have done the thing the sci-fi

writers warned us against doing just in

all directions all at once.

And it's just hope it turns out well

this time.

>> How do you think about protecting the

backstage?

>> I keep a lot of time quiet.

I

don't go to very much.

Did you read uh Lena Dunham's new book?

It's great, Fame Sucks, and she talks a

bunch about the way everything creates

more of itself. Everything you do

creates more of itself. And so if you

get on different circuits, it just

it eats you. It eats the time. So for

me, it's like the way I think about my

work,

most weeks I bring out three things. I

bring out two podcast episodes and one

call.

And the week is just very much organized

around that.

And I just

more and more and more try to cut out

like everything that is not directly

feeding into one of those three pieces

of work

or is not my children, my family,

and deep friendships, or like personal

care and time, right? And that's already

a lot. Like even as I say those five-ish

things to you,

I feel tired.

>> Yeah, and the fact that

I guess

one shortcut is to just make all of the

other stuff part of the main thing.

To turn all of the private life into the

public life. Think uh

Mary Harrington talks about a digital

hijab that she wears, where she covers

up a lot of the parts of her that she

doesn't want the

>> Oh, that's a great

>> the world to see.

>> A digital That's a great coinage.

>> She wears this this thing. She

told this story. She finished her first

marathon, a half marathon, something,

some race. She's into running.

And uh she took a selfie at the end cuz

that's that's what you do, right? You're

I'm proud of this thing. And she went to

post it, and she sort of saw this

universe split, which was how much of

this is for me and how much of this is

for the internet. And yeah, I mean,

it is very easy to be distracted from

doing work.

>> I'm curious how you handle this because

you have a tougher job on this than I

do. So my work,

I can define it much more tightly. You

know, it's primarily about politics,

current affairs, geopolitics. I bring in

some things I care about like meditation

and but for the most part

it is not natural I have to choose to

let it colonize the things that are

closer to my core.

>> Mhm.

>> But yours like the topics you touch on

the show they're very personal. So

anything can become content for you.

>> Mhm.

It's been a a purposeful I think I'm

quite by disposition I'm quite a private

person. Like my personal life's always

remained very private and that's been

something that uh a bunch of friends

gave me advice on early on and I'm

really glad that I followed it. Once you

open that door, I think it's very

difficult to reverse it. People are

interested in oh who you dating now and

and and what what does this mean and oh

why is he what who's he aligning himself

with? As soon as you open that door

it continue the snowball continues to to

roll. Um mercifully for me I think

almost purposely trying to be as boring

as possible with your personal life is a

great prophylactic. Like people just get

very very but they'll move on to what is

more easily consumable and for as long

as Destiny exists

I am not going to be top of the list.

Like there was a period where Destiny's

private life was just made the most

public thing over and over and over

again and

Hasan will get in bother over and over

and over and over again or the Nick

Fuentes will come through or Huberman

will come through. You know, there's a

lot of people that are like easier

access than me who I I think my biggest

defense is purposely making my private

life very boring

and not really talking about it all that

much and people just move on and that

for me is like as I'm completely fine by

that as my strategy.

>> The other thing that I think is

important is not exposing yourself to

the algorithms all that much. Mhm. So I

don't tweet.

I we started putting clips up on

Instagram and even doing a little bit

more of that I feel the pull of it the

want of it. So I'm a big fan of all

these mid-century media theorists like

Marshall McLuhan and and Neil Postman

and Walter Ong and and all of them

basically, their main idea

is that every medium changes the user.

>> Mhm.

>> So, we think what we're doing when we,

you know, turn on the television or turn

on X or turn on Instagram or read a book

for that matter,

is we are consuming content. We are

choosing and we can make better or worse

decisions, right? We can read better or

worse people, watch better or worse

shows.

>> Mhm.

>> And their whole view is no, it is always

using and changing you. There's a great

Marshall McLuhan quote where he says, um

I'll butcher it a little bit from

memory, but he says,

"The content of a medium is the juicy

steak

thrown to distract the watchdog of the

mind."

>> Mhm.

>> And his point is that

while you're sitting there getting mad

at a tweet, what's actually happening is

it your sense

of

how ideas should feel and look, how long

they should be. While you're sitting

there looking at Instagram, your sense

of what everything should look like,

it's all changing.

And as it changes, you change with it

and you and particularly with these

algorithms that create, you know,

constant rankings and other super sad

true love story thing,

it creates a a constant feeling of

"Well, shouldn't I? Shouldn't I be

competing here, too?"

>> Mhm.

>> And what you can do and what I've seen a

lot of people do is they get into local

maximums,

but long-term minimums or degradations

where you're doing a lot to be as

competitive on, say, Twitter or X

as you can be and you don't realize it

in the long run

the like the trade you're making on that

influence is that the way you think is

degrading. And so, that the long-term

work is going to be worse. Yeah.

>> And in the long run, you know,

it's hard to maintain a It's hard to

maintain a career where you have to be

interesting Mhm. over an extended period

of time. And I think people who are

trying to do that

need to be very, very, very intentional

in the same way that like an athlete

needs to be very intentional

about, you know, avoiding injury

and burnout.

>> Getting too captured by one

one black hole, being sucked into one

particular medium. There's this great

story, I think it's uh Dostoevsky or

Nietzsche, and

the first part of their career they were

writing by hand, and the second part of

their career they started writing on

typewriter. Mhm. And they explained the

difference between the first and the

second. They said the sentences got

shorter and punchier, and their thoughts

occurred in a different way. Their

writing style changed because of the

medium. And that's them just being

facilitated by a new output medium, not

even

absorbing things in a different manner.

So, when you've got it going both ways,

this bidirectional thing, I'm going to

be influenced by what I see on this

particular platform, yeah, it's going to

be deranging.

>> So, one thing that I think about and and

I've never quite been able to come up

with a clean enough theory to start

using about, but we can work it out here

together,

is I think we need a better politics of

attention.

