I Asked a Former Trump Official to Justify This War

I’m opposed to this war. The Trump administration did not consult the American public or try to persuade Congress before authorizing the strikes on Iran. I don’t think the administration is prepared for what the strikes might unleash. But I wanted to try to understand President Trump’s decisions from the perspective of somebody much friendlier to his foreign policy. Nadia Schadlow is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and served as a deputy national security adviser during Trump’s first term. She led the drafting and publication of the 2017 National Security Strategy of the United States. In this conversation, Schadlow gives the conservative case for war with Iran, and for attacking without first building support in Congress or with the public. And I ask her how she squares Trump the candidate, who ran on a promise of not starting new wars, with the Trump of today, who’s deposed two heads of state since the start of 2026, and now says he won’t rule out boots on the ground in Iran. Is there a consistent worldview here? Or did Trump change? Mentioned: “National Security Strategy of the United States of America” War and the Art of Governance by Nadia Schadlow “The Globalist Delusion” by Nadia Schadlow “The Great Lie of War” with Ben Rhodes on “The Ezra Klein Show” Book Recommendations: America in the World by Robert B. Zoellick The Mystery of Capital by Hernando De Soto The Peacemaker by William Inboden Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris with Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin, Emma Kehlbeck, Jack McCordick, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Last Friday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced that he was breaking the Pentagon’s contract with the A.I. company Anthropic and would declare the company a supply chain risk — a designation for companies so dangerous, they can’t exist anywhere in the U.S. military supply chain. What makes this so wild is the military is still using Anthropic’s A.I. system right now. They reportedly used it during the raid to capture Maduro in Venezuela, and are now using it in the war in Iran. This story raises so many questions: Why does the government think Anthropic is so dangerous? How exactly is the government using A.I. right now? How do they want to use A.I.? And who should ultimately control this powerful and uncertain technology? Dean Ball is a senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation and the author of the newsletter Hyperdimensional. He served as a senior policy adviser on A.I. for the Trump White House and was the primary staff writer of their A.I. action plan. But he’s been furious at the Trump administration for how it has been handling the conflict with Anthropic. So I wanted to have him on the show to explain why. Mentioned: “Hyperdimensional" by Dean Ball “What if Dario Amodei Is Right About A.I.?” The Ezra Klein Show “Stratechery” by Ben Thompson Book Recommendations: Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays by Michael Oakeshott Empire Of Liberty by Gordon S. Wood Roll, Jordan, Roll by Eugene D. Genovese Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Kristin Lin, Emma Kehlbeck, Jack McCordick, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Two sitting heads of state, eight weeks apart. On Saturday, February 28, the United States and Israel launched a massive military assault on Iran that resulted in the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, along with much of his senior command. This came less than two months after the United States military captured Nicolás Maduro, the president of Venezuela, in an overnight raid. The president seems to believe that he can decapitate these regimes and control their successors without events spinning out of his control. Is he right? Ben Rhodes is a New York Times Opinion contributing writer and a co-host of “Pod Save the World.” He served as a senior adviser to President Barack Obama and worked on the Iran nuclear deal. In this conversation, we discuss the ongoing conflict in Iran, how Democrats should respond, and whether Trump’s “head on a pike” approach to foreign policy underestimates the chaos of war. Mentioned: “Push from Saudis, Israel helped move Trump to attack Iran” by Michael Birnbaum, John Hudson, Karen DeYoung, Natalie Allison and Souad Mekhennet “Trump’s Best Foreign Policy? Not Starting Any Wars” by J.D. Vance Book Recommendations: From the Ruins of Empire by Pankaj Mishra The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig Travelers in the Third Reich by Julia Boyd Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Jack McCordick. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris with Mary Marge Locker, and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota and Isaac Jones. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin, Emma Kehlbeck, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

President Trump’s approval ratings on the economy, immigration and trade are deep in the red. But in Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, he decided to tell the American people: You don’t know what you’re talking about. “Today our border is secure, our spirit is restored, inflation is plummeting, incomes are rising fast. The roaring economy is roaring like never before,” he said. I’m not going to fact-check the president in this episode. But I do want to ask: Even if he can’t be honest with the American people, is he at least being honest with himself? My editor Aaron Retica joins me to discuss. Mentioned: “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration” by Miles Taylor “Has Trump Achieved a Lot Less Than It Seems?” with Yuval Levin on “The Ezra Klein Show” Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Claire Gordon and Marie Cascione. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Isaac Jones & Aman Sahota. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin, Emma Kehlbeck, Jack McCordick, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

