Few among us on the American left – the homeowning, hand-wringing class – can deny crushing on Ezra Klein. He’s everything you might want in your public intellectual, plus some things you didn’t even know could be part of that package: hypersmart, well-spoken, polite but engaging, but also young at 39 years, easy on the eyes, at least in the tiny smartphone thumbnail, and with a subtle and charming lisp.
Klein first hit the national radar as a Washington Post blogger, and as co-founder of Vox, where he was editor-in-chief. He joined the New York Times in 2020, and in January 2021, not unlike thousands of others amid the pandemic, he started a podcast. But unlike the thousands of “hot take from a kitchen table” pods, the Ezra Klein Show had the full weight of the New York Times behind it.
“Real conversations about ideas that matter” is the tagline. The difference is that Klein, over 250 episodes and counting, is having conversations with some of the finest minds of the 21st century. He has read their books, developed his own thoughtful responses and the platform to disseminate what they think – his podcast regularly appears in the top 10 of all podcasts in the US – and he has the ability to parse nuanced theories and stay with his interlocutor through wide-ranging subject matter at serious depth.
Klein, as we learn over several episodes, is vegan, a practitioner of meditation and a sci-fi devotee, and takes his time in a manner that feels both novel and profound.
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Episodes often clock in well past the hour, but this is not the kind of podcast you can listen to at double speed: the information imparted is often dense and weighty, and unless you have a mind that goes twice the speed of Klein’s while maintaining his depth of comprehension, I’d advise against it. Klein makes us all slow down, but he also has a plan for where he’ll take us.
Klein’s philosophical leanings and curiosities have him stretching into new and fascinating areas
Take the episode with Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Kolbert, the foremost climate change author and journalist in the world right now: their conversation ranges from her compelling analysis of our current situation – a point of no return when it comes to climate – to the likelihood of keeping the global temperature rise under two degrees, to geoengineering schemes and whether and how they should be considered to avert the worst crises. (Think genetically engineered mosquitoes and blasting particles into the stratosphere.) Then there’s the standout episode with George Saunders highlighting the importance and necessity of kindness and the aisle-crossing possibilities presented by local politics.
Klein made his name as a policy wonk, and he is at his most comfortable on the ins and outs of US government policy and its implementation, a subject he manages to make both accessible and surprisingly engaging. But his philosophical leanings and curiosities have him stretching into new and fascinating areas, including consideration of the trade-offs people will make with AI, or why modern foods are messing with our brains, or what kind of sociocultural psychologies were foundational to western prosperity.
Guests are regularly asked at the close of episodes for book recommendations, should your bedside stack need replenishing: from Nikolai Gogol’s Dead Souls to Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X Kendi to All the Best by George HW Bush – you’ll find some varied reading in there. Klein’s superpower is that he takes it all seriously – the conversations and the reading material. He’s a man for whom the importance of being earnest is not in question. In short, the Ezra Klein Show won’t make you laugh, but it may make you smarter, if you just slow down and listen.