And one of the ideas that influenced me,

which came from an academic paper that I

don't remember the authors to cite, but

is to think about attention

as a public good or collective resource.

And attention then is subject to tragedy

of the commons problem. So, a tragedy of

commons problem is when, you know,

everybody has access to a grazing field.

And so, it then becomes very quickly a

problem where people will begin trying

to graze as much of the field they can,

and then everybody has to do more, and

soon enough you've exhausted this public

good.

And I think our attention is like that,

and we only have so much of it, and we

have it as a collective, not just

individuals.

And we are being like attention fracked.

And the more competition there is for

our attention, the more aggressive

everybody is about trying to get it. I

don't know if you get on as many

political emails and text message, you

know, things that I do.

>> Zero.

>> God bless.

>> Yep.

>> But they have gotten so

loud. They come with all these siren

emojis now, and it's always like it's

Chuck Schumer and Ezra, and I'm on I'm

on my knees begging, right? Everything

is like the end of the world, everything

is an emergency.

You know, a lot of these places are like

I always joke that um X is like

gain-of-function research for takes.

It's just everybody competing to take

like a normal take

until you can turn it into something

that has viral contagion. And then

occasionally they do it too well, and it

escapes contagion and destroys our

lives.

>> [laughter]

>> Right? Like that's how X works.

And

but collectively the effect

is our collective attention is

irritable, is short, it's changing. The

people we want are changing.

Uh to to again just stay on the the

medium thing for a minute. There's a

great uh

it's not a controversy, it's it's a Neil

Postman argument that he makes in

Amusing Ourselves to Death, which is

always one of my books I recommend to

people.

And he says that uh people often say to

him that how can you say television, cuz

this guy's writing, you know, around

television,

is dreck. Like look at Sesame Street.

And he says, I don't worry about the

dreck on television. I worry about

Sesame Street.

Because what Sesame Street is doing is

teaching kids that education should

actually be entertainment. He said, the

trash on television is no problem.

Everybody knows it's trash. It's where

you're subtly changing

>> masquerading as something else.

>> It it's where you're changing your

expectations for everything else should

be. So I mean, right now we're moving

into a period in politics where I think

in order to be a successful politician,

you have to be attentionally capable.

You have to be able to earn attention in

a way you didn't have to before. Zora

Neale Hurston, Spencer Pratt, Graham

Platner, Donald Trump, right? You can do

it from different James Talerico. You

can do it in better or worse ways. What

you can't be

in a competitive race any longer

is a somewhat boring talker

who's just really good at the

>> Deliver on the policy. I understand the

fundamental economics of this. I'm great

with my constituents.

>> You need more aura.

>> How are things going for Keir Starmer?

>> [laughter]

>> I mean, yeah, a a man that is the

equivalent of a ham sandwich. Uh did you

see this tweet? It's at the very bottom.

Did you see that tweet earlier on today?

Very, very bottom. It's hiding down

there.

>> I did, yes. I saw both of those.

>> Yeah. So, I had to double-check that

@thedemocrats is the Democrats official

proper

>> Democratic National Committee, yeah.

>> Correct. Yeah. And I'm like,

is this a parody account? It's got to

be. So,

the Democrats tweet fired up, ready to

go. It's time to take back Texas.

Stephen Miller replies and says, "The

Democrats made history in Texas by

nominating their first transgender

Senate candidate."

And @thedemocrats reply, "Shut up, you

ugly fuck."

And that reached at least 50 million

people. It's like 300,000 likes. Right.

I I get it. The he did it first thing of

pointing from one side to the other, but

is

Maybe this is just my sort of British

properness coming through.

The

the thought that a

the online

representative account for one of the

parties saying, "Shut up, you ugly

fuck." Is Is that not absurd? Like, that

feels kind of deranged to me.

>> deranged. But But this is a little bit

what I mean about the whole medium,

right? Because one thing that does One

thing that every movement like this

does, and I take Donald Trump honestly

as a bit of a first mover here, is it is

shifting people's sense of what

political communication should sound

like.

>> Agreed.

>> So, I mean, that is the outcome, I would

say, of a long process of learning

that

if you tweet like a normal, sober

stalwart institution, boring.

>> Boring.

>> Barack Obama is I I'm a big Barack Obama

fan.

>> Mhm.

>> That guy's Twitter account, not great.

>> Not sexy enough.

>> Not sexy enough.

>> No.

>> And and so this is the way everything

changes. Like it actually it it changes

the expectations, it changes the people,

and it changes what can succeed.

>> Mhm.

>> And so, you know, sometimes maybe they I

mean I guess you can ask the Democrat

out the Democrats if they went too far

or not. Maybe they Maybe to them it's a

huge success, but the This is what I

mean when you have to think about these

mediums, you have to think about the

attention, you have to think about the

norms, you have to think about the

discourse as a kind of public good. What

that is doing Like that right there is a

tragedy of the commons problem. It's

very hard for Act the Democrats to be

noticed. There's a huge cacophony of

voices. The voices that get noticed are

extreme. So here's the thing.

You notice them. We are here talking

about Act the Democrats were joined or

to Stephen Miller.

>> I can't remember the last time that I

talked about Act the Democrats.

>> So they probably just succeeded.

>> way to put it.

>> But it's a tragedy of the commons. Like

Stephen Miller, by the way, a deputy um

chief of staff to the president is

tweeting about James Tallarico who

Whatever else you want to say about

Tallarico, an incredibly decent person,

an incredibly decent man in politics,

who tries very hard to treat people on

both sides with respect. Stephen Miller,

deputy chief of staff, his reaction to

Ken Paxton, by the way. It wasn't even

like Tallarico won the primary last

night. It was or a couple nights ago, it

was Paxton

was first transgender candidate. So

again the

You know, I don't want to sit here and

just like tut-tut and and chin stroke,

but it is a degradation

of the entire system.