A.I. agents are here. Have they changed your life yet? The release of agents like Claude Code marked a new pivot point in the history of A.I. We are leaving the chatbot era and entering the agentic era — where A.I. is capable of completing all kinds of tasks on its own, and even collaborating and communicating with other A.I. It isn’t clear yet whether these models actually make their users meaningfully more productive. But the technology is continuing to improve; there are few signs that it is close to plateauing. So what might this new era mean for our economy, our labor market and our kids? Clark is a co-founder of Anthropic, the company behind Claude and Claude Code. His newsletter, Import AI, has been one of my go-to reads to track the capabilities of different models over the years. In this conversation, I ask him to share how he sees this moment — how the technology is changing, whether it is leading to meaningful changes in how we work and think, and how policy needs to or can change in response to any job displacement on the horizon. Mentioned: “Import AI” by Jack Clark “2026: This is AGI” by Pat Grady and Sonya Huang “Why and How Governments Should Monitor AI Development” by Jess Whittlestone and Jack Clark “Anthropic’s Chief on A.I.: ‘We Don’t Know if the Models Are Conscious’", Interesting Times with Ross Douthat Book Recommendations: A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin The True Believer by Eric Hoffer There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris with Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Isaac Jones and Aman Sahota. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Kristin Lin, Emma Kehlbeck, Jack McCordick, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

It has been harder to get insight into the dynamics of President Trump’s White House this term compared with the first one, partly because there have been fewer leaks. But after the attack on Venezuela and the administration’s actions in Minneapolis, I’ve found myself wondering: How exactly is Trump making decisions? Who is he listening to? How does this White House work? Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer cover the Trump administration for The Atlantic and have written a series of big profiles on key figures in this administration. Parker previously won three Pulitzer Prizes for her reporting at The Washington Post. Mentioned: “The Wrath of Stephen Miller” by Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer “‘I Run the Country and the World’” by Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer “This Is the Real Reason Susie Wiles Talked to Me 11 Times” by Chris Whipple “Susie Wiles, JD Vance, and the “Junkyard Dogs”: The White House Chief of Staff on Trump’s Second Term (Part 1 of 2)” by Chris Whipple Book Recommendations: The Secret History by Donna Tartt Bel Canto by Ann Patchett Frankly, We Did Win This Election by Michael C. Bender An Image of My Name Enters America by Lucy Ives Palimpsest by Gore Vidal Blood by Douglas Starr Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Jack McCordick. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin, Emma Kehlbeck, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Aman Sahota and Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

At the end of January, Trump’s Justice Department released what it said was the last tranche of the Epstein files: millions of pages of emails and texts, F.B.I. documents and court records. Much was redacted and millions more pages have been withheld. There is a lot we want to know that remains unclear.But what has come into clear view is the role Epstein played as a broker of information, connections, wealth and women and girls for a slice of the global elite. This was the infrastructure of Epstein’s power — and it reveals much about the infrastructure of elite networks more generally.Anand Giridharadas is something of a sociologist of American elites. He’s the author of, among other books, “Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World” and the forthcoming “Man in the Mirror: Hope, Struggle and Belonging in an American City.” He also publishes the great newsletter The.Ink.Back in November, after the release of an earlier batch of Epstein files, Giridharadas wrote a great Times Opinion guest essay, taking a sociologist’s lens to the messages Epstein exchanged with his elite friends. So after the government released this latest, enormous tranche of materials, I wanted to talk to Giridharadas to help make sense of it. What do they reveal — about how Epstein operated in the world, the vulnerabilities he exploited and what that says about how power works in America today?Note: This conversation was recorded on Tuesday, Feb. 10. On Thursday, Feb. 12, Kathryn Ruemmler announced she would be resigning from her role as chief legal officer and general counsel at Goldman Sachs.This episode contains strong language.Mentioned:“How the Elite Behave When No One Is Watching: Inside the Epstein Emails” by Anand Giridharadas“How JPMorgan Enabled the Crimes of Jeffrey Epstein” by David Enrich, Matthew Goldstein and Jessica Silver-Greenberg“Scams, Schemes, Ruthless Cons: The Untold Story of How Jeffrey Epstein Got Rich” by David Enrich, Steve Eder, Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Matthew GoldsteinNobody's Girl by Virginia Roberts GiuffreBook Recommendations:Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlancBehind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine BooUnpublished Work by Conchita SarnoffThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Jack McCordick. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, mixing by Aman Sahota and Isaac Jones. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin, Emma Kehlbeck, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Pat McCusker and Aman Sahota. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