>> Sounds so uncool. I can even feel my own

sort of cringometer of being out of

touch occurring as we're talking about

it.

>> Yeah.

>> Like what do you mean you

both within a couple of years of each

other. Are you really going to be the

fuddy-duddies finger wagging at people

these kids on the internet having fun or

whatever? I'm like

I don't know, man. It feels like

extracting from a system that it

shouldn't be. It feels like there's

something that's going wrong with

regards to that. I guess one of the

other one of the biggest talking points

that we've had over the last couple of

years was around what happened in the

2024 election, especially independent

media sort of being involved in that.

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at checkout. Do you think if the left

had had its own version of Joe Rogan

that the last election would have really

changed?

>> The election was close enough in the

battleground states

that

I think you end up in a situation where

you can change any variable and imagine

moving I don't remember the exact

number, but something like you would

have needed I think 150,000

>> votes to switch. I mean, those votes

would have had to have been correctly uh

like apportioned.

>> Yeah. But, it was in you know, just a

handful of states.

So, maybe not just Joe Rogan. Like, I

would say that the way to think about

this is not a liberal or illiberal Joe

Rogan. It's candidates who are

comfortable in the kinds of spaces that

we mean when we talk about Rogan. Like,

the point is not getting like one guy

who is more on your side. The point is,

you know, Harris and Walls having been

everywhere and having been capable of

talking more effectively to different

kind of of of of person. But But but let

me

pull back on something you said a second

ago.

Uh

I've been thinking a lot about virtue in

politics.

And virtue

I was going to say it's not a word we

use that much, but I actually think

particularly in your corners of the blog

of the blogosphere. We were talking

about blogs before we started. Of the

podcastosphere.

>> RIP.

>> It is something we talk about.

And I was just doing a show that'll come

out shortly about a bunch of the kind of

more masculinist philosophies on the

right, people like Bronze Age Pervert

and Rad Nationalist and

And one of the things I was thinking

about is how much those visions of

masculinity

have a primitivism to them, right? It's

this desire to rediscover

a stereotypically testosterone-soaked,

much more competitive,

dominance-oriented, aggressive, right?

There's a view that modern man has been

warped into and constrained into this

soft, cooperative, like against their

own instincts. Okay.

The thing that I was noticing how when I

actually read what these guys were

writing,

the thing that I was noticing was so

absent was

the idea of self-mastery and

self-discipline

as a fundamental dimension not just of

like manhood or masculinity, but just of

humanity. In fact, a lot of these places

seem to take self-discipline and

self-mastery with the exception maybe of

like a homosocial weightlifting

component [laughter] as a negative,

right? It was evidence of the way

modernity had warped us into this

attenuated shape

that works for, you know,

modern feminized liberal democracy,

right? That's the argument.

And so you see, I think this is

particularly true on Trump and you see

it with Stephen Miller.

This

gleeful rejection

of norms of behavior that once sort of

reflected, I think, a kind of

self-disciplined. Right? Politicians

don't talk the way Donald Trump talks,

right? They are disciplined. They know

not to just unleash on the people they

don't like in a way that is destructive,

most of them.

And it was this wiping away of that as a

kind of show

of

that you would not be held back

by the system as it existed.

And And so there's a message in what

Miller is saying, and then if Now you

see like the Democrats trying to to ape

it. But what I do think is going to it's

going to create I think what it's

already creating

is going to be a swing back

to a desire to see political virtue.

To see social virtue demonstrated in in

leaders. Everything creates its opposite

in politics, always.

>> Mhm.

>> And so

>> This sort of statesman-like, bit more

decorum.

>> Yeah, it'll have to be a version that

works for today.

>> It'll still need to be sexy, got to have

aura.

>> You're going to need to have aura. You

need to have aura.

>> Correct.

>> But the O'Rourke, I mean, the reason

O'Rourke is dangerous to them, and I'm

not saying he's going to win, Texas is a

hard state for a Democrat to win in,

but the reason O'Rourke popped in the

first place, the reason that he ended up

on Joe Rogan in the first place, is he

is able to talk through a kind of

progressive Christianity in a language

of morality and virtue that people found

exciting.

>> Mhm.

>> And that you didn't really hear from

Democrats anymore. And I think he was

one of the first moments, and he's

raised more, I think, than any Senate

candidate in the country based on this.

>> Mhm.

>> And I think he's one of the first

moments where you really see where the

pendulum is going to swing back to

because I think people are looking

around, and they're seeing what it looks

like when we unleash ourselves uh in a

way that conforms to algorithmic media.

And I'm not saying everybody dislikes

it. Some people feel real excited by it.

But I think most people dislike it. Even

people I know who are Trump supporters,

they don't like the way this all feels.

>> You like it in the way that you like

having a McDonald's, that at the time

it's kind of enticing, but afterward you

feel a bit shitty. And if you have too

many of them in a row, you actually

start to reject the system a little bit.

It's interesting. I was having this

conversation with Arthur Brooks

yesterday, and he was saying, "The

moment that you break any kind of

addictive cycle, the first thing that

you have to do, at least following

evidence for a broad range of aggregated

addictions, is you have to get mad.

You have to be angry at the thing. Like,

I'm sick of being at the mercy of this

thing. I'm sick of being at the mercy of

porn. I'm sick of being at the mercy of

drugs. I'm sick of being at the mercy of

alcohol. Sick of scrolling on my phone.

Getting mad is a really effective first

step. And I wonder at what point like

people just get bored. Like cuz this is

evolutionary arms race of like

bullshittery that keeps on happening

online. Like, now, if the Democrats

tweet, "Shut up, you ugly fuck," again,

it gets a tenth as much attention cuz

we've already seen it.

>> Yeah.

>> So, unless you're going to continue to

play that game, okay, well, what's new?

Well, what's new is the equivalent of a

a a sundress and a cake. Right? You know

what I mean? Like, it's something that

feels a little bit more kind of

vestigial.

>> I I feel like there's been a move, and

again, you don't see any of that tweet

set where we're we're using as our text

here.

A rich text, if spare.

I already think there's a move towards

something sunnier.

I mean, if you had to use one word to

describe the aesthetic of Momodou

Ndiaye, it's sunny.

You can say a lot of other things about

him, right? And people disagree with

him, and you know, you everybody can

have their arguments about what he

believes.

You never saw that guy without a smile.

He didn't I mean, if you ever just

looked at the Momodou Ndiaye smile, it's

like Trump had the scowl, even in his

second presidential portrait. This is

not me ragging on him. He has a portrait

in which he's scowling. It's a very

unusual portrait. It's kind of like

looking down.

And Momodou Ndiaye the smile, and I'm

going to read out of his great piece in

his Substack The Ink about like the

rhetoric Momodou Ndiaye smile as

rhetoric.

And Talarico Mom Daddy you start to see

something new working.

And of course it will only work for so

long and we'll see where it goes. It's

not the only thing working. But that

Stephen Miller the Democrats exchange

it sucks, right? Like who who wants to

feel that way?

>> No one.

>> And so that's a it's a way in not a way

out.

And I do think the winning move in

politics in the next couple years is

going to be

the way out not the way in.

>> At best it's a sort of gleeful dancing

over somebody else and they've done

in the same way as

two bullies fighting against each other

kind of take a degree of satisfaction

from having a pop. It's not Yeah, it's

it's it's not sunny. It's it's

performing sunniness, right? I care less

about what you think of me. Oh no,

actually we care even less about what

you think of us than you think that we

do.

Yeah, this arms race sucks. I guess

I'm kind of interested do you think that

you

are at the center of a Democrats civil

war at the moment?

>> At the center of a civil war? I don't

know. Do you think I am?

>> Seems that way on the internet if you

read the right pieces. There's certainly

a an orbiting and I wonder whether it's

because so few people are able to talk

on many different sides. That might be

it.

>> I think the Democratic Party is having a

big debate

over what it should be.

And I think that the book that Derek

Thompson I wrote released us here

abundance

which it was one of these things. I mean

I've released a book before.

It

things catch fire for their own reasons.

And abundance became in a way that is

unremarkable

one of the text that became

the thing people used to have an

argument they wanted to have.

Which was

uh Uh, which is not necessarily the

argument we're actually having in the

book, but abundance sort of became at

the center of this war between what I'd

call the populist wing of the Democratic

Party and the liberal wing of the

Democratic Party.

And what was funny about that fight to

me, so abundance the book we did, was

about the way in which liberalism,

Democrats [clears throat] of various

stripes, left center,

have made it very hard to build where

they govern. And so in places that tend

to be blue, like New York or um uh

California, it's been hard to build

homes, hard to build clean energy.

Texas, where you live, they build just

more homes and more clean energy uh than

blue states do. Not because they're

necessarily more pro affordable housing,

and definitely not because they're more

politically pro clean energy or worried

about climate change. They just have

created a structure in which it is

easier to build things. I've talked to

um climate tech entrepreneurs, not just

doing sort of normal green energy, but

doing things that are much more on the

cost, much bigger projects.

And their politics are Californian, and

they're just like, I can get things done

in Texas and Arizona, and I can't get it

done here, right? And what what was

interesting about the fight that book

kicked off then, is the book was very

much embraced by the people it was

actually criticizing. So Gavin Newsom

embraced that book, right? He talks all

the time now about we need to be,

Democrats need to be a party of

abundance. Uh he uses another term that

that I I I have called a liberalism that

builds.

And

so did a lot of people from outside of

the party. Obama's talked about the

book, right? The the the part of the

party that was actually in power that we

were criticizing kind of grabbed onto

it. And the part of the party that is

insurgent

sort of reacted against that. It's like,

well,

abundance kind of became for them the

face of like the Obamaism, you know, the

sort of the Obama side of the party

keeping power.

And and they want sort of a more

populist party.

Here's the thing, I just think most of

this fight is fake. Because, you know,

Zohran Mamdani just this week released a

big housing plan.

And it's a housing plan all about making

it easier to build, and all about

cutting through bureaucracy and red tape

and making it faster and cheaper and in

Los Angeles Nithya Raman Democratic

Socialist running against

Karen Bass who's the Democratic mayor

you know is also running like you you

know taping things in you know overgrown

fields that the LA city is like suing to

stop from becoming affordable housing

you know the new Democrats the

congressional caucus released a thing

about how to build more clean energy and

create clean energy abundance.

So one of the hard things for me and

like judging this debate is that there's

an online discourse that because of the

nature of online discourse becomes very

very factional

and it becomes very angry

and people who are

people sort of create a fight in it that

they're used to

but to me like the whole thing abundance

is doing is cross-cutting divisions that

exist not just inside the Democratic

not just inside the Democratic Party but

also between Democrats and Republicans

to sort of create new syntheses on

things and so I just don't see the

fights that people are scoring on

Twitter there as being even the fights

and the difficulties that our ideas

really face because in practice it's

much more about how hard these things

are to get done

and I also think that there's like a

whole technology side of abundance that

has proven a much much harder climb

because of AI than it was when we were

writing that book. So I I'm always like

a happy to be a character in various

people's discourse fights but I I tend

to think that the particular one that

has been you know present here

has at this point been pretty belied by

the reality of who's embracing these

ideas.

>> Well you're one of the few liberals that

sort of openly

critiquing liberal governance failures.

Do you ever feel like you need to walk

on eggshells a little because there is a

degree of purity spiraling and othering

on the left the right seems to be

prepared to welcome anybody with

whatever history they've got with open

arms.

>> Well, unless you say unless you say Joe

Biden won the 2020 election, and then

Donald Trump will primary your

like whole career into oblivion.

>> That is kind of he who shall not be

named for for [laughter] joining the

right. That's the Voldemort of the

right. That's correct.