George Saunders is tired of being the “kindness guy.”Saunders is one of my favorite fiction writers, and a friend of the pod; I talked to him back in 2021 and 2022. He also has a reputation as a kind of guru of kindness, thanks to a viral commencement speech he gave back in 2013. We talked about kindness on the show before.But with the publication of his new novel, “Vigil,” I noticed that something about Saunders seemed to have shifted. He was pushing back against that public persona, and wrestling with darker themes.“Vigil” follows an oil tycoon who, on his deathbed, is visited by angels and people from his past asking him to reassess his life. And you can feel a tension in that book that is also very alive in Saunders himself — between recognizing how much of our lives are conditioned by our circumstances and the need to pass judgment to reckon with the truth.In this conversation, I discuss that tension with Saunders. I ask him about his relationship not just to kindness but also to anger; how he defines sin; whether he believes in free will; and what he thinks lies beyond kindness.This episode contains strong language.Mentioned:Vigil by George Saunders“What It Means to Be Kind in a Cruel World” by The Ezra Klein Show“George Saunders Convocation Speech 2013”“A Tough Question Indeed” by George SaundersEast West Street by Philippe Sands“When Is It Genocide?” by The Ezra Klein ShowBook Recommendations:I Will Bear Witness, Volume 1 by Victor KlempererRed Cavalry and Other Stories by Isaac BabelThe Place of Tides by James RebanksThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota, Efim Shapiro and Isaac Jones. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin, Emma Kehlbeck, Jack McCordick, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Aman Sahota and Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ragebait, sponcon, A.I. slop — the internet of 2026 makes a lot of us nostalgic for the internet of 10 or 15 years ago.What exactly went wrong here? How did the early promise of the internet get so twisted? And what exactly is wrong here? What kinds of policies could actually make our digital lives meaningfully better?Cory Doctorow and Tim Wu have two different theories of the case, which I thought would be interesting to put in conversation together. Doctorow is a science fiction writer, an activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the author of “Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It.” Wu is a law professor who worked on technology policy in the Biden White House; his latest book is “The Age of Extraction: How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity.”In this conversation, we discuss their different frameworks, and how they connect to all kinds of issues that plague the modern internet: the feeling that we’re being manipulated; the deranging of our politics; the squeezing of small businesses and creators; the deluge of spam and fraud; the constant surveillance and privacy risks; the quiet rise of algorithmic pricing; and the dehumanization of work. And they lay out the policies that they think would go furthest in making all these different aspects of our digital lives better.Mentioned:Enshittification by Cory DoctorowThe Age of Extraction by Tim Wu“Fighting Enshittification” by Josh RichmanBook Recommendations:Small Is Beautiful by E. F. SchumacherManipulation by Cass R. SunsteinThe Rise and Fall of the Great Powers by Paul KennedyCareless People by Sarah Wynn-WilliamsLittle Bosses Everywhere by Bridget ReadJules, Penny & the Rooster by Daniel PinkwaterThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Will Peischel. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Isaac Jones and Aman Sahota. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin, Emma Kehlbeck, Jack McCordick, Michelle Harris, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Natasha Scott. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My motivation for this episode is personal. One of my resolutions this year is to spend more time hosting and to make those gatherings more meaningful.I think a lot of us wish we had better social lives and a stronger feeling of community around us. But it’s hard. We’re busy, we’re tired, and social planning and hosting can feel like just more work. So I asked Priya Parker on the show to help.Parker is the author of “The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters” and a wonderful Substack, Group Life. She’s also a conflict resolution facilitator. And she just thinks about gathering and hosting in a different way from anyone else I’ve ever met. For her, it’s about more than just throwing a great dinner party; it’s about how we build community across differences, all the way up to how gathering can help create a better politics. The way Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign thought about community and built community among its volunteers was partly based on her work and advice.This episode is a bit of a break from politics — but also not. Because pulling the people we love closer and spending more time together rather than alone are as essential as any political or civic discipline could be right now.This conversation contains strong language.Mentioned:In Defense of Politics by Bernard CrickI And Thou by Martin BuberThe Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai“Adorable Little Detonators” by Allison P. Davis“The Accused” by Katie J.M. Baker“The Black Thought Project” by Alicia Walters“Zohran’s Smile” by Anand GiridharadasBook Recommendations:The Politics of Ritual by Molly FarnethOn Repentance and Repair by Danya RuttenbergBoyMom by Ruth WhippmanTalk to Your Boys by Christopher Pepper and Joanna SchroederThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris with Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin, Emma Kehlbeck, Jack McCordick, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.