>> So but I I want to say something

interesting about this cuz this I think

reflects a difference in the two parties

right now.

>> Mhm.

>> What Donald Trump did very effectively

is he collapsed purity on the Republican

Party down to a single dimensional

point, which is loyalty to him.

So he's willing to accept a tremendous

amount of views,

so long as you are loyal to and say nice

things about him personally.

>> There's a single ordinating principle.

>> Exactly. The left, which does not have

a leader in that respect.

>> plurality of ways that you can get in

trouble.

>> Exactly.

>> Whereas this is just a unity of ways

that you can get in trouble on the

right. That's so interesting.

>> the right has it's a little bit of like

the fox and hedgehog thing. [laughter]

So the right has this one big

>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

>> thing you have to accept. This one I I

not just lie, right? I had the 2020

election stuff is a lie. But the the

problem they're about to have, the

problem they're having right now, is

that

what it means to be loyal to Trump

is a more complicated thing than it was

in the 2024 election because he's doing

things, right? Like the war in Iran. And

so what it means to be loyal to him is

not just you're pro-Trump, but you can

believe whatever on vaccines, you can

believe whatever on Now you actually

have to as a member of the Republican

Party, you know, sign on to you can't

You you see this happening. And so

you've had like very MAGA people like

Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas

Massie,

you know, who 100% were on board with

all kinds of election [ __ ] from

Trump, but they got pushed out over

other things now because they weren't

loyal on

>> The single ordinating principle has

fractured into

>> Party the or the maybe I'll call it like

the broad left.

It It's not like it was 4 years ago.

But it it what it has is an agenda and a

set of um

different factions

have a like a platform and an

orientation and a set of ideas you have

to be loyal to, right? Do you believe in

Medicare for all? Like how do you feel

about billionaires? Or Yeah, how do you

feel about wokeness if you're sort of

more in the set, right?

They're They're trying to create a

programmatic um test.

And

you know,

that has a problem in that it like it it

keeps more cohesive and coherent

coalition if you're able to do it, but

it makes it much harder to welcome

people into it.

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What if we step outside of the more

political dimension of this and we talk

about the cultural left, the people that

contribute to the discourse online?

Because at least with that,

people can be dissenting of Trump, but

broadly still be seen as part of the

right. I'm not convinced that the same

level of

the same amount of ballast is in the

system for people that are on the left.

Now, maybe this is declining. I think

that you're right. It was significantly

more pure five or six years ago. Um

but I'm just interested

as somebody who seems to be departing or

at least criticizing in a manner that I

wouldn't have heard five years ago,

whether that ever plays into the back of

your mind where I'm [ __ ]

I mean, I'm going to press post on this

thing, but I know the subsequent nuclear

fallout that's going to occur once I do.

>> I like to think that I have tried to

hold this approach to my um politics and

work for a long time. I mean, the thing

that led to the moment I've had over the

past couple of years was um a sort of

early and and pretty aggressive argument

that Biden should step down. And that

was not a popular thing in the

Democratic Party when I made it, and it

caused problems. So,

I I have a view that

um and by the way, Abundance, which

releases last year, I mean, the columns

and essays that led to that started in

2021. So, I was writing all this at a at

a different time.

I think you have to be

self-critical

as a party in politics both for two

reasons. One is you're probably making

mistakes and and two is that if you

believe in getting things done and

you're failing, you have to try to

figure out why, whether that getting

done is winning elections or that

getting done is building homes, whatever

it might be.

>> [snorts]

>> Um

I want to But But to take the broader

thing you're saying cuz I I don't want

to

present that as too idiosyncratic.

I think one, this has all gotten an

easier

um

in part because I think like the the

weird moment in the platforms has

fractured. So, here's another theory I

have.

Whoever dominates Twitter

pays for it three to four years later.

And in 2020

progressives dominated Twitter.

>> Mhm.

>> And they convinced themselves of a lot

of kind of wild ideas.

>> Mhm.

>> And those ideas came and bit them in the

ass in 2024.

>> Okay.

>> And Kamala Harris got like really hung

out

on different um

ads that got run against her with things

she had said years before.

Even right now, James Talarico,

the attacks that Ken Paxton and

Republicans are using against him have

to do with things he said like three or

four years ago, right? Like God is

non-binary, that kind of thing.

So, the thing is then Donald then Elon

Musk bought Twitter.

Made it X.

Sort of drove a lot of the left off of

it.

Opened up the floodgates to the right on

it.

And now the right has ended up in a

somewhat similar place where they have

gotten like

attached to Nick Fuentes

and like the more conspiratorial

incarnation of Tucker Carlson

and the the sort of like Twitter anon

world and people are talking themselves

into much more wild and conspiratorial

things and this is going to hurt them is

my prediction in you know, two or three

years when like the bill on all this

comes due, which is all to say that I

think you cannot separate the dynamics

we are talking about

from algorithmic social media.

>> Mhm.

>> I think that is fundamentally what is

shaping these fast rise and fast falls

in coalitional purity

>> Yep.

>> in um

kind of extreme ideas taking hold and in

a sense where you get so

consumed

in talking to your own side that you

lose a sense of where other people

really are.

And I mean that's most dangerous thing

in all of this. It's not having some of

these ideas. I mean, I agree by the way

with like many of the ideas people like

now to write as wokeness.

The problem is when you don't realize

you have not done the political work

to make those ideas legible to others

or to sort of win enough support that

you can push other ideas out of the

marketplace. You you stop instead of

doing politics, you're doing posting.

And politics is a constant balancing of

disagreement.

Politics is an act of endless pluralism

in a liberal democracy.

And posting is not. Posting is for your

side to and get in a lot of energy to

hate on the other side.

>> Mhm.

>> And posting tends to habituate people to

a very very very bad and very um

weak form of politics.

>> So, you're saying that people sort of

believe their own hype for a while. That

becomes its own kind of derangement. And

then at some point in future

>> No, I'm I'm saying that in the way we

were talking about the algorithms

earlier, people get into these

one-up

>> Mhm.

>> dynamics to sort of prove their purity.

So, Mondaire, right? In here in New

York. When he ran for mayor,

he just had to straight-up disown a

bunch of things he had said on Twitter a

couple years ago, right? Like that the

NYPD is anti-queer and it and

a lot of politicos on the on the left

are just having to be in a Yeah, 2020

was a crazy time. Yeah, like it like I

said some [ __ ]

>> Mhm.

>> And

that came from being in a online milieu

where people are getting pushed to like

see and say stuff that was ever more out

of

the mainstream as a way of proving that

they got it.

>> You're optimizing for the platform.

>> And and your corner of it.

>> Correct. Yes, you're optimizing for this

very specific echo chamber. You've got

this

arms race of attention and also you're

trying to do something which garners as

much as many eyeballs as possible.

Eventually somebody when that dust

settles a little bit gets to look at it

with a

clearer set of eyes and go

What's this?

What's this thing that you said not that

long ago? And sometimes it appears in an

ad.

>> Or you're now running statewide in Texas

or citywide in New York.

And all of a sudden, it just it wasn't

for them.

You were You were saying something

to the person you had seen 2 seconds ago

>> Yeah.

>> on social media, and now it's being

blasted out in an ad running all across

El Paso.

>> Yeah.

>> And it wasn't for the median voter in El

Paso.

>> The internet is forever. Do you

Do you consider yourself, given the this

interesting position and especially with

with the book, where it's put you in

terms of criticizing liberal governance,

do you see yourself as further left or

further right than previously, or are

you just in exactly the same spot?

>> I don't think my politics are that

different. I mean, I see myself as a

liberal. And I've been a liberal for a

long time, and like the American

tradition, it means different things in

Europe and other places.

And I have

fairly recognizable liberal goals. I

want universal health care. I want um

more like economic egalitarianism. I

want people to have just the ability to

live a flourishing life.

But in the way that I think it's

traditionally been a big part of

liberalism, and think about Obama, for

instance, I believe very strongly that

the work of making a fractious

complex multi-ethnic democracy function

is honorable important work. And that

requires not just policies

but certain political virtues and

approaches to politics

>> Mhm.

>> that

keep

conflict from spinning out of being

constructive

and allow it to spin into spaces that

are really destructive.

>> If you were to design

an incentive to do the opposite of that,

it would be social media.

>> Yes.

And so

I

Yeah, I I think I'm

>> [laughter]

>> In some ways I'm probably further left

than my temperament makes people think

in terms of what I believe about things.

Uh, but I also think that policy is not

really the way people code other

people's ideology.

Um,

you know, what makes you more far left,

right? Is it believing

in the maximum level of universal health

care you can get to

or is it your view on climate change? Or

is it your view on what level political

compromise is okay? A lot of the places

where people get really angry at me is I

am much more open to political

compromise and I'm very open to

uh

Democrats running very different

candidates in very different places,

including candidates who are much more

conservative than me because I believe

disagreement is very real.

And one mistake I think a lot of people

make when looking at politics

is

they don't really credit how different

people are from them.

And so if you're in a political bubble

in New York City or Austin or Los

Angeles

what it takes for a Democrat like Joe

Manchin to win statewide in West

Virginia, I don't think it's

conceivable. Do you Like you don't know

anybody like Like you don't know what it

means to win working class voters in

West Virginia. He does.

He was like the Democratic MVP, right? I

don't have Joe Manchin's politics. I

find Joe Manchin incredibly

uh irksome. And I also understand that

his job is not my job.

And so one of the the the things I'm

One of the things I worry about because

I worry about where

this country's politics are going and I

am like very deeply opposed to Donald

Trump and MAGA and like the way the

politics are work

is I think it's really important

Democrats win Iowa.

I think it's really important they are

competitive in places like Nebraska,

which they used to be.

Um, you know, in 2010 Democrats held, I

believe, both seats in West Virginia,

right? In the Senate. Like that's

unimaginable now.

And so the the question of what

what kind of big tent would allow that

where you can have a Zephyr Teachout

here, but you know, Rob Sand who's this

more moderate Democrat running statewide

for governor in Iowa who's great, he's

running on getting rid of the two-party

system.

Right? He's not running

as a like a Democrat to appeal to

liberals in Brooklyn or leftists in

Brooklyn for that matter.

He starts every town hall

with he like has Republicans stand up,

he says, "I want everybody to clap for

the Republicans in this room." The

Democrats to stand up, everybody clap

for them, the independents, and then he

has them all do the pledge of allegiance

or sing the Star Spangled Banner

together.

And is that my politics exactly? Like is

that how I would run a rally? Probably

not. Would I win statewide in Iowa? I

sure would like it wouldn't man.

>> [laughter]

>> But Rob Sand might win statewide in

Iowa. And Rob Sand is a hero for that.

Uh and so, you got to believe in things,

but also I do think the question I mean

I think in the Trump era I take more

seriously than I used to

that

building

the

stability of our politics was an

incredible achievement.

And many countries don't have that.

And in many countries they had it and it

was lost.

And believing that in America

we cannot break this thing

is a mistake.

And if you do believe we can break this

thing, then you actually have to think

about what kinds of politics

bring it back. And that's why I'm not

excited even if it works attentionally

about seeing a doom loop of

vice and venality because even if you

can win that way,

you are breaking the thing by doing it.

And so, the question of how do you win

virtuously

is very important to me because I think

like it for all the other things I want

to have,

you actually need a working peaceful

politics to get there.

>> Yeah.

Who's your ideal Democratic Party

candidate?

>> For 2028?

>> Yeah.

>> They They don't exist.

I mean, I don't think there's a perfect

Democrat for 2028. And to the extent if

there is, we don't know them yet because

they've not been under those lights yet.

Uh

I think

I am a sort of unreconstructed

admirer of Barack Obama.

And if Obama were running today, he

would have to run differently than he

did then.

>> More aura.

>> Uh he had a lot of aura then, man.

>> Online aura.

>> I think if you're running today, he'd

have more online aura. That's the point,

right? You can't transpose who he is

post-presidentially

to now, right? He is a human

institution.

He's like a like a monument in some

ways.

Um so he's not going to be who he was

even when he was running in '08.

But I think he did something that's

really hard to do.

Which is one, he contained many of the

country's contradictions inside himself.

And was able to make people even who

disagreed with him quite deeply feel

seen.

And he was able to combine two forms of

moral imagination that I think are hard

to combine. Which is one was a sort of

moral imagination of policy of things

like universal health care, which he

basically achieved, right? It's like a

lot of people have failed on that before

him.

Um

Could we make Obamacare better? Always,

but Obamacare is no small thing.

And the second was a moral imagination

on politics itself.

In a country that had

the kinds of racial divides and legacy

we have and had

in a country that in the Bush years felt

very divided.

He made people feel politics could be

different. And the tragedy of Obamaism

is that it got worse.

That he was able actually to pass quite

a lot of the policy he promised.

But he was not able to make politics and

this country's divisions feel better. In

fact, they felt worse.

>> Mhm.

>> And the thing that I think no one has an

answer to

is how to resuscitate that side of his

moral imagination in a way that does not

feel naive or hopeless

or cliche.

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>> Yeah, it's an interesting one to look to

what happens in 2028. You know, it was

so fascinating to me being in the UK and

starting to come online with realizing

just how

how tumultuous America was politically

and then observing that unfold and then

being starting to be a part of the

conversation, I guess, because I started

Modern Wisdom in 2018 and then to roll

it forward and to think about what

happens in just two years time, just two

years from now, kind of blows my mind

and uh

I don't know I don't know what people

are looking for on either side in 2028

anymore. Do you follow Do you I don't

know how deep you are in politics. I

know you've had Bernie and people like

that on the show.

Do you look at the Democrats and think

that one?

No.

No.

But I also don't look at the

conservatives and think that one either.

I mean my basic read of the field for

what it's worth right now is that the

ones doing the most interesting things

are

Gavin Newsom or AOC

or Buttigieg and then the big dark horse

I think that people should not

underestimate right now is Jon Ossoff

who is the senator from Georgia who is

in a re-election this year.

But when I look at the Democrats those

are the four

who I think have figured out attention

in this era and one of my views on

politics is it attention is its own

competency now

and that if you are not capable of

earning it and wielding it and using it

and breaking through on it yourself

then you actually cannot compete at the

highest levels. Certainly not right now

with the way that the ecosystem says at

the moment. And I don't think it'll be

different in 2020. You got to play the

ball where it lies. And there's also

something about one of the great I think

character mistakes of the Democrats

and and central left parties actually I

think you see this with Keir Starmer

in a bunch of places

is people who are too formed by

institutions

they're afraid.

And it one way I often put this is I

think right now one of the problems in

American politics is Republicans are

under formed by institutions and

Democrats are over formed by them.

So Republicans sort of in the Trump era

they're too contemptuous of institutions

too contemptuous of institutional

authority too contemptuous of the norms

of institutions and how you act inside

of a company just rip it all up dog [ __ ]

chainsaw it it's all [ __ ] anyway and

that's wrong.

The problem for Democrats can be that

they can become a party of Tracy Flick

and they are so

framed and molded

by like from birth having competed their

way,

you know, through every school, you

know,

through every competition, through every

company, through their politics

in a party that is much more

pro-institutions than Republicans are.

And people who come through institutions

like that, they often reflect those

institutions. They they begin to talk

like them. You can hear the institution

when they open their mouth. Keir Starmer

speaks like he is

the government, right? Like you you feel

like he's like got like he feels like a

bureaucracy.

>> Right.

>> And I'm not even saying that as a

negative on him. At another time that

might have been more, you know, a doable

thing.

But

I don't think that works in this media

environment at all. Like you have to

feel

honest, authentic. You have to like talk

like a real person. You have to talk

like a real person. People can

People can sense that before they can

sense anything else about you.

And so when I see some Democrats who are

running,

but they still talk like someone who is

optimized. And to be fair to them, this

used to be a thing you optimized for and

it worked, to win over like local

editorial boards at small-town

newspapers.

They were optimized to be somebody that

the editors of newspapers thought seemed

like a competent, decent person.

And it might be and it is, I think, a

shame

that that has become some kind of a

liability

that you need to have

some edge of wildness to you.

But it is what it

>> skill set as you rise up through the

ranks. Yeah, it's interesting there's

kind of a common thread here, which is

that

um you almost get locked into a a

mode of thinking from a particular

domain that you're in, whether it be a

platform, from a particular niche that

you're in, geographically, culturally,

from a particular time that you were in

in your career, and what was useful

then, and the inability to be prepared

to update that, and also the potential

hypocrisy of having updated that, that

creates its own challenge, too. So,

you're sort of fighting against it. I

guess when we're talking about a more

like active left, like a building left,

right?

The word deregulation gets used

by Elon Musk, and it also gets used by

you.

>> It does.

>> And you clearly don't mean the same

thing, but the same word doing two jobs

is a problem in politics, right? It sort

of lets one team's project

ride the slipstream of the other, and

you end up in this sort of semantic game

back and forth.

How do you tell the difference between

your kind of deregulation

and Elon's in a

simple way that you can explain around a

dinner table?

>> They have different goals.

I mean, what is deregulation?

You are removing rules.

What is regulation? You're adding rules.

Is adding rules or removing rules good

or bad?

Well, how the [ __ ] would you answer that

question?

>> Until the rule is

>> Depends on the rule.

>> Yeah.

>> And so,

look, I consider

Musk

to be

a tragedy.

This is a guy

who is clearly a genius,

who is the most capable industrialist of

our time,

who built

those industries

on public-private partnerships.

Tesla is built

on government subsidies, on government

tax credits. There is no electric

vehicle

market in this country without the huge

amount of money we, and California by

the way, in particular,

pumped into making that market real.

Tesla would have gone under without an

Obama-era loan guarantee. SpaceX SpaceX

is NASA contracts.

And Musk

at some point, and I I that can like

basically like chart when it happened

because he was sort of a Democrat in

semi-good standing. He was like

pro-Obama, right? He radicalizes. He's

online way too much. He gets Twitter

brained. Twitter has been

bad for no one the way it's been

specifically bad for the way that guy

thinks. And his information environment

is so deeply toxic.

And

there's a world where he joined the

Trump administration

and tried to increase state capacity.

And yes, that might mean chainsawing

through some of what the government did.

But with the goal of making it possible

to do more in space.

With the goal of making it possible to

do more effective research into battery

technology.

And instead, he cuts completely

indiscriminately. I have friends

who got

layoff notices that the email read,

"Dear

first name last name,

you have been terminated for cause."

Which cause? Who was that email to?

So,

like Musk's project deregulation is a

traditional Republican thing. He didn't

make it up. But the point is that

right now the government often imposes

too many rules on itself.

And that makes it hard for it to do

things. So, if you look at the Mamdani

housing plan that came out this week,

block by block is what it's called.

What he is doing in that plan overall

is he is removing rules. He is

deregulating

what is required

when New York

puts in money to build affordable

housing.

That in order to build affordable

housing in most jurisdictions, certainly

blue ones in this country,

because you're using public money,

it triggers a bunch of government rules

that make it much more expensive.

Because a lot of interests have come up

and you know, won their way into the

fight. And so, they've been able to

uh,

you know, force higher building

standards and higher wage standards and

higher environmental standards. And all

these things might be good on their own.

They really might be.

But, what you've done is make it twice

as expensive or three times as expensive

or four times as expensive

to build affordable housing as to build

market-rate housing.

And so, the taxpayer's getting a shitty

deal and you're not building enough

affordable housing.

Uh, there was a story in Washington D.C.

a couple years ago

about how they'd ended up building

affordable housing units that were

costing $1.2 million per unit.

These are affordable housing units with,

again, like public and nonprofit

dollars. Uh, there was one particular

build where I I'm worried I'll get the

numbers wrong, um, from memory, but I

think it was something like the same

developer built affordable and

market-rate next to each other.

And the affordable cost something like

$800,000 a unit [laughter]

and the market rate was like $400,000.

And like, you just can't achieve the

goal is affordable housing.

And so, what I care about, the point of

abundance, the first sentence of it,

basically, of the book,

is what do we need more of?

And how do we get it?

And so, the thing that separates

different people in this debate for me,

the the abundance debate, the the the

debate about plenitude,

is first you have to decide what do you

want more of? Mhm. I want a lot more

green energy.

Donald Trump does not. So, the fact that

he is deregulating what it means to

build like coal or oil in this country

is not a big abundance win because he's

trying to achieve something that I don't

support. He's actually made it harder to

build wind and solar. So, you can

regulate government to make it harder

for government to act. You can

deregulate it. You can use rules well

and poorly.

And when you get your politics

wrapped up on the axle of having

emotional reaction

>> Mhm.

>> to the means

to the tools you're using, then you got

a problem.

The idea that deregulation is owned by

the right

or for that matter, that regulation is

owned by the left, it's not true, but

it's a way of shutting off your thought.

The right regulates things all the time.

>> Mhm.

>> The left deregulates things. Like it's

just a stupid

>> Mhm. [laughter]

Yeah, I know. I agree.

>> Stupid way of thinking.

>> This proposal for abundance is a lot

about rolling back red tape, but I know

a lot of people are concerned about

what that means for unchecked power of

potential AI overlords. You know, if

you've got a very small number of people

who are controlling a massive amount of

influence and a massive amount of the

economy,

how does the rolling back of red tape

help with that solution?

>> So, two things. So, what I want to say

abundance is not about rolling back red

tape.

There are places like building housing

in dense blue cities where you probably

do need to roll back what people call

red tape.

But that is

that is useful where that is the

problem.

On AI,

I believe we need a lot more AI

regulation. This is why I don't buy the

sort of deregulation pro-regulation like

dichotomy. There are places I want to

regulate more, places I want to regulate

less.

Um I think the abundance question on AI

is different.

I have a lot of concern

about the power concentrating on AI.

I've covered these guys forever. I've

had

Demis and Sam Altman and

Dario all on my show, right? Like I've

I've been in this since GPT-2, I guess.

And you do not want power concentrating

with that. I mean, at one point, and

some of them will still say that, they

don't want power concentrating with

them, although in practice they don't

always act like that now.

>> Yeah.

>> Sam Sam Altman I think in OpenAI seemed

to be more pro-regulation a couple years

ago than in practice like the Greg

Brockman as president has helped fund

the super PAC that is dumping money

against candidates who want to regulate

AI. And so, it's like on the one hand

they'll come to a hearing and say, "We

want to be regulated." Then somebody

will run for office saying, "We should

do some light regulation." It's like,

not you. Not by you, we don't.

Um

So, you have like real money and

politics problems. And uh I, by the way,

just as a broad thing, this is not

something we're worried about in

abundance, but

like I just believe in much, much, much

stronger money and politics regulations.

You should amend the US Constitution to

say, "Money is not speech."

Money should not be as protected speech

when spent on politics and make it

possible to regulate it. There's an

effort to do that through state houses

happening right now.

Um but I think the abundance question on

AI

is at two levels. One is

we think of AI models, right? People

argue about are they using Gemini or

ChatGPT or Claude.

But AI is, you know, Jensen Huang of

Nvidia always makes this point. It's

like a five-layer cake.

And there's an energy level, there's a

chips level, there's all this

infrastructure you actually need.

If we want the US to be

continue to be kind of AI competitive or